[[3]] Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? Every Oriental would side with Shakespeare in this matter: love, in the East is not love, unless it comes like a flash of lightning.
[[4]] This might be either that of a woman or a snake, for the Nagas, to whom she belonged, waver between the two. The Naga, it may be well to remind the reader, is a being possessed of magic powers, especially that of glamour or blearing the eye, which appealed so powerfully to Spenser and Sir Walter Scott.
[[5]] Krishna, whose colour, it is to be noted, is blue.
[[6]] In every sense of the word: mohaiálamáyá is stronger than any English equivalent.
[[7]] The Underworld, the home of the snakes.
II
So as Aja stood upon the wall, looking out over the desert, suddenly all vanished from before his eyes. And he saw before him no city, and no desert. But he found himself in a dusky wood, thick with tall tamála[[1]] trees, and lit by a light that was neither that of the sun nor that of the moon. And all around him huge red poppies waved gently without a wind, mixed with great moon-lotuses, whose perfume went and came by turns as it hung on the heavy air. And under the shadow of the black-leaved trees large bats flew here and there with slow and noiseless flap, and on the branches monstrous owls with topaz eyes like wheels of flame sat motionless, as if to watch. And a dead silence like that of space whence all three worlds have been removed left Aja nothing else to hear but the beat of his own heart. And the hair rose up upon his head with sheer amazement. And he said to himself: Ha! what new wonder is this, and what has become of the city wall? And where in the world have I got to now, and how? Now let me be very wary, for the danger is evidently coming near.
And as he stood, grasping his sword, prepared, and looking quickly right and left, suddenly he saw a thing which rivetted his gaze to it, as if with an iron nail.
A little way off, among the poppies, was standing up like a lonely column all that was left of one of the walls of a ruined temple, whose fallen pillars were lying scattered all around it, half concealed by creeping leaves. And as he gazed intently at this upright fragment of a fallen wall, he saw upon it the image of a sculptured woman, which stood out so distinctly that he could not take his eyes from it. And after a while, he said to himself: Surely that can be no stone statue, but a real woman of flesh and blood, actually leaning, who knows why, against that bit of a broken wall. And he looked and looked, and after a while, filled with irresistible curiosity, he went nearer, but very slowly, and as it were on his guard, to see.