Creation (28 page)

Two days later the stallion turned south, and Varanasi was safe. Although Varshakara was furious, he did his best to appear serene. “You must,” he said to me the day after the horse’s departure, “come with me to the temple of Agni. He is just like your fire god, and I’m sure you’ll want to worship him in an Indian setting.”

I did not explain the Wise Lord to the chamberlain. I had already made up my mind that I would talk religion only with Brahmans, holy men and kings. But I was interested to see if my grandfather’s influence had spread beyond Persia.

Through what seemed to be miles of narrow, winding, unbelievably crowded streets, we were carried in gilded litters to the temple of Agni, a small ugly building made of wood and brick. We were respectfully received at the—door by the high priest, whose head was entirely shaved except for a long topknot. He wore scarlet robes and brandished a torch.

Beside the temple door, a round stone altar was protected from the rain by a canopy. Casually the high priest lit some ghee with, his torch. I must say that I was appalled at the sacrilege.
The sacred fire must be lit only in a sunless place
.
But I suppose the fact that the sun had not shone once in several months might qualify all India as a sunless place.

Varshakara and I then entered the temple, where a wooden statue of Agni gleams with rancid butter. The god is seated on a ram. In one of his four arms he holds a javelin, representative of fire, while on his head he wears an elaborate wooden crown depicting smoke. Other images in the temple show Agni with seven tongues, and so on, Like most Indo-Aryan deities he has all sorts of personas. In the hearth, he is fire. In the sky, he is lightning. At all time he is the intermediary between man and god because it is the fire that transports the burned sacrifice to heaven; in this last, and only in this, does Agni resemble Zoroaster’s fire.

There was a good deal of ritual, most of it quite confusing to a non-Brahman. For one thing, the priests used an archaic language that neither Caraka nor I understood. “I doubt if they understand it either,” he said later. Although Caraka’s parents were Jains, he liked to claim that he was a worshiper of Naga, the Dravidian snake god upon whose coils rests the world. Actually, Caraka was irreligious.

After an hour of chanted gibberish, each of us was offered an ill-tasting liquid in a communal cup. Dutifully I took a sip. The effect was swift and infinitely more powerful than that of haoma. But since I do not accept the Vedic gods, my waking dreams were unrelated to the ceremonies at hand. Even so, at one point Agni’s four arms appeared to move and by some trick or other the javelin did seem to be afire.

I muttered a prayer to fire, as the messenger of Ahura Mazdah, the Wise Lord. Later I learned that one of the names for the chief Aryan god Varuna is Ashura. This means that he is our own Ahura, or Wise Lord. I then realized that after my grandfather had recognized the central god of the Aryans as the sole creator, he dismissed all the other gods as irrelevant demons. But aside from Ashura-Varuna or Ahura Mazdah, we share nothing with the worshipers of the Vedic gods except the belief that harmony must be maintained between that which creates and that which is created through correct ritual and sacrifice. Yet I cannot help but think that the lunatic jumble that the Indo-Aryans have made of their gods is a sign that they are now moving toward Zoroaster’s concept of the unity that contains all things. Is not an infinitude of gods—as at Babylon—very close to being an admission that there is but One?

Ultimately, the sacrifices that are made to this or that devil must be construed by the Wise Lord as offerings to himself. Otherwise he would not let such things be. Meanwhile he sends us holy men to tell us how and when and what to sacrifice. The holiest was Zoroaster.

In India there are all sorts of holy men or teachers of this way or that way, and many of these figures are both fascinating and disturbing. Most reject the Vedic gods and the notion of an afterlife. According to the Vedic religion, evildoers end up in a hell known as the house of clay, while the good ascend to something called the world of the fathers; and that is that. The current crop of holy men believe in the transmigration of souls, a pre-Aryan concept. Certain holy men, or arhats, believe that the process can be stopped; others don’t. Quite a few are entirely indifferent; they would fit in nicely at one of Aspasia’s dinner parties.

But since the Indo-Aryan devil-worshipers believe that fire is an aspect of the good because fire burns away darkness, I did not in the least mind taking part in that ceremony at Varanasi. The Indians call the image-inducing liquid that I drank soma, obviously a variation of our own haoma. Unfortunately, the Brahmans enjoy their little secrets quite as much as do our Magians, and so I could not find out how or from what it is made. I do know that at one point I saw—that is, imagined—Agni hurl his fiery lance straight at the ceiling.

I also heard, very clearly, the high priest speak of the origin of all things. To my surprise, there was no talk of a cosmic egg or a colossal man or twins. Instead, he spoke very clearly of a moment when even nothingness did not exist.

I was struck by that image. I have never been able to envisage nothing because it is, I suppose, impossible for
some
thing—a man—to comprehend
no
thing at all.

“There was neither nonexistence nor existence; there was no air, no sky.” As the high priest finished each line of the so-called creation hymn, be would strike a small drum that he held in one hand.

“What covered all? and where?” The hymn then tells of a time—which was pre-time—when “there was neither death nor immortality, neither night nor day. But then, because of heat—” Where, I wondered, did the heat come from?—an entity known as the One came into being. “Thereafter rose desire, the primal seed and germ of spirit.” From the One came gods and men, this world, heaven and hell. Then the hymn takes a very odd turn.

“Who knows,” chanted the high priest, “where it all came from? and how creation happened? The gods, including Agni, do not know because they came later. So who does know? The highest of all the gods in heaven, does
he
know how it began—or is he ignorant too?”

To me, this sounded like atheism. But then, I have never been able to figure out what, if anything, the Brahmans actually believe. Although our own Magians are complicated, confused, sly, they are consistent in certain things. The original twins exist for them as the first man and woman. Also, I cannot conceive of any Magian suddenly questioning—at a religious ceremony!—the very existence of the creator-god.

In a highly drugged state I returned to the governor’s palace, where Varshakara wanted to talk to me at length of political matters. But I begged off. The soma and the rains and a journey of more than a thousand miles had exhausted me. I slept for three days.

I was awakened, finally, by Caraka.

“Varshakara has offered to escort us to Rajagriha. Shall I tell him yes?”

“Yes.” Although still half asleep, I was suddenly aware that something was not right. Then I realized that for the first time in close to four months I could not hear the rain clattering on the roof. “The rains ...”

“... have stopped. For a while, anyway. The monsoons withdraw gradually.”

“I was dreaming of that horse.” This was true. In my dream I was at the tomb of Cyrus near Persepolis. I was mounted on the stallion. In front of me stood Atossa and Lais, each with a sword in her hand.

“This is Persia!” Atossa shouted.

“And
that
is the wrong horse,” said Lais firmly; then Caraka awakened me.

I should have had the dream studied at once. Indians are marvelously adept at the interpretation of dreams. But I promptly forgot it and only now, a half-century later, do I recall the dream—vividly, and to no useful purpose.

“The horse is back in Rajagriha,” said Caraka. “Everyone’s upset, especially Bimbisara. He’d hoped to add Varanasi to his kingdom. Or failing that, one of those little republics north of the Ganges. But, so far, the horse has never left Magadha. I’ve arranged for you to meet Mahavira.”

“Who?” I was still half asleep.

“The crossing-maker. The hero of the Jains. He’s in Varanasi, and he’s agreed to meet you.”

The name Mahavira means great hero. The actual name of the twenty-fourth and last maker-of-crossings was Vardhamana. Although he came from a warrior family, his parents were such devoted Jains that they acted seriously upon the Jaina injunction that the best of all deaths is to blow out one’s own life, slowly and deliberately and reverently, through starvation.

When Vardhamana was thirty years old, his parents starved themselves to death. I must say they sound to me like real heroes, if not great heroes. Vardhamana was so impressed by his parents’ death that he left his wife and children and became a Jaina monk. After twelve years of isolation and self-abnegation, he achieved a state called by the Indians kevala. This means that he has somehow joined himself in a special way to the cosmos.

Vardhamana was acclaimed Mahavira, and became the head of the Jaina order. When I was in India, the order was made up of some fourteen thousand celibate men and women. The men live in monasteries, the women in convents. A number of the men go without clothes and are known as sky-clad. Women may not be so heavenly adorned.

On a low hill above the Ganges, a group of Jaina monks had converted a dilapidated warehouse into a monastery where Mahavira had spent the rainy season. We had been told to arrive just after the noon meal. Since the monks do nothing more than gobble a bowl of rice that they have begged, the noon meal begins and ends at noon. So, shortly after noon, a pair of monks escorted us into a cavernous damp room where several hundred members of the order were praying loudly. I noticed that most of them do not wash themselves very often, and that many of them seemed to be physically deformed or ill.

Our guides led us to a sort of lean-to which is separated by a curtain from the warehouse proper. Behind the curtain we found the great hero himself. Mahavira was seated cross-legged on a sumptuous Lydian rug. He wore a golden robe. I thought this somewhat unascetic, but Caraka assured me that each of the twenty-four crossing-makers has had, from the beginning of time, his own particular color and emblem. Mahavira’s color was gold, and his emblem was the lion.

I suppose Mahavira must have been in his late seventies when I met him. He was a short, thick man with a high, compelling voice. He almost never looked at you when he spoke, which I always find disconcerting. But I was brought up at a court where you must not look at anyone royal. Therefore, if someone does not look at me, I think that I am either with someone royal or with—what? An impostor?

“Welcome, ambassador from the Great King Darius. Welcome, grandson of Zoroaster, who spoke for the Wise Lord, if anyone does.”

I was pleased that I was known to Mahavira; displeased at the ambiguity of “if anyone does.” Did he mean that Zoroaster was
not
the prophet? I soon found out.

I saluted Mahavira in the elaborate Indian manner while Caraka kissed his feet as a sign of respect. We then sat at the edge of the rug. Behind the curtain, we could hear the monks chanting in unison some endless hymn.

“I have come to teach all men the ways of the Wise Lord,” I said.

“If any man can do this, I am sure that it is you.” Again the small smile of someone who knew or thought he knew more than one did. I controlled my irritation. For his benefit, I chanted one of Zoroaster’s gathas.

When I stopped, Mahavira said, “There are many gods, just as there are many men and many—mosquitoes.” This last occurred to him when a large mosquito made a slow circuit of his head. As a Jain, Mahavira could not take its life. As a guest of the Jains, I decided that I would not take its life either. Perversely, the mosquito ended by drinking blood from the back of my hand and not from his.

“We are all the same substance,” I was told. Tiny particles, or life monads, assemble and reassemble, in this form and that form. “Some ascend the life cycle,” he said. “And some descend.”

It is the view of the Jains that the cosmos is filled with atoms. I use the word that Anaxagoras invented for the infinitesimal bits of matter that make up creation. Yet the life monad of the Jains is not exactly the same as an atom.

Anaxagoras would not think of an infinitely small bit of sand, say, as containing life. But for the Jains
every
atom is a life monad. Some monads intermingle and ascend the life cycle from sand and water through the vegetable and animal realms to those higher creatures who possess five senses, a category that includes not only human beings but the gods themselves. Or the life monads disintegrate and descend the cycle. First they lose the so-called five faculties of action as well as the five senses; then they gradually decompose themselves into their constituent elements.

“But when and how did this process of ascending and descending begin?” I asked, fearing the answer that I indeed got.

“There is neither beginning nor end. We are fated to continue from level to level, up or down, as we have always done and will always do until this cycle of the world ends—to begin again. Meanwhile, I am the last crossing-maker in this cycle. We are now descending, all of us.”

“You, too?”

“As all things must, I must. But I am the crossing-maker. I at least have been able to make clear as a diamond the life-monad that animates my being.”

Apparently a life monad is like a crystal that is dimmed or darkened or colored by one of six karmic, or fated, colors. If you kill someone deliberately, your life monad will turn black. If you kill inadvertently, it will turn dark-blue, and so on. But if you observe faithfully all the rules of the order, you will become pure, but you will not be the crossing-maker. You must be born that.

The certainty with which Mahavira spoke was the result of an ancient religion whose tenets he so entirely accepted that he could conceive of nothing else. When I pointed out to him that the tension between the life monad and those colors that stain it somewhat resembles the struggles between the Wise Lord and Ahriman, he smiled politely and said, “In every religion, no matter how undeveloped, there is often a tension between the idea of what is good and what is evil. But youthful religions fall short of absolute truth. They cannot accept the end of human personality. They insist upon a cave of clay or some sort of ancestral home where the individual may continue as himself for all time. Now, that is childlike. Is it not plain that what did not begin cannot end? Is it not plain that what ascends must also descend? Is it not plain that there is no escape? Except to become complete, as I have done, by integrating myself with the entire universe.”