Bubbles of the Foam | Page 6

the Hindoos resembled the
ancient Romans: the letter was decisive and irremediable, uti lingua
nuncupassit, ita jus esto.]
And then, as he listened to my doom, Kámadewa turned paler than the
ashes to which I had reduced him long ago, finding himself punished
for his insolence by me, for the second time. But the gods all exclaimed,
with approbation and delight: Victory to Maheshwara! who has once
more bitten the biter, and condemned him, by a sentence even more
merciful than he deserved. For what could be more intolerable than
even Heaven without Saraswati, unless it be the curse that is about to
produce such a melancholy condition of affairs?
And then, those two deities disappeared suddenly from Heaven, and
descended to be born as man and woman on the earth.[12]
[Footnote 12: This exordium, which has points of resemblance with
that of the insufferable Bána's Harsha-charita, is only the Hindoo
method of declaring that the two characters presently to be brought
upon the scene are mortal incarnations of love and charm: as we call a
man, an Adonis, or a woman, a Venus.]
III
Now just at that very moment, it happened, that there were living in the
desert two Rajpoots of the race of the Moon; and the name of the one
was Bimba, and that of the other, Jaya.[13] And Saraswati was born as
the daughter of the wife of Bimba, while Kámadewa was born as the
son of the wife of Jaya. Now Bimba was a king: and Jaya was his
cousin on the mother's side. And very soon afterwards, Jaya set upon
his cousin, laying claim to the throne, and driving him away, took his
kingdom, and kept it for himself. And he caught the wife of Bimba, and

put her to death, as he would have done also with her daughter and her
husband. But Bimba succeeded in escaping with his daughter, and ran
away and hid himself. So Jaya remained in triumph, reigning over the
kingdom, whose capital stood on the very spot on which we are sitting
now. For the kingdoms of the earth come and go upon it, like the
shadows of the clouds: and they grow up suddenly like grass, and
perish a little later, and vanish clean away, leaving behind them
absolutely nothing but mounds, such as those now lying all about thee,
and fragments of recollections, and half-forgotten names, like the
dreams of the night which morning obliterates and drives away,
vaguely hanging in its memory like wreaths of mist curling and
twisting on the black still surface of a pool in some dark valley
screened from the early sun by one of thy father's[14] peaks.
[Footnote 13: i.e. the disc of the moon, and victory. Pronounce Jaya to
rhyme with eye.]
[Footnote 14: i.e. the Himálaya.]
And of all the elements that made up Java's good fortune, there was not
one which filled him with such pride and exultation as his son. And he
looked upon him as the very fruit of his birth in visible form, little
dreaming, that could he but have looked into the future, and seen what
was coming, he would rather have deemed himself more fortunate to
live and die without any son at all, than to have begotten such a son as
he actually had. For sons resemble winds, which sometimes lift their
families like clouds to heaven, and sometimes dash them to the earth,
like hail.
For having waited so long to get a son at all, till hope was all but gone,
the joy of both his parents, when he actually arrived, was so
extravagantly great, that they could not make too much of him. And as
he grew up, they spoiled him so completely, by the want of all
discretion in their admiration and the flattery of their affectionate
caresses, that after a while he became utterly intolerable, even to
themselves. And this came about, not only by reason of their own
foolishness, but also by the very disposition and qualities of that son
himself. For he was so marvellously beautiful, that every time they saw

him, they could hardly believe their own eyes, and were ready to
abandon the body out of joy. And in the intoxication of delight they
gave him the name of Atirupa,[15] which was no more than he
deserved. And he became a byword and a wonder in the world, till the
heart of his mother almost broke with the swelling of its own pride. For
nothing like him had ever been seen by anybody, even in a dream, since
his beauty did not in the least resemble that of other men, but hovered
as it were half-way between one sex and the other, as if the Creator
when he made him, unable to decide,