ASHA: Blast From The Past

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Sab Thaath Para Reh Jaye Ga Jab Laad Chale Ga BANJARA.

Tuk hirs-o-hawas ko chhod mian, mat des bides phire mara,

Qazzaaq ajal ka loote hai din raat, baja kar naqqara;

Kya badhiya, bhainsa, bel, shutar, kya goien, palla, sarbhara,

Kya gehun, chawal, moth, matar, kya aag, dhuvaan, kya angara,

Sab thath para reh jayega jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Gar tu hai lakhhi banjara, aur khaip bhi teri bhari hai,

Ae ghafil, tujh se bhi chadhta ik aur bara beopari hai,

Kya shakkar, misri, qand, giri, kya sambhar, meetha, khari hai,

Kya daakh, munaqqa, saunth, mirch, kya kesar, laung, supari hai

Sab thath para rah jayega jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Ye badhiya laade, bail bhare, jo purab pachhim jawe ga,

Ya sood barha kar lawega, ya tota, ghata, pawe ga,

Qazzaq ajal ka raste mein jab bhala mar girawe ga,

Dhan, daulat, naati, pota kya, ik kunba kaam na aawe ga,

Sab thath para rah jayega jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Har manzil mein ab sath tere ye jaana, dera,daanda hai

Zarr, daam, diram ka bhaanda hai, bandooq, sipar aur khaanda hai

Jab nayak tan ka nikal gya,jo mulkon mulkon baanda hai

Phir haanda hai na bhaanda hai, na halwa hai na maanda hai

Sab thath para rah jayega jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Jab chalte chalte raste main ye joon teri dhal jave gi,

Ik badhya teri matti par phir ghaas na charne ave gi,

Ye khep jo tune laadi hai, sab hisson main batt jave gi

Dhan, pot , jamai ,beta kya, banjaran pas na ave gi

Sab thath para rah jayega jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Ye khep bhare jo jata hai,ye khep mein miyan mat gin apni

Ab koi ghr,pal,saa’at main ye khep badan ki khapni hai

Kya thaal,katore chandi ke,kya peetal ki dabbiya dhapni,

Kya bartan sone,rupe ke,kya matti ki handiya dhapni,

Sab thath para rah jayega jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Kuch kaam na ave ga tere, ye laal,zamurrud,seem-o-zarr,

Jab poonji baat main bikhre gi,phir aan bane gi jaan ooper,

Naqqaare nobat baan nishan,dolat hishmat fojen lashkar,

Kya masnad takiya,milk,makaan,kya choki,kursi,takht,chakkar,

Sab thaath para reh jaye ga jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Kyun jee par bojh uthata hai,in konon bhaari bhaari ke

Jab mout ka dera aan pare phir doone hain Biyopaari ke

Kya saaz,jurao,zarr,zewar, kya doone hain Biyopaari ke

Kya ghore zeen sunehri ke,kya hathi laal umari ke

Sab thaath para reh jaye ga jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Magroor na ho talwaron par,mat phool bharose dhaalon ke

Sab patta tor ke bhaagen ge,mooh dekh ajal ke bhaalon ke

Kya dibbe moti,heeron ke kya dher khazane maalon ke

Kya bukche taash mushjar ke,kya takhte shaal do shaalon ke

Sab thaath para reh jaye ga jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Kya sakht makaan banwata hai,kham tere badan ka hai pola

Tu unche koot uthata hai,waan dekh goor garhe ne mooh khola

Kya reti,khandaq,rand bare,kya burj,kangola anmola

Garh,koot,rihakka,tope,qila,kya sheesha daaru aur gola

Sab thaath para reh jaye ga jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Har aan nafa aur tote mai kyun marta phirta hai bann bann

Tuk ghafil dil mai soch zara, hai sath laga tere dushman

Kya londi,baandi,daai,dawa,kya banda,chela.naik chalan

Kya mandir,MASJID,taal,kunwen,kya ghaat sira,kya baagh,chaman

Sab thaath para reh jaye ga jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

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Jab marg phira kar chahak ko ye bail badan ka haanke ga

Koi naaj samete ga tera,koi goon siye ga aur taanke ga

Ho dher akela jungle mai tu khaak lehad ki phaanke ga

Is jungle mai phir aah Nazeer~ ik bhanga aan na jhaanke ga

Sab thaath para reh jaye ga jab laad chale ga BANJARA.

Water is an absolutely necessary element for life. The availability of water has played a key role in the development of all civilizations. Indeed, especially in the ancient times, water scarcity prevented the development of settlements. Water lifting devices have existed since ca. 3000 BC in various parts of the world. Early devices, such as water wheels and chutes were constructed and used animals (muscle energy) to provide the energy required to move the wheels.

Shaduf or Dhenkli

The shaduf is known as the first device used for lifting water in several ancient civilizations. It has been referred to with different names, such as shaduf (shadoof) in Egypt, zirigum in Sumer, dhenkli in India, kilonion or kelonion in Hellas, and daliya in Iraq.

The Shaduf or dhenkli is a wooden hand-operated device used for lifting water from a well, a river, a cistern or a canal. In its most common form, it consists of a long, tapering, nearly horizontal wooden pole, which is mounted like a seesaw (Figure 1). It has a bag and a rope attached on one end of the pole, with a counter balance on the other. The operator pulls down a rope, attached to the long end, fills the container and allows the counterweight to raise the filled container. A series of shadufs were sometimes mounted one above the other. A typical water lifting rate was 2.5 m3/d. A single shaduf could thus irrigate 0.1 ha of land in 12 h.

The Mesopotamians were known to lift water using the shaduf at around 3000 BC.

This instrument was widely spread in the ancient world, and several ancient civilizations dispute its origin. It was invented in the prehistoric times probably in Mesopotamia as early as the time of Sargon of Akkad (Emperor of the Sumerian city-states in the ca. 23rd and 22nd centuries BC). A shaduf is said to be depicted on a cylindrical seal from Mesopotamia dated ca. 2200 BC. It is also still in use in Egypt and other countries. In North Africa, a similar technique (called locally Diou or Dlou) was developed in the beginning of the ca. 12th century. It was used to raise water to higher levels. Owing to the fact that it was well spread in India, J. Laessoe [Reflections on modern and ancient oriental water works, J. Cuneif. Stud. 7, 5–26, 1935] has reported that the dhenkli / shaduf was invented in India.

The Waterwheel

The Egyptian shaduf and the water wheel (or noria or sania) are probably among the earliest devices for lifting water to be used for irrigation and domestic water supply.

The Egyptian waterwheel (noria) is thought to be the first vertical (horizontal axis) waterwheel and was invented by the Romans ca. 600–700 BC. It consists of a wooden wheel, powered by water flow and fitted with buckets that lifted water for irrigating nearby lands. The diffusion of the Egyptian waterwheel is typically associated with the (later) Arab civilization and the animal-powered waterwheel is considered as the high symbol of the Islamic imprint upon irrigation technology. Also, the invention of the compartmentalized waterwheel in Egypt may have been made ca. in the late 4th century BC, in a rural context, away from the metropolis of Hellenistic Alexandria and was then spread to other parts of North Africa. The hydraulic wheel was later built in Fez, Morocco, in the 13th century and was then spread to other parts of North Africa.

Waterwheels driven by camels were used to lift water for irrigation and domestic use in Afghanistan and other Asian countries. A limited number of these units are still in use today. In Sudan, an ox-driven system has been used as a simple irrigation device for centuries and continues to be used even nowadays.

In India it was called araghatta in Sanskrit. It is also sometimes referred to as ghati yantra. Ghatta means pots which are tied on the rim of the wheel.

Persian Wheel: The Noria

A variation of the Egyptian waterwheel is the Persian waterwheel. The date of its invention is not well known. It consists of an endless series of pots of unequal weight turned over two pulleys and is therefore classified as a pump rather than a waterwheel. The delivery rate of early animal powered Persian waterwheels ranged between 20 m3/h (for 1.5 m height lifting) and 10 m3/h (for 9 m height lifting). Of course, the higher the waterwheel and the more advanced the technology used for its function, the more the quantity of water lifted. The waterwheel, in its different versions, constitutes the ancestor of dynamic water lifting devices and modern hydropower systems, the principle of which is to extract power from the flow (kinetic energy) of water.

The shortage of labour in the Middle Ages rendered machines, such as the waterwheel, cost- effective. The waterwheel remained competitive with the steam engine well into the Industrial Revolution. The system used for lifting water to irrigate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon still remains a mystery. It is worth noting that the word noria is a Spanish word and its origin is coming from in the Arabic term, Na-urah, meaning the first water machine. In the related bibliography this word is found and as Na’ura, as well as Naurah.

The large-scale use of norias was introduced in Spain by Syrian engineers. An installation similar to that at Hama (Figure 2) was still in operation in Toledo in the 12th century. The Na’ura (Noria) of Albolafia in Cordoba also known as Kulaib, which stands until now, served to elevate the water of the river until the Palace of the Caliphs. Its construction was commissioned by Abd al-Rahman I, and was reconstructed several times.

Several civilizations claim the invention of Noria. There are Indian texts dating from ca. 350 BC; Joseph Needham believed that the noria was developed in India ca. the fifth or fourth century BC. He assumed that it had then spread to the west by the first century BC and then diffused to China by the second century AD. This was followed by widespread use of the noria in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 5th century AD, before reaching North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula in the 11th century. Other possibilities of its origin include the Near East ca. 200 BC. Philo of Byzantium in Pneumatica (ca. 230 BC), a Hellenic engineer of the late third or early second century BC, showed sketches of several distinct types of waterwheels.

Noria and Saqiya:

Needham, in Science and Civilisation, Vol. IV(2), gave a clear definition of the two forms, the noria having the containers fixed to the rim of the wheel, and the saqiya on the rope or chain flung over the wheel (p. 356).

Having done so, he was able to follow up the evidence gathered by Coomaraswamy and Laufer, and argue that the earliest water-wheel in India was the noria, and that, moreover, India was probably the country of origin of this device. The reasons Needham adduced for this conclusion were two-fold: first of all, the noria was in the Hellenistic world in the first century BC and in China in the second century AD, and this proximity of date in such distant civilisations suggested an intermediate source of diffusion.

Secondly, he located the earliest recorded reference (derived presumably from Coomaraswamy) to the noria in the term cakkavattaka (turning wheel) used in the Cullavagga Nikaya (assigned to ca. 350 BC) for one of the three permissible models of water-lift.

Source: D.P.Agarwal Needham on Early Indian Inventions of Hydraulics, Cotton-Gins and Alcohol Distillation.

Jab qata ki musāfat e shab āftāb ne

Jab qata ki musāfat e shab āftāb ne

Jalwa kiya sahar ke rukhe behijāb ne

Dekha sūwe falak Shahe gardūn rakāb ne

Murh kar sada rafīqo Ko di us janāb ne

Ākhir hai rāt hamd o sanāye Khuda karo

Utho farīzaye sahri ko ada karo

Hān ghāziyon ye din hai jidāl o qitāl ka

Yān khūn bahega āj Mohammad ki āl ka

Chehra khushi se surkh hai Zahra ke lāl ka

Guzri shabe firāq din āya visāl ka

Hum wo hain gham karenge malak jin ke wāstey

Rātein tadap ke kāti hai is din ke wāstey

Ye sunke bistaron se uthe wo Khuda shinās

Ek ek ne zebe jism kiya fakhira libās

Shane muhasino mein kiye sab ne be hirās

Bāndhe amāme āye imāme zaman ke pās

Rangīn abāyein dosh pe kamre kasey huwe

Muskh o zibād o itr mein kapde basey huwe

Khaime se nikle Shay ke azīzāne khush khisāl

Jin mein kayi thay Hazrate Khairun nisa ke lāl

Qasim sa gul badan Ali Akbar sa khush jamāl

Ek jā Aqīl o Muslim o Jafar ke nau nihāl

Sab ke rukhon ka nūr sipahre barīn pa tha

Athāra āftābon ka ghuncha zamīn pa tha

Nāgāh charkh par khate abyaz huwa ayān

Tashrīf jānemāz pe lāye Shahe zamān

Sajjāde bich gaye aqabe Shāhe ins o jān

Saute Hasan se Akbar e Mahrūh ne di azān

Har ek ki chashm ānsuon se dab daba gayi

Goya sada Rasūl ki kāno mein āgayi

Nāmūse Shāh rotey thay khaime mein zār zār

Chupke khadi thi sahn mein bāno e nāmdār

Zainab balāyein leke ye kahti thi bār bār

Sadqe namāziyon ke muazzin ke main nisār

Karte hain yūn sana o sifat Zul Jalāl ki

Logon azān suno meri yousuf jamāl ki

Ye husn e saut aur ye qirat ye shad o madd

Haqqa ke afsahul fusuha thay inhi ke jadd

Goya hai lahn e Hazrat e Dawūde ba khiradd

Ya Rabb rakh is sadā ko zamāne mein tā abadd

Shu’be sada mein pankhadiyān jaise phūl mein

Bul bul chahak raha hai riyāz e Rasūl mein

Saf mein huwa jo nāraye qad qāmatis salāt

Qaim huwi namaaz uthey Shahe qainaat

Wo nūr ki safein wo musalli falak sifāt

Sardār ke qadam ke taley thi rahe nijāt

Jalwa tha ta ba arshe mu’alla Hussain ka

Mus haf ki lauh thi ke musalla Hussain ka

Qurān khula huwa ke jama’at ki thi namāz

Bismillah āgey jaise ho yūn thay Shahe hijāz

Satrein thi ya safein aqab e Shahe sarfarāz

Karti thi khud namāz bhi inki adā pe nāz

Sadqe sahar bayāz pe bainas sutūr ki

Sab āyatein thi mus hafe nātikh ki nūr ki

Dunya se uth gaya wo qayām aur wo qaūd

Inke liye thi bandagi wajibul wujūd

Wo ajz wo tawīl ruku aur wo sujūd

Ta’at mein nīst jāntey thay apni hast o būd

Tāqat na chalne phirne ki thi hāth pāon mein

Gir gir ke sajde karte thay teghon ki chaon mein

Farigh huwe namāz se jab qibla o anām

Āye musāfahe ko jawānān e tashnakām

Chume kise ne dast e Shahinshāh e khās o ām

Ākhein miley kisi ne qadam par ba ehterām

Kya dil thay kya sipaah e rashīd o sayīd thi

Ba ham mu’anaqe thay ke marne ki eid thi

Zāri thi ilteja thi munajāt thi idhar

Wān sar kashi o zulm o ta’addi o shor o shar

Kahta tha ibne Sa’ad ye jā jā ke nahr par

Ghāton se hoshiyār tarāyi se ba khabar

Do roz se hai tashna dahani Hussain ko

Hān martey dam bhi dījiyo na pani Hussain ko

Baithey thay jānemāz pe Shahe falak sarīr

Nāgāh qarīb āke girey tīn chār tīr

Dekha har ek ne mudhke sūwe lashkar e kasīr

Abbas uthey tol ke shamshīr be nazīr

Parwāne thay sirāj e imāmat ke nūr par

Rokey sipar huzūr karāmat zahūr par

Akbar se mudhke kahne lage Sarware zamān

Bāndhe hai sarkashi pa kamar lashkare girān

Tum jāke kahdo khaime mein ye ay pidar ki jān

Bachon ko leke sahn se hatt jāye bibiyān

Ghaflat mein tīr se koi bacha talaf na ho

Darr hai mujhe ke gardane Asghar hadaf na ho

Kahte thay ye pisar se Shahe āsmān sarīr

Fizza pukāri deordhi se ay khalq ke amīr

Hai hai Ali ki betiyān kis jā ho goshgīr

Asghar ke gahwāre tak ākar girey hain tīr

Garmi se sāri rāt ye ghut ghut ke roye hain

Bachey abhi tou sard hawā pāke soye hain

Bāqir kahīn parha hai Sakina kahīn hai ghash

Garmi ki fasl ye tab o tāb aur ye atash

Ro ro ke sogaye hain saghīrane māhwash

Bachon ko leke yaan se kahān jāye fāqa kash

Ye kis khata pe tīr piya pe barastey hain

Thandi hawa ke wāstey bachey tarastey hain

Uthey ye shor sunke Imāme falak viqār

Deordhi tak āye dhālon ko roke rafīq o yār

Farmāya mudhke chaltey hain ab bahre kārzār

Kamre kaso jihād pe mangwāo rāhwār

Dekhein fizā behisht ki dil bāgh bāgh ho

Ummat ke kām se kahīn jaldi firāgh ho

Khaime mein jāke Shay ne ye dekha haram ka hāl

Chahre tou faqq hai aur…

Zainab ki ye dua thi ke ay Rabbe Zuljalāl

Bach jāye is fasād se khairun nisa ka lāl

Bano e naik nām ki khaiti hari rahey

Sanndal se māng bachon se godhi bhari rahey

Boley qarīb jāke Shahe āsmān janāb

Muztar na ho dua’en hain tum sab ki mustajāb

Maghrūr hain khata pe ye sab khanuma kharāb

Khud jāke mein dikhāta hūn inko rahe sawāb

Mauqa nahi bahan abhi faryād o āh ka

Lāo tabarrukāt Risālat panāh ka

Merāj mei Rasūl ne pahna tha jo libās

Kashti mein lāyi Zainab usey Shahe dīn ke pās

Sar par rakha amāmae Sardāre haq shinās

Pahni qabāye pāk Rasūle falak asās

Bar mei durust o chust tha jāma Rasūl ka

Rūmāl Fātima ka amāma Rasūl ka

Kapdon se ārahi thi Rasūle zaman ki bu

Dūlha ne sūnghi hogi na aisi dulhan ki bu

Hyder ki Fatima ki Hussain o Hasan ki bu

Phaili huwi thi chār taraf Panjetan ki bu

Lut ta tha itr wādi ambar sarisht mein

Gul jhumtey thay bāgh mein Rizwān behisht mein

Poshāk sab pahan chukey jis dam Shahe zaman

Lekar balāein bhāi ki ronay lagi bahan

Kehti thi hai aaj nahi Hyder o Hasan

Amma kahān se laye tumhe ab ye be watan

Rukhsat hai ab Rasool ke yūsuf jamāl ki

Sadqe gayi balein tou lo apne lāl ki

Hathyār idhar laga chuke Moula e khās o ām

Tayyār udhar huwa alam e Sayyide anām

Duāein māngti gird thi saidāniyān tamām

Roti thi thāmey chobe alam khwāhare imām

Teghein kamar mei dosh pe shamley padey huwe

Zainab ke lāl zere alam ā khade huwe

Gah mā ko dekhte thay kabhi jānibe alam

Na’ra kabhi ye tha ke nisār e Shahe umam

Karte thay dono bhai kabhi mashware baham

Āhista pūchtey kabhi ma se wo zī hasham

Kya qasd hai Alliye wali ke nishān ka

Amma kise milega alam nāna jān ka

In nanhe nanhe hāthon se uthega ye alam

Chotey qadon mein sabse sino mein sabho se kam

Nikle tano se sibte Nabi ke qadam pe dam

Ohda yahi hai bas yahi mansab yahi hasham

Rukhsat talab agar ho tou ye mera kām hai

Mā sadqe jāye āj tou marne mein nām hai

Phir tum ko kya buzurg thay jo fakhre roz gār

Zeba nahi hai wasf e izāfi pe iftekhār

Johar wo hai jo taegh karey āp āshkār

Dikhlādo āj Hyder o Jāfar ki kārzār

Tum kyon kaho ke lāl Khuda ke wali ke hain

Faujein pukāre khud ke nawāse Ali ka hain

Ab jisko tum kaho usey dein fouj ka alam

Ki arz jo salāh Shahe āsmān hasham

Farmāya jabse uthgayi Zahra e ba karam

Us din se tumko mā ki jagah jāntey hain hum

Malik ho tum buzurg koi ho ke khurd ho

Jisko kaho usiko ye ohda sipard ho

Boli bahan ke āp bhi tou lein kisi ka nām

Hai kis taraf tawajjo e Sardar o khās o ām

Gar mujhse poochtay hain Shahe āsmān maqām

Quran ke bād hai tou Ali hi ka kuch kalām

Shaukat mein qadd mein shān mein humsar nahi koi

Abbas e nāmdār se behtar nahi koi

Āshiq ghulām khādim e derīna jān nisār

Farzand bhai zīnate pehlu wafa shi’ār

Jarrār yādgār e pidar fakhre rozgār

Rāhat rasā mutī o namudār o nāmdār

Safdar hai sher dil hai bahadur hai naik hai

Bemisl saekdon mein hazaron mein aik hai

Ākhon mein ashk bhar ke ye boley Shahe zaman

Hān thi yahi Ali ki wasiyyat bhi ay bahan

Acha bulāyein aap kidhar hai wo saff shikan

Akbar chacha ke pās gaye sunke ye sukhan

Ki arz intezār hai Shahe ghuyūr ko

Chaliye phuphi ne yād kiya hai huzūr ko

Abbas āye hāthon ko jordhe huzūr e Shāh

Jao bahan ke pās ye bola wo dīn panāh

Zainab wahin alam liye āyi ba izzo jāh

Boley nishān ko leke Shahe arsh bārgāh

Inki khushi wo hai jo riza Panjetan ki hai

Lo bhai lo alam ye ināyat bahan ki hai

Munh karke suwe qabre Ali phir kiya khitāb

Zarre ko āj kardiya Moula ne āftāb

Ye arz khāksār ki hai Ya Abu Turāb

Āqa ke āgey hūn mein shadath se bahre yāb

Sar tan se ibne Fatima ke ru baru girey

Shabbir ke pasīne pe mera lahu girey

Ye sunke āyi zaojaye Abbas e nāmwar

Shaohar ki simpt pehle kinkhiyon se ki nazar

Lī sibte Mustafa ki balāyein ba chashme tar

Zainab ke gird phirke ye boli wo nauhagar

Faiz āp ka hai aur tasadduq Imām ka

Izzat badi kanīz ki rutba ghulām ka

Sar ko laga ke chgāthi se Zainab ne ye kaha

Tu apni māng kokh se thandi rakhe sada

Ki arz mujhse lākh kanīzein hūn tou fida

Bano e nāmwar ko suhāgan rakhe Khuda

Bachey jiye taraqqiy e iqbal o jāh ho

Sāye mein āp ke Ali Akbar ka byāh ho

Nāgāh ākey bāli Sakina ne ye kaha

Kaisa hai ye hujūm kidhar hai mere chacha

Ohda alam ka unko mubārak karey Khuda

Logon mujhe balāyein tou lene do ek zara

Shaukat Khuda badhāye mere ammu jān ki

Mein bhi tou dekhūn shān Ali ke nishān ki

Abbas muskura ke pukārey ka āo āo

Ammu nisār pyās se kya hāl hai batāo

Boli lipat ke wo ke meri mashq lete jāo

Ab tou alam mila tumhein pani mujhe pilāo

Tohfa na koi dījiye na in’ām dījiye

Qurbān jāon pāni ka ek jām dījiye

Nāgāh badhey alam liye Abbas e bā wafa

dauRe sab Ahle Bayt khule sAr, barahna pa

Hazrat ne hāth utha ke ye ik eik se kaha

Lo Alwida ay haram e pāk e Mustafa

Subhe shab e firāq hai pyāron ko dekh lo

Sab mil ki dūbte huwe tāron ko dekh lo

Shay ke qadam pe Zainab e zār o hazīn giri

Bano pachād kha ke pisar ke qarīn giri

Kulsūm thar thara ke barūhe zamīn giri

Bāqir kahin gira tou Sakina kahīn giri

Ujda chaman har ek gul tāza nikal gaya

Nikla alam ke ghar se janāza nikal gaya

Nāgāh udhar se tīr chale jānibe Imām

Ghoda bada ke āp ne hujjat bhi ki tamām

Nikle idhar se Shay ke rafiqān e tashnakām

Be sar huwe paron mein sarā ne sipāh e shām

Bāla kabhi thi taegh kabhi zer e tang thi

Ek ek ki jang mālik e ashtar ki jang thi

Allah re Ali ke nawāson ki kārzār

Dono ke nichey thay ke chalti thi zulfiqār

Shāna kata kisi ne jo roka sipar pe wār

Ginti thi zakhmiyon ki na kishton ka tha shumār

Utney sawār qatl kiye thodi daer mein

Dono ke ghodey chup gaye lāsho ke dhaer mein

Kis husn se Hasan ka jawāne hasīn ladā

Ghir ghir ke sūrate asad e khushmgīn ladā

Do din ki bhook pyās mein wo mahjabīn lada

Sahrā ulat ke yūn koi dulha nahi lada

Hamle dikha diye asad e kirdgār ke

Maqtal mein sūye arzak e shāmi ko mār ke

Chamki jo taegh Hazrate Abbas e arsh jāh

Rūhul amīn pukārey ke Allah ki panāh

Dhālon mein chup gaya pisar e sād ru siyāh

Kushton se band ho gayi aman o amān ki rāh

Jhapta jo sher shoakh mein darya ki saer ke

Le li tarāyi taeghon ki moujon ko phaer ke

Be sar huwe muwakkil e sar chashma e furāt

Hal chal mein misl e mouj safon ko na tha sabāt

Darya mein girke fout huwe kitne bad sifāt

Goya habāb hogaye thay nuqta e hayāt

Abbas bhar ke mashk ko yoon tashnalab laday

Jis tarah naharwān mein amīr e arab laday

Āfat thi harb o zarb e Ali Akbar e diler

Ghusse mein jhapte ser pe jaise garsina sher

Sab sar buland past zabardast sab thay zer

Jangal mein chār simpt huwe zakhmiyon ke dher

Sirān ke utre tan se jo thay rann chadhey huwe

Abbas se bhi jang mein kuch thay badhey huwe

Talwārein barsi subh se nusfun nihār tak

Hilti rahi zamīn laraztey rahey falak

Kāmpa kiye paron ko simte huwe malak

Na’rey na phir wo thay na wo taeghon ki thi chamak

Dhālon ka daur barchiyon ka auj ho gaya

Hangām e zuhr khātema e fauj ho gaya

Lāshe sabho ke sibte Nabi khud uthāke lāye

Qatil kisi shahīd ka sar kātne na paye

Dushman ko bhi na dost ki furqat Khuda dikhāye

Farmātey thay bichad gaye sab hum se hai haye

Itney pahād gir padey jis par wo kham na ho

Gar sou baras jiyūn tou ye majma baham na ho

Kham hogaye ye dāgh uthake Imāme dīn

Jhuk kar bana hilāl e Nabi ka māhe jabīn

Yūn dard mein tadap ke kiya nālaye hazįn

Hilne lage pahād larazne lagi zamīn

Āyi jigar ko tāb na is wāredāt ki

Khushki mein lagi doobne kashti hayāt ki

Jab saff kashi ki dhūm huwi qatl gāh mein

Taswīr e marg phir gayi sab ki nigāh mein

Dūbe rafīq e yūsuf e dīn haq ki chāh mein

Daftar khula ajal ka Hussaini sipāh mein

Jānbāziyān dikhāke jari nām kar gaye

Khāke shifa pa nūr ke dāne bikhar gaye

Jis waqt āmad āmade saif e Khuda huwi

Hal chal padi har ek ke dar pe qaza huwi

Nābūd zindagi huwi hasti fana huwi

Himmat dilon ke jism se quwwat juda huwi

Labrez hokey umr ke sāghar chhalak gaye

Kāmpi zamīn pahād jagah se sarak gaye

Maidān mein jab riyāze Hussaini khizān huwa

Dunya se kārwān Shahe dīn ka rawān huwa

Darya e khūn mein gharq har ek naujawān huwa

Hamshakle Mustafa bhi shahīdey sinān huwa

Rotey thay Shāh lasho mein tanha khade huwe

Thay khāk par kaleje ke tukde padey huwe

Garmi ka roz jang ki kyon kar karūn bayān

Darr hai ke misl e shama na jalne lage zabān

Wo lū ke al hazar wo harārath ke al amān

Rann ki zamīn tou surkh thi aur zard aasmaan

Aab e khunukh ko khalq tarasti thi khaak par

Goya hawa se aag barasti thi khāk par

Wo lū wo āftāb ki hiddat wo tāb o tab

Kāla tha rang dhūp se din ka misāl e shab

Khud nahr e alqama ke bhi sūkhey huwe thay lab

Khaime jo thay hibābon ke tap te thay sab ke sab

Udhti thi khāk khushk tha chashma hayāt ka

Khoula huwa tha dhūp se pāni furāt ka

Jhīlon se chār pāye na uthte thay tāba shām

Maskan mein machliyon ke samandar ka tha maqām

Āhu jo kahile thay tou chītey siyāh fām

Patthar bhi sab pighal gaye thay misl e moum khām

Surkhi udhi thi phūlon se sabzi gayāh se

Pāni kuwein mein utra tha sāye ki chāh se

koson kisi shajar mein na gul thhe na barg o bār

ek ek nakhal jal rahā thā sūrat e chinār

hanstā thā koi gul na lahaktā thā sabzazār

kāntā hui thi sūkh ke har shākh e bār dār

garmi ye thi ki zīst se dil sab ke sard thhe

patte bhi masle e chehara e madqūq zard thhe

girdāb par thā shola e javālā kā gumān

angāre thhe habāb to pāni sharar fishān

munh se nikal parhi thi har ek mauj ki zabān

tah par thhe sab nihang magar thi labon pe jān

pāni tha āg garmi e roz hisāb thi

māhi jo sīkh e mauj tak aayi kabāb thi

aaina e falak ko na thi tāb o tab ki tāb

chhipane ko barq chāhati thi dāman e sahāb

sab ke sivā thā garm mizājon ko iztirāb

kāfūr e subah Dhūndhtā phirtā thā āftāb

bhadaki thi āg gumbad e charkh e asīr mein

bādal chhipe thhe sab kurrah e zamharir mein

Sher uthte thay na dhūp ke mārey kachād se

Aahu na munh nikaalte thay sabz zār se

Āina mahr ka tha muqaddar ghubār se

Gardūn ko tapp chadi thi zamīn ke bukhār se

Garmi se muztarib tha zamāna zamīn par

Bhun jata thā jo girta tha dāna zamīn par

Ābe rawān se munh na uthate thay jānwar

Jangal mein chītey phirtey thay ta’ir idhar udhar

Mardam thay saath pardon ke andar araq mein tar

Jis khana e mizā se nikalti na thi nazar

Gar chashm se nikal ke tahar jāye rāh mein

PaRh jāye lākh ābley pāye nigāh mein

Is dhūp mein khade thay akayle Shahe umam

Na dāman e Rasūl tha na sāya e alam

Oudi thi lab zabān mein kānte kamar mein kham

Sholay jigar se āh ke uthti thi dam badam

Be āb tīsra tha jo din mehmān ko

Hoti thi baat bāt mein miknat zabān ko

Kahta tha ibne sa’ad ke ay āsmān janāb

Bayyat jo kījiye ab bhi tou hāzir hai jāme āb

Farmātey thay Hussain ke ay khānuma kharāb

Darya ko khāk jānta hai ibne Bu Turāb

Fāsiq hai pās kuch tujhe Islām ka nahi

Āb e taba ho ye tou mere kām ka nahi

Garjum ka nām lūn tou abhi jām leke āye

Kausar yahīn Rasūl ka ehkām leke āye

Rūhul amīn zamīn pa mera nām leke āye

Lashkar malak ka fatah ka paighām leke āye

Chāhūn jo inqilāb tou dunya tamām ho

Ulte zamīn yūn ke na kūfa na shām ho

Farmāke ye nigāh jo ki suwwe zulfiqār

Tharrāke pichley pāon hata wo sitam shi’ār

Mazlūm par safon se chaley tīr beshumār

Āwāz e kous harb huwi āsmān ke pār

Naize uthake jang par aswār tul gaye

Kāley nishān sipāh e saeron mein khul gaye

Jab rann mein taegh toul ke Sultān e dīn badhey

Geethi ke thām lene ko rūhul amīn badhey

Manind sher e haq kahin tahre kahin badhey

Goya Ali ulat te huwe āstīn badhey

Jalwa diya jari ne urūse musūf ko

Mushkil kusha ki taegh ne chorda ghilāf ko

Allah re taezi o barsh is shola rang ki

Chamki sawār par tou khabar lāyi tang ki

Pyāsi faqat lahu ki talabgār jang ki

Hājat usey na sān ki thi aur na sang ki

Khoon se falak ko laashon se maqtal ko bharti thi

Sou bār dam mein charkh pe chadhti utarti thi

Sīne pe chal gayi tou kaleja lahu huwa

Goya jigar mein maut ka nakhan faru huwa

Chamki tou al amān ka ghul chār su huwa

Jo iske munh pa āgaya be ābru huwa

Rukta tha ek waar na das se na pānch se

Chehre siyāh hogaye thay is ki ānch se

Bichh bichh gayīn safon pe safein wo jahān chali

Chamki tou is taraf idhar āyi wahān chali

Dono taraf ki fouj pukāri kahān chali

Is ne kaha idhar wo pukāra yahān chali

Munh kis taraf hai taegh zanon ko khabar na thi

Sar gir rahe thay aur tanon ko khabar na thi

Allah re khauf taegh e Shahe kaināt ka

Zehr ah tha aab khauf ke mārey furāt ka

Darya mein hāl ye tha har ek bad sifāt ka

Chara farār ka tha na yāra sabāt ka

Ghul tha ke barq girti hai har dar’a posh par

Bhago Khuda ke kahr ka darya hai josh par

Har chand machliyān thi zira posh sar basar

Munh kholey chipti phirti thi lekin idhar udhar

Bhāgi thi mauj chordh ke girdāb ki sipar

Thay tah nashīn nahang ubhartey na thay magar

Darya na tham ta khauf se is barq o taab ke

Lekin padey thay pāon mein chhāley hubāb ke

Phir tou ye ghul huwa ke duhayi Hussain ki

Allah ka ghazab hai ladāyi Hussain ki

Darya Hussain ka hai tarāyi Hussain ki

Dunya Hussain ki hai Khudāyi Hussain ki

Beda bachaya āp ne tūfan se Nūh ka

Ab rahm wāsta Ali Akbar ki rūh ka

Akbar ka nām sunke jigar par lagi sinā

Ānsū bhar āye rok li rahwār ki ‘inā

Mudh kar pukārey lāshe pisar ko Shahe zamā

Tum ne na dekhi jang meri ay pidar ki jān

Qasmein tumhari rūh ki ye log dete hain

Lo ab tou zulfiqār ko hum rok dete hain

Āyi nidāye ghaib ke Shabbīr marhaba

Is hāth ke liye thi ye shamshīr marhaba

Ye ābru ye jang ye tauqīr marhaba

Dikhlaadi maa ke doodh ki taaseer marhaba

Ghālib kiya Khuda ne tujhe kaināt par

Bas khatima jihād ka hai teri zāt par

Bas ab na kar wigha ki hawas ay Hussain bas

Dam le hawa mein chand nafas ay Hussain bas

Garmi se hāmpta hai faras ay Hussain bas

Waqte namāz e asr hai bas ay Hussain bas

Pyāsa lada nahi koi yūn isdehām mein

Ab ehtemām chāhiye ummat ke kām mein

Labbaik kahke taegh rakhi Shay ne miyān mein

Palti sipāh āyi qayāmat jahān mein

Phir sarkasho ne tīr milāye kamān mein

Phir khul gaye lipat ke pharere nishān mein

Bekas Hussain zulm shi’aron mein ghir gaye

Moula tumharey lākh sawaron mein ghir gaye

Sīne pe sāmne se chaley das hazār tīr

Chhāthi pe lag gaye kayi sou ek bār tīr

Pahlu ke pār barchiyān sīne ke pār tīr

Padhtey thay das jo khainchte thay tan se chār tīr

Yūn thay khudang Zille Ilāhi ke jism par

Jis tarha khār hoti hai sahi ke jism par

Chaltey thay chār simpt se bhāley Hussain par

Tūte huwe thay barchiyon wāley Hussain par

Qatil thay khanjaron ko nikāley Hussain par

Ye dukh Nabi ki godh ke paley Hussain par

Tīr e sitam nikālne wāla koi nahin

Girtey thay aur sambhālne wāla koi nahin

Zakhmo se chūr chūr huwa Fatima ka lāl

Sarde riyāz Ahmad o Hyder huwa nidhāl

Chehre pa khūn mal ke basad hasrat o malāl

Ki arz Shay ne shukr hai ay Rabb e Zuljalāl

Bachpan se roz o shab thi yahi ārzu mujhe

Ya Rabb tere karam ne kiya surkhuru mujhe

Is hāl se jo saif ki shiddat huwi siwa

Sadma huwa juda ta’ab tashnagi juda

Āshista rahwār se Hazrat ne ye kaha

Ab waqt hai wida ka ay asb e ba wafa

Jangal mein ghar Batūl ka lut ta hai Zuljanāh

Ab sāth ek umr ka chut ta ha Zuljanāh

Ay khush kharām ab na bachega tera sawār

Ab ye gulu e khushk hai aur taegh e ābdār

Ab lāsh par gharīb ke daudeinge rahwār

Pāmāl hoga ab Shahe mardon ka gul’ezār

Baithega sīna e pisar e Bu Turāb par

Qatil dharega pāon Khuda ki kitāb par

Zalim mere galey pa jo khanjar phiraega

Tujh se ye hāl qahr ka dekha na jāega

Nāla haram ka hashr zamāne mein lāega

Farte gham o alam se jigar thar tharrāega

Ab hoga sāmna qalaq o izterār ka

Naize pe sar chadhega tere shahsawār ka

Lākhon mein ek bekas o dilgīr hai hai

Farzand e Fatima ki ye tauqīr hai hai

Bhāley wo aur pahlu e Shabbīr hai hai

Wo zahr mein bhujāye huwe tīr hai hai

Ghussey mein thay jo fauj ke sarkash bharey huwe

Khāli kiye Hussain pe tarkash bharey huwe

Wo gard thi jo bhāgtey phirtey thay waqt e jang

Ek sangdil ne pās se māra jabīn pa sang

Sadme se zard hogaya sibt e Nabi ka rang

Māthey pa hāth tha ke galey par laga khudang

Thāma gala janāb ne māthey ko chordh ke

Nikla woh tīr halq e mubārak ko todh ke

Likha hai tīn bhāl ka tha nāwake sitam

Munh khul gaya ulat gayi gardan ruka jo dam

Khainchi sari galey ki taraf se ba chashme nam

Bhalein nikaley pusht ki jānib se hokey kham

Ubla jo khūn nikalta huwa dam tahar gaya

Chullu rakha jo zakhm ke nichey tou bhar gaya

Girtey hain ab Hussain faras par se hāi ghazab

Nikli rikāb pāye mutahhar se hai ghazab

Pahlu shigāfta huwa khanjar se hai ghazab

Ghash mein jhukey amama gira sar se hai ghazab

Qura’an rahle zeen se sar e farsh gir padha

Dīwār e Ka’ba baith gayi arsh gir padha

Gir kar kabhi uthey kabhi rakha zamī pa sar

Ugla kabhi lahu tou sambhala kabhi jigar

Hasrat se ki khayām ki jānib kabhi nazar

Karwat kabhi tadap ke idhar li kabhi udhar

Uth baithey jab tou zakhm se barchi ke phal girey

Tīr aur tan mein gadd gaye jab munh ke bhal girey

Jangal mein āyi Fatima Zahra ki ye sada

Ummat ne mujhko lūt liya wā Mohammada

Is waqt kon haqq e mohabbat karey ada

Hai hai ye zulm aur dou ālam ka muqtara

Unnīs sou hai zakhm taney chāk chāk par

Zainab nikal Hussain tadapta hai khāk par

Zahra idhar tadap ke giri aur haram udhar

Qatil ne taegh phaer di Sayyad ke halq par

Hātif ne āsmān se sada di pukār kar

Faryād kat gaya pisar e Fatima ka sar

Be jān lab e furāt e Shahe tashna lab huwa

Māra gaya Imāme zamān tou ghazab huwa

Dekha jo Ahlebait e Nabi ne utha ke sar

Naizey pe āftāb e Imāmat pada nazar

Daude saron pa khāk udhātey ba chashme tar

Dekha ye hāl jab sarey bālīn huwa guzar

Taza lahu rawān hai taney pāsh pāsh se

Takbīr ki sada chali āti hai lāsh se

Pardah ulat ke binte Ali nikli ba chashm e tar

Larzān qadam khamīda kamar gharke khūn jigar

Charon taraf pukārti thi sar ko pīt kar

Ay Karbala bata tera mehmān hai kidhar

Amma qadam ab uthte nahi tashnakām ke

Pahuncha dou lāsh par mere bazu ko thām ke

Bhayya mein ab kahān se tumhein lāon kya karūn

Kya kahke apne dil ko mein samjhāun kya karūn

Kiski duhāyi dūn kisey chillāon kya karūn

Basti parāyi hai mein kidhar jāon kya karūn

Dunya tamām ujad gayi vīrana ho gaya

Baithūn kahān ke ghar tou azākhana ho gaya

Hai hai tumhārey aagey na khwāhar guzar gayi

Bhayya batāo kya tahey khanjar guzar gayi

Āyi sadā na pūch jo hum par guzar gayi

Sad shukr jo guzar gayi behtar guzar gayi

Sar kat gaya hamey tou alam se firāgh hai

Gar hai tou bas tumhāri judāyi ka dāgh hai

Hādn āshiqon Hussain ke āh o buka karo

Zahra ka sāth do madad e Mustafa karo

Haqq e mohabbat e Shahe wāla ada karo

Be sar huwe Hussain qayāmat bapa karo

Samjho sharīk e majlis e mātam Rasūl ko

Sab milke dou Hussain ka pursa Batūl ko

Bas ay Anees za’uf se larzān hai band band

Ālam mein yādgār raheinge ye chand band

Tapke qalam se za’uf mein kya kya buland band

Ālam pasand lafzein hain sultān pasand band

Ye fasl aur ye bazm e aza yādgār hai

Pīri ke walwale hain khiza ki bahār hai

Mīr Anīs in a group

1 This is because the work was written for presentation to Mobarak Shah, who ascended the throne on 2 (…)

2 Sharaf’uddîn ‘Alî Yazdî, Ẓafarnâma, ed. Maulawî Muhammad Ilâhdâd, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcut (…)

3 Yazdi, vol. II, p. 175; Yaḥyà, p. 167. The statement that Timur had already released Khezr Khan in (…)

4 Yaḥyà, p. 165; Yazdi, vol. II, p. 92-94.

1

Timur’s image in India before the establishment of the Indian Timurid (“Mughal”) dynasty in 1526, was naturally coloured by the experience of his invasion of 1397-99. This can be seen from the account of this event in Yahya Sihrindi’s Târikh-e Mobârakshâhi, which was completed in 1434, though the portion containing the account of Timur’s invasion was probably written much earlier1. It was, therefore, practically contemporaneous with, and is certainly completely independent of, Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi’s Ẓafar-nâma, which was probably completed in 1424-5, and contains the most detailed version from the official Timurid point of view2. A comparison of the two narratives is quite instructive. Despite some slips in the Indian account, like making Timur go to Multan from Tulamba, or placing his occupation of Delhi late by one month, it does give some dates and details of Pir Mohammad’s attack on Uchh and Multan, 1397-98, which are lacking in Yazdi. But the essential particulars are the same in both: the route of the invasion, the slaughter and rapine, and the return. Naturally, however, while Yazdi exults in his hero’s brilliant successes and atrocities, Yahya’s account is hostile to Timur, though with a certain amount of restraint. The restraint is understandable, since his patron’s father, Khezr Khan (Kheżr Khân) was appointed to the government of Multan by Timur in 1399, during his return march3. Timur is simply “Amir Timur” in Yahya, not Ṣâḥeb-e Qerân (Lord of the Conjunction) as in Yazdi. Those whom he slaughtered were not all infidel Hindus, deserving their fate, as in Yazdi, but both Hindus and Muslims: such as were killed by Timur when he marched towards Delhi “obtained the honour of martyrdom (sharaf-e shahâdat)”. Like Yazdi, he too describes the slaughter of all the enslaved captives in the hands of Timur before his recrossing of the Yamuna to attack Delhi: his estimate of the number of the victims is more moderate, being 50 000 as against Yazdi’s 100 0004.

5 Yaḥyà, p. 166.

6 Yazdi, vol. II, p. 116-25. On p. 123, Yazdi similarly exults (in verse) at the slaughter: “Out of t (…)

7 Yaḥyà, p. 167.

2

When Timur entered Delhi after defeating Mahmud Toghloq’s forces, he granted an amnesty in return for protection money (mâl-e amâni). But on the fourth day he ordered that all the people of the city be enslaved; and so they were. Thus reports Yahya, who here inserts a pious prayer in Arabic for the victims’ consolation (“To God we return, and everything happens by His will”)5. Yazdi, on the other hand, does not have any sympathy to waste on these wretches. He records that Timur had granted protection to the people of Delhi on the 18th of December 1398, and the collectors had begun collecting the protection money. But large groups of Timur’s soldiers began to enter the city and, like birds of prey, attacked its citizens. The “pagan Hindus” (Henduân-e gabr) having had the temerity to begin immolating their women and themselves, the three cities of Delhi were put to sack by Timur’s soldiers. “Faithless Hindus”, he adds, had gathered in the Congregation Mosque of Old Delhi and Timur’s officers put them ruthlessly to slaughter there on the 29th of December. Clearly, Yazdi’s “Hindus” included Muslims as well. By now immense numbers of slaves had been obtained by ordinary soldiers, and Timur and his nobles took the lion’s share from amongst “the several thousand craftsmen and men of skill” enslaved. No consolation needed to be extended to such people, for, says Yazdi, “Delhi was laid waste (kharâb shod) … in punishment for its inhabitants’ evil beliefs and vile deeds and conduct”6. This would hardly be a sentiment Indians could share. After Timur left, Yahya tells us, Delhi and whatever areas he and his troops had passed through fell prey to epidemic and famine, taking a further toll of lives. Delhi remained deserted and desolate (kharab-o-abtar) for two months. Gradually, the people of Doab (the area between the Yamuna and Ganga), which had “escaped the grasp of the Mughal”, began to gather around Nosrat Shah (Noṣrat Shâh) who re-established some administration in Delhi7. Timur’s invasion was thus seen as the last, and the most calamitous, of the Mongol raids, which left only huge devastation and desolation in its trail. Timur did not even care to leave any one to administer or maintain order in Delhi, and in his other Indian conquests. Multan was the only place he left in the hands of a subordinate potentate in the person of Khezr Khan.

II.

8 For the reasons behind this decision, see Bâburnâma, Turki text, ed. Eiji Mano, Kyoto, 1995, p. 333 (…)

3

After the death of Timur (18th of February 1405), the process of contraction of the Timurid Empire, and dissensions within it began, so that throughout the 15th century India remained immune from “Mughal” invasions. But as the “descendants of Timur Beg” saw their power in Central Asia disappear under the pressure of the Uzbeks, one of them, the famous Babur (d. 1530), now positioned at Kabul, decided (in 1507-8) to try his fortune in India8, and finally succeeded in the enterprise in 1526.

9 Bâburnâma, ed. Mano, p. 10-11; transl. Beveridge, vol. I, p. 13-14.

10 As on the farmân issued on the 13th of Zîqa’d (Ẕu’l-qa’da) 933/11 August 1527, making a soyurghâl g (…)

11 Bâburnâma, ed. Mano, p. 354; transl. Beveridge, vol. I, 382.

12 Yazdi, vol. II, p. 46, 182.

13 Bâburnâma, ed. Mano, p. 434; transl. Beveridge, vol. II, p. 481 (the translator makes a mistaken id (…)

14 Yaḥyà, p. 166-167. For what it is worth, in his account of Timur’s raid, based obviously on the Târ (…)

15 Yazdi, vol. II, p. 175.

4

Babur naturally emphasized his descent from Timur, for whom, rather surprisingly, however, he usually employs in his memoirs no higher title than “Beg”9. On his seal in India he inscribed, on the circumference, the names of his ancestors going up to Timur10. Yet he nowhere directly makes the claim of an entitlement to a dominion in India on the basis of Timur’s conquests. Only in two places do indirect suggestions occur. First, he tells us that ever since Timur’s time the latter’s descendants have continued to hold parts of the Sind Sagar Doab11, an affirmation which may have historical truth behind it, since Timur’s dominions did come up to the Indus, east of Bannu12. The second statement, an incorrect one, is to the effect that Timur had given away Delhi to the founder of the Saiyid dynasty (Khezr Khan whom Babur does not name)13. Though an interpolation to this effect has been made in one of the manuscripts of Yahya’s Târikh-e Mobârakshâhi, its original source is possibly Babur himself, for all manuscripts of Yahya’s agree on the statement that Timur had Khezr Khan released in the Panjab (not at or near Delhi) only to take control over Multan and Dipalpur14. Yazdi too makes Timur hand over to Khezr Khan nothing other than the charge of Multan15. In fact, it was quite an independent set of circumstances which led to Khezr Khan’s seizure of Delhi in 1414, some fifteen years after Timur’s departure from India.

16 Bâburnâma, ed. Mano, p. 509-520; transl. Beveridge, vol. II, p. 553-574.

5

But it was not, perhaps, the slender historical basis for any “gift” of Delhi to anyone by Timur that made Babur refer to his conquest so casually and not draw from it any legal claim in his own favour. Even in the fatḥ-nâma issued in the form of a farmân (29th of March 1527) after Babur’s victory over Rana Sangram Singh, Babur, or rather his draftsman, Sheykh Zaïn, does not make any reference to Timur, though the fatḥ-nâma sought to portray Babur in the same garb of a holy warrior against the Infidels as Yazdi had done in respect of Timur16. The conclusion seems inescapable that to Babur and his secretaries it looked as if Timur’s name was not one through which much sympathy could be gained for Babur’s cause in India.

III.

6

The duality involved in emphasizing the genealogical links to Timur, the Lord of the Conjunction (Ṣâḥeb-e Qerân), the World Conqueror (Giti-setân), to reinforce the Indian Timurids’ dynastic prestige and innate claim to royalty, on the one hand, and confronting the reality of the negative image of Timur in India, on the other, becomes even more obvious during the reign of Akbar (1556-1605).

17 Published by Irfan Habib (ed.), Akbar and his India, New Delhi, 1997,with translation on p. 270.

18 Original in National Archives of India, New Delhi.

19 Epigraphia Indica: Arabic and Persian Supplement, 1969, Delhi, 1973, p. 68, 81.

20 Târîkh-i Akbarî, ed. M. Nadwi, A.A. Dihlawi and I.A. Arshi, Rampur, 1962, text, p. 3, 8.

7

Like Babur, Akbar from early in his reign used a seal, especially in revenue-grant documents, where, on the rim of the circle, his genealogy is traced back to Timur. This seal may be seen on a farmân as early as that of the 7th of April 1561, assigning the revenues of a village to a Hindu master dyer, the genealogy on the seal going back to “Amir Timur”17, and on a farmân as late as that of the 11th of September 1598, conferring revenue grants on temples of Vrindavan, etc., near Agra, where the title of Ṣâḥeb-e Qerân follows the name “Amir Timur”18. Though Akbar is never known to have himself taken the title of Ṣâḥeb-e Qerân in imitation of Timur, this title does occur for him in quasi-official inscriptions: for example, in an inscription of 975/1567-8 at Jaunpur and one of 985/1577-8 at A’zampur19. ‘Aref Qandahari in his panegyrical history of Akbar, written in 1579, traces Akbar’s ancestry to Timur, and also gives Akbar the title of Ṣâḥeb-e Qerân20. There was thus obviously a bureaucratic tendency to treat the principal title of Timur as an especially elevated one, whose use for Akbar, with his continuing string of conquests, could be deemed appropriate in court sycophancy.

21 Akbarnâma, ed. Abdur Rahim, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, 1877, vol. I, p. 122. It is charac (…)

22 Ibid., vol. I, p. 25.

23 Ibid., vol. I, p. 42-43.

24 Ibid., vol. I, p. 77-81.

8

Abu’l-Fazl, the official historian of Akbar and his major ideological counsellor, while writing (c. 1595) the Akbar-nâma, a history that in some ways (especially, in its meticulous collection of facts) is inspired by Yazdi’s Ẓafar-nâma, begins by emphasizing the augustness of Akbar’s ancestry, in which Timur naturally figured prominently. The “light” (nur) that shone on the achievements of Akbar was the same as had shone throughout the conquests of Babur and the “world-acquisition” of Timur, and in the virtues of the holy ancestress of the family, Alan Qua (Alan Ko’a), from whom the Imperial Mongols too were descended21. Timur also offered a scale of comparison. If Akbar’s horoscope had something in common with Timur’s, this was worth noting22; and it was even better when it indicated higher achievement than did Timur’s23. A chapter in the Akbar-nâma was therefore suitably devoted to the achievements of Timur, providing a short though fairly careful chronicle apparently based on Yazdi24.

9

Yet Abu’l-Fazl faces an obvious difficulty in handling Timur’s invasion of India, now that both he and his patron were making such unalloyed appeals to Indian patriotism. In his main account of Timur, the invasion is mentioned with studied brevity:

25 Ibid., vol. I, p. 79.

“On the 12th of Moḥarram 801, he crossed the Indus after constructing a goodly bridge [of boats], and, with fortune accompanying him, conquered India25”.

26 Ibid., vol. I, p. 97. Yazdi’s statement, which Abu’l Fazl explicitly cites, occurs in Ẓafarnâma, vo (…)

10

Abu’l-Fazl touches on Timur’s invasion once more merely to compare his large force, as deducted from Yazdi, with the small body of troops that Babur had before Panipat in 152626. Finally, in the Â’in-e Akbari, the companion work to his history, while listing “those who have come to India”, he enters remarks that suggest an implicit disapproval of Timur’s action:

27 I.e. in the Bâburnâma.

28 Â’in-i Akbarî, ed. Nawal Kishore, Lucknow, 1892, vol. III, p. 163.

“When the sovereignty of Delhi came into the hands of Solṭân Mahmud, the grandson of Solṭân Firuz [Toghloq], and the viziership in the hands of Mallu Khân, the thread of worth-recognition and work-taking fell from the hand, and sovereignty lost its lustre. At this moment, the Imperial banners [of Timur] arrived, as has been briefly noted27. Although such a populous country came into his [Timur’s] hands, it did not have [for him] the desired booty: out of love for home, he went back28”.

29 Ṭabaqât-i Akbarî, ed. B. De, Calcutta, 1913, vol. I, p. 253-256.

30 It is of some interest that as early as 1606-07, Mohammad Qasem “Fereshta” noticed the divergence b (…)

11

If Abu’l-Fazl could get away from an awkward theme by resorting to brevity and opaque comment, such a way-out was difficult for another scholarly official, Nezam al-Din Ahmad, who belonged to an immigrant family from Herat with possibly generations of service under the Timurids. He had set out to write the first general history of India, the Ṭabaqât-e Akbari, completed in 1592-3, and had therefore to give a narrative of Timur’s invasion. The only device he could use was to take the Indian version as recorded in the Târikh-e Mobârakshâhi and suitably modify and soften its substance and tone29. He removed the epithet shahâdat (martyrdom) for the death of those killed by Timur, and re-worded the sentence about the slaughter of captives before the final assault on Delhi so as to suggest that while 50 000 were taken as captives, “many”, not all of them, were killed. In Delhi, it averred, Timur did not deliberately go back on his promise to grant protection, but withdrew it because the people of Delhi refused to pay the protection money and killed some of the collectors – a version for which there is no sanction even in Yazdi30. Needless to say he omits the prayer of consolation that Yahya had recorded in the Târikh-e Mobârakshâhi for those citizens of Delhi who, escaping death, were condemned to captivity and deportation to Central Asia.

31 Badâûnî, vol.1, p. 267-271.

32 Yazdi, vol. II, p. 92.

33 Akhbâru’l akhyâr, Deoband, 1332 H/1913-4, p. 163-164.

34 This is shown by Mohammad Ṣâdeq’s Ṭabaqât-e Shâhjahâni, written c. 1636-37 (manuscript in the Centr (…)

12

It is interesting to compare Nezam al-Din Ahmad’s treatment of the invasion with that of his friend and fellow historian, ‘Abd al-Qader Badauni (Badâ’uni), who, being a critic of Akbar, was under no obligation to pay any special respect to his ancestor. In his account of the event31, written in or before 1595-6, Badauni does not edit out the harsher words in the Târikh-e Mobârakshâhi version. The execution of all the 50 000 captives before the assault on Delhi is reported; and a remark touching on the boorish ignorance of the theologians accompanying Timur is added. Some of these theologians “thinking that all these Indian Muslim captives were Hindus, put them to death out of greed for earning spiritual merit from participation in a Holy War”. Badauni has apparently in mind here both Yazdi’s practice of treating Indians, whether Hindus or Muslims, as Infidels, and his story of a divine who killed all fifteen of his captive-slaves with his own hand, although he had never before slaughtered even a sheep or goat32. As for the enslavement of the entire population of Delhi, Badauni departed from his source by conjuring up their mythical release allegedly at the instance of the Indian mystic Sheykh Ahmad Khattu; “the people of India are beholden to the Sheykh for this favour”, he adds piously. The story is just a legend; an earlier biographical notice on this mystic by Badauni’s younger contemporary, ‘Abd al-Haqq, says (in 1590-91) that Ahmad Khattu had himself been made captive but obtained only his own release by virtue of his spiritual attainments33. The legend of a wholesale emancipation possibly grew out of the belief in Timur’s affinity to and humility towards Sufis, which legend the hagiologists did so much to further34.

13

Badauni’s final judgment of the invasion was certainly not complimentary to Timur. The year it took place (801 H), he says, could be expressed in chronogram either by the word rakhâ’ / rokhâ’, “affluence/gentle breeze”, or by the word khâr, “thorn”. It was a neat way of informing the reader how differently the same event could look to the invader and the victim.

IV.

35 Amin Qazvini, Pâdshâhnâma, MS British Library, Or. 173, fol. 124; ‘Abdu’l Ḥamîd Lâhorî, Pâdshâhnâma(…)

36 Qazvini, f. 29a-32b, and Lâhori, vol. I, p. 43-45, for notices of Timur as the founder of the imper (…)

37 On which see Shri Ram Sharma, The Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Bombay, 1962 (2nd ed.), (…)

14

No particular interest was shown in Timur during Akbar’s son Jahangir’s reign (1605-27), but it was otherwise with his grandson Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58). Upon his coronation on the 14th of February 1628, he assumed the title of Ṣâḥeb-e Qerân-e Sâni; and his official historians explain, the first (Qazvini), that this was because “in most manners and ways” the new emperor “perfectly ressembled” his ancestor, Timur, the Ṣâḥeh-e Qerân; and, the second (Lahori), that the aptness of the title derived from “the deeds” (presumably, the conquests and the confrontation with adverse circumstances) performed by Shah Jahan as a prince that recalled Timur’s career before his accession35. Both Qazvini and Lahori do not trace Shah Jahan’s ancestry beyond Timur36, thus departing from the tradition of Abu’l-Fazl who took the genealogical line back to the forebears of the Imperial Mongol line, especially the blessed lady Alan Qua. Such stress on non-Muslim ancestry was, perhaps, no more seen to be suitable at Shah Jahan’s court, where a certain Islamic orientation had begun to be distinctly stressed37.

38 Qazvini, f. 32a-33a.

39 Iqtidar A. Khan, The Political Biography of a Mughal Noble: Mun’im Khân, Khân-i Khânân, 1497-1575, (…)

15

Qazvini quotes Shah Jahan as saying that Timur by his invasion of India (and in spite of his not being able to stay on there, owning to his preoccupations with other countries that needed to be conquered) left a standing instruction and a source of inspiration for his descendants, one that led Babur to found his empire in India. He admitted though that “most of the laws, regulations, customs and practices” of the Indian Mughal Empire were those of Babur’s grandson, Akbar, who had also brought India under full subjection. The empire constructed by him was now being perfected by the “building skill” of Shah Jahan himself38. There was, therefore, no claim of a continuance or survival of any administrative or military institutions directly from Timur’s time. Even if desired, such an unhistorical view at a time so close to that of Akbar’s great innovations and systematization of administration was hardly possible39.

40 Tuzuk-i Jahângîrî, ed. Syud Ahmud, Ghazipur and Aligarh 1863-64, p. 11. Jahangir himself followed “ (…)

41 Lâhori, vol. II, p. 62.

42 Ibid., p. 482.

16

One can, indeed, ask why, with the achievements of Babur and Akbar providing sufficient prestige and legitimacy, Shah Jahan needed to have so strongly appealed to the name of Timur at all. The best explanation may, perhaps, lie in Shah Jahan’s ambitions to initiate an extension of the Mughal Empire in the north-west and west at the expense of the Uzbek Khanate and the Safavid Empire which had divided between the two of them the bulk of the Timur’s empire. Each annexation at their expense could be justified as nothing more than a rightful restitution to Timur’s heirs. Transoxiana (Mavarannahr) was, as Jahangir put it (1607) in his memoirs, the “hereditary dominion” of the Mughals to whose recovery Akbar had aspired and he himself was, at least on paper, committed40. Shah Jahan intended to pursue a more energetic course. In 1638 when he had taken back Qandahar from the Safavids, his official historian could see it as the first step in the recovery and annexation of all the dominions that Timur had conquered and subjugated41. When in 1646 the invasion of Balkh and Badakhshan was undertaken, it was justified not only because these territories had once belonged to “this Imperial dynasty” (Badakhshan having been in the control of Babur and Homayun), but also because their possession would “open the way to the recovery of Samarqand, the strong, heaven-like capital seat of His Majesty the Ṣâḥeb-e Qerân (Timur)”42.

43 Muhammad Kâzim, ‘Alamgîrnâma, ed. Khadim Husain, Abd al-Hai and W.N. Lees, Bib. Ind., Calcutta, 186 (…)

44 Ibid., p. 387.

17

The failure of this enterprise – the withdrawal from Balkh and Badakhshan in 1647, the loss of Qandahar in 1648, and the fiasco of three successive expeditions to recover the latter (1649, 1652, 1653) –, put a final stop to any thought of pursuing annexationist ambitions in the north-west in the minds of Shah Jahan and his successors. The utility of an appeal to Timur was, therefore, now largely over, except for the strict purposes of dynastic prestige. Indeed, it was enough for the official historian of Aurangzeb (r. 1659-1707) to refer in complimentary terms to Timur as the founder of the line43, just as for administrative purposes it was still important to recognise Akbar as “the renovator of the rules of sovereignty and the architect of the regulations of this eternal State”44. But the legacy of Timur’s name no longer had any role to play in the formulation of specific strategic designs of the Mughal Empire.

V.

18

We may now pass on to an event of the period when Shah Jahan was particularly encouraging the cult of Timur, which is of some interest to students of the historical sources on Timur. Apparently just before the end of Shah Jahan’s 10th regnal year (lunar), the 20th of October 1637, he received what purported to be a Persian translation of the Turki Memoirs (Malfuẓât) and Counsels (Tuzukât) of Timur. The event is described by Qazvini, the official historian writing very soon afterwards. After telling us that Shah Jahan liked to have books read out to him, whereupon he memorised whatever interested him, he proceeds:

45 Qazvini, fol. 417b.

“Thus from the book Vâqe’ât-e Ṣâḥebqerâni [Memoirs or Events of Timur], which was in the Turki language and preserved in the library of the governor (vâlî) of Yemen and which Mir Abu Ṭâleb Torbati, having obtained it in Yemen, himself translated into Persian – and it seems that some one upon orders of His Majesty Timur (ḥażarat-e Ṣâḥeb-e Qerâni) had written it as if it came from His Majesty’s own august tongue – the story (dâstân) of the appointment of Mirzâ Pir Moḥammad, son of Mirzâ Jahângir, eldest son of His Majesty Ṣâḥeb-e Qerân, to the governorship of the capital seat of Solṭân Mahmud of Ghazni, written in the manner of a Turk [i.e. simply] and one befitting the great, was at this time read out to His Majesty [Shâh Jahân]. It was much praised by him and frequently repeated by his inspired tongue in the heaven-ordered assembly. A copy of it was sent to His Majesty’s son, His Highness Prince Solṭân-Aurangzeb Bahâdor, who a few days earlier had left [the court] for Daulatâbâd [capital of the province of Deccan] and this had relevance to his circumstances (…)45”.

46 Ibid., f. 417b-419a. In his preface, Abu Taleb Hoseyni gives the name of the Governor of Yemen as J (…)

19

Qazvini then reproduces the text of Timur’s narration of his counsels and injunctions to Pir Mohammad, which the historian styles dâstân46.

47 Lâhori, vol. I/2, p. 288-289.

48 Ibid., p. 288-289.

20

Qazvini’s passage has largely been ignored while the shorter corresponding passage in Lahori’s work, which has been published, is much better known47. Thus the important statement that the translated text was not even then believed to have been written originally in Turki by Timur himself (it being supposed to have been composed at his instance by someone else who made Timur the narrator) has passed unnoticed. On the other hand, both Qazvini’s text of Timur’s description of his counsels to Pir Mohammad and the published text of the Tuzukât do read like literal translations of a Turki text with frequent occurrences of Turki words, and with a simple and awkward style throughout. The report of counsels to Pir Mohammad given by Qazvini have such an archaic and non-literary appearance that Lahori, called upon to reproduce the same text, extensively polished it, deleting and replacing words and expressions like kankâsh (“deliberation”, replaced by maṣlaḥat), and zânu zada goft (“knelt and said”, replaced by ma’ruż dâsht), to make it read as if it was composed by clerks of the Mughal chancery48.

49 To be identified presumably with Mohammad Afzal, son of Tarbiyat Khan, who died in 1651-52 (M. Atha (…)

50 Mohammad Afzal’s preface: Aligarh, Maulana Azad Library, MS: Lytton Collection, F: Akhbâr 44, f. 2b (…)

51 Afzal says the task was assigned to him in the 10th regnal year (1636-37), during which Abu Taleb’s (…)

21

Indeed, from Shah Jahan’s criticism of Abu Taleb Hoseyni’s translation as reported by Mohammad Afzal Bokhari49, who was asked to correct it, it would seem that Abu Taleb’s credibility suffered for all the wrong reasons. When his translation was presented to Shah Jahan, it was found, says Afzal, that “events that had not happened, and should not have been recorded, according to the Ẓafar-nâma and other trustworthy histories, had been added in that translation and some matters that had been chronicled in all books and histories had been omitted”. The “gross deviations in additions and omissions in respect of events and dates” were brought to Shah Jahan’s attention; moreover, many Turki and Arabic phrases had been left untranslated. So Mohammad Afzal was asked to remove all these deficiencies and make Abu Taleb’s text conform to Yazdi’s Ẓafar-nâma50. Afzal took his task literally, and rewrote and enlarged Abu Taleb’s text, converted Yazdi’s ornate prose into a simpler though still literary narrative, with Timur placed in the first person, and made the story so complete as to have Timur record his own death at the end!51

52 Version B is contained in Aligarh Maulana Azad Library, MS: Sulaiman Collection, 900 F625/2 (transc (…)

53 Dowson found “no great difference” (H.M. Elliot and J. Dowson, The History of India as told by its (…)

22

Afzal’s text, in turn, affected Abu Taleb’s credibility further because the original narrative in Abu Taleb’s translation (i.e. the so-called malfuẓât portion placed between his preface and the tuzukât portion) was replaced by Afzal’s text in a number of manuscripts52, thus creating what may be called a doctored version (or, more politely, Version B) of Abu Taleb’s translation. Both Dowson, who thought Timur’s “Memoirs” to have a genuine core, and Rieu, who thoroughly doubted its genuineness, confounded Version B with Abu Taleb’s own original translation, and believed that there was no substantive difference at all between Abu Taleb’s work and Afzal’s, both, for example, making Timur record his own death53.

54 Aligarh: Maulana Azad Library, MS University Collection, F(4) 240/10, p. 47, for reference to the a (…)

55 Major C. Stewart, The Malfuzat Timury, or Autobiographical Memoirs of the Moghul Emperor Timur, Lon (…)

56 Aligarh Maulana Azad Library, MS University Collection, F(4) 240/10, p. 47. The note is also reprod (…)

57 Institutes, Political and Military, written originally in the Mongol language, by the great Timour, (…)

58 C.A. Storey, Persian Literature – a Bio-Bibliographical Survey, vol. I/2, London, 1936, p. 280-282.

59 Aligarh Maulana Azad Library, MS University Collection, F(4) 240/10 (1755-56); and Sulaiman Collect (…)

60 Salar Jung, Hist. 161, described by Ashraf, Catalogue, p. 188-189 (catalogue N° 168).

61 India Office Library, Ethé 196 (1.0.1943) (Ethé, Catalogue, col. 84-85); British Library manuscript (…)

23

But Abu Taleb’s version in its original form (Version A) survives in several manuscripts. Here his Preface is followed by a narrative (malfuẓât, according to Stewart), running up to 777 H/l375-6 corresponding to the 41st year of Timur’s life, with Timur represented as writing in his 72nd year (the year of his death)54. This narrative appears to be the one that Stewart has translated, for his translation too comes to the 41st year of Timur’s life only55. In some manuscripts, the narrative is extended to 783 H/1381-2 (Version AA). In both sets of manuscripts, the narrative is followed by the translator’s note declaring his intention to translate the remaining Turki text comprising 40 000 beyt (lit. distiches; words?) containing the “Institutes” (Yarligh-e tuzuk) that he had copied from the original on to his own note-book56. The translation of the tuzukât portion then follows. Excerpts from this portion, or from the Tuzukât reproduced in Version B, were published, along with an English translation, by Major Davy57. The two versions, designated A and B by us, have unfortunately not been distinguished in library catalogues, as may be seen from Storey’s standard listing of the manuscritps58. My own scrutiny has established that two Aligarh manuscripts contain Abu Taleb’s original version (Version A)59; and, from the cataloguer’s description, it would seem also to be contained in a Salar Jung manuscript60. As for Version AA (with the narrative coming down to 983 H.) it is contained in one India Office manuscript and at least three British Library manuscripts61.

62 Aligarh, Maulana Azad Library, MS University Collection, F(4) 240/10, p. 520-522. This also appears (…)

63 Storey, Persian Literature, vol. I/2, p. 530, 533-534.

But Abu Taleb’s version in its original form (Version A) survives in several manuscripts. Here his Preface is followed by a narrative (malfuẓât, according to Stewart), running up to 777 H/l375-6 corresponding to the 41st year of Timur’s life, with Timur represented as writing in his 72nd year (the year of his death)54. This narrative appears to be the one that Stewart has translated, for his translation too comes to the 41st year of Timur’s life only55. In some manuscripts, the narrative is extended to 783 H/1381-2 (Version AA). In both sets of manuscripts, the narrative is followed by the translator’s note declaring his intention to translate the remaining Turki text comprising 40 000 beyt (lit. distiches; words?) containing the “Institutes” (Yarligh-e tuzuk) that he had copied from the original on to his own note-book56. The translation of the tuzukât portion then follows. Excerpts from this portion, or from the Tuzukât reproduced in Version B, were published, along with an English translation, by Major Davy57. The two versions, designated A and B by us, have unfortunately not been distinguished in library catalogues, as may be seen from Storey’s standard listing of the manuscritps58. My own scrutiny has established that two Aligarh manuscripts contain Abu Taleb’s original version (Version A)59; and, from the cataloguer’s description, it would seem also to be contained in a Salar Jung manuscript60. As for Version AA (with the narrative coming down to 983 H.) it is contained in one India Office manuscript and at least three British Library manuscripts61.

62 Aligarh, Maulana Azad Library, MS University Collection, F(4) 240/10, p. 520-522. This also appears (…)

63 Storey, Persian Literature, vol. I/2, p. 530, 533-534.

24

If one takes Abu Taleb’s original translation, criticisms such as those based on his virtual conformity with Yazdi’s Ẓafar-nâma, or on Timur being made to record his own death no longer apply. The language appears natural, its derivation from Turki quite obvious; the narrative is similar to one which would be given while reminiscing or dictating from memory. In the Tuzukât portion, memoirs, oral counsels and documents mix freely. There are no obviously anachronistic elements in either the narrative or its terminology, no visible error in the mention of persons, tribes and major events. How could Abu Taleb, without following Yazdi as his source (for his translation does not accord with Yazdi in many places, as Shah Jahan and his scholars noticed), have possibly invented such a text? And if he was inventing a text for approval by Shah Jahan, why would he have composed the fierce diatribe against the people of India that appears in the Tuzukât portion62? Nor can we press the point of the non-survival of the Turki original or the fact of its remaining unknown until its discovery in the library of the Turkish governor of Yemen. The Turki manuscripts of Babur memoirs, for example, are very rare: only two unfragmented manuscripts exist, while the extant manuscripts of the Persian translation by ‘Abd al-Rahim are extremely numerous63. Turki was at the time neither the official nor the major literary language of Central Asia so that the extinction of the Turki original of Timur’s Memoirs and Counsels is in itself not very surprising.

64 Elliot and Dowson, History of India, vol. IV, p. 559-563.

25

If, then, Abu Taleb had a genuinely Turki text before him, from which he translated, a text moreover that belonged to a much earlier time, it still does not make that text genuinely of Timur’s authorship. The fact that Yazdi knew of no such memoirs, a point Dowson is most unpersuasive about in his defence of the memoirs (or rather of Version B), must certainly be held against the Turki original being a work based even on Timur’s dictation or instructions64. Moreover, the reference to his 72nd year of life (though not to his own death, as in the doctored version), already alluded to, would suggest that Timur was engaged in compiling his memoirs while marching against China. This, being just before his death, could hardly have been a suitable time for such an autobiographical enterprise. It is, therefore, likely that the Turki text is not genuinely Timur’s work; but it might still have been compiled soon after his death, and many of the documents in it must have been extracted from official records. In such a case, it may indeed represent a very early post-Timur historical tradition. The original version of Abu Taleb (as against the doctored) need not, therefore, be dismissed as of no relevance or significance in reconstructing the history of Timur.

26

Shah Jahan and his official scholars need not, therefore, be held guilty of encouraging a fabrication. Owing to his acceptance of Abu Taleb’s presentation of his translation, Shah Jahan enabled an important early source on Timur to survive, though he himself strongly suspected its accuracy. There was no fabrication involved in his ordering Mohammad Afzal to rewrite the Memoirs, for, as Mohammad Afzal’s preface makes it clear, the use of Timur as narrator was in his book a mere literary device. The confusion came only by the mixing at some stage of the two texts, to produce a doctored version of Abu Taleb (Version B), much to the latter’s discredit. His original translation is, however, fortunately extant (Version A), as we have seen; and this needs to be more seriously explored by the students of the history of Timur than has hitherto been the case.

Download PDF Timur & Mughal India Irfan Habib

(This article is taken from the 26 July 2008 EPW issue  on DD Kosambi (download pdf version)

By Irfan Habib

(Irfan Habib is professor emeritus, Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.)

Summary: D D Kosambi profoundly redefined the message that Marxism had for historians. What set him apart from others who “applied” Marxism to Indian history was his determination to maintain, indeed increase the standard of rigour in his factual and textual research, for Marxism dealt with a far more extensive area than the one over which research had conventionally been conducted. Guided by the basic thesis about how social evolution occurs, he rejected the view that India had ever passed through a phase of slavery; rather it was the construction of caste society that happened here. The reasons for his acceptance of a stage of feudalism spanning the period from that of the Guptas to the Mughals are most interesting.

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It was a happy day for Indian historiography when  D D Kosambi began to take interest in the interpretation of  the past of Indian society, doubtless at the expense of his studies in Mathematics, the field where he had already earned so much distinction. This shift of interest was probably not unconnected with Kosambi’s own growing sympathies with Marxism. The collection of Kosambi’s articles on history, which Brajdulal Chattopadhyaya has assembled with so much labour, contains one published as early as 1938-39, in which Kosambi cites Marx and calls attention to his articles on India, to which he had apparently gained access through a publication by the Socialist Book Club, Allahabad.1 He was later to express the grouse that the editors of this volume did not tell the reader of Marx and Engels’ writings on primitive societies.2 After Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, communist literature began to be widely available in India. Kosambi himself now contributed a paper to the American Marxist journal, Science and Society, as early as 1944, on the issue of caste.3 He was apparently greatly affected by the famous passage in Marx’s Preface to his Critique of Political Economy, where Marx concisely enunciates his thesis that historical changes are brought about by the growth of contradictions in each “mode of production”, and explains how man’s “social being” shapes his action.4

‘Applying’ Marxism to Indian History

What sets Kosambi apart from some others who began to “apply” Marxism to Indian history around the same time, was his determination to maintain, and, indeed, increase, the standard of rigour in his factual and textual research. His own work on the Sanskrit poet and grammarian, Bhatrihari, published during the years 1945-48 was in the best “Orientalist” tradition. In 1949 in his review of S A Dange’s India from Primitive Communism to Slavery, published that year, he took Dange to task for his gross errors of fact and lack of linguistic comprehension, and issued a notable caution: “Marxism is not a substitute for thinking, but a tool of analysis”.5

In the same article Kosambi noted that “most of our source material was first collected, analysed and arranged by foreign scholars”, though he agreed that the British historians’ writings had been coloured by their “national and class prejudices”.6 He would not also allow any pandering to nationalist or communal prejudices. This was especially brought forth in his critical review of the first three volumes of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s History and Culture of the Indian People, with K M Munshi and R C Majumdar as the principal editors. Observing that Islam’s chief contribution to India was to increase commodity production in the feudal period, he noted dryly that this was the period “when Munshis and Majumdars were created, though not their mentality”.7

For Kosambi, Marxism required more academic rigour, not less, while it dealt with a far more extensive area than the one over which research had conventionally been conducted. The post-modernist insistence on the non-separation of subject and discourse had not been heard of in his time; in fact, that separation was basic to his method. The critical tools shaped by “orientalism”, or, in India’s case, “Indology”, had to be perfected further, not thrown away or bypassed. This was the thrust of his influential paper ‘Combined Methods in Indology’, published in the most “orientalist” of journals, the Indo-Iranian Journal, in 1963.8 Here Kosambi takes up words and concepts and offers important hypotheses on the basis of critical studies of them. He also insisted on fieldwork, that is, looking at customs and practices whether recorded in the past or found, unrecorded, among contemporary primitive communities or, for that matter, among Brahmans, so as to trace earlier situations from later distorted or altered survivals.9

With the knowledge so gained, and constantly expanded, Kosambi embarked on his ambitious project of studying Indian history on the basis of his own understanding of the ideas of historical materialism laid out by Marx and Engels. An early critique of a Soviet writer D A Suleikin in 1951 and, then, a clearly outlined statement of his own views on the stages of evolution of Indian history in 1954 were preliminary indications of where his research and reflection were leading him.10

Two years later, in 1956, came Kosambi’s major historical work, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, Bombay, which substantiated and extended his views on both how Marxist insights needed to be used to reconstruct Indian history and how history would appear after being thus reconstructed. It was not intended to be a straightforward narrative: it assumed that the reader has read the conventional “bourgeois” textbooks by V A Smith and his successors. After expressly locating his basic approach in Marxist theory, Kosambi eschewed conventional narrative and raised such problems as he thought to be important in successive periods. He, however, often enters lanes and by-lanes, linked to the main path of his argument, whether to substantiate a hypothesis by appealing to a distant piece of evidence or just to record a curiosity. He could also go forward and then come back: In his Chapter VII, Asoka came first, and “the pre-Asokan state and administration” later: this apparently seemed to him to be the more convenient way to present his argument.

From a less sure hand, such a procedure might have looked especially idiosyncratic, but the mere weight of  what Kosambi had to say reduced all such objections to petty carping.

Periodisation of Indian History

In the first place, Kosambi profoundly redefined the message that Marxism had for historians. In an attempt to impart to the Marxist perception of class struggle and its different forms the colour of universal application, the “Leningrad discussions” of the 1920s had led to the conclusion that the unilinear succession of modes of production, primitive community-slavery-feudalism-capitalism, was followed in practically all countries, except for those with very recent immigrant populations. This thesis played its part in countering the belief fostered in western social democracy that, in the words of an anti-communist propagandist, Karl A Wittfogel, “class-struggle far from being a chronic disease of all mankind is the luxury of multi-centred and open [that is, Western] societies”.11 But having played its due part in controverting such beliefs, the standard scheme of periodisation began to gravely shackle Marxist historiography. By overuse both “slavery” and “feudalism” seemed to lose all meaning when the most divergent forms of social organisation in different societies went on being assigned to these two categories, just to keep formally to the standard scheme. Kosambi now boldly asserted that Marxist historians ought to take their cue only from the basic thesis about how social evolution occurs, and not blindly apply a single prescribed pattern.

Taking the case of India, Kosambi summarily rejected the view that it had ever passed through a phase of slavery. Rather it was the construction of caste-society that happened here – a cruel form of bondage, but different, nevertheless, from slavery. He argued that the term “Asiatic” occurring in Marx’s passage in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy should be taken to cover a case like India’s and, for this reason, the term should not be ignored, as had been done in Stalin’s interpretation of the passage.12 This did not mean that he accepted for the “Asiatic”, the sense of a stagnant despotic system, as some of Marx’s own words would suggest.

Indeed, Kosambi directly contested Marx’s observations about the “unchangeableness” of Asiatic societies. Conceding that these remarks were “acute and brilliant”, he yet held that the proposition was “misleading” and “cannot be taken as it stands”.13 It was as if Kosambi was inviting historians to take Marx’s method and apply it to Indian history on a clean slate; and his own book was to serve as an illustration of what could be achieved if this was done.

What Kosambi set out to do in his Introduction was, therefore, to investigate both the economic basis (“the means and relations of production”) and the changing beliefs, customs, and culture (“superstructure”) and their mutual relationships. In carrying out this task he raised questions that conventional historians too found challenging and exciting. For example, should not the technology of production be closely studied, so as to understand the nature of the social organisation that corresponded to it? Quite early in his book he commented:

The villages did not exist “from times immemorial”. The advance of plough-using agrarian village economy over tribal India is a great historical achievement by itself.14

Before Kosambi, little work had been done on the history of technology in India; his senior friend, P K Gode, was practically the lone scholar in the field, with a series of papers on the most diverse devices and processes of manufacture in ancient and medieval times. But the evidence available had not yet been assembled and critically analysed. Kosambi underlined the importance of this aspect of history by his numerous references to tools and products, such as the late use of the shaft-hole axe or the arrival of the coconut no earlier than the first century AD.

On the other side of the spectrum was religion: Kosambi saw in religious beliefs and ritual the reflections of economic and social circumstances which he so loved to trace often in minute detail.16 Religion was also the means by which exploited classes could be kept reconciled to their position, believing it to be divinely ordained, and, by such consent, reducing the amount of violence (with the expenses involved) which would be otherwise needed to keep them under control.17 To Kosambi, this role of religion provides the key to a proper understanding of the rise of the caste system.

Rise of the Caste system

To begin with, he had no quarrel with the suggestion made by many Indologists that the Shudra class arose largely out of the subjugated Dasas, though some of the latter were admitted into the Aryan fold as well. Such a situation, however, would not of itself create a caste system as the parallel Iranian development showed.18 The evidence as to how castes were created could be seen in the evolution of the priestly Brahman caste.

Kosambi shows that Brahman priests did not belong to any tribe and there were non-Aryan priests who also entered their ranks. He concluded that the Brahmans created the model for the other castes: “With him (the Brahman)”, he says, “begins the later reorganisation into caste”.19 The priest served not only as the model but also, of course, the religious spokesman of the caste system. There was another process too behind the formation of castes, namely, “tribal elements” being “fused into a general society”.20 Kosambi appeals to contemporary ethnography to show how endogamous tribes or clans have been absorbed into society as castes.21 In a sense, then, priestly consolidation, on the one hand, and tribal absorption into the agrarian population, on the other, have been the historical sources for the creation of a caste system, serving for India’s major institutional frame for exploitative relationships. One can here go back to what Kosambi had said in his 1954 ISCUS article:

Caste is class at a primitive level of production, a religious method of forming social consciousness in such a manner that the primary producer is deprived of his surplus with the minimum coercion.22

Indian Feudalism

Kosambi has much to say in the Introduction about the growth of the states, the rise of Jainism and Buddhism, the punch-marked coins and the economy of the Mauryan Empire. Important as many points made by Kosambi about these themes are, lack of space forbids a discussion of these here. However, one cannot leave Kosambi’s reconstruction of Indian history without a comment on his acceptance of a stage of feudalism spanning the period from that of the Guptas to the Mughals.

Kosambi recognised that the elements of demesne-farming and serfdom, crucial to the Marxian perception of feudalism as a mode of production, were missing here; but he believed that other features were common between the Indian and European forms, viz, low level of production techniques, growth of rusticity and decline of urban life, political decentralisation and service tenures, and that these justified one to designate the mode of production in India for well over a millennium as “feudal”.23 In the political and fiscal spheres, he discerned two different processes of feudalisation: (1) “From above”, when centralised states created local rights by grants and concessions; and (2) “From below”, when “landowners developed from within the village [to stand] between the state and the peasantry”.24 There seems to be an echo here of Marx’s formulation about capitalists emerging from above (merchants) and below (craftsmen). It may be noted that Kosambi’s remarks about the period of Muslim dynasties (thirteenth to seventeenth centuries) also contain many important insights and suggestions: For instance, we have  from him the significant proposition that “Islamic raiders” played “a role similar to that of the Aryans over two millennia earlier, in breaking down hidebound custom, in the adoption and transmission of new technique”.25

One needs to stress that like any work of history, Kosambi’s work too is limited by the evidence available at the time it was composed; and there is the further matter of the range of an author’s own extent of knowledge (vast enough in Kosambi’s case) and his own subjective preferences when attempting an analysis of existing evidence. Kosambi asked questions few or none had asked before, and as a pioneer many of the solutions he proposed needed verification. Some assumptions (such as the one regarding the absence of plough in the Indus Civilisation) were not sustained as more evidence came to light. For Kosambi himself, the Introduction was not the end-product of his research. He continued to contribute research papers and published two important collections of essays,26 and a straightforward restatement of his major findings in The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline, published from London in 1965.27 Death took Kosambi away the very next year when he was at the height of his powers – not yet even 60. But he had done enough to ensure that history-writing in India would not be the same again.

A Personal Note

On late December evening in 1963 at Pune, Barun De (later to be professor and director, Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Kolkata) and I called on Kosambi at his house. I had arranged the interview on telephone but perhaps I was not able to explain clearly who both of us were, since we had no claim on his attention other than a desire to have his darshan. He apparently thought we were some Soviet scholars. As may be imagined he was none too pleased when he found that we were not the guests he expected. A certain coolness on his part was the natural result and Kosambi was not the one to hide it. He spoke acidly of his bad experience with some people at my university (Aligarh) where he had served early in his career.

Seeking to turn the conversation into other channels, Barun mentioned that we were due to attend H D Sankalia’s lecture the next day. This too did not help matters: “Oh, Sankalia! He would show you how the primitive people of Narbada culture had windows in their houses, as if they were cottages in Sussex.” (Sankalia must have had some telepathic means of knowing about our conversation, because the next evening he began his lecture with a respectful reference to Kosambi as a theoretician, while he himself was only a fieldworker. The windows, however, were there on the slides.) When exactly interpreting prehistory and tracing its distorted survivals in living communities. We had an evening to remember all our lives. Kosambi later visited Aligarh especially to see the early iron site of Atranji Khera. He had wonderful stamina, and when I received him at the railway station, he insisted on carrying his own rucksack. Who could then imagine we would so soon lose him for ever?

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Notes

1 ‘The Emergence of National Characteristics among Three Indo-European Peoples’, reprinted:

D D Kosambi, Combined Methods in Indology and Other Writings

(ed), Brajdulal Chattopadhyaya

(henceforth Combined Methods), pp 753-61. A very useful list of Kosambi’s publications would be found in V V Gokhale, ‘Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi’, in R S Sharma and D N Jha, Indian Society, Historical Probings: In Memory of D D Kosambi, New Delhi 1974, pp 4-15.

2. An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (hereafter, Introduction), Bombay, 1956, pp 15-16, fn 15.

3. Combined Methods, pp 773-79.

4 Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, trans S W Ryazanskaya (ed), Maurice Dobb, Moscow, 1978, pp 20-22. This passage has been quoted most widely, perhaps of all of Marx’s pronouncements, and the English renderings of the German original have varied.

5 ‘Marxism and Ancient Indian Culture’ in

Combined Methods, pp 784-89.

6 Ibid, p 785.

7 ‘What Constitutes Indian History’ in

Combined Methods, pp 790-96; for words quoted, see p 796.

8 Combined Methods, pp 3-29.

9 See a late paper of his ‘Living Prehistory in India’,Scientific American (February 1967), reprinted in: Combined Methods, pp 30-48.

10  ‘On a Marxist Approach to Indian Chronology’ (1951) in Combined Methods, pp 49-56, and ‘Stages in Indian History’ (1954) in Combined Methods,

pp 57-71. Since the latter article was published in ISCUS, the journal of Indo-Soviet Cultural Society, this was the first piece by Kosambi that I happened to read and remember being struck by its self-confident note.

11 Oriental Despotism – A Comparative Study in Total Power, Yale University Press, 1957, p 329. Kosambi’s own criticism of this work has been reprinted in Combined Methods, pp 797-801.

12  Introduction, pp 8-14.

13  Ibid, pp 10-11.

14  Ibid, p 11.

15  Ibid, pp 61, 255-56.

16 I select at random the following comment: “Among names common to several of our sources that of Iksvaku (an obscure chief in RV, 10.60.4) occurs as founder of the Kosalan line of kings. The derivation is from iksu = sugar cane (first men- tion, AV, 1.34.5; also a kind of gourd), obviously totemic, presumably pre Aryan” (p 118).

17 See, eg, pp 58-62, the context of the Indus Civili- sation. Kosambi was writing just before Gramsci’s concept of “hegemony” entered common use.

18 See pp 91-96.

19 See pp 96-101; quoted words on p 100. 20 See p 25.

21 See pp 25-34. Combined Methods, p 59.

22 See Introduction, pp 326-28.

23 Ibid, p 275.

24 Ibid, pp 340-41. Exasperating Essays: Exercise in the Dialectical Method, Poona, 1957, and Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture, Bombay, 1962. Characteristically, Kosambi spoke in his Preface to this book of the tendency to talk “about India’s glo- rious past, unhampered by fact or commonsense”, while he disowned any intention on his own part to indulge in “scholarly display”.

William Finch and F. Pelsaert on the other hand describe the two-vat system which prevailed in the Bayana-Agra-Kol region during the seventeenth Century. According to their description, there were pairs of a rectangular and circular tanks or vats in which the indigo was processed to extract the dye.

The stems and leaves of the indigo plant were first placed in a rectangular vat, the ‘long cisterne’ of Finch and the ‘put’of Pelsaert, where they were covered with water and steeped for a period of time: 16 or 17 hours according to Pelsaert; 24 hours according to Francis Fettiplace; 48 hours according to Mundy; or ‘for certaine dayes’ according to Finch.

This tank was ‘well plastered’ with lime to check any seepage and had a depth of ‘the height of an ordinary man’. According to Pelsaert the yield of one bigha or ‘12 or 20 ser according to the yield’ could be held by each of these ‘put’ or vats. The pressing of the steeped leaves and stalks of the indigo plant in these rectangular tanks was done by pressing the material ‘with many stones’. It was due to this that these rectangular tanks were also known as the ‘steeping tanks’.

These steeping vats were connected to circular tanks or cisterns which were situated at a somewhat lower level. After the ‘substance of the herbe be gone into the water’ as a result of steeping and stone-pressing, the mixture was transferred into these circular vats or tanks, which according to both Finch and Pelsaert had a small ‘bowl-shaped’ receptacle at its base. Once transferred, two or three men standing inside the vat, either stirred the liquid with ‘back and forth movement of their arms’ or stirred it with ‘great staves, like batter or white starch’. This beating and stirring continued from around 6 hours to 16 hours, all the while mixing ‘a little oil’ before letting it stand for a day or so to allow the heavy matter and pigments in the resultant blue water to settle below in the bowl-shaped receptacles.

Lucas Antheunis, writing about indigo processing at Masulipatam on the other hand, informs about mixing of a particular fruit to bring the required thickness and hue:

Here is some very fine and good and may make it generally so but that in seething they mingle with it the rinds of certain fruit like green Spanish figs, which makes it heavy and takes away his colour more or less, according as they put thereof in.

The clear water which was left at the top was then drawn out either manually or by ‘opening holes made round the tank’.

The process of beating, stirring and settling was repeated till ‘only a thicke substance’ remained. According to Pelsaert there was ‘an outlet at the level of the bottom’ of the circular beating vat through which the remaining water was drained.

The wet pure indigo which had sunk to the bowl-shaped receptacle was now collected and taken out to be dried. According to Pelsaert, the bottom of the put was spread with ashes ‘to form a crust’ and probably help in easy removal of the indigo.

The drying of the indigo was in two stages: first the substance was poured on a cotton cloth spread on the ground so that the extra water was soaked by the soil; and then the semi-dry indigo was then shaped by hand or cut into balls or cakes and kept for further drying on the sand. Ultimately the dry balls of indigo were then kept in earthen vessels which were closed tightly to prevent further drying sue to sun and winds.