The flame-gatherers

by Margaret Horton Potter

Every morning, between dawn and sunrise, Oman and his three fellow-students assembled in the broad, sandy square near the apology of a temple to Siva, and there replenished the sacrificial fires, which were never extinguished. When the blaze was high and the sun had reached the horizon, Asvarman would make his appearance, and, seating himself before a fire with his face to the east, his pupils opposite him on the other side of the blaze, would begin the morning recitation of prayers—a dozen verses of the Rig-Veda, already familiar to the boys. After this, the students were instructed in Pâli texts, generally committing to heart each sentence as it was read. At noon they were dismissed to beg a meal in the village; and, early in the afternoon, they returned to continue their study, which lasted till sunset, when the evening Agnihotra was performed and they were dismissed for the night, burdened with an endless list of rules which they must not break on pain of penance. The only relief from this monotonous existence came on Uposatha days:—days of sacrifice to the new or the full moon; and certain sacred festival days, when ceremonial took the place of the usual study.

In a year, by means of this persistent application, the boys were able to read with tolerable fluency, both in Pâli and in Sanscrit. But the rigor of their labors was not lessened thereby. Rather, instruction now took a severer turn; for, young as they were, the little students were of Brahman birth, and, therefore, entitled to the highest education. According to the law, Asvarman now began to expound to these pathetic children the doctrines of the three mystic philosophies:—the Sankhya, the Vedanta, and the Yoga—speculations of such profound abstraction and such absolute intellectuality, that their effect on these childish minds would have been amusing had it not been pitiable. Solemnly, with his wide, unfathomable eyes fixed on the dull orbs of the priest, Oman, now at the age of nine, informed his master that Nature was created in order that the world-soul might become united with itself; that contemplation is the soul’s highest duty till its time of liberation from material fetters; and that only essence is infinite.

Just how much of this found some sort of home in the boy’s young mind, to reappear long years afterward with new meaning attached to it, it were difficult to say. Probably it was at this time, and through the agency of those vast philosophisms, that Oman’s double self began dimly to be shadowed forth. By the time he was eleven, and had been for three years a Snataka, he commenced in his own fashion to meditate, and, also in his own fashion, to suffer. Much that had hitherto lain dormant within him began to stir. He realized that he could scarcely fathom his own state. There seemed to lie within him two distinct natures: the one strong, non-combative, but self-rebellious; the other gentle, and weak, and shrinking. Until now he had had no clear idea of this. He had been all things at once. But the elements were beginning to resolve themselves. He had moods, of longer or shorter duration, during which one set of characteristics or the other seemed to dominate him. Half the time he wondered at himself angrily for his indecisiveness. The other half he shrank from self-analysis, and from any effort at study as well.

Immersed as he was in a self-conflict which he believed to be part of everybody’s ordinary life, his attempts at understanding himself tinctured all his thoughts, and his questions as to the philosophies and their significance always bore a personal relation to himself and his needs. Here he found not a little assistance. But with the Vedas it was different. There was nothing there to apply in any way to the inner life. The formal ritual, the Sutras, the Mantras, were all mere objective texts. And, gradually, as he strove in vain to find in them something personal, their meaningless intricacy impressed itself more and more upon him.

His life, at this time, was far from happy. He was closely bound, even as to his thoughts; and he had really no freedom. His state was almost constantly one of melancholy; but he was subject to violently changeable points of view; and, in his continual secret analysis and meditation, he endured the first pangs of loneliness. How strongly he felt all this, it would be difficult to say. At the time, his existence seemed to him overwhelming. Later on, he could remember it with yearning, as holding a peace and a contentment that would never come for him again.

The years passed over the head of the boy, slowly for him, swiftly for many around him; and when he was thirteen years old, and had been for five years a Snataka, a heavy sickness came, and he was taken to the home of his father, to be cared for there. He alone knew how, for many days, his body and his mind were torn with strangest anguish. Dimly he understood that the souls imprisoned in him were struggling mightily to burst the bonds of flesh, and free themselves. Finally came the evening that was always most vivid in his memory.

Toward sunset he was carried out into the vine-walled veranda of the house; and he felt that people—two, three, four—stood around him, looking upon him. He heard murmurings and exclamations, which gradually melted away; and then only his father and mother were there, standing on either side of him; and he felt afraid, and wept, in misery.

There, indeed, through the whole night, the man and the woman who had brought him into the world stood over him in the agony of the crisis, Kota shaken with sobs of affliction, Gokarna stiff and straight, hands clenched, skin damp with sweat. There the father gave up his son, the priest renounced his hope and his ambition. Lifting up his voice he prayed Siva to take the life of Ramasarman; and this prayer the child, and the mother of the child, dumbly echoed in their hearts. Yet, in the clear, red light of dawn, the agony left Oman’s body, and his mind, exhausted with a weight too terrible to bear, grew gradually quieter. Kota and Gokarna, knowing nothing more to do, spent with weariness and emotion, returned together in silence into the house, leaving Oman alone in the half-light of early day.

The child’s first sensation was one of extreme peace. Pain had left him; and the eyes, half curious, half horrified, that had watched him through the night, were gone. The early air came fresh and sweet to his dry lips; and it seemed to act on him as a powerful narcotic. He grew languorous and drowsy. The spirit within him was still; yet, somewhere, there was a tension. He could not quite give himself up to insensibility. Was it habit:—the old sense of rising at this hour to prepare the sacrifice? Not that. The Vedic ritual, and all its infinite detail, lay quite outside his path just now. No; it was rather a curious sense of expectation, of waiting for something to come—what, he neither knew nor asked. But the waiting was not long. From out of that clear, vermilion dawn-light, came flying a tiny, gray bird,—Spirit-bird, Hindoos call it,—slender-necked, clean-winged. This, hovering for an instant about the entrance to the veranda, darted suddenly in and plunged, quivering, into Oman’s breast.

The boy gave a faint cry—expressive of unutterable things—and laid his two hands with greatest gentleness upon the soft feathers, caressing the creature, and uttering to it little, inarticulate sounds. With the coming of this bird it was as if his being was suddenly complete. Now, for the moment, happy with a happiness that is beyond mortals, still clasping to his breast the feathered thing, which, under his touch, lay perfectly still, he closed his hot and aching eyes and slept.