A muslim princess in the temples of Viṣṇu

Abstract

I begin this essay with a story.1 It tells of the daughter of the Muslim Sultan of Delhi who falls in love with an icon of the Hindu god Visnu and follows it all the way to southern India, where she dies and gains posthumous beatitude within the Hindu temple. The tale is preserved, in slightly differing versions, in several pre-British South Indian Vais?ava texts and primarily relates to two major ?rivaisnava temples, the temple of Visnu Raggan?tha at Srirangam near Tricbi and the N?r?yanasv?mi temple at Melkote in Karnataka.2 The Delhi princess also turns up in other South Indian temples, as we will see. Viewing the Sudan's daughter in her medieval setting, I would like to show how this narrative offers reflections on the problematic relations of contending Hindu and Muslim elites, the incorporative possibilities of bhakti, and the space accorded to Islam within the established Hindu temples of late medieval South India.