Hitopadesha (English translation)
The Book of Good Counsels
by Sir Edwin Arnold | 1861 | 33,335 words
The English translation of the Hitopadesha: a work of high antiquity, and extended popularity. The prose is doubtless as old as our own era; but the intercalated verses and proverbs compose a selection from writings of an age extremely remote....
Chapter 1 - The Battle of the Swans and Peacocks
"In the Isle of Camphor there is a lake called 'Lotus-water,' and therein a Swan-Royal, named 'Silver-sides,' had his residence. The birds of the marsh and the mere had elected him King, in full council of all the fowls—for a people with no ruler is like a ship that is without a helmsman. One day King Silver-sides, with his courtiers, was quietly reposing on a couch of well-spread lotus-blossoms, when a Crane, named 'Long-bill,' who had just arrived from foreign parts, entered the presence with an obeisance, and sat down.
'What news from abroad, Long-bill?' asked his Majesty.
'Great news, may it please you,' answered the Crane, 'and therefore have I hastened hither. Will your Majesty hear me?'
'Speak!' said King Silver-sides.
'You must know, my Liege,' began the Crane, 'that over all the birds of the Vindhya[1] mountains in Jambudwipa[2] a Peacock is King, and his name is 'Jewel-plume.' I was looking for food about a certain burnt jungle there, when some of his retainers discovered me, and asked my name and country. 'I am a vassal of King Silver-sides, Lord of the Island of Camphor,' I replied, 'and I am travelling in foreign lands for my pleasure.' Upon that the birds asked me which country, my own or theirs, and which King, appeared to me superior. 'How can you ask?' I replied; 'the island of Camphor is, as it were, Heaven itself, and its King a heaven-born ruler. To dwellers in a barren land like yours how can I describe them? Come for yourselves, and see the country where I live.' Thereupon, your Majesty, the birds were exceedingly offended, as one might expect—
'Simple milk, when serpents drink it, straightway into venom turns;
And a fool who heareth counsel all the wisdom of it spurns.'
For, indeed, no reflecting person wastes time in admonishing blockheads—
'The birds that took the apes to teaching,
Lost eggs and nests in pay for preaching.'
'How did that befall?' asked the King. The Crane related:—
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
The chain between Hindustan and the south country of Deccan. The name is said to imply that they appear,from their loftiness, to stop the sun in his declining course.
[2]:
"The land of the rose-apple"—the central of the seven continents, containing the regions known to Hindoo geographers. It may not be out of place to sketch in this note the Hindoo's cosmogony. He reads in his Poorans that Priyavrata, son of the Self-born, grieving to see the earth but half illumined at one time by the sun, drove round it seven times in his own flaming chariot, the wheels of which formed seven ruts, which are now the beds of the seven oceans. The continents thus divided are also seven. Jambu-dwipa is the central one, with Mount Meru for its own centre, where "men are born of the colour of burnished gold, and the women resemble blue lotuses; where all live as do the gods, and have the vital forces of 10,000 elephants."
Around Jambu-dwipa runs a sea of salt-water, and beyond it lies Plaksha-dwipa. There the happy inhabitants know nothing of sickness, and live 5,000 years.
Plaksha-dwipa is divided by a sea of sugar-cane juice from Shálmali-dwipa. The castes of this continent are the tawny, the purple, the yellow, and the red, and in it "the vicinity of the gods is very delightful to the soul."
A sea of wine intervenes between this land and Kusha-dwipa. There no one dies; but the gods and gandharvas, the heavenly minstrels, share in the pastimes of the fair and innocent persons who dwell in the land.
Kusha-dwipa is separated from Krauncha-dwipa by its sea of ghee, or clarified butter. This last is twice as large as the first, and the inhabitants dwell among its mountains with the immortal gods, whom they regard without fear.
Outside Krauncha-dwipa rolls the sea of curds and whey, washing also the shores of Saka-dwipa, a favoured land, where there is no vice, nor envy, nor injustice. In the black mountains (Syama) of this country the men are black, and they worship the god Vishnoo, as the sun.
Round the dark shores of Krauncha-dwipa, "like an armlet of ivory on a Brahmanee's wrist," flows the sea of milk. It divides this continent from the last and farthest of the seven, the Pushkara-dwipa. In the perfect joy of this distant sphere, "there is no distinction of highest and lowest, of killer or slain, of truth or falsehood; the people are of one form with the gods, and too high for duty or observances. Food they consume, but it comes spontaneously to them upon desire, and delicately prepared. There is no evil there, but endless good."
And (for the mind yet unsatiated with receding infinity) beyond Pushkara is the sea of fresh water, equal to itself in breadth. Passing that is the Golden Land, without inhabitants, and yet beyond it lie the Loka loka mountains, dark, immovable, and 10,000 yojans (50,000 miles) high and broad. Outside that darkness is the shell of the mundane egg.
"Of which eggs," concludes the Poorana, "there be thousands, and tens of thousands—yea, a hundred millions of millions!"