Dreams and delights

by L. Adams Beck

“When Adam was driven forth from Paradise God made a mountain of Ceylon the place of his descent, to break the force of change and so assuage his fall. The charms of this fair country, the softness of the air, are beyond all telling. White amber is the dregs of its sea, and its indigo and red bakam are cosmetics for beauty. The leaves, the barks, and the sweating of its trees are cloves, spikenard, aloe wood, camphor and fragrant mandel. Its icy water is a ball of muneya for the fractures of the world. The boundaries of its fields refresh the heart like the influence of the stars. The margins of its regions are the bedfellows of loveliness. Its myrobalums impart the blackness of youthful hair, and its peppercorns put the mole on the face of beauty on the fire of envy. Its rubies and carnelians are like the lips and cheeks of charming girls, and its treasures are as oceans full of polished gems. Indeed the various birds are sweet singing parrots and the pheasants of its gardens are graceful peacocks.”

So they told of her, and merchants came from the end of the earth to trade in the wonders of Serendib, bringing and taking riches, and not only riches but tales of wildest wonder and romance. They said the people were descended from a royal lion and hence their name Singhalese—Singha, a lion. They said she breathed her sweetness for miles out to sea and that before the shore rose from the horizon the air was languid with her spices and perfumes. Was this true or hyperbole? It is at least certain that in many parts of the island the wild lemon grass is almost overwhelming in its odour and many of the flowers scent all the world about them. The tropical sun and hot dewy moisture stimulate plant life into a passionate luxuriance of fragrant beauty. Horror too, for there are blossoms whose name of Stercula foetida tells all that need be told of their loathsomeness.

In this strange land the sands of some of the rivers are minute rubies and garnets, and it is of Serendib the story was told of serpents that guarded the precious jacinths, and the stratagem of the merchants in flinging pieces of meat into deep valleys where they lay, that hovering eagles might strike their talons in the meat encrusted with jewels and carry it to their nests in the rocks, where ready hands could seize it. The jacinths have become diamonds in the Arabian Nights, but we all know the story in the mouth of Sindbad the sailor of perilous seas.

And the merchants had terrible tales to tell of the women of the island. They were sirens as dangerous as ever sought to beguile Ulysses. Some of them dwelt in a great city of iron on the coast with fluttering signals on their towers to lure sea-farers, and when the eager boats made for the shore women of the most alluring loveliness, perfumed and garlanded, ran to meet them, stretching passionate arms, wooing them to enter the city. There they caressed them until every sense was drowned in delight, when bound and helpless, they flung them into iron cages and devoured them one by one.

The merchants were the great romancers of the ancient world—the singers of songs, the tellers of tales, and surely they had the right, for is there more romance in any word than in their own name? It calls up mirage after mirage of wearied camel caravans toiling through deserts of sand to cities that were old when Balkh and Damascus were young; where the blue and glittering domes of porcelain rise against intenser skies in sunsets sonorous as a gong with deep light and colour. It is the merchants always who carry romance and adventure in their corded bales. In robe and turban they yearn for the caravanserais and the men coming by many ways to the meeting place. They hunger for the flat hot cakes seed-sprinkled, and the savoury smells of the kous-kous bubbling in oil, but most of all for the excitements and lusts of the bazaar and the dangerous winding ways of forbidden palaces. See them unroll the gold and flowered stuffs of Bokhara, the silks from Cos as transparent as running water that gave the fair Pamphila the glory of having invented a dress “in which women were naked though clothed.” See the muslins of Dacca unloosed from the swaying camel-packs;—the merchants can scarcely handle them lest a faint breeze blow them from their hold, for of these it is told that the Emperor, Akbar, the Truth-Seeker, rebuked a woman who appeared before him robed in woven air, saying, “Little does it become a daughter of the Prophet to show herself arrayed in one dress only and that, as it were, nothing, being but the illusion of a garment.” And she replied audaciously: “Majesty, Light of the Age, I am more modest than modesty’s self, for I wear at this moment Nine.”

Through all the stories of Ceylon the merchants go, tempting the perilous seas in frail dromonds and crank high-decked galleons, tempted in turn by princesses, more perilous than the seas, shooting dangerous glances through rose-coloured veils. Sometimes their historic quests were wild as any dream. It was rumoured over Asia that the lost Tree of Life grew in the jungles of this fortunate Island and a King of Persia and Emperor of China sent their merchants with huge wealth to buy its precious leaves—more than ever precious in the intrigues of Oriental Courts—but only to find it grows in a Paradise more far away than even the famed Serendib, and that no merchants, young and ardent, grave and bearded, could lay that merchandise before the throne.

Ceylon figures in one of the most ancient epics of the world—the Ramayana, for it was Ravana the demon King of Ceylon (Lanka) who seized the lovely Sita, wife of the God-King Rama as she wandered in the forest, and bore her through the air to his island kingdom. The writer of the poem was a mighty poem maker: Valmiki,—let his name be fragrant for all time! And like all his divine brotherhood he was first taught by sorrow. For sitting one day in the heart of the woods, Valmiki beheld two herons singing for joy and love as they wandered together by air and water, and as he gladdened to their gladness, an archer shot the male bird and he fell bathed in blood, never again to sweep the wing-ways of the sky, and his mate fluttered about him in agony. So Valmiki, with the wrath and power of a poet, cursed the man who had done this black deed, and, as he spoke, suddenly he knew that his words were a measured music and that a new and wonderful thing had befallen in the world. And so it was, for Brahma appeared in the cloud, four-faced, majestic, and commanded him to write the history of Rama and the storming of Ceylon in this same mysterious music. “And it shall be true in every word,” said the God, “and so long as the world lasts shall this story be known among men.” And that was the beginning of poetry in India.

Perhaps this is the chief fame of Ceylon, for the God spoke not in vain. There is no city now so lovely as that of which Valmiki tells—the city of jewelled pavements and windows of glimmering crystal and the cloudy palaces where the cruel King dwelt and where Sita was a captive. For—“Here dwelt the fair princesses torn by him from vanquished Kings. Now it was night and they lay overpowered with wine and sleep. One had her head thrown backward; some had their garlands crushed; some lay in each other’s bosoms, or with arms interlaced, others in slumber deep as death. The King Ravana lay on a dais apart made of crystal and adorned with jewels. Here lay he overcome with wine, with glittering rings in his ears and robed in gold, breathing like a hissing serpent. Around him lay his sleeping Queens, and nearest him the dearest, the golden-hued Mandodari.”

So the story runs through all its epic wonder of love and war, and yearly in India is celebrated the harrying of Ravana—I have seen his ten-headed image go up in flames amid the rejoicing of a multitude. Yet, as I think, the ancient city, Anaradhapura, now a ruin in the jungle, could not have fallen so far behind the splendours of Valmiki. Many who have visited it have written of it as it is in death—the broken fragments of palaces and temples, a few preserved here and there like rocks that are the survival of some lost Atlantis in the drowning ocean of the forest. How few recall it as it was in its pride and power! I stood in the green dimness of the glades where are the sculptured tanks where the queens bathed in days long dead, and read the words of one who knew it well—Fa Hien, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim of the fourth century A. D. For this was the Anaradhapura of the Ceylon he visited in search of the words of the Lord Buddha; of himself he speaks in the third person:

“To the north of the royal city is erected a great tower in height 470 feet,—it is adorned with gold and silver and perfected with every precious substance. There is by the side of it a monastery containing 5000 priests. They also have built here a hall of the Lord which is covered with gold and silver engraved work. In the midst of this hall is a jasper figure (of the Buddha) in height about 22 feet. The entire body glitters and sparkles with the seven precious substances. In the right hand he holds a pearl of inestimable value. Fa Hien had been absent many years from China; the manners and customs of these people were entirely strange to him, moreover his fellow travellers were now separated from him, for some had remained behind and some were dead. All at once as he stood by this jasper figure, he beheld a merchant present to it as a religious offering a fan of white silk of Chinese manufacture. Unwittingly Fa Hien gave way to his sorrowful feelings and the tears flowed from his eyes.”