Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 72

No. 203: "As she looked at you, filled with the might of her self-betraying love, so she then, in order to conceal it, looked also at the other persons."

No. 234: "Although all (my) possessions were consumed in the village fire, yet is (my) heart rejoiced, (when it was put out) he took the bucket as it pa.s.sed from hand to hand (from my hand)."

No. 299: "She stares, without having an object, gives vent to long sighs, laughs into vacant s.p.a.ce, mutters unintelligible words--surely she must bear something in her heart."

No. 302: "'Do give her to the one she carries in her heart. Do you not see, aunt, that she is pining away?'

'No one rests in my heart' [literally; whence could come in my heart resting?]--thus speaking, the girl fell into a swoon."

No. 345: "If it is not your beloved, my friend, how is it that at the mention of his name your face glows like a lotos bud opened by the sun's rays?"

No. 368: "Like illness without a doctor--like living with relatives if one is poor, like the sight of an enemy's prosperity--so difficult is it to endure separation from you."

No. 378: "Whatever you do, whatever you say, and wherever you turn your eyes, the day is not long enough for her efforts to imitate you."

No. 440: "...She, whose every limb was bathed in perspiration, at the mere mention of his name."

No. 453: "My friend! tell me honestly, I ask you: do the bracelets of all women become larger when the lover is far away?"

No. 531: "In whichever direction I look I see you before me, as if painted there. The whole firmament brings before me as it were a series of pictures of you."

No. 650: "From him proceed all discourses, all are about him, end with him. Is there then, my aunt, but one young man in all this village?"

While these poems may have been sung mostly by bayaderes, there are others which obviously give expression to the legitimate feelings of married women. This is especially true of the large number which voice the sorrows of women at the absence of their husbands after the rains have set in. The rainy season is in India looked on as the season of love, and separation from the lover at this time is particularly bewailed, all the more as the rains soon make the roads impa.s.sable.

No. 29: "To-day, when, alone, I recalled the joys we had formerly shared, the thunder of the new clouds sounded to me like the death-drum (that accompanies culprits to the place of execution)."

No. 47: "The young wife of the man who has got ready for his journey roams, after his departure, from house to house, trying to get the secret for preserving life from wives who have learned how to endure separation from their beloved."

No. 227: "In putting down the lamp the wife of the wanderer turns her face aside, fearing that the stream of tears that falls at the thought of the beloved might drop on it."

No. 501: "When the voyager, on taking leave, saw his wife turn pale, he was overcome by grief and unable to go."

No. 623: "The wanderer's wife does indeed protect her little son by interposing her head to catch the rain water dripping from the eaves, but fails to notice (in her grief over her absent one) that he is wetted by her tears."

These twenty-one poems are the best samples of everything contained in Hala's anthology ill.u.s.trating the serious side of love among the bayaderes and married women of India. Careful perusal of them must convince the reader that there is nothing in them revealing the altruistic phases of love. There is much ardent longing for the selfish gratification which the presence of a lover would give; deep grief at his absence; indications that a certain man could afford her much more pleasure by his presence than others--and that is all. When a girl wails that she is dying because her lover is absent she is really thinking of her own pleasure rather than his. None of these poems expresses the sentiment, "Oh, that I could do something to make _him_ happy!" These women are indeed taught and _forced_ to sacrifice themselves for their husbands, but when it comes to _spontaneous_ utterances, like these songs, we look in vain for evidence of pure, devoted, high-minded, romantic love. The more frivolous side of Oriental love is, on the other hand, abundantly ill.u.s.trated in Hala's poems, as the following samples show:

No. 40: "O you pitiless man! You who are afraid of your wife and difficult to catch sight of! You who resemble (in bitterness) a nimba worm--and yet who are the delight of the village women! For does not the (whole) village grow thin (longing) for you?"

No. 44: "The sweetheart will not fail to come back into his heart even though he caress another girl, whether he see in her the same charms or not."

No. 83: "This young farmer, O beautiful girl, though he already has a beautiful wife, has nevertheless become so reduced that his own jealous wife has consented to deliver this message to you."

The last two poems hint at the ease with which feminine jealousy is suppressed in India, of which we have had some instances before and shall have others presently. Coyness seems to be not much more developed, at least among those who need it most:

No. 465: "By being kind to him again at first sight you deprived yourself, you foolish girl, of many pleasures--his prostration at your feet and his eager robbing of a kiss."

No. 45: "Since youth (rolls on) like the rapids of a river, the days speed away and the nights cannot be checked--my daughter! what means this accursed, proud reserve?"

No. 139: "On the pretext that the descent to the G.o.da (river) is difficult, she threw herself in his arms.

And he clasped her tightly without thereby incurring any reproach." (See also No. 108.)

No. 121: "Though disconsolate at the death of her relatives, the captive girl looked lovingly upon the young kidnapper, because he appeared to her to be a perfect (hero). Who can remain sulky in the face of virtues?"

Such love as these women felt is fickle and transient:

No. 240: "Through being out of sight, my child, in course of time the love dwindles away even of those who were firmly joined in tender union, as water runs from the hollow of the hand."

No. 106: "O heart that, like a long piece of wood which is being carried down the rapids of a small stream is caught at every place, your fate is nevertheless to be burnt by some one!"

No. 80: "By being out of sight love goes away; by seeing too often it goes away; also by the gossip of malicious persons it goes away; yes, it also goes away by itself."

"If the bee, eager to sip, always seeks the juices of new growths, this is the fault of the sapless flowers, not of the bee."

Where love is merely sensual and shallow lovers' quarrels do not fan the flame, but put it out:

"Love which, once dissolved, is united again, after unpleasant things have been revealed, tastes flat, like water that has been boiled."

The commercial element is conspicuous in this kind of love; it cannot persist without a succession of presents:

No. 67: "When the festival is over nothing gives pleasure. So also with the full moon late in the morning--and of love, which at last becomes insipid--and with gratification, that does not manifest itself in the form of presents."

The illicit, impure aspect of Oriental love is hinted at in many of the poems collected by Hala. There are frequent allusions to rendezvous in temples, which are so quiet that the pigeons are scared by the footsteps of the lovers; or in the high grain of the harvest fields; or on the river banks, so deserted that the monkeys there fill their paunches with mustard leaves undisturbed.

No. 19: "When he comes what shall I do? What shall I say and what will come of this? Her heart beats as, with these thoughts, the girl goes out on her first rendezvous." (_Cf._ also Nos. 223 and 491.)

No. 628: "O summer time! you who give good opportunities for rendezvous by drying the small ditches and covering the trees with a dense abundance of leaves! you test-plate of the gold of love-happiness, you must not fade away yet for a long time."

No. 553: "Aunt, why don't you remove the parrot from this bed-chamber? He betrays all the caressing words to others."

Hindoo poets have the faculty, which they share with the j.a.panese, of bringing a whole scene or episode vividly before the eyes with a sentence or two, as all the foregoing selections show. Sometimes a whole story is thus condensed, as in the following:

"'Master! He came to implore our protection. Save him!'

thus speaking, she very slyly hastened to turn over her paramour to her suddenly entering husband." (See also No. 305 and _Hitopadesa_, p. 88.)

SYMPTOMS OF MASCULINE LOVE

Since Hindoo women, in spite of their altruistic training, are prevented by their lack of culture or virtue (the domestic virtuous women have no culture and the cultured bayaderes have no virtue) from rising to the heights of sentimental love, it would be hopeless to expect the amazingly selfish, unsympathetic and cruel men to do so, despite their intellectual culture. Among all the seven hundred poems culled by Hala there are only two or three which even hint at the higher phases of love in masculine bosoms. Inasmuch as No. 383 tells us that even "the male elephant, though tormented by great hunger, thinking of his beloved wife, allows the juicy lotos-stalk to wither in his trunk," one could hardly expect of man less than the sentiment expressed in No. 576: "He who has a faithful love considers himself contented even in misfortune, whereas without his love he is unhappy though he possess the earth." Another poem indicating that Hindoo men may share with women a strong feeling of amorous monopolism is No.

498:

"He regards only her countenance, and she, too, is quite intoxicated at sight of him. Both of them, satisfied with one another, act as if in the whole world there were no other women or men."

But as a rule the men are depicted as being fickle, even more so than the women. A frequent complaint of the girls is that the men forget whom they happen to be caressing and call them by another girl's name.

More frequent still are the complaints of neglect or desertion. One of these, No. 46, suggests the praises of night sung in the mediaeval legend of Tristan and Isolde:

"To-morrow morning, my beloved, the hard-hearted goes away--so people say. O sacred night! do lengthen so that there will be no morning for him."

At first sight the most surprising and important of Hala's seven hundred poems seems to be No. 567: