CHAPTER CXVI. Narration of the Speech of Crow and Cuckoo.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Argument.—Description of the battle field, and of the hills and sky, and the story of the foolish crow.
The companions added:—Look lord, the field of battle, stretching to the bordering hills; look upon the heaps of shining weapons, and the scattered forces of elephants, horse, infantry and war chariots.
2. Look at the slain and their slayers, and the combatants attacking their corrivals; and how their dying souls are borne by celestial nymphs in heavenly cars to heaven.
3. The victor finding his adversary worsted in warfare, ought not slay him unjustly, unless he is justified to do so by laws of warfare (as a youth is justified to take unto him no other woman but his legal wife).
4. As health and wealth and prosperity, are good for men when they are rightly gained; so it is right to fight for those by whom one is supported.
5. When one kills his opposing corrival in combat, without violation of the laws of warfare, he is justly styled a heavenly champion, and not one who takes undue advantage of his enemy.
6. Behold there the bold champion brandishing his sword, as if he is swinging a blue lotus in his hand; and casting the dark shadow of the evening dusk on the ground. Such a hero is courted by Laxmi for her spousal.
7. Look at those flourishing weapons, flaming as the flying embers of wild fire, in a mountain forest; or as the dreadful dragons of the sea, dancing on land with hundreds of their flashing hoods and heads.
8. Look at the sky on one side, resembling the sea with its watery clouds, and shining with strings of its stars on another; see how it is covered by dark clouds on one side; and how it is brightened by moon beams on the other.
9. Look at the firmament, ranged by multitudes of revolving planets, resembling the rolling chariots of warriors; and crowded by myriads of moving stars, likening the soldiers in the battle field; and yet it is the error of the ignorant to think it an empty vacuum; an error which is hard for the wise to remove.
10. The sky with its over spreading clouds, its fiery lightnings, its thunder bolts that break down the mountain wings; its starry array, and the battle of gods and demigods that took place in it; is still as inscrutable in his nature, as the solid minds of the wise, whose magnitude no one can measure.
11. O wise man, thou hast been constantly observing before thee, the sun, moon and all the planets and stars in the firmament, together with all the luminous bodies of comets, meteors and lightnings; and yet is astonishing that your ignorance will not let see the Great Náráyana in it.
12. Thou dark blue sky, that art brightened by moon-light, dost yet retain thy blackness, like the black spot amidst the lightsome disk of the moon; and such is the wonder with ignorant minds, that with all their enlightenment, they will never get rid of their inward bias and prejudice.
13. Again the clear sky which is full with endless worlds, is never contaminated by their faults, nor ever changed in its essential state; and resembles the vast and pure mind of the wise, which is full with its knowledge of all things, and devoid of all their pollutions.
14. Thou profound sky, that art the receptacle of the most elevated objects of nature, and containest the lofty clouds and trees and summits in thy womb; that art the recipient of the sun, moon and the aerial spirits that move about in thee; art yet inflamed by the flames of the fiery bodies that rise in thee to our great regret, notwithstanding thy greatness, which helps them to spread themselves high in heaven.
15. Thou sky that art replete with pure and transparent light, and great with thy greatness of giving quarters to all the great and elevated objects of nature; but it is greatly to be pitied, that the dark clouds to whom thou givest room to rise under thee, molest us like base upstarts, with pelting their hailstones at random.
16. Again thou dark sky, art the attestor of all lights; as the touchstone is the test of gold; and thou art a void in thy essence, yet thou dost support the substances of stars and planets of clouds and winds and all real existences at large.
17. Thou art the day light at daytime, and the purple red of evening, and turnest black at night; thus devoid of all colour of thyself thou dost exhibit all colours in thee; hence it is impossible even for the learned, to understand aright thy nature and its convertible conditions also.
18. As the helpless man is enabled to achieve his purposes, by means of his patient perseverance; so the inane sky has risen above all, by means of its universal diffusion. (The gloss says that, extension of knowledge, is the cause of elevation).
19. The sun that persists in his wonted course, rises to the vertical point in time; but the unmoving straws and trees, and the dormant hills and places, and stagnant pools and ponds, are ever lying low on the ground.
20. The night invests the sky with a sable garb, and sprinkles over it the fair moonlight like the cooling dust of camphor; with the decoration of stars like clusters of flowers upon it. The day mantles the firmament with bright sun beams, and the seasons serve to cover it in clouds and snows, and in the gaudy attire of vernal flowers. Thus is time ever busy, to decorate the heavenly paths of his lords the sun and moon, the two time keepers by day and night.
21. The firmament like the magnanimous mind, never changes the firmness of its nature; although it is ever assailed by the disturbances of smokes and clouds of dust and darkness, of the rising and setting sun and moon and their dawns and dusks: and of the confluence of stars and combat of gods and demons.
22. The world is an old and decayed mansion, of which the four sides are its walls, the sky its covering roof above and the earth its ground floor below; the hills and mountains are its pillars and columns, and the cities and towns are its rooms and apartments; and all the various classes of animal beings, are as the ants of this abode.
23. Time and action are the occupants of this mansion from age to age, and all its ample space presents the aspect of a smiling garden; it is feared every day to be blown and blasted away, and yet it is a wonder how this frail flower should last so long and for ever more.
24. It is the air methinks, that puts a stop to the greater height or rising of trees and hills; for though it does not actually restrain their growth, yet its influence (pressure from above), like the authority of noble men, puts a check to the rise of aspiring underlings.
25. O fie for that learning, which calls the air as void and vacuity; seeing it to contain millions of worlds in its bosom, and producing and reducing also unnumbered beings in its boundless bosom.
26. We see all things to be born in and to return into the air; and yet we see the madness of men, that reckon the all containing and all pervading air, as something different from God.
27. We see the works of creation, to be continually producing, existing and extinguishing in air, like sparks of fire; I ween this pure and sole air, which is without beginning, middle and end, as the universal source and terminus of all, and no other distinct cause as God.
28. The vacuum is the vast reservoir of the three worlds, and bears in its ample space the innumerable productions of nature; I understand infinite vacuity as the body of the Intellect, and that transcendent being, in which this erroneous conception of the world, has its rise and fall.
29. Therein the woodlands on mountain tops, the solitary forester chants his charming strains amidst his sylvan retreat; and attracts the heart of the lonely passenger, who lifts up his head to listen to the rapturous times.
30. Hearken O Lord, to the sweet music, proceeding from the thick groves on yonder lofty mountain; and emitted with the heart rending strains, of love born Vidyádhara nymphs; and behold the lonely and lovesick passenger, whose lovesick heart being smitten by the sound, has neither the power to proceed forward or recede backward from the spot, or utter a word.
31. I hear a lovelorn Vidyádhara damsel, singing her love ditty amidst the woods of the hill with her heaving sighs and tears flowing profusely from her eyes. She sang saying: “Lord, I well remember the day, when thou ledst me to the recess of the bower, holding my chin and giving kisses on my cheeks with thy smiling face, and now the pleasing remembrance of that gladsome moment, hath left me to deplore its loss for years”.
32. I heard her tale, O Lord, thus related to me from the mouth of a forester on the way. He said:—Her former young lover, was cursed by a relentless sage to become an arbour for a dozen of years; and it is since this ill fated change of his, that she has been reclining on that tree, and singing her mournful ditty unto the same.
33. And now observe the wonder, that on my approach the arborescent lover, was released of his sad curse, and shedding a shower of flowers upon her, he changed his form and clasped her unto his arms with his face smiling as his blooming flowers.
34. The tops of hills are decorated with flowers, as the heads of elephants are painted with white dye; the sky is whitened with the stars and falling meteors, as the summit of the mountain is etiolated with hoar-frost and snows.
35. Behold there the beautiful stream of Kaveri, gliding along with shoals of fishes skimming in its waters; to its boisterous waves resounding with the cries of shrill and clamorous cranes; see its banks mantled in vests of flowers, and its shores freely grazed by timid fauns without any fear.
36. Look the Bela rock, which is washed by the billows of Varuna—the god of the sea; its stones shining as gold under the solar rays; and sparkling as the marine fire when they are laved by the waves.
37. Look at the abodes of the Ghosha shepherds at the foot of the mountain, which are continually covered under the shrouding clouds; and behold the beauty of the blossoming palása and patala trees thereabouts.
38. Look at the plains, whitened by the full-blown whitish flowers; see the mandara tree with twining and flowering creepers; look at the banks crowded by cranes and peacocks; look at those villages and the water falls, resounding as music from the mouths of mountain caves and forests, and redounding to the joy of the happy inhabitants of the valley.
39. Here the buzzing bees are sporting about the new blown petals of plantain flowers; and inspiring fond desire in the breasts of the Pamara foresters; who enjoy a bliss in their rustic pastures and hidden hilly caverns, which I ween, is not attainable by the immortal gods in their garden of Eden. (So says Hafiz:—Thou canst not have in heaven, the blissful fount of Roknabad, nor the flowery groves of Mossella).