The Fountains of Paradise

The attribution was now lost beyond trace. At least a dozen kings might have inscribed those haughty lines; some had reigned for years, some only for weeks, and few indeed had died peacefully in their beds. No-one would ever know if the king who felt it needless to give his name was Mahatissa II, or Bhatikabhaya, or Vijayakumara III, or Gajabahukagamani, or Candamukhasiva, or Moggallana I, or Kittisena, or Sirisamghabodhi… or some other monarch not even recorded in the long and tangled history of Taprobane.

The attendant operating the little elevator was astonished to see his distinguished visitor, and greeted Rajasinghe deferentially. As the cage slowly ascended the full fifteen metres, he remembered how he would once have spurned it for the spiral stairway, up which Dravindra and Jaya were bounding even now in the thoughtless exuberance of youth.

The elevator clicked to a halt, and he stepped on to the small steel platform built out from the face of the cliff. Below and behind were a hundred metres of empty space, but the strong wire mesh gave ample security; not even the most determined suicide could escape from the cage – large enough to hold a dozen people – clinging to the underside of the eternally breaking wave of stone.

Here in this accidental indentation, where the rock-face formed a shallow cave and so protected them from the elements, were the survivors of the king's heavenly court. Rajasinghe greeted them silently, then sank gratefully into the chair that was offered by the official guide.

“I would like,” he said quietly, “to be left alone for ten minutes. Jaya – Dravindra – see if you can head off the tourists.”

His companions looked at him doubtfully; so did the guide, who was supposed never to leave the frescoes unguarded. But, as usual, Ambassador Rajasinghe had his way, without even raising his voice.

“Ayu bowan,” he greeted the silent figures, when he was alone at last. “I'm sorry to have neglected you for so long.”

He waited politely for an answer, but they paid no more attention to him than to all their other admirers for the last twenty centuries. Rajasinghe was not discouraged; he was used to their indifference. Indeed, it added to their charm.

“I have a problem, my dears,” he continued. “You have watched all the invaders of Taprobane come and go, since Kalidasa's time. You have seen the jungle flow like a tide around Yakkagala, and then retreat before the axe and the plough. But nothing has really changed in all those years. Nature has been kind to little Taprobane, and so has History; it has left her alone.”

"Now the centuries of quiet may be drawing to a close. Our land may become the centre of the world of many worlds. The great mountain you have watched so long, there in the south, may be the key to the universe. If that is so, the Taprobane we knew and loved will cease to exist.

“Perhaps there is not much that I can do but I have some power to help, or to hinder. I still have many friends; if I wish, I can delay this dream – or nightmare – at least beyond my lifetime. Should I do so? Or should I give aid to this man, whatever his real motives may be?”

He turned to his favourite – the only one who did not avert her eyes when he gazed upon her. All the other maidens stared into the distance, or examined the flowers in their hands; but the one he had loved since his youth seemed, from a certain angle, to catch his glance.

“Ah, Karuna! It's not fair to ask you such questions. For what could you possibly know of the real worlds beyond the sky, or of men's need to reach them? Even though you were once a goddess, Kalidasa's Heaven was only an illusion. Well, whatever strange futures you may see, I shall not share them. We have known each other a long time – by my standards, if not by yours. While I can, I shall watch you from the villa; but I do not think that we shall meet again. Farewell – and thank you, beautiful ones, for all the pleasure you have brought me down the years. Give my greetings to those who come after me.”

Yet as he descended the spiral stairs – ignoring the elevator – Rajasinghe did not feel at all in a valedictory mood. On the contrary, it seemed to him that he had shed quite a few of his years (and, after all, seventy-two was not really old). He could tell that Dravindra and Jaya had noticed the spring in his step, by the way their faces lit up.

Perhaps his retirement had been getting a little dull. Perhaps both he and Taprobane needed a breath of fresh air to blow away the cobwebs – just as the monsoon brought renewed life after the months of torpid, heavy skies.

Whether Morgan succeeded or not, his was an enterprise to fire the imagination and stir the soul. Kalidasa would have envied – and approved.

II – THE TEMPLE

While the different religions wrangle with one another as to which of them is in possession of the truth, in our view the truth of religion may be altogether disregarded… If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilised individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.

Freud: New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1932).

Of course man made God in his own image; but what was the alternative? Just as a real understanding of geology was impossible until we were able to study other worlds beside Earth, so a valid theology must await contact with extra-terrestrial intelligences. There can be no such subject as comparative religion, as long as we study only the religions of man.

El Hadj Mohammed ben Selim, Professor of Comparative Religion: Inaugural Address, Brigham Young University, 1998.

We must await, not without anxiety, the answers to the following questions; (a) What, if any, are the religious concepts of entities with zero, one, two, or more than two 'parents' (b) is religious belief found only among organisms that have close contact with their direct progenitors during their formative years?

If we find that religion occurs exclusively among intelligent analogs of apes, dolphins, elephants, dogs, etc., but not among extra-terrestrial computers, termites, fish, turtles or social amoebae, we may have to draw some painful conclusions .. Perhaps both love and religion can arise only among mammals, and for much the same reasons. This is also suggested by a study of their pathologies; anyone who doubts the co

(Ibid.)

Dr. Charles Willis' notorious remark (Hawaii, 5970) that “Religion is a by-product of malnutrition” is not, in itself, much more helpful than Gregory Bateson's somewhat indelicate one-syllable refutation. What Dr. Willis apparently meant was (i) the hallucinations caused by voluntary or involuntary starvation are readily interpreted as religious visions (2) hunger in this life encourages belief in a compensatory afterlife, as a – perhaps essential – psychological survival mechanism…

It is indeed one of the ironies of fate that research into the so-called consciousness-expanding drugs proved that they did exactly the opposite, by leading to the detection of the naturally occurring “apothetic” chemicals in the brain. The discovery that the most devout adherent of any faith could be converted to any other by a judicious dose of 2-4-7 ortho-para-theosamine was, perhaps, the most devastating blow ever received by religion.

Until, of course, the advent of Starglider.

R. Gabor: The Pharmacological Basis of Religion (Miskatonic University Press, 2069).