Chapter III

And then at last one day it happened, that Mátali arrived in Indra's palace, having returned to heaven from a visit to the earth. And as soon as he entered, he exclaimed: O punisher of Páka,[15] and the rest, what are you all about? Are you asleep, or have you actually abandoned all care whether of your own pre-eminence or the established order of the world? For away below on earth, there is an old Brahman, in a deserted cemetery in the forest of the Windhya hills, who by his interminable muttering continued through the centuries has accumulated so gigantic a heap of merit,[16] that it threatens destruction to the three worlds. And now, unless something is done very speedily to stop him, and reduce it, this merit of his, beyond a doubt, will disturb the equilibrium of the universe, and wreck the established order of the worlds, and hurl you from your thrones.

And hearing him, Indra said: There is no difficulty in this. I will go myself, and bribe him to discontinue his proceedings. And he went down himself accordingly to earth, to examine and investigate that Brahman, and see what could be done. And after considering him awhile, and admiring his extraordinary obstinacy, he set to work to tempt him, and induce him, by offering bribes of various descriptions, to desist. And he offered him accordingly mountains of gold, and oceans of jewels, and everlasting youth, and many kinds of magic power, and finally he racked his brains, to find something or other that would move that obdurate Trishodadhi, and draw him from his vow. But in vain. For Trishodadhi paid no more attention to his offers and himself, than the moon does to the barking of a dog; continuing to mutter, all the time he spoke, just as if he was not there.

So finding all his efforts vain, after a while, that baffled lover of Ahalyá[17] returned to heaven. And summoning the gods, he laid the case before them, and requested their advice. And after deliberation, they determined to seduce him by sending down a heavenly nymph, saying to themselves: Did not Menaká, and Tilottamá, and others of their kind, prove too strong for the asceticism of even mighty sages, so that their merit melted, like a lump of snow, in the flame of their desire, and their self-control vanished like stubble in a forest conflagration? Nay, did not even Brahma assume his name,[18] becoming four-faced, in order to gratify his intolerable thirst to behold the beauty of Tilottamá performing a pradakshina around him, though he would not turn his head? Therefore it is not to be doubted that in this case also, the irresistible amber of feminine attraction will prove its power, and draw this grass in the form of a Brahman any way it will, snapping like thread the resolution which would chain him to his muttering, as soon as it is seen.

And accordingly they drew up before them in a row the chorus of Indra's heavenly dancers. And they chose out of them all that Apsaras who seemed to them the least easily to be resisted, by reason of her rounded arms and dainty ankles, and sent her down to earth with suitable instructions, to seduce that Brahman from his muttering as quickly as she could. But she, to her amazement, found on her arrival, that, do what she might, she could not even so much as succeed in inducing him to look at her sideways even for a moment. So, after a while, she left him, and flew back to heaven in a pet. And they sent instead of her another, who presently returned, having found herself as ineffectual as the first. And they tried again, and sent, one after another, the whole of Indra's chorus, pelting as it were that stony-hearted old ascetic with a very shower of celestial flowers, and gaining the very opposite of the end at which they aimed. For inasmuch as he never ceased muttering even for a moment, all their efforts to corrupt him and reduce his stock of merit only added to its heap, making its mountainous proportions more formidable than before.

And finally Indra exclaimed in despair: We are conquered by this _awatár_ of obstinacy in the form of an ascetic, on whose rock the waves of this very sea of beauty beat in vain. And now there is no refuge for us but in the sole of the foot of the Burner[19] of the Bodiless God. For he alone is stronger than Love, whose power seems to fail us in this pinch, rendered nugatory by the intractable composition of this exasperating mutterer. And if even he can devise no remedy for this disease, it is incurable; and then will this incorruptible old devotee have us all at his mercy,[20] and bring heaven to its knees, and turn, if he pleases, the three worlds upside down.

And then, led by Indra, they came altogether in a body to me; and placing the difficulty before me, they waited with anxiety to hear what I should say. And I looked there and then into the future, and saw in its dark mirror, like a picture, the ruin of that old ambitious Brahman, and the means by which it was destined to be accomplished. And after a while, I said slowly: All diseases are not able to be remedied by the same medicine, and notwithstanding the omnipotence of feminine attraction, this is a case wherein heavenly nymphs are impotent, and utterly without avail. For all these heavenly nymphs do nothing but dance and sing and attitudinise and ogle, imagining that as in the case of Menaká Tilottamá, Rambhá, and the rest, they have only to show themselves to gain at once their end, trusting only to the body and its beauty, and very shallow coquetry and artifices to sharpen the edge of its effect, such as wind that stirs their clothing, or water that causes it to cling to the outline of their limbs and reveal, as if by accident, the thing that it pretends and is intended to conceal, and other such devices. But this Trishodadhi is a fish that, as I perceive, will not easily be caught by the bait of mere meretricious beauty, and in his case, the hook must be hidden in a lure of quite another kind. But there is a Daitya, named Aparapaksha,[21] living at the very bottom of the sea, who has a hundred daughters. And were beauty the necessary weapon in this instance, any one of them would serve the turn, since all of them have bodies formed as it were of ocean-foam, with lips of coral, and eyes like pools, and hair longer than themselves, and voices like the echo of the waves; and only lately I heard them singing all together as I passed, on an island shore, and was myself all but bewitched, so that unawares I paused, hanging in the air to listen, waylaid as it were by the magic and the spell of that melancholy sound, forgetting my journey for the sake of their refrain. But now, since something more is necessary, you must abandon all the others, and betake you to the youngest of them all, who is rightly named Kalánidhi, though she is the ugliest and cleverest woman in the three worlds, for she is a very ocean of craft and trickery and guile,[22] and very knavish in disposition, as full of deception and caprice as the element in which she lives. And if you can get her to assist you, I do not doubt you will succeed. And perhaps, if you tell her that this is a matter in which all the heavenly nymphs have failed, she will help you out of spite; for she is very jealous of them all, and this is a glorious opportunity for her to show herself able to accomplish a thing which has baffled the ingenuity and beauty of everybody else. But certainly, if she either cannot or will not overcome this obstacle, I think that even the elephant-headed Lord of Obstacles himself would fail. For though beauty is a power stronger than any other, it may nevertheless sometimes be successfully resisted. But feminine ingenuity is a far more formidable antagonist, which no man has ever yet successfully encountered since the beginning of the world, since it is half protected by his own innumerable scruples in its favour, being utterly destitute of any sort of scruple of its own. And so, should Kalánidhi assist you, and fail after all, there is nothing to be done: and under the weight of this Brahman's mountain of accumulated merit, you must sink to the very bottom of the ocean of defeat, like an earth bereft of the tortoise to save it on its back.