[272] Here again we must guard against the naïve error of benevolent observers of confounding chastity with an assumption of modest behavior. In describing the streets of Delhi Ida Pfeiffer says (L.V.R.W., 148):
"The prettiest girlish faces peep modestly out of these curtained bailis, and did one not know that in India an unveiled face is never an innocent one, the fact certainly could not be divined from their looks or behavior." It happens to be the fashion even for bayadères to preserve an appearance of great propriety in public.
[273] Pp. 143 and 160 of Kellner's edition of this drama (Reclam). The extent to which indifference to chastity is sometimes carried in India may be inferred from the facts that in the famous city of Vasali "marriage was forbidden, and high rank attached to the lady who held office as the chief of courtesans;" and that the same condition prevails in British India to this day in a town in North Canara (Balfour, Cyclop. of India, II., 873).
[274] Hâla's date is somewhat uncertain, but he flourished between the third and fourth centuries A.D. Professor Weber's translation of his seven hundred poems, with the professor's comments, takes up no fewer than 1,023 pages of the Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vols. V. and VII. I have selected all those which throw light on the Hindoo conception of love, and translated them carefully from Weber's version. Hâla's anthology served as prototype, about the twelfth century, to a similar collection of âryâ verses, the erotic Saptacati of Govardhana, also seven hundred in number, but written in Sanskrit. Of these I have not been able to find a version in a language that I can read, but the other collection is copious and varied enough to cover all the phases of Hindoo love. The verses were intended, as already indicated, to be sung, for the Hindoos, too, knew the power of music as a pastime and a feeder of the emotions. "If music be the food of love, play on," says the English Shakespere, and the "Hindoo Shakespere" wrote more than a thousand years before him:
"Oh, how beautifully our master Rebhila has sung! Yes, indeed, the zither is a pearl, only it does not come from the depths of the sea. How its tones accord with the heart that longs for love, how it helps to while away time at a rendezvous, how it assuages the grief of separation, and augments the delights of the lovers!" (Vasantasena, Act III., 2.)
[275] The disadvantage of arguing against the believers in primitive, Oriental, and ancient amorous sentiment is that some of the strongest evidence against them cannot be cited in a book intended for general reading. Professor Weber declares in his introduction to Hâla's anthology that these poems take us through all phases of sentimental love (innigen Liebeslebens) to the most licentious situations. He is mistaken, as I have shown, in regard to the sentiment, but there can be no doubt about the licentiousness. Numbers 5, 23, 62, 63, 65, 71, 72, 107, 115, 139, 161, 200, 223, 237, 241, 242, 300, 305, 336, 338, 356, 364, 369, 455, 483, 491, 628, 637, depict or suggest improper scenes, while 61, 213, 215, 242, 278, 327, 476, 690 are frankly obscene. Lower and higher things are mixed in these poems with a naïveté that shows the absence of any idea of refinement.
[276] I have here followed Kellner, though Boehtlingk's version is more literal and Oriental: "Mir aber brennt Liebe, O Grausamer, Tag und Nacht gewaltig die Glieder, deren Wünsche auf dich gerichtet sind."
[277] Anas Casarea, a species of duck which, in Hindoo poetry, is allowed to be with his mate only in the daytime and must leave her at night, in consequence of a curse; thereupon begin mutual lamentations.
[278] For a Hindoo, unless he has a son to make offerings after his death, is doomed to live over again his earthly life with all its sorrows. A daughter will do, provided she has a son to attend to the rites.
[279] The sequel of the story, relating to the misfortunes of Nala and Damayanti after marriage, will be referred to presently. The famous tale herewith briefly summarized occurs in the Mahâbhârata, the great epic or mythological cyclopaedia of India, which embraces 220,000 metric lines, and antedates in the main the Christian era. The story of Savitri also occurs in the Mahâbhârata; and these two episodes have been pronounced by specialists the gems not only of that great epic, but of all Hindoo literature. I have translated from the edition of H.C. Kellner, which is based on the latest and most careful revisions of the Sanscrit text. I have also followed Kellner's edition of Kalidasa's Sakuntala and Otto Fritze's equally critical versions of the same poet's Urvasi and Malavika and Agnimitra. Some of the earlier translators, notably Rückert, permitted themselves unwarranted poetic licenses, modernizing and sentimentalizing the text, somewhat as Professor Ebers did the thoughts and feelings of the ancient Egyptians. I will add that while I have been obliged to greatly condense the stories of the above dramas, I have taken great care to retain all the speeches and details that throw light on the Hindoo conception of love, reserving a few, however, for comment in the following paragraphs.