A peculiar stare—which must be sidelong, not direct at the beloved—is another conventional characteristic of Hindoo amorous fiction. The gait becomes languid, the breathing difficult, the heart stops beating or is paralyzed with joy; the limbs or the whole body wither like flower-stalks after a frost; the mind is lamed, the memory weakened; cold shivers run down the limbs and fever shakes the body; the arms hang limp at the side, the breast heaves, words stick in the throat; pastimes no longer entertain; the perfumed Malayan wind crazes the mind; the eyelids are motionless, sighs give vent to anguish, which may end in a swoon, and if things take an unfavorable turn the thought of suicide is not distant. Attempts to cure this ardent love are futile; Madhava tries snow, and moonlight, and camphor, and lotos roots, and pearls, and sandal oil rubbed on his skin, but all in vain.
THE HINDOO GOD OF LOVE
Quite as artificial and unsentimental as the notions of the Hindoos concerning the symptoms of love is their conception of their god of love, Kama, the husband of Lust. His bow is made of sugar-cane, its string a row of bees, and his arrow-tips are red flower-buds. Spring is his bosom friend, and he rides on a parrot or the sea-monster Makara. He is also called Ananga—the bodiless—because Siwa once burned him up with the fire that flashed from his third eye for disturbing him in his devotions by awakening in him love for Parwati. Sakuntala's lover wails that Kama's arrows are "not flowers, but hard as diamond." Agnimitra declares that the Creator made his beloved "the poison-steeped arrow of the God of Love;" and again, he says: "The softest and the sharpest things are united in you, O Kama." Urvasi's royal lover complains that his "heart is pierced by Kama's arrow," and in Malati and Madhava we are told that "a cruel god no doubt is Kama;" while No. 329 of Ilâla's love-poems declares:
"The arrows of Kama are most diverse in their effects—though made of flowers, very hard; though not coming into direct contact, insufferably hot; and though piercing, yet causing delight."
Our familiarity with Greek and Roman literature has made us so accustomed to the idea of a Cupid awakening love by shooting arrows that we fail to realize how entirely fanciful, not to say whimsical, this conceit is. It would be odd, indeed, if the Hindoo poets had happened on the same fancy as the Greeks of their own accord; but there is no reason to suppose that they did. Kama is one of the later gods of the Indian Pantheon, and there is every reason to believe that the Hindoos borrowed him from the Greeks, as the Romans did. In Sakuntala (27) there is a reference to the Greek women who form the king's body-guard; in Urvasi (70) to a slave of Greek descent; and there are many things in the Hindoo drama that betray Greek influence.
Besides being artificial and borrowed, Kama is entirely sensual. Kama means "gratification of the senses,"[281] and of all the epithets bestowed on their god of love by the Hindoos none rises distinctly above sensual ideas. Dowson (147) has collated these epithets; they are: "the beautiful," "the inflamer," "lustful," "desirous," "the happy," "the gay, or wanton," "deluder," "the lamp of honey, or of spring," "the bewilderer," "the crackling fire," "the stalk of passion," "the weapon of beauty," "the voluptuary," "remembrance," "fire," "the handsome."[282]
The same disregard of sentimental, devotional, and altruistic elements is shown in the Ten Stages of Love-Sickness as conceived by the Hindoos: (1) desire; (2) thinking of her (his) beauty; (3) reminiscent revery; (4) boasting of her (his) excellence; (5) excitement; (6) lamentations; (7) distraction; (8) illness; (9) insensibility; (10) death.[283]
DYING FOR LOVE
The notion that the fever of love may become so severe as to lead to death plays an important role in Hindoo amorous sophistry. "Hindoo casuists," says Lamairesse (151, 179), "always have a peremptory reason, in their own eyes, for dispensing with all scruples in love-affairs: the necessity of not dying for love." "It is permissible," says the author of Kama Soutra, "to seduce another man's wife if one is in danger of dying from love for her;" upon which Lamairesse comments:
"This principle, liberally interpreted by those interested, excuses all intrigues; in theory it is capable of accommodating itself to all cases, and in the practice of the Hindoos it does thus accommodate itself. It is based on the belief that the souls of men who die of ungratified desires flit about a long time as manes before transmigrating."