The Ashes of a God. Bain Francis William

of the illimitable abyss of heaven in the mirror of its glass, so he mistook his own pique at the world arising from the wound inflicted by the conduct of his wife, and proving, by its very violence, the strength of his attachment to the objects of sense that he pretended to despise, for real renunciation based on perfect knowledge, and undertook rashly, in imitation of that bull among ascetics, Wishwamitra, a task beyond the limits of his strength; not having understood, that those only are equal to the terrible strain of true renunciation whose soul is pure, unstained by any tincture of egoism, and resembling a well of the crystal liquor of perfect mastery of self. And yet even so, he commenced his undertaking confidently, and counting beforehand on success, and burning with the fire of preliminary zeal, ignorant of the presence of that element in his soul, which was destined in the future to upset his calculations, and bring about his utter destruction, on the very brink of ultimate success. And going to the farthest recesses of the forest, he discovered in its heart a remote and lonely cemetery,[16] on the outskirts of a long deserted and forgotten town. And he entered it, and having discovered a suitable spot, he remained and dwelt there, as motionless as a tree. And collecting from the relics of burning funeral pyres a quantity of bare and empty skulls, divested of their flesh by fire, and time, and the troops of night-walking, flesh-devouring wild beasts and Rákshasas and Wetálas,[17] by which that gloomy cemetery was infested, he made of them a rosary for himself, like mine,[18] and began to mutter spells. And so he continued, night and day, year after year, muttering incessantly, living all the while like a serpent on nothing but air and his own undaunted resolution, till at last he had completed a century of years.

      And then at last, being pleased with his perseverance, such as it was, I appeared to him one day in the guise of a digambara,[19] and granted him a boon. Thereupon that indomitable Trishodadhi replied: O Shankara, I ask for absolutely nothing, but permission to continue my devotions. If therefore I must perforce select a boon, grant me as much time as I require, so as to continue, muttering on, till I abandon my assiduity of my own accord. So I left him, muttering diligently away, just as before, though I foresaw the end, and knew that he carried within him, unsuspected by himself, the seed of the fruit of his own undoing, which time would ripen, dooming him to undergo the punishment that lies in wait for all, who plunge, without due consideration, into enterprises above their strength.[20] And so the boon I offered him was wasted, and the chance was thrown away. For had he only had knowledge of himself, it might have saved him after all, by ensuring him oblivion of the past. For his memory was his ruin, as the story will show thee, O Daughter of the Snow.

      And he in the meantime muttered on unflaggingly, wholly intent on nothing else, till at length the mound of his accumulated merit began to rival in dimension yonder hill, whose top the evening sun is now touching with the colour of affection, as if loth to leave it to be swallowed by the dark.

III

      And then at last one day it happened, that Mátali arrived in Indra's palace, having returned to heaven from a visit to the earth. And as soon as he entered, he exclaimed: O punisher of Páka,[21] and the rest, what are you all about? Are you asleep, or have you actually abandoned all care whether of your own pre-eminence or the established order of the world? For away below on earth, there is an old Brahman, in a deserted cemetery in the forest of the Windhya hills, who by his interminable muttering continued through the centuries has accumulated so gigantic a heap of merit,[22] that it threatens destruction to the three worlds. And now, unless something is done very speedily to stop him, and reduce it, this merit of his, beyond a doubt, will disturb the equilibrium of the universe, and wreck the established order of the worlds, and hurl you from your thrones.

      And hearing him, Indra said: There is no difficulty in this. I will go myself, and bribe him to discontinue his proceedings. And he went down himself accordingly to earth, to examine and investigate that Brahman, and see what could be done. And after considering him awhile, and admiring his extraordinary obstinacy, he set to work to tempt him, and induce him, by offering bribes of various descriptions, to desist. And he offered him accordingly mountains of gold, and oceans of jewels, and everlasting youth, and many kinds of magic power, and finally he racked his brains, to find something or other that would move that obdurate Trishodadhi, and draw him from his vow. But in vain. For Trishodadhi paid no more attention to his offers and himself, than the moon does to the barking of a dog; continuing to mutter, all the time he spoke, just as if he was not there.

      So finding all his efforts vain, after a while, that baffled lover of Ahalyá[23] returned to heaven. And summoning the gods, he laid the case before them, and requested their advice. And after deliberation, they determined to seduce him by sending down a heavenly nymph, saying to themselves: Did not Menaká, and Tilottamá, and others of their kind, prove too strong for the asceticism of even mighty sages, so that their merit melted, like a lump of snow, in the flame of their desire, and their self-control vanished like stubble in a forest conflagration? Nay, did not even Brahma assume his name,[24] becoming four-faced, in order to gratify his intolerable thirst to behold the beauty of Tilottamá performing a pradakshina around him, though he would not turn his head? Therefore it is not to be doubted that in this case also, the irresistible amber of feminine attraction will prove its power, and draw this grass in the form of a Brahman any way it will, snapping like thread the resolution which would chain him to his muttering, as soon as it is seen.

      And accordingly they drew up before them in a row the chorus of Indra's heavenly dancers. And they chose out of them all that Apsaras who seemed to them the least easily to be resisted, by reason of her rounded arms and dainty ankles, and sent her down to earth with suitable instructions, to seduce that Brahman from his muttering as quickly as she could. But she, to her amazement, found on her arrival, that, do what she might, she could not even so much as succeed in inducing him to look at her sideways even for a moment. So, after a while, she left him, and flew back to heaven in a pet. And they sent instead of her another, who presently returned, having found herself as ineffectual as the first. And they tried again, and sent, one after another, the whole of Indra's chorus, pelting as it were that stony-hearted old ascetic with a very shower of celestial flowers, and gaining the very opposite of the end at which they aimed. For inasmuch as he never ceased muttering even for a moment, all their efforts to corrupt him and reduce his stock of merit only added to its heap, making its mountainous proportions more formidable than before.

      And finally Indra exclaimed in despair: We are conquered by this awatár of obstinacy in the form of an ascetic, on whose rock the waves of this very sea of beauty beat in vain. And now there is no refuge for us but in the sole of the foot of the Burner[25] of the Bodiless God. For he alone is stronger than Love, whose power seems to fail us in this pinch, rendered nugatory by the intractable composition of this exasperating mutterer. And if even he can devise no remedy for this disease, it is incurable; and then will this incorruptible old devotee have us all at his mercy,[26] and bring heaven to its knees, and turn, if he pleases, the three worlds upside down.

      And then, led by Indra, they came altogether in a body to me; and placing the difficulty before me, they waited with anxiety to hear what I should say. And I looked there and then into the future, and saw in its dark mirror, like a picture, the ruin of that old ambitious Brahman, and the means by which it was destined to be accomplished. And after a while, I said slowly: All diseases are not able to be remedied by the same medicine, and notwithstanding the omnipotence of feminine attraction, this is a case wherein heavenly nymphs are impotent, and utterly without avail. For all these heavenly nymphs do nothing but dance and sing and attitudinise and ogle, imagining that as in the case of Menaká Tilottamá, Rambhá, and the rest, they have only to show themselves to gain at once their end, trusting only to the body and its beauty, and very shallow coquetry and artifices to sharpen the edge of its effect, such as wind that stirs their clothing, or water that causes it to cling to the outline of their limbs and reveal, as if by accident, the thing

16

The smashána is rather a burning-ground than a cemetery. But it is often called pitrigriha– "the home of the fathers," and thus cemetery may stand, as an equivalent.

17

i. e. goblins and vampires.

18

Maheshwara, who is speaking, wears a necklace of skulls.

19

i. e. a naked mendicant ascetic.

20

Nemo potest supra seipsum, said the Schoolmen – a profound observation exactly in harmony with old Hindoo ideas on moral force.

21

i. e. Indra. Mátali is his messenger, the Hindoo Mercury.

22

This singular idea, familiar now to Europe, in the form of the prayer-wheels of Tibet, is not wholly without parallels in the West. The only difference is, that the Hindoos are a very logical people, and carry the absurd to its extreme.

23

The wife of the sage Gautama, with whom Indra had an intrigue that covered him with shame, in more ways than one.

24

Chaturmukha.

25

i. e. Maheshwara himself, who burned Love with fire from his eye.

26

Max Müller, to whom students of the Rig-Weda owe so much, was nevertheless essentially mistaken in saying that the word weda means knowledge. It does not mean knowledge, in our sense of the word, scientific, Baconian, Aristotelian; an idea quite alien to that of the old hotris. By weda they meant magical knowledge, spells; which being sung or muttered had power to compel the deities: thus the Brahman who possessed the "knowledge" (in the phrase of the Brahmanas, yah ewam weda) was the master of the world.