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~ 437 , In his great ayms, whose muscles snake-hke coil, Fle holds a mighty awe-inspiring bow ; But gentle are his deeds, devout his tail, No gentler, holier hermit lives below ! Soft the zephyr blows, the sward is green, - The sky is Dive, and tains the dust allay. By worth subdued. the elements I ween Tn one accord to him obeisance pay ! The forest beasts their mutual strife forget, And humbly listen to his beck and word ; For him the bending trees with blossoms wait, The mighty mountains own him as their lord { His ceaseless toil bespeaks a purpose high, His mighty mein denotes success is near. A gentle hermit {But his radianteye Tnstils a sense of awe and secret fear! Hf from holy saints he is descended, From Daityas sprung, or from sonte kingly line, I know not Jord! Nor why to woods hath wended, '. For penance hard and ceaseless rites divine. - Unpublished translation. Indra is pleased with the message, for Arjuna is his son, and Indra wishes him success. But nevertheless he is resolved to try the mortal as he tries all anchorites, and sends celestial. nymphs to lure the hero from his” austere rites, Our author launches into a descrip-— tion of these lovely nymphs in two cantos, describ- ing how they gather flowers and plunge into a river, 438 PAURANIK PERIOD. [BOOK v. and appear with renovated beauty before the solitary anchorite. aa Pale with rites prescribed of old,’ In arms accovtred, calm and bold, Like Veda,-—peaceful, glorious, great,— Arjuna’s self at last they met. Resplendent in a robe of light, Like the beauteous lord of night, ‘Alone, upon a hill he stood, And seemed of all the woods the god ! Pale with pemances,—but great, Unapproachable !—though all sedate, Alone—but strong as hosts in fight, 4 saint,—but weilding Indra’s might ! ; Unpublished translation. Such was the hero whom the nymphs meet, and such was the saint whom they vainly try to tempt. The celestial beauties retire, somewhat humbled, and then Indra himself comes in the guise of an old anchorite to dissuade Arjuna from his penances ; even as K4lid4sa’s Siva comes in disguise to dissuade Uma from her love of that deity. The mutability of worldly grandeur, the folly of seeking power and fame, the wisdom of seeking true virtue and salvation,—all these are pleaded by the disguised god with convincing eloquence ; but Arjuna remains unconvinced and unshaken in his purpose. Father ! thy advice is right, But alas it suits not me, As the starry sky of night Doth not suit the light of day. = * * * CHAP. XL] POETRY. 46 For I seek to wash our stain,— Stain for which this heart hath bled,— ‘With the tear drops for the slain " By their sorrowing widows shed ! if the hope on which I’ve rested Be unreal, idle, vain, Be it so ;~—-thy words are wasted ! Pardon, if I cause thee pain, Till I conquer, crush my foe, Win again our long-fost fame, Salvation’s self to me were woe,— Hind’rance to my lofty aim? Unpublished translation. © Indra is not ill pleased with this unshaken determi- nation which yields neither to temptation not to reason ; and the god discloses himself and points out to the hero the way to win the celestial arms he seeks, by the wor- Ship of Siva, who alone can bestow them. Once more Arjuna engages in penances and severe austerities, until the fame of his rigid piety is carried to Siva himself. Siva row comes to meet the pious Kshatriya,—not in the guise of an old man to dissuade him from his religious performances,—but as a warrior. wishing to try a warriors. steel. He assumes the guise of a Kirata or wild hunter, and a mighty boar which came to attack Arjuna is slain. Both Arjuna and the disguised god claim the merit of having slain the animal, and thus a quarrel is picked up which leads to a fight which our aathor describes in no less than six cantos. 440 PAURANI®’ PERIOD. [BOOK V. The battle, though full of the most striking and spirited passages, is nevertheless described in the extra- vagant style common to Hindu poets. Arms of snakes, arms of fire, and arms of clouds and rain are discharged until the firmament is filled with hissing serpents, roaring flames, or copious torrents of rain! But all these miraculous weapons are of little avail to Arjuna, to the hero’s great astonishment the wild hunter replies to every weapoe with a mightier one, and is more than a match for the most skilled warrior of the period! Astonished at the hunter's mighty skill Arjana paused in meditation stilt, And in his heart which never quaked midst fues, Doubts and misgivings, such as these, arose. Warriors have I seen of matchless power, Armies in great contests darkening lower, And beaten all! Why fail before this swain? Why fails the sun before the paler moon ? _. Is this all magic? Is it all a dream P Gone ig my might? Or am I stil the same ? Why triumphs not my never failing steel, Above this hunter’s all untutored skill > Rending the boundless sky as if in twain, Sounding his bow, and shaking earth and main, He fights. Is he a simple mountaineer ! By deeds a man disguised is shewn all clear. Such wondrous aim on foe to send his dart, To shield himself such never failing art, Not Bhishma’s self nor Drona proud doth own ! How ¢an a swain possess such skill alone ? Unpublished translation. CHAP. X11] POETRY. 441 At length, deprived of all arms, Arjuna springs on his invincible foe to wrestle him down. The wrestling goes on long, and Siva, no mean wrestler, springs into the air to attack Arjuna, and the latter holds him by the feet to pull him down. - This appeal the mighty god cannot withstand ; a faithful worshipper holds him by the feet, Siva reveals himself, and blesses the saintly warrior, and bestows on him the coveted arms by which he is to win back his kingdom and his fame. - Such is the celebrated poem of Bharavi which does not boast of any interesting plot or any striking crea- tions of fancy, but which is characterized by a force and vigour of sentiment and expression which have given | the poem a place among the unperishable works of the ancient Hindus.: Coming now to the seventh century A.D., we know on the authority of the Chinese traveller I-tsing that the poet Bhartrihari graced the age of Siladitya II. ’Bhartrihari’s Satakas show that he was a Hindu, but they are nevertheless marked by the Buddhist spirit of the time in which he lived. Professor Tawney of Calcutta has rendered some of them into elegant and spirited English verse, and a few extracts ae convey an idea of original to the reader— Not to swerve from trath or mercy, not for life to stoop to shames From the poor no gifts accepting, nor from men of evil fame } Lofty faith and proud submission,—who on fortune’s giddy ledge Firm can tread this path of duty, narrow as the sabre’s edge? 442 PAURANIK PERIOD. [BOOK v. Abstinence from sin of bloodshed, and from speech of others’ wives, Truth and open-handed largess, love for men of holy lives, Freedom from desire and avarice,—Such the path that leads to bliss, Path which every sect may travel, and the simple cannot miss. Treachery is of crimes the blackest, Avarice is a world of vice, Truth is nobler far than penance, Purity than sacrifice. Charity 's the first of virtues, Dignity doth most adorn, Knowledge triumphs unassisted, Better death than public scorn, rd You are a lord of acres But we are lords-of song ; And we subdue the subtle, If you subdue the strong 3 The rich of you are speaking, In me the wise believe, And if you find me irksome, Why then — I take my leave, What profit are the Vedas, Or books of legal lore, Or those long winded legends Repeated o'er and o’er ? What gain we by our merits ? . A dwelling in the skies-— A miserable mansion, That men of sense despise— All these are huckstering methods—~ Give me that perfect way Of self contained fruition, Where pain ig done away. CHAP. XIE] POETRY. 443 A hermit’s forest cell, and feltowship with deer, A harmless meal of fruif, stone beds beside the stream, Are helps to those who long for Siva’s guidance here ; But be the mind devout, our homes will forests seem. ron a Tawney. “Truth is nobler far than penatice; purity than sacrifice,"—this is the ulterior tesson which Hinduism has taught in every religious work and every literary composition, in all centuries and in all epochs. The Sitrakaras leamt this lesson from the Vedas and handed - it down to the immortal Gautama Buddha who made this principle his whole religion! And even the later Hindus of the Pauranik Period, with all their leaning _towards forms and rites, never lost sight of this truth. Drunkeunvess and falsehood were Mahdpdtakas of ald ; inter-caste-marriage and widow-marriage were none. Now, the latter involve loss of caste; the former go unpunished. Such rules are doomed ! _” The extracts from Bhartrihari given above will enable the reader to agree in the opinion of Professor Lassen, | ‘ that it is the terse and epigrammatic character of Bhartri- hari’s short poems which make them conspicuous among the productions of the Indian muse; and the perfect _ art which they are composed make them worthy of “being ranked among the masterpieces of Indian genius. - We have seen before that a Mahakavya known as Bhattikdvya is also probably the work of Bhartrihari. It is the story of the Ramdyana told briefly ; the re- 444 PAURANIK PERIOD. [BOOK V. markable feature of the work is that it has been written toteach grammar! All the conjugational forms of verbs which are difficult to remember, and al] other difficult derivations of words have been interwoven in melo- dious verse, so that the student who knows the poem knows Sanscrit grammar also.