Part 2 of 2
The Literary Universe
The Bengali Literary TraditionThe Bengali language, during the early and later medieval periods, as well as the early modern age, was used primarily as the medium of everyday speech, to some extent for letter-writing, and composition of works with a religious dimension. The prose form of Bengali was used for quotidian and documentary purposes; creative Bengali literature, until the very end of the eighteenth century, was almost always in verse.68 Circumstances related to the beginnings of a Bengali prose literature are discussed in Chapter 4. The popular nature of this vernacular ensured that literary works composed with the aim of maximum diffusion and transmission would be cast in this language. A large number of Bengali literary creations during the twelfth to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were derived from the Sanskritic literary tradition, and the latter were frequently used as templates for (p.40) vernacular expression. Yet, despite the obvious and deliberate effort to forge links with Puranic, epic, and other Sanskritic traditions, it would be incorrect to regard this corpus as merely imitative or derivative. They reflected regional sensibilities and experiences and can be seen at best as vernacular articulations of a pan-Indian Sanskritic tradition.69 A major branch of Bengali literature prior to the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was comprised of literature that grew up around the charismatic figure of Sri Chaitanya and the Gaudiya Vaishnava movement he initiated in the early sixteenth century.70 This large corpus of Vaishnava literature is regarded as a significant development in Bengali literature.71 Narratives such as Brindaban Das's Chaitanyabhagabat and the Chaitanyacharitamrita of Krishnadas Kaviraj occupy places of special eminence within it. Bengali Vaishnavism is also associated with Vaishnava padavalis, that is, poems and songs celebrating the lila of Krishna and Radha, as well as other Vaishnava themes.72 A rich tradition of what scholars of Bengali literature have described (not unproblematically though) as ‘Bengali Muslim literature’ also existed since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The subject matter and themes of many of these works derived inspiration from the lives of the Prophet Muhammad, various Muslim pirs and holy men, and even love stories about various mortals that travelled from the Islamic heartlands in the Middle East to India.73
Yet, it is critically important not to lose sight of the fact that the evolving Bengali literary tradition during the early and late medieval periods functioned in a milieu in which first Sanskrit, and later Sanskrit and Persian, were present as trans-regional, cosmopolitan linguistic and cultural registers. Most histories of Bengali literature provide token acknowledgement of the presence and influence of Sanskrit; Persian and Hindustani influences receive very marginal attention, partly as a consequence of the politics of culture and identity as they played out among the Bengali literati of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.74 The following section discusses the origin, antecedents, and careers of both these trans-regional cosmopolitan languages in Bengal.
The Sanskrit Language and Literary TraditionThe earliest Sanskrit expressive literature in Bengal—mostly prashastis in praise of kings—dates back to the Gupta period. The courts of the Pala and Sena kings were associated with the production of well-known works such as the Ramacharita of Sandhyakar Nandy, the Pavanaduta of Dhoyi, and above all, the celebrated Gita Govinda (p.41) of Jaydeva. Nevertheless, the body of Sanskrit expressive literature or kavya produced in Bengal was not particularly large. This was counterbalanced by the great prestige and influence enjoyed by Sanskrit and the literature associated with it.75 The great cultural and literary significance of Sanskrit lay in the fact that it existed as an overarching model over the literary universe of Bengal. In terms of subject matter and theme, grammatical elements such as alamkara and chhanda (meter), in poetic conventions of description and allusion, and in the terms that designated formal and generic typologies, it functioned as a giant reservoir from which poets and authors felt authorized to borrow. The reasons they drew upon the Sanskrit literary tradition are not hard to fathom—over thousands of years of its existence, the ‘Sanskrit cosmopolis’ had become firmly constituted as the prestige economy of the subcontinent and, at times, outside it as well.76 Its prestige derived from its antiquity, its association with religious ritual and liturgical uses, and with a political culture associated with monarchical courts throughout India.77
However, literary production in Bengali—even when modelled on some conventions of Sanskrit literature—was never a simple emulation of it. As with cultural and literary borrowings in other times and places, the whole process of appropriation contained within it elements of selection, modification, rejection, and normalization. Bengali literary productions were ultimately marked by their own regional sensibilities.
Sanskrit, however, had a much more vigorous career in Bengal as the language of choice for intellectual and scholarly productions, related in particular to certain specific shastras.78 From about the ninth and tenth centuries a large amount of Sanskrit scholarly literature (original as well as commentarial) was composed in Bengal, ranging from grammatical works, medical works, writings on Dharma-Shastra (Smriti) and so on.79 The upsurge in cultural and literary creativity stimulated by the Gaudiya Vaishnava movement of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was complemented by the emergence of a body of sophisticated intellectual discourse that included, among other works, Rupa Goswamin's Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu, which embodied the endeavour at developing a new religious aesthetic.80
The Persian Language and Literary TraditionThe Persian language and literature in Bengal are linked, as is this language and its associated literature, to the subcontinent as a whole, (p.42) with developments in political history—that is, the establishment of Muslim regimes starting with the inception of the Delhi sultanate in the twelfth century. Although the prevalence and use of Persian in regions such as Sind, Multan, and Punjab are known for the period prior to the twelfth century, it was really the Turkish conquest of parts of northern India and the emergence of the Delhi Sultanate which made possible a stronger career for Persian language as a ‘prestige language’. Persian thus acquired varying degrees of association with regional/ provincial sultanates which had sprung up in various parts of India since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onward.81 The following discussion sketches out the career of Persian in the Deccan and Bengal prior to the Mughal period.
With the dismantling of the Delhi sultanate, its Indian territory was divided into many regional sultanates which vied with each other culturally as well as politically. This period, in fact, has been characterized as an age that witnessed the apogee of Persian culture in India.82 Many of these sultanates, notably the Deccan-based Bahmani sultanate, established direct contact with Iran and encouraged the arrival of Iranian soldiers, statesmen, and merchants to places like the Deccan and Gujarat. Later, the kingdom of Golconda carried on the tradition of maintaining close contact with Iran and a Persianate culture. Educated and talented Iranians were encouraged to emigrate to Golconda and many were given high political offices there. An excellent example of this is provided by Mir Muhammad Sayyid Ardistani, later known in the Mughal imperial service as Mir Jumla.83 In the sixteenth century, many of the rulers of the Deccan sultanates became Shiis as a result of the growing influence of and their alliance with the Safavid dynasty in Iran. This further strengthened the connection between parts of India and Iran and its Persianate culture. The competition among these regional sultanates resulted in ‘a great diversification of Indo-Persian culture compared to its rather monolithic expression under the sultans of Delhi and later under the great Mughals’.84
The Genealogy of Persian in Sultanate BengalThe development of Persian in Bengal is also associated with the introduction of Islamic rule in Bengal. Court rituals and ceremonies, particularly from the midfourteenth century began to be articulated in Perso-Islamic terms.85 Thus, a Persian cultural ethos was certainly identifiable in the Bengal sultanate's courtly circles. The association of a Persianized culture with the political culture of royalty caused what (p.43) Subrahmanyam describes as a ‘creeping shadow of Persianization’86 from the edges of the Islamicate world of South Asia to reach the court of Roshang in the Arakan region, for instance, particularly during the fifteenth century.87 The kings of Roshang, who were themselves Buddhists, cultivated an Islamicate political culture in which Persian elements were clearly noticeable.
Persian was used as a court language and a language of official business in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century Bengal. However, this status of Persian was shared with certain other languages as well. The role of the pre-Mughal sultans of Bengal in encouraging and patronizing literary productions in the local vernacular, Bengali, is well known. Such literary productions were mostly of the performative type (panchali) involving renditions of the epics or the Puranas into Bengali.88 High officials of the Bengal sultans also used their own durbars to support and promote Bengali literature. The results of such patronage are evident in the composition of several Bengali Mahabharatas associated with authors such as Kabindra Prameshwar.89 The patronization of expressive literature in Bengali by the sultans and their officials was motivated partly by their own interest in and enjoyment of such works, and partly to provide entertainment and enjoyment to their subjects who constituted audience for such works. Arabic was also deployed for some very specific purposes—it was used on Hussain Shahi coins as well as on inscriptions and sometimes in bilingual Arabic/Persian inscriptions.90 Thus, although not the sole official language, Persian shared that position partly with Arabic. However, there are no examples of non-documentary, creative literature in Persian from the period of the Bengal sultanate. Tarafdar explains this in terms of what he describes as Bengal's political isolation from northern India. The core heartland of the Delhi sultanate was where there was considerable prevalence of Persian, for political and governmental purposes, and also for the production of creative literature in various genres.91 This could indeed be a part of the explanation for the non-existence of expressive Persian literary works in sultanate Bengal—but there might also have existed an element of active choice in the deliberate deployment of specific languages for specific purposes. Despite its relatively restricted use in the work of governance, however, a Persianate literary culture did strike roots in sultanate Bengal.
The strongest instance perhaps of the high respect accorded to Persian literature by the Bengal sultans lies in the contact initiated by sultan Ghiyasuddin of the Ilyas Shahi dynasty with the legendary poet Hafiz of Iran.92 The Roshang court, in the seventeenth century in particular, (p.44) witnessed an efflorescence of vernacular Persianized literature—that is, poems in Bengali based on well-known Persian literary works. The work of Sayyid Alaol (1607–80), best known among the Roshang poets and regarded as the pre-eminent Muslim Bengali poet of the seventeenth century, contained strong manifestations of it. He rendered into Bengali several Persian literary pieces. Alaol himself was extremely familiar with the works of Nizami and rendered the latter's Haft Paikar and the Sikandarnamah into Bengali.93 Alaol, as well as other Bengali writers who produced literary compositions based on themes or stories from Persian literature, were, however, not engaging in an exercise of literal translation. At the hands of these writers, a strongly indigenous Bengali ambience was created for the basic themes drawn from Persian literary culture.
Bengal, and kingdoms such as Roshang, perceived Persian as a sophisticated literary culture that came to them from northern India. As Chapter 7 further illustrates, both during the medieval and early modern periods, Persian as well as some other northern India oriented literary cultures were regarded by Bengal's elites as being synonymous with the sophistication and high culture associated with royal courts. A cluster of Awadhi romances (premakhyanas) produced between the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, namely the Chandayan of Maulana Daud, the Mrigavati and the Padmavat of Malik Muhammad Jaysi, and the Madhumalati of Mir Sayyid Manjhan Rajgiri94 produced resonances in the literary productions associated with the court of Roshang.95 The poet Alaol's very first poetic work was in fact the Lor-Chandrani, inspired by Maulana Daud's Awadhi romance; Alaol later composed the Padmavati, derived from Jaysi's narrative of the same name.96 Subsequently, many other Padmavatis were written by Muslim Bengali writers. Thus, alongside a Persian literary culture, an essentially north Indian Hindi-Awadhi culture also played a role in shaping courtly compositions in Bengali in the sixteenth century.
In pre-Mughal Bengal, non-Muslim elites had also begun to appropriate aspects of Islamicate/Persianized culture. Considerable segments of Bengali Hindu gentry and aristocracy formed part of the sultanate's administration. This factor became one of the most potent channels through which Islamization and Persianization in matters of dress, certain social practices, and literary tastes became evident among them.97 Most scholars whose work has touched upon sultanate Bengal, such as Sir J.N. Sarkar, M.R. Tarafdar, Mohammed Enamul Huq, and Richard Eaton have emphasized the limited extent and nature of Persianization in pre-Mughal Bengal.98 It is indeed difficult to claim that it was a dominant cultural strand among the political elite of the sultanate as Subrahmanyam seems to suggest.99 But, it was probably of greater significance and depth in the cultural history of the Bengal sultanate than commonly supposed.
This section has traced the main features of the three literary cultures—Bengali, Sanskrit, and Persian—which held sway in Bengal in the period preceding Mughal rule.
In the following section, I trace the genealogies of the principal terms and concepts, embedded in these literary traditions, which most closely approximate to what we would understand as ‘history’.
The Genealogy of a Concept—I: Ithasa/PuranaIn most South Asian languages including Bengali, the term for history is itihasa. An effort to trace the genealogy of the term indicates that it was in use from very early times in ancient India. The Vedic and Puranic literature shows frequent references to it, often in conjunction with the term ‘purana’, meaning ancient or old, which was used in the Rigveda as an adjective.100 Its earliest use as a noun to denote ancient lore or a story occurs in the Atharvaveda and in the Brahmanas. By the beginning of the Christian era, a large cluster of narratives specifically called Puranas had come into existence. These texts, which occupied a position of central importance in ancient Indian religious tradition, were also considered to embody ancient Indian historical traditions.101
Defining the Puranas is a difficult task. The features that are supposed to distinguish them from other texts turn out to be paradoxical as well as contested. First, the very number of texts that qualify as Puranas is open to disagreement and the rough consensus (if it is a consensus at all) is that there were eighteen original Puranas or Mahapuranas. The substance of the Puranic texts is similarly controversial. The Puranas are supposed to be recognizable on account of their five features (panchalakshana) which were supposed to include accounts of the creation of the universe, the cosmic cycles, genealogies of sages and kings, exploits of the gods, and accounts of royal dynasties. But, in fact, many of the Mahapuranas contained materials which could not be contained within the panchalakshana definition—for example, the glorification of sectarian deities, new myths and legends, a discussion of social and ritual norms, etc. In any case, the Puranas or Mahapuranas refer to a corpus of Sanskrit texts which contained some or all of the traits listed above as part of the panchalakshana feature.102 A striking (p.46) feature of the Puranic tradition lay in the fact that the Puranas did not represent a static tradition, but an essentially dynamic one marked by the continuous revision of its substantive materials primarily through additions, replacements, and modifications. Such processes by which the Puranas were constantly recast often occurred at different time periods and presumably in response to contingent contemporary needs. This ceaseless remaking and recasting of the Puranas also underscores the need for the Puranas to keep abreast of changing times and social conditions so that their importance as sources of religious, ritual, and social authority might not be rendered irrelevant.
It was probably inherent in the very nature of the Puranic process that the everpresent need to adjust to changing times would generate the birth of a related set of texts—the Upapuranas, which Doniger describes as the ‘poor cousins of the already poor Mahapuranas’ (‘already poor’ in relation to the authority and status assigned in Brahmanical culture to the Vedas for instance).103 These Upapuranas consciously located themselves in the Puranic genre, and the principal characteristic feature of these texts was that their affiliations to specific regions were far stronger than in the case of the Mahapuranas. Secondly, they were even less concerned about adhering to the panchalakshana standard than the Mahapuranas. Most Upapuranas were written in areas peripheral to the core Brahmanical sphere of influence and, thus, Bengal became a venue where many Sanskrit Upapauranas were produced most likely between the eleventh and twelfth centuries.104 The Upapuranas or portions of Purana texts composed in Bengal included the Brahmabaibarta Purana, the Brihannaradiya Purana, the Devi Purana, Kalki Purana, and some others. The circulation and use of these Puranas in Bengal is attested to by the fact that quite a few manuscript copies of these works in the Bengali script have been found, and some of these manuscripts can be dated to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.105 The ubiquity and popularity of the itihasa-Purana tradition in Bengal is further confirmed by a vigorous tradition of commentaries on these works which were produced in this region.
Accounts and stories embodied in the itihasa-Purana tradition, moreover, became an entrenched part of the lives of ordinary people in Bengal and were manifest in the use of Puranic allusions in proverbs, idioms of everyday speech, and in commonly held normative ideals.106 The Mangalkavya narratives, which are discussed in Chapter 3, can be located in a range of vernacular Puranas that had descended lineally from the Sanskrit Upapuranas. Thus, the Puranic genre, in all its variations, (p.47) constituted a very important source from which various literary and narrative traditions in different South Asian languages drew sustenance for many centuries. It symbolized a mediating link between ‘high’ Brahmanical traditions, embodied most typically perhaps by the Vedas on the one hand and masses of popular, regional, and local customs and traditions on the other.107
The term itihasa derives etymologically from ‘iti ha asa’ or ‘thus really it was.’ Both itihasa and Purana denoted types of narrative. The challenge in trying to track the genealogy of these terms lies in the fact that they were so often used together in Vedic and Puranic literature and, yet, one can detect tendencies to try to articulate distinctions among them as well as efforts to subsume one of these terms under the other. As Anand Swarup Gupta's analysis of these terms reveals, there were differences of opinion about the exact meaning and distinctions between itihasa and Purana even among ancient Indian commentators on Vedic texts.
There are also indications that the term Purana subsumed within itself both its own meaning (ancient or old) as well as the meaning of itihasa (‘thus really it was’).
What is most important and relevant for our purposes here is that there was also an amalgamation of both these terms to refer to bodies of stories or knowledge about the past. A famous passage from the Vayu Purana seems to suggest that Purana and itihasa were in fact used synonymously in this sense:
That twice born (Brahmana), who knows the four Vedas with the Angas (supplementary sciences) and the Upanishads, should not be (regarded) as proficient unless he thoroughly knows the Puranas. He should reinforce the Vedas with the itihasa and the Purana. The Vedas (is) afraid of him who is deficient in traditional (thinking).108
This usage of itihasa and Purana is reinforced by the use of these terms in the Brahma Purana.109 Thus, it is perhaps not untenable to hold that by the age of the Mahapuranas, both Purana and itihasa were being used to denote an established tradition of knowledge or stories associated with former times. The term akhyana (stories) was also treated in the older stratum of ancient Indian literature as slightly distinct from Purana. Yet, over time, all three terms— itihasa, Purana, and akhyana—came to be used interchangeably.110 It is widely agreed that the Mahabharata was considered a work of itihasa; yet, it was also considered to be a dharmashastra as well as a Purana and an akhyana, whereas in his commentary on the Mahabharata, Nilakantha expounded that Puranam puravrittam (the Puranas are stories about ancient times).111
Itihasa and KavyaItihasa, Purana, and akhyana were all forms of narrative literature or sahitya, the essential elements of which consisted of shabda (word), artha (meaning), and the inseparable unity between the two. Even within the sahitya tradition, itihasa, akhyana, and such others. were more particularly associated with kavya, which held a special pride of place in the Sanskrit literary tradition and was described as ‘shabdarthau sahitam kavyam’.112 Formal discussions about the constituent elements of kavya and its definition were prevalent in South Asia for almost nine hundred years. The consensus is that kavya, as Pollock puts it, was essentially a ‘verbal icon that was distinguished from all other types of narrative by the fact that the raison d’être of its type of expression is expression itself'.113 Thus, itihasa, Purana, akhyana, and such others in the ancient Indian tradition were regarded as forms of narrative literature (to use modern terminology) rather than a distinct discipline that was devoted primarily to the evaluation of rational evidence as the basis of its accounts. Such criteria, as we know, came to be seen as the pre-eminent defining features of history writing from about the later nineteenth century.
In ancient India, beginning particularly from the AD seventh century, there began a trend of the production of ‘historical kavyas’ (Pollock's term) which underwent an ever-intensifying development in the following millennium. These narratives were most often composed in the context of royal courts and were, usually, the direct result of royal patronage. Mainly charitas or biographies of kings, these kavyas recounted the exploits and achievements of the royal personalities who featured as the principal subjects.114 Kings and their exploits, as we know, were one of the commonest topics of history-writing in practically all ancient and medieval societies.115 But, the pre-eminent literariness of these kavyas prompted literary scholars of the Sanskrit tradition ranging from A.B. Keith, S.K. De to Sheldon Pollock to agree that while these narratives possessed historical themes, they did not constitute history.116 Indeed, if one is looking for history or itihasa as an autonomous, rational, evidence-dependent shastra in premodern India, then that search is likely to be futile. Kalhana's Rajatarangini is frequently seen as (p.49) one of the exceptional examples of ‘proper’ historical writing in ancient India.117 Yet, Kalhana saw himself and described himself as a poet, as did Sandhyakara Nandy, author of the Ramacharitam.118
To move closer to the period that is the focus of this book, we find that the terms which most closely approximated ‘history’ in Bengali language narratives were terms such as itihasa, Purana, akhyana, katha, itibritta, and many others. Works such as the Shabda-Kalpa-Druma compiled at the initiative of Raja Radhakanta Deb in the nineteenth century and the Bishwakosha associated with Nagendranath Basu provide definitions of terms such as akhyana, itihasa, and katha, which suggest that they were regarded as being near-synonymous in meaning.119 Thus, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these terms were used in Bengali narratives to refer to stories or accounts of the past, which could be, and very often were, factual, or invented. The terms itihasa and Purana in particular were known and understood as representing ancient models replete with their own conventions regarding subject matter, inter-textual reference, and other parameters. I do not mean to suggest that canonical texts like the Puranas and the Ramayana and Mahabharata created certain normative conventions for writing about the past, which were then adhered to exactly, century after century, until such formulaic repetitiveness was abruptly halted by the impact of colonial rule and the introduction to India of the modern notion of history as a scientific, rational, and positivist discipline. If anything, arguing against such a notion is one of the aims of this work. I suggest instead that in medieval and early modern Bengal, the ancient conventions of itihasa were adhered to, sometimes in terms of subject matter, sometimes in terms of organization, and sometimes primarily in terms of terminology such as itihasa, akhyana, Purana, to signal that such works should be seen, at a certain level, as belonging to some well-known and respected ancient genres. However, as the subsequent chapters demonstrate, significant new features attuned to current conditions and concerns were often incorporated into texts which were titled or described as Purana or itihasa and intended, at a certain level, to be seen as such. But then, this tendency to incorporate new, different, and contingent issues was, as seen earlier, a feature of the Puranic corpus itself. Thus, the models or norms for writing about the past did not stifle the articulation of contemporary concerns and issues. Instead they provided templates endowed with legitimacy, authority, and sanctity on account of their long use and acceptance. (p.50)
The Genealogy of a Concept—II: TarikhThe Indo-Persian tradition of chronicle writing, or the tarikh tradition, formed a component in the intellectual and political culture described here as Persianization. This tradition had its roots in classic traditions of Arab historiography and then, subsequently, Persian historiography.120 In its earliest stages, the terms ‘(ilm) al-ahbar’ and ‘tarih’ came closest to the concept of history in the Islamic world in that the former term initially denoted information about remarkable events (and thus became associated with the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and ancient Muslim authorities) without necessarily meaning an organically connected series of events, whereas the latter term meant both date and era as well as works containing information about dates and eras. Subsequently, the term ‘tarih’ or ‘tarikh’ began to be used for annalistic or connected narratives about past events. The ninth and tenth centuries seem to have marked an important stage in this evolving tradition. First, the impact of philosophical and moral studies imbued the writing of tarikh with an ethical and moral rationale in place of the religious and theological rationale it had possessed earlier. Secondly, the authors of such narratives were no longer religious authorities but courtiers, government officials, and bureaucrats who drew upon official documents, personal contacts, court gossip, and other materials to compose their works. Gibb termed this the ‘secularization’ of history in the Islamic world.121 Often, the authors of such works, ‘would use past history merely as a background for the present’.122 Thirdly, many such tarikhs revolved around what has been described as ‘the ruler scheme of…presentation’—that is, the connected account of the reigns of various rulers of the past or contemporary time when the work was being composed.123 This feature was derived presumably from Greco-Byzantine as well as pre-Islamic Persian nationalist traditions. The focus on the reigns of individual rulers as the structuring device of tarikh narratives was accompanied by copious details regarding the administration and governance of the rulers being discussed. Underlying this preoccupation with administrative details lay a more important interest in ethical and moral principles upon which systems of governance were ideally supposed to be based. The attention to the ethical actions of prominent individuals (such as rulers or their important officials, eminent religious personalities, and others) also established a biographical element into the Islamic historical tradition. In fact, ‘history…became almost synonymous with biography’.124 Finally, from about the twelfth century AD, Arabic and Persian historiography began to diverge more widely. The Mongol conquests precipitated the process by which Arabic was supplanted by Persian in the zone of Perso-Turkish culture. This culture was introduced into India through Turkish military conquests and thus Indo-Islamic historiography came to be imbued with many of the features which had come to characterize the Persian tarikh or historiography tradition.
During the period of the Delhi sultanate, the production of works such as the Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi by Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi (written between 1428 and 1434) and the Tarikh-i-Muhammadi by Muhammad Bihamad Khani (completed in 1438–9), to name only two out of a large body of literature, attests to the currency of this tradition within the Indian subcontinent.125 Rao-ShulmanSubrahmanyam rightly point out that there was a significant maturing of this tradition within the Indian subcontinent during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, both in terms of density and substance.126 A considerable number of such works was produced by the Mughal nobility associated with the adminsitrative-bureaucratic circles of the empire. Mughal royalty also featured as authors of such works.127 Among this large body of Persian tarikhs, the pride of place in terms of its uniqueness goes, of course, to Shaikh Abul Fazal's Akbarnama, composed in the later sixteenth century.128
Other landmark Persian tarikhs of the Mughal empire included Abdul Qadir Badauni's Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, Nizamuddin Bakshi's Tabaqat-i-Akbari, the Padshahnama of Abdul Hamid Lahori, Muhammad Kazim's Alamgirnama and the Ma‘asir-i-Alamgiri, and many others.129 The impetus for tarikh production also led to the composition of Persian narratives that provided successive accounts of regional dynasties and rulers. The Gulshan-i-Ibrahimi (better known as the Tarikh-i-Firishta) of Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah, composed in the Deccan in the early seventeenth century, is one of the best-known of such regional accounts. There are many other regional narratives of this type for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the tarikh tradition had been in use in the South Asian subcontinent for many centuries.130 This intellectual tradition, too, had undergone shifts and changes in response to different historical situations and contexts within India, as well as to different regional contexts within the subcontinent. As Ali Anooshahr points out, from the late sixteenth century, for example, a number of extremely important tarikhs were written in which the history of (p.52) Muslim kingship within the Indian subcontinent was the primary focus, rather than accounts of pre-Islamic or Islamic Iran. Anooshahr characterizes this as a ‘ground-breaking innovation in subject matter’.131 The older tendency of writing universal histories which concentrated mostly on Islamic polities and societies outside India did not cease, but the innovation in framing the subject of tarikhs composed in India was significant. In some of the Persian tarikhs discussed in Chapter 5 of this book, the authors gave central importance to Bengal under the rule of Muslim kings and relatively less weight to Bengal's connection to the Mughal empire.132 Other Bengal tarikhs—such as the Siyar-ul-Mutakhirin of Ghulam Hussain Khan Tabatabai—were more strongly conscious of the political relationship between the Delhi-based Mughal empire and Bengal.133
Other characteristic features of the mature tarikh tradition were to be seen in the use of the Persian language, a preoccupation with the mechanisms and institutions of political power as manifest through actions, policies, and calculations of rulers, nobles, and other governmental functionaries. Indeed, these narratives concentrated on recording the actions of grandees and ministers, thrones and imperial powers. Thus, the career of a ruler would detail his governmental policies and chart his relations with various other functionaries at different levels of the political system and the diverse factors such as trust, loyalty, and protection which anchored them. Similarly, the career of a nobleman would be traced through a series of official appointments and duties in the light of his relation with the king and service to the kingdom. Allusions and points of references were frequently taken from incidents in Islamic history and tradition associated with regions outside India. Significantly, the feature of inter-textuality, or references to earlier works which are regarded as authoritative, points to the fact that authors who wrote such works considered themselves as part of a Persian historiographical tradition. Tarikhs also very typically assigned central importance to sequential successions of rulers. In fact, the very organization of tarikhs attests to this. As seen above, this intense preoccupation with government derived from a deep concern with notions of ethical governance. Connected to this was the even deeper and more fundamental premise of such scholarship, that the events narrated in these works were actually a manifestation of divine will. This was one among many features singled out for criticism by twentieth century scholars who argued that the centrality given to divine will disqualified such works from being taken seriously as history.134
(p.53) Chapter 5 of this book discusses a cluster of Persian tarikhs that were composed in Bengal during the later eighteenth century. These tarikhs embodied many of the characteristics discussed here. Tarikhs, whether from the wider Islamic world or within the Indian subcontinent, were treated as a branch of scholarship which formed an essential part of ‘polite education’. It was part of the intellectual and cultural repertoire of a refined and sophisticated person, which explains its currency among political elites and in courtly circles.
_______________
Notes:(1.) Sir Jadunath Sarkar, History of Bengal: Muslim Period 1200–1757, Patna, 1973, (rpt).
(2.) I do not intend to suggest that culture in general is inherently linked to and dependent on political authority, but rather to focus on cases where political culture can and does affect certain literary, intellectual, and historiographic traditions.
(3.) Sarkar, History of Bengal, pp. 1–14, 187–215.
(4.) M.R. Tarafdar, Hussain Shahi Bengal, 1494–1538 AD A Socio-Economic Study, Dhaka, 1965, pp. 90–122.
(5.) Ratnalekha Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society, New Delhi, 1979, pp. 17–21.
(6.) Abdul Karim, Murshid Quli Khan and his Times, Dacca, 1963; Sarkar, History of Bengal.
(7.) P.B. Calkins, ‘Formation of a Regionally Oriented Ruling Group in Bengal’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 29, no. 4, August 1970, pp. 799–806.
(8.) Kumkum Chatterjee, Merchants, Politics, and Society in Early Modern India: Bihar: 1733–1820, Leiden, 1996, pp. 101–27.
(9.) Sarkar, History of Bengal, pp. 455–67.
(10.) Ghulam Hussain Khan Tabatabai, Seir Mutaqherin, 4 vols, Nota Manus (tr.), Delhi, 1990; Ghulam Hussain Salim Zaidpuri, Riyazus Salatin, Maulavi Abdus Salam (tr.), Delhi, 1904; F.A. Gladwin, A Narrative of Transactions in Bengal: A Translation of Salimullah Munshi's Tarikh-i-Bangala, Calcutta, 1906; Mildred Archer, Patna Painting, London, 1947; Ratnabali Chatterjee, From the Karkhana to the Studio: A Study in the Changing Social Roles of Patron and Artist in Bengal, New Delhi, 1990.
(11.) There is a large literature on the growth of the English East India Company's commerce and political power in Bengal. Some representative examples are Sarkar, History of Bengal; Sukumar Bhattacharya, The East India Company and the Economy of Bengal from 1704–1740, Calcutta, 1969; P.J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead: Eastern India, 1740–1828, Cambridge, 1983; Chatterjee, Merchants, Politics, and Society.
(12.) Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society; Shireen Akhtar, The Role of Zamindars in Bengal, 1707–1772, Dhaka, 1982; J.R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth Century Bengal, Cambridge, 1993.
(13.) Sarkar, History of Bengal; Karim, Murshid Quli Khan and His Times; K.K. Datta, Ali Vardi Khan and his Times, Calcutta, 1963 (1939).
(14.) See, for example, Daniel and Alice Thorner, Land and Labour in India, Bombay and New York, 1960; N.K. Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal From Plassey to the Permanent Settlement, 3 vols, Calcutta, 1956–70; Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society.
(15.) Sinha, Economic History of Bengal; Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society.
(16.) Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society.
(17.) S. Sen (ed.), Kabikankan Birachita Chandimangal, Calcutta, 1993; Mahimaniranjan Chakrabarti, Birbhum Rajvamsa, Calcutta, 1909, p. 62.
(18.) Ramram Basu, Raja Pratapaditya Charitra, Searampore, 1801, pp. 17–18, 44–6.
(19.) Shamita Sinha, Pandits in a Changing Environment, Calcutta, 1993.
(20.) Sarkar, History of Bengal, pp. 216–28.
(21.) Tapan Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jehangir: A Socio-Economic Study, Delhi, 1969, p. 86.
(22.) Some aspects of this phenomenon are described in Aniruddha Ray, Adventurers, Landowners and Rebels: Bengal c. 1575–1715, New Delhi, 1998, pp. 195–245.
(23.) Sarkar, History of Bengal, p. 216.
(24.) See Dinesh Chandra Sen, Banga Bhasha O Sahitya, vol. 2, Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyaya (ed.), Calcutta, rpt, 2002, pp. 555–707; Ashutosh Bhattacharya, Bangla Mangalkabyer Itihasa, Calcutta, 2002 (rpt), pp. 804–6; Dushan Zbavitel, History of Bengali Literature, Wiesbaden, 1976, pp. 165–6.
(25.) Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jehangir, p. 87.
(26.) D.C. Sen, Banga Bhasha O Sahitya, vol. 2: pp. 555–707; also Bhattacharya, Mangalkabyer Itihasa, pp. 811–22.
(27.) Literary scholarship in particular often does not distinguish clearly between Muslim rule and Mughal rule.
(28.) The strongest articulation of this view occurs in Sarkar, History of Bengal, pp. 497–8.
(29.) Mirza Nathan, Bahristan-i-Ghaibi, (tr. M.I. Borah), Gauhati, 1936, vol. 1, bk. 1: p. 2.
(30.) Ibid., 1: pp. 130–1.
(31.) Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jehangir, p. 84.
(32.) W. Pertsch (ed. and tr.), ‘Kshitishvamsavalicharitam: A Chronicle of the Family of Raja Krishnachandra of Navadvipa, Bengal’, in Mohit Roy (ed.), Kshitishvamsavalicharit, Calcutta, 1986, pp. 250–60.
(33.) Gladwin, A Narrative of Transactions in Bengal, p. 61.
(34.) Sarkar, History of Bengal, p. 300.
(35.) Nathan, Bahristan-i-Ghaibi, 1, bk. 1: pp. 14, 27. For the significance of giftgiving rituals, see Stewart Gordon (ed.), Robes of Honour: Khil’at in Pre-Colonial and Colonial India, New Delhi, 2003.
(36.) Nathan, Bharistan-i-Gaibi, vol. 1, bk. 1, p. 32.
(37.) Pertsch, Kshitish; Brajendranath Bandyopadhayaya and Sajanti Kanta Das (eds), ‘Annadamangal’, in Bharatchandra Grantahbali, 1369 BS, Calcutta, pp. 10– 350.
(38.) Jnanendranath Kumar, Vamsa Parichay, vol. 24, 1350 BS, Calcutta, pp. 3–5; A.K. Roy, Lakshmikanta: A Chapter in the Social History of Bengal, Benaras, 1928, pp. 25–8; Bimanbehari Majumdar (ed.), Gaurimangala by Raja Prithvichandra of Pakur, Calcutta, 1971, p. xix.
(39.) Sukumar Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, vol. 2, 1405 BS, Calcutta, pp. 274–5. ‘The son of the lord of Delhi’ mentioned here was probably Shah Shuja, subahdar of Bengal from 1635–60, with some interruptions.
(40.) Satyanarayan Bhattacharya (ed.), Kobi Krishnaram Daser Granthabali, Calcutta, 1958, pp. 7–9.
(41.) Cited in S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, 2, pp. 858–9.
(42.) Bhattacharya (ed.), Kobi Krishnaram Daser Granthabali, p. 9.
(43.) Cited in S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, 2, p. 149.
(44.) J.F. Richards, ‘The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jehangir’, in The Mughal State, Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds), New Delhi, 1998, pp. 126–67; J.F. Richards, ‘Norms of Comportment among Imperial Mughal Officials’, in Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, Barbara Daly Metcalf (ed.), Berkeley, 1984, pp. 255–89.
(45.) Richards, ‘Formulation of Imperial Authority’, p. 150.
(46.) Nathan, Bahristan-i-Ghaibi, vol. 1, bk. 1, pp. 17, 74.
(47.) Ibid., 1, p. 11.
(48.) Kunal Chakrabarty, Religious Process: The Puranas and the Making of a Regional Tradition, New Delhi, 2001.
(49.) For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Chakrabarty, Religious Process; K. Chatterjee, ‘Communities, Kings and Chronicles: The Kulagranthas of Bengal’, Studies in History, vol. 21, no. 2, 2005, pp. 174–213.
(50.) Haraprasad Shastri, ‘Buddhism in Bengal since the Muhammadan Conquest’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. 44, no. 1, 1895, pp. 55– 64.
(51.) Jawhar Sircar, The Construction of the Hindu Identity in Medieval Western Bengal. The Role of Popular Cults, Institute of Development Studies, Occasional Paper No. 8, Kolkata, 2005, p. 38.
(52.) R.C. Majumdar, History of Medieval Bengal, Calcutta, 1973, pp. 188–217, 246–59; Sukhamoy Mukhopadhyaya, Banglar Itihaser Du'Sho Bachar: Swadhin Sultander Amal (1338–1538), Calcutta, 1980, pp. 51, 82–91.
(53.) Mohammed Enamul Huq, Muslim Bengali Literature, Karachi, 1957; Asim Roy, The Muslim Syncretist Tradition in Bengal, Princeton, 1983; Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204–1760, New Delhi, 1994.
(54.) Eaton, Islam and the Bengal Frontier, p. 226.
(55.) Eaton, Islam and the Bengal Frontier, p. 302; Tony Stewart, ‘In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving the Muslim-Hindu Encounter through Translation Theory’, in Richard M. Eaton (ed.), India's Islamic Tradition, 711–1750, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 363–92.
(56.) William Adam, Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 and 1838) including some Account of the State of Education in Bihar and a Consideration of the Means Adapted to the Improvement and Extension of Public Instruction in Both Provinces, Anandanath Basu (ed.), Calcutta, 1941, pp. 59, 141.
(57.) Ibid., pp. 21, 149–51.
(58.) Ibid., pp. 277–9, 279–81, 284, 287.
(59.) Notable exceptions include Stuart Blackburn, Print, Folklore and Nationalism in Colonial South India, New Delhi, 2003; Abhijit Gupta and Swapan Chakravarti (eds), Print Areas: Book History in India, New Delhi, 2004; Anindita Ghosh, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture in a Colonial Society, New Delhi, 2006.
(60.) The literature on this subject is extensive. Some notable examples include Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1979; Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982; Roger Chartier (tr. Lydia G. Cochrane), The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France, Princeton, 1987.
(61.) Juthika Basu Bhaumik, Bangla Punthir Puhpika, Calcutta, 1999.
(62.) Dinesh Chandra Sen, Gharer Katha O Juga Sahitya, Calcutta, 1969 (rpt), pp. 76–7; Rabindranath Thakur, ‘Jibansmriti’, pp. 6, 38, and ‘Chelebela’, p. 101 in Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 11, 1989, Calcutta.
(63.) Ghulam Hussain Tabatabai, Seir, vol. 2: pp. 157–8.
(64.) Anonymous, ‘Popular Literature of Bengal’, Calcutta Review, vol. 13, January–June, 1850, pp. 257–84.
(65.) D.C. Sen, Gharer Katha O Juga Sahitya, pp. 76–7.
(66.) Adam, Report, p. 141.
(67.) Ibid., pp. 284, 287.
(68.) D.C. Sen, Banga Bhasha O Sahitya, vol. 1, pp. 16–33; S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, vol. 1, pp. 19–37; Gholam Murshed, Kalantare Bangla Gadya, 1399 BS, Calcutta, pp. 13–42.
(69.) See D.C. Sen, Banga Bhasha O Sahitya; S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa.
(70.) S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, vol. 2, pp. 47–90, 311–36; Susil Kumar De, Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources, Calcutta, 1986; Ramakanta Chakrabarti, Bange Baishnab Dharma, Calcutta, 1996; Abantikumar Sanyal and Ashoke Bhattacharya (eds), Chaitanyadeb. Itihasa O Abadan, Calcutta, n.d.
(71.) Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘The Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal’, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Berkeley, 2003, pp. 518–28.
(72.) Sukumar Sen (comp.), Vaishnava Padavali, New Delhi, 1957.
(73.) Abdul Karim, Punthi Parichiti, in Ahmad Sharif (ed.), Dhaka, 1958; Mohammed Enamul Huq, Muslim Bengali Literature; Sukumar Sen, Islami Bangla Sahitya, 1400 BS, Calcutta.
(74.) On this point, see Murshed, Kalantare Bangla Gadya, pp. 180–98.
(75.) S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, vol. 1, pp. 19–37; Sushil Kumar De, Bengal's Contribution to Sanskrit Literature and Studies in Bengal Vaishnavism, Calcutta, 1960, pp. 76–9.
(76.) Sheldon Pollock, ‘The Sanskrit Cosmopolis, AD 300–1300. Transculturation, Vernacularization and the Question of Ideology’ in J.E.M. Houben (ed.), Ideology and Status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language, Leiden, 1996, pp. 197–248.
(77.) Sheldon Pollock, ‘Sanskrit Literary Culture from the Inside Out’, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Berkeley, 2003, pp. 39–130.
(78.) De, Bengal's Contribution to Sanskrit Literature, p. 22.
(79.) Tarafdar, Hussain Shahi Bengal, pp. 268–72.
(80.) De, Bengal's Contribution to Sanskrit Literature, p. 122.
(81.) Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Culture and Politics of Persian in Pre-Colonial Hindustan’, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History, pp. 131–98.
(82.) Muzaffar Alam, Francoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye, and Marc Gaborieau (eds) The Making of Indo-Persian Culture. Indian and French Studies, New Delhi, 2000, p. 25.
(83.) Jagadish Narayan Sarkar, The Life of Mir Jumla, the General of Aurangzeb, New Delhi, 1979; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Persianization and Mercantilism in Bay of Bengal History, 1400–1700’, in Explorations in Connected History: From the Tagus to the Ganges, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 45–79.
(84.) Alam, Delvoye, and Gaborieau, The Making of Indo-Persian Culture, p. 25.
(85.) Eaton, Islam and the Bengal Frontier, p. 47; Ma Huan (tr. J.V.G. Mills), YingYai Sheng-lan: ‘The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores’, Cambridge, 1970.
(86.) Subrahmanyam, ‘Persianization and Mercantilism’, p. 57.
(87.) Huq, Muslim Bengali Literature, pp. 142–5.
(88.) S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, vol. 1, pp. 98–9.
(89.) Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 108–10.
(90.) Tarafdar, Hussain Shahi Bengal, pp. 264–6.
(91.) Ibid., p. 266.
(92.) Sukhamoy Mukhopadhyaya, Bangalir Itihaser Du Sho Bachar, pp. 88–9.
(93.) Abdul Karim, Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad Rachanabali: Prathama Khanda, Abul Ahsan Chowdhury (ed.), vol. 1, Dhaka, 1997, pp. 179–319.
(94.) S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, 1, pp. 89–91; S. Sen, Islami Bangla Sahitya, pp. 22–43; M.R. Tarafdar, Bangla Romantic Kabyer Hindi-Awadhi Patabhumi, Dhaka, 1971; Mir Sayyid Manjhan Shattari Rajgiri (tr. Aditya Behl, et al.), Madhumalati: An Indian Sufi Romance, Oxford, 2000; Shantanu Phukan, ‘Through a Persian Prism: Hindi and Padmavat in the Mughal Imagination’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000.
(95.) S. Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihasa, vol. 1, pp. 89–91.
(96.) Karim, Abdul Karim Granthabali, pp. 179–319.
(97.) Sukhamoy Mukhopadhyaya and Sumangal Rana (eds), Jayananda Birachita Chaitanyamangal, Shantiniketan, 1994, p. 135.
(98.) Sarkar, History of Bengal, pp. 223–4; Tarafdar, Hussain Shahi Bengal, pp. 264–6; Eaton, Islam and the Bengal Frontier, pp. 159–93.
(99.) Subrahmanyam, ‘Persianization and Mercantilism’, pp. 53–7.
(100.) Anand Swarup Gupta, ‘Purana, Itihasa, Akhyana’, Purana, vol. 6, no. 2, 1964, p. 454.
(101.) F.E. Pargiter, Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, London, 1922; H.C. Raychaudhuri, Political History of Ancient India from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty, Calcutta, 1953 (rpt).
(102.) Ludo Rocher, Puranas, Wiesbaden: Hassarowitz, 1986; R.C. Hazra, Studies in the Upapuranas, vols 1 and 2, Calcutta, 1963, (1958).
(103.) Wendy Doniger, Purana Perennis: Reciprocity and Transformation in Hindu and Jaina Texts, Albany, 1993, p. ix.
(104.) Hazra, Studies in the Upapuranas, vol. 1, p. 214, and vol. 2.
(105.) Chintaharan Chakrabarty, ‘Purana Tradition in Bengal’, Purana, vol. 7, no. 1, 1965, p. 150–7.
(106.) Ibid., pp. 152–4.
(107.) K. Chakrabarty, Religious Process, p. 55.
(108.) Cited in Thomas B. Coburn, Devi Mahatmya: The Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition, Columbia, MO, 1985, p. 27.
(109.) Renate Schonen and Peter Shriner (eds and trs), Brahmapurana, Wiesbaden, 1989, ch. 42: 38cd–42ab.
(110.) Gupta, ‘Purana, Itihasa. Akhyana’, pp. 456–9; V.S. Pathak, Ancient Historians of India: A Study in Historical Biographies, New York, 1963, pp. 1–18.
(111.) Gupta, ‘Purana, Itihasa, Akhyana’, p. 461.
(112.) Sushil Kumar De, History of Sanskrit Literature, Calcutta, 1947; Edwin Gerow, Indian Poetics, Wiesbaden, 1977, p. 236.
(113.) Sheldon Pollock, ‘Sanskrit Literary Culture from the Inside Out’, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History. Reconstructions from South Asia, p. 51. See also, Gerow, Indian Poetics, p. 219 and De, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 41.
(114.) Pathak, Ancient Historians of India; Chandra Prabha, Historical Mahakavyas in Sanskrit (Eleventh to Fifteenth Century AD), New Delhi, 1976.
(115.) Chronological accounts of kings and dynasties also featured as staples of ‘modern’ history-writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and beyond. The conscious and professed methodology followed here was of course different from either the ‘historical kavya’ or other forms of historiography of ancient and medieval times.
(116.) A.B. Keith, History of Sanskrit Literature, Oxford, 1966, pp. 144–53; De, History of Sanskrit Literature, pp. 345–9; Sheldon Pollock, ‘Sanskrit Literary Culture from the Inside Out’, pp. 41–53.
(117.) A.L. Basham, ‘The Kashmir Chronicle’, in Historians of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, C.H. Philips (ed.), London, 1961, p. 58.
(118.) Sandhyakara Nandy, Ramacharitam, Radhagobinda Basak (ed. and tr.), Calcutta, 1969, p. 99.
(119.) Raja Radhakanta Deb, Shabda-Kalpa-Druma, Calcutta, 1931, pt. 1; Nagendranath Basu, Bishwakosha, 1317 BS, Calcutta, vol. 2, pt. 2.
(120.) Hamilton A.R. Gibb, ‘Tarikh’, in S.J. Shaw and W.K. Polk (eds), Studies in the Civilization of Islam, Boston, 1962, pp. 108–37.
(121.) Ibid.
(122.) Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, Leiden, 1968, p. 72.
(123.) Ibid., p. 87.
(124.) Ibid., p. 101.
(125.) Peter Hardy, ‘Some Studies in Pre-Mughal Muslim Historiography’, in C.H. Philips (ed.), Historians of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, London, 1961, pp. 115– 27; also Peter Hardy, Historians of Medieval India: Studies in Indo-Muslim Historiography, London, 1966.
(126.) Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600–1800, New Delhi, 2001, p. 223.
(127.) The Baburnamah, the Humayunnamah of Gulbadan Begum, and the memoirs of emperor Jehangir (that is, The Tuzuk-i-Jehangiri) are appropriate examples.
(128.) Rao-Shulman-Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time, p. 223.
(129.) Abdur Rashid, ‘Treatment of History in Mughal Official and Biographical Works’, in C.H. Philips (ed.), Historians of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, pp. 139– 51.
(130.) Hardy, Historians of Medieval India; Mohibbul Hasan (ed.), Historians of Medieval India, Meerut, 1968
(131.) Ali Anooshahr, ‘Mughal Historians and the Memory of the Islamic Conquest of India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 43, no. 3, 2006, p. 278.
(132.) For example, Ghulam Hussain Salim Zaidpuri (tr. Maulavi Abdus Salam), Ryazu-s-Salatin, Delhi, 1975 (rpt).
(133.) Ghulam Hussain Tabatabai, Seir.
(134.) Hardy, Historians of Medieval India, p. 111.
