The Tiger Warrior (29 page)

“It’s all carved by the same hand,” Jack said, looking around. “The same style, the same techniques.”

“The figures are familiar to me, but the style isn’t,” Pradesh murmured. “I haven’t seen anything like this in southern India.”

“It’s reminiscent of Gandharan art,” Jack said. “The art of ancient Bactria, the kingdom founded by Alexander the Great’s successors in Afghanistan. A fusion of Indian and Greek styles.”

“But here, it’s not so much a fusion of styles,” Pradesh added. “It’s a fusion of Indian
images
with a foreign style. It’s as if someone from a completely different artistic tradition is trying to copy what he’s seen in India, maybe in Persia too, but using his own techniques and conventions.”

Jack traced his fingers over the elephant trunk. “This is technically skilled work, but not distinguished. If I were to make a comparison with the Graeco-Roman world, I’d say it was done by a jobbing sculptor, the kind who did sarcophagi, household altars, inscriptions, routine architectural decoration. An artisan more than an artist.”

“There’s something not right in all this,” Pradesh said, looking around.

“You mean the whole place is out of sync with the jungle?” Costas said. “I was thinking that. What you were saying earlier. The spirits, the gods of the jungle. The Kóya have no need to represent their gods. They see them already.”

“That’s one problem. But even if you buy into the idea that all this Hindu and Buddhist and animist worship did happen here, it’s still not right.”

“Go on,” Jack said.

“When I was seconded to the Survey of India two years ago, my first posting was to Badami, a cave complex about two hundred miles west of here. I’d studied ancient mining technology for my engineering dissertation, and we were assessing the safety of the caves. They’re famous for the painting and sculpture, mainly sixth century AD. There are familiar mythological scenes, like this one, Vishnu striding across the universe. But at Badami they’re part of a coherent whole, flowing into other scenes, a fluid, confident iconography. Here they’re fragmented, like unmixed ingredients. The Badami sculptor knew his mythology and believed in it. Here they’re like a collection of tourist snapshots. There’s no soul to them, no depth. Hinduism is inclusive. Voraciously inclusive. It accepts all manner of different gods. But there’s just too much here. It’s too disjointed. I’m a practicing Hindu, and I can tell you, it doesn’t feel right.”

“It’s as if someone wanted to keep people out of here, but was hedging his bets, using all the deities he thought the locals might fear,” Costas said.

“Even including the odd Parthian one,” Jack murmured.

“Maybe there was something to hide,” Pradesh said.

Costas pointed at the gloom of the far wall, where dark cracks were visible between the shapes of the boulders. “Another chamber, maybe? That Kubera god, the god of treasure, could be the ultimate protector. If he’s a god of the older religion, maybe the sculptor did understand that the people here would fear the ancient gods more than anything from Hinduism and Buddhism. Whoever did this must have had some contact with the local people. He saw them carry out human sacrifice. And he must have been fed, somehow.”

Pradesh nodded. “Traditionally, the Kóya from Rampa village left food offerings outside here every day. They thought the god Rama was inside, cornered by the spirits of the jungle. As long as he was fed, he would stay there. Every night, the food offerings would disappear. The
muttadar
probably came at night and took away anything left over by the animals to keep up the pretense. And the rats used to grow to a huge size here. The legend was that if an offering was missed, Rama would break free and wreak his vengeance on the jungle people, taking on the guise of the
konda devata
, the tiger spirit, and cleaving them with his great broken sword.”

“Broken sword?” Costas murmured. “That rings a bell, Jack.”

“If we’re going to seek history behind the mythology, the ritual makes sense,” Pradesh continued. “In ancient times, Rama comes into the jungle, the prince who is later deified. But the jungle people resist the intrusion of Hinduism into their spiritual world. The shrine becomes a focus of their cultural strength. They put Rama inside, the intruder. Their gods imprison him. So for the rebel leaders in 1879, this place was a rallying point, a focus of defiance against outsiders. They murder the police constables here, in the guise of sacrifice. But in the minds of the Kóya, Rama was then sealed inside by the earthquake, and the food offerings gradually ceased. And something had gone, the
vélpu
that disappeared in 1879. It was not Rama in the guise of the
konda devata
they now feared, but the
konda devata
itself, the tiger spirit of the jungle.”

“So where’s the image of Rama in all this?” Costas said, looking around. “I mean, isn’t this supposed to be his shrine?”

Pradesh paused. “In Hindu belief, Rama was the descendent of an ancient solar dynasty. He could be represented by that image of Vishnu, or by a sun carving. Maybe we just need to look more closely.”

Jack was staring at the chisel work on the neck of the Kubera god, seeing techniques that seemed remarkably familiar. He stepped back, sweeping his flashlight around the room, finding details, lingering on them, seeing what all his education made him want to deny, yet which years of incredible discoveries as an archaeologist made him know lay within the realm of possibility. His mind raced back to Egypt, to Hiebermeyer’s discovery of the
Periplus
, to the first glimmerings of this trail they were on. An extraordinary discovery was beginning to take shape before his eyes, an imprint from the past that was becoming more real with every second.

“What’s the date of all this?” Costas said.

“The
yakśas
and
yakśīs
, like the
naga
, the serpent, are idols to earth spirits, survivors of the early religion in India before Hinduism and Buddhism took over,” Pradesh replied. “The earliest
yakśas
sculptures date from the third century BC, but these ones here could be first century BC, possibly first century AD. That was when the gods of early Hinduism, the ones you see here, started to make an appearance. After that, the Hindu gods rule supreme over the native cults, absorbing or extinguishing them. And there are no images of Buddha here, but there are Buddhist symbols, the bull on the pillar, the spoked wheel. It’s a little like early Christianity, where symbols were used before Christ was represented anthropomorphically.”

“So this could be, say, late first century BC,” Costas said.

“That would fit with the sculptural style, if we were looking at Graeco-Roman influence,” Jack said. “There are stylistic and technical details I’d put in the late Republican period, if this were Rome.”

“We’ve got to eliminate the obvious,” Pradesh said. “The Roman site at Arikamedu’s only four hundred miles south of here. No Roman from Arikamedu would ever have come into the jungle without a very good reason, but we have to consider the possibility.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t see a sculptor at Arikamedu. Mud-brick buildings, wooden, purely utilitarian. Even at Berenikê on the Red Sea there was hardly anything made of stone. There was nothing for a sculptor to do.”

“Maybe someone who’d been a sculptor, but changed careers, became a sailor or a trader,” Costas said. “Maybe he came to India and then went native, found a bolthole in the jungle, rediscovered an old passion for carving. You always say it, Jack. Anything’s possible.”

Jack hesitated, thinking hard. “Sculpting, stonemasonry, was a hereditary profession, and you didn’t move between trades that easily in the ancient world. And if we’re talking Rome about the time of Augustus, it would have been madness to leave. Augustus rebuilt the city in stone. It was one of the biggest building programs in history.” He paused, then voiced a suspicion that had dawned on him only moments before. “But you may have hit on something. There was one walk of Roman life that took men with all manner of skills, from every profession.”

“The army,” Pradesh said.

“Citizen-soldiers,” Jack murmured. “But we need to think carefully about the date. At the time of Augustus, the army was becoming professional, recruiting eighteen-year-olds for twenty years’ service. For the real citizen-soldier, we need to look back to the time of the civil wars, and before that to the Roman Republic, when fit men of any age would volunteer for a shorter period, usually no more than six years. I’m talking mid-first century BC or earlier. That’s several decades before the main Roman period at Arikamedu. And there’s another problem. There’s no evidence whatsoever that the Romans ever sent legionaries to India.”

“Maybe a mercenary?” Costas said. “Or a deserter? You told me about those maverick British and French officers in eighteenth century India, running native armies and setting themselves up as princes. Maybe the same thing happened in the Roman period?”

Jack panned the light over the walls. “It’s possible. The
Periplus
mentions armed guards on ships, as defense against pirates.” But Jack already knew what they were looking at, with utter certainty. His voice was tight with excitement. “Or something else. An escaped prisoner of war.”

Costas edged around the far side of the chamber, inspecting the deep shadows around the boulders beside the sculpture of Kubera. He peered into one, his hand remaining on the belly of the god. “I was right. There’s another tunnel here. It looks like another chamber beyond.”

A muffled shout came down the entrance passageway in the opposite direction, a few urgent words in Hindi. Pradesh barked something back and then looked beyond Costas. He glanced at his watch, and shook his head in frustration. “I’ve got to go. Sergeant Amratavalli’s returned from his recce. I need to confer with him. I’ll leave you in here as long as I can, but we’ve got no more than an hour. The chopper pilot won’t linger. He’s an ex-army friend, but he’s not going to want his machine to get shot up again. We’ll need to leave before any more of the Maoists arrive. Good luck.” Pradesh un-holstered his revolver and disappeared back toward the entrance. Jack went ahead of Costas into the crack between the boulders, and Costas wedged himself in behind. The slick of damp on the rock acted as a lubricant, and he forced his ample frame through. Jack shone the flashlight back for him, illuminating the thick brown smear on what was left of his shirt. “Ruined,” Costas muttered mournfully. “Completely ruined.”

Jack swung the light around. The chamber was about the same size as the first, but the walls were different. Someone had gone to huge efforts to chip away and smooth the boulders to create flat surfaces, like sculptural canvases. Jack was aware of shapes behind him, but kept his light focused on the wall he had seen when he first entered the chamber. His mind was still attuned to the images they had seen before, Indian gods and demons, bold sculptures almost in the round. The wall ahead was the side of one massive boulder at least five meters long and three meters high. He stared in astonishment. The images were utterly unlike those of the previous chamber. Subtle relief carving covered almost the entire wall. He could see soldiers, weapons. It was a continuous scene, a narrative. And these images had nothing to do with Indian mythology. It was as if they had walked into a museum of Roman art.
Into a room created in the heart of Rome itself
. “My God,” he whispered. “It looks just like the Battle of Issus. One of Alexander the Great’s most famous battles, against the Persians.”

Costas came alongside. “That’s fourth century BC, right? You mentioned prisoners of war, Jack. I’m thinking Battle of Carrhae, first century BC. Is that where all this is leading us?”

Jack’s mind was racing. “Alexander would have been much on the mind of the legionaries as they marched to Carrhae: Crassus probably saw himself as a born-again Alexander, and may have used Issus as a rallying cry. And when the Romans lost at Carrhae, Alexander’s victory against the Persians would have attained mystical status. Add to that the evidence of Alexander’s eastern expedition seen by the escaped Roman prisoners, the altars described in that fragment of the
Periplus
. Alexander would have been a constant backdrop to what might have happened. An adventure that might have taken a citizen-soldier, a sculptor by trade, from Rome to Carrhae, then to imprisonment at Merv and then east into central Asia, on the route taken by Alexander and his Macedonians three centuries before. And then down here to the jungle of southern India.”

“So how do you know this image is Alexander’s battle?”

“The Battle of Issus is on the Alexander mosaic, from Pompeii,” Jack said. “It was probably the way the battle was usually depicted. On the left is Alexander, with wavy hair, sweeping into battle on his horse, Bucephalus, wearing a breastplate depicting Medusa. He’s placed lower than his opponent, Darius, who towers above his Persian soldiers, looking down on Alexander. There are lots of Persian troops, fewer Macedonians. It’s a way of emphasizing the greatness of Alexander’s victory, showing him riding against the seemingly invincible army of the god-king himself And Darius is on the run, ordering his charioteer to whip his horses as he tries to escape, looking around at Alexander with fear in his eyes. His right arm is extended toward Alexander as if he’s just thrown a spear, or maybe as a gesture of obeisance. He’s acknowledging the victor.”

“So how come a mosaic from Pompeii gets copied by a sculptor in the heart of darkness in central India?”

“Here’s my theory,” Jack murmured. “The guy who carved this was a soldier who’d been a sculptor in his former life. There’s a lot of technique here that comes straight out of the school of Roman funerary sculpture of the first century BC. I’m talking about stock sculpture for clients of modest means, relief slabs to put in front of cremation urns, the occasional larger scene on a sarcophagus. But even a small-time sculptor would have been familiar with the great works of art. Rome was awash with art looted after the conquest of Greece in the second century BC. The Alexander mosaic was made about that time for a wealthy client in Pompeii. But even that was a copy of a famous painting, by the Greek artist Apelles or Philoxenos of Eretria. Pliny the Elder mentions it in his
Natural History
. The painting must have been on public display in Rome, and whoever sculpted this must have studied it during his apprenticeship.”