River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  “Are you real?” Gautam Nilambar gasped.

  The stranger smiled impishly. “Yes, I am. Harius Sancarius at your service.” He bowed from the waist in an outlandish manner. Gautam was mystified. Then he said, “Oh, a Yavana!” He had never seen a mlechha1 before.

  “I hail from Ionia and I am in shipping,” the Greek informed him breezily. Gautam looked blank, feeling like a country bumpkin.

  “Well, I’m not one of those Greek shipping magnates you may have heard about,” Harius Sancarius tried to reassure the obviously baffled student from the backwoods. Gautam had never heard of Greek shipping magnates, either.

  “I have a little cargo boat I brought from the Gulf to the River Indus. There I left it in charge of my Phoenician crew and decided to explore the land mass to the east. So I bought a horse from a Scythian and . . . may I sit down? First went up to Taxila . . .”

  “Oh! You’ve been to Taxila! I very much want to go to Taxila, too,” uttered Gautam, mesmerised.

  “Have some of this.” The Greek took out dry fruit from his leather bag. “I am a mlechha all right, but you won’t lose caste. It is uncooked, straight from the orchards of Gandhara!” A diamond ring flashed on his right hand which he quickly hid in the folds of his tunic, and laughed nervously. “People are so honest in this country. I have been travelling over hill and dale fearlessly. No highwaymen, no robbers.”

  Gautam kept quiet. Now he was gazing more intently at the Greek’s weather-beaten handsome face. It was uncanny. He resembled the doe-eyed girl with the gold coronet he had spotted the other day on the royal ghat near Saket. “You speak the local lingo fluently,” he observed doubtfully.

  “Well, I’ve been around, can speak many languages,” the Yavana said nonchalantly. Although he was much older, he almost looked like the tiara-girl’s twin brother. Gautam was confused. He noticed the lonian’s growing discomfort and blurted out, “Look here, sir, Harius Whatever—I happened to see a buxom female wearing a crown, who looked like you—odd isn’t it? That’s why I can’t forget her face. She can be no relation of yours, you being Greek, she a Rajput princess. Anyway, a desirable wench, if truth be told.”

  The Greek’s face reddened. “You mean Her Royal Highness, Princess Nirmala . . . ,” he spoke haughtily and in icy tones. The next moment he glanced around. He had given himself away so stupidly.

  Gautam smiled, still trying to fathom the mystery. All of a sudden it dawned on him. Truimphantly he said, “Sire, permit me to say that you are no Ionian. You are good old Rajkumar Hari Shankar, better known as the Missing Prince of Kaushal Desh.”

  The phoney Greek looked scared. “Please don’t tell a soul about me, I beg of you . . . ,” he pleaded. Gone were his regal arrogance and international airs of a few moments earlier.

  Gautam Nilambar of the backwaters of Shravasti relished this new power which he had acquired over the crown prince.

  “All right,” he said magnanimously, “but only if you tell me why you have become a fugitive. Why are you masquerading as a Greek traveller? Tell me, or . . .’

  “Or?”

  “I’ll go out right now and inform the village drummer. He’ll tom-tom the news that the prince has come back and is hiding in . . .”

  The threat worked. “No, don’t. I beg of you.” The fugitive clasped his hands in all humility.

  Now Gautam assumed the role of a cross-examiner. Authority changes a person in a moment. “The King had sent you to Taxila for higher studies, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “There you—I mean Your Royal Highness—got into bad company, right? Started frequenting dens of iniquity?”

  “No. I got into the splendid company of the Buddha’s missionaries. They were on their way to the steppes of the horsepeople—the Turukshas. They showed me the Highway to Salvation. Still, I was not in a hurry to take the oath of monkhood. See, I had left this fish-eyed magnolia girl behind . . .”

  “A girl! That always seems to be at the root of all problems,” Gautam agreed.

  “. . . so I could not make up my mind. Eventually the world made me renounce it.” The prince continued in his sad, attractive voice, “I used to live in a tiny cave-like brick cell in the quadrangle of Taxila. We had our food in a dining hall where Acharya Vishnu Sharma often lectured on political theory. He propounded the Law of the Fish—big fish eat smaller ones. What we needed, he maintained, was an empire—the days of small kingdoms are over.

  “There were some Iranians in Taxila. They said their monarchs had developed a mystique of kingship which was truly awesome. I faced a dilemma. If I remained in this world of power-hungry kings and warlords and politicians I’d have to kill human beings, whereas now I didn’t even want to kill animals. I left the university and set out on my long journey. I sailed on the Indus river and rode out to the mountains of the blue-eyed Pakhtas, and beyond. The Brahmins of the northwest boast that they can trace their lineage to the rishis who composed the Vedic hymns when they lived in the mountains of Aryana,2 before the mailed warriors of Indra conquered the dark people of Hariyupia. It all seemed quite recent—the time of the gods and the heroes—and one felt very close somehow to the Source, while one lived in Khashtram . . .”

  “What is that?” asked Gautam, peeved.

  “North, in the Iranian language—Aryaniam Khashtram. And those Rig Vedic chants, when they were sung out there, you could almost hear the tearing north wind and the thunder of red-faced Rudra. I sat around the bonfires of fur-clad nomads and heard the caravan-leaders recount the epics of Turanian heroes, Sohrab and Rustam. I heard of the centuries-long Greco-Persian wars and the conquests of Iran’s emperors. Darius I, King of Kings, had declared: ‘I am Daryush, Emperor of Emperors, Lord of this Earth. Iranian, son of an Iranian, Arya, son of an Arya . . .’ The Persian Kings call their language Aryani.”

  “Say, this Arya business is good business. We are Aryans too, aren’t we, very superior people, eh?” Gautam sat up. “Which goes to show. There are people of noble birth like us and the Iranians, and there are the lesser breeds—it’s all the Law of Karma.”

  “I am not too sure of that. Anyway, Guru Vishnu Sharma used to talk about the Wheel of Sovereignty. Persia’s Wheel of Sovereignty rolled everywhere. The Achemenians had also conquered the northeastern regions of Sapta Sindhu. Emperor Xerxes, King of Kings, declared: These lands where devas were worshipped, with the help of Ahur Mazda I have shaken the very foundations of their temples. He had this carved on stone slabs.”

  Hari Shankar continued, “The Greeks had at last defeated the Persians, burned down Shahenshah Dara’s magnificent palace of Persepolis. And Alexander attacked Sapta Sindhu. It’s a strange paradox. Men are destructive and they are seekers of knowledge at the same time. I have wondered about the mystery of languages. Look, our Sanskrit and their Persian have a common origin. Our Ramesh is their Ramish. Our ‘go’ is their ‘gao’, and so on. And some languages are totally different. How did it happen?

  “During my wanderings I came across people from Soghdia, Cappodocio and Thessaly. I have met folks who have invented all manner of scripts. And they write on anything they can lay their restless hands on—they make papyrus and they write on parchment, camel-skin and even on sheep’s bones. They paint word pictures on granite walls, they carve words on stone and they inscribe on clay tablets and then bake their words. They write letters on pieces of baked clay and put them in clay envelopes.

  “Why, this long-haired Hebrew merchant told me that even their god had sent down his orders on stone tablets!

  “I learnt some Aramaic script at Taxila, and some Kharoshti—the words sound harsh like the braying of a khar—donkey in Persian.”

  “You don’t say!” Gautam was overwhelmed by the truant prince’s adventures and academic achievements.

  “Then I also realised that words created much confusion, they led to misunderstandings and bloodshed and wars. So I stopped believing in them.”

  Gautam reflected for a few moments. “You are still u
sing words. They connect. How can you reach pure thought unless you employ words? Meaning is the thing,” he countered vehemently. Now he had again become the college debater. “Therefore, word and non-word are two different Brahmas. By concentrating on the word you can reach the non-word . . .”

  “I am that non-word,” responded Shankar smugly.

  “Word is eternal!” Gautam persisted. “M will always have the sound of M and not of F. Sound is everlasting and we remember it long after having heard it. It exists simultaneously and cannot be annihilated.”

  “So you would not reject the Vedas—because they are words and therefore eternal,” said the prince.

  “Quite right. Matter is Brahma, the Vedas are Brahma in words.”

  The Rajkumar sat up again and said, “Listen, young man, there is no relationship of anything with anything, except its transitory existence. All is momentary, all is pain. Sarvam dukham. Body and soul both are mortal. Man is like a candle, blows out. Only the continuum of events and sensations remains. She used to sing Sri Raga and Bhairav to me in the palace arbour. The notes of her ragas followed me wherever I went—in wind and rain and flowing water . . . And those notes brought me back.”

  Gautam listened carefully, then said, “You may put an end to words but melody remains. Notes are eternal. And also, I think you are being very foolish. If I were you, Prince, I would go right back to the Raj Bhavan. Why must you punish yourself forever, and for no reason at all? The world is so lovely and enjoyable.” Gautam looked up. There was a flutter of wings. Some peacocks had flown over to sleep on the branches of the breadfruit tree overhanging the shrine.

  Hari Shankar was lost in thought.

  “Your Royal Highness,” Gautam reminded him courteously, “You were telling me about this young lady who wore champak blossoms and sang . . .” If I can put two and two together, I think I have seen her, too, on the bathing ghat in Saket. The voluptuous Meenakshi. He resisted the temptation to say so. He had already incurred the prince’s wrath when he mentioned the tiara girl. This was indeed a strange game of chance . . .

  “Ah, yes.” Prince Hari paused and gazed pensively at his diamond ring. “I was supposed to marry her and she gave me this ring as a pledge. I thought I must return it to her and release her from her promise, just as the Buddha freed me of all human bondage. So I decided to come home incognito and give it back to her. I bought a Greek outfit from an Ionian merchant and came here—I went halfway into town, then I got cold feet. My parents would trap me. I’ll have to marry her, continue the dynasty, wage wars—No. I won’t do all that. Therefore, I am going straight to Jetvan Vihar, beyond Shravasti. There I’ll don the saffron robe and be done with it.” He took a deep breath after making this long confession.

  “Will you be able to forget her?”

  “Hopefully.”

  The peacocks had gone to sleep. Hari Shankar made himself a pillow of leaves. Gautam pulled his white wrap up to his face and turned towards the wall. They remained awake for a while and then they, too, fell asleep.

  Gautam had a nightmare. He saw the tribal goddess of the shrine turn into the girl with champak flowers, then an ugly old woman with a toothless grin. She said, “I am Vaishali’s . . .” A breadfruit fell with a thud on the stone floor. Gautam awoke, shivering. Hari Shankar was peacefully asleep. Some Chandals were carrying a dead body towards the cremation ground. Gautam was too afraid to go to sleep again. He didn’t want to be haunted by that hideous crone. He huddled in a corner and waited for the morning. Then it occurred to him . . . If you could somehow foresee your beloved in her old age you would never want to fall in love. Perhaps that’s what the Buddhists’ teaching was all about.

  Rajkumar Hari Shankar awoke at daybreak. Some Brahmins had started gargling noisily on the riverbank down below. Parrots twittered in guava trees. Peacocks had flown down from their branches. Gautam sat cross-legged on the floor, facing the rising sun.

  He jumped to his feet and asked Hari, urgently: “Sire, there was this famous dancer, Amrapali, who lived in Vaishali . . .”

  “Stop thinking about women.”

  “Have you?” asked Gautam cheekily, and returned to his sun-worship. Too upset to continue his communion with nature, he got up again. “They say the courtesan called Amrapali tried to seduce the Buddha’s chief disciple, Ananda. Took it upon herself as a sort of challenge.”

  “Whatever happened or didn’t happen in the past does not concern us. Let’s start on our separate journeys.”

  They clambered down to the edge of the river.

  “The Saryu is so translucent, if you throw a coin you can see it in the riverbed,” the prince remarked.

  “I carry no money, Sire,” Gautam replied.

  Hari Shankar took out a Persian coin from his purse and flung it into the river. It lay sparkling on the grey sand. “Ah! And there is my fine Arabian horse!” the prince said and untied his black steed from the trunk of a neem tree. The next instant he rode past Gautam, shouting joyfully, “Here I go towards my new life, shall see you some other time, dear friend. May all be well with you . . .”

  Gautam remained standing on the bank, surprised by the prince’s abrupt departure. He looked up at the overcast sky and turned towards the road to Shravasti.

  1 Dirty foreigner.

  2 Modern Afghanistan.

  3. The Sages’ Grove

  Shravasti lay on the southern bank of the Rapti, guarded in the north by the pink and blue Himavat range. It was a large city divided into separate localities, where people of different castes lived and followed their ancestral occupations. Thieves, thugs and harlots had their own guilds and canons. The populace enjoyed life. Jugglers and harlequins performed in the marketplace and colourful festivals were celebrated with much merriment. Courtesans played ornate lutes at their windows. Flower girls sold jasmine garlands from door to door. Gambling was everybody’s favourite pastime.

  Low-born cartwrights, potters and basket-weavers lived in shanties outside the suburbs. The Chandals were the lowest of the low, inferior even to the Shudras. They were the fifth caste, destined to be pallbearers. They could only wear clothes taken off dead bodies because their karma had not decreed otherwise.

  The Buddha had arrived in Shravasti nearly a hundred and fifty years earlier from Magadh, and set up his vihara in nearby Jetvan. A lot of untouchables followed him and became touchable. It was as easy as that. He was greatly resented by the powerful Brahmin priests of Shravasti.

  Gautam had inherited the prejudices against Buddhist philosophy and had argued with Prince Hari Shankar as an orthodox Brahmin. He had heard many discourses on Buddhism and was well-versed in it, mainly for the sake of disputation with ochre-robed monks. After Prince Hari vanished from sight, Gautam picked up his staff and cloth bag and resumed his journey.

  The roofline of Shravasti came into view. He entered the gate and reached the town square. His father’s brick-and-timber mansion confronted him—it was known as Elephant House, for carved elephant heads flanked its portals. Gautam had a great urge to go in and see his parents but he was not supposed to meet his family till he graduated. With a heavy heart he walked on. Dusk was falling. Toddy shops and gambling houses resounded with bawdy songs. A juggler was eating live coals and idle spectators cheered him on. Fops strutted about in the Street of Courtesans. He hastened out of the neighbourhood and proceeded towards the gurukul. The prince had disappeared, yet he seemed to be in hot pursuit. Both the Rajkumar and the woman, Champak, had ganged up and were hounding poor Gautam. He felt mentally exhausted and his legs ached.

  At last he arrived at his kutir, hidden behind flowering creepers. This was his sanctuary, his kingdom. A few pots and pans, and a chulha. Some unstitched clothes hung from the rafters. His painting paraphernalia and unfinished figurines were stacked neatly in a corner. He took his bath in the brook which ran under his window and stepped in, feeling light and refreshed. But when he lay down on his piece of sacking and fell asleep, he dreamt of the Lady Champak.

/>   He got up in the morning feeling angry with himself. A female and a fugitive prince have enticed me. I ought to be strong like an oak, not shaken by every wind. He resolved to get back to his studies in earnest and prepare for his final examination.

  Every year from the full moon of July to the full moon of March, he diligently attended open-air classes and followed the strict rules of Brahmacharya. He got up before sunrise, brushed his teeth with a fresh twig of the neem tree, bathed in the river and prayed in the ashoka grove. In the autumn months, cranes and storks came flying in from Tibet and returned to the north in the spring. At the river bank at dawn each crane or bagla was found standing on one leg, as though deep in meditation, so fake “holy” men had come to be called “bagla bhagat”.

  He had followed the ashram routine day after day for ten long years. Soon, he would be twenty-four. On graduation day, early in the morning, he would be shut up in a room in order “to shame the sun by the humiliation of being confronted with his superior lustre. From now on, the sun must shine with the borrowed radiance of the scholar.” In the evening he would come out, take off his white robes, roll up his deerskin, shed his thread, staff and begging bowl. Riding a chariot he would be taken to the assembly of learned Brahmins and presented before them as a competent pandit. At the time of the convocation the Acharya would read “The Advice to Lay Students” from the Upanishads.

  Speak the truth. Do your duty. Honour your teacher and your parents and your guest. Conduct yourself as a Brahmin. This is the rule. This is the true Upanishad of the Vedas.

  Then he would go out into the world, get married and become a householder.

  Many young Kshatriyas went to Indraprastha and joined the army of the warlike Kurus and Panchals. Wars were being fought everywhere. Wherever there was power, there was conflict. Kings and chieftains had their own priests who were also crafty politicians. He was not going to be a bagla bhagat if his heart was not in priestcraft. So what would he do after graduation? Loaf around as a rich man’s son? He liked to carve in stone. But sculpture had yet not developed into a thriving art so he could not make it his career. His future was uncertain and he was in love with an unknown woman. It seemed like a hopeless situation.