The Year of Rice and Salt

'In your year, what would it be, 1194. The previous abbot was a Japanese lama. He practised a Japanese form of Buddhism, which was brought here by his predecessor, with many more monks and nuns, after the Chinese conquered Japan. The Chinese persecute even the Buddhists of their own country, and in Japan it was worse. So they came here, or first to Lanka, then here.'

'And they made studies in medicine, I take it.'

'Yes. My predecessor in particular had very clear sight, and a great curiosity. Generally we see as if it were night, but he stood in the light of morning, because he tested the truth of what we say we know, in regularized trials. He could sense the strengths of things, the force of movement, and devise tests of them in trials of various kinds. We are still walking through the doors he opened for us.'

'Yet I think you have been following him into new places.'

'Yes, more is always revealed, and we have been working hard since he left that body. The great increase in shipping has brought us many useful and remarkable documents, including some from Firanja. It's becoming clear to me that the island England was a sort of Japan about to happen, on the other side of the world. Now they have a forest uncut for centuries, regrown over the ruins, and so they have wood to trade, and they build ships themselves. They bring us books and manuscripts found in the ruins, and scholars here and all around Travancore have learned the languages and translated the books, and they are very interesting. People like the Master of Henley were more advanced than you might think. They advocated efficient organization, good accounting, auditing, the use of trial and record to determine yields – in general, to run their farms on a rational basis, as we do here. They had waterpowered bellows, and could get their furnaces white hot, or high yellow at least. They were even concerned with the loss of forest in their time. Henley calculated that one furnace could burn all the tress within a yoganda's radius, in only forty days.'

'Presumably that will be happening again,' Ismail said.

'No doubt even faster. But meanwhile, it's making them rich.'

'And here?'

'Here we are rich in a different fashion. We help the Kerala, and he extends the reach of the kingdom every month, and within its bounds, all tends to improvement. More food is grown, more cloth made. Less war and brigandage.'

After tea Bhakta showed him around the grounds. A lively river ran through the centre of the monastery, and its water ran through four big wooden mills and their wheels, and a big sluice gate at the bottom end of a catchment pond. All around this rushing stream was green lawn and palm trees, but the big wooden halls built next to the mills on both banks hummed and clanked and roared, and smoke billowed out of tall brick chimneys rising out of them.

'The foundry, ironworks, sawmill and manufactory.'

'You wrote of an armoury,' Ismail said, 'and a gunpowder facility.'

'Yes. But the Kerala did not want to impose that burden on us, as Buddhism is generally against violence. We taught his army some things about guns, because they protect Travancore. We asked the Kerala about this – we told him it was important to Buddhists to work for good, and he promised that in all the lands that came under his control, he would impose a rule of laws that would keep the people from violence or evil dealing. In effect, we help him to protect people. Of course one is, suspicious of that, seeing what rulers do, but this one is very interested in law. In the end he does what he likes, of course. But he likes laws.'

Ismail thought of the nearly bloodless aftermath of the conquest of Konstantiniyye. 'There must be some truth in it, or I would not be alive.'

'Yes, tell me about that. It sounded as if the Ottoman capital was not so vigorously defended.'

'No. But that is partly because of the vigour of the assault. People were unnerved by the fireships, and the flying bags overhead.'

Bhakta looked interested. 'Those were our doing, I must admit. And yet the ships do not seem that formidable.'

'Consider each ship to be a mobile artillery battery.'

The abbess nodded. 'Mobility is one of the Kerala's watchwords.'

'As well it might be. In the end mobility prevails, and all within shot of the sea can be destroyed. And Konstantiniyye is all within shot of the sea.'

' I see what you mean.'

After tea the abbess took Ismail through the monastery and workshops, down to the docks and shipworks, which were loud. Late in the day they walked over to the hospital, and Bhakta led Ismail to the rooms used for teaching monks to become doctors. The teachers gathered to greet him, and they showed him the shelf on one wall of books and papers that they had devoted to the letters and drawings he had sent to Bhakta over the years, all catalogued according to a system he did not understand. 'Every page has been copied many times,' one of the men said.