Chapter 244: India in the Twelfth Month (Two Chapters Combined, 6,500 Characters, One Update Today)

The first year of Qingtai of the Later Tang, the twenty-second year of Tongqing of Khotan, the year 934 CE, the twelfth month.

In the Indus River basin of the Indian subcontinent, a few snowflakes even drifted down for the first time in memory. The Little Ice Age that had begun in the middle to late period of the Great Tang had now reached its peak.

At this time, the snow-covered highlands, once warm enough to grow rice, saw snow fall in the sixth month; in the Sichuan basin, famed for its lychees, even the orange trees froze to death in swathes; in the Huguang region where crocodiles once roamed, the Chinese alligators had nearly vanished.

In Anxi, the extreme cold stopped the snowmelt on the mountain peaks, and even the Green Jade River (the Karakash River) and the White Jade River (the Yurungkash River) ran dry several times. The Indus and Ganges basins, where every year great numbers of people died of heat, now even saw snowflakes drift down.

But this extreme cold would begin to ease when the Later Zhou was founded, and would basically end with the death of the Sorghum-Cart God, at which point that shameless son of Zhao the Second happened to reap a great bargain.

The weather turned warm, the realm had bumper harvests year after year, and he muddled his way into the Xianping Restoration.

Outside Chanzhou, Xiao Dalan, one of history's most notable unlucky wretches, was unexpectedly shot through the head, and Zhao Dechang muddled his way into another military exploit.

In the end, with only half the realm, he performed the Feng and Shan sacrifices at Mount Tai, thoroughly disgusting the later arrivals Zhu Hongwu and Zhu Di.

But this kind of weather, for me, Great King Zhang, is simply heaven helping me.

Originally, on the Indian subcontinent, because the temperature was so high, even fighting in armor in winter was a rather dangerous affair.

Because armored soldiers wearing two or three layers of armor would rapidly dehydrate and suffer mass heatstroke in this dreadful sweltering heat.

But this year, the weather in the twelfth month had, for the first time in memory, dropped to at most four or five degrees — this was simply perfect for fighting in armor.

For Zhang Zhao, cotton armor and iron lamellar armor were ready at hand.

But for the other states of India, their armor emphasized breathability and lightness, and they had no habit of stockpiling heavy armor, so for a time they simply could not find so much heavy armor.

A Kshatriya armored cavalryman's armor was not even as good as that of an ordinary soldier of the Fengtian Army or the Palace Guard Army.

This was already approaching dimensional-strike warfare. Thus the Fengtian Army, the Palace Guard Army, and the Shunyi Left Army preparing to march, the sons of the wealthy families of Huwen City, and the Kshatriya vassal troops of Zhang Bingzhong and Bahmoh that Zhang Zhao had conscripted, were all grinning from ear to ear.

They looked less like men going to war than like a homecoming brigade going to loot and confiscate.

And the reason Zhang Zhao waited until the twelfth month to move was that he was waiting for a reinforcing unit: a force of more than two thousand men, part of the Shunyi Right Army under the Anxi Army Commissioner Rashid Saleman.

These troops, formed from the former Persian surrendered soldiers of Khujand, excelled at water warfare. After all, Khujand was a river fortress, and the Jaxartes could be counted as a great river.

Only after they arrived would Zhang Zhao march, because this time he intended to sail down the Ganges, and without professional naval troops it would be inconvenient.

"Great King, the King of Pala, Rajyapala, has sent envoys again!"

The oath-taking assembly had already concluded, and they were just preparing to set out when Guo Tiance came running over from the distance. Zhang Zhao clicked his tongue.

"This must be the seventh batch of envoys, right? It seems he really is desperate."

Just as I, Great King Zhang, was preparing to march and settling the highland Tajiks who had come south, the Pala dynasty launched a large-scale attack on the Pala kingdom.

The Pala capital of Pataliputra had already fallen by the end of the eleventh month, and King Rajyapala of Pala had retreated to Rajagriha.

The envoys seeking aid came wave after wave; basically before one wave had even arrived, the next had already set out.

"Bring him over! Let him see that we really are going to the rescue, and send him back to give Rajyapala a reassurance, so he'll stake his life on resisting!"

Zhang Zhao smiled smugly. Though his face was full of goodwill, it made Guo Tiance shiver involuntarily.

So he was still going to string them along! Poor King of Pala — if he learned that the Juerhan had already dispatched troops, he would probably stake even his coffin savings.

At this time, India had not yet developed the population density of later ages. The entire prosperous region basically lay along the banks of the Indus and the Ganges.

The famous cities of Mathura, Prayaga, Kanyakubja, Pataliputra, and Rajagriha were strung one after another along the Ganges like a pearl necklace.

Truly, the Indian subcontinent was a place tailor-made for invaders!

Two prosperous regions: one along the Indus, one along the Ganges.

Unlike China's Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, they had no natural barriers like the Yellow River's Nine Bends, Hukou Waterfall, the Three Gorges of the Yangtze, or the Yunmeng Marshes.

The Indus and Ganges basins were entirely broad river-valley plains, wide and open, with few places where the current ran especially swift. They were practically highways built for invaders, coming and going as easily as returning home.

In any case, that was how it was for Zhang Zhao. After reaching the Yamuna River, the current grew gentle. The logistics supplies were loaded onto boats, while men and horses were arrayed on both banks, with small boats ferrying between them.

Six hundred crossbowmen were drawn from the Khotan Palace Guard to board the boats, while the Shunyi Right Army was responsible for piloting them.

At this time, water warfare was still very simple. Although China had long since evolved the five-deck warship and invented tactics such as ramming, fire attacks, and smashing with great hammers,

this was India. The Shahi dynasty, the Pala dynasty, and the Pratihara dynasty combined had a Kshatriya warrior class of fewer than twenty thousand households.

With so few men, how could they afford the high-difficulty business of five-deck warships? Besides, they did not have the technology.

At this time, water warfare on the Ganges consisted of two ships closing and fighting a boarding action; they did not even bother hurling jars of fire oil.

Thus, almost inadvertently, the six hundred Khotan Palace Guards who could shoot bows and crossbows from the boats became a weapon of mass slaughter.

They had originally been trained by Zhang Zhao for water warfare on the Jaxartes during the attack on Khujand.

But before they could reach the stage of a waterborne siege of Khujand, the defenders of Khujand had been pushed onto a dead-end path by the politicians of Bukhara. After months of training, it had all gone unused.

Of course, the Pala dynasty's naval troops also placed archers on their boats, but the Indian bows in their hands were no match at all for the powerful bows and crossbows in the hands of the Khotan Palace Guard.

Moreover, Zhang Zhao was attacking fiercely from upstream, and he had also prepared several hundred small boats loaded with tung oil and firewood, fitted with hooked chains to latch onto the Indian warships and burn without cease.

In battle, the small fire boats were released first. Once the enemy vanguard had been burned away, the large ships then sailed downstream, charging in a mass with bows and crossbows firing in unison.

In the four days since they had sailed down the Yamuna, they had already defeated three waves of Pala dynasty warships, each time a crushing victory.

Zhang Zhao's fleet had grown from more than two hundred vessels of all sizes at the start to nearly four hundred, many of which had to be scuttled because there were not enough prisoners to crew them.

Six days later, the Juerhan army, unimpeded the whole way, arrived at the first fortress city heavily defended by the Pala dynasty — Prayaga.

At this time, this city's position in the Ganges basin was equivalent to Jingzhou or Anqing on China's Yangtze River — it had always been a key river-defense stronghold.

If they broke through here, then Kanyakubja, the Pala dynasty capital, whose status was akin to Nanjing in China, would lie wide open.

"I never imagined India had such a mighty city. Truly magnificent! Taller than Dunhuang. I fear only Ganzhou or Liangzhou could compare!"

The one exclaiming was Yan Jin. The city of Prayaga before them was at least six or seven meters high, built of rammed yellow earth, surrounded by satellite fortresses in dense array, with a water fortress controlling the Ganges channel. It was absolutely the tallest city Zhang Zhao had seen since entering India.

"Though the city is mighty, it is far inferior to Liangzhou!" Military Merit Officer Wu Yuan'er disagreed with Yan Jin.

"Great King, Commander Yan, the city of Liangzhou is more than two zhang high, twenty li in circumference, founded on stone blocks and rammed with lime-and-earth compound, with seven fortresses ringing the surrounding countryside.

In former years, when the Grand Guardian took Liangzhou, twenty thousand elite armored troops fought bitterly for nearly a year, and only through threats and inducements was it finally taken.

But this city of Prayaga, though tall, is built entirely of piled yellow earth. The six forts outside the city, though mutually supporting, have no brave warriors to hold them. How could they block the Great King's heavenly troops?

Moreover, Cao Dunhuang has brought twelve hundred jin of divine fire thunder this time. A mere earthen wall — one blast and it will open!"

Yan Jin had never in his life been east of Dunhuang, so of course he could not imagine what a great city Liangzhou was.

Liangzhou's standing in the Great Tang could compare to Guangzhou in the mid-Qing or Shanghai in the late Qing — it was the Great Tang court's hub on the central Silk Road, one of the realm's mighty cities!

Wu Yuan'er had been there as an itinerant merchant, so he could look at the Prayaga before him with utter contempt.

A mighty city? Depends on where the mighty city is! In India it may be one, but in the Central Plains it wouldn't even make the top twenty.

"Officer Wu is right. What does a Tibetan slave like you know of mighty cities? To me, this city is nothing but clay chickens and pottery dogs!"

Yan Jin had been growing awkward under Wu Yuan'er's words, and Ma Yaozi's timely barrage of contempt instantly relieved the awkwardness; the two then traded a few laughing curses.

Yan Jin had always been deeply ashamed of having once been a slave of the Tibetans. If anyone else called him a Tibetan slave, blood was sure to follow — but Ma Yaozi alone could say it.

Not only because he and Ma Yaozi had once been squad leader and deputy squad leader in the Shouchang Garrison, but also because without Ma Yaozi's care back then, a man of Yan Jin's questionable origins would have found it very hard to enter the Shouchang Garrison, let alone hold a minor post.

"Great King, this city is no simple matter. There are wooden stakes planted in the water. The Youyi Company has gone downstream to look. Unless those stakes are pulled out, the warships cannot get anywhere near the water fort on the other side." Bai Congxin, who commanded the Youyi Company, had come back from the distance again.

"Can you find a way to pull them out?" If there was a wooden boom array in the water, large ships certainly could not pass.

The Pala dynasty truly deserved to be first among the three kingdoms of India. It seemed they had guarded against him after all. These stakes must have been placed only recently, because normally a busy great river like this could not be restricted to small boats.

"We can pull them out, but none of us know the undercurrents here, nor the exact positions of the stakes. I fear it would drag on for days and delay the army's advance."

"Then withdraw the Youyi Company first. For every ten cavalrymen, assign thirty men chosen from the prisoners who know the surrounding terrain, and round up all the fishermen in the area for me.

The kshatriyas of Prayaga could not have gone down to plant the stakes themselves; they must have conscripted the local fishermen to do it."

Zhang Zhao made the decision with a wave of his hand, and Bai Congxin hurried off to carry it out.

Guo Tiance's face, however, was still somewhat taut. He performed a chashou salute toward Zhang Zhao.

"Great King, these fishermen are subjects of the Pala kingdom. Pulling the stakes from the river is extremely dangerous work. Even if they agree, what if they dive in and simply flee?"

"No need to worry. I know how to make these fishermen obey." Zhang Zhao wore an air of complete confidence.

"Go notify Cao Yanming and Shi Chongmin. Have them prepare to blast open the city of Prayaga.

Yan Jin, Ma Yaozi, each of you take two thousand men as the vanguard and clear the forts outside the city. Send in the kshatriyas under Zhang Bingzhong and Bahmoh first."

What method did Zhang Zhao have to make these Pala fishermen risk their lives in deep water for him, without fleeing the moment they entered the river?

In truth, it still had to begin with the Brahmanical caste system.

Strictly speaking, the Brahmanical caste system was not entirely closed to movement.

If it had been completely immobile, offering not a shred of hope to those at the very bottom, it could never have survived all the way to later ages.

Although Indians seem to be born without any spirit of resistance — numb beasts of burden who cannot cry out, "Are kings and lords born to their rank?"

Still, they number over a billion people. Over several thousand years, could there really not have been a single person daring to resist?

Never mind that they are merely people called beasts of burden — even real oxen and horses, if you squeeze them too hard, will lose their temper.

A mule or horse will dare to shake off the load on its back and run away; an ox, when pushed too far, will dare to gore a man. How much more so a human being?

So, in order to win over those among the low castes who knew how to resist, Brahmanism invented a special term: Sanskritization.

Originally a religious term, during the Shramana movement it was used for the choice of people who abandoned the caste-obsessed Brahmanism and converted to Buddhism, which preached the equality of all beings — meaning he had upgraded, had become noble.

And after being badly battered by Buddhism, Brahmanism picked up the term Sanskritization, using it for the path by which a low caste could rise to a high caste.

Sanskritization had two paths. The first was for a low-caste family to marry their daughter to a high-caste man, and then the whole family adopted the son-in-law's surname.

At the same time, they moved away from the original low-caste settlement and adopted the lifestyle of the high caste. After a generation or two, they could declare Sanskritization complete and become a caste one level higher.

But for a high-caste man to disregard his reputation and his family's objections and marry a daughter from a low-caste family, only two situations were possible.

One: you had an exceptionally beautiful daughter, so beautiful that even a king could not walk away at the sight of her.

Two: you were exceptionally rich, and simply bludgeoned the high-caste family with money until they were willing to marry your daughter.

Moreover, one could only rise one level at a time — a Shudra could only rise to Vaishya, and could not leap all at once to Kshatriya.

But this had a very obvious problem: low-caste status first limited your own looks, and also made it very hard to marry a beautiful wife and produce beautiful daughters — especially since India also had requirements about skin color.

At the same time, the low castes all did menial work, which made it very hard to amass great wealth.

Very, very few could Sanskritize through this path.

The path with the highest success rate was the second one: rising up and making trouble.

One kind was making trouble for the Brahmins and Kshatriyas — making trouble until they could no longer suppress it, and in the end were willing to grant a high-caste identity to co-opt you.

The later Great Leader of India, Mr. Modi, was a typical representative of this kind of Sanskritization.

The second was helping the Brahmins and Kshatriyas make trouble — and helping the highest Brahmins and Kshatriyas make trouble.

Only then would they make an exception and raise your caste. For example, what Zhang Zhao was about to do now was to prepare to Sanskritize a batch of people in just this way.

Great Khagan Zhang walked among the assembled fishermen — at least six or seven hundred of them. It seemed Bai Congxin had rounded up all the fishermen in the surrounding area.

There was no need to ask these people their names, nor to look at where they lived or what work they did.

From skin color alone, one could basically determine their caste — it was surely sunk to the very bottom of the mud.

Look at that black and dark-brown skin, the same as oxen and horses, faces written with bitterness and deep resentment, their whole bearing stiffly radiating the two words "untouchable."

By custom, the moment Zhang Zhao appeared, they dropped to their knees with a thud, all pressing their heads into the mud.

They did not even dare glance at Zhang Zhao, nor breathe too loudly, for fear of polluting him.

Even more extreme, several Brahmins who had gone over to Zhang Zhao swept up like a gust of wind and pulled Zhang Zhao to the upwind side of the fishermen, then spread a layer of fine cotton cloth on the ground for Zhang Zhao to stand on.

The former was to keep these low castes from polluting the air Great Khagan Zhang breathed; the latter was to show that they did not even have the right to stand on the same ground as Great Khagan Zhang.

"My demand is simple. I need the stakes pulled from the river. For this, I have prepared twenty Vaishya surnames and forty Shudra surnames."

As he spoke, Zhang Zhao pointed to the two Kshatriyas beside him, who were doing their best to look willing.

"In addition, there are two Kshatriya lords here. They are willing to give two of you a chance at anuloma marriage. Whoever earns the greatest merit — their next generation may become Kshatriyas."

Never mind Kshatriya — for most of these people below, who were Dalits, that is, those entirely outside the caste system, the untouchables, becoming a Shudra would already be a qualitative leap.

To become a Vaishya would be no different from ascending to heaven in a single step. As for becoming a Kshatriya, that was called ascending on the spot.

For these people, not only had their own lives ceased to matter — the lives of their whole family, their whole clan, had ceased to matter.

So when the interpreter finished relaying Zhang Zhao's words, the fishermen kneeling in the distance — though no one dared raise their head — let out a sobbing, keening wail that rose up like ghosts. The crowd kneeling with heads pressed into the mud began to sway as one, like leaves rustling in the wind.

Seeing this, Zhang Zhao decided to add fuel to the fire. "Lastly, I also need a family. Whichever family can deliver the things I designate to the gates of Prayaga, set them in place, and light them—I will bestow upon them a surname, a single-character surname, a surname belonging to the Han-Sun Celestial Lineage!"

In India, the castes were not divided merely into four ranks plus the untouchables; in fact, there were many sub-caste divisions within them.

As far as Zhang Zhao now knew, the Kshatriyas of the Shahi kingdom were divided into more than a dozen sub-castes, distinguishable by ancestry, place of residence, even linguistic habits, each layer looking down on the next.

Originally in Shahi, the highest-ranking Brahmins and Kshatriyas were, of course, those connected to the Shahi royal clan's surname.

But after Zhang Zhao's arrival, the highest-ranking among the Brahmins and Kshatriyas were the single-character surnames known as the Han-Sun Celestial Lineage.

Of course, for now this rule was effective only in the Shahi kingdom, because Juer Khagan had conquered only this place—but the territory of the Pala dynasty would soon be governed the same way.

After Great Khagan Zhang's sweep, in this timeline's India, skin color would still remain the most direct standard of judgment, but among the high castes there would be an even more direct one: whoever bore a single-character Chinese surname was unquestionably of the highest caste.

"Khagan! The entire Baghali clan is willing to pledge loyalty to you!"

At last someone responded. A burly man, a full size larger than the surrounding fishermen, pressed his head into the ground and, like a bulldozer, shoved through the soft wet riverbank soil until he came to a stop not far in front of Zhang Zhao.

Zhang Zhao understood a little of the local language. "Baghali" meant people who lived on the high ground by the water—in short, a group of fishermen living on the hills along the riverbank.

The greatest basis by which Brahmanism judged caste was skin color and surname. Looking at that pitch-black back, plus the meaning of the surname—even if you claimed to be a Kshatriya, who would believe you?

That was why Zhang Zhao had not said he would raise these fishermen to high caste. In a single sentence: without changing surname, without leaving the original low-caste settlement, one could not become high caste.

This was also why, upon hearing that Juer Khan was bestowing single-character surnames, the burly man had immediately come forward.

Zhang Zhao waited another minute or so. It seemed this burly man held great authority among the surrounding fishermen; once he stepped out, no one else dared come forward to compete. So Zhang Zhao beckoned to Cao Yanming.

"Fourteenth Young Lord, take this fellow away. If he can deliver the divine fire-thunder to the gates of Prayaga, bestow on him the surname Yu, and reward him with a thousand rupees!"

The officers of Prayaga's water city had never seen anything like it. Those Dalit fishermen living on both banks of the river called out to their wives and children, howled, and hurled themselves into the water—many without even bringing the pig-bladder floats for breathing, just charging straight into the river.

Before long, the wooden stakes that had cost these people dozens of dead and wounded over a month to drive into the riverbed began floating up one by one. Of course, many who went down never came back up.

Each time a stake surfaced, the women and children of that clan on the riverbank would wail and rush forward to embrace it. If anyone tried to snatch it away, they would fight to the death.

These stakes were the terms Zhang Zhao had set: pull out two and become a Shudra, pull out five and become a Vaishya, and the two families who pulled out the most would be made Kshatriyas directly.

Only now did Zhang Zhao also learn that what the Youyi Patrol had captured were not six hundred fishermen, but the heads of six hundred fishing families, large and small.

At present, the fishermen who had appeared along both banks of the Ganges numbered at least ten thousand.

Guo Tiance stared dumbfounded at the crowds darting through the broad Ganges like water rats, and at the stakes surfacing one after another. His entire worldview was violently shaken.

He could not understand—merely changing a surname could make these people fanatical enough to disregard life and death?

In China, before the Emperor bestowed a surname, he would first privately send someone to sound out whether the recipient was even willing.

But Guo Tiance was not the most dumbfounded person here. The most dumbfounded was the defending general of Prayaga's water city.

Watching the stakes dwindling one after another, he had no choice but to send out large numbers of small boats, hoping the archers aboard could stop the fishermen who kept leaping into the water.

Zhang Zhao likewise hurriedly dispatched archers in small boats to protect them. The two sides' water forces, manning their little craft, began a bloody exchange of arrows across the river's surface, where people kept plunging in with splash after splash.

Boom! At the same moment, violent explosions erupted at Prayaga's south gate and west gate. Mushroom clouds soared into the sky—never mind the gates, even a large section of the west gate's wall was blown down.

"Into the city! Charge!" Yan Jin drew his hengdao saber and roared. Man Xiong, Dunzhu, and the others, along with an army of several thousand, charged straight in through the breached wall.

Zhang Zhao looked at Shi Chongmin, whose face was smudged black by gunpowder, and for the first time a faint trace of reluctance showed on his face.

"How many are left?"

He was asking about the entire Baghali clan who had delivered the gunpowder to the city wall.

"Of more than two hundred able-bodied men, seventy or eighty are gone, I'd say." Shi Chongmin answered with his head lowered, then added with some emotion, "They truly threw their lives away. With just a plank over their heads, they dared to stake their lives on it!"

"They truly threw their lives away. With just a plank over their heads, they dared to stake their lives on it!"

More than a hundred remained. Zhang Zhao let out a soft breath. He had thought nearly all of them would die.

"If it were you, would you stake your life like they did?"

Shi Chongmin thought for a moment, then nodded firmly.

"I would! A complete transformation, rising to the heavens in a single step—losing a few dozen able-bodied men is absolutely worth it!"

All chapters have been cached for you. Download the APP to view them.