Asura- Tale of the Vanquished

by Anand Neelakantan

  On a dusty evening, when we were returning from work on our farms, a messenger appeared on horseback. He was a tall fellow with smallpox marks covering his face and a strange expression in his eyes. He asked us to demolish our Shiva shrine and surrender to Vishnu. He was treated well by the villagers, but sent back with a warning that he should not invite the wrath of Shiva. In fact, the messenger went into the Shiva shrine and offered prayers before leaving. The whole day, we spoke about the Devas. Some said the Emperor had already fallen and fled underground, and that Vishnu had become our new Emperor. They claimed that the messenger was proof of their theory. Others said that Mahabali had moved over to the Deva clan and was rapidly converting all the Shiva temples to Vishnu temples. There was a row in the toddy shop and my friend got punched on his nose by an angry Shiva fanatic. I was happy that there was finally some activity in my quiet village. Usually nothing exciting ever happened here and one new day was as dull as the next.

  That is, until the night I was woken by my wife. I was angry [. Ize="- to be rudely shaken from my sleep and wanted to thrash her for her impudence. Then I saw that there were strangers inside our bedroom. My first thought was, which I vividly remember even now; ‘Oh god! What will I give these people to eat? They have come after dinner time.’ Then anger came. How dare they break into my bedroom? Slowly, fear crept on me. Who were these people? Why were they here? My neighbour, that idiot who spat red betel juice into my courtyard every day and enjoyed the fights that followed, was being burnt alive and brightly lighting up his front yard. In that ghastly light I also saw an orgy taking place in my neighbour’s yard. The cuckold whose wife flirted with every male in the village, was getting it from more than six persons at the same time. But she was screaming. The Deva warriors had taken our village. The whole village was burning. People were running about like scared chickens. I saw people being hacked. Houses were ablaze. Warriors on horseback with their fair, devilish faces, were jeering, howling and killing people.

  The strangers were leering at my wife now and I could feel her trembling. I scrambled up and threw my arms protectively around my family. The devils howled with laughter. Then I heard the crackling sound of fire as it ate through my hay roof. Someone hit me with the hilt of his sword. The bridge of my nose cracked and searing pain shot through my body. A boy, barely fifteen perhaps, lifted my daughter by her legs, swung her like a rag and smashed her hard against a mud wall. I heard my beloved daughter’s skull crack open. Her blood and brains splattered across our faces. The devils laughed again. I went numb and collapsed onto the floor. My wife fainted. I desperately tried to grab my wife as they dragged her away into the darkness. My fingernails scratched lines of blood on her arm, but she slipped away. I tried to stand up. There was blood everywhere. I slipped in the blood and my hands touched my daughter’s shattered head. I shuddered. I did not want to look. I had to find a weapon. Anything that I could use to smash the skulls of these bastards. Somehow, I had to save my wife.

  My wife’s shrill screams got lost among many similar cries rising all over the village. I walked, even as my strength oozed out of me and tried to grab a pillar of the verandah. It was solid bamboo but with dismay I found I could not lift it, let alone use it as a club. I jumped on the swine who were raping my wife. Bare handed, I fought tooth and nail, but I was no match for the mighty Deva warriors. I was down in a second and they started punching me. Solid wooden shoes kicked my face and I was dragged in the mud. Blows rained upon me. Mercifully, one bastard plunged his sword deep into my abdomen and all I knew then was darkness.

  When I awoke, it was still dark. There were flames everywhere but they were slowly dying out. I could hear the distant howls of jackals. Another day has dawned, I thought hazily, and I have to go and milk the cows. But I just lay there. The earth was so cozy, cool and comforting. Then slowly, very slowly, reality crept in and I sat up with a jerk. Needles of pain pierced parts of my body which I didn’t know existed. My eyes were welded together, caked with blood. I struggled to open them. Then I saw some Deva bastards sitting under a tree, getting drunk.

  All around, my village and my entire life, lay shattered. I tried to stand and might have broken a twig in the effort. The noise sounded like a bolt of thunder to my ears. The ghostly figures looked back. I sat without moving. ‘They know I am alive and they are going to kill me,’ I thought. For a moment I was relieved the Devas decided not to investigate. Then I saw him. A dark, tall figure was walking towards me, his sword drawn. I panicked. As he came near, I saw that it was the same boy who had splattered my girl all over the wall. He was drunk and wobbled on unsure legs. I waited, m [. I wally hands searching for anything I could use as weapon. The boy stood near my head, swaying a little. Someone called out to him. He hesitated. By then my hands had found an old knife abandoned by somebody, and in one fluid movement I struck it into the boy’s groin. I was surprised when he fell on the top of me without a sound. I pulled out the knife and struck him again in the nape of his neck.

  “Hey!” there was surprise and shock in the voice of the man who was running towards our tangled forms. I saw others following him. I struggled to get away from the boy but he was heavy. I was drenched in sweat and blood by the time I wriggled out from under him. Instinctively I ran into the forest bordering my village. I ran with whatever strength was left in my body, away from these demons, away from my past, away from the life I had known. I kept running for the sake of my dear, useless, meaningless, hollow, shallow life. I panted and puffed my way towards safety, slipping on the decaying carcasses of my brothers and friends. But it did not matter then. They were just carcasses, waiting for the vultures to finish what the Devas had started. Death was following me and I was chasing my life which was running away swiftly.

  A sharp pain pierced my shoulders and I saw fresh sprouts of blood dripping, marking my trail. The bastards were shooting me. Arrows whined past my ears and landed with sickening thuds in the tree trunks all around. One of them could split open my throat and then this nightmare would mercifully end. Then everything faded away. I had a weightless feeling, as if I was floating. A sea of dark green swallowed me. Branches hit my face. I was falling, falling rapidly down a dark abyss. So this is what death was like. So sudden and kind. The caresses on my face, the sensation of weightlessness, the pleasure of floating, and whack!. For a moment I was dead.

  When I came back to the light, I was lying on a crude rope cot inside a stinking cave. There were moans coming from all around me. I tried to sit up, but was forced to sink back as pain grabbed me in its claws. I turned my head slowly and saw that there were many people lying around the cave in various stages of decay. I shivered. Was I a prisoner-of-war and at the mercy of the Devas? But when had the Devas ever taken prisoners? More over, I was a civilian and not a soldier. I lay there with useless thoughts buzzing in my head which I tried to make sense of. The sound of people talking floated down to me, “Half of them will definitely not make it. The others might take at least a month to even start walking.” The tongue was definitely classy Tamil, the kind used by educated and pretentious city folk. I realized I was not among foes. But the voices sounded matter-of-fact and their dark prophecy filled me with indescribable terror. Slowly, like waves lapping the banks of the Poorna, bubbles of memories rose from my drugged mind and broke into my consciousness. It hurt so much that I started wailing. Many cries echoed through the cave from the throats of men waiting for death. I heard the voice of a defeated people moaning the loss of simp

  licity and a meaning in their lives which they never had. Perhaps, it was in one of those moments, when I lost myself amidst the cries of my people, that I vowed revenge against the Devas.

  7 Lore of the losers

  Ravana

  We had been walking like this for four months and were now tired and hungry. I sensed most of the warriors were bored when I started my usual morning discourse, “Today we will learn about the war of the ten kings, that led to the Asura empire’s final collapse and the a
dvent of the Devas. Initially, the Devas were just a nuisance to the mighty Asura kings. They went on rampages in ^. I wnce to thethe border towns once in a while. However, with the advent of Indra, things started to change rapidly. Indra had nothing to lose. Tales of his savagery preceded him. He had ransacked many small kingdoms north-west of the Himalayas and burned beautiful cities. He butchered all living beings in a captured city and lit huge funeral pyres, around which the Devas danced and chanted.

  When the ten kings of the Asura Council decided that it was time to teach these barbarians a lesson, Indra had already established himself with his sharp shooters in the barren and snowy ridges of the rugged mountains of Gandhara. The mighty Asura army, even without great military or tactical superiority, would have simply crushed the small contingent of Deva marauders by its sheer numbers and superior arm power. But in the narrow valleys of the Gandhara, the elephants of the ten kings were quite useless. The Asura kings were used to fighting in the wide open spaces between the Ganges and the Indus. The elephant battalion, the infantry with heavy clubs and swords, the chariots, which were more like goods carriers and carried reserve weapons and men, were more suited to wide open spaces.

  But Indra showed his brilliance when he chose the narrow Gandhara valleys to encounter the Asura kings. He waited in the heights of the mountains for the Asura kings to come and fight the battle on his terms. The Asuras were quite confident of the outcome. They had faced countless attacks from other tribes from the north and north-west before. This was just another of those picnics, when they would crush the enemy, capture their leader, forgive him magnanimously, and offer the vanquished party a banquet in their palaces.

  Poor devils, they did not know who they were dealing with. This was a different kind of enemy – vicious, ruthless and with an indomitable will to win. I have never been to Gandhara, but what we learned from Brahma gave us a pretty good idea of what it could have been at the time of the war of the ten kings.”

  I had drawn a rough map of north-western India on the sand and was surrounded by my brothers and Prahastha, a capable middle-aged man, who was the captain of our soldiers. The other warriors listened carefully. Prahastha claimed he was my mother’s distant relative and hence my maternal uncle, though I doubted it. On the other hand, my mother had many Asura relatives, so it could have been true. If he thought I was going to bestow special favours on him after I became king, he was going to be disappointed. But Prahastha was a capable and intelligent man and I respected him.

  I paused when I saw some of the soldiers getting edgy. I felt sorry for them. Most of the soldiers were illiterate and poor. They would have been farmers or artisans or traders in normal times, but driven from their homeland, they had followed their once-great Emperor, who had promised them their old, secure world. They were betrayed and had now put their hopes on a homeless young daredevil like me, to deliver back to them their long lost world. Perhaps I was becoming a megalomaniac, but certainly I would try to deliver them their dreams.

  “Indra, had initially made a tactical blunder. He had attacked the walled city of Pragya, on the banks of the Sarswathi, which was a major port of King Pramyudha. He was not a man of half measures. He unleashed his entire army. 500 elephants, 10,000 infantry with heavy swords and clubs, and 500 archers in bull chariots, burst out of the city walls. Indra had a small army of 600 mounted archers. He put 200 of them to attack the city’s front gate and tried to enter the city from the rear. Pramyudha opened all four gates and his mighty army divided itself and converged at the front.

  Indra was shocked by this daring move. Like a cornered rat, the Deva army fought back viciously. But there were far too many Asura forces. Moreover, ces.1">I the wide open plains gave the Asura army room to manoeuvre. The Devas, on their horses, were easy targets. From atop elephants, warriors showered heavy javelins and spears and the heavy arrows made the Deva armours look like onion peels. Indra ordered a retreat, but it was impossible to get out of the mess he had led his army into. More than 80 percent of his army was butchered. But Indra fought valiantly with his sword and even managed to wound Pramyudha.

  It was foolish of Pramyudha to get down from his elephant and challenge Indra. And while Pramyudha fought Indra, the idiotic Asura soldiers stood in a circle and clapped and cheered with each thrust and plunge of the combatants swords. It was as if the Asura warriors were being entertained. They even cheered Indra for his superior swordplay!

  Pramyudha played by the book. His footwork was perfect, so were his jabs and thrusts. But Indra was fighting for his life and he referred to a very different book. Quite unexpectedly, he threw sand into his opponent’s eyes with his shield. At the same time, he deftly cut with his sword. Pramyudha, the accomplished swordsman that he was, ducked, but was a bit too late. He received a deep wound on his shoulder and fainted in the battlefield. In the confusion that followed, Indra forced his way out of the shocked crowd, thrusting his sword into three soldiers who stood in his way. He quickly mounted his horse and vanished in a trice, followed by a handful of survivors.”

  “Tell me any story about a fallen king, and I will show you someone whose foolishness is only exceeded by his vanity,” Prahastha added.

  “True,” I continued, “Had the fallen king let bygones be bygones and gone back to ruling his kingdom, Indra’s attack would have been but a small footnote in history. Instead, his huge ego was hurt. Pramyudha did not take solace from the fact that his subjects had been spared the fate of citizens of other cities which had fallen to Indra. He was not satisfied that, except for his personal defeat at the hands of the enemy king, his army had succeeded in crushing the Deva army. His image had taken a beating. Asura kings of yore did not have divine right to the kingdom. A king was an elected leader, the most accomplished person in the city, a great warrior. And that was all.”

  “Pramyudha learnt from his court spies that his popularity had fallen among his subjects and that he would not get re-elected. He needed to take drastic action to restore his prestige. Such thoughts are devastating for a king. There ought to be no personal failures or victories. If your army has won, it does not matter whether your opponent is a better swordsman than you. But the Asuras always wore their egos on their breastplates. Their thinking thus became clouded and the chain of strategic mistakes began to unwind,” Prahastha added, while I drank water from the pitcher.

  I could see that the audience was listening with rapt attention now. Pleased, I continued, “The king sent spies in all directions. He had to somehow trace Indra and take revenge. Paramyudha also called on the General Council of the Asura kings. This was a body of equals from all parts of India. Ten kings met once a year to decide about water sharing, fixing customs, excise, and toll rates, port levies, and to exchange musicians and artisans. An emergency meeting was rarely called, unless there was a grave threat to the security of any of the kingdoms. Generally, the kingdoms maintained standing armies, but because of rapid cultural growth, their fighting prowess had greatly declined.

  There was something mysterious about this land. When great conquering armies succeeded in their mission and settled down between the great Indus-Ganges plain, they seemed to lose their tough edge and got rounded and feminine. The land changed them from great barbarians to gentle creatures cle ges with a taste for the fine things of life. This happened to all the great conquering armies before the Asuras, and you can see it now happening to the present Deva kingdoms of the north.

  And it happened to the Asura people as well. But, the kings wanted to think of themselves as the descendants of great warriors who swept through the country. They were supremely confident about their military might. The army was nothing more than a bloated organization with musicians, dancing girls, magicians and petty tricksters, acrobats, cooks, flower vendors, traders and priests. The numbers we heard of in stories were untrue. In an army of 10,000, only a few were actual warriors. The others accompanied the army to the battlefields and made a nuisance of themselves.

  Six of the ten
kings disagreed at the General Council meeting that Indra’s attack was not alarming. They believed that any prosperous city could be attacked. But Pramyudha carried the day with his convincing arguments. He said that the tribes which raided the frontier towns of the Indus plains never dared to attack the capital city of a prominent kingdom. This group, Pramyudha thought, did not seem to be the usual raiders who attacked the granaries and carried away whatever they could. In fact, these people had shown unusual daring and cunning and they were using a strange animal to carry out their raids. The Asura army was surprised by the deftness of the animals, which unlike bulls, were swift and agile. Unless this enemy was crushed, Pramyudha argued, our people would live under the constant threat of these barbarian hordes. However, that night the Council adjourned without a decision.

  The morning session broke when a messenger entered the camp of the Asura king of the north-western territory, and announced that horseback tribesmen had set Multamukha on fire. This was a major city on one of the most prominent trade routes that stretched from the mouth of the Ganga to Gandhara and beyond. The attack tipped the scales. All ten kings decided to join hands and form a huge army and decimate not only the horse-mounted tribes, but also all the small-time pirates and robber gangs who attacked the major trade routes to the great cities of Egypt and Mesopotamia.