The Krishna Key

The Krishna Key is Ashwin Sanghi's third novel, published in 2012, and it belongs to the school of Indian thriller writing that treats mythology as an unsolved case. Its protagonist, Professor Ravi Mohan Saini, teaches history and has just been named the chief suspect in the murder of Anil Varshney, a friend since childhood who had recently deciphered the script on the seals of the Indus Valley.

To prove his innocence, Saini retraces the material his friend was working on: four fragments of a seal held by families who claim descent from an ancient tribe, references scattered through scripture, and a treasure connected with Krishna said to include the Syamantaka gem, an object alchemists knew as the philosopher's stone. Meanwhile a serial killer named Taarak Vakil is working from a list of his own.

Sanghi sets the chase among ruins and temples and interrupts it twice to tell another story, so the narrative alternates with an account of Krishna's life and with the history that followed the Mahabharata war. The seal, the gem and the descent of the Yadavas are presented as a puzzle whose pieces were separated centuries ago, and every answer Saini finds puts somebody else in danger. He has said that he wanted to write about the epic without retelling it, and the result asks the reader to treat scripture as evidence while keeping the pace of a thriller.