"You can see why I am eager to get back to Harmozia, to a clime where, if the Lord of Light grant us some more, they have a chance of growing up healthy. For, as you see, Nakia is still a young woman."
When I was taking my leave with profuse thanks, Otaspes said: "Think nothing of it, old boy. In India, we palefaces starve for human contacts. Indians have little to do with those outside their own families, less to do with those outside their colors, and nought to do with foreigners. So, for a foreigner in India, there is no social life. Come back again soon."
I picked my way home with caution, watching for serpents and listening for Arab assassins. As I neared the Ourania, my attention was attracted by a small, jabbering crowd around one of those giant fig trees which, by lowering auxiliary trunks from its branches, becomes a whole grove in itself. A man was hanged from one of the branches. As I got close, I saw by the flickering torchlight that it was Nysos, the other mutineer.
Linos came up, saying: "He climbed up the main trunk with the rope around his neck, while a score of these barbarians stood and watched. Then he tied the rope to the branch and let go."
"Didn't anybody try to cut him down?"
"No. Rama—where is the little dog-face? He was here a moment ago—Rama explained it to me. In India, if somebody wants to kill himself, that's his business. Maybe he'll do better in his next life, so nobody interferes. Anyway, nobody cares what becomes of a foreigner."
"Well," said I, "this simplifies things for us, anyway. If he'd kept on coming around and begging for a berth, I might have weakened."
BOOK IV — Otaspes the Persian
Two ten-days after the attack on the Ourania, I had sold most of our cargo. I could speak enough Indian to get around, although it is a long way from saying: "Two fowl's eggs, a loaf of bread, and a mug of goat's milk, please," to carrying on an intelligent conversation.
I had bought some cargo for the return voyage—mainly cotton cloth, silk, ivory, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, perfumes, and spikenard. I bought several knife and sword blades of Indian steel, which is finer than any steel one can purchase in the Inner Sea. Indian smithery and carpentry are exceptionally skillful. Indian pottery, on the other hand, is crude; there might be a market there for fine Athenian decorated ware.
I learnt some of the peculiar techniques of Indian commerce. Some of their coins are round, some square. Coinage is nowhere standardized, so that every purchase requires weighing the coins as well as the goods. For small change the Indians use, not coins at all, but little sea shells shaped something like walnuts. They count on their fingers, as we do, but begin by extending the little finger instead of the thumb or the index finger. To bargain, one sits cross-legged beside the shopkeeper and conveys one's offers by a kind of dumb language, touching his hand with one's fingers. Thus onlookers are kept from following the course of the chaffer.
The rains were dwindling. We had, however, another month to wait for the seasonal northeaster. With Otaspes as intermediary, I tried to make my peace with the Arabs by telling them that their little ships could still fetch cargoes to Barygaza from shallow ports like Barbarikon and sell them to the Hellenes. But it was no use. The Arabs had decided that they had a feud with me and would not give it up.
Arabs are funny that way. Without some enemy to hate and feud with, an Arab finds life too dull to bear. So, if he has no enemy, he goes out and kicks somebody in the balls in order to make one. The fact that there is nothing much else to do for fun in the Arabian desert may have something to do with it. If they try to rob or murder you and you hurt one of them in resisting, they become as furiously indignant as if you had been the aggressor.
I have had good friends among the Arabs of Syria, but not with this crowd in Barygaza. After they had stabbed and wounded one of my sailors, I made my men go armed and in pairs ashore. I also got permission to carry my sword, a keen Persian blade, longer than the usual Greek smallsword. From Otaspes I bought a shirt of fine Parthain chain mail, made of little interlocked iron rings, and wore it under my tunic.
I survived the attack of some local disease, with flux and fever. When I had recovered, I tried to hire Rama to stay on with us as interpreter, but he refused.
"I am shipping out day after tomorrow to Souppara," he said. "Must save enough to buy share of another ship."
"At least," I said, "before you go, take me to meet that wise man, that Sas—Sisa—"
"Sisonaga?" He wagged his head. "All right, we go in the morning."
I invited Hippalos, too, but he declined. He had taken a hut with one of those little Indian women, a girl of fourteen. I suppose the paltry price he paid her father was more than the old man usually saw in a year.
Sisonaga lived in a hut in the woods, a few furlongs from Barygaza. When we came upon him, he was sitting naked in front of his hut with his eyes closed, enjoying the morning sun, which slanted through the leaves. He was very black, with a mane of white hair and beard. In this part of India, as in the Hellenic lands, a beard is usually the badge of a philosopher. (I had let mine grow on the voyage, because I have always hated to shave or be shaved on shipboard, fearing lest a roll of the ship result in a slashed throat. Moreover, if its gray streaks made me look older, it also hid some of my pockmarks.)
"Peace, O Rama," said Sisonaga as we approached. "And peace to your foreign guest. He would, I take it, learn wisdom?"
"That I would, O Sisonaga," I said. "Permit me, sir ..." And I laid down the loaves of bread and the hamper of fruit and greens that I had brought, as Rama had directed, for my lecture fee.
Sisonaga ignored the food and spoke: "You have come to the right place, my dear pupil. For I, and only I, have found the one true means of uniting oneself with the world-soul. Where the foolish Buddhists and Brachmanists still grope in ignorance, I alone know the truth. Sit before me and I will explain my system."
So, with Rama interpreting the hard parts, Sisonaga told of the three categories {energy, mass, and intelligence); of the equilibrium between soul and consciousness, whence the ego evolves; of how activity causes the ego to differentiate into the six senses, the five motor organs, and the five potentials, which in combination with the five elements and the soul make up the twenty-five realities ...
"Speaking of the five motor organs," I said, "it is about the last of those—the generative organ—that I wish to consult you." And I told him of my troubles. He said:
"Oh, my dear pupil, how wrong you are! You seek to continue experience; but experience involves pain. This pain results from the five errors: inference, illusory knowledge, imagination, sleep, and memory. To attain concentration and thence to unite your individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness, you must correct these errors. To correct the five errors, you must suppress egotism and self-esteem, which includes all desire and aversion, even the desire for self-preservation. To achieve this, you must first adhere to the negative ethic. That is, you must renounce injury to any being, falsehood, theft, incontinence, and the acceptance of gifts. This is followed by the positive ethic of vegetarianism, austerity, and irresponsibility. So, obviously, your desire—"
"Yes, yes," I interrupted. 'This is very much what Rama's Buddhist priest told me. But suppose I undertake all this, what do I get? That priest's bliss of nonexistence?"
"Not at all; that is where they err. You unite your individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness, and the powers of the cosmic consciousness become yours."
"What powers?"
"An accomplished yogin can do things on this material plane that ordinary men cannot—levitate himself, pick up an elephant, push over a city wall, or raise the dead back to life. Of course, these acts must all be done from purely altruistic motives. The slightest trace of self-interest, and the powers vanish."