India in Mind

by Pankaj Mishra

  The Towers are not tall, but are low in proportion to their circumference, like a gasometer. If you should fill a gasometer halfway up with solid granite masonry, then drive a wide and deep well down through the center of this mass of masonry, you would have the idea of a Tower of Silence. On the masonry surrounding the well the bodies lie, in shallow trenches which radiate like wheel spokes from the well. The trenches slant toward the well and carry into it the rainfall. Underground drains, with charcoal filters in them, carry off this water from the bottom of the well.

  When a skeleton has lain in the Tower exposed to the rain and the flaming sun a month it is perfectly dry and clean. Then the same bearers that brought it there come gloved and take it up with tongs and throw it into the well. There it turns to dust. It is never seen again, never touched again, in the world. Other peoples separate their dead, and preserve and continue social distinctions in the grave—the skeletons of kings and statesmen and generals in temples and pantheons proper to skeletons of their degree, and the skeletons of the commonplace and the poor in places suited to their meaner estate; but the Parsees hold that all men rank alike in death—all are humble, all poor, all destitute. In sign of their poverty they are sent to their grave naked, in sign of their equality the bones of the rich, the poor, the illustrious, and the obscure are flung into the common well together. At a Parsee funeral there are no vehicles; all concerned must walk, both rich and poor, howsoever great the distance to be traversed may be. In the wells of the Five Towers of Silence is mingled the dust of all the Parsee men and women and children who have died in Bombay and its vicinity during the two centuries which have elapsed since the Mohammedan conquerors drove the Parsees out of Persia, and into that region of India. The earliest of the five towers was built by the Modi family something more than two hundred years ago, and it is now reserved to the heirs of that house; none but the dead of that blood are carried thither.

  The origin of at least one of the details of a Parsee funeral is not now known—the presence of the dog. Before a corpse is borne from the house of mourning it must be uncovered and exposed to the gaze of a dog; a dog must also be led in the rear of the funeral. Mr. Nusserwanjee Byramjee, Secretary to the Parsee Punchayet, said that these formalities had once had a meaning and a reason for their institution, but that they were survivors whose origin none could now account for. Custom and tradition continue them in force, antiquity hallows them. It is thought that in ancient times in Persia the dog was a sacred animal and could guide souls to heaven; also that his eye had the power of purifying objects which had been contaminated by the touch of the dead; and that hence his presence with the funeral cortège provides an ever-applicable remedy in case of need.

  The Parsees claim that their method of disposing of the dead is an effective protection of the living; that it disseminates no corruption, no impurities of any sort, no disease germs; that no wrap, no garment which has touched the dead is allowed to touch the living afterward; that from the Towers of Silence nothing proceeds which can carry harm to the outside world. These are just claims, I think. As a sanitary measure, their system seems to be about the equivalent of cremation, and as sure. We are drifting slowly—but hopefully—toward cremation in these days. It could not be expected that this progress should be swift, but if it be steady and continuous, even if slow, that will suffice. When cremation becomes the rule we shall cease to shudder at it; we should shudder at burial if we allowed ourselves to think what goes on in the grave.

  The dog was an impressive figure to me, representing as he did a mystery whose key is lost. He was humble, and apparently depressed; and he let his head droop pensively, and looked as if he might be trying to call back to his mind what it was that he had used to symbolize ages ago when he began his function. There was another impressive thing close at hand, but I was not privileged to see it. That was the sacred fire—a fire which is supposed to have been burning without interruption for more than two centuries; and so, living by the same heat that was imparted to it so long ago.

  The Parsees are a remarkable community. There are only about sixty thousand in Bombay, and only about half as many as that in the rest of India; but they make up in importance what they lack in numbers. They are highly educated, energetic, enterprising, progressive, rich, and the Jew himself is not more lavish or catholic in his charities and benevolences. The Parsees build and endow hospitals, for both men and animals; and they and their womankind keep an open purse for all great and good objects. They are a political force, and a valued support to the government. They have a pure and lofty religion, and they preserve it in its integrity and order their lives by it.

  We took a final sweep of the wonderful view of plain and city and ocean, and so ended our visit to the garden and the Towers of Silence; and the last thing I noticed was another symbol—a voluntary symbol this one; it was a vulture standing on the sawed-off top of a tall and slender and branchless palm in an open space in the ground; he was perfectly motionless, and looked like a piece of sculpture on a pillar. And he had a mortuary look, too, which was in keeping with the place.

  1 Without going into particulars, I will remark that, as a rule, they wear no clothing that would conceal the brand. —M.T.

  2 Population today, 300,000,000.

  GORE VIDAL

  (1925–)

  Gore Vidal was born in West Point, New York. His grandfather was a senator and his father, an adviser to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Vidal used his early proximity to the sources of power to brilliant effect in such novelized histories of America as Burr (1974) and Lincoln (1984). His political essays follow in the polemical tradition of Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, and I. F. Stone. His literary essays, which have rescued a range of European and American writers from obscurity, are rather more difficult to place in any tradition. But Vidal is, above all, a connoisseur of the classical world, and particularly its pagan philosophical legacy. His novel Julian (1964) described the brief moment of royal apostasy in the post-Constantine Roman Empire. In Creation (1981), from which the following excerpt is taken, he set out to re-create the world at a crucial time in its history: the fifth century BC, which was privileged with the almost simultaneous presence of Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, and Zoroaster. It is unlikely, Vidal said in a recent introduction to his novel, that one man could have met all of them. But it is what his Persian protagonist Cyrus does as he travels from Greece to China. To see these great men and their times through the eyes of a fifth-century Persian, as he is imagined by a twentieth-century American novelist, is often odd but never less than engaging. The section on India, where Cyrus meets the Buddha and is bewildered, shows that Vidal's research was thorough. And so riveting is Vidal's own curiosity that the few anachronisms—far from being the staple of classical Indians, curry was an Anglo-Indian invention—seem almost amusing.

  from CREATION

  This is what I think I know about the Buddha. At the time that I met him—more than a half-century ago—he was about seventytwo or -three years old. He was born in the Shakya republic, which is located in the foothills of the Himalayas. He came from a warrior family called Gotama. At birth, he was named Siddhartha. He was brought up in the capital city of Kapilavastru. At one time Gotama's father held high office in the republic, but he was hardly a king, as certain snobs at Shravasti and Rajagriha still like to pretend.

  Siddhartha married. He had one son, Rahula—which means link or bond.I suspect that the child must have begun life with another name, but I never found out what it was. He certainly proved to be a bond with that world which the Buddha was to eliminate—for himself.

  At the age of twenty-nine Siddhartha embarked upon what he called the noble quest. Because he was acutely conscious that he was “liable to birth because of self, and knowing the peril in whatever is liable to birth, he sought the uttermost security from this world's bonds—nirvana.”

  Siddhartha's quest took seven years. He lived in the forest. He mortified the flesh. He meditated. In due course
, through his own efforts—or simply because he had evolved in the course of all his previous incarnations?—he understood not only the cause of pain but its cure. He saw all that was and all that will ever be. In a magical contest he defeated the evil god Mara, who is lord of this world.

  Siddhartha became the enlightened one or the Buddha. Since he had eliminated not only himself but the tangible world as well, he is higher than all the gods: they are still evolving and he is not. They continue to exist within a world that he has entirely dissolved. Since enlightenment is an end in itself—the great end—the now-eliminated world ought not to have concerned the Buddha. But the world that he had awakened from returned to him, as it were, when the high god Brahma came down from heaven and begged him to show others the way. But the Buddha was not interested. Why speak, he said, of what cannot be described? But Brahma was so insistent that the Buddha agreed to go to Varanasi and set in motion the wheel of the doctrine. He expounded the four truths; and he revealed the eightfold path. Yet at the same time, paradoxically, the entire exercise was—is—pointless because he had abolished this world and all other worlds, too.

  “Everything subject to causation,” the Buddha said, “is like a mirage.” For him, human personality is something like a bad dream—to be got rid of, preferably, by waking up to… nothing? There is a point beyond which I cannot follow the Buddha. But then, he is enlightened and I am not.

  In every way, the Buddha's teaching is opposed to that of the Wise Lord. For Buddhists and Jains, the world deteriorates; therefore, extinction is the goal of the wise. For Zoroaster, each man must make his way either toward the Truth or the Lie, and in eternity he will be judged for what he did or did not do in the course of only one life. Finally, after a time in heaven or hell, all human souls will share in the Wise Lord's victory over Ahriman, and we shall achieve a perfect state of being that is not so different from the Buddha's sunyata, or shining void—if that is the right translation of a word which explains so precisely the inexplicable.

  For the Indians, all creatures are subject to constant reincarnation. Punishment and rewards in any given life are the result of previous deeds, in previous lives. One is totally subject to one's karma, or destiny. For us, there is suffering or joy in time of the long dominion and, finally, union with Ahura Mazdah in eternal time. For them, there is endless death and rebirth, only broken for a very few by nirvana, which is nothing, and sunyata, which is what it is if it is.

  Democritus thinks that the two attitudes are not so far apart. I know that they are entirely unlike. Admittedly, there is something luminous if slippery about the Buddha's conception of sunyata; in fact, the more I think of his truths, the more I feel that I am trying to catch with two clumsy hands one of those swift eels that writhe at night in hot southern seas, ablaze with cold light. At the core of the Buddhist system there is an empty space which is not just the sought-after nirvana. It is perfect atheism.

  To my knowledge, the Buddha never discussed any of the gods except in the most offhand way. He never denied them; he simply ignored them. But despite his formidable conceit, he did not set himself in place of the gods because, by the time he had set in motion the wheel of his doctrine, he himself had ceased to be, which is the ultimate stage of evolution. But while he still inhabited Gotama's flesh, he allowed others to create the sangha in order to alleviate for the chosen few some of life's pain.

  At first only men could be admitted to the order. But then Ananda persuaded the Buddha that women should be admitted too. They would live in their own communities, and follow the eightfold path. Although the Buddha was complaisant, he did make a joke, much quoted by misogynists. “Had the order been made up only of men, Ananda, it would have lasted a thousand years. Now that women have been included, it will last only five hundred years.” In either case, I suspect he was unduly optimistic.

  Toward the end of the rainy season I accompanied Prince Jeta to the park which he may or may not have sold to the merchant Anathapindika for the Buddha's use. Here live a thousand monks, disciples, admirers. Many ascetics sleep out of doors, while pilgrims live in guesthouses and members of the order are quartered in a large building with a thatched roof.

  Not far from this monastery, a wooden hut had been erected on a low platform. Here on a mat sat the Buddha. Since the hut was built without walls, he lived in full view of the world.

  Sariputra welcomed us to the monastery. He moved like a boy, with a skipping step. He did not carry a parasol. The warm rain seemed never to bother him. “You're in luck. Tathagata is in a mood to talk. We're so glad for you. Since the full moon, he's been silent. But not today.” Sariputra patted my arm. “I told him who you were.”

  If he expected me to ask him what the Buddha had had to say about the Persian ambassador, he was disappointed. I was ceremonious. “I look forward to our meeting.” I used the word upanishad, which means not just a meeting but a serious discussion about spiritual matters.

  Sariputra escorted Prince Jeta and me to the pavilion that had been built on a platform approached by eight shallow steps— one for each part of the eightfold way? At the first step, a tall heavyset yellow man greeted Sariputra, who then introduced him to us. “This is Fan Ch'ih,” said Sariputra. “He has come from Cathay to learn from the Buddha.”

  “It is not possible not to learn from the Buddha.” Fan Ch'ih spoke the Koshalan dialect even better than I, despite an accent that was rather worse.

  Since Fan Ch'ih and I were to become close friends, I will only note here that he had not come to India to learn from the Buddha; he was on a trade mission from a small nation in southeast Cathay. Later he told me that he had come to the park that day in order to meet the Persian ambassador. He was as fascinated by Persia as I was by Cathay.

  We followed Sariputra up the steps and into the hut, where all of those who had been seated rose to greet us except for the Buddha, who remained seated on his mat. I could see why he was called the golden one. He was as yellow as any native of Cathay. Not only was he not Aryan, he was not Dravidian either. Obviously, some tribe from Cathay had crossed the Himalayas to sire the Gotama clan.

  The Buddha was small, slender, supple. He sat very straight, legs crossed beneath him. The slanted eyes were so narrow that one could not tell if they were open or shut. Someone described the Buddha's eyes as being as luminous as the night sky in summer. I would not know. I never actually saw them. Pale arched eyebrows grew together in such a way that there was a tuft of hair at the juncture. In India this is considered a mark of divinity.

  The old man's flesh was wrinkled but glowing with good health, and the bare skull shone like yellow alabaster. There was a scent of sandalwood about him that struck me as less than ascetic. During the time I was with him, he seldom moved either his head or his body. Occasionally he would gesture with the right hand. The Buddha's voice was low and agreeable, and seemed to cost him no breath. In fact, in some mysterious way, he seemed not to breathe at all.

  I bowed low. He motioned for me to sit. I made a set speech. When I was finished, the Buddha smiled. That was all. He did not bother to answer me. There was an awkward moment.

  Then a young man suddenly asked, “O Tathagata, is it your view that the world is eternal and all other views false?”

  “No, child, I do not hold the view that the world is eternal and all other views false.”

  “Then, is it your view that the world is not eternal and all other views are false?”

  “No, child, I do not hold the view that the world is not eternal, and all other views are false.”

  The young man then asked the Buddha if the cosmos was finite or infinite, if the body was similar or not similar to the soul, if a holy man exists or does not exist after death, and so on. To each question the Buddha gave the youth the same answer or nonanswer that he had given to the question whether or not the world was eternal. Finally the young man asked, “What objection, then, does Tathagata perceive to each of these theories that he has not adopted any one of them?”


  “Because, child, the theory that the world is eternal, is a jungle, a wilderness, a puppet show, a writhing, and a chain forever attached to misery, pain, despair and agony—this view does not contribute to aversion, absence of desire, cessation, quiescence, knowledge, supreme wisdom and nirvana.”

  “Is this Tathagata's answer to each question?”

  The Buddha nodded. “This is the objection I perceive to these apparently conflicting theories, and that is why I have not adopted any one of them.”

  “But has Tathagata any theory of his own?”

  There was a pause. I must confess that the blood was suddenly high in my cheeks, and I felt as if I had the fever. I wanted, desperately, to know the answer or nonanswer.

  “The Buddha is free from all theories.” The voice was mild. The eyes seemed to be looking not at us but upon some world or nonworld that we could not comprehend. “There are things, of course, that I know. I know the nature of matter. I know how things come into being and I know how they perish. I know the nature of sensation. I know how it is that sensation comes, and how it goes. I know how perception begins and ends. How consciousness starts, only to stop. Since I know these things, I have been able to free myself from all attachment. The self is gone, given up, relinquished.”