A Digit of the Moon. Bain Francis William
looking round, exclaimed: The painter, the painter! The ministers said: Sire, he is gone. But when the King heard that, he changed colour, and his voice trembled, and he said: If you have allowed him to escape, I will have you all trampled to death by elephants before the sun goes down. So they went out quickly and found the painter, and fetched him in again before the King. And he fell at the King's feet, saying: May the King forgive me! Alas! my evil fortune must have mixed up that lady's portrait among my other pictures, to bring me to destruction. But the King said: O most admirable of all painters, past, present, or to come, know that you have conferred a benefit upon me by exhibiting that portrait to me, which I could not repay even with my whole kingdom. And beyond doubt, that lady must have been my wife in a previous existence, for emotions such as these point unmistakeably to a former life. Now then, tell me, of what land is her father the king? For certain I am, that it is a portrait, for such beauty as hers could not have been conceived by any mortal brain. None but the Creator himself could have fashioned her. Then the painter smiled, and said: O King, be warned by me. Dismiss this lady from your mind, and think of her no more; otherwise my carelessness may turn out to have been the cause of your ruin. But the King said: Painter, no more. Choose, either to tell me who she is, and be loaded with gold; or not; an I will load you with chains, and imprison you in a loathsome dungeon, with neither food nor water, till you do.
Then the painter said: King, since there is no help for it, and your fate will have it so, learn, that this is the portrait of Anangarágá11, the daughter of a brother of the King of the Nagas20, who lives by herself in a palace in the forest, two months' journey from here. And what her beauty is, you yourself partly know by personal experience of the effect which even in a picture it produced upon you: yet what picture could be equal to the reality? For every one that sees her instantly falls in love with her, and many swoon away, as you did, and there are some who have even died. And yet the Creator, when he made her a casket of beauty so inimitably lovely, placed within it a heart of adamant, so hard, that it laughs at all the efforts of the flowery-arrowed god to pierce it. For innumerable suitors have sought her in marriage, coming from all the quarters of the world, and she receives them all with scornful indifference, yet entertains them magnificently for twenty-one days, on this condition, that every day they ask her a riddle21. And if any suitor should succeed in asking her something that she cannot answer, then she herself is to be the prize; but if within the stipulated time he fails, then he becomes her slave, to be disposed of how she will. And no one has ever yet succeeded in asking her anything she cannot answer; for she is of superhuman intelligence, and learned in all the sciences; but of the countless suitors who have tried and failed, some she has sent away, and others she retains about her person as slaves, pitilessly showing them every day that beauty which is for ever unattainable to them, so that their lot is infinitely worse than that of beasts. And therefore, O King, I warned you, lest the same thing should happen also to you. O be wise, and shun her, before it is too late. For I think that no lot can be more wretched than that of those who are doomed to everlasting regret, for having lost what nevertheless they see ever before them, as it were within their reach.
Then King Süryakánta laughed aloud, and he said: Painter, your judgment is not equal to your skill in your own art. For there is a lot infinitely more miserable, and it is that of one who passes his whole life in regret for an object which, with daring and resolution, he might have attained. Let me rather pine for ever miserable in the contemplation of such beauty, than weakly abandon my chance of enjoying it. Then the King gave that painter three crores of gold pieces, as the price of the portrait of the Princess, which he took away from him; and, after allowing him to paint his own portrait, dismissed him. And he said to his ministers: Make all ready: for this very night I start in quest of the Princess Anangarágá. Then his ministers deliberated together, and said to each other: Certainly, if the King should fail in his object and never return, the kingdom will be ruined. Yet, the same will be the case if he remains here, and scorning the society of all other women, never has a son. Therefore it is better as it is. For of two evils, the least is a good. Moreover, he may possibly succeed.
So that very night, burning with the fierce fire of impatience, the King transferred the burden of his government to the shoulders of his ministers, and set out, with the portrait of his beloved, to win or lose her. And he would have taken nobody with him. But as he was preparing to depart, his boon companion, Rasakósha22, said to him: Sire, would you go alone? And the King said: My friend, I may fail, and never return. Why should I drag others with me into the jaws of destruction? I will go by myself. Then Rasakósha said: King, what are you about? You leave yourself behind, if you leave me. That half of you which inhabits your own body is altogether gone upon23 the Princess, and wholly intent upon her, so as to think of nothing else: then how will you baffle her, without that other half of you which lives in me, and is always ready for your service? And what am I to do without my better half? And even if you do fail, what will you do without me? for even prosperity without a friend is tasteless24: how much more adversity! Then the King said: Well, be it so. Come, let us be off. But Rasakósha said: Did I not say that your mind was wandering? Would you start on such a perilous adventure, without first securing the aid of Wináyaka25? Who ever succeeded in anything that neglected him? And the King said: It is true. In my eagerness I had almost forgotten him. So he praised Ganésha, saying: Hail, O thou lord of the Elephant Face, whose trunk is uplifted in the dance! Hail to thee, before whom obstacles melt away like the mists of night before the morning sun! Hail to thee, aided by whom even the weak triumph over the strong! Hail to thee, without whom all prudence is vain, and all wisdom, folly! Hail, O thou whose basket ears flap like banners of victory in the wind!
Then they set out on their journey. And they fared on day and night through the forest, full of wild beasts, apes, and Shabaras26 as the sea is of jewels: but the King in his preoccupation for many days neither spoke nor ate nor drank, living only on air and the portrait of the Princess, which night and day he devoured with his eyes.
Then one day, as they rested at noon beneath the thick shade of a Kadamba27 tree, the King gazed for a long time at the portrait of his mistress. And suddenly he broke silence, and said: Rasakósha, this is a woman. Now, a woman is the one thing about which I know nothing. Tell me, what is the nature of women? Then Rasakósha smiled, and said: King, you should certainly keep this question to ask the Princess; for it is a hard question. A very terrible creature indeed is a woman, and one formed of strange elements. Apropos, I will tell you a story: listen.
In the beginning, when Twashtri28 came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees29, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kókila30, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawáka; and compounding all these together, he made woman, and gave her to man. But after one week, man came to him, and said: Lord, this creature that you have given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly, and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone: and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to give her back again, as I cannot live with her. So Twashtri said: Very well: and he took her back. Then after another week, man came again to him, and said: Lord,
Very few of the stories are really riddles, but they all give the Princess an opportunity of displaying her ready judgment and acumen. It will also be seen, that owing to the device with which the story concludes, there are really only nineteen days, instead of twenty-one.
Pronounce
This colloquialism is an exact facsimile of the Sanskrit expression.
A play upon his own name.
Ganésha, the god of obstacles and success. See Day 1.
An old name for Bhíls and other wild tribes.
'A tree with orange-coloured fragrant blossoms.'
The Hindoo Vulcan, sometimes, as here, used for the Creator,
Hindoo poets see a resemblance between rows of bees and eye-glances.
The Indian cuckoo. The crane is a by-word for inward villainy and sanctimonious exterior. The chakrawáka, or Brahmany drake, is fabled to pass the night sorrowing for the absence of his mate and she for him.