"Clark A Smith - The Brahmin's Wisdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

The Brahmin's Wisdom

Clark Ashton Smith




When the sun has sunk into her grave behind the hills, night after night a shriek of wild horror awakens and flees from the greedily gasping hands of the wind out of
the jungle toward the monastery.

Without lowering the voice, without raising it, without ever taking new breath, it yells, it shrieks, it screams through the jungle.

"It is the mask of Madhu, the Demon, the old, old, colossal mask, carved in stone, half swallowed by the swamps, the mask of Madhu, The Mad, shimmering white, staring with empty eyes out of the pools, out of the lonely, gurgling, rotting, ever murmuring pools," the monks rouned to each other.

Pestilence and plague he heralds -- Madhu, The Demon -- Madhu, The Mad!

And full of fear the Maharajah and his household fled to the North.

"When the Swamiji come, the holy pilgrims, for the feast of Bala Gopala and pass the monastery on their journey, we shall ask them what makes the mask of stone over there in the jungle scream and scream through the night," the hermits declared.

And on the eve of Bala Gopala the Swamiji came moving along the glittering road, silent, their heads drooping, their eyes cast down, dressed in dismal, black monk-frocks ... like wandering corpses.

Four men who had renounced the world ....

Four men beyond virtue and vice ....

Four men freed from all fetters ....

The Swami Vivekananda from Trevandrum.

The Swami Saradananda from Shambalva.

The Swami Abhedananda from Maiavatiti.

And a fourth one, an old, old man from the caste of the Brahmins, whose name no one knew anymore.

And they entered the monastery in a controlled state of mind.

But as the day faded, the winds began to blow, and they carried the stone-face's howling scream from the swamps of the jungle toward the monastery ... like an omen of doom.

And at the hour of the nightwatch the hermits, with a measured step, slowly walked round the venerable Brahmin -- whose name no one knew anymore, and who was so old that Vishnu himself had forgotten the century of his birth -- walked round him three times from the left to the right and asked:

"What is it, O Venerable One, that causes Madhu, The Demon, to send that howling scream through the night, that never rising, never falling, never ending wild and breathless scream?"

And the old Brahmin spoke:

"Not, O hermits, is it that Madhu, whose face is carved in the rock, who screams through the night -- How, you hermits, could it be Madhu? And not is that plaintive cry silenced during the day -- How, you hermits, could that plaintive cry be silenced during the day?? When night falls, the winds awaken in the swamps and blow through the wilderness towards the cloister and carry the scream to your ears. But the scream rings from dusk to dawn, from dawn to dusk -- without a pause -- and it comes from the lips of a penitent sinner who is lacking in true knowledge. It is he, you hermits, who screams through the night."

Thus spoke the venerable one.