Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India 9789004264489, 9004264485

Citation preview



Culture and Circulation

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ii



Brill’s Indological Library Edited by

Johannes Bronkhorst In co-operation with

Richard Gombrich, Oskar von Hinüber, Katsumi Mimaki, Arvind Sharma

VOLUME 46

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bil



iii

Culture and Circulation Literature in Motion in Early Modern India

Edited by

Thomas de Bruijn Allison Busch

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014

iv Cover illustration: Photo taken from the interior of the Hawa Mahal, Jaipur, by Thomas de Bruijn. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Culture and Circulation : Literature in Motion in Early Modern India / edited by Thomas de Bruijn, Allison Busch. pages cm. -- (Brill's Indological Library) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-26447-2 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-26448-9 (e-book) 1. Indic literature-History and criticism. 2. Literature and society--India. I. Bruijn, Thomas de, editor of compilation. II. Busch, Allison, editor of compilation. PK2903.C85 2014 891'.1--dc23 2013043386

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0925-2916 ISBN 978-90-04-26447-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26448-9 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by the Editors and Authors. This work is published by Koninklijke Brill NV. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

contents

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Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   1 Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch Persian as a Passe-Partout: The Case of Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīdil and his Hindu Disciples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21 Stefano Pellò Pirates, Poets, and Merchants: Bengali Language and Literature in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  47 Thibaut d’Hubert The Court of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm Khān-i Khānān as a Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  75 Corinne Lefèvre Mirabai at the Court of Guru Gobind Singh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  107 John Stratton Hawley and Gurinder Singh Mann Shifting Semantics in Early Modern North Indian Poetry: Circulation of Culture and Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  139 Thomas de Bruijn The Gopīs of the Jñāndev Gāthā . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  160 Catharina Kiehnle Poetry in Motion: Literary Circulation in Mughal India . . . . . . . . . . . .  186 Allison Busch “Krishna is the Truth of Man”: Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami’s Haqāʾiq-i Hindī (Indian Truths) and the Circulation of Dhrupad and Bishnupad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  222 Francesca Orsini

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Culture in Circulation in Eighteenth-Century North India: Urdu Poetry by a Rajput Krishna Devotee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  247 Heidi Pauwels A Braj Poet in Colonial Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  278 Robert van de Walle Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  303

Contents Contents Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Persian as a Passe-Partout: the Case of Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīdil and his Hindu Disciples Stefano Pellò. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Pirates, Poets, and Merchants: Bengali Language and Literature in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U Thibaut d’Hubert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 The Court of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm Khān-i Khānān as a Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions Corinne Lefèvre*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 Mirabai at the Court of Guru Gobind Singh John Stratton Hawley and Gurinder Singh Mann*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Shifting Semantics in Early Modern North Indian Poetry: Circulation of Culture and Meaning Thomas de Bruijn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139 The Gopīs of the Jñāndev Gāthā Catharina Kiehnle*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160 Poetry in Motion: Literary Circulation in Mughal India Allison Busch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186 “Krishna is the Truth of Man”: Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami’s Haqāʾiq-i Hindī (Indian Truths) and the Circulation of Dhrupad and Bishnupad Francesca Orsini*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .222 Culture in Circulation in Eighteenth-Century North India: Urdu Poetry by a Rajput Krishna Devotee Heidi Pauwels*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 A Braj Poet in Colonial Times Robert van de Walle*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278 Index

Acknowledgements

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Acknowledgements The present volume originated in a conference in 2006 at Leiden University in the Netherlands, which brought together a group of scholars who saw the need to better understand the cultural exchanges that were driven by the circulation of writers, poetic forms, and ideas in premodern South Asia. The editors convened a panel entitled “People in Motion, Ideas in Motion: Culture and Circulation in Premodern South Asia” over two days, provoking many interesting nodes of discussion. We have since worked closely with the contributors over a period of years to produce the essays collected here. Not all of the original panelists (there were nearly twenty) are represented, but all helped in the conceptualization of the project. We are particularly thankful to Vasudha Dalmia, Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye, Samira Sheikh, Ramya Sreenivasan, and Hugh van Skyhawk for their contribution to the ideas that fuel the essays in the volume. The Leiden conference marked a moment of taking stock of the history and practice of the study of India’s centuries of textual traditions. Several of the scholars working in vernacular languages (especially Hindi) had regularly interacted at a triennial international conference that was often dubbed “the Bhakti conference”. Many of us felt that it would be desirable to meet more regularly as well as to engage with wider linguistic terrains and broader questions. One productive outcome of the panel was to foreground the links and crossovers between the discrete and sometimes fragmented academic lineages that comprise the field. This volume, which especially foregrounds the early modern period, develops new ideas, but also stands on the shoulders of a pioneering generation of scholars, who brought a wealth of material to light and first charted this relatively unknown terrain. The sparkling presence of Aditya Behl merits a special tribute. As a discussant, he commented on and summarized the insights from the various papers, and helped to synthesize them in a manner that enormously benefited the present volume. His untimely death in 2009 stopped short his contribution to this field of scholarship, but his sparkling genius still inspires the essays in the volume. We would also like to thank the hosts of the Leiden conference, EASAS (the European Association for South Asian Studies) and the IIAS

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(International Institute for Asian Studies), as well as Patricia Radder, our editor at Brill and our indexer Katherine Ulrich. Additional thanks go to Arthur Dudney for his tireless editorial assistance in the preparation of the manuscript.

List of Contributors

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List of Contributors Stefano Pellò is lecturer in Persian and Indo-Persian studies at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice. His main research area is the diffusion and reception of Persian linguistic and literary culture in and beyond South Asia, and the related cosmopolitan processes of cultural and aesthetic interactions, particularly in the poetic sphere. He also works as a literary translator. Among his main publications are Ṭūtiyān-i Hind. Specchi identitari e proiezioni cosmopolite indo-persiane (1680–1856), on the textual space of Hindu Persian poets in Indo-Persian taẕkiras (Florence, Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2012), and the first complete Italian annotated translation of the Divan of Ḥāfiz̤ of Shiraz (Hafez, Canzoniere, Milan, Ariele, 2005). Thibaut d’Hubert is assistant professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) of the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the history and poetics of Bengali literature, IndoPersian culture, and translation and commentarial practices in Bengal during the fifteenth-eighteenth centuries. He is working on a book project tentatively entitled Vernacular Transitions around the Bay of Bengal: Ālāol (fl. 1651–1671) and the Bengali Poetry of Arakan. D’Hubert is also co-organizing a project on the reception of the works of the Persian polymath ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami (1414–1492) under the auspices of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society (jamidaralislam.uchicago.edu). Corinne Lefèvre completed her Ph.D. in history and civilizations at the EHESS, Paris. She is currently a research fellow at the Paris-based CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and the CEIAS (Center for Indian and South Asian Studies). Her research deals with Mughal history. Recent publications include “Cultural Dialogue in South Asia and Beyond: Narratives, Images and Community (sixteenth-nineteenth centuries)” in Journal of the Econ­omic and Social History of the Orient, 2012, 55: 2/3 (with I. G. Županov) and “Europe-Mughal India-Muslim Asia: Circulation of Political Ideas and Instruments in Early Modern Times,” in Structures on the Move. Technologies of Governance in Transcultural Encounter (Springer, 2012).

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John Stratton Hawley—more informally, Jack—is Professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author, recently, of Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in Their Time and Ours (Oxford University Press, 2005 and 2012) and The Memory of Love: Surdas Sings to Krishna (Oxford University Press, 2009). Gurinder Singh Mann is Professor of Sikh Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His teaching and research interests focus on Sikhism, Punjabi language, and religion and society in the Punjab. His major publications include The Goindval Pothis (Harvard Oriental Series 51, 1997); The Making of Sikh Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2001), and Sikhism (Religions of the World Series, Prentice Hall, 2004). His current projects include a series of critical editions and translations of early Sikh texts, and making Punjabi language pedagogy available on the internet. Thomas de Bruijn is an independent scholar, residing in Leiden, the Netherlands. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1996 from Leiden University and has been an affiliated fellow at IIAS, Leiden and guest lecturer at INALCO, Paris. He regularly publishes on modern and early modern South Asian literature. His most recent publication is the book Ruby in the Dust: Poetry and History in Padmāvat by the South Asian Sufi Poet Muḥammad Jāyasī (Leiden University Press, 2012). Catharina Kiehnle is Professor of Modern Indo-Aryan Languages at the University of Leipzig. Her special fields are Vedic Studies, Hinduism, Yoga, and Bhakti Literature, especially in Maharashtra. Her most recent monograph, An Indian Tartuffe: P. K. Atre's Comedy “Where there is a Guru there are Women” (Harrassowitz, 2006), is an analysis of Atre’s reworking of Molière's famous play focusing on fraudulent religious practice in twentieth-century India. Allison Busch is Associate Professor of Hindi and Indian literature in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University, New York. Her research centers on early modern Hindi literature with a special interest in courtly India. She is the author of Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India (Oxford University Press, 2011) and has published numerous articles on the literary and intellectual life of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century North India. Her current

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research is on local histories from the Mughal period that were recorded in Rajasthani and Brajbhasha. Francesca Orsini is Professor of Hindi and South Asian Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her publications include The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2002), and Print and Pleasure: commercial publishing and entertaining fiction in colonial North India (Permanent Black, 2009). Two edited volumes from her UK-based AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) project on “North Indian multilingual literary culture”: After Timur Came, and Tellings and Texts, are forthcoming. She also edited the volume Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture (Orient Black Swan, 2010). Heidi Pauwels is Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her publications include Krishna’s Round Dance Reconsidered (Curzon, 1996), In praise of Holy Men (Egbert Forsten, 2002), and The Goddess as Role Model: Sītā and Rādhā in Scripture and on Screen (Oxford University Press, 2008). She is also the editor of Indian Literature and Popular Cinema (Routledge, 2007), Patronage and Popularisation, Pilgrimage and Procession (Harrassowitz, 2009), and, with Monika Horstmann, Satire in the age of Early Modernity (Harrassowitz, 2012). She is currently working on a Guggenheim project on the circulation of ideas, poetic genres, and painting styles, focusing on the small Rajasthani principality of Kishangarh. Robert van de Walle is an independent scholar in Leiden, the Netherlands. He completed his MA in Hindi literature at Leiden University, with a special focus on the nineteenth century. The topic of his thesis was Jagmohan Singh's novel Śyāmāsvapna.

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Introduction

1

Introduction Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch 1. Culture and Circulation The idea of a timeless traditional India, its people locked in place in unchanging, quaint villages until modernity roused them from their somnolence—once a staple of Western representations of the Subcontinent— is so patently at odds with the historical record that one wonders how such imagining could ever have carried force.1 Indian narratives are filled with the peregrinations of kings and military personnel, poets, scholars, merchants, and adventurers. Religious itinerants in particular were ubiquitous in a culture where many aspirants to spiritual attainment wandered constantly, with only a begging bowl and life’s basic necessities at their disposal. The Virashaivas, a militant devotional community in South India that produced some of the finest medieval Kannada poetry, fervently advocated being jaṅgama, mobile, as opposed to sthāvara, stationary (and thus overly wedded to the establishment).2 Indian love poetry is unthinkable without the iconic motif of the pathika, the traveler, and the virahiṇī or forlorn beloved anxiously awaiting his safe return. If centuries of texts are populated by Indians on the move, premodern South Asia itself was also a place one traveled to, a magnet for visitors from virtually all of Eurasia. Examples of this type of mobility abound and cover the entire known history of the region beginning with the people who 1 This notion cannot be traced to a single source. The idea of the Indian village as a static, self-contained world can be found as early as Charles Metcalfe’s minute of 1830: “The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything they can want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations” (1832: 331–32). Another observation is recorded a century later by Charlotte and William Wiser, missionaries who took up residence in the Indian village of Karimpur during the 1920s, returning periodically. Although they did grudgingly acknowledge change over a period of decades in response to the intrusions of modern life, they observed that “When life has followed the same pattern for generations, the grooves made by that pattern go deep. To alter the design is difficult.” (2000[1930]: 160). 2 Ramanujan 1973: 20–22. In a related vein, Catharina Kiehnle notes that one derivation of saurī, a character that figures in the Jñāndev Gāthā that is the subject of her essay in this volume, is from Sanskrit svairī (< svaira, sva-īra, “going where one likes”).

2

Introduction

brought new, Indo-European, languages and composed the Vedas, Hin­ duism’s Ur-texts. “Traditional India” was founded not by locals but by migrants from the northwest.3 Buddhism—an ancient Indian religion whose adherents were profoundly peripatetic—was periodically revitalized through migrant scholars. When in the fourth century Buddhist communities from China needed access to scriptures, they sent Fa-Hsien on a long mission to collect the important source texts.4 Islam brought its own migrations. The religion reached India early—via Arab traders to Sind during its very first century—and multiple dynasties of Turkic rulers from Central Asia pulled India into the greater Islamic world. This linkage stimulated additional opportunities for travel, as when the fourteenth-century Moroccan judge Ibn Battuta spent a long period in residence at the court of Muhammad bin Tughlak (r. 1325–51) or when, during the time of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), India became, with spectacular creative consequences, a haven for Persian literati.5 The same century witnessed unprecedented levels of mercantile exchange in textiles and spices between Europe, South Asia, and destinations further east, following trade routes dating back to at least the third or fourth century. Henceforth India would become a hub for Western expansionist politics. Internal circulation and exchange with the world outside, in short, are defining features of South Asia throughout history. This unassailable fact has been far from self-evident to generations of scholars, a situation that is only recently changing. A 2003 collection of essays by Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, whose title, Society and Circulation, we admiringly echo, was one important model for the present book. Principally working in the period from 1750 to 1950, they take as their starting point the mobility of people, goods, and culture in recent South Asian history. Often a by-product of mobility is the adaptation of ideas, which spurs cultural change. The art historian Barry Flood has made encounters between communities the very premise of a ground-breaking study of frontier regions from a much earlier period, noting that “people and things have been mixed up for a very long time, rarely conforming to the boundaries imposed on them by 3 Or such is the general scholarly consensus. The grounds for this consensus (and opposing views) are outlined in Trautmann, ed., 2005. 4 Fa-Hsien was just one in a series of Chinese travelers to India. See Singh (2009: 33). 5 On Ibn Battuta, see Gibb 1958; on the circulation of Persian literati in Mughal India, see Lefèvre, this volume.

Introduction

3

modern anthropologists and historians.”6 We too have become suspicious of the modern boundaries that have been erected around languages and texts. Although not generally highlighted in Indian literary history, there too circulation was the norm rather than the exception in everything from the movement of literati to the dissemination of texts to the cross-pollination of poetic forms. How could circulation not, in fact, have been endemic to a region that boasts more than two dozen major literary traditions? Sanskrit was the classical language of Brahmanical elites since the early centuries of the Common Era, and it spread across the subcontinent precisely through the vast movements of these communities. After the second millennium, Persian spread across much of India through the movements of political administrators, religious professionals, and court literati. This period also saw the rise of Indian vernacular languages, or more local languages that by definition did not travel to the same extent that Sanskrit and Persian did but nonetheless had circulatory routes that defined their proper literary spaces. Another important type of circulation was across the numerous sites for poetic production, the courts, mercantile centers, and religious venues that were highly conducive to cultural exchange. Literature easily crossed linguistic, geographical, and social, and religious boundaries and in this society the frontier between the worldly and the spiritual was frequently porous.7 In short, texts routinely circulated across nearly every conceivable boundary—or rather, across fluid lines that today have been retrospectively seen as boundaries. An adequate appreciation of the multiple cultural contexts and the many cross-fertilizations produced by all of this circulation has been hampered by the fixity of a nationalist vision of South Asian history.8 Earlier scholars were too quick to distinguish traditions as foreign and Muslim (for instance, Persian)9 or indigenous and Hindu (for instance, Hindi in its 6 Flood 2009: 1. See also the volume Confluence of Cultures, edited by Nalini Delvoye (1994), which brings together essays on early modern and modern Indo-Persian cultural and artistic traditions. 7 A dramatic instance of the interplay between courtly and devotional poetic personas is discussed in Bangha 2007; de Bruijn (2012) stresses the interaction between early modern Chishti Sufi centers and worldly patrons that defined the literary field in which Muhammad Jayasi created his Padmāvat (1540). 8 The impact of nationalist politics on the representation of cultural and literary history has been the topic of various recent studies, such as Vasudha Dalmia’s The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions (1997); Before the Divide, edited by Francesca Orsini (2010); and Literature and Nationalist Ideology (2010), edited by Hans Harder. 9 Persian ceased to be a major literary language in India only in the late nineteenth century and its heritage belongs equally to India and Iran, constituting a transregional

4

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post-nineteenth century incarnation).10 And yet very little from the Indian literary past is intrinsically rooted in a single terrain. Classical writers influenced vernacular writers. Vernacular poetry and oral traditions enlivened the world of the classical. Religious communities have sometimes been identified with a particular language (as when Buddhists developed the Pali canon, or Jains cultivated Apabhramsha), but this was not to the exclusion of other languages, and many texts and genres were disseminated widely across sociolinguistic communities. One literature helped to beget another, and frequently the sources were multiple. Poets traveled. Poems traveled. No tradition was sui generis or isolated within its own boundaries. The circulation of culture—its producers, products, and practices—is the premise of this book. Instead of analyzing how a particular text or tradition can be classified according to a preexisting taxonomy (say, “bhakti literature”) or insular historiography (say, “Bengali literature”), the authors seek to capture points of contact between traditions. A focus on the anomaly or hybrid case, the heteroglossic or syncretic textual moment, is a fruitful vantage point from which to explore the circulation and diffusion that were behind so much of cultural creation. 2. Approaches to Indian Texts Our approach queries the notion of textual fixity (read: purity) that has influenced much Indological study for a very long time. One significant branch of earlier Indological research consisted in weeding out interpolations to bring a literary work back to congruence with a putative original. Some of this impetus stemmed from concerns central to European intellectual history—for instance, the need to recover the original intention of the Bible during the Protestant Reformation—and did not necessarily mesh with Indic practices.11 The traditional philological method can fail spectacularly even for European languages,12 but a concern with purity does Persianate cultural sphere that gave rise to what Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has called “homeless texts” (2001: x). In modern times, Persian literary trends that originated in or became popular in India, such as the so-called sabk-i hindī or “the Indian style”, have been ill-served by modern Iranian nationalist historiography, which has denounced it as a corruption from some putative Persian norm (Kinra 2007: 132–33). 10 The contributions of Muslim authors to Hindi literary culture have been at the center of various publications, such as Phukan 2001 and de Bruijn 2012; the topic is also treated in several essays in this volume. 11 Cf. Schopen 1991. 12 See Cerquiglini 1999: 33–45.

Introduction

5

marked injustice to the complexities on the ground in South Asia. For one, orality and literacy have a much more complicated relationship since the latter does not generally replace the former through some straightforward process of supersession. Additionally, many South Asian literatures have a rich performance history, which can leave its mark on the manuscript tradition.13 Focusing on purity misses the nuances of even classical traditions like Sanskrit or Persian literature but is even more misguided in the case of Indian vernaculars, which remained largely unstandardized until the modern period. Take Hindi, which prior to twentieth-century language reforms was by its very nature mixed, including words from diverse Indic dialects, borrowings from Sanskrit and Persian, as well as occasional words from Turkish and Portuguese. Whereas from the nineteenth century Sanskrit garnered considerable attention in the European academy as a classical tradition, India’s regional languages were for the longest time simply ignored as unworthy of serious study.14 When George Abraham Grierson first attempted a taxonomy of the vernaculars in his Linguistic Survey of India (1894–1928), he focused too narrowly on geographical area and the filiation of regional dialects, missing important sociolinguistic nuances. He defined two large groupings of languages, based on their relationship to either “eastern” or “western” Prakrits. This model tends to force premodern cultural traditions into monologic niches and categorize languages and literatures according to their position in a taxonomy inspired by their relative distance from Sanskrit. Moreover, “Hindu” languages like Hindi were separated out from “Muslim” Urdu and Persian. Such linguistic descriptions from the late nineteenth century profoundly influenced the organizational strategies of the first literary histories, including Grierson’s own The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan (1889). An emphasis on the regional origin of the vernaculars stood in the way of seeing these languages as cultural media that functioned in multiple contexts, in some cases far removed from their geographical base.15 13 Callewaert (1993: 5–6) was forced to confront the failure of Western philological methods for his work on the Dadupanth corpus, which circulated as songs rather than texts. Similar experiences were encountered in the study of the poetry of Surdas by Hawley (1979) and Bahura and Bryant (1984). Novetzke’s innovative analysis (2008) of the authorship of Namdev moves beyond this predicament as it takes the hybridity and instability of the Namdev tradition as a point of departure and combines a diachronic perspective with an analysis of the contemporary construction of the poet’s persona in performance. 14 Pollock 2003: 4–5. 15 On the transregionalism of Brajbhasha, see Busch 2011: 188–96. The essay by Hawley and Mann in this volume tracks the circulation of the Mirabai legend across linguistic and geographical distances.

6

Introduction

More recent trends in scholarship do usefully attempt to break away from such overly restrictive models, seeing traditions as more mobile, complex, and polyphonic. A pioneer in this respect was Charlotte Vaudeville, whose 1955 study of the composition and intellectual antecedents of Tulsidas’s Rāmcaritmānas (c. 1575) moved far beyond the view that this text could simply be reduced to being a vernacular version of the Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa. She recognized how religious diversity and circulatory processes strongly conditioned the work, stressing the confluence of monistic Shaivite recreations of the Rama-epic, popular Sant and Nathyogi religious concepts, and the influence of representations of the life of Krishna in Vaishnava hagiographies modeled on the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. More contemporary scholars have since drawn attention to the Sufi prehistory of several narrative and linguistic elements in Tulsidas’s work.16 Vaudeville’s other pioneering contribution to the field is her analysis of the various “recensions” in the corpus of poems attributed to Kabir (fl. 1450), which showed how these texts traveled all over North India and took on new identities and meanings in their transmission and reception.17 This work has been foundational to the research presented here. Foregrounding circulation and the multiple voices that the literary theorist Bakhtin famously dubbed “heteroglossia”18 facilitates a shift away from the search for “monologic” purity or the sources of cultural traditions as the main driver of research and historiography. Social scientists and humanists alike are increasingly suspicious of claims about communities and identities—even in antiquity—being stable. As noted in a recent manifesto on cultural mobility: Radical mobility is not a phenomenon of the twenty-first century alone, but is a key constituent element of human life in virtually all periods. Yet academic accounts of culture tend to operate on exactly the opposite assumption and to celebrate what they imagine to be rooted or undamaged.19

Primordiality can be a powerful nationalist imagining but it is usually just that: imagining. Nationalism—itself a distinctly modern ideology that is rooted in beliefs about stable, self-evident linguistic and ethnic identities—thrives on cultural fictions rather than facts.20 Our authors are 16 See Behl 2007 and de Bruijn 2010. 17 See Vaudeville 1974 and 1993. 18 Bakhtin 1981: 263. 19 Greenblatt 2010: i. 20 Now-classic investigations of this problem include Chatterjee 1993 and Hobsbawm 1997.

Introduction

7

healthy skeptics when it comes to claims about the fixity of “traditional cultures”, too long a given in Indian studies, and are actively interested in pursuing fresh approaches. 3. Theorizing Cultures in Motion While mobility was always an important characteristic of South Asian society, it dramatically increased during the early modern period (c. 1500– 1800). In fact, historians consider enhanced mobility one of the constitutive features of early modernity itself, even if the phenomenon is far better understood in the realm of economies than in language and literary ecologies. In the typical assessment, new transportation networks began to link the farthest reaches of the globe, wider commercial networks were forged, and technologies began to travel with unprecedented speed.21 Historians rightly stress the importance of economic and political factors, but this volume is also interested in highlighting the early modernity of textual practices.22 The increased scope of vernacular writing, for instance, can be considered one major characteristic of early modern life throughout Eurasia. And a defining feature of the early modern landscape in India is the cross-pollination between Persianate and vernacular realms that occurred during the heyday of Mughal rule (1526–1857). Nonetheless, the impact of exchange and hybridity on the development of early modern literary cultures remains largely uncharted. The hybridizing effects of modernity are, however, a lively subject of discussion in the contemporary humanities and social sciences, where mobility is rightly understood to be an important stimulus for cultural change. Globalization, the transnational imperatives of commerce, urban migration, and diasporic communities are increasingly the markers of contemporary life much of the world over and yet cultures in motion need not be seen as simply a hallmark of the postmodern condition. The scale of mobility in modern times may be of an order of magnitude higher, but earlier historical periods also witnessed extraordinary migrations that stimulated innovation and the reinvention of cultural beliefs and practices. 21 These are just three of six major criteria for early modernity discussed by Richards 1997 (the others are the increased penetration of state bureaucracy, intensification of land use, and population growth), an important early attempt to establish some diagnostic features of South Asian early modernity, albeit one that largely ignored cultural factors. 22 More cultural criteria relevant to the discussions here are outlined in Pollock 1998 and Subrahmanyam 1998.

8

Introduction

India’s early modern period—the context in which both Persian and vernacular literary cultures flourished in spectacular fashion and thus a special focus of this volume—was shaped both by internal mobility and exchange with others who came to the region for diverse reasons, whether seeking business opportunities or generous patronage at India’s famously wealthy courts. The contributors to this volume are interested in circulation as a physical and geographical fact—people literally moving their bodies through space—but also as an engine of conceptual change, since exposure to new places and people means exposure to other ways of doing things, which liberates artists, poets, and religious practitioners from their accustomed ways and has the potential to transform the “old” meaning of their products. A number of even ultra-contemporary theorizations about circulation taken from the critical apparatus of modern cultural theory provide insights that seem applicable even centuries earlier. Arjun Appadurai (1996), for instance, has spoken eloquently of how modern migrant communities construct new identities by retooling existing practices or ideas, engaging creatively with the transnational flows of globalization. In the process, identities become destabilized. Appadurai’s notion of “scapes” to encompass the various structures that define identity (he suggests, for the modern context, factors like technology, finance, religion, and ethnos) might also have broader applicability. The multidirectional movement induced by globalization causes the loss of familiar, locally determined scapes and the rise of much more complex and composite structures. Although doubtless not as pervasive or as rapid as what we see in contemporary times, evidence from India suggests similar practices of realigning and recontextualizing traditions, leading to richly layered forms of identity. Some of the material presented in this volume—clusters of literary motifs and religious beliefs, for instance—might be viewed afresh as “scapes” that were subject to new juxtapositions and syntheses as early modern South Asia was reshaped by the mobility of people and ideas. 23 Hybridity is another influential, if controversial,24 concept from modern critical theory that proves to be readily applicable to a wide range of geographical locations and periods. India’s early modern period, often cele23 The essays by de Bruijn, Busch, Orsini, Pauwels, Pellò, van de Walle, and Hawley and Mann all allude, directly or indirectly, to the recontextualizations of existing cultural images and their role in the formation of new cultural identities. 24 More than one scholar (e.g. Flood 2009: 5) has expressed misgivings about the term hybridity. Burke 2009 (especially chapter 2) is an insightful overview of the strengths and weaknesses of “hybridity” and other terms that attempt to do similar conceptual work.

Introduction

9

brated for its “composite culture” and “syncretism”, was certainly a society with a fertile potential for cultural hybridity. When India, like early modern Europe, witnessed increased mobility, this drove new forms of contact between languages and the rise of written vernaculars. Both cultures were also peopled by itinerant military elites and multi-ethnic armies.25 Competing religious paradigms are another factor that sets the stage for hybridization. In India, the Turkic rulers who became politically dominant after 1200 ce engaged in complex ways with local cultures. Like all zones of acculturation, interactions were far from unidirectional, although as a rule we know more about elite than popular culture. One formulation of hybridity in modern contexts stresses its potential as a tool of resistance to cultural dominance, as in Homi Bhabha’s influential theory (1994). In what ways did hybridizing dominant narratives and cultural discourses by distorting them with alternative visions serve as a strategy to destabilize their hegemonic impact? If in Bhabha’s estimation Postcolonial English Indian writing is a classic case of destabilization, in which the colonist’s language and cultural idiom are deployed to represent a subaltern perspective, it seems that in some forms of Indian vernacular writing, circulation had a comparable effect, since in the process existing narratives would be rephrased, mimicked, or distorted to adapt them to new social and cultural perspectives. The idea of resistance that is at the core of Bhabha’s formulation is only one of many reasons for such adaptation, however. It is also useful to invoke Bakhtin’s general understanding of hybridization: A mixture of two social languages within the limits of a single utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an utterance, between two different linguistic consciousnesses, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation, or by some other factor.26

There are, in fact, many ways to frame circulation and its effects. Regardless of how we conceptualize it, an important aspect of the hybridity of early modern Indian literary culture highlighted in this volume is that it is not to be seen as a deviation from a monolithic norm; nor did we want the stress to be on individual instances of engaging in cultural dialogue (as in the case of the iconic Mughal Emperor Akbar), as though they constituted a special case. We argue instead for a more organic multiplicity. Vernacular Indian literatures, for instance, were inherently mixed and mobile to such 25 On the European case, see Burke 2009: 26–27. 26 Bakhtin 1981: 358.

10

Introduction

an extent that dialogue and exchange had become part of the “habitus” engrained in the literary field—to use Bourdieuian language.27 4. The Essays The editors of the present volume invited the authors to bring out arguments for the circulation of culture from the sources at hand, without imposing a predetermined methodological framework. These essays, each from its own perspective, demonstrate how circulation and the crossing of geographical, linguistic, cultural, religious, and social boundaries have been a tremendous creative force in South Asian history, spurring centuries of literary innovation. The essays span roughly the period from the first appearance of vernacular literature (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) in North India to the heyday of both Persian and vernacular literary life during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The volume concludes with the transition to the modern period, showcasing the fascinating circumstances of circulation between Indian aesthetic paradigms and those wrought by colonial modernity. Although not originally intended, the essays do demonstrate that circulation has a diachronic aspect, involving the reuse of older cultural forms and the re-reading and reinterpretation of earlier texts or other cultural products. On a smaller scale, the temporal aspect of circulation is closely linked to the development of traditions in a process of exchange and diversification. One issue that comes to the fore in the essays is the crossover of cultural forms between Hindu traditions and the textual idioms of Indian Islam, whether expressed in Persian or in Indian vernaculars. In various papers (Pellò, Busch, Orsini, Pauwels), this axis served to connect different parts of North India’s diverse literary field but also proved to be a major hermeneutic challenge. How could we avoid reifying some of the very categories, such as “Hindu” and “Muslim”, that our focus on circulation demanded that we transcend?28 For instance, Hindus and Muslims differed profoundly in how they structured the world theologically, but an arena like literature was readily shared (even if, as several authors demonstrate, dif­ferent communities did not always interpret the same texts in the same 27 Bourdieu 1993: 61–73. 28 Concerted attempts to avoid such pitfalls are the essays collected in Gilmartin and Lawrence 2000. For some useful reflections on the fluidity of premodern South Asian identities, see Flood 2009: 3–9 and Wagoner 1996; 1999; 2011.

Introduction

11

manner).29 Cultural differences divided communities, but strategic uses of culture also had a unifying effect and we aim to understand what literary and linguistic choices meant in their own day, not to impose anachronistic models upon the past. This conundrum with respect to anachronism presents itself in various ways, as with the use of the term “Hindi” in various articles (e.g. Busch and Pauwels). Applying this term prior to the nineteenth century is slightly problematic as it has become tainted by association with the “Hindu” Hindi pitted against a “Muslim” Urdu in the discourse of nationalist language politics. It is used here and in several of the articles for convenience as a blanket term that encompasses the widely intelligible lingua franca of the Mughal period and its literary dialects. While scholars working in Hindi are particularly well represented, the contributors bring expertise in different regions and languages to the effort, and our collaboration enables the tracing of patterns over a much wider area of Indian cultural history than would be possible for any single scholar. Collectively, the essays move beyond the typical literary-historical practice of cataloging individual literary trends to illustrate the various possible applications of the rubric of circulation and are an invitation for future work in this vein. Each essay also stands on its own, since our authors participate in the disciplinary debates in which they locate their work. A brief overview is provided here to connect the diversity and richness of the material presented in the individual contributions to the larger concerns that underlie the general concept of the book and the engagement with earlier scholarly traditions that inspired it. The dominant concern in the essay by Stefano Pellò is the circulation between different aesthetic and cultural frameworks as exemplified in the composite membership of the literary circles surrounding the influential Indo-Persian poet Mirza ʿAbd al-Qadir Bidil (d. 1720). Pellò showcases styles of literary belonging that are likely to seem unfamiliar to those whose expectations are conditioned by modern nationalistic frameworks and thus expect Persian writing to espouse Iranian or Muslim viewpoints, or Brajbhasha (a major dialect of early Hindi) to be primarily a vehicle of Hindu Vaishnavism. Bidil and his Hindu disciples defy such anachronistic expectations by using Persian as a vehicle for Krishna devotionalism, and writing about Krishna and the sacred Vaishnava spaces of Mathura and Vrindavan with the full array of Persian literary tropes. The Persian poetic tradition acted as a filter through which the Indian references were brought 29 See the essays by Busch and Orsini, this volume.

12

Introduction

in. It absorbed local Indian elements and responded to them by incorporating them within the existing framework of Persian aesthetics. Their inclusion did not alter the frame, but extended its scope with new material. Bidil’s Hindu students lived on in literary memory, earning mention in the taẕkiras or biographical compendia of important Muslim writers and as a consequence a place in the Persian literary canon. Thibaut d’Hubert’s contribution takes a different approach to literary circulation, tracing the career of the Bengali poet Alaol (fl. 1651–71) as he moved through both geographical and expressive realms. Hailing from the Bengal hinterland, in his youth he was captured by pirates and enslaved, but went on to become a major poet who attracted the acclaim of Bengali Muslim patrons at the court of Mrauk-U in Arakan, a nominally Buddhist but strikingly cosmopolitan court located at a major coastal entrepôt in the Bay of Bengal. His evolution as a writer reflects the changing tastes and preferences of his patrons—predominantly merchants—who served as intermediaries between regional and supralocal worlds. Alaol started his career by reworking for his Bengali milieu Jayasi’s Padmāvat (c. 1540), a Hindi classic written in the Awadhi dialect. This Sufi text had a regional flavor and would have been familiar to the poet from his own background as a Muslim whose locality was ruled by Afghans with close ties to Awadh. Here the important vector of circulation was between two regional vernacular literary traditions that are rarely viewed in concert.30 Alaol’s later career took a more cosmopolitan turn when he became inspired by the Persian classical romances and epics of Nizami (1141–1209), which had circulated far beyond their homeland in Iran and Central Asia to garner acclaim in many communities in South Asia and in the Southeast Asian seafaring states. Circulation has various dimensions in this case: It is of crucial importance in the very biography of Alaol, whose migration to Mrauk-U proved transformational, as well as in the development of his poetic tastes and that of his patrons. The oeuvre of Alaol evinces a trajectory from the local to the cosmopolitan over the course of a lifetime. The career of ʿAbd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan, a Central Asian nobleman who became a leading general and administrator under the Mughal emperors Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and Jahangir (r. 1605–27), presents a different pattern. A by-product of wealth and power is the ability to be a patron, which can be a highly generative 30 Most scholarship stresses a “parental” relationship between classical and vernacular languages rather than these types of linguistic fraternities. For some insightful remarks on the related subject of “how to do multilingual literary history”, see Orsini 2012.

Introduction

13

force for circulation. At every place where he was stationed in the Mughal Empire (notably Thatta, Ahmadabad, and Burhanpur), Rahim convened his own court, attracting scholars, literati, and other experts from across the Islamic world. Some fled war and political turmoil; others sought the wealth and fame that could be amassed from even a brief tenure at an Indian court. Poets also circulated profusely within the Subcontinent, and Corinne Lefèvre has developed an innovative approach to assessing the political implications of the trajectories of courtly personnel. From which locales did poets arrive at Rahim’s court, and where did they go upon departure? What did this say about the stature of the patron or, indeed, attempts to mobilize one’s own political authority in a regional setting? Assessing the data available in Persian sources, Hindi literary history, as well as details about painting commissions and the architectural record of the Deccan where ʿAbd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan spent the greater part of his time in Mughal service, Corinne Lefèvre also highlights the fluidity of cultural identity. Depending on the archive one consults, Rahim can be seen as one of the leading Persophiles of his day and a Sufi; a Hindi poet and connoisseur of vernacular styles; or a great patron of painting, illustrated manuscripts, and architecture. In one of the major if little-tapped sources for Rahim’s biography, the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī of ʿAbd-ul-Baqi Nahawandi, the dominant impression is that of a Mughal official embodying the very essence of Persian good taste. While Nahawandi has very little to say about Rahim’s patronage of Hindi writers (when he does deign to mention them we are told that they were paid just one tenth of what their Persian counterparts earned), modern Hindi scholarship is all praise for Rahim’s support of Hindi as well as his own compositions in several dialects. The Persianate and Hindi sides of Rahim’s personality present a somewhat contradictory picture, one driven by exogenous cosmopolitan forces, the other by an intimate engagement with his Indian milieu. The visual record is similarly split. The monuments he patronized proclaim an Iranian cultural affiliation, whereas Indic registers can be identified in some of his painting commissions. In short, the cosmopolitan and the local are both important features of Rahim’s cultural life but manifest in accordance with very specific patterns. Jack Hawley and Gurinder Singh Mann consider circulation through the lens of the Prem Ambodh, a seventeenth-century description of the religious life of Mirabai, the famous Krishna devotee from Rajasthan. The text does not originate from the Mewar region that is usually associated with the poetess’s biography, but from the Punjab, and it brings her legacy as a

14

Introduction

famous exemplar of Vaishnava bhakti into dialogue with the cultural discourse of the Sikhs, who emphasize the notion of an abstract nirguṇa divinity and usually are very wary of materialist Vaishnava bhakti. The authors note the importance of mobility and circulation for the reputation of bhaktas in general, but distinguish this from the kind of transfer that inspired the creation of a text like the Prem Ambodh, which was instrumental in having Mirabai taken up in Sikh religious tradition (aided by her association with Ravidas, who was fully accepted as a nirguṇa saint). The familiar topoi of Mirabai’s life, her refusal to consummate her arranged marriage and her strict devotion to Krishna, are now adapted to a new audience. Hawley and Mann show how this transformation influenced the representation of Mirabai’s devotional attitudes and the responses that they occasioned. They suggest that the context in which such exchanges between different devotional traditions take place is a marker of “vulgate Vaishnavism”, a more generalized dimension of premodern religious attitudes that facilitates the crossing of boundaries. The authors reject a simple diffusionist argument about the Mirabai tradition, which presupposes a single source in Mewar that radiated out to other parts. There is no standard Mirabai, a fixed point from which all other versions radiated outwards. They argue that the circulation of the stories created inner echoes and reflections in the various versions, which were reinforced by mobile performance traditions of the Mirabai tales. The tales themselves are also full of accounts of meetings and travel. This fragmented Mirabai is no aberration but reflects who she really was. The essay thus epitomizes the notion (stressed earlier in this introduction) that circulation is a constituent element of the cultural field of early modern North India, which helped to shape and define the traditions as we know them, and not merely to degrade or diffuse them. A critical approach to the notion of diffusion is also central to the essay by Thomas de Bruijn, in which he highlights the dynamic nature of early modern Indian poetry through a close reading of a sample of relatively well-known songs attributed to Kabir. The earliest traceable versions of these texts already show signs of changes induced by their circulation across various contexts. In this movement, their original contextual meaning diminishes, overshadowed by a more generalized, decontextualized semantics. The earlier elements remain present in the poem in the form of voicings or layers of meaning that resonate with the newer semantic tones. De Bruijn proposes a reading that takes the many changes and disruptions that occurred over time as signs of Hindi poetry’s capacity to

Introduction

15

evolve and to generate meaning in various situations. All aspects of the poem—its images, its hint at an original cultural background, the “signature” of the poet in the last line—become tools that add transcendent, decontextualized authority to the text as it circulates. Many of the changes to the wording of the poems of Kabir and other authors in circulation can be seen in the light of emphasizing the “vision” attributed to the sacred persona of the poet as it developed in later reception in devotional hagiographies and in liturgical practice. De Bruijn takes this characteristic, which makes short mystical poems such a potent genre for circulation, as a positive quality, challenging the usual reading of these texts that focuses on retrieving an original and authentic poem by a historical poet amidst the fragmentation in manuscript sources and the many additions in sectarian collections.31 De Bruijn’s reading of a sample of Kabir’s poems instead privileges the stacking of meaning, where new resonances from, among others, Sufi mysticism, enter into dialogue with existing paradigms still present in the poem. He argues that no one paradigm is more “true” or valid, but that the potential for the interaction of different sets of meaning drove the circulation and recontextualization of these powerful texts. Catharina Kiehnle similarly demonstrates the power of circulatory processes. Bhakti texts sometimes have a life of their own, traveling far from their place of origin and adapting to new situations. The texts today associated with the Varkaris, a Vaishnava community based in Maharashtra, have a complex history and are layered with the discourses of other traditions. The Marathi gāthās or “songs” of Jnandev express devotion to a deity with local significance—Vitthal of Pandharpur—but the imagery of these songs also has pan-Vaishnava features. For instance, the songs of longing expressed from the point of view of the gopīs, “cowherdesses” and favorite consorts of Krishna, known in Marathi as gauḷaṇī, share many themes with the Gītagovinda, a twelfth-century Sanskrit classic on the love of Radha and Krishna from Bengal. Intertextuality looms large in the gāthās, for they also contain numerous Shaiva and Nath motifs, as well as complex speculations characteristic of the formal Indian philosophical systems like advaita, yoga, and sāṃkhya. Kiehnle briefly sheds light on some of the mechanisms, both practical and theoretical, that make circulation an important force in Indian cultural history. Verse styles such as the dohā (couplet) and pada (song), which seem to have folk origins, were easily adapted to religious purposes and 31 See the work by Novetzke, Callewaert, Hawley, and Bahura and Bryant referred to in footnote 13, above.

16

Introduction

thus became widely shared across many communities from Jains to Naths to Buddhist Siddhas. Other instances of adaptation relevant to the Jñāndev Gāthā are more locally inflected, as when the ovī, associated with Maharashtrian women’s work songs, became the basis of the tradition’s signature abhaṅga meter. The intertextuality at work in the Jñāndev Gāthā yields an interesting dialectic between cosmopolitan and local forms, and sometimes unexpected juxtapositions of non-conformist and more conservative ideas occur in one and the same text. Whether explicable by notions such as hybridization, or a general openness and tolerance for religious diversity in India, the Jñāndev Gāthā’s sharing of religious and philosophical resources with numerous communities is a dynamic instance of circulation. The focus of Allison Busch is the related theme of the multiple constituencies of early modern literary culture. The modern supposition that Hindi literature is the self-evident patrimony of Hindus is belied by the Mughal-period evidence. Brajbhasha, widely considered a Vaishnava language today, had a following among Indo-Muslim literati since at least the days of Akbar (r. 1556–1605). The rītigranth or manual on Indian poetics, Brajbhasha’s signature courtly genre, helped to inculcate connoisseurship among the nobility as well as provide a structured framework for the production and dissemination of vernacular literature. Busch, like Thomas de Bruijn and Catharina Kiehnle, strives to understand some of the mechanisms by which texts may be opened up to diverse social groups. Analogue genres, such as the Persian shahrāshūb and the Indic nagara-varṇana, both poetic accounts of a city, facilitated literary circulation across language boundaries. Couplets and a culture of epigrammatic performance were yet other traditions held in common between Persian and Hindi writers. This process can be attested over the long durée of Indian cultural history: Consider the retextualization of the Sanskrit Pañcatantra into the Persian and Arabic classics known as Anwar-i Suhaylī and Kalīla wa Dimna. Popular stories were readily shared across a wide cultural base. Busch also presents evidence for transculturation in the reception of poetry, as when bhakti themes in Brajbhasha took on Sufi hues for Muslim audiences. The interplay between a bhakti and Sufi hermeneutics of poetry and song is an important theme of Francesca Orsini’s essay on the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī (Truths of India, 1566) of Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami. This rare work glosses for a Muslim readership common Hindi words used in bishnupad, a Vaishnava performance tradition. As Orsini notes, Arabic and Persian were the scriptural and literary languages of elite Indian Muslims, but many

Introduction

17

took a deep interest in Hindi traditions, as well, including the songs featuring the Krishna legend that were all the rage during the sixteenth century. When the Muslims of Awadh were partaking avidly of even heavily theistic Hindu songs, how should this be understood? As syncretism or a form of religious accommodation? Orsini focuses instead on the multivocality of motifs as they move between different milieus. Some images are translated into Islamic cultural terms, but almost never transparently or in terms of a one-to-one equivalence. Thus, Krishna may be a stand-in for Muhammad but also Satan, or likened to the allure of a kāfir (infidel) lover in accordance with Persian poetics. Figures with specific meanings in the Hindu bhakti tradition are recoded for Sufi or other listeners. This, Orsini argues, should not be seen as syncretism—the melding of religious symbols into a new, hybrid form—but is instead an instance of “parallel enjoyment”, whereby members of different faith communities may appreciate the same genres in terms of their own cultural norms, “an indication of the freedom with which an interpretive community could re-formulate existing symbols.” If the focus of Busch and Orsini is the warm reception of vernacular literary and musical culture among Indo-Muslim patrons both secular and Sufi, Heidi Pauwels tracks a related but contrasting trajectory: a Hindu king’s openness to Mughal styles—not in Persian but in the new Rekhta or Urdu that was taking the court of Emperor Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48) by storm. Savant Singh (1699–1764), the Raja of Kishangarh and a friend of the monarch, complicates the typical literary-historical narrative that sees Urdu as a language of exclusively Muslim heritage by showcasing the dynamic experiments of a local Rajput king with the new medium. Already an accomplished Brajbhasha poet who wrote numerous works using the pen name “Nagridas”, Savant Singh demonstrates a multifold engagement with Urdu styles. Two of the poems collected in his anthology Padamuktāvalī (completed in 1742) are by Vali Dakani (1667–1707), the very poet credited with introducing Urdu composition to the Delhi literati.32 Several of Nagridas’s own works, notably Iśq Caman, are directly inspired by the sophisticated new vernacular poetics. But Nagridas does not adopt every element wholesale. His incorporation of Urdu and Persianate motifs such as the “cruel beloved” simultaneously involves complex acts of cultural translation. His Urdu poems project a mixed Sufi and bhakti ethos, and the poet even incorporates classic Rajput values like martial valor. His oeuvre is a paradigmatic instance of cultural circulation. 32 See Faruqi 2001, chapter 6.

18

Introduction

Robert van de Walle explores circulation in a more modern context as older traditions of Brajbhasha poetry interacted with the new literary models brought to India during colonial times. By the twentieth century, the nationalist turn in Hindi literature meant that Khari Boli, or Modern Standard Hindi, would be associated with innovation and modern, progressive themes, while Brajbhasha was discredited as a medieval and reactionary poetic idiom.33 This perception favors a linear model of literary evolution where older forms are seen to be ineluctably and rightfully discarded in the face of newer genres. A more nuanced picture emerges from the study of late Braj poets such as Thakur Jagmohan Singh (1857–99), who continued to use Braj and its poetic conventions for “modern” topics. The works of Jagmohan Singh also reflect the interchange of ideas between British and Indian culture that was characteristic of not only this period but also the nascent Hindi public sphere.34 Circulation is also highly relevant to the themes of Jagmohan Singh’s poetry in which he reflects on the various locations where he was posted as a civil servant and on his travels through British India. Note on the Use of Diacritics and Typographical Conventions The essays in this volume cohere under the theme of culture and circulation, but the contributors hail from different subfields of South Asian studies (especially literature, religion, and history), each with their own scholarly conventions. For a volume that set itself the charge of bringing together multiple traditions in several languages, it hardly made sense to impose one dominant transliteration scheme. Authors were given license to follow the conventions for representing names or words from Indian languages, Persian, or Arabic that prevail in their own discipline. Wherever it was possible, the editors standardized certain elements, such as the representation of genres, place names, and reference styles. Occasionally a few deliberate choices by the authors were retained.

Bibliography Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Public Worlds vol. 1. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bahura, G. N., and K. Bryant, eds. 1984. The Padas of Surdas. Jaipur: City Palace. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. “Discourse in the Novel.” In Michael Holquist, ed., Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist trans. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 259–422. 33 See Busch 2011: 220–5, Schomer 1983: 1–18. 34 Cf. Dalmia 1999 [1997]; Orsini 2002.

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Bangha, Imre. 2007. “Courtly and Religious Communities as Centres of Literary Activity in Eighteenth-Century India: Ānandghan's Contacts with the Princely Court of KishangarhRupnagar and with the Maṭh of the Nimbārka Sampradāy in Salemabad.” In Csaba Dezso, ed. Indian Languages and Texts Through the Ages: Essays of Hungarian Indologists in Honour of Prof. Csaba Tottossy. Delhi: Manohar. Behl, Aditya. 2007. “Presence and Absence in Bhakti: An Afterword.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 11: 3, pp. 319–24. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, edited by Randall Johnson. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bruijn, Thomas de. 2012. Ruby in the Dust: History and Poetry in Padmāvat by the South Asian Sufi Poet Muḥammad Jāyasī. Leiden: Leiden University Press. ____. 2010. “Dialogism in a Medieval Genre: The Case of the Avadhi Epics.” In Francesca Orsini, ed. Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture. New Delhi: Orient Black Swan. Burke, Peter. 2009. Cultural Hybridity. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press. Busch, Allison. 2011. Poetry of Kings: the Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India. New York: Oxford University Press. Callewaert, Winand. 1993. The Sārvāṅgī of Gopāldās. New Delhi: Manohar. Cerquiglini, Bernard. 1999. In Praise of the Variant: a Critical History of Philology. Translated by Betsy Wing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dalmia, Vasudha. 1997. The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Delvoye, Françoise “Nalini”, ed. 1994. Confluences of Culture: French contributions to IndoPersian Studies. Delhi: Manohar. Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman. 2001. Early Urdu Literary Culture and History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Flood, Finbarr Barry. 2009. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “HinduMuslim” Encounter. Delhi and Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Gibb, H. A. R. 1958. The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, ad 1325–1354, translated, with revisions and notes from the Arabic text and edited by C. Defrémery and B. R. Sanguinetti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilmartin, David, and Bruce Lawrence, eds. 2000. Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. 2010. Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grierson, George Abraham. 1889. The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society of Bengal. Harder, Hans, ed. 2010. Literature and Nationalist Ideology: Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages. Delhi: Social Science Press. Hawley, John Stratton. 1979. “The Early Sur Sagar and the Growth of the Sur Tradition.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 99: 1, pp. 63–72. Hobsbawm, E. J. 1997. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kinra, Rajeev. 2007. “Fresh Words for a Fresh World: Tāza-gūʾī and the Poetics of Newness in Early Modern Indo-Persian Poetry.” Sikh Formations 3: 2, pp. 125–49. Markovits, Claude, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2003. Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950. Delhi, Bangalore: Permanent Black, Orient Longman.

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Metcalfe, Charles T. 1832. “Minute of Charles T. Metcalfe, 7 November 1830”. In Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company. Part III, Revenue, Appendix 84. London: The House of Commons, pp. 331–332. Novetzke, Christian Lee. 2008. Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Orsini, Francesca. 2012. “How to do Multilingual Literary History? Lessons from Fifteenthand Sixteenth-Century North India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 49: 2, pp. 225–46. ____. ed. 2010. Before the Divide, Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Pollock, Sheldon. 2003. Introduction. In Literary Cultures in History, edited by Sheldon Pollock. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ____. 1998. “India in the Vernacular Millennium: Literary Culture and Polity, 1000–1500.” Early Modernities (Daedalus) 127: 3, pp. 41–74. Phukan, Shantanu. 2001. “‘Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet’: The Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 38: 1, pp. 33–58. Ramanujan, A. K. 1973. Speaking of Śiva. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Richards, John F. 1997. “Early Modern India and World History.” Journal of World History 8: 2, pp. 197–209. Schomer, Karine. 1983. Mahadevi Varma and the Chhayavad Age of Modern Hindi Poetry. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Schopen, Gregory. 1991. “Archaeology and Protestant Presuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism.” History of Religions 31: 1, pp. 1–23. Singh, Upinder. 2009. A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India. Delhi: Pearson Longman. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1998. “Hearing Voices: Vignettes of Early Modernity in South Asia, 1400–1750.” In Shmuel Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schluchter, eds. Early Modernities (Daedalus), pp. 95–104. Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad. 2001. Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and His­ toriography. New York: Palgrave. Trautmann, Thomas R., ed. 2005. The Aryan Debate. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Vaudeville, Charlotte, 1993. A Weaver Named Kabir: Selected Verses with a Biographical and Historical Introduction. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ____. 1974. Kabīr: Volume 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ____. 1955. Étude sur les Sources et la Composition du Rāmāyaṇa de Tulsī-Dās. Paris: Maisonneuve. Wagoner, Phillip B. 2011. “The Multiple Worlds of Amīn Khān: Crossing Cultural Boundaries in the Quṭb Shāhī Kingdom.” In Sultans of the South: Arts of India's Deccan Courts, 1323–1687, edited by Navina Najat Haider and Marika Sardar. New York and New Haven, Conn.: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press. ____. 1999. “Fortuitous Convergences and Essential Ambiguities: Transculturated Political Elites in the Medieval Deccan.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 3:3, pp. 241–64. ____. 1996. “‘Sultan among Hindu Kings’: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara.” The Journal of Asian Studies 55: 4, pp. 851–80. Wiser, William, and Charlotte Wiser. 2000 [1930]. Behind Mud Walls. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

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Persian as a Passe-Partout: the Case of Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīdil and his Hindu Disciples Stefano Pellò 1. Framing a Hindu Textual Identity in Persian If, how and to what extent the literary use of Persian by members of non-Muslim communities in South Asia1—a phenomenon which is unparalleled in any other historical context in the Persianate world— contributed to the process of cultural circulation and renewal in late medieval and early modern India remains largely unasked. As a matter of fact, an essentializing identification of “Persian” with “Islamic” and a preconceived understanding of Persian literature in India as a somehow impermeable and elitist whole, have until recently tended to prevent this issue from being addressed. Without presuming to provide definitive answers when we are still looking for proper hermeneutical instruments in a field which is partially unexplored even at the basic level of the identification of the textual material, this paper tries to suggest some promising research paths by focusing on the Hindu participation in the circle of an important Persian poet in late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century India and on its portrayal in the contemporary and subsequent taẕkira literature. It can be seen as an exemplary case for studying transmission, change, and exchange at a literary level in premodern South Asia, involving a particular linguistic and poetic paradigm and the ways this is enlarged, re-shaped, and made to circulate through the encounter between a Muslim master and his non-Muslim disciples. More generally, this study might be of some utility in framing the (self-)understanding of the role of, and the values attributed to, the

1 The work by Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh (1942) is still fundamental. Other more or less general contributions are Nadvi 1938 and 1939, Roy Choudhury 1943, Bukhari 1957, and Gorekar 1962. A brief, recent survey is Pellò 2008a. Among the most recent and specific studies which touch on some specific aspects of the problem are Alam and Subrahmanyam 1996 and 2004, Pellò 2006, and Kinra 2008.

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identities of the Hindu (hindū)2 authors in the Persian written world from the late seventeenth century onwards. While defending his own ustād, Mīr Ghulām ʿAlī Āzād Bilgrāmī (d. 1200/1785), from the biting criticism of the Khatri Persian poet and lexicographer Siyālkoṭī Mal Wārasta (d. 1180/1766), ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Iftikhār (d. 1190/1776) writes as follows in his Taẕkira-yi bīnaz̤īr: This poor slave has witnessed an astonishing fact: Books written by Hindus who imitate Muslims and get involved in the Islamic sciences have no light and are full of darkness, since their titles are devoid of the brilliant glare emanating from the eulogies of the Lord of the Prophets—may God pray for him and for his family and give them peace. ...Hindus, who should not overstep their bounds, have to commit themselves to writing books about their own sciences.3

Such judgments should, of course, be seen more as polemic pretexts than serious arguments about the boundaries of cultural territories: A few pages later in the same work, Iftikhār himself speaks in very positive terms of another Khatri intellectual, Kishan Chand “Ikhlāṣ”, the author of the important taẕkira of Persian poets Hamīsha bahār, who is deemed a “skilful man (mard-i qābil).”4 After all, in this period, Persian was, as has been pointed out by Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “also a South Asian language for all intents and purposes,”5 and it is not generally possible to distinguish a Persian ghazal written by a Muslim from another Persian ghazal written by a non-Muslim, as it is not generally easy to distinguish a Persian mas̤nawī rendering of a Vaishnava narrative done by a Muslim from one accomplished by a non-Muslim. The expressive canon for writing Persian literature—with all its implications of thought and aesthetics—does not vary with a writer’s religious affiliation. As a matter of fact, in the context of Persianate India the relationship between 2 In the Persian texts we deal with in this paper the term is used to indicate nonMuslim Indian followers of one of the Vaishnava (in the great majority of cases), Shaiva, or Shakta traditions; followers of the Sikh-panth are occasionally included among “Hindus”. The word hindū has a long history in the Persian poetic space, being commonly used from the Ghaznavid period onwards, originally indicating the “native of India”, by definition dark and an idolater (see de Bruijn 2004). The image of the hindū (as well as that, equally old, of the barahman) and related tropes are often used by non-Muslim writers of the later Mughal period as metaphors to describe themselves or their social groups, thus creating an interesting interplay between their supposed “real” and “literary” identities (see Pellò 2006: passim, especially 161–193, and also Pellò forthcoming). As far as the slippery category of “identity” is concerned, I draw here on Brubaker and Cooper 2000. 3 Iftikhār 1940: 5–6. 4 Iftikhār 1940: 20. 5 Alam and Subrahmanyam 1996: 132.

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religious, linguistic and literary commonalities, identitifications, and selfidentifications is a multi-faceted one and it is not advisable, as Shantanu Phukan has warned, to draw any monologic correspondence between a literary or linguistic tradition, a confessional community, and an ethnogeographic origin.6 Suffice it to remind the reader here that the Hindu Siyālkoṭī Mal criticized by Iftikhār because of his “interferences” was a firm advocate of “Iranian” linguistic purism as against the “Indianization” of Persian philologically defended by the Indian Muslim Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān Ārzū. He also wrote a pamphlet against Ārzū with the very “Islamic” title—an allusion to a ḥajj ritual—of Rajm al-shayāt̤īn, “The Stoning of Devils”.7 Nevertheless, and above all on account of the peculiarities of this polyphonic cultural milieu, Iftikhār’s remarks do have a weight, as do, for example, munshī Rūp Narāyan’s words concerning the occasion of the composition of his highly refined Persian Shish jihat, “Six Directions” (1121/1709): The compiler of these lines, Rūp Narāyan, the humblest of all creatures, does not actually deserve to speak, but he dares inform the reader that one day an impertinent person said that he had not seen any ingenious work of art written by the multitude of the Hindus, stating that these people are generally lacking in natural skills, and they can only try to make the most of the company of learned men. There is no hope, he said, to see any ornate literary invention from the Hindus. Such words have hurt this slave and have driven him to write a tale which includes many a rhetorical device.8

What Iftikhār and Rūp Narāyan present to us is mainly a problem of literary accul­tu­ra­tion, which needs first of all a literary treatment—so to say, a “decon­textualization to better contextualise.”9 An analysis starting from the literary personas of some Hindu poets who were the disciples of a great author such as Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir “Bīdil” (1054/1644–1133/1720) will help us to highlight some elements useful for approaching the implied 6 See Phukan 2000: 7–8. See also, to place the issue in a wider theoretical frame, Sheldon Pollock’s observations about the lack of crude correspondences between religious or re­gional affiliation and literary language (e.g. 1998: 7, and 2003: 24–5, 31). 7 See Shafīʿī-Kadkanī 1996: 116 and Faruqi 1998: 17–9. On Wārasta’s propensity towards the exclusion of Indian authors as authorities in his lexicographic work, see the comments of Sirūs Shamisā in Wārasta 2001: 31; Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, however, has a very different position (1998: 19). 8 Rūp Narāyan 1974: 2–3. 9 I owe the oxymoron to Thomas de Bruijn’s critical acumen.

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issues (overlapping and fluctuating) of linguistic choices, religious tra­ ditions, and literary interactions. The choice of the school of Bīdil among the many others in Delhi is due above all to the fundamental role played by this poet in shaping eighteenth and nineteenth-century Indo-Persian literature, which it is not even possible to approach without a knowledge of his work, both from a stylistic and a philosophical point of view. In South Asia, anything literarily significant written in Persian after his death has been written either following him or refuting him, up to Ghālib and Iqbāl. Bīdil can therefore be considered the exemplary case to which one can compare all others. Moreover, his poetical circle in Delhi, along with that of Mīrzā Afẓal “Sarkhwush” (d. 1127/1715), was among the first to systematically include non-Muslim pupils eager to learn how to write Persian poetry and artistic prose (given its peculiar socio-political features, I consider the well-known court of the Mughal prince Dārā Shukūh as a case apart). This is, in any case, the opinion of Lachhmī Narāyan “Shafīq” (d. around 1222/1808), who, in his introduction to the second volume of his taẕkira Gul-i raʿnā, which is declaredly devoted only to Hindu poets10 using Persian as a medium of expression (to put it in the words of the Vaishnava writer himself, “the sagacious authors of the idolaters”, nuktapardāzān-i aṣnāmiyān), wrote: In the days of Shāh ʿĀlam, Muḥammad Farrukhsiyar and Muḥammad Shāh, thanks to the graceful company of Mīrzā Bīdil—mercy be upon him—many individuals from the people of the Hindus acquired the talent of weighing poetic expressions. And so the Indian parrots tasted a new sugar, as will become clear from the reading of the subsequent pages.11

As a last introductory remark, it should not be forgotten that the taẕkira, frequently rendered by the term “biographical writing”, although usually rich in information and anecdotes of various kinds, is first of all a literary genre governed by its own specific rules and recurrent topoi, and should be approached as a kind of collective and transforming Legenda

10 On the use of religious affiliation as a meaningful organizational principle and structural feature in another taẕkira, the Anīs al-aḥibbā by Mohan Lāl “Anīs” (1804), see Pellò 2006: 144–153 and forthcoming. 11 Shafīq n.d.: 2. Consider the method by which Shafīq grafts the Hindu poets onto the tree of Persian literature by transforming them into textual figures of Persian literature itself: The last expression is a clear reference to Amīr Khusraw (the t̤ūt̤i-̄ yi hind, “parrot of India”), as well as to a famous verse by Ḥāfiz̤: shakkarshikan shawand hama t̤ūt̤iyān-i hind / z-īn qand-i pārsī ki ba bangāla mīrawad [all the parrots of India become sugar-chewing / because of this Persian sugar-candy which goes to Bengal] (Ḥāfiz̤ 1996: 452).

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Aurea of Persian poetry posing many problems of historical reliability.12 Nevertheless, it is exactly this literary essence that draws our attention here, since it gives us the opportunity to observe the object of our investigation through the “internal” interpretative filters of several men of letters who often are in direct contact with the poetic milieu under investigation and enrich their own discussions with autobiographical notes. One of the literary topoi peculiar to the Persian taẕkira genre (be it devoted to poets or saints) is the ustād-shāgird (master-pupil) relationship: As a general rule, it is usually specified who was the master (or the masters) of the poet or saint whose biography is more or less schematically conveyed. When speaking of authors described as “Hindus”, whose literary output was usually—at least at the beginning—the result of a period of apprentice­ ship in literary circles led by renowned Muslim masters,13 this has an obvious relevance not only because it throws some light on the relations between the actors of the above mentioned interaction, but also because it allows access to the writer’s point of view on this relationship. 2. Dynamics of Interaction inside Bīdil’s Circle On the basis of the information found in twenty-two Indo-Persian taẕkiras compiled between 1136/1723 and 1300/1883,14 Bīdil had, during his long stay in Delhi (between 1106/1685 and the year of his death), 15 at least eight non-Muslim disciples, namely: 12 On this topic see the clear observations by Losensky (1998: 18–9), who, in his study on the reception of the Persian poet Bābā Fighānī (d. 925/1519) in the Safavid-Mughal literary world, has shown how his biography changed with the growth of his artistic fame (Losensky 1998: 17–55). See also the relevant comments in Hermansen-Lawrence 2000: passim. 13 Things will change especially in Lucknow, where I was able to isolate as many as six non-Muslim Persian poets playing the role of “masters” in the taẕkiras (namely, Sarab Sukh “Dīwāna” who shifted from Urdu to Persian, Bhagwān Dās “Hindī”, Mohan Lāl “Anīs”, ʿAwaẓ Rāy “Masarrat”, Shitāb Rāy “Zār”, and Ratan Singh “Zakhmī”; see Pellò 2006: 131–138, 142–143). Some comments on the issue of the Muslim shāgirds of Hindu ustāds in the overlapping Urdu context can be found in Faruqi 2001: 51–2. 14 Ikhlāṣ (1973), Khwushgū (1959), Wālih Dāghistānī (2001), Ḥusaynī (1875), Ārzū (1992), Āzād Bilgrāmī (1871), Anonymous (ms.), Shafīq (n.d.), Qamar al-Dīn ʿAlī (ms.), Muṣḥafī (1934), Khalīl (1978), Sandīlawī (1968–1994), Hindī (1958), Gopāmawī (1957), Najm-i T̤ abāt̤abā’ī (ms.), Mīrānjān Ajmalī (ms.), Nawāb (1875), Nūr al-Ḥasan Khān (1876), Salīm (1878), Ṣabā (1880), and Āftāb Rāy Lakhnawī (1976–1982). A list of Bīdil’s disciples and friends (Muslim as well as Hindu) can also be found in Abdul Ghani 1960: 82–9, 96–8, 102–5. This section is partly based on Pellò 2006: 92–108. 15 Bīdil’s biographical data are mainly gathered from Abdul Ghani 1960.

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Lāla Amānat Rāy “Amānat” Laʿlpūrī (fl. 1740) Lāla Sukhrāj “Sabqat” Lakhnawī (d. 1138/1725) Lāla Shīv Rām Dās “Ḥayā” Akbarābādī (d. 1144/1732) Srī Gopāl “Tamyīz” Dihlawī (d. 1147/1736) Rāy Ānand Rām “Mukhliṣ” Lāhorī (d. 1164/1751) Bindrāban Dās “Khwushgū” Dihlawī (d. 1170/1756) Lāla Ḥakīm (or Ḥukm) Chand “Nudrat” Thānesarī (d. 1200?/1786?) Gurbakhsh “Ḥuẓūrī” Multānī (d. unknown)

The Safīna-yi Khwushgū is by far the most important for our purpose. Compiled between 1137/1724 (four years after the master’s death) and 1147/1734 (but with additions made up to 1162/1749)16 by one of the principal Vaishnava disciples of Bīdil, Bindrāban Dās “Khwushgū” (thus offering an “internal” point of view on the poetic school), it is the text in which the largest amount of information regarding Bīdil’s Hindu pupils is found. Khwushgū’s collection of biographical notices represents, as far as these poets are concerned, the main source for almost all the subsequent taẕkiras, which often directly quote whole passages from it.17 Therefore, our research is based mainly on the data obtained from the analysis of this text, and integrated, whenever possible, with the additional information offered by the other works. The first step in reconstructing the relationships between members of Bīdil’s circle is to find out what these texts tell us about the personal ties between the master and his non-Muslim pupils. Clear statements on the subject are quite scanty, and predictably, most of them are to be found in Khwushgū’s Safīna. Usually, they consist in the simple indication of a master-pupil relationship, or, in a more general way, they briefly record the existence of an artistic fellowship, as in the entry on Ḥuẓūrī by Khwushgū: He used to frequent the great Mīrzā Bīdil for many years, and so, through practice, he could improve the quality of his expression.18

Now and then, nevertheless, we learn something more specific, as with the brief mention of the assignment of the takhalluṣ, the nom de plume, to Ḥayā, a common topos for the ustād-shāgird dynamics in taẕkiras, 16 For a general description of this work and its relevant textual history see Naqawī 1964: 238–55, Gulchīn-i Maʿānī 1969–71: 713–22, and Pellò 2008b. 17 The whole biography of Nudrat in the Gul-i raʿnā, for example, is a quotation from the Safīna-yi Khwushgū (compare Khwushgū 1959: 352–5 with Shafīq n.d.: 165–9). 18 Khwushgū 1959: 348.

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27

comparable to the entrusting of the personal ẕikr by the murshid in the corresponding taẕkiras of saints.19 So writes Khwushgū: He had the precious occasion to practice his poetry in the presence of Mīrzā Bīdil, thus obtaining his takhalluṣ from him. He now speaks with the poetic tongue of his master.20

One of the most interesting and meaningful anecdotes is contained in the Taẕkira-yi Ḥusaynī and concerns Amānat’s biography, which is absent from Khwushgū’s work. Having characterized this poet as “one of those people who gained a great deal of advantage from Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīdil,” Mīr Ḥusayndūst Ḥusaynī Sunbhulī goes on as follows: He himself [Amānat] used to relate this incident: “One night, I was walking near some ruins, thinking about writing a dīwān of verses, when suddenly, in the darkness, I saw a madman in high spirits dancing hand in hand, though respectfully, with my master. In the height of ecstasy, my master looked at me and said: Go, and a whole sea of pearls and rubies will for sure spurt from the spring of the particles of dust! And so I went, and I succeeded in completing my dīwān in a very short time.”21

This account, which in itself has a clear symbolic value as a literary initia­ tion, gains a definitely Bīdilian inflection if we consider that it contains some narrative motifs which remind the reader of some events, these too with similar symbolic meanings, related by Bīdil himself in his auto­biography, the Chahār ʿunṣur (The Four Elements). As a matter of fact, Amānat’s strange and decisive meeting can be compared with the encounters between Bīdil and his own quite enigmatic spiritual master, Shāh-i Kābulī, who suddenly appears and disappears three times in the mentioned text, also changing Bīdil’s life-course as a poet. The image of the dancing madman, in particular, might be a reference to the narrative of the last of these encounters, when Bīdil, riding his horse in a Delhi bazaar, realizes that a dancing madman is following him in a kind of ecstasy: The madman turns out to be Shāh-i Kābulī, who, that very night, will reveal to his disciple many important spiritual secrets.22 As I have already noted, a relatively copious amount of (autobiographical) information concerning the relationship between Bindrāban Dās 19 On the structural features shared by the two taẕkira typologies—often not so easily distinguishable—in Persianate South Asia, see the comments in Hermansen and Lawrence 2000: 149–56; a systematic study in this critical field is still lacking. 20 Khwushgū 1959: 183. 21 Ḥusaynī 1875: 49. 22 Bīdil 1965–6: 169.

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Khwushgū and his master can be found in the section of Khwushgū’s Safīna devoted to Bīdil’s life and poetry.23 In relating his master’s life, besides underlining his own participation in the literary assemblies and discussions held at Bīdil’s home,24 Bindrāban Dās insists on the frequency of his encounters with the great poet, writing, for instance, that “the poor Khwushgū could gain the advantage of his company more than a thousand times in his life”;25 the settings of these intellectual exchanges are vividly described, thus suggesting a great familiarity with Bīdil. For example, Khwushgū recounts the long nights spent listening to the master among chilams and water-pipes (ghalyān) and boasts of having recorded his utterances in a collection of malfūz̤āt.26 Sometimes, the author of the Safīna goes beyond the intellectual aspects of his relationship with Bīdil by relating as an eye-witness his own impressions of Bīdil’s most private habits: In his mature years, when I, the humble Khwushgū, went to visit him every day, I could see him eating two and a half or even three sīr of food.27 When he was young, he used to indulge in drinking alcoholic beverages, but these were not agreeable to his noble health in old age. It is for the same reason that he completely abandoned every kind of intoxicant.28

All in all, however, the interaction between Khwushgū and Bīdil is described by Khwushgū himself as essentially literary;29 it is a fundamentally poetic 23 Bīdil’s biographical notice is by far the longest in the Safīna: If we include the verse anthology, it covers almost 44 pages in the 1959 edition (Khwushgū 1959: 103–47), whereas the second longest notice, devoted to Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān “Ārzū”, is not longer than 19 pages altogether (Khwushgū 1959: 312–31). 24 See, for instance, the first-hand reports of Bīdil’s meeting with the satirist Jaʿfar Zaṭallī (during which Bindrāban Dās tries unsuccessfully to persuade his master, offended by Zaṭallī’s irreverence towards the Mughal poets ʿUrfī and Fayẓī, to let the poet complete the recitation of his poem; Khwushgū 1959: 113), and of Bīdil’s successful debate with an unnamed author whose mas̤nawī had been sharply criticized by the poet of Patna (Khwushgū 1959: 117). 25 Khwushgū 1959: 117. 26 Khwushgū 1959: 112. Unfortunately, the work has been lost (see the comments of Kākwī in Khwushgū 1959: i). 27 Again, as in the above-mentioned case of Ḥayā’s biography in the Taẕkira-yi Ḥusaynī, there is an echo here of a fact narrated by Bīdil himself in his Chahār ʿUnṣur: In this text it is Bīdil’s spiritual master, Shāh-i Kābulī, who is described as able to eat enormous amounts of food (Bīdil 1965–6: 158); it is interesting that in both cases Bīdil as a master acquires the features of his own master, who is essentially a poetic character created by himself. There is no doubt about Khwushgū’s detailed knowledge of Bīdil’s autobiography since it is directly mentioned and openly used as a source in the Safīna (Khwushgū 1959: 106, 109). 28 Khwushgū 1959: 109. 29 As a further example I should add the importance given by Khwushgū to his own achievements in composing jawābs, “replies”, to Bīdil’s verses (Khwushgū 1959: 119–20).

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relationship—in which spiritual and literary mastership are equated30— which does not end with the master’s death: Every year, on the day of his ʿurs, an assembly of poets is held. When all the creators of subtle images are together, someone reads a ghazal from Bīdil’s dīwān and everyone, consequently, gives a demonstration of his own poetic nature. It is always a beautiful gathering, and I hope the eye of discord will always stay away from it.31

To find other evidence regarding personal relationships between Bīdil and his Hindu disciples it is necessary to turn to sources other than the taẕkiras. It may be briefly mentioned, among these “external” remarks is a private note by Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ, who claims to possess an autograph copy of Bīdil’s dīwān with a portrait of the master on the last page.32 Similarly to Amānat’s story described above, the portrait motif may be closely related to an episode narrated by Bīdil in his Chahār ʿunṣur.33 Going back to the taẕkiras, of course, many critical judgements are found which underline the resemblance of the formal features of our authors’ poetry to their master’s style, but they are external observations that do not tell us anything exceptional about the relationships inside the poetic circle, being usually limited to simple statements. For example, in the case of Amānat’s biography in the Taẕkira-yi ṣubḥ-i gulshan, it is merely observed that “he wrote poetry following the stylistic path of Mīrzā Bīdil.”34 Such a remark highlights once more the great influence exercised by Bīdil’s style on eighteenth-century Indo-Persian poets and provides us first-hand information about the aesthetic opinions of the taẕkira-writers, privileged spokesmen for all shifts in literary taste.35 30 Quoting one of the praise verses written by Khwushgū for his master might be useful in illustrating this point: bāyad-am shustan lab az mushk u gulāb / tā bigūyam nām-i ān qudsījanāb // sāmiʿa-rā waqt-i gulchīnī rasīd / nāt̤iqa-ra ṣubḥ-i ḥaqbīnī damīd [I must wash my lips with musk and rose-water / before uttering the name of the one living in sainthood // The time to collect roses has come for the hearing / and for speech has appeared the dawn of the vision of truth] (Khwushgū 1959: 104). 31 Khwushgū 1959: 123. 32 It seems that this dīwān, with an annotation by Mukhliṣ certifying that the authenticity of the book was attested by Bīdil himself, is held by the Habib Ganj Library (I draw here on information given in the usually trustworthy biographical work on Bīdil by Abdul Ghani 1960: 68). 33 Bīdil 1965–6: 281–6. A summary of this very interesting story, where a “living” portrait plays the leading role, can be read in Bausani 1954–6: 172–3 and Abdul Ghani 1960: 67–8. 34 Salīm 1878: 37. 35 In the late taẕkira Riyāẓ al-ʿārifīn by Āftāb Rāy Lakhnawī (written in 1883, when a neo-classical “Iranian” linguistic purism had long been the prevalent fashion in the languishing Indo-Persian literary realm), only one among Bīdil’s non-Muslim disciples, Ānand Rām

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As can be seen from the few reported specimens, there is nothing specific in the notices regarding interpersonal relations with Bīdil about any sort of “Hinduness” of the poets we are dealing with, whose connection with their master is, all in all, described in standard literary terms (the master-pupil relationship, the poetic initiation, the sharing of the same socio-textual spaces, the stylistic heritage) by the taẕkiras. A meaningful exception does occur, however, in the biography of Sabqat from the Safīna-yi Khwushgū, where we read: He was one of the pupils at Mīrzā Bīdil’s sacred court, and his master used to repeat very often these words: “Among my Hindu disciples Sabqat has no equal.”36

The testimony, though isolated, is noteworthy because it shows the existence of a tendency, within Bīdil’s exemplary circle, to judge the work by non-Muslim poets as a separate category. Its relevance in a wider literary perspective is incontrovertible considering that the election of the “best Hindu poet of Persian” is a recurrent topos in many Indo-Persian taẕkiras. Limiting ourselves to two examples chosen from the texts concerning Bīdil’s court poets, the late Taẕkira-yi nigāristān-i sukhan (1292/1875) awards the honour to Khwushgū̃,37 while the earlier Riyāẓ al-shuʿarā (1161/1748) bestows the title to Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ. Most interestingly from the point of view of the history of Indian Persian, he chooses Mukhliṣ for his fluency in Persian (khwushmuḥāwiragī), unique, in the Iranian writer’s opinion, among his co-religionists (dar jamāʿat-i hunūd).38 The extent of the interaction between socio-religious and linguisticliterary spaces becomes evident if we look at the features of some works written by Bīdil’s Hindu disciples and the relevant remarks by the taẕkirawriters. As a matter of fact, many of them deal with traditional Vaishnava themes in their Persian works. Speaking of the devotee of Krishna Tamyīz, Khwushgū, who was himself a Vaishnava born in the holy city of Mathura, writes: Mukhliṣ, is mentioned, but he is deemed “a pupil of Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān Ārzū” (Āftāb Rāy Lakhnawī 1976–82: II, 192); significantly, Bīdil’s poetic diction is judged as follows in this text: “Although there are still some, among ignorant Indians, who consider him to be among the most sublime writers, he is absolutely worthless in the opinion of those who really know the Persian language. His Persian, like that of Nāṣir ʿĀlī [Sirhindī (d. 1694)], is worse than Hindī” (Āftāb Rāy Lakhnawī 1976–82: I, 123). 36 Khwushgū 1959: 158. 37 Nūr al-Ḥasan Khān 1876: 27. 38 Wālih Dāghistānī 2001: 706.

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He engaged in a thorough study of Indian books, and became a man of great learning in this field ... He wrote a mas̤nawī on the beauties of Mathura and the Braj Mandal, describing, profusely and in detail, the peculiarities of these places.39 He read it for me when I went to visit my birthplace.40

Also noteworthy is Khwushgū’s mention of Nudrat’s partial Persian rendering of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa,41 especially on account of the details he mentions and the comparative evaluations crossing the literary and the religious fields: [Nudrat] translated into Persian the tenth skandha (iskandh),42 that is, the tenth chapter, of the Bhāgavat, a book which is highly venerated by the Indians and deals with the deeds and the adventures of Krishna, whom they consider the manifestation of His name. This work consists of 14,000 distichs written in the meter of Shīrīn u Khusraw: The lines are well-constructed, flowery, and pleasant. While composing it he wanted me to listen to his progress almost every day. Once he presented me with this verse, about Krishna lifting a mountain with his forefinger, thus protecting himself for seven days from a violent, calamitous rain which is the symbol of the Last Day (qiyāmat). It is a very agreeable line: He easily lifted that heavy mountain / like the new moon lifts the sky with its finger [sabuk bar dāsht ān kūh-i garān-rā /chu māh-i naw bar angusht āsmān-rā].43

When dealing with Ḥayā’s essay about the holy places of Krishnaite devotion, Khwushgū takes an analogous approach, using an assimilative/interpretative strategy to textualize the concept of the avatāra and at the same time to exploit the literary achievement of the Vaishnava poet to explain and illustrate the religious meaning of the Braj region: He wrote a prose work on the pattern of the late Mīrzā Bīdil’s Chahār ʿunṣur, naming it Gulgasht-i bahār-i Iram.44 It is devoted to the peculiarities of the 39 This text is now probably lost. 40 Khwushgū 1959: 311. 41 As with Tamyīz’s work, this writing has also probably been lost. � ‫ا ��س‬, instead of the 42 The printed edition of Khwushgū’s Safīna carries the form‫� نک��د ر‬ � ‫ا ��س‬. It is most probably a mistake by the copyist, since it is found also in other expected ‫� نک��د ھ‬ taẕkiras which drew on this text, as, for example, the Gul-i raʿnā (Shafīq n.d.: 126). Therefore, I give the amended form in transcription. 43 Khwushgū 1959: 353. Especially noteworthy, besides the assimilative interpretation of Krishna as the manifestation of God’s name and the use of the image of the qiyāmat, is the certification of the literary identity of Nudrat’s poem by juxtaposing it with Niz̤āmī’s normative Shīrīn u Khusraw. Moreover, the association of the moon with the finger in the quoted verse might hint at the miracle of the splitting of the moon (shaqq al-qamar) with his index-finger by Prophet Muḥammad, related by Islamic tradition and based on Qurʾān 54: 1–2; this would represent a further, though more subtle, textual hint towards the “poetic transculturation” of Krishna’s deeds. 44 I have not been able to trace this work in any catalogue or collection so far.

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Stefano Pellò Braj region, that is, the area of Mathura and Vrindavan (Bindrāban): It describes the special qualities of a land which is, in the religion of the Hindus (mashrab-i hunūd), the birthplace and the home of Krishna the avatāra (krishn-i avatār), whom they consider the most perfect manifestation of the Infinite’s attributes (ṣifāt-i nāmutanāhī). I was delighted in reading it.45

Many taẕkiras, and very clearly the Gul-i raʿnā by Lachhmī Narāyan Shafīq and the Taẕkira-yi Hindī by Bhagwān Dās Hindī, along with the Safīna-yi Khwushgū on which they are largely based, show a very similar attitude towards such cross-cultural works (or, perhaps better, cross-literary works, as we shall see), trying to negotiate a quite predictable acculturative explanation. But not every writer can boast the privileged vantage point of Khwushgū, a member of Bīdil’s court and a friend of the poets whose works he describes, nor the conscious perspective belonging to those who, like him, live on the threshold of multiple socio-textual territories, such as, his followers Shafīq and Hindī. A different point of view is represented, for example, by the anonymous author of the Taẕkirat al-shuʿarā.46 Regarding Ḥayā, he writes: We do not know the details of his biography, but judging from his poetry it is clear that he is an Indian and probably a Hindu, since he has celebrated the city of Mathura and other places of worship (maʿbadhā). (Anonymous: f. 275a)

Not all of Bīdil’s Hindu disciples (nor, for that matter, all of the Hindu poets using Persian) have written literary works inspired by Indic religious themes (for instance, from among the poets of Bīdil’s court, not a single text which could fit this category has ever been ascribed to Sabqat or Mukhliṣ); on the other hand, it is a well-known fact that translations and renderings, both in prose and verse, of works like the Bhagavadgītā, the Rāmāyaṇa, etc., done by Muslim men of letters are hardly lacking.47 Never­ theless, the terse remarks by the author of the Taẕkirat al-shuʿarā are challenging and point toward the themes central to this paper. The widespread phenomenon of non-Muslim poets of Persian dealing, especially in the 45 Khwushgū 1959: 183–4. 46 In his work on the history of Persian taẕkira-writing in the Indian subcontinent, Sayyid ʿAlī Riẓā Naqawī suggests that this book was composed around 1170/1760 (Naqawī 1964: 438). 47 Consider, for instance, the well-known Persian-verse Rāmāyaṇa by Masīḥā Pānīpatī (d. after 1050/1640; see Jalīlī 2001). For further specimens, see specific lists such as those given in Habibullah 1938, Mujtabai 1978: 60–91, Shriram Sharma 1982, and Anusha 2001: 767–73; see also Ernst 2003: 174.

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eighteenth century, with Indic devotional literature48 appears to be an attempt to enrich the Persian literary tradition from within by giving a canonical citizenship to Hindu (especially Vaishnava) images and themes. This seems to be done, as the remarks by the taẕkira-writers we have quoted suggest, not by breaking up the structures of the literary palimpsests, but by making the new material pass through two complementary filters: the aesthetic-stylistic one, which is represented, in the case of Bīdil’s disciples, especially by the expressive language of the so-called “Indian style”, and the relevant philosophical one. The latter can be broadly described as comprised of Sufi-Neoplatonic concepts and interpretative frameworks (by the late seventeenth century deeply influenced by the cosmopolitan speculation of the philosophers of the school of Isfahan) readable, if necessary, as Vedanta and/or bhakti-oriented. (For the related phenomenon of reading Vedanta and bhakti material as Sufi across confessional communities, see essays by Busch and Orsini in this volume.) In other words, if a (manifold) Hindu individuality exists in Indo-Persian literature, it seems already integrated, at the very moment of its birth, in the organism containing it, as a literary mode and a further expressive opportunity which enlarges the reference system without transforming it. On the contrary, it consists of the new images that, in order to be accepted, transform themselves into something familiar to the Persian literary environment. A meaningful example, though still to be thoroughly investigated, is represented by the main work of one of Bīdil’s Hindu disciples, the Jilwa-yi ẕāt, “The Epiphany of the Essence”, by Amānat Rāy, a free rendering of the tenth skandha of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa into Persian verse as a long mas̤nawī: The Vaishnava material is remolded in a style which generally seems to follow that of the ustād Bīdil; the title itself, very interestingly, appears as a conscious attempt to closely link the poem to the conceptual universe of the mainstream tradition of Persian poetry.49 The poem opens with the following lines, whose meaning is self-evident from the point of view of the aesthetic-religious reference-system: 48 The relevance of this phenomenon had already been noted by Aziz Ahmad almost fifty years ago (Ahmad 1964: 235). 49 The expression jilwa-yi ẕāt is employed in a famous ghazal by Ḥāfiz̤: baʿd az īn rūy-i man u āyina-yi waṣf-i jamāl / ki dar ānjā khabar az jilwa-yi ẕāt-am dādand [From now on I shall turn to the beauty-describing mirror / because there they made me aware of the epiphany of the essence] (Ḥāfiz̤ 1996: 372). The concept of tajallī-yi ẕāt (tajallī is a synonym of jilwa), “the epiphany of the essence”, is central in the Neoplatonic conceptual universe of classical Persian Sufism, and is explained in the popular Sufi glossary by Sajjādī as the “supreme manifestation of the beloved’s beauty” (Sajjādī 1971: 118–20).

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Stefano Pellò ba nām-i ānki jānān-i jahān-ast chu jān az dīda-yi mardum nihān-ast jahān āyīna-yi ḥusn-i z̤uhūr-ash nabāshad hīch jā khālī zi nūr-ash50 In the name of the Beloved of the world, who is hidden from the eyes of people. The world is the mirror where His beauty appears, no place is devoid of His light.

The interpretation of the avatāra, as the title alone lets the reader suspect, draws clearly on post-Ibn ʿArabī Sufi speculation and on the Persian poetic language, which had formally mastered it from the thirteenth century onwards; in our immediate context, this interpretation is closely related to the results of the already-mentioned philosophical reconciliation attempted by Dārā Shukūh around a century before. The concept of the manifestation of Krishna in the world as in the Bhāgavata is introduced with the following distichs, again drawing, in the opening lines, on the popular image—in mystical Persian poetry—of the reflection of divine beauty in the “mirrors” of the world: az ān pas ān sitāyish-rā sazāvār numāyān gasht dar shikl-i awatār ki ḥusn-ash khalq-i z̤āhirbīn bibīnad gul-i naz̤z̤āra chūn āyīna chīnad51 Then he, who is praiseworthy, appeared in the shape of an avatāra, to show his beauty to creatures, who see only appearances, and pick, like a mirror, the flower of the one who watches.

The poem is very frequently interspersed with ghazals, to give it a recognizable literary identity before a Persianate (but also perhaps Persian) audience. Naturally, such texts written at Bīdil’s court do not spring up suddenly and in isolation: As a matter of fact, they find many illustrious forerunners in the literary experiments carried out at the Mughal court in the preceding century,52 but they seem also to be directly affected by the specific cultural atmosphere of the immediate environment in which they are born. It is Bīdil himself who shows a deep interest, both philosophical and

50 Amānat ms.: f. 1b. 51 Amānat ms.: f. 2b. 52 A typical specimen, comparable to the interpretative works produced at Bīdil’s court, is represented by the Omnāma by Banwālī Dās “Walī” (d. 1085/1674; Walī ms).

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a­ esthetic, in Indic literary and devotional traditions. From the Safīna-yi Khwushgū we learn, for instance, that the noble Bīdil was well-acquainted with theology (ilāhiyāt), the exact sciences (riyāẓiyāt), and the natural sciences (t̤abīʿiyāt), and he had a deep understanding of medicine, astronomy, geomancy, amulet-making, history, and music. He knew by heart the whole story of the Mahābhārata, which is the most revered book among the Indians (tamām-i qiṣṣa-yi mahābharāt ki dar hindiyān az ān muʿtabartar kitāb-ī nīst ba yād dāsht).53

More decisive, however, is what Bīdil himself writes in his Chahār ʿunṣur, where we find several descriptive and interpretative hints of the Vaishnava and especially Krishnaite religious sphere.54 Particularly relevant, in the context of the present study, are the passages where Bīdil speaks about Mathura, a city much loved by him and where he lived for about three years.55 In one of these passages, he gives a detailed and sensitive literary description of his experience of Braj pilgrimage centers, also adding some celebratory lines, perfectly in keeping with his usual style and, above all, drawing a textual identification between bhakti for Krishna and the unending “love for the unattainable” represented by the Persian poetic figure of Majnūn: In the country of Mathura, the market of passionate love (sawdākada), whose dark land has become a whitened, propitious mark since Krishna bade his farewell to the world, where the amorous air, like the sad loneliness of a sigh, has lost the color of rest and stillness, incessantly striving to reach that unattainable one, the tears of the gopīs (gōpiyān) are stormy waves still flowing in the waters of the Yamuna (jumna), and the voice of [Krishna’s] bānsurī is still heard in its flute-like alleys, a soul-stirring modulation which makes the dust dance. dar zamīn-ī ki maḥabbat as̤ar-i kāshta-ast gard-i ū kharman-i chandīn t̤apish anbāshta-ast bar bahār-ī ki az-īn kūcha damīda-ast nasīm jigar-i chāk zi ṣubḥ-ash ʿalam afrāshta-ast hama tan shawq shaw wa wādiy-i majnūn dar yāb mashhad-i sukhtagān buy-i dil-ī dāshta-ast 53 Khwushgū 1959: 118. Bīdil’s knowledge of the Sanskrit itihāsas is actually a common topos in his reception: Significantly, as late as 1875, the Lucknow publisher Nawal Kishore still ascribed to Bīdil a Persian poetic rendering of the Rāmāyaṇa, the Nargisistān, which was actually written by another author poetically named Bīdil, Chandar Man, who was alive in 1105/1693–4 (see Anusha 2001: 540). 54 See, for instance, the quite technical—in Vaishnava terms—dialogue on the problem of Time between Bīdil and a Brahman who was travelling with him (Bīdil 1965–6: 41–5; the episode is roughly summarized and briefly commented upon in Abdul Ghani 1960: 54–5). 55 I follow Abdul Ghani’s chronological estimate (1960: 56).

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Stefano Pellò In a land where love has sown a trace dust has gathered a rich crop of palpitations. On that spring whose breeze has breathed from this alley, the wounded heart, at dawn, has hoisted a flag. Be passion, nothing else, and find the valley of Majnūn! The grave of those burned by love has got the fragrance of a heart. Without any choice but to follow the decree of passion, I resided there for a period, and by observing the kaleidoscopic colors of appearance, I polished a mirror of astonishment. The cheerful lament of the sacred bells still caused the tumult of pride to fly up in the sky, and the hard beliefs of the Brahmans still adorned the embroidery of the zunnārs56 with the stone-vein of haughty idols. The magic juggler of illusions delivered the sickle of a field of hopes to the talent of the nails of the sannyāsins (sanāsiyān), and the spellbound blinkers of faith worked hard to cut off the hair of the pilgrims (jātriyān); to harmony, a minstrel playing sweet melodies, was entrusted the embellishment of the nightingale nests through the heart of the wise ones (parāgiyān), and to nature, a hunter with his snare, was entrusted the nourishment of the turtle-doves in their cages through the interior strength of the yogīs (jogiyān). ʿālam na bulandī dārad u na pastī dil īnhama makhmūrī u mastī dārad az dayr u ḥaram maqṣad-i dil ʿishq-i khudā-st īn āyīna sakht khwudparastī dārad57 The world has no sublimity nor has it humility: It is for the heart to be so drunk and intoxicated. Temple and mosque, to the heart, mean love of God: This mirror is indeed a self-worshipper!

Elsewhere in the same work, the spiritual powers of a renunciate whom Bīdil met on the outskirts of Mathura have a deep impact on his sensitivity.58 It should be borne in mind, moreover, that the Braj area is also the scene for one of the three revealing encounters between Bīdil and his travelling guide Shāh-i Kābulī.59 The poem on Krishna’s deeds by Amānat that we have briefly introduced, and, in particular, the prose texts by Tamyīz and Ḥayā described in 56 The word zunnār, originally indicating a kind of belt or girdle worn in the Byzantine world (ζωνάριον) and employed in the Persian poetic tradition as a symbol of “infidelity”, alludes here, as in other cases in the Indo-Persian context, to the yajñopavīta, the brahman­ ical sacred thread. 57 Bīdil 1965–6: 148. 58 Bīdil 1965–6: 279. 59 Bīdil relates this event in his Chahār ʿunṣur (Bīdil 1965–6: 161–7).

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the taẕkiras and ­consecrated to the holy Krishnaite places of Mathura and the Braj region, are likely to be ascribed to a precise interest in the master for that particular context of religious geography. As a working hypothesis, then, we can say that Bīdil’s Hindu disciples observe—while working as Persianate literati—Hindu traditions first of all through the interpretative lens of their ustād, who is in turn poetically fascinated, as in the above quoted autobiographical passage, by the Vaishnava devotion and religious milieu in Mathura. A telling sign is that the taẕkiras agree in assessing the Gulgasht-i bahār-i Iram by Ḥayā as a work composed on the pattern of Bīdil’s Chahār ʿunṣūr or, more generally, following Bīdil’s stylistic trends.60 The central concern, in other words, is not an alleged “Hinduness” of the poets, but the poetic circle, which is the locus for the mediation between various superimposed (self-)identifications: As we have seen, most taẕkiras, which are the expression of an essentially literary memory, show it in quite clear terms. As an additional note confirming the canonicity of the products of the Hindu members of our poetic court, it should be underlined that the works dealing with geographical descriptions and celebrations, at least from the critical remarks by taẕkira-writers, take their place within an already established literary genre in the Indo-Persian context,61 which is consequently only reinforced and subtly modified, keeping with the rules we have seen before. 3. Beyond the Literary Circle: Widening a Cosmopolitan Culture by Localizing It “The cultivation of Persian poetry,” writes Christopher Shackle, was always a central marker of the cultural identity of the elite, whose efforts to distance themselves from Indic cultural associations led to the formation of an elaborately self-contained symbolic system underlying the interlinked genres of qasīda, ghazal and maṣnavī. Such purism was not limited to Muslim elites; it also extended to the practice of Hindu poets from the Per­sianizing classes ... In other words, the wide-ranging and profoundly differentiated views of the premodern period are not associated with the Hindu-Muslim divide itself; they are marked more by class than by creedal separations.62 60 In addition to the passage from the Safīna-yi Khwushgū I quoted above, consider the following comments in the Ṣuḥuf-i Ibrāhīm: “Ḥayā was one of Bīdil’s disciples: By imitating his master’s style he wrote a prosework entitled Gulgasht-i bahār-i Iram, whose subject is the description of Mathura and Vrindavan” (Khalīl 1978: 52). 61 The issue has been addressed by Sunil Sharma (2004). 62 Shackle 2000: 56.

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As a gloss to Shackle’s statements, which are perhaps a little too rigid in reinforcing the idea of an Indo-Persian elite radically cut off from the other cultural worlds of premodern India, I would add that this “purism” is above all a formal one, pertaining more to how literature is written (the choice of the poetic register) than to what the man of letters writes (the choice of the poetic subjects). Especially for the mas̤nawī, “Indic cultural associations” are acceptable and accepted by the Indo-Persian socio-textual community as long as they do not clash with the well-established—but by no means fixed and motionless—reference system of Persian literary expression, or, in other words, as long as they undergo a transcultural (but transaesthetic would probably be a more proper adjective, avoiding the risk of presuming fixed boundaries among cultures) restyling, as in the highlighted case of Amānat’s Jilwa-yi ẕāt. The aesthetic provincialization of Sufi concepts through the use of Indic poetic forms and of a Hindu religious vocabulary is well known from regional (vernacular) poetry by Muslim authors. Although less studied as such, a similar process occurs in the cosmopolitan Indo-Persian literary sphere, especially from the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. And if, as Shackle states with regard to the Punjabi context, vernacular Muslim literature helps the spreading of “a diffuse conception of South Asian religious identity,”63 Indo-Persian literature, thanks to its Persianization of Indic elements, provides “local” religious themes with a cosmopolitan character and supports cultural circulation not only at the pan-Indian level, but also at the transregional one. We can consider, for instance, the role played by travelling Iranians such as ʿAlī Hazīn (d. 1766), and by the East India Company agents as well as the impact of the direct circulation of IndoPersian texts and authors in Iran proper64—as a matter of fact, it would be somehow restrictive to look at circulation in the Indo-Persian textual milieu without taking into account its extensive connections with West and Central Asia. Such implications can be verified preliminarily by looking at the biographies of the disciples of Bīdil in some of the taẕkiras on which we based our discussion. One of the missions of taẕkira as a literary genre is to transmit a certain view of literature (and of its producers) and to preserve a specific perspec63 Shackle 2000: 57. 64 Ḥazīn’s alleged comments on Bīdil’s and Nāṣir ʿAlī [Sirhindī’s] “incomprehensible” prose, regarding which he writes that he cannot imagine “a better souvenir to make friends in Iran burst out laughing” (Āzād 1992: 212), offer a stimulating hint in this direction. However, much more intriguing for the immediate context of this paper are the travels of Hindu Persian literati in Iran, such as Jagat Rāy “Barahman” (fl. 1091/1680–1) who, according to Shafīq Awrangābādī, settled in Yazd as a merchant (Shafīq n.d.: 29).

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tive on cultural memory:65 Some elements in our texts seem to indicate that one of their aims was to cater to a wide audience and to spread these views and memories among them, while providing them with “Indic” annotations. The Safīna-yi Khwushgū and the Gul-i raʿnā do this in a quite explicit manner: They exploit Persian, and at the same time, the opportunities given by the thematic openness of the taẕkira-genre,66 using the presence of Hindu poets within eighteenth-century Indo-Persian literary circles to describe, explain, and interpret many aspects of Vaishnava culture and religious geography. As underlined by Alam and Subrahmanyam when dealing with the Safarnāma by Ānand Rām “Mukhliṣ”, the description of the socio-religious peculiarities of the Indian landscape becomes a “discovery” of what is familiar:67 Typically, the Hindu authors of Persian taẕkiras place themselves outside of the religious context they describe and to which they actually belong, speaking of Khatri, Kayasth, and Brahman writers as a category alien to themselves, tendentiously adopting the “international” perspective of a learned traveller to better communicate with a wide (and not exclusively Indian) audience. The simplest and probably most widespread technique is represented by the specification of the social background of the non-Muslim authors; as a matter of fact, from the eighteenth century onwards, the indication of caste can be described as a topos of the taẕkira genre in South Asia. As in the notice devoted to Srī Gopāl “Tamyīz” in the Safīna-yi Khwushgū, this often becomes the occasion to offer additional explanations bearing a socio-religious flavor: He belongs to the sūraj brahman people (qawm); among the Brahmans of Hindustan, the sūraj people consider themselves as being the descendants of the sun.68

In other cases, the indication of a specific social provenance provides a clue to supply the reader with precise explanations regarding non-Islamic Indian cultural traditions. This is, for instance, what Bhagwān Dās “Hindī” does while speaking of Bindrāban Dās Khwushgū in his Safīna: 65 See the discussion, mainly based on taẕkiras of Urdu poets, in Hermansen and Lawrence 2000: 156–160. 66 A classic example is the Taẕkira-yi haft iqlīm by Amīn Aḥmad Rāzī (1002/1594), which is both a collection of poetic biographies and a work on world geography and ethnography. As an immediate forerunner, I would indicate the late seventeenth century Mir’āt al-khiyāl by Shīr Khān Lūdī, who deals with prāṇa-yoga—he calls it ʿilm-i nafas, “the science of breath”—while speaking of Indo-Persian poets (Lūdī 1998: 107–11). 67 See Alam and Subrahmanyam 1996: 142. 68 Khwushgū 1959: 311.

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The pretexts for introducing such digressions in the taẕkiras are manifold; what is essential, for the authors, is to harmonize the extra-canonical elements within the literary structure they employ. In one of the most interesting passages from the point of view of textual representations of Vaishnava cultural elements in the whole panorama of the Indo-Persian taẕkiras, Lachhmī Narāyan “Shafīq” expounds some aspects of Krishnaite devotion starting from an analysis of the name of Bindrāban Dās “Khwushgū”, always maintaining an essentially linguistic and poetic approach: He is a Hindu from the people of the bais (bays) … He was born and educated in Mathura … which is a city not far from Akbarabad. His name is Bindrāban Dās. Bindraban … is the name of a place near Mathura; As for the word dās, in the Hindī language it means “servant” (ghulām). The meaning of the name is thus “servant of that incomparable place”, as in the case of Najaf Qulī [“servant of Najaf”]. Mathura is the homeland of Krishna (kishan), who has the largest following among the Hindus (muqtadā-yi ʿumda-yi hunūd-ast). [Krishna] had one thousand six hundred wives. It must be known that in the religion of the Hindus (dar dīn-i hunūd) women can marry only one man and cannot marry twice: That is why Indians always describe love from the point of view of a woman. Krishna gave rise to such an uproar that Indian poets, in their love compositions (dar taghazzulāt-i khwud), always refer to the love of Krishna’s wives for Krishna and do not speak about other loves, differently from Persian and Arabic poets, who have no specific single couple of lovers and mention now Laylā and Majnūn, then Wāmiq and ʿAẕrā, or Shīrīn and Farhād. In Hindi poetry the beloved is Krishna: Although, according to Abū’l-Faẓl’s inquiry in the Akbarnāma, almost five thousand years have gone by since the times when he lived, his fame is still alive and from the earth of his homeland still rises the scent of love (az khāk-i wat̤an-i ū hanūz būy-i ʿishq miyāyad). It is a wonderful flowering land which throws hearts into confusion. The noble Āzād—may his excellent shadow be extended—writes: From the desert plains of Majnūn still rises love:/ When I passed by, the heart palpitated down there [hanūz az dāman-i ṣaḥrā-yi majnūn ʿishq mīkhīzad/ ki hangām-i guẕar uftādan-i mā dil t̤apīd ānjā].70

69 Hindī 1958: 67. 70 Shafīq n.d.: 63–4.

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Shafīq organizes his digression as if he is addressing a non-Indian audience, giving careful instructions for reading the words bays, mathurā and bindrāban in the Perso-Arabic script (the passages, which follow the traditional Persian lexicographic approach, have not been translated here), in all likelihood well-known to the whole Indo-Persian intellectual community, but not necessarily so for an Iranian or a British “international” reader.71 The linguistic and literary point of view adopted by the author appears clearly immediately afterwards, thanks to the comparison between the epithets Bindrāban Dās and Najaf Qulī: Whereas the name Bindrāban Dās needs to be spelled and commented upon, the reading and the meaning of Najaf Qulī is taken for granted. Krishna, whose divine aspect is predictably never alluded to, not only is historicized following a well-attested Muslim intellectual attitude (the quoting of Abū’l-Faẓl’s Akbarnāma as the authoritative text on Krishna’s life by a Vaishnava writer is a self-sufficient explanation), but, most notably in our context, is described as an essentially literary character: The heart of Shafīq’s speech is represented by a comparison of the psychological attitude towards the beloved in the Indic and Arabic-Persian poetic traditions, always observed from the latter’s perspective (it is not by chance that the “Indian” love poems are defined as “their taghazzulāt”). Krishna and the gopīs are accommodated into the poetic taẕkira through the key hermeneutics of poetry, and this allows the author to give technical information without producing any dissonance in the dominant biographical and literary critical tune. The last section, where Mathura is described in terms similar to those used by Khwushgū’s master Bīdil in the passages from Chahār ʿunṣur above, completes the normalization process by directly transferring Krishna (read as an amorous typology) into the Persian poetic riverbed: In Āzād’s verse the sacred land of Mathura is absent but felt to be symbolized by (and to be implied in) the desert plains scoured by the lover Majnūn.72 As a last example, Ḥayā’s biography in the Safīna-yi Khwushgū by his friend and fellow pupil (at Bīdil’s maktab) Bindrāban Dās allows us to observe how the account of specific events in the lives of single authors can promote the insertion into the textual texture of the taẕkira of “exotic” pearls without creating expressive frictions. After celebrating Ḥayā’s poetic 71 Lachhmī Narāyan’s close links to the British, for whom he worked as a historian, are well-known; see, for instance, Naqawī 1964: 440–1, and Anusha 2001: 1518–9. 72 Compare the verse by Āzād—as understood by Shafīq—to the third one among those inserted by Bīdil in the passage of the Chahār ʿunṣur translated above: Following what I have observed in the section above, one could start speaking, albeit cautiously, of a specific topos in the hermeneutics of the poetic image of Majnūn, sanctioned by Bīdil’s authority.

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skills by mentioning that he was able, in a literary salon, to recognize a linguistic imperfection in a verse composed by Khwushgū himself—which allegedly had not been noticed even by the renowned expert Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān “Ārzū”—Khwushgū writes: After that episode, he promised that he would come to see the humble compiler of this page in his house. On the fixed day, he joined the mushāʿira assembly and recited very nice poems. At dinner time, he justified himself pronouncing these words: “I am a disciple (murīd) of Gokula people (gokūliyān), and I conform to their rules, so I don’t eat what has not been cooked by the disciples of my own spiritual tradition (silsila), otherwise I cook for myself.” Then he gave his companions the permission to eat.73

Ḥayā declares his specific devotional affiliation and his strict loyalty to his religious community’s rules by describing a dietary prescription in the middle of a poetic gathering, the mushāʿira at Khwushgū’s home, which obviously perfectly matches the thematic framework of the taẕkira and Ḥayā’s being part of the Indo-Persian literary community. It is probably the larger narrative setting (the poets’ poetic discussions and gatherings) that offer here a valid aesthetic safe-conduct to such peculiar religious information; and the harmonization appears to be fostered by the choice of the usual assimilative lexicon, presenting the followers of Vallabhāchārya (the “Gokula people”) as a Sufi silsila and Ḥayā as one of its murīds. 4. Conclusion Regarding the Sanskrit “new” intellectuals of the seventeenth century, Sheldon Pollock writes that “at the level of literary expression … the seventeenth century was a time of border-crossings we are just learning how to perceive.”74 This lucid statement is certainly valid also for the IndoPersian milieu, and also for the eighteenth century, one of the most neglected periods in Persian literature but also one of the phases which seem to most clearly show the innovative results of the acclimatization of Persian in South Asia.75 The analysis of the specific case offered here can be seen as an attempt to begin understanding the modalities under which these circulation-induced innovations and border-crossings came into 73 Khwushgū 1959: 185. 74 Pollock 2001: 20. 75 As a matter of fact, as stated by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, “Indian self-confidence in Persian reached its peak in the eighteenth century” (Faruqi 1998: 17). See also the comments by Alam (1998: 336–7) and by Tavakoli-Targhi (2001).

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being. Even within the narrow scope of this paper, of course, many issues remain obscure: For instance, we need to address not only the ideas that circulate in, among, and through the texts but also the conditions of the material circulation of the texts themselves, including more precise details of their audiences and reception. We also have to better understand whether we can actually speak of a Vaishnava devotional literature in Persian, whose possible role and diffusion is not clear at present. Notwithstanding these and several other open questions, however, the circulation within Bīdil’s circle and its textual representation clearly underline how Persian—as a cosmopolitan literary culture—was able to widen its aesthetic reference-system from inside by adopting a kind of inclusivist poetic hermeneutics. This phenomenon, it should be emphasized, acquire a deeper significance if understood as part of a wider trend of textual circulation marking the late seventeenth and eighteenth-century Indo-Persian intellectual world: As a matter of fact, in this period we not only see Ārzū’s programmatic struggle towards a (ideologically crucial) recognition of a structural kinship between Persian and Indo-Aryan languages,76 but also conscious attempts to compare the Sanskrit-based poetics with, and to “translate” them into, the Arabic-Persian system (as in the Ghizlān al-hind written by Āzād Bilgrāmī, d. 1200/1785).77 In this consciously cosmopolitan context—although conflicting with an ever-increasing, exclusivist “Iranian” purism—the “Hinduness” of the Hindu disciples of Bīdil (who, we have seen, had already textualized his own view of Vaishnavism) seems to perform, in many taẕkiras, essentially a textual function, an occasion for the inclusion and the diffusion, through the Persian passe-partout, of what I would call the familiar, pre-integrated aesthetic newness of a “Hindu” filtered experience. Bibliography Primary Sources (Manuscripts and Editions) Āftāb Rāy Lakhnawī. 1976–82. Riyāẓ al-ʿārifīn. S. Ḥ. Rāshidī, ed. 2 vols. Islamabad: Markaz-i taḥqīqāt-i fārsī-yi Irān wa Pākistān. Amānat, Lāla Amānat Rāy. Undated ms. Jilwa-yi ẕāt. London, India Office Library: I. O. Islamic 270. 76 See Pellò 2004 and 2006: 27–52. 77 See Sharma 2009. It should be noted here that, according to Āzād himself, among the writer’s friends asking him for a Persian translation of the work is Lachhmī Narāyan “Shafīq”, the author of the here much-quoted taẕkira Gul-i raʿnā (Āzād Bilgrāmī 2003: 26).

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Anonymous. Undated ms. Taẕkirat al-shuʿarā. London, British Library: I. O. Islamic 2415. Ārzū, Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān. 1992. Majmaʿ al-nafā’is. ʿA. R. Bīdār, ed. Patna: Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library. Āzād, Mawlānā Muḥammad ʿAlī. 1992. Nigāristān-i Fārs. Delhi: Aakif Book Depot. Āzād Bilgrāmī, Ghulām ʿAlī. 1871. Khazāna-yi ʿāmira. Kanpur: Nawal Kishor. ____. 2003. Ghizlān al-Hind. S. Shamīsā, ed. Tehran: Ṣadā-yi Muʿāṣir, 1382. Bīdil, Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir. 1965–6. Kulliyāt, vol. 4. Kh. Khalīlī, ed. Kabul: da Pahane wizārat, da Dār al-ta’līf riyāsat, 1344. Gopāmawī, Muḥammad Qudrat Allāh. 1957. Taẕkira-yi natā’ij al-afkār. Bombay: Ardashīr Banshāhī, 1336. Ḥāfiz̤. 1996. Dīwān, 3rd ed., vol. I. P. N. Khānlarī, ed. Tehran: Khwārizmī, 1375. Hindī, Bhagwān Dās. 1958. Safīna-yi Hindī. S. Shah Md. Ataur Rahman, ed. Patna: The Institute of Post Graduate Studies & Research in Arabic and Persian. Ḥusaynī, Mīr Ḥusayndūst Sunbhulī. 1875. Taẕkira-yi Ḥusaynī. Lucknow: Nawal Kishor. Iftikhār, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. 1940. Taẕkira-yi bīnaz̤īr. Sayyid Manz̤ūr ʿAlī, ed. Allahabad: Senate House. Ikhlāṣ, Kishan Chand. 1973. Hamīsha bahār. W. Qurayshī, ed. Karachi: Anjuman Taraqqi-yi Urdū Pakistan. Khalīl, ʿAlī Ibrāhīm Khān. 1978. Ṣuḥuf-i Ibrāhīm. ʿA. R. Bīdār, ed. Patna: Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library. Khwushgū, Bindrāban Dās. 1959. Safīna-yi Khwushgū (daftar-i s̤ālis̤). S. Shah Md. Ataur Rahman, ed. Patna: The Institute of Post Graduate Studies & Research in Arabic and Persian. Lūdī, Shīr ʿAlī Khān. 1998. Taẕkira-yi mir’āt al-khiyāl. Ḥ. Ḥusaynī, ed. Tehran: Rūzbih, 1377. Mīrānjān Ajmalī, Sayyid ʿAlī Kabīr. Undated ms. Khāzin al-shuʿarā. London, British Library: I.O. Islamic 3899. Muṣḥafī, Ghulām Hamadānī. 1934. ʿIqd-i S̤urayyā. Abdul Haq, ed. Aurangabad: Anjuman Taraqqi-yi Urdu. Najm-i T̤ abāt̤abā’ī, Muḥammad Riẓā. Undated ms. Naghma-yi ʿandalīb. London, British Library: Or. 1811. Nawāb, Sayyid Ṣadīq Ḥasan Khān. 1875. Shamʿ-i anjuman. Bhopal: Mat̤baʿ-i Shāhjahānī, 1292 ah. Nūr al-Ḥasan Khān, Nawāb Sayyid. 1876. Nigaristān-i sukhan. Bhopal: Mat̤baʿ-i Shāhjahānī, 1293 ah. Qamar al-Dīn ʿAlī. Undated ms. Lubb-i lubāb. London, British Library: I. O. Islamic 1013. Rūp Narāyan, Munshī.1974. Shish jihat. ʿA. A. Jaʿfarī, ed. Rawalpindi: Markaz-i taḥqīqāt-i fārsī-yi Irān wa Pākistān. Ṣabā, Muḥammad Muz̤affar Ḥusayn. 1880. Rūz-i rawshan. Bhopal: Mat̤baʿ-i Shāhjahānī, 1297 ah. Salīm, Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥasan Khān. 1878. Ṣubḥ-i gulshan. Bhopal: Mat̤baʿ-i Shāhjahānī, 1295 ah. Sandīlawī, Shaykh Aḥmad ʿAlī Khān Hāshimī. 1968–94. Taẕkira-yi makhzan al-gharāʾib. M. Bāqir, ed. 5 vols. Lahore-Islamabad: Markaz-i taḥqīqāt-i fārsī-yi Irān wa Pākistān. Shafīq, Lachhmī Narāyan. Not dated. Taẕkira-yi gul-i raʿnā. Hyderabad: ʿAhd Āfarīn Barqī Press. Walī, Banwālī Dās. Undated ms. Omnāma. Lahore: Diyāl Singh Trust n. 716. Wālih Dāghistānī, ʿAlī Qulī Khān. 2001. Riyāẓ al-shuʿarā ( jild-i awwal). Sh. Ḥ. Qāsimī, ed. Rampur: Rampur Raza Library. Wārasta, Siyālkotī Mal. 2001. Muṣt̤alaḥāt al-shuʿarā. S. Shamīsā, ed. Tehran: Intishārāt-i Firdaws, 1380.

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Pirates, Poets, and Merchants: Bengali Language and Literature in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U Thibaut d’Hubert Our perception of cultural identities and their geographical location is often biased by arguments that treat modern nations as a timeless framework, whereas the boundaries of modern nations actually conceal the different structures that predate the modern world. In this essay, I propose to study some aspects of the literary culture and history of Arakan in the seventeenth century, an area which has not been considered as a cultural and political unit of its own because of its interstitial geographical location between modern Bangladesh and Myanmar. My central concern will be the use of languages in this highly multicultural area and the formation of a literary corpus using one of these languages, namely Bengali. We will see that the Bengali language served as an intermediary between the local sphere and the networks of the Bay of Bengal, in which the kingdom occupied a place of growing importance. The Kingdom of Arakan was located in the northwestern coastal area of modern Myanmar and, at the climax of its expansion at the end of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, extended from Bassein to Chittagong (Leider 2002 and 2004: 503). In the last ten years, studies have dealt with the history of trade in the Indian Ocean, as well as the political history of the kingdom of Arakan during the Mrauk-U period (1433–1785).1 These have allowed us to raise new questions regarding the cultural background and functions of the agents participating in the Bengali literary milieu in Arakan during the seventeenth century. Before dealing with the status of the Bengali language in Arakan, it is necessary to give a general overview of the literary material available to us. We have a very limited idea of the texts produced in the Arakanese language:2 Speeches of ministers and a few poems have been reproduced

1 Gommans and Leider 2002, Leider 2004, Subrahmanayam 2005. 2 The literary language of Arakan used in the inscriptions and chronicles was similar to classical Burmese.

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in later chronicles, but no corpus of Arakanese literary texts is extant.3 Pali language and literature were studied in this Therāvādin kingdom, but very few original works in this domain can be labeled as products of the Arakan court.4 Similarly, according to the historical records dealing with the fall of the kingdom in 1784, it seems that the Burmese king Bodawphaya (r. 1782–1819) was interested in Sanskrit scholarship in Mrauk-U and ordered the translation into Burmese of Sanskrit texts looted from Arakan (Leider 2006). The most important testimonies to literary culture in seventeenth-century Arakan are found in the Bengali texts composed in Chittagong, which was part of the Arakanese kingdom from 1578 to 1666, and in the capital city of Mrauk-U (Ben. Rosāṅg). In Chittagong, the bulk of this literature was written by Muslim authors who settled in the rural areas around the harbor.5 The texts composed in the Chittagong area were concerned with religious matters such as the lives of the prophets of Islam or Islamic doctrine and practices with a strong Sufi inclination. The authors do not claim affiliation to any Sufi order (ṭarīqa) and their Persian and Arabic literary models are not precisely attributed. These texts were apparently aimed at newly converted Bengalis and provided them with the fundamentals of Islam. The Bengali literature composed in the capital shows different features.6 The religious dimension is still present in the texts composed in the capital city but the focus is not on stories of the prophets and proper Islamic behavior. Rather, the authors gave more importance to “Sufi romances” and they made direct references to famous ṭarīqas (i.e., the Chishtiyya and the Qādiriyya) which denotes their integration into supra-regional Sufi networks. The language of these poems is very scholarly and more sophisticated. Their Awadhi, Persian, and Sanskrit literary models are clearly mentioned, thus showing the acute consciousness the authors had of their activity as men of letters. Furthermore, the patrons of this literature were 3 An introduction to the available Arakanese historical literature is given in Leider 2004: 464–77. 4 For instance, in the classic monograph written by Mabel Haynes Bode (1909), Arakan is not presented as a cultural center where Pali literature was composed. 5 See Sharif 2003 [1969] and 1999 [1983], Saiyad Sultān 1978, Roy 1983, Karim 1997, and Bhattacharya 1999. 6 Only one monograph published in Calcutta in 1935 by A. Karim and E. Haq is devoted to the subject of Bengali literature in the Arakanese capital. Their study was based on the manuscripts collected by A. Karim in the Chittagong area. They identified five poets who composed texts in Mrauk-U during the seventeenth century, namely Daulat Kājī, Māgana Ṭhākura, Ālāol, Mardan, and Śāmśir Ālī (Haq and Karim 1993).

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not only Sufis, but also members of the gentry. The Bengali literature of Mrauk-U is mainly represented by two poets, Daulat Kājī (fl. 1622–38) and Ālāol (fl. 1651–71), who worked under the patronage of Muslim nobles employed in the royal administration, and consists of translations of Awadhi and Persian texts into Bengali. Among the authors who lived in the Arakanese kingdom during this period, Ālāol provides the most vivid and complete picture of the aspirations of the Bengali literati of his time.7 As we will see in the following pages, the nature of his oeuvre and the fact that he was first and foremost a poet-translator, when resettled in the context of seventeenth-century Mrauk-U, afford preliminary answers to explain the functions of the Bengali language in the cosmopolitan kingdom of Arakan. In this essay I will first investigate the conditions behind the rise of Bengali literature in Mrauk-U. In the second part I will use Ālāol’s biography and literary activity as a lens for tracing the evolution of Bengali literary culture in Mrauk-U between the reign of Satui:dhammarājā (r. 1645–52) and Candasudhammarājā (r. 1652–84). Finally, I will situate Mrauk-U in the larger cultural context of the Indian Ocean during the seventeenth century and I will focus on the role of the “court poet” as a cultural mediator between the local power and the cosmopolitan networks of the ports around the Bay of Bengal. 1. The Formation of a Muslim Elite in the Arakanese Capital The short-lived Bengali literary tradition arose in Arakan in a Muslim milieu characterized by two main features: diversity and mobility. I will now give an overview of where Muslims came from and how they settled in the area surrounding Mrauk-U called Dhannavati (the [land] rich with rice) between the mid-fifteenth century and the second half of the seventeenth century.8 Then I will proceed by asking two questions: What did they do once settled in Dhannavati? What was their place in Arakanese society? 7  For the editions and manuscripts used to write this article, see Ālāol 1975, 1977, 2002 [1985], and 1992. Extracts from his Rāga-tāla-nāmā can be found in Sharif 1967: 16–7, 81–2, 92–3. The padas of Ālāol are given in Bhattacharya 1984: 38–42. And for Saptapaykar I derived the text of the prologue from two manuscripts of the Bangla Academy (Dhaka) referenced B. A. ālokacitra 4 and 33 and one that is kept at the Dhaka University (Abdul Karim collection, ms. 499). Two monographs deal exclusively with Ālāol’s works: one in English—Ghosal 1959—and one in Bengali—Bala 1991. For a recent analysis of Ālāol’s works focusing on his socio-cultural environment and the poetics of translation, see d’Hubert 2010. 8 On the Muslim presence in Arakan, see Yegar 1972 and Leider 1998.

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Muslims settled in Arakan in waves. The first probable substantial arrival of Muslims in the area surrounding the capital Mrauk-U dates from the return of Nara mit lha (r. 1404–34) to the throne of the Arakanese kingdom after the invasion of the king of Ava around 1408 (Leider 2004: 39–58). After a period of subordination to the Sultan of Bengal who provided Nara mit lha with soldiers to take back the throne, the Arakanese kings regained their sovereignty and about a century later in the 1540s even included the port of Chittagong in the kingdom. Thereafter, the conquest of Bengal by the Mughals that lasted between 1574 and 1610 forced some of the soldiers working for the Afghan rulers to seek refuge in Arakan where they entered the service of the court (Leider 2004: 402). Besides those “willing” Muslim immigrants, we find slaves taken during the raids of Luso-Arakanese pirates in market-villages of the delta area. According to their skills the slaves could either be sold to Western traders or kept in order to work in the kingdom, as was the case with the Bengali poet Ālāol. The fact that Chittagong was controlled by Arakanese kings between 1578 and 1666 also occasioned the settlement of Bengalis (both Muslims and non-Muslims) in the Dhannavati area. The most impressive example dates from 1644 when king Narapati (r. 1638–45) ordered the displacement of 80, 000 craftsmen from Chittagong to Dhannavati (van Galen 2002). We have so far only mentioned urban Muslims of Turko-Afghan stock acclimatized to the Bengali cultural environment, and rural Bengalis recently converted to Islam. Although the two groups cannot be fully homogenized, both share the characteristics of being Muslim and speaking Bengali. I will therefore refer to them as “Bengali Muslims”. Besides the Bengali Muslims, other groups were also present in Mrauk-U: those who were neither Bengali Turko-Afghans, nor converted Bengalis. One category included the merchants involved in long-distance trade. Most of these traders originated from the three great Persianate empires of the time—the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires—as well as from the ports of the sultanates of Southeast Asia. Culturally speaking they were more distant from the Arakanese context and their language for communication was Persian. The other category is historically more traceable and consists of Mughal followers of Prince Shāh Shujāʿ, Aurangzeb’s brother, who took asylum in Mrauk-U in 1660. We will return to this important event when dealing with Ālāol’s life and works. For the moment, what concerns us is that they were Persian-speaking Mughals, distant from the regional culture and thus, just like the traders, they are to be distinguished from Bengali Muslims.9 9 Regarding the place of Bengal in Mughal culture see Eaton 1993: 167–79.

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One cannot fail to notice the potential for diversity within Arakan’s Muslim society itself. This diversity is confirmed by Ālāol who gave an extensive list of names referring to various kinds of Muslim individuals present in Mrauk-U under the reign of Satui:dhammarājā (r. 1645–52): nānā-deśī nānā-loka/ śuniyā rosāṅga-bhoga/ āisanta nṛpa-chāyā-tala/ ārabī misrī śāmī/ turakī hābśī rūmī/ khorāsānī ujbegī sakala// lāhurī mūltānī hindī/ kāśmirī dakṣiṇī sindhī/ kāmarūpī āra baṅgadeśī/ (…) bahu śekha-saiyad-jādā/ mogala-pāṭhāna-yoddhā/ (…)10 Various individuals [coming from] various countries, informed about the delights of Rosāṅg (i.e., Mrauk-U), came under the king’s shadow: Arabs, Egyptians, Syrians, Turks, Abyssinians, Ottomans (Rūmī), Khorasanis, Uzbeks, Lahoris, Multanis, Hindis, Kashmiris, Deccanis, Sindhis, Assamese (Kāmarūpi), and Bengalis (Baṅgadeśī), (…) Many sons of Shaykhs and Sayyids, Mughal and Pathan warriors (…)

One point is striking about this enumeration: Here Ālāol does not encompass the whole Muslim community by saying that “Musalmans” are present in Mrauk-U, but gives precise names related to particular places. He does not just name these places in a random order; he starts from the ones farthest afield (Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Central Asia, and Ethiopia), then he gives the nearer “Hindustani” area (Lahore, Multan, Kashmir, Deccan, and Sindh) before finally introducing the regional area with Assam and Bengal.11 Ālāol is completely conscious of the subtleties of the diversity surrounding him. It seems that no simple religious identity is adequate for describing the kinds of people present in the place he lives. The Bengali Muslim poet here expresses a fact key to the understanding of the modalities of circulation and communication in Arakan during this period: One’s status depends on whether one is from the far Ottoman Empire, from nearer Hindustan, or from the regional (deśī) area of Bengal. By observing the status of Bengali Muslims in Arakan, it will become clear that they could take advantage of their position as regional intermediary between the local Arakanese Buddhist power and the cosmopolitan, Persian-influenced, Muslim outer world. 10 Ālāol 2002 [1985]: 13. 11 He specifies similarly the names of what is usually collectively designated by the term “firing” (Portuguese, French, Dutch, etc.) Concerning the perception of the world by Ālāol as compared to Rānīrī, a contemporary Hadhrami author from Aceh, see Wormser and d’Hubert 2008.

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How did these Bengali Muslims play this role? European sources testify to the active place of Muslims in the administration of the kingdom. Among the titles often encountered when Europeans mention Muslim officials are losclosy or lascorusil (for Pers. lashkar wazīr), kotwal (Pers. kutwāl), and majlis. The lashkar wazīr was a general of the army, the kotwal was in charge of security in the capital city, and the majlis was a representative of foreign merchants in Mrauk-U and delivered authorizations for trading and collected taxes on behalf of the king in the harbor (Subrahmanyam 2002 and van Galen 2008: 217). These three functions were assumed by the various patrons of Daulat Kājī and Ālāol. For instance, Daulat Kājī’s protector, Āśrapha Khāna, was the lashkar wazīr of Sīrisudhammarājā (r. 1622–38). Saiyad Musā, Ālāol’s patron around 1670, seems to have been the kotwal of Mrauk-U.12 The last protector of Ālāol is called majlis Nabarāja all throughout the Sikāndar-nāmā (1671), which identifies him as the majlis, or the tax collector of the Mrauk-U harbor. Other such examples could be added, but the point here is to notice the following fact: These highly ranked Bengali Muslims who patronized literary works were somehow connected to the outside world through warfare in the case of the lashkar wazīr, or economic activities in the case of the majlis. Actually, even people such as the kotwal and the lashkar wazīr, who were responsible for the internal affairs of the kingdom, were also involved in long-distance trade.13 Besides referring to these high-ranking Muslims, Bengali texts also contain data concerning those of a lower status, such as “royal horsemen” (rājāsoyāra)—a rank Ālāol occupied after his arrival in Mrauk-U—as well as “translator for maritime affairs,” ḍiṅgāra dobhāṣī (Sharif 1958: 243). What seems most relevant from this short overview of the functions of the Bengali Muslims in the Arakanese capital is their intermediary location between the local power and the supra-regional world. Ālāol provides a clear picture of the acute perception of the Other prevalent in his milieu. It is not a totalizing categorization, but a precise division of people accord12 Even if the poet does not designate him by the term kotwal, he speaks of him as being “in charge of the royal domain (nṛpati-viṣaya)” and he adds that his patron had under his command thousands of “soldiers equipped with firearms (agni-astra-dhārī)” (Karim 1997: 259). 13 This fact is attested by Bengali sources as well; for instance, Daulat Kājī stresses that, thanks to “wandering traders from abroad”—deśāntarī pravāsī panthika vanījāra (Daulat Kājī 2003 [1995]: 6), his patron was famous in places as distant as Aceh (Āci), China (Mācīna), and Patna in Bihar. The situation is linked with the topic of “mercantilism” in the Bay of Bengal during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which has been investigated by Subrahmanyam (2005). See also Prakash 2002, Leider 2004: 431, and van Galen 2008: 204–41.

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ing to the distance from Mrauk-U of their place of origin. This ability to distinguish what kinds of strangers ran their businesses in Mrauk-U is not merely rhetorical; it is the reason why Bengali Muslims were instrumental to the Arakanese power and is the main driving force behind their status in the Arakanese kingdom. 2. The Functions of the Bengali Language in Arakan As mentioned above, some Bengali Muslims functioned as translators to smoothe maritime affairs. The value placed on their linguistic skills brings us to the next topic: the specific functions of the Bengali language in the Arakanese political and cultural context. In this multicultural milieu, it is necessary to understand the different functions of languages in order to locate Bengali more specifically. Considering that all of the records written on palm leaves and paper are now lost, we rely mainly on inscriptions and travel accounts to identify which languages were used at the Arakanese court. From the available material, we know that Arakanese, Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, and Bengali were all participants in a complex literary system. A more precise classification of these languages according to the different fields of activity in the kingdom would require an accurate study of the content of the inscriptions, which has yet to be undertaken. Nevertheless, it is possible to distinguish to what extent each language was considered administrative or literary. First and foremost, the local language, Arakanese, in its literary form, which is equivalent to classical Burmese, was used on coins, for epigraphic records, and other official documents. In its oral form it was also spoken by the king and his dignitaries, whether Arakanese or not.14 No extensive literary texts produced at the royal court have been preserved in manuscript form.15 Arakanese was the language of the local elite and was central in the administration of the kingdom. But it seems that no active support 14 Ālāol specifies that Māgana, his first patron, knew magī, that is to say, Arakanese (2002 [1985]: 17). 15 This does not mean that no literature was composed in Arakanese at the royal court during this period. For instance, poems attributed to some king or queen are quoted in the chronicles. In the episode relating the events leading to the succession of Narapati, a bard recited a ṅa cañ, that is, a versified narrative about the great deeds of the past (Leider 2004: 272). Manrique also refers to songs in Arakanese (Magh): “To this accompaniment many ditties were sung most skillfully, alternately in the Magh, Brama, and Peguan dialects, but they were in such high-flown language that I could scarcely understand a word” (1927: 36).

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was provided by the local elites towards fostering a literary tradition in this language. The two classical languages originating from India (Sanskrit and Pali) were learned in Arakan from a remote past. We have proof of Sanskrit scholarship for the ancient period (fourth–eighth centuries) in the form of various inscriptions.16 The most important ancient Sanskrit inscription was kept in the Shit-thaung pagoda built in the sixteenth century (Johnston 1944: 373–82). This suggests that it was still relevant to preserve a record in Sanskrit even during later periods. But the main evidence for the study of Sanskrit in Arakan during the seventeenth century stems from the presence of court Brahmans called puṇṇa (Leider 2006). Their activities at the court show that Sanskrit was a technical language useful for various matters connected to statecraft, such as coronation rituals, astrology and the interpretation of omens, and more generally what falls under the category of nīti (political wisdom).17 Ālāol’s constant references to Sanskrit literary culture show its relevance in the Arakanese context outside Brahman circles. If Sanskrit was no longer an administrative language during the seventeenth century, it was still learned by some members of the court for purposes besides religious ones and was present in the cultural background of Bengali Muslims, Brahmans, and Buddhist scholars. The Pāli language was mainly used in the religious field. Unfortunately no study of the history of Pāli literature in Arakan has yet been undertaken. The dynamism of Buddhist institutions is attested by various embassies sent to Sri Lanka to bring back copies of the Tipiṭaka—the Pali Canon—and the construction of libraries to store these texts (Raymond 1995). Through its interaction with Arakanese, Pali also played an important role in the composition of chronicles, and in a broader sense as a lexical stock for Arakanese courtly and administrative language. But, contrary to the case in Burma, no poetical work seems to have been composed at the court or in one of the important monasteries of Arakan. Similarly, in the case of the Arakanese language, the local power left no hint of literary patronage though all the material— texts, scholars, wealth—was available to build up such a tradition. As regards to Persian, we have evidence of its functioning both as an administrative and a literary language. To be more specific, Persian was used in order to garner some visibility from neighboring Muslim Bengal 16 Concerning Sanskrit inscriptions from the Candra dynasty (fourth–eighth centuries), see Johnston 1944. 17 In his study of the sources of the Burmese Nīti kyan, Ludwik Sternbach points to the role of Arakan in the transmission of Sanskrit anthologies dealing with nīti (1963: 330).

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and in diplomatic affairs. During the sixteenth century Arakanese kings struck coins with Persian names alongside their Pali titles, which were also given in Arabic and Sanskrit. This was not a sign of the Islamic influence of the Arakanese kings, but rather a way to be culturally understood by their nearest neighbors and by the sultanates that were then emerging around the Bay of Bengal. Similarly, Persian letters sent to European merchants and Mughal courts simply testify to the presence at the Arakanese court of secretaries and translators who could read and write Persian.18 Persian was then one of the important diplomatic languages of the time, and clearly instrumental for full inclusion in the economic and political exchanges with other powers around the Bay of Bengal. Except for these letters and one inscription, no original Persian literature has been produced in Arakan, and if we wish to find clues regarding Persian scholarship in Arakan, we have to turn to the Bengali literary tradition of the kingdom. Now let us consider the case of Bengali. Firstly, it is important to note that Bengali was the culture language used for administrative and literary purposes in many courts in northeastern South Asia.19 Thus it is no surprise to find Bengali literature in Arakan, which was culturally and politically contiguous. Authors living in Arakan during the seventeenth century left behind a fairly high number of literary texts, which was not the case for the other languages mentioned above. Before mapping the production of Bengali literature in Arakan, it is necessary to say a few words about its use in the administration. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Sanskrit titles written in the Bengali script are found on some Arakanese coins (Leider 1998). The addition of Bengali script on coins can be understood as an attempt to be more visible at the regional level, whereas Persian and Arabic, mentioned above, addressed an even wider audience.20 Dutch and Portuguese sources also provide evidence of the use

18 See the letter to the Armenian merchant Jeorge Christiano in van Galen 2008: 211. Regarding epistolary relation between the Arakanese kings and the Mughals, see Askari 1959. 19 Bengali literature was patronized in the peripheral kingdoms of Nepal, Kamata and Kamrup, Tripura, and Orissa (Sen 1999–2000 [1975–78]: vol 1, 214–24; Brinkhaus 2003). 20 The multilingual coin bearing Arakanese, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit inscriptions dates from 1622. After that the Arakanese kings minted only unilingual coins in Arakanese. The multilingual coins are contemporary with the military expansion of Arakan and reflect a will to be understood as an emerging power at various levels: the local one—the one of Arakanese language, the regional—the area of the Bengali language and regional Sanskrit literacy, and the supraregional one—the realm of the Persian and Arabic speaking world (Mitchiner 2000: 139).

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of Bengali language for diplomatic and commercial activities.21 Thus we observe that Bengali was used in the domains where the Bengali Muslims were active; that is to say, in businesses requiring any kind of interaction between the local and the regional or supra-regional levels. Bengali literature was mainly written in two places in the kingdom: Chittagong and Mrauk-U. The properly Bengali-speaking area of Arakan that was Chittagong was an important center of literary activity. The Bengali texts composed there have to be examined in the context of Islamic influence in the rural areas during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They reflect the necessity of building an Islamic corpus in Bengali in order to educate the recently converted rural populations. The themes center on religious matters (lives of the prophets, Sufism, and so on) and, though the authors note their reliance on Arabic and Persian sources, they very rarely mention them specifically. Otherwise, the capital city of Mrauk-U, where the Bengali Muslim community was very prosperous, provided a suitable environment for learned men seeking patronage. Until the first decades of the seventeenth century, the Bengali language was restricted to the realm of administration and no literary text produced before this period is available today. Note that it is when Bengali disappeared from the coins minted in Arakan that the language acquired the status of a literary language. To put it differently, when the local power claimed its Arakanese Buddhist identity, Bengali Muslims felt the necessity to support the composition of literary texts. The Bengali literature composed during this period can be seen as testimony to the cultural awareness of a community which had reached the highest point of its economic prosperity, and whose role in the administration of the kingdom as an intermediary between the local power and the outside world had been clearly established. At this point the status of Bengali in Arakan, both as an administrative and a literary language, appears to be connected to communication and 21 For instance, the term losclosy, sometimes found with the spelling lascorusil (Manrique 1927: 373), clearly shows that Dutch and Portuguese heard this word from a Bengali speaker, because the phonetic rendering is the one of eastern Bengali (Persian [a] becomes [o], initial syllable [va] becomes [u], [z] becomes [j] in Western Bengali and remains [z] in the East). The Bengali pronunciation is also found in the case of shrines typical to eastern Bengal and Arakan, called in Persian Badr maqām but spelt boder mogom in Dutch sources (similarly the short [a] of Persian became [o] and the consonant cluster [dr] became [d] when followed by the Bengali genitive mark –er(a)). Other such examples could be given, but at present it seems enough to ascertain the fact that Bengali was occasionally used as a medium between Europeans and the local authority.

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mediation. We will now see how essential it is to understand this role, in order to grasp the dynamics that led to the constitution of the corpus of Bengali literature in Arakan during the seventeenth century. The biography and literary career of the Bengali poet Ālāol provides a specific example of the ideological developments of the Bengali milieu, revealed through the literary tastes of the poet and of his patrons. 3. Ālāol: His Life and the Shifting Cultural Environment of Arakan Compared to previous Bengali literature, a remarkable feature of Ālāol’s texts is the autobiographical accounts that the poet provides in the prologues to his poems. These short autobiographies are not strictly historical, and they should be understood within the rhetorical framework required by the poet-patron relationship: Such introductions to the life of the author were a kind of self-promotion aimed at clarifying the poet’s background for the potential patrons present in the assembly. Nevertheless, these passages inserted into the prologues are the only sources we have for a broad reconstruction of the poet’s life, and it is possible to glean from them some basic information about his historical, political, and cultural circumstances. Ālāol’s father was a counselor (amātya) of Majlis Quṭb, the Afghan ruler of the Fatihabad kingdom in the country of Gauda, which is to say the western part of Bengal.22 One day, as his father and he were traveling by boat on some business, they were attacked by Luso-Arakanese pirates (hārmād) who were looking for slaves in neighboring villages. His father died in the battle and Ālāol was taken to Mrauk-U, where he was hired as a royal horseman (rājāsoyāra).23 Before introducing his literary activity in the Arakanese capital, I should mention the tremendous shift in cultural environment that Ālāol experienced when he was violently removed from Fatihabad and led to Mrauk-U. Ālāol briefly depicts the place he came from in the extract from Satī Maynā Lora Candrāṇī given below (1992: 6), which requires some comments on the structure and significance of Ālāol’s lexical choices: In [the country of] Gauda is the famous kingdom (muluka) of Phatehābād (Fatihabad), 22 On the boundaries of the sarkār of Fatihabad (Fatḥābād) during the time of Akbar, see Abū’l-Faẓl 2001 [1927]: 127; for contemporary accounts on Fatihabad and Majlis Quṭb see Mīrzā Nāthan (1936: vol. 1, 59, 88–9). 23 For a depiction of the Muslim cavalry in Mrauk-U, see Manrique 1927: 373.

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Thibaut d’Hubert Where [live] honorable men refined in their speech (ukti) and devotion (bhakti). There are many scholars (dāniśmand) [and] Sufi masters (khaliphā), As well as [holy] tombs (gor-sthāna) of many saints (āuliyā). [Among] Hindu families, [there dwell] wise Brahmans learned in the Vedas (śrotriya); There constantly flow the streams of the Bhāgīrathī. In this place, Majlis Quṭb is the ruler (adhipati), And I, who am endowed with a weak mind (hīnamati), am the son of his counselor (amātya).

First the author locates Fatihabad in the traditional geography of Bengal by mentioning Gauda. He then introduces his audience to the intellectual elite of this place, evoking both the holy men and the holy places of this Brahman and Muslim society. Finally, Ālāol gives the name of the ruler and adds that he is himself the son of a counselor or minister, whose name he does not specify. The words used to describe the intellectual elite of Fatihabad reveal his familiarity with both Brahman/Sanskrit and Muslim/ Persian cultures. Notably, Ālāol does not mix these two domains in a syncretistic way, and he seems totally conscious of their separate religious identities. He mentions Hindu and Muslim intellectual elites with appropriate terms current in Sanskrit (brāhmaṇa, śrotriya)24 and in Persian (dāniśmand, khaliphā), respectively. This categorization comes after a general remark that outlines the characteristics of the educated man, regardless of his religious belonging: refinement in speech and devotion. It is noteworthy that the Bengali Muslim poet uses Sanskrit words (uktibhakti-śiṣṭa), and not Persian, to express the idea of refinement: As a ­matter of fact, his poetry, though based upon Persian themes, answers to aes­thetic requirements originating from Sanskrit literary canons. In contrast to Chittagongian authors of the same period who are not explicit regarding their literary models and sources, Ālāol gives the names of various Sanskrit and Persian works and authors, and once more proves to be very self-conscious about his literary activity as a cultural mediator.25 All of the works Ālāol mentions, whether Persian or Sanskrit, are “classics”— there are only two references to Sanskrit texts composed after the 24 In Sikāndar-nāmā Ālāol uses bhaṭṭācārya instead of śrotriya (1977: 27). 25 For instance, Ālāol mentions the names of Sanskrit authors such as Bhavabhūti, Kālidāsa, and Vararuci (2002 [1985]: 160). He also refers several times to Piṅgala (ibid., 19, 72, 160); and in the field of Persian literature, besides the authors whose texts he translated, he gives the name of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (ibid., 121–2) and mentions Firdawsī’s Shāh-nāma (1977: 20).

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twelfth century26 and no mention of contemporary Persian literature. Sanskrit literary culture was pivotal in a society composed of Buddhists, Hindus, and partly of deśī Muslims or “acclimatized” Turko-Afghans now familiar with South Asian literary culture, and it is no surprise that Ālāol stresses its presence in his native place as a proof of his respectable education. Persian, as we will demonstrate in the following pages, was then an element of growing importance in the socio-cultural climate of Mrauk-U, and it was vital for the poet to make a claim about his necessary accomplishments in this respect as well. But in order to have an accurate opinion of Ālāol’s cultural location, I must add that the court milieu in which the poet grew up was headed by Afghans who about a century earlier were the patrons of the Hindavi Sufi romances such as Jāyasī’s Padmāvat (1540) and Manjhan’s Madhumālatī (1545). In sum, Ālāol was a Bengali-speaking Muslim from the interior of Bengal, who hailed from an Afghan background acclimatized to North Indian regional cultures, and showed respect to figures of eloquence and wisdom associated with both Persian and Sanskrit cultures. From a cultural environment of Afghan nobles settled in the interior of Bengal in a fragmented political context, Ālāol landed in a cosmopolitan harbor, wide open to the commercial network of the Indian Ocean. Such a shift must be taken into account in order to understand the choices and expectations that shaped his literary works. Ālāol’s literary activity can be divided into three phases, which reflect his progressive adaptation to the cultural environment of the assemblies that he joined in Mrauk-U. The period of residence in Mrauk-U led to Ālāol’s shift away from North-Indian (Awadhi) regional cultural references, followed by a phase of literary experimentation deeply linked with his contemporary environment. Finally, that is, during the last years of his career, Ālāol made a radical move to more wide-spread Persian literary models. After some time in the Arakanese capital, Muslim inhabitants with whom he had shared his knowledge recognized him as a scholar and brought him to one of the king’s courtiers named Māgana Ṭhākura, son of Baḍa Ṭhākura, who commissioned a translation of Jāyasī’s Padmāvat into Bengali.27 Here begins what we know about Ālāol’s literary activity. The 26 The Saṅgītadāmodara of Śubhaṅkara (Bengal, sixteenth-c.) and the Saṅgītadarpaṇa of Catura Dāmodara (seventeenth-c.), two treatises dealing with music and related arts, such as theater, dance, and poetics (Ālāol, Saptapaykar, B.A., ālokacitra 4, f. 104b). 27 Māgana apparently did not formulate his request by asking for a translation into “Bengali” but rather asked Ālāol to “compose [the poem] in payāra [verses] in order to fulfill everyone’s wish” (Ālāol 2002 [1985]: 21).

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reasons that motivated Ālāol’s patron to choose this particular text—after all the text originated far away in the plains of India in a dialect of Hindavi— are not clearly expressed. The author only relates that the story of Padmāvatī had been narrated to Māgana, who then expressed the wish that people who did not know “Hindustānī” in Rosāṅg could be given the opportunity to appreciate Jāyasī’s poem, and commissioned a translation using the Bengali verse called payāra. I would suggest that in this particular case, the patron relied upon the poet’s taste for the choice of the text to be translated. Considering Ālāol’s Afghan background and the deep respect he expressed for Jāyasī, whom he calls kavi-kula-guru, the “master of all the poets” (Ālāol 2002 [1985]: 9), a title often given to Kālidāsa in the Sanskrit tradition—it is very likely that he was himself an authority in the literary field and that he provided his milieu with the literary models to be translated. The prologue of the second part of Sayphulmuluk (1670) where it is stated that Māgana, Ālāol’s patron, was also his “disciple”—śiṣya (Karim 1997: 260) —further substantiates this view.28 The composition of the Bengali Padmāvatī (1645–52) constitutes the first phase of his literary activity, and it is characterized by the poet’s inclination towards regional literary cultures, associated with the Afghan ruling class once spread throughout the Gangetic Valley.29 The second phase of Ālāol’s career is marked by two texts: the first part of Sayphumuluk Badiujjāmāl (1652–60, SB) and Satī Maynā Lora Candrāṇī (1659, SMLC). These two texts show a progressive shift from North Indian literary culture to Persian supra-regional models while illustrating at the same time his belonging to the local literary tradition. Ālāol composed SB, later included in the Arabic Thousand and One Nights (Shackle 2007), at the request of the same patron Māgana Ṭhākura. In the prologue of SB, 28 The poet’s role as a teacher is also clear from the several digressions in Padmāvatī where Ālāol comments on topics unfamiliar to his audience. In some places, Māgana himself intervenes and asks the poet for an explanation or expresses his eagerness to hear the rest of the story. See, for instance, Ālāol (2002 [1985]: 120). 29 One should add that Ālāol did not turn towards Braj, which had become the literary vernacular par excellence in North India during the Mughal Period (see Busch, this volume). Though Braj literature shared some simliarities with Ālāol’s poems, such as the explicit recourse to Sanskrit poetics, the highly Sanskritized vocabulary of some authors’ texts, and the centrality of the figure of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa to embody the ideal lovers (nāyaka and nāyikā), Ālāol does not manifest any awareness of this contemporary literary trend. Besides the Indo-Afghan cultural heritage, the first reason for the choice of Awadhi is its association with Sufism, and the second, less evident, could be the presence of these texts in a merchant milieu during the seventeenth century. See Banarsidas 1957: 335. I thank Jérôme Petit for this reference to Sufi romances in Banarsidas’s text.

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Ālāol says that the son of a pīr, a Sufi master, invited by one of Ālāol’s patrons named Sulaymān, once told a story in Persian about the prince of Egypt Sayphulmuluk and a fairy princess called Badiujjāmāl, and it delighted Māgana who was also attending the assembly. Māgana asked the poet to compose a payāra version—i.e., a version in Bengali verse—of the text, comprehensible by those who were not masters of Persian. Ālāol’s familiarity with Persian had already been clear from his translation of Padmāvat, where he makes explicit references to Persian literature,30 but this was the first time the author had adapted an entire text from a Persian model. In the case of Satī Maynā Lora Candrāṇī (1659), the poet fulfills the request of his patron by completing the poem of his predecessor Daulat Kājī. By carrying out this task, Ālāol validated his association with the local literary tradition. Ālāol not only completed the story; he also composed a new tale and inserted it into SMLC. The tale relates the exemplary behavior of princess Ratanakalikā, banished by her husband because she disagreed with the following statement: A wife’s happiness relies on her husband’s fortune (bhāgya) as a recompense for his previous good deeds and not on the value of her own actions (Ālāol 1992: 27–9). This story is most interesting because of its implicit intertextual references. The author frequently makes explicit allusions to the Sanskrit epics (Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa) and borrows motifs found in Sanskrit narrative literature such as the Kathāsaritsāgara. This is his only extensive text that is not a translation or an adaptation. It reveals the various literary skills that the author had been honing since his education in Fatihabad, as well as his growing interest in Niẓāmī’s (d. 1209) poetry. Though he does not explicitly mention the Persian poet, Ālāol employs some of the most important techniques of Niẓāmī’s mas̱navī Haft paykar (Seven Portraits): Through the movement of the protagonist from the world of men to the world of fairies and demons, he conveys mystical meanings and suggests the shift from the physical world (ʿālam al-mulk) to the world of images (ʿālam al-mis̱āl).31 The likely influence of Niẓāmī on Ālāol is confirmed by the fact that he actually translated Niẓāmī’s Haft paykar the following year. This original composition of Ālāol reflects many aspects of life in Arakan during the mid-seventeenth century. For instance, a striking reference to Ālāol’s contemporary environment is found in this quotation from Satī Maynā Lora Candrāṇī, which 30 For instance, Ālāol explicitly refers to the Manṭiq al-ṭayr of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār in Padmāvatī (2002 [1985]: 121–2). 31 See C. Jambet’s afterword in Nezâmi 2000: 341–60.

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mentions some of the main places and characters of the story of Ratanakalikā. A thorough analysis of this tale would reveal many features linking the story and its characters to contemporary Mrauk-U, but for the moment let us consider only the examples present in the following two verses (Ālāol 1992: 45): hena kāle prabhātana nāme sadāgara /  sādhu upendradevera dharmavatī ghara // saodā hetu ratnapure nityi āise yāya /  devera durlabha vastu rājāre jogāya // At that time a trader called Prabhātana, whose mansion was in the righteous [king] Upendradeva’s [city of] Dharmavatī, Frequently went to Ratnapura for trade in order to provide the king with the gods’ rare wealth…

One of the main characters is a trader described by the word sadāgar (Pers. sawdāgar), and the two cities where he conducts his trade are Ratnapura, the “city of jewels”, and Dharmavatī, the “[city] endowed with dharma”. The “city of jewels” is the perfect epithet for Golconda, famous for its diamonds and pearls,32 and the “city endowed with dharma” could plausibly refer to the Buddhist capital, especially considering the phonetic similarity between “Dharmavatī” and “Dhaññavatī”, the name of the area around Mrauk-U. Moreover, the merchant engages in trade in order to provide the king with luxury merchandise, a situation that echoes the prominent place of the king in commercial affairs during Ālāol’s time. Through analogies between his contemporary environment and the one depicted in the story, Ālāol incorporates in a meaningful way the everyday life of his audience in his literary composition. During this period, the poet on the one hand inaugurated the inclusion of Persian models in the local literary corpus and, on the other hand, consolidated by various means his claim of belonging to the local tradition. The third phase is what can be called the Persian turn of Ālāol’s carrier. It includes the three poems entitled Saptapaykar (Seven Portraits, 1660), Tohphā (The Gift, 1662–64), Sikāndar-nāmā (The Book of Alexander, 1671), plus the second part of Sayphulmuluk Badiujjāmāl (1670?). Saptapaykar and Sikāndar-nāmā are two translations from the Khamsa (Five Poems) of Niẓāmī.33 Tuḥfa-yi naṣā’iḥ (The Gift of Counsels) is a versified ethical treatise popular in South-Asia originally composed in 1393 in Delhi by Yūsuf 32 Regarding diamond trade between Golconda and Mrauk-U, see Leider 2004: 435. 33 In actual fact, Ālāol only translated the first part of Niẓāmī’s Iskandar-nāma, entitled Sharaf-nāma. See Ālāol 1977 and Gaeffke 1994.

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Gadā (Digby 1984), a member of the Chishtī Sufi order. All of these are translations from Persian models. This raises the question of what could have motivated the abandoning of Awadhi textual models in favor of an exclusive interest in Persian literature. This issue must be interpreted with reference to two topics: the place of Mrauk-U in the Persianized commercial network of the Bay of Bengal and the arrival of Shāh Shujāʿ, Aurangzeb’s brother, in 1660, followed by the uprising of the Mughal guards in 1663. This political crisis generated a reinforcing of religious identities in the kingdom. The Arakanese power had already been at work for a few decades establishing a Buddhist identity and the repression of the Muslim “strangers” who were the Mughals also spread to the local Bengali Muslims (van Galen 2008: 188–9). European sources, as well as Ālāol’s own statements, mention the momentary distrust of the Arakanese power towards Muslims in the kingdom, regardless of their origin. In such conditions the exclusive choice of Persian was motivated by the necessity to reinforce the identity of the Bengali Muslim subjects of the kingdom. In addition to the shift from Awadhi to Persian, the nearly complete absence of references to Sanskrit texts and authors in Alaol’s later poems is striking.34 One might even remark, as Peter Gaeffke has done, Alaol’s more orthodox approach in the Sikāndar-nāmā (1671) in comparison with Niẓāmī’s.35 Ālāol’s poems shared fewer cultural affinities with a Hindu or Buddhist audience, and were more narrowly Muslim in character. The poet’s affiliation to the Qādiriyya Sufi order, a very important ṭarīqa serving the cause of Islamic reformism in seventeenth-century South and Southeast Asia, through the qāẕī or Islamic Judge of Mrauk-U, can be interpreted as another sign of the defining of his sense of religious identity later in life. This phenomenon can also be seen as a reflection of a new set of cosmopolitan trends rather than local claims on the author. A text such as the Sikāndar-nāmā operated within a vast geo-cultural space extending from Macedonia to China, hence locating the audience of the poem in a wider pan-Islamic and unspecified space. At the same time, the radical shift away from vernacular and Sanskritic models to a more exclusively Persian ethos 34 While explicit references to Sanskrit literature tend to disappear in his last poems, the influence of the principles of Sanskrit poetics is still important and Ālāol’s Bengali remains highly Sanskritized and the Persian words scarce. 35 Peter Gaeffke explains the rather orthodox statements of Ālāol regarding non-Mulims in the Sikāndar-nāmā by the frontier location of Arakan in the Islamic world. Though the tendency towards conservatism on a frontier may have somehow been a factor, the study of socio-political crises that preceded the composition of the text is more relevant in order to understand the new ideological orientations of Ālāol (Gaeffke 1994).

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was a way to show the preeminence of supra-regional literary models from the Indian Ocean over the local ones shared by the bulk of Arakanese literati.36 Being Muslim in such a context meant adopting larger cultural references and putting some distance between one’s self and the local mores. We saw how the status of the Bengali language was related to the roles of its speakers in Arakanese society and how it played the role of an intermediary at the regional level. Ālāol’s itinerary and his progressive shift from regional cultural references to cosmopolitan ones creates a dynamic picture of the changes in Bengali Muslim society in seventeenth-century Mrauk-U. It is interesting to note how Ālāol was instrumental in such a context; he was, in the domain of belles lettres, what his patrons were in the more practical domains of trade and politics. Before dealing with the poet’s specific function in his milieu, I want to highlight the fact that Ālāol would certainly not have had similar opportunities to display his skills in his home town in Fatihabad. It was less connected to the rest of the world than Mrauk-U and, one might add, it is ironically thanks to piracy and the slave trade that his literary genius found a proper environment to be fully expressed. 4. The Poet’s Duty Towards his Milieu: Conveying Global Culture in the Local Idiom Over the last two decades, historians studying the commercial networks of the Indian Ocean and more specifically of the Bay of Bengal have analyzed the internal trade system linking the Coromandel Coast to Burma and Sumatra during the first half of the seventeenth century, which witnessed the climax of commercial exchange in the area.37 We saw that the world of long-distance trade and regions like the Coromandel Coast or North Sumatra are found in the Bengali texts composed in Mrauk-U during this period (cf. supra). Above, I have made an attempt to show the links between Ālāol’s life circumstances, contemporary local history, and the changing inflections of the poet’s literary activity. In the following section 36 Tuḥfat al-naṣā’iḥ, the only Islamic treatise composed by Ālāol, was translated between 1662 and 1664 and the mutiny of Shujāʿ’s guard, the kamānchī, occured in 1663. This fact corroborates the view that this period witnessed the necessity for Muslims in Arakan to define their religious identity more precisely. 37 See mainly the following volumes of essays: Prakash and Lombard 1999, and Gommans and Leider 2002.

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I will adopt another approach, namely the resituating of Ālāol’s texts in the wider literary culture of the Persianized commercial network of the Bay of Bengal, with a special focus on two places where vernacular literatures based on Persian themes were formed almost simultaneously: Aceh and Golconda. Subrahmanyam has shown that the commercial network of the Bay of Bengal was characterized by a Persian culture that underlay the relationships between the various powers engaged in trade. The “mercantilist” policy of some Buddhist states also led to the adopting of Persian protocol at the courts of Buddhist kings in Southeast Asia, the case of Ayutthaya during the second half of the seventeenth century being the best documented (Subrahmanyam 2005). Denys Lombard has also stressed the Western-oriented aspirations of religious and literary life in Aceh during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He referred to Ālāol and his translation of the “Alexander Story” that succeeded the composition of a Malay version of this story and the adoption of the name Iskandar—Iskandar Muda (1607–36), Iskandar Thani (1636–41)—by sultans of Aceh (Lombard 1967: 151ff.; 1999: 193–4).38 The recent work of Vladimir Braginsky on Malay Sufi literature also suggest the relationship between these texts and contemporary Sufi treatises composed in Chittagong (2004). The mention of Aceh in the texts of Daulat Kājī and Ālāol as well as common themes and religious preoccupations encourage further research. We face here a complex nexus of cultural exchange, or at least the obvious interest in similar topics in this area. Putting these data together, we get the impression that poetic “fashions” (no less than textiles and other commodities) were spread among the local literati settled in the ports around the Bay of Bengal. The synchronicity of this adaptation into the local languages of common Persian models is particularly striking in the case of Mrauk-U and Golconda. If we compare the literary production in Golconda with Mrauk-U (see table 1), it appears that whenever a Persian theme was adapted into Dakani, a southern dialect of Hindavi, in the sultanate, the same theme was also finding a new expression in the Bengali texts composed in the Arakanese capital.39 The diffusion of literary models corresponds with the growth of commercial activities between the two places. Sources from both Mrauk-U 38 Previously two Arakanese kings, Ca laṅ ka sū (1494–1501) and Maṅ Pha loṅ (1571–93), had issued coins bearing the name Sikandar (Leider 2004: 330–1). 39 For the dates of the Dakani poems I rely upon the conclusions of Md. Jamal Sharif (2004). Regarding linguistic diversity and the usage of languages, Golconda shares a number of common features with Arakan. Though historians such as R. M. Eaton (1978 and 2005) have integrated the linguistic diversity of the sources in their studies, research combining

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Table 1 Golconda

Mrauk-U

Patron

Poet

Text

Muḥammad Quṭb Shāh (1612–26)

Ghawwāṣī Maynā Satvantī

Date

Date

Text

Poet

Patron

1612–26 1622–38 1659

Satī Maynā (part 1) Id. (part 2)

Daulat Āśraf Khān Kājī Sulaymān Ālāol

ʿAbdallāh Quṭb Id. Shāh (1626– 72)

Sayf al-Mulūk Badīʿ al-Jamāl

1625

1652–60

Sayphulmuluk Ālāol Badiujjāmāl

Māgana Ṭhākura

Abū al-Ḥasan Qādirī

Quṭbī

Tuḥfa al-naṣā’iḥ

1635

1662–64

Tohphā

Id.

Sulaymān

Abū al-Ḥasan Tānā Shāh (1672–1686)

Tabʿī

Bahrām u 1672 Gulandām

1660

Saptapaykar

Id.

Saiyad Md. Khān

and Golconda testify to the development of commercial relations during the first half of the seventeenth century. As mentioned earlier, aside from their functions in the kingdom’s administration, Ālāol’s patrons were also involved in trade. Indeed, there are several clues regarding the trade with Golconda led by the kutwal and the lashkar wazīr of Mrauk-U during the period of Ālāol’s literary activity (Prakash 2002: 98–9; Leider 2004: 424–5, 431). On the other hand, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam has observed, Masulipatnam, the main port of the kingdom of Golconda, was “a window for the process of promoting Persian culture across the Bay of Bengal. Many of the Persian traders that we have mentioned (i.e., Kamal al-Din Mazan­ darani, etc.) were prominent in Tenasserim, Martaban, and Mrauk-U” (2005: 64). We then witness the formation of a network of Muslim notables involved in trade who shared a similar interest in Persian literature. This new diffusion of Persian culture in a regional idiom has to be understood in the larger perspective of the gradual spread of poetry outside the court circles since the Timurid-Turkmen period of Persian literature; thus,

the various literary trends in Golconda in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is still wanting.

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as Losensky notes (1998: 138), “wealthy merchants might act as either patrons or performers at poetic gatherings.” He further adds (1998: 142): Within a general political and cultural history, poetry becomes only one important element in a network of semiotic and economic practices, both shaping and being shaped by its social nature and context.

The socio-cultural aspect of poetry performance to which Losensky draws our attention is crucial in the case of the poems of Mrauk-U and its trading partners. Poetry was a means to teach and learn a range of values and knowledge that constituted a common ground for travelers, who constantly had to reassure their hosts regarding their own status as men of culture through their acquaintance with cultural standards. For example, Ālāol almost never fails to describe the place he came from in the prologues to his poems and provides his audience with the information necessary to situate him within the composite cultural environment of his time. The purpose of this literature was to allow the appropriation of cosmopolitan Persian literature through the regional literary idiom. In other words, the regionalization of the literary expression aimed to make cosmopolitan literature and the values it conveyed more accessible. In the case of Ālāol’s texts, the didactic dimension is additionally salient in his prologues and various technical digressions in the body of the poems. Ālāol was not only a writer but also a teacher. He taught the arts connected with belles lettres to his patrons and their children (Ālāol 1977: 28). He was also just as much a commentator as a translator. It is appropriate to understand the parallel development of regional literature from common Persian models in Golconda and Arakan (among other places) to be the result of Persian-influenced noblemen, involved in both domestic administration and long-distance trade, who were eager to share a common literary culture. The central place where literature appeared as one of the main elements of social relations was the sabhā, or assembly. Ālāol depicted one of these sabhās in his prologue to Sayphulmuluk (Karim 1997: 254–5). One day Sulaymān who was his [= pīr Maʿṣūm Shāh’s] disciple, invited the pīr and welcomed him at his place. The pīr was with his son [Sayyid Muṣṭafā]. He also invited the very wise Māgana. The noble Sulaymān invited many scholars (ālim olamā), all virtuous men. The glorious assembly (mahāsabhā) [was immersed in a stream] of inextinguishable rasa; they were joyous and intoxicated by the rasa of [speeches about] essential matters (tattva-kathā) and songs.

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Thibaut d’Hubert They shared a meal composed of the six flavors, and ate at their leisure. The assembly (sabhā) was enjoying the perfume of musk, of sandalwood, and flowers. As he was listening joyously to spiritual speeches and sweet songs, Māgana, the jewel of virtue, declared: “Half of the night was spent [in a stream of] delightful words; son of the pīr (pīrjādā), tell us an ancient story (purāṇa prasaṅga)!” After listening to these words, Sayyid Muṣṭafā, who is endowed with many qualities, related the story (kicchā) of Sayf al-mulūk. “[Prince Sayf al-Mulūk] strived to reach the nymph (apsarī) called Badiujjāmāl after performing various deeds (…)” In the mouth of the scholar (paṇḍita), grace [expanded] in a playful motion. The assembly was engulfed by a wave of joy. He whose heart contains love when he listens to a love story, starts burning like gold, whose purity increases in the flames. All the topics [of the poem], all the pains and afflictions raised an immense joy in the heart of the lord Māgana! The master (guru) addressed me [in this way]: “Listen! This ancient story (prasaṅga purāṇa) is in Persian language (phārsī-bhāṣeta), Not everybody understands this Persian book (phārsī-kitāb); I propose that you compose this [tale] in a narrative poem in payāra (payāra-prabandhe).” Lack of obedience towards the order of him who shall not be upset is a major fault (pāpa). He provides me with food and helps me to face my fears, thus he is like a father [to me]!

This is reminiscent of similar gatherings held a few decades earlier in Ahmadabad, another important junction-point of the commercial networks of the Indian Ocean. These were hosted by the poet Naẓīrī Nīshābūrī (d. 1612/13) and described by Taqī Awḥadī (d. 1629/30)40 In Gujarat [Naẓīrī] built a mansion worthy of a king (pādshāhāna) and lived in delight, and all the dear ones, rich and poor, were constantly present at his assemblies (majmaʿ). The poetry gatherings and discussions in his house were very animated.

The example of Naẓīrī—an amīr, a merchant, a poet, and a patron all in one—can be compared to the kind of multi-faceted individual we find in Mrauk-U in the person of Māgana Ṭhākura. The host, who was also the poet’s patron, is presented as a scholar, and, in accordance with what is prescribed as the ideal behavior of the patron in Sanskrit and Persian literatures, he is able to understand and comment on the texts to which he

40 Quoted in Hujjati 1996a.

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is listening.41 The two main characteristics of the patron are his erudition and generosity. The guests are other important Muslim men, scholars, and saintly persons and everyone present enjoys the sensual pleasures and spiritual delights of the poem. If the patron is the host and the master in this “court”, the pīr also occupies a central place and provides the literary material that will be the medium for the enjoyment of the soul of the listeners. All of the works translated by Ālāol were narrative texts used by Sufis for spiritual observances, and it leaves absolutely no doubt that Sufism, as it was practiced in seventeenth-century South and Southeast Asia, played a major role in his literary activity. We saw that Awadhi and Persian verses were recited and commented upon in the assemblies Ālāol attended. About three decades before the composition of Padmāvatī, Daulat Kājī, in the prologue to Satī Maynā, explicitly referred to discussions about philosophical matters in Arabic and Persian (2003 [1995]: 10). Also, both of the Bengali poets mention that their patrons (i.e., Āśraph Khān and Māgana) knew “Magī” or Arakanese. If the patron is always presented as a scholar able to understand all of the languages spoken in the multicultural environment of Mrauk-U, the members of the assembly did not seem to be as well- versed in these languages.42 That is why the patron turned to the local poet to translate or explain the Awadhi or Persian poems that were recited in order to avoid any obstacle to the perfect harmony of the heterogeneous gathering. Thus, the poet helped to expand the horizons of his patrons’ entourage in the field of Persian literary culture, helping to bridge the disparate cultural backgrounds of important traders and their peers in other harbors of the commercial network of the Bay of Bengal. 5. Conclusion In this paper, I have tried to show the historical relevance of the literary career of the Bengali poet Ālāol and what one can gain from an accurate 41 Regarding the necessity for kings to be educated in Sanskrit literature, see Pollock 2006: 184–7, and for the poet’s functions in the patron’s court in an Arabo-Persian context, see Meisami 1987: 3–39. 42 That a proper understanding of texts was considered indispensable to the “cultivated companions” (yārān-i bāfarhang) is, significantly, mentioned in the introduction to the Farhang-i Shīr Khānī, a dictionary composed during Afghan rule in North India. The author of the work explains that he had started to collect and to write down the meanings of difficult words found in Persian poems, starting with Niẓāmī’s Sharaf-nāma, to facilitate access to these texts for the companions of the Afghan ruler (Hujjati 1996b).

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contextualization of it. I have traced the life of a man of letters who had been removed from the hinterland of Bengal and who progressively adapted to the literary assemblies of Mrauk-U. At every stage of his career, he affords the modern reader tremendous insights regarding his heterogeneous literary models and the subtle way in which he combined them. Ālāol was always very self-conscious about the development of his literary activity and his role as a mediator in the milieu to which he had adapted himself. His texts provide access to a range of information that makes possible a thorough analysis of languages and their functions in seventeenth-century Mrauk-U. Contextual analyses in tandem with comparative studies of other traditions are necessary in their own right but also as an alternative to the often encountered subjective arguments about the “sweetness” of the sounds of a language or the affective attachment of speakers to their mother tongue.43 My aim has also been to clarify some contextual issues, which I think will pave the way for studying Ālāol’s voluminous oeuvre with more precision. Regarding Bengali literature in Mrauk-U, three features seem particularly important for a better understanding of these texts: the mapping of the centers of literary activity and their links to one another, the role of religious networks and their agents in the spread and interpretation of literary models in the various centers, and the epistemological relevance of the different spheres of local and cosmopolitan literary activity. In the case studied here, we can see that it is impossible to understand the literary tastes of Ālāol’s milieu without a comparative study that considers the other centers of the Bay of Bengal. From the available material we must describe the context in which this literature was performed by defining the places, their social significance, and the functions of the agents inhabiting such circles. Literary assemblies organized by the Muslim noblemen of Mrauk-U adopted some of the codes employed in royal courts, the models par excellence of etiquette and cultural refinement, but the functions of the members seem more fluid and the hierarchy defined differently than at court.44 The comparison of various models of courtly comportment will contribute to a better understanding of the production and circulation of texts. Mapping the centers of literary production will also open up the 43 Horst Brinkhaus justly points to the problematic nature of these subjective arguments while dealing with Bengali and Maithili in Nepal (2003: 68, 71–2). 44 The assemblies attended by Ālāol were somewhere in between the royal courts and these less formal salons. In the present volume, see also the contributions by Allison Busch and Corinne Lefèvre in connection with the courts and entourages of prestigious patrons and also the essay by Stefano Pellò for more information about poetic courts.

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field of intertextual studies. For instance, Ālāol provides various explicit references to other texts. It is necessary to study the role played by such texts in other centers of the commercial and cultural network of the time. Were these texts commented upon, adapted, or translated? Do they figure in the literary canons of other contemporary cities? The religious networks and the agents who were active in these networks were also central to the formation of literary canons during this period. We have indicated that alongside the patrons who provided material support and “sensual pleasures”, both the pīrs and the ʿulamāʾ were the providers of “spiritual delights”. In the assembly where literature was performed, religious figures were the authorities who brought with them the texts that were to become the standards or literary models (Wormser and d’Hubert 2008). They were surely not the only ones to assume this role, but, in the case of Mrauk-U, their place was central in the organization of the assemblies, and all of the texts Ālāol composed were used in other Sufi milieus in South and Southeast Asia. Examining the interplay between local and cosmopolitan registers provides a meaningful tool for investigating seventeenth-century Arakan. Regionalism and cosmopolitanism have been expressed in complex ways by the various members of society. This opposition is an alternative to essentialist approaches based upon the complete identification of cultural identities with religious faiths, because it provides the opportunity to locate “sociotextual communities” in a more subtle frame of reference than that made possible by religious categorizations alone. For instance, the way Ālāol utilizes Sanskrit literary references does not seem to be linked to a mere religious stance; instead, it is a way to state the degree of his identification with, or distance from, locally shared references. The case of Bengali literature in Arakan is a fascinating example of complex cultural exchanges on the margins of South Asia. Above all, it shows the necessity of thinking in terms of regional cultural history in connection with supra-regional processes. I hope that some of the ideas presented here will travel to other shores and stimulate collective work that can lead us to a better comprehension of the circulation of people and ideas in the Bay of Bengal during the premodern period.

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Braginsky, Vladimir. 2004. “The Science of Women and the Jewel: The Synthesis of Tantrism and Sufism in a Corpus of Mystical Texts from Aceh.” Indonesia and the Malay World 32: 93 (July), pp. 141–75. Brinkhaus, Horst. 2003. “On the Transition from Bengali to Maithili in the Nepalese Dramas of the 16th and 17th Centuries.” In W. L. Smith, ed. Maithili Studies, papers presented at the Stockholm conference on Maithili language and literature. Stockholm: University of Stockholm, pp. 67–77. Chatterji, Suniti Kumar. 1975 [1926]. Origin and Development of the Bengali Language. Calcutta: Rupa. D’Hubert, Thibaut. 2010. “Histoire culturelle et poétique de la traduction. Ālāol et la tradition littéraire bengali au XVIIe siècle à Mrauk-U, capitale du royaume d’Arakan,” Ph.D. diss., É cole Pratique des Hautes É tudes, Paris. Digby, Simon. 1984. “The Tuḥfa i nas̤ā’iḥ of Yūsuf Gadā: An Ethical Treatise in Verse from the Late-Fourteenth-Century Delhī Sultanate.” In Barbara Daly Metcalf, ed. Moral Conduct and Authority, the Place of Adab in South Asian Islam. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 91–123. Eaton, Richard M. 1978. Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ____. 1993. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760. Berkeley: University of California Press. ____. 2005. A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761: Eight Indian Lives. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gaeffke, Peter. 1994. “Alexander and the Bengali Sufis.” In Alan W. Entwistle and Françoise Mallison, eds. Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature, research papers, 1988–1991, presented at the fifth conference on “Devotional literature in New Indo-Aryan Lan­ guages,” held at Paris-École Française d’Extrême-Orient. New Delhi: Manohar; Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient, pp. 275–84. Galen, Stephan van. 2002. “Arakan at the Turn of the First Millennium of the Arakanese Era.” In Gommans and Leider 2002, pp. 151–62. ____. 2008. Arakan and Bengal: The Rise and Decline of the Mrauk-U kingdom(Burma) from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century ad. Ph.D. diss., Leiden University. Ghosal, Satyendranath. 1959. Beginning of Secular Romance in Bengali Literature. VishvaBharati Annals 9. Santiniketan: Vishva-Bharati. Gommans, Jos and Jacques P. Leider, eds. 2002. The Maritime Frontier of Burma: Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World, 1200–1800. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen; Leiden: KITLV Press. Haq, Muhammad Enamul. 1993. Vol. 2 of Muhammad Enamul Hak racanāvalī. Dhaka: Bangla Academy. Haq, Muhammad Enamul and Abdul Karim, eds. 1993. Ārākān rājasabhāya bāṅglā sāhitya [1600–1700]. In Haq 1993, pp. 17–142. (Orig. pub. 1935. Kolkata: Gurudāsa Caṭṭopādhyāya and Sons.) Hujjati, Hamide. 1996a. Farhang-i Shīr Khānī. In Anushe 1375/1996. ____. 1996b. Naẓīrī nīshābūrī. In Anushe 1375/1996. Johnston, E. H. 1944. “Some Sanskrit Inscriptions of Arakan.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. London: University of London 11: 2, pp. 357–85. Karim, Abdul. 1997. Abdul Karim sāhityaviśārada racanāvalī, edited by Abdul Ahsan Chaudhuri. Dhaka: Bangla Academy. Leider, Jacques P. 1998. “These Buddhist Kings with Muslim Names… A Discussion of the Muslim Influence in the Mrauk-U Period.” In Pierre Pichard and François Robinne, eds. Etudes birmanes en hommage à Denise Bernot, 189–315. Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient.

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____. 2002. On Arakanese Territorial Expansion: Origins, Context, Means and Practice. In Gommans and Leider 2002, pp. 127–50. ____. 2004. Le royaume d’Arakan, Birmanie, son histoire politique entre le début du XVe et la fin du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient. ____. 2006. “Specialists for Ritual, Magic and Devotion: The Court Brahmins (punna) of the Konbaung Kings (1752–1885).” Journal of the Burma Studies 10, pp. 159–202. Lombard, Denys. 1967. Le sultanat d’Atjéh au temps d’Iskandar Muda: 1607–1636. Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient. ____. 1999. “The Indian World as Seen from Aceh.” In Om Prakash and Denys Lombard, eds. Commerce and Culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1800. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 183–96. Losensky, Paul E. 1998. Welcoming Fighānī: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in SafavidMughal Ghazals. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publisher. Meisami, Julie Scott. 1987. Medieval Persian Court Poetry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mitchiner, Michael. 2000. The Land of Water: Coinage and History of Bangladesh and Later Arakan, Circa 300bc to the Present Day. London: Hawkins Publications. Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men. Berkeley: University of California Press. Prakash, Om. 2002. “Coastal Burma and the Trading World of the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1680.” In Gommans and Leider 2002, pp. 93–106. Prakash, Om and Deny Lombard, eds. Commerce and Culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1800. New Delhi: Manohar. Raymond, Catherine. 1995. “Etude des relations religieuses entre le Sri Lanka et l’Arakan du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle: documentation historique et évidences archéologiques.” Journal Asiatique 283: 2, pp. 469–501. Roy, Asim. 1983. The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sen, Sukumar. 1999–2000 [1975–78]. Bāṅgālā sāhityera itihāsa. 2 vols. Kolkata: Ānanda publishers. Shackle, Christopher. 2007. “The Story of Sayf al-Mulūk in South Asia.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 17: 2, pp. 115–29. Sharif, Ahmad, ed. 1958. Ābdul karim sāhityaviśārada-saṃkalita puthi-pariciti. Dhaka: Ḍhākā Viśvavidyālaya. ____. 1999 [1983]. Bāṅgālī o baṅglā sāhitya. 2 vols. Dhaka: Bangla Academy. Sharif, Md. Jamal. 2004. Dakkan main urdū shāʿirī walī se pahle. Hyderabad: Idāra-yi Adabiyāt-i Urdū. Sternbach, Ludwik. 1963. “The Pāli Lokanīti and the Burmese Nīti kyan and their Sources.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 26: 2, pp. 329–45. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2002. “And a River Runs through it: The Mrauk-U Kingdom and its Bay of Bengal Context.” In Gommans and Leider 2002, pp. 107–26. ____. 2005. “Persianization and “Mercantilism” in Bay of Bengal History, 1400–1700.” In S. Subrahmanyam, ed. Explorations in Connected History, from the Tagus to the Ganges. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 45–79. Wormser, Paul, and Thibaut d’Hubert. 2008. “Représentations du monde dans le golfe du Bengale au XVIIe siècle: Âlâol et Rânîrî.” Archipel 76, pp. 15–35. Yegar, Moshe. 1972. Muslims of Burma. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 75

The Court of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm Khān-i Khānān as a Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions Corinne Lefèvre* ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm Khān-i Khānān (1556–1627) was a major figure from the Mughal nobility during the reigns of Akbar (1556–1605) and Jahāngīr (1605– 27). Born in India, he was the son of Bairam Khān—one among the few Iranian amīrs who had gathered around Bābur (r. 1526–30) in the hope of a new and rewarding career under the rising Mughal power. Bairam Khān had indeed achieved considerable success under Bābur and his successors (he became the tutor and vice-regent of the young Akbar) before falling into disgrace in 1561 and being murdered soon afterwards. Following Bairam Khān’s death, Akbar took his only son under his personal care and entrusted his education to several distinguished scholars. The 1580s saw the real start of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s political career, the sequence of which closely parallels that of the Mughal expansion: After having successfully headed the imperial campaigns in Gujarat (1583) and Sindh (1591), he was assigned to the Deccan (1593) where he spent his remaining life and enjoyed the highest degree of power and autonomy.1 Following the imperial example—and more particularly that of his father—ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm was a man of the sword as well as of the pen. He first distinguished himself by his language skills: His own writings show that he was proficient in Turkish, Persian, and Hindavi, and he is said to have known Arabic, Sanskrit, and Portuguese—learning the last at Akbar’s request. His personally translating Bābur’s memoirs from Turkish into Persian testifies to his linguistic capabilities. The Khān was also an author in his own right, as is evident from the poetry he composed under the pen name of “Raḥīm” (“the compassionate”). Aside from his own literary skills, the amīr was an enthusiastic patron of architecture as well as an ardent collector of books. From the 1580s onwards, he maintained a library-cumworkshop, which is one of the best documented examples of a sub-imperial library in Mughal times. Reflecting the wide-ranging interests of its patron * I am grateful to Allison Busch, Sunil Kumar, Imre Bangha, and the late Aditya Behl for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. 1 For a detailed account of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s career under Akbar, see Husain 1999: 27–36.

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in literature, painting, and architecture, the Khān’s court (and renowned generosity) attracted scholars and artists from all over Iran as well as from different parts of India. As shown by this brief survey, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s life and achievements fully participated in some of the circulatory dynamics that nurtured the Mughal Empire. Himself the son of an Iranian migrant, he travelled extensively within and on the edge of the royal territories, bringing him and many other soldier-administrators into contact with regional courtly traditions that differed in some cases substantially from the central norm under elaboration. Successively established in Thatta, Ahmadabad, and Burhanpur, his court became another moving center for the growing flow of West and South Asian literati, who carried with them different languages and cultural paradigms. Except for the Iranian origin and the geographical locations of his court, the above characterization of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm could, however, equally apply to any of the Mughal royalty he served. Why then choose to address the question of circulation through this figure? First and foremost the existence of contemporary, relevant, and yet relatively untapped documentation—in this case the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī, a massive chronicle commissioned by ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm that details his life as well as his activities as a patron—is a strong draw for the historian. Second is the dual characterization of his person in secondary literature. While the accounts found in handbooks of Mughal history generally portray the Khān-i Khānān as a great general and administrator but mention only briefly his cultural activities, the man takes on the garb of Raḥīm under the pen of historians of Hindi literature and is presented almost exclusively as the author of a rich corpus of poetry written in Hindavi. Raḥīm obviously possessed a certain fluidity in identity that has by and large failed to be addressed in scholarship, but the circulation paradigm adopted in this book should help to uncover it. Third is the opportunity to closely examine the cultural dynamics of circulation at work in a sub-imperial court envisioned as one among the many courtly layers of early modern India, and to reflect on what these dynamics meant for their participants in terms of prestige. In this essay I will focus more particularly on two types of circulatory trajectories. The first is the circulation of people between Iran and India and across South Asia through a study of the Khān’s entourage. I am also centrally concerned with crossovers between Persian and multi-faceted Indian cultural traditions as expressed in the works produced or patronized by Raḥīm. After analysing these intertwined instances of circulation, the essay will conclude with a brief examination of the links between ʿAbd-ur-

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 77 Raḥīm’s cultural stance and contemporary norms at the imperial Mughal court and thus address the question of the circulation of models from an imperial to a sub-imperial level. Before dealing with these questions, however, it is essential to pause a moment and properly introduce the main Persian source for this study, the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī.2 The work was written in 1616 at the behest of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm by a Persian immigrant named ʿAbd-ul-Bāqī Nahāwandī. As shown by the events of his life, he was one among the many participants in the cultural and courtly networks that linked Iran to the Subcontinent during the early modern period, and his itinerary thus deserves more than a cursory treatment.3 ʿAbd-ul-Bāqī was born in 1573 near Hamadan in western Iran. Of Kurdish origin, his family joined the service of the Safavids at the time of Shāh Ismaʿīl (r. 1501–1524). During Shāh ʿAbbās’s reign (1587–1629), Nahāwandī’s elder brother discharged the function of wazīr in Kashan, while he himself held the position of steward of the Shāh’s private purse in that same city. It was also in Kashan that he began to associate with literary people and to write poetry. Sometime after 1598 he met Mīr Mughiṣ-ud-dīn Maḥwī Asadābādī, a Persian poet who had just returned from India where he had served ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm. Nahāwandī may well have been swayed by the description of the Khān’s munificent patronage but he decided to leave Iran for a very different reason. In 1607, his family suffered a sudden reversal of fortune: his elder brother was murdered, and when Nahāwandī took over his charge of wazīr in Kashan he was slandered to such a degree that he had no choice but self-imposed exile. On his arrival in India in 1614, he immediately proceeded to Burhanpur and shortly afterwards entered the service of the Khān, who commissioned him to write a book on his life and achievements. Unfortunately, not much is known of the life of Nahāwandī after he completed the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī: He first served Jahāngīr’s son Prince Parwīz, and subsequently Mahābat Khān (one of the greatest amīrs of the time, also of Iranian origin), and stayed in India until his death sometime after 1636.4 The Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī was thus composed at the request of ʿAbd-urRaḥīm during one of the most important periods of his career: Between 1612 and 1616 he exercised an undivided authority over the southern prov2 Raḥīm being both the Khān’s pen name and a divine epithet, the title of the book may alternatively be translated as “The Memorable Deeds of Raḥīm” or “The Glories of the Compassionate”. 3 The following account is based on Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 1536–46. 4 Orthmann 1996: 12.

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inces of the Mughal Empire. From the mid 1590s onwards, and even more during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, his management of Deccan affairs and, more particularly, of the Mughal campaigns launched against the independent sultanate of Ahmadnagar was, however, seriously questioned. He was thought to be secretly collaborating with the enemy and fomenting division among the Mughal amīrs serving in the Deccan, thereby compromising the chances of Mughal success in the area.5 These accusations are far too numerous in the contemporary sources to be ignored or ascribed to malevolence or jealousy, as has been argued by some scholars.6 On the verge of old age (he was then sixty years old), the Khān probably felt the need to answer the charges brought against him and to present quite a different image from the one spread by his detractors. To this end, he appropriated the model of imperial chronicling as the means for his rehabilitation—a bold (yet not uncommon7) gesture on behalf of an amīr as chronicles had, by the seventeenth century, become a privileged medium for dynastic and royal propaganda. The Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī should thus be considered not only a highly eulogistic work but also a great campaign of public relations directed at the emperor and the Mughal nobility.8 The political stakes that underlie this monumental work (encompassing more than three thousand pages) naturally necessitate a great deal of caution in its use by scholars. 1. ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s Entourage Of particular interest for understanding the various constituencies of ʿAbdur-Raḥīm’s immense patronage activities is the epilogue (khātima) of the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī: Covering nearly one thousand and seven hundred pages, it deals with the life and work of the men who benefited from the Khān’s patronage. The biographical entries are divided into three sections: ʿulamāʾ 5 Harawī 1960, ii: 498; Jahāngīr 1999: 114; ʿAbd-us-Sattār 2006: 114–5; Bhakkarī 1993: 32. 6 See in particular Schimmel 1990: 154, 159–60, and 1992: 210, 212, and 217. 7 While no trace of such an appropriation may be found (except for one case) during the preceding period, three other sub-imperial chronicles were commissioned by Mughal amīrs during the reign of Jahāngīr: the Zubdat-ut-tawārikh for Shaikh Farīd Bukhārī also known as Murtaẓā Khān (d. 1616), the Tārīkh-i Khān Jahānī wa Makhzan-i Afghānī (1613) for Khān Jahān Lodī, and the Anfaʿ-ul-akhbār (1626–1627) for Khanjar Khān. Taken together, these works testify to the filtering down of imperial genres and instruments to the “lower” levels of the state apparatus—a process whose centrifugal implications would become clear by the eighteenth century. 8 For a demonstration of this point, see Lefèvre 2007: 1292–9.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 79 and scholars (ʿulamāʾ wa fuẓalāʾ), poets (shuʿarāʾ), and soldiers and men of merit (sipāhiyān wa mustaʿiddān). A number of scholars have relied on this epilogue to reconstruct the amīr’s patronage,9 but none has critically assessed its status as a historical document. Here I would like to make two observations about the epilogue. The first relates to its scale. By devoting more than half of his work to the “protégés” of the Khān, Nahāwandī drew special attention to ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm as an outstanding patron, and this stands as one of the pillars of the rehabilitation put forward by the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī—the other two being to portray him as an exceptional administrator as well as a dervish whose piety verged on sanctity.10 That the scale of the Khān’s patronage was deemed fit to mend his damaged reputation as a statesman points to the enormous prestige attached to cultural activities in Mughal India and underlies their political significance. The presentation of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm as an embodiment of the perfect patron clearly challenged the emperor who claimed that very status for himself.11 The fact that one thousand and five hundred pages alone (i.e., nearly half of the whole Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī) were devoted to poets highlights how central culture was in the Khān’s definition of (his own) power. Albeit, this statement is not altogether surprising: As a sphere of activity that state authority could not so easily control, culture (and, more particularly, literature) was a space with a freer scope for self-assertion. That ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm and his panegyrist were fully aware of this is borne out by the shift towards hagiography shown by some parts of the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī. The second observation about the epilogue relates to the criteria applied by Nahāwandī when listing the recipients of the Khān’s patronage. These criteria were obviously quite loose and he included individuals, especially poets, who were only very vaguely connected with the amīr’s court. Some poets mentioned in the epilogue never left Iran, and their relationship to the Khān amounted merely to the sending of a poem in the hope of some financial reward. Żuhūrī and Malik Qummī are telling examples of poets featured 9 Haq 1931, Naik 1966, Khan 1985, and Orthmann 1996. 10 This is argued in greater detail in Lefèvre 2007. 11 In this respect, it is interesting to note that whereas Raḥīm is never mentioned as a patron in the Jahāngīr Nāma, most of the references to him found in the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī—a newly discovered chronicle that was written under the close supervision of the emperor—pertain to the poets he patronized (Shakībī, Nażīrī Nishāpūrī, Nauʿī Khurāsānī, and Kufrī) and to his connoisseurship of poetry (ʿAbd-us-Sattār 2006: 39–40, 49, 189–90, and 199). While this discrepancy may be explained by the different focuses and audiences of the texts, it shows that Jahāngīr was perfectly aware of the Khān-i Khānān’s high status as a patron and makes his silence in the memoirs all the more significant.

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in the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī who were not actually under ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage. Even though both poets wrote verses in praise of ʿAbd-urRaḥīm,12 it is well known that they were based at the courts of the sultans of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur. Of course, the privileged connection that both poets enjoyed with the Deccani courts did not prevent them from establishing special relations with other leading regional figures. Still, the advantage of including such famous literary figures in the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī under the rubric of the poets patronized by the Khān could hardly have been missed by his panegyrist or the reader: ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s own status as a patron swelled accordingly as a result. The aim of these remarks is not to preclude us from using the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī as a historical document, but rather to caution against any simpleminded reliance on its contents. Whenever possible, the information it provides must be checked against other sources. For the painters, we may benefit from consulting the notes and signatures inscribed on the manuscripts made or altered for ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm. Thanks to the research conducted by John Seyller, these inscriptions have recently been collected, and he has uncovered the names of sixteen artists to supplement the list of five known from the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī. Seyller’s analysis has further shown that the painters mentioned by Nahāwandī were far from the most prolific or gifted members of the Khān’s atelier, and has pointed to the lack of a coherent motivation behind their inclusion in the chronicle.13 This last point may be interpreted as a sign of Nahāwandī’s unfamiliarity with or lack of interest in the visual arts; it certainly calls for further caution in using his work. Concerning the architectural production, the verification process proves more intractable since none of the other descriptions that have come to my notice provide any new evidence on the architects or their buildings,14 and very few inscriptions have actually survived. In fact, I only know of one, which is dated 1607–1608 and concerns a ḥammām built on the orders of the Khān in Burhanpur.15 As to the Persian-speaking poets, additional information may be found in their own works, and the biographical literature (taẕkiras) produced in Mughal India, the Deccan Sultanates, Safavid Iran, and Uzbek Central Asia. Altogether different is

12 Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 399–446, 450–2, 469–89. 13 Seyller 1999: 317–8. 14 Compare, for example, Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 607–9, and Jahāngīr 1999: 247 on the Garden of Victory (fatḥ bāgh) built at the behest of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm near Sarkhej (Gujarat). 15 Verma 1955–6: 115–6.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 81 the case of the Hindavi-speaking literati whom ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm is also said to have extensively patronized. In this respect, it is first important to note that the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī contains very little information on the subject. Nahāwandī states that Hindavi-speaking poets eulogized the Khān, but he also indicates that the favor (tajammul wa inʿām wa iḥsān) he bestowed on them was ten times inferior to that shown to Persian-speaking poets, meaning thereby that the former’s material and symbolic remuneration (wages and prestige) corresponded to one-tenth of the latter’s.16 Further on in the text, Nahāwandī also apologizes for not taking into account the Hindavi-speaking poets who showered praise on the Khān, and expresses the wish to deal at length with this group later.17 His wish was, however, never fulfilled and his silence raises a number of questions. First is the issue of Nahāwandī’s access to the works of these Hindavi-speaking poets: Did he, during his stay in the Deccan, learn some kind of Dakani Hindavi that would have enabled him to read the poems? If so, why did he (or ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm, for that matter) finally decide not to include them in his chronicle? While no definitive answer can be given here, several lines of reflection may be offered. The first one pertains to the intended audience of the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī, i.e., the emperor and the Mughal nobility (as hinted above) or, more precisely, the Persian-speakers among them. Now, while many of these men (including ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm) were also proficient in Hindavi and took a keen interest in the literature written in that language, Persian certainly remained for them the most prestigious idiom where culture and politics were concerned. Concurrently, the personal prestige of these amīrs depended first and foremost on the number and greatness of the Persian-speaking (rather than Hindavi-speaking) literati (preferably of Iranian origin) they were able to attract to their court.18 Even though the Khān personally cultivated both literary traditions, he or his panegyrist apparently refrained from giving them an equal visibility in the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī19—a rather astute 16 Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 561–2. 17 Ibid., 590. 18 It is significant, in this regard, that the position of malik-ush-shuʿarāʾ (poet-laureate) instituted by Akbar was exclusively meant for Persian-speaking poets. That this title was awarded only once to an Indian Muslim (Abūʾl Faẓl’s brother Faiẓī) is even more telling (Alam 2003: 161). 19 A similar imbalance is manifest in Nahāwandī’s treatment of the multilingualism of the Khān, whom he significantly refers to as zabān-dān (linguist). Whereas the author of the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī provides a detailed list of all the different types of Turkish and Iranian ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm is said to have mastered, he remains somewhat elusive where Indian languages are concerned (Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 590–3).

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choice in view of the cultural hierarchy that prevailed in the Mughal milieu for which the book was intended. Here again, one cannot help but note the very limited degree of circulation between the two poles of the Khān’s identity. Facing the gaps in Nahāwandī’s account, the historian hoping to assess ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage of Hindavi-speaking poets should normally look for answers in the works of the latter. Unfortunately, it will not be attempted here in view of my own ignorance of Hindi—a limitation on my part that acutely points to the necessity of a sustained dialogue between scholars of early modern India working in various languages and different disciplinary fields in order to reach a deeper understanding of this multifaceted society. Pending the full realization of such a cooperation (in which this book participates), the following discussion relies solely on secondary literature written in English and should consequently be regarded as a very partial and preliminary treatment of the question. This secondary literature was produced largely by Indian historians of Hindi literature who were active during the 1950s-1960s at a time when the newly-born Republic of India was eagerly looking for historical figures able to bolster the nascent and somewhat precarious sense of nationalist feeling. Akbar was certainly the most qualified to carry out the task, as shown by the writings of many Indian historians who praised him as the architect of a national unity transcending religious boundaries.20 This ideological context should be kept in mind when dealing with modern accounts of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm. Comparable to constructions of Akbar’s religious pluralism, the Khān’s connections with the Hindavi literary milieu as well as the poetry he wrote in that language seem to have inspired historians to put him on a pedestal in the manner of other putatively proto-nationalist figures. Their books have indeed portrayed ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm as such an exceptional patron of Hindavi literature that he became at their hands a powerful symbol of Hindu-Muslim concord in pre-colonial times.21 The historian eager to reconsider this received wisdom has, furthermore, to face an even greater problem: the difficulty of accessing Mughal-period Hindavi court poetry. The factors that lie at the root of this relative inaccessibility (e.g. the Hindu nationalist perception of this courtly tradition as decadent, and the near exclusive focus of Mughal scholars on texts produced in Persian) need not 20 See, among others, Srivastava 1973. 21 Vidyalankar 1950, Chaudhuri 1954, Jindal 1993: 136–41, Naik 1966: 463–97, and Handa 1978: 173–7.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 83 detain us longer here;22 suffice it to say that they resulted in both a lack of published editions of the aforementioned corpus and the absence of studies drawing on reliable manuscript traditions. While the ideological context of the 1950s and 1960s and the specific intellectual parameters of Hindi literary history account to a large extent for the kind of assessment C. R. Naik provides of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage of Hindavi, a critical analysis of his ʿAbdur Rahim Khan-i Khanan and his Literary Circle (1966) leads one to conclude that this aspect of the Khān’s activities has been somewhat overstated.23 The first point of criticism relates to the material on which Naik relied for his chapter entitled “Hindi Poets Patronised by the Khan-i-Khanan.” He does not base his analysis on the few original sources available, but only on secondary literature written in Hindi, from which quotations of poems are occasionally extracted.24 Naik draws from these sources a list of fourteen Hindavi-speaking poets said to have been patronized by ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm. This list in turn calls for two remarks. First, even if taken at face value, the list testifies to the very different scales on which the Khān’s patronage of Persian- and Hindavispeaking poets seems to have operated—over a hundred Persian-speaking poets are mentioned in the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī. Second, the list itself appears highly questionable when one turns to the names of the poets it provides and to the kind of evidence given in favor of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage. Arousing particularly strong suspicion are the names of two poets whose works are relatively well known today. The first of them is Keśavdās (1555–1617), a poet often regarded as one of the founders of the rīti literary tradition and one who has recently been the subject of a thorough re-examination.25 Drawing on the opening verses of the Jahāngīrjascandrikā (Moonlight of the Fame of Jahāngīr, 1612), Naik argues that this historical poem was written for Irāj Khān, one of the sons of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm.26 There are indeed a number of elements pointing in that direction, including the fact that the Jahāngīrjascandrikā contains a series of verses praising Irāj Khān as well as his father ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm and his grandfather Bairam Khān.27 As a matter of fact, no other Muslim lineage of the Mughal Empire benefited from such a preferential treatment at the 22 See Busch 2010a and 2011 for a discussion of these factors. 23 To this day, C. R. Naik is the scholar writing in English who has paid the greatest attention to ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage of Hindavi-speaking poets. 24 Naik 1966: 463–97. 25 Busch 2004, 2005, and 2011, especially: 23–64. 26 Naik 1966: 488, probably relying here on Chaudhuri 1954: 7. 27 For further details on this subject, see Busch 2010a: 279, and 2011: 56 and 141.

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hands of Keśavdās. The Khān was then probably on very good terms with the poet. However, there is no clear evidence that he patronized the latter, whose family had been employed by the Bundelas of Orchha for several generations. Further calling into question the reliability of Naik is his mention of the great bhakti poet Tulsīdās (1532–1623) among the Hindavi-speaking literati supposedly patronized by the amīr. Naik gives no formal evidence of this link and is satisfied with echoing the otherwise baseless (if widespread) assertion that Tulsīdās would have written his Barvai Rāmāyaṇ under the influence of Raḥīm—whom Naik, as many others, considers the “father” of the barvai meter.28 Apart from the fact that the attribution of the Barvai Rāmāyaṇ to Tulsīdās remains to this day “far from proven,” Rupert Snell has recently shown that the hypothesis of Raḥīm’s influence on Tulsīdās is totally baseless.29 The way Naik misinterprets the connections between Keśavdās, Tulsīdās, and ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm casts serious doubts on the links he further establishes between the latter and a number of other Hindavi-speaking poets who are much less well known and whose patronage networks are extremely difficult to ascertain. According to Naik, the Khān patronized the following poets: Alāqulī, Bān, Gaṅg, Harināth, Jādā, Lakṣmīnārāyaṇa, Maṇḍaṇ, Mukund, Narhari, Prasiddh, Santa Kavi, and Tārā. With the exceptions of Gaṅg, Narhari, Narhari’s son Harināth, and Maṇḍaṇ,30 I have unfortunately been unable to trace any of these poets elsewhere. Moreover, concerning even these four known poets, all we have is, as mentioned above, scant information and a very sketchy manuscript tradition except, perhaps, for Maṇḍaṇ.31 As a matter of fact, the tradition portraying ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm as a great patron of Hindavi-speaking poets is based on very meager contemporary material and seems to owe much to the wishful thinking of Indian nationalist historiography. The only thing we can actually be sure of is that some poets like Keśavdās or Gaṅg did eulogize the Khān in their poems. In the 28 Naik 1966: 470. 29 Snell 1994: 376 (quotation), 380, and 397. 30 Gaṅg (c. 1538–1617), Narhari, and Harināth (fl.? 1587) were closely associated with the Mughal court and composed a number of poems in praise of the Mughal emperors (Humāyūn, Akbar) and amīrs (including ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm). See McGregor 1984: 119–20, Jindal 1993: 141, Handa 1978: 177–9, and 180–1. The case of Maṇdaṇ is more problematic since he is deemed to have been patronized by Rāja Maṅgaḍ Singh of Jaitpur (Bundelkhand), circa 1660 (McGregor 1984: 193). 31 Personal communication with Allison Busch.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 85 opening verses of the Jahāngīrjascandrikā, Keśavdās thus praises ʿAbd-urRaḥīm through his assimilation to two eminent Hindu figures (Hanumān and Rāma):32 Raḥīm protected Akbar’s sovereignty in every respect. He was as dutiful as the brave Hanumān towards his one master. Raḥīm’s charisma dazzles the entire earth, its splendor like the milk ocean. And his pure motives and limitless nobility are respected everywhere, Just like Ganges water. The Khān of Khāns is like Rāma’s arrow. It destroys evil and protects the world.33

Gaṅg, for his part, paid a stirring homage to the renowned generosity of the amīr by asking him the following question: How did you pick up this habit of giving alms? As the hand goes up to give, the eyes go downwards as though automatically.34

Gaṅg’s dohā, if authentic, appears to be a vernacular reiteration of the numerous Persian verses praising the Khān’s munificence. The critical survey of the available sources imposes some limits upon but does not ultimately call into question the role of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm as a patron. Dozens of Persian-speaking poets, twenty painters, and at least two architects are verifiably associated with his court. As to the question of the Hindavi-speaking poets, we have seen it come up against a two-fold problem: first, the biased nature of the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī whose account strongly emphasizes Persian-speaking literati of Iranian origin, presumably because of the enormous prestige the latter enjoyed in Mughal India; second, the scanty evidence found in Hindavi contemporary sources as they are known today. Pending further research, the focus here will be on the people whose connection to ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s circle stands on firmer ground. The majority of these people came from Iran, but the Khān’s entourage also included a number of Indian Muslims and a few individuals from Central Asia. The composition of this group clearly testifies to the importance of the cultural and courtly circuits that connected West, Central, and South Asia, as well as a number of regional centers within the Subcontinent, during the early 32 For a further analysis of the Hinduization of Muslim Mughal figures in the work of Keśavdās, see Busch 2005: 45–50. 33 Quoted from the English translation of Busch 2005: 49. 34 Quoted from the English translation of Vidyalankar 1950: 126.

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modern period. Now I will attempt to address the following questions: What factors presided over the constitution of such circulation networks? How did they operate? What was their role in the shaping of a multi-layered and transregional courtly hierarchy? By way of background, I will first outline the circumstances that led so many Iranians to leave their homes, before turning to assess the position of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s court vis-à-vis other Indo-Persian centers of patronage. 2. The Indian Eldorado Contrary to the usual explanation for the exodus of literati from Iran to India, the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī does not depict the religious intolerance of the Safavids as a decisive factor. Four other inducements for Iranian poets and artists to try their luck in the Subcontinent, and more particularly at the Khān’s court are, however, stressed repeatedly.35 The first two can best be described as “push factors”: wars and political disfavor. The wars waged between Safavids, Uzbeks, and Ottomans throughout the last quarter of the sixteenth century account for the migration of many Iranians. On the eastern frontier, Khurasan had been a bone of contention between the Safavid and Uzbek powers since the beginning of the century. When ʿAbdullāh Khān Uzbek (r. 1583–1598) conquered the area at the end of the 1580s, many Khurāsānīs chose to leave their native place to escape the depredations of war. Such was the case with Muḥammad Amīn Jadwal, Yūlqulī Beg Anīsī and Ismaʿīl Beg Unsī, who made their way to India and joined ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s service after the Uzbek army had taken control of Mashhad and Herat.36 On the western frontier, the Safavid Empire was regularly threatened by its Ottoman rival, and although we have evidence for only one poet who fled from Hamadan to India when he heard of the approach of Ottoman troops at the beginning of the 1580s,37 one strongly suspects that there were many more. While some left for India from fear of the war, others sought to escape the wrath of the Shāh and his representatives. Such was the case of the young Maulānā Tasallī, whose father Shāhwardī Khān ʿAbbāsī had rebelled against Shāh ʿAbbās in 1598. After his father had been sentenced to death, he spent his childhood wandering 35 On Iranian migration to India during the early modern period, see more generally Subrahmanyam 1992 and Haneda 1997. 36 For these three cases, see Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 1678–9, 517–21, and 625–33. 37 His name was Ghanī Beg Asadābādī (ibid., 979–82, and Orthmann 1996: 100).

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 87 incognito in Iran until he was old enough to undertake a journey to India.38 However, the causes of royal disfavor are not always so easily identifiable: We do not, for instance, possess any information explaining either the murder of Nahāwandī’s brother or the nature of the slander to which he fell victim. The “push factors” so far mentioned certainly played an important part in quite a number of individual cases, but cannot fully account for the large migration of literati from Iran to India from the mid-sixteenth century. Reaching its apogee under Akbar and Jahāngīr, this movement is perhaps best explained by the combination of two powerful “pull factors”. The first one relates to the economic disparity between the Iranian Plateau and the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal Empire commanded far greater financial and human resources and consequently offered far better opportunities for patronage than its Safavid counterpart.39 As hinted above, the second factor lies in the immense prestige enjoyed by Persian culture in Mughal India. Akbar’s interest in promoting intellectual contacts with Iran as well as in engaging Iranian literati is well known, and this interest was widely shared by the political elite of the realm.40 Furthermore, the presence of Persian migrants in Indian courts reciprocally enhanced the reputation of the latter. The two same factors also account for the attraction of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s court: he was renowned for his exceptional generosity and “Iranophilia”— two qualities to which the following verses pay tribute: In Iran nobody appeared to buy the merchandise of “meaning”. In this Iran the palate of my soul has become bitter— Now I have to go toward Hindustan. Like the drop sent toward the vast ocean I send my merchandise toward Hindustan, For among those who know words in this age there is No one to buy words save the Khān-i Khānān.41

Selling their merchandise at the best price seems indeed to have been the main incentive for many poets who came to ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s court. The Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī accordingly presents us with numerous examples of individuals who joined the Khān’s entourage just long enough to obtain from him a generous reward, thereafter returning to Iran. Writing about the poet 38 Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 1525–6, and Orthmann 1996: 97. 39 Dale 2003: 66–7, and Subrahmanyam 2005, i: 182. 40 Alam 2003: 159. 41 Poem by a neglected Persian poet called Kausarī, as cited in Schimmel 1992: 202–3.

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Fahīm-ud-dīn Fahīmī, Nahāwandī tells us that “once he had gathered [enough] money and presents, he returned to his ordinary residence. Thanks to the benefits and gifts he had taken back with him, he spent his time in this port [Hurmuz] in leisure.”42 We also get a glimpse of the Khān’s generosity through the description of the rewards he offered to the poets connected with him: Nawāʾī is said to have been weighed in gold, and we are told that Ḥayatī and Shūqī were both brought to the amīr’s private treasury where they were allowed to take away as much gold as they could carry.43 Although such descriptions were, to some extent, formulaic, the economic reality they referred to can hardly be questioned. Until the midseventeenth century, India was certainly a place where financial rewards and elevated positions could quite easily be won by those among the Iranian elite who were willing to undertake the journey.44 ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s court was of course not the only place in the Sub­ continent where literati seeking patronage could try their luck. The Khān was in fact only one among many potential patrons: Mughal emperors, princes and amīrs, as well as independent sultans, all aimed at assembling a brilliant court where Iranian poets and artists often held pride of place. Analyzing the various trajectories followed by the literati who chose to associate (whether temporarily or long-term) with the Khān affords a good view of the circulation of producers of culture in Persianate India during the first quarter of the seventeenth century; it also enables us to reconstruct (at least to some extent) the prevailing courtly hierarchy at the time, and to better assess the position of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s establishment within the latter. 3. ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s Court and Other Indo-Persian Patronage Centers: Circulation and Hierarchies Let us first take a look at ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s status as a patron within Mughal India. The Khān was certainly not the only amīr to bestow generous patronage on the Persian-speaking ahl-i qalam, but few other grandees offered such good prospects. Judging from the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī, Ḥakīm Abūʾl Fatḥ 42 Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 1427. Also quoted by Orthmann 1996: 112. 43 Orthmann 1996: 116. See also ʿAbd-us-Sattār 2006: 40 for the large amount of money (mablagh-i farāwān) presented by the Khān to Shakībī as a reward for the composition of his Sāqī Nāma. 44 As recently shown by Alam and Subrahmanyam 2007: ch. 5, this situation changed during the second half of the seventeenth century.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 89 Gīlānī—who was himself of Iranian origin as shown by his nisbat (patronymic)—appears as the only such figure,45 and it is interesting to note that some members of his literary circle later enjoyed ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage.46 Furthermore, no poet is known (at least from Nahāwandī’s account) to have left the Khān to serve another amīr. If we are to believe the evidence at hand, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s court then appears as the most attractive and, thereby, as the most eminent among the amīrid courts of the empire. Things were, however, different when it came to competing with the upper strata of the Mughal courtly hierarchy, almost every movement between the court of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm and those of the princes occurring to the benefit of the latter.47 The motives at work here are easily discernible: Moving from an amīr’s to a prince’s entourage meant higher prospects in terms of salary and socio-cultural recognition; above all, it was one way of getting closer to the imperial court for those who nourished still greater expectations. It is significant that three of the five individuals who left ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s for a prince’s service made their way afterwards to the imperial court.48 These movements from amīr to prince call for two further observations: first, they generally took place in the Deccan, at a time when the princes (Dāniyāl, Parwīz, and Khurram) were in command of the military operations there; second, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm was often instrumental in introducing the poet to the prince. The Khān’s eagerness to find a job for some of his “protégés” at the courts of the princes appointed in the Deccan may be more generally explained by his willingness to build through them a strong network of influence. As evident from his own Deccani career, this strategy turned out to be profitable, and it also partly accounts for the circulation of Persian-speaking literati between his and the Mughal court. As a matter of fact, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage seems to have been considered a springboard for entry into imperial service by many poets and artists who had freshly arrived in India from Iran. Their hope was to win the favor of the Khān in order to convince him to introduce them to

45 For a brief survey of his life and deeds, see Bhakkarī 1993: 143. 46 Such were the cases of ʿUrfī Shīrāzī, Sanāʾī Khurāsānī, and Malhamī (Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 293–9, 354–60, and 604–10). 47 Nażīrī Nishāpūrī left ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s service for Prince Murād’s and Nauʿī Khurāsānī for Dāniyāl’s (ibid., 115–8, and 635–8). While both Faghfūr Lāhījānī and Nahāwandī made their way to Parwīz, Shukrullāh Shirāzī attached himself to Khurram (ibid., 901–13, 1535–46, and 27–30). 48 This was the case for Nażīrī Nishāpūrī, Nauʿī Khurāsānī, and Shukrullāh Shirāzī.

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the monarch.49 For his part, the amīr willingly played the game since men who entered royal service through his mediation henceforth became indebted to him. He could then reasonably expect that they would intervene on his behalf if the need arose. Fueling the imperial court with new talents was, moreover, a safe way to win the monarch’s favor. All in all, it proved to be a fair deal for both parties: social promotion in exchange for political leverage. Equally interesting are the departures from the imperial court to ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s service, because they allow us a glimpse into another set of factors explaining the attractiveness of the Khān’s circle. Contrary to what one might expect, these departures were not so rare and did not systematically occur as a consequence of royal disgrace. Among the examples provided by the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī, the case of Shaidā Taklū appears particularly significant. His family originally belonged to the Taklū tribe of Mashhad but had settled at Fatehpur Sikri. Shaidā Taklū himself began his career in the service of some Mughal noble who had been favorably impressed by his poetic skills, thereafter introducing him to Jahāngīr. Though the monarch enrolled him as a royal aḥadī (a horseman serving directly under the emperor’s orders), Shaidā Taklū soon became dissatisfied with his new position because it did not allow him the chance to compose poetry. While escorting the imperial train to Mandu in 1616, he then decided to address a poem to the Khān-i Khānān wherein he asked for a position at his court. ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm accepted his proposal, and Shaidā Taklū immediately resigned his imperial office to join the Khān’s service as a poet. After the death of the latter, he made his way back to Shāh Jahān’s court, this time, however, as a recognized poet.50 This story of Shaidā Taklū portrays ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s court as a place where shifts of professional identities were not only allowed but also encouraged, and where poets were given the opportunity to fulfil their aspirations. One should, however, be careful not to consider this circulation in terms of socio-professional categories as a hallmark of the Khān’s patronage alone, as this was a time when frontiers between different occupations and social identities were much less strictly defined than today, and when poets and artists (including those patronized by the amīr) often combined literary pursuits with administrative or military activities.

49 The poets Ḥusain Kufrī and ʿAbd-ul-Bāqī Tābīnī stayed so briefly at ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s court that we can safely assume that their main aim was to advance from there to the imperial court (ibid., 807–8, and 1452–5). 50 Ibid., 1487–8, Orthmann 1996: 74, and Naik 1966: 429–34.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 91 The circulation of the painters patronized by ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm serves as another interesting case-study, for the logic underlying their trajectories seems to have been quite different from the one guiding the mobility of the poets. According to the limited information available today, none of these painters is known to have left the Khān’s workshop for another patron, and eight out of the twenty-one so far traced had been employed in Akbar’s studio before entering the Khān’s service.51 We can conjecture three main motivations for painters to move from Akbar’s workshop to Raḥīm’s.52 The first relates to the stylistic changes that took place in the imperial atelier throughout the second half of the sixteenth century: Some painters were probably unable (or unwilling) to adapt to the new trends and hence had to find a new patron.53 The second is linked to the decreasing size of the Mughal workshop under Jahāngīr, who chose to rely on a small team of outstanding painters. That ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm, like other subimperial patrons, benefited from the flow of ex-imperial artists that consequently occurred is all the more likely because the majority of the manuscripts executed at his behest were produced precisely during the reign of that monarch. Finally, the Khān himself highly valued these painters for the savoir-faire they had acquired in the imperial studio and the innovations they were likely to introduce in his own workshop. Situating ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s establishment within the courtly hierarchy of Mughal India is necessary but not sufficient in order to correctly assess his status as a patron for, as seen above, he resided for different lengths of time in two regions of the Subcontinent that were also dynamic cultural hubs: the court of the Tarkhāns of Sindh (at least until the 1590s) and those of the Deccani sultanates of Bijapur, Golconda, and, to a much lesser extent, Ahmadnagar.54 Since these regional centers also offered good patronage opportunities for Persian-speaking literati, exploring the networks of circulation that connected them with the Khān’s circle should enable us to enrich the picture delineated so far and to answer the following questions: 51 These are Maulānā Ibrāhīm Naqqāsh, Ghulām ʿAlī, Kamāl, Mōhana, Śyāma Sundara, ʿAbdullāh, Banavārī (Khūrd), and Bhagavātī (Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 1688 and Seyller 1999). 52 The following development takes its inspiration from a number of remarks scattered in Seyller 1999. 53 For a synthetic presentation of the major trends in Mughal manuscript painting, see Beach 1992. 54 No mention is made here of Gujarat for, by the time ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm took up residence in the region (in the 1580s), the Mużaffarid dynasty had already been severely weakened by the Mughal campaigns of the 1570s, and its role as a patronage center had accordingly shrunk. Furthermore, of all the poets and artists who entered the Khān’s service during his stay in Ahmadabad, none seems to have previously benefited from Mużaffarid patronage.

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To what extent, if at all, did the Sindhi and Deccani courts supply the entourage of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm with new talents? How did the latter measure up to the other patrons of the day? On the eve of the Mughal conquest of Sindh, Mīrzā Jānī Tarkhān (d. 1598/9) was a sovereign renowned for the generous patronage he bestowed on literati. His submission to Akbar in 1593 did not have much effect on the status of his court as a regional center of patronage since he was allowed to stay in his former kingdom as governor of the new province of Thatta. That we only know of one poet who chose to leave Tarkhān’s service for that of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm confirms this. A native of Kashan, Mīr Ghurūrī served the Safavid governor of Darabgird and then Mīrzā Bāqī Tarkhān (d. 1585), a son of the monarch Mīrzā ʿIsā, before applying for a position at ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s court following the Mughal conquest of Sindh.55 Some poets of Sindhi origin also took advantage of the Khān’s sojourn in Thatta by joining his entourage: Such was the case of the young Muḥibb ʿAlī Sindhī, who had so far failed to attract the attention of a patron.56 The majority of the poets and artists who entered ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s service in Sindh were, however, not locals but recent migrants from Iran to India. From the few examples gathered here, it thus appears that the years spent by the amīr in Thatta did not have a great impact on the composition of his entourage. Far more interesting to analyze is the position ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s establishment came to occupy in the cultural landscape of the Deccan. The Khān’s residence in Burhanpur extended over a much longer period of time and corresponded to the apogee of his career as a Mughal amīr and of his attractiveness as a patron.57 When ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm settled in the Deccan by the mid 1590s, the sultans of Bijapur and Golconda were the most active patrons of Islamicate South India, while the importance of Ahmadnagar as a cultural center had begun to decline in the face of repeated Mughal attacks. Contrary to what Nahāwandī suggests by including Żuhūrī and Malik Qummī among the poets patronized by the Khān, the latter’s court did not really benefit from the stream of literati leaving Ahmadnagar: Most of these men actually chose to try their luck in Bijapur or Golconda. Both sultanates were at the time on very good terms with Iran and had encouraged Iranian literati to settle in their territories since the mid-sixteenth 55 Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 1133–4. 56 Ibid., 489–94. 57 This is also echoed by the author of the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī who connects the Khān’s activities as a patron with the Deccan at several points in the text (ʿAbd-us-Sattār 2006: 39–40 and 49).

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 93 century. While it is true that Bijapur underwent a political and cultural indigenization at the expense of Iranian influence under Ibrāhīm ʿĀdil Shāh II (r. 1580–1627),58 the monarch nonetheless kept patronizing Persian ahl-i qalam, as is clearly shown by the examples of Firishtah, Żuhūrī, and Malik Qummī, and by the contents of his library.59 If the sultans of Golconda also promoted a kind of mixed culture between 1550 and 1612, the Iranian influence remained strong throughout these years before developing with a new vigor during the reign of Muḥammad Quṭb Shāh (1612–26).60 Throughout ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s stay in the Deccan, both sultanates then undoubtedly stood as very attractive centers of patronage for Persianspeaking literati. Now, how did Bijapur and Golconda compete with the sub-imperial court of the amīr? The Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī provides us with a roughly equivalent number of individuals who resigned their position in one of the two Deccani sultanates and then applied for ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage in Burhanpur, and of others who made the opposite choice. Furthermore, we know of at least two poets who made a roundtrip between Golconda and the Khān’s court. Interestingly, none of these individuals was of Deccani origin. Three points should be stressed with regard to the observations I have made so far. First is the density of the cultural flux, especially when compared with what seems to have been the situation in Sindh. Second is the equivalence of the three Deccani poles in the eyes of the Persian-speaking literati in quest of patronage. That the courts of the sultans and the amīr could be deemed equally prestigious is a good indicator of the contemporary balance of power in the region: Although Jahāngīr kept the Deccani sultanates under continuous pressure, it is well known that no significant progress was made towards annexation under his rule. It was therefore a time when serving a Mughal amīr whose intercession could eventually lead to the emperor’s court and favor could be considered as good a position as working under the patronage of the fully-fledged (yet ultimately threatened) monarchs of the Deccan. Third is, at least according to the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī, the apparent imperviousness of the cultural flux that connected the three Deccani courts to local literary resources—a situation that parallels what has been described for Sindh. This, in turn, leads us back to the issue of the biased nature of Nahāwandī’s account: Does this imperviousness reflect a real 58 On this subject, see Eaton 1996: 89–105. 59 For a thorough assessment of Ibrāhīm ʿĀdil Shāh II’s collection of Persian books, see Overton 2011: ch. 2. 60 For a survey of Golconda history under the Quṭb Shāhīs, see Sherwani 1974.

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absence of such connections, or is it the result of the chronicler’s (or his patron’s) lack of interest in—or ignorance of—such connections? Although the answer to these questions must await the analysis of relevant Sindhi and Dakani material, one should keep in mind that the mention of ʿAbdur-Raḥīm’s patronage of Persian-speaking poets of Sindhi or Deccani origin (as well as Hindavi-speaking poets) was of limited use in respect of the overall purpose and intended audience of the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī that have been described above. As mentioned in the introduction of this essay, focusing on ʿAbd-urRaḥīm and his entourage provides the historian with a great opportunity to not only address the physical circulation of poets and artists across West and South Asia and within the Subcontinent, but also to raise the question of accompanying stylistic circulations. 4. The Play of Persian and Indian Cultural Traditions in the Works of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm and his Entourage 4.1 The Two Worlds of Raḥīm’s Poetry Given the doubts cast above on the extent of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s patronage of Hindavi-speaking poets, I will not be able to address the matter further here. Furthermore, the vast corpus of the Persian-speaking poets patronized by the Khān makes a detailed analysis far beyond the scope of this article. It is, however, well-known that many of those literati were themselves leading exponents of the so-called sabk-i hindī (“Indian style”) or, more appropriately, of the tāza-gūʾī or “fresh style”,61 the most famous among them being undoubtedly ʿUrfī Shīrāzī. And yet it is worth asking whether ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s own poetry was touched by the literary milieu of which he was such an exemplary patron. In considering the influence of this literary milieu it is clear that the multilingualism of a number of its participants is of key importance. Indeed, the originality of the amīr’s poetical work stems from the variety of languages it explored. He composed poetry in Persian and Hindavi, but he is also credited with Sanskrit, Arabic, and Turkish verses.62 The latter having not yet been identified, one cannot help questioning their very existence—even though ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s translation of the Bābur Nāma from Turkish into Persian gives some credibility 61 On this complex question, see Alam 2003, Kinra 2011, as well as the contribution of Stefano Pellò in this volume. 62 Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 561.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 95 to his composition of Turkish verses—and we will therefore devote our whole attention to his writings in Persian and in different Indian languages. With regard to Raḥīm’s Persian poetry, the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī stands once again as the principal source of information. According to Nahāwandī, the Khān started composing poetry at the age of eleven; he never sought the guidance of any master in this field and his harmonious verses stemmed from his own genius.63 One is, moreover, told that the amīr played the role of a master in the eyes of the Persian-speaking poets he patronized. In his account of the poet Kāmī Sabzawārī (d. 1606/7), Nahāwandī thus tells us that: At this time, Maulānā Shakībī, Mullā Nażīrī, Maulānā ʿUrfī, Anīsī, and their fellows were among the companions of the sipah sālār [ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm] and often took part in his majlis [poetic gathering].The poems he [Kāmī] had composed were read before them and were then distinguished by their praise and approbation. Through the mediation of this group, his poems were laid before the Nawwāb’s eyes for correction (ba iṣlāḥ). Little by little, he made great progress (taraqqī).64

Nahāwandī evidently draws here on the traditional topos according to which the genius of the patronized artist only came to maturity through the attention and instruction of his patron.65 In striking contrast to Nahāwandī’s laudatory description, the Persian oeuvre of Raḥīm—at least as it stands today—appears rather limited in terms of the quantity of surviving poems. The Khān in all likelihood put little thought into the collection of his poems, and no dīwān of his is mentioned either in the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī or in any contemporary source.66 All we have at our disposal are the poems copied by Nahāwandī and presumably composed before 1616, plus a number of others quoted in later taẕkiras.67 How the latter came to be attributed to Raḥīm is, at the moment, not clear and, pending further investigation into the reliability of the manuscript tradition, it seems safer to focus on the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī verses. 63 Ibid., 562. 64 Ibid., iii: 864. Also quoted by Orthmann 1996: 122. 65 This topos also permeates the accounts of several other artists in the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī. See, for example, Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 1678, 1681–2, and Seyller 1999: 52–3, 318–9 for a further analysis of this subject. 66 To my knowledge, Jindal 1993: 136 is the only historian crediting ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm with a dīwān of Persian ghazals. He, however, produces no proof for it. 67 Among them are the Tazkira-i Naṣrābādī of Muḥammad Ṭāhir Naṣrābādī (Safavid Iran, 1672–80), the Kalimāt-ush-shuʿarāʾ of Muḥammad Afẓal Sarkhwush (Mughal India, 1682–97), and the Ātash-kadah of Ḥājī Luṭf ʿAlī Beg “Āzar” (Zand Iran, 1760).

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These consist of one ghazal (love lyric), as well as a few baits (couplets) and rubāʾīs (quatrains).68 Testifying to Raḥīm’s preference for shorter poetical forms, this small collection of verses mainly deals with the longing (shauq) for the beloved, a theme which is here—as often in classical Persian poetry—heavily impregnated with mystical connotations. Nahāwandī, for his part, describes Raḥīm’s poetry as “verses of mystical love (abiyāt-i ʿashiqāna-i ʿārifāna).”69 Like the poetry of a number of his contemporaries (especially Faiẓī and ʿUrfī), Raḥīm’s verses are imbued with a conception of the divine which lay well beyond the traditional religions and reflected the non-sectarianism of the Mughals—a multi-layered ideology whose diverse sources included the Mongol legacy and the ethics of Nāṣir-ud-dīn Ṭūṣī (1201–74) as well as millenarian brands of Islam and the liberal waḥdat-ul-wujūd trend of Sufism.70 For example, in one of his poems, he says: He whom fate has taken away from the thought of lovers has been released from the mosque (masjid) and freed from the synagogue (kunish).71

Of concern to us here is not simply the apparent scantiness of Raḥīm’s Persian oeuvre; also of note is the absence of Hindavi words or poetical images stemming from the Indian literary tradition. The surviving poems are all firmly rooted in a Persianate episteme. Judging from stylistic and formal criteria at least, Raḥīm’s Persian poetry thus seems to have been rather impervious to its Indian environment. The poetry composed by the amīr in different Indian languages constitutes a far richer corpus than anything that can be attested in Persian. As a matter of fact, the literary theorist Bhikhārīdās paid tribute to his contribution to Brajbhasha poetry in the opening verses of his Kāvyanirṇay (Critical Perspective on Literature, 1746), a major work of literary theory from the Hindavi tradition.72 While these verses undoubtedly show that Raḥīm was already considered a part of the Braj canon a century after his death, the amīr’s literary production in Hindavi calls for a number of 68 Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 562–70. For another contemporary piece of evidence of Raḥīm’s composition of ghazals, see Jahāngīr 1999: 265. 69 Ibid., 562. 70 On this subject, see Ernst 2003: 179, Alam 2003: 168–70, and 2004: 93 ff, and Moin 2012. Waḥdat-ul-wujūd literally means “Oneness of Being” and refers to the Sufi trend initiated by Ibn ʿArabī (1165–1240). 71 Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 567. 72 Busch 2011: 230.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 97 remarks. One is that none of the poems is dated. Furthermore, the textual tradition of Raḥīm’s Hindavi poetry remains unclear to this day, and none of the collections so far published has actually been a proper critical ­edition.73 Indeed, some poems present in these collections quite closely resemble verses attributed elsewhere to other poets.74 As in the case of Hindavi-speaking poets considered to have thrived under his patronage, one should therefore be very cautious in dealing with the literary corpus so far attributed to Raḥīm. Pending a thorough re-examination of the manuscript tradition, the discussion by R. S. McGregor serves as a preliminary but hardly definitive basis for understanding Raḥīm’s Hindavi poetry.75 In Hindavi as in Persian, the Khān favored the poetical forms (dohā, barvai) best suited to a pithy mode of expression. Another salient feature of his poetry is the wide-ranging themes it explores. Part of his work is in keeping with the tradition of Brajbhasha court poetry, which had been flourishing since the sixteenth century. Heavily drawing on the Sanskrit nīti tradition, Raḥīm’s numerous dohās on worldly wisdom and morality are a well-known and appreciated segment of his work. Two other collections of verses—the Nagarśobhā (dohās) and the Barvai Nāyikābheda (barvais)—are for their part closely linked to an aspect of the topic of śr̥ ṅgār (love) prominent in court poetry: the description and classification of heroines (nāyikābheda).76 While most of these poems were composed in Brajbhasha, the language of the Barvai Nāyikābheda has a much more markedly Awadhi or Eastern flavor. Besides, both works are distinctive for their playfully experimenting with Sanskrit and Persian vocabulary.77 Taken as a whole, this portion of Raḥīm’s oeuvre shows that he had full command over a range of linguistic registers in the Hindavi tradition of court poetry as well as its lyrical imagery and formal conventions. The Nagarśobhā also testifies to his capacity for bridging the gap between Brajbhasha and Persian poetic genres. 73 Busch 2010a: 282, 2010b: 109, and 2011: 140. The most recent edition of Raḥīm’s Hindavi poetry is by Vidyanivas Mishra and Govind Rajnish, Raḥīm granthāvalī, Delhi, 1985. It is mainly based on earlier Hindi printed editions of Raḥīm’s poetry rather than a thorough appraisal of manuscript traditions. 74 McGregor 1984: 121 (n. 366). 75 Ibid., 121–2. Unless otherwise indicated, the following discussion is exclusively drawn from this work. 76 The Nagarśobhā has also much in common with the Persian genre of shahrāshūb (lament for the city), conventional poems that celebrate the exquisite charms of a particular city’s handsome youth. Also see Busch, this volume. 77 Snell 1994: 377, Busch 2010b: 112–3, and 2011: 94.

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Elsewhere, Raḥīm’s work drew its inspiration from devotional or bhakti poetry, at times lending a more worldly character to some of its privileged themes. Such is, for instance, the case with the topic of viraha (the pain of separation felt by the gopīs when deserted by their lover Krishna) which, at the amīr’s hands, becomes a more general state of longing for the beloved, be he (or she) human or divine.78 This blending of devotional and courtly atmospheres makes itself best felt in a collection of barvai poems, which included four Persian couplets and may be described as “a loosely arranged anthology of mainly Krishnaite material.”79 It also permeates the Madanāṣṭak, eight verses on viraha and śr̥ ṅgāra composed in Sanskrit meters and in a Sanskritized Khari Boli idiom interspersed with Persianized words.80 What emerges from this more religious aspect of Raḥīm’s Hindavi poetry is his great familiarity with the major figures of Hinduism and with the poetical metaphors generally used to evoke them. The last work worth mentioning here is the Kheṭa-kautukam, a collection of astrological verses purported to be by Raḥīm. Composed in a surprising mixture of Sanskrit and Persian, it summarizes the effects of the nine ­planets in each of the twelve houses of the horoscope and ends with a chapter containing twenty-five verses on Rājayoga or lucky combinations of ­planets.81 This brief survey of Raḥīm’s works raises the question of the impact of the amīr’s multilingualism on his poetic oeuvre. In this respect, the contrast between the Persian and Hindavi corpus is striking. Raḥīm’s Hindavi poetry appears to be much more polyphonic and hybrid—at least at the linguistic level—than his Persian verses, as revealed by the interspersing in the former of vernacular idioms (Brajbhasha, Awadhi, and Khari Boli) and of Sanskrit, as well as the smattering of Persian or Persianized words and the presence of full couplets written in this same language.82 Furthermore, Raḥīm’s linguistic behavior calls for a number of general remarks. It is first particularly interesting to note that his residence in Gujarat, Sindh, and the Deccan had very little impact in this respect. As a matter of fact, he tried his hand at a variety of languages—those of the cultural tradition in 78 Snell 1991: 33–4. 79 Snell 1994: 378. 80 For further details on the intermingling of Indic and Persian lexicons and motifs in this work, see Busch 2010b: 109–11. 81 For a partial translation of this work, see Udhrain 1973. 82 As of today, Busch 2010b: 108–14 provides the most comprehensive treatment of this aspect of Raḥīm’s Hindavi poetry. For the Khān’s macaronic Rekhta verses, see also Bangha 2010: 45–47.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 99 which he was educated (Persian, Turkish, and maybe Arabic) and those of the Indian environment in which he lived (be it Sanskrit or the Brajbhasha, Awadhi, and Khari Boli dialects). But he primarily cultivated two idioms— Persian and Brajbhasha—which the Mughals were promoting or encouraging as the two great channels of cultural (and political, in the case of Persian) circulation within the Indo-Persian ecumene.83 Raḥīm’s self-definition—which may be described as the selective literary bilingualism of a polyglot—can thus be said to derive from the literary attitudes at the royal court even though his personal involvement in Hindavi literature clearly exceeded the frontiers of the royal model. Significantly, this very bilingualism is also a prominent feature of the manuscript paintings he commissioned. 4.2 The Shāh Nāma and Mahābhārata Manuscripts of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s Atelier In the 1580s, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm founded a library-cum-workshop, which was in its time the largest establishment of this sort maintained by a Mughal amīr. Over time its size kept increasing in keeping with the Khān’s own rise to prominence. The institution is said to have welcomed approximately a hundred visitors a day, and ninety-five people worked in its precincts at one time or another in different capacities (supervisor, calligrapher, gilder, book-binder, painter, etc.).84 According to the information provided by the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī and the surviving inscribed manuscripts, many of these people originated from Iran, more particularly from Herat and Shiraz—two cities highly reputed for their artistic production.85 While the origins of the twenty-one painters patronized by the Khān remain in most cases difficult to ascertain, the data we have interestingly points to a group of indigenous artists: With the exception of one clearly identified Iranian, all of these men were probably either Indian Muslims or Hindus.86 As mentioned in the first part of this essay, eight of them are, moreover, known to have been employed in the imperial atelier before entering the amīr’s service. Unfortunately, only a small number of the books kept in the library are known to us today. Thanks to the tremendous work done by John Seyller, 83 For the transformation of Brajbhasha into a transregional idiom under the impetus of the Mughals, see Busch 2010a and 2011. 84 Seyller 1999: 50. 85 Nahāwandī 1910–31, iii: 27–30, 1658–60, 1675–6, 1678, 1680. 86 Ibid., 1681–2, and Seyller 1999.

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this portion is now, however, fairly well known and tells us a great deal about the literary interests of the Khān.87 Reflecting to some extent his own poetical production, these were wide-ranging: While Persian classics were most esteemed along with theological and mystical texts, the library also contained Persian translations of the Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata (Razm Nāma).88 In this last respect, it is particularly interesting to note that despite his knowledge of Sanskrit and the existence of vernacular versions of the Rāmāyaṇa—most famous among which was Tulsīdās’s Awadhi Rāmcaritmānas—ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm chose the Persian translation of Badāʾūnī for copying and illustrating. His decision is to be seen as the result of the influence exerted by the imperial model, as is made clear by the Khān himself in the note he inscribed on folio Ia of the manuscript: Upon completion of that [work] [Akbar’s earliest illustrated manuscript of the Rāmāyaṇa, now in Jaipur (1588–92)], this slave reared by the kindness of the emperor, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm … requested that as I had the privilege of seeing this book, I be allowed to have a copy made. By royal favor, permission was granted. This work was prepared and illustrated by the scribes and painters of this well-wisher of the king.89

Some of the library books were rare specimens acquired by the amīr and were, should the need be felt, restored or illustrated by his painters. With only one exception, all the books altered at ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s request were works of Persian poetry. Illuminations were thus added to a sixteenthcentury Panj Ganj of Jāmī (c. 1603–07). The original paintings of a sixteenthcentury Khamsa (by Amīr Khusrau) and of a fifteenth-century Shāh Nāma (by Firdausī) were also replaced by works executed by the artists of the workshop in 1605–1616 and 1616 respectively. Finally, five paintings were added to an originally unillustrated Tīmūr Nāma of Hatifī (c. 1610–1615). Other manuscripts were, however, entirely produced in the Khān’s workshop: This was the case with the above-mentioned Rāmāyaṇa (1597–1605) and Razm Nāma (1616–17). ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm also commissioned a Rāgamālā album, which was completed in 1610. 87 Unless otherwise indicated, the following description is based on Seyller 1997 and 1999. 88 For an in-depth re-examination of the Mughal Mahābhāratas and Rāmāyaṇas, see Truschke 2012: 181–252 and 279–300. 89 As cited in Seyller 1999: 74. The similarity of the cycle of images chosen, on the one hand, for Akbar’s Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata and, on the other, for the copies illustrated in ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s workshop is further testament to the influence of the imperial court.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 101 The stylistic analysis of these manuscript paintings is especially revealing in view of the present inquiry. It is first significant to note that none of these paintings bore the stamp of any particular regional influence.90 This may be explained by the structural mobility of the library, but also by the Khān’s ability to attract ex-imperial painters. The second element of importance is the coexistence within the workshop of two distinct styles used for illustrating two different bodies of work. As argued by John Seyller, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s artists “almost always selected a simplified composition, a strong palette, and a coarse painting technique for indigenous Indian subjects [i.e., for the Razm Nāma, the Rāgamālā album and, to a lesser degree, the Rāmāyaṇa], and reserved their most ambitious compositional and color arrangements for Persian literary texts [the Khamsa, the Shāh Nāma, and, to a lesser extent, the Tīmūr Nāma].”91 In other words, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm (or, more likely, the supervisor and artists of his workshop) consistently chose to associate a particular mode of painting with the cultural and literary tradition to which the illustrated work belonged. This choice appears all the more significant in view of the above analysis of the Khān’s poetical work: Much like the verses he preferentially (although not exclusively) composed in Hindavi and Persian, the paintings produced at his behest alternatively used what may be called an Indianizing and a Persianizing pictorial language. This kind of cultural bilingualism is, however, completely absent from the architectural works he patronized. 4.3 “Turning Hindustan into Iran” According to Nahāwandī, ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s architectural patronage “turned Hindustan into Iran.”92 However bombastic, this statement rightly points to the strong Iranian character of most of the buildings constructed at the amīr’s behest. But who were the architects employed by the Khān? The two names which have come down to us indicate exclusively Persian origins: While Muḥammad ʿAlī’s title—Gurg-i Khurāsānī (literally, “the wolf of Khurasan”)—speaks for itself, the nādira-i miʿmārān (“Marvel of architects”) Ustād Barwalī is said to have been previously employed by the monarchs of Iran and to have designed beautiful buildings for them.93 90 Nor is any particular regional influence visible in the few other known illustrated manuscripts made for identified sub-imperial patrons; their style was an imitation of the imperial idiom (ibid., 29–32). 91 Ibid., 316. 92 Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 601, 93 The following discussion is based on ibid., 600–11, Verma 1955–6: 115–6, and Koch 2002: 90–2.

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Thanks to these men and probably to other architects originating from Iran, the cities and regions where the amīr successively resided saw the blossoming of Persianate buildings. The Fatḥ Bāgh (“Garden of Victory”) he built in Sarkhej to commemorate his victory over Mużaffar Gujarātī (1583) aroused Jahāngīr’s admiration when the emperor toured Gujarat during the winter of 1617–18.94 As to the buildings which Ustād Barwalī was appointed to construct in Agra, they were to strictly conform to the ones he had previously designed for the Iranian monarchs. It is, however, in Burhanpur—the place where ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm resided during his extended stay in the Deccan—that the Khān’s imprint on the urban landscape was most conspicuous: In an outwardly civic spirit, he patronized several works of architecture in this Deccani city. Among them was a ḥammām (1607–08) meant for public use, and which is probably the oldest such bath known in the Deccan. In 1615, he also endowed the city with an extensive irrigation system: Devised along the lines of the Iranian qanāts, this network of underground pipes brought water to the city and to the amīr’s Laʿl Bāgh (“Ruby Garden”), and remains to this day the only known “Indian” example of qanāts. Although ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm’s Ruby Garden has not survived, the careful planning described by the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī and the presence of a lotuspond in its center suggest an Iranian inspiration. The Khān may further be credited with the building of a sarāy (1617–18) and with the foundation of a new township—Jahangirpura—on the outskirts of the city. In view of the polyphony in the poetical oeuvre of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm as well as in the illustrated manuscripts he commissioned, and taking into account his own religious liberalism, one is left to wonder why the amīr refrained from patronizing buildings more closely connected with his Indian environment or even from following one of the indigenous regional styles at hand.95 To my knowledge, the only exception to this picture comes from the Rasik-ananyamāl, a seventeenth-century Rādhāvallabhī hagiography. According to Rupert Snell, this text relates how a kāyasth named Sundardās Bhaṭnāgar, a dīvān of Abdurrahīm, undertook the building of a temple to Rādhāvallabha in Vrindavan. When enemies of Sundardās reported to Abdurrahīm that Sundardās was misappropriating 94 Jahāngīr 1999: 247, 95 As pointed out by the late Aditya Behl during the discussion of this paper, the transfer of cultural models from one setting to another generally implied a reshaping of these models, which subsequently acquired “new meanings”. What these “new meanings” were remains, however, very difficult to ascertain in view of the scarcity of material on the subject.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 103 funds for this project, Abdurrahīm chastised him, told him to ask for funds openly, and himself provided ornaments and funding … for the deity.96

One should, however, note that ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm did not initiate the building of the temple, but only provided some additional funding for it. In this respect, it is also worth remembering that while some Hindu amīrs did sponsor the construction of mosques,97 no Mughal emperor or Muslim amīr is known to have ordered the building of temples. Funding was always allotted through discrete channels. The Krishnaite temples of Mathura and neighbouring areas probably provide the best examples in this respect: Although administrative documents have revealed to us that these establishments were partly maintained by the Mughal monarchs from the 1560s onwards, the imperial patronage surfaces nowhere in the contemporary official chronicles.98 In conclusion, I would like to address a question which has been running through the pages of this essay, and which appears particularly relevant when trying to assess the originality of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm as a man of culture and as a patron: How should we define the Khān’s position vis-à-vis the standards set up by the imperial Mughal court? Turning once again to the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī provides us with a preliminary set of answers. While efficiently using the model of imperial chronicling for his rehabilitation, ʿAbdur-Raḥīm was at the same time unable to break away from the political and cultural paradigms it provided: Whether he was described as an exceptional administrator and patron, as a great poet, or as “a dervish in the garb of a sultan,”99 Raḥīm still remained within the boundaries set by the Mughal dynasty. The works he produced or patronized only slightly qualify this picture of conformity. As mentioned above, the Khān’s patronage of poetry, painting, and architecture broadly followed the lines drawn up by Akbar. One should keep in mind that Akbar was the Mughal monarch who first encouraged the coming of Persian literati to India on a large scale; he also initiated the translation of Indian classics into Persian as well as the royal patronage of Hindavi-speaking poets (even though some of them seem to have previously worked for his father Humāyūn). When compared with 96 Snell 1994: 399 (n. 7). 97 A major figure of Akbar’s reign, the Rajput Rāja Mān Singh thus built two mosques, the first situated in Lahore, the second and more impressive in Rajmahal/Akbarnagar in Bengal (Asher 1992: 192–3). 98 For the documents, see Mukherjee and Habib 1988 and 1989. 99 Nahāwandī 1910–31, ii: 538–9.

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the imperial cultural stance, Raḥīm’s composition of Hindavi poetry indeed appears as his only truly distinguishing characteristic. This peculiarity revealed itself not only in the Hindavi verses traditionally ascribed to him but also in his commissioning of the Rāgamālā album. As rightly underlined by John Seyller, its paintings constitute “the sole instance in which ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm ordered the illustration of a Hindu subject which had not been explored previously by the Mughal emperor.”100 If ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm can be regarded as a perfect embodiment of the cultural circulation that connected the imperial to the sub-imperial levels of the Mughal courtly hierarchy, he also took considerable part in two prominent networks of literary and artistic exchanges that linked, on the one hand, Safavid Iran and Mughal India and, on the other, the Mughal nobility with the Hindavi cultural sphere. Involving peoples, languages, literary genres, and styles, these exchanges certainly endowed the Mughal Empire and its principal actors with a fair degree of cosmopolitanism. And yet underlying this cosmopolitanism was a sense of hierarchy that held Persianate culture as the most preeminent in the eyes of the majority of the Mughal elite. The superiority attached to the Persianate episteme is an aspect that must not be overlooked, especially in the case of ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm. As a matter of fact, it is this very sense of superiority that accounts for the somewhat flat portrayal of the Khān in the Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī and obscures the flux in his cultural identities. Considering ʿAbd-ur-Raḥīm under the rubric of circulation has proven particularly fruitful in this respect because it has allowed us to rebuild the bridge that he had helped establish between the Persian and Hindavi traditions and to go beyond the truncated images provided by both pre-colonial and post-colonial historiographies. Bibliography ʿAbd-us-Sattār (b. Qāsim Lāhaurī). 2006. Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, ed. A. Naushāhī and M. Niżāmī. Tehran: Miras-i Maktub. Alam, Muzaffar. 2004. The Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200–1800. Delhi: Permanent Black. ____. 2003. “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 131–198. Alam, Muzaffar and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2007. Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

100 Seyller 1999: 258.

Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions 105 Asher, Catherine Blanshard. 1992. “The Architecture of Rāja Mān Singh: A Study of SubImperial Patronage.” In Barbara Stoler Miller, ed. The Powers of Art. Patronage in Indian Culture. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 183–201. Bangha, Imre. 2010. “Rekhta: Poetry in Mixed Language. The Emergence of Khari Boli Literature in North India.” In Francesca Orsini, ed. Before the Divide. Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture. Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 21–83. Beach, Milo Cleveland. 1992. Mughal and Rajput Painting (New Cambridge History of India, I/3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bhakkarī, Shaikh Farīd. 1993. Zakhīrat-ul-khawānīn. The Dhakhirat ul-khawanin of Shaikh Farid Bhakkari (A Biographical Dictionary of Mughal Noblemen), trans. Z. A. Desai, vol. 1. Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli. Busch, Allison. 2011. Poetry of Kings. The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ____. 2010a. “Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal Court.” Modern Asian Studies 44: 2, pp. 267–309. ____. 2010b. “Riti and Register. Lexical Variations in Courtly Braj Bhasha Texts.” In Francesca Orsini, ed. Before the Divide. Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture. Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 84–120. ____. 2005. “Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of Keśavdās.” South Asia Research 25: 1, pp. 31–54. ____. 2004. “The Anxiety of Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in the Hindi/Riti Tradition.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24: 2, pp. 45–59. Chaudhuri, Jatindra Bimal. 1954. Khānān Abdur Rahim (1557 a.d.–1630 a.d.) and Contemporary Sanskrit Learning (1551–1651 a.d.). Calcutta: Pracyavidya Mandir. Dale, Stephen Frederic. 2003. “A Safavid Poet in the Heart of Darkness. The Indian Poems of Ashraf Mazandarani.” In M. Mazzaoui, ed. Safavid Iran and her Neighbors. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, pp. 63–80. Eaton, Richard Maxwell. 1996. Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India. Reprint. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Ernst, Carl W. 2003. “Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian languages.” Iranian Studies 36: 2, pp. 173–195. Handa, Rajendra Lal. 1978. History of Hindi Language and Literature. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Haneda, Masashi. 1997. “Emigration of Iranian Elites to India during the 16th-17th centuries.” In Maria Szuppe, ed. L’héritage timouride, Iran – Asie centrale – Inde, XVe-XVIIIe siècles (Cahiers d’Asie Centrale, 3–4). Tashkent and Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, pp. 129–43. Haq, M. Mahfuzul. 1931. “The Khan Khanan and his Painters, Illuminators and Calli­ graphists.” Islamic Culture 5: 4, pp. 621–30. Harawī, Khwāja Niʿmatullāh. 1960. Tārīkh-i Khān Jahānī wa Makhzan-i Afghānī, ed. S. M. Imamuddin, 2 vols. Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan. Husain, Afzal. 1999. The Nobility under Akbar and Jahāngīr. A Study of Family Groups. Delhi: Manohar. Jahāngīr. 1999. Jahāngīr Nāma. The Jahāngīr Nāma. Memoirs of Jahāngīr, Emperor of India, trans. W. M. Thackston. Washington, D. C. and New York: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution & Oxford University Press. Jindal, K. B. 1993. History of Hindi Literature. Reprint. Delhi: Mushiram Manoharlal. Khan, Rahmat Ali. 1985. “The Grand Court of the Khān-i Khānān.” Lalit Kalā 21, pp. 27–35. Koch, Ebba. 2002. Mughal Architecture. An Outline of its History (1528–1858). Reprint. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kinra, Rajeev. 2011. “Make it fresh: time, tradition, and Indo-Persian literary modernity.” In Anne C. Murphy, ed. Time, History, and the Religious Imaginary of South Asia. New York: Routledge, pp. 12–39.

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Lefèvre, Corinne. 2007. “Pouvoir et noblesse dans l’empire moghol. Perspectives du règne de Jahāngīr (1605–1627).” Annales HSS 62: 6, pp. 1287–1312. McGregor, Ronald Stuart. 1984. Hindi Literature from Its Beginning to the 19th Century. A History of Indian Literature, ed. J. Gonda, VIII/6. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Moin, Ahmed Azfar. 2012. The Millennial Sovereign. Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. Mukherjee, Tarapada and Habib, Irfan. 1989. “The Mughal Administration and the Temples of Vrindavan during the Reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan.” Proceedings of the Indian Historical Congress, 49th Session, pp. 287–99. ____. 1988. “Akbar and the Temples of Mathura and its Environs.” Proceedings of the Indian Historical Congress, 48th Session, pp. 234–50. Nahāwandī, ʿAbd-ul-Bāqī. 1910–1931. Ma⁠ʾāsir-i Raḥīmī, ed. M. Hidayat Husain, 3 Vols. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society of Bengal. Naik, Chhotubhai Ranchhodji. 1966. ʿAbdur Rahim Khan-i Khanan and his Literary Circle. Ahmadabad: Gujarat University. Orthmann, Eva. 1996. ʿAbd or-Rahim ḫan-e ḫanan (964–1036/1556–1627): Staatsman und Mäzen. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. Overton, Keelan H. 2011. “A Collector and His Portrait: Book Arts and Paintings for Ibrahim ʿAdil Shah II of Bijapur (r. 1580–1627).” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles. Schimmel, Annemarie. 1992. “A Dervish in the Guise of a Prince: Khān-i Khānān Abdur Rahīm as a Patron.” In Barbara Stoler Miller, ed. The Powers of Art: Patronage in Indian Culture. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 202–223. ____. 1990. “Khankhanan ʿAbdur Rahim and the Sufis.” In M. M. Mazzaoui and V. B. Moreen, eds. Intellectual Studies on Islam: Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, pp. 153–60. Seyller, John. 1999. Workshop and Patron in Mughal India. The Freer Rāmāyaṇa and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of ʿAbd al-Raḥīm. Artibus Asiae Supplementum, XLII. Zürich: Artibus Asiae Publishers. ____. 1997. “The Inspection and Valuation of the Manuscripts in the Imperial Mughal Library.” Artibus Asiae 57: 3–4, pp. 243–349. Sherwani, Haroon Khan. 1974. History of the Qutb Shāhī Dynasty. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Snell, Rupert. 1994. “‘Barvai’ Metre in Tulsīdās and Raḥīm.” In A. W. Entwistle and F. Mallison, eds. Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature: Research Papers 1988–1991. Delhi and Paris: Manohar and École Française d’Extrême-Orient, pp. 373–405. ____. 1991. The Hindi Classical Tradition: A Braj Bhāṣā Reader. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. Srivastava, A. L. 1973. Akbar the Great. 3 Vols. Agra: S. L. Agarwala. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2005. Explorations in Connected History. 2 Vols. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ____. 1992. “Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Forma­ tion.” Journal of Asian Studies 51: 2, pp. 340–63. Truschke, Audrey. 2012. “Cosmopolitan Encounters: Sanskrit and Persian at the Mughal Court.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University. Udhrain, S. D., ed. and trans. 1973. Star-Lore [Khet-Kautuk]. Delhi: Sagar Publications. Vidyalankar, V. 1950. “ʿAbdur Rahim and his Hindi Poetry.” Islamic Culture 24, pp. 123–33. Verma, B. D. 1955–1956. “Inscriptions from the Central Museum, Nagpur.” Epigraphia Indica (Arabic and Persian Supplement), pp. 109–18.

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Mirabai at the Court of Guru Gobind Singh John Stratton Hawley and Gurinder Singh Mann* Everything about the poet-saints of North India seems to circulate: the songs that bear their names, the performers who sing them, the motifs that are conjoined to form these saints’ traditional life-stories, the manuscripts in which such stories and the songs attributed to these saints are recorded, and finally, of course, the saints themselves, whose lives often trace telling itineraries. Circulation itself seems to be one of the factors that turns an ordinary bhakta into a saint. We see this certifying power of circulation in the great debating tours (digvijaya, śāstrārtha) that are often encoded into the lives of those bhaktas who come to play the role of preceptor (ācārya), including Madhva, Chaitanya, and Vallabha. But circulation is also a prominent motif in the biographies of other bhaktas too—the wanderings of Surdas or Namdev, or the story that we hear in Sikh hagiographies about how Kabir was attracted into the magnetic presence of Baba Nanak.1 The Kabir we meet, when such a thing happens, is not exactly the Kabir who is remembered in his hometown, Banaras. The same is true for other “bhakti period” bhaktas as well. Circulation does not merely certify, it alters. This essay will focus on a surprising and little-known example of this phenomenon: What happens to Mirabai when she—or rather, her story—visits the Punjab? 1. Circulatory and Stationary Miras Mirabai was hardly a homebody. Anyone who knows her story knows that she traveled to Vrindavan, where she was led while searching for Krishna. Mirabai’s attempt to enter the religious culture of Vrindavan precipitated * Jack Hawley wishes to acknowledge his considerable debt to Anne Murphy, Jaswinder Garg, and Yusuf Muhammad for early help in reading segments of the Prem Ambodh. We are both grateful to Gurpreet Singh Lehal of Punjabi University for performing the very useful task of providing a Devanagari transliteration of the text of the Prem Ambodh that has been printed in Gurmukhi as Osahan 1989, and to Allison Busch and Thomas deBruijn for close and perceptive readings of earlier drafts. 1 E.g. McLeod 1980: 151–5.

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an unusual intellectual exchange with the Chaitanyite theologian Jiva Gosvami—or as reported later on, his uncle Rupa Gosvami. Our earliest description of this rendezvous occurs in the Bhaktirasabodhinī (Awakening Religious Sentiment) of Priyadas, written in Vrindavan in 1712.2 There we hear how Mirabai requested an audience with Jiva, but was rebuffed on the grounds that it would destroy the vow he had made to observe perfect celibacy: This evidently included verbal celibacy along with all the rest. Mirabai’s rejoinder is famous. She told Jiva that in Vrindavan everyone is a woman; there’s only one man in town—Krishna. That did indeed produce a meeting with the great scholar, and the very fact of it was a theological victory for Mirabai. We see this motif both extended and up-ended in the Caurāsī Vaiṣṇavan kī Vārtā, the preeminent hagiographical text of the Vallabhan Sampraday. Here Vallabhacharya’s emissary to Gujarat, Krishnadas, refuses to meet with Mirabai as he makes his journey west. This time it would seem the counterstructural logic of bhakti would be on Krishnadas’s side, since Mirabai is styled a queen while he is only a shudra. Yet gender trumps caste: It is once again he who, as the man involved, refuses to have concourse with a woman. And it is Mirabai, the woman, who champions the idea that bhakti should circulate with complete freedom.3 We also have the story of how Mirabai herself traveled to Gujarat. Priyadas’s version of her life ends famously in Dwarka, where she is assumed into the very form of Krishna, as manifest in the temple of Ranchor. This motif may reflect the fact that poems connected with her name were early on performed not just in Brajbhasha but in linguistic forms suggesting locations farther west. Alas, we cannot say for sure, since we have almost no access to poems bearing Mirabai’s signature in anything like her own lifetime: Only two poems can be traced to the sixteenth century with reason­able assuredness.4 But we certainly know that Mirabai’s Gujarati persona has become a major issue in modern scholarship about her. Much effort has been devoted to explaining how and when Mirabai’s Gujarati poems—as opposed to those performed in Rajasthani or Brajbhasha— came to be composed in that language.5 The story of Mirabai’s life that has come to be conventional in the present day places her in each of the three regions that claims a poetic corpus 2 Nābhādās et al. 1961 [originally 1910]: 712–23. A critical edition also exists: Jhā, ed. 1978. 3 Barz 1976: 213–4. The original is Parīkh, ed. 1970 [originally 1948]: 530. 4 Hawley 2005: 99–100. 5 E.g. Nagar 1997. See also Shukla-Bhatt 2007.

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bearing her name—Braj, western Rajasthan, and Gujarat. Yet surprisingly, the very earliest sustained account of the life of Mirabai to which we are heir comes from none of those regions, but from a fourth: the Punjab. We find it in a text called the Prem Ambodh (Ocean of Love), an account of the lives of sixteen persons who display extraordinary sensitivity to the ways in which the Creator has fashioned this world by and for love (prem). Their lives are told in such a way as to demonstrate how the manifold undulations that connect lover, beloved, and love express the oceanic reality of all existence. The author of Prem Ambodh is unknown, but the language he uses—a version of western Hindi or Brajbhasha that shows a familiarity with many Punjabi idioms—fits comfortably within the range laid out by other early texts in the Sikh tradition. The text comes to us entirely in Gurmukhi script. The earliest manuscript at our disposal—along with a number of others— seems to position it quite precisely in time and, by inference, place. The scribe of that manuscript dates his work to vs 1763 (1706 ce), but the manuscript he is copying ends with a caupaī that dates the original work to vs 1750, the equivalent of 1693 ce. Though we lack the original manuscript, there seems no good reason to doubt this date, since it is internal to the text and confirmed in many copies. That date in turn fits nicely with other hints we have as to the context in or for which it was probably composed: the court of Guru Gobind Singh. Guru Gobind Singh served as head of the Sikh community from 1675 to 1708. The author of the Prem Ambodh does not propose that Mirabai traveled to the Punjab herself; only the language of the text and the circumstances of its production tie it to that region. Yet it is fascinating to see just where he does think she lived. While nothing about this is revealed in his account of Mirabai’s own life, it becomes clear in what he says about the life of Karmabai, a younger saint whose life he links with hers. Describing the moment when that younger bhakta made Mirabai her exemplar—a motif that is absent in commonly told versions of her biography—he tells us that we are witnessing events that occurred in the city of Udaipur: The city where Mirabai lived—  a city everyone calls Udaipur— That was the city where Karmabai was raised:  she took her training in bhakti there. While still a young girl she was filled with love:  she went to Mirabai, and it flowed in her too.6 6 Caupaī 1 of the section on Karmabai in Osahan 1989 (kīo prakās). In this instance we retain the term bhakti in the translation, while rendering prem (1.3) as “love”. For our general

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The mention of Udaipur is curious, because the story of Mirabai’s life that was to become effectively canonical locates her Sisodiya in-laws not in Udaipur but in Chittor, the old Mewari capital.7 If one visits Chittor today, in fact, one can see a temple clearly labeled as belonging to Mirabai, although that label was applied only recently to a structure formerly associated with the famous fifteenth-century Rana Kumbha.8 The relation between him and Mirabai is also an interesting story—it took some very public efforts to expunge it from the would-be historical record as anachronistic—but that need not detain us here.9 Suffice it to say that the story nowadays linking Mirabai to Chittor does so by making her the wife of Rana Bhojraj, the eldest son of Rana Sanga, who ruled from that city in the early decades of the sixteenth century. Bhojraj apparently died young, no later than in the third decade of the sixteenth century. It was not until Chittor fell to the Mughal emperor Akbar in 1568 that the new city of Udaipur began to function as Mewar’s capital in its stead. If Mirabai was Bhojraj’s wife, therefore, it would be possible to think of her as living in Udaipur in her later years, but the version of her life that was to become canonical—let us call it the Mewari version—fails to do so. Instead, it understands that she left Mewar for Vrindavan and Dwarka long before that. Thus our Punjabi account diverges from “the norm”. Yet it seems natural enough that a poet writing in Punjab in the late seventeenth century might have been led by Mirabai’s associations with royalty to locate her in the city that served as Mewar’s capital in his own time: Udaipur. The matter of physical location is only one of several fundamental points of divergence between the Prem Ambodh’s depiction of Mirabai and the standard “Mewari” account. Consider the matter of her marriage. Neither the Bhaktamāl of Nabhadas nor the Bhaktirasabodhinī of Priyadas goes so far as to specify to which of the kings of Mewar was Mirabai’s betrothed— there is nothing about Bhojraj—yet at least the Bhaktirasabodhinī is clear policy in translating these two critical terms, see Hawley and Mann 2008: 200–1. A complete translation of the Mirabai section of the text, with annotations, appears there (pp. 204–26). We use the word “stanza” in this essay to designate a caupaī together with whatever dohās and soraṭhās may follow it before we come to the next caupaī. As for the term caupaī itself, its standard four-verse form (implicit in the title itself) is almost invariably expanded to a unit of five, and six verses are also possible. The following abbreviations are adopted to designate the three verse forms in question: cau., do., so. 7 On the process by means of which such a “canonical” picture emerged, see Martin 2000: 162–82. Among hagiographies of Mirabai, Udaipur is also mentioned in the Marathi Bhaktavijaya of Mahipati, which S. G. Tulpule dates to 1762 (1979: 431). 8 On the dating of this temple, see Banerjea 1946: 20. 9 Hawley 2008: 134.

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about the fact that Mirabai hailed from Merta and came to Mewar to be married into its royal family. This is a leading motif in the Bhaktirasabodhinī’s narrative. Yet it is missing in the Prem Ambodh. The Prem Ambodh only tells us that the name of her bridegroom was Giridhar. That name corresponds to none that appears in the Sisodiya lineage; it evidently enters the picture because it designates the god Krishna, which creates a productive ambiguity in relation to her physical spouse. This ambiguity is absent in the Bhaktirasabodhinī’s version of Mirabai’s life and in later versions of the “Mewari” account. There Krishna is the bridegroom Mirabai always wished she had, the husband the world would not accept, but he does not share his name with her Mewari mate. It is not hard to guess why the name Giridhar would have been chosen by the author of the Prem Ambodh (or the tradition upon which he relied) to designate Mirabai’s husband. Giridhar means “Mountain Lifter”—that is, the lifter of Mount Govardhan—and the formula giridhar nāgar (“clever Mountain-Lifter”) often occurs in the concluding line of poems attributed to Mirabai, where it is intimately linked with her own name. Giridhar would naturally have seemed the most appropriate name for a bard to assign to Krishna as he entered Mirabai’s earthly orbit—or, in any case, to Mirabai’s husband.10 Notably, there is no other on the scene—no Mewari husband or father-in-law from whom she tries to escape into the arms of Krishna. This means that the tensions caused by Mirabai’s outlandish bhakti conduct did not erupt between her and her in-laws but in relation to the family she inherited at birth. Accordingly, by contrast to every standard depiction of Mira’s life, the ruler who tried to kill the princess was, in the view of the Prem Ambodh, her own father! The story of Mira’s conflict with her father does not emerge until the last segment of the story (dohā 26 and stanzas 27–33). Before then, we have two main tales. First, there is the story of how Mirabai refused to have sex with her husband Giridhar until he certified himself as a true bhakta by uttering the name of Ram (stanzas 1–20)—Ram not in the sense of Ramacandra, but Ram in the very common usage that designates the Deity broadly. Then, after this recounting of Mirabai’s marital trials, we have the story of how she was set upon by one of the sādhus who flocked to her devotional assembly (stanzas 21–26). This episode with the lecherous sādhu also appears in the Bhaktirasabodhinī, but the story of Mirabai’s love-test 10 Nabhadas includes the name Giridhar in his chappay on Mirabai (Śrī Bhaktamāl, p. 712)—as the object of the verb bhajī. Priyadas, making Krishna an actor in Mirabai’s drama, prefers the closely related designation giridhārīlāl (Śrī Bhaktamāl, p. 714ff.).

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for her husband is apparently confined to the Prem Ambodh itself. Then it’s on to the final episode: the conflict and reconciliation between her and her parents. Notably, unlike the “Mewari” version of her life, none of these episodes requires Mirabai to wander. From beginning to end, apparently, she lives in a house of her own or an independent suite within the palace compound. When the story of her struggles with her parents (and brothers and ser­ vants) is complete, the author moves on to Karmabai. Karmabai meets Mirabai in Udaipur, where she seems to have been residing all along. In general one would suspect that the desire of various regions and locales to claim Mirabai as their own would have strengthened the motif of peregrination in her story, “Mirabai came here, too”, they would be saying, and sure enough, temples exist in Braj, Rajasthan, and Gujarat that bear witness to that fact. But in this instance we have an exception. There is no effort to claim Mirabai as a visitor to the Punjab. Was it perhaps the Prem Ambodh’s very distance from the places where Mirabai is said to have traveled that allowed it to picture her as a sedentary being? Unlike Braj and Gujarat, the Punjab is host to no major pilgrimage center that would logically have served as a destination for a devotee of Krishna— or, at another level, where one might have expected that songs attributed to or composed about Mirabai would be sung. But that doesn’t mean the issue of circulation goes away. Rather, it gets transposed from internal aspects of her life story—where the heroine herself travels—to the places and modes that shaped the manner in which her story was told. If we think of Mirabai as a historical person, it is easiest to envision a process whereby the story of her life first takes shape in her own region, then makes its way elsewhere. But the case is a difficult one: Sisodiya royal records provide no way to anchor Mirabai in “history”. And the situation is no better for Merta, where she is supposed to have been born, though we will presently take note of a single line from the Marwari chronicler Munhata Nainsi.11 Suppose, then, that we think of Mirabai as a storied princess from the start— a figure whom we know as a legend rather than an actor in history. If so, a diffusionist model for understanding how her narrative developed becomes much less self-evident. A circulatory approach seems to fit the evidence better. This may seem ironic, since “the circulatory Mirabai” disappears from the plotline of the Prem Ambodh, but she reappears with force at a different 11 The most comprehensive case for a historical reading of roughly this sort, together with a consideration of the stages at which that story developed, has been put forward by Taft 2002: 313–35. For a critical response, see Hawley 2005: 89–116. Further details follow.

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level. For it is only by postulating a story that has been in circulation for a while—more than one story, perhaps—that one can fully appreciate how the Prem Ambodh’s version of Mirabai’s life is told. As we shall see, if you couldn’t hear overtones of those other stories—if you couldn’t feel the weight of the history of their circulation, the conviction with which they were told— then you couldn’t taste some of the most pungent flavors that the author of the Prem Ambodh stirred into his own contrasting account.12 2. Mirabai in a Sikh Environment Scholarship on the Prem Ambodh is so far quite limited—almost entirely confined, in fact, to a single volume. This is Davindar Singh Osahan’s Prem Ambodh Pothī. Osahan presents us with a critically edited version of the Prem Ambodh based on the earliest manuscript available. It is dated vs 1763 (not, as Osahan reports, vs 1753) and is preserved in the library of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.13 This manuscript actually contains two texts: the Prem Ambodh, which occupies folios 1–206, and verses of Bhai Gurdas (Bānī Bhāi Gurdās kī), which take up the remainder of the volume. Importantly, the manuscript being copied in 1706 gives its own date as being more than a decade earlier—vs 1750, that is, 1693 ce. In the final dohās and caupaīs of the manuscript, the author of the Prem Ambodh gives credit to “the grace of the Satguru” (satigura kai prasādi) and says that actually the entire work belongs to him—the author of the text only “completed” it. Such formulas would have been the normal way of referring to the reigning Sikh guru at the time. As we have seen, that was Guru Gobind Singh, and he would still have been alive when the copy was made. The fact that the remainder of the manuscript in question is taken up with the poetry of Bhai Gurdas, a major figure in the early Sikh tradition, accords with the general ambience. In every manuscript that includes the final verses of the Prem Ambodh, the 1693 date also appears.14 In his introduction Osahan reports that “some writers” have, on the basis of a couplet found in only two manuscripts, concluded that the author of 12 Issues involved in distinguishing a diffusionist account of historical transmission from a circulatory one are laid out cogently in Markovits et al., eds. 2003: 3, 10–11, 22. 13 Serial number 810. For details regarding other manuscripts of the Prem Ambodh, see Hawley and Mann 2008: 200–1. 14 Among those we have so far examined, this includes the manuscript of Trilochan Singh Bedi, Chandigarh, dated vs 1807 (1740 ce), folio 288, Khalsa College manuscript 1737, dated vs 1840 (1783 ce), folio 168, and Punjab University manuscript 1193, dated vs 1844 (1787 ce), folio 136.

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the text was Guru Gobind Singh’s scribe Haridas. Osahan may especially be referring to the important scholar Piara Singh Padam, and he rejects this point of view.15 Other writers, he says, have attributed the Prem Ambodh to Guru Gobind Singh himself. Again he dismisses the idea, and this time he is almost certainly correct. Such a notion might arise from the words the author uses to acknowledge his debt to the Satguru in concluding (pothī pūraṇ satigura karī / dāsa duārai purī parī). But that is a formula used to pay tribute to the Guru’s inspiration, not actually to claim his authorship, and would have been understood as such at the time.16 Osahan’s own point of view is more interesting. He attempts to make the case that the Prem Ambodh was written by a certain Kevaldas.17 Of the three passages he cites as providing evidence for this claim, however, only one actually contains the name in question. The other two either use keval in a generic sense (“only”) or do the same for dās (“servant”). One instance remains, and there one could sustain an interpretation that took kevaldās as a proper noun, but the first impulse would again be to read it generically—“only servants”—since the context has to do with “the saints” (santan). Texts that praise Sants or bhaktas emphasize that however luminous they may be, they attain this state by being “only servants” (keval dās) of God. Prahlad, the subject of the portrait (paracī, literally “acquaintance”, that is, “introduction”) that is concluded at this point is a perfect example of the phenomenon. The dohā (that is, doharā) reads as follows: jāna lābha santana kai nāhī / varatahi sahija subhāi jīvana mukati birājaī / kevala dāsa suhāi For saints there’s no such thing as loss or gain—  what happens simply happens as it does. Released from life yet still living, they’re radiant,  but only as servants do they shine.18

It is true that there may be, in these lines, a sense that those who are able to discern such saints as servants do so themselves as “servants of servants”; 15 Padam 1976: 179–80. He quotes a verse where the name of Haridas appears. 16 A similar error has been made in regard to manuscripts of the Dasam Granth. In that case the utterance śrī mukhvāk pātśāhī dasvīn has often been read as meaning “uttered from the mouth of the tenth ruler,” when actually it should be interpreted as saying “addressed (or dedicated) to the tenth ruler” (i.e., Guru Gobind Singh), with the term mukhvāk serving as a Punjabi analogue to the Persian mukhātib. 17 Osahan 1989: 2–3. Jeevan Singh Deol regards Osahan’s case as being based on “rather flimsy internal evidence” (2000: 173 note 19), but Rattan Singh Jaggi supports it (2005: 1191). 18 Dohā 58 in the Prahlad paracī. The other citations are cau. 38.4 in the Namdev paracī and cau. 61.2 at the conclusion of the text.

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this too is a familiar formulation. Perhaps one among their number was called Kevaldas and perhaps he was announcing himself as such here, but if so, he has succeeded in calling as little attention to himself as would be warranted by the sentiment. Only if one already knew that the poet’s name was Kevaldas would one be likely to catch the reference. At present, then, we have no firm clue about the identity of the author of the Prem Ambodh, and there is nothing in the text that seems to reveal anything about his personal circumstances. All that is clear is that the Prem Ambodh was written to be performed at the court of Guru Gobind Singh, and the date we are given enables us to imagine something of the scene. The year 1693 places the text in the period of halcyon stability when Guru Gobind Singh held court at Anandpur in the Shivalik foothills; it would be more than a decade before the Mughals would begin to lay siege to the city in 1704. Certain genres of poetry contained in the Dasam Granth do run closely parallel to what we find in the Prem Ambodh—more on that later— yet it is notable that the Prem Ambodh apparently never came to be thought of as part of that large, eclectic collection.19 The author of the Prem Ambodh begins by outlining a general theological system in which God (paramātmā, parabrahma) as the ultimate lover (prītam, premī) expresses himself in a world animated by that love (prem). A provisional duality obtains between God and the world: God (aikaṅkāru = ekoṃkār) exists as a single primordial entity, but emanates his light (kīo prakās)—that is, arises, taking phenomenal form—“at the time of love” (premu kī velā). Thus Deity expresses itself through the medium of nature— we encounter the ancient contrast between Puruṣa and Prakṛti—and love emerges as the internal thread that unites the two (cau. 1.3–5). Love is the medium that makes it possible for the ultimate Lover to “play” (khelai, cau. 1.1), a play that we observe in the antics taken on by Lover and Beloved in the story of Mirabai. This vision of the world as an oceanic loving field of force is reflected in the text’s intriguing title. At first glance it may seem that we are meant to perceive a set of teachings that comprise “the [true] understanding of love” (premābodh, i.e., premāṅ bodh). Certainly this makes better sense than interpreting the a before bodh as a negative particle—“ignorance (abodh) of love (prem)”. But neither option is correct. The first is rendered dubious by the fact that we have here not the nasalization that would accompany a long a (bindī), but the sort appropriate to a short vowel (tippī). The proper 19 A recent appraisal of the bases of our knowledge about the court of Guru Gobind Singh is provided by Gurinder Singh Mann (2008).

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division between the two words, then, is prem ambodh, not premāṅ bodh, and the word ambodh is to be understood as “that which bears, carries, or provides (dha) water (amb, cf. Skt. ambhas)”. This is the analysis of the term provided by the great scholar Kahn Singh Nabha, and he goes on to interpret it as meaning “cloud” or “ocean”.20 In the metaphorical economy of the present work “cloud” is less plausible than “ocean”, a concept to which the author turns both in describing Mirabai (mahodadh, cau. 4.5, 14.1–2) and in the dohā that concludes the text as a whole. The opening dohā, too, points in this direction, describing the visible world as a wave (taraṅgu) that expresses the beginningless, endless Being that inhabits it. He is, by implication, its inner ocean. This imagery also relates to the spiritual hydraulics of an individual person, as adumbrated familiarly in texts associated with the name of Gorakhnath.21 As we shall see, all this becomes relevant to what is said about Mirabai and Giridhar. Once our author has sketched his general subject, he explains that he will treat sixteen bhagats (bhaktas) under the rubric of prem. At the end he says it has taken him a “half-thousand stanzas” (aradh sahasar caupaī) to do so, and if we add in the dohās, soraṭhās, and jhulaṇās that serve as “leaves and flowers”—adornments—to these 500 or so caupaīs, we converge on a total number of 1000, which seems to have served as a sort of magic number in other compositions performed at the court of Guru Gobind Singh.22 Mirabai falls roughly in the middle of the sequence of bhaktas whom the text describes: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Kabir Dhanna Trilocan Namdev Jaidev Ravidas Mirabai Karmabai Pipa Sain Sadhna Balmik (i.e., Valmiki)

20 Nabha 1981: 117. 21 In this regard, compare especially the Gorakh Bodh, with its intriguing similarity as to title: White 489n235 and oral communication May 23, 2007. 22 Cf. Hawley 2008: 137–59.

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Sudhdev Badhak Dhruhi (i.e., Dhruva) Prahlad.23

One can see immediately that Mirabai is not being positioned in the usual Vaishnava company—Tulsidas, Surdas, and the like. Rather, this selection of bhaktas corresponds closely to what we would expect on the basis of other principal documents in the Sikh tradition, especially the ballads (vārs) of Bhai Gurdas (d. 1628) and the Gurū Granth itself. Kabir, the bhakta most frequently quoted in the Gurū Granth, heads the list, and other bhaktas massively important to the tradition follow, though not strictly according to the number of compositions bearing their signatures in the Gurū Granth.24 Mirabai’s position makes sense if we see it in this larger Sikh perspective. Although she was cast out of the Gurū Granth when that text attained its canonical form in the 1680s—presumably because of the strongly Vaishnava associations she called to mind—a single composition bearing her signature was included in the earliest prototype that has come down to us, namely, the Kartārpur Pothī of 1604. This composition persisted as part of the Sikh scriptural corpus into the middle of the seventeenth century,25 and even when it was deleted from the central canon, that apparently did not mean that Mirabai ceased entirely to be a meaningful part of the larger orbit in which Sikh ideas and institutions flourished. The Prem Ambodh is witness to this fact. But what about that earlier poem? Considering how very Vaishnava she was, how did Mirabai ever manage to be included in the central scriptural corpus when other renowned poets of Krishna failed to do so? One of the petitionary vinaya poems of Surdas was included for a time, but eventually it was rooted out,26 and poems by Haridas, Hitaharivams, Kanha, and any number of others were never admitted in the first place. One obvious hypothesis would be that those who compiled the earliest Sikh anthologies found something appealing about the particular poem concerned, but if so, this was certainly by contrast to almost everything else the anthologists selected to be part of the corpus. Here is the poem:

23 Certain partial versions of the Prem Ambodh fail to produce exactly this sequence, but in cases we have seen, it seems possible to explain why the deviations occurred. 24 See Mann 2001: 102. 25 For details see Mann 2001: 115–6 and table 6 on p. 81. 26 Mann 2001: 116–7.

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Krishna plainly appears in this poem, and with a designation that matches what we are given in many other poems attributed to Mirabai. He is Giridhar Svami, “Mira’s Mountain-Lifter Lord”, and it seems he stands at the center of a thoroughly Vaishnava composition. Why did the theological axe of nirguṇa bhakti not fall on this poem while other examples of Krishna poetry were rigorously excluded? The reason seems to be that Mira was distinguished from other openly Krishnaite poets by means of something she had that they did not: her association in at least some reaches of the popular imagination with Ravidas, whose biography appears just before hers in the Prem Ambodh. We first meet this association between Mirabai and Ravidas—or rather, a close replica of it—in the paracaīs of Anantadas, composed near the end of the sixteenth century, and it appears again in the Bhaktirasabodhinī of Priyadas a century later.28 Both writers make a connection between Ravidas and an unnamed Jhali Queen, not with Mirabai herself, but the longstanding connection of this queen’s clan, the Jhalas, with the Sisodiyas—they frequently intermarried—and the general outlines of her story make it clear that her story is only one short step removed from that of Mirabai. It is very likely that this connection was plain to those who first compiled the anthology of poetry that would eventually become the Gurū Granth. 27 Alternate translations appear along with the original in Hawley 2005: 104–5. 28 Given that they also share thematic similarities, it is noteworthy that Anantadas and the author of the Prem Ambodh use the same term (paracaī = paracī) to designate the narrative units that structure their hagiographies.

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Ravidas is generously represented there—and with full nirguṇa credibility. Very likely it was his influence that made it possible for a poem of Mirabai to sneak in, too.29 As is well known, other versions of Mirabai’s life story make explicit the connection between Mirabai and Ravidas.30 There no anonymous Jhali Queen serves as a buffer between them. The Prem Ambodh’s life of Mirabai provides us with our first extant example of this group. The third verse in the Prem Ambodh’s Mirabai paracī tells us quite plainly that she came to Ravidas for spiritual guidance. This builds on what has already been said in the Ravidas segment of the Prem Ambodh, where we hear of a visit he was paid by “Mirabai Rajkumari, a devotee of Vishnu, a great benefactress” who came to him and “grasped his feet.”31 There, as in the stories of the Jhali Queen, we read that the Brahmans who observed this interaction were greatly disconcerted, since she was a princess and he a leatherworker. From the point of view of hierarchies internal to Sikhism, however, their statuses were reversed: Ravidas was Mirabai’s ticket to stardom. The authority of his nirguṇa poetry had earned him a place in the Sikh canon from its inception. Mirabai seems to have come riding in on his coat-tails—perhaps because her general popularity was so great that she became an interesting feature of his biography in roughly the way she came to figure in the life stories of Jiva Gosvami and Krishnadas. If this hypothesis is correct, however, it does not tell the full story. A theological adjustment provided a further rationalization of the lineage that tied Mirabai to Ravidas, for it seems that by the time Ravidas made his way into the Prem Ambodh, his characteristic message had been somewhat recast. In the Prem Ambodh, Ravidas comes across much more straightforwardly as a love poet than he ever could have been in the selections from his attributed oeuvre that were adopted into the Gurū Granth. In the Gurū Granth, we hear of the trials of the body, the falseness of distinctions between purity and pollution, the charade of caste—familiar preoccupations in a nirguṇa poet. In the Prem Ambodh, by contrast, the words of Ravidas are made to center on relations between Self and Superself, or ātmā and paramātmā, and these in turn are melded into the archetypal figures of Lover and Beloved.32 A taste of this can be had in the 29 See also Mann 2001: 115. 30 For example, the life of Ravidas that appears in the Amar Chitra Katha comic-book series, as described in Hawley 2005: 156–9. 31 Ravidas paracī, cau. 16.1–3 . 32 We do not mean to imply that such motifs are entirely absent from poetry of Ravidas that is included in the Gurū Granth. A well-known example is tūṅ mohi dekhai hūṅ tohi

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final verses in the Ravidas section of the Prem Ambodh, the ones that directly precede the section on Mirabai. First we have a caupaī in which we are meant to hear the voice of Ravidas himself. Then in a dohā and soraṭhā the narrator of the Prem Ambodh comments on what this saint represents: Ravidas says, Oh Beloved of my life,  the whole world depends on you. You are the Self, the Superself.  Nothing exists apart from you. If someone says there’s something separate from you,  he’s a wandering ghost, a demon.33 Says Ravidas, in the entire world there’s nothing else  that can flourish within this body: If, beside you, nothing exists,  then who could ask for anything—   and who, if you gave, receive it?   Caupaī 29 Lover and Beloved: two forms they are,  but both of them melt away For the form of the self is light itself  and the glow in which it bathes is love. 

Doharā

I’ve told you this in the spoken tongue—  how love welled up in the heart of Ravidas: If you hear it, speak it, make it your rule of life,  you will surely meet Hari as you do. 34

Soraṭhā

We can see, thus, how Ravidas has been poured into a broadly non-dual or advaitan mold, one that is specifically conceived as being exemplified in relationships shaped by love, as is also familiarly the case in Sufi paradigms. This is echoed in the devotional pose to which the Prem Ambodh assigns Ravidas. He is made to worship Vishnu, but in the material aspect that is, so to speak, least saguṇa of all. Ravidas’s personal deity, his ṭhākur, is the aniconic śālagrām stone.35 dekhauṅ (Gurū Granth 32), found in Callewaert and Friedlander 1992: 186, translation on pp. 111–2. 33 Reading bhūtana asura, as in Khalsa College 1737, as against bhūta nasura, as in Osahan’s understanding of GNDU 810. Compare, however, the similar phraseology in cau. 24.1 of the Mirabai paracī and the note on its translation in Hawley and Mann 2008: 223–4. 34 The word translated by “heart” is ghaṭ. This word literally denotes a pot or water-jar, and is a frequent metaphor for an individual soul/body. The latter dimension is conveyed by the clay substance of the pot itself, the form by the substance it contains. We choose the former meaning here—soul or heart—but a case could equally well be made for “body”. Really, the point is that the two are closely interconnected. 35 Prem Ambodh, Ravidas paracī, dohā 16 through stanza 22.

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For Mirabai something of a parallel transformation was achieved, but from the other side. The acts of binding, persuasion, and aggression that Mirabai relates to an older female friend in the poem we have quoted from Kartārpur Pothī are sanded down so that the elements of tension and opposition so natural to love poetry diminish sharply. These dvaita (dualist), saguṇa aspects are muted as the advaitan frame takes hold. At the end of the story the lesson we learn—through the eyes of Mirabai’s parents— is that in actuality she and her Beloved are one (cau. 32.3): There is no distinction between you and Hari,  no difference at all—a seamless whole.

In the concluding dohā this absence of distinction is emphasized. It is remapped as the non-dual relation that pertains between the object of worship and the person who worships—divinity and humanity, Hari and “the true and good” (sādh): Hari and the true and good—they are one.  There’s no hint of difference between them— So fill your eyes with both of them.  See them in your heart.

As all of this implies, the Prem Ambodh gives us a Mirabai who stands at a considerable remove from the model of loving interaction that is charted out in central Vaishnava scriptures such as the Bhāgavatapurāṇa—the paradigm of Krishna and the gopīs. This collapsing of the difference between bhakta and bhagavān was, in a way, the keynote of the whole bhaktamāl genre: Nabhadas displayed it prominently at the beginning of his text. But many who heard Nabhadas heard him in conjunction with Priyadas’s commentary, the Bhaktirasabodhinī, where the distinction between Krishna and the gopīs, between deity and devotee, was etched more sharply.36 Perhaps this is no surprise—Priyadas was sitting in Vrindavan as he wrote—but the author of the Prem Ambodh had a different audience in mind, one that seemingly expected a less vividly polychrome vision of how divinity was bound up with the world.

36 This contrast has been explored by James P. Hare in an untitled seminar paper presented at Columbia University in December 2004.

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The Prem Ambodh’s narrative of Mirabai begins with the story of her marriage to Giridhar. As we have said, it strains toward a doctrinal orientation that is broadly non-dual. True, only Giridhar is identified as being really Brahma (do. 3.1; cf. cau. 3.1), but it is intriguing that at one point Mirabai, too, is spoken of as if she had a supramundane antetype (cau. 2.1). Here is how the story unfolds:37 Listen to the story of Mirabai,  who took love into her life and gained wisdom in her voice. Through love she enacted her feeling of love for God:38   her mind thought of nothing but serving Hari. Then she became a companion of Ravidas,  developing a love for his lotus feet. She married a man called Giridhar—“Mountain-Lifter”—  who was born into the world as a royal prince, a Rajput, But that Giridhar never spoke the name of Ram,  so she took him for a beast and refused to bed with him. Cau. 1 Among the bodies one can take in being born,  only one is best—the human, For humans, in their mental states and words and acts,  can always, always utter Hari’s name. 

Do. 1

So the real Giridhar became that Giridhar:  As she became Mirabai, he became him. Mirabai became the icon of love;  Giridhar, the likeness of the Beloved. Mirabai, in every shade of love she felt,  shared her every element with Giridhar, her Beloved. 37 The reader is referred to notes on this and subsequent passages that are given in Hawley and Mann 2008: 218–26. 38 Here the author introduces the two most critical terms in his exposition: bhakti and prem. We will make it a practice to translate bhakti, wherever it occurs, as “the love of God” unless a specific object of that love is named, as it is in cau. 6.6: bisana bhagata, “the love of Vishnu”. The term most frequently used to translate bhakti into English is “devotion”, but this suggests a distinctly more private, staid form of piety than the bhakti usually conveys in Indic languages. We therefore render prem and its closely associated cousin prīti as simply “love”. The word prem may also connote love in a religious mode, but it typically signals love in a broader range (as was also possible for bhakti in earlier centuries). The selfless or self-emptying associations of prem often distinguish it from lust or passion (kām), but such passion is often also understood to be an aspect of prem. Prem can refer to deep devotion as it pertains to two human lovers, but it is not Platonic love—love without the body. As is plain in the stanza at hand and at many other points in the Prem Ambodh, the author of the text believes that the realms of bhakti and prem are thoroughly overlapping.

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Mirabai should be called the Lover  and Giridhar, known as her Beloved. Mirabai aimed her love of God toward her Beloved  though her beloved Giridhar didn’t show her all he was.

Cau. 2

Mirabai felt love in every aspect of herself;  Giridhar was the form of her Beloved. That woman could not entirely comprehend  the wondrous, peerless tale in which she lived. 

Do. 2

That Giridhar was Giridhar, God Himself,  remaining somewhat distant from the human form he took. The fire of knowledge burned inside his mind  but outside you couldn’t see the smoke. Inside he fully recognized himself;  outside no one knew. Inside he was utterly, completely the Beloved;  outside he just looked enchanted. Inside the light of the three worlds shone;  outside he seemed like any ordinary being. Cau. 3 Inside—wholly Brahma, nothing else,  but it manifests itself as the whole world. Outside—the way it all appears on the surface:  why would anyone trust in that? 

Do. 3

Into this recipe for eternal marital bliss the author of the Prem Ambodh inserts an element of mischief: the double-edged sword (khaṇḍe kī dhārā). This would have been a familiar symbol at the court of Guru Gobind Singh, standing for the Guru’s dual authority in temporal (miri) and spiritual (piri) domains. Here we have yet another articulation of the analogy between love and battle that runs through the literature of so many Indian languages: Mirabai’s love for God was love without a shore—  the edge of a double-edged sword. In her beloved she couldn’t see a love for God,  so how could she ever want to bed with him? Thus she felt great restlessness of mind  wondering when the seed of Ram   would plant itself in his mouth: “As soon as I hear him say the Name of Ram,” she thought,  “I’ll offer my everything to him. If only he’d join the company of the good!  That’s where the Name of Ram is heard.” 

Cau. 5

Thus the plot is on its way. Mira, that bhakti warrior, won’t sleep with Giridhar until he certifies himself as a bhakta—the right kind of bhakta—

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by speaking the name of Ram. By day he utters nothing of the sort, so she lies at his side waiting to hear if it will come by night—in dream. Sure enough, one magic night it does, and this releases a torrent of pent-up emotion in her. She is ready to have sex with him right away. But not so fast. In a moment of consummate burlesque, when Mirabai tells Giridhar that he has spoken “Ram” in a dream, Giridhar sets upon an entirely different course of action from the one Mira had envisioned. To him, the stunning thing is that by saying “Ram” he has uttered the tāraka mantra, the very sounds that usher a dying person to liberation. So he adopts the seated pose appropriate to samādhi, and both wills and achieves his own demise. This causes a reaction in Mirabai that many listeners would have found hilarious—equally life-threatening, but not according to the satī formula that her relatives expect—and in the end it is only Hari, the erstwhile Giridhar, who is able to rescue her from the jaws of death. Here is the passage in full: The woman answered her husband,  “My Lord and the basis of my life, I heard it emerge from your mouth at night—  ‘Hari Hari,’ that matchless sound.”  

Do. 9

When the woman spoke these words  Giridhar answered, amazed: “The name of Ram has now come forth from my mouth!  Inside I’m gone—but outside, here’s this woman!”39 He closed his eyes, exercised his skill,  and made his breath ascend to the tenth door.40 I myself have never had that experience  so how I could possibly describe it to you? As for the woman, when she recognized his feat—  that her husband had relinquished his life—   what could she do, poor thing? 

Cau. 10

39 Apparently we should read not bāpa but bāma (i.e., vām, “young woman”), as in several manuscripts; it preserves both rhyme and meaning. The verse is an important one—and humorous. The author apparently wants us to think that once Giridhar realizes he has uttered the name of Ram, he is prepared to die, having spoken the tāraka mantra, the last utterance a person should hear before crossing over to the other side of existence at death. At this point he fashions himself in the seated samādhi pose that realized beings adopt as they prepare for their own deaths. On “Rāma, Rāma” as the tāraka mantra, see Eck 1982: 332–4. 40 The reference is to the opening at the top of the head which can be reached when a person’s kuṇḍalinī energy rises above the limitations imposed by the nine doors of the senses. Again, we are in the realm of samādhi practice.

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Once the breath of life had left her husband  and the body left behind was just an empty vessel, All she could do in her heart was lament  that they’d never have the chance to meet again.  

Do. 10

“Stupid me! I didn’t know who my husband was!  This love of mine was really God! Every being is imprinted with Self  and Giridhar is the one who’s caused it to be so. To hell with the life I’m living in this world!  I’m sick of it. I want no more. He never let on he had these capabilities  and now he’s left his body—how can he help me now? Even if Hari kills me and revives me a million times  in life after life, I’ll never have a man like this. 

Cau. 11

It was great good fortune that I managed to find  a beloved, a dear one, such as he. Fate it was that wrote it on my forehead  and now that the karma’s spent, I grieve.” 

Do. 11

When Giridhar performed this act,  Mirabai began murmuring “Hari Hari.” She went to her house, closed her door,  and spoke not a word to anyone. Her entire family, men and women both,  performed the death rituals for Giridhar’s body. However much they explained to that woman  about karma and dharma and family and such things, She refused to open the door and talk with them.  She was so unsettled she couldn’t speak. 

Cau. 12

Heart, mind, intellect—she was utterly distressed.  She pressed her eyelids closed. Like an image of God made from a block of wood  she had no sense of body and home.  

So. 12

The whole family and the servants, male and female,  gathered again that very morning And tried again to speak to Mirabai,  to convince her by whatever means to get hold of herself: “The kind of behavior the world expects of a woman  at a time like this is to wail and beat her breast, And if she is called a satī, a virtuous woman,  she has herself burned alongside her husband. But that’s not at all the way you’re behaving.  This anguish of yours—it’s beyond us.” 

Cau. 13

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John Stratton Hawley and Gurinder Singh Mann When a person unites with the one she loves—  when the two become as one— Only if some consciousness of the body remains  can she possibly explain what’s been done.  

Do. 13

A great ocean of love was contained in her body  and then many waves began to billow up inside, Yet now, as she looked upon the life her husband had lived,  she froze, as if the ocean had turned to ice. All of her sensory faculties went numb.  She lost all awareness in her body. Her consciousness was like the dark at the heart of a flame:  no insight or intellection remained. Brothers and family, maidservants and manservants—  how they lamented then! 

Cau. 14

There she sat in a single yogic pose  unwavering, unmoving, fixed, Like an image that someone had drawn on paper—  extremely lovely to behold. 

Do. 14

Half the night she passed in this way  until the Friend of the World became concerned: Feeling compassion, he went to her door  and stood there, that Non-dual Highest Person. At that point Hari pronounced these words:  “Mirabai, open the door. The sight that sages have never been able to see—  I’ll joyfully show it to you now.” When the sense of what Hari was saying dawned,  her mind stirred awake from its unconscious state. 

Cau. 15

The words Hari spoke were like a brilliant sun  as they dawned upon that woman. She felt its rays and they melted her,  causing a current of love to flow.  

So. 15

At this, Mirabai requests that Hari take the form of Giridhar for a second time, so that she can know him properly and they can play it all out again. He complies with this request, begging her to “open the door,” and when she does so, they experience “the wondrous play of love” beyond all description (do. 19). (Both “opening the door” and the experience of play are motifs that recur throughout the Prem Ambodh.41) When that supernal night has passed, Giridhar departs again, but this time all Mira’s wishes have been 41 In the very first caupaī of the Prem Ambodh, for example, we hear that the primordial Lover (premī) takes the form of love to play in the world (prema rūpu dhari jaga mahi

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fulfilled. This time she does not pine for him in his absence—or presence! Rather, she wants to share her joy with the world. She does so in song, acting as a sort of priestess (pūjārī, cau. 21.1, cf. 20.3), and that brings us to the scene in which she encounters the randy ascetic. His advances to her follow from the fact that her intimacy with Hari has “swept aside all family ­modesty” (cau. 21). That, in turn, sets the stage for the moment when the rāṇā—her father, now, and not her father-in-law or husband or brother-in-law, as in other accounts—sets upon her first with poison and then with a sword. He vows to kill her. But on approaching, he has an apparition of Hari, who remains with her in her private quarters, and the rāṇā is terrified by what he sees: the sudarśan cakra, Vishnu’s deadly weapon. More than once he retreats. Here are the concluding stanzas of the tale: So the king caught sight of the Four-Armed One:  one of his hands held the disc they call Fine Vision And his peacock-feather crown shone with such great brilliance  that it seemed to have robbed the moon and sun. The yellow clothes he wore dazzled as if lightning  burst across a dark night, making it glow, And a garland of wildflowers adorned his breast,  spreading its great fragrance throughout the house. Mirabai sang out her love for him  and he made sweet melodies with Murali, his flute.  Cau. 30 Seeing that sight for just a moment,  the king was filled with fear; he recoiled. He looked, but it made no sense to him:  Who but a lover can see love?  

So. 30

So he turned and went back home and started lamenting:  “Here I’ve had a vision of the Lord, But however long I waited for my eyes to adjust,  I couldn’t seem to get the focus right.” After many such laments he went and tried again,  but again Fine Vision struck terror in him. Whenever he tried to cross the threshold, he could not:  Fine Vision held him in its power. He’d turn back, gather up his confidence, and return,  but tell me, who could ward off his fear? 

Cau. 31

Thus the king lamented.  He made his way home and sat down. khelai), and in the penultimate caupaī the expression “open the door” (kholahi kapāṭa) is glossed as referring to “the door of liberation” (mokha duāra).

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John Stratton Hawley and Gurinder Singh Mann He spent the whole night gripped by fear.  He tried to sleep, but no sleep came. 

Do. 31

When it was morning, he took along his wife,  and went to Mirabai with this appeal: “Mirabai, you are extraordinarily wise.  Among those who love the Lord, you are best. There is no distinction between you and Hari,  no difference at all—a seamless whole. Daughter, whatever disrespect we have shown—  be forgiving, a Man-Lion to your saints! Now we no longer regard you as our daughter.  You’re Hari’s servant, and indeed, Hari himself.  

Cau. 32

You’re a forest of sandalwood; we’re just a single tree.  You’re a touchstone; we are just iron. You are the one who worships the Lord  and we—now we worship you.” 

Do. 32

Then Mirabai—wise and accomplished—  approached her mother and father reverently And asked them, please, to let her send them home  while she, drunk with love, sang Hari’s glory. Then she trained on Hari her unbroken gaze,  perceiving him as the Self who exists in every body. Drunk with love, her mind was immersed  in the sight of the Highest Self, wherever she was. Who can find a metaphor for her?  The true metaphor, only Hari knows. 

Cau. 33

Hari and the true and good—they are one.  There’s no hint of difference between them— So fill your eyes with both of them.  See them in your heart.  

Do. 33

4. Beyond the Diffusionist Model In presenting highlights from the Prem Ambodh’s story of Mirabai, we have tried to communicate some of the humor that is so delightfully embedded in the tale, but we hope it will also be clear that the narrator is treading a very fine line. Some members of the audience—or some readers—may have smiled or even laughed, but there is nothing that keeps others from accepting the story straight-faced, as an apt dramatization of the truths of love, devotion, and non-duality. The poetry may not be world-class, but it does succeed in keeping these two options open.

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If we did not know with tolerable certainty that this poetry was created under the sponsorship and probably for the ears of Guru Gobind Singh, it would be possible to imagine other audiences for whom it could have been intended. For example, in seeing how the “historical” Mirabai becomes hypostasized in the opening stanzas, one might think of the eternal, hypostatic Kabir who is featured in the Anurāg Sāgar, a text of uncertain date and origin (eighteenth century?) that may reflect a struggle between Kabirpanthis and Nathyogis and would presumably have been performed in Kabirpanthi circles.42 One could also call to mind the Ghaṭ Rāmāyaṇ of Tulsi Sahib of Hathras, probably composed sometime in the early decades of the nineteenth century. This text obviously features the concept ghaṭ (“body” or the embodied “heart”), a word that also lies behind certain instances of the term “body” that appear in our translation from the Prem Ambodh.43 Tulsi Sahib’s Ghaṭ Rāmāyaṇ proposes to offer a “spiritual” interpretation that supersedes the plain narrative meaning of the Rāmāyaṇa of Tulsidas in a manner that corresponds roughly to the way the Prem Ambodh transforms the Mirabai of Krishna legendry into someone more supernal, more primordial than the romantic heroine we meet in the “Mewari” account. In some ways these are rather distant analogues, but they do suggest performative environments that are more religious than courtly—a Radhasoami satsaṅg, in the case of the Ghaṭ Rāmāyaṇ. Interestingly, the worlds of both Radhasoami and the Kabirpanth do on occasion overlap with that of the Sikhs. Both are Vaishnava in a “vulgate”, not strictly saguṇa way. They articulate a broad, non-sectarian sense of Hari that corresponds to what Sikhs meant when they named the great gurdwara in Amritsar the harimandir.44 In prompting us to consider analogies such as these, the Prem Ambodh causes us to imagine a context for its performance that is considerably different from the temple or bhajan-group settings we have come to associate first and foremost with Mira’s name.45 The Prem Ambodh’s “vulgate Vaishnava” environment might well have supported performers and genres of poetry that could bridge rather easily into the sorts of discourse that would have been deemed appropriate at the court of Guru Gobind Singh. Parts of the narrative would also have been at home in a setting geared to 42 Juergensmeyer 1987: 352–4. 43 Ravidas cau. 29.4, Mirabai cau. 14.1. 44 On “vulgate Vaishnavism” of this sort as we meet it in the oldest manuscript preserving poems of Kabir see Hawley 2005: 285–300. 45 On the latter, see Mukta 1994, or, in a very different milieu, Singer 1971: 90–112.

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the premākhyān genre—in some instances, at least, a Sufi environment— even though there is nothing in the story that seems specifically Islamic.46 One can well imagine some Sufi boilerplate behind the “love” section—the Giridhar section—of the Prem Ambodh’s life of Mirabai, but whoever performed the story as a whole must also have been comfortable in other settings as well. It seems the story of the lecher would have been familiar enough where Vaishnava paracaīs or bhaktamāls were being sung, since that motif could also be associated with other saints than Mirabai.47 Such genres also made their way into the courtly ambience associated with Guru Gobind Singh. In the Dasam Granth, whose oldest manuscripts are contemporary with the Guru’s reign at Anandpur and may well have been produced there, we find a number of compositions that bear a distinctly Vaishnava ring. Among the most celebrated are the nine pads called śabad hazāre, some of which are impossible to extricate from an even more definitely Krishnaite milieu, though recent commentators with a nervous eye on nirguṇa Sikh orthodoxy have tried.48 Then there is the text called Caubīs Avatār (“Twenty-four Avatars”), which is focused more on Krishna than any other.49 The exact identity of the poets who performed such compositions is usually not clear, although a number of names recur—Ram, Syam, and Kal.50 Nor is it yet known in what other courts they might have performed besides that of Guru Gobind Singh. But given the fact that such compositions would have made for “easy listening” in many a court hospitable to Vaishnava poetry, it is hard to imagine that the poets who performed them did not travel beyond Anandpur. The unstable political circumstances of the time may have dictated a fair amount of theological and linguistic ambidexterity, and the broad region in which Brajbhasha and its charac46 Aditya Behl explored such matters in a lecture series entitled entitled Shadows of Paradise: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379–1545 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, especially “The Scent of the Invisible World: Allegory, Rasa, and Ma’ni” (June 15, 2005), pp. 37–41. Also see Behl 2012. 47 For example, we meet it in more than one guise in the story of Sita, the wife of Pipa, who appears both in the paracaīs of Anantadas and in the Bhaktirasabodhinī of Priyadas. See Callewaert in collaboration with Sharma 2000: 157–8, 173–4, 183–91, and Hawley 2005: 60–2, referring to Nābhādās et al., Śrī Bhaktamāl, pp. 503ff. In the Bhaktavijaya of Mahipati, certain features of the Sita story are transferred to the wife of Kabir. See Abbott and Godbole 1982: 11:15–97, pp. 178–85. The genre is reviewed in Smith 2003: 254–6 [pp. 258–60 in original edition]. 48 Hawley 2008, especially the fourth poem, pp. 142, 153–4. 49 Rinehart 2001: 7. 50 Jaggi 1966: 169–72, as cited in Rinehart 2001: 5.

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teristic genres were understood and appreciated would have formed a baseline. Many Brajbhasha compositions are included in the Dasam Granth. Yet the Prem Ambodh’s diction has a distinctly Punjabi ring—words like ghiau (for ghī), ḍhī (daughter), and cānā (a flat utensil) or phrases such as cugalī lāuṇā (to speak ill)51—and this accords with the fact that the Prem Ambodh seems not to have circulated outside the Punjab. We know of no version that was written in a script other than Gurmukhi, and the catalogues of a number of well-known libraries in regions adjacent to the Punjab—in Braj and Rajasthan—fail to show that the Prem Ambodh came into those collections. In this way it seems the Prem Ambodh may have depended upon the Brajbhasha Krishna “canon” without adding to it. Given the present state of our knowledge, at least, it seems that the Prem Ambodh’s version of the life of Mirabai circulated only within the Punjab—and indeed, in Sikh circles specifically. To affirm such a thing is not, however, to reassert the old diffusionist model, with the Punjabi Mirabai appearing at the end of a radius that emanated from western Rajasthan. True, the Prem Ambodh’s portrait of Mirabai carries an aura of far-away Mewar, and the king who figures there carries the Mewari title rāṇā. There is also the western-sounding epithet –bāī, which is particularly prevalent in later parts of the narrative. But there is nothing in the broader pattern of sources for Mirabai to suggest that her story actually originated in Mewar and was gradually “diffused” elsewhere. For all we know, it may have been an imagined Mewar that Mirabai inhabited from the beginning, rather than walking around in a real one. Such imaginings need not have originated in Mewar itself. The universally assumed features of Mirabai’s “Mewari” biography—she comes from Merta, she marries Bhojraj, his evil brother Vikramajit tries to kill her, she departs for Vrindavan and Dwarka—grow progressively more faint the farther back one pushes them in time. Her marriage to Bhojraj of the Sisodiya line is a telling example. It was apparently omitted when her story was told to Colonel James Tod, unless he nodded or simply misheard, for Tod understood her to have been married to Bhojraj’s great-grandfather, Rana Kumbha. Moreover, it is absent from all dynastic registers of the Sisodiya court—no wonder, perhaps, since she was just a woman. Much has been made of the fact that Bhojraj does appear as Mirabai’s husband in Munhata Nainsi’s khyāt, written at Jodhpur in the mid-seventeenth century, but what has not been emphasized is that Nainsi only reports that 51 Osahan discusses these and similar instances (1989: 48–9).

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people say Mirabai was married to Bhojraj.52 In a notable departure from his usual practice, he suggests that we are dealing with popular hearsay. Of course, this was seventeenth-century hearsay—somewhat prior to the Prem Ambodh—but it’s hearsay just the same. It’s circulation. It is tempting to think that the “renegade” aspects of the Prem Ambodh’s depiction of Mirabai place it naturally at the end of a long process of diffusion—both in place and in time, but it is hard to argue for such a view. We must remind ourselves that the Mirabai who is now so familiarly “received” (for instance, by Kumkum Sangari in a purportedly historical article originally published in the Economic and Political Weekly53) was not necessarily assumed in this way at the turn of the eighteenth century, either in the Punjab or elsewhere. For the period with which we are concerned— and arguably for many years afterward—there is no standard Mirabai, no fixed point that would make it possible to chart degrees of separation or routes of diffusion. This is obviously true with respect to her poetry. At present, fewer than twenty-five poems bearing her signature can be located in manuscripts dating to the seventeenth century or earlier, and only in the case of two of those (one being the poem we know from the Kartārpur Pothī) can it be compellingly argued that they were known in the sixteenth century.54 We face a similar situation in relation to her life. Nabhadas’s thickly condensed chappay on Mirabai, the only narrative account we know to have been written before the Prem Ambodh, shows clearly that by the first quarter of the seventeenth century her legend was known in the Ramanandi order of which he was a part, very likely at the Galta monastery near Amber, where Nabhadas may well have lived and which he certainly would have visited.55 But in what it says, it is no closer to the latterly canonical “Mewari” account of which we have spoken than it is to what we read in the Prem Ambodh. Not only does Nabhadas fail to say anything about the family into which Mirabai married, or mention the marriage at all, he even fails to specify that the villains (duṣṭani) who rose against her came from among her in-laws:

21).

52 Bhojarāja saṅgāvata / iṇanuṅ kahe chai mīrāṅbāī rāṭhoḍa paraṇāī hutī (Sākariyā 1960:

53 Sangari 1990: 1464–75, 1537–52. See also Hawley 2005: 329, 396. 54 For details, see Hawley 2005: 99–103. 55 Matters of dating are reviewed in Hawley 2005: 345 note 4. On the text’s provenance and ambience, see Pinch 1999: 367–99.

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Modesty in public, the chains of family life—  Mira shed both for the Lifter of Mountains. Like a latter-day gopī, she showed what love can mean  in our devastated, age-ending age. No inhibitions. Totally fearless.  Her tongue sang the fame of her tasteful Lord. Villains thought it vile. They set out to kill her,  but not a single hair on her head was harmed: The poison she was brought turned elixir in her throat.  She cringed before none. She beat love’s drum. Modesty in public, the chains of family life—  Mira shed both for the Lifter of Mountains.56

If Nabhadas is no closer to the “Mewari” account than to our Punjabi one, what is one to make of the other point of reference that can clearly be said to predate the Prem Ambodh? This is a passage that occurs in poetry attributed to Hariramvyas, to which Heidi Pauwels has drawn our attention. This brief passage is surprisingly hospitable to what we meet in the Prem Ambodh, for Hariramvyas seems to understand Mirabai in relation to the father-daughter relationship, not anything mediated by marriage: Mīrābāī vinu ko bhaktani pitā jāni ura lāvai With Mirabai gone, who will embrace devotees like [a daughter] her  father?57

Pauwels interprets this line as referring to the absence of any improper, erotic component in Mira’s interactions with the men who formed the greater part of her adoptive “family” of Krishna devotees, and this may well be correct. But in light of the father-daughter dimension that emerges so strongly in the Prem Ambodh, one may ask whether this motif may not reveal a somewhat richer frame of reference. The earliest manuscript attestation for the verse in question is 1737 ce, but Pauwels argues plausibly— from the convergence of manuscript recensions, from the apparent absence of updating in the service of sectarian aims, and from content per se—that it can probably be traced to the voice of Hariramvyas himself in the middle or late sixteenth century. Connections between Braj and the Punjab were certainly strong at that point in time; the three Mughal capitals were positioned at Agra, Delhi, and Lahore. One might make the case, then, that the Prem Ambodh’s Mirabai lives out Nabhadas’s expectation that she can only thrive once released from “the chains of family life” (kula śṛṅkhalā). It is 56 Nābhādās 1961: 712–3. 57 Pauwels 2002: 85.

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perfectly possible to conceive that she break these bonds without following the “Mewari” model, that is, without compromising her status as a good daughter. In fact, Hariramvyas’s verse, which sounds so strange from a “Mewari” vantage point, might lead us to expect just this. Surprisingly, then, for all its evident contrast to what we learn from Vrindavan-based Priyadas and from Nainsi’s Jodhpuri “hearsay” and a host of later Rajasthani sources, the Prem Ambodh’s portrait of Mirabai is not actually so aberrant as it seems at first. There is nothing that compels us to believe it lies at the end of a trail of diffusion that began in Mewar or Merta. But this does not mean that the author of the Prem Ambodh took his hearers to be ignorant of other versions of her story. Indeed, quite the contrary. It seems very likely that those who heard the story of Mirabai being performed at the court of Guru Gobind Singh would have appreciated it more fully—would have gotten more of the jokes—if they had been familiar with other tellings of her life. After all, there are some delicious twists here, starting with a Mirabai who refuses to make love to Krishna until he speaks the name of Ram. How could one fully appreciate the humour of such a portrayal without having some familiarity with more serious Krishnaite tellings of the Mirabai story and some of the poems that pertain to it? Perhaps one could say the same about the motif of “breaking the chains of family”. In the Prem Ambodh the scandal is not about Mirabai’s defiance of marital dharma, as it is elsewhere, but rather her insistence upon subordinating marital practice to a higher dharma—having all else follow the uttering of the holy name. Yet that doesn’t mean Mirabai has no interest in sex, as one would surmise from so many other tellings of her life. Perhaps the poet thought such a view would be less appealing to Guru Gobind Singh and his robust Sikh cohort than to certain other clients. A parallel peculiarity is that rather than having Krishna challenge courtly codes of family honor, as devotion to him causes Mira to do in the “Mewari” account and in Nabhadas’s Bhaktamāl, he himself is here cast in the role of a Rajput prince. Not only that, he is given the “open the door” line that elsewhere appears in the mouth of Mirabai’s adversaries. In Priyadas’s account, it is the rāṇā who speaks these words, demanding that Mira reveal who she has been murmuring sweet nothings to. It turns out to be Krishna, in image form.58 Yet in the Prem Ambodh it is not only the enemy who can utter this phrase, but Krishna himself: 58 Nābhādās 1961: 719.

Mirabai at the Court of Guru Gobind Singh Feeling compassion, he went to her door  and stood there, that Non-dual Highest Person. At that point Hari pronounced these words:  “Mirabai, open the door.” 

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To respond fully to any of these ironies, one has to know the story of Mirabai as otherwise told, but that is a fact of circulation, not diffusion. We are not talking here of sedimentation. For the best in listeners’ enjoyment, those other stories would have had to be vividly present in listeners’ minds, not obscured by too great a distance from the source. Along those lines one wonders how other narrators might have responded to the Prem Ambodh’s Mirabai. What did other performers of viṣṇupads make of the Mirabai we meet at the court of Guru Gobind Singh? In many ways, then, the Prem Ambodh invites us to consider a performative environment in which circulation was a key participant. We are accustomed to seeing Mirabai circulate “in life”, that is, in the wanderings that fill so much of her hagiography. In the Bhaktirasabodhinī she meets Jiva Gosvami—or, in later versions, Rupa Gosvami—as we have seen. As her story is told elsewhere she also corresponds with Tulsidas, entertains Akbar and Tansen, seeks out Ravidas, and encounters Sufis like Shahul Hamid, who was to travel far and wide himself, settling in the southern city of Nagore on the coast of the Bay of Bengal.59 But the Prem Ambodh’s Mirabai forces us to see that it is not just Mira who circulates, but the stories about her, as well. It does this even—and indeed, especially—when its own picture of her life is an unusually sedentary one: Its scenes are set in a single, well-established court. As to who, precisely, might have been the agents of this circulation, one can at present only guess. Did these performers understand themselves to be part of a network of singers who performed viṣṇupads specifically60 (the term is mentioned in cau. 20.2), who were kīrtaniyās like Mirabai herself? If so, just how did they circulate, and who recorded their words? When they found themselves in a Sikh court like that of Guru Gobind Singh, did they modify their stash of stories about Mirabai to produce an archetype more friendly to “family values” than they might have projected elsewhere, in almost the same way that poems attributed to Kabir seem to have been censored in favor of householdership before being admitted to the Gurū 59 For this information on Shahul Hamid we are grateful to Vasudha Narayanan, email communication, June 20, 2006. See her “Shared Ritual Spaces: Hindus and Muslims at the Shrine of Shabul Hamid in South India” (Narayanan 1998). 60 For further on this genre (also called bishnupad), see the essay by Francesca Orsini in this volume.

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Granth?61 Did quite a different line of family connections kick in when the courts of Rajasthan served as performance venues, as Heidi Pauwels’s study of Jaimal Mertiyo and the “Rathauri Mira” suggests?62 These are questions that have, as yet, no definitive answers, and they relate to a larger, more general one. Did a given author expect his listeners to have roughly the same knowledge of earlier versions of a poem or story as he did when he reworked them to produce something new? In the case of the Prem Ambodh, with its ironic and humorous overtones, this seems likely. Otherwise the jokes would be lost on his hearers. Of course, you could say, jokes are indeed sometimes lost, and the performer has to plan for that eventuality, too. But in any event, the circulatory model that such a line of questioning presupposes is far more adequate to the task of explaining who Mirabai “was” when she entered the court of Guru Gobind Singh than the Mewar-centered historicist diffusionism that has dominated so much scholarly talk about her. She was not an aberration or a precipitate; she was alive. Bibliography Manuscripts of the Prem Ambodh Pothī, by Date Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Accession 810. vs 1753 (1706 ce). Folios 1–206. Trilochan Singh Bedi, Chandigarh. vs 1807 (1740 ce). Folios 106–300. Punjabi University, Patiala. Accession 115714. vs 1810 (1743 ce) Folios 146–204. Khalsa College, Amritsar. Accession 1737. vs 1840 (1783 ce). Folios 1–168. Punjab University, Chandigarh. Accession 1193. vs 1844 (1787 ce). Folios 1–136. Printed Books and Articles Abbott, Justin E., and Narhar R. Godbole. 1982 [1933–4]. Stories of Indian Saints: Translation of Mahipati’s Marathi Bhaktajijaya. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Banerjea, Jitendra Nath. 1946. “Hindu Iconography, II: Vyūhas and Vibhavas of Viṣṇu.” JISOA 14, pp. 1–74. Barz, Richard. 1976. The Bhakti Sect of Vallabhācārya. Faridabad: Thomson Press. Behl, Aditya. 2012. Love’s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379–1545. New York: Oxford University Press. ____. 2005. “The Scent of the Invisible World: Allegory, Rasa, and Ma’ni.” Lecture delivered at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, June 15, 2005. Callewaert, Winand M., in collaboration with Swapna Sharma. 2000. The Hagiographies of Anantadās: The Bhakti Poets of North India. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. 61 Schomer 1979: 75–86. 62 Pauwels 2011.

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Callewaert, Winand M., and Peter G. Friedlander. 1992. The Life and Works of Raidās. Delhi: Manohar. Deol, Jeevan Singh. 2000. “Sūrdās: Poet and Text in the Sikh Tradition.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 63: 2, pp. 169–93. Eck, Diana L. 1982. Banaras: City of Light. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Friedlander, Peter Gerard. 1991. “The Life and Works of Sant Raidās.” Ph.D. diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Hawley, John Stratton. 1984. Sūr Dās: Poet, Singer, Saint. Seattle: University of Washington Press and Delhi: Oxford University Press. ____. 2005. Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in Their Time and Ours. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ____. 2008. “Shabad Hazare.” Journal of Punjab Studies 15:1–2, pp. 137–59. Hawley, John Stratton, and Gurinder Singh Mann. 2008. “Mirabai in the Pothi Prem Ambodh.” Journal of Punjab Studies 15: 1–2, pp. 199–226. Jaggi, Rattan Singh. 1966. Dasam Granth dā Kartritav. New Delhi: Punjābī Sahit Sabhā. ____. 2005. Sikh Panth: Vishava Kosh, Part 2. Patiala: Gur Rattan Publishers. Jhā, Narendra, ed. 1978. Bhaktamāl: Pāṭhānuśīlan evam Vivecan. Patna: Anupam Prakashan. Juergensmeyer, Mark. 1987. “The Radhasoami Revival of the Sant Tradition.” In Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod, eds. The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India. Berkeley: Berkeley Religious Studies Series and Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 329–55. Mann, Gurinder Singh. 2001. The Making of Sikh Scripture. New York: Oxford University Press. ____. 2008. “Sources for the Study of Guru Gobind Singh’s Life and Times.” Journal of Punjab Studies 15: 1–2, pp. 229–84. Markovits, Claude, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds. 2003. Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950. Delhi: Permanent Black. Martin, Nancy M. 2000. “Mirabai in the Academy and the Politics of Identity.” In Mandakranta Bose, ed. Faces of the Feminine from Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India. New York: Oxford University Press. McLeod, W. H. 1980. The B40 Janam-Sakhi. Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University. Mukta, Parita. 1994. Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mirabai. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nabha, Kahn Singh. 1981. Mahān Koś. Patiala: Bhasha Vibhag. Nābhādās. 1961 [1910]. Śrī Bhaktamāl, with the Bhaktirasabodhinī Commentary of Priyādās, edited by Bhagavān Prasād Rūpakalā. Lucknow: Tejkumar Press. Nagar, Amba Shankar. 1997. “Mīrāṅbāī: Gujarātī Kavayitrī ke Rūp meṅ.” In Nagar, Madhakālīn Hindī Sāhitya: Adhyayan aur Anveṣaṇ. Ahmedabad: Pashcimancal Prakashan, pp. 174–88. Narayanan, Vasudha. 1998. “Shared Ritual Spaces: Hindus and Muslims at the Shrine of Shabul Hamid in South India,” Religious Studies News, February 1998, pp. 15, 30, 41. Osahan, Davindar Singh. 1989. Prem Ambodh Pothī. Patiala: Punjabi University Publication Bureau. Padam, Piara Singh. 1976. Gurū Gobind Singh jī de Darbārī Ratan. Patiala: Qalim Mandir, pp. 179–80. Parīkh, Dvārakādās, ed. 1970 [1948]. Caurāsī Vaiṣṇavan kī Vārtā. Mathura: Shri Bajarang Pustakalay. Pauwels, Heidi R. M. 2002. In Praise of Holy Men: Hagiographic Poems by and about Harirām Vyās. Groningen: Egbert Forsten. ____. 2010. “Rāṭhauṛī Mīrā: Two Neglected Rāṭhauṛ Connections of Mīrā: Jaimal Meṛtiyo and Nāgrīdās.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 14: 2–3, pp. 177–200.

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Pinch, William R. 1999. “History, Devotion, and the Search for Nabhadas of Galta.” In Daud Ali, ed. Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 367–99. Rinehart, Robin. 2001. “The Dasam Granth and Definitions of Sikhism.” Paper delivered at Columbia University, November 17, 2001. Sākariyā, Badarīprasād, ed. 1960. Muṅhatā Nainsī rī Khyāt. Vol. 1. Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracyavidya Pratisthan. Sangari, Kumkum. 1990. “Mirabai and the Spiritual Economy of Bhakti.” Economic and Political Weekly, Special Articles, July 7 and 14, 1990, pp. 1464–75, 1537–52. Schomer, Karine. 1979. “Kabir in the Guru Granth Sahib: An Exploratory Essay.” In Mark Juergensmeyer and N. Gerald Barrier, eds. Sikh Studies: Comparative Perspectives on a Changing Tradition. Berkeley: Berkeley Religious Studies Series, pp. 75–86. Shukla-Bhatt, Neelima. 2006. “Performance as Translation: Mīrā in Gujarat.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 11: 3, pp. 273–98. Singer, Milton. 1971 [1966]. “The Rādhā-Krishna Bhajanas of Madras City.” In Singer, ed., Krishna: Myths, Rites, and Attitudes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 90–138. Smith, William L. 2003 [2000, Stockholm]. Patterns in Indian Hagiography. Guwahati: Srikrishna Prakashan. Taft, Frances. 2002. “The Elusive Historical Mirabai: A Note.” In Lawrence A. Babb, Varsha Joshi, and Michael Meister, eds. Multiple Histories: Culture, and Society in the Study of Rajasthan. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, pp. 313–35. Tulpule, S. G. 1979. Classical Marathi Literature. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. White, David Gordon. 1996. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Shifting Semantics in Early Modern North Indian Poetry: Circulation of Culture and Meaning Thomas de Bruijn The papers in this volume explore convincingly how cultural products and practices in early modern North India cross boundaries between communities and defy being fixed to a single social, cultural, or geographical location. The analysis of these fluid cultural practices and practitioners in this volume aptly illustrate the “circulation of culture” that characterizes this environment. The present essay describes another aspect of this phenomenon, as it focuses on the shifts in the semantic program of literary texts in early modern North Indian vernaculars that coincide with the circulation of this material across different milieus. It proposes a reading that does not frame these changes as a “corruption” introduced by the transmission of the text, but rather as the effect of a mechanism that enables texts to be ported to various cultural contexts without losing their evocative power.1 Through an analysis of a sample of poems attributed to the North Indian poet Kabir, this essay analyzes how these texts accumulated various overlapping meanings as they traveled in a hybrid cultural environment. It builds on earlier research considering the transmission and structure of the corpora of North Indian vernacular textual traditions that brought to light the composite nature of these collections and the many variations in the wording of the poems. By following the development of the meaning of these texts as they traveled through time and cultural space, this essay proposes to extend the notion of circulation beyond the words to the meanings of North Indian poetry from this period. 1. Circulation of Poems Recent research on the major collections of poetry in North Indian vernaculars has demonstrated convincingly that these texts circulated among various milieus and took on new shapes as well as new meanings in the 1  For a critique of the application of Eurocentric notions of textual purity to Indian literary history, see the introduction.

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process. This insight has fundamentally undermined the notion of a stable textual tradition in which philological research can distinguish authentic poems. In many cases, collections of poetry existed as a repertoire for oral performers before they were recorded in manuscripts. One form of circulation was the adoption of the work and the historical persona of the poets by religious movements. This adoption was often constructed by means of hagiographical accounts that made the poet into a religious hero whose life exemplified the movement’s outlook, accompanied by sectarian compilations of his work. In this process many new verses were added in the name of the poet and existing texts were edited to make them fit the sectarian ideology. As a result, it is very hard to define the outlines of the historical figure and the original work of the early modern poets on the basis of these sources. An example of this circulation can be found in the corpus of poetry attributed to Surdas (prob. sixteenth c.). Comparison of various manuscripts of his poetry with the Sūrsāgar—the collection compiled in the Vaishnava milieu of the Vallabhan sect, which was oriented towards devotion to the figure of Krishna—showed that only a limited set of poems can be traced back to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscripts. With­in this earliest layer of sources the poems also show a remarkable ideological diversity, which does not always match the later image of Surdas that was constructed in hagiographical accounts of the Vallabhans (Hawley 1983, 1987; Bryant 1978). The poetry of Kabir is associated with the Sants, a religious movement that focused on devotion to a nameless god and was influenced by ascetic orders such as the Nathyogis. Poems in his name appear in collections of various traditions, such as the Ādi-granth of the Sikhs, the Pāñcvāṇī compilations of religious poetry revered by the Dadupanthi movement in western North India, and the Bījak—the collection compiled by the Kabirpanthi sect, which is based in the northeastern region around Banaras and has taken the poet as its patron saint. The reconstruction of the corpus of authentic Kabir poems has proven to be very difficult. The analysis of the manuscripts in which his poetry is recorded demonstrates that the various collections have only a limited number of poems in common, and that the circulation of this material spurred tremendous variety in the wordings of the texts (Callewaert 2000: 1–19). Just as in the case of Surdas, the early collections in which Kabir

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poems are found contain verses attributed to various poets and probably originate from an orally sung tradition.2 Various attempts have been made to reconstruct Kabir’s life on the basis of hagiographical stories, his poems, and external sources, but only a faint outline of the historical figure can be drawn out of these data.3 One of the elements of his biography that proved most elusive is his spiritual genealogy, especially his association with the influential Shaivite guru Ramanand (probably fifteenth c.). Both the dates of the poet and his presumed teacher are highly uncertain. There is some overlap between the various assumed dates, but this is hardly a solid basis for a connection between the two (Lorenzen 1991: 9–18). The adoption of the poet’s fame by various religious sects has thickened the hagiographic mist surrounding his biography. The lack of a clear outline of the poet’s own creation and his biography has not prevented the ascription of an ideological outlook to his poems, with some differentiation between the various collections in which his work is transmitted. The Dadupanthi collections are seen as colored by the more mellow devotional outlook of this milieu, while sharp rhetoric and criticism directed at religious orthodoxy features particularly strongly in the Kabirpanthi collection (Vaudeville 1974, 1993; Hess 1987a). In more recent receptions, many ideologies have been projected onto the figure of Kabir, starting with the translation by Rabindranath Tagore (1915) that established the image of the poet as a “prophet of unity”. In a different vein, a recent study of the poet by Purushottam Agrawal (2009) emphasizes the individualism that speaks through his poetry, which has some overlap with the rebellious poetic and religious personality found in the translation of poems from the Bījak by Hess and Singh (1983/2002). None of these assumptions about Kabir’s religious or philosophical intent can be propped up by historical evidence that is sufficiently reliable as a base for these kinds of projections. 2. An Alternative Approach The intensive research on the distribution of Kabir poems and on the historical background of the poet has produced valuable information on this tradition, but the insistence on retrieving an authentic core among the 2 An interesting source is the famed Fatehpur manuscript, dated 1582 ce, which features poems by, among others, both Kabir and Surdas (Hawley 1987; Callewaert 2000: 19). 3 See Vaudeville’s description of Kabir (1974: 27–48). She also concludes that much of his biography is shrouded in hagiographical stories with little historical reliability.

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many verses attributed to him, as well as the debate on the dating and the ideological outlook of a “historical Kabir”, has led to a negative characterization of the fluidity and circulation of the texts. This perspective stands in the way of alternative readings of early modern texts that not only take a more positive view of the diffusion of this material, but also see diffusion as central to the poetic enterprise. The polymorphism of the poems can be taken as an indication of their capacity to adapt to a hybrid cultural field instead of as the degradation of a once coherent original. It is evident from the manuscripts that the transmission process of early modern poetry did not value authenticity specifically; there are no indications that there was a preference for poems from earlier, less bloated collections. The numerous additions in sectarian collections suggest that the poems can be reproduced and adapted to new contexts without loss of their evocative power. It can be argued that the spread and diffraction of the poems constitutes a form of evolution that favors characteristics that are not dependent on the authenticity of the texts or the authorial intent of a historical poet. A reading that is based on a positive appreciation of the diffusion focuses on those elements that poems created in the name of a famous saint-poet take along as they move away from their original context. In this view, the use of the name of the poet is not a sign of the authentic creation by a historical figure, but a rhetorical tool that adds transcendent and universal authority to the text as it circulates. It transforms the poet to whom the poems are attributed into a rhetorical persona that can be used to convey a decontextualized and generalized message. This can be transported to other environments that are sensitive to the religious experience evoked in the text. The generalization of the poem’s message does not eradicate the link with an original context, but adds new dimensions to the older connotations. The Sant poets reused material from yogic, tantric, and Buddhist mystical traditions. Bhakti poets who wrote for a Vaishnava audience used scenes from the life of Krishna drawn from the puranic traditions in Sanskrit as well as their vernacular adaptations. Representing well-known material in a new manner induces a startling effect that awakens the religious or mystical vision in the reader.4 The poems analyzed below suggest that this rhetorical strategy continued to be a productive tool as texts circulated. The generalization of the original images startles the reader into 4 A similar effect and rhetorical strategy has been described for poetry attributed to Surdas by Bryant (1978).

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forgetting the textual sign, which was conducive to unmediated perception of the divine. This mechanism depends on the circulation of poems in a space in which the persona of a saintly poet is accessible to various audiences and has a distinctive voice in each context. In the reading proposed here, the authorial intent of a historical poet is less relevant. It may have inspired a lineage of poetry, but as the texts evolve in circulation, the rhetorical persona “writes” the poem rather than a particular individual author. Similarly, the generalization of contextual images reduces the narrative function of the poems. The audience knows the image and the poem becomes a symbolic representation of a religious insight, sanctioned by the use of the name of a famous poet. The emphasis on the historicity of the text and its author in earlier interpretations of the poetry of Kabir and other poets is informed by a concept of authorship based on individual expression as the main motive for artistic creation. Pursuing this concept in the early modern North Indian context conflicts with the evidence that the transmission and valorization of texts occurred through multiple agencies, which each had their own particular interests. An interpretation that follows the perceived “value” of the insight expressed in the text as the motive for its transmission and reappropriation is better able to understand the pattern of distribution and re-creation of poetry from this environment. It appears that the charisma and prestige of the famous name, instead of the individual expression of the original author, provided the incentive to invest in collecting his poems and adding new ones in his name. The genre provided a cultural space for this form of valorization, which was accessible to all actors who had an interest in the extension and development of a corpus of poetry. These characteristics provide a framework for reading poetry in a manner that is consistent with their function in a cultural field in which texts and authors circulate and where meanings evolve without a predefined destination. 3. Links with Other Contexts When one looks at the broader context of early modern vernacular poetry, a parallel to the mechanisms described here can be found in the works of Indian Sufi poets such Maulana Daud (fl. 1379), Muhammad Jayasi (fl. 1540), Manjhan (fl. 1545) and Qutban (fl. 1503). Their mystical romances incorporate material from a wide range of sources, especially Sant and Nathyogi

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poetry, tailoring it to the semantics of Sufi mystical doctrine. This goes further than a mere translation of the terminology of Nathyogi theories; it constitutes a recontextualization of the Sufi paradigm in the Indian milieu, drawing familiar material into the thematic realm of the mystical ro­mances.5 The Sufi texts have a different literary background from Sant poetry, as they build on elements from the Persian tradition of the mas̱navī as well as on Indian traditions such as the epics by Jain poets writing in Apa­ bhramsha. The epic format of the romances and the fact that they were transmitted more as complete texts and complex narratives, instead of as single poems (as in the case of Kabir), gives this genre its own characteristics. The Sufi works share with the poems discussed here the rhetorical perspective that the text is instrumental in representing a vision, albeit on a much larger canvas, and that in its frame images and meanings can be displaced and recontextualized. The point of origin for the Sufi poets is the teaching they received from their pīrs, which is ultimately a manifestation of the Prophet’s divine inspiration. In the prologues to the romances, the poets describe the sacred nature of language and the poet’s role as mediator of a vision.6 The texts themselves create a thematic framework where all the elements from Indian and Persian sources come together to express the nature of mystical love. Here, again, decontextualization—the use of literary material outside its original context, adapting it to a new thematic program—is at the forefront. Sufi poets writing in Indian languages combine bārahmāsā, viraha poems, the nakh-śikh descriptions from art poetry, and many other themes from popular and more literary sources. The poet shows them in a new light to surprise the reader, an aesthetic approach comparable to that of Kabir and Surdas p ­­ oems. The similarity between the processes that shaped the strophic poetry by Sant and bhakti poets and the aesthetics of Sufi narratives in Indian languages is more complex than can be outlined here. Clearly a penchant for generalization, the relocation of literary material, and an emphasis on the vision rather than the historical figure of the poet who was its receptacle were productive in several domains of the early modern environment. 5 See the introduction to the translation by Aditya Behl and Simon Weightmann of Manjhan’s Madhumālatī (2000: xi-xlvi). 6 Note the powerful descriptions of the poetic vision and the inspiration of the poet in Padmāvat, stanza 18, Madhumālatī 17 and 24–6, and Cāndāyan 9.

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4. Four Kabir Poems The observations made above will be tested out in the following, by applying them in a close reading of four poems attributed to Kabir. The selection represents several, but not all, of the major types of texts in the Kabir collections. Two poems are taken from the Kabirpanthi sectarian collection known as the Bījak (lit. “seed”);7 the other two are found in Dadupanthi anthologies. The first three poems can all be traced to an early manuscript of a Pāñcvāṇī (“Sayings of the Five”) texts dated to 1614 ce, in which poems attributed to Dadu, Kabir, Namdev, Raidas, and Hardas (who were revered as saints by the Dadupanthi sect) are contained. The manuscript is most probably based not on a written original, but on repertoires of oral singers (Callewaert 2000: 11–2). The circulation of the selected poems can be traced in other sources of Kabir poetry. The variants given in the edition by Callewaert demonstrate the degree of differentiation in the wording of the texts that is apparent in later manuscripts. The reading of the first three poems is based on the text as recorded in the Pāñcvāṇī manuscript of 1614 ce; the fourth poem occurs only in the Bījak. The first poem is among the few that occur both in the Bījak and in the Dadupanthi collections. This poem presents a well-known scene from the legendary biographies of Kabir. When the poet-saint feels his end is near, he asks his pupils to bring him from Banaras to Magahar, a place that has a bad reputation, where no one wants to live let alone die. His pupils protest, warning him about the belief that those who die in inauspicious Magahar are reborn as donkeys and do not obtain the salvation that a death in Banaras brings. In the poem, the saint has the final say and reveals to his audience the deeper truth behind his wish to die in Magahar instead of holy Banaras. Logā tumahīṃ mati ke bhorā / Jyoṃ pānī pānī mili gayaū tyoṃ dhuri mile kabīra // Jo maithila ko sācā byāsa tora marana magahara pāsa // Magahara marai marana nahīm pāvai antau marai to rāma le jāvai // Magahara marai so gadahā hoya bhala paratīta rāma se ṣoya // Kyā kāsī kyā magahara ūsara jo pai hṛdaya rāma basa mora // Jo kāsī tana tajai kabīra to rāmahi kahu kauna nihora //8

7 For a description of the Bījak and the Kabirpanthi tradition, see Hess and Singh 1983/2002. 8 Bījak, śabda 103; no. 486 in Callewaert’s “The Millennium Kabīr-vāṇī” (2000: 591). It is not found in the Fatehpur ms.

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Thomas de Bruijn Folks, don’t you get it? Just as water will mix with water, Kabir will eventually go to dust. When Mithila is your real hometown, will your death be in Magahar? If one dies in Magahar, one does not really die; if you die somewhere else, Ram will take you away. If one dies in Magahar, one will become a donkey; have you lost your faith in Ram? What is this Kasi, what is this Magahar, this dry land, when Ram lives in my heart? When Kabir dies in Kasi, what good would it do Ram?

The poem presents an imagined conversation between Kabir and his pupils that concludes in a lesson by the saint. The conversation is framed in a manner that is typical of Kabir verses. The poem starts with a direct and powerful address to the reader in the refrain, the ṭek, which is repeated after each line in recitation or singing. The direct rhetorical voice in the concluding verse drives home the poem’s message.9 In between these two instances in which the reader is addressed directly, the narration of the conversation with the pupils is inserted in direct speech. Neither the speakers nor the context are specified. The conversation with the pupils is occasioned by, but not entirely determined by, the scene from the hagiographic biography of the poet. The address to the audience uses a more general didactic perspective and seems to comment on rather than narrate the conversation. The hagiographic topos provides a cue for pointing out the notion that, when Ram resides in one’s heart, worldly categories and prejudices do not matter anymore: “What good would it do Ram?’ Framing the presentation of this message in the context of the dispute with the pupils over the place of Kabir’s death places the reader (or listener) in the position of the dim-witted pupils. It is presumed that he/she will likely prefer Banaras over Magahar, in line with the common belief. This framing juxtaposes two world-views—one that is based on what people say and believe (usually erroneously), the other coming from an insight into the “real” state of things.10 9 On the rhetoric of Kabir’s poetry, see Hess 1987b and Vaudeville 1974, 1993. 10 Accounts in the biographies of Kabir on his own death vary quite a bit. The identification of the town of Magahar is not completely certain. David Lorenzen, in his study of the Kabirpanthi biographies of the poet, mentions alternative identifications, one of which links Magahar to a town on the bank of the Ganges, opposite to Banaras (1991: 40–2). This suggests that even from a devotional perspective, the evocative impact of the parable was not determined by its factual exactness.

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Obviously, the poem could probably never have been written by the poet himself because he is on the brink of death. It narrates the events of his last days from a perspective that is external to the scene itself, as an example of a didactic insight. This distancing constitutes a decontextualization of the scene that originates in Kabir legends as they were produced in the Kabirpanthi sect. Instead of focusing on the physicality of his death and its hagiographical import, the poem emphasizes the transcendent nature of the vision expressed in the scene. The generalization of the poem’s meaning enhances its rhetorical impact. It forces the reader or listener to realize in him- or herself a narrowmindedness similar to that of the saint’s pupils, even when he or she hears the story only from a distance. The dialogue with the pupils is reduced to a few lines, but for an acculturated audience this was more than enough to grasp the context of the scene and the connotations it carries. Thus, the reader’s attention is focused on what the events mean rather than on what happened. Through this generalization, the scene can also produce meaning in other contexts, such as in communities of Sufis or Sikhs who similarly emphasized independent religious experience and distrusted religious orthodoxy. The fact that this poem, with its clever rhetorical framing, is found in early manuscripts suggests that, at the moment it was integrated into the corpus of Kabir verses, it had already evolved from a predominantly hagiographical mode to a didactic register in which the scene from the saint’s life becomes a more general icon of his visionary power. The original connotation was still accessible but the more general stance is already fully deployed in the representation of the scene. The poem uses powerful religious images that also have meaning outside the context of devotion to the figure of Kabir, which can be assumed as the original cultural location of the parable. In the refrain, the images of water mixing with water and of Kabir’s body turning to dust resonate with notions from Islamic piety and mysticism, such as the call to relinquish vanity, as everything will turn to dust.11 The final lines continue this address with the exhortation to trust in a Ram within and not to give in to a display of outward piety, which a death in Banaras would imply. The biographical account of a saint’s death, which characterizes the original tone and setting of this poem, is a common element in hagiographic records as they may have been present in the Kabirpanthi context. 11 Qurʾan 22:5: “(Consider) that We created you out of dust,” and 76:2: “Verily, We created the human from a drop of a liquid mixture in order to try him. Thus We made him a

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At the moment the Sant movement developed, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was already an established tradition of taẕkiras, biographies of Muslim saints, which played an important role in shaping the religious persona of famous Indian Sufis. The taẕkiras intended to record the development of Sufi lineages and mixed hagiography with a genuine historical interest. They were an important model for descriptions of scenes from the lives of other Indian saints, such as the accounts of the life of Guru Nanak composed in a Sikh environment.12 The hagiographic frame was therefore a space shared between various communities: Kabirpanthis, the Sants and their followers, Indian Muslims, and other religious movements. The popularity of the polyvalent trope of a saint’s death may well have added to its potential for being decontextualized and for its circulation beyond the banks of the Ganges. A feature that coincides with the generalization demonstrated earlier is the undertone of scepticism towards the wisdom of religious teachers. This concept is a standard item in Sant ideology and is expressed in the poem by the exhortation to disregard the orthodox belief in the religious status of Banaras, and to trust instead the Ram within. The sense of subversion is enhanced by putting the message of individual responsibility and the rejection of religious authorities into the mouth of the famous saint Kabir. It is as if the poem hints at a higher, but unsettling truth: Listening to any moral message—even when uttered by Kabir—is a distraction from the belief in God within, the only true path to salvation. This “subversive” semantic level is represented by the voice of the narrator, who is not Kabir himself, but a mediator who relates the scene close to the death of the poet from an external perspective. From his point of view, the words themselves become less important than the message they convey and lose their referential quality, attaining the ultimate degree of semantic generalization and opening up the poem to recontextualization in many different ways. hearer and a seer.” See also 21:30, and 24:45. In Islamic mystical poetry, the image of returning to dust is ubiquitous. It inspires many images, such as in a ghazal by Hafiz.



‫م �ع� ت � ن � ا � ن � ن‬ �‫���ه�ا � خ�را ب‬ ‫ب�ـ�هآ ی م�ا ر � د ل ک�� ک�ه ی� ج‬ ‫�ز‬ ‫� � ن ��س ا ����س� ت ک �ز‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ش‬ ������� ‫��ه ا خ��اک �م�ا ب���س�ا د‬ � ‫بر � ر‬

“With wine (of divine love) make (prosperous) the fabric of the heart. For this evil world is bent on that it may make a brick of our dust (in the grave).” No. 60, line 4 in the translation by H. Wilberforce Clark (1891: 149). 12 See Lawrence 1987: 359–74. For a description of the miraculous and hagiographic nature of the traditions of janamsākhīs, hagiographical accounts of the life of Nanak, see McLeod 1968.

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The new, generalized meaning of the poem is added to the more conventional connotations of the scene of Kabir’s death in a devotional context such as that of the Kabirpanthi sect. It does not impose a new monologic meaning, but adds another dimension that enhances the existing semantic scope of the poem. The older connotations remain accessible and contribute to producing a new perspective. Readings that tune in to the scepticism of the saint-poet may have been informed by the idiom and rhetoric of Islamic mystical poetry in the Indian vernaculars or in Persian. A reading that does not dispute the authority of Kabir’s words is more likely to have prevailed in a milieu in which the saint’s miraculous powers made him the unquestioned object of worship, such as that of the Kabirpanthi sect. The capacity to “stack” different semantic layers can be seen as an adaptation to the hybridity of the cultural field in which this poem circulated. A reading that emphasizes the polyphony of the poem that plays with the image of the death of Kabir instead of searching for a single restricted meaning is less anxious to attribute it to an individual, historical poet. Blending localized and decontextualized voices is a part of the expressive potential of the genre, which can be tapped into by various individual poets in the tradition. The use of the pen name of a famous poet legitimizes the vision that is deployed in the poem but is no claim to authenticity. The corpus of lyrical poems (pads) attributed to Kabir demonstrates a great variety in the types of texts and the intertextual backgrounds to which they refer. A common type is the didactic poem that directly addresses the audience to drive home a doctrinal message. A recurrent theme in such poems is the hypocrisy of outward piety, mostly associated with brahmans, mullahs, and other orthodox religious authorities. The next poem juxtaposes a trope from Sant rhetoric with images that generalize the doctrinal message and endow it with a wider significance than that of a scholastic sermon. Kyā hoi terā re nhāṃye dhoyeṃ / ātama rāma na cīnhauṃ soī // Kā ghaṭa upari maṃjaṃna kīyeṃ / bhītari maila apārā // Rāṃma nāṃma bina naraka na chūṭai / jo dhovai sauṃ bārā // Kā naṭa bheṣa bhagavāṃ bastara / bhasama lagāvai loī / Jyūṃ dādura surasurī bhītari bhītari / hari bina mukati na hoī // Prahari kāma rāṃma kahi baure / suni siṣa bandhu merī / Hari kau nāūṃ abhai pada dātā / kahai kabīrau korī //13

13 No. 432 in the edition by Callewaert (2000: 538).

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Thomas de Bruijn Why do you do all this bathing and washing, when your soul has not recognized that Ram? Why do you keep scrubbing the outside of the body, when the dirt inside is endless? Without the name of Ram, there is no escape from Hell, even if you bathe one hundred times. Why do you dress like an actor in the robes of the saints, adorning yourself with ashes? You are like frogs immersed in the waters of the Ganges; without Hari, there will be no liberation. Fool, conquer sensual love and say the name of Ram; heed my lesson, friend. The name of Hari gives you a place without fear, says the weaver Kabir.

The poem is built on the Sant poet’s critique of the display of piety by brahmans and ascetics. Here, the poet’s scorn is directed at the yogi who bathes and covers his body with ashes, but thereby only fulfils the outward obligations of his faith. This will not gain him liberation, as that can only be obtained by inner reflection on the name of Ram without paying attention to the outer paraphernalia of sainthood. The motif of the scorn of outward piety in Sant poetry goes back to the roots of the genre in the verses of Nathyogi teachers, as can be found in early collections such as the Gorakhbānī (lit. “Sayings of Gorakh”).14 Nathyogi poetry inspired many genres of vernacular poetry by bhakti, Sant, and Sufi poets, especially through the images that depict and represent their religious concepts. The spread of this idiom to many genres of early modern poetry, as well as its capacity to take on new meanings outside of the original context, is a good example of the semantic fluidity of the traditions described in this essay. In this poem, the critique of brahmanical hypocrisy is intensified by comparing the ritual bathing and covering with ashes to the sensual cultivation of the body. The ascetic who puts on his garb is likened to an actor (naṭa) who dresses up for a performance. The exhortation in the last line, in which the name of the poet is also inserted, is to let go of sensual love and find freedom from fear in true devotion. This address reflects back on the image of the actor; the use of the term kām (“sensual love”) seems to refer to his world of artful poetry or drama, in which there are only staged emotions. In a manner that is comparable to the first cited text, the central dogmatic trope of the poem (“Why do you do all this bathing and washing, 14 See Barthval’s edition of the Gorakhbānī (1942).

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when your soul has not recognized that Ram?”) is decontextualized by relating it to images that can also function in other contexts. For an audience attuned to Sufi mysticism, the image of the ascetic and his attire can be easily related to the emphasis on inner piety instead of on the outward performance of religious rituals such as the daily prayers. This was an important theme for Indian Sufis whose mystical and devotional practices challenged Islamic orthodoxy. The comparison of the ignorance of the orthodox believer with the frogs in the Ganges who will never gain liberation is a powerful image which also found its way into Indian Sufi poetry, as in the concluding verse of stanza 24 in Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmāvat (1540 ce): bhaṃvara āi banakhaṇḍa huti lehi kaṃvala kai bāsa / dādura bāsa na pāvahiṃ bhalehiṃ jo āchahiṃ pāsa // The bee comes from the forest to grasp the fragrance of the lotus; the frogs will never get it, even though they sit next [to the flower].

An interesting feature is the use of the word “korī” in the last line, which has a stack of meanings in the context of this poem as it means “simple”, “pure”, and “weaver”. All meanings converge in the notion that Kabir is the simple weaver as well as the advocate of pure religion. The use of this polyphonic term condenses the poem to an utterance of a humble craftsman with the right vision. The original topos of the yogi’s critique of the ascetic’s piety provides a cue for this revelation. As in the preceding poem, the last line subverts the authority of the text itself: He who perceives the message does not need the words of the poem. In the next poem, we see the same phenomena as described above, but here the generalization of a poetical trope with a specific cultural background is taken to another level. The idiom used in this poem is rooted in the notion of viraha, the longing in separation, of a young bride whose husband has gone away to work as a hired laborer, a traveling merchant or a mercenary in a warlord’s army. The marriage was not consummated before he left, which leaves the young woman in double anguish, torn between erotic desires and the fear that, if her husband does not come back, she will have to live on as a widow in the home of her in-laws. There, she will be scolded for being just another mouth to feed, unprotected by a son or the honor of a married woman.

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Thomas de Bruijn Vālhā āva hamārai greha re / tumha bina15 duṣyayā deha re // Saba ko kahai tumhārī nārī / mokū ihai aṃdeha re / Aikamaika hvai seja na sūvai / taba laga kaisā neha re // anaṃ na bhāvai nīda na āvai / grihaṃ bina dhare na dhīra re / jyūṃ kāṃmī nai kāma piyārau / jyūṃ pyāse kūṃ nīre re // hai koī aiṃsā upagārī / hari syūṃ kahai sunāṃi re / aisai hvāla kabīra bhaye haiṃ / bina deṣyeṃ jīva jāi re //16 Lord, come to my house, without you my heart aches. Everyone says I am your wife, but I am anxious about that. As long as we do not sleep together, what kind of love is this? I do not crave food or sleep, without you I cannot find rest at home. A love-seeker craves love as one who is thirsty longs for water. Is there someone who can do me a favor by telling Hari: “Hey, Kabir has reached such a state that he will die if he does not see you.”

The woman pines away and asks a messenger to send word of her longing to her husband to make him return. The request to the messenger is ubiquitous in Indian literature, both in classical Sanskrit, as in Kalidasa’s Meghadūta, as well as in numerous vernacular epics and romances, where birds often play the role of mediators.17 In many cases, viraha poems consist only of the inner monologue of the protagonist describing her suffering. The cited poem is put into the mouth of the young bride. Only in the last line, the reader is made aware that this viraha song is not the monologic plaint of a woman but a devotional poem with additional semantic dimensions. When the husband is identified as Hari and the woman as Kabir, the poet can no longer hide behind the mask of the viraha trope and must reveal himself, which he does in the last line. The unveiling prompts a second reading of the poem that reveals the double meaning of the text. The images lose their contextual conventionality and the anguished longing of the woman becomes a more generalized testimony of the soul’s yearning for reunion with god. In the second reading, the signature in the last line takes on a more literal significance as the poet becomes the young bride, and thus the narrator of the poem. The use of direct speech reinforces the rhetorical impact of the images. The two semantic layers that are revealed interact and reinforce each other, converging in a synthesis of the rustic emotionality of the viraha 15 Most other older manuscripts have “bana” instead of “bina”, which makes good sense: “Neither in the house or outside can I find rest” (cf. Callewaert 2000: 461). 16 No. 357 in the “The Millennium Kabīr-vāṇī”, see Callewaert (ibid.). 17 Cf. the prominent role of messenger birds in Jayasi’s Padmāvat.

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song with the metaphysical insight of the mystical poem. The unveiling of the narrator’s identity at the end provides a key to the synthesis and sets in motion its unlocking. The second layer emphasizes the mystical aspect of the poem, suggesting that the words of the poem hint at a reality that is beyond the one referred to in the text. Sensitivity to the conventions of viraha poetry as well as to mystical symbolism is required to fully appreciate the generalization of the trope of the lonely, newlywed bride into a religious epiphany. Indian Sufi poets often used the trope of love in separation intensively in their romances and in strophic poetry. The most moving pieces from the Sufi mystical romances, such as Daud’s Cāndāyan, Jayasi’s Padmāvat, and Manjhan’s Madhumālatī, are the bārahmāsā episodes, which depict the virahiṇ­ī’s longing against the background of the four seasons. These passages fully exploit the mystical connotation of the character’s emotions.18 The last poem to be discussed is a ramainī, a typical meter found in Kabir collections. The poem is part of the Bījak, the collection compiled and revered by the Kabirpanthi sect. It is not found in the earliest manuscripts of the western recension of Kabir poetry that was compiled in the Dadupanthi milieu, which means that it must have been created by a later (sectarian) author who used the models handed down to him in the genre. Like the previous poem, this text uses the motif of viraha from folk and classical poetry, but frames it in a completely different manner. On first reading, the poem appears to depict a scene that evokes the usual emotional mood of longing associated with viraha. The difference is that the image is not used in a literal sense but merely as a symbol for religious concepts from Sant teachings. Unahī badariyā pari gai sāṃjhā aguvā bhūlā bana khaṃda māmjhā // Piyā anate dhanī anate rahaī cauparī kāmarī māthe gahaī // phulavā bhāra na lai sakai kahai sakhina so roe / jyoṃ jyoṃ bhijai kāmarī tyoṃ tyoṃ bhārī hoe //19 The clouds gather, the evening has fallen; the guide has lost his way in the forest. The lover is in one place, the woman in an other; she has taken a fourfold cover. She cannot bear the weight of a flower, she says, crying to her friends. The more the blanket is drenched by her tears, the heavier it gets. 18 See Cāndāyan 343–54, Padmāvat 341–56, Madhumālatī 401–14. 19 Bījak ramainī 15 (Callewaert 1991: 375).

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The literal meaning of the poem is completely overshadowed by its doctrinal symbolism. The use of poetry to encode religious concepts is a wellknown rhetorical tool in Sant poetry. Its origins lie in tantric texts that convey esoteric concepts by means of symbolic representations rather than by explanations, a practice called sandhyābhāṣā (lit. “twilight language”). It came to Sant poetry through early Nathyogi poetry.20 The use of riddle verses in which the doctrinal meaning is encoded in seemingly paradoxical images constitutes a form of sandhyābhāṣā (shadow-language). This style is also called ulaṭvāṃsī and is prominent in many poems attributed to Kabir.21 In this poem, the images do not present a paradox or riddle. The symbolism is direct: The separated woman stands for the soul which has lost touch with the divine in this world (the lover). The longing in separation stands for the mystic’s quest to regain knowledge of God. The soul has lost its way because there is no guide in this world who is not himself lost and therefore useless. The woman who tries to cover herself stands for the ignorant believer who tries to cling to false certainties. The “fourfold” blanket may well refer to the four Vedas, a source of authority for orthodox Hindus but to no purpose here. The tears are the worldly attachments that weigh down the useless cover and crush her tender body, which cannot even bear the weight of a flower.22 The poem is not signed by the poet in the last line, setting it apart from the other examples. As the poem was part of the Bījak collection, the chāp or signature was most probably deemed not necessary to identify it as a Kabir poem for readers in a Kabirpanthi environment, who were familiar with its particular didactic mode. The didactic use of symbolic imagery from Nathyogi poetry by the Sant poets already constitutes a generalization of the purely technical meaning of this idiom in its original context of the tantric teachings by Nath preachers. The Sant poets developed this idiom further by relating the powerful and evocative images to their own spiritual vision, another instance of the process of layering new significations in other contexts. The poetic idiom of viraha that is at the basis of the images in the poem cited above was also widely used in Sufi environments as a carrier of mystical meaning, as noted. The concept of sandhyābhāṣā that is central to the 20  See also the article by Catharina Kiehnle in this volume for an explanation of this concept. 21 See Hess 1987b: 152–3 and Appendix A of Hess and Singh 1983/2002. 22 This interpretation is given by Charlotte Vaudeville in her French translation of the verse (1959: 85).

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semantics of this poem may well be connected with that of the “hidden” meaning of sacred texts, which was well-known in Islamic mysticism. These correspondences will have made the recontextualization of the didactic modes from Nath poetry across cultural boundaries easier for poets of various persuasions. Moreover, both in Sufi and Sant contexts, the notion of a hidden meaning emphasizes the role of the poet as knower and revealer of secrets.23 5. Context These approaches to reading a selection of Kabir poems show how material from a range of different backgrounds is framed in such a manner that contextual elements develop into a more generalized representation of mystical insight, which widens the semantic scope of the texts and facilitates their circulation in a wider context. The generalization of literary material can be seen as a mechanism that is built into the genre and is not dependent on the individual authorship of a historical poet. Within the corpus of early modern poetry, there are no traces of conscious reflection on the poetical principles that explain or prescribe the hermeneutic notions outlined above. The concept of generalization is to some extent comparable with the notion of sādharaṇīkaraṇa in aesthetic theories based on the notion of rasa, where it connotes the highest attainable level of generalization of the representation of a certain emotion. Sādharaṇīkaraṇa marks the pinnacle of aesthetic apprehension, when a work evokes in the rasika, the “connoisseur” who is sensitive to the different levels of artistic purity, a sublime perception of the emotion in its purest form. This paradigm was translated to the realm of religious experience by the eleventh-century philosopher and rhetorician Abhinavagupta, who equated the relishing of art at the highest level of abstraction with mystical experience. Abhinavagupta added the notion of śāntarasa to the existing vocabulary of poetic theory to indicate the emotion in which the heights of aesthetic and religious experience converge.24 The framework of śāntarasa devised by Abhinavagupta has been very productive in Vaishnava theology, where it connects the aesthetics of 23 See Jayasi’s Padmāvat stanzas 8 and 9, in which the omnipresence and omnipotence of God are described in paradoxical terms, which comes close to the ulaṭvāṃsī in Kabir poems. 24 See Gnoli 1968.

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secular art poetry with depictions of scenes from the life of Krishna and his consort Radha with religious inspiration.25 The aesthetic program associated with saguṇa Vaishnava theology has inspired a number of early modern texts.26 There is ample evidence of communication between the milieu of saguṇa bhakti and the nirguṇa movements such as the Sants, which focused on the divine as an abstract phenomenon. Sant ideologies are present in the vinaya poems in the collections of Surdas’s poetry and have been adopted along with the saguṇa repertoire by the Vaishnava Vallabhan sect (Hawley 1987: 191–211). Nevertheless, the semantic generalization that is apparent in the poems discussed here cannot be characterized as an implementation of the poetic prescriptions connected with Abhinavagupta’s framework of śāntarasa. The transcendent vision of the poet that defines the structure of these texts can be illustrated by means of images that evoke the Vaishnava discourse or even the notion of śāntarasa, but only as one of the many images that are used and transformed in this poetry.27 The immediacy of the vision that is at the heart of the rhetorical program of the Sant poems is at odds with the scholastic, brahmanical origin of a concept such as śāntarasa. As has been shown above, the orientation of the poems is towards circulation in a wider milieu that recognizes the individual mystical experience rather than being stationary within the confines of sectarian theology. 6. False Idealization of Syncretism The tendency towards a generalized mystical awareness that can cross the boundaries between cultural communities and traditions can easily be misconceived as an intent by the poet to bridge the differences between Hinduism and Islam. Popular translations, such as the One Hundred Poems of Kabīr (1915) by Rabindranath Tagore, have been influential in creating 25 Such as in Vallabha’s commentary on the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (Redington 1983). 26 The most well-known is Keshavdas’s (c. 1555–1617) Rasikapriyā; other examples are the Rasamañjari of Nanddas (c. 1570) and the Hitataraṅginī of Kṛpārām (1541?). 27  The examples presented here of the various transformations of the semantics of a Kabir verse brings to mind Appadurai’s concept of “scapes”, which describes the redefinition of identities in new context as a result of globalization or similar transformations. The present study of Kabir’s poetry supports the notion that phenomena from early modern India have a rapport with the topics discussed in postmodern cultural studies, as expressed in the introduction of this volume.

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the image of the Oriental mystic as a “prophet of unity”. Most of these interpretations reflect a Western preoccupation with universal religion and the anxiety over the growing polarization between South Asia’s religious communities. Against this background, the early modern traditions were often idealized for their apparently benign syncretism (de Bruijn 2010). The decontextualization described here is not connected to the idealist perspective on the hybridity of early modern cultural traditions that has inspired many interpretations of Indian texts from this era.28 The relocation of cultural references and the emphasis on shared semantics and experiences witnessed in the poems of Kabir are instrumental to their circulation in a field where the boundaries between communities were fluid and where culture was being transmitted and valorized in a dialogic exchange. It was not intended to bridge the differences between religions. 7. Conclusion On the microcosmic scale of four poems attributed to Kabir, the present essay proposes a theoretical model that connects the circulation of early modern literature with the cultural hybridity of its environment. In doing so, it attempts to convey notions that are also relevant to the larger context of the circulation of culture in early modern North India, especially as it critiques the notion that the meaning or value of texts would have degraded in circulation. Decontextualization and generalization have positively shaped early Sant, bhakti, and Sufi poetry, and thus created a poetic idiom that remained productive as genres and styles traveled over ever larger social and cultural realms. In the present volume, the essay by Jack Hawley and Gurinder Singh Mann on the circulation of the literary presence of Mirabai provides a parallel in the Sikh tradition, where the local image of the Rajput princesspoet developed into a more general emblem of mystical love, merging with notions that resonate with Sufi mysticism and popular Islamic devotion. On the other side of the spectrum, Francesca Orsini’s analysis of the imagery of Krishna bhakti in the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī shows a radical form of decontextualization, in which the original connotation of a literary image is completely replaced by a new meaning apparently without leaving any 28  See also the remarks on hybridity in the introduction.

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common ground between the old and the new. Parallels to the concepts described in this essay can also be found in the contributions by Thibaut d’Hubert and Robert van de Walle who describe the restyling of existing genres that coincide with a move to new environments. In this learned company, the present discussion provides a new perspective on the mechanisms of distribution of early modern poetry, and shed light on the creative process that produced these uniquely evocative poems. Bibliography Agrawal, Purushottam. 2009. Akath kahāni prem kī. Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan. Agraval, V. S., ed. 1961. Padmāvat, Malik Muhammad kṛta mahākāvya (mūl aur sañjīvanī vyākhyā). Ciragamv: Sahitya Sadan. Barthval, Pitambara Datta. 1942. Gorakhbānī. Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. Behl, Aditya and Simon Weightman. 2000. Madhumālatī: A Sufi Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Bruijn, Thomas 2010. “Lost Voices: The Creation of Images of India through Translation.” In Maya Burger and Nicola Pozza, eds. Conference volume of the seminar “Translating India: The Construction of Cultural India through Translating Hindi Literature,” Lausanne, 2009. Bryant, Kenneth. 1978. Poems to the Child-God: Structures and Strategies in the Poetry of Sūrdās. Berkeley: University of California. Callewaert, Winand M. 2000. The Millennium Kabīr Vāṇī: A Collection of Pad-s. In collaboration with Swapna Sharma and Dieter Taillieu. New Delhi: Manohar. ____. 1991. Devotional Hindī literature: A Critical Edition of the Pañc-vāṇī or Five Works of Dādū, Kabīr, Nāmdev, Raidās, Hardās, with the Hindī songs of Gorakhnāth and Sundardās, and a complete word-index. Winand M. Callewaert and Bart Op de Beeck, eds. New Delhi: Manohar. Dāūd Maulānā. 1967. Cāndāyan: Dāūd-viracit pratham hindī sūphī-kāvya. Mātāprasād Gupta, ed. Pramanik Prakashan. Dvivedi, Hazari Prasad. 1964 [1960]. Kabīr. Bombay: Hindi Granth-Ratnakar. Gnoli, R. 1968. The Aesthetical Experience According to Abhinavagupta. Banaras: The Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office. Hawley, John Stratton. 1987. “The Sant in Sur Das.” In Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod, eds. The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 191–211. ____. 1983. Krishna the Butter Thief. Princeton: Princeton University. Hess, Linda 1987a. “Three Kabir collections.” In Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod, eds. The Sants. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 111–41. ____. 1987b “Kabir’s Rough Rhetoric.” In Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod, eds. The Sants. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 143–67. Hess, Linda and Shukdev Singh. 1983/2002. The Bijak of Kabir. Delhi: Oxford University Press [North Point Press]. McLeod, W. H. 1968. Guru Nānak and the Sikh Religion. Oxford: Clarendon. Lawrence, Bruce B. 1987. “The Sant Movement and North Indian Sufis.” In Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod, eds. The Sants. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 359–74. Lorenzen, David N. 1991. Kabir Legends and Ananta-das’s Kabir Parachai. New York: New York University.

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Redington, James D. 1983. Vallabhācārya on the Love Games of Kṛṣṇa. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Wilberforce Clark, H. 1891. The Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal. Vaudeville, Charlotte 1993. A Weaver Named Kabir: Selected Verses with a Detailed Biographical and Historical Introduction. Delhi, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University. ____. 1974. Kabir. Introduction and translation from the Hindi by Charlotte Vaudeville. Oxford: Clarendon.

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The Gopīs of the Jñāndev Gāthā Catharina Kiehnle* The circulation of ideas and practices is a feature typical of Indian religions. Right from the textually attested beginnings, a system of worship and religion-based social structures was imported into South Asia and gradually spread all over the Subcontinent. Over the centuries, conquering kings, migrant communities, and itinerant monks of various denominations transported ideas throughout the region, thus adding to the plurality of views that characterizes the religious landscape of India. The so-called bhakti [devotional] movements are no exception to this. Appearing on the scene in about the sixth century ce in the South, and later all over India, they often started as regional cults with deities who were worshipped not in Sanskrit but in the vernaculars. Sometimes the deities attracted devotees from wider areas and developed into pan-Indic ones, or the founders and members of local cults were influenced by the pan-Indian traditions with their overwhelming presence in Sanskrit literature and other media, so that exchange, incorporation, and circulation can be observed in many fields. The most popular religious group in Maharashtra, the Vārkarī movement, is the perfect case study for circulation since it absorbed many influences. It centers on the god Viṭṭhal of Pandharpur and is first attested in an inscription of 1189 ce, in which the construction of a temple for the god is mentioned.1 A special feature of the cult is the vārī [pilgrimage] to Pandharpur that takes place twice a year, and to which the devotees owe their designation vārkarī [“those doing the pilgrimage”]. Many Maha­ rashtrian poet-saints since the medieval period have been Vārkarīs, and their compositions have helped to increase the fame of the god. Already in the old layers of Marathi literature that date back to the thirteenth century, it is possible to trace elements of various origins that make up the Vārkarī belief sytem. In the following I shall exemplify this by * I want to thank Françoise Mallison, Nalini Delvoye, and George-Jean Pinault who invited me to EPHE in Paris for one month in December 2005, which made it possible for me to start research on this subject. 1 Tulpule 1979: 329.

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means of songs attributed to the poet Jñāndev, who most probably died in 1296 ce, and is one of the prominent saints of Maharashtra. He is considered by the Vārkarīs as one of the founders of their movement. He wrote the famous Bhagavadgītā commentary that was later called Jñāneśvarī, and several other texts on philosophical subjects. A collection (Jñāndev Gāthā) of about 1200 songs (abhaṅgas) is attributed to him as well. The authorship question has not yet been solved completely. There may be songs or groups of songs that go back to the famous author, while others may have been composed by his followers. I am inclined to consider the texts as products of the “Jñāndev school”.2 If treated thus, the Jñāndev Gāthā can supply valuable information about the development of the Vārkarī movement.3 The songs deal with various topics such as the highest reality, the teacher (guru) who is supposed to help the devotee experience that reality, the methods to be applied for this purpose, and the philosophical background of those views. The texts discussed in this paper belong to a group of about 100 compositions called gauḷaṇī-virahiṇī by some of the editors of the Gāthā. The term “gauḷaṇ” (or gauḷaṇī in Old Marathi) means “cowherdess” or “milkmaid” (gopī in Hindī, gopikā in Sanskrit), and refers to the playmates of Kṛṣṇa during his youth in Vrindavan. In modern Marathi, “gauḷaṇī” is used for the genre of songs pertaining to them. The milkmaids are important characters already in the tenth book of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (most probably composed in the tenth century, and since then one of the pillars of the Vaishnava religion) where their love for Kṛṣṇa is depicted. Their pain of separation (viraha) after he left them is the reason why they are also called virahiṇīs, women separated from their lover or husband.4 The gopīs have become the subject of many texts all over India, and one would expect the Jñāndev songs to be similar to those in other areas. That, however, is only partly the case. The songs were used for purposes beyond expressing love and longing, and contain various elements pertaining to literature, philosophy, and religion. In this paper, I first introduce the songs, highlighting the philosophical complexity of their imagery, before turning to more general reflections. First of all, one finds in the gauḷaṇīs the element of folk religion, namely local Viṭṭhal devotion. The oldest literary source for the cult is the 2 Kiehnle 1992: 126ff. 3 Kiehnle 1997b: 38ff. 4 For an extensive examination of this variety of devotion (especially in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa) cf. Hardy 1983.

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Līḷācaritra, the biography of the founder of the Mahānubhāva movement, Cakradhar. He is said to have informed his devotees that the god originated from a memorial stone for a hero called Vīṭhala who had died fighting for his cows.5 He was worshipped with singing and dancing (naḍanācu) by his relatives and later on also by others. The deified statue attracted a legend according to which the god had come to Pandharpur in order to honor a person called Puṇḍalīka for his faithful services to his parents.6 Since Puṇḍalīka had no time to receive the god (after all, he had to look after his parents), he asked him to stand on a brick and wait—which explains a special iconographical trait of Viṭṭhal: The statue stands on a brick-like pedestal. In the beginning a trend limited to South Maharashtra where Pandharpur is situated (Viṭṭhal is considered “karnāṭaku” in texts of the thirteenth/fourteenth centuries),7 the area of Viṭṭhal devotion gradually spread over all the Marathi speaking areas. The pen names of a great number of Haridāsas, the Vaishnava singers of Karnataka, testify to Viṭṭhal worship there also.8 Faint memories of Puṃḍarī nātha, Paṇḍharīnātha, Paṇḍharī ke rāyā, Viṭhṭhala, etc., were carried to Punjab perhaps as early as the fourteenth century, either by the famous contemporary of Jñāndev, Nāmdev, or by a later poet of the same name.9 Although Viṭṭhal is considered the svarūp, Viṣṇu’s “own form”—in contrast to his incarnations [avatārs]—the legends of pan-Indic Kṛṣṇa devotion made their entry into the Vārkarī cult. According to the Vārkarī tradition, Kṛṣṇa arrived in Pandharpur in search of his wife Rukmiṇī (Rakhumāī in Marathi) who had settled in a forest near the town.10 The identification of Viṭṭhal with Kṛṣṇa became an established fact and is reflected in the Jñāndev songs where Viṭṭhal is not only called by names like Viṭhobā, Paṇḍharīnātha, or Pāṇḍuraṅga, but also Kṛṣṇa, Hari, Govinda, Gopāla, etc. Together with the pan-Indic Kṛṣṇa, the idea of the cowherd5 Līḷācaritra, ed. Kolte 1978, līḷā no. 508. Another version (mentioned by Kolte in the note to 508) makes Viṭṭhal a cow-thief. The so-called “hero-stones” are very common in Central India (cf. Sontheimer 1982). 6 Vaudeville 1996: 204ff. 7 E.g. in P. N. Joshi’s Gāthā ed. no. 20 kānaḍā ho viṭṭhalu karnāṭaku; F 207 tẽ paṃḍhariye ubhẽ ase kānaḍẽ. 8 Karmarkar 1939: table opposite p. 26. 9 Nāmdev 1970, e.g. songs 2131.5, 2290.1, 2292.1–3, 2295 refrain, references also in 1–3; for Nāmdev’s Hindī works in general cf. the hiṃdī padāvalī in Nāmdev 1970: 807–72. The emphasis of the padāvalī is often on the name of the god Rāma, so a later period seems more probable. On the circulation to Punjab of poems by another famous bhakti poet, Mīrābāī, see Hawley and Mann, this volume. 10 Vaudeville 1996: 207.

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esses in general, and one favorite cowherdess in particular, was also incorporated into the local myth: The reason for Rukmiṇī’s presence in Pandharpur is said to have been jealousy of her rival, due to which she left her husband.11 Although this lover of Kṛṣṇa is absent in classical texts like Harivaṃśa, Viṣṇupurāṇa, or Bhāgavatapurāṇa, she became extremely important in later Sanskrit and vernacular poetry. Rādhā or Rādhikā, as she is called, is for example the main character of Jayadeva’s Gītagovinda, the most famous Sanskrit poem on devotional love (albeit depicted in images of “worldly” love). In order to show the imagery that set the standard for North Indian Kṛṣṇa poetry, here is an example from the Gītagovinda in the translation of Barbara Stoler Miller: Refrain: Kṛṣṇa, Rādhikā suffers in your desertion 11. An exquisite garland lying on her breasts is a burden to the frail, wasted girl. 12. Moist sandal balm smoothed on her body feels like dread poison to her. 13. The strong wind of her own sighing feels like the burning fire of love. 14. Her eyes shed tears everywhere like dew from lotuses with broken stems. 15. Her eyes see a couch of tender shoots, but she imagines a ritual bed of flames. 16. She presses her palm against her cheek, wan as a crescent moon in the evening. 17. “Hari! Hari!” she chants passionately, as if destined to die through harsh neglect. 18. May singing Jayadeva’s song give pleasure to the worshipper at Kṛṣṇa’s feet!12

In a Jñāndev song that has become famous through the interpretation by the well-known singer Lata Mangeshkar, some of the images are similar: ghaṇu vāje ghuṇughuṇā ' vārā vāje13 ruṇujhuṇā / bhavatāraku hā kānhā ' vegī�̃ bheṭ[a]vā14 kā̃ // 1 // cāṃda vo cāṃdaṇẽ ' cāpe vo caṃdanu / devakīnandanu—viṇa aṇū nāvaḍe vo // 2 // caṃdanācī coḷī ' mājhẽ sarva aṅga poḷī / kānho vanamāḷī ' vegī�̃ bheṭ[a]vā15 kā̃ // 3 // sumanācī seja ' sitaḷa vo nikī / [v]oḷe16 āgīsārakhī ' vegī�̃ vijhavā kā̃ // 4 // tumhī�̃ gātasā̃ susvarẽ ' aik [õ nedāvī�]̃ 17 uttarẽ /

11 Ibid. 12 Miller 1984: 88, text 142–3. 13 Mangeshkar sings vāhe. 14 With A, A1 198. 15 With A 198. 16 With all eds. except E, E1 (vole), F, Mangeshkar (poḷe); G reads bole. 17 With A 198.

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Catharina Kiehnle kokiḷe18 varjāve ' tumhī�̃ bāīyāṃno // 5 // darpaṇī�̃ pāhatā̃ ' rūpa na dise āpulẽ / bāpa rakhumādevivarẽ viṭhṭhalẽ maja aisẽ kelẽ // 6 //(G I.310)19 1. The clouds rumble, the winds howl—let me meet Kṛṣṇa quickly, he who steers [his devotees]20 across the world. 2. Oh, moon and moonlight, oh, campaka flower and sandal—they do not please me without Kṛṣṇa, the joy of (his mother) Devakī. 3. The bodice of sandal paste burns my whole body —will you let me meet quickly Kṛṣṇa who wears garlands from the woods? 4. The bed of flower[s should actually be] cooling, but surrounds [me] like fire—quickly put it out! 5. You women are singing beautifully—[but] do not let me hear it, do not mention the kokila birds. 6. When I look into the mirror, my [reflection] is not visible. Viṭṭhal, the father, the husband of goddess Rakhumāī,21 did this to me.

In both cases poetic conventions also known from secular Sanskrit poetry are used, for example the heat of passion that consumes the body and cannot be quenched by sandal, flowers, or moonlight. The Jñāndev song contains in addition the well-known allusion to the beginning of the rainy season when husbands and lovers are supposed to come back home, and to the kokila bird, a sort of cuckoo, whose cooing is thought to “inspire tender emotions.”22 Such songs of the Gāthā may have been inspired by the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, where Kṛṣṇa is depicted as playing with the gopīs “by spreading [his] arms, embracing, by touching [their] hands, curls, thighs, waistcloths, breasts, playfully scratching [them] with the tips of his nails ...,”23 so that they complain when he leaves them: “Rogue, who deserts women at night who are enraptured by the song of you who knows [our] state? Having seen the sign [you gave] secretly, [your] laughing face [and] loving glance, the surge of love, your broad breast, the abode of [goddess] 18 It should be kokile varjāve (against kokilẽ varjāvẽ in G and the other eds.) because kokile is the correct plural of kokilā. 19 The abbreviations G, A, A1, etc., refer to the editions enumerated in the bibliography under Jñāndev Gāthā. G (Kāṇaḍe) distinguishes songs he accepts as Jñāndev’s (G I), and those he thinks spurious (G II). Usually this (latest) edition is the basis for the passages quoted here. For a detailed description of all the sources I used until 1997 see Kiehnle 1997a: 21ff. I shall mention in the following variant readings from the editions and manuscripts when necessary and possible. 20 Here and elsewhere additions to the text or non-literal translations are put in brackets, explanations in parentheses. 21 Bāpa rakhumādevivarẽ viṭhṭhala is one of Jñāndev’s mudrikās (“seal”, chāp in Hindi poetry), signatures, found in the last line of the songs. Another one is jñānadeva mhaṇe, “Jñāndev says”. 22 Monier-Williams s.v. 23 Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.29.46 (and in the following chapters).

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Śrī, [our] mind[s, full of] excessive love, become enchanted.”24 Another source might even be the Gītagovinda, but it would be rash to assume that the Marathi songs depend on the famous Sanskrit poem from Bengal. According to Barbara Stoler Miller, the Gītagovinda had indeed reached western India by the end of the thirteenth century,25 and may also have been known in Maharashtra, but Rādhā is not mentioned in any one of the 1,200 Jñāndev songs. In this respect they rather reflect the situation in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa where the gopikās are usually depicted as a group, and in rare cases when an individual is mentioned she remains nameless.26 Rādhā did appear in the Marathi literary context as Rāhī in a frequently sung prayer (āratī) attributed to Nāmdev who lived most probably during the fourteenth century.27 Another element present in the songs under discussion is advaitavedānta. Being one of the classical philosophical systems, it is normally the domain of Sanskrit scholars, but Mukundarāja, perhaps a contemporary or even predecessor of Jñāndev, introduced it into the world of folk languages. His Vivekasindhu is one of the first works in Marathi, but its “rigour of intellectualism” may have impeded its growing popular.28 Jñāndev was aware of the difficulties monism might raise in a devotional context where an object of devotion is needed: aikā̃ dvaitācā ṭhāoci pheḍī / te brahmavidyā kījaila ughaḍī / tari arjunu paḍḥiye he goḍī / nāsaila h[a]na29 // 113 // hmaṇauni tẽ taisẽ bolaṇẽ / navhe [sapātaḷa]30 āḍa lāvaṇẽ / kelẽ melū vegaḷepaṇẽ / bhogāveyā // 114 // (Jñāneśvarī 6)31 113. Listen, [if] he removes the basis of duality [and] the knowledge of brahman is opened, then the sweetness of [the feeling] “Arjuna is dear [to Kṛṣṇa]” will be gone. 114. Therefore to speak32 in that way is not putting a subtle difference, [but it] is done in order to enjoy harmony through difference.

Although the Jñāndev Gāthā contains many songs in praise of Viṭṭhal’s and Kṛṣṇa’s beauty, there are also passages in which advaita is favored. That is 24 Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10. 31.16, 17. 25 Miller 1984: 7 (introduction). 26 For example in Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.30.31ff. 27 Nāmdev Gāthā 2101, refrain: jay deva jay deva jay pāṃḍuraṃgā / rakhumāī vallabhā rāhīcyā vallabhā pāvẽ jivalagā. 28 Tulpule 1979: 315–6, 325–7. 29 With Government edition, for G hāna. 30 With Government edition, for G saptatala. 31 I am quoting the Jñāneśvarī from Maṃgrūḷkar’s edition. 32 I have dropped tẽ, “that”, in the translation because it sounds awkward in English.

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the case, for example, in a group of 27 songs called Haripāṭh, “the recitation of Hari's name”, which was considered the “creed” of the Vārkarīs by Charlotte Vaudeville.33 The Haripāṭh advocates the remembrance of God’s name, an exercise done on a comparatively abstract level of worship, so that the idea of advaita is more plausible here than in a gauḷaṇī. With respect to the worship of Kṛṣṇa another difficulty arises, namely that the highest principle of advaita is without qualities (nirguṇa), and Viṭṭhal/ Kṛṣṇa is a deity with qualities (saguṇa). Both difficulties are done away with in the Gāthā: saguṇa aṃbulā nirguṇa paĩ jālā / gharācāra samasta buḍavilā // 1 // āśā he sāsu asatā̃ buḍavilī / śāṃti māūlī bheṭõ ālī // 2 // rakhumādevivara viṭhṭhalẽsī cāḍa / advaitẽsī māḷa gheūnī ṭhelẽ // 3 //  (G I. 355) 1. The husband with qualities became without qualities, he let drown the whole of my family rule[s]. 2. Hope, the mother-in-law, was drowned, Mother Peace came for a visit. 3. [My] liking is for the husband of Goddess Rakhumāī, Viṭṭhal, I stand holding a garland for advaita. advaita aṃbulā pariṇilā dekhā / dusarā vicāra sāṃḍilā aikā // 1 // sāṃḍiṇī sāṃḍilā paĩ gharācāru / dusarā vicāru nāhī�̃ kelā // 2 // bāparakhumādevivaru viṭhṭhalẽsī gharācāra / ṭhakalā vyavahāra  bāīyāṃno // 3 // (G I.353) 1. See, I married a non-duality husband; listen, I discarded all other thought. 2. As a woman who leaves [her husband] I discarded the household affairs, I did not think of anything else. 3 [My] household affairs are with the father, the husband of goddess Rakhumā, Viṭṭhal—worldly life came to a halt, women.

Even the women are above advaita in G I.375: dvaitādvaitavirahita gauḷaṇī, “the gauḷaṇs are without duality and non-duality,” perhaps because they accept the saguṇa form of god as well as the nirguṇa one. The connection of the two is highlighted in many songs, for example: tyā guṇācyā saṃgẽ kaisẽ advaita jālẽ / mana hmaṇoṇī kāḷepaṇa bahu jhālẽ ge māya // 2 // pure pure buddhi nimālī vedavāṇī / ātā̃ kevī�̃ vāṇū̃ cakrapāṇī bahu kāḷẽ ge māya // 3 // (G I.421)

33 Vaudeville 1969: 97, 100, 102, 127, 132, 134 (similarly, F 56.2, 3; 60.1; 61.1). Vaudeville translated the Haripāṭh into French and thus drew the attention of Western scholars to the most famous group of Jñāndev songs which are known by heart to many Maharash­trians.

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2. How did non-duality come about together with these guṇas? What is called mind became a vast blackness.34 3. Enough, enough, the intellect disappeared [and also] the word of the Vedas—how can I describe now for a long while35 the one who holds the disc in his hand, oh mother? guṇāceni āṭopẽ ākāralẽ brahma / bhaktabhāgya sama āl[ẽ muse]36 // 1 // caitanya paripāṭh[ī]37 ṭhasā ghaḍalāse sākāra / kṛṣṇaci ākāra gokuḷī�̃ rayā // 2 // tyā rupẽ vedhilẽ kāya karũ ge māye / nāma rūpa soya nāhī�̃ āmhā̃ // 3 // sabāhya sabhõvatẽ caturbhuja sā̃vaḷẽ / sarvabhūtī�̃ vivaḷe kṛṣṇarupẽ // 4 // hārapale ākāra kṛṣṇaci kṣaralā / vedāṃsi abolā śrutīsahita // 5 // aisẽ parabrahma sā̃vaḷẽ daivata āmucẽ / ātā āmhā̃ kaicẽ kriyā karma // 6 // bāparakhumādevivaru viṭhṭhalu daivata / manẽ ghara tethẽ caraṇī�̃ kelẽ // 7 // (G I.46) 1. By the force of the qualities brahman got a form. Through the fortune of the devotees it appeared in a mold. 2. In accordance with the rules of consciousness an imprint with a form came up, Kṛṣṇa as a form in Gokul, oh king. 3. By that form I became attracted, what can I do, mother, [I]38 do not have the convenience39 of name and form. 4. Outside, all around, the dark four-armed one dawns in all beings in the form of Kṛṣṇa. 5. The forms disappeared, Kṛṣṇa alone pervaded [everything, making] the Vedas speechless, together with the śruti.40 6. Such a black dark parabrahman [is] our deity. How [can there be] rituals and actions for us? 7. The father, the husband of goddess Rakhumā, Viṭhṭhal [is that] deity. The mind made [its] abode there at his feet.

The presence of sāṃkhya (the philosophy of “enumeration” of the consti­ tuents of creation) in the milkmaids’ songs further underscores the complexity of philosophical positions at play in these supposedly simple women’s verses: bhāvācī mī saurī gele saṃtā[ṃ] pāśī�̃ 41 / jñānakhaḍga gheūni hātī liṃgadeh[a]42 nāśī // 1 // cāla mājhī viṭho / tumhī āmhī bheṭo // dhru // 34 The dark color signifies ignorance. 35 Bahu kāḷẽ can also be translated “the great black [thing]” because—ẽ is neuter. 36 I read muse (for mūrti) with A, A1, B, C, C1. 37 With F 278 for paripāṭha. 38 Literally: “we”. 39 The meaning of soya is difficult to ascertain. According to Tulpule 1999, it may be: way, means, habit, quality, or convenience. 40 The editions agree in the reading śrutīsahita, but the statement is not logical because the śruti consists of the Vedas. 41 Plural saṃtāṃ is a conjecture. 42 With Pāṃgārkar 1927: 7.

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Catharina Kiehnle tīna mācave pāca gāte / tyāvara nijale hote / phaṭaphaṭīta ujeḍa paḍa[l]ā43 khāṭale paḍale rite // 2 // deva neṇe dharma neṇe āṇika neṇe kā̃hī�̃ / mhaṇe jñānadeva āmhā yeṇẽ jāṇẽ nāhī�̃ // 3 // (G II.679) 1. I became a woman of loving feeling, without restraint, I went to the sants. Taking the sword of knowledge in hand, I destroy the liṅgadeha. 2. My authority is Viṭho, we both shall meet. Three legs, five pieces for the frame, on that [bed] I was sleeping. Bright light fell, the bed became vacant. 3. I do not know god, I do not know religion, I do not know anything else, Jñānadeva says, for us there is no [more] coming and going.

Almost the whole system of sāṃkhya is woven into this song, mostly in the form of an allegory. The liṅgadeha (or -śarīra) to which the poet refers in stanza 1 is the subtle body, composed of an inner organ (antaḥkaraṇa, made up of intelligence, ego, and thinking), the five sense-capacities (buddhīn­ driyas, hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, smelling), the five action capacities (karmendriyas, speaking, grasping, walking, excreting, procreating), and the five subtle elements (tanmātras, sound, touch, form, taste, smell).44 The liṅgadeha is detachable from the mortal body and transports the karmic dispositions from one life to the other. When it is destroyed, as in the song, no more birth is possible. Knowledge, here the “sword of knowledge”, is the means to achieve the highest goal in sāṃkhya: jñānena cāpavargaḥ “and through knowledge there is release.”45 The three feet of the bed in the second stanza refer to the three guṇas, the qualities goodness, passion, and darkness inherent in everything created. The five pieces for the frame are the five gross elements (mahābhūtas, space, wind, fire, water, earth) that make up the material world, to which the soul is bound through ignorance. Both the guṇas and the gross elements are left behind when the light of knowledge and liberation dawns, and the highest principle, the puruṣa, becomes independent from matter. In that state, dharma (here meritorious behavior)46 has no relevance any more, as the last stan­za suggests. The saurī of stanza one is a character perhaps created by the authors of the Jñāndev Gāthā. The word goes back to Sanskrit svairī (< svaira, sva-īra, “going where one likes, self-willed, independent, unrestrained”). Tulpule in his dictionary gives the translation “a wanton woman”. Here the designation stands for a woman who has become independent due to her love of 43 Paḍalā with Pāṃgārkar 1927: 7, for paḍadā. 44 Larson 1987: 52–3. 45 Sāṃkhyakārikā 1963: 141 (no. 44). 46 Larson 1987: 26, 53.

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knowledge and those propagating it: the sants. They are “the good ones”, those who worship Viṭṭhal. The term is also a designation for poet-saints of the medieval period. The saurī reminds one of the legends about Mīrābāī (the poetess and Kṛṣṇa devotee of the sixteenth century who behaved independently and thus invoked the wrath of her in-laws47), but, as the context suggests, may have been inspired by the idea of kaivalya, “perfect isolation, soleness, exclusiveness”, the aim of sāṃkhya. In that state the puruṣa, “consciousness” or “pure awareness”, is dissociated from matter. Apavarga, literally “turning away”, may be another term that inspired the idea of the woman who leaves everything behind. Another element in the gauḷaṇīs is yoga. One might expect Patañjali’s classical version, and indeed the terms aṣṭāṅga, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, and samādhi (“eight-limbed”,48 concentration, meditation, absorption) are used several times in the Gāthā.49 The yoga discussed in detail, however, belongs to a different school, namely the one of the Nāths. Due to kingly followers, the Nāths had a strong influence on both religious and political life between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries in India and Nepal. In the royal house of Satara (Maharashtra), Nāth yogīs exercise ritual functions to this day. During the medieval period they spread their teachings over northern and central India. In the Jñāneśvarī, Saptashringi is mentioned as one of their special places in Maharashtra. Abhinavagupta (who lived during the tenth century ce in Kashmir) mentions the first human teacher of the Nāths: Matsyendranāth. According to the Jñāneśvarī, Gahinīnāth, who was initiated into the cult by Matsyendranāth’s pupil Gorakhnāth, taught Jñāndev’s elder brother Nivṛttināth, who in turn became Jñāndev’s teacher. The Nāths propagated haṭha- and kuṇḍalinīyoga, and important Sanskrit texts like Siddhasiddhānta­paddhati, Haṭhayogapradīpikā, and Gheraṇḍa­ samhitā are attributed to them. Even Jñāndev’s Bhagavadgītā commentary contains a long description of kuṇḍalinī’s ascent, and more than 150 songs of the Jñāndev Gāthā describe many details of this variety of yoga. “As the king of snakes is the basis of the earth together with its mountains and forests, so is kuṇḍalī the basis of all yoga tantras”50—this stanza from the 47 On Mīrābāī, see Hawley and Mann, this volume. 48 The eight limbs of yoga are, according to Patañjali 2.29, yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, and samādhi. 49 In F 499.2, F 295.6, and 501.2, and twice in the yoga songs. See Kiehnle 1997: 125, 133 (songs 47.3, 53.3, 23.3, 63.3, 46.4). 50 Haṭhayogapradīpikā 1975: 73 (stanza 3.1): saśailavanadhātrīṇāṃ yathādhāro'hināyakaḥ / sarveṣāṃ yogatantrāṇāṃ tathādhā­ro hi kuṇḍalī.

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Haṭhayogapradīpikā shows that the Nāths belong to the realm of what is nowadays called tantrism. Basically theistic, “tantrism” is nevertheless indebted to the sāṃkhya theory of puruṣa and prakṛti (spirit and matter). The two were identified with Śiva and his creative energy, Śakti, and together they are considered the origin of the universe. Other than puruṣa and prakṛti in dualist sāṃkhya, they are considered identical in many tantric texts and also in Nāth philosophy, which may be called a sort of śaiva advaita. Such teachings are also the basis of Jñāndev’s Anubhavāmṛt.51 About 35 gauḷaṇīs are connected with various aspects of kuṇḍalinīyoga. One of them is not composed in the usual meter found in the Gāthā, the abhaṅga.52 It is much longer, very irregular, and poorly transmitted, but included here nevertheless because its author uses the motif of the gauḷaṇ in order to describe the awakening of kuṇḍalinī. ādhāracakrī�̃ nivaṇẽ māṃḍilẽ kaisā ḍeriyā upacāra kelā // tinhī saṃyoga gomaṭẽ ghusaḷaṇa ravi53 jo meru vo // teṇẽ āṇilẽ samayātẽ tethẽ guruvacana lādhalẽ nirutẽ vo // 1 // vidyāpātrẽ gauḷaṇī maṃthana kar[ī]54 brahmajñānī vo / (cāla nija) 55 paṃthẽ kaisẽ navanīta āṇilẽse hātā vo // dhru // guruupadeśẽ ravi dharī adha56 ūrdhva mājarī57 pāṃcai prāṇa maṃthana  kelẽ nirutẽ vo // īḍā piṃgaḷā kuṃḍaḷaṇīyā brahmasūtra doru to āṇi[l]ā58 vo // ubhī rāhoni gaganī�̃ anuhātẽ aṃbara garje vo // 2 // mana ekatatvī�̃ karī59 vo citta dṛḍha dharī vo // tayāmāji na visaṃbe kā̃hī�̃ vo / aisā gorasu cokhaṭu molẽviṇa yetase phukaṭu / yāsi na vece kāhī�̃ citta baise samarasẽ ṭhāī�̃ vo // 3 // gauḷaṇī gomaṭī hātī�̃ kasavaṭī kṣīrā nirā nivāḍā karī60 vo // meghaḍaṃbara na visaṃbe tethẽ ghusaḷitā̃ theṃbu jo nusaḷe vo // jana paḍalese dhaṃdā gorasā goḍī neṇatī aṃdhe vo // 4 // kāyā61 he nagarī gauḷaṇī gorasu pukārī navahi dāravaṃṭe sāṃḍūni vo / 51 Anubhavāmṛt chapter 1; cf. Kiehnle 1993. 52 There are two varieties of abhaṅgas, one with four quarters, and one with two quarters in one stanza; cf. Kiehnle 1997a: 41ff. 53 I read ravi jo meru with A1 440 and B 113; the other editions read ba after ravi. 54 Karī is a conjecture for karū̃. 55 Cāla, and most probably the first nija, do not belong to the wording of the stanza, but means “melody”, indicating that the melody beginning with the word nija starts here. 56 With A 440 for ardha. 57 With A 440 for majarī. 58 Conjecture for āṇiyā. 59 With A 440 for karī�.̃ 60 With A 440 for karī�.̃ 61 With A 440 for kāya.

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daśave dvārī�̃ pātalī kaisī vinaṭalī goviṃdī�̃ go // daṃbhavikarā jālā adharma dharma lopalā vo // avaghī kāyā jhāṃkuḷalī bāparakhumādevivarā viṭhṭhalī�̃ vo // 5 //  (G II.380) 1. The ring of grass was placed on the [mūla-]ādhāracakra, how the churning pot was treated! The union of all the three: the churning is good. That which [is Mount] Meru, [is] the churning rod. It62 was brought in proper time, the word of the guru was clearly attained. Refrain: By means of the vessel of knowledge the gauḷaṇ churns in the knowledge of brahman. How [easily] did she bring the butter to hand by the path of her inborn [self]! 2. By means of the instruction of the guru she holds the churning rod, with the upper and the lower loop she churned well all the five varieties of breath. She took the brahman-thread63 of iḍā, piṅgalā, and kuṇḍalinī as a rope. While she stands in heaven, the sky resounds with the unstruck sound. 3. She sets her mind on the one principle, she fixes her thinking, therein she does not miss anything. Such pure milk comes without a price, free. For that she does not spend anything, thought sits in [its] place with the feeling of unity. 4. The beautiful gauḷaṇ, with the test-stone in hand, takes out milk from water.64 She does not forget the show of the clouds. While churning there, no drop jumps out. People are engaged in their occupations, the blind ones do not know the sweetness of the milk. 5. The body is the town, the gauḷaṇ hawks her milk after leaving behind all the nine doors. She arrived at the tenth door, how engrossed she was in Govinda! The sale of pride took place, good and bad actions65 disappeared, her whole body was pervaded by the father, the husband of goddess Rakhumā, Viṭhṭhala.

In the first stanza, the author refers to the system of six (or sometimes more) cakras, the energy centers of the subtle body. The lowest is the mūlādhāra, “root-base”, or here, ādhāra, “base” near the base of the spine. There resides kuṇḍalinī, the form of energy that is supposed to have created the body. She is said to sleep until the yogī, with the help of a competent teacher, makes her ascend along or in the spine to the brahmarandhra in the head. The name of the spine is borrowed from the Purāṇas: merudaṇḍa, Meru-stick, after the mythical mountain that served as the churning stick when the milk ocean was churned. The churning of milk is used in the second stanza as a simile for the beginning stage of awakening kuṇḍalinī, śakticālana, “causing the śakti to move”. The subtle channel (suṣumnā) 62 Teṇẽ and tethẽ of the line were dropped in the translation for the sake of clarity. 63 Perhaps this is an allusion to the Brahmasūtras, the famous advaita text. 64 According to a convention of classical Sanskrit poetry, the haṃsa (gander) is able to drink only the milk when given a mixture of milk and water. 65 Dharma and adharma: The verb should be lopale (plural).

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through which she is supposed to ascend, and the two parallel channels iḍā and piṅgalā, are likened to a churning rod. The means to move kuṇḍalinī are breathing exercises, which is why the five varieties of breath (prāṇa, apāna, udāna, vyāna, samāna) are referred to. The “butter” or “milk” resulting from the process stands either for the highest knowledge (also called the knowledge of brahman in the first stanza) or for the health-bestowing liquid that according to yoga literature is streaming down a special channel within the head when kuṇḍalinī ascends. When the latter reaches the head (“heaven”), sounds are said to arise, one being the anāhatanāda of the second stanza, the unstruck sound. The sounds may be as impressive as thunder, which is most probably alluded to by the phrase “the show of the clouds” in the fourth stanza. The brahmarandhra where kuṇḍalinī unites with the one principle of the third stanza is also known as “the tenth door” (stanza 5), in contrast to the other openings of the body-town (eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, excretive, and procreative organs). The language of comparisons and metaphors reminds one of another sphere of Indian religious life: Sahajiyā Buddhism. In 1977, Per Kvaerne translated the Caryāgīti from an old form of Bengali, a collection of songs (dohās) attributed to the Buddhist siddhācāryas, “adept teachers”. The lives of many of them are described in the stories of 84 siddhas, among which the founders of the Nāth tradition are also included.66 The songs were most probably composed around the eleventh century, and like the Jñāndev ones they often refer to kuṇḍalinīyoga. With respect to terminology they differ from the Nāths: The central channel in the spine is not called suṣumnā but avadhūti, the channels at her left and right, lalanā and rasanā correspond to iḍā and piṅgala, equated with sun and moon, etc. The Caryāgīti are composed in what is called sandhyābhāṣā, a term of unclear meaning—twilight speech, enigmatic speech, or secret speech.67 Sandhyā indeed means “twilight”, but also “union”, which might indicate that two or more meanings are combined. As in the case of some of the Jñāndev songs quoted above, in the Caryāgīti yogic unity or the longing for it is depicted by means of erotic imagery. The protagonist, however, is not a female in ecstasy about her lover, but often a yogī or ascetic madly in love with a low-caste woman.68 In the following I am quoting Kvaerne's text and translation:69

66 Robinson 1975: 146–54. 67 Cf. Kvaerne 1986: 37ff where the possibilities of translation are discussed. 68 Kvaerne 1986: 49, 50. 69 Kvaerne 1986: 113.

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nagara bāhirī re ḍombī tohori kuṛiā/ choi choi yāi bāhmaṇa nāṛiā // 1 // ālo ḍombī toe sama karibe ma sāṅga / nighiṇa Kāṇha kāpāli joi lāga // 2 // (Kvaerne 10) 1. Outside the town, o Ḍombī, the shaven-headed Brahman boy goes constantly touching you. 2. Ho Ḍombī! I shall associate with you, I, Kāṇha, a kāpāli-yogin, shameless and naked.

Such images could give rise to interpretations perhaps not intended by the authors. Kvaerne quotes Padma dkar-po, a Tibetan scholar who lived during the sixteenth century: “The secret tantric treatises were originally compiled secretly and to teach and explain them to those who have not become worthy would be improper. In the meantime, they were allowed to be translated and practised; however, since it was not clarified that they were couched in enigmatic words, there arose such people who took the word accordingly (i.e., literally), and did perverse practice.”70 That yoga was indeed the subject of the Caryāgīti becomes clear from another song. Again, the yogī is likened to a kāpālikayogī, a śaiva ascetic who wears earrings (shaped like the sun and moon, symbolizing iḍā and piṅgalā) and carries a khaṭvāṅga, a staff with a skull on top. The staff symbolizes the kuṇḍalinī energy. As in G II.380, the unstruck sound is perceived, and, as often in kuṇḍalinīyoga, the syllables of the language are visualized in the cakras: nār̥ī śakti diṛha dharia khaṭṭe / anahā ḍamaru bājae bīranāde // 1 // Kāṇha kāpālī yogī païṭha acāre / deha naarī biharae ekākārẽ // 2 // āli kāli ghaṇṭā neura caraṇe / rabi śaśī kuṇḍala kiū ābharaṇe // 3 // rāga deśa moha lāia chāra / parama mokha labae muttihāra // 4 // māria śāsu naṇanda ghare śālī / māa māria Kānha bhaïla kabālī // 5 //  (Kvaerne 11) 1. Firmly holding the nāḍī-śakti as khaṭvāṅga, the drum of the unstruck (sound) resounds with the sound of the hero. 2. Kāṇha, having adopted the conduct of a kāpālika-yogin, roams about in the city of the body, being of one disposition (towards all). 3. The bells of the vowels and the consonants are the anklets of the feet; the earrings of sun and moon are made (into) ornaments. 4. Taking the ashes of Passion, Hate, and Delusion, he obtains the pearl necklace of the Ultimate Liberation. 5. Killing the mother-in-law, the aunt, and sister-in-law in the house, killing the mother, Kāṇha became a kāpālika.

The highest state of consciousness a Sahajiyā Buddhist can reach is sahaja, literally meaning “born together”, but, according to Kvaerne, here to be construed as “congenital, innate, natural”. This term, as well as samarasa 70 Kvaerne 1986: 38.

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“the state of non-dual unity, free from both existence and non-existence,”71 and śūnya, “void”, which express similar notions in tantric Buddhism, also occur in the Jñāndev songs: prabhākaḷikā dīpa72 śūnyākāra hẽ svarūpa / munijanamānasīṃcẽ sukha yekalepaṇẽ // biṃba ardhabiṃba ardhamātṛkā turyā nātaḷe jyāsī bhānu to diṭhī kevĩ dharāvā / guṇātīta nirguṇī�̃ jẽ sahajī�̃ sahajacī saguṇī�̃ vikhure rayā // 1 // āpaāpaṇiyā paḍe māya visaru / maja āvaḍe to naṃdācā kumāru ge māye // 2 // (G II.400) 1. The form of the self is a lamp like a bud of light, resembling the void, the happiness in the mind of the sages, [experienced] through unity. How can that sun, which the [elements of the syllable om]73 and the fourth state of consciousness do not touch, be captured in [one’s] sight? That sahaja, which is beyond qualities [and located] in that which is without qualities,74 is spread over that which is with qualities. 2. I forget myself, mother, I love the son of Nanda, oh mother …

“Like the dohā, the pada75 form seems genuinely popular in origin: It is really a folk song, adapted to religious purposes. Here again, the Sahajiyā siddhas, together with the Jain Munis, seem to have been the first to use popular lyrical forms to propagate their doctrines.”76 Just as the Buddhist siddhas drew on folk poetry, so did the authors of the Jñāndev Gāthā. Apart from the language, Marathi, one important popular aspect of the songs is the abhaṅga meter. It is based on the ovī, a meter used in songs that were sung by Maharashtrian women while doing household work like grinding and pounding corn. It is mentioned in Someśvara’s Mānasollāsa, which was composed in 1129. “The ovī which [Someśvara] mentions is a typically popular Marathi meter and his statement that it was used in the composition of folk songs is supported by similar songs found in the early biographical works of the Mahānubhāva sect.”77 There is even mention in them of a song about Viṣṇu in which the god is said to have left behind the conch and the wheel (two of his emblems) in heaven, in order to adopt the 71 Dasgupta 1962: 82. 72 In Kānaḍe’s edition, the words are separated. 73 The elements of the syllable auṃ (om) are visualized in the head, where they merge into the ardhabimba, the “half-moon” that indicates the nasal sound ṃ in Devanagari script. It may also be called ardhamātrā (here ardhamātr̥ kā), “half-mora” (Kiehnle 1997: 103). 74 I did not translate sahajī�,̃ “in sahaja” because the ending may have been added here by mistake. 75 These are metrical forms used in many songs of North India. 76 Vaudeville 1974: 54, 19. 77 Tulpule 1979: 314.

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garb of a cowherd.78 Cowherds were necessarily a popular topic because they must have been present all over India. The same is the case with the timeles themes of the union and separation of lovers, which are found in many poetry traditions. A frequent motif in folk poetry is the woman who constantly remembers her mother’s house because she has been married into a family of strangers she dislikes, as in G I.355 quoted above, and in Caryā song 11 of the previous paragraph. Eknāth, a Vārkarī poet of the sixteenth century, too, utilized the motif of the relatives in a song to the folk goddess Bhavānī where “the in-laws are the different passions, the husband is ignorance, and living alone is the solitude vital for spirituality.”79 The topic of bad relatives was not only popular over a long span of time, but also, it seems, over a vast area. They figure, as has been seen, in the Caryā songs of Bengal, and also in a poem by Mahādeviyakkā, a poetess from Karnataka. She lived during the twelfth century, belonged to the reformist Lingāyat movement, and was therefore a devotee of Śiva. The following translation is by A. K. Ramanujan:80 I have Māyā for mother-in-law; the world for father-in-law; three brothers-in-law, like tigers; and the husband’s thoughts are full of laughing women: no god, this man. And I cannot cross the sister-in-law. But I will give this wench the slip and go cuckold my husband with Hara,81 my Lord. My mind is my maid: by her kindness, I join my Lord, my utterly beautiful Lord from the mountain-peaks, my lord white as jasmine, and I will make Him my good husband.

What is also “folkish” here is not the presence of erotic imagery as such, but the directness with which it is handled. That is typical also for songs sung during marriage ceremonies. Durga Bhagwat, a famous Maharashtrian 78 Kolte 418 (ed. Tulpule 2.205). 79 Tulpule 1979: 357. 80 Ramanujan 1973: 49, 141. 81 A designation of Śiva.

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anthropologist and writer, reports that all over rural India, such songs are often accompanied by corresponding gestures and verbal combats, in which women take the lead. In some areas of India, marriage songs are a special genre, called bhaḍounī in Uttar Pradesh, and kabīta in Bhopal.82 Similarly, riddles contain sexual images for things that have nothing to do with sex at all.83 The poets of the Jñāndev Gāthā were themselves quite outspoken in such matters (contrary to the general opinion in Maha­ rashtra),84 as for example in some of the (about) 25 gauḷaṇīs dealing with the pati, dādulā, or aṃbulā, (“husband”, “master”, or “man”). Often, though not always, he is contrasted to parapuruṣa, the “other man”, which means at the same time “the highest man”: māyāvivarjita jālẽ vo / mājhẽ gota tẽ paṃḍhariye rāhilẽ vo // 1 // pativratā mī paradvāriṇī / parapuruṣẽsī vyabhicāriṇī // 2 // (G II.113) 1. I became free from illusion; my clan remained in Pandhari. 2. I am a faithful woman [who] goes to the door of another, an adulteress with another man/the highest man.

Just as with Mahādeviyakkā, the question of propriety is discarded. The Virashaiva poetess declaimed, “When one heart touches and feels another, won’t feeling weigh over all, can it stand any decencies then… Go, go, I'll have nothing of your mother-and-daughter stuff. You go now.”85 A similar sentiment is expressed here: aṃbulā māherī�̃ bhogī�̃ dhanīvarī / maga tayā śrīhari sāmg[õ] guja // 1 // mājhẽ sukha mīca bhogīna / kṣemẽsī nigena aṃgoaṃgī�̃ // 2 // sāṃḍunī kuḷācāra jāliye nirlajja / tumhī kāya maja śikavāla // 3 // (G II.407) 1. When I enjoy my husband in my parents’ house to my heart’s content, I86 tell to that Śrīhari [my] secret. 2. I myself shall enjoy my happiness, I shall go for a body-to-body embrace. 3. Discarding the rules of the family, I became shameless—what will you teach me…

So far we have outlined the most conspicuous aspects of the gauḷaṇīs. All of them deserve more detailed examination within the context of the whole Gāthā and the religious history of Maharashtra. Even though only a short survey could be given, one thing is obvious: The constituent elements are 82 Bhagwat 1965: 58. 83 Bhagwat 1965: 46. 84 According to Vaudeville, “the erotic element in the Kṛṣṇa-Gopāl legend, especially his dalliance with the milk-maids, is ignored” (1987: 43). 85 Ramanujan 1979: 126, no. 102. 86 Literally: “we”.

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quite disparate since there are those concerning the god of Pandharpur, Marathi language and poetry that keep the Gāthā songs within a particular language group and cultural ethos, and those concerning Kṛṣṇa and classical philosophy that provide a link to the Sanskritized traditions of India. Esoteric and often secret yoga teachings connect the songs to the poetry of the Buddhist siddhas and later movements like those of Kabīr, or the Bauls of Bengal. Whereas classical philosophy and to a great extent the “Krishnaite” traditions are conservative, the teachings of the Buddhist and other siddhas are rather nonconformist. One question that arises is how such a strange mixture came into existence. For a Vārkarī, the answer is easy: Jñāndev, as the son of an outcaste Brahman (his father is said to have been a monk turned householder again, which at that time was against traditional law), participated in Sanskrit education to the extent it was possible within his family circle. Initiation into the nonconformist Nāth cult where caste was unimportant provided him with knowledge of yoga and (through his brother and teacher) the mission to bring the teachings of the Bhagavadgītā to the uneducated masses in Marathi. Being a yogī, he included kuṇḍalinī lore in his commentary, and wrote a treatise called Anubhavāmṛt in which he expounds śaiva-śākta advaita. Afterwards he and his brothers and sister joined the circle of Nāmdev and other Viṭṭhal devotees and composed songs for them. In the scholarly world, the incongruities in the works attributed to Jñāndev have given rise to speculations that there existed two authors, one Nāth yogī who composed Jñāneśvarī and Anubhavāmṛt without mentioning the god Viṭṭhal, and another one who belonged to Nāmdev’s circle of Viṭṭhal devotees and composed the songs of the Gāthā. From the point of view of language one might indeed argue that Jñāneśvarī/Anubhavāmṛt and the Gāthā are by different authors, and that the latter is not the work of one person either. From the point of view of contents, however, a definite assessment is more difficult, because, for example, the elements isolated above are often intermingled in one song, and many motifs from the songs are also found in Jñāneśvarī and Anubhavāmṛt. What one can conclude from those elements is that the song composers must have been wellinformed about the religious trends of their time, and not only able to discuss philosophy, but also to put it into poetry and music. Whatever one may think of the Vārkarī biography of Jñāndev, it at least reflects the idea prevalent among religious Maharashtrians that the texts transmitted in the name of the saint originated from an unusual background as far as family, education, and religious affiliation of the poet are concerned.

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This leads to the question of who could at all understand the texts. The Kṛṣṇa and Viṭṭhal surface is easy, but the deeper yoga poses problems. Interestingly, in Sākhre’s, Jog’s, and Āvṭe’s Gāthā editions, the gauḷaṇīs and similar songs about beggars, low-caste men, soldiers, etc., are subsumed under a special heading, namely, rūpak. The term has several meanings, and two of them are possible here: “metaphor”, and “drama, play”.87 This testifies to a feeling on the part of the editors that such figures in the Gāthā are not meant to be “real”, but should be considered allegories for aspects of bhakti and yoga. In fact, as I have shown elsewhere, the present-day members of the groups described in such songs, for example the Vāsudevs (Vaishnava religious mendicants), neither know the Jñāndev songs about their community, nor do they recognize themselves in them.88 The gauḷaṇīs selected by Lata Mangeshkar have become popular because they belong to the few “realistic” ones.89 Too often, however, the cowherdesses are not of flesh and blood, but illustrations of complicated philosophical speculations, or metaphors in the service of a yoga understood and practiced only by some specialists. In the legends, Jñāndev is never depicted as a holy man who enjoyed the bliss of samādhi in solitude and from time to time came up with a new book or song—which would also have been a plausible possibility—but as a person accompanied by his brothers, his sister, yogī and bhakta friends, almost all of whom were poets. The Sakalasantagāthā contains collections of their songs, and the Jñāndev hagiography by Nāmdev their discussions.90 In the individual Gāthās one finds “saṃvāds”, “dialogues”, between Nivṛtti and Jñāndev, Muktā and Cāṅgdev, Parsā Bhagavat and Nāmdev,91 and in tāṭīce abhaṅga, “abhaṅgas of the door”, Jñāndev's sister Muktā asks him not to be angry any more and come out of the hut.92 If one dismisses the headings of the songs as later additions, there remains the fact that in the texts themselves the respective persons are addressed. Similarly, in a great number of other songs the listeners are addressed as rayā, “king”, māye, 87 Unfortunately it is not possible to find out how old all these designations are. Since neither the oldest Jñāndev Gāthā edition by Goḍbole nor the manuscripts used by me contain any such headings at all, it is to be suspected that they are additions found only in some printed editions since the late nineteenth century. 88 Kiehnle 2005: 193–210. 89 Even with them one has to be careful: mogarā phulalā (G I.110) may be interpreted as a metaphor for kuṇḍalinī’s ascent (cf. Kiehnle 1994: 306). 90 Sakalasaṃtagāthā I p. 130–208. 91 Sakalasaṃtagāthā I p. 39, 40, 168–170, 480–483. 92 Tulpule 1979: 334.

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“mother”, bāpā, “father”, baīyāno, “women”, etc. Even as rhetorical devices those words indicate that listeners were at least imagined. Janābāī mentions who of the group wrote down whose songs, which points to a workshop-like situation.93 So in several ways there may have been in the early Vārkarī movement a culture of religious discussion. If one wants to pursue this possibility one can very well imagine how the participants inspired each other, and also the fun they probably had when presenting sāṃkhya riddles, or seemingly suggestive texts—because not all of the songs are “an outpouring of the heart” as R. D. Ranade suggests.94 They are also intellectual experiments, as in the case of the above-mentioned gopī who serves as an allegory for the ascent of kuṇḍalinī. Such discussions are not alien to Nāth culture: To this day, the householder Nāths of Rajasthan transmit esoteric yoga lore in their bhajan sessions, singing their songs “lustily, with lots of percussion and music, with a chillum frequently being passed around; rounds of singing were regularly followed by group discussions of the songs’ significance—not the pronouncements of a guru, but what they called ‘knowledge gossip: gyān carcāʾ” (which I would prefer to translate here as “talk” or “discussion”).95 It would be interesting to compare in detail the style and contents of the abhaṅgas of the Jñāndev circle in order to identify set-pieces of wording and ideas that circulated among the Maharashtrian poet-saints over the centuries. Tukārām (1598–1649) learnt the art of abhaṅga making through imitation in the beginning, as he himself mentions in one of his autobiographical poems.96 One may also suspect that many ideas were just taken over—and that others were dropped in the course of time. It seems, for example, that, perhaps due to the absence of yogic “gyān carcā”, and most probably because of the tangible presence of the god Viṭṭhal, the vārī, the Gītā, and the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, the impact of yoga teachings gradually diminished among the Vārkarīs. Although genuine Shaiva Nāth literature was produced outside their circles until the eighteenth century,97 the works of later Vārkarī poet saints contain only occasional references to that facet of their movement.98 This tendency is already visible within the Jñāndev Gāthā where one of the yoga songs reminds one of passages dealing with the Nāth tradition in the Jñāneśvarī; and another one, similar in diction, is 93 Sakalasaṃtagāthā I p. 450 (no. 271). 94 Ranade 1983: 166. 95 Gold 2002: 145. 96 Tukārām Gāthā no. 1333. 97 Tulpule 1979: 420ff. 98 Kiehnle 1997: 183–90.

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full of references to the epics and Purāṇas, especially to episodes about Viṣṇu from the Bhāgavatapurāṇa.99 In the first song, the author alludes to the instructions given by Śiva to his wife at the beginning of the Nāth tradition. Then he identifies Śiva’s teachings with those of the Haṃsagītā of Bhāgavata­purāṇa 11.13, where Viṣṇu in his incarnation as Haṃsa answers Brahmā's question about the highest reality, that is, about himself. Afterwards, in a similar way to Jñāneśvarī 18.1735–1742 where Śiva's activities are compared to Viṣṇu's periodical incarnations when dharma is endangered, Nivṛtti is praised for transmitting that knowledge: maheśe umesī 100/ je khuṇa dāvilī / haṃse lādhavilī / kamaḷāsanā // 1 // sanakādika tṛpta / jyā sukhe jāhale / yogī ānaṃdale / yugāyugī // 2 // teci maja kele / karataḷāmaḷa / nivṛttī kṛpāḷa / kāya vānu // 3 // (K VII)101 1. The sign Maheśa showed to Umā, Haṃsa made available to the one whose seat is in the lotus. 2. The joy by which Sanaka and the others became content, [through that] the yogīs were delighted in every world age. 3. Just that [is what] the compassionate Nivṛtti made to me [as obvious as] the āmaḷa fruit on the palm of the hand102—what [more is there] to say?

In the second song, which Kānaḍe considers spurious and which therefore is most probably a late product of the Jñāndev school, the references to Śiva are dubious: Upamanyu (stanza 4) propitiated the god because of the poverty of his parents,103 true, but his object of worship cannot be the same as that of the elephant who worshipped Viṣṇu—unless the author had another story in mind. The eighth stanza reminds one at first hand of the song mentioned above about Śiva’s and Śakti’s dialogue. In these Vaishnava surroundings, however, I rather think that the reference is to a famous verse in which Śiva tells his wife that the repetition of Rāma’s name is equal to the recitation of Viṣṇu’s thousand names from the Mahābhārata:104 baravī�̃ pāulẽ pāulẽ / suṃdara sakumāra pāulẽ // 1 // śītaḷa harīcī�̃ pāulẽ / gomaṭī�̃ harīcī�̃ pāulẽ // 2 //

99 See, for instance, Dhruva in Bhāgavatapurāṇa 4.8–12, Prahlāda in 7.5–8, the elephant in 8.2–4, Bali in 8.19, and the episodes about Kṛṣṇa in book 10. The story about Draupadī belongs to the second book of the Mahābhārata. 100 Maheśa and Umā are designations of Śiva and his wife Pārvatī/Śakti. 101 Kiehnle 1997: 178, 205, 227–8. 102 In philosophical texts, the āmaḷa fruit (very sour and yet good for digestion) in the hand is a metaphor for something obvious. 103 Mahābhārata 13.14. 104 Rāmarakṣāstotra 1983: 29 rāma rāmeti rāmeti rame rāme manorame, sahasranāma tat tulyaṃ rāmanāma varānane.

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[dhruvāsī]105 upadeśilẽ / tẽci prahlādẽ smarilẽ // 3 // upamanyā prasanna jālẽ / tẽci gajendrẽ ciṃtilẽ // 4 // ahalyesī uddharilẽ / tẽci draupadīye dhā̃vinnalẽ // 5 // yaśodenẽ ovāḷilẽ / teci govardhanī�̃ raṃgalẽ // 6 // śakaṭā aṃgī�̃ jẽ umaṭalẽ / tẽci baḷipṛṣṭī�̃ śobhalẽ // 7 // śivẽ śaktipratī kathilẽ / dharmarājẽ tẽ pujilẽ // 8 // bāparakhumādevivarā viṭhṭhalẽ / tẽ viṭevarī dāvilẽ // 9 // ( G II.306) 1. Handsome [are] his feet, his feet, beautiful, delicate, his feet. 2. Cool [are] Hari’s feet, beautiful his feet. 3. Prahlāda remembered what was taught to Dhruva. 4. Upamanyu became happy [due to that which] was remembered by the king of the elephants. 5. [Rāma who] saved Ahalyā, came to help Draupadī. 6. [What] was worshipped by Yaśodā, took pleasure at Govardhan [hill]. 7. [The foot that] was imprinted on the body of Śakaṭa looked beautiful on the back of Bali. 8. What Śiva told to Śakti was worshipped by the god of death. 9. The father, the husband of goddess Rakhumāī, Viṭṭhal, showed that on the brick.106

The song shows that ideas went out of circulation due to changed circumstances. On the one hand, the Nāth mission, so conspicous in the Jñāneśvarī, was no longer the concern of authors who most probably were not initiated into the cult. The idea of Shaiva-Vaishnava unity had become a commonplace in surroundings where even today devotees of Khaṇḍobā (a form of Śiva worshiped in Jejurī, Pune district) join the pilgrimage to the god of Pandharpur who in turn is said to carry Śiva on his head. On the other hand, there were the Vaishnava pravacans and kīrtans (mythology based religious 105 I substituted the reading dhruvāsī for śivāsī (which occurs first in Avṭe’s edition, D 554, of 1923). I think Dhruva is more probable because he was taught to meditate on Viṣṇu, like Prahlāda. To my knowledge, there is no corresponding story about Śiva. Śivesī, “to Śivā (Śiva’s wife)”, would also be possible, but she occurs in stanza 8. 106 The other Vaishnava references are as follows (see also note 100): Viṣṇu bestowed on his devotee Dhruva the position of the polar star (stanza 3). He saved the king of elephants (gajendra, stanza 4) from a crocodile. As man-lion, he rescued Prahlāda from his demon father Hiraṇyakaśipu (stanza 3). In his incarnation as Vāmana (“dwarf”), he won back heaven and earth from Bali with two steps, and, putting his foot on the head of the demon, pushed him to the netherworld (stanza 7). As Rāma, he brought back to life by a touch of his foot Ahalyā, who had been turned into stone (Rāmāyaṇa 1.48–9), and as Kṛṣṇa, he saved Draupadī from the humiliation of being stripped naked in front of a great assembly (stanza 5). Yaśodā (stanza 6) was Kṛṣṇa’s foster-mother. On the one hand she adored him, and on the other she was bewildered by his feats, two of which are mentioned here: During his time in Vrindavan he kicked the demon Śakaṭa (“cart”, stanza 7) to pieces, and lifted on his finger Govardhan hill for the protection of his friends from the wrath of Indra (stanza 6). Dharmarāja/Yama (stanza 8), the god of death, is also included in the Vaishnava world: He visited Rāma in order to call him to heaven (Rāmāyaṇa, uttarakāṇḍa, 103–4); on another occasion he performed a sacrifice during which he worshipped Rāma or Kṛṣṇa (P. N. Jośī in his commentary on the song).

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discourses). Held since the medieval period in temples and private houses, they were often highly entertaining—in any case more so than esoteric discourses on kuṇḍalinī. I was informed that there are nowadays two branches of Jñāndev followers in Maharashtra: the Vārkarī panth with millions of followers, and a small minority that upholds the yoga tradition.107 What remained in Maharashtra was an atmosphere of openness in religious matters that may very well be due to the heritage of the Nāths. Except for the legends concerning their tradition of teachers, they never cared much about myths, names, and denominations: Their highest principle is called anāma, “nameless”, in Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati 1.4 (dated between 1000 and 1250 ce), and in the seventeenth-century Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, a text on kuṇḍalinī yoga, terms like abode of Śiva, abode belonging to Viṣṇu, eternal bliss, brahman, liberation, etc., are identified.108 In the Jñāndev Gāthā one finds a similar idea, to which Vivekanand with his conviction that all religions are “one in essence” (in his case of course under the umbrella of advaita vedānta), might have subscribed:109 pūrva biṃba śūnya he śabdaci nimāle / anāmyāceni bhale hotẽ sukhẽ // tyāsī rūpa nā̃va ṭhāva saṃkalpẽ āṇilā / arūpācyā bolā nāma ṭhelā //  ( G I.357.3) Formerly [there were ideas of] image or void—these very words disappeared, through the nameless one great happiness arose. By imagination we gave him form, name, [and] place—we gave a name to an expression of the formless.

Bibliography Bhagavadgītā: Śrīmadbhagavadgītā with the commentaries Śrīmat-śankarabhāṣya with Ānandagiri, etc. Wasudev Laxman Sāstrī Panśīkar, ed. Second edition. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1978. Bhāgavatapurāṇa: Śrīmadbhāgavata-mahāpurāṇa, maharṣi vedavyāsa-praṇīta. Gorakhpur: Gītāpress, sam. 2053. ____. Śrīmadbhāgavataṃ cūrṇikāsametaṃ saṭippaṇam. Bombay: Khemarāj Śrīkṛṣṇadās, 1867. Bhagwat, Durga. 1965. The Riddle in Indian Life, Lore and Literature. Bombay: Popular Prakashan.

107 See also the introduction to So'haṃ dhyān sādhanā, published by Svāmī Mādhavnāth bodh prasārak maṇḍal. 108 Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa 49; for the dating of the texts see Larson 2008: 10, 11. 109 Panicker 2006: 44.

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Briggs, George Weston. 1982 [1938]. Gorakhnāth and the Kānphaṭa Yogīs. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Eknāth Gāthā: Śrīsakalasaṃtagāthā II. K. A. Jośī, ed. Part 1. Puṇe: Śrīsaṃtvāṅmaya Prakāśan, 1967. Haṇmante, Ś. Ś. 1980. Saṃkhyā saṃket koś. Pune: Prasad Prakashan. Hardy, Friedhelm. 1983. Viraha Bhakti: The Early History of Kṛṣṇa Devotion in South India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Haṭhayogapradīpikā of Svātmārāma, with the commentary Jyotsnā of Brahmānanda, and English translation by Srinivasa Iyangar, revised by A. A. Ramanathan, and S. V. Subrahmanya Sastri. Madras: The Adyar Library and Research Centre, 1975 [=1972]. Horstmann, Monika. 2002. Images of Kabīr. Delhi: Manohar. Jñāndev. Anubhavāmṛt, anek junyā poṭhyāṃce ādhārẽ siddha kelelī navī saṃśodhit āvṛtti. Edited by Vā. Dā. Gokhle. Pune: Nilkanth Prakashan, 1967. ____. Cāṅgdev pāsaṣṭī, ek abhyās, Vā. Pu. Giṃḍe, Āḷaṃdī devācī (Sādhakāśram) Śake 1899 (ce 1977). ____. Gāthā-Editions (arranged according to stemmatical principles explained in Kiehnle 1997): A: Śrī jñāndevācā gāthā, ed. by R. Ś. Goṃdhḷekar, Pune ce 1891; A1: Śrī jñāneśvar mahārājāṃcī gāthā, ed. by T. N. Pāṅgaḷ, Pune 1927; B: Śrī jñāneśvarmahārājācyā abhaṅgāṃcī gāthā, ed. by G. N. Dātār, Muṃbaī 1906; C: Jñāndevācī gāthā, ed. by V. N. Jog, Pune 1907; C1: Śrīsakalasaṃtagāthā, ed. by K. A. Jośī, Puṇe 1967. D: Śrījñāndevmahārāj yāṃcyā abhaṅgāṃcī gāthā, ed. by T. H. Avṭe, Pune 1923; E: Śrījñāneśvarmahārāj yāṃcī sārtha gāthā, ed. by V. N. Sākhre, Āḷaṃdī 1934; E1: Śrī jñāneśvar mahārāj viracit amṛtānubhav, cāṅgdevpāsaṣṭī, haripāṭh, abhaṅgagāthā; ed. by J. Paṃḍit; Āḷaṃdī 1977; F: Sārtha śrī jñāndev abhaṅga gāthā; ed. by P. N. Jośī, Pune 1969; G Śrījñāndevāṃcā sārth cikitsak gāthā, saṃpādak M. Ś. Kānaḍe, R. Ś. Nagarkar, Pune 1995; K: Kiehnle 1997. Separate Prints: Bh: Manuscripts from Bhārat Itihās Saṃśodhak Maṇḍal; Mu: Pāṃgārkar, Mumukṣu February, March/April, May/June 1927; Ok, V. D., Anek kavikṛt padẽ, don bhāg, Kāvyasaṃgraha 13, 24, 1894, 1896. ____. Haripāṭh: L’Invocation, Le Haripāṭh de Dyāndev. Charlotte Vaudeville, ed. Publications de l’École Française d’Extrême‑Orient vol. LXXIII. Paris: Adrien‑Maisonneuve, 1969. ____. Śrī jñāneśvarī. Mahārāṣṭra Rājya Śikṣaṇ Vibhāg, Sacivālay, Muṃbaī: 1977. ____. Sārtha jñāneśvarī. Śaṃkar Vāman Dāṃḍekar, ed. āvṛtti sātvī, Pune: Svānand Prakāśan, 1980 [=Śake 1875, ce 1953]. ____. Upanyās, anvay, arth, ṭīpā, pariśiṣṭe va ovīsūcī yāṃsaha jñānadevī, vi. kā. rājvāḍe pratītīl saṃhitā, saṃpādak Arviṃd Maṃgrūḷkar, Vināyak Moreśvar Keḷkar. Muṃbaī: Muṃbaī Vidyāpīṭh, Marāṭhī vibhāg, 1994. Jośī, P. N. 1977. Nāthsaṃpradāy, uday va vistār. Pune. Karmarkar, A. P., and N. B. Kalamdani. 1939. Mystic Teachings of the Haridāsas of Karnātak. Bombay: Karnatak Vidyavardhak Sangha. Kaulajñānanirṇaya. P. C. Bagchi, ed. Kaulajnana-nirnaya of the School of Matsyendranāth, Tantra granthamala 12. Varanasi: Prachya Prakashan, 1986. Kiehnle, Catharina. 1985. Śivaismus und Viṣṇuismus in der Bhakti-Bewegung Mahārāṣṭras: Jñāndevs Saptapadi; XXIII. Deutscher Orientalistentag 1985, Ausgewählte Vorträge, herausgegeben von Einar von Schuler, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, pp. 357–63. ____. 1992. “Authorship and Redactorship of the Jñāndev Gāthā.” In R. S. McGregor, ed. Devotional Literature in South Asia, Current Research, 1985–1988. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 126–37. ____. 1993. “Gott und Göttin: Die Eltern des Universums.” Südasienanthologie 44 Über­ setzungen aus Südasiatischen Literaturen. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. ____. 1994. “Metaphors in the Jñāndev Gāthā.” In Alan Entwistle and Francoise Mallison, eds. Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature. Paris: École Française d’Extrême‑­ Orient, pp. 301–23.

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____. 1997a. “Songs on Yoga, Texts and Teachings of the Mahārāṣṭrian Nāths.” Jñāndev Studies I-II, Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien 48: 1. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. ____. 1997b. “The Conservative Vaiṣṇava, Anonymous Songs of the Jñāndev Gāthā.” Jñāndev Studies III, Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien 48: 2. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. ____. 2005. “The Vāsudev: Folk Figures and Vārkarī bhakti in the Jñāndev Gāthā.” In Aditya Malik et al., eds. In the Company of Gods. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 193–210. Kolte, V. B. 1978. Līḷācaritra. Mumbai: Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya Sanskriti Mandal, 1978. Kulkarṇī, K. P. 1996 [1946]. Marāṭhī vyutpatti koś, tṛtīya āvṛttī. Pune: Shubhada-Sarasvat Prakashan. Kvaerne, Per. 1986. An Anthology of Buddhist Tantric Songs: A Study of the Caryāgīti. Bangkok: White Orchid Press. Larson, Gerald James, and Ram Shankar Bhattacharya, eds. Yoga: India's Philosophy of Medi­ tation, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies. Vol. XII. Delhi, 2008. Larson, G. J. and R. S. Bhattacharya, eds. 1987. Sāṃkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy, vol. IV, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Līḷācaritra: see Kolte 1978 and Tulpule 1964–7. Mahābhārata (and Harivaṃśa), edited by V. S. Sukthankar. Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1933–69. Mahipati. 1982 [1933]. Stories of Indian Saints, translation of Mahipati's Marathi Bhaktavijay by Justin E. Abbott and Narhar R. Godbole, vols. I and II. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Michaël, Tara. 1979. Corps Subtil et Corps Causal, “La description des six Cakra” et quelques textes sanscrits sur le Kuṇḍalinī Yoga. Paris : Le Courrier du Livre. (With the original text at the end). Miller, Barbara Stoler, ed. and trans. 1984. Gītagovinda of Jayadeva, Love Song of the Dark Lord. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Molesworth, J. T. 1975. Marāṭhī‑English Dictionary, Corrected Reprint. Pune: Shubhadha Sarasvat. Monier-Williams, Monier. 1992 [1899]. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, reprint of the first edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Nāmdev. 1970. Śrīnāmdev Gāthā. Mumbai: Shasakiya Madhyavarti Mudranalaya. ____. 1967. Śrīsakalasaṃtagāthā I, ed. K. A. Jośī, pt. 1. Pune: Shrisantavanmay Prakashan. Padoux, André. 1963. Recherches sur la symbolique et l'Énergie de la parole dans certains textes tantriques. Publications de l'Institut de Civilisation Indienne, Serie IN‑8o, fascicule 21. Paris: Edition E. de Boccard. Panicker, P. L. John. 2006. Gandhi on Pluralism and Communalism. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Ramanujan, A. K. 1979 [1973]. Speaking of Śiva. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Rāmarakṣāstotra: Budha-Kauśika's Rāmarakṣāstotra, a Contribution to the study of Sanskrit devotional literature, by Gudrun Bühnemann. Vienna: De Nobili Research Library, 1983. Rāmāyaṇa: Śrīmad vālmīki-rāmāyaṇa, pts. I-III. Gorakhpur: Gita Press, 1992. Robinson, James Burnell, 1976. The Eighty-Four Siddhas. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Microfilms. Śrīsakalasaṃtagāthā, ed. K. A. Jośī. Puṇe: 1967. Sāṃkhyakārikā: The Sāṅkhya Kārikā of Īśvarakṛṣṇa, by C. Kunhan Raja. Hoshiarpur: V. V. Research Institute, 1963. Settar, S., and G. Sontheimer. 1982. Memorial Stones, A Study of their Origin, Significance and Variety. Dharwad: Karnatak University. Sharma, Krishna. 1987. Bhakti and the Bhakti Movement, A Study in the History of Ideas. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati: Mallik, Kalyani, Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati & other works of Nath Yogis. Poona, 1954. Svāmī Mādhavnāth bodh prasārak maṇḍal (prakāśak), So'haṃ dhyān sādhanā, Puṇe, n.d.

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Tukārām, Śrī Tukārāmbāvāṃcyā abhaṃgāṃcī gāthā. Muṃbaī, 1973. Tulpule, Shankar Gopal, ed. 1964–67. Līḷācaritra, ekāk, pūrvārdha bhāg 1,2, uttarārdha bhāg 1,2. Nagpur: Suvicar Prakashan Mandal. ____. 1979. Classical Marāṭhī Literature, From the Beginning to ce 1818. [A History of Indian Literature, Vol. IX, fasc. 4.] Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Tulpule, S. G. and Anne Feldhaus. 1999. A Dictionary of Old Marathi. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. Vākyapadīya: Bhartṛharis Vākyapadīya. Wilhelm Rau, ed. Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, 1977. Unbescheid, Günter. 1980. “Kānphaṭā, Untersuchungen zu Kult, Mythologie und Geschichte śivaitischer Tantriker in Nepal.” Beiträge zur Südasienforschung 63. Vaudeville, Charlotte. 1969. Haripāṭh: see Jñāndev. ____. 1987. “The Shaivite Background of Santism in Maharashtra.” In Milton Israel and N. K. Wagle, eds. Religion and Society in Maharashtra. South Asian Studies Papers 1: Toronto: University of Toronto (Centre for South Asian Studies), pp. 32‑50. ____. 1996. Myths, Saints and Legends in Medieval India. (Compiled by and with an introduction by Vasudha Dalmia). Delhi: Oxford University Press. Yogasūtra: Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras with the commentary of Vyasa and the gloss of Vachaspati Misra. Translated by Rama Prasada. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1988 [1912].

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Poetry in Motion: Literary Circulation in Mughal India Allison Busch Hindi’s Non-Hindu Past Since the late nineteenth century it has become customary to view the Hindi language and its literary heritage as an arena of culture upon which Hindus have a special claim. Even a cursory glimpse at North India’s premodern literary landscape, however, reveals a deeply hybrid past, for Muslim writers and patrons played a decisive role in the development of both of North India’s classical Hindi idioms, Awadhi and Brajbhasha. Here my concern is the latter, with a focus on the courtly traditions that Hindi specialists today designate by the term rīti or “[high] style”. Indo-Muslim elites were enthusiastic patrons, connoisseurs, and even occasional composers of rīti literature, which owes much of its genesis and genius to processes of political, cultural, and religious circulation during the Mughal period. While poetry with its slim readership today may seem an improbable barometer for culture writ large, the case of premodern India is different. In a world where poetry was at the very center of everyday life, aesthetic choices were significant. Poetry was an entertainment, a means of education, even an instrument of statecraft. Babur (r. 1526–30), the first of the Mughal emperors, bequeathed to India several centuries of Timurid rule but an important part of his legacy is literary: his memoirs and a dīvān (poetry collection) in Turkish.1 Babur’s grandson Akbar (r. 1556–1605), for his part, adopted Persian as the primary idiom of empire, which had been a major cosmopolitan language in India since the eleventh century.2 But this does not even begin to encompass the complexity of India’s multilingual literary landscape. Sanskrit had been a staple of court life for centuries before Persian ever took root in India, and several South Indian vernaculars were well-established by the end of the first millennium ce.3 In North India, 1 See Thackston 2002 and Ross 1910 (respectively). 2 Muzaffar Alam (1998; 2003; 2004) has written extensively on what he calls the “pursuit of Persian” in India. 3 See Pollock 2006, chapters. 8–10.

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regional rulers under the Delhi Sultanate and its successor states in the east were demonstrably active in constituting Awadhi as a major literary language in the two centuries leading up to Mughal rule. The Afghan kings who were serious rivals to the Mughals even into Akbar’s reign were major patrons of the Awadhi tradition of Sufi kāvya (poetry) that was an important forerunner to Brajbhasha and, eventually, to modern Hindi.4 Thus, any historian of Mughal-period literature needs to be cognizant of the array of available languages and poetic cultures. It is against this terrain of multiplicity that particular choices can be deemed significant: When so many literary cultures were available, what made one more relevant or suitable than another in a specific context? For example, the Mughal emperors, who primarily patronized Persian writers, occasionally went out of their way to commission Brajbhasha texts. Can we retrieve their motivations? Was the patronage accorded to a vernacular literary tradition part of a mission to learn about the culture of the country that they ruled, in a language they could understand far better than Sanskrit? Perhaps the Mughals were deliberately turning away from Awadhi, the earlier Indo-Muslim literary vernacular, because it had been so assiduously cultivated at the courts of their Afghan rivals and thus was too readily associated with a competing political formation.5 Certainly aesthetic factors also need to be weighed. Did poets or patrons percieve a particular language to be conducive to types of literary experience unavailable in another?6 What did such literary choices mean for those connected to Mughal power as well as the other social groups who made them? The rubric of circulation is an indispensable methodological tool for assessing a cultural system that was shared by multiple constituencies. The majority of rīti writers came from Brahmanical Hindu backgrounds but 4 See Behl and Weightman 2000: xi-xiv. To use the term “Hindi” prior to the nineteenth century is slightly problematic, but I use it for convenience as a blanket term that encompasses the widely intelligible lingua franca of the Mughal period and its literary dialects. 5 This possibility was suggested to me by Aditya Behl (personal communication). And yet while Brajbhasha does begin to eclipse Awadhi as a literary language by late in Akbar’s period, Mughal elites hardly abandoned the earlier tradition. For instance, ʿAbd al-Qadir Badauni mentions that Maulana Daud’s Cāndāyan was read from the pulpit in Muntakhab al-tavārīkh (1: 333). Shantanu Phukan (2000) has documented an enthusiastic reception for Awadhi literature among Persianized elites throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And a few important literary works, such as Usman’s Citrāvalī and Surdas’s Naldaman, continued to be written. For these and other latter-day works of the Awadhi Sufi tradition, see McGregor 1984: 150–4. 6 An insightful analysis of the choice of Hindi made by Persianized Mughal elites is Phukan 2001.

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their patrons were diverse; far from being associated with a Hindu religious identity, rīti poetry had a distinctly non-denominational cachet among kings (whether the Mughal badshah or the regional Hindu rulers known as “Rajputs”), Indian noblemen, music aficionados, Brahman intellectuals, soldiers, and merchant groups. I begin by briefly outlining some of the key genres of the rīti tradition and the circulatory factors behind its inauguration in the early Mughal period. I am especially keen to understand rīti literature as a cultural form held in common by Rajput and Mughal royalty because this facet of its connoisseurship is poorly understood, especially in comparison to the similarly shared idioms of painting and architecture from the same courts.7 The greater part of the essay is devoted to trying to reconstruct to the extent possible the reception of rīti texts in a multicultural region like South Asia. When more than one readership participated in a literary culture was it experienced in the same way? Or can we speak of a polyvalence of genres as they traveled between different social groups? What factors in rīti texts themselves contributed to their broad appeal? What acts of translation were generated in this culture of circulation? To fully account for all of the diverse strands of a major literary culture is impossible in a short essay and some hesitation about making categorical statements is warranted when it comes to theorizing what rīti texts meant to their varied audiences over the centuries. With rare exceptions, such as an insightful study by Shantanu Phukan (2000), the field of reception theory has barely been broached by Indian literary historians, and even basic data, let alone any adequate understanding of it, is scarce. Still, assessing the evidence, where available, enriches our knowledge of richly variegated literary and social milieus that were so central to early modern life. Cultural Circulation and the Beginnings of Rīti Literature The term “rīti literature” designates a diverse repertoire of courtly genres including elaborate praise addresses to royalty, political narratives, historical poems, lyrical styles, as well as a robust tradition of vernacular rhetoric. Although Brajbhasha courtly literature has some important antecedents in Gwalior and among Vaishnava communities of Vrindavan and Mathura, the rīti tradition is closely tied to the consolidation of Mughal rule during the second half of the sixteenth century. In some respects it can be seen as a vernacular revival of the Sanskrit kāvya tradition that was being promoted by the courts of early modern India. Older literary motifs 7 See Beach 1992; Asher 1995; Tillotson 1999 [1987]; Aitken 2010; Rothfarb 2012.

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were invested with a new cultural salience for the Mughal elite and the Rajput manṣabdārs (prominent officials) who were the tradition’s powerful backers. Praśasti or political poetry had been a favored mode of projecting royal authority in India since the classical period. Inscriptions as well as courtly kāvya were composed in a rich, highly aestheticized style, as though poets aimed to approximate the power of the king through the expressive feats of language itself. The Mughal emperors were especially drawn to Timurid and Persianate forms of political expression, but Akbar’s reign witnessed an interest in local styles in both Sanskrit and Brajbhasha. The Sanskrit and vernacular poets who contributed to early Mughal court culture were perhaps more comfortable with their traditional genres and thus did not always rush to adopt Persian protocols, but presumably it was also desirable for the Mughal emperors to broadcast their authority widely, in as many languages and idioms as possible. In India and elsewhere, court poetry has a long history of underwriting political authority. When even Persian-language histories on occasion traced Emperor Akbar to exalted figures like Yudhisthira from India’s epic past,8 it makes good sense that the Mughal kings would have found praśasti poems in Indian languages appealing, as when Keshavdas constructed this complex poetic vision of Emperor Jahangir in his Braj panegyric Jahāngīrjascandrikā (Moonlight of the Fame of Jahangir, 1612):9 Like Brahma, he has made the royal swan his mount. With the various deities at his side, he is as stable as Mount Meru. His luster radiates throughout the seven continents. He is a second Dilip, backed by the power of [his wife] Sudakshina. Like the magnificent ocean, he is the lord of many rivers. Or is he the spotless sun, the enemy of the night? Valiant in battle, Jahangir is everywhere resplendent. His fame, pure and bright like Ganges water, has brightened the three worlds.

Like Brahma, he has vanquished the pride of eminent kings. With the various courtiers at his side, he is as stable as Mount Meru. His luster radiates throughout the seven continents. He is a second Dilip, backed by the power of his charity. Like magnificent King Sagara, he is the lord of many armies. Or is he brilliant like the spotless sun, constantly engaged in charitable acts? Valiant in battle, Jahangir is everywhere resplendent. His fame, pure and bright like Ganges water, has brightened the three worlds.

8 Ernst 2003: 183. 9 Jahāngīrjascandrikā, v. 110. Instances of śleṣa or secondary meanings cleverly crafted by the poet are here indicated by means of a double-columned translation. My translation draws insight from the modern Hindi rendition by Kishorilal.

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This verse mobilizes a host of images and royal codes to cast Emperor Jahangir in the mold of an ideal Indian ruler from antiquity. The poet likens the emperor to heroic figures such as Dilip and Sagara from the Raghu clan, ancestors of King Rama, whose famously just rule was held up as the model for all subsequent Hindu kings and the occasional Muslim sultan. Keshavdas knew the Sanskrit kāvya tradition well, for in places he draws on imagery from Sanskrit predecessors.10 He also uses the classical technique of śleṣa (double entendre) to interesting effect: Some words and phrases are intended to be read in two registers simultaneously, a form of verbal play that was a specialty of Indian court poets.11 The adopting of a distinctly Indian royal vocabulary, invoking esteemed classical heroes (not to mention Mount Meru from Hindu Cosmogony and the revered Ganges River) has the effect of naturalizing a Muslim ruler of Central Asian descent in the Indian setting.12 For the Rajput kingdoms of central and western India, whose court culture was evolving in dialogue with the Mughals, rīti literature was an especially potent means of articulating the power of regional rulers at a time when the inexorability of Mughal dominion made such assertions of some urgency. Although Sanskrit writers retained their status as intellectuals and court professionals for many years to come, this period witnessed the dramatic rise of vernacular kāvya, often at the very courts that had the closest ties to the Mughal Empire. Two of the earliest vernacular examples of the carit (exemplary biography) genre, for instance, can be traced to the court of Man Singh Kachhwaha of Amber, who was Emperor Akbar’s leading Rajput general for more than two decades. Between 1585 and 1595 two of Man Singh’s court poets, Amrit Rai and Narottam, wrote lengthy narratives about their patron, both entitled Māncarit. They contain typical Sanskrit elements such as elaborate praśasti verses about the king and trademark kāvya features like the nagara-varṇana (description of the city), but also distinctly topical features, in particular a concern to narrativize Mughal power.13 Amrit Rai and Narottam record many of the signal historical events of Man Singh’s career in Akbar’s service, while at the same 10 As noted by Kishorilal (Jahāngīrjascandrikā, p. 104), in this verse Keshavdas appropriates expressions like vimānīkṛta rājahaṃsa from the opening to Bana’s Kādambarī (see p. 6). 11 On the Indian śleṣa tradition, see Bronner 2010. 12 Sanskrit poets had a long history of representing Muslim power, both admiringly and otherwise. See Chattopadhyaya 1998. 13 See Bahura 1990, and Busch 2012. There were other approaches to the Mughal presence. As discussed by Cynthia Talbot (2012), Chandrashekhara, the author of the Surjana-

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time presenting the patron as an ideal king in keeping with ancient Sanskrit and contemporary Rajput styles of royal representation. A similar bending of the genres of poetry and history is Keshavdas’s Vīrsiṃhdevcarit (Deeds of Bir Singh Deo, 1607), another important early example of vernacular political kāvya written at the court of Bir Singh Deo Bundela (r. 1605–27) of Orchha, a late contemporary of Man Singh who made a name for himself as one of the most powerful Rajputs of Jahangir’s reign. The Vīrsiṃhdevcarit is a breathtakingly complex and erudite work of rīti literature that is very much in keeping with the protocols of classical literary representation while also revealing dramatic new early modern hues. Some of the work is highly stylized and demonstrably drawing from classical authorities like Bana, but in a dozen of his opening cantos Keshavdas records—almost with a modern historian’s zeal—important details about Mughal-Orchha political relations at the turn of the seventeenth century. It seems likely that this political turn in Braj literature arose in response to a new form of circulation between Persianate and Hindi-using literati. Can it be mere coincidence that the Akbarnāmah (1590s), Abu al-Fazl’s Persian account of Akbar’s life and reign, is almost exactly contemporary with a spate of biographies of Rajput rulers? The languages and rhetorical modes of the Mughal royal biography and the Brajbhasha carit are of course distinct, but their broader political and historicizing missions seem too similar to just have sprung into existence without some as yet little-understood process of cultural circulation. At any rate, these bold experiments with new vernacular genres widened the repertoire of Brajbhasha and contributed to its profile as a sophisticated language of courtly life. Whereas earlier sixteenth-century bhakti poets tended to be closely affiliated with or even founding members of religious communities, the new class of rīti literati operated out of a vastly different social milieu: that of the early modern court. Amrit Rai and Narottam wrote their remarkable carits about Man Singh and then either died or faded into obscurity.14 Keshavdas, however, had a more extensive career with truly multi-disciplinary reach. As the leading court poet of an upwardly mobile Rajput kingdom in central India that had come under Mughal dominion in the carita, a Sanskrit kāvya from about the same period commissioned by Bundi patrons, seems almost to wish Mughal power away by largely excluding it from his narrative. 14 As suggested by G. N. Bahura, who edited both Māncarits, Amrit Rai may have died in 1585, or fallen from favor, which would explain why his text does not cover any events later than that year (Bahura 1990: 20). Narottam’s work, for its part, breaks off in c. 1594.

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1570s, Keshavdas wrote a total of eight major works that collectively extended Brajbhasha into new expressive realms, contributing in significant ways to the process of vernacularization that was by then well underway in northern India. Aside from writing new types of political and historical literature that satisfied the evolving cultural needs of his contemporary milieu, Keshavdas was also an important innovator in the field of vernacular rhetoric.15 Inspired by his courtly context and considerable Sanskrit training (he was from a pandit family), while not forsaking the bhakti concerns that were also central to Brajbhasha literary culture (his Orchha patrons were recent converts to Vaishnavism), he wrote a total of three instructional manuals on traditional topics from Indian literary theory: the Rasikpriyā (Handbook for Poetry Connoisseurs, 1591), Kavipriyā (Handbook for Poets, 1601), and Chandamālā (Guide to Metrics, 1602). These works, known as rītigranths (books of method), heralded a growing concern with classicism and formal scholarship and helped to spark a new literary trend: the production on a vast scale of vernacular handbooks on rhetoric. The immense popularity of such handbooks—a cultural trend that would endure for centuries—must have stemmed from their ability to condense the general principles of a long and complex tradition of Sanskrit theory into an accessible vernacular medium. Here too the rubric of circulation proves relevant: Classical ideas were brought forward into the present and transmitted in a new Hindi idiom that could reach a broader community, notably (but by no means exclusively) the Mughal and Rajput elite. Rīti poets also updated the earlier Sanskrit treatises. For instance, most Sanskrit courtly texts were wholly unconcerned with religious themes, whereas for many Brajbhasha poets, writing in the age of bhakti fervor, to craft a treatise on aesthetics was unthinkable without featuring the venerated deity Krishna and his consort Radha. The Brajbhasha rītigranth also played an important role in cultural translation and community formation. These texts decanted the best of Sanskrit literary tradition into new vessels. At the same time, by dint of their generally truncated and relatively uncomplicated style the rītigranths served as the perfect introduction to general Indic literary devices and images for a Hindi-knowing Persianate clientele. They fostered connoisseurship and helped to create a new reading public for Brajbhasha literature. 15 Keshavdas’s forays into history are discussed in Busch 2005; an overview of his larger oeuvre is Busch 2011: 29–56.

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The rīti poetry manuals that became popular from the late sixteenth century imparted technical knowledge about Indian literary theory, one of premodern India’s most important knowledge systems, but they also contributed in general ways to producing well-rounded individuals of courtly sensibility. To be effective, kings and members of the nobility required not only political and military training but also cultural and emotional refinement. The frequent emphasis on śṛṅgāra (erotic love) in rīti poetry manuals played a role in the education of the senses. Brajbhasha poets routinely served as mentors to kings and members of the nobility. Education had a moral component; it also meant a process of self-cultivation to become a connoisseur, a person of taste. When the eighteenthcentury writer Bhikharidas proclaimed, “the fine points of poetic sentiment are comparable to women because they deliver instruction in a pleasurable manner,” he encapsulated a widely held belief.16 Rīti literature became an indispensable form of court culture in greater Hindustan through its multiplicity of genres and poets’ and connoisseurs’ diverse modes of engaging them. Several non-literary circulatory mechanisms also fostered this development. Mughal military expansion and a Timurid ruling style that favored travel more than staying put contributed to the development of a transregional court culture. Some localities that had been more isolated or resistant to the surge of imperial might were definitively incorporated as Mughal vassals. Rajput rulers became a critical part of this moving machinery of empire. Sometimes serving as kings in their own territory, they were also generals and administrators in the Mughal system, posted in various provinces of the realm. Poets and poems regularly moved between regional courts and the imperial capitals, fostering a shared Mughal and Rajput courtly ethos. Another more general factor behind the rise of rīti literature was the Mughal rulers’ acculturation to the Indian milieu from Akbar’s period onward. All of the Mughal rulers self-affiliated with the Persianate world but, whereas Babur and Humayun spent much of their lives outside of India and gave precedence to Central Asian and Safavid cultural models, Akbar (r. 1556–1605) was keenly interested in his local environment. He commissioned Abu al-Fazl, his close friend and courtier, to write the Ā’īn-i akbarī (Institutes of Akbar, 1590s), which contains a census of Indian knowledge systems, including extensive sections on sāhitya (literature) and saṅgīt (music), the latter of special relevance to vernacular literary culture since 16 Kāvyanirṇay, 1.11. Here and elsewhere all translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

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Tansen, the emperor’s leading court musician, composed his songs in Braj. Akbar’s court also undertook translations of Indian texts from Sanskrit into Persian on an unprecedented scale. Women too would have exerted their influence from behind the scenes as Rajput brides entered the Mughal harem beginning in Akbar’s day.17 Although detailed evidence can be hard to pin down, they brought with them their own Indic cultural tastes, to which the emperors would have been routinely exposed.18 Jahangir, whose mother was a Kachhwaha princess, regularly uses Hindi words in his Persian memoirs and otherwise showcases his knowledge of Hindustan. The Vernacular Medium and Analogue Genres While translation was one mechanism for the circulation of ideas across linguistic boundaries, Brajbhasha itself functioned as a zone of sociolinguistic contact, a medium that the Persian-using Mughals and the Sanskritproficient Hindu literati had in common.19 As Sunil Sharma has remarked, in the premodern centuries of Muslim presence in South Asia very few works of belles-lettres were actually translated into Persian from Indian languages, and surprisingly, after Bīrūnī perhaps only a handful of Muslim scholars in the subcontinent were proficient in the Sanskrit language. But there was a fair degree of participation in the vernacular literary cultures, as well as a sense of shared ethical and aesthetic values, that gave rise to new hybrid forms in literature, especially in the provinces of the Mughal Empire.20

As a vernacular, Brajbhasha had the innate ability to foster the participation of multiple groups and linkages between them. In contrast to Sanskrit and Persian, India’s two cosmopolitan languages that were only accessible to those with specialized linguistic knowledge, Brajbhasha was readily intelligible to most North Indians from Gujarat to Bengal and it also gained a following in the Deccan.21 It was a marvellously adaptable linguistic resource because writers could manipulate registers to suit diverse literary 17 See Taft 1994; Lal 2005: 140–75. 18 As noted by Rizvi (1975: 179, drawing on the Muntakhab al-tavārīkh of Badauni), Akbar’s Hindu wives maintained their distinctive religious traditions. Rajput women’s probable influence on Mughal visual culture has been mentioned in Welch 1983: 30–1. 19 Audrey Truschke (2011: 507–8) has observed that the Persian translations of Sanskrit texts commissioned by Akbar were not made directly but rather through the medium of oral explanations in Hindi. 20 Sharma 2009: 92. 21 See Busch 2011: 188–96.

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contexts and patrons. Rīti poets in some cases wrote in an uncomplicated, down-to-earth idiom; they could also opt for spectacularly elegant Sanskritized style. Many writers used Persian loan words when the occasion warranted it, whether composing praise addresses to Shah Jahan or crafting a scene from a Mughal darbār.22 There is also a tradition of writing macaronic poetry that blends Persian and Hindi.23 Writing in the vernacular was one factor that facilitated the transmission of cultural forms between different social groups.24 Another is the existence of analogue genres. As noted, the Brajbhasha carit and Persian chronicles like Akbarnāmah have more than a passing similarity in terms of both genre and political intent; they arose at the same time in two distinct but related courtly milieus that had a pressing need to articulate royal authority. Disparate communities in South Asia had long been appropriating each other’s genres for communicating their messages, whether political, spiritual, or aesthetic. Hagiographers of Vaishnava and Sikh saints, for instance, had at their disposal the Sufi taẕkira tradition, which they reshaped to their own purposes.25 Several rīti styles would have easily translated into genres readily accessible to a Persianate reading public. Love poetry is of course universal, but both Persian and Braj writers had a penchant for crafting scenes about lovers destined to endure anguished separation (firāq and viraha, respectively). Yet other notable equivalences between Persian and vernacular genres can be traced. Structural resemblances between the musical lyrics of Braj dhrupad and the Persian rubāʿī may have contributed to the enjoyment of this genre by Mughal patrons.26 Persian and Indic literatures share the genre of the “head-to-toe” description of the beloved, known as sarāpā in Persian and śikh-nakh in Brajbhasha. Additionally, Persian and Brajbhasha both have strong traditions of epigrammatic poetry. It has been suggested that the overwhelming popularity of the Braj rhyming couplet during the 22 See Busch 2010. 23 On the Bikaṭ kahānī of Muhammad Afzal, see Phukan 2000: 89–101; on Rekhta or “mixed language” more generally, see Bangha 2010. 24 Phillip Wagoner (2011a: 105) has observed that Telugu literature was a similar zone of cultural contact in the mixed cultural sphere of the Deccan under the Qutb Shahs: “In such a complex social setting, searching for areas of congruence and commensurability between cultures would have been a vital necessity, and the production and enjoyment of Telugu kavya within a primarily Persianate courtly milieu would have provided one natural avenue for such exploration.” 25 The Sikh genre of janam-sākhī demonstrably drew on Sufi biographical writings, as did Sant commemorative traditions. See McLeod 1980: 82; Lawrence 1987. 26 Delvoye 1991: 152.

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Mughal period probably owes something to Persian literary tastes.27 Certainly the verses now collected in the Dohāvalī (Collection of Couplets) of the Mughal amīr and Hindi poet ʿAbd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan (Rahim), though vernacular in form, are in keeping with Persianate court culture, in which poetry was publically declaimed as proof of one’s sophistication as well as to offer up trenchant political or social commentary. The same poet’s Nagarśobhā (Beauty of the City) can similarly be approached as both a vehicle for Persian sensibilities and a sincere attempt to participate in local literary culture. In this work, Rahim provides a poetic account of an (unnamed) Indian city that seems in part inspired by the Persian genre of shahrāshūb (lament for the city).28 Whereas in Persian the emphasis is on the devastating beauty of the young men who stroll the city’s byways, Rahim’s rendition focuses on the piquant beauty of myriad Indian women and their saucy ways. In each case the female beloveds are portrayed in terms relevant to their caste profession. This verse, for instance, records the fascination of the onlooker with a kayasth’s wife (kaithinī): The kayasth’s wife is unable to tell her tale of love. Her heart itself becomes the paper on which she writes love’s intimations. Her eyelash, dipped in kajol-ink, is a pen. She writes love’s alphabet with her eyes, and gives 29 it to her lover to read.30

One after another, each Indian woman infatuates him with her charms. Consorting with a dyer’s wife (raṃgrejin) unleashes waves of liquid passion. A butcher’s wife (kasāin) is like a bloodthirsty murderess, wielding her weapons of youth, haughtiness, and exuberance. A wood-cutter’s wife is hard-hearted (ura kī kaṭhina), intractable as the raw materials of her husband’s craft.31 The antecedents of Rahim’s Nagarśobhā are probably multiple. While the emphasis on cruel beloveds conjures up the world of the Persian shahrāshūb, descriptions of the city, known as nagara-varṇana, have a long pedigree in Sanskrit and Indic vernaculars.32 Elaborate descriptions of 27 These and other shared features of Persian and Braj literature are discussed in Holland 1969: 104–9. 28 The Ma⁠ʾāsir-i raḥīmī contains a shaharāshūb, strengthening the possibility (Vivek Gupta, personal communication). On the shahrāshūb genre, see Pritchett 1984; Petievich 1990; Sharma 2011. 29 Here reading dei for the editors’ deha (the latter does not conform to the rhyme scheme but would have the racier meaning “she gives her body to her lover to read”). 30 Nagarśobhā, vv. 9–10. 31 Ibid., vv. 19–20, 37–8, 122–3. 32 See Ramanujan 1970. Another instance from the Deccan (where Rahim lived for an extended period) is Krīḍābhirāmamu by the Telugu poet Vinukonda Vallabharaya (trans-

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Rajput capitals became prevalent in the Brajbhasha political narratives of the Mughal period.33 Often rīti poets were especially concerned with portraying architectural and artistic grandeur, but beautiful women do feature as part of the ambience.34 Rahim’s descriptions of the female jātis is quasiethnographic, but also distinctly erotic in flair. Should the Nagarśobhā be viewed as an attempt by a Mughal writer to contribute to Indic literary culture on its own terms, the imposition of a Persianate worldview upon the target literature, or some kind of hybrid creation that deftly melds various traditions? When a Persianate genre is grafted into Brajbhasha, it is neither what it once was nor entirely naturalized in the new environment. A spectacular instance of circulation between Indic and Perso-Arabic milieus that took place over centuries concerns a genre of advice literature. The Pañcatantra, a famous collection of animal fables from the Sanskrit nīti (political wisdom) tradition, was translated into Pahlavi as early as the sixth century and circulated widely throughout the Islamic world, occasioning renditions in countless languages.35 The Pañcatantra famously entered the Arabic literary environment as Kalīlah wa dimnah, and it also engendered an elaborate Persian reworking as Anwār-i suhaylī. One reason for the popularity of this frequently illustrated text in Islamic lands was that it resonated with the mirror for princes genre that was used to impart akhlāq or moral instruction to would-be rulers.36 Several painted versions of the text produced in the Mughal atelier of Akbar and Jahangir’s reigns testify to its popularity there, and Akbar commissioned Abu al-Fazl to write a version in simplified Persian, known as ʿIyār-i dānish. At least one Brajbhasha version was also produced, a Buddhisāgar by Jan Kavi, said to have been presented to Shah Jahan.37 Presumably this work would have had special appeal for a Persianized ruler who was also deeply familiar with illustrated versions of the text that had been common in India since at least the Lodi period.38 lated by Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman as A Lover’s Guide to Warangal), who takes the reader on an extended tour of the city of Warangal, pruriently pausing over various low-caste beauties with their raw charms. I am grateful to Phillip Wagoner for the reference. 33 On Bundi, the Hada capital, and Shivaji’s capital at Raigarh, see Busch 2011: 181, 191–2. 34 See, for instance, the Māncarit of Amrit Rai, vv. 101–6. 35 See de Blois 1991; Riedel 2010. 36 Grube 1991: 33, 36; Khandalavala and Desai 1991: 137–8; Olivelle 1997: xl-xlv. 37 Talbot 2009: 230 n. 55 (citing Dasharatha Sharma). 38 The illustrated copies of the text produced in India are discussed in Khandalavala and Desai 1991.

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In some cases it is clear that Mughal writers and patrons did not necessarily approach local literatures with a view to understanding the subtle points of Indian cultural logic. When Masih Panipati, a poet from Jahangir’s period, composed a Persian Rāmāyaṇa, he called his work Mas̱navī-yi rām wa sītā. The work’s title, genre, and overall textual approach transform it into a story focused on two lovers, changing its tenor and meaning considerably from the morally-laden emphasis on duty and righteousness that is at the core of Valmiki’s version.39 Elsewhere, in Jahangir’s memoirs, we sense the emperor’s deep familiarity with Hindi poetry, but his manner of describing it suggests that he filtered the material through Persian topoi. When the emperor expresses delight at the bee’s passion for the lotus, a common motif in Brajbhasha poetry and song (“bee poetry” had recently been popularized in the “bhramar-gīt” genre), he does so by comparing the bee to a “nightingale in love with the rose.”40 A similar phenomenon is evident in the writings of Mirza Khan, whose Tuḥfat al-hind (Gift of India, c. 1675?), a Persian treatise on Indian literature and music, is thought to have been commissioned by Aurangzeb’s son Azam Shah. Mirza Khan expresses his enthusiasm for Brajbhasha in terms of a central dyad of Persian poetry when he notes that it excels in the “praise of the lover and the beloved” (wasf-i ʿāshiq ū maʿshūq).41 In each of these cases responses to Indian motifs appear to have been conditioned by Persian literary values, possibly because of the audience for whom Masih, Jahangir, and Mirza Khan were writing. And yet certain ideas translated particularly well between the Persianate and Indic literary milieus because pre-existing concepts and genres allowed readers to decode (or recode) them. We see voluminous evidence for this in religious interactions. As Tony Stewart has demonstrated, premodern Bengali Sufis sought “dynamic equivalences” between Islamic ideas and more local Hindu conceptualizations of divinity.42 Thus, the Nabīvaṃśa (Lineage of the Prophets, 1584–6) by the Muslim poet Saiyid Sultan includes Krishna in a list of prophets that culminate in Muhammad.43 In a similar 39 Gandhi 2007. 40 Jahāngīrnāma, p. 239. Nalini Delvoye (1994: 414–5) has also called attention to the significance of this passage. 41 A Grammar of the Braj Bhakha by Mīrzā Khān, pp. 35, 54. 42 See Stewart 2001. 43 Asher and Talbot 2006: 88–9. On the circulation of literary forms between Bengali, Hindi, and Persian in this period, see d’Hubert, this volume.

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vein, when the Mughal-period Sufi ʿAbd al-Rahman Chishti wrote his Mirāt al-ḥaqā’iq (Mirror of Truths, seventeenth century), an Indo-Persian account of the Bhagavadgītā, he introduces various equivalences. A central framework for his treatment of the Gītā is that “Krishna explained to Arjuna by analogy the secrets of tawḥīd.” (Tawḥīd is a profession of the oneness of God, often linked to the Sufi concept of ontological monism, waḥdat al-wujūd.) Hindu scriptures are glossed as kitāb ([holy] book), which places them in the semantic field of the Qurʾān. The interpolation of some Sufi verses in the middle of his rendition of theological points from the Gītā, again, steers the interpretation down an Islamic path.44 Conceptualizing Indian metaphysical and philosophical ideas in Sufi terms was, in fact, very common for Mughal intellectuals. Banwalidas (d. 1677/8), whose Gulẕār-i ḥāl is a Persian translation, probably via Brajbhasha, of the Prabodhacan­ drodaya (Moonrise of Wisdom, eleventh century), converted the Vedan­ tic-Vaishnava context of the original Sanskrit classic into a Sufi one.45 A related case is the celebrated section of Jahangir’s memoirs where, upon visiting the Hindu ascetic Jadrup, the emperor issues a dramatic statement of religious commensurability: “He is not devoid of learning and has studied well the science of the Vedanta, which is the science of Sufism.” Moreover, whenever Jahangir praises Jadrup, he interlaces his discussion with fragments of Sufi poetry.46 Here we begin to touch on the important issue, well-known to those interested in reception theory, that meaning inheres not in the text itself but in the eyes and ears of the beholder. To measure and theorize readership across a gap of centuries can of course feel methodologically fraught: How do we know for certain how particular texts were interpreted by the individual connoisseurs of Mughal India who would have brought different sensibilities and values to the experience of reading and listening? A few have left traces that can be analyzed, but often we can do little more than speculate about these hermeneutic transactions. It is natural to presume that some principle of curiosity about other people and their cultural traditions underlies at least some types of literary encounter. This is generally presumed to be the case with the Mughal 44 My knowledge of this text comes from Vassie 1992. Recently, Muzaffar Alam (2012) has insightfully drawn attention to how the writings of ʿAbd al-Rahman Chishti, with their openness to more eclectic strains of Indian Islam, complicate the general view of this period as leaning more toward religious orthodoxy. 45 Ernst 2003: 184. 46 Jahāngīrnāma, p. 209 (Maulana Rumi and Hakim Sana’i are referenced on pages 209 and 313, respectively).

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translations that have rightly attracted the attention of scholars. And yet the evidence can be ambiguous. Audrey Truschke reports the startling fact that ʿAbd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan, who patronized an expensive illustrated manuscript of the Rāmāyaṇa, was ill-informed about a basic element of the storyline (he thought that Shiva was Rama’s father), which suggests the need for caution before glibly attributing complex patronage and textual choices to a desire for cultural rapprochement.47 The Akbar-com­mis­ sioned Razmnāmah (Book of War), a Persian reworking of the Mahābhārata, was for its part never just a straightforward translation from the Sanskrit since the expectations of a Mughal readership contributed to the text’s reshaping. In the Persian version elements of ʿajā’ib (wonder) are stressed, presumably because Mughal readers—accustomed to the dāstān tradition—would have had an affinity for them.48 The Bhagavadgītā episode, which features Krishna’s powerful sermon to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, is downplayed and loses its ethical force, most likely because it was “theologically awkward” for the Mughal interpreters.49 The addition of hundreds of Persian poems to the epic, interpolated with clear deliberation to lend emotional weight to particular scenes, brings an unfamiliar text into conformity with Persian literary aesthetics. The Persian Book of War also speaks to Akbar’s political concerns.50 Carl Ernst has drawn attention to a similar case. When a Siṃhāsan Battīsī (Thirty-two Tales of the Throne), which celebrates the exemplary rule of King Vikramaditya, was presented to Akbar, it was framed as a book of kings in the manner of the Persian classic Shāhnāmah. As Ernst puts it, “The evidence suggests that one of Akbar’s purposes was the absorption of Indian traditions of kingship into a form that he could take advantage of.”51 In short, Indian literature may undergo what Stefano Pellò has characterized as transcultural or “transaesthetic restyling” in a Persian context.52

47 See Truschke 2012: 292–94 (drawing on Seyller 1999). Nonetheless, in other respects Rahim does appear remarkably adept at absorbing and reproducing contemporary Indian literary trends, as in his two collections of Braj barvai verses that showcase bhakti, viraha, and the figure of the Indian nāyikā. When it comes to his visual and architectural patronage, Corinne Lefèvre (this volume) notes a similarly uneven record of engagement with local cultural forms. 48 Truschke 2011: 509–10, 512. 49 Ibid., p. 514. 50 Ibid., pp. 516–9. 51 Ernst 2003: 183. 52 See Pellò, this volume. Alam and Subrahmanyam (2011: 239–40) discuss a similar transcultural reworking of the Nala-Damayanti story in Persian.

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The rītigranth or Braj poetry manual was one widely disseminated genre that was versatile enough to serve a range of cultural needs across communities. It could be a gateway into Indian literary systems for novices who were unfamiliar with the basic ideas. Or at least Abu al-Fazl hints at such a reception when he concludes his discussion of nāyikābheda from Ā’īn-i akbarī with the remarks, In this art the manners and bearing of the hero and the heroine are set forth with much variety of exposition, and illustrated by delightful examples. The works on this subject should be consulted by those who are interested in its study.53

A central feature of the rītigranth is the interplay between lakṣaṇs (definitions) and udāharaṇs (example verses). Although connoisseurs prided themselves on their knowledge of the fine points, for those less interested in the technical matters of tropology and classifications of Indian heroines, the example verses with their frequent emphasis on śṛṅgāra (erotic love) would have been enjoyable in their own right. Thus, poems on the Hindu deities Radha and Krishna may have been savored in more universal terms, interpreted as simply love lyrics or as an expression of the soul’s longing for god, a common motif of Sufi literature and indeed Persian textual culture more generally.54 Vaishnava poems and songs were frequently restyled in terms of Persian or Suficate love themes. Sufi and bhakti thought worlds do naturally invite comparison, given the shared theme of ecstatic devotion to a divine lover.55 Speculating about some of the factors that attracted Sultan Ibrahim Qutb Shah (r. 1550–80) to Telugu literature in the same period, Phillip Wagoner wonders if he “found intriguing the resonant parallels between the conventions of Persian mystical love poetry and those of the devotional poetry of the Srivaisnava tradition.”56 Richard Eaton has similarly remarked on a Sufi hermeneutics of the Krishna legend in the Deccan.57 A dramatic illustration of a Sufi reading of bhakti from North India is the treatise Haqāʾiq-i hindī (Truths of India, 1566) of Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami, which presented the imagery of bishnupad lyrics in terms of specific theological points from 53 Ā ʾīn-i akbarī 3: 260. 54 In her research on Indo-Muslim connoisseurship of Indian dhrupad, Delvoye (1991: 167–68) has argued similarly for the denuding of Hindu religious content. 55 The North Indian bhakti efflorescence of the sixteenth century has a number of largely unacknowledged Sufi antecedents. See Entwistle 1987: 42–3; de Bruijn 2005; Behl 2007. 56 Wagoner 2011b: 95. 57 Eaton 1996 [1978]: 151.

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within the Muslim community and had nothing to do with the memorializing of Krishna’s deeds that was a spiritual mainstay of their kāfir (infidel) contemporaries. The two interpretive communities did not so much share in a joint religious and cultural practice as experience what Francesca Orsini calls “parallel enjoyment”.58 Indeed, one explanation for the popularity of Awadhi texts among the Mughal elite is that they were a medium for intense emotional experience and thus prized for their ability to embody Sufi values like zawq (taste/epiphany), maʿrifat (spiritual insight), jazb (emotion), and ḥaqīqat (truth perception).59 In such cases the vernacular was chosen not for its access to local cultural frameworks but paradoxically because it was perceived as more suitable than Persian for facilitating Muslim mystical experience. The implication is that Hindi texts, for all the other kinds of cultural work they did in early modern India, were at times a vehicle for Muslim religious sentiments, and Islamicate cultural tastes. Indo-Muslim Connoisseurship If Brajbhasha texts on occasion generated meanings that were not necessarily linked to Vaishnavism, or even specifically connected to Indian literature, there is also considerable evidence of deeply committed connoisseurs of vernacular poetry from within the Indo-Muslim community. We have noted above that the likes of Emperor Jahangir and the nobleman Mirza Khan spoke appreciatively of Hindi literature. It is true that Persian had been especially favored by the Mughal elite from Akbar’s time, but Jahangir celebrates his brother Danyal’s facility with local music and poetry styles60 and even Abu al-Fazl took pains to stress the emperor’s expertise in both Hindi and Persian, saying The inspired nature of His Majesty is strongly drawn to composing poetry in Hindi and Persian, and he exhibits a subtle understanding of the finest points of literary conceits.61

58 See Orsini, this volume; cf. Alam 1996. 59 Phukan 2000: 79–88. 60 Jahāngīrnāma, p. 39. 61 (Ṭabʿ-i ilhām paẕīr-i ān ḥaz̤rat bih guftan-i naẓm-i hindī ū fārsī bih ghayāt-i muwāfiq uftādah dar daqā’iq-i takhayyulāt-i shiʿrī-yi nuktah-sanjī ū mū-shigāfī [i.e., shikāfī] mīfarmāyand) Akbarnāmah 1:270–1. My translation modifies Beveridge (Akbarnāmah 1: 520). A sampling of Hindi verses attributed to Akbar is in Hindī kāvyagaṅgā, p. 463.

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Akbar has also been credited with the patronage of several manuals on Indian rhetoric, including three rītigranths in Braj.62 That one of Rahim’s barvai (short couplet) collections is on the theme of nāyikābheda (canonical types of female characters) attests to the subject’s currency in elite Mughal circles of the day.63 The Sundarśṛṅgār by the poet Sundar is a major monument of rīti literature from Shah Jahan’s period that condenses a complex tradition of Indian alaṅkāraśāstra into an accessible vernacular form, showcasing a rich inter-disciplinary set of cultural motifs that were especially pertinent to poetry, but also to music and painting.64 Writing mere decades after Keshavdas, whose seminal Rasikpriyā and Kavipriyā developed the rītigranth into a major court genre, Sundar’s magnum opus took shape not at a regional outpost in Bundelkhand but at the Mughal court.65 The commissioning of this landmark rītigranth is once again testament to an interest at the highest levels of Mughal society in cultivating an expertise in Indian poetics.66 Such connoisseurship of Indian poetry and literary theory was apparently widespread. Chintamani Tripathi, one of the leading Braj rhetoricians of the mid-seventeenth century, was invited to translate the Śṛṅgāramañjarī of Akbar Shah (Bouquet of Passion, c. 1668) for the Indo-Muslim elite of Golconda during the late 1660s. Vrind, a rīti poet from Kishangarh, was summoned to Ajmer by Mirza Qadiri, the governor, to compose his 62 Shukla 1994 [1929]: 114–5. Unfortunately, no Akbar-sponsored Braj works survive but a Sanskrit work on Indian poetics that Akbar commissioned from the Jain monk Padmasundara, Śṛṅgāradarpaṇa (Mirror of Passion, 1569), is extant. 63 Rahim’s own son Iraj Shahnawaz Khan is the likely patron of Keshavdas’s Jahān­ gīrjascandrikā, a collection of praśasti verses to Emperor Jahangir (one was cited above) that epitomizes the political and historical dimensions of the rīti tradition. 64 The nāyikābheda system underpins many Brajbhasha musical lyrics and the rāgas and rāginīs—elements of saṅgītaśāstra (the science of music)—were also frequently conceived of in nāyikābheda terms, leading to figural representations of them in Rajput paintings. 65 Vidyadhar Mishra (1990: 39–40) wonders whether the Rasvilās of Chintamani Tripathi (1630s?), another important early rītigranth (housed at the Anup Sanskrit Library, Bikaner, and regrettably still unpublished), may also have been his commission. It contains praise addresses to Emperor Shah Jahan, Dara Shukoh, and several Mughal elites. 66 Evidence from the realm of music strengthens this supposition. The dhrupads of Kavindracharya Sarasvati employ the technical terminology of nāyikābheda. See Kavīndrakalpalatā, pp. 23–30 (especially dhrupads 14, 20, 31, 35–36). Also evidence of Shah Jahan’s devoted connoisseurship is his ensuring the systematic preservation of Brajbhasha music lyrics from the previous century: He ordered experts to compile Sahasras (One Thousand Delights), a collection of song texts attributed to the great composer Nayak Bakshu. This has been considered “the first written canon of authoritative compositions in the Mughal corpus.” See Schofield 2010: 499. Cf. Delvoye 1991: 168–74.

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Śṛṅgārśikṣā (Instruction in Passion, 1691). He later moved to Dhaka, writing his Nītisatsaī (Seven Hundred Verses on Ethics) for the Mughal Prince Azim al-Shan. As noted above, Azam Shah, one of Aurangzeb’s sons, is remembered as the patron of Mirza Khan’s Tuḥfat al-hind. This unique Persian compendium bears some resemblance to the Braj rītigranth with its treatment of prosody, nāyikābheda, music, and the ancient Indian discipline of kāmaśāstra (erotic science) but it covered a wider range of topics including grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. The work also contains a HindiPersian dictionary, another important indication of circulation between the two literary fields.67 The Indo-Muslim engagement with Indian literary theory per se was not new. The Sufi poets of eastern India, who were the leading force behind Awadhi literature from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, were markedly interested in classical Indian theories of rasa or aestheticized emotion, which they invoked insistently in the service of mystical aims.68 Nonetheless, the Awadhi authors employed the idea of rasa more generically and were not concerned with classification in the manner of ancient Sanskrit writers or their early modern rīti successors.69 The point was not sophisticated specialist knowledge but rather to compose a poignant, emotionally wrenching story that would aid in the apprehension of divinity. New in the Mughal period was a concern with classical Indian aesthetics as a systematic domain of knowledge. A similar, and probably related, trend toward formalized śāstra can also be found in the field of Indian music, although in this case evidence of the shastric bent is even earlier. Approximately contemporary with Maulana Daud’s Cāndāyan, the earliest known Awadhi work, is the Ghunyat almunyah (Pleasure of Desire, 1374–5), a fascinating discourse on the technical specificities of Indian music written for the Turkish nobility during Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s reign. The author of this remarkable work (whose name has not come down to us) drew on Sanskrit sources while at the same 67 A detailed description of the contents is Ziauddin 1935: 4–33; also see McGregor 2003: 942–4. According to Katherine Schofield (2010: 503), “the two most important and exhaustive chapters in the Tuḥfat al-hind, which was designed to be an encyclopedic systematization of all previous indigenous theory on the arts, are those on Brajbhasha and music.” 68 See, for instance, Manjhan’s use of rasa discourse in Madhumālatī, vv. 39–40; 43 and his paean to pema (“love”), a vernacular analogue of śṛṅgāra rasa, in vv. 27–30. On the Sufi poetics of love, see Behl 2012: 63–76. 69 As Thomas de Bruijn (2012: 166–69) points out, Sufi authors such as Jayasi did indeed use technical terms like rasa but Sanskrit poetics was only one of many traditions that inspired them.

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time providing invaluable information about contemporary musical assemblies.70 The very existence of the Ghunyat al-munyah intimates something important about the avid participation of the Indo-Muslim community in local performance traditions during the Sultanate period, but under Mughal rule the evidence becomes more extensive and compelling. As noted, Abu al-Fazl took cognizance of Indian saṅgīt in his Ā’īn-i akbarī and his treatment of the subject later became canonical for a whole class of seventeenthcentury Indo-Persian writers. Among them was Faqirullah, whose Rāgdarpan (1666) is a learned account of Indian music theory. Mirza Raushan Zamir’s Tarjoma-yi pārijātak of the same year was a muchacclaimed translation of a Sanskrit text.71 The latter also contains examples of Hindi dohrās (i.e., dohās) and kavitts, two of the signature verse forms of rīti poetry. By this period, an important element of mīrzāī, the quality of being a gentleman, was sophisticated technical knowledge of Indian musical traditions and the ability to exhibit connoisseurship in elite gatherings.72 As the popularity of the rītigranth genre in this milieu illustrates, the same also holds true for Hindi poetry. Although the number of formal treatises on music and poetry produced in elite Muslim circles is substantial, in the latter case we could wish for more data about readership. Good information is lacking about even basic questions such as, for instance, how many Hindi manuscripts can be traced in the Indian libraries of Indo-Muslim heritage. Another vexing issue is that of script. By the twentieth century, the Nastaliq script came to be almost exclusively associated with Muslim readership, but the relationship between script and literary community for the early modern period is not as clear.73 Is determining whether a given old Hindi text is found in Nastaliq a meaningful indicator of Muslim readership? Some “Muslim” textual traditions, like the earliest manuscripts of Awadhi Sufi classics, show a predilection for Nastaliq.74 And yet “Hindu” classics such as Tulsidas’s Rāmcaritmānas, the Sūrsāgar, and Prabodhacandrodaya are occasionally 70 See Sarmadee 2003. 71 Brown 2003: 45–50. 72 Schofield 2010: 495–503. 73 Sudhakar Pandey (1987:2) exposed the problem of teleological interpretations of earlier script usages based on modern premises. I am also grateful to Francesca Orsini for her suggestion to investigate this matter. 74 All but one of the manuscripts of Daud’s Cāndāyan are in Nastaliq. See Hines 2009: 32. Mataprasad Gupta (1967: 52–57), however, did not rule out a Nagari predecessor to the dominant Nastaliq transmission. De Bruijn (2012: 71–89) notes that the oldest layer of Padmāvat manuscripts is in Nastaliq, and yet the text was constantly being adapted to different readerships and performance settings.

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found in Nastaliq. Although a comprehensive census has never been attempted, rītigranth manuscripts do seem mostly to have been collected in Nagari script even if a few important texts, notably Raslin’s Rasprabodh (see below), Keshavdas’s Rasikpriyā, the Sundarśṛṅgār, and the Bihārīsatsaī, are attested in Nastaliq as well.75 Although a preference for Nastaliq may point toward a Persianized readership, it does not necessarily reveal a religious leaning since Persianized Hindus were an important literary constituency during Mughal times.76 And, in any case, is the written form of texts the most meaningful indicator of reception when poems were often performed? Still, written indicators are the ones that survive and thus are most readily measured. It is, for instance, possible to learn more about the premodern reception of rīti texts by studying Braj commentaries and taẕkiras, a Persian genre of biographical compendia. Rajput kings were especially frequent patrons of commentaries on the rīti classics, but we can also find such evidence of Braj connoisseurship among highly-placed Muslim officials. The poet-intellectual Surati Mishra, for instance, wrote two commentaries on Keshavdas’s Rasikpriyā (both, incidentally, attested in Nagari script). One, Jorāvarprakāś (Light of Joravar), was requested by a Rajput patron, Maharaja Joravar Singh (r. 1735–46) of Bikaner.77 The other, his Rasgāhakcandrikā (Moonlight of the Apprehender of Aesthetic Delight), was commissioned by Nasirullah Khan, governor of Jahanabad and a friend of Emperor Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48).78 The opening to the Rasgāhakcandrikā contains several revealing details about the relationship between the poet and his patron. Surati Mishra was Nasirullah Khan’s teacher.79 Khan admired his guru so much that on one 75 On Tulsidas, see Lutgendorf 1994: 75; on Raslin, Pandey 1987: 3–4; on Nanddas, McGregor 1971 and 2001: 9. Nastaliq manuscripts of Sundar and Keshavdas are available in the Asia, Pacific, and African Collection of the British Library. See, for instance, shelfmarks (classified under Oriental Manuscripts) Mss.Hin.B.56 and Mss.Hin.B.66. 76 See Pellò, this volume. Only recently Lakshmidhar Malviya has argued that the Bihārīsatsaī, arguably the most acclaimed of all seventeenth-century rīti texts, was first transmitted in Nastaliq. He proposes that the only explanation for the types of variants in short vowels that are found in the transmission of Bihari’s work by early commentators is that they were all from a Nastaliq prototype. See Malviya 2008: ix, 11, 25. 77 Some information is available in Singh 1992: 23–6. 78 According to Surati Mishra, Muhammad Shah gave Nasirullah Khan the title “Nawaz Muhammad Khan” (pātisāha diya nāma navāja mahammada khāna jaga jāneṃ, Rasgāhakcandrikā, v.5, folio 2a [although the opening folios are not bound in the correct order]). 79 “He [Nasirullah Khan], a man of discrimination, read many texts with Surati Mishra. He made him his guru and honored him—this was his wish.” (tini kavi sūrata misra soṃ

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occasion (during Holi in the year 1733) he arranged to introduce him to the Emperor Muhammad Shah himself, for whom Surati Mishra recited his poetry.80 The more immediate context for the commentary, written the following year in 1734, is also discussed. One day the pandit and his pupil were sitting together and the latter said, Wise one, the works of Keshavdas are very tough. And among them the Rasikpriyā is particularly deep. Please write a commentary in the “question and answer” format. Connoisseurs will read it and take pleasure from it. pothī keśavadāsa kī, sabai kaṭhina matidhīra tina meṃ yaha rasikapriyā, mahā artha gambhīra yākī ṭīkā kījiyai, praśna uttara niradhari jāhi paṛhata jaga rasika jana laheṃ moda niradhāri81

Nasirullah Khan’s preference for the praśnottarī (question and answer) style of commentary suggests a literary culture in which learned discussion of the intricacies of poetry was the norm. Of course, the very title of the commentary, which foregrounds Rasgāhak, the chosen takhalluṣ or pen name of Nasirullah Khan, signals not only that members of the Muslim nobility placed a high value on mastering this local knowledge system but is also a reminder that some of them were Braj poets in their own right.82 (We already noticed this in the case of Emperor Akbar, his son Prince Danyal, Rahim, and Mirza Raushan Zamir.) There are also commentaries on the Bihārīsatsaī written for or by IndoMuslims.83 Shubhkarandas, author of the Anvarcandrikā (Moonlight of Anvar Khan, 1714), remarks upon the interest of his patron, Anvar Khan, in the finer points of rīti poetry: Anvar Khan affectionately instructed his poets to explain the poetic concepts (kavita rīti) in the Satsaī. I composed Anvarcandrikā in the delightful month of Sāvan in VS 1771 (1714 ce). Herein I reveal the various poetic concepts of

pothīṃ paṛhīṃ aneka, vidyāguru kari pūjiyau, abhilāṣā saviveka, Rasgāhakcandrikā, v.6). 80 See Surati Mishra’s preamble in Rasgāhakcandrikā, vv. 12ff. Muhammad Shah was evidently fond of Brajbhasha poetry. On Sāvant Singh, another Braj poet (who used the takhalluṣ “Nāgrīdās”) and friend of the emperor, see Pauwels, this volume. 81 Rasgāhakcandrikā, vv. 26–7. 82 Of his patron Surati Mishra says, “He signs his poems with the pen name ‘Rasgahak’ (apprehender of aesthetic delight)” (rasagāhaka yaha nāma āpanoṃ kavittāī me āneṃ, Rasgāhakcandrikā, folio 2a, v.5). 83 An overview of commentaries on Bihari, including one by Isvi Khan written in 1752, is Mishra 1965: 174–86. Also see Malviya 1993.

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Allison Busch the Bihārīsatsaī. Whover reads the Anvarcandrikā with attention will find that it removes the darkness of ignorance with respect to literary theory.84

This commentary clarifies the poetry not simply with a pedestrian gloss or translation—presumably Anvar Khan needed no such aid in comprehending Bihari’s classic work—but by highlighting the deeper points of subtle knowledge that enrich a reader’s experience. True connoisseurship of rīti literature, which was deeply conditioned by classical Sanskrit traditions, was predicated on knowing the science of nāyikābheda and the various conventionalized scenarios of lovers: their passion and their pique, the typical signs of viraha (anguished separation from the beloved), and the distinctive types of alaṅkāras (figures of speech) that imparted sophistication to Indian poetry. Rīti poets especially favored muktakas, a freestanding verse style whose brevity often poses an interpretive challenge, particularly in the dohā or couplet form preferred by Bihari. In this verse the poet takes up the popular theme of viraha: I couldn’t seem to write it on paper, I hesitate to send a message. Let your own heart tell you what it is mine is trying to say.85 kāgada para likhata na banaiṃ, kahata sandesa lajāta kahihai saba terau hiyau, mere hiya kī bāta

A poem such as this is perfectly intelligible without a commentary. We have a solitary lover pining for the beloved and struggling for the right words to convey such a powerful emotion. And yet other subtle possibilities can be entertained, as Shubhkarandas punctiliously points out: If these are the words of the heroine then they have been transmitted as a message through a friend or a go-between. In this case, the heroine is of the type “She whose husband has gone abroad”. But if the hero is speaking then it is a case of a man’s love in separation. The figure of speech in question is hyperbole. Jau nāyakā kī ukti hoy tau sakhī kai dūti sauṃ sandeś sauṃ hoi to proṣitapatikā. Jau nāyak kī ukti hoi tau puruṣ viyog. Atiśayokti alaṅkār.86

The commentator then proceeds to define “hyperbole” for his readers. This work and indeed much of the Braj commentarial tradition is concerned with teasing out precise shifts in the meaning and figure of speech depend84 Anvarcandrikā, vv. 10–13 (cited in Malviya 1993: 7). 85 Anvarcandrikā, v. 255. 86 Ibid., p. 138.

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ing on whether the heroine, the girlfriend, the go-between, or the hero is speaking. Clearly the intended readers were not neophytes but connoisseurs with a deep grounding in and appreciation for Indian alaṅkāraśāstra. Other eighteenth-century Persian writers shed further light on the reception conditions for Braj poetry and the reach of poetic theory as a knowledge system among Indo-Muslim communities. The Maʾāsir al-kirām of Mir Ghulam ʿAli Azad Bilgrami (1704–86), which treats Persian and Braj littérateurs in the same work, contains several passages that foreground Hindi literary connoisseurship and reinforce the importance of alaṅkāraśāstra for the reception of formal styles of Indic poetry.87 An entry on Sayyid Ghulam Nabi Bilgrami “Raslin” (1699–1750), one of the most gifted Muslim writers of the rīti tradition, stresses his mastery of Indian literary tropes such as the śikh-nakh (head-to-toe description), rasa theory, and the nāyikābheda system. Like Nasirullah Khan “Rasgahak”, Ghulam Nabi Bilgrami adopted a Braj pen name that trumpeted his expertise in the fine points of Indian śāstra, choosing the persona of “Raslin”, which means “absorbed in sentiment”.88 In all likelihood one function of Azad Bilgrami’s taẕkira was to translate Indic concepts for a Persianate audience that was evidently not expected to be entirely familiar with Indian literary theory since Azad needed to spell out the very meaning of the word “rasa” and elaborate on the basic tenets with brief descriptions.89 Among the products of Raslin’s imagination is a śikh-nakh in 177 dohās, which has the name Aṅgdarpan (mirror of her body). And another is a description of female characters (nāyikā barnan), which he wrote in 1154 Hijri—a dohā appended at the end of the book corresponds to this year.90 And he called it Rasprabodh, which indicates that solace comes from this book as the mind of the reader apprehends the revelation of rasa. May it not remain hidden that the Indians conceive of the change in con­ dition that a person experiences upon seeing or hearing something and, 87 All of the entries deal with Muslim writers. The Muslim community of Bilgram made many notable contributions to Hindi literature, which have prompted a separate study. See Zaidi 1969. According to Carl Ernst (2013: 44, citing evidence from C. A. Storey’s survey of Persian literature), it was not unusual for the taẕkiras of this period to deal with both Hindi and Persian writers. 88 Raslin also occasionally used the takhalluṣ “Nabi”, and “Ghulam Nabi”, invoking the name of the Prophet. See Pandey 1987: 1, 54. 89 Also see the entry on Sayyid Rahmatullah (Ma’ās̱ir al-kirām, pp. 364–6), in which Azad situates the ananvaya alaṅkāra (trope of incomparability) from Indian poetic theory in terms that would have been familiar to those more conversant with Arabic and Persian literature; this passage is briefly discussed in Busch 2011: 154–6. 90 That is, there is a chronogram.

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Allison Busch b­ ecoming totally immersed in it, as “rasa”. And it has nine states. The book Nauras, to which Mulla Zuhuri91 wrote the introduction, has this same meaning. “Nau”, in India, means nine, hence [the title means] nine states: The first is “śṛṅgāra rasa”, which is a poetic expression of the state of the perfection of love that is manifest in a man upon seeing a woman or hearing about her features. In the same way, it is a state that also affects a woman upon seeing a man or hearing about his features. The second is “hāsya rasa”, which is a poetic expression of the state of the perfection of laughter. The third is “karuṇa rasa”, which is a poetic expression of the state of the perfection of sorrow. The fourth is “raudra rasa”, which is a poetic expression of the state of the perfection of rashness. The fifth is “vīra rasa”, which is a poetic expression of the state of the perfection of bravery, liberalness, and so forth. The sixth is “bhayānaka rasa”, which is a poetic expression of the state of the perfection of fear. The seventh is “bībhatsā rasa”, which is a poetic expression of the state of the perfection of revulsion. The eighth is “adbhuta rasa”, which is a poetic expression of the state of the perfection of wonder. The ninth is “śānta rasa”, which is a poetic expression of a state in which all desires are eliminated and all good and bad become alike. And the true root of this state is renunciation and solitude. In this book Mir laid out with complete delicacy and precision most of the states, which few people among earlier writers have investigated.… Aside from these two books, he has another book full of many delicate maz̤mūns (poetic themes). And his pen name is “Raslin”. “Lin” means absorbed, so the expression means a person who is absorbed in rasa.92

It was typical of the taẕkira genre to praise the author whose biography was being recorded. In this example, the grounds for Raslin’s literary expertise are presented almost entirely in terms of his mastery of Indian poetic theory. Raslin was rightly hailed as a master of alaṅkāraśāstra. He was well versed in Sanskrit classics such as Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra and the 91 Zuhuri was a famous Mughal-period Persian poet who was active in the Deccan. 92 Ma’ās̱ir al-kirām, pp. 372–3.

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Rasamañjarī of Bhanudatta; he had read Keshavdas.93 He synthesized earlier thinking with erudition and care. His Rasprabodh is a distillation of the major components of classical literary discourse, reasoned in its exposition, and it proves true to the claims of its author, who in the prologue states, “I have proposed new ideas according to my own conception.”94 Raslin’s innovations in the field of alaṅkāraśāstra were already recognized by Azad Bilgrami during the poet’s own lifetime since he praises his subtle intellect for being able to distinguish between closely-related nāyikās, such as dhīrā (self-possessed in the display of anger) and khaṇḍitā (angry over a lover’s infidelity).95 As with Surati Mishra’s student Nasirullah Khan and Shubhkarandas’s patron Anvar Khan, to know the Indian literary systems precisely was a desirable cultural attainment. Certainly the Mughal aristocracy identified with Persianate culture, but Persian was not the only language and literature that mattered in the cultivation of poetry, learning, or the gentlemanly behaviour known as mirzāʾī. In addition to penning a fascinating taẕkira that attests to Hindi poetics being a domain of sincere scholarly and aesthetic interest for his Persianate contemporaries, Azad Bilgrami was himself a master of the subject.96 His Arabic Subḥat al-marjān fi āthār Hindustān (Coral Rosary of the Monuments of India, collated in 1763–64) is an extended disquisition on Indian literary concepts. In the words of Sunil Sharma, “Āzād Bilgrāmī combined a purely theoretical and scholarly interest in comparative poetics with a practising poet’s insight into the aesthetic sensibilities and linguistic nuances of the multiple traditions that were now inextricably linked in this region.”97 If one aim of the Subḥat al-marjān was to establish fruitful grounds for comparison between Arabic and Indian literary theory, another—which was shared by the analogue genre of the Braj rītigranth—was to outline for non-specialists the basic principles of classical poetics. Azad had special regard for the topic of nāyikābheda, which by the time he was writing had been a subject of formal Indo-Muslim reflections on literature for nearly two hundred years. Azad transliterates rather than translates some of the typical Hindi and Sanskrit bhedas in the Persian version, suggesting that 93 Pandey 1987: 56, 111–14. 94 “Apane mana kī ukti so raci raci jukti navīna,” Rasprabodh, v. 23. On the early modern scholarly practice of updating literary theory “according to one’s own understanding,” see Busch 2004: 50–53. 95 Ma’ās̱ir al-kirām, pp. 373; Rasprabodh, vv. 171–83. 96 In fact, he was a remarkable polymath with considerable literary attainments. He is credited with an extensive poetic oeuvre, including Arabic qaṣīdahs on the Prophet; he also wrote commentaries on classical Arabic poetry, ḥadīs̱, and history. See Sharma 2009: 95. 97 Sharma 2009: 95.

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this particular audience was conversant with Indian languages. He introduces some unexpected elements, however, as when he renders nāyi­ kābhe­da by the term asrār al nisvān (the secrets of women), misinter­preting or possibly intentionally modifying the meaning of the Indic word bheda, which in this context conventionally means “type”, but is here taken to mean “secret”.98 Alterations such as this are a reminder of the semantic fluidities of translation. Elsewhere Azad demonstrates his uncontestable expertise in Indian poetics by inventing some of his own categories, presenting thirty-six figures of speech of his own devising.99 He also creatively transposes the Indian concept of a mugdhā ajñātayauvanā nāyikā (young girl too innocent to understand her changing adolescent body) into a PersoArabic poetic milieu, typing this poem by the seventeenth-century writer Shawkat Bukhari as an example of the ghāfilah (ignorant) subtype of ṣaghīrah (innocent) beloved: The saucy one who stole my heart from my hand, in his childishness his eyes are not yet traps and his tresses not yet lassos.100 [trans. Sharma]

Here the beloved is male in accordance with Persian sensibilities, but on the whole the argument of Azad’s text is that Perso-Arabic and SanskritHindi literary conventions are commensurable. Circulation and its Limits These vignettes of readership, connoisseurship, and scholarship highlight the multilingual competencies of Indo-Muslim literati in the early modern period and signal some of the complex ways in which rīti texts were shared between Muslim and Hindu readers. Still, these textual communities were hardly congruent, nor were literary meanings stable as they traveled. More­ over, the very fact that many writers, whether Jahangir in the seventeenth century or Azad in the eighteenth, had to explain some of their cate­gories to their Persian and Arabic readers means that Hindi connoisseurship and cultural competence in Indian poetics were far from ­universal.101 98 Ibid., 97–8. I have benefited from the insights of Vivek Gupta on this matter. 99 Toorawa 2007: 11. For specific examples, see Sharma 2009: 100; Ernst 2013. 100 This and other analogies are discussed in Sharma 2009: 98–100. 101 It is often strangely difficult to gauge even a basic fact like the level of imperial patronage for Brajbhasha poets because Mughal chronicles so rarely mention anything other than Persian literary life. See Busch 2011, chapter 4.

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Certainly Brajbhasha poetry enabled a degree of cultural synthesis and exchange between social groups, and yet only a few rīti genres are truly widespread across constituencies. Several were in fact restricted in their social appeal. In general, a much wider range of rīti genres were in use in Rajput courts than in their Mughal counterparts. During the early modern period, alaṅkāraśāstra became the most important vernacular science for Brahman literati, many of whom were sponsored by Rajput courts, but there is also a substantial extant corpus of Braj works on other formal knowledge systems, including Vedanta, astrology, equestrian science, and other subjects that had long been cultivated in pandit communities. These scientific treatises tended not to be commissioned by Mughal patrons, for whom Persian and Arabic were the languages of learning.102 Brajbhasha was thus in some cases a scholarly niche for non-Persianized Brahman intellectuals whose interests had nothing to do with cultural translation and interaction with Muslims but instead centered on traditional Indian knowledge systems. While there are many instances of panegyric to both the Rajput and Indo-Muslim elite, another element of Braj textual culture largely unattested in Mughal settings is historiography. This use of Brajbhasha had salience for Rajput courts but the Mughals had no need for it since their histories were written in Persian. It is possible that rīti poets’ concern with historiography may stem in part from an awareness of the parallel domain of Mughal court chronicles in Persian since, as noted, works with similar missions like the Akbarnāmah and the Māncarit emerge at the same time. Still, despite this synchronicity, little blending of culture is evident in the structure and style of the texts themselves, which are in keeping with the mandate of their respective Persian and Indic genres. Another noteworthy distinction is that for Mughal connoisseurs, Brajbhasha was something to be cultivated in addition to Persian and always primarily as a literary medium. To demonstrate mastery of Indian poetics—by composing verses, commissioning a commentary, or in rarer cases writing a scholarly treatise, was to add a feather in one’s cap as a mīrzā or rasika but it supplemented, not supplanted, Persian literary knowledge. Musical lyrics, instructional manuals on poetics, and aphoristic verse were all popular with Mughal audiences, but most of all it was Brajbhasha love poetry that captivated these readers and patrons. Indian literary theorists had developed a delightful way of conceptualizing the 102 There is virtually no scholarship on early modern knowledge systems in Brajbhasha. Brief preliminary discussions are Busch 2003: 162–6; Pollock 2011: 26–29.

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various scenarios of lovers through nāyikābheda terminology that ­resonated strongly with Indo-Persian literati.103 Whereas in Rajput and other Hindu communities the rītigranth texts with their frequently reverential poems glorifying Radha and Krishna were a vehicle for bhakti sentiment, in an Indo-Muslim reception context Brajbhasha poetry could generate meanings that were not linked to Vaishnavism, or even specifically connected to Indian literature. Some Indic works underwent a Persian or Sufistic recalibration at the point of reception. Conclusion India has always been a multi-lingual, and multi-literary, place. Languages and literatures cross-pollinated for centuries, and, as the various authors represented in this volume suggest, literary historians need to be more attuned to cultural systems at points of intersection.104 The interface between Persian and Hindi literary spheres is especially important to track not least because it can seem so unfamiliar according to the cultural logic of today’s South Asia. In the modern period, the Hindi language came to be constructed as a predominantly Hindu cultural sphere, but the early modern record tells a different story. Despite its modern name, Brajbhasha (“language of the Braj region”) was never geographically restricted to any one place or confessional group. A common misconception about Braj has been that it is centrally a Vaishnava language. Although often steeped in the topoi of the Krishna legend, Braj literature had an extremely wide following, and the central concerns of its poets extend far beyond any kind of sectarian or religious orientation. It may be one of the great ironies of the history of Hindi, which is too often understood from a Hindu nationalist perspective that became current only a century ago, that so many factors behind its cultivation and literary success—arguably even its very existence as a poetic medium—stem from Indo-Muslim contact. Awadhi and Braj are today celebrated as the two great literary precursors of modern standard Hindi and yet much of this heritage can scarcely be understood without recognizing the defining input of Indo-Muslim communities. To argue for a non-Hindu history of Hindi literature is not, of course, to deny the key contributions of Hindu royal and religious groups, both of which were 103 Sunil Sharma (2009: 88–9, 101–2) notes that love poetry has frequently been a site of cultural exchange and accommodation. 104 See Orsini 2012 for some important methodological reflections.

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demonstrably important. It is merely to urge greater recognition of the role of Indo-Muslim writers and connoisseurs. The Mughal period witnessed various circulatory factors conducive to the rise of this transregional literary culture that we now call rīti poetry. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, diverse imperial spheres of activity in tandem with networks of Vaishnavized Rajput courts comprised a larger Mughal system of culture and power characterized by interactions on many levels.105 Whereas Sanskrit texts remained largely inaccessible except through sporadic Persian translations such as those famously commissioned by Akbar, Braj was a cultural repertory in which Indo-Muslims could participate first-hand and a multifaceted cultural resource that could be tailored to different audiences. As a vernacular, it was inherently comprehensible to most people, irrespective of community. I have demonstrated the basic fact of the Mughal interest in Brajbhasha texts but also tried to take some snapshots of readership with the hope of uncovering more about how the tradition was experienced and understanding the mechanisms that enabled shared literary cultures. We noted instances of analogue genres and motifs that could readily travel across cultural boundaries. Love is a popular theme of poets the world over, but both the Persian and Indian classical traditions had honed love poetry to a fine art. Thus, when Persianate connoisseurs encountered a literary system in which śṛṅgāra rasa was predominant, learning to appreciate its fine points was an easy cultural adjustment to make.106 And yet texts were never static entities: New meanings constantly accrued to them, a transformation made possible by the sensibilities of different readerships. Persianized Urdu eventually took over some of the cultural space inhabited by Braj107 from the early Mughal period and during the nineteenth century became not just Islamicate but Islamic no less than Hindi became Hindu.108 But there was a cultural moment, one that lasted for hundreds of years, when language politics were not so divisive and Hindi functioned as a major conduit for circulation in a multicultural literary field.

105  Cf. Chatterjee 2009. 106  Phillip Wagoner (1999) has discussed a related notion of “fortuitous convergences” that eased transculturation in Deccani architectural settings. 107 On the creative early experiments with Urdu by Sāvant Singh (also known as Nāgrīdās), a Braj poet and Rajput king, see Pauwels, this volume. 108 A now-classic account of the Hindi-Urdu divide is King 1999 [1994].

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Many dear colleagues have weighed in on various iterations of this paper. I especially thank Imre Bangha, Thomas de Bruijn, Jack Hawley, Sunil Sharma, Rupert Snell, Ramya Sreenivasan, and Phillip Wagoner for their thoughtful comments. Without the trailblazing work of Shantanu Phukan it is difficult to see how some of these questions could even have been formulated. I am grateful for the editorial and research assistance provided by Arthur Dudney and Ronnie Dreyer. Owen Cornwall and Audrey Truschke gave me valuable suggestions on my Persian translations. Additional thanks go to the staff of the Bharatpur branch of the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute for making available to me a manuscript of Surati Mishra’s Rasgāhakcandrikā.

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Māncarit of Amrit Rai. In Māncaritāvalī: amber ke suprasiddh rājā mānsiṃh ke carit se sambandhit pāṃc rājasthānī racnāoṃ kā saṅkalan, edited by Gopalnarayan Bahura. Jaipur: Maharaja Savai Man Singh II Sangrahalay, 1990. Muntakhab al-tavārīkh of ʿAbd al-Qadir Badauni. Translated by George S. A. Ranking. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1898. Nagarśobhā of Rahim. In Rahīmgranthāvalī, edited by Govind Rajnish and Vidyanivas Mishra. New Delhi: Zenith Publishers, 2005. Rasgāhakcandrikā of Surati Mishra. Manuscript 78, Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Bharatpur. Rasprabodh of Raslin. In Raslīngranthāvalī, edited by Sudhakar Pandey. Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Sabha, 1987. Śṛṅgāradarpaṇa of Padmasundara. Edited by Shivshankar Tripathi. Prayag: Bharatiya Manisha Sutram, 2006. Śṛṅgārmañjarī of Chintamani Tripathi. Edited by Bhagirath Mishra. Lucknow: Lucknow University, 1956. Śṛṅgārśikṣā of Vrind. In Vṛndgranthāvalī, edited by Janardan Rao Cheler. Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir, 1971. Sundarśṛṅgār of Sundar. In Sundar kavirāy granthāvalī, edited by Ramanand Sharma. Delhi: Lok Vani Samsthan, 2004. Secondary References Aitken, Molly Emma. 2010. The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting. New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press. Alam, Muzaffar. 2012. “The Debate within: a Sufi Critique of Religious Law, Tasawwuf and Politics in Mughal India.” In Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook, eds. Religious Cultures in Early Modern India. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 6–27. ____. 2004. The Languages of Political Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ____. 2003. “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed. Literary Cultures in History. Berkeley: University of California, pp. 131–98. ____. 1998. “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics.” Modern Asian Studies 32: 2, pp. 317–49. ____. 1996. “Assimilation from a Distance: Confrontation and Sufi Accommodation in Awadh Society.” In R. Champakalakshmi and S. Gopal, eds. Tradition, Dissent and Ideology. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 164–91. Alam, Muzaffar, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2011. Writing the Mughal World. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Asher, Catherine. 1995. Architecture of Mughal India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Asher, Catherine, and Cynthia Talbot. 2006. India before Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bahura, Gopalnarayan. 1990. “Prāstāvik paricay (introduction).” In Māncaritāvalī: amber ke suprasiddh rājā mānsiṃh ke carit se sambandhit pāṃc rājasthānī racnāoṃ kā saṅkalan. Jaipur: Maharaja Savai Man Singh II Sangrahalay. Bangha, Imre. 2010. “Rekhta: Poetry in Mixed Language.” In Francesca Orsini, ed. Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Beach, Milo Cleveland. 1992. Mughal and Rajput Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Behl, Aditya. 2012. Love's Subtle Magic. New York: Oxford University Press. ____. 2007. “Presence and Absence in Bhakti: An Afterword.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 11: 3, pp. 319–24.

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Behl, Aditya, and Simon Weightman. 2000. “Introduction.” In Aditya Behl and Simon Weight­man, trans. Madhumālatī: An Indian Sufi Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. xi–lvi. de Blois, François. 1991. “The Pancatantra: From India to the West—and Back.” In Ernst J. Grube, ed. A Mirror for Princes from India. Bombay: Marg Publications, pp. 10–15. Bronner, Yigal. 2010. Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration. New York: Columbia University Press. Brown, Katherine. 2003. Hindustani Music in the Time of Aurangzeb, Ph.D. diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, London. de Bruijn, Thomas. 2012. Ruby in the Dust Poetry and History of the Indian Padmāvat by Sufi poet Muḥammad Jāyasī. Leiden: Leiden University Press. ____. 2005. “Many Roads Lead to Lanka: The Intercultural Semantics of Rama’s Quest.” Contemporary South Asia 14: 1, pp. 39–53. Busch, Allison. 2012. “Portrait of a Raja in a Badshah’s World: Amrit Rai’s Biography of Man Singh (1585).” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55: 2–3, pp. 287–328. ____. 2011. Poetry of Kings: the Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India. New York: Oxford University Press. ____. 2010. “Riti and Register: Lexical Variation in Courtly Braj Bhasha Texts.” In Francesca Orsini, ed. Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 84–120. ____. 2005. “Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of Keśavdās.” South Asia Research 25: pp. 31–54. ____. 2004. “The Anxiety of Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in the Hindi Riti Tradition.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24: 2, pp. 45–59. ____. 2003. The Courtly Vernacular: The Transformation of Brajbhāṣā Literary Culture (1590– 1690), Ph.D. diss., Dept. of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. Chatterjee, Kumkum. 2009. “Cultural Flows and Cosmopolitanism in Mughal India: The Bishnupur Kingdom.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 46: 2, pp. 147–82. Chattopadhyaya, Brajadulal. 1998. Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims. Delhi: Manohar. Delvoye, Françoise “Nalini”. 1994. “Dhrupad Songs Attributed to Tānsen, Foremost CourtMusician of the Mughal Emperor Akbar.” In Alan W. Entwistle and Françoise Mallison, eds. Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature. New Delhi: Manohar, pp 406–29. ____. 1991. “Les chants dhrupad en langue braj des poètes-musiciens de l’Inde Moghole.” In Françoise Mallison, ed. Littératures médiévales de l'Inde du Nord. Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient, pp. 139–59. Eaton, Richard Maxwell. 1996 [1978]. Sufis of Bijapur, 1300–1700. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Entwistle, Alan W. 1987. Braj, Centre of Krishna Pilgrimage. Groningen: E. Forsten. Ernst, Carl. 2013. “Indian Lovers in Arabic and Persian Guise: Āzād Bilgrāmī's Depiction of Nāyikas.” The Journal of Hindu Studies 6: 1, pp. 37–51. ____. 2003. “Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Languages.” Iranian Studies 36: 2, pp. 173–95. Gandhi, Supriya. 2007. The Topography of Hindustān in a Persian Rāmāyaṇa: Masīh Pānipati’s Masnavī-yi Rām wa Sītā. Paper presented at 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston. Grube, Ernst J. 1991. “The Early Illustrated Kalilah wa Dimnah Manuscripts.” In Ernst J. Grube, ed. A Mirror for Princes from India. Bombay: Marg Publications, pp. 33–51. Gupta, Mataprasad. 1967. “Bhūmikā.” In Cāndāyan. Agra: Pramanik Prakashan. Hines, Naseem Akhtar. 2009. Maulana Daud’s Cāndāyan: A Critical study. New Delhi: Manohar.

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Holland, B. G. 1969. The Satsaī of Bihārī: Hindi Poetry of the Early Rīti Period. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley. Khandalavala, Karl, and Kalpana Desai. 1991. “Indian Illustrated Manuscripts of the Kalilah wa Dimnah, Anvar-i Suhayli, and Iyar-i Danish.” In Ernst J. Grube, ed. A Mirror for Princes from India. Bombay: Marg Publications, pp. 128–44. King, Christopher. 1999 [1994]. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Lal, Ruby. 2005. Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lawrence, Bruce. 1987. “The Sant Movement and North Indian Sufis.” In Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod, eds. The Sants. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, pp. 359–73. Lutgendorf, Philip. 1994. “The Quest for the Legendary Tulsidas.” In Winand Callewaert and Rupert Snell, eds. According to Tradition: Hagiographical Writing in India. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 65–85. Malviya, Harimohan. 1993. “Bihārī satsaī sambandhī ālocanetar sāhitya.” In Harimohan Malviya, ed. Bihārī satsaī anvar candrikā ṭīkā. Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. Malviya, Lakshmidhar. 2008. Bihārīdās kī satsaī. Vol. 1. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. McLeod, W. H. 1980. Early Sikh Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. McGregor, R. S. 2003. “The Progress of Hindi, Part 1: The Development of a Transregional Idiom.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed. Literary Cultures in History. Berkeley: University of California, pp. 912–57. ____. 2001. The Formation of Modern Hindi as Demonstrated in Early “Hindi” Dictionaries. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. ____. 1984. Hindi Literature from its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ____. 1971. “Some Manuscripts Containing Nanddas’s Version of the Prabodhacandrodaya Drama.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 91: 4, pp. 487–93. Mishra, Vidyadhar. 1990. Cintāmaṇi kavi aur ācārya. Allahabad: Vidya Sahitya Samsthan. Mishra, Vishvanathprasad. 1965 [1950]. Bihārī. 5th ed. Varanasi: Vani Vitan Prakashan. Olivelle, Patrick. 1997. “Introduction.” In Pañcatantra. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. ix–xlv. Orsini, Francesca. 2012. “How to do Multilingual Literary History? Lessons from Fifteenthand Sixteenth-century North India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 49: 2, pp. 225–46. Pandey, Sudhakar. 1987. “Introduction.” In Raslīngranthāvalī. Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Sabha. Petievich, Carla. 1990. “Poetry of the Declining Mughals: The ‘Shahr Āshob’.” Journal of South Asian Literature 25: 1, pp. 99–110. Phukan, Shantanu. 2001. “‘Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet’: The Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 38: 1, pp. 33–58. ____. 2000. Through a Persian Prism: Hindi and Padmavat in the Mughal Imagination, Ph.D. diss., Dept. of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. Pollock, Sheldon. 2011. “The Languages of Science in Early Modern India.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 19–48. ____. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California. Pritchett, Frances. 1984. “The World Turned Upside Down: Shahr Ashob as a Genre.” Annual of Urdu Studies 4, pp. 37–41. Ramanujan, A. K. 1970. “Toward an Anthology of Indian City Images.” In Richard G. Fox, ed., Urban India: Society, Space, and Image. Durham: Duke University Program in Comparative Studies on Southern Asia, pp. 224–44.

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Riedel, Dagmar. 2010. “Kalila wa Demna, i. Redactions and circulation.” Encyclopedia Iranica http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kalila-demna-i [accessed July 5, 2013]. Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas. 1975. Religious and Intellectual History of the Muslims in Akbar’s Reign. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Ross, E. Denison. 1910. “A Collection of Poems by the Emperor Babur.” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (extra nos. iv-vi), pp. i–43. Rothfarb, Edward Leland. 2012. Orchha and Beyond: Design at the Court of Raja Bir Singh Dev Bundela. Mumbai: Marg Foundation. Sarmadee, Shahab. 2003. “Introduction by the Translator.” In Shahab Sarmadee, trans. Ghunyatu’l Munya: The Earliest Persian Work on Indian Classical Music. New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research in association with Northern Book Centre, pp. xv–xlv. Schofield, Katherine. 2010. “Reviving the Golden Age Again: “Classicization”, Hindustani Music, and the Mughals.” Ethnomusicology 54: 3, pp. 484–517. Seyller, John William. 1999. Workshop and Patron in Mughal India. Zürich and Washington, D. C.: Artibus Asiae. Sharma, Sunil. 2011. “If There Is a Paradise on Earth, It Is Here: Urban Ethnography in IndoPersian Poetic and Historical Texts.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800. Durham: Duke University, pp. 240–56. ____. 2009. “Translating Gender: Āzād Bilgrāmī on the Poetics of the Love Lyric and Cultural Synthesis.” The Translator 15: 1, pp. 87–103. Shukla, Ramchandra. 1994 [1929]. Hindī sāhitya kā itihās. 29th ed. Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Sabha. Singh, Yogendrapratap. 1992. “Bhūmikā.” In Jorāvarprakāś. Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan. Stewart, Tony K. 2001. “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter through Translation Theory.” History of Religions 40: 3, pp. 260–87. Taft, Frances H. 1994. “Honor and Alliance: Reconsidering Mughal-Rajput Marriages.” In Karine Schomer et al., eds. The Idea of Rajasthan: Explorations in Regional Identity. Vol. 2. Delhi: Manohar & American Institute of Indian Studies, pp. 217–41. Talbot, Cynthia. 2012. “Justifying Defeat: A Rajput Perspective on the Age of Akbar.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55: 2–3, pp. 329–68. ____. 2009. “Becoming Turk the Rajput Way: Conversion and Identity in an Indian Warrior Narrative.” Modern Asian Studies 43: 1, pp. 211–43. Thackston, Wheeler, trans. 2002. Bāburnāma. New York: The Modern Library. Tillotson, G. H. R. 1999 [1987]. The Rajput Palaces. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Toorawa, Shawkat M. 2007. “Introduction.” In Shawkat M. Toorawa, ed. Shifāʿ al-ʿAlīl. Hyderabad: Government of Andhra Pradesh Oriental Manuscripts Library & Research Institute, pp. 1–12. Truschke, Audrey. 2012. Cosmopolitan Encounters: Sanskrit and Persian at the Mughal Court. Ph.D. diss., Dept. of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia, New York. ____. 2011. “The Mughal Book of War: A Persian Translation of the Sanskrit Mahabharata.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31: 2, pp. 506–20. Vassie, Roderic. 1992. “ʿAbd al-Raḥman Chishtī & the Bhagavadgita: ‘Unity of Religion’ Theory in Practice.” In Leonard Lewisohn, ed. The Legacy of Mediaeval Persian Sufism. London and New York: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, pp. 367–77. Wagoner, Phillip B. 2011a. “In Amin Khan’s Garden: Charitable Gardens in Qutb Shahi Andhra.” In Daud Ali and Emma Flatt, eds. Garden and Landscape Practices in Precolonial India: Histories from the Deccan. New Delhi: Routledge, pp. 101–28. ____. 2011b. “The Multiple Worlds of Amīn Khān: Crossing Cultural Boundaries in the Quṭb Shāhī Kingdom.” In Navina Najat Haider and Marika Sardar, eds. Sultans of the South:

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Arts of India’s Deccan Courts, 1323–1687. New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University, pp. 90–101. Wagoner, Philip. 1999. “Fortuitous Convergences and Essential Ambiguities: Transculturated Political Elites in the Medieval Deccan.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 3: 3, pp. 241–64. Welch, Stuart Cary. 1983. “Akbar and His Times.” In Annemarie Schimmel and Stuart Cary Welch, eds. Anvari’s Divan: A Pocket Book for Akbar. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 13–55. Zaidi, Shailesh. 1969. Bilgrām ke musalmān hindī kavi. Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Sabha. Ziauddin, M. 1935. “Introduction.” In A Grammar of the Braj Bhakha by Mīrzā Khān. Calcutta: Visva-Bharati Bookshop, pp. 1–33.

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“Krishna is the Truth of Man”: Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami’s Haqāʾiq-i Hindī (Indian Truths) and the Circulation of Dhrupad and Bishnupad Francesca Orsini* The Haqāʾiq-i Hindī (1566) by Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami (1509–1608) is a short treatise in Persian offering a Sufi interpretation of words and images occurring in dhrupad, bishnupad, and other “Hindavi” songs. The short work (18 ff.), which survives in a single manuscript copy, is divided into three chapters, listing respectively and in this order, technical terms related to music and performance and the detailed description of female beauty and ornaments; words and names related to the Krishna story; and the natural imagery of seasonal songs. The exposition follows the order of the Hindavi words—for the description of female beauty, for example, it proceeds from the top of her head to her toes. The Sufi interpretation touches upon a range of mystical topics without a clear structure or particular order. Rather, ʿAbdul Wahid takes a single Hindavi word1 and glosses it with one or, more often, several Sufi terms or concepts, as if to show discursively that the Sufi master perceives many meanings and truths hidden behind each superficial appearance, and that the disciple or seeker must learn to do the same. It is thanks to this mystical vision that the “truths of India” are perceived as signaling the truths of Islam. The Haqāʾiq-i Hindī thus offers not only precious direct evidence of the circulation of Hindavi songs in Sufi circles, but also an insight into the intellectual and religious process of translation that such circulation engendered. Although such a detailed exposition is unique, the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī can nonetheless be framed within three existing forms of cultural circulation, all germane to the purpose of this volume. The first frame is that of * I am very grateful to the Librarian and staff of the Persian manuscript section of the Maulana Azad Library in Aligarh for allowing me to photograph the manuscript (they have now a copy in their computer for anyone to request a copy of), and for Professors Azarmi Dukht Safavi and Farhan Mujeeb who actually arranged for the photographing to be done in my absence. I also acknowledge Hashem Sedqamiz’s invaluable help in reading and interpreting the Persian manuscript text. 1 Only rarely short phrases or whole song verses are quoted, complete with the parda (i.e., rāga) they were sung in.

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the long tradition of North Indian Sufi writing in Hindavi,2 in particular romances or tales (pemkathās), lyrics, and couplets. While this engagement has long been acknowledged by Hindi literary historians, the critical rubric for assessing Hindavi Sufi love romances (pemkathās) starting from Maulana Daud’s Cāndāyan (1379) has been largely one of “Indianness” vs “foreignness”, revealing a long-standing awkwardness in Hindi criticism towards the presence of Islam—viewed as rather monolithically “foreign”—within North Indian culture. From such a perspective, “Hindi” writing by Sufis can only be perceived and valued in terms of a longing to be(come) Indian by “adopting” the local language and local literary forms.3 In contrast, short treatises (risālas) on topics related to the Sufi path that contain Persian as well as Hindavi verses and lyrical fragments, like the Rushdnāma of ʿAbdul Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537) or the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī, show that within the tri-lingual world of North Indian Sufis, Arabic was the scriptural language, Persian was the textual language of exposition and poetry, and Hindavi was comfortably the local language of Islam and a parallel poetic language to that of Persian.4 While Hindavi Sufi lyrics have come to us mostly as fragments couched within manuals or treatises, or else through the fluid oral transmission of the singers themselves, there is much more abundant evidence concerning the widespread and continuous tradition of samāʿ musical sessions and the oral recitation of the Hindavi Sufi romances. This evidence shows that whereas the textual world of North Indian Sufism appears to have been overwhelmingly Persian, its oral and oral-literary world must have been more substantially Hindavi. Although direct evidence about the contexts and modes of performance and oral reception is scant, one source often quoted shows, for example, that verses from the Cāndāyan were recited from the pulpit in a mosque in Delhi.5 The second frame is that of the range of poetic engagements with the story of Krishna, as not only oral and written vernacular versions of the 2 I will use Hindavi in the general Persian sense of any form of Hindi, and will instead use Awadhi, Madhyadeshi or Brajbhasha when making specific points about regional styles. 3 Aditya Behl (1995) discusses the question of the “Indianness” of Sufi premākhyān among Hindi critics from Ramchandra Shukla onwards in “Rasa and Romance: the Madhumālatī of Shaikh Mañjhan Shattari,” his unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, pp. 8 ff. In chapter IV of his dissertation, Behl in fact convincingly uses the glosses in the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī to read the deeper meanings in the description of Madhumalati’s body; id., pp. 194 ff. 4 For a theoretical discussion based on Bengali Sufi sources see Stewart 2001. 5 ʿAbdul Qadir Badauni, Muntakhabu-t-Tavārikh, vol. 1, p. 33, quoted in Phukan 2000: 76.

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Tenth Book of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa circulated in northern India, but the upsurge of Krishna bhakti in the sixteenth century must have made those tellings and devotional lyrics (bishnupad) increasingly popular.6 If the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī is evidence of Sufi reception and interpretation of bishnupad specifically about Krishna, only a few years earlier in the nearby qasbah of Jais, Malik Muhammad Jayasi had heard the story of Krishna sung by ahirs at the time of Divali and decided “to compose a Krishna kathā and tell it to all.”7 In Jayasi’s romance, too, Krishna revealed to those endowed with the proper vision a “secret knowledge” (kapaṭ gyān) behind visible appearances.8 The Haqāʾiq-i Hindī therefore testifies to one kind of reception within a broader history of circulation of Krishna songs, tales, and motifs in and out of public, religious, and courtly domains, as other essays in this volume also show. Thus Stefano Pellò’s essay on Bīdil’s Hindu disciples documents a rather different poetic engagement located in eighteenth-century urban Persian poetic circles, where Vaishnava disciples wrote about Krishna and Braj through the prism of Persian poetry, according to the categories developed over centuries by Persian poets. Allison Busch’s essay highlights the circulation of Brajbhasha poets and their rīti poetry within the orbit of Mughal elites. Within this frame, we should therefore not think of Bilgrami’s engagement with bishnupad about Krishna as something “strange”, but rather as one among many varied responses to an attractive cluster of motifs, structures of feelings, and genres. Finally, as a genre the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī could appear to belong to the long tradition of Sufi writings in defense of music—for any musical style beyond the simple voice has had a contested status in Islamic law.9 It might also be described as a kind of spiritual glossary, a work explaining mystical terms and problems through scriptural and poetic examples—in another 6 See e.g. the Bhāgavata Purāṇa Dasam Skandha in Brajbhasha by Lalac Kavi, composed in 1530, which equates the Vedas with Hari-bhakti; McGregor 1984: 96. 7 “Kanha kathā kara sabahi sunāvū̃,” Gupta 1981: 140. For other instances of references to Krishna in Sufi romances, see Chandel 1976: 160–5. 8 Gupta 1981: 250. 9 For a careful discussion of Islamic legal debates regarding different types of music, see al-Faruqi 1985. Robson (1938) translates two Arabic treatises regarding music, one by Ahmad Ghazzali. Bruce Lawrence (1983, and in Ernst and Lawrence 2002) discusses several works in defense of samāʿ by Indian Sufis of the Sultanate period, upon which later compilations drew: Uṣūl as-samāʿ (in Arabic) by Fakhr ud-din Zarradi and Risālah-i samāʿ by Shaykh Hamid ud-din Nagauri. The fourteenth-century Delhi saint Masʿud Bakk devoted a chapter of his Mir’āt al-ʿārifīn to samāʿ, and so did the biographer of Sayyid Ashraf Jahangir Simnani in his Lat̤āʿif-i Ashrafī and the disciple of the Deccani saint Burhan ud-din Gharib, Rukn ud-Din, in his Shamā’il atqiyā’.

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treatise, the Risālah-i ḥal-i shubhāt (Treatise for the removal of doubts), ʿAbdul Wahid appended mystical interpretations of terms such as zulf (lock of hair), bosa (kiss), bulbul (nightingale) and qumrī (turtle-dove) appearing in the poems of Hafiz.10 The fact that ʿAbdul Wahid himself wrote an epistle in defense of samāʿ to a local scholar who was hostile to it shows that music in Sufi assemblies remained a controversial topic,11 but actually in the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī the apology does not come at the beginning of the text but only at the beginning of the second chapter, which deals with Hindavi words in biśnupad connected with Krishna. In other words, this work seems directed not to those hostile to samāʿ who would object to music and singing as such, but to disciples who may perceive some discomfort in listening to religious songs that contained “the coarse names of kāfirs.”12 It is worth quoting the passage in full: If someone says “who gave permission13 to listen with great delight to the names of coarse kāfirs (kāfirān-i ghalīz) and to dance ecstatically to words contrary to the shariʿa (namashruʿ)?” I say that a tradition narrates that to someone who had asked him, ʿUmar Khattab (raziullāh)14 replied “Are there not in the Qurʾān addresses to enemies and kafirs?” And to someone who had asked him about this, ʿAin al-Qaza15 said that Abu Jahil saw in the Qurʾān the names of the Pharaoh, of Hamar and Qarun,16 but out of ignorance he only heard the Qurʾān.17 Therefore, since it is possible for someone to hear the names of enemies and the addresses to kāfirs in the Qurʾān, it is (also) possible to hear the coarse names of kāfirs in a piece of music. (p. 19)

Clearly, this justification is presented for the sake of those who looked with suspicion upon this particular song genre in Sufi musical assemblies. ʿAbdul Wahid defends it on two accounts. First, as we shall see, he invokes a general argument that Sufis perceive hidden spiritual truths underneath any worldly appearance and event. Second, here he specifically invokes the 10 Qadiri n.d.: 32; Rizvi 1957: 30. 11 The scholar was Mufti Ilahdad Danishmand of Lucknow. I have been unable to see the letter, which is preserved in the Barakatiya Khanqah at Mahru; see Qadiri n.d.: 29. 12 In other words, this is not a syncretistic text in the sense of aiming to bring about unity between Sufis and Vaishnavas, in the way in which Sufis and Sants are sometimes hailed as the “apostles of Hindu-Muslim unity”. 13 Lit. “Where is it from?”. 14 The second Caliph. 15 A famous Sufi. 16 Abu Jahil was an uncle of the Prophet who disagreed with him to the end. Hamar was the Pharaoh’s minister, and Qarun a wealthy man and a symbol in Islam of the love of wealth. 17 In other words, he did not understand that these were names of kāfirs.

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Qurʾān as the unimpeachable authority: The mere mention of kāfir names is not objectionable as long as one does not invest them with belief. Before we move to the text itself, it is useful to consider existing scholarly treatments as well as some family background about the Bilgramis that will help locate ʿAbdul Wahid historically. The Haqāʾiq-i Hindī was first brought to scholarly attention by the indefatigable S. A. A. Rizvi, who found it while compiling a catalogue of Persian manuscripts at Maulana Azad Library in Aligarh and published a Hindi translation in Devanagari in 1957.18 He also mentioned and summarized parts of the text in his Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India (1965) and History of Sufism in India (1978, vol. 1), in the chapter on “The Interaction between Medieval Hindu Mystic Traditions and Sufism,” where it is sandwiched between the translations of yogic texts and Sufi interest in Nath and Siddha practices and poetry, the poetry of the Bauls and the Awadhi romances. Rizvi noted that Sufis “regarded [Vaishnava themed songs] as welcome additions to their devotional poetry to induce ecstacy,” and viewed the phenomenon as an instance of “influence of Vaishnavite themes” (Rizvi 1978, I: 359). More recently, Muzaffar Alam has considered the text within the paradigm of “assimilation from a distance” of the Sufis of Awadh, which resulted from their belief in the (inclusive) doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (unity of existence), but also emerged out of political necessity in the face of continued threats and attacks from local Rajput zamindars (Alam 1996). Indeed, ʿAbdul Wahid belonged to a lineage of provincial Sufis who claimed allegiance to the important Awadhi qasbah of Bilgram. The family’s enforced journeys show a pattern of limited movement across local networks of towns and families (as opposed to long-distance or centripetal mobility) and a tendency to put down local roots, as part of the family settled in one place while others moved on. Like the other Awadh Sufis that Muzaffar Alam considers, ʿAbdul Wahid’s grandfather Saiyyid Qutbuddin Mahru, who had moved from Bilgram to the nearby qasbah of Sara, founded the settlement of Mahru Khera and built a small fort there, was fatally caught up in disputes with local zamindars.19 He and several of his children were killed and buried there and the family was displaced from the lands he had 18 The translation was of course a great help during our reading, but the fact that Rizvi chose a very “Hindu” and Sanskritized register meant that one had to go to the original to see whether ʿAbdul Wahid had in fact used bhakti and Indian philosophical terms, and in fact he had not. 19 The following information on ʿAbdul Wahid’s life and family are taken from Mir Ghulam ʿAli Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786) Ma⁠ʾās̤ir al-Kirām, a taẕkira of Sufis from Bilgram, quoted in Rizvi 1957: 23–8. For further discussion of this taẕkira, see Busch, this volume.

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received as inʿām. They moved to Gaughat and then again to Sandi, while one son who had pursued a course of education was appointed by the local qāẕī of the qasbah of Bari and later received it as inʿām during Akbar’s reign. ʿAbdul Wahid himself moved between Bilgram, where his daughter was married, and Kannauj, his wife’s hometown. As for his spiritual lineage, it also reveals a pattern of provincial Shaikhs firmly rooted in the Awadh countryside. Both in the case of his pīr and of ʿAbdul Wahid himself, the possibility of travelling to Mecca or to meet other important Sufis and “remove one’s doubts” was rendered unnecessary by opportune dreams which suggested that the nearby pīr or his tomb could be just as effective. ʿAbdul Wahid’s first spiritual guide was Shaikh Safi ud-din Saipuri, himself a disciple of Shaikh Saʿd uddin Khairabadi. Shaikh Safi initiated him, and after his death ʿAbdul Wahid became a disciple of his khalifa, Shaikh Husain, who was famous in Sufi taẕkiras for having given up all his wealth and taking pride in his newly-found poverty. That musical sessions were a regular part of the life of the lineage is confirmed by Shaikh Husain’s wish to die listening to a singer with a good voice reciting verses from the Qurʾān in kori or jāyashri rāga.20 ʿAbdul Wahid seems to have been one of the fortunate Chishti Sufis who did not suffer but in fact found favor under Akbar’s dispensation, most likely through the good services of Mir Ṣadr Jahan Khan Pihanvi, who was for a time tutor to Prince Salim and had risen through the ranks to become Ṣadr aṣ-ṣudūr.21 The emperor summoned him at court and granted him 500 bighas as rent-free land. ʿAbdul Wahid had become famous enough in his lifetime for ʿAbdul Qadir Badauni, the famous historian of Akbar’s reign, to place him among the celebrated Sufis of his day.22 Certainly his manual Sabʿa sanābil (The seven ears of corn), on topics and problems related to the Sufi path, was his most famous and popular work, but he was also the author of several commentaries, and ostensibly of a short mas̤navī on the relative merits of the mango and the melon.23 What about the motivation behind the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī? According to Muzaffar Alam, in this work ʿAbdul Wahid “sought to reconcile Vaisnav 20 Rizvi 1957: 25–7. 21 Sadr Jahan Khan was from the small town of Pihani (today’s Hardoi district). ʿAbdul Wahid addressed one letter to him; see Qadiri n.d.: 30. 22 Though Badauni seems keen to assert that ʿAbdul Wahid, who was fifty-seven at the time of their meeting, had given up his ecstatic Hindi singing: “He used formerly to indulge in ecstatic exercises and sing ecstatic songs in Hindi and fall into trances, but he is now past all this,” ʿAbdul Qadir Badauni, Muntakhabu-t-Tavarikh, vol. 3, p. 106. 23 Munaz̤ira-yi amba va kharbūza; for a list of his works, see Qadiri n.d.

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symbols as well as the terms and ideas used in Hindu devotional songs with orthodox Muslim beliefs” within the “syncretistic religious milieu” of Awadh qasbahs (Alam 1996: 174). While Alam importantly points out the political dimensions of waḥdat al-wujūd and the composite and competitive social world of the Awadh countryside, the terms “syncretism” and “reconciliation” need to be approached with some caution. Rather, this essay argues that in a social world where religious traditions and events could and would have multi-religious audiences, and singers and songs traveled among courtly, religious and other “open” contexts, religious symbols and terms could and did acquire more than one meaning. It is precisely this phenomenon of multivocality of symbols that the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī evinces. Particularly worth noting is the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī’s claim that the “saguṇa” vocabulary of Krishna songs could be as multivocal as the “nirguṇa” vocabulary of the Naths or the Sants, which North Indian Sufis had already been using.24 This may well have been due to the growing popularity of dhrupad, bishnupad, and Krishna’s story (Harikathā) in the sixteenth century. 1. Sufis and Dhrupad While the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī is unfortunately silent on the actual settings in which the songs were sung, and who the singers were, other sources point to an eclectic musical landscape in which Sufis played an important role as patrons, composers, connoisseurs and, we may infer, trainers and impresarios. Thus, while singers of qaul and tarānā “in the style of Amir Khusrau” are what we most immediately associate with Sufi samāʿ, the musicallyinclined Chishtis of North India drew upon a wide range of musicians and musical styles. For example, it is said about Pir Buddhan, renowned as the pīr of Sultan Husain Sharqi (r. 1458–1479), himself a famous music connois24 For an example of Sufi interpretation of Nath vocabulary, dohās, and padas, see ʿAbdul Quddus Gangohi’s Rushdnāma, Jajjhar: Muslim Press, 1314H/1896–7; for a Hindi translation in Devanagari, see Rizvi 1971, and Weightman 1992. For a consideration of his poetic language, see my “Echoes of a Multilingual World: Hindavi in Persian Texts,” forthcoming in Orsini and Sheikh. Among Sufis who composed (song) poems in Hindavi, Badauni mentions, apart from ʿAbdul Wahid, Shaikh Muhammad Ghaus, Shaikh Burhan of Kalpi, Shaikh Gada’i of Delhi; but the list of famous Shaikhs who regularly listened to music and songs (including probably songs in Hindavi) includes: Shaikh Fakhruddin, Shaikh Azi­zullah, Shaikh ul-Hidya of Khairabad, Shaikh Adhan of Jaunpur, Abu’l Fazl’s father Shaikh Mubarak of Nagor, Shaikh ʿAbdul Ghani of Badaon and Shaikh Jalai Wasail of Kalpi; ʿAbdul Qadir Badauni, Muntakhabu-t-Tavarikh, vol. 3: chs. 1 and 2.

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seur, that “often nāyaks and kalāvants from the Deccan would gather, who sang praband [prabandha] and sangīt … based on the principles of music and according to the shāstras in Sanskrit.”25 Within this eclectic and multi­ lingual musical repertoire, dhrupad clearly emerged in the sixteenth century as a popular and fashionable style, and it is not surprising that it should have become a fixture at Sufi musical assemblies as well. As “Nalini” Delvoye has documented in her numerous writings on the subject, dhrupad, a lyrical song-poem (gey pad) in the vernacular, though first mentioned in Persian treatises from the sixteenth century and only a century later in Sanskrit ones, was traced back to the court of the great patron and connoisseur of music Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior (r. 1486–1516), whose much-admired singer-composers (vāggeyakārs) moved to other courts after the demise of Tomar rule.26 Dhrupad, she notes, developed in parallel with the poetic and musical tradition of the bhakta-kavi—a phenomenon epitomized in the relationship between Tansen and Svami Haridas. That Sufis listened and danced to dhrupad in samāʿ assemblies is confirmed by the author of the Chishtiyya Bihishtiya (1655), a history of a small Chishti sub-branch written by Shaikh ʿAla’ud-din Barnawi, son of the renowned music connoisseur and composer Shaikh Baha’ud-din Barnawi. While acknowledging that dhrupad had become more and more popular with poets and ordinary people (ʿawwām) because of its easy and comprehensible language (which he terms “Gwaliori”), the author notes that “in previous times no friend of God (awliyā-i Ilāhi) listened to it or danced to it in samāʿ.”27 The same must have been true of bishnupad, a song genre associated with Mathura and with Vaishnavas and wandering Bairagis.28 25 Sherani 1927a: 48, summarizing and translating into Urdu the Chishtiya Bihishtiya (see below). According to this text, singers from Delhi singing jikrī [zikrī] in praise of the Pirs and Jaunpur singers of farodast parda were always in attendance at Pir Buddhan’s estate in Rapri, while Afghan minstrels also came to perform. Another group of particularly renowned singers were the Chokhs from the Deccan, who became attached to the Sufi’s family for generations. Initially limited to singing Sanskrit prabandha, they were later trained by a descendant of Pir Buddhan, Shaikh Baha’ud-din Barnawi (d. 1628/9), one of the most famous composers and musical connoisseurs of his day, to extend their repertory to other styles such as chand, qaul, tarānā, fārsī, naqsh, jikrī, khayāl of Delhi, cuṭkalā farodast, sadra from Mewat, and indeed dhrupad and biśnupad. After Baha’ud-din’s demise, his son remarked ruefully, these singers made dhrupad their chief source of livelihood; see Sherani 1927b: 18. 26 The following summary draws upon her seminal article “Les chants dhrupad en langue Braj des poètes-musiciens de l’Inde Moghole,” Delvoye 1991: 139–59. 27 Sherani 1927b: 26, emphasis added. 28 It is mentioned also in Faqirullah’s Risāla-i Rāgdarpan as a genre linked to Mathura and the worship of Krishna; Sarmadee 1996: 115.

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For example, Shaikh Baha’uddin Barnawi was a good friend of a Bairagi called Baba Ghanun (?) who was, like him, a learned connoisseur, accomplished composer, and wandering impresario who taught his new compositions to disciples/musicians. He and other Bairagis “often used to come to Hazrat Makhdum [Shaikh Baha’uddin] to perform their verses and kabīrīs [?].” Shaikh Baha’uddin himself composed bishnupad “in every rāga, some in imitation of Kabir the weaver and some of Surdas the blind”—a reference to style or content?29 His son and biographer is eager to point out that the Shaikh only composed on mystical Sufi themes, and in a style slightly different from that of Bairagis, but it is easy to see how the same musical and song styles could be made to represent the “truths of mysticism” as well as the “truths of India” (Haqāʾiq-i Hindī)—Baba Ghanun, after all, was valued by the Shaikh not only as an accomplished musician and friend, but also as someone who “had a foot in the unity of Being.”30 Barnawi’s account, then, provides evidence of the circulation of singers, the mutual exchange of songs between a Sufi and a Vaishnava Bairagi, the simultaneous cultivation of a range of song styles that we now apportion to different sectarian traditions, as well as the multivocality of spiritual terms and metaphors that we will focus on. For, having ascertained that it was not unusual for sixteenth-century Sufis to listen to dhrupad and bishnupad and enjoy the aesthetic experience, the question remains: How did they relate those “truths of India” to their own religious understanding? Particularly in the case of bishnupads and the Krishna motif, is Bilgrami’s explanation an allegorical reading? If so, does he establish a one-to-one relation between the two sets of (figured) ideas, the bhakti and the Sufi, or does he suggest multiple possible interpretations? To what extent did Bilgrami’s evident knowledge of the chain of meanings underlying the Krishna story “influence” his explanation? Was the result a kind of syncretic combination of bhakti and Sufi symbols and concepts? Or did he completely displace the bhakti meanings and overtones with new Sufi meanings, which took no notice of the “original” symbolization? Did the words remain linked together, only in a new and parallel chain of meanings? Or were they delinked and made to stand alone, or else reassembled in new and different chains of significations?31

29 Sherani 1929: 88, 87. 30 Ibid., 88. 31 The question of allegorical reading of course looms large over modern interpretations of premodern works, in particular the attempt at reading all love verse in a mystical light.

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To anticipate my conclusions, I argue that there is no overall attempt at syncretism at the level of theology or even mystical practices. The text in fact shows very little interest in the theology of bhakti, as the discussion of the muralī (Krishna’s flute) will show, where the only possible overlap in that case is the sound of the flute being likened to the sound of creation (II.8, f. 11r). One other potential convergence can be detected in Bilgrami’s explanation of the term gopīs (Krishna’s devoted milkmaids), who at times indicate, in his words “the true existence [of a kind of people] on the basis of their oneness [despite] their various qualities.” The point here is that despite appearing to be different and many, they are actually one. Bilgrami could here be referring generally to the gopīs, but also possibly to the rāsa dance, when the appearance of many Krishnas hid the truth of his oneness with the gopīs, who each thought that Krishna was dancing with her alone. Bilgrami does not explain his point, but he argues that “if the eye of discriminating reason (khirad) sees difference in these signs (ishārat, i.e., in the appearance of multiple Krishnas?), difference (tafāwut) lies in the eye of reason,32 since there is no difference between such designs (irādat, of God) and signs” (II.2, f. 10v). To give another example, while the order in which the Hindavi words are listed shows that ʿAbdul Wahid was well familiar with the Krishna story and its chain of meanings—starting with Madhopuri/Vrindavan/Madhu­ ban in Krishna’s childhood, followed by Mathura in his successful fight with his evil uncle and usurper Kamsa, and ending in Dwarka, where Krishna ruled and died—the emphasis on individual terms seems dictated by the importance of the concept associated with it in the Sufi paradigm. For example, about Jasodha’s vātsalya bhāva (maternal affection), one of the most important elements of Krishna bhakti emanating from Braj, it is merely said that she “indicates the gift and mercy that God had for men since the beginning (sābqa)” (II. 16, f. 12r).33 Thus, Jasodha is fitted awkwardly into the Sufi framework, which transmutes the mother’s defense of 32 That is, in the eyes of the gopīs in the rāsa dance. It was this reference to the eyes that see a non-existing difference that pointed me towards the rāsa dance, but I could well be mistaken. Waḥdat al-wujūd did of course favor a position in which even outward religious differences were attributed to the external eyes of reason, whereas the inner eyes would perceive only unity. Indeed, Malik Muhammad Jayasi made precisely this statement in his version of the Krishna story, when he has Krishna reveal to the gopī Chandravali that he is Gopal-Govinda only in appearance (pargaṭ) and according to the “secret knowledge” (kapaṭ gyān) there is no Turk nor Hindu; Gupta 1981: 250. But ʿAbdul Wahid does not make the same statement about Krishna, as we shall see. 33 Jasodha is allotted even less space than Kamsa, for whom five possible meanings are given: he “indicates either the nafs (lower soul), or a khannās (a jinn or person who suggests

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her child against the gopīs’ accusations into God’s mercy for man’s real faults and weaknesses: II.24 And if among Hindavi words we find from the tongue of Jasodha expressions like yah bālak mero kachū najānen (this child of mine knows nothing) or Kanhaiyā mero bāro tum bāv lagāvat khor (Kanhaiya is my son, you accuse him for no reason), they allude to the object demonstrated by these two ayats: “And man is created weak” (Q 4:28), and “Surely he is unjust and ignorant” (Q 33:72).34 The seekers of truth say that God the Holiest and the Almighty, out of the extreme kindness he feels for his servant (banda), named him weak and ignorant (nādān), so that if he falls short in fulfilling his worship and a gap occurs in his mystical state (ḥāl) because he is subject to desire and to the nafs, the benevolence of God the Almighty unfastens the language of apology and of mercy and says that “I created him from the beginning weak and ignorant and a sinner.” maʿnī: Your mercy begs for the forgiveness of us all. (f. 13r)

I have already suggested that rather than “reconciliation” or “syncretism”, a more appropriate way of conceptualizing the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī’s engagement with Krishna motifs is in terms of the multivocality of symbols. If we consider North India in this period a synchronic palimpsest in which genres like songs (Vaishnava, Sant, seasonal, etc.) circulated among different interpretive communities, the same images and symbols became by necessity multivocal, i.e., there was no one interpretation that was valid for all. Participants like ʿAbdul Wahid knew this and accepted it as such. Thus, when he set out to interpret Vaishnava motifs for his Sufi disciples he quickly departed from the “original” meaning (though the term is not apt in this context), retaining sometimes only a faint whiff of it or its abstract quality, and immediately drew it into a web of meanings that is completely Sufi. This is an intertextual web that, as already mentioned, weaves together the mystical interpretation of Quranic verses, early Islamic traditions, and Persian poetry. Rather than “accommodation from a distance”, therefore, one may characterize this particular stance as “parallel enjoyment” or “enjoyment from close by”. In the rest of the essay I try to support these suggestions by examining more closely the Hindavi words included in ʿAbdul Wahid’s exposition and the Sufi interpretation that he provides.

evil acts) or Iblis, or else one of the names for God’s majesty and wrath. He may also indicate the laws of the first Prophets” [II.11, f. 11v]. 34 This is said about man when he accepted the trust (amānat) of the rūḥ given by God, whereas mountains and heavens refused it.

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2. The Range The first Hindavi words explained in Haqāʾiq-i Hindī have to do with technical terms about music and performance—Sarsatī (Sarasvati, the goddess of speech and music), sur/swara (note, sound), tāl (beat) and bandhān (possibly a composition?).35 As Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye has argued, dhrupads on musical theory were an integral part of the content of dhrupad and a way in which singers and singers-composers demonstrated their command over musical theory and their ability to instruct, as well as to please, their patrons and audiences.36 Nāyak and bahunāyak usually refer to the patron of a musical performance, pātar/pātur (and her caturāī) to the courtesan-singer and her skills, the bahurūpī to the master of ceremonies, and words like suḍhang (a kind of stage, but also a style or type of singing) and jamanikā (the curtain) to the stage. All these terms appear frequently in dhrupad lyrics—such as, for example, in the Sahasras, a thousand lyrics attributed to Nayak Bakhshu and collected at Shah Jahan’s order around 1650.37 Within the spiritual setting of the samāʿ performance and the mystical explanation by ʿAbdul Wahid, these courtly terms acquire quite different meanings. Sometimes the object remains the same and only the context around it changes. For example, the stage is explained as “the fullness of all accomplished actions (umūr) and all the states (ḥālāt)” [I.8, 35 I.1: “Know, o taster, that if, among Hindavi words, one finds the words Sarsatī and sur [swara], then by Sarsati they indicate the continuing bounty of God (tawātur faiẓ-i Raḥmān) and the continuous existence of God (wujūd-i Raḥmān) that never stops. And by swara they indicate the signs (as̤ār) of that bounty which reaches the vigilant (āgāh) hearts of the seekers from the unspoken words (wāredāt), passions (jazbāt), and inspirations (ilhāmāt).” Wāredāt are the words which one understands without having been spoken, while ilhām is the entry of a special meaning in the heart by the bounty of God. I.2: “And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of tāl and bandhān, they indicate the firmness (istaqāmat) which is the highest gift (fauq al-karāmat).” The words anāgat [anāghat], atīt, and sam, corresponding to the falling of the word in the rhythmic cycle before, on, and after the tāl, are glossed as follows: I.3: “And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of anāgat and atīt and sam, by anāgat they indicate/it indicates the passion that precedes setting on the way (sulūk), and by atīt the way which follows the passion, and sam indicates the equality (musāwāt) which occurs between the passion and the setting on the way” (f. 1v). I am grateful to Katherine Schofield for her explication of these technical terms. 36 Delvoye has made this point forcefully in her recent paper on “Enchanting Tomar, Muzaffarid and Mughal rulers: The Literary and Performing Strategies of Court Poetcomposers and Singers,” presented at the conference “Tellings, Not Texts: Singing, storytelling and performance” held at SOAS, 8–10 June 2009. 37 Sharma 1972: 136–7, based on two manuscripts dated respectively 1656 and 1667. See e.g. lyrics 5.12 (12 in Chapter Five) for sur and tāl; 4.20 for pātar/pātur; and 3.3 and 4.3 for bahunāyak.

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f. 1v]. At other times the object leads to another object within the Sufi/ Islamic paradigm by way of similarity: for example the curtain becomes “the mantle of greatness, as [God spoke] ‘Greatness is my mantle’” [ibid.]. Yet at other times the “original” meaning is quickly left behind and the spiritual meaning leads in new directions: The pātur indicates the seeker (sālik) who has been chosen (majẕūb), or the chosen one who becomes a seeker, or simply the seeker. I.5 And if in Hindavi the epithet of nāyak is to be found, it indicates the pīr of the path (t̤arīqat) and the guide to true reality (murshīd-i haqīqat) or anyone who has been a full recipient of the bounty of God’s presence (faiẓ-i dargāh) and to whom this name can be fully applied. I.6 And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of the bahunāyak, it indicates the one about whom it is said “Every moment He is in a state of glory” (Q 55: 29): mas̤navī: O you have a different secret in every person. [f. 1v]

The word bahurūpī, which ordinarily refers to young male dancers and jugglers who performed extraordinary feats of masquerade, refers here to the beauty of God, who appears as the beloved or shahīd. The bahurūpī’s ability to disguise himself and come under many, ever new appearances is linked to the beauty of God which is carried into the phenomenal world both in its active and passive qualities, as “the quality of being a beloved” (maʿshūqī) and “the quality of being of a lover” (ʿāshiqī): I.7 And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of the bahurūpī, it indicates the real beauty of God which appears in every speck that makes the two worlds [= this one and the next], [since] by virtue of being a beloved it possesses a special beauty (ḥusn-o jamāl), and by the quality of being the lover it has a special desire and yearning. And every moment the beauty of being a beloved displays a special novelty and appearance. While the desire and yearning of being a lover [display] special ways of showing love and joy, and “this has no end.” qit̤aʿ: Since his face had a hundred thousand faces,  It appeared different in every speck.  Inevitably every speck revealed anew  A different countenance of his face. [f. 1v]

This interpretation signals the Sufis’ mystical ability of discerning “real” beauty or truth inside worldly phenomena: When they hear mention of the bahurūpī, a handsome young male performer, they perceive the beauty of God. As has already been mentioned, no explanation is deemed necessary for the importance of music for the cultivation of the heart and of mystical

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knowledge: The plectrum falls upon the strings as well as on the heart of the listener, and it sings about the mystery of the hidden world. Music opens the heart, its mystery symbolized by the fact that material elements (the gut strings, wood, and hide-front of an instrument) “speak of the secrets of the Friend from the hidden world” [f. 1r]. Listening to music and grasping the hidden meanings of sounds and words are therefore introduced as appropriate for the “seekers of truth”—indeed Bilgrami hints that they are the only ones worthy of listening to such music and songs at all. “Know that listeners are many but those with taste (ẕā’iq) are few, and all those who do not have taste are not worthy of listening to these meanings: ‘A peevish person (badmizāj) who is not stimulated by spring and excited by music and instruments, is beyond treatment’” [f. 1v]. The remainder of the first chapter, dedicated to words occurring in dhrupad songs, is devoted to terms pertaining to the description of female beauty (nakh-śikh, sarāpā), starting conventionally from the parting of the hair (māng) down to the forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, cheeks, ears and ear ornaments, and so on, which could refer either to a courtly heroine (nāyikā) or to Radha or some other gopī.38 Here sometimes the allegorical reading is straightforward: The straight parting in the woman’s hair “indicates the straight path (ṣirāt̤ al-mustaqīm)” while the blackness of the hair indicates “the darkness of losing one’s way. God says: ‘This is the straight way. Follow me. Do not follow the other way. Because that way leads you astray’” [I.12, f. 2r]. The Sufi exposition of the Hindavi word māng is a good example of how expressions connected to a particular term generate new clusters of signification and recontextualization. Thus the parting filled with vermillion (bharī māng) or the parting from which vermillion has been scattered (bithrī māng) “indicate the soul of the sālik getting lost in base actions through his own self (or selfishness, khudī), or his heart getting lost in the good things by forgetting himself” [I.13, f. 2r]). In other cases the logic is metonymical: the face for facing, the ear for hearing.39 38 A selective list includes: māng, ghūnghaṭ (veil over one’s face), sīndūr (red vermillion), alak (lock of hair), jūṛā (hair bun), lalār and māthā (forehead), ṭīkā and tilak (forehead mark), nāsikā (nose) and besar (nose ring), locan, netr and ānkh (all synonyms for the eye), bhaunhen (eyebrows) and barunī (eyelashes), kaṭāch (sidelong glance), kājal, sarvan (ears), karanphūl and taraunā (ear ornaments), kapol (cheek), ānan (face), adhar (lips), lālī (redness, e.g. pān kī lālī), muskān (smile), rasnā (tongue), kan, kanthī, kanṭhmālā and rudrāch (necklaces), angurī (finger), ur and chhātī (breast), ābhūshan (ornaments), sar (head), etc. 39 E.g. “And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of sarvan or karanphūl or taraun or any other names of ear ornaments, they signal the opening of the heart to inspirations from the beyond (ilḥamāt-i ghaibī) or to hearing religious teachings or the teachings of the Qurʾān” [f. 2v].

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There is a clear convergence between female beauty as celebrated by nakh-śikh varṇaṇ and descriptions of the beloved’s beauty in Persian poetry. For example, the Hindavi terms locan and netr (both meaning eye) evoke the following Persian verse [I.21, f. 2r]: sheʿr: Your black eye teaches me acts of deceit,  Otherwise intoxication (mastī, also lust) and acting behind the veil are  not for everyone.40

The explanation for eyebrows, eyelashes (bhaunhen, barunī), and sidelong glances (kaṭāch) shows how the allegorical interpretation treats the sign as inherently multivocal. First we have the standard metaphor of the beloved’s eyebrow capturing the lover’s heart: bait: I have captured both worlds with my eyebrow (ābrū) and my wink  (ghamza), Overlook the fact that I have no bow and arrow.

And at times they indicate the meaning of this verse: sheʿr: I cannot escape alive from his eyes, for everywhere I look  They are lying in ambush with an arrow ready on the bow. [I.23, f. 2v].

But then the next example introduces a mystical dimension: The eyebrow is a place (and stage) between the two bows and it can also allude to the mystical meaning of the word miḥrāb, not the place which indicates the direction of Mecca in the mosque, but the place of the “great Jihad” within the mystic, since apart from being curved like the eyebrow, miḥrāb derives from the root ḥarb, i.e., the place of warring (with Satan).41 Besides, while at times the explanation embraces the imagery of human beauty and love in positive terms, at other times it can just as easily view beauty as an obstacle on the path of the mystic, as the example of the lock of hair shows: And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of alak (lock) or other names for it, or of til (mole), they indicate anything which causes confusion to the 40 By contrast, expressions connected with the eyes mentioned in the second chapter, devoted to bishnupad and the Krishna theme, such as vah rah [rāh] becan jā’e (“sold” on the road, i.e., waiting) or duhāvan [?] jā’e or nīr bharan jā’e (they fill with tears), are all glossed as referring to prayers and forms of worship in which the person praying weeps; see f. 12r and v. 41 “And at times the eyebrows refer to the place of [between] the two bows (maqām-i qāb-i qausain), and at times they indicate the miḥrāb, that is, the weapons and bows in the war, since the ‘great jihād’ (against oneself) takes place there” [I. 23, f. 2v]. In Sufi terms, the maqām-i qāb-i qausain, the infinitesimal distance between Muhammad and Jibrael during their meeting (see Q 53:9), refers to the infinitesimal distance between God and the mystic.

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mystics, distraction to the seekers, and disarray (bī-sar-o-sāmān) to the lovers. At times they indicate their restlessness in front of the veil (ḥijāb),42 at times they mean sin and at other times they indicate also the [sin of] forgetting God for one’s whole life. sheʿr: If you knew the worth of each one of your hairs  Would you waste even one of your musk locks? [I.16, f. 2r]43

In line with courtly poetry and women’s folk poetry, the heroine can be either unmarried or married, and the Hindavi list continues with words referring to marriage and married women (suhāgin, duhāgin, naihar, sasurār, byāh). The proud (mānmatī) woman, for example, seems to be a married woman—the term comes right after saut, the co-wife, suggesting that it was because of her pride that the husband took another woman. Finally, the last area of vocabulary to consider apart from that of the “matter of Krishna” pertains to natural details related to the seasons, in particular spring (basant) and the rains, and their attendant pleasures and festivals.44 These are terms common to a whole range of poetic compositions, from women’s seasonal songs and bārahmāsās to courtly dhrupad lyrics. Unfortunately, in most cases the fragments are too short to try and assess their provenance. As for the terms drawn from bishnupad centered on Krishna, the following section shows that there is even less of an attempt to impose a single allegorical reading, and almost every element is treated as a multivocal symbol. 42 Ḥijāb could refer either to (a) ḥijāb-i z̤ulmānī, the veil of darkness, i.e., sin; or (b) ḥijāb-i nūranī, i.e., virtuous actions which also keep one away from God. 43 By contrast, the ṭīkā or tilak are given a positive gloss, assimilated to the marks on the forehead of those who pray a lot: “They indicate the light of rectitude (nūr-i ṣalāḥ) which appears on the face: ‘The marks [of light] are on their faces because of the effects of their prostrations (sijda)’ (Q 48:29)” [I.19, f. 2r]. 44 Some of the words included in chapter three are: basant (spring), puhup (flower), mā̃h pālā (frost), and pavan (breeze, wind). These are followed by a series of terms for women’s ornaments: hār and hamel (a necklace made of coins), causar hār, sehrā (a garland), naulāsī (delicate). After it, the rainy season (barkhā rut) and its various poetic components are listed: badrī (cloud), meh (heavy rain), svā̃t nakhat or būnd svāti (the Svati asterism and Svati bird who drinks drops of dew at moonlight during the rainy season), cakor (partridge), baṛī baṛī būndan (very large raindrops), nanh nanh būnden (tiny raindrops), papīhā and dādur and mor (cuckoo, frog, and peacock, the animals mentioned in this season), dāmini (lightning), hans, bak, chakaī, sāras (various kind of poetical birds), ghan garajī (heavy thunder), bīr bahūṭī (the red-lac insect which comes out during the rainy season); hinḍolā (swing) produces the following verses: Ek hinḍolā bāp diyā, dūjā jo pī’ū de’ī, tisre hinḍole na pā̃v dharaū̃ (My father gave me my first swing, my love the second, on a third one I will not set foot), Rizvi 1957: 101. Among tyohār (festivals), divālī and holī and dhurhanḍī (Rizvi suggests dhuleṇḍī) are mentioned; Haqāʾiq, ff. 14–8, Rizvi: 1957 87–103.

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ʿAbdul Wahid was clearly knowledgeable about more than the basic outline of the Krishna story and, in the case of Krishna himself, he includes several of his names: mor mukuṭ (sporting a crest of peacock feathers), govardhan dhārī (holding mount Govardhan on his finger), syām sundar and sānvaro (the beautiful dark one), antarjāmī (who dwells inside the human’s heart/ knows the human heart) and pīt pachaurī (dressed in yellow garments). II.1 Therefore, if among Hindavi words one hears mention of Kishan or any other of his names, they are a metaphor for the risālat-panāh (“refuge of prophecy”, i.e., Muhammad) [PBUH], and sometimes they refer to him and other times to the Truth of man (ḥaqīqat-i insān),45 which is founded upon the essential oneness of God (aḥdiyat-i zāt). And at times [they refer] to Iblis (= Satan), and at other times to the meaning intended by idols, Christian children (tarsa bachcha) and Zoroastrian children (=beauty), as will be known from this mas̤navī verse: The idol and the Christian child are the manifest light, The source of light is the face of the idol. It charms every heart, and Sometimes it is a singer (mughannī), sometimes a sāqī. [f. 10 r and v]

Krishna clearly is assimilated not with Allah, but with the highest form of man, that is, the Prophet Muhammad, while the term ḥaqīqat-i insān brings the disciple back, as so often in Sufi expositions, to the realm and moment of God’s creation, at the beginning of ordinary time-space. Then, possibly on account of his being a god other than God, Krishna is glossed as Satan. The next element that ʿAbdul Wahid adduces is Krishna’s beauty, which assimilates him to the other figures of intoxicating beauty of Persian and Sufi poetry: but (an idol) and the kafir young boys that Muslims encountered in the Middle East, i.e., Zoroastrian and Christian, recalling the mystical reflections on beauty of Sheikh Ruzbihan Baqli Shirazi, or singers and cupbearers.46 After Krishna come the gopīs or gujrīn, who appear only as a group. They indicate the Sufis as a “kind of people” (noʿ-i insān), but also the ability to grasp the single spiritual essence (waḥdiyat) beyond the multiple qualities of appearances. This could be taken as signifying that the gopīs represent 45 The higher stage of man, before actual man was created. 46 E.g. in the Kitāb-i ʿAbhar al-ʿĀshiqīn, translated into French by Henry Corbin; see Corbin 1958; see also Ernst 1996, who points out that his works were well known in India, and in the fourteenth century Indian Chishti Sufis knew Ruzbihan as an advocate of listening to music; id.: 10.

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“true religion”, though not in juxtaposition to the philosophical teachings of Udho, as in the bhakti tradition. In ʿAbdul Wahid’s explanation Udho is not the exasperating, pedantic character of the bhramar-gīt tradition— once again he does not seem interested in the theological aspects of bhakti—but is only a sign for various kinds of messengers and intermediaries between God and men. Thus, he is glossed first of all as the Prophet himself, then as his first companions, and finally as the angel Jibrael.47 The character of the hunchback, kubrī or kubjā, like that of Krishna’s evil uncle Kamsa, is straightforwardly assimilated to human faults and failings, whereas in the bhakti tradition she is a recipient of Krishna’s grace because of her simple gift to him.48 If there is any suggestion to compare God’s mercy towards human failings and Krishna’s miraculous intervention, it is not made explicit. Kamsa’s temptation to kill Krishna is compared to the temptation of the nafs, the instinctual soul. As already mentioned above, nothing much is made of Jasodha, and she is given the same space and importance as her husband Nand: They both represent God’s gifts of mercy, generosity, and benevolence.49 The long explanation given to the term patiyā (letter) is a good example of what can be called a “target-oriented” re-signification. Within the Krishna story, the patiyā, the letter written by the gopīs to Krishna after he has left Braj for Mathura, is quite a small detail, evoking the intensity of affect of the virahinī left behind and longing for her husband to come home. In ʿAbdul Wahid’s mystical explanation, the patiyā is assimilated to a book: First of all the Qurʾān, the “descended book” (kitāb-i munzil), then the register on which all human actions are written (nāma-yi aʿmāl) and which will become manifest on the Day of Judgment. The next ring on the chain of signification is the book of God’s creation, in which appearances are vowels, substances are consonants, and classes of beings are like the signs of consciousness (āyāt-i wuqūf). The mystic knows how to read this book 47 “And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of Ūdho, it refers to Muhammad (janāb-i risāla-panāh) [PBUH], and at times to those companions of Muhammad who saw him (mutābʿān), who are the intermediaries between the servant (banda) and God the Highest, and at times they refer to Jibrail” [II.4, f. 10v]. 48 “And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of kūbrī and kubjā, it alludes to a person on the basis of his faults and failings” [f. 10 v]. For the hunchback in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, see Bryant 2003: 174–5, and in the wider bhakti tradition Pauwels 2008: 316 ff. For Kamsa, see fn. 34 above. 49 “And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of Nand har, it indicates the janāb-i risāla-panāh Muhammad, and sometimes it refers to the eternal gift, benevolence, and generosity of God” [II.17, f. 12r]. For Jasodha, see above.

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and the hidden meanings within visible things.50 A sheʿr acts as a link to the next meaning, from book to story: And at times it indicates the hearts in which God wrote faith: “Those are  the people in whose hearts faith was imposed.” (Q. 58:22) sheʿr: The day He kneaded the earth, He wrote inside the heart the story of faith (qiṣṣa-yi īmān). And if you read that letter once, you will learn everything you want. [II.5, p. 21]

From letter to register, book and story: Clearly the sign works here only as a point of departure for a journey in many directions, in which the multiplicity of possible meanings represents the process of spiritual instruction in which the master leads the disciple deeper and deeper into mystical knowledge (maʿrifat), opening up hidden meanings behind the realm of the visible.51 Until, as ʿAbdul Wahid writes elsewhere in the text, the phenomenal becomes the real. And if in such places misapprehensions pass through your mind about the word gvāl, for example that it should indicate the unity of God or mean that an ancient phenomenon (hādith-i qadīm) is saying something wrong, they have no reason, and my answer is that for this group [=Sufis] everything which is in the world of phenomena (dar ʿālam-i majāz) is [also] necessarily true reality (ḥaqīqat). Then if by a phenomenon they indicate true real50 “At other times it indicates the whole world made of substances, appearances, surfaces, and compounds, which is the Book of God the Almighty. mas̤navī: For someone whose life is in the light, The whole world is God’s Book. Appearances are [like] vowels, substances are consonants, Classes [of beings] are like the signs of consciousness (āyāt-i vuqūf). But from a certain aspect every page from the book of the world is [itself] a book of mystical knowledge, and from a certain aspect every page and visible thing is a word from the book of the world. sheʿr: Consider the z̤āhir and the bāt̤in both to be the essence, Know all things to be a book of the signs from God.” [ff. 10v and 11r]. 51 A similar case is that of the phrase gvāl gāyen carāve (the cowherd took the cows grazing), again quite a “neutral” action, which to ʿAbdul Wahid suggests the idea of shepherding and protecting and finds several different applications: It indicates “women and children, who are like cows and sheep, while the lord of the house is like the shepherd (rāʿī). ‘All of you are shepherds, and all of you are responsible towards your people’.” It also indicates the relationship between the limbs of the body, which are like cattle, and the ʿaql-i maʿād, the faculty within the heart which directs the heart so that one does not go astray, which is like the shepherd. “And sometimes they allude to [the fact that] mischievous thoughts are like sheep and the heart is their shepherd.” It may also indicate the ummat, who is like the sheep, whose keepers are the prophets. “And sometimes they indicate that [he] turns the multitudes into unity. This is like a pearl, and that is like a flowing river” [f. 13r].

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ity, there is no cause for exception in this because “the phenomenal is a bridge to the real.” This group especially says that all things that exist in the phenomenal world are all names of reality. sheʿr: Since He does not have a name, With every name you call Him, He raises his head. [II.25, f. 13v]

As mentioned above, the sequential treatment of places associated with Krishna (Braj, Gokul, Mathura, and Dwarka) shows once more how ʿAbdul Wahid, while well aware of the significance of these places within the Krishna story, chooses to consider only their abstract quality—Braj is both the real and the eternal abode of Krishna, Dwarka becomes the place of arrival. In this case the exposition revolves around the hierarchy of realms created by God and the dual dwelling of the mystics in this world (nāsū) and in their “permanent abode” (mustaqarr) in the higher spheres, which are also stages in God’s creation.52 Thus, If among Hindavi words one finds mention of Braj and Gokul, they allude sometimes to the human world (ʿālam-i nāsūt), sometimes to the angelic world (ʿālam-i malakūt), and at times to the highest heaven (ʿālam-i jabarrūt)53 [f. 11r].

Vrindavan and Madhuban are associated with the valley of Imen, where God spoke to Moses, but more specifically “to the [mystical] meaning that the valley of Imen has among this people [qaum = the Sufis].” sheʿr: Come once to the valley of Imen, and hear: “Truly I am God.” Come to the valley of Imen, where suddenly A tree will tell you: “Truly I am God.” Know that in their usage the valley of Imen refers to the mode of purification of the heart and illumination of the rūḥ (tajallī-yi rūḥ), which are necessary for receiving the grace and the “opening” (futūḥ) [by God]. And at times they are a synonym for the words Gokul and Braj [f. 11v].

Thus, for ʿAbdul Wahid Vrindavan and Madhuban are, like the valley of Imen, a spatial metaphor of the stages of purification that comes at the onset of the mystical path so that the seeker may receive God’s grace. Dwarka, Krishna’s final destination, indicates both the Sufis’ permanent abode “and the place to which they will return (maʿād), and it is the great 52 “And since in the spiritual journey one jumps from the place one leaves and sets foot in one’s permanent abode, this is what the phrase ‘the man who is not born twice does not enter the world of angels’ is about” [f. 11v]. 53 The ʿālam-i jabarrūt was the first to be created, before the material world.

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place of transit (barzakhī) where the journey of the perfect Sufis and of their actions and knowledge reaches completion” [f. 12r]. But it also alludes to the higher stage to which a mystic can aspire. Finally, despite the significant attraction of the banter between Krishna and the gopīs in Krishna bhakti, ʿAbdul Wahid is not captivated by it in terms of spiritual exegesis. The banter is only interpreted in a negative light as seduction by Iblis or else, taking the gopīs’ anger quite literally, as a symbol of God’s wrath or a warning that the seeker will not find a way to God. As in all the other cases, it would be a mistake to consider this as a failure of understanding on his part. Rather, it is an indication of the freedom with which an interpretive community could re-formulate existing symbols. And if among Hindavi words one finds mention of Kānha ghaṭ rūndho (Krishna stalked the ghat), or if they say Kanhaiyā mārag roko (Krishna stopped us on our path) or other such expressions, they refer to the different kinds of seductions and deceptions by Iblis. sheʿr: The beloved told me: Sit by my door, and  Do not let anyone in who is not seduced by me.  And sometimes they refer to the fearsome majesty [of God] who is wrath ful. sheʿr: The light of God cannot be contained in the visible,  For the glories of the majesty of God come with wrath.  Let go of your reason; stay with the Truth (ḥaqq),  For the bat cannot endure the light of the sun. And at times they refer to the “keep away” of these words: “The seeker will be sent away and the door will be shut.” sheʿr: Until you walk with your feet and your head,  Go your way, this is not the path for you.  Until you can bring the azal and the abad together,54  However many times you knock on the ring, the door will remain shut. And sometimes it indicates the heart seduced by worldly idols,55 something that is forbidden by worship and by propriety. [f. 12v]

54 Azal and abad are eternity without beginning and without end. 55 E.g. women.

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4. Conclusions Texts like the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī are not only evidence of circulation of religious ideas, literary and musical forms, and aesthetic tastes. They are also useful because they force us to go beyond a simple acknowledgment that such circulation took place and to think about the specific phenomena that were created in the process. First of all, we can safely say what this text is not: It is not a kind of syncretism, as ʿAbdul Wahid clearly shows no interest in the theology of bhakti underlying the songs. Nor is this the work of a “neophyte”, to use the term conveniently adopted to explain the interest of Muslim poets like Raskhan in Krishna poetry (Snell 1989). Rather, in provincial contexts such as that of Awadh qasbahs and other parts of the Mughal Empire (e.g. Punjab), far from direct imperial control and any obsessive focus on the imperial court, the wide range of performances and patronage by local elites and religious groups and institutions becomes apparent. It may be argued that the parallel enjoyment of texts and performances to which the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī and Jayasi’s Kanhāvat and Padmāvat bear witness, instilled in some the desire to re-interpret stories and symbols in their own fashion. It may have also encouraged the realization that some religious-philosophical ideas could be considered comparable and that at the level of secret knowledge (kapaṭ gyān) there was “no Turk, no Hindu,” as Jayasi puts it. While the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī reveals a substantial knowledge of the story and theology of Krishna, and there is a hint of convergence in the importance given to sound in both Krishna bhakti and Sufi theology, by and large bhakti is not ʿAbdul Wahid’s interest. His exposition is firmly anchored in Sufi ideas about the hierarchy of realms and stages that are mapped onto the successive stages of creation, and on the fundamental principle that everything that the seeker realizes is received from God by way of the pīr. Intuitions and realizations “enter” his heart through the bounty and grace of God. This of course offers interesting parallels with bhakti theology and the different stages of proximity and unity of the bhakta with God envisaged by Vallabhacharya, for example (Barz 1976), but it is not a parallel that ʿAbdul Wahid draws himself at any point. At the same time, the scholastic (and partly apologetic) quality of his commentary points to the dialogic position that his Sufism had vis-à-vis other brands of Sufism and of Islam.56

56 I owe this point to Thomas de Bruijn.

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A certain limit to cross-cultural sharing can arguably be found at the level of vocabulary, too. Whereas with the Awadhi Sufi romances or the Hindavi verses by the fifteenth-century Sufi ʿAbdul Quddus Gangohi we can see Sufis forging a local language of Islam out of the linguistic materials at their disposal, as Tony Stewart (2001) has argued in the case of Bengali Sufis, here the religious vocabulary of Krishna bhakti is not assimilated but rather kept at a distance. What does this mean? That it was far easier to use the religious ideas of the Naths and Sants because they were less denominational and linked to a well-defined mythology? Or that in the sixteenth century Krishna bhakti was too embedded in its own socially powerful communities of devotees, Vaishnavas and Bairagis, for its vocabulary to be incorporated? Taken together with other contributions in this volume, this essay has highlighted different sites and agents of circulation—singers and Sufi patrons. While in the courtly or other elite urban settings discussed by Allison Busch and Stefano Pellò, it was the poetic language and aesthetic that dictated access and practice, and aristocratic Muslim practitioners of Brajbhasha rīti poetry or upwardly mobile and elite Hindu practitioners of Persian poetry adopted poetic categories and idioms wholesale, down to representing themselves within the terms already set by the poetic tradition, we see ʿAbdul Wahid adding Krishna poetry in Hindavi to his repertoire of Persian poetry. Thus while forms as well as individuals clearly crossed boundaries as they circulated in social, geographical, and aesthetic terms,57 the predominant form in which audiences and practitioners took to new forms seems to have been in terms of adding further options, further “textual identities” (to borrow Stefano Pellò’s term) within a panoply of tastes and identities, rather than in terms of fundamental transformations. True, often it is only one identity that found literary expression and has thus come down to us, as in the case of the Persian identity of Stefano Pellò’s Hindu poets. And often it is exegetic traditions such as taẕkiras and vārtās (hagiographies of bhaktas), which favor sudden conversions and single identities, that tell us the story. Yet texts like the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī remind us that the expansion of aesthetic tastes and appreciation did not necessarily involve dramatic transformations at the level of belief.

57 Delvoye has emphasized the flexibility of singers and songs to adapt, with only slight variations, to different religious and courtly contexts. Dhrupad lyrics in the courtly Sahasras pay homage to the bahunāyak as the royal patron, whereas in the Haqāʾiq-i Hindī he is the pīr-o-murshid (2000: 270 ff; 2012: 143).

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Bibliography ʿAbdul Qadir Badauni. 1986. Muntakhabu-t-Tawārīkh. New Delhi: Renaissance Publishing House, vol. III, reprint. ʿAbd al-Wahid Bilgrami, Mir. Haqāʾiq-i Hindī, Ahsanullah Collection MS 297.7/II, Aligarh: Maulana Azad Library. Alam, Muzaffar. 1996. “Assimilation from a Distance: Confrontation and Sufi Accommodation in Awadh Society.” In R. Champakalakshmi and S. Gopal, eds. Tradition, Dissent and Ideology: Essays in Honour of Romila Thapar. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 164–91. Bangha, Imre. 2010. “Rekhta Poetry in North India.” In Francesca Orsini, ed. Before the HindiUrdu Divide, Delhi: Longman, pp. 21–83. Barz, Richard K. 1976. The Bhakti Sect of Vallabhācārya. Faridabad: Thomson Press. Behl. Aditya. 1995. Rasa and Romance: The Madhumālatī of Shaikh Mañjhan Shattari. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. Behl, Aditya, and Simon Weightman. 2000. Madhumālatī. An Indian Sufi Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chandel, Umapatiray. 1976. Hindī sūfī kāvya mẽ paurāṇik ākhyān. Delhi: Abhinav Prakashan. Corbin, Henry. 1958. Les Jasmin des Fidèles d’Amour. Kitāb-i ʿAbhar al-ʿĀshiqīn by Ruzbihan Baqli Shirazi. Tehran. De Bruijn, Thomas. 1996. The Ruby Hidden in the Dust. A Study of the Poetics of Malik Muḥam­ mad Jāyasī’s Padmāvat. Ph.D. diss., University of Leiden. Delvoye, Françoise “Nalini.” 1991.  “Les chants dhrupad en langue Braj des poètes-musiciens de l’Inde Moghole.” In Françoise Mallison, ed. Littératures médiévales de l’Inde du Nord. Paris: Publications de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient, pp. 139–59. ____. 2000. “Indo-Persian Accounts on Music Patronage in the Sultanate of Gujarat.” In The Making of Indo-Persian Culture, Muzaffar Alam, Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye, and Marc Gaborieau, eds. Delhi: Manohar and Centre de Sciences Humaines. ____. 2012. “Collections of Lyrics in Hindustani Music: the case of Dhrupad.” In Joep Bor, Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye, Jane Harvey, and Emmie te Nijenhuis, eds. Hindustani Music: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries. Delhi: Manohar, p. 143. Digby, Simon. 1994. “To Ride a Tiger or a Wall? Strategies of Prestige in Indian Sufi Legend.” In Winand Callewaert and Rupert Snell, eds. According to Tradition: Hagiographical Writing in India. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Ernst, Carl W. 1996. Rūzbihān Baqlī: Mysticism and Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism. London: Curzon Press. al Faruqi, Lois Ibsen. 1985. “Music, Musicians and Islamic Law.” Asian Music17: 1, pp. 3–36. Gupta, Parameshwarilal. 1981. Malik Muhammad Jāyasī kṛt Kanhāvat. Varanasi: Annapurna Prakashan. Lawrence, Bruce B. 1983. “Early Chishtī Approach to Samāʿ.” In Milton Israel, N. K. Wagle, eds. Islamic Society and Culture: Essays in Honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 69–93. McGregor, R. S. 1984. Hindi Literature from its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz. Orsini, Francesca, and Samira Sheikh, eds. forthcoming. After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth Century North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pauwels, Heidi R. M. 2008. The Goddess as Role Model: Sītā and Rādhā in Scripture and on Screen. New York: Oxford University Press. ____. 2011. “A Sufi listening to Hindi Religious Poetry: Mir Abdul Wahid Bilgrami’s Haqayaq-i Hindi.” Rewrite of student paper originally written in 1992 and submitted as field exam towards the degree of Ph.D. at UW, Seattle. Online

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Qadiri, M. Ayyub. Not dated. Introduction to Saba’-i Sanābil Sharīf by Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami. Urdu trans. by Mufti M. Khalil Khan Barkati. Bhivandi: Rizvi Kitab Ghar. Raheja, Gloria Goodwin, and Ann Grodzins Gold. 1996. Listen to the Heron’s Words. Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rizvi, S. A. A. 1992 [1978]. History of Sufism in India. 2 vols. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. ____, trans. 1957. Hakāyake hindī. Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Sabha. Robson, James. 1938. Tracts on Listening to Music: Being Dhamm al-malāhī, by Ibn abī ’l-Dunyā, and Bawāriq al-ilmāʿ, by Majd al-Dīn al-Tūsī al-Ghazālī. Edited with introduction, translation, and notes, by James Robson. London: The Royal Asiatic Society, Oriental Translation Fund. Sarmadee, Shahab, ed. and trans. 1996. Tarjuma-i Mānkutūhal va Risāla-i Rāgdarpan by Saif Khan Faqirullah. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Performing Arts and Motilal Banarsidass. Sharma, Premlata. 1972. Sahasras: Nāyak Bakhśū ke dhrupadõ ka sangrah. Delhi: Sangit Natak Akademi. Sherani, Mahmud Hafiz. 1927a. “Makhdūm Shaikh Bahāʾud-dīn Barnāwī,” part 1, Oriental College Magazine, August, pp. 41–58. ____. 1927b. “Makhdūm Shaikh Bahāʾud-dīn Barnāwī,” part 2, Oriental College Magazine, November, pp. 9–26. ____. 1929. “Makhdūm Shaikh Bahāʾud-dīn Barnāwī,” part 3, Oriental College Magazine, August, pp. 72–99. Snell, Rupert. 1989. “Raskhān the Neophyte: Hindu Perspectives on a Muslim Vaishnava.” In Christopher Shackle, ed. Urdu and Muslim South Asia. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. Stewart, Tony K. 2001. “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter through Translation Theory.” History of Religions 40: 3, pp. 260–87. Weightman, Simon. 1992. “The Text of Alakh Bani.” In R. S. McGregor, ed. Devotional literature in South Asia: Current research, 1985–8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 171–8.

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Culture in Circulation in Eighteenth-Century North India: Urdu Poetry by a Rajput Krishna Devotee Heidi Pauwels* 1. Introduction This paper seeks to contribute to the study of the circulation of ideas and culture by focusing on the fusion of cultures in eighteenth-century North India. In particular, it will address two types of circulation: first, the confluence of the milieus of court and temple, and second, the movement back and forth from the center to the periphery. The first half will study the confluence of the milieus of court and temple with regard to the Krishna devotional movement. The proximity of the center of Krishna devotion, Braj, to the seats of Mughal power in Agra and Delhi suggests a close interchange. Indeed, there are many stories of exchange, of the Mughal representatives and even the emperor himself visiting the holy land of Braj or sponsoring its holy men. Furthermore, provincial rulers from all over India, in particular from nearby Rajasthan, made frequent pilgrimages to the area. Temples and monasteries stand as enduring monuments of sponsorship by regional power centers, witnessed by inscriptions and land grants. As will become apparent from our study, this was not a unidirectional process, but one marked by close cooperation: that of provincial rulers working with local agents. I will focus on the circulation of ideas between the regions of Braj and Rajasthan as related in the hagiographies, paying particular attention to the provincial court of Kishangarh (near Jaipur), which in turn had close relationships with the Mughal court in Delhi.

* I gratefully acknowledge the National Endowment for the Humanities for having granted me a summer stipend to make it possible to carry out this research and write up this paper. For help with the Urdu translation, I am grateful to Jameel Ahmad of the University of Washington. For comments, I am grateful to the audience at the bi-annual European Modern Conference of South Asian Studies in Leiden, in June 2006, where this paper was first circulated, especially to Ramya Sreenivasan, and to the editors of this volume for their detailed suggestions.

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The second half of the paper looks at the movement between the Mughal court in Delhi and regional political centers, with which it was in touch via a constant stream of visiting courtiers and vassals. This is not a case where the center disseminated a hegemonic culture to the periphery. Rather, cultural production happened in close exchange with regional centers, and provincial agents traveling between different centers played the major role in this interchange. Fertilized by the influx of new ideas and idioms of expression, Delhi became a vibrant center for the arts, where styles of expression originating from the Deccan could be transmitted to visitors from other provincial centers. The focus here will mainly be on poetry, with some asides about miniature painting and music. There is still much that is not yet understood about this confluence of cultures in which ideas were floating around, fusing into new styles of expression. I will focus here on just one of the notable developments in Delhi at this time, namely the emergence of a new medium for poetic expression. At the time, this new idiom was termed Rekhta, or “mixed language”, but it has now come to be called Urdu (Faruqi 2003). The case of the emergence of Rekhta is particularly interesting, as it promoted a new wave of poetry in imperial Delhi inspired by what was in effect an import from the Deccan. Histories of Urdu typically focus on the happenings in Delhi, but we will explore how this new cosmopolitan fashion caught on in unexpected corners, in provincial centers, such as the Rajasthani principality of Kishangarh. For this part of the paper I will be looking at a more complex triangulation of exchanges between the Deccan, Delhi, and Rajasthan. I will present a case study of one agent in these complex processes, Sāvant Singh (1699–1764), crown prince of Kishangarh. He was an avid sponsor of the arts, in particular of poetry and miniature painting. A turning point in his life came with the death of his father in 1748, shortly after which his throne was usurped by his younger brother. He attempted to regain his kingdom, but succeeded only partially in 1755 with the help of the Marathas. The kingdom was split and Sāvant Singh gained control only over the nearby satellite city Rupnagar. Disgusted with worldly politics, he placed his son on the throne and retired to the major pilgrimage center of Braj, the site of Krishna’s youthful sporting with Radha. His favorite mistress, nick-named Banī-ṭhanī, herself a Braj poetess, seems to have accompanied him in his self-imposed exile. Sāvant Singh is best known for his impact on miniature painting. From 1735 until 1748, he ran an atelier that developed the distinctively lyrical

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Kishangarhi style of painting, specialising in Radha-Krishna themes.1 This so-called “sub-imperial style” was developed by artists trained at the Mughal court, but employed in Kishangarh (Haidar 2000, Mathur 2000).2 This sets the stage for the exchange of cultural know-how that we also see in other areas. It is less well-known that Sāvant Singh was also a prolific poet, likely because very few of his works have been translated.3 He wrote under the pen name Nāgrīdās, or “Devotee of Sophisticated Radha”. His vast oeuvre spans eight collections of padas, or songs, as well as nineteen collections of dohās (couplets), sixteen collections of kavitts (four-line verses), and seven collections of poetry in other meters (sār and arill). In addition, he composed five narrative, six descriptive, and five philosophical works in mixed-meter; he also authored an autobiographical pilgrimage account in mixed verse, a prose work on how to read the holy scripture of Krishna devotion, Bhāgavatapurāṇa, and a prose hagiography, called Padaprasaṅ­ gamālā.4 I will refer to the latter to study the confluence of court and temple in the first half of the paper. It is clear that Nāgrīdās was steeped in the religious traditions of Krishna devotion, and we know he made frequent pilgrimages to the temples of Braj. So it is not surprising that he chose to write in Brajbhasha. However, he had other choices of linguistic register at his disposal. As a Rajput prince, he was also raised in the rituals and practices of Rajput court culture and we can assume that he was well-versed in the literary tradition now called Rajasthani, but he chose not to use that idiom.5 Modern sensibilities would 1 For more information on Kishangarh, in particular the art, see Haidar 1995. For Sāvant Singh’s life and literature, see Pauwels 2005. Sources for his life are his auto-biographical works, hagiographical works, and court records. Unfortunately, all this has been little studied. 2 Recently, a critique has been voiced against the oversimplified interpretation of these styles as spin-offs from a perceived hegemonic imperial style; see Ehnbom 2002. 3 In Hindi, there are three major editions of his work, with in-depth introductions on his life and literary accomplishments: one by the prestigious Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā (Gupta 1965), one with a Nimbarkan sectarian agenda (Śaraṇ 1966), and one by a spokesman of the royal court in defense of a Vallabhan sectarian agenda (Khan 1974). For more details, see Pauwels 2006. 4 In enumerating these works, I follow Gupta 1965. 5 The Kishangarh court in the early eighteenth century is known to have sponsored traditional “bardic” poetry, notably that of the poet Vṛnd, who composed mainly in Braj but also wrote a vacanikā in honor of Rūp Singh, Sāvant Singh’s predecessor (see Celer 1971). As a king, Nāgrīdās would not have written bardic works, but he could have authored works on Krishna devotion in an idiom of Marwari Rajasthani, called Diṅgal, in the same vein as, for instance, a century or two earlier his clansman and contemporary of Akbar, Pṛthvīrāj

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lead us to cast him as a traditional Hindi poet, heir to at least two streams of medieval literary Hindi traditions, namely Brajbhasha and to a lesser extent Rajasthani. However, there is more to this poet. As a vassal of the Mughals, the Kishangarh royal family was much influenced by Mughal culture (Haidar 1995). Sāvant Singh attended the court in Delhi from when he was a young boy. There are stories that situate him at the Delhi court at the age of ten.6 Certainly he was steeped in the refined court culture of the reign of Muḥammad Shāh (r. 1719–48), as evidenced by the characteristics of the miniature paintings he commissioned. Not only their style (Haidar 1995: 118), but also the scenes depicted in the paintings demonstrate the Mughal cultural influence at work in Kishangarh. For example, the depiction of spectacular displays of fireworks brings to mind Muḥammad Shāh’s similar predilection (Malik 1977). Another example is the portrayal of dance and music performances by artists from Delhi.7 It would be natural, then, that in his poetical works, Nāgrīdās would have been influenced by the literature that was in vogue in Delhi at the time. There is no evidence he ever attempted to write in Persian. However, he may well have been present when the new Rekhta poetry caught on. Whereas modern communal sensibilities would lead us to project that a traditional Braj poet would be isolated from such developments and hardly notice the new literary trend, or if he did, reject it as “alien”, we find that such was not the case. On the contrary, Nāgrīdās was well aware of the new wave. He was inspired by it and even functioned as a conduit of the new ideas to other Rajasthani centers. In the second part of this paper, I will bring to light how he included some Rekhta verse on a par with devotional Krishna poetry in his anthology, Padamuktāvalī, or “String of Unconnected Songs” (or “String of Pearls-Songs”). I will demonstrate how, in response to these poems, he composed poetry himself in the new style, which he circulated among Rajput friends. A notable example is his Iśq Caman, or “Garden of Love”. We shall see that the twentieth-century Hindi critics of Nāgrīdās’s oeuvre have a hard time dealing with these works. As is often the case, hybrid works provoke a profound unease in literary critics working within estabRāṭhaur, who authored the famous Kisan Rukmiṇī rī velī. I am grateful to Ramya Sreenivasan for pressing this issue. 6 He is said to have bravely subdued a mad elephant (Dickinson and Khandalavala 1959). This event is also depicted in a miniature (Khan 1974: plate 2). 7 A good example is the miniature depicting a nautch at the court of his son Sardār Singh, depicted in Dickinson and Khandalavala 1959, plate 10. Its inscriptions give specifics of the dancers and musicians as being from Delhi.

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lished categories. They are bothered by the fact that they do not fit any of the neat labels they are working with. Yet those “Rekhta works” by Nāgrīdās deserve special attention. I will present some results of my archival work, which shows that the manuscripts of some of his Rekhta poetry enjoyed wide circulation, and, more importantly, that this in turn inspired other Rajput rulers to compose in the same idiom. Interestingly, the manuscripts of the new poetry were illustrated with miniatures.8 The case of Nāgrīdās’s engagement with Rekhta is part of the as yet unwritten reception history of the newly emergent Rekhta/Urdu. In addition to the circulation of ideas, this is the second field of studies to which this paper contributes: the current revision of the early history of Urdu and its relationship to Hindi. Nāgrīdās’s example shows how multiple registers of Hindi-Urdu language and literature were fluid before they hardened as they were regrouped as two discrete units: “Muslim-Urdu” and “HinduHindi”. My plan is to edit, translate, analyse, and study the transmission of some selected relevant works by Nāgrīdās to illuminate the cross-breeding of idioms and ideas in eighteenth-century North India. For the purpose of this paper, I limit myself to preliminary results of my work on Padamuktāvalī and Iśq Caman.9 2. The Devotional Song: Conduit between Court and Temple The house of Kishangarh had a long-standing connection with the Braj area. There is a dispute about its precise sectarian allegiance, whether it was Vallabhan or Nimbarkan, but in any case, most rulers and their family members were staunch Krishna bhaktas and sponsors of Krishna devotion. There is a family residence in Vrindavan, called Nagri Kunj.10 Nāgrīdās seems to have made frequent pilgrimages to Braj, as witnessed in his poetry. He wrote, among others, an autobiographical pilgrimage account of Braj called Tīrthānanda, or “The Joy of Pilgrimage”. When in 1748 his throne 8 One of the questions I hope to explore in further research is the interrelatedness of the appropriation of Urdu poetry and of the Mughal miniature style at the Kishangarh court. 9 I say preliminary results, because there is a need for further manuscript research and a fresh edition of Nāgrīdās’s works. Each of the extant editions (Gupta 1965, Śaraṇ 1966, and Khan 1974) has an ideological axe to grind (for more details, see Pauwels 2006). 10 Though it seems that the current building was constructed only after Nāgrīdās’s death (in 1787 according to Vrajvallabh Śaraṇ 1972), the family had some outpost in the holy city even before, as we know that in 1728, Nāgrīdās’s mother died in Vrindavan during a pilgrimage (ibid.).

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was usurped by his younger brother (or perhaps in 1755, after he had regained part of the kingdom around Rupnagar), he retired to Vrindavan, where he died. His cenotaph is in Vrindavan, near Nagri Kunj (Entwistle 1987: 210). The exchange between court and temple, between Kishangarh and the Braj area, is well-illustrated in particular in a hagiographic work attributed to Nāgrīdās, Padaprasaṅgamālā, or “Garland of Stories about Songs”.11 This prose hagiography, in which several great bhaktas or more precisely their compositions, or padas, are praised, is exactly what the title promises: The stories are organized around favorite devotional songs, with specifics about how the songs are understood to have been created, how they were received, and what miracles might have occurred in their performance context (see also Pauwels 2006). The work likely was composed in Vrindavan, towards the end of Nāgrīdās’s life, possibly after he had lost his throne. As the prince in exile has transposed his court to the pilgrimage center, the confluence of court and temple becomes literally true. Even more, the prince has come to embody the religious—as illustrated in a Kishangarhi miniature of Krishna-as-yogī in the woods of Vrindavan, which is modelled after the dethroned king in his exile.12 Here the milieus of temple and court converge. I will present a reading of the hagiography not with the intention of mining it for historical facts and assessing the veracity of the stories, for such would be a mistake as its purpose was not to write a chronicle for posterity, but rather to inspire belief. Still, the hagiography is useful for historians in documenting contemporary attitudes and reconstructions of the past in the milieu of the hagiographer.13 Often, hagiographies are read 11 I am using the Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā edition by Kiśorīlāl Gupta (1965: vol. 2), which is based on that of an earlier edition of Nāgrī’s works, Nāgar Samuccay, published in Bombay in 1898, and one undated manuscript from the Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā collection (Gupta 1965: 2:1). Interestingly, the latter manuscript is shorter. The other edition of Nāgrī’s works by Faiyāz Ali Khān (1974) is also based on the same 1898 edition upon which Gupta based his version as well as “authoritative manuscripts” from the Kishangarh royal collection, about which he does not give details. My own manuscript research has confirmed that there are two recensions, a longer and a shorter one. I am not yet in a position to determine which was the earlier one, or at which point they diverged, but this does not matter for the episodes discussed here, all three of which appear in both recensions. 12 See Mathur 2000, plate 16. His “Radha” is his concubine Banī-ṭhanī, who accompanied Nāgrīdās on his exile in Braj, and stayed at his side till death parted them in 1764 (1821VS in bhādon). She died a year later and her cenotaph is next to his. For more details on their relationship, see Pauwels 2005. 13 Before one assesses the historicity of the stories related, one has to be careful to fully understand the author’s agenda as well as the sources he is working with and the conven-

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“statically”, as providing facts about the lives of individuals, but here I offer a “dynamic” reading, focusing on interactions and exchanges, as befits the theme of this volume. I have selected three passages from Padaprasaṅgamālā that are relevant for our topic. The first illustrates how memory of the past is constructed in the eighteenth century, as the hagiographer tells a story of exchange between the sixteenth-century Braj milieu and the Mughal court of Akbar. The other two illustrate interpretations of contemporary situations, in particular the two-way traffic of devotional songs between a provincial courtly center and a place of pilgrimage. The first story presents an account of a performance of a bhakti song by a saint of Vrindavan in the presence of the Mughal emperor Akbar. This is perhaps the most famous passage of the whole work, as it relates the meeting of Akbar and Tānsen with Haridās in Vrindavan. Tānsen, the celebrated singer at Akbar’s court functions as the match-maker, providing the Mughal entry into this world of Krishna devotion. The story is told in Prasaṅga 39: Once upon a time the emperor Akbar asked Tānsen, “From whom did you learn how to sing? Is there anyone who sings better than you?” Then he answered: “Who am I? In Vrindavan, there is a Vaishnava by the name of Haridāsjī. I’ve learned from his singing. No sooner was this said than the emperor took Tānsen on a boat to Vrindavan to Svāmījī. First Tānsen sang. He begged: “Great master, let us hear something.” Then Śrī Haridāsjī started the introduction (ālāpa) of the musical mood of the monsoon (rāga malār). It was the time of Caitra-Vaisākh (March-May). But at that very moment rumbling clouds assembled. The peacocks started singing. He sang a song of devotion, a new composition. At that very moment it started to rain. (PPM 39 Gupta 1965: 2.385–6; PPM 43 Khan 1974: 596).

This is apparently the earliest source supporting the link of Tānsen with his perceived guru Svāmī Haridās (Delvoye 2001: 238–41). Whereas Tānsen’s connections with other Braj singers may be attested earlier, still his association with Haridās is the most influential in the contemporary popular imagination. Possibly, this story had such effect because it was reinforced with visual images. There are at least three miniatures depicting this incident, which seem to have high currency in being reprinted and reproduced multiple times. Apparently they can all be traced to the same Kishangarh court where the story originated (Delvoye 2001: 247–8; for an example, see Mathur 2000: 98–9, plate 31).

tions of the genre, including the tropes and topoi (for a fuller analysis, see Pauwels 2002).

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Nalini Delvoye has analysed the hagiology of Tānsen and how the story of the meeting with Haridās fits into the historical picture of appropriation of Tānsen by different sectarian groups (2001). For our purpose it suffices to note how cultural transmission between the court in Delhi and the Braj area was imagined in the eighteenth century by someone who had a foot in both milieus: Nāgrīdās attended the Mughal court several times. At the same time, he had also made several pilgrimages to the Braj area. It is significant that he, himself an intermediary and a poet, imagines the conduit between court and temple culture to be via the musician-singer. The power of the song is the main theme in this episode (as it is in the whole work, as the title indicates). It is then the song that is the quintessential vehicle for cultural exchange. Songs travel from place to place, and in the hands (or the mouth) of a capable musician their power can be transmitted across different milieus. The appeal of a performance can attract the patron in pursuit of the creator of the song, which leads him into the world of the Krishna pilgrimage center. This theme did not originate with Nāgrīdās; it has a long hagiographical pedigree. As revealed by Delvoye’s work, Haridās is not the only saint to whom Tānsen is imagined to have led the emperor and Akbar is only one of the many kings imagined to have pursued saints, attracted by their fame (see also Sangari 2000). The focus on the song, though, is characteristic of the stories connected with Akbar, which may reflect his court’s sponsorship of musical genres.14 However, the reflection on musical performance in the Mughal court may also reflect preoccupations at court in the early eighteenth century. Particularly relevant here are the traumatic events during the early days of Sāvant Singh’s contacts with the Mughals, when the short-lived emperor Jahandar Shah (1712) raised his favorite courtesan and musicians to high rank, which provoked much criticism and a ruthless reaction after the emperor was deposed (Brown 2006: 80–1). The device of the song as a conduit between court and temple is historicized in the later chapters of the same hagiographical work, where we find accounts of contemporary reception of songs in different milieus. Two songs by Nāgrīdās himself are singled out for such stories. Prasaṅga 68 relates the story of a pilgrimage to Braj: A Rājput among the noble courtiers was a vassal of Rupnagar. He was a great, dedicated Vaishnava and a devotee of Vrindavan. So when he would 14 Generally, Akbar is regarded as an enthusiastic sponsor of musical performance in contrast to Aurangzeb. For a nuanced assessment of the role of music and the social interactions associated with musical performance at the Mughal court, see Brown 2006.

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come on a trip to Vrindavan, he would be clean-shaven15 and, gourd in hand, would join the ascetics and discourse on Braj and Vrindavan’s sweetness. So one time he had come that way. He was doing the circumambulation of Śrī Govardhan. It was night, but the moonlight of Caitra-Vaisākh lit everything up (cāṃdanī khulī rahī). As it happened, accompanying this passionate emotional soul were another four or five Vaishnavas and together they sang songs with a frenzy of love. Just then, they heard the same song sung from the direction of Govardhan. At first they thought, “An echo of what we sing is coming from the mountain.” So they remained silent. But even so the sound was heard like before. Then they went in the direction of that sound, and as they advanced, they would not16 seem to come closer to the sound, but it would still be heard from a distance. Then at first they thought, “Somewhere some young ascetics or children of the people of Braj must have heard us and started to sing the same song.” So as they were coming halfway around the mountain, they were scanning the place for people. But they didn’t find anyone anywhere. At that point, they were caught in a frenzy of love and swooned. They now understood that it was in the gathering of the eternal play (līlā) that the song was sung. So they kept singing passionately in the same way and finished the circumambulation in great excitement. A crowd17 assembled: Much bliss on this marvellous occasion! So the song that had come from Govardhan, [sounding] as it were from young children’s lips,18 was heard from the sacred mouth itself in the eternal heavenly assembly. So that song became famous (PPM 68 Khan 1974: 611–2; PPM 63 Gupta 1965).

This story makes the case for the miraculous power of one of Nāgrī’s own songs. The claim is that this song not only catches on back in Braj, but even at the divine level. While there is obviously an element of hyperbole and flattery, this illustrates how pilgrims bring with them songs from their homeland, which may become popular in the pilgrimage center and be transmitted further from there. The image of the echo or reverberation of sound is particularly significant for our purpose. Songs have a way of echoing back and forth and can transcend boundaries in between milieus and regions. Songs may travel in yet a different way, as illustrated by the next chapter, Prasaṅga 69: In Rupnagar there was a two-storied mansion. There, singers were singing kīrtan, and one song really caught on. Those who were predisposed (bhāvuk) 15 The expression is bhadrabheṣ hvai, which is glossed as sir dāṛhī ādi kā muṇḍan karākar (Khan 1974: 918). 16 This is based on the addition of the word na in Gupta’s text (1965: 2.406). 17 Khan read bhīr, but Gupta reads bhor: “Dawn broke”. 18 Lit., “throats”. I am interpreting patare garena teṃ as equivalent to patale galena teṃ.

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Heidi Pauwels would be overwhelmed just hearing it, but a foreign (vijātī) faqīr got so into this song that in a frenzy of emotion he fell down from the roof. That spot was so high that he should already have died by the time he reached the ground. But though he fell from there, he survived… (PPM 69; Khan 1974: 612; PPM 64 in Gupta 1965).

In this case, a visitor is part of the gathering in which a song by the local prince is performed. The visitor is said explicitly to be vijātī, a foreigner, which seems to mean Muslim, especially because of the word “faqīr” following the term. The narrator comments on how it is natural for those predisposed to bhakti to like this song, but he marvels at its effect on the “outsider”. The enthusiasm of those present is contagious and the faqīr too gets excited, to the point that in his ecstasy he forgets himself and falls from the roof. The reason for examining this fragment is that it provides a glimpse of another way ideas travel: Songs are overheard by travellers, in particular ascetics and holy men of all kinds of sectarian provenance. The songs they hear might inspire them and they are bound to bring them along wherever their travels may lead them: to other shrines connected with other “sects” or “religions”, and to other regions, including their home area. The two last stories feature a positive reception for songs by the author (or patron?) of the hagiographical work. Both vignettes could be interpreted as part of the rumour mill of Rupnagar, at least the official gazette, which is keen to flatter the local prince. Whether there is some historical truth behind these incidents is less relevant for us than the perception they reflect about the power of songs and their ability to travel beyond the boundaries within which they originated. Songs from the court may travel to the pilgrimage center, and the other way round. Court and temple are also not the only locales of performance. Smaller venues, such as the house of a devotee, may become the scene of a gathering of people from different backgrounds. Moreover, the songs can be performed en route, during the pilgrimage itself, for all to hear. Songs also travel across religious boundaries via conduits of all social classes: Kings and royal musicians, but also ordinary pilgrims or even wandering faqīrs may be agents in the process of transmission. The hagiographies do not address what the agents now called “Muslims” made of these songs now categorized as “Hindu”, but what is clear is that religious identities are not compartmentalized in the early eighteenth century and paths of transmission are multiple and complex.

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3. The “Urdu” Ghazal: From the Deccan to Delhi and on to Rajasthan In this part of the paper, we will reflect on another conduit for the circulation of culture and ideas, in the form of another genre of song, one that was perceived to be new in the early eighteenth century, namely the “Urdu” ghazal. We look at the triangulation of exchanges, first between the Deccan and Delhi, and then on to Rajasthan. Throughout the focus is on the key figure of Valī. First we will discuss the poetic medium of Rekhta, stressing how it is itself the result of a complex circulation of cultural idiom. This provides the background for understanding the appropriation of this “cosmopolitan” medium by our “provincial” poet Nāgrīdās. The main contribution will lie in a correction of the contemporary understanding of the origins of Urdu and Hindi. Commonly, this is colored by the hindsight of the emergence of the nation-states of Pakistan and India. The association of Urdu with Muslims, with the Persian script, and with Persian themes and poetics is now commonplace, as is that of Hindi with Hindus, the Devanagari script, and Sanskrit themes and poetics. Hindi and Urdu are now perceived to be different languages with separate histories and literatures. This process is now well-understood as a product of the nineteenth century (King 1994). Yet, in the eighteenth century, there was no such strict bifurcation. What seem hard boundaries now were permeable in the past. Much is to be gained by recovering what the linguistic field looked like “before the divide”.19 How, by whom, and for whom were different registers of Hindi-Urdu literature created at particular points in history? The emergence of Urdu poetry is one such moment, and this section will recover one piece of evidence to reconstruct the way it was sympathetically received in non-Muslim, non-Persianized milieus. 3.1. A “New” Idiom for Poetry in Delhi: Rekhta Our focus shifts to the cosmopolitan Mughal court in Delhi. In the eight­ eenth century, this was a meeting ground for people from different regions and milieus. Linguistically, Delhi was a melting pot of languages, where the official court language, Persian, vied with many New Indo-Aryan vernaculars as languages of refined discourse and musical performance. Linguistic idioms were fluid and one performance might draw on many registers at the same time. One of these idioms for poetry was Brajbhasha, the vehicle par excellence for love poetry and songs of devotion to the 19 Here I reference the essays collected in Orsini 2010.

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Hindu god Krishna. However, a new idiom in the early eighteenth century was Urdu, at the time called Rekhta. One might wonder whether these idioms were competing for attention or functioning in mutually exclusive milieus. Our investigation will shed some light on the issue. While politically the Mughal Empire was disintegrating, culturally it was going through a phase of intense creative expression. From the confluence of cultures in cosmopolitan Delhi under the patronage of the Mughal elite emerged a new medium for poetic expression: the language now called Urdu. There is much debate about what exactly the antecedents of this poetic idiom were, but all agree that a decisive moment occurred in the early eighteenth century. Cultural production in Urdu can even be traced in time to a unique moment: 1720/1 the year of the arrival in Delhi of the (posthumous?) collection of works (dīvān) of a poet from the Deccan,20 known consequently as Valī Dakanī (1665?-1708?).21 Valī himself is an interesting figure of great significance to the circulation of ideas in early modern India. The whole situation surrounding the supposed beginning of Urdu around 1720 is illustrative of the complexity of the meeting of cultures in the eighteenth-century Mughal court. Valī was heir to the tradition of Dakani, which in the Deccan had flourished as a poetic idiom (under different names, see Faruqi 2003). This idiom was actually based on the North Indian vernacular spoken in elite circles in Delhi, which we could refer to by the term “Dihlavi”. Its presence in the Deccan had been the consequence of a displacement of Delhi noble families back in the early fourteenth century.22 Gradually, it had developed into a poetic idiom sponsored by the ruling elite as well as by Sufis.23 By Valī’s time, this idiom had been recently revitalized by a new wave of immigration from Delhi. Aurangzeb’s re-establishment of Delhi’s authority 20 It is debatable whether he was from Gujarat or from the Deccan; some hold that he was born in Gujarat, others in Aurangabad. See Hashmi 1986: 10–5. 21 His full name may have been Shāh Valī Ullah or Saiyid Valī Muḥammad, according to Gujarati and Hyderabadi scholars respectively; see Hashmi 1986: 10. 22 The move of Delhi nobles to the South may actually be traced back yet another century to the subjugation by the Delhi Sultanate of the regions of Gujarat in 1297 and the Deccan principalities in 1311. However, the defining moment seems to have been Sultan Muḥammad bin Tughlaq’s transplant of his capital to the newly renamed Daulatabad (formerly Devgiri). 23 Though Tughlaq’s tenure in the Deccan was short-lived (1326–42), the displacement of families to the South seems to have resulted in a considerable influx of speakers of “Dihlavi”. A new wave of such immigrants came in the wake of the sack of Delhi by Timur in 1398. “Dihlavi” became a vehicle for poetry, lavishly sponsored by the shortly thereafter independent Bahmani kingdom and its successor-dynasties in the sixteenth century (Hashmi 1986: 7–9).

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in the Deccan around 1687 had brought an influx of northern immigrants, especially to the new imperial city named for him, Aurangabad. It is significant, therefore, that Valī is closely connected with Aurangabad. The importation of his poetry to Delhi can be seen to be part of the traffic of people and goods back and forth from the Deccan to the North (Faruqi 2001: 138–9). Thus, ironically, this poet from the Deccan brought back to Delhi at the beginning of the eighteenth century a poetic idiom that really originated from there. One could speak of a “pizza-effect”: Only after Dihlavi had been transformed into a poetic idiom in the Deccan was it accepted and incorporated back “home” in the North. At the same time, this success was not achieved without hostility and ambivalence regarding the new poetic idiom’s southern provenance. Indeed, mid-eighteenth-century Delhi evaluations of Valī are keen to attribute his inspiration to a prominent Sufi figure in Delhi at the time, Shāh Gulshan, who is said to have encouraged Valī to continue composing in the “vernacular” but on Persianate themes in Persianate style (Faruqi 2001: 129–38). This perception, that Valī’s contribution lies not just in transmitting a tradition of Dakani poetry but in a radical transformation of it toward a Persianate register, is what is usually singled out in histories of Urdu literature. The “southern” provenance of the new vogue is then downplayed in favor of establishing a connection with a Persian heritage. According to some, this was tied up with the construction of a new militant masculine identity that went hand in hand with a de-Hinduization and de-feminization of earlier Dakani poetry (Petievich 2002). Whatever may be the case, the new idiom at the time was mostly referred to as Rekhta, or “mixed language”, meaning a mixture of Persian and “Dihlavi”. This idiom is now understood to be classical Urdu (Faruqi 2003). Several important issues remain unknown. It is worth investigating whether indeed the Persianate influence is something that was particularly appreciated by Valī’s audience in Delhi as opposed to in the Deccan. Were Valī’s earlier works indeed less Persianized? If so, to what degree should the Persianization be attributed to Valī’s developing his own poetic register?24 Do we see a similar trend in the work of his contemporaries and predecessors?

24 There is some evidence that this is a later development in Valī’s oeuvre; see Ahmad 1964: 251, n. 2. The matter is further complicated by the fact that Valī had a strong connection with Gujarat, which had also been a center where Dihlavi (under the name of Gujri) had been flourishing.

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There are other interesting problems related to this perceived moment of the beginning of Urdu literature. There is the curious element that the arrival in Delhi of Valī’s dīvān and its consequent success seem to be posthumous, as Valī most probably died in 1708.25 We know that Valī visited Delhi at least once during his lifetime, around 1700 (Faruqi 2001: 134), yet that seems not to have had much impact. Perhaps the times were not yet ripe for the craze, possibly due to the unstable political climate. Rekhta did not catch on until twenty years later, during the culturally fertile reign of Muḥammad Shāh. The circumstances of the arrival of Valī’s dīvān in Delhi would be well worth further investigation by scholars of Urdu. Was it first recited at the Mughal court, and if so at whose behest and under whose patronage? What was the performance context? Who was in the audience, and how did its popularity expand so rapidly? One wonders how the new “Rekhta rage” fits in the context of linguistic debates at the time regarding the appropriate (read: most prestigious) register of Persian: a “purified” Iranian speech as promoted by the Mughal elite and the high-profile Iranian immigrants, or an “Indianized” register, which seems to have been associated with an upwardly mobile minority (Alam 1998: 335–42).26 Such debates were evidently the order of the day in the “salons” of Delhi, among noblemen such as Amīr Khān (d. 1744; see Alam 1998: 347). Might one such salon have been the scene where Valī’s dīvān met with its first success? Valī’s contribution seems to be to supply the “outside the box” solution to the question of linguistic purity. He hit upon an idiom that is exactly the opposite of the struggling Indianized Persian, namely Persianized “Hindavi”. This seems to have opened up a sphere of expression for the “Indian upstarts” (term from Alam 1998: 342), as they could now assume a position of linguistic purism vis-à-vis those from whom they sought to distance themselves, namely the “uncouth” provincial masses.27 I suggest that underlying the success of Rekhta, may have been an element of legitimating an upwardly mobile Indian elite 25 The arguments in favor of this date are fairly convincing as a manuscript of his complete dīvan is datable to just about that period (Faruqi 2001: 130–1). For a contrasting view, in favor of a later date, see Hashmi 1986: 14–5. 26 Interestingly, the Persian scholar Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān Ārzū (1689?-1756) argued for the legitimacy of Indian words in Persian on the grounds of a correspondence between Persian and Sanskrit, foreshadowing apparently later postulations of an Indo-Iranian language family (Alam 1998: 341). 27 This is suggested by Alam’s analysis of the writings of the Persian scholar Ārzū, who defended Indian Persian (against Iranian purism) on the one hand, yet vigorously opposed the use of indigenous terms in Hindavi as “illiterate jargon”, or zubān-i juhhāl not fit for speakers of “the proper imperial language”, or zabān-i Urdū-i muʿallā, or zabān-i Urdū-i

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(Alam’s “Indian upstarts”) that was asserting its linguistic identity in response to the perceived superiority of recent Persian immigrants. Finally, Valī is of particular interest for our project seeking to revise the discourse that understands Urdu literature as a communal phenomenon, an exclusionary dialect cultivated by Indian Muslims. While his Sufi inspiration, and by extension his “Islamic identity” is often stressed, as it turns out, his poetry was not overwhelmingly religious in its inspiration; we could indeed label large parts of his dīvān as preoccupied with what we would consider secular themes, in particular his attachment to the region of Gujarat and his expression of erotic love and friendship, quite concretely naming several contemporaries. Though several of his poems can be read as reflecting Sufi sensibilities, Vali's fame is not as a Sufi.28 The arrival of Valī’s poetry in Delhi is just the beginning of a new chapter. Histories of Urdu literature tend to focus on its impact in circles previously involved with Persian poetry, though they reveal that the new poets who enthusiastically adopted Rekhta included people from all classes and religious backgrounds, including Hindus (Faruqi 2001: 145–84). In what follows, I will pick up this relatively neglected thread, and present evidence for the reception of Valī’s poetry in totally different circles, such as their inclusion in a collection of Krishna bhakti poetry. 3.2. The Braj Poet Nāgrīdās’s Responses to Valī In this section, we strive to recover a neglected part of the circulation of ideas in early modern India. While most histories concentrate on the reception of the “new” Rekhta poetry in circles of Persian literati in Delhi, this section focuses on contemporary Hindu circles. It recovers the sympathetic reaction of our Rajput prince, Sāvant Singh, alias Nāgrīdās, who was an accomplished Braj poet and patron of art at a provincial center as well as a participant in Delhi’s cosmopolitan milieu. For evidence of Nāgrīdās’s reception of Rekhta, I focus on one of his most voluminous works, his collection of poetry called Padamuktāvalī, or “String of Unconnected Songs”, finished in 1742.29 It is a huge collection, Shāhī (1998: 346–7). Note also the early, eighteenth-century date for the use of the term “Urdu”. 28 Valī has been connected with the Hidāyat Bakhś madrasah in Ahmedabad, (where some claim he is buried), where Shaikh Nūruddīn is said to have been his tutor (Hashmi 1986: 10). Yet his fame is not particularly dependent on his religious views. 29 The date 1742 is given in one manuscript, now preserved at the Jaipur Sawai Man Singh II Museum, and is reproduced in Navina Haidar’s thesis (1995: plate 213).

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incorporating 560 padas and around 500 dohās, organized thematically, according to the pastimes of the divine pair Radha and Krishna, including seasonal vignettes, as well as descriptions of their beauty, their feelings, and so on. It this collection, Nāgrīdās has interspersed his own compositions with what we may assume to be his favorite poems by others. He includes works by poets from across the sectarian spectrum, including Vallabhan, Gaudiya, Radhavallabhan, Haridasi, Nimbarkan, as well as Ramanandi poets and some that have no clear sectarian affiliation, notably Mīrābāī.30 Several of these poets are also praised in his hagiography Padaprasaṅgamālā. He has also incorporated poems by his great-grandfather Rūp Singh, his father Rāj Singh, and, notably his concubine Rasik Bihārī (alias Baṇī-ṭhanī), of whom no less than 61 poems are included.31 It is fortunate that we have the full anthology available. This enables us to study how Nāgrīdās saw his poetry connect with that of his predecessors and contemporaries. It is rare to be afforded such a glimpse into the artist’s mind and it represents a mine of material for intertextual study. For our purpose, the most interesting part of the work comes at the end, after the category “miscellaneous” (phuṭkar), which is followed by one called “Rekhta”.32 The bulk of the poems in the Rekhta section are Nāgrīdās’s own, but he also incorporates two poems by Valī, both of which are attested in Valī’s dīvān PMĀ 762 and 764 (Gupta 1965: 1.505 and 506–7), correspond to ghazal 54 and 370 (Āzam 1979: 2.66 and 231)33 respectively. Interestingly, Nāgrīdās introduces this section with specific instructions as to the musical performance of these Rekhta-language dhrupads and khyāls (Rekhtā zubāṃn ke in dhurpadauṃ khiyālauṃ kī alāpcārī maiṃ daine e dohā), and also gives the musical coordinates, the rāga and tāla by which to perform these poems. As I understand it, this information is not usually included in Urdu dīvāns. It seems that the reception of the ghazals in a Krishna bhakti context readily transforms them into a genre akin to what musicians specializing in bhajan would be able to recognize and play. 30 This information is based on the edition by the Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā (NPS) (Gupta 1965), which in turn is based on an undated manuscript from the NPS collection, which the editor estimates to have been written down around the time of the death of Sāvant Singh (Gupta 1965: 1.109). The older edition, Nāgar Samuccay, had left out all the poems by poets not related to the Kishangarh family, and the more recent editor followed suit (Khān 1974). 31 On their relationship, see Pauwels 2005. 32 In Khān’s edition the Rekhta poetry starts with poems numbered 569–98 (1974: 843–9), and the Iśq Caman is not included, but given separately elsewhere (114–9). 33 PMĀ 762 and 764 (Gupta 1965: 1.505 and 506–7), which correspond to ghazal 54 and 370 (Āzam 1979: 2.66 and 231).

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The first poem by Valī is on the theme of the beauty and mercilessness of the beloved, who may be—though never explicitly is—identified with God. PMĀ 762 Rāga soraṭha, titāla Jis bakat ye surījan, tū be hijāb hogā Har jarrah tuj jhalak sūṃ jūṃ āphtāb hogā Mati jā caman maiṃ dilbar, bulbul paiṃ mat sitam kar Garmī soṃ tuj nigah kī, gul gal gulāb hogā Mat āīneṃ ko dikhlā, apnā jamāl-e rosan, Tujh mukh kī tāb dekhaiṃ, āīnā āb hogā Niklā hai vo sitamgar, tege adā kūṃ lekar Sīne paiṃ muj āsak ke, ab phateyāb hogā Rakhtā hai kyauṃ japhā ko, muj par ravā e jālam Mahsar maiṃ merā tujsauṃ, ākhar hisāb hogā Mujkau huvā hai mālam, e maste jāme khūbī Terī nigāh dekhaiṃ sab kāmyāb hogā Hātif naiṃ yauṃ diyā hai, mujkauṃ valī basārat Uskī galī maiṃ jā tūṃ, matlab sitāb hogā At the time, O my beloved,34 when you’ll shed your veil, Your radiance will make every atom resplendent. Don’t enter the garden, my beauty, don’t torment the nightingale, By the brilliance of your looks, the rose will melt to rose-water. Don’t show the mirror your radiant beauty, Seeing the splendor of your face, the mirror will melt to water. The beloved set out, mercilessly, with the sword of coquetry, On my chest, her lover’s, (s)he’ll celebrate her victory. Why do you hold it to be right to make me victim of your oppression?35 On the Day of Judgment, my bill will reach you at last. I’ve come to know, drunk with the cup of plenty, That in meeting your glance, all desires are fulfilled. The angel36 sent this divine message37 to me, Valī: “Go to her (his) door, and soon you will be satisfied.”

First of all, the inclusion of this poem in a mid-eighteenth-century collection of Krishna bhakti poetry testifies to its general popularity at the time. It must have been one of the poems that caught on most, and apparently not just with the Delhi-ites, but well beyond, with visitors from provincial 34 Surajana is attested as synonymous with sajjan (OHED). 35 The expression ravā rakh- means “to hold something to be just”. 36 Hātif is glossed svargīya sandeś denevālā by Gupta, which is attested in Platts as “messenger of good news”. 37 Basārat is glossed sandeś by Gupta, which is attested in Platts 1213 as “happy news” and “revelation”.

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centers. Thus it illustrates that the Rekhta fashion was more widespread than previously assumed. Our prince from the provincial Kishangarh too felt inspired. He did not have the benefit of the newly developing mentordisciple (ustād-shāgird) institution and the performance context of the poetic symposium, or muśāʿirah, which were becoming central to Delhi’s literary culture (Faruqi 2001: 145–50), but that did not stop him from contributing in his own way. We get a glimpse of his enthusiastic reaction in his own Rekhta poems included in the Padamuktāvalī. Immediately after quoting Valī’s poem, Nāgrīdās registers what could be regarded as his own response in a similar idiom: PMĀ 763 Dekhā mana moṃhanāṃ soṃhanāṃ pyārā, pheṃṭā sira vā saja kajadāra Tisa maiṃ dhare banāya gula gulāba naubahāra Hardu julpha badarauṃ maiṃ, rosana mukha caṃda Jyāna ḍasaiṃ kālī kāliyā sī, matavāliyāṃ bhauṃha bulaṃda Mahara bhare casmauṃ kī, sahara sī nigāha Syāṃma raṃga aṃga aṃga, ajaba khusa adāha Badasta nīlophara phirāvatā, āvatā bica umaṃga Usī phirana maiṃ phiratā, dila hai hunara phiraṃga Cāla mauṃ cita cāla ḍāla, ḍālā jaṃjāla Huvā nihāra nāgara chabi, iska masta hāla I’ve gazed at this heart-stealing handsome lover:38  a small turban39 on his head, its decoration40 a fancy thing.41 On top of which he put a rose: the rose perfume of early spring. Face resplendent, like the moon: turmeric under hairlock-cloud. 42 As if bitten by a dark Kāliyā-like snake: his brows raised high and proud. Of eyes filled with affection, a sun-dawn glance [like resurrection], Dark in every limb. Unworldly joy and sweet affection.43 In hand, a blue lotus waving, wells up a wave of frenzy inside, In its wavy frenzy my heart is dancing, with foreign magic it keeps astride.44 38 This seems to be a formula, and may be a private joke. Some poems by Rasik Bihārī start with similar formulae in the first line: aṇī vahi sauṃhanāṃ mohana yār (PMĀ 589, Gupta 1965: 1.446); see also Pauwels 2005 for a translation. 39 Pheṃṭā can mean “a small turban” (OHED). 40 Saja can mean “decoration; attire” (OHED); sajadāra is “elegant”. 41 Kajadāra is glossed as ṭeṛhā, and indeed kaja can mean “crooked” (OHED). 42 Interpreting the word break as haradu zulfa rather than hara duzulfa as in Gupta’s edition. 43 Interpreting adāha as a rhyming variant of adā, literally meaning “grace”, rendered here freely for rhyme in the English. This is also the gloss given by Khan 1974: 967. 44 Hunar-phirang is glossed as jādū in both editions (Gupta 1965 and Khan 1974: 967) but this is not confirmed by Platts. The pun is untranslatable: Nāgrīdās is playing on the alliteration of phiraṃga and phirana.

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My thoughts followed the swaying of his [every] move, the web he wove, Gazing at his beauty Nāgar45 was elated,46 in love’s expanse he dove.

As is clear from the footnotes, the poem is brimming with Persianate vocabulary. This is in stark distinction to the linguistically Sanskritic loans (tatsama, tadbhava, and ardhatatsama) or deśī Braj register found elsewhere in Nāgrīdās’s poetry, with only an occasional loan from Persian. However, it is immediately apparent that the resemblance to Valī’s particular poem is actually superficial, limited to vocabulary and some imagery. The main reason these poems are quoted together seems to be a few lexical resonances. Nāgrīdās must have particularly liked Valī’s juxtaposition of gul and gulāb, which he imitates, but he leaves out the cleverly punning gal. He has added a lot of Persianate vocabulary, but none overlaps with the words in this particular poem by Valī, though we could find them elsewhere in the dīvān. However, in general, Nāgrīdās’s poem retains a Braj feel. He seems to be mainly enchanted by the wordplay and rhyme potential of the new vocabulary with which he can enhance his Braj poems: He likes the internal rhyme of mahar and sahar in the third line, and the wordplay that phiraṃgī and nīlophara allow him to make with pseudocognates such as phirāvtā, phirana, and phiratā. By the last line, though, he has fully returned to his usual Braj fireworks whose effects derive from the internal rhyme of Hindi words (cāla, ḍāla, jaṃjāla). There is, then, little overlap, though we can connect this poem with other poems by Valī. The beginning of this poem is, for instance, reminiscent of Valī’s ghazal: dekhyā hai jinī tere rukhsār kā tamāśa “Those who have seen the splendor of your beauty” (21, Āzam 1978: 2.45).

The references to the beloved’s gait and the wordplay on cāla bring to mind his famous ghazal “Mat gusse ke śole sūṃ jalte kūṃ jalātī jā” (13, Āzam 1978: 2.40). The second sheʿr reads: tujh cāl kī qīmat soṃ dil naīṃ hai merā vaqīf e mān bharī cañcal ṭuk bhāv batātī jā My heart is not familiar with the value of your gait O proud and fickle one, tell me your price/feeling.

45 “Nāgar” is the chāp, the way Nāgrīdās signed his poetry. 46 The poet seems to use nihāra as a śleṣa, with the double meaning of “gazing” and “contented”, the latter synonymous with nihāla.

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However, the inspiration is not obvious and in any case this poem by Valī is not quoted by Nāgrīdās, so we cannot be sure that he would have had this sheʿr in mind. What is striking is actually the difference. Nāgrīdās’s poem may have borrowed some words or turns of phrase, but none of the passionately violent imagery of Valī’s poem. Krishna may be a fraud and a deceiver, but he does not wield daggers; he may be handsome and brilliant, but he does not melt and burn.47 Indeed, Nāgrīdās omitted the classically Urdu/ Persianate imagery of the beloved as the cold-blooded murderer and the lover as the willing martyr-victim. Also notable is that the poetical format of Nāgrīdās’s poem does not correspond to that of the ghazal. There is no radīf or rhyming phrase, just the usual rhyme in Braj style. Nāgrīdās also has reverted to a metrical pattern he is more familiar with, namely the arill. Elsewhere, however, he does show off his understanding of Urdu meter. In the poem just preceding this one, he had tried his hand at a more Persian genre, a bahr: PMĀ 761 Rāg bhairūṃ, titāl Āsik dil aṃkhiyauṃ kī jag maiṃ, sab saiṃ akah kahānī haiṃ Phir na phiraiṃ, mahbūb karai jab hasi citavani mahmāṃnī haiṃ Besak bad parhej nihāyat, inhiṃ na lālac hai jī kā Husna jahar kā givjā mukarrar, aisī ajab ayāṃnī haiṃ Un bin sanam aur nahīṃ būjhai, har dam ek usīkūṃ būjhai Is matlab maiṃ nipaṭ sayāṃnī, aur na kahūṃ lubhāṃnī haiṃ Mast hāl sab sudhi bisarānī, pyāsī maraiṃ parī bic pāṃnī e garīb us rūz divaṃnī, uhi nāgara abhimāṃnī hai Rag Bhairava, Titāl rhythm In this world, a lover’s heart’s is the untold story in the eyes, They do not turn away, not even when the lover smiles and welcomes [others] with his eyes. No doubt she’s truly gluttonous, but her greed is not for this life’s titbits. Her sustenance48 is beauty’s poison, I marvel at her lack of wits. Except for that her thirst won’t slake, though one might try time and again, She’s very wise in that respect, and not at all a glutton then. In this mad state, she lost herself: she died of thirst, right in the lake, 47 Of course, Braj literature does contain violent imagery, as when love’s ways are likened to the cutting of a “saw” (karavaṭa). However, it is not the beloved who is portrayed as violent, but love itself, in particular the pain of separation. The body parts of the beloved may be metaphorically linked with images of war, especially the eyes’ glances with arrows, but this is still different from the image of the lover as a cold-blooded killer that is common in Urdu poetry. 48 The word gizā (m.) is from Arabic and means “food”, “diet”.

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O poor man, it’s that divine beauty, which, Nāgar, she prides [her thirst will slake].

In this case, too, we can investigate the intertextuality with Valī’s dīvān: There are three ghazals with the same radīf (455–7), but upon closer scrutiny, none shows much overlap with this poem by Nāgrīdās. Even here, where he has attempted to work within Persian meter, the Hindi rhythms take over.49 This is especially the case in the formulaic, nearly proverbial 16-mātrā half-line pyāsī maraiṃ parī bic pāṃnī. The state of madness and allusions to addiction to liquor are typical for Urdu poetry. However, Nāgrīdās has marked the crazed lover as female, with feminine verbal and adjectival endings throughout. This feels neither Urdu, nor Braj, because she is portrayed as a drunk and a glutton, which is not an image I have seen anywhere in Braj poetry. It seems that Nāgrīdās has tried to transplant the imagery of drunkenness onto the more socially acceptable Braj trope of the cakora bird thirsting for the raindrops of one particular constellation, who dies of thirst even though other water is available. The second poem by Valī that Nāgrīdās quotes is the following: PMĀ 764 iktāla Dil choṛī yār kyauṃ ki jāvai, jakhmī hai sikār kyauṃ ki jāvai Tā dar na rasad sarāb-e didār, āṃkhiyāṃ kā khumār kyauṃ ki jāvai Hai husn terā hamesā ik sāṃ, jannat sūṃ bahār kyauṃ ki jāvai [aṃjhvāṃ kī gar madad na hove, mujh dil kā gubār kyoṃki jāvai]50 Mumkin nahīṃ ab valī kā jānā, hai āsik-e zār kyauṃ ki jāvai Iktāla rhythm How could my beloved go and leave my heart? Her prey is wounded, how could she leave? As long as I’m deprived of the liquor of her sight, how could thirst51 leave my eyes? Your beauty is ever the same, how could spring leave heaven? [If tears don’t bring relief,52 how could this suffering leave my heart?]

49 Another poem where Nāgrīdās experiments with a radīf is PM 755/576, and here too the same observations apply. There are no ghazals with that radīf “kyā hai” in Valī’s oeuvre. 50 This line is in the dīvān but not in Nāgrīdās’s quote. 51 Lit., “have a hangover”, the latter being the gloss of khumār in Gupta (attested in OHED). 52 Anjhu seems to mean “tear” in Dakani poetry, see Petievich 2002: 239, translating from Vajhi.

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Nāgrīdās follows up with a viraha poem of his own that sounds very Mīrāesque (kī karāṃ maiṃ raiṃna bihānī, nīṃda na āvai PMĀ 765: “How can I pass the night, I cannot sleep”) and has only one or two “Urdu” words, but then follows up with a more thoroughly Rekhta poem: PMĀ 766 Huvā hai iska dāṃvana gīra Syāyata bhī na raphāyata detā dila kauṃ duganī pīra Subai sāma sotaiṃ jagataiṃ, saṃga rahaiṃ biraha bahīra Nāgara kulpha karī aṃkhiyāṃ aba, jakarī julpha jaṃjīra Love has grabbed me by the hem, No moment does it leave me alone, it doubles my heart’s pain Morning and evening, sleeping and waking, the pain of separation overwhelms me Nāgar: Locks have now chained my eyes, and tresses have tightened the noose.

This poem is close in sentiment to Valī’s, but yet again, we see that the violent metaphor of the beloved wounding her lover like a prey is omitted. The closest Nāgrīdās comes is his reference to how the lover is “chained” by the beloved’s tresses, an image that is common in Urdu and Awadhi Sufi poetry. What is most remarkable about Nāgrīdās’s reception of these poems is how he has interpreted them content-wise. Apparently unaware of what we now see as “Muslim” associations, he has unhesitatingly included them in a work of poetry dedicated to Krishna. While he did start a new section, under the title Rekhta, thus indicating the switch in genre, he nonetheless just continued to compose poetry on Krishna bhakti. It seems that he understood Valī’s poems to be similarly referring to the divine and thus easily transferable to Krishna.54 The first poem by Valī that he quotes is in itself ambiguous and can be read as being about love both secular and divine.55 Nāgrīdās in response has composed his own ode to Krishna, which 53 I am particularly grateful to Jameel Ahmad of the University of Washington for his help with the translation of this ghazal. 54 In interspersing known ghazals with his own Krishna-oriented work, Nāgrīdās is a forerunner of the famous Bhāratendu Hariścandra; see Sengupta 1994: 93–9. However, the latter strongly rejected Urdu, which is ironic in the poems that capitalize on the popularity of the very medium they denounce. 55 On the Sufi element in Valī’s poetry and his equation of divine with mundane love, see Turbiano 1994.

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indicates he reads it as about divine love only. For him, of course, this means love for Krishna. The second poem he quotes from Valī seems better to fit a secular interpretation. Nāgrīdās may have been sensitive to this, as he has included it in a set of poems that can be read either way, as the gopīs’ longing for Krishna or indeed as a secular lover’s longing for his beloved. In conclusion, it is clear that Nāgrīdās loved the new poetry he had heard, but his was not a whole-scale taking up of the new fashion, rather an idiosyncratic incorporation of certain elements.56 First and foremost, he entirely devotes the new poetry to Krishna and does not apparently feel this is incongruous. What seems to have appealed most to him in Valī’s poetry were the sonorous sounds of Persian-turned-Rekhta words, which he readily incorporated into his own poems. He loved their rhyming and 56 We should reflect for a moment on what Nāgrīdās did not include in his Padamuktā­ valī. There are at least two famous poems by Valī that seem close to Krishna bhakti sentiments, and which one might suspect would have appealed to Nāgrīdās had he heard them. One such poem is the following ghazal: Pirati kī jo kaṃṭhi pahane use ghar bār karnā kyā, Huī jogan jo koī pī kī use saṃsār karnā kyā (82, Āzam 1978: 2.82) What use is home and hearth for one who sports the necklace of love? When she has become a yoginī of her beloved, what use is the world to her? This could be applied in the context of the gopīs who leave their home and hearth to join Krishna in the Rāsa-līlā. Or it could be cast as one of their pleas to Krishna when he leaves them behind to go to Mathura, or to Uddhav as he comes to comfort them. The yoginī imagery evokes Mīrā’s poetry in particular. This impression is strengthened by the repeated invocation throughout the poem of female friends (sakhī, saheliyāṃ) The next sheʿr indeed seems close to Nāgrīdās’s earlier description of the crazy female beloved: Jo pīve nīr naimāṃ kā use kyā kām pānī sūṃ Jo bhojan dukh kā karte haiṃ use āghār karnā kyā (82, Ózam 1978: 2.82–3) If [you] drink only tears, what use for water? If [you] eat only sorrow, why care to offer food to the deity? Another poem that might have appealed to a Krishna devotee is the famous ghazal Mat gusse ke śole sūṃ jalte kūṃ jalātī jā “Don’t go on burning with your anger’s flame, one who is already burning for you” (13, Āzam 1978: 2.40–1). In its penultimate sheʿr, this poem too has some Mīrā-like resonances: tujh neh meṃ dil jal jal jogī kī liyā sūrat, yak bār use mohan chātī suṃ lagātī jā Burning with love for you my heart has changed into a yogī, Enchanter, just once press it to your chest. The use of the appellation mohan here is particularly evocative of Krishna poetry. Still, for some reason, Nāgrīdās did not include these particular sheʿrs in his collection.

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punning potential; basically we can recognize the true poet’s delight at finding new tricks for his trade. The abundance of Persian words in Nāgrī­ dās’s verse seems to indicate that his model, Valī, used a highly Persianate register of Dihlavi/Dakani. What Nāgrīdās did not appropriate was the metrical structure of the ghazal. He tried his hand at it only once or twice and clearly felt most comfortable with his own Braj meters. Similarly, he did not incorporate any of the imagery of the beloved as a murderer and the lover as a martyr for love, at least not in these sample poems. Thus, he ignored other aspects of the Persianization attributed to Valī’s work. Would this mean that Nāgrīdās missed out on the essence of the new Rekhta genre, which was all about constructing a new militant masculine identity—as Petievich argues (2002)? But at the end of the more pada-like poems, Padamuktāvalī includes another sustained Rekhta work by Nāgrīdās, to which we will turn our attention now. 3.3. Nāgrīdās’s Iśq Caman and its Reception In contrast to the poetry in response to Valī’s ghazals, Nāgrīdās’s full-length Rekhta work, Iśq Caman, or “Garden of Love” (consisting of 45 dohās), does include the more violent imagery typical of the ghazal genre. That this is unusual for Nāgrīdās’s oeuvre has not escaped the critic’s pen. Interestingly, this work is sometimes derided as a mistaken detour of an otherwise great Krishna devotee into a world of “un-Indian” Sufi sentiments. Nāgrīdās stands accused of a fascination with elements classifiable under the sentiment of “disgust”, or jugupsā, one of the classical emotions in aesthetic theory. A typical assessment is provided by his editor, Khan, in the introduction to this section of his edition of Nāgrī’s works: “In this book there is an overdose of un-Indian elements that cause disgust, such as blood, daggers, mud colored with blood, etc.”57 This disapproval seems to be tied up with what are perceived to be Persianate and hence foreign elements58 and it seems to be a distinctly modern phenomenon, especially in its concern about “un-Indianness”.59 57 “Is granth meṃ jugupsā utpanna karnevāle prem ke abhāratīya tattva–khūn, khaṃjar, lohū kā kīc ādi–pracur mātrā meṃ haiṃ.” (Khan 1974: 114). 58 That such purist sentiments branding Persian as “foreign” come from someone with a Muslim name may seem counterintuitive. It is in itself an interesting example of how the Muslim-Hindu bifurcation does not hold upon closer investigation. Khan was a loyal employee of the Kishangarh court and a staunch defender of its Vallabhan credentials. 59 It is debatable how modern such an assessment is. Linguistically speaking, Persian as a foreign language associated with Islam might be traced back to seventeenth-century

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Such a negative assessment shows the difficulties that traditional critics, eager to categorize literature with the pre-conceived labels of Hindi literary criticism, encounter when confronted with “hybrid” forms, literature that crosses over the neatly-defined boundaries of their taxonomies. The traditional static assessments have a hard time capturing the dynamism of the circulation of ideas and genres as exemplified in Nāgrīdās’s Rekhta verse. Rather than recognizing a poet’s creativity and openness, literary experimentation is derided as a corruption, or assessed as an early work of an as yet immature and easily influenced genius. However, earlier and contemporary audiences’ enthusiasm for Iśq Caman belies Khan’s demeaning assessment. The work has enjoyed great popular appeal. In fact, it is still performed in front of the famous image of Kalyāṇ Rāi worshiped by the royal family in the Kishangarh fort, as testified by Manmohandās Mukhiyā, head of the temple.60 The wide currency of manuscripts also attests to its popularity. Nāgrīdās readily circulated the manuscripts of Iśq Caman among his friends, and indeed some responded in kind. Aḍi Singh of Udaipur (r. 1761–73) wrote in response a Rasik Caman, a manuscript of which I had a chance to consult in the Kishangarh royal library. This is a wonderful instance of reception history, attesting to the dispersal of the new Rekhta poetry, via the Kishangarhi crown prince to other Rajasthani courts. Elsewhere I will provide a full study of Nāgrīdās’s Iśq Caman. For our purpose here, I want to only make a few observations about the style and imagery of the work, and what they tell us about Nāgrīdās’s religious understanding of the “Sufi” poetry he heard. As regards the linguistic register of the poetry, there is indeed an abundance of Persian loan words, but they are used in a very Indian way, similar to the poetry discussed above. The meter is the dohā throughout, which influences the rhyming patterns of the work. Nāgrīdās also loves to use Persianate words for internal rhyme and seems to have created a few favorite oral formulae, such as syāyatrifāyat (above), kādara nādara (see below), śakhs bakhs, and ajab-ghazab. Sometimes he finds Braj rhymes for the Persian loans, such as the fine nanda kā farzanda. circles (notably in the work of Jamāl ud-Dīn Inju, see Alam 1998: 329). The debate among purists and indigenists about the proper register of Persian seems to indicate on the other hand a feeling of Indian “ownership” of the language, and of course knowledge of Persian had spread well beyond elite society by the seventeenth century. 60  Personal communication, August 2003.

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Nāgrīdās incorporates references to Persianate imagery, particularly by alluding to the legendary lover Majnūn (dohās 16 and 33–5). In contrast to his padas, in this work, Nāgrīdās does appropriate some of the more violent themes typical of Urdu’s poetic sensibility, something viewed by Khan as an element evoking “disgust” (see above). Some examples are: māre phira phira mārie  casma tīra sauṃ khūba kie adālata julama kī  jahāṃ baiṭhā mahbūba (IC dohā 14) Strike and strike again, with the arrow from your eyes, sharply, Hold the court of tyranny, where the beloved presides.

Here Nāgrīdās is connecting the Indic images of the eyes shooting arrows with the more violent images of what could be understood as a certain masochistic delight in the lover’s mistreatment at the hands of the beloved in Urdu poetry. I also select for quotation three verses with explicit battlefield imagery: sīsa kāṭi kari bhū dharai  ūpara rakhai pāva iska cimana ke bīca maiṃ  aisā hai to āva (dohā 9) Cut off your head with your [own] hands, place it at [the beloved’s] feet If that’s [your attitude], come and enter the garden of love. iska kheta sauṃ nahi ṭalai  āvai be usavāsa casma coṭa sauṃ sira uṛai  dhaḍa bolai syābāsa (dohā 19) He does not retreat from the battlefield, but advances breathlessly, his head flies, hit by her glance, a resounding “bravo” [he utters]. ātasa lapaṭaiṃ rāga kī  pahuṃcaiṃ dila bica jāya dabī iska bārūda kī  bhabhakani lāgī lāya (dohā 30) The flame of passion is sparking, it reaches inside the heart love is lurking in the gunpowder, it starts to flare up in flames.

Here Nāgrīdās is connecting the Urdu images of love as a gory battle, in which one party keeps losing and getting hurt, with the Rajput hero’s bravery in battle and his willingness to commit the ultimate sacrifice of his life.

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The self-decapitation image comes close to a reference to goddess worship prominent in Rajput lore. Nāgrīdās updates the imagery to include the latest technology of gunpowder in the last couplet quoted. Finally we come to the verse that struck Khan as so disgusting: Jigara jakhma jārī jahāṃ  nita lohū kā kīca nāgara āsika lūṭi rahe  iska cimana ke bīca (dohā 44) Where the heart61 is always wounded, and the mud is mixed with blood, Nāgar the lover is being plundered, in the garden of love.

It seems then that Nāgrīdās is selectively adopting some of the violent imagery of Urdu conventions, but transposing it into his own world, notably into one of Rajput bravery and goddess worship. In the rest of his extensive oeuvre we do not find much of this Rajasthani ethos, as he chose instead to concentrate on the lovely world of Radha and Krishna’s erotic pastimes. It is ironically only in this poetry styled after the new Rekhta that the poet links up with this heritage of Rajput bravery, to which he certainly was heir. Based on what may be an unconscious link for Nāgrīdās of Rekhta with Rajput bravery, one wonders indeed whether this can be taken as an indication that the new Rekhta poetry signified a violent masculinity at the time, as proposed by Petievich (2002). However, for Nāgrīdās there is no explicit break or rupture with the world of Krishna bhakti. Engaging with Rekhta poetry conventions does not mean rejecting his more accustomed literary and religious modes. Rather, he appropriates this new style for the greater glory of his God. He declares explicitly that all religions are just different ways to God, and only become meaningful if suffused with love. Nāgrīdās is quite explicit about how he sees religious diversity in his Iśq Caman: saba majahaba saba ilma aru  sabaiṃ aisa ke svāda are iska ke asara bina  e saba hī barabāda (dohā 6) All religions and all philosophies, each and everyone has the same “taste” Indeed, without the effect of love, they all are worthless.

He had expressed a similar sentiment in his introductory dohās in Rekhta, though there the Krishna bhakti chauvinism came through stronger. In 61 Lit., “the liver”.

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effect, Nāgrīdās subsumes the message of the new poetry under the umbrella of his unwavering devotion for Krishna. usa hī kī suni siphta kauṃ, kisī jubāṃ maiṃ noya kādara nādara husna kā, kṛṣṇa kahāyā soya (PM Rekhtā 1) Hearing of his fame in whatever tongue, The one of mighty wonderful beauty must be called Krishna ujle maile khalaka maiṃ, phaile majba aneka iskabāja siratāja kauṃ, iska piyārā ek (PM Rekhtā 2) In the bright fair of the world, several religions have spread For prime lovers there is only one beloved love iskabāja vaisā na kou, vaiṃsā sūrata khūba nāgara mohana sāṃvalā, kadaradāṃna mahbūba (PM Rekhtā 3) No one like the lover, so beautiful, Clever, dark Mohan, the lover-connoisseur

Thus, while professing a broad-minded openness to all religions provided they preach love, Nāgrīdās’s own view on the world has not changed. The only true beloved is Krishna. Khan need not have worried about selling out to “foreign elements”: Nāgrīdās merely bent the new style to fit his own sectar­ian mold. 4. Conclusion The eighteenth century was a period of great cultural ferment in North India. It is a fallacy to see the Mughal court as the matrix of a cultural hegemony, since regional centers played important roles in fashioning new ideas and media of expression. Not only courts, but also monasteries and temples at religious centers were important sites of this interchange. Cosmopolitan as well as provincial salons patronized cultural performances that incubated and promoted new fashions. The reality seems to be a complex net of interactions, of which the agents were poets, pilgrims, performers, painters and their patrons, artists and artisans, as well as courtiers. And indeed, some of these roles may have applied to the same individual. Trajectories exemplified in this paper were routes of pilgrimage as well as traffic to and from the imperial court by vassals, but of course there were others. We see multiple channels of exchange and a complex fluidity. The medium par excellence for the circulation of ideas is the pada, or song, especially as performed, and to a lesser extent through (sometimes illustrated) manuscript transmission.

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This complex picture is reflected in the constructed pasts of contemporary hagiographies, as discussed in the first part of the paper. We can also piece it together from historical, literary, and archival evidence, as in the discussion of the emergence of the new Rekhta poetry in the second half. We have seen how the arrival of Rekhta on the Delhi scene was itself an interesting case of the circulation of ideas, a pizza-effect of sorts, re-importing “Dihlavi” from the Deccan, yet with a twist. At least purportedly the idiom’s newness consisted of a heavy Persianization, perhaps reinforcing, as Petievich has argued, a new construction of masculinity, going hand in hand with a de-Hinduization of the poetry. I suggest that perhaps we can understand it as a reaction of local elites against the accusations of the inferiority of Indian Persian in literary circles, asserting instead a Persianized Indian medium for poetry. One aspect of this moment in Rekhta’s history that this paper has brought to light is that its reception was not limited to Persianized circles, but that the new idiom caught on elsewhere. The testimony of the Krishna bhakta poet Nāgrīdās’s response to Valī’s works in his Padamuktāvalī shows direct influence of the Delhi fashion on this Rajasthani prince. This is not an instance, though, of imitation and wholesale taking up of the new idiom, but a selective adaptation, suited to Nāgrīdās’s personal taste. The preponderance of Persianate words in Nāgrīdās’s adaptations may well confirm the strongly Persianising character of the new vogue. However, if this went hand in hand with a de-Hinduization of the new Rekhta, it is not something to which Nāgrīdās seems to have been sensitized, as he happily applies the new medium to sing the glories of Krishna and Radha as he does elsewhere in his poetry. Nāgrīdās also tends to bypass the violent imagery of the beloved as a cold-blooded murderer and the lover as a martyr for love. He applies this imagery only in his Iśq Caman, and there—I have argued— transforms it into a celebration of Rajput bravery in service of the goddess. Thus, while recognizing how the genre circulates between different milieus, we also have to register that certain elements do not. Nāgrīdās’s “hybrid” Rekhta poetry is decried by twentieth-century critics, who see it as an uncharacteristic corruption of his otherwise bhakti-oriented work, or even as selling out to “disgusting, un-Indian” norms. However, the abundant manuscript evidence and the fact that Iśq Caman is still performed in the Kishangarh Kalyāṇ Rāi temple attest to the abiding popularity of his Rekhta works. There is even evidence that a neighboring Rajput king replied in kind when Nāgrīdās sent him his work. Thus we see a successful case of transmission of Rekhta into a Braj milieu, from the imperial to the provincial center, from an overwhelmingly

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Islamicate context to a Krishna bhakti-inspired one. A follow-up question would be whether this was a unilateral phenomenon. We know that Braj and Sanskrit compositions circulated in imperial circles and some were translated into Persian.62 We have solid evidence for the patronage of Braj at the Delhi court in the early eighteenth century.63 Notably, the Kishangarh court poet Vṛnd (fl. 1668–1706) is said to have been one of the tutors of the Mughal prince Muḥammad ʿAzīm (Alam 1998: 327). An aspect not addressed in this paper, but well worth studying is what the new Rekhta meant for the fledgling Braj circles patronized by the Mughal elite. Did such patronage of Braj poets survive the Rekhta wave? When Shāh Ālam II (1761–1818) is said to have composed in “Hindi” (Alam 1998: 346), which idiom did he choose? Was it a mix of (already mixed) Rekhta and Braj? There are many more questions that remain unanswered but approaching this part of literary and religious history from the theoretical frame of “circulation” certainly has proved a fertile ground for further research. Bibliography Primary Sources Āzam, Muḥammad, ed. 1978. Valī Granthāvalī. 2 vols. Kanpur: Annapūrṇā Prakāśan. Celer, Janārdan Rao, ed. 1971. Vṛnd Granthāvalī. Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir. Gupta, Kiśorīlāl, ed. 1965. Nāgarīdās. 2 vols. Banaras: Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā. Khān, Faiyāz Alī, ed. 1974. Nāgarīdās Granthāvalī. New Delhi: Kendrīya Hindī Nideśālay. Śaraṇ, Vrajvallabh, ed. 1966. Śrī Nāgarīdāsjī kī Vāṇī: Nāgarīdāśjī ke Jīvanvṛtta evaṃ Vāṇiyoṃ kā Sanśodhit Sanskaraṇ. Vrindavan: Śrī Sarveśvar Press. Secondary Sources Ahmad, Aziz. 1964. Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 62 One example is Faiz̤ī’s Nal-Daman, the subject of a recent article by Alam and Subrahmanyam (2006). Unfortunately, the authors do not address the issue of which text Faiz̤ī worked with. The comparison with the Sanskrit Mahābhārata text seems to assume that it was his source, but one might well speculate that existing Braj versions may also have played a role. Interestingly, the Persian gets “retranslated” into Hindavi and Urdu in the following centuries, as the authors point out. 63 Aurangzeb’s grandson, Muḥammad Rafī uś-Śān wrote “Hindi” poetry under the pen name “Nyāyī”. Later, Farrukh Siyar (r. 1713–9) himself patronized the rīti poet ʿAbd ur-Raḥmān “Premī” and bestowed the title of Kavīśvara onto the Braj poet Navāz, whereas he did not appoint any Persian poet-laureates (Alam 1998: 345–6). For further discussion of the engagement of Mughal society with Brajbhasha literary culture, see Busch, this volume.

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Alam, Muzaffar. 1998. “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics.” In Modern Asian Studies 32: 2, pp. 317–49. Alam, Muzaffar, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2006. “Love, Passion and Reason in Faizi’s Nal-Daman.” In Francesca Orsini, ed. Love in South Asia: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 109–41. Brown, Katherine Butler. 2006. “If Music be the Food of Love: Masculinity and Eroticism in the Mughal mehfil.” In Franscesca Orsini, ed. Love in South Asia: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–83. Delvoye, Françoise Nalini. 2001. “L’appropriation de Tānsen, premier musicien de la cour d’Akbar, par les traditions sectaires krishnaïtes.” In Françoise Mallison, ed. Constructions hagiographiques dans le monde indien: Entre mythe et histoire. Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, pp. 221–56. Dickinson, Eric, and Karl Khandalavala. 1959. Kishangarh Paintings. Delhi: Lalit Kalā Academy. Ehnbom, Daniel J. 2002. “‘Passionate Delineation and the Mainstream of Indian Painting’: The Mughal Style and the Schools of Rajasthan.” In Richard B. Barnett, ed. Rethinking Early Modern India. Delhi: Manohar 2002, pp. 179–91. Entwistle, Alan. 1987. Braj: Centre of Krishna Pilgrimage. Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman. 2003. “A Long History of Urdu literary Culture, Part 1: Naming and Placing a literary Culture.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 805–63. ­­­____. 2001. Early Urdu Literary Culture and History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Haidar, Navina Najat. 2000. “Satire and Humour in Kishangarh Painting.” In Andrew Topsfield, ed. Court Painting in Rajasthan. Mumbai: Marg Publications, pp. 78–91. ____. 1995. The Kishangarh School of Painting (c. 1680–1850). 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., Oxford University. Hashmi, N. H. 1986. Wali. Makers of Indian literature series. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. King, Christopher. 1994. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. Bombay: Oxford University Press. Malik, Zahir Uddin. 1977. The Reign of Muhammad Shah (1719–1748). New York: Asia Publishing House. Mathur, Vijay Kumar. 2000. Marvels of Kishangarh Paintings from the Collection of the National Museum, New Delhi. Delhi: Bharatiya Kala Prakashan. Orsini, Francesca, ed. 2010. Hindi-Urdu Before the Divide. New Delhi: Orient Longman. Pauwels, Heidi. 2006. “Hagiography and Reception History: The Case of Mira’s Padas in Nāgrīdās’ Pada-prasanga-mala.” In Monika Horstmann, ed. Proceedings of the Bhakti Conference in Heidelberg, 2003. Delhi: Manohar. ____. 2005. “Romancing Rādhā: Nāgrīdās’s Royal Appropriations of Bhakti Themes.” In South Asia Research 25:1, pp. 55–78. Petievich, Carla. 2002. “Making ‘Manly’ Poetry: The Construction of Urdu’s ‘Golden Age.’” In Richard Barnett, ed. Rethinking Early Modern India. New Delhi: Manohar. Sangari, Kumkum. 2000. “Tracing Akbar: Hagiographies, Popular Narrative Traditions and the Subject of Conversion.” In Neera Chandhoke, ed. Mapping Histories: Essays Presented to Ravinder Kumar. New Delhi: Tulika. Śaraṇ, Vrajvallabh. 1972. Śrī Nimbārkācārya aur unkā Sampradāya. Vrindāvan: Śrī Sarveśvar Press. Sengupta, Sagaree. 1994. “Krsna the Cruel Beloved: Hariscandra and Urdu.” The Annual of Urdu Studies 9, pp. 82–102. Turbiano, Enzo. 1994. “The Mystical Aspect of Valī Aurangābādī’s Poetry.” In Alan Entwistle and Francoise Mallison, eds. Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 239–54.

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A Braj Poet in Colonial Times Robert van de Walle* 1. Multiple Transitions: “Medieval” Verse in the Colonial Age Close study of the lives and works of nineteenth-century Hindi poets problematizes existing notions of modern and traditional literature, the literary use of different variants of Hindi, and the relationship between Indians and the colonial state. The fact that poets circulated between multiple cultural worlds considerably blurs the idea that Hindi literature developed according to a clear-cut narrative of abandoning older genres in favor of modern forms, and makes it impossible to define the attitudes of the indigenous Indian elite towards the colonial state as either straightforward opposition or endorsement. The present paper explores these issues by focusing on Thakur Jagmohan Singh (1857–1899), a poet who hailed from the small princely state of Bijeraghogarh in present-day Madhya Pradesh. He was educated at institutions founded by the colonial government, as evident from the many prefaces to his works in which he pays tribute to British scholars who were in some way connected to educational establishments in Banaras, and whom he apparently considered to be among his literary mentors. Surprisingly, the works for which he acknowledges the encouragement and guidance of such British mentors are without exception written in traditional verse forms in the variety of Hindi known as Braj, a type of poetry which by no means owed its existence to contact with Western culture. One would sooner expect such acknowledgements in prose genres such as the novel, the essay, or the book review, which were adapted from Western models during the second half of the nineteenth century, and written in the variety of Hindi called Khari Boli, the cultivation of which did have much to do with colonial contact. At the time Jagmohan was writing, Hindi prose was invariably written in Khari Boli, whereas poetry was predominantly written in Braj; thus, within one and the same work, switching between poetry and prose implied switching between Braj and * I am very grateful to Allison Busch for providing extensive comments on several drafts of this paper.

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Khari Boli as well. From the 1870s onwards some poetry began to be written in Khari Boli, and in the 1880s a debate on whether poetry should be written in Khari Boli or Braj began to rage in the Hindi literary sphere. By the turn of the century, Khari Boli became more and more accepted as the standard language for poetry, mainly through its association with nationalism, while Braj was portrayed as the overly “sweet” language of a morally dubious poetic tradition.1 Jagmohan’s acknowledgements are an example of how Braj poetry, which rose to prominence in Mughal-period India, adapted to drastically changed political and cultural circumstances in the nineteenth century; it responded to these circumstances by participating in print culture and new systems of patronage, and by assimilating new themes and aesthetic criteria. Some Braj poems dealt with modern technology and recent political developments; conventions of Western science found their way into poetry as evident from a new stress on empirical observation, and in some cases we see early traces of the concept of literature as a vehicle for the improvement of social welfare, a notion which would later become a major strand of Hindi literary criticism. Tracing the “newness” of such Braj verse, however, demands more scrutiny than in the case of more obviously modern works in Western-imported genres, which sometimes contain selfconscious claims about their own innovations.2 As will be shown below, scholars have provided examples of how Braj poetry was not merely a stagnant counterpart to the innovations of Khari Boli writing, but some of their general statements on nineteenth-century Braj poetry do not entirely do justice to the complex way in which this poetic medium appropriated innovations without rejecting tradition. Scholarship on nineteenth-century Hindi poetry continues to be informed by early twentieth-century notions of what constituted Khari Boli and Braj literature and their intrinsic characteristics: Braj poetry is associated with tradition and stagnation, a nostalgic counterpart to Khari Boli literature, which embodies modernity, literary innovation, and nationalism. However, 1 For the beginnings of nineteenth-century Khari Boli poetry, see McGregor 1974: 107–11. The increasing use of Khari Boli Hindi, the development of the rhetoric on what made it different from languages such as Urdu and Braj, and the ways in which these processes were intimately connected to nationalist ideologies, are presented in detail in Christopher King's One Language, Two Scripts (1994). See especially pp. 33–7 for details of the Braj-Khari Boli controversy. 2 For instance, the title page and introduction of the early Hindi novel Nūtan caritra (Ratnacandra 1893) state that it is based on English novels, and is intended to provide Hindi speakers with an opportunity to read a novel in their own language.

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these notions are to a large extent those of the nationalist propagators of Khari Boli, serving their argument that abandoning Braj in favor of Khari Boli was a necessary step in the progress of the Indian nation. The relevance of this rhetoric for nineteenth-century Braj poets, to whom writing in Braj rather than Khari Boli was a legitimate choice, or a matter of course rather than a conscious and politically loaded decision, needs to be questioned. I will illustrate this with examples from some English-language studies on the Hindi literary sphere of the nineteenth century. In the introduction to his Hindi Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, R. S. McGregor states that his study is mainly concerned with writing in Khari Boli, as in general this is the literature which reflects the “social, cultural, linguistic and political developments” of the time.3 He then remarks: The more purely traditional literature which continued to be composed in Brajbhāṣā and other Hindi dialects in the nineteenth century is seen as an extension of the literature of the preceding period and is not generally discussed, except insofar its existence may illustrate the extent to which traditional interests and attitudes maintained themselves during the period, or may throw particular light on the activity of individual writers.4

The emphasis here lies on Braj verse as an extension of what had been written in earlier times; further on, McGregor discusses some examples of Braj poetry that did reflect the developments mentioned in the introduction, and these examples are mainly concerned with India’s political subservience or the cow-protection movement.5 Of course, such uses of Braj for overtly nationalistic themes are a major example of social and cultural change, but not all literary innovations were ostensibly linked to the rising nationalist movement. McGregor himself furnishes some examples of what he considers innovative nineteenth-century Braj poetry in his Hindi Literature from its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. One of these are the works of Gokulprasad “Brij” (1820–1905), the themes of which include a description of the king of Balrampur’s daily routine, “an account of an accident during a tiger-shoot, Vedanta topics and a father’s bereavement.”6 In the same vein McGregor mentions Mansingh “Dvijdev” (d. 1873), whose Śṛṅgār-latikā (1853) contained “individually-felt reactions to the beauties of nature”; a section of this work within which “the poet describes his state” (apnī daśā kavi kahai hai) is singled out by McGregor as indicative of a new 3 McGregor 1974: 63. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 105–6. 6 McGregor 1984: 202–3.

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sense of individuality and a distinctively modern sensibility.7 Unfortunately, McGregor does not specify why the thematic content of such works is particular to the nineteenth-century context. The problem of defining what is unequivocally novel will reappear throughout this paper: Apart from references to the colonial state and technological innovations, there are very few themes which are unthinkable in works predating the nineteenth century. Something of the tendency to deemphasize innovation in traditional genres is also apparent in Dalmia’s The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions (1997), which deals in depth with questions of genre in the writings of Bharatendu Harishchandra and his contemporaries. Here too the focus lies on experiments in new genres using Khari Boli Hindi. Although these experiments were numerous and highly innovative, this approach somewhat downplays the extensive use of the Braj poetic tradition, which Bharatendu and the members of his maṇḍal (circle) fully commanded. The idea that “the older forms no longer sufficed to express new varieties of subjectivity and experience, to establish new varieties of communication and solidarity and thus needed to be replenished with the newer genres from the West”8 runs the risk of over-privileging the newer genres. This observation is borne out by the fact that The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions actually contains many examples of Harishchandra’s use of Braj poetry as a medium which could indeed record new subjectivities and experiences.9 A rare example of a study focusing on late Braj verse is Sengupta (1992), a doctoral dissertation on Bharatendu Harishchandra’s poetry. Sengupta reveals the skill with which it was written and how it addressed the concerns of its day. She describes this as a process of “selective adaptation to changing cultural situations,” and refers to a range of nineteenth-century innovators as “cultural representatives who synthesized the various modes of emotional, imaginative and intellectual discourse available into new and constantly developing media.”10 But when it comes to discussing the particularly “modern” aspects of Harishchandra’s verse, the emphasis is on verse expressing nationalist thought. It leaves unaddressed the question of whether the numerous original features which cannot be so easily subsumed under rising nationalist awareness are distinctively modern or a 7 Ibid. 8 Dalmia 1997: 280. 9 As noted in Damsteegt's review (1999: 94–5). 10 Sengupta 1992: 174–5.

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continuation of the kind of creative ingenuity that had been expected of Braj poets for centuries. This discussion of the above works is by no means intended as petty criticism of these major contributions to our understanding of Hindi literary culture in the nineteenth century. My purpose here is merely to highlight how difficult it is to make general statements on the role and use of traditional genres in Braj, as these genres were not “new” in the explicit and self-conscious way of their Khari Boli counterparts in new genres, which were seemingly without predecessors and lacked a commonly acknowledged literary heritage. By privileging writing in new genres in Khari Boli, or Braj verse which is overtly political, one ignores a wide range of subtle literary responses to the colonial encounter contained in Braj writings in traditional genres. Attempting to get a fuller picture of nineteenth-century literature in Braj thus involves defining the way this literature relates to the epistemological overhaul of Indian culture that coincided with British rule. In the case of Jagmohan Singh it is hard to pinpoint the extent of colonial influence on his literary output, especially in the case of his Braj poems. At first sight, his Braj verse hardly seems to differ, either in language, meter, or figures of speech, from that written by earlier rīti poets such as Keshavdas. But these poems are not “uncolonized”. On close inspection, they bear witness to colonial influence, sometimes by concrete references to things introduced during colonial rule, sometimes by the treatment of themes which were unknown or highly unusual in earlier times; as far as thematic content is concerned, no attempt is made to make them pass for earlier rīti poetry. Why did Jagmohan so readily include new and foreign elements in his Braj verse, and even mention English scholars as authorities on Indian poetry? How could British influence achieve such prominence in a traditional poetic genre? The present paper investigates such questions in the context of the literary culture of nineteenth-century India, in which the boundaries between the “native” and the “colonial” became increasingly blurred as authors circulated between cultural worlds. First an account will be given of Jagmohan’s life, literary oeuvre, and the sites of his involvement with the colonial state; then two of his Braj poems will be discussed in detail.

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2. From Bijeraghogarh to the Central Provinces, via Banaras11 Jagmohan hailed from a Rajput lineage. The history of his family exemplifies how Rajput landholding lineages were affected by the British intervention in proprietary rights in the nineteenth century, in its most dramatic form through the confiscation of estates as a punishment for those who took part in the 1857 Rebellion.12 Jagmohan’s ancestors migrated from Rajasthan to Bundelkhand in the early eighteenth century. In the late eighteenth century they were awarded the Maihar area as a jāgīr, which in time became the princely state of Maihar.13 In 1826, after the death of its ruler Durjan Singh, the British divided the kingdom of Maihar into two parts, each of which was given to one of Durjan Singh’s sons; one of them, Prayagdas, was given the southern part of the state, in which he founded the princely state of Bijeraghogarh, which was officially recognized in 1828. British interference increased when Prayagdas died in 1846, as the administration of the state was then entrusted to the Court of Wards. Prayagdas’s son Saryuprasad was only five years old, which meant a government manager was stationed in Bijeraghogarh. The Court of Wards had been established by the British as early as 1791, with the purpose of appointing managers to estates of minors, females, and “persons of known incapacity.”14 As the Court of Wards frequently took responsibility for the education of the young landholders entrusted to it, it was a powerful instrument for the colonial state to exert control, not just over the way estates were managed, but over the minds of young members of the landholding elite as well.15 During the events of 1857, the manager appointed to Saryu­ prasad’s estate was killed by rebels; at the same time, Saryuprasad took part in a campaign against the British.16 In revenge, the British confiscated the entire state and Saryuprasad committed suicide to avoid being transported to the Andaman Islands. Shortly before his suicide his son Jagmohan Singh was born, in 1857. Apart from violent interventions such as those following the 1857 uprising, the founding of a whole new educational system was another way in which British rule affected Indian society. Rather than simply offering new 11 The biographical information in this section is based mainly on Ramabhilash Tripathi “Candra” (2000: 38–40, 46). Another major source is Mishra 1959: 110–1. 12 A detailed history is outlined in Kasturi 2002. 13 On the lineage of the rulers of Maihar, see also Henige 2004: 126. 14 See Yang 1979: 248–50. 15 See ibid., 247–8, 259–64. 16 A fact mentioned in Roy 1994: 120–1, 126.

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kinds of learning, the schools founded by the colonial rulers transformed existing structures of knowledge and the careers of the indigenous elite. In this respect too Jagmohan Singh is exemplary, as he was sent by the government to Banaras in 1866 to study at the Wards’ Institution and Queen’s College. Queen’s College had been founded as Benares Sanskrit College in 1791, and its objective had been the patronage of, and control over, religious learning.17 From 1844 onwards important curricular innovations were instituted: The study of a vernacular language became compulsory, and both English and Sanskrit literature were now to be taught.18 The Wards’ Institution in Banaras, founded in 1863, was a school for young upper-class men who had been entrusted to the Court of Wards; this involvement with the education of wards was one of the ways in which the Court of Wards acted as a “channel for government control.”19 Regulations of the Banaras Wards’ Institution in 1872 specify that each boy was allowed personal attendants, a cook, and several other servants, testifying to the elite character of this type of education.20 All classes in the Institution appear to have been in English.21 Jagmohan’s poetry did not remain unaffected by his Banaras education. Significant in this respect are the introductions of the works he wrote at the time, which express his gratitude for the help and knowledge he received from British scholars who were affiliated with the College. One such work is Pramitākṣar dīpikā (A Treatise on Measured Syllables, 1874),22 the main body of which consists of a description in Khari Boli of 18 Sanskrit meters (chand), with verses in Sanskrit and Braj exemplifying each meter; in other words, a traditional poetic treatise or rītigranth as they had been produced at courts for hundreds of years. The treatise contains an English introduction, and concludes with a Braj poem on prosody. The book is dedicated to Ralph T. H. Griffith, the principal of Benares College and the visitor (inspector) of the Wards’ Institution; in his introduction, Jagmohan mentions that he had obtained permission from the Reverend W. Etherington to quote passages from his Hindi grammar to illustrate rules of prosody, and quotes Ralph Griffith’s favorable comments on Jayadeva’s poetry, as well as his translations of Kalidasa’s verse. Similarly, the preface to his Braj translation of Kalidasa’s Ṛtusaṃhāra (The Seasons) (1875/1886) 17 See Cohn 1996: 47–8. 18 See Dalmia 1997: 102. 19 See Yang 1979: 248, 259–64. 20 Cf. ibid., 260 n. 69. 21 See ibid., 260. 22 In Ṭhākur jaganmohan siṃh granthāvalī, henceforth TJSG.

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contains an excerpt from a letter written by A. E. Gough, then principal of Benares College, saying that he corrected the English introduction to the translation, and encouraged Jagmohan to publish it.23 Jagmohan clearly felt indebted to several British scholars in the fields of Hindi and Sanskrit poetry. The question arises as to how these new nineteenth-century British “connoisseurs” of Indian literatures affected what was being written in Hindi. For instance, one of the striking things about Jagmohan’s works written during the period of his education in Banaras is their preoccupation with Kalidasa,24 which reflects the tendency in early Hindi publishing to hark back to Sanskrit classics, a practice that was heartily promoted by the colonial education department out of a sense that Hindi literature needed to be revitalized through an infusion of classical themes. Romila Thapar speaks of how colonial attitudes towards Kalidasa’s Abhijñānaśakuntalā played a part in a colonial “strategy of control” in which an Orientalist interpretation of Indian culture was forced upon Indians; Thapar links the many vernacular translations of the play in the second half of the nineteenth century to this process (2002: 197–237). Of course, the European appraisal of Kalidasa reflected a status he already enjoyed in precolonial times;25 he was not a “forgotten” author, whose status was invented by the British. But although the Orientalists’ appraisal of Kalidasa reflected an older Indian discourse, it had a profound influence on the Indian literatures of the nineteenth century. In the late nineteenth century, Kalidasa was translated into Hindi more than any other Sanskrit poet. At no other period in history had there been such a nearexclusive predilection for Kalidasa’s oeuvre as a source of translations and adaptations into Hindi. It is thus not far-fetched to suggest a link between these translations and the fact that they were written at a time when British scholars sought to remold Hindi literature according to what they deemed the best aspects of the Sanskrit literary tradition. Jagmohan’s early works, 23 Preface to Ṛtusaṃhāra, in TJSG. 24 Many of the examples of Sanskrit poetry in Pramitākṣar dīpikā are drawn from Kalidasa’s works; and in addition to Ṛtusaṃhāra, Jagmohan also translated Kumārasambhava (written 1876–95), Meghadūta (1883), and Raghuvaṃśa (1892), all from originals by Kalidasa, into Braj. See Tripathi 2000: 189–215. Apart from Jagmohan, several other late nineteenthcentury poets translated Meghadūta, Kumārasambhava, and Raghuvaṃśa into Braj (Sharma 1972: 313). 25 For instance, Sehgal 1959: i-ii and Thapar 2002: 190–4 describe an early Braj translation of Śakuntalā, which recasts the play as a verse narrative; it was written in 1716 by the Mughal poet laureate Navaz Kavishvar.

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with their prefaces establishing a direct link between the works themselves and his English mentors, provide striking instances of this process. The colonial context affected not just the thematic content of Hindi literary works, but also, with the advent of print culture, the means by which texts circulated. Most of Jagmohan’s works were published by printers in Banaras;26 Banaras was an important center for publishing in the late nineteenth century, and publishing in Braj formed a substantial part of this.27 Thus, when it comes to the transmission of texts the equation of Khari Boli with modernity and Braj with tradition does—once again—not apply, as both languages partook in the new print culture. However, the new Khari Boli prose genres lacked the traditional patronage systems which Braj had known for centuries; for this kind of writing it represented the only avenue for the wide circulation of literary works and making a living out of writing, whereas in the case of Braj the new print culture coexisted with earlier practices. The above paragraphs provide many examples of the importance of Banaras as a cultural center, and the defining influence of this city’s institutions on how poets like Jagmohan were educated, what they wrote about, and the means by which their works were transmitted. But Jagmohan did not stay in Banaras for the rest of his life. Having completed his education, he moved frequently, motivated mainly by the search for employment. During the 1880s and 1890s he occupied various civil service positions (e.g. taḥṣīldār or assistant commissioner) in the Central Provinces.28 His oeuvre deals extensively with the places he visited for work, leisure, or pilgrimage. His article on Chattisgarh, “Chattīsgaṛh kā kuch hāl” (A Brief Description of Chattisgarh), was published in the journal Ānand kādambinī in 1881, one year after he had started to work in the Chattisgarh area. The article is mainly concerned with the poverty of the people of Chattisgarh and the marriage customs of the Gond people. An interest in Chattisgarh and its landscape is also apparent in the novel Śyāmāsvapna (The Dream about Shyama, 1888)29 which is set in Dakshin Koshal, the mythological region corresponding to Chattisgarh, and contains descriptions of the natural beauty of the area. Sajjanāṣṭak (Eight Poems on Gentlemen, 1885) contains verse descriptions of eight gentlemen he befriended as a taḥṣīldār in the 26 See Mishra 1959: 118–28. 27 See Orsini 2004 for the multilingual nature of printing and publishing in Banaras in the nineteenth century. 28 The biographical details of this section are drawn from Tripathi 2000: 63 and Mishra 1959: 115. 29 In TJSG.

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area of Seorinarayan.30 Finally, his Mānas-saṃpatti (The Mind’s Wealth, 1888) contains descriptions of the places he visited during his travels, and the feelings of love in separation that these places conjured up in him.31 Places described include Rajasthan, the Himalayas, Bombay, Tirhut, Aligarh, Alvar, and his ancestral home Bijeraghogarh.32 Works such as these simultaneously occupy the new cultural spaces created by colonial rule and the older literary traditions closely connected to their courtly origins. On the one hand, new genres such as the novel and the journal article are employed; and the attention to the poverty and marriage customs of the Gond people is akin to the concerns of colonial reform movements. But the older literary culture of Braj poetry remains a crucial aspect. For example, although the genre of the novel Śyāmāsvapna had only very recently been introduced into Hindi, the novel itself contains numerous extended passages in Braj verse, and the stylized nature descriptions mentioned above are predominantly found in such verse passages. They sometimes appear in prose passages as well, but even these passages entirely follow the stylistic and thematic conventions of nature descriptions in Braj poetry. Notably, the novel always refers to the Chattisgarh area as Dakshin Koshal, evoking classical geographical conceptions rather than colonial administrative divisions. Thus Jagmohan’s treatment of particular geographical areas drew on various discourses. It should be noted that although the regions of the Central Provinces where Jagmohan lived provided some of the subject matter for his works, they seem to have lacked the infrastructure for the wider distribution of books, unlike Banaras, a major center of printing and publishing in the period. Most of Jagmohan’s works were published in Banaras, and this continued to be the case long after he left the city.33 While Jagmohan’s residence in “peripheral” areas accounts for the settings and subject matter of many of his poems, Banaras remains essential in understanding the intermediary nature of his Braj verse as a form of courtly poetry produced in the settings of colonial modernity. Further evidence of Jagmohan’s enduring connection to Banaras is his lifelong friendship with Bharatendu 30 Tripathi 2000: 78–80. 31 Ibid., 87–9. 32 Ibid. 33 At least nine of his works were printed/published by various printers in Banaras (Mishra 1958: 118–28). Of the works published during the working years of his life, only a few were published outside Banaras, such as his translation of Meghadūta (1883, Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta) and his novel Śyāmāsvapna (1888, Education Society’s Press, Bombay) (ibid., and title page of Singh 1888).

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Harishchandra, who was a driving force in the Hindi literary world of the day. Harishchandra retained strong links with his friends and continued to encourage them to write even when they no longer lived in Banaras, thereby creating a network of authors and literary institutions throughout North India.34 Exemplary in this respect is the fact that Jagmohan, together with Bharatendu Harishchandra and their respective mistresses Shyama and Mallika, took part in literary gatherings (sāhityik goṣṭhiyāṃ) organized by their friend Gomtiya Aman Singh in Jabalpur, at the same time a rare indication of literary activity taking place in the Central Provinces.35 In the following sections of this paper I illustrate the difficulties posed by Jagmohan’s Braj poetry when trying to assess it using the conventional scholarly concepts and narratives of “Hindi literature” and its development. For example, the role of personal experience is particularly hard to evaluate. Its role in Jagmohan’s poetry can be seen as a nineteenth-century revitalization of a Sanskrit aesthetic category.36 But there are also precolonial Braj poems which represent a poet’s personal experience,37 suggesting that the nineteenth-century emphasis on personal experience need not be a colonial import, although the importance it acquired in the colonial period may well have been prompted by the “Romantic expressivist, nationalist, and aesthetic criteria” which were brought to bear on Indian literatures by the Orientalists.38 The fact that most of Jagmohan’s works were written in Braj in traditional verse forms gives an extra dimension to his use of new aesthetic concepts, blurring the boundaries between the “modern” and the “traditional”, and the “native” and the “colonial”. 3. Pralay Pralay (1889)39 is a poem about the flooding of the river Mahanadi, which affected the town of Seorinarayan in 1885 when Jagmohan served as 34 “It is well known that Harishchandra encouraged many contemporaries to write and publish, wherever they were: The “Bharatendu circle” had its center in Banaras but extended over several cities in the United Provinces and Bihar” (Orsini 2004: 119). 35 See Barad 1970: 12. 36 Dalmia has described how the need for writing to be anubhavsiddh, proved by experience, became a major aesthetic criterion in the essayistic writings of Harishchandra; older forms such as bhakti and rīti were found lacking in this aspect, so the new stress on experience constituted a rupture with older forms (cf. Dalmia 1997: 274, 280). 37 One example is the seventeenth-century autobiographical poem discussed in Snell 2005. 38 Cf. Dharwadker 1993: 178–81. 39 In TJSG.

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taḥṣīldār of the area. It contains a Khari Boli preface addressed to the inhabitants of Seorinarayan. The author dedicates the poem to them, and gives all kinds of scientific information on the Mahanadi, of which he expects the townsmen to be ignorant. The sheer number of facts is dazzling: For instance, the latitude and longitude of the Mahanadi are given, as are its length, and the volume of water, in cubic feet, which flows through it in one second (as compared to the Ganges and the Mississippi). The meaning of “cubic feet” is explained in a footnote. Another footnote tells of how Jagmohan visited Kaneshvar, near the source of the Mahanadi, in 1881. In Kaneshvar he saw the ancient temple of the Five Deities. The ancient temples of Chattisgarh, he writes, are solid but ugly, which does not surprise him, as even now the Chattisgarhis are so uncivilized that even their richest men wear nothing but loincloths; in the past things must have been worse. Jagmohan’s remarks here closely resemble colonial rhetoric on Indian “backwardness”, such as that found in the statements on Chattisgarh made in the 1870 edition of a Gazetteer of the Central Provinces: The races which inhabit this part of the country are the same in caste and religious prejudices as those found in other parts of India. Their clothing and diet still indicate a primitive simplicity. A narrow cloth about the loins is almost universally the only covering in use.… These habits are not found among the poor only, they are peculiar to all classes, and it is only of late years that village headmen and others on coming before official superiors assume more clothing.40 [of a temple in the Seorinarayan district:] “It is an object of interest on account of its extreme antiquity, but possesses no architectural beauty.”41

Jagmohan seems to have shared something of the colonial view of the “backwardness” of the area where he was stationed. In spite of his many literary works dealing in some way or other with the Chattisgarh area, it is important to note that he did not identify with the people of Chattisgarh, and, in a way similar to colonial views on the subject, felt they were lacking in civilization. It is hard to theorize the identities Jagmohan adopted as a writer. Seeing him purely as a product of a Western-style education, eager to mimic colonial attitudes, does not do justice to the prolific Braj poet who is consistently described on the title pages of his works as the “son of

40 Grant 1984 [1870]: 155. 41 Ibid., 476.

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the chief of Bijeraghogarh.”42 Jagmohan’s works display a continuous negotiation between personal and literary identities, and in one and the same work he can be the colonial administrator keen on enlightening the people of his district on Western science, the erudite poet fully conversant with centuries of Sanskrit and Braj poetry, and the proud scion of a Rajput dynasty. The effect of colonial rule on the identity of an individual such as Jagmohan cannot be expressed in reductive binary categories such as either fierce resistance or Anglophilia, staunch traditionalism or full-fledged modernity. Colonial discourses are part of a repertoire on which he draws frequently, but never exclusively.43 After the introduction, the actual poem Pralay recounts the devastation caused by the flood and the efforts of a local inhabitant to save people. Jagmohan employs various meters that were already current in precolonial times; together with the choice of Braj instead of Khari Boli this gives the poem a traditional appearance. But its verses contain many elements that one can assume to have been unknown in precolonial times. The poem is not in any way motivated by a nostalgic longing to recreate the world of precolonial Braj poetry. In terms of its formal and aesthetic characteristics it can be placed in a long tradition of Braj poetry, but its contents show a similar engagement with colonial modernity to that found in its counterparts in “Western” genres in Khari Boli Hindi. For example, certain elements indicate contact with European culture. Thus, the temple priest (pujārī) Bhogha, who is lavishly praised by Jagmohan in his introduction as a man who did his utmost to rescue fellow villagers, is compared to Noah and his ark.44 42 When the title pages include an English translation, “chief” is used as a translation for adhip. 43 A striking example from his personal life is that Jagmohan was married to four wives at the same time, in line with Rajput customs of polygamy, but lived with his mistress Shyama, to whom he dedicated many of his poems (Mishra 1959: 115–6). He is said to have never eaten food prepared by Shyama as she was lower in caste than he was (ibid.). Thus, in the domains of marriage and romance, Jagmohan’s life was by no means “modern”, unlike for instance certain Bengali reformists and intellectuals of the time who actively endorsed ideals of companionate marriage (cf. Orsini 2006: 30–4). 44 Alternatively, the author might have known the story of Noah through Islamic sources rather than European ones; but the use of Nuh, the Arabic name for Noah, is in itself no proof of this, as Hindi translations of the Bible often use the Arabic names of Biblical characters, probably because these have a certain degree of currency in India through Islam and the Urdu language. For instance, the Hindi Bible translation Dharmśāstra arthāt purānā aur nayā dharm niyam (Bangalore: Bhārat-Laṃkā Bible-samiti, n.d.) has Havvā for Eve, Ibrāhīm for Abraham, Nūh for Noah, Dāūd for David, Mariyam for Mary, and Yūsuf for Joseph.

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pralai vāri vārīśa meṃ nūha naiyā, paro hai manau bhogahā so bacaiyā. Like Noah’s boat in the water of the flood, and the rain, stands Bhogha, that savior. (v. 68)

And the year of the flood is given both as a traditional chronogram45 and according to the Western calendar, both neatly embedded in the verses of the poem. jeṭha śukla śiva vāsara ganapati tithi puni ahi senānī kramaso amba sumāra vāra guni sambata dala pahicānī pakṣa veda graha indu pralaya dina jo vā pura meṃ hoī ikaisa bāisa teisa jūnahiṃ aṃgarejī tithi soī eka sahasa vasuśata paccāsī sana īsā ko jāno dyausa tīna vikarāla vipati guni saṃkaṭa vikaṭa bakhāno. [It happened during] the bright half of the month of Jeṭh, the third solar weekday, the eighth lunar day, with the constellation Aśleṣā again in command46 by calculating the heavens in due order I have calculated47 the day of the week and identified the number of years. The day of the flood that occurred in that town was in saṃvat 1942 know that the English date is 21, 22, and 23 June, in the year of Jesus 1885. Having calculated the terrible disaster to last three days, I have described  it as dreadful misfortune. (vv. 111–113)

Another aspect of the poem, which seems indicative of a shift in aesthetic sensibilities, is the stress it places on representing true facts, based on the poet’s personal observations. The clearest example of this new emphasis is of course the lengthy introduction with its scientific data and accounts of the author’s personal experiences in the region. Moreover, when on the first page of this preface the author addresses Bhogha and tells him that the poem describes the way he saved his fellow townsmen, this is followed by the sentence “yah kuch keval kavitā hī nahīṃ baran sab ṭhīk ṭhīk likhā gayā hai” (This is not just some poetry, everything has been written exactly, p. 1); apparently “poetry” carried connotations of not being realistic, 45 Pakṣa veda graha indu = 1885 ce. 46 The words śiva, ganapati and senānī, apart from indicating numbers and astronomical terms, conjure up associations with Shiva and his sons Ganesh (Ganapati) and Karttikeya (Senani); similarly, amba is reminiscent of ambā, a name for Shiva’s consort Parvati. 47 Guni has been read here, and in the last line of this fragment, as gani (having counted/ calculated).

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whereas the author’s intention was to write things ṭhīk ṭhīk, i.e., “in the proper way” and (one may infer) “just like it happened”. The body of the poem also contains elements stressing its status as fact, based on science and empirical observation. Thus, when the flooded town with “pots” drifting through it is compared to Kashmir, an accompanying footnote explains that pot is a local name for a small boat, and another instructs that the people of Kashmir use boats to visit one another, as one can read in the geography book written by Raja Shivprasad.48 Also significant is the following line, referring explicitly to personal observation. raho āsa mana gāvana sārī daśā jona maiṃ dekhī jaba śavrī nārāyaṇa vāsī puravāsina kī pekhī. In my mind I felt the wish to sing about all the situations which I saw, when, as a resident of Seorinarayan, I saw what happened to its towns people. (v. 106)

Remarks such as these embody the aesthetic criterion of anubhavsiddh, proven by experience, mentioned earlier. Setting up such criteria entailed the demand for “a social realism, which was verifiable by experience.”49 It is hard to decide whether a concept such as anubhavsiddh should be viewed entirely as an example of the imposition of contemporary Western aesthetic standards originating in the Romantic period on Indian vernacular literatures as part of the colonial endeavor.50 An interesting point of comparison here is provided by the argument made in Textures of Time that historical writing, far from being a colonial import, can be found in numerous premodern texts, not as a separate genre but as a historiographical mode which can be part of various genres; the historiographical mode can be indicated by different markers, such as lexical choice or the way a text is framed. 51 The way Pralay combines rhetorical embellishments and factual information to produce a text which is literary without being un-factual is something it shares with many earlier writings, as demonstrated by the 48 (Kha) pot choṭī nāv ko kahte haiṃ (ga)kāśmīr meṃ ek dūsre ke ghar jāte bhī log nāv par baiṭhkar jāte haiṃ, rājā śivprasād sitāre hind kṛt bhūgol dekho. Raja Shivprasad “Sitar-e Hind” (1823–95) was a prominent Banaras intellectual at the time, and author of several textbooks for schools (Dalmia 1997: 132). 49 Dalmia 1997: 280. 50 For examples of this process, see Busch 2003: 58–63; Dharwadker 1992. 51 Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam 2003: 1–23.

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numerous examples in Textures of Time. However, the particular emphasis on factuality does set the poem apart from precolonial poetical traditions; here, one does not have to scrutinize the text for subtle markers. The preface, which equals the actual poem in length, situates the work in a new discursive frame that stresses facticity and realism. Its bewildering array of empirical data is only partly explained by the author’s ostensible aim of educating the people of Seorinarayan. Measures of length, and exact dates and times, are frequently mentioned in the body of the poem. The use of meter, language, rhetorical embellishments, and imagery makes the poem unmistakably literary in nature, but nonetheless it contains a wealth of factual information, and asserts that what is related is an eyewitness account rather than “mere” poetry. Moreover, the use of footnotes— emblematic of new colonial epistemological realms—is not limited to the introduction: The actual poem also contains several footnotes, with one verse even containing four footnotes. It is hard to determine the extent to which this particular emphasis on empirical facts in a literary work is a novelty of the nineteenth century, as there are earlier Braj poems which contain textual markers indicating that they represent an eyewitness account. One of the last verses (v. 207) of Nagridas’s Tīrthānand (1751)52 states that the poet has only described those festivals in the Braj region which he has seen with his own eyes (nija naina). Similarly, the beginning of the autobiographical Braj poem Ardhakathānak by Banarasidas (1641) contains the lines “That ‘Banārasī’ … tells his own story … ‘Let me say in words what I have heard, what I have seen with my eyes.’”53 Although the general concept of factuality as an aesthetic criterion need not necessarily be ascribed to the colonial presence, the particular way in which facts are reported in Pralay is indicative of colonial influence. This is evident from the use of English words for concepts such as “cubic feet”, “geology”, and the “discharge” of a river; the source for some of the facts is an account written by one Captain Harrison.54 Western calendar dates are mentioned in the poem as “English” dates. The most striking instances of reporting “prosaic” facts involve such English words or Western concepts, suggesting that reporting bare factual matter and “being scientific” entailed the adopting of a Western scientific discourse. 52 In Nagridas (granthāvalī), pt. 2. For further on Nāgrīdās, see Pauwels, this volume. 53 As translated in Snell 2005: 80. 54 Introduction to Pralay, p. 8.

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Another striking aspect of the subject matter of Pralay is its treatment of a recent natural disaster affecting “ordinary” people in a region, which, at least in the perception of Jagmohan and contemporary gazetteers, was remote and backward. The use of Braj poetry to record historic events is not new in itself. Historical poems in Braj about Indian kings date back to the Mughal period55 and Harishchandra wrote occasional verse about the British royal family in more recent times.56 But all these examples concern kings and emperors and are embedded in a courtly literary culture.57 Part of the novelty of a poem like Pralay lies in the fact that it documents a local event of concern to ordinary citizens, in a tone far removed from the earlier court poet’s laudatory celebration of royal realms. Indeed, by ostensibly addressing the local inhabitants and writing the poem for their “benefit” it stands far removed from the aesthetic codes of poetry produced under conditions of court patronage; here the poet, the Banaras-educated taḥṣīldār, adopts a new voice, “talking down” to the rustic people of the area. Still, although a traditional form like rīti could thus be used as a vehicle for new literary concepts in the late nineteenth century, Khari Boli poetry, in combination with new, secular themes, would gain pre-eminence over Braj poetry in the early decades of the twentieth century.58 Works like Pralay did not become the norm in the following century, as Braj poetry ceased to be a living literary practice. A poem such as Pralay complicates the typical understanding of this process of marginalization, generally held to be the natural outcome of adaptation to new literary standards, with the traditional Braj verse forms seen as genres incapable of fulfilling the needs of new generations of authors. In the late nineteenth century, Braj poetry was used to express the changing literary aesthetics of the time; in fact, Bharatendu and his contemporaries more often wrote Braj poetry, adapting it to the changing literary culture of the moment, than they opted for the more experimental venture of writing Khari Boli poetry. Explaining the dominant position attained by Khari Boli literature in modern genres, and the marginalization of Braj, by suggesting some kind of inherent deficiency in the traditional Braj genres seems therefore overly simplistic, as 55  E.g. Busch 2005. 56  Dalmia 1997: 283. 57  In the case of Bharatendu it is sometimes unclear whether his panegyric works were written with the intention of presenting them to royals in order to obtain some kind of reward; they might employ the trope of praising a monarch without reflecting an actual patronage situation. See Chandra 1992: 26–9, 50. 58 Cf. Gaeffke 1978; King 1994: 35–7.

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if new subjects, aesthetic ideas, and literary practices increased at the expense of traditional paradigms until Braj verse could no longer “contain” the innovations demanded by the modern period. This bypasses the potential of a language and a genre to innovate and adjust; and it does not do justice to much of the Braj verse of the second half of the nineteenth century, which accommodated the changes in the circumstances of literary production and changes in literary criteria, without indications that writers felt they were stretching old genres to the limit or that they considered Braj verse an inadequate medium of expression.59 4. Omkār candrikā Omkār candrikā (1894)60 is a poem in praise of Shiva and the temple containing the Omkara jyotirliṅga on the island Mandhata in the river Narmada; Mandhata is situated in an area where Jagmohan had been stationed. In general subject matter and style the poem stands in a long tradition of māhātmyas and other writings in praise of pilgrimage sites.61 But Omkār candrikā contains a few elements that clearly mark it as a late nineteenthcentury exemplar of this tradition of writing on pilgrimage sites. These elements are reminiscent of the travelogues that began to be written in the second half of the nineteenth century.62 This is no coincidence, as nineteenth-century Hindi travel accounts were partly a continuation of older traditions of writing on holy places. Although they emphasized personal experience and the particularities of late nineteenth-century India, many of the places they dealt with were pilgrimage sites, and the relevant mythology was invariably included.63 What makes Omkār candrikā particularly interesting is that it is an account of a pilgrimage place in Braj verse, ostensibly belonging to older traditions, which contains some aspects that are typical of the Khari Boli travelogues, a more radically innovative genre 59 Nor did Khari Boli definitively supersede Braj with any kind of linear predictability. Shridhar Pathak, for instance, produced Khari Boli translations of two poems by Goldsmith in 1886, but used Braj when three years later he wrote a translation of a third poem by Goldsmith (McGregor 1974: 108). Indeed, the literary trajectories of many individual authors did not necessarily mirror the general transition from Braj to Khari Boli. 60 In TJSG. 61 Some earlier examples in Braj include the description of Prayag in canto 5 of Keshavdas’s Vīrsimhadevacarita (1607; cf. Busch 2005); the account of Janakpur in Sur Kishor’s Śrī Mithilā Vilāsa (early eighteenth century, cf. Burghart 1983); and Nagridas’s account of the Braj area, Tīrthānand (1753, cf. McGregor 1984: 159; Entwistle 1987: 270–1). 62 Cf. Dalmia 1997: 322–8. 63 Ibid.

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(albeit one deriving from colonial models). One such aspect is that the poet mentions how Mandhata can be conveniently reached by the Rajputana railway branch, further specifying that the six miles from the station in Mortakka can be traveled by ox-cart. yaha khaṃḍavā ke khaṇḍa bīca nīmāra kahāvai rājputānā rela śākha hvai saba kou jāvai. ahai na yaha ati dūra moraṭakkā so bhāī kevala tīnahiṃ kosa śakaṭa māraga bani āī. ina bicitra pula rela anūpama sundara bhārī kārīgara so dhanya jiyata jasa canda ujyārī. It is called Nimar, in the middle of the Khandva district, everyone comes via the Rajputana railway branch. It is not far from Mortakka, my friend; for just three kosas the road is traveled by ox-cart. On the strong wonderful bridge is the train, incomparably beautiful and heavy the craftsman lives greatly praised, splendid like the moon. (vv. 6–8)

In these lines, references to modern technology enhance the eulogistic mood of the poem: The railway bridge is not just necessary to reach the pilgrimage place, but a marvel which adds to the glory of Mandhata. Jagmohan adopts the same approach to describing the police station near Mandhata: yāke nikaṭahiṃ kūla ahai sarakārī thānā pulake pūraba ora manohara ramya suhānā. Close by on the riverbank lies the government’s police station, on the east side of the bridge, charming, beautiful, and attractive. (v. 10)

Thus, using the traditional eulogistic tone in describing a tīrtha did not preclude “modern” aspects. Details such as the railway bridge and the thānā suggest that the poem is the account of an eyewitness, as it is clearly the late nineteenth-century situation of the pilgrimage site that is described rather than a “timeless” mythological vision. Using a traditional type of verse in 1893 did not amount to a nostalgic act of recreating the world of earlier courtly poetry. Contemporary experience is recorded, while preserving the rhetorical and stylistic flourishes common to earlier genres.64

64 Cf. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam 2003: 221 on how a writer’s choice to use ornate, rhetorical writing does not necessarily entail his privileging of a fictional over a factual register.

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Another element which might be indicative of the changed circumstances in which Braj verse was composed in the late nineteenth century can be found in the chronogram towards the end of the poem. It is an elaborate one, whose components have been written between the lines in numerals; this addition could naturally have been made by an editor, but if these figures were put there by the author himself, this suggests that chronograms, especially complex ones containing double meanings (śleṣa) like the one in this poem, were no longer readily understood by the poet’s readership in 1894, an indicator that knowledge of the conventions of classical poetry was on the decline. nagara ramya cahūṃ subhaga manoharatā darasāī kīnhau baraṇana nabhasi māsa parivā badi bhāī. 0      5 yogana bihārī bāna paṃca kara madana jarāyo    9       1 gaurī aṃkahi ropi bhāla śaśi vikrama bhāyo. The town is beautiful on all sides, it displays great charm. I wrote this description on the first day of the dark half of the month Bhadom, my friend.        0  5 He who delights in yoga burned Kamadeva with five arrows in his hand;              9    He with the moon on his forehead took Parvati in his lap, his valor    1 resplendent. (vv. 63–64)65

These interlinear numerals are similar to the footnotes on local vocabulary and Kashmiri customs, and the mentioning of Western dates alongside Indian ones, in that they are examples of the apparent need to explain certain elements in the poem, and to accommodate different types of audiences and different cultural positions as a writer. The Western dates, and the deciphering of the chronogram, are particularly significant as they apparently show the weakening of aspects of “traditional” Indian culture, which had been standard elements of Braj poetry of an earlier date. 65 The punning centers on Shiva; yogana bihārī and bhāla śaśi seem to be epithets of the god, who with his third eye reduced Kamadeva to ashes. Gauri is a name of Shiva’s consort Parvati. The author says he has written the description in the month nabhasi (derived from nabhyasī, i.e., Bhādoṃ); this contains the word nabha (sky), indicating the number zero. The five arrows of Kamdeva indicate the number five; aṃka, in its sense of “number” or “figure”, indicates the number nine; the moon stands for the number one, and, finally, vikrama can indicate the Vikramaditya era. This gives 0–5–9–1 VS, i.e., (reading right to left) 1950 according to the Vikramaditya era. For the words used to indicate numbers in Indic chronograms, see Renou and Filliozat 1953: 708–9.

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Whether the author's explanations are taken as indicative of a potential lack of knowledge on the part of his readers, or (in the case of the dates) of the different connotations held by Hindu and Western calendar dates, in either case the “native” elements which are explained have lost something of their self-evidence. 5. Conclusions Jagmohan Singh’s career and poetry were deeply affected by the circumstances of colonial rule. Although the language and verse forms of his poetry are the continuation of a centuries-old tradition, much of its subject matter is indicative of colonial modernity. This capacity of Braj verse to accommodate the social and aesthetic changes of its day is rarely sufficiently acknowledged in studies of nineteenth-century Hindi literature; general comments on the poetry of the time usually treat Braj poetry as an extension of an older tradition, and whenever there is an acknowledgement that Braj poetry did not remain unaffected by colonial modernity this is done by referring to the most markedly nationalistic types of poetry. Importantly, Jagmohan was by no means exceptional in writing “modern” Braj verse that was not explicitly nationalistic. Kartikprasad Khatri wrote a poem on steam engines; Harishchandra wrote about the first Afghan war and a samasyā-pūrti poem based on a half-verse in Braj meaning “Rome is wax, Russia is straw”; Premghan wrote on the present state of his native village, and the goondas of Mirzapur.66 Such examples could easily be multiplied. Thus, the problem is not the range and adaptability of Brajbhasha in this period. The problem is, rather, a hermeneutical one: Braj poetry of the rīti kind has been uncritically deemed limited, and Hindi scholars have focused on the emerging body of writings in the Khari Boli variety of Hindi as the locus of innovation in nineteenth-century Hindi literature. Unequivocal nationalism has been privileged as the only modern purpose that Braj verse could serve, thereby bypassing much other poetry which can equally claim to be modern. Many of Jagmohan’s early Braj poems seem to have been written within a colonial support network, with Western scholars affiliated to the educational institutions he frequented commenting on his work, and stimulating 66 See Singh 1953, Introduction, p. 13; Bhāratendu-granthāvalī (1950-53: 731–8, 761–5, 793–6, 864–5); Premghan-sarvasva Pt. 1, pp. 1–49, 255, 429–30.

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him to publish. In a more subtle way, the fact that he translated so many of Kalidasa’s works into Braj may in itself reflect English appraisals of Kalidasa as the “Indian Shakespeare”, though here there is the risk of ascribing everything to colonial influence, when there are so many other factors at play. In the poetry Jagmohan wrote as a civil servant, the colonial context is integrated in various ways. A Biblical figure can serve as a simile, and a railway bridge can add to the splendor of an ancient pilgrimage site. Explanatory materials such as introductions and footnotes bear witness to an awareness of Western scientific conventions, and to the fact that many indigenous conventions were potentially in need of an explanation. The cultural situation of Banaras in the second half of the nineteenth century seems to have been particularly conducive to this blend of rīti aesthetics and new literary paradigms. A strong tradition of Sanskrit learning, the existence of several British schools, a vibrant literary community, and a thriving multilingual printing and publishing industry produced an environment that was favorable to the eclecticism of Jagmohan’s writings. Jagmohan’s education at British-founded schools did not mean he became a wholly anglicized intellectual. As apparent from the prefaces to his early works, it was the way British scholars posited themselves as experts of Sanskrit kāvya and Braj rīti which seems to have influenced Jagmohan, rather than European literature and culture as such, and, significantly, he never composed literary verse or prose in English. The presses of the day brought out a substantial amount of poetry in Braj, which was in fact a commercially viable genre.67 Thus Banaras as a cultural center provided the conditions for an adaptation of colonial modernity that did not exclude older forms and paradigms. Certain aspects of Jagmohan’s poetry can be explained both as an effect of colonialism and as a continuation of precolonial ideas. His preoccupation with Kalidasa, his choice of a flood affecting a relatively isolated area as the subject of a long narrative poem, and his stress on empirical factuality and recording personal experience can all be placed within the context of colonialism and budding nationalism but are not without precedents in earlier poetry. Moreover, modern elements occur side by side with passages and concepts that harken back to earlier traditions of Sanskrit and Braj poetry; the modern and the traditional are not mutually exclusive. The analytical rubric of circulation offers a way of dealing with late nineteenth-century Braj verse that recognizes its ability to accommodate 67 See Orsini 2004: 119–20.

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colonial modernity. Colonial Braj poets circulated between cultural worlds, and Braj poetry circulated through time, surviving the advent of colonialism and the epistemological overhauls accompanying it. The problem here is that Braj lost out to Khari Boli as the dominant poetic language in the course of the early twentieth century, as part of the process by which nationalism and Braj came to be considered incompatible.68 Jagmohan’s Braj verse might have been able to cope with the changed circumstances of its time, but at the same time it belongs to the last period in which Braj was widespread as a living poetic language. This raises the question whether the accommodation and adaptation of new themes and aesthetic paradigms turned out to be a curse rather than a blessing for its continuation. In itself the involvement of Braj poetry with colonial modernity constituted no real reason for its decline. The Braj language and the meters and rhetorical embellishments characteristic of its verse were able to accommodate new subject matter and aesthetics, and could in theory have continued to do so after the early twentieth century. The marginalization of Braj needs to be seen as a result of the way it was constructed by colonial and nationalist thought, rather than as the “natural” outcome of some kind of inherent deficiency. By projecting an image of Braj poetry as incapable of dealing with secular, especially nationalistic, themes, even as an emasculating art form that constituted an impediment to national progress,69 the propagators of Khari Boli managed to deprive Braj of its center-stage position. This was despite the fact that it had been used successfully for secular themes in the late nineteenth century and long before. Similarly, the fact that Braj differed from the variety of Hindi used for modern prose is not in itself an objective reason for its decline; rather, the idea that it was wrong to have separate languages for poetry and prose, as actively endorsed by the nationalist-period Hindi critic Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi, among others,70 was what caused the drastic change in the status of Brajbhasha. The late nineteenth-century examples of Braj poetry applied to new themes constitute important evidence for seeing the eventual predominance of Khari Boli to the detriment of Braj as an issue of image-constructing, rather than the older language’s incompatibility with new aesthetic criteria.

68 Its marginalization within “Hindi literature”, a concept excluding a wide range of texts deemed too “popular”, “regional”, or “archaic”, did not of course affect its role and status within Hindustani vocal music and Krishnaite religious traditions. 69 See King 1994: 35–6. 70 Ibid., 35.

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Kasturi, Malavika. 2002. Embattled Identities. Rajput Lineages and the Colonial State in Nineteenth-Century North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. King, Christopher R. 1994. One Language, Two Scripts. The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. McGregor, Ronald Stuart. 1984. Hindi Literature from its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. [A History of Indian Literature, Vol. VIII, pt. 6] ____. 1974. Hindi Literature of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. [A History of Indian Literature, Vol. VIII, pt. 2] Mishra, Ramcandra. 1959. Śrīdhar pāṭhak tathā hindī kā pūrv-svacchandtāvādī kāvya (1875 ī. se 1925 ī. tak). Delhi: Ranjit Printers and Publishers. Orsini, Francesca. 2004. “Pandits, Printers and Others: Publishing in Nineteenth-Century Benares.” In Abhijit Gupta and Swapan Chakravorty, eds. Print Areas. Book History in India. Delhi: Permanent Black, pp. 103–38. ____. 2006. Introduction to Love in South Asia. A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–39. Rao, Velcheru Narayana, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2003. Textures of Time. Writing History in South India 1600–1800. New York: Other Press. Renou, Louis, and Jean Filliozat. 1953. L’Inde classique: manuel des études indiennes. II Paris: É cole française d’Extrême-orient. Roy, Tapti. 1994. The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sehgal, S. R. 1959. Kālidāsa’s Kumārasambhavam. Jullundur: Navayug Publications. Sengupta, Sagaree 1992. The Nineteenth-Century Brajbhāṣā Poetry of “Bhāratendu” Hariścandra: To the Limits of Tradition and Beyond. Ph.D. diss., University of Penn­ sylvania. Sharma, Vinaymohan, ed. 1972. Hindī sāhitya kā bṛhat itihās. Aṣṭam bhāg. Hindī sāhitya kā abhyutthān: Bhāratendu kāl. Varanasi: Nagaripracarini Sabha. Snell, Rupert. 2005. “Confessions of a 17th-Century Jain Merchant: The Ardhakathānak of Banārasīdās.” South Asia Research 25: 1, pp. 79–104. Thapar, Romila. 2002. Śakuntalā: Texts, Readings, Histories. London: Anthem Press. Tripathi “Candra,” Ramabhilash. 2000. Sāhityakār ṭhākur jagmohan siṃh. Allahabad: Vishva sahitya prakashan. Yang, Anand A. 1979. “An Institutional Shelter: The Court of Wards in Late NineteenthCentury Bihar.” Modern Asian Studies 13: 2, pp. 247–64.

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Index ʿAbd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan (ʿAbd-urRaḥīm Khān-i Khānān, Khān-i khānān, Rahim) 12–13, 75–104, 196, 200 as author 75–76, 94–98, 103–4, 196, 203, 206 career of 75, 77–78, 89, 92 Hindi/Hindavi or Braj and 13, 75, 81–85, 94, 96–98, 101, 104, 196, 200n47, 206 as patron or generosity of 13, 75, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 200 Persian and 13, 75, 81, 83, 85, 87, 94–99, 101 ʿAbd al-Rahman Chishti 199 ʿAbdul Qadir Badauni (ʿAbd al-Qādir Badāʾūnī) 100, 187n5, 223n5, 227, 228n24 ʿAbdul Quddus Gangohi 223, 228n24, 244 ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami, Mir (1509– 1608) 16, 201, 222, 224–27, 230–33, 235, 238–44 abhaṅga (meter) 16, 161, 170, 174, 178–79 Abhinavagupta 155–56, 169 Abu al-Fazl (Abū’l-Faẓl) 40–41, 57n22, 81n18, 191, 193, 197, 201–2, 205, 228n24 Aceh 51n11, 52n13, 65 Ādi-granth. See Gurū Granth advaita 15, 120–22, 126, 128, 135, 165–67, 170, 171n63, 174, 177, 182. See also Vedanta Afghans 12, 50, 57, 59–60, 69n42, 187, 229n25 Agra 102, 133, 247 Ahmadabad 13, 68, 76, 261n28 Ahmadnagar 78, 80, 91–92 Ā’īn-i akbarī 193, 201, 205 Akbar, Emperor literature, art, or music and 2, 16, 81n18, 84n30, 87, 91–92, 100, 103, 187, 189, 193–94, 197, 200, 202–3, 207, 215, 253–54 milieu of court or era  9, 75, 82, 135, 193–94, 200, 227 Akbarnāma(h) (of Abu al-Fazl) 40–41, 191, 195, 213

alaṅkāras (figures of speech) 208, 209n89 alaṅkāraśāstra 203, 209–11, 213 Ālāol 12, 48n6, 49–54, 57–67, 69–71 Alam, Muzaffar 22, 39, 88n44, 186n2, 199n44, 226–27, 260–61 Aligarh 226, 287 “Amānat”, Lāla Rāy Laʿlpūrī 26–27, 33, 36 Amber (place) 132, 190 Amir Khusrau (Amīr Khusraw; Amīr Khusrau) 24, 100, 228 Amrit Rai 190–91, 197n34 Amritsar 113, 129 Anandpur 115, 130 Anantadas 118, 130n47 Anubhavāmṛt (of Jñāndev) 170, 177 anubhavsiddh (proven by experience) 288n36, 292 Anvar Khan 207–8, 211 Anvarcandrikā (of Shubhkarandas) 207– 8 Anwar-i Suhaylī 16, 197 Apabhramsha 4, 144 Appadurai, Arjun 8, 156n27 Arabic 16, 41, 43, 48, 55–56, 60, 69, 75, 94, 99, 197, 209n89, 211–13, 223, 224n9, 266n48, 290n44 Arabs 2, 40, 51 Arakan 12, 47–55, 61, 63n35, 65, 67, 71 Arakanese 47–48, 48n3, 53–54, 55n20, 64, 69 architecture 13, 76, 80, 85, 101–3, 188, 197, 200n47, 215n106 “Ārzū”, Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān 23, 28n23, 30n35, 42–43, 260n26 Āśrapha (Āśraf) Khāna 52, 66, 69 Assamese 51 assemblies literary (sabhā, majlis) 28–29, 42, 57, 59, 67–71, 95, 257, 260, 274, 288 musical or devotional 129, 135–36, 205, 225, 227, 229–30, 233, 243, 253– 56, 264, 274 (see also performance; samāʿ) astrology 54, 98, 213 Aurangabad 258n20, 259 Aurangzeb, Emperor 50, 63, 198, 204, 254n14, 258, 276n63

304

index

authenticity 15, 29n32, 140–42, 149 autobiographies 25, 27, 28n27, 37, 57, 179, 249, 251, 288n37, 293 avatāras 31–32, 34, 130, 162 Awadh 12, 17, 40, 59, 226–28, 243–44 Awadhi 12, 48–49, 60n29, 63, 69, 97–100, 186–87, 202, 204–5, 214, 223n2, 226, 244, 268 Ayutthaya 65 Āzād Bilgrāmī, Mīr Ghulām ʿAlī (Mir Ghulam ʿAli Azad Bilgrami, 1704– 86) 22, 43, 209, 211–12 Azam Shah (son of Aurangzeb) 198, 204 Babur (Bābur), Emperor 75, 94, 186, 193 Badauni. See ʿAbdul Qadir Badauni Bairagis 229–30, 244 Bairam Khān 75, 83 Bakhtin, Mikhail 6, 9 Bana 190n10, 191 Banaras (Kasi) 107, 140, 145–48, 278, 284, 286–88, 292n48, 294, 299 Banarasidas (Banārasīdās) 60n29, 293 Baṇī-ṭhanī (Rasik Bihārī), courtesan 248, 252n12, 262, 264n38 Banwalidas 199 bārahmāsā 144, 153, 237 Barnawi, Shaikh ʿAla’ud-din or Baha’uddin 229–30 barvai (meter) 84, 97–98, 200n47, 203 Barvai Nāyikābheda (of ʿAbd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan) 97 Bauls 177, 226 Bay of Bengal 12, 47, 49, 52n13, 55, 63–66, 70–71, 135 Behl, Aditya vii, 102n95, 130n46, 144n5, 223n3 beloved beauty or description of 33n49, 195–96, 234, 236, 263–67 cruel or violent 17, 196, 263, 266, 268, 270, 272, 275 divine 40–41, 98, 109, 115, 119–23, 125, 234, 263, 269n56, 274 longing for or separation from 96, 98, 208, 268–69 Persian or Urdu conventions for 17, 41, 96, 196, 212, 236, 266, 268, 272 Benares College 284–85 Bengal 12, 15, 24n11, 50–51, 57, 165, 177, 194

Bengali 4, 15, 172, 175, 198n43 in Arakan 12, 47–50, 53–62, 64–65, 69–71 Muslim authors and 48–49, 56 Bhabha, Homi 9 Bhagavadgītā 32, 160, 169, 177, 179, 199–200 Bhāgavatapurāṇa 6, 31, 33–34, 121, 156n25, 161, 163–65, 179–80, 224, 239n48, 249 Bhai Gurdas 113, 117 bhajan 129, 179, 262 bhaktamāl (genre) 121, 130 Bhaktamāl (of Nabhadas) 110, 111n10, 121, 134 bhaktas. See bhakti; circulation: of ascetics, bhaktas, or mendicants bhakti 58, 109, 111, 114, 123, 178, 256 circulation and 108, 160 Krishna 35, 157, 214, 224, 231, 242–44, 261–63, 268, 269n56, 273, 276 poets, poetry, or literature 4, 15–16, 84, 98, 142, 144, 150, 157, 191–92, 261, 268, 288n36 Sufism and 16–17, 33, 144, 201, 230, 243 theology 231, 239, 243 translation or meaning of 109–10n6, 122n38 Bhaktirasabodhinī (of Priyadas) 108, 110–11, 121, 130n47, 135 Bhāratendu Hariścandra (Bharatendu Harishchandra) 268n54, 281, 287–88, 294, 298 Bhikharidas 96, 193 Bhojraj 110, 131–32 Bhramar-gīt 198, 239 Bīdil, Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir 11–12, 23–38, 38n64, 41, 43, 224 Bihārīsatsaī 206–8 Bījak (of Kabir) 140–41, 145, 153–54 Bijapur 80, 91–93 Bijeraghogarh 278, 283, 287, 290 Bikaner 203n65, 206 Bilgram (place) 209n87, 226–27 Bilgrami. See ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami, Mir (1509–1608); Āzād Bilgrāmī, Mīr Ghulām ʿAlī (1704–86) biographies 12–13, 25–27, 28n23, 28n27, 29–30, 32, 38, 39n66, 41, 78, 107, 109, 118–19, 131, 141, 145–47, 162, 174,

index 177, 191, 195n25, 210, 230. See also hagiographies; taẕkiras bishnupad (Vaishnava performance tradition) 16, 135, 201, 222, 224–25, 228–30, 236n40, 237. See also viṣṇupads boundaries (borders, frontiers) 2–4, 38, 47, 63n35, 82, 86, 157, 282, 288 crossing of 3, 10, 14, 16, 42, 139, 194, 215, 244, 255–57, 271 Bourdieu, Pierre 10 brahman (formless God) 165, 167, 171–72, 182 Brahmans 39, 54, 58, 119, 149–50, 173, 177, 188, 213 Braj (language). See Brajbhasha Braj (place) 31–32, 35–37, 109, 112, 131, 133, 214, 224, 231, 239, 241, 247–48, 251, 253–55, 275, 293 Brajbhasha 17, 96–99, 108–9, 131, 223n2, 253, 261, 265, 278, 298–99 Hindus, Brahmans, or bhakti and 11, 16, 192, 199, 213–14, 249, 257 Khari Boli and 18, 278–80, 286, 290, 293, 295, 300 Mughals or Indo-Muslims and 16, 60n29, 99, 186–89, 191, 194–95, 197–199, 202–3, 206–7, 209, 212n101, 213–15, 224, 244, 276, 279 nationalism or communalism and 214, 250, 280–82, 300 poetics, metrics, canon, or literary conventions of 18, 60n29, 96–97, 130–31, 191–92, 195, 198, 201, 204, 208–9, 212, 266–67, 270–71, 280, 284, 287, 295, 300 poetry 97, 195, 198, 209, 213–14, 257, 267, 278–81, 287, 290, 294, 298–300 Rajputs and 197, 206, 213, 215, 249–50 as transregional or cosmopolitan language 5n15, 60n29, 99n83, 130–31, 191, 194, 213–15 British 18, 41, 278, 282–86, 299 Buddhism 2, 4, 12, 16, 48, 51, 54, 56, 59, 63, 65, 142, 172–73, 177 Bundelas 84, 191 Bundelkhand 84n30, 203, 283 Burhanpur 13, 76–77, 80, 92–93, 102 Burmese 47n2, 48, 53 cakras 171, 173 Cāndāyan (of Maulana Daud) 144n6, 153,

305

187n5, 204, 205n74, 223 carit (exemplary biography; genre) 190– 91, 195. See also biographies Caryāgīti 172–73, 175 caste 108, 119, 172, 177, 196–97, 289, 290n43 caupaīs 109, 110n6, 113, 116, 120, 126n41 Caurāsī Vaiṣṇavan kī Vārtā (of Gokulnath) 108 Central Asia 2, 12, 38, 51, 80, 85, 190, 193 Central Provinces 286–89 Chahār ʿunṣur (of Bīdil) 27, 28n27, 29, 31, 35, 37, 41 Chaitanya 107 Chandamālā (of Keshavdas) 192 chāp (signature) 154, 164n21, 265n45. See also takhalluṣ Chattisgarh 286–87, 289 China 2, 52n13, 63 Chishtīs (Chishtis) 3n7, 48, 63, 199, 227–29, 238n46 Chishtiyya Bihishtiya (of Shaikh ʿAla’ud-din Barnawi) 229 Chittagong 47–48, 50, 56, 58, 65 chronicles 78, 79n11, 103, 212n101, 213 circulation of culture cultural change or creation and 1–4, 7–8, 10–11, 14, 42, 107, 160, 192, 300 of ideas vii, 43, 71, 160, 192, 194, 243, 247, 251, 258, 261, 274–75 of literary genres 3–4, 15–16, 76, 94, 104, 157, 195, 243, 275 as physical and geographical fact 8, 94 (see also circulation of people) of songs or musical forms 222, 228, 230, 232, 243–44, 254–57, 274 theoretical concept 1–10, 21, 38, 51, 70–71, 76–77, 104, 107, 136, 140–42, 157, 160, 187, 215, 222–23, 244, 247, 256, 276, 278, 300 circulation of people of artists or painters 91, 94, 99, 104 of ascetics, bhaktas, or mendicants 1, 14, 107, 256 of musicians 229–30, 244, 254 of literati vii, 1, 3–4, 13, 76, 86–94, 103, 143, 193, 278, 299 of rulers, courtiers, or civil servants 1, 3, 9, 18, 193, 247, 274

306

index

coins 53, 55–56 colonialism 18, 278, 281–90, 292–93, 296, 298–300 connoisseurs (rasikas) 13, 16, 79n11, 155, 186, 188, 192–93, 199, 201–3, 205–6, 208–9, 212–13, 215, 228–30, 285 cosmopolitanism 13, 16, 38, 43, 63–64, 71, 104, 194 courtesans 233, 254, 288, 290n43. See also Baṇī-ṭhanī courts Deccani 80, 89, 91–93 Guru Gobind Singh’s 109, 115–16, 123, 129–30, 134–36 Kishangarh 247, 249n5, 251n8, 253, 270n58, 276 literature or music in 3, 13, 30, 49, 59, 66, 79–80, 82, 85, 87–88, 90, 93, 97, 99, 130, 188–94, 203, 229, 287 Mrauk-U’s or Arakan 12, 48, 50, 53–55, 70 Mughal or imperial 24, 34, 55, 77, 84n30, 89–91, 93, 100n89, 103–4, 188–90, 193–94, 203, 213, 227, 243, 247–49, 254, 257–58, 260, 274 Muhammad Shah’s 17, 207, 250, 260 Persian and 81, 85, 87, 186, 194, 196, 213 (see also Mughals: Persian or Persianate culture and) Rahim’s 13, 76, 80, 85–92 Rajput or Rajasthani 136, 188, 190–91, 193, 213, 215, 249, 271 Sanskrit and 54, 69n41, 186, 188–90, 192, 194 Dadupanth 5n13, 140–41, 145, 153 Dakani 65, 81, 94, 258–59, 267n52, 270 Dalmia, Vasudha 3n8, 281, 288n36. See also anubhavsiddh Danyal, Prince (Akbar’s son) 202, 207 Dārā Shukūh (Dara Shukoh), Prince 24, 34, 203n65 Dasam Granth 114n16, 115, 130–31 Daud, Maulana 143, 153, 187n5, 204, 223. See also Cāndāyan Daulat Kājī 48n6, 49, 52, 61, 65–66, 69 Deccan 51, 75, 78, 80, 89, 91–93, 98, 102, 194, 195n24, 196n32, 201, 210n91, 229, 248, 257–59, 275 decontextualization 23, 144, 147–48, 157 Delhi 17, 133, 223, 229n25, 247–48, 250, 254, 257–61, 263–64, 275–76

Delhi Sultanate 187, 205, 224n9, 258n22 Delvoye, Françoise “Nalini” 3n6, 201n54, 229, 233, 244n57, 254 Dhaka 49n7, 204 Dhannavati 49–50, 62 dharma 62, 125, 134, 168, 180 dhrupad 195, 201n54, 203n66, 222, 228– 30, 233, 235, 237, 262 Dhruva 117, 180n99, 181 diasporas 7 diffusion 14, 43, 65–66, 112, 113n12, 128, 131–32, 134–36, 142 Dihlavi 258–59, 270, 275 dīvān (poetry collection; dīwān) 27, 29, 186, 258, 260–62, 265, 267 dohā (couplet) 15, 85, 96–97, 110n6, 113– 14, 116, 120–21, 172, 174, 205, 208–9, 228n24, 249, 262, 270–71, 273 Dutch 51n11, 55, 56n21 “Dvijdev” Mansingh  280 Dvivedi, Mahavir Prasad 300 Dwarka 108, 110, 131, 231, 241 East India Company 38, 290 education 59, 61, 75, 177, 186, 193, 227, 278, 283–86, 289 Egypt 51, 61 Eknāth 175 elites Indo-Muslim 16, 58, 186, 203, 205, 213 Mughal 104, 187n5, 187n6, 189, 192, 202, 203n65, 211, 224, 258, 260, 276 Rajput 17, 122, 134, 188–94, 206, 213, 226, 249–51, 283, 290 (see also Rajputs; courts: Rajput or Rajasthani) See also kings; patrons English 9, 279n2, 282, 284–85, 293, 299 epics 6, 12, 61, 144, 152, 180, 189, 200 Faiẓī (Fayẓī, Faiz̤ī) 81n18, 28n24, 96, 276n62 Faqirullah 205, 229n28 Farhād-o-Shīrīn (of Niẓāmī) 40 Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār 58n25, 61n30 Fatehpur Sikri 90 Fatḥ Bāgh (Garden of Victory) in Sarkhej 80n14, 102 Fatihabad 57–58, 61, 64 Firdawsī 58n25 Firoz Shah Tughlaq 204 Flood, Barry 2, 3n3, 8n24, 10n28

index food 28, 42, 68, 269n56, 289, 290n43 Gaṅg 84–85 Ganges 60, 85, 146n10, 148, 150–51, 189–90 gāthās (Marathi genre; songs) 15, 178. See also Jñāndev Gāthā gauḷaṇī (cowherdess). See gopīs gauḷaṇī-virahiṇī (genre) 161, 166, 170, 176, 178 Ghālib 24 ghazal (ghazal; genre) 22, 29, 33n49, 34, 37, 96, 148n11, 257, 262, 265–67, 268n54, 269n56, 270 Ghunyat al-munyah 204–5 Giridhar (Mountain-Lifter) 111, 116, 118, 122–26, 130, 133 Gītagovinda (of Jayadeva) 15, 163, 165 globalization 7–8, 156n27 Gobind Singh, Guru 109, 113–16, 123, 129–30, 134–36 goddesses 164, 166–67, 171, 175, 181, 233, 273, 275 Golconda 62, 65–67, 91–93, 203 gopīs (cowherdesses; milkmaids) 15, 35, 41, 98, 121, 133, 161, 163–65, 167, 178– 79, 231–32, 235, 238–39, 242, 269 Gorakhbānī 150 Govardhan, Mount 111, 181, 238, 255 Grierson, George Abraham 5 Gujarat 68, 75, 91n54, 98, 102, 108–9, 112, 194, 258n20, 259n24 Gul-i raʿnā (of Lachhmī Narāyan “Shafīq”) 24, 32, 39, 43n77 Gurmukhi 109, 131 Gurū Granth 117–19, 135–36, 140 Gwalior 188, 229 Ḥāfiz̤ (Hafez) 24n11, 33n49, 225 Haft paykar (of Niẓāmī) 61 hagiographies 15, 102, 107, 110n7, 140, 146–48, 178, 195, 244, 247, 252–56, 275 Ḥakīm Abūʾl Fatḥ Gīlānī 88–89 Hamadan 77, 86 Hamīsha bahār (of Kishan Chand “Ikhlāṣ”) 22 Hanumān 85 Haqāʾiq-i Hindī (of ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami, Mir) 16, 157, 201, 222–28, 230, 232–34, 237, 243–44 Hari 120–22, 124–29, 135, 150, 152, 162–63, 166, 181

307

Haridās, Svāmī 229, 253–54 Haridāsas (Vaishnava singers of Karnataka) 162 Harināth 84 Haripāṭh (recitation of Hari’s name) 166 Hariramvyas 133–34 Harivaṃśa 163 Haṭhayogapradīpikā (of Svātmārāma) 169–70 “Ḥayā”, Lāla Shīv Rām Dās Akbarābādī 26–27, 28n27, 31–32, 36–38, 41–42 Ḥayatī 88 Herat 86, 99 heroines 97, 112, 129, 201, 208–9, 237. See also nāyikābheda heteroglossia 4, 6 Hindavi 60, 65, 75–76, 81–85, 94, 96–99, 101, 103–4, 260, 276n62 defined 223n2 Sufism and 59, 222–23, 225, 228n24, 231–39, 241–42, 244 (see also Awadhi) Hindi vii, 3, 51, 76, 82–83, 109, 187n4, 191– 92, 194, 196, 209, 250, 265, 295 colonial-period changes and 186, 215, 278–82, 285–300 Modern (Standard) 18, 187, 214, 300 Muslims and 4, 4n10, 11, 16, 186, 202, 205, 209n87, 214–15, 223 Urdu or Rekhta and 11, 251, 257, 276 See also Brajbhasha; Hindavi; Khari Boli Hindī, Bhagwān Dās 25n13, 32, 39 Hinduism 2, 22n2, 30, 32–33, 40, 43, 59, 63, 98, 156, 205, 214, 231n32, 243 historiography 4n9, 82, 84, 104, 213, 292 history, nationalist view of 3, 214 Humayun (Humāyūn), Emperor 84n30, 103, 193 Husain Sharqi, Sultan 228 Ḥusaynī, Mīr Ḥusayndūst Sunbhulī 27 “Ḥuẓūrī”, Gurbakhsh Multānī 26 hybridity 4, 5n13, 7–8, 8n24, 9, 16–17, 139, 149, 157 Ibn ʿArabī 34, 96n70. See also waḥdat al-wujūd Ibn Battuta 2 Ibrahim Qutb Shah, Sultan 201 identities cultural or ethnic 6, 8n23, 13, 47, 71, 104

308

index

identities (cont.) religious 22n2, 51, 58, 63, 64n36, 256, 261 textual or literary 6, 22–23, 30–33, 37–38, 53–57, 60, 62–64, 70–71, 94–99, 207–9, 244, 249–51, 289–90 Iftikhār, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 22–23 “Ikhlāṣ”, Kishan Chand 22, 25n14 Indian Ocean 47, 49, 59, 64, 68 inscriptions 53–55, 80, 189, 247 intertextuality 15–16, 61, 71, 149, 195–97, 215, 232, 262, 267 Irāj Khān (Iraj Shahnawaz Khan) 83, 203n63 Iran(ians) 3n8, 12, 38, 41, 43, 75–77, 85–87, 92, 99, 101–2, 104, 260 Islam 2–3, 10, 21, 48, 96, 130, 147, 149, 151, 155–57, 198–99, 215, 222–24, 232, 243–44, 290n44. See also Muslims; Sufis Ismaʿīl Beg Unsī 86 Iśq Caman (of Nāgrīdās) 17, 250–51, 262n32, 270–71, 273, 275 Jagmohan Singh, Thakur. See Singh, Thakur Jagmohan Jahandar Shah, Emperor 254 Jahangir (Jahāngīr), Emperor 12, 75, 77, 79n11, 87, 90–91, 93, 102, 189–91, 194, 197–99, 202, 203n63, 212 Jahāngīrjascandrikā (of Keshavdas) 83, 85, 189, 203n63 Jahāngīr Nāma (Jahāngīrnāma) 79n11, 198–99 Jaimal Mertiyo 136 Jains 4, 16, 144, 174, 203n62 janam-sākhīs 148n12, 195n25 Jasodha 231–32, 239 Jayadeva 163, 284 Jayasi, Muhammad (Muḥammad Jāyasī) 3n7, 12, 59–60, 143, 151, 153, 155n23, 204n69, 224, 231 Jilwa-yi ẕāt (of Amānat Rāy) 33, 38 Jiva Gosvami 108, 119, 135 Jñāndev (Jnandev) 15, 161–65, 169–70, 172, 174, 177–80, 182 Jñāndev Gāthā 1n2, 16, 161, 164–66, 168– 70, 174, 176–79, 182 Jñāneśvarī 161, 165, 169, 177, 179–81 Jodhpur 131, 134 Joravar Singh, Maharaja of Bikaner 206

Kabir 6, 14–15, 107, 116–17, 129, 130n47, 135, 139–57, 229 corpus of poetry by 140–42, 145, 147, 149, 153 death of 145–49 hagiographies or legends of 141, 147 historical background of or as historical figure 141–42 Kabirpanth 129, 140–41, 145, 146n10, 147–49, 153–54, 177 Kachhwahas 190–91, 194 Kālidāsa 50, 58n25, 152, 284–85, 299 Kalīla wa Dimna 16, 197 Kalyāṇ Rāi 271, 275 kāmaśāstra (erotic science) 204 Kāmī Sabzawārī 95 Kamsa 231, 239 Kanhāvat (of Muhammad Jayasi) 243 Kannada 1, 162, 175–76 Karmabai 109, 112, 116 Karnataka 162, 175 Kartārpur Pothī 117, 121, 132 Kashan 77, 92 Kashmir 51, 169, 292 Kathāsaritsāgara 61 Kavipriyā (of Keshavdas) 192, 203 kavitt(a)s 205, 249 kāvya 187–91, 195n24, 299. See also Sanskrit: poetry Kāvyanirṇay (of Bhikharidas) 96, 193 Kayasths 39, 102, 196 Keshavdas (Keśavdās) 83–85, 156n26, 189–92, 203, 206–7, 211–12, 282, 295n61 Khamsa (of Amīr Khusrau) 100–1 Khaṇḍobā 181 Khān, Faiyāz Alī 270–74 Khari Boli 18, 98–99, 278–82, 284, 286, 289, 293, 298, 300 Khatris 22, 39 Kheṭa-kautukam (of ʿAbd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan) 98 Khurasan 86, 101 “Khwushgū”, Bindrāban Dās 26–32, 39–42 kings 1, 50, 55, 65, 69n41, 76, 88, 160, 187–91, 193–94, 197, 200, 206, 254, 256, 294. See also courts; patrons kīrtan 181, 255 Kishangarh 17, 203, 247–51, 264, 271, 275 kotwal (security officer) 52, 66

index Krishna (Kṛṣṇa) devotion to or worship of 11, 35, 107–8, 111–12, 140, 162, 165–66, 247, 249, 251, 253, 269, 274 gopīs or Rādhā and 15, 41, 98, 161–64, 176n84, 192, 201, 231, 239, 242, 248, 262, 269n56, 273, 275 life of or stories about 6, 13–14, 41, 142, 156, 222–23, 228, 230–31, 238, 241, 243 Muslim, Sufi, or Persian works on 11, 17, 30–32, 34–37, 40–41, 199–202, 222–24, 228, 230–32, 243, 270 (see also Haqāʾiq-i Hindī) songs or poetry about 15, 17, 36, 40– 41, 60n29, 117–18, 121–26, 129–34, 192, 201, 214, 257, 261, 266, 268–69, 274 Viṭṭhal as 162, 178 See also Giridhar; Hari Krishnadas 108, 119 kuṇḍalinī 124n40, 169–73, 177, 178n89, 179 kuṇḍalinīyoga. See yoga Kvaerne, Per (translator of Caryāgīti) 172–73 Lahore 51, 133 languages classical or cosmopolitan (see cosmopolitanism; Sanskrit; Persian) classical–vernacular interaction 4, 5, 7, 12n30, 48, 53–56, 58–67, 69–71, 160, 163–65, 168, 171, 177, 187, 192, 194, 214, 257 (see also under Sanskrit; Persian) taxonomy or classification of 3, 5, 53 vernacular vii, 3, 38, 65, 98, 139, 160, 186–87 lashkar wazīr (general) 52, 66 libraries 54, 75, 99–100, 131, 205, 226 Līḷācaritra 162 liṅgadeha 168 Lingāyats 1, 175–76 literati 2, 17, 37, 38n64, 49, 76, 81, 85–87, 89, 91–93, 191, 194, 212–14, 224, 261 literatures early modern Indian 9–10, 47–48, 53, 57, 59–64, 66, 69–71, 139, 142–43, 150, 155, 158, 188, 198–202, 205–206, 212, 214, 223, 228, 230, 232, 243–44, 248, 251, 257–61, 270–71, 274–76, 278, 292 European 279, 299 19th-century 278–82, 285, 294–95 love divine or mystical 15, 17, 33–35, 96–



309 98, 109, 115, 119–28, 144, 151–54, 157, 161, 163–64, 172, 198, 201–2, 208, 214, 232, 234, 236–37, 255, 261, 268–69, 273–74 erotic 40–41, 197, 261 (see also śṛṅgāra)

Ma’āsir al-kirām (Maʾās̤ir al-Kirām; of Mir Ghulam ʿAli Azad Bilgrami) 209, 210n92, 226n19 Ma’āsir-i Raḥīmī (Maʾās̤ir-i Raḥīmī; of ʿAbdul-Baqi Nahawandi) 13, 76–81, 83, 85–88, 90, 93–95, 99, 102–4 Madanāṣṭak (of ʿAbd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan) 98 Madhuban 231, 241 Madhumālatī (of Manjhan) 59, 144n5, 153, 204n68 Māgana Ṭhākura 48n6, 53n14, 59–61, 66–68 Mahābhārata 35, 61, 100, 180, 200, 276n62 Mahādeviyakkā 175–76 Mahanadi River 288–89 Mahānubhāvas 162, 174 Maharashtra 15, 160–62, 165, 169, 176, 182 majlis. See assemblies: literary; performances majlis (tax collector) 52 Majlis Quṭb 57–58 Majnūn 35–36, 40–41, 272 Malik Qummī 79, 92–93 Man Singh Kachhwaha (Rajput Rāja Mān Singh) 103n97, 190–91 Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior 229 Mānasollāsa (of Someśvara) 174 Mānas-saṃpatti (of Jagmohan Singh) 287 Māncarit 190–91, 197n34, 213 Mandhata 295–96 Mangeshkar, Lata 163, 178 Manjhan 59, 143, 144n5, 153, 204n68 manuscripts 5, 80, 91, 99, 107, 109, 113, 130, 140, 178n87, 205, 271 illustrated 13, 100–2, 197, 200, 251, 274 Marathi 15, 160–62, 165, 174, 177 Markovits, Claude 2, 113n12 marriage 40, 61, 110, 151, 194, 237, 286–87, 290n43 marriage songs 175–76 Masih Panipati (Masīḥā Pānīpatī) 32n47, 198 mas̤navī (mas̱navī, mas̤nawī) 22, 31, 33, 37–38, 61, 144, 227, 238, 240n50

310

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Mas̱navī-yi rām wa sītā (of Masih Panipati) 198 Masulipatnam 66 Mathura 11, 30–32, 35, 37, 40–41, 103, 188, 229, 231, 239, 241, 269n56 Matsyendranāth 169 Maulānā Tasallī 86 McGregor, R. S. 97, 280–81 merchants 1–2, 12, 38n64, 50, 52, 55, 60n29, 62, 66–69, 151, 181 Merta 111–12, 131, 134 Meru, Mount 171, 189–90 Mewar 13–14, 110–11, 131. See also Udaipur migration. See circulation Miller, Barbara Stoler 163, 165 Mirabai (Mīrābāī) 5n15, 13–14, 107–36, 157, 169, 262, 268, 269n56 in Dwarka or Gujarat 108–10, 131 Gurū Granth and 117–19 as historical person 112, 129 in Punjab 109–10, 112, 131–33, 162n9 in Rajasthan 109, 112, 131, 134 in Vrindavan 107–8, 110, 131, 134 Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami (1509–1608). See ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami, Mir (1509–1608) Mirāt al-ḥaqā’iq (of ʿAbd al-Rahman Chishti) 199 Mīr Ghurūrī 92 Mīr Mughiṣ-ud-dīn Maḥwī Asadābādī 77 mirzā’ī (quality of being a gentleman) 205, 211 Mirza Khan 198, 202, 204 Mirza Raushan Zamir 205, 207 mobility 1–2, 6–9, 14, 49, 91, 101, 226. See also circulation of people modernity 1, 7, 279, 286, 290 colonial 10, 287, 290, 298–300 early 7, 7n21, 9–10, 14 mosques 96, 103, 223, 236 Mrauk-U (Ben. Rosāṅg) 12, 47–53, 56–57, 59–60, 62–71 Mughals 11, 13, 16, 50–51, 63, 75–79, 83, 87–93, 96, 104, 115, 133, 187–90, 193– 200, 202–3, 206, 215, 243, 258, 279 Brajbhasha and (see under Brajbhasha) court (see courts: Mughal or imperial) cultural influence 17, 250, 258 patronage by 195, 198, 203, 211, 212n101, 213, 247, 258, 260, 276 Persian or Persianate culture and 2, 7, 13, 25n12, 34, 55, 81–82, 85–89, 103–4,

186–87, 189, 193, 202, 211, 212n101, 213, 215, 257, 260 See also names of individual emperors Muhammad (Prophet) 17, 144, 198, 209n88, 211n96, 225n16, 236n41, 238–39 Muḥammad ʿAlī, Gurg-i Khurāsānī 101 Muhammad Azim al-Shan (Muḥammad ʿAzīm al-Shan), Prince 204, 276 Muhammad bin Tughlak 2, 258n22 Muhammad Shah, Emperor 17, 206–7, 250, 260 “Mukhliṣ”, Ānand Rām (Lāhorī) 26, 29–30, 32, 39 muktakas 208 Mukundarāja 165 music 35, 177, 179, 188, 194, 202–5, 213, 222–25, 227–30, 238n46, 248, 250, 253–54, 257, 262 assemblies (see under assemblies; see also samāʿ; performance) treatises or texts on 59n26, 193, 198, 204–5, 222, 224–25, 229, 233–35, 243 musicians (and singers) 135, 162, 223, 227–29, 233, 238, 244n57, 254, 256, 262 Muslims Bengali 12, 49–56, 58–59, 63–64, 198 Indian or Indo- 10, 16–17, 22, 85, 99, 148, 186–87, 202–5, 207, 209, 211–15, 256–57, 261 Myanmar 47, 54, 64. See also Arakan mysticism 15, 34, 96, 100, 142–44, 147, 149–51, 153–57, 230 Nabhadas 110, 121, 132–34 Nabīvaṃśa (of Saiyid Sultan) 198 nagara-varṇana (description of the city; genre) 16, 190, 196 Nagari (Devanagari) 205n74, 206, 226, 257 Nagarśobhā (of ʿAbd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan) 97, 196–97 Nāgrīdās (Nagridas). See Sāvant Singh Nahāwandī, ʿAbd-ul-Bāqī 13, 77–82, 87–89, 92–93, 95–96, 101 Nainsi, Munhata 112, 131, 134 nakh-śikh 144, 235–36. See also sarāpā Nal-Daman (of Faiz̤ī) 200n52, 276n62 Nāmdev (Namdev) 5n13, 107, 116, 145, 162, 165, 177–78 name (of God, Hari, or Ram) 123–24, 134, 150, 166, 180, 182

index Nanak, Guru 107, 148 Narapati, King 50, 53n15 Narottam 190–91 Nāṣir-ud-dīn Ṭūṣī 96 Nasirullah Khan “Rasgahak” 206–7, 209, 211 Nastaliq 205–6 Nāth (yogis) 6, 15–16, 129, 140, 143–44, 150, 154–55, 169–70, 172, 177, 179, 181–82, 226, 228, 244 nationalism 6, 11, 18, 82, 84, 279–81, 288, 298, 300 nation-states 47, 257, 280 Nāṭyaśāstra (of Bharata) 210 Nawāʾī 88 Nayak Bakhshu 203n66, 233 nāyikābheda (canonical types of female characters) 97, 201, 203, 203n64, 203n66, 204, 208–9, 211–14 Naẓīrī Nīshābūrī 68, 79n11, 89n47 Neoplatonism 33 Nepal 55n19, 70n43, 169 networks, commercial 7, 59, 63–66, 68–69, 71. See also circulation of culture Nimbarka Sampraday 249n3, 251, 262 nirguṇa 14, 118–19, 130, 156, 166, 228 nīti (political wisdom) 54, 97, 197. See also Pañcatantra Nivṛtti(nāth) 169, 178, 180 Niẓāmī 12, 31n43, 40, 61–63, 69n42 North India 6, 10, 14, 59–60, 139, 143, 157, 163, 186, 194, 223–24, 228, 232, 258, 274, 288 novels 278, 279n2, 286–87 “Nudrat”, Lāla Ḥakīm (Ḥukm) Chand Thānesarī  26, 31 Omkār candrikā (of Jagmohan Singh) 295 Orchha 84, 191–92 Orientalists 285, 288 Osahan, Davindar Singh 113–14, 131n51 Ottomans 50–51, 86 ovī (meter) 16, 149, 174 pada (song, also pad) 15, 174, 262. See also bishnupads; viṣṇupads Padamuktāvalī (of Nāgrīdās) 17, 250–51, 261, 264, 269n56, 270, 275 Padaprasaṅgamālā (of Nāgrīdās) 249, 252–53, 262

311

Padma dkar-po 173 Padmāvat (of Muhammad Jayasi) 3n7, 12, 59–61, 144n6, 151, 152n17, 153, 155n23, 205n74, 243 Padmāvatī (of Ālāol) 60–61, 69 painting 13, 80, 85, 91, 99–101, 103–4, 188, 203, 248, 250, 252–53. See also manuscripts: illustrated Pali 4, 48, 48n4, 53–55 Pañcatantra 16, 197 Pāñcvāṇī (“Sayings of the Five”) 140, 145 Pandharpur 15, 160, 162–63, 177, 181 Panj Ganj (of Jāmī) 100 paracaīs 118, 130 Patañjali 169 patrons 3n7, 48, 54, 55n19, 66–69, 71, 75, 88, 187–88, 190–91, 195, 198, 204, 279, 286 ʿAbd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan as (see under ʿAbd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan) Ālāol’s or Daulat Kājī’s 12, 49, 52, 53n14, 57, 59–61, 64, 66–69 of art, architecture, or music 13, 75–76, 91, 99, 101–3, 200n47, 229, 233, 254, 256, 261 courts or politics and 8, 12–13, 59, 69n41, 70n44, 87–88, 91–93, 191, 206, 243, 294 Mughal (see under Mughals) Muslim or Indo-Muslim 12, 17, 49, 52, 56, 186–88, 207, 213, 228 networks or circulation and 8, 84, 91, 244, 274 relationship with poets or artists 57, 206 payāra (Bengali meter) 59n27, 60, 61, 68 pemkathās. See romances performance 5, 14, 16, 67, 71, 129–30, 135–36, 140, 150, 205, 222–23, 228, 233, 243, 250, 254, 260, 264, 274 Persian as classical, cosmopolitan, or court language 37–38, 43, 51, 54–55, 65–67, 85–86, 104, 186, 194, 213, 257 loan words or vocabulary 97–98, 195, 215, 259–60, 265, 269–71, 275 poetry and poets 11–12, 17, 21–22, 24– 25, 29, 33–35, 37, 40–41, 48, 58–63, 65, 77, 87n41, 95–97, 100, 195, 198, 200–1, 210–11, 213, 215, 223–24, 236, 244, 266, 272

312

index

Persian (cont.) other Indian languages and 5, 7, 10, 12–13, 16, 32, 43, 48–49, 53, 56, 61, 63, 66, 75–76, 81, 85, 94–98, 100, 103, 144, 191–200, 202, 204–5, 209–15, 226, 232, 236, 259–61, 266–67, 269, 275–76 Vaishnava works or themes in 11, 30–31, 33, 41, 43, 224, 238, 244 Petievich, Carla 259, 270, 273, 275 Phukan, Shantanu 23, 187n5, 187n6, 188 pilgrimage 35–36, 112, 160, 181, 247, 249, 251, 254–56, 274, 295–96, 299 pirates 12, 57, 64 Pir Buddhan 228 pīrs 61, 67, 69, 71, 144, 227–28, 234, 243 poetics 17, 43, 58, 60n29, 63n34, 188, 192, 203, 204n69, 211–13, 257 poetry court or political 30, 49, 82, 97, 130, 188–89, 190–91, 196, 237, 267, 287, 294 Islamic, mystical, or Sufi 63, 69, 148n11, 149, 151, 157, 187, 199, 201, 238, 268, 271 love or viraha 1, 121, 153, 195, 213, 214n103, 215, 257 manuals (see rītigranth) vernacular or folk 4, 38, 65, 139–40, 143, 150, 153, 163, 174–75, 202, 237 poet-saints 107, 145, 160, 169, 179 Pollock, Sheldon 23n6, 42 Portuguese 5, 55, 56n21, 75 Pouchepadass, Jacques 2 Prabodhacandrodaya 199, 205 Prahlāda 114, 117, 180n99, 181 Pralay (of Jagmohan Singh) 288–94 Pramitākṣar dīpikā (of Jagmohan Singh) 284, 285n24 praśasti (political poetry) 189–90, 203n63 Prem Ambodh authorship, performance, and mss. of 113–15, 129–31, 135–36 on Mirabai 121–28, 130–36 on Ravidas 119–20, 122 princely states 278, 283 printing 279, 286–87, 299 Priyadas 108–10, 121, 130n47, 134 prophets 48, 56, 232n33 prose 24, 31–32, 36, 38n64, 249, 252, 278, 286–87, 299–300 Punjab 13, 38, 107, 109, 131–33, 162, 243

Qādiriyya 48, 63 qāẕī (Islamic judge) 63, 227 Qurʾān 147n11, 199, 225–27, 232, 235n39, 239 Qutban 143 Quṭb Shāhīs (Qutb Shahs) 66, 93, 201 Rādhā (Radha) 15, 60n29, 156, 163, 165, 192, 201, 214, 235, 248–49, 252n12, 262, 273, 275 Radhasoami 129 Rādhāvallabha 102, 262 Rāgamālā Album 100–1, 104 rāgas 203n64, 222n1, 227, 230, 253, 262 Rāgdarpan (of Faqirullah) 205, 229n28 Rahim. See ʿAbd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan Rajasthan 13, 109, 112, 131, 179, 247–48, 257, 273, 283, 287 Rajasthani 108, 249–50 Rajm al-shayāt̤īn (of Siyālkoṭī Mal) 23 Rajputs 17, 40, 103n97, 122, 134, 157, 188–94, 197, 203n64, 206, 213–14, 226, 249–50, 254, 261, 272–73, 275, 283, 290 Ram 146–48, 150–51 Rāma (Rama) 85, 162n9, 180–81, 190, 200 ramainī (meter) 153 Ramanand 141 Ramanandis 132, 262 Ramanujan, A. K. 175 Rāmāyaṇ(a) 6, 32, 35n53, 61, 84, 100–1, 129, 198 Rāmcaritmānas (of Tulsidas) 6, 100, 129, 205 Rasamañjarī (of Bhanudatta) 211 rasas 67, 155–56, 204, 209–10, 215 Rasgāhakcandrikā (of Surati Mishra) 206–7 Rasik Bihārī. See Baṇī-ṭhanī Rasik-ananyamāl (of Bhagvat Mudit) 102 Rasikpriyā (of Keshavdas) 192, 203, 206–7 Raslin (Sayyid Ghulam Nabi Bilgrami “Raslin”) 206, 209–12 Rasprabodh (of Raslin) 206, 209, 211 Ratanakalikā 61–62 Ravidas 14, 116, 118–19, 122, 135, 145 Razm Nāma (also Razmnāmah) 100–1, 200 Rekhta 17, 98n82, 195n23, 248, 250–51, 257–64, 268–71, 273, 275–76 rhetoric. See poetics rhetorical devices or embellishment 23,

index 179, 292–93, 296, 300. See also alaṅkāra Risālah-i ḥal-i shubhāt (of Mir ‘Abdul Wahid Bilgrami) 225 rīti 83, 186–88, 190–93, 195, 197, 206–9, 212–13, 215, 224, 244, 282, 288n36, 294, 298–99 rītigranths (manuals on poetics) 16, 192–93, 201, 203–6, 211, 214, 284 Riyāẓ al-shuʿarā 30 Rizvi, S. A. A. 194n18, 226 romances (literary genre) 48, 59, 60n29, 143–44, 153, 222–24, 243 pemkathā and premākhyān 130, 223 rubāʾīs (quatrains) 96, 195 Rukmiṇī 162–63 Rupa Gosvami 108, 135 Rupnagar 248, 252, 254–56 Rūp Narāyan 23 Rushdnāma (of ʿAbdul Quddus Gangohi) 223, 228n24 Sabʿa sanābil (of Mir ʿAbdul Wahid Bilgrami) 227 sabk-i hindī (Indian style) 4n9, 33, 94 “Sabqat”, Lāla Sukhrāj Lakhnawī 26, 30, 32 sādharaṇīkaraṇa 155 Safarnāma (of Ānand Rām “Mukhliṣ”) 39 Safavids 50, 77, 80, 86, 92, 104, 193 Safīna-yi Khwushgū (of Bindrāban Dās “Khwushgū”) 26–28, 30, 32, 35, 39 saguṇa 120–21, 129, 156, 166, 228 Sahasras (of Nayak Bakhshu) 203n66, 233, 244n57 Sakalasantagāthā 178 Śakti 170, 172, 180–81 śālagrām stone 120 salons. See assemblies samāʿ (musical assembly) 223, 224n9, 225, 228–29, 233. See also assemblies: musical or devotional sāṃkhya 15, 167–70, 179 sandhyābhāṣā (“twilight language”) 154, 172 Sangari, Kumkum 132, 254 Sanskrit 15–16, 54–55, 58, 60, 68, 169, 177, 187–92, 204, 229, 257 as cosmopolitan, classical, courtly, or transregional language 3, 5, 54, 59, 152, 186, 192, 194 (see also courts: Sanskrit and)



313

education, scholarship, or intellectuals 42, 48, 54, 58, 69n41, 165, 177, 190, 192, 284–85, 299 epics (itihāsas) or purānas 6, 35n53, 61, 100, 142, 200, 276n62 Muslim or Mughal use of 35n53, 42, 48, 53, 58–61, 71, 94, 98, 189–90, 194, 209–11, 229n25, 260n26, 276, 276n62 other Indian languages or translations and 3, 5–6, 43, 48, 58, 61, 63, 75, 94, 97–100, 160, 165, 177, 187–90, 192, 194, 197, 199–200, 204–5, 211–12, 215, 260n26, 265, 276, 284–85, 299 poetics, aesthetics, or literary models 43, 48, 58, 60n29, 63, 97, 164, 192, 196, 203n62, 204, 208, 210, 212, 284, 288 poetry 58, 94, 163–65, 171n64, 188–90, 190n12, 284–85, 290, 299 (see also kāvya) vocabulary or loan words 5, 58, 60n29, 63n34, 97–98, 168, 226n18, 260n26, 265 Sants 6, 114, 140, 142–44, 148–49, 153–57, 168–69, 195n25, 225n12, 228, 244 Saptapaykar (of Ālāol) 49n7, 62, 66 sarāpā 195, 235. See also nakh-śikh “Sarkhwush”, Mirzā Afẓal 24, 95n67 Satī Maynā Lora Candrāṇī (of Ālāol) 57, 60–61, 66, 69 Satui:dhammarājā 49, 51 saurī 1n2, 168–69 Sāvant Singh (“Nāgrīdās”; Raja of Kishangarh) 17, 207n90, 215n107, 248–75 as author 249–52, 254, 257, 261–62, 264–75, 293, 295n61 exile and pilgimages 248–49, 251–52, 254 painting and 248–50, 261 Sayphumuluk Badiujjāmāl (of Ālāol) 60– 62, 66–68 Sayyid Muṣṭafā 67–68 Sengupta, Sagaree 268n54, 281 Seorinarayan 287–89, 292–93 sex 111, 124, 134, 176 Seyller, John 80, 99, 101, 104 Shackle, Christopher 37–38 “Shafīq”, Lachhmī Narāyan 24, 32, 40–41, 43n77 Shāh ʿAbbās 77, 86 Shāh Ālam II 276

314

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Shāh Gulshan 259 Shāh-i Kābulī 27, 28n27, 36 Shāh Ismaʿīl 77 Shāh Jahān (Shah Jahan), Emperor 90, 195, 197, 203, 233 Shāhnāmah (Shāh Nāma; of Firdausī) 58n25, 100–1, 200 shahrāshūb (Persian genre) 16, 97n76, 196. See also nagara-varṇana Shāh Shujāʿ, Prince 50, 63, 64n36 Shahul Hamid 135 Shaidā Taklū 90 Shaivism (Śaivism) 6, 15, 22n2, 170, 173, 179, 181. See also Virashaivas Sharaf-nāma (of Niẓāmī) 62n33, 69n42 Sharma, Sunil 194, 211, 214n103 shaykhs (shaikhs, sheikhs) 51, 227, 228n24, 238 sheʿr 236–37, 240–42, 265–66, 269n56 Shish jihat (of Rūp Narāyan) 23 Shiva (Śiva) 169–70, 175, 180–81, 200, 295, 297n65 Shubhkarandas 207–8, 211 Siddhas (Buddhist adepts) 16, 172, 174, 177, 226 Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati 169, 182 Sikāndar-nāmā 52, 58n24, 62–63 Sikhism 14, 107, 109, 119, 129–31, 134–35, 140, 147–48, 195 śikh-nakh 195, 209. See also sarāpā; nakhśikh Siṃhāsan Battīsī 200 Sindh (Sind) 2, 51, 75, 91–93, 98 Singh, Thakur Jagmohan  18, 278–79, 282–300 background and education of 278, 283–84, 289, 299 in Banaras 284, 286, 299 use of Braj 278–79, 282, 284, 287–90, 298–300 career 286–87, 299 Sisodiyas 110–12, 118, 131 śleṣa (double entendre) 189n9, 190, 265n46, 297 Southeast Asia 12, 50, 63, 65, 69, 71 South India 1, 92, 160, 186 śṛṅgāra (erotic love) 97–98, 193, 201, 204n68, 210, 215 Śṛṅgār-latikā (of Mansingh “Dvijdev”) 280 Stewart, Tony 198, 244 Subḥat al-marjān fi āthār Hindustān (of

Azad Bilgrami) 211 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay 2, 22, 39, 65–66, 88n44 Sufis Awadhi texts by 60n29, 202, 204, 244, 268 (see also Jayasi, Daud, Manjhan) communities, orders (ṭarīqa), or silsila of 42, 48, 63, 147–48 Hindavi and 59, 222–23, 228n24, 244 influence or patronage of 6, 15–16, 48–49, 130, 244 literary genres or paradigms of 48, 120, 130, 142–44, 148, 153, 195 masters or saints 58, 135, 148 (see also pīrs) poetry or literature of 3n7, 6, 12, 38, 48, 56, 65, 69, 71, 96, 143–44, 150–51, 153, 157, 187, 199, 201, 204, 268n55, 271 Vaishnavas, Krishna, or Indian philosophy and 16–17, 33–34, 38, 199, 201, 222, 224, 225n12, 226–28, 230, 232, 244, 270 Sundar 203, 206n75 Sundarśṛṅgār (of Sundar) 203, 206 Surati Mishra 206–7, 211 Sūrdās (Surdas) 5n13, 107, 117, 140, 142n4, 144, 156, 187n5, 205, 229 Śyāmāsvapna (of Thakur Jagmohan Singh) 286–87 syncretism 4, 17, 58, 156–57, 225n12, 228, 230–32, 243 Tagore, Rabindranath 141, 156 takhalluṣ (nom de plume) 26–27, 149, 207, 209. See also chāp “Tamyīz”, Srī Gopāl Dihlawī  26, 30–31, 36, 39 Tānsen (Tansen) 194, 229, 253–54 tantra 142, 154, 169, 173–74 Taqī Awḥadī 68 Tarjoma-yi pārijātak (of Mirza Raushan Zamir) 205 Tarkhāns 91–92 tāza-gūʾī (“fresh” style) 94 taẕkiras (biographical compendia) 12, 21–30, 32–33, 37–43, 80, 95, 148, 195, 206, 209–11, 226n19, 227, 244 Telugu 195n24, 196n32, 201 temples 102–3, 109–10, 112, 129, 160, 169, 271, 275, 289, 295 courts and 247, 249, 252, 256

index Thatta 13, 76, 92 Timurids 66, 186, 189, 193 Tīmūr Nāma (of Hatifī) 100–1 Tīrthānanda (of Nāgrīdās) 251, 293, 295n61 Tohphā (of Ālāol) 62, 66 trade 2, 47, 50, 52, 55, 62, 64–67. See also merchants; networks, commercial Tuḥfat al-hind (of Mirza Khan) 198, 204 Tukārām 179 Tulpule, S. G. 110n7, 167n39, 168 Tulsīdās 6, 84, 100, 117, 129, 135, 205 Turkish 5, 75, 81n19, 94–95, 99, 186 Turko-Afghans 50, 59 Turks 50–51, 204, 231n32, 243 Udaipur 109–10, 112, 271. See also Mewar ʿulamāʾ 71, 78 Urdu 11, 17, 215, 248, 251, 257–61, 266–268, 272–73, 290n44. See also Rekhta ʿUrfī Shīrāzī 94–96 ustād (poetic mentor/master) 22, 25–26, 33, 37, 95, 264 Ustād Barwalī 101–2 Uzbeks 51, 80, 86 Vaishnavism or Vaishnav(a)s 6, 11, 14, 16, 22, 24, 30–31, 35, 37, 39–41, 117, 120– 21, 130, 140, 142, 178, 181, 192, 199, 202 literature or poetry of 6, 30–33, 41, 43, 117–18, 120–21, 130, 161–62, 188, 195, 214, 229, 232, 254–55 Sufism or Persian and 26, 30–33, 41, 43, 199, 201–2, 224, 226, 232, theology of 155–56, 231, 243 vulgate 14, 129 See also Varkaris Valī Dakanī 17, 257–69 Vallabhāchārya 42, 107–8, 156n25, 243 Vallabh(an) Sampraday 108, 140, 156,

315

249n3, 251, 262, 270n58 Valmiki 116, 198 Vārkarīs 15, 160–62, 166, 175, 177, 179, 182 vātsalya bhāva (maternal affection) 231 Vaudeville, Charlotte 6, 141n3, 154n22, 166 Vedanta 33, 199, 213. See also advaita Vedas 2, 58, 154, 167, 224n6 Vikramaditya, King 40, 200 viraha (longing in separation) 98, 144, 151–54, 161, 195, 200n47, 208, 268 virahiṇī (forlorn beloved) 1, 153, 161, 239 Virashaivas 1, 175–76 Vīrsiṃhdevcarit (of Keshavdas) 191, 295n61 Viṣṇu (Vishnu) 119–20, 127, 162, 174, 180 viṣṇupads 135. See also bishnupads Viṭṭhal 15, 160–62, 165–66, 169, 177, 179, 181 Vivekasindhu (of Mukundarāja) 165 Vrindavan 11, 32, 37n60, 40, 102, 107–8, 121, 134, 161, 188, 231, 241, 251–55 Vṛnd (Vrind) 203–4, 249n5, 276 Wagoner, Phillip 10n28, 195n24, 201, 215n106 waḥdat al-wujūd 96, 199, 226, 228, 231n32. See also Ibn ʿArabī Wāmiq 40 Wārasta, Siyālkoṭī Mal 22–23 wazīr 52, 66, 77 West Asia 38, 76, 85, 94 Yamuna 35 yoga 15, 39n66, 142, 150–51, 169–73, 177–79, 182, 269n56 Yūlqulī Beg Anīsī 86 Yūsuf Gadā 62–63 Żuhūrī (Zuhuri) 79, 92–93, 210

316

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