SHE was the Princess Ajita.\u00a0 And the court poet of King N\u00e2r\u00e2yan had never seen her.\u00a0 On the day he recited a new poem to the king he would raise his voice just to that pitch which could be heard by unseen hearers in the screened balcony high above the hall.\u00a0 He sent up his song towards the star-land out of his reach, where, circled with light, the planet who ruled his destiny shone unknown and out of ken.<\/p>\n
He would espy some shadow moving behind the veil.\u00a0 A tinkling sound would come to his ear from afar, and would set him dreaming of the ankles whose tiny golden bells sang at each step.\u00a0 Ah, the rosy red tender feet that walked the dust of the earth like God’s mercy on the fallen!\u00a0 The poet had placed them on the altar of his heart, where he wove his songs to the tune of those golden bells.\u00a0 Doubt never arose in his mind as to whose shadow it was that moved behind the screen, and whose anklets they were that sang to the time of his beating heart.\u00a0 Manjari, the maid of the princess, passed by the poet’s house on her way to the river, and she never missed a day to have a few words with him on the sly.\u00a0 When she found the road deserted, and the shadow of dusk on the land, she would boldly enter his room, and sit at the corner of his carpet.\u00a0 There was a suspicion of an added care in the choice of the colour of her veil, in the setting of the flower in her hair.<\/p>\n
People smiled and whispered at this, and they were not to blame.\u00a0 For Shekhar the poet never took the trouble to hide the fact that these meetings were a pure joy to him.<\/p>\n
The meaning of her name was the spray of flowers.<\/i>\u00a0 One must confess that for an ordinary mortal it was sufficient in its sweetness.\u00a0 But Shekhar made his own addition to this name, and called her the Spray of Spring Flowers.\u00a0 And ordinary mortals shook their heads and said, Ah, me!<\/p>\n
In the spring songs that the poet sang the praise of the spray of spring flowers was conspicuously reiterated; and the king winked and smiled at him when he heard it, and the poet smiled in answer.\u00a0 The king would put him the question:<\/p>\n
“Is it the business of the bee merely to hum in the court of the spring?”<\/p>\n
The poet would answer: “No, but also to sip the honey of the spray of spring flowers.”<\/p>\n
And they all laughed in the king’s hall.\u00a0 And it was rumoured that the Princess Ajita also laughed at her maid’s accepting the poet’s name for her, and Manjari felt glad in her heart.<\/p>\n
Thus truth and falsehood mingle in life–and to what God builds man adds his own decoration.<\/p>\n
Only those were pure truths which were sung by the poet.\u00a0 The theme was Krishna, the lover god, and R\u00e2dh\u00e2, the beloved, the Eternal Man and the Eternal Woman, the sorrow that comes from the beginning of time, and the joy without end.\u00a0 The truth of these songs was tested in his inmost heart by everybody from the beggar to the king himself.\u00a0 The poet’s songs were on the lips of all.\u00a0 At the merest glimmer of the moon and the faintest whisper of the summer breeze his songs would break forth in the land from windows and courtyards, from sailing-boats, from shadows of the wayside trees, in numberless voices.<\/p>\n
Thus passed the days happily.\u00a0 The poet recited, the king listened, the hearers applauded, Manjari passed and repassed by the poet’s room on her way to the river–the shadow flitted behind the screened balcony, and the tiny golden bells tinkled from afar.<\/p>\n
<\/pre>\nJust then set forth from his home in the south a poet on his path of conquest.\u00a0 He came to King N\u00e2r\u00e2yan, in the kingdom of Amarapur. He stood before the throne, and uttered a verse in praise of the king.\u00a0 He had challenged all the court poets on his way, and his career of victory had been unbroken.<\/p>\n
The king received him with honour, and said:<\/p>\n
“Poet, I offer you welcome.”<\/p>\n
Pundarik, the poet, proudly replied: “Sire, I ask for war.”<\/p>\n
Shekhar, the court poet of the king did not know how the battle of the muse was to be waged. He had no sleep at night.\u00a0 The mighty figure of the famous Pundarik, his sharp nose curved like a scimitar, and his proud head tilted on one side, haunted the poet’s vision in the dark.<\/p>\n
With a trembling heart Shekhar entered the arena in the morning.\u00a0 The theatre was filled with the crowd.<\/p>\n
The poet greeted his rival with a smile and a bow.\u00a0 Pundarik returned it with a slight toss of his head, and turned his face towards his circle of adoring followers with a meaning smile.<\/p>\n
Shekhar cast his glance towards the screened balcony high above, and saluted his lady in his mind, saying: “If I am the winner at the combat to-day, my lady, thy victorious name shall be glorified.”<\/p>\n
The trumpet sounded.\u00a0 The great crowd stood up, shouting victory to the king.\u00a0 The king, dressed in an ample robe of white, slowly came into the hall like a floating cloud of autumn, and sat on his throne.<\/p>\n
Pundarik stood up, and the vast hall became still.\u00a0 With his head raised high and chest expanded, he began in his thundering voice to recite the praise of King N\u00e2r\u00e2yan. His words burst upon the walls of the hall like breakers of the sea, and seemed to rattle against the ribs of the listening crowd.\u00a0 The skill with which he gave varied meanings to the name N\u00e2r\u00e2yan, and wove each letter of it through the web of his verses in all manner of combinations, took away the breath of his amazed hearers.<\/p>\n
For some minutes after he took his seat his voice continued to vibrate among the numberless pillars of the king’s court and in thousands of speechless hearts.\u00a0 The learned professors who had come from distant lands raised their right hands, and cried, Bravo!<\/p>\n
The king threw a glance on Shekhar’s face, and Shekhar in answer raised for a moment his eyes full of pain towards his master, and then stood up like a stricken deer at bay.\u00a0 His face was pale, his bashfulness was almost that of a woman, his slight youthful figure, delicate in its outline, seemed like a tensely strung vina<\/i> ready to break out in music at the least touch.<\/p>\n
His head was bent, his voice was low, when he began.\u00a0 The first few verses were almost inaudible.\u00a0 Then he slowly raised his head, and his clear sweet voice rose into the sky like a quivering flame of fire.\u00a0 He began with the ancient legend of the kingly line lost in the haze of the past, and brought it down through its long course of heroism and matchless generosity to the present age.\u00a0 He fixed his gaze on the king’s face, and all the vast and unexpressed love of the people for the royal house rose like incense in his song, and enwreathed the throne on all sides. These were his last words when, trembling, he took his seat: “My master, I may be beaten in play of words, but not in my love for thee.”<\/p>\n
Tears filled the eyes of the hearers, and the stone walls shook with cries of victory.<\/p>\n
Mocking this popular outburst of feeling, with an august shake of his head and a contemptuous sneer, Pundarik stood up, and flung this question to the assembly: “What is there superior to words?” In a moment the hall lapsed into silence again.<\/p>\n
Then with a marvellous display of learning, he proved that the Word was in the beginning, that the Word was God.\u00a0 He piled up quotations from scriptures, and built a high altar for the Word to be seated above all that there is in heaven and in earth.\u00a0 He repeated that question in his mighty voice: “What is there superior to words?”<\/p>\n
Proudly he looked around him.\u00a0 None dared to accept his challenge, and he slowly took his seat like a lion who had just made a full meal of its victim.\u00a0 The pandits shouted, Bravo!\u00a0 The king remained silent with wonder, and the poet Shekhar felt himself of no account by the side of this stupendous learning.\u00a0 The assembly broke up for that day.<\/p>\n
Next day Shekhar began his song.\u00a0 It was of that day when the pipings of love’s flute startled for the first time the hushed air of the Vrinda forest.\u00a0 The shepherd women did not know who was the player or whence came the music.\u00a0 Sometimes it seemed to come from the heart of the south wind, and sometimes from the straying clouds of the hilltops.\u00a0 It came with a message of tryst from the land of the sunrise, and it floated from the verge of sunset with its sigh of sorrow.\u00a0 The stars seemed to be the stops of the instrument that flooded the dreams of the night with melody. The music seemed to burst all at once from all sides, from fields and groves, from the shady lanes and lonely roads, from the melting blue of the sky, from the shimmering green of the grass. They neither knew its meaning nor could they find words to give utterance to the desire of their hearts.\u00a0 Tears filled their eyes, and their life seemed to long for a death that would be its consummation.<\/p>\n
Shekhar forgot his audience, forgot the trial of his strength with a rival.\u00a0 He stood alone amid his thoughts that rustled and quivered round him like leaves in a summer breeze, and sang the Song of the Flute.\u00a0 He had in his mind the vision of an image that had taken its shape from a shadow, and the echo of a faint tinkling sound of a distant footstep.<\/p>\n
He took his seat.\u00a0 His hearers trembled with the sadness of an indefinable delight, immense and vague, and they forgot to applaud him.\u00a0 As this feeling died away Pundarik stood up before the throne and challenged his rival to define who was this Lover and who was the Beloved.\u00a0 He arrogantly looked around him, he smiled at his followers and then put the question again: “Who is Krishna, the lover, and who is R\u00e2dh\u00e2, the beloved?”<\/p>\n
Then he began to analyse the roots of those names,–and various interpretations of their meanings.\u00a0 He brought before the bewildered audience all the intricacies of the different schools of metaphysics with consummate skill. Each letter of those names he divided from its fellow, and then pursued them with a relentless logic till they fell to the dust in confusion, to be caught up again and restored to a meaning never before imagined by the subtlest of word-mongers.<\/p>\n
The pandits were in ecstasy; they applauded vociferously; and the crowd followed them, deluded into the certainty that they had witnessed, that day, the last shred of the curtains of Truth torn to pieces before their eyes by a prodigy of intellect.\u00a0 The performance of his tremendous feat so delighted them that they forgot to ask themselves if there was any truth behind it after all.<\/p>\n
The king’s mind was overwhelmed with wonder. The atmosphere was completely cleared of all illusion of music, and the vision of the world around seemed to be changed from its freshness of tender green to the solidity of a high road levelled and made hard with crushed stones.<\/p>\n
To the people assembled their own poet appeared a mere boy in comparison with this giant, who walked with such ease, knocking down difficulties at each step in the world of words and thoughts. It became evident to them for the first time that the poems Shekhar wrote were absurdly simple, and it must be a mere accident that they did not write them themselves.\u00a0 They were neither new, nor difficult, nor instructive, nor necessary.<\/p>\n
The king tried to goad his poet with keen glances, silently inciting him to make a final effort.\u00a0 But Shekhar took no notice, and remained fixed to his seat.<\/p>\n
The king in anger came down from his throne–took off his pearl chain and put it on Pundarik’s head.\u00a0 Everybody in the hall cheered. From the upper balcony came a slight sound of the movements of rustling robes and waist-chains hung with golden bells.\u00a0 Shekhar rose from his seat and left the hall.<\/p>\n
It was a dark night of waning moon.\u00a0 The poet Shekhar took down his MSS. from his shelves and heaped them on the floor.\u00a0 Some of them contained his earliest writings, which he had almost forgotten.\u00a0 He turned over the pages, reading passages here and there.\u00a0 They all seemed to him poor and trivial–mere words and childish rhymes!<\/p>\n
One by one he tore his books to fragments, and threw them into a vessel containing fire, and said: “To thee, to thee, O my beauty, my fire!\u00a0 Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years.\u00a0 If my life were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of ashes.”<\/p>\n
The night wore on.\u00a0 Shekhar opened wide his windows.\u00a0 He spread upon his bed the white flowers that he loved, the jasmines, tuberoses and chrysanthemums, and brought into his bedroom all the lamps he had in his house and lighted them. Then mixing with honey the juice of some poisonous root he drank it and lay down on his bed.<\/p>\n
Golden anklets tinkled in the passage outside the door, and a subtle perfume came into the room with the breeze.\u00a0 The poet, with his eyes shut, said:<\/p>\n
“My lady, have you taken pity upon your servant at last and come to see him?”<\/p>\n
The answer came in a sweet voice: “My poet, I have come.”<\/p>\n
Shekhar opened his eyes–and saw before his bed the figure of a woman.<\/p>\n
His sight was dim and blurred.\u00a0 And it seemed to him that the image made of a shadow that he had ever kept throned in the secret shrine of his heart had come into the outer world in his last moment to gaze upon his face.<\/p>\n
The woman said:<\/p>\n
“I am the Princess Ajita.”<\/p>\n
The poet with a great effort sat up on his bed.<\/p>\n
The princess whispered into his ear: “The king has not done you justice.\u00a0 It was you who won at the combat, my poet, and I have come to crown you with the crown of victory.”<\/p>\n
She took the garland of flowers from her own neck, and put it on his hair, and the poet fell down upon his bed stricken by death.<\/p>\n
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE VICTORY SHE was the Princess Ajita.\u00a0 And the court poet of King N\u00e2r\u00e2yan had… more