Chapter 61

"My master and husband has made you a present of these pearls. It would therefore be improper for me to accept them: my master and husband is my special jewel. This I beg you to consider."

And, in the final scenes, the wife shows her great love for her husband by hastening to get ready for the funeral pyre to be burnt alive with his corpse. And when, after expressing her joy at his rescue and kissing him, she turns and sees Vasantasena, she exclaims: "O this happiness! How do you do, my sister?" Vasantasena replies: "Now I am happy," and the two embrace!

The translator of Çûdraka's play notes in the preface that there is a curious lack of ardor in the expression of Tscharudatta's love for Vasantasena, and he naïvely--though quite in the Hindoo spirit--explains this as showing that this superior person (who is a model of altruistic self-sacrifice in every respect), "remains untouched by coarse outbursts of sensual passion." The only time he warms up is when he hears that the bayadères prefers him to her wealthy persecutor; he then exclaims, "Oh, how this girl deserves to be worshipped like a goddess." Vasantasena is much the more ardent of the two. It is she who goes forth to seek him, repeatedly, dressed in purple and pearls, as custom prescribes to a girl who goes to meet her lover. It is she who exclaims: "The clouds may rain, thunder, or send forth lightning: women who go to meet their lovers heed neither heat nor cold." And again: "may the clouds tower on high, may night come on, may the rain fall in torrents, I heed them not. Alas, my heart looks only toward the lover." It is she who is so absent-minded, thinking of him, that her maid suspects her passion; she who, when a royal suitor is suggested to her, exclaims, "'Tis love I crave to bestow, not homage."

SYMPTOMS OF FEMININE LOVE

This portrayal of the girl as the chief lover is quite the custom in Hindoo literature, and doubtless mirrors life as it was and is. Like a dog that fawns on an indifferent or cruel master, these women of India were sometimes attached to their selfish lovers and husbands. They had been trained from their childhood to be sympathetic, altruistic, devoted, self-sacrificing, and were thus much better prepared than the men for the germs of amorous sentiment, which can grow only in such a soil of self-denial. Hence it is that Hindoo love-poems are usually of the feminine gender. This is notably the case with the _Saptacatakam_ of Hâla, an anthology of seven hundred Prakrit verses made from a countless number of love-poems that are intended to be sung--"songs," says Albrecht Weber, "such as the girls of India, especially perhaps the bayadères or temple girls may have been in the habit of singing."[274] Some of these indicate a strong individual preference and monopoly of attachment:

No. 40: "Her heart is dear to her as being your abode, her eyes because she saw you with them, her body because it has become thin owing to your absence."

No. 43: "The burning (grief) of separation is (said to be) made more endurable by hope. But, mother, if my beloved is away from me even in the same village, it is worse than death to me."

No. 57: "Heedless of the other youths, she roams about, transgressing the rules of propriety, casting her glances in (all) directions of the world for your sake, O child."

No. 92: "That momentary glimpse of him whom, oh, my aunt, I constantly long to see, has (touched) quenched my thirst (as little) as a drink taken in a dream."

No. 185: "She has not sent me. You have no relations with her. What concern of ours is it therefore? Well, she dies in her separation from you."

No. 202: "No matter how often I repeat to my mistress the message you confided to me, she replies 'I did not hear' (what you said), and thus makes me repeat it a hundred times."

No. 203: "As she looked at you, filled with the might of her self-betraying love, so she then, in order to conceal it, looked also at the other persons."

No. 234: "Although all (my) possessions were consumed in the village fire, yet is (my) heart rejoiced, (when it was put out) he took the bucket as it passed from hand to hand (from my hand)."

No. 299: "She stares, without having an object, gives vent to long sighs, laughs into vacant space, mutters unintelligible words--surely she must bear something in her heart."

No. 302: "'Do give her to the one she carries in her heart. Do you not see, aunt, that she is pining away?' 'No one rests in my heart' [literally; whence could come in my heart resting?]--thus speaking, the girl fell into a swoon."

No. 345: "If it is not your beloved, my friend, how is it that at the mention of his name your face glows like a lotos bud opened by the sun's rays?"

No. 368: "Like illness without a doctor--like living with relatives if one is poor, like the sight of an enemy's prosperity--so difficult is it to endure separation from you."

No. 378: "Whatever you do, whatever you say, and wherever you turn your eyes, the day is not long enough for her efforts to imitate you."

No. 440: "...She, whose every limb was bathed in perspiration, at the mere mention of his name."

No. 453: "My friend! tell me honestly, I ask you: do the bracelets of all women become larger when the lover is far away?"

No. 531: "In whichever direction I look I see you before me, as if painted there. The whole firmament brings before me as it were a series of pictures of you."

No. 650: "From him proceed all discourses, all are about him, end with him. Is there then, my aunt, but one young man in all this village?"

While these poems may have been sung mostly by bayadères, there are others which obviously give expression to the legitimate feelings of married women. This is especially true of the large number which voice the sorrows of women at the absence of their husbands after the rains have set in. The rainy season is in India looked on as the season of love, and separation from the lover at this time is particularly bewailed, all the more as the rains soon make the roads impassable.

No. 29: "To-day, when, alone, I recalled the joys we had formerly shared, the thunder of the new clouds sounded to me like the death-drum (that accompanies culprits to the place of execution)."

No. 47: "The young wife of the man who has got ready for his journey roams, after his departure, from house to house, trying to get the secret for preserving life from wives who have learned how to endure separation from their beloved."

No. 227: "In putting down the lamp the wife of the wanderer turns her face aside, fearing that the stream of tears that falls at the thought of the beloved might drop on it."

No. 501: "When the voyager, on taking leave, saw his wife turn pale, he was overcome by grief and unable to go."

No. 623: "The wanderer's wife does indeed protect her little son by interposing her head to catch the rain water dripping from the eaves, but fails to notice (in her grief over her absent one) that he is wetted by her tears."

These twenty-one poems are the best samples of everything contained in Hâla's anthology illustrating the serious side of love among the bayadères and married women of India. Careful perusal of them must convince the reader that there is nothing in them revealing the altruistic phases of love. There is much ardent longing for the selfish gratification which the presence of a lover would give; deep grief at his absence; indications that a certain man could afford her much more pleasure by his presence than others--and that is all. When a girl wails that she is dying because her lover is absent she is really thinking of her own pleasure rather than his. None of these poems expresses the sentiment, "Oh, that I could do something to make _him_ happy!" These women are indeed taught and _forced_ to sacrifice themselves for their husbands, but when it comes to _spontaneous_ utterances, like these songs, we look in vain for evidence of pure, devoted, high-minded, romantic love. The more frivolous side of Oriental love is, on the other hand, abundantly illustrated in Hâla's poems, as the following samples show:

No. 40: "O you pitiless man! You who are afraid of your wife and difficult to catch sight of! You who resemble (in bitterness) a nimba worm--and yet who are the delight of the village women! For does not the (whole) village grow thin (longing) for you?"

No. 44: "The sweetheart will not fail to come back into his heart even though he caress another girl, whether he see in her the same charms or not."

No. 83: "This young farmer, O beautiful girl, though he already has a beautiful wife, has nevertheless become so reduced that his own jealous wife has consented to deliver this message to you."

The last two poems hint at the ease with which feminine jealousy is suppressed in India, of which we have had some instances before and shall have others presently. Coyness seems to be not much more developed, at least among those who need it most:

No. 465: "By being kind to him again at first sight you deprived yourself, you foolish girl, of many pleasures--his prostration at your feet and his eager robbing of a kiss."

No. 45: "Since youth (rolls on) like the rapids of a river, the days speed away and the nights cannot be checked--my daughter! what means this accursed, proud reserve?"

No. 139: "On the pretext that the descent to the Goda (river) is difficult, she threw herself in his arms. And he clasped her tightly without thereby incurring any reproach." (See also No. 108.)

No. 121: "Though disconsolate at the death of her relatives, the captive girl looked lovingly upon the young kidnapper, because he appeared to her to be a perfect (hero). Who can remain sulky in the face of virtues?"

Such love as these women felt is fickle and transient:

No. 240: "Through being out of sight, my child, in course of time the love dwindles away even of those who were firmly joined in tender union, as water runs from the hollow of the hand."

No. 106: "O heart that, like a long piece of wood which is being carried down the rapids of a small stream is caught at every place, your fate is nevertheless to be burnt by some one!"

No. 80: "By being out of sight love goes away; by seeing too often it goes away; also by the gossip of malicious persons it goes away; yes, it also goes away by itself."

"If the bee, eager to sip, always seeks the juices of new growths, this is the fault of the sapless flowers, not of the bee."

Where love is merely sensual and shallow lovers' quarrels do not fan the flame, but put it out:

"Love which, once dissolved, is united again, after unpleasant things have been revealed, tastes flat, like water that has been boiled."

The commercial element is conspicuous in this kind of love; it cannot persist without a succession of presents:

No. 67: "When the festival is over nothing gives pleasure. So also with the full moon late in the morning--and of love, which at last becomes insipid--and with gratification, that does not manifest itself in the form of presents."

The illicit, impure aspect of Oriental love is hinted at in many of the poems collected by Hâla. There are frequent allusions to rendezvous in temples, which are so quiet that the pigeons are scared by the footsteps of the lovers; or in the high grain of the harvest fields; or on the river banks, so deserted that the monkeys there fill their paunches with mustard leaves undisturbed.

No. 19: "When he comes what shall I do? What shall I say and what will come of this? Her heart beats as, with these thoughts, the girl goes out on her first rendezvous." (_Cf._ also Nos. 223 and 491.)

No. 628: "O summer time! you who give good opportunities for rendezvous by drying the small ditches and covering the trees with a dense abundance of leaves! you test-plate of the gold of love-happiness, you must not fade away yet for a long time."

No. 553: "Aunt, why don't you remove the parrot from this bed-chamber? He betrays all the caressing words to others."

Hindoo poets have the faculty, which they share with the Japanese, of bringing a whole scene or episode vividly before the eyes with a sentence or two, as all the foregoing selections show. Sometimes a whole story is thus condensed, as in the following:

"'Master! He came to implore our protection. Save him!' thus speaking, she very slyly hastened to turn over her paramour to her suddenly entering husband." (See also No. 305 and _Hitopadesa_, p. 88.)

SYMPTOMS OF MASCULINE LOVE

Since Hindoo women, in spite of their altruistic training, are prevented by their lack of culture or virtue (the domestic virtuous women have no culture and the cultured bayadères have no virtue) from rising to the heights of sentimental love, it would be hopeless to expect the amazingly selfish, unsympathetic and cruel men to do so, despite their intellectual culture. Among all the seven hundred poems culled by Hâla there are only two or three which even hint at the higher phases of love in masculine bosoms. Inasmuch as No. 383 tells us that even "the male elephant, though tormented by great hunger, thinking of his beloved wife, allows the juicy lotos-stalk to wither in his trunk," one could hardly expect of man less than the sentiment expressed in No. 576: "He who has a faithful love considers himself contented even in misfortune, whereas without his love he is unhappy though he possess the earth." Another poem indicating that Hindoo men may share with women a strong feeling of amorous monopolism is No. 498:

"He regards only her countenance, and she, too, is quite intoxicated at sight of him. Both of them, satisfied with one another, act as if in the whole world there were no other women or men."

But as a rule the men are depicted as being fickle, even more so than the women. A frequent complaint of the girls is that the men forget whom they happen to be caressing and call them by another girl's name. More frequent still are the complaints of neglect or desertion. One of these, No. 46, suggests the praises of night sung in the mediaeval legend of Tristan and Isolde:

"To-morrow morning, my beloved, the hard-hearted goes away--so people say. O sacred night! do lengthen so that there will be no morning for him."

At first sight the most surprising and important of Hâla's seven hundred poems seems to be No. 567:

"Only over me, the iron-hearted, thunder, O cloud, and with all your might; be sure that you do not kill my poor one with the hanging locks."

Here, for once, we have the idea of self-sacrifice--only the idea, it is true, and not the act; but it indicates a very exceptional and exalted state for a Hindoo even to think of such a thing. The self-reproach of "iron-hearted" tells us, however, that the man has been behaving selfishly and cruelly toward his sweetheart or wife, and is feeling sorry for a moment. In such moments a Hindoo not infrequently becomes human, especially if he expects new favors of the maltreated woman, which she is only too willing to grant:

No. 85: "While with the breath of his mouth he cooled one of my hands, swollen from the effect of his blow, I put the other one laughingly around his neck."

No. 191: "By untangling the hair of her prostrate lover from the notches of her spangles in which it had been caught, she shows him that her heart has ceased to be sulky."

References to such prostrations to secure forgiveness for inconstancy or cruelty are frequent in Hindoo poems and dramas, and it is needless to say that they are a very different thing from the disinterested prostrations and homage of modern gallantry. True gallantry being one of the altruistic ingredients of love, it would be useless to seek for it among the Hindoos. Not so with hyperbole, which being simply a magnifying of one's own sensations and an expression of extravagant feeling of any kind, forms, as we know, a phase of sensual as well as of sentimental love. The eager desire for a girl's favor makes her breath and all her attributes seem delicious not only to man but to inanimate things. The following, with the finishing touches applied by the German translator, approaches modern poetic sentiment more closely than any other of Hâla's songs:

No. 13: "O you who are skilled in cooking! Do not be angry (that the fire fails to burn). The fire does not burn, smokes only, in order to drink in (long) the breath of (your) mouth, perfumed like red pâtela blossoms."

In the use of hyperbole it is very difficult to avoid the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. The author of No. 153 had a happy thought when he sang that his beloved was so perfect a beauty that no one had ever been able to see her whole body because the eye refused to leave whatever part it first alighted on. This pretty notion is turned into unconscious burlesque by the author of No. 274, who complains,

"How can I describe her from whose limbs the eyes that see them cannot tear themselves away, like a weak cow from the mud she is sticking in."

Hardly less grotesque to our Western taste is the favorite boast (No. 211 _et passim_) that the moon is making vain efforts to shine as brightly as the beloved's face. It is easier for us to sympathize with the Hindoo poets when they express their raptures over the eyes or locks of their beloved:

No. 470: "Other beauties too have in their faces beautiful wide black eyes, with long lashes, but they cannot cast such glances as you do."

No. 77: "I think of her countenance with her locks floating loosely about it as she shook her head when I seized her lip--like unto a lotos flower surrounded by a swarm of (black) bees attracted by its fragrance."

Yet even these two references to personal beauty are not purely esthetic, and in all the others the sensual aspect is more emphasized:

No. 556: "The brown girl's hair, which had succeeded in touching her hips, weeps drops of water, as it were, now that she comes out of the bath, as if from fear of now being tied up again."

No. 128: "As by a miracle, as by a treasure, as in heaven, as a kingdom, as a drink of ambrosia, was I affected when I (first) saw her without any clothing."

No. 473: "For the sake of the dark-eyed girls whose hips and thighs are visible through their wet dresses when they bathe in the afternoon, does Kama [the god of love] wield his bow."

Again and again the poets express their raptures over exaggerated busts and hips, often in disgustingly coarse comparisons--lines which cannot be quoted here.[275]

LYRICS AND DRAMAS

In his _History of Indian Literature_ (209), Weber says that

"the erotic lyric commences for us with certain of the poems attributed to Kalidasa." "The later Kavyas are to be ranked with the erotic poems rather than with the epic. In general this love-poetry is of the most unbridled and extravagantly sensual description; yet examples of deep and truly romantic tenderness are not wanting."

Inasmuch as he attributes the same qualities to some of the Hâla poems in which we have been unable to find them, it is obvious that his conception of "deep and truly romantic tenderness" is different from ours, and it is useless to quarrel about words. Hâla's collection, being an anthology of the best love-songs of many poets, is much more representative and valuable than if the verses were all by the same poet. If Hindoo bards and bayadères had a capacity for true altruistic love-sentiment, these seven hundred songs could hardly have failed to reveal it. But to make doubly sure that we are not misrepresenting a phase of the history of civilization, let us examine the Hindoo dramas most noted as love-stories, especially those of Kalidasa, whose _Sakuntala_ in particular was triumphantly held up by some of my critics as a refutation of my theory that none of the ancient civilized nations knew romantic love. I shall first briefly summarize the love-stories told in these dramas, and then point out what they reveal in regard to the Hindoo conception of love as based, presumably, on their experiences.

I. THE STORY OF SAKUNTALA

Once upon a time there lived on the banks of the Gautami River a hermit named Kauçika. He was of royal blood and had made so much progress with his saintly exercises of penitence that he was on the point of being able to defy the laws of Nature, and the gods themselves began to fear his power. To deprive him of it they sent down a beautiful _apsara_ (celestial bayadères) to tempt him. He could not resist her charms, and broke his vows. A daughter was born who received the name of Sakuntala, and was given in charge of another saint, named Kanva, who brought her up lovingly as if she had been his own daughter. She has grown up to be a maiden of more than human beauty, when one day she is seen by the king, who, while hunting, has strayed within the sacred precincts while the saint is away on a holy errand. He is at once fascinated by her beauty--a beauty, as he says to himself, such as is seldom found in royal chambers--a wild vine more lovely than any garden-plant--and she, too, confesses to her companions that since she has seen him she is overcome by a feeling which seems out of place in this abode of penitence.

The king cannot bear the idea of returning to his palace, but encamps near the grove of the penitents. He fears that he may not be able to win the girl's love, and she is tortured by the same doubt regarding him. "Did Brahma first paint her and then infuse life into her, or did he in his spirit fashion her out of a number of spirits?" he exclaims. He wonders what excuse he can have for lingering in the grove. His companion suggests gathering the tithe, but the king retorts: "What I get for protecting her is to be esteemed higher than piles of jewels." He now feels an aversion to hunting. "I would not be able to shoot this arrow at the gazelles who have lived with her, and who taught the beloved to gaze so innocently." He grows thin from loss of sleep. Unable to keep his feelings locked up in his bosom, he reveals them to his companion, the jester, but afterward, fearing he might tell his wives about this love-affair, he says to him:

"Of course there is no truth in the notion that I coveted this girl Sakuntala. Just think! how could we suit one another, a girl who knows nothing of love and has grown up perfectly wild with the young gazelles? No, my friend, you must not take a joke seriously."

But all the time he grows thinner from longing--so thin that his bracelet, whose jewels have lost all their lustre from his tears, falls constantly from his arm and has to be replaced.