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ABSTRACT
The Tomar court in Gwalior sponsored the first known extant retellings of the epics in Classical Hindi. This is sometimes interpreted as a Hindu renaissance after an interlude of Sultanate-installed overlordship in Gwalior. Is there evidence that the Tomars inaugurated an emotional regime of resurgent Hinduism when they came to power around 1394? This paper attempts to answer the question based on the contemporaneous Persian sources, complemented with Tomar inscriptions and the relevant passages in the Classical Hindi chronicle Gopācalākhyāna, authored by Khaḍag Rāy (ca. 1630), on the basis of a recently rediscovered manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Acknowledgments
This research has been made possible thanks to a visiting professorship at Ghent University in Belgium, with a Royalty Research Foundation Grant of the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. I am grateful to the participants of our reading sessions and masterclasses in Ghent and Seattle for good suggestions and comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Both epics were edited by Harihar Nivās Dvivedī in 1973. An edition of the Rāmāyaṇa had also been published the year before by Loknāth Dvivedī ‘Silākārī’.
2. McGregor, “An Early Hindi (Brajbhāṣā) Version,” 183; and see also McGregor, “Viṣṇudās and his Rāmāyan-kathā.”
3. For definition and discussion of emotional regimes, see Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling, 55.
4. Pollock, “The Cosmopolitan Vernacular,” 31.
5. See McGregor, “A Narrative Poet’s View”; “The Progress of Hindi,”; and Bangha, “Early Hindi Epic Poetry.”
6. Because of restrictions of length, this article will not engage with the Persian sources that are later than the fifteenth century.
7. This text too was edited by Harihar Nivās Dvivedī (Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān). Outside the scope of this paper are the Persian sources from Gwalior, which seem to be contemporaneous with or later than Gopācalākhyāna, and most likely derivative, thus the Kulliyāt-i Gwāliyarī by Sayyid Fazl ‘Alī Shāh Qadirī (also Shāh Jahān period, based on a Hindavī source itself), Gwāliyar-Nāmah by Shāh Jalāl Hisārī, (up to 1645–1646), by Hīrāman bin Girdhardās Munshī (up to 1668), and by Khair ud-Dīn Muhammad Illāhābādī (up to 1785–1786).
8. The founder, Ghiyāz ud-Dīn Tughluq Shāh (Ghāzī Mālik), was likely a Qaruna Turk, see Siddiqui, Authority and Kingship, 122.
9. For discussions of those different factions and social tensions, see Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate; Digby, “Before Timur Came”; Siddiqui, Authority and Kingship; Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate and ‘The Ignored Elites’. On the diversity in the Sultanate and the (dis)continuities into the Mughal imperial formation, see Lefèvre, ‘State-building and the Management’, 425–447.
10. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy, 71–116.
11. Kolff, “Retrospection,” 458–459.
12. The actual founder of the Sayyid dynasty, Khizr Khān from Multan, had allied himself with Timur and never called himself sultan. I have used the translation by Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī.
13. There is a solid translation of this text (leaving out unfortunately the poems) prepared by Muhammad Zaki (Zaki, Tarikh-i-Muhammadi) under direction of Professor S. Nurul Hasan, Head, of the Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University.
14. Zaki, Tarikh-i-Muhammadi, 31.
15. This identification is not accepted by all, but still seems plausible (Katare, “Two Gangolātāl, Gwalior, Inscriptions,” 353 n. 4).
16. This is after much unrest, starting with his nephew Tughluq Shah II ibn Fateh Khan, who managed to ascend the throne with his grandfather’s support in 1388.
17. Zaki, Tarikh-i-Muhammadi, 42.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 160–161. It should be noted that this was nothing new: Uddharan and his compatriots at Etawah are reported already in 1377–78 to have revolted (Habib and Khaliq, Comprehensive History of India, 5.617).
21. Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 177.
22. See also Eaton, Temple Desecration and Muslim States, about the rhetoric in Persian chronicles.
23. Willis, Inscriptions of Gopakṣetra, 40–43.
24. For speculation for a more precise date, see Katare, “Two Gangolātāl, Gwalior, Inscriptions,” 349–50 and 352; and Dvivedī, Gvāliar ke Tomaron kā itihās, 22–23 and 37.
25. In the first one, the epithet for the king, Śakanipātita actually means ‘being struck down by the Śaka’ (see also the paper by Pauwels and De Clercq in this volume). In the second, the word śakagaṇam ‘the hord of Śakas’ is legible. In both inscriptions, there is a pun, as Uddharaṇa’s name means ‘uplifter’ and is in close conjunction with mahīm, ‘the earth.’ This may well carry connotations with Varāha, the boar incarnation of Vishnu, especially given the presence of a giant earlier sculpture in Gwalior. I am grateful to Prof. Richard Salomon of U. Washington for his help with understanding the fragmentary inscription.
26. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān.
27. O’Shaughnessy and Sutherland, “Sanscrit Inscription on slab.”
28. Mitra, “Vestiges of the Kings of Gwalior,” 404–406.
29. For Mewar chronicles, see Talbot, The Last Hindu Emperor, esp. 104–6; for the fascinating case of the Khyamkhanis, and see Talbot, “Becoming Turk the Rajput Way.”
30. Talbot, “The Mewar Court’s Construction of History,” 16–17.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., 18–19.
33. Ed. 97–8, ms. fol. 45 r–v.
34. Busch, Poetry of Kings, 144–148.
35. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 36–37.
36. I am grateful to the Bibliothèque nationale for providing and the Department of Asian Languages and Literature of the University of Washington for funding to order a pdf copy of the manuscript.
37. The edition tells the complete story under the teleological title Vīrsingh dev Tomar kā abhyuday aur Tovar rajya kā ant, ‘The rise of Vīrsingh dev Tomar and the end of the Tomar dynasty’ (Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 89), but in the ms. fol. 38r the focus initially is solely on taking possession of the fort, as the much less Sanskritic title indicates: garha gvāliyar rājā taubara kesai āe ‘How the Tomar kings came to Gwalior fort.’
38. The ms. on fol 38 reads tini ke hradai basai ati dharmu (instead of parabrahmu).
39. The author refers here to his source, which is not further identified.
40. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 89–90; ms. fol 38r–v. Translations from the Hindi in this article are all mine. I am grateful for the feedback and suggestions from participants in reading sessions of this text in Seattle in September 2017, and in Ghent in Fall 2018.
41. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy.
42. I have translated the ms. reading (fol 38v): tā teṃ nasarata khān uccarai, araja eka sāhiba cita dharai. The edition reads taba nasarata khān yoṃ uccarau, acaraja nāhi sāhi cita dharau, ‘Then Nusrat Khān advised thus: “That’s no surprise, your Lordship should attend [to the matter].”’.
43. Panjā, lit. ‘aggregate of five,’ can mean literally ‘paw’ or more fig. ‘clutch, grasp; power.’
44. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 90, ms. fol 38v–39r.
45. It is not clear who this is. ‘Allāh ud-Dīn had a nephew of that name, the son of his elder brother Fateh Khān, but given that he was a rival, who was proclaimed sultan in 1394–1395, this does not seem likely to be the party intended here (see Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 167).
46. The reading of the ms. on fol. 38v line 6: pātasāhi ko ḍerā jahāṃ whereas the edition on p. 90 reads dilī alavadīna ho tahān ‘Delhi, where the sultan was enthroned’. In the manuscript the next line is missing, which I have indicated here with square brackets.
47. This may be an extradiegetical exhortation by the teller of the story. Alternatively, the verb sunau, which looks like an imperative could be taken as the perfective sunyau, and apply to the sultan or Nusrat Khan, who listened to Vīr Singh’s story.
48. The ms. adds before this line: Rājā bīra sangha dyau uvāca.
49. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 90, ms. fol 39r–v.
50. Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 160–1. As Yāḥyā reports, Islām Khān, about whose real name there is some confusion (probably it is Mubashir (Hā)jab, Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 157 n. 4), shortly thereafter fell victim to an intrigue and was killed around 1392 (Ibid., 161).
51. Thus, in the sixteenth-century Sanskrit stories about the brothers Harihara and Bukka of Vijayanagara, similarly the sultan, impressed with their loyalty after they stay put during a monsoon night, gives them a land grand of ‘Karnāta country’ (Waggoner, ‘Harihara, Bukka, and the Sultan’, 306–307). I am grateful to Cynthia Talbot for this reference.
52. This line is missing in the ms. (fol 39v), which instead adds: Alāvadīn uvāca.
53. Instead of the edition’s roke sāhi, the ms. reads rījhai sāhi ‘the Shāh was pleased’ (fol 39v).
54. Instead of the edition’s tilaka sāhi abarekha, the ms. reads tilaka sāhi abhiṣeku ‘tilaka and royal coronation.’
55. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 91, ms. fol 39v.
56. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 91, ms. fol 39v–40.
57. This line and the next are switched in ms. and instead of mijamānī it reads Mahimānī (fol. 40r).
58. The ms. reads pakari rahe te sava dala khale instead of the edition’s parkari pakari te sabare haye (fol 40r).
59. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 91, ms. fol 40r.
60. Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 142.
61. The text in the ms. has been corrected to eku ba ḍaumana aciraja karai (fol. 40v).
62. The ms. instead of ādi pauri has āni pauri (fol. 40v).
63. The ms. has the superior reading: nāri bhedu tava pragaṭau bhayau (end fol 40v), for the edition’s nāri bheda taba gaḍha para bhayau.
64. The ms. reads dhāi (fol 40v) for chāi.
65. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 91–92, ms. fol 40r–v.
66. The ms. reads sāja (fol. 40v) for rāja.
67. The reading of the edition virasingha dyau tesau layau (the ms. has an inferior reading that does not make much sense: Vira singha dyau nripa te ho bhayau; fol 40v).
68. Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 92, ms. fol 40v. Nānā Kavi, who updated the story to Maratha times, feels moved to add an additional line: ‘The Tomars of the Moon Dynasty ruled for nine generations. Then the fort of Gopācala was lost, while the lineage continued.’ He reinforces it with a Sanskrit śloka: ‘By the power of past valour, a king may obtain a fort. But as this royal virtue runs out, his fort is conquered in a wink’ (Dvivedī, Gopācal Ākhyān, 93). These lines are not in the ms. (fol. 40), where the next section immediately follows without page break.
69. The basis of this interpretation is probably the short retrospective mention by Yāḥyā: [in 1402] ‘Iḳbāl marched against Gwālior, which had been treacherously wrested from the hands of the Musalmans during the invasion of the Mughals by the accursed Bar Singh … ’ (Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 177).
70. Waggoner, “Harihara, Bukka, and the Sultan.” I am grateful to Cynthia Talbot for this reference.
71. Dvivedī, Mahākavi Viṣṇudās, text p. 5, v. 35–37.
72. Perhaps it is not coincidental either that the name of the fort becomes the more militaristic Gopācaladurgā (as opposed to the earlier Gopagiri or Gopācala) for the first time in one of Dūṅgar Singh’s inscriptions (dated 1453, or 1510 VS; see Willis, Inscriptions of Gopakṣetra, 32).
73. De Clercq, “Apabhramsha as a Literary Medium,” 354.
74. Yāḥyā’s Tārīḳh-i Mubārak Shāhī, Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 209–210. Note however the sultan is cast slightly less gloriously in Tabaqāt-i Akbarī by Nizām ud-Dīn Aḥmad (Day, Medieval Malwa, 50–51).
75. In 1427 (Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 213), in 1428 (ibid., 216–7), in 1429–1430 (ibid., 222), in 1432–1433 (ibid., 233–235).
76. These campaigns of the Sayyid sultans are described in Habib and Nizami, Comprehensive History of India: 637–640, 645–648, 650, 654, and more of the same under the Lodis, ibidem, 684.
77. For the Sultan, see Yāḥyā’s Tārīḳh-i Mubārak Shāhī, Basu, The Tārīkh-i-Mubārakshāhī, 241. For Hoshang Shāh, the exact date is given as July 1435, see Day, Medieval Malwa: 59–62, based on Ma’āthir-i Maḥmūd Shāhī.
78. Dvivedī, Gvāliar ke Tomaron, 81; similarly in McGregor, ‘A Narrative Poet’s View’, 340.
79. Dvivedī, Mahākavi Viṣṇudās, text p. 5, v. 38–39.
80. It should be mentioned though that there is doubt about the exact date given in the text of the manuscripts, the 11th day of the dark half of Kārttik, which did not fall on a Friday according to the editor (see Bangha, ‘Early Hindi Epic Poetry’, 375 fn. 29). We might also surmise that the epic was commissioned on that day, perhaps immediately followed by the first performance, but conceivably it played over more than one day (or night) at the Tomar court.
81. Muhammad Bihamad Khānī’s Tārīḳh-i Muḥammadī, ch. 14, see Zaki, Tarikh-i-Muhammadi, 79–80.
82. Dvivedī on the other hand surmises the Mahābhārata was commissioned after the campaign, as a celebration of victory over the sultan of Kalpi (Dvivedī, Mahākavi Viṣṇudās, 48).
83. As translated in Eva De Clercq, “Apabhramsha as a Literary Medium,” 343–344.
84. See the inscriptions from Dūṅgar Singh’s rule on or near Jain images, two of which are dated 1440 (1497 VS), another two 1453 (1510 VS), and one perhaps 1448 (1505 VS; Willis, Inscriptions of Gopakṣetra, 40–43). On the Jain images, see Granoff, ‘Mountains of Eternity’, who speculates about their significance within a Hindu-Muslim antagonistic context.
85. De Clercq, “Apabhramsha as a Literary Medium,” 357–358 and 362 resp.
86. Day, Medieval Malwa, 422–428.
87. Yudhiṣṭhira figures prominently in Viṣṇudās’ Svargāvarohana (v. 3 in appendix 1 on p. 171 in Dvivedī, Mahākavi Viṣṇudās). In this text, due to the nature of the topic of the looming Kaliyuga, indeed dharma takes a more important role. Though often conflated with the Mahābhārata, this is a separate work with its own preface and authored later.
88. Pauwels forthcoming.
89. Dvivedī, Mahākavi Viṣṇudās, text p. 122, v. 4.3.59.
90. See, e.g., Wadley, Damayanti and Nala, 156.
91. I am grateful to Prof. Archana Kumar from BHU, for directing my attention to this genre during one of our reading sessions at Ghent University, Belgium in 2016. She has also presented a paper on the topic (Kumar, ‘Pandavani and Pandav-Charit’), of which she kindly shared a draft with me, and has provided me with a video recording of a Paṇḍavāṇī performance of Kīcaka-vadha.
92. The theme of the disastrous effects of a king’s rash action was also prominent in the Sanskrit works, such as the Hammīra-mahākāvya, composed at the Tomar court perhaps a few years earlier by Nayacandra Surī (see Sander Hens elsewhere in this volume). While sometimes the latter text and the underlying historical confrontations too have been interpreted through the lens of Hindu-Muslim conflict, as it turns out its treatment is much more complex. Within a context of multi-ethnic confrontations and shifting alliances, this Tomar-sponsored Mahākāvya too reflects a strong concern with an early form of Rajputization and social mobility (Bednar, ‘Mongol, Muslim, Rajput’).