The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales - Richard Garnett
Ananda vainly strove to explain that the austerities to which he had
referred were entirely of a spiritual and contemplative character. The
Brahmins, enchanted to get a heretic into their clutches, immediately
seized upon him, and conveyed him to one of their temples. They stripped
him, and perceived with astonishment that not one single weal or scar was
visible anywhere on his person. "Horror!" they exclaimed; "here is a man
who expects to go to heaven in a whole skin!" To obviate this breach of
etiquette, they laid him upon his face, and flagellated him until the
obnoxious soundness of cuticle was entirely removed. They then departed,
promising to return next day and operate in a corresponding manner upon the
anterior part of his person, after which, they jeeringly assured him, his
merits would be in no respect less than those of the saintly Bhagiratha, or
of the regal Viswamitra himself.
Ananda lay half dead upon the floor of the temple, when the sanctuary was
illuminated by the apparition of a resplendent Glendoveer, who thus
addressed him:
"Well, backsliding disciple, art thou yet convinced of thy folly?"
Ananda relished neither the imputation on his orthodoxy nor that on his
wisdom. He replied, notwithstanding, with all meekness:
"Heaven forbid that I should repine at any variety of martyrdom that tends
to the propagation of my master's faith."
"Wilt thou then first be healed, and moreover become the instrument of
converting the entire realm of Magadha?"
"How shall this be accomplished?" demanded Ananda.
"By perseverance in the path of deceit and disobedience," returned the
Glendoveer.
Ananda winced, but maintained silence in the expectation of more explicit
directions.
"Know," pursued the spirit, "that the king's son will revive from his
trance at the expiration of the thirtieth day, which takes place at noon
to-morrow. Thou hast but to proceed at the fitting period to the couch
whereon he is deposited, and, placing thy hand upon his heart, to command
him to rise forthwith. His recovery will be ascribed to thy supernatural
powers, and the establishment of Buddha's religion will result. Before this
it will be needful that I should perform an actual cure upon thy back,
which is within the compass of my capacity. I only request thee to take
notice, that thou wilt on this occasion be transgressing the precepts of
thy master with thine eyes open. It is also meet to apprise thee that thy
temporary extrication from thy present difficulties will only involve thee
in others still more formidable."
"An incorporeal Glendoveer is no judge of the feelings of a flayed
apostle," thought Ananda. "Heal me," he replied, "if thou canst, and
reserve thy admonitions for a more convenient opportunity."
"So be it," returned the Glendoveer; and as he extended his hand over
Ananda, the latter's back was clothed anew with skin, and his previous
smart simultaneously allayed. The Glendoveer vanished at the same moment,
saying, "When thou hast need of me, pronounce but the incantation, _Gnooh
Imdap Inam Mua_, [*] and I will immediately be by thy side."
[Footnote: The mystic formula of the Buddhists, read backwards.]
The anger and amazement of the Brahmins may be conceived when, on returning
equipped with fresh implements of flagellation, they discovered the
salubrious condition of their victim. Their scourges would probably have
undergone conversion into halters, had they not been accompanied by a royal
officer, who took the really triumphant martyr under his protection, and
carried him off to the palace. He was speedily conducted to the young
prince's couch, whither a vast crowd attended him. The hour of noon not
having yet arrived, Ananda discreetly protracted the time by a seasonable
discourse on the impossibility of miracles, those only excepted which
should be wrought by the professors of the faith of Buddha. He then
descended from his pulpit, and precisely as the sun attained the zenith
laid his hand upon the bosom of the young prince, who instantly revived,
and completed a sentence touching the game of dice which had been
interrupted by his catalepsy.
The people shouted, the courtiers went into ecstasies, the countenances of
the Brahmins assumed an exceedingly sheepish expression. Even the king
seemed impressed, and craved to be more particularly instructed in the law
of Buddha. In complying with this request, Ananda, who had made marvellous
progress in worldly wisdom during the last twenty-four hours, deemed it
needless to dilate on the cardinal doctrines of his master, the misery of
existence, the need of redemption, the path to felicity, the prohibition to
shed blood. He simply stated that the priests of Buddha were bound to
perpetual poverty, and that under the new dispensation all ecclesiastical
property would accrue to the temporal authorities.
"By the holy cow!" exclaimed the monarch, "this is something like a
religion!"
The words were scarcely out of the royal lips ere the courtiers professed
themselves converts. The multitude followed their example. The Brahminical
church was promptly disestablished and disendowed, and more injustice was
committed in the name of the new and purified religion in one day than the
old corrupt one had occasioned in a hundred years.
Ananda had the satisfaction of feeling able to forgive his adversaries, and
of valuing himself accordingly; and to complete his felicity, he was
received in the palace, and entrusted with the education of the king's son,
which he strove to conduct agreeably to the precepts of Buddha. This was a
task of some delicacy, as it involved interference with the princely
youth's favourite amusement, which had previously consisted in torturing
small reptiles.
After a short interval Ananda was again summoned to the monarch's presence.
He found his majesty in the company of two most ferocious ruffians, one of
whom bore a huge axe, and the other an enormous pair of pincers.
"My chief executioner and my chief tormentor," said the king.
Ananda expressed his gratification at becoming acquainted with such exalted
functionaries.
"Thou must know, most holy man," resumed the king, "that need has again
arisen for the exercise of fortitude and self-denial on thy part. A
powerful enemy has invaded my dominions, and has impiously presumed to
discomfit my troops. Well might I feel dismayed, were it not for the
consolations of religion; but my trust is in thee, O spiritual father! It
is urgent that thou shouldst accumulate the largest amount of merit with
the least delay possible. I am unable to invoke the ministrations of thy
old friends the Brahmins to this end, they being, as thou knowest, in
disgrace, but I have summoned these trusty and experienced counsellors in
their room. I find them not wholly in accord. My chief tormentor, being a
man of mild temper and humane disposition, considers that it might at first
suffice to employ gentle measures, such, for example, as suspending thee
head downwards in the smoke of a wood fire, and filling thy nostrils with
red pepper. My chief executioner, taking, peradventure, a too professional
view of the subject, deems it best to resort at once to crucifixion or
impalement. I would gladly know thy thoughts on the matter."
Ananda expressed, as well as his terror would suffer him, his entire
disapproval of both the courses recommended by the royal advisers.
"Well," said the king, with an air of resignation, "if we cannot agree upon
either, it follows that we must try both. We will meet for that purpose
to-morrow morning at the second hour. Go in peace!"
Ananda went, but not in peace. His alarm would have well-nigh deprived him
of his faculties if he had not remembered the promise made him by his
former deliverer. On reaching a secluded spot he pronounced the mystic
formula, and immediately became aware of the presence, not of a radiant
Glendoveer, but of a holy man, whose head was strewn with ashes, and his
body anointed with cow-dung.
"Thy occasion," said the Fakir, "brooks no delay. Thou must immediately
accompany me, and assume the garb of a Jogi."
Ananda rebelled excessively in his heart, for he had imbibed from the mild
and sage Buddha a befitting contempt for these grotesque and cadaverous
fanatics. The emergency, however, left him no resource, and he followed his
guide to a charnel house, which the latter had selected as his domicile.
There, with many lamentations over the smoothness of his hair and the
brevity of his nails, the Jogi besprinkled and besmeared Ananda agreeably
to his own pattern, and scored him with chalk and ochre until the peaceful
apostle of the gentlest of creeds resembled a Bengal tiger. He then hung a
chaplet of infants' skulls about his neck, placed the skull of a malefactor
in one of his hands and the thigh-bone of a necromancer in the other, and
at nightfall conducted him into the adjacent cemetery, where, seating him
on the ashes of a recent funeral pile, he bade him drum upon the skull with
the thigh-bone, and repeat after himself the incantations which he began to
scream out towards the western part of the firmament. These charms were
apparently possessed of singular efficacy, for scarcely were they commenced
ere a hideous tempest arose, rain descended in torrents, phosphoric flashes
darted across the sky, wolves and hyaenas thronged howling from their dens,
and gigantic goblins, arising from the earth, extended their fleshless arms
towards Ananda, and strove to drag him from his seat. Urged by frantic
terror, and the example and exhortations of his companion, he battered,
banged, and vociferated, until on the very verge of exhaustion; when, as if
by enchantment, the tempest ceased, the spectres disappeared, and joyous
shouts and a burst of music announced the occurrence of something
auspicious in the adjoining city.
"The hostile king is dead," said the Jogi; "and his army has dispersed.
This will be attributed to thy incantations. They are coming in quest of
thee even now. Farewell until thou again hast need of me."
The Jogi disappeared, the tramp of a procession became audible, and soon
torches glared feebly through the damp, cheerless dawn. The monarch
descended from his state elephant, and, prostrating himself before Ananda,
exclaimed:
"Inestimable man! why didst thou not disclose that thou wert a Jogi? Never
more shall I feel the least apprehension of any of my enemies, so long as
thou continuest an inmate of this cemetery."
A family of jackals were unceremoniously dislodged from a disused
sepulchre, which was allotted to Ananda for his future residence. The king
permitted no alteration in his costume, and took care that the food doled
out to him should have no tendency to impair his sanctity, which speedily
gave promise of attaining a very high pitch. His hair had already become as
matted and his nails as long as the Jogi could have desired, when he
received a visit from another royal messenger. The Rajah, so ran the regal
missive, had been suddenly and mysteriously attacked by a dangerous malady,
but confidently anticipated relief from Ananda's merits and incantations.
Ananda resumed his thigh-bone and his skull, and ruefully began to thump
the latter with the former, in dismal expectation of the things that were
to come. But the spell seemed to have lost its potency. Nothing more
unearthly than a bat presented itself, and Ananda was beginning to think
that he might as well desist when his reflections were diverted by the
apparition of a tall and grave personage, wearing a sad-coloured robe, and
carrying a long wand, who stood by his side as suddenly as though just
risen from the earth.
"The caldron is ready," said the stranger.
"What caldron?" demanded Ananda.
"That wherein thou art about to be immersed."
"I immersed in a caldron! wherefore?"
"Thy spells," returned his interlocutor, "having hitherto failed to afford
his majesty the slightest relief, and his experience of their efficacy on a
former occasion forbidding him to suppose that they can be inoperative, he
is naturally led to ascribe to their pernicious influence that aggravation
of pain of which he has for some time past unfortunately been sensible. I
have confirmed him in this conjecture, esteeming it for the interest of
science that his anger should fall upon an impudent impostor like thee
rather than on a discreet and learned physician like myself. He has
consequently directed the principal caldron to be kept boiling all night,
intending to immerse thee therein at daybreak, unless he should in the
meantime derive some benefit from thy conjurations."
"Heavens!" exclaimed Ananda, "whither shall I fly?"
"Nowhere beyond this cemetery," returned the physician, "inasmuch as it is
entirely surrounded by the royal forces."
"Wherein, then," demanded the agonized apostle, "doth the path of safety
lie?"
"In this phial," answered the physician. "It contains a subtle poison.
Demand to be led before the king. Affirm that thou hast received a
sovereign medicine from the hands of benignant spirits. He will drink it
and perish, and thou wilt be richly rewarded by his successor."
"Ayaunt, tempter!" cried Ananda, hurling the phial indignantly away. "I
defy thee! and will have recourse to my old deliverer--_Gnooh Imdap Inam
Mua!"_
But the charm appeared to fail of its effect. No figure was visible to his
gaze, save that of the physician, who seemed to regard him with an
expression of pity as he gathered up his robes and melted rather than
glided into the encompassing darkness.
Ananda remained, contending with himself. Countless times was he on the
point of calling after the physician and imploring him to return with a
potion of like properties to the one rejected, but something seemed always
to rise in his throat and impede his utterance, until, worn out by
agitation, he fell asleep and dreamed this dream.
He thought he stood at the vast and gloomy entrance of Patala. [*] The
lugubrious spot wore a holiday appearance; everything seemed to denote a
diabolical gala. Swarms of demons of all shapes and sizes beset the portal,
contemplating what appeared to be preparations for an illumination. Strings
of coloured lamps were in course of disposition in wreaths and festoons by
legions of frolicsome imps, chattering, laughing, and swinging by their
tails like so many monkeys. The operation was directed from below by
superior fiends of great apparent gravity and respectability. These bore
wands of office, tipped with yellow flames, wherewith they singed the tails
of the imps when such discipline appeared to them to be requisite. Ananda
could not refrain from asking the reason of these festive preparations.
[Footnote: The Hindoo Pandemonium.]
"They are in honour," responded the demon interrogated, "of the pious
Ananda, one of the apostles of the Lord Buddha, whose advent is hourly
expected among us with much eagerness and satisfaction."
The horrified Ananda with much difficulty mustered resolution to inquire on
what account the apostle in question was necessitated to take up his abode
in the infernal regions.
"On account of poisoning," returned the fiend laconically.
Ananda was about to seek further explanations, when his attention was
arrested by a violent altercation between two of the supervising demons.
"Kammuragha, evidently," croaked one.
"Damburanana, of course," snarled the other.
"May I," inquired Ananda of the fiend he had before addressed, "presume to
ask the signification of Kammuragha and Damburanana?"
"They are two hells," replied the demon. "In Kammuragha the occupant is
plunged into melted pitch and fed with melted lead. In Damburanana he is
plunged into melted lead and fed with melted pitch. My colleagues are
debating which is the more appropriate to the demerits of our guest
Ananda."
Ere Ananda had had time to digest this announcement a youthful imp
descended from above with agility, and, making a profound reverence,
presented himself before the disputants.
"Venerable demons," interposed he, "might my insignificance venture to
suggest that we cannot well testify too much honour for our visitor Ananda,
seeing that he is the only apostle of Buddha with whose company we are
likely ever to be indulged? Wherefore I would propose that neither
Kammuragha nor Damburanana be assigned for his residence, but that the
amenities of all the two hundred and forty-four thousand hells be combined
in a new one, constructed especially for his reception."
The imp having thus spoken, the senior demons were amazed at his precocity,
and performed a _pradakshina_, exclaiming, "Truly thou art a highly
superior young devil!" They then departed to prepare the new infernal
chamber, agreeably to his recipe.
Ananda awoke, shuddering with terror.
"Why," he exclaimed, "why was I ever an apostle? O Buddha! Buddha! how hard
are the paths of saintliness! How prone to error are the well-meaning! How
huge is the absurdity of spiritual pride!"
"Thou hast discovered that, my son?" said a gentle voice in his vicinity.
He turned and beheld the divine Buddha, radiant with a mild and benignant
light. A cloud seemed rolled away from his vision, and he recognised in his
master the Glendoveer, the Jogi, and the Physician.
"O holy teacher!" exclaimed he in extreme perturbation, "whither shall I
turn? My sin forbids me to approach thee."
"Not on account of thy sin art thou forbidden, my son," returned Buddha,
"but on account of the ridiculous and unsavoury plight to which thy knavery
and disobedience have reduced thee. I have now appeared to remind thee that
this day all my apostles meet on Mount Vindhya to render an account of
their mission, and to inquire whether I am to deliver thine in thy stead,
or whether thou art minded to proclaim it thyself."
"I will render it with my own lips," resolutely exclaimed Ananda. "It is
meet that I should bear the humiliation of acknowledging my folly."
"Thou hast said well, my son," replied Buddha, "and in return I will permit
thee to discard the attire, if such it may be termed, of a Jogi, and to
appear in our assembly wearing the yellow robe as beseems my disciple. Nay,
I will even infringe my own rule on thy behalf, and perform a not
inconsiderable miracle by immediately transporting thee to the summit of
Vindhya, where the faithful are already beginning to assemble. Thou wouldst
otherwise incur much risk of being torn to pieces by the multitude, who, as
the shouts now approaching may instruct thee, are beginning to extirpate my
religion at the instigation of the new king, thy hopeful pupil. The old
king is dead, poisoned by the Brahmins."
"O master! master!" exclaimed Ananda, weeping bitterly, "and is all the
work undone, and all by my fault and folly?"
"That which is built on fraud and imposture can by no means endure,"
returned Buddha, "be it the very truth of Heaven. Be comforted; thou shalt
proclaim my doctrine to better purpose in other lands. Thou hast this time
but a sorry account to render of thy stewardship; yet thou mayest truly
declare that thou hast obeyed my precept in the letter, if not in the
spirit, since none can assert that thou hast ever wrought any miracle."
THE CITY OF PHILOSOPHERS
I
Nature is manifold, not infinite, though the extent of the resources of
which she can dispose almost enables her to pass for such. Her cards are so
multitudinous that the pairs are easily shuffled into ages so far asunder
that their resemblance escapes remark. But sometimes her mischievous
daughter Fortune manages to thrust these duplicates into such conspicuous
places that their similarity cannot pass unobserved, and Nature is caught
plagiarising from herself. She is thus detected dealing a king--or
knave--a second time in the person of a king who has already fallen from
her pack as an emperor. Brilliant, careless, selfish, yet good-natured
_vauriens_, the Roman Emperor Gallienus and our Charles the Second excelled
in every art save the art of reigning, and might have excelled in that also
if they would have taken the trouble. The circumstances of their reigns
were in many respects as similar as their characters. Both were the sons of
grave and strict fathers, each of whom had met with terrible misfortunes:
one deprived of his liberty by his enemies, the other of his head by his
own subjects. Each of the sons had been grievously vexed by rebels, but
Charles's troubles from this quarter had mostly ended where those of
Gallienus began. Each saw his dominions ravaged by pestilence in a manner
beyond all former experience. The Goths destroyed the temple of the
Ephesian Diana, and the Dutch burned the English fleet at Chatham. Charles
shut up the Exchequer, and Gallienus debased the coinage. Charles accepted
a pension from Louis XIV., and Gallienus devolved the burden of his Eastern
provinces on a Syrian Emir. Their tastes and pursuits were as similar as
their histories. Charles excelled as a wit and a critic; Gallienus as a
poet and a gastronomer. Charles was curious about chemistry, and founded
the Royal Society. In the third century the conception of the systematic
investigation of nature did not exist. Gallienus, therefore, could not
patronise exact science; and the great literary light of the age, Longinus,
irradiated the court of Palmyra. But the Emperor bestowed his favour in
ample measure on the chief contemporary philosopher, Plotinus, who strove
to unite the characters of Plato and Pythagoras, of sage and seer. Like
Schelling in time to come, he maintained the necessity of a special organ
for the apprehension of philosophy, without perceiving that he thereby
proclaimed philosophy bankrupt, and placed himself on the level of the
Oriental hierophants, with whose sublime quackeries the modest sage could
not hope to contend. So extreme was his humility, that he would not claim
to have been consciously united to the Divinity more than four times in his
life; without condemning magic and thaumaturgy, he left their practice to
more adventurous spirits, and contented himself with the occasional visits
of a familiar demon in the shape of a serpent. He experienced, however,
frequent visitations of trance or ecstasy, sometimes lasting for a long
period; and it may have been in one of these that he was inspired by the
idea of asking the Emperor for a decayed city in Campania, there to
establish a philosophic commonwealth as nearly upon the model of Plato's
Republic as the degeneracy of the times would allow.
"I cannot," said Gallienus, when the project had been explained to him,
"object in principle to aught so festive and jocose. The age is turned
upside down; its comedians are lamentable, and its sages ludicrous. It must
moreover, I apprehend, be sated with the earthquakes, famines, pestilences,
and barbarian invasions with which it hath been exclusively regaled for so
long, and must crave something enlivening, of the nature of thy
proposition. But whether, when we arrive at the consideration of ways and
means, I shall find my interview with my treasurer enlivening, is gravely
to be questioned. I have heard homilies enough on my prodigality, which
merely means that I prefer spending my treasures on myself to saving them
for my successor, whose title will probably have been acquired by cutting
my throat."
"I know," said Plotinus, "that the expenses of administering an empire must
necessarily be prodigious. I am aware that the principal generals are only
kept to their allegiance by enormous bribes. I well understand that the
Empress must have pearls, and that the Roman populace must have panthers;
and that, since Egypt has revolted, the hippopotamus is worth his weight in
gold. I am further aware that the proposed colossal statue of your Majesty
in the same metal, including a staircase, with room in the head for a
child, like another Pallas in the brain of Zeus, must alone involve very
considerable outlay. But I am encouraged by your Majesty's wise and
statesmanlike measure of debasing the currency; since, money having become
devoid of value, there can be no difficulty in devoting any amount of it to
any purpose required."
"Plotinus," said Gallienus, "in this age the devil is taking the hindmost,
and we are the hindmost. There are tidings to-day of a new earthquake in
Bithynia, and three days' darkness, also of outbreaks of pestilence, and
incursions of the barbarians, too numerous as well as too disagreeable to
mention. At this moment some revolted legion is probably forcing the purple
upon some reluctant general; and the Persian king, a great equestrian, is
doubtless mounting his horse by the aid of my father's back. If I had been
an old Roman, I should by this time have avenged my father, but I am a man
of my age. Take the money for thy city, and see that it yields me some
amusement at any rate. I assume, of course, that thou wilt exercise severe
economy, and that cresses and spring water will be the diet of thy
philosophers. Farewell, I go to Gaul to encounter Postumus. Willingly would
I leave him in peace in Gaul if he would leave me in peace in Italy; but I
foresee that if I do not attack him there he will attack me here. As if the
Empire were not large enough for us all! What an ass the fellow must be!"