THE Talkative Man said :
Once I was an archaeologist's assistant. I wandered up and down the country probing,
exploring, and digging, in search of antiquities, a most interesting occupation, although
cynics sometimes called us " grave-diggers." I enjoyed the work immensely. I had a
master who was a famous archaeologist called Doctor something or other. He was a
superb, timeless being, who lived a thousand years behind the times, and who wanted
neither food nor roof nor riches if only he was allowed to gaze on undisturbed at an old
coin or chip of a burial urn.
He had torn up the earth in almost all parts of India and had brought to light very
valuable information concerning the history and outlook of people of remote centuries.
His monographs on each of his excavations filled several shelves in all the important
libraries. And then, as our good fortune would have it, he received an inspiration that
Malgudi district was eminently diggable. I am not competent to explain how he got this
idea, but there it was. Word was brought to me that the great man was staying in the
dak bungalow and was in need of an assistant. Within an hour of hearing it I stood
before the great man. He was sitting on the floor with the most crazy collection of
articles in front of him pots and beads and useless coins and palm leaves, all of them
rusty and decaying. He had a lens by his side, through which he looked at these
articles and made notes.
He asked me : " What do you know of the archaeological factors of your district ? " I
blinked. Honestly I didn't know there was any archaeology in our place. He looked at
me through his old spectacles, and I realized that my living depended upon my answer.
I mustered up all the knowledge of elementary history I had acquired in my boyhood,
and replied : " Well, nothing has so far been done in any methodical manner, although
now and then we come across some ignorant villagers ploughing up old unusual bits of
pottery and metal."
" Really," he asked, pricking up his ears. " And what do they do with them ? "
" They simply throw them away or give them to children to play with," I replied.
" Oh, too bad," he muttered. " Why couldn't you have collected these things in one
place ? "
" I will take care to do that hereafter, sir," I said ; and that settled it. He engaged me on
the spot at fifty rupees a month, and my main business was to follow him about and
help him.
I had my wits alive, and within a month I was in a position to lead him by the hand. Not
the slightest object escaped my notice. I picked up everything I saw, cleaned and
polished it, and held it up for his opinion. Most times, I am sorry to confess, they were
useless bits of stuff of known origin namely, our own times. But I am glad to say that
once I scored a hit.
We camped one week-end at Siral a village sixty miles from the town. It is a lovely
ancient place, consisting of a hundred houses. Sarayu River winds its way along the
northern boundary of the village. The river here is broader than it is anywhere else in
the district. On the other bank of the river we have the beginnings of a magnificent
jungle of bamboo and teak. The most modern structure in the place was a small two-
roomed inspection lodge. The doctor occupied one room and I the other. We were
scouting the surroundings for a mound under which was supposed to be a buried city.
This discovery was going to push the earliest known civilization three centuries farther
back and rival Mohenjadaro in antiquity. We might be pardoned if we set about our
business with some intensity. Our doctor some- how seemed to possess an
inexplicable feeling of rivalry with the discoverers of Mohenjadaro and such other
places. His greatest desire was to have a monopoly of the earliest known civilization
and place it where he chose. This seemed to me a slight weak- ness in his nature, but
pardonable in a great man, who had done so much else in life. This is all beside the
point. Let me get on with the story.
One day I had gone to the river for a bathe. It was an exhilarating evening ; I had done
a good day's work, assisting the doctor to clean up and study a piece of stained glass
picked up in a field outside the village. The doctor kept gazing at this glass all day. He
constantly shook his head and said : " This is easily the most important piece of work
which has come under my notice. This bit of glass you see is not ordinary
archaeological stuff, but a very important link. This piece of glass is really Florentian,
which went out of vogue in A.D. 5. How did this come here ? It is not found anywhere
else in the world. If the identity of this is established properly we may ultimately have a
great deal to say about the early Roman Empire and this part of India. This will
revolutionize our whole knowledge of history."
He talked of nothing but that the whole day. He trembled with excitement and lost all
taste for food. He kept on muttering : " We must tread warily and not overlook the
slightest evidence. Keep your eyes open. We are on the eve of great discoveries. . . ."
And I caught this excitement and acquired a permanently searching look. I was in this
state when I plunged into the waters of Sarayu that evening. I am a good diver. As I
went down my hand struck against a hard object in the sandy bed. Feeling with my
fingers, I found it to be a stone image. When I came to the surface again I came up
bearing that image with me. Dripping with water, I sat on the river step, without even
drying myself, and examined the image.
" This takes us on to an entirely new set of possibilities ! " exclaimed the doctor in great
joy. He keenly examined it by our tin lantern. It was a stone image a foot high, which
had acquired a glass- like smoothness, having been under water for years. It had an
arm, an eye, the nose, and the mouth missing. There were a few details of ornament
and drapery which the doctor examined with special care. It was 3 a.m. when he went
to bed. An hour later the doctor peeped in at my doorway and announced : " This is a
Roman statue. How it came to be found in these parts is an historical fact we have to
wrest from evidence. It is going to give an entirely new turn to Indian history."
Within the next two months all the important papers and periodicals in the world
published details of this discovery. Papers were read before historical associations and
conferences. I came to be looked upon as a sort of saviour of Indian history. For the
doctor insisted upon giving me my due share of fame. University honours came my
way. I was offered lucrative positions here and there. It was finally decided that the
image was that of a Roman Emperor called Tiberius II. It would be out' of place to go
into the details that led to this conclusion : but you need have no doubt that the doctor
had excellent reasons for it. Besides the study of the image itself he went through
some Roman texts which mentioned South India.
For the next few months we toured about a great deal lecturing on this subject and
demonstrating. I went with my doctor to Madras and started work on a monograph on
the subject. It was to be a monumental work covering over a thousand pages of demy
size, full of photographs and sketches. You can understand why it should be so big
when I tell you that it was going to be a combined work on early Roman history, Indian
history, archaeology, and epigraphy. My name was going to appear as the joint author
of the work. I realized that here was my future fame, position, and perhaps some
money too. The doctor left me in entire charge of this work and went away to Upper
India to continue a piece of work which he had already been doing. I sat in a large
library the whole day, examining, investigating, studying, and writing. I became a fairly
important person in learned societies. I worked from seven in the morning to eleven in
the evening almost without a break, and throughout the day I had visits from people
interested in the discovery. Papers and journals contained paragraphs now and then
"Archaeologist assistant working on monograph . . ." and its progress was duly
reported to the public. And then there came a time when the press could announce :
" Monograph on which has been working for months now will be ready for publication in
ten days. It is expected that this is going to make the richest contribution to Indian
history . . ."
My fingers
were worn out with writing. My eyes were nearly gone. I looked forward to the end of
the work ; and then as my doctor wrote : " You can have a holiday for three months in
any hill station you like and forget the whole business ..." The manuscripts piled a yard
high on my table. It was at this stage that I had to visit Siral once again. I had to obtain
measurements of the spot where the image was found. I left my work at that and
hurried to the village. I plunged into the river and came up. I sat on the river step, still
dripping with water, noting down figures, when a stranger came and sat near me. We
fell to talking, and I told him about my work, in the hope of drawing out further facts. He
was a rustic, and he listened to me without emotion. At the end of my narration he
remained peculiarly moody and asked me to repeat facts about the image. He com-
pressed his lips and asked : " Where do you say it came from ? "
Rome "
" Where is that ? "
" In Europe," I said. He stood still, puzzled, and I amplified : " Where the European
people live "
" I don't know about that but if it is the image which you found in these parts I can tell
you something about it. It is without nose and arm, isn't it ? "
I assented, not knowing what was coming. He said : " Follow me, if you want to know
anything more about this image." He led me up the bank, along a foot track which
wound through the jungle. We reached a hamlet a mile off. He stopped in front of a
little shrine and said : " That image belonged to this temple." He led me into the shrine.
We had to go stooping into it because of its narrow doorway and low roof. At the inner
sanctum there was an image of Mari with a garland of yellow chrysanthemums around
her neck, lit by a faint wick lamp. On one side of the sanctum doorway stood a
dwarapalaka (doorkeeper) a winged creature a foot high. My friend pointed at the
image and said : " This formed a pair with the one you picked up, and it used to adorn
that side of the doorway."
I looked up where he pointed. I noticed a pedestal without anything on it. A doubt
seized me. " I want to examine the figure," I said. He brought down the wick lamp ; I
examined by its flickering light the dwarapalaka. " Is this exactly like the one which was
on that side ? " It was a superfluous question. This image was exactly like the image I
had found, but without its injuries.
" Where was this made ? "
" I had it done by a stone-image maker, a fellow in another village. You see that hillock
? Its stone is made into images all over the world, and at its foot is a village where they
make images."
" Are you sure when it was made ? "
" Yes, I gave an advance of twenty rupees for it, and how that fellow delayed ! I went
over to the village and sat up night and day for two months and , got the pair done. I
watched them take shape before my eyes. And then we collected about fifty rupees
and gave it to him. We wanted to improve this temple." I put back the lamp and walked
out. I sat down on the temple step. " Why do you look so sad? I thought you'd be
pleased to know these things," he said, watching me.
" I am, I am only I've been rather unwell," I assured him. " Can't you tell me something
more about it : how it came to be found in the river ? "
" Yes, yes," said my friend. " It was carried and thrown into the river ; it didn't walk
down there."
" Oh ! " I exclaimed.
" That is a story. For this we went to the court and had the priest dismissed and fined.
He cannot come near the temple now. We spent one thousand rupees in lawyer fees
alone ; we were prepared to spend all our fortune if only to see that priest removed.
It went up to Malgudi court we got a vakil from Madras."
" What was wrong with your priest ? "
" No doubt he had a hereditary claim and took up the work when his father died, but
the fellow was a devil for drink, if ever there was one. Morning till night he was drinking,
and he performed all the puja in that condition. We did not know what to do with him.
We just tolerated him, hoping that some day the goddess would teach him a lesson.
We did not like to be too harsh, since he was a poor fellow, and he went about his
duties quietly. But when we added these two dwarapalakas at the doorway he got a
queer notion in his head. He used to say that the two doorkeepers constantly harried
him by staring at him wherever he went. He said that their look pricked him in the neck.
Sometimes he would peep in from within to see if the images were looking away, and
he'd scream, * Ah, still they are watching me,' and shout at them. This went on for
months. In course of time he began to shudder whenever he had to pass these
doorkeepers. It was an acute moment of suspense for him when he had to cross that
pair and get into the sanctum. Gradually he complained that if he ever took his eyes off
these figures they butted him from behind, kicked him, and pulled his hair, and so forth.
He was afraid to look anywhere else and walked on cautiously with his eyes on the
images. But if he had his eyes on one, the other knocked him from behind. He showed
us bruises and scratches sometimes. We declared we might treat his complaints
seriously if he ever went into the shrine without a drop of drink in him. In course of time
he started to seek his own remedy. He carried a small mallet with him, and whenever
he got a knock he returned the blow ; it fell on a nose today, on an arm tomorrow, and
on an ear another day. We didn't notice his handiwork for months. Judging from the
mallet blows, the image on the left side seems to have been the greater offender.
" The culmination came when he knocked it off its pedestal and carried it to the river.
Next morning he declared he saw it walk off and plunge into the river. He must have
felt that this would serve as a lesson to the other image if it should be thinking of any
trick. But the other image never got its chance. For we dragged the priest before a law
court and had him sent away."
Thus ended the villager's tale. It took time for me to recover. I asked : " Didn't you have
to pick up the image from the water and show it to the judge ? "
" No, because the fellow would not tell us where he had flung it. I did not know till this
moment where exactly it could be found."
When I went back to Madras I was a different man. The doctor had just returned for a
short stay. I told him everything. He was furious. " We have made ourselves mighty
fools before the whole world," he cried.
I didn't know what to say. I mumbled : "I am so sorry, sir." He pointed at the pile of
manuscripts on the table and cried : " Throw all that rubbish into the fire, before we are
declared mad. ..."
I pushed the whole pile off the table and applied a match-stick. We stood frowning at
the roaring fire for a moment, and then he asked, pointing at the image : " And what will
you do with it ? "
" I don't know," I said.
" Drown it. After all, you picked it up from the water that piece of nonsense ! " he cried.
I had never seen him in such a rage before. I wrapped the image in a piece of brown
paper, carried it to the seashore, and flung it far into the sea. I hope it is still rolling
about at the bottom of the Bay of Bengal. I only hope it won't get into some large fish
and come back to the study table ! Later a brief message appeared in all the important
papers : " 'The manuscript on which Doctor and assistant were engaged has been
destroyed, and the work will be suspended."
The doctor gave me two months' salary and bade me good-bye.
