Big and tall for someone only just past thirteen years of age, Prince Prabhava was now a strapping lad on the earliest fringes of youthhood. Even then, he still had not lost his childhood keenness for a fine tale. One day …
"Father," Prabhava spoke. “I’ve heard someone say, that the Kambhoja were originally sprung from the same stock as the Persians. Is that true?”
”It is,” replied Prakasha, “the same stock of people who called themselves Arya, which meant noble. As also were the other older tribes than the Persians, such as the Scythians, the Cymmerians and the Medes. Indeed, there are some wise men who believe that the Cymmerians and the Kambhoja ultimately began as one tribe, who later split into two.”
”How did that happen?”
”The name Cymmerian came from the Greek Kimmeroi, which in turn sprang from the Ashurian Gimiraa, which meant going back and forth, because the Cymmerians were a tribe of nomadic wanderers. They inhabited the grassland regions around the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, including the northern and central regions of the Caucasus.”
”And then?”
”Their numbers eventually became too many, whilst their food sources became too scarce for their expanded populace. A portion of them migrated to the west and southwest, reaching Anatolia and the White Continent, while another moved on east and southeast, reaching the Western Himalayas, where their original name Gimiraa gradually evolved in different areas into Kumara, Kamira, Kumuya or Kambhoja, the last of which in Sanskrit happened to mean handsome king.”
”That’s really amazing. And you promised me yesterday that you’d tell me stories about the Kambhoja, and the battles they fought in times of old.”
"Go gather the firewood for your mother first, Bhava," his father responded. "You'll hear those tales in the afternoon."
The morning passed slowly. It seemed especially long for Prabhava, but he bore with it patiently. Lunch was steamed rice with roast tilapia, a sweet fleshed river fish, boiled yam for vegetable, and cashew shoot dipped into fermented fish sauce as appetiser. After lunch, father and son sat together under the verdant shade of a mango tree whose fruits were just about to ripen.
"There was once this ancient Kambhoja warrioress," Prakasha began, "who had stood up with admirable courage to Eskander (Alexander) of Makheduniya."
"Did she? Really?"
"Yes. Her name was Krippya (Cleophis), of the Ashvaka tribe of Massaga. She was the Queen Dowager. Her land had been invaded by Eskander and his army, and her son the new king had fallen in battle. He had been hit by a big boulder launched from an enemy ballista while directing battle operations."
"Poor soul. What happened next?"
With classic Kambhoja bravery, Krippya simply took over her son's role of supreme commander, then exhorted her Ashvaka forces to continue fighting tooth and nail against those of Eskander.
"The only way to fight when your back is up against the wall, right Father? That's what Grandfather told me. And then?"
The Makheduniyan king was even gravely wounded in the Battle of Massaga and only made a narrow escape. He had to hobble his way out of the battlefield with the greatest urgency that day.
"Great stuff. I knew she'd give him a good fight. She was an Ashvaka."
Krippya's army, by then including many other women of the tribe who had also lost husbands or sons, was only defeated and overpowered by the Makheduniyans, not in a fair fight but through fraud, treachery and breach of treaty. An act for which even Eskander's own court historians, including Kallisthenes of Olynthus, had severely castigated him.
"What lame excuse did Eskander come up with, then?"
Eskander claimed that he had no choice, for in order to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against the fiercest fighters his men had ever faced, he had to break every sacred rule in the code of the true warrior.
"How disgusting. And then?"
By the same sly wile and guile, Eskander went on to win further battles against Ashvaka armies in Ora and Bazira, the remaining Ashvaka fighters then retreating to a high mountain fortress in Una Sar (Aornos). Eventually, however, Eskander met his match in cunning and trickery in the form of a young man by the name of Sashigupta, renegade son of a prince of the Nanda dynasty, rulers of the powerful kingdom of Magadha, by his Ashvaka concubine named Maurya.
On the run from his grandfather Dhana Nanda, the king of Magadha, after a perceived slight, Sashigupta found refuge in the willing embrace of Eskander's invading army. The youth managed to convince Eskander that he had the fighters who could help the Makheduniyan king win the Una Sar fortress with minimum casualties. At the same time, Sashigupta told his Ashvaka kinsmen, quite correctly, that Una Sar was a lost cause and persuaded them to abandon the fortress, after some token resistance to make things look real, to the Greek invaders.
Sashigupta's plan worked brilliantly, avoiding what would have been a big bloodbath and the sacrifice of many thousands of lives, both Greek and Kambhoja. Eskander made Sashigupta satrap of Una Sar, and left it for him to rule on Eskander's behalf. Sashigupta would later lead a composite army of nomadic highlanders, with Kambhoja warriors forming its core, to vanquish the kingdom of his Nanda grandfather and found a new ruling dynasty of Magadha, named after his mother, the Maurya Dynasty.
Sashigupta himself ascended the throne as King Chandragupta Maurya. In later years, Chandragupta Maurya would wrest back the Kambhoja territories lost to Eskander from Seleukus, Eskander's successor in the Indus Valley region, and incorporate them into his Magadha kingdom.
“I’ve also heard it said that Eskander married a Kambhoja princess. Who was she, Father?”
Before marching onward to Massaga, Eskander had invaded and conquered two other Kambhoja kingdoms, Bakhtara (Bactria) dan Sugadha (Sogdiana). Vakhsuva Darva (Oxyartes), a Kambhoja general from Bakhtara who was retreating with his family from the advancing Makheduniyan army had deposited his wife and several daughters in a supposedly impregnable fort in Sugadha. That fort however fell to Eskander.
Unable to resist the forces of Eskander, Vakhsuva Darva had no choice but to accept a peace deal offered by Eskander, with the condition that Sugadha submitted to Eskander’s overlordship.
At a banquet to celebrate the victory of his army and the peace deal forged with the Kambhoja of Sugadha, Eskander was enthralled by the beauty of the Kambhoja dances, while the his heart was captivated by one pretty young dancer in particular, whose moves Eskander thought were exquisitely elegant. Eskander just had to get to know her, and he requested a companion to enquire about her.
She turned out to be one of Vakhsuva Darva’s daughters, Rukhsana her name was. Subsequent properly chaperoned meetings between the two paved the way for feelings of affection to bud and flower. Eskander eventually asked Vakhsuva Darva for Rukhsana’s hand in marriage and made her his queen.
Vakhsuva Darva was later appointed by Eskander to be the kshatrapa (provincial governor) of a province in southern Sugadha. A couple of months after Eskander’s death from sickness in Egypt, Rukhsana bore him a son, also named Eskander by Rukhsana after his Makheduniyan father.
"There was another heroic Kambhoja queen too, I believe," Prabhava nudged his father toward one more story.
"Yes, there was. Her name was Timmeya (Tomyris), also of the Ashvaka tribe. Her time was even more ancient, two centuries earlier than that of Kryppia."
"Did she fight a powerful invader too?", the son enquired, prompting the general to continue.
"Oh yes, she did. And she won."
"Tell me about the battle, Father."
After the death of her husband the king, Timmeya had ascended to the Kambhoja throne of Massaga kingdom. About a year later, Khouroush-e-Bozorg (Cyrus the Great) of Persia conquered Babilun (Babylon), then started looking eastward, toward the lands of the Kambhoja. Khouroush wanted to annex the highland kingdoms of the Kambhoja tribes, including Massaga, to Persia, citing common ancient ancestry, a familiar tactic among conquering kings.
Aware of Khouroush's expansionist machinations, Queen Timmeya sent a mesenger to him, explicitly stating the wishes of the Kambhoja people to remain independent, advising Khouroush to rein in his grand ambitions and to be content with the lands already under the rule of Persia.
Khouroush could have been right about the common ancestry claim, the name Kambhujiya of the Kambhoja's ancient founding ancestor having cropped up rather frequently among the then ruling Hakhamanesh Dynasty of Persia. But when Khouroush tried to intimidate Queen Timmeya into marrying him, after her son had been captured and killed by Khouroush's forces on his orders, after several days of fighting, he pushed his luck too far.
Queen Timmeya jumped into the fray, leading her Kambhoja fighters from the front against the Persian army of Khouroush, in what would turn out to be his last battle.
After her rampaging Kambhoja army, buttressed by a meaner than usual Ashvaka cavalry, had finally routed Khouroush's invading Persian forces, Timmeya searched the entire battlefield for Khouroush's body, then chopped off Khouroush's head from his corpse, grabbed it by the hair, turned it upside down, and screamed, "You were always thirsty for blood. Now you can have the fill of your own!"
She then went riding all around the battlefield, holding her trophy aloft for all to see, to the loud chants and cheers of her triumphant warriors.
"What brave srikandhi they were, Queen Kryppia and Queen Timmeya. Could we be, by any chance, related to either of them, Father?"
"Indeed we are, Son. To both of them. You and I come from, believe it or not, the line of Queen Kryppia, and she, in turn, was descended from Queen Timmeya."
"Now, that's just magnificent. What about Prince Sudakh Shina, Father? I've heard that that he was among the finest warriors in the history of the Kambhoja people."
"We'll keep the story of Prince Sudakh Shina for another day."
"What about your side, Mother?" Prabhava then turned to his mother, who had just come to join them. "You promised me that one of these days you'd tell me about the ancient kings and princes of Karna Suvarna."
"You have to go riding with your father now, Bhava," Princess Anjali answered. "Then it's mukkti yuddha and swordfighting after that. Remember, Son. You have to grow up into a formidable warrior yourself first, like Prince Sudakh Shina, if you're to have any chance of finding the Sword of Kambhujiya, let alone winning it and keeping it. I shall tell you the story of Buddha Gupta Maha Navika tomorrow."
"He was a great adventurer, right Mother?"
"Yes. He was. And a sailor extraordinaire. That's why they called him Maha Navika. He was a talented merchant too."
"Where he did he go to, that was of special interest? And what was his greatest achievement, Mother?"
Prince Buddha Gupta sailed all the way to Suvarna Dvipa, the Golden Islands, finally landing in a place on a peninsula called the Golden Peninsula. He met and fell in love with a beautiful local girl, who happened to be a chieftain's daughter, then married her with her father's blessing. Buddha Gupta eventually founded a kingdom which he named Raktam Rttika ... Red Earth ... after the great maha vihara at Rajbadi Danga. It became a prosperous regional trading centre, and the Chinese travellers and adventurers who visited it then called it Chi Tu.
"Oooh. I can't wait to hear all of it, Mother."
”You will also hear about Princess Charu Vathi, daughter of Ashoka and builder of the Charu Vathi Vihara in Kathmandu, and about Shashanka, a general of the Gupta army who eventually founded the kingdom of Gauda in the land of Bhangala.”
”Oh, Mother. Now I’ve decided not to go riding today.”
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