4. Prose Narratives of Kings
Between ‘Old’ and ‘New’
This chapter focuses on a group of Bengali prose narratives which were composed during the first decade of the nineteenth century. These narratives represented accounts of past kings and their deeds—one of the most common topics in pre-modern historiography. Kings figured centrally in pre-modern historiographic narratives partly because of their prominence and power and partly because their actions affected the fates of the subject population. Kings represented the moral climates of the polities they ruled, the king's body being often perceived as an embodiment of the polity itself. Thus, accounts of kings served to commemorate the lives and actions of eminent individuals; at another level, they also encompassed the experiences of the community of subjects as well.1
This chapter traces the historiographic substance and style of this cluster of prose narratives. These texts hold a celebrity status on account of several factors: they are widely regarded as early examples of Bengali prose; they represent some of the earliest printed texts in the region and language; they are associated with the emergence of a modern literary culture in Bengal; and finally, they are associated with the compulsions of the early colonial state in the region. Since the historiographic status of these texts is intertwined with their status as early examples of a definitive Bengali prose, the present discussion foregrounds the exploration of their historiographical significance by tracing the genealogy and history of Bengali prose. Like many other societies, Bengal too had produced verse literature for many centuries in the most commonly used language of the region, that is, Bengali, prior to what is conventionally regarded as the definitive advent of a prose style in that language during the early nineteenth century. My aims are, first, to reflect on the significance attached by scholars to the transition of a literary culture from verse to prose, and to consider whether the issues raised by this discussion are applicable to the region and the literary/historical culture studied here. Secondly, this chapter discusses the history of prose-use in Bengal prior to the nineteenth century and the linguistic and literary influences which affected it. Thirdly, this chapter suggests that influences from the Persian language and literary culture functioned as a significant influence on Bengali prose, especially during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Finally, a cluster of prose narratives works in Bengali are discussed thoroughly to illustrate the features mentioned above.
The Transition from Verse to Prose
Scholars of various persuasions have reflected upon and discussed the significance of the transition from verse to prose in any given society. As the linguistic traditions of Greek, Latin, Arabic, English, Spanish, German and certainly many South Asian languages indicate, verse often preceded prose.2 As Bakhtin points out, prose represented more than just a genre; it indicated on the contrary, a form of thinking that presumed the importance of the everyday, the ordinary, and the prosaic. Literary theorists have also pointed out that the emergence of a new genre in effect reflected significant changes in social life.3 Scholars like Godzich and Kittay and Gabrielle Spiegel have made the case that the advent of prose as the language of literary expression was connected to shifts in the political and cultural order and to the attendant quest for new modes of expression, particularly historiographic expression.
While these reflections on the significance of the emergence of a prose genre as a mode of literary expression raise powerful intellectual issues, they do not quite help us in trying to understand the advent of a Bengali prose language or its significance for the composition of historical narratives. In Bengal, it was not the prose genre per se that was new, but rather its use in the regional vernacular. Secondly, it was not just any prose use in Bengali, but its use to produce expressive narratives.
History and Context of Prose-Use in Bengal
Several languages (that is, other than just for purposes of speaking) had circulated in Bengal at least since the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries —particularly among the literate gentry and aristocracy. As seen in Chapter 1, Sanskrit, Persian, and Bengali, the principal linguistic and literary registers, were used for different purposes and performed different functions. This, however, was not a simple form of multilingualism since each language and its literary culture created ‘a hierarchy of discourses each of which represented a different set of values, behaviour and attitudes’.4 The need for prose—identified sometimes with material, practical uses, especially during its early phases—was met most often in Bengal by the use of the two main supra-regional languages in use at the time, that is, Sanskrit and Persian.
The reason for the non-development of a robust mode of Bengali prose prior to the nineteenth century is attributed to a number of factors, not all of which can be accepted unreservedly. These range from the view that many centuries of literary convention discouraged the use of Bengali for literary prose compositions, to the assertion that relatively low levels of literacy together with the largely oral character of pre-modern Bengali society impeded the development of a vigorous prose literature. Gholam Murshed also refers to the nature and culture of governance in Bengal prior to colonial rule and describes it as one in which the culture of writing was relatively limited when compared to the governmental culture ushered in by the rule of the English East India Company.5 Given the fairly intensive ‘documentary’ nature of Mughal governmental culture, it is hard to accept without more evidence that the regime of the nawabs of Murshidabad would deliberately subvert or reduce it. The remark regarding the overall importance of orality in Bengal prior to the advent of colonial rule and, with it, the culture of print, is of course valid at a general level. But we need to keep in mind that despite such all-pervasive orality, it was nevertheless a culture which had been accustomed for many centuries to strong traditions of writing. The issue therefore is not so much the absence of writing per se, or the absence of prose writing, but the fact that the language of choice for such writing was not Bengali. Here, the argument about the continuing power and legitimacy of the Bengali verse genre as well as the point about prose needs being met through the use of Persian and Sanskrit may be much more persuasive.
The most commonly held view is that Bengali prose made its appearance quite dramatically at the very beginning of the nineteenth century on account of the compulsions of the early colonial state in Bengal.6 In 1800, the East India Company's government in Bengal established the Fort William College for the purpose of providing newly-arrived officials of the company with a degree of familiarity and proficiency in the languages they were likely to encounter in the course of their administrative career in the company's dominions in India. This ‘Oxford of the East’7 was to provide instruction in Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, six Indian vernacular languages and several other subjects. The Bengali department of the college was placed under the charge of William Carey, one of the famous trio of Baptist missionaries associated with the Srirampur (Searampore) mission. Carey's perception that there was a total dearth of suitable Bengali prose books prompted him to commission three Bengali scholars—Ramram Basu, Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar, and Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya—to produce texts in Bengali which could be used as classroom material. This initiative led to the production of the first cluster of Bengali prose narratives. These were the Pratapaditya Charitra by Ramram Basu (1801), Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya's Maharaja Krishnachandra Royasya Charitram (1805), and Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar's Rajabali (1808).8 This development was a command-performance activated by the early colonial state rather than an organic development. Thus, what is more significant than the choice of Bengali for the composition of these works, is the style and contents of these works and also the models and influences from which they may have been derived.
By far the most pervasive truism about the Bengali language and literature is that it was descended from Sanskrit and therefore Sanskrit literature and literary style provided a template and a model for it. While this is undoubtedly true, this view was articulated through the first dictionaries and grammars of Bengali which made their appearance in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries thanks to the efforts of European scholar-officials and missionaries. Since Bengali does not appear to have been studied formally (through grammars and dictionaries) during the pre-nineteenth century period by the indigenous literati, we cannot speak of their views and assumptions about the linguistic and literary heritage of this language.9
A history of the career of Persian in Bengal and its association with the history of pre-Mughal and Muslim rule has been discussed at some length in Chapter 1. The following section traces the presence and influence of Persian in Bengal during the period of Mughal rule.
Persian and Bengali Prose: the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The view that the English East India Company was instrumental in making possible the definitive development of Bengali prose still enjoys a degree of currency. However, a large body of scholarship which was dedicated to finding samples of pre-nineteenth century Bengali prose has compelled a modification of this point of view.10 There is now a degree of acceptance of the premise that that there had occurred a considerable expansion of Bengali prose-use during the seventeenth century and a further acceleration of this trend in the eighteenth.
The use of Bengali prose for letter-writing and documentary purposes continued as before, but prose was being deployed, perhaps in a limited, but no less significant way, for religious texts composed by Vaishnavas and Sahajiyas.11 Bengal's administrative integration within the Mughal empire and the greater currency of the Persian language and literature in Bengal is regarded as a significant factor in this expansion of Bengali prose-use.12 According to Sukumar Sen, the use of Bengali for practical reasons had become indispensable since the seventeenth century and the number of people who possessed high degrees of Sanskrit literacy began to decline in comparison to earlier periods. This was compensated by growing literacy in Persian, the language in which much administrative business was now being conducted. The full development of Bengali prose was still far away, but the influence of Persian is believed to have created distinctive features at this incipient stage. Both Sukumar Sen and Haraprasad Shastri attest to the emergence of a Persianized prose style from this period. This type of expression coexisted with other styles of expression— such as Sanskritic or ‘panditi Bangla’ for example—but it was nevertheless identifiable as a distinct mode.13
These views are reinforced by the fact that there was a steady influx of Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Hindusthani words into Bengali during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in particular. The expansion of Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Hindusthani words in written expression—documentary (legal, judicial, official), epistolary, expressive narrative works as well as everyday speech—is generally acknowledged to have attained a remarkable level during this period.14 The endeavour of Suniti Kumar Chatterji to provide a chronological comparison of ‘the rate of admission of Persian words into Bengali’ over several centuries further confirms this (see table below). In the eighteenth century, even Persian-knowing Bengali pundits used Persianized expression in their letter-writing, petitions, and other writings. Murshed further asserts that there occurred the migration of a vocabulary of Persian/Arabic/Hindusthani origins into the everyday speech of educated Bengalis during the early nineteenth century.15
Table 4.1 Incidence of Persian Words in Bengali Texts: Fourteenth–Eighteenth Centuries
Title of Bengali Text / Date / Total Number of Lines / Approximate Number of Persian Words
Srikrishnakirtan of Badu Chandidas / late 14th century / 9,500 / 4
Padmapuran of Vijay Gupta / late 15th century / 18,000 / 125
Dharmamangal of Manikram Ganguly / mid 16th century / 17,000 / 225
Chandikavya (Chandimangal) of Mukunda Chakrabarty / later 16th century / 20,000 / 200–210
Annadamangal-kavya of Bharat-Chandra Roy / mid 18th century / 13,000 / over 400
Source: Suniti Kumar Chatterji, The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, p. 204, footnote no.1
Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Sir J.N. Sarkar, and Sukumar Sen posit a direct relationship between the Mughal conquest of Bengal and the expanding currency of Persian and, in the case of Sen, their connection to the growing use of Bengali for prose compositions.16 In general, though, the influx of Persian and Hindusthani words into Bengali, when noticed at all by scholars of Bengali literature and language, tends to be treated almost as an incidental phenomenon and the full implications of it for the society and culture of the region are not adequately explored. The reason may well lie in the declaration of Suniti Kumar Chatterji that ‘the Persian influence on the Bengali language has been mainly lexical’.17 As Chatterji further elaborates, ‘the net result of the Persian influence has been the imposition, as a permanent addition to the vocabulary, of some 2,500 [Persian] words.……’.18 One of my main aims here is to prove that Persian, in early modern Bengal, was more than a ‘lexical influence’. Since I approach Persianization as an aspect primarily of Mughal political culture, my perspective includes but does not remain confined only to purely linguistic matters. The phenomenon I call ‘Persianization’ was transmitted to Bengal through the medium of the Persian language as well as the literary culture of Persian and both were mediated through the incoming governmental culture and style of the Mughal state. These were mirrored, among other things, in the style and the political and temporal perspectives found in Bengali narrative accounts with a historiographic content. The subsequent section discusses the authors of the three Bengali prose narratives that are the central focus of this chapter. It is followed by a discussion of the narratives themselves.
The Authors
The scholars who composed the cluster of Bengali prose narratives commissioned by the Fort William College had been formally recruited by William Carey to serve in the Bengali department of that institution. The involvement of these scholars with various facets of early colonial enterprise during the eighteenth century highlights the critical need of the English to depend on indigenous scholarly collaborators during this period. The large numbers of Indian scholars associated with Colin Mackenzie in Southern India, the Calcutta Orientalists, and the East India Company's governmental circles as well as with missionary projects in Bengal, provide well-known examples of such collaboration. The link between these ‘native informants’ and the colonial state have been the topic of much debate and controversy among contemporary scholars regarding the formation of colonial knowledge and the very nature— hegemonic versus dialogic—of colonial power and colonial institutions in eighteenth and early nineteenth century India.19 This debate is well-known; a recapitulation of it though lies beyond the scope of this book. However, it is necessary to be aware that the authors under discussion here also fitted into the overarching rubric of native informants who serviced various needs of the early colonial state.
Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya, the author of the Maharaja Krishnachandra Roysya Charitram, most probably had a family connection to the rajas of Nadia and chose as the main subject of his narrative, the life and achievements of Maharaja Krishnachandra Roy of that family. Rajiblochan was well-acquainted with Sanskrit literature and scholarship. He may also have had a long association with Carey, but it is difficult to be certain about it.20
Ramram Basu had a prolonged association with various English enterprises in Bengal generally, and with Carey and the Baptist missionary project more particularly. He was born into a Kayastha family, probably at Chinsurah near Calcutta, around the middle of the eighteenth century. Basu's family may have had connections with a wealthy landowner somewhere in the Twenty Four Parganas or the Sunderban region.21 The career track most common within Basu's family circle seems to have been as scribes, secretaries, and clerical employees in the bureaucracies maintained by landowning gentry and the nobility. In keeping with the practice among literate genteel families of this sort, Ramram Basu too received an education which involved proficiency in Sanskrit, Persian, and Bengali. Through his own efforts, he may have taught himself rudimentary English even prior to his contact with Carey.22
Basu's proficiency in multiple languages made him ideal as a tutor/translator/ interpreter for Englishmen associated with various types of endeavours in eighteenth century Bengal. Ramram Basu first served as Persian tutor to William Chambers, a judge in the East India Company's Supreme Court at Calcutta; subsequently he became the Bengali munshi of John Thomas, a surgeon aboard one of the Company's ships, and also deeply interested in translating the Bible for purposes of proselytizing in Bengal. In 1793 Basu secured the position of munshi to William Carey—beginning a relationship, which although not uninterrupted, lasted probably until the former's death in 1813.23
Basu served as language instructor and perhaps translator to Carey primarily for Bengali and also at times for Sanskrit. At the behest of the Fort William College, he authored two books, the first being the Raja Pratapaditya Charitra (1801) which is discussed below. The second book, entitled the Lipimala (1802) was designed to provide examples of colloquial dialogues in Bengali and its intended audience were the sahibs who needed to learn the regional language.24
Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar was probably the best-known among the Bengali pundits commissioned to produce classroom materials for the Fort William College. Born in Midnapur in 1762, he received a formal education which emphasized the Sanskritic and shastric. He may have left Midnapur sometime in the 1790s and come to Calcutta in search of a livelihood. In Calcutta, prior to his association with the company's college at Fort William he ran a tol from his residence at Baghbazar.25 The multifarious needs of the early colonial state for Sanskrit-proficient pundits drew Mrityunjoy into the ambit of the activities of the colonial state. Carey recruited him as the chief pundit of the Bengali department of Fort William College. He was also Carey's Sanskrit tutor, possibly the ghostwriter of some of Carey's Bengali publications and served upon occasion as Carey's assistant in the classroom. Mrityunjoy was also associated with the Company's judicial establishment. He became the chief pundit of the Company's Supreme Court at Calcutta in 1816. In 1817, as part of his professional duty, he produced a vyavastha (opinion) pointing out that the scriptural sanction for sati was in fact ambiguous. Mrityunjoy's other publications included the Batris Simhasan (1802) and the Rajabali (1808). The former was a collection of popular stories about king Vikramaditya in Bengali and it was used as a textbook at the Fort William College.26 The Rajabali is discussed below in greater detail. Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar's other publications included the Hitopadesha (1808) and the Prabodhchandrika (1819).27
The Raja Pratapaditya Charitra, Maharaja Krishnachandra Roysya Charitram, and the Rajabali
The Pratapaditya Charitra of Ramram Basu traced the rise to power of a family of chieftains (zamindars) in the Jessore region of Bengal during the interregnum between Afghan and Mughal rule and highlighted in particular the career and reign of Raja Pratapaditya. The narrative detailed the circumstances of Pratapaditya's rebellion against Mughal authority and its suppression by the latter. The theme of Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya's work recounted the circumstances through which the ancestors of Maharaja Krishnachnadra Roy of Nadia had acquired power and fame. While this theme provided a background, the prime focus of this text was on the reign of Maharaja Krishnachandra, whose life and reign coincided with the transfer of political power in Bengal from the nawabs of Murshidabad into the hands of the English company. The Rajabali of Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar also provided accounts of past kings and their reigns— but on a scale far wider than the framework adopted in either of these two charitras. The Rajabali was a true chronicle. The two other narratives discussed here focus mainly on single kingly personalities; accounts of the ancestors of these rajas served only to create a backdrop for the principal protagonists of these texts. In the Rajabali, by contrast, the main aim was to highlight the continuous succession of kings of various dynasties for thousands of years. In the manner typical of chronicles, the Rajabali of Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar ended with an account of the contemporary ruler of Bengal, but left open the narrative possibility of another chronicler picking up the thread of this narrative and continuing to provide accounts of subsequent kings. This chronicle foregrounded its account in the creation of the universe and the earth in Puranic terms and provided on account of the ‘waves’ (taranga) of kings who had reigned over the earth. The account then traced the reigns of successive Puranic and epic kings through the reigns of the Sena kings of Bengal, the Rajput Chauhan rulers of Delhi and then on to the reigns of the Turushka sultans who ruled from Delhi. Mrityunjoy's narrative gave considerable weight in particular to the reigns of the Mughal emperors, especially that of the emperor Akbar, as well as to the reigns of the Murshidabad nawabs. This encyclopaedic chronicle of kings terminated with an account of the takeover of power in Bengal by the English—developments which had occurred a few years before Mrityunjoy's birth in AD 1762.
Sanskritic/Puranic Influences
The authors of all three texts positioned themselves within the Sanskrit literary tradition by using forms such as the charita and the rajabali or Rajataranga. In substantive terms too, these narratives are characterized by idioms and allusions associated with long-established literary–historical Indic traditions such as the Puranic tradition, the high tradition of Sanskrit courtly literature as well as the assumptions and premises linked with them. For example, the Rajabali of Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar begins with the Puranic explanation of how the earth and the universe itself was created and then expands to provide a description of cosmology, geography, and the notion of time itself as well as its related units and divisions in Puranic terms. The varnashrama-based social order, for example, is an essential premise in the geographical and cosmological imagination which Mrityunjoy had obviously derived from the Puranic corpus.28 The successive kings described by Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar reigned over a region also located in terms of Puranic geography, that is, they were all kings of Madhyadesa, a component part of Bharatbarsha, which again was a part of the continent called Jambudvipa.29
The accomplishments and flaws of the kings described in the Rajabali are also grounded in the cultural and ideological assumptions underlying the Puranic corpus in all its manifestations and variations.30
The imprint of a Puranic/Sanskritic tradition in these three prose works is neither surprising nor unexpected and contemporary scholarship pays due attention to it.31 What remains unnoticed is the strong imprint of the IndoPersian tarikh tradition in all three of these prose narratives. The presence of this feature is uneven in the three texts under discussion here: it is strongly noticeable in the Pratapaditya Charitra. Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar's Rajabali embodies this feature quite markedly in the part of the narrative devoted to a discussion of the reigns of various Turkish and Afghan rulers as well as the Mughals over Delhi. Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya's Charitra of Maharaja Krishnachandra Roy probably tries the hardest to associate itself with a Sanskritic tradition; but this text too, in many ways, incorporates features reminiscent of the Indo-Persian tarikh tradition. The following section explores further the specific features which mark the resonance of the Indo-Islamic tarikh tradition in these prose narratives.
Persianate Influences
One of the most obvious and visible markers of the Indo-Persian literary tradition in these Bengali texts is comprised by the heavy use of Persian terms in them. The narratives composed by Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar and Ramram Basu in particular contain the profuse usage of Persian vocabulary—usually words associated with a political and administrative culture such as subahdar, takht, khelat, nazr, daftar, mulk, qanungo, bandobast, and many others. Ramram Basu's language, in particular, seems to indicate the struggle of a writer groping to find suitable words and terminology in a narrative form for which there was no pre-existing model he could follow. The model which seems to have provided him with some sort of a template was that of the Persian tarikh, not just merely in terms of using Persian vocabulary, but in terms of a more substantive vision and idiom for writing about the rise and fall of a territorial raja.
At their core, all three prose narratives discussed in this chapter give central importance to accounts of past kings and their accomplishments and failures. Underlying this preoccupation is the assumption that the institution of monarchy was indispensable for orderly social existence. Periods of chaos, disorder, and breakdown of the moral and ethical environment are described as arajak times, that is, times when there was no king.32 In the Pratapaditya Charitra, the region of Jessore is described initially as an ‘ownerless zamindari’ (be-waris zamindari) which was deserted, forested, and infested with wild animals. But through the efforts of Bikaramaditya and Basanta Roy, the father and uncle respectively of Raja Pratapaditya, this wilderness was converted into an orderly settlement surrounded by grain stores, markets, public squares, and gardens. Thus, it needed kings to create and preserve a settled society and to keep it orderly.33
In Ramram Basu's narrative, the story of the rise and fall of Raja Pratapaditya and his forefathers is squarely grounded within a political and administrative culture. For example, the dramatic rise to power of Pratapaditya's ancestors is charted solely through a series of administrative offices held by them. The ‘original’ ancestor mentioned by Basu was a certain Ramchandra who worked in the qanungo daftar at Sarkar Saptagram.34 Subsequently Ramchandra and his sons moved to Gauda and there the latter again acquired jobs in the qanungo daftar at the behest of Sulaiman Karrani, who was then ruler of Bengal. Shibananda, one of the sons of Ramchandra rose to become the head of the qanungo daftar.35 When, on Sulaiman's death, his son Daud Khan Karrani succeeded him to the throne, the latter elevated his friends (who were nephews of Shibananda) Bikramaditya to the office of ‘courtier-in-chief’ (sarvadhyaksha mukhya patra)36 and Basanta Roy to the office of diwan of a department of his government. Similarly, the biography of Krishnachandra Roy of Nadia by Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya also traces the lives and careers of the rajas of Nadia primarily in terms of their acquisition of higher and higher administrative offices. Thus Kashinath Roy, the ancestor of Bhabananda Majumdar, held a zamindari in the pargana of Haveli in Bengal—but he lost it through unfortunate circumstances. Kashinath's grandson Bhabananda secured an important position in the administration of the subahdar of Dhaka and acquired the title of RoyMajumdar.37 Bhabananda collaborated with Raja Man Singh in the task of suppressing Raja Pratapaditya of Jessore and was rewarded with zamindari rights over pargana Baguan.38
Biographies of royal or aristocratic personages, whether in the Sanskrit literary tradition or in various Bengali traditions do not usually trace an individual's career primarily through the lens of a political and administrative culture. The kulagranthas of royalty and the aristocracy, for instance, are also biographies. However, in these traditions, the protagonist's identity and position was made more meaningful in terms of his varna/jati antecedents and his/communal status and relationships, rather than purely in terms of career trajectories viewed through the perspective of a political/administrative culture. The text composed by Rajiblochan Mukhopadhayaya, for instance, drew considerably upon the Sanskrit genealogy of the rajas of Nadia, the Kshitishvamsavalicharitam. Here, unlike the 1801 biography composed by Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya, the antecedents of the Nadia rajas are located in the event celebrated by most kulajis of Bengali Brahmins, that is, the immigration of five ritually pure Brahmins from Kanyakubja to Bengal, and in the identification of Bhattanarayana, one of the ‘original’ Kanaujiya Brahmins, as the ancestor of the Nadia rajas. It is not until twenty-eight generations had passed since Bhattanarayan's settlement in Bengal that this genealogy began to mention the career trajectories of the Nadia rajas, beginning with Kashinath Roy.39 The Kshitishvamsavalicharitam did indeed refer to the material accession of this family—but it was intertwined with descriptions of their high ritual status and dedication to a varnashrama-based social order and virtues. The biography of Krishnachandra Roy by Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya also contained references to the Bramanical zeal and enthusiasm of these rajas—but the contrast lies in the degree of importance given to this element. Despite professions of Brahmanical enthusiasm, the rajas of Nadia, as depicted in Rajiblochan's biography, are primarily represented as being preoccupied with climbing up the ladder of political and material wealth and power; their status as Brahmins and self-professed leaders of Bengal's Rarhiya Brahmin samaja in the eighteenth century seems relatively less important, or at best, a supplement to the political and material clout of these magnates. The tarikh tradition by contrast typically charts biographies and careers of rulers, their nobles and principal officials almost entirely through the perspective of a political culture. Other aspects of their lives are either not mentioned or given little importance.
The imprint of the tarikh tradition on the Bengali prose narratives in question is further reinforced by the weight and emphasis placed on a complex tangle of political relationships—particularly in the two charitras of Raja Krishnachandra Roy and Raja Pratapaditya. Thus, these two biographies repeatedly brought to the forefront the issue of political relationships between overlords and subordinates and the pressing issue of political morality. These relationships, grounded in loyalty and trust, were not to be subverted or taken lightly. In Ramram Basu's narrative, Daud Khan Karrani sought to be defiant against the Mughals and came to grief; later, Raja Pratapaditya himself defied Mughal authority and came to grief; Raja Bikramaditya and Basanta Roy however, collaborated with the paramount sovereign authority of the Mughals and won the zamindari of Jessore.40 In Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya's text, too, Bhabananda Majumdar was awarded the zamindari of Baguan as a reward for helping the Mughal forces in their campaign against Raja Pratapaditya.41 Thus, Mughal authority and overlordship were implicitly and explicitly regarded as legitimate and a betrayal of the submission and loyalty due to them almost inevitably resulted in the destruction of the transgressor. In most of these cases the tension between submission to a political overlord vis-à-vis the impulse to defiance was manifest through the concrete example of non-payment of revenue. The examples of Daud Khan Karrani and Pratapaditya referred to above bear eloquent testimony to it. Land revenue records almost symbolize the ultimate victory over a region through the acquisition of the records of its resources. This is eloquently demonstrated in the incident when the Mughal generals sent to subdue Pratapaditya realize that their victory is meaningless unless they can find the revenue records of the region. These were ultimately handed over to them by Raja Bikramaditya and Basanta Roy.42 In the tarikh tradition too, issues of political fealty and submission are very frequently manifested through the payment of tribute; while the withholding of it signals a lack of political submission and loyalty.
The history of Mughal and nawabi rule in Bengal is replete with instances of ruptured political relationships between zamindars and rajas on the one hand and the Mughal subahdars and the nawabs of Murshidabad on the other. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, the Nadia zamindars in particular are known to have suffered humiliating reprisals at the hands of the Murshidabad nawabs on account of the failure of the former to meet the niabat's revenue demands.43 Interestingly enough, the 1801 biography of Maharaja Krishnachandra Roy by Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya erases the earlier record of revenue-related troubles vis-à-vis the Murshidabad government. Significantly, this Charitra was composed during a period when the zamindars of Nadia (and other Bengal zamindars) were once again severely hard-pressed by revenue problems arising from the revenue demands made upon them by the early colonial regime in Bengal. Thus, in an adroit and strategic move, the 1801 biography steered completely away from references to revenue-related sensitivities of the Nadia rajas vis-à-vis the nawabs of the past as well as the East India Company's regime at the present and instead sought to portray these zamindars as steadfast allies of the English and key collaborators of the latter in the Plassey conspiracy which had catapulted the Company onto the path of political power in Bengal.
Despite the sanctity attached to the need to accept and maintain the authority of the political overlord, these texts also made it clear that not all forms of political overlordship were legitimate. Mughal overlordship is implicitly regarded as legitimate by both Ramram Basu and Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyaya. Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar actually discusses the moral and ethical underpinnings of Mughal hegemony in terms of the principles which guided their governance and the examples they set by their personal conduct. Thus the emperor Akbar is depicted as the epitome of every possible kingly virtue—courageous, dignified, capable of appreciating merit and virtue in others, compassionate, the suppressor of evil people, anxious to cater to the needs of his subjects.44 Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar paid the highest encomium to Akbar when he wrote, ‘Since the reign of Sri Bikramaditya, there has been no other emperor in Hindustan who possessed as much virtue as Akbar Shah’.45 Other Mughal emperors—such as Jehangir, Shah Jehan, and even Aurangzeb—receive overall positive assessments from him.46 However, royal authority commanded respect and obedience only when it was associated with virtue. As Rajiblochan explains in his work, Nawab Ali Vardi Khan of Bengal was an extremely virtuous ruler who was known for his piety, generosity, and compassion,47 but the latter's successor Nawab Sirajuddaula seems to have been wantonly cruel, oppressive, and depraved. His misdeeds included the kidnapping of beautiful women, deliberate overturning of passenger-laden boats, and ripping open the abdomens of pregnant women, etc.48 Interestingly enough, Persian tarikhs produced in late eighteenth century Bengal also portray a similar image of Nawab Sirajuddaula. While sketching out the mounting tensions between the English Company and Nawab Sirajuddaula, the Maharaja Krishnachandra Roysya Charitram depicted the former as much more committed to the practice of ‘dharma’. Here, the English are shown to be willing to risk a war with the ruler of a country rather than compromise their ethical principles. The principle in question revolved around whether it was moral to betray someone who had sought protection and the English are depicted as steadfast in their determination that it was contrary to ‘dharma’ to abandon someone who had sought out their protection.49
Thus, the three narratives are for the most part powerful and secular narratives of political ambition, power, and calculation, and these are firmly linked to a specific Mughal political and administrative culture. The explicit and implicit political and territorial imagination at play in these texts accepts as a premise the overarching hegemony of the Mughals as the paramount and sovereign authority. The territorial unit of discussion is variously referred to as the Madhyadesha of Bharatbarsha and as Hindustan. Bengal, the region that receives most attention in these narratives is regarded as a component part of Madhyadesha, Hindustan, and the Mughal empire. There are indeed references to divine providence in these texts and to the power of supernatural forces in shaping earthly developments. But, these are outweighed in the texts by a clearsighted discussion and analysis of motivations which were in the final analysis impelled by purely temporal considerations. Such considerations prompted the characters depicted in these works to behave in certain ways or, to arrive at certain decisions. In Ramram Basu's biography, for example, the various characters, Daud Khan Karrani, Bikramaditya, Basanta Roy, and Pratapditya are shown weighing various options, making different calculations and then engaging in specific actions. These worldly calculations and decisions were critically important because, as the narratives of Mukhopadhyaya and Basu show, they could cause total devastation or lead to an ascension in one's worldly fortunes.
The cultural environment glimpsed through these narratives reveals a world in which Sanskritic-Brahmanical cultural norms and ideals are certainly espoused by the royal and aristocratic personalities described in them. As Mrityunjoy Bidyalankar explains repeatedly, even the Mughal emperors were either by temperament or, as a matter of tactful policy, inclined to respect the cultural sensitivities of their Hindu subjects. In Mrityunjoy's view, Aurangzeb too was not totally exempt from such behaviour.50 However, a Persianized courtly culture associated with the political culture of the imperial Mughals was also portrayed as a critically important element in the careers of regional chieftains and their families. Careers of potential rajas, zamindars, and gentry were moulded through the kind of education expected of such people, that is, horseback riding, martial skills, competence at record-keeping, accounting, and the management of revenues, as well as proficiency in Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian.
Proficiency in Persian, in particular, was seen as an indispensable element of courtly and elite culture.51 It enabled Bhabananda Majumdar of the Nadia Raj family to secure his first important bureaucratic appointment and paved the way for the ascension of the entire lineage's fortunes in the long run.52 Raja Pratapaditya turned rebel against his Mughal overlords; but he did not rebel against Mughal courtly culture.53 Again, the same text shows how a Persian education could bring the son of a fugitive chieftain from a distant province closer to princes of the Mughal royal family, through the concrete example of the sons of Raja Basanta Roy who fled to Delhi when Pratapaditya expelled them from the kingdom of Jessore.54