Two thousand three hundred years after Chandragupta maurya had come to live out the last days of his life on an insignificant hillock, (lost) in the vast expanse of his empire – the very first of the subcontinent- I was reading from the information board of the archaeological society of india beneath it.. Chandra gupta maurya had since then passed into history and the face of the earth itself had undergone a change that nothing that happens now can turn the wheel backwards, but I doubt if that change had touched shravan belgola at all.It is still a sleepy town insignificant in the larger scheme of things for the ‘growing’ nation of india except for a slot in the tourist itinerary of the domestic pilgrims and foreign students; there were a few bakeries and two hotels and small shops that sold handicrafts one would find anywhere in india. It is an irony that there is a wiki pedia page on shravana belgola though one has to search hard to find a browsing centre. but that is another story.
As I looked up to see the nuns walk up the hillock of chandragiri , I realized that between two millennia , the only thing that symbolized any change in their lives was, perhaps, the handle that holds together the peacock feathers which they use, to sweep the earth clean of small organisms they might inadvertently trample..that handle is now made of plastic..
They were clad in white and wore the cloth as a shroud over their heads as they moved like little white caterpillars up the small steps to the temple complex. One of them had chosen not to use the steps and hence crawled over the curvy hillside.
Then as I too made my way , I tried to understand what it means to actually ‘relinquish’ an empire – not an inherited one, but one established after a lifetime of struggle subjugating a wide range of people- from the culturally, aesthetically refined Greeks in the northwest to the warlike nomadic tribes of the subcontinent. For every interested reader, ashoka’s repudiation of war is an eye catcher; but to me, chandragupta’s renunciation has always implied a much more deeper desire for truth. What makes a man who was an emperor one day , a naked monk the very next day. As I kept thinking, groups of rocks welcomed me, like their ancestors that welcomed Chandragupta maurya- rocks that are as old as the Indian subcontinent- professing a way of living equally ancient.
In shravana belgola , there are two hills, one is the chandragiri , the other is the one housing the more famous bahubali statue. Chandragiri temple complex had not a single tourist when I went inside (the previous night, 3 buses full of tourists had come to the same place where I was lodged ). however, the market always belongs to bahubali, the tallest statue made out of a single stone- people flock towards the superlatives, little aware that , nine out of ten times, the small can be extraordinarily beautiful. In the process , that left me at peace with the place.(bless them)
The temple seemed like a delicately balanced diadem on the locks of a runaway princess’ hair; the decision not to pave the turbulent rocky surface of the hill (as we usually find in hill side temples) gave the impression as if the whole complex was a boat swaying over the uncertain waves of an ocean’s middle. The jaina artist, it seems, thought it better not to try and master nature but just coexist with it. Even the statue of bharata , bahubali’s brother , his legs mutilated and standing beneath open skies symbolize this spirit. If one looks closer , the broad chest disappears and one can see only the rock , a fragment of the mountain’s wilderness; but once you walk further , the limbs and torso of a meditating man- emerges out like a dream. I wondered if the sculptor wanted man to be like the mountain. Stubborn, but warm; raw but extraordinarily broad hearted.
Cavalry and infantry and knives and swords can capture the people who dwell in the mountains; but the mountains themselves cannot be easily conquered. It means much more than transforming a thousand human beings into captives. To subdue the mountain, one has to climb it, only at the pace the mountain allows one to. And the man has to climb, not just physically , but psychologically.. he has to outgrow himself to the extent that he is never the same person again. Perhaps that is why monks capture kingdoms that emperors never could.
The shrines housing the tirthankaras are deafeningly silent. Their nude bodies exude a stark simplicity, of the soul unlike any other. The transformation the Indian mind had to undergo to learn to revere a human being- “a renouncing monk” above that of the divine and celestial must have been a watershed in religious psychology. Surely, the tirthankaras are not imagined as all powerful. They are certainly not multi cephalic nor are they thousand limbed. Their majesty is the majesty of the man who gives up. Their strength comes from their courage to be vulnerable. They are not the ones who give answers, they are silent to one’s questions and perhaps in that silence one begins to think.
Suddenly, the profuse hemorrhage of images from the hoysaleshvara and chennaksava temples of belur and halabedu faded into an avalanche of silence that the shrines exuded and I was lost into that vortex of meditation. And as I walked down the hill, I felt I understood what the birds were chirping was indeed , the mountain’s song and the song was inseparable from the monks ‘ song. They had both drunk at the fountains of divine silence.
And that song was blooming like a dark flower in the moist recesses of the unknown forests of my heart.
