Chola Adventure , livre ebook

Penguin Books Ltd - Anu Kumar

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

78 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

990 CE, Tanjore, India Twelve-year-old Raji is growing up during the reign of Rajaraja Chola in south India. Raji is a girl of spirit---brave, bright and bold. She is also a dancer, a warrior and a sculptor who models kingdoms in stone. Raji, however is not happy: she misses her family. Her mother is in exile and her father has left home in grief. On a dark night as a storm rages, Raji rescues a Chinese sailor at sea. This sets off a chain of events with unforeseen consequences. A Shiva statue goes missing, a prince disappears and there is a murder inside a temple. As Raji and her friends, the prince Rajendra Chola and his cousin, Ananta, try to help the Chinese mariner, they realize that he may have some of the answers Raji has been looking for. Will the Criminals be brought to justice? Will Raji's family be reunited once again? Will peace be restored to the mighty Chola Kingdom?

Sujets

Children's

Informations

Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	15 juin 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184756630
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

ANU KUMAR

Girls of India A Chola Adventure

Illustrated by Hemant Kumar

PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Map
Prologue
1 A Dancer Exiled
2 The Two Boys
3 A Chinese Sailor
4 The Missing Prince
5 The Nataraja
6 Chasing Suspicions
7 Liu s Secret
8 The Physician Who Went Away
9 The Unfortunate Astrologer
10 Inside the Royal Tank
11 A Jeweller from Afar
12 Grand Voyages
13 City in the Sea
Epilogue
The Great Cholas of South India
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PUFFIN BOOKS
A CHOLA ADVENTURE
Anu Kumar lives in Singapore and has written historical fiction for both older and younger readers. She studied at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University and at the XLRI School of Business, Jamshedpur. Her books for children include the Atisa and the Seven Wonders (2008), Atisa and his Time Machine: Adventures with Hiuen Tsang (2010), and In the Country of Gold-digging Ants (2009) all published by Puffin. She was awarded the Commonwealth Prize for her stories in 2004 and 2010. She loves writing stories set back in time and through them wants to make children believe that history can be interesting, have loads of possibilities and be fun too.
Other Books in the Girls of India Series
A Harappan Adventure by Sunila Gupte
A Mauryan Adventure by Subhadra Sen Gupta

Prologue
For Raji, the nightmare always began the same way.
It was the season of unending dull heat. A time when the weather was still and birds dropped from the sky in exhaustion. Some flew listlessly towards the shore, over the rocks where only a few days ago, Raji had found a barn swallow dead. These were migratory birds, making the journey across the seas from the north and east every winter. She remembered even in her dream how the heat had proved too much for one swallow and he had simply crashed down from the skies. He had a tuft of white hair on his forehead and a long black tail. A tired feather had brushed against her cheek as she held the bird close and she decided to carry him to Ananta, the king s nephew. Every injured bird was always brought to him and he nursed them back to health. He had a way with them.
But as often happened in dreams, the heat turned to rain too quickly, and in moments the slow, gentle drizzle became something more terrifying. A storm that howled, shrieked, thumped on the roof and banged on the door, demanding to be let in.
Every time the sound dimmed, Raji heard a woman s voice begging to be rescued. But the waters washed over her small boat, the grey swirling waves which were carrying her farther and farther away, and soon Raji couldn t see a thing. The wall of water, dark blue, white, grey and then black, rose higher and higher. This was what the fishermen feared the most, the waves rising fast, turning into a raging tsunami. The kind of natural disaster their village of Nagapattinam was familiar with, in its history. Everyone knew the stories that came from long ago of huge waves rising from the sea, rushing in with a terrifying roar and destroying everything within reach. It could happen again. With that frightening thought, Raji woke up.
1
A Dancer Exiled
The nightmare was different on other nights but there was always the sea in it. The sea that stretched beyond their village. On some nights there was only the woman crying. A low piteous sobbing that nothing could ever console or comfort. And one night, in the middle of the nightmare, Raji awoke to the sound of hammer beating on stone. In that state of half-awakening she knew at once that her father was finally back. The door to the outhouse was open, and a man was working on a piece of stone, while a fire sizzled beside him. It had to be her father though she remembered him only vaguely; he had been gone such a long time ago.
This hasn t been lit for a while.
He looked at her, and Raji hoped she didn t look so lost. She didn t want her father to see how unhappy she had been.
He looked away and said in a low voice, You have grown.
So have you, she replied, much older.
He smiled, and his tired brown eyes crinkled up. That was not the way Raji had imagined him.
She walked to the corner and rummaged among things there. Her clay colouring pots, her brushes, and the toy mud figurines she made. At last she found what she was looking for. A scroll, carefully folded and placed at the far end, so that it would remain unspoiled and she could find it easily. Still it had taken her time to locate it and she smiled wryly at her overcaution.
This is how you looked. Aji told me, and I made it.
You missed the rainfall last season-the water overflowed and rushed over the canals, she went on, and the men didn t go out to sea for days.
I missed the old king s death too, he said.
Already there had been four rice crops on the delta and two seasons when the merchants had left for lands across the sea. There was a new headman assisted by a council formed by village elders, for the new king, Rajaraja, wanted to reach out to every small village of his kingdom. He had even provided funds to Nagapattinam for building a new tank and had encouraged the villagers to rebuild the dykes in order to keep the seawaters at bay.
Her father grimaced, as if he had somehow missed all this, and Raji told herself she must save her questions for later, when he was more rested.
Within days of his return, he started working again, in the manner just like Aji, her grandmother, had predicted. Her father, one of the kingdom s best sculptors couldn t stay away long from creating something new, something that would make the world even more beautiful. Now his moves were fast and insistent, as if he had missed the sound of the chisel, as if he was trying very hard to forget something.
Tuk tuk, tuk
Why did Father go away? she had asked Aji often.
She had been a child of five when she had first put forward this question before Aji, and several times later. Her grandmother s reply rarely varied, There are some things you want to run away from, and some things bring you back, no matter how far you run. He will come back, you wait and see.
Still, Raji couldn t bring herself to ask her father why he had gone away, to find out his version of it. She knew the other accounts that their neighbours had always told her. Her mother had been sent away first; exiled for attempting to murder a prince. Then her father, too, had gone away leaving everything behind. He was completely besotted with that woman , said her neighbours, for that was how they now referred to Menaka. Neighbours, who she knew were well-intentioned, but their explanations could be cruel too.
Yet Raji had always believed her father would return, and now he had.
Every morning was different now. The sound of her father working, chisel hitting stone, comforted Raji as she lay still, those few moments before the sun came in, and the long black palm-leaf shadows outside lengthened and moved towards her, prodding her fully awake. The hammering mingled with the other sounds of her morning. Aji jingling a small bell as she said her prayers, her voice breaking out in a hymn that she sang in her old, cracked voice. The sea was a low rumble, and there was the sound of cowbells too. The boys were taking the cattle out to graze in the pastures outside. She heard the sweep of brooms, the sound of water being poured on the streets and she waited for the smell of damp earth to reach her. Every other house would be waking up now, in rhythm to the sounds of the temple bells. The Shiva temple lay at the very heart of the village, and all houses were built in the square around it.
Sunlight came in through the slatted windows, with its blinds made of coir, and Raji heard the crackle of firewood and knew she was late. She had to help Aji in every way she could, now that her grandmother was getting old.
At the time of his going away, her father Keshavan had been one of the most sought-after sculptors in the Chola kingdom. It was rumoured that the Chalukyas on the other side of the Krishna River wanted to invade Thanjavur simply because of him. Across the seas, the king of Java had also expressly asked for Keshavan. The statues he made, it was said, were as magnificent as the famed Pallava statues of Mahabalipuram, and those other statues now part of the lost Pallava city, which had long been claimed by the sea. A storm terrifying in its force that had happened so long ago that even Aji had only heard about it when she was a little girl.
It was a time when things should have gone right for your father and mother, said Aji whenever she recounted the incident of Raji s mother going away. However tragedy had struck, a prince was almost fatally poisoned and Raji s mother, Menaka, was blamed for it all. It was the magic she created with her dance that was supposed to have poisoned the prince. Everyone soon believed that. Menaka had once been the kingdom s most famous dancer, and people from other realms came in secret to watch her perform. Then on one terrible day, the prince Madurantaka had watched her perform, mesmerized like everyone else in the audience, and soon he had collapsed right in the special enclosure where he sat with the other royal guests. In moments he had rolled off the cushions, his face crimson and purple, and lay writhing on the floor. It was his uncle, who in open court, had accused the dancer Menaka of hypnotizing him. Menaka had been condemned and sent away to her death.
Madurantaka was the son of King Uttama Chola, but the throne had been promised to the king s nephew, the very popular Rajaraja. He was now in line to the throne after the mysterious death of his older brother, Aditya Karikala. Everyone said the king, the queen, and Prince Madurantaka resented this intended ascension and wanted to do everything in their power to stop Rajaraja from becoming king.
Madurantaka s uncle, Veeramani, the queen s brother and a chieftain from the Malabar region, was the first to