Perso-Sanskrit Narratives of the Mughal’s Tasḵẖīr-i-kashmir: Phased Opening, Ecology and Literary Strategies

Abstract

This study explores the Mughal conquest of Kashmir (tasḵẖīr-i-kashmīr) through the region’s phased openings rather than a singular watershed event signalling either a climactic loss of independence or ushering in a golden age. Before 1585–89, there were two decades of patronage, diplomacy, and a steady breaching of the valley’s defences. When Mughal dominion was established, sections of the local aristocracy figured prominently as part of the new dispensation of power, while others continued to offer resistance. An analysis of imperial and local Perso-Sanskrit narratives of the conquest yields insight into how Kashmir was incorporated into the Mughal empire. This micro-historical process is the most valorised of historical transitions within the early Mughal literary discourse, it was highly represented as moment of glory and grand vehicle for rhetoric of diplomatic propaganda. This study largely demonstrates pre-modern power elites’ graded political loyalties, multi-laterality of socio-historical and ecological processes that facilitated the Mughal kingdom-seizing in Kashmir. Simultaneously moving beyond the traditional binary of ‘conquest’ vs ‘resistance’ conceptualisation and political abuse of the local narratives, it navigates the analytical efficacy and social logic of five primary narrative constructions of the Conquest produced by Mughal political elites and regional counter-elites in the terminal decade of sixteenth and early decades of the seventeenth century, namely, Akbarnāmā, Insha’ Abū’l Faẓl, Śukha-rājataraṅgiṇī, Bāhāristān-i-Sháhi and Taʼrīḵẖ-i-Kashmir.