The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c11.123

v1.c11.123

of the Vedas have, without a single exception, been elaborated into myths in after ages, and not a few of them form the basis of mystical dogmas. In Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece and Rome, ancient poetry went through the same course of transformation, and the result was very much the same. Allegories on religious subjects, when not otherwise explained, have been looked upon as mystic, and the *Song of Songs* of Solomon has always been looked upon as a remarkable specimen of this species of composition, typifying under the figure of a marriage the intimate connexion between God and His Church. The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and David use the same kind of mystic allegory,⁶² and instances of this description from the Old Testament may be easily multiplied. The mystical character of the *Song of Solomon* may be compared with that of the Pastorals of Jayadeva, designed, like the *song* in question, to illustrate the longing of the human soul for communion with the divine. The late Dr. Adam Clarke was so struck with the comparison between the *Gitagovinda* of Jayadeva and the *Song of Solomon*, that he inserted the whole poem in his commentary on the Bible with this introduction: “*Gitagovinda*.—A mystical poem supposed to have a near resemblance to the *Book of Canticles*, many passages of which it illustrates. There are few turns of thought in the *Song of Songs* that may not find a parallel in the *Gitagovinda*, and even the strongly impassioned language of Solomon may be everywhere supported by that of Jayadeva and vice versa.” The eminent linguist and Biblical critic, Dr. Mason Good, in his translation of Solomon’s *Song*, has illustrated many passages of it from the *Gitagovinda*; and Hartwell Horn, whose *Introduction to the Scriptures* is a text-book in the principal universities of England and America, and a knowledge of which is required by the Bishops from candidates studying for orders, remarks: “In further confirmation of the preceding view of the spiritual design of this sacred oriental poem, we may observe that this allegoric mode of describing the sacred union between mankind at large, or an individual and pious soul, and the Great Creator, is common to almost all Eastern poets from the earliest down to the present age. Without such an esoteric or spiritual interpretation, it is impossible to understand many passages of the Persian poets, Sādī and Hāfiz, and the Turkish commentators on them have uniformly thus interpreted them. A similar emblematic mysticism is equally conspicuous with the bards of Indra, and the Vedāntic or Hindu commentators have, in like manner, attributed a double, i. e., literal and spiritual, meaning to their compositions. This is particularly the case with the *Gitagovinda* or *Songs* of Jayadeva, the subject of which is the loves of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, or the reciprocal attraction between the Divine goodness and the soul of man, and the style and imagery of which, like those of the royal Hebrew poet, are in the highest degree flowery and amatory.”⁶³