Part 7 (1/2)

And I laid her down very gently, turning carefully away, that I might not see her face. And I went away very quickly, and all at once, as I went, I fell down and began to sob, as if my heart would break. And at last, after a long while, I got up, and stood, thinking, and looking back under the trees. And I crept back on tiptoe, and looked and saw her at a distance, lying in the moonlight, very still, like the tomb of my own heart. And then I turned sharp round, and went away for good and all, without a soul. And I said to myself in agony: Now I have made the whole world empty with my own hand, and it was myself that I have killed, as well as her. And now I will go after her as soon as I possibly can. But there is one thing still to do, before I go, for I have to give another lesson to Narasinha. Only this time I will not use a lute-string, but crush out his soul with my bare hands.

Ha! Narasinha, I have told thee, and thou knowest all. And now thou hast only to count the hours that are left to thee, for I am coming very soon.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: p.r.o.nounce in three syllables _Shut-roon-jye_: it means, _one who triumphs over his foes_. So again, in three syllables, _Narasing_: which means, _man-lion_, alluding to one of Wishnu's incarnations. (Europeans do not adequately realise that the short final _a_, in Sanskrit, is always mute. They p.r.o.nounce e.g. _Rama_, _Krishna_, as if the last letter were long. They are monosyllables.)]

[Footnote 7: ”The menace prevented the deed,” observes Gibbon, of a would-be a.s.sa.s.sin of Commodus. That was also the error of the Germans, in 1914.]

[Footnote 8: A heavenly musician.]

[Footnote 9: _Dharma_ does not mean religion in our sense of the word.

It means, for every man, that set of obligations laid on him by his caste or status: thus everybody's _dharma_ is different.]

[Footnote 10: A crown prince. Palace intrigues were common in the old Hindoo courts. Each wife thought of nothing but providing the heir to the throne, if not by fair means, then by foul.]

[Footnote 11: Krishna, the lute-player, and flute-player, _par excellence_. He resembles Odin in this particular.]

[Footnote 12: i.e. _the city of lotuses._ The final _a_ is mute.]

[Footnote 13: i.e. _a line of stars_; _a constellation_; _a star intensified._]

[Footnote 14: That is to say, abandoned, dissolute: independence being, in old Hindoo ears, a synonym for every possible species of depravity.]

[Footnote 15: There is here an untranslatable play on _manasa_ and _manasi-ja_ = a feminine G.o.d of love.]

[Footnote 16: There is no vulgarity in this idea: it is a poetical degree in the scale of pa.s.sion. An _abhisarika_ is a lady so mastered by her love that she cannot wait for her lover, but goes to him of her own accord. There are all sorts of conditions laid down to regulate her going: she must not go in broad daylight, but in a thunderstorm, or dusk.]

[Footnote 17: _Lawanya_ means loveliness as well as salt.]

[Footnote 18: The exact equivalent, and indeed the only possible translation of _kupandita._]

[Footnote 19: This is due to the peculiar dress of Hindoo women, all in one piece, and put on so that the edge that runs around the feet afterwards runs up diagonally and winds around the whole figure. No national costume was ever better calculated to set off the sinuosities and soft grace of a woman's figure to advantage than the marvellous simplicity of the _sari_ which is nothing more than a very long strip of almost anything you please.]

[Footnote 20: i.e. _the clever one_: a name, like Nipunika, employed in Hindoo plays to denote the qualities of a _grisette_: _Suzanne._]

[Footnote 21: _Anuraktamritam bala wirakta wisham ewa sa._]

[Footnote 22: A female door-keeper. This appears to have been customary in old times. Runjeet Singh had a body-guard of women, dressed like boys.]

[Footnote 23: The roots of these great figs ”grow down” (hence their name) from the branches, often coalescing with the trunks into the most extraordinary shapes: it needs no imagination to see Dryads under the bark: they are visible to the naked eye. The huge leaves and great white blossom of the _shala_ make it one of the most beautiful of earthly trees: as the champak is one of the most weird, like a great candlestick of innumerable branches whose pale flower-cups grow out of the end of its clumsy fingers without leaves.]

[Footnote 24: Durga, _the inaccessible one_, is one of Parwati's innumerable names. It has reference to a mountain steep, with accessory meanings, moral and theological.]

[Footnote 25: There are constant references in Hindoo poetry to swinging, which is a national pastime in India, with a special festival in its honour.]

[Footnote 26: p.r.o.nounce as a trisyllable: Haridas.]