z:\ ambedkar\vol 011\vol11 02.indd MK SJ+YS 4 10 2013/YS 18 11 2013 40
40 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
- “This city bereft of him is a forest, and that forest which possesses him is a city ; the city without him has no charms for us.”
I
- Next the women crowded to the rows of windows, crying to one another, “The prince has returned” ; but having seen that his horse had an empty back, they closed the windows again and wailed aloud.
§ 21. The Family in Mourning
The members of the family of Suddhodana were anxiously awaiting the return of Channa in the hope that he might persuade Gautama to return home.
On entering the royal stable, Kanthaka uttered a loud sound, uttering his woe to the palace people.
Then the people, who were in the neighbourhood of the king’s inner apartments, thought in their hearts, “Since the horse Kanthaka neighs, it must be that the prince has come.”
And the women, who were fainting with sorrow, now in wild joy, with their eyes rolling to see the prince, rushed out of the palace full of hope. But they were disappointed. There was Kanthaka without the prince.
Gautami, abandoning all self-control, cried aloud— she fainted, and with a weeping face exclaimed:
“With his long arms and lion gait, his bull like eye, and his beauty, bright like gold, his broad chest, and his voice deep as a drum or a cloud,—should such a hero as this dwell in a hermitage ?
“This earth is indeed unworthy as regards that peerless doer of noble actions, for such a virtuous hero has gone away from us.
“Those two feet of his, tender with their beautiful web spread between the toes, with their ankles, concealed and soft like a blue lotus,—how can they, bearing a wheel mark in the middle, walk on the hard ground of the skirts of the forest ?
“That body, which deserves to sit or lie on the roof of a palace, honoured with costly garments,