Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/67

 So, on the one hand, he conducted the sacrificial service as priest,—and people ascribed the unusual luck of the band nearly as much to his priestly knowledge as to Angulimala's able leadership,—and, on the other hand, he lectured on the metaphysics of the robber-nature, in systematic form,—and not only on the technical side of it, but on its ethical side also; for I observed, to my amazement, that the robbers did have a morality of their own, and by no means considered themselves worse than other men.

These lectures were delivered chiefly at night, during the clear half of the month, at which time—apart from chance occurrences—business was quiet. In a forest clearing, the hearers squatted in several semicircular rows about the worshipful Vajaçravas, who sat with his legs crossed under him. His powerful head, barren of all hair, shone in the moonlight, and his whole appearance was not unlike that of a Vedic teacher who, in the quiet of a starlit night, imparts the Esoteric or Secret Doctrine to the inmates of a forest hermitage; but, on the other hand, many an unholy and bestial face, aye, and that of many a gallows-bird, was to be seen in that circle. It really seems to me as though I see them at this moment—as though I hear again the seething of the sounds in that gigantic forest, now swelling to the long sough of the far-off storm, anon sinking to the gentle sigh of the night wind as it goes to rest amid the lonely tree-tops—at intervals, the distant growl of a tiger or the hoarser bellow of a panther—and above it all, clear, penetrating, marvellously quiet, the voice of Vajaçravas—a deep, full-toned bass, the priceless inheritance of countless generations of Udgatars.

To these lectures I was admitted because Vajaçravas had conceived a liking for me. He even went so far as to