Mughal Court Research Articles

Pre-Twentieth-Century Sikh Sacred Music: The Mughals, Courtly Patronage and Canonisation

This article discusses the canonisation and institutionalisation of Sikh sacred music (kirtan) at the courts of the ten Sikh gurus and the later Sikh maharajas in Lahore and Patiala. At the same time, it emphasises possible parallels with what happened musically at the Mughal court. Essentially, the article argues that pre-twentieth-century Sikh sacred music was Hindustani (classical) music because of its performance practice, instruments used, music theory and the interactions between Sikh court musicians and those of the Mughal and other North Indian courts, as well as of different Hindustani music lineages (gharanas). Ultimately, it underlines the importance of contextual history, for example in terms of Mughal culture, the imperial encounter and globalisation, in forming a firm understanding of continuity and change over five centuries of kirtan performance practice.

Dangerous Debates: Jain responses to theological challenges at the Mughal court

AbstractIn the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Jain leaders faced a series of religious questions at the royal Mughal court. At the request of their imperial Muslim hosts, Jain representatives discussed aspects of both Islam and Jainism on separate occasions, including the veracity of Islam, whether Jains are monotheists, and the validity of Jain asceticism. The Mughals sometimes initiated these conversations of their own accord and at other times acted on the prompting of Brahmans, who had political and religious interests at stake in encouraging imperial clashes with Jain leaders. Jain authors recorded these exchanges in numerous Sanskrit texts, which generally remain unknown to Mughal historians and Sanskrit scholars alike. I examine the Jain accounts of these cross-cultural debates and expound their political, religious, and intellectual implications. These engagements showcase how the Mughals negotiated religious differences with diverse communities in their kingdom. Furthermore, the Sanskrit narratives of these dialogues outline complex theological visions of how Jain beliefs and practices could thrive within a potentially hazardous Islamicate imperial order. More broadly Jain and Mughal discussions provide rich insight into key developments in religious precepts and local identities in early modern India.

Cosmopolitan Soirées in Eighteenth-Century North India: Reception of early Urdu poetry in Kishangarh

This paper looks at poetic dialogues and exchange of ideas in eighteenth-century North India. The focus is on the reception of the new Urdu poetry (then called Rekhtā) in the lesser-known Rajasthani principality, Kishangarh. This small kingdom near Jaipur is known in the art world for its gorgeous paintings, especially the delicate depictions of the love of Rādhā and Krishna that have made the Kishangarhi school famous and give it an air of timelessness. Sometimes the school is also considered ‘provincial’. Yet, there is more to this small principality than is commonly known. This paper shows how it was in fact quite cosmopolitan, very much in the midst of new intellectual and artistic developments at the Mughal court in the first half of the eighteenth century under Mahārājā Rāj Singh (r. 1706-1748). The paper’s point of departure consists of two Kishangarhi paintings that were produced during Rāj Singh’s reign. Both pictures portray mixed Hindu-Muslim gatherings. They show how there was more to the culture of Kishangarh than the world of Braj Bhāṣā poetry about Rādhā and Krishna. I read these paintings in conjunction with literary material that illustrates that in Kishangarh there were also experiments with the then-new style of poetry, later called Urdu. I present evidence of poetic dialogues between what are now regarded as separate poetic traditions, Urdu and Braj. The paper is based on recent manuscript research in India of Kishangarhi poems and collections. Methodologically it seeks to establish what can be gained in understanding by reading paintings together with contemporary literary sources.

Shirazi scholars and the political culture of the sixteenth-century Indo-Persian world

This article studies the career of Fath Allah Shirazi who matriculated in Shiraz with some of the most prominent scholars of the age, and subsequently moved to India as his specific network lost political power in Safavid Iran during the reign of Shah Tahmasp. Fath Allah found employment at the Bijapur Sultanate and finally went to Mughal India and contributed to a number of administrative, intellectual and ‘ideological’ movements at the Mughal court. Shirazi’s career is significant as it sheds light on the significance (and dangers) of personal networks that facilitated the political prospects of the elites in the Indo-Persian world. It also demonstrates the importance of the Deccan in elite circulations between Iran and Mughal India in this period. Finally, it shows how such individuals had to constantly modify their learning in order to meet the varying needs of the centres of patronage in which they served.

The Perception of Reception: The Importance of Sir Thomas Roe at the Mughal Court of Jahangir

Sir Thomas Roe, sent as an official ambassador from King James I of England to the Mughal court of Jahangir in 1615, was a prolific writer during his time in the Mughal Empire. In Roe’s writings, he vividly portrays the importance he associated with his position as a royal ambassador, the stress he placed on his position at the Mughal court, and the self-perceived intimacy of his relationship with Jahangir. By examining Roe’s journal and letters, the contemporary autobiographical memoirs of Emperor Jahangir, and significant examples of contemporary Mughal painting, this article will investigate the reasons for Roe’s self-perceived importance to Jahangir, and Jahangir’s corresponding take on Roe and England. It will conclude that while Roe purposefully projected an image of self-importance at the Mughal court in his writings to enhance his status in England, his perceived reception by Jahangir was not the reality of the situation. Roe’s time at Jahangir’s court did not enhance the political status of England within the Mughal Empire; instead, his embassy served to increase the span of Jahangir’s visual imagery of power.

Women of ‘Ill Repute’: Ethics and Urdu literature in colonial India

AbstractThe courtesan, the embodiment of both threat and allure, was a central figure in the moral discourses of the Muslim ‘respectable’ classes of colonial North India. Since women are seen as the bearers of culture, tradition, the honour of the family, community, and nation, control over women's sexuality becomes a central feature in the process of forming identity and community. As a public woman, the courtesan became the target of severe moral regulation from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The way in which the courtesan was invoked within aesthetic, ethical, and legal domains shifted over time, and by the third decade of the twentieth century, there appeared a new way of speaking and writing about the ‘fallen woman’ within the Urdu public sphere. A social critique emerged which heralded the prostitute-courtesan as an ethical figure struggling against an unjust social order. Since the courtesan symbolized both elite Mughal court culture as well as its decay, she was a convenient foil for some nationalists to challenge the dominant idioms of nationalist and communitarian politics. Moreover, certain late medieval and early modern Indo-Persian ethical concepts were redeployed by twentieth century writers for ‘progressive’ ends. This illustrated a turn to progressive cultural politics that was simultaneously anti-colonial and anti-communitarian, while maintaining a critical posture towards the dominant idioms of Indian nationalism.

Diplomacy at the Edge: Split Interests in the Roe Embassy to the Mughal Court

AbstractAs the first official English ambassador to the Mughal court, Sir Thomas Roe found himself at the outer reaches of English knowledge, experience, and influence in the early seventeenth century. This article examines the difficult position Roe felt himself to occupy, triangulating between the different interests he represented—his own interests, those of the East India Company that employed him, and those of the Crown that accredited him. Roe's letters revealed his difficulties in conducting what he saw as the essential tasks of the ambassador, and his limited success in establishing his status and authority both at the Mughal court and over the Company factors in India. As someone at the forefront of English overseas activities in the early seventeenth century, Roe's experiences shed light on the lived experience of English expansion. His case demonstrates the difficulties of adapting the tools of Tudor-Stuart statecraft to England's widening global reach.

Passionate Projectors: Savants and silk on the Coromandel coast 1780–98

Passionate Projectors: Savants and silk on the Coromandel coast 1780–98 Maxine Berg Silk in India Silk was an industry of longstanding provenance in precolonial India, highly specialized by region and the specific markets it provided. It was well known from the Punjab, Dacca and Bengal, Surat and Ahmedabad, Benares, and Hyderabad; in South India silk and cotton mixes were produced in Mylapore, Tanjore, Trichinopoly and Madurai. Wild silks (moonga) were known in India “from time immemorial” and produced for the Arab market.1 Yet a recent survey of the early European and Eurasian industry mentions the Indian silk industry only once, as “known in India before our era.”2 From the early medieval origins of South Indian production, the industry flourished during the Vijayanagar Empire of the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries in the Karnataka, Andhra and Tamil regions. Silk production in new cotton and silk mixes (mushroo and himroo) also expanded in the Deccan and the Mughal courts in the fashionable dress of the nobility.3 Silk production in South India for export to Europe became an East India Company project in the later eighteenth century, at a time when it was seeking cheaper alternatives for European, Persian and Chinese silks on the London luxury market. A series of South Indian silk projects also found its context in Enlightenment projects of “useful knowledge” and industrial improvement. This article investigates James Anderson’s silk projects on the Coromandel coast. Though the projects ultimately failed, they show dedicated attempts to adapt and transfer technologies and substantial investment by the East India Company. Detailed analysis of the setting-up phases, early progress, then failure of a number of these projects shows a common lack of engagement with local environmental constraints and local commercial incentives among farmers and zamindars. Europeans were well aware of Indian silks by the first half of the sixteenth century. Portuguese chroniclers described the silk robes and caps of the Vijayanagar kings and of the court of the Zamorin in Calicut. Bengal had a reputation by then for its lightweight silks, “taffeties” or “taffeta,” much used by the English by the seventeenth century.4 European imports from the seventeenth century, especially from Bengal, included large amounts of silk textiles. European trading companies soon sought to exploit the potential of an export trade to Europe in Indian silks. From this time the crafts and production moved away from the indigenous production and trading centres to the “black towns” around the European trading centres and factories in coastal India. There was also an increased demand for silk in the princely states.5 The English sent Streynsham Master to India in 1675 to learn about silk production there, and its potential as a trade product. He spent five years there, and promoted the promise of Bengal silks.6 He wrote in 1676: “All the Country, or great parts thereof about Cassambazar, is planted or sett with Mullberry trees, the leaves of which are gathered young to feed the worms with and make the silke fine, and therefore, the trees are planted every yeare.”7 From the later seventeenth century the Dutch and the English imported large amounts of raw silk from Bengal. It accounted for 88 per cent of the Asian raw silk sold on the Amsterdam market from 1693 to 1820. Bengal also supplied most of the raw silk and silk goods from Asia to the London market; Chinese silk piece goods made up no more than 2 per cent of imports at the turn of the eighteenth century.8 English silk weavers so feared the competition of Indian and Near Eastern silks by the late seventeenth century that an Act of 1699 outlawed their sale in England, though the re-export trade was still allowed.9 Indian silk was by the eighteenth century a priority of the English East India Company, then seeking cheaper alternatives for a large London luxury market in Italian and later French silks, and to a lesser extent in expensive Persian and Chinese silks. The English Weavers Company achieved a total ban on imported French silks in 1766; the law remained until 1824.10 Silk fascinated European savants and projectors. Its exotic provenance from ancient times...

Air Conditioning Jahangir: The 1622 English Great Design, Climate, and the Nature of Global Projects

An exploration of an unfulfilled 1622 English global project offers an anthropology of early modern global economic thought. The design included the air conditioning of the Mughal court, piracy, and a submarine treasure-hunting industry. A seemingly Orientalist or colonial attempt to Anglicize India, the design, in fact, aimed to globalize England by drawing on new views concerning the malleability of climate. Later colonialism cannot explain the culture of early seventeenth-century projecting in general and great designs in particular. However, the latter shaped relations of knowledge and power, which continued to operate in later Orientalism and colonialism.

The Nuqṭavī Movement and the Question of Its Exodus during the Ṣafavid Period (Sixteenth Century AD): A Historical Survey

The Nuqṭavī Ṣūfī order, an offshoot of the Ḥurūffiayya sect of Islam, emerged during the late fourteenth century in Persia under the spiritual guidance of Maḥmūd Pasīkhānī as a political religious force to reckon with. It projected itself as representative of old glory of Persian culture which, it felt, was undermined under ‘Arab and Turkish influence. Their ideology made them critical of the sixteenth century Ṣafavid rulers’ encouragement of Turkish language and culture. This brought them in confrontation with the Ṣafavids who considered themselves as protectors of Islam and, therefore, attacked the Nuqṭavīs as heretics. The attack resulted in their large scale persecution and mass exodus to the Mughal court and Shia kingdoms of Deccan. Nuqṭavīs were leading figures who were reported to have exercised great influence at the Mughal court. At one point even Abū-I Faẓl, Akbar’s ideologue, came under its sway and was able to impress upon Akbar to write to Shāh ‘Abbās to exercise restraint over religious persecution.

Setting the record wrong: a Sanskrit vision of Mughal conquests

In 1589, Padmasāgara wrote the first Sanskrit account of the Mughal rise to power within a short poem titled Jagadgurukāvya (Poem on the Teacher of the World). The work primarily eulogizes the life of a Jain religious leader named Hīravijaya, but Padmasāgara devotes one-third of the text to detailing the military exploits of Humayun and Akbar. Moreover, Padmasāgara departs significantly from known Indo-Persian historiography and imagines a startlingly innovative storyline for the early days of the Mughal Empire. Through this substantial rewriting, he furthermore consistently depicts the coerced establishment of Mughal rule as engendering the flourishing of Indian cultural and religious traditions. In this article, I provide the first detailed account of Padmasāgara's presentation of the battles of Humayun and Akbar to secure their claims over the subcontinent. I then seek to understand the motivations that fuelled this particular narrative by placing Jagadgurukāvya in the context of Gujarati relations with the Mughal court, Jain religious interests and historical sensibilities in early modern India. In his account of the early Mughal Empire, Padmasāgara crafts a political vision in which history is not constituted by a set of unchangeable facts but rather by a range of potential cultural implications that can be best realized through literature. His ambitious narrative about the recent past has important implications for how we understand early modern Sanskrit historiography and its relationship to Mughal power.

The Mughal Book of War: A Persian Translation of the Sanskrit Mahabharata

This article presents the first in-depth textual analysis of the Razmnamah (Book of War), the Persian translation of the Mahabharata sponsored by the Mughal emperor Akbar in the late sixteenth century. I argue that the Razmnamah was a central literary work in the Mughal court and of deep relevance to Akbar’s imperial and political ambitions. I pursue my analysis of the Mughal Mahabharata in two sections, focusing first on the work’s Sanskrit sources and then on the translation practices one finds evidenced in the Persian text. In the first section, I outline how the Mughal translators accessed Sanskrit materials and identify the Sanskrit texts that served as the basis for the Persian translation. This framework helps reconstruct the nature of the Mahabharata as the Mughals knew it and provides both the conceptual and literary tools needed to pursue comparative textual analysis. In the second section, I examine the text of the Razmnamah in comparison with its Sanskrit sources to highlight some of the Mughal translators’ key strategies in reimagining the epic in Persian. This close reading traces several literary paradigms that offer insight into the crucial role the Razmnamah played in the production and reproduction of Mughal imperial culture. Taken as a whole, my analysis argues that the Razmnamah was a crucial component of the politico-cultural fashioning of Akbar’s court, whereby the Mughals developed a new type of Indo-Persian imperial aesthetic.

INTERTWINED HISTORIES: CRÓNICA AND TĀRĪKH IN THE SIXTEENTH‐CENTURY INDIAN OCEAN WORLD1

ABSTRACTThis essay reflects on the future of world history by reflecting on its past. It looks to how Iberian historiography in the early modern period “rediscovered” Islamic historiography in the course of Portuguese expansion into the Indian Ocean region in the sixteenth century. However, since the Iberians had deliberately cultivated a form of amnesia regarding this historiography as a result of the so‐called Reconquest, new modes and methods of appropriation had to be found. Further, whereas medieval contact had largely been with materials in Arabic, the sixteenth‐century world was far more centrally concerned with materials in Persian. The essay proposes that these materials and their perspective had a significant impact on humanist historians such as João de Barros as well as on their successors. Equally, access to European historical writings in Latin had some impact on Indo‐Persian chroniclers at the Mughal court and elsewhere. However, it may be argued that an even greater impact on the Mughals was that of “Hindu” writings regarding the ancient past of India. All in all, the essay suggests that the past of such historical writing was crucially mediated by philological practice. Nor can philology be neglected for future projects in the writing of world history or global history. The essay thus questions the presumptions of both neoskeptics, who neglect how historians have worked in the past, and of scientistic historians, who oppose the central place of humanistic disciplines in the future writing of history.

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times

Radhika Mohan Maitra:His Life and Times Kalyan Mukherjea (bio) and Peter Manuel (bio) Radhika Mohan Maitra (pronounced and often spelled Moitra, 1917-1981), popularly known as Radhubabu, was one of the finest sarod players of his generation. Perhaps more interestingly, he lived through a period of unprecedented change both in Indian society and Hindustani music. Hindustani music, its social status, and its manner of propagation altered enormously during Radhubabu's lifetime. These changes affected not only his career, but also how the general public and the community of musicians perceived one another. This biographical essay attempts to convey an impression of the spirit of the times in which Radhubabu developed as a musician; many small anecdotes, though not essential to an account of Radhubabu's life, have been recounted since they throw light upon an era of which hardly any trace remains. The Early Years The appellation "Radhubabu" comes from "Radhu," a diminutive form for "Radhika," and the honorific suffix "babu," which is something like the Japanese "san" or Hindustani "ji." Since the use of "babu" while referring to a young boy or teenager is somewhat ridiculous, in describing Radhubabu's early years I have preferred to use his name. Radhika Mohan was the eldest son of Rai Bahadur Brajendra Mohan Maitra, the zamîndâr (feudal administrator) of a large estate whose main center was the town of Rajshahi (presently located in Bangladesh, across the Indian border from Maldah in Bengal, India). The zamîndârs lived on the income accruing from the taxes they collected from their estates, this right having been granted them in the late 18th century by the East India Company, the first British colonial administrators of India. The zamîndârs were often addressed as "raja" or "maharaja," depending on the size and prosperity of their estate. They lived with as many of the trappings of royalty as they fancied and could afford. Thus, zamîndârs who enjoyed music often employed masters of Hindustani classical music as court musicians. Indeed, they were largely responsible, through their patronage, for the preservation of Hindustani classical music after royal patronage at the Mughal court declined during and after the reign of Aurangzeb (d. 1707). One of the court musicians in Rajshahi during the 1920s and 1930s was the sarod player Ustad Mohammed Amir Khan of Shahjahanpur, [End Page 180] who was Radhika Mohan's first teacher. (This Amir Khan was himself the son of Abdullah Khan, disciple and adopted son of Murad Ali Khan, who was the uncle of Hafiz Ali Khan, father of famed present-day sarod player Amjad Ali Khan.) Another musician who had a profound influence on Radhika Mohan during his early years was the great sitar player Ustad Inayat Hussain Khan (d. 1938), whose son Vilayat Khan (d. 2004) was a dominant figure in the Hindustani music scene in the latter half of the 20th century. Inayat Khan was the court musician at the estate of Gauripur, the seat of the Raychaudhuri family, whose current head was a great patron of music and friend of the senior Maitra. In fact, not only were the two patrons friends, but Amir Khan and Inayat Khan had a warm personal relationship. According to Radhubabu, Inayat Khan would in private refer to Amir Khan as châchâmiyân or uncle. In addition, Radhika Mohan's mother, Binapani, had learned the sitar from Inayat Khan. It was fairly common for one or more members of the patron's family to become students of the musician-in-residence; generally these "noble disciples" did not exert themselves strenuously to master the music, although some exceptions did occur. For instance, Birendra Kishore Raychaudhuri of Gauripur was a sursringâr player who was greatly respected, even by professional musicians, for his musical knowledge and virtuosity. A younger cousin of the senior Maitra used to take lessons from Amir Khan, but hardly ever exerted himself and was making little progress when the young Radhika Mohan got fascinated with the instrument and, whenever the opportunity arose, tried to imitate the lessons his elder cousin neglected to practice. One day Amir Khan saw the small boy trying to play the sarod and...

Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal Court

AbstractBrajbhasha literature is a domain of Mughal culture seldom investigated by scholars, to the detriment of our understanding of both. While the Mughal court is famed for its lavish support of Persian writers, a surprising number of Brajbhasha poets also attracted the notice of Mughal patrons. In this paper I look at the lives and texts of important Braj writers who worked in Mughal settings, with a view to uncovering the nature of the social, political and cultural interactions that this kind of patronage represents. Why these poets have been largely lost to social and literary history is another concern, along with the challenges of trying to recover their stories.

Forbidden Love, Persianate Style: Re-reading Tales of Iranian Poets and Mughal Patrons

The patronage system at the Mughal court drew many Safavid poets and men of learning to India who interacted with Indians at various levels. In an unusual case, the young Iranian poet ‘Urfī's attachment to his patron, Prince Salīm (later Emperor Jahāngīr), was interpreted by some as more than merely professional and the poet's death at a young age gave rise to speculations of intrigue. Mughal princesses were also actively involved in the literary scene of the time. In another instance, the association of Princess Zībunnisa, daughter of the Emperor Awrangzīb, with Persian poets was sometimes personal, leading to gossip and scandal about her. It turns out that in both cases stories about the sexual aspects of the relationships between Mughal patrons and Iranian poets arose in the eighteenth century and are more reflective of the concerns of the literary culture of that period. This paper explores the power and gender dynamics of these poet–patron relationships in the context of the general Iranian–Indian tension at the Mughal court and a highly developed and creative tradition of crafting biographical accounts.

Frank disputations

The essay sets out to re-examine the relations between Catholics and Muslims in the Mughal court in the early seventeenth century, during the reign of Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27). It does so by confronting two sets of source–materials, namely the letters of the Jesuit Jerónimo Xavier and Persian–language texts from the Mughal court. In particular it focuses on the important and neglected figure of Maulana ‘Abdus Sattar ibn Qasim Lahauri, an intellectual who worked with and also studied the Europeans. The recent publication of a hitherto unknown text by him, under the title of Majālis-i Jahāngīrī, is in part the occasion for us to return to this classic theme in the historiography of cross-cultural encounters.

Translating the Body Into Image. The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Abstract This article investigates the ways in which visual representations reconfigured the body in North Indian political culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While images were meant to transmit and translate ethical conceptions of the polity, communicative modes of the visual medium followed a dynamic that was not a rehearsal of the path taken by texts. As images cut across distinctions formulated elsewhere and drew up new boundaries, they worked to refine and pluralise the understandings of political culture beyond the normative. Pictorial experiments at the North Indian courts involved negotiating multiple regimes of visuality and arriving at pictorial choices that ended up creating a new field of sensibilities, especially the corporeal. An argument is therefore made for the agency of the visual in defining new ideas of the political body that were constitutive of politico-ethical ideals in early modern North India.

Jahangir as Francis Bacon's Ideal of the King as an Observer and Investigator of Nature

AbstractThe Mughal Empire is paradigmatic in many of its formulations, and it is epitomised in the persons of its first six padshahs or emperors. The Great Mughals, Grao Mogor, Grand Mogul, Großmogul or Groote Mogul, as the padshahs were known in Europe, have been considered as paragons of rulership. In critical appraisals, which were the prevailing view in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were the quintessential Oriental despots, held up as a warning to those rulers in Europe with similar aspirations. One thinks here especially of Francois Bernier's letters of the Mughal court to his French contacts which included Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715). In more sympathetic (and more recent) eyes, such as those of the world-traveller, philosopher and enthusiastic inter-culturalist Count Hermann Keyserling, who was in India in 1911, they were “the grandest rulers brought forth by mankind”. Keyserling came to this conclusion because the Mughals “combined in their personalities so many divers talents: they were men of action, refined diplomats, experienced judges of the human psyche, and at the same time aesthetes and dreamers”. He felt that such a “superior human synthesis” (grossartige Menscheitsynthese) had not shown itself in any European king. Here I discuss to what extent the emperor Jahangir fulfilled Francis Bacon's ideal of the perfect ruler.

The Emperor Jahangir and the Pursuit of Pleasure

The Mughal emperors of India were remarkably mobile kings, inspiring modern historians to describe their imperial court culture as ‘peripatetic’. While the Mughals were not immune to the impulse to construct massive urban architect, no Mughal city, no matter how splendid, innovative, accessible or enlightened, remained the imperial centre for long. Through generations of Mughal rule in India, the political relevance of Mughal imperial cities continued to be very limited; it was physical mobility which remained at the centre of Mughal imperial court life and, for much of the Mughal period, the imperial court was encapsulated in the physical presence of the king.