GAZING EASTWARDS: Of Buddhist Monks and Revolutionaries in China by Romila Thapar

Author:Romila Thapar [Thapar, Romila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Our routine of work was regular. We would go up after an early breakfast and work in the caves until lunch, then nip down for a quick snack after which we would go up again until evening when we came down for our daily wash and a hot dinner. Taking photographs was not easy given the problems with creating light inside the cave. Reflectors of various sizes had to be used and carefully placed at angles to each other. Sometimes the murals in a deep corner were shrouded in darkness and had to be studied by torchlight. Taking a break meant sitting uncomfortably in the gallery. But this afforded us a clear view of the monastery down below and occasionally the activities of the monks, which on the whole tended to be rather mundane. The occasional visit of a local peasant family would make a change, and especially if they were persuaded to come up to the gallery and enquire as to what on earth we were doing there. We kept strictly to the rule of not trying to converse with the monks, although it did seem a bit odd that we were living in close proximity yet not even exchanging the day’s greeting.

This changed some days later when I heard the regular sound of a ball hitting a hard surface repeatedly and then a pause. I guessed it was a game of what we as children used to call ping-pong, in other words table tennis. I enquired from Mingo if my guess was right and she laughed and said that there was a roughly made-up kitchen table in the courtyard and the monks and their occasional visitors played on it for amusement. I promptly asked if I could join in. Anil was not so sure as we had been requested to keep clear of the monastic side. Mingo decided for us and said she would speak to the monks. Back came the reply from the monk Wang, ‘But of course and right away’. So we trooped into the courtyard to play ping-pong. We were told that the courtyard was now open to us and we were welcome to come and sit there in the evenings. In the first game I played with one of the monks, he won which I thought was a good omen!

Some nights later we sat in the courtyard. It was a clear night, a little cool, and drowned in moonlight, with the moon coming up from behind the hill at the back of us. The Maijishan hill with its east face reflecting the steely light of the moon looked distant and inspiring. It looked then like an early engraving of a south Indian temple, or like a drawing published in an early report on a temple, in the days before the structures had been cleared and restored, when stunted trees growing out of the structure were an almost expected feature in the older monuments. The shape of Maijishan hinted at some passing similarities. The shapes

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