Why so Assyrious
On the mental health of insecure Neo-Assyrian empires, Disco songs in the Bible, gravestones and "Bhakti films"
Why so Assyrious?
History is replete with incidents of large scale destruction caused by nothing more than the need for insecure men to maintain an image of strength. The progeny of famous kings, who often live a life of constantly being compared to their fathers can have serious mental health implications, and King Sennacherib of the Neo-Assyrian empire was no exception. In fact, we have a lot of clay tablets documenting his thoughts and feelings and experts surmise that he may indeed have suffered from clinical depression.
The Assyrian empire was one of the most brutally efficient military machines of the ancient world. Pathbreakingly innovative, they were the first to use siege engines and also the first to have a corps of engineers who travelled with them to build these things (and bridges and such). The Roman army tends to get a lot of the credit for essentially inventing the professional military, whose basic organisational structure hasn’t changed for 2 millennia, but as with most things, the Italians get way more credit than they deserve (like for pizza, for instance, that the Americans really pioneered the mass production of).
Back to the Assyrians, our Sennacherib was being “disrespected” by vassal states who felt that he wasn’t a strong enough king. And Judea (what is today modern-day Israel and Palestine) decided to stop paying tribute. And Sennacherib decided to go all out Gurgaon on Judea’s ass.
In 701 BCE, the town of Lachish, one of the fortress towns surrounding Jerusalem was besieged by the army of King Sennacherib, who wanted to teach these pesky Judeans a lesson for disrespecting the might of the Assyrian empire.
The city is Lachish is walled and on a hill. The northern slope is steeper, which is why the city gates are placed there. But of course, none of this was a problem for the sheer might of the Assyrian army. They simply attacked from the Southern side by building huge siege ramps and then soldiers simply climbed over the walls and into the city. For the extra work they had to do, they impale the city defenders in public and some are dramatically dropped from the city walls to make a point and so on. Just usual Assyrian things.
Brutal destruction followed. Anyone who wasn't killed was deported thousands of kilometres away to the heart of the Assyrian empire (in modern-day Iraq) and put to work as slaves.
How do we know all of this? This event is documented in great detail in both Assyrian clay tablets and wall reliefs…and the Hebrew Bible. And where are the Assyrian reliefs, you ask? The British Museum (one of the world’s great crime scenes). The panels describe in excruciating detail the misery of the Jewish people - carvings of carts with women and children with their belongings travelling to their new destination, prisoners in chains bowing to the majesty of the Assyrian king and such.
And a hundred years later, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (another Biblical villain) laid siege to Jerusalem after the king of Judea stopped paying tribute. So this time, the Babylonian army decided to take things far more seriously and besieged the entire city of Jerusalem and then deported everyone in Judea thousands of km away to the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates where they were held captive till 539 BCE when Cyrus the great (a Biblical hero and common Zoroastrian first name) liberated them and sent them back to the “holy land”.
The Hebrew Bible records this large scale century-long deportation and enslavement of the Jewish people in a psalm. Psalm 137 to be precise. There is even a beautiful Byzantine 9th century miniature that captures this psalm with poignant visuals of the Jewish people’s suffering.
So let me ask you this. Did you know this story? And the psalm that describes it?
Even if you think you did not know this story, you probably do. Here’s how it goes:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
There the wicked
Carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
Now how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
This is the King James Bible version of Psalm 137, thus the English translation of a Latin translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And it also happens to be the lyrics of a famous disco song by Boney-M
Interestingly though, Boney-M didn't just adapt this song from the Bible. ”Rivers of Babylon" was originally a Rastafarian song written and recorded by Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton of the Jamaican reggae group The Melodians in 1970. They adapted the lyrics from Psalm 137 in the King James Bible, but changed some of the lyrics to refer to “King Alpha's song" (a reference to Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, also known as Ras Tafari) instead of the "Lord's Song". When Boney-M covered this version, they changed it back to the “Lord's Song”.
In the Rastafarian religion, Babylon is a term to describe any oppressive government. Jamaicans used to refer to the police as Babylon because they would often arrest anyone smoking marijuana which was a sacrament for their faith. On that high note, over to Sidin.
William Digby C.I.E.
So there was this guy in my class in Abu Dhabi named Bony. Really. Bony. And he was… exceedingly thin. Bony. Malayalis are out of control. Was Bony named after Boney M? I don’t know, I will have to ask my cousin Beegees Chacko.
So some weeks ago I went to get my second shot of the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine. The vaccination centre was a longish bus journey away and then a short walk. And as I walked from the bus stop I realized that my route was taking me past a really quite handsome graveyard. By which I mean it was quite green and well-maintained and full of at least 200 years worth of headstones in largely good repair.
Now I love graveyards. Always have. Why? Are you… dying to know? Partly because I just didn’t see any of them when I was growing up in the gulf. But then I would come to Kerala on holidays and suddenly there were graveyards everywhere. Not just graveyards but death. In Abu Dhabi, nobody seemed to die at all. But in Kerala? Death was everywhere. And somewhat commonplace.
And then I moved to the UK. And here graveyards are both ubiquitous but also full of little historical things. Walk into almost any graveyard here and odds are you’re going to find some sort of inventor, scientist, politician or, at the bare minimum, some sort of colonial-type who used to live in Ooty and was the commissioner of minor fireworks in 1887.
And thus on my way back from the second jab, I decided to gallivant through the cemetery. it is summer here. But it had been a wet morning. So the air was cool. And the grass was wet through the gaps of my Crocs. And the graveyard was a treat. There was one headstone entirely in French. And then there was a cluster of graves belonging to some nuns.
And then I saw it. A grave with an impressive obelisk type marble thing over it. Oho, I thought. Who expired here? At first glance, I could… not glance anything at all really. Just a name. William Digby. Ok, I thought, very good. Time to go home. And then I stopped. Wait. There were three-letter after William Digby’s name. C.I.E.
Oho! My spider-sense tingled.
Companion Of the Indian Empire. CIEs were given to eminent fellows who had served the Indian Empire. There were a bunch of other honours too. But CIEs were given away in quite large numbers. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, C.D. Deshmukh and Jagdish Chandra Bose were all CIEs.
William Digby CIE. I wondered as I walked back to my bus stop, what his story was.
Turns out that Digby was a big deal in the early years of the Indian National Congress. And when he died in 1904 none other than Mahatma Gandhi had written his obituary. Digby, I later found out, had lived a really interesting, complex and controversial life. Starting off as a journalist in England, he later edited newspapers in India and Sri Lanka—experiences that led him to directly witness the incompetence of British rule in India. Starting as an anti-famine campaigner, Digby went on to become the INC’s main lobbyist in London, where he tirelessly worked to campaign for the cause of Indian self-government with the British political establishment. Which was all very good. But then the INC got tardy with his remuneration. And so wily old Digby decided to make money on the side by also doing a little lobbying on the side for the Maharaja of Kashmir.
All of which eventually led to controversy and Digby slowly became something of a persona non-grata within Indian circles. Still, when he passed away in 1904, Gandhi had this to say:
“By the death of William Digby CIE, India has lost a champion, whom it will be difficult to replace. His advocacy of the Indian cause was strenuous and well-informed... By his voluminous writings, the late Mr Digby ever kept the different Indian questions before the public.”
Today, if Digby’s grave is any indicator, this interesting man is long forgotten. And yet once upon a time, he was power broker of some repute in London. And over a century later I just happened to walk past his grave to get my vaccine. What a Salem Junction of an event.
Ok, I have said my story. Now Ashok you may debase the discourse.
Bhakti Films
There is a place in Chennai called Burma Bazaar, not too far from the port of Chennai, and not surprisingly, it has, over the years, become the kind of place where you can source all manner of smuggled goods. One of those goods is “Bhakti films”, which is the local codeword for adult entertainment. And because this is India, a good number of those films targeted at the local audience tend to involve either the Kamasutra, or Khajuraho, or Kamasutra positions being enacted in Khajuraho.
Khajuraho was once the capital of the Chandela dynasty, and the Kandariya Mahadeva temple is the most famous of the surviving temples, replete with blush-inducing, jaw-droppingly spectacular erotic sculptures with positions that require the flexibility of an Olympic gymnast (that Sidin claims he has mastered over years of meditation and penance). If one can briefly look past the erotica (and I know it might be hard to do) and think about the cultural and social milieu that was able to produce this kind of art in what was a public place of worship, one can appreciate the history of competing religious faiths and cults that emerged out of the decline of Buddhism in North India around the 10th century. One of those schools of philosophy was Tantra, a school of thought that sought to bring about enlightenment not by abstaining from pleasures but by wholeheartedly partaking in them. By the 15th century, the more puritanical schools of Hinduism took hold resulting in temple art that would not, to use a term from Burma bazaar, qualify for “Bhakti films”.
The Kandariya Mahadeva temple was built during the reign of a certain Vidyadhara (1003-1035 CE). A lesser-known fact of history is that this chap, also known as Bida in the recordings of the Muslim historian Ibn-al-Athir was a powerful ruler who fought Mahmud of Ghazni (yes, the Mahmud of Ghazni) in not one, but two battles, both of which ended disappointingly for the Mahmud. Eventually, he gave up and called a truce and both these gentlemen parted by exchanging gifts! And what did Vidhyadhara do to celebrate his victory over the subcontinent’s most infamous invader?
He built the Kandariya Mahadeva temple.
Grave Party
Do we have space for one more grave story? Yes? Ok good. But I will make it short. So many many years ago I went on a tourism junket to the Lake District. My job was to stay at the excellent Sharrow Bay Hotel, partake of the numerous tourist attractions of Lake Ullswater, get shown around by people who worked for the local tourism department, and then write it all up for the Mint newspaper.
Journalism can be very hard work. But someone has to do it.
On the second day of that trip, I found myself being taken to the valley of Martindale, near Ullswater. The valley is not only utterly beautiful but also home to an ancient herd of red deer. Also, nestled in the valley, is an old hunting lodge that once provided hospitality to the German Kaiser. Really quite spectacular. You should visit.
My tourist guide also suggested that I briefly stopover at the nearby Old St Martin’s church. I agreed immediately. Just the most charming little church set in the most sylvan surroundings. With a graveyard. I immediately made a speedy little scan of the headstone. And then came across:
Here lies the body of Andrew Wilson. Traveller. Orientalist and Man of Letters. Author of The Abode of Snow. Born in Bombay on April 11th 1830. Died at Bank House Howtown June 8th 1881
Pause, for a moment, and consider this. In a corner of a churchyard, of an ancient church in an ancient valley in the Lake District, I found the grave of a man born in Bombay. And not just any man.
“The son of John Wilson, a famous Indian missionary and founding father of Bombay in the 1830s, Andrew actually spent much of his early life in and around Edinburgh where he’d been sent to escape Bombay’s terrible unsanitary conditions, and the risk he would follow his siblings to an early grave. His education took him to the Edinburgh Academy and then, like his father, along the path of training to be a minister in the Scottish church. But a profound crisis of faith caused him to veer off course, into what appears to have been a very modern kind of European Buddhism – a philosophy espoused by the likes of Schopenhauer and other gurus of the later German romantic period. Deeply troubled, he abandoned his training and took up a career in journalism, eventually editing newspapers in India and China, as well as the UK. But it’s in his personal works, rather than his day-job reportage that I have sought the man and a very interesting man he turned out to be.”
More here in an excellent blog post with nice pictures.
You should visit the Lake District if you can. It is really very nice.
Lovely write up. Your best write up thus far..
Evocative! Heartwarming too.