The Hindoo God Of Love

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_ 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 disturbing him in his devotions by awakening in him love for Parwati. Sakuntala's lover wails that Kama's arrows are "not flowers, but hard as diamond." Agnimitra declares that the Creator made his beloved "the poison-steeped arrow of the God of Love;" and again, he says: "The softest and the sharpest things are united in you, O Kama." Urvasi's royal lover complains that his "heart is pierced by Kama's arrow," and in _Malati and Madhava_ we are told that "a cruel god no doubt is Kama;" while No. 329 of Ilala's love-poems declares:

"The arrows of Kama are most diverse in their
effects--though made of flowers, very hard; though not
coming into direct contact, insufferably hot; and
though piercing, yet causing delight."

Our familiarity with Greek and Roman literature has made us so accustomed to the idea of a Cupid awakening love by shooting arrows that we fail to realize how entirely fanciful, not to say whimsical, this conceit is. It would be odd, indeed, if the Hindoo poets had happened on the same fancy as the Greeks of their own accord; but there is no reason to suppose that they did. Kama is one of the later gods of the Indian Pantheon, and there is every reason to believe that the Hindoos borrowed him from the Greeks, as the Romans did. In _Sakuntala_ there is a reference to the Greek women who form the king's body-guard; in _Urvasi_ to a slave of Greek descent; and there are many things in the Hindoo drama that betray Greek influence.

Besides being artificial and borrowed, Kama is entirely sensual. Kama means "gratification of the senses,"[281] and of all the epithets bestowed on their god of love by the Hindoos none rises distinctly above sensual ideas. Dowson has collated these epithets; they are: "the beautiful," "the inflamer," "lustful," "desirous," "the happy," "the gay, or wanton," "deluder," "the lamp of honey, or of spring," "the bewilderer," "the crackling fire," "the stalk of passion," "the weapon of beauty," "the voluptuary," "remembrance," "fire," "the handsome."[282]

The same disregard of sentimental, devotional, and altruistic elements is shown in the Ten Stages of Love-Sickness as conceived by the Hindoos: (1) desire; (2) thinking of her (his) beauty; (3) reminiscent revery; (4) boasting of her (his) excellence; (5) excitement; (6) lamentations; (7) distraction; (8) illness; (9) insensibility; (10) death.[283]

[FOOTNOTE 281: _Hitopadesa_. This gratification the Hindoos regard as one of the four great objects of life, the other three being liberty (emancipation of the soul), wealth, and the performance of religious duties.]

[FOOTNOTE 282: Robert Brown has remarked that "moral and intellectual qualities seem to be entirely omitted from the seven points which, according to Manu, make a good wife." And Ward says that no attention is paid to a bride's mind or temper, the only points being the bride's person, her family, and the prospect of male offspring.]

[FOOTNOTE 283: This is the list, as given by the eminent Sanscrit scholar, Professor Albrecht Weber in the _Abhandlungen fuer die Kunde des Abendlandes_, Vol. V., 135. Burton, in his original edition of the _Arabian Nights_ (III., 36), gives the stages thus: love of the eyes; attraction of the manos or mind; birth of desire; loss of sleep; loss of flesh; indifference to objects of sense; loss of shame; distraction of thought; loss of consciousness; death. _Cf_. Lamairesse, p. 179.] _

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