Divya, page 15
Seven months earlier, Pratool had imported one hundred and thirty-five slaves, both men and women, from Dakshinapath. On his return he brought with him one hundred and sixty-five slaves. There were Greeks, Kashmiris, some fair-complexioned slaves from Uttarapath,1 but the majority of them were female slaves from the newly conquered territory of Darva—light-eyed, fair-complexioned, with curvaceous bodies. After every battle on the frontiers, there would be a boost in the trade in slaves. The tax collector examined the palmyra-leaf document containing details of every slave, and satisfied himself that none of them was a runaway, had been kidnapped or was a Brahmin by birth.
Holding the seal of the Republic of Madra in his hand, an assistant examined the manifest, and drew the attention of the customs officer to one of the entries, ‘Seven months ago, the trader Pratool entered the territory of the Republic with one wife, six slave-porters and two slave-attendants, a boy and a youth. Now, while returning from the state, he has with him two wives. Besides, he is travelling with a fair-complexioned slave in place of the dark-complexioned slave. The trader has sold within the borders of Madra the dark slave whom he brought as a personal attendant. No tax was levied on that slave. Since the slave has been disposed of, tax to the amount of one nishk2 must be paid.’
‘What the diligent officer says is perfectly correct. It was my mistake. Please accept one more nishk,’ Pratool replied laughing.
The assistant with the state seal again spoke to the customs officer, this time in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘Is this second wife a bought slave or a formally wedded spouse?’
Overhearing the whispered question, Pratool laughed jovially and said, ‘The young officer’s vigilance is truly commendable, but this trader does not cheat for the sake of one nishk. Among high-born people, transactions in slaves are always made in writing, whereas marriage—the giving away of a daughter and her acceptance as wife—are executed by word of mouth only, holding the invisible gods as witness. For that reason, a document on palmyra-leaf cannot be produced. My friend, the aphorism “You as wife, I as husband” explains the traditional mode of marriage among the Aryas of Jambu Dweep. I was enamoured of the beauty and accomplishments of the daughter of a high-caste tradesman of Sagal, Naimityak by name, and I took her in marriage. And look at the superior worth of a high-born girl; she is already bearing in her womb the continuity of my family. My first wife, despite three years of married life, is still childless. That’s why a second wife …’ He laughed again.
‘May fortune smile on you! May your family prosper,’ the customs officer said, also laughing. ‘But how can we expect your fortunate wife to be happy, away from the free land of Madra and its cool climate, in areas where the climate is so sultry and hot and where princes rule with an iron hand? But of course, the poor girl couldn’t know anything about foreign places where people suffer under tyrants and the climate is so much harsher than our own. It all shows that man is only a plaything in the hands of fate!’
On the veranda of the Customs House, Divya sat with Anjana—the wife of the slave trader, listening to the pleasantries being exchanged between Pratool and the customs officers. She felt a stab of pain in her heart. She was being pulled away from her motherland—the free state of Madra, the beloved city of Sagal—where she had spent her carefree childhood. Divya knew that she had only to cry out in protest and she would be free, free from the clutches of the slave trader, free from bondage. But then, where would she go? Was there anywhere that she would be truly free? Where would she find shelter and security? Where would she get protection for her child? Freedom had little meaning for a person who did not have the means to survive!
Pratool was saying to the customs officer, ‘Love of land and country is linked with life. My motherland is wherever I can earn my living. And what do you say to love? Hasn’t lover’s feeling any importance?’
To Divya, the word ‘love’ connoted terror and dread. Love was what had brought on her predicament; her deception by Prithusen. From the elderly Pratool too, she had known nothing but terror. He had called her ‘daughter’ but had been nothing but a tyrant. He had snatched Dhata, her only support, away from her. Since the night Divya had been locked up alone, she had heard nothing of Dhata. Whenever she cried or complained, Pratool would pretend to be kind and sympathetic, and would ask her to have patience. Anjana would again and again show surprise and say, ‘Oh! God alone knows where that crafty woman has gone!’
Sometimes, however, Divya would think that perhaps Amma had become frightened and had returned to the palace, and this thought would keep her quiet.
Behind the ostensibly kind behaviour of Pratool, Divya sensed the trickery of the slave trader in keeping his captive safe and contented. Divya realized that Pratool was sympathetic only because he wanted to take her safely across the borders of Madra. Once the border was crossed, the noose of slavery and oppression would tighten around her neck. Her silence was a form of consent. The impulse to cry out seized her once again. One cry, one word, and she would be saved from the agony. But where would she go? Back to the palace of her great-grandfather in Sagal? No, never!
Even though a slave, she still had a roof over her head. Where would she go if she became homeless? Caught in the rain, a homeless person seeks shelter even behind a fence post. Tears welled up in her eyes and she fell silent. ‘Pratool and Anjana also know of my plight,’ she thought. ‘So they don’t consider it necessary to use real chains to bind me. Far stronger than any physical bonds are the subtle invisible shackles that have kept me a captive.’
The customs clearance given, the slave trader Pratool’s caravan boarded a barge standing on the shallow waters at the bank of the Shatudri river. The boatmen pushed the barge into the current and it began to move swiftly down the river. They then began to ply their oars with full strength, calling out the rhythm of their strokes.
The chorus of the boatmen as they swung their oars, the conversation among the passengers about the situation in Madra—Divya was oblivious to all that she heard or saw. Her eyes saw the vast stretches of the sandy bank on either side of the river, but she felt nothing. She was thinking to herself, ‘I have, with my own hands, pushed the boat of my life into the fast current … Who knows where it will carry me?’
The barge moved slowly eastwards and the shore of Madra receded into the distance. Though she had suffered greatly there, separation from it tore her heart. Her agony struggled to express itself in one word ‘Mother!’ Would she have left that country in her helpless state, if her mother, who had given her birth, had been alive? And her second mother, her Amma, Dhata’s face appeared before her eyes. ‘All daughters leave their mothers one day or the other to go and live with their husbands in the house of their in-laws,’ Divya thought, ‘but they are content to go, they are even eager at heart, to be starting a new life in marriage.’
The thought of a husband brought Prithusen’s face before her eyes. ‘What is the difference between the deceiver Prithusen and the slave trader Pratool?’ she thought and a shiver ran through her body. She felt as though her teeth had closed on a mouthful of grit. Of what use was her love for the country where she had been treated so shabbily? With a deep sigh, she closed her eyes.
Anjana, the wife of the slave trader, was sympathetic towards Divya. She had taken for herself Divya’s jewellery, which in value, was worth more than four slaves. And Divya had not uttered a word about it. Anjana could not help feeling touched by this silent generosity on Divya’s part. Divya’s pearl necklaces, jewel-studded armlet and the clothing of silk had convinced Anjana that the girl belonged to some noble family. She also understood that Divya’s pregnancy was the reason behind her choosing the path of suffering and poverty. Out of sympathy as well as curiosity, she tried to find out the secret. All that she could get out of Divya was the brief timid reply, ‘I am an unfortunate deserted woman. In my father’s house there was everything, but I couldn’t stay there. In this condition I couldn’t expect any help from my family. While going about in search of a refuge I fell into the hands of your husband. Now I am at the mercy of fate …’
The slave trader Pratool was hoping to sell Divya to some rich, pleasure-loving customer of Magadh and earn a lot of money. For a slave of such beauty and elegance, even four hundred gold pieces would not be too high a price. However, by the time they reached Mathurapuri, in the kingdom of Shursen, Divya’s condition did not permit her to travel any further. She was not used to rough journeys, and found it uncomfortable even to travel in a chariot. On uneven roads there was always the danger that she might collapse.
If her child could be taken from her after birth and she could be fattened up for four or five months, to bring her back to the bloom of health, then any connoisseur would readily buy her, without thinking twice, and willingly hand over fistfuls of gold. But Pratool could not afford to stay on indefinitely in Shursen for the sake of one female slave. There were no fewer than one hundred and sixty-five slaves in the new batch—male and female—and he would not want to feed them to no purpose for a very long time. Moreover, that would delay him from the slave fair which took place in the month of Chaitra in Dakshinapath.
Since he was an experienced trader in human beings, Pratool was well versed in the subtle qualities of different individuals of different categories, just as a potter understands the quality of clay from different soils, and the characteristics and the value of vessels made from them. In his house in Pataliputra1 in the kingdom of Magadh, Pratool kept four female slaves. These four did not merely do domestic work or were hired out to make money by their master. Each one of them would produce a child every eighteen months. Instead of selling the women, Pratool would sell their children. After the first few separations, they became inured to the pain of losing their children. Their grief was made more bearable by one or two babies which were left for them to rear. With good food, the debility caused by pregnancy and childbirth disappeared.
But Pratool knew he could not hope to exploit Divya in this way; childbirth would deprive her of much of her charms for a long time to come. And if her child was taken away from her, she might not even survive the loss. Slaves can be tamed with the whip and through starvation, but in some situations force is of no avail. Pratool, therefore, decided to remain content with the ornaments that he had taken from Divya and to sell her off in Mathurapuri.
Pratool met another slave dealer, Bhoodhar, in Mathurapuri. He spoke to him about the problems he faced in travel, and offered to sell him an extremely beautiful, though pregnant, slave-girl from Kashmir. ‘I purchased the girl—Dara is her name—from a noble’s palace in Pushpapur for a hundred and fifty gold pieces,’ Pratool said. ‘I can easily sell her to the royal palace of Magadh for four hundred, but there is the inconvenience of travel and the girl is of a delicate constitution.’
Bhoodhar had a good look at Dara and offered to buy her for twenty pieces of gold.
‘What?’ Pratool protested, his eyes wide open in amazement at this barefaced unfairness. ‘Can’t you see the curve of her fine limbs? That smooth, pale complexion like a champa flower? What if it is a little faded because of her pregnancy? Don’t you see that for the price of one you are getting two people? And for how long will her complexion remain faded? A ruby remains a ruby even though it may be covered with dust.’ Then, putting his mouth to Bhoodhars ear, Pratool whispered, ‘Look at her eyes and her face; the marks of a thoroughbred. How is she inferior to any princess? I can tell you, four months hence, you will receive five hundred pieces of gold for her.’
‘Yes, yes, I can see how she looks,’ replied Bhoodhar, stroking his greying moustache. ‘I don’t deal in cattle and horses, I deal in human beings. I can see her bloodlines. She has been brought up on a soft bed. It’s obvious that she’s a Brahmin girl, and it’s her first pregnancy too. On top of that, she’s still weak after a long journey. But she has only to miss her footing once and my twenty gold coins will go down the drain.’
And whispering into Pratool’s ear, Bhoodhar said again, ‘Friend, gone are the days of the low-born rulers, Ajatshatru and Vrihadrath. It is Pushya Mitra, the Brahmin, who is ruling in Magadh now, and the governor of Shursen is the dreaded Ravi Sharma. If some Brahmin falls for her beauty and declares her to be a member of his family, then I am done for. I will spend my last days in prison and the state officials will torture me until they leave me just a bag of bones. Anyway, it’s unwise to take her to Magadh; you’ll be running a grave risk.’
Dara, the slave, had hardly recovered from the travails of childbirth when fate sent her to a new master.
Chakradhar, a priest and cleric-sacrificer of Mathurapuri, had an ailing wife. Soon after giving birth to a baby boy, she developed a serious fever. The physician forbade the mother to feed the infant with her own milk, and the boy was too frail to digest the milk of the cow kept in the house.
Chakradhar came to know that Bhoodhar, the slave dealer, had a slave who had recently given birth to a child. He purchased both the mother and the child for fifty gold pieces. With her own child in her lap, Dara took over the priest’s son too. She was thankful to the gods for at least being permitted to feed and bring up her own child. She was happy at the thought that besides her own, she would also be able to assist in fostering the life of another newborn baby. When the priest’s wife recovered from her dangerous illness, she found that her breasts had run completely dry of milk. So Dara continued to nurse both the children and tried not to make any distinctions between them.
But Dara’s joy was short-lived. Soon enough her feelings underwent a change. Her mistress’s bidding was that she should suckle the mistress’s child first, and then her own. This order pierced Dara’s heart like an arrow. But she had no choice. After suckling the son of the Brahmin priest, there would be little milk left in her breasts for her own child. She would cry her heart out when she saw her own child hungry. She was always on the lookout for a chance to give the breast to her own child when the Brahmin’s wife was not looking. She began to cheat with her own milk. When the Brahmin’s son was hungry, there would be little milk left in her breasts for him. She began to hate the child of her master. Even when there was milk in her breasts, it would not flow to feed the master’s child.
The Brahmin’s wife was beside herself with rage at the slave-girl’s trickery. She shouted at Dara and scolded her in the most insulting terms. Seeing that Dara was not mending her ways, she warned her that she would take her child away from her and sell it. She ordered Dara to put her own child aside until she had satisfied her master’s baby.
Dara’s own child would lie on a rag in the veranda, and she would watch him with tearful eyes, while the other baby lay on her lap. This irritated her mistress all the more. She accused Dara of all kinds of duplicity and of disloyalty to her master.
It was unbearable for Dara to give the breast to her mistress’s child and see her own son crying for milk. She would turn her eyes away, and milk would stop flowing from her breasts. The Brahmin’s son would tug at her nipples with his toothless gums and start crying, waving his fists in the air. The Brahmin’s clever wife knew how to handle the situation. She would order Dara’s son, Shakul, to be brought before his mother. Milk would start rushing to Dara’s breasts and tears to her eyes when she saw him.
A similar scene was enacted every morning and evening with the cow in the cowshed. Before milking the cow, its little calf was let out to suck its mother’s teats. Feeling the mouth of the calf on her teats, the cow would release all her milk into the udder, but just at that moment the calf would be pulled away and tied to a stake nearby. The cow was then milked by the Brahmin’s wife or a slave-girl. Dara would watch this without batting an eyelid.
‘You are so devious and crafty,’ the Brahmin’s wife would scold Dara. ‘In this lifetime you are suffering as a slave because of your past misdeeds. And in your future birth too you will suffer because of the sin of treachery that you are committing against your master now. The cow is only a beast, yet it is more honest than you.’
Dara would keep quiet, but in her own mind her situation appeared to be quite like the cow’s. The only difference was that there was no halter round Dara’s neck. In other respects she was just as helpless. ‘Does the cow feel any sense of injustice or wrong?’ she would ask herself. ‘If not, why not? Why do I feel this way? Why do I feel that I alone have the right over my body?’ To be a slave and yet regard her body as her own was, in Dara’s eyes, a sin, but she could not think otherwise. ‘Why doesn’t my child have the right to nourishment so that it may live and grow?’ she would ask herself.
Her imagination would take possession of her mind. Had her child been born in Prithusen’s palace, instead of in these conditions, the walls of the palace would have shaken with the sound of rejoicing and merrymaking. As Prithusen’s son, everything would have been available to Shakul. But since he was a fatherless child, there was no place for him. Dara felt that her son was like water that had overflowed the vessel and had fallen on the scorching ground, only to evaporate. But, no, she would not let Shakul be regarded as the neglected castaway of that wicked Prithusen. For her child she would do all that was possible.
At her own birth, her mother had fallen ill. She too had been breastfed by a wet nurse. ‘Is this the consequence of that deed?’ she would ask. ‘The Buddhist monks say that man suffers as a result of his own misdeeds. What are my child’s misdeeds? He has only just come into the world. Can it be that even before his birth his fate was sealed? He does not even know for which sin he is undergoing punishment or that he is being punished. If I am the one who is guilty, she thought, I am fully prepared to bear the punishment. Why should my son go hungry? … Was my love for Prithusen a misdeed? … Was bearing a child a sin? … The whole creation bears progeny. What have I done that others do not do? I conceived without the approval of the society of twice-born Brahmins; is my suffering the result of that misdeed? Are Brahmins alone the disburser of rewards and punishments?’
