7. To crown these specimens of the Sanscrit of Hélène, let us cite her “Hindoo chant,” which has made half a dozen appearances in the last two years, and of which Leopold deigned, on a single occasion, to outline the translation.
The utterances consist essentially of the Sanscrit word gaya “chant,” repeated to satiety, with here and there some other terms, badly articulated and offering discouraging variations in the notes taken by the different hearers. I will confine myself to two versions.
Fig. 36. Modulation of a Hindoo song. The final G of the three variations was held with perfect steadiness during fourteen seconds. The series A was often doubled and trebled before the continuation.
One of them is by Hélène herself. In a spontaneous vision (May 18, 1898, in the morning, upon awaking), she perceived a man, richly dressed in yellow and blue (Sivrouka), reclining upon beautiful cushions near a fountain surrounded by palm-trees; a brunette woman (Simandini) seats herself on the grass, sings to him in a strange language a ravishing melody. Hélène gathers the following fragments of it in writing, in which may be recognized the disfigured text of her ordinary song, “Ga haïa vahaïyami ... vassen iata ... pattissaïa priaïa.”
The other version is that of M. de Saussure, very much better qualified than we are to distinguish the Hindoo sounds. He was quite near Hélène, who sang seated upon the ground, whose voice for the moment articulated so badly that several words escaped him, and he does not vouch for the accuracy of his text, which is as follows, as he wrote it to the measure: “Gâya gaya naïa ia miya gayä briti ... gaya vaya yâni pritiya kriya gayâni i gâya mamatua gaya mama nara mama patii si gaya gandaryô gâya ityami vasanta ... gaya gaya yâmi gaya priti gaya priya gâya patisi....”
It was towards the end of this same seance that Leopold, undoubtedly with the idea of doing honor to the distinguished presence of M. de Saussure, decided, after a scene of Martian translation (text 14, by Esenale), to give us, in Hélène’s voice, his interpretation of the Hindoo chant, which follows, verbatim, with its mixture of Sanscrit words: “Sing, bird, let us sing! Gaya! Adèl, Sivrouka, sing of the spring-time! Day and night I am happy! Let us sing! Spring-time bird, happiness! ityâmi mamanara priti, let us sing! let us love! my king! Miousa, Adèl!”
In comparing these translations of the Hindoo text, certain points of resemblance are discovered between them. Outside the two perfectly correct words, gâya, song, and vasanta, spring-time, the idea of “let us love” is discovered in priti and briti (Sanscrit prîti, the act of loving), and an approximate equivalent of “my king” in mama patii, recalling the Sanscrit mama patê, “my husband, my master.”