Part 15

And for the end to my journey the great and noble harbour of Trincomali! I wonder why tourists so seldom go there, but the ways of the tourist pass understanding. It winds about in lakes of sea blue among palms and coral bights and glittering beaches. Long ago, the people drifting over from India built a temple where the old fort now stands, and though thus polluted the site is still holy and you may see the Brahman priest cast offerings into the sea from a ledge high up the cliff, with the worshipping people about him. Then the Portuguese swept down upon Ceylon in their great naval days when they were the Sweepers of the Sea, and they destroyed the temple and built their fort. And the Dutch followed, and the Portuguese vanished, and the French conquered the Dutch, and again the Dutch the French, and then the English, hawking over the Seven Seas, pounced like the osprey, and the Dutch sovereignty passed into their keeping. Did I not say the Island had many masters?

So the English made this a great fortified place, humming with naval and military activity; men-of-war lying in the bay, guns bristling in the beautiful old fort that guards the cliff. And now all that too is gone—blown away like a wreath of mist, and the only soldiers and sailors are those who will stay forever in the little grave-place under the palms, and if it so continues I daresay the jungle will take Trincomali as it has taken the City of Kings.

A beautiful place. I wandered on the beach among the shells one marvelled to see as a child, when sailor friends gave them into eager hands—deep brown freckled polished things, leopard-spotted and ivory-lipped, and so smooth that the hand slips off the perfect surface. Delicate frailties of opal and pearl shimmering with mystic colour, spiny grotesques with long thorned stems—there they all lay for the gathering. And at last I went up into the old fort.

It covers many acres on the cliff and the jungle is steadily conquering the empty bungalows and fortifications. It is very old, for the Dutch built it in 1650. Now in the thickets the forsaken guns make an empty bravado like toothless lions. I saw a deer and her fawn come peering shyly through the bushes, and they fled before me. The casements are empty and a flagless flagstaff looks over the heavenly calm of the sea.

Almost lost in the shade I found some old Dutch graves, very square and formal—a something of the rigidity of the burgomaster about them still, as of stiff-ruffed men and women. “Here sleeps in God—” said one mossy inscription (but in Dutch)—and then a break, and then “Johanna” and another break, and only a word here and there and a long obliterated date. And the Dutch were masters and Johanna slept in the ground of her people as securely as if it had been The Hague itself. So it must then have seemed. And now it is English, and whose next? Truly the fashion of this world passeth away! They were touching, those old tombs, with inscriptions that once were watered with tears, that no one now cares to decipher. And there they lie forgotten in the sighing trees, and the world goes by. The dominion of oblivion is secure, whatever that of death may be.

I climbed down to a casement in the cliff, half-way to the sea, a little shelf overlooking the blue transparence that met the blue horizon, and wondered what the grave God-fearing talk of the Dutchmen had been as they leaned over the parapet, discussing the ways of the heathen and the encroachments of the British. And from there I made my way to the rocks below with the brilliant water heaving about them. Some large fish of the most perfect forget-me-not blue shading into periwinkle mauve on the fins were playing before me, and as they rolled over, or a ripple took them they displayed the underside, a faint rose pink. Such beautiful happy creatures in the wash of the wandering water clear and liquid as light! Sometimes they wavered like moons under a ripple, a blot of heavenliest blue, submerged and quivering, sometimes a shoal of black fish barred with gold swam in among them, beautiful to see. I could have stayed all day, for it was heavenly cool, with a soft sea breeze blowing through the rocks, but even as I watched a great brown monster came wallowing through the water, and my beauties fled like swallows.

The touch of tragedy was not wanting, for high on the cliff was a little pillar to the memory of a Dutch girl who fell in love long ago with an Englishman—a false lover, who sailed away and left her heartbroken. Here she watched his sails lessening along the sky, and as they dipped below the horizon, she threw herself over the cliff in unendurable anguish.

A tragic story, but it is all so long ago that it has fallen back into the beauty of nature and is now no more sad than a sunset that casts its melancholy glory before it fades. Yet I wonder whether in all the hide and seek of rebirth she has caught up somewhere with her Englishman! She knows all about Psyche’s wings by this time, and he too must have gained a dear-bought wisdom through “the great mercy of the gift of departing,” as the Buddhists call it . . . they to whom death is so small an episode in so long a story.

I sat by the pillar and watched the dying torch of the sunset extinguished in the sea—a sea of glass mingled with fire. And very quietly the stars appeared one by one in a violet sky and it was night.

THE WONDERFUL PILGRIMAGE TO AMARNATH

THE WONDERFUL PILGRIMAGE TO AMARNATH

In all India there is nothing more wonderful than the pilgrimages of millions, which set like tidal waves at certain seasons to certain sacrosanct places—the throngs that flock to holy Benares, to Hardwar, and to that meeting of the waters at Prayag, where the lustral rites purify soul and body, and the pilgrims return shriven and glad. But of all the pilgrimages in India the most touching, the most marvellous, is that to Amarnath, nearly twelve thousand feet up in the Himalayas. The cruel difficulties to be surmounted, the august heights to be climbed (for a part of the way is much higher than the height at which the Cave stands), the wild and terrible beauty of the journey, and the glorious close when the Cave is reached, make this pilgrimage the experience of a lifetime even for a European. What must it not be for a true believer? Yet, in the deepest sense, I should advise none to make it who is not a true believer—who cannot sympathize to the uttermost with the wave of faith and devotion that sends these poor pilgrims climbing on torn and wearied feet to the great Himalayan heights, where they not infrequently lay down their lives before reaching the silver pinnacles that hold their hearts’ desire.

I have myself made the pilgrimage, and it was one of the deepest experiences of my life; while, as for the beauty and wonder of the journey, all words break down under the effort to express them.

But first for a few words about the God who is the object of devotion. The Cave is sacred to Siva—the Third Person of the Hindu Trinity; that Destroyer who, in his other aspects, is the Creator and Preserver. He is the God especially of the Himalayas—the Blue-Throated God, from the blue mists of the mountains that veil him. The Crescent in his hair is the young moon, resting on the peak that is neighbour to the stars. The Ganges wanders in the matted forests of his hair before the maddening torrents fling their riches to the Indian plains, even as the snow-rivers wander in the mountain pine forests. He is also Nataraja—Lord of the Cosmic Dance; and one of the strangest and deepest-wrought parables in the world is that famous image where, in a wild ecstasy, arms flung out, head flung back in a passion of motion, he dances the Tandavan, the whole wild joy of the figure signifying the cosmic activities of Creation, Maintenance and Destruction. “For,” says a Tamil text, “our Lord is a Dancer, who like the heat latent in firewood, diffuses his power in mind and matter, and makes them dance in their turn.”

The strange affinity of this conception with the discoveries of science relating to the eternal dance of the atom and electron gives it the deepest interest. I would choose this aspect of the God as that which should fill the mind of the Amarnath pilgrim. Let him see the Great God Mahadeo (Magnus Deus), with the drum in one hand which symbolizes creative sound—the world built, as it were, to rhythm and music. Another hand is upraised bidding the worshipper, “Fear not!” A third hand points to his foot, the refuge where the soul may cling. The right foot rests lightly on a demon—to his strength, what is it? A nothing, the mere illusion of reality! In his hair, crowned with the crescent moon, sits the Ganges, a nymph entangled in its forest. This is the aspect of Mahadeo which I carried in my own mind as I made the pilgrimage, for thus is embodied a very high mysticism, common to all the faiths.

Of all the deities of India Maheshwara is the most complex and bewildering in his many aspects. He is the Great Ascetic, but he is also Lord of the beautiful daughter of the Himalaya,—Uma, Parwati, Gauri, Girija, the Snowy One, the Inaccessible, the Virgin, the Mystic Mother of India, to give but a few of her many and lovely names. She too has her differing aspects. As Kali, she is the goddess of death and destruction; as Parwati, the very incarnation of the charm and sweetness of the Eternal Femine. As Uma she is especially Himalayan.

In the freezing mountain lake of Manasarovar she did age-long penance for her attempt to win the heart of the Great Ascetic, the Supreme Yogi,—her lovely body floating like a lily upon its icy deeps, and so, at long last, winning him for ever. She is the seeker of mountains, the Dweller in the Windhya Hills, the complement of her terrible Lord and Lover, whose throne is Mount Kailasa. Yet in some of his moods she must be completely absorbed and subjugated to ensure his companionship, for he is the archetype of the perfected human yogi of whom says the ancient Song Celestial that “he abides alone in a secret place without desire and without possessions, upon a firm seat, with the working of the mind and senses held in check, with body, head and neck in perfect equipoise, meditating in order that he may reach the boundless Abyss; he who knows the infinite joy that lies beyond the senses and so becomes like an unflickering lamp in a lonely place.”

This union is possible to Parwati and her Lord. So dear are they each to the other that they are often represented as a single image of which one half is male, the other female, the dual nature in perfect harmony in the Divine.

Thus then is the Great God to be visited in the high-uplifted secret shrine of the mountains, which are themselves the Lotus flower of creation. At dawn, suffused through all their snows with glowing rose they dominate Indian thought as the crimson lotus of Brahma the Creator. At noon, blue in the radiant unveiled blue of the sky they are the blue Lotus of Vishnu the Preserver, the Pillar of Cosmic Law. At night, when all the earth is rapt in _samadhi_, the mystic ecstasy, they are the snowy Lotus, throne of Siva, Maheshwara the Great God, the Supreme Yogi when he dreams worlds beneath the dreaming moon upon his brow.

And India is herself a petal of the World Lotus of Asia as the Asiatic mind conceives it. Look at Asia of the maps and reverence the Flower which thrones all the Gods of Asia.

The Cave at Amarnath is sacred because a spring, eternally frozen, has in its rush taken the shape of the holy Lingam, which is the symbol of reproduction and therefore of Life. This is also the Pillar of the Universe—that Pillar which the Gods sought to measure, the one flying upward, the other downward, for aeons, seeking the beginning and the end, and finding none. Yet again, it is the Tree of Life, which has its roots in Eternity, and branches through the mythology of many peoples. And if there are degenerated forms of this worship, surely the same may be said of many others. And it is needful to know these things in order to realize the significance of the worship.

The pilgrimage can be made only in July and August. Before and after, a barrier of snow and ice closes the way, and makes the Cave a desolation.

The start is made from Pahlgam, a tiny village on the banks of the Lidar River in Kashmir, where it leaps from the great glacier of Kolahoi to join the Jhelum River in the Happy Valley. Pahlgam itself stands at a height of about eight thousand feet.

The day before we started there was a great thunderstorm, the grandest I have ever known. The mountains were so close on each side that they tossed the thunder backwards and forwards to each other, and the shattering and roaring of the echoes was like the battles of the Gods or the rolling of Maheshwara’s mighty drum in the mountain hollows, while the continuous blue glare of the lightning was almost appalling. It was strange to feel only a little web of canvas between ourselves and that elemental strife when the rain followed as if the fountains of the great deep were broken up—cold as snow, stinging like hail, and so steady that it looked like crystal harpstrings as it fell. Yet next day we waked to a silver rain-washed world, sparkling with prisms of rain and dew; fresh snow on the mountains, and delicate webs of soft blue mist caught like smoke in the pines.

So we set forth from Pahlgam, with our cavalcade of rough hill ponies carrying the tents and provisions and all our substance, and began our march by climbing up the river that flows from those eternal heights into the Pahlgam valley. Much of the way can be ridden if one rides very slowly and carefully for these wonderful animals are sure-footed as cats; but the track is often terrifying—broken boulders and the like. If the ponies were not marvels, it could not be done; and if one were not a safe rider, one certainly could not stick on. The pony gives a strong hoist of his fore-legs, and you are up one rock and hanging on by his withers; then a strong hoist of the hind legs and you are nearly over his neck; and this goes on for hours; and when it is beyond the pony you climb on your feet, and ford the torrents as best you may.

Up and up the steep banks of the river we climbed, among the pines and mighty tumbled boulders. Up by the cliffs, where the path hangs and trembles over the water roaring beneath. On the opposite side the mountains soared above the birches and pines, and the torrents hung down them like mist, falling, falling from crag to crag, and shattering like spray-dust as they fell. Once a mighty eagle soared above us, balancing on the wind, and then floated away without a single motion of his wings—wonderful to see; and the spread of his wings was greater than the height of the tallest man.

We had long passed the last few huts, and the track wound steadily higher, when suddenly growing on us, I heard a deep musical roar like the underlying bass of an orchestra—the full-chorded voice of many waters. And as we turned a corner where the trail hung like a line round the cliff, behold, a mighty gorge of pines and uplifted hills, and the river pouring down in a tremendous waterfall, boiling and foaming white as it fell into the raging pit beneath.

What a sight! We stopped and looked, every sense steeped in the wonder of it. For the air was cool with the coolness that comes like breath off a river; our ears were full of the soft thunder; the smell of pines was like the taste of a young world in one’s mouth; yet it was all phantasmal, in a way, as if it could not be real. I watched the lovely phantom, for it hung like a thing unreal between heaven and earth, until it grew dreamlike to me and dyed my brain with sound and colour, and it was hard indeed to pass on.

That night we camped in a mountain valley some two thousand feet above Pahlgam. It was like climbing from story to story in a House of Wonder. The river was rushing by our tents when they were pitched, pale green and curling back upon itself, as if it were loath to leave these pure heights, and the mountains stood about us like a prison, almost as if we might go no farther. And when I stood outside my tent just before turning in, a tremulous star was poised on one of the peaks, like the topmost light on a Christmas tree, and the Great Bear which in India is the constellation of the Seven Rishis, or Sages, lay across the sky glittering frostily in the blue-blackness.

I had a narrow escape that day; for, as I was leading the cavalcade, I met a wild hill-rider in the trail between two great rocks, and his unbroken pony kicked out at me savagely with his foreleg and caught me above the ankle. Luckily, they do not shoe their horses here; but it was pretty bad for a bit, and I was glad of the night’s rest.

Next day we started and rounded out of the tiny valley; and lo! on the other side another river, flowing apparently out of a great arch in the mountainside. Out it poured, rejoicing to be free; and when I looked, it was flowing, not from the mountain but from a snow-bridge. Mighty falls of snow had piled up at the foot of the mountain, as they slipped from its steeps; and then the snow, melting above, had come down as a torrent and eaten its way through the wide arch of this cave. Often one must cross a river on these snow-bridges, and at a certain stage of melting they are most dangerous; for, if the snow should give, there may be frightful depths beneath.

Here first I noticed how beautiful were the flowers of the heights. The men gathered and brought me tremulous white and blue columbines, and wild wallflowers, orange-coloured and so deeply scented that I could close my eyes and call up a cottage garden, and the beehives standing in sedate rows under the thatched eaves. And there was a glorious thistle, new to me, as tall as a man, well armed and girded with blue and silver spears and a head of spiky rays. Bushes, also, like great laurels, but loaded with rosy berries that the Kashmiris love.

We turned then round a huge fallen rock, green and moist with hanging ferns, and shining with the spray of the river, and before us was a mountain, and an incredible little trail winding up it, and that was our way. I looked and doubted. It is called the Pisu, or Flea Ascent, on the dubious ground that it takes a flea’s activity to negotiate it. Of course, it was beyond the ponies, except here and there, on what I called breathers, and so we dismounted. The men advised us to clutch the ponies’ tails, and but for that help it would have been difficult to manage. My heart was pumping in my throat, and I could feel the little pulses beating in my eyes, before I had gone far, and every few minutes we had to stop; for even the guides were speechless from the climb, and I could see the ponies’ hearts beating hard and fast under the smooth coats.

But still we held on, and now beside us were blooming the flower-gardens of the brief and brilliant Himalayan summer—beds of delicate purple anemones, gorgeous golden ranunculus holding its golden shields to the sun, orange poppies, masses of forget-me-nots of a deep, glowing blue—a _burning_ blue, not like the fair azure of the Western flower, but like the royal blue of the Virgin’s robe in a Flemish missal. And above these swayed the bells of the columbines on their slender stems, ranging from purest white, through a faint, misty blue, to a deep, glooming purple. We could hardly go on for joy of the flowers. It was a marvel to see all these lovely things growing wild and uncared for, flinging their sweetness on the pure air, and clothing the ways with beauty. And at each turn fresh snow-peaks emerged against the infinite blue of the sky—some with frail wisps of white cloud caught in the spires, and some bold and clear as giants ranged for battle—the lotus petals of the Infinite Flower.

And so we climbed up and reached another story, and lay down to rest and breathe before we went farther up into wonderland.

The top was a grassy “marg,” or meadow, cloven down to the heart of the earth by a fierce river. Around it was a vast amphitheatre of wild crags and peaks; and beneath these, but ever upward, lay our trail. But the meadow was like the field in Sicily where Persephone was gathering flowers when she was snatched away by Dis to reign in the Underworld. I remembered Leighton’s picture of her, floating up from the dead dark, like a withered flower, and stretching her hands to the blossoms of the earth once more. I never saw such flowers; they could scarcely be seen elsewhere.

And here the myriad blossoms lay In shattered rainbows on the grass. Exulting in their little day They laughed aloud to see us pass.

We left them in their merriment,— The singing angels of the snows,— And still we climbed the steep ascent Along the sunward way it knows.

The snow had slipped off the meadow,—was rushing away in the thundering river far below,—and the flowers were crowding each other, rejoicing in the brief gladness of summer before they should be shrouded again under the chilly whiteness. But their colour took revenge on it now. They glowed, they sang and shouted for joy—such was the vibration of their radiance! I have never dreamed of such a thing before.

And then came our next bad climb, up the bed of a ragged mountain torrent and across it, with the water lashing at us like a whip. I do not know how the ponies did it. They were clutched and dragged by the ears and tails, and a man seized me by the arms and hauled me up and round the face of a precipice, where to miss one step on the loose stones would have been to plunge into depths I preferred not to look at. Then another ascent like the Flea, but shorter, and we were a story higher, in another wild marg, all frosted silver with edelweiss, and glorious with the flowers of another zone—flowers that cling to the bare and lichened rock and ask no foothold of earth.

That was a wild way. We climbed and climbed steadfastly, sometimes riding, sometimes walking, and round us were rocks clothed with rose-red saxifrage, shaded into pink, and myriads of snowy stars, each with a star of ruby in its heart. Clouds still of the wonderful forget-me-not climbed with us. Such rock gardens! No earthly hand could plant those glowing masses and set them against the warm russets and golds of the lower crags, lifted up into this mighty sky world. The tenderness of the soft form and radiant colour of these little flowers in the cruel grasp of the rocks, yet softening them into grace with the short summer of their lives, is exquisitely touching. It has the pathos of all fragility and brief beauty.

Later we climbed a great horn of rock, and rounded a slender trail, and before was another camping-place—the Shisha-Nag Lake among the peaks. We saw its green river first, bursting through a rocky gateway, and then, far below, the lake itself,—

We passed the frozen sea of glass Where never human foot has trod, Green as a clouded chrysoprase And lonely as a dream of God.—

reflecting the snowy pinnacles above. The splintered peaks stand about it. Until July it is polished ice, and out of one side opens a solemn ante-chapel blocked with snow. The lake itself is swept clear and empty. The moon climbs the peaks and looks down, and the constellations swing above it. A terrible, lonely place, peopled only by shadows. It was awful to think of the pomps of sunrise, noon, and sunset passing overhead, and leaving it to the night and dream which are its only true companions. It should never be day there—always black, immovable Night, crouching among the snows and staring down with all her starlight eyes into that polished icy mirror.