The Kādambarī of Bāṇa

Having thus said, he laid the cage before the king and retired. (27) And when he was gone, the king of birds, standing before the king, and raising his right foot, having uttered the words, ‘All hail!’ recited to the king, in a song perfect in the enunciation of each syllable and accent, a verse72 to this effect:

‘The bosoms of your foemen’s queens now mourn,Keeping a fast of widowed solitude,Bathed in salt tears, of pearl-wreaths all forlorn,Scorched by their sad hearts’ too close neighbourhood.’

And the king, having heard it, was amazed, and joyfully addressed his minister Kumārapālita, who sat close to him on a costly golden throne, like Bṛihaspati in his mastery of political philosophy, aged, of noble birth, first in the circle of wise councillors: ‘Thou hast heard the bird’s clear enunciation of consonants, and the sweetness of his intonation. This, in the first place, is a great marvel, that he should raise a song in which the syllables are clearly separated; and there is a combination of correctness with clearness in the vowels and anunāsikas. (28) Then, again, we had something more than that: for in him, though a lower creation, are found the accomplishments, as it were, of a man, in a pleasurable art, and the course of his song is inspired by knowledge. For it was he who, with the cry, “All hail!” straightened his right foot and sang this song concerning me, whereas, generally, birds and beasts are only skilled in the science of fearing, eating, pairing, and sleeping. This is most wonderful.’ And when the king had said this, Kumārapālita, with a slight smile, replied: ‘Where is the wonder? For all kinds of birds, beginning with the parrot and the maina, repeat a sound once heard, as thou, O king, knowest; so it is no wonder that exceeding skill is produced either by the efforts of men, or in consequence of perfection gained in a former birth. Moreover, they formerly possessed a voice like that of men, with clear utterance. The indistinct speech of parrots, as well as the change in elephants’ tongues, arose from a curse of Agni.’

Hardly had he thus spoken when there arose the blast of the mid-day conch, following the roar of the drum distinctly struck at the completion of the hour, and announcing that the sun had reached the zenith. (29) And, hearing this, the king dismissed his band of chiefs, as the hour for bathing was at hand, and arose from his hall of audience.

Then, as he started, the great chiefs thronged together as they rose, tearing their silk raiment with the leaf-work of their bracelets, as it fell from its place in the hurried movement. Their necklaces were swinging with the shock; the quarters of space were made tawny by showers of fragrant sandal-powder and saffron scattered from their limbs in their restlessness; the bees arose in swarms from their garlands of mālatī flowers, all quivering; their cheeks were caressed by the lotuses in their ears, half hanging down; their strings of pearls were trembling on their bosoms – each longed in his self-consciousness to pay his respects to the king as he departed.

The hall of audience was astir on all sides with the sound of the anklets of the cowrie bearers as they disappeared in all directions, bearing the cowries on their shoulders, their gems tinkling at every step, broken by the cry of the kalahaṃsas, eager to drink the lotus honey; (30) with the pleasant music of the jewelled girdles and wreaths of the dancing-girls coming to pay their respects as they struck their breast and sides; with the cries of the kalahaṃsas of the palace lake, which, charmed by the sound of the anklets, whitened the broad steps of the hall of audience; with the voices of the tame cranes, eager for the sound of the girdles, screaming more and more with a prolonged outcry, like the scratching of bell-metal; with the heavy tramp on the floor of the hall of audience struck by the feet of a hundred neighbouring chiefs suddenly departing, which seemed to shake the earth like a hurricane; with the cry of ‘Look!’ from the wand-bearing ushers, who were driving the people in confusion before them, and shouting loudly, yet good-naturedly, ‘Behold!’ long and shrill, resounding far by its echo in the bowers of the palace; (31) with the ringing of the pavement as it was scratched by the points of diadems with their projecting aigrettes, as the kings swiftly bent till their trembling crest-gems touched the ground; with the tinkling of the earrings as they rang on the hard mosaic in their owners’ obeisance; with the space-pervading din of the bards reciting auspicious verses, and coming forward with the pleasant continuous cry, ‘Long life and victory to our king!’; with the hum of the bees as they rose up leaving the flowers, by reason of the turmoil of the hundreds of departing feet; with the clash of the jewelled pillars on which the gems were set jangling from being struck by the points of the bracelets as the chieftains fell hastily prostrate in their confusion. The king then dismissed the assembled chiefs, saying, ‘Rest awhile’; and after saying to the Caṇḍāla maiden, ‘Let Vaiçampāyana be taken into the inner apartments,’ and giving the order to his betel-nut bearer, he went, accompanied by a few favourite princes, to his private apartments. There, laying aside his adornments, like the sun divested of his rays, or the sky bare of moon and stars, he entered the hall of exercise, where all was duly prepared. Having taken pleasant exercise therein with the princes of his own age, (32) he then entered the bathing-place, which was covered with a white canopy, surrounded by the verses of many a bard. It had a gold bath, filled with scented water in its midst, with a crystal bathing-seat placed by it, and was adorned with pitchers placed on one side, full of most fragrant waters, having their mouths darkened by bees attracted by the odour, as if they were covered with blue cloths, from fear of the heat. (33) Then the hand-maidens, some darkened by the reflection of their emerald jars, like embodied lotuses with their leafy cups, some holding silver pitchers, like night with a stream of light shed by the full moon, duly besprinkled the king. (34) Straightway there arose a blare of the trumpets sounded for bathing, penetrating all the hollows of the universe, accompanied by the din of song, lute, flute, drum, cymbal, and tabor, resounding shrilly in diverse tones, mingled with the uproar of a multitude of bards, and cleaving the path of hearing. Then, in due order, the king put upon him two white garments, light as a shed snake-skin, and wearing a turban, with an edge of fine silk, pure as a fleck of white cloud, like Himālaya with the stream of the heavenly river falling upon it, he made his libation to the Pitṛis with a handful of water, consecrated by a hymn, and then, prostrating himself before the sun, proceeded to the temple. When he had worshipped Çiva, and made an offering to Agni, (35) his limbs were anointed in the perfuming-room with sandal-wood, sweetened with the fragrance of saffron, camphor, and musk, the scent of which was followed by murmuring bees; he put on a chaplet of scented mālatī flowers, changed his garb, and, with no adornment save his jewelled earrings, he, together with the kings, for whom a fitting meal was prepared, broke his fast, with the pleasure that arises from the enjoyment of viands of sweet savour. Then, having drunk of a fragrant drug, rinsed his mouth, and taken his betel, he arose from his daïs, with its bright mosaic pavement. The portress, who was close by, hastened to him, and leaning on her arm, he went to the hall of audience, followed by the attendants worthy to enter the inner apartments, whose palms were like boughs, very hard from their firm grasp of their wands.

The hall showed as though walled with crystal by reason of the white silk that draped its ends; the jewelled floor was watered to coolness with sandal-water, to which was added very fragrant musk; the pure mosaic was ceaselessly strewn with masses of blossoms, as the sky with its bevy of stars; (36) many a golden pillar shone forth, purified with scented water, and decked with countless images, as though with the household gods in their niches; aloe spread its fragrance richly; the whole was dominated by an alcove, which held a couch white as a cloud after storm, with a flower-scented covering, a pillow of fine linen at the head, castors encrusted with gems, and a jewelled footstool by its side, like the peak of Himālaya to behold.

Reclining on this couch, while a maiden, seated on the ground, having placed in her bosom the dagger she was wont to bear, gently rubbed his feet with a palm soft as the leaves of fresh lotuses, the king rested for a short time, and held converse on many a theme with the kings, ministers, and friends whose presence was meet for that hour.

He then bade the portress, who was at hand, to fetch Vaiçampāyana from the women’s apartments, for he had become curious to learn his story. And she, bending hand and knee to the ground, with the words ‘Thy will shall be done!’ taking the command on her head, fulfilled his bidding. (37) Soon Vaiçampāyana approached the king, having his cage borne by the portress, under the escort of a herald, leaning on a gold staff, slightly bent, white robed, wearing a top-knot silvered with age, slow in gait, and tremulous in speech, like an aged flamingo in his love for the race of birds, who, placing his palm on the ground, thus delivered his message: ‘Sire, the queens send thee word that by thy command this Vaiçampāyana has been bathed and fed, and is now brought by the portress to thy feet.’ Thus speaking, he retired, and the king asked Vaiçampāyana: ‘Hast thou in the interval eaten food sufficient and to thy taste?’ ‘Sire,’ replied he, ‘what have I not eaten? I have drunk my fill of the juice of the jambū fruit, aromatically sweet, pink and blue as a cuckoo’s eye in the gladness of spring; I have cracked the pomegranate seeds, bright as pearls wet with blood, which lions’ claws have torn from the frontal bones of elephants. I have torn at my will old myrobalans, green as lotus leaves, and sweet as grapes. (38) But what need of further words? For everything brought by the queens with their own hands turns to ambrosia.’ And the king, rebuking his talk, said: ‘Let all this cease for a while, and do thou remove our curiosity. Tell us from the very beginning the whole history of thy birth – in what country, and how wert thou born, and by whom was thy name given? Who were thy father and mother? How came thine attainment of the Vedas, and thine acquaintance with the Çāstras, and thy skill in the fine arts? What caused thy remembrance of a former birth? Was it a special boon given thee? Or dost thou dwell in disguise, wearing the form only of a bird, and where didst thou formerly dwell? How old art thou, and how came this bondage of a cage, and the falling into the hands of a Caṇḍāla maiden, and thy coming hither?’ Thus respectfully questioned by the king, whose curiosity was kindled, Vaiçampāyana thought a moment, and reverently replied, ‘Sire, the tale is long; but if it is thy pleasure, let it be heard.’

‘There is a forest, by name Vindhya, that embraces the shores of the eastern and western ocean, and decks the central region as though it were the earth’s zone. (39) It is beauteous with trees watered with the ichor of wild elephants, and bearing on their crests masses of white blossom that rise to the sky and vie with the stars; in it the pepper-trees, bitten by ospreys in their spring gladness, spread their boughs; tamāla branches trampled by young elephants fill it with fragrance; shoots in hue like the wine-flushed cheeks of Malabārīs, as though roseate with lac from the feet of wandering wood-nymphs, overshadow it. Bowers there are, too, wet with drippings from parrot-pierced pomegranates; bowers in which the ground is covered with torn fruit and leaves shaken down by restless monkeys from the kakkola trees, or sprinkled with pollen from ever-falling blossoms, or strewn with couches of clove-branches by travellers, or hemmed in by fine cocoanuts, ketakīs, karīras, and bakulas; bowers so fair that with their areca trees girt about with betel vines, they make a fitting home for a woodland Lakshmī. Thickly growing ēlās make the wood dark and fragrant, as with the ichor of wild elephants; (40) hundreds of lions, who meet their death from barbaric leaders eager to seize the pearls of the elephants’ frontal-bones still clinging to their mouth and claws, roam therein; it is fearful as the haunt of death, like the citadel of Yama, and filled with the buffaloes dear to him; like an army ready for battle, it has bees resting on its arrow-trees, as the points on arrows, and the roar of the lion is clear as the lion-cry of onset; it has rhinoceros tusks dreadful as the dagger of Durgā, and like her is adorned with red sandal-wood; like the story of Karṇīsuta, it has its Vipula, Acala and Çaça in the wide mountains haunted by hares,73 that lie near it; as the twilight of the last eve of an aeon has the frantic dance of blue-necked Çiva, so has it the dances of blue-necked peacocks, and bursts into crimson; as the time of churning the ocean had the glory of Çrī and the tree which grants all desires, and was surrounded by sweet draughts of Vāruṇa,74 so is it adorned by Çrī trees and Varuṇa39 trees. It is densely dark, as the rainy season with clouds, and decked with pools in countless hundreds;75 like the moon, it is always the haunt of the bears, and is the home of the deer.76 (41) Like a king’s palace, it is adorned by the tails of cowrie deer,77 and protected by troops of fierce elephants. Like Durgā, it is strong of nature,78 and haunted by the lion. Like Sītā, it has its Kuça, and is held by the wanderer of night.79 Like a maiden in love, it wears the scent of sandal and musk, and is adorned with a tilaka of bright aloes;80 like a lady in her lover’s absence, it is fanned with the wind of many a bough, and possessed of Madana;81 like a child’s neck, it is bright with rows of tiger’s-claws,82 and adorned with a rhinoceros;83 like a hall of revelry with its honeyed draughts, it has hundreds of beehives84 visible, and is strewn with flowers. In parts it has a circle of earth torn up by the tusks of large boars, like the end of the world when the circle of the earth was lifted up by the tusks of Mahāvarāha; here, like the city of Rāvaṇa, it is filled with lofty çālas85 inhabited by restless monkeys; (42) here it is, like the scene of a recent wedding, bright with fresh kuça grass, fuel, flowers, acacia, and palāça; here, it seems to bristle in terror at the lions’ roar; here, it is vocal with cuckoos wild for joy; here it is, as if in excitement, resonant with the sound of palms86 in the strong wind; here, it drops its palm-leaves like a widow giving up her earrings; here, like a field of battle, it is filled with arrowy reeds;87 here, like Indra’s body, it has a thousand netras;88 here, like Vishṇu’s form, it has the darkness of tamālas;89 here, like the banner of Arjuna’s chariot, it is blazoned with monkeys; here, like the court of an earthly king, it is hard of access, through the bamboos; here, like the city of King Virāṭa, it is guarded by a Kīcaka;90 here, like the Lakshmī of the sky, it has the tremulous eyes of its deer pursued by the hunter;91 here, like an ascetic, it has bark, bushes, and ragged strips and grass.92 (43) Though adorned with Saptaparṇa,93 it yet possesses leaves innumerable; though honoured by ascetics, it is yet very savage;94 though in its season of blossom, it is yet most pure.

‘In that forest there is a hermitage, famed throughout the world – a very birthplace of Dharma. It is adorned with trees tended by Lopāmudrā as her own children, fed with water sprinkled by her own hands, and trenched round by herself. She was the wife of the great ascetic Agastya; he it was who at the prayer of Indra drank up the waters of ocean, and who, when the Vindhya mountains, by a thousand wide peaks stretching to the sky in rivalry of Meru, were striving to stop the course of the sun’s chariot, and were despising the prayers of all the gods, yet had his commands obeyed by them; who digested the demon Vātāpi by his inward fire; who had the dust of his feet kissed by the tips of the gold ornaments on the crests of gods and demons; who adorned the brow of the Southern Region; and who manifested his majesty by casting Nahusha down from heaven by the mere force of his murmur.

(44) ‘The hermitage is also hallowed by Lopāmudrā’s son Dṛiḍhadasyu, an ascetic, bearing his staff of palāça,95 wearing a sectarial mark made of purifying ashes, clothed in strips of kuça grass, girt with muñja, holding a cup of green leaves in his roaming from hut to hut to ask alms. From the large supply of fuel he brought, he was surnamed by his father Fuelbearer.

‘The place is also darkened in many a spot by green parrots and by plantain groves, and is girt by the river Godāverī, which, like a dutiful wife, followed the path of the ocean when drunk by Agastya.

‘There, too, Rāma, when he gave up his kingdom to keep his father’s promise, dwelt happily for some time at Pañcavaṭī with Sītā, following the great ascetic Agastya, living in a pleasant hut made by Lakshmaṇa, even Rāma, the vexer of the triumphs of Rāvaṇa’s glory.96

‘There, even now, the trees, though the hermitage has long been empty, show, as it were, in the lines of white doves softly nestling in the boughs, the hermits’ pure lines of sacrificial smoke clinging to them; and there a glow bursts forth on the shoots of creepers, as if it had passed to them from Sītā’s hand as she offered flowers of oblation; (45) there the water of ocean drunk and sent forth by the ascetic seems to have been wholly distributed among the great lakes round the hermitage; there the wood, with its fresh foliage, shines as if its roots had been watered with the blood of countless hosts of demons struck down by Rāma’s many keen shafts, and as if now its palaāças were stained with their crimson hue; there, even yet, the old deer nurtured by Sītā, when they hear the deep roar of fresh clouds in the rainy season, think on the twang of Rāma’s bow penetrating all the hollows of the universe, and refuse their mouthfuls of fresh grass, while their eyes are dimmed by ceaseless tears, as they see a deserted world, and their own horns crumbling from age; there, too, the golden deer, as if it had been incited by the rest of the forest deer slain in the ceaseless chase, deceived Sītā, and led the son of Raghu far astray; there, too, in their grief for the bitter loss of Sītā, Rāma and Lakshmaṇa seized by Kabandha, like an eclipse of sun and moon heralding the death of Rāvaṇa, filled the universe with a mighty dread; (46) there, too, the arm of Yojanabāhu, struck off by Rāma’s arrow, caused fear in the saints as it lay on the ground, lest it should be the serpent form of Nahusha, brought back by Agastya’s curse; there, even now, foresters behold Sītā painted inside the hut by her husband to solace his bereavement, as if she were again rising from the ground in her longing to see her husband’s home.

‘Not far from that hermitage of Agastya, of which the ancient history is yet clearly to be seen, is a lotus lake called Pampā. It stands near that hermitage, as if it were a second ocean made by the Creator in rivalry with Agastya, at the prompting of Varuṇa, wrathful at the drinking of ocean; it is like the sky fallen on earth to bind together the fragments of the eight quarters when severed in the day of doom.97 (48) It is, indeed, a peerless home of waters, and its depth and extent none can tell. There, even now, the wanderer may see pairs of cakravākas, with their wings turned to blue by the gleam of the blossoming lotuses, as if they were swallowed up by the impersonate curse of Rāma.

‘On the left bank of that lake, and near a clump of palms broken by Rāma’s arrows, was a large old çālmalī tree.98 It shows as though it were enclosed in a large trench, because its roots are always encircled by an old snake, like the trunk of the elephants of the quarters; (49) it seems to be mantled with the slough of serpents, which hangs on its lofty trunk and waves in the wind; it strives to compass the measurement of the circle of space by its many boughs spreading through the firmament, and so to imitate Çiva, whose thousand arms are outstretched in his wild dance at the day of doom, and who wears the moon on his crest. Through its weight of years, it clings for support even to the shoulder of the wind; it is girt with creepers that cover its whole trunk, and stand out like the thick veins of old age. Thorns have gathered on its surface like the moles of old age; not even the thick clouds by which its foliage is bedewed can behold its top, when, after drinking the waters of ocean, they return from all sides to the sky, and pause for a moment, weary with their load of water, like birds amongst its boughs. From its great height, it seems to be on tiptoe to look99 at the glory of the Nandana100 Wood; its topmost branches are whitened by cotton, which men might mistake for foam dropped from the corners of their mouths by the sun’s steeds as, beset with weariness of their path through the sky, they come near it in their course overhead; (50) it has a root that will last for an aeon, for, with the garland of drunken bees sticking to the ichor which clings to it where the cheeks of woodland elephants are rubbed against it, it seems to be held motionless by iron chains; it seems alive with swarms of bees, flashing in and out of its hollow trunk. It beholds the alighting of the wings of birds, as Duryodhana receives proofs of Çakuni’s101 partizanship; like Kṛishṇa, it is encircled by a woodland chaplet;102 like a mass of fresh clouds its rising is seen in the sky. It is a temple whence woodland goddesses can look out upon the whole world. It is the king of the Daṇḍaka Wood, the leader of the lordly trees, the friend of the Vindhya Mountains, and it seems to embrace with the arms of its boughs the whole Vindhya Forest. There, on the edge of the boughs, in the centre of the crevices, amongst the twigs, in the joints of the trunks, in the holes of the rotten bark, flocks of parrots have taken their abode. From its spaciousness, they have confidently built in it their thousand nests; from its steepness, they have come to it fearlessly from every quarter. Though its leaves are thin with age, this lord of the forest still looks green with dense foliage, as they rest upon it day and night. (51) In it they spend the nights in their own nests, and daily, as they rise, they form lines in the sky; they show in heaven like Yamunā with her wide streams scattered by the tossing of Bala’s ploughshare in his passion; they suggest a lotus-bed of the heavenly Ganges flowing away, uprooted by the elephant of heaven; they show forth a sky streaked, as it were, with the brightness of the steeds of the sun’s chariot; they wear the semblance of a moving floor of emerald; they stretch out in the lake of heaven like long twines of Vallisneria; they fan the faces of the quarters wearied with the mass of the sun’s keen rays, with their wings spread against the sky like plantain leaves; they form a grassy path stretching through the heaven, and as they roam they grace the firmament with a rainbow. After their meal they return to the young birds which stay in the nest, and give them, from beaks pink as tiger’s claws reddened with the blood of slain deer, the juice of fruits and many a dainty morsel of rice-clusters, for by their deep love to their children all their other likings are subdued; (52) then they spend the night in this same tree with their young under their wings.

‘Now my father, who by reason of his great age barely dragged on his life, dwelt with my mother in a certain old hollow, and to him I was, by the decree of Fate, born as his only son. My mother, overcome by the pains of child-birth when I was born, went to another world, and, in spite of his grief for the death of his loved wife, my father, from love to his child, checked the keen onrush of his sorrow, and devoted himself in his loneliness wholly to my nurture. From his great age, the wide wings he raised had lost their power of flight, and hung loose from his shoulders, so that when he shook them he seemed to be trying to shake off the painful old age that clung to his body, while his few remaining tail feathers were broken like a tatter of kuça grass; and yet, though he was unable to wander far, he gathered up bits of fruit torn down by parrots and fallen at the foot of the tree, and picked up grains of rice from rice-stalks that had fallen from other nests, with a beak the point of which was broken and the edge worn away and rubbed by breaking rice-clusters, and pink as the stalk of the sephālikā flower when still hard, and he daily made his own meal on what I left.