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 passed from
hand to hand (from my hand)."

No. 299: "She stares, without having an object, gives
vent to long sighs, laughs into vacant space, 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 bayadères, 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 impassable.

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
Hâla's anthology illustrating the serious side of love among the
bayadères 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 illustrated in Hâla'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 Goda
(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 Hâla. 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 Japanese, 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 bayadères 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 Hâla 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 Hâla's seven
hundred poems seems to be No. 567:

"Only over me, the iron-hearted, thunder, O cloud, and
with all your might; be sure that you do not kill my
poor one with the hanging locks."

Here, for once, we have the idea of self-sacrifice--only the idea, it
is true, and not the act; but it indicates a very exceptional and
exalted state for a Hindoo even to think of such a thing. The
self-reproach of "iron-hearted" tells us, however, that the man has
been behaving selfishly and cruelly toward his sweetheart or wife, and
is feeling sorry for a moment. In such moments a Hindoo not
infrequently becomes human, especially if he expects new favors of the
maltreated woman, which she is only too willing to grant:

No. 85: "While with the breath of his mouth he cooled
one of my hands, swollen from the effect of his blow, I
put the other one laughingly around his neck."

No. 191: "By untangling the hair of her prostrate lover
from the notches of her spangles in which it had been
caught, she shows him that her heart has ceased to be
sulky."

References to such prostrations to secure forgiveness for inconstancy
or cruelty are frequent in Hindoo poems and dramas, and it is needless
to say that they are a very different thing from the disinterested
prostrations and homage of modern gallantry. True gallantry being one
of the altruistic ingredients of love, it would be useless to seek for
it among the Hindoos. Not so with hyperbole, which being simply a
magnifying of one's own sensations and an expression of extravagant
feeling of any kind, forms, as we know, a phase of sensual as well as
of sentimental love. The eager desire for a girl's favor makes her
breath and all her attributes seem delicious not only to man but to
inanimate things. The following, with the finishing touches applied by
the German translator, approaches modern poetic sentiment more closely
than any other of Hâla's songs:

No. 13: "O you who are skilled in cooking! Do not be
angry (that the fire fails to burn). The fire does not
burn, smokes only, in order to drink in (long) the
breath of (your) mouth, perfumed like red pâtela
blossoms."

In the use of hyperbole it is very difficult to avoid the step from
the sublime to the ridiculous. The author of No. 153 had a happy
thought when he sang that his beloved was so perfect a beauty that no
one had ever been able to see her whole body because the eye refused
to leave whatever part it first alighted on. This pretty notion is
turned into unconscious burlesque by the author of No. 274, who
complains,

"How can I describe her from whose limbs the eyes that
see them cannot tear themselves away, like a weak cow
from the mud she is sticking in."

Hardly less grotesque to our Western taste is the favorite boast (No.
211 _et passim_) that the moon is making vain efforts to shine as
brightly as the beloved's face. It is easier for us to sympathize with
the Hindoo poets when they express their raptures over the eyes or
locks of their beloved:

No. 470: "Other beauties too have in their faces
beautiful wide black eyes, with long lashes, but they
cannot cast such glances as you do."

No. 77: "I think of her countenance with her locks
floating loosely about it as she shook her head when I
seized her lip--like unto a lotos flower surrounded by
a swarm of (black) bees attracted by its fragrance."

Yet even these two references to personal beauty are not purely
esthetic, and in all the others the sensual aspect is more emphasized:

No. 556: "The brown girl's hair, which had succeeded in
touching her hips, weeps drops of water, as it were,
now that she comes out of the bath, as if from fear of
now being tied up again."

No. 128: "As by a miracle, as by a treasure, as in
heaven, as a kingdom, as a drink of ambrosia, was I
affected when I (first) saw her without any clothing."

No. 473: "For the sake of the dark-eyed girls whose
hips and thighs are visible through their wet dresses
when they bathe in the afternoon, does Kama [the god of
love] wield his bow."

Again and again the poets express their raptures over exaggerated
busts and hips, often in disgustingly coarse comparisons--lines which
cannot be quoted here.[275]


LYRICS AND DRAMAS

In his _History of Indian Literature_ (209), Weber says that

"the erotic lyric commences for us with certain of the poems
attributed to Kalidasa." "The later Kavyas are to be ranked
with the erotic poems rather than with the epic. In general
this love-poetry is of the most unbridled and extravagantly
sensual description; yet examples of deep and truly romantic
tenderness are not wanting."

Inasmuch as he attributes the same qualities to some of the Hâla poems
in which we have been unable to find them, it is obvious that his
conception of "deep and truly romantic tenderness" is different from
ours, and it is useless to quarrel about words. Hâla's collection,
being an anthology of the best love-songs of many poets, is much more
representative and valuable than if the verses were all by the same
poet. If Hindoo bards and bayadères had a capacity for true altruistic
love-sentiment, these seven hundred songs could hardly have failed to
reveal it. But to make doubly sure that we are not misrepresenting a
phase of the history of civilization, let us examine the Hindoo dramas
most noted as love-stories, especially those of Kalidasa, whose
_Sakuntala_ in particular was triumphantly held up by some of my
critics as a refutation of my theory that none of the ancient
civilized nations knew romantic love. I shall first briefly summarize
the love-stories told in these dramas, and then point out what they
reveal in regard to the Hindoo conception of love as based,
presumably, on their experiences.


I. THE STORY OF SAKUNTALA

Once upon a time there lived on the banks of the Gautami River a
hermit named Kauçika. He was of royal blood and had made so much
progress with his saintly exercises of penitence that he was on the
point of being able to defy the laws of Nature, and the gods
themselves began to fear his power. To deprive him of it they sent
down a beautiful _apsara_ (celestial bayadères) to tempt him. He could
not resist her charms, and broke his vows. A daughter was born who
received the name of Sakuntala, and was given in charge of another
saint, named Kanva, who brought her up lovingly as if she had been his
own daughter. She has grown up to be a maiden of more than human
beauty, when one day she is seen by the king, who, while hunting, has
strayed within the sacred precincts while the saint is away on a holy
errand. He is at once fascinated by her beauty--a beauty, as he says
to himself, such as is seldom found in royal chambers--a wild vine
more lovely than any garden-plant--and she, too, confesses to her
companions that since she has seen him she is overcome by a feeling
which seems out of place in this abode of penitence.

The king cannot bear the idea of returning to his palace, but encamps
near the grove of the penitents. He fears that he may not be able to
win the girl's love, and she is tortured by the same doubt regarding
him. "Did Brahma first paint her and then infuse life into her, or did
he in his spirit fashion her out of a number of spirits?" he exclaims.
He wonders what excuse he can have for lingering in the grove. His
companion suggests gathering the tithe, but the king retorts: "What I
get for protecting her is to be esteemed higher than piles of jewels."
He now feels an aversion to hunting. "I would not be able to shoot
this arrow at the gazelles who have lived with her, and who taught the
beloved to gaze so innocently." He grows thin from loss of sleep.
Unable to keep his feelings locked up in his bosom, he reveals them to
his companion, the jester, but afterward, fearing he might tell his
wives about this love-affair, he says to him:

"Of course there is no truth in the notion that I
coveted this girl Sakuntala. Just think! how could we
suit one another, a girl who knows nothing of love and
has grown up perfectly wild with the young gazelles?
No, my friend, you must not take a joke seriously."

But all the time he grows thinner from longing--so thin that his
bracelet, whose jewels have lost all their lustre from his tears,
falls constantly from his arm and has to be replaced.

In the meantime Sakuntala, without lacking the reserve and timidity
proper to the girls of penitents, has done several things that
encouraged the king to hope. While she avoided looking straight at him
(as etiquette prescribed), there was a loving expression on her face,
and once, when about to go away with her companions, she pretended
that her foot had been cut by a blade of kusagrass--but it was merely
an excuse for turning her face. Thus, while her love is not frankly
discovered, it is not covered either. She doubts whether the king
loves her, and her agony throws her into a feverish state which her
companions try in vain to allay by fanning her with lotos leaves. The
king is convinced that the sun's heat alone could not have affected
her thus. He sees that she has grown emaciated and seems ill. "Her
cheeks," he says,

"have grown thin, her bosom has lost its firm tension,
her body has grown attenuated, her shoulders stoop, and
pale is her face. Tortured by love, the girl presents
an aspect as pitiable as it is lovable; she resembles
the vine Mâdhavi when it is blighted by the hot breath
of a leaf-desiccating wind."

He is watching her, unseen himself, as she reclines in an arbor with
her friends, who are fanning her. He hears her say: "Since the hour
when he came before my eyes ... the royal sage, ah, since that hour I
have become as you see me--from longing for him;" and he wonders, "how
could she fear to have any difficulty in winning her lover?" "The
little hairs on her cheek reveal her passion by becoming erect," he
adds as he sees her writing something with her nails on a lotos leaf.
She reads to her companions what she has written: "_Your_ heart I know
not; me love burns day and night, you cruel one, because I think of
you alone."[276] Encouraged by this confession, the king steps from
his place of concealment and exclaims: "Slender girl, the glowing heat
of love only burns you, but me it consumes, and incessant is the great
torture." Sakuntala tries to rise, but is too weak, and the king bids
her dispense with ceremony. While he expresses his happiness at having
found his love reciprocated, one of the companions mutters something
about "Kings having many loves," and Sakuntala herself exclaims: "Why
do you detain the royal sage? He is quite unhappy because he is
separated from his wives at court." But the king protests that though
he has many women at court, his heart belongs to no other but her.
Left alone with Sakuntala, he exclaims:

"Be not alarmed! For am not I, who brings you adoring
homage, at your side? Shall I fan you with the cooling
petals of these water-lilies? Or shall I place your
lotos feet on my lap and fondle them to my heart's
content, you round-hipped maiden?"

"God forbid that I should be so indiscreet with a man that commands
respect," replies Sakuntala. She tries to escape, and when the king
holds her, she says: "Son of Puru! Observe the laws of propriety and
custom! I am, indeed, inflamed by love, but I cannot dispose of
myself." The king urges her not to fear her foster father. Many girls,
he says, have freely given themselves to kings without incurring
parental disapproval; and he tries to kiss her. A voice warns them
that night approaches, and, hearing her friends returning, Sakuntala
urges the king to conceal himself in the bushes.

Sakuntala now belongs to the king; they are united according to one of
the eight forms of Hindoo marriage known as that of free choice. After
remaining with her a short time the king returns to his other wives at
court. Before leaving he puts a seal ring on her finger and tells her
how she can count the days till a messenger shall arrive to bring her
to his palace. But month after month passes and no messenger arrives.
"The king has acted abominably toward Sakuntala," says one of her
friends; "he has deceived an inexperienced girl who put faith in him.
He has not even written her a letter, and she will soon be a mother."
She feels convinced, however, that the king's neglect is due to the
action of a saint who had cursed Sakuntala because she had not waited
on him promptly. "Like a drunkard, her lover shall forget what has
happened," was his curse. Relenting somewhat, he added afterward that
the force of the curse could be broken by bringing to the king some
ornament that he might have left as a souvenir. Sakuntala has her
ring, and relying on that she departs with a retinue for the royal
abode. On the way, in crossing a river, she loses the ring, and when
she confronts the king he fails to remember her and dismisses her
ignominiously. A fisherman afterward finds the ring in the stomach of
a fish, and it gets into the hands of the king, who, at sight of it,
remembers Sakuntala and is heartbroken at his cruel conduct toward
her. But he cannot at once make amends, as he has chased her away, and
it is not till some years later, and with supernatural aid, that they
are reunited.


II. THE STORY OF URVASI

The saint Narayana had spent so many years in solitude, addicted to
prayers and ascetic practices, that the gods dreaded his growing
power, which was making him like unto them, and to break it they sent
down to him some of the seductive apsaras. But the saint held a
flower-stalk to his loins, and Urvasi was born, a girl more beautiful
than the celestial bayadères who had been sent to tempt him. He gave
this girl to the apsaras to take as a present to the god Indra, whose
entertainers they were. She soon became the special ornament of heaven
and Indra used her to bring the saints to fall.

One day King Pururavas, while out driving, hears female voices calling
for help. Five apsaras appear and implore him, if he can drive through
the air, to come to the assistance of their companion Urvasi, who has
been seized and carried away, northward, by a demon. The king
forthwith orders his charioteer to steer in that direction, and
erelong he returns victorious, with the captured maiden on his
chariot. She is still overcome with terror, her eyes are closed, and
as the king gazes at her he doubts that she can be the daughter of a
cold and learned hermit; the moon must have created her, or the god of
love himself. As the chariot descends, Urvasi, frightened, leans
against the king's shoulder, and the little hairs on his body stand up
straight, so much is he pleased thereat. He brings her back to the
other apsaras, who are on a mountain-top awaiting their return.
Urvasi, too much overcome to thank him for her rescue, begs one of her
friends to do it for her, whereupon the apsaras, bidding him good-by,
rise into the air. Urvasi lingers a moment on the pretence that her
pearl necklace has got entangled in a vine, but in reality to get
another peep at the king, who addresses fervent words of thanks to the
bush for having thus given him another chance to look on her face.
"Rising into the air," he exclaims, "this girl tears my heart from my
body and carries it away with her."

The queen soon notices that his heart has gone away with another. She
complains of this estrangement to her maid, to whom she sets the task
of discovering the secret of it. The maid goes at it slyly. Addressing
the king's viduschaka (confidential adviser), she informs him that the
queen is very unhappy because the king addressed her by the name of
the girl he longs for. "What?" retorts the viduschaka--"the king
himself has revealed the secret? He called her Urvasi?" "And who, your
honor, is Urvasi?" says the maid. "She is one of the apsaras," he
says. "The sight of her has infatuated the king's senses so that he
tortures not only the queen but me, the Brahman, too, for he no longer
thinks of eating." But he expresses his conviction that the folly will
not last long, and the maid departs.

Urvasi, tortured, like the king, by love and doubt, suppresses her
bashfulness and asks one of her friends to go with her to get her
pearl necklace which she had left entangled in the vine. "Then you are
hurrying down, surely, to see Pururavas, the king?" says the friend;
"and whom have you sent in advance?" "My heart," replied Urvasi. So
they fly down to the earth, invisible to mortals, and when they see
the king, Urvasi declares that he seems to her even more beautiful
than at their first meeting. They listen to the conversation between
him and the viduschaka. The latter advises his master to seek
consolation by dreaming of a union with his love, or by painting her
picture, but the king answers that dreams cannot come to a man who is
unable to sleep, nor would a picture be able to stop his flood of
tears. "The god of love has pierced my heart and now he tortures me by
denying my wish." Encouraged by these words, but unwilling to make
herself visible, Urvasi takes a piece of birch-bark, writes on it a
message, and throws it down. The king sees it fall, picks it up and
reads:

"I love you, O master; you did not know, nor I, that
you burn with love for me. No longer do I find rest on
my coral couch, and the air of the celestial grove
burns me like fire."

"What will he say to that?" wonders Urvasi, and her friend replies,
"Is there not an answer in his limbs, which have become like withered
lotos stalks?" The king declares to his friend that the message on the
leaf has made him as happy as if he had seen his beloved's face.
Fearing that the perspiration on his hand (the sign of violent love)
might wash away the message, he gives the birch-bark to the
viduschaka. Urvasi's friend now makes herself visible to the king, who
welcomes her, but adds that the sight of her delights him not as it
did when Urvasi was with her. "Urvasi bows before you," the apsara
answers, "and sends this message: 'You were my protector, O master,
when a demon offered me violence. Since I saw you, god Kama has
tortured me violently; therefore you must sometime take pity on me,
great king!'" And the king retorts: "The ardor of love is here equally
great on either side. It is proper that hot iron be welded with hot
iron." After this Urvasi makes herself visible, too, but the king has
hardly had time to greet her, when a celestial messenger arrives to
summon her hastily back to heaven, to her own great distress and the
king's.

Left alone, the king wants to seek consolation in the message written
on the birch-bark. But to their consternation, they cannot find it. It
had dropped from the viduschaka's hand and the wind had carried it
off. "O wind of Malaya," laments the king,

"you are welcome to all the fragrance breathing from
the flowers, but of what use to you is the love-letter
you have stolen from me? Know you not that a hundred
such consolers may save the life of a love-sick man who
cannot hope soon to attain the goal of his desires?"

In the meantime the queen and her maid have appeared in the
background. They come across the birch-bark, see the message on it,
and the maid reads it aloud. "With this gift of the celestial girl let
us now meet her lover," says the queen, and stepping forward, she
confronts the king with the words: "Here is the bark, my husband. You
need not search for it longer." Denial is useless; the king prostrates
himself at her feet, confessing his guilt and begging her not to be
angry at her slave. But she turns her back and leaves him. "I cannot
blame her," says the king; "homage to a woman leaves her cold unless
it is inspired by love, as an artificial jewel leaves an expert who
knows the fire of genuine stones." "Though Urvasi has my heart," he
adds, "yet I highly esteem the queen. Of course, I shall meet her with
firmness, since she has disdained my prostration at her feet."

The reason why Urvasi had been summoned back to heaven so suddenly was
that Indra wanted to hear a play which the celestial manager had
rehearsed with the apsaras. Urvasi takes her part, but her thoughts
are so incessantly with the king that she blunders repeatedly. She
puts passion into lines which do not call for it, and once, when she
is called on to answer the question, "To whom does her heart incline?"
she utters the name of her own lover instead of the one of similar
sound called for in the play. For these mistakes her teacher curses
her and forbids her remaining in heaven any longer. Then Indra says to
the abashed maiden: "I must do a favor to the king whom you love and
who aids me in battle. Go and remain with him at your will, until you
have borne him a son."

Ignorant of the happiness in store for him, the king meanwhile
continues to give utterance to his longings and laments. "The day has
not passed so very sadly; there was something to do, no time for
longing. But how shall I spend the long night, for which there is no
pastime?" The viduschaka counsels hope, and the king grants that even
the tortures of love have their advantage; for, as the force of the
torrent is increased a hundredfold if a rock is interposed, so is the
power of love if obstacles retard the blissful union. The twitching of
his right arm (a favorable sign) augments his hope. At the moment when
he remarks: "The anguish of love increases at night," Urvasi and her
friend came down from the air and hover about him. "Nothing can cool
the flame of my love," he continues,

"neither a bed of fresh flowers, nor moonlight, nor
strings of pearls, nor sandal ointment applied to the
whole body. The only part of my body that has attained
its goal is this shoulder, which touched her in the
chariot."

At these words Urvasi boldly steps before the king, but he pays no
attention to her. "The great king," she complains to her friend,
"remains cold though I stand before him." "Impetuous girl," is the
answer, "you are still wearing your magic veil; he cannot see you."

At this moment voices are heard and the queen appears with her
retinue. She had already sent a message to the king to inform him that
she was no longer angry and had made a vow to fast and wear no finery
until the moon had entered the constellation of Rohini, in order to
express her penitence and conciliate her husband. The king, greeting
her, expresses sorrow that she should weaken her body, delicate as
lotos root, by thus fasting. "What?" he adds, "you yourself conciliate
the slave who ardently longs to be with you and who is anxious to win
your indulgence!" "What great esteem he shows her!" exclaims Urvasi,
with a confused smile; but her companion retorts: "You foolish girl, a
man of the world is most polite when he loves another woman." "The
power of my vow," says the queen, "is revealed in his solicitude for
me." Then she folds her hands, and, bowing reverently, says:

"I call to witness these two gods, the Moon and his
Rohini, that I beg my husband's pardon. Henceforth may
he, unhindered, associate with the woman whom he loves
and who is glad to be his companion."

"Is he indifferent to you?" asks the viduschaka. "Fool!" she replies;
"I desire only my husband's happiness, and give up my own for that.
Judge for yourself whether I love him."

When the queen has left, the king once more abandons himself to his
yearning for his beloved. "Would that she came from behind and put her
lotos hands over my eyes." Urvasi hears the words and fulfils his
wish. He knows who it is, for every little hair on his body stands up
straight. "Do not consider me forward if now I embrace his body," says
Urvasi to her friend; "for the queen has given him to me." "You take
my body as the queen's present," says the king; "but who, you thief,
allowed you before that to steal my heart?" "It shall always be yours
and I your slave alone," he continues. "When I took possession of the
throne I did not feel so near my goal as now when I begin my service
at your feet." "The moon's rays which formerly tortured me now refresh
my body, and welcome are Kama's arrows which used to wound me." "Did
my delaying do you harm?" asks Urvasi, and he replies: "Oh, no! Joy is
sweeter when it follows distress. He who has been exposed to the sun
is cooled by the tree's shade more than others;" and he ends the same
with the words: "A night seemed to consist of a hundred nights ere my
wish was fulfilled; may it be the same now that I am with you, O
beauty! how glad I should be!"

Absorbed by his happy love, the king hands over the reins of
government to his ministers and retires with Urvasi to a forest. One
day he looks for a moment thoughtfully at another girl, whereat Urvasi
gets so jealous that she refuses to accept his apology, and in her
anger forgets that no woman must walk into the forest of the war-god.
Hardly has she entered when she is changed into a vine. The king goes
out of his mind from grief; he roams all over the forest, alternately
fainting and raving, calling upon peacock and cuckoo, bee, swan, and
elephant, antelope, mountain, and river to give him tidings of his
beloved, her with the antelope eyes and the big breasts, and the hips
so broad that she can only walk slowly. At last he sees in a cleft a
large red jewel and picks it up. It is the stone of union which