Not that in emulous skill that sweetest bird
Her rival strain would try.—XIII. p. 10.
I have been assured, by a credible eye-witness, that two wild antelopes used often to come from their woods to the place where a more savage beast, Sirajuddaulah, entertained himself with concerts, and that they listened to the strains with an appearance of pleasure, till the monster, in whose soul there was no music, shot one of them, to display his archery. A learned native of this country told me that he had frequently seen the most venomous and malignant snakes leave their holes, upon hearing tunes on a flute, which, as he supposed, gave them peculiar delight. An intelligent Persian, who repeated his story again and again, and permitted me to write it down from his lips, declared, he had more than once been present when a celebrated lutanist, Mirza Mohammed, surnamed Bulbul, was playing to a large company, in a grove near Shiraz, where he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician; sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to approach the instrument whence the melody proceeded, and at length dropping on the ground, in a kind of ecstacy, from which they were soon raised, he assured me, by a change of the mode. I hardly know, says Sir William Jones, how to disbelieve the testimony of men who had no system of their own to support, and could have no interest in deceiving me.—Asiatic Researches.
No idle ornaments deface
Her natural grace.—XIII. p. 10.
The Hindoo Wife, in Sir William Jones’s poem, describes her own toilet-tasks:—
Nor were my night thoughts, I confess, Free from solicitude for dress; How best to bind my flowing hair With art, yet with an artless air,— My hair, like musk in scent and hue, Oh! blacker far, and sweeter too! In what nice braid, or glossy curl, To fix a diamond or a pearl, And where to smooth the love-spread toils With nard or jasmin’s fragrant oils; How to adjust the golden Teic,[30] And most adorn my forehead sleek;
What Condals[31] should emblaze my ears, Like Seita’s[32] waves, or Seita’s[33] tears; How elegantly to dispose Bright circlets for my well-form’d nose; With strings of rubies how to deck, Or emerald rows, my stately neck; While some that ebon tower embraced, Some pendent sought my slender waist; How next my purfled veil to chuse From silken stores of varied hues, Which would attract the roving view, Pink, violet, purple, orange, blue; The loveliest mantle to select, Or unembellished or bedeck’d; And how my twisted scarf to place With most inimitable grace, (Too thin its warp, too fine its woof, For eyes of males not beauty-proof;) What skirts the mantle best would suit, Ornate, with stars, or tissued fruit,
The flower-embroidered or the plain, With silver or with golden vein; The Chury[34] bright, which gayly shows Fair objects aptly to compose; How each smooth arm, and each soft wrist, By richest Cosees[35] might be kiss’d, While some my taper ankles round, With sunny radiance tinged the ground.
See how he kisses the lip of my rival, and imprints on her forehead an ornament of pure musk, black as the young antelope on the lunar orb! Now, like the husband of Reti, he fixes white blossoms on her dark locks, where they gleam like flashes of lightning among the curled clouds. On her breasts, like two firmaments, he places a string of gems like a radiant constellation; he binds on her arms, graceful as the stalks of the water-lily, and adorned with hands glowing like the petals of its flower, a bracelet of sapphires, which resemble a cluster of bees. Ah! see how he ties round her waist a rich girdle illumined with golden bells, which seem to laugh as they tinkle, at the inferior brightness of the leafy garlands which lovers hang on their bowers, to propitiate the god of desire. He places her soft foot, as he reclines by her side, on his ardent bosom, and stains it with the ruddy hue of Yavaca.—Songs of Jayadeva.
Sandal-streak.—XIII. p. 10.
The Hindoos, especially after bathing, paint their faces with ochres and sandal-wood ground very fine into a pulp.