Chapters.
98
"Holy Yama,[FN#160] hear the villain," exclaimed both of them at the same moment. * * * * * In short, having thus begun, they continued to quarrel violently, each one declaring that the beautiful Unmadini belonged to him, and to him only. How to settle their dispute Brahma the Lord of creatures only knows. I do not, except by cutting off their heads once more, and by putting them in their proper places. And I am quite sure, O Raja Vikram! that thy wits are quite unfit to answer the question, To which of these two is the beautiful Unmadini wife? It is even said−−amongst us Baitals −−that when this pair of half−husbands appeared in the presence of the Just King, a terrible confusion arose, each head declaiming all the sins and peccadilloes which its body had committed, and that Yama the holy ruler himself hit his forefinger with vexation.[FN#161] Here the young prince Dharma Dhwaj burst out laughing at the ridiculous idea of the wrong heads. And the warrior king, who, like single−minded fathers in general, was ever in the idea that his son had a velleity for deriding and otherwise vexing him, began a severe course of reproof. He reminded the prince of the common saying that merriment without cause degrades a man in the opinion of his fellows, and indulged him with a quotation extensively used by grave fathers, namely, that the loud laugh bespeaks a vacant mind. After which he proceeded with much pompousness to pronounce the following opinion: "It is said .n the Shastras−−−−" "Your majesty need hardly display so much erudition! Doubtless it comes from the lips of Jayudeva or some other one of your Nine Gems of Science, who know much more about their songs and their stanzas than they do about their scriptures," insolently interrupted the Baital, who never lost an opportunity of carping at those reverend men. "It is said in the Shastras," continued Raja Vikram sternly, after hesitating whether he should or should not administer a corporeal correction to the Vampire, "that Mother Ganga[FN#162] is the queen amongst rivers, and the mountain Sumeru[FN#163] is the monarch among mountains, and the tree Kalpavriksha[FN#164] is the king of all trees, and the head of man is the best and most excellent of limbs. And thus, according to this reason, the wife belonged to him whose noblest position claimed her." "The next thing your majesty will do, I suppose," continued the Baital, with a sneer, "is to support the opinions of the Digambara, who maintains that the soul is exceedingly rarefied, confined to one place, and of equal dimensions with the body, or the fancies of that worthy philosopher Jaimani, who, conceiving soul and mind and matter to be things purely synonymous, asserts outwardly and writes in his books that the brain is the organ of the mind which is acted upon by the immortal soul, but who inwardly and verily believes that the brain is the mind, and consequently that the brain is the soul or spirit or whatever you please to call it; in fact, that soul is a natural faculty of the body. A pretty doctrine, indeed, for a Brahman to hold. You might as well agree with me at once that the soul of man resides, when at home, either in a vein in the breast, or in the pit of his stomach, or that half of it is in a man's brain and the other or reasoning half is in his heart, an organ of his body." "What has all this string of words to do with the matter, Vampire?" asked Raja Vikram angrily. "Only," said the demon laughing, "that in my opinion, as opposed to the Shastras and to Raja Vikram, that the beautiful Unmadini belonged, not to the head part but to the body part. Because the latter has an immortal soul in the pit of its stomach, whereas the former is a box of bone, more or less thick, and contains brains which are of much the same consistence as those of a calf." "Villain!" exclaimed the Raja, "does not the soul or conscious life enter the body through the sagittal suture and lodge in the brain, thence to contemplate, through the same opening, the divine perfections?"