“Explain to me. I don’t understand. I know so little of him. What is the subject?”
She hesitated; then chose her words as if for a beginner;—“It is the Blessed One preaching to the Tree-Spirits. See how eagerly they lean from the boughs to listen. This other relief represents him in the state of mystic vision. Here he is drowned in peace. See how it overflows from the closed eyes; the closed lips. The air is filled with his quiet.”
“What is he dreaming?”
“Not dreaming—seeing. Peace. He sits at the point where time and infinity meet. To attain that vision was the aim of the monks who lived here.”
“Did they attain?” I found myself speaking as if she could certainly answer.
“A few. There was one, Vasettha, the Brahman, a young man who had renounced all his possessions and riches, and seated here before this image of the Blessed One, he fell often into the mystic state. He had a strange vision at one time of the future of India, which will surely be fulfilled. He did not forget it in his rebirths. He remembers-”
She broke off suddenly and said with forced indifference,—“He would sit here often looking out over the mountains; the monks sat at his feet to hear. He became abbot while still young. But his story is a sad one.”
“I entreat you to tell me.”
She looked away over the mountains. “While he was abbot here,—still a young man,—a famous Chinese Pilgrim came down through Kashmir to visit the Holy Places in India. The abbot went forward with him to Peshawar, that he might make him welcome. And there came a dancer to Peshawar, named Lilavanti, most beautiful! I dare not tell you her beauty. I tremble now to think-”
Again she paused, and again the faint creeping sense of mystery invaded me.