I attended another Bactrio-Greek party and learnt that Avanti was a seething cauldron of hostility between the ruling Buddhists and the Brachmanist majority. These Bactrio-Greeks, like those in Mahismati, urged me to bring some nubile Greek women on my next voyage.
I bought more gems tones, until my Ptolemaic staters were nearly all gone. These stones included several fine rubies and a couple of emeralds, as well as minor stones like agates, jaspers, chrysoprases, and onyxes. I also bought one diamond. This stone has always seemed to me a waste of money, since it is too hard to cut and hence never looks like anything but a glassy pebble; but there are those who believe that wearing it confers upon the wearer some of its own hardness and will pay accordingly. The Indian tale is that diamonds come from a vast range of mountains, the Hemodos, to the north of India. Diamonds are made, they say, of water frozen so hard by the intense cold of those heights that it is permanently fixed in the solid state and cannot again be melted.
I also prowled the shops, asking the prices of everything— even goods I had no thought of buying—to become familiar with the market. This was not a pleasant business, because of the Indians' intense dislike of foreigners. Every one of them believes that Indians are the only good, well-behaved, decent, civilized folk on earth, and they miss no chance of letting the stranger know it. This is of course ridiculous, since every well-informed person knows that, if any people is superior to all the others, it is we Hellenes.
Three days after my arrival, I knocked on the door of Gupta the philosopher. Gupta proved a small man with a long, gray beard, very lively, cordial, and effusive.
"Come in, come in!" he exclaimed, when I had told him who I was. "Everybody who earnestly seeks the truth is welcome here, regardless of creed or color. I have heard rumors of your arrival in this city. If I give you a sip of forbidden palm wine, you will not tell on me, will you?"
"Of course not!"
"Who is the other man?"
"Gnouros the Scythian, my slave."
"Ah, yes, a slave," said Gupta. "We have little slavery in Bharata, although I have heard that it is much practiced in the western lands. Slavery is a cruel, unjust custom."
I shrugged. "Somebody has to do the dirty work. And from what I have seen, the members of your lower colors are no better off than slaves are among us."
"There is that," he said. "And do not think, because I criticize slavery, that I praise the system of colors. That is the most fiendishly clever method of making the lower orders content with their lot that our wicked species has yet devised."
"How so?"
"Why, the men of the upper colors tell them that, if they suffer from oppression and starvation, it is only a just punishment for misdeeds in some former life. To shine up their karma and get promoted in the next incarnation, they must bear their troubles humbly and obey the higher colors without complaint. Most of the poor fools believe it, too."
"You take a critical view of your own land, sir," I said.
"What is the good of having intelligence if one use it not? What Bharata needs is a complete overthrow of the present social order, if justice shall ever prevail. They need persons like myself, without vested interests or superstitious preconceptions, to manage their affairs. Have another! Dear me, where did I put that jug? Ah, there! So you have been to Sisonaga and Jaivali, eh? Well-meaning wights, I doubt not, but oh, so misguided!"
"How so?"
'They suffer from the curse of our land, which is subjectivism. Everybody in Bharata thinks that, by contemplating the tip of his nose and ignoring the real world around him, he can dredge up eternal truths out of the depths of his own mind. All they get are a lot of mutually contradictory fancies. Now, I follow the great Ajita and Kanada—two of the few clear thinkers that Bharata has produced—in believing that all is made of atoms, moving in space. You and I are made of atoms. When we die, these atoms scatter, and that is the end of us."
"We had a Hellene, Demokritos, who I believe advanced similar theories."
"I am glad to hear that even in foreign lands there are men of sense. All this talk of the soul and immortality and karma and reincarnation is sentimental rubbish, invented to comfort men who fear extinction."
"Do you believe in gods?"
"Show me a real, live, miracle-working god and I will own to belief in that god, at least. I suspect they were invented by the clever to exploit the simple. When the first fool met the first knave, they started the first religion, with the former as the worshiper and the latter as the priest ..."
We went on for hours. Gupta was an interesting talker, full of daring impieties and unorthodoxies, which he had no hesitation in avowing. I judged him to have two main faults. First, he caustically condemned practically everything and everybody. Every person mentioned was either a fool, or a knave, or a bit of both; every belief was superstitious nonsense; every institution ought to be destroyed and replaced by something more rational. Such a man would never be satisfied with any system run by real, fallible human beings. He might, moreover, be extremely dangerous if he got power, because he would want to destroy everything and everybody that did not come up to his own impossibly high ideals. Second, I thought him more dogmatic in denying the existence of the spiritual or supernatural than was warranted by the present state of man's knowledge.
Nonetheless, he was a relief after the woolly-minded speculations of the other thinkers whom I had lately heard. I finally got around to the real purpose of my visit. When I had explained, Gupta said:
"I must think about this. Unlike some of my mystical colleagues, I see nought wrong in enjoying mundane pleasures in moderation, but your problem presents difficulties. Howsomever, I doubt not that by the application of proper scientific methods we shall succeed. Thousands of years ago, before they wandered off into the swamp of subjectivism, the wise men of Bharata achieved great scientific triumphs, such as flying chariots and elixirs of youth, as anybody can perceive from an enlightened reading of the Rigveda or the Ramayana or —"
"Yes, yes," I said. "I have heard of those. Of course, we Hellenes can make the same sort of claim. Thousands of years ago we had an artificer named Daidalos, who could fly through the air. He made a mechanical bronzen giant, which guarded the isle of Crete. Another epic tells of the mechanical tables of the god Hephaistos, which served repasts without the help of human servants—"
"Hm, hm, very interesting," said Gupta. "But let us get back to business. Have you done nought but wander the face of Bharata, asking one wiseacre after another how to stiffen your lingam?"
"I have also done a bit of trading, to make the journey pay for itself."
"Have you had good luck?"
"Not bad at all. You see, the price of gems in the western world is much higher—"
I could have bitten my tongue for blabbing so indiscreetly, but the harm had been done. The palm wine and Gupta's garrulity had between them loosened my tongue. I finished lamely:
"Well, anyway, I hope to end up with some small profit."
"Good for you! And now I think I know how to cure your weakness. Have you ever attended an orgy?"
"I have enjoyed many women, surely; but a real orgy—no, I think not."
"You would be surprised at its stimulating effect."
"Do you mean you have orgies in India? Indians have impressed me as the most straitlaced and sobersided lot I have ever encountered."
Gupta giggled. "The Brachmanes strive to impose all these ridiculously rigid rules of conduct upon the rest of us, but not everybody takes them so seriously as they would like. Now, I head a little group of advanced thinkers, who meet betimes on the banks of the Sipta to enjoy an evening of philosophical discourse and good-fellowship. The next meeting of our club is—let me think—by the nonexistent gods, it is tomorrow night! Meet me here at sunset, and we shall see what we can do for you."