The jungle is terrible as an army with banners. Sleeping in the little rest-house when the night has fallen, it comes close up to you, creeping, leaning over you, calling, whispering, vibrating with secret life. A word more,—only one,—a movement, and you would know the meaning and be gathered into the heart of it; but always there is something fine, impalpable, between, and you catch but a breath of the whisper.
Very wonderful is the jungle! In the moonlight of a small clearing I saw the huge bulk of three wild elephants feeding. They vanished like wraiths into the depths. The fireflies were hosting in the air like flitting diamonds. Stealthy life and movement were about me: the jungle, wide-awake and aware, moving on its own occasions.
A few days later I was at Anaradhapura. Once a million people dwelt in the teeming city. Here or near was the site visited by the famous Chinese pilgrim already mentioned, Fa Hien. But it is in ruins; the jasper image is gone. The tower is in the dust. A few priests watch by the scene of so much dead greatness and receive the pilgrims who still come with bowed heads to the Holy Places. But Fa Hien has reached the home of all the pilgrimages—the City of God dear and desirable in the sight of Plato and Saint Augustine, and all the warriors of all the faiths, and the inexorable years that have devoured the splendours of the Kings leave untouched his tears and his hope, for both are rooted in immortality.
He writes:
“The houses of the merchants are very beautifully adorned. The streets are smooth and level. At this time the King, being an earnest believer in the Law, desired to build a new monastery for this congregation. He chose a pair of strong oxen and adorned their horns with gold, silver and precious things. Then providing himself with a beautiful gilded plough, the King himself ploughed round the four sides of the allotted space, after which, ceding all personal rights, he presented the whole to the priests.”
This must be the monastery described by a later pilgrim, Hieuen Tsang, who journeyed from China to India about the year 630 A.D. In visiting Ceylon, he writes of its magnificence and especially of an upright pole on the roof “on which is fixed a mighty ruby. This gem constantly sheds a brilliant light which is visible day and night for a long distance and afar off appears like a bright star.”
That too is quenched in the dust. Where do the great jewels of antiquity hide? But one is left at Anaradhapura more precious than rubies—the famous image of the Buddha seated alone in a forest glade, the true presentment of a God, to whom beneath his closed eyes eternity is visible and time the shadow of a dream. Around him surged once the clamour of a great city, around him now the growth of the forest, both to his vision alike—and nothing. Some wayfarer had laid a flower at his feet when I stood there, and a white tassel of the areca palm. The sun and moon circle before him in this lonely place and the centuries pass like seasons.
“Forgetful is green earth; the God alone
Remember everlastingly.”
The place is a village lost in the woods, but inexpressibly holy because it contains in its own temple the sacred Bodhi Tree which is an offshoot of that very Tree beneath which the Lord Buddha received the Perfect Wisdom. Ceylon desired this treasure, and they tried to break a branch from the Tree, but dared not, for it resisted the sacrilege. But the Princess Sanghamitta, in great awe and with trembling hand, drew a line of vermilion about the bough, and at that line it separated from the Tree, and the Princess planted it in perfumed earth in a golden vase, and so brought it, attended by honours human and superhuman, to Ceylon—to this place, where it still stands. It is believed to be 2230 years old.