46. Saying so, she began to shudder with fear at the woeful sight of her husband’s person, and fell insensible on the ground like a creeper cut off by an axe.
47. Vidúratha though thus mutilated and disabled, was rising to smite the enemy in his rage, when he fell down from his car like an uprooted tree, and was replaced there by his charioteer ready to make his retreat.
48. At this instant, the savage Sindhu struck a sabre on his neck, and pursued the car in which the dying monarch was borne back to his tent.
49. The body of Padma (alias Vidúratha), was placed like a lotus in the presence of Sarasvatí, shining with the splendour of the sun; but the elated Sindhu was kept from entering that abode, like a giddy fly from a flame.
50. The charioteer entered in the apartment, and placed the body in its death-bed, all mangled and besmeared with blood, exuding from the pores of the severed neck, in the presence of the goddess, from where the enemy returned to his camp.
(Gloss). Here Padma fighting in the person of Vidúratha, and falling bravely in the field, obtained his redemption by his death in the presence of the goddess; but the savage Sindhu, who slew his foiled foe in his retreat, proved a ruffian in his barbarous act, and could have no admittance into the presence of the goddess and to his future salvation.
CONCLUSION.
The whole vision of Lílá, like that of Mirza, shows the state of human life, with its various incidents and phases to its last termination by death. It is not so compact and allegorical as that of the western essayist; but as idle effusions of those ideal reveries or loose vagaries which are characteristic of the wild imagination of eastern rhapsodists. The discontented Bráhmana longs for royal dignity, imagines to himself all its enjoyments in the person of Padma, and sees at last all its evils in the character of Vidúratha; which serves as a lesson to aspirants from aiming at high worldly honours which end in their destruction.
Lílá by her wisdom sees in her silent meditation, the whole course and vicissitudes of the world, and the rise and fall of human glory in the aspirations of her husband. These parables serve to show the nature of Yoga philosophy to be no other, than an absolute idealism or mental abstraction, consisting in the abstract knowledge of all things appertaining to our temporal as well as Spiritual concerns.
The knowledge is derived either by intuition as that of the Bráhmana and Padma, or by inspiration like that of the genius of wisdom to her votary Lílá. It may also be had by means of communication with others, as in the discourse of Ráma and his preceptor; as also from the attentive perusal of such works as the present one, treating both of temporal and spiritual subjects, and reviewing them with the eye of the mind.