PREFACE.
More generally known, perhaps, than any other Hindoo legend, is the story of the demon, RÁHU, who brings about ECLIPSES, by devouring the Sun and Moon. For when the gods had upchurned the nectar, the delectable Butter of the Brine, Ráhu's mouth watered at the very sight of it: and "in the guise of a god" he mingled unperceived among them, to partake. But the Sun and Moon, the watchful Eyes of Night and Day, detected him, and told Wishnu, who cast at him his discus, and cut his body from his head: but not until the nectar was on the way down his throat. Hence, though the body died, the head became immortal: and ever since, a thing unique, "no body and all head," a byword among philosophers, he takes revenge on Sun and Moon, the great Taletellers, by "gripping" them in his horrid jaws, and holding on, till he is tired, or can be persuaded to let go. Hence, in some parts of India, the doleful shout of the country people at eclipses: Chor do! chor do![1] and hence, also, the primary and surface meaning of our title: A Digit of the Moon in the Demon's grip: in plain English, an eclipse of the moon. And yet, legend though it be, there is something in the old mythological way of putting the case, which describes the situation in eclipses, far better than our arid scientific prose. I shall not easily forget, how, as we slid like ghosts at midnight, through the middle of the desert, along the Suez Canal[2], I watched the ghastly pallor of the wan unhappy moon, as the horrible shadow crept slowly over her face, stealing away her beauty, and turning the lone and level sands that stretched away below to a weird and ashy blue, as though covering the earth with a sepulchral sympathetic pall. For we caught the "griesly terror," Ráhu, at his horrid work, towards the end of May, four years ago.
But our title has yet another meaning underneath the first, for Ahi, the name employed for Ráhu (like all other figures in Indian mythology, he is known by many names), also means a snake. Beauty persecuted by a snake is the subject of the story. That story will presently explain itself: but the relation between Ráhu, or eclipses, and a snake is so curiously illustrated by a little insignificant occurrence that happened to myself, that the reader will doubtless forgive me for making him acquainted with it.
Being at Delhi, not many years ago, I seized the opportunity to visit the Kutub Minár. There was famine in the land. At every station I had passed upon the way were piled the hides of bullocks, and from the train you might see their skeletons lying, each one bleaching where it died for want of fodder, scattered here and there on the brown and burning earth; for even every river bed was waterless, and not a single blade of green could you descry, for many hundred miles. And hence it came about, that as I gazed upon the two emaciated hacks that were to pull me from the station, a dozen miles out, and as many more back, I could bring myself to sit behind them only by the thought that thereby I should save them from a load far greater than my own, that would have been their fate on my refusal. Therefore we started, and did ultimately arrive, in the very blaze of noon.
The Kutub Minár is a needle of red stone, that rises from a plain as flat as paper to a height of two hundred and fifty feet; and you might compare it, as you catch, approaching, glimpses of it at a distance, to a colossal chimney, a Pharos, or an Efreet of the Jinn. The last would be the best. For nothing on the surface of the earth can parallel the scene of desolation which unrols itself below, if you climb its 380 steps and look out from the dizzy verge: a thing that will test both the muscle of your knees and the steadiness of your nerves. Round you is empty space: look down, the pillar bends and totters, and you seem to rock in air; you shudder, you are falling; and away, away below, far as the eye can carry, you see the dusty plain, studded with a thousand tombs and relics of forgotten kings. There is the grim old fortress of the Toghlaks: there is the singular observatory of the rájá astronomer, Jaya Singh: and there the tomb, Humaioon's tomb, before which Hodson, Hodson the brave, Hodson the slandered, Hodson the unforgotten, sat, for two long hours, still, as if man and horse were carved in stone, with the hostile crowd that loathed and feared him tossing and seething and surging round him, waiting for the last Mogul to come out and be led away. The air is thick, and sparkles with blinding dust and glare, and the wind whistles in your ears. Over the bones of dynasties, the hot wind wails and sobs and moans. Aye! if a man seeks for melancholy, I will tell him where to find it—at the top of the old Kutub Minár.
And then, that happened which I had foreseen. We had not gone a mile upon our homeward way, when one of the horses fell. Therefore, disregarding the asseverations of my rascally Jehu that the remaining animal was fully equal to the task alone, I descended, and proceeded on foot. But a ten mile walk on the Delhi plain in the hottest part of the day is not a thing to be recommended. After plodding on for about two hours, I was, like Langland, "wery forwandred," and went me to rest, not alas! by a burnside, but in the shadow of one of the innumerable little tombs that stand along the dusty road. There I lay down and fell asleep.
Nothing induces slumber like exertion under an Indian sun. When I awoke, that sun was setting. A little way before me, the yellow walls of Delhi were bathed in a ruddy glow; the minarets of the Great Mosque stood out sharp against the clear unspotted amber sky. And as I watched them, I suddenly became aware that I was myself observed with interest by a dusky individual, who was squatted just in front of me, and who rose, salaaming, when he saw that I was awake. It appeared that I had, so to say, fallen into a "nest of vipers;" that I had unwittingly invaded the premises of a snake dealer, who, no doubt for solid reasons, had made my friendly tomb the temporary repository of his stock-in-trade.
The Indian snake charmer, gáruda, hawadiga[3], or whatever else they call him, is as a rule but a poor impostor. He goes about with one fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling at the end of a string. My dweller in tombs was richer than all his tribe in his snakes, and in his eyes. I have never seen anybody else with real cat's eyes: eyes with exactly that greenish yellow luminous glare which you see when you look at a cat in the dark. They gleamed and rolled in the evening sun, over a row of shining teeth, as their owner squatted down before me, liberating one after another from little bags and baskets an amazing multitude of snakes, which he fetched in batches from the interior of the tomb, till the very ground seemed alive with them[4]. Some of them he handled only with the greatest respect, and by means of an iron prong. Outside the Zoo (where they lose in effect) I never saw so many together before: and it is only when you see a number of these reptiles together that you realise what a strange uncanny being, after all, is a snake: and as you watch him, lying, as it were, in wait, beautiful exceedingly, but with a beauty that inspires you with a shudder, his eyes full of cruelty and original sin, and his tongue of culumny and malice, you begin to understand his influence in all religions. I was wholly absorbed in their snaky evolutions, and buried in mythological reminiscences, when my gáruda roused me suddenly, by saying: Huzoor, look!
He leaned over, and administered with his bare hand a vicious dig to a magnificent hamadryad, that lay coiled upon itself in its open basket. The creature instantly sat up, with a surge of splendid passion, hissing, bowing, and expanding angrily its great tawny hood. The gáruda put his púngi to his lips, and blew for a while upon it a low and wheezy drone,—the invariable prelude to a little jadoo, or black art,—which the beautiful animal appeared to appreciate: and then, pointing with the end of his pipe to the "spectacles" on its hood, he said, with that silky, insinuating smile which is characteristic of the scamp: Huzoor, dekho, namas karta[5]:—
Nágki phani, chánd ka dúkh
Uski badi, áp ka súkh[6].
I did not understand his lunar allusion, but, judging that his rhyming gibberish, like that of the rascally priests in Apuleius, was a carefully prepared oracle of general application, kept in stock for the cozening of such prey as myself, I repeated to him my favourite Hindu proverb[7], and gave him, in exchange for his benevolent cheque on the future, a more commonplace article of present value, which led to our parting on the most amicable terms. But I did him injustice, perhaps. Long afterwards, having occasion to consult an astronomical chart, with reference to this very story, all at once I started, and in an instant, the golden evening, the walls of Delhi, and my friend of the many snakes and sinister eyes, suddenly rose up again into my mind. For there, staring at me out of the chart, was the mark on the cobra's head. It is the sign still used in modern astronomy for "the head and tail of the dragon," the nodes indicating the point of occultation, the symbol of eclipse.
What then induced or inspired the gáruda to connect me with the moon? Was it really black art, divination, or was it only a coincidence? Reason recommends the latter alternative: and yet, the contrary persuasion is not without its charm. Who knows? It may be, that the soul grows to its atmosphere as well as the body, and living in a land where dreams are realities, and all things are credible, and history is only a fairy tale: the land of the moon and the lotus and the snake, old gods and old ruins, former births, second sight, and idealism: it falls back, unconsciously mesmerised, under the spell of forgotten creeds.
POONA, April, 1906.
[1] Let go! let go!
[2] Though nothing can be less romantic than a canal, gliding through that of Suez is a strange experience at night. Your great ship seems to move, swift and noiseless, through the very sand: and if only you could get there without knowing where you were, you would think that you were dreaming.
[3] Háwa, in Canarese, is the name of Ráhu.
[4] I did not count them, but there were several dozen, nearly all different. I have reason to believe that this man must have been one of the disciples of a former very celebrated snake charmer, who was known all over India.
[5] See, he makes obeisance.
[6] Which we may roughly render: Hood of snake brings joy and rue, this to moon and that to you. In all Oriental saws, jingle counts for much.
[7] "Tulsi, in this world hobnob with everybody: for you never know in what guise the deity may present himself." In the original it is a rhyming stanza.