Part 1
Here’s a picture I took by the banks of river Hooghly in Kolkata
last December. The memorial in the picture honours the British polymath James Prinsep
who worked in a local mint in early 1800s.
At a time when many of his compatriots were either ignorant
or indifferent to Indian culture – Macaulay famously said ‘a single shelf of
good European library is worth the whole native literature of India’ – Prinsep
took keen interest in Indian languages, texts and temples. On the sides of
his regular job at the mint, he set about deciphering the mysterious
script which some English officers had found on sandstone pillars across
the country. The script did not resemble anything they had ever seen. Thinking it must
be a primitive form of Sanskrit they consulted local scholars, but no one was able to read it.
Prinsep worked on unlocking this mysterious script for 4
years. Then, in 1837 he was sent copies of inscriptions found on the pillars of
a temple in Sanchi. Prinsep noticed that they all ended with the same three-lettered
word. Here he had his Eureka moment. Recalling from his travels that temples in
India often had the donor’s name engraved on individual stones (a practice
common even today), Prinsep guessed the repeating word to be ‘Daanam’
(donation) and thereby the three letters to be ‘Da’, ‘Na’ and ‘Ma’.
This breakthrough allowed him to decipher the rest of the script which
we today know as ‘Brahmi’.
Prinsep’s discovery drew open a curtain of time, and the world
found a lost Emperor, who I regard as the greatest of all time, in the entire world
– Emperor Ashoka.
Part 2
A compromise couldn’t be reached, war is now inevitable. Both
sides are hurriedly seeking out family members for support and forming alliances
with smaller kings. King Shalya sets out with his huge
army to join the Pandava forces. He is the King of Madra, brother of Madri (Nakul
& Sahadev’s mother), and by that relation the Pandavas are his nephews.
Learning that the powerful King Shalya is moving with his army, Duryodhana
arranges luxurious hospitality along the route in a bid to impress him and gain his support. Shalya is indeed impressed, but is unaware of the benefactor, he assumes it to be the Pandavas. In high spirits he asks to see Yudhishthir, the eldest
of the Pandavas, to reward him in return for his gracious hospitality. Duryodhana reveals
it was his undertaking and as a reward seeks his alliance in the impending war. The
stunned Shalya reluctantly obliges. He had set out to join forces with his nephews,
but in a cruel twist of fate ends up joining hands with their arch enemy.
In the war Shalya is assigned to be Karna’s charioteer. This
is a move Yudhishthir had predicted and had already convinced Shalya to use his
position to demoralise Karna. All through the war Shalya constantly belittles Karna
and praises Arjuna. Karna is annoyed and stops trusting his own charioteer.
On day 16 Karna defeats both Nakul and Sahadev. He can kill them
both but decides to spare their lives saying they are both younger and unequal
to him, so it wouldn’t be fair for him to kill them. Shalya suddenly finds some
respect for Karna for he spared his dearest nephews. Later that day, the biggest
showdown of the battle ensues, it is Arjuna vs Karna. Destined by his ill fate Karna’s curses haunt him and he is severely weakened. To make matters worse, his
wheel gets stuck in the earth (another curse) and he is unable to move. Karna
requests Shalya to help him with the wheel but he refuses. Left with no other choice, Karna asks Arjuna
to stop the fight momentarily, lays down his arms and gets off the chariot to pull the
wheel out by himself. The rules of war prohibit
attacking an unarmed person, but on Krishna’s advice Arjuna takes aim at Karna and
shoots him dead.
That evening, while relaying the events of the day to
Duryodhana, Shalya has a complete change of heart. He realises how brave Karna actually
was, that despite being robbed off his strengths both before and during the war, he showed valour and magnanimity. The Pandavas could get rid of him only by unethical
means. So finally, on the 16th day of the 18-day war, Shalya for the
first time becomes a passioned Kaurava supporter. He is crowned the new Commandar-in-Chief,
leads the Kaurava army the next day, fights valiantly and gives up his life as a Kaurava.
Part 3
You may wonder why I jumped from the story of a lost Emperor
to a little-known character in the Mahabharata. It’s because of a pivotal
moment in their lives, a moment of profound realisation when they renounced everything
they ever believed in and committed themselves to the diametrically opposite. How
often do we see such transformation in people today? Despite our supposedly higher learning
and knowledge we pretty much espouse the same ideology, whatever that may be, throughout
our lifetime.
The story of Emperor Ashoka is more awe-inspiring of the two,
because we know for a fact that it is historically true. The ruler of much of the Indian
sub-continent, the overlord of the largest dominion in the world, has a change
of heart after a war which he won, and becomes the most passionate torchbearer
of ahimsa (non-violence) for the rest of his life. I wonder if there’s any personality
from any part of the world, at any point in history who has done something comparable? I don’t think so. Also, his wasn’t a temporary flight of fancy, like our New
Year resolutions. About 60 edicts surviving from Ashoka’s time have been found all
over the subcontinent, their dating tells us that they were issued over a prolonged
period of time (nearly 2 decades) and the message is recurring – his remorse on
the unnecessary killings before, a plea to renounce violence, to stop the sacrifice
of animals, to tolerate other faiths, to
stop environmental destruction etc. Nearly 2500 years later, his
message is still relevant to us. And that’s why he’s the greatest of the greats
(Alexander, Cyrus, Darius, Kanishka, Akbar etc).
Part 4 – Epilogue
Today Ashoka’s legacy constitutes the symbols of India in the form of our National
Emblem and National Flag. His symbols are a part of our everyday lives, on
our currency notes and coins. In the face of his omnipresence today, it feels very strange to think that for over 2000 years nobody in the world knew of his existence.
He was lost in time until Prinsep deciphered the Brahmi script.
Before I conclude I’d like to drop you off at a different place, in a different time. About 2500 years before Emperor Ashoka, there seems to
have existed a strange society. For its time, the society appears fairly large (perhaps
2-5 million) and advanced (grid-like streets, public bath, drainage etc).
However, despite their highly-developed organisation there is no evidence of a central leadership (king or queen). Neither is any evidence of a war or conflict, which is unheard of in ancient times. They left behind several seals
and pottery, but unfortunately the script on them, once again, is yet to be
deciphered.
Imagine the treasures that’ll be unlocked when this script from the Indus Valley is deciphered. The stories of our prehistoric ancestors will resurrect from their ashes and fill us with wonder one more time. Let’s
hope and pray this happens in our lifetime.
End
