But as soon as they saw me — they were in the middle of the rice planting, water up to their knees and rice shoots in hand— Linge Gowda stopped his plough and came rushing towards us, blanket and folded hands and all. ‘The Learned-one has come! The Learned-one! The Krishnappa family has come!’ And the women came rushing too; they looked at me and said, ‘Oh, he looks just like he looked when young, lovely as the son of a king,’ and they knocked their knuckles against their temples (that no evil eye should fall on my princely face!).
‘Well, when you have drunk the Himavathy waters you can’t ever look different,’ remarked Sakamma, fat, long-eared, deaf as a hen; she put her finger on her lip and proclaimed. ‘He looks just like his grandfather, when he started building that rice-mill there, that never did function.’
The Linge Gowda said, ‘Hé, Rangi, is this the way to receive elders and big people? Go and get some milk, you she-buffalo!’ Meanwhile the villagers all came — Ramayya, Sundarappa, Bodhayya, Cart-Wheel Sivaramanna, Timma, Putta, Kitta, Nanjanna, boatman Kalappa — they came with their silver bangles, their whips and black-blankets, and fell at my feet. The milk arrived and the bananas, and as we sat under the Buxom- mango — we were near my Aruni-field — the blue Himavathy flowing below me, with the fair-carts wading through the waters and the smell of rotten mango and cow-dung coming to us. I wondered at the gentleness, the fertility and greenness of the earth that had shapen me.
We went home, and after my bath, meditation, and meal, I went up the loft to see what had become of the manuscripts. Grandfather had such a lot of palm-leaf manuscripts that had come generation on generation down to us. And once in a while when he found a child lighting the evening lamps one after the other with one of those palm leaves, how Grandfather gave him a nice marriage ceremony! And you burst your lamentation the louder, that Aunt Sata or Grandmother Rangamma might take you on her waist, and went to bed with a nice song and many a restful pat. Night would come. And Grandfather Ramanna, who got angry so quickly and forgot equally quickly, would say, coming back from the morning river with his wet clothes and wet vessels in hand, ‘Give that orphan his breakfast, Sata. You know he’s just like his father. He will never ask.’
Some of the manuscripts were still there. I wiped them gently and tried to read here and there. Some were on medicine, some on Vedanta (mostly commentaries, on the Upanishads by Gaudapada and Sankara, the Rig Veda Samhita, or the Ramayana) and others on sundry things, such as a strange book on Lizard-wisdom, which interpreted the clucking of house-lizards on the wall (unlike most of the others, this was in Kannada): one cluck meant bad, two meant success, and four and five meant different things during different parts of the day. There were also Sanskrit manuscripts on house-building, describing with extraordinary precision what to build for a merchant and what to build for a Brahmin householder. There was a sixteenth-century book on music, and a small palm-leaf manuscript on snuffs, which read, ‘On the eighteen ways of autumn trituration of snuff, for maladies, delights, cosmetic, and erotic purposes; with the eleven ways of perfuming it, in the Northern, Southern, South-Eastern and Malabar ways, and with multiple fashions of making it a means for attaining peace and prosperity. Written by the great jewel of medical and other sciences, Linga Sastry.’ I also took out the copperplate inscription, carefully tied in cotton cloth, and with many auspicious marks of kunkum, turmeric and flower-spots on it. How proud I was to read it again! I brought it in front of the still turning sanctuary lights, and read it out to Little Mother.
‘Be it prosperous. Adored be He of the Three-Eyes, with Ganges in his Hair, etc., etc….
‘This day, in the year 16152 of the victorious increasing Salivahana era, the year named Sri Mukha, on the 12th of the bright fortnight of Pushya, when King Virabhadra the Great, he who hath killed his enemies with weapons of the very Pandavas, valorous, young, splendid as the new sun of the northern-turning equinox, of the race of the Yadavas, king of the sacred lands south of the ever blue Krishna and north of the Cauvery, master of the eighteen sciences, learned, inexorable, kind, protector of the family Gods, He in his infinite Ocean of kindness whose foam is like the new moon; to the Venerable Three-Veda — knowing, bright, auspicious, like the very Himalayas in learning, as if the Goddess of learning sat in his throat, who beams wisdom like the sun beams light, Vishweswara Ramakrishna Bhatta; to him hath His Gracious Majesty, this village of Hastinapura given, at the auspicious time of Makara-Sankramana, with presentation of a coin and pouring of water; that acquiring the eight rights of full possession belonging to this village, namely, present profit, future profit, hidden treasure, underground stores, springs, minerals, actualities, and possibilities, yea, his offspring and descendants, as long as the sun and moon endure, that he fulfil the four duties of the Brahmin, keep learning aflame like the face of Brahma, that the said learned Brahmin and his sons and grandson, in undivided property, and for generations to come, keep from every foe and Turk; and may the Himavathy flow with noble abundance, for when the sacrificial fire be, plenty and righteousness also be. With horses, elephants, and chariots, did the great king, roaring like a lion in speech, whose very shadow frightens the demons in the underworld, He, His Majesty Virabhadra, made holy ablutions in the waters, the gentle, the soft, the fruitful Himavathy, daughter of the Srigiri Mountains, that rise like the very Himalayas on the Western Sea…
Sridhara listened to it all as if he understood every word, and when Aunt Sata poured ghee to sanctuary lamps, how Sridhara fell before the gods. The lizards knowingly clucked, and the cows came to ask for rice-water. The temple elephant gave a shout somewhere: I was back in Hariharapura.
In the afternoon Alur Sri Kantha Sastri came and took me down to the river. Grave she looked, Mother Himavathy, but what a rich vesture of gracious peacock-blue she wore. We washed, and since I could not bathe I wandered about thinking of where Grandfather Ramanna had taught me this or that, of Amara, Nirukta, the Isa and Kena Upanishads. Sri Kantha Sastri came to remind me where Grandfather had been cremated: Mother Himavathy had just waited for the fire to die down and then she had risen suddenly and washed away his sacred ashes.
Timma and Ranga brought us vegetables, and the cook gave us a magnificent meal that evening.