I enjoy the juxtaposition of ideas. I play. The end, I have been taught, is not a question of success or defeat, but the abolition of contradiction, of duality—and of the peace it should bring to one. I play the game knowing I am the game. That is the meaning of India.

When this battle is over, you go, step by step, up the Himalayas, to Manasarovar. You are alone there. The sun shines on the high snows. The waters sizzle, but you can see and hear silence. The wonder is there is no listener. No. None.

These essays were written for different occasions mostly from the last thirty years. I must be forgiven for repetitions, sometimes, especially of the Purusha Sukta, and sometimes, even of my personal interpretations (in foolishness or ignorance) of texts. In one case, of Nala and Damayanti, there is such a mix-up of myths, I must be forgiven for this misdemeanour. It is just the game. Come, let us play, you and I.

Raja Rao

Part I

The Meaning of India

1

The Meaning of India

There’s that beautiful story: Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was ruling in Varanasi,1 there was a hare that lived in the jungle. On one side of the jungle was the mountain, and, on the other a border hamlet. And the hare was joined by three companions, a monkey, a jackal and an otter. And the four good friends lived in wisdom and in the fruits of wisdom; and the master of wisdom was the hare himself. Then came a festival, a holy day, and the giving of gifts. Each one went his way, on the auspicious morning, and the otter went by the Ganga and brought seven red fish, and the jackal brought from a field watchman milk and meat and a lizard, and the monkey too went out to the jungle and brought down a bunch of mangoes and, placing them in his lair, lay down.

But the hare had a secret of its own that none knew and none understood except it be the god Sakka2 himself, for his stone seat showed heat. So, down he flew into the world, and went by turn to the otter and the jackal and the monkey and each spoke many bright words and kind words and many noble words, saying, ‘Please, sir Brahmin, take these seven red fish and in the woods abide, and the milk and the meat and the lizard and the rich, round mangoes of the jungle.’