The Lusiad Part 43

[456] _Of deepest west._--Alludes to the discovery and conquest of the Brazils by the Portuguese.

[457] The poet, having brought his heroes to the sh.o.r.e of India, indulges himself with a review of the state of the western and eastern worlds; the latter of which is now, by the labour of his heroes, rendered accessible to the former. The purpose of his poem is also strictly kept in view. The west and the east he considers as two great empires; the one of the true religion, the other of a false. The professors of the true, disunited and destroying one another; the professors of the false one, all combined to extirpate the other. He upbraids the professors of the true religion for their vices, particularly for their disunion, and for deserting the interests of holy faith. His countrymen, however, he boasts, have been its defenders and planters, and, without the a.s.sistance of their brother powers, will plant it in Asia.

"The Crusaders," according to Voltaire, "were a band of vagabond thieves, who had agreed to ramble from the heart of Europe in order to desolate a country they had no right to, and ma.s.sacre, in cold blood, a venerable prince, more than fourscore years old, and his whole people, against whom they had no pretence of complaint."

To prove that the Crusades were neither so unjustifiable, so impolitic, nor so unhappy in their consequences as superficial readers of history are accustomed to regard them, would not be difficult.

Upon the whole, it will be found that the Portuguese poet talks of the political reasons of a Crusade with an accuracy in the philosophy of history as superior to that of Voltaire, as the poetical merit of the Lusiad surpa.s.ses that of the Henriade. And the critic in poetry must allow, that, to suppose the discovery of GAMA the completion of all the endeavours to overthrow the great enemies of the true religion, gives a dignity to the poem, and an importance to the hero, similar to that which Voltaire, on the same supposition, allows to the subject of the Jerusalem of Ta.s.so.

[458] Calicut is the name of a famous sea-port town in the province of Malabar.

[459]

_The herald hears Castilia's manly tongue salute his ears.--_

This in according to the truth of history. While the messenger sent ash.o.r.e by GAMA was borne here and there, and carried off his feet by the throng, who understood not a word of his language, he was accosted in Spanish by a Moorish merchant, a native of Tunis, who, according to Osorius, had been the chief person with whom King Ferdinand had formerly contracted for military stores. He proved himself an honest agent, and of infinite service to GAMA; he returned to Portugal, where, according to Faria, he died in the Christian communion. He was named Monzaida.

[460] _The sacred pledge of eastern faith._--To eat together was, and still is, in the east looked upon as the inviolable pledge of protection. As a Persian n.o.bleman was one day walking in his garden, a wretch in the utmost terror prostrated himself before him, and implored to be protected from the rage of a mult.i.tude who were in pursuit of him, to take his life. The n.o.bleman took a peach, eat part of it, and gave the rest to the fugitive, a.s.suring him of safety. As they approached the house, they met a crowd who carried the murdered corpse of the n.o.bleman's beloved son. The incensed populace demanded the murderer, who stood beside him, to be delivered to their fury. The father, though overwhelmed with grief and anger, replied, "We have eaten together, and I will not betray him." He protected the murderer of his son from the fury of his domestics and neighbours, and in the night facilitated his escape.

[461] _i.e._ crescent-shaped.--_Ed._

[462] _In Rhodope._--The beautiful fable of the descent of Orpheus to h.e.l.l, for the recovery of his beloved wife, Eurydice, will be found in Virgil's Georgics, bk. iv., lines 460-80.--_Ed._

[463]

(_For now the banquet on the tented plain, And sylvan chase his careless hours employ_).--

The great Mogul, and other eastern sovereigns, attended by their courtiers, spend annually some months of the finest season in encampments in the field, in hunting parties, and military amus.e.m.e.nts.

[464] _Th' enormous mountain._--The Himalaya range, which is a continuation of an immense chain of mountains girdling the northern regions of the earth and known by various names, as Caucasus, h.o.m.odus, Paropamissus, Imaus, etc., and from Imaus extended through Tartary to the sea of Kamschatka. Not the range of mountains so called in Asia Minor.--_Ed._

[465] _As wild traditions tell._--Pliny, imposed upon by some Greeks, who pretended to have been in India, relates this fable.--Vide Nat.

Hist. lib. 12.

[466] _Is fondly plac'd in Ganges' holy wave._--Almost all the Indian nations attribute to the Ganges the virtue of cleansing the soul from the stains of sin. They have such veneration for this river, that if any one in their presence were to throw any filth into the stream, an instant death would punish his audacity.

[467] Cambaya, the ancient Camanes of Ptolemy, gives name to the gulf of that name at the head of which it is situated. It is the princ.i.p.al seaport of Guzerat.--_Ed._

[468] Porus was king of part of the Punjaub, and was conquered by Alexander the Great.--_Ed._

[469] _Narsinga._--The laws of Narsing oblige the women to throw themselves into the funeral pile, to be burnt with their deceased husbands. An infallible secret to prevent the desire of widowhood.--CASTERA from Barros, Dec. 4.

[470] The Canarese, who inhabit Canara, on the west coast of India.--_Ed._

[471] Medina, a city of Arabia, famous as being the burial-place of Mohammed, and hence esteemed sacred.--_Ed._

[472] According to tradition, Perimal, a sovereign of India, embraced Islamism about 800 years before GAMA'S voyage, divided his dominions into different kingdoms, and ended his days as a hermit at Mecca.--_Ed._

[473] _i.e._ pariahs, outcasts.

[474] _Brahma their founder as a G.o.d they boast._--Antiquity has talked much, but knew little with certainty of the Brahmins, and their philosophy. Porphyry and others esteem them the same as the Gymnosophists of the Greeks, and divide them into several sects, the Samanaei, the Germanes, the Pramnae, the Gymnetae, etc. Brahma is the head of the Hindu triad which consists of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva.--_Ed._

[475] Almost innumerable, and sometimes as whimsically absurd as the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," are the holy legends of India. The accounts of the G.o.d Brahma, or Brimha, are more various than those of any fable in the Grecian mythology. According to Father Bohours, in his life of Xavier, the Brahmins hold, that the Great G.o.d having a desire to become visible, became man. In this state he produced three sons, Mayso, Visnu, and Brahma; the first, born of his mouth, the second, of his breast, the third, of his belly. Being about to return to his invisibility, he a.s.signed various departments to his three sons. To Brahma he gave the third heaven, with the superintendence of the rites of religion. Brahma having a desire for children, begat the Brahmins, who are the priests of India, and who are believed by the other tribes to be a race of demi-G.o.ds, who have the blood of heaven running in their veins. Other accounts say, that Brahma produced the priests from his head, the more ign.o.ble tribes from his breast, thighs, and feet.

According to the learned Kircher's account of the theology of the Brahmins, the sole and supreme G.o.d Vishnu, formed the secondary G.o.d Brahma, out of a flower that floated on the surface of the great deep before the creation. And afterwards, in reward of the virtue, fidelity, and grat.i.tude of Brahma, gave him power to create the universe.

Hesiod's genealogy of the G.o.ds, though refined upon by the schools of Plato, is of the same cla.s.s with the divine genealogies of the Brahmins.

The Jewish fables, foolish questions and genealogies, reproved by Saint Paul (epist. t.i.t.), were probably of this kind, for the Talmudical legends were not then sprung up. _Binah_, or Understanding, said the cabalists, begat _Kochmah_, or Wisdom, etc., till at last comes _Milcah_, the Kingdom, who begat _Shekinah_, the Divine Presence. In the same manner the Christian Gnostics, of the sect of Valentinus, held their ?????a, and their thirty aeons. _Ampsiu_ and _Auraan_, they tell us, _i.e._ Profundity and Silence, begat _Bacua_ and _Tharthuu_, Mind and Truth; these begat _Ubucua_ and _Thardeadie_, Word and Life, and these _Merexa_ and _Atarbarba_, Man and Church. The other conjunctions of their thirty aeons are of similar ingenuity. The prevalence of the same spirit of mythological allegory in such different nations, affords the philosopher a worthy field for speculation.

Almost as innumerable as their legends are the dreadful penances to which the Hindus submit themselves for the expiation of sins. Some hold the transmigration of souls, and of consequence abstain from all animal food.{*} Yet, however austere in other respects, they freely abandon themselves to every species of debauchery, some of them esteeming the most unnatural abominations as the privilege of their sanct.i.ty. The cow they venerate as sacred. If a dying man can lay hold of a cow's tail, and expire with it in his hands, his soul is sure to be purified, and perhaps will enjoy the signal favour to transmigrate into the body of one of those animals. The temples of India, which are numerous, are filled with innumerable idols of the most horrid figures. The Brahmins are allowed to eat nothing but what is cooked by themselves. Astrology is their princ.i.p.al study; yet, though they are mostly a despicable set of fortune-tellers, some of them are excellent moralists, and particularly inculcate the comprehensive virtue of humanity, which is enforced by the opinion, that Divine beings often a.s.sume the habit of mendicants, in order to distinguish the charitable from the inhuman.

They have several traditions of the virtuous, on these happy trials, being translated into heaven; the best designed incitement to virtue, perhaps, which their religion contains. Besides the Brahmins, the princ.i.p.al sect of that vast region called India, there are several others, who are divided and subdivided, according to innumerable variations, in every province. In Cambaya, the Banians, a sect who strictly abstain from all animal food, are numerous.

{*} Though from the extracts given by Mr. Dow, the philosopher Goutam appears to have been a very Duns Scotus or Aquinas in metaphysics, the Pythagorean reason why the Brahmins abstain from animal food, is a convincing proof of their ignorance in natural philosophy. Some will let vermin overrun them; some of the Banians cover their mouth with a cloth, lest they should suck in a gnat with their breath; and some carefully sweep the floor ere they tread upon it, lest they dislodge the soul of an insect. And yet they do not know that in the water they drink, and in every salad they eat, they cause the death of innumerable living creatures.

The sacred books of the Hindoos are written in a dead language, the Sanskrit, which none but the Brahmins are allowed to study. So strict in this are they, says Mr. Dow, that only one Mussulman was ever instructed in it, and his knowledge was obtained by fraud. Mahummud Akbar, emperor of India, though bred a Mohammedan, studied several religions. In the Christian he was instructed by a Portuguese. But, finding that of the Hindoos inaccessible, he had recourse to art. A boy named Feizi, was, as the orphan of a Brahmin, put under the care of one of the most eminent of these philosophers, and obtained full knowledge of their hidden religion. But the fraud being discovered, he was laid under the restraint of an oath, and it does not appear that he ever communicated the knowledge thus acquired.

[476] Kotwal, the chief officer of police in a town.--FORBES' Hindustani Dictionary.

[477] _The monster forms, Chimera-like, and rude._--Chimera, a monster slain by Bellerophon.

"First, dire Chimera's conquest was enjoin'd, A mingled monster of no mortal kind; Behind, a dragon's fiery tail was spread, A goat's rough body bore a lion's head; Her pitchy nostrils flaky flames expire, Her gaping throat emits infernal fire."

POPE'S II. vi.

[478] _So t.i.tan's son._--Briareus.

[479] _Before these shrines the blinded Indians bow._--In this instance, Camoens has, with great art, deviated from the truth of history. As it was the great purpose of his hero to propagate the law of heaven in the East, it would have been highly absurd to have represented GAMA and his attendants as on their knees in a pagan temple. This, however, was the case. "GAMA, who had been told," says Osorius, "that there were many Christians in India, conjectured that the temple, to which the catual led him, was a Christian church. At their entrance they were met by four priests, who seemed to make crosses on their foreheads. The walls were painted with many images. In the middle was it little round chapel, in the wall of which, opposite to the entrance, stood an image which could hardly be discovered. The four priests ascending, some entered the chapel by a little bra.s.s door, and pointing to the benighted image, cried aloud, 'Mary, Mary!' The catual and his attendants prostrated themselves an the ground, while the Lusians on their bended knees adored the blessed virgin." Thus Osorius. Another writer says, that a Portuguese, having some doubt, exclaimed, "If this be the devil's image, I however worship G.o.d."

[480] _Here India's fate._--The description of the palace of the zamorim, situated among aromatic groves, is according to history; the embellishment of the walls is in imitation of Virgil's description of the palace of King Latinus:--

_Tectum augustum, ingens, centum sublime columnis, Urbe fuit summa, etc._

"The palace built by Picus, vast and proud, } Supported by a hundred pillars stood, } And round encompa.s.s'd with a rising wood. } The pile o'erlook'd the town, and drew the sight, Surprised, at once, with reverence and delight....

Above the portal, carv'd in cedar wood, Placed in their ranks their G.o.dlike grandsires stood.

Old Saturn, with his crooked scythe on high; And Italus, that led the colony: And ancient Ja.n.u.s with his double face, And bunch of keys, the porter of the place.

There stood Sabinus, planter of the vines, } On a short pruning-hook his head reclines; } And studiously surveys his gen'rous wines. } Then warlike kings who for their country fought, And honourable wounds from battle brought.

Around the posts hung helmets, darts, and spears; } And captive chariots, axes, shields, and bars; } And broken beaks of ships, the trophies of their wars.} Above the rest, as chief of all the band Was Picus plac'd, a buckler in his hand; His other wav'd a long divining wand.

Girt in his Gabin gown the hero sate----"

DRYDEN, aen. vii.

[481]

_Behind her founder Nysa's walls were rear'd---- ----at distance far The Ganges lav'd the wide-extended war.--_

This is in the perspective manner of the beautiful descriptions of the figures on the shield of Achilles.--IL. xviii.