Creation (40 page)

Prince Jeta believed that the reason why the merchant class supports the Buddhists and the Jains is that the two orders respect all life and disapprove of war. The two orders also appeal to those villagers who worship the pre-Aryan gods. For one thing, villagers prefer peace to war; for another, they detest those huge and wasteful slaughters of horses and bulls and rams that the Brahmans are forever offering up to the Vedic gods. No villager wants to give up his bullock to anyone, Aryan or non-Aryan, man or god. I think it altogether possible that one day the Buddhist and Jaina orders will displace the Aryan gods, thanks to the effort of the wealthy merchants in combination with the non-Aryan population of the countryside.

Until I came to India I had thought of cities as being nothing more than irregular blank walls of different heights arranged haphazardly along winding lanes. Even at Babylon, the houses that look upon the long straight streets are as blank and as windowless as those of any Persian or Greek city. Were it not for the occasional Greek arcade, the monotony would be depressing, particularly in those climates where the common people tend to live out-of-doors all year around.

But Shravasti is unlike the western cities. Every house displays windows and balconies, and the roofs are fantastically turreted. Walls are often decorated with scenes from Rama’s endless life. Many of these paintings are beautifully done—or redone—since each year the rains wash them away. Some householders now cover their walls with bas-reliefs, and the effect is delightful.

As the governor and I moved slowly down the center of the crowded avenue, horse-drawn chariots made way for us while rich merchants peered down at us from the tops of elephants. Unlike the crowd at the port, the city people were decorous. But then, they are used to foreigners. They had been Persians before, not to mention Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and even visitors from behind the Himalayas, the yellow folk of Cathay.

“To the left,” said Prince Jeta, ever the compassionate guide, “are the bazaars and the manufactories.” He need not have told me. I could hear or smell the specialty of each of the streets or lanes that led from the avenue. One smelled of flowers; another stank of curing hides. Some quarters were loud with the noise of metal being pounded while others were filled with the sounds of singing birds, to be sold as pets or food.

“To the right are the government buildings, the great houses, the king’s palace. While here”—we were now in the enormous central square—“caravans from all over the world meet.”

Shravasti’s caravan square is an astonishing sight. Thousands of camels, elephants, bullocks and horses fill the largest city square that I have ever seen. Day and night, caravans arrive and depart, load and unload. Three large fountains water both beasts and men while, entirely at random, tents are pitched and booths set up. Everything is bought and sold by imperturbable merchants. Solemnly they hop from wagonload to wagonload, eyes as sharp and glittering as the eyes of those carrion birds which appear once a battle’s done.

From caravan square the royal way proceeds to a green park, at whose center is an elaborate wood-and-brick palace. If somewhat less impressive than Bimbisara’s recent creation, it is far more beautiful.

By then I was exhausted. So was my escort. They were, also, less than pleased by the long, hot walk that I had subjected them to. Once inside the palace, they got their revenge. “The king has said that you are to attend him the moment you arrive.” The sweating chamberlain was very happy.

I was not. “But I am dusty ...”

“Today the king is indifferent to protocol.”

“In that case, the king will not mind if I were to change these clothes and—”

“He may be indifferent to protocol, Lord Ambassador, but he expects to be obeyed in all things.”

“But I have gifts from the Great King ...”

“Another time.”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Prince Jeta.

As the chamberlain led me through a series of high-ceilinged rooms, inset with plaques of silver, with mother-of-pearl and ivory, I was very much aware that the splendor of the surroundings was in vivid contrast to the grubbiness of my person.

Finally, without ceremony, I was shown into a small room where ogival windows looked onto trees, flowering vines, a marble fountain with no water in it. Silhouetted against the window were two elderly Buddhist monks with shaved heads.

For a moment I thought that I had been brought to the wrong room. I stared dumbly at the two old men. They smiled at me. They looked like brothers. Then the smaller of the two said, “Welcome, Cyrus Spitama, to our court.”

As I started to go down on one knee, King Pasenadi stopped me. “No, no. You are a holy man. You must kneel only for those who worship ... fire, isn’t it?”

“We only worship the Wise Lord. The fire is simply his messenger to us.” Although I was much too tired to preach more of a sermon than that, I found the king’s sweetness relentless.

“Of course. Of course. You worship a sky god. So do we, don’t we, Sariputra?”

“Yes, indeed. We have every sort of god imaginable,” said the tall, fragile-looking Sariputra.

“Including those that are unimaginable,” added Pasenadi.

“The Wise Lord is the only god,” I said.

“We also have
only
gods, too. Don’t we, Sariputra?”

“Quantities, my dear.”

I was by now used to the way Indian holy men address their disciples ... as if speaking to small children whom they love. The “my dear’s” are gently bestowed, quite unlike the somewhat menacing “my dear’s” of Ajatashatru, whose use of endearments was always calculated to keep others off-guard.

“I think that is a contradiction,” I said stiffly.

“We have those, too,” said King Pasenadi mildly.

“In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because”—Sariputra giggled—“birth is the direct cause, in every single
case, of death.”

The two old men laughed happily.

Since I was by now in a thoroughly bad temper, I became formal. “I come to you from the Achaemenid, from Darius the Great King, the lord of all the lands, the king of kings.”

“My dear, we know, we know! And you will be able to tell us all about Darius when we receive you at our court, in state. Then, and only then, will we receive the messenger—no, the ambassador of that Persian king whose presence in the valley of the Indus River has been a matter of such concern to us all. But, for now, we are simply two old men who would follow the eightfold path. As a king, I cannot go as far as I would like. But, fortunately, I am now an arhat, while Sariputra here is unusually close to enlightenment.”

“My dear, I am no such thing! I serve the Buddha and the order, in little ways ...”

“Listen to him, Cyrus Spitama! It was Sariputra who created the order. It is he who makes all the rules. It is he who sees to it that whatever the Buddha says or has said will be remembered. Why, Sariputra himself remembers every single word that the Buddha has spoken since that day in the deer park at Varanasi.”

“My dear, you exaggerate. It is Ananda, not I, who remembers
every
word. All that I do is put those words into verses that even little children can learn.” He turned to me. “Do you sing, my dear?”

“No. I mean, not well.” I had the sense that I was going mad. I could not believe that one of these two old men ruled a country as large as Egypt, and that the other was the head of the Buddhist order. They struck me as perfect simpletons.

“I can see that you don’t see. But you are tired. Even so, you will want to know what happened. In due course, a young lady arrived in Shravasti. She said that she was from the Gotama clan, just like the golden one himself! Oh, I was thrilled! After we were married, the golden one told me what a lovely joke had been played on me. Apparently the” Shakyas did not want to mix their noble blood with the royal house of Koshala. On the other hand, they did not dare to offend me. So they sent me a common prostitute. And I married her. But when I found out, was I angry, dear Sariputra?”

“You were in a rage, dearest.”

“Oh, no, I was not.” Pasenadi looked hurt. “Oh, yes, you were. You were in such a temper that we feared for you.”

“I
seemed
to be, perhaps.”

“My dear, you were.”

“My dear, I was not.”

Mercifully, some great hand has eliminated the rest of that scene from my memory. It is possible that I fainted dead away.

The Persian embassy was housed in a small building at one end of the palace gardens. Between us and the palace, there were fountains, flowers, trees—and silence. Even the peacocks made no sound—were their tongues slit?—while the band of sacred monkeys would watch us, in perfect silence, from the treetops. At the center of a great city, the king had created a forest retreat.

During the week that I was allowed to prepare myself for the formal presentation to the king, Prince Jeta took me in hand. He invited me to his house, a tall building that overlooked the river. In the prince’s civilized company, my encounter with the two silly old men seemed like a fever-dream. But when I told Prince Jeta the story of my reception by King Pasenadi, he was both amused and perturbed. “The old man is like that,” he said.

We were seated on the roof of Prince Jeta’s house. As the sun set over dull-blue hills, the clouds made strange streak patterns, a characteristic of the start of the monsoon season.

The sky-dome that covers the Indian earth is mysteriously heightened—a trick of light? I don’t know the reason but the effect is awesome, and for man diminishing.

“Does Pasenadi’s behavior explain why the state dissolves?”

“Things are not that bad.” Prince Jeta spoke precisely. “Koshala is still a great power. Pasenadi is still a great king.”

I mouthed the word “Spies?”

Prince Jeta nodded. But up to a point, he had meant what he said. “The problem is that Pasenadi is now both an arhat and a king, and it is very hard to be both. I know, in my own small way.”

“What is an arhat?”

“The word means ‘one who has killed the enemy.’ In this case, human desire.”

“Like the Buddha.”

“Except that an arhat still exists—unlike the Buddha, who has come and gone. There are those who think that since Sariputra is every bit as holy as Gotama, he, too, has achieved nirvana. But this is not possible. Buddha is always singular—in the present tense. In the past, there have been twenty-three Buddhas. In the future, there will be one more Buddha and that will be the end of that, for this cycle of time.”

“Sariputra is actually considered ... holy?”

“Oh, yes! There may be some doubt about Pasenadi, but there is none about Sariputra. After the Buddha, he is the most-nearly-released of all men. Then, of course, he is the sole creator of the order. It was he who gave the monks their rules. Now he and Ananda are assembling every word that the Buddha has said.”

“Do they write down these words?”

“Of course not. Why should they?”

“They shouldn’t.” In those days I believed that whenever holy words were written down, they lost their religious potency. I believed that the Wise Lord’s words must live not in writing on a cowhide but in the mind of the true believer. Unfortunately, I could not explain this to my Zoroastrian cousins at Bactra, who had picked up from the Greeks the mania for writing.

Democritus thinks that the first religious texts were Egyptian. Who knows? Who cares? I still believe that the writing down of hymns and sacred stories is bound to diminish religious feeling. Certainly, there is nothing more magical than a religious narrative or injunction or prayer at work in the mind, just as there is nothing more effective than the human voice when it summons from the recesses of memory the words of Truth. Nevertheless, over the years, I have changed. I now want a complete written record of my grandfather’s words on the simple ground that if we survivors do not make it, others will, and the true Zoroaster will vanish beneath a stack of illuminated oxhides.

Without ceremony of any kind, we were joined on the roof by a handsome man of forty. He wore full armor, and carried a helmet that looked to be made of gold.

Prince Jeta dropped to his knees. I went to one knee, assuming, correctly, that this was Virudhaka, the heir to the throne.

Virudhaka was quick to put us at our ease. With a graceful gesture he motioned for us to sit on the divan. “We shall see each other officially tomorrow, Lord Ambassador. But I thought it might be more pleasurable for us to meet like this, with our noble friend.”

In the name of the Great King, I agreed. Out of the corner of my eye, I studied the prince. Three questions were very much on my mind. Was he contemplating parricide? If he was, would he succeed? If he succeeded, what would that mean for Persia?

Unaware of my dark thoughts, Virudhaka asked a number of intelligent questions about Persia. Other than Bimbisara, he was the first Indian of high rank to acknowledge the extent of the Great King’s power. “In some ways,” he said, “Darius seems very close to being the long-predicted universal monarch.”

“We think, Lord Prince, that he is the universal monarch.” All the color had now gone out of the sky. Night birds soared and dived. The air smelled of rain.

“But shouldn’t this universe include Koshala? and the republics? and Magadha? and the south of India? And back of those mountains”—he pointed to the high dark Himalayas—“there is Cathay, a world far larger than Persia and all the western lands put together. Ought not Cathay be subject to the universal monarch?”

“It is said that they claim to have their own universal monarch.” I was tactful.

Virudhaka shook his head. “There are many kingdoms in Cathay. But they lack the monarch who will unite them.”

“Monarch? Or god?” asked Prince Jeta. “I should think that a true universal monarch would have to be very like a god.”

“I thought you Buddhists were atheists.” Virudhaka laughed to show that he was serious.

“No, we accept all the gods. They are a necessary part of the cosmic landscape.” Prince Jeta was serene. “Naturally, the Buddha ignores them. Naturally, the gods venerate him.”

“I steer clear of these matters,” said Virudhaka. “I have only one interest. That is Koshala.” He turned to me. “We have our problems.”