Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/24

 to far-distant heroic days, and its floods have reflected the ruins of Hastinapura, 'the City of Elephants,' and washed the plain where the Pándavas and the Kauravas struggled for the mastery, where Karna raged in his tent, where Krishna himself guided the steeds of Arjuna—but of all that I need not remind thee, seeing that thou art thyself at home in the ancient heroic songs. Often have I stood on yonder projecting tongue of land when the blue waves of the Jumna have rolled onward side by side with the yellow waters of the Gunga, and blue and yellow have never mingled. Blue and Yellow, Warrior and Brahman in the great river-bed of Caste, passing onward to eternity, approaching—uniting—for ever side by side—for ever two. Then it seemed to me that, blent with the rushing of these blue floods, I heard warlike sounds—the clash of arms and the blowing of horns, neighing of horses and the trumpeting of war elephants—and my heart beat faster, for my ancestors also had been there, and the sands of Kurukshetra had drunk their heroic blood."

Full of admiration, I looked up to this man from the warrior caste, in whose family such memories lived.

But he took me by the hand, and saying, "Come, my son, and behold the goal of thy first journey," he led me but a few steps around some dense shrubbery that had hitherto hidden the view to the cast.

As it flashed upon my vision I uttered an involuntary cry of admiration, for there, at a bend of the broad Gunga, lay, great and splendid in its beauty, the city of Kosambi. With its walls and towers, its piled-up masses of houses, its terraces, its quays and ghâts lit up by the setting sun, it really looked like a city of red gold—a city such as Benares was until the sins of its inhabitants changed it to stone and mortar—while the cupolas that were of real gold