Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition [1 ed.] 9789004218871, 9789004212091

Citation preview

Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition

Brill’s Indological Library Edited by

Johannes Bronkhorst In co-operation with

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

VOLUME 38

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

Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition Edited by

Alka Patel Karen Leonard

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012

Cover image: Badshahi Ashurkhana, Hyderabad (India), late 16th-early 17th century. Main shrine: ʿalams in front of glazed tile panel with calligraphy. © Didier Tais 2008. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Indo-Muslim cultures in transition / edited by Alka Patel, Karen Leonard.    p. cm. — (Brill’s indological library, ISSN 0925-2916 ; v. 38)   Papers originally presented at a conference held at the University of California, Irvine, also titled Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, 2008.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-90-04-21209-1 (hardback : alk. paper)   1. India—Civilization—Islamic influences—Congresses. 2. India—Civilization— 1200-1765—Congresses. 3. Muslims—India—History—Congresses. 4. Islam—India— History—Congresses. 5. Mogul Empire—History—Congresses. I. Patel, Alka. II. Leonard, Karen Isaksen, 1939  DS427.I83 2012   305.6’970954—dc23

2011035146

ISSN 0925-2916 ISBN 978 90 04 21209 1 Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Copyright of the article The Evolving Siddhis: Yoga and Tantra in the Human Potential Movement and Beyond belongs to Jeffrey J. Kripal. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

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Contents List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  vii Introduction Alka Patel and Karen Leonard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   1 Representation of Social Groups in Mughal Art and Literature: Ethnography or Trope? Sunil Sharma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17 “Maid Killing a Snake” and “Dervish Receiving a Visitor”: A Re-Examination of Bijapuri Masterpieces through the Lens of the Lucknow Copy Keelan Overton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37 Literary Moments of Exchange in the 18th Century: The New Urdu Vogue Meets Krishna Bhakti Heidi Pauwels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  61 Darbārs in Transition: The Many Facets of the Mughal Imperial Image after Shah Jahan As Seen in the ex-Binney Collection in the San Diego Museum of Art Laura E. Parodi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  87 From Miniatures to Monuments Picturing Shah Alam’s Delhi (1771-1806) Yuthika Sharma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  111 Mercantile Architectural Patronage in Hyderabad, Late 18th19th Centuries Alka Patel.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  139 Indo-Muslim Culture in Hyderabad: Old City Neighborhoods in the 19th Century Karen Leonard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  165

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Interrogating “The East,” “Culture,” and “Loss,” in Abdul Halim Shararʾs Guzashta Lakhnaʾu C. M. Naim. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  189 Zaheer v Ali: Dissenting Views on the Early Years of the Progressive Movement in Urdu Literature Carlo Coppola. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  205 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  219 Color Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  221 Black and White Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  252

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List of illustrations Figures 8.1

Places in Hyderabad. Color Plates

2.1 Painting of a youth with a bow. 2.2 Mulla under a tree with a soldier and a musician. 2.3 Seated man with gray skin and two white dogs. 2.4 Kanphata yogi. 3.1 “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600-10. 3.2 “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”), Bijapuri (?), early-to-mid seventeenth century. 3.3 “Ibrahim feeding a hawk”. The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600-10. 3.4 Detail of Ibrahim and inscription, “Ibrahim feeding a hawk”. The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600-10. 3.5 Inscription on the façade of the tomb of Amin al-Din Aʿlā, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 3.6 Northeastern corner, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 3.7 ʿAlams and standards in the interior of the tomb of Amin alDin, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 5.1 Bahadur Shah I with sons and a grandson. Delhi, c. 1710? 5.2 Farrukhsiyar at the jharoka. 5.3 Darbār of Muhammad Shah. By Nidha Mal, c. 1735. 5.4 Muhammad Shah greeting an officer from a palanquin. By Faqirullah. Delhi, c. 1720-25. 5.5 Akbar Shah II enthroned. 5.6 Darbār of Bahadur Shah II. 5.7 Imaginary darbār of Akbar I. From a 1843 Genealogy of Amir Timur. 6.1 Shahjahanabad to Kandahar, detail. Anon, ca. 1770-1780. 6.2 Ali Mardan Khan Canal. Anon, ca. 1760.

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6.3 6.4 6.8

Ali Mardan Khan Canal, detail. Anon, ca. 1760. Map of the Red Fort, by Nidha Mal, 1750. “A hunt in the park at Faizabad by the reigning Emperor Shah Alam”, detail from Recueil de toutes sortes (1774) made for Jean Baptiste Gentil. 6.9 Shah Alam II seated in a throne overlooking a river. Style of Dip Chand, 1764. 6.10 Map of the Red Fort, after Nidha Mal, ca. 1774. 6.13 View of the Red Fort, attributed to Mihr Chand, 1780-1790. 6.14 Shah Alam’s Return to Delhi, c.1776. 7.1 Bhagwan Das Pavilion. Karwan, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Interior from east. Mid-18th century. 7.2 Amin Haveli. Vaso, Gujarat. Central courtyard. 1875. 7.3 Bhagwan Das Pavilion (Karwan, Hyderabad). Wood carving details. 7.4 Matha of Narsingh Girji, entrance lintel (Shah Inayat Ganj, Hyderabad). 7.5 Bansilal-ki Devri, upper floor (Begum Bazaar, Hyderabad). 7.6 Ganeriwala Haveli. Fatehpur, Rajasthan. Small inner courtyard. Mid- or late 19th century. 7.7 Sri Rangji Temple. Pushkar, Rajasthan. Principal shrine area. Founded 1850. Black and White Plates 3.1

“Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). Mir Kalan Khan, Faizabad, c. 1770. 3.2 Detail of lower left corner, “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600-10. 3.3 Detail of lower right corner, “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). Bijapuri (?), early-to-mid seventeenth century. 3.4 Eighteenth century (?) frame preserving “Ibrahim feeding a hawk”. The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600-10. 3.5 “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb” (“Dervish receiving a visitor”). The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1610-27. 3.6 “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb” (“Dervish receiving a visitor”). Mihr Chand, Faizabad or Lucknow, c. 1765-76.

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3.7 Aerial view of the Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 3.8 Tomb of Amin al-Din Aʿla, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 3.9 Northeastern corner, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 3.10 Northeastern corner, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 3.11 Whitewashed “weights”, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 3.12 Detail of Ibrahim, “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb” (“Dervish receiving a visitor”). The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1610-27. 3.13 Details of roundels with the names of the Twelve Imams. Inscription on the façade of the tomb of Amin al-Din, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. 5.1 Darbār of ‘Alamgir, c. 1660. 5.2 Six Mughal princes. 5.3 Muhammad Shah at the jharoka. 5.4 Muhammad Shah with consort and female dancers. 5.5 Akbar Shah II greets the British Resident. 5.6 “Amir Timur Sahib Qiran”. From a 1834 Genealogy. 6.5 Muhammad Shah enthroned on a terrace at night with his ­officers. Nidha Mal, ca. 1735. 6.6 “Chadjeanabad,” [“Shahjehanabad. Emperor's throne, howdah, canopy, insignia, chobdar, soontahburdar, jewels, kettle drums, cymbals, trumpet, flags, etc.”] from Empire Mogol divisé en 21 soubahs ou Gouvernements tiré de differens ecrivains du pais a Faizabad. (1770). Compiled for Colonel Jean Baptiste Gentil. By Faizabad artists. 6.7 “The presentation of Gentil … to Shah Alam”, detail from Recueil de toutes sortes (1774) made for Jean Baptiste Gentil. 6.11 Street plan of Chandni Chowk. Anon, ca. 1774. 6.12 Trigonometrical Survey of the Environs of Delhy or Shah Jehanabad, 1808. 7.1 Leonard Munn. Hyderabad Municipal Survey, Karwan Area, Sheet 14. 1911. 7.2 Leonard Munn (1911). Hyderabad Municipal Survey, City Area, Sheet 10. 7.3 Leonard Munn (1911). Hyderabad Municipal Survey, Chadarghat/Residency, Sheet 44. 7.4 Wood carving. Paithan, Maharashtra. 18th-19th centuries. 7.5 Matha of Narsingh Girji (destroyed). Shah Inayat Ganj, ­Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Late 18th-20th centuries. 7.6 Jangambari matha. Benares, Uttar Pradesh. Structure today, founded 16th century.

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Bansilal-ki Devri. Begum Bazaar, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Ground floor. Early 19th century. 7.8 Laxman Bagh. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Market area. Early 19th century. 7.9 Sri Bihariji Temple. Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan. Late 18th-early 19th century. 7.10 Sri Bihariji Temple, perimeter walls (Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan). 7.11 Temple. Vijayanagara (Hampi), Karnataka. 15th century. 7.12 Sitaram Bagh. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Laxmi Temple, spire. Founded 1825. 7.13 Sitaram Bagh (Hyderabad). Porch (maṇḍapa). 7.14 Sitaram Bagh (Hyderabad). Gopuram. 7.15 Sitaram Bagh (Hyderabad). Sarai.

introduction

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Introduction

Alka Patel and Karen Leonard The authors in this volume1 explore Indo-Muslim cultures developing in South Asia from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries. All the essays share central themes, but they show significant contextual variations by time and place. It can no longer be contested that Muslims and Islamic traditions have been in India and have interacted with other people and traditions there for centuries, having become “natural elements of India’s cultural landscape” as Richard Eaton put it,2 and as other authors have also argued compellingly.3 While recent works have had wider purviews—treating the travel of people, commodities and ideas during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in South Asia, the Near East and Europe4—our work focuses a muchneeded analytical gaze on the rich layers of circulation and exchange within South Asia itself during a period that had previously been considered one of political, economic, and cultural decline.5 Our volume contributes to the discourse on the ‘post-Mughal’ period in particular The authors herein were all participants in a conference held at the University of California, Irvine, also titled Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition (31 October2 November 2008). However, not all of the conference participants were able to contribute to this volume. For a full list of conference participants and other information, see . 2  Eaton, “Introduction”, in India’s Islamic Traditions, 711-1750 (Richard M. Eaton ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 1-34. 3   Although the issue of Islam and India has long been under debate, revision and even reconciliation, we refer here particularly to several more recent works: eds. David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Tampa: University Press of Florida, 2000); ed. Sushil Mittal, Surprising Bedfellows: Hindus and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern India (New York: Lexington Books, 2003); Dominique-Sila Khan, Crossing the Threshold: Understanding Religious Identities in South Asia (New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2004). 4  See esp. Nehabat Avcioglu and Finbarr Barry Flood, eds., Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century (Ars Orientalis 39), Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2010. 5  One of the seminal works re-examining and redefining the modern period in South Asia was C. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 1 

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by means of a truly interdisciplinary panoply of approaches and archives, spanning various visual media (painting, architecture, cartography), literature, and public culture, along with the function and reception of these cultural productions. What can be contested—or certainly discussed—are our choices of the terms ‘Indo-Muslimʾ and ‘Transitionʾ in the title of this volume. While ‘Indo-Muslimʾ receives in-depth treatment below, ʿTransitionʾ is more easily explained. We rely on ‘Transitionʾ rather than ‘declineʾ as an analytical model in line with C.M. Naim’s essay in this volume about nostalgic memories of Lucknow, memories that posit and date a ‘declineʾ or ‘fall’ of Lucknavi culture rather differently: Naim argues that Lucknavi culture still survives (and is still seen as dying) for members of the Indian diaspora. It is our position also that transformed Indo-Muslim cultural expressions have survived in fluid but recognizable forms into the present day. By spanning almost the entire length of the Mughal dynasty (ca. 1525-1858) the essays in this volume e centuries were far from being a period of decline. Rather, this halfmillen­nium witnessed ongoing transformations of Indo-Muslim traditions and presents new methodological possibilities for scholarship.6 We have named and framed our research topics using the adjective ‘Indo-Muslimʾ although earlier volumes with similar approaches have relied on other terms, such as ‘Islamicate’, ʿIslamic’, ʿIndo-Persian’, and ‘Persianateʾ; often these volumes designate Hindus and Muslims in their subtitles as well. A focus on Islamic religious issues or on Persian literature justifies some of those other titles, while concerns about communalism intensifying in South Asia in the 1990s explain many of the subtitles.7 We prefer ‘Indo-Muslim’, however, for several reasons. First, using ‘Muslimʾ rather than ‘Islamicʾ designates a civilizational rather than a religious culture. Of course the term ‘Islamicateʾ was

6   The volume continues the rethinking of the later Mughal period initiated by Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, esp. pp. 34-37, 69ff. For the artistic activity of the eighteenth century and later, see Barbara Schmitz ed., After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002). 7   Gilmartin and Lawrence, Beyond Turk and Hindu (op. cit. supra); Mittal, Surprising Bedfellows (op. cit. supra); David Ludden, ed., Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).

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coined especially to distinguish between religion and civilization,8 but its usage and meaning has been limited largely to scholarly works. With the alternative ‘Indo-Muslim’, we make reference to the changing but recognizable cultural traditions that permeate the many forms of contemporary media (themselves ever-changing), including some not treated in this volume such as film, popular visual culture, spoken language, etc. Moreover, we hope that this term expands the appeal and accessibility of the material treated in this volume beyond the community of scholars into the arenas of contemporary life that are constantly ‘transitioningʾ as well.9 Second, ʿIndo-Muslimʾ puts the emphasis on the Indian location, though undeniably the court culture of most of the states studied in this volume was modeled on that of early modern Iran. The­ adjective ‘Indo-Persianʾ is generally used when the emphasis is on language, and the Bahmani sultanate in the Deccan (1347-1527) and the five Deccani sultanates (Bijapuri, Golconda, Bidar, Berar, and Ahmednagar) that succeeded it from the early sixteenth century, as well as the Mughals from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries and the Nizams of Hyderabad from the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, all had Persian as their state language. These courts all included immigrants from Iran as well as other places, and the courtiers and officials, including people of Indian origins, used Persian as the official state language. Many courtiers and officials also contributed to Persian literature written in India.10 8   Marshall G.S. Hodgson was among the earliest scholars to use Islamicate and thoroughly defend its usage among scholars: see his The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization Vol. I, The Classical Age of Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972 [2nd ed.]), pp. 57ff. See also Richard Eaton, “The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan,” in The Experience of Islamic Art on the Margins of Islam, ed. Irene Bierman (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2005), pp. 113-132. 9  Such is the goal also of the recent exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and its accompanying publication: see esp. Tushara Bindu Gude, “India’s Fabled City: Narratives of an Exhibition,” in India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow (Stephen Markel & Tushara Bindu Gude eds., Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010), 69-101. 10   From the eleventh through the eighteenth centuries, “more Persian literature was produced in India than in Central Asia and even in Iran proper”: Muzaffar Alam, Francoise ‘Naliniʾ Delvoye, and Marc Gaborieau, The Making of Indo-Persian Culture (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), 23. This book opens by stating, “The making of Indo-Persian culture is closely connected with the establishment and the spread of Islam” in India, but most of the articles focus on texts. See also Muzaffar Alam, “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan,” in Literary Cultures in

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Yet, while Indo-Muslim cultures were initially linked through use of the Persian language, as Sunil Sharma states, “with the closing of the literary border between the Iranian lands and India,…the larger Persian world fragmented into separate cultural regions dominated by local traditions.” He goes on to say that Urdu was primed to claim and eventually occupy the space previously claimed by Persian.11 Choosing ‘Indo-Muslimʾ rather than ‘Indo-Persian’, for example, recognizes the declining use of Persian over time, and the transformation of Muslim civilization into a recognizably South Asian cultural formation. Indeed, the contributions in this volume highlight India’s unique engagement with Muslim and Persianate cultural forms. Collectively the work demonstrates the disadvantages of a center-periphery hierarchy espoused in some previous works, which implied the unchanging stability of a central Muslim ‘selfʾ with others as peripheral and inadequate reflections of this center.12 The unequivocal Indian location of this volume allows for in-depth examination of multiple, regionally specific cultural negotiations, showing that Indo-Muslim cultures are worthy of study in their own right, rather than derivative from—and thereby implicitly subordinate to—imported and imposed traditions. Despite the volume’s chronological organization, a major theme is the movement across time and across space of styles and practices of architecture, literature, poetry, and painting, indeed of styles of life followed by rulers and courtiers at all levels of the Indo-Muslim courts, cities and hinterlands treated here. We place a strong emphasis on visual communication, on architecture and paintings, tracing artists and styles as they moved about the subcontinent. And of course, in looking at cultural configurations in specific regional contexts and at different times, we note that these were not bounded but ­permeable,

History (Sheldon Pollock ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 131-198. 11  Sunil Sharma, “The City of Beauties in Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape,” in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, 2 (2004): 73-81. 12  E.g. “Situated at the margins, in places where Muslims and others meet…” (emphasis added), in Irene Bierman, “Introduction,” in The Experience of Islamic Art on the Margins of Islam (op. cit. supra), p. 9. The historical instability of the Muslim ‘selfʾ in the context of the medieval dynasty of the Ghurids (ca. 1150-ca. 1210) is treated by Finbarr Barry Flood, “Ghurid Monuments and Muslim Identities: Epigraphy and Exegesis in Twelfth-Century Afghanistan,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review 42 (2005): 263-294.

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inspiring one another through literature and art as part of the political process.13 The research and analysis published here extends and refines earlier work. As noted above, prior volumes and contributors to them have designated and analyzed Indo-Muslim materials in various ways. Many scholars have employed concepts of synthesis, syncretism, hybridity, and intertextuality; others have looked at identities, both individual and collective, or have proposed models of state and society such as cosmopolitanism or pluralism. Translation theory has been proposed most recently and notably by Tony Stewart, but others have invoked it as well and in the broadest sense, involving not just issues of language but of culture. Richard Eaton uses the term as he argues for the many ways in which Islamic traditions thrived and changed in the South Asian environment, the ways in which the double-movement between local cultures and Islam’s universal norms led to enormous variation but also overarching themes.14 Finbarr Flood uses the term as he too looks beyond texts to material culture in South Asia.15 Flood focuses on dynamic patterns of engagement, emphasizing relations and movements of rulers, artisans, craftsmen, merchants, and others within regions but also transregionally. The essays in this book also, covering time periods later than Flood’s eighth through thirteenth centuries, unsettle easy assignments of poetry, paintings, and buildings to ‘Hinduʾ or ‘Muslimʾ identities. We ask our readers to look again at past sociopolitical worlds to understand how participants in those worlds identified themselves and their activities. We invoke current theories to guide our conversations about the transitions Indo-Muslim cultures have undergone and continue to undergo. Earlier works developed concepts of syncretism and hybridity, for example, David Ludden’s edited volume, Contesting the Nation (1996). In part 2, “Genealogies of Hindu and Muslim,” this book had a number of pieces responding to the 1992 dismantling of the Babri 13  One work that already focuses on a regional Indo-Muslim culture, demonstrating the immense productivity of this approach, is Stephen Markel & Tushara Bindu Gude, eds. India’s Fabled City: the Art of Courtly Lucknow. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010, 69-101. 14  Eaton, “Introduction,” 3-9. 15   Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Flood builds on writings by Tony Stewart and others to develop a five-century survey of practices of circulation, displacement, and translation involving Hindus and Muslims across West and South Asia.

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Masjid by Hindu communalists. Of particular interest to us is the piece by Peter Manuel about musical genres and practices, partly because we have no comparable contribution in our volume, but also because he employs the concept of syncretism as he discusses Hin­ dustani music. He shows the “confluence of distinct, yet in many ways compatible streams of Hindu and Muslim aesthetics, ideologies, and social practices,” producing “an inherently syncretic and collaborative product of Hindu and Muslim artists and patrons,” a “symbol of the fundamental pluralism of north Indian culture.”16 Highlighting the patronage of music fundamentally linked in various ways to Hinduism by Persian-speaking, ethnically Turkish rulers, Manuel convincingly shows the pluralistic nature of North Indian or Hindus­tani classical music; furthermore, he argues that the “most significant effect of Muslim rule on Hindustani music was a subtle process of seculari­ zation.”17 We make this an important part of our argument as well, as several contributions demonstrate the movement of artists from patron to patron and the support of artists by patrons regardless of sectarian or religious affiliation. Heidi Pauwels’s contribution, in particular, relates to Manuel’s discussions of Braj-bhasha, Urdu, and Krishnaite themes, while Karen Leonard’s close description of neighborhood cultures in Hyderabad’s old city shows a secular or state ­culture in which urban residents participated in the court and admin­ istra­tion according to their rank rather than their religion. Yet the invocation of terms such as syncretism, synthesis, and hybridity has recently come under attack. Tony Stewart strongly rejects these terms as almost always implying that the product is inferior to the two parent or ‘original’ cultural traditions; similarly, he finds that ‘shared’ or ‘borrowed’ traditions suggest a weakening or misuse of the ‘original’. Manuel’s analysis, above, does not imply weakening, misuse or inferiority, and many sets of rich material analyzed with these terms remain invaluable. Stewart’s rejection seems to center on their use to analyze religious texts and practices. To us, ­particularly when expressive culture—i.e. painting, architecture,

16   Peter Manuel, “Music, the Media, and Communal Relations in North India, Past and Present,” in ed. David Ludden, Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 119-139. 17   Manuel, “Music,” 124; he draws on Daniel Neuman, 1985, for this as well.

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poetry and other literature—is the subject these terms still seem appropriate.18 Turning to the essays that deepen our understanding of the transitions Indo-Muslim cultures have undergone, Sunil Sharma opens the volume by showing that before the colonial era the Mughals too ­produced ethnographic documentations of Indian populations. His important interdisciplinary examination of the Persian literary trope of shahrāshūb (ʿcity-inciter,ʾ ʿcity-disturberʾ), during the reigns of Akbar (1556-1605), Jahangir (1605-1627) and Shah Jahan (16271658) draws on visual portrayals accompanying the texts. The shahrāshūb genre focused on the diverse professional ‘types’—rendered in visual and literary terms as individuals—who inhabited the bazaar, itself serving as synecdoche for the cosmopolitan city of the Persianate world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sharma suggests that painters of the Mughal era were likely aware of (if not actually working within) a similar trope on the pictorial plane. Fo­cusing much needed attention on some enigmatic folios from Mughalera albums, he helps bridge the gap between image and text, proposing that “the impulse that directed the gaze of the poet and painter on an individual subject in the setting of a bazaar or city…was located in the service of an imperial project of documenting diversity by the representation of individual social types.” In addition to shedding light on album pages that have long intrigued and mystified scholars, Sharma’s work (also pointed out by Ronald Inden19) further emphasizes the importance of continued scholarly attention on practices and institutions dating before the advent of colonialism in South Asia: not only are they worthy foci of study in their own right, they may in fact anticipate projects previously attributed to the colonial era. Keelan Overton’s compelling reconsideration of several well known paintings from Bijapuri and Lucknow highlights the fluidity of IndoMuslim cultures across time and space. Based on two case studies encompassing ʿAdil Shahi Bijapuri in the early seventeenth century and Nawabi Lucknow in the eighteenth, Overton demonstrates the great potential for insight when ‘originals’ and their later ‘copies’ are considered together. She focuses on paintings that are now themselves 18   But see Flood’s careful discussion of their employment as well, in Objects of Translation, 150-152, 178-180. 19   Ronald Inden, “Introduction: From Philological to Dialogical Texts,” in ­Ronald Inden, Jonathan Walters, Daud Ali, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 3-28.

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dispersed across vast distances in St. Petersburg, Berlin, London, and Oxford, her first-hand analysis revealing that ‘copies’ may actually be ‘originals’ and that later ‘copies’ are invaluable works in their own right. Indeed, ʿcopies’ reveal otherwise undetected patterns of consumption: The frequent incorporation of Bijapuri paintings in late Mughal albums albums subsequently carried away to Iran by Nadir Shah in 1739 and ultimately ending up in Russia along with the commissioning of copies of several Bijapuri works by northern patrons, altogether hint at a special regard for Bijapuri works in northern India, particularly in Lucknow. Overton’s work underscores Tony Stewart’s caution against the hierarchical privileging of originals over copies; both can be equally important sources of information for the contemporary scholar, telling us much about the journeys undertaken by artists as well as objects in pre-modern India. Heidi Pauwels also traces circulation, but of poetic language from the Deccan to Delhi to Rajasthan, and the fluid boundaries between poetic registers and genres in the eighteenth century. Further, she traces the extensive circulation of ideas—both pictorial and poetic— between southern and northern India and between what in contemporary times have been delineated as ‘Hinduʾ and ‘Muslimʾ spheres of production. Moreover, she expands our purview to one of the important courts adjacent to the Mughal heartland, Kishangarh (northeast of Ajmer in eastern Rajasthan). Pauwels brings to our attention the little-known Rekhta (later called Urdu) poetry by Savant Singh (16991764), crown prince of Kishangarh and noted patron of the arts. Under the name Nagridas, Savant Singh was a bhaktā or devotional poet in Braj-bhasha (closely related to Hindi). Nagridas’s interest in the new mixed language or Rekhta, brought to Delhi from the Deccan by Wali Dakani’s Diwan or collection of poetry, led him to produce poems filled with Persianate vocabulary like that of Wali, in contrast to his more usual Sanskritic vocabulary in the Braj poems. Pauwels shows Nagridas’s choices and avoidances as she investigates the intertexuality of Wali’s and Nagridas’s poems; she shows how selectively Nagridas brought ghazal-like images to the Krishna devotional tradition, and how unhesitatingly he included Wali’s Rekhta verses in a work dedicated to Krishna. While Nagridas’s audience in the early eighteenth century received his Indo-Muslim ‘hybrid’ work with enthusiasm, more modern critics have raised questions about the ‘unIndianʾ hybrid forms, Pauwels suggests, because of the hardening

introduction

9

of literary canons that associated Urdu with Muslims and Hindi with Hindus. The contributions by Laura Parodi and Yuthika Sharma return to the Mughal centers of power but focus on the later years of ca. 17071857. Like some of the preceding contributions, these two also stress the importance of suspending the usual, chronologically linear train of scholarly thought: Parodi’s work in particular highlights the significance of later imperial group portraits not only for discerning changes in Mughal court ceremonial in the reign of Alamgir I (also Aurangzeb, r. 1658-1707) and through the early nineteenth century, but also for understanding the development and function of darbār (ceremonial courtly gathering) scenes during the earlier, so-called high Mughal period of the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. Both Parodi and Sharma demonstrate the immense potential of visual-material sources in providing historical insights into the later years of Mughal rule. Parodi proposes that analyzing the large court scenes usually evoked by the term darbār—teeming with well known personalities, structured with a hierarchical spatial composition, and frequently painted during the reigns of earlier Mughal emperors—over time yields significant information regarding the changing relationships both within the court and between the court and the British East India Company. Such darbār paintings were less numerous already by the reign of Alamgir I (continuing through that of Muhammad Shah [r. 1719-1748]), giving way to images of smaller gatherings that were spatially non-hierarchical and seemingly intimate, with the allegorical group portrait (several generations of rulers depicted together) appearing in the reign of Bahadur Shah I (1707-1712). But these smaller, more intimate scenes did not constitute an entirely new genre. Indeed, Parodi suggests, they had precedents in the loose folios produced in the ateliers of Akbar and Jahangir, many of which were collated into albums. Earlier rulers’ portraits in the allegorical works must have also been based on (if not copied from) exemplars still remaining in the imperial library. Moreover, the altered conventions for group scenes (can we still call them ‘darbār scenes’?) blurred the previously rigid boundary between the public and private lives of Mughal rulers and hint at a profound change in the Mughal court’s ceremonial by the end of the seventeenth-early eighteenth century. This change was likely precipitated by the political and financial precariousness of the later reign of Alamgir and those of his ­successors.

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She speculates further that the revival of darbār paintings and elaborate Timurid genealogies in the early nineteenth century signaled an emphasis on the past greatness of the Mughals in the face of the Company’s growing power during this time. Yuthika Sharma’s study continues with the later Mughal period and brings European military experts, engineers, and cartographers into the picture to shed light on the still further changing conventions in the representation of Mughal sovereignty during the reign of Shah Alam II (intermittently 1759-1806). In stark contrast to the great social, religious and territorial diversity of the Mughal empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—diversity that inspired poets and painters and served as synecdoche for the vastness of the empire itself (see Sunil Sharma in this volume)—by the late eighteenth century Mughal dominion had dwindled practically to the limits of the enclave of Shahjahanabad (founded 1648). Sharma proposes that, after the return of Shah Alam to Delhi in 1772 after a fifteen-year exile in Patna, Banares, Allahabad and Awadh, the most powerful icon (and index) of the empire was no longer the person of the emperor or his diverse array of subjects, but rather the Red Fort. Highlighting another element of transition in Indo-Muslim cultures, Sharma suggests that the symbolic paramountcy of the Red Fort was achieved in part due to the influential presence of European military experts, engineers, and cartographers in northern India. They conceived of the Red Fort as a locus of power precisely due to its defensibility and overall strategic value. Such well-known personalities as Jean-Baptiste Gentil (1726-1799) and Antoine-Louis Henri Polier (1741-1795) brought yet another mode of ‘scientificʾ representation into the repertory of painters trained in the Mughal miniature tradition. Again,20 however, we should not undervalue the agency of the local artists in assimilating European concepts of spatial representation into their aesthetic vision, itself changing with the encounter of new pictorial devices.

20   It was noted above that the nineteenth-century ‘ethnographicʾ documentation trends—another example of ‘scientificʾ empiricism—conventionally associated with colonial presence in the subcontinent should also be considered in light of earlier practices, beginning as early as the sixteenth century and the establishment of the Mughal empire. See esp. Sunil Sharma in this volume.

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Shifting focus to the so-called “Mughal satrapies”21 or one type of successor state to the Mughals during the eighteenth century and onward, Alka Patel and Karen Leonard contribute studies on the Nizam’s state of Hyderabad (ca. 1780-1948). Concentrating on the nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, these two essays elucidate the degree and quality of the transplantation of Indo-Muslim socio-cultural and political practices to the Deccan, a region incorporated piecemeal into the Mughal empire beginning only in the late seventeenth century. Both of these works also broaden the analytical field by taking as their subjects the non-royal—though not to be mistaken for non-elite—merchant-bankers and administrative castes, themselves originating in northern and western India but migrating and settling in Hyderabad. Patel and Leonard examine evidence of these groups’ participation in public life and patronage of socio-religious rituals and buildings, probing issues of identity formation and integrity at the site of settlement, as well as the nature of engagement with the dominant public cultures of the Deccan. Patel takes up the architectural patronage throughout the city of Hyderabad, capital of Hyderabad state, of merchant-banker groups belonging to diverse religious backgrounds and coming from various parts of northern India: the Gujaratis, the Marwaris, and the Gosains. Her analysis reveals how the architectural record sheds light on aspects of socio-cultural and religious interactions among communities, aspects that could not be gleaned from other sources. Patel proposes a distinction between the secular—primarily residential—and religious ambits of the north Indian merchant-bankers of Hyderabad: while their secular-residential spaces clearly adhered to north Indian Indo-Muslim architectural conventions, their religious spaces (temples, shrines) unequivocally belonged to indigenous south Indian traditions. Such a discernible distinction between the two spheres urges further research on changes in religious ritual between homeland and site of settlement, for example; but equally, it proclaims the existence of more than one conspicuous public culture in Hyderabad. Karen Leonard looks closely at Indo-Muslim cultures at neighborhood and household levels as experienced and practiced by residents of the old city of Hyderabad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth 21   A term used specifically for the post-Mughal states of Bengal, Hyderabad, Awadh and Delhi itself, all previously under Mughal-deputed governors who asserted increasing independence after Nadir Shah’s sack of Delhi in 1739 (Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, pp. 20ff., 124).

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centuries. All who lived in the city, especially in the three neighborhoods focused on here—Shahalibanda, Chowk Maidan Khan, and Husaini Alam—participated in the dominant Indo-Muslim or Mughlai public culture, regardless of their religious affiliations and private religious observances. The Hyderabad Kayasths, members of a high Hindu ‘writingʾ or administrative caste originally from northern and western India, furnish most of Leonard’s examples, continuing their allegiance to the Indo-Muslim court, administration, and culture of their time well into the twentieth century. Many of the cultural activities in which the Hyderabad Hindus participated are discussed in the context of the three neighborhoods, but Leonard discusses Hindu patronage and use of temples and literary contributions as part of the broader state and urban culture. She does not take the participation of Hindus in Indo-Muslim practices as evidence of a cultural synthesis, syncretism or hybridity, but as evidence of a successful plural society with an elite or ruling culture that powerfully shaped the lives of people throughout the city. She suggests that Indo-Muslim cultural practices in Hyderabad offer instances of translation, as proposed by work on linguistic texts but extended to analyze societal changes. Thus, people of different faiths reaching for equivalent terms and practices across what are now perceived as strong religious boundaries reflected the dynamic interaction of actors and ideas in a world they shared. In a fascinating exploration of the meaning of words in other times and spaces, C.M. Naim carefully contextualizes writers and writings considered to be at the core of what we designate here as Indo-Muslim culture. Naim rereads Abdul Halim Sharar’s classic work (first published as articles from 1913-20) on the decline of Lucknavi culture and interrogates the words in the title. The Urdu title was Hindustān meñ Mashriqi Tamaddun kā ākhiri namunā (The Last Example of Eastern Culture in Hindustan), with yʿāni Guzashtā Lakhnaʾu (Meaning Bygone Lucknow) added a few years later when the articles were published as a book. The title of the English 1975 edition became Lucknow: the Last Phase of an Oriental Culture. Naim opens by commenting that, to Sharar and to most Urdu and Hindi writers of the nineteenth century, Hindustan meant a smaller, culturally defined area of North India, the Gangetic plain of Uttar Pradesh dominated by Lucknow and the kingdom of Awadh. Thinking about why Sharar would have designated Lucknow but not the rest of India as mashriq or ‘east,ʾ Naim concludes that this meant Muslim to Sharar, and ­further, that

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‘Oriental’ was an appropriate English translation because mashriq meant ‘Islamicʾ or ‘Arabʾ to writers in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Turning to tamaddun or culture, Naim makes the important observation that only in the second half of the nineteenth century did the many diverse matters earlier considered separately begin to be subsumed within one word, tahẓīb or culture, and only in 1896 did tamaddun begin to complement or replace tahẓīb. Noting that for Sharar the progress or decline of a culture was linked to political power and therefore Lucknow’s rise was linked to Delhi’s decline, Naim notes that the 1975 introduction to the English translation moves, in one passage, from Indo-Mughal to Indo-Muslim without apparent consideration of pre-Mughal Muslim-ruled kingdoms and their cultures. He finds this slippage reflective of North Indian Urdu intellectuals, alerting us to the importance of the studies in this volume that show how other Indo-Muslim states have related to developments in northern India. Finally, Naim takes up Sharar’s notion that Lucknow was the ākhiri or ‘lastʾ example of the IndoMuslim culture of Hindustan; Sharar was writing this in the early twentieth century, and Naim points to a series of articles published in the 1970s by Mirza Jaʾfar Hussain (and as a volume in1981) claiming that Lucknavi culture disappeared only in the 1940s. Naim closes by remarking that nostalgia seems to become truly enjoyable only when a golden past is thought totally lost, and that although Sharar and Hussain give different dates for the decline and loss of Lucknavi culture, both writers continue to be relevant as Urdu journals today in both India and Pakistan still lament the its loss. Our last contributor, Carlo Coppola, shows the continuing vitality of Indo-Muslim culture as the Progressive Movement in Urdu engages with Marxism in the twentieth century. The Progressive message of social justice can be traced back to Indo-Muslim literature, even to the Koran, but the Progressives omitted a god and therefore their movement was a transgressive rather than a transitional one, at least initially. Not only was it difficult to be staunch Communists and staunch Muslims, Coppola draws out internal conflicts among the initiators of the Progressive Movement. These four writers, three men and a woman, all came from the North Indian heartland, the ‘Hindustanʾ of Naim's essay (Zaheer from Allahabad, Ali from Delhi, Jahan from Aligarh, and Mahmuduzzafar from Rampur). But in this case, the South Asian writers traveled, studied, and lived abroad, and the Com­ munist Party of Britain, the Union of Soviet Writers, the Communist

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Party of India, and the Communist Party of Pakistan all influenced their lives and literary output heavily (and Ali ended up in Pakistan). This transnational landscape is the background to Coppola’s close interrogation of the personal relationships among the four initiators of the movement, from their publication of Angārē in 1932 through increasingly difficult relationships to the final rupture of the core relationship between Zaheer and Ali. Coppola suggests that by challenging contemporary middle- and upper-class Indo-Muslim morality and mores and even Islam itself, these two feuding writers had a lasting influence on the course of twentieth-century Indo-Muslim culture. Researchers on the Bollywood films, major employers of Urdu writers from the 1940s onward, can testify to this influence but their work is not included in this volume. Particularly relevant is the argument, made in a conference paper by Sarah Waheed, that IndoMuslim culture prior to Partition in 1947 was universally Indian, but afterward, this culture occupied a particular niche in popular culture, as Lucknow as the capital of Urdu gave way to Lucknow as the representation of Muslim culture, the setting for “Muslim socials” produced by Bollywood with an integrationist agenda.22 Taking these essays together, we can see the circulation of words, paintings, and even buildings as writers, artists, and craftsmen produced regional and cross-regional variations on Indo-Muslim cultures over time. Translation joins concepts of syncretism, synthesis, and hybridity, indeed it serves better to discuss many of the products and practices treated in this volume. Rooted in northern India, the Deccan, and western India but moving across space and through time, literature, art, and architecture continue to produce changing IndoMuslim cultural configurations that can be traced from pre-Mughal through Mughal and British times down into the postcolonial present. These configurations reflect not decline but change and continuing vitality as language, form, and everyday practice evidence the longstanding development of Indo-Muslim cultures in the subcontinent and the need to recognize and understand them more deeply. 22  Sarah Waheed, “Ethics, Cosmopolitan Muslim Identity and Indian Nationalism: Ismat Chughtai’s Reading of Guru Dutt,” conference paper, Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition, 31 October-2 November 2008. See also Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2009). A similar niche might be that occupied by Lucknavi muhājirs (exiles, refugees) in Karachi, as in Joginder Paul’s Urdu novel Khwābrau, translated into English as Sleepwalkers (1998).

introduction

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Bibliography Alam, Muzaffar, Françoise ‘Naliniʾ Delvoye, and Marc Gaborieau. The Making of Indo-Persian Culture (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000). Alam, Muzaffar. “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan,” in Literary Cultures in History, Sheldon Pollock ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 131-198. Avcioglu, Nehabat, and Finbarr Barry Flood, eds. Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century (Ars Orientalis 39). Washington, DC: Smith­ sonian Institution, 2010. Bayly, C. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Bhasker, Ira, and Richard Allen. Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2009. Bierman, Irene.“Introduction,” in The Experience of Islamic Art on the Margins of Islam, Irene Bierman, ed. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2005. Eaton, Richard. ʿIntroduction’, in Richard M. Eaton, ed., India’s Islamic Traditions, 711-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 1-34. Eaton, Richard.“The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan,” in The Experience of Islamic Art on the Margins of Islam, ed. Irene Bierman. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2005, 113-132. Flood, Finbarr Barry. “Ghurid Monuments and Muslim Identities: Epigraphy and Exegesis in Twelfth-Century Afghanistan,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review 42 (2005): 263-294. Flood, Finbarr Barry. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “HinduMuslim” Encounter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Gilmartin, David and Bruce B. Lawrence, eds. Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia. Tampa: University Press of Florida, 2000. Gude, Tushara Bindu, “India’s Fabled City: Narratives of an Exhibition,” in India’s Fabled City: the Art of Courtly Lucknow (Stephen Markel & Tushara Bindu Gude eds.) Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010, 69-101. Hodgson, Marshall G.S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization Vol. I, The Classical Age of Islam. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972 [2nd ed.]. Inden, Ronald. “Introduction: From Philological to Dialogical Texts,” in Ronald Inden, Jonathan Walters, Daud Ali, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 3-28. Khan, Dominique-Sila. Crossing the Threshold: Understanding Religious Identities in South Asia. New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2004. Ludden, David, ed. Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Manuel, Peter. "Music, the Media, and Communal Relations in North India, Past and Prewsent," in ed. David Ludden, Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India. Philadellphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, 119-139. Mittal, Sushil, ed. Surprising Bedfellows: Hindus and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern India. New York: Lexington Books, 2003. Paul, Joginder. Sleepwalkers. New Delhi: Katha, 1998. Schmitz, Barbara. After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002.

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Sharma, Sunil. “The City of Beauties in Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape,” in Com­ parative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, 2 (2004): 73-81. Stephen Markel & Tushara Bindu Gude, eds. India’s Fabled City: the Art of Courtly Lucknow. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010. Waheed, Sarah. “Ethics, Cosmopolitan Muslim Identity and Indian Nationalism: Ismat Chughtai’s Reading of Guru Dutt.” Conference paper, Indo-Muslim Cul­ tures in Transition, UC Irvine, November 2, 2008.

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Representation of Social Groups in Mughal Art and Literature: Ethnography or Trope?1 Sunil Sharma Ehsan Yarshater was one of the earliest scholars of Persian who wrote about the importance of approaching images through texts, “Poetry is the most significant artistic achievement of Persia, and, as an art with wide scope, sustained energy and universal appeal, provides the broadest stage for artistic and intellectual expression. Therefore, it claims our foremost attention in deciding the common traits of Persian art in general.”2 This view suggests one way to begin the study of texts and images, at least for a literary historian. In the context of Indo-Persian culture of the Mughal and Deccan courts, I have previously studied ethnographic, or proto-ethnographic, descriptions of the urban city, bazaar, and its inhabitants in works by poets using a literary trope called shahrāshūb.3 The chief aim of this paper is to extend my previous investigation on this subject in literature to a few specific paintings, but rather than a one-to-one correspondence between text and image, I attempt to show how reading both types of sources in tandem brings out the complexities of the representation of the ideal city and its inhabitants through a variety of aesthetic modes. With due consideration to the differences between the textual and visual sources, chiefly of the Mughal period, I propose that the impulse that directed the gaze of the poet and painter on an individual subject in the setting of a bazaar or city, and the message that they sought to convey to their audience, served the imperial program of documenting diversity by the representation of individual social types. The 1   I am grateful to Alka Patel for her encouragement and editorial comments. I have also benefited from the suggestions of Debra Diamond and Emine Fetvaci. 2  Ehsan Yarshater, “Some Common Characteristics of Persian Poetry and Art,” Studia Islamica 16 (1962): 61. 3  Sunil Sharma, “The City of Beauties in the Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape.” In Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. XXIV, no. 2 (2004): 73-81; “ʿIf There Is a Paradise on Earth, It is Hereʾ: Urban Ethnography in IndoPersian Poetic and Historical Texts,” Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500-1800, edited by Sheldon Pollock (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 240-56.

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Mughal period is a particularly rich area to use this approach since there was a busy traffic of artists, scholars and poets between the Persianate regions—India, Central Asia, Iran and the Ottoman world—as well as the existence of a shared literary culture of Persian, at least in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A more universal and comparative approach would yield useful insights, but here I focus on the evidence from early Mughal India. The figure of the dervish or jogī, appearing in multiple manifestations in Mughal literature and painting, is an example of a social type that merits further scrutiny. But first, it is necessary to study the pre-Mughal precedents for such forms of representation. By using the term ethnography, borrowed from the discipline of anthropology, for literary and artistic materials, I have in mind “a qualitative research process and product whose aim is cultural interpretation [where] ... [t]he ethnographer goes beyond reporting events and details of experience and works to explain how these represent the webs of meaning in which we live.”4 Despite Persian being the lingua franca and shared courtly cultural practices, the domain of IndoPersian culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth century was not a monolithic cultural sphere and often the responses of Iranian or Central Asian writers to India were just as exotic as that of the European encounter with ‘nativeʾ populations a couple of centuries later. The visual and textual evidence shows that the bazaar was especially the site for much personal and commercial interaction in Islamicate societies and played a role in the creation of a new brand of cosmopolitanism. However, it was the individual in the bazaar or city who formed the microcosm in a society that valued the projection of utopian visions of itself conveyed in a variety of modes and metaphors. The Persian literary representation of cities can be conceptually linked to imaginations of utopias found in earlier Islamic texts on philosophy, such as in al-Fārābī’s ninth-century Arabic treatise on the Madīna-yi fāzila (The Virtuous City), in which he says, “The excellent city resembles the perfect and healthy body, all of whose limbs cooperate to make the life of the animal perfect and to preserve it in this state.”5 He then goes on to describe the organic role of the inhabitants 4   Dictionary of Multicultural Education, ed. Carl A. Grant and Gloria LadsonBillings (Phoenix: Oryx, 1997), 115. 5   Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abū Nasr al-Fārābī’s Mabādiʿ ārāʿ ahl al-madīna al-fādila, a revised text with introduction, translation and commentary, tr. and ed. by Richard Walzer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 231.

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of the city, “they are not parts of the city by their inborn nature alone but rather by the voluntary habits which they acquire such as the arts and their likes.”6 Thus, a link between the individual and a larger social network is often implicit in literary and artistic works, as discussed below. When it comes to the representation of an individual of a certain social group or a single person engaged in an activity considered useful in that society, the portrayal of a generic youth, such as an archer or wine server (sāqī) found in numerous single folios or albums from the Timurid period onwards, is one of the most commonly encountered emblematic personification of courtly values. Short poems describing such characters in an amorous vein also exist, but rarely do text and image come together; more often than not these single paintings from albums are without any accompanying text. An example of image with text is that of a sixteenth-century painting from Bukhara of a young archer (Harvard Art Museum, 1958.78.1, Color Plate 2.1) that shows a youth with a bow who combines the good looks of the beloved in a typical Persian love lyric (ghazal), the most popular poetic form of the time, as well as embodying the metaphor of one marking his prey. The poem on the right panel describes him in an amorous tone: shah-i khūbān zi khāb-i nāz bar-khvāst / qabā-yi zarnigār u jām-i raz khvāst kashīdand ablaq-i zarrin-lajāmi / chu khang-i sabz gardūn tīr-i kāmī The prince of beauties rose from sultry slumber and asked for his embroidered robe and goblet of wine. They pulled the dappled horse with golden reins as the green heaven does with its arrow of desire.7

Although there is a reference to an arrow here, the verses are impressionistic and do not specify or identify the individual archer in any way. The lines on the left panel are even more general, their function being to encapsulate the aesthetic content in pithy verses. This is in keeping with the conventions of Persian poetry where the image of the beloved is generic but coded with various characteristics that mark him as the object of love who may be the Other of the poet/lover:

6 7

  Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, 235.   Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in this paper are mine.

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sunil sharma The lack of individual traits in such descriptions is typical of the tradition as a whole and can even be noticed in romances where the Beloved is identified by a personal name. … The situation understood in these poems was the convivial life at an Iranian court. The beloved person is sometimes specified as a servant, an artist performing at a social gathering, or a young soldier from the sultan’s army. Ethnic specifications were added occasionally: most often a Turk is referred to, more rarely an Arab or a Hindu. The Beloved’s behavior toward the Lover was frequently depicted as whimsical and quarrelsome. The former was “the one who disturbs the town” (šahrāšūb or šahrangīz); this motif developed into a genre, based on playful references to the occupations of “sensational” young men, which was especially common in quatrains […]. In the ḡazals the Beloved might be represented as a debauched qalandar who frequents the wine houses and is often associated with religious cults alien to Islam (kofrīyāt).8

Homoerotic in tone, these poems represent the point of view of a Muslim poet/lover, the first person speaker of a typical lyric, who is willing to give up his creed for the sake of his beloved. Women do not appear in such poems, whether for reasons of propriety and literary convention. In painting, apart from those illustrating romance narratives, individual portraits of idealized women are sometimes found, supporting the argument that the beloved in a ghazal can be male or female. Unlike the males, women are not depicted as performing any function other than serving wine, providing entertainment or being the object of male desire. However, in the case of Mughal, and especially Deccan paintings, there are a fair number of female ascetics along with dancing girls, princesses, and other social types.9 How then, especially from the point of view of a literary historian, do we relate poems about such individuals to paintings? Generic characters in Persian literature can be equated with those found in paintings, as in this discussion by Yarshater: Th[e] flight from naturalism, which imparts that quality of airiness, serenity and lightness to Persian painting, is carried still one stage 8   J.T.P. de Bruijn, “Beloved,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), IV, 128-9. 9  See the image of the female ascetic Mriganka in a Mughal painting ca. 1600, 118-19; and a yogini in a Deccani painting, 174-5, Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting, B.N. Goswamy and Caron Smith (San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art, 2005). Also see Deborah Hutton for an insightful discussion of the “type portraits” of yoginis and the Sufi symbolism in them, Art of the Court of Bijapur (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 83-96.

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f­ urther by an abstraction of types similar to that which we notice in poetry. Not only does the artist tend to confine himself to stock character-motifs, such as the Prince, the Lover, the Sweetheart, the Wine Server, the Music Player or the Sage, but in his design, whole scenes such as those of the Hunt, Battle, Garden, Banquet and the Court assume the quality of conventionalized concepts and images. These the artist uses as the basis for his variations, much as the Persian poet confines himself to a number of typical situations, images, metaphors and allegories for the expression of his poetical sensibilities.10

The portrait of the idealized archer discussed above brings to mind another poem that would seem to have more of an aesthetic correspondence with the image. The late Timurid poet Sayfī (d. ca. 1504) of Bukhara composed a ghazal cycle, Sanāʿi al-badāʿi (Arts of Inno­ vations), comprising a hundred and twenty three poems in the shahrāshūb/shahrangīz genre covering a whole range of craftsmen, social types from the poet’s world, including Sufis, and even specific individuals.11 The poem on an archer illustrates the witty wordplay of the poet-lover on the occupation of his object of affection, conveyed in the language of the love lyric: The playful archer makes a martyr out of the lover— then how can the poor lover use his bow? I became cold and hunched like a bow due to the sorrow caused by my love for him. The string of his bow is like a noose around the neck of lovers. If my darling had not shown mercy, many heads would have been lost.

The one surviving manuscript of Sayfi’s ghazals was not furnished with illustrations—and one wonders why with its rich material for images—nor were his poems framed by a larger organizing structure. Later poets and artists quickly became aware, however, of the possibilities that existing poetic forms such as the ghazal and masnavi offered for a new manner of representation of individuals within the framework of a city. The poetic topos of describing an individual as a craftsman or social type gained much popularity in post-Timurid   “Some Common Characteristics of Persian Poetry and Art,” 64.   For a fuller discussion of this poem, see Sunil Sharma “Generic Innovation in Sayfî Bukhârâî’s Shahrâshûb Ghazals,” Ghazal as a Genre of World Literature: The Ottoman Ghazal in Its Historical Context, (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 2006), 141-49. 10 11

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l­iterature that it was easily accommodated in a variety of verse and prose texts ranging from masnavīs, biographical dictionaries, chronicles to travelogues, and in ethnographic representations of different social types and groups. Poetic works in this genre describe the inhabitants of a city as being joyful and active in their professions, embodying the vigor and vitality of a particular city. The narrow parameters of Persian aesthetics allowed for innovation and artistic freedom, and poets and artists employed a metaphoric idiom to create a (homo)erotic interweave of commerce and love between themselves and their subjects. I would now like to focus on another type of individual who was also popularly represented in painting and literature, from the earliest period of Indo-Persian poetry but especially by Mughal artists and poets. The ascetic, in the form of a dervish or jogī (also jūkī in Persian), was a frequent character in Indo-Persian literature and art of the Mughal period. Although also generic in the way the archer was, at times the jogis become particularized in the Indian context. In the Muslim world, “[j]ogis have long had a standard place in “believe it or not” accounts of the strange and marvelous in India.”12 In pre-modern South Asian courtly as well as popular folk literary traditions, the jogi is sometimes represented as a magician in the context of tantrism, but often as the object of love, whether in a secular or religious context. From the earliest instance of Indo-Persian literature, the interest in these groups extended to a larger understanding of the religious system of various communities and individual portraits of their representative members, reflecting the multi-religious nature of Indian society in which Muslim rulers and literati found themselves. In the Mughal period, innumerable paintings were produced of ascetics and holy men, alone or in company with princes. The historical and poetic texts of this period also reflect this fascination with holy men that are ethnographic in their detailed descriptions. According to Walter Smith, Hindu holy men can be found in two kinds of texts from Akbar’s period: “in illustrations to historical works, such as the Babur Nama and Akbar Nama, where they are shown in contemporary idealized settings, and in illustrations to Persian translations of Sanskrit texts, which depict sadhus and sanyasis as counseling sages   Carl W. Ernst, “Accounts of Yogis in Arabic and Persian Historical and Travel Texts,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 33 (2007), 410. 12

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and yogic adepts.”13 Thus, interest in ascetics and holy men forms an entire sub-genre of documentation of social and religious diversity in various formats in Mughal sources. Rochelle Kessler has written about the genre of paintings of Mughal rulers visiting holy men, “These compositions often included soldiers, nobles of the court, or other members of the imperial entourage. Although a handful of these ruler-holy man works were based on historical events, the majority represented nonspecific or idealized inter­ actions.”14 Similarly, textual representations are most often tropes, even when the description is of a specific individual, given the highly metaphoric quality of the Persian literary idiom. But even when poems and paintings of holy men are purely generic, in the Mughal context they can often be viewed in the context of a larger program supported by imperial, rather than individual, motivation to document the ethnographic diversity of Indian society, albeit in a circumscribed literary language. Before studying examples from Mughal culture, pre-Mughal representation of the holy man in Indo-Persian literature provides some background for the importance of this figure in the later period. The jogi must first be considered along with the representations of various religious characters, such as darvīsh (darvesh), faqīr, Sufi, who appear in the form of the beloved in classical Persian poetry. The jogi is depicted in literature within the convention of describing other holy men in classical Persian literature, with a few specific markers of the Indian context; according to Carl Ernst, “[T]he marvelous figure of the jogi burning himself alive, and performing superhuman acts of asceticism to rival the desert anchorites of early Christianity, is presented in terms derived from the highly refined esthetic of Persian poetry.”15 In Indo-Persian literature, one of the earliest instances of short poems addressed to religious men in the form of a beloved is found in the dīvān of Masʿūd-i Saʿd-i Salmān (d. 1121), whose shahrāshūb poems, although replete with useful information on the crafts and trades prevalent during the Ghaznavid period, also included in his utopian metropolis categories of men who are not only distinguished by a profession but also by their membership in a religious or 13

67.

  “Hindu Ascetics in Mughal Painting under Akbar,” Oriental Art 27, 1 (1981),

14   “In the Company of the Enlightened: Portraits of Mughal Rulers and Holy Men,” Studies in Islamic and Later Indian Art from the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, 2002), 18. 15  Ernst, “Accounts of Yogis,” 416.

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social community, such as a Sufi, Christian, hājjī, etc. or who even have a distinctive physical characteristic such as boy with curly hair, mute, squint, etc. There are two poems on Sufis in the shahrāshūb genre by Masʿūd-i Saʿd-i Salmān; here is the first one: ānrā kih zi ‘ishq-i tu balā nīst balā nīst / va ānrā kih zi hijr-i tu fanā nīst fanā nīst sih būsa hamī khvāham manʿam makun ay dūst / tu Sūfīyī u manʿ bi-nazd-i tu ravā nīst16 He who is not afflicted by love for you does not know affliction. He who is not annihilated in absence from you does not know   annihilation. I want three kisses—donʾt deny them to me, my friend. You are a Sufi and denial doesnʾt befit you.

In the second poem, the poet uses the device of a dialogue between the lover and beloved: guftam chirā nasāzī bā man tu / tā kay tanam zi bahr-i tu bi-gudāzad guftā tu but-parastī u man Sūfī / bā but-parast Sūfī kay sāzad17 I asked, “Why donʾt you get along with me? How long will my body melt for you?” He said, “You are an idol-worshipper, I a Sufi; how can a Sufi get along with one like you?”

Ascetics of various sorts, both Muslim and Hindu, are described in the same poetic idiom in which the poet addresses the object of his affection as a beloved and plays upon a single characteristic peculiar to them. The poet also includes a poem to a generic non-Muslim (ghairMuslim) beloved: ai but-i zībā kāfir-dilī u kāfir-dīn / kufr u īmān shuda az zulf u rukhat har du yaqīn agar ān zulmat k-andar dil-i pur-zulmat-i tust / rūz rā būdī tārīk shudī rū-yi zamīn va-gar ān nūr ke bar du rukh-i nūrānī-i tust / dar dilat būdī jā-yi tu budī khuld-i barīn18 O beautiful idol of infidel heart and religion,   Your tresses and face have turned both infidelity and belief into certainty. 16   Dīvān-i Masʿūd-i Saʿd-i Salmān, ed. Mahdi Nūriyān (Isfahan: Kamāl, 1985), v. 2, 916. 17   Dīvān-i Masʿūd-i Saʿd-i Salmān, v. 2, 919. 18   Dīvān-i Masʿūd-i Saʿd-i Salmān, 929.

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If that darkness in your cruel heart belonged to the day,   The face of the earth would become dark. And if that light on your luminous face were in your heart,   You would be in the highest heaven.

Although this poem is even more non-specific about the identity of the beloved, it uses the same kind of binary oppositions associated with religious traditions. Jogis had a strong connection to the pre-Mughal Delhi court and had a similar position to astrologers and magicians. The court poet Amīr Khusraw (d. 1325), who showed a great interest in multiple aspects of Indian society and sought to introduce these elements into Persian poetry, described “the supernatural powers of Indian ascetics in his lengthy accolade to the virtues of India in the third chapter of his Persian epic, Nuh sipihr (Nine Heavens),” where he particularly wrote about the “Brahmins' skill in divination, and the jogis' breathing control.”19 Among the shahrāshūb verses in the rubāʿī form attributed to Amīr Khusraw, two describe a young jogi. This poem has allusions to the famous star-crossed lovers of Persian literature:20 jogī pisarī nishasta dar khākistar / laylī rūyī buvad valī majnūn sar az khāk fuzūn shavad jamālash / āyīna zi khāk mīshavad rawshantar The young jogi boy was sitting in the dust, face pretty as Laylā’s, mind mad as Majnūn’s. His beauty was really enhanced by the dust: a mirror is brighter when polished with grit.

The second poem is in the form of questions addressed to the jogi. jogī lab-i tu khushk zi chashm-i tar-i kīst? / īn mastī u bī-hūshīyat az sāghar-e kīst? har rūz turā bīnam u sūzam az rashk / k-imrūz rakht-i tāza zi khākistar-i kīst? Jogi, whose teary eyes are the cause of your lips being dry? Your intoxication and senseless state is because of whose goblet? I see you every day and burn with jealousy thinking today from whose ashes are you freshly decked out.

The last image, of course, refers to the ash-smeared body of the ascetic, and the lover who has been annihilated by love of the jogi. Such ­playful  Ernst, “Accounts of Yogis,” 411.   Ahmad Gulchīn-Ma‘ānī, Shahrāshūb dar shi‘ir-i Fārsī, 2nd ed. (Tehran: Rivāyat, 1380/2001), 38. 19 20

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poems provided a way to integrate people of various social backgrounds into the Persianate poetic discourse, especially since they occur in clusters with others describing various craftsmen and social and religious types (butcher, flower-seller, etc.). Thus, even as the reader focuses on the individual type who is always generic in a Persianate sense in that he is male, young and handsome, there is a tacit understanding that he belongs to a larger community in which there is regular interaction between its members. Jogis proliferate in the painting of the Mughal period, although in the poetry of this period they do not appear as frequently.21 For instance, during the reign of the emperor Jahāngīr (r. 1605-28), the case of the Hindu ascetic, Jadrūp, or Chitrarūp as has been conjectured, demonstrates the close nature of contact between the court and such religious figures.22 This verse description of the famous ascetic is found in a Mughal chronicle: zāhidī dīdam az jahān rasta / dar bi-rū-yi jahāniyān basta na azū bar dil zamīn bārī / na dilash rā zi charkh āzārī23 I saw an ascetic who had abandoned the world and closed the door on its people. Neither was the earth a burden to him, nor was he troubled by the heavens.

I would also suggest that we apply this mode of reading for paintings where individual types are inserted together in an album, or in some exceptional cases when they are bunched together in the borders of a single page. One example of a collocation of an entire range of holy men representing all faiths is a remarkable album page with the ­central 21  One group of texts that I have not been able to access for this study is related to the Panjabi Hīr-Rānjhā romance that was translated numerous times into Persian during the Mughal period. In this tale, the male protagonist, Rānjhā, spends time with jogis and then himself becomes one in order to win his love. For a survey of these masnavī narratives, see S.A.H. Abidi, “The Story of Hir and Ranjha in IndoPersian Literature,” Professor Birinchi Kumar Barua Commemoration Volume, edited by Maheshwar Neog and Mukunda Madhava Sharma (Gauhati: All India Oriental Conference, 1966), 23-31. 22  Shireen, Moosvi, “The Mughal Encounter with Vedanta: Recovering the Biography of 'Jadrup',” Social Scientist, Vol. 30, No. 7/8 (2002), 13-23; also see William Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), especially chapter 1, as well as David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 23   Mutamad Khan, Iqbālnāma-yi Jahāngīrī, eds. Abdul Hay and Ahmad Ali, Calcutta, 1865, 95.

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painting of a prince visiting a Sufi (Color Plate 2.2).24 Collocations of figures on the borders of other album pages indicate that they are not random people, but collectively form a community—as seen in the Mughal shahrāshūb poems that group individuals together—and are also connected in some way to the figure in the centre. Thus, we find calligraphers, painters, and gardeners, and even those pertaining to the interests of a particular courtier.25 Let us briefly consider paintings of jogis with Persian verses in order to see how the juxtaposition of word and image makes the reading of the object more complex.26 Two instances of such poems accompanied by an image (or vice versa, depending on which one was meant to accompany the other) of jogis with dogs bear certain similarities but have not been studied together. The style of painting and calligraphy suggest that they may have been part of the same album. The first is in Harvard University’s Sackler Museum (200.50.29; Color Plate 2.3)27 and shows a jogi dressed in a Hindu sadhu’s saffron garb, accompanied by two dogs. The flat landscape behind him shows the horizon and conveys a sense of wilderness. The following inscription surrounds the image, one line above and one below: dar firāq-i yār jogī gashta am / bahr-i ān dildār jogī gashta am mayl dārad shāh-i man bā jogīyān / zān sabab nāchār jogī gashta am Separation from my beloved has made me a mendicant. I have become a mendicant for the sake of my beloved. My prince is inclined to [keep company with] mendicants, For that reason I was forced to become a mendicant. 24   CBL In 07B.26 (“A Mulla under a Tree with a Soldier and a Musician”), Muraqqaʿ, Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, by Elaine Wright (Alexandria, Va: University Press of New England, 2008), 404. 25   It would seem that the production of these marginal figures coincides with the composition of verses on craftsmen and social types, the highpoint of this being the early period of Shāh Jahān’s reign (1628-58). In a discussion on this subject John A. Seyller communicated to me that after the 1630s it is rare to find paintings of this type, June 2008. 26   The reason that I have limited my study to two paintings is that these are the only ones I have been able to find of illustrated poems in the shahrāshūb genre. 27   This is apparently the same painting as described in Appendix 1.II, Muraqqaʿ, 456. It was published in Sotheby’s December 6, 1967, lot 1211. The list of ‘other religious figures’ originally belonging to the Salim Album is provided here. Apart from this one, there are four others: a second kanphatā yogi, a Jain monk, a mulla, and an ascetic with a holy man, although it is not clear whether these are accompanied by verses. My thanks to Mary McWilliams and Kimberly Masteller for their assistance in my research in the Harvard collections.

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These verses are in the shahrāshūb mode, the words being uttered by a poet-lover who has assumed the identity of his beloved. The kind of jogi shown here can be identified as a kānphatā mainly due to his earrings. Kānphatā yogis, also known as Gorakhnathis or Nathpanthis, were followers of Gorakhnath and shown wearing large earrings, hence the term kān-phatā (split-ear).28 The other accoutrements such as the begging bowl and dogs are also distinguishing marks of these ascetics. The second work, from the so-called Salim album (CBL In 44.3; Color Plate 2.4), also depicts a kānphatā jogi. This one is dressed in a black robe and hat and is shown with one white dog. A rocky background and different facial type differentiates this ascetic from the previous one. The catalogue description of this object reads, “Despite the assumed austerity of the yogi’s life, this is a scene of domestic bliss. Moreover, the distinctive and pronounced features of the yogi’s face— large nose, full lips, and heavy brows—suggest that this is a portrait of an actual individual, not a mere type.”29 The inscription is longer in this painting than in the previous one: jogi-yi ‘ishqam u sawda-yi tu dar sar dāram / mū bi-mū zawq-e tamannā-yi tu dar sar dāram mārā zi khāk-i kūyash pīrāhanast bar tan / ān ham zi khūn-i dīda sad chāk tā bi-dāman I am the jogi30 of love who is infatuated with you. I desire you with every hair of my head. My shirt is made with the dust of his lane And that too is ripped to its hem and has blood from my eyes.

Below the figure the following lines appear: man bi-haftād u du millat yak tanam / subhat u zunnār mībāyad marā sag-i tu az hama dar ‘ālam-i vafā bihtar / agar sag-i tu nabāsham sag zi mā bihtar I am one with the seventy-two nations— I should have a rosary and an infidel’s girdle. Your dog is better than the entire world of fidelity. If I am not your dog, the dog is better than me. 28   George Weston Briggs, Gorakhnāth and the Kānphata Yogīs (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973). I would like to thank Supriya Gandhi for a discussion on this subject. 29   Muraqqaʿ, 270. 30   Wheeler M. Thackston reads this word as chawki (watchman) but this reading is not correct in the context of the painting, Muraqqaʾ, 270.

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The verses above the image are in the same shahrāshūb vein, describing the degradation of the obsessive poet-lover. The second set of verses imparts a message of religious harmony, with the seventy-two nations, an oft-used reference in Persian poetry, representing all of humanity. The almost identical border design suggests that these two paintings may have been facing folios from one album representing two different kinds of kānphatā jogis. The other paintings of the Salim album indicate that holy men may have been its theme. In any case, the viewer of the album was expected to get a full variety of these types. From their iconography and styles, both paintings appear to have been produced at the Mughal court. In particular, the Mughal artist Govardhan, who was perhaps connected to the eclectic circle of Prince Dārā Shikoh, specialized in these subjects and “apparently felt curiosity and sympathy for religious figures and eccentric characters.”31 A similar kānphatā yogi with a dog also appears in a later painting, where he is in the company of other sādhus and sādhvīs. There is no accompanying text here and appears to have been inserted in the middle of the group.32 Despite the ethnographic quality of these paintings, it could be stated with some certainty that the verses, where they occur, are of a generic kind, as in the poems discussed earlier. How do they then enhance the reader’s understanding or enjoyment of the painting since images of such religious figures also appear without any text? One explanation is that the viewer would remember similar lines of poetry, given the applicability of the situation described in poems to almost every lover and beloved, since memorizing and reciting verses was part of the literary culture in Persianate societies. In fact, particularly in the period when Mughal and Company painting overlapped the increasing tendency towards an anthropological ethnographic representation of people, in contrast to what can be considered the earlier sixteenth and seventeenth century proto-ethnography, tended to blur the distinction between individuals representing specific groups or even familiar literary stock characters. It is worth keeping in mind that holy men, especially old dervishes, proliferate in Safavid painting too, but perhaps due to the attention paid to the realism of 31   Amina Okada, Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court, tr. Deke Dussinberre (New York: Abrams, 1992), 197. 32   “A Group of Dervishes,” Plate XXXI, Raj Kumar Tandan, Indian Miniature Painting, 16th through 19th Centuries (Banglore: Natesan, 1982), probably from Ajmer, ca. 1720.

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the human form in Mughal painting, generic and idealized portrayals do not receive their due attention.33 The Mughal, and later the colonial, fascination with holy men and ascetics in particular, borders on a fetishization of religious social types. The vast body of Mughal court literature and the arts were used to promote the vision of a multi-ethnic city characterized by variety and home to diverse types of peoples.34 An emphasis on and propagation of this view of India was integral to the success of the imperial vision of the ruling polity. The interest in individuals extended to a larger understanding of the religious system of various communities, and if individual portraits of their representative members have a documentary quality to them, the metaphoric register was equally employed to convey information in a familiar idiom and register. Mughal portraits of Hindu ascetics combine the documentary with the poetic, even with the absence of any accompanying verses around a painting. In his detailed ethnography of Hindustan, which is a central component of the Āʾīn-i Akbarī (Institutes of Akbar), Abū al-Fazl describes Akbar’s interest in holy men: In his abundant carefulness he [Akbar] sought for truth among the dust-stained denizens of the field of irreflection—and most of the really great study it under this disguise—and consorted with every sort of wearers of patched garments such as jogis, sanyasis and qalandars, and other solitary sitters in the dust, and insouciant recluses.35

Abū al-Fazl also has a chapter on “Saints of India” (Awliyā-yi-Hind) in which twelve orders of saints and twelve of Sufis are described. Elsewhere he describes the Jain religion and its various holy men in detail: “The ascetics of this body have no intercourse with women, and avoid the spot where the sound of her voice is heard.”36 Regarding the  Examples of Safavid depictions of dervishes are found in Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, Le Chant du monde: L’art de l’Iran safavide, 1501-1736 (Paris: Louvre, 2007), 96-97. 34   For imperial propaganda in Shāh Jahān’s reign, see Ebba Koch, “Introduction,” Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), xxvii. 35   The Ain-i-Akbari, tr. H.S. Jarrett (Delhi: Taj, 1989), v. 2, chapter 37. 36   The Ain-i-Akbari, v. 2, 218-9. For an image of a Jain monk, without any text, see Michael Brand and Glenn D. Lowry, Akbar’s India: Art from the Mughal City of Victory (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1985), 82. For a discussion on the identificaton of this historical person, see Paul Dundas, History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect (London: Routledge, 2007), 198; I am grateful to Audrey Truschke for this information. 33

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fourth Hindu stage of life, the sanyāsa āshrama, he writes, “After the completion of the third stage, and the habit of self-denial in all sensual pleasures is acquired, the disciple first obtains the permission of his teacher and then quits his wife, shaves his head, beard, and the hair of his face and abandons all worldly concerns … He does not occupy himself with reading, but applies himself entirely to spiritual contemplation. He passes his life alone in the wilds.”37 It is possible to match these detailed ethnographic descriptions to portraits of holy men from this period.38 As Walter Smith explains, paintings of Hindu ascetics in Akbar’s time “At first encounter, they seem to show a purely spiritual interest in Hinduism, but further historical research suggests that gaining familiarity with certain Hindu practices may have been only one aspect of Akbar’s attempts at winning the confidence and support of his subjects.”39 What was once part of the imperial program to celebrate a multicultural and tolerant society became entrenched in later Mughal artistic and literary conventions. The emphasis on the harmony between the seventy-two nations of humanity mentioned in the painting of the second jogi accords well with Abū al-Fazl’s analysis of the causes of misunderstanding and quarrels between different religions in India. He states that the first cause is “the diversity of tongues and the misapprehension of mutual purposes, and thus the alloy of ill-will is introduced and the dust of discord arises.”40 On the importance of religious harmony, Āsaf Khān Jaʿfar Beg, the author of the second half of the Tārīkh-i Alfī, the socalled “History of the Millennium,” written in 1592 to mark a historical point in Islamic history, in his introduction explains Akbar’s motives in having this history written, “His heart is inclined to justice, desiring that the followers of different faiths, each having become acquainted with the truth and reality of the others’ religion, should act with restraint and abandon bigotry.”41 Mughal textual and visual sources are replete with ethnographic pictures and literary representations of the Indo-Persian world even before the European encounter and the advent of Company painting   The Ain-i-Akbari, v. 2, 300.  See endnote 36. 39   “Hindu Ascetics in Mughal Painting under Akbar,” Oriental Art ns 27/1 (1981), 75. 40   The Ain-i-Akbari, v. 2, 3. 41   Quoted in Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the Muslims in Akbar’s Reign, with special reference to Abu’l Fazl (1556-1605) (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1975), 254. 37 38

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and scientific surveys. The hyperbolic and flowery descriptions of types of individuals provide valuable proto-ethnographic information and represent a system of knowledge that was transmitted by the use of certain literary topoi and genres. Over time these topoi were innovatively employed by authors of a variety of verse and prose texts ranging from masnavīs, biographical dictionaries, chronicles to travelogues. Paintings in Mughal manuscripts and albums reflect a similar interest in people of the empire whose influence on and continuity with later colonial period ethnographic projects have been overlooked. The late Mughal Persian chronicle, Sujān Rāʾi’s Khulāsāt al-Tavārīkh (Compendium of Histories), composed around 1696 in the time of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707), included a more detailed typology of Hindu holy men, including Indian faqirs such as sanyasis, jogis, bairagis, Nanakpanthis, etc.42 The detailed ethnographic information found in this text was transmitted to the colonial period through an Urdu translation by Mīr Afsos (d. 1809), published in 1808 under the patronage of the Fort William College in Calcutta. Afsos’work, Ārāʾish-i mahfil (Adornment of the Assembly), became a standard textbook for British officers trained in early colonial India to understand the intricacies of Indian society.43 The textual and visual corpus of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would appear to be more than an indirect precursor to an interest in social types that came about during the period of European contact in Iran and colonialism in Persianate South Asia. This took many forms: from albums, Company paintings, ethnographic surveys, and later, photographs that mapped out the complex network of societies into detailed typologies. There was also an ethnographic interest within the Persianate world with respect to other Persophone societies. For instance, the Mansour album commissioned by a member of the Dutch East India Company resident in Iran in the seventeenth century is interesting in that it includes a large number of paintings of Indian dancers and courtesans.44 The Persian and Arab view of India as an exotic land has a long history. Travel accounts to the east by Europeans such as Cornelis de Bruyn, Jean Chardin and Engelbert 42

33.

  The Khulasatu-t-Tawarikh, ed. M. Zafar Hasan (Delhi, 1918), 30; also Ernst,

43   Also see Marc Gaborieau, “Muslim Saints, Faquirs and Pilgrims in 1831 according to Garcin de Tassy,” Perspectives of Mutual Encounters in South Asian History, 1760-1860, ed. Jamal Malik (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 130-56. 44   Basil Gray, in Persian and Mughal Art (London: Colnaghi, 1976), 251-8.

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Kaempfer were often furnished with illustrations of social and ethnic types in retrospect for individuals represented the society as a whole. The nineteenth century was an age of transition in many ways and the beginning of multi-media production where traditional forms of representation encountered modern ones. A striking example of this is a work such as the important but unstudied illustrated ethnographic survey, Tashrīh al-aqvām (Concise Account of Peoples), written in Persian by the Eurasian Colonel James Skinner (1778-1841) in Hansi in 1825, probably with the assistance of a native secretary (munshi). Included among the various Hindu castes found in the region around Delhi are occupational groups and Hindu, Jain and Sikh religious mendicants, as well as Muslim religious figures.45 A transitional text that is located at a historical juncture when the grand world of the Mughals was giving way to newer forms of knowledge, this work retains aspects of Persian texts from an earlier period with a new, more scientific and objective approach. British patrons commissioned Persian works such as Ghulām Yahyā’s Kitāb-i tasāvīr,46 illustrated texts that included detailed information on castes and communities, as well as technical knowledge about tools used in different professions such as in an illustrated manuscript about the crafts of Kashmir in the British Museum. Starting in the nineteenth century, the new kind of illustrated ethnographic works had no accompanying text, but the aesthetics of representation were embedded in the object of the gaze of the artist and the long history of focusing on certain social types that was part of the memory of people. In the grand photography projects that document the full range of Indian society during the colonial period, such as John Forbes Watson and John Kaye’s, The People of India (1868-75), religious groups are prominent. There may have been sinister undertones behind such projects, but their connections to earlier indigenous forms of representation and classification, although not conspicuous any longer offer interesting possibilities of comparison. Visual images of the peoples of the world or a city were produced for commercial as well as aesthetic purposes, and postcards 45  See Cedric Dover, “The Cultural Significance of Col. James Skinner,” The Calcutta Review 134/i (Jan. 1955): 17-23; also see Jeremiah P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India (London: British Library, 1982), 148, 152. In addition to the different castes of the Hindus, this work also has a separate section on the different Hindu holy men including jogis. A section on Muslim families and tribes includes fakirs. 46   The manuscript is reproduced and translated by Mehr Afshan Farooqi, Crafting Traditions: Documenting Trades & Crafts in Early Nineteenth Century North India (New Delhi: IGNCA, 2005).

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from India and the Middle East gave their recipients in Europe snippets of street life.47 Regarding the overall purpose of pictures of social types starting from the late sixteenth century and later, even after the demise of Persianate culture in India in the nineteenth century, one can recall Yarshater’s pioneering study on the points of commonality in Persian poetry and painting, “This constant striving to portray the type, this tendency to stylize and generalize individual forms, this conspicuous reluctance to give credit to the temporal or impart life to the specific, all may be interpreted … as a reflection of … a positive leaning to discover, define and record the lasting, the imperishable and the “typical” and to portray the abiding features and the formal essence of things.”48 Thus, given the differences in regional idioms in Mughal and postMughal Indo-Muslim centers of artistic production, and new motivations behind artistic patronage in the colonial period, the impulse to represent social types, especially holy men who continue to be the object of a collective gaze, remained a strong feature of early modern Indo-Muslim culture. Bibliography Abū al-Fazl, The Ain-i-Akbari. Tr. H.S. Jarrett, Delhi: Taj, 1989. Abidi, S.A.H., “The Story of Hir and Ranjha in Indo-Persian Literature,” Professor Birinchi Kumar Barua Commemoration Volume, edited by Maheshwar Neog and Mukunda Madhava Sharma (Gauhati: All India Oriental Conference, 1966), 23-31. Brand, Michael and Glenn D. Lowry, Akbar’s India: Art from the Mughal City of Victory, New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1985. Briggs, George Weston, Gorakhnāth and the Kānphata Yogīs. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973. de Bruijn, “Beloved,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), IV, 128-9. Dover, Cedric, “The Cultural Significance of Col. James Skinner,” The Calcutta Review 134/i (Jan. 1955): 17-23. Dundas, Paul, History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect (London: Routledge, 2007. Ernst, Carl W., “Accounts of Yogis in Arabic and Persian Historical and Travel Texts,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 33 (2007): 409-26.

47   For the role of picture postcards in the colonial period, see Saloni Mathur, “Collecting Colonial Postcards: Gender and the Visual Archive,” India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 109-32. 48   “Some Common Characteristics of Persian Poetry and Art,” 65.

social groups in mughal art and literature

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al-Fārābī, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abū Nasr al-Fārābī’s Mabādiʿ ārāʿ ahl al-madīna al-fādila, a revised text with introduction, translation and commentary, tr. and ed. by Richard Walzer, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Farooqi, Mehr Afshan, Crafting Traditions: Documenting Trades & Crafts in Early Nineteenth Century North India, New Delhi: IGNCA, 2005. Gaborieau, Marc, “Muslim Saints, Faquirs and Pilgrims in 1831 according to Garcin de Tassy,” Perspectives of Mutual Encounters in South Asian History, 1760-1860, ed. Jamal Malik, Leiden: Brill, 2000, 130-156. Grant, Carl A., and Gloria Ladson-Billings, eds., Dictionary of Multicultural Educa­ tion, Phoenix: Oryx, 1997. Gray, Basil, Persian and Mughal Art, London: Colnaghi, 1976. Goswamy, B.N and Caron Smith, Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting, San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art, 2005. Gulchīn-Ma ‘ānī, Ahmad, Shahrāshūb dar shi ‘ir-i Fārsī, 2nd ed., Tehran: Rivāyat, 1380/2001. Hutton, Deborah, Art of the Court of Bijapur, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Kessler, Rochelle, “In the Company of the Enlightened: Portraits of Mughal Rulers and Holy Men,” Studies in Islamic and Later Indian Art from the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 2002, 17-41. Koch, Ebba, “Introduction,” Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology: Collected Essays, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Losty, Jeremiah P., The Art of the Book in India, London: British Library, 1982. Masʿūd-i Saʿd-i Salmān, Dīvān-i Masʿūd-i Saʿd Salmān, ed. Mahdi Nūriyān, Isfahan: Kamāl, 1985. Mathur, Saloni, India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Melikian-Chirvani, Assadullah Souren, Le Chant du monde: L’art de l’Iran safavide, 1501-1736, Paris: Louvre, 2007. Moosvi, Shireen, “The Mughal Encounter with Vedanta: Recovering the Biography of 'Jadrup',” Social Scientist, Vol. 30, No. 7/8 (2002), 13-23. Mutamad Khan, Iqbālnāma-yi Jahāngīrī, eds. Abdul Hay and Ahmad Ali, Calcutta, 1865. Okada, Amina, Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court, tr. Deke Dussinberre, New York: Abrams, 1992. Pinch, William, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 2006. Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas, Religious and Intellectual History of the Muslims in Akbar’s Reign, with special reference to Abu’l Fazl (1556-1605), Delhi: Munshiram Mano­ harlal, 1975. Sharma, Sunil, “Generic Innovation in Sayfî Bukhârâî’s Shahrâshûb Ghazals,” Ghazal as a Genre of World Literature: The Ottoman Ghazal in Its Historical Context, Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 2006, 14149. Sharma, Sunil, “ʿIf There Is a Paradise on Earth, It is Hereʾ: Urban Ethnography in Indo-Persian Poetic and Historical Texts,” Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500-1800, edited by Sheldon Pollock, Durham: Duke University Press, 2011, 240-56. Sharma, Sunil, “The City of Beauties in the Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. XXIV, no. 2 (2004): 73-81.

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Smith, Walter, “Hindu Ascetics in Mughal Painting under Akbar,” Oriental Art 27, 1 (1981): 67-75. Sujān Rāʾi, The Khulasatu-t-Tawarikh, ed. M. Zafar Hasan, Delhi, 1918. Wright, Elaine, Muraqqaʿ, Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Alexandria, Va: University Press of New England, 2008. Tandan, Raj Kumar, Indian Miniature Painting, 16th through 19th Centuries, Banglore: Natesan, 1982. White, David Gordon. Sinister Yogis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Yarshater, Ehsan, “Some Common Characteristics of Persian Poetry and Art,” Studia Islamica 16 (1962): 61-71.

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 37

“Maid killing a snake” and “Dervish receiving a visitor”: A Re-examination of Bijapuri masterpieces through the lens of the Lucknow copy Keelan Overton Despite significant temporal and geographical distances between ‘Adil Shahi Bijapuri (1490-1686) and Nawabi Lucknow (1732-1857), ­scholarship of the last two decades has increasingly acknowledged important correlations between the two courts. In her pioneering 2006 publication, for example, Deborah Hutton outlined the following religious, literary, and aesthetic overlaps between Bijapuri and Lucknow: the flourishing of Shiʿi Islam, the popularity of Urdu literature, and the production of yogini imagery.1 This paper introduces an additional parallel between the two cities: the legacy of paintings produced during the reign of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II (r. 1580-1627) within the ateliers and collecting circles of eighteenth century Awadh.2 In doing so, I propose a more fluid approach to the study of Indo-Persian painting and seek to establish a bridge between painting of the high Mughal period (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and that of the late Mughal period (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). After offering a brief introduction to the collecting of Ibrahim-era painting in Lucknow, this paper focuses on two case studies involving Bijapuri originals and their respective Lucknow copies. While a central goal is to clarify differences between originals and copies, I also investigate Ibrahim-era masterpieces as windows into a variety of cultural syntheses that are too often positioned as polar opposites. The paintings in question not only problematize rigid art historical taxonomies between Deccani and Mughal painting, they also blur sectarian and religious divisions (Shiʿi versus Sunni, Hindu versus Muslim) while underscoring European inspirations for Indo-Persian 1   Deborah Hutton, Art of the Court of Bijapur (Bloomington & Indianapolis, 2006), p. 84, pp. 94-95 (hitherto cited as Hutton 2006). 2   For a recent exhibition devoted to Lucknow, see Stephen Markel with ­Tushara Bindu Gude, India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow (Los Angeles, 2010).

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painting. As such, they are compelling sites of Indo-Muslim cultures in transition and transformation. In terms of the paintings themselves, the strongest links between Bijapuri and Lucknow can be found in a number of albums assembled by and for British officials stationed in Lucknow during the mid-tolate eighteenth century. One of these administrators, Richard Johnson (1753-1807), served as Head Assistant to the British Resident at Lucknow between 1780 and 1782, and his albums are today preserved in the British Library. The most important Bijapuri original in John­ son’s collection is “Mullah,” a portrait of a religious dignitary by the so-called “Bodleian Painter,” whose well-known masterpiece—“Der­ vish receiving a visitor”—is housed in the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library.3 The most significant Lucknow copy of a Bijapuri original in Johnson’s collection is a painting by Mir Kalan Khan that is widely known as “A princess watching a maid killing a snake,” or simply “Maid killing a snake.”4 In the first case study of this paper, I will consider Mir Kalan Khan’s copy in relation to two ostensibly contemporary versions of the same painting in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. The largest corpus of imagery pertaining to both Bijapuri and Lucknow is found in nearly two dozen albums preserved in the Museum of Islamic Art (Museum für Islamische Kunst) in Berlin. Eight of these albums were assembled by the Scottish officer Captain Archibald Swinton (1731-1804).5 The rest were compiled by the SwissFrench mercenary and engineer, Colonel Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier 3   I have argued elsewhere that the artist identified by Mark Zebrowski as “The Bodleian Painter” was in fact the Bijapuri painter ‘Ali Riza, who signed several known works. See Keelan Overton, “ ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter),” in Masters of Indian Painting I: 1100-1650, Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, B. N. Goswmany (eds.) (Zurich, 2011), 375-390. This essay reproduces all thirteen of the paintings that I have attributed to ‘Ali Riza/The Bodleian Painter. For “Mullah,” see fig. 9; for “Dervish receiving a visitor,” see fig. 1. Throughout this essay, I refer to the Bodleian Painter as such, because this is his most common designation. For Zebrowski’s analysis of the artist, see Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting (London, 1983), pp. 78-91 (hitherto cited as Zebrowski 1983). 4  See, for example, Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library (London, 1981), no. 239, pp. 137-138, color illustration plate 10 and Zebrowski 1983, fig. 66, p. 88. “Maid killing a snake” was most recently on view in the Lucknow exhibition. See Markel, India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow, no. 133, p. 39. 5   For further details on Swinton’s collection, see Lucian Harris, “Archibald Swinton: A New Source for Albums of Indian Miniatures in William Beckford’s Collection,” The Burlington Magazine 143, no. 1179 (June 2001), pp. 360-366.

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 39 (1741-95).6 Both Swinton and Polier acquired famous Ibrahim-era originals, including “The Shah of the Deccan having a siesta,” “Yogini playing a tambur,” and “Ascetic visited by a yogini.”7 Polier also commissioned Lucknow artists to create copies of Bijapuri originals, the most important of which is Mihr Chand’s version of the aforementioned “Dervish receiving a visitor” (Bodleian Library). This original and Mihr Chand’s copy constitute the second case study of this paper. It remains unclear how exactly early seventeenth century Bijapuri paintings moved northward to Lucknow and were subsequently assembled into the eighteenth century albums of Johnson, Polier, and Swinton. Many were likely acquired by the Mughals during their various raids in the Deccan during the seventeenth century.8 We can assume that they were then transported from Delhi to Lucknow upon or soon after Nadir Shah’s 1739 invasion, perhaps via the hands of artists formerly associated with Muhammad Shah (r. 1719-48).9 One of these artists, Mir Kalan Khan (fl. c. 1730-70), likely migrated from Delhi to Lucknow in c. 1755.10 Although a number of Mir Kalan Khan’s paintings are preserved in collections across the globe, this paper is solely concerned with his “Maid killing a snake” (British 6   For a study devoted to Polier, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “The Career of Colonel Polier and Late Eighteenth-Century Orientalism,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 10, 1 (2000), pp. 43-60. 7   For “The Shah of the Deccan having a siesta” (Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, I. 4595, fol. 36), see Almut von Gladiss and Claus-Peter Haase, The Radiance of Islamic Art: Masterpieces from the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin (Berlin, 2008), p. 49. For “Yogini playing a tambur” (Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, I. 4591, fol. 13a), see Hutton 2006, fig. 3.6. For “Ascetic visited by a yogini” (Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, J. 4596, fol. 4), see Zebrowski 1983, plate xiv. 8  Several important Ibrahim-era paintings were looted from ‘Adil Shahi-controlled fortresses during the Mughal invasions of the late seventeenth century and subsequently entered collections in Rajasthan. Consider, for example, “Ibrahim in Procession” (private collection), reproduced in Zebrowski 1983, fig. 50. An inscription on the painting’s reverse notes that it was taken from the Adoni fortress by Raja Anup Singh (r. 1669-98) in 1691 and subsequently incorporated into Bikaner’s royal library. For this inscription, see Robert Skelton, “Documents for the study of paintings at Bijapuri in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,” Arts Asiatiques 2 (1958), p. 102 (hereafter cited as Skelton 1958) and also Zebrowski 1983, p. 76. For further information on the Bikaner military campaigns in the Deccan on behalf of the Mughals, and hence visual parallels between Bijapuri and Bikaner painting, see Catherine Glynn, “Bijapuri Themes in Bikaner Painting,” in Andrew Topsfield (ed.), Court Painting in Rajasthan (Mumbai, 2000), pp. 65-77. 9   For this hypothesis, see Linda York Leach, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art: Volume VIII: Paintings from India (London, 1998), p. 166. 10   For a recent essay devoted to Mir Kalan Khan, see Terence McInerney, “Mir Kalan Khan,” in Masters of Indian Painting II: 1650-1900, 607-622.

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Library), which depicts a royal lady attended by three women, one of whom bends down to pierce a snake with a staff (b/w 3.1). When Toby Falk and Mildred Archer published this work in their 1981 catalog of Indian paintings in the India Office Library, they concluded: This is a copy made by Mir Kalan Khan from a Bijapuri original of c. 1620. The subject is not identified, but could be an illustration of a court incident where the princess narrowly escaped snakebite. The whereabouts of the Bijapuri original is unknown, but several Lucknow versions exist, two of which are in the Leningrad Albums.11

Almost two decades later, Jeremiah Losty and Linda Leach repeated a similar argument. They proposed: Here Mir Kalan Khan takes as his starting point a Bijapuri picture … Whether this is an actual copy of a Bijapuri painting, as has often been claimed, or a recreation of the Bijapuri style … is open to question … Other contemporary versions of this painting exist, two of which are in the St. Petersburg albums.12

The two St. Petersburg (Leningrad) paintings in question are mirror images preserved side by side (fols. 69v and 70r) in the National Library of Russia’s Dorn 489 album, which houses innumerable masterpieces of Persian and Indian painting (Color Plates 3.1-3.2). When the snake paintings were first published in a German text of 1925, and subsequently a Russian publication of 1971, they were attributed to the seventeenth century.13 The more recent conclusions of Falk and Archer and Losty and Leach, which span nearly two decades, therefore beg two important questions. First, do we agree with the prevailing consensus, at least in English scholarship, that the St. Petersburg paintings are indeed Lucknow copies? Second, is Mir Kalan Khan’s painting an exact replica of a Bijapuri composition (“an actual copy,” per Losty and Leach), or did the artist excerpt individual elements from extant Bijapuri paintings and arrange them into his own new and fanciful composition (“a recreation,” per Losty and Leach)? In 11   Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, p. 137. Italics mine. 12   Jeremiah Losty and Linda York Leach, Mughal Paintings from the British Library (London, 1998), no. 30. Italics mine. 13   Heinrich Glück and Ernst Diez, Die Kunst des Islam (Berlin, 1925), no. 521 (fol. 70r, black and white reproduction) and 595 (text) and T.V. Grek, Indiiskie minia­tiury XVI-XVII vv [Indian Miniatures of the 16th and 17th centuries] (Moscow, 1971), plate 63 (fol. 69v, XVII B., color reproduction), plate 64 [fol. 70r, XVII B., black and white reproduction], and 48-49 (text).

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 41 order to answer these questions, it is necessary to examine the album context of the St. Petersburg pair (Dorn 489), compare the quality of the three snake paintings in question (St. Petersburg pair and London Mir Kalan Khan), analyze the iconography and sources of the snake painting, and contextualize it in relation to contemporary Bijapuri imagery. The current assumption that the two St. Petersburg paintings are products of circa 1770 Lucknow is refuted by both the provenance of Dorn 489 and firsthand examination of the images themselves. According to curators in St. Petersburg, it is likely that the Indian paintings preserved in the album were taken out of India upon Nadir Shah’s sack of Delhi in 1739. Once in Iran, they were combined with a handful of Persian paintings to form the codex known today as Dorn 489, which soon made its way to Russia.14 Based on this presumed provenance, the terminus ante quem for any Indian painting in Dorn 489 must be 1739. Indeed, the latest Mir Kalan Khan painting in the album, a festive depiction of women, is dated 1734-35, hence a decade before his Lucknow period of c. 1748 onwards.15 Firsthand examination of the St. Petersburg pair suggests that the painting on the right (fol. 69v) is in fact the supposedly lost Bijapuri original while that on the left (fol. 70r) is an accomplished seventeenth century copy. The paintings are virtually identical, save for several important details that confirm that fol. 69v is earlier than fol. 70r. The most conspicuous difference is a Persian inscription found in fol. 69v at the very top of the architectural backdrop. This inscription reads ustād-i ṣaḥib-i salāmat (Master of the Lord of Well-Being) and is not repeated in fol. 70r. In terms of condition, fol. 69v has also suffered far more damage than fol. 70r, particularly in the green snake, pair of ducks, and stone wall (b/w 3.2-3.3). Despite these differences in condition, the copy (fol. 70r) retains a technical proficiency comparable to the original (fol. 69v), especially in the stippled handling of the stone wall and the delicate outlining of green leaves in gold. Its “copy” status is therefore only revealed by its missing inscription and all too perfect condition (consider, for example, the bright green of the tree trunk). 14   Personal correspondence with Dr. Olga Vasilyeva, to whom I am grateful for sharing her thoughts on the history of Dorn 489. 15   For a black and white reproduction of this painting, see Grek, Indiiskie miniatiury, plate 42.

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At least three technical aspects of fol. 69v further support its attribution as an Ibrahim-era painting of c. 1600, and more specifically, an original by the so-called Bodleian Painter. First, its brown background has suffered considerable oxidation and spotting, especially in the area above the central lady and her two upright attendants. A very similar pattern of degradation can be seen in several other paintings by the Bodleian Painter, including “Stout Courtier” (British Museum) and “Mullah” (British Library).16 Second, the painting’s technical precision is in keeping with the Bodleian Painter’s masterful hand. Among the most subtle details are the delicate grains in the wood railing, the rippling water around the pattering feet of the ducks, and the stone wall stippled in gray, blue and purple. Third, the Bodleian Painter’s hallmark technique of shading is visible throughout, especially in the contours of the white building.17 Returning now to the Mir Kalan Khan Lucknow copy in the British Library (see b/w 3.1), when one compares this painting to the St. Petersburg pair, significant differences in content and quality become apparent. Perhaps most conspicuously, Mir Kalan Khan’s palette lacks the vibrancy of the St. Petersburg pair, as exemplified by the light ­purple curtain in the arch.18 Furthermore, as accomplished an artist he could have been, Mir Kalan Khan entirely ignored elements of the Bijapuri original and sloppily rendered others. Most obviously, the blue and yellow chevron pattern enclosing the arch is absent, and various details around the snake-killing maid’s feet are haphazard. The blue flowers lack clarity, the green leaves are not outlined in gold, the paired ducks are stagnant (their feet do not patter in rippling water), the stone wall lacks texture, and the trim of the woman’s dress is now predominantly blue with only careless hints of gold (compare to b/w 3.2-3.3).19 The discussion above has argued that three paintings of “Maid killing a snake”—all previously considered to be “Lucknow versions”— 16   For reproductions of these two paintings, see Overton, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter),” figs. 8-9. 17   For further elaboration on the Bodleian Painter’s trademark styles and techniques, see Overton, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter).” 18   For a color reproduction of the Mir Kalan Khan, see McInerney, “Mir Kalan Khan,” fig. 7. 19   Although this discussion of Mir Kalan Khan’s “Maid killing a snake” is critical, many paintings by the artist are quite accomplished. For one example (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, AC1997.30.1), see Markel, India’s Fabled City, no. 15, p. 166 (also McInerney, fig. 15).

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 43 not only constitute an Ibrahim-era original versus later copies, but more specifically, an Ibrahim-era original (Dorn 489, fol. 69v; see Color Plate 3.1), a proficient seventeenth century copy (Dorn 489, fol. 70r; see Color Plate 3.2), and a rather mediocre eighteenth century copy by Mir Kalan Khan (British Library; see b/w 3.1).20 With these attributions in mind, it is now appropriate to consider the painting’s iconography and sources. The encounter between the snake-killing maid and the royal lady takes place in front of an architectural backdrop consisting of a multistoried white building and a wall composed of basalt blocks. With its projecting cornices, ogee arches topped with trefoils, and wood lunettes and doors, the building resembles extant Ibrahim-era palaces, such as the gateway of the Mihtar-i Mahal.21 Likewise, the stone wall accented with a trefoil pattern on its upper edge is reminiscent of Ibrahim-era platforms and sarcophagi, such as those found throughout the Ibrahim Rauza (1622-33), the ruler’s tomb complex.22 This degree of architectural realism may at first seem anomalous, especially to those more familiar with Bijapuri paintings deemed “fantastic,” “poetic,” and “paradisical,” such as the well-known “Yogini” (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin).23 As will be discussed in the paragraphs to follow, however, “Maid killing a snake” belongs to an alternative— albeit no less important—strand of Ibrahim-era painting that   Mir Kalan Khan’s experimentation with “Maid killing a snake” did not end with his British Library copy. He, or members of his school, excerpted figures from the image and inserted them into several novel compositions. In one example, “A maid on the bank of a river kills a snake” (Chester Beatty Library, 63.16), three figures were drawn from the Bijapuri original: the queen, the attendant raising her scarf, and the maid killing the snake. For a reproduction, see Linda York Leach, Mughal and other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, volume 2 (London, 1995), 6.344, p. 700. In a second, “A lady visiting yoginis at night” (British Library, Johnson Album 15, no. 10), the queen and the attendant raising her scarf are now shown visiting a group of yoginis. For a reproduction, see Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, no. 245i, p. 437. A third version of “Maid killing a snake,” in which the elderly attendant has been omitted, is preserved in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1972-160-2); see ARTstor for a reproduction. A fourth includes an additional woman with a young child observing the scene from the arch. For a reproduction, see Sotheby’s, “Western, Oriental and Hebrew Manuscripts and Miniatures,” 10 July 1968, lot 80. The considerable legacy of this particular Bijapuri original within Lucknow workshops deserves further consideration. 21   For an architectural rendering of this building, see Hutton 2006, fig. 4.16. 22   For this complex, see Hutton 2006, pp. 121-130. 23   For a reproduction of “Yogini,” see Hutton 2006, plate 16. See also Zebrowski 1983, plate xii. For the widespread use of these adjectives to describe Ibrahim-era painting, see, for example, Zebrowski 1983, 92-95. 20

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approached setting, whether landscape and/or architecture, through a quasi-documentary and semi-naturalistic lens. While the setting of “Maid killing a snake” is immediately recognizable to students of Bijapuri architecture, the subject matter of three women watching a maid killing a snake is less familiar. The women are clearly members of the royal household, as suggested by their abundant jewelry. All of them wear a distinct form of bejeweled adornment specifically associated with Ibrahim’s reign: a large, jewelencrusted, necklace pendant known as an urbasī.24 The woman in the center of the composition is emphasized by her large size and gold cloths. She is clearly an important Bijapuri figure, perhaps a princess or queen. Although Falk and Archer suggested that the depiction of a maid killing a snake may have reflected an actual event in Bijapuri’s history (see page 40), the maid’s enigmatic gesture was in fact a product of workshop circumstances; specifically, the availability and subsequent influence of European prints. As first brought to my attention by Adel Adamova, the maid’s pose was borrowed from an engraving by Raphael Sadeler I (c. 1560-1628/32) after a design by Marten de Vos (1532-1603), which was in turn inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s (14711528) “Dolor.”25 The left foreground of Sadeler’s print depicts a muscular woman burying a number of items in the ground. Her body is bent at the waist in an “L” form, and she looks to her left towards a man, St. Jerome, who is seated in a wicker chair with a dog at his feet. This idiosyncratic pose directly inspired that of the snake-killing maid in “Maid killing a snake.” However, instead of shoveling dirt, the Indian maid pierces a snake, and instead of gazing towards St. Jerome, she looks at her approaching mistress. The Sadeler print firmly situates “Maid killing a snake” in the early seventeenth century, for it also inspired a second painting with concrete links to Ibrahim’s Bijapuri. It is well-known that the saint in “St. Jerome representing Melancholy” (Museum of Islamic Art, Doha) 24   For a further discussion of the urbasī, including its description in contemporary textual sources, see Keelan Overton, “Vida de Jacques de Coutre: A Flemish account of Bijapuri visual culture in the shadow of Mughal felicity,” in The Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early ­Modern Era, Laura Parodi (ed.) (London, forthcoming 2011). 25   Personal communication, St. Petersburg (June 2008). I am grateful to Dr. Adamova for allowing me to publish her astute observation. For a reproduction of Sadeler’s “Dolor,” see Overton, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter),” fig. 4 and Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art and Culture, 1300-1900 (New York, 1985), p. 225.

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 45 was excerpted from the right side of Sadeler’s above-described engraving.26 The Doha painting bears a Mughal ascription noting that it was presented to Jahangir at Ajmer in 1615 and was the work of Farrukh Beg.27 After entering Akbar’s service in the late sixteenth century and subsequently working on renowned manuscripts such as the Akbarnāma, Farrukh Beg migrated to Bijapuri and was employed by Ibrahim for over a decade, c. 1595-1609. He then returned to the Mughal court, now under the rule of Jahangir, where it is widely assumed that he painted the Doha image in the final years of his life, c. 1615, when he was seventy years old. When considered in tandem, “Maid killing a snake” and “St. Jerome representing Melancholy” blur rigid art historical divisions between Bijapuri and Mughal painting. In addition to being initially inspired by the same print (Sadeler’s “Dolor”), they also share several compositional elements that were not present in—and hence dictated by—the European engraving. The most prominent parallels are the delicately stippled basalt wall, the framing of the central protagonists by a large tree, and the placement of floral clusters and animals in the immediate foreground. These similarities suggest that a significant degree of interaction—one distinct from the Sadeler print’s realm of influence— occurred between Farrukh Beg and the Bodleian Painter.28 As such, “St. Jerome representing Melancholy” should not be exclusively categorized as a Mughal painting, but rather as an intriguing example of Mughal-Bijapuri synthesis. In addition to stimulating a re-examination of “St. Jerome representing Melancholy,” “Maid killing a snake” furthers understanding 26   For the most recent publication of “St. Jerome representing Melancholy,” see Milo Cleveland Beach, “Farrukh Beg,” in Masters of Indian Painting I, fig. 10, p. 199. See also Philip Jodidio, Museum of Islamic Art: Doha, Qatar (Munich, 2008), no. 30, pp. 162-163 and Welch, India: Art and Culture, cat. no. 147, pp. 221-225. I am grateful to Oliver Watson and Franak Hilloowala for facilitating my study of this painting in October 2009. 27   For an analysis of this inscription, see Ziyaud-Din A. Desai, “Studies in Indian Art and Culture: Some Avoidable Presumptions and Speculative Theories,” Marg 51/1 (Sep. 1999), p. 77. For canonical studies devoted to Farrukh Beg, see, among others, Robert Skelton, “The Mughal artist Farrokh Beg,” Ars Orientalis 2 (1957), pp. 393-411 and John Seyller, “Farrukh Beg in the Deccan,” Artibus Asiae 55/3-4 (1995), pp. 319-341. For my recent examination of this artist, who was also known as Farrukh Husayn, see Chapter Four of my dissertation, “A Collector and His Portrait: Book Arts and Painting for Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II of Bijapuri (r. 1580-1627)” (University of California, Los Angeles, May 2011). 28   For my full elaboration of the relationship between the two paintings, and their respective artists, see Overton, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter),” and Overton, “A Collector and His Portrait,” Chapter 5.3.

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of an understudied portrait of Ibrahim. When “Maid killing a snake” and “Ibrahim feeding a hawk” (Earl of Harrowby Collection, Sandon Hall) are viewed in tandem, numerous compositional similarities are revealed (Color plate 3.3 and b/w 3.4).29 Both feature a central large figure (princess-queen and Ibrahim) surrounded by a total of three attendants, most of whom wear large urbasi pendants and longer chains of gold discs encircled by pearls. Each painting also includes paired birds in an upper corner, a large bird next to the central figure (parrot or hawk), paired swimming ducks in the foreground, and a strong horizontal element that is richly textured (basalt wall and wood railing). Finally, the palettes of the two images are notably vibrant (consider the bright oranges and blues), and both are characterized by a profusion of gold pigment, particularly in the dress of the main figures. The strongest link between the two paintings rests in their respective inscriptions. As mentioned previously, the St. Petersburg original of “Maid killing a snake” (see Color Plate 3.1) includes the inscription ustād-i ṣaḥib-i salāmat (Master of the Lord of Salvation). This exact inscription is also rendered in the large banner that looms before Ibrahim in the Harrowby portrait. In this instance, the three word inscription does not read from right to left but is instead stacked in four registers that read from bottom to top. Although the diminutive inscription in the St. Petersburg original could initially be interpreted as the artist’s signature (a “master” in the service of the “Lord of Salvation”—Ibrahim), the prominent position of this phrase over Ibrahim’s head in the Harrowby painting suggests that it was perhaps a reference to the ruler himself as a master physician (ustād) capable of bestowing good health, or well-being, upon others (ṣaḥib-i salāmat).30 While the inscription’s exact meaning remains to be clarified, it nonetheless serves as an irrefutable link between the St. Petersburg and Harrowby paintings. The poor condition of the Harrowby painting has led most scholars to position it as a copy of an early seventeenth century Bijapuri composition, rather than an original. The work has been attributed to both seventeenth century Golconda and mid-eighteenth century Lucknow; 29   I am grateful to the Earl and Countess of Harrowby, The Dowager Countess of Harrowby, and the staff of Sandon Hall for accommodating my study of this painting in July 2009. 30   This interpretation was kindly provided by Wheeler Thackston.

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 47 specifically, the artist Mir Kalan Khan.31 As observed by Robert Skel­ ton in his canonical article of 1958, Ibrahim’s face is rather awkward.32 His facial hair is an opaque black, his skin tone is a pasty white, and the outer contour of his face is noticeably flat. Firsthand inspection of this passage reveals, however, that it—and indeed all of the faces in the painting—is the product of extensive and low-quality overpainting.33 Much of this unsightly “restoration” was likely prompted by damage resulting from the painting having been folded in half. The crease from this horizontal fold runs from the turban of the attendant on the far left, through the hawk’s head and Ibrahim’s neck, and ends on the far right in the turban of the man holding the green cloth (Color Plate 3.4). The majority of the painting’s background has also been overpainted in an opaque dark brown. In some instances, this overpainting has obscured the original pigment, as is evident in the outer contour of Ibrahim’s flattened face, his raised right hand, and the upper part of the green cloth fanning him (see Color Plate 3.4). For viewers today, this uniformly matte background is disconcerting, especially when compared to the degraded surfaces of most contemporary Bijapuri paintings, such as the St. Petersburg original of “Maid killing a snake” (see Color Plate 3.1). Portions of the Harrowby painting’s original background are, however, discernable in the spaces between the posts of the wood fence. In these small interstices, which were likely too difficult to overpaint, an uneven light brown background is clearly visible (see Color Plate 3.4).

31   The Harrowby portrait was first published in 1958 by Robert Skelton, who attributed it to Mir Kalan Khan. See Skelton 1958, pp. 108-110 and fig. 4. Although I propose an alternative to Skelton’s eighteenth century attribution, he was the first to introduce this intriguing image and to underscore important parallels between it and the snake painting, including the important inscription. My findings are thus indebted to, and build upon, his visionary scholarship. The attribution to Mir Kalan Khan, c. 1750, was repeated in W. G. Archer, Indian Miniatures (Greenwich, 1960), plate 16. Several decades later, Zebrowski attributed the work to “Golconda (?), second half seventeenth century (?), after a lost Bijapuri original, c. 1610-20.” See Zebrowski 1983, pp. 88-91 and fig. 67. 32  Skelton 1958, pp. 108-109. 33   The face of the attendant behind Ibrahim—the one who fans him with a green cloth—has been significantly “restored” with a careless brown line, which is most visible in his eyebrows, eyelids, and the left edge of his neck. A similar brown line has wreaked havoc on the eyes of the attendant presenting the hawk, resulting in a “double-eyebrow” look. The face of the figure holding the standard on the far left is the most intact of the four.

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Like the St. Petersburg original of “Maid killing a snake,” the Harrowby painting can also be attributed as an early seventeenth century work by the Bodleian Painter. At least three technical aspects of the image support this argument. First, the painting includes systematic underdrawing, which was a hallmark technique of the Bodleian Painter.34 In the robes of the figures, this underdrawing consists of sharp vertical lines, which lend a degree of texture and three-dimensionality to the costumes. In areas where the pigment has flaked off (see Ibrahim’s left arm), these lines remain visible. Second, the surface of the Harrowby painting was prepared with a reddish-brown ground. This ground is also visible in areas of pigment loss, such as the brown background and foliage just above Ibrahim’s head (see Color Plate 3.4). While further research remains to be done on this technical matter, I have hitherto only detected this curious reddish-brown ground in a handful of Bijapuri paintings, including the Bodleian Painter’s masterpiece, “Dervish receiving a visitor,” where it is discernible throughout the damaged composition (b/w 3.5). Third, the gold and silver pigments used throughout the composition have been brilliantly applied and recall the Bodleian Painter’s confirmed masterpieces, such as “Stout Courtier” (British Museum). Ibrahim’s gold shawl, which is adorned with large silver blossoms, is one of the most skillful passages of dress in Ibrahim-era painting. Delicate floral arabesques also decorate the green border of the banner, Ibrahim’s blue shoes, and the red velvet book cover held by the attendant behind the ruler. All of these details testify to an artist of the highest caliber, one on par with the Bodleian Painter. Ultimately, despite large areas of overpainting, the Harrowby painting is an accomplished original by the Bodleian Painter. The most successful areas of the painting are the banner (notice its refined calligraphy and many gold elements), the large hawk, the pattering ducks, the gold cloths worn by most of the figures, the textured wood railing, and the colorful carpet. When the Harrowby painting is considered in light of the St. Petersburg original of “Maid killing a snake” (see Color Plate 3.1), it becomes clear that the latter is far more than simply a depiction of a maid killing a snake. Rather, it is a rare portrait of Ibrahim’s female counterpart and was likely meant to be read as a companion piece, or pendant, to “Ibrahim feeding a hawk.” As such, I   For an elaboration of this argument, see Overton, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter).” 34

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 49 propose a new title for the St. Petersburg original: “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake.” This title lends greater context and specificity to a painting whose stylistic and compositional complexities will continue to emerge with sustained scholarship. The second case study of this paper centers on an image that has already been referenced several times, the Bodleian Library’s “Dervish receiving a visitor” (see b/w 3.5). Despite its large size, extensive use of gold, and intriguing subject matter, this painting has not been the subject of recent in-depth analysis.35 At least two realities partially explain this lacuna. First, as alluded to above, the painting is in poor condition, and large areas of its composition are lost. Second, its subject matter is enigmatic, and fundamental issues of content, such as the identities of its two main characters, are ambiguous. The goal of this case study is therefore to resolve some of the enigmas surrounding the Bodleian painting. To accomplish this task, I propose a new methodology: the study of the Bodleian original in relation to its Lucknow copy by Mihr Chand (fl. 1759-86). The latter is preserved in one of the Berlin Polier albums, is a faithful copy, and is in excellent condition (b/w 3.6).36 It is therefore a valuable source, for it clarifies aspects of the original composition that are severely damaged or entirely lost. “Dervish receiving a visitor” takes places outdoors in a rustic shrine setting. The central compositional element is a rocky platform with steps leading to several flat terraces. A yellow hut is located to the right of the platform, and a group of four ‘alams are displayed on the left. Three of the ‘alams are inscribed, and the one on the far left reads “Imam Hasan, Imam Husayn.”37 These ‘alams, in conjunction with a 35   The lengthiest analysis of the painting can be found in Zebrowski 1983, pp. 77-81. For its most recent publication, see Andrew Topsfield, Paintings from Mughal India (Oxford, 2008), no. 21, p. 50. 36   Mihr Chand’s signature is visible in the lower left corner of the copy and reads ‘amal-i Mihr Chand pisar-i Ganga Ram (work of Mihr Chand, son of Ganga Ram). The painting’s lower border also includes an inscription reading “Hazrat Shah Murad,” which is presumably an attempt to identify the “dervish” but cannot be substantiated. The painting was most recently on view in the Lucknow exhibition; see Markel, India’s Fabled City, no. 117, p. 177. 37   The second ‘alam reads, Yā Allah, Yā Muḥammad, Yā ‘Alī (Oh God, Oh Muhammad, Oh ‘Ali). The ‘alam on the far right is inscribed with two of the ninetynine names of God: Yā Ghanī, Yā Mujīb (Oh you, God, who is rich [Self-Sufficient]; Oh you, God, who is answering [Responsive]). I am grateful to Abdullah Gouchani for clarifying the inscription on the ‘alam on the far right, some of which has been lost in the original. It is likely that Mihr Chand created his copy after this damage

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number of dark green banners and cloths, confirm the Islamic—and specifically Shiʿi—context of the scene. The painting includes a cast of seven characters. A man covered in ash introduces an elderly “visitor” draped in a white shawl to a “dervish” seated on one of the elevated terraces. Both “visitor” and “dervish” are scantily clad and resemble ascetics; the former has dreadlocks matted upon his head and burn marks on his arms, while the latter has similar burn marks, long fingernails, and lengthy tufts of hair hanging from his white beard. Four other figures surround this central group. In the left background, a shepherd pours water into a trough for a pair of oxen. In the foreground, an ash-covered devotee meditates, one with dreadlocks points to the “visitor,” and a third wears a blue hat. The face of the latter character is largely lost, but from Mihr Chand’s copy (see b/w 3.6), we see that he appears to be a European. In his 1983 analysis of the Bodleian painting, Mark Zebrowski compared the image to a modern textual account of a Muslim shrine in Pakistan.38 While the use of a modern description to advance understanding of a four-hundred-year-old painting may at first seem anachronistic, Zebrowski’s method was not without merit. Indeed, my analysis of the painting is largely informed by my own experiences at Bijapuri’s Sufi dargāhs, particularly that of Shahpur Hillock, a Chishti shrine located on a hill about a mile northwest of the city’s outer walls (b/w 3.7).39 The principal buildings in this rectangular shrine complex are two tombs consisting of an octagonal base topped with a dome. The smaller tomb, which likely dates to the early ­seventeenth century, preserves the bodies of Shah Miranji Shams al-ʿUshshaq (d. 1499) and Shah Burhan al-Din Janam (d. 1597) (see b/w 3.7, #3). The former Sufi received the Chishti khilāfat from a successor of Gesudaraz (d. 1422), the Deccan’s most revered Sufi saint.40 Both father and son were largely responsible for reviving Chishti had occurred, for the calligraphy on his ‘alam is largely illegible and suggests that he was unaware of how to interpret the prototype. For analyses of Deccani ‘alams, see Shehbaz H. Safrani, “Golconda Alums: Shimmering Standards,” in Golconda and Hyderabad, Shehbaz H. Safrani (ed.) (Bombay, 1992), pp. 81-94 and Mark Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India (London, 1997), pp. 321-333 (hitherto cited as Zebrowski 1997). 38   Zebrowski 1983, p. 80. 39   For further information on the development of the dargāh in Bijapuri, see Richard Eaton, Sufis of Bijapuri, 1300-1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton, 1978), pp. 168-169. 40   Ibid., p. 78.

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 51 Sufism in the Deccan and produced a large body of mystical writing in Deccani Urdu. As such, Richard Eaton classified the two as “literati” in his seminal study of Bijapuri Sufism.41 The larger and more adorned tomb is that of Amin al-Din Aʿlā (1597-1675), the son of Burhan al-Din Janam (b/w 3.8 and see b/w 3.7, #4). As documented in a lengthy inscription on its façade, this tomb was completed in 1088/1677-78, a few years after Amin al-Din’s death (Color Plate 3.5).42 In contrast to his father and grandfather, Amin al-Din was a heterodox “dervish” who gradually became the focus of a cult that considered him to be quasi-divine.43 Amin al-Din remains the focus of Chishti devotionalism at Shahpur Hillock today, and as such, the site is popularly known as the dargāh of Khwaja Amin al-Din. His tomb is whitewashed and painted on an annual basis on the occasion of his ʿurs (death anniversary). Contemporary visitors to Shahpur Hillock typically enter the shrine through a large gateway located on its outermost northeastern corner (see b/w 3.7, #1). Looking directly forward from this lower vantage point, one sees a number of steps, whitewashed walls composed of irregular rocks, trees growing out of flat patches of terrain, the white dome of the smaller tomb of Shah Miranji and Burhan al-Din Janam, a small gateway leading into the inner complex, and, of course, the stray goat here and there (Color Plate 3.6 and b/w 3.9). Turning to the right, one notices the white dome of the tomb of Amin al-Din (b/w 3.10). A very similar visual environment, albeit on a smaller scale, is captured in the Bodleian painting. The white form behind the dervish is clearly the top of a dome, the rocky platform consists of a number of steps and terraces, a large almond tree grows out of the top terrace, and a goat is visible in the immediate foreground. It is therefore plausible to imagine that, four hundred years ago, the artist of “Dervish receiving a visitor” desired to convey an actual Bijapuri hilltop shrine, perhaps even a secluded corner of Shahpur Hillock. If we presume that the Bodleian image dates to c. 1610-27, the shrine would have been far smaller and only included the tomb of Shah Miranji and   Ibid., Chapter Six, “Sufis as Literati.”   For an article devoted to this inscription, see M. Akbaruddin Siddiqi, “The Dakani Inscription on the Amin Dargah in Bijapur,” Epigraphia Indica, Arabic and Persian Supplement (1969), pp. 79-92. 43   Amin al-Din is discussed in Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, Chapter Nine, “Sufis as Dervishes.” 41 42

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Burhan al-Din Janam. As noted above, the second and larger tomb of Amin al-Din was not constructed until 1677-78. In addition to creating a topographically accurate setting—or at least one that read as such and was inspired by his immediate surroundings—the Bodleian Painter filled his scene with a number of vignettes that evoke daily life on the Deccan plateau. One of the most compelling details is the large tree at the top the platform. Its oval leaves, some of which are beginning to turn red, and its small clusters of fruit confirm it to be an Indian almond (Terminalia catappa), a ubiquitous tree throughout the region. The meticulous rendition of this known species is notable, especially since Deccani landscapes are typically described as otherworldly and botanically impossible. An equally revealing vignette is located on the far left edge of the composition. Since most of this portion is severely damaged in the original, it is useful to refer to Mihr Chand’s intact copy (see b/w 3.6). The latter reveals that the original did at one point include a monkey seated on a stand. With its white fur juxtaposed against a black face and ears, this monkey is immediately recognizable as the langur, yet another common feature throughout the Deccan. Immediately below the monkey, a man empties water from his leather satchel into a large trough, much to the delight of a pair of oxen with gold-tipped horns. Next to the trough, cone-shaped forms of what appear to be jaggery rest on a raised surface.44 Additional details in the painting specifically recall dargāh ritual. The grayish-blue ash forming a mound in the center of the composition was likely used to smear the bodies of two of the devotees. Similarly, we can imagine that the white circular forms next to the “dervish” were in fact weights employed in some sort of exercise ritual.45 Instead of rendering the weights from a side angle, the Bodleian Painter opted for a quasi-bird’s-eye view, thereby allowing a glimpse of their internal gripping bars. Finally, the four ‘alams would have been used during important ceremonies, such as the annual ʿAshura procession. Like the other details throughout the painting, the ‘alams 44   I am grateful to Professor Robert Brown for suggesting these forms to be jaggery. 45   For a relatively contemporary depiction of comparable weights in use, see B. N. Goswamy, Painted Visions: The Goenka Collection of Indian Paintings (New Delhi, 1999), no. 113, p. 144. The exact relationship between exercise and Bijapuri Sufism remains to be determined. Since exercise and religion were integrally related in Safavid Iran (consider the zūrkhāna; house of strength), we can assume that a comparable relationship may have existed in seventeenth century Bijapuri.

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 53 have been carefully rendered, from their diverse shapes and inscriptions to the green cloths billowing below them. A number of these ritualistic objects can be seen at Shahpur Hillock today. Basalt and granite weights are scattered throughout the shrine, and some have even been coated in white paint, thus providing “­living” parallels to those in the painting (b/w 3.11).46 The interior of the tomb of Amin al-Din also preserves a group of ‘alams similar to the four in the painting (Color Plate 3.7).47 They too are draped in green cloths, and several have comparable finials, roped borders, and small dragon heads. Considered together, these weights and ‘alams further underscore the realism of “Dervish receiving a visitor” while implying a compelling degree of continuity between the dargāhs of seventeenth century Bjiapur and those of today. With a greater understanding of the Bodleian painting’s setting— one that was likely inspired by a physical reality within Ibrahim’s Bijapuri—it is now fitting to consider the contentious question of who is being depicted. As early as 1983, Zebrowski acknowledged similarities between the appearance of the “visitor” and Ibrahim, yet the painting still retains the generic title of “Dervish receiving a visitor” (b/w 3.12).48 For those most familiar with portraits of the Bijapuri ruler as an attractive and youthful prince (consider “Ibrahim playing the tambur,” Náprstek Museum, Prague and “Ibrahim hawking,” Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg49), the argument in favor of Ibrahim may seem incongruous. It must be acknowledged, however, that these canonical portraits of the ruler probably did not capture his actual appearance. According to the Flemish jewel merchant, Jacques de Coutre, Ibrahim did not have the translucent complexion of the Prague and St. Petersburg paintings but was instead “a little dark in the face like a gypsy.”50 This darker skin color is evident in one   At the shrine today, many of these weights are used to hold down textiles; that is, as mīr-i farsh (slaves of the carpet). 47   I am grateful to the sajjāda nishīn of the shrine, Sayyid Shah Asadullah Husayni Chishti Jagirdar, for kindly removing several of the objects preserved in the tomb for my viewing (females are prohibited entrance). I am also indebted to Ameen Hullur for photographing the ‘alams in situ inside the tomb and for facilitating several memorable visits to the shrine. 48   Zebrowski 1983, p. 81. For its most recent publication, see Topsfield, Paintings from Mughal India, no. 21, p. 50. 49   For images of these two paintings, see Hutton 2006, plates 20-21. 50  Eddy Stols, Benjamín Teensma and Johan Verberckmoes, Jacques de Coutre: Andanzas asiáticas (Madrid, 1991), p. 298. This primary source is the subject of my forthcoming article, “Vida de Jacques de Coutre.” 46

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of the Bodleian Painter’s smallest and simplest portraits of the ruler, “Ibra­him walking” (San Diego Museum of Art), which also portrays him with a large and crooked nose at odds with the slim and idealized example in the Prague and St. Petersburg images.51 In the Bodleian painting, Ibrahim appears to have aged considerably; his beard is noticeably thin, and his closed eyes are surrounded by wrinkles. This is a ruler who spent the majority of his reign thwarting a ubiquitous Mughal threat and who ultimately witnessed the destruction of his beloved Nauraspur by Malik Ambar in 1624. This humble, elderly, and likely dejected Ibrahim is a far cry from the young, confident, and accomplished musician-ruler of the Prague and St. Petersburg portraits. Nonetheless, he is no less “real.” Additional evidence for the argument in favor of Ibrahim rests in a comparison of the Bodleian painting to yet another portrait by the Bodleian Painter, “Ibrahim holding instruments” (British Museum).52 As in the Prague example, the London portrait presents the ruler as an attractive and youthful musician. Ibrahim holds two instruments covered in fabric casings while a third is tucked into the upper fold of his robe. A similar visual trope appears in “Dervish receiving a visitor.” In this instance, two similarly elongated forms poke out of the fabric wrapped around Ibrahim’s stomach (see b/w 3.12). Given their varied shapes (pointed and curved), it is unlikely that they belong to a single item, such as a dagger. Rather, they may be the opposite ends of two separate percussion instruments, like the one tucked into Ibrahim’s robe in “Ibrahim holding instruments.” In a painting that emphasizes verisimilitude, our strongest clue to Ibrahim’s identity may rest in this small detail, which is likely a discrete allusion to his musical talents, the most consistent element of his iconography. Turning now to the identity of the “dervish,” if we agree that he is indeed a Sufi Muslim53, he would have likely belonged to one of the 51   For a reproduction of “Ibrahim walking,” see Overton, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter),” fig. 7. Two additional portraits of Ibrahim depict him as physically attractive albeit ultimately subservient to another individual. See “Ibrahim offering obeisance to Jahangir” (title my own, Golestan Palace Library, no. 1663, fol. 87), the focus of Chapter 4.2 of my dissertation, and “Ibrahim visiting a Sufi saint” (British Museum, London, 1997.1108.01), reproduced in Overton, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter),” fig. 12. 52   This painting is often called “Ibrahim holding castanets.” For a reproduction, see Overton, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter),” fig. 5. 53  Some may prefer to argue that he is a yogi, but given the overt Islamic references in the scene, I believe that he is first and foremost a Sufi who was clearly amenable to Hinduism.

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 55 three orders most active during Ibrahim’s reign: the Qadiri, Shattari, or Chishti. The former two orders largely consisted of Arab émigrés who sought to reform Bijapuri’s courtly culture from within its urban and elite environment. In contrast, Bijapuri’s Chishtis were primarily Deccani-born and fostered ties with the general populace from their withdrawn location at Shahpur Hillock.54 Based on his ascetic appearance and presence within a rustic shrine that recalls the physical topography of Shahpur Hillock55, we can suggest that the “dervish” in the Bodleian painting is most likely a reclusive Chishti and certainly not a Qadiri or Shattari of the reformist and urban type. While he may be a Chishti, the “dervish” in question is certainly not of the “literati” type exemplified by the aforementioned Burhan al-Din Janam (d. 1597). Rather, he appears to be a majzūb, which was the emic term used in seventeenth century Bijapuri to describe “a Sufi drawn immediately to God without his own effort or guidance from a pir” and/or “a Sufi willing to risk social disapprobation in order to attain states of ecstatic rapture.”56 These majzūbs often engaged in heretical practices, such as nakedness and the consumption of wine, opium, and bhang. In doing so, they reacted against the elite pious establishment, as represented by the ʿulema and urban Sufis who received royal favors, often in the form of tax-free land grants (inʿām). During the seventeenth century, many of Bijapuri’s majzūbs were associated with Shahpur Hillock.57 Arguably the most famous was Amin al-Din (d. 1675), who was pejoratively described as a majzūb by members of Bijapuri’s Qadiri and Shattari orders.58 While I hesitate to resolutely identify the Bodleian painting’s majzūb as Amin al-Din or its setting as Shahpur Hillock, we can describe the shrine in question as a heterodox rural establishment in keeping with the seventeenth century cult of Amin al-Din at Shahpur Hillock.59 In addition to its physical setting, which closely echoes that   I draw upon Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, p. 107.  Shahpur Hillock is one of two large hilltop shrines located to the northwest of the city. 56  Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, p. 321. For Eaton’s analysis of majzūbs, see pp. 264-278. 57   Ibid., p. 244. 58   Ibid., p. 245. 59  Even if we date the Bodleian painting to the final year of Ibrahim’s reign (1627), the considerably younger Amin al-Din (1597-1675) would have been no more than thirty years old. The “dervish” in question certainly appears to be far older. This acknowledged, I hesitate to read any Ibrahim-era painting literally or at face value. Indeed, the “dervish’s” appearance—as well as Ibrahim’s—could have 54 55

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of modern-day Shahpur Hillock, three additional lines of evidence support this argument. First, several of the devotees partake in heterodox practices, such as nakedness and bhang and/or opium consumption (see the man in meditation next to a coconut pipe), which were commonly associated with Shahpur Hillock during the seventeenth century. Second, some of the devotees appear to be Hindus60, and we know that a component of Shahpur Hillock that garnered sustained criticism from Bijapuri’s urban Sufis was its accommodation of nonMuslims, specifically Kannada-speaking Hindu Lingayats. According to Eaton, Lingayats may have formed “a significant component of the outer circle of devotees attached to seventeenth-century Shahpur Hillock.”61 Third, the shrine in question was clearly amenable to Shiʿism, as underscored by the four prominently displayed ‘alams. Although Sufism and Shiʿism can be viewed as antithetical in today’s world, such was not the case throughout Bijapuri’s ‘Adil Shahi history. Ibrahim’s predecessor, ʿAli ‘Adil Shah I (r. 1558-80), for example, was a fervent Shiʿi who nonetheless retained numerous ties to Sufism. As elucidated by Deborah Hutton, his tomb was inscribed with Shiʿi praises yet was erected in a Sufic stronghold of southwest Bijapuri and echoed the Sufic tomb model of a central arcaded chamber.62 A similar recon­ ciliation between Bijapuri Shiʿism and Sufism seems to have occurred during the late seventeenth century, as demonstrated by the lengthy inscription on the façade of Amin al-Din’s tomb (see Color Plate 3.5), which is dated 1088/1677-78. The very top of this inscription includes twelve roundels, each of which is inscribed with the name of one of the Twelve Imams (b/w 3.13).63 A degree of Shiʿi-Sufi synthesis been exaggerated by the Bodleian Painter, an artist inclined towards what I term “illusionary realism.” See Overton, “A Collector and His Portrait,” Chapter Five. 60   The devotee pointing to Ibrahim, for example, resembles two figures identified as the brothers Punya and Pavana in the 1602 Mughal Yog Vashisht (Chester Beatty Library, In 05). See Elaine Wright, Muraqqaʿ: Imperial Mughal Albums for the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Alexandria, 2008), fig. 6. 61  Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, p. 250. 62   Hutton 2006, pp. 46-50. Building upon Hutton’s visionary scholarship, Catherine Asher has recently concluded, “Ali’s tomb demonstrates that in Bijapur the choice between being Shia and being a Sufi did not have to be made, for both were embraced by the culture of the Adil Shah’s court.” Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot, India Before Europe (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 167-168. Italics mine. 63  See Siddiqi, “The Dakani Inscription on the Amin Dargah in Bijapur,” p. 82 and pp. 85-86.

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 57 ­ ersists at Shahpur Hillock today, for as noted above, a group of p ‘alams recalling those in the Bodleian painting are among the most prized objects preserved in Amin al-Din’s tomb (see Color Plate 3.7).64 Based on the evidence presented above, I believe it is now opportune to re-title the Bodleian painting “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb.” This compelling masterpiece underscores two critical points about Ibrahim and his courtly culture. First, Ibrahim’s religious tendencies were unabashedly ecumenical. Although nominally a Sunni, the ruler was devoted to both Hindu goddesses and Sufi saints65, and he patronized and defended Bijapuri’s Shiʿi community on several occasions.66 Thus, the decidedly catholic setting of the Bodleian painting—one with explicit references to Sufism, Shiʿism, Hinduism, and general heterodox practices—would have appealed to him. Second, courtly culture during Ibrahim's reign was international and cosmopolitan. In addition to depicting a nominally Sunni sultan amongst Sufi majzūbs and Hindu devotees, the image also includes a European, the figure in the blue hat whose identity is revealed in the Mihr Chand copy (see b/w 3.6). The European’s sparse green clothing, seated posture, and general presence in the scene suggest that he too is a devotee of the majzūb in question. Two forth­coming studies will further elucidate the role of Europeans, specifically merchants and artists, at Ibrahim’s court.67 Arguably the greatest legacy of “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb” is its problematization of a monolithic definition of Bijapuri painting, and Deccani painting in general. The image stimulates the consideration of alternative strands of Ibrahim-era painting; specifically, those that are not necessarily associated with literary traditions, such as the sultan’s own songs (Kitāb-i Nauras) and Sufic romances (Pem Nem).68 The latter mode of painting is exemplified by the Prague portrait and the Pem Nem illustrations and has been appropriately described by scholars such as Hutton as “deliberately removed from the specifici64   The current sajjāda nishīn of the shrine, as well as his family members, identify themselves as Sunni Muslims. 65   Consider song 1 of his Kitāb-i Nauras, in which he pledges devotion to both Saraswati and Gesudaraz. 66   Consider his ordering of the house arrest of an anti-Shiʿi Shattari Sufi who disrupted the ʿAshura celebrations in 1596. See Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, p. 116. 67  See Overton, “Vida de Jacques de Coutre” and Deborah Hutton and Rebecca Tucker, “A Dutch Artist in Bijapur,” in Parodi (ed.), The Visual World of Muslim India. 68   For further information on the Pem Nem, see Hutton 2006, pp. 73-83.

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ties of historical events.”69 The Bodleian’s “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb” is intriguing, precisely because it does not conform to this poetic mode. Instead, it is ostensibly rooted in the mundane realities of Ibrahim’s Bijapuri and can be compared to several other paintings that depict the ruler and his surroundings through a quasi-documentary, albeit certainly contrived, lens.70 This sub-group within the history of Ibrahim-era painting therefore challenges the rigid categorization of Deccani painting as solely “imaginary” and “fantastical,” and thus in direct opposition to the “logic” and “verisimilitude” of Mughal painting.71 This paper has introduced the simultaneous study of Bijapuri original and Lucknow copy as a viable methodology for students of Ibrahim-era painting. In the first case study, I distinguished between an Ibrahim-era original, an accomplished seventeenth century copy, and a later Lucknow copy of a rare portrait of Ibrahim’s female counterpart, which was hitherto known as simply an image of a maid killing a snake. I further contextualized this portrait in relation to its pendant depiction of Ibrahim, which I propose to also be an original by the Bodleian Painter. In the second case study, the superb condition of Mihr Chand’s copy fostered a more nuanced understanding of yet another masterpiece by the Bodleian Painter, “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb,” whose depth of verisimilitude, religious eclecticism, and cosmo­politan cast of characters can now be fully appreciated. In the enigmatic field of Bijapuri painting, it is clear that much can be learned and clarified through the lens of the Lucknow copy. Bibliography Archer, W.G, Indian Miniatures. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society 1960. Asher, Catherine and Cynthia Talbot, India Before Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Barrett, Douglas, Painting of the Deccan, XVI-XVII century. London: Faber and Faber, 1958. Desai, Ziyaud-Din A., “Studies in Indian Art and Culture: Some Avoidable Pre­sump­ tions and Speculative Theories,” Marg 51/1 (Sep. 1999), 75-87.   Hutton 2006, p. 160.   For my analysis of the Bodleian painting’s fusion of meticulous realism and theatrical exaggeration, as well as several comparable portraits of Ibrahim by the Bodleian Painter, see Overton, “A Collector and His Portrait,” Chapter Five. 71   For an example of the juxtaposition of Mughal and Deccani painting, see Douglas Barrett, Painting of the Deccan, XVI-XVII century (London, 1958), 2. 69 70

“maid killing a snake” and “dervish receiving a visitor” 59 Eaton, Richard, Sufis of Bijapur, 1300-1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Falk, Archer and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library. London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1981. Gladiss, Almut von and Claus-Peter Haase, The Radiance of Islamic Art: Masterpieces from the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. Berlin: Hirmer, 2008. Glück, Heinrich and Ernst Diez, Die Kunst des Islam. Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag, 1925. Glynn, Catherine, “Bijapur Themes in Bikaner Painting,” in Court Painting in Rajasthan, ed. Andrew Topsfield. Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2000, 65-77. Goswamy, B. N., Painted Visions: The Goenka Collection of Indian Paintings. New Delhi: Lalit Kala Academi, 1999. Grek, T.V., Indiiskie miniatiury XVI-XVII vv [Indian Miniatures of the 16th and 17th centuries]. Moscow: Nauka, 1971. Harris, Lucian, “Archibald Swinton: A New Source for Albums of Indian Miniatures in William Beckford’s Collection,” The Burlington Magazine 143, no. 1179 (June 2001), 360-366. Hutton, Deborah, Art of the Court of Bijapur. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. Hutton, Deborah and Rebecca Tucker, “A Dutch Artist in Bijapur,” in The Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era, ed. Laura Parodi. London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming 2012. Jodidio, Philip, Museum of Islamic Art: Doha, Qatar. Munich: Prestel, 2008. Leach, Linda York, Mughal and other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, volume 2. London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995. ———, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art: Volume VIII: Paintings from India. London: Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1998. Losty, Jeremiah, and Linda York Leach, Mughal Paintings from the British Library. London: Indar Pasricha Fine Arts, 1998. Markel, Stephen with Tushara Bindu Gude, India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010. McInerney, Terence, “Mir Kalan Khan,” in Masters of Indian Painting II: 1650-1900, eds. Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer, B.N. Goswamy. Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011, 607-622. Overton, Keelan, “ʿAli Riza (The Bodleian Painter),” in Masters of Indian Painting I: 1100-1650, eds. Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer, B.N. Goswamy. Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011, 375-390. ———, “A Collector and His Portrait: Book Arts and Painting for Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II of Bijapur (r. 1580-1627).” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, May 2011. ———, “Vida de Jacques de Coutre: “A Dutch Artist in Bijapur,” in The Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era, ed. Laura Parodi. London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming 2012. Safrani, Shehbaz H., “Golconda Alums: Shimmering Standards,” in Golconda and Hyderabad, ed. Shehbaz H. Safrani. Bombay: Marg Publications, 1992, 81-94. Seyller, John, “Farrukh Beg in the Deccan,” Artibus Asiae 55/3-4 (1995), 319-341. Siddiqi, M. Akbaruddin, “The Dakani Inscription on the Amin Dargah in Bijapur,” Epigraphia Indica, Arabic and Persian Supplement (1969), 79-92. Skelton, Robert, “Documents for the study of paintings at Bijapur in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,” Arts Asiatiques 2 (1958), 97-125. ———, “The Mughal artist Farrokh Beg,” Ars Orientalis 2 (1957), 393-411.

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Subrahmanyam, Sanjay,“The Career of Colonel Polier and Late Eighteenth-Century Orientalism,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 10, 1 (2000), 43-60. Sotheby’s, “Western, Oriental and Hebrew Manuscripts and Miniatures,” 10 July 1968. Stols, Eddy, Benjamín Teensma and Johan Verberckmoes, Jacques de Coutre: Andanzas asiáticas. Madrid: Historia 16, 1991. Topsfield, Andrew, Paintings from Mughal India. Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 2008. Welch, Stuart Cary, India: Art and Culture, 1300-1900. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985. Wright, Elaine, Muraqqaʿ: Imperial Mughal Albums for the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. Alexandria: Art Services International, 2008. Zebrowski, Mark, Deccani Painting. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali­for­ nia Press, 1983. ———, Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India. London: Alexandria Press in association with Laurence King, 1997.

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 61

Literary Moments of Exchange in the 18th Century: The New Urdu Vogue Meets Krishna Bhakti∗ Heidi Pauwels Introduction The production of Indo-Muslim cultures in North India resulted from an intense interaction and exchange of ideas that has been partly erased or suppressed in the increasing bifurcation between Hindu and Muslim in modern times. This paper will look at literary production, and in particular the emergence of a new medium for poetic expression in Delhi in the early eighteenth century, then called Rekhtā, or “mixed language,” meaning a mixture of Persian and the language of Delhi, or Dihlavī.1 Nowadays this medium has come to be called Urdu,2 and it has become associated nearly exclusively with “Muslim” literary production. This case study shows how multiple registers of Hindi-Urdu language and literature were fluid in the early eighteenth century, before they hardened in the nineteenth century as they were regrouped as ∗ I gratefully acknowledge the National Endowment for the Humanities for having granted me a summer stipend (2006) to make it possible to carry out the research for this paper. For help with the Urdu translation, I thank Jameel Ahmad of the University of Washington. For comments, I am grateful to the organizers and audiences at the venues where partial versions of this paper were presented: the bi-annual European Modern Conference of South Asian Studies in Leiden, in June 2006, in the panel “People in Motion, Ideas in Motion: Culture and Circulation in Pre-modern South Asia” organized by Allison Bush (Columbia University) and Thomas de Bruyn (Leiden), who are publishing a longer earlier version of this paper; and the conference “Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition” organized by Alka Patel and Karen Leonard on November 1-2, 2008 at UC Irvine. 1   The term Rekhtā was in use before the eighteenth century, see Imre Bangha, “Poetry in Mixed Language: A Survey of Rekhtā Literature in North India,” in ed. Francesca Orsini, Before the Divide (New Delhi: Orient Longman, forthcoming), but the particular fashion of “early Urdu” poetry was perceived as new at the time. 2  See Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, “A Long History of Urdu literary Culture, Part 1: Naming and Placing a literary Culture,” in ed. Sheldon Pollock, Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. 805-63 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003).

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two discrete units: “Muslim-Urdu” and “Hindu-Hindi.” Contemporary understanding of the origins of Urdu and Hindi is colored in hindsight by 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, with the Devanāgarī script and Sanskritic themes and poetics. Hindi and Urdu are now perceived to be different languages with separate histories and literatures. This process of bifurcation is now well-understood to have been a product of the nineteenth century.3 Yet, in the eighteenth century, there was no such strict differentiation. What seem to be hard boundaries now were permeable in the past. Much is to be gained by recovering what the linguistic field looked like before this divide. How, by whom and for whom were different registers of Hindi-Urdu literature used at particular points in history? The emergence of Urdu poetry is a significant moment, and this paper will recover one piece of evidence to reconstruct the way it was sympathetically received in non-Muslim, non-Persianized milieus. The emergence of Rekhtā/Urdu poetry was occasioned by the arrival of the dīvān of Walī Dakanī in 1720/21. This import from the Deccan inspired a new wave of poetry in imperial Delhi. Histories of Urdu typically focus on the happenings in Delhi, but this paper will explore how this new cosmopolitan fashion caught on in provincial centers, such as the Rajasthani principality of Kishangarh. I will be looking at a complex triangulation of exchanges between the Deccan, Delhi and Rajasthan. I present a case study of one agent in these complex processes, prince Sāvant Singh (1699-1764), crown prince of Kishangarh. He was an avid sponsor of the arts, poetry and miniature painting, and he is best known for his impact on the latter. From 1735 till 1748, he ran an atelier that developed the distinctively lyrical Kishangaṛhi style of painting, specialising in Rādhā-Krishna themes.4 This so-called “subimperial style” was developed by artists trained at the Mughal court

3  See Christopher King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in nineteenth century North India (Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1994). 4   For more information on Kishangarh, in particular the art, see Navina Najat Haidar, The Kishangarh School of Painting (c. 1680-1850), 2 vols, Ph.D. Dissertation. (Oxford University, 1995).

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 63 but employed in Kishangarh.5 This sets the context for the exchange of cultural know-how that we see going on in other areas too. It is less well-known that Sāvant Singh was also a prolific poet, probably because very few of his works have been translated.6 He wrote under the pen name Nāgrīdās, or “devotee of sophisticated Rādhā.” His vast oeuvre spans eight collections of padas, (songs), as well as nineteen collections of dohās (couplets), sixteen collections of kavittas (four-line verses), and seven collections of poetry in other metres (sār and arill).7 Obviously, Nāgrīdās was steeped in the religious traditions of Krishna devotion. He made frequent pilgrimages to the temples of Braj (south of Delhi), so it is not surprising that he chose to write in Braj Bhāṣā. Modern histories cast him as a traditional Hindi poet, heir to medieval literary Hindi traditions, especially Braj and to a lesser extent

5  See also Navina Najat Haidar, “Satire and Humour in Kishangarh Painting,” in ed. Andrew Topsfield, Court Painting in Rajasthan (Mumbai, Marg Publications, 2000), 78-91; and Vijay Kumar Mathur, Marvels of Kishangarh Paintings from the Collection of the National Museum, New Delhi (Delhi, Bharatiya Kala Prakashan, 2000). Recently, a critique has been voiced against the oversimplified interpretation of sub-imperial styles as spin-offs from a perceived hegemonic imperial style, see Daniel J. Ehnbom, “ʿPassionate Delineation and the Mainstream of Indian Paintingʾ: The Mughal Style and the Schools of Rajasthan,” in ed. Richard B. Barnett, Rethinking Early Modern India (Delhi, Manohar, 2002), 179-91. Seyller reserves the term for works associated wit members of the Mughal nobility and uses “Popular Mughal” for the Rajasthani offshoots (John Seyller, Workshop and Patron in Mughal India. Zurich, Museum Rietberg, 1999). 6   In Hindi, there are three major editions of his work, with in-depth introductions on his life and literary accomplishments: one by the prestigious Nāgrīpracāriṇī Sabhā (Kiśorīlāl Gupta, ed. Nāgarīdās, 2 vols. Benares, Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā, 1965), one with a Nimbārkan sectarian agenda (Vrajvallabh Śaran, ed., Śrī Nāga­ rīdāsjī kī Vāṇī: Nāgarīdāśjī ke Jīvanvṛtta evaṃ Vāṇiyoṃ kā Sanśodhit Sanskaraṇ Vrindaban, Śrī Sarveśvar Press, 1966) and one by a spokesman of the royal court in defense of a Vallabhan sectarian agenda (Faiyāz Alī Khān. ed., Nāgarīdās Granthāvalī New Delhi, Kendrīya Hindī Nideśālay, 1974). For more details, see Heidi Pauwels, “Hagiography and Reception History: The Case of Mira’s Padas in Nāgrīdās’ Pada-prasanga-mala.” in ed. Monika Horstmann, Proceedings of the Bhakti Conference in Heidelberg, 2003 (Delhi, Manohar, 2006). 7   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, Bhāgavata-purāṇa, and a prose hagiography. In counting these works, I follow Gupta, Nāgrīdās, vol. 1. For more on Sāvant Singh’s life and work, see Heidi Pauwels “Romancing Rādhā: Nāgrīdās’ royal appropriations of Bhakti themes.” South Asia Research (2005), 15: 55-78.

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Rajasthani.8 However, there is more to this poet. This paper seeks to recover a now-forgotten or maligned phase in his career: his experiment with Urdu verse. Whereas modern communal sensibilities would lead us to project that a traditional Braj poet would be isolated from the Delhi Urdu rage and hardly notice the new literary trend, or if he did, reject it as “alien,” 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 genre to other Rajasthani centers. However, twentieth-century Hindi critics of Nāgrīdās’ oeuvre tend to have a hard time dealing with Nāgrīdās’ Urdu. As is often the case, hybrid works provoke a profound unease in literary critics, who are bothered by the fact that these works do not fit any of the neat labels of established categories. Yet the case of Nāgrīdās’ engagement with Urdu deserves special attention and is part of the as yet unwritten reception history of the newly emergent Rekhtā/Urdu. Nāgrīdās included some Urdu verses by Walī on a par with devotional Krishna poetry in his anthology, Padamuktāvali, or “String of unconnected songs” (or “string of pearlssongs”). 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.” My plan is to edit, translate, analyze, 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. In this paper, I limit myself to preliminary results of my work on Padamuktāvalī and Iśq Caman.9 In order to understand the reception of Rekhtā/Urdu, it is important to revisit the key figure of Walī Dakanī. Thus I begin by looking at the impact of Walī’s dīvān in Delhi, a fascinating example of interchange between the Deccan and Delhi. This provides the background for understanding the appropriation of this new cosmopolitan medium by the provincial poet Nāgrīdās. Then I focus on the ­reception 8   The Kishangarh court in the early eighteenth century is known to have sponsored traditional ‘bardicʾ poetry, notably that of the poet Vrind, who composed mainly in Braj but also wrote a Vacanikā in honor of Rūp Singh, Sāvant Singh’s predecessor (see Janārdan Rao Celer, Vṛnd Granthāvalī Agra, Vinod Pustak Mandir, 1971). 9   I say preliminary results, because there is a need for further manuscript research and a fresh edition of Nāgrīdās’ work.

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 65 of Walī’s poetry in Nāgrīdās’ Padamuktāvalī, and finally I look at the circulation of Nāgrīdās’ Iśq Caman in Rajasthan at the time, as well as the history of its modern reception by Hindi literary critics. 1. From the Deccan to Delhi: Walī Dakanī and the New “Urdu” Poetry The cosmopolitan Mughal court in Delhi in the eighteenth century was a meeting ground for people from different regions. 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 Braj Bhāṣā, the vehicle par excellence for love poetry and songs of devotion to the Hindu god Krishna. Urdu/Rekhtā was a newcomer on the scene in the early eighteenth century. 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 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: 1720/21, the year of the arrival in Delhi of the (posthumous?) collection of works (dīvān) of a poet from the Deccan, known as Walī Dakanī (1665?-1708?).10 Walī himself is an interesting figure and the whole situation surrounding the supposed beginning of Urdu around 1720 is illustrative of the complex meeting of cultures in the eighteenth-century Mughal imperial centre of Delhi. Walī was heir to the tradition of Dakanī, a 10   It is debated whether Walī was born in Gujarat or in Aurangabad in the Deccan. His full name may have been Shāh Walī Ullah or Saiyid Walī Muhammad according to Gujarati and Hyderabadi scholars respectively; see N.H. Hashmi, Wali. Makers of Indian literature (Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1986), 10-15.

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poetic idiom that flourished in the Deccan (under different names).11 This idiom was actually based on the North Indian vernacular spoken in elite circles in Delhi, which we could refer to by the term “Dihlavī.” Its presence in the Deccan had resulted from a displacement of Delhi noble families going back to the early fourteenth century.12 Gradually, it had developed into a poetic idiom sponsored by the ruling elite as well as Sufis.13 By Walī’s time, this idiom had been recently revitalized by a new immigration wave from Delhi: Aurangzeb’s re-establishment of Delhi authority 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 that Walī was 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.14 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 Dihlavī itself there. One could speak of a “pizza-effect”: only after Dihlavī 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 Walī were keen to attribute his inspiration to a prominent Sufi figure in Delhi at the time, Shāh Gulshan, said to have encouraged Walī to continue composing in the “vernacular” but on Persianate themes in Persianate style.15 This perception, that Walī’s contribution lies not just in transmitting a tradition of Dakanī poetry, but a transformed   Faruqi, “A long history.”   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 Muhammad Tughlaq’s transplant of his capital to the newly renamed Daulatabad (formerly Devgiri). 13   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 Dihlavī. A new wave of such immigrants came in the wake of the 1398 sack of Delhi by Timur. Dihlavī became a vehicle for poetry, lavishly sponsored by the shortly thereafter independent Bahmani kingdom and its successor-dynasties in the sixteenth-century (Hashmi, Wali, 7-9). 14  Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Early Urdu Literary Culture and History (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2001), 138-9. 15   Ibidem, 129-38. 11 12

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 67 version of it that leaned more towards a Persianate register, is often stressed 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 to the construction of a new militant masculine identity that went hand in hand with a de-Hinduizaton and de-feminizaton of earlier Dakanī poetry.16 Several important issues remain unresolved. It is worth investigating whether indeed the Persianate influence is something that was particularly appreciated by Walī’s audience in Delhi as opposed to his audience in the Deccan. Were Walī’s earlier works indeed less Persianized? If so, to what degree should the Persianization be attributed to Walī’s developing his own poetic register?17 Do we see a similar trend in the work of his contemporaries and predecessors? There are other interesting problems related to this perceived moment of the beginning of Urdu literature. There is the curious fact that the arrival in Delhi of Walī’s dīvān and its consequent success seem to be posthumous, as Walī probably died in 1708.18 We know that Walī visited Delhi at least once during his lifetime, around 1700,19 yet his poetry seems not to have had much impact then, possibly due to the unstable political climate. Rekhtā did not catch on until twenty years later, during the culturally fertile reign of Muhammad Shāh. The circumstances of the arrival of Walī’s dīvān in Delhi deserves further investigation by scholars of Urdu. Was it first recited at the Mughal court, and, if so, at whose behest and who were the patrons? What was the performance context? Who was in the audience, and how did its popularity expand so rapidly? One wonders how the new “Rekhtā rage” fits in the context of ­linguistic debates at the time regarding the appropriate (read: most 16  See Carla Petievich, “Making ‘Manlyʾ Poetry: The construction of Urdu’s ‘golden Age’,” in ed. Richard Barnett, Rethinking early modern India (New Delhi, Manohar, 2002). 17   There seems to be some evidence that this is a later development in Walī’s oeuvre, see Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964), 251, n. 2. The matter is further complicated by the fact that Walī had a strong connection with Gujarat, also a centre where Dihlavī (under the name of Gujrī) had been flourishing. 18   The arguments in favor of this date are fairly convincing as there is a manuscript of his complete dīvān datable to just about that period (Faruqi, Early Urdu, 130-1). For a view in favor of a later date, see Hashmi, Wali, 14-5. 19   Faruqi, Early Urdu, 134.

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prestigious) register of Persian: a “purified” Iranian speech as promoted by the Mughal elite and the high-profile Iranian immigrants or an “Indianized” register associated with an upwardly mobile minority.20 Such debates seem to have been 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 Walī’s dīvān met with its first success? Walī’s contribution seems to supply the “outside the box” solution to the question of linguistic purity. He hit upon an idiom that was exactly the opposite of the struggling Indianized Persian, namely Persianized “Hindvī,” opening up a sphere of expression for the “Indian upstarts,”21 who could now assume a position of linguistic purism vis-à-vis those from whom they sought to distance themselves, namely the “uncouth” provincial masses.22 I suggest that underlying the success of Rekhtā, there may have been an element of legitimating an upwardly mobile Indian elite that was asserting its linguistic identity in response to the perceived superiority of recent Persian immigrants. Finally, Walī’s case is central for understanding the history of Urdu literature as a communal phenomenon, nowadays misunderstood as an exclusionary dialect cultivated by Indo-Muslims. While some interested parties stress his Sufi inspiration, and by extension his “Islamic identity,” by and large his poetry was not overwhelmingly religious in its inspiration. Large parts of his dīvān could be classified as preoccupied with what we would now consider secular themes, such as his attachment to the region of Gujarat and his expressions of erotic love and friendship, quite specifically naming several

20   Muzaffar Alam, “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics,” Modern Asian Studies (1998) 32.2, 335-42. Interestingly, the Persian scholar Sirāj al-dīn ‘Alī Khān Ārzū (1689-1756) argued for the legitimacy of Indian words in Persian on grounds of a correspondence between Persian and Sanskrit, foreshadowing later postulations of an Indo-Iranian language family (ibidem, 341). 21   This term is from Alam, ibidem, 342. 22   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 Hindvī as “illiterate jargon,” or zubān-i juhhāl not fit for speakers of “the proper imperial language,” or zubān-i Urdū-i muʿallā, or zubān-i Urdū-i Shāhī (ibidem, 346-7). Note also the early, eighteenthcentury date for the use of the term “Urdu.”

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 69 c­ ontemporaries. Walī’s fame is not as a Sufi, though of course several of his poems can be read as reflecting Sufi sensibilities.23 The arrival of Walī’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 Rekhtā included people from all classes and religious backgrounds, including Hindus.24 I now turn to this relatively neglected thread and present evidence for the reception of Walī’s poetry in totally different circles, including Krishna Bhakti. 2. From Delhi to Rajasthan: Walī in Nāgrīdās’ Padamuktāvalī Not only Persiante milieus, but also Braj bhakti ones, reacted sympathetically to Rekhtā. I focus on the Rajput prince, Sāvant Singh, alias the Krishna poet Nāgrīdās. As we have seen, he was an accomplished Braj poet, a patron of art at the provincial centre of Kishangarh. He also participated in Delhi’s cosmopolitan milieu. As a vassal of the Mughals, the Kishangarh royal family was much influenced by Mughal culture. Sāvant Singh was steeped in the refined court culture of the reign of Muhammad Shāh (r. 1719-48), as evidenced by the characteristics of the miniature paintings he commissioned. Not only their style,25 but also the scenes depicted in the paintings betray the Mughal cultural influence at Kishangarh, for example, the depiction of spectacular displays of fire works.26 Kishangarhi miniatures also portray dance and music performances by artists from Delhi.27 It would be natural then that also in his poetical works Nāgrīdās would have been influenced by the literature that was in vogue in Delhi at the time.

  Walī has been connected with the Hidāyat Bakhś madrasah in Ahmedabad where some purport he lies buried and where Shaikh Nūruddīn is said to have been his tutor (Hashmi, Wali, 10). Yet his fame is not dependent on his religious views. 24  See Faruqi, Early Urdu, 145-84. 25  See Haidar, Kishangarh School, 118 26  On this topic, see Zahir Uddin Malik, The Reign of Muhammad Shah (17191748) (New York, Asia Publishing House,1977). 27   A good example is the miniature depicting a nautch at the court of his son Sardār Singh, depicted in Eric Dickinson and Karl Khandalavala, Kishangarh Paintings (Delhi, Lalit Kalā Academy, 1959), plate 10. Its inscriptions give specifics of the dancers and musicians as being from Delhi. 23

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For evidence of Nāgrīdās’ reception of Rekhtā, I focus first on one of his most voluminous works, his collection of poetry, called Pada­ muktāvalī, “String of unconnected songs,” finished in 1742.28 This huge collection incorporates 560 padas and around 500 dohās, organized thematically according to the pastimes of the divine pair Rādhā and Krishna. It includes seasonal vignettes, as well as descriptions of the divine pair’s beauty, 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 of Vaishnava devotees, including Valla­ bhan, Gauḍīya, Rādhāvallabhan, Haridāsī, Nimbārkan, as well as Rāmānandī poets, and some who have no clear sectarian affiliation, notably Mīrābāī.29 Several of these poets are also praised in his hagiography Pada-prasaṅga-mālā. He has also incorporated poems by his great-grandfather Rūp Singh, his father Rāj Singh and his concubine Rasik Bihārī (alias Baṇī-ṭhanī). No less than 61 of her poems are included.30 Fortunately, the anthology has been edited in full with the quotes from all other poets,31 enabling 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 the study of intertextuality. 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 “Rekhtā.”32 The bulk of the poems in the Rekhtā section are Nāgrīdās’ own, but he also incorporates two poems by Walī. Both are attested in Walī’s 28   The date 1742 is given in the colophon of one manuscript, now preserved at the Jaipur Sawai Man Singh II Museum, reproduced in Navina Haidar’s thesis (Kishangarh Paintings, plate 213). 29   This information is based on the edition by the Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā (NPS) (Gupta, Nāgrīdās, 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 (ibidem, vol. 1, 109). 30  On their relationship, see Pauwels, “Romancing Rādhā.” 31   In Gupta, Nāgrīdās. The older edition, prepared with patronage of the royal house, Nāgar Samuccay, had left out all the poems by poets not related to the Kishangarh family, and a more recent editor from Kishangarh has followed suit (Khān, Nāgrīdās Granthāvalī). 32   In Khān’s edition the Rekhtā poetry starts with poems numbered 569-98 (ibidem, 843-9). The Iśq Caman is not included here, but given separately elsewhere (114-9).

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 71 dīvān: PMĀ762 and 76433 correspond to ghazal 54 and 37034 respectively. I will discuss each in turn, with an analysis of Nāgrīdās’ poetic responses to his model.35 The first poem by Walī is on the theme of the beauty and mercilessness of the beloved, who may be (though never explicitly is) identified with God. 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 āineṃ 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 tuj sauṃ, 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 (PMĀ762/ Ghazal 54) At the time, O my beloved,36 when you’ll shed your veil, Your radiance will make every atom resplendent. Donʾt enter the garden, my beauty, donʾt torment the nightingale, By the brilliance of your looks, the rose will melt to rose-water. Donʾt 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, his lover’s, he’ll celebrate his victory.37   In the edition by Gupta, Nāgrīdās, vol. 1, 505 and 506-7.   In the edition by Muhammad Āzam, Walī Granthāvalī (Kanpur, Annapūrṇā Prakāśan, 1978), vol. 2, 66 and 231. 35   Interestingly, Nāgrīdās introduces this section with specifics as to the musical performance of these Rekhtā-language dhrupadas and khyāls (Rekhtā zubāṃn ke in dhurpadauṃ khiyālauṃ kī alāpcārī maiṃ daine e dohā), and he also gives the musical coordinates, the rāga and tāla by which to perform these poems. It seems that the reception of the ghazals in a Krishna bhakti context readily transformed them into a genre akin to what musicians specialized in bhajan would be able to recognize and play. 36   Surajana is attested as synonymous with sajjan; see Ronald Stuart McGregor, The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), from here onwards referred to as OHED. 37   The gender of the beloved remains ambivalent, as so often in Urdu poetry; one could also translate as “she” and “her.” 33 34

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heidi pauwels Why do you hold it to be right to make me victim of your oppression?38 At the day of judgement, my bill will reach you at last. Iʾve come to know, drunk with the cup of plenty, That in meeting your glance, all desires are fulfilled. The angel39 sent this divine message40 to me, Walī: “Go to 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 centers. Sāvant Singh, prince from the provincial Kishangarh, did not just include it in his anthology, he felt inspired by it. He did not have the benefit of the newly developing mentor-disciple (ustād-shāgird) institution and the performance context of the poetic symposium, or muśāʾirah, which were becoming central to Delhi literary culture,41 but that did not stop him from contributing in his own way. We get a glimpse of his enthusiastic reaction in his own Rekhtā poems included in the Padamuktāvalī. Immediately after quoting Walī’s poem, Nāgrī registers what I take to be his own response in a similar idiom: 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 (PMĀ763)

  The expression ravā rakh- means “to hold something to be just.”   Hātif is glossed svargīya sandeś denevālā by Gupta, which is attested in Platts as “messenger of good news” in John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdū, classical Hindī, and English (Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press, [1930] 1974). 40   Basārat is glossed sandeś by Gupta, which is attested as “happy news” and “revelation” (ibidem). 41   Faruqi, Early Urdu, 145-50. 38 39

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 73 Iʾve gazed at this heart-stealing handsome lover:42 a small turban43 on his head, its decoration44 like a fling,45 On top of which he put a rose: the rose perfume of early spring. Face resplendent, like the moon: turmeric under hairlock-cloud. 46 As if bitten by a dark Kāliyā-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.47 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.48 My thoughts followed the swaying of his [every] move, the web he wove, Gazing at his beauty Nāgar was elated,49 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 poetry, where there is only an occasional loan from Persian. Thus it fits well after Walī’s “Urdu” poem. However, the resemblance to Walī’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 particularly liked Walī’s juxtaposition of gul (“rose”) and gulāb (“rosewater”/ “rose-perfume”), which he imitated in this poem, but he left out the cleverly punning gal (“having melted”). He added a lot of Persianate vocabulary, but none overlaps with the words in the preceding poem by Walī, though we could find these lexical items elsewhere in the dīvān. In general, Nāgrī’s poem keeps a Braji feel. Mainly 42   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 (PMĀ589, Gupta, Nāgrīdās, vol. 1, 446), see also Pauwels, Romancing Rādhā, for a translation. 43   Pheṃṭā can mean “a small turban” (OHED). 44   Saja can mean “decoration; attire” (OHED); sajadāra is “elegant.” 45   Kajadāra is glossed as ṭeṛhā, and indeed kaja can mean “crooked” (OHED). 46   Interpreting the word break as haradu zulfa rather than hara duzulfa as in Gupta’s edition. 47   Interpreting adāha as a rhyming variant of adā, meaning literally “grace,” rendered here freely for rhyme in the English. This is also the gloss given by Khan, Nāgrīdās Granthāvalī, 967. 48   Hunar-phirang is glossed as jādū in both editions (Gupta, Nāgrīdās, and Khan Nāgrīdās Granthāvalī, 967), but this is not confirmed by Platts. The pun is untranslatable: Nāgrīdās is playing on the alliteration of phiraṃga and phirana. 49  Nāgrīdās seems to use nihāra as a śleṣa, with double meaning of “gazing” and “contented,” the latter synonymous with nihāla.

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he was enchanted by the wordplay and rhyme potential of the new vocabulary with which he could enhance his Braj poems: he liked the internal rhyme of mahar (“affection”) and sahar (“dawn”) in the third line, and the wordplay that phiraṃgī (“foreign (magic)”) and partly homophonous (nīlo)phara (“blue lotus”) allowed him to make with pseudo-cognates phirāvtā, phirana, and phiratā. By the last line, though, he fully returned to his usual Braj rhyming 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 Walī.50 The beginning of this poem is reminiscent of Walī’s ghazal dekhyā hai jinī tere rukhsār kā tamāśa “Those who have seen the splendor of your beauty” (21).51

However, the inspiration is not obvious, and in any case this poem by Walī is not quoted by Nāgrīdās, so we cannot be sure that he would have had this śer in mind. What is striking is actually the differences compared to Walī’s poetry. First, Nāgrīdās leaves out the imagery of the beloved as the cold-blooded murderer and the lover as the willing martyr-victim. Krishna may enchant, but as a lover, he does not wield daggers or celebrate victory on his victim’s chest. Second, the poetical format of Nāgrī’s poem does not correspond to that of the ghazal. There is no radīf or rhyming phrase, just the usual rhyme in Braj style. Nāgrī also has reverted to a metrical pattern he is more familiar with, namely the arilla. Elsewhere, however, he showed 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:

50   The references to the beloved’s gait and the wordplay on cāla bring to mind notably his famous ghazal Mat gusse ke śole sūṃ jalte kūṃ jalātī jā (13, Āzam, Walī Granthāvalī, vo. 2, 40-1): the second śer 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, go on telling me your price/ feeling.” In its penultimate śer too, this poem might appeal to Krishna bhaktas, as it 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. One would expect this ghazal to appeal to a Krishna devotee. 51   Found in Āzam, Walī Granthāvalī, vol. 2, 45.

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 75 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 rūp divaṃnī, uhi nāgara abhimāṃnī hai (PMĀ761) 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 with welcoming eyes. No doubt she’s truly gluttonous, but her greed is not for this life’s bits. Her sustenance52 is beauty’s poison, I marvel at her lack of wits. Except for that, her thirst wonʾt 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, 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 Walī’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.53 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 Braji, because she is portrayed as a drunk and a glutton, not images often seen 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, although other water is available.

  The word gizā (m.) is from Arabic and means “food,” “diet.”   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 Walī’s oeuvre. 52 53

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The poem may also evoke another of Walī’s ghazals that seems to fit well the Krishna devotional tradition: Pirati kī jo kaṃṭhi pahane use ghar bār karnā kyā, huī jogan jo koī pī kī use saṃsār karnā kyā (82)54 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 ghazal would resonate with a Krishna devotee, who could take it to refer to the Gopīs who leave their home and hearth to join Krishna in the Rāsa-līlā, or as one of the Gopīs’ pleas to Krishna when he leaves them behind to go to Mathurā, or to Krishna’s messenger, Uddhav who comes to comfort them later. 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 śer of that ghazal in particular seems close to Nāgrīdās’ description of the crazed female beloved: Jo pīve nīr naināṃ kā use kyā kām pānī sūṃ Jo bhojan dukh kā karte haiṃ use āghār karnā kyā (82)55 If [you] drink only tears, what use for water? If [you] eat only sorrow, why care to offer food to the deity?

Thus we can on closer investigation find echoes of Walī’s ghazals, though all tentative. Still, the fact that Nāgrīdās quotes some ghazals indicates an intertextuality that remains to be fully discovered. The second poem by Walī that Nāgrīdās quotes is the following: 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]56 Mumkin nahīṃ ab valī kā jānā, hai āsik-e zār kyauṃ ki jāvai (PMĀ764 / Ghazal 370) Iktāla rhythm How could my beloved go and leave my heart? Her prey is wounded, how could she leave?

  Found in Āzam, Walī Granthāvalī, vol. 2.82   Found in Āzam, Walī Granthāvalī, vol. 2, 82-3. 56   This line is in the dīvān but not in Nāgrīdās’ quote. 54

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literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 77 As long as Iʾm deprived of the liquor of her sight, how could thirst57 leave my eyes? Your beauty is ever the same, how could spring leave heaven? [If tears donʾt bring relief,58 how could this suffering leave my heart?] Walī finds it impossible to go, he is smouldering for his beloved, how can he leave?59

In this poem, the gender of the beloved is marked as feminine (cf. the grammatical ending of choṛī in the first line). The poem seems to be more clearly about secular love, especially the pain of separation of the beloved. Nāgrīdās follows up with a viraha poem of his own that sounds very Mīrā-esque (kī karāṃ maiṃ raiṃna bihānī, nīṃda na āvai PMĀ765: “How can I pass the night, I cannot sleep”) and has only one or two “Urdu” words, before continuing with a more thoroughly Rekhtā poem: 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 (PMĀ766) Love has grabbed me by the hem, It doesnʾt relent, not for a moment, it doubles my heart’s mayhem. Morning and evening, sleeping and waking, overwhelmed by separation’s pain. Nāgar [says]: locks have now ensnared my eyes, tresses have tightened the chain.

This poem is close in sentiment to Walī’s. Interestingly, 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 Avadhi Sufi poetry. What is most remarkable about Nāgrīdās’ reception of Walī’s poems is how he has interpreted their content. Unaware of what we now see as the “Muslim” associations of Urdu, he has unhesitatingly included them in a work of poetry dedicated to Krishna. While he did start a new section, under the title Rekhtā, thus indicating the switch 57   Literally: “have a hangover,” the latter being the gloss of khumār in Gupta (attested in OHED). 58   anjhu seems to mean “tear” in Dakanī poetry, see Petievich, “Making ‘Manlyʾ Poetry,” 239, translating from Vajhi. 59   I am grateful to Jameel Ahmad, lecturer of Urdu at the University of Washington for his help with the translation of this ghazal.

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in genre, he nonetheless just continued to compose poetry of Krishna bhakti. It seems that he understood Walī’s poems as similarly referring to the divine and thus easily transferable to Krishna.60 The first poem by Walī that he quotes is in itself ambiguous and can be read as being about love secular as well as divine.61 Nāgrīdās in response has composed his own ode to Krishna, which indicates that he reads it as about divine love only. For him, of course, this means love for Krishna. The second poem he quotes from Walī 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 over of the new fashion, rather an idiosyncratic incorporation of certain elements. First and foremost: he entirely devoted the new poetry to Krishna without feeling this is incongruous. What seems to have appealed most to him in Walī’s poetry were the sonorous sounds of Persian-turned-Rekhtā words, which he readily incorporated into his own poems. He loved their rhyming and punning potential; basically we can recognize the true poet’s delight at finding new tricks for his trade. The abundance of Persian words in Nāgrīdās’ verse seems to indicate that his model’s, Walī’s, register of Dihlavī/Dakanī was highly Persianate. What Nāgrīdās did not appropriate was the metrical structure of the ghazal. He tried his hand at it only once or twice but 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 the poems in Padamuktāvalī. Thus, he did not incorporate certain aspects of the Persianizaton attributed to Walī’s work. Would this mean that Nāgrīdās missed out on the essence of the new Rekhtā genre, which was all about constructing a new militant masculine identity, as Petievich argues? But 60   In interspersing known ghazals with his own Krishna-oriented work, Nāgrīdās is a forerunner of the famous Bhāratendu Hariścandra (see Sagaree Sengupta, “Krsna the Cruel Beloved: Hariscandra and Urdu,” The Annual of Urdu Studies (1994) 9:82102). However, the latter strongly rejected Urdu, which is ironic, since he does so in the poems that capitalize on the popularity of the very medium they denounce. 61  On the Sufi element in Walī’s poetry and his equation of divine with mundane love, see Enzo Turbiano, “The mystical aspect of Valī Aurangābādī’s Poetry,” in eds. Alan Entwistle and Francoise Mallison, Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature (New Delhi, Manohar, 1994), 239-254.

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 79 at the end of the more pada-like poems, Padamuktāvalī included another sustained Rekhtā work by Nāgrīdās that did incorporate some of that imagery. 3. Nāgrīdās’ Iśq Caman and Its Reception In contrast to the poetry in response to Walī’s ghazals, Nāgrīdās’ fulllength Rekhtā work (consisting of 45 dohās), Iśq Caman, “Garden of love”, does include the more violent imagery typical of the ghazal genre. That this is unusual for Nāgrīdās’ 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 1974 edition Nāgrī’s works: “In this book there is an overdose of unIndian elements that cause disgust, such as blood, daggers, mud coloured with blood etc.” is granth meṃ jugupsā utpanna karnevāle prem ke abhāratīya tattva–khūn, khaṃjar, lohū kā kīc ādi–pracur mātrā meṃ haiṃ.62 This disapproval seems to be tied up with what are perceived to be Persianate and hence foreign elements63 and it seems to be a distinctly modern phenomenon, especially in its concern that such is “un-Indian” (abhāratīya).64 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   Khan, Nāgrīdās Granthāvalī, 114.   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. 64   It is debatable how modern such an assessment is. Linguistically speaking, assessment of Persian as a foreign language associated with Islām might be traced back to seventeenth-century circles (notably in the work of Jamāl ud-Dīn Inju, see Alam, “Pursuit,” 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 broadly among all classes by the seventeenth century. 62 63

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their taxonomies. The traditional static assessments have a hard time capturing the dynamic cross-fertilization of ideas and genres exemplified in Nāgrīdās’ Rekhtā verse. Literary experimentation is derided as a corruption or assessed as an early work of an 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 stated by Manmohandās Mukhiyā, head of the temple (personal communication, August 2003). 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 Rekhtā poetry via the Kishangarhi crown prince to other Rajasthani courts. Elsewhere I will provide a full study of Nāgrīdās’ Iśq Caman. Here, I want to only make a few observations about the style and imagery of the work, and what that tells us about Nāgrīdās’ religious understanding of the Urdu 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 loves to use Persianate words for internal rhyme and seems to have created a few favorite formulae of his own, such as syāyat-rifāyat (“minute, relief”), kādara nādara (“mighty, unsurpassed”), śakhs bakhs (“individual, bestowing”), ajabghazab (“marvel, outrage”). Sometimes he finds Braj rhymes for the Persian loans, such as the fine nanda kā farzanda (“Nanda’s son”). In his Iśq Caman, Nāgrīdās incorporates references to Persianate imagery, including allusions to the legendary lover Majnūn (dohā 16 and 33-5). In contrast to his short songs (padas), in this longer work Nāgrīdās appropriates some of the more violent themes typical for Urdu’s poetic sensibility, something viewed by Khan as an element of “disgust” (above). I 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)

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 81 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 fumes.

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 maket the ultimate sacrifice of his life. 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 felt so disgusting and un-Indian to Khan: jigara jakhma jārī jahāṃ, nita lohū kā kīca nāgara āsika lūṭi rahe, iska cimana ke bīca (dohā 44) Where the heart65 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 taking over some of the violent imagery of Urdu conventions but transposing it into his own Rajput world of 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 Rādhā and Krishna’s erotic pastimes. It is ironically only in this poetry styled after the new Rekhtā that the poet links up with this Rajput heritage, to which he certainly was heir. Based on what may be an unconscious link in Nāgrīdās’ mind of Rekhtā with Rajput bravery, one wonders indeed whether this can be taken as an indication that the new Rekhtā poetry signified a violent masculinity, as per Petievich’s arguments. However, for Nāgrīdās there is no explicit break or rupture with the world of Krishna bhakti. Engaging with Rekhtā poetry conventions 65

  Literally: “the liver.”

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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 become meaningful only if suffused with love. Nāgrīdās is quite explict 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, theyʾre all merely waste.

He had expressed a similar sentiment in his introductory dohās in Rekhtā, though there the Krishna bhakti predeliction came through stronger. In 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 (PMĀ Rekhtā 1) Hearing of his fame in whatever tongue, The one of mighty wonderful beauty must be called Krishna. ujle maile khalaka maiṃ, phaile majaba aneka iskabāja siratāja kauṃ, iska piyārā ek (PMĀ 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 (PMĀ Rekhtā 3) No one like the lover, such abundant beauty, Clever dark Mohan, the lover-connoisseur.

Thus, professing a broad-minded openness to all religions provided they preach love, Nāgrīdās’ 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 mould. Conclusion The forging of the new genre of Urdu poetry in the eighteenth century is an excellent example of the great cultural ferment happening in North India at the time. It is a fallacy to focus on Delhi and the Mughal

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 83 court as the matrix of a cultural hegemony, since regional centers played important roles in fashioning and transmitting new ideas and media of expression. Cosmopolitan as well as provincial salons patronized cultural performances that incubated and promoted new fashions. We see multiple channels of exchange and a complex fluidity. This multi-layered picture can be pieced together from historical, literary and archival evidence. We have seen how the arrival of Rekhtā on the Delhi scene was itself an interesting case of exchange of ideas, a pizza-effect of sorts, reimporting “Dihlavī” 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 Dakanī poetry. I suggest that perhaps there may have been also an element of legitimating an upwardly mobile Indian elite (Alam’s “Indian up­starts”) seeking to assert their linguistic identity in response to the perceived superiority of recent Persian immigrants. One aspect of this moment in Rekhtā’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’ response to Walī’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 over of the new idiom, but of selective adaptation, as suited to Nāgrīdās’ personal taste. The preponderance of Persianate words in Nāgrīdās’ adaptations may well confirm the strong Persia­ nizing character of the new vogue. However, if this went hand in hand with a de-Hinduizaton in the new Rekhtā, 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 Rādhā as he does elsewhere in his poetry. Nāgrīdās also tends to bypass the violent imagery of the beloved as a cool-blooded murderer and the lover as a martyr for love. He resorts to this imagery only in his Iśq Caman, and there—I have argued—transforms the imagery into that of Rajput bravery in service of the Goddess. Thus, while recognizing how the genre circulates between different milieus, we have to also register that certain elements do not circulate easily. Nāgrīdās’ “hybrid” Rekhtā poetry is decried by twentieth-century critics, who see it as an uncharacteristic corruption in his otherwise bhakti oriented work or as immature selling out to “disgusting, un-

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Indian” norms. However, the abundant manuscript evidence and the fact that Iśq Caman is still performed in the Kishangarh Kalyān Rāi temple attest to the abiding popularity of these Rekhtā works. There is even evidence that a neighbouring Rajput king replied in kind when Nāgrīdās sent him his work. Thus we see a successful case of transmission of Rekhtā into a Braj milieu, from the imperial to the provincial centre, from an overwhelmingly Islamic elite to a Krishna bhaktiinspired one. Bibliography Primary Sources: Editions Āzam, Muhammad, ed. 1978. Walī Granthāvalī. 2 vols. Kanpur: Annapūrṇā Prakāśan. Celer, Janārdan Rao. 1971. Vṛnd Granthāvalī. Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir. Gupta, Kiśorīlāl. 1965. Nāgarīdās. 2 vols. Benares: Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā. Khān, Faiyāz Alī. 1974. Nāgarīdās Granthāvalī. New Delhi: Kendrīya Hindī Nideśālay. Śaraṇ, Vrajvallabh. 1966. Śrī Nāgarīdāsjī kī Vāṇī: Nāgarīdāśjī ke Jīvanvṛtta evaṃ Vāṇiyoṃ kā Sanśodhit Sanskaraṇ. Vrindaban: Śrī Sarveśvar Press. Secondary Sources Ahmad, Aziz. 1964. Studies in Islamic culture in the Indian Environment. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Alam, Muzaffar. 1998. “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics.” In Modern Asian Studies 32.2: 317-349. Bangha, Imre. Forthcoming. “Poetry in Mixed Language: A Survey of Rekhtā Literature in North India.” In: Francesca Orsini, ed. Before the Divide. New Delhi: Orient Longman. 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. 179-91. 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. 805-63. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———, 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, 78-91. ———, 1995. The Kishangarh School of Painting (c. 1680-1850). 2 vols. Ph.D. Dissertation. Oxford University. Hashmi, N.H. 1986. Wali. Makers of Indian literature. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. King, Christopher. 1994. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in nineteenth century North India. Bombay: Oxford University Press.

literary moments of exchange in the 18th century 85 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. 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’ royal appropriations of Bhakti themes.” In South Asia Research 15: 55-78, SOAS, London. Petievich, Carla. 2002. “Making ‘Manlyʾ Poetry: The construction of Urdu’s ‘Golden Ageʾ.” In: Richard Barnett, ed. Rethinking early modern India. New Delhi: Manohar. 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 9:82-102. Seyller, John. 1999. Workshop and Patron in Mughal India. Zurich: Museum Rietberg. Turbiano, Enzo. 1994. “The mystical aspect of Valī Aurangābādī’s Poetry.” In Alan Entwistle and Francoise Mallison, eds. Studies in South Asian Devotional Litera­ ture. 239-254. New Delhi: Manohar

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darbārs in transition

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Darbārs in transition: the many facets of the Mughal imperial image after Shah Jahan as seen in the ex-Binney collection in the San Diego Museum of Art Laura E. Parodi During over four centuries of Mughal rule, the imperial image was relentlessly recast in response to the challenge of changing circumstances. This is as true of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which I have discussed in a previous article,1 as of the eighteenth and the nineteenth—the subject of this essay. In both instances, I have chosen to focus more specifically on depictions of formal audiences, conventionally known to scholars as darbārs. In connection with the sharp transitions marked by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, darbār iconography reveals shifting perceptions of imperial authority, when not actual changes in court ceremonial. As demonstrated by the examples considered in this essay, even at a time when imperial authority had been vastly reduced, Mughal patrons and their artists retained a remarkable awareness of the potential of the visual medium. Any discussion of late imperial Mughal iconography must be regarded as preliminary. Despite increasing scholarly interest in recent years, the history of Mughal painting after the reign of Shah Jahan (1628-1658 ce) remains largely unwritten. Rather than attempt a comprehensive survey, I have chosen to focus on the collection assembled by Edwin Binney, 3rd and later acquired in its near entirety by the San Diego Museum of Art (hence: SDMA). Binney had a special interest in post-Shahjahani Mughal painting and his collection contains numerous pieces that will allow me to single out some of the key features of imperial Mughal iconography in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, suggesting future research trails. ,

1   Laura E. Parodi, “From tooy to darbār. Materials for a history of Mughal audiences and their depictions,” in Ratnamala (Garland of Gems): Arts in India between Mughal, Rajput (sic), Europe and China, eds. Joachim K. Bautze and Rosa Maria Cimino (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 2010), pp. 51-76.

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The crucial yet understudied reign of Bahadur Shah I (1707-12) was well represented in the Binney collection. At least two paintings, one of which is today in the San Diego Museum of Art (Color Plate 5.1),2 testify to an early detachment of imperial iconography from the prevailing conventions of Shah Jahan’s reign and prelude to significant later developments. Both works are large, comprise few figures and focus on the ruler and members of his family. A comparison with the imperial image projected by the majority of Mughal paintings in the previous century highlights significant differences. In the large public audience scenes popular at court in the first half of the seventeenth century, exemplified by several pages of the Windsor Pādshāhnāma, the Mughal ruler occupies a separate pictorial space, positioned above a crowd of assembled courtiers.3 This iconography—which stresses the quasi-divine status of the ruler—was apparently discontinued by ‘Alamgir (r. 1658-1707), pointing to relevant changes in the conception of authority; whether this also reflects changes in the emperor’s daily routine remains for historians to clarify. The darbārs of Bahadur Shah I reflect this shift in interest from crowded public assemblies to quiet and intimate gatherings, often hosted in less formal settings. The limits entailed in the adoption of a comprehensive darbār label for what are clearly distinct iconographies become evident: these images are neither comparable in subject, nor in their approach to the imperial image. For the sake of clarity, I shall abide by convention and refrain from suggesting alternative designations;4 but a finer-grain categorization will appear necessary soon as we move beyond formal analysis and address the content of these paintings. The most readily apparent difference is that between public and private audiences; but further and 2  SDMA, 1990: 368. Previously published in Indian Miniature Painting from the Collection of Edwin Binney, 3rd, I: The Mughal and Deccani Schools, with some related Sultanate material (Portland, OR: Portland Art Museum, 1973), no. 71. See also ibid., no. 72—whereabouts unknown. 3  See for example fols. 48b, by Ramdas, and 49a, by Murar, c. 1640; illus. in Milo Cleveland Beach and Ebba Koch, King of the World: The Padshahnama—An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (Washington, D.C. and London: Azimuth Editions / Sackler Gallery and Thames and Hudson, 1997), nos. 8-9. 4   The word darbār also appears in inscriptions, although the earliest one known to me is in the Shujaʿ al-Dawla Album inscription, more precisely in a folio now in Dublin, The Chester Beatty Library (hence: CBL), In 34.7. See Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library (London: Scorpion Cavendish / World of Islam Festival Trust, 1995), no. 4.7 (vol. I, p. 489).

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more historically accurate descriptions may perhaps be suggested. The SDMA Bahadur Shah I darbār, for example (and the other ex-Binney specimen), may well record appointments or investitures. Whether these are real or imaginary—contemporary records or later recollections—is a matter of debate and involves yet another level of complexity. Color Plate 5.1, described in the early Binney catalogue as the only picture showing all of Bahadur Shah I’s four sons, is a clear example. Recent scholarly attention has shifted to the young prince, who is shown receiving a turban ornament (sarpīch) from Bahadur Shah (symbolizing the transmission of authority).5 The prince, as noted in the early Binney catalogue, is most probably someone other (and younger) than Bahadur Shah’s successor Farrukhsiyar (r. 1713-19).6 It may well be the latter’s successor Muhammad Shah (r. 1719-48), although there are problems with this identification. If accepted, such a dating would make it a posthumous grouping.7 Although the composition builds upon established conventions, it is also innovative in various respects. An immediate precedent, where the ruler is enthroned but the reception is hosted on an open-air terrace rather than inside an audience hall, is a c. 1660 “Darbar of ‘Alamgir” in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (b/w 5.1).8 Datable to shortly after the emperor’s accession on the basis of his apparent age, it marks a sharp deviation from the imperial image projected in Shah Jahan’s reign (and even in a painting identifiable as ‘Alamgir’s accession picture9). The ruler no longer occupies an exalted position; his officers, sheltered under the imperial baldachin, press close to the throne. Although ‘Alamgir is nimbused and larger in size (hierarchical proportions being new in Mughal painting and possibly a Deccani suggestion),10 the standing officers tower above him, appropriating most of the picture frame. The parasol mounted above the throne—   For a discussion see Laura E. Parodi, “Two pages from the Late Shah Jahan Album,” Ars Orientalis 40 (2011), pp. 267-94 (with further bibliography). 6  See Yuthika Sharma, “Bahadur Shah I with his sons, handing a sarpech to a grandson,” in Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi 1707-1857, ed. W. Dalrymple and Y. Sharma (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), forthcoming. 7   Ibid., where an identification of the four sons is also suggested. 8   Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar, MS.54.2007. For a color illustration see Stuart Cary Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting (London: Chatto & Windus: 1978), no. 37. 9  Stuart Cary Welch, The Art of Mughal India: Painting and Precious Objects (New York: The Asia Society, 1963), no. 58. 10  See for example Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting (London / Berkeley and Los Angeles: Sotheby Publications / University of California Press, 1983), figs. 19, 89. 5

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usually a means to single out the emperor—becomes blurred with the baldachin; the young prince is similarly lost amid the larger figures. Although I am currently unable to propose a precise identification for the episode recorded, I suggest this approach to the subject reflects ‘Alamgir’s will or necessity to promote different relations with his officers compared to his father. This is a promising subject for future inquiry. Compared to ‘Alamgir’s darbār, Bahadur Shah’s investiture of a young prince in the presence of family members (Color Plate 5.1) makes an unequivocal statement about the ruler’s preeminence. At some distance, a circle is clearly perceived around him—formed by two of his sons, the two standing figures and the rim of the parasol.11 But a relevant difference is noticeable in the play of gazes: ʿAlamgir and his officers do not look into each other’s eyes, in accordance with the prevalent conventions established under Shah Jahan; the only direct gaze is that of the child eyeing the falcon perched on the emperor’s hand. Instead, Bahadur Shah and his grandson make intimate eye contact, and the four sons look straight across and very nearly exchange gazes. This creates an unprecedented feeling of intimacy and relaxation which will continue to characterize imperial portraits until the twilight of the Mughal school. The “lotus-shaped” eyes in the Bahadur Shah I darbār are a hall­ mark of eighteenth-century Mughal painting, and suggest the work of an artist trained in the Rajput style. This is further confirmed by the direction in which the narrative unfolds: left to right rather than the reverse, as had been the norm in the seventeenth century.12 Such an orientation is characteristic of paintings produced for an audience accustomed to Devanagari rather than Arabic script. In the context of a court where Persian continued to be the preeminent language, it can only be explained as the result of a disruption of the court atelier, followed by a fresh start. Another sign of this disruption is the preference for individual paintings over complex illustrated manuscripts: it is only in a well-established and properly staffed kitābkhāna that 11   This means of singling out a figure was not new in Mughal painting: an example from Jahangir’s time is illustrated in Beach and Koch, King of the World, fig. 29. 12   The CBL portion of a c. 1603-5 Akbarnāma shows no exceptions to the rightto-left orientation in scenes involving action: In 03, illus. in Leach, Indian Paintings, I, pp. 232-300. This is likely a result of increasingly standardized atelier practice; a few decades later, the Windsor Pādshāhnāma only features one exception: folio 174a, illus. in Beach and Koch, no. 35. Audience scenes generally follow the same rule, but may diverge if actual ceremonial requires them to, as explained below.

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c­ omplex projects involving a number of practitioners become feasible. For the same reason perhaps—the paintings being conceived independently of a written text—the new directionality encountered no resistance. This one instance is exceptional in that the prince received is a junior: juniors and political rivals were received (always a rare in­stance) on the ruler’s left-hand side.13 In this instance, the painter could mirror a standard seventeenth-century composition precisely. Note how even the sarpīch is handed to the prince using the left hand (­possibly a sign of respect for the more senior relatives attending the reception). Eighteenth-century painters were confronted by greater difficulties when depicting the far more frequent instance of a senior officer or prince being received. The new left-to-right directionality was especially unsuited for conveying the preeminence of such guests, who were traditionally received to the ruler’s right. Changes seem to have affected pictorial conventions, not protocol. One consequently wonders whether the disappearance of the public audience from Mughal painting is to be interpreted as an actual withdrawal of the Mughals from the public sphere, or as the product of pictorial conventions that placed special emphasis on the private audience. Historians are better equipped than myself here, and may be able to clarify whether the public audience lost importance in the emperor’s daily routine or whether it simply ceased to be an interesting subject for depiction. The problems faced by the artists when attempting to negotiate the conflicting principles of ceremonial and visual depictions are illustrated by another ex-Binney Bahadur Shah I darbār, whose whereabouts I have been unable to trace,14 where an officer or prince is received to the ruler’s right (as befits a guest of honor) and a sarpīch delivered to him using the right hand. As a result of the reversal of seventeenthcentury conventions, the painter strived to reconcile ceremonial with a narrative unfolding from left to right, resulting in a tension that characterizes Mughal painting throughout the eighteenth century, as we 13   In the CBL Akbarnāma (see previous note), the ambassadors of Shah Sulayman of Badakhshan are received to Akbar’s left after Sulayman’s attempted coup on Kabul (In 03-53-54, illus. in Leach, Indian Paintings, nos. 2.107-108), and Jahangir’s imaginary reception for the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas from the St. Petersburg Album— another rare exception to the rule—must be understood in similarly derogatory terms (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, 42.16A; illus. in Amina Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters—Indian Miniatures from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Paris: Flammarion, 1992, fig. 53). 14  See note 2.

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shall see from further examples. There could be no clearer evidence of a disruption of atelier practice during the latter part of ‘Alamgir’s reign, I would argue, than this shift in direction; it is equally apparent in paintings depicting other subjects (not of direct concern for us). Other paintings in the former Binney collection, now in the SDMA, allow us to explore the issue further. But regarding the second Bahadur Shah I darbār, it is worth noting a few further details. Jewelry strongly supports an identification of the standing figure as a prince; the thumb­­ring he is wearing and the tray with jewels carried by his attendant suggest a successful military campaign. The early Binney catalogue identifies the figure as “probably Farrukhsiyàr,”15 but it is worth considering other possibilities. The reception itself is less formal than the first darbār: it seems to be a reward or an exchange of gifts, not an official investiture. The throne has no parasol and there are no dignitaries present; the artist consequently resorted to a larger group of ­servants to balance the figures of prince and attendant. Finally, the chauri typical of Shahjahani painting is replaced by a peacock-feather ­morchhal: this is already seen in ‘Alamgir’s darbār and will remain in use throughout the eighteenth century. The origin of this new fashion is unclear, but the earliest instances in Mughal painting possibly date from the reign of Shah Jahan, when the peacock-feather morchhal occasionally appears alongside the far more common chauri without completely replacing it.16 The depiction of elaborate public audiences may have fallen out of favor in conjunction with ‘Alamgir’s disavowal of historical painting: after all, Shah Jahan’s (and arguably Jahangir’s, r. 1605-27) elaborate darbārs were conceived as illustrations to historical narratives, whereas ‘Alamgir’s and Bahadur Shah’s more intimate pictures seem to have functioned independently of a text. The same applies to other eighteenth-century darbārs, examples of which are discussed below. The hypothesis is further supported by the revived popularity of the public audience in the nineteenth century, in conjunction with a renewed interest in genealogies and historical manuscripts. If confirmed by further research, this would demonstrate that the public and private “darbārs” are not only distinct, but derive from separate iconographic lineages.   Indian Miniature Painting, p. 98.   There are only two instances in the Pādshāhnāma (fols. 46b and 214b); illus. in Beach and Koch, King of the World, nos. 6-7 and 43. 15 16

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It may be no coincidence that the earliest predecessors for Bahadur Shah’s audiences are found not in illustrated manuscripts, but in a series of loose folios commissioned by Akbar (r. 1556-1605) and Jahangir at the turn of the seventeenth century. These depict unidentified but doubtlessly specific events involving the rulers and their officers: perhaps appointments?17 Similar paintings unconnected with a text continued to be produced for Shah Jahan, but with an emphasis on the emperor’s offspring rather than his officers, and an increasing prevalence of the profile convention, resulting in a more markedly two-dimensional space.18 Note how, once more, post-Shahjahani darbārs cannot be reduced to mere repetitions of inherited conventions. With the notable exception of Asaf Khan (who was after all Shah Jahan’s father-in-law), officers in Shah Jahan’s reign are shown as part of a multitude, occupying a less exalted place than the ruler: more of a darshān than a darbār.19 By contrast, eighteenth-century Mughal rulers inhabit a plausible world alongside their courtiers. Terence McInerney has aptly contextualized the increasing signs of human emotions in the paintings commissioned by Muhammad Shah—incidentally, a point in favor of a dating to his reign for Color Plate 5.1. But, as I hope to have shown, the Mughal imperial image had begun to step down from semi-divine status much earlier, possibly as early as the first decade of ‘Alamgir’s reign. Also practiced at the court of Bahadur Shah I was the allegorical group portrait. Although similarly grouped under the darbār label, it is a distinct genre, whose lineage can be traced to the early seventeenth century.20 Edwin Binney purchased one of the most puzzling examples, now also at the SDMA (b/w 5.2).21 Datable to c. 1710, it depicts six Mughal princes; a minute inscription on the leftmost 17  Not much scholarship exists on these paintings, often decontextualized today even from the albums they were gathered in at some later date: for some examples see Terence McInerney, “Manohar,” in Master Artists Of The Imperial Mughal Court, ed. Pratapaditya Pal (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1991), pp. 53-68. 18   Compare McInerney, “Manohar,” figs. 10 and 13. 19  See for example Beach and Koch, King of the World, nos. 12-13, 39 and passim. 20   The earliest example is possibly the c. 1550-55 Princes of the House of Timur (London, British Museum, 1913,0208,0.1), if we accept its refashioning into an allegorical scene to have been commissioned by Jahangir c. 1605. For the most recent discussion see Laura E. Parodi, “Princes of the House of Timur,” in The Indian Portrait 1560-1850 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2010), eds. Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala, no. 1. 21  SDMA 1990: 365. Previously discussed and illustrated in color in Barbara Schmitz, “After the Great Mughals,” in After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi

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blue-and-white jar identifies it as the work of Bhawani Das. Another inscription, in a cartouche placed above the painting, identifies the princes: Shāh Shujāʿ Shāhzāda; Dārā Shikūh Shāhzāda; Awrangzīb; Murād Bakhsh; Bahādur Shāh; Aʿẓam Shāh. This second inscription must be later, considering the similarity of its cartouche and the page border with those of the Shujaʿ al-Dawla Album, assembled for the Oudh nawab in Faizabad c. 1770.22 It is useful, as we shall see, but less authoritative in that it postdates the painting by several decades. Despite its inclusion of princely likenesses, this imaginary assembly has little in common with darbārs and is more directly related to pictures that typically portray an (often long-deceased) ancestor handing a jewel (symbolizing the right to rule) to some descendant.23 This only helps up to a point, though—as none of the said images provides a precedent for this gathering of six princes from two different generations. If originally meant to be included in an album, as seems likely, this unusual iconography may have been conceived as a complement to a now lost facing composition. As with other audience scenes, most allegorical group portraits are based on a slight asymmetry that triggers a narrative. Here, the first impression is of a static top-down hierarchy: the princes’ size decreases in relation to their age; in addition, only the seniormost two are protected by a baldachin, while the middle ones hold jewels in their hands. But a closer look reveals that, whereas daggers are equally distributed among the princes, only Dara Shikoh (top left) and Bahadur Shah (bottom right) have swords. Here is the expected asymmetry. If we read the image from left to right and from top to bottom, in accordance with eighteenth-century conventions, we may infer that Dara Shikoh is portrayed as having the right to rule, and so is Bahadur Shah. Dara had been Shah Jahan’s heir-apparent in preference to Bahadur Shah’s father, the future ‘Alamgir. According to this and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002), pp. 1-11, esp. p. 2 and fig. 1. 22   Many such pages have had their borders trimmed: among these are eighteen CBL folios discussed in Leach, Indian Paintings, Vol. II, pp. 654-64. The size of another similar page is 50.5x35 cm: Bodleian Ms. Douce Or. a.3, f. 16r; illus. in Andrew Topsfield, Paintings from Mughal India (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2008), no. 61. 23  See for example CBL In. 7A.19 (illus. in Leach, Indian Paintings, no. 3.29); Rampur, Raza Library, Album 5, fol. 6a, reproduced in Barbara Schmitz and ZiyaudDin A. Desai, Mughal and Persian Paintings and Illustrated Manuscripts in the Raza Library, Rampur (New Delhi, 2006), pl. 62.

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interpretation, the picture contains a denial of ‘Alamgir’s right to rule. This is precisely captured by the inscription, which is somewhat later and lists the princes as they appear from right to left and from top to bottom (confusing matters somewhat), but interestingly refers to ‘Alamgir by the princely name of Aurangzeb, at variance with the norm.24 By contrast, Bahadur Shah I is addressed by his regnal title, rather than as Muhammad Muʿazzam—his given name—or Shah ‘Alam, the title he was awarded by his father (incidentally, in a complete parallel with Jahangir/Shah Jahan). It is often such fine points of protocol, whether verbal or visual, that provide clues to the content of our purported darbār paintings. The depiction of an imaginary princely assembly as a means to make a point on someone’s right to rule was not new in Mughal painting;25 indeed it is an element of con­ tinuity within an established tradition. What is somewhat puzzling is the message suggested by iconographic detail: ʿAlamgir had many detractors, but delegitimizing him would not have done Bahadur Shah I a great service... Clearly the issue will deserve further attention. The visual idiom adopted is also new and striking—particularly the use of straightforward hierarchical proportions.26 This further confirms the suggestion of a disruption followed by a fresh start at the turn of the eighteenth century. The reign of Farruksiyar27 is represented in the SDMA’s ex-Binney collection by a portrait of the ruler at the window (jharoka) (Color Plate 5.2);28 another work in the collection depicts his successor Muhammad Shah at the jharoka (b/w 5.3).29 These will not be discussed at length here due to limited space and the greater availability of information on this genre, whose lineage is traceable to Jahangir’s 24   Hence my insistence on the use of the regnal title, contrary to scholarly conventions. “Aurangzeb” and “ʿAlamgir” are by no means equivalent in Mughal documents, and should not be treated as such. 25   CBL In. 7A.19, cited in the previous note, being one such example. 26  One could well argue that images such as “Jujhar Singh Bundela kneels in submission to Shah Jahan” (CBL In 07A.16; most recently discussed in Elaine Wright, Muraqqaʿ: Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin [Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 2008], no. 51) do indeed make use of hierarchical proportions; but these are staged through visual means that set the ruler and secondary figures, as it were, on different visual planes, thereby preserving an impression of naturalism. In the ‘Alamgiri darbār previously discussed, the use of hierarchical proportions is detected only upon close scrutiny. 27  On which see also Schmitz, “After the Great Mughals,” p. 3 and Fig. 2. 28  SDMA 1990: 370. 29  SDMA 1990: 376. Previously published in Indian Miniature Painting, no. 75.

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reign30 and ultimately to the late-fifteenth century Bellini portraits of Mehmet Fatıh.31 Jharoka portraits enjoyed equal popularity at the Rajput courts and in the Deccan during the eighteenth century,32 and although the iconographic details suggest an echo of the Fatıh portraits (in particular, the carpet or embroidered textile laid out on the window-sill), the practice itself is traditional in India. As it stands today, Farrukhsiyar’s portrait (whose inner border may have been touched up with pink at a later stage) is a wonderfully delicate picture, in which pattern has been largely sacrificed in favor of greater clarity in design and a compelling palette of pastel shades. Here too, the sarpīch symbolizes authority—a Mughal counterpart to the Ottoman rose.33 Muhammad Shah’s portrait (b/w 5.3) is more in keeping with earlier examples, but his hand holds no sarpīch or other symbol of authority; instead, it grips a novel attribute, the water-pipe (huqqa), which was to enjoy great popularity under Muhammad Shah and his successors. The private realm with its pastimes and addictions thus suddenly breaks into the picture frame, and there it will remain until the dynasty’s final downfall. The increasingly blurred confines of public and private sphere quite possibly reflect a decay in the ruler’s power. The huqqa’s debut in the public realm is only the most dramatic example. McInerney’s suggestion to view Muhammad Shah’s album portraits as ‘an alternate format-version of the type of pictorial biography that was initiated by Akbar and continued by Jahangir and Shah Jahanʾ34 sets the pitch right, allowing us to place the huqqa in a correct perspective. With only few precedents, depictions of huqqas first became common during ‘Alamgir’s reign; they appear c. 1690 in portraits of officers posted in the Deccan, where the Portuguese had introduced the waterpipe several decades earlier.35 There is no dearth of precedents for the  See especially the famous painting where Jahangir is shown holding a portrait of his deceased father: Paris, Musée Guimet, No. 3676 B; illus. in Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters, fig. 27. 31  On which see Bellini and The East, ed. Deborah Howard and J.M. Rogers (London: National Gallery Company, 2005), no. 23; also pp. 70-79, 87-95. 32  See for example Topsfield, Painting at Udaipur, figs. 132, 180; Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, fig. 108. 33  See note 30. 34  Terence McInerney, “Mughal Painting in the Reign of Muhammad Shah,” in After the Great Mughals, ed. Barbara Schmitz, p. 15. 35   An example (where the huqqa has been retouched in the nineteenth century) is SDMA 1990: 450; illus. in Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, fig. 181. For a fuller contextualization, see Laura E. Parodi, “Bidri Ware and the New Mughal Order,” in The 30

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association of huqqas with official images—whether Deccani or Rajput;36 what is interesting is not so much the appearance of the object per se as the shift in attitude that allowed these private overtones to affect the imperial image. In Mughal art, self-indulgence had until Muhammad Shah’s reign been kept strictly separate from the images recording official receptions; now that dividing line becomes blurred. It is likely that such a momentous shift in emphasis was once again prompted by Rajput precedents and is related to the work­shops’ dispersal during the reign of ‘Alamgir I. The paintings commissioned by Muhammad Shah are innovative— often dramatically so—in other respects: many are in a large landscape format, the palette is frequently dominated by whites and greys, and the subjects are often unprecedented. Save for certain iconographic details and the shift in direction already apparent in Bahadur Shah I’s reign, little needs to be added to McInerney’s account. But while he emphasizes a substantial continuity in terms of subject matter between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a resilience of ‘portraits, pictures of formal receptions and administrative activities, depictions of private entertainment and the hunt,ʾ37 the impression gained from a finer-grain examination of iconographic details is remarkably different. A good example is another ex-Binney darbār painting at the SDMA (Color Plate 5.3),38 signed by Nidha Mal and dated by McInerney to c. 1725.39 As with Bahadur Shah I, the direction of the ruler’s gaze, which dictates that of the viewer, seems to be in accordance with Devanagari rather than Arabic script; and again the principles of Mughal ceremonial are squeezed into the picture only with some effort. Note how the officers lining up on the ruler’s right hand result in a concentration of figures toward the bottom right side of the painting. This is seen elsewhere at this time; and it is possible that the tension resulting from a narrative unfolding in the “wrong” direction in relation to ceremonial encouraged painters to create a three-dimensional setting. Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era, ed. Laura E. Parodi (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming). 36  See respectively Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, figs. 95, 107 and Topsfield, Painting at Udaipur, figs. 95, 100. 37   “Muhammad Shah,” p. 14. 38  SDMA 1990: 378. Previously published in Indian Miniature Painting, no. 77 and McInerney, “Muhammad Shah,” fig. 10. 39   Ibid., p. 25 and fig. 10.

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On one point only I dissent with McInerney: I do not think these darbār images simply ‘exclude people who are not essential to the meaning of an event.ʾ40 In my opinion we are looking at a different event or routine altogether from Shah Jahan’s large public audiences. On the other hand, McInerney’s interpretation of the format and size of Muhammad Shah’s paintings as ‘the final liberation of Mughal painting from the format of the written word’41 receives full support from the adoption of a new directionality: had these paintings been meant to accompany a text, it is likely that a return to the right-to-left orientation would have been witnessed. For a viewer acquainted with traditional Persianate iconography, the new orientation produces slightly disconcerting effects, as in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s “Muhammad Shah with consort and female dancers,” (b/w 5.4),42 where the female protagonist is seated to the ruler’s left—as prescribed by protocol;43 but, as a result of the new orientation, she is positioned higher up the page than the ruler! The artist was clearly aware of the problem and accordingly reduced the woman’s size so that the emperor’s head still rises above hers; yet an observer imbued with Persianate or earlier Mughal conventions struggles to reconcile this with the expectation of her being a senior due to her placement on the page. The same problems were faced by the artist who painted “Muhammad Shah celebrating Holi,” now in the Bodleian Library, this time with standing figures.44 There are occasional exceptions to the prevailing left-right direction: examples are a private audience scene in the Raza Library45 and a tinted drawing in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The latter also shows Muhammad Shah and his ladies celebrating Holi.46 The architectural setting, as noted by Robert Del Bontà,47 precisely   Ibid., p. 16.   Ibid., p. 17. 42   London, Victoria and Albert Museum, I.S. 133-1964, fol. 64b. 43   The issue is discussed in Laura E. Parodi, “Of Shaykhs, Bibis and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” in Proceedings of the 6th Conference of Iranian Studies, ed. Anna Krasnowolska, Claus Pedersen and Maria Szuppe (special issue of Studia Iranica, forthcoming). 44  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce Or. b.3, f. 22r; illus. in Topsfield, Paintings from Mughal India, no. 50. 45   Rampur, Raza Library, Album 14, fol. 27a; illus. in Schmitz and Desai, Mughal and Persian Paintings, pl. 110. 46   Gift of Paul F. Walter, M.76.149.2; illus. in Robert J. Del Bontà, “Late or Faux Mughal Painting: A Question of Intent,” in Schmitz, After the Great Mughals, fig. 7. 47   Ibid., p. 157. 40 41

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reproduces that of a Shahjahani public audience—which may explain its “archaizing” orientation (Muhammad Shah is, for once, looking to the viewer’s left). As a result, the emperor does not even glance at the women who are playfully celebrating the festival under the jharoka. Of relevance to us is the complete disregard for the public audience that had been so popular only a few decades earlier. Whether this also reflects changes in the ruler’s routine would be interesting to assess. Del Bontà has proposed to view this unusual painting as ‘relat[ing] to more than one model’48 (the public audience and private pastimes in the female quarters) and illustrative of ‘how Indian artists work— copying of all types of earlier and contemporary paintings is fair game.’49 Yet a slightly more sophisticated explanation may be proposed for this apparently odd juxtaposition when we consider the numerous close precedents in Rajput painting.50 Perhaps the synthesis had been effected before; and while the architectural setting originates in Shahjahani painting, the iconography may simply represent another facet of the interaction between Delhi and the Rajput courts in the eighteenth century. But Muhammad Shah’s portraits have other surprises in store, and often baffle our attempts at categorization. The emperor is shown at times with a halo, at times without one; but there does not seem to be a direct correlation with a more public versus a more private context. In the two examples previously discussed and a third one (Color Plate 5.4), Muhammad Shah is engaged in official business and nimbused. The third example—a lightly touched-up drawing—sees him riding in a palanquin. Although no setting is provided, the visual details suggest an official reception: an attendant holding a parasol, an officer ceremoniously saluting, and the piece of paper in the ruler’s hand (a petition or report, seen also in Color Plate 5.3). Muhammad Shah, who suffered from reduced mobility at a relatively early age, is here “riding out” to greet an officer. If not physically impaired, he would have been riding a horse. This, one could argue, is a more official context than the paintings which depict Muhammad Shah similarly riding in a palanquin to visit the palace gardens, of which at least two examples

  Ibid.   Ibid. 50  See for example Topsfield, Painting at Udaipur, fig. 82. 48 49

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have been previously published.51 Why, then, does a nimbus surround his head in one of them, but not the other?52 Even more difficult to account for is the absence of a halo in a Bodleian Library page that depicts Muhammad Shah and four of his nobles, possibly inside the very same hall of private audience seen in the background of the SDMA darbār.53 The two images seem to show some of the same officers, with the prominent inclusion of a huqqa and no exchange of gazes; but the interior setting and the absence of a throne suggest greater intimacy in the Bodleian painting. Muhammad Shah is accordingly shown without a halo, at variance with the SDMA darbār—although a faint aura is perceivable around his head. In addition, the painter Chitarman54 skilfully arranged the officers’ figures so as to baffle the new directionality and echo a typical Shahjahani composition, with the ruler towering above two groups of courtiers of comparable size. In the SDMA audience scene, the artist Nidha Mal opted for a more three-dimensional arrangement and divided up the space into two equal halves, reserving one for Muhammad Shah and his attendant and the other for his officers. Despite the use of hierarchical proportions within the group of officers, the ruler’s figure is neither larger nor prominently positioned; his gaze crosses the bodies of his officers rather than point above their heads to a dimension beyond the page (as would have been typical under Shah Jahan). Nidha Mal’s Muham­ mad Shah also has a physical quality that makes his presence felt by the viewer in a manner not seen in the seventeenth century. Such radically different approaches indicate that painters were at this time allowed a certain freedom to play with spatial conventions—although we are a long way from fully understanding what expressive intent dictated their choice. A striking example is Chitarman’s use of a halo in

  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Francis Bartlett Picture Fund and Special Contribution, 14.686, and id., 26.283, where a falcon is seen perched on his hand and no halo is used; illus. in McInerney, “Muhammad Shah,” figs. 8 and 11 respectively. 52   Recent examination of BMFA 14.686 (see note 51) has revealed that the emperor is carrying paper, pen and seal on his litter, indicating he is probably not going out on a hunt but about to conduct some official business; this makes the absence of a halo even more puzzling. 53  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce Or. a.3, f. 14r; most recently discussed and illus. in color in Topsfield, Paintings from Mughal India, no. 49. See also ­McInerney, “Muhammad Shah,” p. 24 and fig. 9. 54   Discussed at length in McInerney, “Muhammad Shah.” 51

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“Muhammad Shah making love,”55 perhaps signaling more symbolic overtones than the modern viewer would expect. The ex-Binney collection in the SDMA also features some postShahjahani equestrian portraits—most notably one of ‘Alamgir56 and one of Muhammad Shah57 (or possibly his son and successor Ahmad Shah: r. 1748-54). I have chosen not to discuss them at length here, but they too testify to a shift away from Shahjahani conventions, with a remarkably innovative palette and approach to landscape in the second case.58 Given these premises, the sudden reemergence of large, symmetrically arranged public audience scenes in the early decades of the nineteenth century must be seen as a deliberate revival, resulting at least in part from another disruption. Historical circumstances fully support this suggestion; and one of the most evident iconographic clues are the turbans, directly borrowed from those in vogue at the Awadhi court.59 Nineteenth-century painters (or perhaps more accurately, their patrons) seem to have challenged some of the ideas developed in the previous century: a reaction, perhaps, to a wound still sore—Nadir Shah’s 1739 sack of Delhi. McInerney ascribes the revival to Akbar II (r. 1806-37) and Bahadur Shah II (r. 1837-58);60 iconographic details suggest the second mostly followed ideas developed under the first. At variance with their immediate predecessors, nineteenth-century Mughal rulers favored historical painting and Timurid genealogies; they also commissioned multiple copies of audience scenes for dissemination. These were powerful ideological weapons that allowed them to maintain some of their prestige despite increasingly adverse circumstances. The artists that created these images seem to have had access to the remains of the imperial library, as demonstrated for example by a c. 1800 illustrated copy of the Pādshāhnāma now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art whose illustrations are an   By Chitarman; Delhi, c. 1735. London, The British Library, L3-9-070-20-J-47; illus. in McInerney, “Muhammad Shah,” fig. 7. 56  SDMA 1990: 361; illus. in Indian Miniature Painting, no. 69. Other similar works exist, among which London, British Library, Johnson Album 3, no. 4, illus. in The Indian Portrait 1560-1860, no. 29. 57  SDMA 1990: 384. Illus. in Indian Miniature Painting, no. 81 and (color) McInerney, “Muhammad Shah,” fig. 1. 58   For a discussion, see McInerney, “Muhammad Shah,” pp. 17-18. 59  See for example CBL In 64.24, Lucknow, c. 1790; illus. in Leach no. 7.109 (II, p. 771). 60   “Muhammad Shah,” p. 31. 55

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abbreviated version of Shahjahani originals,61 and by a number of single folios depicting “darbārs”. Akbar II’s political programme is eloquently proclaimed by his choice of regnal title, and the prestige of the earlier Akbar (r. 15561605) is similarly emphasized in nineteenth-century Mughal painting. An 1843 Genealogy of Amir Timur—produced only some few years before the Mutiny and discussed below—accordingly includes stereotyped portraits of all Timurid rulers from the first to the last but only one darbār scene, and that is an imaginary public audience of Akbar the Great (Color Plate 5.7). This is no “historic” painting, though, but a projection of the audiences held at the Mughal court in the nineteenth century (Color Plates 5.5, 5.6)62 and actually resembles the orderly arrangement of Shahjahani audiences more than the relatively infrequent, deliberately animated and often asymmetrical darbārs of Akbar’s time.63 One relevant difference is the distance between the ruler and his courtiers, which historically began to build up in Akbar’s time64 and appears, conversely, vastly reduced by the nineteenth century. The nineteenth-century darbārs present us with a deeply human image of the ruler, regardless of his being enthroned above standing courtiers. It would be simplistic to interpret this “humanization” as a mechanical outcome of the rulers’ increasing dispossession at the hands of the British, although the transition from a profile view surrounded by a halo (Color Plate 5.3)65 to an old character whose face is unceremoniously offered to the viewer’s eyes (Color Plate 5.5) is quite striking and makes one wonder whether the suppression of imperial authority did not indeed play a part in this. One would even be tempted to suggest a connection with the then developing art of photography; but Akbar Shah II died two years before the daguerreotype was even invented and therefore, an influence of Company painting and its approach to the sitter seems a more plausible explanation. The approach to imperial iconography displayed by the two ex-Binney images of Akbar II owned by the SDMA is so strikingly different that one of them had long been thought to depict Bahadur Shah 61   Mr and Mrs Allan C. Balch Collection, M.45.3; illus. of an opening in Del Bontà, “Late or Faux,” fig. 5. 62  SDMA 1990: 401, 1990: 402. 63   Discussed in Parodi, “Tooy to darbār.” 64  See ibid. 65  See also CBL In 64.16, by Ghulam Murtaza Khan, Delhi, 1809-10; illus. in Leach no. 8.55 (II, p. 808).

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instead (thus in the museum’s records at the time of my visit); but the identity of the sitter cannot be doubted—although this is most likely a posthumous portrait. From an iconographic point of view, the image parallels a number of darbārs of Akbar II (whose constantly shifting array of officers would deserve a fully detailed study),66 and details of dress and physiognomy further point to the sitter’s identity. Akbar II wore a flat, broad crown derived from those in vogue at Awadh; Bahadur Shah II in contrast adopted a more opulent version of the headgear worn by himself and other princes during his father’s reign. This seems to have been made up of vertical features whose number increased in accordance with the princes’ rank. Bahadur Shah II further elaborated upon this prototype and transformed it into a distinctive tall headgear (Color Plate 5.6). In addition, Bahadur Shah’s figure is characteristically emaciated—perhaps reflecting his ascetic life­style, although his large bulging eyes may be a sign of severe opium ad­diction. His narrow shoulders encouraged the introduction of pads in­spired by European uniforms—again a feature that immediately distin­guishes him from his shorter and stockier father. Interestingly, an unpublished small bust portrait in the Freer Gallery of Art is identified as Akbar II, but depicts one of the emperor’s sons, quite possibly his successor. The rather handsome middle-aged gentleman wears princely headgear (see above) and his facial features—rendered in exquisite detail by a skilled draftsman—are compatible with Bahadur Shah II’s as known from later paintings.67 Bahadur’s Shah II darbār (Color Plate 5.6) and other near-coeval examples further point to a renewed interest in large public audience scenes, contrasting with the smaller group portraits popular in his father’s reign). Even at this late stage, the depiction of public and private audiences continued to respond to different concerns. In the future, through an accurate identification of some of the characters involved and other iconographic details, we may be able to connect some of these images with precise episodes. In the SDMA painting, Bahadur Shah II sports a dark beard; but the age of the two princes to his right appears to be the same as in an 1838 work by Ghulam ‘Ali 66  See for example London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 289-1871 (Delhi, c. 1825; illus. available online at http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O18429/paintingportrait-of-akbar-ii/); or Christie’s London, Friday September 23, 2005 Sale, Lot 154 (attributed to Ghulam Murtaza Khan, 1820; illus. online at http://www.artnet.com/ artists/lotdetailpage.aspx?lot_id=0F94B47A1792075884ADABB6C44AF0F7). 67   Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, F1907.259.

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Khan where the emperor looks much older.68 Given that he only rose to the throne in 1837, we must presume that either he grew white almost instantly, or the painter of the SDMA work was allowed some licence. The princes and officers attending the SDMA darbār are meticulously identified through labels in the Arabic script; these correspond closely in content to the Devanagari inscriptions on a near-identical image now in the Chester Beatty Library collections.69 Because it is unfinished and the figures are numbered, Leach regarded the CBL specimen as the Ur-version—a model artists were meant to reproduce; the SDMA painting, which contains less textual information, would be one of the copies made from it. Leach’s list of captions (read from left to right) makes it easier for the Western viewer to associate each name with a face, but gives no sense of contemporary protocol. From the point of view of ceremonial, the most honored position is that occupied by the prince closest to the throne at the emperor’s right (viewer’s left): this is Shahzada Mirza Fakhruddin, who became Bahadur Shah II’s virtual heir-apparent (though none was officially authorized by the British) allegedly after his elder brother’s death.70 But Mirza Dara Bakht is here alive and well and is shown first to the left and closer to the throne: his feet are on the steps leading up to it. He is closely followed by Shahzada Mirza Jahan Khusraw—a senior prince of about the same age as Bahadur Shah— while behind them are an unspecified “Shahzada” and a Shahzada Mirza Bulakhi who seem to be about the same age as Fakhruddin. Clearly something is the matter: either the more junior princes had become the most privileged (but why, then, would the senior Mirzas be positioned higher up the steps?) or Bahadur Shah II inverted the ceremonial order as a consequence of the British insistence to have their representative positioned to the right. The matter will deserve further attention. The British officer is labelled “Hilledar” and Leach identifies him as the chief of the palace guards. Despite his position, his feet are shown right to the fore of the painting, as if he were not in line with the officers but more distant from the throne than everyone 68   Art and History Trust Collection. Illus. in Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting, no. 40 and Stephen Markel, “Correlating Paintings of Indian Decorative Objects,” Asianart.com, fig. 1: http://www.asianart.com/articles/markel/1.html. 69   CBL In 69.14; illus. in Leach, Indian Paintings, no. 8.58 (II, pp. 812-14). 70   A portrait of Mirza Fakhruddin painted by William Carpenter in February 1856, only a few months before his premature death, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.193-1881 (illus. available online at: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/ O108192/painting-prince-fakhr-ud-din-mirza/).

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else in the picture: by playing around with his tall figure, the artist managed to provide an adequate commentary regarding his proper place in the court’s perception. The two junior princes do seem to have occupied a special place in Bahadur Shah II’s heart, given that they are portrayed with him in one of the most poignant works from the period—a “family portrait” picture where the ruler is nonetheless enthroned under the Scales of Justice.71 The younger prince is unidentified in the SDMA version and is not mentioned by Leach, perhaps because the Devanagari inscription is not easily deciphered; fortunately the third and more intimate group portrait features a longer inscription that identifies him as “Shahzada Afaq Mirza Farkhunda Siyar Bakht.” The SDMA painting, despite its close similarity with the CBL version, differs from it in a small iconographic detail that possibly yields a clue to its context: Bahadur Shah’s headgear is in this instance ornamented not by one or more feather sarpīchs72 but, apparently, by a bunch of flowers (whether fresh flowers or a jewel so shaped is impossible to say with certainty). Perhaps this particular version was intended as a Nawruz picture—although the suggested dating would accord well with an accession picture. The two, of course, are not in contrast, Nawruz being a favorable time to celebrate a ruler’s accession, sometimes months after it had taken place. Now widely believed to be a posthumous recollection, “Akbar II greets the British Resident” (b/w 5.6),73 displays similar concerns about the proper place of British representatives. From an iconographic point of view, this painting belongs with the great accession or procession scenes of earlier times74 and signals a return to ostentatious grandeur that is one of the hallmarks of the last phase of Mughal painting. The crowd is treated in a manner very similar to Shahjahani painting, and subtle points are once again made through the arrangement of figures. The palanquin provides an effective means to isolate the ruler’s figure from the crowd. Interestingly enough, Akbar II is shown proceeding from right to left as in the seventeenth century. But   Cited in note 67.   Cf. the cited Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting, no. 40, and especially the otherwise very close CBL version of the scene (on which see note 69). 73  SDMA 1990: 394. Previously illustrated in Indian Miniature Painting, no. 91. Yuthika Sharma, personal communication, April 2011. 74  See for example Beach and Koch, King of the World, nos. 8-9, 23-24 and passim. 71

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the direction of riding may also have been carefully chosen in order to position the British resident as far as possible from the viewer and partly obscure him: he would otherwise have stood in the foreground and in the way of the imperial image. It will not have escaped the reader that he stands to the emperor’s right—a detail that is consistent with other late Mughal darbārs (see below) and shows the British had obtained a privileged place at court. This did not prevent artists (and patrons) from manipulating the images in order to minimize the Resident’s importance.75 The young Mirza Jahangir, as befits an heirapparent, is shown riding out of the city to the ruler’s right at some distance: yet he is singled out more vividly than the Resident by virtue of his elevated position. A comparison with a Chester Beatty Library darbār of Akbar Shah II76 further illustrates this manipulation: similar to the Bahadur Shah darbār discussed above, the British representative stands to the ruler’s right, but at some distance. However Mirza Jahangir is shown first in line to the ruler’s left, as only the most important among the junior. Such changes to protocol (or representation) were probably carefully calibrated and therefore deserve further attention. Last of all known Mughal manuscripts, the 1843 Genealogy of Amir Timur77 (b/w 5.6, Color Plate 5.7) is an exceptional document, preserved as it is in pristine condition unlike other comparable series. It illustrates every single Timurid ruler in the Miranshahi lineage (from which the Mughals were descended), including those that reigned only for brief periods. It also contains substantial, and thus far unstudied, textual material.78 Its date and state of preservation commend this manuscript for a more detailed study. According to the colophon, it took three years to complete,79 while the details of manufacture   In V&A 289-1871 (see note 66, above) the British representative (Sir David Octhterlony?) stands to the right of Akbar Shah II but is “cornered” in such a way that he is actually shown behind the throne, precisely mirroring the position of the servant holding a morchhal. 76   CBL In 69.13; illus. in Leach, Indian Paintings, no. 8.56 (II, pp. 811-12). Leach dates this to c. 1820-25. 77  SDMA 1990: 405. See also Indian Miniature Painting, no. 93. 78   Another famous series, CBL In 27 (Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, 8.29-45), was exhibited at the Empire of India Exhibition in 1895 and was rebound in European book format. The original borders and any text that may have accompanied the images are lost. In addition, the series contains only 17 paintings as the Mughals are preceded by Timur but not by his immediate descendants. 79   Indian Miniature Painting, p. 115. 75

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s­ uggest the work of several and only loosely coordinated artists—an index in all likelihood of the complete dissolution of the Mughal atelier. Suffice it to say that at least five different hues of blue alternate in the illumination without any apparent logic. Given that 1843 is the year when Bahadur Shah sent his ambassador, Sir George Thompson, to Queen Victoria, one wonders whether the manuscript was not commissioned for the occasion, especially considering the insistence on the prestige of the House of Timur in the letter conveyed by the mission;80 it ­certainly testifies to a resurgence of imperial pride. The format of the portraits is perhaps less exciting than these potential historical connec­tions, being rather repetitive and adapting a repertoire previously developed at other centers, such as Lucknow or Murshidabad, for both Indian and British patrons.81 Although it must be noted that greater attempts at historical accuracy and individualization are seen in the SDMA Genealogy than at any non-Mughal center: an example is the association of the dynastic ancestor with a large tree, echoing a prominent motif in Timurid painting (b/w 5.6). Here as elsewhere in nineteenth-century Mughal painting, despite a certain measure of idealization, the Timurid-Mughal rulers are as human as never before. Past rulers are often depicted in profile, but the last few Mughals in particular are portrayed in a three-quarter view that increasingly approximates frontality, as in coeval darbārs. The last Mughal emperors thus become really close to us; yet their intellectual endeavors and their pride are undiminished, the epitome of course being the dispassionate photograph showing Bahadur Shah II in his captivity at Rangoon, where he looks straight into the camera’s eye—his huqqa perpetually at hand and his dignity unscathed despite circumstances. In accordance with my research interests and the overarching theme of this volume, I have chosen to approach imperial Mughal portraits and more specifically darbārs as indexes of artistic practice and the conception of authority. Much work remains to be done in this respect. Already at the outset of ‘Alamgir’s reign, certain changes are apparent, such as a subtle use of hierarchical proportions and— more importantly—the disappearance of the public audience in favor 80  See S. Mahdi Husain, Bahadur Shah Zafar and the War of 1857 in Delhi (Delhi: 1958; reprint Aakar Books, 2006), pp. 140-47. 81   Leach, Indian Paintings, II, p. 800. For a fragmentary series (Murshidabad, c. 1780) see CBL In 42.6-8; ibid., nos. 6.295-97 (II, pp. 682-3).

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of more intimate gatherings. The suggested connection with ‘Alamgir’s rejection of historical writing is intriguing but requires substantiation. For their part, the “Rajput” features evident in some of Muhammad Shah’s images—from the shift in direction to the emphasis of a more private, secluded realm—need to be further specified and, if possible, contextualized in relation to actual court ceremonial. The focus on imperial iconography should not lead one to dismiss other signs of a truly creative season for Mughal painting under Muhammad Shah: McInerney has made a convincing case for the critical role of the patron himself in promoting innovation—resulting, we may add, in an approach that is neither under the “influence” of a particular tradition, nor ultimately “just” Mughal. An approach that sometimes defies our assumptions—witness the absence or presence of a halo, or the unresolved yet challenging tension between ceremonial and visual conventions. Even when one would least expect it and at a time when material properties had sharply declined, Mughal painting reveals itself as continually assertive and ever-changing. I am personally skeptical that “legitimization” was a major concern in Mughal painting—architecture, poetry and music were far more powerful means to that end, with the potential to address a wider audience. I prefer to think of Mughal paintings as a realm for self-reflection: something the elite contemplated for intellectual delectation, never disjoint from moral values. There are exceptions though. Painting had a long history of serving diplomatic purposes in the Islamic East—the Safavids, Otto­ mans, Mughals and Shaybanids were all aware of this potential; accordingly, manuscripts had often figured prominently in diplomatic exchanges. Could the SDMA 1843 genealogy represent one such instance? Even though the format of the manuscript seems to address a “local” audience, this may be intentional and suggest instead an intention to present the dynasty in its undiminished dignity at a juncture when Bahadur Shah II was struggling to safeguard at least a minimum of decorum. The revival of the public audience and its subtle manipulation suggests an intention to affirm the respective places of the Mughals face the British colonialists. It also demonstrates a continuing ability to control, manipulate and “reinvent” iconography, by both patrons and artists. From this perspective, there is no darbār but in transition.

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Bibliography Beach, Milo Cleveland and Ebba Koch. King of the World: The Padshahnama—An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (Washington, D.C. and London: Azimuth Editions / Sackler Gallery and Thames and Hudson, 1997). Bellini and The East, ed. Deborah Howard and J.M. Rogers (London: National Gallery Company, 2005). Del Bontà, Robert J. “Late or Faux Mughal Painting: A Question of Intent,” in After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002), pp. 150-65. Husain, S. Mahdi. Bahadur Shah Zafar and the War of 1857 in Delhi (Delhi: 1958; reprint Aakar Books, 2006). Indian Miniature Painting from the Collection of Edwin Binney, 3rd, I: The Mughal and Deccani Schools, with some related Sultanate material (Portland, OR: Portland Art Museum, 1973). Leach, Linda York. Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library. 2 Vols. (London: Scorpion Cavendish / World of Islam Festival Trust, 1995). Markel, Stephen. “Correlating Paintings of Indian Decorative Objects,” Asianart.com. http://asianart.com/articles/markel/index.html. McInerney, Terence. “Manohar,” in Master Artists Of The Imperial Mughal Court, ed. Pratapaditya Pal (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1991), pp. 53-68. ———, “Mughal Painting in the Reign of Muhammad Shah,” in After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002), pp. 12-33. Okada, Amina. Imperial Mughal Painters—Indian Miniatures from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Paris: Flammarion). Parodi, Laura E. “From tooy to darbār. Materials for a history of Mughal audiences and their depictions,” in Ratnamala (Garland of Gems): Arts in India between Mughal, Rajput (sic), Europe and China, eds. Joachim K. Bautze and Rosa Maria Cimino (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 2010), pp. 51-76. ———, “Princes of the House of Timur,” in The Indian Portrait 1560-1850 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2010), eds. Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala, no. 1. ———, “Two pages from the Late Shahjahan Album,” Ars Orientalis 40 (2011), pp.  267-94. ———, “Of Shaykhs, Bibis and Begims: sources on early Mughal marriage connections and the patronage of Babur’s tomb,” in Proceedings of the 6th Conference of Iranian Studies, ed. Anna Krasnowolska, Claus Pedersen and Maria Szuppe (special issue of Studia Iranica, forthcoming). ———, “Bidri Ware and the New Mughal Order,” in The Visual World of Muslim India: The Art, Culture and Society of the Deccan in the Early Modern Era, ed. Laura E. Parodi (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming). Schmitz, Barbara. “After the Great Mughals,” in After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002), pp. 1-11. Schmitz, Barbara and Ziyaud-Din A. Desai. Mughal and Persian Paintings and Illustrated Manuscripts in the Raza Library, Rampur (New Delhi, 2006). Sharma, Yuthika. “Bahadur Shah I with his sons, handing a sarpech to a grandson,” in Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi 1707-1857 , ed. W. Dalrymple and Y. Sharma (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), forthcoming.

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Topsfield, Andrew. Paintings from Mughal India (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2008). Welch, Stuart Cary. The Art of Mughal India: Painting and Precious Objects (New York: The Asia Society, 1963). ———, Imperial Mughal Painting (London: Chatto & Windus: 1978). Wright, Elaine. Muraqqaʿ: Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 2008). Zebrowski, Mark. Deccani Painting (London / Berkeley and Los Angeles: Sotheby Publications / University of California Press, 1983).

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From Miniatures to Monuments Picturing Shah Alam’s Delhi (1771-1806) Yuthika Sharma

Both my heart and Delhi are desolate Yet I find comfort in this deserted city1

In January 1772 the reigning Mughal emperor Shah Alam II entered Delhi with much pomp and splendor.2 In 1759 following his father’s death, Shah Alam had ascended the masnad (throne) as the new emperor but had stayed away from Delhi in a bid to garner support to counter the monopoly of the minister Ghaziuddin who effectively controlled the Mughal court under his father Alamgir II (r. 17541759). Yet, the desire to return to his ancestral home and reassert his supremacy from the dar-al-khilafat, the traditional seat of empire at Shahjahanabad, remained ever present. Following the Battle of Buxar 1764, Mughal geographical dominance had steadily diminished—its major territories were now the hands of the British East India Company.3 By the last quarter of the eighteenth century only the limits of the Mughal city of Shahjahanabad and the local environs of Delhi constituted the bulk of Shah Alam’s political as well as geographical dominion, evoking the popular saying, “From Delhi to Palam—the reign of Shah Alam.”

1   Mir Taqi Mir, Kulliyat, I, p. 496. As cited in Ishrat Haque, Glimpses of Mughal Society and Culture (New Delhi: Concept Publication Company, 1992). 2  Shah Alam had fled Delhi following the occupation of the city by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1756-57 and moved around Patna and Varanasi. According to Jadunath Sarkar Shah Alam II entered Delhi on 10 January 1772 but both Antoine Polier and William Francklin suggest 25th December 1771 as the date of his return to Delhi. See Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire (Calcutta: 1952), p. 555; A.L.H. Polier, Shah Alam II and his court. A narrative of the transactions at the court of Delhy from the year 1771 to the present time ... Ed. Pratul C. Gupta (1989); William Francklin, History of the reign of Shah-Aulum (1798). 3   In 1764 after losing the battle of Buxar against the British East India Company Shah Alam had signed a treaty handing over the diwani of Bihar, Bengal, and Orissa to them, and moved to Allahabad where he was to remain for another seven years. Later, Shah Alam conceded other territories in the Doab to Maratha chiefs in exchange for a safe passage to Delhi.

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Against the backdrop of Shah Alam’s return to Delhi, this essay looks at the pictorial modes of imagining Delhi and its environs from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, when the Mughal house re-established itself in the city. It studies the enmeshed nature of art, politics, and artistic agency manifested in the imagery of the Qila i-Mualla (the Exalted Fort) at Delhi within Indo-European imagination, proposing that the pictorial representation of Shahja­hana­bad and its environs was synonymous with the projection of later-Mughal sovereignty. The visual stronghold of fort imagery, that referenced the vocabulary of Mughal miniature painting as well as European topographical techniques of representation, offers a unique insight into the constitutive role of these conventions in the development of the Delhi school of painting under Shah Alam II and his successors. In this context, we look at the significance of works produced within a crosscultural artistic climate, under patrons such as Jean-Bapiste Gentil (1726-1799) in Avadh and Antoine Louis Henri Polier (1741-1795) in Delhi in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Gentil’s commission of the Recueil des toutes sortes … (1774) and Polier’s own experience of the Mughal court at Delhi (ca. 1776) were, as we will see, significant for building a topographical vocabulary for Shah Alam’s imperial image through various modes of visualizing Shahjahanabad. In this context, an early painting of the Red Fort dated to 1750 by the Mughal court artist Nidha Mal (active 1735-75) is considered for its repercussions on later cartographic drawings commissioned by Gentil and Polier. Nidha Mal’s own migration from Delhi to Avadh is a significant subtext for this analysis, in the wake of successive attacks on Delhi by the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali (reigned 1747-1773), and other rival political groups. As Delhi artists found reemployment in the provincial courts, they were also absorbed into the emerging information network of European surveys of Indian territories. The agency of these local artists in this process of topographical translation was paramount, as they were able to re-imagine Mughal kingship largely in terms of its architectural and geographical symbolism. Mapping Delhi, Depicting Shahjahanabad Delhi continued to enjoy the unique position of being an intellectual, spiritual, and cultural center of the Mughal Empire and this was reflected in its prominence as a regional stronghold as well as urban

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center under Mughal rule.4 Eighteenth-century topographical and statistical records reiterate the delineation of Delhi both as a suba (province) and as a sarkar (division) following the initial guidelines laid out in the Aʾin i-Akbari compiled by Abu’l Fazl (1551-1602) at the end of the sixteenth century.5 As a suba, the Delhi province enjoyed revenues from numerous divisions and sub-divisions while Delhi sarkar contained the vast historical footprint of older fortifications and cities ruled by numerous powers for over a millennium.6 The sarkar accounted for three mahals (sub-divisions)—the Haveli-i Qadimi (old buildings), the Haveli-i Jadid (new buildings), and the capital city of Dihli, referring to the Mughal city of Shahjahanabad built under Shah Jahan (reigned 1628-1658).7 Later topographical accounts such as the Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh by Sujan Rai Bhandari (1695) and the Chahar Gulshan by Rai Chatirman (ca. 1720/1759) celebrate the primacy of Delhi as an important socio-cultural locus of the Mughal Empire.8 It is noteworthy that the Khulasat, also translated in 1728 for the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah (reigned 1719-1748) at Delhi, takes a somewhat unconventional recourse into verse when describing Shahajahanabad, assuming the format of a literary urban ethnography. This intersection between idealized and observed forms of city description was common to the large body of Indo-Persian ethnographies of Delhi that utilized the literary tropes of shahr ashub and shahr

  Delhi was a site of ritual significance and imperial hunts prior to the construction of Shahjahanabad. Ebba Koch, “Shah Jahan’s visits to Delhi prior to 1648”: New evidence of ritual movement in urban Mughal India.” Mughal Architecture: Pomp and Ceremonies, Environmental Design 1-2 (1991): 18-29. 5   The manual served as an important model for later terrestrial and revenue records created under Aurangzeb (1658-1707) and the later Mughals. For example, see the initial comparison offered by Jadunath Sarkar, The India of Aurangzib (Topography, Statistics, and Roads) compared with the India of Akbar. With extracts from the Khulasatu-t-Tawarikh and the Chahar Gulshan (Calcutta, 1901). 6   For an analysis of Delhi’s greater economic potential compared with Agra see, K.K. Trivedi, “The Emergence of Agra as a Capital and a City: A Note on Its Spatial and Historical Background during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 37, No. 2 (1994) 147-170. 7   Along with these mahals, the Western and Eastern tracts of the Jamuna were also accounted for in early administrative tabulations for the suba. After 1648, following the construction of Shahjahanabad the nomenclature for Delhi shifted to ‘Shahjahanabad’ or ‘Jahanabad’, and by the eighteenth century, Shahjahanabad seems to have been used to refer to the entire suba. Irfan Habib, An atlas of the Mughal Empire (1982). 8   Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh, ed. Zafar Hasan (Delhi, 1918). 4

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ashob to comment on the vitality of the city.9 A detailed exploration of the intersecting notions of space and territoriality in the literary and visual realms lies outside the immediate scope of this paper. However, it is worth noting that such literary forms that projected ideas of an inscribed space also underwent a simultaneous process of routinization and serialization in part due to the influence of maps and census taking practices in this period.10 Mid-century pictorial mappings of Delhi embody the conceptual logic of statistical and literary mappings of the city continuing to represent Delhi as the locus of imperial power in the face of political upheaval. Two surviving maps depicting Shahjahanabad allow us to understand the city as it would have been locally imagined, serving as important visual documents conveying topographical information. These maps coincide with the completion of Chahar Gulshan by Rai Chaturman in 1759 in Delhi for the puppet emperor Shah Jahan III (reigned 1759).11 Although much of its statistical content reflects the conditions of the Mughal State ca.1720 the text, along with other extant topographical manuals, would have likely provided the source material for these two maps.12 The first of these is a set of two scrolls approximately 0.2 by 20 meters and 0.2 by 12 meters long showing route maps from Shahjahanabad to Kandahar datable to between 1770 and 1780 (See Color Plate 6.1). The scroll, which is compositionally centered along the central stretch of a road, traverses the main   For an overview of Indo-Persian urban ethnographies, see Sunil Sharma, “City of Beauties in the Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 73-81. 10   Henry Scholberg, The District Gazetteers of British India: a Bibliography. (Zug, Switzerland: Inter Documentation Co., 1970); Emmett, Robert C. “The Gazetteers of India.” M.A. Thesis, University of Chicago, 1976. Indo-Persian urban ethnographies also formed the basis of topographical gazetteers such as Asar- us-Sanadid produced in 19th century Delhi. See, Sunil Sharma, “Urban Ethnography in Indo-Persian Poetic and Historical Texts”, Manuscript, 2005; See also Carla Petievich, “Poetry of the Declining Mughals: The Shahr Ashob,” Journal of South Asian Literature, 25, vol.1 (1990): 99-110. 11  Sarkar’s translation of the inscription may be slightly incorrect as he names the emperor as Shah Jahan II, but his transliteration points out that the Chahar Gulshan was prepared as dynastic history for the emperor “who increased the splendor of the throne in the year 1173 ah (ad 1759) with the help of the Wazir of the Empire Ghazi-ud-din Khan alias Shahab ud-din Khan at the time of the second invasion of Ahmed Shah Abdali.” Sarkar India of Aurangzib, xv-xvi. 12   For instance, the Khulasat would have likely formed a basis for the compilation of base material for the Chahar Gulshan. Both texts, as Sarkar points out, were in large part based on the Aʾin-i Akbari. Ibid. 9

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outposts of cities such as Qandahar, Kabul, Lahore, and Shahjahana­ bad.13 The final destination of Shahjahanabad is depicted through its main elements—the main gateways leading into the fortified city, the nahr-i-bahisht and sarais, and a minimalist planimetric view of the Red Fort. This convention for depicting the fort highlights its visual emphasis in red and blue identifying the main palace structures along the eastern length of the fort, its adjacent fortifications, the Jami Mosque, the Faiz canal, Chandni Chowk, and the various gateways that form the outposts of the fortified city.14 Residences are shown as square plans comprising of rooms organized around a central courtyard while important shrines are marked by views of tombstones and mosques are identified by their plans with the major minarets shown in elevation. Landscape features, too, are fairly standardized with the depiction of various types of gardens as either walled or those lying along the main road or a river.15 The route largely conforms to the main topographical features and roadways described in the Chahar Gulshan, however the map is a detailed rendering of the religious, cultural, and urban centers along the route.16 A second twelve-meter long topographical map from ca.1760, tracing the path of the monumental water-works of the nahr-i-bahisht canal undertaken by Shah Jahan’s engineer Ali Mardan Khan, follows the logic of the earlier route map but with greater naturalistic detail.17 (CP 6.2) The nahr-i-bahisht (Paradise Canal), as it was officially known, was laid out at the time of the building of Shahjahanabad in 1630 and only functioned intermittently in the mid eighteenth ­century.18 The map’s distinctive topographic palette details distances, measurements, and techniques of water harnessing along the length of canal charting its formal transition from a sinuous watercourse to a 13   The inscription notes that the map was made by Maulvi Qulam Qadir who was in Kandahar with Mountstuart Elphintsone in 1814. However, Susan Gole has shown on the basis of internal evidence that the maps can be dated to the period after the 1760s. 14  Susan Gole, Indian maps and plans: from the earliest times to the advent of European surveys (Manohar: Delhi, 1989), 94-103. 15  See Philippa Vaughan, “The Mughal Garden At Hasan Abdal, a Unique Surviving Example of a ‘Manzil’ Bagh” South Asia Research, vol. 15(Sep 1995): 241- 265. 16  See “Roads” in Chahar Gulshan, Sarkar, India of Aurangzib, 174-175. 17   Ali Mardan Khan was largely responsible for extending the Canal from Hansi and Hisar to the northwestern suburbs of the city that spanned a distance of seventyeight miles. Susan Gole, Indian maps and plans, 104-109. 18  Stephen Blake, Shahjahanabad, The sovereign city in Mughal India 1639-1739. (Cambridge, 1993), 64.

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rectilinear waterway. The section of the map dealing with urban Delhi follows the visual convention of a planimetric layout with buildings in elevation. More importantly, even as the map conveys the idea of the water-bearing canal as a technological achievement, it evokes its beneficence as a canal of Paradise that imparts heavenly fervor to Delhi’s landscape. This beneficence is sanctioned by spiritual means too, for we find that the shrine of the Sufi saint Bu ‘Ali Qalandar, illuminated in gold, figures conspicuously in the very first section of the canal’s inauguration in the village of Benawas (CP 6.3).19 Mughal mapping and survey practices also provided crucial base material for the development of European cartography in the Indian subcontinent in the eighteenth century.20 In addition to providing the core information for geographic and cadastral maps prepared by missionaries and surveyors, the preparation of such surveys was highly dependant on local informants, surveyors, and agents whose ability to transcribe information, visually or in written form, was indispensable to this process.21 The demand for “accurate” information by missions of the Dutch, French, and British East India Companies had led to a number of disparate efforts to produce cartographic information on various regions of India since the beginning of the eighteenth ‑century.22 Simultaneously, early modern European techniques of 19   The view of the shrine is not architecturally accurate nor does Bu ‘Ali’s shrine lie in such close proximity to the canal. Nineteenth-century depictions show Bu ‘Ali’s shrine within an enclosed courtyard. Ibid. 20   For instance Jesuit missionaries such as Joseph Teiffenthaler (1710-1785) were engaged in recording these prevailing systems of land survey and also involved in producing topographical images and maps of regions in India. See La Géographie de l’Indoustan, écrite en Latin, dans le pays même, par le Pere [sic] Joseph Tieffenthaler Jésuite & Missionaire apostolique dans l’Inde. Vol. I in Jean Bernoulli, ed. Description historique et géographique de l’Inde, 3 volumes (Berlin: Pierre Bordeaux, 1786-8). For an overview of modern mapping in the subcontinent see Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 60-82. 21   Raj Relocating Modern Science; Raj, “Circulation and the emergence of modern mapping, Great Britain and early colonial India, 1764-1820” in Subrahmanyam, et al., eds. Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia 1750-1950 (Permanent Black, 2003), 23-54. 22   Thus, missionaries and antiquarians such as Teiffenthaler and AntequilDuper­ron (1731-1805) relied heavily upon local scribes, guides, engineers, draftsmen and artists for their topographical surveys. Teiffenthaler, La Géographie de l’Indoustan; Des Recherches historiques and chronologiques sur l’Inde, & la Description du Cours du ange & du Gagra, avec une trés grande Carte, par M. Antequil Du Perron de l’Acad. Des Insc, & B.L. & Interpréte du Roi pour les langues orientales, à Paris’ in Bernoulli, op. cit. Vols. I and II.

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mapping also filtered into mainstream Mughal artistic culture and featured quite prominently within visual practices of the Mughal imperial atelier. For instance, the visual projection of the terrestrial globe in paintings for the Mughal emperors Jahangir (reigned 16051627) and later Shah Jahan was a means to reconstruct and even alter the globe’s spatial logic in the service of fashioning the imperial Self.23 The absorption of European spatial practices into Mughal painting at Delhi can be seen in the later work of the Mughal court artist Nidha Mal, who was active from the second quarter of the eighteenth century. A plan of the Red Fort signed “Amal-i Nidha Mal” and inscribed with a date of 1750, rendered in the traditional technique of gouache and watercolor, may well be the earliest example of a cartographic depiction of the Red Fort and its environs at Delhi by a Mughal artist incorporating elements of European conventions (CP 6.4). The fort plan contains multiple labels in Persian identifying key mosques, settlements, and gardens (e.g. Angur-i Bagh) outside the fort, the gateways and bastions (e.g. Dilli Darwaza and Hathia Pol), and the main buildings and apartments of the Mughal palace within the Fort complex. Since the map is extensively repaired with gauze it is very difficult to ascertain the quality of the paper used to prepare this work. Nidha Mal’s signature provides a guide for orienting the plan such that the map is oriented along its East-West axis, thus giving prominence to the eastern façade of the fort that contains the royal buildings such as the Diwan-i Am, Diwan-i Khas and the Shah Burj. The Red Fort is shown in a square planar format with its fortifications, gateways, buildings, and vegetation in elevation. But most notice­ably the center of the fort is left empty as if to emphasize its focus on the fortification and its immediate environs. This feature anticipates the conventions for fort renderings in the two route maps discussed earlier. More significantly, it recalls elements of European engineering drawings, especially the format of an isometric perspective or perspective cavalière—that privileged a two dimensional view 23   The terrestrial globe often functioned as a cartographic artifact within early modern Mughal painting—as an “…imperial prerogative par excellence, and joins the ranks of such exclusive signifiers of imperial sovereignty such as the crown, the plume or turban ornament, the precious gem, the falcon, and the ceremonial robe of honor” situated on the “‘… the Emperor’s person as an embodiment of Empire,’ and in this case, … the world itself.” Sumathi Ramaswamy, “Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 4 (2007): 751-82. John F. Richards, ed. Kingship and Authority in South Asia, (1998), 128.

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of the building. Military perspectives such as these were used extensively to illustrate the design of fortifications in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe, and can be seen in the seminal treatises by the Frenchman Monsieur de Vauban and the Dutch engineer Menno Baron van Coehoorn.24 The main emphasis in these illustrations was on the frontiers of a fort that brought into prominence its bastions and outer-works whose designs were being constantly worked upon by fort engineers.25 The artistic convention of the military perspective dispensed with any details of the interior of the fort, which were considered extraneous to the purpose of delineation. Thus, the blank center of the Fort complex reinforced the idea of the fort as a defensible establishment. The sole choice of populating this landscape with horses in stables, cannons, and soldiers in the inner forecourt of the Delhi Gate, and the proliferation of labels identifying the outer bastions and environs of the fort further enhances the military character of this painting. Complementing this pragmatic rendering of the Red Fort is the elevated view of the emperor’s palace delineated through the use of red canopies commonly used to demarcate imperial presence in Mughal painting. The backdrop of the eastern face of the palace ­complex at the Red Fort became increasingly popular in paintings from Muhammad Shah’s reign and is carried forward here in Nidha Mal’s map of the Red Fort.26 Nidha Mal’s penchant for detailing 24   For instance see William Allingham’s translation of the late 17th century treatise by de Vauban titled The new method of fortification, as practised by Monsieur de Vauban engineer-general of France. Together with a new treatise of geometry. The fourth edition, carefully revised & corrected by the original. ... By W. Allingham, ... (London, 1722). Also see, The new method of fortification. Translated from the original Dutch, of the late famous engineer, Minno Baron of Koehoorn, ... By Tho. Savery gent. (London, 1705). Also see, Prost, Philippe, Les fortresses de l’Empire. Fortifications, villes de guerre et arsenaux napoléoniens, (Paris: Editions du Moniteur, 1991). Also see, Alexis Rinckenbach, Les Villes Fleurs. Aventures et catrogrpahie des Francais aux Indes aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Petit Journal de l’Exposition, Port-Louis (France): Musée de la Compagnie des Indes, (1998). 25   Horst. Remarks on a new system of fortification. Proposed by M. le Comte de Saxe, in his memoirs on the art of war. Trans. Charles Theodore D’ Asti (Edinburgh, 1787). By the late eighteenth century, there were significant revisions in the designs of fortifications advanced by Vauban and Coehoorn. The author puts forward M. le Comte de Saxe’s revisions on the earlier treatises putting greater emphasis on the development of the outer-works of fortifications, a greater scope for technical improvement and therefore of greater defensibility. 26   This element is also seen in the work of Bhupal Singh and Hunhar. For an overview of paintings produced in Muhammad Shah’s atelier, see Terence McInerney. “Mughal Painting during the Reign of Muhammad Shah,” in After the Great

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architectural and landscape elements can be observed in his largescaled paintings for Muhammad Shah (B/W 6.5). In the first brush drawing painted ca. 1725 Muhammad Shah and his courtiers are seen in the midst of a verdant garden landscape rendered with botanical clarity. The foreground and background are merged into the common pictorial space organized along the quadripartite sections of a fourpart garden. In the second painting from the same period, the figures of the emperor and his courtiers are positioned on a garden terrace set against the brightly canopied structure of the Hall of Special Audience. In keeping with the overall formality of this evening conference, Nidha Mal has depicted the planting constrained to the two sides of the painting, leaving the garden space fairly plain and drawing the focus to the central figures. In both paintings, the palace buildings with their distinctive canopies sit above eye-level and are placed above the emperor’s physical position. The placement of the figures is more in keeping with the spatial hierarchy of a geometric picture plane rather than the conventions of Mughal imperial court paintings, where the emperor physical placement was usually higher than his subordinates. Nidha Mal’s court paintings were very much in accordance with the ongoing experi­mentation of Mughal artists with European volume and pictorial space while trying to balance the hierarchy of traditional ceremonial scenes. The rendering of the landscape, observed from the eye-level of the onlooker rather than a higher viewpoint in paintings for Muhammad Shah, forms a significant precedent for the experiments with light, spatial depth, and volume that artists in the provincial courts of Murshidabad, Patna, and Avadh began to undertake, setting their subjects within a geometrically devised setting based on European perspective.27 In the Fort map of 1750 painted after the death of Muhammad Shah, Nidha Mal retains his characteristic Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries, ed. Barbara Schmitz, Marg 53, no. 4 (2002), 12-33. 27  See Jeremiah P. Losty. “Towards a New Naturalism: Portraiture in Murshidabad and Avadh 1750-80.” Marg 53, no. 4 (2002): 34-55. Molly Aitken offers an ­alternative perspective to viewing the ‘concerns of naturalism’ articulated by J.P. Losty and Linda Leach, arguing in favor of such compositional ‘failures,’ which attempted to balance Mughal and European spatial hieratics. Molly Emma Aitken, “Parataxis and the Practice of Reuse: From Mughal Margins to Mir Kalan Khan” Archives of Asian Art 59 (2009): 81-103. See also Linda Leach, Mughal and Other Rajput Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, vol. II (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), 685.

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t­ reatment of vegetation, cluster planting and palace buildings while working with the planar vocabulary of a cartographic map.Further­ more, he employs visual correctives to guide the viewer’s eye to the imperial buildings in the palace by aligning the Shah Burj in the Khas Mahal with the main entrance, the Lahore Gate. A Provincial View to Shah Alam II’s Shahjahanabad Nidha Mal’s migration to Avadh after 1750 offers an important context for situating the re-employment of miniature painters as topographical artists in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. His move to Avadh was recorded in a letter dated 18th September 1772 by a clerk named Sankaraja Satyadeva to Nana Phadnavis, the Maratha Peshwa Madho Rao Narayan’s minister at Delhi. Satyadeva, who was ambassador to Phadnavis in Delhi stated that the paintings were hard to obtain since the Hindu nobility had left Delhi and fine artists were starving to death and mentions Nidha Mal’s migration to Lucknow in this context.28 Avadh played host to the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II for a number of years, and the emperor’s presence spurred a number of topographical commissions that provide crucial art historical context for Shah Alam’s movements prior to his return to Delhi. Moreover, these commissions reflect how diverse painting genres, especially those lying outside the purview of court painting in the provinces, engaged directly with Mughal history and imperial narrative towards the end of the eighteenth century. The province’s European residents such as Jean-Baptiste Gentil, the official agent of the French King Louis XVI to the court of Nawab Shuja ud-Daula (1732-1775), and Antoine Louis Henri Polier, the Nawab’s official engineer and architect, were individuals whose involvement with the itinerant Mughal court under Shah Alam warrants greater examination in this respect.29  Satyadeva also mentions Nidha Mal’s subsequent death there. Itihasa Sangraha Aitihasik Tipane, (1981), 1, no. 11 (September, 1908). First published in Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures of the India Office Library, 122. The ambassador also reported that both of Nidha Mal’s sons were reported to be working in Lucknow but that one of them was said to be useless and the other mediocre. See, Patricia Bahree Baryiski “Paining in Avadh in the 18th Century”, Islam and Indian Regions, eds. A.L. Dallapiccola and S.Z.-A. Lallemant (Stuttgart 1993), vol. 1, 351-66, vol. 2, plates. 31-40. 29   For a brief overview of Gentil’s career see Archer Company Paintings, (1992), 117-118; Jean-Marie Lafont, Chitra: Cities and monuments of eighteenth-century India from French archives (Oxford, 2001). 28

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Gentil is perhaps best known for his endeavor to visualize topographical information about the subcontinent from local and Euro­ pean manuals into a geographical atlas titled, Empire Mogol divisé en 21 soubahs ou Gouvernements tiré de differens ecrivains du païs a Faisabad MDCCLXX (1771).30 The forty-two folios of the atlas are a remarkable exercise in topographical representation following the logic of older texts such as the Aʾin i-Akbari (1595) but blending them with the existing state of European information on the subcontinent in a comprehensive visual format.31 The atlas is divided into folios representing each suba, then illustrated in cadastral detail showing the routes and connections between various towns, the cities within, and the geographical features of the region such as mountain ranges, forests, rivers, and at times lakes and smaller water bodies.32 The remarkable addition to each map are genre and mythological scenes in miniature that appear to function as ethnographic and cultural vignettes, which are meant to provide a visual supplement to the cartographic views of each suba. In addition to devising a visual vocabulary for annotating architecture and landscape that provided each suba with its distinctive characteristic, the use of delicate colors, grays, pink, mauve, pale yellow and green, in the atlas represents the “…first adjustments to European tastes and interests…(these) subjects which were later to become the stock-in-trade of ‘Company’ painters were already present in miniature form.”33 In the first folio illustrating the suba of Shahjahanabad (Chadjeana­ bad) Gentil provides a compelling view into the current state of Mughal rule (B/W 6.6).34 The map of Shahjahanabad contains very 30  Susan Gole, Maps of Mughal India (1988), Introduction. Other examples of Mughal sources that compile geographical and administrative information include Yusuf Mirak’s Mazhar-i Shahjahani (1634) for Sind, Nainsi’s Vigat (c. 1664) for Marwar, Ali Muhammad Khan’s Mir' at i-Ahmadi supplement (1761) for Gujarat. Irfan Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire (1982). 31   It has been suggested that Gentil’s atlas largely dew upon the coastline of Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville Carte de l’Inde made in 1752 and published in 1771. Gole, Maps of Mughal India, Introduction. 32   Gentil’s survey of the caves, which was used by Antequil Duperron, was one of many essential surveys to be compiled. Similarly, the view of the famous fort at the suba of Allahabad is likely a copy of the fort provided to Gentil by Teiffenthaler. Gole, Maps of Mughal India, Introduction; Lafont, Chitra, 9. 33   Jean-Marie Lafont has used the term ‘farenghi art’ to define this early phase of European patronage. Lafont, Chitra, 11. 34   This practice is noticeably different from the nomenclature of the Ain, where the sarkar (capital) of Delhi is based within the suba of Sirhind. See Abuʾl Fazl, Aʾin-i

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few figures unlike the maps of other subas, where genre and mythological scenes set the context for the cartographic mappings. As if to emphasize the Mughal emperor Shah Alam’s absence from the city, the accompanying miniatures on the map show royal and courtly accoutrements such as standards, parasols, howdahs, a tent, a reproduction of the peacock throne of Shah Jahan, and musical instruments—all objects constituting royal paraphernalia. However, in the absence of the emperor’s figure they seem somewhat displaced, static, and noticeably lacking in vigor, especially as they occur in the first folio of the atlas. In contrast, the description of the province of Avadh shows a vignette of Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula and Gentil on elephantback engaged in a lion hunt flanked by an army of soldiers. Using the quintessential idea of the hunt as a means of projecting royal authority, the atlas situates Avadh as the new outpost of Mughal culture.35 The choice of illustrations showing fakirs, mythological scenes, flora, and fauna reflects Gentil’s own interests as a manuscript collector and these vignettes are distinctly related to the paintings he commissioned during his stay at Avadh.36 In a second compendium commissioned by Gentil a few years later following Shah Alam’s return to Delhi, the structure of Mughal imperial authority is consciously resurrected. In the album Recueil de toutes sortes de Dessins sur les Usages et coutumes des Peuples de l'indoustan ou Empire Mogol d’après plusiers peintres Indiens, Nevasilal, Mounsin­ gue & c. au service du Nabab visir Soudjaatdaula Gouverneur general des provinces d’ Eléabad et d’ Avad. Lequel recueil a été fait par les soins du Sr Gentil, Colonel d’Infanterie; en 1774 à Faisabad (1774), Gentil emphasizes Shah Alam’s recently restored status at Delhi in a more direct fashion, dedicating the first section of the album to the activities of the Mughal emperor and his court. In the very first illustrated folio, the courtly accessories that appeared in the atlas to depict Shah Alam’s absentia from Delhi were now given a proper context—forming an array of the material accoutrements of the Mughal court shown in Akbari, trans. H. Blochman (1927, reprint 1965); Irfan Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire,10. 35  On the imperial significance of the Mughal Hunt see, Ebba Koch, Dara Shikoh Shooting Nilgais. Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Painting (Occasional Papers, Freer Gallery of Art, 1998). 36   In addition to mythological scenes from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, pictures of yogis, festivals, acrobats, birds and animals seen in this page are also reminiscent of Gentil’s own interests. See selections from Gentil’s collection in A la cour de Grand Moghol (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1986).

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s­ ession. Shah Alam is seated on a takht (throne) in the topmost row surrounded by his main courtiers, standards, thrones, and musical instruments. The second folio is one of the only known pictures that celebrate Shah Alam’s accession to the throne of Delhi, referring to the twelfth year of his reign, which was also when new coinage was struck in celebration of this milestone. In the Recueil, Gentil’s biography of Shah Alam is interspersed along with the illustrated account of his own life in Shuja-ud-Daula’s court. In 1772 Gentil had married into a family with ancestral connections with the Mughal domestic sphere. Gentil married Therese Velho, the daughter of Lucia Mendece, the great-niece of one Juliana, who had been entrusted with the education of the Mughal emperor Alamgir I’s son Muhammad Muazzam, Shah Alam Bahadur Shah I (reigned 1707-1712).37 This historical consciousness is palpable in Gentil’s attempt to interweave the historical narrative of the Mughal court with his own experience at Avadh. Gentil’s use of personal anecdotes detailing his interaction with the current Mughal emperor exemplifies this. After recounting the instance of Shah Alam II’s asylum with Shuja ud-Daula, Gentil mentions the emperor’s eagerness to meet him and also employ him, and his consequent unwillingness to join the emperor’s service.38 (B/W 6.7) Later in the context of Shuja ud-Daula’s efforts to annex the vacated fortress of Allahabad, Gentil mentions Shah Alam’s departure for Delhi, which seems to offer a turning point in the narrative.39 The Recueil is a rare instance of the visualization of Mughal sovereignty in the late eighteenth century, when Mughal power was politically at its weakest. It is in the Recueil that we first recognize an attempt to visually narrate the history of Shah Alam’s rule. The number of folios dedicated to Shah Alam’s court and leisure activities in the Recueil point to the importance of the emperor’s return to the Mughal capital, the sole act that reinstated him as the Mughal sovereign in the eyes of the general public. This event for Gentil is no doubt also the definitive moment marking Shah Alam’s reign—he annotates a scene showing Shah Alam II hunting in 37   Juliana’s name was made out as a hereditary title passed down through six generations and Therese was the last ‘Juliana’ in this lineage. Shah Alam I was known to have given Juliana Dara Shikoh’s palace in Delhi, which was in her family’s possession and taken by Safdar Jang, Shuja ud-Daula’s father and then wazir of Delhi. Jean-Marie Lafont, Chitra, 11. 38   Recueil, f.15 (a)-f.16 (a). 39   Recueil, f.20 (a).

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the garden at Faizabad as “Chasse dans la parc du Faisabad faite par l’Empe­reur Cha alem aujourdhui regnant/ A hunt in the park at Faizabad by the reigning Emperor Shah Alam.” (CP 6.8) Topographical experiments in the Receuil prepared in 1774 draw upon some of the earlier ideas of the atlas. Ranging from vignettes of military and diplomatic encounters, leisure activities such as the hunt, court activities, and religious, and ethnographic scenes, the Receuil functions as a historical document while being oriented from the particular perspective of Gentil’s interests. Gentil’s dedication in the Recueil naming the artists Nevasi Lal and Mohan Singh highlights the intersecting realms of court patronage in Avadh under Nawab Shuja ud-Daula and an emergent class of European patrons.40 Nevasi Lal emerges as a figure of multiple talents—as a copyist in miniature of oil-portraits of Shuja ud-Daula painted by the western artist Tilly Kettle in Faizabad ca. 1771, as well as a topographer who illustrated the Receuil and other albums for Gentil.41 Mohan Singh, who is extolled by Gentil for his work on the Receuil, was the son of Govardhan II who had worked at the court of Mohammad Shah at Delhi.42 Such multiple correspondences between the miniatures in the atlas and the Recueil point to the existence of stock sets of popular images that were available to artists within a commercial set-up that allowed for their easy replication and use in various contexts. For example the drawings in Gentil’s atlas can be attributed to a number of artists such as Sital Das, Gobind Singh and Ghulam Reza who, like Mohan Singh, worked for the assistant to the British Resident at Lucknow Richard Johnson between 1780-82. Sital Das’s paintings of 40   For an overview of the patronage base in Avadh during the reign of Shuja udDaula, see Natasha Eaton, “Critical cosmopolitanism” gifting and collecting art at Lucknow, 1775-97 in Art and the British empire, ed. Barringer et al., (Manchester, 2007), 189-204. 41  Nevasi Lal’s expertise as a copyist of oil portraits is recounted in Gentil’s memoirs where he mentions how Shuja ud-Daulah was particularly taken by Nevasi Lal’s copy of an oil portrait by Kettle, and wanted to keep it for him. Gentil’s playful objection resulted in the Nawab giving him Kettle’s portrait in exchange of the copy. Recounted in Mémoires sur l’indoustan ou Empire Mogol. Cited in Mildred Archer, Company Paintings, 118. See also Archer, ‘Tilly Kettle and the Court of Oude (17721778)’ Apollo, (Feb 1972):  96-106. 42   For a discussion of Govardhan II, see McInerney, “Reign of Muhammad Shah,” 12-33. In a folio from the ‘Iyar i-Danish from the Johnson collection, Mohan Singh has signed the work “amal-i mohan singh valad-i govardhan”—the work of Mohan Singh, son of Govardhan. See British Library, Add.Or J.54, 26. For Ragamala paintings by Govardhan and other scenes see Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures (1981), 106, nos. 168-174.

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Vedic sacrifices (Album 5) for Johnson are those that appear in the map of Khandesh in Gentil’s atlas.43 From Avadh to Delhi: Polier and the Mughal Court of Shah Alam As we have seen Shah Alam’s return to Delhi in 1772 offered much artistic impetus to the visualization of the emperor’s reinstatement in the historic seat of empire at Delhi. Where large-scale migration of artists from Delhi to Avadh had become commonplace a few decades earlier, the emperor’s move to Delhi attracted Avadh officials, who brought artists along with them for a small but significant period of time. The tenure of Antoine Louis Henri Polier, the engineer and architect to the Avadh Nawab, is one such important instance that raises a number of possibilities for reassessing the artistic climate of Delhi in this period and the role of topographical imagery within it. By 1767, Polier had gained a reputation as a fort engineer because of his designs, improvements, and field advice for Fort William at Calcutta and later for the fort of Chunar near Benaras. As a military engineer Polier was involved in the commissioning of measured drawings and preliminary cartographic works, which ultimately became part of such topographical surveys.44 For instance, Polier’s appointment as the Chief surveyor of Avadh in April 1773 was expected to yield a detailed map of the area to be used for the Surveyor-General James Rennell’s initial survey reports on Avadh and the northern territories.45 However, Polier’s involvement with a rival Mughal cause involving the siege of Agra led to his discharge from Avadh and eventual departure to Shah Alam’s court at Delhi. After being chastised for overstepping his role as a surveyor by imparting military intelligence and strategic advice to Najaf Khan, Shah Alam’s Mir Bakshi   Archer IOL Report (1978), as cited by Gole, Maps of Mughal India, Introduction. 44   For example, Gentil was a close contact of both Teiffenthaler and Duperron, and shared visual information on fortifications and towns with them. 45   After 1776, Rennell having completed his map of Bihar and Bengal extended it up to Delhi finally publishing his map of India in 1782. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, A very ingenious man: Claude Martin in early colonial India (Oxford: Delhi, 1992), 55-56. Llewellyn-Jones points out that though Polier did send the reports he had promised Hastings and Rennell, there was ‘great room for improvement’ which was more a ‘skeleton’ rather than a finished map of Avadh. Also see, Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire (Chicago, 1990). 43

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(Commander in Chief), Polier finally resigned in October 1775 and accepted a short-term employment with Shah Alam II at Delhi.46 This phase of Polier’s career in Delhi remains to be explored for the sum of possibilities that it offers. In February 1776, Polier wrote to the Emperor requesting an audience: I have been honored with a special shuqqa from you which I received together with the letter of Nawab Majd-ud-Daula. It has been my long standing desire to be in your service and to do something to set right the management of the Empire and reinforce the law and order. I have given up the Company job and have arrived in Akbarabad with the intention to come to the court and meet you. I hope that I will soon be honored by meeting you and by being ordered to be in your service forever. ʿArzdasht to the Emperor, 7 Muharram, Tuesday, Akbarabad.47

Following Shuja ud-Daula’s death in 1775, Polier saw his alternative employment with Shah Alam as a way to tackle his ambiguous status in India. His recognition of Shah Alam’s sovereignty and status after his ascension to the throne of Delhi in 1772 is further re-affirmed in Polier’s biography of the emperor’s reign from 1771 through 1779.48 But as his personal correspondence shows, he was also keen to have royal support for settling a number of outstanding property disputes with Najaf Khan, Shah Alam’s primary aide. Well aware of the ongoing political uncertainties in the Mughal court, Polier saw himself as a military advisor and aide to Shah Alam who would “…set right the management of the Empire.”49 On 18 March 1776, Polier finally gained an audience with the emperor and joined his service. Despite his newfound employment, Polier’s letters communicate his impatience with the state of affairs in Delhi and the difficulty in securing a diwan and other handymen to assist him.50 He was equally anxious to   Polier, Shah Alam II and his court. Ed. Pratul C. Gupta (1989), 7-9.   Folio 358a. Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi. A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: The Iʾjaz-i Arsalani (Persian Letters, 1773-1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri Polier (Oxford University Press: Delhi, 2001), 314. 48   Polier, Shah Alam II and his court. 49   The pargana of Khalilganj was assigned to Polier, which Najib Khan refused to release to him. Polier was very anxious to recover the revenue from Khalilganj and had solicited the help of Shah Alam to this effect. His frustration over the unresolved matter of the jagir’s ownership is expressed throughout in his correspondence. Alam and Alavi. European Experience. 50   “… I need a Bengali here to take care of my work at the court. Find out about one and send him to me…This place is full of Kashmiris. However to me there is no distinction between a Bengali and a Kashmiri. Look for someone capable of manag46 47

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manage his household affairs and impart correct direction to painters in his service there. Generally dissatisfied with the lack of supervision of his painters in Avadh, Polier found it necessary to call the painters to Delhi: The painters are doing nothing these days. As a matter of fact, in the absence of the masters it is difficult to get things done properly by the servants. I therefore want these artists to be sent here.”51 “…I gather that the artists are not doing good work after I left. Since I have been ordered to stay here in Shahjahanabad it is necessary they join me here.52

In this context, we are made aware of the all-important instance of Polier directing his chef d’atelier Mihr Chand to join him in Delhi. In a letter dated 27 March 1776, Polier asks Mihr Chand to, “… reach here along with two other painters and one naqqash [decorator] who should be a good person, skillful and keen to accompany you…53 Polier further instructs Mihr Chand to: …Keep all the albums and qitʾas in one box carefully so that they are safe from the dust and do not get damaged in transit. Load them together with the boxes for the Persian books and fix them there (tightly). Also fix the cartage rates and arrive here with them without delay.54

Polier’s personal correspondence confirms that Mihr Chand did arrive in Delhi and carried with him a number of drawings and albums. On 26 June 1776, Polier wrote to his diwan Manik Ram acknowledging the painter’s arrival, Mehrchand gave me your letter of 15 Rabiʾ II here on 6 Jumada I, together with two chaupalas full of boxes of velvet, books and paintings, a bundle (ganth) of clothes and locked boxes (pitaris) with goods from Faizabad…55

The arrival of Avadh artists in Delhi ca.1776 would have likely caused a stir in the artistic circles at Delhi, however, there is no further written evidence in Polier’s correspondence to suggest that Mihr Chand ing my work here efficiently.” 5 Safar Tuesday, Folio 368b. To Diwan Manik Ram. Ibid., 322-23. 51   Folio 391b. Letter to Manik Ram. Ibid., 343. 52   Folio 396b, Ibid., 347. 53   Folio 373b. Letter to Mehrchand, the artist. Ibid., 326-7. 54   Folio 397b. To Mehrchand. Ibid., 348. 55   Folio 430a. Letter to Manik Ram. Ibid., 377.

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or any other artists from Avadh were received at the Mughal court or commissioned to work for local patrons in Delhi. However, it is not difficult to imagine the warm reception Mihr Chand would have received especially since he had painted Shah Alam soon after his accession to the throne in 1759 when the emperor was residing in the eastern provinces. Mihr Chand’s portrait of Shah Alam titled, “Abu’l Muzaffar Jalal al-din Shah Alam Badshah Ghazi,” (ca.1760-65) confirms in its use of the emperor’s formal titles, his regal status to the fullest.56 The presence of the chatr (parasol), the Koran in the emperor’s hands as well as the use of the side profile reinforces the formality of the composition.57 By 1765, a number of European collectors in addition to Polier owned such portraits that were painted in cities where Shah Alam had resided. (CP 6.9)58 A likely candidate for the unknown contents of Mihr Chand’s box of paintings brought to Delhi is a set of five drawings of large-scaled plans of Delhi currently held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Curiously enough, three of these five drawings are maps of the city of Shahjahanabad, executed on hand-scaled paper in watercolor in a light wash, drawn on long scrolls such that all three parts could be laid out to form a single composition. At the head of this tripartite composition is a plan of the Red Fort followed by two large-scaled plans of the main streets in Shahjahanabad—one depicting Chandni Chowk (140 × 31cm) and the other, Faiz Bazaar (135 × 31cm).59 The drawings are labeled in Persian with transliteration in English and Latin labels. The labels fall roughly into three types—the well-known buildings such as mosques, baths and public squares, the havelis and residences of nobles, and finally, the names of trades carried on in various localities. The other two drawings, 56  See Museum für Islamiche Kunst, Berlin, Polier Album I.4594, fol. 32r, reproduced in Roy, “Origins of the Late Mughal Painting Tradition in Avadh” in India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow, ed. Stephen Markel (DelMonico, Prestel, New York, 2010), 178, plate 115. 57   Losty’s suggests that Mihr Chand likely left Delhi at the same time as Shah Alam’s departure to the east in 1758. Losty “Towards a New Naturalism”, 45. For Mihr Chand’s employment with Polier see Malini Roy, “Some Unexpected Sources for Paintings by the Artist Mihr Chand (fl. c. 1759-86), Son of Ganga Ram.” South Asian Studies 26, No. 1, (March 2010): 21-29. 58   This portrait of Shah Alam II painted in Murshidabad is inscribed, “This picture given me by Hugh Acland 1764 F. T. H. (?),” See also Simon Ray Indian & Islamic Works of Art, Cat. No. 24 (November 2009), 84-85. 59   Victoria & Albert Museum AL 1754; AL 1762; AL 1763. Archer, Company Paintings, 132.

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e­ xecuted on hand-squared paper, clearly belong to another master album of architectural drawings commissioned by Gentil in Faizabad in 1774 titled, Palais indiens recueilles par M. Le Gentil, now held in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.60 The presence of the city maps with the architectural drawings may initially indicate that the maps were commissioned for Gentil. However, as further examination will show Polier emerges as a more likely candidate for commissioning these street maps of Delhi. Polier and Gentil were in the habit of sharing drawings and paintings and often commissioned copies of a particular work by the same artist.61 Thus it is not surprising to find drawings from the Palais Indiens in this set.62 The three maps of Shahjahanabad would have been an appropriate means of projecting Polier’s authority as a surveyor, fort engineer, and military strategist to Shah Alam at Delhi and it is more likely that the maps were made for him. It is remarkable that the three maps of Shahjahanabad are obvious copies from a master version, one of which is the plan of the Red Fort by Nidha Mal discussed earlier in this essay (CP 6.10). Susan Gole’s thorough study of the V&A maps suggests that they were made between 1751 and 1757, around the time of the raid of Delhi by Ahmad Shah Abdali. Her analysis is based on the latest building illustrated in the map, which was the mosque of Javed Khan Nawab Bahadur built in 1751. The maps also name important public places such as the bath of Saʾad ullah Khan, mosques, the Kotwali, and the gate to the Begum’s garden.63 (b/w 6.11) It is self-evident that the 60  Two drawings, Dara Shikoh’s palace in Agra (Façade du Palais de Dara Cheka du côte du Djemna à Agra 1774) and the plan of the Emperor’s Garden and Seraglio, Delhi (Sérail et jardin du palais du grand Mughal à Dély) are undoubtedly contemporaneous with Palais Indiens and were probably dispersed from the original set before Gentil compiled the album. There is also a third drawing, of the Jami Mosque of Delhi, which is unlisted in the museum catalogue. For a fuller exposition of the album, see Chanchal Dadlani, “The ‘Palais Indiens’ collection of 1774,” Representing Mughal Architecture in Late-Eighteenth Century India” in Ars Orientalis, 39, ­Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century (2010): 175-97. 61  On Thursday December 15, 1774 Polier wrote to one of his painters, possibly Nevasi Lal: “The portrait of the Nawab [Shuja ud-Daulah] that you had sent for me has been held back by Monsieur Gentil for himself. Make a similar portrait and keep it for me. You shall be generously rewarded when I reach Faizabad if you do my work with due care and attention.” See Folio 37a. Alam and Alavi European experience, 117. 62   For instance, the drawings are listed in Gentil’s inventory. Dadlani ‘Palais ­Indiens’ collection of 1774, 175-97. 63  Susan Gole, ‘Three maps of Shahjahanabad,’ South Asian Studies, (1988): 13-27. Also see Susan Gole, ‘Plans of Indian Towns’ in Shahjahanabad/Old Delhi,

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­ ating is closer to the signed map by Nidha Mal, which also raises the d important question of not one but three paintings originally executed successively by Nidha Mal in the 1750s forming the basis of the later V&A set.64 The oblique reference to Nidha Mal’s death before 1772 in Maratha correspondence, which is discussed earlier, is further evidence that the signed Red Fort map was done as a precedent to the later copies.65 While we have no record of whether Nidha Mal worked on any maps during the last decade of his career, his signature appears on a number of later paintings from Avadh.66 The English inscription “jurisdiction of Nuddha Mull,” on the earlier map from 1750 by Nidha Mal accompanying his signature was most likely added to the painting after it was brought into Avadh between 1760 and 1770.67 (CP 6.3) Polier’s own experience in Delhi reveals much about his interest in the city’s built environment. Polier occupied the haveli of wazir Safdar Jang (father of Shuja ud-Daula) upon his arrival in Delhi, one of the largest mansions originally part of Dara Shikoh’s haveli.68 He soon Tradition and Colonial Change, eds. Thomas Ehlers and Eckart Krafft (Manohar, 2003), 128. Gole suggests that the street plans they seem to have been drawn at eye level by someone walking along the centre of each street. 64   Joseph E. Schwartzberg, ‘South Asian Cartography,’ in The history of cartography. Vol.2. Book 1: Cartography in the traditional Islamic and South Asian societies, eds. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 468-469. 65   The dating is further substantiated by the painting’s provenance. It was part of the collection of Robert Orme and acquired by India Office after his death in 1801. Since Orme left India for England in 1758 he must have acquired this painting before. It is inscribed incorrectly on reverse: ‘Orme. Fortʾ (‘Palace) at Agra, MSʾ; numbered ‘39ʾ; and: ‘No.21, Agra fort.ʾ See British Library Add.Or. 1790. For the life and career of Orme, see Sinharaja Tammita Delgoda, “Nabob, Historian and Orientalist” Robert Orme: The Life and Career of an East India Company Servant (17281801) Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series 2, (November, 1992): 363-376. The drawing is not mentioned in Hill (1916), which does pose an interesting possibility that it was added to the collection at a later date. 66  See for instance, “Two noblemen smoking a huqqa on a terrace,” Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi; “Night scene showing nobles and courtiers entertained by female musicians,” Collection of Cynthia Polsky, New York. See also Roy, “Late Mughal Painting Tradition,” 165-186. 67   Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, 121. 68   Polier writes: “At present I am living in the haveli of late Nawab Safdar Jang. I am honored to be in the service of the Emperor. 5 Safar Tuesday (25 March 1776). Alam and Alavi, European Experience, 324. Gentil in his emoirs noted that Safdar Jang bought Dara Shikoh’s Palace at a modest price during the reign of Ahmad Shah. See Mémoirs (1822), 379; Gole, ‘Plans of Indian Towns’. Stephen Blake suggests that Safdar Jang’s Haveli was a part of a two-part division of Dara Shikoh’s Palace, divided during the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century possibly during Nadir Shah’s invasion. It was inhabited by Najib ud-Daula, the Afghan leader

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vacated Safdar Jang’s haveli to move to Itimad ud-Daula’s (Qamar alDin Khan’s) haveli in Delhi. 69 This move allowed Polier to inhabit one of the most prestigious havelis in the city. This was the haveli of Muhammad Shah’s wazir Qamar al-Din Khan (wazir from 1724-48), who was titled Itimad ud-Daulah II. Polier was struck by the irony of his residing in this mansion, while Qamar al-Din’s surviving son was living in a ‘wretched dwelling on the outside of this house, which, in the time of his father, one of his servants would have disdained to live in.ʾ70 However, Polier’s description of it as a lackluster building in disrepair points to the contrast that he must have experienced from his dwellings in Faizabad that he had taken pains to furnish and decorate.71 This impression of new residence in Shahjahanabad was largely reflective of his disappointment with the city itself, which in Polier’s opinion possessed only a few noteworthy features. The only structures that impressed Polier were the Jami Mosque and the ‘regular’ street of Chandni Chowk, which compared well to a French or English avenue.72 It is possible that the two street plans of Chandni Chowk and Faiz Bazaar would have appealed to Polier precisely because they were planned as rectilinear streets. (These, along with the square plan of the Red Fort appear to recast the city’s layout as if derived from a trigonometric survey, well before one was begun for Delhi in the last decade of the eighteenth century. (b/w 6.12)73 Polier’s commissions of aerial views of the Red Fort recasting it within a rectilinear format, Ahmad Shah Abdali’s appointee in India between 1755-57 and then again from 1761-1770 following Abdali’s victory at Panipat. Blake, Shahjahanabad 75. 69  Safdar Jang’s mansion had been the center of much political intrigue. It was also the site of the murder of Javed Khan, the court eunuch, in 1752.The masjid of Nawab Bahadur built by Javed Khan in 1751 forms the anchor point for dating the map by Susan Gole. Gole also points out that the house of Javed Khan near Delhi Gate next to the city wall, labeled in the map, was used by the Marathas to break into the city in 1760. As quoted in Sarkar, (1932-50) Vol. II, 253. 70   A.L.H. Polier, Miscellaneous Tracts, Extracts of Letters from Major Polier at Delhi to Col. Ironside at Belgram, May 22, 1776, Asiatic Annual Register 2 (1800): 29-30. Blake, Shahjahanabad, 79. 71  Take for instance Polier’s detailed instructions to his handyman Oshra Gora Mistri for furnishing and decorating his haveli in Faizabad. Folio 115a. Alam and Alavi, European Experience, 324. 72   Polier, ‘Extracts of Letters’. 73   For a later map of Shahjahanabad that also conforms to a geometric layout see, “Trigonometrical Survey of the Environs of Delhy or Shah Jehanabad, 1808” British Library Asia and Pacific Collection, Cat. No. E. VII. 20, size 71 × 84 cm. Another map titled ‘Plan of Dehly Reduced from a large Hindostanny Map of that City, 1800?’” also depicts the city wall as a square plan.

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privileging axial views into the palace grounds from the main entrance. A view of the Red Fort from an album that Polier compiled for Lady Coote, widow of General Eyre Coote (died 1783), Commander in Chief under Warren Hastings ca.1785, shows the general life in the Fort in isometric views. In the foreground the foreshortened figure of Shah Alam is shown entering the Diwan-i-Khas while to the left female figures occupy the grounds of the Rang Mahal and other buildings alongside. In the near distance soldiers walk in ranks and people mill about their daily tasks. The view is oriented from the eastern face of the Red Fort, with the Shah Burj and the Naqqar Khana in virtual alignment. (CP 6.13)74 Concluding a Journey: Bazgasht Imagery and the Red Fort In the prelude to Shah Alam’s return to Delhi, the Mughal fortress became the center of much discussion and political intrigue. Shah Alam II’s ‘Royal resolution,’ to march from Allahabad towards Shahja­ hanabad, was a source of much consternation to the British East India Company and their allies in Avadh and Bihar.75 As William Francklin wrote, “…even from the moment of his settlement at Allahabad, ” he “sighed in secret for the pleasures of the capital, and was ambitious of re-ascending the throne of his ancestors.”76 Entreaties from the Company’s Commander-in-Chief General Robert Barker were laid to the wayside, as the Mughal emperor confirmed his alliance with Maratha chiefs who had promised the deliverance of the Delhi fort to him. For the British, this return implied a ‘hazardous undertaking’ that would have found them confronting the Marathas, who posed an immediate threat to their own territorial ambitions.77 Moreover, the ‘movement of the royal standard towards the capital, it was feared,’ 74   This drawing measuring 28.2 × 41.7 cm is executed in ink, transparent and opaque watercolor, and gold and is mounted on to an ornamental border also in the same medium. Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (FAMSF), 1982.2.70.9. Another copy of this view in the British Library lacks the trellis framing the view, and indicates the production of multiple copies of this image. See Add. Or. 948. copy of this album compiled by Polier is in the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin. For a discussion of the album see, J. Bautze, Interaction of Cultures: Indian and Western Painting, 1780-1910 (Virginia, 1998), 252-54. 75   December 14, 1770. Calendar of Persian Correspondence, Vol. III (Calcutta, 1919). 76   Francklin, Reign of Shah-Aulum, 26. 77   April 22, 1771 Persian Correspondence, April 22, 1771.

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would leave the occupation of the Allahabad fort open to wazir Shuja ud-Daula’s designs on it and cause further ambiguity in terms of its ownership. 78 These discussions based on Shah Alam’s resolve to move to Delhi form the subtext of two processional scenes painted by Avadh artists showing instances from the return journey that the Mughal court and household undertook from Allahabad to Delhi. In the first procession set along the banks of a river, Shah Alam is seated on his elephant howdah surrounded by his standard bearers and his retinue of soldiers approaching a fort to the left.79 The documentary content of the procession scene allows us to date it to a period between 1770-1775, perhaps documenting the movement of the Mughal court from Allahabad to Delhi.80 A more significant painting is an all-encompassing view of Shah Alam’s procession approaching the fortifications of Shahjahanabad, which provides an insight into the moment of the emperor’s arrival at Delhi embodying the penultimate phase of the ‘Royal resolutionʾ. Painted in the last quarter of the eighteenth century the painting highlights, in both spatial and temporal terms, the symbolic importance of the royal procession’s arrival at Delhi (CP 6.14). The unfolding of the winding movement of the royal cortege from left to right along the banks of the river Jamuna, leading to the the eastern face of the Red Fort at Shahjahanabad, conveys its progress over time. In the immediate foreground the presence of the East India Company soldiers escorting the covered palanquins and howdahs of ladies of the royal household suggests that the painting was possibly made to highlight the Company’s role in facilitating the Mughal emperor’s move to Delhi.81 Any signs of the emperor’s collusion with the Marathas are conveniently omitted. In addition to being the sole historical record of Shah Alam’s bazgasht (return) to Delhi, this painting is also easily the most visible endorsement of topographical genre in the service of imperial identity in the later Mughal period. On closer inspection we find that the Fort buildings along the eastern front of the Jamuna are carefully   Ibid.   “The Royal Procession of Shah Alam II”, here ascribed a revised date of ca. 1776 V&A Museum IS 38-1957. Archer, Company Paintings 124, No. 91. 80   Ibid., 124. 81  Shah Alam sent a shuqqa asking General Barker for a force to accompany his procession to Delhi, a request that was obliged. Dec 14, 1770. Persian Correspondence, Vol. III. The left to right directionality of the procession and the numbering indicates that it would have been commissioned by a European patron. 78 79

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delineated with numbers to a form a panorama of the fort and its surroundings, with the Qutb Minar on the extreme left and the Salimgarh Fort on the right. The royal enclosures and audience halls rendered in three dimensions are shown within the walls of the Red Fort, with the prominent gilded dome of the Shah Burj within the imperial apartments prominently in view of the approaching cavalcade. This panoramic view of the fort city and its environs reinforces Mughal Delhi as the desired destination of the emperor. This view may well be one of the earliest attempts at an architectural panorama of Delhi along the riverfront, a view which was to achieve much popularity in the coming decades. The intentional numbering of the buildings along the fort wall highlights the documentary interest of the patron, which ­further reinforces the importance of the Red Fort to the historic bazgasht of Shah Alam.82 The selection of paintings discussed in this essay highlight the way in which the architectural view of the Red Fort of Shahjahanabad often served as a visual encapsulation of power, as the seat of the lateMughal empire. Created by Mughal painters and their descendants who worked as mapmakers and topographers, such visuals allow us to recast these artists as innovators of spatial frameworks within paintings in later Mughal Delhi. As the various topographical drawings of Delhi discussed in this essay demonstrate, the projection of Shahjahanabad as a site of imperial significance was often the result of the “…artist’s layering of motifs from heterogeneous pictorial traditions…to legitimate the site as a locus of power both sacred and secular.”83 In the various pictorial representations of Delhi, the artist’s use of cartographic methods also worked to alter the logic of the city, which is now negotiated by relative placement of buildings and figures, labeling, and by the hierarchical sizing of elements within it. The view of Shah Alam’s return to Shahjahanabad in 1772 appears as a ringing endorsement of the Red Fort as the seat of the laterMughals. In the painting, the Red Fort embodies the idea of Shah 82   Mildred Archer has suggested that this painting is very similar to those in the Recueil made for Gentil in Faizabad in 1774. See Archer, Company Paintings, 124, No. 91. 83   In a parallel scenario, Debra Diamond has shown how the representation of new towns around Jodhpur such as Mahamandir (ca. 1803) often borrowed visual conventions from existing devotional painting, pilgrimage maps, and town plans. “The Cartography of Power: Mapping genres in Jodhpur Painting” in Arts of Mughal India, ed. Rosemary Crill, et. al., 280-82 (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2004), pp. 280-282.

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Alam’s bazgasht, a solitary bastion of Mughal sovereignty in a fragmented political domain. By 1803, the British East India Company, under General Gerard Lake, defeated the Maratha army at Laswari and took over the effective administration of Delhi. Conventional wisdom has attributed to the British occupation of Delhi the renaissance of all artistic activity. Topographical painting in Delhi, too, is primarily understood with respect to the rise of the school of Company painters, who worked for British Residents and officials such as David Ochterlony, William Fraser, and James Skinner.84 The piecemeal scholarship on painters employed by the later Mughal court at Delhi has discouraged a substantive view into the painting culture in this period, and into the role of artists who brought together local and European conventions of cartography. While these paintings may not have closely adhered to either Mughal or European conventions, nevertheless they remained a means of projecting Delhi's pre-eminence as the seat of the Mughal authority in the troubled eighteenth century. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Catherine B. Asher, Vidya Dehejia, Finbarr Barry Flood, Susan Gole, Karen Leonard, Alka Patel, and Susan Stronge for their reviews and comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Bibliography Calendar of Persian Correspondence, Vol. I, II, III. Calcutta: Superintendent Govern­ ment Printing, India, 1919. Itihasa Sangraha Aitihasik Tipane, no. 11. Satara (India), September, 1908. Aitken, Molly Emma. “Parataxis and the Practice of Reuse: From Mughal Margins to Mir Kalan Khan” Archives of Asian Art 59 (2009) 81-103. Alam, Muzaffar and Seema Alavi. A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: The Iʾjaz-i Arsalani (Persian Letters, 1773-1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri Polier. Oxford University Press: Delhi, 2001. Allingham, William. The new method of fortification, as practised by Monsieur de Vauban engineer-general of France. Together with a new treatise of geometry. The 84   For instance, see Mildred Archer, Company Drawings in the India Office Library (1972). The topographical school of painting is seen to have matured fullscale in 1815, fueled in part by the earlier visit of painters such as Thomas and ­William Daniell (in Delhi 1788-89) and a synonymous interest in architectural con­ ­servation. See J.P. Losty, ‘The Delhi Palace in 1846: a Panoramic View by Mazhar ʿAli Khan’, in Arts of Mughal India; Studies in Honour of Robert Skelton, 286-302 (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2004).

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fourth edition, carefully revised & corrected by the original. ... By W. Allingham, ... London, 1722. Archer, Mildred. “Tilly Kettle and the Court of Oude (1772-1778)” Apollo, (February 1972): 96-106. ———., Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1992. Bautze, Joachim. Interaction of Cultures: Indian and Western Painting, 1780-1910. Virginia: Art Services International, 1998. Baryiski, Patricia Bahree. “Painting in Avadh in the 18th Century.” In Islam and Indian Regions, edited by A.L. Dallapiccola and S.Z.-A. Lallemant, Vol. I, 351-66, Vol. 2, plates 31-40. Stuttgart, 1993. Bernoulli, Jean, ed. Description historique et géographique de l’Inde, 3 Volumes. Berlin: Pierre Bordeaux, 1786-8. Bhandari, Sujan Rai. Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh, edited by Ed. Zafar Hasan. Delhi, 1918. Blake, Stephen. Shahjahanabad: The sovereign city in Mughal India 1639-1739. Cambridge, 1993. Cohen, Monique, Amina Okada, Francis Richard. A la cour du Grand Moghol. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1986. Diamond, Debra. “The Cartography of Power: Mapping genres in Jodhpur Painting.” In Arts of Mughal India, edited by Rosemary Crill et al., Victoria & Albert Museum, Ahmedabad, India: Mapin, 2004. Dadlani, Chanchal. “The ‘Palais Indiens’ collection of 1774: Representing Mughal Architecture in Late-Eighteenth Century India” Ars Orientalis, Vol. 39, Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Nebahat Avcıoğlu and Finbarr Barry Flood. (2010): 175-97. Delgoda, Sinharaja Tammita. “ “Nabob, Historian and Orientalist” Robert Orme: The Life and Career of an East India Company Servant (1728-1801)” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, Third Series 2, (November, 1992). Eaton, Natasha. “Critical cosmopolitanism: gifting and collecting art at Lucknow, 1775-97” Art and the British empire, edited by Timothy Barringer et al., 189-204. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Edney, Matthew H. Mapping an Empire: The geographical construction of British India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Emmett, Robert C. “The Gazetteers of India.” M.A. Thesis, University of Chicago, 1976. Falk, Toby and Mildred Archer. Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library. London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1981. Fazl, Abu’l. Ain-i Akbari, Vol. I translated by H. Blochman. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1927, reprint 1965. Francklin, William. History of the reign of Shah-Aulum (1798). Gole, Susan. Indian maps and plans: from the earliest times to the advent of European surveys. Manohar: Delhi, 1989, 94-103. Habib, Irfan. Atlas of the Mughal Empire. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982. Haque, Ishrat. Glimpses of Mughal Society and Culture. Delhi, 1992. Horst. Remarks on a new system of fortification, proposed by M. le Comte de Saxe, in his memoirs on the art of war. Trans. Charles Theodore D’Asti, Edinburgh, 1787. Koch, Ebba. “Shah Jahan’s visits to Delhi prior to 1648: New evidence of ritual movement in urban Mughal India”. Mughal Architecture: Pomp and Ceremonies, Environ­mental Design 1-2 (1991): 18-29. ———. Dara Shikoh Shooting Nilgais: Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Painting. Occasional papers, Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, 1998.

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Lafont, Jean-Marie. Chitra: cities and monuments of eighteenth-century India from French archives (New Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Leach, Linda. Mughal and Other Rajput Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, vol. II (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995). Llewellyn-Jones, Rosie. A very ingenious man: Claude Martin in early colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992). Losty, Jeremiah P. “Towards a New Naturalism: Portraiture in Murshidabad and Avadh 1750-80.” After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries, edited by Barbara Schmitz, Marg 53, no. 4 (2002): 34-55. ———, ‘The Delhi Palace in 1846: A panoramic view by Mazhar ‘Ali Khan I” In Arts of Mughal India: Studies in honour of Robert Skelton, edited by Rosemary Crill, et al., 286-302. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, Ahmedabad, India: Mapin, 2004. McInerney, Terence. “Mughal Painting during the Reign of Muhammad Shah” in After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries, edited by Barbara Schmitz, Marg 53, no. 4 (2002): 12-33. Petievich, Carla. “Poetry of the Declining Mughals: The Shahr Ashob,” Journal of South Asian Literature, 25, vol. 1 (1990): 99-110. Polier, A.L.H. Shah Alam II and his court. A narrative of the transactions at the court of Delhy from the year 1771 to the present time ..., edited by Pratul C. Gupta 1989. ———. Miscellaneous Tracts, Extracts of Letters from Major Polier at Delhi to Col. Ironside at Belgram, May 22, 1776, Asiatic Annual Register 2 (1800): 29-30. Prost, Philippe. Les fortresses de l’Empire. Fortifications, villes de guerre et arsenaux napoléoniens. Paris: Editions du Moniteur, 1991. Raj, Kapil. Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowl­edge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. “Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 4 (2007): 751-82. Richards, John F. ed. Kingship and Authority in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Rinckenbach, Alexis, et al. Les Villes Fleurs. Aventures et cartogrpahie des Francais aux Indes aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Petit Journal de l’Exposition, Port-Louis (France): Musée de la Compagnie des Indes, 1998. Roy, Malini. “Origins of the Late Mughal Painting Tradition in Avadh.” In India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow, edited by Stephen Markel with Tushara Bindu Gude. DelMonico, Prestel, New York, 2011. ———, “Some Unexpected Sources for Paintings by the Artist Mihr Chand (fl. c. 175986), Son of Ganga Ram.” South Asian Studies 26, No. 1, March: 21-29. Sarkar, Jadunath. The India of Aurangzib (Topography, Statistics, and Roads) compared with the India of Akbar. With extracts from the Khulasatu-t-Tawarikh and the Chahar Gulshan. Calcutta, 1901. Schwartzberg, Joseph E. “‘South Asian Cartography’” In The history of cartography. Vol. 2. Book 1: Cartography in the traditional Islamic and South Asian societies, edited by J. B. Harley and David Woodward. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, 468-469. Sharma, Sunil. “City of Beauties in the Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 73-81. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Claude Markovits, and Jacques Pouchepadass, eds. Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia 1750-1950. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.

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Sharma, Yuthika. “Art and Praxis in-between Empires: Visual Culture in Late Mughal and British Delhi 1750-1857” Unpublished Dissertation, Columbia University, 2012. Scholberg, Henry. The District Gazetteers of British India: a Bibliography. Zug, Switzer­land: Inter Documentation Co., 1970. Trivedi, K. K. “The Emergence of Agra as a Capital and a City: A Note on Its Spatial and Historical Background during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 37, No. 2: 147-170. Vaughan, Philippa. “The Mughal Garden At Hasan Abdal: a Unique Surviving Example of a ‘Manzil’ Bagh.” South Asia Research 15(Sep 1995): 241-265.

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Mercantile Architectural Patronage in Hyderabad, late 18th-19th Centuries* Alka Patel The Mercantile World and the Architectural History of South Asia The history of merchants and the mercantile world of South Asia, particularly of the early modern period (sixteenth-nineteenth centuries), could very well be re-emerging as a focus of scholarly interest, despite recent pessimistic prognoses to the contrary.1 These fascinating and frequently mobile individuals and groups established and maintained pan-Indic and pan-Asian banking and commercial networks enacted through agnates, affines and other agents working on behalf of family firms most often originating in the northwestern “dry zones” of South Asia.2 It noteworthy, however, that with few exceptions3 South Asia’s early modern mercantile history has been studied with little reference to mercantile patronage of architecture and the arts. What C. A. Bayly * This work is an expansion of a paper presented at the conference Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition (UC-Irvine, 31 October–2 November 2008). I am grateful to the conference attendees for their comments and suggestions. 1  See esp. Claude Markovits, Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs: Indian Business in the Colonial Era (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 253-270. 2   The family firms of northern and northwestern India with Eurasian networks have been treated at length by Stephen Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Claude Markovits, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Scott C. Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and its Trade, 1550-1900 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002). For the disproportionate number of successful family firms originating in South Asia’s northwestern “dry zones” see Markovits, Merchants, Traders, pp. 188ff. 3   Recent exceptions include Anne Hardgrove, Community and Public Culture: the Marwaris in Calcutta, c. 1897-1997 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004 [accessed on line]); and Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny (London & New York: Routledge, 2005). However, Hardgrove’s work is a social and anthropological rather than architectural analysis. And Chattopadhyay’s Representing Calcutta does not focus on the merchant-bankers of the city per se, being more a study of British definitions of modernity and their imposition on Calcutta’s urban development.

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has said about royal and noble consumption of smaller-scale portable commodities holds true perhaps even more for architecture, and for our purposes, specifically merchant-patronized architecture: Far from being a “luxury” in the contemporary Occidental sense, the commissioning and purchase of buildings (along with jewels, shawls and other objects among the royalty and nobility) aided in the “ritualization of everyday life”4: buildings constituted the stages for the domestic, religious and political performances of identity and participation in the larger society. Furthermore, scholars of South Asian mercantile history have complained of the dearth of archival and other evidence with which to write a history of the mercantile world and merchants’ activities and movements in various times and places.5 Thus, it is all the more surprising that the physical record has not been investigated more extensively. The present work adds to the growing body of scholarship reclaiming the importance of the mercantile world for South Asian history, proposing that architectural patronage provides a primary source for discerning merchant-banker6 activities. Focusing on the buildings of merchant-banker groups in the Nizam’s State of Hyderabad (ca. 17801948) in the Deccan during the late eighteenth through nineteenth centuries, I argue that formal and contextual analysis of the surviving 4  See C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 57ff., 124. 5   Particularly in Markovits, Merchants, Traders, pp. 221, 231. 6   The term “merchant-banker” is especially apt for those engaged in commerce and money lending in elite urban contexts. In contrast to moneylenders, prominent merchant-bankers (sheths) rarely dealt with short-term agricultural finance, which was handled almost exclusively by moneylenders. Instead, they concentrated their capital in transactions with urban politico-military elites, for whom they frequently acted as treasurers of a sort, providing cash and credit for staff and troops while seasonal agriculture-based revenues were collected. Moreover, merchant-bankers’ activities were rarely limited to finance; family firms also conducted both the purchase and sale of commodities such as wood and cotton, and were frequently dealers in jewelry and bullion. See K. Krishnaswamy Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad Vol. II (Hyderabad: Chandrakant Press, 1934), pp. 479, 480, 487, 489, 497, 499. Finally, merchant-bankers performed the added functions of receiving deposits and issuing hundis (notes of credit). See Karen Leonard, “The ‘Great Firm’ Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 21, 2 (April 1979), pp. 155-157. Such a wide range of activity is also documented among the trading castes of Rajasthan, some migrating to Hyderabad in the nineteenth century (see below). Lawrence A. Babb, “Violence and the Construction of Trading-Caste Identity,” in Multiple Histories: Culture and Society in the Study of Rajasthan (Lawrence A. Babb et al., eds., New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2002), p. 19.

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 141 buildings provides indices not only of the participation of merchantbankers in identifiable regionally based public cultures, but the nature of this participation as well. The evidence also indicates that architectural preferences as well as labor (and capital) were transferred between site of settlement and homeland. The term ‘diaspora’ is eschewed here in favor of ‘site of settlement’ because, as argued below, these groups undertook permanent rather than temporary settlement outside of their home regions, and engaged fully in the political and cultural life of Hyderabad.7 Hyderabad As Site of Settlement The military forces of the Mughal emperor Alamgir I (also Aurangzeb, r. 1658-1707) penetrated into the Deccan by the end of the seventeenth century, leading to the migration of many north Indian mercantile groups into the region, some through the Mughal base at Aurangabad and others through Burhanpur.8 Eventually in the 1770s, the Deccan’s Mughal governor Nizam al-Mulk Ali Khan Asaf Jah II (r. 1762-1803) moved his headquarters to the Qutb-shahi city of Hydera­bad (founded 1578 or 1591), further underscoring his increasing independence from the declining Mughal imperium. The newly coalescing state formed tributary alliances with many regional elites. Among these were the samasthans, Hindu rulerships in the Telangana and Kannara regions, which had existed since the time of the Kakatiyas (1163-1323). These states remained semi-autonomous and were not fully integrated into Hyderabad’s politics and society. For governance 7   William Safran’s widely accepted definition of ‘diaspora’ is treated more thoroughly in Karen Leonard, Locating Home: India’s Hyderabadis Abroad (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 2 & 258ff. See also the discussion of a modified concept of a ‘trading diaspora’ and its refutation by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation,” in Merchant Networks in the Early Modern World (ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Aldershot, NH: Ashgate, 1996), pp. 72-73. 8   Many of the late seventeenth-century Marwari merchant-bankers accompanying Mughal forces to Aurangabad for their Deccan campaigns were financiers and commodities merchants transacting directly with the troops rather than the emperor. Interview with Atish Sawaiwala, Aurangabad, 17 December 2009. Particularly by the later eighteenth century, families cited Burhanpur as the intermediary point by which they arrived from the north to Hyderabad: interview with Satish Shah, descendant of a Gujarati family firm (Hyderabad, 4 January 2008). See also Stewart Gordon, “Burhanpur: Entrepot and Hinterland, 1650-1750,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review 25 (1988), esp. 440ff.

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of this varied domain, the Nizam and his courtiers instituted a Mughal state bureaucracy adapted to the specific circumstances of the Deccan.9 Rather than relying on Deccani and south Indian trading groups such as the Komatis, successive Nizams encouraged the settlement of north Indian merchant-bankers,10 likely as part of the imposition of an adapted Mughlai bureaucracy. The principal merchant-banker family firms operating in Hyderabad during the eighteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, engaging in long-distance trade and providing finance to various Nizams’ administrations as well as early British Residents, belonged to three main groups originating in northern India.11 By the eighteenth century, merchant-bankers from Gujarat were already settled to the northwest of the walled city across the Musi River at Karwan Sahu—the name of the area indicating its strong mercantile connections—and in the nineteenth century were also settled in the walled city. Gujaratis were principally Jains or Vaishnava Hindus, but likely also included Bohras and other Muslims.12 In the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, other northern groups made their way to the Deccan. First, the extremely intriguing Gosains, characterized as “sanyasi [celibate] soldier-traders” by military historian Dirk Kolff and described as “some of the most powerful trading people of the century,”13 arrived in Hyderabad from their 9   For the samasthans, see Benjamin B. Cohen, Kingship and Colonialism in India’s Deccan: 1850-1948 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), esp. p. 8. For Hyderabad’s adapted political system, see Karen Leonard, “The Hyderabad Political System and Its Participants,” in The Journal of Asian Studies 30, 3 (May 1971): 569582. 10   Karen Leonard, “Family Firms in Hyderabad: Gujarati, Goswami, and Marwari Patterns of Adoption, Marriage, and Inheritance,” forthcoming in Comparative Studies in Society and History 53, 4 (October 2011). I am grateful to the author for supplying me with this and other manuscripts of articles prior to publication. See also Markovits, Merchants, Traders, p. 196. 11   Information on the three major merchant-banking communities of Hyderabad comes from Leonard, “Banking Firms,” p. 181; see also idem, Locating Home, pp. 237ff; and idem, “Family Firms in Hyderabad.” 12   Muslim banking firms in general are less known in Hyderabad in contrast to other trading nodes such as Surat (for the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, see ­Douglas Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: the Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852-1928 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991], esp. pp. 72-76). Although, Karen Leonard has identified at least one prominent Muslim banking house in early nineteenth-century Hyderabad (“Banking Firms,” p. 180; and “Family Firms in Hyderabad.”) The early twentieth-century Muslim banking firm of Khan Bahadur Ahmed Alladin and Co. is mentioned in Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad Vol. II, p. 506 G. 13   D. H. A. Kolff, “Sannyasi Trader Soldiers,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review 8 (1971): 213-218; and Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, p. 29. See

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 143 homelands in the Punjab, Benares and Mirzapur, some via Maratha territories in the western Deccan. Gosain groups settled in the Begum Bazaar area, also across the river from the city proper and east of Karwan. Finally in the nineteenth century came the Marwaris, actually a diverse community of Oswal and Saraogi Jains, and Agarwal and Maheshwari Hindus originating in central through northeastern Rajasthan and at times included among the broad term bania.14 While they also settled at Begum Bazaar and in the old city, the establishment of a British Residency to the north of the city by the early nineteenth century attracted later Marwari merchant-bankers and new waves of Gujaratis to Sultan Bazaar, the Residency area, and Secun­ darabad. Although the principal merchant-banker family firms of Hyderabad were affiliated with various sects of Hinduism and Jainism, their inclusion within this volume on Indo-Muslim cultures is justified on both socio-political as well as architectural grounds. As Karen Leonard has summarized, certainly within Hyderabad city, the society can be characterized not as a synthesis of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Islamic’ cultural and political norms (insofar as these can be generalized), but rather as a “plural society, associated with the ruler and the state apparatus.”15 The Sunni Nizams and the Shiʿi, Sunni, and Hindu nobility of Hyderabad were prominent patrons of the various religious festivals and institutions within their realms, so that rule was performed at least in part through patronage. Just as the Sunni Nizams frequently granted jāgirs and made monetary donations to Shia āshūrkhānās (buildings where ʿālams or banners for Muharram were housed) and large temple foundations, Punjabi Khatri, Kayasth and Maharashtrian Brahman nobles also patronized Shia and other festivals and institutions.16 As a whole, then, the ruling elites enacted state control through patronage of also Bernard S. Cohn, “The Role of the Gosains in the Economy of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Upper India,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review (1964): 175-182; David N. Lorenzen, “Warrior Ascetics in Indian History,” in Journal of the American Oriental Society 98, 1 (Jan.-Mar. 1978), esp. pp. 74ff.; and William R. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. pp. 6ff. See also note 43. 14  See Babb, “Violence and the Construction of Trading-Caste Identity.” 15   Leonard, Locating Home, p. 13. 16  See Karen Leonard, “Indo-Muslim Culture in Hyderabad: Old City Neighborhoods in the Nineteenth Century,” in this volume. See also S. A. Asgar Bilgrami, Landmarks of the Deccan (Hyderabad: Government Central Press, 1927), esp. pp. 10, 25, 61, 99.

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v­ arious religio-cultural institutions, weaving together an ‘IndoMuslim’ and distinctively Hyderabadi ruling culture that was inclusive of the multifarious confessional interests of the Deccan as well as those of the northern settlers. Merchant-bankers occupied a unique niche within Hyderabad. While they could remain somewhat disengaged from performances of rulership, they were also deeply involved with Hyderabad’s politics, playing decisive roles in the concentration of state power in the hands of certain individuals. For example, the support of merchant-bankers was instrumental in the political careers of two prominent power-brokers: Maharaja Chandu Lal Bahadur was de facto Diwan or prime minister directly under the Nizam’s authority (officially only Peshkar or deputy Diwan) from 1808 to 1832, and officially Diwan 1832-1843, thanks to his ability to obtain credit from merchant-bankers where his competitors had failed. And the ‘modernizing’ reforms of Salar Jung I (Diwan and effective ruler 1853-1883) were able to go forward again because of the support of important merchant-bankers.17 Among more intimate cultural engagements, some merchantbankers were renowned for their patronage of Hindu as well as Muslim religious institutions in the form of charitable and—in the early twentieth century—educational projects. Many of them were also known for their proficiency in Urdu, the language of courtly society in Hyderabad, and some also in Persian literary traditions.18 Finally, a shared culture of conviviality among the mainly Muslim nobles and the Vaishnava Hindu, Gosain and Jain merchant-bankers is evidenced in the social events frequented by all.19 Contrary to theories of an apolitical trading ‘diaspora’,20 then, Hyderabad’s merchantbankers were thoroughly intertwined with the political life of the city and the State.

17  See Karen Leonard, “Hyderabad: the Mulki-Non-Mulki Conflict,” in People, Princes and Paramount Power (ed. Robin Jeffrey, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 65-106; and idem, “Banking Firms,” pp. 178, 194. 18   For the Gosain Raja Dhahrajgirji’s “[association] with almost every public cause, social or educational, Hindu, Christian or Muslim,” see Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad Vol. II, p. 438. For the versedness of merchant-bankers in Urdu and Persian, see ibid, pp. 465 B, 485. 19  See Leonard, “Banking Firms,” p. 200. 20   Also discussed in Subrahmanyam, “Iranians Abroad,” pp. 72-73.

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 145 Merchant-Banker Architectural Patronage in Hyderabad Unlike the very broad glimpses into encounters between settler groups and their new host societies that can be gleaned from historical sources such as court documents and other written records, merchant-banker patronized architecture reveals the multifaceted negotiations of these communities, who entered the new cultural space of the Deccan. The surviving buildings provide insight into the unique role they played in Hyderabad, clearly participating in elite Indo-Muslim culture in some important respects, but in others engaging south Indian practices. Based on the surviving architectural evidence, I propose a distinction between the religious and non-religious ambits of merchantbanker architectural patronage: While their non-religious or ‘secular’ buildings, such as residential and other non-ritual architecture, derived from imperial Mughal or Indo-Muslim conventions imported from northern India, their temple shrines are traceable to indigenous south Indian building practices. Contrary to the diasporic model, these groups certainly ‘fit in’ to their host societies, but it is important to note that, apparently, more than one host society was operative in Hyderabad: elite Indo-Muslim government and society, and the preexisting Hindu—broadly speaking—or Dravidian traditions21 of south India including the Deccan. On the elite level of rulership, the Hindu traditions of south India were more extensively patronized by the tributary samasthān Rajas than the Nizams. As we have seen above, however, the cultural practices broadly classifiable as ‘Indo-Muslim’ or ‘Hindu’ were never mutually exclusive; rather, they coexisted within the Deccan’s various social formations.22 I. Residences Although drawn in 1911, maps of Hyderabad city by the surveyor Leonard Munn are useful for our purposes, particularly since most of

21  So termed by M. S. Mate, “Temple Architecture,” in Shivaji and Facets of Maratha Culture (ed. Saryu Doshi, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1982), p. 88. 22   The samasthans tended to have more temple complexes than mosques, though both were documented within their territories. Also, many of the Rajahs adopted some Indo-Muslim practices within their courts. See Cohen, Kingship and Colonialism, Introduction n.15 and pp. 1-3, 5, 7.

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the identified structures no longer survive [b/w 7.1].23 These maps painstakingly record family names on properties, indicating the continued prominence of north Indian merchant-banker families into the twentieth century. Reflective of early Gujarati settlement in Karwan Sahu, this area continued to be dominated by Gujaratis in the early 1900s, seen in family property names such as Gulab Das, Bhagwan Das, and Jai Kishan Das. These were interspersed with dargāhs, āshūrkhānās, and also dewals or small temples. After the complete transplantation of state authority from Golconda to Hyderabad by the later eighteenth century, Begum Bazaar and eventually the Residency area became the centers of political and economic activity and attracted fresh waves of migration of Gujaratis, as well as the incoming Gosains and Marwaris. Thus, by the early twentieth century, Begum Bazaar and the Residency area had fluid community identities, including the residences and gardens of Muslim nobles alongside those of merchant-bankers from all three communities. In Shah Inayat Ganj near Begum Bazaar, for example, various Gosain maṭhas were contiguous with the property of Motilal Seth, a Marwari, and in the vicinity of gardens of Muslim nobles such as Nawab Shamsher alDawla. And in the Residency, Lalgir Gosain found himself next to another property of the Marwari Motilal Seth, and not far from that of the noble Sayyad Humayun Mirza [b/w 7.2, 7.3]. Such a commingling of Gujarati, Gosain, Marwari and Muslim estab­lishments—together with mosques, āshūrkhānās, dargāhs and small temples—unequivocally indicates the cohabitation of com­ munities rather than their segregation within localities in Hyderabad.24 These close quarters doubtless contributed to the culture of 23   I am grateful to Karen Leonard for granting me full access to these invaluable maps, and for indications of the community affiliations of various names listed on them. 24   While cohabitation of communities is documented in Shahjahanabad, it is not a characteristic of Calcutta and Surat, which have both been described as cities where mixed neighborhoods were few, the majority being occupied by specific communities. For Shahjahanabad, see Maulvi Zafar Hasan, Monuments of Delhi: Lasting Splendour of the Great Mughals and Others, esp. Vol. I: Shahjahanabad (1916; reprinted in New Delhi: Aryan Books, 1997); and Ratish Nanda et al., Delhi, the Built Heritage: a Listing, esp. Vol. I (New Delhi: INTACH, Delhi Chapter, 1999). For Calcutta: Jonathan Roy Barlow, “Calcutta, the English City on the Ganges: Temperament and Architecture in the 18th Century,” in Ports, Towns, Cities: a Historical Tour of the Indian Littoral (ed. Lakshmi Subramanian, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2008), pp. 117ff.; and for Surat: Farhat Hasan, “The Mughal Port Cities of Surat and Hugli,” in Ports, Towns, Cities, p. 87.

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 147 convi­viality shared among Muslim ruling elites and merchant-banker com­munities (mentioned above), and also aided in creating a shared architec­tural language for residential buildings. No known eighteenth- and nineteenth-century residences of Gujarati merchant-bankers survive in Hyderabad,25 but other structures provide important information regarding Gujarati patronage of non-religious architecture. The Bhagwan Das garden pavilion to the west of Karwan Sahu [Color Plate 7.1] was likely part of a larger, perhaps residential compound dating to the mid-eighteenth century. By this time its patrons, the family firm of Benkati Das Bhagwan Das, were not only active in Hyderabad, they were prominent among the ruling elite. Located at a convenient stopping place between Golconda and Karwan (and eventually Hyderabad city), the first Nizam Qamr al-Din Khan and his son Salabat Jung stopped there in the 1750s, along with successive Nizams and small armies throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the third Nizam Sikandar Jah’s (r. 1803-1829) flag being hoisted there in 1803.26 The frequent use of this locale by the Nizams and their forces further underscores the close social connections—in addition to the economic ones—between merchant-bankers and Hyderabad’s ruling elites. The pavilion itself is a wooden structure with a mezzanine, all ­elegantly carved with floral and bird motifs, many of them painted. While there are differences in specific motifs (discussed below), the strong formal similarities between Bhagwan Das’s pavilion and residential structures in Gujarat, such as the Amin haveli in Vaso, southcentral Gujarat27 [Color Plate 7.2], suggest that this early Gujarati merchant-banker family in Hyderabad may have imported craftspeople from their ‘home’ region for this project. Both structures have a 25   The possible exception is the residence and place of business of Vitthaldas Jewelers near the Char Minar, possibly dating from the early nineteenth century. The structure has been completely renovated, however, with only a few intricately carved wood elements salvaged for decorative purposes. Fieldnotes and Interview with Vitthaldas descendants, Hyderabad, 11 January 2008. A residence of the well known and long-lived Gujarati firm of Benkati Das (1890-1910; see main text) in the Sultan Bazaar-Residency area dates from 1903, but is now rented out to various businesses who have greatly modified the structure. Fieldnotes and Interview with Krishna Kumar (descendant of Benkati Das), Hyderabad, 7 January 2008. 26   Leonard, “Family Firms in Hyderabad.” 27   The Amin haveli is dated to ca. 1875, but is usable as a comparison here due to a marked continuity both in the configuration of space as well as little alteration in decorative motifs from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. See V. S. Pramar, Haveli (Ahmadabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 1989), esp. pp. 76ff., 116-119.

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nearly identical configuration: a central open area with mezzanine, and a slightly slanted roof. It is probable that the core of the Gujarati residence, the open courtyard, was altered in the Hyderabad pavilion, which was a structure only for periodic and temporary habitation. In a Gujarati residence often accommodating several generations of a family, many rooms on the ground and upper floors radiated from the open courtyard; due to less need for space in the Hyderabad building, the courtyard was covered and had only a few small rooms beyond. In both buildings, however, proportionally slender columns support the multi-lobed arches forming arcades (mainly on the mezzanine floor in the Gujarati structure). The multi-lobed arches had originated in Mughal architecture but had long been integrated into Gujarati practices of wood construction. Moreover, both interiors are replete with flat, intricately carved and polychrome bands of floral and geometric motifs [Color Plate 7.3], which were common in the craft vocabulary of Gujarati artisans through the nineteenth century.28 Elements such as elaborate bracket systems and multi-lobed arches, and techniques such as two-dimensional piercing for decorative bands were also evident in the woodworking traditions of the western reaches of Hyderabad state (modern Karnataka and parts of Maharashtra) at sites such as Paithan. Located south of Aurangabad on the Godavari river, Paithan had been an important trading node since at least the first century ce.29 It was another site of settlement for wealthy merchant-bankers from Gujarat and adjacent northern areas, whose formidable mansions could have served as precedents for Hyderabad’s later merchant-bankers. However, differences between the buildings of Paithan and Hyderabad suggest that Hyderabad’s merchant-bankers patronized carving and construction practices from farther afield. Flora and bird-derived designs are also present in Paithan’s surviving architecture and its fragments. Paithan architecture is more strongly characterized, however, by a prominent use of aniconic 28  See V. S. Pramar, “Traditional Woodwork in Secular Architecture,” in The Impulse to Adorn (ed. Saryu Doshi, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1982), esp. pp. 31-32; and Jay Thakkar, Naqsh: the Art of Wood Carving in Traditional Houses of Gujarat, a Focus on Ornamentation (Ahmadabad: Research Cell, School of Interior Design, CEPT, 2004), pp. 201-211. 29  See R. S. Morwanchikar, “Mansions and Monasteries of Paithan,” in Shivaji and Facets of Maratha Culture (op. cit. supra), pp. 113-122.

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 149 g­ eometric and floral forms contained within teardrop frames (bearing a striking resemblance to ʿālams) [b/w 7.4]. Moreover, the overall more crisp carving technique of Paithan appears virtually desiccated next to the fuller forms of the Bhagwan Das pavilion, as well as those of contemporaneous buildings in Gujarat. Finally, it has been noted that Paithan’s merchant-banker residences had strong fortification elements, including extremely thick masonry walls, bent entrances, and heavy doors—all serving to protect wealth, property, and person in a zone that had suffered several Maratha-Mughal confrontations.30 Defen­sive architectural elements are notably absent in Hyderabad, though guards’ quarters were often integrated into the principal en­trances of some of the important residences and temples.31 Overall, however, if a conclusion based on stylistic analysis is permitted, it can be proposed that the patrons of the Bhagwan Das pavilion employed Gujarati rather than Deccani craftspeople for its construction. There is nonetheless a noteworthy innovation to the Gujarati woodworking tradition transplanted to Hyderabad. Among the eighteenthand nineteenth-century residences and temples I surveyed in Gujarat, none employed the banglā.32 This term refers to the gently curving roofline and heavy eaves of eastern Indian (Bengal = banglā) verna­ cular architecture, which was integrated into the imperial Mughal ­building vocabulary during the reign of the emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1627-1658). The banglā’s distinctive curving roofline, used to emphasize royal pavilions and the imperial throne itself (as well as the nobility’s architecture33), became a recognizable signature of Shah Jahan’s architectural interventions. The emperor’s substantial altera30   Gujarati artisans were apparently also active in Paithan, though their style and ornamental vocabulary evince notable differences with the Bhagwan Das pavilion in Hyderabad. See Morwanchikar, “Mansions and Monasteries,” p. 114; also Gopal Krishna Kanhere, “Maratha Wadas: a Way of Life,” in Shivaji and Facets of Maratha Culture (op. cit. supra), pp. 105-112. 31   Guards’ quarters were extant at the matha of Narsingh Girji and Sitaram Bagh temple complex, both discussed below in main text. Interviews with Chandrakant Gir (Hyderabad, 27 December 2007) and Gopal Das, manager of Sitaram Bagh (Hyderabad, 6 January 2008). 32   Also not included in the exhaustive list of decorative elements compiled by Thakkar, Naqsh, cf. pp. 55-74, 101-145. 33   Based on an architectural drawing of 1774, the palace of Qamr al-Din Khan Nizam al-Mulk Asaf Jah I (1671-1748; founded Asaf Jahi dynasty in 1737) in Shahjahanabad was like that of other nobles in its use of imperial architectural conventions, including the bangla. See Jean-Marie Lafont, Chitra: Cities and Monuments of Eighteenth-Century India from French Archives (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 122-125.

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tions at Agra Fort (ca. 1565), for example, are clearly distinguishable from the constructions of his illustrious predecessor Akbar (r. 15561605) due to the emphatic use of banglās.34 Eventually, the banglā became a common element throughout the architecture of northern India, with the important exception of Gujarat. By the eighteenth century, it could be found in non-royal com­missions such as merchant-banker patronized religious and civic structures as well. With a decline in patronage by the Mughal aristocracy, craftspeople previously in the employ of nobles and other ruling elites were dispersed from their ateliers and sought work outside of their traditional sources of support.35 With the rise of the ‘Mughal satrapy’ of Hyderabad, it is plausible that many northern artisans also came to the Deccan, linking this region into the mobile flow of labor between northern and southern India. Merchant-bankers were among those employing artisans previously working on the commissions of ruling elites. With the banglā’s pedigree, traceable to the imperial Mughal architectural ambit, its more widespread use in later buildings signaled not only the dispersal of artisans previously employed by ruling houses and the military elites to other patronage sources. It also indexed the adoption of Indo-Muslim aesthetic conventions and their reinvention in a new context.36 While Gujarati artisans adopted some elements of this Indo-Muslim building vocabulary such as the multilobed arch, the banglā remained conspicuously absent.37 34   For the banglā and baluster column as elements associated with Shah Jahan’s architectural patronage, see Ebba Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 45, 67-68, 224-225; and Catherine Asher, “Piety, Religion and the Old Social Order in the Architecture of the Later Mughals and their Contemporaries,” in Rethinking Early Modern India (ed. Richard B. ­Barnett, New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), p. 194. 35   Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, esp. p. 142. See also Ilay Cooper, “The Painted Walls of Churu, Jhunjhunu and Sikar Districts of Rajasthan,” in South Asia Studies 2 (1986): 21-35; and idem, The Painted Towns of Shekhawati (Ahmadabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 1994), pp. 25ff. See also Asher, “Piety, Religion and the Old Social Order” p. 195. 36   Artists’ southern movement has been noted certainly for painting by e.g. ­Barbara Schmitz, “After the Great Mughals,” in After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries (ed. Barbara Schmitz, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002), p. 1. For the dissemination of imperial architectural vocabulary, see Alka Patel, “Shekhawati and Beyond: ‘Marwaris’ at Home and in the Diaspora,” in Shekhawati (eds. Rashmi Poddar and Abha Narain Lambah, Mumbai: Marg Publications, forthcoming). 37   Late seventeenth- through early nineteenth-century residences in particular exhibit use of multi-lobed arches and also baluster columns, but not the banglā. See Thakkar, Naqsh, pp. 150-153.

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 151 The prominent placement of the banglā in the Gujarati pavilion in Hyderabad, then, is clearly a new introduction to the otherwise Gujarati woodworking techniques and motifs of the structure. In Hyderabad, I would suggest that the banglā was specifically related to the participation of merchant-bankers in the city’s elite Indo-Muslim culture and society. Merchant-banker architecture was the stage upon which their participation in the shared Indo-Muslim culture among the city’s various groups was played out. The specific circumstances of the merchant-bankers’ new ‘home’ of Hyderabad were directly influential in the buildings they commissioned, so that these constituted familiar surroundings to all those with whom the merchant-bankers were inextricably intertwined, including the ruling elites who were the keepers of Hyderabad’s Indo-Muslim legacies.38 No complete Gosain maṭhas or monastic establishments (also referring to residential compounds) of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries survive in Hyderabad, even though by the late nineteenth century there were sixteen to eighteen Gosain maṭhas in Begum Bazaar, Shah Inayat Ganj and along the Musi River.39 Moreover, the 1911 Munn maps indicate that these maṭhas continued as major property owners into the twentieth century [b/w 7.1-7.3]. The current rise in land prices in Hyderabad and much speculation by the city’s builders has led to the dismantling of many older structures.40 Nevertheless, some data can be gleaned from the rapidly diminishing remains of the maṭha of Narsingh Girji (now completely destroyed), head of a banking firm documented from 1801 [b/w 7.5]. Like many of Hyderabad’s Gosains, Narsingh Girji’s predecessors originated in northern India, specifically in Gandhari, eastern Uttar Pradesh. First coming to Poona in the mid-1700s, they eventually made their way to Hyderabad by the late eighteenth century.41 Based on stylistic analysis, I would suggest that the maṭha dates to the late eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. In the case of Hyderabad’s wealthier Gosain establishments, the maṭhas served as residential and business places, being fitted with guards’ quarters and   Leonard, “Hyderabad: Mulki—non-Mulki Conflict,” esp. pp. 68ff.  See Leonard, “Family Firms in Hyderabad” (forthcoming). 40  Our documentation of the maṭha on 27 December 2007 was hampered by developers and their construction crews in the process of completely dismantling the structure. 41  See Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad Vol. II, pp. 433-437; and Leonard, “Family Firms in Hyderabad” (forthcoming). 38 39

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wood trunks for the storage of valuables and rivaling the large residential complexes of other merchant-bankers.42 The Gosain residences also evoke an Indo-Muslim architectural aesthetic, their interior walls punctuated with blind pointed-arch niches. Walls and doors are framed with wood intricately carved with familiar Indo-Muslim floral and geometric motifs, as well as iconic reliefs of deities such as Ganesh [Color Plate 7.4]. Formally, the Hyderabad maṭhas evince little difference from their counterparts in northern areas such as Benares [b/w 7.6] and Mirza­ pur—two cities with prominent sañyāsi maṭhas, established there as much for the sacrality of the sites as for the profits from pilgrimage and riverine commercial traffic.43 With the resources commanded by Gosain maṭhas at various locales in northern India as well as Hyderabad, they were in all probability also new patrons for the craftspeople dispersed with the decline of the Mughal aristocracy and its traditional centers of power. In Benares, for example, the Jangambāri maṭha of the Shaiva Lingāyats had grown to great prominence in the city by the sixteenth century, at least in part through its management of pilgrimage and worship at the well known Kashi Vishvanath Temple. Due to its wealth and importance for pilgrimage to the holy city, the maṭha had a commanding position among populations throughout northern India and beyond. These were the likely reasons that all of the Mughal emperors from Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) to Alamgir I (r. 1658-1707) issued farmāns granting more lands to the institution, and reiterated the validity of previous grants.44   Interview with Chandrakant Gir, Hyderabad, 27 December 2007.   Mirzapur was likely founded in the late seventeenth century specifically as a site of transshipment for goods from Benares and northeastern India, toward the west and southward into the Deccan. In the eighteenth century, “the principal traders with the Deccan were of the Sannyasi sect … [who] resided at Varanasi and transported their goods to Mirzapur to sell them to other members of their own sect who came annually from the Deccan to buy them”: Pramanand Mishra, Uttar Pradesh District Gazetter, Mirzapur (Roorkee: Govt. of Uttar Pradesh, 1988), pp. 295-296. See also Edward Thornton, A Gazetter of the Territories under the Government of the East India Company (London: Allen & Co., 1857), pp. 619-621. Also, interview with Dr. Bhudev Pandey, relation by marriage of Parshuram Gir, the first Gosain in Mirzapur (ca. 1790), Mirzapur, 15 August 2009. 44  See Surjit Sinha & Baidyanath Saraswati, Ascetics of Kashi: an Anthropological Exploration (Varanasi: N. K. Bose Memorial Foundation, 1978), pp. 101ff., 264-266. Indeed, it was not only the Benares Jangambari maṭha that received imperial attention. Its associated maṭhas in Allahabad and Gaya, though not granted lands, were nonetheless protected from misappropriation of their properties by farmāns from 42 43

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 153 It is possible, however, that Hyderabad’s Gosain maṭhas underwent a transformation in layout and delineation of public and private spaces during the early twentieth century, when the community finally began to move away from sañyāsi law to follow Hindu family law, establishing itself as a caste and legally recognizing marriage and the right to inheritance of biological children. The destruction of maṭhas makes it impossible to know the effects on Gosain architecture of this significant socio-legal transition.45 The residences of the Marwari merchant-bankers also demonstrate that this community patronized the Indo-Muslim architectural aesthetic of their host society of Hyderabad, indicating their participation in this culture of everyday interaction and conviviality. Moreover, Marwari residential architecture in Hyderabad is quite different from that in the Marwari home regions of southern through northeastern Rajasthan, further suggesting that the community ‘fit in’ to their host society. The current residence in Begum Bazaar of descendants of the prominent Marwari firm of Raja Bahadur Bansilal, whose ancestors were from Nagaur (central Rajasthan), serves as an example. Popularly known as Bansilal-ki Devri, the structure is one of the few from the early nineteenth century surviving in the city, thanks to the efforts of successive generations of the family toward maintaining and updating the building.46 As was the case generally with pre-twentieth-century architecture, the business and residential spaces are contained within the same building. In the relatively dense urban setting of Begum Bazaar during the 1800s, space was accessed vertically rather than horizontally: the more public business quarters [b/w 7.7] are on the ground floor, while the family’s private apartments, including a central courtyard, are all on the upper floors [Color Plate 7.5]. All of the building’s interiors nonetheless exhibit architectural and decorative elements familiar Akbar (r. 1556-1605), Jahangir, Alamgir I, and Muhammad Shah (r. 1719-1720, 1720-1748) [Ascetics of Kashi, p. 266]. 45   In northern India, the shift to Hindu family law among some sanyasi sects had occurred earlier in the nineteenth century. See Catherine Clémentin-Ojha, “Les principes réglmentant les activités économiques des ascètes hindous d’aprés la description de “Coutumes des Gosawees” de John Warden,” in Divines richesses: religion et économie en monde marchand indien (eds. P. Lachaier & C. Clémentin-Ojha, Paris: Ecole française d’Extrême Orient, 2008), pp. 49-74; also Leonard, “Family Firms in Hyderabad.” 46   Interview with Vinita Pittie, Hyderabad, 28 December 2007. For Raja Bahadur Bansilal, see Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad Vol. II, pp. 465 A-D.

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from the Indo-Muslim aesthetic vocabulary, including banglā components and baluster columns.47 The Mughal architectural device of punctuating planar wall surfaces with small niches is also in evidence here. The adaptation of Marwari architectural choices to Hyderabad’s distinctive cultural milieu is visible in the differences between Ban­ silal-ki Devri and the Marwari residences of Rajasthan [Color Plate 7.6]. This local adaptation is true despite assertions among interviewees that Marwari artisans were brought to Hyderabad for construction and maintenance.48 Not only were Marwar’s residences horizontally (rather than vertically) extended with rambling accretions built over several generations, they were also profusely painted, both on the exterior and interior.49 In place of the horror vacui evident in the havelis of Shekhawati, Hyderabad’s Bansilal-ki Devri exhibits restraint in both exterior and interior decoration. The wall surfaces and ceilings are certainly painted with floral motifs and vignettes, but the quantity of decoration is much reduced in comparison with its Marwari counterparts. This restraint in decoration in Hyderabad could have been an adaptation to the host society, where structures had some painted decoration but not as much as the Marwari homelands.50 Like the Bhagwan Das pavilion of the Gujarati firm of Benkati Das and the Gosain maṭha of Narsingh Girji, Bansilal-ki Devri also hearkened to Indo-Muslim architectural practices. II. Temples On the Surveyor Leonard Munn’s maps of Hyderabad city (see b/w 7.1-7.3), there is a noteworthy absence: while dewals or small temples appear interspersed among āshūrkhānās, mosques, and the large gardens and stately residences of merchant-bankers, few of their large temple complexes are identified. This absence is due to the location of these extensive complexes far outside the boundaries of Munn’s survey, which focused on the principal urban and semi-urban areas north of the Musi river and the densely populated walled city abutting the river’s southern bank. The temple complexes’ distance from the urban  See Koch, Mughal Art, pp. 38-60.   Interview with Vinita Pittie, Hyderabad, 28 December 2008. 49  See esp. Cooper, Painted Towns. 50  Some exterior surfaces of Narsingh Girji’s maṭha also showed traces of painted decoration [cf. Color Plate 7.4]. 47 48

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 155 areas is explicable in light of their multiple functions: these large complexes were certainly places of religious ritual, but they were also important places of commerce.51 This interpretation is put forward with some caution, as no large Gosain complexes have been located. The Gujarati temples we documented date from the early twentieth century and, due to the increasing congestion of the city, have undergone significant changes to their surroundings.52 Some nineteenth-century merchant-banker patronized temple complexes had substantial market annexes and merchants’ accommodations. The Laxman Bagh complex’s (early nineteenth century) market area was a quadrangle contained by single-storey arcades divided into small cells [b/w 7.8]. The central open area has a square, flatroofed pavilion, where the sheṭhs themselves were said to preside over brisk dealing in wood, cotton, and grains.53 Sitaram Bagh’s (ca. 182554) large baoli (in-ground water tank), sarai (traveling merchants’ accommodations), and extensive grounds indicate preparedness for regular as well as seasonal commercial traffic. These temple complexes’ prominent commercial functions are further emphasized by their location on principal highways connecting Hyderabad to the west coast: Sitaram Bagh, still maintained by the descendants of the Marwari firm of Mahanand Ram Puran Mal Ganeriwala, and Laxman Bagh, maintained by the descendants of the Marwari firm of Raja Bahadur Bansilal, are both located in the northwesterly direction from the walled city of Hyderabad, occupying strategic locations on the main highway toward Bombay. In their location, marked commercial functions and other respects, Hyderabad’s merchant-banker patronized temple complexes must be contrasted with temples in the home regions of Marwar. The Sri 51   The multiple functions of temple complexes, including as periodic quarters for military forces, is discussed by Karen Leonard, “Hindu Temples in Hyderabad: State Patronage and Politics in South Asia,” in South Asian History and Culture 2, 3 (July 2011): 352-373. 52   The earliest surviving Gujarati temple documented, the Shri Narsingh Mandir, is located on the Residency Road and dates to 1937. Despite its twentieth-century date, this temple also adheres to south Indian temple building conventions in its pyramidal superstructure (see below in main text). 53   Interview with priests of Laxman Bagh, Hyderabad, 12 January 2008. 54   The date of Sitaram Bagh’s foundation adopted here is from Leonard, “Hindu Temples in Hyderabad,” p. 359. Mudiraj dates the foundation to 1882, most likely in error (Pictorial Hyderabad Vol. II, p. 508). He also dates the family firm’s Sri Rangji temple complex in Pushkar, Rajasthan (discussed below in main text) to 1900, which is refuted by the complex’s own plaque noting its year of foundation as 1850.

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Bijariji temple at Jhunjhunu [b/w 7.9] was also built by Marwari merchants in the late eighteenth-early nineteenth century,55 but shows significant differences with Hyderabad’s Marwari temples in both situation and style. Rather than being on the outskirts of a city, the Sri Bihariji temple is well ensconced within the urban fabric of the busy market center of Jhunjhunu. The temple consists of the shrine and preceding porch (maṇḍapa), with no market area within its perimeter. This is not to say that the Jhunjhunu temple played no economic role in the life of the city. Indeed, since at least the eleventh century if not earlier, temple foundations commanded sizeable revenues in pilgrims’ gifts of moveable and immoveable property and at times were significant landowners in their own right, thereby playing an important economic role in the lives of their associated settlements.56 The absence of an identifiable market area or sarai within the property of the Sri Bihariji temple, however, indicates that the specific commercial activity of buying and selling commodities was not directly asso­ ciated with the temple. By contrast, the strategic location of Hyderabad’s Marwari merchant-banker temples and their prominent commercial areas underscore the crucial role these sites and their patrons played in the development of Hyderabad’s market activity and commercial networks. These initiatives on the part of individual merchant-banker firms were fully supported by the ruling elite: Sitaram Bagh was not only funded by jāgir granted as inām (tax-free) by the State, the third Nizam Akbar Ali Khan Sikandar Jah (r. 1803-1829) was likely present at its foundation laying ceremony.57 Thus, while temples in the Mar­ wari homeland were one among many types of institutions participating in the already well-established commercial connectivity of the region,58 Hyderabad’s merchant-banker temples were quite different:  See Cooper, Painted Towns, pp. 155, 156. “Hindu” temples in northern India have also been analyzed by Catherine Asher, “Mapping Hindu-Muslim Identities through the Architecture of Shahjahanabad and Jaipur” in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (eds. D. Gilmartin & B. Lawrence, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), pp. 121-148; and idem, “Piety, Religion and the Old Social Order.” 56   In addition to the vast epigraphic corpus documenting temple grants and other transactions in exact detail, see also Himanshu Prabha Ray, “Introduction,” in Archaeology and Text: The Temple in South Asia (ed. Himanshu Prabha Ray, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 3-4. 57  See Leonard, “Hindu Temples in Hyderabad,” p. 359. 58  See Cooper, “Painted Walls,” pp. 24ff.; idem, Painted Towns, pp. 21-24; and Hardgrove, Community and Public Culture (accessed on line), ch. 3. In fact, despite 55

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 157 They were state-supported commercial spaces, likely participating in linkages with the western coastal regions and northern areas of the subcontinent, thanks in large part to the networks of the merchantbankers settled in the city. Perhaps the most visible differences between merchant-banker temples in Hyderabad and Marwar are in architectural style. Signifying more than mere architectural preference, I suggest that, in Hyderabad, these formal differences also signal the merchant-bankers’ patronage of the city’s other host society: the continuing indigenous Hindu (ʿDravidianʾ) traditions most notably maintained by Hyderabad State’s fourteen tributary samasthāns—traditions that co-existed with the Indo-Muslim culture of Hyderabad City’s ruling elites. The Jhunjhunu temple was constructed within the north Indian temple building tradition, though with a palpable presence of the Indo-Muslim building vocabulary, itself prevalent throughout northern India by the eighteenth century. Although not as well studied as eighth- through twelfth-century temple architecture, later temple building of the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries incorporated many elements from Islamic buildings, including a de-emphasis of figural iconography and the extensive use of pointed and multi-lobed arches. These elements, combined with earlier conventions, rejuvenated what some have claimed to be a rote and even moribund temple building tradition by the thirteenth century.59 The Jhunjhunu temple’s sanctum is capped by a recognizably north Indian śikhara (curvilinear spire). It is partially of the bhumijā mode of north-central India, which is characterized by the offsets continuHindu Law’s emphasis of the Brahman-Kshatriya relationship, throughout Rajasthan the ruling Rajputs and the region’s traders formed “the most important social dyad.” See Lawrence A. Babb, “Tod and Traders,” in James Tod’s Rajasthan (ed. Giles ­Tillotson, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2007), p. 120. 59   For northern Indian temple building conventions, see Encyclopedia of Indian Temple Architecture (eds. Michael Meister, M. A. Dhaky & Krishna Deva, New Delhi & Philadelphia: American Institute of Indian Studies & Princeton University Press, 1983-), esp. Vol. 2, part 1: Foundations of North Indian Style, c 250 bc-ad 1100. Among the studies of later medieval and early modern temples are M. A. Dhaky, “Renaissance and the Late Maru-Gurjara Temple Architecture,” in Western Indian Art, Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art (Special Number, 1965-1966) [eds. Umakant P. Shah & Kalyan K. Ganguli, Calcutta: Indian Society of Oriental Art, 1966], pp. 4-22; Asher, “Mapping Hindu-Muslim Identities”; idem, “Piety, Religion and the Old Social Order”; and Pika Ghosh, Temple to Love: Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005.

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ing through the elevation and the spire itself [b/w 7.9].60 The porch preceding the sanctum, or maṇḍapa, has the domed roof, a common type of porch superstructure beginning in the fifteenth century. While these elements adhere to long-established temple building con­ ventions, the temple’s surrounding wall exhibits elements from Mughal-derived conventions [b/w 7.10]: The surface of the wall is symme­trically punctured with niches and blind arches, reminiscent of the interiors of the residential areas of Mughal forts (as well as Marwari residential interiors and non-religious parts of temple complexes in Hyderabad, cf. Color Plate 7.5 & b/w 7.15). The significance of banglā elements—used at cardinal points here—within seventeenth-century Mughal architecture has been discussed above. The shrines of merchant-banker patronized temples of Hyderabad, by contrast, adhered to southern Indian temple building conventions, evidenced already by the eighth century in Deccani temples and continued through the fifteenth century and later [b/w 7.11]. Rather than the curvilinear spires atop temple sancta as in the north, Hydera­bad’s temple superstructures have stepped, pyramidal profiles, capped by a proportionately small, often ribbed dome [b/w 7.12]. In addition to the superstructures, other elements of the temples clearly place them within the south Indian temple tradition: rather than the domecapped maṇḍapa with multilobed arches of Jhunjhunu, the maṇḍapas of Hyderabad are of trabeate construction. They have flat roofs, which are supported by slender columns often having character­istically southern, disk-like capitals [b/w 7.13]. Finally, the monumental entrances to Hyderabad’s merchant-banker complexes were fre­ quent­ly gopurāms [b/w 7.14]—large, tiered gateways that were a hallmark of the south Indian architectural landscape.61 The mer­­­­ chant-banker shrines, then, formed a marked contrast with mer­­chant-bank­er residences: while the latter employed Indo-Muslim archi­­tectural vocabulary, the temples subscribed to building traditions that were indigenous to the Deccan and southern India more broadly. 60   For the bhumija temple, see Krishna Deva, “Bhumija Temples,” in Studies in Indian Temple Architecture (ed. Pramod Chandra, Varanasi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1975), pp. 90-113. 61   For the south Indian temple building tradition, see Encyclopedia of Indian Temple Architecture (eds. Michael Meister & M. A. Dhaky, New Delhi & Philadelphia: American Institute of Indian Studies & Princeton University Press, 1983–), esp. Vol. I, part 1: South India, Lower Drāviḍadēśa, 200 bc-ad 1324.

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 159 While Sitaram Bagh’s shrine clearly adhered to Deccani-south Indian temple conventions, other areas not strictly for religious function, such as the sarai [b/w 7.15], had elements from the north Indian Indo-Muslim architectural vocabulary: the principal arches of the entrances in these parts of the complex are multilobed—rather than the trabeate construction of the temple maṇḍapas—and are highlighted with a prominent banglā and baluster columns. This notable contrast in architectural style within the same complex demonstrates even more emphatically that there was a strict delineation of religious and non-religious spaces in the temple architecture of merchantbankers: Deccani-south Indian styles were exclusively used in shrines and other religious areas, while the ‘secular’ areas of a complex—those not intended exclusively for religious ritual—and indeed residences (discussed above) were constructed within Indo-Muslim conventions. The south Indian temple building tradition patronized by the merchant-bankers of Hyderabad did not remain confined to the Deccan. Indeed, the site of settlement eventually reinscribed homeland practices in significant ways. Descendants of the family firm of Mahanand Ram Puran Mal Ganeriwala (patrons of Sitaram Bagh) constructed a large temple complex in Marwar in the mid-nineteenth century. Their Sri Rangji temple complex [1850, Color Plate 7.7] is in the sacred city of Pushkar, southeastern Rajasthan, one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the heart of northern India. Like the shrine of Sitaram Bagh, the Sri Rangji shrine and its monumental gopurām clearly have more in common with Deccani-south Indian temple architecture than northern-style temples in the region, such as Jhunjhunu’s Sri Bihariji temple [Color Plate 7.7 & b/w 7.9]. The Sri Rangji shrine boasts a tiered, pyramidal superstructure complete with domical cap, very similar to the family’s Sitaram Bagh complex in Hyderabad. The overall execution of both superstructures is similar enough to suggest that the Ganeriwala family brought craftspeople from Hyderabad to work on this slightly later Pushkar commission. Remarkably, other areas of the Pushkar complex, particularly those surrounding the shrine itself, obviously utilize elements from the region’s Indo-Muslim lexicon, exhibiting the unmistakable banglā pavilions. Not only is the Pushkar temple complex’s shrine extremely similar to Hyderabad’s Sitaram Bagh, the Pushkar complex also replicates the distinction between religious and non-religious areas by means of architectural style. Moreover, the use of a southern-style,

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tiered superstructure rather than the curvilinear śikhara [b/w 7.9] is unique in the region. Such a recognizable distinction argues even more strongly in favor of the employment of Hyderabadi artisans for this northern Indian complex at Pushkar. The Sri Rangji shrine is one example, at least, that indicates that the flow of labor in the nineteenth century was not exclusively southward from Marwar and other northern regions into the Deccani sites of settlement. Marwari merchants settled outside of Marwar also brought to their northern homelands not only their architectural preferences but also the labor to execute them. Further documentation of other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century temples may yield more indications that southern-trained artisans worked in northern India. It can nonetheless be said that, in important ways, the experiences of merchant-bankers at their sites of settlement were also reinscribing their home regions. Mercantile Architecture As Historical Record: Conclusions and Further Questions The preceding analysis of Hyderabad has brought to the fore im­portant features about this particular site of settlement for north Indian merchant-bankers. Merchant-banker architectural patronage in Hy­de­ra­ bad has been an all too little utilized resource for the activities of these northern groups in a particular cultural milieu. Architecture provides important insights into the nature of the encounters between these new groups and their sites of settlement—insights that are uniquely obtained from architectural rather than textual sources. Mercantile residences and other non-religious structures also subscribed to IndoMuslim architectural traditions. Since many documentary sources reveal merchant-banker participation in the Indo-Muslim culture of Hyderabad’s ruling elites (knowledge of Urdu and Persian, shared conviviality), one might easily conclude that these settled groups originally from northern India were virtually exclusive in their IndoMuslim cultural affiliations. The above examination of mercantile temple complexes revealed, however, that merchant-bankers (and other north Indian groups ­settled in Hyderabad) patronized south Indian temple building practices for the construction of their religious architecture. Furthermore, |there is evidence that the patronage of south Indian temple building

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 161 t­ raditions was also carried back to the home regions, where Marwari merchant-bankers commissioned temples that contrasted with nearby north Indian-style temples. Thus, we can clearly discern patterns in the use of specific architectural styles distinguishing religious and non-religious ambits. What is less discernible, however, is the reason for these seemingly strict differences. It has been noted that artisans of many specialties were circulating throughout the subcontinent in the post-eighteenth-century devolution of politico-economic power to new centers—Hyderabad being one of them. Thus, it may seem all the more surprising that Hyderabad’s merchant-banker groups, having come from northern India and settled relatively recently in the Deccan, did not replicate an architectural landscape familiar to them from their home regions even though artisans trained in the northern temple styles were likely available. Indo-Muslim elements from northern India were present in the merchant-bankers’ non-religious buildings in Hyderabad—quite possibly constructed by artisans from the north. However, their temples—important loci of community identity—were in the hands of artisans trained in south Indian temple architecture. The notable distinction between the ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ ambits in merchant-banker buildings in Hyderabad and in the homeland leads to further questions also regarding the effects that form could have exercised on religious ritual and other functions. Did the building of temples within south Indian-Deccani canons also effect changes in these north Indian merchant-bankers’ religious practices? Such important questions remain open for future investigation. With the present state of research, however, we can conclude that the dénouement of Mughal power in South Asia was not the only factor in the dissemination of artisans and their practices outside of traditional centers of patronage. Merchant-bankers were also significant patrons of these artisans, and their patronage at various locations provided an impetus for the movement of labor (and capital) between southern and northern India. Bibliography Asher, Catherine.“Mapping Hindu-Muslim Identities through the Architecture of Shahjahanabad and Jaipur” in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, pp. 121-148. Eds. D. Gilmartin & B. Lawrence, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.

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———, “Piety, Religion and the Old Social Order in the Architecture of the Later Mughals and their Contemporaries,” in Rethinking Early Modern India, pp. 193209. Ed. Richard B. Barnett, New Delhi: Manohar, 2002. Babb, Lawrence A. “Violence and the Construction of Trading-Caste Identity,” in Multiple Histories: Culture and Society in the Study of Rajasthan, pp. 15-38. Eds. Babb, Lawrence A. et al., New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2002. ———, “Tod and Traders,” in James Tod’s Rajasthan, pp. 110-121. Ed. Giles Tillotson, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2007. Barlow, Jonathan Roy. “Calcutta, the English City on the Ganges: Temperament and Architecture in the 18th Century,” in Ports, Towns, Cities: a Historical Tour of the Indian Littoral, pp. 110-131. Ed. Lakshmi Subramanian, Mumbai: Marg Publica­ tions, 2008. Bayly, C. A. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Bilgrami, S. A. Asgar. Landmarks of the Deccan. Hyderabad: Government Central Press, 1927. Chattopadhyay, Swati. Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny. London & New York: Routledge, 2005. Clémentin-Ojha, Catherine. “Les principes réglmentant les activités économiques des ascètes hindous d’aprés la description de “Coutumes des Gosawees” de John Warden.” In Divines richesses: religion et économie en monde marchand indien, pp. 49-74. Eds. P. Lachaier & C. Clémentin-Ojha, Paris: Ecole française d’Extrême Orient, 2008. Cohen, Benjamin B. Kingship and Colonialism in India’s Deccan: 1850-1948. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Cohn, Bernard S. “The Role of the Gosains in the Economy of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Upper India,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review (1964): 175-182. Cooper, Ilay. “The Painted Walls of Churu, Jhunjhunu and Sikar Districts of Rajasthan,” in South Asia Studies 2 (1986): 21-35 ———, The Painted Towns of Shekhawati. Ahmadabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 1994. Dale, Stephen. Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Deva, Krishna. “Bhumija Temples,” in Studies in Indian Temple Architecture, pp. 90-113. Ed. Pramod Chandra, Varanasi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1975. Dhaky, M. A. “Renaissance and the Late Maru-Gurjara Temple Architecture,” in Western Indian Art, Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, pp. 4-22 Eds. Umakant P. Shah & Kalyan K. Ganguli, Calcutta: Indian Society of Oriental Art, 1966. Ghosh, Pika Temple to Love: Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005. Gordon, Stewart. “Burhanpur: Entrepot and Hinterland, 1650-1750,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review 25 (1988): pp. 425-442. Hardgrove, Anne. Community and Public Culture: the Marwaris in Calcutta, c. 18971997. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Haynes, Douglas. Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: the Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852-1928. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Hasan, Farhat. “The Mughal Port Cities of Surat and Hugli,” in Ports, Towns, Cities, pp. 78-93. Ed. Lakshmi Subramanian, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2008.

mercantile architectural patronage in hyderabad 163 Hasan, Maulvi Zafar. Monuments of Delhi: Lasting Splendour of the Great Mughals and Others, 2 vols. New Delhi: Aryan Books, 1997 (first ed. 1916). Kanhere, Gopal Krishna. “Maratha Wadas: a Way of Life,” in Shivaji and Facets of Maratha Culture, pp. 105-112. Ed. Saryu Doshi, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1982. Koch, Ebba. Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Kolff, D. H. A. “Sannyasi Trader Soldiers,” in Indian Economic and Social History Review 8 (1971): 213-218. Lafont, Jean-Marie. Chitra: Cities and Monuments of Eighteenth-Century India from French Archives. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Leonard, Karen. “Hyderabad: the Mulki-Non-Mulki Conflict,” in People, Princes and Paramount Power, pp. 65-106. Ed. Robin Jeffrey, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978. ———, “The ‘Great Firm’ Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire,” in Com­ parative Studies in Society and History 21, 2 (April 1979): pp. 151-167. ———, “Banking Firms in Ninetheenth-Century Hyderabad Politics,” in Modern Asian Studies 15, 2 (1981): 177-201. ———, Locating Home: India’s Hyderabadis Abroad. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. ———, “Hindu Temples in Hyderabad: State Patronage and Politics in South Asia,” in South Asian History and Culture 2, 3 (July 2011): 352-373. ———, “Family Firms in Hyderabad: Gujarati, Goswami, and Marwari Patterns of Adoption, Marriage, and Inheritance,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 53, 4 (October 2011): forthcoming. Levi, Scott C. The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and its Trade, 1550-1900. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002. Lorenzen, David N. “Warrior Ascetics in Indian History,” in Journal of the American Oriental Society 98, 1 (Jan.-Mar. 1978): pp. 61-75. Markovits, Claude. The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———, Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs: Indian Business in the Colonial Era. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Mate, M. S. “Temple Architecture,” in Shivaji and Facets of Maratha Culture, pp. 131136. Ed. Saryu Doshi, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1982. Meister, Michael et al. Encyclopedia of Indian Temple Architecture, 2 vols. (3 parts each). New Delhi & Philadelphia: American Institute of Indian Studies & Princeton University Press, 1983. Mishra, Pramanand. Uttar Pradesh District Gazetter, Mirzapur. Roorkee: Govt. of Uttar Pradesh, 1988. Morwanchikar, R. S. “Mansions and Monasteries of Paithan,” in Shivaji and Facets of Maratha Culture, pp. 113-122. Ed. Saryu Doshi, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1982. Mudiraj, K. Krishnaswamy. Pictorial Hyderabad, 2 vols. Hyderabad: Chandrakant Press, 1934. Nanda, Ratish et al. Delhi, the Built Heritage: a Listing, 2 vols. New Delhi: INTACH, Delhi Chapter, 1999. Patel, Alka “Shekhawati and Beyond: ‘Marwaris’ at Home and in the Diaspora,” in Shekhawati. Eds. Rashmi Poddar and Abha Narain Lambah, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2012 (forthcoming). Pinch, William R. Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

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Pramar, V. S. Haveli. Ahmadabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 1989. ———, “Traditional Woodwork in Secular Architecture,” in The Impulse to Adorn, pp. 31-32. Ed. Saryu Doshi, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1982. Ray, Himanshu Prabha “Introduction,” in Archaeology and Text: The Temple in South Asia. pp. 1-14. Ed. Himanshu Prabha Ray, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010. Schmitz, Barbara. “After the Great Mughals,” in After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Ed. Barbara Schmitz, pp. 1-11. Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002. Sinha, Surjit & Baidyanath Saraswati. Ascetics of Kashi: an Anthropological Exploration. Varanasi: N. K. Bose Memorial Foundation, 1978. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. “Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation,” in Merchant Networks in the Early Modern World, pp. 72-96. Ed. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Aldershot, NH: Ashgate, 1996. Thakkar, Jay Naqsh: the Art of Wood Carving in Traditional Houses of Gujarat, a Focus on Ornamentation. Ahmadabad: Research Cell, School of Interior Design, CEPT, 2004. Thornton, Edward. A Gazetter of the Territories under the Government of the East India Company. London: Allen & Co., 1857.

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Indo-Muslim Culture in Hyderabad: Old City Neighborhoods in the 19th Century Karen Leonard Hyderabad city’s culture was Indo-Muslim or Mughlai, terms that need definition here. I use Indo-Muslim in preference to Islamic, Indo-Persian, Persianate, or Islamicate. I prefer Indo-Muslim to the other four commonly-used alternatives because, first, Muslim rather than Islamic emphasizes a civilizational and not a religious culture (Islamicate has the same meaning but probably not to the general reader). Certainly Hyderabad was not an Islamic state: the Nizams never tried to impose Islamic law or to convert people. Second, IndoMuslim puts the emphasis on the Indian location, although undeniably the Bahmani sultanate in the Deccan from the mid-fourteenth century, its five successor Deccani sultanates (Bijapuri, Golconda, Bidar, Berar, and Ahmednagar) from the early sixteenth century, and the Nizams, starting as Mughal governors after the conquests of Bijapuri and Golconda by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1686 and 1687, modeled their court culture on that of Persia. I use the term Mughlai because, in Hyderabad, it designates the administration developed from the time of the first Nizam, Mughal governor of the Deccan in the early eighteenth century, and distinguishes it from the modernizing or Diwani administration initiated by the Diwan Salar Jung (1853-83) and based in the new city of Hyderabad north of the Musi River.1 Only in the 1880s did the state’s official language switch from Persian to Urdu (not to English, as in British India from the 1830s). I argue here that not only the court and administrative culture but the urban culture as well was Indo-Muslim or Mughlai, at the neighborhood and even the household level. All who lived in the city, especially in the neighborhoods of the old walled city, participated in that 1  See Karen Leonard, “Hyderabad: The Mulki—non-Mulki Conflict,” in ed. Robin Jeffrey, People, Princes and Paramount Power (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), 65-106.

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dominant public culture, regardless of their religious affiliations and private religious observances. I do not take these Indo-Muslim ­practices as evidence of a “cultural synthesis” 2 or “syncretism” or “hybridity.”3 Rather, they are evidence of a successful plural society with an elite or ruling culture that powerfully shaped the lives of people throughout the city. One can go further and suggest that IndoMuslim cultural practices in Hyderabad offer instances of translation, as proposed by work on linguistic but also, arguably, on societal changes. Anthropologists have seen “translation” as part of their disciplinary enterprise as they try to explain contemporary cultures to each other;4 here I am discussing translations across time. I would argue that many contemporary citizens of India have lost the ability to read the cultural worlds of the past, the Indo-Muslim cultural worlds that were powerful in South Asia in previous centuries. Work by Gayatri Spivak, Tony Stewart, and Finbarr Flood effectively challenges current notions of bounded and incompatible “Hindu” and “Muslim” worlds in South Asia.5 The Hyderabad Kayasths, for example, members of a high Hindu “writing” or administrative caste originally from northern and western India, continued their allegiance to Indo-Muslim culture well into the twentieth century, though Kayasths in North India under British imperial rule were changing their allegiance to British Indian English  I argued before against the idea of a “Deccani synthesis:” “The Deccani Synthesis in Old Hyderabad: An Historiographic Essay,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society (October, 1973, Karachi), 205-218. Here I recognize how powerfully the ruling culture actually pervaded the lives of ordinary urban residents. 3  Tony K. Stewart, “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter Through Translation Theory,” History of Religions 40:3 (Feb., 2001), 26087 argues powerfully against applying academic models of hybridity and syncretism to encounters between “Hindus” and “Muslims,” models assuming the production of things new and different from either “original part,” things usually thought unstable and inferior to the highly idealized and bounded “originals.” 4   Gisli Palsson, ed., Beyond Boundaries: Understanding, Translation and Anthropological Discourse (Berg: Oxford, 1993. Palsson suggests that “cultural dyslexia” describes the inability to read the alien, cultural worlds of other people” when ethnographic and transnational political “translations” are attempted in the contemporary world: Palsson, Beyond Boundaries, 23-24. Ulf Hannerz discusses mediation across cultures, likening cultures to languages: “Mediations in the Global Ecumene,” in the same volume. 5   Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, “Translating into English,” in Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, edited by Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 93-110; Stewart, “In Search of Equivalence;” Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 2

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based administration and culture. Personal names like Jahangir Pershad and Fateh Chand continued to be given to Hindus in Hyderabad, although even there, British administrative and social practices made significant inroads from the mid-nineteenth century onwards as the power of the British Resident and connections with British India increased. But these changes had relatively little effect upon the Kayasths and others working in the Mughlai administration and living in the old walled city, people whose lives give us a glimpse of a world now lost. Drawing on materials about the Kayasth caste and subcastes,6 I examine here three contrasting neighborhoods in the old city of Hyderabad, highlighting their differences but also the distinctly IndoMuslim cultural practices that their residents shared. People of diverse backgrounds and classes—Hindus and Muslims, speakers of Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, and Urdu—participated in the public culture of their place and time, in everyday ways as well as on special occasions. The Kayasth caste has often been characterized as “halfMuslim,” meaning that its members became prominent as administrators for Muslim rulers in India and as scholars and poets in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. I show elsewhere7 that Kayasths were not unusual in this regard, that other Hindus in Hyderabad also patronized not only temples but ashurkhanahs and dargāhs. The three areas of heavy Kayasth settlement in the old walled city of Hyderabad, Shahalibanda, Chowk Maidan Khan, and Husaini Alam, also represent important stages of Hyderabad’s political history. All three locality names commemorate Muslim figures or landmarks, accurately reflecting the history of the city and its ruling class. The Qutb Shahis, Shia Muslims who ruled first from Golconda Fort north of the Musi river, founded Hyderabad city in 1591, and their  See Karen Isaksen Leonard, Social History of an Indian Caste: the Kayasths of Hyderabad (Berkeley: University of California, 1978) for details of Hyderabad’s seven Kayasth subcastes, their migrations, settlement patterns, and marriage and occupational networks. Six subcastes settled in the old city: Saksenas, Mathurs, Srivastavas, Gaurs, Bhatnagars, and Nigams; the Asthanas came later, worked in the modern or Diwani administration, and settled in the new city north of the river Musi. That book grew out of my dissertation (Karen B. Leonard, “The Kayasths of Hyderabad City: Their Internal History, and Their Role in Politics and Society from 1850 to 1900,” Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Wisconsin, 1969), but most of the information in this article, chiefly from chapter VI of my dissertation, has not been published. 7   “Hindu Temples in Hyderabad: State Patronage and Politics in South Asia,” South Asian History and Culture 2:3 (July, 2011), 352-373. 6

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successors, the Mughals and the Nizams, continued and further developed the Indo-Muslim culture of the city. Although the Nizams were Sunni Muslims, they continued the Shia Muslim annual commemoration of Muharram institutionalized in the old city by the earlier Qutb Shahi rulers; this was marked by ten days of ‘alams, or sacred relics, being taken out in processions as crowds mourned the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson Husain at Qarbala in 680 ce. Despite their sharing in citywide observances such as Muharram and certain Hindu jatras or temple festivals, the three neighborhoods, Shahalibanda, Chowk Maidan Khan, and Husaini Alam, were not only geographically distinct but were characterized by different styles of life. These lifestyles—of the military men, the nobility, and the Mughlai civil servants—all coexisted in the early nineteenth century, although the first was declining. The first and second Nizams (Nizam ul Mulk, 1724-48, and Nizam Ali Khan, 1762-1803) engaged in continual battles with the Marathas, Tipu Sultan, and others, and military men and their establishments dominated the Shahalibanda locality. As the military regime gave way by the mid- nineteenth century to an increasingly hereditary class of nobles settled in Hyderabad city and a growing Mughlai bureaucracy,8 the men working for the nobles and in the various offices settled with their families near their patrons and employers. Chowk Maidan Khan was an extension of the residential area of the old Qutb Shahi nobility, with the palaces of the Diwan (Prime Minister) Shia Muslim family of Salar Jung and the Maratha Raja Rao Rumbha; the former was descended from a Diwan with the earlier Adil Shahi Deccani sultanate and the latter led a cavalry unit against the Marathas (whom his grandfather had initially served) and was a favorite of the second Nizam.9 The Mathur Kayasth Malwala noble family that headed the Daftar-i-Mal, the revenue collection office for the eastern half of the state, built its palace on Chowk Maidan Khan, and the Malwala family’s Mathur Kayasth relatives and others settled nearby. In Husaini Alam, near the Nizam’s Chow Mahalla

8  See Karen Leonard, “The Hyderabad Political System and Its Participants,” Journal of Asian Studies (May, 1971), 569-582. 9   Raja Rao Rumbha Jivant Bahadur Nimbhalkar had two sons by a Hindu wife and three by a Muslim courtesan. He headed a unit of 600 cavalry, and for that and personal expenses he held a jagir of 5 lakhs, but when he went into debt to Mehdavi Pathans, Raja Chandu Lal reduced his military unit and put the Raja on a pension: Makhan Laʿl, Tarikh-i Yadgar-i Makhan Laʿl (Hyderabad: [1829]), 61.

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Fig. 8.1. Places in Hyderabad. Adapted from Indian Science Congress, Rehnumad-i Hyderabad (Hyderabad, 1937), 82-83.

­ alace and his Sarf-i Khas (private estate) offices,10 Saksena Kayasths p and others working in the Mughlai administration settled. The residential patterns of the Kayasths in the old city changed little from the early nineteenth century to the last decades of the twentieth century, save for the disappearance of many Shahalibanda military families.

10  Originally the term Sarf-i Khas designated the small division of troops maintained by the Paigahs for the Nizam’s personal protection, but in the nineteenth century under Peshkar and acting Diwan Raja Chandu Lal, scattered pieces of land were set aside for personal control by the Nizam, and later Nizams added to these jagirs.

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karen leonard Shahalibanda: Military Men

The first locality, Shahalibanda, was the site of most military establishments, including those of the leading military noble family, the Sunni Muslim Paigahs, and its Gaur Kayasth serrishtahdars or managers of military and household units. The earliest Kayasths here were themselves military men, including many Saksenas and some Srivastavas. Presumably named for a now-forgotten Muslim saint Shah Ali,11 this large area sprawled across the southern end of the city, bounded on the east and south by the city wall.12 Residences were interspersed with centers of craft and production activity. Shahalibanda included the large establishments of Raja Rae Rayan (the Maharashtrian Brahman family that headed the Daftar-i Diwani, the revenue office for the western half of the state) and Raja Chandu Lal (the Punjabi Khatri family that usually furnished the Peshkar, or deputy to the Diwan) on the north, while the even larger establishment of the Paigah nobles bordered it on the west. This southern section of the old city had been the military quarters in the eighteenth century, and the quarters moved further south in the nineteenth century, outside the city walls, as the city grew. In the time of the Qutb Shahis, the Royal Dairy had been located in Shahalibanda, and the area continued to be the site of production and service enterprises. In the nineteenth century, slaughter houses, tanneries, sewage deposit pits, salt-making pits, and even the old Hydera­ bad Mint were located there. Beyond the settled area lay Muslim tombs, Hindu temples, and an old church used by European military adventurers in the Nizam’s service. Also beyond the walls were the nobles’ pleasure gardens and Paigah and Sarf-i Khas lands that were used for growing vegetables and grazing horses. Residents of Shahalibanda came from many cultural backgrounds and economic levels. Imposing residences of Hindu and Muslim nobles and military commanders stood amidst small communities of tanners, salt-makers, grain-carriers, goat-sellers, water-carriers, and 11  Syed Ali Asgar Bilgrami, Landmarks of the Deccan (Hyderabad: Government Central Press, 1927), notes that this was formerly Chichlam village, inhabited by Brahmins, and that the first Muslim resident was Shah Charagh, a holy man from Najaf: 49-50. 12   The following information about groups and occupations in Shahalibanda can be found on maps 67-128 of the old city, Leonard Munn, Hyderabad Municipal Survey (Hyderabad: 1911-13). I thank the late Roy Mahboob Narayan who spent an entire day going over these maps with me on November 3, 1965.

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torch-bearers. Other streets were settled by Telugu and Maharashtrian Brahman priests and Navayat Muslims from Madras.13 Popular Islam was represented by groups of talisman-makers and faqirs and by many local shrines or ashurkhanahs, where ‘alams (religious relics) were kept for commemoration of the Shia Muslim ten-day mourning period, Muharram. Nagulachinta, the locality of Hindu dancing girls and prostitutes, was in Shahalibanda; legend locates the village of Chichlam here, home of Bhagmati, the legendary Hindu courtesan for whose love a Qutb Shahi prince, later Sultan Quli Qutb Shah, crossed the river and founded the city of Hyderabad in 1591.14 The rival locality of Mahbub ki Mehndi, famous for Muslim courtesans and musicians, developed later and was near Husaini Alam. Socially and occu­pationally, the neighborhood was extremely diverse. Military establishments and their style of life characterized Shaha­ libanda. Of the three largest nobles in or bordering the neighborhood, the Paigah and Peshkar families were closely associated with the military forces, and the Rae Rayan family’s origin went back to Daulatabad in the time of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.15 Other large establishments were those of Arab and Afghan military chiefs like Ghalib Jung and Subhan Khan.16 The residences of the military serrishtahdars, recordkeepers, paymasters, and managers of units of troops, were prominent ones too. Maharashtrian and Telugu Brahmans and Kayasths were in charge of most of the troops and households of the big establishments; that is, most of the serrishtahdars were Hindus. 13   This particular group of Muslims from Medina was prominent in Madras. H.H. Wilson, who spells the name “nawa-ae-the,” says that the term is peculiar to South India: Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms (London: W.H. Allen and Co., 1855), 372. 14   In Telugu, the name means “cobra in the tamarind tree.” Not only Bhagmati but the mother or aunt of Mah Laqa Bai, renowned poetess and courtesan of early nineteenth-century Hyderabad, also was said to live here, though this is disputed: Chanda Bai’s own story was that she was a Shia Muslim: see Scott Kugle, “Mah Laqa Bai: The Origins of Hyderabad’s Most Famous Courtesan and Her Family,” Deccan Studies VIII:1 (January-June 2010), 33-58. 15   Although the Rae Rayan family became hereditarily associated with the Daftari Diwani, the revenue recordkeeping office for the western half of the state, its members in the time of the first Nizam were Peshkars, one man becoming the record­keeper in the time of Salabat Jung but even his son (Dhondaji Pant) serving also as Peshkar: K. Krishnaswamy Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad (Hyderabad: Chandrakant Press, 1929, 1934) II, 181-94; Laʿl, Yadgar, 61-2. 16   These were mid-nineteenth century chiefs. For references to their families, see The Chronology of Modern Hyderabad, 1720-1890 (Hyderabad: Central Records Office, 1954), Index 26, 27: text 224, 228, 293.

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The leading figures in Shahalibanda in the early nineteenth century were military commanders and their Hindu serrishtahdars. According to both written and oral sources, although these men came from different backgrounds, they shared certain characteristics. Emphasis was placed on personal ability combined with aggressive use of power and wealth. In contrast (as we shall see below), descriptions of dominant figures in Chowk Maidan Khan and Husaini Alam emphasized personal ability combined with loyalty to the Nizam, participation in the court culture, and a “respectable” style of life. Of the stories told about the colorful and legendary nineteenth century military men of Shahalibanda, a surprising number centered on the Hindu serrishtahdars.17 Serrishtahdars able to control the unruly Hyderabad troops were often recognized as leaders of those troops, as much so as the jamadars, or military commanders, and many military units were named after their serrishtahdars. “Buchar Mal’s serrishtah” and ‘Maya Ram’s serrishtah’ were named for two legendary Saksena Kayasths, though they were commanded by Muslims, the first by Sulaiman Jah and the second by Nadi ‘Ali Beg Khan and Jafar Yar Jung.18 Often, too, serrishtahdars were named after their troops. The Maharashtrian Brahman serrishtahdars of the Arab and Abyssinian troops were known respectively as ‘Urub’ Esvant Rao and ‘Siddi’ Madhu Rao.19 Gaur, Saksena, and Srivastava Kayasthas lived in the Shahalibanda neighborhood, most of them employed by various military figures. The Gaur Kayasths served the Paigah family and the Arab family of Ghalib Jung. Most Saksenas served the Paigah and Peshkar families. Most Srivastavas were with the Nizam’s personal military forces. The Gaur households and some Saksena households were grouped to­gether, but Kayasth households were scattered throughout the locality. No family served as patron or head of its subcaste, or of all the Kayasths there, or of the neighborhood as a whole.20 Even if there had been one dominant Kayasth family, Shahalibanda was a large area and 17   The early- and mid-nineteenth-century sources are full of references to mutinies by unpaid troops and the imprisonment or killing of serrishtahdars. See Mahdi Syed Ali, ed., Hyderabad Affairs , volumes 1-10 (Bombay: 1883-89). 18   Laʿl, Yadgar, 68-70, 161. 19   Interviews with Roy Mahboob Narayan (Nov. 3 and 15, 1965). 20  North of the river in Karwan and Begum Bazar, localities dominated by Gujaratis and Marwaris respectively, dominant families from those communities often were designated as “head man,” and in Chowk Maidan Khan, as we shall see, the Malwala noble family dominated the locality.

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included prominent Maharashtrian, Telugu, and Muslim families too. Another reason for the “dispersion of power” was that many of the Shahalibanda Kayasths were suratvals, of illegitimate or intercaste parentage.21 Nearly all the Srivastavas and many Saksenas fell into this category.22 Further implications of this fact will be discussed below. Despite their distinctively military affiliations, Kayasths in Shaha­ libanda shared many characteristics with those in Husaini Alam and Chowk Maidan Khan. Muharram was enthusiastically celebrated, though there was no special procession associated with the locality. People attended the major processions elsewhere. Kayasths kept ‘alams in their homes or built ‘ashurkhanahs to house an ‘alam for the neighborhood.23 Some Shahalibanda Kayasth families fasted like Shia Muslims. Many wore green clothes and armbands and dressed their children in costumes.24 As in the other two neighborhoods, Chowk Maidan Khan and Husaini Alam, a good Persian education was a cultural and often an occupational requisite. Shahalibanda produced ­several major Kayasth poets,25 and there were musicians of note among these Kayasth families too.26 Hindu festivals were privately sponsored in Shahalibanda, such as the Ramlila celebration of the 21   The term’s origin is unclear, most spelling it suratval, or “those resembling,” and some sarhadval, or “those on the border.” Other terms used for this group in Hyderabad were hul hul bacce, “mixed children,” and khijri, a mixed rice and pulses dish. 22  See Leonard, Social History, Appendix E, 303, for a suratval genealogy.. 23   Buchar Mal had an ashurkhanah; Benkat Pershad’s family had the ‘Nal Sahib’ ʿalam; Bala Pershad’s family had the ‘Mahbub subhan ka jhanda’ ʿalam. Interviews with Benkat Pershad (Nov. 9, 1965), and Roy Mahboob Narayan (Nov. 3 and 15, 1965, and Jan. 9, 1966). Termed Buchar Mal ki tatti, for its bamboo screen, Buchar Mal’s ashurkhana or imambara survived for many years (see John Norman Hollister, The Shiʾa of India (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1979 [first published 1953]), 165-68, for a description of such screens. 24   Interview with Benkat Pershad (Nov. 9, 1965). This may have been done in other localities but was more freely admitted by Shahalibanda residents. 25   Amba Pershad Hunar was a student of Nawab Mir Khairat Ali Khan Sakhi; Mahinder Raj Saksenah, “Cand Kayasth Shʾora,” Kayasth Herald, VII and VIII (1948), 12-13. Sital Pershad Khurram was a student of Faiz and held gatherings in his memory; Ghulam Samdani Khan, Tuzuk-i Mahbubiyah (Hyderabad, 1902), II (poets), 58: Nasir ud-din Hashimi, Dakhini Hindu aur Urdu (Hyderabad: [1958]), 57. Devi Pershad Zara was a good poet: Ram Das Gaur, Tazkirah-i Sucaru Vanshi (Allahabad, 1911), 30. Raja Makhan Lal Makhan translated Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat into Urdu: Hashini, Dakhini Hindu aur Urdu, 52: Saksenah, “Cand Kayasth Shʾora,” 12. Buchar Mal Tamkin was a noted Persian poet; Nar Singh Raj, Dard-i Baqi o Durd-i Saqi, (Hyderabad: Sardar Press, 1933), 22. In the cases above, the last element of the name is the takhallus or poetical name. 26   Interview with the son of Raghunath Pershad (May 2, 1965).

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Fateh Chand Saksena family.27 Several families built small temples adjoining their homes.28 The most striking fact about the Shalalibanda Kayasths was the large number of families that died out during the nineteenth century. The reasons advanced to account for this phenomenon were equally striking. Over half the families in each subcaste—Gaur, Saksena, and Srivastava—left no direct, legitimate, Hindu descendants. Many Kayasths have been remembered only because localities were named for them: Ghan Raj Bazaar, Lal Pershad’s Bazaar, Rup Lal’s Bazaar, and Makhan Lal’s Lane.29 Others left only colorful legends behind them, such as the Gaur family of the ‘Five Brothers’ (Panch Bhai Gaur) and the Saksena serrishtahdars Raja Buchar Mal Shamsher Jung and Raja Maya Ram.30 The major reason advanced to account for the extinction of so many Kayasth families in Shahalibanda was that of heavy Muslim influence. Some Kayasth men converted to Islam.31 In other cases, a Hindu line of descent ended, but the family continued through the children of a Muslim wife or concubine.32 A few Kayasths in Chowk Maidan Khan and Husaini Alam left only Muslim descendants,33 but 27   Interviews with Roy Mahboob Narayan (Nov. 3, 1965) and Satguru Pershad and Mahinder Raj Suxena (Feb. 21, 1966). 28  Temples were in or adjacent to the residences of Maya Ram and Buchar Mal. Interviews with Roy Mahboob Narayan (Nov. 3 and 15, 1965) and my own observation. 29  Oral information about these places was verified by locating them on the detailed maps of the old city: Munn, Hyderabad Municipal Survey. 30  See Leonard, Social History, Appendix D, 301-02. 31   The family of Kapu Lal has a Muslim branch in the city, descended from Kapu Lal’s brother who converted in the 1850s; interview with Ishwar Raj Saxena (June 24, 1965). Raja Makhan Lal allegedly converted and his descendants went to Pakistan after 1948—his property had passed to a neighboring Khatri family by the 1890s: Fateh Chand, Dabdabah-i Asafi, vol. I (1898) [this journal was edited by the Khatri and published in his house, the one once owned by Makhan Lal, according to Roy Mahboob Narayan (Aug. 11, 1965)]. Jaganath Pershad taught Persian to Kayasth boys in Shahalibanda and then became a moulvi, taking the name Jalil Ahmed; interviews with Benkat Pershad (Nov. 9, 1965) and Roy Mahboob Narayan (Aug. 11, 1965). 32   Raja Rup Lal left no Hindu descendants, but “Rustum Ali Khan is called his son:” La’l, Yadgar, 67-68. There is some reason to believe that Raja Buchar Mal left Muslim descendants: interviews with Roy Mahboob Narayan (Aug. 11, 1965) and Shakamber Raj Saxena and his mother (May 26, 1965). Others who left Muslim sons included the Maratha Raja Rao Rumbha and members of the Peshkari family of Raja Chandu Lal. 33   Among the Mathurs, Dulhe Rai and Kashinath converted before the 1850s: interviews with Hakim Vicerai (May 14 and July 2, 1965). From among the Husaini

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the great majority of such cases among the Hyderabad Kayasths occurred in Shahalibanda. Some of these men allegedly converted for love of a Muslim woman. Others had been famous for their great proficiency in Arabic and Persian. In some cases, those who adopted Islam were suratvals, looked down upon by other Kayasths; Islam may have offered them more opportunities. A second reason for the apparent end of many Shahalibanda Kayasth families is related to the large proportion of suratval Kayasths there. In some families, the legitimate line died out, but a suratval branch of the family continued.34 In other cases even these nominal caste members were lost through intermarriage with suratvals of other castes. Shahalibanda must have been a more hospitable neighborhood for suratvals than Chowk Maiden Khan or Husaini Alam, for the suratvals there lived among the other Kayasths and not at a distance as was more common elsewhere. In fact, save for Shahalibanda, suratval Kayasths often lived quite far from other Kayasths. Most lived in Dabirpura and across the Musi river in Dhulpet. A final reason for the lapse of Shahalibanda Kayasth families can be seen in the fluctuating fortunes of the military men upon whom most Kayasths depended for their livelihoods. Few military units were tied directly to the Nizam’s administration. At the height of their power and wealth, military commanders and serrishtahdars lived very well, but their jobs proved less secure than those of civil administrative employees. After the mid-nineteenth century, the military establishments declined in importance and were subjected to administrative reforms and increased control.35 Though a few military serrishtahdars were prominent later in the nineteenth century, and some new Kayasth arrivals established themselves as serrishtahdars at that time,36 their wealth and power had been lessened considerably. Alam Saksenas, Jwala Pershad Fazil left a Muslim son, Dilavar Hussain, at the end of the nineteenth century: interviews with Shakambar Raj Saxena (May 26, 1965) and Gurucharan Das (May 26, 1965). 34   This was true of at least two Gaur and three Saksena families in the neighborhood. 35   Leonard, Social History, chapter 3. 36   The two new arrivals were the families of Roshen Chand and Hira Lal. Hira Lal came from Ellichpur and obtained a mansab which he used to purchase horses and hire troopers. He hired this cavalry unit out to the Paigah estate as the Jahanuma Lancers. He was then able to bring three cousin-brothers to Hyderabad, one of whom got his own serrishtahdar post: interviews with the sons of Inder Raja, Roshen Chand’s descendants (Jan. 3, 1966), and Manohar Raj Saxena (Jan. 3, 1966).

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Chowk Maidan Khan, just south of the residences of the old Qutb Shahi nobles (and then the residences of the earliest Hyderabad nobles), shared many of the characteristics of the adjacent older area. It was almost entirely residential. Residential establishments were quite large, usually housing one noble family and numerous dependent relatives. Each noble’s establishment was surrounded by high walls with an ornate gateway including a naubatkhanah from which drummers announced visitors. The palaces were divided into private apartments for the household and public reception rooms. Other buildings adjoined the residential establishments: in the case of the Malwala palace, these included a distillery, provisions storerooms, the wedding hall, and a stable. The locality was named for the broad main street, or chowk, which ran directly east from the Char Minar monument, and the chowk was named for a monkey, Maidan Khan, remembered as having helped teach in a local akhara or wrestling school.37 The neighborhood consisted of large houses along the main street and smaller houses on several narrow lanes which ran back from the street on both sides. The Malwala palace dominated the street and the other Mathur households clustered around it. Other Kayasths were nearby, some Bhat­ nagars living just next to the Mathurs and a Nigam family and two Srivastava noble families living a slight distance away. A few Muslim and other Hindu (Brahmo-Khatri, Agarwal, Marwari, and Telugu Brahman) families were scattered around the edges of the neighborhood. Some small shops and karkhanah (production or service unit, usually part of the Nizam’s household administration) buildings bordered the main street near the Char Minar. At its eastern edge, the city wall separated Chowk Maidan Khan from a less prosperous and more heterogeneous neighborhood beyond. Most activities in the neighborhood took place behind the walls. Relatively few families in Chowk Maidan Khan actually lived on the level of the nobility, yet the style of life characteristic of the Hyderabad nobility set the standard for the locality. Wealthy families had diwankhanahs (reception halls) where they sponsored literary and social 37   The following description is based on the detailed series of old city maps in Munn, Hyderabad Municipal Survey, maps 45-58, 52-56, 60-64; an interview with Hakim Viceral (Nov. 4, 1965); and my own field research.

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entertainments. Eight of the thirty Mathur Kayasth households had diwankhanahs, and the families occasionally hosted literary and other entertainments.38 Nearby, the Srivastava noble familiy of Raja Chain Rae also had a diwankhanah.39 Entertainments given by the Malwala family frequently featured dancing girls, musicians, and jesters,40 in addition to the family’s famous homemade wine. Malwala weddings were particularly festive and lengthy occasions, in which the Mathur women were major participants. Many members of the Hyderabad nobility attended weddings here.41 On the annual Dasserah festival, when Hindus traditionally worshipped the tools used in hereditary occupations, all the Mathur Kayasth men gathered in the Malwala palace reception hall in full court dress to present nazrs or offerings to the head of the Malwala family, as in a durbar held by the Nizam. Following this presentation, they jointly offered homage to the tools of the Kayasth profession, a pen and inkpot. Other Kayasth households would observe this in private domestic ceremonies, but in Chowk Maidan Khan it marked the economic dependence of Mathur Kayasths on the Malwala family, the noble family that had brought the others to Hyderabad for marriages.42 The Malwala family, the wealthiest family in Chowk Maiden Khan, was the major patron of neighborhood institutions and events. As throughout the city, such institutions and events usually were IndoMuslim. The wealthy families jointly supported the neighborhood mosques (the Kotla Ali Jah mosque, the Maidan Khan mosque, and the two Lodhi Khan mosques) and the ashurkhanahs where ‘alams were kept for Muharram. The Malwala family furnished floor matting and lamp oil for the mosques and donated money in Ramzan, the Islamic month of fasting. Three local Muslim families paid the mosque attendants and financed repairs to the buildings.43 Another Mathur   Hakim Vicerai, Ramayan Manzum (Hyderabad, n.d. [1960]), in the foreword by Balobir Prosad. 39   Paper no. 12, concerning a party of Raja Inderjit’s in 1284 H. [1867-68]), in the records of the Arbab-i Nishat in Sarf-i Khas files in the Andhra Pradesh State Archives. 40   Interviews with Roy Mahboob Narayan (April 6, 1965) and Ram Kumar Lal (Jan.10, 1966). 41  Shiv Narayan Saksenah, Kayasth Sajjan Caritra (Jaipur: 3 vols., 1912-13), II, 10, 12, 32, 74. 42   Interviews with Hind Kishore (who included swords and horses among the objects of homage), Hakim Vicerai, Sri Rang Pershad, and Mahbub Karan (May 25, April 6, August 17, and April 25 respectively, all in 1965). 43   Interview with Hakim Vicerai (Nov. 4, 1965). 38

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family’s house adjoined a small dargāh (tomb of a Muslim saint) and the family assumed responsibility for the annual ‘urs (death commemoration ceremony).44 On Islamic holidays, large households had certain obligations to the public. The Malwala family gave out alms and illuminated its palace on the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday and for Abdul Qadir Jilani’s fatihah ceremony.45 The grandest public occasion for Chowk Maidan Khan fell during Muharram. Then the local Shia religious relic, the Bikʾalam,46 was taken out in procession on an elephant. The Bikʾalam, or bibi ka ‘alam, was an inscribed metal standard placed in a shrine by a Qutb Shahi queen, Hayat Bakshi Begum, and annually taken out for Muharram, accompanied by Shia Muslims and other mourners. The procession passed through the city streets, pausing in the gateways of noble residences for the customary cash offerings. The Malwala palace was the traditional halting place for this ‘alam along Chowk Maidan Khan, and the head of the family would present the family offering with great ceremony.47 Other Mathur families presented offerings less formally along the route. Some Mathur households kept replicas of the shrine of Hasan and Husain. These were called taziyahs and were taken out in Muharram processions also. During Muharram, the Malwala family displayed its taziyah, set up an abdarkhanah (shelter) to serve ­sherbet to the public, and distributed alms.48 Thus, in neighborhood acti­vities, the Malwala family assumed the role expected of a wealthy noble family of Hyderabad, and other Kayasth families in Chowk Mai­den Khan followed its lead.

  Interview with Hakim Vicerai (Nov. 4, 1965).   The fatihah ceremony features a reading of the first chapter of the Qurʾan as prayers for the dead; Abdul Qadir Jilani, who died in Baghdad in the late twelfth century, was the founder of the Qadiri Sufi order in India. These two holidays are called Dvazdahum (the 12th) and Yazdahum (the 11th) because they occur on the 12th of Rabʾi alaval and the 11th of Rabʾi al-akhir. For the Malwala observance of them, see Saksenah, Kayasth Sajjan Caritra, II, 14. 46   Manik Raʾo Vithal Raʾo, Bustan-i Asafiyah (Hyderabad: Anwar ul Islam, later Sardar Press, 7 vols., 1909-32), II, 743. 47   The author observed this ceremony on May 12, 1965. 48   Ghulam Husain Khan. Tarikh-i Gulzar-i Asafiyah (Hyderabad: Mohamudi Tabshud, 1890-91): 579; Saksenah, Kayasth Sajjan Caritra, II, 8, 14; numerous interviews. 44 45

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Husaini Alam: Mughlai Bureaucrats The third neighborhood, Husaini Alam, contrasted with Chowk Mai­ dan Khan. It was more crowded, and its population was more heterogeneous. The locality was an old one, named after an ‘alam enshrined there in Qutb Shahi days. The housing was generally substantial but of varied quality, with a slightly irregular layout of streets and buildings. Located behind the Nizam’s Chow Mohalla palace and the Sarf-i Khas offices, Husaini Alam was close to most residents’ places of employment, and since the main bazaar in the old city was nearby, it reflected some of the bustling activity of the bazaar. The Kayasths living in Husaini Alam were Saksenas, Bhatnagars, and Srivastavas. These Kayasths and some Maharashtrian Brahman families clustered at the center of the locality. Close neighbors were Bohra Muslims, the Paigah military nobles to the south, and other Sunni Muslims.49 The Kayasth and Maharashtrian residents held administrative positions, typically middle- to lower-levels posts in the Sarf-i Khas. A few prominent Husaini Alam families—the Saksena family of Raja Girdhari Pershad Mahbub Nawazwant, popularly known as Bansi Raja, and the Bhatnagar families of Raja Bhavani Pershad and Raja Majlis Rae—had diwankhanahs and followed a style of life approximating that of wealthier nobles. Most public activities in Husaini Alam, as in Chowk Maidan Khan, were Indo-Muslim. Prominent families assumed roles as patrons much as the Malwalas did in their locality. Bansi Raja, as head of the leading Saksena family, arranged illuminations for the annual ‘urs or commemoration of a local Muslim saint whose tomb adjoined the old Qutb Shahi pigeon house. In the month of Ramzan, Bansi Raja served a light breakfast before sunrise to neighbors who were fasting.50 Muharram in Husaini Alam was marked by enthusiastic popular participation. The procession associated with Husaini Alam was the Langar procession on the fifth of the month.51 On that occasion, all the troops in Hyderabad marched through the city streets. The riotous and disorderly procession commenced at the Husaini Alam mosque   Munn, Hyderabad Municipal Survey, old city maps 41-44, 49-52, 57-60.   Raj, Dard-i Baqi, 31. 51   The langar or chain had been installed as an ‘alam by the Qutb Shahi queen Hayat Bakshi Begum, to commemorate her son’s rescue from a runaway elephant: see Raʾo, Bustan-i Asafiyah, II, 744-745. The procession was described by many European writers in the late nineteenth century. 49

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and featured the military commanders mounted on elephants, followed by the Arab, Rohilla, Sikh, and other troops, including the camel corps and the cavalry. Bansi Raja, head of the Saksena family but in his capacity as serrishtahdar of the Regular and Irregular Forces,52 rode the lead elephant in the Langar procession.53 Many other families in the neighborhood celebrated by contributing taziyahs to the Langar procession and illuminating their houses.54 Adults wore green clothing and special armbands55 made for Muharram; children dressed up as faqirs. Kayasth families distributed alms to the public.56 Social life was more diversified in Husaini Alam than in Chowk Maidan Khan. There were equal numbers of families in the three Kayasth subcastes there, and within each subcaste no one family consistently presided over joint functions. Weddings were performed in many different homes. The Hindu festival of Dasserah was observed privately in each household. Bansi Raja did receive guests in his diwankhanah on Dasserah,57 but this was not a demonstration of subcaste unity like the Malwala durbar. Two Husaini Alam Kayasth Saksena families began sponsoring Hindu religious festivals in the mid-nineteenth century, and these drew other Hindus in the neighborhood. The Wala Jahi family celebrated the birthday of Ram, and a family recently arrived from Aurangabad (capital of the first Nizam) continued its customary celebration of the birthday of Krishna.58 Hindus in Husaini Alam participated in these local, privately-sponsored Hindu events in addition to the more widely-observed IndoMuslim events. Entertainments in Husaini Alam drew upon the cultural attainments of local families. Poets or musicians entertaining at social 52   Bansi Raja assumed this post, created as part of the reform of the military organization, in the 1860s. 53   Interview with Nar Har Raj (May 16, 1965). 54   Raja Manu Lal of the Bhatnagar family did this: Khan, Gulzar-i Asafiyah, 579. The Srivastava Ghausi Lal got his nickname for the Ghausi ‘alam he kept: interview with Manohar Lal (Jan. 7, 1966). 55   Called imam zamin, these were worn to secure the protection of a saint. 56   Interviews with the mother of Shakamber Raj Saxena (March 16, 1965) and Rajadhar Pershad (Jan, 10. 1966). 57   Interviews with the mother of Shakambar Raj Saxena (March 16, 1965) and Prithvi Raj (June 27, 1965). 58   For the first family, Lakshmi Narayan, Vinaʾe Govind [in Hindi] (Hyderabad: 1937), foreword; interview with Shakamber Raj Saxena (March 16, 1965). For the second, Raʾo, Bustan-i Asafiyah, II, 751.

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gatherings often came from Kayasth families. Some Srivastava and Saksena families produced several generations of Hindustani classical musicians.59 Mahbub ki Mehndi, the locality of Muslim dancing girls and musicians, lay just to the north of Husaini Alam. The Kayasth tradition of scholarship was strong here, particularly among the Saksena residents. A good education was an occupational necessity. Families with low incomes sent their sons to the moulvi’s classes in the local Ghausia mosque.60 In some families, an older relative taught the boys.61 Those Kayasths who could afford it engaged moulvis as private tutors. Leading families obtained the best tutors in the city, poets who emphasized literary rather than professional skills.62 In fact, Husaini Alam and the first Kayasth neighborhood, Shahali­ banda, produced most of the famous Hindu poets of Hyderabad.63 Temples and Literature: Aspects of Indo-Muslim Culture Many of the cultural activities in which the Hyderabad Kayasths and others participated have been discussed above in the context of the three neighborhoods. But other activities—Kayasth patronage and use of temples and Kayasth literary contributions—can better be discussed as part of the broader state and urban culture. Again, Kayasths are prominent in both arenas but other Hindus also participated in temple-building and patronage that was supported by the state and in 59   These were the Srivastava families of Saheb Rae and Ghausi Lal: interviews with Manohar Lal (Jan. 7, 1966) and Sohan Lal Arya (Feb. 2, 1966); also the Saksena Wala Jahi family: interview with Eknath Pershad (Jan. 13, 1966). 60   Interview with Shakamber Raj Sexena (March 23, 1965). 61   Gaya Pershad, Halat-i Gaya Pershad Aryah, a handwritten autobiography in Urdu (with Karen Leonard), 8-9. This refers to the author’s training in the late nineteenth century. 62  Swami Pershad was tutored by Nawab Baddruddin Khan Amiruddaula Laeq; Bansi Raja in Urdu by Hazrat Shamsuddin Faiz and in Persian by Muhammad ‘Ali Ashiq; Jwala Pershad by Muhammad ‘Ali Ashiq too. The Wala Jahi’s family tutor at the end of the nineteenth century was Allama Abdur Razzaq Naishapuri; also in this later period, Mahbub Raj Mahbub was tutored by Fisahit Jung Jalil. See Hashimi, Dakhini Hindu aur Urdu, 44; Raj, Dard-i Baqi, 12-13; Saksenah, “Cand Kayasth Shʾora,” 7, 11. Also, interview with Eknath Pershad (Jan, 13. 1966). 63  Early poets in Persian included Buchar Mal Tamkin, Makhan Lal Saqi, Jwala Pershad Fazil, Bansi Raja Baqi, Amba Pershad Hukm (two from Shahalibanda and three from Husaini Alam). Early poets in Urdu were Bansi Raja Baqi, Jwala Pershad Fazil, Amba Pershad Hunar, Thakur Pershad Nazm, Shanker Pershad Afzal, and Sri Pershad Ahqar, all of Husaini Alam. See Saksenah, Kayasth Herald, VII and VIII, 10.

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Persian and Urdu literary activities that marked the prevailing IndoMuslim culture. Some of these literary activities were oriented more specifically to Sufi Islam, the strand of Islam whose beliefs and practices have been characterized as closer to Hinduism, to bhakti or devotional Hinduism.64 The sources of temple support and the uses to which the temples and their lands were put provide valuable insights into relationships centered on the Hyderabadi court and the Mughlai administration. Kayasth families had built or taken responsibility for at least thirteen different temples in the city by the late nineteenth century.65 Wealthier families from all six of the Kayasth castes settled in the old city managed these temples. Geographically, the temples were located all over the city and outside the walls. Temple management demonstrated Kayasth patronage and support of Hindu religious institutions, and, beyond that, political relationships of the time. Examples chosen from the material concerning only four Kayasth temples show the multiple purposes that the temples fulfilled. The ­oldest Kayasth temple in Hyderabad, Ram Bagh, was built by a Bhatnagar family in 1802 west of the city and south of the Musi river. The idol, a gift of the Raja of Gadwal (one of the samasthans or longstanding Hindu chiefdoms in Hyderabad State), was installed with great ceremony. The Nizam Sikander Jah attended that ceremony and granted a large jagir for the temple’s support.66 The political relationships in­volved here were clearer than religious ones. In a second instance, the Keshavgiri temple was granted in 1859 to the Saksena Kayasth Bansi Raja of Husaini Alam on condition that the surrounding area, south of the old city walls beyond Shahalibanda, be improved and settled. The Keshavgiri temple had been patronized and endowed by several famous Hindu dancing girls at the beginning of

64   The most famous Hindu Sufi in Hyderabad is probably Maharaja Kishen Pershad, from the Peshkari family of Raja Chandu Lal: see Nile Green, “The Maharaja and the Madman: Patterns of Cosmopolitanism in ‘Colonial’ Hyderabad”, in Samira Sheikh (ed.), Devotional Expressions of South Asian Muslims (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming). 65   Leonard, “The Kayasths of Hyderabad City,” figure 7, 143. 66   Raʾo, Bustan-i Asafiyah, II, 748; Satguru Pershad, Farkhundah Bunyad Hyderabad (Hyderabad: Hyderabad: Telugu-Urdu Academy of Science and History, 1964), 110-111; “Statement of Endowment Register”, serial number 9201, in the Endowment Office of the Andhra Pradesh State Government.

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the nineteenth century,67 its temple lands granted by both Hindu and Muslim nobles. Other lands had been granted by the government as grazing land for cavalry units.68 Bansi Raja stationed his Irregular Arab troops on the temple grounds. He also held entertainments in the gardens of the temple, invited the Nizam to set up his hunting camp there, and sent his family there for refuge from plague epidemics in the city.69 This large temple complex clearly served many purposes. In contrast, the Chitragupta temple in Shahalibanda, honoring Chi­tra­gupta, patron deity of the Kayasths, appeared to have been little used. It had been built by one of the early Srivastava noble families in 1811, and it too held a jagir from the Nizam, the third Nizam Sikander Jah (1803-29).70 This was the only temple to which no non-religious uses were ascribed by Kayasth informants. Since the extinction of the patron family, and perhaps even in its day, there was little interest in the temple evidenced by Kayasths.71 But the nearby Kali temple, by all accounts the temple of most religious significance to Kayasths in the past (and present), once had the troops of its Saksena serrishtahdar family garrisoned on the temple grounds. Guns and gunpowder had been stored in the basement of the temple.72 Another Hindu official, the Brahmo Khatri Raja Raghu Ram Bahadur, vakil or agent of several samasthans to the Nizam, built the Kishen Bagh temple in 1822 on grounds that included an old Qutb Shahi mosque. The Nizam granted a jagir for the temple and later granted an additional jagir for naubat or drum expenses, a rare distinction. The Kishen Bagh temple was dedicated to Lord Krishna and 67   Pershad, Farkhundah Bunyad, 88; “Judgment of Original Suit No. 32 of 1959 (Keshovgiri temple case),” II Additional Judge, file in the Endowment Office of the Andhra Pradesh State Government. 68   This information can be found in “Judgement (Keshovagiri temple case),” 1-16. 69   “Keshav Namah,” 1-21, in Girdhari Pershad, Kulliyat-i Baqi (Hyderabad, 188788), Raʾo, Bustan-i Asafiyah, II, 749; Raj. Dard-i Baqi, 21; interview with Nar Har Raj (Aug. 4, 1965). 70   Pershad, Farkbundah Bunyad, 40-41 71   Interviews with Roy Mahboob Narayan (Nov.13, 1965), and Benkat Pershad and Ishwar Raj Saxena (Nov. 9, 1965). There was no pujari (priest) there in the 1960s. 72   Visit to the temple with Roy Mahboob Narayan (Nov.13, 1965). A cannon is still on the grounds, inscribed “first fired on 22 Ramzan 1197 H. [1783] Sarkar Nizam Ali Khan.” A well and sitting place (baithak) were constructed for the use of the troops. This was the Saksena family of Isri Pershad.

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set in a garden west of the old city wall on the way to Ram Bagh, and next to it was the dargāh or tomb of Hazrat Syed Shah Najamullah (or Nadimullah) Husaini, a Muslim saint who had lived in the old mosque. Raja Raghu Ram had faith in him and constructed buildings for his urs or annual death commemoration, which the Raja’s family still celebrated in 1943. These sacred spaces reportedly attracted both Hindus and Muslims.73 The roles that temples played depended upon the families that owned or managed them and the men’s positions in the political economy of the state. The temples clearly served other than narrowly Hindu religious purposes.74 The historical material concerning these Kayasth temples reflected relationships among individuals according to their positions in the Mughlai administration and at the court. The same point must be made about the Muslim institutions and events in the neighborhoods, that the Kayasth role with respect to them was essentially secular,75 part of the dominant Indo-Muslim culture, rather than religious. This point is strengthened by the fact that Hindus still participate in Muharram in Hyderabad and that Shiites view the ceremonies as symbols of communal harmony and take the (now Andhra Pradesh) government’s protection of them for granted.76 In their intellectual interests as well as in their occupations, the Kayasths pledged allegiance to the dominant political and cultural force in India’s recent past, the Mughal empire. Most literary activity in Hyderabad used Persian until the late nineteenth century, when 73   Khan, Tuzukh-i Mahbubiyah, 412; Laʿl, Yadgar, 182; Hyderabad Information release, April 24, 1943, vol. 5 no. 93, Deccan Chronicle; Raza Alikhan, Hyderabad 400 Years (1591-1991) (Hyderabad: Zenith Services, 1991), 170; Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad II, 233-35. Trimbak Lal, son of Rae Mohan Lal, custodian of the deval in the early 20th century, still held the jagir of three temple villages meant for temple expenditures and the jatra. Minor sons Nand Lal and Mog Raj got equal shares, inheritance was sanctioned to the eldest son Triambak Lal, on condition that he would care for his mother Tulja Bai and care for and marry off his three sisters Tara Bai, Champa Bai, and Makdooti Bah (mid-Shaban 1348 H.) Also, shares were fixed for Vasudev and Gyanilal. Syed Manzur Ali, Anvar-i Asafiyah (Hyderabad: 1935), 333. 74  See my “Hindu Temples in Hyderabad.” 75   Here I follow Anna Bigelow’s 2009 note that in South Asia “secularism” is closer in meaning to pluralism or multiculturalism in the U.S., meaning equality in terms of state patronage and the absence of religious favoritism: “Saved by the Saint: Refusing and Reversing Partition in Muslim North India,” The Journal of Asian Studies 68:2 (May 2009), 435, note 1. 76   David Pinault, The Shiites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 160-165.

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Urdu became a more popular medium of expression. Kayasths produced poetry which mixed poetical forms and intellectual content associated with both the ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ literary heritages. These literary contributions, it should be emphasized, do not evidence conversion to Islam or a Hindu-Muslim cultural synthesis: they simply reflect the fact of Kayasth participation in the literary culture of the time. Many nineteenth-century Kayasth poets were deeply influenced by Sufi thought. The verses of Bansi Raja, of the Husaini Alam Saksena family, illustrate this well: 77 I do not put tilak,78 It’s just another headache; Nor do I perform sejdah,79 It makes a black spot on my face. I rubbed my forehead On the threshold of my God, And the tilak mark Was just like the mark of the Muslim I am neither this nor that. I am free in my faith. I am the place where God is As beauty and love.

At its best, such poetry was the expression of an individual’s personal belief. Kayasths and other Hindus also wrote poems to please Muslim patrons, fellow poets, and the wider public. Thus at the end of the nineteenth century Bansi Raja wrote a moving tribute to the Prophet Muhammad, at the request of a Muslim Nawab.80 Sometimes seemingly inappropriate juxtapositions were simply the result of a Hindu subject being encased in current literary usages. In a Hindu devotional poem praising Krishna written in the North Indian Hindi dialect of braj bhasha but in the Urdu script, Bansi Raja prefaced his poem, as 77   These verses are printed in Raj, Dard-i Baqi, 50-51. The rough translation from the Persian is mine. Another famous Hindu poet whose verses often were Sufi was Maharajah Kishen Pershad, from the Khatri Peshkari family of Shahalibanda: see Green, “The Maharaja and the Madman.” 78   Tilak refers to the spot of paste applied to the center of a man’s forehead for religious reasons. 79   Sejdah refers to the Muslim custom of prostration so that the forehead rubs the ground. 80   Girdhari Pershad, Haft band (Delhi, 1312 H. [1894-95]).

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was customary, by the Arabic bismiʾallah.81 Their traditional skill in Persian and Urdu made Kayasths eminent members of intellectual and literary society in nineteenth century Hyderabad. As the Indo-British imperial culture became dominant in the surrounding territories under the East India Company and then the British Crown, the Indo-Muslim culture prevailing longer in Hydera­ bad gives us glimpses of its powerful role in the everyday lives of India’s people in the past. We see here creative and adaptive acts of cultural, not religious, translation in a specific early modern (and non-colonial) historical context. Gayatri Spivak wrote of the difficulties of translating a Bengali language once prevalent in her region, a language replete with Arabic and Persian words and resonances. Arabic and Persian were the languages of the courts and of law in the late Mughal empire and the corresponding Nawabate in Bengal, and traces of them lingered in the Bangla of a text Spivak was translating into English.82 Even more clearly, the Hyderabad material shows the importance of changing linguistic and historical contexts, offering instances of Tony Stewart’s translation theory at the levels of “dynamic equivalence” and “shared metaphoric worlds.” Stewart focuses on language and the translation of ideas in texts, and he ends by proposing that speakers of Bengali, both Hindu and Muslim, were Bengali first and sectarian second in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Rather than reflecting weak religious identities, theological ignorance, or religious capitulation (Stewart’s phrases), people of different faiths reaching for equivalent terms and practices across what are now perceived as strong religious boundaries reflected the dynamic interaction of actors and ideas in a world they shared. 83 I make a similar argument here for the (former) Hyderabadi identity: Hindus in Hyderabad city neighborhoods and households were simply performing ritual actions and proclaiming political allegiances in the context and idiom of the Indo-Muslim court and administration of their time.   Girdhari Pershad, Bhagvat Sar (Hyderabad 1307 H. [1890-91]).  Spivak, “Translating into English.” The text was the Bangladeshi activist-poet Farhad Mazhar’s Ashmoyer Noteboi (Untimely Notebook). Spivak reflects on societal and linguistic changes under British rule in the eighteenth century, as “the fashioners of the new Bengali prose purged the language of the Arabic-Persian content until …. a Sanskritized Bengali emerged (98).” She notes that a corresponding movement to purge Arabic-Persian elements from India’s national language, Hindi, followed India’s independence in 1947 and that there is a move underway to restore those components to Bangla, the national language of Bangladesh. 83  Stewart, “In Search of Equivalence,” 280-87. 81 82

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Bibliography Ali, Mahdi Syed, ed. Hyderabad Affairs, volumes 1-10 (Bombay: 1883-89). Ali, Syed Manzur. Anvar-i Asafiyah (Hyderabad: 1935). Alikhan, Raza. Hyderabad 400 Years (1591-1991) (Hyderabad: Zenith Services, 1991). Arbab-i Nishat records, Sarf-i Khas files, Andhra Pradesh State Archives, Paper no. 12. Arya, Sohan Lal. (interview Feb. 2, 1966). Bigelow, Anna. “Saved by the Saint: Refusing and Reversing Partition in Muslim North India,” The Journal of Asian Studies 68:2 (May 2009). Bilgrami, Syed Ali Asgar. Landmarks of the Deccan (Hyderabad: Government Central Press, 1927). Chand, Fateh. Dabdabah-i Asafi, vol. I (1898) Das, Gurucharan. (interview May 26, 1965). Flood, Finbarr B. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “HinduMuslim” Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Gaur, Ram Das. Tazkirah-i Sucaru Vanshi (Allahabad, 1911). Green, Nile. “The Maharaja and the Madman: Patterns of Cosmopolitanism in ‘Colonial’ Hyderabad”, in Samira Sheikh (ed.), Devotional Expressions of South Asian Muslims (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming?). Hashimi, Nasir ud-din. Dakhini Hindu aur Urdu (Hyderabad: [1958]). Hyderabad Information release, April 24, 1943, vol. 5 no. 93, Deccan Chronicle; “Judgment of Original Suit No. 32 of 1959 (Keshovgiri temple case),” II Additional Judge, file in the Endowment Office of the Andhra Pradesh State Government. Kugle, Scott. “Mah Laqa Bai: The Origins of Hyderabad’s Most Famous Courtesan and Her Family,” Deccan Studies VIII:1 (January-June 2010), 33-58. Karan, Mahbub (April 25 respectively, all in 1965). Khan, Ghulam Husain. Tarikh-i Gulzar-i Asafiyah (Hyderabad: Mohamudi Tabshud, 1890-91). Khan, Ghulam Samdani. Tuzuk-i Mahbubiyah (Hyderabad, 1902). Kishore, Hind (interview May 25, 1965). La’l, Makhan. Tarikh-i Yadgar-i Makhan Laʿl (Hyderabad: [1829]). Lal, Manohar (interview Jan. 7, 1966). Lal, Ram Kumar (interview Jan.10, 1966). Leonard, Karen Isaksen. Social History of an Indian Caste: the Kayasths of Hyderabad (Berkeley: University of California, 1978) ———, Hindu Temples in Hyderabad: State Patronage and Politics in South Asia,” South Asian History and Culture 2:3 (July, 2011), 352-373. ———, “The Hyderabad Political System and Its Participants,” Journal of Asian Studies (May, 1971), 569-582. ———, “Hyderabad: The Mulki—non-Mulki Conflict,” in ed. Robin Jeffrey, People, Princes and Paramount Power (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), 65-106. Leonard, Karen. “The Deccani Synthesis in Old Hyderabad: An Historiographic Essay,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society (October, 1973, Karachi), 205218. Munn, Leonard. Hyderabad Municipal Survey (Hyderabad: 1911-13). Mudiraj, K. Krishnaswamy. Pictorial Hyderabad (Hyderabad: Chandrakant Press, 1929, 1934). Narayan, Lakshmi. Vinaʾe Govind [in Hindi] (Hyderabad: 1937).

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Narayan, Roy Mahboob (interviews, April 6, Aug. 11, Nov. 3, Nov. 13 and 15, 1965, and Jan. 9, 1966). Palsson, Gisli, ed., Beyond Boundaries: Understanding, Translation and Anthro­ pological Discourse (Berg: Oxford, 1993. Pershad, Benkat (interview, Nov. 9, 1965). Pershad, Eknath (interview Jan. 13, 1966). Pershad, Gaya. Halat-i Gaya Pershad Aryah, a handwritten autobiography in Urdu. Pershad, Girdhari. Haft band (Delhi, 1312 H. [1894-95]). ———, Bhagvat Sar (Hyderabad 1307 H. [1890-91]). ———, Kulliyat-i Baqi (Hyderabad, 1887-88). Pershad, Rajadhar (interview Jan, 10. 1966). Pershad, Raghunath, his son (interview, May 2, 1965). Pershad, Satguru. Farkhundah Bunyad Hyderabad (Hyderabad: Hyderabad: TeluguUrdu Academy of Science and History, 1964). Pershad, Satguru and Mahinder Raj Suxena (interview Feb. 21, 1966). Pershad, Sri Rang (interview August 17, 1965). Prosad, Balobir, foreword in Hakim Vicerai, Ramayan Manzum (Hyderabad, n.d. [1960]). Pinault, David. The Shiites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992). Raj, Nar Singh. Dard-i Baqi o Durd-i Saqi (Hyderabad: Sardar Press, 1933). Raj, Nar Har. (interview May 16, Aug. 4, 1965). Raj, Prithvi (interview June 27, 1965). Raja, Inder, sons of (interview Jan. 3, 1966). Raʾo, Manik Raʾo Vithal. Bustan-i Asafiyah (Hyderabad: Anwar ul Islam, later Sardar Press, 7 vols., 1909-32). Saxena, Ishwar Raj (interview June 24, 1965). Saxena, Manohar Raj (interview Jan. 3, 1966). Saxena, Shakamber Raj (interviews March 23, 1965; and with him and his mother, March 16, May 26, 1965). Saksenah, Mahinder Raj. “Cand Kayasth Shʾora,” Kayasth Herald, VII and VIII (1948), 12-13. Saksenah, Shiv Narayan. Kayasth Sajjan Caritra (Jaipur: 3 vols., 1912-13). Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorti, “Translating into English,” in Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, edited by Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 93-110. “Statement of Endowment Register”, serial number 9201, in the Endowment Office of the Andhra Pradesh State Government. Stewart, Tony K. “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter Through Translation Theory,” History of Religions 40:3 (Feb., 2001), 260-87. Vicerai, Hakim (interviews April 6, May 14, July 2, Nov. 4, 1965). Wilson, H. Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms (London: W.H. Allen and Co., 1855). The Chronology of Modern Hyderabad, 1720-1890 (Hyderabad: Central Records Office, 1954).

interrogating “the east,” “culture,” and “loss” 189

INTERROGATING “THE EAST,” “CULTURE,” AND “LOSS,” IN ABDUL HALIM SHARARʾS Guzashta Lakhnaʾu C. M. Naim Abdul Halim Sharar, born in Lucknow in 1860, spent several boyhood years in Matiya Burj, outside Calcutta, where his father was in the service of Wajid Ali Shah, the deposed King of Awadh,1 As an adult, Sharar lived in Hyderabad at various times, working in different capacities for either the Nizam or one of his nobles. He also traveled to England as a tutor to the noble’s son, a student at Eton. Sharar remain­ed in England for less than two years; the bulk of his life, however, was spent at Lucknow, where he died in 1926. By then, he had become an exceptionally famous literary figure in Urdu. Sharar’s oeuvre consists of at least twenty-one biographies, twentyeight historical novels, fourteen social novels, fifteen books of popular history, six plays, much poetry, and innumerable essays, only some of which were collected and published in eight volumes. He also receives credit for introducing blank verse in Urdu. During his life Sharar edited and published several journals that he also entirely wrote, the most famous being Dilgudaz (“Heart-Melting”). Most of Sharar’s writings were initially serialized in his journals. Sharar’s outstanding study of Lucknow’s arts and culture at the middle of the 19th century was originally serialized in Dilgudaz from 1913 to 1920, under the title “Hindustan Men Mashriqi Tamaddun Ka Akhiri Namuna” (“The Last Example of Eastern Culture in Hin­ dustan”). When, some years later, the articles were put together in a volume in the multi-volume edition of his selected essays, it was either the publisher or Sharar himself who expanded the title by adding “yaʾni Guzashta Lakhnaʾu” (“i.e. Lucknow of the Past”). Since then the book is simply referred to as Guzashta Lakhnaʾu, and has never been

1   I found the following useful on Sharar’s life and work: (1) Jaʾfar Raza, Abdul Halim Sharar (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1988); (2) Mumtaz Manglori, Sharar ke Tarikhi Navil aur un ka Taḥqiqi wa Tanqidi Jaʾizah (Lahore: Maktaba-i-Khiyaban-iAdab, 1978).

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out of print.2 In 1975, the book gained wider attention among scholars when an English translation came out entitled: Lucknow: The Last Phase of An Oriental Culture.3 As one reads the original Urdu title—Hindustan Men Mashriqi Tamaddun Ka Akhiri Namuna (“The Last Example of Eastern Culture in Hindustan”)—one is immediately impelled to ask, “Was Hindustan not a part of the East, or Indian culture of Sharar’s time not Eastern?” What follows below is an attempt to understand that puzzle of a title by exploring the key words in it. The exercise, it is hoped, would also throw some light on the overarching narrative of cultural and political “Loss” or “Decline” that so much dominated Urdu literary and sociocultural writings in the late 19th and early 20th century, and to some extent still does in some quarters. The first word in the title, Hindustan, is now generally translated as “India.” We must, however, recall that not too long before Sharar’s time, Hindustan equally commonly, if not more so, referred to a smaller, culturally defined area of North India, namely the doaba or the Gangetic plain of Uttar Pradesh. The area was perceived as culturally and linguistically distinctive—frequently, even normative—not only by its residents but also by many other people across India. The narrower meaning of Hindustan was functionally prevalent in both Hindi and Urdu throughout the 19th century. 4 One quotation from Syed Ahmad Khan can exemplify both uses: “The Bengalis, our brothers in Hindustan, are the pride of all communities [qaum]; they have struggled and produced a dozen ‘civilians’ [i.e. civil servants]. But their brothers, be they of any country [mulk]—

2  Two particularly useful editions presently exist: (1) Abdul Halim Sharar, Guzashta Lakhnaʾu, ed. Rashid Hasan Khan (New Delhi: Maktaba-i-Jamia, 2000), and (2) Abdul Halim Sharar, Guzashta Lakhnaʾu, ed. Muhammad Ikram Chaghatai (Lahore: Sang-i-Mil, 2006). All references below are to the latter edition; henceforth: Sharar, Guzashta. 3   Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, tr. and ed. E. S. Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain (Boulder: Westview Press, 1975). Henceforth: Sharar, Lucknow. 4   For some useful information on how the British historians and cartographers struggled with the two meanings of Hindustan, see Ian J. Barrow, “From Hindustan to India: Naming Change in Changing Names,” in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 26:1 (April 2003), 37-49.

interrogating “the east,” “culture,” and “loss” 191 Punjab or Hindustan—and be they Muslim or Hindu, do not feel any shame in being left behind.”5

The narrower reference had not disappeared in Sharar’s time. For example in the following Persian verse of Sharar’s peer and friend, Shibli Nuʾmani, written in 1911: za bambaʾi chun ba hindostan rasam shibli // za bada baguzaram baz parsa gardam, “When I leave Bombay and reach Hindustan, I give up wine and become pious again.” 6 The same situation was also found in Sharar’s time concerning the derived form, Hindustani, “Indian/Hindustani.”7 The word alleged attributes of identity and culture that were actually regional but presumed to be pan-Indian by many North Indians. Additionally, for many “nationalist” Muslim authors, Hindustani was often synonymous with the expression, ganga-jamni, i.e. a product of the co-mingling of the Hindu (Ganga) and Muslim (Jamuna) traditions. For some other Muslim intellectuals, however, Hindustani stood for a linguistic variety rival to their own Urdu as it allegedly contained a disproportionate percentage of what they regarded as “Hindi/Hindu” elements. To sum up, in the early decades of the 20th century, the word Hindustan and its derived adjective were contested semanticfields, and for Sharar and many other authors of his time both Hin­ dustan and Hindustani were not necessarily always as pan-Indian in reference as we now commonly assume.8 We may safely assume that 5  Syed Iqbal Ali, Sayyad Ahmad Khan ka Safarnama-i-Panjab, ed. Shaikh Muhammad Ismaʾil Panipati (Lahore: Majlis-i-Taraqqi-i-Adab, 1973), 107-108. Elsewhere in the same book: “Islam does not ask: Are you a Turk or a Tajik, and Arab or an African. … It does not ask: were you born in Punjab or Hindustan” (p. 13). Similar examples can also be found in Hindi writings of that time. 6   A more poignant example is found even later in this verse of Fani Badayuni (d. 1941): fani dakan men a-ke ye uqda khula ki ham // hindostan men rahte hain hindostan se dur, “When I arrived in the Deccan this enigma dawned on me: I lived in Hindustan, but away from Hindustan.” 7  Even now the narrower reference is used to distinguish the Hindustani or North Indian classical music from the South Indian musical tradition. On the other hand, a pejorative use of the word is often found in the anti-Muhajir polemics in Pakistan. 8   The situation did not totally change with the passage of time. In September 1947, in the legislative assembly of what is now Uttar Pradesh, an MLA could say the following and be fully understood: “As a matter of fact, if you ask a Bengalee ‘what will you call me?’ he will say, ‘I would call you Hindustani.’ If I were to answer that question myself ‘what are you,’ I would call myself Hindustani for lack of anything better.” Quoted in Gyanesh Kudaisya, “‘Aryavarta,’ ‘Hind,’ or ‘Uttar Pradeshʾ: The Postcolonial Naming and Framing of a ‘Region,’ in D. Chakrabarty, R. Majumdar and A Sartori (eds), From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in

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Sharar used Hindustan in the title to refer to the sub-continent as a whole, but some presence of the earlier, not-so-inclusive reference cannot be entirely ruled out. At least its imperatives of cultural uniqueness and superiority could lie behind some of Sharar’s hyperbolic claims for Lucknow.9 Paradoxically, while Sharar used Hindustan in an expanded and inclusive sense, his use of the word Mashriqi (“Eastern”) in the title was curiously exclusive, separating India and Indian from the East. What could he have in mind? In what sense India, for Sharar, was not a part of the East? And how was mid-nineteenth century Rajputana, for instance, not as “Eastern” in Sharar’s sight as the Lucknow of the Nawabs? As one proceeds to read the opening sentences of the book, one becomes more intrigued. Here is my literal translation: Perhaps no one would hesitate to concede that the last example of Eastern culture [mashriqi tahzib-o-tamaddun] seen in Hindustan was the former court of Awadh. Some relics of the past are still found at several courts [darbar], but it was the court [of Awadh] with which ended old culture [tahzib] and social behavior [muʾasharat].10

Fakhir Hussain, a proud native of Lucknow, who finalized the English version and wrote its explanatory notes, adds in a footnote, “The reference [to other courts] is mainly to the Muslim Princely States of Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Rampur which were flourishing in India during the author’s lifetime and lasted until 1947.”11 Hussain does not explain why Sharar could not have also meant one or two of the major non-Muslim courts at the time, such as Mysore, Jaipur, and Travan­ core-Cochin. Sharar, however, makes his point of view quite clear some fifty pages later: Transition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 266. I thank Mohinder Singh for this reference. 9  One might also argue, however unconvincingly, that by making the claim for Lucknow being the “the last example” of a particularly Muslim culture in “Hindustan,” Sharar left open the possibility for Hyderabad to be considered as a flourishing example of the same in India. 10  Sharar, Guzashta, 53. In Sharar, Lucknow: “It is unlikely that anyone will question the statement that the late court of Awadh was the final example of oriental refinement and culture in India. There are several other courts to remind us of former times, but the one in which old culture and social life reached its zenith was this court of Awadh… . (29)” 11  Sharar, Lucknow, 234.

interrogating “the east,” “culture,” and “loss” 193 There were of course at that time many Hindu states, but the Muslim courts were the only ones which were considered refined and cultured [muhazzab aur shaʾista]. The Hindu rajas themselves admitted that they could not surpass the Muslim courts as regards culture [tamaddun] and social behavior [muʾasharat]. The idea of reviving their old civilization [tahzib] and providing for themselves a new culture [tamad­dun] and literature came to them only later and as a result of English education.12

But if mashriqi and muslim were synonymous for Sharar, why did he use the former in the title and not the latter? Also, were Harcourt and Hussain right when they translated mashriqi as “Oriental?” The answers require a brief digression. For the generation preceding Sharar’s, mashriq meant “East,” a point on the compass, while mashriqi was merely its adjectival form. However, for the same people—i.e. men like Syed Ahmad Khan, Altaf Husain Hali, and Nazir Ahmad—the word purab (“East”) carried much additional meaning. For them, purab and purbi designated the people and culture of the region that is now covered by central and eastern Uttar Pradesh and North Bihar. Going back several centuries, when a Tughluq Sultan of Delhi appointed a commander for his territories east of Delhi, he gave him the title Malik-al-Sharq (“Master of the East”), where the word Sharq stood for the indigenous purab, referring to the region and not the direction. After the commander’s death, his two adopted sons and their descendents ruled as independent Sharqi kings, i.e. the kings of the Purab. When Shahjahan reportedly claimed, “‘Purab’ is our Shiraz,” he had in mind Jaunpur and its surrounding area. On the other hand, when Mushafi (d. 1824), two hundred years later, accused the “amirs of purab” of being pusillanimous, his target was the nobility of Awadh.13 While the rich connotations of purab and purabi had survived for Sharar and his peers, something new and equally powerful developed at the turn of the century vis-à-vis mashriq and mashriqi. The two became linked to the discourse of the European Orientalists whose studies had focused on Islam and the Middle East, and for whom “the 12  Sharar, Lucknow, 78. I have added Sharar’s actual words within brackets. Sharar, Guzashta, 112-3. 13   Mushafi described the nobles of Awadh as “Bengali mynahs”—bangale ki maina hain ye purab ke amir—for they said only what their British masters taught them.

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Orient” exclusively denoted the Islamic Middle East, primarily the Arab lands. The Arabs, in turn, called these scholars Mustashriqin, i.e. those who studied the Sharq or Mashriq. Harcourt and Hussain, therefore, made no error when they used “Oriental” as the equivalent of Sharar’s Mashriqi in the title. Sharar would have done the same. In fact, he would have placed, I believe, the definite article “the” before the word, instead of Harcourt and Hussein’s indefinite “a.”14 The translators, working nearly five decades after Sharar, felt compelled to give recognition to other areas of “the Orient,” but for Sharar and many of his learned Muslim peers “Orient” or, more correctly, Mashriq was only what was “Islamic” or “Arab.” That had been the practice of the people writing in Arabic, like Jurji Zaidan and Rashid Rida in Egypt, and it was readily accepted in Urdu by people like Sharar and Shibli Nuʾmani in India, who read the Arabs and often interacted with them.15 As surprising as the adjective, mashriqi, is the noun that the adjective qualifies in the title, namely tamaddun.16 What struck me first was the fact that Sharar had used it by itself, and not in combination with the word tahzib.17 In present day Urdu one comes across tamaddun either as the second element in the expression tahzib-o-tamaddun (lit. tahzib and tamaddun), or hardly at all. The phrase, however, must have been already common in Sharar’s days, for it occurs in the opening sentence of the book: “is ke taslim karne men shayad kisi ko ‘uzr na hoga ki hindustan men mashriqi tahzib-o-tamaddun ka jo akhiri namuna nazar aya wo guzashta darbar-i-awadh tha.” Harcourt and Hussain translate the sentence as: “It is unlikely that anyone will question the statement that the late court of Awadh was the final example of oriental refinement and culture in India.” The translators, obviously, were being meticulous, and used two English words for the two in Urdu.

14   Mashriq in the original Urdu carries the force of definiteness. In Urdu, indefiniteness is indicated in various ways, while definiteness is expressed by the absence of any marker. 15  Sharar and Shibli Nuʾmani (1857-1914) were good friends. It was through Shibli that Sharar had met Syed Ahmad Khan at a crucial moment in his own life. 16   F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary: “Residing in a city; dwelling together in large bodies.” “Urban or urbanized culture” would be the closest meaning to its modern usage. 17  Steingass, Comprehensive: “Purifying … adorning … amending; correction … refinement.” Today, it is commonly translated as “civilization.”

interrogating “the east,” “culture,” and “loss” 195 But I suspect Sharar would have been perfectly happy had they used just one word, “culture,” as I did in my translation earlier. To confirm my impression that tamaddun was no longer common in ordinary Urdu, particularly by itself, I tried a little experiment. I sent a request to 20 well-educated Urdu speakers, asking them to translate into Urdu the following two sentences, one of which contained the words “refinement and culture.” It is the finest example of Islamic refinement and culture. It must be preserved.

In the twelve responses I received, “culture” was translated as tahzib six times, as saqafat three times, and one time each as tamaddun, tahzib-o-tamaddun, and kalchar. As for the word “refinement,” it turned into a whole range of expressions, but never either tahzib or tamaddun. Every Urdu speaker today would rightly call me a pedant if I were to translate tahzib-o-tamaddun as “civilization and culture.” Use one or the other, he would insist. Further, he might point out that in contemporary Urdu one freely uses the English word “culture” (kalchar), adding that tahzib refers to things that possess considerable timedepth while kalchar encompasses what is contemporary or of recent origin (So, we write Pakistani kalchar, but Islami tahzib.) A different option for some would be to consider tamaddun as referring to the material culture of a people but tahzib to habits of public and private interaction. Lastly, a few learned souls might offer that while tahzib could be experienced even in remote rural areas, tamaddun is found only in cities. A second experiment brought up something more fascinating, something I was not quite aware of. Using the search option, “keyword in the title,” I did several book searches in the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. Tahzib brought up 106 titles, a solid hundred of them in Urdu, plus one each in Bengali and Pushto, with only four in either Arabic or Persian. Tamaddun, on the other hand, showed up in 96 titles, but most of them were in either Arabic or Persian. Of the 23 Urdu entries, four referred to Sharar’s book, and two were old translations from the French. A third search, using the phrase tahzib-o-tamaddun, turned up only five Urdu titles. Further examination disclosed that while tahzib, by itself, occurred in 96 Urdu books, tamaddun was used in only 16 titles in that manner. Of the latter, three were written or translated around the same time in the first

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two decades of the 20th century, and three more were written by people connected to the Nadwat-al-Ulama of Lucknow. Clearly, how the two words were used in Urdu required a closer look. I donʾt have the resources to explore with any precision two interrelated key questions: (1) when exactly did Urdu intellectuals begin to write about “culture” and “cultural heritage;” and (2) when did the word tahzib first appear in Urdu denoting either “culture” or “civili­ zation.”18 I can only speculate, and submit that it was some time in the second half of the 19th century that the many diverse matters that earlier used to be considered separately under such rubrics as adab (“proto­cols”), akhlaq (“moral codes”), aʾin (“administrative rules or con­stitution”), rusum (“customs”), riwaj (“local practices”), riwayat (“traditions”), funun (“arts and crafts”) and so forth, began to be subsumed within one overarching word, tahzib, whose main function, it would appear, was to imply and then underscore a link between all of them and a single, and almost autochthonous, past.19 I further submit that the impulse to do so arose very much in reaction to the claim made by colonial authorities that their success in India was due to the unique superiority of their “Civilization.” As a result, notions of cultural superiority and “civilizing” missions also crept in, particularly with some of those who preferred to use the word tamaddun. Tamaddun, I speculate entered the language of social discourse in Urdu in 1896, when Syed Ali Bilgirami published his masterly translation of Gustave LeBon’s La Civilization des Arabes, and called it

18   When Syed Ahmad Khan, in December 1870, named his famous journal Tahzib-al-Akhlaq (“Refinement of Morals”), he used tahzib as a verbal noun. But he chose it as his synonym for “Civilization” when, in 1874, he published the Urdu version of a portion of Henry Thomas Buckle’s The History of Civilization in England and commented on it. (I owe this reference to David Lelyveld.) John T. Platts in his A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English (1884) glosses tamaddun: “Residing in a city or town; dwelling together in large bodies (men).” While his entry for tahzib treats the word as a verbal noun and gives the expected glosses: purifying, adorning, etc. The Standard English-Urdu Dictionary (1938?) published by the Anjuman-i-Taraqqi-i-Urdu, has entries for both “Civilization” and “Culture.” Its primary synonyms for “Civilization” are islah and tarbiyat, after them comes tamaddun, and lastly tahzib. The entry for “Culture” does not mention tamaddun, but gives tahzib as the word’s tertiary meaning. Evidently, the two concepts and associated words remained hazy for quite some time. 19  Earlier, people wrote about different arts separately, without projecting the notion of a unifying and unified culture. The only exception, to my limited knowledge, could be Abul Fazl’s Aʾin-i-Akbari, but it claimed a unity that emerged from the genius of one man, the Emperor Akbar, and not a people or religion.

interrogating “the east,” “culture,” and “loss” 197 Tamaddun-i-ʿArab.20 Brought out in a lavishly illustrated edition, it must have been well received by the intellectual elite at the time due to Bilgirami’s status and fame.21 Before his death, Bilgirami had completed a translation of Le Bon’s similar book on Indian Civilization, Les Civilisations de l’Inde. Entitled Tamaddun-i-Hind, it came out posthumously in 1913.22 Between Le Bon’s two books came a book that was probably much more influential: Mohammad Halim Ansari’s translation in 1907 of two volumes of Jurji Zaidan’s Arabic bestseller, Tarikh-al-Tamaddun-al-Islami (“History of Islamic Tamaddun”).23 Zaidan’s popularity among the Muslim/Urdu literati at the time has not been noted, and I am presently in no position to discuss it at length. I can only mention that his influential journal Al-Hilal was recommended with approval by Shibli in the account of his travels to Constantinople and Cairo, and in fact subscribed to by the Arabic 20   Why Bilgirami chose tamaddun, and not tahzib, is a question I have not yet resolved. Most likely it was in imitation of the Arabs. Gustave LeBon (1841-1931) was a self-taught polymath, now chiefly remembered as a great popularizer of academic theories related to several diverse fields. His neglect as an “Orientalist” is such now that Edward Said mentioned him only once in his famous book, and only with reference to LeBon’s racist anthropological theories. My limited knowledge of LeBon’s ideas comes from Robert A. Nye, The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave LeBon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic (London: Sage Publications, 1975). 21   Gustave LeBon, Tamaddun-i-ʿArab, tr. Syed Ali Bilgirami (Sargodha: Zafar Traders, 1975, reprint). Syed Ali Bilgirami (1851-1911), a polyglot/polymath person, was an influential figure in both Hyderabad and British India. He founded the Directorate of Arts and Sciences [ʿulum-o-funun] at Hyderabad in 1894, where Shibli Nuʾmani was appointed in 1901 as the Secretary (Bilgirami had retired the same year.) He was also the author or translator of a dozen scholarly books that, one may safely assume, were carefully read by many during his distinguished life. But references to Tamaddun-i-ʿArab are rare, and its second edition came out only in 1936, with a useful biographical note by Nawab Jivan Yar Jang. I have used a new reprint of the second edition. 22   I use the reprint: Gustave LeBon, Tamaddun-i-Hind, tr. Syed Ali Bilgirami (Karachi: Book Land, 1962). No earlier reprint has yet been found. Besides the two books already mentioned, two other books by LeBon existed in Urdu translation in the 1920s, Ruh-al-Ijtimaʾ and Inqilab-al-Umam, both apparently in the discipline of Social Psychology. 23   Jurji Zaidan (1861–1914), Tarikh-i-Tamaddun-i-Islam, tr. Mohammad Halim Ansari, 2 vols. (Karachi: Sh. Shaukat Ali, 1964, reprint). The third volume of Zaidan’s History was translated by Aslam Jairajpuri and published the same year. I have not seen the original edition of Ansari’s translated volumes, but have seen the Jairajpuri volume. It uses movable fonts of the kind used in many publications of the M. A. O. College (Madrasat-ul-ʿUlum), and carries the Urdu name on the title page, without mentioning Aligarh. To my knowledge, the third volume, as against the first two, was never reprinted.

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Club at Aligarh that Shibli had founded and mentored.24 Shibli maintained contact with Zaidan for twenty years, and received copies of Zaidan’s books as they came out. The two also corresponded.25 Their relationship came to an end only in 1911, when Shibli savagely criticized the same Tarikh in a long Arabic essay published by Rashid Rida in Al-Manar. What actually motivated Shibli to react so, eight years after the book’s publication, can only be speculated, but the reason offered was the book’s increasing acceptance in Muslim circles in India.26 Zaidan also wrote twenty-one historical novels, some of which were translated into Urdu and found wide circulation.27 Le Bon employs an evolutionary concept of tamaddun: a culture moves from being simple to becoming complex, and thus progresses from being “barbaric” to becoming “civilized.”28 Further, Le Bon lays 24   Zaidan’s journal was the unacknowledged inspiration behind Abul Kalam Azad’s Urdu journal of the same name that began in 1912. Azad’s Al-Hilal was as concerned with the Ottoman Caliph and his empire as was Zaidan’s, and its format, new for Urdu, was close to the Arabic original. Urdu scholars seem to have ignored Zaidan’s influence on Azad, but Ian H. Douglas notes the matter briefly in Abul Kalam Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography, eds. Gail Minault and Christian W. Troll (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), 141. My information on Zaidan is based on Thomas Philipp, Gurgi Zaidan: His Life and Thought (Beirut: Orient-Institut, 1979). 25  Shibli suggested improvements in the History’s subsequent volumes after reading the first. Zaidan obliged. Shibli Nuʾmani, “Tamaddun-i-Islam musannifa Jurji Zaidan ki Parda-dari (“Ripping the Veil off the Tamaddun-i-Islam written by Jurji Zaidan”), in Shibli Nuʾmani, Maqalat-i-Shibli, Vol. 4, ed. Syed Sulaiman Nadvi (Azamgarh: Dar-al-Musannifin, 1956 reprint), 139, f.n. 26   In another footnote (op. cit., 133) to his essay, Shibli mentions that Zaidan’s book was widely popular (kitab ghar ghar phail gai), and was being recommended for inclusion in the syllabus for the Fazil degree (at the Nadwa?). 27  Translations of Zaidan’s novels were always listed in the booksellers’ catalogs of my boyhood. One novel is preserved at the Jamia Millia Library, New Delhi. It had come out in 1907, only two years after the original publication, and translated by the same M. Halim Ansari (I owe this information to Professors Shamim Hanfi and Sarwar-ul-Huda of the Jamia.) Sharar published his first historical novel in 1888, and the popularity of his novels must have contributed to the easy acceptance of Zaidan’s novels in Urdu. For a young girl’s delight at receiving Zaidan’s “historical books” in the 1930s from her famous father, the poet Yagana of Lucknow, see Sahil Ahmad, Yagana (Allahabad: Urdu Writers’ Guild, 1986), 341. 28  Shibli, in his essay, “Hindustan men Islami Hukumat ke Tamaddun ka Asar (“The Effect of the Tamaddun of Islamic Rule on India”), writes, “The foremost effect of tamaddun is a sustained increment in life’s necessities. For example, when life is plain, people sit on the ground, put food on a banana-leaf, and get done with their meal. But when tamaddun arrives it brings with it much more. First a cloth is spread out then a cover-sheet is laid on it, followed by a basin for washing hands … . Then a dining-cloth is spread out, on which are placed a variety of foods on colorful plates, each of a different shape and color suitable to the particular food.” Shibli Nuʾmani,

interrogating “the east,” “culture,” and “loss” 199 much emphasis on the physical environment within which a people develop their “essential” attributes, and their culture takes shape on specific lines. He is keenly interested in a people’s material culture, in particular architecture, and sees changes in it in terms of “progress” and “decline.” LeBon is also very much an elitist, and in some ways a frank racist. Zaidan, who put Le Bon at the top of his list of the European scholars he used in his own work, is not prone to grand theories, but he does share with Le Bon the belief that “political power” leads to “cultural progress.” For both authors, expansions of political domination inherently contain a potential to launch and sustain a “civilizing” ­process among the dominated. What the two perceive as the most glorious phase of Arab/Islamic culture is inherently linked, to their satisfaction, with the Arab/Muslim imperial expansion under the Abba­sids. Consequently, they also link a culture’s “decline” with its people’s loss of political domination. For Sharar, too, the “progress” and “decline” of a culture are linked to the rise and fall of political power. According to Sharar, only when Delhi became powerless and its mercantile class asserted itself over Delhi’s nobility, did first Faizabad and then Lucknow become politically strong, and consequently capable of developing a distinct tamaddun. Later, when Lucknow lost its political power, its culture too went into a decline. Like Le Bon, Sharar uses architecture as a measure in that regard. For him, Asafuddaulah (r. 1775-97) and his father built the only buildings in Awadh that possessed historical significance and enduring strength; whatever was put up by Saʾadat Ali Khan (r. 17981814) and his successors possessed only a surface gloss, and had no lasting value.29 As could be expected, for Sharar the tamaddun of the politically dominant also has a “civilizing” role in the dominated land. And so, in Sharar’s narrative, both Faizabad and Lucknow appear as blank slates on which Burhanul Mulk, Safdar Jung, and Shujauddaulah inscribed their tamaddun. It is as if Awadh had never been an integral part of the Sharqi Kingdom of Jaunpur, whose notable contributions in architecture, literature, and such industries as perfumery and carpet weaving could not have been unknown to Sharar. There is no reason to Maqalat-i-Shibli, Vol. 6, ed. Syed Sulaiman Nadvi (Azamgarh: Dar-al-Musannifin, 1989 reprint). 29  Sharar, Lucknow, 47-8, 52; Sharar, Guzashta, 75, 80.

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think that the Sunni Sharar’s neglect of the Shiʾah Sharqis was based on sectarian feelings—after all the Nawabs of Awadh were also Shiʾah. It reflects, I submit, a different but ingrained habit among the Muslim elite of North India. Consider the opening nine lines of Fakhir Hussain’s introduction: Like all civilizations, the Indo-Mughal was grounded in a powerful set of ideas related to a specific social context. These ideas, expressed in institutions, ceremonies, ritual and language, underlined a markedly class-based society that, however unrepresentative and elitist, was in itself cohesive and harmonious. But inevitably, such a civilization could not remain static. New forces emerged, old ideas were challenged and the framework of the established order was disturbed. It is on this period of Indo-Muslim civilization, at its zenith which was also its last phase, when its centre was transferred from Delhi to Lucknow, that the present work concentrates.30

Note the telling slippage. The “Indo-Mughal” of the first sentence becomes “Indo-Muslim” in the fifth sentence ever so casually. Of course, Fakhir Hussain only did what Urdu intellectuals of North India had been doing for over a century before him. Shibli, in the essay quoted earlier, writes, “Once Hindustan was in the state described by Babur—its people went around in loincloths—but now the Muslims created a thousand aspects of civilization and culture [tahzib-o-tamaddun] in each and every thing.” 31 For Shibli too, the Indo-Muslim was synonymous with the Indo-Mughal; the Muslim rulers preceding the Mughals seemingly made no difference to him in that regard. Returning to the title of Sharar’s book, if we place together the two words, mashriqi and tamaddun, and ask what the phrase meant to Sharar, the answer, in the light of the above discussion, would be: mashriqi tamaddun = “Oriental Culture” = “Islamic Culture” = “IndoMughal Culture” = “Delhi Culture of the 18th Century” = “Lucknow Culture.” The linearity of that process of thinking is breathtaking, as is the presumed co-equality within it—not to mention all that is left out. The habit has not disappeared entirely in Urdu historical writings, though notions of interaction and exchange, cooperation and inclusiveness have gradually gained wider acceptance. The change, one  Sharar, Lucknow, 9.  Shibli, Maqalat, Vol. 6, 212. Shibli does not even pause to consider that Babur’s description of India, if taken at face value, would also imply an indictment of all the earlier Muslim rulers for their failure to properly implement the “civilizing” role of the Muslim tamaddun. 30 31

interrogating “the east,” “culture,” and “loss” 201 might say, is perhaps reflected in the way tahzib has gained preference over tamaddun in Urdu and how the English word “culture,” has become an accepted Urdu word with accommodative connotations. Lastly we take up the final two words in the original title, akhiri namuna (“the last example”), and ask: which Lucknow was the “last” for Sharar? Was it the Lucknow that Sharar declared ceased to exist after 1857, or was it the Lucknow that Sharar says was recreated in Matiya Burj by Wajid Ali Shah and came to an end only at the latter’s death in 1887?32 However, Lucknow, the physical city, had not disappeared after the dissolution of the kingdom. It had survived the Mutiny and was, by Sharar’s own evidence, very much alive and productive when he wrote his book. It would be useful here to remind ourselves that Lucknow’s fate after the Mutiny had been quite different from Delhi’s, particularly concerning the Muslim population. In Delhi, the walled city was first held under siege and bombarded, and then the royalty and nobility were killed or imprisoned. The walled city’s Muslim population that had fled was not allowed to return for a long time. Even after re-­ conquest, Delhi remained secondary to Agra as a seat of colonial authority. Lucknow, on the other hand, did not suffer a siege, and its popu­lated areas suffered relatively less destruction during the Mutiny. Neither was its Muslim population forced to abandon the city for any extended period. More importantly, Lucknow swiftly gained new prominence as the major regional site of colonial authority, surpassing its two rivals, Kanpur and Allahabad. As a result, any number of big and small ta’luqdars and zamindars quickly set up establishments in Lucknow.33 They brought money into the city, hastened its physical recovery, and provided patronage to its artisans and specialists. Sharar, justly, could not find at the turn of the century much of what he had seen growing up in Lucknow and Matiya Burj, but he was not unaware that a great deal of the past still existed among the Hindu 32   “The fact is that due to the King’s stay at Matiya Burj a second Lucknow had come to be next to Calcutta, The real Lucknow had disappeared and its select people had moved to Matiya Burj. In truth, in those days it was Matiya Burj that was Lucknow, and not Lucknow itself (Sharar, Guzashta, 108).” 33   Under official patronage, a formal organization of the ta’luqdars, “British Indian Association,” was formed in 1861; the same year its members were “en­sconced in one of the more splendid palace complexes in Lucknow.” Veena Talwar Oldenburg, The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856-1877 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1089), 221.

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and Muslim elite of the city and those who catered to their needs. In other words, while mostly claiming to write about a past, Sharar was implicitly also writing about a present.34 Our impression is confirmed by a book that comes sixty years later: Qadim Lakhnʾau ki Akhiri Bahar (“The Last Spring of Old Lucknow”).35 According to its author, Mirza Jaʾfar Hussain, the old culture of Lucknow came to end only in the late 1940s! For Hussain, the key word is always tahzib. This is how he introduces his book. No one can deny that Lucknow, until some time ago, was the center for an extremely bewitching and valuable tahzib. The nawabs and elites of Lucknow, its rich and poor, scholars and illiterates, Hindus and Muslims, poets and mystics, rishis and sadhus, traders and beggars, soldiers and civilians, men and women—all had contributed, as dictated by their rank, size, and ambition, to the formation of that tahzib.

Then, after listing over thirteen lines the many gifts that “Old” Luck­ now bestowed on world’s culture, Hussain concludes: Lucknow’s tahzib was in itself a beautiful and beguiling world that the rulers of Awadh had created and inhabited. They laid its foundation with such skill and with so much devotion and sincerity that its remnants could be seen even some eighty years after their rule ended. However, in the fourth decade of the 20th century what they had made disappeared in entirety.36

The rubrics of tahzib—food, entertainment, courtesans, language, poetry, household goods, rituals and rites, and more—that Hussain covers in his book are much the same as defining tamaddun for Sharar. The only significant difference between the two authors is that while Sharar repeatedly brings up Lucknow’s indebtedness to Delhi,

34   The achievements of Asghar Ali and Ahmad Husain in specialty tobacco (Sharar, Guzashta, 304), Newal Kishore in book publishing (Sharar, Guzashta, 149), Jaʾfar Husain and Ali Husain in lithography (Sharar, Guzashta, 150), and various people in the art of cooking are some examples. Sharar is also proud of the Urdu of his peers in Lucknow, and finds no sign of a “decline” in it. 35   Mirza Jaʾfar Hussain, Qadim Lakhna'u ki Akhiri Bahar (New Delhi: Taraqqi-iUrdu Bureau, 1981). Hussain’s book also began as an extended series of articles in the 1970s. 36   Hussain, Qadim, 7-8. Some of the listed gifts, incidentally, are: dopalli caps, chuRidar pajamas, velvet quilts, shoes with silver buckles, gourmet food such as mutanjan and shirmal, the habit of saying Adab instead of Assalam-o-Alaikum, cutthroat kite flying and fighting quails, and educated and refined courtesans.

interrogating “the east,” “culture,” and “loss” 203 Hussain hardly ever mentions Delhi when rhapsodizing about Luck­ now.37 Nevertheless, Hussain is grateful to Sharar in the extreme. May the Almighty reward Maulana Abdul Halim Sharar for his labors. In his invaluable book Guzashta Lakhnaʾu, there is abundant information about the ways of our ancestors …. But everything in that book was about the ‘time of the kings.’ Though, of course, a glow of that time still illumined the city in the waning years of the 19th century. I, on the other hand, witnessed [a later] time when all signs of our ancestors gradually disappeared, one after another after another.38

Revealingly, in contemporary, nostalgia-filled accounts of Lucknow’s special but “lost and gone” culture that frequently appear in Urdu journals in India and Pakistan, both authors are accorded the same rank for truth-telling. Apparently, nostalgia becomes truly enjoyable to the nostalgic only when he manages somehow to convince himself that the “golden” past was totally lost and for good. That seems to be the case with both Sharar and Hussain. It is also the case with those now who adore the two books but see no contradiction in the separate claims both make of standing witness to the “final” days of a single fabulous Lucknow. Bibliography Sahil Ahmad, Yagana (Allahabad: Urdu Writers’ Guild, 1986). Syed Iqbal Ali, Sayyad Ahmad Khan ka Safarnama-i-Panjab, ed. Shaikh Muhammad Ismaʾil Panipati (Lahore: Majlis-i-Taraqqi-i-Adab, 1973). Gustave Le Bon, Tamaddun-i-Hind, tr. Syed Ali Bligirami (Karachi: Book Land, 1962). ———, Tamaddun-i-ʿArab, tr. Syed Ali Bilgirami (Sargodha: Zafar Traders, 1975). Mirza Jaʾfar Hussain, Qadim Lakhna'u ki Akhiri Bahar (New Delhi: Taraqqi-i-Urdu Bureau, 1981). Mumtaz Manglori, Sharar ke Tarikhi Navil aur un ka Taḥqiqi wa Tanqidi Jaʾizah (Lahore: Maktaba-i-Khiyaban-i-Adab, 1978). Robert A. Nye, The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave LeBon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic (London: Sage Publications, 1975). Thomas Philipp, Gurgi Zaidan: His Life and Thought (Beirut: Orient-Institut, 1979). Jaʾfar Raza, Abdul Halim Sharar (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1988). Abdul Halim Sharar, Guzashta Lakhnaʾu, ed. Rashid Hasan Khan (New Delhi: Maktaba-i-Jamia, 2000). 37   Hussain, however, gives more credit to the writers at Delhi who, according to him, preserved their cultural heritage by writing about it, as against the writers at Lucknow, who did not. 38   Hussain, Qadim, 9. He elsewhere makes it clear that he meant the first three decades of the 20th century (254).

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Abdul Halim Sharar, Guzashta Lakhnaʾu, ed. Muhammad Ikram Chaghatai (Lahore: Sang-i-Mil, 2006). ———, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, tr. and ed. E. S. Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain (Boulder: Westview Press, 1975). Shibli Nuʾmani, Maqalat-i-Shibli, ed. Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Vol. 4 (Azamgarh: Daral-Musannifin, 1956 reprint). ———, Maqalat-i-Shibli, ed. Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Vol. 6 (Azamgarh: Dar-alMusannifin, 1989 reprint). Jurji Zaidan, Tarikh-i-Tamaddun-i-Islam, tr. Mohammad Halim Ansari, 2 vols. (Karachi: Shaikh Shaukat Ali, 1964).

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ZAHEER v ALI: DISSENTING VIEWS ON THE EARLY YEARS OF THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT IN URDU LITERATURE Carlo Coppola In 1931 Sajjad Zaheer (1904-1973) returned from England, where he had been studying for the past four years. He had just received his B.A. (Honours) degree from Oxford University and had been associated with liberal and left-wing elements in both the Indian and the larger student bodies. Visiting Mussoorie during that summer, he met Ahmed Ali (1910-1994), a newly minted M.A. in English from Lucknow University now teaching at that institution. Their casual meeting, which developed into a warm friendship and a classic meeting of the minds, would ultimately result in one of the more recent and exciting developments in Indo-Muslim culture: its interactions with Marxism. This produced profound effects on the twentieth-­ century literary development of not only Urdu, but of all the major literatures of the subcontinent. Ultimately as well, the men’s warm friend­ship and mutual respect for one another would sour and result in a literary feud full of accusations and recriminations. The two men were similar in many respects: both were young, single, educated through the medium of English, and, according to Ali, shared a fondness for somberors, bright shirts and contrasting ties, collecting candlesticks and gargoyles, Bach and Beethoven, and an admiration for James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence, and the New Writing poets [Spender, Auden, Day-Lewis], as well as Chekhov and Gorky.1

But there were also differences. Zaheer came from a high-bourgeois zamindari family, his father, Sir Syed Wazir Hasan (1874-1947), a judge of the High Court of Judicature in Allahabad. Though Ali’s forefathers, Quranic legal scholars (ʿulamā), had originally been invited to India from Persia by Emperor Shahjahan (r. 1628-1658), they lost their privileged status after 1857, so that Ali’s more immediate 1  “The Progressive Writers’ Movement and Creative Writers in Urdu,” Marxist Influences and South Asian Literature, ed. Carlo Coppola 2nd. ed. (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1988), 44.

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family’s circumstances were considerably humbler than Zaheer’s. Ali’s father was a middle-level civil servant who passed away when Ali was young. By custom, then, Ali’s mother and the family were required to live in the home of a paternal uncle, a zealously pious man of limited education and cultural interests, and his wife, a woman whom Ali has described as stingy and mean-spirited. Both scorned the young man’s interest in the English language and western education. But a feature which clinched the relationship between the Zaheer and Ali was that both had been writing fiction and wished to get their stories published. In fact, Ali had already published two short stories, one in English and one in Urdu.2 They were soon joined by two others. One was Ali’s friend Rashid Jahan (1905-1952), daughter of the Muslim champion of women’s education, Shaikh Muhammad Abdul­ lah (1887-1965), an out-spoken and charismatic gynecologist—with chic bobbed hair—working at Lady Dufferin Hospital, Lucknow, with the Provincial Medical Service. The other friend was Sahabzadah Mahmuduzzafar Khan (1908-1956), a member of the extended royal family of Rampur. Schooled almost entirely in English and graduating from Oxford, he refused to sit for the Indian Civil Service exam and, like Rashid Jahan, took to wearing handloom cloth in support of Gandhi’s boycott of British goods. Ali has indicated that, because the combined number of Zaheer’s and his own stories was not sufficient to publish as a book, the four friends “decided on an evening to write a story each within a day” to bring the number of items up to a publishable level.3 Thus, the collection, entitled Angārē: Das mukhtaṡar kahānīʾōñ kā majmūʿah (Embers: A Collection of Ten Short Stories), appeared in 1932, though no date of publication appears anywhere on it. Zaheer paid for the printing costs for about 200 copies. The volume consists of ten works: five short stories by Zaheer, two by Ali, and one by Mahmuduzzafar.4 Rashid Jahan contributed a short 2   “When the Funeral Was Crossing the Bridge,” Lucknow University Journal, (1929); “Mahāvaŧõñ kī ēk rāt” [A Night of Winter Rains], Humāyūñ [Fortunate] (Jan., 1931). The latter was one of two stories by Ahmed Ali included in Angārē [Embers]. 3   Personal correspondence to me from Karachi, 16 Aug. 1972. 4   Zaheer’s stories are: “Nīnd nahīñ ātī” [Sleep Does Not Come]; “Garmīʾōñ kī ēk rāt” [A Summer Night]; tr. by Snehal Shingavi as “A Summer’s Evening,” The Annual of Urdu Studies (Madison), 22 (2008), 247-52; “Phir yē hangāma …” [The Same Tumult …]; tr. by Snehal Shingavi as “The Same Trouble … ,” The Annual of Urdu Studies (Madison), 22 (2008), 253-58; “Dulārī” [Darling]; and “Jannat kī

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story and a one-act play, often mistakenly called a short story by uninformed critics and scholars who clearly have not read the volume, which, truth be told, has until recently been extremely difficult to find. In these works the young authors took on nearly everyone and everything in Indo-Muslim society, starting with Allah himself, Islamic traditions, feudal privilege and mores, and deceitful, sexually repressed clerics, one of whom, dreaming of having sex with a houri, has a nocturnal emission upon the Qurʿan. They also lampoon clueless, chauvinistic husbands, one of whom, a villager, leaves his wife in the busy Delhi railway station while he goes off to lunch with a friend, and another who, despite doctor’s orders, insists on impregnating his young, sickly wife, who has borne him daughters, in hopes of having a son. In what is very likely a bit of self-mockery of Zaheer and Mah­ muduzzafar themselves, they even ridiculed so-called enlightened ‘England-returned,’ western-educated men who seem to leave their ‘enlightenment’ at India Gate when they return home. The pieces offer sympathetic portrayals of wives abused by indifference, neglect, or constant child-bearing, servant girls satisfying the sexual needs of the spoiled, sole son in the wealthy household, and prostitutes and abandoned wives or single mothers who are unable to answer the wails of their hungry children for food during nights of winter rain. The book stirred up considerable controversy, despite its extremely limited distribution.5 News of it spread mostly by word of mouth, and those who denounced it loudest knew of its contents almost entirely through hearsay. Because of the considerable religious, and subsequently political, turmoil it caused, the book was quickly banned by United Provinces officials and all available copies confiscated. Reac­ tions to it were frenzied and vicious: ceremonial burnings of the volume occurred, and contests were held in newspapers to see what baśārat” [Vision of Heaven]; tr. by Munibur Rahman and Carlo Coppola as “Vision of Paradise,” Journal of South Asian Literature, 22:1 (1987), 185-88. Ahmed Ali’s stories are “Mahāvaŧōñ kī ēk rāt” [A Night of Winter Rains]; tr. by Tahira Naqvi, Journal of South Asian Literature, 33:1-2/34:1-2 (1998-99), 195-99; also tr. by Snehal Shingavi, The Annual of Urdu Studies 22 (2008), 240-46; “Bādil nahīñ ātē” [Clouds Do Not Come]; tr. by Tahir Naqvi as “Clouds Donʾt Come,” Journal of South Asian Literature, 33:1-2/34:1-2 (1998-99), 200-201. 5   For discussions of the controversy surrounding the publication of this volume, see my “The Angārē Group: The Enfants Terribles of Urdu Literature,” Annual of Urdu Studies (Chicago), 1 (1981), 57-69; Shabana Mahmud, “Angāre and the ­Founding of the Progressive Writers’ Association,” Modern Asian Studies 30:2 (1996), 447-67; and Amardeep Singh, “Progressivism and Modernism in South Asian Fiction: 1930-1970,” Literature Compass, 7:9 (Sept. 2010) 836-50.

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would be the appropriate punishment for the four heretics who defamed Islam, the Prophet, and the entire Muslim community. Vari­ ous suggested methods of debasement and torture always ended in death. As a result of this ban, which is still in effect today, copies of the book have become very rare. In fact, I was unable to locate a copy while doing my dissertation research in India. I finally received a copy several years later, courtesy of a close friend who, in the dark of night, personally photographed, developed, and printed a copy of the volume as 5”X7” photographs at the Mathematics Department of Aligarh Muslim University. That original copy had been clandestinely spirited by train to Aligarh from Lucknow—a distance of over 200 miles—by another friend, who, wishing to distance himself as quickly as possible from the intended reproduction of the volume, then took the train back to Lucknow that same day. The book was, and still is, highly toxic, though it was bravely reprinted—not in South Asia, but in a very small, out-of-the-way town in Sweden—in 1988 and in a Hindi transliteration in 1995.6 In short, Angārē did not merely transition Urdu literature, and with it, Indo-Muslim culture, into a Marxist-shaded, twentieth-century modernity, challenging the validity of contemporary middle- and upper-class Indo-Muslim morality and mores, and even Islam itself. Angārē jettisoned them there. The writers came under considerable hostile public scrutiny and, according to Ali, at times feared for their lives. Undaunted, they denounced their critics and announced the formation of “a League of Progressive authors” in the Leader of Allahabad on 5 April 1933. In the midst of the turmoil, Zaheer’s family hustled him back to England to study law at Lincoln’s Inn, Zaheer having secured a promise of marriage from Rashid Jahan. According to Ali, he left her ‘in the care of his friend’ Mahmuduzzafar. As it turned out, a more serious romance developed between Rashid Jahan and Mahmuduzzafar, and they were married in 1934, the couple taking up residence in Amritsar,

6   Angārē: ēk jāʿiżah [Embers: A Review], ed. Shabana Mahmud (Sigtuna, Sweden: Bokforlag Kitabiat, 1988). In addition to the stories, this volume also contains material from Urdu- and English-language newspapers and other sources dealing with the post-publication controversy. Curiously, the place of publication of this volume is indicated with brackets in online university library catalogs as [London]. Also: Angārē [Embers], tr. and ed. Shakil Siddiqi (Allahabad: Parimal Prakashan, 1995). This is basically a Hindi transliteration of the work.

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Mahmuduzzafar as a professor and administrator at M.A.O. College, and Rashid Jahan practicing medicine in the inner city. In my several extended interviews with Ali about the Progressive Writers’ Association, I found that, for reasons I do not fully understand, this marriage did not set well with him. From what I have been able to deduce from casual, desultory remarks he made to me on several occasions regarding this love triangle, I have been left with a profound sense that this marriage occasioned the first of two cracks—both related to the notion of abandonment—in Ali and Zaheer’s otherwise solid, mutually respectful friendship. First, Ali seems to have felt that Zaheer had essentially left Rashid Jahan behind, had abandoned her to Mahmuduzzafar, an interloper, the weakest link in their literary undertaking, whom Ali seems not to have liked very much, for whatever reason(s). My speculation is that, consequently, Ali lost respect for Sajjad Zaheer the man. Second, Ali may have harbored some feelings of resentment towards the patrician Zaheer, the group’s ostensible leader, major contributor, publisher, and financial backer, for leaving India and returning to England (via Switzerland for rest from exhaustion or possible tuberculosis), essentially abandoning the other three to face the social, political, literary, and religious fallout—including death threats—which followed the book’s publication. This resentment showed itself in several incidents he related to me, one example of which will suffice. When the public reactions to book started to turn ugly, Zaheer’s mother tried to blame Ali for the situation. She had shouted at him—(here, Ali’s English translation of her Urdu, she using the familiar tum form of ‘you,’ he the formal āp)—“Thou rogue, thou hast spoilt [i.e., ruined] my son!” To which Ali said he replied, “Not this thou; your son has spoiled this thou!”7 These interpersonal entanglements and feelings, which have not been addressed before, must, I feel, stand alongside other ‘official,’ public, literary, and political reasons both men, and others, have offered for their estrangement. Ali became a Lecturer in English at Allahabad University and later at his alma mater, Lucknow University. He continued to write fiction, publishing his first two of three short-story collections, together with his first work, a short story, to be published in England in the Left Review.

  “Interview: Ahmed Ali,” Journal of South Asian Literature, 33:1-2/34:12 (199899), 141. The interview is dated 3 Aug. 1975. 7

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In England Zaheer pursued his law studies, followed by a course in journalism, and continued his association with leftist Indian students at Oxbridge and the University of London, most notably with the budding novelist Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004), who was connected to the Bloomsbury Group through his work as a book reviewer for T. S. Eliot’s Criterion magazine. Together, Zaheer and Anand formed the London-based Indian Progressive Writers Association, which held its first meeting in the back room of the Nanking Restaurant in Bloomsbury very likely on the evening of 24 November 1934.8 This London group developed a manifesto which went through various versions, iterations, and revisions. In its final form, it espoused very broad, humanistic, leftward-leaning sentiments: the importance of literature in a free, democratic society, the responsibility of writers to challenge reactionary and retrograde forces in society, the role of writers in shaping the social and political fabric of a nation, the need for support, both moral and financial, for writers, etc., etc. These concepts were also being expressed widely among many writers and intellectuals internationally. The manifesto was eventually published in both India—in a Hindi, not Urdu, translation—and in English in Great Britain. This period witnessed the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the fear of its breaking out in Spain. To focus world attention on these ominous signs, a group of major French writers—André Gide (18681951), Henri Barbusse (1873-1935), Romain Rolland (1866-1944), and André Malraux (1901-1976)—organized with substantial help from Moscow the International Congress for the Defence of Culture in Paris on the sweltering days of 21-26 June 1935. The intent was to organize and promote solidarity among writers against the fascist threat. The list of speakers and attendees at this congress included some of the most famous writers of the day from over fifteen countries: Forster, Huxley, Ehrenberg, Mann, Pasternak, to name but a few. Among the 4000 or so attendees who crammed and squeezed into 8   For a thorough treatment of this European phase of the Progressive Movement, see my “The All-India Progressive Writers’ Association: The European Phase,” Marxist Influences and South Asian Literature, 1-34. Two important studies of this general period are Khizar Humayun Ansari, The Emergence of Socialist Thought Among North Indian Muslims, 1917-1947 (Lahore: Book Traders, 1990) and Talat Ahmed, Literature and Politics in the Age of Nationalism: The Progressive Episode in South Asia, 1932-56 (New Delhi: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2009).

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the Palais de la Mutualité, an Art Deco building in the Latin Quarter that had the seating capacity for only half that number, were two young, lesser luminaries, Sajjad Zaheer and Mulk Raj Anand. With encouragement from various British and French writers, these two attendees began to organize writers in India. To this end, Zaheer—who seems to have gotten over his loss of Rashid Jahan— wrote his fellow Angārē-wallahs to start the groundwork for the establishment of the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association. They did. He returned to India in November 1935 and, with the help of the three others, contacted or visited various major literary, intellectual, and political figures—Tagore, Nehru, and Gandhi himself among them— seeking support. The association’s first meeting was held on 9-10 April 1936, with the great doyen of Hindi literature, Munshi Premchand (1880-1936), delivering the major address, despite severe ill health.9 Ali, too, gave a speech setting out the broad aims of the association. In it he used algebraic formulas to illustrate a point about progressive literature. Reactions to his paper by his fellow-organizers, we learn twenty years after the fact, were roundly negative, underscoring the breach in the close friendship of Zaheer and Ali. This can be seen in the manner which Zaheer describes Ali’s paper in his reminiscence entitled Rōśnāʾī (Light) (or, due to the two possible readings of the Urdu “‫( ”و‬vāʾō), Rūśnāʾī, Ink, or Jottings). The most comprehensive first-person account of the Progressive Movement in Urdu literature, this work was completed while Zaheer was imprisoned in Central Jail, Macch, Baluchistan, Pakistan, from 1951 to 1955 in connection with the infamous Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and was published in 1956. Commenting on Ali’s presentation, Zaheer writes that he had used mathematical formulas to explain some literary concepts; these were “unintelligible to people of average intelligence and education.”10 He continues his personal attack by stating that Ali “could not tolerate criticism,” was prone to “jealousy,” was “convinced of his superiority over all others,” and lacked “a love of mankind, sensitive to its pain and unhappiness, and the willingness to find a solution for their amelioration.” As a result Ali was not, according to Zaheer, a progressive 9   For a discussion of this first meeting and Premchand’s address, see “­Premchand’s Address to the First All-India Progressive Writers’ Association: Some Speculations,” Journal of South Asian Literature, 21:2 (1986), 21-39. 10  Sajjad Zaheer, The Light: A History of the Movement for Progressive Literature in the Indo-Pak Subcontinent, tr. by Amina Azfar (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 68.

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and “gradually receded into his shell of egoism, and disappeared from the literary world.”11 Moreover, Zaheer indicates—with what seems considerable relish—that the outspoken and irrepressible Rashid Jahan (to my mind, the most interesting and probably the most intelligent member of the Angārē group) later mocked Ali’s mathematical formulas during a post-mortem she, Zaheer, and Mahmuduzzafar held after the conference.12 While I can personally (and strongly) attest to the assertion that Ali could not tolerate criticism, anyone who has followed his career can only disagree with Zaheer’s assertion that he “disappeared from the literary world.” The author of three volumes of Urdu short stories, many of which he translated into English (and in one of which Sajjad Zaheer even appears as a character), a novella, his masterpiece, the novel Twilight in Delhi, published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s prestigious Hogarth Press in 1940 to considerable critical acclaim in Great Britain and today considered a major work in the corpus of South Asian fiction in English, his several volumes of translations of Urdu poetry, as well as his own poetry in English, and a translation of the Qurʿan—no, he had hardly disappeared, except perhaps in the minds of those with whom he had a fundamental disagreement about the nature and function of art. What, one might ask, was going on here? Why this rupture in a close, deep friendship and the historic literary collaboration of these two men? I have already touched on the matter of the Angārē love triangle. In addition, it turned out that during his second period in England, Zaheer developed views which were even more deeply colored by his increasingly close affiliation with the Communist Party of Great Britain and, on his return to India, the Communist Party of India. Both groups were, with regard to writers and artists, conforming to the requirements of socialist realism, a Stalin-supported, Soviet literary doctrine which demanded that art be a handmaiden to communism. It became official state policy in 1932 with the establishment of the Union of Soviet Writers to control the output of authors. It was rubber-stamped at the Congress of Socialist Writers in 1934 and was ruthlessly enforced in the Soviet Union in all spheres of artistic endeavor. According to its dictates, (1) art must be proletarian, that is, 11 12

  Zaheer, The Light, 64.   Zaheer, The Light, 74.

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relevant to the lives of peasants and workers, and understandable to them; (2) it must be typical, that is, depicting themes and scenes familiar to the everyday life of the proletariat; (3) it must also be realistic in the representational sense (read: no strange or idiosyncratic ‘stuffʾ— especially sex—as found in the various ‘-isms’ cutting-edge and popular at the time such as surrealism or expressionism, or overly in­­tellectual literary strategies, such as stream-of-consciousness or unreliable narrators). Finally, (4) art must be partisan and supportive of the aims of the State and the Party. In short, artists and writers were to be propagandists. Strangely, though, Zaheer did not seem to conform to these dicta in his writing. The characters in his short stories are not peasants or workers, but rather lower-middle and middle class, or even elites. In his novella, Landan kī ēk rāt (A Night in London, 1938), the various Indian and British student characters studying in London at the time do not qualify as proletarians, though in the second chapter, which takes place in a pub, the two English workers, Tom and Jim—whom the Indian protagonists, Azam and Rao, meet and with whom they talk about Indian politics—do meet the proletarian standard.13 In fact, the friendly and respectful Tom seems to be something of a blue-collar intellectual. It took Ali many years to rebut Zaheer’s remarks, which could be construed as an attempt to write Ali out of the early history of the Progressive Movement. Ali responded in the important, previously quoted essay, “The Progressive Writers’ Movement and Creative Writers in Urdu” (1974). He writes that Zaheer’s Rūśnāʾī (he preferred this slightly pejorative pronunciation of the title, even mischievously suggesting to translate it as ‘Ink Smatterings’) “eschews the real beginnings” of the Progressive movement. It is “one-sided and blackens out even outstanding ‘pro­gressive’ works,” including, of course, many of his own. Zaheer’s account is “colored by personal and pathological considerations.”14 Stating that he does not want to assume the same tone or attitude Zaheer has taken, Ali takes off the gloves and does exactly that, giving his version of the start of the Progressive Movement: not the 1934 13   This novella will appear in an English translation by Bilal Hashmi (New York University) from HarperCollins India in 2011; I have provided an afterword for it. 14   Ali, “The Progressive Writers’ Movement,” 43. Ali’s use of the word “pathological” here is, ironic, for when I interviewed Zaheer in New Delhi on 20 July 1968, he referred to Ali not only as “very difficult” but as “very paranoid” as well.

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meeting in London or the 1936 Lucknow meeting, as Zaheer insists, but with the publication of Angārē, in 1932, a volume which, strangely enough, Zaheer mentions only once, on page 6, of Rōśnāʾī. Certainly this could not have been an oversight. I submit that it was highly likely that Zaheer wished to distance himself from that book and its aftermath, a process which others, I believe, continue to attempt even today.15 Ali, on the other hand, speaks out passionately, even poetically, for the Angārē quartet: [W]e shared a love of art and literature and, inspired by the youthful discovery of the strange new world of European culture, were filled with a zeal to change the social order and right the wrongs done to man by man. Estheticism of a creative kind was not common in India of those days, and the meeting of akin souls was not without its fullness and gratification. That age mellows down the heart’s instincts and colors everything with the falsifying light of expedience and experience had never entered or discolored our thoughts.16

He insists that the dream of the Angārē authors was to win for Urdu and India’s regional languages “the same respect, and for the Indian people the same dignity, which other civilized languages and societies have enjoyed.” Though “ardent nationalists and anti-British, Marxism was not [emphasis added] a ruling passion, though a progressive   A very recent attempt to play down Zaheer’s association with Angārē occurred when I prepared an introduction, now an afterword, to Bilal Hashmi’s excellent forthcoming translation of Landan kī ēk rāt (see Note 12 above). There I offered a rather benign, five-and-a-half-page discussion of Zaheer’s Angārē stories and the controversy which followed its publication. My whole introduction ran about twenty-five type-written pages. One of Zaheer’s daughters, who holds the copyright to her father’s literary estate, and thus the power to approve or disapprove publication of any translation, asked that my analysis be substantially reduced, suggesting that so much attention to these stories and the discussion of the post-publication turmoil were unwarranted and detracted from the main object of the introduction, the novella. Evidently she ignored, or overlooked, or possibly failed to appreciate, the various connections and associations I made between these stories and the novella, as well as the ways in which Zaheer grew and changed as a writer of fiction. But not wishing to impede in any way the publication of this translation, I reluctantly agreed, and, against my better judgment, cut my discussion of the stories down to two sentences. This daughter is in the process of publishing her father’s complete works, a welcomed, much-needed, and highly commendable undertaking in the service of not just Urdu literature, but all of all Indian literatures, provided, of course, that it is done in an objective, scholarly manner by someone qualified—not necessarily by blood—to do so. It will be interesting, and very telling, to see if and how the Angārē stories are, in fact, included and treated in Zaheer’s collected oeuvre. 16   Ali, “The Progressive Writers’ Movement,” 44. 15

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­ utlook was inherent in the revolt.” Without naming names, though o perhaps referring to Mahmuduzzafar, Ali states that “as the group expanded, leftist leanings, vague in some and pronounced in others, did become apparent, for there seemed no other way out of the social and political morass.”17 Ali then indicates that there were two different parts to the Pro­ gressive Movement: the “creative section,” to which he belonged, and the “organizational section”: The traits that distinguished the writings of the creative section of the movement, however, were realism, an awareness of social, moral, and intellectual backwardness, the exposure of the hold of superstitious beliefs and practices of society, and a strong desire to rid that society of everything which cramped the speculative mind and upheld the dignity and rights of many by focusing attention on the hungry and exploited. Some went a long way with us; others only tried.18

The “others” he refers to here are his fellow-contributors to Angārē. Then, as if to explicitly put Zaheer and his literary talent in this latter category of those who “only tried,” Ali states, “Romantic tendencies persisted, as in a good deal of poetry and even in that unsuccessful attempt at a novel [sic], Landan ki ek rat (A Night in London; 1937) by Sajjad Zaheer himself, which discredits his own credo of a Marxist line in progressivism.”19 Ali’s distinction between the “creative” and the “organizational” sections of the Progressive Movement is important and contains a number of implications. First, it suggests that he was the only bona fide writer in the Angārē group, and, second, that Zaheer, lacking literary skills, abandoned creative writing to assume a ‘lower’ level of involvement, that of an organizer, and a political organizer at that. In short, Zaheer had become an apparatchik, or, in the context of literature, a hack. Elsewhere Ali also downplays the literary bona fides of both Rashid Jahan, his close friend, and Mahmuduzzafar, for whom he seems to bear some animus, very likely for wooing Rashid Jahan away from Sajjad Zaheer. For example, Ali incorrectly states in an interview that Rashid Jahan’s two contributions to Angārē were her first literary attempts, when, in fact, she had published a short story in English almost a decade earlier and, in the interim, despite her   Ali, “The Progressive Writers’ Movement,” 44.   Ali, “The Progressive Writers’ Movement,” 45. 19   Ali, “The Progressive Writers’ Movement,” 45. 17 18

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medical studies, had written, but did not publish, various stories in Urdu.20 He also asserts that Mahmuduzzafar’s story in Angārē, “Javānmardī” (Manhood), was, in fact, first written in English, then translated into Urdu by Zaheer.21 Clearly, both men have axes to grind. Zaheer, it seems, wishes to minimize, or even eliminate, Ali’s involvement in the founding of the Progressive Movement, perhaps in an attempt to distance himself from Ali, whose writings were not only being published in India and England, but which were, in light of socialist realism, defective. And there is no gainsaying the fact that Zaheer did dominate the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association from its inception until his death in 1973, through its various vicissitudes, which even involved his going to prison. And everyone who reads about the Progressive Movement in Urdu goes to his Rōśnāʾī, replete with many names, dates, and incidents, to get an understanding and details as to how the movement arose, developed, and eventually failed. One could even make the case that Zaheer, in spite of his limited creative literary output (five short stories, a one-act play, a novella, and a volume of poems, together with some translations and literary criticism as well), was one of the most powerful men in twentieth-century Urdu letters. Ali, on the other hand, did pursue a successful literary career, one of several during his lifetime: a high-level Pakistani government ­official, diplomat, and businessman. A man of great pride and quick 20   For information on this story and Rashid Jahan’s life and literary career generally, see Sajida Zubair’s and my “Rashid Jahan: Urdu Literature’s First ‘Angry Young Woman,ʾ” Journal of South Asian Literature, 22:1 (1987), 166-83. A major part of this issue of the journal is devoted to a tribute to Rashid Jahan and contains two of her short stories, “Sight Seeing Trip to Delhi,” 131-32, tr. by Asad ur Rahman (this story appeared in Angārē [Embers]) and “That One,” 133-34, tr. by Khurshid Mirza (aka Sajida Zubair); and a play: “Woman: A One-Act Drama,” 135-51, tr. by Steven M. Poulos. Articles include Sajida Zubair’s, “Rashid Jahan: My Āpābī [Big Sister],” 152-57. Sajida Zubair was Rashid Jahan’s younger sister. This essay served as the impetus for Mrs. Zubair to write her autobiography, A Woman of Substance:The Memoirs of Begum Khurshid Mirza,1918-1989, a chapter of which is entitled “My Sister, Rashid Jahan 1905-1952” (New Delhi: Zubaan and Kali for Women, 2005/ Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 86-104. Mrs. Zubair is the distinguished Pakistani actress Khurshid Mirza; her name as a film star in pre-Partition India was Renuka Devi. Finally, the tribute also contains my “Interview with Dr. Hamida Saiduzzafar,” 158-65. Dr. Saiduzzafar was Rashid Jahan’s sister-in-law and very close friend, the sister of Mahmuduzzafar. Also see: Idris Ahmad Khan, Đākŧar raśīd jahāñ, ħayāt aur khidmāt [Doctor Rashid Jahan: Life and Accomplishments] (New Delhi: Maudarn Pablishing Haus, 1996). 21   For his opinion of Mahmuduzzafar as a writer, see my “Interview: Ahmed Ali,” 140.

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temper (to which Zaheer alludes repeatedly throughout the early pages of Rōśnāʾī, and about which he warned me in our interview), Ali clearly did not relish being “blackened out” of the picture of the early Progressive Movement. Ali has contended that ‘progressive literature’ and ‘Marxist socialist realist literature,’ while sharing some features, are quite different. He saw himself as a ‘progressive’ and not a ‘Marxist’ writer. I submit that he deserves credit for his contributions, both literary and organizational, to the movement, certainly more than he is generally given in what has been written about the Progressive Movement based on Sajjad Zaheer’s clearly biased account in Rōśnāʾī and by writers and critics who use this memoir as their sole or major source of information. This point is all the more pressing today with what seems to be a renewed interest in and re-evaluation of the Progressive Movement among many major critics and historians of Urdu literature. This point needs to be made all the more forcefully with the appearance of the 2006 English translation of Rōśnāʾī, which now makes Zaheer’s view of events available to a much wider audience than just Urdu-wallahs. How much more credit does Ali deserve? Certainly more than the derision he receives in Zaheer’s account. But just how much? I will leave that for other literary historians and critics to determine. Whatever their answers to these questions in the future, they will not be able to deny the force with which Angārē and these two feuding writers influenced the course of twentieth-century Indo-Muslim ­culture. Bibliography Ali, Ahmed. 1988. “The Progressive Writers’ Movement and Creative Writers in Urdu.” Marxist Influences and South Asian Literature. Ed. Carlo Coppola. 2nd ed. Delhi: Chanakya Publications. ———. 1998-99. “Clouds Don’t Come.” Tr. by Tahira Naqvi. Journal of South Asian Literature. 33:1-2/34:1-2. 200-201. ———. 1998-99a. “A Night of Winter Rains.” Tr. by Tahira Naqvi. Journal of South Asian Literature. 33:1-2/34:1-2. 195-99. ———. 2008. “A Night of Winter Rains.” Tr. by Snehal Shingavi. The Annual of Urdu Studies (Madison). 22. 240-46. Ali, Ahmed and Sajjad Zaheer. 1932. Angārē: Das mukhta#ar kahānīōn kā majmūah [Embers: A Collection of Ten Short Stories]. Lucknow: Nizami Press. Coppola, Carlo. 1981. “The Angārē Group: The Enfants Terribles of Urdu Literature,” Annual of Urdu Studies (Chicago). 1. 57-69. ———. 1986. “Premchand’s Address to the First All-India Progressive Writers’ Association: Some Speculations.” Journal of South Asian Literature. 21:2. 21-39.

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———. 1987. Interview: Dr. Hamida Saiduzzafar. Journal of South Asian Literature .22:1. 158-65. ———. 1998-99. Interview: Ahmed Ali. Journal of South Asian Literature. 23:1-2/24:12. 117-94. Coppola, Carlo and Sajida Zubair. 1987. “Rashid Jahan: Urdu Literature’s First ‘Angry Young Woman.’” Journal of South Asian Literature. 22:1. 166-83. Jahan, Rashid. 1987. “Sight Seeing Trip to Delhi.” Tr. by Asad ur Rahman. Journal of South Asian Literature. 22:1. 131-32. ———. 1987a. “That One.” Trans. Khurshid Mirza. Journal of South Asian Literature. 22:1. 133-34. ———. 1987b. “Woman: A One-Act Drama.” Tr. by Steven M. Poulos. Journal of South Asian Literature. 22:1. 135-51. Khan, Idris Ahmad. 1996. Đākŧar raśīd jahāñ, ħayāt aur khidmāt [Doctor Rashid Jahan: Life and Accomplishments]. New Delhi: Maudarn Pablishing Haus. Mahmud, Shabana, ed. 1988. Angārē: ēk jāʿiżah [Embers: A Review]. Sigtuna, Sweden: Bokforlag Kitabiat. ———. 1996. “Angāre and the Founding of the Progressive Writers’ Association.” Modern Asian Studies. 30:2. 447-67. Siddiqi, Shakil, ed. 1995. Angārē [Embers]. Allahabad: Parimala Prakashan. Singh, Amardeep. 2010. “Progressivism and Modernism in South Asian Fiction: 1930-1970.” Literature Compass. 7:9. 836-50. Zaheer, Sajjad. 1987. “Vision of Paradise.” Journal of South Asian Literature. Tr. by Munibur Rahman and Carlo Coppola. 22:1. 185-88. ———. 2006. The Light: A History of the Movement for Progressive Literature in the Indo-Pak Subcontinent. Tr. by Amina Azfar. Karachi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008a. “The Same Trouble … .” Tr. by Snehal Shingavi. The Annual of Urdu Studies. 22. 253-58. ———. 2008b. “A Summer’s Evening.” Tr. by Snehal Shingavi. The Annual of Urdu Studies. 22. 247-52. ———. 2011. A Night in London. Tr. by Bilal Hashmi. New Delhi: HarperCollins. Zubair, Sajida. 1987. “Rashid Jahan: My Āpābī [Big Sister].” Journal of South Asian Literature. 22:1. 152-57.

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Index Alam II (Shah, r. 1759-1806), viii, 10, 111-112, 120, 123, 126, 128 n.58, 132, 133 n.79 ‘alams, iv, vii, 49, 52-53, 56, 57, 143, 149, 168, 170, 171, 173, 177 Ali, Ahmed, 205, 206 n.2, 207 n.4 All-India Progressive Writers’ Association, 209-211, 216 Amin al-Din A‘la (1597-1675), vii, viii, ix, 51-52, 53, 55-56, 57, 59, 147 Anand, Mulk Raj, 210, 211 Angārē (Embers), 14, 206, 208, 211, 212, 214-217 āshūrkhānās, iv, 143, 146, 154, 167, 171, 173, 177 Bahadur Shah I (r. 1707-1712)vii, 9, 88-95, 97, 123 Bahadur Shah II (r. 1837-58), vii, 101, 103-109 Banglā, 149-151, 154, 158, 159, 186 Bijapur, vii, viii, ix, 3, 7-8, 20, 35, 37-39, 40, 41, 43-46, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54-59, 165 ‘The Bodleian Painter’ (‘Ali Riza), vii, viii, ix, 38, 41-42, 44, 45, 46, 48-49, 52, 53-56, 54, 56 n. 59, 58, 59-60 Braj-bhasha/bhāṣā, 6, 8, 63-64, 65, 69, 73, 74, 75, 78, 80, 83, 84, 185 Chandni Chowk, ix, 115, 128, 131 Chowk Maidan Khan, 12, 167-168, 172, 173, 174-175, 176-177, 178, 179, 180 civilization, 3, 4, 15, 193, 194 n.17, 195197, 200 culture, Hindustani, 191 Dakanī poetry, 8, 50, 56, 58, 65-66, 67, 83 Delhi, v, vii, viii, 2-3, 8, 10, 11 n.21, 12-15, 25, 28, 30-35, 39, 41, 52, 58, 61-68, 69-70, 72-73, 78, 82-83, 83-86, 89, 93-94, 99-102, 106, 108-109, 111115, 116, 117, 120, 122, 123, 125-129, 130, 131, 132-135, 140, 144, 146, 149150, 156-158, 161-163, 165, 173, 184, 186-187, 189, 191, 193, 197-203, 199,

201, 202-203, 205, 207, 210, 213, 215, 217-218 dervishes, ix, 18, 22, 30 n.33, 38-39, 48-55 see also jogi Dihlavī/Dakanī language, 61, 66, 67 n.17, 78, 83 Dravidian traditions, 145, 157 ethnographies, 7, 10 n.20, 17-18, 22, 23, 29-30, 31-33, 113-114, 121, 124 Gentil, Jean Baptiste, viii, ix, 10, 112, 120-125, 129, 130 n.68, 134 n.82 ghazals, 8, 19, 20, 21, 35, 70-71, 74-77, 78, 79 gopurāms, 158, 159 Gosains, 11, 142-144, 146, 151-154, 155 Gujaratis, 11, 142-143, 146, 172 n.20 Hindustan, 4, 12-14, 30, 189-192, 198, 200 Hindustani music, 6, 181 Husaini Alam, 12, 22, 167-168, 171-175, 178-182 Hyderabad, v, viii, ix, x, 3, 6, 10-12, 50, 59, 139-163, 165-189, 192, 197 Chowk Maidan Khan neighourhood, 12, 167-168, 172, 173, 174-175, 176-177, 178, 179, 180 Husaini Alam neigbourhood, 12, 22, 167-168, 171-175, 178-182 Karwan area, viii, ix, 142-143, 146147, 172 n. 20 Shahalibanda neighbourhood, 12, 167-175, 181-182, 183 Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II (r. 1580-1627), vii, viii, ix, 37-39, 41-48, 52-58 Indianization, 68 Indo-Persian culture, 3-4, 17-18, 22-23, 31, 37, 113-114, 165 International Congress for the Defence of Culture, 210 intertextuality, 5, 8, 70, 75, 76

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Jahan, Rashid, 206, 208-209, 211-212, 215-216 Jains, 30, 142-143, 144 jogi, 18, 22-23, 25, 27-28, 31 see also dervishes Karwan, viii, ix, 142-143, 146-147, 172 n. 20 Kayasths, 12, 143, 166-169, 170, 171-185, 186 Kishangarh, 8, 62-63, 64 n.8, 69-70, 72, 79-80, 80, 83-84

Nidha Mal, vii, viii, ix, 97, 100, 112, 117120, 129-130 A Night in London, 213, 215 Nizams, of Hyderabad, 3, 11, 140-142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 149, 156, 165, 168, 169 n.10, 170-172, 175-178, 180, 182183, 189 Oriental, 12, 13, 22, 26, 31, 34-35, 43, 53, 59, 143, 157, 162, 173, 190, 193, 194, 200, 203 Orientalists, 193-194, 197 n.20

Le Bon, Gustave, 197-199, 203 Lucknow, v, ix, 2-3, 7-8, 12-15, 37-43, 46, 49, 58-59, 101, 106, 107, 120, 123-124, 127, 135, 137, 189-190, 192-193, 195, 198-203, 205-206, 208-209, 213, 217

Persian poetry, 19, 23, 25, 29, 34, 69 Persianization, 62, 67, 68, 83 Polier, Antoine Louis Henri, 10, 38-39, 49, 111 n.2, 112, 120, 125-132 Premchand, Munshi, 211

Mahmuduzzafar Khan, Sahabzadah, 13, 206, 207, 208-209, 212, 215, 216 majzubs, viii, ix, 55, 57, 58 Malwala family, 168, 172, 177-178, 179, 180 Malwala palace, 176, 177, 178 maṇḍapa, x Marwaris, 11, 143, 146, 150, 153-154, 155-156, 160, 161-163, 172 n.20 merchant-bankers, 11, 139 n.3, 140-144, 145-161 Mihr Chand, viii, ix, 39, 49-50, 52, 57-58, 127-128, 137 Mir Kalan Khan, 38, 39-41, 42, 43, 47 Mughal, ix, 1-2, 7-11, 13-14, 17-18, 20, 22-23, 25-27, 29-32, 34-35, 37, 39-40, 43-45, 49-50, 53-54, 56, 58-60, 62-63, 65, 67-69, 82, 84-85, 87-98, 100-103, 105-109, 111-128, 130, 132-137, 140142, 145-146, 148-150, 152, 154, 158, 161-163, 165, 171, 184, 186, 200 Muhammad Shah (r. 1719-1748), vii, ix, 9, 39, 67, 69, 89, 93, 95-101, 108, 113, 118-119, 131, 136, 153 n.44 Mulk Raj, 210

Rekhta, 8, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67-68, 69, 70, 71 n.35, 72, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81-82, 83, 84 Rōśnā’ī (Light), 211, 214, 216, 217

tahzib (culture), 13, 192, 193, 194-196, 200-201, 202 tamaddun (culture), 12, 13, 189-190, 193, 194-195, 196-197, 198, 199, 200201, 202, 203 Twilight in Delhi, 212

Nāgrīdās (Savant Singh), 8, 63-65, 69-71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78-82, 83-84

Walī Dakanī, 8, 62, 64-69, 70-72, 73, 74-77, 78, 79, 83, 84

serrishtahdars, 170, 171-172, 174-175, 180, 183 Shahalibanda, 12, 167-175, 181-182, 183 Shahjahanabad (Delhi), vii, 10, 111-115, 120-121, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 146 n.24, 149 n.33, 156 n.55 Shahpur Hillock, vii, ix, 50, 50-52, 51, 53, 54-56, 55-56, 57 shahrāshūb poetry, 7, 17, 21, 23-25, 27, 28, 29 Sharar, Abdul Halim, 12-13, 189, 191196, 198 n.27, 199-204 śikhara, 157, 160 suratvals, 173, 175

Zaheer, Sajjad, 13-14, 205-217 Zaidan, Jurji, 194, 197-198, 199, 203

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2.1  Painting of a youth with a bow. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of John Goelet, 1958.78.1.

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2.2  Mulla under a tree with a soldier and a musician. © The Trustees of The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (In 07B.26). 

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2.3  Seated man with gray skin and two white dogs. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M.   Sackler Museum, Gift of John Goelet, 2002.50.29.

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2.4  Kanphata yogi. ©The Trustees of The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (In 44.3).

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3.1  “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600–10. Courtesy of The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg (Dorn 489, folio 69v).

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3.2  “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). Bijapuri (?), earlyto-mid seventeenth century. Courtesy of The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg (Dorn 489, folio 70r).

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3.3  “Ibrahim feeding a hawk”. The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600–10. Earl of Harrowby Collection, Sandon Hall, Staffordshire. Courtesy of the Earl and Countess of Harrowby.

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3.4  Detail of Ibrahim and inscription, “Ibrahim feeding a hawk”. The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600–10. Earl of Harrowby Collection, Sandon Hall, Staffordshire. Courtesy of the Earl and Countess of Harrowby.

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3.5  Inscription on the façade of the tomb of Amin al-Din Aʿla, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Photograph by the author (2010).

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3.6  Northeastern corner (between #1 and #2 in b/w 3.7), Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Photograph by the author (2007). The dome in the background is that of the tomb of Shah Miranji and Shah Burhan al-Din Janam (#3 in b/w 3.7).

3.7  ʿAlams and standards in the interior of the tomb of Amin al-Din, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Photograph by Ameen Hullur on behalf of the author (2010), reproduced with the kind permission of Sayyid Shah Asadullah Husayni Chishti Jagirdar.

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5.1  Bahadur Shah I with sons and a grandson. Delhi, c. 1710? San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 368.

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5.2  Farrukhsiyar at the jharoka. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 370.

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5.3  Darbār of Muhammad Shah. By Nidha Mal, c. 1735. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 378.

5.4  Muhammad Shah greeting an officer from a palanquin. By Faqirullah. Delhi,   c. 1720–25. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 377.

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5.5  Akbar Shah II enthroned. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 401.

5.6  Darbār of Bahadur Shah II. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 402.

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5.7  Imaginary darbār of Akbar I. From a 1843 Genealogy of Amir Timur. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 405, fol. 59r.

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6.1  Shahjahanabad to Kandahar, detail. Anon, c. 1770–1780. Paper, approx. 25 × 2000 cm. British Library, London. 0.1a Pers. Mss. 4725. Image Courtesy, Susan Gole.

6.2  Ali Mardan Khan Canal. Anon, c. 1760. Paper on cloth. 43 × 1250 cm. Andhra Pradesh State Archives, Hyderabad, India. Copyright Courtesy Susan Gole.

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6.3  Ali Mardan Khan Canal, detail. Anon, c. 1760. Paper on cloth. 43 × 1250 cm. Andhra Pradesh State Archives, Hyderabad, India. Copyright Courtesy Susan Gole.

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6.4  Map of the Red Fort, by Nidha Mal, 1750. Gouache on Paper, 83.5 × 76.5 cm. British Library, APAC, Add. Or. 1790.

6.8  “A hunt in the park at Faizabad by the reigning Emperor Shah Alam,” detail from Recueil de toutes sortes (1774) made for Jean Baptiste Gentil. Watercolor on paper, 37 × 53.5 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. IS 25: 8-1980 (folio 8).

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6.9  Shah Alam II seated in a throne overlooking a river. Style of Dip Chand, 1764. Opaque Watercolor, Image: 19.5 × 14.7 cm Mounted: 24.2 × 19 cm) British Library, APAC, Add. Or. 5694.

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6.10  Map of the Red Fort, after Nidha Mal, c. 1774. Watercolor on paper, 82 × 75 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. AL 1754.

6.13  View of the Red Fort, attributed to Mihr Chand, 1780-1790. Opaque watercolor on paper, 29.2 × 41.5 cm; 32.5 × 44.5 cm. British Library, APAC, Add. Or. 948.

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6.14  Shah Alam’s Return to Delhi, c. 1776. Watercolor on paper, 46.5 × 67.5 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. IM.59-1922

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7.1  Bhagwan Das Pavilion. Karwan, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Interior from east. Mid-18th century. Photograph by author.

7.2  Amin Haveli. Vaso, Gujarat. Central courtyard. 1875. Photograph by author.

7.3  Bhagwan Das Pavilion (Karwan, Hyderabad). Wood carving details. Photograph by author.

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7.4  Matha of Narsingh Girji, entrance lintel (Shah Inayat Ganj, Hyderabad).  Photograph by author.

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7.5  Bansilal-ki Devri, upper floor (Begum Bazaar, Hyderabad). Photograph by author.

7.6  Ganeriwala Haveli. Fatehpur, Rajasthan. Small inner courtyard. Mid- or late 19th century. Photograph by author.

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7.7  Sri Rangji Temple. Pushkar, Rajasthan. Principal shrine area. Founded 1850. Photograph by author.

BLACK AND WHITE PLATES

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3.1  “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). Mir Kalan Khan, Faizabad, c. 1770. © British Library Board, J. 15, 8.

3.2  Detail of lower left corner, “Ibrahim’s con­ sort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600–10. Courtesy of the The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg (Dorn 489, folio 69v).

3.3  Detail of lower right corner, “Ibrahim’s consort watching a maid killing a snake” (“Maid killing a snake”). Bijapuri, early-tomid seventeenth century. Courtesy of The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg (Dorn 489, folio 70r).

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3.4  Eighteenth (?) century frame preserving “Ibrahim feeding a hawk”. The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1600–10. Earl of Harrowby Collection, Sandon Hall, Staffordshire. Courtesy of the Earl and Countess of Harrowby.

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3.5  “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb” (“Dervish receiving a visitor”). The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1610–27. Courtesy of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS. Douce Or.b.2, fol. 1r).

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3.6  “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb” (“Dervish receiving a visitor”). Mihr Chand, Faizabad or Lucknow, c. 1765–76. Copyright Museum für Islamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (J. 4594, fol. 40). Photograph by author.

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3.7 Aerial view of the Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Google Earth with graphics by the author. 1: north outer gate; 2: inner gate; 3: tomb of Shah Miranji and Burhan al-Din Janam; 4: tomb of Amin al-Din; 5: west gate. Arrows indicate the standard approach from Bijapur, entering through #1.

3.8  Tomb of Amin al-Din Aʿla (#4 in b/w 3.7), Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Photograph by the author (2010).

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3.9  Northeastern corner (between #1 and #2 in b/w 3.7), Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Photograph by author (2010). The dome in the background is that of the tomb of Shah Miranji and Shah Burhan al-Din Janam (#3 in b/w 3.7). The gate on the far right is #2 in b/w 3.7.

3.10  Northeastern corner (between #1 and #2 in b/w 3.7), Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Photograph by author (2007). The dome in the background is that of the tomb of Amin al-Din (see b/w 3.8).

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3.11  Whitewashed “weights”, Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Photograph by author (2010).

3.12  Detail of Ibrahim, “Ibrahim visiting a majzūb” (“Dervish receiving a visitor”). The Bodleian Painter, Bijapuri, c. 1610–27. Courtesy of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS. Douce Or.b.2, fol. 1r)

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3.13  Details of roundels with the names of the Twelve Imams. Inscription on the façade of the tomb of Amin al-Din (see b/w 3.8), Shahpur Hillock dargāh, Bijapuri. Photograph by the author (2010).

5.1  Darbār of ʿAlamgir, c. 1660. Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar, MS.54.2007.

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5.2  Six Mughal princes. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 365.

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5.3  Muhammad Shah at the jharoka. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 376.

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5.4  Muhammad Shah with consort and female dancers. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, I.S. 133-1964, fol. 64b.

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5.5  Akbar Shah II greets the British Resident. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 394.

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5.6  “Amir Timur Sahib Qiran”. From a 1834 Genealogy. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III collection, 1990: 405, fol. 51r.

6.5  Muhammad Shah enthroned on a terrace at night with his officers. Nidha Mal, c. 1735. Opaque watercolor on paper. 32.8 cm × 42.3 cm. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney 3rd collection, 1990: 378.

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6.6  “Chadjeanabad,” [“Shahjehanabad. Emperor’s throne, howdah, canopy, insignia, chobdar, soontahburdar, jewels, kettle drums, cymbals, trumpet, flags, etc.”] from Empire Mogol divisé en 21 soubahs ou Gouvernements tiré de differens ecrivains du pais a Faizabad. (1770). Compiled for Colonel Jean Baptiste Gentil. By Faizabad artists. Watercolor and ink on paper, 38.4 × 54.5 cm. The British Library, APAC, Add. Or. 4039 folio 3.

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6.7  “The presentation of Gentil … to Shah Alam”, detail from Recueil de toutes sortes (1774) made for Jean Baptiste Gentil. Watercolor and ink on paper, 37 × 53.5 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. IS 25: 16-1980 (folio 16).

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6.11  Street plan of Chandni Chowk. Anon, c. 1774. Watercolor on paper, 140 × 31 cm. Victoria & Albert Museum, London. AL 1762.

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6.12 “Trigonometrical Survey of the Environs of Delhy or Shah Jehanabad, 1808”. British Library X/1658, size 71 × 84 cm.

7.1  Leonard Munn. Hyderabad Municipal Survey, Karwan Area, Sheet 14 (Scale 50ʹ:1ʹʹ). 1911. © Karen Leonard.

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7.2  Leonard Munn (1911). Hyderabad Municipal Survey, City Area, Sheet 10. © Karen Leonard.

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7.3  Leonard Munn (1911). Hyderabad Municipal Survey, Chadarghat/Residency, Sheet 44.   © Karen Leonard. 

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7.4  Wood carving. Paithan, Maharashtra. 18th–19th centuries. © R. S. Morwanchikar.

7.5  Matha of Narsingh Girji (destroyed). Shah Inayat Ganj, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Late 18th–20th centuries. Photograph by author.

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7.6  Jangambari matha. Benares, Uttar Pradesh. Structure today, founded 16th century. Photograph by author.

7.7  Bansilal-ki Devri. Begum Bazaar, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Ground floor. Early 19th century. Photograph by author.

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7.8  Laxman Bagh. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Market area. Early 19th century. Photograph by author.

7.9  Sri Bihariji Temple. Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan. Late 18th-early 19th century. Photograph by author.

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7.10  Sri Bihariji Temple, perimeter walls (Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan). Photograph by author.

7.11  Temple. Vijayanagara (Hampi), Karnataka. 15th century. Photograph by author.

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7.12  Sitaram Bagh. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Laxmi Temple, spire. Founded 1825. Photograph by author.

7.13  Sitaram Bagh (Hyderabad). Porch (maṇḍapa). Photograph by author.

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7.14  Sitaram Bagh (Hyderabad). Gopuram. Photograph by author.

7.15  Sitaram Bagh (Hyderabad). Sarai. Photograph by author.