Chapter 251: So You Were Xiongnu After All

In a small, dilapidated temple, King Krishila II, at the end of his rope, was trapped here.

He still had a few guards with him, but all their warhorses had been lost. To fend off the attacks of the Juer Khan's knights, the finest knights under his command had been nearly wiped out.

His gray-white beard was soaked by the rain and clung stickily to Krishila II's chin.

Commanding an army of more than sixty thousand, destroying the Pala Dynasty, capturing Rajyapala alive, and fulfilling the long-cherished wish of generations of kings by annexing the Pala Dynasty — all of it seemed like only yesterday, but now it had all vanished like smoke.

Though the defeat had come with shocking suddenness, Krishila II knew he had not lost unjustly, because the Juer Khan's army far surpassed his own.

Take, for example, the fifty riders who had been hounding him all along. They were only half his own number, but they were superb archers at a distance and ferocious in close combat, armored in two layers, each one a match for ten of his men.

The escape plan he had so carefully devised, the finest palace guard cavalry of the Balihara Dynasty, had been practically steamrolled before these men.

"My king, there is still some clean water in the temple's water jar. Have a drink! After a drink, we'll keep running. As long as we can get back to Kanyakubja, we can raise a great army and fight again!"

As the ruler who had revived the Balihara Dynasty, if one were to rank the kings of the Indian subcontinent at this moment, King Krishila II would surely be at the very top.

But everything suffers by comparison. If he were in the Central Plains, the one who would earn that ranking would be a heaven-sent sovereign like Guo Rong. If Great Khan Zhang could become a historical Guo Rong twenty years from now, he would be more than satisfied.

But in India, even the finest enlightened ruler was only so much, because he had to be constrained by the overall environment.

China's late Tang and Five Dynasties period, though chaotic, was not weak at all — on the contrary, its fighting strength was explosive. Anyone who could be praised as an enlightened sovereign in such an era, whether Guo Rong or the early Li Cunxu, was a genuine sage-king and enlightened ruler.

But on the Indian subcontinent, ever since the Harappan civilization was mysteriously destroyed, neither the Dravidians, who later made an effort, nor the Aryan kingdoms, established by outside invaders yet claiming to have defeated Alexander the Great, could change the fundamental course of the subcontinent.

That is, once the earlier conquerors had grown corrupt and degenerate in this land of ease, other strongmen coming through the Khyber Pass would smoothly and thoroughly overturn the power structure here.

Then these invaders would begin to rot in turn, until the next wave of strongmen came to wipe them out.

Moreover, many of these strongmen who came to India were losers in the political struggles of other lands, so the actual strength of the local enlightened rulers whom these strongmen overthrew goes without saying.

More importantly, this game was played by the strongmen who invaded at each stage — it had nothing to do with the dark-skinned native Dravidians.

So although the Balihara Dynasty had at least seven or eight million people, what Krishila II could truly rely on was only the ten thousand-plus Kshatriya households of the same origin as himself, and the populations they controlled.

At most, add the few tens of thousands of vested interests among the hundred thousand-plus Vaishyas, and among the several hundred thousand Shudras, those barely useful would not exceed two hundred thousand.

Reckoned this way, Krishila II was not actually able to use seven or eight million people to resist Zhang Zhao.

Rather, he was using at most sixty or seventy thousand men conscripted from four or five hundred thousand people to fight Zhang Zhao's twenty or thirty thousand. The true gap in strength between the two sides was not that great!

At this thought, Krishila II let out a long sigh. Just then, shouts of men and neighing of horses came from outside the temple, and squadron after squadron of cavalry surrounded the little temple. It seemed the Juer Khan had arrived.

Krishila II hesitated for a moment, then set down the cracked bowl of water.

"Go! Tell the Juer Khan that I wish to bathe and change clothes, to wear the garments a king ought to wear, and to eat a fine meal of mutton rolled in flatbread. If possible, I would like to meet him face to face!"

Outside the ruined temple, Zhang Zhao looked at Krishila II's guard, who came out trembling to relay his demands, his expression utterly calm.

"Tiance, ride fast and go strip the royal robes that Queen Avachi brought for Rajyapala off him. He has no use for them!"

Guo Tiance stared at Zhang Zhao in astonishment. He could not help feeling that whenever the Great King spoke the name Rajyapala, there seemed to be a certain displeasure, which had never been the case before!

Poor King of Pala — his clothes probably had not even warmed on his body before they were to be stripped off.

"Get the mutton rolled in flatbread here quickly too, and bring a jug of my grape wine as well!"

The magnificent royal robes, though a bit too loose, were better than nothing. After bathing and washing up, Krishila II finally recovered the bearing of a king.

The mutton rolled in flatbread and the grape wine made the old king, who had been fleeing for over half a month, wolf his food down ravenously.

Perhaps because he was finally full, Krishila II drained an entire bowl of grape wine in one breath and at last stopped his mouth.

"Truly delicious! It has been many years since I found mutton rolled in flatbread so delicious!"

"If Your Highness finds it not enough, I can have more sent over!" Zhang Zhao's manner was impeccable, and he gave King Krishila II full face.

After all, set against Shahi King Madanapala and Pala King Rajyapala — those two big "palas" — this man at least had something of the look of a king.

"The Khagan surely will not let me live, will he?" Krishila II probed, still unwilling to give up.

"Your Highness should not jest. With you still alive, how could I sleep?" Zhang Zhao answered just as directly, without the slightest beating around the bush.

"Ah!" Krishila II let out a long sigh, not knowing whether to be pleased or grieved.

"It seems that being a king like Rajyapala is sometimes a good thing after all! Then can the Khagan leave me a trace of my bloodline?"

"That depends on Your Highness's choice. The ideal outcome is this." Zhang Zhao reached out and drew a line on the wooden board from which Krishila II had eaten.

"Of the lands of the Balihara kingdom, I want only the third nearest the Shahi kingdom. Another third I will use to trade with the Buddhist orders.

The remaining third, I can consider leaving to the princes as a way out — a way out that lets them continue to live in wealth and honor."

As he spoke, Zhang Zhao looked at the three guards remaining beside Krishila II.

"Even these loyal guards can be rewarded. If it can be arranged, I will grant them single-character surnames and make them Kshatriyas in my territory!"

"How can the Khagan guarantee that his promises will surely be fulfilled?"

"Your Highness has no room to choose. You can only trust me. But I can say one thing: in five months at the most, I will leave India!"

Krishila II looked at Zhang Zhao, then at the few guards who had protected him from the very beginning. After sighing countless times, he finally, trembling, slowly nodded.

"I will write a letter and trouble the Khagan to deliver it to Crown Prince Tela. He will open the gates of Kanyakubja!"

After speaking, Krishila II turned shakily around, his back to Zhang Zhao.

"A king does not suffer poisoned water, nor the blade!"

Quite particular indeed! Zhang Zhao shot Guo Tiance a look, then walked out himself.

Guo Tiance stepped forward holding a wooden tray. On the tray were a sheet of parchment, a quill pen, and a cord twisted from silk.

"You three — the Great King of the Great Dynasty, Great Treasure, Great Jin Kingdom; Khan of Khans of the Uyghurs, the Oghuz, and the Basmyls; Conqueror of Samanid Persia; Protector of the city of Huwen; the great ruler of the Shahi Kingdom, His Majesty the Juer Khan, personally bestows single-character surnames. This represents supreme glory. Please prepare yourselves to attend His Highness Krishila on his final journey!"

A joke — Great King Zhang's single-character surnames were not so easily obtained. If the three of them did not personally send Krishila II off, why would Zhang Zhao believe them?

Kanyakubja — ever since the era of King Harsha more than three hundred years ago, it had been the ruling center of the Indian subcontinent.

And two hundred seventy-five years ago, a great event had occurred in India: King Harsha was murdered by his minister Arjuna, who then made himself king and also ambushed and killed the envoys the Tang dynasty had sent to India.

Among those envoys was a famously ruthless man — Wang Xuance, the man who destroyed a kingdom single-handedly.

In the end, Wang Xuance borrowed a great army from the kingdom of Nepal and the Tibetans, seized the usurper Arjuna — and it should have happened right in Kanyakubja.

So there was a piece of common knowledge that Zhang Zhao only learned after arriving in India: the India of this time understood China far better than the Indians of later generations did.

So once they learned that the Juer Khan had come from the Eastern Land, it was easy for them to think of that legendary Heavenly Khagan.

By the time Zhang Zhao reached Kanyakubja, Yin Yaozi was already commanding thirty thousand troops, and had blasted a section of Kanyakubja's city wall into collapse. The people inside the city were already in a state of shutting their eyes and waiting for death.

It seemed that even if Krishnaraja II's will had not arrived, the fall of Kanyakubja was only a matter of time.

"Master Baotongzi, you never thought you would enter Kanyakubja again, did you?"

Zhang Zhao asked pointedly, because during the Harsha dynasty, Kanyakubja had been a flourishing center of Buddhism in all of India, but now, one could hardly find any Buddhists there at all.

"Thanks to the Khagan's great fortune!" Master Baotongzi forced a face full of smiles and chimed in with extreme reluctance.

What does it mean to ride fast in the spring breeze with pride? This, damn it, is what it means to ride fast in the spring breeze with pride. In just four months, Great King Zhang had sailed straight down the river and fought through more than half of the Ganges River basin.

The bodies of Krishnaraja II of the Parihara dynasty and his two sons had just been handed over to Crown Prince Tara of the Parihara dynasty, and King Rajyapala of Pala was being forced, dusty and disheveled, to lead the horse before Zhang Zhao.

Queen Avachi — slurp! Zhang Zhao sucked in a mouthful of saliva. Queen Avachi was at this moment hiding among the crowd, not daring to look directly at the Great Khagan Zhang.

As for the Buddhist establishment of India, not only had Master Baotongzi, the chief seat of Nalanda Monastery, come, but the chief seats of Vikramashila Monastery, Odantapuri Monastery, Karanja Monastery, and other famous great monasteries had all come as well.

Kanyakubja, the White Moon Palace — the founders of the Parihara dynasty were a people called the Rajputs.

The origins of this people are complex. On the paternal side there were Saka, Kushan, Hephthalite, and Xiongnu peoples, and even Parthians and Greeks.

They intermingled with the local natives and formed the present-day Rajputs.

At present the Rajputs have two branches. The mixed descendants of the Saka, Kushan, Parthian, and Greek peoples are called the Saka Rajputs.

The descendants of the Xiongnu and Hephthalites are called the White Huna Rajputs.

As luck would have it, the royal house of Parihara happened to be of mixed Xiongnu descent.

Only they were not the main Xiongnu stock, whose appearance differed little from the Han people, but rather the white people in the west called the White Huns, or the Yellow-Headed Xiongnu.

In fact, this is still not entirely accurate. Perhaps we could say that the so-called Hephthalites and White Huns were formed when the Xiongnu, after being repeatedly defeated by the Han armies, fled to the Central Asian steppe and mixed with the westward-migrating Yuezhi and Saka peoples.

The Hephthalites and the White Huns are essentially the same people.

When Zhang Zhao explained this history to his subordinates, everyone immediately grew excited.

So you are the descendants of the Xiongnu after all! Their eyes seemed to say as they looked at the Parihara royal house.

"Bet you never imagined it! We Han people have chased you all the way to India."

"Aiyo! Isn't this the great Xiongnu? Haven't seen you in a few hundred years, and you've fallen so low?"

In an instant, everyone, including Yan Jin, felt as if Wei Qing and Huo Qubing had possessed them! Absolutely wonderful!

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