Atma A Romance

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

O that Decay were always beautiful!How soft the exit of the dying day,The dying season too, its disarrayIs gold and scarlet, hues of gay misrule,So it in festive cheer may pass away;Fading is excellent in earth or air,With it no budding April may compare,Nor fragrant June with long love-laden hours;Sweet is decadence in the quiet bowersWhere summer songs and mirth are fallen asleep,And sweet the woe when fading violets weep.O that among things dearer in their waneOur fallen faiths might numbered be, that soReligions cherished in their hour of woeMight linger round the god-deserted fane,And worshippers be loath to leave and prayThat old-time power return, until there mayIssue a virtue, and the faith reviveAnd holiness be there, and all the sphereBe filled with happy altars where shall thriveThe mystic plants of faith and hope to bearImmortal fruitage of sweet charity;For I believe that every piety,And every thirst for truth is gift divine,The gifts of God are not to me uncleanThough strangely honoured at an unknown shrine.In temples of the past my spirit fainFor old-time strength and vigour would imploreAs in a ruined abbey, fairer for"The unimaginable touch of time"We long for the sincerity of yore.But this is not man's mood, in his regimeSweet "calm decay" becomes mischance unmeet,And dying creeds sink to extinction,Hooted, and scorned, and sepultured in hate,Denied their rosary of good deeds and boonOf reverence and holy unction—First in the list of crimes man writes defeat.These purest dreams of this our low estate,White-robed vestals, fond and vain designs,I lay a wreath at your forgotten shrines.

Nearly four hundred years ago, Nanuk, a man of a gentle spirit, lived in the Punjaub, and taught that God is a spirit. He enunciated the solemn truth that no soul shall find God until it be first found of Him. This is true religion. The soul that apprehends it readjusts its affairs, looks unto God, and quietly waits for Him. The existence of an Omnipresent Holiness was alike the beginning and the burden of his theology, and in the light of that truth all the earth became holy to him. His followers abjured idolatry and sought to know only the invisible things of the spirit. He did not seek to establish a church; the truths which he knew, in their essence discountenance a visible semblance of divine authority, and Nanuk simply spoke them to him who would hear,—emperor or beggar,—until in 1540 he went into that spiritual world, which even here had been for him the real one.

And then an oft-told story was repeated; a band of followers elected a successor, laws were necessary as their number increased, and a choice of particular assembling places became expedient. And as

"the treesThat whisper round a temple become soonDear as the temple's self,"

so the laws passed into dogmas having equal weight with the truths that Nanuk had delivered, and the places became sacred.

Nanuk's successors were ten, fulfilling a prophecy which thus limited their number. The compilation of their sayings and doings to form a book which as years went on was venerated more and more, and the founding of Oomritsur, chief of their holy places, were the principal things that transpired in the history of the Khalsa during a century and a half, save that the brotherhood was greatly strengthened by Moslem persecution, occurring at intervals.

But with the death of the ninth gooroo, by Moslem violence, and the accession of his son Govind, the worldly fortunes of the Khalsa changed. Under the leadership of Govind, a young man of genius and enthusiasm, who comes before us in the two-fold character of religionist and military hero, the Sikhs moved on to a national greatness not dreamed of by Nanuk....