[NATALIKA]
The story of a statue of sable stone among the ruins of Tirouvicaray, which are in the Land of Golconda that was.... When the body shall have mouldered even as the trunk of a dead tree, shall have crumbled to dust even as a clod of earth, the lovers of the dead will turn away their faces and depart; but Virtue, remaining faithful, will lead the soul beyond the darknesses....
The yellow jungle-grasses are in the streets of the city; the hooded serpents are coiled about the marble legs of the gods. Bats suckle their young within the ears of the granite elephants; and the hairy spider spins her web for ruby-throated humming-birds within the chambers of longs. The pythons breed within the sanctuaries, once ornate as the love-songs of Indian poets; the diamond eyes of the gods have been plucked out; lizards nestle in the lips of Siva; the centipedes writhe among the friezes; the droppings of birds whiten the altars.... But the sacred gateway of a temple still stands, as though preserved by the holiness of its inscriptions:
The Self-existent is not of the universe.... Man may not take with him aught of his possessions beyond the grave; let him increase the greatness of his good deeds, even as the white ants do increase the height of their habitation. For neither father nor mother, neither sister nor brother, neither son nor wife, may accompany him to the other world; but Virtue only may be his comrade...
And these words, graven upon the stone, have survived the wreck of a thousand years.
Now, among the broken limbs of the gods, and the jungle grasses, and the monstrous creeping plants that seem striving to strangle the elephants of stone, a learned traveler wandering in recent years came upon the statue of a maiden, in black granite, marvelously wrought. Her figure was nude and supple as those of the women of Krishna; on her head was the tiara of a princess, and from her joined hands escaped a cascade of flowers to fall upon the tablet supporting her exquisite feet. And on the tablet was the name NATALIKA; and above it a verse from the holy Ramayana, which signifies, in our tongue, these words:
...For I have been witness of this marvel, that by crushing the flowers in her hands, she made them to exhale a sweeter perfume.
And this is the story of Natalika, as it is told in the chronicle of the Moslem historian Ferista: