The First Aryan

by Paramu Kurumathur

PART I

  1

  A Student Dies

  Kaśyapa’s involvement in the intrigues of the royal family and the priestly circles started that morning. Though he had not wanted it, he was dragged into the middle of a series of extraordinary events that were about to unravel in the kingdom of Parśuvarta.

  It all started in the capital city, Parśupur, which was located on the gentle inward curve of the Sarasvatī. There were walls, one hasta thick, on the other three sides of the city. Its area was approximately one eighty-first of a square yojana. The city had three gates—one in the south, about one-third the wall’s distance from the river; another in the north wall, halfway into the west–south-west angled section; and the third in the west wall, halfway into the south–south-east section of the wall.

  Eleven of Vasiṣṭha’s twelve students were there, in the study hall outside his house. The younger ones were poring over the alphabet and mathematical tables. Kaśyapa and three of his fellow students were working on astronomical and logic treatises. They would first recite the appropriate verses, as they had been taught by their guru, discuss the meaning and implications among themselves and ask their guru or a senior student questions in case they had doubts. Two older students were working on the theory of sacrifices and the esoteric sciences. It was early morning and Kaśyapa was feeling sleepy. However, he toiled on.

  Suddenly, he heard somebody mention a senior student, Atharvan’s, name and looked around to notice that he was missing. He asked aloud, to no one in particular, ‘Where is Atharvan? He should have been here by now.’

  ‘Maybe the guru sent him somewhere on an errand? Maybe he is back at his house? Was he unwell?’

  The study hall was in a thatched shed next to their guru’s house. This was no ordinary shed. It was from here that their guru, Vasiṣṭha, had given the kingdom some of its most accomplished priests and scholars. He trained them rigorously—they had to undergo twelve years of basic education, and then a few more of specialized education if they displayed special talent for any of the subjects.

  Kaśyapa shivered slightly. It was winter and the woollen shawl he had around him was not warm enough. A feeble sun was just starting to peep through the trees around Vasiṣṭha’s house. There was a cold breeze that entered the shed through the gaps in the wooden planks that made up its walls.

  The smell of burning ghee and soma wafted in from the sacrificial field nearby. It was a smell they had grown up with and had got used to. There were other smells in the air too—the smell of the guru’s wife’s cooking and the distant, though distinct, smell of the river in the air. Kaśyapa listened to the cacophony with a smile, as the sound of several students memorizing their lessons seemed to have grown louder. It reminded him of frogs croaking during the rains.

  Just then, Bhārgava got into an argument with one of his peers. ‘Well, the gods either respond to our sacrifices or they don’t. We have to decide which.’ The other student was persistent in his scepticism, ‘They certainly do. I have no argument with that. But . . .’

  Kaśyapa interjected, ‘Why can’t it be in between? They respond to some sacrifices and don’t respond to others. Logically, there needn’t even be a disjunction between these two propositions. It is not always an either/or situation. There can be any number of options in between. Let’s not fall into the trap of a false dilemma. We don’t need more reasons for conflict.’

  One of the senior students said, ‘Keep quiet. You don’t understand these things. Are you saying that it is always something in between?’

  ‘No, I am not suggesting a false compromise either. But whatever be the situation, logically, the gods have no choice. They have to give us what we ask for in our sacrifices. Our guru has told us this many times.’

  ‘Yes. That is what our guru told us. You, on the other hand, are far too young to argue on the matter.’

  ‘Well, think about it. If you are fed enough, even if you are a god, you will be happy, won’t you?’

  Bhārgava was not happy. ‘You are irreverent. I have half a mind to report you to our guru. Now, shut up and do your astronomy.’

  Kaśyapa turned to his fellow pupil, Agastya, and said, ‘It is known that the planets go around the earth. It can be proved by the fact that . . .’

  They were interrupted by their guru’s wife, Arundhatī, bringing in their morning snacks. There were lots of fruits like oranges, pears, grapefruits, apples and pomegranates to choose from. Kaśyapa knew his priorities! He was the first to reach for the platter.

  He bit into a luscious apple with obvious delight. These apples had been brought in by the traders from one of the Dasyu kingdoms to the east.

  It is good that our traditional enmity with the Dasyus doesn’t stop us from trading with them, he thought. These apples are good.

  He remembered Vasiṣṭha telling them, ‘Whether Aryans or Dasyus, we are all the same, though our ways of life are different.’

  Their guru came in and observed the students eating. He asked, ‘Where is Atharvan?’

  One of the students said, ‘Sir, we thought that you had sent him somewhere.’

  ‘I did not send him anywhere.’

  ‘We have not seen him since morning. He always comes directly to the study hall after his morning chores.’

  Vasiṣṭha went inside the house and asked Arundhatī. She said that she had seen Atharvan go out early that morning. ‘I assumed he was going out for his morning ablutions,’ she said.

  ‘Was he okay when he had his meal last evening?’

  ‘Yes. He certainly was.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘He was. But somebody went out behind him. It was misty this morning so I could not make out who it was. But they were not together. I’m not even sure if he knew this person was behind him or if the other one knew that Atharvan was walking ahead of him.’

  Vasiṣṭha was suddenly worried about Atharvan and his forehead crinkled. This was most unusual! Had something happened to Atharvan? He asked the students to go and look for him. Kaśyapa and Agastya went towards the south gate of the city, which was closest to Vasiṣṭha’s house. They wanted to make sure that Atharvan had not gone outside the gates.

  One of the guards at the gate told them that he had seen one or two students of the priestly class go out that morning. A few pauruṣas away from the gate, to the left of the southern road, was a small rivulet that meandered in a northern direction and joined the Sarasvatī just south of the southern wall of the city, not very far from where they stood. There were lots of bushes between the road and the rivulet. This area was used by people to relieve themselves—both by those living in the city and by travellers. The morning mist was beginning to lift and they were able to see into the distance. The place stank of human waste. They could hear cartwheels on the southern road going towards the gate. There were a few people going towards the gate from different parts of the rivulet. And, much to their horror, they found Atharvan.

  He was lying face down in an isolated spot in the rivulet, away from where most people usually went. This spot was concealed by bushes growing along the banks and was not visible from the road. Shocked at the sight of his lifeless body, they shouted for help. When no one paid attention, Agastya hurried back into the city to inform Vasiṣṭha while Kaśyapa stayed behind and continued to call out to the people standing near the gate. Some of them ran towards him when they noticed the lack of colour in his face. They helped him lift Atharvan out of the water and lay him on his back. He was indeed dead.

  Kaśyapa was seized by a feeling of fear and dread. How did Atharvan die? And why? He was a student just like him. Could it be that he fell face down into the water and hit his head against a rock? If he had lost consciousness, he would have drowned without any chance of resisting the water. To confirm this, Kaśyapa felt around his forehead and the rest of his head but he could neither see nor feel any mark or bump. Instead, muddy water flowed out of his mouth and his eyes were closed.

  Had he committed
suicide? Did he feel bad about his outburst the previous evening and the subsequent telling-off that he had received from their guru? The stones and mud around the area where he lay were disturbed. If he had taken his own life, what would their guru tell Atharvan’s parents?

  Agastya, meanwhile, had come back to check if Atharvan had come to. The two boys stared in disbelief at their friend’s body, shocked at seeing one of their own dead. Soon, Vasiṣṭha arrived. He sent Kaśyapa and Agastya to report this death to one of the king’s officers, since it was the law to have any unnatural death inspected by a king’s officer and a physician. The students were then to go back and get on with their morning rituals and studies.

  *

  After their afternoon meal on that fateful day, Agastya asked, ‘Kaśyapa, how do you think he died?’

  ‘I am sure that he was killed.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘If Atharvan committed suicide, he must have been very determined to not struggle and persistently keep his head under water. Not many people can do that. Especially not us, as people of the priestly class and untrained in the singular pursuit of a goal like this . . .’

  Agastya thought for a while and said, ‘Kaśyapa, but who could have killed him? Maybe one of Jaraduṣṭra’s students, unhappy that his guru had been referred to in disrespectful terms by Atharvan, had thought of taking revenge on him?’

  Guru Vasiṣṭha was a person of rank in the priestly class of Parśuvarta. He was the domestic priest and chief minister to the king, and hence was highly respected. But this had not always been so. Another priest by the name of Jaraduṣṭra had occupied this highly coveted position till about five years ago. His tendency to decry the kingdom’s religion and ways of worshipping, and his persecution of honest citizens for ‘immorality’, thus exploiting the powers accorded to him by the king’s law, had become a big distraction for the king and his government. In those days, King Turvaśa was strong-willed and had not been debilitated by his addiction to liquor. Turvaśa had dismissed Jaraduṣṭra from his government roles and replaced him with Vasiṣṭha. This had led to bad blood between the two leaders of the priestly class. However, while they were very careful not to show any ill-feelings in public, there certainly were reasons for Jaraduṣṭra to be bitter and jealous of Vasiṣṭha.

  Kaśyapa said, ‘Very slim reason for killing someone. Also, Jaraduṣṭra’s students had gone home last evening after the debate. If one of his students had walked through the town early morning, he would have been noticed. Many of the traders and servants are up and about early in the morning.’

  He was referring to the debate that their guru had arranged the previous evening, between his students and those of Jaraduṣṭra, on why Indra or Varuṇa was the superior god. Each faction had to defend its belief. The debate had started off well, sticking to the rules, but then things got out of hand. In the heat of the debate, Atharvan had said a few insulting words about Jaraduṣṭra, including calling him a rabble-rouser and an egotist. This had angered Jaraduṣṭra’s students. Vasiṣṭha had intervened and stopped the debate, chiding them for forgetting the civilized way of conducting a debate. He had particularly scolded Atharvan for attacking Jaraduṣṭra personally.

  That evening, Kaśyapa and Agastya met the king’s officer they had talked to before and learnt from him that there had been three other deaths in the kingdom the previous night. The vice commander of the army had been killed in his house. Prince Sudās’s uncle had been found dead, again in his own house. Also found killed was the warrior who, on the first day of the year, had spoken against the king in the assembly.

  Though they had been taught to react to death stoically, as a natural point in the bigger cycle of life and death, there was a feeling of gloom among the students that day and for the next few days. When one of your fellow students dies, you are affected personally, whether you are stoic or not. It is akin to losing a member of one’s family.

  When Vasiṣṭha got back to his students later in the evening, after sending a messenger to Atharvan’s parents and arranging for his funeral, he called Kaśyapa aside. ‘Child, the physicians who examined Atharvan’s body are sure that it was not a suicide. He was wilfully killed by someone.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We also came to the same conclusion. Nobody could have committed suicide in this fashion. But why would anyone want to kill Atharvan?’

  ‘That is what we need to find out. The killing of Sudās’s uncle, the vice commander and the other warrior can be viewed as damage caused by the political strife we are experiencing. But Atharvan’s is not easily explainable. Does the killing have anything to do with the political and religious rebellions we are facing now? Or is it completely unrelated?’

  ‘How can it be related?’

  ‘You are right, Kaśyapa. You are adept at inductive and deductive logic and have shown great ability to use them. I want you to look into this incident and find out all you can about why, how and by whom it was done. This will be a great help to the officers of the kingdom. If I were to do it, there may be questions asked. But you can do it quietly. For now, we are letting out that this was a suicide. This should be your line too. The murder of an ordinary student will set tongues wagging and trigger unnecessary speculation. We do not want the priestly class and other people panicking, especially if there is no reason to. None of us can do this without arousing suspicion. And maybe you have already talked to Agastya about the death, seeing that you both were there when the body was discovered. He can help you get to the bottom of this mess. He has practical, worldly wisdom. You two can be an ideal team. You can even bounce off your ideas with him.’

  It was thus that Kaśyapa became a part of the great turmoil in the kingdom, on the fourth day of the month of Tapasya, the thirty-fourth day of the year.

  Kaśyapa was sure that the murder of the vice commander, the prince’s uncle and the warrior had something to do with the dynastic struggle going on in the kingdom. But Atharvan? Did his death have anything to do with that? Surely not.

  To inquire into the circumstances of Atharvan’s death, he would have to talk to some of the protagonists and antagonists of the great struggle. And who knew? He may even find that there was indeed a connection between the political and religious struggle and Atharvan’s death. He had to be very careful. The threat might be much greater than what anybody could anticipate.

  His mind went back to the first day of the year, that chilly morning when Arundhatī sent Atharvan and him to the assembly house with a message for the guru. And, with a shudder, Kaśyapa remembered the scene from a month ago.

  2

  A Secular and a Religious Rebellion

  It was the first day of the year, the first day of the month of Tapa and officially the first day of the winter season. The previous night had seen a full moon near the Phalguṇī stars. The previous day was the day of the winter solstice—the day the sun stopped its southward movement and resumed its northward journey. It was the first day of the annual ritual sacrifice organized by the king for the people of the kingdom. The sacrifice session, called the Cows’ Walk, was when oblations were offered to appease the gods so the year ahead may be auspicious.

  Kaśyapa and Atharvan turned left on to one of the small roads that led to the great assembly hall. They were there on an errand on behalf of the guru’s wife—she had wanted an urgent message to be conveyed to their guru. One of the small students had tripped and may have broken a bone. The guru was to bring a physician home as soon as possible. They told the guard at the entrance of the hall the reason for their presence and were let in.

  The assembly hall was a large wooden structure, rectangular in shape with wooden benches arranged in a semi-circular fashion around a raised dais on which the head of the assembly sat. It was the second of the five parts of the day. The waxing sunlight was streaming in through the cracks between the wooden logs in the walls and forming a pattern on the floor, on the benches and on the people. The pandemonium in the hall drew
everyone’s attention away from the calming fragrance of the myrrh and frankincense incense sticks burning at the centre.

  It was clear that the members present there had split into two groups: one which was loyal to the current king, Turvaśa, and the other one, the so-called rebels, supporting another member of the royal family, Prince Sudās.

  As per Sudās’s followers, the reigning king had become weak, was addicted to intoxicating spirits and was not fit to rule any more. They felt that Sudās had what it took to lead a strong Aryan kingdom like Parśuvarta, especially in comparison to the present king. He was decisive, had the strength to protect the realm and the people and, as a young man, had years left in him to provide a stable reign. Many of the rebels also pointed out that Sudās had a better claim to the throne than Turvaśa, who was a member of the branch of the family that had usurped the throne only two generations ago. The other group was insistent that Turvaśa’s father and grandfather were kings before him and therefore he had the first right to the throne, as the heir of a new dynasty. This dynasty could claim the right to the throne by conquest. Also, the reigning king had a young son who would be capable of continuing the dynasty, taking on kingship when he came of age.

  Vasiṣṭha, who was also the chief minister of the kingdom, tried his best to control the riotous groups but wasn’t successful. The queen, Menakā, who was in attendance on behalf of the king, was furious. Kaśyapa could see that she was making a note of the people who were talking against the king.

  Kaśyapa turned to a person from the warrior class standing next to him. ‘Sir, why is there dissent against the king?’

  The warrior looked amused to see the boy there. ‘You shouldn’t even be here. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Guru Vasiṣṭha’s wife has sent us here with a message for him. What is all the chaos about?’

  The mention of the guru’s name seemed to make the man more respectful. ‘Our king has become old and unfit to rule,’ he said with resignation. ‘We are trying to discuss if he should step down so that Prince Sudās can take over.’