3.5 The (in)validity of feelings

[date:-325|magadha,x]

The gathered crowd of Mālavas silently parted to clear a way for the revered Professor.

His stoic eyes fell upon the lifeless body of his beloved.

His cold, stoic eyes.

“Has Alexander claimed victory yet?” he asked.

The Mālava Chief nodded.

“Good.”

“ … ”

“ … ”

“The war has taken a far greater toll on us than on the Śivis and Kśūdrakas, Professor,” said the Mālava Chief Minister. “The barbarians slew vast numbers of men – civilians, all, in the countryside – forced vast numbers of our women to sacrifice their lives to Agni to escape their perverted hands – and the children have been taken as slaves. All to lure us out of our fortified city. But we held our ground, as you asked, and your plan was executed.”

In any unforeseen circumstance, he had said, Should I be unable to reconvene with the Mālava capital, then you shall act as my representative and execute my plan.

Yes, Lord, Princess Puṣkaradhāriṇī had replied simply.

There were some scholars, including Cāṇakya’s own preceptor Caṇin, who maintained that only some feelings were valid: those that stemmed from sattva (goodness) and rajas (greatness) were valid, while those that stemmed from tamas (wicked) were invalid. Kindness was always valid; fury never so – ambition was valid so long as it was towards a sattvic goal.

Neti Kautilyah. A feeling was made valid or invalid by the validity or invalidity of the action that it encouraged in its bearer. To make a country prosperous, it was necessary to love it – to avoid death, it was necessary to hate it – and to destroy an enemy, it was necessary to hate him.

(Such were the depravity of the times, the aged cried, that vast numbers of civilians, without regard for their caste, wealth or learning, had been used as negotiating tokens. Such were the depravity of the times, that women had been left no choice but to self-immolate to preserve their dignity.)

Conversely, generic depression was not a valid feeling; nor was complaining about the times; nor was hatred towards a good man; nor was aversion towards the rich for being miserly; nor was lust for another man’s wife and wealth.

(He mustered every spark of hatred, every feeling of revulsion, that he had ever faced toward anyone – toward the wicked Greeks who had murdered Puṣkaradhāriṇī, toward Dhanānanda and the Magadhi monarchs before him, toward the Persians – which now felt like such a long time ago – toward all those who refused to just shut up and listen to him – mustered all the kind emotions he had ever felt – for his mother, for Professor Caṇin, for his students, for the women who had loved him, for all those who adored and worshipped him – and cast away the positive emotions, and directed his hatred against the barbarians led by Alexander.)

“She died bravely,” said the Chief, the grieving father. “Bow in hand, slaying barbarian after barbarian until her very last breath.”

There would be a time to exchange ideas and to trade with the Greeks, to entertain them as partners and friends, as immigrants and as hosts for traders and monks, to hire them as mercenaries and to compliment their strengths as one customarily did to a defeated enemy, as Rama had done to Ravana after defeating him. And then it would no longer be valid to hate them.

There is much that I must disclose to you, he had said. After the war.

That time was not now.

Now was the time for war.

Such lies! Such lies, that his enemies propagated – enemies on the inside!

Those who pretend to be friends of Alexander, and yet are jealous of his success.

To believe that the heroic Alexander – the demigod Alexander – the great besieger, who destroyed the mighty empire of the Persians, who defeated the fearsome Assakenoi (Aśvakāyanas) in battle, who obtained the submission of Takṣaśilā, the most prosperous city known to the Greeks, who defeated the mighty Porus (Puruṣottama) with his many elephants and then vanquished those enemies whom Porus himself was previously unable to defeat – could meet his match in the hands of a loosely confederated, lionskin-wearing barbarian tribe like the Śivis and the Oxydraci (Kśūdrakas) – or indeed, by any mortals at all!

It can only be attributed to foolishness or malice to claim so.

Here, then, is the truth, as Alexander recounts to Nearchus and other chroniclers who have accompanied him.

As the Macedonian army sailed down the Candrabhāga river, I learned that the kings who ruled by the banks of that river had retreated to strong forts out of their fear of me. But as much as the son of Zeus is inclined towards mercy, he took this action as a rejection of his sovereignty – for all former vassals of the Persian empire were to submit to me, that had been my command – and so I began to harass the countries of these enemies to draw them out of their forts.

Nearchus says: And this is when, of course, we received news that Nicanor, the Satrap of the Paropamisadae (Kamboja) had been slain?

Indeed – this was when we received the communication from Śaśigupta, informing us that the Aspaisoi (Aśvakas) rebelled, led by a certain wicked Scythian princess, an Amazon by the name of Ghṛtācī, interrupting our supplies and murdering our reinforcements. Nicanor had been slain, and the cowardly Śaśigupta, receiving an ultimatum from Queen Ghṛtācī, had also deserted me – and even King Āmbhi of Takṣaśilā woefully informed me that all his forces were occupied fighting the opportunistic nuisance that were the Abhiras of Kashmir. It was a trying time indeed!

Nearchus says: Is this why you retreated from attacking the Śivis? Was it here that you realized that by attacking the Oxydraci directly, you will be able to reconvene with your territory in Arachosia and Gedrosia and secure a Southern supply line to Babylon?

Retreated? Nonsense! I swiftly made contact with Phillipos, who began campaigning to eliminate the Aspaisoi menace. Sure, the war certainly made the supply of reinforcements from the North more expensive, but it was not an impossibility – nothing is, for the son of Zeus! In view of the objectives of war, I recognized that the objective of my war against the Śivis was to prevent them from aiding the Malloi (Mālavas) further South, who were the enemies of true importance, who ruled over the most prosperous Indian city apart from Takṣaśilā.

Why didn’t I secure the Southern supply line? As mentioned, the problems in the North were not of such great importance that I needed to reorient the entire purpose of my Indian campaign as its consequence. Should I bother, in the course of my grand campaign, to weed out every criminal and miscreant who lives among the barbarians – as are the lion-clad Śivis of no influence, or the loosely confederated Oxydraci? Or should I focus on besieging those impenetrable forts, scaling those unscalable heights, conquering those countries that even my godly half-brother Dionysus was unable to conquer? Of course, it is the latter course that a heroic name like mine chooses.

(Alexander had approached the Kśūdrakas with a mighty confidence – with his soldiers and closest confidantes singing such praises that he had never lost a battle, that he was invincible, and had such a record to show for it! But on setting foot on Kśūdraka territory, his army had been plagued by such troubles – poisonous plants, traps, bandits, fires, skirmishing horse-archers – each village they slaughtered would have, with discipline, poisoned their food and water making them of no use to the invading army.

Thus forced to treat the peasants with kindness, Alexander was left with no negotiating chips against the Kśūdrakas. At this point, Alexander was fearful of breaking his streak of victories that his army had so praised, and desperately wished to abandon the mission against the Kśūdrakas – but was also fearful of causing his army to lose faith in him, and desperately needed a win.

But he was also aware – for he was no stranger to the cautionary Attic tragedies – that desperation drove men to make impulsive choices, choices that lead to disasters of such magnitude as to undo the great gains they may have previously made.

And in a move that surprised even Cāṇakya, as well as himself – for they had both apparently overestimated Alexander’s ambitiousness and perfectionist thoroughness – Alexander declared that the objective of the campaign against the Kśūdrakas had always been to isolate them in their city while he launched a sudden surprise attack on the Mālavas, his real rivals.)

Nearchus says: I must say – I had been confused by your actions against these tribes, but all the pieces truly came together in your invasion of the Malloi.

Indeed! The Malloi – the prosperous Malloi with their great city; this time, having learned the strategy of the Indians and being determined to win – as I always have … of course – I rushed my cavalry into the Mālava country before word could reach the defenders, surrounded their capital, and rampaged through the country for a full-scale conquest.

Nearchus says: And one by one, each layer of their defence fell. Taken by surprise, large parts of their army had been outside the fortress and unprepared, and they fell to your cavalry. Then your infantry arrived, and surrounded the city – and then, of course, the elephants that had previously been seized from Porus.

Careful, now! We did not seize those elephants – Porus is a friend of mine, and it was in this capacity that he sent his elephants to serve me. But yes – terrified by the sight of Porus’s elephants, the Malloi quit defending their city walls, and retreated to their citadel, where we pursued them.

Nearchus says: And that was where you were wounded – by that stray arrow!

An arrow is nothing, Nearchus. There was nothing more heartening to see than my men charge the walls of the citadel in teutonic fury – both to pursue the archer who had shot me, and to hunt down the Malloi at large and massacre them. To know the regard with which my men hold me, even after all these years – to hear their guttural roars, to see the devotion in the eyes of even those who had previously mutinied against me!

Nearchus says: But once they entered the citadel—

They slew the Malloi and enslaved the women.

(They found the citadel almost empty, except for those defenders who had already been slain.)

Nearchus says: But—

And the children too! Yes, they were also enslaved.

(A clicking sound. And then the entire citadel collapsed onto itself, killing the invading Greeks instantly.)

Nearchus says: But actually—

That’s all that happened, Nearchus. That is all that happened. It was a great victory for us.

“Today, Candragupta, your education is complete. Only rituals remain – chief among them being guru dakṣiṇā (tuition fee payment). But for the education I have given you, your fee will not be monetary.”

Candragupta kneeled. “Name your price, Professor.”

Cāṇakya turned to face his student and dearest friend.

“Entire Bhāratavarṣa.”