At the same time at which she attentively examines the lines of my hand, she pronounces the following fragmentary sentences, separated by silences corresponding to the hallucinatory replies of Sivrouka: “Priya sivrouka ... nô [signifying No, according to Leopold] ... tvandastroum sivrouka ... itiami adia priya ... itiami sivra adia ... yatou ... napi adia ... nô ... mama souka, mama baga sivrouka ... yatou.” Besides sivra, which, Leopold says, is an affectionate name for Sivrouka, we can divine in this text other terms of affection: priya, beloved; mama soukha, mama bhâga, “Oh, my delight, oh, my happiness!” M. Glardon also calls attention to the word tvandastroum, which approaches the Hindustani tandarast (or tandurust), “who is in good health”—tandurusti, “health,” coming from the two words tan, “physical condition,” and durust, “good, true,” of Persian origin. But he adds that it is possibly only a coincidence, and seems to me doubtful whether he would have thought of the connection if it were not found in a scene of chiromancy.
5. The Hindoo cycle, like the others, makes numerous irruptions into the ordinary life of Mlle. Smith, and affects her personality in most varied degrees, from the simple waking vision of Oriental landscapes or people up to the total incarnations of Simandini, of which Hélène preserves no memory whatever. One frequent form of these spontaneous automatisms consists in certain mixed states, in which she perceives personages who seem to her objective and independent, while continuing to have the feeling of a subjective implication or identification in regard to them, the impression of an indefinable tua res agitur. It then easily happens that the conversations she has with them are a mixture of French and a foreign language which she is wholly ignorant of, though feeling the meaning of it. The following is an example:
March 1, 1898.—Between five and six in the morning, while still in bed but wide awake, as she affirms, Hélène had “a superb Hindoo vision.” Magnificent palace, with a huge staircase of white stone, leading to splendid halls furnished with low divans without cushions, of yellow, red, and more often of blue materials. In a boudoir a woman (Simandini) reclining and leaning nonchalantly on her elbow; on his knees near her a man with black curly hair, of dark complexion (Sivrouka), clothed in a large, red, embroidered robe, and speaking a foreign language, not Martian, which Hélène did not know, but which, however, she had the feeling of comprehending inwardly, and which enabled her to write some sentences of it in French after the vision. While she listened to this man speaking, she saw the lips of the woman open, without hearing any sound come from her mouth, in such a way that she did not know what she said, but Hélène had at the same time the impression of answering inwardly, in thought, to the conversation of the man, and she noted his reply. (This means, psychologically, that the words of Sivrouka gushed forth in auditive images or hallucinations, and the answers of Simandini-Hélène in psycho-motor-spoken images of articulation, accompanied by the usual representation of Simandini effectuating the corresponding labial movements.) Here is a fragment of conversation noted by Hélène in pencil at the outset of the vision, in her ordinary handwriting, but very irregular, attesting that she had not yet entirely regained her normal state.
(Sivrouka.) “My nights without repose, my eyes red with tears, Simandini, will not these touch at last thy attamana? Shall this day end without pardon, without love?” (Simandini.) “Sivrouka, no, the day shall not end without pardon, without love; the sumina has not been launched far from me, as thou hast supposed; it is there—dost thou see?” (Sivrouka.) “Simandini, my soucca, maccanna baguea—pardon me again, always!“
This little scrap of conversation, it may be remarked in passing, gives quite correctly the emotional note, which is strong throughout the whole length of the Hindoo dream in the relationship of its two chief personages. As to the Sanscritoid words which are there mingled with the French, they have not an equal value. “Sumina,” says M. de Saussure, “recalls nothing. Attamana, at most âtmânam (accusative of âtmâ), l’âme, ‘the soul’; but I hasten to say that in the context in which attamana figures one could not make use of the Sanscrit word which resembles it, and which at bottom only signifies (âme) ‘soul’ in philosophical language, and in the sense of ‘l’âme universelle,’ or other learned meanings.”
6. The apparition of isolated Hindoo words, or words incorporated in a non-Hindoo context, is not very rare with Hélène, and is produced sometimes in auditive hallucinations, sometimes in her writings (see, e. g., [Fig. 37], p. 333); sometimes, again, in the course of words uttered in hemisomnambulism more or less marked. The list which has been collected of these detached terms shows the same mixture of pure Sanscrit and unknown words, which can only be connected with that language by some transformation so arbitrary or forced as to destroy altogether the value of such comparison.
To this second category belong, for example, gava, vindamini, jotisse, also spelled by Mlle. Smith. These terms, of whose signification she is absolutely ignorant, struck her ear in the course of a Hindoo vision which occurred in the morning when she first awoke. The last of these words recalls to M. de Saussure the Sanscrit jyôtis, “a constellation”; but then he would pronounce it djiôtisse, which hardly corresponds to the manner in which Hélène heard and wrote it. There must be added to these examples certain Hindoo words which have made irruptions into some Martian texts.
These are Adèl, a proper name, and yestad, “unknown,” in text 13; and (in text 31) vadasa, which, according to the rest of the sentence, seems to designate some divinities or some powers, and in which MM. de Saussure and Glardon suspect a mangled reminiscence of the Sanscrit term dévâ-dâsa, “slave of the gods.”