The Penguin Book of Classical Indian Love Stories and Lyrics Page 7

  How should these things accord: the antelope vestment of one who gives all his life to pious endeavour, and a garment stained by contact with a public woman?

  You split wood for the sacrifices in your childhood; whence came this art to you of tearing mistress’ lips?

  You practised unwavering obedience to the priest; whence have you learnt this conquering manner over loose women?

  Your perfect pronunciation in reciting the syllables of the sacred text became a by-word; whence have you such virtuosity in speech with raging girls?

  I have recalled your family to you, now I go pray.’

  Sundarasena took note of the contents of this letter, and then fell into a hesitation as to what he should do. Then it was that someone sang these most appropriate lines in the metre Arya:

  For him whose eyes are drowned in lust

  Until they miss the way you must

  Compound a salve of syllables

  The pious mouth of a priest tells.

  Harsh duty and that bitter root

  Self-Knowledge should be added to it;

  For then the unguent shall sear

  And cleanse, and both the eyes see clear.

  As soon as Sundarasena’s friend, Gunapalita, heard these words, he seized the occasion to say to his companion: ‘An upright man is never disparaged because he pays attention to the salutary discourse of dear mouths.

  ‘You have not listened to the counsels of your comrade; your body is plunged into the great deep of evil passions; your surest hope of salvation is in words of an angry father.

  ‘Your Father, the light of his race, who wears his irreproachable conduct as a garment, your father, a man of high-placed heart, is now brought low, Sundara, by the trespass of an evil son.

  ‘Never to have had a son is better than to give the light to evil.

  ‘Virtue cannot hold the hand of happiness. The son by whose transgression a mother is led to cry: “Would that I had not borne him!” is an evil son.

  ‘If violent feeling lead us but once from the road, a knowledge of the arts shall stay without fruit, and years passed in the house a master all be barren.

  ‘He at whom people point the finger from afar off, looking upon him and making faces, is dead in life.

  ‘This thing is true, that sensuality cannot be killed. A man of perfect understanding will avoid occasion even of unjust reproach.

  ‘He who cannot waver on that path which the righteous follow, who is the jewel of his family, alone finds happiness. His perfections go out from him into all the world; the upright accord him high consideration; he is sought by the people; he is the throne of good.

  ‘That man who perpetually satisfies his ear with the instructive discourse of his ancestors, the same shall become a treasury of education, knowing the suitable from the unsuitable.

  ‘When a youth attaches himself to vile women, it is the ripening of the fruit of evil works in a past existence. A noble wife is an abiding joy.

  ‘When he is vexed, she is vexed also; when he is joyful, she rejoices; when he is uneasy, she betrays uneasiness; she is his mirror. But when he is angry, she is afraid, and is careful not to become angry also.

  ‘She allows him as much as he wishes of the amorous gymnastic; she does not forbid his pleasures upon her; she is adroit to slip into his thoughts; she is the inheritance of a treasure of merits in a former existence.’

  It was after this that Sundarasena resolved to make his father’s house at one again by breaking with his mistress; therefore he said to her, by way of beginning:

  ‘O child of beautiful teeth, you must think no more upon any wounding words which I may have spoken, either in amorous anger or ill-considered pleasantry, or through misunderstanding.

  ‘My heart is laid in yours, as it were a pledge; and to keep a pledge is a very serious matter. Bend all your cares that my pledge shall not lessen in value because of the place of its deposit.’

  When her lover had finished speaking, Haralata answered with difficulty, in a hesitant voice, mingling a wave of tears into her words:

  ‘How should these things accord: a woman born of an impure race, who gains her food by giving up her body, whose conduct is deceit, who sells her beauty, and you whose life is one perfection?

  ‘Desire urged you to see the land of lust, and you have stayed here many days. This was because I acquired merit in some other life . . .

  ‘All those sweet pleasantries, those fine double meanings, those hours consumed in loving conversation . . . you must not keep silence about them in your heart if you would live at peace . . .

  ‘I beg you to pardon me all the harm I have done you, either by negligence or through excess of love, and also all annoyance.

  ‘The roads are hard to go over; you will sleep far from here tonight; no heart is steady. Gunapalita, as he travels beside you, must not be light-hearted.

  ‘When two young folk, whose hearts have at any time been one, know separation, that is the opportunity of a third party to carry them comfort.

  ‘The man who is bound by a tender inclination, a discreet rapture, can abide parting through death or the judgement of the wise alone.’

  Sundarasena had listened to her conversation with manifest coldness, and now he said: ‘I must depart, my dear.’

  With that he turned his head and went away.

  But Haralata stayed where she was, leaning against the branch of a banyan, her lips withering under a hot sigh. With fixed eyes she watched her lover go, and then fell heavily to the earth, like a dead stem, straining the fingers of her hand over her broken heart. O end of gracious jesting! She was stricken to death in the innermost of her body, her soul was as empty as sand. ‘O spirits of my life,’ she murmured, ‘do not depart straight away! Remain until he has passed into the trees!’ But as she spoke, life left her.

  A little later the son of Purandara questioned a traveller who overtook him on the way, saying: ‘Have you encountered a grief-stricken woman?’

  ‘Under a banyan tree,’ answered the man, ‘there lies one, but her beautiful limbs are quiet in death. I have not seen another.’

  Wounded in the full of the heart by the shock of these words, Sundarasena fell, and to his friend who lifted him, he showed the ulceration of his heart:

  ‘Be satisfied, O father, and, you, very dear friend . . . . Let joy be manifest! Two things abandoned Haralata at the same moment, this wretch who is I, and her dear life.

  ‘Love delight, the model of constancy, is beaten down. Love’s gentle game is over. You spread a light upon me; where is it now?

  ‘O folly of love, depart into the woods, a penitent! The dumb signs have left her. You had sweet shame before your lover’s tenderness, you had a noble indifference under his caresses. You concealed so tender, so sweetly foolish a passion. Alas, have you fainted for ever?

  ‘I will return, I will see her again who has perished of our separation; I owe her the last office, I will give her body to the fire.’

  He went back to the place where she was dead, and rolled upon the earth; and while his friend strove to bear him up, he cried:

  ‘See, we have come back. Now let your anger fall. Spare me one word, O sulky one. Rise up, my dear! Why do you stay in bed so long, for the bed is dust?

  ‘Why do you not answer me, why do your eyes stay shut? We are lost, and it was through my fault, because you did not wish me to go.

  ‘Now you have climbed into the sky, now you eclipse all women in the city of the king, now Kama is disarmed for all his arrows.

  ‘All over the world it is said: False as a harlot. But, with your death, my beloved, the proverb dies.

  ‘Only the son of Shiva, Mahasena, is worthy of our praise at all, for he is eternally chaste, his heart is intangible by love and the eyes of women.

  ‘O porter of the world, why have you opened the gates to my mistress? Did you not know that she was the ornament of the Earth, and that her departing has left it empty?

  ‘Do not burn the Earth’s
high jewel, O god of fire; it cost the Creator too much pain. Do not steal away the quintessence of the sweet sea!’

  Without paying further attention to the lamentations of his friend, Gunapalita now raised a pyre and burnt the body of the courtesan.

  In his despair the lover would have thrown himself among the flames, but at that moment a man felt these most appropriate lines rising within his soul, and so gave voice to them:

  Only a madman follows into death

  The girl who seemed more dear to him than breath,

  Whose passing puts his soul into confusion;

  Since, though in women such an end is meet,

  Man has the fortitude to clear his feet

  Of every grief, for grieving is illusion.

  These words drew Sundarasena from his prostration, and he said to his friend: ‘My spirit is enlightened by this wise man, for he has shown me what is fitting.

  ‘What man of sense would fall into any passion because of this circle of existences? He is bound within it to the pain of losing; he is bound to birth, to age, to sickness and to death!

  ‘Let us go now towards Kusumapura, for I vow to find my refuge in the last stage of life which is asceticism, so that freedom from ignorance may be my portion.’ To this his noble young friend made answer: ‘Since earliest childhood you have not left me. What need is there, even for one who dreams of complete renunciation, to abandon a friend? I have not one desire which points towards the world of sense.’

  ‘It is well!’ cried Sundarasena, and led his friend in the direction of the forest of penitents, of resolution and abiding vows. . . .

  ‘The Loves of Haralata and Sundarasena’, from ‘Lessons of a Bawd’ by Damodaragupta in Eastern Love Vol. I, edited and translated by E. Powys Mathers. London, 1927.

  The Queen and the Mahout

  Janna

  Canto Two

  ‘Listen, this is our story’

  The Land of Avanti

  shone

  like the fair face of a woman,

  its main city, Ujjayini,

  like her nose—delicate as a bud.

  Its King Yasaugha, a great

  conqueror, had won renown

  for personal valour, and trophies

  in war. The princes of the earth

  bowed at his feet, and the gems

  in their crowns, as they bowed,

  burned like lamps

  of amethyst around the feet.

  Candramati was the royal queen,

  the king’s lovely woman.

  The king’s eyes stood waiting

  on her like bodyguards, his mind

  adorned her as a jewel. The very

  goddess Wealth, the royal deity,

  was her maid. She was every

  inch a queen. They loved each

  other, shared the joys of their bed.

  The moon kept watch at their door

  by night; the spring, brought on

  by the roll of seasons, by day.

  And the love-god Mara all day long.

  Presently, to the king and queen

  was born a son, Yasodhara.

  He was comely, radiant as

  the arrow of Mara who

  brings it out with grace

  to fit his sugarcane-bow

  and the string made of flowerbuds.

  The child, ruddy of limb,

  of bright looks, romped about

  and brought riches to the eyes that looked,

  honey to the lips

  that touched him

  and himself

  to the arms that stretched

  for a caress.

  Years passed. The boy grew

  into a fine strapping man.

  Were there eyes around, then, one

  wondered, that wouldn’t tell

  how he himself looked like Mara

  or like a piece of moonlight

  to intrigue us

  or touched us with the cool

  of a mountain breeze?

  Soon he excelled in valour

  over enemies who began to feel

  the pressure of his sinewy arms.

  Presently Mara came along,

  this time as hunter

  with a decoy to lure

  the young prince. The charming

  decoy was none other than Amritamati,

  now the beloved of Yasodhara.

  And they came together as man and wife.

  King Yasaugha, as he grew older,

  and greedier for conjugal pleasure,

  crowned king his son Yasodhara

  and freed himself from the affairs

  of State—so that he could bury

  himself deeper in voluptuous life.

  By and by his hair turned

  silver, crept out like a dove

  to catch the thieving old-timer

  as if with a lamp in hand—

  which was an ill-omen, as the

  royal custom ran, that

  when a dove enters the palace

  the king should leave it. Age had

  seized Yasaugha, the silver hair

  was hint enough for him

  to put aside his palace pleasures

  and take to the life of a recluse for

  the rest of his days. He left his kingdom

  to the care of his beloved son, and with

  the pick of his men, all of the royal house,

  he betook himself to the forest with

  the liberty of an elephant

  that breaks loose from its chains.

  The realm, divorced from her

  rightful master, flew into

  the clasp of Yasodhara as a mistress

  would when times change.

  She now found in his eminence

  the cool of sandal and

  in his loving care her lost comforts.

  The lands he conquered, the trophies

  he won, all his victories

  he bore about him with ease.

  For victory is a clever wench

  who breaks her troth with kings

  and flies to any new-glossed prince

  who comes to the fore by strength of sword.

  Young Yasodhara was happy in

  the company of Queen Amritamati,

  whose looks were the very glass wherein

  he dressed himself, and touched his features.

  But things soon began to take

  a new turn in the young prince’s life.

  Once, as it happened,

  the king discharged his court duties

  before time, and by the end

  of day, went up the staircase

  to the bed-chamber

  to meet his beloved queen.

  From the casements

  rose a tiny column of

  incense smoke like the grey-

  winged dove that flew out, as if

  at the behest of the love-god Mara,

  to carry his message to

  the minds of people.

  Bees came hovering

  round for the scent, and

  the brush of their wings raised

  the musk and camphor dust.

  The blue sapphires

  adorning the chamber

  burned and glowed.

  The bed breathed passion. It was

  a swing-bed and at either

  end were images of swans

  inlaid with nine varieties of gems.

  There they lay,

  the young king and the lovely queen,

  in bed in each other’s arms.

  their eyes, cast, bit

  into each other, their bodies

  melted in the clasp, like those

  fabled moon-stones

  when the moon’s rays fell on them.

  As dolls with strings, the love-god

  Mara pulled them, put them

  together, and let them get

  drunk with the joys of love.

  They played as if possessed

 
by an untiring love for

  each other. Tired out at last

  in the night’s toil, they drowsed

  and lay asleep—their bodies

  still clinging together loosely, and

  drops of sweat running down them.

  Yet they didn’t have the heart to unclasp!

  (‘listen now, my king,

  what happened next’)

  In the small hours

  of the morning, when the noise

  of the last change of guards

  at the palace gate died out,

  the queen heard

  a faint voice, and

  was awakened. Enclosed

  and lost

  in the prison of her love’s arms,

  she heard:

  the voice grew into a song,

  sweet and alluring in the dark silence.

  It came to her

  like fallen seeds

  trouble the resting waters.

  A tiny ripple

  stirred

  and grew. Soon it touched

  her, tapped her gently, and

  woke her out of her drowsy

  slumbers. Eyes wide open,

  she stared in the dark,

  and toward the direction of the song.

  The voice came from the nearby

  elephant stables. The song

  went home to her, shook

  her to the roots. Tired though

  she was, her body rose again

  tingling and all alive to the song.

  She lost her heart to it,

  to the possessor of that

  divine voice. She paid him

  in her mind

  the tribute

  of her entire body.

  The mahout down in the elephant

  stables was a born singer. His voice,

  tremulous

  and sensitive to the

  minutest crease of fancy

  dithered,

  wavered,

  and answered

  to the metamorphic

  variations of the tune.

  Keeping time,

  working

  to a climax,

  the song took a stance

  stood poised

  limned,

  and limbered away to the end.

  The voice came

  smooth and vivid

  to the queen as if

  she had touched it.

  Lured

  and lost in the song

  there now broke out within her

  a cascade of feeling,

  an irresistible urge to see him,