Tara: A Mahratta Tale

by Meadows Taylor

"Something has moved the people more than ordinarily, lady," said a priest who advanced from the outer court. "The assembly can be seen from the bastion yonder, and I have been watching it while you were within; if you would look, follow me."

She drew the shawl more closely around her, and went with him through the court to the bastion, which, situated on the edge of an angle of the precipice, commanded a view of the town and valley below. The moon shone clear and bright, else she had looked into a black void; but the air was soft and white, of a tint like opal, as the moon's rays caught the thin vapours now rising. Some thousands of feet below, was a bright spot in a dell, filled with torches, which sent up a dull smoke, while they diffused a bright light on all around. There were many thousands of people there, mostly men, and there was a glitter as of weapons among them, as the masses still heaved and swayed under the influence of some strange excitement. She could make out no particular forms, but she knew that her son sat in the pavilion at the end, and about that there was no movement. As she looked, the shout they had first heard arose more clearly than before—"Hur, Hur, Mahadeo! Dônguras-lavilé Déva!"[15]

"O Mother," she cried, stretching out her arms to the sky, and then to the dell below, "enough! thou hast heard the prayer of thy daughter: thou wast there with him, not with me. Now I understand, and it is enough. Come, Bheemee, it is cold," she said, after a pause, and in her usual cheerful voice, "thou shouldst have been yonder in the Kutha, girl, and all of you. Well, the next, to-morrow night, will be a better one, and you shall all go, for I will go myself with the Maharaja; come now, they will not return till daylight;" and descending the steps of the bastion, she followed her servants, who preceded her, to the private apartments.

Below, Sivaji had been busy since before sunset. He had descended the mountain on foot, attended by his body-guard, and a large company of the garrison of the fort—a gay procession, as, accompanied by the pipers and horn-blowers of the fortress, it had wound down the rugged pathway in the full glare of the evening sun; and, amidst the shouts of thousands, and a confused and hideous clangour, caused by the independent performances of all the pipers and drummers of the clans assembled—the screaming, quivering notes of the long village horns, the clash of cymbals, and the deep tones of some of the large brass trumpets belonging to the temple, which had been brought down from the fort,—Sivaji passed on round the village to the spot which had been cleared for the Kutha.

It was a glen from which all wood had long been cleared away, and short crisp grass had grown up in its place, which, moistened by the perpetual drainage of the mountain, was always close and verdant. Near enough to the village to serve as a grazing ground for its cattle, the herbage was kept short by them; and the passage round and round its sides of beasts of all kinds, goats and sheep, cows, bullocks, and buffaloes, had worn them into paths which formed, as it were, a series of steps, rising gradually to the edge of the forest above.

In the midst was a bright green sward, soft and close, and of some extent, and at all times of the year the resort of the village youth for athletic exercises—wrestling, leaping, archery, shooting with the matchlock, or, most favoured of all perhaps, the sword-playing for which the Mahratta soldiery were almost celebrated. A projecting mound, which might have been artificial, and was possibly the partly completed embankment of some intended reservoir, stretched nearly across its mouth, and while its grassy surface afforded seats to many of the spectators, it shut out the valley beyond, from all observers.

At the upper end of the dell, which in shape was a long oval, and slightly raised above the level sward, was the Rajah's seat, a platform of sods and earth, covered with dry grass, and then with carpets from the fort, upon which the Guddee, or seat of state, was placed. Directly the Rajah had retired from the morning ceremony, the cushions had been taken down the mountain and placed on this dais, which afforded room also for many personal friends and priests who attended the ceremony with him.

In the centre of the sward, but near the upper end, was the place for the players. The smoothest portion of turf had been selected, and around it wattled screens were built, made of leafy branches, for entrance and exit, and also to allow of changes of dress, rest during intervals of performance, and the like. The stage, if it might be called one, was bounded by wild plantain trees cut off at the root, and set in the ground so that the broad leaves continued fresh and green; and above these were twined branches of teak with their large rough foliage, bamboos, and other slender trees readily felled and transported, while long masses of flowery creepers had been cut from the forest, and hung from poles at each side above the players' heads in graceful festoons. Inside all this foliage, were huge cressets of iron filled with cotton-seed soaked in oil, and all round the area below, and especially round the Rajah's seat, similar torches had been arranged, which would be lighted as the ceremony began, and illuminate the whole.