and giant buds formed on the fuzzy stalks of snow lotuses.
But he paid little attention to the flowers: he was thinking only of how tomorrow he would take his sheep closer to the foothills now that the grass was lush and green and the danger of avalanche had passed. The noise had startled the sheep, and cleared the last vestiges of his dream from his mind, but his agitation remained, like a dark cloud on the horizon. But then his dream came back to him clearly, and he saw the story that had played out on this very land. For thousands of years, bards had told the tale, on the grassland and in farming villages. He himself had heard it many times, the story of a hero, King Gesar, but from poor storytellers who could remember only fragments. Now, as he revisited his dream, he realised that he had seen the beginning of the story.
Silence reigned, yet he could hear thunderclaps in the mountains. He shuddered, as if struck by lightning, and sweat poured from his body. What power had let him witness the opening scenes that had eluded so many? Without knowing the beginning, others could not tell the whole story – the beginning, the middle and the end.
The shepherd’s uncle was one of those bards. He was a farmer in a village two hundred li from the shepherd’s home, and in his spare time, he carved sutra printing blocks from pear wood. He would sit in the lotus position under the shade of a plum tree in the middle of the yard and send wood shavings curling down between his fingers. Lines were etched ever more deeply into his face. Sometimes he would sip strong drink and sing fragments of King Gesar’s tale. His song had no beginning or end, for he knew only how to describe the hero’s mount, the weapons he wielded, the warlike helmet he wore and the powerful magic that enabled him to kill people like flies.
‘What happens next?’ the shepherd had asked his uncle many times.
‘That is all my master told me.’
‘Who taught your master?’
‘No one. He saw it in a dream. He was sick with a high fever, and babbling when he dreamed it.’
‘Could he not have dreamed the rest?’
‘Jigmed, my dear nephew, did you come all this way, nearly crippling the little donkey, only to ask me foolish questions?’
Jigmed just smiled.
In the courtyard of the farming village, with its several plum trees, he watched as his uncle placed a length of pear wood on his knees and began to carve words, reciting as he worked. Jigmed had not wanted to stay inside with his cousins. The younger one, who went to school, had told him that the gamy odour he’d brought with him from the fields was offensive. He was puzzled: he did not smell bad when he was on the pasture, but in this hot village he reeked of sheep and cows.
‘Don’t worry about the smell, Jigmed. It will be gone in a few days,’ his uncle said.
‘I want to go home.’
‘You must be disappointed by my story. But that is my master’s fault. He said he had dreamed it all but could not remember much when he awoke. He told me he could not even retell half of what he had dreamed.’
Jigmed wanted to tell his uncle that he had had a similar dream, more than once: he, too, had always forgotten it upon waking, but this time, startled by the avalanche, he could recall it all. The hero had yet to appear, so he knew he had seen the beginning of a long tale. His need to know what happened next had impelled him to travel the two hundred li with a gift-laden donkey to visit his uncle.
‘Something is worrying you, Jigmed,’ Uncle said.
Jigmed held his tongue: he felt that he must keep the dream a secret, that it had been a divine revelation.
Uncle moved aside to give him half of the shade cast by the plum tree. ‘Come, sit here.’
He sat down and Uncle placed the wood on his knees. ‘Hold the knife like this. No, too straight, tilt it a little. Now carve . . . with more force. Good . . . very good. Keep going . . . more. See? Like this, and a syllable appears.’
Jigmed knew the syllable: it was the first on the list of combinations, one that even the unlettered knew. People said it was the origin of human consciousness, the mother of all poetry, like the first wind that blew over the world, the first drop of water from the melting river ice, a fable for all prophecies and, of course, the prophecy of all fables.
‘My dear nephew, with so many people in the world, the gods cannot take care of us all, and that is why you feel out of sorts. When that happens, think of this syllable.’
‘I don’t know how to carve.’
‘Then treat your heart as if it were the best pear wood. Imagine yourself holding a knife, carving this syllable one letter at a time. As you think about it and say it, only this syllable will flicker in your consciousness. It will bring you tranquillity.’
On his way home, Jigmed said to the donkey, ‘I’m thinking of the syllable.’
It was pronounced Om. When that sound is made, water wheels, windmills, spinning wheels and prayer wheels begin to whirl. And when everything is whirling, the world turns.
The donkey did not understand but it ambled along, with its head lowered and its eyes cast downward. There was a sharp bend in the road by a sparse grove of pine trees. Swaying its narrow hips, the donkey disappeared from Jigmed’s view as it made the turn. He raised his voice and spoke to two parrots perched on a wild cherry tree: ‘Think of the syllable.’
Startled, the birds fluttered up, clamouring, ‘Syllable! Syllable! Syllable!’ and flew away.
He quickened his steps and found his donkey waiting for him by the side of the road. It gave him a dispassionate look, then set off again, the bell on its neck jingling as it plodded ahead.
For a long time after that, Jigmed spoke to all manner of living things that appeared along the way, telling them, in a half-serious, half-mocking manner, of how he was focusing on the syllable – serious, because he hoped it would help him return to his dream world and not forget it upon waking, and mocking, to help him prepare for the inevitable disappointment. Deep down he hoped it would work magic.
He said it to a lizard sunning itself on a rock as they crossed a valley.
He said it to a marmot that held its front paws together and stood up on its hind legs in a mountain pasture, gazing into the distance.
He said it to a stag that seemed proud of its wide antlers.
But they all ignored him, or scurried off, as though fearful of his muttering.
He spent that night in a mountain cave, while his donkey grazed near the opening. Moonbeams flowed like water on the ground; in the distance they were like a mist. It felt like a night made for dreams. He recited the syllable before he fell asleep, but knew as soon as he awakened that the dream had not come.
As the road rose higher, the sky grew brighter. He had planned to spend the second night in a town, at a hotel, but there was no stable for his donkey. The manager led him out to the yard behind the building, where cars, large and small, were parked on the tarmac.
The manager appeared puzzled. ‘You seem to have travelled a long distance, but people usually take the bus. We have a bus stop in the town. I can show you how to get there.’
He shook his head. ‘There are no seats
