A Digit of the Moon

Hindu script
Hindu script

Frontispiece
Frontispiece

A
DIGIT OF THE MOON

Hindu script
Hindu script

A HINDOO LOVE STORY

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MS.

BY

F. W. BAIN

NINTH EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

PREFATORY NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.

O thou lovely Incarnation of the Nectar-dropping Moon, come down from Heaven to lighten our Darkness: Delight of the Race of Man: retaining in thy Womanhood the dancing Play of the Waves of that Sea of Milk out of which thou wert originally churned by the Gods: we the Three Worlds (i.e. of Childhood, Manhood, and Age) do worship the Orb of thy Bosom that possesses for us a Threefold Mystical Feminine Energy[1] being a Pitcher of Milk for us, when we are Born: a Pillow for us, in the Middle of the Path of Life: and a Shrine, in which we take refuge to die at the last.

But we lose, in a literal prose version, the reverberation, and the echo of the Sea, which undertones the meaning of the words like the accompaniment to a song. This sound we might make some attempt to preserve, without doing violence to the sense, as follows;

Like a New MODE'S exquisite Incarnation,
    In the Ebb and Flow of a Surging Sea,
Wave-breasted Beauty, the whole Creation
    Wanes, and waxes, and rocks on thee!
For we rise and fall on thy Bosom's Billow
    Whose heaving Swell is our Home Divine.
Our Chalice at Dawn, and our hot Noon's Pillow,
                                                Our Evening's Shrine.

Woolacombe Bay, April 29, 1901.

[1] The last lines contain recondite philosophical allusions to the Creation, Preservation, and Destruction of the World, and other matters, in technical terms which defy translation. Life in Hindoo philosophy, as in that of the Middle Ages, carries about with it a perfume of death: there is in its atmosphere something melancholy, and even a little morbid, like the slow tolling of a bell.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION,

A Digit of the Moon is the sixteenth part of a much longer work, entitled The Churning of the Ocean of Time[1]. A well-known Hindoo legend recounts how the gods and antigods assembled to churn the ocean of milk[2] for the nectar of immortality. After throwing in herbs of various kinds, they churned it with Mount Mandara, and obtained the nectar, with certain other things, one of which was the MOON, who by the way is often called 'the Lord of Herbs.'

But in Sanskrit, the Moon, like the Sun, is a male. Hindoo poets get over this difficulty, when they want a female Moon, by personifying his attributes, or making a part do duty for the whole. Thus, his disc is divided into sixteen parts, called 'streaks' or 'digits' and a beautiful woman is 'a digit of the moon.'

The whole work, then, called 'The Churning of the Ocean of Time,' is, like the Moon, divided into sixteen parts, each named after one of the digits of the Moon. The one now before the reader is called A Digit of the Moon, turned red by the rays of the dawning Sun[3]. The point lies in the play on the word red, which in the original also means 'enamoured,' 'in love.' That is to say, that the heroine of the story 'turns red,' i.e. falls in love with the hero, whose name, it will be found, is SÜryakÁnta, or 'Sunstone.'

*****

I little thought, ten years ago, that it would ever be my lot to play, as it were, the part of Boccaccio, and bring forth meat from the eater, stories from a plague. Yet here also the unexpected came about, in the following way.

Considering how recently Europe has become aware of the very existence of a Sanskrit literature, I had often wondered whether there might not be hidden away, here and there, in the vast ocean of India, literary treasures still undiscovered, which future 'churning' might bring up. But I did not expect that my question would ever receive a practical answer. However, a few years ago, when the plague was decimating the city of Poona, carrying off its victims by hundreds a day, personal acquaintance with some of the officers appointed by Government to cope with the enemy put it into my power to do a slight service to an old MarÁtha Brahman, whose name, by his own particular desire, I suppress. My 'service' was indeed a mere trifle, a thing of which no Englishman would have thought twice. Hindoos, however, look on these matters with very different eyes. An Englishman's house may be his castle, but a Hindoo's house is a shrine, a holy of holies, which for unhallowed footsteps to invade is desecration. I was amused to find that my old Brahman regarded me almost as though I had preserved his family from nameless and everlasting infamy. And when he subsequently discovered that I was a humble student of the 'polished, sacred' language, and could make shift to admire his beloved KÁlidÁs in the original, his esteem for me rose to a degree almost embarrassing. He came two or three times to see me, and took an obvious pleasure in dilating on the beauties of his ancient authors to one who was at least a good listener. But it struck me as curious, that every time he went away he seemed as it were labouring to deliver himself of some important communication, which nevertheless he shrank from discovering to me; and he always eventually departed, with an air of some confusion, and his secret left untold. I thought at the time that he was only nerving himself to make some request of me, of which he doubted the reception, and was unable to screw his courage to the sticking-point. But I was mistaken.

Our interviews came to an abrupt conclusion. The plague stepped in and swept his family clean away, carrying off his wife, all his children, and various others of his kin, leaving him alone untouched—but not for long. One evening, when I came home late, having been out nearly all day, I found on my doorstep a messenger who had been waiting for me, with the inexhaustible patience of an Oriental, for many hours. The plague had remembered my old Brahman at last, and he had sent to ask me to come and see him, 'on business of importance.' I went off accordingly to a segregate camp, whither he had been removed, and, much to my relief, arrived in time to find him conscious: for he was a fine old gentleman, and when a Brahman is a gentleman, he is a striking type of humanity. He confused me by thanking me, for the hundredth time, for my good offices, adding, however, that they had been, in a certain sense, wasted, as he was the only one left of his family, and now he also, he was glad to say, was going the same way. He said, that he had been anxious to see me before he died, because he had something of value to give me. Hereupon he produced what the uninitiated might have taken for a packet of ladies' long six-button gloves, pressed together between two strips of wood about the size of a cheroot box, and tied round with string; but which from experience I knew to be a manuscript[4]. He handed it to me, observing that it had been in the possession of his family from a time beyond memory, and that nothing would ever have induced him to part with it, had any of that family remained to possess it; but as they were all gone, and as, moreover, it would certainly be burned by the plague authorities as soon as he was dead, it was mine, if I cared to accept it. If not, he said, with an effort to smile, no matter: it could, like a faithful wife, enter the fire on the death of its owner: yet that would be a pity, for it was worth preserving. I accepted his present, and he bade me farewell. I took leave of the old man, not without emotion, for grief and approaching death had converted his face to the very incarnation of misery; and I learned on enquiry that he died, about thirty-six hours afterwards, in the early morning.

Notwithstanding the hints let fall by its former owner, I own I was dubious as to the value of my MS., for Hindoos will admire anything in Sanskrit. But when—after having redeemed it with difficulty from the ordeal of fire and the plague authorities by subjecting it to severe fumigations—I fell to examining it[5], I apologised to the manes of my old Brahman for doubting his judgment, and blessed him for his present, which is, I will venture to say, unique in literature. But I will leave the reader to judge of it for himself[6], warning him only that no language loses so much by translation as the Sanskrit; and advising him, for his own sake, to read it consecutively through, or he will lose much[7]. I cannot refrain from observing, however, that it differs from the general run of classical Sanskrit productions in two very striking particulars—the simplicity of its style, and the originality of its matter. As to the last, every body knows that classical Sanskrit authors have no originality. They do but rhetorically reset and embellish notorious themes: such originality as they exhibit lying, not in their subject, but its treatment. Our author is an exception. Whoever he was, he must have possessed the gift of imagination: for though the plan of the story was doubtless suggested by the WÉtÁla-panchawimshatikÁ, yet so novel and poetical is the use made of it that it may fairly claim to owe but little to its source, while all the particular stories are curious and original. The book differs, again, in a remarkable manner from other classical products of the Hindoo Muse in the simplicity of its style. The author would seem to have deliberately chosen the epic[8] rather than the classic style as his model. We find here none of that artificiality, that straining and effort at style for its own sake, that perverse elaboration, those insipid intolerable shlÉhas and interminable compounds which reach a climax in the appalling concatenations of e.g. the KÉdambarÍ. Mature Hindoo literature exhibits precisely the same tendency as its architecture: ornament is piled on ornament with aimless, tasteless extravagance, till the whole becomes nauseous, and all unity is smothered and annihilated under a load of rhetorical gewgaws. Just as the rank and luxuriant growth of a creeper will sometimes drain of its juices, dry up, and destroy the tree it was designed to adorn, so the over development of gaudy rhetorical blossoms and effeminate literary prettinesses has desiccated and broken the spring of the Hindoo mind. The best things in the literature are just those which are simplest, and therefore as a rule oldest. Literary arabesque nearly always indicates and springs from the absence of anything to say; a poverty of creative ideas. But our author has really a story to tell, and can therefore afford to exhibit it in naked unadorned simplicity.

Finally, the words which stand as a motto on the title-page have a history of their own. They are the closing lines of the ShakuntalÁ, and they mean, briefly: O Shiwa, grant that I may never be born again. There is a curiosa felicitas in their application to the conclusion of the story, where indeed I found them, scribbled in the margin by another hand; and though it cannot be proved, I am convinced that they were placed there by my old Brahman himself (who had KÁlidÁs by heart), when he took his farewell of the MS., in an access of grief and despair at feeling his family annihilated and himself deprived of all that had made his life worth living, by the plague. Let us hope that the old man has had his wish, and that 'the purple-tinted god' has 'destroyed his rebirth.'

MahÁbaleshwar, 1898.

[1] SansÁra-sÁgara-manthanam.

[2] For milk the author has substituted a technical word which means the world considered as the scene of never-ending transmigrations. ('O world! O life! O time!') By this he implies that the nectar of his work it the residuum of much churning of life and experience of the world, and that it is destined to be immortal.

[3] I have never experienced a stranger or more delightful sensation than when, as I was translating this work, I saw this very phenomenon on the Ghauts at MahÁbaleshwar: a blood-red Moon going down into the hills at early dawn, with the Sun rising on the opposite peaks. Only the redness which the poet ascribes to the Sun was of course due to the haze of the atmosphere.

[4] Though I make no attempt to assign a date to this MS., the reader should observe that in India printing has not superseded hand work. The Hindoos have religious prejudices against printed books, and they will not use them in their temples, or for sacred purposes.

[5] A well written MS. in the DÉwanÁgari character, is hardly if at all, inferior to print.

[6] At some future time I hope to translate the remainder, or part of it.

[7] Its principal beauty lies in the skill of its climax, which is lost by neglecting the order.

[8] The poem is written in shlÓkas, or anushtubh, with occasional deviations (as e.g. the conclusion) into more elaborate metres.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION. The Story of the Creation of Woman

Day 1. The Story of GanÉsha and the ChÁrwÁka
Day 2. The Story of the Brahman's Cows
Day 3. The Story of the Baby RÁjÁ
Day 4. The Story of Bimba and Pratibimba
Day 5. The Story of SuwarnaskÍlÁ
Day 6. The Story of the Three Queens
Day 7. The Story of the False Ascetic and the King's daughter
Day 8. The Story of the Pilgrim and the Ganges
Day 9. The Story of the Repentant Wife
Day 10. The Story of the Wrestler's Pet
Day 11. The Story of the Domestic Chaplain
Day 12. The Story of the Elephant and the Ants
Day 13. The Story of the Mirage Hunter
Day 14. The Story of the Red Lips
Day 15. The Story of the Lotus and the Bee
Day 16. The Story of the Gem in the Snake's Hood
Day 17. The Story of the King's Dream
Day 18. The Story of Love and Death
Day 19. The Story of KritÁkrita
Day 20. The Story of Conclusion

Note.—The Vignette is a rude sketch by the translator from an old bust of GanÉsha. He has only one tusk, and should have four arms, but they have got broken. His favourite vehicle is a mouse or rat, and his trunk is always considered to be smeared with vermilion. He is the God of Success, and the Remover of Obstacles, and woe to the man who should neglect to conciliate him, at the opening of any undertaking!