At night, there always seemed to be a religious ceremony within earshot. We heard their singing and their musical bands, sometimes slow and solemn, sometimes fast and frenzied.
"The real business of India is religion," said Otaspes. "If you wonder why they act like such idiots, the reason is that their minds are not on this world, which to them is a mere illusion. Instead, they are trying to think up some new and quicker way to unite themselves with God—or at least with some god or other, for this land has more gods than it has men."
"How about you?" I said.
"Me? I worship the one Good God, Oramazdes, the Lord of Light. If these people wish to divide God up into ten thousand aspects, incarnations, demigods, and so forth, that is their affair."
In nine days we reached Mahismati. As we disembarked, Otaspes hired some skinny little porters to hoist our baggage on their heads and follow us into the city. As we climbed the path from the landing to the river gate, we saw a crowd of people around a funeral pyre. As we drew closer, I saw that an elderly woman sat on top of the pyre beside the corpse. She was not bound; she simply sat there until the flames roared up and hid her from view.
"By the gods and goddesses!" I said, "what's that?"
"A widow burning herself," said Otaspes. "Among the upper colors of the Brachmanists, it is a point of honor for a widow to sacrifice herself on her man's pyre. She thus expiates all their sins, so they shall spend the next fifty million years in paradise. If she failed to burn herself, she would be deemed an outcast—a person of no color, treated worse than a dog."
"Phy! What a country!"
We walked on to the city—a town of much the same size and character as Barygaza, but with a more substantial wall of brick. A gay assortment of flags flew from the Walls, and Otaspes learnt that the king was celebrating the birth of his first son by his legitimate wife. The massive wooden gates were studded with large iron spikes to keep elephants from breaking them down with their heads. Before each gate was a kind of triumphal arch, consisting of a pair of wooden pillars joined at the tops by several wooden crosspieces intricately carved into figures of elephants, dancing girls, creatures half woman and half serpent, and other beings.
At the river gate stood a pair of soldiers whose bronzen cuirasses, horsehair-crested helmets, and long pikes looked familiar. As I approached, I said:
"Ô hoplitai! Legete ta hellênika?"
They looked startled; then the bearded faces split in broad grins. "Malista!" they shouted. In no time, the whole duty squad was swarming around me, wringing my hands and pounding me on the back. Their strangely accented Greek was sprinkled with Persian and Indian words,
"By Zeus the Savior, have the Hellenes at last reached this god-detested part of India?" asked one.
"Just this one Hellene, a trader from Egypt," I said. "But how did you fellows get here? You're as far from Hellas as I am."
The speaker explained: "We're Bactrian Hellenes—born and reared in the mountains of Gandaria. We soldiered for King Antialkidas, but lately the polluted Sakas have wrested most of Antialkidas' lands from him. The other big Hellenic king, Straton, saw a chance to stab Antialkidas in the back, so he attacked his rear.
"When the fighting stopped, Antialkidas had so little land left that he couldn't afford to keep us all, so several thousand left to take service elsewhere. Some went over to King Straton, but we wouldn't work for the treacher. So we came hither."
"How do you make out?"
He shrugged. "It's India, but we might be worse off. But look, sir, you must let us give you a feast, so you can tell us the news from the West."
"I shall be glad to." I turned to Otaspes. "Where are we staying?'
"At Sudas' inn, unless he's full. Tell your friends to leave a message for you when they get their party organized."
So it was agreed. Having paid a tax on our goods to the customs officer at the gate, we passed on into the city, ignoring as best we could the stares of the Indians. When we were settled, we went to pay our respects to the king. Since His Majesty was busy at rites connected with his son's birth, we were received, instead, by a lean, bald, dour-looking, elderly minister, who wore the sacred thread of the Brachman color about his neck. He welcomed us with brief sentences and told us to come back two days later, when the natal ceremonies would be over.
"But you need not waste your time tomorrow," he said. "The king is giving a fete to conclude the celebrations, and you shall be invited." He signed to a clerk, who produced a piece of dried palm leaf on which something had been scribbled in ink. "That is your pass. Present it at the public park outside the East Gate at sunrise tomorrow."
By now it was too late for trading or for seeking out the hermit Jaivali. A couple of Bactrio-Greek soldiers appeared at Sudas' inn and invited us to the party at the barracks. A fine, festive affair it was, with naked dancing girls and real wine from Persia—a great rarity in India—on which Otaspes got drunk and slid quietly under the table. King Girixis' whole company of Greek mercenaries jammed into the mess hall.
I told the soldiers about events around the Inner Sea, and they told me how King Odraka of Magadha was already collecting tribute from the next neighboring kingdom to the east, that of Vidisha. It was only a matter of time, they said, before he fastened his grip on Mahismati and Avanti as well.
"I don't think our little king will resist very hard," said one. "So long as he has his girls and his jug and his hunting, he doesn't care who collects tribute from whom."
"Oh, come!" said another. "You're unfair to the little bastard. He's a real sport, always ready to give us a big bonus.
It's that dog-faced minister who's always telling him he can't afford to do the generous thing."
"He'll do the generous thing once too often, and then there won't be any regular pay left for us," said the first soldier. "Remember last year, when he ran short? He'd have sent us on a raid into Vidisha to refill his coffers, except that he was afraid it would bring Odraka down on him. So he had to grind it out of his starving peasantry, as usual. What he should do is to play off the kings of Magadha and Andhra, one against the other ..."
And they were off on an argument over foreign policy. Like onlookers everywhere, each was sure he could manage the government with infinitely more skill and address than those who were faced with the task.
While these two argued, a third soldier said: "Master Eudoxos, among your trade goods, you didn't by chance bring any Greek girls, did you?"
"Why, no," I said. "I never expected to find a market for them here."
"I think you might. We all have women—except those who prefer the love of other men—but they're native women and don't count as lawful wives. What we want are real Greek girls, so we can marry them properly and beget legitimate children—"
"Now, look here!" said another. "My wife is a respectable Bactrian girl, of a good landowning family, and I won't have anybody saying our children are bastards—"
"All right for you," said another, "but most of us have to make do with whatever dames we can pick up. Solon's right. If Master Eudoxos will load his ship with Greek girls—either slave or free; we'll free the bonded ones and wed 'em anyway —we'd make it well worth his while ..."