And to me those words will ever bring the scents and fragrance and the dreams of Dean Prior, and as for the cake, ’twill be eat beyond Dean Burn on the little mushroom tables of fay and ouphe and elf, and the drink shall be a pearl of dew for each, served in the purple of a pregnant violet.

And so ends my letter but much more and stranger things shall I tell when I come to my friend.

THE ISLAND OF PEARLS

THE HIDDEN HEART OF CEYLON

The Island of Pearls, shaped like a dewdrop hanging from the lotus petal of India, is loveliest of the Oceanides, a Nereid floating on blue tropic seas. She is a voluptuous beauty, jewelled, languid, fanned by spiced airs, crowned with flowers, dusky, sultry, with strange romances in her past as she went from lover to lover, faithful only to one, the eternal sea. Colombo flames on you in the sun, hidden in trees so deep, so green that if you climb a hill the town is lost like a bird’s nest in the tangle of vegetation. And what trees!—unlike the pensive elm and poplar, the ribbed oak of the West, these burst into flowers and a spendthrift fire of life. There is a giant covered with clusters of mauve blossoms like the rhododendron—I could not leave it—I was caught like a bee by its huge glory towering up into the sunshine. It bathed every sense in delight to stand beneath and see the larkspur blue of the sky through the crowded bloom. Others more austerely beautiful with faint rose and white crocus flowers springing from the grey stem and loading the air with perfume, and for the background the grace and grandeur of the palms balancing their frondure in the blue. There are no words to describe these things. Only in colour or music can their splendour be told.

And the lavish fruit! Mangosteens, mangoes, papayas, oranges,—Aladdin’s jewels of wizard gardens. And the jewels themselves, for Ratnapura, the City of Gems, is near at hand. Moonstones heaped in great pearl-shells, like silvery blue moonlight touched with swimming gleams of gold, great cats’ eyes with oblique pupils, aqua-marines of purest sparkling green, sea water dipped up from the secrecies of deepest depths, wine-dark jargoons, tourmalines many-hued as spring flowers, sapphires ranging from pale azure to ocean blue, carbuncles that flame in ancient legends as sacred jewels, all these and many more Ceylon displays like the Queen she is. And the sea is as the jewels—all light and glitter and the broken glories of rolling surf. It is these things which have made her the desire of men’s eyes from time immemorial—the Island of the blue horizon, scarcely believable for beauty and wonder. Hear Abdulla, called Wassaf, the poet of Siraf in Persia, when he wrote of her long centuries ago:

“When Adam was driven forth from Paradise God made a mountain of Ceylon the place of his descent, to break the force of change and so assuage his fall. The charms of this fair country, the softness of the air, are beyond all telling. White amber is the dregs of its sea, and its indigo and red bakam are cosmetics for beauty. The leaves, the barks, and the sweating of its trees are cloves, spikenard, aloe wood, camphor and fragrant mandel. Its icy water is a ball of muneya for the fractures of the world. The boundaries of its fields refresh the heart like the influence of the stars. The margins of its regions are the bedfellows of loveliness. Its myrobalums impart the blackness of youthful hair, and its peppercorns put the mole on the face of beauty on the fire of envy. Its rubies and carnelians are like the lips and cheeks of charming girls, and its treasures are as oceans full of polished gems. Indeed the various birds are sweet singing parrots and the pheasants of its gardens are graceful peacocks.”

So they told of her, and merchants came from the end of the earth to trade in the wonders of Serendib, bringing and taking riches, and not only riches but tales of wildest wonder and romance. They said the people were descended from a royal lion and hence their name Singhalese—Singha, a lion. They said she breathed her sweetness for miles out to sea and that before the shore rose from the horizon the air was languid with her spices and perfumes. Was this true or hyperbole? It is at least certain that in many parts of the island the wild lemon grass is almost overwhelming in its odour and many of the flowers scent all the world about them. The tropical sun and hot dewy moisture stimulate plant life into a passionate luxuriance of fragrant beauty. Horror too, for there are blossoms whose name of Stercula foetida tells all that need be told of their loathsomeness.

In this strange land the sands of some of the rivers are minute rubies and garnets, and it is of Serendib the story was told of serpents that guarded the precious jacinths, and the stratagem of the merchants in flinging pieces of meat into deep valleys where they lay, that hovering eagles might strike their talons in the meat encrusted with jewels and carry it to their nests in the rocks, where ready hands could seize it. The jacinths have become diamonds in the Arabian Nights, but we all know the story in the mouth of Sindbad the sailor of perilous seas.

And the merchants had terrible tales to tell of the women of the island. They were sirens as dangerous as ever sought to beguile Ulysses. Some of them dwelt in a great city of iron on the coast with fluttering signals on their towers to lure sea-farers, and when the eager boats made for the shore women of the most alluring loveliness, perfumed and garlanded, ran to meet them, stretching passionate arms, wooing them to enter the city. There they caressed them until every sense was drowned in delight, when bound and helpless, they flung them into iron cages and devoured them one by one.

The merchants were the great romancers of the ancient world—the singers of songs, the tellers of tales, and surely they had the right, for is there more romance in any word than in their own name? It calls up mirage after mirage of wearied camel caravans toiling through deserts of sand to cities that were old when Balkh and Damascus were young; where the blue and glittering domes of porcelain rise against intenser skies in sunsets sonorous as a gong with deep light and colour. It is the merchants always who carry romance and adventure in their corded bales. In robe and turban they yearn for the caravanserais and the men coming by many ways to the meeting place. They hunger for the flat hot cakes seed-sprinkled, and the savoury smells of the kous-kous bubbling in oil, but most of all for the excitements and lusts of the bazaar and the dangerous winding ways of forbidden palaces. See them unroll the gold and flowered stuffs of Bokhara, the silks from Cos as transparent as running water that gave the fair Pamphila the glory of having invented a dress “in which women were naked though clothed.” See the muslins of Dacca unloosed from the swaying camel-packs;—the merchants can scarcely handle them lest a faint breeze blow them from their hold, for of these it is told that the Emperor, Akbar, the Truth-Seeker, rebuked a woman who appeared before him robed in woven air, saying, “Little does it become a daughter of the Prophet to show herself arrayed in one dress only and that, as it were, nothing, being but the illusion of a garment.” And she replied audaciously: “Majesty, Light of the Age, I am more modest than modesty’s self, for I wear at this moment Nine.”

Through all the stories of Ceylon the merchants go, tempting the perilous seas in frail dromonds and crank high-decked galleons, tempted in turn by princesses, more perilous than the seas, shooting dangerous glances through rose-coloured veils. Sometimes their historic quests were wild as any dream. It was rumoured over Asia that the lost Tree of Life grew in the jungles of this fortunate Island and a King of Persia and Emperor of China sent their merchants with huge wealth to buy its precious leaves—more than ever precious in the intrigues of Oriental Courts—but only to find it grows in a Paradise more far away than even the famed Serendib, and that no merchants, young and ardent, grave and bearded, could lay that merchandise before the throne.

Ceylon figures in one of the most ancient epics of the world—the Ramayana, for it was Ravana the demon King of Ceylon (Lanka) who seized the lovely Sita, wife of the God-King Rama as she wandered in the forest, and bore her through the air to his island kingdom. The writer of the poem was a mighty poem maker: Valmiki,—let his name be fragrant for all time! And like all his divine brotherhood he was first taught by sorrow. For sitting one day in the heart of the woods, Valmiki beheld two herons singing for joy and love as they wandered together by air and water, and as he gladdened to their gladness, an archer shot the male bird and he fell bathed in blood, never again to sweep the wing-ways of the sky, and his mate fluttered about him in agony. So Valmiki, with the wrath and power of a poet, cursed the man who had done this black deed, and, as he spoke, suddenly he knew that his words were a measured music and that a new and wonderful thing had befallen in the world. And so it was, for Brahma appeared in the cloud, four-faced, majestic, and commanded him to write the history of Rama and the storming of Ceylon in this same mysterious music. “And it shall be true in every word,” said the God, “and so long as the world lasts shall this story be known among men.” And that was the beginning of poetry in India.

Perhaps this is the chief fame of Ceylon, for the God spoke not in vain. There is no city now so lovely as that of which Valmiki tells—the city of jewelled pavements and windows of glimmering crystal and the cloudy palaces where the cruel King dwelt and where Sita was a captive. For—“Here dwelt the fair princesses torn by him from vanquished Kings. Now it was night and they lay overpowered with wine and sleep. One had her head thrown backward; some had their garlands crushed; some lay in each other’s bosoms, or with arms interlaced, others in slumber deep as death. The King Ravana lay on a dais apart made of crystal and adorned with jewels. Here lay he overcome with wine, with glittering rings in his ears and robed in gold, breathing like a hissing serpent. Around him lay his sleeping Queens, and nearest him the dearest, the golden-hued Mandodari.”

So the story runs through all its epic wonder of love and war, and yearly in India is celebrated the harrying of Ravana—I have seen his ten-headed image go up in flames amid the rejoicing of a multitude. Yet, as I think, the ancient city, Anaradhapura, now a ruin in the jungle, could not have fallen so far behind the splendours of Valmiki. Many who have visited it have written of it as it is in death—the broken fragments of palaces and temples, a few preserved here and there like rocks that are the survival of some lost Atlantis in the drowning ocean of the forest. How few recall it as it was in its pride and power! I stood in the green dimness of the glades where are the sculptured tanks where the queens bathed in days long dead, and read the words of one who knew it well—Fa Hien, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim of the fourth century A. D. For this was the Anaradhapura of the Ceylon he visited in search of the words of the Lord Buddha; of himself he speaks in the third person:

“To the north of the royal city is erected a great tower in height 470 feet,—it is adorned with gold and silver and perfected with every precious substance. There is by the side of it a monastery containing 5000 priests. They also have built here a hall of the Lord which is covered with gold and silver engraved work. In the midst of this hall is a jasper figure (of the Buddha) in height about 22 feet. The entire body glitters and sparkles with the seven precious substances. In the right hand he holds a pearl of inestimable value. Fa Hien had been absent many years from China; the manners and customs of these people were entirely strange to him, moreover his fellow travellers were now separated from him, for some had remained behind and some were dead. All at once as he stood by this jasper figure, he beheld a merchant present to it as a religious offering a fan of white silk of Chinese manufacture. Unwittingly Fa Hien gave way to his sorrowful feelings and the tears flowed from his eyes.”

Those tears, dried so long since, gave to this Western pilgrim, standing in the same place, the true Virgilian sense of tears in mortal things, and still they move the world.

Ceylon is a land of the Gods. They have left their footprints very plain upon this radiant loveliness as they came and went. She has known many generations of them. All who would understand her should read Valmiki’s semi-divine poem of the great battles of Rama, God-King of India, as he fought here his wars of the Gods and Titans to rescue his wife, the lovely Sita, the heart’s love and worship to this day of his dominion.

Here, when the Demon King held her in captivity, the army of Rama strode across the bridge of scattered rocks between Ceylon and India. Still may be seen the gap that no strength, human or divine, could pass, where the mighty host was stayed, until a little tree squirrel, for love of Rama, laid his small body in the hollow, and because love is the bridge eternal between the two worlds, the rescuing host passed triumphant over it. But Rama, stooping from his Godhead, Incarnation as he was in human flesh of Vishnu the Preserver, lifted the crushed body tenderly and touched the dead fur, and to this day, the tree squirrels bear the marks of the divine fingers upon their coats of grey.

There is no demarcation in Asia between the so-called animal and human lives. Rama himself had passed through the animal experience on the upward way and knew well what beats in the little heart beneath fur and feather.

In those wonderful parables, the Birth Stories of the Lord Buddha, are recorded his supposed memories of the incarnations of bird, animal and other lives through which a steadfast evolution led him to the Ten Perfections. How should he not know, and knowing love? Is it not written by a great Buddhist saint: “It may well be that to the eye of flesh, plants and trees appear to be gross matter; but to the eye of the Buddha they are composed of minute spiritual particles; grass, trees, countries the earth itself, shall enter wholly into Buddhahood”? And does not science, faltering far behind the wisdom of the mighty, adumbrate these truths in its later revelations?

We know too little of the wisdom of the East. The Magi still journey to Bethlehem, but only those who have the heart of the Child may receive their gold, myrrh, and frankincense.

Yet, for mere beauty’s sake, these stories of the East should be read. Men thrill to the mighty thunder-roll of Homer’s verse, but the two supreme epics of India are little known. If the West would gather about the story-teller as the East gathers, in bazaar or temple court, the stories should be told from these and other sources, until Rama stands beside the knightly Hector, and Sita’s star is set in the same heaven where shines the lonely splendour of Antigone.

When the rapturous peace of the Lord Buddha could no longer be contained within the heart of India, it overflowed, and like a rising tide submerged Ceylon. And now, although India has forgotten and has returned to the more ancient faiths, Ceylon remembers. The Lotus of the Good Law blossoms in every forest pool. The invocation to the Jewel in the Lotus is daily heard from every monastery of the Faith, where the yellow-robed Brethren still follow the way marked for them by the Blessed One who in Uruvela attained to that supernal enlightenment of which he said, “And that deep knowledge have I made my own—that knowledge, hard to perceive, hard to understand, peace-giving, not to be gained by mere reason, which is deeper than the depths, and accessible only to the wise.

“Yet, among living men are some whose eyes are but a little darkened with dust. To them shall the truth be manifest.”

If it be an aim of travel to see what is beautiful and strange, it may be also an aim to seek that spiritual beauty where it sits enthroned in its own high places; and my hope in Ceylon was to visit the land where that strait and narrow way of Buddhism is held which is known as the Hinayana—or the Lesser Vehicle. In Tibet, China, and Japan, I had known the efflorescence of the Buddhist Faith where, recognizing the mystic emanations of the Buddhas, it becomes the Greater Vehicle and breaks into gorgeous ritual and symbolism, extraordinarily beautiful in themselves, and yet more so in their teaching. Buddhism, in those countries, like the Bride of the Canticles, goes beautifully in jewels of gold and raiment of fine needlework, within her ivory palaces. In Ceylon, like the Lady Poverty of Saint Francis of Assisi, she walks with bared feet, bowed head, her begging-bowl in hand, simple and austere in the yellow robe of the Master—her rock-temples and shrines as he himself might have blessed them in their stern humility. Save at the Temple of the Tooth, the splendours she heaps upon his altars are those of her flowers. With these she may be lavish because his life was wreathed with their beauty. He was born in a garden, beneath a Tree he attained Wisdom, in a garden he died. A faith that is held by nearly every tenth living man or woman is surely worthy of reverence and study, even in these hurrying days when gold, not wisdom, is the measure of attainment.

So I came to Ceylon for the first time but not for the last.

Near a little town in the hills stands a Wihara—a monastery—dreaming in the silent sunshine. The palms are grouped close about the simple roofs—so close that the passing tourist could never guess that the Head of the Buddhist Faith in Ceylon, a great saint, a great ruler of seven thousand priests, dwelt there in so secret, so complete an austerity.

He was a very old man when I came, but his ninety-two years sat lightly on him and each year had laid its tribute of love and honour at his feet. He was known as the Maha Nayaka Thero; and in religion, for the love of the Master, he had taken the Master’s human name of Siddartha. It was strange indeed to see the simplicity of his surroundings;—to me it appeared singularly beautiful: it breathed the spiritual purity that had made him beloved throughout the island.

A great scholar, deeply learned in Sanskrit and Pali and in the abtruse philosophy that is for the elders of the Law, he was yet the gentlest of men, and his very learning and strength were all fused into a benignant radiance that sunned the griefs of the world he had cast so far behind him.

I was glad to wander about in the quiet monastery—the little one-storied quadrangle on the side of the hill. It offered—it invited—the life of meditation, of clear thought, of delicate austerity. The noise of great events (so-called) was like the dim murmur of a shell when they reached the Wihara and the ear of Sri Siddartha. But he heard, he noted the progress of science, even to the possibilities of aviation, because to a Buddhist saint all spheres of knowledge are one, and all nothing, in the Ocean of Omniscience.

So the people brought their grievances and troubles to the aged Archbishop. You were in the presence of a very great gentleman when you entered and found him seated, his scribe cross-legged at his feet to record what passed. The people would approach him softly and with the deepest reverence, and with permission would seat themselves on the ground at a due distance.

“Venerable Sir, we are in trouble. We seek your counsel.” That was the cry. And always, in spite of his many years, he listened and counselled and comforted.

Soon after my arrival his birthday was celebrated with much rejoicing. The Bhikkus (monks) had put up little festive bamboo arches, fluttering with split palm-leaves like ribbons, all about the Wihara, and troops of Bhikkus came to lay their homage at his feet. The roads were sunshiny with their yellow robes as they flocked in from remote places—jungle, cave-temples, and far mountains. The laity came also, crowding to see the Venerable One. He received them all with serene joy, and pursued his quiet way, thinking, reading, meditating on the Three Jewels—the Lord, the Law, and the Communion of Saints. And the Bhikkus departed, believing that he might be among them for many days.

But it was not to be; for, a few days later, while he was sweeping the garden walks, a duty he had made his own, he felt a sudden loss of strength, and lying down, in two hours he passed painlessly away.

I was permitted to visit Sri Siddartha as he lay in death. The room was very simple and bare. Many of his Bhikkus stood about him, and there were flowers, flowers, everywhere. Beside him burned a perfumed gum, sending up its thin blue spirals of fragrance.

I was received with perfect kindness, and especially by his favourite disciple and pupil—a young monk with a worn ascetic face, who stood in deep meditation at the head of his Master. He looked up and smiled, and raised the face-cloth that I might see, and looked down again at the brown face, calm as a mask of Wisdom with its closed lips and eyes. Even closed, they looked old—old. A Bhikku, standing by, told me that all had loved him and were bereaved in his going. “But for him—he is in the Nirvana of Paradise.”

The strange phrase awoke in my mind the words of the Blessed One, and I repeated them as I stood beside that quiet sleep.

“But this, O Bhikkus, is the highest, this is the holiest wisdom—to know that all suffering has vanished away. He has found the true deliverance that lies beyond the reach of change.”

And I remembered the symbolic fresco in Colombo, representing the Lord Buddha borne dead on a chariot in a garden. The gardener digs his grave, but the Lord awakes from death, and bids the man know he is not dead but living. The Buddha stands majestic by the open grave—the gardener recoils in fear. Death has no more dominion.

So I left Sri Siddartha lying in the mystery where all the wisdoms are one.

In the garden, in the riot of tropical blossom and beauty, a Bhikku was standing in the perfect stillness that is a part of the discipline. He greeted me, and we spoke of my quest.

“Go,” he said, “to Mihintale, where the Law first came to this island by the hands of Mahinda. Seek also the great Dagoba where stand the images of the Buddhas that have been and of Him who is to come. And under the Tree which is a part of that Tree beneath which the Blessed One received illumination, meditate on Truth.”

I delayed only that I might see the flames receive the discarded body of the Venerable One; and the ceremony took place next day, amid a vast gathering of the people and the great companies of the Bhikkus. They flooded the ways with sunshine in every shade of yellow, from deep primrose to a tawny orange. The roads were strewn, with rice like snowflakes, stamped into star-shapes. A strange melancholy music went with us. So, climbing a steep hill, we came to the pyre, heaped with the scented and aromatic woods of the jungle, and closed from human view by a high scaffolding draped with bright colours. On this pyre he was laid, and one of his own blood, holding a torch, applied the pure element to the wood: and, as he did so, the assembly raised a cry of “Sadhu, Sadhu!” and with that ascription of holiness a sheet of flame swept up into the crowns of the palms, and the scent of spices filled the air. And even as the body of the Blessed One passed into grey ash, passed also the worn-out dwelling of Sri Siddartha.

I made my way next day to a temple hollowed in the rock, the ceiling of which is frescoed with gods and heroes. It is taught that here the Canon of the Buddhist Scriptures was first committed to writing about 450 B.C. Here five hundred, priests, learned in the Faith, assembled, and collating the Scriptures, chanted every word, while the scribes recorded them with stylus and palm-leaf as they heard. Burmese, Tibetans, Indians, all were present, that so the Law might be carried over Asia, and the Peace of the Blessed One be made known to men.

Here, too, the discipline was fixed. The Bhikku must not be touched by a woman’s hand. He must eat but twice a day, and not after noon. He must keep the rule of the Lady Poverty as did Saint Francis. He must sleep nowhere but in Wiharas and other appointed places. And these are but a few of the commands. Yet, if the rule is too hard for him, the Bhikku may relinquish it at his will, and return to the world a free man—a fettered man, as the Master would have said, but free according to the rule of the Transient World. It is said that few accept this permission.

It took little imagination to people the silent temple with the Assembly—the keen intellectual Indian faces, the yellow robe and the bared shoulder, seated in close ranks in the twilight of the temple. Now it was silent and empty, but a mysterious aura filled it. The buildings of men’s hands pass away, but the rock, worn not at all, save where feet come and go, preserves the aspect of its great day, when it was the fountain-head of Truth.

A solemn gladness filled the air. Surely the West is waking to the message of the East—that message, flowing through the marvellous art of China and Japan, through the deep philosophies of India, the great Scriptures of the Buddhist Faith, and many more such channels. And we who have entered the many mansions through another gate may share and rejoice in the truths that are a world-heritage.

It was time now that I should visit the holy places, and I took the road through the jungle, intending to stay at the little rest-houses which exist to shelter travellers. The way is green with grass in the middle; there are two tracks for wheels—narrow and little used. Even the native huts may sometimes be forty miles apart. And on either side runs the huge wall of the jungle, holding its secret well.

Great trees, knotted with vines and dark with heavy undergrowth, shut me in. Sometimes a troop of silver-grey monkeys swept chattering overhead; sometimes a few red deer would cross the road, or a blue shrike flutter radiantly from one shelter to another. Mostly, the jungle was silent as the grave, but living, breathing, a vast and terrible personality; an ocean, and with the same illimitable might and majesty. Travelling through it, I was as a fish that swims through the green depths of water.

So I journeyed in a little bullock cart—and suddenly, abruptly, as if dropped from heaven, sprang out of the ocean of the jungle that bathed its feet a huge cube of rock nearly five hundred feet high, with lesser rocks spilt about it that would have been gigantic were it not for the first—the famous Sigurya.

An ancient people, led by a parricide king, took this strange place and made of it a mighty fortress. They cut galleries in the living rock that, like ants, they might pass up and down unharmed from below; and on the head of the rock—a space four acres in extent—they set a king’s palace and pleasance, with a bathing-tank to cool the torrid air. Then, still desiring beauty, this people frescoed the sheer planes of this precipitous rock of Sigurya with pictures that modern Singhalese art cannot rival. These vast pictures represent a procession of ladies to a shrine, with attendants bearing offerings. Only from the waist upward are the figures visible; they rise from clouds as if floating in the sky. The faces have an archaic beauty and dignity. One, a queen, crowned and bare-bosomed, followed by attendants bearing stiff lotus blooms, is beautiful indeed, but in no Singhalese or Indian fashion—a face dark, exotic, and heavy-lidded, like a pale orchid. It is believed the whole rock was thus frescoed into a picture-gallery, but time and weather have taken toll of the rest.

The Government has put steps and climbing rails, that the height may be reached. Half-way up is a natural level, and above it soars the remainder of the citadel, to be climbed only by notches cut in the rock, and hand-rails as a safeguard from the sheer fall below. And here this dead people had done a wonderful thing. They had built a lion of brick, so colossal that the head towered to the full height of the ascent. It has fallen into ruin, but the great cat-paws that remain indicate a beast some two hundred feet high. There is a gate between the paws, and in the old days they clambered up through the body of the lion and finally through his throat, into the daylight of the top. Only the paws are left, complete even to the little cat-claw at the back of each. Surely one of the strangest approaches in the world! Here and there the shelving of the rock overhangs the ascent, and drops of water fall in a bright crystal rain perpetually over the jungle so far below.

Standing upon the height, it was weirdly lovely to see the eternal jungle monotonously swaying and waving beneath. I thought of the strange feet that had followed these ways, with hopes and fears so like our own. And now their fortress is but a sunny day’s amusement for travellers from lands unknown, and the city sitteth desolate, and the strength of their building is resumed into the heart of nature. But the places where men have worshipped and lifted their hands to the Infinite are never dead. The Spirit that is Life Eternal hovers about them, and the green that binds their broken pillars is the green of an immortal hope.

The evening was now at hand, and, after the sun-steeped day, the jungle gave out its good smells, beautiful earth-warm smells like a Nature-Goddess, rising from the vast tangle of life in the mysterious depths. You may gather the flowers on their edge and wonder what the inmost flowers are like that you will never see—rich, labyrinthine, beyond all thought to paint.

The jungle is terrible as an army with banners. Sleeping in the little rest-house when the night has fallen, it comes close up to you, creeping, leaning over you, calling, whispering, vibrating with secret life. A word more,—only one,—a movement, and you would know the meaning and be gathered into the heart of it; but always there is something fine, impalpable, between, and you catch but a breath of the whisper.

Very wonderful is the jungle! In the moonlight of a small clearing I saw the huge bulk of three wild elephants feeding. They vanished like wraiths into the depths. The fireflies were hosting in the air like flitting diamonds. Stealthy life and movement were about me: the jungle, wide-awake and aware, moving on its own occasions.

A few days later I was at Anaradhapura. Once a million people dwelt in the teeming city. Here or near was the site visited by the famous Chinese pilgrim already mentioned, Fa Hien. But it is in ruins; the jasper image is gone. The tower is in the dust. A few priests watch by the scene of so much dead greatness and receive the pilgrims who still come with bowed heads to the Holy Places. But Fa Hien has reached the home of all the pilgrimages—the City of God dear and desirable in the sight of Plato and Saint Augustine, and all the warriors of all the faiths, and the inexorable years that have devoured the splendours of the Kings leave untouched his tears and his hope, for both are rooted in immortality.

He writes:

“The houses of the merchants are very beautifully adorned. The streets are smooth and level. At this time the King, being an earnest believer in the Law, desired to build a new monastery for this congregation. He chose a pair of strong oxen and adorned their horns with gold, silver and precious things. Then providing himself with a beautiful gilded plough, the King himself ploughed round the four sides of the allotted space, after which, ceding all personal rights, he presented the whole to the priests.”

This must be the monastery described by a later pilgrim, Hieuen Tsang, who journeyed from China to India about the year 630 A.D. In visiting Ceylon, he writes of its magnificence and especially of an upright pole on the roof “on which is fixed a mighty ruby. This gem constantly sheds a brilliant light which is visible day and night for a long distance and afar off appears like a bright star.”

That too is quenched in the dust. Where do the great jewels of antiquity hide? But one is left at Anaradhapura more precious than rubies—the famous image of the Buddha seated alone in a forest glade, the true presentment of a God, to whom beneath his closed eyes eternity is visible and time the shadow of a dream. Around him surged once the clamour of a great city, around him now the growth of the forest, both to his vision alike—and nothing. Some wayfarer had laid a flower at his feet when I stood there, and a white tassel of the areca palm. The sun and moon circle before him in this lonely place and the centuries pass like seasons.

The place is a village lost in the woods, but inexpressibly holy because it contains in its own temple the sacred Bodhi Tree which is an offshoot of that very Tree beneath which the Lord Buddha received the Perfect Wisdom. Ceylon desired this treasure, and they tried to break a branch from the Tree, but dared not, for it resisted the sacrilege. But the Princess Sanghamitta, in great awe and with trembling hand, drew a line of vermilion about the bough, and at that line it separated from the Tree, and the Princess planted it in perfumed earth in a golden vase, and so brought it, attended by honours human and superhuman, to Ceylon—to this place, where it still stands. It is believed to be 2230 years old.

With infinite reverence I was given two leaves, collected as they fell; and it is difficult to look on them unmoved if indeed this Tree be directly descended from the other, which sheltered the triumphant conflict with evil.

The city itself is drowned in the jungle. In the green twilight you meet a queen’s palace, with reeling pillars and fallen capitals, beautiful with carved moonstones, for so are called the steps of ascent. Or lost in tangle, a manger fifty feet long for the royal elephants, or a nobly planned bath for the queens, where it is but to close the eyes and dream that dead loveliness floating in the waters once so jealously guarded, now mirroring the wild woodways. A little creeper is stronger than all our strength, and our armies are as nothing before the silent legions of the grass.

Later, I stood before the image of that Buddha who is to come—who in the Unchanging awaits his hour; Maitreya, the Buddha of Love. A majestic figure, robed like a king, for he will be royal. In his face, calm as the Sphinx, must the world decipher its hope, if it may. Strangely enough, in most of his images this Saviour who shall come is seated like a man of the West, and many learned in the faith believe that this Morning Star shall rise in the West. May he come quickly!

I set out one day for Mihintale, in a world of dewy, virginal loveliness, washed with morning gold, the sun shooting bright arrows into the green shade of the trees, a cloud of butterflies radiant as little flower angels going with me. One splendour, rose-red, velvet-black, alighted with quivering wings on the mouse-grey shoulder of the meek little bull who drew my cart and so went with us.

I was glad that my companion should be a devout Buddhist, for his reverence and delight in the beauty of his faith taught me many things. We climbed up through trees so still that the rustling of their shadows on the ground might have been audible, and as we went he told me a very ancient Buddhist story which must have reached the Island with the Apostle Mahinda, son of the high Emperor Ashoka, who brought the faith from his father’s court in India. Ashoka is one of the great world-rulers, the Constantine of the Buddhist teaching and himself a devout disciple. This story is a Jataka or Birth Story of the Lord, one of those to which I have already alluded, as conveying moral teaching (and often much folk lore), and this is called “The Dancing Peacock.”

“Thus have I heard. In the old days the Blessed Buddha sat at Jetavana, and they told him of a monk who had become drowned in luxury, eating, drinking and adorning his person with magnificence, so that he cared nothing for the faith. And at last they brought him before the Lord that he might be admonished. And the Perfect One said:

“ ‘Is it true, monk, that despising all nobility you have surrendered yourself to idle luxury?’

“And without waiting to hear a word more the monk flew into a violent anger, and tearing off his magnificent robe he stood naked before the Master, crying:

“ ‘Then, if you like not my robes, this is the way I will go about!’

“So the bystanding monks cried out: ‘Shame, Shame!’ and in a fury he rushed from the hall and returned to the condition of a layman. And the Lord said:

“ ‘Not only now, O monks, has this man lost the Jewel of the faith by immodesty but it was also with him in a former life. Hear the story of the Dancing Peacock.

“ ‘Very long ago in the first age of the world, the birds chose the Golden Bird to be their King. Now the Golden Bird had a daughter, most beautiful to see, and he gave her her choice of a husband, after the ancient manner of India, calling together all the birds of the Himalaya. And he sent for his daughter, saying: “Now come and choose!” And looking she saw the Peacock with a neck of gold and emeralds and a train of spread jewels, and instantly she said: “Let this be my husband!”

“So all the birds approached the Peacock, saying:

“ ‘Noble Peacock, the Princess has set her heart upon you. Therefore rejoice with humility.’

“But the Peacock, walking arrogantly, replied:

“ ‘Up to this day none of you would recognize the greatness that was in me. Now instantly do homage to my majesty!’

“And so intoxicated was he with pride that he began to dance, spreading his wings and swaying his head, and altogether conducting himself like a drunken man who cares not at all for decency. And horror seized the Golden Bird and he said:

“ ‘This fellow has broken loose from all sense of shame—how could it be that I should give my Princess to such as he?’ And he uttered this:

“ ‘Pleasant is your cry. Jewelled is your back. The feathers of your tail are glorious, but, Sir, to such a dancer, I can give no daughter of mine!’

“And he bestowed his Princess immediately upon a bird of modest behaviour, and the Peacock, covered with shame, fled away.

“Therefore, brethren, this monk has now lost the Jewel of the faith as he once lost a fair wife. For in a former birth, the Peacock was this shameless monk, but I myself was the Golden Bird.”

And this is a lesson also upon the stately calm which marks the gentleman according to Oriental opinion. It is the low-born only who may hurry and storm. Other stories I heard, for my friend was a student of ancient things, and this belief in lives past and to come is the spiritual life blood of the Orient. It is the mete-yard of justice. He asked me whether the Christian faith explicitly denied it, and I could only reply—No; quoting that strange passage of the Blind Man, when disciples questioning the Christ—

“Did this man sin or his parents, that he was born blind?”—pass unrebuked for the implication.

The Hill of Mihintale rises abruptly as Sigurya from the forests, and the very air about it is holy, for it was on this great hill that Mahinda, mysteriously transported from India, alighted bewildered as one waking from a dream. Here the King, Tissa, seeing the saint seated beneath a tree, heard a voice he could not gainsay that called his name three times; and so, approaching with his nobles, he received the Teaching of the Blessed One.

The hill is climbed by wonderful carved shallow steps, broken now, and most beautiful with an overgrowth of green. At the sides are beds of the Sensitive Plant, with its frail pink flowers. They would faint and fall if touched, and here you would not even breathe roughly upon them, for Buddhists regard the shrinking creatures as living and hold it sinful to cause such evident suffering.

Descending the grey steps, the shade and sunshine dappling his yellow robe and bared shoulder with noble colour, came a priest, on his way to visit the sick of the little village. He stopped and spoke. I told him I had come from visiting the shrines of Burma, and he desired me to give him a description of some matters I had seen there. I did so, and we talked for some time, and it was then mentioned that my food, like his own, necessitated no taking of life. Instantly his whole face softened as he said that was glad news to hear. It was the fulfilling of a high commandment. Would I receive his blessing, and his prayer that the truth might enlighten me in all things? He bestowed both, and, having made his gift, went upon his way with the dignity of perfect serenity. That little circumstance of food (as some would call it) has opened many a closed door to me in Asia.

At the top of the hill is a deep shadowy rock-pool, with a brow of cliff overhanging it; and this is named the Cobra’s Bath, for it is believed that in the past there was a cobra who used, with his outspread hood, to shelter the saint, Mahinda, from the torrid sun, and who was also so much a little servant of the Law that none feared and all mourned him when he passed upon his upward way in the chain of existences. Here, above the pool where he loved to lie in the clear cool, they sculptured a great cobra, with three hooded heads, rising, as it were, from the water. It was most sinuously beautiful and looked like the work of a great and ancient people, gathering the very emblem of Fear into the great Peace. On the topmost height was the stupa, or shrine, of Mahinda, incasing its holy relic, and the caves where his priests dwelt and still dwell. I entered one, at the invitation of a Bhikku, an old man with singularly beautiful eyes, set in a face of wistful delicacy. He touched my engraved ring and asked what it might mean. Little enough to such as he, whose minds are winged things and flutter in the blue tranquillities far above the earth!

The caves are many, with a rock-roof so low that one cannot stand upright—a strange, dim life, it would seem, but this Bhikku spoke only of the peace of it, the calm that falls with sunset and that each dawn renews. I could not doubt this—it was written upon his every gesture. He gave me his blessing, and his prayer that I might walk forever in the Way of Peace. With such friends as these the soul is at home. Peace. It is indeed the salutation of Asia, which does not greet you with a desire for health or prosperity as in the West, but only—Peace.

I would willingly tell more of my seekings and findings in Ceylon, for they were many and great. But I pass on to the little drowsy hill town of Badulla, where the small bungalows nest in their gardens of glorious flowers and vines. I sat in the churchyard, where the quiet graves of English and Singhalese are sinking peacefully into oblivion. It was Sunday, with a Sabbath calm upon the world. A winding path led up to the open door of the little English church, a sweet breeze swayed the boughs and ruffled the long grass of the graves; the butterflies, small Psyches fluttered their parable in the air about me. A clear voice from the church repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and many young voices followed. It was a service for the Singhalese children who have been baptized into the Christian Faith. They sang of how they had been brought out of darkness and the shadow of death and their feet set upon the Way of Peace.

Surely it is so. When was that Way closed to any who sought? But because man must follow his own categorical imperative, I repeated to myself, when they were silent, the words of the poet Abdul Fazl, which he wrote at the command of the Emperor Akbar as an inscription for a Temple in Kashmir:—