f
the right or left arm or eye to indicate what kind of luck he is going
to have; and she is equally favored. Usually the love is mutual and at
first sight--nay, preferably _before_ first sight. The mere hearsay
that a certain man or maiden is very beautiful suffices, as we saw in
the story of Nala and Damayanti, to banish sleep and appetite, and to
make the lover pale and wan and most wretched. Sakuntala's royal lover
wastes away so rapidly that in a few days his bracelet falls from his
attenuated arm, and Sakuntala herself becomes so weak that she cannot
rise, and is supposed to have sunstroke! Malati dwindles until her
form resembles the moon in its last quarter; her face is as pale as
the moon at morning dawn. Always both the lovers, though he be a
king--as he generally is--and she a goddess, are diffident at first,
fearing failure, even after the most unmistakable signs of fondness,
in the betrayal of which the girls are anything but coy. All these
symptoms the poets prescribe as regularly as a physician makes out a
prescription for an apothecary.

A peculiar stare--which must be sidelong, not direct at the
beloved--is another conventional characteristic of Hindoo amorous
fiction. The gait becomes languid, the breathing difficult, the heart
stops beating or is paralyzed with joy; the limbs or the whole body
wither like flower-stalks after a frost; the mind is lamed, the memory
weakened; cold shivers run down the limbs and fever shakes the body;
the arms hang limp at the side, the breast heaves, words stick in the
throat; pastimes no longer entertain; the perfumed Malayan wind crazes
the mind; the eyelids are motionless, sighs give vent to anguish,
which may end in a swoon, and if things take an unfavorable turn the
thought of suicide is not distant. Attempts to cure this ardent love
are futile; Madhava tries snow, and moonlight, and camphor, and lotos
roots, and pearls, and sandal oil rubbed on his skin, but all in vain.

THE HINDOO GOD OF LOVE

Quite as artificial and unsentimental as the notions of the Hindoos
concerning the symptoms of love is their conception of their god of
love, Kama, the husband of Lust. His bow is made of sugar-cane, its
string a row of bees, and his arrow-tips are red flower-buds. Spring
is his bosom friend, and he rides on a parrot or the sea-monster
Makara. He is also called Ananga--the bodiless--because Siwa once
burned him up with the fire that flashed from his third eye for
dist