Victory City(26)
“Your Majesty,” Haleya Kote began, using the formal appellation of his former drinking partner, “if you would give me time to explain, and also beg for clemency.”
“There is no need to beg,” Bukka said. “Two out of five is not so bad.”
Haleya Kote, experiencing a powerful mixture of relief and puzzlement, scratched the back of his neck, shook his head, and shuddered a little, giving the impression of being flea-infested, which, in fact, was very probably true. Finally he asked, “Why did you summon me to court, Your Majesty?”
“Earlier this morning,” Bukka told him, “I entertained our great and wise sage, Vidyasagar, the Ocean of Knowledge, and I suggested to him that his masterwork-in-progress, his inquiry into the Sixteen Systems of Philosophy, was reportedly of a brilliance so extraordinary that it would be a tragedy if it ended up incomplete, unfinished, because of the distractions of his work at court. I also took the liberty to mention that astrology was not my personal cup of tea, so that the daily morning horoscope readings demanded by my brother would no longer be required. I must say that on the whole he took it very well. He is a man of infinite grace, and when he let out a single wordless ejaculation—a ‘ha!’ so loud that it frightened the horses in the stables—I understood this to be a part of his transcendent spiritual practice, a controlled exhalation from his body in which he expelled all that was now redundant. A letting-go. After that he took his leave and I believe he has retreated into his original cave of so long ago, near the perimeter of the Mandana complex, to begin a ninety-one-day program of meditation and soul-renewal. I know that we will all be grateful for the fruits of this disciplined activity and for the rebirth of his spirit in an even more bountiful incarnation. He is the greatest of us all.”
“You fired him,” Haleya Kote dared to summarize.
“It is true I have a vacancy at court,” Bukka replied. “I can’t replace Vidyasagar with a single adviser, because he is a man worth more than any other single living person. So I would like to offer you two-fifths of his responsibilities, namely, to advise on political issues. I’ll find somebody else to be in charge of another two-fifths, which is to say, social life and art, the stuff you’re too ignorant and bigoted to deal with. As for war, as and when that necessity arises, I’ll take charge of that myself.”
“I will try to become less bigoted and ignorant,” Haleya Kote said.
“Good,” said Bukka Raya I. “See that you do.”
* * *
—
In Pampa Kampana’s mighty rediscovered book, the Jayaparajaya, which looks with equal clarity and skepticism upon both Victory and Defeat, the name of the adviser chosen by Bukka to deal with social and artistic matters is given as “Gangadevi,” who is described as a poet and the “wife of Bukka’s son, Kumara Kampana,” and who was the author of the epic poem Madurai Vijayam, “The Conquest of Madurai.” The humble author of this present (and wholly derivative) text ventures to suggest that what we see here is a small subterfuge on the part of immortal Pampa—near-immortal in her physical incarnation, forever immortal in her words. We know already that “Gangadevi” is the name used by Vidyasagar to address the mute child who came to him in the aftermath of fiery tragedy; and “Kampana” of course is a name forever associated with Pampa herself. As for the “wife of Bukka’s son,” well! That would be a physical and moral impossibility, since Pampa Kampana would soon be the mother of Bukka’s three sons—yes! This time around it was all boys!—and these sons would therefore have been unborn at the time of the Madurai expedition; and if they had been born, then to marry one of them would have been unthinkable and offensive to all. We must therefore conclude that “Kumara Kampana” never existed, that “Gangadevi” and Pampa Kampana are one and the same, that Pampa herself was the author of the Madurai Vijayam, and that it was her great modesty, her unwillingness to demand approval for herself, that was the reason for this flimsy veil of fiction, which is so easily torn away. However, we may further speculate that the very flimsiness of the veil suggests that Pampa Kampana actually wanted her future reader to rip it to shreds; which would mean that she wished to give the impression of modesty while secretly wanting the credit she pretended to be giving to another. We cannot know the truth. We can only surmise.
And so to resume: Pampa Kampana achieved the unusual feat of being queen of Bisnaga in two successive reigns, the consort of consecutive kings, who were also brothers; and Bukka gave her responsibility for overseeing the progress of the empire’s architecture, poetry, painting, music, and sexual matters as well.
The poetry written during the reign of Bukka Raya I is rivaled only by the work done a hundred years later during the glory days of Krishnadevaraya. (This we know because Pampa Kampana included many examples of the work of both periods in her buried book, and those long-forgotten poets are only now beginning to gain the recognition they deserve.) Of the paintings made in the royal atelier, none survive, because during the apocalypse of Bisnaga its destroyers paid particular attention to the obliteration of representational art. Also, regarding the enormous quantity of erotic sculptures and friezes, we only have her word that they existed.
* * *
—
In spite of everything Bukka wanted to stay on good terms with the philosopher-priest Vidyasagar, because of the immense influence he still wielded over many Bisnagan hearts and minds. To keep himself in Vidyasagar’s good books even after dismissing him from the palace, Bukka agreed to allow the holy man to levy his own taxes for the maintenance of the growing Mandana temple complex, in return for an assurance that the mutt would not involve itself in worldly matters.