The nobles as well as the commonfolk were struck with amazement at the proclamation. As time went by, people began to talk about it, at one place with enthusiasm, at another with vexation. In the twilight of hope brought in by the new social order, the views and attitudes of people began to undergo a change. People with foresight began to make conjectures as to who would be appointed the new army chief and senior commanders.

Acharya Pravardhan

IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT. AFTER A DAY OF APPREHENSION, PANIC and bewilderment, the town of Sagal was breathing heavily under the cover of darkness, silence and sleep. Every few minutes, the thick pall of silence was broken by the shouts of the guards at the ramparts and gates of the town. Armed soldiers, taciturn and alert, stood on duty in the streets and lanes. Orders had been issued to the effect that after midnight anyone whose identity could not be established, or anyone found in suspicious circumstances, would be arrested and brought before the officers of state. As a result, the clamour in the drinking parlours and in the prostitutes’ quarters, which used to go on until late in the night, began to subside soon after sunset.

Besides the ramparts, the only other place where any activity or glimmer of light was to be seen was the palace gate of Acharya Pravardhan. There weary charioteers, grooms and attendants were trying to ward off sleep by making banal conversation. The tired horses, standing in front of the main gate, beat the cobblestones with their hoofs, to register their nervous restlessness. Some of the visitors to the palace had already left. The expectant eyes of the attendants and horses that remained would time and again look to the palace gate, and turn back disappointed. They were uncertain whether their masters had simply forgotten them.

In the past, too, on many occasions their masters had kept them waiting until late in the night at the gates of many palaces, but then the situation and the prevailing atmosphere had been different. This time there was neither the jingle of dancers’ anklets nor the resounding beat of the mridang¹ to be heard. The sweet notes of music and guffaws of laughter were missing and so were the pleasant odours of food and wine. No one had remembered to send out bowls of wine or the coarse meraya.² The five sentries standing at the gate, armed and alert, were not there for mere show, as had been the case on previous occasions. Their suspicious alertness was such as to make the waiting grooms and attendants feel uneasy.

Similarly, in the corridors of the reception hall, armed soldiers were keeping guard, instead of the usual torch-bearers. Light was to be seen only in the assembly chamber.

Acharya Pravardhan looked extremely perturbed. By his side sat Rudradhir, motionless, with his head bowed, looking like an image carved in wood. Around them sat the feudatory chiefs, Kartavir and Lakshman, the merchants Dharmajit and Balbhadra, as also Pandit Vishnu Sharma and Vinay Sharma, the son and grandson of the Chief Justice. They all sat with their faces drawn and heads bowed reclining against cushions.