Jamshid the Persian and Waraka the Arabian in the Indian Court of Harshavardhana

by A. Human Being (July 2016)

January 11, 630 AD: Kanauj, The Harsha Empire, Central Bharata (India)

Once upon a time in the far off land of Bharata, east of Arabia, lived a great king named Harshavardhana, who was known far and wide for not only having united north India and being crowned Maharaja at the young age of sixteen, but for ruling the citizens of this vast land with great justice and wisdom.

He pointed across the room to a fine painting of his father in chariot. “My father, Prabhakara, would have said the secret lies in strength of arms and wisdom from the classics, for he had repelled the Huns in the battlefield of war, in the battlefield of mind, and the battlefield of heart. Oh, how I grew up hearing the classics, ‘Sanjaya, sing to me of what my sons and the sons of King Pandu did on the battlefield of Kuru, that field of sacred duty.’ King Prabhakara was a man of spiritual discipline, knowledge, and action. There was nothing he could not achieve.

“But what is my secret, Jamshid? Permit me a digressive answer. You are a Sasanian Zoroastrian, what your friend Waraka, the Christian, had called (with slight theological error) a ‘sun worshiper’. We have much in common, you and I, because when I was a child, I was given by my guru, Surya, the Sun, as my ishtadeva, a personalized symbol of my inner essence, which outwardly can be recognized as a divinity. So, my inner nature, as shown me by my great teacher, is the Sun. And since you are a Zoroastrian, I ask you, ‘What is the Sun?’”

Jamshid nodded to all in the cosmopolitan circle of which he was but one singular ray. He reflected on past discourses in the Persian Sasanian court where Zoroastrians sat next to Vedic Hindus, Nestorian and Jacobite Christians, Manichees, Jews, and Buddhists. His heart was an old friend to cosmopolitanism with its inclusive morality, mutual respect, and shared economic and national relationships. It was from these basic human sentiments that his caravan had picked up the Ebonite Christian, Waraka, cared after his wounds, and brought him east with them, to contribute to a destiny larger than that of solitary death in the Arabian Desert.

At the time, the caravan driver had spotted him in al-Harrah, a stone littered valley northeast of Medina. Having heard men from many a caravan describe the city’s deterioration into a militarized enclave, Jamshid bid the caravan driver to purposefully avoid it. The driver carefully gauged the topography of the land and angle of the sun while keeping the city as but a pin’s point on the southern and then western horizon. Jamshid and the caravan driver both had shared the careless hope of gathering information on the political development in the region, especially as the rumor was that assassins were . . . well, killing rumor outright. Thus, in the valley of stones northeast of the beleaguered city, they came upon a fettered man exposed in the waterless expanse. And thus, they had found and rescued Waraka.

Indeed, Jamshid recalled with a smile how his conversations with Waraka en route to India were more than an escape from travelers’ tedium though the imaginal geography of narrative, but more expansively, a moral exercise in expanding upon shared spheres of knowledge and breaking the iron bands of prejudice that, without vigilance, may injure the traveler’s heart. And at times, he had felt the arrogance of pride in his rescue of poor and dreadfully infirm Waraka. But what a surprise it was to discover in him a literate scholar of the traditions of the Mediterranean and Arabian Levant. And thus, though indeed, he had personally untied the old Arab from the stake where he had been abandoned, given the old man food and drink, and had his servants and physicians look after his needs, it was he who now felt indebted to Waraka, for the Ebonite had helped him loosen those iron bands that may transform a man into a fettered animal when tightened. Rather, he had thought, one must live in imitation of the most-charitable Sun, who’s very Self is revealed in the heart.

And now he listened intently in the great court at Kanauj, as the Maharaja continued his wayward discourse on his success, “Ah, but if the sun is a symbol, what then is a symbol?” he asked, standing up from his table and circling (like a moon in its parabola) the round table of the dignitaries and scholars. He pointed at a Hindu architect and city planner.

The man responded, “A symbol is a truth that reflects a greater truth, like a seed in which we see reflected the entirety of the tree.” He pointed toward his chest. “A symbol is a process that affects the pulsation of the heart in reflecting the seemingly outwardly projected sphere of appearances.”

“Indeed! That is the secret of what a man might call his . . . strength,” The Maharaja said. “It is the lion roar of the Buddha, it is the sun, the lightning, the diamond, the mustard seed. This is the Maharaja’s center. It must be. And in this pulsation into relational appearances — the world of politics, economics, family, society, culture, aesthetics, religion, what-have-you — this same center is recognized as everywhere. It is in each and every one of you. And thus we greet each other, ‘Namaste.’ Good governance, dear Jamshid, exists in vigilance to the ubiquitousness of that center.” The Maharaja’s hands were folded in prayer. “From the perspective of aesthetics, therefore . . . for indeed, I am a playwright as well . . . an art connoisseur may measure my success in this empire’s fidelity to that truth. And this is a truth respecting the subjectivity and fallibility of every truth.”

The Maharaja turned back to the ambassador from the Sasanian Empire. “Jamshid of Persia, pearl that you are in a string of pearls, have you now the answer to your question?”

“You have made of my heart the wedding feast of wisdom and good governance,” Jamshid replied. He swept the whole banquet hall with his arm. “With gratitude, I celebrate my cognizant inclusion in this cosmos of your answer. Blessings upon you for the enlightenment of my prideful negligence. I feel it snap like the final band of iron from around a pilgrim’s heart. I am free.”  

 

__________________________________________

 

The above short story is a chapter from the novel War Verses: A Jihadist Fairytale by A. Human Being. War Verses: A Jihadist Fairytale: Part One: Muhammad and the Origin of Jihad is now available on Amazon.com.

 

To comment on this story, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish thought provoking stories such as this, please click here.

If you have enjoyed this story and want to read more by A. Human Being, please click here.