A PHONE CALL TO Bose produced reassuring news. Police clearance for the journey to the interior had come through. The expedition he had in mind would cover up to some 1,500 miles through most of those parts of south-western Orissa accessible by road. He had found someone to go with me familiar with the area, who spoke three of the principal tribal languages, and who would be ready to travel in three days’ time. He quoted the approximate cost involved, which seemed extremely reasonable.
Traveller’s cheques had to be changed to meet the bill so I went to Mrs Panda. Tourists in India soon learn to steer clear of bureaucratic institutions such as banks, in recognition of which hotels are empowered to change money at roughly equivalent rates, and they are under obligation to display a notice showing what those rates are. I found it a little ominous that the Marina Gardens should fail to do this, and when after preliminary blandishments Mrs Panda got down to brass tacks I could understand why. Nothing changed in the seraphic smile when I told her that I preferred to save money by going to the bank in Puri. This was a Saturday, she pointed out, and the banks in Puri were closed. She wheedled: If a large sum of money were involved she might be able to do a little better.
An Indian fellow guest who had hovered within earshot while these transactions were taking place took me aside to assure me that whatever Mrs Panda said, the State Bank of India at Puri remained open until midday. However there was some delay in obtaining a taxi, and by the time it arrived I knew that it was touch and go whether I would get there before the bank closed. The taxi was old and slow, we were held up by road-mending operations and then a procession, after which resignation took over and I adjusted to the fact that what had started as a rush to a bank about to close for the weekend would end as a leisurely tour of the sights of one of India’s most fascinating cities.
Puri was five miles away down the coast. My taxi drove into its heart down the wide street built to allow the lumbering, hardly controllable passage of the Car of the Juggernaut blundering through multitudes entranced by the presence of the god. Scarlet flags flared from the icy-white pinnacle of Manrique’s landmark, the Jagannath Temple tower, which thrust into the sky. Holy men overtook us and passed pedalling furiously on garlanded bicycles. Pilgrims had bought conch shells and filled the air through the tinkling of bicycle bells with their melancholy hooting. Beside the shells the stalls sold pilgrims’ souvenirs saturated in the imagination of the buyer with magical force; images of the Lord of the Jagannath, bold-eyed ceramic cockerels, squares of tin-plate punched with patterns of sunflowers, mystic birds and the footprints of Lakshmi, goddess of poverty and wealth. The crooked side streets running back from the temple were full of pilgrims who washed themselves endlessly. The suds trickled down to join a mainstream from their ablutions finding its eventual way into a black gutter.
The cows of Puri were quite unlike those anywhere else. They were the best organised in India, going in single file and orderly fashion the round of the streets, pausing only for a moment to collect an offering from a regular contributor before moving on. They were calculating, nimble and sleek.
This was the Chaucer’s Canterbury of eastern India. People had always come here out of the natural delight of going on pilgrimage, or to profit spiritually or physically from the proximity of holy things. Letters in the local press attested to the benefits to be derived. A stay in Puri, it was claimed, with frequent visits to the temples, promoted sublime visions, strengthened transcendental consciousness, and improved digestion and the elimination of waste products. Someone had developed a highly sensitive piece of electrical equipment which measured the strength and direction of divine influences radiated from the Jagannath shrine. A correspondent wrote that his friends had detected a current flowing from his body on his return from pilgrimage and that for the first few days physical contacts with him sometimes produced slight shocks. Many such experiences transmitted by word of mouth had added to the reputation of Puri over the centuries. Nowadays in season buses delivered and collected up to 5,000 pilgrims in a day. At the time of the Car Festival in June or July the town’s population was swollen by several hundred thousand, with pilgrims bedding down in lodging houses ten or twenty to a room, covering the rooftops at night with their recumbent bodies, and lined up row after row under plastic sheeting all along the beach.
The Lord Jagannath, usually depicted in naive childlike imagery, is senior member of a family trio including a brother Balabhadra, and sister Subihadra, and replaces Durga (Kali) of neighbouring West Bengal as the most popular deity of Orissa. This partiality is derived, it is said, from his accessibility to worshippers of all castes. Nevertheless the cult is exclusive. Only Hindus are allowed to enter the temple, even Mrs Gandhi’s application being turned down through what was seen as her unorthodox marriage. Foreigners wishing to see something of the temple beyond its external walls are invited to view it from the roof of a library across the road, gaining little from this although paying a charge.
The religious activities of Puri are on a grand scale. The temple itself is enormous—a city in miniature. Within the compound 6,000 men are permanently employed in temple duties, many engaged in the construction of the famous cars, always destroyed following each annual festival and taking a year to rebuild. It takes 4,000 pullers to haul the processional cars down the street. The leading car in which Lord Jagannath rides is 50 feet high, weighs over 100 tons, is carried on 16 wheels, and once started is virtually unstoppable, although the distance covered is exceedingly short. In the past instant admission to paradise was assured for those who threw themselves under the wheels. The supposed hypnotic effect produced by this pre-eminent local god featured largely in the school-book histories of old, and descriptions of mass immolations under the car of the Juggernaut were inseparable from the Indian scene. They may have been based upon such second-hand accounts as those given by Manrique: ‘They voluntarily offer up their wretched lives, throwing themselves down in the centre of the road along which the procession passes with its chariots full of idols. These pass over their unhappy bodies, leaving them crushed and mutilated. Such men are looked on as martyrs.’ Even now devotional frenzy may demand a lesser sacrifice. A friend, a native of Puri and witness to a number of processions, saw a man cut off his tongue and offer it to the image. Onlookers, even in these days, were sometimes roused to a pitch of fervour, he said, causing them to slash their throats, although in symbolic fashion, producing spectacular, although non-fatal results.
With nearly half the day still in hand this seemed the opportunity for the excursion to the site of the battle between the Emperor Ashoka and the King of Kalinga for control of a sizeable portion of the ancient world. It is in the delta area of the Devi, the Kusha and Bhargabi rivers, up one or other of which—most likely the first named—Manrique travelled through such enchanting sylvan scenery after his arrival in India. Now whatever trees had been spared by the woodcutters must have been carried away by the annual floods consequent upon deforestation. With all that, and despite the change, this riverine landscape retained its own kind of inoffensive beauty—at least in the dry season, although it was hard to imagine the furious inundations of the monsoons. A sweep of fields down to the water’s edge had been patterned like a patchwork quilt with brilliant geometrical shapes upon which the spring’s snatch-crops were being grown. Where the receding waters had left stagnant pools a little amateurish fishing was going on and children were sailing boats knocked together by their fathers in a few inches of water rippling over white, polished stones at the river’s edge. Three hundred and fifty years ago, Manrique had written of parrots and peacocks. Now there were glossy, black crows pecking over the mud at the edge of the pools. This was a calm vista—there was nothing of tropical extremism in the scene.
It was fertile soil too, enriched a little annually, in the style of the Nile valley, by silt deposited by the river in spate. There were many small villages, and in most years at monsoon time the floods poured over or through them. This being so, only a clear six months were available to till the soil, sow and harvest the crops and attend to all the other matters of production, growth and defence against annual near-catastrophe. Everything in these villages seemed to be overshadowed by the short-term passage of time, in the certain knowledge that by a set date the shallow river-bed would fill, overflow and the waters released would be lapping against the makeshift walls.
Hirapur was an enchanting place, devoted to the making of temple bells—a form of cottage industry carried out in so many hut-like buildings scattered through the village that the tinkling, musical concussion of hammers on brass came from every direction, and was never out of the ears. It began at close quarters as a peremptory blacksmith’s chink of hammer on anvil, but distance transformed it so that the hutments at the far end of the village seemed to conceal aviaries of excited birds. The work was done in hectic, fire-lit gloom; an infernal chaos of noise and heat in which order must have been concealed, round an open furnace on the floor. Bellows were pumped to flush darting sparks into the air. Men groped with tongs in the flames to pull out fiery ingots, dropping these on metal slabs by which specialists waited with their hammers. The hammers clanged down, jarring the eardrums and flattening the brass. Experts at shaping took over. The bells were dowsed in water and hammered again. Metal workers had always been the highest of the artisan castes. By local standards they made good money—fifty rupees, the equivalent of £1.60, a day—and could afford to send their daughters by rickshaw to a nearby school, a valuable precaution in a society in which female mobility comes under suspicion, and is the subject of strict control.
In Hirapur monkey gods keep an eye open for people who walk over thresholds without removing their shoes—a major solecism in this village—but their principal occupation is to keep watch on floods, and for this purpose they are placed at strategic points along the perimeter. The goddess Lakshmi also helps with flood defences and almost every house was decorated with the most elaborate symbolic designs to enlist her support in keeping out the water. This attractive custom has spread throughout the villages of Orissa, although I was never to see examples of the art-form quite to equal those of Hirapur. These designs are created by the womenfolk of the village. Originality of motif is sought after, and the very best work is said to be inspired by dreams. Other wise the women take their inspiration from the bustle of everyday village life: its traffic of bullock carts and jeeps, worshippers at the temple, a political rally, a procession with loudspeakers and flags.
In the best specimen I found at Hirapur, all the walls including those of a large courtyard had been densely covered with stylised flowers, butterflies and musical instruments, painted in white on an ultramarine background. Most Indian village people—as all the travellers of the past have recorded—are extremely hospitable. It was only necessary to show interest in the paintings for doors immediately to be opened, with a hearty invitation to come in and look round. In the villages of the interior such Lakshmi paintings, executed under various local names, are painted and repainted with some frequency while those carried out in the street on the threshold of a house to invite the goddess to enter will be repainted every night. The Hirapur masterpieces are renewed every year, on the eve of the feast of Lakshmi … otherwise, as the lady of the household explained, the goddess would be bored. She added that it had taken her about five hours to carry out this major piece of creation, fitted into what time she could spare between the household tasks. When I complimented her on the unusual design she said that the goddess, famous in the locality for her musical tastes, had put the idea into her head. She felt sure that the result had met with divine approval. So far it had been a good year.
Hirapur is full of interest. The large tank permanently fringed with children splashing among the lotuses and ‘aquatic plants is not only an indispensable convenience but saturated with beneficial influences, for a large number of images illustrating the carver’s art over many centuries have been recovered from the mud. Nearby is the sixth-century open-air temple of the sixty-four yoginis, one of the four of its kind existing in India. The yoginis are lesser goddesses enabled by their not too exalted status to interest themselves in the solution of minor human problems, and consequently highly popular among ordinary working folk. All sixty-four of them are splendidly carved on the temple’s circular wall, shown in the style of the period in vigorous action of the kind associated with their special powers. A few arms and legs were broken off at the time of a Muslim incursion, but as the stone employed is exceptionally hard, religious vandalism was no more than symbolic. Few people seem to know of the temple’s existence.
Dhauli hill overlooks the river a mile or two upstream, and on both banks immediately below took place one of the decisive battles of the ancient world—the encounter between the Emperor Ashoka, who by 250 BC had conquered almost the whole of the sub-continent, and the King of Kalinga. The forces of Kalinga were annihilated, and an imperial inscription speaks of several hundred thousand battle casualties, followed by the deportation en masse of the survivors. At this point the Emperor is supposed to have been overcome by remorse, and to have embraced the Buddhist philosophy of nonviolence, thereafter succeeding in the tricky task of conducting the affairs of the empire while turning to ascetic practices and becoming himself a monk. There were family precedents for adoption in later life of extreme forms of belief, for Ashoka’s grandfather Chandragupta, who campaigned successfully against the Hellenic Greeks in north-west India, followed his victory by becoming a Jain and entering a monastery. Here he deliberately starved himself to death in orthodox Jain fashion. The turn around in Ashoka’s case was almost equally dramatic, for the Mauryan Empire was based on a successful espionage system with spies working in the guise of recluses, householders, merchants, ascetics, mendicant women and prostitutes. From this unpromising ethical start, and with the final battle behind him, the Emperor moved on to his formulation of Dhamma, the universal Law of Righteousness, of which much is made in the Ashoka rock edicts carved at many sites throughout the length and breadth of the country.
It is assumed by many Buddhists that it was following the great victory that what had up to this time been no more than the credences of an Indian sect were carried forward on the impetus of imperial backing to become the religion of much of the eastern world. This was the belief motivating the Japanese who arrived on the spot in 1972 to erect a Buddhist Peace Pagoda on the summit of Dhauli hill. This stark white building, shaped in a way that recalls a medieval samurai’s war helmet, is highly unsympathetic to the environment.
At the foot of the hill India’s earliest rock-carving, taking the form of an elephant, surmounts one of the Ashokan inscriptions—in this case a collection of edicts which, although for the most part perfectly legible, were not deciphered until 1837. They are accompanied by an atrocious translation into English.
There is no way of knowing whether the edicts ramble on in the original Brahmi in this muddled and sometimes incoherent fashion. Here we are presented with a mixed assortment of imperial pronouncements—copied in style it is supposed by some from those of Darius—random moralising, and philosophical asides interspersed with detailed instructions to the Emperor’s morality police, created some twelve years after his reign began. The Emperor apologised for a course of actions that departs from the principles of non-violence, but explains with extraordinary frankness, ‘It is difficult to perform virtuous deeds.’ At this juncture Ashoka’s Dhamma was beginning to take shape, some aspects of it being revolutionary indeed.
In the earliest of the edicts—which in their entirety cover a time-spread of fifteen years—Ashoka concentrates, remarkably enough, on the welfare of animals. It suggests a rapid and compulsory conversion of his subjects to vegetarianism, and the emperor refers with distaste to the previous gluttony of the court. ‘Formerly in the royal kitchen many hundreds of thousands of animals were killed daily for the sake of curry. But now only three animals are being killed, namely two peacocks and a deer, and even this deer not regularly. Even these three animals shall not be killed in future.’ The sacred cow was well established in the third century BC, for the second edict is concerned largely with its welfare. Medical treatment was established by the King for his subjects, but also for cattle. ‘Wherever there were no herbs that are beneficial to men and cattle, they were imported and planted. Roots and fruit were also planted. On the roads, wells were dug and trees planted for the use of cattle and men.’
Twelve years followed the Emperor’s anointing before the Mahamatras of the morality force received their orders, which were repeatedly emphasised in subsequent edicts. They were to ensure proper courtesy to slaves and servants, reverence to elders, abstention from the killing of animals, moderation in spending and possessions, and liberality to the religious poor. ‘All men are my children,’ said the Emperor. ‘I desire that they may be provided with happiness in this world and the next.’ The morality officers were to furnish prisoners with money, and in the case of those with ‘bewitched children’ or aged parents to support, to free them from their fetters.
The Dhamma of Ashoka had something about it of the New Man political philosophy of the South American revolutionaries of the sixties. Both failed to some extent through the impossibility of defining and setting bounds upon the idealism motivating the struggle. It was hard to conceive of the principles of Dhamma enshrined in a state institution, and non-violence and imperial administration were badly matched. A sort of priesthood evolved to defend the Emperor’s growing obsession with virtue, becoming in the nature of things a self-protective orthodoxy resistant to change. For a few more years slaves were treated kindly and prisoners with aged parents or bewitched children freed from their shackles, but with Ashoka’s death India returned to the cast-iron rule of certainty and submission.