Creation (30 page)

After the first day or two of what can only be described as seasickness, one becomes not only used to this sort of travel but also fond of the beast itself. I would not be surprised if elephants
are
more intelligent than human beings. After all, their heads are larger than ours, and the fact that they do not speak might well be an indication of superiority.

What for us is the cool autumn of the year is a hot and stormy time for the people of the Gangetic plain. As the monsoons gradually recede, the moist air is heavy with heat; and one feels rather as if one were floating under water. The strange feathery trees are like sea ferns, among whose fronds bright-colored birds dart like fish.

The road to Rajagriha is unusually bad. When I said as much to Varshakara, he looked surprised. “This is one of our best roads, Lord Ambassador.” Then he laughed. A red spray of saliva just missed me. “If the road were any better, we would have armies marching against us every day.”

This was cryptic, to say the least. Since Magadha is the most powerful state in India, there is no army that would dare march against it. Unless, of course, the chamberlain was making a subtle reference to Darius. Although I often had difficulty understanding what he said, I had no difficulty at all in understanding him. Varshakara was a merciless man of great ambition. He would do anything to increase the power of Magadha. He would ... But I shall get to all that in due course.

I was impressed by the richness of the land in the so called great plain. There are two harvests a year. One is in the winter, the only bearable season; the second is at the time of the summer solstice. Immediately after the summer harvest, rice and millet are planted, and the fields devoted to those crops looked, to my eye, like yellow-green rugs thrown across the flat land. Without much effort, the people are well-fed. In fact, if it were not for the complex task of feeding large urban areas, the Indian villager could live without work. The fruits and nuts from trees, the domestic and water fowl, the thousand and one varieties of river fish provide a bountiful free diet.

But cities require elaborate agriculture. As a result, the enormous cattle herds of the Aryan conquerors are now being deliberately cut back as grazing land is converted to farm land, and there is a good deal of debate about this change in the way the people live. “What is an Aryan without his cow?” the Brahmans ask. They do not, of course, expect an answer.

Just past the forest or jungle to the east of Varanasi, there are many villages. Each settlement is surrounded by a flimsy wooden stockade, designed not to keep out an army but to prevent tigers and other predators from carrying off livestock and children. At the center of each of these somewhat random communities is a rest house where travelers can sleep on the floor for nothing and buy a meal for next-to-nothing.

I was surprised to learn that most Indian farmers are free men and that each village has its own elected council. Although they are obliged to pay taxes to whoever happens to be their overlord, they are pretty much left in peace. No doubt this explains the high crop yield of the Indian countryside. As every landowner on earth knows, a hired farmer or slave will produce exactly half as much food as a freeman who owns the land that he tills. Obviously, the Indian village system is a leftover from an earlier, more pristine age of man.

The journey from Varanasi to Rajagriha took two weeks. We traveled slowly. Except for the heat of the day, the journey was comfortable. Each night elaborate tents were set up for the chamberlain and for me. Caraka shared my tent while the rest of the embassy slept in the rest house of the nearest village or beneath the stars.

Each night I would burn a noxious incense which drives away those insects that feed on sleeping men. But Indian snakes are another problem. Since neither incense nor prayer repels them, Varshakara allowed me the use of a small furry snake-eating creature called a mongoose. Chain a mongoose to a post near your bed, and no snake will disturb your sleep.

Evenings were tranquil. Caraka and I would make notes about what we had seen and heard during the day. We also supervised the making of new maps, since Scylax’s map of the interior of India was as inaccurate as the rendering of the coastal area was precise. Then, once the tents were set up, I would usually dine with Varshakara. He was as curious about me as I was about him. Although we told each other numerous necessary lies, I was able to pick up a good deal of useful information about the exotic world that I had only just begun to penetrate. We would recline on divans, which somewhat resemble Greek couches except that they are upholstered and strewn with cushions. Beside each divan was the inevitable spittoon. Indians are always chewing some sort of narcotic leaf.

Indian food is not unlike Lydian. Saffron is much used, as well as a pungent combination of spices called curry. For cooking fat the wealthy use ghee, which keeps for a long time even in hot weather. Eventually, I grew used to ghee. If I had not, I would have starved. What is not fried in ghee is soaked in it. I much preferred the oil that the Indian poor use. Made from a grain called sesamun, it is lighter than ghee and tastes no worse. Sesamun oil is to the masses what olive oil is to the Athenians.

But at royal or rich tables only ghee may be served, and since I ate, doggedly, whatever was served me, I became for the first and only time in my life fat as a eunuch. Incidentally, fatness in both sexes is much admired by Indians. No woman can ever be too fat, while a prince of spheroid proportions is reckoned to be blessed by the gods and perfectly happy.

Yet the chamberlain himself ate sparingly. On the other hand, he enjoyed altogether too much a powerful drink that is made from distilled sugar cane. I also grew to like it. But each of us took care not to drink too much in the other’s company. Varshakara regarded me with the same suspicion that I regarded him. As we flattered each other extravagantly in the Indian manner, each waited for the other to make an indiscreet move; neither ever did.

I do remember one conversation in the tent. After an unusually heavy dinner we continued to drink the sugarcane wine that a servant girl kept pouring into our earthenware cups. I was half asleep; so was he. But I do remember asking, “How much longer is the horse supposed to wander?”

“Until the spring. Another five or six months. Have you a similar ceremony in Persia?”

“No. But the horse is peculiarly sacred to our kings. Once a year our priests sacrifice a horse at the tomb of Cyrus the Great King.”

The Indian horse sacrifice made a great impression on me. For one thing, I was struck by the sheer strangeness of fighting a war simply because a horse has chosen to graze in the field of another country. Of course, I had heard those endless verses of blind Homer, who assures us that once upon a time the Greeks attacked Troy—now Sigeum in our part of the world—because the wife of a Greek chieftain had run off with a Trojan youth. For anyone who knows both the Greeks and Sigeum, it is perfectly plain that the Greeks have always wanted to control the entrance to the Black Sea and the rich lands beyond. But to gain that control, they must first conquer Troy or Sigeum. Currently, that is the dream of Pericles. I wish him luck. He will need it. Meanwhile, should Pericles’ wife run off with the son of old Hippias of Sigeum, that would make a suitably Greek pretext for war and you, Democritus, can celebrate the result in verse.

We Persians are more candid than other peoples. We admit openly that we created an empire in order to become richer and safer than we were before. Besides, if we had not conquered our neighbors, they would have conquered us. That is the way of the world. It is certainly the way of those Aryan tribes whom Homer sang about in much the same way that the Brahmans of India sing of the heroes of their Aryan past. Incidentally, one Vedic narrative about a young king named Rama may well be the longest hymn ever written. I am told that it takes at least ten years for an intelligent Brahman to learn every line. After having listened to a day or two of this hymn, I think that one can say with some justice that the narrative is even more boring than Homer’s story. To me, the only interesting thing about either of these old Aryan stories is the fact that the gods are simply superheroes. There is no sense of true deity anywhere in either story. The Aryan gods are exactly like ordinary men and women except that they seem to live forever; they also have exaggerated appetites which they overindulge, usually at the expense of human beings.

Democritus tells me that the intelligent Greeks have never taken the Homeric gods seriously. That may be. But the huge temple to Athena that is now being built just behind us on the Acropolis is an incredibly expensive memorial to a goddess that is obviously taken very seriously not only by the people but by the rulers of a city that has been named for her. Also, it is still a capital offense in Athens to mock or deny the Homeric gods—in public, at least.

The Indians of my day—and perhaps now, too—were wiser than the Greeks. For them the gods are simply there or not there, depending on your perception of them. The notion of impiety is quite alien to the Indian mind. Not only do Aryan kings enjoy talking to atheists who openly mock the high gods of the Aryan tribes but no Aryan ruler would ever dream of outlawing the pre-Aryan local gods of the country folk.

My grandfather’s attempt to make devils of the Aryan gods struck the Aryans of India not so much as a sign of impiety as an exercise in pointlessness. Under such names as Brahma and Varuna, the idea of the Wise Lord is everywhere prevalent. Why, then, they would ask me, deny the lesser gods? I repeated Zoroaster’s injunctions: one must purify oneself; cast out devils; convert all men to the True. I did not make a single convert. But then, my mission was political.

Varshakara did not know when or how or why the horse sacrifice began. “It is very old. Very sacred. In fact, after the ceremony of coronation, it is the most important ceremony in a king’s life.”

“Because it adds new territory to the realm?” Varshakara nodded. “What better indication of heaven’s favor? Had the horse entered Varanasi, our king would have been truly glorious. But ...” Varshakara sighed.

“I don’t want to be irreligious, Lord Chamberlain”—the powerful wine had somewhat loosened my tongue—“but those warriors who follow the horse ... can they determine its direction?”

When Varshakara smiled, his betel-stained teeth seemed to drip blood. “Even to hint that the horse is guided by anything but fate is intolerable and irreligious ... and partly true. The horse can be subtly guided, but only to a point. Since cities tend to terrify horses, we usually encourage the horse to walk all around a city. That’s quite good enough for us. Control the perimeter of a city, and the place is yours. Naturally, our soldiers will then have to defeat their soldiers. But that part is simple—for us. Koshala is disintegrating and we could very easily have ... But the horse went south. Our only hope now is that it will turn to the northeast, to the Ganges, to the republics on the other side. That’s where the real danger is.”

“The republics?”

Again Varshakara showed his red teeth, but not in a smile. “There are nine republics. From the Shakya republic in the northern mountains down to the Licchavi republic just across the Ganges from Magadha, the nine are all united by a relentless hatred of Magadha.”

“How can nine small republics be a single threat to a great kingdom?”

“Because at this very moment they are making a federation, which will be as powerful as Magadha. Last year they elected a general sangha.”

I suppose assembly is the best translation for this word. But whereas the Athenian assembly is supposedly open to commoners as well as to nobles, the sangha of the Indian republics was made up of representatives from each of the nine states. As it turned out, only five republics ever joined the federation, and those were the states closest to Magadha and so most fearful of King Bimbisara and his chamberlain Varshakara. They had every right to be afraid. These republics stood in relation to Magadha rather the way that the Ionian Greek cities stand in relation to Persia. The only difference is that in the days of Darius, the Greek cities of Asia Minor were not republics but tyrannies.

Even so, I thought the analogy apt. I made it. “It has been our experience that no republic can ever withstand a popular monarchy. Consider the Greeks ...” I might just as well have mentioned the inhabitants of the moon. Varshakara had a fair notion of what and where Persia was, and he knew something of Babylon and Egypt; otherwise, the west did not exist for him.

I tried to tell him how no two Greeks can ever agree for any length of time on a common policy. As a result, they are either defeated by disciplined outside armies or torn apart from within by democratic factions.

Varshakara understood enough of this to define the Indian word for republic. “These countries are not governed by popular assemblies. Those ended long before we arrived. No, those republics are governed by assemblies or councils made up of the heads of the noble families. What we call a republic is really a—” He used the Indian word for oligarchy.

Later I learned that the ancient tribal assemblies that he had referred to were not pre-Aryan; instead, they were very much a part of the original Aryan tribal system. In free assembly, leaders were elected. But the assemblies gradually faded away, as they tend to do everywhere; and hereditary monarchy took their place, as it tends to do everywhere.

“You’re right that we have nothing to fear from any one of these republics. But a federation presents a real danger. After all, only the Ganges separates us from their southern border.”

“What about Koshala?” Although my grasp of Indian geography was never to be entirely secure, even then I had a mental picture of that part of the world which was not totally inaccurate. I could see in my imagination the high mountains to the north. They are supposed to be the highest in the world, as if anyone has ever measured them—or seen all the other mountains that there are on this vast earth. But the Himalayas are certainly impressive, particularly when seen from the low flat Gangetic plain. These mountains are the home of the Aryan gods and, more important, the source of the Ganges River. At the foot of the Himalayas are the nine small republics. They are set in a fertile valley between the Rapti River on the west and the thickly forested foothills to the Himalayas on the east. The Gandak River runs more or less through the center of this territory, ending when it joins the Ganges, the northern border of Magadha. The most important of Indian trade routes starts at the far-eastern port of Tamralipti and passes through the republics on its way to Taxila and Persia beyond. Magadha has always coveted that trade route.