topics: |  youth | fiction |

Subhadra Sengupta, well known author of historical novels (including one on Ashoka), has written a taut page turner about a likeable feisty twelve-year old girl living in the Ashokan empire, shortly after he has turned to Buddhism after the Kalinga battle.

Madhura's sorrows

At twelve years, Madhura is unhappy with her life. Her father, who was a soldier in Ashoka's army, has recently been killed in the Kalinga war. Her brother Kartik has taken up trader's life, and is away for months at a time. She and her mother work as maids in the palace, washing dishes and clothes and running endless menial errands for the spoilt princesses and queens.

The book opens with Madhura carrying a heavy pot of water from the river, over the slippery steps, to her home in a small lane of Pataliputra:

	"What's so special about this life, hahn? I still have
	to cook and clean, carry heavy pots of water, and wash
	clothes.  When you are poor your life is the same
	everywhere."

However, things are not as bad as it appears at first.  As the story
progresses, we find that Madhura is actually quite close to the princess
Sanghamitra who is four years her elder.  It is her liveliness that endears
her to the princess.  But the princess is tired of the gilded cage where
she can have whatever she wants, but cannot visit the market or play
freely as a child.

The maid and the princess

So Madhura plots with the princess and arranges to smuggle her out of the
palace by dressing her in her own commoners' clothes.  they spend a few
hours at the market where they buy bangles and eat a commoner's meal
followed by paan.

This excursion with a royal princess gets Madhura into trouble with Queen
Mahadevi - but while scolding them, she too turns out to be interested in the
details of the market.

This is followed by a sudden opportunity for mother and daughter to
accompany Kartik on a long journey along the "Dakshinapatha" to Ujjain where
a number of intrigues unfold...

Strongly Recommended

The writing is effortless and keeps you turning pages.  I wish I had such
books to read as a child.  I still remember the zest with which I devoured
Bankimchandra's historical novels, following the exploits of the maverick
rAjput prince rAjasingha resisting the might of the mughal empire.  But
those were clearly written for adults.

As delineated above, the plot starts off very well indeed.  However,
it loses some of its steam after they reach Vidisha.  The action however,
keeps moving very fast.  Towards the end some aspects that strain one's
credulity, such as the ease with which they gain admission to the
governor's palace (or the most famous courtesan's chambers), and the way
the emperor himself notices the lowly Madhura.

Nonetheless, it's a great book, and one I would definitely recommend for
the English medium bookworms rapidly populating our metros...

The historical princess : Sanghamitra

[Sanghamitra is known to history for having become a nun and leading a
major buddhist mission to Sri Lanka.  In the book, she is sixteen, and is
married at the end of the period in this story.

however, radha kumud mookerjee in his Asoka cites the sri lankan and
indian versions of the pali tradition to suggest this chronology:

	we are told in the mahAvaMsa that asoka's eldest son and daughter,
	mahendra and sanghamitra, were both ordained in the sixth year of his
	coronation when they were respectively twenty and eighteen years
	old. taking the date of asoka's coronation to be 270 b.c., as
	explained below, we get 284 b.c. and 282 b.c. as the dates of the
	birth of mahendra and his sister respectively.

	it is also stated that asoka's son-in-law, agnibrahmA, was ordained
	in the fourth year of his coronation, i.e., in 266 b.c., before which
	a son was born to him. thus sanghamitra must have been married in 268
	b.c. at the latest, i.e., at the age of fourteen.

thus, sanghamitra may have been married earlier than suggested here.


 
sanghamitra statue at bhikkuni monastery near Anuradhapura,
sri lanka.  the bhikkhuni lineage started by her ended in
Lanka in the 11th c.; today there are only make bhikkhus.

After her ordainment at age eighteen, Sanghamitra would emerge as a learned
bhikkuni.  After Mahendra reached Sri Lanka at the request of the King,
many were converted to Buddhism.  When the lankan queen Anula wished to be
ordained, he requested Sanghamitra to come.  Thus, she too went to Lanka
and founded the first Bhikkhuni sangha there.

Most chronologies date the events in Asoka's life from his coronation at 268
or 270 BC (based on years after Buddha's death).  By the latter calendar,
Sanghamitra is reckoned to have been born in 282 BC.

Other hisotrical connections

The book has a few pages of history at the end that are useful as a
postscript for the inquiring reader.

Her mother, referred to as Queen Mahadevi in the book, hailed from a Vidisha
merchant family (but was originally from a shAkya family - the buddha's
family clan).  she was however a "commoner", and did not join asoka after his
coronation, where his aggamahishi (principal queen) was asandhimitrA.
However, Lankan texts describer MahadevI (called dharma) as the
aggamahishi.

However, the book doesn't mention the queen asandhimitrA; it does take
notice of Queen padmAvatI, mother of prince kuNAla whom they meet at Ujjain
Kunala however may have been governor at Taxila rather than Ujjain.

As Kani explains to Madhura, Mahadevi was a commoner, and possibly for this
reason, her son Mahendra, Ashoka's first-born, was unlikely to become king.
But perhaps he was also deeply invested in his father's peace project, for He
joined the Buddhist order as a monk at the age of twenty.  He is supposed to
have been ordained at age twenty, and was only two years older to
Sanghamitra.

---

Regarding the paan they enjoy in the market, I looked it up in
K.T. Achaya's magisterial Indian food: A Historical Companion
this seems to be an anachronism; apparently paan was known, but was largely
endemic as a South Indian practice in the classical Sanskrit period, and
the sanskrit words for it appear to be late derivations from Tamil.

the "blouse" that madhura wants to wear may not have been a part of indian
attire till a few milleniums later.  the blouse as we know it today
originated in 18th c., calcutta.  in fact, stitched clothing was very rare
until the advent of islam; there is no sanskrit word for darzi, though
needle and thread were known (suchika = one who uses the needle).

Excerpts

Madhura dipped the water pot into the river, then raised the filled pot to
rest it on her hip, and began walking very carefully up the slippery stone
steps...

"What's so special about [this life], hahn? I still have to cook and clean,
carry heavy pots of water, and wash clothes.  When you are poor your life is
the same everywhere."

She was twelve and she knew that pretty soon she would be married.  p.1

---

In the cloth shop, lengths of cloth in the colours of the rainbow floated in
the breeze.  Madhura picked up a matching piece to make a blouse for her new
skirt.


the market at pataliputra.  the book has
a few sketches executed by Hemant Kumar.

The monastery at Pataliputra

The largest building was a high-ceilinged hall with walls covered in
beautiful paintings depicting the life of Buddha.  The hall was redolent with
the fragrance of flowers, the air filled with incense smoke and echoing with
the ringing of bells.
   "That's the chaitya," Sanghamitra explained.  "It's the temple where we
worship the Buddha." 25

Madhura shook her hands to make her bangles clink and said, 'I think I look
very pretty today.' 67

Kartik: this medallion proves that I am a Cara, first class... 78

Women guards at the inner palace:
Madhura had never seen these women guards up close before.  The first
thing she noticed was that they wore trousers, with a tunic and a
sleeveless leather jacket on top.  Swords hung from their belts and they
    carried a spear.  They wore strange pointed caps and high leather boots.
    Madhura had heard that these women came from the hills; they were tall,
    fair and had brownish hair and pale blue eyes. 79

Review by Jaya Bhattacharji

www.jayabhattacharjirose.com/blog/tag/subhadra-sen-gupta/
“Girls of India” series

Puffin, an imprint of Penguin Books India, launched the  “Girls of India”
series. The idea is to introduce young readers to history, make it come
alive and accessible, without confining it to history textbooks where
history is dry, dull and boring. Far from it!

The first three titles --
	- A Chola Adventure ( Anu Kumar),
    	- A Harappan Adventure (Sunile Gupte) and
    	- A Mauryan Adventure ( Subhadra Sen Gupta)

are the adventures of twelve-year-old girls from , Raji, Avani and Madhura in
990 CE, Tanjore (990CE); Bagasara village, Harappa (2570 BCE); and
Pataliputra (3rd c. BCE), respectively. Well-told tales that immerse you
immediately into the stories, the period and the antics of the girls. Of the
three, Subhadra Sen Gupta’s A Mauryan Adventure is the finest, evident in the
ease with which the story is told...

In fact Prof Narayani Gupta wrote “It is very important to have teachers use
this (in schools). My husband [well-known historian Prof. Partha Sarthi
Gupta] used to recommend specific Sherlock Holmes stories for European
diplomatic history!”

While I am all for encouraging young girls to be readers too, I do have
reservations about restricting the series to “Girls of India” or having girls
on the book covers. These are books that will be enjoyed by both boys and
girls. Details like making the book covers more amenable to girls for reading
can quite easily deter the boys from picking up these titles. It is a fine
balance to be achieved.

In March 2013, Dame Jacqueline Wilson had commented upon publishers stopping
the pink tide, of creating books dressed up in pink to lure young girls as
readers. Her argument was based on the premise that “a boy is going to have
to feel really quite confident if he is going to be seen in front of his
mates with a book that is bright pink because it is immediately code for this
being ‘girlie’.”

A valid argument for accessing boys as readers, I think, holds true here
as well.

review by Parinita Shetty

http://goodbooks.in/node/7215

The book is rife with historical information – details of famous Magadhan
pottery, architectural descriptions, the clothing, historical pastimes,
including an ancient form of chess called chaturanga, as well as
explanations of complicated royal lineage structures, hierarchies among
queens and rules of etiquette. None of this information seems obtrusive
since we’re seeing the world through Madhura’s eyes.

Apart from being interesting historically, the book also has all the
elements for a crackerjack story – mysteries galore with a Buddhist monk
being attacked, royal accounts being fudged, secret messages in code, a
glamorous singer, and plenty of plots and secrets. It also gives a glimpse
into the lives of spies and informants and their role in helping a kingdom
function and flourish. The author paints a fascinatingly realistic portrait
of life under the Mauryan dynasty.

Madhura may be a bystander to other people’s adventures, but she makes for
an intriguing, true-to-life character. At first, she’s thrilled when she’s
allowed to accompany her brother on his latest jaunt – everything is new and
exciting in her life on the road. But routine breeds familiarity and
familiarity breeds boredom. She realises her brother’s life may not have
been as exciting as she had imagined, and it’s not long before she begins
thinking wistfully of her life at the palace. She soon realises that
adventures always sound better in stories.

Dissatisfaction and compromise are themes that often crop up in the book –
Madhura with her seemingly dull life back home, Princess Sanghamitra who
feels suffocated by the overprotectiveness her position brings... Even the
spies are constantly on the lookout for hints of dissatisfaction and
discontent in the kingdom so they can either be resolved or reported to the
king. The characters that populate the story have more or less accepted
their lot in life, but they also manage to make room for a bit of fun.

One quibble I had with the book is that the action starts only when the
reader is midway through it. While the mystery is set up nicely in the
beginning, it unfolds quite slowly because it is superseded by other minor
events. While this works because of the slice-of-life style of storytelling
the author uses, younger readers looking for the adventure the title
suggests may not stick around long enough to find it. A few modern words and
phrases, like “what’s up?”, “make-up”, and “hairdo”, that occasionally pop
up feel out of place in this lovely historical story.

These niggles aside, the book makes for a particularly great resource in
schools. Students studying Ashoka can view his world through Madhura’s eyes
and experience history coming alive with a thoroughly enjoyable story.

Parinita Shetty buys more books than she can afford, reads everything she
can get her hands (or eyes) on, and writes only when she can think of
literally nothing else to do. She is considering building a spaceship made
of books because her house has run out of shelf space. She accidentally
wrote her first book called The Monster Hunters in 2013. Her second book,
When Santa Went Missing, was published in 2014.