1.10 Hero worship

Takṣaśilā was losing.

It was as if dark clouds had formed over the arena at Śalātura, yet such clouds that passed without providing rainfall.

Victory after victory, the university, with all its scholars and students, had forgotten the feeling of defeat.

In the nearly four hundred years of the Annual Debates held in the honour of the ancient philosopher Yājñavalkya, from whose works all schools of thought had birthed, the site and sponsors of the debates had changed numerous times, but the contest had remained the most prestigious of such events for scholars and students alike; its pride and prestige remaining unchallenged even by the Royal Debates of Gandhāra.

Scholars would pour in year after year, coveting the contest’s generous prizes, and wealthy families fought for the honour of sponsoring it, just as cities competed for the glory of hosting the debate.

The university currently held a twenty-year winning streak, but this year, after reaching the finals, found itself dangerously close to losing its crown to the Sauvīrāyana University in Sindh.

Nothing – nothing – could have been more humiliating! The Mūṣikas, the descendants of sea nomads from Aparānta who had settled in Sindh, merchants who had once been entrenched in practices like piracy, who bore the banner of a rat, their joke of a university was merely an inferior imitation of Takṣaśilā’s.

It was not because the sponsor, the wealthy merchant Valgujangha, himself a Mūṣika merchant who had received his education at the Sauvīrāyana University – to the contrary, Valgujangha’s repute for fairness in all his business dealings was matched only by his honesty and truthfulness.

No. As the final contestants warred with words in the central arena, it became very obvious that Takṣaśilā had grown complacent in its position. Its representative, the seventeen-year-old student Śuśrava, was obviously woefully unprepared and lacking in clarity of thought – stumbling over his words, he allowed himself to be completely dominated by Pratikṣatra, the older man who represented Sauvīrāyana.

Curious and wide-eyed, an eleven-year-old Greek girl watched from the back of the great ampitheatre.

Between heroism and discipline, which quality is more desirable in an army? That was the question.

“Infused with valour, a skilful warrior may slay hundreds from atop his chariot,” said Pratikṣatra, “For of a man who knows no duty but that of war, surrender does not even cross his mind.”

“I hold that to be impossible, O respected Professor,” Śuśrava objected, his voice nearly a squeak, “For such feats as are quoted in accounts – of an archer piercing thousands of armoured men with a single arrow, or a soldier crushing the skulls of half an army with a swing of his mace – cannot truly be realistic, as they defy reason.”

Pratikṣatra smiled concedingly. “Indeed the precise numbers may be bardic exaggeration,” he allowed, “But the fact remains that some warriors were exalted for their incredible skill and competence, and raised above others in the minds of their followers – thus my stance: that it is such qualities that a commander must inculcate in his army, rather than discipline.”

Śuśrava took a full half-minute to respond. (murmurs could be heard of boys going “I could do such a better job!” and “Śuśrava lacks force”)

Finally, he admitted: “Such warriors are to be honoured. I’m afraid, however, O respected Professor, that the Age of Heroes has long passed. The present is the Age of Empires, and imperial armies function on discipline more than bravery. It is not courage, but the ability of a commander to strategize effectively, that allows small armies to defeat great ones.”

 It was not unheard of for a Greek to receive an education in India.

Two centuries ago, Pythagoras, the son of a wealthy man from Samos, had spent some years at Takṣaśilā. He had learned from the scholars here the laws of mathematics and music, and to introspect on the mind and on the meaning and causes of knowledge (a study he later gave the name “philosophy”). Donning simple robes and rejecting meat as learned Indians did, he brought these ideas back with him to Greece, and thus the light of Classical Greece was lit by the torch of India.

“Why is the Age of Heroes past us?” Pratikṣatra questioned. “Surely it is human actions, and not the intervention of gods, that has lead to the dearth of heroes. You are young and naive, Śuśrava, but it must be said, that is this very discipline that you exalt, that has crushed the heroism of the kṣatriyas. In commanding them to conform to those rules that their superiors have set for them, we deprive them of the skill for intrigue, of their capacity to plan in situations not yet anticipated. And thus our dark times were born.”

It was also not unheard of for a woman to receive an education in India.

Indeed, even in the earliest days, among the first debaters against Yājñavalkya himself had been the firebrand princess Maitreyi – who had questioned him on matters of afterlife and immortality and later became his wife – and Vācaknavī, who had debated him on pertinent questions on the natural sciences.

Nonetheless, both occurrences were relatively rare, and the result of odd circumstances.

In the case of Thera, that circumstance was the untimely death of both her parents in a domestic squabble after her mother Laodice had claimed, to her father Antiochus’s distaste, that her children were sired by the god Apollo. Of course, the terming of this circumstances as “odd” or “unusual” was questionable: in Macedon, the men were violent, the women were insane, everyone was perpetually drunk, and glassware was abundant.

While it was still not at all usual to send away an eleven-year-old girl away from family to study in the East, her brother Seleucus had been worried about her being used as a hostage during the political violence in Greece surrounding subsequent troubles in the Macedonian noble family – much of such affairs he himself was involved in.

She had been admitted alongside a class of Persian students who studied various arts of Persia and India – however, upon arriving at Takṣaśilā, she had found herself more drawn to studying the sciences of the Indian philosophers, and so she had abandoned her living quarters in Puṣkalāvatī to stay within the campus of the University of Takṣaśilā itself, as the relatively studious Indians did.

“But the capacity to plan in situations not yet anticipated is precisely the argument for discipline,” Śuśrava argued. “Discipline is the art of developing solutions in anticipation of problems instead of in reaction to them, and based on such considerations developing protocols to follow that will then be adhered to rigidly, and ensure victory.”

Upon arriving at Takṣaśilā, she had quickly heard tales of Cāṇakya, the Golden Boy of Takṣaśilā, who was currently away, for at least one and a half fortnights, on a dangerous expedition to Magadha.

In all honesty, she found most of the viewpoints attributed to him to be so outrageous that it would be no exaggeration to say that merely hearing such opinions expressed had left her scarred for life. She took great objection to his thesis that “wealth and wealth alone is important”, his defence of usury went completely against the teachings of Aristotle that she had held so sacred, and his apparent neutrality between many systems of government seemed plainly amoral.

Yet it was hard not to develop an admiration for his brilliance.

“A strategist cannot anticipate every possible outcome in battle,” Pratikṣatra retorted harshly, “Nor every trap that the enemy may institute in the midst of the battle. Thus it is necessary for this onus to fall on the individual soldier, to think for himself in the absence of, or in spite of orders. An army that possesses discipline alone is merely a phalanx of blind men walking off the edge of a cliff.”

“ … ”

“ … ”

The crowd watched.

A wave of dejection had washed over the crowd from Takṣaśilā – many of its younger members, who had never seen their university defeated in contest, found it inconceivable to so much as imagine what was unfolding before their very eyes.

“ … ”

Śuśrava bowed his head.

There was a collective intake of breath from the audience – scholars, students, merchants, nobles, peasants who had climbed the trees surrounding the amphitheatre to watch the iconic debates.

The despair was palpable.

Even Thera, who was new to the university and to India, who did not yet fully grasp or relate to all its ways, understood the significance of the gesture.

It was the end of an era.

“You have convinced me of the truth of your viewpoint,” said Śuśrava. “I had in my naivety, dismissed the entire enterprise of heroism as chaotic and based in emotion rather than reason. I had not considered the intellectual and strategic aspects of heroism—” he breathed in deeply, “—I concede.”

Not one man spoke.

Not one student from Takṣaśilā, not one student from Sauvīrāyana.

There was no ritual exchange of congratulatory pleasantries.

For those of Sauvīrāyana were proud – but to be merry, to rejoice, when those of Takṣaśilā stood humiliated – like a defeated army watching their capital city ravaged before their very eyes – like a farmer watching his fields burn to a day before the harvest – would have been the act of a barbarian.

An eternity followed.

Valgujangha rose at last, preparing to break the silence. Solemn and ceremonial, he addressed the attendees—

—just as a young voice cried out from somewhere near the East door: “I do not!”

Gasps. Elation on the faces of the Takṣaśilā boys, and dread on the Sauvīrāyana ones’.

Even as she did not recognize the voice herself, Thera inferred, from the sudden reinvigoration in her classmates, and the name Cāṇakya formed on her lips.

Students from across the amphitheatre scrambled, shuffled in place, to make way for the golden boy of Takṣaśilā – their faces red and their hearts beating.

“Cā-ṇa-kya! – Cā-ṇa-kya!”

Passionate informal drumming deafened her ears, and Thera had to lean on her toes to peer past the rows of heads, still catching but a quick glimpse.

Cāṇakya rode in on a horse, flanked by two boys too regally dressed to be attendants, and yet acted as if they were his. He did not tie his hair into a top-bun as was the standard for students at Takṣaśilā, instead leaving it untied, and his dhoti had taken a silvery-white hue.

“Forgive me, Lord,” he said, dismounting, “My visit to Pāṭaliputra involved a number of unforeseen detours – I request your permission to represent my university in the debates of the last day.”

Thera could hardly imagine so much pomp in the citadel of Corinth if Poseidon himself rose from the sea in mid-noon.

Valgujangha was smiling, but his assistant called for order in the crowd, and the students (as well as some particularly excitable professors) slowly began to return to their places.

“This is the final debate, Cāṇakya. Do you wish for a summary of the arguments made so far by each side?”

Cāṇakya grinned in amusement.

“I predict,” he said, inhaling deeply as if to relax, “That my opponent’s arguments are as follows: warriors used to be more powerful in the Age of Heroes than they are now, that’s because discipline reduces creativity and valour, and commanders can’t predict the various outcomes of battle thus soldiers must be capable of making decisions individually on their own accord—”

Thera’s jaw dropped. The crowd exploded into cheers of amazement, prompting the attendant to hush them once again.

“—he has surely also made the tired analogy of a disciplined army to a phalanx of men blindly walking off a cliff even as they see its edge, and made the claim that a rigidly defined army can be defeated as it cannot adapt to its enemy.”

Pratikṣatra shifted awkwardly. “In all honesty, I did not think of the last point.”

Cāṇakya looked quite proud of himself.

“Well,” he addressed the Professor, “Perhaps I should then also formulate your own rebuttals before you make them, then I would have a worthy opponent.”

The crowd erupted into cheers. This time it was Cāṇakya who hushed them.

“Instead of addressing each one of your points,” he said, “I shall begin with a general observation about the nature of your arguments, and indeed of many debaters who hold incorrect stances on questions stated in of the form of comparisons. It is as if you have, instead of defeating your opponent in a swordfight, defeated a cripple of your own creation claiming – and successfully convincing the audience and even your opponent – that cripple to be your opponent.

“In all your arguments, you have assumed the image, for I cannot even call it a defining characteristic, of a disciplined army as one that follows a certain small set of rigid and simplistic rules. You have assumed the image of a heroic army as one comprised of valiant and creative soldiers. Between these two, I have no doubt that the latter is superior. However, this is not what is commonly meant by these terms.”

“Your rebuttal is merely a game of semantics, Cāṇakya,” said Pratikṣatra proudly, “Surely fire by any other name burns just as hot.”

“Indeed, you may call your mother poison and obesity edible, but that would not enable one to safely consume poison. If the objective of such arguments was merely a play with invented words, then your argument would be valid, as well as completely trivial. But the purpose of thought is action, and you expect your arguments to apply to the more common meanings of these terms. In doing so, you behave like a merchant who secures a large deal by promising silk fabrics, but instead delivers cotton or linen apparel – or like a policeman who is told to execute a man by a certain name, but not finding the criminal, gives that name to an innocent civilian and executes him – or like a preacher who describes his religion in vague platitudes, and demands your blood from you once you join his cult – or like a scholar of a misguided school who says that in his ideal form of government, people will act very nobly and charitably, yet does not specify at all how his plans will cause them to do so – or like a legislator who, in his argument to forbid a practice, uses only its most wicked manifestations as examples for his rhetorics, even as his own proposed laws do not prevent such evil. In short: your arguments are the intellectual equivalent of fraud.”

The faces of all those of Takṣaśilā – including Thera herself, she imagined – shone with a wordless emotion: like the faces of a routed army watching its champion ride into battle in full metal armour to turn the tides of war – like the faces of the gods when Viṣṇu rose to defend them – or like the face of the Earth goddess when Brahmā descended to rescue her – manifesting like dawn at the night’s darkest.

Rather ironic comparisons, Thera thought, as Cāṇakya was literally arguing against the importance of heroism.

Pratikṣatra pressed on. “Your analogies are merely insults,” he complained, “You have not explained how I have committed this fallacy you claim.”

Cāṇakya smiled wryly. “Surely you are a scholar of repute yourself, and recognize the mistakes in your argument when they are pointed at to you? But I shall spell it out. When people speak of a heroic army, they do not state any plan that will cause the individual soldiers of an army to act in a creative or valiant manner – instead, they simply propose the elimination of discipline and claim that this will miraculously cause this outcome, even as this is contradicted by history – for though we deride the Magadhas as barbarians, in part precisely for their disciplined armies, it remains true that they were able to completely annihilate the relatively undisciplined armies of the states to its West.”

“Surely you realize, Cāṇakya, that prior to the introduction of discipline, all such demonstrations of heroism were common and widespread among the armies of the Mahājanapada states?”

“There are many levels on which your argument can be refuted. Firstly, one may say that you have no way to demonstrate that this change was caused by the introduction of discipline. Second, one may point out the military successes of Magadha against the other states. But a more fundamental refutation is possible. While my classmate likely made claims to the effect of – heroic armies were suited for the Age of Heroes, but that glorious age is lost to us now, thus as we must make do with iron for the age of gold is lost to us, we must make do with disciplined imperial armies – in truth, there never was an Age of Heroes—”

Thera gasped, then shut her mouth when she got some weird looks.

“—for such an age is not found in the Vedas, merely in the poetry of bards. The Battle of the Ten kings was not won by warriors who slew ten times their own number, it was won by the cunning of Sage Vasiṣhta who opened a dam to flood and kill off much of the unsuspecting enemy armies before the battle even began, and who shrewdly placed, in a manner that did not raise suspicion among scouts and spies, his own army into position to attack on command during the enemy’s rescue operations. The latter is certainly the exercise of discipline.”

The unbashed anti-romanticism of such words. It was shocking that they were even legal.

Thera felt rather conflicted – on one hand, she wished to interrupt Cāṇakya and object to his damning rejection of the very existence of the Age of Heroes (surely it existed in Greece, and if the Indians had a similar story of such an age it must have existed in India too – why was the existence of something so sacred even up for debate?) – but on the other hand, despite having attended Takṣaśilā for less than a month, she too felt the jingoistic fever that had permeated the crowd since Cāṇakya’s arrival. Cāṇakya was a hero, his arrival a miracle to Takṣaśilā in its darkest of nights. To question him there was like including, in a prayer for rain, a criticism of Zeus’s treatment of Prometheus.

Even Pratikṣatra appeared to have lost all confidence at this point, merely pressing on to introduce an honourable delay to his inevitable surrender.

“Surely it follows from reason,” he argued, “That instilling a standard protocol discourages a warrior from thinking for himself?”

“How, precisely, would you ensure that soldiers do think for themselves in the midst of battle? Perhaps by educating them earlier on the art of solving problems? And such an education would include practice problems, of course – cases one may encounter in battle, and instruction on the optimal strategy for such cases. If only we had a name for such an education.” Cāṇakya smiled. “The difference between an undisciplined army and a disciplined army is not that the former thinks for itself and the latter doesn’t, it’s that the former is forced to come up with solutions on the spot, as beasts must, rather than strategize in advance, as men do. You believe, wishfully, that each of your soldiers will think for themselves on the battlefield, even as you have no means to ensure it – just as you believe wishfully that each of your soldiers will slay ten of your enemy’s, but that this will not be true of your enemy’s valour.”

“Your characterization is an insult to the great heroes of history and legend, like Arjuna, Rama, and Viṣṇu,” said Pratikṣatra.

Heracles, Odysseus, Achilles. Thera had to stop herself from vigorously nodding.

“And I may similarly say that you insult the great strategists of history,” replied Cāṇakya, “Like Vasiṣṭha, Krishna, Viṣṇu too, Saṃkarṣaṇa and his heirs – or, for reasons aforementioned, that the rejection of discipline in warfare is a rejection of the intellect, and therefore of Puruṣa himself. But I am not interested in the game of compliments and insults, as that is a game of gossip, and therefore is a concern of women, not of scholars.”

Thera observed the shift in Pratikṣatra’s tone and posture of argument. He had abandoned his earlier pompous rhetoric, choosing instead a defensive position against Cāṇakya, and once that too had failed, he had attacked Cāṇakya on the basis of the morality of his stance. Even as she likely agreed with him on matters of policy, she had to confess that this was telling of a fundamental insincerity.

In a final attempt, Pratikṣatra adopted yet another appearance: one of wisdom and calm temparement.

“How blissful it is,” he said, “To be young and believe one knows everything. I must relish the nostalgia. You have studied under the Professors at Takṣaśilā, Cāṇakya, and have believed their words to be truth – but I could name you tens of more experienced scholars at Sauvīrāyana and elsewhere, who have discussed at length the value of heroism over discipline, and the disaster that discipline has spelled for the kṣatriya race.”

Cāṇakya gave a wry smile in response, that alone sufficed to rescue the university from a historic humiliation, and to secure Takṣaśilā its twenty-first consecutive victory at the Yājñavalkya Debates.

“Tens of scholars?” he asked. “I only need two: myself, and the goddess Vāc, who smiles down upon me when I speak the truth.”

The celebration was cut short by a commotion at the perimeter of the gathering.

Thera squeezed her way through the crowd, and saw a gory scene before her.

A young boy, dirty and unkempt – apparently not a student at any gurukula – had his right arm outstretched, the palm of his hand dripping with blood.

He was not crying or even cringing in pain – instead, he defiantly held the gaze of Professor Ṛṣyaśṛṅga, who stood taken aback.

She stood frozen, unsure what to even do. The boy clearly needed aid, and yet he seemed not to care, no one had acted, not even the Professor—

—“Fetch Doctor Ugraśravas!” The voice belonged to Cāṇakya, who had just broken through the crowd, as he delegated instructions, then tore a piece off someone’s dhoti and started wrapping the kid’s hand.

“What happened?” he pressed.

The boy winced for the first time, at the pressure applied to his hand.

But when he replied, his voice was steady.

“I told Professor Ṛṣyaśṛṅga that I wished to study at Takṣaśilā,” he stated. “That I wished to be his student. The Professor declined, telling me the knowledge-line on my palm was not deep enough. I did not know which line that was, so I carved all of them with a knife.”

Cāṇakya held the boy’s gaze for a full half-minute.

“That intelligence resides behind the forehead, not on the palm, is known to all men who possess any of it. What is your name, child?”

“Pāṇini,” said the boy.

“From today, Pāṇini,” Cāṇakya announced, “You are my student.”

It was only after returning to Takṣaśilā that Thera was able to catch up to Cāṇakya during dinner.

She introduced herself, then said: “I had some objections to what you said at the debate, but didn’t wish to betray you and the university by interrupting you mid-speech.”

“Oh?” Cāṇakya started. “You should have. If you were to defeat me now, my win would be tainted.”

“I was unaware,” she said shamefully. “I’m new to Takṣaśilā, and am not familiar with what’s considered polite.”

Cāṇakya, for all his apparent haughtiness from afar, said something fairly decent for once: “Do whatever is right, and no one will be offended in Takṣaśilā. Honesty is what we regard as polite; dishonesty is the gravest insult.”

“That’s good advice,” Thera confessed.

A short pause followed, during which Cāṇakya seemed rather annoyed. “Did you merely wish to mention that you have objections to what I said, or do you wish to debate me on them?”

Feeling embarrassed, she gathered her thoughts, and expressed them in so many words, focusing specifically on how upsetting his nay-saying rejection of the “Age of Heroes” was.

To which Cāṇakya said: “None of your objections have anything to do with the truth of my statements, and merely to do with how upsetting they are to you. To hold a value more sacred than the truth is to dishonour the goddess Sarasvati.” Furthermore, he explained, if wars were run on heroism alone, such heroism would be rather dull in itself, for the only job of a commander would be to maximize such spirits among his soldiers; it would not allow the plays and outplays – or the rock-paper-scissors – of strategic war. Indeed, he said, disciplined war merely made the strategist the hero, and such heroism was actually effective in large scale as the proponents of heroism claimed their own methods to be.

Thera then brought up yet another point of contention she had with what she had heard of Cāṇakya’s views, namely with his thesis that wealth and wealth alone is important. She explained that there were many things that couldn’t be bought with wealth, which he seemed to neglect.

This seemed to amuse Cāṇakya greatly, who asked: “I take it that your family is wealthy?”

“Very,” Thera admitted, feeling a little attacked.

“It is only those born to wealth who do not understand its value, only those born with great intelligence who cannot comprehend what cognitive capacities they possess that others do not, and it is beautiful women who downplay the importance of being well-formed or shower dishonest praise on the beauty of their uglier friends. There is a great deal that wealth can buy, and wealth is an encapsulation of the deeds of a man – for a man earns wealth by giving goods to his clients, and loses wealth by taking goods from sellers. There are indeed goods that money cannot buy, but an honest man must find it upsetting that such goods cannot be bought by money, and think of methods to make such goods purchasable to money, rather than celebrate such goods for their inability to be purchased by money.”

Thera raised more questions, about usury and other matters, and Cāṇakya must have grown tired of the smalltalk, because he then said: “If you truly believe the things you say, you wouldn’t be so easily convinced by my single-point arguments without any further questioning, because you would have thought through these beliefs more thoroughly. I suspect that your true intention here has nothing to do with the topics you profess to care about, but rather to talk to me, such as to extract some favour or to merely make my acquaintance.”

Thera felt humiliated. Cāṇakya had humoured her so far like a friend, but perhaps she had pushed it too far at the end and caused him to adopt a stricter position as a professor and all. She recalled his earlier words: Honesty is what we regard as polite; Dishonesty is the gravest insult, and decided to be forthright:

“Forgive me for my insincerity. I learned that you will soon become a Professor and have your own gurukula. I greatly respect your intellect, and wish to be your student.”

Cāṇakya declined emphatically. Thera’s heart sank.

“Although,” he said, “If you do just merely to make my acquaintance, I happen to need a wife for my graduation ceremony.”

Thera laughed, a little red, but then realized he may be serious, and that he might consider the child marriage of a “barbarian” girl – even one of such noble birth as herself – to be completely morally acceptable.

“If I may press further,” she asked, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, “Why will you not accept me as a student?”

“I believe you do not quite understand the quality of students that I am taking for my gurukula,” said Cāṇakya. “You are a student of the Persian arts, a discipline imposed on us by the imperial government, that is taken by princes lacking in intelligence and masculinity, to which admission is gained by uttering a few insincere words of flattery to the Persians.”

Not wishing to be deterred so easily, Thera insisted: “But I am trying to switch to an Indian education in the sciences—” she leaned forward conspiratorially, “—and between you and me, I, and the Greeks in general, share the Indian opinion of the Persians. I do not have any words of flattery for them in my mind.”

“I’m sure that you, and the Greeks in general, also agree with the Indian opinion on the proper method to wash oneself after defecating—”

“—actually, we don’t agree on that—”

“—but it is through discussing disagreement, not agreement, that the progress of the world is achieved. Agreement is the consequence, not the cause, of a successful debate that dispels false beliefs on either or both sides.”

“I am willing to discuss our disagreements.” Feeling a little brave, she added: “But let me warn you that your perceptions of the Greeks may be quite incorrect. For instance, we have our own great cities, just like India and Persia do, and our own sciences, just like India does.”

Cāṇakya gave her a skeptical look, but didn’t seem offended that a foolish barbarian girl had dared to defy him.

“There is a tale that is often told of the Greeks,” he said, “As a warning to travellers visiting foreign countries and as a solemn reminder of the superiority of Vedic culture. Of a scholar by the name of Shukrata who was executed in Greece for his political views.”

“Socrates’s execution was a tragedy and an indictment of Athenian democracy,” Thera agreed. “But matters have changed now. Socrates’s student’s student, a philosopher by the name of Aristotle, is now employed as a teacher by the royal family that rules Greece.”

“If another philosopher were to speak negatively of Socrates, or of this student’s student, would he be executed?”

“Without doubt!” Thera replied haughtily, then realized the implication.

“Then things haven’t changed at all,” said Cāṇakya. “No more than the welfare of a slave who is passed from one master to another. The Greeks have no law against Brahmahatya, indeed their governments actively engage in that wicked practice – that reason, among others, is why we regard the Greeks as barbarians.”

“Indeed,” said Thera. “Just as the wicked practice of widow-burning is why we regard the Indians as barbarians.”

“ … ”

“ … ”

Thera was certain that she had crossed a line, and readied herself to prostrate herself and beg for forgiveness, when Cāṇakya cracked a small smile.

“Philosophers are more important than widows,” he said at last. “But I will accept you as my student.”