Legendary & romantic tales of Indian history

by Hobart Caunter

CHAPTER II.

The Hindoo mother, having made her acknowledgments to the deliverer of her child, entered the walls of Somnat, and sought her home. She related the adventure of the morning to her husband, at this time lying ill of fever. He was a man of high caste, and entertained all the prejudices of his national superstitions in an eminent degree. This tendency was aggravated to a morbid excess by his present illness. The relation greatly distressed him. The idea that his infant had been snatched from death by a worshipper of gods which his nation did not recognise, agitated him to a paroxysm of excitement. He raved, and cursed the chances that had exposed his offspring to such pollution. He would rather the wolf had devoured it, than that it should have owed its preservation to the arm of a Mussulman, and he the greatest enemy of the Hindoos and their religion.

The Hindoo father was a young man of about thirty, handsome and amiable, but a rigid observer of the national superstitions. He was affectionate to his wife, in a degree seldom equalled by Hindoo husbands, and she returned his tenderness with a pure and ardent attachment. In spite, however, of his fondness, like all husbands of his tribe he was not only a master but a tyrant. The wife was subservient to an extent that rendered her domestic life a slavery; but being impressed with a conviction that such subserviency was the proper sphere, because it was the destined lot of woman, she submitted without a murmur. Still she was relatively happy; for, by comparison with the generality of Hindoo wives, her social comforts were considerable. She felt conscious of possessing her husband’s attachment; and, though his general conduct towards her was authoritative, it was seldom harsh. Had it been otherwise than authoritative, she would have despised him as descending from the dignity of his manhood, and foregoing the especial immunities of his privileged sex.

Upon the present occasion, harassed by suffering of body and anxiety of mind, the sick man treated his young and lovely consort with a severity which he had never before exercised.

“The vengeance of Siva will be directed against this house for the folly of a woman. The god of Somnat has seen the pollution offered to the offspring of one of his worshippers. Take heed that the fiery gleam of his eye does not blast thee, when thou next offerest thy oblations at his holy shrine.” The youthful mother raised her head; the long lashes that fringed her soft but intensely bright eyes were moistened with the dew of sadness. It gathered gradually, until the weight of the liquid gem was too great a burden for the trembling lashes to support, and then trickled slowly down her clear brown cheek. She uttered not a word, but clasped her babe with greater fervour to her bosom. The husband saw her emotion, and was moved; nevertheless, he bade her quit the apartment and leave him to his repose, which, alas! came not, for the excitement had only aggravated his malady. He was scorched with fever; and, in the course of that night, his peril was imminent. The tender partner of his home and of his love did not quit his side for a moment. She saw his danger; and the gloomy thought of her own death came with the chill of a night-blast upon her soul. The awful customs of her tribe forbade that she should outlive him; and the horrible manner in which her death would be consummated seemed to freeze the very fountain of life as she thought upon it. To be cut off by the appalling process of cremation, ere the sweet fragrant blossom of existence had fairly opened into womanhood, was a sad and bitter thought. Still, the sufferings of the man she loved recalled her from these sad reflections, and she gazed upon him with an interest in which, for the moment, all her prospective sufferings were absorbed. He spoke not, but the thought of that contamination, which he supposed to have passed upon his child by the contact of one of another creed, evidently remained the paramount impression on his mind; for when the mother presented him her infant for a paternal caress, he turned from it with a shudder, and refused to allow it to be brought into his presence.

Hour after hour the tender consort watched by his side, submitting without a murmur, or even a look of dissatisfaction, to the petulance induced by his disease. She watched him as he lay upon his rug—anticipated his wishes—soothed his sufferings—prepared whatever he took with her own hand—but all her attentions seemed likely to be bestowed in vain. The full, rapidly throbbing pulse; the burning brow, the dry palm, and the brown furred tongue, upon which the cool liquid was evaporated the moment it came in contact with it, all proclaimed the jeopardy in which the invalid lay.

The native physician by whom he was attended ordered him decoctions, prepared from some lenitive herbs; these had not the slightest effect upon his disorder. When this arrived at a certain height, and the medical visitor saw that all material remedies were useless, he impressed upon the wife the necessity of immediately repairing to the temple of Somnat, and supplicating the divine intercession of its idol, promising her that her husband’s health would certainly be re-established, if she could only prevail upon the stone divinity to listen to her supplications.

“All that art can do,” said he, “I have done to restore this unhappy man, who must soon yield up his spirit to be the inhabitant of another body, unless the deity of our temple raise him up at the intercession of a pious heart. Go, and may your prayer be heard!”

This was no very encouraging expectation. The unhappy young creature now felt assured that her husband could not live, unless restored by superhuman means. The creed in which she had been reared taught her to trust in the efficacy of such means, and to believe that they would be accorded to a pious solicitation; she was therefore determined to offer her supplications in the temple, in the hope of averting her husband’s death, which, in fact, would involve her own. At this moment a Brahmin, and one of the officiating priests of the sanctuary, entered the sick man’s apartment. He was a sanctified man, with a gross, misshapen body, gross from indolence and indulgence, and bearing about him the unequivocal marks of the coarse bloated Sybarite. His shorn scalp bore not indeed the frost of age, but the deep corrugations by which the forehead was crossed showed, in characters too legible to need interpretation, that time had already prepared the furrows for the seeds of death. The old man’s countenance was haggard, though placid; but it was placid rather from insensibility, than from the access of elevated feeling. The eye was sunk beneath a projecting brow, that hid much of its expression, and its faded lustre spoke not that mute language of passion which his heart frequently prompted, but which the eye was too lustreless to betray. His legs were shrunk to the bones, and seemed scarcely able to bear the burthen of obesity which laziness and indulgence had imposed upon them. He hobbled to the couch of the dying man, looked at him for a moment, doubled his legs under him as he seated himself upon the floor, desired the cocoa-nut hookah to be brought, and, having inhaled the sedative luxury for a few moments, said, with an air of the utmost unconcern, “Thy soul is about to assume a new body; what are thy hopes?”

The invalid said faintly—“I have not lived an unholy life, and therefore hope that I shall be advanced one step towards absorption[1] into Bhrim, when my spirit throws off the vile crust by which it has been encumbered here.”