Taxila

Salman Rashid 

A bureaucrat, mutated into an ‘intellectual’, hogs the waves of an Urdu television channel and tells the ignorant television viewing public what it wants to hear. One of his not-so-recent gems was about the country that is now Pakistan being a wild and savage land until illuminated by Islam in the early 8th century. That, until that time, this land had no culture or sophistication. The man is a liar and a charlatan.

In April 326 BCE, Alexander arrived in Taxila and it is from that time we get the first real notice on this wonderful city. Several members of the Macedonian’s staff wrote diaries that were subsequently published. Some of those works are lost entirely, others preserved by later historians. Whatever the case, they provide a fantastic window into the city.

Taxila was a city of Buddhists and Brahmans and of yet another class that did not bury its dead. They exposed them in isolated places for the bones to be picked clean by the birds. This was a clear reference to the followers of the great Zartusht or Zoroaster — the people we today know as Parsees. We are told that the Brahmans were a very powerful class, actively engaged in the political life of the city and serving as counsellors to the court.

As for the Buddhists, Greek writers refer to them as ‘sramanes’. Clearly this was a mispronunciation of ‘sramanera’, or a new entry training to be a monk. Though there is no dearth of ruins of post-Alexander Buddhist monasteries in town, we can take this as proof of Taxila being a centre of learning even before the westerners descended upon it.

There is no notice of animosity between followers of the various religious persuasions who lived in total harmony. Taxila, if we are to believe Alexander’s general Nearchus, was a city of peace and the rule of law. Nearchus notes, with evident awe, the rectitude and decency of the townspeople who made all monetary transactions without “either seals or witnesses”. Yet the courts of law were without any cases of fraud! Mendacity was unheard of and when folks went away, either for work or pleasure, they left their homes unlocked and unguarded for theft was not known in Taxila!

The people of Taxila were admirers of physical beauty and never left home improperly dressed or made up. The men wore their beards either in white or in punk shades of bright red, green or purple. The dress, as described by Nearchus, was “an under-garment of cotton which reaches below the knee halfway down to the ankles, and also an upper garment which they throw partly over their shoulders, and partly twist in folds around their heads.”

Their shoes had thick soles to make the wearer seem taller and the clothing of the rich men was worked in gold thread and studded with precious stones. When they went about their business out of doors, attendants shaded them from the harsh Punjabi sun with broad parasols.

Polygamy was common among the rich. But parents with daughters of marriageable age and unable, because of poverty, to wed them off, exhibited the damsels in the town square. There the champions of Taxila fought boxing matches and the winner’s prize was the hand of the girl in marriage.

Arrian called Taxila “the largest [city] between the Indus and the Jhleum” and we can tell from the above description of its richer classes that it was indeed so. Sitting at a spot that made it an important staging post for caravans, it picked off large amounts in custom duties. But much of its wealth also came from its rich agriculture. According to Nearchus, there was no shortage of food in Taxila.

But the noblest aspect of Taxilian society was the respect it bestowed upon its learned men. The philosophers, whose fame had reached Alexander months before he got to Taxila, were held in the highest possible esteem by the Taxilians. They lived outside town, but whenever they wandered in, people mobbed them, oiling their hair and massaging their limbs, begging them to come into their homes so that they could hear their discourse.

Taxila was a city of high culture that valued true learning. And we have a mendacious bureaucrat pretending to be an intellectual who tells us otherwise.

The writer is author of eight travel books including The Apricot Road to Yarkand

The philosophers of Taxila

Salman Rashid

Alexander was still on the far side of the Sindhu River, yet he already knew of the philosophers of Taxila. And so, having taken the city without a fight and settled its affairs, the Macedonian one day asked for the philosophers to be brought into his presence. The man tasked with the job was the sailor Onesicritus, a native of Cos, who had been a student of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes.

Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador in the court of Chandragupta Maurya, who was in our part of the world for fifteen years, from 300 to 285 BCE, tells us of them. They lived outside the city, abstained from animal food or anything cooked by fire. They ate fruits and nuts that grew in the area, went about naked (perhaps with only a loin-cloth) and inured themselves to extreme hardship. They practiced celibacy and held death in contemptuous disregard.

We also learn that they were very highly regarded by the people of Taxila. When the savants wandered into town, they were mobbed by young and old, women and men, rich and poor alike. Ordinary people stopped them in the streets, poured oil in their hair and massaged their limbs. Shopkeepers stood aside and permitted them to take whatever they pleased, though that was never much, and people invited them into their homes. All they asked in return from the philosophers was to hear their discourse.

To these philosophers did Alexander send Onesicritus. It was a day getting to be hot in late April in 326 BCE, when the sailor from Cos crossed the Tamrah rivulet and went into the forest outside the city. The first man Onesicritus accosted was stretched full length, stark naked, on bare stones. The sailor made an introduction and asked for a discussion. That did not please the Taxilian. He taunted the visitor, telling him that if he wished to learn of his philosophy, he would have strip naked and lie on the blistering hot stones.

Megasthenes tells us that this young, impertinent man was rebuked by an elder philosopher lying some distance away. The latter, named Mandanis in Greek, called Onesicritus over and there appears to have been a short discourse between them. Mandanis is said to have held forth on the nature of pleasure and grief and when the visitor said that his own mentor, Diogenes, held similar views, Mandanis was pleased.

But the Greeks were wrong, said the sage. They went about pampering their bodies with fancy attire and the easy life. The best body, said the man, was the one that needed minimal upkeep and maintenance as his own did, for he lived off the bounty of the earth.

From Megasthenes’ work it seems as if Onesicritus had to pay at least one return visit to convince Mandanis to visit Alexander. The first time, when he relayed Alexander’s desire for the philosophers to make themselves available at court, Mandanis roundly dismissed the request.

On the second visit, Onesicritus mixed threat with allure. If Mandanis and his fellows would present themselves to Alexander, there were lavish gifts to be had. But if they refused, the king would have them executed. Mandanis is reported, by Megasthenes, to have said that the worldly possessions that Alexander promised only fuelled worry and banished sleep. All that the savants of Taxila needed was given by the earth ‘as a mother [nurtured] her child with milk.’

He was free, said Mandanis, to go where he pleased. He was his own master, never burdened against his will and he wished to remain that way. But if Alexander were to cut off his head, he would still be unable to destroy his soul, said our philosopher. And the soul would leave the body ‘like a torn garment upon the earth’ to join the Maker. “Go, then, and tell Alexander this: Mandanis has no need of aught that is yours, and therefore will not go to you, but if you want anything from Mandanis, come you to him.”

Megasthenes writes, “Alexander, on receiving from Onesicritus a report of the interview, felt a stronger desire than ever to see Mandanis, who, though old and naked, was the only antagonist in whom he, the conqueror of many nations, had found more than his match.”

The writer is author of eight travel books including The Apricot Road to Yarkand

Kalyan of Taxila

Salman Rashid

It happened in Persepolis (whose ruins lie northwest of Shiraz, in Iran). The histories do not assign a definite date to it, but from a timetable of events we know it would have occurred sometime in the spring of 323 BCE. The tellers of our tale are both reliable, however. We have the Greek philosopher, historian and teacher Plutarch writing about 70 CE and we have Arrian, a Greek general serving Roman masters, who wrote about sixty years later.

Having made off with his life from his Indian campaigns, Alexander was in Persepolis. In his train he had a Punjabi philosopher, a native of Taxila whose name, the histories record, was Kalanos — definitely a Greek mispronunciation of the Sanskrit word Kalyan (Fortunate). When he left his home in Taxila and agreed to accompany Alexander so that the Macedonian conqueror may learn more of Indian philosophy, Kalyan was already an elderly man. One source says he was in his late seventies at that time.

Now three years later, having endured the dreadful privation of the crossing of the deserts of Makran, Kalyan had been ill for a few months. He was drained of the will to live. One day, Arrian records, he told Alexander that since he was unwilling to follow an invalid regimen, he was prepared to end his life on a funeral pyre.

Alexander pleaded with him, no doubt saying that there were ideas that the two yet needed to talk of. But Kalyan was adamant. A funeral pyre was built under the direct supervision of no less a person than Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s confidants and progenitor of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt.

From his quarters, the enfeebled Kalyan was carried in a palanquin to his pyre at the head of a procession: “horses, men, soldiers in armour, and people carrying all kinds of precious oils and spices to throw upon the flames…”. With his head wreathed in garlands ‘in the Indian fashion’ Kalyan sang hymns to his gods as he went.

From Arrian we learn that in the years the sage had spent with the motley army of Macedonian, Greek, Scythian, Persian, Parthian and Sogdian soldiers, he had earned fame and respect. There were countless in the procession who were his pupils and who showered upon their mentor gifts of gold and silver, which he redistributed among the host.

We now must turn to Plutarch who tells us that just before the pyre was set alight, Alexander approached the man who had been his friend and teacher for three years. He pleaded for the last time with Kalyan to spare himself. But the man refused and mounted the still unlit pyre. He drank his last libation and told the gathering to make this a day of ‘gaiety and celebration and to drink deep with the king….’ As for Alexander, Kalyan of Taxila said the two of them would soon be reunited in Babylon.

As the fire was kindled, Alexander ordered an impressive salute with bugles and a full-throated battle cry by the army. What overawed the gathered multitude was Kalyan’s complete imperviousness to the flames around him, for he neither let out a moan nor flinched in the least bit. This event would surely have remained alive in Persepolitan memory for years afterward.

Abiding by the savant’s bidding, Alexander did indeed turn the day into one of celebration and held a feast and a drinking contest after the funeral. One Promachus, we are told, polished off four pitchers of undiluted wine to clinch the winner’s prize of a crown, presumably of gold.

At the time of this event, no one may have given much thought to Kalyan’s words about being reunited with Alexander in Babylon. But surely, many would have called this prophecy to mind when scarcely fourteen months later, in early June 322 BCE, following a brief illness, Alexander died in that Mesopotamian city.

Kalyan was not the only philosopher that Taxila had produced, however.

Salman Rashid is author of eight travel books including The Apricot Road to Yarkand