1.4 Deception games

Two years ago, upon his altercation with the Persian prince, Professor Caṇin had advised him to learn the art of cunning. A year before that, he himself had formulated the doctrine of sāma dāma daṇḍa bheda – persuasion, purchase, punishment and deceit. To learn these methods, and to learn when to employ each method, was the art of cunning.

Over these two years, he had repeatedly won debates against opponents, from students to professors to nobles and other interested parties, who were initially convinced of viewpoints most opposed to his own, and he had converted them to the truth. He had done so without uttering a single lie, without a single line of argument that was not based in reason, without the use of emotion or of any form of manipulation.

Public debates were the most high-status events that the university held, and the courtyards in which they were held would be populated by visitors from other gurukulas, as well as by nobles and other wealthy men who sought to signal that they were well-versed in the sciences. But to hear Cāṇakya speak, even girls and peasant children, who had neither intention nor opportunity of ever pursuing an academic education, would gather past the university’s fences, wide-eyed in awe at his scholarly eloquence.

Such was the nature of Cāṇakya’s words – he made no effort to make them less erudite to be accessible to such audiences, yet he also made no effort to make them erudite beyond necessity out of a desire to impress more scholarly audiences.

And as a consequence Cāṇakya had grown so confident in the effectiveness of sāma, of persuasion alone, that his mind had become almost unable to imagine a man who couldn’t be convinced by the truth. Particularly instrumental in building this confidence in him had been his debate with Śrībhānu, a Magadhi kṣatriya student who was heavily influenced by a philosopher of his country contemporary to Ajātaśatru.

“Ambition is the cause of all suffering,” Śrībhānu had said, “Hence my objection to your position that the pursuit of wealth is the noblest goal.”

“I deny your premise,” Cāṇakya had replied, to which Śrībhānu had explained:

“It is his desire for wealth that causes a man to be unhappy in its absence; it is his desire for family that causes him to be unhappy in their death; it is his desire for women that causes him to be unhappy in abstinence. It is the mark of maturity to reject all such desires and ambitions, that is the principle of ascetism.”

To which Cāṇakya had said simply: “Then die.”

At Śrībhānu’s offended expression, he had elaborated: “Why? Do you desire life? Surely it is the desire for life that causes a man to be unhappy at the prospect of death.”

“I have no attachments towards life either,” Śrībhānu had said indignantly. “But I also do not desire death.”

“So you have no preference between life and death?”

“Correct.”

“And did you have any preference between life and death yesterday?”

“I did not.”

“And the day before?”

“I did not.”

“In all the days since your conversion to this philosophy, you will claim to never have had a preference between life and death,” Cāṇakya had observed. “Yet on each of these days, you and all the other adherents of your school chose life over death. I do not know much of the peculiarities of the Magadhas, but in Gandhāra, if a housewife purchases groceries at the same shop each day, we say that she prefers that shop’s goods to those of others. If a king consistently purchases iron from the mines of the same country for his armoury, we say that he prefers that country’s mines to others. If a householder spends each night with one wife ignoring all others, we say that he prefers that wife to the rest.”

Cāṇakya had continued, before Śrībhānu could come up with a reply: “It seems there is little I need to convince you of, kid, for you already agree with me. You already have preferences, desires, ambitions – I do not need to convince you of their merit, only that you need no convincing.”

A mere concession from Śrībhānu would not have made this debate stand out in Cāṇakya’s memory – but after his concession, Śrībhānu had demonstrated his understanding of Cāṇakya’s argument by generalizing it thus:

“Indeed,” he had said, his eyes lit up in realization, “That is a contradiction, isn’t it? In my very argument against desire, I had relied on the assumption that suffering was undesirable. Do you say, then, that it is impossible to be devoid of desire?”

Cāṇakya, expressionless, had turned to the audience. “The focus on suffering is a fallacy of all Magadhi philosophers, not only of whom my opponent honoured, but also of the many schools of the Ājīvakas. It is childish to believe one can live without causing suffering at all, and if minimizing suffering, whether to others or to oneself, were the goal, then there are many methods to kill someone painlessly in their sleep. The very act of walking on the Earth causes pain to various insects and other beings that may dwell on its surface; yet it is righteous to do so, so long as the act leads to the creation of wealth. And thus I re-state my undefeated stance: that it is wealth and wealth alone that is important, and that suffering is only bad in so far as it harms one’s wealth, whether this wealth is in the form of one’s possessions, relations, knowledge or health.”

Thus Cāṇakya had won from the king, for Professor Caṇin, another herd of cows, each laden with heavy golden ornaments and various rare gems.

(Professor Caṇin would complain that he was running out of space to house the cows, to which Cāṇakya had replied: that is the great joy of wealth, Professor, that it can be traded to other forms. You may sell the cows for more gold, which is easier to store, or you may sell their ornaments for more space to house them.)

And for himself, he had won an immense excess of confidence in his own persuasive power – why, if he could in such short debate convince a boy of Magadhi noble lineage, who had spent his childhood living among barbarians and believing in barbarian philosophy, to abandon his deeply-held beliefs and adopt a diametrically opposite position, then, well, Cāṇakya ought to be deified as the god of debate.

And it was in this confidence that Cāṇakya had marched into the empire of darkness, to the dwelling of the very source of that darkness, on a mission to persuade the Emperor of Magadha to change his ways.

Professor Caṇin had warned him of the dangers of visiting a state like Magadha that was so different from them in their ways, and that his charm may be ineffectual or even dangerous there. He had finally given his blessing, satisfied after rehearsing with Cāṇakya several possible scenarios that may come to result in the court of Pāṭaliputra. But even Professor Caṇin had not foreseen this.

Now deep in the Dungeons of Ajātaśatru, Cāṇakya thought.

It was a dreadful feeling to await one’s death – whether announced by a king, a physician or a prophet. Suppressing panic, shock and all terrible emotions, Cāṇakya thought.

The prison system of Pāṭaliputra was impenetrable: from the outside and the inside, to men and to messages, by routes and tunnels or by physical force. It had been designed by Ajātaśatru a century and a half ago, and had all stood the test for as long.

What hasn’t stood the test? Cāṇakya thought. What – unlike the immortal bricks and stones and metals that comprised the prison – were no longer the same as they were in Ajātaśatru’s time?

(Somewhere in the back of his mind, Cāṇakya was shocked at how clearly he was able to think in this state: not once was he enticed by the thought of giving up and accepting his death like Śrībhānu would have implied, not once did he find that option appealing. Such was the nature of man: some primal instinct would kick in when one’s life was at stake, ridding the mind of foolish distractions, of romantic idealisms and of all squeamishness. A man possessed of sufficient intellect would in some way, with cold and calculating demeanour, loving nothing but his own life, caring for nothing the survival of his self, claw himself out of such a situation.)

“Am I the first child you’ve seen submitted for execution?” he asked the guards.

The strength of a door could be tested by physical methods; the method to interact with a man’s mind was to speak with him.

“The first?” one of them snorted, “Not even close.”

“Usually they’re crying for their mothers,” said another one. “You’re the first to accept your own death so calmly.”

Look sad. “I’m not one to accept my death so neutrally,” Cāṇakya said with a tender smile. “I love my life; it is dearer to me than anything else on Earth.”

The guards seemed unmoved by this. He noticed their tones in speech were all carefully neutral; expressing neither sympathy nor sadistic pleasure – as if they simply didn’t care. Cāṇakya needed to make a play that achieved three goals: (1) show the guards something unique, something that broke them out of their rut, so they didn’t view his execution as merely their job (2) cause the guards to befriend him and feel an immense responsibility to help him and (3) allowed him to understand the guards’ security flaws, both psychological and systemic.

And Cāṇakya knew the perfect play.

“You know what is second dearest to me, after my life?” he asked to no one in particular.

“Your mother?” suggested one of the guards – Cāṇakya quickly studied his eyes and decided that the guard intended that question as an insult, rather than an expression of sympathy.

“She died three years ago, and I lacked the wealth to so much as attend her funeral. And not my father either, for I never knew him.” Cāṇakya shook his sadly. “No, what I treasure most is—”

“Knowledge!” exclaimed another guard – at the weird looks he got from the other guards, he quickly explained: “I’ve … heard people care about that sort of thing … Brāhmaṇas … in the conquered Western realms.”

Cāṇakya quickly noted this guard’s face for future use, then nodded, putting on a most meaningful expression. “To discover things, to learn things, to teach things … it is the noblest pursuit. That is all I wish for.”

Some people believed that the art to manipulation was in lying.

Those people were wrong. The art to convincingly make people believe lies was to tell truths, things that you truly believed in, but by carefully picking which truths to speak, or by stringing those truths in a manner that apparently, but not truly, implied the lies you wished them to believe. This is because a true belief could be expressed with a conviction that a lie could not easily be, even if for dishonest purpose.

Finally, the guard who had guessed correctly spoke up. “In this prison, even an inmate’s wish for a last meal isn’t satisfied. None of us can teach you anything, nor do we have the intellect to learn what you can teach us.”

“There’s a game we play in Takṣaśilā,” said Cāṇakya, “It’s called Rājamaṇḍala, and we use it to teach students about many features of covert war, political alliance-making and the administration of justice. I believe that you could play it too. But the game requires six players; all five of you will need to play.”

(In fact, Cāṇakya had developed his own version of the game that also taught economics: in this version, no players had any loyalties, the emperor had to purchase information from them. But this version was far too complicated, and served no additional purpose, to play with the guards.)

It took some convincing from the nice guard; perhaps it was out of intrigue, or boredom, or genuine sympathy for boy’s plight, but all four remaining guards eventually acquiesced.