A Digit of the Moon - A Hindu Love Story

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. PREFATORY NOTE TO SECONDEDITION: THE better to Illustrate how, in Hindoo mythology,the ideas of a beautiful woman, the Moon, and the Seagtdissolve and disappear into one another, I have placedon the fly-leaf of this edition a single stanza, drawnfrom another part of my MS., which characteristically.exemplifies that dissolving mew: subjoining here, fordie benefit of the uninitiated, a literal translation :O thou lovely Incarnation of the Nectar-droppingMoon come down from Heaven to lighten our Dark-ness : 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 of Childhood Man-hood) and Age) do worship the Orb of thy Bosom thatpossesses for us a Threefold Mystical Feminine Energy*:being a Pitcher of Milk for us% when we are Born : The last lines contain recondite philosophical allusions tothe Creation, Preservation, and Destruction of the World, andother matters, in technical terms which defy translation. Lifein Hindoo philosophy, as in that of the Middle Ages, carriesabout with it a perfume of death: there is in its atmospheresomething melancholy, and even a little morbid, like the slowtoiling of a bell. the Middle of the Path of Life: anda Shrine in 'which we take refuge to die at the last.But we lose, la a literal prose version, the reverbera-tion, 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 followsLike a New Moon's exquisite Incarnation,,In the Ebb and Flow of a Surging SeaWave-breasted Beauty, the whole CreationWanes, and waxes, and rocks on thee IFor we rise and fall on thy Bosom's BillowWhose heavimg Swell is our Home DivineOur Chalice at Dawn and our hot Noon's Pillow,Our Evening's Shrine. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION: A DIGIT OF THE MOON is the sixteenth part of a muchlonger work, entitled The Churning of the Ocean ofTime \ A well-known Hindoo legend recounts how thegods and antigods assembled to churn the ocean of milk bfor the nectar of immortality. After throwing in herbs'ofvarious kinds, they churned it with Mount Mandara,andobtained the nectar, with certain other things, one ofwhich was the MOON, who by the way is often called* the Lord of Herbs.'But in Sanskrit, the Moon, like the Sun, is a male.Hindoo poets get over this difficulty, when they want afemale Moon, by personifying his attributes, or makinga part do duty for the whole. Thus, his disc is dividedinto sixteen parts, called 'streaks' or 'digits? and abeautiful woman is 'a digit of the moon?* Sansampra-sdgara-manthanam* For milk the author has substituted a technical word whichmeans the world considered as the scene of never-ending trans*migrations. ('0 world! O life! O time!) By this he impliesthat the nectar of his work is the residuum of much churningof life and experience of the world, and that it is destinedto be immortal.

Produktdetails

• Autoren: F. W. Bain, F.w. Bain
• Verlag: External catalogues UK
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erschienen: 24.11.2009
• EAN: 9781443722230
• ISBN: 978-1-4437-2223-0
• Thema: Belletristik > Lyrik, Dramatik