Part 3 (2/2)

Is it all _maya_,--delusion? I open wide my eyes, then close them, then open them again. There still lie the living puppets, not daring to look up to the face of their silent G.o.d, where scorn and pa.s.sion contend for place. The dim lights, the shadows blending with them, the fine harmony of colors, the wild harmony of sounds, the fantastic phantoms, the overcoming sentiment, all the poetry and the pity of the scene,--the formless longing, the undefined sense of wrong! Poor things, poor things!

The prime minister of Siam enjoys no exemption from that mocking law which condemns the hero strutting on the stage of the world to cut but a sorry figure at home. Toward these helpless slaves of his nod his deportment was studiously ungracious and mean. No smile of pleased surprise or approbation ever brightened his gloomy countenance. True, the fire of his native ardor burns there still, but through no crevice of the outward man may one catch a glimpse of its light. Though he rage as a fiery furnace within, externally he is calm as a lake, too deep to be troubled by the skipping, singing brooks that flow into it. Rising automatically, he abruptly retired, bored. And those youthful, tender forms, glowing and panting there,--in what glorious robes might not their proper loveliness have arrayed them, if only their hearts had looked upward in freedom, and not, like their trained eyes, downward in blind homage.

Koon Ying Phan (literally, ”The Lady in One Thousand”) was the head wife of the Premier. He married her, after repudiating the companion of his more grateful years, the mother of his only child, a son--the legitimacy of whose birth he doubted, and so, for a grim jest, named the lad _My Chi_, ”Not So.” He would have put the mother to death, but finding no real grounds for his suspicion, let her off with a public ”putting away.” The divorced woman, having nothing left but her disowned baby, carefully changed the _My Chi_ to _Ny Chi_ (”Not So” to ”Master So ”),--a cunning trick of pride, but a doubtful improvement.

Koon Ying Phan had neither beauty nor grace; but her habits were domestic, and her temper extremely mild. When I first knew her she was perhaps forty years old,--stout, heavy, dark,--her only attraction the gentle expression of her eyes and mouth. Around her pretty residence, adjoining the Premier's palace, bloomed the most charming garden I saw in Siam, with shrubberies, fountains, and nooks, designed by a true artist; though the work of the native florists is usually fantastic and grotesque, with an excess of dwarfed trees in Chinese vases. There was, besides, a cool, shaded walk, leading to a more extensive garden, adorned with curious lattice-work, and abounding in shrubs of great variety and beauty. Koon Ying Phan had a lively love for flowers, which she styled the children of her heart; ”for my lord is childless,” she whispered.

In her apartments the same subdued lights and mellow half-tints prevailed that in her husband's saloons imparted a pensive sentiment to the place. There were neither carpets nor mirrors; and the only articles of furniture were some sofa-beds, low marble couches, tables, and a few arm-chairs, but all of forms antique and delicate. The combined effect was one of delicious coolness, retirement, and repose, even despite the glaring rays that strove to invade the sweet refuge through the silken window-nets.

This lady, to whom belonged the undivided supervision of the premier's household, was kind to the younger women of her husband's harem, in whose welfare she manifested a most amiable interest,--living among them happily, as a mother among her daughters, sharing their confidences, and often pleading their cause with her lord and theirs, over whom she exercised a very cautious but positive influence.

I learned gladly and with pride to admire and love this lady, to accept her as the type of a most precious truth. For to behold, even afar off, ”silent upon a peak” of sympathy, the ocean of love and pathos, of pa.s.sion and patience, on which the lives of these our pagan sisters drift, is to be gratefully sensible of a loving, pitying, and sufficing Presence, even in the darkness of error, superst.i.tion, slavery, and death. Shortly after her marriage, Koon Ying Phan, moved partly by compa.s.sion for the wrongs of her predecessor, partly by the ”aching void” of her own life, adopted the disowned son of the premier, and called him, with reproachful significance, P'hra Nah Why, ”the Lord endures.” And her strong friend, Nature, who had already knit together, by nerve and vein and bone and sinew, the father and the child, now came to her aid, and united them by the finer but scarcely weaker ties of habit and companions.h.i.+p and home affections.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TEMPLE OF THE SLEEPING IDOL.]

V. THE TEMPLES OF THE SLEEPING AND THE EMERALD IDOLS.

The day had come for my presentation to the supreme king. After much preliminary talk between the Kralahome and myself, through the medium of the interpreter, it had been arranged that my straightforward friend, Captain B----, should conduct us to the royal palace, and procure the interview. Our cheerful escort arrived duly, and we proceeded up the river,--my boy maintaining an ominous silence all the while, except once, when he shyly confessed he was afraid to go.

At the landing we found a large party of priests, some bathing, some wringing their yellow garments; graceful girls balancing on their heads vessels of water; others, less pleasing, carrying bundles of gra.s.s, or baskets of fruit and nuts; n.o.blemen in gilded sedans, borne on men's shoulders, hurrying toward the palace; in the distance a troop of hors.e.m.e.n, with long glittering spears.

Pa.s.sing the covered gangway at the landing, we came upon a clean brick road, bounded by two high walls, the one on the left enclosing the abode of royalty, the other the temple Watt Poh, where reposes in gigantic state the wondrous Sleeping Idol. Imagine a reclining figure one hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet high, entirely overlaid with plate gold; the soles of its monstrous feet covered with ba.s.s-reliefs inlaid with mother-of-pearl and chased with gold; each separate design distinctly representing one of the many transmigrations of Buddha whereby he obtained Niphan. On the nails are graven his divine attributes, ten in number:

1. Arahang,--Immaculate, Pure, Chaste.

2. Samma Sam-Putho,--Cognizant of the laws of Nature, Infallible, Unchangeable, True.

3. Vicharanah Sampanoh,--Endowed with all Knowledge, all Science.

4. Lukha-tho,--Excellence, Perfection.

5. Lok-havi-tho,--Cognizant of the mystery of Creation.

6. Annutharo,--Inconceivably Pure, without Sin.

7. Purisah tham-mah Sarathi,--Unconquerable, Invincible, before whom the angels bow.

8. Sa.s.sahdah,--Father of Beat.i.tude, Teacher of the ways to bliss.

9. Poodh-tho,--Endowed with boundless Compa.s.sion, Pitiful, Tender, Loving, Merciful, Benevolent.

10. Pak-havah,--Glorious, endowed with inconceivable Merit, Adorable.

Leaving this temple, we approached a low circular fort near the palace, --a miniature model of a great citadel, with bastions, battlements, and towers, showing confusedly over a crenellated wall. Entering by a curious wooden gate, bossed with great flat-headed nails, we reached by a stony pathway the stables (or, more correctly, the palace) of the White Elephant, where the huge creature--indebted for its ”whiteness” to tradition rather than to nature--is housed royally. Pa.s.sing these, we next came to the famous Watt P'hra Keau, or temple of the Emerald Idol.

An inner wall separates this temple from the military depot attached to the palace; but it is connected by a secret pa.s.sage with the most private apartments of his Majesty's harem, which, enclosed on all sides, is accessible only to women. The temple itself is unquestionably one of the most remarkable and beautiful structures of its cla.s.s in the Orient; the lofty octagonal pillars, the quaint Gothic doors and windows, the tapering and gilded roofs, are carved in an infinite variety of emblems, the lotos and the palm predominating. The adornment of the exterior is only equalled in its profusion by the pictorial and hieroglyphic embellishment within. The ceiling is covered with mythological figures and symbols. Most conspicuous among the latter are the luminous circles, resembling the mystic orb of the Hindoos, and representing the seven constellations known to the ancients; these revolve round a central sun in the form of a lotos, called by the Siamese _Dok athit_ (sun-flower), because it expands its leaves to the rising sun and contracts them as he sets. On the cornices are displayed the twelve signs of the zodiac.

The altar is a wonder of dimensions and splendor,--a pyramid one hundred feet high, terminating in a fine spire of gold, and surrounded on every side by idols, all curious and precious, from the bijou image in sapphire to the colossal statue in plate gold. A series of trophies these, gathered from the triumphs of Buddhism over the proudest forms of wors.h.i.+p in the old pagan world. In the pillars that surround the temple, and the spires that taper far aloft, may be traced types and emblems borrowed from the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, the proud fane of Diana at Ephesus, the shrines of the Delian Apollo; but the Brahminical symbols and interpretations prevail. Strange that it should be so, with a sect that suffered by the slayings and the outcastings of a ruthless persecution, at the hands of their Brahmin fathers, for the cause of restoring the culture of that simple and pure philosophy which nourished before pantheism!

The floor is paved with diamonds of polished bra.s.s, which reflect the light of tall tapers that have burned on for more than a hundred years, so closely is the sacred fire watched. The floods of light and depths of shadow about the altar are extreme, and the effect overwhelming.

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