#Vasishtha

“The first Indian battle with a name, a river and a victor was won — so the victors insisted — by their chaplain's poetry; and the same chaplain left behind verses confessing that he did not know what he had done wrong, or whether his god still loved him. Public victory and private anguish, in one career, thirty-four centuries ago.”

“Words as decisive weapons. His patrons credited his prayers — not their spears — with winning the earliest battle in Indian history we can name; and in his family's book India's oldest personal voice speaks, and it is anxious: a poet pleading with his god to tell him what he did wrong.”