1.11 Availing opportunities

[date:-335|magadha,x]

Eighteen months later, Thera received a communication from her brother.

Her heart sank to hear the messenger’s words, but such were the restrictions of being of a noble family. Thera had once criticized, during a lecture, the suffocating security measures that Cāṇakya had advocated for the king and royal family, to which he had replied that the nobles were, of course, free to live as ordinary peasants, abandoning both the comforts and responsibilities of noble life.

It was at midnight that she woke Cāṇakya.

She hesitated, for it was always considered rude to do so (even though he had told her that falsehood was the only thing that caused offense at Takṣaśilā), yet the alternative would have been even less polite.

Addressing him respectfully as was typical for such social rituals, she told him of the message and of her departure.

Cāṇakya stared sharply in her eyes for a few seconds.

Then he asked: “What security concern to you could be more pronounced here in Gandhāra than in Greece?”

Thera shrugged helplessly.

“How did you guess it is a security concern?” she asked.

“Do noble families in Greece typically send their children to hard labour, conscript them to fight in armies, marry them off or sell them to slavery? Are there any disasters about to hit Takṣaśilā that the Greeks are aware of? Have you engaged in any undignified behaviour since arriving at Takṣaśilā that your family may wish you to cease?”

Thera smiled a little – a less arrogant man would have thought of, perhaps, education before child labour, marriage, conscription, slavery, prostitution and the apocalypse, but Cāṇakya was so certain (and admittedly correctly so) of the superiority of Takṣaśilā over any institution that could possibly exist in Greece that it was blasphemy to even suggest that Seleucus may have preferred a Greek school to Takṣaśilā.

“I suppose that makes sen—wait, how do you know my family is noble?”

Cāṇakya waved her question off. “Nonetheless,” he said, “As your Professor and well-wisher, I must advise you to not go. I believe that whatever dangers your family may be wary of, will only be exacerbated by a three-month journey across Persia. I believe I know the cause of your family’s actions, and if I am right in my suspicions, then there may be some in the Persian government who also share these suspicions, and act accordingly.”

The fact that Cāṇakya cared enough to want her to stay caused a flurry of emotion in her heart, but she couldn’t even consider disobeying Seleucus, and said so. She looked into Cāṇakya’s eyes to see if he was saddened by her departure, but his face held its usual stoic look.

“Very well then,” Cāṇakya said after a short pause, as if he had just finished a quick calculation of the effectiveness of pressing further and decided against it. “As your education is not complete, I believe there are no remaining formalities between us.”

It was still odd, even to a girl of noble birth as herself, to hear a boy of her own age speak in such a professorial way about formalities and such.

They stayed quiet for a moment.

Feeling a cold winter gust, Thera wrapped her toga tighter.

“I feel like our conversation ought to be more personable for two friends parting,” she said finally, trying not to sound too emotional. “I do not even know what to say, for the only pleasantry in the Indian language for Chaíre is See you again, while we are parting—most likely forever.”

“You may have overestimated that likelihood,” said Cāṇakya, considering.

Her face brightened. “You intend to travel to Hellas?”

He gave her a very empty expression.

Of course not. Of course he would not waste half a year of his life on travel.

But he did not clarify, and she did not ask further, even though she desperately wanted to know what it was that he predicted, and instead merely tried not to get her hopes up.

The moon was full.

“Well,” she spoke, nervously and biting her lip, “Even as tongues may differ, gestures are universal. And this is a universal gesture for Chaíre—”

(It was only a brief moment, but it would occupy her thoughts for years on—)

“That is not a parting gesture among the Āryas,” said Cāṇakya in a slightly angry tone. “It is a romantic one.”

“ … I know.”

Cāṇakya’s mind was not occupied by fruitless thoughts of romance and personal relationships. Despite the pains it imposed on him to spurn her embrace – as Arjuna had spurned the Matsya princess – Cāṇakya knew that had been right, for there was great value in the restraint of the senses. There was no advantage to childhood romances, as neither the faculties of pleasure nor those of child-bearing were developed at such an age, and since these romances never blossomed into marriage – as the famed cautionary tale of the Śūrasenas attested – they were entirely destructive to the goal of kāma.

(Cāṇakya watched Tara speak some words in Greek to the Ājīvaka Professor Varṣākāra’s parrot that she had befriended.)

Neither were his thoughts occupied with worry for the political implications of their closeness, for that was a calculation that he had made much earlier. He knew very well that his mere friendship with a Greek girl – even if she had only expressed her affections to him in private and quite late – could potentially be wielded against him by his rivals to throw shade on his motives, or even cause well-meaning allies to be distrustful of the same. Why, that would be the smear campaign that Cāṇakya would have run against himself, had he been in the position of such a rival.

I do not comment on whether there is anything wrong in giving education to a barbarian girl, but for a boy who had merely just ended his celibacy, we would be fools to not see the conflict in interest! A learned Brāhmaṇa who so unorthodoxly ends his celibacy in his childhood – why, very possibly for the barbarian girl herself – is that in whom we choose to place our trust? Is there truly no one else whom we can look to as a leader?

But he had accepted her as a student despite these implications, for he had immediately judged her to be of noble birth, and as the Greeks bordered on the Western fringe of the Persian empire, her many valuable qualities made her a potentially useful ally. So there were no new revelations on this.

No, the boy’s thoughts were occupied with matters of far greater importance.

Something big was happening in Greece.

Something that Tara did not understand, though her brother certainly did.

Something that quite possibly, the Persians themselves did not understand.

No internal political trouble could have caused the Greeks to regard their own country as safer for Tara than Gandhāra – no, such a threat had to be foreign. Such a threat had to be Persian.

It was a mistake, Cāṇakya realized, to regard the Greeks as simply some distant barbarian tribe – they had their own cities, and until recently, they had been comprised of several countries similar to the Mahājanapadas. But in the most recent generation, the kingdom of Macedon, that Tara belonged to, had embarked on the goal of conquering all of Greece.

(The method of ascertaining truth from a person who did not actively wish to lie to you, but may potentially be lying to themselves, was to decide beforehand the answers to what questions were relevant for your purposes, rather than to allow them to state their narrative on their own accord. Thus, Cāṇakya was fairly certain of the truth of what he had learned from Tara.)

Persia’s great secret to its stability was that it closely regulated the militias that its vassals could possess, choosing to collect large numbers of troops from them as tribute and thus centralizing its imperial army. This made local rebellions impossible – conversely, it also made them ineffectual in fighting against an external threat.

In Āryāvarta, the regions bordering the Persian empire were ruled by disunited mercenary-run states of the Eastern Punjab, which while warlike and unconquerable, were also naturally unwilling to launch a concerted invasion of either bordering empire. The reverse was true in Greece, where Macedon had united the country under an ambitious monarch.

The Greeks were planning, in secret, an invasion of Persia.

Cāṇakya was certain of it.

And that made them his allies.

There were two methods of forming alliances. One was the explicit way, secured by words and treaties, or the exchange of hostages. The other was the natural way, for even in the absence of communication between parties, simply by virtue of the parties’ geographical positioning and their motives, the goals of two states may coincide, and their actions may benefit each other.

To employ either method, an ambitious statesman had to learn to identify opportunities when they were afforded to him by circumstance, and to avail himself of them.

The boy’s eyes, steely in conviction, turned towards the moonless sky, his red dhoti quietly waving in the strong winds resemblant of a royal banner.

The game had begun.