by John Masters
Rukmini stayed a long minute with him, men she folded his hands carefully on his chest and rose, weeping, and went to the shelter of the Suvala’s arms.
Postscript
Those readers who would like to learn more about the inner history of The Venus of Konpara may be interested in the following report, which was prepared in A.D. 1930:
(Author’s Note: All references in this postscript, as in the story, to events that took place in Deori or Konpara are imaginary, but in accordance with archaeological theory. Other references, such as those to the Harappa discoveries, are actual fact.)
Mohan Singh Suvala, Rajah of Deori, in the fortieth year of his reign, has ordered this report prepared on the Caves of Konpara, and the circumstances of their rediscovery. No eyes but those of the Ruler and the State Archivist may be permitted to see it until A.D. 1960, when, seventy years having elapsed since the events described, all those who had a part in them may be expected to have passed beyond the reach of earthly reward and punishment.
The report falls into two parts. First, that relating to the building of the caves and the earliest history of Deori; secondly, that relating to the events of A.D. 1890.
PART ONE
Supposing the Aryan invaders of India to have reached Deori about 1400 B.C., the fortress of Konpara would have been built about 1300 B.C. Traces of the wall of this fortress were found on the Dobehari and Konpara Ridges by Rajah Mohan Singh’s excavations in 1892 and 1893. The dividing walls first uncovered by Mr Smith at the cricket pitch site proved to have been part of the dwelling quarters allotted to the royal household.
Soon after the fortress was completed the Aryans built, inside it, the shrine and memorial of their great conquest. This was the Hall of Human Felony and the tunnel leading to it. The date of completion of these works is unlikely to be later than 1200 B.C.; but, whatever the absolute chronology, it was certainly made soon after the great wars of the conquest. Indeed, the conquest may still have been continuing in other parts of India, for the atmosphere here is one of triumphant war, of recent victory over enemies whose evil gods are still powerful. The Dravidian cities and monuments which the Aryans are shown destroying were not necessarily in Deori. A great victory five hundred miles away and fifty years back might be shown, for the men who took part in it were still alive, and had come to Deori.
These two works, the tunnel and the first hall, were the products of Dravidian slave labour, working under a few Aryans who had a greater artistic genius than any Dravidian - the Vedas prove that - but no technical ability to transform their vision into stone. The Aryans were cattle herders, only recently come from the Asian steppes, while the Dravidians had built great cities.
Since this was an Aryan shrine its efficacy had to be preserved from the enmity of the subtle Dravidian gods and goddesses (particularly the latter). Those gods could be expected to find entry, for hostile purposes, through their devotees; therefore no Dravidian must be permitted to enter the cave, or indeed to know the exact whereabouts of its entrance inside the great fortress, To this end the slaves were forced to carry the debris from the construction to a considerable distance - to what is now known as the Buddha Tumulus. When their useful work was finished they were murdered by being thrown from Indra’s Rock in the rite which has been perpetuated under the name of the Rite of the Labourers.
The wooden brooch used in the modern rite is the counterpart of the original tally issued to each slave, marked on one side with his name, symbol, or number, and on the other with the device of the Suvala who owned him. Three of these wooden tallies were recovered intact during the careful excavation of the Indra’s Rock Tumulus which took place in 1890, causing a six months’ delay in the opening of the Kendrick Dam. (No hardship resulted to the people of Deori from this delay, as a part of the gold recovered during that year was used to buy wheat, food grains, and seed for the people.) The steatite brooches, of which thirty-seven were found during the same excavation, were the private property of certain of the Dravidian slaves, perhaps of important men or women, nobles, priests, or the like. The similarity in design between the wooden tallies and the steatite brooch/seals is probably due to the fact that the Aryans copied the steatite seals they found the Dravidians wearing - and indeed were perhaps taught by the latter how to use numbers to identify and differentiate their captives.
The other two halls, of Peace and Love, show such an advance in technique that they must be much later. Even more important is the change of theme, and the settling down of relations between the races. The people were still divided in a class or colour pattern, but the division was not based solely on fear, nor was it immutable. Indeed, the central scene of the Hall of Love shows the Aryan king accepting in marriage the daughter of a Dravidian aristocrat, and, we may assume, thereby elevating her to his own level in the newly formed caste system. Both halls were probably made under the driving impulse of a single ruler of genius - the golden hero of the Hall of Love - who desired to show the spiritual and social progress that had been achieved in Deori since the original usurpation. The time was the fifth century B.C. This may be stated with certainty because the gold used to plate the statues bears the simple bow mark only used until the fifth century B.C., while detailed studies of the Hall of Peace reveal an unmistakable bodhisattva in the background of one of the scenes, and the Buddha lived from 560 to 480 B.C.
To summarise: The caves show the newly arrived Aryans destroying the Dravidian civilisation in about 1250 B.C.; and they show how, eight hundred years later in about 450 B.C., a social and religious system had been built under which both parties could live in peace. They show how the conquered Dravidians yet imposed their Dominance on the invaders, for the very goddesses who were being attacked in the first hall have become triumphant in the second and third. The caves have thus shown that the elements of Brahminism which are so much at variance with the classical Vedic religion of the Aryans came from nowhere else but the rites and beliefs of the conquered Dravidians, after a lapse of several centuries.
The opening of the caves to the public, in 1891, caused sensation and controversy which were to last for thirty years. The problem was essentially no different from that posed by the Vedas - if the Dravidians had indeed built such great cities as those shown being burned and destroyed, where were the relics of them? Argument and accusation flew back and forth among the learned men with regrettable venom, and doubts were even cast upon the genuineness of the caves, until 1922 of the Christian era.
In that year Indian archaeologists discovered, at Harappa in the northern Punjab, and at Mohenjo-Daro, on the west bank of the Indus River two hundred miles north of Karachi, the relics of a pre-Aryan culture - the missing Dravidian civilisation. This Indus civilisation, as it was named after the location of the discovered sites, flourished from about 3000 to 1500 B.C. It was a riverine culture, depending for its food upon the rich, flat, alluvial plain of the Indus. Its people were intensely organised, and it contained great cities. These cities were planned in an extraordinarily ‘modern’: manner, not excluding an ugly and uniform monotony for their low-income housing: developments. They had running water, drainage, and sewage systems, and show evidence of a way of life far superior, in terms of what the world has agreed to call material civilisation, to anything else found in India until the late nineteenth century A.D. The art objects found, principally steatite seals, with some statuettes, show a high level of craftsmanship and decorative ability but little genius or creative vision. The religion of the Indus civilisation seems to have been diffuse, composed more of a blend of local and family cults than of a single state religion; but certain ideas were common to all these cults. They are: the worship of the cow and bull, and of a male figure associated with the bull, the worship of a female figure, perhaps a goddess, perhaps a generalised idea of fertility; and worship of the lingam-yoni.
These discoveries have proved the existence of a material Dravidian civilisation. Perhaps there was more than one, though so far only that settled in
the Indus Valley has been located. This civilisation was destroyed by the Aryan invaders, who did not know how to live in that manner and would not then have wanted to if they did. It has been ‘lost’ because its sites in the alluvial plains would quickly be buried by the deposit from annual floods once the bunds, the dams, and irrigation works were allowed to fall into disrepair.
Neither Konpara nor Deori was the original site of the Dravidian civilisation -- the country is not alluvial nor riverine -- but both were places where Dravidian refugees, perhaps from Harappa, sought to bide from the savage, persistent invaders.
To return to the caves - the chief problem outstanding is that of the so-called Venus. (Reference here is to the original statue of which only a leg has been found, not to the present statue, carved by the famous English artist Barbara Foster in A.D. 1900, and placed under the cobra head by the Suvala in that year.) Detailed study of the central group in the Hall of Love shows that the golden hero-king’s ears are of different sizes. He also has a striking but unhandsome and untypical setting of the eyes. The statue - was therefore not a stylisation, but an actual portrait. It must be assumed that the Venus was also to be a portrait. Both were free-standing statues, not carved in relief out of the living rock. The work could therefore have been done elsewhere than in the caves. If so, it certainly must have been, for we cannot imagine the royal couple being able or willing to spend weeks in the depths of the caves when it was much more convenient for all concerned for the sculptor to work in a studio above ground.
It is suggested that the Venus statue, the last work of all, was nearly ready when the fortress was thrown into confusion by one of those rebellions or coups d’état which are so common whenever a multiplicity of wives and concubines produce many rival heirs to the throne. The rebel would most likely have been a son of the king by a wife who had lost pre-eminence, both for herself and her son, when the king decided to marry ‘the Venus’. We may suppose the rebel son to have been victorious. He would not have damaged the statue of his father - which was already set up - for that would be unthinkable sacrilege. But his mother would certainly have caused the execution of the Venus and the destruction of her statue. This statue would still have been in the sculptor’s studio above ground - at the cricket pitch site. Probably the pieces of the statue were further broken up, or removed as souvenirs. The sculptor, we may assume, was executed. The gilding of the central group in the Hall of Love was carried out by a process still in use. The sculptors were given gold bars, which they melted, poured into shallow pans, and cut into pieces the size of small coins. These were then placed, individually, between sheets of parchment or papyrus and pounded until the gold became extremely thin. The gold leaf was then applied to the statues or surfaces with a siccative of egg and milk curd. When the latter had dried, the gold was burnished with pieces of ivory.
The chief sculptor of Konpara therefore had gold in his studio, and, although some accounting of it would certainly have been demanded, it is possible that he managed to cheat his employer, and hide the gold bar which was found by the leg (but lower down, it will be recalled - i.e., under the floor of his studio). It is also possible to suppose that the sculptor, being so near the completion of his work, had been paid in gold. It is of interest here to note that one of the gold bars found under the original leg, and which we now suppose to have been the wages of the original sculptor, formed the recompense given by the Suvala to Barbara Foster for the new Venus.
The fortress had been dismantled, as a fortress, about a century earlier, if we are to accept that the eclipse of 556 B.C. is the ‘sun-darkening’ which ruined it (Suvala-Gita, couplet for 195 B.C.). What remained were the dwelling places and studios on the Dobehari Ridge - that is, a sort of summer residence; and the mouth of the cave on the Konpara Ridge across the valley. Although the relationships between Aryan and Dravidian had settled down, the cave would still only have been open to rulers, aristocrats, and priests - that is, to people who, under the growing caste system, could only have been of fairly pure Aryan descent. For the Gonds and the low-caste peasants it was a taboo. They would know that in the distant past numerous people of their race had been taken inside the fortress and had never reappeared until they were cast off Indra’s Rock into the pit. They would know that the cave contained the power of the gods that had destroyed them. They would never enter it.
The years passed. In 265 B.C another rebel set up his standard in the summer palace, and the ensuing battle spread to the caves. In 195 B.C., on the occasion of another eclipse, the Suvala made a special pilgrimage to Konpara, and offered prayers, presumably for the preservation of the state’s prosperity.
The prayers were not answered, for in 147 B.C. the Suvala king of Deori was defeated in his capital, by evil demons, and forced to flee. (We may assume that the demons were the army of a hostile king.) It is important that the decisive battle took place at Deori, not in Konpara. There is thus reason to think that the new conquerors of Deori never learned of the existence of Cave of Konpara. The Suvala would certainly have done everything possible to preserve that secret, for it was the shrine of his power. Destruction or possession of it would have ruined him and his race, for ever.
He preserved the secret by appointing guards. The nearest people were the villagers of Konpara, and there might have been some memory of the ancient union between a Suvala king and the daughter of the chief Dravidian of Konpara. The defeated Suvala may have passed through Konpara on his flight, or the orders may have reached the village by some other channel - but it is likely that at this point the village of Konpara became, collectively, the ‘official’ guardian of the caves. A wise ruler, besides reminding them of the fate which awaited anyone who desecrated the cave, would also have promised the village a payment for their duty - and this would have removed any inducement to betray their trust to the new rulers. Such most have been the purpose of the gold bars placed fast inside the cave mouth - some for use by the village, some perhaps a portion of the king’s private fortune, to be stored for safe keeping. The headman of Konpara has confirmed that from time immemorial one of his first duties, after his appointment or succession, has been to enter the tunnel to count and weigh the gold bars.
Neither the defeated king nor the villagers can have guessed that the Suvala family’s exile from Deori was to last 478 years, until A.D. 331. The date, it may be noted, indicates that the Suvalas returned to power under the protection of the Emperor Chandragupta I.
In the course of those 478 years the Suvala family lost all knowledge of the whereabouts and meaning of the cave that they still carried in the royal title, ‘Lord of the Cave.’ It would not be strange to find that in the same period the villagers of Konpara had lost the knowledge of exactly why they were guarding the cave mouth, and to whom they were authorised to reveal the secret. Alternatively, since the cave was known to be a shrine of evil meaning for Dravidians, the villagers may have lain low on the return of the Suvalas, in the hope that the supernatural powers which had caused their poverty and their subjection might become extinct through neglect. This closed system, of secrecy on one side and ignorance on all others, was broken by the discovery of the stone leg and the two gold bars on April 7, 1890.
PART TWO
The entrance to the cave had been hidden for a long time, probably since 147 B.C., by the device of placing over it a large stack of wood. The wood was burned to charcoal every year, and immediately replaced by a fresh stack. Mr Charles Kendrick’s decision, in 1883, to build a bungalow on the ridge near by caused consternation, because it was obvious that Mr Kendrick would not permit wood to be burned so close to his bungalow. The then headman, Huttoo Lall, acted fast. He built the caretaker’s hut before work on the bungalow had started. It was then easy to conceal the cave entrance behind beds, clothes, or other furnishings. The caretaker, of course, was always to be a village elder.
Next, in 1886-7, came the surveying for the irrigation works, and the decision to build them, which was taken on March 11, 1887
, when the Resident called the headman into Deori and explained the whole project to him. The next day Mr Kendrick and Mr Foster, contractor, went out to Konpara with him and explained the layout of the work on the ground. The elders knew the approximate path of the tunnel and the caves. They also knew that there was a crevice in the pit cliff which might give entry to the caves, for the bats had been noticed centuries earlier. To make sure, a young man was lowered over the cliff, and the current of air verified, at this period. The elders were now sure that the filling of the Kendrick Reservoir would flood the cave.
From their point of view, salvation was at hand. After long ages the evil forces that had cast and held them down were to be destroyed by drowning. It was probably significant that this would come about through the instrumentality of a British Resident and a British contractor, for the British invaders were now going to do to the tutelary spirit of the Aryans precisely what the Aryans had done to them. And the completion of the irrigation works would give them rich land, of the sort from which they had been dispossessed three thousand years earlier.
The headman gathered the whole village, and the chief men among the Gonds, and told them what was to happen. A regrettable but perhaps natural debauch took place. Everyone was drunk for five days. Three men and a woman died, and two houses burned down. Then work began, and the people of Konpara laboured hard and well to ensure that their hopes came true.
Success seemed very near when the headman learned that part of an ancient statue had been discovered on the Dobehari Ridge. Next he learned that Mr Smith, an English gentleman of considerable archaeological learning, was taking charge of the excavation. The search for the Venus began. But the headman was sure that the Venus would be in the cave. He knew that once the cave was found it would be preserved, together with its power for evil; the reservoir would not be filled; the good land would not be given. It was pure chance that the cricket pitch where the leg was found happens to lie almost immediately above the caves, but the headman knowing the general course of the tunnel, presumed that the searchers would merely go on digging and blasting downward, and would soon come upon the caves.
