"Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when the heathen pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!"
And, with this most splendid stanza, thus, does start the most amazing, splendid and magical book - KIM - by Rudyard Kipling. For all those who have read, re-read and read and re-read KIM again and again and again, and once again, these lines will forever remain etched in their memory. Kipling uses three stanzas in different chapters to summon the beginning, and they come from a rather very indistinct and not-as-usual-remarkable poems that he has written. This one is from 'Buddha at Kamakura' written sometime in 1892.
The poem is thus -
Buddha at Kamakura (1892)
‘And there is a Japanese idol at Kamakura.’
O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when ‘the heathen’ pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!
To Him the Way, the Law, apart,
Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda’s Lord, the Bodhisat,
The Buddha of Kamakura.
For though He neither burns nor sees,
Nor hears ye thank your Deities,
Ye have not sinned with such as these,
His children at Kamakura,
Yet spare us still the Western joke
When joss-sticks turn to scented smoke
The little sins of little folk
That worship at Kamakura—
The grey-robed, gay-sashed butterflies
That flit beneath the Master’s eyes.
He is beyond the Mysteries
But loves them at Kamakura.
And whoso will, from Pride released,
Contemning neither creed nor priest,
May feel the Soul of all the East
About him at Kamakura.
Yea, every tale Ananda heard,
Of birth as fish or beast or bird,
While yet in lives the Master stirred,
The warm wind brings Kamakura.
Till drowsy eyelids seem to see
A-flower ’neath her golden htee
The Shwe-Dagon flare easterly
From Burma to Kamakura,
And down the loaded air there comes
The thunder of Thibetan drums,
And droned—‘Om mane padme hum’s’
A world’s-width from Kamakura.
Yet Brahmans rule Benares still,
Buddh-Gaya’s ruins pit the hill,
And beef-fed zealots threaten ill
To Buddha and Kamakura.
A tourist-show, a legend told,
A rusting bulk of bronze and gold,
So much, and scarce so much, ye hold
The meaning of Kamakura?
But when the morning prayer is prayed,
Think, ere ye pass to strife and trade,
Is God in human image made
No nearer than Kamakura?
Rudyard Kipling is known to have visited Japan during 1889 and later in 1892. There is considerable writing about Japan and it is available as a separate compilation. The poem - 'Buddha at Kamakura' - was first published in the New York Sun and the Lahore Civil and Military News in July 1892. And, as said earlier, three of the stanzas in this poem appear as chapter headings in Kim, published in 1901. Kipling had worked for nearly seven years in India, especially in Mumbai, and also in the Times of India, as a journalist. He left India, this time, permanently, on 9 March 1889, and planned to journey on a voyage to London, though, via the Far East and South East Asia. He journeyed through Rangoon, Penang, Singapore and Hong Kong before reaching Nagasaki on 15 April 1889.
While in Japan, Kipling visited several places, including Kamakura, and brought about this most remarkable poem about the Amitabha Buddha.
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