DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5828#0148
A HINDOO LEGEND.
119
CHAPTER XIV.
To account for the sudden and unexpected change
which had come over the spirit of their sovereign,
puzzled all the conjurors ; not one of them could
unravel the mystery. Many ventured to imagine that
the venerahle Veramarken was under the influence of
some of the emissaries of Yama, whose office it is to
corrupt the souls of holy men, and seduce them to
his infernal abodes. And, yet, how this should pos-
sibly happen to a man who had reached the extreme
purity of a Suniassi, was too great a marvel to be
reduced to so simple an elucidation. Yama could
have no power over one who had obtained not oidy
the sanction, but the fellowship of the celestial
principalities, and had moreover performed those
penances which rendered him impermeable by the
assaults of evil. Besides, it was morally impossible
that the soul of a pious penitentiary, who had rival-
led each of the seven penitents in the severity of
his mortifications, should, on a sudden, have aban-
doned the claims to which those mortifications enti-
tled him, and have submitted to the dominion of
that retributory divinity, presiding over the infernal
Pnson of doomed souls, to whom he awards ever-
lasting tortures.
119
CHAPTER XIV.
To account for the sudden and unexpected change
which had come over the spirit of their sovereign,
puzzled all the conjurors ; not one of them could
unravel the mystery. Many ventured to imagine that
the venerahle Veramarken was under the influence of
some of the emissaries of Yama, whose office it is to
corrupt the souls of holy men, and seduce them to
his infernal abodes. And, yet, how this should pos-
sibly happen to a man who had reached the extreme
purity of a Suniassi, was too great a marvel to be
reduced to so simple an elucidation. Yama could
have no power over one who had obtained not oidy
the sanction, but the fellowship of the celestial
principalities, and had moreover performed those
penances which rendered him impermeable by the
assaults of evil. Besides, it was morally impossible
that the soul of a pious penitentiary, who had rival-
led each of the seven penitents in the severity of
his mortifications, should, on a sudden, have aban-
doned the claims to which those mortifications enti-
tled him, and have submitted to the dominion of
that retributory divinity, presiding over the infernal
Pnson of doomed souls, to whom he awards ever-
lasting tortures.