Dhan Gopal Mukerji

“ I thought, the buffalo that in nature looks healthy and silken, in a Zoo is a mangy creature with matted mane and dirty skin. Can those who see bisons in captivity ever conceive how beautiful they can be? What a pity that most young people instead of seeing one animal in nature—which is worth a hundred in any Zoo—must derive their knowledge of God's creatures from their appearance in prisons. If we cannot perceive any right proportion of man's moral nature by looking at prisoners in a jail, how do we manage to think that we know all about an animal by gazing at him penned in a cage? ”

“ I thought I saw weasels way below, and in the distance I felt the stag disturbing the leaves of small plants. Then there was a snarl in the jungle and these gently moving sounds and quivers ceased. An aching silence came over everything, broken only by strange insect voices like the spurting of water. Very soon the call of the fox was heard, and then the groan of the tiger, but that passed. As I was above the ground the odor of my breath went up in the air, and the animals never knew there was man about. Men always disturb animals because they hate and fear more than the animals. ”

“ One petal of these
Will cheer the vagrant souls
That tread the pathway
Of love's forsaking.
Or, when Death will sow
This Soul of mine
On the lake-shore of sorrow,
Like a weeping willow I will spring,
And with my green tresses
And bending body
Shall shelter secrecy-seeking lovers
That love for an hour,
As our twin hearts today.
Kiss then, with kisses of flame;
Touch me with rosy caresses;
Bury this, my hope, my dream,
And thy all-conquering love of me;
So the kiss-flowers may each be a dream! ”

“ Then that dog! Shall I ever forget him? I was frightened when Ghond first annexed him but he got no scent from my body, and the air that rose from below told me that somehow, like a clean-smelling ghost, he had come to befriend us. His footsteps I will remember all my life. He walked softly as a cat. He must have been a savage dog, for dogs that live in civilization are noisy. They cannot even walk quietly. Man's company is corrupting: every animal, excepting cats, becomes careless and noisy in human society. But that dog was quite wild. ”

“ The stillness was intense—like a drum whose skin had been so stretched that even breathing on it would make it groan. I felt hemmed in by the piercing soundlessness from every direction. Now and then like an explosion came the crackling of some dry autumn leaves as a soft-footed wild cat leaped on them from the branch of a tree not far away. That sound very soon sank like a stone in the ever rising tide of stillness. Slowly one by one the stars set. The rising tide of mystery that was reigning everywhere deepened, when like the shaking of lances something shivered in the eagle's eyrie. ”

“ The most difficult thing to teach an elephant is the master call. He generally takes five years to learn it properly. The master call is a strange hissing, howling sound, as if a snake [15] and a tiger were fighting each other, and you have to make that kind of noise in his ear. And do you know what you expect an elephant to do when you give him the master call? If you are lost in the jungle and there is no way out, and everything is black except the stars above, you dare not stay very long anywhere. ”

“ It is of thee that I dream,
In the heart of my soul's stream
That flows to thy feet, my darling.
[41]
Dark grows both east and west;
Flower-heads droop into rest,
As I seek to lay my heart and loving
On thy star-white breast, my darling,
And sink into that pool of sleep
That rises from thy singing's deep,
While all are silent, as my desires near thee, my Queen.
What peace thy presence breathes!
What serenity weaves its wreathes! ”

“ Every dawn and sunset, seat Gay-Neck on your shoulder and say to yourself: 'Infinite courage is in all life. Each being that lives and breathes is a reservoir of infinite courage. May I be pure enough to pour infinite courage into those whom I touch!' If you do that for a while, one day your heart, mind and soul will become pure through and through. That instant the power of your soul, now without fear, without hate, without suspicion will enter the pigeon and make him free. He who purifies himself to the greatest extent can put into the world the greatest spiritual force. ”

“ It is all dark and dank, a mourning of earth and heaven,
Sorrow-laden, life-weary, long-lost, death-craven,
A day lost to time, a light more baleful than night.
No dead these, but a living death seeking peace
From the furies—their own thoughts—sorrow—surcease,
Kissing the lashing wind thinking it to be the breeze.
Pour, pour, pour, O relentless, exhaustless pain!
To the measure of thine own agony, thy woe's refrain,
These desolate streams of thy music, thy pangs of a million seas. ”

“ When we went to sleep at night, the old ones made a ring of tusks, within which the young maids and the males each made rings, and in that triple ring we children slept guarded by elephants and stars. In my sleep in the jungle I have seen elephant ghosts in the sky shaking their tusks of lightning, roaring in anger and battling with the moon. These elephants of the sky are our dead ancestors watching over us. You know, in the beginning, elephants ruled over all other animals, and hence, men and monkeys and snakes and tigers were created. ”

“ A tiger in the jungle does not frighten me, but I cannot say the same of an automobile. One crossing of a modern city street imperils more lives in a minute than a day in the most dangerous forests. Farewell! I go where the woods wear stillness for a dress, the air is free of odours and dust, and the sky, a hollowed turquoise, is not cross-cut and pierced with poles and telegraph wires. Instead of factory whistles I shall hear the song of birds; and in the place of thieves and gunmen I shall have innocent tigers and panthers face to face. ”

“ Like tears shed over a dream,
Like sighs that stream
In an unseen nameless way
Into the heart of our lay.
It seemed hour on hours,
Years like fading flowers
Scattered their petals and bloom
In a half-lit forest of gloom.
The softness of its sounds,
Like the coursing of a million hounds
Of dream over the glade of sleep
Where tortured silences creep.
Exquisite, pain-laden, peaceful,
This night most beautiful,
What love forsaken by loving
Sets his heart a'singing?
No torment in it, but tenderness;
A liquid star-music of sadness
Pours into my soul half asleep ”

“ That instant a shiver went through the herd; the stag stamped his foot [94] on the ground and as swiftly as the waving of a blade of grass in the breeze they all disappeared in the forest. I could feel in the distance the shiver of the undergrowth of grass and saplings indicating the way the animals had passed.
Knowing this power of music over animals, I wanted to train Kari and Kopee to follow the tunes of my flute. Kopee was such a monkey that I could not make him listen. Whenever I began to play the flute, he would go to sleep or run up a tree. Monkeys have no brains. ”

“ Below, a buffalo's bellowing unlocked the insect voices one by one, tearing into shreds and tatters the stillness of the evening. An owl hooted near by, making Gay-Neck snuggle closely to my heart under my tunic. Suddenly the Himalayan Doël, a night bird, very much like a nightingale, flung abroad its magic song. Like a silver flute blown by a God, trill upon trill, cadenza upon cadenza, spilled its torrential peace which rushed like rain down the boughs of the trees, dripping over their rude barks to the floor of the jungle, then through their very roots into the heart of the earth. ”

“ The Dream of his Soul, in flesh and blood—
Not to possess, but only to see—
Was given him, for an hour:
Ah, fool, he lingered longer,—
The Dream died like the shadow of a Star!
[20]
16 THE EURASIAN
Indignity your part today,
Suffering the guerdon of the gods;
No country to claim your own,
Nowhere to lay your head.
The ocean of ignorance separates us;
The snow-storm of commerce blinds the eye;
Yet you must stand true,
Bridge of blood and flesh between the West and East.
In ages to come, when
Man will love his brother,
Irrespective of birth and breed ”

“ The tiger hid his face between his paws; the wild cats curled up, hiding their faces. None wanted to see the passing of the terror. Later in the afternoon some of the birds that were flying aimlessly around were drawn by the hypnotism of the flames into the jungle where they perished. If one is frightened beyond his control, fear possesses him so that he loses all consciousness of self-protection and he is drawn down into the vortex of the very destruction which rouses that fear.
The more I watched Kari and the other animals, the more I came to understand why [125] Kari and I loved each other. ”

“ Hardly had he done so when he squealed, for the odour of man all beasts fear, and swiftly withdrew his trunk. After grunting and complaining to himself he put up his trunk again very near Ghond's face. Just then Ghond sneezed almost into the elephant's nostrils. That struck panic into the latter's heart; he felt beleaguered by men. Trumpeting and squealing like a frightened fiend, he dashed through the jungle, breaking and smashing everything before him. Again the parrots, thick as green sails, flew in the sky. Monkeys screamed and raced from tree to tree. ”

“ Sleep children in the cradle of rest.
Dream stars, dream moon;
Dream sea; dream O, sun;
Dream rainbow, dream storm;
Dream rain, O, milk from Heaven's breast.
Rest ye feet, rest ye hands;
Rest bleeding hours of even;
Rest O, heart torn and burnt,
Rest my fancies, day is done.
Sleep night, sleep with star-eyes closed;
Sleep sorrow in death's silent repose;
Sleep O, Soul, be it twilight or morn;
Sleep thou too, O, sleep, heedless of moon and sun.
[5] Shanti is the Sanskrit for "Peace." ”

“ I have seen with my own eyes how fond the deer are of music. Sometimes in the middle of the afternoon, if you stand on the edge of the forest and play your flute and slowly strike the notes which sound like the whistling call of the antelope, you will see a strange phenomenon. ”

“ My wings were paralysed, my entrails frozen with terror.
"Besides, I would not fly without Ghond. Why should I spring from the hands of a man whose complexion was not brown and whose eyes were blue? I had not known such people before. We pigeons don't take to any and every outsider. At last they brought me in a cage to the hospital where Ghond was, and left me beside him. When I saw him I hardly recognized him, for his eyes—Ghond's eyes—wore a look of real fear! ”

“ In the soul's night,
Through pain's window
Behold! His light!
On Life's Height.
No prayer, now,
Though death-waves roll,
Faith's candle lit,
Beside it sits the soul
Reading Eternity's scroll.
[4]
2 SOURCE OF SINGING
A bruised heart,
A wounded soul,
A broken lute,
That is all!
A sad evening,
And a lone star,
Then song reddens—
Sets life's forest afire!
[5]
3
With purple shadows the mist measures the infinite sea
That spreads her wave-raiment in lavender, violet, gray, and green;
While with thin silver rays a lone star seeks to sound the deeps. ”

“ After dinner, the Abbot invited Ghond and me to take our siesta in his company, and we climbed with him up to the topmost cliff, which was like an eagle's eyrie, over which grew a clump of firs, where we found a hard bare cell, without a stick of furniture anywhere, which I had never seen before. After we had seated ourselves there, the holy man said, "Here in the monastery we have prayed to Infinite Compassion twice every day for the healing of the nations of earth. Yet the war goes on, infecting even birds and beasts with fear and hate. ”

“ When his mind returns to him, an elephant can never remember the road that he took in his insanity, and if he runs very far into the jungle he may never come back because the Spirit of the jungle seizes him. Kari's last impression of human beings must have been so terrible that when the Spirit of the jungle asserted itself in him, he allowed it to lure him away forever from the habitations of men. ”

“ At that moment the signal whistle blew that the contest had begun, and each pigeon fancier waved from his roof a white flag. Instantly from nowhere innumerable flocks of pigeons rose into the sky. Flock upon flock, colour upon colour, their fluttering wings bore them above the city. Crows and kites—the latter of two species, red and brown—fled from the sky before the thundering onrush of tens of thousands of carriers and tumblers. Soon all the flocks—each flying in the shape of a fan—circled in the sky like so many clouds caught in large whirlpools of air. ”

“ Where no offering that I bring ever be too dear,
Where no soul burnt in the fire of senses can perish;
Where no suffering fails to be mother and daughter of joy.
Take all, great God among these Gods:
The pearl of my woman-soul buried in deeps of passion,
The coral-wreath from the ocean of my bleeding heart ”

“ It is very strange that when Western people come to the East, they do not give up their expensive ways of living. Drinking wine and eating meat is one thing in cold climates, where one has to keep warm, but in a hot climate a man is sure to go to pieces if he eats and drinks much. Kari had no objection to wine drinking, but he did not like meat-eating men any more than he liked meat-eating tigers. He never hated them or feared them, simply he somehow did not enjoy their company. But these white engineers who came from afar did not know that an elephant had a soul. ”

“ Now and then a flock of green parrots flung their emerald glory in the face of the sun, then vanished. Insects multiplied. Mammoth butterflies, velvety black, swarmed from blossom to blossom, and innumerable small birds preyed on numberless buzzing flies. We were stung with the sharpest stings of worms, and now and then we had to wait to let pass a serpent that crossed our path. Were it not for the practised eyes of Ghond who knew which way the animals came and went, we would have been killed ten times over by a snake or a bison. Sometimes Ghond would put his ear to the ground and listen. ”

“ The following morning long before day-break, I heard nothing but the beat, beat, beat of unknown feet on the dusky pavement of Benares. It seemed as though the stillness of the night were hurrying away. I left my animals where they were and went in quest of these beating feet. There is something sinister in this walk of the Hindu. The Hindu walks with a great deal of poise, in fact, very much like an elephant, but he also has the agility of the panther. I did not realize it until that early morning when I heard the moving feet, as one hears dogs on the hurrying heels of a stag. ”

“ Like the sun, our souls seek repose.
The mountains, empurpled priests,
The river, the chant from their lips,
Sunlit the pine-candles' crimson tips.
At this hour of worship
Shadows spread their wings;
Silently the breeze-bell rings.
The stars put a silver riband round night's tresses,
The light fades like a receding song
As fall soundless sounds from Nature's
moon-gong. ”

“ The eagles were preening their wings as a man stretches himself before fully waking from sleep. Now I could hear a rustle near by that I thought must be the two eagles coming forward on the front ledge of their nest. Soon came other noises. Storks flew by overhead, strange birds like cranes shouldered the sky. And nearby the bellow of a yak tore the stillness asunder as if he had put his horn through the skin of a drum. Far down, birds called one another. At last fell a white light on the Kanchinjinga range. ”

“ A dark breeze the forest-heart stirs;
Yet merry the face of the sky—
Twinkling in joy
Its innumerable eyes, the stars.
Hushed the music within;
Pleasure's silver laugh, dead;
Thought lost in reverie—
Reverie receding into nothing.
The taper of dreams flickers
Out, leaving the soul in dusk
By the altar of love,
Flower-laden as the night with stars.
[59]
51
"Nothing endures," you said;
"None can die," quoth love;
"In the firmament of loving
No stars set, no meteors fall." ”

“ Below them in arboreal darkness many deer grazed on abundant tall grass and saplings, only to be devoured in their turn by tigers, leopards and panthers. Everywhere life grew in abundance, all the more intensifying the struggle for existence among birds, beasts and plants. Such is the self-contradictory nature of existence. Even insects were not free of it.
When we emerged from the forest darkness and beheld the open spaces, the hot tropical sunlight suddenly shot its diamond points of fire into our helpless eyes. ”

“ Like Sleep, yielding to Dream's caresses.
[31]
26
In the deeps of Dream
O'er the pool of Sleep
A lone star her face
Seeking, with song-kindled eyes
Her Isle of Rest.
Across the dusky hills
The first flush of waking
Unfurls its silver banner
To signal the Isle for her:
She vanishes, as before, into the fading Night.
Thus the Eye of Life
Searches for the home of Peace
Night after night:
And when the sun of Death rises
It flees,—it loves its own night. ”

“ Those were leopards and panthers who had slept on the trees all day and were now leaping down to hunt at night.
When they had gone the frogs croaked, insects buzzed continually and owls hooted. Noise, like a diamond, opened its million facets. Sounds leapt at one's hearing like the dart of sunlight into unprotected eyes. A boar passed, cracking and breaking all before him. Soon the frogs stopped croaking, and way down on the floor of the jungle we heard the tall grass and other undergrowth rise like a hay-cock, then with a sigh fall back. ”

“ That sound was drowned in the deep-toned cry of the eagles above who flew in flocks and barked as well as screeched like mad, slaying each other like so many sparrows. The Rasseldar who was in charge of me pointed the face of his pup at the sky, then let off—puck puff—some fire and lo! it brought down one of those eagles as if it were a rabbit. Now the deepest tone was heard. The boom bazoom bum bum! The tiger-roar of the large ones' mammoth majesty rose and spread like a canopy of divine chords, drowning under its engulfing immensity all other petty sounds. Oh! ”

“ All the ranges lie in the grip of the most devastating blizzards. Once in a while above the battle of storms and driven snow the peaks appear—a compact mass of hard ice and white fire. They glow intensely in the sunlight, while at their feet the snow clouds whirl and fall like fanatical dervishes dancing frenziedly before their terrible God.
During the summer my friend Radja and our teacher in jungle lore, old Ghond, came to visit our home. Radja was about sixteen years old, already a Brahmin priest, and Ghond we always called old, for none knew his age. ”

“ Led by such good accounts we reached the highest table-land of Sikkim and were forced to bivouac there the third night. Our ponies were sleepy, and so were we, but after what seemed like an hour's sleep, I was roused by a tenseness that had fallen upon everything. I found the two beasts of burden standing stiff; in the light of the fire and that of the risen half moon I saw that their ears were raised tensely in the act of listening carefully. Even their tails did not move. I too listened intently. There was no doubt that the silence of the night was more than mere stillness ”

“ I cannot begin to describe how overjoyed I was to hear that Gay-Neck had flown at last. He had winged all the way from the Lamasery to our home in Dentam. He had not faltered nor failed! "O, thou soul of flight, thou pearl amongst pigeons," I exclaimed to myself as Ghond and I accelerated our steps.
Thus ended our pilgrimage to Singalele. It healed both Gay-Neck and Ghond of the disease of fear and hate that they had caught in the battlefields. No labor would be in vain if it could heal a single soul of these worst ills of life. ”

“ To my utter amazement Ghond whispered "I cannot hold you any more. Wake up! Mischief is abroad. A mad elephant has been left behind. The straggler is bent on harm. We are not high enough to be altogether out of the reach of his trunk, and if he raises it far enough he will scent our presence. Wild elephants hate and fear man and once he gets our odour he may stay about here all day in order to find out where we are. ”

“ By now they were hardly six hundred feet from our roof, and then as fate would have it, Mr. Baz, like a shell full of high explosives, fell again, this time right in the middle of the crescent and opened his wings and beak like forks of fire, crying and shrieking with fury. That produced its effect. Instead of one solid wall of pigeons, the flock was cut in two, of which one half followed Gay-Neck, while the other, smitten with abject fear, flew none knew whither. Gay-Neck did what a true leader does in great crises. ”

“ Just then I saw that above them, way up, the hawk was folding his wings: he was about to drop and in an instant he fell upon them like a stone. In desperation I put my fingers in my mouth and made a shrill whistle, a cry of warning. The pigeons dived like a falling sword, yet the hawk followed. Inch by inch, moment by moment he was gaining on them. Faster and faster he fell: now there was scarcely twenty feet between him and his prey. There was no doubt that he was aiming at Gay-Neck. I could see his sinister claws. "Won't those stupid pigeons do anything to save themselves?" ”

“ The mother bird knew the day when she was to break open the egg-shell with her own beak, in order to usher Gay-Neck into the world. Though the male sits on the egg pretty nearly one third of the time—for he does that each day from morning till late afternoon—yet he does not know when the hour of his child's birth is at hand. No one save the mother bird arrives at that divine certainty. We do not yet understand the nature of the unique wireless message by which she learns that within the shell the yolk and the white of her egg have turned into a baby-bird. ”