The Idol of Somnat.
CHAPTER I.
Shortly after the sun had risen, a beautiful Hindoo was washing her graceful limbs in the crisp waters of the sea, which gently curled over a smooth pebbly beach, a short distance from the fortifications of Somnat. This town was situated on the neck of a peninsula washed on three sides by the ocean, and fortified with great strength. There was only one approach to it. It was reported that the Ghiznivites, under Mahmood their sovereign, were on their march towards the town in large force, at which the infatuated Hindoos affected to rejoice, proclaiming in the frantic wildness of their enthusiasm, that their great idol, to whom all things upon earth were obedient, had drawn thither the Mahomedans to blast them in a moment and to avenge the destruction of the various gods of India. Upon this vain-glorious boast they appeared to rely.
The town was crowded with inhabitants who seemed determined to resist to the last gasp of life the threatened assault of their foes. Nevertheless, they trusted more to the imagined supremacy of their idol, than to their own efforts of resistance. Though the fortifications were strong for the period, when cannon were not employed in sieges, and even the battering-ram was but seldom resorted to, yet, being only of mud, they were not impregnable to the assaults of a brave and resolute foe. They were defended, moreover, by a host of fanatics, thousands of pilgrims, and crazy visionaries who crowded to worship the celebrated idols containedwithin their walls, forming the uncertain instruments of defence, against which the hardy and resolute troops of Ghizny, inured to warfare and accustomed to conquest, had to contend.
The inhabitants of Somnat were confident in their numbers, and this being increased by their expectation of divine interposition through the influence of their stone divinity, they hailed with derision the approach of their foes, observed their festivals with increased acclamations, as if the menaced hostility promised rather to be scenes of pastime than of devastation.
The threatened siege did not in the slightest degree interrupt the daily observances of the Hindoos. The women went to the sea-shore to bathe as usual, perfectly unapprehensive of danger from the advancing army of Mahmood.
The beach on one side of the town was very retired, and, beyond the battlements landward, flanked by a thick wood. Hither the women repaired to perform their matutinal ablutions, and being considered a spot sacred to this purpose, it was seldom or never intruded upon, except on chance occasions by the stranger.
Here, as I have already said, according to her invariable practice, about the period of sunrise, a beautiful young Hindoo mother was performing those lustrations imposed by her religion, and which, apart from any spiritual consideration, are indispensable in a tropical region. The beach sloped gradually into the sea, in which she stood up to the shoulders, her long black hair streaming like a silken fringe upon the rippling waters. Her eyes were frequently bent downward, as if in reverential abstraction, after which she would raise them to the clear blue sky, rich with the pure tints of heaven, and brightened by the fresh genial radiance of the morning sun. She was only dawning into womanhood though a mother, her age not being yet sixteen. Her child was lying on the beach wrapped in a small coverlet, and basking in the young sunlight. The babe was but a few weeks old, and the youthful mother felt for it all the yearning of a parent for her first child. She looked at it occasionally from the place where she stood, draining the water from her streaming tresses, and cleaning them with a carethat showed a consciousness of their beauty, and her eye glistened with a parent’s pride as she gazed upon the earliest fruit of her wedded love.
The infant was laid upon the dry soft sand, a few yards above where the water reached at high tide. Several other women were at this moment bathing at some short distance from the young mother, who now quitted the water, having first carefully arrayed her hair, and in a short time was wrapped in that loose becoming drapery which sets off to such advantage the slender, but round and graceful forms of the Hindoo women. Her bust was enclosed in a vest of bright crimson silk, fitted closely to the shape, and covering the arm midway from the shoulder to the elbow. A long piece of fine muslin encircled her head, falling over her neck and shoulders behind, and passing the lower parts of the body in a variety of elegant undulating folds peculiar to the taste of oriental beauties. Standing a few yards from her babe, she arranged her dress with a neatness and precision which sufficiently indicated a consciousness of the becoming. She had just completed this necessary arrangement of her toilet, and was about to turn towards her tender offspring to proceed homeward, when a wolf darted from the neighbouring thicket, seized the unconscious infant, and was retiring with all speed towards the wood. The distracted mother gazed for an instant in speechless agony, but quickly recovering herself, she sprang after the beast with the swiftness of an antelope, screaming the while with an energy that made the forest re-echo her cries.
The wolf was encumbered by the weight of its burden, and the cloth in which it was wrapped trailing upon the ground, as the animal ran, greatly impeded its progress. Her companions gazed after the anxious mother, as she followed wildly in pursuit of her infant; without making the slightest effort to assist her. They stood with open mouths, but neither a sigh of sympathy escaped their bosoms, nor did even an aspiration for the bereavement of the young mother rise to their lips.
The wolf had nearly reached the thicket with its prey, and the wretched parent was about to yield herself up to the wild impulseof despair, when a horseman emerged from a path in the wood, and seeing the distress of a young and beautiful woman, the cause of which became instantly evident, he urged his steed forward, and reaching the wolf before it had time to enter the jungle, struck it on the back with his sword. The blow was given from so sinewy an arm as almost to sever the brute in twain. It immediately dropped its prey, writhed for a few moments, and died. The eager mother threw herself frantically on the body of her first-born, and began to bewail its untimely fate with piercing shrieks of loud and bitter agony. Supposing that it was dead, she clasped it to her bosom and called upon her idol to restore the joy of her life; but the stone divinity, dumb and insensible as the earth on which she had prostrated herself, heard not her lamentable cry. The huge image of Somnat, adored by millions of enthusiasts, and enriched by the perpetual offerings of wealthy devotees, standing within the walls of a gorgeous temple, which might have vied with the proudest palaces of Egypt’s kings in the brightest days of their renown, heard not the tender supplications of one of its devoted adorers, but stood in its grim majesty inaccessible to the appeal which might have melted any stone that had not been employed to fashion a divinity.
The child, feeling the pantings of its mother’s bosom, uttered a cry that in a moment subdued the mental anguish of its parent. Her lamentations ceased—she gazed upon it—unfastened the cloth in which it had been tied—examined it with an expression of excited anxiety, and finding that it was uninjured, gave a scream of joy, and clasped it with fervency to her breast.
The wolf had seized only the wrapper in which the infant had been secured, so that when released from the monster’s jaws, the babe was without a scratch. The youthful mother was wild with transport. She fixed her beaming eyes upon her preserver with a look between amazement and exultation, but without uttering a word.
By this time the stranger, beneath whose sword the wolf had died, stood near, apparently enjoying the rapture of the youngHindoo. For a few moments, he left her to the feelings in which her ardent heart was evidently revelling, forbearing to interrupt an enjoyment second only to the fruition of paradise. He beheld her beauty with fervent admiration, a beauty seldom paralleled, and heightened by the tender excitement under which she was at that moment labouring. Having recovered from the shock of agony produced by the apprehension of her child’s peril, her thoughts were now sufficiently collected to acknowledge her obligations to its deliverer. She again turned upon him her large dark liquid eyes with an expression of melting gratitude which could not be mistaken.
The stranger approached. She shrank from him, in spite of the obligation which he had placed her under, because he was of another creed. The tie of his jumma or tunic proclaimed him a Mahomedan, and she almost shuddered as he came near and bent over her. She could not smother her deeply-rooted prejudices against the enemies of her race, and the blasphemers of her gods.
“I am happy,” said the stranger, “in having been the instrument of preserving your infant from the ravening wolf. Though our creeds differ they ought at least to concur in the natural law of reciprocal benefaction. I rejoice to have saved the child of one who has been taught to look upon me, and those who profess a similar faith, as fit to hold intercourse only with the scum and off-scouring of human society, and trust that while such an act offers an appeal to your gratitude, it will convey a lesson of wisdom. I would that you should not only look upon me as the saviour of your babe, but put me on the footing in social dignity with those of your own belief in matters concerning the life which is to succeed the present, and think not that all virtue expires when not fostered by the warm atmosphere of Hindoo superstition.”
“Stranger,” replied the mother, looking tenderly upon her child, now drawing from her the maternal nutriment, “I cannot gaze upon this dear object without being sensible that, apart from allprejudices raised by those conventional laws which different creeds impose, I am your debtor for the greatest enjoyment which this world can realise. You have restored the infant to its longing mother, and whatever the restraint by which I may be repelled from welcoming the saviour of my child with those outward expressions of acknowledgment which I might be permitted to show to a member of my own faith, believe me I shall never forget that the greatest debt of my life is due to one who is considered the enemy of my country’s gods, but whom I have found to be the most signal and magnanimous of friends.”
“Perhaps the enthusiasm of your gratitude will subside when you know to whom you have been indebted for the salvation of your offspring.”
“No!—such knowledge cannot alter the fact of my obligation. I may indeed regret the spiritual and social bar which lies between us, but I never can forget the act which has restored to me a life that I value far more dearly than my own. But may I ask to whom I am indebted for such a signal act of magnanimity?”
“To Mahmood of Ghizny, the most inveterate foe of your race, who despises your gods, and is at this moment preparing to hurl your gigantic divinity, installed in yonder gorgeous temple, from its proud pedestal, and make its worshippers ashamed of having so long prostrated themselves before a block of stone.”
The lovely Hindoo shrank from her interlocutor when he declared himself to be the greatest enemy of her nation’s gods. She trembled for the moment, but her high sense of moral obligation bore down the weak fences of prejudice, and she assured him that the preserver of her child could never merge in the enemy of her race.
“Prepare,” said Mahmood, “to behold me shortly enter those walls in triumph; but be assured of your own safety, and you may yet live to know that the sovereign of Ghizny never professed a kindness which he did not rigidly perform.”