This is what really happened, a remaking of the past, a reconstruction of the things that live on within us as they might have happened once upon a time. suppose someone says, whar really happened. Then say that once there were people who built cities in the valley of the Indus, large teeming cities with broad straight streets intersecting at ninety degrees, like a well-made grid. There are certain things that have appeared out of the drifting sands to speak cryptically about these people. There is a statue of a sophisticated gentleman with contemplating inward-looking eyes. There is a figurine of a dancing girl, hips carelessly and confidently thrown forward, hand on waist, ready to break impulsively into movement. There are thousands of lines of beautiful indecipherable writings on clay seals; on one of these seals Pashupati sits in meditation, the supreme yogi, the Lord of the animals, the wild king of the forest who holds the universe together with his dance. There is a figure of a bull, dewlapped and powerful, repeated endlessly on these seals. There are toys, the thousands of clay animals and carts like the ones we see on country roads today. There are great baths now empty; the wind shifts dust endlessly from the desert.

Where did this richness go? Is it true that a tribe riding chariots appeared out of the western passes, filled with the uncouth energy of the steppes, worshipping a rain-god soon to be called Destroyer of cities? Were there massacres and raids and despair? Or did the river change course and leave the long streets empty and silent? Or did the cities just grow old, very very old, and collapse in on themselves like a stand of dying trees? Nobody knows, but we do know that Shiva still meditates endlessly among the awestruck animals, that the legends of the chariot-riding Aryans speak of old dark-skinned Asuras who impared knowledge of secret sciences to chosen students, that brave adventurers fell in love with the daughters of their enemies, the ones from before, the ones who worshipped old gods, that the sounds of the languages of the south seem to fit the strokes of that indecipherable writing, that Urvashi and Menaka, and other apsaras of Indra’s heaven dance in ancient rhythms, hands curving in old, old gestures that hold oceans of meaning, that bulls stride pulsating with strength across landscapes imagined and invented eons later, that thousands bathe and then sit in meditation every morning in Bombay and Calcutta and Madras and Delhi, calmly observing their breath, gathering energy.
What really happened? Suppose somebody says, what really happened? Say that Kala walks among us, in all our cities and villages and fields, awaiting his chance, patient, unnoticed and always triumphant; when he wins finally, only names are lost, only names drift away, dry and hollow, to break up and mingle with sand, but something else is left that lives, that meditates and dances and walks. Say that the wheel turns. But say that there are things that even Kala cannot touch.

The Aryans moved west and south, clearing forests for their cattle, and Indra the thunder-god, became Indra the Destroyer of Cities. But, though cities are often destroyed, sometimes they do not vanish, sometimes they become invisible and invade the heards and minds of the destroyers, who then live forever changed.

So the newcomers and the old ones collided and metamorphosed into a thing wholly new and unutterably old, fell into new orbits around new centres of gravity. In this anomie, the ones newly in power quickly created a perception that promised order, flung at the world that oldest and most fundamental of definitive statements: I and you, us and them, what I am and what I am not, white and black. More importantly, there was another perception or rather another experience of some kind of truth, being born in lonely forest meditations, in the mathematical and musical rhythms of great sacrifices, or perhaps in the heightened awareness of the hunt, this: the universe is one, there is a unity that is the boundless mother of this world and not this, and this great harmony, this oneness, this Brahman, burst into being as differentiation, is visible only by becoming non-unity, so that – are you ready? Here it comes – unity is diversity, diversity is unity. And this diversity, every part of it, is sacred, because it is one-the sky and the fields, the summer and the rains, life is feeding on life, the birds and the animals, each a part of some web: ‘everything is the eater and the eaten.’

So, it seemed, people must be different, and a story was told: when Purusha, the primeval human. Was dismembered in a great sacrifice; from his head were born the Brahmins, the scholars; from his arms, the kshatriyas, the warriors; from his thighs, the vaishyas, the farmers; from his feet, the sudras, the labourers; and each had a different role in Leela, the great cosmic play, afrom each, it might be said, according to his ability and to each, atleast in principle, according to his need, a convinient way for the uppers to make use of the lowers.

So the Brahmins made sacrifices and wrote hymns and the kshatriyas fought wars, and the vaishyas and the sudras went about their tilling and laboring. Huge herds were seen in the fields, and cities of wood were built, shining cities with gardens and lovers and good houses. The years passed, then centuries, and the words of the ancient seers, those discoveries made in solitude were compiled in the Vedas in the shape of formulae, of verse that reveals little to the uninitiated but nevertheless stirs the heart, because of the power of the goddess Vac-speech-is immeasurable; it was she who brought forth both the seen and the unseen from potentiality; the external from the immanent. The Vedas show little, but tell much, and should always be taken with a nice pinch of salt.