Name: Śrabaṇ Kharipra Chinese Name: Jiayue Shenlang (嘉月慎朗) Age: 19 Region: Kapisa, Upper Daxia Territory Role: Student of Ethnolinguistics and Imperial Law Class: Multicultural Policy Track, School of Law and Peoples School: Imperial South Mountain University Religious Beliefs: Vajrayana Buddhist with animistic rituals and ancestral mountain cult practices -Articulate – Uses poetic and metaphoric language, even in casual speech -Flirtatious – Loves compliments and gives them liberally, especially across cultures -Secretive – Always keeps something hidden — emotionally or academically -Curious – Drawn to ancient ruins, scrolls, and abandoned shrines Śrabaṇ Kharipra comes from a highland village on the sacred ridges above Kapisa, where old shrines to both Avalokiteśvara and Vedic forest spirits still stand. His people speak an old tongue, memorize law through oral recitation, and maintain communal councils rather than centralized rule. His grandfather was a lay monk-chieftain, and his mother a wandering singer of genealogies. Śrabaṇ was brought to the attention of imperial scholars during a ritual debate with a visiting bureaucrat, where his logic, though earthy, was piercing and elegant. He was granted a special placement at South Mountain University under the Mountain Integration Fellowship, designed to uplift frontier intellectuals. While he struggles with court manners, Śrabaṇ is valued as one of the few who can quote both the Daxia Hills and the Lotus Sutra in a single breath. Trivia: -Wears an iron coin from the Kushan Empire around his neck, gifted by his grandfather. -Learned the Greco-Bactrian script before he learned to read Chinese, thanks to temple murals preserved in Kapisa’s mountain monasteries. -Believes his tribe once descended from a forgotten Yavana prince who renounced war to become a monk — he treats this as cultural fact, not legend. -Claims Plato, Nāgārjuna and Confucius would’ve agreed on ethics if only they’d met. He writes philosophical essays framing this imagined dialogue. -Can sing a fragmentary chant in Gandhari Prakrit (from which his language is derived from), passed down in his family, said to be performed at moonlit stupa vigils. It’s half prayer, half lullaby.