Banabhatta - Harsha Charita

Banbhatta's

Harsha Charita

Translated into English

E. B. Cowell and F. W. Thomas

Index

Chapter I

The Harsha-charita of Bana

T HUS runs the tale:-- In former days the Holy One, the Most High, enthroned in his own sphere was reclining on his full-blown lotus couch surrounded by Indra and the other gods; and on a certain occasion he was holding a session, framing questions on the lore of Brahma and enjoying other blameless discussions. As he so sate, adored of the three worlds, the Prajapatis headed by Manu, Daksa, and Caksusa, and all the great sages with the seven Risis worshipped him. Some in chorus chanted the Rik hymns apt for psalmody; some recited the Yajus sentences of worship; some sang aloud the Saman strains of praise. Others rehearsed the Mantras that reveal the ritual of the sacrifice. And there, arising from the differences of their studies, quarrels one with another we heard among them.

Now there was a certain sage, a great ascetic, by nature excessively choleric, a son of Atri and brother of the moon, by name Durvasas, and he, while brawling with a second sage named Mandapala, being blinded by passion made a discord in singing a Saman . At this silence fell on all the other sages through fear of a curse, while Brahma in the sport of another conversation heeded not. But the divine Sarasvati, a maiden of tender years, now doffing her girlhood and arrayed in youthful beauty, was fanning the great Father with a fly-flap held by her arm's waving tendril. Those sprays, her feet, glowed with a natural red as though flushed by furious stripes, and her steps were musical with a pair of anklets keeping time with them like two disciples intoning the Veda word by word. Her legs produced the illusion of being the pillars of the portal to the city of Love. Her left hand, like a bud, was laid in sport on the chain of her girdle, which tinkled like the murmur of love-sick kala-hamsas . Her body was made pure by a Brahmanical thread, which, hanging from the shoulder, seemed like a coil of virtues that had clung to her through dwelling in the Manasa of the wise: while her necklace, studded with many a pearl and having a brilliant central gem, suggested the path of renunciation, leading midway the sun and lined by many liberated souls. Her quivering lips glowed red as with lac from the feet of all the sciences, which had entered her mouth. In her cheek was reflected an image of Brahma's black deer-skin, as if the moon's deer were come down to hearken to her honeyed song. One eyebrow like a creeper was raised in a disdainful curve, and a stream of tears flowing from the outer corner of her eye seemed to be washing one ear soiled by the discord; while the other ear, revelling in a white full-blown Sindhuvara flower, betokened as with a gleaming smile the intoxication of knowledge. In the flowers of her ear-ornament tribes of devoted bees attended upon her like repeated Oms accompanying the Sruti . Her form was clad in a silken robe fine and spotless as the fabric of thought. In this guise, shedding on all sides the moonlight of her teeth, pure as if of the substance of speech, the goddess Sarasvati , hearing the discord, smiled.

Seeing her so smiling, Wretch ! cried the sage, vain in the conceit of a grain of ill-got knowledge, dost jeer at me? With these words, shaking his head so that his matted locks, streaming from the broken fillet, seemed by their outpouring yellowness to flood the heavens with an issuing fire of passion; gathering a frown that darkened the chess-board of his forehead, like the presence of the god of death, and recalled the crocodile embellishments upon the faces of Yama's wives; with a red eye offering, as it were, an oblation of his blood to the goddess of pitilessness; imprisoning the gleam of his teeth, as if it were his voice flying in terror at the merciless biting of his lip; altering the tie of the black antelope skin-a scroll of cursing as it were-which was slipping from his shoulder; clasped in every limb by gods, asuras , and sages, who, reflected in his drops of sweat, seemed to have come for refuge in their alarm at the curse; with a hand whose fingers shook with an angry tremor spurning his rosary as though it were a string of syllables clinging with supplications to him; thus, having first rinsed his mouth from his earthen pitcher, he took the water of cursing.

Meanwhile the great goddess Savitri was seated in corporeal shape near to the Self-existent, wearing a robe of the silken bark of the tree of paradise and white as a mass of ambrosia foam. A shawl of lotus filament was tied in a svastika knot between her swelling bosoms. Three sectarial lines of ashes, banners of triumph, as it were, over the three worlds vanquished by ascetic force, brightened the courtyard of her forehead. Her Vaikaksyaka scarf consisted of a hermit's wrap which hung from her shoulder, white as ambrosia foam, like a Ganges stream bent to a circle by ascetic power. Her left hand held a crystal water-vessel like the lotus calyx whence Brahma arose; and her right, encircled -with a rotary and studded with rugs of shells, was raised aloft, the finger of scorn being scornfully waved as she cried :- Fie on thee, sinner, prey to anger, evil of heart, reft of reason, ignorant of self, false Brahman and pretended sage, outcast, excommunicate, how comes it that, bewildered by thine own offence, thou wouldst curse the divine Sarasvati , mother of the three worlds, fit adoration for throngs of gods, asuras , sages, and mortal men?'

So she spoke, and abandoning her ascetic's pillow arose, and with her the four incarnate Vedas left their cane seats in wrath, clad in bark garments and holding delicate chowries of Kuca fibres, bearing their hermit's staves, and grasping their round water-vessels like weapons. Under the guise of sweat soma juice, as it were, oozed from them: their foreheads gleamed with the pure ashes of the Agnihotra oblation: their voices echoed the sacred syllable : the quarters of the heavens were oppressed by the weight of their angrily agitated matted-locks: the daylight was darkened by the bulging of their black antelope skins flung round as they girt up their loins: and the world of Brahma vibrated with the coming and going of their passionate panting.

Whereat in vain besought to mercy by the gods, O reverend sir, be merciful, she is no victim for a curse; in vain implored by suppliant disciples, Master, forgive one fault: in vain restrained by Atri , Balk not, my son, the fruit of throe asceticism; the sage, beside himself with passion, let fall the water of that curse, crying:-Ill-mannered girl, I take away from thee this state of pride by knowledge won. Begone downward to the world of mortal men. But when Savitri would have answered , curse with curse, 'twas Sarasvati that hindered her, saying:-Dear friend, restrain thy wrath: even to Brahmans by birth merely, uninitiated in heart, respect is due.

Thereupon, seeing Sarasvati thus cursed, the Lord Brahma uplifted his form, which wore the white sacrificial thread, as though his birth from the lotus had left a fibre clinging about him. With his right hand, which, as its signet ring sent up a spray of emerald rays, seemed to grasp a cluster of Kuca grass for staying a world-dissolution, he allayed the tumult of the curse; while his teeth shot out pure penetrating rays like plummet lines for the building of a coming aeon of bliss, and his voice echoed through the spheres like a drum heralding with honour the departure of Sarasvati , as in deep tones he spake:- Brahman , the path thou hast followed is one not frequented by the good. Its final goal is death. The dust upraised by the steeds of passion in their unbridled onrush is wont to cloud the vision of such as be not masters of the senses. How limited indeed the scope of the eye! for tis by the purified intellect that the perfected behold all things good and evil. Nature rejects this union of piety and wrath as of water and fire. How dost thou, leaving the light, sink in darkness! for the root of all asceticism is patience. Skilled in discerning the faults of others, thy angry mind, like an eye inflamed, perceives not the frailty of its own passion. How can censoriousness consort with commerce of great penances? Blind verily is that seeing man who is over-wrathful. Clouded with passion, the mind distinguishes not what should and what should not be done. First of all the wisdom of the angry man is darkened; then his frowning brow. The flush of passion assaults first the senses, last the eyes. In the beginning the store of merit dissolves away; then the oozing sweat. The flash of dishonour flickers; then comes the trembling of the lip. How ruinous to the world was the growth of thy matted locks and bark dress, shoots and bark as it were of the poison tree! Like a pearl necklace, this graceless impulse of thy mind is out of harmony, surely, with thy sage's dress. With a heart void of resignation idly like an actor dost thou wear the counterfeited semblance of an ascetic. Nought free from taint can I detect in thee. Even to this hour thy levity floats but on the surface of the sea of knowledge. None of these great sages are deaf and dumb, impotent and dull of wit. Why halt thou checked the sinless Sarasvati , when thine own heart, the haunt of angry sin, should rather have been checked? These are the follies born of their own heedless slips whereby the undiscerning fall into reproach.