Asura- Tale of the Vanquished

by Anand Neelakantan

  The Council met for the third day and war plans were drawn up. Pramyudha won the generalship, not because of his seniority or prowess, but because he was the only one who did not have any second thoughts about following the enemy into unknown territory. Most of the kingdoms were comfortable and no one wanted a war. Trade was booming and life was generally good. The old crowd of daring soldiers who had followed Shiva on their bulls, slept on dirt, and ate once a week, had vanished. These were men who had tasted the sweetness of life and did not want to fight extended wars with tribes that had nothing to lose.

  Pramyudha started from the bank of the Indus, with over a lakh of archers and warriors armed with clubs, spears and curved swords. About 10,000 elephants and 3,000 bullock chariots were accompanied by 10,000 drummers, flutists, dancing girls, camp builders, bards to record the heroics and render songs of Asura bravery, and the other dregs of society who usually accompanied an Asura army. This mighty crowd – there is no more suitable word, crossed the Indus and Sarswathi rivers and started hunting down small-time robbers and marauding tribes. The army marched on with great success. Pramyudha maintained excellent communication lines with runners carrying messages between the villages on the way. Spies informed the Asura king about enemy hideouts and the army descended with surprising speed and ruthlessness on the villages suspected to harbour enemy spies.

  Pramyudha became drunk with success. His spies informed him that Indra was fleeing with a small army towards the north-western mountains of Gandhara. Pramyudha’s bards sang praises abo cg pnfout him and this ruffled the fragile egos of the other nine kings, who were reluctantly accompanying the army. They found themselves demoted to minor leaders in Pramyudha’s service. Pramyudha himself was becoming haughtier by the day. Initially he ignored the advice of the other kings. Later, he openly criticized them and made fun of their military strategies.”

  I pointed out the course of Pramyudha’s army, marching happily towards disaster about 1000 years ago. The soldiers leaned over to get a better view of the rough map I had drawn on the ground.

  Prahastha took over, as I was feeling parched and needed a break. He started in his throaty voice, “The army was no longer a compact fighting unit by the time it reached the rugged plains at the base of the Hindukush mountains. Three kings had rebelled and threatened to leave with their armies if the campaign was not called off. By this time, Pramyudha had started talking about conquering the West, including Egypt, and proclaiming himself the Emperor of the world. When the three kings rebelled, he promptly arrested them for treason and after a brief trial, executed them openly. That sent a shiver through the army. Their morale was already at its nadir.

  The campaign was not turning out to be the picnic they had imagined. The great march was taking its toll. Soon, a large part of the armies belonging to the executed kings, rebelled, and many others deserted. Pramyudha hit back with brutal force. The bards sang that he slayed 9,000 of his own armymen. He also sent a huge contingent to chase deserters and bring them back to be executed after a mock trial. Some of the warriors remained neutral during this time. It seemed that the Asura army would inflict a defeat upon itself through this rabid infighting. Finally, Pramyudha was able to persuade six kings to remain with him and the rebellion was put down with great difficulty. But he had lost precious time. It was already winter by the time he decided to penetrate deep into the mountain country in search of Indra and his army

  Viboga, the king of Varanasi, asked Pramyudha to wait until summer, but Pramyudha declined. He wanted to capture Indra and drag him back to his capital at the earliest. He, who would be the Emperor of the world, would not be cowed by steep mountains and snows. Against better counsel, Pramyudha ordered his army to move north-west. The narrow mountain roads were slippery. The elephants slipped and fell into gorges or on the road, blocking progress for hours. Bullock-drawn chariots and even elephants, had to be abandoned on the narrow road. The infantry column broke up and soldiers walked as they pleased. The heavy axes, clubs and bows were difficult to carry and most of the soldiers, coming from the sweltering plains, were not used to the freezing mountain cold. To add to their woes, Pramyudha kept all his supplies in the bullock carts and these had to be carried uphill by the warriors. The motley crowd of dancing girls, bards and musicians; magicians and priests; became a nuisance and slowed down the progress drastically.”

  I took over the story from Prahastha, “The mob walked for more than a month in search of the elusive Indra and his followers. Many deserted the army and others died due to the elements and exhaustion. The men had exhausted most of the supplies and except for an occasional mountains goat and small birds, nothing else was edible. More than half the elephants were dead and bullocks were killed to feed the hungry and tired army.

  The army had lost most of its heavy weaponry. The dregs had already fallen behind and the column of soldiers stretched more than seven miles. The group of dirty, ragged men, with heavy unwieldy weapons, slowly and painfully dragged themselves through the labyrinths of the treacherous mountains. In the past year, they had not seen a single Deva soldier. The only time the Asura warriors csurough had taken to arms were against themselves and highway robbers, on this great march.

  By this time, Pramyudha also had discovered his folly and wanted to turn back towards the cozy comfort of his beautiful capital city. But the army was hopelessly lost. Many of the mountain passes were now closed due to avalanches and landslides. Pramyudha sent messengers upon messengers, in all possible directions, asking for help and supplies from petty Asura chieftains. But not a single messenger returned. It is believed that these messages were intercepted by Indra’s army. Then, when the Asura army’s morale was at its lowest ebb, on a cold, foggy morning, Indra’s horse-mounted archers started raining flaming arrows on them. Pramyudha’s army was stuck in a narrow, mountain gorge and stretched over ten miles in single file formation.”

  I made a circle around a point in the map to emphasis my point. “Indra trapped the mighty, numerically stronger, Asura forces in a narrow mountain gorge with deep canyons on one side and high rugged rocks on the other. Perched on agile horses, the Deva archers rained lightweight arrows on the helpless Asura crowd. Indra had hardly 500 warriors to take on a 50,000-strong Asura army. But what followed was plain slaughter. The heavy arrows of the Asuras could not defy gravity and reach the mountain tops where the Deva archers had stationed themselves. Axes, clubs and spears were quite useless. There was nothing the Asura army could do to stop the huge stones which came rolling down, crushing scores of men in their way, but to wait for their turn to die. After a brief attempt to fight, the majority of the army fell into a disorderly retreat.

  Pramyudha, despite all his faults, was brave, and he attempted to raise the morale of his fleeing army by trying to climb the rocks where the biggest group of Deva archers was placed. With adroitness, he started to shoot arrows with surprising accuracy and succeeded in hitting quite a few Deva archers. Seeing their King’s valour, hundreds of Asura archers started following him. But the majority of his army fled, and except for the brave king of Varanasi, who tried to dissuade Pramyudha from this doomed campaign, the five other kings of the Council also fled with their armies. In the stampede which ensued, thousands were trampled to death and many found their graves at the bottom of the ravines.

  Pramyudha and Viboga fought their way uphill with their small crew of a few thousand. Even this small determined troop outnumbered the Deva army. Indra understood the danger and quickly led the fight himself. Once more Pramyudha and Indra were face to face in the battlefield. Viboga was fighting his way up and shouted at Pramyudha to retreat and let him lead. But this was the chance for Pramyudha to avenge himself for the shameful defeat he had suffered in the last combat with Indra. He cornered Indra, who soon got tired, defending the powerful jabs, cuts and thrusts of his opponent’s sword. But unlike the Asuras, the Devas do not stand in a circle and applaud good swordsmanship when their leader’s life is in peril. A cleverly aimed arr
ow hit Pramyudha’s neck and emerged from his right eye. The shock paralyzed Viboga and in those split seconds, seven Deva swords hacked Viboga to pieces.

  Pramyudha continued fighting for a few more seconds, but Indra, with a clean sweep of his sword, gracefully severed his opponent’s head. His cry of triumph sent shock waves through the remaining Asura warriors. Indra raised the severed head of Pramyudha on his sword tip for all his opponents to see. The Asura army was in full flight. Indra allowed a few thousand to escape and then closed in to butcher the unfortunate multitude left behind. Thousands were slain on that fateful day.

  The disorganized Asura army was forced out of mountains by the Deva warriors, who knew the territory well. Once they reache ce tuntains d the plains, the Asura army in full flight, pursed by mounted soldiers, numbered only about 200. The five kings who had taken flight, could have turned back and conducted an organized counter attack. The horse riders were in the open where the heavy equipment of the Asura army could have wiped them out. That was the reason why Indra had tactically kept his army at a safe distance, beyond the range of the heavy Asura arrows, but within the range of his lighter arrows. Soon, the Deva ranks swelled with fortune hunters and deserters from the Asura army, the kind of people who always want to be on the winning side. The news spread that the Asuras were in full flight after a rout and the Devas were following them. Robbers and other wild tribes, who had gone into hiding when the mighty army was sweeping northwards, came out and joined the Deva ranks.

  The first to know the taste of the Deva’s might, was the motley crowd of drummers and dancing girls and other useless crew members who were returning home, unaware of the fate of their army. They were first overtaken by the fleeing Asura army and then the swelling Deva hordes descended upon them like a plague. The mob was out of control and except for the original hundred warriors, no one listened to Indra’s command. The majority were aboriginal tribesmen and plunderers who stopped at each village to loot. They ransacked houses, plundered cities on their way, hacked thousands of ordinary folk to death, and gang raped women. Soon, citizens of the big cities began to flee even before the defeated Asura army reached them. It became a human avalanche and riots broke out. Utter chaos reigned with an entire country fleeing from a handful of barbarians. Then the Asura army also started burning down cities during their flight, lest they fall into Deva hands. The public took to arms and the standing armies of small towns joined the public to stop the fleeing Asura army from looting their own cities. Civil war broke out.

  Rumours spread that the five kings had joined the ranks of the Devas and had murdered the other five, including the charismatic Pramyudha. Soon the Asura kingdoms were fighting each other while the Devas grew in strength. Indra’s prestige had risen tremendously after the Asura rout. Soon, other wandering Deva hordes joined him, while the mighty Asura empire disintegrated before their eyes.

  It took seven months for the great empire to crumble, an empire which had taken a thousand years to reach maturity. Once Indra felt confident that the Asura empire was weak enough, he blasted through the cocoon of the Asura’s protected existence. It is a great lesson for all students of warfare and statecraft on how to treat a conquered land.

  A civilization draws its pride from the cities it has built, the books it has produced, the artists and artisans it has bred, the temples it has built and so on. A conqueror’s first duty is to aim the mightiest blow possible on these edifices of civilized existence. Indra did it beautifully. He demolished all that was possible. He burned libraries, butchered poets and architects and pummelled the temples and hacked women and children. Soon, everything the Asuras held precious was destroyed. And from there, the original Indra got the name Purendra or ‘slayer of cities’. Soon, the Asuras had to go underground and there was occasional resistance, but mostly ineffective. Indra built an empire with the skeletons of the Asura civilization as its foundation. For nearly 300 years, the country was under the total control of the Indra dynasty.

  During this period, the plains soothed the Deva temperament. Art and culture once again regained their sway and the Devas began to lose their fierceness. They also became creatures of comfort. Great cities, though much inferior to those of the Asuras, were built. The process of synthesis start cnthnfered at the end of the second Indra’s reign. Shiva, who was the supreme God of the Asuras, came to be accepted by the Devas also. The great teacher of the Asura tribe, Brahma, was also accepted as God. The later Indra kings were weak and soon became mere puppets in the hands of Vishnu, who was the commander-in-chief of Indra III’s army. By the end of Indra XI’s reign, the Vishnu clan was virtually ruling the country and the Indra kings were just token monarchs: like the Shiva kings of the Asura tribe, who had become just a small power in the upper Himalayas, near Kailash, long before the rule of the ten kings.

  The Vishnus ruled fo l in preserving the Indra name and the Deva culture and were hailed by Brahmins as preservers of a social order. Soon, a curious set of thoughts got mixed up. I do not know whether it was Brahmin slyness or mere coincidence, but Brahma, the original possessor of knowledge, was hailed as the Creator; Vishnu as the Preserver of the system; and ironically Shiva, who built an empire, and not Indra, who destroyed, was hailed as the Destroyer. They were the three Gods of India – the Trimurti.

  The first members of these families were hailed as Gods and are still revered by the Devas. We accept Shiva as God and also the first Brahma as God. But the Brahmin insistence that Vishnu, a Deva commander-in-chief and a mere servant of a Deva king, be considered the supreme God, was hard to accept. There were great rebellions by the subjugated Asuras against Vishnu. Some great men like the Hiranya twins and Mahabali, succeeded in establishing an extensive Asura empire rivalling the empires of old, for a short period of time. But in later years, just as the Asura empire was divided into ten kingdoms, so was the Deva empire split into many petty fiefdoms.

  When an empire crumbles and many small states spring up, we know the time has come to build a new empire. When half-castes like Bali in Central India, and aborigines like Karthi Veerarjuna in the Sahya mountains, are able to carve huge kingdoms out of the Deva empire, we know that history has come full circle. Indra had but a small army to take on the mighty but divided Asura empire. I hope you have learnt the lessons of that eventful war which resulted in the fall of our people. The time has come for us to return the favour.

  Remember that the mighty Vishnu family also has weakened itself through in-fighting and only a small group, ruling the tiny princely state of Ayodhya near the River Sarayu, is worth mentioning. Our beloved Emperor Mahabali believed that its young prince, Dasaratha, a relative of the present king Anarnya, was the only one among the Devas capable of building an empire. So let us continue our struggle until we get ourselves horses and arms. Then we’ll show the Devas that they have forgotten the lessons of history.”

  The lecture was rather heavy for the crowd assembled before us. It was better to give them short, simple orders which they could follow, instead of indigestible doses of history. I was disappointed that no one had contradicted me or raised any questions during my long address. They just sat there staring stupidly. If I was to quench even a little of my fiery ambition, I would have to devote a great deal of time to developing leaders. One day, the passive submission of this group could be advantageous to me. What my predecessors had tried to do was to run a republic. They wanted democracy, where each man, like this bunch of idiots in front of me, decided the future of the nation.

  What such a race needed was a strong dictator. Mahabali tried to become one and failed. He was too soft to be a dictator. Earlier kings like Hiranya and his brother, were cruel and ruthless, and were so harsh that they lost popular support. What they needed was someone who was intelligent, ambitious, stron citie cg and ruthless, and of course, benevolent – perhaps someone like me.

  I gave the order for the congregation of would-be warriors to break for lunch. I sat with my brothers and cousins under a banyan tree, not
too far from the meadow where the warriors were making merry and cracking raunchy jokes. We started with the leftover debate of the past few days. Where should we start our campaign? Vibhishana wanted to capture the small Deva village near the river Kaveri. It had a small fort, granaries, a tiny school, but nothing else. The people were dirt poor and a small band of malnourished men guarded the dilapidated fort. It would be just a token victory. Kumbakarna was dead against it, saying that it would be a waste of effort and alert the other Deva kings about our army. I thought it a bit preposterous to call this motley crowd an army, but allowed Kumbakarna to get away with his illusions. He wanted an all-out campaign against Karthi Veerarjuna in the northern Sahyas. My uncles, Malyavan and Sumali, wanted none of this. They wished to continue the guerilla warfare against the Central Indian Deva kingdoms and finally take on Amaravathi.

  It was a long and drawn-out dream without any strategy or plan. I was part-amused, half-irritated, with this elaborate joke of the past few days. I was trying hard to make this a democratic forum, where we would take a decision with mutual consent after due discussions. But, I was convinced that democracy would not do with these people. If they, who were my close kin, could not agree upon the direction the campaign should take, without stopping to think whether we had the arms, means and men to conduct the same, how could I expect the common Asuras to think with any clarity?

  “Enough!” I was getting flustered and wanted to end this farce. “I want to attack Lanka and that settles it. I will not allow any further discussions.”

  “But…” I stopped Vibhishana with a steely glare and saw with dismay that he cowered before me. Either I was getting better at intimidating people or my younger brother was a bigger coward than I had previously imagined. Before my uncles could start rolling out their grandiose, hare-brained schemes, I said with determination, “First someone has to get our mother and sister from the island. It might get too dangerous there. Then we will plan the campaign to attack the island. I want the throne where that oaf of a half- brother is resting his fat arse and I want it fast.”