Island - Aldous Huxley [86]
“By means of the moksha-medicine?”
Dr. Robert nodded. “Their leaders give it them before they leave the Climbing Association’s hut. Then they come over to the temple. The stuff starts working during the service. Incidentally,” he added, “the service is in Sanskrit, so you won’t understand a word of it. Vijaya’s address will be in English—he speaks in his capacity as president of the Climbing Association. So will mine. And of course the young people will mostly talk in English.”
Inside the temple there was a cool, cavernous darkness, tempered only by the faint daylight filtering in through a pair of small latticed windows and by the seven lamps that hung, like a halo of yellow, quivering stars, above the head of the image on the altar. It was a copper statue, no taller than a child, of Shiva. Surrounded by a flame-fringed glory, his four arms gesturing, his braided hair wildly flying, his right foot treading down a dwarfish figure of the most hideous malignity, his left foot gracefully lifted, the god stood there, frozen in mid-ecstasy. No longer in their climbing dress, but sandaled, bare-breasted and in shorts or brightly colored skirts, a score of boys and girls, together with the six young men who had acted as their leaders and instructors, were sitting cross-legged on the floor. Above them, on the highest of the altar steps, an old priest, shaven and yellow-robed, was intoning something sonorous and incomprehensible. Leaving Will installed on a convenient ledge, Dr. Robert tiptoed over to where Vijaya and Murugan were sitting and squatted down beside them.
The splendid rumble of Sanskrit gave place to a high nasal chant, and the chanting in due course was succeeded by a litany, priestly utterance alternating with congregational response.
And now incense was burned in a bass thurible. The old priest held up his two hands for silence, and through a long pregnant time of the most perfect stillness the thread of gray incense smoke rose straight and unwavering before the god, then as it met the draft from the windows broke and was lost to view in an invisible cloud that filled the whole dim space with the mysterious fragrance of another world. Will opened his eyes and saw that, alone of all the congregation, Murugan was restlessly fidgeting. And not merely fidgeting—making faces of impatient disapproval. He himself had never climbed; therefore climbing was merely silly. He himself had always refused to try the moksha-medicine; therefore those who used it were beyond the pale. His mother believed in the Ascended Masters and chatted regularly with Koot Hoomi; therefore the image of Shiva was a vulgar idol. What an eloquent pantomime, Will thought as he watched the boy. But alas for poor little Murugan, nobody was paying the slightest attention to his antics.
“Shivayanama,” said the old priest, breaking the long silence, and again, “Shivayanama.” He made a beckoning gesture.
Rising from her place, the tall girl whom Will had seen working her way down the precipice mounted the altar steps. Standing on tiptoe, her oiled body gleaming like a second copper statue in the light of the lamps, she hung a garland of pale-yellow flowers on the uppermost of Shiva’s two left arms. Then, laying palm to palm, she looked up into the god’s serenely smiling face and, in a voice that faltered at first, but gradually grew steadier, began to speak:
“O you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain and make an end,
Who in sunlight dance among the birds and the children at their play,
Who at midnight dance among corpses in the burning grounds,
You Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava,
You Suchness and Illusion, the Void and All Things,
You are the lord of life, and therefore I have brought you flowers;
You are the lord of death, and therefore I have brought you my heart—
This heart that is now your burning ground.
Ignorance there and self shall be consumed with fire.
That you may dance, Bhairava, among the ashes.
That you may dance, Lord Shiva, in a place of flowers,
And I dance with you.”
Raising