the Hindus who had been there for 450 years had become very rich from trade. They had “long tufts of hair on their clean-shaven pates”, which is what we call chotis. There was a fierce battle in 301 AD between the Christians and the Hindus. The Armenians were led by a prince of Angegh, the Indians by a prince called Demeter and a soldier priest called Artzan or Arjun. Artzan means statue in Armenian. Odzun, pronounced as Awjun, could be Arjun. The army of some 6000 Hindus was eventually defeated. During it some of the 5000 Armenian troops who were converted Hindus joined their former brethren and this prolonged the bloody conflict. Artzan was killed and so was Demeter, but not before he had killed a popular Armenian prince during the battle. Seeing so much blood shed, a truce to bury the dead was arranged. Zenob, a chronicler of that age, records that 1038 Hindus were buried. The Armenians built a strange monument with two obelisk-holding arches as a tribute to the bravery of both the adversaries. The Odzun church was influential among Armenians. From 717 to 728 AD, it was the seat of the Armenian Catholicos Yovhan Awjnec, whose statue stands in the town. He, however, shifted it to Echmiadzin near Yerevan – the headquarters to this day. The church is cavernous, spartan, and gloomy, especially in winter. There are graves of important and useful persons from history outside the church. Its grounds are strewn with ancient khatchkars or crosses hewn on stone slabs that also depict fragments of contemporary history. There is also a slab commemorating people from Odzun who fell fighting in WW II, with an etched outline of Stalin’s face decorating a small corner of it. The Odzun Church is large, built in the sixth century on a plateau dominated by a ridge that looks close enough to walk to but is actually across a narrow valley. It has been repaired and reconstructed after the depredations of the Arabs and the Persians from the Middle Ages till the seventeenth century. It is in pink felsite stone, with which most of the buildings in Armenia appear to be made. Like most churches of this period, the Odzun church does not have windows at waist level. Its four windows are narrow slats high up near the dome and let in light only just before sunset or after sunrise.