Creation (29 page)

“How was this accomplished?” I was polite; even curious.

“For twelve years I isolated myself. I lived without clothes, ate seldom, was chaste. Naturally, I was beaten and stoned by villagers. But since I knew that the body is unclean, transient, an anchor that holds the ferryboat in mid-passage, I ignored all the body’s needs until, finally, gradually, my life monad became clear. Since I am now impervious to all things, I cannot be born again, not even as a king of the gods—always something to be feared, for that sort of grandeur has clouded more than one crystal. In fact, to be one of the high gods is the last temptation, the hardest to resist, the most exquisite. Look at your own Ahura Mazdah. He has chosen to be Wise Lord. But if he had been truly wise, he would have taken the next and final step and integrated himself with that cosmic creature of whom we are all a part, the colossal man within whose body we are all of us simply atoms that will not cease to rearrange themselves over and over again until, with integration, there is a release from the self and like a bubble one floats to the top of that curving starry skull, and it is over and it is done with.”

What fascinates me about the Jains is not so much their certainty—a characteristic of altogether too many religions—as the antiquity of their beliefs. It is possible that their atomistic view of man is the oldest known religious theory. For centuries they have studied every aspect of human life and related it to their world view. Although integration is the official goal of every Jaina monk, only a few will ever achieve it. Yet the effort to do so will make for a better rebirth, if there is such a thing.

“Can you remember any of your previous incarnations?”

For the first time Mahavira looked at me. “Why, no. What would be the point? After all, it takes no effort to
imagine
what it must be like to be a lion or the god Indra or a blind woman or a grain of sand.”

“A Greek named Pythagoras claims that he can remember all of his previous lives.”

“Oh, poor man!” Mahavira looked genuinely unhappy. “To remember eighty-four thousand previous existences! Now, that is indeed hell, if such a thing were to exist.”

The number eighty-four thousand reminded me of Gosala. I told him that I had met his former friend.

Mahavira blinked his eyes at me. He looked like a friendly fat monkey. “For six years we were as close as brothers,” he said. “Then I ceased to be myself. I no longer cared for him. Or for anyone. I had achieved integration. Poor Gosala has not, cannot. So we parted. Sixteen years later when we met again. I was the crossing-maker. Because he could not bear this, he hated himself. That was when he denied the essential belief of the Jains. If we cannot, some of us, integrate ourselves, then there is no point to what we do. At that instant, Gosala decided that there is absolutely no point to what we do because ... Did he throw out a ball of string for you?”

“Yes, Mahavira.”

Mahavira laughed. “What happens, I wonder, to those minute particles of the string that detach themselves as it unwinds? I have a suspicion that some will integrate themselves with the whole, don’t you?”

“I have no idea. Tell me about this cycle of creation which is ending?”

“What is there to tell? It ends ...”

“To begin again?”

“Yes.”

“But when did these cycles first begin? And why do they go on?”

Mahavira shrugged. “What is endless is without beginning.”

“But what about this—this colossal man? Where did he come from? Who created him?”

“He was not created, because he already was, and everything is a part of him, forever.”

“Time—”

“Time does not exist.” Mahavira smiled. “If you find that too difficult to understand”—he looked at Caraka the Dravidian—“then think of time as a serpent swallowing its tail.”

“Time is a circle?”

“Time is a circle. There is no beginning. There is no end.” With that Mahavira inclined his head, and the audience was over. As I rose to go I noticed that a mosquito had settled on Mahavira’s bare shoulder. He did not stir as it sucked his blood.

One of the monks insisted on showing us through the nearby animal shelter where every sort of wounded or sick animal is lovingly tended in a series of ramshackle huts where I have never before or since smelled such a stench or heard so much howling and baying and lowing.

“Do you also tend human beings?” I asked, cloth held over my nose.

“Others do, Lord. We prefer to help the truly helpless. Let me show you this heartbreaking cow that we found ...”

But Caraka and I had hurried away. Later that day I met one of the city’s most important merchants. Although the merchant class is looked down upon by the warriors and Brahmans, most of the wealth of the Indian states is controlled by them and they are often courted by their social betters.

I would now give the man’s name, but I have forgotten it. He was, curiously enough, in correspondence with the ubiquitous Egibi and sons, the Babylonian bankers. For years he had been trying to exchange caravans with them. “Caravans are the basis of all prosperity.” He sounded as if he were quoting some religious text. When I told him of the Great King’s desire to import iron from Magadha, he thought that he might be useful. He had, he said, a number of partners in Rajagriha. I would get on with them. Some were bankers, who used money.

By and large, Indians do not strike many coins. Either their trade is conducted through barter or else they use crudely stamped weights of silver or copper. Curiously enough, they mint no gold, even though our Persian darics are highly valued; yet they produce quantities of gold which are mined for them by giant ants. Although I found it odd that these highly civilized and ancient countries are so primitive in regard to money, I was much impressed by their credit system.

Because of thieves, Indians seldom travel with chests of gold or objects of value. Instead, they place their valuables with a reputable merchant of their own city. He then gives them a written statement to the effect that goods of a certain value have been placed with him and he requests his fellow merchants throughout the sixteen kingdoms to provide the holder of the statement with money or goods against the money or goods he is holding. This is done gladly. No wonder! Not only is the money safe,, but the lender collects eighteen percent interest on what is borrowed. Fortunately, the merchant who holds your valuables will often pay you quite a good percentage for his own lendings against what is yours.

For safety and convenience, this system is difficult to fault. During my embassy I actually earned a bit more money than I spent. Some years ago I was able to introduce a similar system of credit in Persia. But I don’t think that it will ever catch on. Persians are both honest and suspicious, not the best mentality for the conduct of business.

While the merchant and I were talking, an elderly servant woman entered the room with a pitcher of water.

“I must make one of the five sacrifices, if you’ll forgive me.” The merchant crossed to a niche where a number of crudely-made clay figures were placed side by side on a shelf of elegantly glazed tile. Pouring water onto the floor in front of them, he murmured a series of prayers. Then he gave the pitcher to the servant, who crept from the room.

“That was the prayer to my ancestors. Each day we must perform what we call the five great sacrifices. The first is to Brahma, the world spirit. We recite to him from the vedas. Later we make a libation of water to our ancestors, while to all the gods we pour ghee onto the sacred fire. Next we scatter grain for the animals, birds, spirits. Finally we worship man by offering a stranger hospitality. I have”—he bowed very low to me—“just had the honor of performing two sacrifices simultaneously.”

I quoted for him a similar Aryan sentiment that predates Zoroaster. Then my new acquaintance asked me how the Persians educate their young. He was particularly interested in Cyrus’ palace school system.

“Our kings should do the same,” he said. “But we are very indolent here. I suppose it has to do with the heat, the rains. Our warrior class is taught archery, and some of them actually know how to fight, but not much else. If they can learn by heart a single veda, they are considered educated. All in all, I think that we merchants are the best educated. Of course, the Brahmans learn thousands and thousands of verses of the vedas. But they seldom learn the things that we consider important—like mathematics, astronomy, etymology. The origins of speech fascinate us. Up north, in Taxila, the Persian language was studied long before Darius got control of the Indus River. We have always been fascinated by the words that both separate and bind us. I myself support a school here at Varanasi where we teach the six schools of metaphysics as well as the secrets of the calendar.”

Although I was somewhat overwhelmed by the intricacies of Indian education, I agreed to talk to a group of students before I left for Rajagriha. “They will be honored,” he assured me, “and attentive.”

The school occupied several rooms in an old building just back of a bazaar that specialized in metalwork. The distracting sound of hammers on copper did not exactly improve the quality of my discourse. But the students were indeed attentive. Most were reasonably fair-skinned. A few were of the warrior class; the rest were merchant class. There were no Brahmans.

Democritus wants to know how I could tell who belongs to what class. This is how. When an Indian boy is old enough for what is called his second birth as an Aryan, he is given a cord of three intertwined threads, which he will wear for the rest of his life across his chest, from left shoulder to below the right arm. For the warrior, the cord is of cotton; for the priest, hemp; for the merchant, wool. In Persia we have a somewhat similar rite of initiation but without any visible mark of caste.

I sat in a chair beside the teacher. Although of the merchant class, he was deeply religious. “I am a disciple of Gotama,” he told me gravely when we met. “We call him the enlightened one, or the Buddha.”

I found the students inquisitive, polite, shy. There was a good deal of curiosity about geography. Just where was Persia? and how many families lived at Susa? They measure population not by the number of individual freemen but by households. At that time there were forty thousand families in Varanasi or, perhaps, two hundred thousand people, not counting foreigners and the non-Aryan natives.

I spoke at some length of the Wise Lord. They seemed interested. I refrained from that fierceness of style which characterized my grandfather’s exhortations. Because the Indians accept all the gods, they find it quite easy to accept the idea of only one god. They even accept the possibility that there is no creator at all and that the Aryan gods are simply natural forces of supermen who will one day be extinguished when this cycle of creation ends, as it must, and a new cycle begins, as it will—or so they believe.

I can see how this lack of certainty about deity has led to the sudden recent flourishing of so many new theories of creation. At first I was hopelessly confused. I had been brought up to believe that the Wise Lord was all-encompassing, and I was quite prepared to annihilate in debate anyone who denied the truth of Zoroaster’s vision. But no Indian ever denied it. Everyone accepted Ahura Mazdah as the Wise Lord. They even accepted the fact that their own high deities Varuna, Mithra, Rudra were, to us, devils.

“All things evolve, and change,” said the young teacher as the class ended. He then insisted that we visit the deer park outside the city. A four-horse chariot had been provided by my merchant friend, so we were able to drive comfortably through Varanasi. Like so many very old cities, the place had simply evolved without plan or straight avenues. Most of the city clings to the riverbank. Many of the houses are four and five stories tall, with a tendency to collapse. Day and night the narrow winding streets are crowded with people, animals, carts, elephants. There are no temples or public buildings of any interest. The vice-regal lodge is simply a house larger than its neighbors. The temples are small, dingy, stinking of ghee.

The deer park contained no deer as far as I could tell. It was simply a charming overgrown park, filled with strange flowers and even stranger trees. Since the common people may use the park as they please, it pleases them to sit about under the trees, eating, playing games, and listening to professional storytellers or even to wise men.

Thanks to four months of rain, the greens of the park were so intense that they made my eyes water. I suspect that even then my eyes were somehow oversensitive, and flawed.

“This is where Gotama sat when he first came to Varanasi.” The young teacher pointed at a tree whose only distinction was that no one went near it except to stare, as we were doing.

“Who?” I’m afraid that I had managed to forget already the name that he had told me only an hour before.

“Gotama. We call him the Buddha.”

“Oh, yes. Your teacher.”

“
Our
teacher.” My companion was matter-of-fact. “Under that bo tree, he experienced enlightenment. He became the Buddha.”

I listened with less than half an ear. I was not interested in Siddhartha Gotama and his enlightenment. But I was interested to learn that King Bimbisara was a Buddhist; and I remember thinking to myself, Yes, he’s a Buddhist in the same way Darius is a Zoroastrian. Kings are always respectful of popular religions.

As we parted I told the young man that I was leaving for Rajagriha.

“Then you are already in the Buddha’s footsteps.” The young man was entirely serious. “When the rainy season ended, the Buddha left this park and journeyed east to Rajagriha, as you will do. He was then received by King Bimbisara, as you will be.”

“But there the likeness must surely end.”

“Or begin. Who knows when or how enlightenment will come?”

There was no answer to that. Like Greeks, Indians are better at questions than at answers.

IN GREAT STATE, THE PERSIAN EMBASSY left Varanasi. Normally, the traveler goes by boat down the Ganges to the port of Pataliputra, where he disembarks and proceeds overland to Rajagriha. But since the Ganges was still dangerously swollen, Varshakara insisted that we travel overland by elephant.