Metempsychosis, transmigration, everlasting incarnation and re-incarnation of the immortal soul in body after body, birth after birth: all Hindoo literature is but the kaleidoscopic reiteration of this one identical idea, whose beauty is such that no logic will ever destroy it or oust it in favour of another. For the Sanskrit language is a kind of shrine, consecrated to the embodiment and immortalisation of this philosophical myth. The Hindoos are possessed by it; it is their hereditary heirloom, _Kramágatam_, the legacy from an immemorial past: it is all that they have left. And nations, like the characters in our story, cling desperately, in periods of degradation and eclipse, to all that reminds them of a former state of ideal prosperity, which lingers in their literature and echoes in their souls, like dim recollections of a forgotten paradise, or faint reminiscences of a former birth. Distance lends enchantment, and time effaces detail, and endows stern realities with dreamy beauty; and thus a rugged stony past fades gradually into a picture, blue, soft, and unutterably beautiful, like some low barren island, seen far away in the haze, over a hot and glittering sea. POONA, _March_ 21, 1903. [1] _Shrí_ also means a Sacred Lotus, and it is the name of the twelfth Digit of the Moon: thus indicating the position of this story in the series to which it belongs: for an account of which, and the manuscript, I may refer the reader to the preface to her predecessor _Shashiní_, entitled _A Digit of the Moon_. [2] Cp. also I. 154, 155, and elsewhere. It should be observed that learned doctors differ as to the interpretation of the _three strides_: but this is not the place to examine their views. [3] From this point of view, the period of Night would be the reign of _Tamas_, one of the three great categories of that philosophy: the Quality of _Darkness_, as opposed to _Light_, _Ignorance_, as opposed to _Knowledge_, _Evil_, as opposed to _Good_, the World _Below_, as opposed to the World _Above_. [4] From the Bhagwad-Gitá: IT _is never born and never dies_. CONTENTS. SUNSET.--An Evil Eye NIGHT.--A Sleep and a Dream DAWN [_Note_.--As the story belongs, by its title, both to Sun and Moon, it should be observed, that the Night and the two Twilights, Dusk and Dawn, apply to both in opposite ways. The Moon rises when the Sun sets, reigns over the Night when he is buried in Darkness, and either sets or vanishes when he is risen in his light. For the Moon is the type of Night, or this lower world (_ihaloka_), but the Sun, of Day, that is, of the other.] NIGHT.