THE
COLONY
17
assembled in a large field, a natural theatre shaped like a saucer with
a broken rim, which was closed on three sides by a
rise
of ground and
shallow at the farther end where the platform had been raised. Over
the shallow the sun rose, and as those who knelt faced the sun, they
seemed also to be praying to the leaders on the platform, the party's
banner and the cloth streamers, covered with slogans in all the native
dialects, that were strung along the trees. This put a taint of idolatry
upon the prayer, confusing religion with politics in a manner which
Satya, who sat on a dais and therefore seemed to be the object of
worship, found extremely distasteful. But it could not be helped; even
practical circumstances contributed their share to the confusion. Thus,
t
the fact that the shallow depression happened to lie directly in the
path of the rising sun, could not stand against its selection
as
the best
site for the platform. There was a similar confusion in the country
itself, a complexity and a tangle, an imperfection and intermingling of
chance and necessity, tradition and hazard, which put truth beyond
all simple utterance, made irony inevitable and molded even the nar-
I.S'l
rawest will into a product of contraries.
Satya sat with his legs folded under
him,
his thighs forming a
deep bay-the traditional human lap of generation and reception,
which even the earliest gods had learned to imitate. So, level with
the earth, they had poured forth their seed into furrows and valleys
and in return, received human offering, having discovered that this
was the best position for the intercourse they held with men. The
language in which the hymns were sung had once been a human
language, but now forgotten, it had become divine. So, too, the
spreading of genital laps in the sign of nature pointed to a discon–
tinued intercourse, and the gods, who were
all
split beings, owing
half their existence to nature and half to man, had become one, as
the dirt of the soil and the mark of human handiwork had disap–
peared. They had entered reality, acquiring their own natures, because,
and this was all Satya would grant to the sacred metaphysic, reality,
as
it was forgotten, retreated behind successive veils, spun out of
threads which men still held in their hands. It is what we put away
from us that becomes real, not what we handle and use. That which
dies acquires its own life.
Children were singing the hymns. They were ranged around the
platform many rows deep, their heads bowed, their hands clasped at
their breasts, their white gowns and bare feet, with dully shining nails,
making a natural uniform. The blue-black straight glossy hair of the
girls, parted in the middle, was bisected by rows of white scalp and
