The Kadambari of Bana

[Dark Saint Alaick]

First, let one who strives after happiness
look at Lakshmi. For this Lakshmi, who now rests like a bee on the
lotus-grove of a circle of naked swords, has risen from the milk ocean,
has taken her glow from the buds of the coral-tree, her crookedness
from the moon's digit, her restlessness from the steed Uccaihçrava,
her witchery from Kalakuta poison, her intoxication from nectar, and
from the Kaustubha gem her hardness. (210) All these she has taken
as keepsakes to relieve her longing with memory of her companions'
friendship. There is nothing so little understood here in the world
as this base Lakshmi. When won, she is hard to keep; when bound fast
by the firm cords of heroism, she vanishes; when held by a cage of
swords brandished by a thousand fierce champions, she yet escapes;
when guarded by a thick band of elephants, dark with a storm of ichor,
she yet flees away. She keeps not friendships; she regards not race;
she recks not of beauty; she follows not the fortunes of a family;
she looks not on character; she counts not cleverness; she hears
not sacred learning; she courts not righteousness; she honours not
liberality; she values not discrimination; she guards not conduct;
she understands not truth; she makes not auspicious marks her guide;
like the outline of an aërial city, she vanishes even as we look on
her. She is still dizzy with the feeling produced by the eddying of
the whirlpool made by Mount Mandara. As if she were the tip of a
lotus-stalk bound to the varying motion of a lotus-bed, she gives
no firm foothold anywhere. Even when held fast with great effort
in palaces, she totters as if drunk with the ichor of their many
wild elephants. (211) She dwells on the sword's edge as if to learn
cruelty. She clings to the form of Narayana as if to learn constant
change of form. Full of fickleness, she leaves even a king, richly
endowed with friends, judicial power, treasure, and territory, as she
leaves a lotus at the end of day, though it have root, stalk, bud, and
wide-spreading petals. Like a creeper, she is ever a parasite. [226]
Like Ganga, though producing wealth, she is all astir with bubbles;
like the sun's ray, she alights on one thing after another; like the
cavity of hell, she is full of dense darkness. Like the demon Hidamba,
her heart is only won by the courage of a Bhima; like the rainy season,
she sends forth but a momentary flash; like an evil demon, she, with
the height of many men, [227] crazes the feeble mind. As if jealous,
she embraces not him whom learning has favoured; she touches not
the virtuous man, as being impure; she despises a lofty nature as
unpropitious; she regards not the gently-born, as useless. She leaps
over a courteous man as a snake; (212) she avoids a hero as a thorn;
she forgets a giver as a nightmare; she keeps far from a temperate man
as a villain; she mocks at the wise as a fool; she manifests her ways
in the world as if in a jugglery that unites contradictions. For,
though creating constant fever, [228] she produces a chill; [229]
though exalting men, she shows lowness of soul; though rising from
water, she augments thirst; though bestowing lordship, [230] she
shows an unlordly [231] nature; though loading men with power, she
deprives them of weight; [232] though sister of nectar, she leaves a
bitter taste; though of earthly mould, [233] she is invisible; though
attached to the highest, [234] she loves the base; like a creature of
dust, she soils even the pure. Moreover, let this wavering one shine
as she may, she yet, like lamplight, only sends forth lamp-black. For
she is the fostering rain of the poison-plants of desire, the hunter's
luring song to the deer of the senses, the polluting smoke to the
pictures of virtue, the luxurious couch of infatuation's long sleep,
the ancient watch-tower of the demons of pride and wealth. (213) She is
the cataract gathering over eyes lighted by the çastras, the banner of
the reckless, the native stream of the alligators of wrath, the tavern
of the mead of the senses, the music-hall of alluring dances, the lair
of the serpents of sin, the rod to drive out good practices. She is
the untimely rain to the kalahamsas [235] of the virtues, the hotbed
of the pustules of scandal, the prologue of the drama of fraud, the
roar of the elephant of passion, the slaughter-house of goodness,
the tongue of Rahu for the moon of holiness. Nor see I any who has
not been violently embraced by her while she was yet unknown to him,
and whom she has not deceived. Truly, even in a picture she moves;
even in a book she practises magic; even cut in a gem she deceives;
even when heard she misleads; even when thought on she betrays.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

'"'When this wretched evil creature wins kings after great toil by
the will of destiny, they become helpless, and the abode of every
shameful deed. For at the very moment of coronation their graciousness
is washed away as if by the auspicious water-jars; (214) their heart
is darkened as by the smoke of the sacrificial fire; their patience is
swept away as by the kuça brooms of the priest; their remembrance of
advancing age is concealed as by the donning of the turban; the sight
of the next world is kept afar as by the umbrella's circle; truth is
removed as by the wind of the cowries; virtue is driven out as by the
wands of office; the voices of the good are drowned as by cries of
"All hail!" and glory is flouted as by the streamers of the banners.

'"'For some kings are deceived by successes which are uncertain as the
tremulous beaks of birds when loose from weariness, and which, though
pleasant for a moment as a firefly's flash, are contemned by the wise;
they forget their origin in the pride of amassing a little wealth,
and are troubled by the onrush of passion as by a blood-poisoning
brought on by accumulated diseases; they are tortured by the senses,
which though but five, in their eagerness to taste every pleasure,
turn to a thousand; they are bewildered by the mind, which, in
native fickleness, follows its own impulses, and, being but one,
gets the force of a hundred thousand in its changes. Thus they fall
into utter helplessness. They are seized by demons, conquered by imps,
(215) possessed by enchantments, held by monsters, mocked by the wind,
swallowed by ogres. Pierced by the arrows of Kama, they make a thousand
contortions; scorched by covetousness, they writhe; struck down by
fierce blows, they sink down. [236] Like crabs, they sidle; like
cripples, with steps broken by sin, they are led helpless by others;
like stammerers from former sins of falsehood, they can scarce babble;
like saptacchada [237] trees, they produce headache in those near them;
like dying men, they know not even their kin; like purblind [238] men,
they cannot see the brightest virtue; like men bitten in a fatal hour,
they are not waked even by mighty charms; like lac-ornaments, they
cannot endure strong heat; [239] like rogue elephants, being firmly
fixed to the pillar of self-conceit, they refuse teaching; bewildered
by the poison of covetousness, they see everything as golden; like
arrows sharpened by polishing, [240] when in the hands of others they
cause destruction; (216) with their rods [241] they strike down great
families, like high-growing fruit; like untimely blossoms, though
fair outwardly, they cause destruction; they are terrible of nature,
like the ashes of a funeral pyre; like men with cataract, they can
see no distance; like men possessed, they have their houses ruled by
court jesters; when but heard of, they terrify, like funeral drums;
when but thought of, like a resolve to commit mortal sin, they bring
about great calamity; being daily filled with sin, they become wholly
puffed up. In this state, having allied themselves to a hundred sins,
they are like drops of water hanging on the tip of the grass on an
anthill, and have fallen without perceiving it.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

'"'But others are deceived by rogues intent on their own
ends, greedy of the flesh-pots of wealth, cranes of the palace
lotus-beds! "Gambling," say these, "is a relaxation; adultery a sign
of cleverness; hunting, exercise; drinking, delight; recklessness,
heroism; neglect of a wife, freedom from infatuation; (217) contempt
of a guru's words, a claim to others' submission; unruliness of
servants, the ensuring of pleasant service; devotion to dance, song,
music, and bad company, is knowledge of the world; hearkening to
shameful crimes is greatness of mind; tame endurance of contempt is
patience; self-will is lordship; disregard of the gods is high spirit;
the praise of bards is glory; restlessness is enterprise; lack of
discernment is impartiality." Thus are kings deceived with more than
mortal praises by men ready to raise faults to the grade of virtues,
practised in deception, laughing in their hearts, utterly villainous;
and thus these monarchs, by reason of their senselessness, have their
minds intoxicated by the pride of wealth, and have a settled false
conceit in them that these things are really so; though subject to
mortal conditions, they look on themselves as having alighted on
earth as divine beings with a superhuman destiny; they employ a pomp
in their undertakings only fit for gods (218) and win the contempt
of all mankind. They welcome this deception of themselves by their
followers. From the delusion as to their own divinity established in
their minds, they are overthrown by false ideas, and they think their
own pair of arms have received another pair; [242] they imagine their
forehead has a third eye buried in the skin. [243] They consider the
sight of themselves a favour; they esteem their glance a benefit; they
regard their words as a present; they hold their command a glorious
boon; they deem their touch a purification. Weighed down by the
pride of their false greatness, they neither do homage to the gods,
nor reverence Brahmans, nor honour the honourable, nor salute those
to whom salutes are due, nor address those who should be addressed,
nor rise to greet their gurus. They laugh at the learned as losing
in useless labour all the enjoyment of pleasure; they look on the
teaching of the old as the wandering talk of dotage; they abuse the
advice of their councillors as an insult to their own wisdom; they
are wroth with the giver of good counsel.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

'"'At all events, the man they welcome, with whom they converse,
whom they place by their side, advance, (219) take as companion of
their pleasure and recipient of their gifts, choose as a friend,
the man to whose voice they listen, on whom they rain favours, of
whom they think highly, in whom they trust, is he who does nothing
day and night but ceaselessly salute them, praise them as divine,
and exalt their greatness.

'"'What can we expect of those kings whose standard is a law of
deceit, pitiless in the cruelty of its maxims; whose gurus are family
priests, with natures made merciless by magic rites; whose teachers
are councillors skilled to deceive others; whose hearts are set on a
power that hundreds of kings before them have gained and lost; whose
skill in weapons is only to inflict death; whose brothers, tender as
their hearts may be with natural affection, are only to be slaughtered.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

'"'Therefore, my Prince, in this post of empire which is terrible in
the hundreds of evil and perverse impulses which attend it, and in this
season of youth which leads to utter infatuation, thou must strive
earnestly not to be scorned by thy people, nor blamed by the good,
nor cursed by thy gurus, nor reproached by thy friends, nor grieved
over by the wise. Strive, too, that thou be not exposed by knaves,
(220) deceived by sharpers, preyed upon by villains, torn to pieces
by wolvish courtiers, misled by rascals, deluded by women, cheated by
fortune, led a wild dance by pride, maddened by desire, assailed by the
things of sense, dragged headlong by passion, carried away by pleasure.

'"'Granted that by nature thou art steadfast, and that by thy father's
care thou art trained in goodness, and moreover, that wealth only
intoxicates the light of nature, and the thoughtless, yet my very
delight in thy virtues makes me speak thus at length.

'"'Let this saying be ever ringing in thine ears: There is none so
wise, so prudent, so magnanimous, so gracious, so steadfast, and
so earnest, that the shameless wretch Fortune cannot grind him to
powder. Yet now mayest thou enjoy the consecration of thy youth to
kinghood by thy father under happy auspices. Bear the yoke handed down
to thee that thy forefathers have borne. Bow the heads of thy foes;
raise the host of thy friends; after thy coronation wander round the
world for conquest; and bring under thy sway the earth with its seven
continents subdued of yore by thy father.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

'"'This is the time to crown thyself with glory. (221) A glorious
king has his commands fulfilled as swiftly as a great ascetic.'

'"Having said thus much, he was silent, and by his words Candrapida
was, as it were, washed, wakened, purified, brightened, bedewed,
anointed, adorned, cleansed, and made radiant, and with glad heart
he returned after a short time to his own palace.

'"Some days later, on an auspicious day, the king, surrounded by a
thousand chiefs, raised aloft, with Çukanasa's help, the vessel of
consecration, and himself anointed his son, while the rest of the
rites were performed by the family priest. The water of consecration
was brought from every sacred pool, river and ocean, encircled by
every plant, fruit, earth, and gem, mingled with tears of joy, and
purified by mantras. At that very moment, while the prince was yet wet
with the water of consecration, royal glory passed on to him without
leaving Tarapida, as a creeper still clasping its own tree passes
to another. (222) Straightway he was anointed from head to foot by
Vilasavati, attended by all the zenana, and full of tender love, with
sweet sandal white as moonbeams. He was garlanded with fresh white
flowers; decked [244] with lines of gorocana; adorned with an earring
of durva grass; clad in two new silken robes with long fringes, white
as the moon; bound with an amulet round his hand, tied by the family
priest; and had his breast encircled by a pearl-necklace, like the
circle of the Seven Rishis come down to see his coronation, strung
on filaments from the lotus-pool of the royal fortune of young royalty.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

'"From the complete concealment of his body by wreaths of white flowers
interwoven and hanging to his knees, soft as moonbeams, and from his
wearing snowy robes he was like Narasimha, shaking his thick mane,
[245] or like Kailasa, with its flowing streams, or Airavata, rough
with the tangled lotus-fibres of the heavenly Ganges, or the Milky
Ocean, all covered with flakes of bright foam.

(223) '"Then his father himself for that time took the chamberlain's
wand to make way for him, and he went to the hall of assembly and
mounted the royal throne, like the moon on Meru's peak. Then, when he
had received due homage from the kings, after a short pause the great
drum that heralded his setting out on his triumphal course resounded
deeply, under the stroke of golden drum-sticks. Its sound was as the
noise of clouds gathering at the day of doom; or the ocean struck by
Mandara; or the foundations of earth by the earthquakes that close an
aeon; or a portent-cloud, with its flashes of lightning; or the hollow
of hell by the blows of the snout of the Great Boar. And by its sound
the spaces of the world were inflated, opened, separated, outspread,
filled, turned sunwise, and deepened, and the bonds that held the
sky were unloosed. The echo of it wandered through the three worlds;
for it was embraced in the lower world by Çesha, with his thousand
hoods raised and bristling in fear; it was challenged in space by the
elephants of the quarters tossing their tusks in opposition; it was
honoured with sunwise turns in the sky by the sun's steeds, tossing
[246] their heads in their snort of terror; (224) it was wondrously
answered on Kailasa's peak by Çiva's bull, with a roar of joy in the
belief that it was his master's loudest laugh; it was met in Meru by
Airavata, with deep trumpeting; it was reverenced in the hall of the
gods by Yama's bull, with his curved horns turned sideways in wrath
at so strange a sound; and it was heard in terror by the guardian
gods of the world.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

'"Then, at the roar of the drum, followed by an outcry of 'All
hail!' from all sides, Candrapida came down from the throne, and
with him went the glory of his foes. He left the hall of assembly,
followed by a thousand chiefs, who rose hastily around him, strewing
on all sides the large pearls that fell from the strings of their
necklaces as they struck against each other, like rice sportively
thrown as a good omen for their setting off to conquer the world. He
showed like the coral-tree amid the white buds of the kalpa-trees;
[247] or Airavata amid the elephants of the quarters bedewing him with
water from their trunks; or heaven, with the firmament showering stars;
or the rainy season with clouds ever pouring heavy drops.

(225) '"Then an elephant was hastily brought by the mahout, adorned
with all auspicious signs for the journey, and on the inner seat
Patralekha was placed. The prince then mounted, and under the shade of
an umbrella with a hundred wires enmeshed with pearls, beauteous as
Kailasa standing on the arms of Ravana, and white as the whirlpools
of the Milky Ocean under the tossing of the mountain, he started on
his journey. And as he paused in his departure he saw the ten quarters
tawny with the rich sunlight, surpassing molten lac, of the flashing
crest-jewels of the kings who watched him with faces hidden behind the
ramparts, as if the light were the fire of his own majesty, flashing
forth after his coronation. He saw the earth bright as if with his own
glow of loyalty when anointed as heir-apparent, and the sky crimson
as with the flame that heralded the swift destruction of his foes,
and daylight roseate as with lac-juice from the feet of the Lakshmi
of earth coming to greet him.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

'"On the way hosts of kings, with their thousand elephants swaying
in confusion, their umbrellas broken by the pressure of the crowd,
their crest-jewels falling low as their diadems bent in homage, (226)
their earrings hanging down, and the jewels falling on their cheeks,
bowed low before him, as a trusted general recited their names. The
elephant Gandhamadana followed the prince, pink with much red lead,
dangling to the ground his ear-ornaments of pearls, having his head
outlined with many a wreath of white flowers, like Meru with evening
sunlight resting on it, the white stream of Ganges falling across it,
and the spangled roughness of a bevy of stars on its peak. Before
Candrapida went Indrayudha, led by his groom, perfumed with saffron
and many-hued, with the flash of golden trappings on his limbs. And
so the expedition slowly started towards the Eastern Quarter. [248]

'"Then the whole army set forth with wondrous turmoil, with its forest
of umbrellas stirred by the elephants' movements, like an ocean
of destruction reflecting on its advancing waves a thousand moons,
flooding the earth.

(227) '"When the prince left his palace Vaiçampayana performed every
auspicious rite, and then, clothed in white, anointed with an ointment
of white flowers, accompanied by a great host of powerful kings, shaded
by a white umbrella, followed close on the prince, mounted on a swift
elephant, like a second Crown Prince, and drew near to him like the
moon to the sun. Straightway the earth heard on all sides the cry:
'The Crown Prince has started!' and shook with the weight of the
advancing army.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

(228) '"In an instant the earth seemed as it were made of horses;
the horizon, of elephants; the atmosphere, of umbrellas; the sky,
of forests of pennons; the wind, of the scent of ichor; the human
race, of kings; the eye, of the rays of jewels; the day, of crests;
the universe, of cries of 'All hail!'

(228-234 condensed) '"The dust rose at the advance of the army like
a herd of elephants to tear up the lotuses of the sunbeams, or a
veil to cover the Lakshmi of the three worlds. Day became earthy;
the quarters were modelled in clay; the sky was, as it were, resolved
in dust, and the whole universe appeared to consist of but one element.

(234) '"When the horizon became clear again, Vaiçampayana, looking at
the mighty host which seemed to rise from the ocean, was filled with
wonder, and, turning his glance on every side, said to Candrapida:
'What, prince, has been left unconquered by the mighty King
Tarapida, for thee to conquer? What regions unsubdued, for thee
to subdue? (235) What fortresses untaken, for thee to take? What
continents unappropriated, for thee to appropriate? What treasures
ungained, for thee to gain? What kings have not been humbled? By whom
have the raised hands of salutation, soft as young lotuses, not been
placed on the head? By whose brows, encircled with golden bands,
have the floors of his halls not been polished? Whose crest-jewels
have not scraped his footstool? Who have not accepted his staff of
office?