BHIC-112

HISTORY OF INDIA-VII
(c. 1605-1750)

School of Social Sciences

Indira Gandhi National Open University
New Delhi
EXPERT COMMITTEE
Prof. Swaraj Basu Prof. Najaf Haider
Director Centre for Historical Studies
School of Social Sciences School of Social Sciences
IGNOU, New Delhi Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi
Prof. Pius Malekandathil
Centre for Historical Studies Prof. Abha Singh
School of Social Sciences Faculty of History
School of Social Sciences
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
IGNOU,
Prof. R.P. Bahuguna New Delhi
Department of History and Culture
Prof. A.R. Khan (Convener)
Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi
Faculty of History
Prof. Farhat Hasan School of Social Sciences
Department of History IGNOU
University of Delhi, Delhi New Delhi

Dr. Tanuja Kothiyal Dr. Mayank Kumar

School of Liberal Studies Department of History
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Satyawati College (Eve)
Delhi University of Delhi, Delhi

COURSE COORDINATOR
Dr. Mayank Kumar

COURSE TEAM
Prof. Abha Singh Dr. Mayank Kumar

COURSE PREPARATION TEAM

Unit No. Course Writer Unit No. Course Writer

1 Dr. Prateek 2 Dr. Pankaj Jha

Motilal Nehru College Lady Shri Ram College
University of Delhi University of Delhi
Delhi Delhi

3 Dr. Mayank Kumar 4 Prof. Syed Inayet Ali Zaidi

School of Social Sciences Department of History and Culture
Indira Gandhi National Open University Jamia Milia Islamia
New Delhi New Delhi

5 Dr. Yogesh Snehi 6 Prof. Surendra Gopal

School of Liberal Studies Department of History
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Patna University
Delhi Patna

7 Dr. Divya Sethi 8 Dr. Sohinee Basak

Museum-Sector Skilled Professional Independent Researcher
Ministry of Culture (MOC) New Delhi
New Delhi

9 Prof. A.R. Khan 10 Prof. S.M. Azizuddin Husain

School of Social Sciences Department of History and Culture
Indira Gandhi National Open University Jamia Milia Islamia
New Delhi New Delhi and
Dr. Mayank Kumar
School of Social Sciences
Indira Gandhi National Open University
New Delhi
Unit No. Course Writer Unit No. Course Writer

11 Prof. R P Bahuguna 12 Dr. Mayank Kumar

Department of History and Culture School of Social Sciences
Jamia Milia Islamia, Indira Gandhi National Open University
New Delhi New Delhi

13 Prof. Ravindra Kumar 14 Prof. Ravindra Kumar

School of Social Sciences School of Social Sciences
Indira Gandhi National Open University Indira Gandhi National Open University
New Delhi. New Delhi.

15 Dr. Shailka Mishra 16 Dr. Prasun Chatterjee

Director Deputy Head of Publications
Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Primus Book
Indian Art Delhi
Hyderabad

17 Dr. Anubhuti Maurya 18 Prof. Seema Alavi

School of Humanities and Social Department of History
Sciences Delhi University
Shiv Nadar University Delhi, and
Greater Noida, UP Dr. Mayank Kumar
School of Social Sciences
Indira Gandhi National Open University
New Delhi

CONTENT, FORMAT AND LANGUAGE EDITING : Dr. Mayank Kumar

Cover Page Images Courtesy

Cover page is collage of the followings: A page of Bhagvat Purana, 18th century manuscript of Panchtantra
and Muhammad Juki’s Shahnamah
Sources are in order of appearance:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rajasthan_manuscript_page_of_ Bhagavata_ Purana.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:18th_century_Panchatantra_ manuscript_page,_The_ Birds_
Try_to_Beat_Down_the_Ocean.jpg
Muhammad Juki’s Shahnamah (A Prince’s Manuscript Unbound, Asia Society Exhibition Feb-9 May-1, 2011.
http://sites.asiasociety.org/bookofkings/a-closer-look/mughal-emperors/

PRINT PRODUCTION COVER DESIGN

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March, 2022
 Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2021
ISBN : 978-93-5568-251-2
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 Course Contents
Pages

COURSE INTRODUCTION 7
THEME 1 SOURCES AND LITERARY TRADITIONS 9
Unit 1 Persian Histories and Memoirs 11
Unit 2 Sanskrit Kavya Literature, Regional Sources and Travelogues 23

THEME 2 POLITICAL PROCESSES 41

Unit 3 Political Developments in the Deccan and the Rise of 43
the Marathas
Unit 4 The Rajputs: Conflicts and Collaborations 58
Unit 5 Rise of Sikh Power 74

THEME 3 PRODUCTION AND COMMERCIAL PRACTICES 87

Unit 6 Craft Production, Manufacture and Artisanal Groups 89
Unit 7 Inland Commerce 101
Unit 8 Indian Ocean Trade Network 115
Unit 9 Trading Communities and Commercial Practices 129

THEME 4 STATE, SOCIETY AND RELIGION 139

Unit 10 Religious Ideas and Movements-I 141
Unit 11 Religious Ideas and Movements-II 149
Unit 12 State, Religion and Society 164

THEME 5 VISUAL CULTURE 175

Unit 13 Architecture 177
Unit 14 Paintings and Fine Arts 207
Unit 15 Paintings: Diverse Traditions 221

THEME 6 SOCIETY AND CULTURE 251

Unit 16 Courtly Culture 253
Unit 17 Women and Gender 263

THEME 7 THE 18TH CENTURY 275

Unit 18 Mughal Decline and Disintegration 277
 Guidelines for Study of the Course
In this Course we have followed a uniform pattern for presenting the learning
material. This starts with an introduction to the Course underlining the significant
developments in chronological order and covers 7 major themes with coverage of
18 sub-themes or Units. For the convenience of study, all the Units have been
presented with a uniform structure. Objectives as the first section of the Unit have
been included to help you find what are you expected to learn from the study of the
Unit. Please go through these objectives carefully and keep reflecting and checking
them after studying a few sections of the Unit. Introduction of the Unit introduces
you to the subject area covered and guides you to the way subject matter is
presented. These are followed by the main subject area discussed through sections
and sub-sections for ease of comprehension. In between the text, some self-check
exercises have been provided. We advise you to attempt these as and when you
reach them. These will help you assess your study and test your comprehension of
the subject studied. Compare your answers with the answer guidelines provided
after the summary. The keywords and unfamiliar terms have been provided at the
end of Unit, which have been marked in bold in the text. At the end of Unit under
Suggested Readings we have also provided a list of books and references. These
include sources and books which are useful or have been consulted for developing
the material for the concerned Unit. You should try to study them. We have also
included instructional videos for an enhanced understanding by the students. Please
try to watch these videos, they will help you in understanding and learning the
subject matter in an all-inclusive manner.
COURSE INTRODUCTION
The focus of the present Course is the seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century
developments. This is a period of transition in multiple manners; Mughal Empire reached
to its zenith but the decline can also be located during this period. This period is very
rich in historical documentation. Along with variety of writings; court chronicles,
Akhbarat, Akhlaq literature, Tazkiras, etc. in Persian, there is lot of historical material
available in vernacular literature. Not to forget are the Factory records maintained by
European Trading Companies, travelogues and numerous kinds of correspondences.
Regional archives; Rajasthan State Archives, Bikaner, Andhara Pradesh State Archives,
Hyderabad, Raza library Rampur, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune have
provided a very diverse corpus of administrative documents for the seventeenth century
and onwards.
Such a diverse body of documentation has resulted in a very rich historiography dealing
with different dimensions of economy, society, polity, ecology, culture, religions, sects,
etc. Along with works on the Mughal Empire we have very good variety of historical
works on different regions exploring newer dimensions of Indian Society. Nuances of
social relations, cultural practices, literary traditions, dimensions of legitimacy, regional
resurgence, politics of patronage, significance of climate and ecological context have
received fairly good amount of attention of the historians. Fascinating and absorbing
details are available pertaining to the courtly culture, women and gender.
Indian subcontinent became part of global trade network with ever increasing presence
and domination of European trading companies. While the first part of the seventeenth
century was relatively the period of tranquility, the second half of the century and the
turn of the century is the saga of constant warfare and conflicts – the Rajputs, Jats,
Marathas and the Sikhs. It takes into account various regional powers and their
interactions with the Mughals. Discussion on trade and commerce with its Oceanic
networks, culture and society provides a new perspective for understanding the history
of this period. The Course ends with an analysis of the decline of the Mughal Empire
that led to the formation of a number of independent regional states in the eighteenth
century.
This course thus makes an attempt to capture the rich history of the period and offer
you a comprehensive insights to the functioning of society, economy, polity, etc. along
with an examination of the growing contestation over natural resources. The question
of defining this period as Early Modern and the great divergence debate have also
been touched upon to make you familiar with the issues involved in the debate.
Theme 1 primarily deals with literary traditions. It focuses on Persian, vernacular
literary traditions, and travelogue, and their significance as important source material to
understand the historical developments of the period.
Theme 2 begins with political conditions of India at the beginning of seventeenth century
and examines the rise of Marathas, and later on Sikhs. This section also brings out the
nature of Mughal – Rajput relations, which can be termed as Conflicts and
Collaborations.
Theme 3 examines the artisanal production systems and commercial practices. The
complexity of Indian trade and commerce and its negotiations with the European trading
companies have been addressed under this theme. Growing significance of Indian Ocean
in the global trade networks where varieties of Indian products were in great demand
further strengthened artisanal production system in India. Role and significance of Trading
communities and trading practices have also been elaborated.
Theme 4 Seventeenth century has been identified with several significant changes
especially with respect to character of state, relationships between state and religion,
religious ideas, enhanced documentation, greater access to knowledge, intense
circulation of ideas, greater penetration of money economy, etc. which have global
resonance. Significance of Millenium and mahdi in Islam and Islamic thoughts resonated
in the religious ideas and movements. Rediscovery of Krishna-Bhakti Sites in the Braj
Region in the sixteenth century gradually led to contesting claims by different
Sampradayas. Efforts to secure political patronage and spread their own form of
Vaishnav traditions resulted in conflicts among Sampradayas and its history has been
discussed.
Theme 5 broadly focuses on the Visual culture. Rulers, be it Mughals or Rajputs or
Marathas were aware of the symbolic power of monuments. Mughals are credited
with the construction of several important monuments; few of them are now on the
UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Temple construction also received patronage
during this period along with Sarais and bridges. Fortunately, for this period we have a
very good number of paintings, usually available in manuscripts. Mughals and nobility
provide patronage to artists, thus we have very flourishing art of painting. Traditions of
painting flourished further with regional variations; Pahari, Kishangarh, Deccan, etc.
These diverse traditions have been examined under the theme; Visual Culture.
Theme 6 elaborates the nuances of Courtly culture, which have evolved a very elaborate
etiquettes and cultural practices. Mirza and associated notions of manliness were greatly
cherished and insisted upon in the courtly etiquettes. Gender relations have been
examined to highlight the layers of subjugation as well as assertions.
Theme 7 deals with the Mughal decline in the 18th century and elaborates upon different
theories proposed to explain the plausible cause of the Mughal decline. This unit also
acquaints you with the ongoing debate on the issue of Great Divergence Debate.
Our emphasis in developing the Courses has always been on continuity and changes.
Therefore, the present Course BHIC 112 has to be studied in unison with our Course
BHIC 109. One cannot study the seventeenth and eighteenth century (BHIC 112) in
isolation, without understanding the earlier developments in the sixteenth century (BHIC
109). As stated in the Course Introduction of by, there are some themes which were
left to be addressed under this Course. Therefore, units addressing such themes have
taken care of developments in the sixteenth century as well.
 Theme 1
Sources and Literary Traditions
Sources and Literary
Traditions

Courtesy : Choupasini Shodh Sansthan, Jodhpur

10
 Persian Histories and
UNIT 1 PERSIAN HISTORIES AND Memoirs

MEMOIRS*
Structure

1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Expanding Domain of Persian
1.2.1 Training in Persian
1.2.2 Writings of Scribes
1.3 Memoirs
1.3.1 Jahangirnama
1.3.2 Padshahnama
1.4 Namah Traditions
1.5 Dabistan-i Mazahib
1.6 Dictionaries
1.7 Spread Much Beyond Mughal Court
1.7.1 Regional Imitations
1.8 Persian and Vernaculars
1.8.1 Emergence of Urdu
1.8.2 Dobhasi
1.9 Let Us Sum Up
1.10 Key Words
1.11 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

1.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit, you will:
• be acquaint with some of the representative Persian texts written during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;
• know the evolution of Persian scribal class in Mughal India;
• understand the growth of Persian as a language of courts as well as it’s penetration
in the hinterland; and
• appreciate the impacts of Persian language on Indian vernacular languages.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are marked by further development of Persian
language in India by leaps and bounds. The process that had gained momentum during
Emperor Akbar’s reign showed more rigour during the next two centuries due to the

*
Dr. Prateek, Motilal Nehru College, Delhi University, Delhi 11
Sources and Literary all-encompassing pervasion of the Persian language in the spheres of adab, akhlaq,
Traditions
literature and courtly manners. The development of Persian in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries can be understood by three significant processes happening
simultaneously. First, the political might of the Mughal Empire had established itself
firmly leading to the intensification of state formation which needed an elaborate
administrative setup to manage the juggernaut of the empire. Persian, being the official
language of the Mughal Empire saw tremendous rise in production of all kinds of
administrative documents, records and communications written primarily in Persian
language. Secondly, Mughal court was the dissemination centre of high culture
inculcating moral values, code of conduct, courtly manners and set an ideal example to
be followed and imitated by the political elites of India. Thus, Persian became the
language of the power, high culture and refinement. The Persian adab (refined conduct)
and akhlaq (ethics) literature thus produced, helped the Mughals in their political
endeavour to put them at the centre in India and in the larger Persianate world as well.
The proliferation of Persian literary production from all across the regions of India was
a defining feature of this period. Thirdly, the Persian exerted great influence on the
various local cultures and vernacular languages of India by introducing the Persian
sensibilities, imagery, poetic forms and genres. Persian interacted with the vernacular
languages and dialects with the help of large number of polyglots, native poets,
bureaucrats and literati who could bring out the cultural exchanges between different
regional languages. The vibrant eighteenth century saw the rise of Rekhta due to this
interaction which culminated in the development of a full-fledged language of Urdu
which virtually replaced it during the later Mughals’ period.
Persian, also known as ‘Farsi,’ had been the literary language in several premodern
societies and served as the lingua-franca in the non-Arab Islamic world. It was a
language that connected India to the wider Central Asia and Middle East areas. It
became a vehicle of constituting the knowledge about India in the Persophone world.
India attracted the talents from across the world especially the Persian speaking Islamic
world by constituting India’s image as a fabled land of wealth and luxury. Marshal
Hodgson had coined the term Persianate in his book, The Venture of Islam: The
Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods, wherein he qualifies that Persian “was to
form the chief model for the rise of still other languages to the literary level… Most of
the local languages of high culture that were later used by Muslims likewise depended
upon Persian wholly or in part for their literary inspiration. We may call these cultural
traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, ‘Persianate’ by extension”.
This concept of Persianate is now widely used by scholars to study the history and
literature of the non-Arabic Muslim world generally. Highlighting the important position
enjoyed by the rulers of Indian subcontinent, in the larger political culture of the Middle-
Eastern region and Central Asian region, Richard M. Eaton has defined the period
between 1000-1765 CE as Persianate Age in Indian history. However, it is important
to understand the difference between Iranian and Persian. Persian denotes the both
the culture of Iran and also the semantic world of ‘Farsi,’ so being Persian does not
necessarily mean Iranian. The examples from the Indian subcontinent clarifies this
difference further; Amir Khusrau was a Persian poet who was not Iranian, but an
Indian who wrote in Persian language. Persian literature was not exclusive to Iran
alone but had currency in large part of Asia. Sunil Sharma, in his book Mughal Arcadia:
Persian Literature in an Indian Court, defines Indo-Persian literature as “the body
of Persian literature that was produced in and consciously crafted as belonging to the
subcontinent, whether the author was of Indian or Iranian origin”. The Indo-Persian
12
literature had made a distinctive space and identity for itself in the Persianate world Persian Histories and
Memoirs
with its distinctive style known as Sabk-i Hindi and Istemal-i Hindi.

1.2 EXPANDING DOMAIN OF PERSIAN

There were many genres of Persian prevalent in India such as Tarikh (history), memoirs,
Malfuzat (Sufi instructional literature), Tazkirah (biographical compendium), Nasihat-
namah (advice literature), Waqa’i (reports of the proceedings at the court), Akhbarat
(news reports), Dastur al-Amal (revenue manuals), Insha (composition of state
documents and letters), manaqib (panegyric accounts), Farhang (lexicography) Adab
(didactic texts), Akhlaq (ethics) etc. among many others. The poems had masnawi
(long versified narrative), ghazal (love poems) and qasida (ode) as major genres of
Persian.
The Persian language got a boost in India by Akbar’s decision to adopt it as the official
language of administration at all levels. This change over was brought about by the
well-known Iranian noble Fathullah Shirazi who helped the Mughals to streamline the
revenue system and other administrative offices. It were the Iranian clerks
(nawisindagan) and mutsaddis who held important positions in the Mughal
administrative system due to their efficiency in the Persian language and accounts. But
soon due to the rise in tradition of record keeping and written communication, a class
of Hindu scribes emerged in seventeenth century who adopted to the changing political
and economic conditions after the firm establishment of Mughals in India. Persian opened
the doors of opportunities to the Kayasthas, Khatris, Vaishyas and Brahmins who
were expert accountants, clerks and secretaries of India. The displacement of Hindawi
with Persian pushed these castes to learn Persian in the village maktabs (schools) and
madrasas where they acquired the skills to become revenue reporters, land registrars
(qanungo), village accountants (patwari), surveyors, petition writers, letter writing
(insha), accountancy (siyaq), court readers, secretaries and scribes (munshis,
munims).

1.2.1 Training in Persian

The students of Persian studying in the madrasas first learnt some basics of the arithmetic
(siyaq, hisab), measurement (masahat), mathematics (riyazi), geometry, household
economics (tadbir-i manzil), medicine, logic, rules of government (siyasat-i mudun),
physical and metaphysical sciences (tabi and Ilahi) etc. The advanced level included
studying Shaikh Sadi’s Bustan and Gulistan, Akhlaq-i-Nasiri of Khwaja
NasiruddinTusi etc. The essential chronicles prescribed for reading were Tarikh-i
Guzida, Zafarnama, Habib-us-Siyar, Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl etc. The art of insha
writings of Abu’l Fazl was also an essential reading.

Emperor Aurangzeb’s letter to his son Muhammad Sultan in 1654 depicts that Persian
was privileged over other languages in learning and teaching of the royal household.
He advised him to learn reading and writing Persian prose and poetry. He further
elaborated, “Read the Akbarnamah at leisure, so that the style of your conversation
and writing may become pure and elegant. Before you have thoroughly mastered the
meanings of words and the proper connection in which they may be used, do not
employ them in your speeches or letters. Ponder carefully on what you speak or
write.”
13
Sources and Literary 1.2.2 Writings of Scribes
Traditions
One of the finest examples of a book produced by a Munshi is Chahar Chaman
(The Four Gardens) by Chandar Bhan Brahman (d. ca. 1666-70). He was born in late
sixteenth century in Lahore, Punjab and had experience of serving three emperors
namely Jahangir, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. He was an elite state secretary, Persian
poet and prose writer whose book Chahar Chaman was an account of his personal
experiences of serving the Mughals and a manual for the aspirants to become the
expert secretaries. So, the genre of the book was memoir cum advice book (nasihat-
nama) that emphasised on the ethical behaviour (akhlaq), mystical sensibilities, civility,
efficiency, public morality, righteousness etc. He was proud of his Brahman lineage
and credited to his religious Brahmanical background that made him understand the
Perso-Islamic Sufi mysticism. His book is particularly significant for his lively descriptions
of the cities of Shahjahanabad (dar al-hukumat) and Lahore (dar al-salamat).
There was a tradition among the scribal families to join the state services. Munshi
Chandar Bhan had trained his son Khwaja Tej Bhan, who was expected to continue
the family tradition of joining the Mughal service as an accomplished Munshi. Chandar
Bhan’s letter to his son is a valuable example of the training method, syllabus followed
and didactic values prescribed to such aspirant trainees. He advised that a Munshi,
“should undergo training in the Mughal system of norms or akhlaq, for it led to the
acquisition of the knowledge; read the works of history, diwans, and masnawis; learn
the skills of siyaq and nawisindagi (scribal techniques), for a man who could combine
good prose with accountancy ‘is a bright light even among lights’; be discreet and
virtuous; and above all, increase and improve his linguistic abilities.”
The Chahar Chaman along with another work of Chandar Bhan, Munsha’at-i
Brahman were two of the most circulated works in Persian prose writing in seventeen
and eighteenth centuries. He remained an inspiration for the scribal community as
observed by the example of Balkrishan Brahman of Hisar who wrote Chahar Bahar
by emulating his idol Chandar Bhan’s style. He was in the Mughal administrative service
during the reign of Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. Some of the important works produced
by the scribes and secretaries of Mughal administration are Insha-i Harkaran by
Harkaran Das Kamboh of Multan written during Jahangir’s reign; Sujan Rai Bhandari’s
(Batalvi) Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh (Essence of Histories); Nigarnama-i-Munshi of an
anonymous author with the pen names of Munshi and Malikzada written during
Aurangzeb’s reign; Rai Chaturman Saksena’s Chahar Gulshan written in eighteenth
century.

1.3 MEMOIRS
There has been a well established tradition of writing memoirs and auto/biographies
during this period. Babur wrote his memoirs, though in Turkish. Banarsi Das has been
credited with writing autobiography in vernacular during the reign of Jahangir. In Persian
we have Jahangirnama.

1.3.1 Jahangirnama
The Jahangirnama or Tuzuk-i Jahangiri is an important Persian text written in
seventeenth century composed in memoir genre that deals with the compilation of
personal memories much similar in style to the diary writing. Emperor Jahangir (1569-
14
1627) wrote this autobiography following the literary tradition laid down by his great- Persian Histories and
Memoirs
grandfather Babur who composed the Baburnama or Tuzuk-i Baburi. Jahangir
authored this book himself up to 1622, and then asked Mu’tamad Khan, his court
chronicler to carry on the narration. Mu’tamad Khan wrote Jahangirnama in
collaboration with the Emperor Jahangir till 1624 where the narration abruptly ends.
The Tehran edition of the Jahangirnama manuscript has record of events after 1624
to 1627 written by Muhammad Hadi.
Jahangirnama is written in simple but fluent style of Persian with vocabulary coalesced
in Turkish, Hindustani and Kashmiri. It is written in chronological annalistic manner that
represented Jahangir’s worldview about politics, religion, social issues and his own
image as a naturalist, intelligent, just and great patron of art. Jahangir wanted his
autobiography to serve as an exemplary advice book on kingship, therefore he get it
translated into Ottoman Turkish as well. He sent the beautifully painted copies of
Jahangirnama to different parts of the world.

1.3.2 Padshahnama
Shahjahan (1592-1666) commissioned the writing of a court chronicle Padshahnama
(1638) to Muhammad Amin Qazwini who covered the first ten years of Shahjahan’s
reign (1627-1637). This genre of history writing is known as Tawarikh (histories).
Qazwini informs that Shahjahan took great interest in the project of Padshahnama
just as his ancestor Timur. Shahjahan entrusted the work of rewriting the narrative of
first ten years to Abdul Hamid Lahori because he wanted to change the solar calendar
dates to lunar calendar dates ascribing to a more Islamic way of recording history.
Lahori composed a detailed account of Shahjahan’s twenty years of reign by the name
of Padshahnama. The description of construction of Shahjahanabad, its architecture,
the fort and bazars of Delhi is beautifully captured by Lahori. The account of third
decade of Shahjahan’s reign was written by Lahori’s disciple Muhammad Waris.

1.4 NAMAH TRADITION

The reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) was one without any complete official court
chronicle of history. Aurangzeb initially ordered to write the history of his reign called
Alamgirnama to Mirza Muhammad Kazim in the typical namah or official annals
style which was a highly scrutinised and favourable version of history. The sources
used for writing such chronicles were same as used during the time of Akbarnamah
by Abul Fazl like records of waqainavis (recorder of events), secret news reports
sent to the centre from provinces and akhbarat-i darbar-i mualla (report of court
proceedings and Emperor’s camp). The historians used these resources skilfully to
create an accurately dated and detailed version of history written from the Emperor’s
perspective.
Aurangzeb stopped the project of history writing in his tenth year of reign (1668) and
ordered codification of Islamic laws under the title of Fatwa-i Alamgiri in Arabic.
Jadunath Sarkar has reasoned that the depreciating state finances was the prime factor
behind the ceasure of highly expensive project of history writing. Therefore, the official
history Alamgirnama is only until the first ten years of Aurangzeb’s reign. This work of
completing the history of his reign was carried forward by Saqi Mustaid Khan, at the
request of Inayatullah Khan, wazir of Aurangzeb’s son Bahadur Shah. This work is
known as Maasir-i Alamgiri that was compiled in two parts; first was a shorter version
15
Sources and Literary of Alamgirnama covering the first ten years of the Emperor Aurangzeb’s reign and
Traditions
second part dealt with the remaining forty years of his reign. The other history texts
produced about Aurangzeb Alamgir’s reign are Mir’at al-Alam of Muhammad
Bakhtawar Khan; Abu’l Fazl Mamuri’s untitled history which was largely incorporated
by Khafi Khan in his work Muntakhab al-Lubab (1731); Bhimsen’s Nuskha-i Dilkusha
(1709); and Tarikh-i Shivaji (1777) by an anonymous historian which was based on
Marathi vernacular sources called Bakhar.

1.5 DABISTAN-I MAZAHIB

Dabistan-i Mazahib (School of Religions) was compiled in or a little after 1653 by an
anonymous author variously identified as Mobad, Muhsin Fani, Mirza Zulfiqar Baig
and Kaikhusrau Isfandyar. The book provides accounts of various religions and sects
popular in contemporary India. It is divided in twelve ta’lims or chapters that cover
Parsi religion (including Zoroastrianism), Hinduism and other Indian sects, Buddhism,
Judaism and Christianity in first five chapters, the rest of the seven chapters deal with
Islam and its sects. It is a unique and important source in many ways especially because
it is based on personal field survey along with use of the textual resources. It is specially
known for providing the first ever known biographical account on Kabir, the
monotheistsant. The details regarding Sikhism are much appreciated by the historians
because they are first hand observations of the author that presents a nuanced
understanding of Nanakpanth. Irfan Habib has called this work as a fairly sincere,
dispassionate and unbiased intellectual attempt of knowledge production about as
difficult and complex issue as religion.

1.6 DICTIONARIES
Gharaib al-lughat is an important text that testifies the fact that Persian had integrated
into the life world of India. It was composed by Abdul Wasi Hansawi (fl. late 17th c.)
who was a teacher and leading intellectual based in the town of Hansi, situated 150 km
northwest of Delhi. The exact date of composition of Gharaib al-lughat is not known
but most of the manuscripts date to 1730s. Gharaib-al lughat was a record of ‘Indic
words of which the Persian, Arabic or Turkish [synonyms] were less common in the
speech of the people of the provinces.’ It indicates that there was more than one
version of Persian popular among the people. It existed in the hinterland and towns
away from the Imperial cities like Delhi and Lahore. Persian interacted freely with the
vernaculars in such places wherein local words entered into the vocabulary of Persian.
The lexicon of Gharaib al-lughat was part of the series of such dictionaries that
appeared in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries like Farhang-i Jahangiri, Farhang-
i Sururi and Farhang-i Rashidi, etc. Sirajal-Din Ali Khan Arzu (d.1756), the famous
eighteenth century poet and intellectual edited and published an enlarged version of
Wasi’s Gharaib al-lughat by the title of Nawadir al-Alfaz. He modified Wasi’s work
to reconfigure the vernacular Persian into an imperial high Persian used in the courts.
The works of Abdul Wasi Hansawi remained popular even in the nineteenth century,
known by the fact that Ghalib had also criticised the provincial register of Persian in
Gharaib al-lughat.
The example of Gharaib al-lughat becomes special from another perspective that its
writer, Abdul Wasi Hansawi was not part of the coterie that received patronage from
the imperial courts. He was an educator who produced the most influential works on
16 Persian learning and teaching such as Samad Bari (Nisab), commentaries on Sadi’s
works, Zawaid al-Fawaid (Persian grammar) and the most influential Risalah (Essay) Persian Histories and
Memoirs
that made him a household name. The Persian had created a space and economy for
itself that could survive without the patronage from the elites in qasbah (town) like
Hansi. Intellectuals like Abdul Wasi who was not a poet, had established himself as the
authority on the Persian language in India signifies that Persian was not limited to just
poetry or administrative language in the early modern India.
Check Your Progress 1
1. What are the major impacts of the Mughal policy of treating Persian as the official
language of India?
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
2. Write summary of some of the main Persian books authored during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................

1.7 SPREAD MUCH BEYOND MUGHAL COURT

It is generally understood that being the language of administration and high culture
Persian had an overarching authoritative presence over and above all the native. The
cosmopolitan and foreign tongue, Persian received maximum patronage and attention
from the elites of India. It thrived for centuries and reached every part of the Indian
subcontinent travelling on the wheels of courtly patronage, education, intellectual
knowledge production and most importantly the interaction with hundreds of native
languages and dialects of India. This interaction with the common people of India
happened at bazars, small towns, and villages and far out places that are away from
the high cultured courtly influences. The interplay of the Persian with both the local
tongues which were non-literarized and the vernaculars known as Bhakha or Hindawi,
the literarized languages led to the formation of new languages and dialects in different
parts of the Indian subcontinent. It needs to be emphasised that Persian had been well
entrenched in the Indian society during the course of many centuries from Sultanate to
Mughal period. The common Hindi proverb “hath kangan ko aarsi kya, padhe likhe
ko Farsi kya” is the best example that being educated was equivalent to knowing
Persian. Persian words had trickled down to the speech of common masses throughout
India leading to the proliferation of bilingual wordbooks or dictionaries that explained
the meaning of Hindawi words to Persian speaking persons and vice versa as well.

1.7.1 Regional Imitations

The tradition of history writing in Persian under the Mughals deeply influenced the
regional elites’ sense of history and archive. As discussed in unit-12 Nainsi ri Khyat 17
Sources and Literary and Marwar ra pargana ri Vigat compiled in Jodhpur by Nainsi was directly influenced
Traditions
by Abul Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari. Similarly, Mirat-i Ahmadi was compiled in Gujarat by
Muhammad Ali Khan, revenue minister of Gujarat province. It was written between
1748 and 1762. It is a fine example of a text that contains the historical narrative of the
regional history supplemented by exhaustive empirical data. He provides the details
about basic political structure of the province, its geographical features and revenue
amount earned from different sources and distribution of military retainers. The historical
account of Gujarat has been started from the times of Rajput rulers prior to triumph of
Turkish forces and then Sultanate rulers of Delhi have been covered by him. He has
borrowed much from the Mirat-i-Sikandari (1611) of Sikandar bin Muhammad alias
Manjhu to write the history of Gujarat Sultanate. However, it contributes valuable
information about the history of Jahangir, Shahjahan, Aurangzeb and the defeat of
Marathas at the battle of Panipat in 1761. The khatimah or appendix of the book
contains important details of the towns, parganas, religious places etc.

1.8 PERSIAN AND VERNACULARS

As argued above, it will be erroneous to believe that Persian remained confined solely
to Mughal courts or at the courts of regional powers. Seventeenth century witnessed
tremendous interaction between Persian and vernaculars often enriching the vocabulary
and literary sensibilities of both.

1.8.1 Emergence of Urdu

The emergence of Urdu in the eighteenth century India is much akin to a chemical
reaction wherein a foreign element when introduced to a mixture of chemicals agitates
the chemicals to produce a new chemical altogether. Persian, which once was a foreign
language got introduced in India but well received and inherited by the people of India
speaking a plethora of different dialects and languages. It influenced the literary cultures
of India by introducing new genres and imageries commonly used in Persian language.
It interplayed with the spoken language of in and around Delhi, Khari Boli (pure
speech) led to emergence of a new language called Urdu. There were many stages in
development of Urdu as a full-fledged language wherein Rekhta represents the early
stage of its experimentation with the native tongue. Rekhta is a Persian word that
means mixed, poured, interspersed that represents the poetry when one line of Persian
alternated with one in Hindi. Mir Taqi Mir, is hailed as the greatest Urdu poet of the
eighteenth century, called himself a poet of Rekhta. Mir, in his tazkirah, Nikat ash-
shuara defined Rekhta as ‘poetry which is in style and manner of Persian poetry, but
in the language of the exalted court of Delhi.’ Let’s look at one example which is most
famous lines of a Rekhta poem wrongly attributed to Amir Khusrau (c. 1253-1325). It
has the first half of each line in Persian the other second half is in Brajbhasha.
Zihal-i miskin makun tagaful, duraya na ina banaya batya;
Kitab-i Hijrannadaramaijan, nalehu kahe lagaya chatya.
Do not be negligent towards this poor one – You hide your eyes and invent excuses.
Since I don’t have the strength to bear the separation, o my love, why don’t you
embrace me at once?
It is interesting to note that this new form of Rekhta was not limited to the Persian script
and Khari Boli but it had created several other combinations of mixed languages in
Nagari script. Imre Bangha states that Rekhta can be called as “any poetry either in
18 extended Persian, Gurmukhi, the Kaithi or the Nagari scripts, which consciously mixes
the vernacular Hindawi (including Braj Bhasha) and the cosmopolitan Persian.” Persian Histories and
Memoirs
Therefore, it is clear that Persian was internalised in the sections of literati active in
vernacular languages to create some new mixed versions of languages with high content
of Perso-Arabic vocabulary. Such examples of intermixing and amalgamation
disapprove the impression that Persian was a hegemonic foreign language with
magisterial presence over the Indian vernaculars.

1.8.2 Dobhasi
Bengal province is the eastern most part of the Indian subcontinent where Persian had
established a strong presence during the Sultanate period. Akbar’s policy regarding
the use of Persian in administration bore quite similar fruits as in other regions of Mughal
India. A large bureaucratic class developed in Bengal that prepared ground for popularity
of Persian in Bengal that continued till the nineteenth century. Experiments in literature
started happening during the fourteenth and fifteenth century in Bengal in the form of
literature which amalgamated Persian and various Bangla dialects. This process of
mixing, which we know by the name of Rekhta in northern India got accelerated in
popularising a new register of Bengali known as Dobhasi. Dobhasi meaning bilingual,
as a new genre was first started by writers who were experts of Arabic, Persian and
Bangla languages. The early literature produced in Dobhasi shows strong Islamic
influences in the content, subjects, themes and characters especially because these
were produced by Muslim scholars.
Fakir Garibullah (c. 1680-1770) popularised this further with his work Amir Hamza
which differed with the earlier Bangla literature because of its highly Persianised
vocabulary. Fakir Garibullah and his disciple Syed Hamza popularised the Dobhasi by
composing many epics and poems such as Hatem Tai (1804), Jangnama, Jaiguner
Puthi (1798) in a dialect spoken by Hughli-Howrah area. Dobhasi is known by other
names as well such as Puthi (Book) and Muslim Bangla. These epic poems were
written in Persian script adapted to a versatile vernacular Bangla that could effortlessly
use the Persian grammar. Dobhasi was not only a literary language only but it was
spoken by large population of Muslims living in Howrah, Hughli, Sylhet and Chittagong
where it was written in eastern Nagari and Sylhet Nagari script.
Check Your Progress-2
1. Is it correct to say that Persian remained a foreign language in India in the early
modern period? Give examples to substantiate your argument.
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
2. Describe the phenomenon of evolution of Rekhta literature in India. What are the
different types of Rekhta that are found in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
India?
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................ 19
Sources and Literary
Traditions 1.9 LET US SUM UP
The immediate effect of Persianisation of the administration was the evolution of a
large class of scribes who learnt Persian to gain access to the lucrative bureaucratic
jobs in the Mughal administration. The seventeenth and eighteenth century were the
centuries when Indians deeply engaged with Persian in numerous fields of education,
science, literature, ethics, politics, culture and semantics. The Indians mastered not
only the language and created a niche Sabk-i Hindi in the Persianate world but
internalised the sensibilities, imagery, intellectual and cultural tradition that the Persian
language offered as well. The propagation of Persian increased manifold with the
consolidation of Mughal state where it emerged as the language of refined high culture.
The proliferation of books and imperial documents are the hallmark of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Persian reached deep down to the masses in eighteenth century
whereby creating a plethora of new mixed indigenous languages and registers in the
form of Rekhta, Nagari Rekhta, Dobhasi etc.

1.10 KEY WORDS

Persian : Persian is also known as its endonym Farsi, is an Iranian
language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian
sub branch of the Indo-European languages.
Rekhta : Rekhta is a Persian word that means poured, interspersed,
mixed. It appeared in eighteenth century as a name for Khari
Boli mixed with Perso-Arabic vocabulary.
Munshi : A writer, secretary, clerk, scribe author, or a language
master, a composer in prose.
Dobhasi : Dobhasi was a highly Persianised register of Bengali
language written in Eastern Nagari, Sylheti Nagari, and
Perso-Arabic script as well.
Persianate World : It is an interregional or “world” system generated by shared
knowledge of religiosity, statecraft, diplomacy, trade,
sociability, or subjectivity that was accessed and circulated
through the common use of written Persian across
interconnected nodal points of Eurasia.

1.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES
Check Your Progress 1
1) The one of the most important result of the Persianisation of the administration
was emergence of an indigenous bureaucratic class. The education system of India
was changed significantly by introducing basic to advanced Persian that could
help students to attain jobs in the Mughal administration. Soon, India became the
most Persian literate region in the Persianate world, even surpassing Iran.
20
2) There are a number of Persian books written during the sixteenth and seventeenth Persian Histories and
Memoirs
century. Some of them are Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, Chahar Chaman, Khulasat ut-
Tawarikh, Padshahnama, Ma’asir-i Alamgiri etc.

Check Your Progress-2

1) There is a generally held view that Urdu could easily wipe out Persian in the late
eighteenth century because Persian was the language of a small minority in India. It
remained as a foreign language to the masses at large, who accepted Urdu
wholeheartedly because that was a local a language.

2) The meaning of Rekhta is mixed and broken. The pan Indian presence of Persian
led to the growth of several mixed languages in different regions of India written in
multiple scripts with Persian as a common factor. It could be seen in Nagari script
of nirgun sants such as Dadu Dayal and Sundardas; and early Rekhta poetry of
Persian script composed in Deccan and Delhi.

Recommended Readings

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, and Muzaffar Alam. 2001. Writing the Mughal World: Studies
on Culture and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. doi:10.7312/columbia/
9780231158114.001.0001

Habib, Irfan. 2000. “A Fragmentary Exploration Of An Indian Text On Religions And

Sects: Notes On The Earlier Version Of The ‘Dabistan-I Mazahib.’” Proceedings of
the Indian History Congress, Vol. 61, pp. 474–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/
44148125.

Alam, Muzaffar. 1988. “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics.” Modern
Asian Studies Vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 317–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/313001.

Chatterjee, Kumkum. 2008. “The Persianization of ‘Itihasa’: Performance Narratives

and Mughal Political Culture in Eighteenth-Century Bengal.” The Journal of Asian
Studies, Vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 513–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20203376.

Bangha, Imre. 2012. “Rekhta, Poetry in the Mixed Language: The Emergence of Khari
Boli Literature in North India” in Francesca Orsini ed. Before the Divide: Hindi and
Urdu Literary Culture. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 22-88. Doi: (PDF) Rekhta,
Poetry in Mixed Language | ImreBangha - Academia.edu.

Hakala, Walter. 2016. Negotiating Languages, Urdu, Hindi and the Definition of
Modern South Asia, New York: Columbia University Press.

Sharma, Sunil. 2017. Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Kinra, Rajeev. 2015. Writing Self, Writing Empire: ChandarBhan Brahman and
the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary. Oakland: University of
California Press. https://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.3/
Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan. The Jahangirnama. Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M.
Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1999. https://dx.doi.org/10.5479/
sil.849796.39088018028456
21
Sources and Literary Green Nile. 2019. The Persianate World. California: University of California Press.
Traditions
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.64.
Rezavi, Ali Nadeem. “Sources of Aurangzeb’s Reign.” 14 October 2021. https://
rezavisblastfromthepast.co.in/2021/10/14/sources-of-aurangzebs-reign/.
Dudney, Arthur. 2019. ‘Persian-Language Education in Mughal India from Qasbah to
Capital’, in Maya Burger and Nadia Cattoni, Eds., Early Modern India: Literatures
and Images, Texts and Languages. Reprint, Heidelberg/ ; Berlin: Cross Asia-eBooks.
https://doi.org/10.11588/xabooks.387.552.

22
 Persian Histories and
UNIT 2 SANSKRIT KAVYA LITERATURE, Memoirs

REGIONAL SOURCES AND

TRAVELOGUES1
Structure

2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2. Sanskrit
2.3 Regional Sources
2.3.1 Assamese
2.3.2 Bengali
2.3.3 Gujarati
2.3.4 Hindi
2.3.5 Kannada
2.3.6 Malayalam
2.3.7 Marathi
2.3.8 Odiya
2.3.9 Punjabi
2.3.10 Tamil
2.3.11 Telugu
2.3.12 Urdu
2.4 Travelogues
2.5 Let Us Sum Up
2.6 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

2.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit you will appreciate that:
 the Indian subcontinent was multilingual during early modern times
 Sanskrit continued to flourish and original writings in Sanskrit can be found
 Vernacular literature flourished at regional centres
 writings in prose was gradually gaining ground
 there was a lot of commonality in the themes across languages
 travelogues are important source of information but must be used with caution

2.1 INTRODUCTION
The literaryworld of the Indian subcontinent was thoroughlymultilingual during the so-
called Muslim period. Sanskrit and vernacular literatures continued to flourish in the
seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries alongside Persian andArabic. Not all of

Dr. Pankaj Jha, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University, Delhi
1
23
Sources and Literary the texts from this period are extant, but even those that are available are too numerous
Traditions
to be counted. Their themes covered philosophy(darśan), political ethics (nīti), science
(śāstra), law (dharmaśāstra) devotional (bhakti), astrology (jyotica), gammar
(vyākarana), gastrology, music, the art of poetics, love and aesthetics (srngāra),
history, and mythology among others. These compositions came in a variety of genres
including as anthology and doxography, epic retelling, drama, biography, genealogy,
panegyrics, local tales formatted on the style of the puranas, smritis, exegesis, etc. The
sites of these compositions were also varied. They were composed in the courts of the
Timurid, Rajput, Maratha, Nayak and other Muslim and non-Muslim rulers. Many
scholars and poets did not acknowledge anyone as their patrons, and it is very likely
that they either wrote on their own or under patrons who were either non-descript or
too numerous to be acknowledged explicitly in the text. Certain regions emerged as
centres of Sanskrit learning and textual production. The more prominent among them
were Mithila, Varanasi, Srinagar, Pune, Tanjavur, and Cochin.

2.2 SANSKRIT
Recent research suggests that the Mughal court as well as the courts of its allied and
subordinate Rajas continued to patronize Sanskrit scholars, especially those specialising
in astrology, lexicography, yoga, music, anthologies of poetry and prashastikāvyas
(praise compositions).
An astrologer under Jahangir called Parmananda composed a treatise on astrology
entitled Jahāngīravinodaratnākara. It seems that the Mughal rulers inspired the court
poets as well as poets living outside their network of patronage to compose poetic
works in their praise. Harideva Miśra in Mithila composed a long poem in praise of
Jahangir entitled, Jahāngīrvirudāvalī. Shah Jahan’s astrologer Malājit Vedāngarāya
wrote a dictionary of Persian and Sanskrit called Pārasīprakāśa. The famous
astronomer-scientist Nityananda translated a Persian text on astronomy into Sanskrit
and named it Siddhāntasindhu. Again, on Shah Jahan’s instructions, he composed
Sarvasiddhāntarāja that tried to capture the Indic astrological knowledge available
in Sanskrit till that time.Two of the most prominent Sanskrit scholars patronized by
Shah Jahan’s court were Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī and Jagannātha
Panditarāja. Kavīndrācārya composed Yogavaśistha (a Hindavi digest of the
Sanskrit work of the same name) and Kavīndrakalpalatā, a treatise on music that
praised Shah Jahan while providing a gloss on certain ragas. Jagannātha
Panditarāja famously composed kāvyas in praise of Dārā Śukoh and Āsaf Khan.
Venidatta’s Padyaveni put together in the seventeenth century was an ambitious
anthology of poems of nearly a hundred poets including those by Kalidas, Bhartrhari,
Srivara, Krsnadāsa, and many others about whom we do not have any information.
Similarly, theworks oftheprolificpolymathscholarfromVaranasi, Kamalākara Bhatta
(early 17th century) on a huge range of themes are well known. Mid 17th century
Varanasi also saw the rise of others like Kaunda Bhatta, a grammarian and Gāga
Bhatta, a hermeneutist. Among eastern philosophers who continued to develop the
new philosophical ideas especiallyof the navya-nyāya school of thought were Jagadisha
Tarkalankara (flourished c. 1625), and Gadadhara Bhattacharya (flourished c. 1650).
Movingsouthof the Vindhyas, Sanskrit literature flourished with no less vitality. Lengthy
narratives, part biographical and part bio-fictional, were an established genre of Sanskrit
24 kāvya in the Nāyaka period. Rāmabhadrāmba’s Raghunāthābhyudaya for example
was a biographical praise poem of the famous king Raghunāthanayaka. Yajnanārayana Sanskrit Kavya Literature,
Regional Sources and
Diksita’s Sāhityaratnākara also told the same Nāyaka ruler’s story. A biography of Travelogues
Raghunātha’s father, Acyutappa Nayaka is among the more famous Sanskrit
mahākāvyas. Sanskrit literary landscape of this period is also marked bya number of
satirical works. The renowned scholar Nīlakantha Diksita composed one such text in
the early 17th century. His Kalividambanā produced a dark critique of the
author’s times. Śivalīlārnava (The Sixty-four Games of Śiva) and
Ānandasāgarastava by the same author were texts focused on Lord Śiva and
Pārvatī (as Mināksī) respectively. These compositions are known for the refreshing
experiments in Sanskrit kāvya and mythologies, and they contradict the claims
about the decline of ‘original’ works in that language.
No less impressive is the corpus of scholarly works on a range of themes, especially
philosophical commentaries, grammar, rituals, literary theory (alankāraśāstra), and
astrology. One of the works on literary theory entitled Raghunāthabhūpālīya actually
had the aforementioned Raghunātha as the protagonist of all the verses that the text
cited as examples.Another important litterateur Śrīnivāsa Diksita served as a minister
at the Nayak court of Gingee and was reported to have composed eighteen dramas
and numerous other kāvyas. Similarly Govinda Diksita of Tanjore famouslycomposed
texts like Sāhitya Sudhā and Sangītasudhānidhi. While the former carry interesting
information on the political events of the time, the latter is a useful treatise on music.
The great Maratha ruler, Śivaji also inspired impressive literary compositions.
Among these mention must be made of Kavīndra Parmananda’s Śrīśivabhārata, a
mahākāvya based on the life and exploits of the self-made king. It is one of the
most important sources for the Maratha history of the 17th century. Interesting,
the work was later expanded by the poet’s son and grandson who incorporated the
biography of Shambhaji Maharaj in the text.
As is obvious, Sanskrit continued to hold on to its creative vitality till at least the
seventeenth century. However, by the early eighteenth century, the effects of a long
term reshuffling of division of labour among languages started having more tangible
consequences. Sanskrit had been a language par excellence for scientific exploration,
philosophical speculation, literary theories, and codification of rituals and law since
ancient times. It practically had a monopoly of ‘high’ literature till at least the
thirteenth century. Yet, it was exclusionary in its high stature and outside the reach of
a majority of people, notwithstanding its ‘cosmopolitan’ horizontal spread from
Gujarat to Bengal, from Kandahar and Srinagar to Kochi, Tanjavur, Java and
Sumatra. With continued and intensified processes of state formation from the
fifteenth century, however, the rulers and princes of the numerous courts were
seeking to extend their networks of communication beyond the traditional
elites. They often preferred to patronize compositions in the vernacular languages,
which had better vertical access than Sanskrit. One of the reasons why scholars were
beginning to explore other language options even for scientific and erudite work
had to do with the fact that Sanskrit stopped changing with the times. With
colonial intervention, and large scale epistemological disruptions in knowledge
formation from the late eighteenth century onwards, the language that once was the
preferred medium for scientific research, increasinglystarted being confined to ritual
usages, even though a few creative sparks continued to shine every now and then.
Yet, Sanskrit compositions of the period between the late 16th century and the mid
18th century are extremely important as a source for writing the history of knowledge 25
Sources and Literary formations, scientific and philosophical traditions, multifarious perspectives on political
Traditions
developments, official articulations of authority, digests on law and astronomy, and of
course developments in the fields of language and literature.
Check Your Progress-1
1) Write a note on the literary culture of early modern times in Indian subcontinent.
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
2) Discuss the various genres of writings available in Sanskrit.
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................

2.3 REGIONAL SOURCES

The 8th Schedule of the Constitution of India today recognises twenty-two languages.
However, there are many more languages that are still used by more than ten thousand
native speakers in the country. Even the Census of India (1991) listed 184 such
languages. In his multi volume Linguistic Survey of India (1903-1923), George
Grierson had listed 179 languages and 544 dialects.
Historians see the beginning of the second millennium of Christian Era as marking the
advent of ‘vernacularization’ in South Asia. This refers to the increasing written
visibility of a number of regional languages, or deśabhasās as they were called in
Sanskrit. Ancient India was witness to a dynamic culture of Sanskrit literature.
Very few languages of the world could equal it with regard to the range of subjects,
extent of creativity, variety of genres, diversity of themes and even with regard
to the sheer size of its literary corpus. However, Sanskrit scholars were usually
drawn from amongst the social elites, and they zealously guarded their privilege.
They advocated the idea that true literature (kāvya) could be composed only in
Sanskrit, even though they also theoretically admitted that literature could be
produced in Prakrit and Apabhramśa. By the 11th – 12th centuries, Prakrit and
Apabhramśa became generic terms that were used to refer to any of the regional
languages that started producing their own literature. This included Gujarati (or
Gurjari), Shaurseni (later, Punjabi), Marathi, Avadhī, Maithili, Bangla, Assamese,
Odia, Telugu, Hindi/Hindavi/Urdu, and many others.
Most of these languages came to acquire a script of their own and many were
written in more than one script depending on the scribe’s own skill and
preference. Even though most of these languages came to be literarised by the
twelfth century, and some of them even acquired their own written grammars, they
were not yet distinctively named. Even their authors referred to these languages
either as Prarkrit/Apabhramśa or as deśabhāsā (language of a place) or simply
26 as bhāsā (literally, dialect). (Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and Tamil, on the other hand,
were languages with a wider reach, and hence escaped characterisation as ‘language Sanskrit Kavya Literature,
Regional Sources and
of a place’). By the seventeenth century, most of these languages had a formidable Travelogues
corpus of literary compositions of their own. Together they constitute an extremely
important source for reconstructing the histories of the various aspects of life in the
period of our study, i.e. 17th to the mid 18th centuries. It is amazing, if ironical, that the
languages that were once practically forbidden to nourish literary compositions
are now not only dynamic literary media, but probably the strongest rallying
point for the formation and sustenance of regional identities in India today.
The famous Sanskritist and historian Sheldon Pollock has observed that there was an
unwritten division of labour among the Indic languages in the second millennium of the
Christian Era: while Sanskrit was used for composing texts on scientific, philosophical,
and more generally ‘secular’themes, the so-called vernaculars were usually deployed
for religious compositions including compilation of devotional songs. This observation
does give us a broad idea of the language preferences, but it is not entirely true. As we
will see below, the deśabhāsas were used for composing texts on a variety of themes
even though religious subjects constituted a major part of it.

2.3.1 Assamese
Like most of the other ‘regional’languages of the subcontinent, Assamese too might
have existed as some speech form or the other since ancient times. The Chinese traveller
Huen Tsang who spent some time in the Kāmarūpa court of Raja Bhāskaravarmana in
the 7th century CE, referred to its language as ‘slightly different’ from the language of
‘middle’India. However, the earliest written specimens of writing inAssamese cannot
be dated before the 14th century CE. Early forms of Assamese language and literature
developed under the patronage of the rulers of Kāmarūpa and Cooch-Behar during
the 14th -15th centuries CE. True beginning of Assamese literature is often considered
to be with the songs and other compositions of Mādhav Kandali (who ‘trans-created’
Rāmāyana) and Śankardev, the most famous and versatile Vaisnava poet of Assam
who flourished in the period between the mid 15th to the mid 16th centuries CE. The
bhakti songs and hymns ofAssamese are known for their focus on Krishna’s childhood
and for avoiding depictions of the amorous love between Radha and Krishna, the way
it was done for example in Bengal and Mithila.
Bhattadeva was another important figure from late 16th century who translated Bhagvat
Gita and Bhagvat Purana into Assamese. The period after this witnessed changes in
the grammar and orthography of the language, especially since a whole new corpus of
historical writing started being composed in prose under the influence of the Ahom
court. This corpus came to be known as ‘Buranji’, and they constitute the single most
important source for writing a historyof theAssamese speaking regions. It is noteworthy
that the language of the northern part of Bengal was and is similar to if, not identical
with, Assamese. Indeed, the Assamese speech forms in these regions shaded off into
the Bengali speech forms in the early modern period. Some historians are of the view
that the literarymedium of Brajbuli, which was deployed in medieval Bengal and Mithila
to compose devotional songs was first experimented with by the aforementioned
Śankaradeva.

2.3.2 Bengali/Bangla
The beginning of Bengali compositions, as also of literary texts in many other Eastern
dialects of the time, is often traced to the Charyapadas, a vast set of Buddhist and
27
Sources and Literary Tantric songs composed during the 8th to the 12th centuries CE. However, literature in
Traditions
a distinctively identifiable form of Bengali is often traced with greater confidence in the
compositions inspired by Śrī Caitanya or Caitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534 CE).
Foremost among these were songs depicting love of Radha-Krishna, and a number of
biographies of Śrī Caitanya, e.g. Caitanya Bhāgavata by Brindaban Das, Caitanya
Mangal by Locanadas, and Caitanya Caritāmrita by Krsnadās Kavirāj. Many of
the Vaisnava songs in this period was composed in a particular register of literary
Bangla known as Brajbuli.
An important stage in the development of Bengali literature was the composition of a
series of long narrative poems in a novel genre called mangalakāvya between the
16th and the 18th centuries CE. Their narrative format was similar to that of the Sanskrit
Puranas, but they were unique in many other respects. Even though the Purānic gods
like Śiva, Pārvati, Indra, and others formed an integral part of the mangalakāvya’s
complex narrative, they were invariably dedicated to the propagation of the worship
and superiority of local cultic deities like Candi, Mansā, Śitalā and Dharma. Another
unique characteristic of this set of compositions was that they often combined both
purely benevolent and ferociouslymalevolent traits in the same protagonist-deity.
These tales combine the everyday with the magical and the miraculous, but they are
an invaluable source for writing the history of religious rivalries,
literaryexperimentations, oral lore, coming together ofa ‘universalistic’ Puranic religion
with the local cults, as well as that of the natural environment, disease pathogens and
medicinal practices of the time in the Bengali speaking regions.
Another strand of literature came to be developed during this period in a language that
is somewhat misleadingly termed as Musalmānī Banglā simply because these were
composed by Muslim poets, had a larger share of words of Perso-Arabic origin, and
revolved mostly, but not exclusively, around Sufic themes. One of the foremost among
these authors was Daulat Qazi. Born in Chittagong in early 17th century, he spent most
of his productive years in the Arakan region (in Myanmar) where the local court
patronized Bengali literature. He famouslyrendered the folk tales of Laurik and Chanda
as well as of Mayna Sati in Bengali. Even more appreciated for his poetic and musical
skills was the famousAlaol who also ended up in theArakanese court. Alaol rendered
a number of Persian and Avadhi Sufi compositions (including Jayasi’s Padmavat) in
Bengali and enriched the language. Another important author of the time was Saiyid
Sultān, the 17th century Islamic scholar who wrote Nabīvamśa (‘The Lineage of the
Prophet’), the first biography of Prophet Mohammad in Bangla.

2.3.3 Gujarati
Literary compositions in the ‘older forms’ of Gujarati probably started in the twelfth
century in the Christian Era. It is in the second half of the 12th century that we have the
earliest extant Gujarati work entitled Bharateśvarabāhubalīghor and composed
by Vajrasenasūrī in the style of rāso when it is attributed to the renowned Sanskrit
scholar Hemacandra. However, it is only with onset of the 15th century and the
beginnings of Vaisnava compositions byBhalana and Narsimha Mehta that Gujarati
literature appears to have come to its own in a distinctive manner. An important non-
sectarian author in Gujarati was a prolific Jain monk who wrote extensively in
Sanskrit as well as in Gujarati. His name was Samaya Sundar and he composed about
twenty-five Gujarati works, including a poem on famine.An interesting habit with
Samaya Sundar was the fact that he always made it a point to mention the year and
28
place of composition in the last lines of each of his poems. The 17th century Sanskrit Kavya Literature,
Regional Sources and
bhakti poet Akho’s contribution to the development of a distinct idiom for Travelogues
Gujarati poetry and songs is considered seminal. Interestingly, however, Akho did
not see Gujarati as a substitute for Sanskrit but only as an indispensable supplement
with which the treasures of Sanskrit could be made accessible to people at large. His
other ruminations on the relative status and usages of Sanskrit and the popular
idioms help us understand the politics of languages in the early modern times.

2.3.4 Hindi
Like most of the other languages, Hindi was forged over centuries out of other speech
forms. In its present form, Hindi probably emerged around the 16th century when it
was known as Khari Boli. The word ‘Hindi’ is Persian in origin and referred to the
language of ‘Hind’, which the Persian users understood as north India. The great poet
of Delhi Amir Khusrau used the word Hindui/ Hindavi in early 14th century to refer to
the dialects of north India. At that time, it was a generic word that meant any of the
several north Indian dialects including what later came to be known asAvadhi, Bhojpuri,
Brajabhasā, Gujarati, Śaurasenī, Malavi, Rajasthani, etc. As a literary medium,
languages likeAvadhi, Gujarati and Brajabhāsā clearly predate Hindi. In other words,
the pre-history of Hindi is actually the history of these other languages. Hindi in its
present form came to be standardized in the 18th century and adopted as a link language
for north India as well as for literary expression in prose and poetry. It is ironical, if not
misleading, to refer to Avadhi, Gujarati, Braj, etc. as dialects of Hindi! It is equally
important to remember that Urdu also emerged from Hindui/ Hindavi dialects and
shares its grammar, syntax, and a large chunk of its vocabulary with Hindi. Even today
apart from the fact that Hindi is usuallywritten in the Devanāgarī script and Urdu in the
slightly modified version of Perso-Arabic script, the difference between the two
languages is confined to the relative quantum of Persian/Sanskrit words.
Followinga somewhat questionable classification byRamachandra Shuklain thedecades
before independence, Hindi is seen to have developed in periods of primacy given
successively to the sentiments (rasas) of valour or vīragāthā (up to the 14th century
CE), devotionalism or bhakti (up to the 16th century CE), traditionalism/ ornamentalism
or rīti/śrngāra (up to the 18th century), to finally usher into the modern age. It is only
with the development of khari boli that the modern Hindi language as a
standardized literary medium may be said to have stabilized. It is noteworthy
that even the autobiographies (e.g. Ardhakathānak of Banarsidas) in the 17th
century CE were composed in the verse form. The fact that Hindi could boast of a
large number of long vowels made it very amenable to song compositions in a
way that neither Sanskrit nor Persian could have been used. Some historians see
the early 14th– 16th century CE forms of Gujarati language as crucial to the making
of modern Hindi but the debate continues.
Works of Kabir, Surdas, Rahim, Tulsidas, Raskhan (bhakti tradition, 16th century
CE), and Keshavdas, Bhushan and Bhikharidas (riti tradition, 17th century CE) might
be seen as important early poets of Hindi. Many however would also consider the
poets of rāso and carita (biography) texts written a century or two before the 16th
century CE to be the first early poets of Hindi. Hindi is no longer considered a
‘regional’ language. Even though it is the rājabhāsā or ‘language of governance’
(and not ‘the national’ language of India), it often works as a link language for
different regions of north India.
29
Sources and Literary 2.3.5 Kannada
Traditions
Kannada language was one of the first vernaculars in India to have developed its
distinct literary identity. This literature developed in close association with inscriptions
as is evident in the works of the first great poets of Kannada, namely Pampa and
Ranna in the 10th century. In the 11th century, Naragvarma wrote its first major grammar
in Sanskrit by the title of Karnātakabhāsābhūsanam. In the next five centuries, the
Malayalam literary culture was enriched by works on grammar, philosophy, epic
retellings, Jaina cosmology, and the devotional literature of various denominations
(lingāyat, Śaiva and Vaisnav). The format that dominated Kannada literature during
this period was campū, i.e. a mix of prose and poetry.
From the late 16th centuryonwards, Kannada literature saw manyradical developments.
The Keladi court (1500-1763) and the Mysore court (1610-1947) became the chief
patrons of Kannada literature during this period, even though some of the most creative
compositions of the time were produced outside the courtly context. The older trend
of articulatingideas on philosophy, spirituality, and aesthetics through symbols of erotica
continued. Ratnākaravarnī in the 16th century was one such author who came to be
identified primarilywitherotic literature eventhough he was also learned inother sciences
and scriptures of various religious traditions. He adopted Vīraśaivism at a mature age
but eventually repented and became a Jaina. He is credited with having written texts
both on Basavanna (the 12th century CE Lingāyat saint) and śatakas (set of hundred
verses) for different Jain deities.An interesting intellectual and author of the 17th century
in Kannada was Sarvajña. Known for his wit and satirical writing, his radical
pronouncements on modes of social inequality(especiallycaste) has been an inspiration
for many modern progressive movements in Karnataka.
At the same time, Śrīvaisnava poets of various languages flourished and competed
with each other in the Wodeyars’ court. But many of the most prominent Kannada
poets were wandering saints, including Mupinā Sadāksarī, Śiśunāla Śerif,
Navalagundada Nāgalingāyogī, and Kaakolada Madivālappa

2.3.6 Malayalam
The language we todaycall Malayalam came out of the diverse speech forms prevalent
in the areas roughly coinciding with the geographical confines of the modern province
of Kerala. This language got its name and a standardized grammar only in the 18th
century. However, its formative speech forms, the ‘archaic Malayalams’slowlyemerged
in historical visibility from 12th century onwards. The people of the region, before the
word ‘Malayalam’stuck in 18th century, commonly referred to some of these
dialects as Tamil even though these were distinct from the language of that name that
dominated the areas east of the Western ghats. Certain other related speech forms of
the Kerala region, especially those heavily influenced by Sanskrit, were identified
bythe generic term ‘Manipravalam’. A treatise on the grammar and poetic
conventions of this literary medium was composed in the 14th century by the title of
Līlātilakam.
The earliest known extant poem in the bhāsā of Kerala is Tirunīlamāla of the 13thcentury.
Though the famous 12th century composition Rāmacaritam (attributed to Cīrāman or
Srīrāma), describing the yuddhakānda of Rāmayana is also from Kerala, its language
is closer to Tamil.
An important figure in the history of Malayalam language and literature is Thuncathu
30
Ramanujan Ezhuthacchan who flourished in the 16th century. He is credited to have
given Malayalam language its distinct character and identity separate from Tamil and Sanskrit Kavya Literature,
Regional Sources and
Sanskrit. His compositions include a Malayalam ‘translation’ of Ādhyātma Rāmāyana Travelogues
and an abridged Mahābhārata. Ezuthacchan’s translation of Ādhyātma Rāmāyana
like so many translations in the medieval period was actually a fresh retelling of the
story of Ram and hence an original work. Other famous Malayalam poets of the 16th
centuryinclude Melputhur Narayana Bhattatiriand Pūntānam Nampūtiri.Alarge number
of anonymous folk songs broadlycategorized as ballads by their collectors (usually the
British administrators) appear to have been composed during the 16th – 17th centuries
CE in north Kerala.
Northern Kerala in the 17th century CE was also witness to the compositions of the
great playwright Kōmmayam Thampurān, the author of a set of four plays based on
episodes of Mahabharat: Bakavadham, Kalyānasaugandhikam, Kirmīravadham,
and Nivatakavacakālakeyavadham. Following the ‘creation’ of the dance form
Kathakali by KottarakaraThampuran in the mid 17thcentury, a number of Kathakali
plays called attakkathas were composed. Nalacaritam by Unnayi Vārier (late 17th
- early 18th century CE) was one such play that revolved around the character of Nala.
A number of Christian missionaries made seminal contribution to the development of
Malayalam language and literature. Fr. John Ernestus Hanxieden aka Arnos Padiri
(1681-1732 CE) was one such missionaryscholar who wrote two grammatical works,
two dictionaries (of Malayalam-Sanskrit and Malayalam-Portuguese) and a number
of poetical works on Biblical themes including Putten Pāna, a brief summary of the
Old Testament and the New Testament in Malayalam. Another great poet of early
modern Malayalam was Kuncan Nambiyār ((1700-1770 CE), a great exponent of
the dance-recitation form thullal, who also wrote a number of poetic tales to be recited
by the performers.

2.3.7 Marathi
Marathi was one of the earliest deśabhāsās to have been literized (put to writing) as
well as literarized (have its own imaginative literature). Marathi emerged out of the
diverse speech forms prevalent in the geo-cultural zone whose geographical boundaries
were not too different from the present day province of Maharashtra. Like many other
‘regional’ languages, it found its distinctive literary form in the medieval period.
The first major literary compositions of Marathi were composed in the 13th century
CE, and the most iconic among these early works were the Līlācaritra and Bhāvārtha
Dīpikā or Jnāneśvarī. The former was a collection of anecdotes, compiled by
Mhāimbhat, around the figure of Cakradhar, the founder of the Mahānubhāv sect. The
founder of the Warkari or the Bhagwat sect, Jnāneśvar was the author of
BhāvārthaDīpikā (aka Jnāneśvarī), an extensive poetic commentary on the
Bhagvadgita. These poetic forms had a lasting impact on the Marathi literature, so
much so that these continued to be emulated centuries later, e.g. in Father Thomas
Stephens’Krista Purana in the late 16th / early 17th century. Among the early poets of
Marathi, mention must be made of Jana Bai (13th – 14th century) and Eknath (1533-
1599). The former was a follower of Namdev and a shudra poetess of Ganga Kheda
who composed more than 350 poems (abhangas). Sant Eknath of Paithan on the
other hand was known for his Chatuhshloki Bhagvat, Eknathi Bhagvat, Bhavarth
Ramayan and Rakmini Svayamvar.
Among the greatest early modern bhakti sants was another ‘low born’ poet, Tukaram
(1608-1650) who wrote his songs in Marathi. His abhangas are known for their 31
Sources and Literary intensely passionate tenor and continue to be sung today. Tukaram’s contemporary
Traditions
Ramdas (1608-1681 CE) was a man of comparable literarytalent and mystical passion.
He founded a sect, which focused on devotion to Ram and Hanuman, and emphasized
the need for balance between one’s spiritual and material needs as well as between the
worldly and other worldly aspirations.
Shivaji Raje’s letters, especially those he wrote to his military commanders (and one to
his brother Ekoji) in the second half of the seventeenth century are fine specimens of
Marathi prose during this period, laced as those were with both Persian and Sanskrit
words. Shivaji also patronized the writingof Marathi dictionaries, andfurther contributed
to the standardization of the language. The historical chronicle by Sabhasad (full name:
Drishanji Anant Sabhasad) entitled Shivaji Raje Vanchi Bakhar written in the late
seventeenth century is one of the earliest of its kind text in the region. Marathi writers
also emulated a number of traditional Sanskrit genres like Puranas and epics. The
famous Shridhar (1658-1729 CE) composed many such texts including Hari Vijay,
Ram Vijay, Pandav Pratap and Shivalilamrita.
The literary oeuvre of Marathi, however, was more varied than the above sampling
would indicate. It was one of the few regional languages in the early modern period
that also came to be adopted for writing of political treatises. The famous such text
was the Ājñāpatra of Ramachandra NilakanthaAmatya at the request of Shambhaji II.

2.3.8 Odiya
The speech forms of the eastern regions (viz. the present provinces of Odisha, Bengal
and Assam) developed together and had much in common even though variations in
verb endings and grammar were there even within a given region. In what might have
distinct traces of an archaic form of Odiya language, the earliest extant texts are from
the fourteenth century CE. The most important of these is the anonymous ŚriŚisu
Veda, a text with a clear imprint of the Nath cult. Another Nathpanthi text from the
same period, Amarkosa was written in the form of a conversation between a preceptor
(Adinath) and his disciple Loi.
However, Odiya literature is usually seen to have acquired a more mature and distinct
form in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries with the epic compositions of Sarla Das, Balram
Das and Jagannath Das. Sarla Das’s Odiya Mahabharat, Balram Das’s Jagmohan
Ramayan and Lakshmi Purana, and Jagannath Das’s Bhagavat are considered early
classics of Odiya literature. Even though their works were based on the epic and
Puranic tales, there is no doubt that these were not mere translations but very creatively
conceived literary retellings. The same may be said of Devadurllabha Das’s
Rahasyamañjarī (focused on Radha and Krishna), and Gopīnāth Das’s Budhei Osha,
Khudurukuni and Govinda Vilās. A prolific poet of the sixteenth century from this
region was Vishnu Das who composed a number of kāvyas and chautishas.
The trend of composing narrative poems on episodes from Ramayan and Mahabharat
continued in the seventeenth century. Fisherman-poet Bhimā Dhibar’s Kapātapasa
was based on the latter and continues to be popular today. Another distinguished
Odiya poet from the seventeenth century was Dinakrishna Das whose style is often
compared to the great Sanskrit poet of the eleventh century, Jayadeva. Like the latter,
Dinakrishna’s verses describe Krishna’s amorous play with milkmaids in rich lyrical
ways. A contemporary of Dinakrishna was Dhananjay Bhanja, a prince and a poet
who made a name in creative pursuits with his compositions including Madanmanjari,
32 Tripuramanjari, Raghunath Vilas and Icchabiti.
2.3.9 Punjabi Sanskrit Kavya Literature,
Regional Sources and
Travelogues
The origin of Punjabi is often traced to the Shaurseni strand of early medieval Prakrit
andApabhramsha. While there is enough evidence from the Persian literature to suggest
that Punjab had its own dialect as a speech form and in oral folk compositions from at
least the twelfth century, the earliest written examples of Punjabi comes fromAdi Granth
or the Guru Granth Sahib compiled by Guru Arjan Dev (5th Guru of Sikh religion) in
1604 CE. Since this was a sacred text, its original version has come down to us
without any alteration. Interestingly, the oldest verses in the Adi Granth are the songs
of Sheikh Fariduddin Masood (d. 1265 CE) of Khotwal who was educated in
Multan and Delhi, and who spent much of his productive life in Pak Pattan. His
Punjabi songs of love for God, the earliest extant specimens of written literature in
Punjabi, were so sweet that he got the name of Ganjshakar or ‘treasure of
sweetness’.
Among the greatest early poets of Punjabi were the Sikh Gurus beginning with Guru
Nanak Dev (1469-1539 CE) himself.As a child, he was taught both by a Brahmin and
a Qazi ofhis village. Hispowerfulandextremelylyricalverses focusingbothondevotional
and philosophical themes constitute the core of Adi Granth, and the greatest influence
on the later development of the language. The devotional songs of Guru Amardas
(1479-1574 CE) and Guru Ram Das (1534-1581 CE) offer more colloquial versions
of Punjabi put to great effect in a lyrical metre. The most famous long composition of
Guru Amardas was Anand, and they continue to be very popular. Guru Ram Das’s
songs are marked also by the aesthetically pleasing deployment of classical literary
devices like alliteration and onomatopoeia. Other poets of the sixteenth centuryincluded
Damodar Gulati (the first author to have put the Heer-Ranjha folk tale into narrative
songs) and Guru Arjan Dev (1563-1606 CE) whose Sukhamani (Peace of Mind),
Bavan Akhari (Fifty-two Epistles) and Bara Maha (Twelve Months) are still considered
masterpieces of Punjabi literature.
The contribution of Bhai Gurdas (1558-1637 CE) is next only to the Gurus. He was a
polyglot scholar as well as a poet, and his songs revolve around a range of devotional
and secular themes. Theyreflect the spiritual aspirations but also the ‘mundane’ concerns
of the contemporary society. Another polyglot poet, a Sufi master was Sultan Bahu
(late sixteenth or early seventeenth century CE) who composed his Punjabi songs in
the Davayya metre. Indeed a number of Sufi and other Muslim authors enriched the
corpus of Punjabi literature with their creative talent in the early modern period. Shah
Husain (1538-1601 CE), Hafiz Barkhurdar (17th century CE) and Bulhe Shah (1680-
1757 CE), Waris Shah (18th century CE) were the most prominent among them.
A respected class, almost a genre, of Punjabi literature was the Janamsakhis or the
biographical accounts of Guru Nanak Dev written in the hagiographical style. Scores
of these texts from the earlymodern period have come down to us and they are usually
grouped as Puratan Janam Sakhi, Meherban Janam Sakhi, Bala Janam Sakhi,
and Mani Singh Janam Sakhi.

2.3.10 Tamil
There are many reasons whyTamil literature, especiallyof the medieval period, should
not be clubbed with ‘regional’ literary traditions of the subcontinent. For one, as a
speech form or as a creative medium for written compositions, Tamil was not confined
to a single geo-cultural zone. From South Indian locales in Tamilnadu, Kerala and
Karnataka to Sri Lanka, and South-east Asian archipelago, the world of Tamil was 33
Sources and Literary extensive and multi-locational. Secondly, alreadybythe earlycenturies of the Christian
Traditions
Era (and long before the literarisation of the regional languages started in contact with
Sanskrit and Persian), Tamil already had a rich corpus of literary compositions, both
sacred and secular, to boast of.
The most famous medieval poet of Tamil was Kampan (aka Kavi Chakravarti) who
composed a Ramayana in Tamil in circa ninth century. (Some scholars date it to the
twelfth century).
Some of the most prominent poets from the period between Kampan and the end of
the sixteenth century include Sekkilar (author of Periyaupuranam,11th – 12th centuries
CE), Avvaiyar (a generic name by which several poetesses of 11th – 14th centuries CE
were known), Kalladanar (12th centuryauthor of Kalladam), Jayankontar (12th century
author of Kalingattu Parani), Meykandar (author of the 13th century Shaiva text
Shivajnanabodham), Pukalenti (another 13th century poet, author of Nalavenpa),
Pattinattar and Villiputturar (both from the 14th century), Pampatti Sitthar and
Palappattatai Chokkanathapulavar (both 15th century), Ativirarama Pantian (late 16th
century CE). The themes they covered included the retellings of Ramayana and
Mahabharata (or episodes there from), Puranic stories, folk tales, rituals, etc.
One of the most prominent Tamil litterateur of the seventeenth century was Sant
Kumaraguruparar, singer and composer of a number of devotional songs/verses
dedicated to various gods and goddesses such as Meenakshi, Chidambara and
Sarasvati.Another scholar poet of the seventeenth century wasAilakiamanavaladasar
(aka PillaiperumalIyenkar) who composed eight prabandhkavyas (finite narrative
poems), namely Tiruvarangattu Antati, Tiruvarangattu Malai, Tiruvaranga
Kalampagam, Sriranganayakar Uosal, Tiruvenkada Malai, Tiruvenkadattu
Antati, and Nurrettut Tiruppati Antati. No less prolific and popular was Guru
Jnanasambandhar (17th century CE), the founder of a Shaiva Mutt at Dharmapuram,
who composed Chokkanata Kalitturai, Jnanapirakasa Malai, Navaratna Malai,
Das Karya Ahaval, Mukti Nichayam, and Shivabhogasaram. His contemporary
Sant Paranjoti composed Tiruvilaiyatal Puranam depicting sixty-four different lilas
of Lord Shiva [Sundareswarar].Another Shaiva poet from the same period was Ellappa
Navalar who is credited to have composed a number of sthalapuranas such as
Arunachalapuranam, Tiruvirinjaipuranam, Teerthagiri Puranam,
Tiruvenkattupuranam, Sevanthipuranam, etc.
Among the Tamil poets of the eighteenth century, mention must be made of Katikai
Muttu Pulavar, the author of texts like Samudra Vilasam, Mathan Vithara Malai,
Tiruvitai Marudhur Antati, and Kumaraja Manjari. No less important was
Ambalavanak Kavirayar and Shivajnana Munivar. The former was the author of
Arappalishvarashatakam while the latter wrote Shivajnana Mapadiyam. It is
interesting that the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century texts appear to be
more directly concerned about regulating social conduct.

2.3.11 Telugu
Telugu literature has a continuous history of nearly a thousand years. Like most of the
other ‘regional’languages and literary cultures, Telugu literature also developed under
the influence of many other languages especially Sanskrit, Tamil and Kannada from the
very beginning. Persian influence also becomes marked from the sixteenth century
onwards. Unlike in the case of other deśabhāsās (language of place) however, the
34 authors of Telugu from the eleventh centuryitself were conscious of writingin a language
that was distinct from its neighbouring languages and stated clearly that they were Sanskrit Kavya Literature,
Regional Sources and
writing in Tenugu/ Telugu. One of the first iconic poets of Telugu was Nannaya who Travelogues
flourished in the eleventh century. Other early icons of Telugu literature were
Nannecodudu (12th century CE) and Tikkana (13th century CE).
Among the most well known authors of Telugu in the middle period was the famous
Vijayanagar ruler Krishnadeva Raya (r. 1509-1529) who wrote a political treatise (a
book of advice for the king) entitled Amuktamalyada. Krishnadeva Raya’s
contemporary and a poet laureate in his court was Allasani Peddana who wrote a
narrative poem on a story of Markandeya Purana entitled Svarocisha Sambhava or
Manucaritra. Other prominent authors of the sixteenth centuryinclude Dhurjati, Tenali
Ramakrishna Kavi (aka Vikatakavi or witty/mischievous poet), and Pingali Surana.
Dhurjati was the author of Shrikalahastishwara Mahatmyamu and
Shrikalahastishwara Shatakamu (dedicated to Lord Shiva).Tenail Ramakrishna’s
compositions include Udbhataradhyacaritramu and Panduranga Mahatmyamu.
Pingali Surana was known both for being prolific and for experimenting with various
forms of kavya. His Raghavapandaviyamu was a unique text of its time since it could
be read both as a Ramakatha as well as a Mahabharata.
The most prolific poet of Telugu in the seventeenth century was probably Kshetrayya
(1600-1660). He is credited with the composition of four thousand poems known as
Muvva Gopala Padamulu which were focused on the love-play of Lord Krishna
with his beloveds.Another poet-singer of the seventeenth century was Ramadasu (aka
Kancherla Gopalanna whose devotional songs compiled under the title of Ramadasu
Kirtanalu are popular even today.

2.3.12 Urdu
The word Ordu or Urdu refers to a military camp, or a royal palace or a fort in
Turkish. In Persian texts in India, however, it referred to an empire or a capital city.
The popular perception that Urdu originated in the military camps or that the Deccan
was the original habitat of Urdu have been busted by scholars. Though the language
existed as a speech form (known as Hindavi/Dehlawi) in and around Delhi from at
least the thirteenth century, it is only in the eighteenth century that we come across the
first evidence for the use of the word ‘Urdu’ to describe it.In different times and contexts,
it was referred to bya variety of names such as Hindavi, Hindui, Hindi, Rekhta, Dehlavi,
etc. In the Deccan, a version of it was known as dakkani since the fifteenth century.
The grammar and syntax of both Urdu and Hindi were based on the everyday speech
forms of and around the cityof Delhi in the thirteenth century. It was this language that
later came to be known as khari boli. Indeed modern Urdu and modern Hindi are
the contenders for the single linguistic and literary tradition. The earliest reference
to Hindavi as a literary form comes from the Persian poet Masud Saad Salman
(1046-1121 CE) from Lahore who claimed to have composed a divan (collection of
verses) in Hindavi. Amir Khusrau (1253-1325 CE) is widely recognized to be
the first major poet of Urdu/Hindi though his preferred medium of literary
expression was Persian, and it was only for joyful sessions with friends that he
composed verses in Hindavi (or ‘Urdu’). Yet Urdu seems to have become
acceptable medium for creative expression only by the fifteenth century with the
rise of the Delhi Sufi poet, Banda Nawaz Gesudaraz who settled in Gulbarg in the
aftermath of the Timurid invasions. Burhanuddin Janam (d. 1582 CE) wrote
Asrarul-Wajud and Kalimat-ul-Haqaiq of which the latter is considered to be 35
the oldest specimen of Urdu prose.
Sources and Literary One of the earliest prominent authors in Hindavi (‘Urdu’) from north India was
Traditions
Mohammad Afzal (d. 1625 CE)Bikat Kahani an adaptation of the barahmasa genre,
a genre of Sanskrit literary tradition wherein the poet would describe the varied moods
of a woman’s yearning for her lover across the twelve months (barah mas) of the
year. Another poet who helped establish the language as a highly respected choice
for literary expression was Khub Mohammad Chishti (d. 1614 CE) who wrote Khub
Tarang, a masnawi (narrative poem) on ethics marked bydeeplyphilosophical/mystical
ruminations.
A large number of the ‘great’ poets of Urdu during this period however came from the
Deccan region. The fifth Qutb Shahi ruler of Golconda, Mohammad Quli Qutb Shah
(d. 1611 CE) himself composed thousands of couplets known for a delicate and
influential dakkani style of Urdu. Another ruler of the deccan, theAli Adil Shah II (d.
1672 CE) of Bijapur was even more prolific and composed qasidas, marsiahs,
masnawis and kabit. A poet patronized by the court in Bijapur was Sanati who
composed a narrative poem Qissa-I Benazeer. A Golconda court poet, equally
prominent, was Ibn-I Nishati who composed a masnawi by the title of Phul Ban or
‘Garden of Flowers’ (mid 17th century CE), a tale of adventures, love and longing but
rich in details of contemporary social life. Mulla Asadullah Wajhi (d. 1659 CE) was
another seventeenth century author from the deccan who contributed to the growing
prestige of Urdu literary corpus. His composition Qutub Mushtani(1609 CE) was
a romance poem in the form of a masnawi, and his prose work Sab Ras (1635
CE) was a more mature allegorical account of mysticism.Another influential poet
from the Adil Shahi court in the seventeenth century was Mohammad Nusrat
Nusrati who composed masnawis, ghazals and qasidahs. His retelling of the
Madhumati and Manohar story entitled Gulshan-I Ishq (1657 CE) is considered
a classic of Urdu literaryhistory.
Other important writers of the seventeenth centuryinclude Mian Mir Hashmi andAbdul
Qadir Bedil. The eighteenth century was the period of Urdu’s unprecedented
efflorescence. This is when Syed Abdul Wali ‘Uzlat (1693-1775 CE), authored texts
like Barahmasa, Ragmala, and Saqinamah, and Syed Sadruddin Mohammad Khan
Faez (1690-1738 CE) composed his divans. In northern India, others like Jafar
Zatalli became popular with their witty and satirical ghazals, and the famous Persian
scholar from Akbarabad and Gwalior, Sirajuddin Ali KhanArzu (aka Khan-IArzu)
worked to enhance the prestige of Urdu in Delhi and Lucknow. In fact, the
eighteenth century witnessed the rise of numerous poets as well as scholars of Urdu.
Tek Chand Dehlawi Bahar (1687-1766 CE), the great lexicographer wrote a
dictionary of Urdu entitled Bahar- I Azam. Many other texts of this period are
considered classics of Urdu literature today. Among them one must consider Mir
Ghulam Hasan’s (1735-86 CE) Masnawi Sehr-ul Bayan. Hasan’s contemporaries
Chandra Bhan Brahman and Raja Ram Narayan Mauzoon became famous for
their scintillating ghazals. Syed Fazl-iAli Fazli’s Karbala Katha, a translation of
Rauzat-ush Shohada is considered to be a specimen of exemplary Urdu prose.
Where qasida (eulogy) and hajw (satire) are concerned, Mirza Mohammad Rafi
Sauda (1713-1780 CE) is counted among the great poets.
However, it is Mir Mohammad Taqi Mir (1722-1810 CE) who is considered the
greatest ever poet of Urdu, comparable perhaps only to the great Mirza Asadullah
Khan Ghalib of the nineteenth century.Adisciple of SirajuddinAliArzu, Mir compiled
in Persian a critical tazkirah (biographical dictionary) of Urdu poets. The first collection
36 of his own poems appeared in 1752 CE. Mir is lauded for the mastery of both the
varied crafts of Urdu poetry as well as the daunting range of emotions and ideas that Sanskrit Kavya Literature,
Regional Sources and
informed his verses. Travelogues

Check Your Progress-2

1) Diversity of vernacular literary traditions was hallmark of Indian subcontinent
in 16-18th Centuries. Comment.
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
2) Why should we not categorize Tamil literature of medieval times as regional?
Elaborate.
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
3) Definethe followings:
a. Buranji
b. Abangas
c. rāso and carita
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................

2.4 TRAVELOGUES
Travellers have been visiting the Indian subcontinent since ancient times, as
travel enthusiasts, pilgrims, political emissaries, missionaries, traders, etc. By the
middle centuries of the Common Era, the subcontinent came to be perceived as
a land of immense wealth, exotic landscape, natural wealth and skilled crafts. For this
reason as well as on account of improved technologies of commutation via land
and oceans, India attracted a large number of visitors during the period of our
study. Some were individual adventurers who travelled for the joy of seeing strange
and exotic countries. Others were on a diplomatic mission sent by a distant state.
Some came to explore the possibilities of getting privileged access to trade, while
others came in search of people they could convert to their own religions, i.e. what
they thought to be the ‘true faith’. If some stayed only for a few weeks in one place,
others spent half of their lives living in this country. Clearly the travellers’ motives,
subject positions, as well as their social and occupational backgrounds varied. 37
Sources and Literary A large number of the travellers have left behind written records of their experience
Traditions
here. These records are available to us in varied forms. Some wrote travelogues and
others wrote letters to friends and superiors back home, while theywere still travelling
in India. Wherever their writings survived, they are unique sources of information for
historians. The information available in the travel literatures pertains to a whole variety
ofissues and themes includingsocialcustoms, urban architecture, culturalvalues, political
traditions, climates and landscapes as well as the birds, animals and plants of the various
parts of India.
Since the visitors did not see the reigning kings as their patrons, their accounts provide
necessary‘correctives’ to the court chronicles that routinelyand hyperbolically praised
the rulers, and never noticed anything wrong in their empires. Unfettered by the need
to please the rulers, the travel accounts were less stiff and more colourful. Indeed the
travel writers often provide the most vivid accounts of the rivers and mountains, hunting
expeditions of the kings and grandees, terrible scarcities that marked the times of
famine, resistance by forest-dwellers or idiosyncratic habits of sovereign rulers. As
outsiders, they often noticed and wrote about things that the native writers considered
too mundane to mention. The clothes people wore for example, or the food they ate,
often found only incidental reference in the court chronicles, but visitor from beyond
the subcontinent would often comment upon these and other everyday habits.
It is interesting to note that at times travellers tried to and did learn Persian, often before
coming to India for better communication. However most were not very familiar with
the vernaculars, and hired Indian guides or translators often called dubash or dubashi.
As with any other ‘sources’, reading the travellers’ accounts poses its own challenges
for the historians. The fact that most of the travel writers did not have local patrons, did
not mean that they lacked an agenda for writing. Nor did it mean that they were always
‘objective’. Very often they too tried to please a master or a friend abroad. Sometimes,
they tried to prove a political point back home by taking liberty with facts and creating
a narrative that would help them convey their point more effectively. As historians,
therefore, we need to be cautious and interpret these texts within their given contexts.
The life of the travellers were very uncertain and to a great extent vulnerable.
Some observers believed that until the beginning of the early modern times, half of
the ships that sailed for India from Europe did not return. Nor was it easy for the
travellers once they deboarded onto the Indian soil. Their means of travel also
varied. They travelled on foot, rode horses and, even used palanquins and bullock
carts, etc. depending on the availability of the means of transport, quality of
roads, and resourcefulness. Encounters with bandits were not very infrequent.
These encounters made their lives miserable, because survivingwithout moneyin
an alien land was verydifficult.At times, the local officials confiscated their
belongings. Boarding and lodging was a recurrent cause of concern for them.At
times they stayed in camps or in inns or in carvan Sarais.
Food was always a cause of concern, which had no easy solution. Their writing was
mostly oriented towards their European patrons or to the friends. Rarely, if ever, was
it written directly for Indian audiences.
Let me brieflydiscuss a few travellers belonging to different regions, who came to
India for different purposes. To begin with Afanasy Nikitin, a Russian came here to
try his fortune as a horse trader in the later part of the 15th and early years of the 16th
century. FatherAntonio Monserrate was a Portuguese Jesuit who, on the invitation
38 of Emperor Akbar, visited Agra and tried hard to convert Emperor Akbar to
Christianity. His writings unfortunately carried his missionary bias towards Hindus, Sanskrit Kavya Literature,
Regional Sources and
Muslims and other communities, especially Bhils. William Hawkins was an Travelogues
English merchant, ambassador of King James-I to the Mughal court. He was eager
to secure concessions for the English trade and permission for permanent factory
at Surat. He carried a watch for Emperor Jahangir.
Peter Mundy who later followed Hawkins was witness to the turmoils caused by the
war ofsuccession. He travelled up to China and Japan, and offered a veryrich description
of Indian society. Friar Sebastien Manrique (c. 1585-1669) was a priest ofAugustinian
Order from Portugal. He narrated interesting, at times horrifying, stories to tell us about
his journey from the east coast upto Bengal, describing his encounters with monsoon
floods, mosquito, feverafter mosquito bite, inhospitable villages, etc. Niccolao Manucci,
a venetian who travelled to India and stayed with Mughal prince Dara Sukoh, provided
detailed history of the war of succession and a nuanced account of court etiquettes and
prevalent practices of favour and bribery. We will conclude this section with the travels
of Francois Bernier, a physician from Paris and a man with a natural flair for philosophy.
Initially, he joined the fugitive prince Dara Shukoh as his personal physician. His
observations on Indian societyin general, and his description ofthe exploitative character
of ruling elite, have been extensively quoted bylater colonial historians, which has been
challenged and modified bysubsequent historians working with other kinds of sources.

2.5 LET US SUM UP

Above summaryof literary traditions in Sanskrit and different vernacular languages is a
testimony of flourishing literary culture during early modern times. Persian being the
official language was flourishing as discussed in the previous unit but along with that we
find patronage was made available to not onlySanskrit but at regional levels to respective
vernaculars. Such diverse literary traditions have been manifestation of multilingual
society. Though onlya brief survey has been attempted above yet we need to appreciate
that extensive researches are being carried out in each of these vernaculars. (Bibliography
below will help you explore further) Avery broad sketch of travellers and travelogues
has also been discussed to highlight the variety of sources available for the period
under study.

2.6 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES
Check your Progress 1
1) See Section 2.1 The multilingual ethos of early modern times need elaboration.
2) See Section 2.2 Sanskrit continued to flourish in medieval times is the core of this
question
Check your Progress 2
1) See Section 2.3 It is expected that answer will highlight the diverse literarytraditions
across Indian subcontinent.
2) See Section 2.3.10 Tamil has much older historyand has Influenced developments
in neighbouring vernaculars.
3) See Section 2.3.1, 2.3.7 and 2.3.4 39
Sources and Literary Recommended Readings
Traditions
Alam, M. & S. Subrahmanyam. 2011. Writing the Mughal World: Studies on
Culture and Poitics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Busch, Allison. 2011. Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal
India. New York: Oxford University Press.
Faruqi, S. R. 2011. Early Urdu Literary Culture and History, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
Fisher, M. H., ed. 2007. Visions of Mughal India: An Anthology of European
Travel Writing, London: I.B. Tauris.
Kakati, Banikanta, ed. 1953. Aspects of Early Assamese Literature, Guwahati:
Guwahati University.
McGregor, R. S. 1984. Hindi Literature from Its Beginnings to the Nineteenth
Century, Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Paniker, K. Ayyappa, ed. 1997-2000. Medieval Indian Literature: An Anthology,
Vols 1-4, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
Pingree, David. 1994. Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit, Series A, Vol. 5.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
Rao, V.N., D. Shulman and S. Subrahmanyam. 1992. Symbols of Substance:
Court and State in Nayak Period Tamilnadu, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sheldon Pollock, ed. 2003. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from
South Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Truschke, Audrey. 2016. Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Warder, A.K. 1972. Indian Kavya Literature, vol. I: Literary Criticism. Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited.

40