Mocking this popular outburst of feeling, with an august shake of his
head and a contemptuous sneer, Pundarik stood up, and flung this
question to the assembly; "What is there superior to words?" In a
moment the hall lapsed into silence again.

Then with a marvellous display of learning, he proved that the Word was
in the beginning, that the Word was God. He piled up quotations from
scriptures, and built a high altar for the Word to be seated above all
that there is in heaven and in earth. He repeated that question in his
mighty voice: "What is there superior to words?"

Proudly he looked around him. None dared to accept his challenge, and
he slowly took his seat like a lion who had just made a full meal of its
victim. The pandits shouted, Bravo ! The king remained silent with
wonder, and the poet Shekhar felt himself of no account by the side of
this stupendous learning. The assembly broke up for that day.

Next day Shekhar began his song. It was of that day when the pipings of
love's flute startled for the first time the hushed air of the Vrinda
forest. The shepherd women did not know who was the player or whence
came the music. Sometimes it seemed to come from the heart of the south
wind, and sometimes from the straying clouds of the hilltops. It came
with a message of tryst from the land of the sunrise, and it floated
from the verge of sunset with its sigh of sorrow. The stars seemed to
be the stops of the instrument that flooded the dreams of the night with
melody. The music seemed to burst all at once from all sides, from
fields and groves, from the shady lanes and lonely roads, from the
melting blue of the sky, from the shimmering green of the grass. They
neither knew its meaning nor could they find words to give utterance to