The Pilgrim Kamanita · Chapter
VII: In the Ravine explained
Kamanita recounts the aftermath of the attack in the ravine, his recovery alongside Vasitthi, and the growing threat from Satagira.
What happens
Kamanita recounts the aftermath of the attack in the ravine, his recovery alongside Vasitthi, and the growing threat from Satagira. Their secret meetings are discovered, leading to forced separation and Vasitthi's plea for Kamanita to leave the city. Despite the danger, Kamanita refuses to depart without a final private meeting, and Medini helps devise a plan.
Themes in this chapter
Suffering and Detachment
Kamanita's physical wounds and emotional torment illustrate the suffering inherent in attachment to love and worldly desires.
Illusion and Reality
The idyllic 'Terrace of the Sorrowless' becomes a 'sunken island' as the harsh reality of danger and separation intrudes.
Characters to notice
- Kamanita
Narrates the attack, his wounds, and his longing for Vasitthi; refuses to leave without seeing her alone.
- Vasitthi
Falls ill from worry over Kamanita; pleads with him to leave the city for his safety.
- Medini
Acts as messenger between the sick lovers and later helps devise a plan for a secret meeting.
- Somadatta
Fights alongside Kamanita in the ravine, helps him home, and later relays Vasitthi's plan.
- Satagira
Revealed as the instigator of the attack; informs Vasitthi's parents of the secret meetings.
Key passages
“I was obliged to laugh aloud because I heard that there were people who called this world a vale of woe, and who directed their thoughts and wishes to the not being born again among men. “What arrant fools, Somadatta,” I cried, “as if there could be a more perfect abode of bliss than the Terrace of the Sorrowless!””
Kamanita mocked those who see the world as a place of suffering and seek to escape rebirth, insisting that the Terrace of the Sorrowless was the ultimate paradise.
Highlights Kamanita's initial ignorance of suffering and attachment to worldly bliss.
“Thus, then, was our love homeless. That which, most of all, feels itself at home in secret, might only be so now where the whole world looked on.”
Their love, which thrived in secrecy, was now exposed and constrained by public scrutiny.
Emphasizes the loss of intimacy and the pain of forced openness.