The dreamy solitudes in which Valmiki and Vyasa love to linger have a restfulness about them which the European, unused to Eastern lands, can hardly comprehend. They have also a mystery only to be found in primæval forests, and they possess a dark background of horror, in the roar of the ferocious tiger, the hiss of the deadly serpent, and the grip of the invisible fever-fiend, enough to awaken strange and gloomy imaginings.
The few who have lived, as I have done, through changing seasons in the dense forests of Eastern India, can hover in spirit through Valmiki and Vyasa’s woodlands of the past.
First it is summer, and the hot sunbeams come filtering through the leafy covering, under the shadow of which man and beast listlessly repose through uneventful hours, while the shrill cricket chirps its monotonous song and the cokil’s sweet note fills the hot and trembling air. Then the black clouds gather overhead. God Indra parts them with his flashing bolts. Loud thunder peals in the sky, the roaring hurricane enters into fearful conflict with the warring trees, and the rain descends, not in tiny drizzles, but in torrents; and its voice, as it buries itself in square miles of standing forest, is like the roar of many waters. Cascades, starting into life, leap gladly from the hill-side. The swollen streams, muddy and impassable, swirl and rush along, carrying with them a burden of forest trees. A mantle of vivid green covers, as if by magic, the whole earth, and climbs up till it almost hides the little cottage in which the proprietor takes refuge from the incessant drip, which descends from the leafy covering above.
To this succeeds a period when the steamy miasma rises in the green light from the rotten ground, and man and beast sicken in the malarious atmosphere, wherein the odour of decaying vegetation mingles with the exquisite perfume of orchids and strange flowers of the wilderness. In the glorious sky—in mystic cloudland—appear displays of light and colour, of subtle tints and gorgeous hues, utterly beyond description or the artist’s cunningest skill. Watch, with fevered vision, from the neighbourhood of one of these dark forests the rapidly shifting cloud-phantasms, arrayed in red and gold, upon the evening sky, then cease from marvelling at the exuberant and unbridled imaginings of the Indian bard! Fix your attention at night upon the monstrous shapes which hover, skulking in the background, in the flickering firelight, listen to the unearthly wailing and stifled cries which steal through the hideous darkness, and doubt no more the existence and doings of gruesome Rakshasas who change their shapes at will! Learn also, at the same time, how indispensable a god is Agni, who protects you through the horrors of darkest night in the forests.
Later in the year winter smiles mildly over the enervated land and chills the tepid air. For hours after sunrise a dense fog wraps the primæval forest in its embrace, but when it, ghost-like, steals silently away, it reveals the white smoke of the cottages curling upwards into a blue unclouded sky. The sun hardly affords sufficient warmth to the labourer in the little patch of cultivation near the hut, and the moon looks cold and pallid: the streams begin to dwindle away; the cascades are silent.
Such is the succession of seasons in a tropical forest-land like the India of the Epics. And, throughout all the seasons, the forest is enveloped in a dreamy air of depression and despondency, which peoples the solitudes with hideous Rakshasas, but leaves no place for sporting nymphs or dancing fairies. Life in such woodlands is real forest-life, not like Thoreau’s delightful playing at hermit in Walden, within a couple of miles of Concord, and in sight of a railway.
Thus far the forests; but the sublime Alps of the Indian world, tallest and most majestic of mountains, have not been without influence upon the feelings of the Indian poets, elevating them to lofty heights of contemplation. And when we read what the few travellers who have penetrated those regions have to tell us of the ineffable grandeur and sublimity of the lone mountains, the glittering ice-fields, and the untrodden snows of the interior, when we consider the solemn silence of those uninhabited solitudes, we cannot wonder that the Indian poets who had heard of them, and perhaps visited their rocky fastnesses, made of them a land of mystery and the sporting place of their gods and Apsaras.
Not only from the woods of Dandhaka and the vales and crests of mighty Himavat did the epic poets of India gather inspiration; but also from the noble and lovely rivers of their fair land, winding beneficently through many hundreds of miles of fertile country, from their birth-places above the clouds to the bosom of the all-embracing ocean, while determining in their course the march of migration and conquest.
Mountains, forests and rivers, all of colossal proportions, have served to impress a grandiose if bewildering character upon the great Epics of India, which the reader, even of this volume, can hardly fail to observe.
Religion, being the dominant note of these voluminous poems, claims our first consideration. In this connection I would draw attention to the fact that India is very far from that stage of intellectual development in which literature, science, art and politics become secularized. In Europe secularization has taken place gradually under the influence of the spirit of rationalism, as Mr. Lecky has so admirably explained. In India a beginning has been made in the secularization of knowledge. It is yet only a mere beginning, which owes its origin to the influence of English education; but the effects being confined to a very small class indeed, it may still be said with truth that all departments of knowledge which form the intellectual heritage of the Indian people—even law, poetry and the drama—fall within the domain of theology. And, certainly, there is no indigenous science amongst the Hindus which is not subject to priestly influence and interpretation.