Sham Rao
assured us that no man of the last three generations had ever stepped
over the threshold of this thick iron door; no one had seen the
subterranean passage for many years. Kangalim lived there in
perfect isolation, and, according to the oldest people in the
neighborhood, she had always lived there. Some people said she
was three hundred years old; others alleged that a certain old
man on his death-bed had revealed to his son that this old woman
was no one else than his own uncle. This fabulous uncle had settled
in the cave in the times when the "dead city" still counted several
hundreds of inhabitants. The hermit, busy paving his road to Moksha,
had no intercourse with the rest of the world, and nobody knew how
he lived and what he ate. But a good while ago, in the days when
the Bellati (foreigners) had not yet taken possession of this mountain,
the old hermit suddenly was transformed into a hermitess. She
continues his pursuits and speaks with his voice, and often in his
name; but she receives worshippers, which was not the practice of
her predecessor.
We had come too early, and the Pythia did not at first appear. But
the square before the temple was full of people, and a wild, though
picturesque, scene it was. An enormous bonfire blazed in the centre,
and round it crowded the naked savages like so many black gnomes,
adding whole branches of trees sacred to the seven sister-goddesses.
Slowly and evenly they all jumped from one leg to another to a tune
of a single monotonous musical phrase, which they repeated in chorus,
accompanied by several local drums and tambourines. The hushed
trill of the latter mingled with the forest echoes and the hysterical
moans of two little girls, who lay under a heap of leaves by the fire.
The poor children were brought here by their mothers, in the hope
that the goddesses would take pity upon them and banish the two
evil spirits under whose obsession they were. Both mothers were
quite young, and sat on their heels blankly and sadly staring at
the flames. No one paid us the slightest attention when we appeared,
and afterwards during all our stay these people acted as if we
were invisible. Had we worn a cap of darkness they could not have
behaved more strangely.
"They feel the approach of the gods! The atmosphere is full of
their sacred emanations!" mysteriously explained Sham Rao,
contemplating with reverence the natives, whom his beloved Haeckel
might have easily mistaken for his "missing link," the brood of
his " Bathybius Haeckelii. "
"They are simply under the influence of toddy and opium!" retorted
the irreverent Babu.
The lookers-on moved as in a dream, as if they all were only
half-awakened somnambulists; but the actors were simply victims
of St. Vitus's dance. One of them, a tall old man, a mere skeleton
with a long white beard, left the ring and begun whirling vertiginously,
with his arms spread like wings, and loudly grinding his long, wolf-
like teeth. He was painful and disgusting to look at. He soon fell
down, and was carelessly, almost mechanically, pushed aside by the
feet of the others still engaged in their demoniac performance.
All this was frightful enough, but many more horrors were in store
for us.
Waiting for the appearance of the prima donna of this forest opera
company, we sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, ready to ask
innumerable questions of our condescending host. But I was hardly
seated, when a feeling of indescribable astonishment and horror
made me shrink back.
I beheld the skull of a monstrous animal, the like of which I could
not find in my zoological reminiscences. This head was much larger
than the head of an elephant skeleton. And still it could not be
anything but an elephant, judging by the skillfully restored trunk,
which wound down to my feet like a gigantic black leech. But an
elephant has no horns, whereas this one had four of them! The
front pair stuck from the flat forehead slightly bending forward
and then spreading out; and the others had a wide base, like the
root of a deer's horn, that gradually decreased almost up to the
middle, and bore long branches enough to decorate a dozen ordinary
elks. Pieces of the transparent amber-yellow rhinoceros skin were
strained over the empty eye-holes of the skull, and small lamps
burning behind them only added to the horror, the devilish appearance
of this head.
"What can this be?" was our unanimous question. None of us had
ever met anything like it, and even the colonel looked aghast.
"It is a Sivatherium," said Narayan. "Is it possible you never
came across these fossils in European museums? Their remains are
common enough in the Himalayas, though, of course, in fragments.
They were called after Shiva."
"If the collector of this district ever hears that this antediluvian
relic adorns the den of your - ahem! - witch," remarked the Babu,
"it won't adorn it many days longer."
All round the skull, and on the floor of the portico there were
heaps of white flowers, which, though not quite antediluvian, were
totally unknown to us. They were as large as a big rose; and
their white petals were covered with a red powder, the inevitable
concomitant of every Indian religious ceremony. Further on, there
were groups of cocoa-nuts, and large brass dishes filled with rice;
and each adorned with a red or green taper. In the centre of the
portico there stood a queer-shaped censer, surrounded with chandeliers.
A little boy, dressed from head to foot in white, threw into it
handfuls of aromatic powders.
