I thanked my father with tears of joy, and a few
days later said farewell to my friends and my home.
What a joyful anticipation my heart beat with as, at
the head of my wagons, I passed out of the city gates, a
member of this magnificent procession, and the wide
world lay open before me! Each day of the journey was to
me like a festival, and when the camp‐fires blazed up in
the evenings to scare the panthers and tigers away, and I
sat in the circle by the side of the ambassador with men of
years and rank, it seemed to me that I was in some kind of
wonderful fairyland.
Through the magnificent forest regions of Vedisa
and over the gently swelling heights of the Vindhaya
mountains we reached the vast northern plain, and there
an entirely new world opened itself out before me for I
had never imagined that the earth could be so flat and so
huge.
It was about a month after our setting out that, one
glorious evening, from a palm‐covered hill‐top, we saw
two golden bands which, disengaging themselves from
the mists on the horizon, threaded through the immeasur‐
able acres of green beneath, and gradually approached
each other until they became united in one broad zone.
A hand touched my shoulder.
It was the ambassador who had approached me
unperceived.
“Those, Kāmanīta, are the sacred river Yamunā and
the divine Gangā whose waters unite before our eyes.”
Involuntarily I raised my hands, palms together, in
reverence.
“You do well to greet them in this way,” my patron
went on. “For if the Gangā comes from the home of the
gods amid the snow‐clad mountains of the north and
flows from the Abode of the Eternal; the Yamunā, on the
other hand, takes its rise in lands known to far‐distant
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heroic days, and its floods have reflected the ruins of
Hastinapura, The City of Elephants, and it washed the
plain where the Pāndavas and the Kaurāvas struggled for
mastery; where Karna raged in his tent, where Krishna
himself guided the steeds of Arjuna — but of all that I do
not need remind you, I know that you are well‐versed in
the ancient heroic songs.
“Often I have stood on that projecting tongue of
land where the blue waves of the Yamunā roll onward
side by side with the yellow waters of the Gangā, and blue
and yellow have never mingled. Blue and yellow, warrior
and brahmin in the great river‐bed of Caste, passing
onward to eternity, approaching — uniting — for ever
side by side — for ever two. Then it seemed to me that,
blended with the rushing of these blue floods, I heard
warlike sounds — the clash of weapons and the blowing
of horns, the neighing of horses and the trumpeting of war
elephants — and my heart beat faster, for my ancestors
also had been there. And the sands of Kurukshetra drank
their heroic blood.”
Full of admiration, I looked up to this man from
the warrior caste in whose family such memories lived.
But he took me by the hand and said: “Come, son,
look at the goal of your first journey.” He led me a few
steps around some dense shrubbery that had, up until
then, hidden the view to the east.
As it flashed upon my vision I gasped in admiration
for there, at a bend of the broad Gangā, lay the city of
Kosambī great and splendid in its beauty. With its walls
and towers, its piled‐up masses of houses, its terraces,
quays and bathing‐ghats lit up by the setting sun, it really
looked like a city of red gold — a city such as Benares had
been until the unwholesome lives of its inhabitants
changed it to stone and mortar — while the cupolas that
were of real gold shone like so many suns. Columns of
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smoke, dark red‐brown from the temple courts above,
light blue from the funeral pyres on the banks below, rose
straight into the air. Carried aloft on these, as if it were a
canopy, there hung over the whole a veil woven of the
tenderest tints of mother‐of‐pearl, while in the background,
flung forth in the wildest profusion, there flashed
and burned every hue of heaven. On the sacred stream,
which mirrored all this glory and multiplied it a thousand‐
fold in the shimmer of its waters, countless boats were
rocking, gay with many‐coloured sails and streamers. And,
distant though we were, we could see the broad stairs of
the ghats swarming with people and numerous bathers
splashing in the sparkling waves beneath. A sound of
joyous movement, floating out upon the air like the busy
hum of innumerable bees, was borne up to us from time
to time.
As you can imagine, I felt as if I was looking upon
a city of the Tavatimsa heaven, the abode of the Thirty‐three
Gods, rather than one of human beings; indeed, the
whole valley of the Gangā and the Yamunā with its luxuriant
richness looked to us men of the hills like Paradise. And, in
truth, this very place of all others on earth was indeed to
become Paradise for me.
That same night I slept under the hospitable roof of
Panāda, my father’s old friend.
Early on the following day I hurried to the nearest
ghat and descended, with feelings which I cannot attempt
to describe, into the sacred waters which should not only
cleanse me from the dust of my journey but also from my
unwholesome karma as well. This was, owing to my
youth, of no great gravity as yet; however I filled a large
bottle from the river to take home to my father. Unfortu‐
nately, it never came into his possession, as you will soon
learn from my tale.
The good Panāda, a grey‐haired old gentleman of
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