The Aryavarta Chronicles Kaurava: Book 2 (54 page)

BOOK: The Aryavarta Chronicles Kaurava: Book 2
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The military history of India, from the AllEmpires.com historical information website, Sushama Londhe’s page on war in Ancient India (
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/War_in_Ancient_India. htm
), S.A. Paramahans’s ‘A Glance at Military Techniques in Ramayana and Mahabharata’ (1989,
Indian Journal of History of Science
, 24–3, 156–160) and The Sarasvati Web (
http://www. hindunet.org/hindu_history/sarasvati
) also deserve reference.

GENEALOGIES

In constructing genealogies, I have relied on the texts of the Mahabharata and Harivamsa mentioned above, as well as the Srimad Bhagavatham. My tables were supplemented and cross-checked against two sources: Desiraju Hanumanta Rao’s genealogical tables of the Yadu and related dynasties (
www.mahabharata-resources.org
) and the tables in Irawati Karve’s
Yuganta
. Vettam Mani’s classic
Puranic Encyclopaedia
(Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, 1975) has filled many gaps and provided essential details.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF TIME

My approach to Time has been a mix of the literal and the symbolic. Myth suggests that lifespans were much longer in the previous yugas, lasting perhaps up to three or four hundred years in the Dwaparayuga – the era of the Mahabharata. However, these figures take on a different meaning if we apply the notion of ashrama or stages of life. K.N.S. Patnaik (
The Mahabharata Chronology
, Pune: Annual Research J. of the Institute for Rewriting Indian History, 1990) compares how childhood (
baalyam
) lasted forty years in the times of the Mahabharata, whereas it lasts approximately 15 years in the current age of Kali. Similarly, youth or
youvanam
lasted till the age of 120 years in the past, as compared to about 45 years in today’s age. We are, in essence, dealing with a different basis of measurement of time and age.

Time, in the
Chronicles
, is therefore scaled down to contextualize the main actors as the middle-aged individuals they were, relative to the period of the epic. As a result, the age of the characters is given in contemporary terms.

Interestingly, ancient units of measurements ran by seasonal and sidereal time, along with the common solar. The possibility, therefore, of a year as we know constituting a shorter period of time, cannot be discounted. Subash Kak (‘On the Chronological Framework for Indian Culture’,
Indian Council of Philosophical Research,
2000, pp. 1–24) mentions how one of the bases for variation in the dating of the events of the Mahabharata may be the calendar system used (more precisely, the number of stellar constellations in a given cycle).

LANGUAGE

My work would have been near-impossible but for these amazing dictionaries and glossaries, accessed primarily through the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries website (
http://www.sanskrit-lexicon. uni-koeln.de
). Included in this database are the well-known Monier-Williams, Apte and MacDonnell dictionaries, as well as Kale’s work on Sanskrit grammar. I also used the simpler but wonderful Spoken Sanskrit Dictionary (
http://spokensanskrit.de
) and relied on the Sanskrit Heritage Site (
http://sanskrit.inria.fr/sanskrit.html
) for grammar reference.

Acknowledgements

‘Imagine that you have nine men struggling to lift a large rock. Strong as they are, they fail. Then you have someone like, say, Bhim here, who decides to give them a hand. And the rock moves. Would you say that Bhim is the reason it does?’

‘But of course! Without him, the nine men could not have lifted the rock.’

‘Without the nine men, without even one of those nine,
Bhim
could not have lifted the rock. Doesn’t that make each one of them as important as him?’

‘What do you mean, Govinda?’

‘No one person is the cause for or consequence of all that happens. I am just the tenth man, the threshold, the turn in the tide. I stand here on the shoulders of humanity, a mere instrument of time.’


The Aryavarta Chronicles Book 3: Kurukshetra

To all those who helped lift my rock and made this book possible, though you may know it not: Thank you.

Poulomi Chatterjee
Saiswaroopa Iyer
Jaishankar Krishnamurthy
Sukanya Venkatraghavan
Shobana Udayasankar
Sachin Dev
Boozo Iyer and Zana Iyer
Pradip Bhattacharya
Jaya and K.S. Krishnamurthy
Murali Neelakantan
Alvin Pang
Zafar Anjum
Jayapriya Vasudevan
Vinod George Joseph
Aravind N.V.

Helen Mangham and the entire team at Jacaranda.

Thomas Abraham, Sohini Bhattacharya and the team at Hachette India.

Kunal Kundu and Gunjan Ahlawat for yet another fantastic cover.

The entire ‘gang’ at #TSBC (special call-out to Sudha, Rahul and Raghav).

All the regulars on
The Aryavarta Chronicles
FB page.

Many known and anonymous reviewers – I’ve tried my best to learn from the feedback.

The reader – who brought Aryavarta to life.

And finally, always, A.R. Udayasankar.

THE ARYAVARTA CHRONICLES

continue in

BOOK 3

KURUKSHETRA

There will be war.

The empire that was Aryavarta fades under the shadow of doom. Ancient orders lie shattered. Krishna Dwaipayana, the Vyasa of the Firstborn, watches as his own blood, his own kin, savage and kill on the fields of Kurukshetra.

At the heart of the storm stands Govinda Shauri, driven by fickle gods and failed kings to the very brink of darkness. Victory is all that matters, and he no longer knows restraint. As he manipulates, schemes and kills with abandon to win, he will change Aryavarta forever, reforging the forsaken realm in the fire of his apocalyptic wrath, destroying all that he loves and making the ultimate sacrifice of them all.

One last hope remains… But will the last Secret Keeper of the Firewrights finally reveal himself to save Aryavarta from the greatest danger it has faced yet – Govinda Shauri?

COMING SOON!

For more on
The Aryavarta Chronicles
log on to
www.aryavartachronicles.com

Krishna Udayasankar is a graduate of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, and holds a PhD in Strategic Management from Nanyang Business School, Singapore, where she presently works as a lecturer.

Govinda
, Krishna’s debut novel and the first in the
Aryavarta Chronicles
series of mytho-historical novels, received critical acclaim and featured on a number of bestseller lists. She is also the author of
Objects of Affection
, a full-length collection of poetry (Math Paper Press, 2013), and is an editor of
Body Boundaries: The Etiquette Anthology of Women’s Writing
(forthcoming, The Literary Centre, 2013).

When she is not watching Rajinikanth movies first-day, first-show, complete with applause and whistles, or hanging out with her fictional characters, Krishna can be found with her family, which includes two book-loving Siberian Huskies, Boozo and Zana.

The Aryavarta Chronicles
Book 2

Kaurava

Nothing left to fight for is nothing left to lose...

Emperor Dharma Yudhisthir of the Kauravas and Empress Panchali Draupadi rule over a unified Aryavarta, an empire built for them by Govinda Shauri with the blessings of the Firstborn and by the might of those whom everyone believes long gone – the Firewrights.

Now the Firewrights rise from the ashes of the past, divided as before in purpose and allegiance, and no one, it seems, can stand in the way of the chaos about to be unleashed on the land – not the Firstborn, not the kings of Aryavarta, and not Govinda Shauri.

As sinister plans are put in play and treacherous alliances emerge, Aryavarta transforms into its own worst enemy. Dharma Yudhisthir gambles away his empire, the tormented empress is forced into a terrifying exile and the many nations of the realm begin to take up arms in a bid to fight, conquer and destroy each other.

His every dream shattered, Govinda is left a broken man. The only way he can protect Aryavarta and the woman in whose trusted hands he had left it is by playing a dangerous game. But can he bring himself to reveal the terrible secrets that the Vyasa has protected all his life – secrets that may well destroy the Firstborn, and the Firewrights with them?

www.hachetteindia.com

BOOK: The Aryavarta Chronicles Kaurava: Book 2
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