英語聽書《白鯨記》第724期

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Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, we find the head-waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;—Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? Even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?

這樣，在我們團體的全部成員中，就不僅有英雄、圣人、神明和預(yù)言者了。我們還得舉出我們的老祖師來；因為，如同古代的帝王一樣，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)在我們的同道的來源中，就不乏許多大神。那個神奇的東方傳說，那個現(xiàn)在還在經(jīng)書上一再被傳誦著的、可畏敬的毗濕奴，經(jīng)書上就告訴我們，它是印度的三大神之一；這個神明的毗濕奴就是我們的上帝；——毗濕奴，作為塵世上的十大化身的第一個化身，就始終被單獨奉為大鯨之神。據(jù)經(jīng)書上說，當(dāng)婆羅門，即眾神之神決定要在這世界的一次定期毀滅后重造世界的時候，他生出了毗濕奴來主持這個大業(yè)，但是，那部《吠陀經(jīng)》，或者叫做《禪經(jīng)》，對于毗濕奴說來，卻似乎是他在開始創(chuàng)造世界之前，非加探討不可的東西。（因此它一定有些什么切合實際的東西，可供年輕的建筑師們借鏡）可是，由于這部《吠陀經(jīng)》一直就深藏在海里，所以毗濕奴不得不化身為大鯨，深潛到海底里，把這部圣書給撈了出來。這樣說來，難道這個毗濕奴不是個捕鯨人么？豈不是正如我們把騎著馬的人稱為騎手一樣嗎？

Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?

柏修斯，圣喬治，海格立斯，約拿和毗濕奴！這就是你所看到的一份會員錄！除了捕鯨人的團體以外，有哪個團體能夠有這樣源長流遠呢。