“Run along and play, children,” she said. “Play nice!”
The bronze doors swung shut behind us.
The monk looked at the patch of vomit on the ground not far outside.
“My father would be so ashamed of me,” he said.
A vulture that had been eyeing it squawked and turned to look at us instead.
“My name is Suryapavan—Surya for short,” I said, hoping that this would count as playing nice, and could somehow make up for my earlier “courteous greeting.”
“Mine is Shantarakshita,” he said. “Rakshi, for short.”
“Most Venerable Shantarakshita!” exclaimed the young monk.
“He wasn’t ‘venerable’ then,” said the old man. “He was only a couple years older than you are now. Not so much older even than I was. He was barely past his preliminary oral qualifying exams; still years from completing his Pandita degree. He got a late start, due to his unusual upbringing.”
“Rakshi!” I said. “That sounds like a girl’s name!”
I regretted it instantly. He would take offense, I would have to pretend I’d meant the insult, we would fight, and I would have no one to talk to. I knew how this went. I learned it from my foster-brothers. Or, I suppose, they learned it from me.
He grinned. “Well,” he said, “you have to admit your name is pretty funny too.”
I was so relieved we wouldn’t have to fight that I didn’t stop to wonder what he thought was funny about my name. It wasn’t until years later that I understood my parents’ joke.
“I… did not expect any of this,” he said. “I confess considerable confusion. I wonder if you could be so good as to edify me, in my state of ignorance,” he said.
“I was hoping you would!” I said. “I don’t understand any of it!”
“But… you live with the goddess as her attendant?”
“She’s not a goddess!”
Rakshi looked at me disbelieving.
“Well, she’s not usually a goddess! She’s not usually like this at all. None of this is like this. She’s a vetali. She’s a monster!”
“A vetali! The goddess Prajñaparamita—personification of the wisdom that cognizes emptiness—a vetali? Inconceivable… but I suppose it would explain the heads. Somehow?”
“Yes, why did you bring the heads?”
“I didn’t! I mean, I had no idea what was in the sack. It was handed over to us by the abbot of the monastery we stayed in last night. I don’t think he knew either… So if Most Venerable Jñanagarbha knew this isn’t the real Prajñaparamita, I understand why he wanted her help with necromancy, but why is he asking her about Madhyamaka?”
“She is the real Prajñaparamita, she’s just not a goddess. Not usually a goddess, I mean.”
“She is? How do you know?”
“She said so! It was Nagarjuna’s pet-name for her!”
“His what?”
“So who was Nagarjuna? I mean, besides her boyfriend. Which obviously didn’t work out. All she said was that he was an idiot!”
“Her boyfriend? An idiot!”
“Well, and that he thought he was the smartest man in the world.”
“Acharya Nagarjuna was the Second Buddha!” said Rakshi. “He wrested the Prajñaparamita Sutras from the king of the Naga snake-demons! He founded the Madhyamaka!”
“Oh,” I said, “yes, I saw that.”
“You saw it?”
“In a vision, I mean. Because of the dakinis in the charnel ground. She was there with him.”
We had settled on a soft patch of ground outside the cave, avoiding the vomit. Rakshi leapt to his feet and bowed to me. I had no idea why, or what I was supposed to do, so I got up and bowed back.
“Most Venerable Jñanagarbha said ‘you must be a most remarkable young man,’ and… I confess I thought he might be making fun of you, although that is not like him. Now I see what he meant…”
“Um… I am? I mean, I’m not? She says I’m an idiot.”
“Well, apparently you are in good company then!”
“So who is he? What is an Interim Thingy?”
“Interim Acting Chancellor. That’s nonsense, actually. The Chancellor is the head of Nalanda University. Since the University is primarily a Buddhist institution—although not exclusively, there are faculty and students adhering to many outsider doctrines, from across India and from distant lands—it is housed in a monastery, and the Chancellor is also abbot of the monastery. A new Chancellor must be elected unanimously by all the monks. When Most Venerable Dharmakiriti passed into the ineffable—”
“Yes, how did he die?”
“Well, it’s funny you should ask… He spent his last weeks with the now Most Venerable Jñanagarbha, as you have heard. On the night Most Venerable Jñanagarbha announced his parinirvana, the senior monk in charge of death ritual verified that the body was cold and no breath showed on a mirror. The former Chancellor had left his body in meditation posture. The ritual team dressed him carefully in his finest robes, without disturbing the asana. Then they kept vigil, reciting mantras and dharanis and sutras and shastras for the prescribed seven days, all day and through the night by ghee lamps. The body sat upright, eyes slightly open, as though meditating, for a week in death.
“After seven days had passed, the corpse jumped up in the middle of the night and walked stiff-legged out of his cell. The attendants hurried after, some rejoicing that he had returned to life, others afraid. They tried to talk to him, but there was no answer, and as the corpse left the university precinct it walked faster and faster, so that even running as fast as they could, no one could keep up. It was heading toward the river, they said.”
“Oh,” I said. I had a pretty good idea what happened next, but I had just enough sense not to blurt out that I ate him.
“So anyway, the next Chancellor had to be elected unanimously, but the University had split into hostile factions, despite Most Venerable Dharmakiriti’s efforts to maintain comity. The advocates of Madhyamaka and those of Yogacara had their own candidates, and after days of debate neither side was willing to back down.”
“Oh, she said Nalanda is a place where monks argue about nonexistence all day. My uncle too.”
“Well… that’s sort of true…”
“What are Madhya-thingy and the other one?”
“The Yogacarins say the Madhyamikas say that nothing exists. The Madhyamikas say that the Yogacarins say that everything exists, but only as a mental illusion. Neither characterization is fair, it’s much more complicated than that—”
“That’s all crazy! Which side was Jñanagarbha on?”
“He says that both sides are right, which makes neither side happy. Some of the senior monks insisted that electing someone was urgent and imperative, but wouldn’t say why. I suppose, from what Most Venerable Jñanagarbha said today about the esoteric duties of the Chancellor, that they must also have known about the threat from Kannauj, and that the time to take action was approaching. I didn’t know anything about that… Most Venerable Dharmakiriti was a great Chancellor, but he had grown infirm, and also had always been somewhat other-worldly. I wouldn’t say lost in contemplation of the intricacies of formal logic, but—well, anyway.
“They advocated Venerable Jñanagarbha as a compromise candidate, which made his doctrinal neutrality politically convenient, but also I now realize they must have known that Most Venerable Dharmakiriti had transmitted the secrets of pragmatic Chancellorship to him. The two sides were, nevertheless, stubbornly unwilling to accept any Chancellor other than their own candidates. To be selected, the Chancellor must be the greatest scholar at Nalanda, and therefore the greatest scholar of the human world. Venerable Jñanagarbha is a great scholar, and so were the other two candidates, and the assembly could argue about who was greatest until the end of time.
“So the advocates of Venerable Jñanagarbha proposed a compromise compromise: he would be elected ‘Interim Acting Chancellor,’ and when the Yogacarins and Madhyamikas concluded their argument and achieved a unanimous vote, he would step down. And in the end, everyone saw reason, or resentfully pretended to, and so the vote for him was unanimous.
“And then almost immediately he left the University, without explanation.
“I knew of a story, I didn’t know whether it was true, that the Chancellors of Nalanda consult a ‘special advisor’ at times of great need. When Most Venerable Jñanagarbha selected me to accompany him on this journey—an unexpected honor—I guessed that might be our mission. He didn’t tell me anything.
“There’s another story: that Nagarjuna never died, but alchemically transformed his body so he can remain in meditation in a hidden cave at Vulture Peak Mountain forever. I did wonder if that was true, and if he might even be the ‘special advisor.’ He studied at Nalanda centuries ago.
“Maybe my guess was not so far wrong… I never expected to meet a goddess in person, much less the supreme deity of Madhyamaka. I didn’t imagine it could be anything like this… How can the goddess Prajñaparamita be a vetali?”
“How can the vetali be a goddess?” I retorted. I knew she could change form, but I wasn’t expecting anything like that, either.
“I’m just remembering: according to legend, Nagarjuna wrote a secret grimoire of vetala-siddhi, the power of raising and commanding the dead. It’s been lost for centuries. Maybe that explains something… what is the goddess ‘usually like’?”
“She is a monster! It is a monster! It’s not a she, it’s an it. It’s a corpse with a demon inside. I hate her, she’s hideous and deranged and cruel.”
“Deranged and cruel?” Rakshi had looked shocked repeatedly, and I wouldn’t have thought he could look more shocked, but he did. “Prajñaparamita deranged and cruel? So… what are you doing here, if you think that?”
“I am on a Quest!” I said.
“And?”
“And, um, the dakinis sent me to her because of the Quest, and then I broke my ankle so I was stuck here, and she, uh, fed me, and then… well, she gave me a sort of important clue for the Quest, I guess, and also she’s showing me how to stop thinking, which is supposed to make me not be so angry all the time, and also it’s somehow about Life and Death… Maybe I ought be grateful? Nothing she says makes sense, but… I suppose she’s never been cruel, except once—”
There was the memory of Sukhi’s smile and her naked body, lit by flickering ghee lamps. I was not staying because of that.
“—which was the clue, so…”
“So maybe your vetali is the goddess in disguise?”
“Maybe your goddess is the vetali in disguise?”
A muffled groaning, verging on screaming, came from behind the bronze doors.
“Oh dear,” said Rakshi. “I hope Most Venerable Jñanagarbha is not in great pain. What the goddess said before sending us out was a bit ominous, in light of what you say about the vetali. Do you think he will be all right?”
I forced down a flare of fury. Of course she would have a special relationship with the Chancellor. Rakshi had explained that.
“I think he’s very all right,” I said, scowling through gritted teeth.