Even our invulnerable Babu always wore a kind of white
cap during the night.
As soon as the reeds concert reaches its height and the inhabitants
of the neighborhood hear the distant "voices of the gods," whole
villages flock together to the bank of the lake, light bonfires,
and perform their pujas. The fires lit up one after the other,
and the black silhouettes of the worshippers moved about on the
opposite shore. Their sacred songs and loud exclamations, "Hari,
Hari, Maha-deva!" resounded with a strange loudness and a wild
emphasis in the pure air of the night. And the reeds, shaken in
the wind, answered them with tender musical phrases. The whole
stirred a vague feeling of uneasiness in my soul, a strange
intoxication crept gradually over me, and in this enchanting place
the idol-worship of these passionate, poetical souls, sunk in dark
ignorance, seemed more intelligible and less repulsive. A Hindu
is a born mystic, and the luxuriant nature of his country has made
of him a zealous pantheist.
Sounds of alguja, a kind of Pandean pipe with seven openings, struck
our attention; their music was wafted by the wind quite distinctly
from somewhere in the wood. They also startled a whole family of
monkeys in the branches of a tree over our heads. Two or three
monkeys carefully slipped down, and looked round as if waiting
for something.
"What is this new Orpheus, to whose voice these monkeys answer?"
asked I laughingly.
"Some fakir probably. The alguja is generally used to invite the
sacred monkeys to their meals. The community of fakirs, who once
inhabited this island, have removed to an old pagoda in the forest.
Their new resting-place brings them more profit, because there are
many passers by, whereas the island is perfectly isolated."
"Probably they were compelled to desert this dreadful place because
they were threatened by chronic deafness," Miss X - - expressed her
opinion. She could not help being out of temper at being prevented
from enjoying her quiet slumber, our tents being right in the middle
of the orchestra.
"A propos of Orpheus," asked the Takur, "do you know that the lyre
of this Greek demigod was not the first to cast spells over people,
animals and even rivers? Kui, a certain Chinese musical artist,
as they are called, expresses something to this effect: `When I
play my kyng the wild animals hasten to me, and range themselvis
into rows, spellbound by my melody.' This Kui lived one thousand
years before the supposed era of Orpheus."
"What a funny coincidence!" exclaimed I. "Kui is the name of one
of our best artists in St. Petersburg.
