Flaxius

Now it befel once in the golden time, meaning the good-olden or aureate age, which Hesiod and other poets write of, that Flaxius having seen the dragon world, with all its thousand brazen eyes of glittering cities, and looked bravely at them, and read their meaning, found himself in north-western India, in a then famous city called Chotahazripoora. As for the date, it was somewhere the other side of the year One, which is tolerably accurate chronology for Indian records, which were not very well kept by the Sanskrit Civil Service about that time, or any other, with all their wisdom.

And in this particular poora, which is in Greek and Gypsy foros, whence forum, so called from its great wealth, Flaxius became a great man at court, because he despised riches and was a sage, being, of course, greatly honoured and admired and coloured up as an incongruity, and inexpensive at that. And at last the king consulted with him on all matters, social, familiar, or financial, from taxing a province down to buying a new bayadere. In all of which the Immortal displayed singular sagacity and exquisite good taste.

This monarch had, of course, three sons, by which ye may know that I have started on a fairy tale, the head of which is, as usual, the part which comes last, or the youngest. This third became very dear to Flaxius, because he was a brave, frank, innocent, clever youth, worth looking after and loving. And his name was Arjūn.

Now in the gust and whirlwind, and flit and flow of hailstones and rain-drops which make the pelting incidents of court-life, there being little rest or peace in it, Flaxius began to note that a cloud was coming over the soul of Arjūn, and from this ante-chamber of the dream, he soon passed to the bright hall of perception, that his pupil or friend was in love. And ere long the expected confidence came in these words:

‘Thou knowest, O wise among men, that I have never set my heart on love of woman. For the article in its best quality has ever been so exceeding cheap and abundant about our court, and I have had so freely my pick and choice of primeurs, that it was unto me only as my meals. Moreover, all the books which I have studied have taught me that the preferring one girl to another is mere idle fancy, even as tastes in food are simply the result of caprice and custom, and that female nature is all, in fact, folly. This I did steadfastly believe, till it chanced that one day in the woods far beyond the city I met with a maid of exceeding beauty, who, as I found by conversation, was so witty and wise, original and good, that it soon appeared to me that I had all along been in ignorance and error as to what Woman might be. And, in short, all my philosophy went to the Seven Hells, where it may remain for ever for all I care, being in love through and through—dyed in the grain.

‘And this girl, Sakhára, is the daughter of a Brahmin of kingly race, but exceeding poor. So when I told my father of my love——’

‘Why then,’ interposed Flaxius,

‘“Fire flashed from the monarch’s eyes,
And high his wrath began to rise.”’

‘Yea,’ replied Arjūn, ‘and, in short, he swore by the Cow that I should never marry her unless it were shown to be the special will of the gods.’

‘H’m!’ observed Flaxius, ‘I have noticed that the special will of the gods is generally manifest in anything to which we agree, and could the king be brought to assent to this, in any way, the divine sanction would soon be perceptible. Therefore, my son, fret not thy soul, but go and amuse thyself, for in love-troubles, as in all others, he who is least uneasy comes the soonest to ease. I will see what can be done.’

It came to pass that the next day, Flaxius, while walking in the forest and listening to the chattering of the holy monkeys in the trees o’erhead—whose conversation was, however, of a most frivolous and unholy character—met with a man who was evidently a poor devil on general principles, but who appeared to be a decidedly superior person, when one investigated the particulars, for he had a very intelligent face of dark hue, a keen, shrewd eye, and a goodly mien. He was clad in black.

‘I beg you, great sir,’ he said to Flaxius, ‘to take heed how you speak to me or even look at me or let my shadow fall on you, else you will find yourself in for hell or a long penance, for I am a pariah, and my name is Dschim Crow.’

‘And I,’ replied Flaxius, ‘not being a fool, and having travelled in many lands, and seen the vanity of all things human, would probably be ranked with you, could the Brahmins read my soul.’

‘Ay,’ answered the outcast, ‘’tis one of the precepts of our philosophy, that mankind are all divisible into the found-out and the not-found-out.’

‘A good saying,’ replied Flaxius. ‘Have ye then a philosophy?’

‘We are the only true philosophers,’ answered the Pariah, ‘for ours is the sole system that teaches the error of excess of wisdom, law, and goodness. As is shown by our literature, which comprises every work of true humour ever written in India.’

‘Better and better,’ said Flaxius; ‘and I believe you the more, because such a literature is the natural result of such a principle. And what are some of the works to which you refer?’

‘There is, firstly,’ answered the outlaw, ‘the story of “Vikram and the Vampire,” in which the Baital teaches the sage in a series of twenty-five lessons how to show himself a fool just two dozen times, by being over wise.

‘Secondly, the “Life of the Gūrū Simple,” by which we may learn that a good man may be a great goose.

‘Thirdly, the “Marvellous Tale,” showing how Boorum-bunder Pop, the Buddhist, broke open a poultry-house and stole all the fowls, by virtue of the holy fourteen formulas of Sakhya Mūni.

‘Fourthly, how Ah-Sin the Chinese sage, who had been converted to the true religion, and came to the Gate of Nirvana, descended to earth, and meeting Brahma on a pilgrimage in human form, cheated him out of all his money at cards.

‘Fifthly, how the holy Brahmin, Baro Chor, pilfered from the divine cow of Waschischta a pint of the milk of experience, from which he churned the butter of wisdom, which is in twenty thousand slokas or verses.

‘Parraco tute,’ replied Flaxius in Prakrit, ‘I had rather thou wouldst read it than I. Any more?’

‘There is the divine legend how Krishna, the chastest of the gods, made love, in extreme, to twenty thousand milk-maids all at once, with the moral of “Be virtuous and you will be happy.” After which he was always blue in the face.’

‘Truly, I do not wonder at it,’ remarked Flaxius. ‘I have seen a man look blue for less than that. Any more?’

‘Well there is the Thieves’ Bible teaching the divine worship of Kàli, which they study devoutly in spirit and in truth, all the more because it teaches them how to commit burglary, personal theft, and murder.

‘And with this the Bāro Lil, or Scripture of the Trablūs Dom, who call themselves the Rom or Romany, teaching the sanctity of stealing shirts from clothes-lines, the piety of pilfering hens, the holy art of passing off bad horses for good, and the divineness of telling fortunes.’

‘A goodly library!’ remarked Flaxius. ‘Dost thou know aught of magic?’

‘I have picked up a few tricks,’ replied the Pariah, ‘which I learned from a Mahatma, such as the three card game, thimble-rig, floating in the air, putting cigarettes under cushions, and sending letters from a distance. My one great game is, however, to turn a girl into a tree, or the reverse. But with all my fine accomplishments I could never conjure up my wife or a dinner, and I need a meal now, most deucedly.’

‘Friend,’ said Flaxius, ‘I will conjure thee up a good dinner and teach thee the art of doing it, if thou wilt impart to me those tricks of thine.’

‘By Yamen!’ cried the jovial Bohemian, ‘thou art generous, for I deem thy secret worth forty of mine any day. He who hath a woman may have nothing to eat, but devil the place was I ever in where, if I had a bountiful dinner, I could not get a girl to share it with me. By the way,’ he inquired, ‘does this dinner of yours embrace drink—not water, you know, but tátto pani or spirits?’

‘Also that,’ said Flaxius with a smile. ‘Behold!’

There was not far from them a large earthenware pot, left by some traveller. Flaxius bade the Outcast dig a hole in the ground. In this the pot, upside down, was half-buried. Then he chanted in a mystic ancient Indian tongue:

‘Baro duvel dikkamì,
Kūshto hāben, well avri!
O choro Rom se bokalo,
Kekno māss, kek kokalo;
Kekno kil, ne kel pā mui:
Bitcha leste sari dui,
Te tatto pani kater Rom,
Om mani padmi hom!’[9]
‘Mighty spirit, look on me!
Let a dinner come from thee!
Outcast hungers here alone,
Hath no meat and ne’er a bone.
Cheese nor butter for his mouth,
Send to him, I pray thee, both!
Also spirits in this hour,
O Jewel in the lotus flower!’

And this done, the feast began, for on removing the pot there appeared beneath it a rice curry, surmounted with a fine piece of roast beef, garnished with chillies, two chupattis or wheat-cakes, jaggree sugar and a great flask.

‘Now by the thousand years in hell, which I am to catch for eating that beef,’ exclaimed the Outcast, ‘I call that a good meal. Thank the devil and your lordship—if ye be not one and the same—and for what I am about to devour, make us truly thankful,’ as the tiger said when he ate up the Buddha. Yeck lav se tacho sā desh:

‘One word’s as good as ten,
Leather away—Amen!’

‘And toddy—by all the goblins!’ he exclaimed as he sampled the bottle, ‘strong and abundant enough to demoralise an elephant. Verily I can now be clear through to the further end of my ideal of bliss, for, as your lordship knows, that man is a bachtalo beng or lucky devil who knows when he is well off, or as the great Sanskrit poet, Jan Kitz, sings:

‘“It is a flaw,
In happiness to see beyond our bourne,
It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
And spoils the singing of the nightingale.”

‘Therefore let us not see beyond our bourne—at least not till we get there; which, as our great ancestor Cain says in his precepts, is more than most men manage to do.’

‘Was Cain thy ancestor?’ inquired Flaxius. ‘I would fain hear the legend if one there be?’

‘Thou shalt hear it in spirit and in truth,’ replied the Outcast. ‘In the spirit of toddy, and on the truth of a gypsy, know then, what is known to everybody of every language, and in every land, that in the beginning were Cainos and Abelos. And unto them was a sister. And Cainos slew his brother and took his sister to wife. But she, being told that it was wrong, fled from him, and took refuge in the sun, where she dwells to this day. Then Cainos for all his sins was sent to live in the moon, and because it is cold, there he is always bearing thorns to feed the fire. And longing for his sister, he, in the moon, ever pursues her. But others say that when the sun has set and ere the moon has risen, then they meet, which accounts for their love lasting so long, since they do not see too much of one another. But however it be, they are gods of all us wanderers, because they are always wandering over the heavens. And we are their descendants, and therefore under a curse, for which indeed we do not care a curse—when we can get toddy!

‘“When the evening fire is burning,
And the women return from town;
And the crows to their nests returning,
We will drink till the moon goes down:

And merrily sing and prattle,
While music rings over the plain;
And if there’s enough in the bottle,
We’ll drink till she rises again.”

‘Now the sun is called in our tongue Kam or Kàn, and the moon Tchen or Zen, even as tongues turn it, hence we their children are the Zen-kan or Zingan. And this is the true story of our race, whence ye may see what a fine lot we are.

‘And now, your Illustriousness, since it takes two to make a bargain, or as a bargain requires a pair, which must consist of a couple, and as duality demands separate units, or a double of singles, and a duplicate repeated units, and twins bi-fold births, and as according to the Vedas there are needed twice-five fingers to make a hand-shake, and the Shastras assert that if one parent be wanting there can be no child born—

‘Heaven-a-mercy, man!’ cried Flaxius, ‘what the devil art thou driving at?’

‘Only this, O heaven born! that as thou hast kept thy word and given me the dinner without an end, and the flask inexhaustible, I will forthwith repay, reciprocate, discharge, settle, acquit bequests with, strike a balance, clear off old scores, liquidate, poney up my dues to the tune of “On the nail,” and show myself a man of honour and a gentleman by telling thee how to turn a tree into a girl or a girl into a tree, albeit I do not guarantee the quality of the timber. But by their fruit shall ye know them.’

‘’Tis well,’ answered Flaxius. ‘Proceed with thy process.’

And the Outcast proceeded. But here I must draw the veil of secrecy over the mirror of curiosity. I did not mind, O reader, letting thee know how to raise a dinner by means of sorcery, but I draw the line at girls. For there are, as it is, rather too many girls in the world if we may believe the Census, and too few trees, if we are to put faith in agricultural newspapers, and therefore I think it just as well that this metamorphosis be not added to those of Daphne and the Dryads.

---

When Flaxius returned to the Ruppeny-gav or Silver City of Chotahazripoora, he went straight to the golden palace or Sonafilisin and entered the Tatcho-bar Kamora or Diamond Chamber, where he found the king shadowing the day time of his lordly soul in the dark void of night with sleepless woe, which is to say that he was in a gloomy fit of the blues and bored to death.

‘Sarshān, your majesty. How art thou?’ inquired Flaxius in the court tongue.

‘Sarshān yer kokero, puro! How are you yourself, O ancient?’ replied the mighty monarch. ‘As for me, I am in trouble. I have, as thou knowest, more than a thousand mothers-in-law in my family?’

‘Yea,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and I have known a man ere now to be always in hot water with only one.’

‘And they are all nagging me to get first of all my three sons married, and then the daughters. Canst thou see a way out of it?’ he added anxiously.

Flaxius reflected a long time, in order not to make his wisdom too cheap, nor yet ‘to set himself by flippancy too light, too high above the level of his king,’ and then replied:

‘Thou knowest, O sublime Superiority, that I have deeply studied the science of dreams, and can command them. Therefore will I somnambulate in sleep, and draw conclusion from its imagery.

‘“The figments and conceits, the myths and fads,
The grey chimeras and the visions blue;
The phantasms and shadows of the soul,
The whims and vagaries and rhapsodies,
Extravaganzas of the booming soul,
The hum-bugs which go sailing in the dark,
The air-drawn dodgers and the bug-bears wild,
The Flying Dutchmen in the sea of sleep,
The castles in the air and homes i’ the moon,
Utopias and fair Atlantises,
The happy valleys of the bards of yore,
The fairy lands and the Millenia
Of Prester John and of Micomicon,
Wherein Alnaschar found le pot au lait,
And where the fay Morgana rules supreme,
Shall be explored down to their deepest dream,
And the last shadow of their last ideal,
And the last fairy coin struck in their mint
Be studied deeply in the minutest case,
To answer well thy question, O my King!”’

‘S’e pmi duvel! As my Spirit may help me!’ cried the monarch in admiration. ‘I will say this for thee, Flaxius, that beside thee as a bard Kalidasa is nowhere, and that what thou canst not do in poetry is not worth a-doing. Therefore, let us drink!’

And they drank.

When Flaxius appeared the next morning before his majesty, it was with the grand and important air of a man who has been dreaming on a royal order, and filled up every detail in first class style. The courtiers looked at him with awe, and even his Highness regarded him with a kind of fearful respect, as if apprehending that he might go off, or explode, or burst in some mysterious way. He was manifestly relieved when an attendant maiden brought to the sage a golden goblet of Soma, or India pale ale; and when the wise man had drained off about a pint thereof, he sighed as if all danger of a conflagration was for the time extinguished. So great a thing is it to be known to be possessed of a secret.

‘By your majesty’s royal command!’ said Flaxius—and all around became as still as the mice-stars in heaven before the cat-moon—‘By your majesty’s royal command I dreamed and I found myself in a far isle of light holding a trumpet shell of pearly hue, which Glendoveers do blow whene’er they meet. Then from a bowery strand just opposite—an island of the sea—there came enchantment with the shifting wind that did both drown and keep alive my ears. And as I listened all my sense was filled with that new blissful golden melody; a living death was in each gust of sounds; each family of rapturous, hurried notes, aunts, cousins, nieces, daughters, all most beautiful, fell one after one, yet all at once, like pearl beads dropping sudden from their strings.’

‘Ahem!’ muttered the Outcast, who had in the daring disguise of a respectable person found his way into the assembly. ‘It seems to me that I have heard something like that before!’

‘Then,’ continued Flaxius, ‘there rose amid wild clouds incarnadine, the form of Siva with his glory on. He bore in one hand the Triçula or trident; and without speaking, he pointed impressively at its three points.’

All present were in breathless awe.

‘Then he disappeared, and I beheld the terrible Vishnu. He held up his three fingers and vanished in turn.

‘And anon from the cloud there came an awful Rakhshi or demon. And he held up three arrows—winked at me and nodded, and disappeared in a clap of thunder!

‘From which I learned, O king, that thou must gather together all the most beautiful princesses who are eligible. Then turn all the people in the town out of their houses for one day, and put a princess into every house.’

The excitement was at its height.

‘Then, O king, let thy three sons, armed with bows and arrows, send each a shaft at random into the city. And where it hits, there will each bride be found.’

‘What thou hast said, O Flaxius, shall be done,’ replied the king.

And it was done, secundum artem, in the proper way. Each prince took his place at the great window, and let fly an arrow. The eldest and the second-best son, one after the other, hit a house. It was considered a great miracle that both of them were perfectly delighted with the success which attended their aim, but Flaxius, observing a wink in the eye of the Outcast, elicited from him the fact that both of the princes, who were excellent archers, had been previously and respectively in love with these very girls, and that there had been, in fact, a little arrangement made by the help of the gypsy. For as Rum Kove, the poet, sang in Zend:

Full many a shaft at random sent
Hits mark the archer surely meant.

Now it happened that Arjūn, the youngest, could pull the long bow better than any of them; in fact, he had been heard to say that he could split a hair at a hundred yards, or hit a thunderbolt with a bolt head as it passed whizzing by. And there was in the armoury of the palace a mighty bow which no one else on earth could bend, which he chose for this occasion, but by the secret suggestion of Flaxius he aimed over the town. And when he discharged the arrow, he gave the bow and it, at the instant, a peculiar impulse, which skilled archers understand, so that the shaft flew miles away far into the forest.

Then messengers were sent to trace its course, which they did; and on returning repeated that they had found it sticking in the top of a tamarind-tree, in the foliage, like a hairpin passed through the chignon or gathered hair of a maiden.

So the king summoned Flaxius and all the learned men to know what should be done. And it was unanimously agreed that Arjūn must marry the tree; there being many precedents to prove that trees were a kind of human beings, only that they grew with their heads in the ground, their forked branches being legs. Also, that according to legends of many lands, men have descended from them.

[On which subject the Outcast expressed his assent, sotto voce, to Flaxius, but added that he believed the said men had first ascended them to steal fruit.]

So there was a procession formed; and going to the tamarind-tree, the king and prince and all concerned bowed before it, expressing hopes that it was in good health; and finally proposed the marriage. When at that instant came a charming breeze, before which the tree bowed its head as if in assent, and the match was concluded. Then rich gifts were laid before the bride and left there with a guard, and the king and his cortège returned home.

When lo! the next day there were found spread on a table in the grand hall of the palace, other gifts, exceeding rich, with a purple scroll, on which was inscribed in letters of silver:

‘The Tamarind herself commends,
And to the prince these presents sends,
And humbly begs of him that he
Will seek the forest speedily;
Unto the spot where she doth bide,
And bear away his loving bride.’

So they all went once more. And when they were before the tree, they saw it slowly shrink to smaller space, its foliage turning into curling hair, till in its place there stood a maiden fair.

And this was, of course, the fair Sakhara, who being found to be of royal blood, was duly wedded to Arjūn—the king sagely observing that ‘it was manifestly the will of the gods.’ And here endeth the story of her and of Arjūn.

Now by the powerful influence of Flaxius there was a special investigation of the case of the Outcast, by the entire College of Brahmins, with a view to his rehabilitation, since there were precedents for it. And it was found that in a previous existence, a million of years before, he had been a Crow. And of him the most learned of the Brahmins discovered the following history of his Jatakas in an ancient Sanscrit scroll:

Contemplate steadfastly the divine glory, cast thy soul into the sparkling depths of the infinite sea, whose fishes are gods, whose waves are the ages!

It is written in the Ramayana, it was told of yore by the Rishis. Once there was a man named Bhusanda, who was the Crow that related to the eagle Garuda, the bird of Vishnu, the deeds of Rama to convince him that the latter was greater than Shiva and Vishnu.

Nor was Bhusanda utterly evil, neither was he bad, but the spirit of mockery was in him, for, ever doing good deeds, he wanted reverence; he was as a silver bell with a flaw.

And when a youth, Bhusanda was worshipping Shiva in the temple, there entered the holy Gūrū, his teacher. And Bhusanda, seeing him enter, for a jest, being also mightily exalted with ideas of his own wisdom, did not greet or notice his Gūrū. Which thing the teacher, in his extreme humility and mildness, would have passed unnoted. But the God above, in his rage at this insolence, thundered from heaven at Bhusanda the awful doom of eternal damnation.

Then the Gūrū who knew not revenge or anger, flung himself on his face before the God and prayed for a remission of the sentence. And the God, relenting, said:

‘He shall pass through one thousand transformations, in all of them shall he be poor, but crafty and wise. He shall adore Vishnu, yet ever call aloud my name!’

Then after his death, he became a serpent, and so passed through a thousand forms, and at last became a Brahmin again. Yet was he still, as erst, incorrigible; and the devilry of quizzing and satire would not leave his heart, despite his goodness. Among men, gods, and devils, no one dared so much as he for a joke.

Now there are ten sons of Brahma, even the ten Rishis, and these are: Daksha, Pulastya, Agni, Washishta, Brigu, Atri, Maritshi, Narada, Pulagen, Kratū. Each of them—all of them—truly an awful gooroo! And one day when one of these was lecturing on the attributes of God, his own father, Bhusanda, ventured to differ with him in opinion, yea even to contradict him. Whereupon the Rishi, in a rage at such stupendous impudence, condemned him in his next life to become a crow; which he did, but took it all so cheerfully, and continued to say so many good things, that the Rishi, to soften the sentence, taught him to call the name of Rama. [Whom the Romi or Gypsies worship, and from whom they take their name, the crow being among the Brahmins the symbol of the sun, who is the mother of the Romany.]

Now when Rama was born, the Crow flew unto him, and accompanied him in all his childhood; and as the god performed his great deeds, Bhusanda, every morning, on the top of the Blue Mountain, narrated them to all the birds assembled, who spread them over all the world. And so in due time it was written that he should become a man again, named Dschim Crow, and turn up some day or other at the court of the city of Chotahazripoora in company with a great and marvellous sage named F——.

---

Here the manuscript ended abruptly, and it seemed to one or two experts present that these last lines were in a somewhat different ink from the rest, and looked like a later addition. But these profitably held their peace. And as it was a tremendous feather in the caps of the assembled Brahmins to have discovered the long lost Crow, they made the most of him.

Whereupon the Crow fell into a trance, which lasted many hours. And when he recovered, he narrated how Rama had appeared unto him in a vision, and assured him that every one of the Brahmins there present was destined to become a number-one god in the next generation, and to keep on rising for nine hundred and ninety-four million Kalpacs, and then attain Nirvana; also that the whole party, including himself, while here on earth, would be deemed incapable of committing any sin or crime. He had indeed received, as a first instalment of plenary indulgence, a special dispensation and injunction to drink aràk toddy in honour of Rama, to be supplied to him by the Sacred College. Whereupon he was invested with the yellow thread, and declared to be a saint.

---

It was midnight, and Flaxius and Dschim Crow sat on either side of a pearl-inlaid table, on seats set with gems, and between them was the Holy Bottle with gold cups.

‘Well!’ observed Flaxius, ‘of all the in-fer-nal, lying, cold-frozen, brazen, impudent, cheeky humbugs whom I ever encountered on earth, thou, my son, dost take the cake! But yesterday a Pariah, and to-day directing all the Brahmins as their chief!’

‘Que veux-tu, mon vieux?’ replied the Holy Crow, who in his new capacity of divine of course divined all the languages of the future:

‘Surely ’tis not by modesty
That gods attain to what they be:
For face, and cheek, since time began,
Were aye the noblest part of man,
And he who hath but impudence
To all things hath sublime pretence.

For the very essence of the most orthodox religion is that man is to be saved by faith alone, good works being only manifestations of faith; and of all faith ever roasted or toasted, stewed or brewed in the kitchen of theology, there is none like a holy faith in one’s own self, pious auto-reliance, devout assurance, divine audacity, and sanctified looking-down on everybody, which latter is the true secret of all ecclesiastical supremacy and influence, as we saints well know.

‘And note you, that this full faith and belief in oneself is neither egoism nor egotism, but only religion directed inward, devotion which has gone to the heart instead of striking outward into Pharisaical displays of modesty, wherewith the world is more deluded and gulled than by all the good honest boldness ever obtruded on it. For he who believes in his lucky star brings to the battle of life nine-tenths of victory. Therefore, O illustrious patron, I pray you believe that this which you call Cheek in me is indeed no vanity or idle desire to be admired by the world, for which I verily do not care three straws, esteeming its praise or blame as all stuff and taradiddle:

‘Trumpery, trash, rubbish and hum,
Fatras, frippery, bubble and scum,
Leather-prunella, drugs and chaff,
Refuse, sweepings, sediment, raff,
Trifling, paltry, petty or small;
Frivolous stuff worth nothing at all,
Hardly anything, no great shakes;
Peu de chose and as farthing stakes,
Gimcracks, whim-whams, gammon and sells,
Fiddlestick, fudge and bagatelles,
Paltry, pitiful two-penny flams,
Fribbling, beggarly, pitiful crams;
Not worth mentioning, nor a rush,
Stuff and nonsense, humbug and tush!

‘For verily at that, and nothing more, do I esteem vanity and the notice of the world or personal notoriety, or puffs, while, to my taste, all applause, homage, hero-worship, clapping, hosannahs, glorification and acclamation, raw or cooked, save so far that there is Fun in it all, may go to the devil and shake itself! But he who is what you may call self-superstitious, or guided in all things, as he thinks, by a dæmon or star, or fairy, or fate, or strange omens, by occult desires, and coincidences, always becomes strangely self-confident, and yet not vain or egoistic, because he feels as if he were a wheelbarrow trundled by his god—

‘Or a top spun by a boy,
Or clay in the potter’s hands,
Or dough being kneaded,
Or a horse in harness,
Or paper under the pen,
Or a maid taken by force,
Or potatoes being mashed,
Or type being set,
Or a garment being shaped,
Or a rocket set fire to,
Or a fiddle being played,
Or an arrow shot from a bow,
Or a cake being mixed,
Or a twine in cat’s-cradle,
Or a sermon being preached,
Or a puppet being played,
Or a pig driven to market,
Or a football in a game,
Or a top being spun,
Or a boat being steered,

or anything or anybody under external direction. Now the egoist believes himself to be, and the vain man is sure that he is, the actor and the thing acted on, all in one, but the blind believer in self is only confident that he is well-directed. Eccomi!’

‘A subtle distinction,’ said Flaxius, ‘and not without truth.’

‘Moreover, and this should be noted,’ resumed the Holy Crow, ‘he who is by God’s grace even a little of a Humourist is above all men most likely to be misunderstood in this matter. For verily, I swear by this Holy Bottle, that when I took no notice of the Gūrū, for which Shiva wished to send me to hell, ’twas not from vanity of great wisdom, (as those lying old devils the Brahmins declared), but just to see what sort of a rum face he would cut; and when I disputed with the son of Brahma as to the divine attributes of his father, I hope I may be split, salted and dried in hell like a fish, if it was that I pretended to know more about the Governor than he did, devil a bit! Nay, it was only that the fiend of Fun inspired me to a stupendous, palpable absurdity, which, rightly understood, was an act of the deepest reverence. But the Rishi was a fool, even as the Brahmins and old Vish himself were also, and Shiv into the bargain.’

‘I believe thee, O Crow,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and it is true that the dull world often attributes to self-conceit that which is truly an artistic or humorously inspired conception. Many a creator and artist have I seen carried away by pride or faith in his inspiration, who had, God wot! little pride in himself. But, O Dschim Crow, he had, as thou ever hast, the sublime enjoyment of the joke, or idea, albeit gods and men missed the point!’

‘Amen,’ quoth the Crow. ‘Let us drink!’

‘And now,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘that the sun shines, thou wilt, I suppose, begin to make hay, or lay up money for the rainy days.’

‘By the Wheel of Heaven, not I!’ exclaimed the Crow. ‘He that saves up money keeps it from circulating, which is a great crime, yea, a robbery of the widow and the orphan. Albeit, should such a chance occur of saving up money at another man’s expense, as once befell me, I will not say that I will utterly reject it. One ought to have cash in hand for holy charities and small treats.’

‘I pray thee, tell me the tale,’ answered Flaxius.

‘That will I,’ exclaimed the Crow, after a drink. ‘Once upon a time, when Bramadatta was reigning in Benares in Kasi, it befell that I was born, and when I grew up I had a small place under the treasurer, Bunder Shroff Kash.

‘One day I bewailed that I was poor, and the treasurer, overhearing me, told it to the king at his elbow; and the king, calling me, said:

‘“Excellent young man, it is very easy to get rich. Remember that a penny saved is a penny earned. Now to encourage, I will give thee an order on the treasury, commanding that when thou shalt have saved a penny it shall be doubled.”

‘“May your glory endure for ever, O Life of the World!” I replied; “but while you are about it, make it pence.”

‘He did so, and the order was written. But the king forgot to limit the payment! He thought I would only draw once, or a penny at a time, but I knew a trick worth two of that. I went with my penny and drew another.

‘The next day I came and said, “I have saved twopence, pray pay the equivalent.” The next day I brought fourpence, and the next eight; and so it went on, till ere long the treasurer begged for credit. Now I paid the treasurer a handsome percentage to keep quiet—and he quieted. But at last the thing got beyond all bounds, and the treasurer one day informed the king that he was bankrupt, and owed more than the whole kingdom was worth, and all the world with it. For the sum due me was: Lakhs of Rupees 972,687,265,390,221.

‘Then the king got into a fine rage, and would fain have had me put to death. But the treasurer said, “Your majesty, it would be better to compromise with such a brilliant financier, and employ him to collect the taxes”; which was done.

‘When this lesson was ended, the Supreme Deity, the All-Knowing One himself, repeated this stanza:

‘“With humblest start on a trifling capital
A shrewd and able man will rise to wealth,
E’en as his breath can nurse a tiny flame.”

‘And there are many tables and fables in which something like this is to be found, or will be, as, for instance, The Jātakas from the Pali, edited by Professor E. B. Cowell, who will in a future age be known as a great, good, wise, illustrious, and learned Sanskritist, and in the Parables of Buddhagosha and Dhammapady (or the Accused Irishman), and the Divyāvadāna, and the Kathā Sārit Sāgara. But mine, note ye, is the Original Jacobs, and the first true prototype, model, pattern, precedent, protoplast, mould, ensample, matrix, and paradigm of them all. All the rest of them being mere re-echoes, shadows, reflexes, apographs, and adumbrations of mine. Selah!’

‘And how long dost thou expect to remain here in clover, O Incarnation of Bhusanda, and favourite of Rama?’ inquired Flaxius.

‘I hope to run the machine of the Sacred College,’ replied the Crow, critically eyeing his liquor, ‘till a spring breaks, or a screw comes loose—or, what is quite as likely, till I find the affair is slow and the fun giving out—when I will start as a yoghi on a pilgrimage, or a Banjari or Nāt—jeckno covva miri hai——’

‘’Tis all one to me,
Where on earth I be;
So I only pass the time in jollity,
Where the girls abound,
And good drink is found,
And a changing round of life I ever see.
With a tol‑diddle,
And a rol‑diddle,
And a tol‑de‑rol‑de‑rol‑de diddle dee!

‘All-so, camarado, buona sera! Meet me again in life when life seems dull!’

---

‘Hæc fabula docet,’ wrote Flaxius, ‘that in this life we should not be too much guided by appearances. For, firstly, the Tale of Sakhara and Arjun as it occurs in the Asiatic Journal of 1829, whence it was transferred by Grimm to his work on Women’s Names derived from Plants, might seem to many to have been the original source, whereas it is only a mutilated and abridged version, as appears from the fact that I, who had so much to do with the plot, am not mentioned in it, nor does Dschim Crow once occur in the story. Neither are there in it those beautiful specimens of Indian poetry in the original Romany, or Romanyana, dialect (allied to Sanskrit) which prove the fidelity of my text.

‘Secondly, that the king did not surmise that there was any “working of the oracle,” as regarded the shooting of the three arrows, or that the will of the gods is sometimes managed even by such characters as the Crow. For it was the Crow, indeed, who pulled all the wires, wrote the lady’s letter, and told all the needful lies on this occasion.

‘Thirdly, that it came not to the surface, neither did it appear to man, that Dschim Crow, who was an expert penman, added that little postscript to the old manuscript.

‘Fourthly, that it is most probable that the vast majority of my readers will fondly believe that I am the author of the old ms. History of Bhusanda, whereas it is really given in the Ramayana, and extracted therefrom by Nork in his Symbolisches-mythologisches Real-Wörterbuch, vol. i. p. 259.

‘Fifthly, that Brahma, Siva, Vishnu and Co., including all the saints, were utterly mistaken in the true character of the Crow [even as a reviewer sometimes is at the present day when he adventures into literature]. Now, this showing how the Hindoo Trinity made a fool of itself firstly, by putting Pantagruelism into a Crow, and then expecting to ever get it out, is, I am sure, one of those subtle sarcasms of the Pariah literature, which worked its way into the regular Scriptures, somewhat in the same way as the erotic, or erratic, melodrama of the Song of Solomon was insinuated (probably by some Hebrew joker) into the Old Testament.

‘Sixthly, that as there are substances, which to the vulgar sense seem to be one and the same, yet which chemistry shows are radically different elements, so there are natures like that of the Crow, which do not care twopence for applause, or what the world thinks of them, and yet are called egoistic when their inspiration consists in yielding to influences which, had they guided them, might indeed have caused them to be called vain.

‘Seventhly, that the Crow, being incorrigible and incurable, will continue to manifest himself as a poor devil, and be considered as “a comic fella, doncher know,” and as nothing but a swell jester—until gods and saints get more sense.’

1. This exquisitely beautiful incantation poem will be readily intelligible to every Sanskritist, with the exception perhaps of the last line, which is in a later vulgar dialect. It means, accurately translated: ‘I am a gypsy foot-traveller.’ In common dialect it would be, ‘Ro-mani pat-engro shom.’ Omani for ‘Romany’ occurs in The English Gypsies and their Language. ↩