River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [180]
Scarcely had I recovered from the surprise of this when Zadig Bey pointed his spyglass in the direction of another temple, far away: Buddhists from Hindusthan had lived there for centuries, he said, the most famous of them being a Kashmiri monk called Dharamyasa.
Nor is this all! Down by the river stands a temple that was founded by the most famous of Buddhist missionaries – the Bodhidharma, who had come to Canton from southern India and was perhaps a native of Madras!
And that too was not the end of it: Zadig Bey’s finger rose again to point to another roof, which belonged, he said, to a mosque – one of the oldest in the whole world, having been built in the lifetime of the Prophet Mohammad himself! It is a most remarkable structure, no different, in outward appearance, from a Chinese temple – all except for the minaret, which is like that of any dargah in Bengal!
But how is it possible, I said, that people from Hindusthan and Arabia and Persia were able to build monasteries and mosques in a city that is forbidden to foreigners?
It was then that I learnt it has not always been thus: there was a time, said Zadig Bey, when hundreds of thousands of Achhas, Arabs, Persians and Africans had lived in Canton. Back in the time of the Tang dynasty (they of the marvellous horses and paintings!): the emperors had invited foreigners to settle in Canton, along with their wives and children and servants. They were allowed their own courts and places of worship and were permitted to come and go as they pleased. Amongst the Arabs the city was so famous, said Zadig Bey, that it was known by a word that meant ‘Olive’ – Zaitoon. Even Marco Polo had visited it, he said; in fact he had probably stood where I was standing at that very moment!
Not content with these revelations Zadig Bey produced another, still more surprising.
Why, he asked me, do you know how the Pearl River got its name?
No, I said, so then he pointed his spyglass at an island in the river, not far from the foreign enclave: it is but a small outcrop of rock, with some crumbling ruins on it. Fanquis speak of it as ‘the Dutch folly’.
‘But the Chinese have another name for it,’ said Zadig Bey. ‘They call it Pearl Island. It’s said that there was nothing there until a jewel merchant from across the sea (whether he was an Arab or an Armenian or a Hindusthani, no one knows) but wherever he was from he was clumsier than a jewel merchant ought to be – he dropped the best of his pearls in the river. Now you’ve seen how muddy that water is? How quickly things disappear? Most things maybe, but not that pearl. It lay at the bottom, glowing like a lantern and slowly growing larger until it grew into an island. And from then on that waterway, which is properly spoken of as the “West River”, became famous as the Choo Kiang or “Pearl River”.’
You will understand how dumbfounded I was.
‘I cannot credit it, Zadig Bey,’ I cried. ‘Surely you do not expect me to believe that the Pearl River may owe its name to an Achha?’
He answered with a nod. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is quite likely.’
‘So what happened then?’ I asked. ‘Why did they go away? The Arabs, the Persians and the Achhas?’
‘It is a familiar story,’ said Zadig Bey. ‘The Tang went into decline and people became discontented. There was hunger and unrest, and as is common at such times, the troublemakers looked to place the blame on the foreigners. One day a rebel army stormed into the city and killed them all – men, women and children, over a hundred thousand of them were slaughtered, in a great river of blood. The memory of it was so bitter and lingered so long, that for centuries afterwards no visitors would venture here from overseas.’ Here he paused, with a proud smile. ‘But when the foreigners did return it was my own people who were in the lead.’
‘Armenians?’ said I, and he nodded: ‘Yes. Some came overland from Lhasa, where a large Armenian community has existed since late Roman times. Some came by sea, through Persia and Hindusthan. By the fourteenth century there were hundreds