Madhumalati
Page 13
What defect has made you a beggar?
What is this fire, that burns the triple world?
What power has taken away my life?’
When he saw his dear parents’ faces, compassion was born in the Prince’s heart.
Opening his eyes, he told them of the sorrow given to him by Madhumālatī.
169. With tears in his eyes, the Prince said,
‘Father, I have lost my soul.
If you grant me your royal permission,
I will seek my soul and bring it back.
I do not know where in the two worlds
the city of Mahāras is, where my soul was lost.
If you command me I will go
to unite my body and my soul,
to make matters well again.
Maybe the same destiny will be kind,
which brought me love in a dream before.
With your permission I will seek my soul, for my worldly life is finished.
Perhaps fortune will favour me, for then I’ll find my life and soul again.’
170. His mother and father were overcome
with emotion when they heard the Prince.
Both of them touched his feet.
‘Be sure of this, our son,’ they said,
‘You are the life of our two bodies.
Better that you kill us now, son,
than to abandon us in old age.
The realm will crumble into dust without you,
and we will die with broken hearts.
The sunlight of our lives grows dim,
and Yama, lord of death, surrounds us.
You are our Śravaa,* our sorrow’s support.
O son, our dire old age terrifies us—we beg you, do not desert us now!
You are our ferry across life’s ocean. Without you, who would take us across?
171. ‘Do not count on us any longer, for our lives
are lamps flickering out in the light of dawn.
Do not rob your parents of hope,
for once we part we may never meet again.
When we leave this Kali age,
only through you will our name live on!
Like Daśaratha* pining away for his son,
we will die without you, Manohar.
First kill us both and take our lives,
then go to foreign lands, dear son!
Do not abandon us alive, for we have no one else to call our own.
Weeping, we will remember your virtues, and break our hearts and die.’
The Prince Assumes a Yogi’s Guise
172. The Prince did not hear a word
of whatever his weeping parents said.
Whoever loses his senses on the path of love,
can comprehend nothing in the two worlds.
So acute was the pain of separation
he could not control himself.
He asked for a begging bowl*
and a yogi’s staff and crutch.*
He marked his forehead with a circle,*
smeared his body with ashes,*
and hung shining earrings in both his ears.*
He took his drinking cup firmly in hand,
and tightened the strings of his ascetic’s viol.*
Letting down his matted locks,* he donned the patched cloak and the girdle of rope.*
With loincloth tied around his waist, the Prince took the guise of a Gorakh yogi.*
173. The yogi forged within his trident
suffering, indifference, and renunciation.
His rosary was a basil-bead necklace.*
Around his neck hung the horn whistle.*
On his shoulder was the crutch for meditation.
With his staff and the thread of Gorakh,
he controlled his mind and his breath.
He put on his feet the sandals of love,
and arranged on himself the deerskin of renunciation.
He assumed this guise for a vision of Madhumālatī;.
For her sake he assayed wretchedness.
He sat in meditation, thinking, reflecting, and his eyes and ears were steeped in love.
He took on this guise for a vision of his beloved, but it seemed as if Gorakh had awakened.
174. This ascetic appeared a perfected soul
as he set out for a vision of Madhumālatī.
If he gained perfection on the path of yoga,
he might yet meet his beloved again.
Through a vision of the Guru love is born,
and the viol sounds the mystic note of absorption.
Through the beauty of Madhumālatī
his consciousness had been sunk in ecstasy.
He had made constant the breath in his body.
Mind and body were consumed in separation’s blaze.
He had cleansed his limbs with the water of his breath.
The Guru’s beauty had entered his eyes, his voice resounded in the ascetic’s ears.
Sitting in silent absorption, the yogi contemplated the vision of Madhumālatī.
Manohar’s Departure
175. His father and mother then returned,
saw him and sighed deeply in their hearts.
When she saw his face smeared with ash,
Kamalā washed it with tears from her lotus eyes.
‘O son,’ they said, ‘You are our only hope.
Why abandon the kingdom to become a beggar?
All our wealth and treasure is yours,
we acquired and saved it for you.
If it is of no use to you today,
then what use can it ever be to us?
We will take all our wealth and treasure, and make our relatives and retainers accompany us.
If we ever meet Madhumālatī, we will ask for her hand in marriage.’
176. In the morning the King assembled a company,
and accompanied the Prince for forty miles.
There were elephants, horses, and much treasure.
Who could count the army that followed them?
The King sent off all the companions and men
who had come with them to accompany the Prince.
Off they went, questing for Mahāras,
where Vikram Rāi was lord of men.
They came to the shore of an ocean,
impassable, deep and fathomless.
With elephants, horses, companions and servants, and much treasure and store,
the Prince embarked on a ship. How can one erase what’s written in one’s fate?
The Shipwreck
177. They boarded ship and set sail on the ocean,
but no one can know the writings of fate.
For four months they sailed on the water.
After this evil times drew near.
The sea was in swell, darkness everywhere,
and the helmsman lost his bearings.
He could not decide which way to go,
and the ship fell into a mighty whirlpool.
Suddenly it crashed into seven hundred pieces,
and the waves battered it from every side.
All sank into the water—his friends and companions, the treasure and store,
every sign of royalty, all the beasts and horses—and vanished without a trace.
178. The Prince gave up every hope of life,
and began to invoke the name of God.
‘You are the Protector of the triple world.
O Lord, whom could I call on except you?
You are the giver of life to the world,
stretch out your hand and save me as I drown.
The one who remembers the Creator
in times of danger, finds that fire
has turned into a bed of flowers.’*
At that moment God showed mercy
and the Prince found a support in his drowning.
Through the grace of God a wooden plank floated in front of the Prince.
The Prince caught hold of it as he was sinking, just as life was leaving his body.
179. That wooden plank became his support
when huge waves rose again around him.
When again he was drawn under the waves,
the Prince abandoned all hope of life.
Then he lost all knowledge of where he was,
and of where the current carried him.
The surging waves took him and put him down
where moon and sun did not shine.
The surf left the Prince unconscious on that shore,
and subsided back into the treasure-filled ocean.
When the Prince came to his senses again, he lay half-stunned on the shore.
Around him there was nothing and no one, save his pain and the mercy of God.
The Prince Finds a Maiden
180. All the trappings of royalty were lost, and only
his sorrow for Madhumālataī remained with him.
He looked around but there was no one there.
Except for his shadow, he had no companion.
In a dark wood where no mortal had been,
the Prince had been set down by God.
He got up and started towards the wood’s interior,
where no birds even flapped their wings.
Treading an impassable path, grief his only companion,
he ran forward one moment, sat and cried the next.
Blood rushed from his head to his feet, and back from his feet to his head.
He would stop to sit a thousand times, before he could traverse a mile.
181. He wandered on alone in the dark forest,
on a difficult path, hard and insurmountable.
Lions and tigers roared, and elephants trumpeted,
but the Prince was alone, without any friends.
He walked on without resting for an instant,
his tongue repeating the name of Madhumālatī.
Then he came to a grove of plantain trees.*
Evening fell and the light retreated.
Since it was impossible to see anything,
the Prince settled down there for the night.
He sat in meditation, concentrating on the Guru, and remained there deeply absorbed.
The night of separation passes like an age, in which the knower awakens to love!
182. The dawn came, the Prince began on his way,
on the path of love he gave his head, then set foot.*
The pain of separation had seized his body.
He cried, ‘Madhumālataī! Madhumālataī!’
Recalling her, he struck his head and mouth
violently, as if he were performing ikr.*
Having lost his love, he could not recognize himself.*
His senses had fled, all his knowledge had gone.
‘I will not fall back,’ he resolved,
‘from giving my life on the path of love.
If I had a hundred lives, I’d sacrifice them all.’
Walking onwards through the forest, the Prince saw a four-cornered pavilion.
When he realized what he was seeing, his mind began to speculate about it.
183. Wondering in his mind for a moment,
the Prince set foot inside the pavilion.
He saw a marvellously coloured new bed,
on which slept a Princess, drunken with sleep.
Sweet fragrances had been sprinkled on the bed.
Bees hovered, intoxicated, not leaving her side.
The Prince advanced towards the bed,
and fears and doubts sprang up in his mind.
Her face was like the moon, her beauty youthful,
and she lay there unconscious. The Creator
had shaped her form without blemish.
She was virtuous and clever, and could enchant men’s minds in the world.
Blessed was the Maker who made her, and blessed too was the sleeping maiden.
184. Who could describe her sleeping on her bed?
It was as if the lotus had captured the honey-bee.
Did her eyes reflect nectar or poison?
Who had fashioned her two lovely eyes?
Her forehead could not be described at all.
One moment it seemed the full moon,
the next the moon of the second night.*
Her face, like the moon, cherished her doe-eyes.
These does drew along the chariot of her moon-face.
The mole on her cheek was matchless,
a single spot equal to a thousand adornments.
The Princess, adorned in all sixteen ways, lay fearlessly on her bed in the bliss of sleep.
Her two eyes were like cakora birds gazing longingly at the face of the moon.
185. Poison flowed from her serpentine curls.
The man who saw them lost life and youth.
Her firm breasts, full of nectar untasted,
were inverted like two golden bowls.
The soles of her feet were red with dye.*
Every pore of her body exulted in youth.
Her black braid cannot be described,
it seemed like the serpent Śea
were crawling up the mountain, Sumeru.
Seeing her beautiful lips took one’s life.
The sages of the triple world
could not contain themselves at the sight.
From head to foot her form was etched out like a painting soaked in natural colour.
Even a moment’s vision of her would trouble one’s heart for a lifetime.
186. She seemed like the moon resting through the day,
having risen in the heavens at night.
The Prince thought, ‘Maybe she is
a heavenly nymph banished to earth
by the curse of Indra.* Or perhaps she is
Jupiter descended from the sky
to rest here a while. Maybe
she is a witch of the forest,
and has assumed this form by magic.
How could a mortal live here
where there is no one for a hundred yojanas?*
Is she the goddess of the woods here in disguise, or is my mind deceiving me?
Has someone enchanted me? Is a spirit from the cremation ground bewitching me?’
The Maiden Awakes
187. Soundly that lovely maiden slept,
bursting with youth, lovely and lovable.
When he saw her his mind was enchanted,
so he went to the bed and sat down.
Sometimes his mind was full of fear and doubt,
and sometimes he grew fearless with love’s savour.
The maiden turned over in her bed, stretching
involuntarily with a languid yawn.
As she stretched out her lovely arms,
both sun and moon began to shine.*
Her eyes opened and grew alert, and she drew back the bows of her eyebrows.
Indra in heaven, all men on earth, and even the hooded Śea below grew alarmed.
188. The maiden awoke and opened her eyes,
like two clever deer suddenly alerted.
When her gaze fell on the Prince
she was confused and feared him in her heart.
Then that lovely maiden, matchless in form,
began to speak naturally, in words full of rasa.
She asked, ‘Who are you?
Where have you come from?
Who has driven you to such madness?
Your form, so like the God of Love, is mortal.
What is your name? Why don’t you speak?
Tell me truly who you are, whether you are a ghost or a vampire.
You seem human, like a royal prince, so why have you left your palace and home?
189. ‘For whom do you suffer separation’s pain,
that you should leave your palace, your home?
Speak the truth, truth is precious in the world.
No one can be a match for the man
whose heart’s companion is truth.
The truthful man never tells a lie,
for truth is the
essence of this world.*
Tell me truly, who is it that you love?
What is her name? Who has intoxicated you?
Truth is the helmsman of the ship at sea.
Without truth, no one can cross this ocean.
I speak the truth, and you must believe that truth is your friend in the world’s nine regions.
If a mortal lives a life of truth, he ascends to Brahma’s cosmos* in his own body.
190. ‘Either you have reached the supreme state,
or someone has robbed you of your mind.
Are you mad? Have you lost your senses?
Or perhaps your mind knows enlightenment.
Has someone stolen all your money?
Did an enemy give you kite’s flesh to eat,
casting an evil spell on your heart?
Are you inflamed with passion’s wine
and cannot control yourself at all?
Perhaps it is pride that prevents you from speaking.
Are you frightened looking at this place?
Only through speaking the truth, O adept,
does one attain perfect enlightenment.
O yogi, do not be afraid! Rid your heart of all doubts and misgivings.’
All this the pure and moon-faced girl asked him with natural friendliness.
191. ‘Has something spontaneously affected your heart?
Or have you been reading the scripture of love?
Did your mother curse you to exile?
Or did someone practise magic on you?
Has the marrow in your brain been excited?
Or did the Creator make you mad?
Have you found out the secret of God,
has someone’s beauty made you forget yourself?
Is your soul soaked in the colour of sahaja,
or are you intoxicated with the wine of love?
Have you lost your life’s capital, or is there some sorrow in your family?
Or were you forsaken by a lovely maiden, for whom your heart suffers in separation?’
Manohar’s Reply
192. Then the Prince rose to answer her,
‘Alluring maiden, most worthy of love,
I am a traveller from a foreign land.
My mind, my head, and my foot
are set on the path of renunciation.
I want to ask the truth about you.
Tell me only the honest truth.
I have come wandering over
the earth’s four quarters, and did not find
a mortal for a hundred yojanas.
Where are there traces of humans here?
So perhaps you are the witch of this place.
You are a witch who has assumed a beautiful form, for I see the signs clearly.
Otherwise no human being could ever live in such a desolate forest.
193. ‘How could a human being survive