their very haunted dwellings are sacred to the imagination,Tempe and Arethusa, and Delphi and Helicon, are peopled with their tutelar deities, whose forms and attributes rise up at once before us ;—but we feel no sacred horror at the name of the holy mountain Meru: Troy and Thebes awaken far different trains of thought from Ayodhya and Vidarbha, of the form and the powers of Vishnu and Siva we know little, and that little indistinctly. Had the Indian mythological odes of Sir W. Jones been animated with a much higher and more daring vein of lyric inspiration, they would still have been weighed down by their cumbrous learning, they require a profound and regular course of study before we can enter into their merits. The Cloud Messenger of Calidasa, translated with considerable elegance by Mr. Wilson, is liable to the same objection; its beauty, after its very fine opening, consists in the description of places whose very names are full of poetry to the native ear, but to the European awaken no pleasing sentiment whatever.

To a certain degree, then, Indian poetry must be to us learned or foreign-yet there are universal feelings, which lie in the very depth of our common nature,-affections and passions, of which the language is as universal as the shape and the lineaments of man; and when poetry, in however remote a region, speaks this general dialect of the heart, it will command attention and excite a pleasing or a thrilling interest. Such appears to us to be the case with the episode of Nala; and the purely Indian costume of the poetry, in this instance, only adds to its charms, by making us feel that we have before us a faithful transcript of native manners, which, instead of demanding much previous acquaintance with Indian usages, conveys to us much information in a very delightful way: the Nala would require much fewer explanatory notes than any other piece of Oriental poetry. This poem likewise gives a very favourable view of the virtues of the Indian character. A nation, to whom the devoted conjugal fidelity of the wife of Nala is the ideal of female excellence, must have reached a high rank in moral culture; and the whole poem breathes that gentle, and humane, and pacific tone, which is so strikingly distinctive in all the earlier representations of the Indian native races. Mr. Southey, when, following the bent of his own genius, he indulged, in his Oriental epic, in those exquisite pictures of domestic love which are the peculiar charm of his poetry, was more true to Indian life than he himself perhaps supposed; for the poem of Nala was, we believe, altogether unknown in Europe at the time of the publication of the Curse of Kehama.' Nor is it mean praise to the Indian poet that so many centuries ago he should have equalled, in his conceptions of the moral elevation of the female character,

the

the Christian poet who has been most successful in delineating the domestic virtues.

Nala, the monarch of Nishadha, centered in his person all the noble qualities which could distinguish an Indian monarch. He surpassed all kings in justice, all men in beauty, and he was unrivalled in the management of horses. Bhima, the king of Vidarbha (Berar), possessed an only daughter, the most beautiful and most modest of her sex-the gentle Damajanti. Like the knights and ladies of old, these two perfect beings become mutually enamoured from the fame each of the other's admirable qualities but instead of human ambassadors—the faithful squire or the adventurous handmaid,-Indian poetry furnishes the enamoured prince with a very different kind of confidante. Wandering in the woods, Nala beholds a flock of birds with golden wings, who offer to convey the tidings of his passion to the ear of the princess. Nala could not refuse a proposal so courteous, and at the same time so acceptable. We have in these translations admitted a slight alteration in our measure, in order to make it more flowing.

Flew away the swans rejoicing, to Vidarbha straight they flew, To Vidarbha's stately city, there by Damajanti's feet,

Down with drooping plumes they settled, and she gazed upon the flock,

Wondering at their forms so graceful, where amid her maids she sat.
Sportively began the damsels all around to chase the birds,
Scattering flew the swans before her, all about the lovely grove.
Lightly ran the nimble maidens, every one her bird pursued;
But the swan that through the forest gentle Damajanti followed,
Suddenly in human language spake to Damajanti thus :
"Damajanti, in Vidarbha dwells a noble monarch, Nala,
Fair in form as the Aswinas, peerless among men is he-
Like Kandharba in his beauty, like a god in human form―
Truly if that thou wert wedded to this man, O peerless princess!
Beautiful would be thy children, like to him, thou slender maid.
We have seen Gods and Gandharvas, men, the Serpents and the
Rishis; †

All we've seen, but ne'er the equal have we seen of noble Nala,
Pearl art thou among all women, Nala is the pride of men.'

* In the original, according to our translators, this is a far less poetic bird; and we must crave permission for once to turn our geese into swans.' If, however, we are to believe Bohlen, in his very learned work, Das alte Indien,' the translators are altogether mistaken; they have been misled by the similarity of the word hansa to gans. The original either means a mythic bird, closely resembling the swan, or is perhaps the tall and brilliant flamingo, which Southey has introduced with such effect in one of his rich descriptions in the Curse of Kehama. The goose, however, is so common in Indian mythology, that this must be received with much doubt.

+ Intermediate beings in Indian mythology.

They

They receive a favourable answer from the princess, and take flight.

Thus the egg-born to the maiden spake, O lord of many peasants! Back then flew they to Nishadha, and to Nala told it all.' Love has the same effect on maidens in east and west. 'Full of thought she sat dejected, pale her melancholy cheeks; Damajanti sat and yielded all her soul to sighs of grief; Silent gazing on the heavens, miserable to behold;

Wan was all her soft complexion with her spirit's inward sorrows; Nor in sleep, nor gentle converse, nor in banquets found she joy, Night nor day she could not slumber; Woe, O woe! she wept and said.'

As in ancient Greece, or as in feudal romance, the kings of all the earth, and all the chiefs or warriors who aspire to the hand of this blameless Helen of the East, are summoned to a solemn assemblage, called the Swayambara, or self-election, where the princess is to designate the favoured suitor by throwing a wreathe of flowers round his neck. The roads to the court of Vidarbha are crowded with rajahs and kings; and groan beneath the weight of steeds, and cars, and elephants. Nala, of course, is among the first; but on his way he encounters four formidable and unexpected rivals, Indra the god of the firmament, Agni the god of fire, Varuna the god of the waters, Yama the god of the infernal regions. They declare that they have descended from heaven to seek the hand of the lovely Damajanti, and they adjure the enamoured Nala, by his piety and dutiful allegiance to the gods, to undertake the ungracious task of bearing their message of love to the fair. Nala remonstrates, but piety triumphs over passion. He is suddenly, by the divine aid, transported into the bower of the princess.

There he saw Vidarbha's maiden, girt with all her virgin bands,
Bright in beauty, full of softness, worthy of her noble blood;
Every limb in round proportion, slender sides and lovely eyes;
Even the moon's soft gleam despising, in her own o'erpowering
brightness;

As he gazed, his love grew warmer to the softly smiling maid,
Yet to keep his truth, his duty, all his passion he suppressed.'

He delivers the message of the gods, but the maiden, in this delicate situation, permits her candour to prevail over her bashfulness, and declares that, even in the presence of the gods, she shall select the noble Nala. But a new difficulty arises; the assembly is met at the Swayambara, all the royal suitors are in array, and Damajanti discovers, to her dismay, five Nalas; for each of the deities had assumed the form, the features, the dress of the king of Nishadha. She addresses the deities in a supplicating hymn.

VOL. XLV. NO. LXXXIX

• With

With her words and with her spirit, uttered she her humble prayer, Folding both her hands and trembling, to the gods the maiden spake.' The gods are moved with compassion, they stand confessed, pure (literally sine sudore), with eyes that do not close, with chaplets of celestial amaranth, their feet not touching the ground, their bodies casting no shadow. The form of the mortal Nala is distinguished by the opposite of all these celestial attributes. He is not free from the dust and heat of earth, his feet press the ground, his body casts a shadow.

Modestly the large-eyed maiden lifted up his garment's hem,

Round his shoulders threw she lightly the bright zone of radiant flowers.'

The assembly breaks up amid the applause of the gods, and the jealous lamentations of the unsuccessful suitors.

The nuptials are celebrated; Nala and his bride are blessed with two children; Nala is the model of all virtue; beloved by his subjects, pious to the gods, a diligent reader of the four Vedas, even of the fifth-he at length performs the Aswameda, the celebrated sacrifice of the horse, the height of Indian devotion.

But the course of true love never doth run smooth.' The gods on their return from the Swayambara had met the fierce and vindictive Kali and another Deity, who, enraged to find themselves too late, and jealous of the success of Nala, swore deep and eternal vengeance. But evil spirits have no power over the blameless; offence must be committed before they can possess themselves of the soul of man. In unlucky hour Nala is guilty of a nameless act of impurity in the omission of a certain ablution; the demon Kali at once enters into him, his understanding is perverted, his disposition changed, and one lingering virtue, the love of Damajanti, alone remains. He plays at dice with his unnatural brother Pushkara-loses his wealth, palaces, provinces, his kingdom, his very clothes. Damajanti had fortunately seized an opportunity of sending her children, under the care of the chief charioteer (the master of the horse), to her father's court. What stake remains to the ruined gambler? none but Damajanti herself. The brother proposes the hazard; but the demoniac has not yet lost that last holy affection. They are driven together into the wilderness-with but one garment between them, for a bird flew away with the only one Nala had retained, mocking the spendthrift gambler-and proscribed by an edict, which makes it a capital crime to afford them any succour, or to receive them under any roof. Nala persuades his miserable wife to abandon him to his fate, and retire to her father's court. It is our fault if we have entirely marred the exquisite pathos of her reply.

Truly

Truly all my heart is breaking, and my sinking members fail, When, O king, thy desperate counsel, once I think on, once again. Robbed of kingdom, robbed of riches, naked, worn with thirst and

hunger,

Shall I leave thee in the forest, shall I wander from thee far? When thou, sad and faniine-stricken, thinkest of thy former bliss In the wild wood, O my husband, I will soothe thy weariness. Like a wife is no physician, in a state so sad as thine, Medicine none is like her kindness-Nala, speak I not the truth?' Nala promises that they shall not part; but the evil spirit within him strives to overpower this last virtue. The frantic man determines to abandon her while she is sleeping; he cuts off part of the single garment they possess, and leaves her half naked, and lying on the hard earth. Once he turns back to take a parting look'Yet his cruel heart relenting, to the cabin turns he back: On the slumbering Damajanti gazing, sadly wept the king: Thou, that sun or wind hath never roughly visited, my lov'd one, On the hard earth in a cabin sleep'st, with no protecting friend. When she sees her severed garment, she, that ever smiled so sweetly, Will not all her senses fail her, loveliest, how will 't fare with her? How will❜t fare with Bhima's daughter, lonely, by her lord abandoned, Wandering in the savage forest, where wild beasts and serpents dwell?' He entreats the protection of all the gods and genii, but rests his chief trust in a still surer safeguard.

Noblest, may they all protect thee, best of all thy virtue guard thee.' The classical reader will not fail to call to mind the Ariadne of Catullus; the English, the Una of Spenser, or the lady in Comus. My sister is not so defenceless left

As you imagine; she has a hidden strength
Which you remember not.'

The strength of Damajanti, through which she is enabled

To trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds,'

is her deep, and ardent, and self-regardless love for her faithless husband.

'Damajanti woke-the beauteous, in the wild wood, full of dread, When she did not see her husband, overpowered with grief and pain. Loud she shriek'd in her first anguish-Where art thou, Nishardha's king?

Mighty king! my sole protector! Ah! my lord, desert'st thou me ?
Oh! I'm lost, undone for ever; helpless in the wild wood left.
Faithful once to every duty, wert thou, king, and true in word;
True in word art thou, to leave me, slumbering in the forest thus?
Couldst thou then depart, forsaking thy weak, faithful, once-loved wife,
Her that never sinned against thee, now, alas! so sinned against?
O, I fear, thou famous conqueror, shew thee to me, oh, my lord;

C 2

Yes,