A
DIGIT OF THE MOON
A HINDOO LOVE STORY
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MS.
BY
F. W. BAIN
NINTH EDITION
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
Originally Published by Messrs. James Parker & Co. 1898 Second Edition ................................... 1901 Third Edition .................................... 1902 Fourth Edition ................................... 1904 Fifth Edition .................................... 1906 Sixth Edition .................................... 1909 First Published by Methuen & Co. Ltd. ....... June 1910 Seventh Edition ........................... August 1910 Eighth Edition ........................... January 1911 Ninth Edition ........................... November 1911
TO
MY WIFE.
PREFATORY NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.
The better to illustrate how, in Hindoo mythology,the ideas of a beautiful woman, the Moon, and the Sea,dissolve and disappear into one another, I have placedon the fly-leaf of this edition a single stanza, drawnfrom another part of my MS., which characteristicallyexemplifies that dissolving view: subjoining here, forthe benefit of the uninitiated, a literal translation:
O thou lovely Incarnation of the Nectar-droppingMoon, come down from Heaven to lighten ourDarkness: Delight of the Race of Man: retaining in thyWomanhood the dancing Play of the Waves of that Seaof Milk out of which thou wert originally churned bythe Gods: we the Three Worlds (i.e. of Childhood,Manhood, and Age) do worship the Orb of thy Bosom thatpossesses for us a Threefold Mystical Feminine Energy[1]being a Pitcher of Milk for us, when we are Born:a Pillow for us, in the Middle of the Path of Life: anda Shrine, in which we take refuge to die at the last.
But we lose, in a literal prose version, the reverberation,and the echo of the Sea, which undertones themeaning of the words like the accompaniment to a song.This sound we might make some attempt to preserve,without doing violence to the sense, as follows;
Like a New MODE'S exquisite Incarnation,
In the Ebb and Flow of a Surging Sea,
Wave-breasted Beauty, the whole Creation
Wanes, and waxes, and rocks on thee!
For we rise and fall on thy Bosom's Billow
Whose heaving Swell is our Home Divine.
Our Chalice at Dawn, and our hot Noon's Pillow,
Our Evening's Shrine.
Woolacombe Bay, April 29, 1901.
[1] The last lines contain recondite philosophical allusions