Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/18

 a blind man come that way, he could not have failed to notice this house, for wanton laughter, the clang of goblets, the clapping of hands, the beat of dancing feet, and the delightfully merry notes of the seven-stringed vina rose clearly upon the air. Leaning against the doorpost stood a handsome girl, robed in rich silk, and hung with jasmine garlands. Laughingly showing her teeth, red from chewing the betel-nut, she invited the wayfarer to stay: "Enter, O stranger. This is the House of Mirth." But the Blessed One went on his way, and as he did so he recalled his own words: "As weeping, in the Order of the Holy, shall singing be looked on; as madness, in the Order of the Holy, shall dancing be looked on; as childish, in the Order of the Holy, shall unseemly showing of teeth, shall laughter, be looked on. All-sufficing, for ye who in truth are enraptured, be the smile of the smiling eyes."

The neighbouring house was not far distant, but the noise of the carousers and vina-players penetrated thither, so the Lord Buddha went on to the next. Beside it two butcher's assistants were hard at work by the last glimmer of daylight, cutting up with sharp knives a cow they had just slaughtered. And the Master strode past the house of the butcher.

In front of the one following, stood many dishes and bowls freshly formed from clay, the fruit of a diligent day's labour. The potter's wheel stood under a tamarind tree, and the potter at that moment removed a dish from the wheel and bore it to where the others lay.

The Master approached the potter, greeted him courteously, and said: "If it be not inconvenient to, thee, O descendant of Bhaga, I shall spend this night in thy hall."