Part 14

An ancient people, led by a parricide king, took this strange place and made of it a mighty fortress. They cut galleries in the living rock that, like ants, they might pass up and down unharmed from below; and on the head of the rock—a space four acres in extent—they set a king’s palace and pleasance, with a bathing-tank to cool the torrid air. Then, still desiring beauty, this people frescoed the sheer planes of this precipitous rock of Sigurya with pictures that modern Singhalese art cannot rival. These vast pictures represent a procession of ladies to a shrine, with attendants bearing offerings. Only from the waist upward are the figures visible; they rise from clouds as if floating in the sky. The faces have an archaic beauty and dignity. One, a queen, crowned and bare-bosomed, followed by attendants bearing stiff lotus blooms, is beautiful indeed, but in no Singhalese or Indian fashion—a face dark, exotic, and heavy-lidded, like a pale orchid. It is believed the whole rock was thus frescoed into a picture-gallery, but time and weather have taken toll of the rest.

The Government has put steps and climbing rails, that the height may be reached. Half-way up is a natural level, and above it soars the remainder of the citadel, to be climbed only by notches cut in the rock, and hand-rails as a safeguard from the sheer fall below. And here this dead people had done a wonderful thing. They had built a lion of brick, so colossal that the head towered to the full height of the ascent. It has fallen into ruin, but the great cat-paws that remain indicate a beast some two hundred feet high. There is a gate between the paws, and in the old days they clambered up through the body of the lion and finally through his throat, into the daylight of the top. Only the paws are left, complete even to the little cat-claw at the back of each. Surely one of the strangest approaches in the world! Here and there the shelving of the rock overhangs the ascent, and drops of water fall in a bright crystal rain perpetually over the jungle so far below.

Standing upon the height, it was weirdly lovely to see the eternal jungle monotonously swaying and waving beneath. I thought of the strange feet that had followed these ways, with hopes and fears so like our own. And now their fortress is but a sunny day’s amusement for travellers from lands unknown, and the city sitteth desolate, and the strength of their building is resumed into the heart of nature. But the places where men have worshipped and lifted their hands to the Infinite are never dead. The Spirit that is Life Eternal hovers about them, and the green that binds their broken pillars is the green of an immortal hope.

The evening was now at hand, and, after the sun-steeped day, the jungle gave out its good smells, beautiful earth-warm smells like a Nature-Goddess, rising from the vast tangle of life in the mysterious depths. You may gather the flowers on their edge and wonder what the inmost flowers are like that you will never see—rich, labyrinthine, beyond all thought to paint.

The jungle is terrible as an army with banners. Sleeping in the little rest-house when the night has fallen, it comes close up to you, creeping, leaning over you, calling, whispering, vibrating with secret life. A word more,—only one,—a movement, and you would know the meaning and be gathered into the heart of it; but always there is something fine, impalpable, between, and you catch but a breath of the whisper.

Very wonderful is the jungle! In the moonlight of a small clearing I saw the huge bulk of three wild elephants feeding. They vanished like wraiths into the depths. The fireflies were hosting in the air like flitting diamonds. Stealthy life and movement were about me: the jungle, wide-awake and aware, moving on its own occasions.

A few days later I was at Anaradhapura. Once a million people dwelt in the teeming city. Here or near was the site visited by the famous Chinese pilgrim already mentioned, Fa Hien. But it is in ruins; the jasper image is gone. The tower is in the dust. A few priests watch by the scene of so much dead greatness and receive the pilgrims who still come with bowed heads to the Holy Places. But Fa Hien has reached the home of all the pilgrimages—the City of God dear and desirable in the sight of Plato and Saint Augustine, and all the warriors of all the faiths, and the inexorable years that have devoured the splendours of the Kings leave untouched his tears and his hope, for both are rooted in immortality.

He writes:

“The houses of the merchants are very beautifully adorned. The streets are smooth and level. At this time the King, being an earnest believer in the Law, desired to build a new monastery for this congregation. He chose a pair of strong oxen and adorned their horns with gold, silver and precious things. Then providing himself with a beautiful gilded plough, the King himself ploughed round the four sides of the allotted space, after which, ceding all personal rights, he presented the whole to the priests.”

This must be the monastery described by a later pilgrim, Hieuen Tsang, who journeyed from China to India about the year 630 A.D. In visiting Ceylon, he writes of its magnificence and especially of an upright pole on the roof “on which is fixed a mighty ruby. This gem constantly sheds a brilliant light which is visible day and night for a long distance and afar off appears like a bright star.”

That too is quenched in the dust. Where do the great jewels of antiquity hide? But one is left at Anaradhapura more precious than rubies—the famous image of the Buddha seated alone in a forest glade, the true presentment of a God, to whom beneath his closed eyes eternity is visible and time the shadow of a dream. Around him surged once the clamour of a great city, around him now the growth of the forest, both to his vision alike—and nothing. Some wayfarer had laid a flower at his feet when I stood there, and a white tassel of the areca palm. The sun and moon circle before him in this lonely place and the centuries pass like seasons.

“Forgetful is green earth; the God alone Remember everlastingly.”

The place is a village lost in the woods, but inexpressibly holy because it contains in its own temple the sacred Bodhi Tree which is an offshoot of that very Tree beneath which the Lord Buddha received the Perfect Wisdom. Ceylon desired this treasure, and they tried to break a branch from the Tree, but dared not, for it resisted the sacrilege. But the Princess Sanghamitta, in great awe and with trembling hand, drew a line of vermilion about the bough, and at that line it separated from the Tree, and the Princess planted it in perfumed earth in a golden vase, and so brought it, attended by honours human and superhuman, to Ceylon—to this place, where it still stands. It is believed to be 2230 years old.

With infinite reverence I was given two leaves, collected as they fell; and it is difficult to look on them unmoved if indeed this Tree be directly descended from the other, which sheltered the triumphant conflict with evil.

The city itself is drowned in the jungle. In the green twilight you meet a queen’s palace, with reeling pillars and fallen capitals, beautiful with carved moonstones, for so are called the steps of ascent. Or lost in tangle, a manger fifty feet long for the royal elephants, or a nobly planned bath for the queens, where it is but to close the eyes and dream that dead loveliness floating in the waters once so jealously guarded, now mirroring the wild woodways. A little creeper is stronger than all our strength, and our armies are as nothing before the silent legions of the grass.

Later, I stood before the image of that Buddha who is to come—who in the Unchanging awaits his hour; Maitreya, the Buddha of Love. A majestic figure, robed like a king, for he will be royal. In his face, calm as the Sphinx, must the world decipher its hope, if it may. Strangely enough, in most of his images this Saviour who shall come is seated like a man of the West, and many learned in the faith believe that this Morning Star shall rise in the West. May he come quickly!

I set out one day for Mihintale, in a world of dewy, virginal loveliness, washed with morning gold, the sun shooting bright arrows into the green shade of the trees, a cloud of butterflies radiant as little flower angels going with me. One splendour, rose-red, velvet-black, alighted with quivering wings on the mouse-grey shoulder of the meek little bull who drew my cart and so went with us.

I was glad that my companion should be a devout Buddhist, for his reverence and delight in the beauty of his faith taught me many things. We climbed up through trees so still that the rustling of their shadows on the ground might have been audible, and as we went he told me a very ancient Buddhist story which must have reached the Island with the Apostle Mahinda, son of the high Emperor Ashoka, who brought the faith from his father’s court in India. Ashoka is one of the great world-rulers, the Constantine of the Buddhist teaching and himself a devout disciple. This story is a Jataka or Birth Story of the Lord, one of those to which I have already alluded, as conveying moral teaching (and often much folk lore), and this is called “The Dancing Peacock.”

“Thus have I heard. In the old days the Blessed Buddha sat at Jetavana, and they told him of a monk who had become drowned in luxury, eating, drinking and adorning his person with magnificence, so that he cared nothing for the faith. And at last they brought him before the Lord that he might be admonished. And the Perfect One said:

“‘Is it true, monk, that despising all nobility you have surrendered yourself to idle luxury?’

“And without waiting to hear a word more the monk flew into a violent anger, and tearing off his magnificent robe he stood naked before the Master, crying:

“‘Then, if you like not my robes, this is the way I will go about!’

“So the bystanding monks cried out: ‘Shame, Shame!’ and in a fury he rushed from the hall and returned to the condition of a layman. And the Lord said:

“‘Not only now, O monks, has this man lost the Jewel of the faith by immodesty but it was also with him in a former life. Hear the story of the Dancing Peacock.

“‘Very long ago in the first age of the world, the birds chose the Golden Bird to be their King. Now the Golden Bird had a daughter, most beautiful to see, and he gave her her choice of a husband, after the ancient manner of India, calling together all the birds of the Himalaya. And he sent for his daughter, saying: “Now come and choose!” And looking she saw the Peacock with a neck of gold and emeralds and a train of spread jewels, and instantly she said: “Let this be my husband!”

“So all the birds approached the Peacock, saying:

“‘Noble Peacock, the Princess has set her heart upon you. Therefore rejoice with humility.’

“But the Peacock, walking arrogantly, replied:

“‘Up to this day none of you would recognize the greatness that was in me. Now instantly do homage to my majesty!’

“And so intoxicated was he with pride that he began to dance, spreading his wings and swaying his head, and altogether conducting himself like a drunken man who cares not at all for decency. And horror seized the Golden Bird and he said:

“‘This fellow has broken loose from all sense of shame—how could it be that I should give my Princess to such as he?’ And he uttered this:

“‘Pleasant is your cry. Jewelled is your back. The feathers of your tail are glorious, but, Sir, to such a dancer, I can give no daughter of mine!’

“And he bestowed his Princess immediately upon a bird of modest behaviour, and the Peacock, covered with shame, fled away.

“Therefore, brethren, this monk has now lost the Jewel of the faith as he once lost a fair wife. For in a former birth, the Peacock was this shameless monk, but I myself was the Golden Bird.”

And this is a lesson also upon the stately calm which marks the gentleman according to Oriental opinion. It is the low-born only who may hurry and storm. Other stories I heard, for my friend was a student of ancient things, and this belief in lives past and to come is the spiritual life blood of the Orient. It is the mete-yard of justice. He asked me whether the Christian faith explicitly denied it, and I could only reply—No; quoting that strange passage of the Blind Man, when disciples questioning the Christ—

“Did this man sin or his parents, that he was born blind?”—pass unrebuked for the implication.

The Hill of Mihintale rises abruptly as Sigurya from the forests, and the very air about it is holy, for it was on this great hill that Mahinda, mysteriously transported from India, alighted bewildered as one waking from a dream. Here the King, Tissa, seeing the saint seated beneath a tree, heard a voice he could not gainsay that called his name three times; and so, approaching with his nobles, he received the Teaching of the Blessed One.

The hill is climbed by wonderful carved shallow steps, broken now, and most beautiful with an overgrowth of green. At the sides are beds of the Sensitive Plant, with its frail pink flowers. They would faint and fall if touched, and here you would not even breathe roughly upon them, for Buddhists regard the shrinking creatures as living and hold it sinful to cause such evident suffering.

Descending the grey steps, the shade and sunshine dappling his yellow robe and bared shoulder with noble colour, came a priest, on his way to visit the sick of the little village. He stopped and spoke. I told him I had come from visiting the shrines of Burma, and he desired me to give him a description of some matters I had seen there. I did so, and we talked for some time, and it was then mentioned that my food, like his own, necessitated no taking of life. Instantly his whole face softened as he said that was glad news to hear. It was the fulfilling of a high commandment. Would I receive his blessing, and his prayer that the truth might enlighten me in all things? He bestowed both, and, having made his gift, went upon his way with the dignity of perfect serenity. That little circumstance of food (as some would call it) has opened many a closed door to me in Asia.

At the top of the hill is a deep shadowy rock-pool, with a brow of cliff overhanging it; and this is named the Cobra’s Bath, for it is believed that in the past there was a cobra who used, with his outspread hood, to shelter the saint, Mahinda, from the torrid sun, and who was also so much a little servant of the Law that none feared and all mourned him when he passed upon his upward way in the chain of existences. Here, above the pool where he loved to lie in the clear cool, they sculptured a great cobra, with three hooded heads, rising, as it were, from the water. It was most sinuously beautiful and looked like the work of a great and ancient people, gathering the very emblem of Fear into the great Peace. On the topmost height was the _stupa_, or shrine, of Mahinda, incasing its holy relic, and the caves where his priests dwelt and still dwell. I entered one, at the invitation of a Bhikku, an old man with singularly beautiful eyes, set in a face of wistful delicacy. He touched my engraved ring and asked what it might mean. Little enough to such as he, whose minds are winged things and flutter in the blue tranquillities far above the earth!

The caves are many, with a rock-roof so low that one cannot stand upright—a strange, dim life, it would seem, but this Bhikku spoke only of the peace of it, the calm that falls with sunset and that each dawn renews. _I_ could not doubt this—it was written upon his every gesture. He gave me his blessing, and his prayer that I might walk forever in the Way of Peace. With such friends as these the soul is at home. Peace. It is indeed the salutation of Asia, which does not greet you with a desire for health or prosperity as in the West, but only—Peace.

I would willingly tell more of my seekings and findings in Ceylon, for they were many and great. But I pass on to the little drowsy hill town of Badulla, where the small bungalows nest in their gardens of glorious flowers and vines. I sat in the churchyard, where the quiet graves of English and Singhalese are sinking peacefully into oblivion. It was Sunday, with a Sabbath calm upon the world. A winding path led up to the open door of the little English church, a sweet breeze swayed the boughs and ruffled the long grass of the graves; the butterflies, small Psyches fluttered their parable in the air about me. A clear voice from the church repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and many young voices followed. It was a service for the Singhalese children who have been baptized into the Christian Faith. They sang of how they had been brought out of darkness and the shadow of death and their feet set upon the Way of Peace.

Surely it is so. When was that Way closed to any who sought? But because man must follow his own categorical imperative, I repeated to myself, when they were silent, the words of the poet Abdul Fazl, which he wrote at the command of the Emperor Akbar as an inscription for a Temple in Kashmir:—

“O God, in every temple I see people that see Thee, and in every language they praise Thee.

If it be a mosque, men murmur the holy prayer, and if it be a Christian church they ring the bell from love to Thee.

Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the mosque, but it is Thou whom I seek from temple to temple.

Thine elect have no dealings with heresy or orthodoxy, for neither of these stands behind the screen of thy Truth.

Heresy to the heretic and religion to the orthodox!

But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume-seller!”

Yes,—and an ancient Japanese poet, going yet deeper, says this thing: “So long as the mind of a man is in accord with the Truth, the Gods will hear him though he do not pray.”

I passed the night at a little rest-house and next day set out on the long journey to Polonnarewa, and beyond that to Trincomali, through a wild part of Ceylon, stopping each night at the rest-houses which mark the way. Jungle in India is often mere scrub; this is thousands of acres of mighty forest. A small road has been driven through it, and on either side rises the dark and secret wall of trees, impenetrable for miles, knitted with creepers and blind with undergrowth—a dangerous mystery.

“Thousand eyeballs under hoods, Have you by the hair.”

It seems that every movement is watched, that strained ears listen to every breath from the secrecy that can never be pierced.

Much farther on the forest opens into the ancient tank of Minneri, for these great artificial lakes of the bygone Kings here and in India are called tanks. It is a glorious lake twenty miles in circumference and I saw it first with the mountains, exquisite in form and colour, rising behind it in the rose and gold of a great sunset. Some forgotten King made it to water the country, and there are still the very sluices unbroken though choked by masses of fallen masonry. It is the work of great engineers. No place could be more lovely—the silver fish leaping in translucent water, and one pouched pelican with its ax-like beak drifting lazily in a glory so dazzling, that one could only glimpse it a moment in the dipping sparkles of the reflected sun. The way, like the ascent to Mihintale, was banked with masses of the Sensitive Plant, lovely with its fragile pink flowers and delicately folding and dropping leaves, fainting as you brush them in passing.

But the lake—the wide expanse, calm as heaven and a shimmer of rose and blue and gold! I lingered to watch it—the strange beautiful grotesque of the great bird floating above its own perfect image. It was evening and the jungle was sweet with all the scents drawn out of it during the long sun-steeped day—heavenly scents that come from the teeming life in the mysterious forests, fresh forests germinating on the ruins of the old—murmuring, calling, vibrating with life and wonder and strange existences, and their endless chain of blossom and decay.

It grew dark soon after Minneri, and the fireflies were glittering about us and the moonlight white on the narrow way. A whispering silence filled the air with unseen presences as of the feet that long, long centuries ago trod this way on their errands of pleasure or pain to the dead city of my goal. I could almost see its spectral towers and palaces down the moon-blanched glades. Illusion—nothing more.

The driver missed the track to Polonnarewa, but that mattered little, so wonderful was the night in the lonely place and the great dark where once a mighty people moved, and now but the moon and stars circle before a dead majesty.

But at the long last we found our way and the little rest-house which stands where stood the royal city, near a dim glimmer of water. The only accommodation was a chair, but that was welcome, and when I woke in the grey dawn she came gliding with silver feet over the loveliest lake rippling up to the steps of the fairy house in the woods, and peopled by the glorious rose lotus, grown by the ancient people for the service of the Temples. And the traveller whom I met there went out before breakfast and brought in for provender a pea-hen, a wood pigeon, and a great grey fish from the lake. For myself, I eat like a Buddhist priest and am content,—living foods were not for me.

The ruins at Polonnarewa are wonderful indeed, much more perfect than those of the better known Anaradhapura, though it does not offer, like the latter, the marvellous row of the Buddhas who have fulfilled their mission and that Buddha of Love who is yet to come. All about are temples with colossal Buddhas, palaces, the strangely sculptured stone rails which are so distinctively Buddhist surrounding richly carved shrines. Hinduism mingled with Buddhism also. Some of these beautiful relics have been dug out of the jungle strata, some reclaimed from the invading growths which are so all-obliterating in a tropic country, and no doubt there is as much more to be discovered. The carved work is exquisitely lovely. How strong is the passion for beauty—in the very ends of the earth it is found, and surely it confirms the Platonic teaching that it is a reflection of that passion of joy in which the Creator beheld his work on the seventh day and knew that it was good.

I cannot describe the wonder of passing through these glades and lawns and seeing the great dagobas, those mighty buildings of brick, but now waving with greenery, enshrining each its holy relic. Would that it were possible to imagine the city which dwelt under their shadow! But the homes of men pass very swiftly away. It is only the homes of their souls which abide. Yet the jungle is more wonderful than what it buries. The sunlit walls of green guard the road jealously. The sun-flecks only struggle a few inches within that line, and then—trackless secrecy. A bird flew out, jewelled, gorgeous, “Half angel and half bird.” Are there greater wonders within? Who can tell? It is sometimes death to attempt to lift the veil of Isis. I saw the gravestone of a young man who for all his strength and youth was lost in the jungle—caught in the poisoned sweetness of her embrace and so died. It may have been a lonely and fearful death, and yet again—who knows! There are compensations of which we know nothing.

I stayed at the little rest-house of Kantelai on its lake with the jungle creeping and whispering about it— “Dark mother ever gliding near with soft feet.” Days to be remembered—unspeakably beautiful—they leave some precious deposit in the memory almost more lovely than the sight itself, as in the world of thought the spirit is more than the body.