In a Jaina hermit story a king goes hunting with a great attendance of horses, elephants, chariots, and men on foot. He pursues the deer on horseback, and, keen on his sport, he does not notice, as he aims the arrow, that the frightened creature is fleeing to a holy ascetic who is wise in the study of sacred things. Of a sudden, he beholds the dead deer and the holy man standing by it. A dreadful fear seizes the king: he might have killed the monk! He gets off his horse, bows low, and prays to be forgiven. The venerable saint was plunged in thought and made no answer; the king grew more and more alarmed at his silence. “Answer me, I pray, Reverend Sir,” he said. “Be without fear, O king,” replied the monk, “but grant safety to others also. In this transient world of living things, why are you prone to cruelty?” Why should the king cling to kingly power, since one day he must part with everything? Life and beauty pass, wife and children, friends and kindred—they will follow no man in death: what do follow him are his deeds, good or evil. When he heard that, the king renounced his kingdom and became an ascetic. “A certain nobleman who had turned monk said to him, ‘As you look so happy, you must have peace of mind.’”
It may be a wrong conception of life that makes men seek rest on this side of the grave, but one can well believe that the finding of it brings a happiness beyond our common ken. For one thing, he who lives with Nature surely never knows ennui. The most marvellous of dramatic poems unfolds its pages before his eyes. Nor does he know loneliness; even one little creature in a prisoner’s cell gives a sense of companionship, and the recluse in the wild has the society of all the furred and feathered hosts. The greatest poet of the later literature of India, Kálidása, draws an exquisite picture of the surroundings of an Indian heritage:—
“See under yon trees the hallowed grains which have been scattered on the ground, while the tender female parrots were feeding their unfledged young ones in their pendant nests.... Look at the young fawns, which, having acquired confidence in man, and accustomed themselves to the sound of his voice, frisk at pleasure, without varying their course. See, too, where the young roes graze, without apprehension from our approach, on the lawn before yonder garden, where the tops of the sacrificial grass, cut for some religious rite, are sprinkled round.”[[9]]
[9]. Sir William Jones’s translation.
In the play of Sacontala—which filled Goethe with a delight crystallised in his immortal quatrain—no scene is so impressed by genuine feeling and none so artistic in its admirable simplicity as that in which the heroine takes leave of her childhood’s pet.
The hermit, who has been the foster-father of Sacontala, is dismissing her upon her journey to the exalted bridegroom who awaits her. At the last moment she says to him: “My father, see you there my pet deer, grazing close to the hermitage? She expects soon to fawn, and even now the weight of the little ones she carries hinders her movements. Do not forget to send me word when she becomes a mother.”
The hermit, Canna, promises that it shall be done; then as Sacontala moves away, she feels herself drawn back, and turning round, she says, “What can this be fastened to my dress?”
Canna answers:—
“My daughter,
It is the little fawn, thy foster child.