THE DREAM OF RAVAN

A MYSTERY

by Anon

[Reprinted from “The Dublin University Magazine”, 1853 & 1854]

The Theosophical Publishing Society, 7 Duke Street, Adelphi, London, W.C.
The Path, 144 Madison Avenue, New York, U.S.A.
The Theosophist Office, Adyar, Madras, India

1895

PREFACE

The DREAM OF RAVAN appeared originally in a series of articles in “The Dublin University Magazine” of 1853, 1854. The name of the writer has not been disclosed; but, whoever he was, there is no doubt that he was both a scholar and a mystic. That he had studied the “Râmâyana” from the original texts and was a master of Vedântic psychology is amply manifested; that he was a mystic himself and spoke of things that were realities to him and not mere empty speculations, is evident to every earnest student of Indian theosophical literature. In no other western publication, have the three “states” of man's consciousness been so strikingly and so intelligibly set forth as by our author. This mystic exposition will endow such intellectual production as Professor Max Müller's “Lectures on the Vedânta” and Dr. Paul Deussen's ”Das System des Vedânta” with a soul, and breathe into them the breath of life. Though the narrative is set forth in the garb of phantasy and much of strangeness is intermixed, so that the general reader will pass it by as merely a strange conceit, nevertheless the mystic and student of yoga will recognize many a home truth but slightly veiled, and many a secret wholly disclosed.

G.R.S. Mead

In the caves of Eastern Sibyl, what curious leaves lie hidden, or go whirling in the wind! written over with strange, hieroglyphic characters, not without deep meaning — akin to prophetic, —

Teste David cum Sibylla.

Fragmentary — incomplete — hard to put together, yet furnishing here and there, when the attempt is made, a piece of chance mosaic that engages our attention like the forms in the moss-stone. Such a bundle of Sibylline leaves is the “Dream of Ravan”, of which we propose to put together and interpret some torn and ragged fragments.

Valmiki — in that musical epic, the Ramayana, which stands beside the [Page 2] Iliad for antique and stately simplicity, and for the surpassing melody of its numbers, no less than for its elevated morality, may fairly challenge a comparison with any poem in existence — has told us the main incidents in the history of Rama and his Titanic enemy Ravan. We need hardly inform our readers that the Ramayana is, like the Iliad, the story of a city besieged, for the sake of a wife who has been unjustly carried off. Rama, the son of Dasharatha, King of Ayodhya, having been banished for fourteen years by his father to gratify the ambition of one of his younger queens, Kekaiyi, who wished to secure the succession for her own son Bharata (an admirable illustration of the working of polygamy), proceeds with his incomparable wife Sita, one of the loveliest female creations of poetry, and his brother the indomitable archer [Page 3] Lakshmana, or as he is now popularly called, Laxuman, to wander in the wilds of the then thinly-peopled India, exploring and admiring the magnificent forests, rivers, and mountains which lie in their course; visiting the holy sages and hermits who live far in these wilds unknown to public view, and slaying demons, goblins, and giants innumerable.

Sita, though the heroine and central female personage round whom the whole action of the poem resolves, and though the immediate cause of the war between Rama, the religious or Brahmanical prince of Ayodhya, the modern Oude, and Ravan, the Titanic, or in other words the anti-Brahmanical, aboriginal, fetish-worshipping monarch of Lanka or Ceylon, — was herself but the secondary and occasional cause. The original mover and teterrima cause belli was a sister of Ravan, a certain [Page 4] Rakshasi or Titanic Ogress, whose nails were of the size and shape of the Indian winnowing basket, and who was thence called Shurpa-nakha, or Basket-nails. This lady had assigned for her maintenance the forest of Janasthana, covering an immense tract in the South of India, and lived here in considerable case, with her brother and a large train of attendant Rakshasas, feeding upon the Munis or hermits who resorted in great numbers to the recesses of this forest, as in later ages to the Thebaid, for the purpose of leading, with their disciples, in its silent solitudes, a life of holy contemplation, and abstraction, and attaining a perfection which was not possible amid the uproar and the temptations of the world. Considering the life of mortification and self-denial which these Munis led — that some stood on their heads, some upon [Page 5] one leg, some with one or both arms stretched over their heads; some hanging by their feet from the branches of trees, with their heads downward, and this for tens, hundreds, thousands of years; that the most luxurious ate only leaves and roots, and vast numbers were “Vata-bhakshas”, or “wind-eaters” — we fear that Basket-nails and her Titanic court, even after the most successful day of hermit bagging, must have had, after all, but meagre fare. Still the ogress was happy in her condition, for she knew not the pangs of love. One fatal day, however, while prowling about in hopes of picking up a stray Muni, she chanced to spy the foot-print of a man, so exquisitely beautiful that she fell instantly in love with its possessor; and tracking it on through the thicket with the sharp sense of a roamer in the forest, she came at [Page 6] last upon its owner, the youthful and beautiful Rama. The sequel we shall give as succinctly related in the Adhyatma Ramayana — [Aranya Kanda — Sarga V.]

Raghava, son or descendant of Raghu, it should be stated, is a patronymic for Rama; Saumitri, or son of Sumitra, a similar patronymic for Laxuman. The Rakshasas are the Titans and giants of Hindu mythology, the fiends and ghouls of the Hindu cemetery, the ogres and goblins of the Hindu nursery.

The Unhappy Love of the Rakshasi or Titaness Shurpa-Nakha
and the Tragic Consequences of her Revenge

Translated from the Sanskrit

In the great forest just then a Rakshasi, changing her form at will.
Of terrible strength, went roaming about, dwelling in Janasthana, [Page 7]
Once on a time, on the Gautami [Another name for Godavari ] banks,
not far from the Five Banian Trees,
The foot-prints of the Universe Lord, marked with the lotus petals,
Chancing to see, inflamed with love, bewitched by the beautiful feet,
Tracking them onward, slowly she came at last to the dwelling of Rama.
There that lord of prosperity, along with Sita abiding,
Beholding beautiful as Kandarpa, intoxicated with love,
The Rakshasi spoke to Raghava: — Who and of whom art thou ? in this hermitage what
Seekest thou to accomplish, with hair coiled up and clothing of bark ? this unto me declare.

I am a Rakshasi, taking all forms at will — Shurpa-nakha my name;
Sister I am to the king of the Rakshasas, Ravana the magnanimous.
Here in this forest I dwell, together with Khara, my brother.
Unto me by the king the whole has been given. I live by devouring Munis.
Who thou art I desire to know — tell me, most eloquent speaker.
To her he replied: — My name is Rama, the son of the king of Ayodhya;
This beautiful woman is Sita, my wife, the daughter of (King)Janaka;
That exceedingly handsome youth my younger brother, Laxuman. [Page 8]
What is thy wish that I can accomplish ? tell me, O universe beauty!
Hearing these words of Rama, in anguish from love she replied —
Come to the forest, O Rama, with me; come sport in mountain and grove.
I am sick with love; I cannot relinquish thee with thy lotus eyes.
Rama, glancing a sidelong look towards Sita, said with a smile —
This is my wife, happy in me, whom I never quit for a moment.
How, without pain to her, my wife, canst thou become mine, O fair one ?
Without stands my brother, Laxuman, a youth surpassingly handsome
He'll be a suitable husband for thee. Go, wander about with him.
Thus addressed, she said to Laxuman — Be thou my husband, O handsome youth.
Obeying thy brother's commands, today let us be united; do not delay.
Thus to Laxuman spoke the terrible Rakshasi, overcome with desire.
To her thus Laxuman: — Good lady, I am the slave of that high-minded one.
Thou wilt become his female slave. O, what more wretched than this!
Go to himself, good luck to thee; he is a king — the Lord of all.
Thus bespoken, the evil-minded one turned again to Raghava: —
Why dost thou make a fool of me thus, with anger she cried, unstable one ? [Page 9]
This moment, before thy very eyes, this Sita of thine I'll devour.
Thus saying, assuming a hideous form, she rushed on the daughter of Janaka.
Then, by the order of Rama, drawing his sword and seizing her,
Laxuman, nimble mover, slit off her nose and ears.
Then uttering a terrible roar — her body streaked over with blood — with speed,
Screeching, she flew to the presence of Khara, in utterance discordant.
What is all this? cried Khara to her, still harsher in his utterance.
By whom, rushing into the jaws of death, wert thou thus lacerated ?
Tell me; him will I instantly slay tho' he resembled Fate.
To him the Rakshasi thus: —Attended by Sita and Laxuman, Rama
Dwells upon the Godavari banks, freeing the Dandaka forest from fear.
'Tis his brother hath maimed me thus, by Rama himself commanded.
If thou art a son of a noble race — if a hero, slay these enemies,
That I may drink up their blood and devour the arrogant pair,
Otherwise I, abandoning life, will go to the dwelling of Yama.
This hearing, Khara rushed hastily forth, out of himself with anger;
And fourteen thousand Rakshasas, terrible in their deeds, [Page 10]
He commanded to march upon Rama, thro' desire to effect his slaughter.
And Khara himself, and Trishiras, and Dushana, the Rakshas —
[All these names are significant. “Khara” means harsh; “Trishiras”, three heads; “Dushana”. crime ]
All went forth against Rama, with manifold weapons armed.
Hearing their tumult, Rama thus spoke to the son of Sumitra: —
Hark to this mighty uproar! doubtless the Rakshasas come;
'Twixt them and me of a truth this day will be fought a mighty battle.
Lead Sita away, and go to the cave; and there, O mighty one, stand.
All the Rakshasas, horrible-shaped, I am desirous to slay.
In this not a word must thou utter: I by myself adjure thee.
Obedient, leading Sita away, Laxuman went to the cave.
Rama, girding his zone around him, taking his cruel bow,
And of arrows two inexhaustible quivers binding, the lord stood ready.
Then the Rakshasas, marching up, hurled forth upon Rama
Weapons of manifold form, and fragments of rocks and trees.
Those in a moment Rama asunder cleft, in sport, like sesamum seeds; [Page 11]
Then with a thousand arrows slaughtering all those Rakshasas,
Khara also, and Trishiras and Dushana the Rakshas —
The whole he slew within half a watch, the eminent son of Raghu.
Laxuman, too, having brought forth Sita out of the cave, to Rama
Delivering her up, beholding the Rakshasas slain, was filled with astonishment.
Sita, embracing Rama, with a countenance beaming joy,
The daughter of Janaka brushed ◊ the wounds of the weapons upon his limbs.
But SHE, beholding those eminent chiefs of the Rakshasas slain, fled away.
Hastening to Lanka — into the council screaming she rushed, and down at the feet of Ravan, [Page 12]

◊ From the word used here, as well as from the commentary, there is little doubt that Sita is here described as having, by mesmeric passes downward, completely healed the bruises and wounds inflicted by the Rakshasas. The words of the commentary are remarkable —

“Shastra Vranáni mârjita rudhiráni purna gartáni
Satya- Sankalpatvach - Chakà- etyarthaha”

“This is the sense — Brushing the bloody wounds of the weapons, she filled up the cavities by the volition of pure intention”.

The “brushing” indicates the mesmeric traction; the “filling up the cavities”, the perfect healing of the wounds; the “volition of pure intention” — the strong will and pure intention laid down by Du Potet and others as so necessary to success in mesmeric operations.

She, the Titan's sister, fell prostrate upon the earth.
Beholding her, Ravan addressed his sister thus overcome with terror —
Arise, poor darling, arise ! The deed of maiming thee thus,
Tho' by Indra 'twere done, O auspicious! by Yama or by Varuna;
Or by Kuvera, relate unto me. I will instantly burn him to ashes.
The Rakshasi thus replied: Thou art arrogant overmuch and stolid of mind;
Given over to drink, by women o'ercome, thou art everywhere seen as a fool:
Without any spies — those eyes of a monarch — O, how canst thou be a king?
Lo ! Khara lies slaughtered in battle; Trishiras, and Dushana too,
And fourteen thousand other Rakshasas, all of them mighty in spirit,
Have been in a moment by Rama slain, the enemy of Asuras.
The whole Janasthana forest now he has rendered safe for the Munis;
And thou, O foolish one, knowest it not; to thee by me it is told !

RAVAN

Who is this Rama ? For what and how, by him were the Asuras slaughtered ?
Relate unto me exactly. I will utterly extirpate them. [Page 13]

SHURPA-NAKA.

From the Janasthana forest once to the Gautami's bank as I went,
I came to an ancient asylum of Munis, bearing the name of the Five Banian Trees. [Panchavati ]
There within a hermitage I beheld the lotus-eyed Rama,
Glorious, holding arrows and how, with hair coiled up, and clad in bark;
And, even in like manner arrayed, his younger brother Laxuman;
And the large-eyed Sita — his beautiful wife — like a second Goddess Shri.
Among Gods, Gandharvas, or Nagas, among mankind, such a being
Was never beheld — was heard of never, O King, with her beauty illuming the forest!
Making endeavours to bring her away, O sinless one, for thy wife,
Her brother, Laxuman named, slit off my nose
And both my ears — that mighty one, commanded thus by Rama.
Weeping from intense anguish, I went and sought out Khara.
Then he, in battle assailing Rama, with multitudes of Rakshasas,
Thereupon in a moment, by that strength-resplendent Rama
All those Rakshasas were destroyed — so terrible in prowess. [Page 14]
If Rama wished it, the whole three worlds, in half a twinkling of the eye,
He would doubtless reduce to ashes; so, my lord, it appears to me.
Ah ! were she but thy wife — then hadst thou not been born in vain !
Now endeavour, O King, that she thy beloved become.
Sita, with eyes like lotus leaves, alone in the world is beautiful.
Thou, in the presence of Rama — Lord, canst never openly stand;
By magic the excellent son of Raghu bewitching, thou shalt obtain her.
Hearing this, by soothing words, by gifts and by marks of honour,
Consoling his sister the monarch retired into his own apartment.
There with anxiety filled, he could get no sleep through the night.
“How by Rama, merely a man, was my powerful Khara destroyed!
How was my brother, alas ! with strength and courage and pride, destroyed by the son of Raghu!
Or is it that Rama is not a man, but the most high Lord himself,
Me and my army desiring to slay, with his multitude of forces ?
That besought by Brahma of old, today he appears in the race of Raghu ?
If I'm to be slain by the Spirit Supreme, I shall win the Vaikunta kingdom.
[The celestial kingdom of Vishnu or Hari. ] [Page 15]
If not, I shall long this kingdom Titanic enjoy;
I will, therefore, march against Rama”.
Thus reflected the monarch of all the Rakshasas, knowing Rama for Hari, the Lord Supreme,
“By hostile intention to Hari I go; not soon the Supreme by devotion is won !“

Thus the die was cast and the fatal resolve taken, upon grounds that must appear strange to European minds — viz., that hostile struggle with, and death at the hands of Vishnu, incarnate in the person of Kama, so far from being a punishment to the soul, was its triumph — was in fact union with the Deity; a more rapid and royal road for its attainment, than the slow and wearisome path of devotion. Thus all Ravan's subsequent violence and crime receives a religious colouring. However the slave of earthly passion to the eyes of men, his whole conduct was really motived upon this determination to bring on the beatific catastrophe, and [Page 16] speed the collision which was to unite him with the supreme soul of the world; — an interpretation of action, which, however startling, seems to flow, as a necessary result, from a pantheistic view of the universe.

Ravan, soon after, carries off Sita, Rama's wife, to the great scandal of his own queen, the virtuous Titaness, “Mandodari”, who seems to have been a very corpulent lady, as that name, unless rendered by the singular term which St. Paul applies to the Cretans, must be translated euphuistically “weighty-stomach”. The name, however, is not worse than that which our fair Ulster friends apply to their sisters of a dark complexion; and which is, in the south, applied indiscriminately to all the natives of the barony of Forth.

Rama, assisted by an army of talking monkeys — a race, we believe, not yet [Page 17] extinct in India, nor perhaps elsewhere — under the command of Hanumanta, an astonishing leaper and marcher, who is to this day worshipped in India, and has a celebrated temple in Bombay, marches to the south in pursuit; bridges over the straits of Manaar; besieges the Titan's capital, Lanka, perhaps the present Candy; and after Indrajit, the heroic son of Ravan and Mandodari, has fallen to the bow of Laxuman, and several other leading chiefs of the Titanic army are killed, takes and burns Lanka, slays the ten-headed Titan, and recovers Sita, whom Ravan had never been able to prevail upon to listen to his love, either by flatteries or threats.

What Homer's battle of the frogs and mice is to the Iliad, the Dream of Ravan is to the Ramayana; for although there is in it much of sad and serious, all these graver parts are bound together [Page 18] by matter of a light and sometimes ludicrous character. It is free in this respect as Don Juan; and, after rising from a perusal, one may be puzzled to decide if the whole poem is to be taken as having a deep and serious moral, or is a mere jeu d'esprit. It may be reasonably doubted if Valmiki is the author. Indeed, we have little hesitation in pronouncing our verdict against that view; for although it contains some descriptions, as we shall see, resembling passages in the Ramayana; and though some of the epithets, such as the “Ten-headed”, “matchless archer”, “astonishing marcher”, correspond very closely with those applied by Valmiki to Ravan, Laxuman, and Hanumanta respectively, these coincidences are to be expected from an imitator. There are, moreover, apparent anachronisms which militate against Valmiki's [Page 19] authorship, and the prophecies of the future state of India, uttered by the Rishis to Ravan, are at least suggestive of grave suspicion.

The poem opens abruptly — upon the return of Ravan from a hard-fought day with Rama and Laxuman. He retires to sleep, attended by his Titanic queen Mandodari; has a fearful dream; and awaking in alarm, summons, like Belshazzar, all his wise men and counsellors, and especially the whole tribe of Yogis, Munis, and Rishis — ascetics, saints, and holy sages, who, singular to say, are found in invariable attendance on, and apparently held in reverence in the Titanic Court — to interpret its meaning. The first canto of the poem is, from this assembly, called the Sabhâ Parva, or “Canto of the Assembly”, and opens shortly after Indrajit is slain. The main action of the poem, in the [Page 20] first Kanda or section of this Parva, consists in the alternate narrative of Ravan, and utterances, chiefly vedantic and always oracular, by the chorus of Rishis, or assembled sages, which give the whole poem a dramatic cast.

In the subsequent Kandas, a third Interlocutor is introduced, a youthful Seer, in whom the Rishis awaken, by laying their hands (mesmerically ?) upon his head, the dnyana drishti, or “gnostic vision”, which is evidently clairvoyance. Thus illumined, he proceeds, at the request of Ravan, to picture as present, the scenes of a far futurity, in which Ravan shall be engaged.

We now proceed to quote the opening, and a considerable portion of the first Kanda of the Sabha Parva..

SABHA PARVA.

KANDA 1.

Hark to the rushing and clangour, the snorting, and galloping rattle — [Page 21]
'Tis Ravan the ten-headed Titan to Lanka come home from the battle
With Rama the Prince of Ayodhya, and Laxuman matchless archer,
And Hanumanta the chief of the monkeys, that most astonishing marcher.
Down from his chariot of polished steel the Titan monarch descended,
And straight to his lofty sleeping chamber overlooking Lanka ascended;
There having doffed his coat of mail, and hung up his tenfold crown,
And quaffed a dozen mashaks of wine, the Ten-headed laid him down.
And he called his magnanimous wife, the Titaness Mandodari,
And he told her beside him to take her seat upon a bearskin godari
And shampoo his limbs while he went to sleep, for he felt fatigued and weary
With all the combating he had had on that day of battle dreary.
Out of his twice five noses the Titan soon was snoring
As loud as if a hundred lions were all in a concert roaring.
But his slumbers were not refreshing, his sleep seemed sorely troubled;
His body uneasily rolled about, and often was upward doubled;
His twenty arms were tossed aloft with all their rattling bones,
His ten heads started fearfully, and he uttered forth smothered moans; [Page 22]
All his faces were deadly pale, for he saw some terrible dream,
And at last he started up and woke, with a wild tremendous scream !

Mandodari asked in alarm, What aileth thee so, my lord ?
What fearful dream or vision thy refreshing sleep hath marred ?

Summon the council, cried Ravan aloud, the Rishis and holy sages,
The astrologers and dream-expounders, and readers of destiny's pages;
For I have dreamt an astonishing dream, me feareth it bodes disaster —
Speed for the Rishis and Councillors, why don't the slaves run faster ?
The nágara drums struck up at once, and the kettle-drums rub-a-dub,
And, ere ten minutes were over, all Lanka was in a hubbub;
And into the palace, with sleepy eyes, came the yawning counsellors trooping,
With descending beards, and matted hair, from the weight of their ages stooping,
Next came the Senapatis and other heroic commanders,
The fire-eating chiefs of Akali youths, and similar salamanders,
Brahmins and Panta-Pradhanas, and Rishis and holy sages,
Astrologers and dream-expounders, and readers of destiny's pages. [Page 23]
The grave assemblage respectful stood, silent, with joined hands,
Wondering what meant this hurried summons, awaiting the monarch's commands.
Solemnly looking upon the assemblage, Rávan the silence broke,
Respectfully bowing down to his Guru, thus the Ten-headed spoke: —

Hearken, ye bearded sages, ye Rishis emaciated,
Ye Yogis with matted hair, and arms stretched upwards and elongated,
Ye venerable warriors, and Akali heroes elated,
Ye sleek-headed men of worldly wisdom, with proportions round and fair,
Whom out of your beds I have dragged reluctant, into the cold night air;
This night when weary from battle I came, and laid me down to sleep,
I dreamt a dream that troubles my mind, for I heard Mandodari weep,
And other voices of lamentation, that of evil omen seem;
Interpret me, I command you, sages, the significance of my dream.

THE DREAM OF RAVAN.

I wandered, methought, in a wonderful land from which all life had fled,
Where everything was turned to stone, or desolate, or dead,
And silent cities in the desert, profounder deserts spread; [Page 24]
Along their sad and lonely streets there moved no living crowd,
Within the vast colossal fanes no breathing votary bowed;
The warrior and his war-horse, the monarch and his bride,
The priest, the god, the victim — alike were petrified.
The maiden and her poor pet cat lay lifeless side by side.
Gigantic forms of life gone by looked out at you from stone,
With a sad, eternal beauty, that time had not overthrown,
And wailing, as the sun arose, they uttered forth a moan.

CHORUS OF RISHIS.

Ten-headed Ravan ! beware, beware,
How even in a dream thou ventures! there;
'Tis the land mysterious of those that mourn:
   On the wings of the wind thou thither may'st go,
   But woe for Mandodari! O woe !
Canst thou, wilt thou safe return ?
   Ah no!

RAVAN

In that land of the silent and desolate I wandered not all alone,
For beside me there moved a beautiful one, whom I loved and called my own; [Page 25]
And yet altho' she appeared as one I had known from eternity,
It was not this my magnanimous queen the dusky Mandodari:
She seemed as tho' she were one with whom, in some long anterior birth,
Hundreds of thousands of years before, I had been the companion on earth.

CHORUS OF RISHIS

Rávan, Rávan, thou errest, beware!
Hearken to this truth sublime —
To the spirit is no time,
Past or future — space or clime —
   Before or after — here or there.
In its own, its primordial state
   Of unity, purity, power and grace,
In itself it mirrors all finite fate,
Possessing in one-ness, gazing on all
That hath befallen, or shall ever befall
   Its evolution in time and space;
Events and relations, persons and things,
Actings and thinkings, and utterings,
   Been or to be, in its finite race,
All are in unity seen and possessed,
   As present at once, without where or when
Such is the universal range
   Of the spirit's boundless ken,
   Such the eternal spirit life,
Without succession, devoid of change,
   Duality, passion, or strife,
Condition of the free, the doubly blest —
Highest activity, in unbroken rest — [Page 26]
Three-fold being, thought, and bliss
Crowding in one happiness !

In the eternal Now of that high sphere,
   Which ever was and is, and will be there,
In that all-comprehending infinite Here,
   Which circling boundless, centres everywhere.
Within that recapitulated All,
Where person mergeth in impersonal,
Which It, and I, indifferent we call,
All scenes and all events, all times and places,
All persons, gestures, speeches, voices, faces,
To be encountered in our finite days,
Are present to the spirit's sense and gaze.

Hence often man, chancing on some new scene,
   Whither in life his footsteps never bore,
Hearing some voice, meeting some well-marked mien,
   Feels vaguely, all familiar were of yore;
  He seems to live again scenes lived or dreamt before,
And wonders where or how it could have been.

They are seen by the spirit rapt and sublime,
Not in a former, but out of all time,
When retiring backward into itself
From the world of sense, and passion, and pelf,.
And concentrated in that deep
Mysterious and illumined sleep,
The body's trance, the spirit's seeing,
Its own primordial mode, ecstatic being,
Its infinite nature it contemplates
As mirrored forth in the temporal fates,
Which await on its goings forth as a soul; [Page 27]
  For then the universal sum
 Of its destinies past, or in time to come,
Lie open before it like a scroll.

'Twas thus, O Ten-headed Rávan, with thee;
Not ages ago in a former birth,
As thou thoughtest, wert thou her companion on earth,
But in ages of ages yet to come,
On thy forehead and on thy thumb
   It is written that thou shalt be.

Before all time — beyond — beside,
   Thou rememberest her eternally,
For she is thy spirit's primeval bride,
   The complement of thy unity,
Joined or dissevered, averted or fond,
'Twixt her and thee an eternal bond
Exists, which, tho' ye were to seek,
Ye cannot ever, ever break —
A bond from whence there is no freeing,
   Since the typal spirit never
   From its antitype can sever,
She is a portion of thy being
   To all eternity.

RAVAN

Her cheeks were very pale, loosely bound her flaxen hair,
And the face was that of childhood, so simple, small and fair;
But that child-like face, tho' beautiful, looked sorrowful and wan.
And from the circlet on her brow, two living gems were gone; [Page 28]
Her hair was decked with coral sprigs and beautiful sea-weed,
And a scarf of crimson sea-moss across her shoulders hung;
Her feet were small and delicate, the shingle made them bleed,
So she sat her down to wash them the Babul trees among.
She listened to the wind that sighed thro' bulrush and thro' reed,
And she joined the plaintive dirge, and a low sweet ditty sung.

SONG OF THE MYSTERIOUS WANDERER

I saw a vision once, and it sometimes reappears,
    I know not if 'twas real, for they said I was not well;
But often as the Sun goes down my eyes fill up with tears,
   And then that vision comes, and I see my Floribel.

The day was going softly down, the breeze had died away,
    The waters from the far west came slowly rolling on,
The sky, the clouds, the ocean wave, one molten glory lay,
   All kindled into crimson by the deep red Sun.

As silently I stood and gazed before the glory passed,
   There rose a sad remembrance of days long gone; [Page 29]
My youth, my childhood came again, my mind was overcast,
  As I gazed upon the going down of that red Sun.

I thought on the beloved dead, the beautiful, the dear,
    The hearts that once were warm with life, the loving ones now gone;
The voices that like marriage bells rang sweetly on my ear,
   The eyes that once had gazed with mine on that red Sun.

The past upon my spirit rushed, the dead were standing near,
    Their cheeks were warm again with life, their winding sheets were gone,
Their voices rang like marriage bells once more upon my ear,
   Their eyes were gazing there with mine on that red Sun.

Many days have passed since then, many chequered years
   I have wandered far and wide — still I fear I am not well;
For often as the Sun goes down, my eyes fill up with tears,
   And then that vision comes, and I see my Floribel.

Ah! never sank in human heart more deeply touching sound, [Page 30]
Than from the low and child-like voice that sang that pensive song;
Never lute woke melody more varied or profound,
   Than to those fairy fingers as they ran its cords along.

O wonder of creation ! O beauteous female hand.
That o'er such various elements can exercise command!
I saw her with that little hand control the Yavan steed,
And check him in the desert while careering at full speed;
With that evolving fabric, so exquisitely fine,
More fabulous in texture than Vishvakarma spun,
With that she woke on canvas such forms of life divine,
The champas blow, the parrots talk, the speckled cobras twine,
You smell the fragrance of the flowers, you hear the stag hounds run,
You feel the Penitent's return and weep with sire and son.

   Nor lived she in the transcendent sphere
   Of art and the beautiful alone;
   High intellect and reason clear,
   And philosophy their daughter dear,
    Had erected upon her brow a throne,
    And shared her mind with the ideal —
   The actual, and the unseen real,
   Claiming her equally for their own. [Page 31]

Marking her sylph-like figure, and her pensive features small,
   You thought her the fairy child to whom unearthly bard might sing —
Whose hand might sadly touch the lute, or sweep the virginal,
    Embroider a drooping violet, or paint a butterfly's wing.

But go to her chamber, and there behold
    The ponderous folios that range,
Written all over with characters old,
Classic, and beautiful, and bold,
    Recondite, rare, and strange:
And all this deep, mysterious lore,
    Whose every dark and sibylline page
    Studious youth and thoughtful age
Might meditate and ponder o'er,
   And grow more learned and more sage,
And not exhaust, if haply understand,
    All was the labour — labour loved, severe,
    Labour pursued thro' many a painful year
By that small, fragile, but unresting hand!

With such manifold gifts, such mystic learning,
With a subtle power of thought discerning,
And an unappeasable yearning
    Towards all that is pure, and good,
And noble, and beautiful, and high,
And infinite as the deep blue sky,
    Alone upon earth she stood,
    Alone in her delicate soul and lofty mood —
Of the friends that she loved and looked upon
Read truly, loved, by only one,
    By others misunderstood. [Page 32]

On the awful mystery round
She gazed with a sadness profound,
That oft brought the tears to her eye,
And the light ones around her wondered why !
The creatures she loved in life,
    She wept like a child in death.
With her living cat she had playful strife,
   She received with tears her dying breath.
She mourned o'er the drooping bird
   And the withering flower:
She wondered — she had never heard —
   Why such a dark and terrible power
  As death, should over all things lower.
Nothing beautiful seemed to live,
Nothing that joy could give
    Endured an hour! —
With the fathomless eyes of a dove,
And the power of an infinite love,
That nothing on earth could satisfy.
For something unknown she would ever sigh,
For some far-off country pine,
And all joy of the present decline.

CHORUS OF RISHIS

Ah ! Ravan, couldest thou not tell why ?
    Knowest thou not the mark and sign
Of the soul descended from on high
That claims its kindred with the sky ?
To such no permanent rest is given
Short of its native heaven.
Love after love, joy after joy.
Rejecting like a worn-out toy,
Till upward ever drawn and tending, [Page 33]

From trial cloud to cloud ascending;
All earthly hopes away are cast,
All earthly loves resigned and past,
   And the spirit so weak and weary deemed,
    Enlightened, strengthened, and redeemed,
Triumphant rests at last,
   Never again to roam,
    In its own, its native home,
Its love primordial, and its last
   The Love divine!

RAVAN

   Oft would she steal away
To sit and think alone,
Seated apart on some grey stone,
Or from the lattice of ruin lone
With moss and ivy all overgrown,
    Watch the receding day,
    Or the moon as it rose over hills and bay,
   Or upward turn her gaze afar
    Upon some solitary star,
Its bright eye tearful as her own.
She loved to look upon the sea,
In whatever fitful mood it might be —
To watch its swelling, white-crested waves
    Dash with a hollow sound
    And a hollower rebound
Among the rugged rocks and caves
  That hem it round.
She loved the moaning of the wind,
For it harmonised with her pensive mind;
  And, were no profane intruder there,
Her amber tresses she would unbind
    And woo it to sigh thro' her hair.[Page 34]
Oft to her ear she would hold a mottled shell,
And listen as if to sounds that she knew full well,
    And loved, and heard with deep emotion,
For they seemed over memory's track
To bring all her childhood back.
And some coral-embowered home that lay
Far, far, far away
    In the depths of the dark blue ocean.

Oft I wondered who could she be,
This wonderful being, thus linked with me,
Was she some fairy princess, or some syren of the sea ?
For oft she was seen to sit alone on the rocks,
Holding a mirror in her hand, dressing her flowing locks,
And as she combed her amber hair,
    She sang again that low sweet song,
    That softly stole the waves along,
And rose so mournful thro' the air,
The very sea-birds gathered round
To hear so sweet and sad a sound.

One thins in my dream I remember well,
That I called her beloved Zingarel;
And from this, methinks, she must have been
Some syren or nymph of the ocean green,
For every one knows that the Zingarels
Are the tiny rose-coloured mermaid belles
That float on the waves in the summer calms,
    And sport about
    When the tide is out
Round the beautiful Isle of Palms.
On her wrist was bound an amulet [Page 35]
Which she had never relinquished yet,
    For an ancient sage named Rajarshi,
When walking the earth, of old, in disguise,
    As a poor faquir, selling medical roots,
    And metallic powders and Tulsi shoots,
And charms against agues and evil eyes,
From her gracious hand, with that gracious smile
That speaketh the heart without grudging or guile,
    Receiving food and a bright rupee
In token of womanly charity;
Had gratefully bound it upon her arm
As a precious talisman and charm
To guard her from all future harm;

Twas a tiny white cow of the sea,
Not bigger I ween than a humble bee;
In a crystal grotto she was shut,
And only now and then let out,
For a minute or two, lest she should pout.
In the deepest recesses of this grot
Was a fairy lake, in a shady spot,
Where miniature corals and sea-weed grew,
    And crystals, and pebbles, and speckled shells,
    And hanging spars like icicles,
And tiny sea-flowers of every hue;
Here in this quiet, secluded lake,
The little sea-cow would her pleasure take,
And paddle about in the brine,
    Would swim and feed
    On fresh sea-weed,
And her name was Chrystalline. [Page 36]

When you opened the grotto the little cow
Would give a joyful, inaudible low,
Then playfully come to the door and greet
Your sense with her sanative breath so sweet,
“Twas far more ravishing to the nose
Than breath of jasmine, or the rose
That on the Pahlavi mountain grows.
But the little sea-cow had a diamond horn,
    That was sharp as a needle to the touch,
And if either in love, in frolic, or scorn,
    You teased the little creature much,
Or keep its grotto open long,
    It would suddenly make a rush at the door,
For the creature, tho' little, was swift and strong.
And half in anger, and half in joke,
With its horn would give your nose such a poke
    As would make you stagger and roar;
But after a minute or two again
Her sanative breath would ascend your brain,
Infuse fresh vigour, assuage your pain,
    And leave you livelier than before.

At this point the assembly is startled by a cry of grief, which is found to proceed from the Queen of Ravan, the “dusky Mandodari”. She had been an attentive listener to the transcendental delivery of the Rishis, and reads in it her own displacement and [Page 37] disseverance from Ravan. We believe few of our fair married readers would feel any very poignant emotions of grief, at being informed that some thousands of years hence, they would no longer occupy their present relation to their husbands. It is even to be feared, that the vast majority would be in absolute despair at the idea of the relation continuing one tenth part of the time. Even those most happily circumstanced might wince a little at the prospect of such a dreadful monotony of happiness ! What ? “toujours perdrix” through all eternity ! It must be confessed the “perdrix” should be a very bird of paradise, yea, a phoenix renewing its youth, like the eagles, not to weary and bore the “varium et mutabile” through so long a duration. But in that circle of ideas in which Mandodari was brought up it is otherwise. [Page 38] The ideal of happiness to the Hindu female is a perpetuity of renewed union with the one “lord of her life”. And, as none of those who have been thus beatified have ever come back, and hinted what a bore the reality is, the ideal still maintains its place, and serves its moral purpose. The Chorus, therefore, is compelled to find an adequate solution of the nodus. For Mandodari's virtues and fidelity render it worthy of a vindicator; and a perpetual theodicea is a part of their very office. To the sad cry, therefore,

“Woe! Woe! Woe !
Whither shall poor Mandodari go ?”

they administer what to the disinterested affection and elevated spiritualism of the dusky queen, — for notwithstanding the bulky corporeity which her name indicates, and which might render it a heavy infliction on the horses that [Page 39] would have, were she living in these modern times, to draw her carriage when she went out for an airing or drove to the band — notwithstanding this unfortunate “stoutness”, the dusky Mandodari is clearly of a lofty and spiritual nature, and capable of entire self-sacrifice, though the powerful spiritual element in her is unconscious, and unawakened by intelligence; and to such a nature the Rishis administer what is an ample consolation; though we fear the proud dames whose garments sweep the ground of modern drawing-rooms, and their husband's pockets into the bargain, would deem it rather humiliating. Mandodari is told not to mourn. She, too, the Chorus informs her, stands in an eternal relation to Ravan; and here follows an authoritative utterance on Hindu psychology, which we shall endeavour [Page 40] to render as intelligible in prose as so dark a subject can be made. The metrical outpouring of the Chorus, like all metaphysics in verse, would, we fear, be hopelessly obscure to the uninitiated reader.

Any one who has ever dabbled in Hindu philosophy must have been somewhat puzzled by the three radical, shall we say prismatic, qualities, into which the primordial and eternal unity divides itself, when reflected in time, through the prism of Maya, into the multitudinous universe; and of which every soul, while in this estranged state, partakes in greater or less degree. These qualities, Tamas, Rajas, and Satva, have been translated generally, the first, Darkness; the second, Passion or Foulness (Turbidness ?); the third, Truth or Goodness. Schlegel renders them caligo, impetus, essentia, the word [Page 41] Sat meaning primarily Being, and secondarily, Truth or Goodness, because that which beeth is alone true, and alone good. The Bhagavad Gita goes briefly into the subject of their nature and influence in the fourteenth Lecture.

“There are” (says Krishna, addressing Arjuna) “three Goon or qualities arising from Prakreetee or nature: Satva truth, Raja passion, and Tama darkness; and each of them confineth the incorruptible spirit in the body. The Satva-Goon, because of its purity, is clear and free from defect, and entwineth the soul with sweet and pleasant consequences, and the fruit of wisdom. The Raja-Goon is of a passionate nature, arising from the effects of worldly thirst, and imprisoneth the soul with the consequences produced from action. The Tama-Goon is the offspring of ignorance, and the [Page 42] confounder of all the faculties of the mind, and it imprisoneth the soul with intoxication, sloth, and idleness. The Satva-Goon prevaileth in felicity, the Raja in action, and the Tama, having possessed the soul, prevaileth in intoxication. When the Tama and the Raja have been overcome, then the Satva appeareth; when the Raja and the Satva, the Tama; and when the Tama and the Satva, the Raja. When Gnan, or wisdom shall become evident in this body at all its gates, then shall it be known that the Satva-Goon is prevalent within. The love of gain, industry, and the commencement of works, intemperance, and inordinate desire, are produced from the prevalency of the Raja-Goon, whilst the tokens of the Tama-Goon are gloominess, idleness, sottishness, and distraction of thought. When the body is dissolved, whilst the [Page 43] Satva-Goon prevaileth, the soul proceedeth to the regions of those immaculate beings who are acquainted with the Most High. When the body findeth dissolution whilst the Raja-Goon is predominant, the soul is born again amongst those who are attached to the fruits of their actions. So, in like manner, should the body be dissolved whilst the Tama-Goon is prevalent, the spirit is conceived again in the wombs of irrational beings. The fruit of good works is called Satvika and pure; the fruit of the Raja-Goon is pain, and the fruit of the Tama-Goon is ignorance. From the Satva is produced wisdom, from the Raja, covetousness, and from the Tama, madness, distraction, and ignorance. Those of the Satva-Goon mount on high; those of the Raja stay in the middle; whilst those abject followers of the Tama-Goon sink below”. [Page 44]

But in other authorities the Tamas quality appears more clearly explained, and from this it is evident that its demerit is negative. It is the absence of all knowledge, feeling, motion, penetrability, transparency. It is, in fact, what may appear a strange expression, the moral basis of matter; or, in other words, that stolid state or form of spirit, which causes it to appear and be what we call matter.

Makunda Raja, in his relation of the order of creation [Viveka Sindhu, Section III., v. 72, 73] says:—

“Know the three-fold egoity or self-consciousness (Ahankara) to be the Satvika, or self-consciousness of Truth or Goodness; the Rajasa, or self-consciousness of Passion; and the Tamasa or self-consciousness of Darkness; in each of which respectively, a power or energy peculiar to it, appears radiantly developed.

“In the self-consciousness of Truth or Goodness, is the power or energy of knowledge or wisdom; in the self-consciousness of Passion, resideth the power or energy of action; in the self-consciousness of Darkness, existeth [Page 45] incessantly the power or energy of substance or matter (dravya)”.

The Tamas quality, therefore, we may consider as the great characteristic of brute matter, insensibility, opacity, cold obstruction, immovability; — in optics, the dark purple or violet ray; — in morals, the sluggish, material, brutish tendency. Its highest form of organic development goes not beyond the mere animal life and the region of sense.

The Rajas is the characteristic of moral life, or soul; the dark opacity is penetrated with a fiery and turbid glare but not yet rendered purely transparent; the cold obstruction and insensibility are wakened into pangs of painful movement; the dark purple or violet has kindled into the red ray. The sensational has struggled into the emotional; sentiment has supplanted sense and blind impulse. [Page 46]

The Satva is the characteristic of spirit; spirit indeed still in antithesis to body and soul, to matter and life; and, therefore, though bright, luminous, and glorious, still partaking of distinction, and bound in the chains of individuality and limitation; the orange ray in optics, ready to escape and lose itself in the pure light. The feeling soul compelled by suffering into a profounder self-consciousness and reflection, passion has risen into reason and knowledge. Self-knowledge, reasoning outward, progresses into universal sympathy. The life of emotion reaches its consummation, and all other passions expire in giving birth to an eternal sentiment of justice and love, which are ultimately one.

Thus, as sense was wakened into passion or sentiment — sentiment itself has risen into eternal principle: and, as [Page 47] the sensual life of blind animal impulse was kindled into the heroic life of passion, the latter is, in turn, by reflection and knowledge, elevated into the calm regions of idea! or spiritual life, in which Rishis, and Munis, and Kavis, sages and saints, prophets and poets divine, live a life of eternal labour in unbroken tranquillity; labour “unhasting, unresting” — not demiurgic, but sabbatical, [in that sense in which it is said “The father worketh hitherto”] .

Still beyond the isolated Satva quality is a sphere called the pure Satva, which must be considered to denote essentia pura, pure being, pure truth, pure goodness — viewed as one simple essence. This seems attained only when all isolation is renounced; when the Satva, re-entering predominant into the Rajas and Tamas, and penetrating them with its influence, all three isolated prismatic [Page 48] rays coalesce into pure universal light,, and a consciousness of divine re-union. Or, as Hippolytus says — if Hippolytus be the author of the Oxford MSS.— “when man becomes God”; or, as Alfonso Liguori, therein translating the Spanish of St. Theresa, expresses it in his theology [Oratio Meditationis], “Anima fit unum quid cum Deo”, — when the plastic, and the emotional, and the ideal, become absolutely one, and there is, properly speaking, neither matter, nor soul, nor spirit, but something which is all and yet none of these — call it Bramh; call it the constant or eternal Life [nitya]; call it, if you will, that true Hindu trinity in unity — SACH -- CHID - - ANANDA-GHANA — “SOLIDARITY of BEING, THOUGHT, and JOY”, in which the eternal going-forth and re-introcession of the One, is expressed in the most perfect harmony [Page 49] with the deepest speculation of Platonism, and still more so with the pro-foundest development of Johannic Christianity.

SAT — absolute self-existing BEING — develops in itself self-consciousness [Ahankara]; instinctive Being or Life becomes CHIT, i.e., THOUGHT, or REASON reflecting on its own nature — the internal WORD or LOGOS, which says, “ I am Bramh or the Self-existent”. From the self-conscious Thought contemplating its own eternal Being, from the eternal Being developing into perpetual self-consciousness, Thought, or Reason, is an eternal breathing forth of ANANDA, JOY, or LOVE, and these three are in one GHANA or SOLIDARITY.

Out of the purple or dark Violet has struggled the Red; out of the Red is breathed the Orange. The movement of the Orange Joy is three-fold. If, [Page 50] holding to its root in the Red, it goeth forth in a circle according to Pravritti, or procession, till it re-enters the primordial Violet, it produces the glad Green of universal nature, wherein all living things rejoice, and on which the fairies love to dance. If, preferring the way of Nivritti or retrocession into itself — it re-enters its fountain, the Red, and their common fountain the Violet, all three coalesce, and merge into pure light — then the Red is subject unto the Violet, and Light is all in all.

If casting itself off from its fountain the Red, and not tending towards their common parent the Violet, it seeks to stand alone, it becometh, in its proud isolation, a deadly, venomous yellow, the colour of serpents, and dragons, and irredeemable Bramha-Rakshasas.

The Titanic nature is not of this kind: for though the Tamas nature [Page 51] imrnensely predominates, it still partakes largely of the Rajas, and in lesser measure of the Satva quality. The problem to be solved in the case of Titanic Ravan — and in greater or less degree of every human soul, in proportion as it partakes of the Titanic nature, as all in their emerging must in some measure — is, how shall the Tamas be changed into the Satva, or penetrated and ruled by it ? — how shall matter re-ascend and become spirit ? — the gross darkness and stolid stupidity of the tree or the animal be illumined into self-consciousness, reflection, reason, knowledge ? — the brute self-concentration be kindled into universal sympathy and love ? — the blind instinct and coarse desires of the Titan, or Titanic man, be sublimed into the eternal conscious principles, self-renunciation, and pure ideality of the divine life ? [Page 52]

This can only be accomplished in one way, and that way lies through the Rajas — the life of passion — the life of suffering. The result of every passion of our nature, even love, nay, of love more than of all others, is suffering and sorrow. The first awakening of unconscious matter into the consciousness of mere animal life is through physical pain; and the process is carried still further by the mental suffering which is the very nature of the soul's emotional life.

Through the anguish of the fire alone can the black coal of the mine become transmuted into light. And so the sorrow and anguish, which result in-inevitably from the passions in the Rajas, or emotional life, constitute the purifying fire designed to purge away the dross of our Titanic nature, and transmute it into the pure Satva, where [Page 53] purity, goodness, and truth are predominant. Brute appetite and blind impulse are first superseded by passion; and passion working, through sorrow and the reflexion and sympathy which sorrow begets, its own extinction, finally merges in and is swallowed up in love and absolute resignation. This philosophy seems to rest on a basis of unquestionable truth. For, understood in all its depth, it is identical, in ultimate results, with the way of the Cross,

Upon this psychological basis the Chorus offers consolation to Mandodari. She is the complement of the Tamas quality in Ravan's nature. The Tamas too partakes of good: it contains within itself potentially both the Rajas and the Satva, which only require to be evolved from it: nay, it is the necessary basis or Adhishtan, without which they could have no place. Like the black flint of [Page 54] the desert, it is cold, dark, insensible, motionless; but within it is the movement, the fire, and the anguish of the Rajas, and the light and joy of the Satva. And in proportion to the large basis of the Tamas quality is the intensity and power of that Rajas fire and Satva light, which movement can evolve: a view in remarkable harmony with the conclusions of modern phrenology; where it is found that, for heroic greatness and energy of character, no development of the moral and intellectual organs, however favourable, is sufficient, without a powerful basis in the organs of destructiveness, combativeness, and the other animal or Tamas energies of man. The Tamas, in a word, to repeat a former illustration, is the coal, without which there is no fire, no steam, no light. The Tamas portion, therefore, of our being, for its normal development, [Page 55] requires its appropriate guardianship of love; for in the very lowest spheres of existence, in the plastic and even the seemingly, but only seemingly, dead atomic region, love is ever manifest in some cognate and there cognisable form; and is the worker and preserver of existence there. So long as the Tamas or Titanic nature is predominant in Ravan, whether that be for a whole life, or only a portion of it, Mandodari is his necessary and tutelary co-ordinate, for she has the Tamas, or dark plastic love. Devoid of passion, or heroic sentiment — unawakened to the Satva element within her, a stranger to the light of knowledge and ideality — she possesses the simple, unreflecting, spontaneous kindness of nature, the plastic, cherishing affection of the negro woman. In his present stage of development these are what the Titan needs.[Page 56]

When he comes home from the battle, she will have a warm cake and smoking kid ready for his exhausted frame and craving appetite; she will fill his Titanic goblet with mashaks of fresh mirth-inspiring wine; she will sit and shampoo his weary limbs as if she were kneading a loaf; she will perhaps touch her banjo, and animate his spirits with a wild, though not unmelodious chant, or sing him to sleep with some simple, monotonous song; and, taking a chawri of peacock's feathers, whisk the flies from his face, till she herself is overcome by the drowse, and sinks to sleep by his side.

But when this stage is passed, when the influence of appetite and brute impulse is surmounted, and Ravan is ripe for entering the higher career of true passion and heroic sentiment, through which alone he can be fitted for the [Page 57] still higher sphere of ideal life nourished by a spiritual love, then a higher nature must be placed in relation with him; a nature which, possessing sufficient power of beauty to inspire him with love, and sufficient sympathy with the nobler side of his own nature to attract his affections, shall yet present the most rigid antithesis to that nature, wherever it is defective and requires elevation or change. With a purity and gentleness which shall rebuke his Titanic coarseness and ferocity; with an intuitive sense of right and truth which shall lay mountains of reasoning low with a word; with a lofty scorn of every divergence or short-coming, which shall sting him into an emulating pursuit of absolute, heroic good; with an intelligence which shall appreciate and stimulate his own, and a feminine ideality which shall reveal to him the inferiority of his own grosser [Page 58] nature, and lead him to know and worship ideal beauty; with a tenderness which shall sink deeper into his soul than every other quality, and make every sorrow or suffering falling upon her beloved head, and every hiding of the face of her love, bitter to his soul as death; — out of the anguish to be wrought in his nature by these complex emotions, he is destined to emerge, purified, ennobled and refined, into a higher nature.

When the time comes that Ravan is capable of undergoing this process, Mandodari will be no longer suited for his companion and partner, no longer capable of appreciating his nature, or deriving happiness from an equal companionship with him.

When this period, therefore, arrives, Mandodari's task as companion and co-partner ends; but not her offices of [Page 59] kindness or her relation to Ravan. Though his Tamas nature shall then be no longer predominant, and shall only exist as the basis which affords fuel to higher emotions, it is not annihilated. His Tamas, or animal man, will still require cherishing; the more so as he himself will now be neglectful of it. Mandodari will still be with him, but she will have receded into the lower relation, in which such services can be most appropriately rendered; and, with the same simple tenderness that now characterises her as the Titan's wife, she will minister to him then as an attendant, and nurse him in his illness and in sorrow. And this is the destiny which, as we hinted above, may appear a humiliating change to most of our fair readers. But it need not, and ought not: for there is no violent contrast in that future destiny to awaken such a [Page 60] feeling. United to one in the same Tamas sphere of life as herself, Mandodari in that future birth will become a mother, and a desolate widow. Needing protection, she will find it under the shadow of Ravan, in his future appearance on earth. She will experience unvarying kindness and unbounded trust at his hands, and will return it with affectionate fidelity. A perfect sympathy shall establish itself between them — not as equals, but befitting their new relation. A benevolent and gracious kindness on his part — respect, gratitude, and maternal watchfulness over his welfare on hers. Ravan will seal the bond between them by parental care of her dying son, and she will have ample scope for repaying love for love in her own sphere. For, it is not the least of the consolations awarded to Mandodari by the Rishis, that the [Page 61] beautiful, but pensive and mysterious, Zingarel, of whose destiny, supplanting, as it is doomed to do, her own, she entertains the jealousy natural to her position, is destined to be, conjointly with Ravan, one of the chief objects of her own future affection, and almost maternal care. She will wait upon, and gaze on her with wonder, as a being incomprehensible, whom she might almost worship, and yet one whom she cannot help loving as fondly, and as freely, as if she were her own infant; she will nurse all her children; she will fondle and carry in her arms one cherished boy when he is snatched away; and will mourn her Indrajit a second time in the beloved Floribel. She will nurse Zingarel herself with a mother's tenderness, when her frame has given way, and her mind has become clouded; and ere her pilgrimage to the [Page 62] mournful and silent land described in Ravan's dream, the last kiss imprinted by the wan lips of the weeping wanderer, on leaving the beautiful Isle of Palms, shall be on the dusky but faithful cheek of her, within whose body the spirit of Mandodari shall then be tabernacled. Nor is this all. Disasters not yet told by Ravan are gathering in that dream of futurity; and when they occur — when Zingarel is far from Ravan — 'tis her faithful and tender spirit — Mandodari's — that shall be near him, to soothe, to cherish, to console, and to support him, in the hour of his anguish and isolation.

At the announcement of such a destiny, the honest heart of Mandodari swells, and her eyes kindle and fill with tears of affectionate joy — forgetful of self, forgetful of everything but the happiness of ministering to Ravan ! So fully does love partake of nobleness, of [Page 63] divinity, in however humble a sphere of the universe it is manifested! And here some grave questions arise. Why should not so noble, though simple a love, merit to rise, like Ravan's own nature, into the Rajas sphere, and be his future companion, as now, in lieu of Zingarel? When Ravan, surmounting the Rajas sphere, shall ascend to the Satva, must he have a third partner of his spirit, and must Zingarel be superseded by another, as Mandodari by her? Does the spirit of the male alone progress through eternity, and is that of the female, by whose aid his nature ascends, bound and stationary for ever ? If not, if Zingarel progresses into the Satva, why not Mandodari into the Rajas'? These questions all pass before the mind of Ravan; but he defers asking them, till he has concluded the relation of his dream. He will then [Page 64] seek, and receive, a solution of these mysteries from the Chorus. For the present, the first Kanda of the Sabha Parva closes, and the curtain descends upon the joyful tears of the consoled Mandodari.

PART - 2 -

THE first Kanda closed with the consolation of Mandodari. At the opening of the second, Ravan resumes the narration of his dream. It chances that while he lies asleep, overpowered with the heat, at the base of an ancient column or obelisk, on the banks of a mighty river, Zingarel, who had been watching at his side, rises, with that indomitable thirst for knowledge which distinguishes the sex, to scan more intently the curious characters and hieroglyphics, that cover the time-worn monument. In her tip-toe eagerness to accomplish this, the clasps, which [Page 65] fasten Chrystalline on her arm, give way, and the amulet drops, without her being sensible of the loss, into the bosom of Ravan. Fatal loss! Fatal female curiosity that occasioned it! The talisman that ensured her safety, and averted evil, no longer guards her; and misfortune is, for a time, mistress of her destiny. A dark, terrible object in the adjacent waters now fixes her attention, by its mass, its wonderful shape, its strange utterings, and its motions so indicative of power. Is it Leviathan, or Behemoth, or one of those creatures of the gigantic saurian tribe, that possessed our fenny world and its waters, before it was yet trodden by the foot and gladdened by the voice of man ? The description given of this great creature of the deep reminds us of the magnificent picture in Job, of him who is styled “king over all the children of pride” : — [Page 66]

Baffled and stupefied with grief, Ravan stands in the water, gazing upon the receding monster, when, smiting his bosom in a sudden movement of despair, his hand strikes against the talisman, which till then he had never noticed. Aware of its importance to the welfare of Zingarel, and of the fatal consequences which must result from its loss, of which he has already [Page 68] had this terrible sample, he resolves to make one last, desperate effort; and, if he cannot rescue her from the monster, at least restore to her possession the amulet, on which her safety depended, and through which she might yet escape the dark fate that seemed impending over her. He seeks the cave of some Divars, a species of Eastern Tritons, and taking .off his tenfold gemmed tiara, and his heavy collar formed of the large pearls obtained in the fishery of Lanka, or Ceylon, tenders them to the Divars for their aid. The eyes of the Divars glisten at the sight of the promised reward, and they eagerly accept his proposal; but all is nearly lost by the greediness, mutual envy, and perverseness of the Divars' wives, who no sooner behold the sparkling jewels proffered by Ravan, than they commence fighting for their [Page 69] possession, and raise such a horrible clamour in the cave, that the Divars beseech Ravan to take his gems away, as the only mode of restoring peace among their females. This proposal, however, brings the latter to their senses; and, sooner than lose the treasure altogether, they come to the curious compromise, that the jewels shall be considered common property; but, that, at every new moon, they, the Divars' wives, shall all be weighed, and the heaviest shall have the first choice of the jewels for that month; the next heaviest the second choice, and so on to the end. No sooner has this compact been made, than they all fall to eating voraciously, in hopes of bettering their chance of success; and, thus released, the Divars yoke their sea chariot, an enormous shell, to a train of gigantic, red, shrimp like sea-horses; [Page 70] and, placing Ravan in the seat of honour, and taking their tridents and harpoons, proceed rapidly to sea, in pursuit of the saurian monster.

As soon as they come near enough to give some hope of accomplishing their object, Ravan is desirous that the Divars shall approach the monster cautiously from behind. But they are mad with wine, with the excitement of the pursuit, and with the hope of securing the splendid recompense before them. They pay no heed, therefore, to his entreaties, but rush right upon the creature's flank, and receive, in consequence, a stroke from his powerful flipper, which crushes two of the red sea-horses, and nearly sends the whole equipage, and those within it, to the bottom. Warned by this calamity, the Divars cut the traces of the slain horses, and fall back to the rear. [Page 71] But here a violent lash of the monster's tail covers them with a deluge of foam, and creates an abyss in which they are nearly engulphed. Emerging from this second danger, they are averted from further effort, by a warning voice in the air, and they behold the hoary form of Lingastya — the ancient Rishi of the Sea, one of the favourite children of Varuna, the Hindu Neptune — who, sitting at a distance in his conch, with his two green-haired daughters, cautions them against further approach to this terrible monster. Ravan is fain to submit to the voice of Lingastya, whose experience has given him a prophetic power like that of Proteus. Taking a last look at Zingarel, lie beholds her standing on the back of the giant alligator, with her arms outstretched towards him; and, holding up Chrystalline to her view, [Page 72] he flings the talisman with all his force towards her. The little sea-cow, by some secret sympathy and power on her own element, guides the flight of her crystal grotto straight to the hands of Zingarel, who receives it in her outspread scarf, and is filled with joy and courage at its repossession — with a sad smile she waves her scarf to Ravan —

Here the good Mandodari is heard to sigh; and as, according to the etiquette of all Eastern courts, it is considered of rigour to re-echo the slightest feelings and sentiments of royal personages, the whole of the assembly take up the sorrowful utterance, and sigh, or feign to sigh in unison with her. The attempt proves distressing to some of the old Rishis, and veteran Senapatis, and ludicrous on the part of others; and [Page 73] the effect of the whole is to produce a very singular and undignified combination of sounds, which interrupt the Titan's narrative, and try his patience for a full quarter of an hour. Silence and decorum being at length restored, he proceeds with his tale.

The third was the semblance of a black, wavering vapour, that seemed ever to flutter before the eyes in the sunshine, but which you could never fix by a steady gaze. Ever and anon it seemed to glimmer black before you, but, look fixedly, it was gone; relax the tension of your gaze, and there it wavered again. This was the greatest delusion of the three; for it deluded not the eye merely, but the mind. As the blue and white mirage, operating in space, and altering its relations, inverted real objects, and produced phantasmal representations of unreal ones; so this, operating in, and altering the relations of time, inverted real events, [Page 79] and projected illusive phantasms of unreal ones. Ravan felt himself remembering the events which had happened tomorrow; and looking forward, with expectation, to those which would happen yesterday. He lived in future ages. He looked forward to the arrival of the past. The destruction of the universe by the sword-shaped comet of Kalki, the tenth Avatar, was gone by. Its first production by Brahma — its successive preservation in three deluges, by the Fish, the Tortoise, and the Boar Avatars, were yet to come. Such was the effect of the “Kala-Vivarta”, the “Black Mirage” or “Mirage of Time”.

Through these delusions he proceeded for two days and nights without refreshment, or sense of fatigue, deep sorrow supporting, and being assuaged by, the prolonged physical exertion. On the third night, when it was [Page 80] towards dawn, and the waning moon was just going down among the western sandhills, he observed a singular appearance upon the eastern mountains, upon which the last pale glimmer of her departing radiance was now projected. A dark, undulating, broad shadow came waving over the side of the mountains, from the summit downward, like that cast by the rapid flitting of autumn clouds over a field of grass or corn. But not a cloud was then in the sky. As the moving shadow extended into, and darkened the plain, it looked like a black mantle or sheet covering the ground for miles, and moving close to the earth. He paused in curiosity to watch this phenomenon; and, as it approached and passed the spot on which he stood, he observed with astonishment, not unmixed with terror, that it consisted of an army of [Page 81] millions of black wolves proceeding in marshalled order and dead silence across the plain, in the direction of the setting moon. The vision — for he could not tell whether they were living creatures, or mere phantasms — lasted for about half-an-hour, and then gradually disappeared to the west, leaving a chill upon his feelings that made him anxiously long for the morning. Often did he turn to the east to catch, across the faint twilight, some glimpse of orient red heralding the rising sun. But no ruddy golden glow flushed the horizon. No sun arose that mournful day. He lay sleeping in his clouds in some far off, misty chamber, “careless of the voice of the morning”. At last, when the hour arrived that the day should have broken, and his light should have been gladdening the hills, Ravan beheld, in his stead, a black comet rise [Page 82] in the east, with its nucleus in the Zenith, and its tail — in which, by some strange effect of refraction, he saw a terrific and magnified image of himself, pointing downwards towards the earth, looming, in its rise, larger and larger, and nearer and nearer — till its distinct outline was lost in its immense spread and proximity, and he was only conscious of a black tempest — as yet silent, collected, and as it were brooding — advancing, imperceptibly over the earth.

While reflecting upon the meaning of this strange portent, other ominous signs began to show themselves. A lurid, coppery glow crept gradually up the horizon. The wind began to blow at intervals in low, mournful gusts, and then suddenly to cease. Flocks of birds came wheeling and screaming over his head, and groups of wild dogs, jackals, and other beasts of the desert, [Page 83] darted suddenly past, uttering cries indicative of distress and supernatural terror. The wild ass on which he rode at last lay down beneath him, and buried its nose in the sand; and, finding no effort of his could induce it to rise, he left it to its fate, and staggered on alone, dismayed by the appearances of change and elemental convulsion that gathered more thickly around him at every step. At last, a deep hollow sound, as of roaring waters in the distance, burst upon his ear, and hastened his flight. The great blue river, at whose embouchure Zingarel had been borne off, had burst its bounds to the right; while the sea itself, overleaping its barriers to the south, was advancing to cut off retreat in that direction. The coppery glow of the horizon deepened upward into a dark, inky purple — the low [Page 84] murmuring of the wind gradually swelled to a roar; red and blue flashes of light shot athwart the gloom, amid sharp crashes of thunder — and all nature seemed returning again to chaos, darkness, and whirlwind. Above, blackness, tempest, red lightning, and waterspout; below, the river and the ocean roaring along, and covering the earth — the Maha-Pralaya, or great dissolution of all things, was at hand, and escape appeared hopeless. In this crisis, Ravan clambered to the top of an ancient pyramidical temple of the Goddess Uma, or Bhavani, which stood abandoned in the desert, and there awaited his fate. It was time that he did so; for the waters now covered the whole face of the desert, and threatened, before many hours were past, to submerge even the lofty temple where he had taken refuge. At this crisis he [Page 85] discerns a large object looming through the darkness, and apparently advancing towards him on the face of the waters. As it approaches, he perceives it to have the semblance of a ship; and, to his inexpressible relief, it stops on arriving opposite the temple. But there is something mysterious, something supernatural or spiritual (adhy-atmika) in this dim, phantasmal ship. Its outline is nowhere sharp and firm, but wavy and ragged, like a swaying cloud; it has neither helm nor sails, and appears to move and to stop at will. There are human figures on board; but they appear shadowy, and almost transparent; they neither speak nor move, but seem wrapt in Samadhi, or the profound trance of religious contemplation. Their attire, too, is of a fashion now unknown. Still, it strikes Ravan as not wholly new; and, [Page 86] on taxing his memory, he remembers with astonishment, that he has seen them all in the religious paintings which adorn the walls of his eastern palace. Eight of the parties who occupied the centre, seven surrounding in a semicircle one apparently greater than the rest — all wore matted hair coiled up into a pyramid above the head, and garments of bark. The central personage had one arm and one leg stiffened and shrunk, as if he had been standing for years, or centuries, in a penitential attitude, which destroyed their natural functions. In him Ravan recognised with awe no less a personage than Satyavrata, or Manu Vaivasvata (the Hindu Noah); and in his seven attendants, the seven Rishis, or holy sages, Bhrigu, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Kratu and Vashista, who are preserved with him [Page 87] in the ark, in the dissolution of all things, by the Fish Avatar. This phantom ship, then, can be no other than Manu's Ark; and he now comprehends how it moved without sails or rudder, being fastened by a rope to the horn of the divine fish. But if this be the ark of Manu, the deluge must indeed be once more upon the earth ! What, then, can be the fate of Zingarel ? Lanka too must have been submerged, and Sita and Rama must both have perished!

This race of men un-illumined, bound by their own past deeds,
From desire of pleasure — give themselves up to action, productive of only pain.
He, by whose service man shaketh off this evil bent of his mind,
He only may cleave that knot, the heart, He is our Guru Supreme.

As an eyeless man made leader unto the blind,
Even so to the ignorant man is an un-illumined guide,
Thou the Sun-eye itself, which illuminateth all eyes,
Art the chosen Guide of us, who seek the way unto thyself.

To thee, the chief and the all-transcending God,
I come for illumination:
Cleave, Lord, asunder, with words, burning as lamps of truth,
The knots in my heart existing, and thine own self reveal.

[This whole hymn, which is put into the mouth of Satyavrata in the account of the deluge given in the Bhagavata (Skandha, viii Adhyaya, 24), is a very remarkable production It shows that, in the very heart of the wildest and most apparently childish portions of the Hindu mythology, there is a deep vital mysticism, and aspiration after divine union, which could hardly be fruitless

The word translated “mankind” and “man” is Loka, which may also be rendered the “world”. This stanza has a very great analogy to these words of John — “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not”.]

What further happens — what becomes of the Shell demon, the Fish, the Ark and the Rishis in the dream — [Page 98] he cannot tell. When he recovers his consciousness in that dreaming world, he finds himself on the little Isle of Palms, near Lanka, lying in a chamber within the castle of the Kamatur Rakshas, attended by a strange wizard from the north — surrounded by the clamorous lamentations of all his wives — but quietly and tenderly waited on by his chief queen, Mandodari.

“Ah!” said Mandodari, “it is at such times only that we are appreciated”. Sita would have been of little use there, I fancy. Amid sunshine and green trees, gay cavalcades, and brave plumery — among chaplets, and music, and lights, Sita is all in all, and Mandodari is forgotten. But in darkness and sickness; among vials and gallipots, and plasters, and poultices, poor Mandodari becomes some one once more. [Page 99]

“You shall have it”, said the Water-lily, gaily, “but mind! it is the poet Hara Suta, or as he sometimes calls himself, Hari Tanaya, who speaks, and not I. For my part, when I think as a philosopher, which I always do after dinner, I discover there are two sides to every question: two aspects of every relation in life; and good and bad in each. But in my vocation as Vidu-shaka, I must necessarily prefer that which is most satirical, most humorous, and capable of yielding most entertainment. The dream of the king is so full of sad and grave images, that a little fun is absolutely necessary to relieve the painful tension of all our minds”.

'Tis money, 'tis money that draweth friends,
And never the cord of love.

                         - 1 -

As long as your person is gilded with wealth,
So long their affection expands.
    'Tis money, 'tis money.                  

                        - 2 -

In the hour of your danger, in the day of your decline,
With clapping hands they publish your disgrace.
    'Tis money, 'tis money.

                      - 3 -

Hari Tanaya, Sirs ! tells you this proof,
In my own person I've had experience of the truth.
    'Tis money, 'tis money that draweth friends,
    And never the net of love.

Who was it healed King Ravan ?
Was it Shaka, or Pahlavi, Barbar, or Yavan,
Who stanched the bleeding arm,
    By medical drug, or magical charm? —
   Was it he, the compassionate Muni Ke,
Who lifted the wounded Titan up, [Page 108]
And held to his lips the amrita cup,
    And bade him to drink ere he swooned away ?—
Or was it Gandharva Davini ?—
Or the twin physicians of heaven, Ashvini ?
    Was it one of the Rishis three,
    Who in Manu's bark still roam the sea ? —
Was it Moreshvar the wise,
The towers of whose hermitage rise
   In the forest of Grantha Nagari ? —
  Was it Vatsa, or Valinshal,
His disciples who dwell in the hermit's hall,
   And learn his lore and alchemy ?
Who was it healed King Ravan? —
Shaka, or Pahlavi, Barbar, or Yavan ?

'Twas I, said the Pahlavi Muni Bhims,
Thaumaturgos of wounded and broken limbs,
Of legs and of arms, of fingers and toes,
Luxated jaws, and disjointed nose,
Of men, and of peacocks, of women and cows,
Kids, children, and horses, and buffaloes.
'Twas I healed Ravan's arm,
By amulet tavis, and charm;
By mantra, and tantra, and drug.
Essence of blood-sucker, ottar of bug;
By the honey-bag of Brahmar bee,
The leathern wing of the vampire bat,
The pounded ears of mummied cat,
The tail of grey-haired bandicoot
Dug out of his homestead under the root
    Of aged Banian tree:
By the claw of lizard, the scorpion's sting, [Page 109]
The flying fox's hooked wing;
The tarantula's legs, the centipedes' feet,
The dust scraped up where seven roads meet,
The small white spider's gossamer thread,
The little ant-lion's shovel head,
The spectre grasshopper's long green legs,
Queen ant's mandibles, cockatrice eggs,
The parasite gochar, that lives and grows
Fat on the hide of living cows;
The eye of the insect pulled out by crows
From the ears of afflicted buffaloes;
Scrapings of nilgay's horns and hoofs,
White ants taken out of mouldering roofs;
The gekho's eyelash, the cobra's fang,
Poppy-juice, majum, hemp, and bhang;
The down from blushing maiden's cheek,
The dew from the lip of widow weak,
Who dreading the fire, and running away,
   Would not be canonised and mourned —
    Worshipped first, and after burnt —
Upon her immolation day.
The nails of misers that grew old
In hoarding up their cankered gold;
The saddest tear by woman shed,
For the first grey hair on her poor little head;
The last black tufts that straggling grow
On whisker side of faded beau;
Raja's liver, Brahman's gall,
Pounding, boiling, stirring all,
In a witch's cauldron sure,
I accomplished Ravan's cure.
Not Rishi Ke, nor Gandharva Davini,
Nor the twin physicians of heaven, Ashvini;
Nor Nala Siddh — nor the wandering Muni —[Page 110]
Nor Moreshvar, Vatsa, nor Valinshal;
'Twas I alone—apart from all,
    I healed King Ravan.

WHEN Ravan mentioned the name of the Kamatur Rakshas, a smile full of meaning passed round the assembly. Kamatur signifies “sick with love”; or “madly in love”; and since his [Page 113] hallucination about Sita, the epithet of Kamatur Rakshas, or “the love-sick Titan”; had been stealthily applied to himself in all the gossiping coteries that formed round the Court of Lanka. For then, as now, though subjects would fight loyally, and die bravely for their monarch, they would freely canvass his faults. Indeed, the nickname was first tauntingly given him by his own virtuous brother, Bibbishana, who, though most devotedly attached to his person and his government, never ceased to protest against his injustice in detaining Sita, and to warn him of the fatal results of persevering in such a course. But there was another reason for the furtive merriment. Among the auditors of the dream, standing in his place among the ancient Senapatis, or military chiefs, was the genuine Kamatur Rakshas [Page 114] himself, to whom Ravan's narrative alluded. He was the oldest friend and companion of the Titan king, and was a general favourite at the Rakshas' court; but of so humorous a turn of mind, and so eccentric in his conduct, that the mere introduction of a name so constantly associated with fun, into a recital so sombre, and almost tragic in its general character, produced a contrast of ideas that was too violent for the gravity of the assembly. The original name of this Titan was Kopadana, a title indicative of the combination in his character of anger and generosity; but since he had held the government of the pearl-fisheries, it had been changed to Kamatur. For while exercising this government he had once entertained for some months, a group of beautiful Apsaras, those celestial nymphs that dance like mists upon the [Page 115] sunbeams — whose virtue was equal to their beauty — and became passionately attached to one of the number, named Ramaniya, [RAMANA signifies, in Sanscrit, a husband, a lover, a sporter, player, tumbler RAMANI, a wife, sweetheart, agreeable woman. female player, dancer, from the root RAM, to sport. There can be no doubt this is the true origin of the terra ROMANI. by which the Gypsies designate both a Gypsy and a husband. Their language, with a great portion of modern Hindu dialects, contains many words of pure Sanscrit, such as SHAKA (vegetable); KASHTA (wood), etc.. ] or the “Charmer”. His love, however, was as chivalric as it was ardent; and, not being returned by the fair object of his passion, except by a grateful friendship, he limited the expression of his passion to keeping vigil at night (in full armour) outside the tower in which Ramaniya's chamber was situated, and driving away all the Yakshas and Pishachas that infested the neighbourhood, with the intention of carrying off the beauty.

Another peculiarity was his power of using the “Mohan-Astra”, and the delight which he took in it. The Astras are, as we may inform our readers, a kind of weapons that one constantly meets in the ancient Hindu legends, and which at first are very puzzling. They sometimes have a palpable shape, and from their effects in burning the enemy, etc., we are led to imagine, that they are nothing but rockets or shells, and that the ancient Hindus were well acquainted with the use of gunpowder. But a further acquaintance corrects this idea. We find the operator folding his arms on the field of battle, and, by mere inward meditation, despatching the Astra, which is [Page 119] to arrest or consume the hostile army. We find such elemental Astras as “Wet Thunderbolt”, “Dry Thunderbolt”, “Rain Astra”, “Drought Astra”, “Frost Astra”, such spiritual Astras as “Fascination”, “Allurement”, “Maddening”, or “Intoxication”, “Trembling”, or “Panic”; such physiological Astras as “Overpowering with Sleep”, “Quieting”. and “Paralysing”; and we are forced ultimately to conclude, that the whole armoury is spiritual, and is to be interpreted by three analogies in the European sphere of thought and experience — namely, magic, mesmerism, and the modern electro-biology. We subjoin here a curious list of these weapons, taken from the Ramayana. The manuscripts vary a good deal: even the printed editions of Schlegel and Gorresio differ somewhat as to the [Page 120] order, the number, and the names of the Astras. There is, however, a sufficient agreement, on the whole. Gorresio's edition, the typography of which is beautiful, but in which the text is, in general, less carefully and correctly edited than Schlegel's, contains the fuller list of the two. We have constructed the subjoined catalogue of the magical armoury from a comparison of both: —

The “casting into deep sleep”, the “thoroughly quieting”, and the “Paralysing Astras” have their co-relatives in mesmerism, also, to which biology evidently bears some relation. [Page 125]

In the “burning”, “whipping”, “pounding to atoms”, “shaking to pieces”, and other Astras of physical torture, we are reminded of the plagues with which the magician, Prospero, threatens to visit the refractory Caliban, according to the well-known practice of his profession. The Astras of “allurement”, “fascination”, “bewitching”, “maddening with love”, are amongst the recognised powers of magic; love itself being, indeed, an admitted magical and mesmeric power, acting through the eyes. The power of affecting the BRAIN through the optic nerve, by fixing the eye on one point, if luminous so much the better, to which the biologist resorts, and which is only another form of Mr. Braid's HYPNOTISING, and of Jacob Behmen's looking into the bright tin dish to bring on ecstasy, has been exercised, time out of mind, by the ecstatic [Page 126] schools of India: many of the Yogis, following the advice of Krishna, in the Gita, and gazing downward on the tips of their own noses, while others squint upwards at the corner of their eyebrows. But this is a very different matter from the “fascination” produced by two eyes looking intently and immovably into other two eyes of a different sex, and in which the soul itself is affected. Upon the very natural employment, and the result of this process in love-making, we need not dwell. But the modern adoption of this very method to induce the mesmeric sleep is more curious, and shows that there is an undoubted relation, which it would be worth while to understand, between magic, mesmerism, fascination, and love. What renders the adoption of this mode of mesmerism by the fascination of the eye more curious, is, that we find this also [Page 127] mentioned as having been practised in India, more than two thousand years ago, for the purpose of fascinating and paralysing a woman; and, singular to say, in order to preserve her from the counter fascinations of a lover.

Vipula, the ascetic Muni, mesmerises his Preceptor's Wife (Ruchi),
in order to prevent her from giving heed to the fine speeches of Indra, or Shakra.

That Vipula, mighty ascetic, SEATED NEAR his Preceptor's wife,
FASCINATED, with all his might, the beautiful woman SEATED BEFORE HIM.
WITH HIS TWO EYES UPON HER TWO EYES, RAYS UNITING WITH RAYS,
Vipula entered her body, even as the wind pervadeth the empty space,
HER SIGHT WITH HIS SIGHT, and HER MOUTH WITH HIS MOUTH (pervading) [These are the very remarkable words of the original: Guru-patnim samasino Vipulaha sa mahatapaha Upasinam-anindyangim yatharthe samal obhayat.
Netrabhyam netrayorasya, rashnirn sanyojya rashmibhihi,
Vivesha Vipulaha kayam-akasham pavanoyatha.
Lakshanam lakshane naiva. vadanam vadanenacha. ]
Motionless, then, the Muni remained, like a shadow vanishing inward:
Then Vipula, taking under his own control the body of his Preceptor's wife,
Abode therein, intent upon keeping her safe; but SHE WAS NOT AWARE OF HIS PRESENCE.
He guarded her all the time, O King, his Preceptor remained away;
Till the mighty of spirit, having accomplished his sacrifice, home returned. [Page 130]
Once about then, the Lord of the Devas, assuming a body of heavenly form,
Thinking “now is the time for me”, that hermitage approached.
Making his beauty beyond compare, and much to be loved, the lord of mankind,
Becoming most lovely to look upon, entered that hermitage.
There he beheld that body of Vipula Muni seated,
Motionless and with fixed eye, as if to a statue turned!
And Ruchi, with beautiful side-long glances, with rounded form, and bosom replete with milk,
With eyes like the lotus-leaf and large, and a face that shone like the moon at its full.

She, as soon as she looked upon him, desired to rise up precipitate,
At his beauty astonished, and wishing to say to him, “Who art thou ?”
BUT THE MATRON DESIROUS OF RISING UP, BY VlPULA WAS RESTRAINED;
BOUND DOWN, O King of men, SHE FELT UNABLE TO MOVE.
Her the Lord of the Devas addressed, in tender speech, surpassingly sweet —
“Know me, O purely smiling, the Lord of the Devas, come hither on thy account,
Suffering anguish from love, the result of my passion for thee.
That me behold in thy presence — O haste ! the time is passing away”. [Page 131]

That Shakra, as he addressed her thus, the Muni Vipula heard;
Within the body housed of his master's wife, he beheld the Lord of the Devas.
And that unslandered woman, O King, WAS UNABLE TO GET UP:
NOR WAS SHE ABLE TO UTTER A WORD, HELD BY VlPULA UNDER CONTROL.
THE SON OF BHRIGU, LOOKING WITHIN THE FRAME OF HIS MASTER'S WIFE.
THE MOST LUMINOUS SAGE, ABOUNDING IN POWER, BY YOGA, O SOVEREIGN, BOUND HER DOWN;
HE FASTENED DOWN, BY THE BONDS OF YOGA, ALL HER ORGANS OF SENSE.
The husband of Sachi, seeing her void of emotion, again
Addressed her abashed, O King, AS FASCINATED SHE SAT BY POWER OF YOGA.
Then she wished to reply to him — “Come, O come!”
But Vipula CHANGED THAT SPEECH OF HIS MASTER'S WIFE,
And, “Pray, Sir, what is the cause of your coming ?” This reply,
Adorning her matron purity, went forth from her moon-like mouth.
But she was abashed, HAVING UTTERED THAT SPEECH WHILE UNDER ANOTHER'S CONTROL;
And the Shaker of Cities, standing there, became perplexed exceedingly.
That King of the Devas, O lord of men, perceiving this her aversion,
The Thousand-eyed One, then giving a glance with his [inward] celestial eye, [Page 132]
Beheld the Muni within her body, visible before him,
Like an image within a mirror, reflected him within the body of his Preceptor's wife;
With terrific mortification armed, the Shaker of Cities beholding,
Then trembled he, Sovereign, greatly alarmed, and dreading his terrible curse:
But, releasing the wife of his ghostly Preceptor, Vipula, glorious ascetic,
Entering his proper body again, thus spoke to the terrified Shakra —
“O slave of thy senses, evil-disposed, sin-breathing Shaker of Cities!
Not long will the gods and men continue to worship thee!
What! Shakra, hast thou forgotten, is it not fixed in thy mind,
That thou by Gautama wert let go, branded all over with marks of shame ?
I know thee, the lord of the boyish intellect, and the spirit uncollected:
Fool ! this woman by me is guarded — begone as thou camest, mischievous wretch !
Thee let me not, O foolish of spirit, this day consume with my holy radiance.
Feeling compassion, I do not wish, O Vasava, to burn thee.
But if the more terrible Lord of Mind, the Preceptor, see thee sin-devising,
He will this day consume thee utterly with an anger enkindled eye:
And, Shakra, thou oughtest not to act thus again; but shouldest respect the Brahmans. [Page 133]
He, whom the Scripture calleth 'my son and minister', smites with the power of God:
And for that thou goest forward [to sin] confiding in this idea, ' I am immortal'.
Beware and do not despise ! there is nothing whatever too hard to accomplish by penitential austerities”.

Then, again, we have a class of goblin Astras, which must have operated terribly upon the imagination, such as the Devil's Astra, “red flesh-eater”, and the Rakshas Astra of “Kankala-Mushala”, which Schlegel translates the “bone-breaking pestle” —“horrendum pistillum ossifragum”— but which should really be rendered “Skeleton-pestle”, which harmonises it completely with its two companions, “Skull-bracelet” and [Page 135] “Tinkling waist-chain of rattling bones”, such as the Titans delight to wear.

“Tunc LEGIS LAQUEUM, fatique laqueum invictum,
Varuni quoque laqueum do tibi celebratissimum”.

LIST OF THE SIDDHIS, OR SUPERNATURAL POWERS

Maricha was already master of all these, except the three last. He was in appearance a Panjara or Cage, i.e., a mere skeleton, in food a Wayubhaksha, or Windeater, in power a Khe-chara, or Sky-goer. With all his eminent qualities he was timid and scrupulous in religious matters, and his better judgment often yielded to his spiritual fears. Thus, when Ravan first resolved to carry off Sita, he visited Maricha, and asked him to assume the form of a beautiful deer, and lure Rama and Lakshmana far from the hermitage [Page 143] where she abode. He at first refused, but on Ravan threatening to kill him, he complied, and thus became the accomplice of his crime; not, however, from the earthly fear of death, but upon this somewhat selfish calculation of spiritual profit and loss.

Next came the gentler races — the elephants, with their majestic tread, blowing clouds of fine dust from their trunks over their backs, to drive away the insects; the leisurely, long-striding camels, with their noiseless footsteps, and their heads, expressive at once of weary endurance, and an inclination towards revenge; graceful, slender coursers from the Yavan lands, beyond [Page 146] the seas; others of smaller size and still slenderer make, with silken skins, and beautifully spotted, from the regions of Achin; little horses from Nepaul, not larger than a shepherd's dog; square barrel-built ponies from Pegu; stout tunnuks from the Western Ghauts; vicious tatoos, red, grey and piebald, from the Dakshina; the homely cows, the friends of man, with their moist noses and odoriferous breath; the heavy, lazy, slate-blue, mud-loving buffaloes, with their long, low, protruded heads, wide-spreading horns, and wild-looking eyes; the nilgays, or, as the name implies, blue cows — half-cow, half-deer; the sambhars, or Indian elks; crowds of speckled deer — some varieties with boar's tusks; white or spotted kids, with pendants under their throats like the drops of an earring, making impossible jumps sideways; [Page 147] brown mungooses with their bushy tails, enemies of the serpent race; jambuks, shrigals, jackals, vranjari, paria, and other varieties of dogs; flying squirrels, and black monkeys with white faces, from the sandal-wood mountains of Malabar; grey bonkas and black chapas from one only spot in the Isle of Palms; and striped squirrels, called CHANIS, that love to sport on the banyan-tree.

With these flocked many varieties of birds — screaming cranes and herons; tall, stalking, stupid adjutants; white paddy birds, contemplating the growing rice crops as if they were intent on making a Jamabandi, or revenue settlement; high-crested cockatoos, screaming like angry old women; peacocks trumpeting and waving their trains of green and gold to the rumble of the thunder-clouds; speckled guinea fowls, with white and scarlet tippets, ever [Page 148] pursuing each other, singly or in groups; turtle doves, with their low ringing co-ôo, bringing reminiscences of solitude and far-away valleys; screeching parrots, with blue or crimson rings round their green or greyish necks and lories, with every colour of the rainbow — of all the feathered race the most splendid in the hues of their plumage, and of all the most affectionate; fitly selected, therefore, to carry Kandarpa, the deity of love.

When Maricha beheld this splendid collection of animals and birds, he imagined the Kamatur Rakshas designed to make a last trial of his virtue, by-offering it to him as a propitiatory gift, and steeled himself, accordingly, for further resistance. No sooner, however, had all the animals entered the enclosure, than the Rakshas closed the gate; and taking his bow in his hands, and [Page 149] emptying out upon the ground before him all the arrows in his two quivers (for the warriors of ancient Ind carried generally two, one behind each shoulder), he threatened Maricha, that, unless he delivered to him the Mohan Astra, he would instantly commence slaughtering all the creatures before him, and the guilt of their blood would lie upon his, the Rishi's head. This blow, unexpected as it was terrible, was irresistible to the humane and scrupulous Rishi. He laid his hand beseechingly on the arm of the Kamatur Rakshas, entreated him to forbear his bloody purpose, and yielded to a request thus cruelly enforced; stipulating only for a promise, that he would never employ the Astra for the destruction of life, the subversion of right, or the injury of innocence: this he gave without hesitation. The animals and birds were [Page 150] then sent back to the park of the Kamatur Rakshas, under the care of the Buddhist friar, who had been as much frightened as Maricha; and the Rishi, leading the Rakshas into a deep woody recess at the back of his hermitage, began delivering to him, with all solemnity of form, the coveted Mohan Astra.

Hram ! Hrârn ! Hrim ! Hraum !
Kling !
Yusmabhihi Mohanam bhavatu!
Glaum !
San-Mohanam bhavatu!
Spheng !
Pari-Mohanam bhavatu;
Sphing !

The Kamatur Rakshas succeeded very well in pronouncing all the rest; but when he came to the “BOLT”, he could not manage it at all, declaring emphatically to Maricha, that nothing but a sneezing camel could utter such a sound. Maricha was nonplussed for a moment; but, reflecting a little, he went to a bottle-bird's nest that hung from a tree adjoining the hermitage, and took out of it a little crystal casket called “Gogalgai”, containing [Page 153] grains of a light, silvery powder, varying in bulk from the size of a cummin seed to that of a marble; this was “Kalabhasma”, or magical Time-powder. It was composed of an equal quantity of condensed consciousness and duration, and its effect, when exploded, was to expand in time, and occupy as large a portion thereof as was originally condensed in the grain; so that the act, word, or thought, proceeding when the explosion took place, though really occupying only a minute, seemed to him under whose nose the Time-powder was exploded, to endure a whole day, month, or year — nay, a whole lifetime, century, or age, according to the mass of the powder exploded. Maricha, putting a cat's-eye ring on his finger, threw one of the smallest grains upon the chafing-dish in front of the Kamatur Rakshas, at the same [Page 154] moment pouring from his Arghya, or ablution-vase, some water upon his bare head. The cat's-eye ring prevented the Rishi himself from being affected by the explosion, which was perfectly noiseless; but the effect upon the Rakshas was, to make him experience a three day's drenching of rain, which brought on a severe cold in the head, and set him sneezing violently, in the course of which he came to pronounce the important “EI-PHNPHJ” with perfect ease, and thus became master of the Mantra, and consequently of the Mohan Astra. He now took leave of Maricha in high spirits; but, before doing so, took an opportunity, while the Rishi's back was turned for a moment, to dip his fingers into the crystal casket, and purloin one of the largest grains of Time-powder it contained. As, however, no evil act ever [Page 155] goes without retribution in the long run, he forgot all about the cat's-eye ring, which was necessary to the safe use of the magical powder; and thus his ungrateful theft, though proceeding only from his predominant love of fun, was eventually punished.

As soon as he got home, he made instant preparations for a grand entertainment, to which he invited Ravan, his brother, Bibhishana, and all the grandees of the Titan court; and for this feast he caused to be slaughtered many of those very animals and birds whom the Rishi vainly imagined to have saved by conceding the Mohan Astra. So rarely does weak compliance, even with a good purpose, produce the intended result! As soon as the banquet had been concluded, and wine began to unlock the tongues of the assembly, and inspire each guest [Page 156] with a desire of telling some tale in which he himself was, of course, the hero, — the Kamatur Rakshas, who had his Buddhist friar in attendance behind him, with the chafing-dish, Asclepias leaves, and a vial of the Sankalp-odaka, or aqua mirabilis, all in readiness, took the opportunity of a break in the general conversation; and, fixing a steady eye, full of wicked meaning, upon Ravan, began, as it were, quite carelessly: “That reminds me, by the way, of what once happened to me in the time of my uncle, Sarva-Varta. I remember Amuk coming up one day into the eastern sky chambers, and saying to Tamuk” — the moment these fatal names were heard, a look of meaning passed round the circle of guests; and Ravan, catching the eyes of the principal chiefs — as in modern days the lady of the house telegraphs [Page 157] her fair guests, when about to rise and retire — got up from the seat of honour, his example being followed by all present, and said , with grave courtesy, “Farewell, brave Kamatur — it is now late, and we all need rest; for there will be hard work with Hanuman and his monkeys tomorrow”.

THE morning following the night on which Ravan had concluded the narration of his dream, rose with that full flush of orient splendour which is only [Page 162] to be witnessed in the East; where the magnificence and grateful coolness of the hours of sunrise and sunset, and the pearly lustre of the clear moonlight nights, come, in accordance with that remarkable principle of compensation which pervades all the arrangements of the universe, to atone for the dazzling glare, the oppressive heat, and the listless monotony of the tropical day.

Long before the first glimmer of the dawn reddened the tops of the eastern hills, or flung a glow upon the waters, the symptoms of the coming day began to show themselves. The flying foxes, or supposed vampire bats, that had been out all night preying upon the ripening custard-apples and other fruit in the orchards round the city, or stealing the toddy or palm wine from the gourd-vessels in which it was extracted, [Page 163] as by so many cupping-glasses, from the incised tops of the palm-trees, now flocked screeching home to the old banyan and other trees that surrounded the tanks and temples of Lanka; and hanging themselves up in the branches, by the hooks attached to the extremity of their leathern wings, with their heads downward, gave themselves up to an unmolested sleep for the day.

A yellow pavilion wide outspread;
Therein a yellow throne.
Rama, Sita, Lakshmana seated thereupon;
Dasa their servant sings their attributes.

[ Dasa, which signifies slave or devoted worshipper, is also the name of the author The yellow complexion of this hymn has probably a mystic, as well as pictorial, sense for Dnyanadeva, in describing the the successive phases of, or stages of transit to, the beatific vision of spirit, makes the last and central one yellow, thus —
“Red, white, grey, blue, the colour .
Yellow saffron in the midst”']

But as all the songs and hymns in the invading force were connected with praise and worship of Rama as the seventh Avatar of Vishnu, the wily counsellors of Ravan advised him at to counteract the effect of this religious enthusiasm in favour of Rama, and to disparage him in the eyes of the Titans, if not of his own troops, by celebrating with constant and ostentatious honours and worship that greater Avatar, Krishna, who was to succeed Rama, and surpass him by the totality of his divinity. [Page 169]

The result was, that while the Titans were fighting against one manifestation of Vishnu, they were singing hymns in honour of the other. And never was Krishna worshipped with so much ardour by devout men, while upon earth, as he was, before he was born, by this generation of Titans [naturally the enemies of all the celestials], from pure enmity to Rama,

The cows for their calves are lowing;
The birds in the trees are pouring forth their notes.
At the door thy playfellows stand waiting,
They call for thee! oh, Yadu Raja!
    Arise! arise ! dear wearer, etc.

[ In this piece we have many phrases which are constantly applied to Krishna, some in a double sense. Thus Vanamali, the wearer of the forest garland; Megha Shama, the thunder-cloud, dark-blue in colour. Yadu Raja, the Yadu King, or chief of the tribe of that name; and Kanha, or Kanhoba, the youth, are common substitutes for his own name. The term Atmarama, soul-delighter, or soul of the soul, employed in the second line of stanza ii, besides its ostensible, has a mystic sense, which, is here meant to be insinuated under the affectionate utterances of Yashoda; soul of my soul is in this sense equivalent to “soul of the universe which lives and moves in my own soul. The phrase Saguna also, rendered “Full of Perfection” in stanzas 3 and 5, has a double mystic sense — viz , the deity manifested with all perfections, or attributes, as contradistinguished from that ultimate and inaccessible depth of divine being, in which there is neither form, passion nor attribute [in this latter point curiously agreeing with some of the European mystics treated of in the writings of Bossuet]: and which is accordingly distinguished as nirakara, without form, nirguna, without property or attribute; and nirvikara, without change or passion. The term used in the last stanza to signify Lord of Life, Jivana, Suta, also indicates, by an equivoque frequent in these lyrics, the name of the author ]

As the last echo of this matin hymn died away, a loud rustle was heard in the wood skirting the Rakshas outposts, and a stir was perceived among the branches. The Rakshas sentinel imagining it was an ambuscade of the monkeys, fired an arrow into the thicket; but to his astonishment and terror, it came back, and glanced close to his cheek. Thinking it must be a powerful Yaksha, or treasure-guarding [Page 174] goblin that inhabited the wood, the sentinel threw down his bow, and was about to fly, when a voice called out, “It is only Vayu, the king's messenger”. Ravan has subdued and enslaved all the elemental deities, and compelled them to serve as domestic servants in his establishment. Thus Agni, or Fire, was his cook; Varuna, the Water Deity, his dhobi, or washerman; and this Vayu, or Wind, he made a sort of hamaul. In the morning he was compelled to sweep the floors and brush the furniture of the palace with invisible brooms and brushes; and all the day afterwards he either wheeled about his Vimana, or air-chariot, or pulled an invisible punka, or large Indian fan, to cool him, or ran on errands and messages through his kingdom and to his army. Speculation was immediately at work as to the destination [Page 175] or object of Vayu's present mission; and the Titan warriors addressed him in a song which Madhavi Pankaja had composed, and which was well known and often chanted in camp,

Following the Aeolian murmurs of Vayu, we arrive at the hermitage called Ashta Vati, or “The Eight Banyan Trees”. In point of fact there was but one parent tree; but seven of the suckers, which it had originally thrown down to take fresh root in the earth, had now grown into massive trunks, sweeping in an irregular octagon round the central stem, and joined to it and to each other by picturesque arches, from each of which again descended fresh slender shoots towards the ground, which some had already penetrated, and others only [Page 177] approached, the rudiments of a future still more massive and extended arcade of foliage. The descending suckers fell so thick as to form almost a continuous curtain between the arches, and to shelter the centre of the retreat; and with the aid of one or two thick groups of broad-leaved plantain trees judiciously planted, and a mass of green creepers dotted with large trumpet-shaped white, or small and delicate scarlet and violet flowers, the sanctuary of the Rishi was complete and impenetrable to the eye. It stood on a long high ridge of ground, and occupied nearly the whole breadth between two loose stone-walls enclosing cottages on either side, inhabited by his friends, admirers, and disciples. In front, descending by a gradual slope, spread a vast plain, green with the growing rice-crops, dotted here [Page 178] and there with solitary clumps of mango-trees of a century's growth, and terminating in groups, and at last in a dense grove, of feathered palm.

THE YOGI'S APPROPRIATE RETREAT

A place in which Sadhakas, or practisers of particular discipline for attaining spiritual and thaumaturgic perfection, have been in the habit of dwelling; but where the footfall of other men is never heard. Where trees sweet as amrita, or immortal [Page 181] nectar, to the very roots, crowd thickly together, ever bearing fruit. Where, at every footstep, are waters of surpassing clearness, even without the autumnal season; where springs abounding are easy to be found. Where the broken sunshine falls at intervals, and yet which is cool with shade; where the wind, scarcely moving, softly blows in intermitting airs. Devoid in general of sound; so thick that the beasts of prey penetrate it not; no parrot, no humble bee is there (to disturb with its scream or hum).Close to the water may dwell swans and a few flamingoes; the kokila also, or black cuckoo, may alight occasionally there. Peacocks should not abide there constantly but should a few come and go at intervals, let them, I forbid them not.

Thou art without fail, oh ! son of Pandu, to seek out and find such a place; there let thy profoundly embowered hermitage be, or oratory dedicated to Shiva.

For forty long years, in yon ruinous hut
Dwells a withered ascetic, whose arm is shrunk,
And devotees flock, to the sacred Muth, [Page 186]
   To kiss the feet of the blossoming monk.
His eyes with weeping are red and ferrety;
His sun-scorched hair all matted and carroty;
His body is smeared with a pale yellow crust
Of funeral ashes and charnel dust:
He lives upon leaves, and berries and haws,
    And doses with opium, his spirit to calm;
His nails are grown like a vulture's claws,
    And, inward curling, have pierced his palm;
On which he supporteth, by night and by day,
O torment of wonder ! — for ever, for ever,
Sleeping or waking, a flower-pot of clay,
    Which he must, living, relinquish never.
Within the red flower-pot a Tulsi is seen,
A blossoming basil, that's sacred and green;
Twixth the growth of his claws and the force of his vow,
The hand, the vase, and the plant are now
So locked together, 'tis hard to scan
'Twixt the talking shrub and the sprouting man.
If he walk, you behold a moving bower;
   If he speak, 'tis the awful voice of a tree;
In springtime you meet with a man in flower,
    And wondering ask, what can it be ?
For forty long years, this penance he's borne,
    Through autumn's rain and through summer's sun,
In age and in feebleness — weary and worn,
    And still must bear, till his race is run.
Some live on the summit of pinnacles high,
   Some hook themselves up, and swing over a fire,
Some drop themselves into the Ganges and die, [Page 187]
  Some mount, all undaunted, the funeral pyre;
But here, in this Cingalese land we see,
    Expiation is wrought on a different plan;
The sinner grows holy by fettering a tree,
    And the innocent shrub is enchained for the man.

Ananta Rishi, though interiorly a man of mortified spirit, avoided all such excesses; for he considered them often to spring from spiritual pride, or fanatic zeal; and he followed the maxims of the Gita, which says, sect. vi. : —

Even in the performance of Yoga, or the internal contemplation and self-union, he differed from Maricha. The latter, following his mystic, thaumaturgic bent, was full of internal visions and revelations. Sometimes, according to the mystic school of Paithana, sitting cross-legged, meditating at midnight [Page 188] at the foot of a banyan-tree, with his two thumbs closing his ears, and his little fingers pressed upon his eyelids, he saw rolling before him gigantic fiery wheels, masses of serpent shapes, clusters of brilliant jewels, quadrats of pearls, lamps blazing without oil, a white haze melting away into a sea of glittering moonlight, a solitary fixed swan-like fiery eye of intense ruddy glare, and, at length, the splendour of an internal light more dazzling than the sun or the whole star-paved court of heaven. An internal, spontaneous, unproduced music [anahata] vibrated on his ear; and sometimes a sweet mouth, sometimes a majestic nose, sometimes a whole face of exquisite beseeching beauty, would rise out of a cloud before his inward gnostic eye, look into his soul, and advance to embrace him. [Page 189]

Then with a discharge from above, the reservoir of moon-fluid of immortality (contained in the brain), leaning over on one side, communicates into the mouth of the POWER.

Even so, above is this dry shell of the skin, which, like the husk of grain, of itself falls off.

His age remains the same as before; but in other respects he exhibits the strength of [Page 192] childhood; the greatness of his fortitude is beyond comparison.

In other respects, indeed, just as before, he appears with the members of his body; but he is as one formed of the wind!

Behold the Sadhaka (the thaumaturgic saint) departeth; but the talk of his footsteps remains behind; there in various places invisibility and the other supernatural faculties become acquired.

As soon as they were seated, the invisible Vayu recommenced his loud, humming murmur. The car rose in the air lightly; the tops of the trees bent before it; and after a short and pleasant excursion through the air, they alighted at the palace of Ravan. A group of female slaves was in attendance to receive Ghanta Patali, and carry her off to the chamber of Mandodari. Ananta was greeted respectfully by a crowd of learned and religious men, and conducted immediately to the council-chamber, where he found the Rishis in deep consultation, and exchanging troubled glances with each other. The imperious injunction of the Titan to interpret the dream had thrown them all into consternation, for all agreed that it foreshadowed great [Page 202] disaster, which it might be perilous to communicate. The majority considered that it foreboded no less than the death of Ravan, and the fall of Lanka. Maricha, however, who sat on the ground, throwing ever and anon a handful of cowrie shells on the pavement, and observing carefully the number that fell with the mouths upward, and the number in which the mouths were down, as well as the order which they assumed in their fall, shook his head mysteriously, and asserted that, although these disasters were certainly written in the future, they did not form, but preceded, the real interpretation; that the precise misfortunes indicated in the dream related to a far future state of existence, in which Ravan would probably not believe. The council of sages was not only divided on this point, but felt that, whichever [Page 203] interpretation they should agree to adopt, it would be equally hazardous to deliver it boldly to the Titan, since each must point, directly or indirectly, to his own destruction. In this dilemma they sought counsel of Ananta.

In the second view, which is given in the Tattva Bodha, and many other works, the idea is further expanded: man is there represented as a prismatic trinity, veiling and looked through by a primordial unity of light — gross outward body; subtle internal body or soul; a being neither body nor soul, but absolute self-forgetfulness, called the cause-body, because it is the original sin of ignorance of his true nature which precipitates him from the spirit into the life-condition. These three bodies, existing in the waking, dreaming, sleeping states, are all known, [Page 212] witnessed, and watched, by the spirit which standeth behind and apart from them, in the unwinking vigilance of ecstasy, or spirit-waking.

There are four spheres of existence, one enfolding the other — the inmost sphere of Turya, in which the individualised spirit lives the ecstatic life; the sphere of transition, or Lethe, in which the spirit, plunged in the ocean of Adnyana, or total unconsciousness, and utterly forgetting its real self, [Page 213] undergoes a change of gnostic tendency [polarity ?]; and from not knowing at all, or absolute unconsciousness, emerges on the hither side of that Lethean boundary to a false or reversed knowledge of things (viparita dnyana), under the influence of an illusive Pradnya, or belief in, and tendency to, knowledge outward from itself, in which delusion it thoroughly believes, and now endeavours to realise: — whereas the true knowledge which it had in the state of Turya, or the ecstatic life, was all within itself, in which it intuitively knew and experienced all things. And from the sphere of Pradnya, or out-knowing, — this struggle to reach and recover outside itself all that it once possessed within itself, and lost, — to regain for the lost intuition an objective perception through the senses and understanding, — in which the spirit [Page 214] became an intelligence, — it merges into the third sphere, which is the sphere of dreams, where it believes in a universe of light and shade, and where all existence is in the way of Abhasa, or phantasm. There it imagines itself into the Linga-deha (Psyche), or subtle, semi-material, ethereal soul, composed of a vibrating or knowing pentad, and a breathing or undulating pentad. The vibrating or knowing pentad consists of simple consciousness, radiating into four different forms of knowledge — the egoity or consciousness of self; the ever-changing, devising, wishing mind, imagination, or fancy; the thinking, reflecting, remembering faculty; and the apprehending and determining understanding or judgment. The breathing or undulating pentad contains the five vital aurae — namely, the breath of life, [Page 215] and the four nervous aethers that produce sensation, motion, and the other vital phenomena.

From this subtle personification and phantasmal sphere, in due time, it progresses into the fourth or outermost sphere, where matter and sense are triumphant; where the universe is believed a solid reality; where all things exist in the mode of Akara, or substantial form; and where that, which successively forgot itself from spirit into absolute unconsciousness, and awoke on this side of that boundary of oblivion into an intelligence struggling outward, and from this outward struggling intelligence imagined itself into a conscious, feeling, breathing nervous soul, prepared for further clothing, now out-realises itself from soul into a body, with five senses or organs of perception, and five organs [Page 216] of action, to suit it for knowing and acting in the external world, which it once held within, but now has wrought out of itself. The first or spiritual state was ecstasy; from ecstasy it forgot itself into deep sleep; from profound sleep it awoke out of unconsciousness, but still within itself, into the internal world of dreams; from dreaming it passed finally into the thoroughly waking state, and the outer world of sense. Each state has an embodiment of ideas or language of its own. The universal, eternal, ever-present intuitions that be eternally with the spirit in the first, are in the second utterly forgotten for a time, and then emerge reversed, limited and translated into divided successive intellections, or gropings, rather, of a struggling and as yet unorganised intelligence, having reference to place [Page 217] and time, and an external historical world, which it seeks, but cannot all at once realise outside itself. In the third they become pictured by a creative fantasy into phantasms of persons, things, and events, in a world of light and shade within us, which is visible even when the eyes are sealed in dreaming slumber, and is a prophecy and forecast shadow of the solid world that is coming. In the fourth the outforming or objectivity is complete. They are embodied by the senses into hard, external realities in a world without us. That ancient seer [Kavi Purana] which the Gita and the Mahabharata mention as abiding in the breast of each, is first a prophet and poet; then he falls asleep, and awakes as a blindfold logican and historian, without materials for reasoning, or a world for events, but groping [Page 218] towards them; next a painter, with an ear for inward phantasmal music too; at last a sculptor carving out hard, palpable solidities. Hence the events destined to occur in this outer world can never be either foreshown or represented with complete exactitude in the sphere of dreams, but must be translated into its pictorial and fantastical language.

But besides this dim, prophetic character, referring to isolated events in time, thy dream, like all other dreams, has a more universal and enduring significance, setting forth, as it does, in a series of vivid symbols, a crowd of spiritual truths and allegories that are eternally true to the human soul. The prophetic hieroglyphics it is not given me to read. That may lie within the compass of Maricha's powers, for he treads the difficult and [Page 219] dangerous paths of thaumaturgy, and ventures on the perilous gaze into the dread future. Mine be it simply to unfold before thine eyes, oh king! the symbolic and moral interpretations of the vision, which, if thou be wise, will have for thee a profounder, because a more eternal interest, than the mere foretelling of transitory events.

That desolate land in which thou didst wander, oh Titan! with thy beautiful and mysterious companion, where silent cities strewed the desert, in which no life stirred, and no voice was heard in the streets, but all was death and desolation; where everything lay still or petrified; where gigantic ruins lay around, and the colossal forms of a by-gone life stared out on thee from stone, with an impress [Page 220] of solemn and eternal beauty, uttering a moan to the first beams of the rising sun, offers a true type of this mournful world. For what, in truth, is this earth but one immense ruin, or heap of ruins — a land of death and desolation — a desert strewn with the fragments of an extinct past ?

If we contemplate external nature, we find in its stupendous mountain-chains, its gigantic volcanic peaks shooting up aloof into the sky — its abrupt masses of scarped rock and table-lands — its scattered, solitary, gigantic stones, far from their parent mountains — its tremendous clefts, and chasms, and valleys, the evidences and traces of immense convulsions in past ages. The whole earth appears a vast assemblage of sublime ruins. When we consult more closely the materials which form these ruins, we [Page 221] find with astonishment that they too are composed of other ruins; we find everywhere the marks of an extinct world. A gigantic vegetation of consummate beauty in its forms; broken fragments, too, of a creation of living creatures, colossal in size, wonderful in structure, and awful in power, surround us everywhere. The dead faces of extinct organisations look out on us from stone on every side with their sad, eternal beauty; and, as every fresh sun dawns upon the world of ruins, a mournful plaint is wailed forth from all past creations to greet his rising, which recalls to them their own former being.

If we turned, continued the Rishi, from external nature to what is called the living world, we look in vain for life. Death meets us at every turn. The terrible Yama is everywhere. The whole animal creation appears upon the scene, merely to pass away by some form of violent death. To the peaceful herds grazing on the hillside, Yama comes in the guise of the tiger; to the innocent bleating sheep, as wolf or hyena. The snake seizes the frog from his moist bed, and him into his hole, or his drags crevice among the stones, crushing his limbs in [Page 223] the traction. The hawk pierces with his cruel beak the poor sparrow; the sparrow, in turn, transfixes or carries off the grub. Bird preys on bird; fish on fish, as it is written in the Maha-bharata: —

But man himself is the most terrible incarnation of Yama. He plunges with a savage joy into the thicket of bamboo or sugar-cane, to attack and slay the boar. He pursues over the plain the timid and graceful antelope; his arrows outstrip his fleetness; and the exhausted creature, that erst bounded in beauty and freedom, falls sobbing to the earth, and expires in torture. He gathers the dumb and patient sheep, and the helpless lambs, from the pastures where they bleated [Page 224] in joy, and consigns them to the slaughter-house. Behold yon porters passing even now the court gate with baskets on their heads full of the beautiful plumage of the Cingalese cocks gathered from the villages round Lanka, sitting happy together, all unconscious of their coming doom. They are bearing them to the camp to feed thy military followers. The festivity of man is the signal of death to the humbler creatures of the earth: he rejoices, or weds, and they die as the materials of his joy, victims immolated to his household gods. Even those creatures, upon whose flesh he has not yet learned to feed, he harasses to death by more protracted and painful means. The horse, that in his youth bore him in the day of battle or the pompous ceremonial, is, when age advances, and his fire abates, consigned [Page 225] to the merciless Vaisha, who trades in hired chariots, and you behold thousands of those wretched creatures, lean, lacerated, and panting, driven by male Durgas (furies) through the city, without respite from sunrise till midnight, till at last they drop and expire in harness, or are rudely taken out and cast aside into some corner to die unseen and unpitied. And the dog, the honest friend of man; and the cat, self-adorning, playful, capricious, coy, timid, watchful, secretive, house-loving, but ever affectionate when gently treated, the friend and —be not offended, good Mandodari, for thou knowest their strong attachments — in some respects the type of woman, and the playfellow of children, the household Numen, and hieroglyphic of domestic life, — what becomes of these ? Who sees their end ? Into what by-way [Page 226] solitudes, what holes and corners do they creep, led by a mournful Instinct of nature to conceal their agonies and yield up their breath ? Ah ! how many tragedies of animal agony daily take place not far from the dwelling of man, and he knows it not, or knowing, lays it not to heart, or laughs in scorn of sympathy for animal suffering ! And yet all creatures, Manu teaches, have their life in that awful Spirit in whom man, too, lives, and in them as in man that Spirit liveth —

And the same doctrine is applicable to individual personalities, which all arise and re-subside, like waves, into the infinite impersonal ocean of Being, but for the contemplation of this mystery thou art not yet fully prepared, oh Titan! nor has it any type in the three images, which typify only Space, [Page 237] Time, and multitudinous divided Matter. To sum up. To Spirit, or True Being, there is no Space, no Time, no diversified Matter, no multitudinous Personality, no successive Thought, no historical Event.

That wherein this trio — the knower, the [medium or process of knowledge, and the thing to be known, does not exist — that, my son, know to be supreme Brimh, undual.

Which even Sarv-Eshvara, or the All Lord himself, if he assume the egoity of knowing, even he knoweth not the furthest limits of that OWN-FORM. [i.e, if Brimh become Sarv-Eshvara; if going out of the infinite impersonal all consciousness, in which there is neither knowing, nor not knowing, he assume the egoity of knowing, and thus become the egoistic and personal God, the all Lord, as such he knoweth not, and cannot know, the limits of that essence from which he has come forth, of that OWN-FORM, which is pure Brimh ]

As the clouds melt into the ethereal space and [Page 242] cease to be, so in Own-Form the film of Maya: when that is dissolved, wholly Brimh [or the absolute] alone is.