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The princess had of course heard of the holy man and of his miracles and his fastings, and she was filled with curiosity to see and to speak to him; but this was difficult, since she was not allowed to go out except into the palace grounds, and then was always closely guarded. However, at length she found an opportunity, and made her way one evening alone to the hermit's shrine.
It is the revelation of antique civilization, of the palaestra and the stadium, of the sanctification of the body, of the apotheosis of man, of the religion of life and nature and joy; revealed to the man of the Middle Ages, who has hitherto seen in the untrained, diseased, despised body but a deformed piece of baseness, which his priests tell him belongs to the worms and to Satan; who has been taught that the monk living in solitude and celibacy, filthy, sick, worn out with fastings and bleeding with flagellation, is the nearest approach to divinity; who has seen Divinity itself, pale, emaciated, joyless, hanging bleeding from the cross; and who is for ever reminded that the kingdom of this Godhead is not of this world.
"Almost everything that is distinctive in the Roman form of Christianity is to be found in Buddhism: images, pictures, lights, altars, incense, vestments, masses, beads, wayside shrines, monasteries, nunneries, celibacy, fastings, vigils, retreats, pilgrimages, mendicant vows, shorn heads, orders, habits, uniforms, nuns, convents, purgatory, saintly and priestly intercession, indulgences, works of supererogation, pope, archbishops, abbots, abbesses, monks, neophytes, relics and relic-worship, exclusive burial-ground, etc., etc., etc."
He banisheth the Demons forth of the Island. And the demons grieved for their lost dominion, and assailing the saint they tormented him in his prayers and his fastings; and they fluttered around him like birds of the blackest hue, fearful in their form, their hugeness, and their multitude, and striving with horrible chatterings to prevent his prayer, long time they disturbed the man of God.
Psalm-singing commenced and ended the day in his house, and graces before meat and graces before sleep, prayers and ablutions, thanksgivings and fastings, had so much thinned the animal necessities of his household, that a domestic war was the consequence, and the sheriff and the sheriff's lady held separate sway, having equally divided the dwelling between them, and ruling each their respective sovereignties with a most jealous watchfulness.
With terrible imprecations she devoted herself to the gods, and each time that Schahabarim pronounced a word she falteringly repeated it. He indicated to her all the purifications and fastings that she was to observe, and how she was to reach Matho. Moreover, a man acquainted with the routes would accompany her. She felt as if she had been set free.
Thrice I have been scourged with rods, once I have been stoned, thrice I have suffered shipwreck, a whole night and day I have passed in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own countrymen, in perils from the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert, in perils on the sea, in perils among false brethren; in labour and travail, in watchings often, in fastings frequently, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness; and beside all these things from without, that accumulated burden which cometh on me daily, the care of all the churches.
"Well, then," said Bateman, "I will appeal to the Church of Rome too. Rome is part of the Catholic Church as well as we: since, then, the Romish Church has ever kept up fastings the ordinance is not abolished; the 'greater part' of the Catholic Church has always observed it." "But it has not," said Campbell; "it now dispenses with fasts, as you have heard." Willis interposed to ask a question.
Perhaps the pains endured in the various ordeals, the long fastings, the silences in the depth of the forests or on the mountains or among the ice-floes, helped to rouse the visionary faculty. The developments of this faculty among the black and colored peoples East-Indian, Burmese, African, American-Indian, etc. are well known.
And yet your priests make no scruple to receive and cherish them as proper instruments of profit; whereas if some scurvy wise fellow should step up and speak things as they are, as, to live well is the way to die well; the best way to get quit of sin is to add to the money you give the hatred of sin, tears, watchings, prayers, fastings, and amendment of life; such or such a saint will favor you, if you imitate his life these, I say, and the like should this wise man chat to the people, from what happiness into how great troubles would he draw them?
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