The attorney thus caught in his own snare, had no means of escape; and after paying the ba lance, which his insulted friend would not remit, be was obliged to quit London; for the story, which was circulated far and wide, was so disgraceful to him, that he lost all his practice, and every friend. AN ANCIENT EASTERN TALE. A MILITARY gentleman who has served many years in India, on the Madras establishment, one day recounted to me the following tale, which is one of hundreds or perhaps thousands of the popular traditions among the natives on the coast of Cormandel. It is believed in Asia with the same degree of reverence and reliance, as the Britons formerly believed the traditions concerning the Druids or as the Welch to this hour rely on the prophecies and other supernatural powers of Merlin, and the many fairies and witches who are still supposed to influence the good or bad luck of those beings whom they mean to favour or to injure. Before I recount the tale, it may be as well, by way of introduction, to describe the persons and their power, from whom the incidents and events of the tale take their rise. + It was formerly customary for the learned of the Cormandel coast of India to retire from the noise and tumults of cities, into woods and desarts, and there to study among the appearances and wonders of nature, and to trace out the properties and powers of all the objects which impress themselves on contemplative and religious minds. They were very great botanists, and tried by various experiments the consequences of using herbs and fruits, for the purposes of food and medicine: and thus, by long practice, and by experiments which were pursued, multiplied, and enlarged upon, for ages, they acquired such a thorough knowledge of their effects, and such a prodigious skill in their application, that the secrets of nature were discovered to their enrapt minds. They found by successive processes, that the nut of the banyan tree, when eaten in a certain quantity, was capable of prolonging life through so many generations of those whom time swept away, and reunited to their kindred earth, that none so fed had ever been known to die, and therefore they were said to be immortal. They began by eating a specified quantity, which was gradually encreased to another specified quantity, which when eaten would extend life for a hundred years beyond the hour of taking the last meal, and was so nutritive that it sustained the body in full strength and vigour, without taking food again during the hundred years of their prolonged life. If during that hundred years they could preserve such a command over themselves as to remain silent, they were thenceforward the favoured of Brama, and aided by him became omnipotent. The name given to them when omnipotent was Raji. Having gone through the trial, which I do not know how to express but by calling it their noviciate, they were allowed again to exert the faculty of speech; and they were then as universally consulted by that part of Asia which we call India within Ganges, in all the dangers, and difficulties, and events of life, as the oracle of Apollo was by the ancient Greeks and Romans. When the effects of the nut ceased, they renewed them by such encreased quantities as the advance in power had enabled the Raji to endure, and thus they continued from century to century. During the omnipotence of the Raji, which subsequent superior powers have overcome, Ram Rajah, or as we should say, Ram the King of Madura, had among other children, a son named Armogem, whom he did not at all love; and while his other sons were indulged in all the gratifications of Asiatic luxury, he was excluded as an outcast from all the pleasures of the palace. The dislike of the king, as a natural consequence, occasioned the dislike of all the family and dependants, and the unhappy Armogem, unable to bear the scoffs and indignities to which he was daily subjected, left the palace of his ancestors, and fled into the woods. The desire he had to quit the place, where, from his birth, he had been wretched, gave speed to his steps and strength to his body, and he journeyed on without stopping or taking food through the whole day, when nearly exhausted by the unaccustomed fatigue he had undergone, he stretched himself beneath a tree at the entrance of the wood, wherein he meant to live unknown and undisturbed, and in the bitterness of grief, exclaimed, "O! wretched Armogem! wherefore have you been suffered to behold the light of day? Why were you not left among the unformed matter which never has received the spark of life; that so sensation might not have been awaked to woe?" He had hardly finished his murmuring soliloquy, when he heard a voice say, "Repine not, Armogem. None knows but the Supreme why any thing is so. Perhaps for thee some blessings are in store, to which thy sorrows lead thee." |