Part 9

‘It is well, O warrior king,’ resumed the Baital. After that Churaman the parrot had given the young Raja Ram a golden mine full of good advice about the management of daughters, he proceeded to describe Jayashri.

She was tall, stout, and well made, of lymphatic temperament, and yet strong passions. Her fine large eyes had heavy and rather full eyelids, which are to be avoided. Her hands were symmetrical without being small, and the palms were ever warm and damp. Though her lips were good, her mouth was somewhat underhung; and her voice was so deep, that at times it sounded like that of a man. Her hair was smooth as the kokila’s plume, and her complexion was that of the young jasmine; and these were the points at which most persons looked. Altogether, she was neither handsome nor ugly, which is an excellent thing in woman. Sita the goddess[77] was lovely to excess; therefore she was carried away by a demon. Raja Bali was exceedingly generous, and he emptied his treasury. In this way, exaggeration, even of good, is exceedingly bad.

[77] The beautiful wife of the demigod Rama Chandra.

Yet must I confess, continued the parrot, that, as a rule, the beautiful woman is more virtuous than the ugly. The former is often tempted, but her vanity and conceit enable her to resist, by the self-promise that she shall be tempted again and again. On the other hand, the ugly woman must tempt instead of being tempted, and she must yield, because her vanity and conceit are gratified by yielding, not by resisting.

‘Ho, there!’ broke in the jay, contemptuously. ‘What woman cannot win the hearts of the silly things called men? Is it not said that a pig-faced female who dwells in Landanpur has a lover?’

I was about to remark, my king! said the parrot, somewhat nettled, if the aged virgin had not interrupted me, that as ugly women are more vicious than handsome women, so they are more successful. ‘We love the pretty, we adore the plain,’ is a true saying amongst the worldly wise. And why do we adore the plain? Because they seem to think less of themselves than of us—a vital condition of adoration.

Jayashri made some conquests by the portion of good looks which she possessed, more by her impudence, and most by her father’s reputation for riches. She was truly shameless, and never allowed herself less than half a dozen admirers at the time. Her chief amusement was to appoint interviews with them successively, at intervals so short that she was obliged to hurry away one in order to make room for another. And when a lover happened to be jealous, or ventured in any way to criticise her arrangements, she replied at once by showing him the door. Answer unanswerable!

When Jayashri had reached the ripe age of thirteen, the son of a merchant, who was her father’s gossip and neighbour, returned home after a long sojourn in far lands, whither he had travelled in the search of wealth. The poor wretch, whose name, by the bye, was Shridat (Gift of Fortune), had loved her in her childhood; and he came back, as men are apt to do after absence from familiar scenes, painfully full of affection for house and home and all belonging to it. From his cross stingy old uncle to the snarling superannuated beast of a watchdog, he viewed all with eyes of love and melting heart. He could not see that his idol was greatly changed, and nowise for the better; that her nose was broader and more club-like, her eyelids fatter and thicker, her under lip more prominent, her voice harsher, and her manner coarser. He did not notice that she was an adept in judging of men’s dress, and that she looked with admiration upon all swordsmen, especially upon those who fought on horses and elephants. The charm of memory, the curious faculty of making past time present, caused all he viewed to be enchanting to him.

Having obtained her father’s permission, Shridat applied for betrothal to Jayashri, who, with peculiar boldness, had resolved that no suitor should come to her through her parent. And she, after leading him on by all the coquetries of which she was a mistress, refused to marry him, saying that she liked him as a friend, but would hate him as a husband.

You see, my King! there are three several states of feeling with which women regard their masters, and these are love, hate, and indifference. Of all, love is the weakest and the most transient, because the essentially unstable creatures naturally fall out of it as readily as they fall into it. Hate being a sister excitement will easily become, if man has wit enough to effect the change, love; and hate-love may perhaps last a little longer than love-love. Also, man has the occupation, the excitement, and the pleasure of bringing about the change. As regards the neutral state, that poet was not happy in his ideas who sang,

Whene’er indifference appears, or scorn, Then, man, despair! then, hapless lover, mourn!

For a man versed in the Lila Shastra[78] can soon turn a woman’s indifference into hate, which I have shown is as easily permuted to love. In which predicament it is the old thing over again, and it ends in the pure Asat[79] or nonentity.

[78] The Hindu _Ars Amoris_.

[79] The old philosophers, believing in a ‘Sat’ (τὸ ὄν), postulated an Asat (τὸ μὴ ὄν) and made the latter the root of the former.

‘Which of these two birds, the jay or the parrot, had dipped deeper into human nature, mighty King Vikram?’ asked the demon in a wheedling tone of voice.

The trap was this time set too openly, even for the royal personage to fall into it. He hurried on, calling to his son, and not answering a word. The Vampire therefore resumed the thread of his story at the place where he had broken it off.

Shridat was in despair when he heard the resolve of his idol. He thought of drowning himself, of throwing himself down from the summit of Mount Girnar,[80] of becoming a religious beggar; in short, of a multitude of follies. But he refrained from all such heroic remedies for despair, having rightly judged, when he became somewhat calmer, that they would not be likely to further his suit. He discovered that patience is a virtue, and he resolved impatiently enough to practise it. And by perseverance he succeeded. The worse for him! How vain are men to wish! How wise is the Deity, who is deaf to their wishes!

[80] In Western India, a place celebrated for suicides.

Jayashri, for potent reasons best known to herself, was married to Shridat six months after his return home. He was in raptures. He called himself the happiest man in existence. He thanked and sacrificed to the Bhagwan for listening to his prayers. He recalled to mind with thrilling heart the long years which he had spent in hopeless exile from all that was dear to him; his sadness and anxiety, his hopes and joys, his toils and troubles, his loyal love and his vows to Heaven for the happiness of his idol, and for the furtherance of his fondest desires.

For truly he loved her, continued the parrot, and there is something holy in such love. It becomes not only a faith, but the best of faiths—an abnegation of self which emancipates the spirit from its straightest and earthliest bondage, the ‘I;’ the first step in the regions of heaven; a homage rendered through the creature to the Creator; a devotion solid, practical, ardent, not as worship mostly is, a cold and lifeless abstraction; a merging of human nature into one far nobler and higher, the spiritual existence of the supernal world. For perfect love is perfect happiness, and the only perfection of man; and what is a demon but a being without love? And what makes man’s love truly divine, is the fact that it is bestowed upon such a thing as woman.

‘And now, Raja Vikram,’ said the Vampire, speaking in his proper person, ‘I have given you Madan-manjari the jay’s and Churaman the parrot’s definitions of the tender passion, or rather their descriptions of its effects. Kindly observe that I am far from accepting either one or the other. Love is, according to me, somewhat akin to mania, a temporary condition of selfishness, a transient confusion of identity. It enables man to predicate of others who are his other selves, that which he is ashamed to say about his real self. I will suppose the beloved object to be ugly, stupid, vicious, perverse, selfish, low-minded, or the reverse; man finds it charming by the same rule that makes his faults and foibles dearer to him than all the virtues and good qualities of his neighbours. Ye call love a spell, an alchemy, a deity. Why? Because it deifies self by gratifying all man’s pride, man’s vanity, and man’s conceit, under the mask of complete unegotism. Who is not in heaven when he is talking of himself? and, prithee, of what else consists all the talk of lovers?’

It is astonishing that the warrior king allowed this speech to last as long as it did. He hated nothing so fiercely, now that he was in middle age, as any long mention of the ‘handsome god.’[81] Having vainly endeavoured to stop by angry mutterings the course of the Baital’s eloquence, he stepped out so vigorously and so rudely shook that inveterate talker, that the latter once or twice nearly bit off the tip of his tongue. Then the Vampire became silent, and Vikram relapsed into a walk which allowed the tale to be resumed.

[81] Kama Deva. ‘Out on thee, foul fiend, talk’st thou of nothing but ladies?’

Jayashri immediately conceived a strong dislike for her husband, and simultaneously a fierce affection for a reprobate who before had been indifferent to her. The more lovingly Shridat behaved to her, the more vexed and annoyed she was. When her friends talked to her, she turned up her nose, raising her eyebrows (in token of displeasure), and remained silent. When her husband spoke words of affection to her, she found them disagreeable, and turning away her face, reclined on the bed. Then he brought dresses and ornaments of various kinds and presented them to her, saying, ‘Wear these.’ Whereupon she would become more angry, knit her brows, turn her face away, and in an audible whisper call him ‘fool.’ All day she stayed out of the house, saying to her companions, ‘Sisters, my youth is passing away, and I have not, up to the present time, tasted any of this world’s pleasures.’ Then she would ascend to the balcony, peep through the lattice, and seeing the reprobate going along, she would cry to her friend, ‘Bring that person to me.’ All night she tossed and turned from side to side, reflecting in her heart, ‘I am puzzled in my mind what I shall say, and whither I shall go. I have forgotten sleep, hunger, and thirst; neither heat nor cold is refreshing to me.’

At last, unable any longer to support the separation from her reprobate paramour, whom she adored, she resolved to fly with him. On one occasion, when she thought that her husband was fast asleep, she rose up quietly, and leaving him, made her way fearlessly in the dark night to her lover’s abode. A footpad, who saw her on the way, thought to himself, ‘Where can this woman, clothed in jewels, be going alone at midnight?’ And thus he followed her unseen, and watched her.

When Jayashri reached the intended place, she went into the house, and found her lover lying at the door. He was dead, having been stabbed by the footpad; but she, thinking that he had, according to custom, drunk intoxicating hemp, sat upon the floor, and raising his head, placed it tenderly in her lap. Then, burning with the fire of separation from him, she began to kiss his cheeks, and to fondle and caress him with the utmost freedom and affection.

By chance a Pisach (evil spirit) was seated in a large fig-tree[82] opposite the house, and it occurred to him, when beholding this scene, that he might amuse himself in a characteristic way. He therefore hopped down from his branch, vivified the body, and began to return the woman’s caresses. But as Jayashri bent down to kiss his lips, he caught the end of her nose in his teeth, and bit it clean off. He then issued from the corpse, and returned to the branch where he had been sitting.

[82] The pipal or _Ficus religiosa_, a favourite roosting place for fiends.

Jayashri was in despair. She did not, however, lose her presence of mind, but sat down and proceeded to take thought; and when she had matured her plan she arose, dripping with blood, and walked straight home to her husband’s house. On entering his room she clapped her hand to her nose, and began to gnash her teeth, and to shriek so violently, that all the members of the family were alarmed. The neighbours also collected in numbers at the door, and, as it was bolted inside, they broke it open and rushed in, carrying lights. There they saw the wife sitting upon the ground with her face mutilated, and the husband standing over her, apparently trying to appease her.

‘O ignorant, criminal, shameless, pitiless wretch!’ cried the people, especially the women; ‘why hast thou cut off her nose, she not having offended in any way?’

Poor Shridat, seeing at once the trick which had been played upon him, thought to himself: ‘One should put no confidence in a changeful mind, a black serpent, or an armed enemy, and one should dread a woman’s doings. What cannot a poet describe? What is there that a saint (jogi) does not know? What nonsense will not a drunken man talk? What limit is there to a woman’s guile? True it is that the gods know nothing of the defects of a horse, of the thundering of clouds, of a woman’s deeds, or of a man’s future fortunes. How then can we know?’ He could do nothing but weep, and swear by the herb basil, by his cattle, by his grain, by a piece of gold, and by all that is holy, that he had not committed the crime.

In the meanwhile, the old merchant, Jayashri’s father, ran off, and laid a complaint before the kotwal, and the footmen of the police magistrate were immediately sent to apprehend the husband, and to carry him bound before the judge. The latter, after due examination, laid the affair before the king. An example happening to be necessary at the time, the king resolved to punish the offence with severity, and he summoned the husband and wife to the court.

When the merchant’s daughter was asked to give an account of what had happened, she pointed out the state of her nose, and said, ‘Maharaj! why enquire of me concerning what is so manifest?’ The king then turned to the husband, and bade him state his defence. He said, ‘I know nothing of it,’ and in the face of the strongest evidence he persisted in denying his guilt.

Thereupon the king, who had vainly threatened to cut off Shridat’s right hand, infuriated by his refusing to confess and to beg for mercy, exclaimed, ‘How must I punish such a wretch as thou art?’ The unfortunate man answered, ‘Whatever your majesty may consider just, that be pleased to do.’ Thereupon the king cried, ‘Away with him, and impale him;’ and the people, hearing the command, prepared to obey it.

Before Shridat had left the court, the footpad, who had been looking on, and who saw that an innocent man was about to be unjustly punished, raised a cry for justice, and, pushing through the crowd, resolved to make himself heard. He thus addressed the throne: ‘Great king, the cherishing of the good, and the punishment of the bad, is the invariable duty of kings.’ The ruler having caused him to approach, asked him who he was, and he replied boldly, ‘Maharaj! I am a thief, and this man is innocent, and his blood is about to be shed unjustly. Your majesty has not done what is right in this affair.’ Thereupon the king charged him to tell the truth according to his religion; and the thief related explicitly the whole circumstances, omitting, of course, the murder.

‘Go ye,’ said the king to his messengers, ‘and look in the mouth of the woman’s lover who has fallen dead. If the nose be there found, then has this thief-witness told the truth, and the husband is a guiltless man.’

The nose was presently produced in court, and Shridat escaped the stake. The king caused the wicked Jayashri’s face to be smeared with oily soot, and her head and eyebrows to be shaved; thus blackened and disfigured, she was mounted upon a little ragged-limbed ass, and was led around the market and the streets, after which she was banished for ever from the city. The husband and the thief were then dismissed with betel and other gifts, together with much sage advice, which neither of them wanted.

‘My king,’ resumed the misogyne parrot, ‘of such excellencies as these are women composed. It is said that “wet cloth will extinguish fire and bad food will destroy strength; a degenerate son ruins a family, and when a friend is in wrath he takes away life. But a woman is an inflicter of grief in love and in hate; whatever she does turns out to be for our ill. Truly the Deity has created woman a strange being in this world.” And again, “The beauty of the nightingale is its song, science is the beauty of an ugly man, forgiveness is the beauty of a devotee, and the beauty of a woman is virtue—but where shall we find it?” And again, “Among the sages, Narudu; among the beasts, the jackal; among the birds, the crow; among men, the barber; and in this world woman—is the most crafty.”

‘What I have told thee, my king, I have seen with mine own eyes, and I have heard with mine own ears. At the time I was young, but the event so affected me that I have ever since held female kind to be a walking pest, a two-legged plague, whose mission on earth, like flies and other vermin, is only to prevent our being too happy. O, why do not children and young parrots sprout in crops from the ground—from budding trees or vine-stocks?’

‘I was thinking, sire,’ said the young Dharma Dhwaj to the warrior king his father, ‘what women would say of us if they could compose Sanskrit verses!’

‘Then keep your thoughts to yourself,’ replied the Raja, nettled at his son daring to say a word in favour of the sex. ‘You always take the part of wickedness and depravity——’

‘Permit me, your majesty,’ interrupted the Baital, ‘to conclude my tale.’

When Madan-manjari, the jay, and Churaman, the parrot, had given these illustrations of their belief, they began to wrangle, and words ran high. The former insisted that females are the salt of the earth, speaking, I presume, figuratively. The latter went so far as to assert that the opposite sex have no souls, and that their brains are in a rudimental and inchoate state of development. Thereupon he was tartly taken to task by his master’s bride, the beautiful Chandravati, who told him that those only have a bad opinion of women who have associated with none but the vicious and the low, and that he should be ashamed to abuse feminine parrots, because his mother had been one.

This was truly logical.

On the other hand, the jay was sternly reproved for her mutinous and treasonable assertions by the husband of her mistress, Raja Ram, who, although still a bridegroom, had not forgotten the gallant rule of his syntax—

The masculine is more worthy than the feminine;

till Madan-manjari burst into tears and declared that her life was not worth having. And Raja Ram looked at her as if he could have wrung her neck.

In short, Raja Vikram, all the four lost their tempers, and with them what little wits they had. Two of them were but birds, and the others seem not to have been much better, being young, ignorant, inexperienced, and lately married. How then could they decide so difficult a question as that of the relative wickedness and villany of men and women? Had your majesty been there, the knot of uncertainty would soon have been undone by the trenchant edge of your wit and wisdom, your knowledge and experience. You have, of course, long since made up your mind upon the subject?

Dharma Dhwaj would have prevented his father’s reply. But the youth had been twice reprehended in the course of this tale, and he thought it wisest to let things take their own way.

‘Women,’ quoth the Raja, oracularly, ‘are worse than we are; a man, however depraved he may be, ever retains some notion of right and wrong, but a woman does not. She has no such regard whatever.’

‘The beautiful Bangalah Rani for instance?’ said the Baital, with a demonic sneer.

At the mention of a word, the uttering of which was punishable by extirpation of the tongue, Raja Vikram’s brain whirled with rage. He staggered in the violence of his passion, and putting forth both hands to break his fall, he dropped the bundle from his back. Then the Baital, disentangling himself and laughing lustily, ran off towards the tree as fast as his thin brown legs could carry him. But his activity availed him little.

The king, puffing with fury, followed him at the top of his speed, and caught him by his tail before he reached the siras-tree, hurled him backwards with force, put foot upon his chest, and after shaking out the cloth, rolled him up in it with extreme violence, bumped his back half a dozen times against the stony ground, and finally, with a jerk, threw him on his shoulder, as he had done before.

The young prince, afraid to accompany his father whilst he was pursuing the fiend, followed slowly in the rear, and did not join him for some minutes.

But when matters were in their normal state, the Vampire, who had endured with exemplary patience the penalty of his impudence, began in honeyed accents,

‘Listen, O warrior king, whilst thy servant recounts unto thee another true tale.’

THE VAMPIRE’S THIRD STORY.

OF A HIGH-MINDED FAMILY.

In the venerable city of Bardwan, O warrior king! (quoth the Vampire) during the reign of the mighty Rupsen, nourished one Rajeshwar, a Rajput warrior of distinguished fame. By his valour and conduct he had risen from the lowest ranks of the army to command it as its captain. And arrived at that dignity, he did not put a stop to all improvements, like other chiefs, who rejoice to rest and return thanks. On the contrary, he became such a reformer that, to some extent, he remodelled the art of war.

Instead of attending to rules and regulations, drawn up in their studies by pandits and Brahmans, he consulted chiefly his own experience and judgment. He threw aside the systematic plans of campaigns laid down in the Shastras or books of the ancients, and he acted upon the spur of the moment. He displayed a skill in the choice of ground, in the use of light troops, and in securing his own supplies whilst he cut off those of the enemy, which Kartikaya himself, God of War, might have envied. Finding that the bows of his troops were clumsy and slow to use, he had them all changed before compelled so to do by defeat; he also gave his attention to the sword handles, which cramped the men’s grasp, but which having been used for eighteen hundred years, were considered perfect weapons. And having organised a special corps of warriors using fire arrows, he soon brought it to such perfection that, by using it against the elephants of his enemies, he gained many a campaign.

One instance of his superior judgment I am about to quote to thee, O Vikram, after which I return to my tale; for thou art truly a warrior king, very likely to imitate the innovations of the great general Rajeshwar.

(A grunt from the monarch was the result of the Vampire’s sneer.)