My name is Kamanita. I was born in Ujjeni, a town lying far to the south, in the land of Avanti, among the mountains. My father was a merchant, and rich, though our family could lay claim to no special rank. He gave me a good education, and, when of age to assume the Sacrificial Cord, I was already possessed of most of the accomplishments which befit a young man of position, so that people generally believed I must have been educated in Takkasila.[1] I could wrestle and fence with the best. My voice was melodious and well trained, and I was able to play the vina with considerable artistic skill: I could repeat all the poems of Bharata by heart; and many others also. With the mysteries of metre I was most intimately acquainted, and was myself able to write verses replete with feeling and ingenious thought. I could draw and paint so that few surpassed me, and my originality in the art of strewing flowers was universally lauded. I had attained to an unusual mastery in the colouring of crystals, and, furthermore, could tell at sight whence any jewel came. My parrots and parson-birds I trained so that none spoke as they. And to all these accomplishments I added a thorough command of the game of chess with its sixty-four squares, of the wand game, of archery, of ball games of every description, of riddles, and of flower games. So that it became, O stranger, a proverbial saying in Ujjeni: "Talented as the young Kamanita."
When I was twenty years old, my father one day sent for me, and spoke as follows:
"My son, thy education is now completed; it is time for thee to see something of the world and to begin thy merchant career. A suitable opportunity has just offered itself. Within the next few days our monarch sends an embassy to King Udena in Kosambi, which lies far to the north. There I have a friend named Panada, with whom I have at various times exchanged hospitalities. He has long told me that in Kosambi there is good business to be done in the products of our land, particularly in rock crystals and sandal powder, as also in artistic wicker-work and woven goods. I have always, however, shunned such a business journey, holding it to be an altogether too hazardous undertaking, on account of the many dangers of the road; but for any one going there and back in the train of the embassy there can be no danger whatsoever. So now, my son, we had better go to the warehouse and inspect the twelve wagons with their teams of oxen and the goods which I have decided on for thy journey. In exchange for the latter thou art to bring back muslin from Benares and carefully selected rice; and that will be the beginning, and I trust a splendid one, of thy business career. Then thou wilt have an opportunity of seeing foreign lands with natural characteristics other than thine own, and other customs, and wilt have daily intercourse with courtiers, men of the highest station and most refined manners, all of which I consider a great gain, for a merchant must be a man of the world."
I thanked my father with tears of joy, and a few days later bade farewell to my parents and home.
With what joyful anticipation did my heart beat as, at the head of my wagons, I passed out at 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 altogether in fairyland.
Through the magnificent forest region of Vedisa and over the gently swelling heights of the Vindhya mountains we reached the vast northern plain, and there an entirely new world opened itself out before me, for I had hitherto never imagined that the earth was so flat and so huge.
It was about a month after our setting out that, one glorious evening, we saw, from a palm-covered eminence, two golden bands, which, disengaging themselves from the mists on the horizon, threaded the illimitable green beneath and gradually approached each other till they became united in one broad one.
A hand touched my shoulder.
It was the ambassador, who had approached me unperceived.
"Those, Kamanita, are the sacred Jumna and the divine Gunga whose waters unite before our eyes."
Involuntarily I raised my hands in adoration.
"Thou dost well to greet them in this way," my patron went on. "For if the Gunga comes from the home of the gods amid the snow-clad mountains of the North and flows as it were from the Abode of the Eternal, yet the Jumna, on the other hand, takes its rise in lands known to far-distant heroic days, and its floods have reflected the ruins of Hastinapura, 'the City of Elephants,' and washed the plain where the Pándavas and the Kauravas struggled for the mastery, where Karna raged in his tent, where Krishna himself guided the steeds of Arjuna—but of all that I need not remind thee, seeing that thou art thyself at home in the ancient heroic songs. Often have I stood on yonder projecting tongue of land when the blue waves of the Jumna have rolled onward side by side with the yellow waters of the Gunga, and blue and yellow have never mingled. Blue and Yellow, Warrior and Brahman 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, blent with the rushing of these blue floods, I heard warlike sounds—the clash of arms and the blowing of horns, 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 had drunk 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 saying, "Come, my son, and behold the goal of thy first journey," he led me but a few steps around some dense shrubbery that had hitherto hidden the view to the cast.
As it flashed upon my vision I uttered an involuntary cry of admiration, for there, at a bend of the broad Gunga, lay, great and splendid in its beauty, the city of Kosambi. With its walls and towers, its piled-up masses of houses, its terraces, its quays and ghâts lit up by the setting sun, it really looked like a city of red gold—a city such as Benares was until the sins of its inhabitants changed it to stone and mortar—while the cupolas that were of real gold shone like so many suns. Columns of smoke, dark red brown from the temple courts above, light blue from the funeral pyres on the banks below, rose straight into the air; and borne 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, flashed and burned every hue of heaven. On the sacred stream which imaged all this glory and multiplied it a thousandfold in the shimmer of its waters, rocked countless boats, gay with many-coloured sails and streamers; and, distant though we were, we could yet see the broad stairs of the ghâts[2] swarming with people, and numerous bathers already plashing 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 thou canst imagine, I felt I was looking upon a city of the thirty-three gods, rather than one of human beings; indeed, the whole valley of the Gunga with its luxuriant richness looked to us, men of the hills, like Paradise. And of a truth, this very place, of all others on earth, was to be Paradise Revealed to me.
That same night I slept under the hospitable roof of Panada, my father's old friend.
Early on the following day, I hurried to the nearest ghât, 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 from my sins as well. These were, owing to my youth, of no great gravity; but I filled a large bottle front the river to take to my father. Alas! it never came into his possession, as thou wilt later learn.
The good Panada, a grey-haired old gentleman of venerable appearance, now conducted me to the markets of the city, and, with his friendly assistance, I was able, in the course of the next few days, to sell my wares at a good profit, and to lay in an abundance of those products of the northern plain which are so highly prized among our people.
My business was thus brought to a happy conclusion long before the embassy had begun to think of getting ready to start on its return journey; and I was in no way sorry, for I had now full liberty to see the town and to enjoy its pleasures, which I did to the full, in the company of Somadatta, the son of my host.