Reading section 70

48. Rows of lights were placed about the court-yard, which looked as beautiful as clusters of stars in the clear sky.

49. The ground of the court-yard was filled by throngs of people, as the earth was covered of yore by floods of the great deluge.

50. The dignified ministers and chiefs attended first and took their respective seats, and appeared as a set of the newly created rulers of people of the world on all sides, or the regents of the quarters of the sky.

51. The cooling and fragrant odour of thickly pasted camphor filled the palace, and the sweet-scented zephyrs breathed profusely the fragrance of the lotus flowers, which they bore from all sides.

52. The chamberlains stood all around in their white garbs, and appeared as an assemblage of silvery clouds, hanging over the burning hills under the equator.

53. The ground was strewn over by the morning breeze with heaps of flowers, bright as the beaming dawn dispelling the gloom of night, and etiolated as clusters of stars fallen upon the ground.

54. The palace was crowded by the retinue of the chiefs of the land, and seemed as it was a lake full of full-blown lotuses, with the fair swimming swans rambling about them.

55. There Lílá took her seat on a golden seat by the side of the throne, and appeared as the beauteous Rati seated in the joyous heart of Káma (_i.e._ as Venus sitting in the lap of aureate lighted Phoebus).

56. She saw all the princes seated in their order as before, and the elders of the people and the nobles of men and all her friends and relatives, seated in their proper places.

57. She was highly delighted to behold them all in their former states, and shone forth as the moon with the brightness of her countenance, to find them all alive again.

CHAPTER XVIII.

EXPOSURE OF THE ERRORS OF THIS WORLD.

She said, “I have much consolation in you, and now will I console my sorrowing heart.” So saying, she made a sign for the assembly to break, and rose from her royal seat.

2. She entered the inner apartment and sat by the side of the dead body of her lord, hidden under the heap of flowers, and thus began to reflect within herself.

3. She exclaimed:—“O the wondrous magic! that presents these people of my place situated in the same manner without myself, as they were seen to be seated within me.

4. “O how great is the extent of this delusion, as to contain the same high hills, and the same spacious forests of palm and Hintála trees, both in the outside as well as they are situated in the inside of myself.

5. “As the mirror shows the reflexion of the hills within itself as they are without it, so the reflector of the intellect presents the whole creation inwardly as it has outwards of itself.

6. “I must now invoke the goddess of wisdom to ascertain which of these is illusion, and which the sober and certain reality.”

7. So saying, she worshipped and invoked the goddess, and beheld her immediately present before herself, in the form of a virgin.

8. She made the goddess sit on the elevated seat, and having seated herself low upon the ground before her, asked that divine power to tell her the truth.

9. Lílá said:—“Vouchsafe, O goddess, and clear this doubt of thy suppliant; for it is thy wisdom which has framed this beautiful system of the universe at first and knows the truth. (Divine wisdom is the prime cause of all).

10. “Tell me, O great goddess, about what I am going to lay before thee at present, for it is by thy favour alone that I may be successful to know it.

11. “I saw the pattern of this world in the intellect, which is more transparent than the etherial sphere, and as extensive as to contain millions and millions of miles in a small space of it.

12. “It is what no definite words can express, and what is known as the calm, cool and ineffable light. This is called the unintelligible intelligence, and is without any cover or support (_nirávarana nirbhitti_).

13. “It exhibits the reflexions of space and the course of time, and those of the sky and its light, and the course of events concentrating in itself.

14. “Thus the images of the worlds, are to be seen both within and without the intellect, and it is hard to distinguish the real and unreal ones between them.”

15. The goddess asked:—Tell me fair lady, what is the nature of the real world, and what you mean, by its unreality.

16. Lílá replied:—I know the nature of the real to be such as I find myself to be sitting here, and looking upon you as seated in this place.

17. And I mean that to be unreal, as the state in which I beheld my husband in the etherial region erewhile; because vacuity has no limit of time or place in it.

18. The goddess rejoined:—The real creation cannot produce an unreal figure, nor a similar cause produce a dissimilar effect.

19. Lílá replied:—But we often see, O goddess! dissimilar effects to be produced from similar causes: thus, the earth and earthen pot though similar in their substance, yet the one is seen to melt in water, and the other to carry water in it.

20. The goddess said:—Yes, when an act is done by the aid of auxiliary means, there the effect is found to be somewhat different from the primary cause. (Thus the earthen pot being produced by the auxiliary appliances of fire, the potter’s wheel and the like, differs in its quality from the original clay).

21. Say O beauteous lady! what were the causes of thy husband’s being born in this earth? The same led to his birth in the other world also (_i.e._ the merit of the acts and desires of men, are the causes of their transmigrations in both worlds).

22. When the soul has fled from here, how can the earth follow him there any more, and what auxiliary causes can there be in connection with this cause?

23. Wherever there arises a coaction with its apparent causality, it is usually attributed by every one to some unknown antecedent cause or motive.

24. Lílá said:—Methinks goddess, that it was the expansion of my husband’s memory that was the cause of his regenerations; because it is certain that reminiscence is the cause of the reproduction of objects before us.

25. The goddess replied that, memory is an aerial substance, and its productions are as unsubstantial as itself.

26. Lílá said:—Yes I find reminiscence to be an airy thing, and its reproduction of my husband and all other things within me to be but empty shadows in the mind.

27. The goddess replied:—So verily was this reproduction of thy husband and all those things which appeared to thy sight in thy reverie; and so, my daughter, is the appearance of all things I see in this world.

28. Lílá said:—Tell me goddess for the removal of my conception of the reality of the world, how the false appearance of my formless lord, was produced before me by the unreal world, (since nothing unsubstantial can cast a shadow).

29. The goddess replied:—As this illusive world appeared a reality to thee before thy reminiscence of it, so must thou know all this to be unreal from what I am going to relate to thee.

30. There is in some part of the sphere of the Intellect the great fabric of the world, with the glassy vault of the firmament for its roof on all sides.

31. The Meru (the polar axle or mountain) is its pillar, beset around by the regents of the ten sides, as statues carved upon it. The fourteen regions are as so many apartments of it, and the hollow concavity containing the three worlds, is lighted by the lamp of the luminous sun.

32. Its corners are inhabited by living creatures resembling ants and emmets, which are surrounded by mountains appearing as ant-hills in the sight of Brahmá, the prime lord of creatures and the primeval patriarch of many races of men.

33. All animal beings are as worms confined in the cocoons (prison houses) of their own making. The azure skies above and below are as the soot of this house, beset by bodies of Siddhas (or departed spirits), resembling groups of gnats buzzing in the air.

34. The fleeting clouds are the smoke of this house or as webs of spiders in its corners, and the hollow air is full of aerial spirits, like holes of bamboos filled with flies.

35. There are also the playful spirits of gods and demigods, hovering over human habitations, as swarms of busy and buzzing bees about vessels of honey.

36. Here there lay amidst the cavity of heaven, earth and the infernal regions, tracts of land well watered by rivers, lakes and the sea on all sides.

37. In a corner of this land, there was situated a secluded piece of ground (a vale or village), sheltered by hills and craigs about it.

38. In this secluded spot thus sheltered by hills, rivers and forests, there lived a Bráhman with his wife and children, free from disease and care of gain and fear of a ruler, and passed his days in his fire-worship and hospitality, with the produce of his kine and lands.

CHAPTER XIX.

STORY OF A FORMER VASISHTHA AND HIS WIFE.

This Bráhman was equal to his namesake—the sage Vasishtha, in his age and attire, in his learning and wealth, and in all his actions and pursuits, except in his profession. (The one being a secular man, and the other the priest of the royal family).

2. His name was Vasishtha, and that of his wife Arundhatí; who was as fair as the moon, and as the star of the same name on earth.

3. She resembled her namesake the priestess of the solar race, in her virtues and parts and in all things, except in her soul and body.

4. She passed her time in true love and affection in his company, and was his all in the world, with her sweet smiling face resembling the Kumuda flower.

5. This Bráhman had been sitting once under the shady _sarala_ trees, on the table land of his native hill, when he saw the ruler of the land, passing with his gaudy train below.

6. He was accompanied by all the members of the royal family and his troops and soldiers, and was going to a chase, with a clamour that resounded in the hills and forests.

7. The white flappers shed a stream of moon light, and the lifted banners appeared as a moving forest, and the white umbrellas made the sky a canopy to them.

8. The air was filled with dust raised by the hoofs of horses from the ground, and lines of elephants with their high _haúdás_, seemed as moving towers, to protect them from the solar heat and sultry winds.