CHAPTER III.
The sun went down in glory, and smiled upon its own land when it withdrew behind the ocean, as if unwilling longer to look upon the griefs with which the world that had so lately glowed with its pure vivid light was encumbered. Evening suddenly flung her shadows over the city of Somnat, but the stars sparkled in the purple concave of heaven like children of joy, imparting a beautiful relief to the grave solemnity of night.
At rather a late hour the melancholy wife quitted the side of her husband, whose malady had not abated, and repaired to the magnificent temple of Somnat, at that time the most celebrated in Hindostan. It stood upon an elevated part of the town, and covered a vast space of ground. It was a ponderous edifice, exhibiting that elaborate detail of ornament combined with massive grandeur peculiar to the early Hindoo temples. Within, it consisted of one vast aisle several hundred feet long, the roof supported on either side by magnificent columns, ornamented even to superfluity with sculpture, each column detailing an episode from the Mahabarat. Every pillar was cut from a single block of granite, elaborated with an accuracy of touch, and a justness of proportion, not exceeded by any monuments of ancient art, save those of Greece. The light was admitted through a vast dome in the centre, beneath which the huge idol stood like a Colossus, casting one unvarying expression of grim insensibility upon its prostrate but humble adorers. The figure was of stone, clumsily wrought into a monstrous form. The head was ornamented with gems of prodigious value, similar gems being likewise fixed in every pillar of the temple. Its eyes were formed of two rubies of such transcendent lustre as to inspire the worshippers with a holy awe when they prostrated themselves before this hideous image.
There were no lights used in the temple at night except one pendent lamp, the light of which being reflected from the jewels in the idol’s head, and from those fixed in the various columns that adorned the sacred edifice, spotted the whole area with a dazzling gleam which appeared the effect of superhuman agency.[2]
The most costly offerings were daily made to this factitious divinity, but the depository of its immense wealth was a secret, as the Brahmins pretended, known only to the deity to whom it had been dedicated. On two sides of the temple were various apartments occupied by the functionaries of the sanctuary, which no persons were permitted to enter, save those to whose habitation they had been especially appropriated. Strange and mysterious events were said frequently to take place within those secret and forbidden retreats, supposed to be hallowed by the holy lives of their spiritual occupants.
The Brahmin who had recently visited the invalid had an apartment near the shrine, and was one of the officiating priests in this fane of superstition, where, under the mask of religion, the most revolting abominations were nightly practised. Like the Eleusinian mysteries, they were hidden from the public eye, as only fit to be witnessed by those whom it would seem to have been thought that vice had sanctified.
With a resolved but throbbing heart the beautiful Hindoo wife entered within the black narrow portal of this gorgeous but gloomy structure. The lower part of the edifice was involved in a shadowy light which imparted a cavernous solemnity to this house of a most unholy worship. The huge idol rose amid the distance surrounded by a blaze of light that filled the dome in which the colossal image stood, but did not extend far enough to pierce the distant gloom.
As she stalked forward with a measured pace, the monstrous figures surrounding the columns seemed to glare upon her from their granite pedestals like so many petrified ogres. Her heart throbbed with emotion. The object of her visit at this dark hour of night rose to her memory with an impetuous impulse, whilst the associations of the gloom of the grave, and that of the consecrated edifice which she had now entered for the purpose of propitiating a deaf and dumb idol for the benefit of a departing soul, and to arrest the summons of death, sent a chill through the whole mass of her blood which seemed to reach and congeal the very fountain of life. When she reached the dome there was not a person but herself that she could perceive in the sanctuary. The light of the solitary lamp hanging from the centre of the dome was reflected from thousands of brilliant gems which cast a radiance around the figure of intense and dazzling brilliancy. She prostrated herself before the image, and poured the full tide of her heart’s emotions in a prayer for the restoration of her husband.
A general belief prevailed among the Hindoos of that part of the country that souls after death were summoned before the Idol of Somnat, which transported them into other bodies according to their merits in this life, where he became a sort of Hindoo Rhadamanthus, resembling that infernal justiciary, however, in nothing less than in the rigid impartiality of his justice. It was also declared by the Brahmins belonging to this celebrated temple, that the ebb and flow of the tides represented the reverence paid by the ocean to this shrine.
Having paid her devotions, the supplicant approached the base of the idol, and laid a handful of gold upon it; for her husband was wealthy, and the god of Somnat never heard a vow that was not accompanied by an offering. She prayed that her husband might be spared to her; or, if the slender thread of his destiny was already spun, that his soul might be transferred into a nobler body, and be thus advanced one step nearer to that final and beatific state of absorption so anxiously desired by all faithful Hindoos. As she concluded, there was a strange unearthly sound heard from within the image; the eyes seemed to glow with more intense brightness, and when she rose from her posture of prostration, to her surprise the aged Brahmin who had lately visited her husband stood before her. She looked upon him, however, without apprehension, feeling herself in the presence of an omnipotent agent, and not entertaining a thought, in the innocence of her pure heart, that the altar of deity could be polluted by the most licentious impurities.