The King Within

214 Pages·2017·1.17 MB·English

by  Nandini Sengupta

THE KING
WITHIN
NANDINI SENGUPTA
To Mamoni,
For all those tales, from Durgesh Nandini to Tungabhadra’r Tirey
To Reshmi,
For showing me that history is mostly about the story
CONTENTS
Introduction
Part 1 Power of Passion
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Part 2 Passion for Power
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Glossary
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
THIS ISN’T A LESSON in narrative history. This is primarily a story that
takes place in the historical past, featuring some well-known and some
lesser known historical figures. Apart from Chandragupta himself, many of his
friends too are real characters. Kalidas is easily the most recognizable, but
Saba Virasena, Amrakarddava, Varaha Mihir, Harisena and a number of
others in court are also real people, described with a little imagination here
and there to breathe life into names on copper plates and stone inscriptions.
The entire royal family, including the Vakataka in-laws, are, of course, taken
from history but they have been fleshed out with a generous dose of poetic
licence. As is Chinese pilgrim Fa Hien, though much of what he says about
Buddhist pilgrimage sites across India is historically authentic.
But rubbing shoulders with them are some entirely fictional characters and
incidents. Ancient India does not have the wealth of contemporary accounts
that enriches medieval Indian history. In their absence, I have used my
imagination to fill in the gaps and there are places in the story where I have
taken poetic license with history. For instance, there’s nothing to suggest
Govind Gupta was the bastard child of Emperor Chandragupta Vikramaditya.
But there’s nothing to suggest that this is entirely unlikely either.
Similarly, the underground movement that led to the face-off between the
two royal brothers is also completely imaginary. Contemporary accounts offer
several different versions of the story but for the sake of drama and continuity,
I have reimagined the blood feud and the fratricide that followed. I have also
borrowed—names mostly—from writers of historical fiction whom I admire
and whose works I have grown up reading. Foremost among them are noted
historian, archaeologist and writer Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay and author
Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay. From the former, I have borrowed titbits of the
queen’s ancestry—more fictional than historical given how little is known
about it—and from the latter I have taken the Buddhist incantation ‘Namo
Tassa’.
The basic premise of the story is historical and culled from a variety of
sources including Devi Chandraguptam. But beyond the basics, the
embellishment and the flow of the narrative is entirely fictional. This story of
four friends and the tumultuous events that drove India’s glorious destiny
sixteen centuries ago, I feel, will engage readers even if they are not interested
in history. After all, it isn’t very different from life as we know it today.
Part 1
Power of Passion
1
373 CE
MUCH LATER, LOOKING BACK, it all seemed like a dismembered dream.
As if she’d imagined it—the dusty forest path, the still heat of the
afternoon and the taste of fear in her parched mouth. That’s how she would
always remember that day—the day it all began. The day that lasted a lifetime.
The day in the sixth month of the year 373, the thirty-eighth year of the rule
of His Illustrious Majesty, Emperor Samudragupta.
There were seven of them. Darshini knew they were there, even before she
saw them, even before they appeared out of nowhere, as if by magic. They
looked like atabic tribesmen, their faces smeared with warpaint—grotesque in
the dappled light of the forest—beads of bones strung round their necks,
naked except for their grass skirts. They moved noiselessly among the trees,
but Darshini could feel them closing in, her fear making her alert to the
slightest movement in the stillness of the afternoon.
She realized now how foolish she had been to send her escorts looking for
water, leaving only two guards by her side. This was wild country—a lawless
no man’s land that no monarch had yet managed to completely subdue—and
the forest folk never lost the chance to pillage a convoy: raping, looting and
ransoming at will. Her guards would give fight. They were armed and
seasoned warriors but they would be outnumbered three to one. And there
was no saying whether this was the main gang of bandits or just a scouting
party. Either way, the guards would, at best, delay the inevitable and no more.
The company had dispersed an hour ago, once it had become obvious they
had lost their way. The original idea had been to hug the banks of the