Temple Of Dawn (11 page)

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Authors: Yukio Mishima

BOOK: Temple Of Dawn
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Honda’s reason for leaving the hotel before the dawn was to see the crowds waiting to worship the sunrise at the ghats.
Benares was dedicated to the concept of the one from the many, the unity of Brahma, who was a transcendent godhead, being the One that contained the many. The solar disk was the embodiment of his divinity, and his godliness was greatest at the moment the sun rose above the horizon. The holy city of Benares and the heavens had been treated as equals in Indian religion. The pundit Shankara once said: “When God put the heavens and Benares on the scale, heavy Benares sank to the land and the lighter heavens rose.”
Hindus perceive the highest consciousness of the godhead in the sun and consider it the symbol of ultimate truth. Thus Benares is filled with devotion to and prayer for the solar disk. People’s consciousness frees itself from the rules governing the earth, and thus Benares itself, like a floating carpet, is elevated by the efficacy of prayer.
Unlike the day before, Dasasvamedha ghat was now swarming with masses of people, and the candles under countless umbrellas were flickering in the dusk before sunrise. In the sky above the jungle on the opposite side of the river, there was a hint of the approaching dawn below the tiers of clouds.
People had placed benches under each large bamboo umbrella and decorated the lingam stone, symbol of Shiva, with red flowers. Some were mixing red cinnabar powder in small mortars, preparing to paint their foreheads after the bath. Beside them attendant monks were mixing the paste with Ganges water in brass jugs which had been dedicated and blessed at the temple. Some people had already descended the stairs in order to be in the water to meet the sunrise. After worshipping the water, which they scooped up in their hands, they slowly immersed their entire body. Some awaited the sunrise kneeling under the umbrellas.
As the first light of dawn broke over the horizon, the scene on the ghat instantly assumed outline and color; women’s saris, their skin, flowers, white hair, scabies, brass vessels—all began to cry out with color. The tortured morning clouds, slowly changing shape, gave way to the expanding light. Finally, just as the tip of the vermilion morning sun appeared above the low jungle, all at once a reverent sigh escaped from the lips of the people who had filled the square almost rubbing shoulders against Honda. Some of them knelt in devotion.
Those who were in the water pressed their hands together or opened their arms, praying to the red sun which gradually rose to display its full disk. The shadows of their torsos, cast far across the purplish golden river waves, reached to the feet of the people on the steps. Great rejoicing was heard, all directed toward the sun over the opposite shore. And all the while, one after the other, people stepped into the water, as though guided by some invisible hand.
The sun hung now above the green jungle. The scarlet disk, which had permitted itself to be looked upon, now turned in a trice into a cluster of brilliance that rejected even a momentary glance. It had already become a pulsating, threatening ball of flame.
Suddenly Honda knew! The sun which Isao had constantly seen in his suicide dream was this!
9
 
 B
UDDHISM
suddenly deteriorated in India sometime after the fourth century of the Christian era. It has been rightly said that Hinduism stifled it in its friendly embrace. Like Christianity and Judaism in Judea and Confucianism and Taoism in China, Buddhism had to be exiled from India for it to become a world religion. It was necessary for India to turn to a more primitive folk religion. Hinduism perfunctorily retained the name Buddha in a far corner of its pantheon, where he was preserved as the ninth of the ten avatars of Vishnu.
Vishnu is believed to assume ten transfigurations: Matsya, the fish; Kurma, the land tortoise; Varaha, the boar; Narasimha, the man-lion; Vamana, the dwarf; Parashurama; Rama; Krishna; the Buddha; and Kalki. According to the Brahmans, Vishnu, assuming the form of the Buddha, purposely introduced a heretical religion so that believers would be led astray, thus presenting the opportunity for the Brahmans to lead them back to their true religion—Hinduism.
Thus, along with the decline of Buddhism the cave temples at Ajanta in western India fell into ruin and became known to the world only twelve centuries later, in 1819, when a British Army corps chanced upon them.
The twenty-seven stone caves in the cliffs of the Wagora River were originally excavated in three different periods: in the second century
B.C.
and in the fifth and seventh centuries
A.D.
With the exception of caves 8, 9, 10, 12, and 13 constructed during the Hinayana period, all the rest belong to the age of Mahayana Buddhism.
After visiting the living holy land of Hinduism, Honda wanted to seek out the ruins of Buddhism, now extinct in India.
Ajanta was where he must go. Somehow it was his destiny.
This idea was substantiated by the fact that the caves themselves and the hotel and its surroundings were extremely quiet and simple, devoid of surging crowds.
As there were no facilities for lodgings around Ajanta, Honda registered in a hotel in Aurangabad with the thought of visiting the famous Hindu site of Ellora. Aurangabad was only eighteen miles from there, but sixty-six from Ajanta.
The best room in the hotel had been reserved for him by Itsui Products, and the finest car placed at his disposal. These advantages along with the Sikh chauffeur’s deferential attitude turned the English tourists in the hotel hostile. That morning in the dining room before setting out on the all-day tour, Honda had already felt the silent pact of antagonism that united the Britishers against the lone Asian tourist. It was even expressed overtly when the waiter brought a plate of bacon and eggs to Honda’s table before serving anyone else. An arrogant old gentleman with a handsome beard, doubtless some retired Army officer, seated with his wife at the next table, called the waiter over and admonished him sharply and curtly. After that, Honda was served last.
An ordinary traveler would have at once taken umbrage at such a situation, but Honda was obstinately impervious to trivia. Since Benares, some incomprehensible, thick membrane overlay his heart and everything slipped off its surface. Since the excessive respect of the waiter was surely the result of a generous tip paid in advance by Itsui Products, such incidents never affected the withdrawn dignity he had acquired during his term as judge.
The beautiful black car, assiduously cleaned and polished by more than five hotel employees with nothing else to do, stood in readiness for Honda’s departure, the various flowers of the front garden reflecting in its shining surface. Soon, with Honda as passenger, it was rolling over the lovely plains of western India.
The vast expanse revealed not a single human figure. Sometimes the supple, dark-brown forms of mongooses splashed in the swamp water beside the road or scurried across in front of the car; or a group of long-tailed monkeys would peer out at him from the branches.
Hope for purification arose in Honda’s heart. Purification in the Indian manner was too disgusting, and the sacraments he had witnessed in Benares were still in him like a raging fever. He craved a ladle of clear, cool Japanese water.
The expansiveness of the plains comforted him. There was no rice paddy nor other field under cultivation: only endless, beautiful plains stretching away, dotted with the deep indigo shadows of mimosa trees. There were swamps, streams, yellow and red flowers, and over it all, a brilliant sky hung like some colossal canopy.
There was nothing miraculous or extreme in this natural setting. The dazzling greenery radiantly exuded idle sleepiness. The plain itself had a tranquilizing effect on Honda whose heart had been seared by frightening and ominous flames. Instead of the spatter of sacrificial blood, a virginally white heron fluttered up from the jungle. The whiteness sometimes darkened when it passed before the deep green shade, but would emerge pure white again.
The clouds in the sky ahead were delicately convoluted, and their irregular borders gave out a silken sheen. The blue was fathomless.
Needless to say, a large component of the comfort Honda felt came with his awareness that soon he was to enter Buddhist territory, even though Buddhism had long been extinct.
To be sure, after experiencing the weird and variegated mandala of Benares, the Buddhism he dreamed of was as refreshing as ice, and already he felt a presage of the familiar Buddhist quietude in the bright stillness of the plains.
Suddenly Honda felt nostalgic. He was returning from a noisy kingdom dominated by living Hinduism to a familiar country of temple gongs, a land which had been destroyed but which had taken on a purity by that destruction. As he thought of the Buddha waiting for him to return from the Absolute he had experienced in Benares, he felt he had perhaps never expected an Absolute in Buddhism. In the tranquility of the homecoming he had dreamed of, he felt an unremitting closeness to what was gradually perishing. Beyond the beautiful, radiantly blue sky, the graveyard of Buddhism itself, the site of its oblivion was soon to appear. Even before seeing it, Honda clearly felt the somber coolness soothing his overheated mind, the coolness of the rock caves, and the limpidity of the water there.
It was a kind of weakening of intent. Perhaps the odiousness of color and the deterioration of flesh and blood had driven him to seek another religion which had petrified itself in solitude. Simple, pure extinction was suggested even by the shapes of the clouds beyond. Here was the illusion of shade, perhaps a reward from a former life, in the beautiful, luxuriant foliage. In this world of absolute morning quiet, still except for the lazy vibration of the car engine, the smooth vista of the plains slowly unfolded beyond the window and slowly but surely carried Honda’s heart home.
After a time the car reached the edge of a ravine cutting sharply into the flat plain. This was the first indication of Ajanta. They drove along the meandering road descending toward the bed of the Wagora which glistened at the bottom of the gorge like the sharp blade of a knife.
The teahouse where Honda stopped to rest was aswarm with flies. He looked out of the window immediately before him across the square toward the entrance to the caves. Going in now, giving in to his impatience, he felt, might infringe on the tranquility he was seeking. He bought a postcard, and taking his fountain pen in a clammy hand, he scrutinized for some time the picture of the caves crudely printed on the front.
Again there was a suggestion of noise here as in Benares. Black people in white clothes with suspicious eyes were standing around, and skinny children were shouting in the square, selling souvenir necklaces. The space was filled with bright yellow sunlight that reached to every cranny. On a table in the dark room lay three small dried-up oranges with flies crawling over them. The heavy, acrid odor of fried food wafted from the kitchen. He addressed the postcard to his wife Rié, to whom he had not written for some time. Then he wrote:
I’m here to see the cave temples at Ajanta. The tour’s about to start. I can’t drink the orange drink in front of me, because I see the edge of the glass is all dotted with fly spots. But don’t worry, I’m being very careful about my health. India’s really astonishing. You’re taking care of your kidneys, I hope. Love to Mother.
 
Could this be thought of as affectionate? He always wrote the same. The nostalgia and affection that had begun to gather like a haze in his heart had suddenly made him resolve to write. But when he tried to put his feelings into words, his sentences invariably turned out ordinary and dry.
Rié would always welcome his return with the same quiet smile she had displayed at his departure, no matter how many years he might leave her alone in Japan. Though her hair might bear a few more strands of white since he had left, the face which had seen him off and the one which would greet his return would coincide as perfectly as the two identical crests on the sleeves of a formal kimono.
A touch of kidney trouble had made her profile somewhat vague, like a moon in daytime; and this countenance, now that he called it to mind, seemed more suitable for being visualized in memory than seen in reality. Of course, no one could dislike such a woman. In his heart Honda felt deep relief as he wrote the postcard, and he offered thanks to an unnamable something. It was a relief altogether different from the assurance of being loved.

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