Читать книгу: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876», страница 5

"And now," said Bhima Gandharva next day, "while you are thinking upon temples, and wondering if the Hindus have all been fools, you should complete your collection of mental materials by adding to the sight you have had of a Hindu temple proper, and to the description you have had of Jain temples proper, a sight of those marvelous subterranean works of the Buddhists proper which remain to us. We might select our examples of these either at Ellora or at Ajunta (which are on the mainland a short distance to the north-east of Bombay), the latter of which contains the most complete series of purely Buddhistic caves known in the country; or, indeed, we could find Buddhistic caves just yonder on Salsette. But let us go and see Karli at once: it is the largest shaîtya (or cave-temple) in India."

Accordingly, we took railway at Bombay, sped along the isle, over the bridge to the island of Salsette, along Salsette to Tannah, then over the bridge which connects Salsette with the mainland, across the narrow head of Bombay harbor, and so on to the station at Khandalla, about halfway between Bombay and Poonah, where we disembarked. The caves of Karli are situated but a few miles from Khandalla, and in a short time we were standing in front of a talus at the foot of a sloping hill whose summit was probably five to six hundred feet high. A flight of steps cut in the hillside led up to a ledge running out from an escarpment which was something above sixty feet high before giving off into the slope of the mountain. From the narrow and picturesque valley a flight of steps cut in the hillside led up to the platform. We could not see the façade of the shaîtya on account of the concealing boscage of trees. On ascending the steps, however, and passing a small square Brahmanic chapel, where we paid a trifling fee to the priests who reside there for the purpose of protecting the place, the entire front of the excavation revealed itself, and with every moment of gazing grew in strangeness and solemn mystery.

The shaîtya is hewn in the solid rock of the mountain. Just to the left of the entrance stands a heavy pillar (Silasthamba) completely detached from the temple, with a capital upon whose top stand four lions back to back. On this pillar is an inscription in Pali, which has been deciphered, and which is now considered to fix the date of the excavation conclusively at not later than the second century before the Christian era. The eye took in at first only the vague confusion of windows and pillars cut in the rock. It is supposed that originally a music-gallery stood here in front, consisting of a balcony supported out from the two octagonal pillars, and probably roofed or having a second balcony above. But the woodwork is now gone. One soon felt one's attention becoming concentrated, however, upon a great arched window cut in the form of a horseshoe, through which one could look down what was very much like the nave of a church running straight back into the depths of the hill. Certainly, at first, as one passes into the strange vestibule which intervenes still between the front and the interior of the shaîtya, one does not think at all—one only feels the dim sense of mildness raying out from the great faces of the elephants, and of mysterious far-awayness conveyed by the bizarre postures of the sculptured figures on the walls.

Entering the interior, a central nave stretches back between two lines of pillars, each of whose capitals supports upon its abacus two kneeling elephants: upon each elephant are seated two figures, most of which are male and female pairs. The nave extends eighty-one feet three inches back, the whole length of the temple being one hundred and two feet three inches. There are fifteen pillars on each side the nave, which thus enclose between themselves and the wall two side-aisles, each about half the width of the nave, the latter being twenty-five feet and seven inches in width, while the whole width from wall to wall is forty-five feet and seven inches. At the rear, in a sort of apse, are seven plain octagonal pillars—the other thirty are sculptured. Just in front of these seven pillars is the Daghaba—a domed structure covered by a wooden parasol. The Daghaba is the reliquary in which or under which some relic of Gotama Buddha is enshrined. The roof of the shaîtya is vaulted, and ribs of teak-wood—which could serve no possible architectural purpose—reveal themselves, strangely enough, running down the sides.

As I took in all these details, pacing round the dark aisles, and finally resuming my stand near the entrance, from which I perceived the aisles, dark between the close pillars and the wall, while the light streamed through the great horseshoe window full upon the Daghaba at the other end, I exclaimed to Bhima Gandharva, "Why, it is the very copy of a Gothic church—the aisles, the nave, the vaulted roof, and all—and yet you tell me it was excavated two thousand years ago!"

"The resemblance has struck every traveler," he replied. "And, strange to say, all the Buddhist cave-temples are designed upon the same general plan. There is always the organ-loft, as you see there; always the three doors, the largest one opening on the nave, the smaller ones each on its side-aisle; always the window throwing its light directly on the Daghaba at the other end; always, in short, the general arrangement of the choir of a Gothic round or polygonal apse cathedral. It is supposed that the devotees were confined to the front part of the temple, and that the great window through which the light comes was hidden from view, both outside by the music-galleries and screens, and inside through the disposition of the worshipers in front. The gloom of the interior was thus available to the priests for the production of effects which may be imagined."

Emerging from the temple, we saw the Buddhist monastery (Vihara), which is a series of halls and cells rising one above the other in stories connected by flights of steps, all hewn in the face of the hill at the side of the temple. We sat down on a fragment of rock near a stream of water with which a spring in the hillside fills a little pool at the entrance of the Vihara. "Tell me something of Gotama Buddha," I said. "Recite some of his deliverances, O Bhima Gandharva!—you who know everything."

"I will recite to you from the Sutta Nipata, which is supposed by many pundits of Ceylon to contain several of the oldest examples of the Pali language. It professes to give the conversation of Buddha, who died five hundred and forty-three years before Christ lived on earth; and these utterances are believed by scholars to have been brought together at least more than two hundred years before the Christian era. The Mahámangala Sutta, of the Nipata Sutta, says, for example: 'Thus it was heard by me. At a certain time Bhagavá (Gotama Buddha) lived at Sávatthi in Jetavana, in the garden of Anáthupindika. Then, the night being far advanced, a certain god, endowed with a radiant color illuminating Jetavana completely, came to where Bhagavá was, [and] making obeisance to him, stood on one side. And, standing on one side, the god addressed Bhagavá in [these] verses:

"1. Many gods and men, longing after what is good, have considered many things as blessings. Tell us what is the greatest blessing.

"2. Buddha said: Not serving fools, but serving the wise, and honoring those worthy of being honored: this is the greatest blessing.

"3. The living in a fit country, meritorious deeds done in a former existence, the righteous establishment of one's self: this is the greatest blessing.

"4. Extensive knowledge and science, well-regulated discipline and well-spoken speech: this is the greatest blessing.

"5. The helping of father and mother, the cherishing of child and wife, and the following of a lawful calling: this is the greatest blessing.

"6. The giving alms, a religious life, aid rendered to relatives, blameless acts: this is the greatest blessing.

"7. The abstaining from sins and the avoiding them, the eschewing of intoxicating drink, diligence in good deeds: this is the greatest blessing.

"8. Reverence and humility, contentment and gratefulness, the hearing of the law in the right time: this is the greatest blessing.

"9. Patience and mild speech, the association with those who have subdued their passions, the holding of religious discourse in the right time: this is the greatest blessing.

"10. Temperance and charity, the discernment of holy truth, the perception of Nibbána: this is the greatest blessing.

"11. The mind of any one unshaken by the ways of the world, exemption from sorrow, freedom from passion, and security: this is the greatest blessing.

"12. Those who having done these things become invincible on all sides, attain happiness on all sides: this is the greatest blessing."

"At another time also Gotama Buddha was discoursing on caste. You know that the Hindus are divided into the Brahmans, or the priestly caste, which is the highest; next the Kshatriyas, or the warrior and statesman caste; next the Vaishyas, or the herdsman and farmer caste; lastly, the Sudras, or the menial caste. Now, once upon a time the two youths Vásettha and Bháradvaja had a discussion as to what constitutes a Brahman. Thus, Vásettha and Bháradvaja went to the place where Bhagavá was, and having approached him were well pleased with him; and having finished a pleasing and complimentary conversation, they sat down on one side. Vásettha, who sat down on one side, addressed Buddha in verse: …

"3. O Gotama! we have a controversy regarding [the distinctions of] birth. Thus know, O wise one! the point of difference between us: Bháradvaja says that a Brahman is such by reason of his birth.

"4. But I affirm that he is such by reason of his conduct....

"7. Bhagavá replied: …

"53. I call him alone a Brahman who is fearless, eminent, heroic, a great sage, a conqueror, freed from attachments—one who has bathed in the waters of wisdom, and is a Buddha.

"54. I call him alone a Brahman who knows his former abode, who sees both heaven and hell, and has reached the extinction of births.

"55. What is called 'name' or 'tribe' in the world arises from usage only. It is adopted here and there by common consent.

"56. It comes from long and uninterrupted usage, and from the false belief of the ignorant. Hence the ignorant assert that a Brahman is such from birth.

"57. One is not a Brahman nor a non-Brahman by birth: by his conduct alone is he a Brahman, and by his conduct alone is he a non-Brahman,

"58. By his conduct he is a husbandman, an artisan, a merchant, a servant;

"59. By his conduct he is a thief, a warrior, a sacrificer, a king....

"62. One is a Brahman from penance, charity, observance of the moral precepts and the subjugation of the passions. Such is the best kind of Brahmanism."

"That would pass for very good republican doctrine in Jonesville," I said. "What a pity you have all so backslidden from your orthodoxies here in India, Bhima Gandharva! In my native land there is a region where many orange trees grow. Sometimes, when a tree is too heavily fertilized, it suddenly shoots out in great luxuriance, and looks as if it were going to make oranges enough for the whole world, so to speak. But somehow, no fruit comes: it proves to be all wood and no oranges, and presently the whole tree changes and gets sick and good for nothing. It is a disease which the natives call 'the dieback.' Now, it seems to me that when you old Aryans came from—from—well, from wherever you did come from—you branched out at first into a superb magnificence of religions and sentiments and imaginations and other boscage. But it looks now as if you were really bad off with the dieback."

It was, however, impossible to perceive that Bhima Gandharva's smile was like anything other than the same plain full of ripe corn.

LADY ARTHUR EILDON'S DYING LETTER

I

Lady Arthur Eildon was a widow: she was a remarkable woman, and her husband, Lord Arthur Eildon, had been a remarkable man. He was a brother of the duke of Eildon, and was very remarkable in his day for his love of horses and dogs. But this passion did not lead him into any evil ways: he was a thoroughly upright, genial man, with a frank word for every one, and was of course a general favorite. "He'll just come in and crack away as if he was ane o' oorsels," was a remark often made concerning him by the people on his estates; for he had estates which had been left to him by an uncle, and which, with the portion that fell to him as a younger son, yielded him an ample revenue, so that he had no need to do anything.

What talents he might have developed in the army or navy, or even in the Church, no one knows, for he never did anything in this world except enjoy himself; which was entirely natural to him, and not the hard work it is to many people who try it. He was in Parliament for a number of years, but contented himself with giving his vote. He did not distinguish himself. He was not an able or intellectual man: people said he would never set the Thames on fire, which was true; but if an open heart and hand and a frank tongue are desirable things, these he had. As he took in food, and it nourished him without further intervention on his part, so he took in enjoyment and gave it out to the people round him with equal unconsciousness. Let it not be said that such a man as this is of no value in a world like ours: he is at once an anodyne and a stimulant of the healthiest and most innocent kind.

As was meet, he first saw the lady who was to be his wife in the hunting-field. She was Miss Garscube of Garscube, an only child and an heiress. She was a fast young lady when as yet fastness was a rare development:—a harbinger of the fast period, the one swallow that presages summer, but does not make it—and as such much in the mouths of the public.

Miss Garscube was said to be clever—she was certainly eccentric—and she was no beauty, but community of tastes in the matter of horses and dogs drew her and Lord Arthur together.

On one of the choicest of October days, when she was following the hounds, and her horse had taken the fences like a creature with wings, he came to one which he also flew over, but fell on the other side, throwing off his rider—on soft grass, luckily. But almost before an exclamation of alarm could leave the mouths of the hunters behind, Miss Garscube was on her feet and in the saddle, and her horse away again, as if both had been ignorant of the little mishap that had occurred. Lord Arthur was immediately behind, and witnessed this bit of presence of mind and pluck with unfeigned admiration: it won his heart completely; and on her part she enjoyed the genuineness of his homage as she had never enjoyed anything before, and from that day things went on and prospered between them.

People who knew both parties regretted this, and shook their heads over it, prophesying that no good could come of it. Miss Garscube's will had never been crossed in her life, and she was a "clever" woman: Lord Arthur would not submit to her domineering ways, and she would wince under and be ashamed of his want of intellect. All this was foretold and thoroughly believed by people having the most perfect confidence in their own judgment, so that Lord Arthur and his wife ought to have been, in the very nature of things, a most wretched pair. But, as it turned out, no happier couple existed in Great Britain. Their qualities must have been complementary, for they dovetailed into each other as few people do; and the wise persons who had predicted the contrary were entirely thrown out in their calculations—a fact which they speedily forgot; nor did it diminish their faith in their own wisdom, as, indeed, how could one slight mistake stand against an array of instances in which their predictions had been verified to the letter?

Lord Arthur might not have the intellect which fixes the attention of a nation, but he had plenty for his own fireside—at least, his wife never discovered any want of it—and as for her strong will, they had only one strong will between them, so that there could be no collision. Being thus thoroughly attached and thoroughly happy, what could occur to break up this happiness? A terrible thing came to pass. Having had perfect health up to middle life, an acutely painful disease seized Lord Arthur, and after tormenting him for more than a year it changed his face and sent him away.

There is nothing more striking than the calmness and dignity with which people will meet death—even people from whom this could not have been expected. No one who did not know it would have guessed how Lord Arthur was suffering, and he never spoke of it, least of all to his wife; while she, acutely aware of it and vibrating with sympathy, never spoke of it to him; and they were happy as those are who know that they are drinking the last drops of earthly happiness. He died with his wife's hand in his grasp: she gave the face—dead, but with the appearance of life not vanished from it—one long, passionate kiss, and left him, nor ever looked on it again.

Lady Arthur secluded herself for some weeks in her own room, seeing no one but the servants who attended her; and when she came forth it was found that her eccentricity had taken a curious turn: she steadily ignored the death of her husband, acting always as if he had gone on a journey and might at any moment return, but never naming him unless it was absolutely necessary. She found comfort in this simulated delusion no doubt, just as a child enjoys a fairy-tale, knowing perfectly well all the time that it is not true. People in her own sphere said her mind was touched: the common people about her affirmed without hesitation that she was "daft." She rode no more, but she kept all the horses and dogs as usual. She cultivated a taste she had for antiquities; she wrote poetry– ballad poetry—which people who were considered judges thought well of; and flinging these and other things into the awful chasm that had been made in her life, she tried her best to fill it up. She set herself to consider the poor man's case, and made experiments and gave advice which confirmed her poorer brethren in their opinion that she was daft; but as her hand was always very wide open, and they pitied her sorrow, she was much loved, although they laughed at her zeal in preserving old ruins and her wrath if an old stone was moved, and told, and firmly believed, that she wrote and posted letters to Lord Arthur. What was perhaps more to the purpose of filling the chasm than any of these things, Lady Arthur adopted a daughter, an orphan child of a cousin of her own, who came to her two years after her husband's death, a little girl of nine.

II

Alice Garscube's education was not of the stereotyped kind. When she came to Garscube Hall, Lady Arthur wrote to the head-master of a normal school asking if he knew of a healthy, sagacious, good-tempered, clever girl who had a thorough knowledge of the elementary branches of education and a natural taste for teaching. Mr. Boyton, the head-master, replied that he knew of such a person whom he could entirely recommend, having all the qualities mentioned; but when he found that it was not a teacher for a village school that her ladyship wanted, but for her own relation, he wrote to say that he doubted the party he had in view would hardly be suitable: her father, who had been dead for some years, was a workingman, and her mother, who had died quite recently, supported herself by keeping a little shop, and she herself was in appearance and manner scarcely enough of the lady for such a situation. Now, Lady Arthur, though a firm believer in birth and race, and by habit and prejudice an aristocrat and a Tory, was, we know, eccentric by nature, and Nature will always assert itself. She wrote to Mr. Boyton that if the girl he recommended was all he said, she was a lady inside, and they would leave the outside to shift for itself. Her ladyship had considered the matter. She could get decayed gentlewomen and clergymen and officers' daughters by the dozen, but she did not want a girl with a sickly knowledge of everything, and very sickly ideas of her own merits and place and work in the world: she wanted a girl of natural sagacity, who from her cradle had known that she came into the world to do something, and had learned how to do it.

Miss Adamson, the normal-school young lady recommended, wrote thus to Lady Arthur:

"MADAM: I am very much tempted to take the situation you offer me. If I were teacher of a village school, as I had intended, when my work in the school was over I should have had my time to myself; and I wish to stipulate that when the hours of teaching Miss Garscube are over I may have the same privilege. If you engage me, I think, so far as I know myself, you will not be disappointed.

"I am," etc. etc.

To which Lady Arthur:

"So far as I can judge, you are the very thing I want. Come, and we shall not disagree about terms," etc. etc.

Thus it came about that Miss Garscube was unusually lucky in the matter of her education and Miss Adamson in her engagement. Although eccentric to the pitch of getting credit for being daft, Lady Arthur had a strong vein of masculine sense, which in all essential things kept her in the right path. Miss Adamson and she suited each other thoroughly, and the education of the two ladies and the child may be said to have gone on simultaneously. Miss Adamson had an absorbing pursuit: she was an embryo artist, and she roused a kindred taste in her pupil; so that, instead of carrying on her work in solitude, as she had expected to do, she had the intense pleasure of sympathy and companionship. Lady Arthur often paid them long visits in their studio; she herself sketched a little, but she had never excelled in any single pursuit except horsemanship, and that she had given up at her husband's death, as she had given up keeping much company or going often into society.

In this quiet, unexciting, regular life Lady Arthur's antiquarian tastes grew on her, and she went on writing poetry, the quantity of which was more remarkable than the quality, although here and there in the mass of ore there was an occasional sparkle from fine gold (there are few voluminous writers in which this accident does not occur). She superintended excavations, and made prizes of old dust and stones and coins and jewelry (or what was called ancient jewelry: it looked ancient enough, but more like rusty iron to the untrained eye than jewelry) and cooking utensils supposed to have been used by some noble savages or other. Of these and such like she had a museum, and she visited old monuments and cairns and Roman camps and Druidical remains and old castles, and all old things, with increasing interest. There were a number of places near or remote to which she was in the habit of making periodical pilgrimages—places probably dear to her from whim or association or natural beauty or antiquity. When she fixed a time for such an excursion, no weather changed her purpose: it might pour rain or deep snow might be on the ground: she only put four horses to her carriage instead of two, and went on her way. She was generally accompanied in these expeditions by her two young friends, who got into the spirit of the thing and enjoyed them amazingly. They were in the habit of driving to some farm-house, where they left the carriage and on foot ascended the hill they had come to call on, most probably a hill with the marks of a Roman camp on it—there are many such in the south of Scotland—hills called "the rings" by the people, from the way in which the entrenchments circle round them like rings.

Dear to Lady Arthur's heart was such a place as this. Even when the ground was covered with snow or ice she would ascend with the help of a stick or umbrella, a faint adumbration of the Alpine Club when as yet the Alpine Club lurked in the future and had given no hint of its existence. On the top of such a hill she would eat luncheon, thinking of the dust of legions beneath her foot, and drink wine to the memory of the immortals. The coachman and the footman who toiled up the hill bearing the luncheon-basket, and slipping back two steps for every one they took forward, had by no means the same respect for the immortal heroes. The coachman was an old servant, and had a great regard for Lady Arthur both as his mistress and as a lady of rank, besides being accustomed to and familiar with her whims, and knowing, as he said, "the best and the warst o' her;" but the footman was a new acquisition and young, and he had not the wisdom to see at all times the duty of giving honor to whom honor is due, nor yet had he the spirit of the born flunkey; and his intercourse with the nobility, unfortunately, had not impressed him with any other idea than that they were mortals like himself; so he remarked to his fellow-servant, "Od! ye wad think, if she likes to eat her lunch amang snawy slush, she might get enough of it at the fut o' the hill, without gaun to the tap."

"Weel, I'll no deny," said the older man, "but what it's daftlike, but if it is her leddyship's pleasure, it's nae business o' oors."

"Pleasure!" said the youth: "if she ca's this pleasure, her friends should see about shutting her up: it's time."

"She says the Romans once lived here," said John.

"If they did," Thomas said, "I daur say they had mair sinse than sit down to eat their dinner in the middle o' snaw if they had a house to tak it in."

"Her leddyship does na' tak the cauld easy," said John.

"She has the constitution o' a horse," Thomas remarked.

"Man," said John, "that shows a' that ye ken about horses: there's no a mair delicate beast on the face o' the earth than the horse. They tell me a' the horses in London hae the influenza the now."

"Weel, it'll be our turn next," said Thomas, "if we dinna tak something warm."

When luncheon was over her ladyship as often as not ordered her servants to take the carriage round by the turnpike-road to a given point, where she arranged to meet it, while she herself struck right over the hills as the crow flies, crossing the burns on her way in the same manner as the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, only the water did not stand up on each side and leave dry ground for her to tread on; but she ignored the water altogether, and walked straight through. The young ladies, knowing this, took an extra supply of stockings and shoes with them, but Lady Arthur despised such effeminate ways and drove home in the footgear she set out in. She was a woman of robust health, and having grown stout and elderly and red-faced, when out on the tramp and divested of externals she might very well have been taken for the eccentric landlady of a roadside inn or the mistress of a luncheon-bar; and probably her young footman did not think she answered to her own name at all.

There is a divinity that doth hedge a king, but it is the king's wisdom to keep the hedge close and well trimmed and allow no gaps: if there are gaps, people see through them and the illusion is destroyed. Lady Arthur was not a heroine to her footman; and when she traversed the snow-slush and walked right through the burns, he merely endorsed the received opinion that she wanted "twopence of the shilling." If she had been a poor woman and compelled to take such a journey in such weather, people would have felt sorry for her, and have been ready to subscribe to help her to a more comfortable mode of traveling; but in Lady Arthur's case of course there was nothing to be done but to wonder at her eccentricity.

But her ladyship knew what she was about. The sleep as well as the food of the laboring man is sweet, and if nobility likes to labor, it will partake of the poor man's blessing. The party arrived back among the luxurious appointments of Garscube Hall (which were apt to pall on them at times) legitimately and bodily tired, and that in itself was a sensation worth working for. They had braved difficulty and discomfort, and not for a nonsensical and fruitless end, either: it can never be fruitless or nonsensical to get face to face with Nature in any of her moods. The ice-locked streams, the driven snow, the sleep of vegetation, a burst of sunshine over the snow, the sough of the winter wind, Earth waiting to feel the breath of spring on her face to waken up in youth and beauty again, like the sleeping princess at the touch of the young prince,—all these are things richly to be enjoyed, especially by strong, healthy people: let chilly and shivering mortals sing about cozy fires and drawn curtains if they like. Besides, Miss Adamson had the eye of an artist, upon which nothing, be it what it may, is thrown away.

But an expedition to a hill with "rings" undertaken on a long midsummer day looked fully more enjoyable to the common mind: John, and even the footman approved of that, and another individual, who had become a frequent visitor at the hall, approved of it very highly indeed, and joined such a party as often as he could.

This was George Eildon, the only son of a brother of the late Lord Arthur.

Now comes the tug—well, not of war, certainly, but, to change the figure—now comes the cloud no bigger than a man's hand which is to obscure the quiet sunshine of the regular and exemplary life of these three ladies.

Having been eight years at Garscube Hall, as a matter of necessity and in the ordinary course of Nature, Alice Garscube had grown up to womanhood. With accustomed eccentricity, Lady Arthur entirely ignored this. As for bringing her "out," as the phrase is, she had no intention of it, considering that one of the follies of life: Lady Arthur was always a law to herself. Alice was a shy, amiable girl, who loved her guardian fervently (her ladyship had the knack of gaining love, and also of gaining the opposite in pretty decisive measure), and was entirely swayed by her; indeed, it never occurred to her to have a will of her own, for her nature was peculiarly sweet and guileless.