The wonder that was india

Stuart, C. M. Villiers, Gardens of the Great Mughals, London, 1913.

Verma, S. P., Art and Material Culture in the Paintings of Akbar's Court, New Delhi, 1978.

Welch, S. C, The Art of Mughal India, New York, 1963.

——, Imperial Mughal Painting, London, 1978.

Wellesz, E., Akbar's Religious Thought Reflected in Mogul Painting, London, 1952.

REFERENCES

1. Gibb (tr.), The Travels of Ibn Battuta, p. 622.

2. R. H. Major (tr.), India in the Fifteenth Century (Journey of Abd er-Razzak), New York (Hakluyt Society), 19, pp. 23-35.

3. Brown, Indian Architecutre (Islamic Period), p. 89.

4. Ibid., p. 93.

5. Rizvi and Flynn, Fathpur-Sikri, pp. 37-8.

6. Ibid., pp. 53-4.

7. Jahangir, tr. Rogers and Beveridge, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, I, p. 152.

8. Abu 'l-Fazl, tr. Blochmann, A 'in-i Akbari, I, p. 114.

9. A. Muqtadir, Catalogue of the Arabic and Persian Manuscripts in the Oriental Public Library at Bankipore, Patna, 1921, VII, pp. 40-9.

10. Mohammad Wahid Mirza, The Life and Times of Amir Khusrau, Calcutta, 1935, pp. 237-9.

11. Firdawsi, Shahnama, Tehran, n.d., IV, pp. 1961-2.

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12. Rizvi, History of Sufism in India, I, pp. 326-7.

13. The Life and Times of Amir Khusrau, pp. 164—6.

14. Ethe (Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office), No. 2005. For a paper on the work, see Mrs K. N. Hasan, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Delhi session, 1961, pp. 177-9.

15. Abu'l-Fazl, tr. Blochmann, A 'in-i Akbari, I, p. 681.

16. Jadunath Sarkar (tr.), Ma'dsir-i 'Alamgiri, Calcutta, 1947, p. 45.

17. Rizvi, History of Sufism in India, II, pp. 468-70.

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APPENDIX

MEDIEVAL INDIAN LITERATURE AND THE BHAKTI MOVEMENT

In ancient times the enormous body of sacred Hindu literature written in Sanskrit, comprising the Vedas, the Brahmanas (meaning texts of sacrificial rituals; not to be confused with the highest Hindu priestly class, the brahmans or Anglicized brahmins), and the Upanishads, were the exclusive preserve of the learned brahmans, who in succeeding centuries interpreted and reinterpreted them in the light of new challenges and demands. The two epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the compendia of legends and religious instructions, of which there are eighteen main ones, in the Puranas, and the books of sacred law and numerous hymns and religious poems, although in Sanskrit, were available to all, including men of low caste and women.

At least a century before the birth of Christ, the influence of the Bhagavad Gita from Book VI of the Mahabharata, comprising the ethical sermons of Lord Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield when the Kurus were drawn up against the Pandavas, changed Hindu religious attitudes. They moved away from sacrifice and mystical techniques based on the ascetic virtues of renunciation and self-forgetfulness towards the impassioned religion of self-abandonment in God. The three paths to the Absolute whereby spiritual fulfilment was attained, as spelled out in the Bhagavad Gita, are the path of knowledge (jnana), the path of action (karma), and the path of deep adoration (bhakti). The goal of the paths of knowledge and action is for the soul to realize itself by its own efforts; but according to the path of bhakti, God actively helps the soul to liberation by the exercise of His grace. Bhakti does not recognize Hindu class and caste distinctions. Referring to Krishna's teachings on the subject, al-Biruni says:

All these things originate in the difference of the classes or castes, one set of people treating the others as fools. This apart, all men are equal to each other, as Vasudeva says regarding him who seeks salvation: 'In the judgement of the intelligent man, the brahman and the Candala are equal, the friend and the (be, the faithful and the deceitful, nay, even the serpent and the weasel. If to the eyes of intelligence all things are equal, to ignorance they appear as separated and different.'1

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In the face of attacks from the materialists, the Buddhists, and Jainas, and the indifference of their own members towards the ossified ceremonies, the more enlightened brahmans elevated Vishnu from his role of sun deity in the Rig-Veda to the state of supreme spirit. They identified him with Bhagavan, Vasudeva, Krishna, Narayana, and other less widely known divine figures. Similarly, the worship of the Rig-Vedic deity, Rudra, was transformed into Shaivism or Shiva worship.

Much of the vernacular sacred poetry was produced in the Peninsula. Some is of great value, and is considered to be very holy. A beautiful collection of moral aphorisms in Tamil verse, the Tirukkural (Sacred Couplets), attributed to Tiruvalluvar, perhaps dates from the fourth or fifth century AD, though some authorities would put it much earlier. Later, from the seventh to the tenth centuries, the eleven sacred books (Tirumurai) of the Tamil Shaivites were composed, anthologies of hymns by the sixty-three Nayanars, or Teachers. Chief of these eleven works are the Tevaram, containing songs by the three poets Appar, Nanasambandar, and Sundaramurti, and the Tiruvasagam of Manikka Vasagar. The Tamil Vaishnavites produced at about the same period the Nalayiram (Four Thousand), a collection of stanzas attributed to the twelve Alvars or saints of the sect.2

The Alvar hymns in Tamil were composed in honour of the god Vishnu and his avatars (incarnations) Rama and Krishna, particularly Krishna. They proposed bhakti (fervent devotion) as a path for all - outcaste and caste Hindu alike. The name Alvar, based on a Tamil root meaning 'be immersed', epitomizes the intuitive mystical content of their devotionalism. Rebelling against the superior caste claims of the brahmans, the greatest of the Alvars was Nammalvar (c. AD 800), himself a lowly Shudra. In the hymns of Antal, a female Alvar, both the childhood of the incarnate god Krishna and his youthful days are lyrically depicted.

In the realm of philosophy, the influence of the south Indian Shaivite brahman, Shankara (?788-820), strengthened the classical Vedanta, which is one of the six systems of salvation in Hinduism. Shankara's greatness lies in his brilliant dialectic. By able use of logical argument - and, we must admit, by interpreting some phrases very figuratively - he reduced all the apparently self-contradictory passages of the Upanishads to a consistent system which, though not unchallenged, has remained the standard philosophy of intellectual Hinduism to this day. The comparison of Shankara in Hinduism with St Thomas Aquinas in the Roman Catholic Church is a very fair one. The doctrine of Shankara is often known as advaita ('allowing no second', i.e. 'monism') or

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kevaladvaita ('strict monism'). On the everyday level of truth, the world was produced by Brahma, and went through an evolutionary process similar to that taught by the Sankhya school, from which Shankara took over the doctrine of the three gunas (constituent qualities, causing virtue [sattva], passion [rajas] and dullness [tamas]). On the highest level of truth the whole phenomenal universe, including the gods themselves, was unreal; the world was maya, illusion, a dream, a mirage, a figment of the imagination. Ultimately the only reality was Brahman, the impersonal world-soul of the Upanishads, with which the individual soul was identical.3

Despite his rigid Upanishadic doctrine of salvation of knowledge, Shankara was the reputed author of some fine devotional poems in Sanskrit. In fact the Tamil country was absorbed in impassioned devotionalism, and Shankara could not remain unaffected. Hinduism remains indebted, however, to Ramanuja (?1017—1137), who was also a south Indian brahman. He taught in the great temple of Srirangam. Although he admitted Shankara's doctrine of salvation by knowledge, he declared 'that those so saved would find a state of bliss inferior to the highest'. The best means of salvation was devotion, and the best yoga (mystical training) was bhakti-yoga -such intense devotion to Vishnu that the worshipper realized that he was but a fragment of God, and wholly dependent on Him. Another means of salvation was prapatti, the abandonment of self, putting one's soul completely in the hands of God, trusting in His will, and waiting confidently for His grace.

Ramanuja's god was a personal being, full of grace and love for his creation. He could even override the power of karma to draw repentant sinners to him. Unlike the impersonal world-soul of Shankara, which made the illusory universe in a sort of sport (lila), Ramanuja's God needed man, as man needed God. By forcing the sense, Ramanuja interpreted the words of Krishan, 'the wise man "I" deem my very self, to imply that just as man cannot live without God, so God cannot live without man. The individual soul, made by God out of His own essence, returned to its maker and lived for ever in full communion with Him, but was always distinct. It shared the divine nature of omniscience and bliss, and evil could not touch it, but it was always conscious of itself as an 'I', for it was eternal by virtue of its being a part of godhead, and if it lost consciousness it would cease to exist. It was one with God, but yet separate, and for this reason the system of Ramanuja was called visistadvaita ('qualified monism').4

It was the compilation of the Bhagavata Purana by some Bhagavata brahman community in the Tamil country between 850 and 950,

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however, that made bhakti popular with both intellectuals and non-intellectuals. The tenth book of the Bhagavata Purana, describing the life and achievements of Krishna, highlights important Hindu cosmological and philosophical theories. The ecstatic and passionate love of the gopis (herd-girls) for Krishna, and his reciprocal love for them, went a long way to making bhakti-yoga predominant in the Hindu ways of salvation. In the Bhagavata Purdna, the Supreme Being is predominantly qualified (saguna) and is conceived of as personal. Although the achievements of the cowherd god as an avatar (incarnation of a god, especially of Vishnu) satisfy the intense spiritual cravings of the devotee, the Bhagavata Purana also emphasizes the nirguna (unqualified) approach to the deity. In a very remarkable manner the great work blends devotionalism with non-dualism by focusing its attention on the worship of Krishna as the transcendent and supreme deity of the Vaishnavites.

The translation of the Bhagavata Purdna from Sanskrit into Indian regional languages (some forty in Bengali alone) made the bhakti movement predominant in Hinduism. In short, the deification of Krishna, Rama, or Shiva and the devotional religion of the saints of the bhakti movement shook the foundation of brahmanical dominance of Hinduism. Bhaktas ('devotees') adopted gurus or spiritual directors, many from the lower castes, as their supreme authority. The guru was not necessarily a living being or an historical personality; legendary figures or abstract ideas of divinity were elevated to the position of guru. The devotees, or bhaktas, reverently treasured the hymns composed by gurus or ascribed to them, although interpolations were frequently made as they passed from generation to generation. Supernatural feats were freely credited to these gurus and were gullibly accepted as historical facts by the devotees.

The twelfth- and thirteenth-century Hindu mystics, such as Madhva (1197-1276), a Kanarese brahman and the founder of the Madhava sect, and the Telegu brahman Nimbarka (c. 1130-1200), who settled near Mathura, also greatly influenced the bhakti movement. In northern India the cumulative impact of the Buddhist Sahajiyas,5 Tantrics,6, and Nath yogis led to the development of the north Indian sant (saintly) traditions, whose followers organized themselves into spiritual orders known as panths.

Bhakti devotion was not confined to a simplistic, singular attitude, or the bhava to god or gods. It could assume the form of a servant's attitude to his master, such as the monkey god Hanu-man's devotion to Rama (dasya-bhava); that of a friend to a friend (sakhya-bhava), such as that of Arjuna to Krishna; a parent's

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attitude to his or her child, as that of Kausalya to Rama (vatsalya-bhava); a child's attitude to his or her parent, such as Dhurva to Suniti (santa-bhava); a wife's attitude to her husband, such as Sita's to Rama (kanta-bhava); the beloved's attitude to her lover, such as Radha's to Krishna; or even the attitude of hatred, such as that of an atheist or god-hater towards God, as Sisupala's to Krishna. The overriding feature of the attitudes in the bhakti movement is self-abandonment to a personal God, and this tends to be highly emotional.

These bhavas were aroused by hymns and songs in regional dialects of the twelfth century onwards and helped to fill the heart of devotees from all classes with warmth and ecstasy. They gave rise to a rich corpus of devotional literature in these languages.

The tenth- and eleventh-century mystic songs, in the north Indian dialects known as charyapadas, are a curious mixture of a decadent Mahayana Buddhism and Tantric and Nath cult beliefs, but the devotional elements in them are deeply appealing. The most valuable contribution to the bhakti movement in Maharashtra was made, however, by the Marathi commentary on the Bhagavad Gita entitled the Bhavarthaipika, popularly known as Jnanesvari, by Jnanesvara (1271-96), also known as Jnanadeva.

Jnanesvara's contemporary, Namdev (1270-1350), belonged to a low-caste family of Pandharpur tailors. Although his hymns are predominantly Vaishnavite, the notes of devotion to the invisible and formless God of the nirguna (unqualified) bhakti are obvious. There is a story that Namdev once fell into a trance and believed himself to be playing the cymbals in God's honour. God finally appeared and took the instrument from him. On awakening, Namdev composed the following hymn:

Come, God, the Qalandar Wearing the dress of an Abdali. Nama's Lord is the searcher of all hearts, And wandereth in every land.7

The sufi terminologies such as 'Qalandar' and 'Abdal' in these verses suggest that, even before the conquest of the region by Sultan 'Ala'u'd-Din Khalji, sufi ideas were already strongly entrenched there.

The most remarkable feature of Namdev's leadership was his indomitable courage in abolishing class and caste distinctions. This was decidedly an Alvar legacy, but the sufi traditions also contributed to the opening of the doors of devotion to the Lord of all classes. A galaxy of hymnodist saints of low caste — such as Gora

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the potter, Samvata the gardener, Chokha the untouchable, Sena the barber, and Janaba'i the maid - were Namdev's friends. Even though the low-caste Chokha was forbidden access to the temple, the god Vitthal carried him into the sanctum sanctorum and, according to the legend, gave him his own necklace. The townspeople refused to believe Chokha's story, however, and along with other untouchables he died a miserable death whilst performing forced labour. In a touching abhang (hymn), his friend Namdev describes how he was asked by Vitthal to go and find Chokha's remains in order to erect a monument over them.

The mystic Eknath (?1533-99) was a brahman but he made kirtan (group singing) in Marathi into the highest form of worship to the Lord. He published a reliable edition of the Jnanesvari and wrote a commentary on the Ramayana entitled the Bhavartha-Ramayana. He also made no distinction between a brahman and a mahar (outcaste) and frequently ate with untouchables.

Tukaram (1598-1650), the greatest bhakti poet in the Marathi language, was the son of a grocer. He would never have succeeded in life, because he gave away whatever he possessed or earned to the needy. He wrote emotional abhanga (hymns) in order to arouse devotion to Krishna. The great Maratha ruler Shivaji respected him greatly, but Tukaram did not attend his court.

The Marathi poet and saint Ramdas (1608-81) exerted a strong influence on Shivaji. He was the son of a Nasik brahman. When the priest who was officiating at his wedding uttered the word 'svadhan' ('be constant'), Ramdas interpreted it as a divine command to serve God and left the place. He began to wander through the Maratha region as a devotee of Rama and gathered a considerable following. He rebuilt dilapidated temples, established mathas (monasteries), and wrote several works to reinvigorate Hindu devotion to Rama.

The Bengali movement was inspired both by Vaishnavite and Sahajiya sources. The Bhagavata Purdna gave a new form and meaning to the Gita-Govind (Songs of the Cowherd) by Jayadeva (c. 1199), a poet at the court of Lakshman Sena of Bengal, which features the love stories of Krishna and his celestial consort, Radha, who in later Krishna bhakti themes assumes the form of the supreme hladini shakti or joy-giving energy of Krishna. Even uninitiates are fascinated by the romance of Krishna, Radha, and the gopis; to the bhaktas it is an allegory of the soul's love and craving for the divine. It has been suggested that Jayadeva's Sanskrit version is based on the apabrahmsa (traditional vernacular or archaic Bengali) and that the Krishna cult was predominant in Bengal much earlier than the twelfth century. Chandidas (c.

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1350-1430) and other Vaishnavite poets identified themselves with Krishna's female companions. Chaitanya (1485-1533) proved even more radical by personally identifying himself with Radha and her love for Krishna, which symbolized the soul's search for God. Chaitanya's emotional attachment to Krishna immersed him in long spells of ecstasy and epileptic fits. His favourite form of worship as a bhakta was kirtan or samkirtan (group singing and dancing) accompanied by drums, cymbals, or a one-stringed fiddle, during which the words 'Hari' and 'Krishna' were constantly chanted. The singing sessions were not confined to private homes and temples, but spilled over into the streets. For three centuries hymns, ballads, legends, and dramas centring around Chaitanya's interpretations of Krishna multiplied in Bengali literature. In the seventeenth century Govind Das reinvigorated the Chaitanya traditions.

A unique offshoot of the Chaitanya tradition was the baul movement. This began in Nadia and spread all over Bengal. Although Hindus and Muslims adapted their own version, they both wrote their rapturous songs in Bengali. The Muslim bauls followed the sufi tradition, while the Hindu bauls were Vaishnavites. They are both regarded as 'men of the heart'. The bauls were non-dualistic, conceiving the body as the microcosm of the universe. A baul poet wrote: 'The man of the house is dwelling in the house - in vain have you become mad by searching for Him outside.'8

The Indo-Aryan dialects, such as Bhojpuri, Magadhi, and Maithili of modern Bihar, Avadhi, of the Avadh region, Braj Bhasha of the Mathura region, and Rajasthani, Panjabi, Kashmiri, Sindi, and Gujarati, also assumed new forms and meaning through bhakti poetry. The love ballads on Radha and Krishna by Vidyapati (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries), in Maithili, are a legacy from Chandidas. Their vigour and refined diction made them popular even in Bengal, Assam, and Nepal.

In the fifteenth century the area which may loosely be called 'the land of Hindi' saw a new turn in the bhakti movement under the influence of Ramananda (c. 1360-1470). In his early days, Ramananda probably lived in South India and was initiated into Ramanuja's Srivaishnava sect. Later he travelled all over India, spending some time teaching in Banaras and Agra. He advocated devotion to the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of Rama and his consort Sita, and worshipped their close companion, the monkey god Hanuman. His Adhyatma-Ramayana in Sanskrit is a remarkable literary achievement which re-aligns the saguna and nirguna forms into parallel currents. His disciples belonged to both the Vaishnavite

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and nirguna bhakti north Indian sant (Hindu saints) traditions. Ramananda firmly repudiated the injustices of caste, and among his twelve outstanding disciples were an outcaste, a woman, and a Muslim. Raidas, the chamar (shoemaker) disciple of Ramananda, wrote songs condemning brahmanical rituals and caste prejudices. The famous bhakti poet Kabir was also one of Ramananda's disciples, but he reorientated the prevailing north Indian nirguna bhakti traditions. He uninhibitedly declared:

I am not Hindu nor Muslim Allah-Ram is the breath of my body!

Kabir's history is shrouded with myths. Some legends state that Kabir was the illegitimate son of a brahman widow. One version claims that he was conceived by a widow because of Ramananda's blessings, and that, as with Christ, this occurred without a natural father. In order to protect herself from public slander, the widow left her baby near a pond some way out of the city. A Muslim weaver called 'Ali, popularly known as Niru, saw the baby; being childless, he and his wife Nima decided to adopt it as their own. This story is reminiscent of the adoption of Moses by the Pharaoh's daughter after she had found him abandoned in the bulrushes. The local qazi gave the child the name Kabir. This story was an obvious invention and was an attempt to associate Kabir's parentage with Hinduism. What is more probable is that Kabir was born into a Muslim family, the members of which were deeply imbued with Nath beliefs. That his parents' ancestors were yogis is not impossible. Of various dates for his birth, 1425 is the most likely.

Kabir constantly travelled around the Banaras area and was directly in touch with a number of Hindu sants and sufis. It is not unlikely that he exchanged ideas with eminent sufis in Kara, Manikpur, and Rudawli. Their views on the Wahdat al-Wujud ('unity of being' doctrine), expressed in Hindi, revolutionized Kabir's spiritual sensitivity. Although Kabir's mythology was predominantly Hindu, Muslim equivalents are commonplace and laboured. His verses were generally memorized by his disciples after they had been uttered, and then written down immediately or soon afterwards. This process gave rise to considerable interpolation, and naturally many inauthentic verses are included. Those in the Adi Granth, the Kabir Granthawali, and the Bijak (Treasury) are the most reliable.

Kabir was married and although he was unhappy with his role as a husband and a father he preached neither renunciation nor celibacy. Throughout his life, when he was not travelling he lived

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the traditional life of a married man. Before his death he is said to have migrated from Banaras to Maghar. Some authors suggest that Maghar was close to Banaras; others believe it was in the district of Basti, near Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. The decision was deliberately taken by Kablr in order to belie the Hindu superstition that one who died in Maghar would return in a following life as an ass. Of the many dates given for Kabir's death, 1505 is the most probable.

The earliest sufi traditions refer to Kabir as muwahhid (unitarian, or a follower of the Wahdat al-Wujud), who could not be called either an orthodox Hindu or an orthodox Muslim.9 According to the seventeenth-century Mir'atu'l-asrar, he was a Firdawsiyya sufi, but the Irani author of the Dabistan-i Mazahib places Kabir against the background of the legend of the Vaishnavite vairagis (mendicants). 'Abdu'llah Khweshgi, the author of the early eighteenth-century Ma'ariju'l-wilayat, says:

Shaykh Kabir Julaha [weaver] is the disciple of Shaykh Taqi.10 Kabir was one of the perfect awliya' (sufis) and the most famous gnostic of his age, but he chose for himself the path of the malamatiyya.11 He adopted this technique in order to remain unknown. His Hindi poetry is sublime and is a proof of the greatness of the author. If his poetry is carefully examined it is found full of ideas of unification (wisal), with little mention of separation. He was a pioneer in expressing spiritual truth and gnosis through the medium of Hindi. He wrote a great variety of Hindi poetry, and his Bishunpads and sakhis (forms of Hindi poetry) are very famous. Those who do proper justice to Kabir's poetry are convinced that no other poetry can match it in the expression of divine secrets and spiritual truth. Muhaqqiq-i Hindi (Malik Muhammad Ja'isi) imitated the style of Kabir but he chose the soratha and dohas (forms of Hindi poetry) through which to express his thoughts. Kabir's spiritual eminence attracted both Muslims and Hindus to his discipleship. Each religious group considered him to be a member of its own religion, but in reality he transcended all such distinctions. Were someone to assert that Kabir had only Hindu followers, this claim would still not undermine his wilayat (position as an eminent sufi). An earlier example of a similar situation was the devotion of the Rafizis (Shi'is) to the fourth Caliph, 'Ali; this did not undermine the reputation of the latter, but on the contrary established the greatness of 'Ali, to whom even the irreligious (Shi'is) were drawn.12