Download PDF | Aparna Kapadia - In Praise of Kings_ Rajputs, Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-century Gujarat-Cambridge University Press (2018).
198 Pages
In Praise of Kings
In Praise of Kings is a study of Gujarat in the long-neglected fifteenth century. The interregnum between the Delhi sultanate and the Mughal empire has conventionally been regarded as a period of decline. By contrast, this book shows the cultural and political dynamism of an important South Asian region at this critical moment in its history.
This book highlights how, after the fall of the Delhi sultanate, the political landscape of fifteenth-century Gujarat was dominated by Rajput warrior chieftains and the Muzaffarid sultans. The interaction between these competing political players have been traditionally viewed as a clash between two religious groups. Querying this perspective, the book demonstrates how both the Rajputs and the sultans fashioned a common warrior ethos that was constructed with diverse literary and cultural elements.
Notably, the study draws on rarely used literary works in Sanskrit and Gujarati to reconstruct the royal courts of fifteenth-century Gujarat and recasts the fifteenth century as a period of creative transformations. It also questions the deeply entrenched perception that Gujarat was predominantly a land of traders and merchants. Through a close analysis of original primary sources, it shows how Gujarat’s warrior past was also integral to this region’s history and identity.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of medieval and early modern South Asian history and literary culture, as well as to those concerned with wider questions of the formation of regional traditions and identities.
Aparna Kapadia teaches History at Williams College, USA. She writes about the history of Gujarat and western India, and the cultural and intellectual histories of early modern and modern South Asia. She is also the co-editor of The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text published in 2010.
Acknowledgements
This book has been in the making for nearly a decade. When I began the project as my doctoral dissertation at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), I intended to write a history of Gujarat, a region whose pre-colonial past had received surprisingly little attention despite crucial significance in the political and economic development of India. Over the years, however, the context for the research coincided with other significant developments. In recent times, the politics of India’s medieval past has become more fiercely contested than ever before. Underpinning this contestation is a political imagination of the subcontinent’s pre-colonial history as one shaped by conflict between religious communities. Nowhere is this more evident than in Gujarat and western India. In this imagination, little space remains for an understanding of interactions between social groups as driven by multiple and overlapping motivations and affiliations set within specific historical contexts. Through a focus on a period of transitions in a richly diverse region, I hope to have broadened the space of discussion and highlighted the complex fabric of India’s pre-colonial past.
I have accumulated several debts in writing this book. My dissertation advisor, Daud Ali, helped to shape the project through the example of his own scholarship and his insightful and constructive comments on the text. I am grateful for Daud’s continued support and interest in my work. My interest in regional and cultural history began at the Centre for Historical Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Kunal Chakrabarty sparked my initial curiosity about regional narrative traditions. During the early years of my graduate study, I was also privileged to learn from scholars like Neeladri Bhattacharya, B. D. Chattopadhyaya, Vijaya Ramaswamy, Himanshu Prabha Ray and Kum Kum Roy. Fleur D’Souza and Siddhartha Menon’s engaging history classes at St Xavier’s College and Rishi Valley School respectively alerted me to the exciting possibilities of a career in the discipline.
In transforming the dissertation into a book, I have also benefitted from comments and discussions with several scholars. I am particularly grateful to Francesca Orsini for her timely and perceptive suggestions at a crucial stage. Rosalind O’Hanlon’s mentorship during my postdoctoral years at the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, helped to sharpen ideas in this monograph. Christopher Minkowski offered several suggestions for the translation of the Sanskrit works. Thanks are also due to Faisal Devji, Rachel Dwyer, Douglas Haynes and Sunil Sharma for always being generous with their scholarship, time and intellectual support. Interactions with and comments from scholars working on pre-colonial histories of South Asia — Allison Busch, Whitney Cox, Sumit Guha, Sunil Kumar, Luther Obrock, Ramya Sreenivasan, Cynthia Talbot, and Audrey Truschke, in particular — have helped to refine many of the ideas presented in this book.
Tanuja Kothiyal and Samira Sheikh read several drafts of the manuscript and offered insightful suggestions and comments. No words can adequately express my gratitude to them for their unconditional support, expertise and friendship. Marisha Kirtane and Samir Patil always responded to my unreasonable demands on their time. They provided the astute non-academic perspectives that helped to improve clarity and coherence. This book has benefitted from several conversations with Kaushik Bhaumik. I am also indebted to Prashant Kidambi who mentored this project from its inception.
I am grateful to the editorial team at Cambridge University Press for their patience. Katie Van Heest’s developmental inputs and Deborah Jones’s editorial support have immeasurably improved the outcome. Three anonymous referees for Cambridge University Press suggested ways to contextualize the ideas and arguments of this monograph. Their suggestions have sharpened the final product.
Williams College has provided a congenial intellectual environment to complete this book. My colleagues at the College, and especially the Department of History, welcomed me warmly in their midst. Their support and encouragement of my research and teaching as well as their unstinted friendship eased the challenges that accompanied the writing of this book. Thanks are also owed to friends and former colleagues at Ambedkar University, Delhi, where I took my first steps into the world of university teaching.
The initial dissertation project was supported by a fellowship from the Felix Trust. An Additional Fieldwork Grant from SOAS and an Isobel Thornley Fellowship from the Institute of Historical Research funded the later stages of dissertation research. The award of an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford allowed me the time to work on the early drafts of the manuscript. I also appreciate the support from the Hellman Fellows Fund and the Oakely Center at Williams College, which facilitated the final stages of research and writing. Williams College’s generous sabbatical leave policy provided the uninterrupted time needed to see this book to completion.
I am grateful to several libraries and archives in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States for granting me access to their resources. Thanks are due in India to the Library of the Asiatic Society and the Forbes Gujarati Sabha in Mumbai, the B. J. Institute in Ahmedabad, the Hansa Mehta Library at the M. S. University and Oriental Institute in Baroda, and the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. In the UK, I have benefitted from the repositories of the British Library (Asia and Africa Collections) and the SOAS library; and in the USA from the Library of Congress in Washington DC and the Widener Library at Harvard. I would also like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the Williams College Library, particularly to the inter-library loan service through which I was able to access a number of valuable research materials. I am grateful to Cory Campbell at the Williams College Office of Information Technology for preparing the maps.
Versions of chapters 3, 4 and 5 have been previously published. Chapter 3 appeared in After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth Century North India edited by Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh (Oxford University Press, 2014); extracts from Chapter 4 were published in The Medieval History Journal (vol. 16, issue 1, 2013), and sections of Chapter 5 in The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text edited by Edward Simpson and myself (Orient Blackswan, 2010). I am grateful to the editors and publishers for granting me permission to use this material.
I have been very fortunate to have been part of a vibrant community of scholars of South Asia in three countries. Aparna Balachandran, Preeti Chopra, Carolyn Heitmeyer, Farhana Ibrahim, Abhishek Kaicker, Aditi Saraf, Aditya Sarkar and Uditi Sen have all been wonderful interlocutors and compatriots in this journey, making every moment a worthwhile enterprise. Many other friends have also sustained me through their emotional and intellectual support. I particularly wish to thank Meera Asher, Milena Behrendt, Christophe Carvahlo, Amal Eqeiq, Jacqueline Hidalgo, Ann Leibowitz, John Lloyd, Christophe Kone, Vedica Kant, Pia Kohler, Mahesh Menon, Sudhir Sitapati, Mishka Sinha, Archana Rao, Darshak Shah and Abha Thorat-Shah. Virchand Dharamsey was always willing to share his extraordinary scholarship and knowledge of the many histories of Gujarat. Geeta Kapur and Vivan Sundaram; Arun Adarkar and Fiona Shrikhande; and Aruna and Priya D’Souza have been the most supportive and generous extended family.
My parents, and my sister Payal Kapadia, as well as Ranabir Das, have been an endless source of encouragement and inspiration. To them I remain ever-grateful. Nandita Prasad Sahai, dear friend, mentor, fellow traveler, left this world a little too soon. It is to Nandita’s memory that I dedicate this book.
Introduction
Gangadhara, a multilingual poet of the fifteenth century, having achieved renown in south India, decided to seek further glory in the faraway kingdoms of Gujarat.! From the court of King Pratapadevaraya of Vijayanagara (r. 1426-1447), he set forth on a long and arduous journey of hundreds of miles.” At the time, Gujarat roughly comprised much of the territory that is part of the state today, including the peninsulas of Saurashtra, also known as Kathiawad, and Kachchh.? Gangadhara first went on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Dwarka. Next, he proceeded to the court of Sultan Muhammad Shah IT (r. 1442-1451), at Ahmadabad. This was a flourishing city, a new capital of the Gujarat sultanate that had only recently been built by the Sultan’s father, Ahmad Shah (r. 1411-1442). At the Ahmedabad court, to the great delight of Sultan Muhammad, Gangadhara vanquished the local poets with his excellent lyrical skills. Gangadhara then went on to two other courts in the region — Champaner, to the east of the capital, and Junagadh, to its far west — composing panegyrics for the Rajput chieftains of these fort kingdoms.
In the mid-fifteenth century Gujarat was becoming well known as a place where poets and scholars were sure to find supportive audiences.’ Sanskrit continued to be popular: Gangadhara’s skills in this Indic High language were favoured not only by modest Rajput kings but also desired in the court of a Muslim sultan. At the same time, a multilingual milieu was also emerging. As political action shifted away from the subcontinent’s traditional centre, Delhi, Gujarat, an ecologically and socially diverse region, saw a variety of groups vying for political power. Poets, writers, and scribes were crucial to the ways in which these new rulers of local and regional entities imagined their polities and asserted their rights to rule in this changing political context. Gangadhara’s ability to make good in the different courts that constituted Gujarat evidence the region’s political, cultural, and literary vibrancy. Yet the century during which Gangadhara made his journey is viewed in the conventional historiography of pre-modern South Asia as one of political and cultural decline. In most surveys of Indian history, the fifteenth century is given little attention, and is often designated the ‘period in waiting’ or the ‘twilight’ before the rise of the Mughals in the sixteenth century.>
This paradox is the starting point of the questions that animate this book: what kind of political ethos can we discern from works like Gangadhara’s compositions in praise of Gujarat’s kings? Who were these kings whose courts supported both local and trans-regional poets in the fifteenth century? And what does their presence say about the politics and culture of Gujarat during this time? Why would a successful poet from a region with a well-established tradition of patronage, like Vijayanagara, undertake a difficult journey to find new patrons in Gujarat in particular?
I use literary narratives produced in the courts of Gujarat to answer these questions and explore the ways in which regional and local rulers were represented, and represented themselves, in a century of transitions between c. 1398 and 1511. These narratives include biographical praise-poems in Sanskrit as well as in Dimgal, a poetic language tradition associated with the oral genealogist-historians of western India.° The result is a portrait of fifteenth-century Gujarat as a rich, multi-layered, and multi-lingual political landscape. At the start of this period, Gujarat was an unsettled region, a frontier in which a number of different mobile political players of obscure origins, ranging from warlords to chieftains, who later came to be referred to as Rajputs, and sultans with imperial ambitions, were making competing territorial and economic claims. By the mid fifteenth-century, the sultans would overpower the competition to establish a regional imperium. Whatever the size of their actual domains, these men sought to define themselves in a landscape of shifting authorities and ambiguous sovereignties; patronising poets and commissioning panegyrics was one way they asserted their newfound status. Turning our gaze to such regional specificities, and regional texts, highlights the changes in the subcontinent, driven by smaller political and territorial entities, and proves the fifteenth century to have been a time of influential change that has hitherto not been fully investigated and accounted for.
Two developments have conventionally been viewed as markers of political and cultural change in the history of pre-modern north India: first, Delhi’s sack at the hands of the famous Turko-Mongol warrior, Timur, in 1398 and the Delhi sultanate’s consequent decline, and second, the rise of the Mughal empire, which is credited with the inauguration of unprecedented political and cultural innovations. The intervening period between 1398 and 1555,’ sometimes referred to as ‘the long fifteenth century’, is often overlooked as many of the sources available from this time are not the sorts commonly considered ‘hard evidence’. Major imperial accounts, building projects, and other material remains are scarce. However, even when such evidence is available, as in the case of the regional sultanate of Gujarat (1407-1580), literary narratives that were produced in abundance during this period give insight conventional sources cannot. The writings explored in this monograph — primarily biographical praise poems — reveal the ideologies, aspirations, and self-expressions of those who may have commissioned them. Expanding the conventional archive to include these effusions illuminates what is obscured in the historiography of fifteenth-century Gujarat as a ‘twilight’ time of political fragmentation and cultural regression.’ Upending prevailing conceptions, this book uncovers the fifteenth century as an era of tremendous dynamism. Taking a fresh look at this century’s cultural diversity, and the creative political processes that it engendered, can throw light on the history of pre-Mughal South Asia in important new ways.”
Society and Polity in a Regional Setting
Gujarat had been a province of Delhi since c. 1304. In 1407, amidst the chaos that followed Delhi’s destruction at Timur’s hands, the last governor sent to Gujarat by the Delhi sultan, Zafar Khan son of ‘Wajih al-Mulk’, declared himself independent of his former masters. Zafar Khan took the title of Muzaffar Shah, and with this declaration inaugurated a regional imperium that would last for over a hundred and fifty years. Gujarat had the advantage of a long association with the Indian Ocean trade networks. This favourable position was further enhanced by the sultans’ control over important coastal and overland trade routes that connected Gujarat to the rest of the subcontinent.!° According to the eighteenth-century historian Ali Mohammad Khan, it was this resulting prosperity that led the fifteenth-century ruler of Delhi, Sultan Sikandar Shah, to complain that the ‘support of the throne of Delhi is wheat and barley but the foundation of the realm of Gujarat is coral and pearls’.!! Years later, Gujarat’s wealth also made it the prized province of the Mughal empire: two of its major rulers, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, had both served as its governors before ascending Delhi’s throne.
The region Muzaffar Shah (r. 1407-1411) and his descendants came to control was characterized by a vast ecological diversity and consequently, different economies of trade.!* Different parts of the region were interconnected by the trade routes that extended overland to other parts of the Indian subcontinent as well as to the western Indian ocean. Gujarat’s location and ecology rendered it a frontier that encouraged the movement and settlement of traders, pastoralists, peasants, military, and political adventurers. Its long coastline had been home to a variety of trading communities and their mercantile interests, while the central plains of the east were centres of manufacturing and agriculture. The Saurashtra and Kachchh peninsulas had supported pastoral and semi-pastoral life for centuries. Many of these pastoralists went on to adopt the upwardly mobile social identity of Rajputs as they established stronger territorial ties in these locales during the fifteenth century. Gujarat in the fifteenth century was also marked by considerable urban and agricultural expansion, which facilitated settlement. As they established their rule, the sultans were able to ‘settle’ different parts of this diverse region and increase its interconnectedness through the expansion of trading networks and further development of cities. A number of administrative and military measures also encouraged this process.
The sultans’ attempts to make inroads into Gujarat were not unchallenged; likewise their success was not a foregone conclusion. Throughout their rule, the sultans faced considerable resistance from chieftains and rulers of local power centres, who had often acquired their patrimonies during Chaulukya rule. With Chaulukya decline in the twelfth century, many of these regional strongmen were able gain control over lands around the core administrative area. The fifteenth century saw an expansion of this state of affairs, with the competition between political aspirants growing as Delhi weakened. Thus, in Gujarat, on the eve of the regional sultanate’s establishment, many of these chieftains — including the Rathods in Idar, the Chauhans in Champaner, the Chudasamas and the Gohils in Saurashtra — had built strong local political ties. Their forts, located on the outer boundaries of what had been the region’s centre, Anhilvada—Patan, and later Ahmadabad, were of great strategic significance, as was their control of the resources in the surrounding areas.
The history of Gujarat in the fifteenth century was shaped by alternating periods of conflict, negotiation, and accommodation between these small but significant local power bases and the regional sultans, for whom the control of these resources was crucial to their centralising initiatives and to the establishment of their rule.'!* The narratives surveyed in this book are expressions of this landscape in which political configurations were in flux and multiple groups were vying to establish their political and social positions. Ranamallachanda, a poem narrating the story of the Rathod chieftain Ranmal (Chapter 2) provides a striking example of this. Ranmal’s fort at Idar, strategically located on the trade route connecting the sultanate capital at Anhilvada—Patan, was one of the first local power bases coveted by Zafar Khan. Yet, while Ranmal is depicted in the poem as a fierce warrior single-handedly resisting and triumphing over the Khan’s massive armies, he is a chieftain devoid of lofty titles or a prestigious lineage, thus indicating his modest and hitherto unestablished status. Moreover, he is also depicted as conquering territories encompassing much of Gujarat — territories that would have been far beyond his reach. Other historical accounts do not corroborate the claims about Ranmal in these verses. Yet the poet allows the reader/audience to consider possibilities that lie beyond historical realities — a large empire, or comparisons with well-known, and often unconventional, historical and mythical heroes — creating a history and legacy for the protagonist in a time when new social identities of men like him were still evolving.
The struggle between the chieftains and sultans in the dominant historiography of Gujarat and in the popular imagination is often narrowly viewed in terms of clashes between two religious groups: the ‘Hindu’ Rajputs and the ‘Muslim’ sultans. In this line of thought, which has had a lasting impact, the introduction of Turkic rule is considered the end of civilisation and as a rupture in Gujarat’s heroic history.!> However, the political flux that shaped the establishment and consolidation of sultanate rule in the region cannot be comprehended through such simplistic religious binaries. The rise of the new chieftains and the breakaway sultans may be more productively understood as an outcome of the ‘military labour’ market that had been emerging in central and north India since the 1200s.!° This was a landscape of rich mobility wherein talented military adventurers could attain a considerable degree of success through their ability to recruit manpower and supply elephants and horses. The Delhi sultans were the largest employers of these services, creating space for entrepreneurial leaders, with a loose and contingent allegiance to central authority, to establish their own landed chieftaincies or even regional-level kingdoms.
In fact, Zafar Khan’s own father and uncle had been beneficiaries of this very system, as they had won the favour of the Delhi sultan, Firoz Shah, by supplying his military. These men, a certain Saharan and his brother Sadhu, were, most likely peasants or pastoralists, non-Muslim Tank Rajputs from Thanesar in northwestern India (modern-day Haryana). They encountered the prince Firuz Khan (who would later become Firuz Shah Tughluq) when he was separated from his retinue during a hunting expedition. The two brothers, who were already somewhat prominent within their locality and could gather horsemen and footsoldiers by the thousands, decided to help the prince, whom they recognised as having royal links. They further ingratiated themselves with the prince by giving him their sister in marriage and joined his retinue, eventually becoming very prominent among his courtiers. Both brothers eventually converted to Islam and became followers of a prominent Sufi saint. Saharan received the title of Wajih al-Mulk. It was Wajih al-Mulk’s son, Zafar Khan, who went on to become the last governor of the prosperous province of Gujarat before declaring himself an independent sultan. The progress of his career is indicative of how rapidly military adventurers could rise in this landscape.!”
The eventual collapse of Delhi’s power in the fourteenth century led to the further expansion of the military labour market and the formation of a number of new political alliances between the rising sultanates and those who commanded the resources they required to cement their rule. Consequently, new groups were also integrated into the political networks during the fifteenth century. Chief among these were Afghans and other migrants from the northwest, as well as diverse men of unknown origins who came to be encompassed by the label of Rajput. In return for military services, these men were able to acquire lands that they could pass on to their descendants as well as gain varying degrees of political status.!®
If the entrepreneurial military labour market was one of the defining forces shaping Gujarat’s polity at the time, another factor was the struggle by the local centres of powers to assert their status. The ways in which the local chieftains sought to have their authority recognised, offers even more clear evidence that the framework of religious binaries is seriously misleading. As many of these warrior groups became more successful, both in terms of their territorial gains, and political prominence, they also aspired to royalty. One way in which they pursued this aspiration was by drawing on pre-existing norms of the exalted Kshatriya status that had been deployed by Indic polities for centuries. In their public epigraphs, many of these groups, including a number of chieftains from Gujarat, made claims on this prestigious identity by forging links with the ancient solar and lunar lineages (surya and chandra vamsha), claiming royal titles and links with Puranic deities, and in many cases also making grants of land to Brahmins and projecting themselves in stock terms as protectors of Brahmins and cows.!?
The currency of the Kshatriya status was so strong even in the fifteenth century that the powerful Muzaffarid sultans, self-proclaimed Muslim rulers who had access to several other avenues of expressing their political superiority and royalty, also chose to make claims on this identity. According to the account of seventeenth-century historian Sikandar Manjhu, which traces the sultans’ Rajput ancestry back by several generations, the Tanks belonged to the solar lineage, which linked them to the Puranic hero, Rama.”° A full-blown expression of this is visible in the Sanskrit poem addressed to Mahmud Shah Begada (1459-1511), which also links him to the solar lineage, and portrays him as a paramount Indic king or chakravarti, blessed by Sarasvati, the goddess of learning, who chooses to establish herself in the sultan’s court (Chapter 4). In the poem, Sultan Mahmud Begada is adorned with multiple titles usually reserved for great Indic kings, and described as equal in virtues and attributes to a plethora of Puranic deities. Thus, despite the options available to him, pre-existing ideologies of Indic kingship and royal status appear to have held significance to this regional Muslim monarch.
The evolution of the quest of Kshatriya status would eventually result in many of the local chieftains making claims on the ‘Rajput’ identity. The heroes from the Rathod, Chauhan, and Chudasama lineages that appear in the following pages, have all been recognised as such from the sixteenth century onwards. B. D. Chattopadhya’s groundbreaking work on Rajasthan suggests that ‘Rajput’ was an assimilative category that allowed for transition from tribal to state polity from the sixth century onwards and in which prestigious descent played a crucial role.*! On the other hand, Dirk Kolff suggests that, during the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, ‘Rajput’ was an open-ended category that provided social status to a wide range of itinerant warriors who continued to circulate in northern and northwestern India; it was only in the sixteenth century, Kolff writes, that the term Rajput came to be associated with aristocratic monarchical lineages.** In the narratives discussed, from the courts of Gujarat, both the older warrior ethos and the gradually emerging descent-based category of Rajputs can be found. Moreover, the universal royal ideal of Kshatriya kingship was integrated into the ways the identities of these groups developed. While a warrior like Ranmal Rathod (Chapter 2), is referred to as a Kshatriya, the panegyric addressed to him is a bricolage of different tropes that draw from local legends, contemporary history, as well as Puranic mythology. It is these, rather than his lineage and descent, that define him as a hero and chieftain. In contrast, in the biography of the Chudasama king, Mandalik (Chapter 3), whose family had ruled the fort of Junagadh in Saurashtra for centuries, we can see a descent-based identity acquiring significance. Interestingly, among all the narratives studied here, descent from the prestigious solar lineage, as well as a genealogy tracing historical descent, hold the most significant place in the epic-poem addressed to the Muslim sultan, Mahmud Begada (Chapter 4). A close reading of narratives from the local and regional courts throws light on the fluid nature of the “Rajput warrior’ identity and reveals how those who claimed it harnessed a plethora of widely-recognised rhetorical elements to do so.
Arich body of scholarship now exists on the elite clan-based Rajput kingship and warrior tradition that evolved from the sixteenth century onwards as elite Rajputs were incorporated in the Mughal imperial system. It was during this period that the category of ‘Rajput’ came to be crystallised around prestigious descent, something that was held in significance by the imperial Mughals as well.” Less is known, however, about the specific elements of the elite warrior ethos and descent-based identity that were emerging in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the idea of the ‘Rajput’ was still open-ended and could include a number of different elements and innovations. The collection of narratives brought together in this book reflects crucial aspects of the ways in which the warrior ethos and identities were creatively developing, but had not entirely become set in stone, in the fifteen-century milieu.
Society and polity as represented in the narratives from Gujarat’s courts offer a view of a vibrant and evolving warrior ethos. The warrior chieftains of these works, composed by Brahmin poets and preserved in written form, belonged to elite traditions and circulated within the setting of elite courts. The trajectories the warriors took in each case differed, but often rather than simplistic religious differences, it was the common pool of ideological resources that shaped the ways in which they chose to fashion their political claims through the works of their poet panegyrists.
Literary Innovations for Elaborating a Warrior Identity
As Gangadhara’s experience with the regional and local courts of Gujarat shows, here and in many other parts of India, patrons big and small were seeking the services of poets and composers who could articulate their newly acquired positions, or at least their aspirations. The fifteenth-century Telugu poet Srinatha travelled across the Andhra region and was called upon not only by the Vijayanagara king Harihara II, but also by the ambitious elites of the region, who wished secure their social positions by emulating current courtly trends.*4 Similarly, in several small hinterland towns that popped up all over central India, warlords and chieftains — men who may not even have had strong forts let alone an actual court — commissioned poetic works in the north Indian vernacular, Hindavi, modifying classical genres to suit their own specific contextual contingencies.*> Likewise, in Gujarat, a great deal of literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries comes from these relatively small centres of power: Ranmal’s Idar fort (Chapter 2) was most likely of a modest size at the time when Sridhara Vyasa composed his panegyric celebrating the chieftain. Gangadas and Mandalik (Chapter 3), on the other hand, were holders of larger fortifications at Champaner and Junagadh, respectively, which the regional sultans found more challenging to conquer.”°
The texts surveyed here can broadly be categorised as eulogistic biographies of the lives and deeds of individual chieftains and kings. While the roots of royal biographies can be traced to the Vedic period, biographies of historically known kings and individuals became popular across the subcontinent from the early medieval period onwards.”’ These are not always birth-to-death narratives; rather they often include events that may have been regarded by the patron or poet as worthy of transmission to a contemporary audience and preservation for posterity. The narratives may also go beyond historical realities, sometimes including supernatural interventions, as was the convention in these genres. Nonetheless, they all demonstrate a keen awareness of the patrons’ specific historic and political context.
The poet-composers of these narratives played a central role in the creation of the self-image of new warrior groups, some of whom, as the protagonists of the compositions in this book, also managed to acquire varying degrees of elite status. Ranmal’s ancestors belonged to the cadet line of the Rathod clan, and had gained territorial control of Idar during the Chaulukya reign in Ahilvada—Patan around the eleventh century. The Chudasamas, on the other hand, had become the most prominent rulers of Saurashtra over several centuries.”* These chieftains, originally pastoralists with links to Islam, came to claim elaborate royal titles and ties to the Puranic deity Krishna’s yadava lineage; such efforts are partucularly visible in the eulogistic biographical poem, Mandalikanrpacarita, addressed to their last major ruler Mandalik (Chapter 3).
The Chaulukya and their successors, the Vaghelas, who preceded the rulers of Delhi in Gujarat, had been great patrons of Sanskrit as well as the other transregional languages, Apabhramsha and Prakrit. Hundreds of public inscriptions and important eulogies evidence how the Chaulukya-Vaghelas presided over an Indic polity that drew from the prevailing conventions of the cosmopolitan ideal of kingship. Furthermore, the Chaulukyas and Vaghelas also supported the Jain faith, members of which often had close ties to the state. The eleventh-century Jain scholar-monk, Acharya Hemachandra, who is considered one the most important Jain intellectuals, was based at the court of two of the most prominent kings of the Chaulukya dynasty. A number of compositions, including the Sanskrit-Apabhramsha-Prakrit grammar, Siddharhemacandra, played an important role in shaping Chaulukya ideas of rule both within the region and outside of it. At the same time, within the numerous Muslim trading communities that had settled in Gujarat’s thriving urban centres, Arabic and, to some extent Persian, were introduced into the region’s literary landscape. This multilingual tradition, which had already been established during Chaulukya— Vaghela rule beginning in the tenth century, reached an unprecedented scale during the fifteenth-century regional transformations.
The Muzaffarid sultans actively patronised literature and learning in Arabic and Persian, perhaps on a larger scale than in other contemporary courts. Scholars and men of religion from across the Islamic world were invited to settle in the region, which emerged as a vibrant location for intellectual communities to flourish. *? This also provided impetus for the first expressions of an IndoPersian vernacular, Gujari, a form of Hindavi or Hindi.*° As Sufis and scholars from north India settled in the cities of Gujarat, they often composed works in this regional tongue. Yet Sanskrit and bilingual inscriptions using both Sanskrit and Persian, and sometimes Gujarati, also a regional language, continued to be commissioned both by local communities as well as court officials; there was a considerable increase in the number of such inscriptions during the fifteenth century. Furthermore, the tradition of Jain literary production not only endured under the Delhi sultanate, but flourished as Jain scholars continued to compose works in Sanskrit and Apabhramsha.
Vernacularisation was taking new forms outside the courtly milieu as well. In the early fifteenth century the poet Bhalan adapted the classical Sanskrit work Kadambari by transforming both the tale and the genre into the regional language and idiom.*! But this was also the period in which Narasimha Maheta, the poet who is regarded as Gujarat’s first poet or adi-kavi, composed his vast oeuvre of Vaishanava devotional poems in Gujarati. Narasimha’s poetry transformed the Gujarati language as his compositions were not Sanskrit poems in ‘Gujarati but Gujarati poems in Gujarati’.** Moreover, Narasimha carved out new possibilities of patronage for the poet in the devotional congregational realm rather than through state support, revolutionising the regional literary traditions.*? This elevated Gujarati to a language of poetry both akin to Sanskrit but also distinct from it. Alongside these major changes in the development and status of the Gujarati language, immense varieties of local and specialised community dialects also blossomed at this time; the regional languages of Saurashtra and Kachchh, and Khojki, the medium of devotional expression used by the Ismaili Khojas, are some example of these. Both at the popular and courtly levels then, the inhabitants of Gujarat had a variety of languages and idioms to choose from.
It is against this backdrop that the choices the chieftains and sultans and their poets made, to fashion their ideas of self, kingship, and the region, may be viewed. Instead of the evolving regional vocabularies, the chieftains of Gujarat chose to express their political aspirations in Sanskrit. What is more, while the sultans were patrons of a variety of languages, and did in fact commission largescale historical writings in Persian and Arabic, in the mid-fifteenth century, they too claimed the benefits of the universal Kshatriya values of kingship that the Sanskrit eulogistic and epic traditions had to offer. Similarly illuminating is the widespread use of Dimgal, which was a language tradition that was not specific to Gujarat but was understood amongst warrior elites across western India. Unlike Sanskrit, however, Dimgal was associated with specialist oral performers, namely Bhats and Charans. These genealogist-poets held close ties with the Rajput ruling groups all over western India and Gujarat. Thus, while the narratives studied in this book display a close relationship to the context in which they are produced, the medium of communication their composers deployed were decidedly trans-regional.
I view these texts as having active, ‘dialogic and discursive’ relationships to their particular contexts.*4 Consequently, I situate these narratives firmly within the historical contexts to which they belong.*> In their use of the transregional languages and familiar idioms, these narratives draw their legitimacy from the conventions of respected genres. Yet they also exhibit innovation, shaped by and, in turn, shaping the patrons’ political and social aspirations. The ‘particular’ and the ‘place’ are crucial to the ways in which the protagonists are fashioned in and presented by the composers of these narratives: the local and universal are constantly intertwined to create the protagonists’ world. In the play about the Chauhan king, Gangadas of Champaner, and in Mandalik’s biography, both set in local courts, this interplay is visible throughout the narratives (Chapter 3). In the regional sultan’s biography, however, the universal takes precedence over details of historical accuracy (Chapter 4).
Bringing these texts together and reading them closely illuminates the aspirations and self-articulations of elite warrior groups in fifteenth-century Gujarat, as they negotiated the political processes that were in motion at the regional and local levels. On one hand, through Sanskrit, these groups were able to forge links to the prestigious and universally recognised Kshatriya warrior status; on the other hand they could also draw on the more open-ended warrior ethos through languages akin to the oral traditions. The political prestige associated with the classical language of power appears to have remained foundational in establishing the patrons’ self-image as successful kings. On the other hand, pre-existing genres and linguistic conventions could be substantially modified to suit the needs of the patrons: the Sanskrit play and the biography of the Chudasama chieftain as well as the sultan’s Sanskrit biography are examples of how new groups could be incorporated into classical genres that were usually associated with Indic kings from great lineages of the past. Far from composing conventionalised narratives about cardboard heroes, the poets of these works drew upon a rich pool of ideological and linguistic resources to represent their patrons in a time and space in which sovereignties and identities were not fully established. I argue that, in producing these kinds of narratives, the poets were making deliberate attempts to write both their patrons’ personal histories, and more importantly, inscribe them into the wider histories unfolding at the time.
While the fifteenth century was not the source of great canon-making literature, it was a period in which a vast body of literary works, in a plethora of languages and genres, was created in order to articulate a variety of community-based and religious identities.°° Placing such narratives within a longer history of local and regional state formation provides both a counterargument and a corrective to the dominant historiography of South Asia. The fifteenth century has been a black hole of sorts in the historiography of the subcontinent in general, but this lacuna has had an especially deep impact on the historical studies of Gujarat. The dominant view — both in scholarship and in the popular imagination — considers Turkic rule as a rupture in Gujarat’s heroic Rajput past. By paying close attention to the vibrant literary culture of the Rajput and sultanate courts, we can also recognise the political and cultural continuities — not ruptures — that were at work.
Re-discovering the Fifteenth-century Warriors
In the mid-nineteenth century, an officer of the East India Company of Scottish descent, Alexander Kinloch Forbes (1821-1865), was stationed in Ahmadabad and Mahi Kantha in Gujarat as the Assistant Collector. Like many of his colleagues at the time, Forbes was interested in unearthing the history of the place he was sent to administer. Forbes’s attention was caught by the works of Jain scholars who had written the histories of the Chaulukya and Vaghela kingdoms. However, he was especially captivated by the people he refers to as ‘bards’, the different communities of Bhats and Charans, who specialised in the oral narration of the pasts and genealogies of the various Rajput kingdoms that dotted the region. It was in their records and traditions that Forbes found the stories of the chieftains and warriors who had been part of the fifteenth-century political configurations. On the basis of these sources, along with translations of a few Jain and Persian works, Forbes went on to compose what has become a classical account of Gujarat’s past, Ras Mala: Hindoo Annals of Western India (1856), in which he constructed the history of Gujarat as the history of the Rajput chieftains. Forbes’s Ras Mala, which foregrounded the Rajput polities, their origins, and their interactions with the sultans, still stands out as distinct from later histories of the region (Chapter 5). These works, particularly the accounts of the colonial nationalist elite in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gave precedence to the Indic Chaulukya—Vaghela polities, viewing the sultanate-Rajput interactions as indicators of the fifteenth-century decline.
The communities of Bhats and Charans, the preservers of the genealogies and histories of the Rajput chieftains, were integral to their polities, not only as historians but also as diplomats and guarantors. These men often accompanied their patrons during battles, inspiring the warriors to fight and composing poetry in their honour. They were also considered descendants of the Mother Goddess and therefore enjoyed a sacred status in the communities they served. Because of this status, the Bhats and Charans became a crucial link in the preservation of not only lineages but also of the heroic ethos. In the centuries that followed the fifteenth, while the courtly milieu of the entrepreneurial polities was transformed under the Mughal rule, it was their battle narratives, sustained by oral tradition, that continued to flourish and circulate.
It was these narratives of the Bhats and Charans that Forbes documented. While the fifteenth-century narratives that I have analysed, such as Ranmallachanda, Gangadasapratapavilasandtaka, Mandalikamahakavya, and Rdajavinoda, were not among Forbes’s discoveries, his work on oral compositions plays a crucial role in the understanding of the period. Oral traditions further confirm the complex interplay of ideas and power between the mobile polities of the region in which the sultans and Rajputs played significant roles. Although his history is not free of colonial bias, the oral traditions recorded by Forbes present a fluid, rather than entirely confrontational, picture of the politics of the region, differing sharply from much of the scholarship that would appear in the years to follow.
Plan of the Book
With the exception of the first, the chapters in this monograph are centred on one or two individual narratives. Chapter | provides the setting; a historical map that sets the stage for the ways in which the region and its politics evolved in the fifteenth century. It traces three important developments that shaped the fifteenth century society and polity: first, the establishment of the Indic polity of the Chaulukya—Vaghelas; second, the rise and decline of the Muslim empire of the Delhi sultanate, and third, the emergence of the local Rajput chieftains, who were once pastoralist warriors, and who began to settle down and establish their patrimonies in the region before the foundation of the great fifteenth-century polity of the Muzaffarid sultans. While discussing each of these political formations, I also map the linguistic and literary choices that were made during this period to articulate ideas of kingship and authority as well as express community identities.
The changes in the early fifteenth century are reflected in the literary culture of the Rajput chieftains, the topic of Chapter 2. This chapter centres on Ranmallachanda, a battle narrative in which Ranmal, the Rathod chieftain of Idar, fights against the new governor sent by the Delhi sultan. Ranmal, in this narrative, is supported neither by an elaborate court nor a long genealogy linking him to an illustrious royal lineage. Instead, Ranmal is portrayed as a solitary hero concerned with the defence of his patrimonies and honour. This work is in Dimgal, prefaced by Sanskrit, and interspersed with words from the Persian register. The story has the fluid quality of an oral narrative and, interestingly, is composed by a Brahmin poet, Sridhara Vyasa. It is also laden with stock descriptions of a Kshatriya warrior’s duty to protect Brahmins, women, and cows against the atrocities of the Muslims. This multilingual layering of genres, traditions, and tropes, reflects the crystallising selfrepresentation of chieftains, such as Ranmal, who appear, simultaneously, to be seeking a place in the larger varna hierarchy, as well as maintaining ties with the more fluid warrior traditions in this period. The two languages serve different functions: the Sanskrit section portrays Ranmal, a local chieftain with limited territorial control, as a great Indic king, whereas the Dimgal portion depicts Ranmal as a warrior, and his triumphs on the battlefield, replete with copious descriptions of blood and gore.
As the fifteenth century progressed, the more successful of the Rajput chieftains in Gujarat also patronised Sanskrit poetry alongside oral traditions, which continued to shape their notions of identity and authority.
In the narratives discussed in Chapter 3, Gangaddasapratapavilasandataka and Mandalikanrpacarita, which are addressed to chieftains who controlled strategically located hill kingdoms, we find resonances of the cosmopolitan order that existed during the erstwhile Chaulukya world. Unlike Idar, the Chauhan kingdom of Champaner and the Chudasama kingdom of Junagadh are depicted as having elaborate courts, courtiers, and genealogies that proclaimed links with prestigious Puranic heroes. Above all, their rulers saw themselves as repositories of all the virtues demanded of true Kshatriya kings. Nevertheless, their political aspirations remained modest and limited to the areas they already controlled. Despite the violent battles with the enemy sultanate or yavana rulers depicted in the narratives, these men sought control and fame in their own local territories rather than the entire region. The use of the cosmopolitan Sanskrit and the aestheticised kKavya genre was meant to establish the patrons’ rule firmly within the region, rather than transport their fame across the subcontinent.
Chapter 4 examines a significant Sanskrit text entitled Rajavinoda, ‘pleasure of the king’, by a poet named Udayaraja. Drawing on the classical kavya tradition of Sanskrit poetry and using the markers of an Indic paramount king or chakravarti, whose kingdom is the centre of Indian subcontinent, this text allowed Mahmud Begada, a Muslim sultan, to draw on the eclectic ideological resources available to him. In contrast to the Sanskrit works composed for the local Rajput chieftains (Chapter 3), or the multilingual text in honour of Ranmal (Chapter 2), which highlight the context of the protagonists’ rule, the panegyric addressed to Sultan Mahmud conveys deeply universal values of kingship that could be applied to any great king.
The Rajput chieftains of Gujarat, their literary world, and the articulations of kingship and authority that emerged during the fifteenth century, had long-term implications in the making of Gujarat as region. While the sultans were overpowered by the Mughals at the end of the sixteenth century, and the Mughals in turn by the Marathas and the British, the Rajput kingdoms endured and went on to constitute the over two hundred princely states that comprised Gujarat on the eve of independence. The significance of this historical legacy was first articulated in a text entitled Ras Mala: Hindoo Annals of Western India by a colonial administrator named Alexander Forbes in the mid-nineteenth century. Forbes drew primarily upon the oral accounts and written sources related to these Rajput groups that were abundantly available through the local elites to write a ‘modern’ history of the region. The end result was something of a hybrid of his colonial imperialist ideals, ‘modern’ history, and older articulations of kingship and authority that were based in the Rajputs’ own itinerant martial pasts. The fifth chapter is a reading of Ras Mala. There we see that, contrary to the popular perception of Gujarat as a land of merchants and traders, it was the history of the Rajputs and their interactions with the sultans that went into the making of one of the first attempts to articulate the idea of Gujarat as a modern region.
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