[36] Literally, with a sáshtanganamaskara: i.e. with an obeisance made by falling prostrate with the eight corners of the body, a form of profound reverence made as to a divinity.
III
A Story without an End
And then, Maheshwara tossed the last leaf into the air. And as it floated away down the stream, he said to the goddess, as she listened with attention: And yet he never came, as I told thee at the beginning. For Narasinha was beforehand with him, after all.
And the Daughter of the Snow sat silent, looking away down the river after the floating leaf, until it was lost to sight. And then she said slowly: Why didst thou say in the beginning that Táráwalí was the most extraordinary of all women, past, present, or to come? For I was deceived by thy encomium, expecting a woman altogether different from her, who was only but a specimen of her sex.
And the Moony-crested god burst into loud laughter. And he exclaimed: Speak low, O Snowy One: for if thy mortal sisters overheard thee betraying their secrets and their cause, they would be very angry, and perhaps begin to curse thee as a traitor, instead of offering thee worship, as they all do now. What! dost thou actually deem her to be but a type of all the rest? Surely, thou must have been asleep all the time that I was reading, after all: since thou hast either misunderstood her altogether, or it may be, wilt not do her justice, out of jealousy: since no woman in the three worlds can ever be trusted to judge another fairly, treating her always as a criminal and a rival, and falling on her tooth and nail, especially if, like Táráwalí, she sets custom at defiance, going by an independent standard of her own. But now, let me help thee to see how utterly mistaken is thy estimate of a character so rare as hardly to be matched in the whole of space and time for her cleverness and her candour and her tranquillity of soul, leaving her beauty out of the account, as that one element in her common to a very host of others. For the Creator was not such a bungler as to confine all feminine beauty to a single instance, but scattered it universally, since almost every woman in the world, no matter what her face be like, shares in the wonderful fascination exerted over men by the shape essential to her sex, which is far the most important thing of all, being general instead of special, as every woman seen dimly in the dark, or at a distance, or with her face hidden by a veil, will prove, being then above all most attractive when her face cannot be seen at all: as the story that I told thee of the ugly lady, not long ago, shows, if thou hast not forgotten it.[37] Whereas the thing special to Táráwalí was her incomparable soul, in which were mingled elements hardly ever to be found combined, gentleness and strength, and simplicity almost naive, with subtlety beyond all comparison, and pride that never took offence, and superlative beauty with humility, and submissiveness with extreme independence of spirit, and kindness without weakness, and feminine sweetness of disposition with the intellectual vigour of a man, and his courage, and his candour, all of which combined with her extraordinary bodily beauty to make her a paragon of intoxication utterly irresistible to every male[38] she came across, like a very Prakriti in a woman's form.
And Párwatí said: How canst thou lavish such praise on a woman so deservedly slain by her infuriated lover, when he suddenly awoke to the discovery of the real nature behind the mask?
And the great god laughed again, and he looked at her shrewdly and he said: Aha! Snowy One, said I not that thou wert asleep as I read? I shall have to repeat to thee the story all over again another time. Dost thou actually not see that all she said, from beginning to end, was absolutely true? For Shatrunjaya told the whole story very well, as he understood it; but he did not understand completely, and made a terrible error in the most important point of all, being led astray by what he had heard, and easily taken in. For blinded by his rage against his rival Narasinha, he came suddenly to the wrong conclusion, and slew her by mistake, never so much as giving her time for any explanation. For her eyes never wavered, as he thought, for guilt, but for quite another reason. And Narasinha really was, exactly as she said, her tyrant, nor had she anything to do with his assassination of her lovers, which he committed all on his own account, out of jealousy, paying no attention at all to her intercession. But in her gentleness, she shrank from the very idea of any violence, and this was the true cause of the wavering of her eyes, foreseeing as she did another attempt on Shatrunjaya, which she could not avert. And my heart was grieved at her death at the hands of a lover whose life she had saved, and would have saved again if she could. For she was worth far more than he.