Part 5

'When soon afterwards the noise of the chase was stilled and the wood had become quiet, like the ocean when its water was stilled by the ceasing of the churning, or like a mass of clouds silent after the rainy season, I felt less of fear and became curious, and so, moving a little from my father's embrace, (60) I stood in the hollow, stretched out my neck, and with eyes that, from my childishness, were yet tremulous with fear, in my eagerness to see what this thing was, I cast my glance in that direction.

'Before me I saw the Çabara [104] army come out from the wood like the stream of Narmada tossed by Arjuna's [105] thousand arms; like a wood of tamalas stirred by the wind; like all the nights of the dark fortnight rolled into one; like a solid pillar of antimony shaken by an earthquake; like a grove of darkness disturbed by sunbeams; like the followers of death roaming; like the demon world that had burst open hell and risen up; like a crowd of evil deeds come together; like a caravan of curses of the many hermits dwelling in the Dandaka Forest; like all the hosts of Dushana [106] and Khara struck by Rama as he rained his ceaseless shafts, and they turned into demons for their hatred to him; like the whole confraternity of the Iron Age come together; like a band of buffaloes prepared for a plunge into the water; like a mass of black clouds broken by a blow from a lion's paw as he stands on the mountain peak; [107] like a throng of meteors risen for the destruction of all form; it darkened the wood; it numbered many thousands; it inspired great dread; it was like a multitude of demons portending disasters.

(61) 'And in the midst of that great host of Çabaras I beheld the Çabara leader, Matanga by name. He was yet in early youth; from his great hardness he seemed made of iron; he was like Ekalavya [108] in another birth; from his growing beard, he was like a young royal elephant with its temples encircled by its first line of ichor; he filled the wood with beauty that streamed from him sombre as dark lotuses, like the waters of Yamuna; he had thick locks curled at the ends and hanging on his shoulders, like a lion with its mane stained by elephant's ichor; his brow was broad; his nose was stern and aquiline; his left side shone reddened by the faint pink rays of a jewelled snake's hood that was made the ornament for one of his ears, like the glow of shoots that had clung to him from his resting on a leafy couch; he was perfumed with fragrant ichor, bearing the scent of saptacchada blossoms torn from the cheeks of an elephant freshly slain, like a stain of black aloes; (62) he had the heat warded off by a swarm of bees, like a peacock-feather parasol, flying about blinded by the scent, as if they were a branch of tamala; he was marked with lines of perspiration on his cheek rubbed by his hand, as if Vindhya Forest, being conquered by his strong arm, were timidly offering homage under the guise of its slender waving twigs, and he seemed to tinge space by his eye somewhat pink, as if it were bloodshot, and shedding a twilight of the night of doom for the deer; he had mighty arms reaching to his knees, as if the measure of an elephant's trunk had been taken in making them, and his shoulders were rough with scars from keen weapons often used to make an offering of blood to Kali; the space round his eyes was bright and broad as the Vindhya Mountain, and with the drops of dried deer's blood clinging on it, and the marking of drops of perspiration, as if they were adorned by large pearls from an elephant's frontal bone mixed with guñja fruit; his chest was scarred by constant and ceaseless fatigue; he was clad in a silk dress red with cochineal, and with his strong legs he mocked a pair of elephants' posts stained with elephants' ichor; he seemed from his causeless fierceness to have been marked on his dread brow by a frown that formed three banners, as if Durga, propitiated by his great devotion, had marked him with a trident to denote that he was her servant. (63) He was accompanied by hounds of every colour, which were his familiar friends; they showed their weariness by tongues that, dry as they were, seemed by their natural pinkness to drip deer's blood, and which hung down far from tiredness; as their mouths were open they raised the corners of their lips and showed their flashing teeth clearly, like a lion's mane caught between the teeth; their throats were covered with strings of cowries, and they were hacked by blows from the large boars' tusks; though but small, from their great strength they were like lions' cubs with their manes ungrown; they were skilled in initiating the does in widowhood; with them came their wives, very large, like lionesses coming to beg an amnesty for the lions. He was surrounded by troops of Çabaras of all kinds: some had seized elephants' tusks and the long hair of yaks; some had vessels for honey made of leaves closely bound; some, like lions, had hands filled with many a pearl from the frontal bones of elephants; some, like demons, had pieces of raw flesh; some, like goblins, were carrying the skins of lions; some, like Jain ascetics, held peacocks' tails; some, like children, wore crows' feathers; [109] some represented Krishna's [110] exploits by bearing the elephants' tusks they had torn out; (64) some, like the days of the rainy season, had garments dark as clouds. [111] He had his sword-sheath, as a wood its rhinoceroses; [112] like a fresh cloud, he held a bow [113] bright as peacocks' tails; like the demon Vaka, [114] he possessed a peerless army; like Garuda, he had torn out the teeth of many large nagas; [115] he was hostile to peacocks, as Bhishma to Çikhandi; [116] like a summer day, he always showed a thirst for deer; [117] like a heavenly genius, he was impetuous in pride; [118] as Vyasa followed Yojanagandha, [119] so did he follow the musk deer; like Ghatotkaca, he was dreadful in form; [120] as the locks of Uma were decked with Çiva's moon, so was he adorned with the eyes in the peacocks' tails; [121] as the demon Hiranyakaçipu [122] by Mahavaraha, so he had his breast torn by the teeth of a great boar; (65) like an ambitious man, [123] he had a train of captives around him; like a demon, he loved [124] the hunters; like the gamut of song, he was closed in by Nishadas; [125] like the trident of Durga, he was wet with the blood of buffaloes; though quite young, he had seen many lives pass; [126] though he had many hounds, [127] he lived on roots and fruits; though of Krishna's hue, [128] he was not good to look on; though he wandered at will, his mountain fort [129] was his only refuge; though he always lived at the foot of a lord of earth, [130] he was unskilled in the service of a king.

'He was as the child of the Vindhya Mountains, the partial avatar of death; the born brother of wickedness, the essence of the Iron Age; horrible as he was, he yet inspired awe by reason of his natural greatness, [131] and his form could not be surpassed. [132] His name I afterwards learnt. In my mind was this thought: "Ah, the life of these men is full of folly, and their career is blamed by the good. (66) For their one religion is offering human flesh to Durga; their meat, mead, and so forth, is a meal loathed by the good; their exercise is the chase; their çastra [133] is the cry of the jackal; their teachers of good and evil are owls; [134] their knowledge is skill in birds; [135] their bosom friends are dogs; their kingdom is in deserted woods; their feast is a drinking bout; their friends are the bows that work their cruel deeds, and arrows, with their heads smeared, like snakes, with poison, are their helpers; their song is what draws on bewildered deer; their wives are the wives of others taken captive; their dwelling is with savage tigers; their worship of the gods is with the blood of beasts, their sacrifice with flesh, their livelihood by theft; the snakes' hood is their ornament; their cosmetic, elephants' ichor; and the very wood wherein they may dwell is utterly destroyed root and branch."

'As I was thus thinking, the Çabara leader, desiring to rest after his wandering through the forest, approached, and, laying his bow in the shade beneath that very cotton-tree, sat down on a seat of twigs gathered hastily by his suite. (67) Another youthful Çabara, coming down hastily, brought to him from the lake, when he had stirred its waters with his hand, some water aromatic with lotus-pollen, and freshly-plucked bright lotus-fibres with their mud washed off; the water was like liquid lapis lazuli, or showed as if it were painted with a piece of sky fallen from the heat of the sun's rays in the day of doom, or had dropped from the moon's orb, or were a mass of melted pearl, or as if in its great purity it was frozen into ice, and could only be distinguished from it by touch. After drinking it, the Çabara in turn devoured the lotus-fibres, as Rahu does the moon's digits; when he was rested he rose, and, followed by all his host, who had satisfied their thirst, he went slowly to his desired goal. But one old Çabara from that barbarous troop had got no deer's flesh, and, with a demoniac [136] expression coming into his face in his desire for meat, he lingered a short time by that tree. (68) As soon as the Çabara leader had vanished, that old Çabara, with eyes pink as drops of blood and terrible with their overhanging tawny brows, drank in, as it were, our lives; he seemed to reckon up the number in the parrots' nests like a falcon eager to taste bird's flesh, and looked up the tree from its foot, wishing to climb it. The parrots seemed to have drawn their last breath at that very moment in their terror at the sight of him. For what is hard for the pitiless? So he climbed the tree easily and without effort, as if by ladders, though it was as high as many palms, and the tops of its boughs swept the clouds, and plucked the young parrots from among its boughs one by one, as if they were its fruit, for some were not yet strong for flight; some were only a few days old, and were pink with the down of their birth, so that they might almost be taken for cotton-flowers; [137] some, with their wings just sprouting, were like fresh lotus-leaves; some were like the Asclepias fruit; some, with their beaks growing red, had the grace of lotus-buds with their heads rising pink from slowly unfolding leaves; while some, under the guise of the ceaseless motion of their heads, seemed to try to forbid him, though they could not stop him, for he slew them and cast them on the ground.

(69) 'But my father, seeing on a sudden this great, destructive, remediless, overwhelming calamity that had come on us, trembled doubly, and, with pupils quivering and wandering from fear of death, cast all round a glance that grief had made vacant and tears had dimmed; his palate was dry, and he could not help himself, but he covered me with his wing, though its joints were relaxed by fear, and bethought himself of what help could avail at such a moment. Swayed wholly by love, bewildered how to save me, and puzzled what to do, he stood, holding me to his breast. That miscreant, however, wandering among the boughs, came to the entrance of the hollow, and stretched out his left arm, dreadful as the body of an old black snake, with its hand redolent of the raw fat of many boars, and its forearm marked with weals from ceaseless drawing of the bowstrings, like the wand of death; and though my father gave many a blow with his beak, and moaned piteously, that murderous wretch dragged him down and slew him. (70) Me, however, he somehow did not notice, though I was within the wings, from my being small and curled into a ball from fear, and from my not having lived my fated life, but he wrung my father's neck and threw him dead upon the ground. Meanwhile I, with my neck between my father's feet, clinging quietly to his breast, fell with him, and, from my having some fated life yet to live, I found that I had fallen on a large mass of dry leaves, heaped together by the wind, so that my limbs were not broken. While the Çabara was getting down from the tree-top, I left my father, like a heartless wretch, though I should have died with him; but, from my extreme youth, I knew not the love that belongs to a later age, and was wholly swayed by the fear that dwells in us from birth; I could hardly be seen from the likeness of my colour to the fallen leaves; I tottered along with the help of my wings, which were just beginning to grow, thinking that I had escaped from the jaws of death, and came to the foot of a very large tamala tree close by. Its shoots were fitted to be the earrings of Çabara women, as if it mocked the beauty of Vishnu's body by the colour of Balarama's dark-blue robe, (71) or as if it were clad in pure strips of the water of Yamuna; its twigs were watered by the ichor of wild elephants; it bore the beauty of the tresses of the Vindhya Forest; the space between its boughs was dark even by day; [138] the ground round its root was hollow, and unpierced by the sun's rays; and I entered it as if it were the bosom of my noble father. Then the Çabara came down and gathered up the tiny parrots scattered on the ground; he bound them hastily in a basket of leaves with a coil of creepers, and going off with hasty steps by the path trodden by his leader, he made for that region. I meanwhile had begun to hope for life, but my heart was dried up with grief for my father's recent death; my body was in pain from my long fall, and I was possessed by a violent thirst, caused by fright, which tortured all my limbs. Then I thought, "The villain has now gone some way," so I lifted my head a little and gazed around with eyes tremulous with fear, thinking even when a blade of grass moved that the wretch was coming back. I watched him go step by step, and then, leaving the root of the tamala tree, I made a great effort to creep near the water. (72) My steps were feeble, because my wings were not yet grown, and again and again I fell on my face; I supported myself on one wing; I was weak with the weariness [139] of creeping along the ground, and from my want of practice; after each step I always lifted my head and panted hard, and as I crept along I became gray with dust. "Truly even in the hardest trials," I reflected, "living creatures never become careless of life. Nothing in this world is dearer to all created beings than life, seeing that when my honoured father, of well-chosen name, is dead, I still live with senses unimpaired! Shame on me that I should be so pitiless, cruel, and ungrateful! For my life goes on shamefully in that the grief of my father's death is so easily borne. I regard no kindness; truly my heart is vile! I have even forgotten how, when my mother died, my father restrained his bitter grief, and from the day of my birth, old as he was, reckoned lightly in his deep love the great toil of bringing me up with every care. And yet in a moment I have forgotten how I was watched over by him! (73) Most vile is this breath of mine which goes not straightway forth to follow my father on his path, my father, that was so good to me! Surely there is none that thirst of life does not harden, if the longing for water can make me take trouble in my present plight. Methinks this idea of drinking water is purely hardness of heart, because I think lightly of the grief of my father's death. Even now the lake is still far off. For the cry of the kalahamsas, like the anklets of a water-nymph, is still far away; the cranes' notes are yet dim; the scent of the lotus-bed comes rarely through the space it creeps through, because the distance is great; noontide is hard to bear, for the sun is in the midst of heaven, and scatters with his rays a blazing heat, unceasing, like fiery dust, and makes my thirst worse; the earth with its hot thick dust is hard to tread; my limbs are unable to go even a little way, for they are weary with excessive thirst; I am not master of myself; (74) my heart sinks; my eyes are darkened. O that pitiless fate would now bring that death which yet I desire not!" Thus I thought; but a great ascetic named Jabali dwelt in a hermitage not far from the lake, and his son Harita, a youthful hermit, was coming down to the lotus-lake to bathe. He, like the son of Brahma, had a mind purified with all knowledge; he was coming by the very path where I was with many holy youths of his own age; like a second sun, his form was hard to see from its great brightness; he seemed to have dropped [140] from the rising sun, and to have limbs fashioned from lightning and a shape painted with molten gold; he showed the beauty of a wood on fire, or of day with its early sunlight, by reason of the clear tawny splendour of his form flashing out; he had thick matted locks hanging on his shoulders red as heated iron, and pure with sprinkling from many a sacred pool; his top-knot was bound as if he were Agni in the false guise of a young Brahman in his desire to burn the Khandava Wood; [141] he carried a bright crystal rosary hanging from his right ear, like the anklets of the goddesses of the hermitage, and resembling the circle of Dharma's commandments, made to turn aside all earthly joys; (75) he adorned his brow with a tripundraka [142] mark in ashes, as if with threefold truth; [143] he laid his left hand on a crystal pitcher with its neck held ever upwards as if to look at the path to heaven, like a crane gazing upwards to the sky; he was covered by a black antelope skin hanging from his shoulders, like thick smoke that was coming out again after being swallowed [144] in thirst for penance, with pale-blue [145] lustre; he wore on his left shoulder a sacrificial thread, which seemed from its lightness to be fashioned from very young lotus-fibres, and wavered in the wind as if counting the framework of his fleshless ribs; he held in his right hand an ashadha [146] staff, having on its top a leafy basket full of creeper-blossoms gathered for the worship of Çiva; he was followed by a deer from the hermitage, still bearing the clay of the bathing-place dug up by its horns, quite at home with the hermits, fed on mouthfuls of rice, and letting its eyes wander on all sides to the kuça grass flowers and creepers. Like a tree, he was covered with soft bark; [147] like a mountain, he was surrounded by a girdle; [148] like Rahu, he had often tasted Soma; [149] like a day lotus-bed, he drank the sun's rays; (76) like a tree by the river's side, his tangled locks were pure with ceaseless washing; like a young elephant, his teeth were white as [150] pieces of moon-lotus petals; like Drauni, he had Kripa [151] ever with him; like the zodiac, he was adorned by having the hide [152] of the dappled deer; like a summer day, he was free from darkness; [153] like the rainy season, he had allayed the blinding dust of passion; [154] like Varuna, he dwelt on the waters; [155] like Krishna, he had banished the fear of hell; [156] like the beginning of twilight, he had eyes tawny as the glow of dawn; [157] like early morn, he was gilded with fresh sunlight; like the chariot of the sun, he was controlled in his course; [158] like a good king, he brought to nought the secret guiles of the foe; [159] (77) like the ocean, his temples were cavernous with meditation; [160] like Bhagiratha, he had often beheld the descent of Ganges; [161] like a bee, he had often tasted life in a water-engirt wood; [162] though a woodsman, he yet entered a great home; [163] though unrestrained, he longed for release; [164] though intent on works of peace, he bore the rod; [165] though asleep, he was yet awake; [166] though with two well-placed eyes, he had his sinister eye abolished. [167] Such was he who approached the lotus-lake to bathe.

'Now the mind of the good is ever wont to be compassionate and kind instinctively. Wherefore he, seeing my plight, was filled with pity, and said to another young ascetic standing near: (78) "This little half-fledged parrot has somehow fallen from the top of that tree, or perhaps from a hawk's mouth. For, owing to his long fall, he has hardly any life left; his eyes are closed, and he ever falls on his face and pants violently, and opens his beak, nor can he hold up his neck. Come, then, take him before his breath deserts him. Carry him to the water." So saying, he had me taken to the edge of the lake; and, coming there, he laid down his staff and pitcher near the water, and, taking me himself, just when I had given up all effort, he lifted up my head, and with his finger made me drink a few drops of water; and when I had been sprinkled with water and had gained fresh breath, he placed me in the cool wet shade of a fresh lotus-leaf growing on the bank, and went through the wonted rites of bathing. After that, he purified himself by often holding his breath, and murmuring the cleansing aghamarshana [168], and then he arose and, with upraised face, made an offering to the sun with freshly-plucked red lotuses in a cup of lotus-leaves. Having taken a pure white robe, so that he was like the glow of evening sunlight accompanied by the moon's radiance, he rubbed his hair with his hands till it shone, and, (79) followed by the band of ascetic youths, with their hair yet wet from recent bathing, he took me and went slowly towards the penance grove.

'And after going but a short way, I beheld the penance grove, hidden in thick woods rich in flowers and fruit.