by Ted Riccardi
“And add it to your sensational annals,” I said laughing. “I never cease to be amazed at how these things fall your way. You no doubt thought immediately of parallel murders, in Riga, or St. Louis . . .”
Holmes grinned at my last remark, but then he said almost somberly, “On the face of it, one can indeed feel a certain astonishment at how similar cases arise. But upon reflection, Watson, one sees that, whatever the time and the place, good and evil are linked in some inextricable way. They are perhaps drawn to each other by some third force, the nature of which is inevitable but barely discernible. One can only hope that in the battles that ensue, the forces of good are strong enough to prevail. Having chosen to do what I do, I have found it only natural that cases fall across my path, whether from antiquity or the present. All I must do is wait and the inevitable happens.”
It was, in any event, with added enthusiasm, he continued, that he arrived with Gorashar at Changu Narayan. While his friend performed his religious rituals with the priests, Holmes attended to the business at hand, a minute examination of what he found before him: a magnificent edifice, adorned with metal and wood carvings, and a courtyard filled with some of the finest sculpture to be seen anywhere.
At first the temple appeared as if filled with a jumble of deities thrown everywhere. Its surface had no unfilled space. All was covered in ornament and design. It was only after one observed it closely, therefore, noted Holmes, that one realised that all was in order and that the shrine itself was an illustration in wood, brick, and metal, of the Hindoo’s belief in the interconnectedness of all things, the harmony and illusion of the universe that he conceives and, to a large degree, shares with the Buddhist. The temple was, according to Holmes, one of the supreme achievements of Gorashar’s people, the Newars.
“No other people on earth, Watson, has produced such intricate beauty in as small a space as the Valley of Katmandu. One trenchant observer has described it best as a kind of coral reef, built up laboriously over the centuries by unrecorded artisans. As a human achievement, it ranks with the creations of Persia and Italy.”
“Good Lord, Holmes, and no one even knows of its existence!”
“Let us not say ‘no one.’ A few, including myself, have been fortunate enough to see and to observe it. But permit me to continue, Watson. I returned to Katmandu with Gorashar that afternoon, but not without securing from the temple priests permission to return and read the pillar inscription. In this, Gorashar’s help was invaluable, particularly his pledge to supply gold leaf for the roof of the temple. With this promise, the suspicious priests became my allies and promised every courtesy and help. It took me seven long trips to the temple to record what you have in front of you in that sketch.”
The pillar had drawn Holmes’s immediate attention. It was some twenty feet high, and the writing on it was in most places as clear as the day it was carved, a most singular case of preservation from the ancient world. At the top of the pillar sat a metal crown, a large disc of burnished gold, about two feet in diameter. It had a penumbra of flames, and was no doubt a representation of the sun itself. At the bottom, Holmes noted to his frustration that the writing on the pillar extended below the ground in which it was placed. Unless it were dug up, that part of the inscription would remain unknown. Holmes spoke to the head priest about excavating the hidden portions. The priest became incensed, refused to discuss the matter, and said that Holmes would be limited, as all observers, to what was above ground. Holmes made no more of the matter.
The reading of the inscription fully occupied the next several weeks. So engrossed did Holmes become that he decided to stay for an extended time in a nearby village, in the mud and thatch hut of a Brahman who lived across the river to the west. The Brahman provided his meals and a clean bed. This saved the long daily trip to Katmandu and allowed him to view the temple and its pillar from morning to night. It was during this long stay that he finished the recording not only of the inscription but of the chief features of the temple and the artistic remains around it.
It was then too that he began to take note of what until then had been entirely hidden from him: the connections between the temple and the natural world, connections that led him to renewed wonder at the achievement of the Newars. One day, as he sat copying the last few lines of the pillar inscription, he looked up and observed that the sun, now beginning its descent in the west, had been caught in reflection by the golden disc atop the pillar. The beam thus created was redirected into the temple courtyard. His eye followed it quickly to a large statue of Vishnu, where it came to rest brightly on a jewel placed in the god’s forehead. From there the light moved once again, coming to rest this time on the right hand of a small statue of Ganesh, the Elephant God. The light rested in this way for only a few seconds and then disappeared. As soon as it faded, a young boy, half naked and clothed only in rags, appeared and effortlessly scaled the pillar. Upon reaching the top, he gave the disc a slight push, slid down, and disappeared silently.
“This must be the beam,” I said, pointing to Holmes’s rendition of it in his drawing.
“Yes, you may imagine it hitting the third eye of Vishnu and the hand of the Elephant God just outside the drawing. But, as in many instances, Watson, here again you have seen but not observed.”
Holmes took the drawing from my hand and said, “Look again, my good doctor.”
I took the drawing back and stared at it. This time I noticed that a portion of it had been folded over and secured to its back. So carefully had this been done that one hardly saw that the picture could be extended from behind.
“Let me undo it, Watson. The hidden portion is secured in a particular Nepalese way, and your tugging at it may harm it.”
Holmes held the entire picture up to me, and it was now even more wondrous than I had thought previously. The light from the sun, visible only as a brightness in the sky, flowed in reflection directly from the golden disc to its two recipients, Vishnu and Ganesh, all rendered with the greatest beauty in the extended picture.
“Extraordinary, Holmes. What is the meaning of this? And what of the boy?”
“More of him later, Watson. Suffice it to say that he appeared periodically during my remaining visits, scaled the pillar, touched the disc, then slid down and left.”
Holmes said that he studied the beam of sunlight very closely, noticing how it struck the same places on the statues and then faded away almost immediately. In this, there was obviously some as yet hidden significance. He gave it little thought at the moment, for he was preoccupied with recording the inscription itself.
On completing his record, he found that Gorashar’s account of the death of King Dharmadeva was substantially correct, if incomplete. The inscription stated that the unfortunate king had gone to his pleasure garden, where he was found dead by his wife, Rajyavati. She sent news to her son, Manadeva, who was at once declared king. She herself planned to die on the funeral pyre of her husband, but her son, pleading with her, prevailed upon her to retire into widowhood. And so, like the celebrated Arundhati of Indian legend, she remained alive but in the seclusion of chastity.
Written much after the events and at the order of Manadeva himself, however, the pillar recorded none of the persistent doubts about the mysterious way in which his father had died. The rest of the inscription merely recorded King Manadeva’s own exploits and said nothing more about his father, Dharmadeva.
“An odd business, Holmes,” said I, “rather at odds with Hindoo custom, I would think. A king who dies suddenly and unexpectedly, a wife who does not follow the usual rites of suttee, and a son who suddenly becomes king and explains nothing.”
“Yes, Watson, a story so lacking in detail that any interpretation could be given to it. But I must confess that I had begun to tire of the work. I suddenly felt the need to leave Nepal and to move on. Gorashar had completed his pilgrimages, and I had seen more than enough of temples and sculpture. The monsoon had begun, and the rains were unusually heavy so that the mos
t recent trips to Changu had become very difficult. And with the sun blocked by the clouds, I could not further my investigations of the mysterious reflections of its rays.”
Without prolonged study of the temple, he continued, he did not think that he could solve the mystery of the death of good King Dharmadeva. And so he put his things in order to be ready for the first break in the rains, bade good-bye to the pandits in the Residence, and spent his last days in seclusion in Gorashar’s establishment.
In a short time, the sun came out from behind the clouds and the sky cleared. Holmes decided to leave, still in the guise of the pandit through whose identity he had become known, and to change only when he had crossed the border into India.
On the evening before he was about to leave, however, he found a note addressed to him from a scholar visiting from Paris. It read:
My dear Pandit Kaul,
I have learned through the offices of the Maharajah Deb Shamsher and the Rajguru of Nepal of your presence here in the Valley. I understand that you are performing some philological tasks for Grierson. I would like very much to meet you and to share your knowledge of the country and its history. I myself am investigating the ancient inscriptions of the Valley, and if you have come across any in your wanderings, I would be most grateful for your information and advice. At present, I am the guest of the Maharajah and am staying in the guest house at Thapathali. If I do not hear otherwise, I shall call on you tomorrow morning at seven. With my most distinguished sentiments,
(Prof.) Sylvain Levi
Holmes received the note too late to inform Levi of his imminent departure, and so the following morning at seven he found myself unavoidably at tea with the learned French savant. Levi was, according to Holmes, a most entertaining fellow, very much aware of his intellectual gifts. In his late thirties only, he had already published learned articles on Indian history and religion. He proudly presented him with copies of two of his works, La Notion du Sacrifice dans les Brahmanas, and Le Thêátre Indien, neither of which particularly took Holmes’s fancy, but for which he thanked the good professor. In turn, Holmes handed him his rough reading and translations of the Sanskrit inscriptions he had found in the Valley, including the one at Changu. He no longer had any use for them. Levi thanked him profusely for them, but noticing the latter, he remarked, “I have no need of this one. I already have it—and more.”
Holmes continued pacing back and forth, his hands together behind his back, a slight smile on his lips as he recalled the tale that he continued to narrate to me. Levi was an intelligent man, he said, but he showed a strong disdain for the local population that made his presence at that moment unpleasant. He criticised the government and its officials, and the priests of the country, especially those at the temple at which he was pursuing his scholarly investigations.
“These ignorant priests have tried to thwart me at every turn,” he said. “My greatest desire has been to read the pillar inscription of King Manadeva that stands in front of the temple of the god Changu Narayan. Manadeva was one of the great kings of antiquity, but little is known of him. As you may know, there is a portion of the inscription that lies below the surface, buried and unread for centuries. I tried in a friendly way to convince the priests that I be able to excavate and read the inscription in its entirety. They refused. They would not even allow me into the temple area, saying that as a foreign barbarian I would desecrate and pollute it. Sacré bleu! Can you believe in such ignorant superstition? I finally convinced the Maharajah of the importance of my work, and he sent several soldiers into the temple to dig it up. The priests were furious, but there was nothing they could do. In a few hours, I had a complete rubbing of the inscription, including the buried portion. It is mon triomphe!”
Levi’s eyes glowed with a sense of victory, and Holmes remarked that he was very fortunate to have arrived at the time that there was such a maharajah as this one. But Levi scoffed and said that anyone would have helped him, knowing that he was the best of European Sanscritists.
“‘And I have still not been allowed into the temple compound to study its treasures. The family jewels of Manadeva are reportedly there, hidden somewhere. But I shall find a way. Ah, ces prêtres.”
Holmes had soon begun to tire of this gentleman. He stood up, extended his hand, and bade him adieu. Levi took his leave, and Holmes went about his affairs, his departure now delayed by a day. He spent the rest of the afternoon with his friend Gorashar, who had promised that he would accompany him to Bhimphedi, the last post in the hills before one descends to the Tarai and the plains of India.
“It was early the following morning, as I prepared to depart, that I received an unexpected visitor. Lakshman, my servant, scrambled up the five flights of stairs to my room and announced breathlessly that there was a messenger from the Maharajah, who insisted on delivering a note himself. I told Lakshman to accompany the messenger to my room. Soon I was face-to-face with a member in full regalia of His Majesty’s Royal Guard.”
The soldier handed Holmes an envelope that bore the official seal of the Maharajah, Deb Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana. The note was short and was written in what he took to be the Maharajah’s own hand:
M. Sylvain Levi, the French scholar, has disappeared without a trace. He left his quarters late yesterday afternoon and has not been seen since. Please come at once since I believe that you may be of assistance in locating him.
Deb Shamsher J.B.R.
The messenger told Holmes that he was ordered to accompany him without delay. And so, his departure thwarted once again, he found myself on another, most unexpected adventure.
The trip from the hotel by carriage to Thapathali, the Maharajah’s residence, was normally of very short duration, but this time it took almost a full hour. The monsoon had struck again that morning, and the roads of Katmandu were flooded and thick with swirling mud. They passed through the imposing gates of the palace and rode through the front gardens to the veranda.
The Maharajah Deb Shamsher stood there waiting, surrounded by servants and umbrellas to protect him from the rain, but as soon as the carriage stopped he jumped forth and pulled the door open himself, escorting Holmes inside.
It was Holmes’s first taste of this kind of Oriental splendor, and he found it most impressive. They walked through a large receiving hall filled with the luxuries of every country of Europe, then through a room that marked the love of the hunt, the shikar of the Ranas. The remains of tigers, leopards, and antelope, the great beasts of the southern jungles, were everywhere. They passed from there into a small room, which Holmes assumed to be the Maharajah’s own study.
“‘I know who you are, Mr. Holmes, and that is why I summoned you. Your secret is safe with us, however.”
Holmes was taken aback at first by his statement, but he realised that it would have been foolish of him to think that he could maintain his secret indefinitely. The Maharajah’s agents had probably overheard his name at the Residence.
“I believe that it is indeed time for me to leave Nepal,” he said.
Holmes watched him closely to see the effect of my answer. He was a small dark man, but with an enormous head upon which played a roundish face that had more of intelligence in it than the cruelty usually associated with his kinsmen. His eyes narrowed as he spoke.
“You are, as usual, correct. It is indeed time for your departure,” said he, “and I will see that you are aided on your journey. It is probable by now that some of your worst enemies know of your survival, and so I deem it best that you leave. But you will always be welcome here. We are indebted to you for your service to us in the recent matter at the Residence, and in the assistance which you gave to us in ridding our country of a number of unwanted pests. There is now, however, the rather delicate problem of the missing Frenchman. I am distressed to tell you that my agents have failed to locate him, and therefore I must enlist your aid, even if it means postponing your departure once again. His disappearance is an embarrassment in itself, but even more so because
the French ambassador to India, Monsieur Bertrand, is due to arrive in Katmandu tomorrow with Prince Henri of Orleans, on an important diplomatic visit. The recognition of our independence by France is one of my chief goals, Mr. Holmes, and I can hardly tell the Prince and his ambassador on their arrival that the greatest Sanscrit scholar of France is unaccounted for.”
Holmes asked him what information his agents had been able to unearth.
“What my agents have uncovered, Mr. Holmes,” replied the Maharajah, “is that after his return from his visit to you yesterday, Monsieur Levi lunched with his wife here at my guest house. Madame Levi then retired for an afternoon nap. When she awoke, she found that her husband was not there. She questioned the servants, who said that he had left alone at about three. This was in no way unusual, for she was used to his habits of work, which left her to her own devices for the better part of the day. ‘Mon pauvre mari travaille toujours,’ she had said to me on their arrival. She only became alarmed at nightfall, when he had not returned. That is when she notified me of his absence. My agents learned that he travelled by rickshaw to the great Buddhist shrine at Bodhnath, where he was observed transcribing Tibetan inscriptions. He wore, as he has regularly since his arrival, local attire, including the Nepalese black cap, or topi. He was last seen before dusk leaving Bodhnath on foot through the great southern gate.”
“‘What chances are there that he was abducted to embarrass Your Highness?” asked Holmes.
“‘This is always possible, of course, but we should have been made aware of this by now by his abductors. I doubt this, therefore. My men have entered every house at Bodhnath. As you know, the inhabitants there are almost all poor peaceful Tibetans and would have little reason to harm him. No, something unexpected has happened that has put him beyond my spies. Mr. Holmes, we must find him. I can assure you that in this you will have my every assistance. You may have as many of my men as you need.”