an extract from 'bharata-sindhu-rashmi': the reverie

Sahitya Akademi

An Extract from 'Bharata-sindhu-rashmi': The ReverieAuthor(s): VINAYAKASource: Indian Literature, Vol. 29, No. 1 (111) (January-February, 1986), pp. 95-102Published by: Sahitya AkademiStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23335978 .

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An Extract

from Bharata-sindhu-rashmi'

The Reverie

VINAYAKA

THE following extract from Bharata-sindhu-rashmi centres round the

episode of the Dasharajna battle in the Rgveda. This battle trans

formed the Sapta Sindhu country, dotted over with a number of

small kingdoms, into Bharata Varsha, extending the kingdom to the North-East and to the South. Sudasa was the hero, and Vasi$tha earlier and Visvämitra later were the Purohits, who counselled King Sudasa to conduct this war. Visvämitra achieved his objectives as a

poet, a warrior-king and a sage. He had the satisfaction of seeing that Bharata Varsha was established as a great country, with the two

races, Aryan and Dravidian, brought together under a pan-Indian cul tural pattern and that there was a new life in the land.

What follows in the extract happens when Visvämitra gets into a reverie on his last day, resting in his bed in the evening. His creative

energy is face to face with his environment stretched to its largest expansion. Nature has been enlarged into the Space-Time Continuum itself. His response to this environment is contained in this extract.

\VAPOURED an evening mist into the room. * Moveless he lay. His moving eyeballs measured Measureless dimensions, mystic realms. Planet earth hung star-like in the sky, Shining like silver Venus or gold Mars. An urn ash-laden spun into the room. In mild surprise the sage beheld the urn

Rotating and revolving, moving slow

95



INDIAN LITERATURE

In a born rhythm, querulous, intimate

That matched these words uttered majestic, calm:

"I am the vessel that spins through space. I hold

The dust and ash of the burnt and buried dead.

Noiseless I whirl to my appointed task. There is no other way. They call me Earth.

Bee-wax or pipe-clay, king or mendicant, Schemer or scholiast : dust is but dust.

In my dark clay-womb they lie : ignoble end!

The star-glow in your seer-dust,—will it last?

It will sink soon in my benighted womb.

All that's born will burn and lie in an urn."

Flickered a gentle smile on those seer-lips Glowed a piercing glint in those bright eyes. "O Mother! Earthing Angel heaping love! No urn turning in the bowels of earth!

An infinite number of created things Descend, I doubt not, into your dusty womb.

But, too, wake up day after day and shine

Minerals and metals, seeds in the ocean-bed, Corals and pearls, sunrise and sunset, birds, Animal and man and seasons sempiternal! For ever men and women, drawn to Love,

In progeny perpetuate themselves

And hearts' fresh creepers hail the greening earth!

Mother! O ladle of vision for men and gods! No vessel of dust, empty or full, art thou

But the lotus of the honeyed consciousness!"

The sunset-flush illumed the sage's room.

The movement of the urn slowed down awhile.

A golden lotus bloomed within the urn.

Stood on its kernel an angelic shape Of mother and spoke these words in solemn tones:

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THE REVERIE

"Earth and sky brim with infinity, Seasons with beauty, starry space with truth, And universe with love! Awake, arise!

Among planets moving evolutionless, A pilgrim, I, crusading towards the Whole!"

Vanished the scene. A lovely moon arose.

Riding a dark-blue cloud came Svayambhu, The Adam of the race from manes' sphere. Beckoning the cloud to linger near the gate, Colossus subtle-bodied, handsome, vexed, So movingly he spoke! The Vina's strings evoked not music more entrancing-sweet: "How fares the earth? How fares the human race? Holds still the pledge of man's advancing glory And world-diffusion of light won so far?

Rasping rumour grates upon the ear: Man by his brinkmanship imperils the race. He has played into Vritra's hands as servitor; Lives a forked life on the cross-roads of Desire. Indra on one hand, Vritra on the other; Like the Ash-Demon, perchance, his own destroyer!" The agony of the race was in his voice.

Gently the sage said: "Sire, you seem care-worn. Vast is your vision, cosmic your journeying And even beyond the Soul behind the World Direct into the mind of the supreme. If this is your stance, what hope is there for man?" "Time once said to its Master, the Lord Supreme: 'I rule because it was Thy sovereign will That from hell-depth to highest heaven-height I should, empire of bird and beast and man, Satyr and faun, faerie and gandharva: From hell-depth where no dawning sense of time is To heaven-height where broods vast timelessness,

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INDIAN LITERATURE

Shaping creation, evolution doom. In this wide world which I am asked to rule, Man is the Prince of Problems, only he. No discipline he knows, no self-control, No satisfaction born of quenched desires.

To him not truth-light but his own will is law.

Like a glow worm gloating over its tail-end light, He prides himself upon his intellect.

A fox-tail burning with a fierce abscess, The ego's carbuncle infests his being. To treat the carbuncle, he maltreats men.

I am perplexed. How should I mend or end?' "

"Said the Eternal Voice into Time's (y)ears: 'Man shall come round serenely in the end.

His own misdeeds will humble him with stumbling. In his own errors are involved the steps

That help him to evolve towards the Throne

And sit, one day, anointed, near the High. Man was born God-like, innocent and pure. And he knew Beauty day by day through Sense.

But fiends allured him with the Golden Deer, Enslaved his kind with the spell of Name and Form

And foothold gave in their dominion.

To save man from this plight, I, the Supreme,

Breathed Sacrifice into his daily life

And built the fire-altar. But ignorance Mantra turned to magic, Word to words.

In a world marbled with ingratitude O! I came down in clay. I showered love.

"The Avatar is here!" some cried. But others closed

Their ears with cotton wicks and sat stone-deaf, No quickened pulse of love, no sign of welcome

Was there to greet me on my dreary path, I came, a lone god, and alone I went.

I felt the crowd missed what was poured from heaven,

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THE REVERIE

The light of Wisdom that illumes the world. I hummed. A hundred -sophies, -ologies Rose, keen sky-holes; scorpion-tails of light

Stung man into wisdom. He came to grips with dips into the Real and discoursed On systems, fully armed from A to Z.' It was great fun. Í watched it for a while. In an infinite zero the Nihilist lost his way. Philosophers called me a hermaphrodite, Feminists,—woman and others a neuter noun. Each capped Me his own way till all were trapped. The Materialist's Gross as the root of all the subtle; The Humanist's Man as yardstick of the yard; The Existentialist's prowl both day and night For golden particles glistening in sand; With aching sense, the Epicurean's search

Only for crumbs in Life's most gorgeous banquet; The Man of Reason and the Socialist (rebellious man) Pleased with a little when Life gifts the whole: All these revealed the intermediate darkness With which the ego eclipses, day or night The plangent journeys of the planetary soul.

Many worship the Manifold, not the One.

They strike for unity, forgetting the Supreme. Integral living remains a broken image, When they move through the world, or tribes through

jungles; It does not tingle, mingle in their blood."

" 'Guest of the high seas on their pearl-strewn floor, A thunder-tamer, a sun-god in dark spaces, Miraculous healer, a robot-rearer too! Man is turned Indra, king of earth and heaven! His eyes run to his head. Imperial pride Seizes his being, makes him compassionless!' 'Beneath the throne a rumble! The Vritra-quake

99



INDIAN LITERATURE

Overtakes the footstool and the throne itself! But Vritra turns man's wealth and fame to dust. Man's jealousy and hate ascend sky-high, The poison-flame has done its work. All humbled, Man cries and prays for grace. The scene is changed. His very cells and pulls will be transformed And paradise will open where he lives.

Perception beyond sense will draw him inward. The subtle worlds will open to sun-worlds soon

Impurities, illusions melt away And man becomes a nursling of the gods!'

"

Conveying the word divine to Svayambhu, Visvämitra discoursed to him with love About the crisis of the race, its fall And its eventful rise with help of spirit, As the Supreme had passed it on to Time When Time had asked Him what the end would be. As a last word the sage to Manu said: "Peace be with you, O Patriarch of the race! God-births are cradled in man's consciousness On plane upon plane of being. Sheer agony Will furnace consciousness into pure gold And stains on his conscience fountains of love unstain." At that the first Manu smiled a jasmine smile And to the Manes' world returned in peace.

All was still But for Time's pulse-beats in the twinkling stars.

Soon it was light and calm within the room.

But there, in a corner, a wounded partridge fell,

Parting its bill in pain, lifting its wings, Each moment there. The wound was yet unhealed. No time for questions now, no how, no why! His heart all tense with pain, eyes moist with tears, Into his fond hand the sage took the bird

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THE REVERIE

And with his other gently stroked its wings To fill them with his love. In the tumbling air The sage released it. O! up flew the bird Poised on its wings, beyond the door, the river. Into the moonlit sky. The sage stood smiling.

This Kapinjala, A common bird, blueprint of everyman, Made its own bid for immortality. Wounded, it fell, but fell into the sage's room

Where Grace awaited it as its birthright. Mouths yearn for nectar, despairing for a drop, On physical, vital, mental, casual planes— A million hearts are anguished for its taste.

Sage-fingers work enchantment on the wing And the bird's heart hears the immortal's tread. To earth it returns with its slender beak all full.

Into a deep trance of being entered the sage And brooded and murmured thus within himself:

"My task is done. Other bells ring within me!

I am the sky-wave of ethereal being, Steersman in the cabin of the Seven-star-cluster!"

The crown of the sage's head grew soft. A blaze

of solar light burst its interior, Pushed past the waters of Sarasvati, Goddess of Sound, and into starry space melted, as melts a sunset in the sky.

May Visvämitra be born again! Masters of the world's well-being and masters

Of their own creative sculpture, let them move

to the vast mansion of seven beams and streams!

May mankind open to the Life Divine!

Maybe, cruel Agony blocks on the path The subtle filaments of Consciousness.

Anchor may vanish in the doom-driven sea

And the anchorite left all anchorless, rudderless.

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INDIAN LITERATURE

Maybe millions are stranded on starless nights And die strife and suffering deaden the earth.' Man will be victor pilgrim of the stars, Moving from heaven to hell, from hell to heaven And the star-vigilant eyes of seers protect him!

Victory to Man! Aum, Aum, Aum!

Tr. by the Poet

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an extract from 'bharata-sindhu-rashmi': the reverie

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