By: Audrey Truschke
Stanford University and Rutgers University-Newarkaudrey
truschke@gmail.com
Abstract
Brahman
Sanskrit intellectuals enjoyed a century of relations with the Mughal
elite. Nonetheless, such cross-cultural
connections feature only sporadically in Persian chronicles, and Brahmans rarely elaborated on
their imperial links in Sanskrit texts. In
this essay I analyze a major exception to the Brahmanical silence on
their Mughal con
nections,
the Kavīndracandrodaya (“Moonrise of Kavīndra”). More than seventy Brahmans penned the poetry and prose of this
Sanskrit work that celebrates
Kavīndrācārya’s successful attempt to persuade Emperor Shah Jahan to
rescind taxes on Hindu pilgrims to
Benares and Prayag (Allahabad). I argue that the Kavīndracandrodaya constituted
an act of selective remembrance in the Sanskrit tradition of
cross-cultural encounters in Mughal
India. This enshrined memory was, however, hardly a uniform vision. The work’s many authors demonstrate
the limits and points of contestation
among early moderns regarding how to formulate social and historical
commentaries in Sanskrit on imperial
relations.
Keywords
Brahmans
– Mughals – Sanskrit – Persian – history – memory
Introduction
By the mid-seventeenth century, Brahman Sanskrit intellectuals had enjoyed nearly a century of support from members of the Mughal elite. The Mughals were a Persian-speaking Islamicate dynasty with a sustained interest in tra ditional Indian knowledge systems and their intelligentsia. Brahman schol ars first entered the central imperial court in the 1560s, following the Mughal expansion into eastern India under Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605).1 Within twenty years, many Brahmans had become integrated into the fabric of courtly life and operated in a variety of often overlapping capacities. They served as astrologers for the Mughal emperors, resident scholars, informants on learned Indian traditions, translators, and political negotiators. Sanskrit knowing Brahmans actively engaged with the Mughals throughout Jahangir’s rule (1605-1627) and continued to populate the court well into Shah Jahan’s reign (1628-1658).2 Despite their enthusiastic participation in Mughal impe rial life, however, Brahmans rarely elaborated in Sanskrit texts on their cross cultural activities. Brief mentions of receiving Mughal patronage abound, but Brahman-authored Sanskrit narratives of events at the Mughal court are non existent, and few texts offer even a glimpse into what imperial relations meant for Brahmanical communities culturally, socially, and religiously.3 Brahmans were reluctant to reflect in Sanskrit literary texts upon their experiences regarding the Mughal imperial world.
Some
scholars have tried to bypass this profound Brahmanical silence by pointing to unacknowledged Persianate
influences in the literary production of
certain Sanskrit writers. For example, Christopher Minkowski has argued that the sixteenth-century polymath Sūryadāsa
modeled bidirectional poetry
(vilomakāvya) on the Persian script, which reads right-to-left.4 Sheldon
Pollock has proposed that the personal
tone of some of Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja’s
poetry is indebted to Perso-Arabic literary practices.5 Yigal Bronner
and Gary Tubb have suggested a parallel
influence on Jagannātha’s poetic analysis.6
While such instances of undisclosed crossovers remain important to
identify, they show, among other things,
how Brahmans typically omitted any overt
recognition of cross-cultural connections. Even in cases in which
Persianate influences can be detected
centuries later, contemporary writers consistently declined to note (or perhaps failed to
realize) their sources of inspiration.
Can we find instances, however, of a more forthcoming approach
whereby Brahmans tried to formulate a
vision of what links with the Mughals meant for
their social and intellectual communities? Such attempts would have
impor tant consequences for how we conceptualize Brahmanical Sanskrit culture
in the early modern period and the
importance of memory and forgetting in the
Sanskrit tradition. To date, the Sanskrit text I have found that tries
most overtly to define a Brahmanical
memory of connections with the Mughal court is the Kavīndracandrodaya, composed to honor
Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī.
Kavīndrācārya
was a Maharashtrian Brahman who was based in Benares. At some point he traveled to the court of the
Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and engaged in
various aspects of Mughal cultural life.7 Among other activities, Kavīndra taught Sanskrit texts to members of
the royal family and sang vernac ular songs for the imperial assembly, as I
discuss below. He was well paid for his
efforts, and Shah Jahan’s largesse helped Kavīndra build an impressive
library of more than two thousand
Sanskrit manuscripts.8 Kavīndra’s greatest imperial achievement, in the eyes of
his fellow Brahmans, was that he convinced
Shah Jahan to cease levying an onerous tax on Hindu pilgrims to Benaras
and Prayag (Allahabad).9 Kavīndra
maintained his connection with the imperial
court until the end of Shah Jahan’s rule. When Aurangzeb ʿAlamgir rose
to power in 1658, he cut off Kavīndra’s
imperial stipend in a political move cal culated to distinguish himself from
his elder brother, Dara Shikuh, previously
the likely successor to the throne.10 Kavīndra was subsequently
sponsored by Danishmand Khan, a Mughal
notable, and later served for three years as a cul tural intermediary for the
European traveler Francois Bernier.11 The Kavīndracandrodaya was compiled in
the mid-seventeenth century, during the
height of Kavīndra’s favor with Shah Jahan and after many decades of Brahman-Mughal relations. Neither Persian
nor Sanskrit sources offer any linear
narrative of precisely what it was that passed between Kavīndra and Shah Jahan that resulted in the cancellation of
Hindu pilgrimage fees. However, doz ens of Brahmans composed celebratory verses
and prose extolling Kavīndra that were
collected into two texts: the Sanskrit Kavīndracandrodaya (“Moonrise of Kavīndra”) and the significantly shorter
Hindi Kavīndracandrikā (“Moonlight of
Kavīndra”). These praise poems appropriately parallel Kavīndra’s own bifur
cated production of Sanskrit and vernacular texts and his engagement with both traditions at the Mughal court.12
Scholars have occasionally tried to pluck historical information from these
parallel praise poems, but they have rarely
considered either work as a literary whole.
In
this essay I examine the Sanskrit panegyric Moonrise of Kavīndra as a mode of historical memory for the early
modern Brahman community. Praise poetry
for kings and gods has a long history in India, especially in Sanskrit, but compiling a text honoring a community
leader’s political achievement has far
fewer precedents.13 One modern scholar has even dubbed the Moonrise of Kavīndra “the first festschrift in
Sanskrit.”14 I am interested in this work because of its emphasis on a cross-cultural event and
its corresponding implications for
history and memory in early modern India. The Kavīndracandrodaya constituted an
act of selective remembrance of cross-cultural encounters in Mughal India. Moreover, this enshrined memory
was hardly a uniform vision. Nearly
seventy named writers and many anonymous authors contributed to the Sanskrit praise poem,15 which allows us
to see the general contours of the
project, as well as its limits and points of contestation.
Recovering
the valence of the Kavīndracandrodaya is beset by a major methodological challenge that is helpful to
address at the outset. Early modern
Sanskrit authors inherited a strong penchant for conventions. This banal observation is true for many genres of
Sanskrit works, but it is perhaps
nowhere more evident than in praise poetry. Authors frequently
recycled verses and even entire poems
for different subjects. Original contributions
often followed predictable patterns and set formulas. These conventions
did not render Sanskrit praises devoid
of meaning or prohibit specificity, but they
made novelty a subtle art. Additionally, modern sensibilities are hardly
cali brated to detect the nuances of seventeenth-century Sanskrit panegyrists.
As a result, Sanskrit encomiums, when
read today, often seem vague and divorced
from their social contexts. The Kavīndracandrodaya is no different, and
many contributions probably strike most
modern readers as applicable to any laud able individual rather than as
tailored to Kavīndra and Mughal tax relief. I take a two-pronged approach to these challenges by
reading both with the grain of the text
and against it. On one hand, I recover the contextual meanings often embedded in conventions by reading
sensitively with an eye to how seven teenth-century readers would have
understood seemingly generic formula tions in rather specific ways. On the
other hand, I highlight instances in which
individual writers bent the rules, even slightly, or elaborated beyond a
stan dard script and commented on contemporary affairs.
I
analyze the Moonrise of Kavīndra in three major sections. I first explore the pertinent social and literary contexts
for understanding the work and its
framing. I then examine the poem’s depiction of Kavīndra and the
Mughals. In discussing the text’s
treatment of Kavīndra, I both provide a literary analysis of the work and bring out the cultural
implications of the various ways of prais ing Kavīndra. Regarding the authors’
handling of the Mughals, I engage with
the overarching reluctance to discuss distinctive markers of new
religious and social groups in Sanskrit
and suggest some ways to tease out the contemporary import of lines mired in tradition. Having
explored the Kavīndracandrodaya, I turn,
at the end of the essay, to the question of historical memory and offer a few thoughts about what this peculiar work
can tell us about historical
sensibilities and modes of remembering the past in early modern India.
The Moonrise of Kavīndra demonstrates
the variety of approaches adopted by early
moderns for formulating social and historical commentaries in Sanskrit
on real-world events.
1
The Social Context and Historical Project of the Kavīndracandrodaya
There
are a few pertinent contexts for understanding the Kavīndracandrodaya, beginning with the social history of
Brahman-Mughal ties. By the time Kavīndra
approached Shah Jahan, Brahman intellectuals had profited from nearly a cen
tury of ongoing associations with the central Mughal court. Beginning early in Akbar’s reign, Brahmans entered the Mughal
courts from across northern and central
India, both through Rajput networks and also of their own accord, in search of the Mughals’ well-known liberal
patronage. Some Brahmans, like a variety
of other Indians, learned Persian and entered imperial service. In contrast, Kavīndra and his ilk generally
acted outside of the formal struc tures of imperial service—they did not
receive imperial ranks (manṣabs), for
example—and remained grounded in traditional Indian knowledge systems.16
Nonetheless, Sanskrit-knowing Brahmans participated in many aspects of the Mughal polity. For instance,
Kavīndra sang vernacular praises for
Shah Jahan and other members of the royal family and instructed them in Sanskrit texts.17 Scholars have proposed,
based on compelling circumstan tial evidence, that the Yogavāsiṣṭha was among
the works that Kavīndra intro duced to the royal family.18
Brahmans
had also long solicited the Mughals for favors, and, in Kavīndra’s case, the goal was rescinding a tax levied on
Hindu pilgrims to Benares and Prayag.
Neither the Sanskrit nor Persian traditions offers details about this tax, its origins, or how long it had been in
effect.19 We are also unclear about how
Kavīndra came to negotiate this policy. Based on attestations that
Kavīndra served the Mughals as a scholar
and singer, it seems most likely that he was first admitted to the Mughal court for these other
reasons and then took the oppor tunity to solicit the emperor.20 Several of Kavīndra’s
admirers in the Moonrise of Kavīndra
allude to his other imperial activities (see below), but none elabo rates on
the precise circumstances that led him to request tax relief. We can nevertheless safely say that nobody was
surprised by Kavīndra’s mere presence at
the Mughal court or his decision to participate in imperial life. Brahmans had been pursuing similar engagements for
several generations. What appears to
have been new in Kavīndra’s case was the magnitude of the imperial conces sion
he earned, which, in turn, prompted an unprecedented textual response on the part of his Brahmanical community.
Brahmans
generally avoided extended reflections in Sanskrit on their activities at the Mughal court. In contrast,
Jains produced at least half a dozen
detailed Sanskrit narratives that chronicle their interactions with the
Mughals. The Jain works fall within a
variety of genres, including poetry, narrative writ ing, and chronicles (kāvya,
carita, and prabandha, respectively). They also
emerged from two different Jain sects, the Tapā and the Kharatara
Gacchas. I have written about these Jain
works elsewhere.21 I bring them up here to high light a basic but often
overlooked point: the Brahmanical textual muteness about the Mughals was not predetermined but a
meaningful choice. Sanskrit writers were
generally slow to respond to social changes and hesitant to intro duce new
groups into their social imagination, as many scholars have noted.22 But we have been far too hasty in declaring a
total absence of Sanskrit texts that
respond to the advent of Indo-Islamic rule.23 By the mid-seventeenth century, there were many Jain works in
Sanskrit that displayed a broad spec trum of options regarding whether to write
about such topics and how to do so. In
the face of such evidence, the Brahmanical reluctance to write about the Mughals requires serious analysis and
explanation, rather than blasé accep tance. I leave for another day
consideration of the overarching Brahmanical
decision not to discuss their imperial links in Sanskrit literature.
Here I investigate the Kavīndracandrodaya, the text that partially broke the
Brahmanical prohibition against
incorporating Mughal events into Sanskrit. Sixty-nine named authors contributed
to the Kavīndracandrodaya, and there are
several anonymous passages. Altogether, the work contains more than three hundred Sanskrit verses, numerous
lengthy prose passages, and a few
Prakrit and Marathi lines.24 A writer named Kṛṣṇa25 assembled the verses and prose into a single work, grouping the
praises of each author together. Kṛṣṇa
also penned a series of introductory verses that describe Kavīndra and the reasons behind the work. Kṛṣṇa, in one of
the earliest verses in the text,
characterizes the encomium as a cooperative effort:
Composed
by the glorious luminaries of Kashi that are good poets, the similar inhabitants of Prayag, and residents
of all lands who delight in great
learning, this collection of verses was written down by glorious Kṛṣṇa and is dedicated to glorious, venerable
Kavīndra, the lord of good poets, who is
a treasure house of knowledge, known by the name teacher (ācārya), and yoked with the title
sarasvatī.26
Roughly
one-third of the encomium’s authors can be identified with known figures of the period, and a few additional
writers state their relationship to
Kavīndra (e.g., his students) or their geographical location (e.g., the
learned of Varanasi).27 So far as we
know, however, the overwhelming majority of contrib utors to this encomium had
no personal connection with the Mughal court.
Rather, Brahman literati across the board judged that Kavīndra had
engaged with the Mughals in a manner
that was proper to commemorate, in particular
ways, in Sanskrit praise poetry.
The
intended audience for the Moonrise of Kavīndra was at least twofold. The direct addressee of the text is Kavīndra
himself, whom the work exalts. But Kṛṣṇa,
its compiler, also outlines a second broader reception at the beginning of the text:
Warding
off the mass of utter darkness, removing the anguish of all wise men, let this composition called the Moonrise
of Kavīndra traverse the world.28
Here
Kṛṣṇa projects an audience far beyond a single individual. This envisioned wide readership is confirmed by the first
eight verses of the work, authored by Kṛṣṇa,
which briefly review Kavīndra’s biography, including his scholarly train ing
and receipt of titles.29 Other contributors offer little indication about
who, beyond Kavīndra, they hoped would
read their praises. A few ask Kavīndra
for specific concessions, including financial assistance and his help
liberating another city “from the siege of oppressors.”30 Several take the
opportunity to show off their poetic
skills or display mastery of various meters.31 But it is unclear whether such efforts were meant for
Kavīndra’s appreciation, intended to
please learned readers more generally, or simply appropriately typified the tribute to Kavīndra.
We
know little about the actual reception of the Kavīndracandrodaya. Kavīndra himself certainly appreciated the
text and reproduced seven verses that
address his learning and high esteem among the Benaras-based
Brahmanical
community in his vernacular version of the Laghuyogavāsiṣṭha.32 Others copied the work at least a few times,
and manuscripts reside today in Bombay,
Calcutta, and Bikaner.33 One of Kavīndra’s protégés, Janārdana Vyāsa, borrows verses from the first two contributors
to the panegyric in his commen tary on Mammaṭa’s Kāvyaprakāśa.34 Notwithstanding
its seemingly limited reception, the
imagined large audience of the Kavīndracandrodaya stands in stark contrast to the Brahmanical reticence
to write anything in Sanskrit about most
of their imperial activities. Dozens of Brahmans agreed that Kavīndra’s actions merited a Sanskrit praise poem
devoted entirely to commemorating his
encounter with the Mughals. The content of their eulogies offers a
wealth of insights concerning how
Brahmans, as individuals and a community, decided to memorialize Kavīndra’s political
achievement.
2
Commemorating Kavīndra through Sanskrit Conventions
The
majority of contributors to the Kavīndracandrodaya offer standard trib utes
that invoke Kavīndra’s name but no other historical details. Nonetheless, we should not hastily brand all such praises
bland and generic, lacking any
contemporary context. Early modern Sanskrit intellectuals developed
sophis ticated methods of commenting on specific circumstances by working through the conventions of their tradition. Take for
example Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja, who
penned a Sanskrit encomium directed to Asaf Khan, Shah Jahan’s vizier.35
In
the work Jagannātha avoids any overt contemporary references, aside from a few names. Nonetheless, he draws upon
aspects of the Sanskrit tradition that
would have resonated with a Mughal audience, such as admiring
Kashmir’s gardens, a classic Sanskrit
theme and a particular interest of Asaf Khan.36 The authors of the Kavīndracandrodaya adopted
similar convergent approaches that
enabled them to speak about their contemporary situation without step ping
outside of their inherited tradition.
Many
Brahmans frame Kavīndra as a savior, often comparing him to Hindu gods and their incarnations, typically
without specifying what he did to jus tify such lofty comparisons. Popular
references include Vishnu’s various ava tars that are known for rescuing the
world. For example Vrajabhūṣaṇa, a man
who pursued his own interactions with the Persianate world,37 marvels
that, “Having taken on mendicant
clothing, Kavīndra lifted up Prayag that was
drowning in an ocean of taxes, just as Vishnu [in his boar incarnation]
rescued the earth that was drowning in
the grip [of the demon Hiraṇyakṣa].”38 Many
authors laud Kavīndra’s generosity, and specifically eulogize his
compassion (kṛpā, dayā) and empathy
(kāruṇya/karuṇa) with the hardships faced in the world.39 The figures of Dadhīci, Bali, and
Karṇa arise in a few verses and are
celebrated for their selfless munificence.40 Without specifically
mentioning tax relief for religious
pilgrims, such homages encapsulated Kavīndra’s suc cessful negotiations with
Shah Jahan.
Many
authors hail Kavīndra’s legendary learning, including his knowl edge of the
śāstras and poetics. Several admire Kavīndra’s mastery of a range of philosophical traditions. One panegyrist
proclaims Kavīndra the equal of the
founders of the six schools of Indian philosophy.41 An anonymous writer from Mithila positions Kavīndra among such
great poets as Vālmīki, Vyāsa, and Kālidāsa.42
A contributor known as Kūrmācala Vīreśvara Paṇḍita covers philo sophical,
liturgical, and poetic expertise in a verse that imagines Kavīndra’s speech as a beautiful woman who embodies
traditional Indian learning:
Your
speech—whose body is the Vedic canon, whose auspicious fore head mark is Yoga,
whose lovely earrings are Vedānta, whose bracelet is Mīmāṃsā, whose belt is the Āgama, the
splendor of whose necklace is Vaiśeṣika,
whose tinkling anklets are Sāṃkhya, whose brilliant clothes are sophisticated literature, whose diadem is
Nyāya—O Kavīndra, your dancing speech is
victorious.43
As
Kūrmācala Vīreśvara Paṇḍita says in his closing line, Kavīndra’s
oratorical skills helped him triumph. He
leaves implied, however, that Kavīndra’s role as an instructor of the Mughals left him well
positioned him to gain “victorious” tax
relief.
Other
contributors also indicate obliquely the relationship between Kavīndra’s erudition and his successful
encounter with Shah Jahan. For instance,
a prose section by “the renouncers and pandits who live in Kashi” (kāśīsthasannyāsipaṇḍitānām) esteems Kavīndra
“as skilled in initiating decrees, just
as he is skilled in [giving] good advice” (hitopadeśakuśalānapi vihitopadeśakuśalān).44 The line leaves it
unclear to whom Kavīndra is impart ing guidance, but the Mughals are the likely
recipients. In addition to linking his
tutoring of the Mughals with eliciting a royal order, this praise cleverly works in the phrase hitopadeśa “[giving] good
advice,” which is also the title of a
popular Sanskrit book of instructive fables. As everyone of that time would have known, the Hitopadeśa and other
Pañcatantra works were popular among
Mughal intellectuals and repeatedly translated into and reworked in Persian.45 We do not know for certain that
Kavīndra’s instruction to Shah Jahan and
other members of the royal court included the Hitopadeśa, but even the veiled suggestion of this work in the Kavīndracandrodaya
reminds readers of the multifaceted
relations between Sanskrit intellectuals and Mughal elites.
Some
Brahmans chose to address more specifically Kavīndra’s high esteem at the Mughal court. Several poets celebrate
that he received the Sanskrit title of
vidyānidhāna (“treasure house of knowledge”), also sometimes given as sarvavidyānidhāna (“treasure house of all
knowledge”), from Shah Jahan.46 One
writer, Pūrṇānanda Brahmacārin, presents a series of verses that cite this designation, which he directly connects with
Kavīndra’s feat of introducing Sanskrit
learning to Shah Jahan. For instance:
Kavīndra,
lord of the three worlds, teaches the Lord of Delhi everyday according to knowledge of the Vedas, sacred
texts, and śāstras. Even though famous
for releasing major pilgrimage sites from royal tax and honored with [the title] vidyānidhāna,
[Kavīndra] does not fall prey to
pride.47
Two
verses by separate authors attribute Kavīndra’s receipt of the title vidyānidhāna to compassion (kṛpā). But one
author speaks of Shah Jahan’s
benevolence, while the other extols Kavīndra’s empathy.48 Kavīndra’s
title car ried significant cultural cachet in Brahman literary circles.
Kavīndra himself claimed it in both his
Sanskrit and Hindi writings, and it is also written on manuscripts held in his library.49
Some
authors indicate how Kavīndra may have achieved a place of pride in imperial circles. Several mention Kavīndra’s
debating prowess, and a few even call
attention to his renowned argumentative skills in the context of the royal court.50 While we know of no specific
instances involving Kavīndra orating
before Shah Jahan, Brahmans and Jains both regularly participated in
Mughal led debates. These exchanges often involved religious questions.
Sometimes Jains and Brahmans argued with
each other about long-standing points of
dispute.51 In other cases, the Mughals pressed members of one tradition
on a specific contention. For example, a
Brahman who visited Jahangir in the com pany of Ramdas Kachhwaha was asked to
explain why Hindus considered the mouths
of cows polluted, given that they revere the animal.52 Probably playing on similar themes, Kṣmānanda Vājapeyin lauds
Kavīndra as “one whose logic dances in
the court.”53
Despite
portraying Kavīndra as learned and wise, the contributors seem to evade describing explicitly how he used
such faculties to gain tax relief.
Nīlakaṇṭha Ācārya 54 comes closest in his only verse in the work:
OKavīndra!
Freed by you from the grasp of imperial taxes through [teach ing the king]
commentaries (bhāṣya), poetry (subhāṣita), etc., Glorious Kashi is glorified by the feet of sages and
enlightens people in good and bad
speech, just as the Kāśikā commentary, freed by your own hand, O World-ruler, with [your] writing about the
[Mahā]bhāṣya, illuminates correct usage
and provides wisdom concerning speech and mis-speech.55 It is difficult to
imagine Kavīndra working through a Sanskrit commentary (bhāṣya) with the Mughal emperor. Although
more plausible is the notion that Shah
Jahan admired Kavīndra’s eloquence and grasp of philosophy. Another admirer, Raghunātha Bhaṭṭa Gurjara, likewise
emphasizes Kavīndra’s poetic dexterity
in an imperial context, admiring him as “lord of poets in the sul tan’s court”
(suratrāṇasaṃsatkavīndra).56 In the same verse, this poet lauds Kavīndra as suratrāṇakārī, a phrase that has
the double meaning of “rescuer of the
gods” and “king-maker.” An anonymous author simply salutes Kavīndra as “conqueror of the king” (kṣitipativijayī).57
While
most authors eschew detailed descriptions of Kavīndra’s interac tions with the
Mughals, they regularly imagine Kavīndra as a king complete with the trappings of royal authority. Many
writers marvel at Kavīndra’s fame, an
attribute frequently associated with royalty in Sanskrit. Few contributors state directly that Kavīndra’s fame is the
result of his encounter with Shah Jahan,
although the poets occasionally note the Mughal emperor’s crucial role in making Kavīndra a celebrity. For
instance, Mādhavabhaṭṭa celebrates that
“the rise of your esteem was enacted by the king.”58 Kavīndra is also occa
sionally compared to a ruler in the work. For example, after borrowing
openly from Bāṇa’s Kādambarī, Mauni
Viśveśvara Bhaṭṭa adds the acclamation that
Kavīndra ought to “live long like a king.”59 In one of his six verses, Pūrṇānanda Brahmacārin fancies Kavīndra a king (nṛpati)
and imagines his home in Kashi as a
royal court.60 Others play upon imagery typically associated with victo rious
monarchs in Sanskrit. For instance, Mauni Raṅganāthabhaṭṭa describes the weeping wives of Kavīndra’s slaughtered
enemies, a common image in royal praises
that underscores a king’s success in battle.61
Rather
than liken Kavīndra to a monarch, some Brahmans elected to com mend the virtues
that set Kavīndra apart from the worldly Mughal court, even when the details they provide are not
historically accurate. For example, Kṣmānanda
Vājapeyin celebrates that Kavīndra rejected Shah Jahan’s offer of wealth and instead demanded relief for
religious pilgrims: For the hordes of elephants and horses, gold, and lines of
jewels that were being offered, Kavīndra
had no thirst. He was committed to the deliver ance of all pilgrimage places.
Surely a mass of rainclouds takes no plea sure in rain?62
As
a point of comparison, Jain sources likewise praise their leaders for
refusing Mughal financial compensation.
For instance, the late-sixteenth-century Jain
writer Padmasāgara describes how Akbar offered a Jain monk heaps of wealth on platters, from which the mendicant turned
away in disgust.63 One verse in the
Kavīndracandrodaya even tenders similar imagery.64 The difference is that, so far as we know, Jain claims about
rejecting Mughal wealth are accurate, but,
in the case of Kavīndra, the boast is false.
Persian
and European sources both attest that Kavīndra accepted cash pay ments from the
Mughals. According to Shah Jahan’s historians, Kavīndra was rewarded for his skills as a vernacular
singer and writer. Two Persian-language
chroniclers, Muḥammad Sāliḥ Kambūh and Muḥammad Vāris̱, record that “Kabīndar Sanyāsī,” who was skilled in
dhrupads and Hindi compositions (taṣnīfāti
hindī), entered Shah Jahan’s court and received two thousand rupees and a robe of honor—and a horse, Vāris̱
adds—in exchange for pleasing the
emperor.65 Vāris̱ also mentions at least one other occasion on which
Kavīndra met Shah Jahan at Lahore and
received 1500 rupees.66 Francois Bernier, a French visitor to Mughal India, confirms this financial
arrangement, although he per ceived the stipend as rewarding Kavīndra’s erudition.
He writes: “[Kavīndra] is a Fakire or
Devotee so eminent for knowledge that ChahJehan, partly for that consideration, and partly to gratify the
Rajas, granted him a pension of two
thousand roupies, which is about one thousand crowns.”67
While
Sanskrit literati generally gloss over or even flatly deny these aspects of Kavīndra’s links with the court, they were
aware of both his singing and his
receipt of cash. One Sanskrit writer, Muralīdhara, grandson of
Kālidāsamiśra, explicitly notes Kavīndra’s
dual roles of singer and scholar for the Mughals, writing in the Kavīndracandrodaya: “The
illustrious Svāmi Kavīndra learned
knowledge and studied songs for everybody’s sake, in order to protect
cows and Brahmans from fear.”68 Some of
Kavīndra’s disciples also refer to their teach er’s musical talents (“singer of
the legions of virtues of Shiva and Vishnu”).69
Another contributor to the Kavīndracandrodaya calls Kavīndra a kalāvant, which was probably meant to have the dual
meaning of somebody skilled in the arts
(kalā) and a specific type of Indian singer popular among Mughal con
noisseurs.70 In terms of money, Kavīndra was widely famed for his
financial generosity, and several poets
discuss his liberality in the Kavīndracandrodaya. They acclaim him as “a destroyer of poverty”
and somebody who “vanquishes lines of
wishing trees in generosity.”71 His disciples note that he was “a great giver of dinars to the poor.”72 Pūrṇānanda
Brahmacārin offers the most explicit
verse, celebrating Kavīndra for giving away gold (suvarṇa) at the
Viśveśvara temple in Kashi.73
One
author, Mahādeva Paṭṭavardhana, asks Kavīndra overtly to lend him two hundred rupees, presumably out of his
more lucrative Mughal stipend.74
Significantly, while Mahādeva Paṭṭavardhana offers numerous Sanskrit
verses lauding Kavīndra’s generosity, he
switches to Marathi to make his explicit plea
for financial assistance. Even the literary dialect of Braj Bhasha, the
language of the Kavīndracandrikā, was
not appropriate for such a topic. Mahādeva
Paṭṭavardhana turned instead to Marathi, a vernacular understood widely
in the North Indian Brahmanical
community, including by Kavīndra, who was
himself from Maharashtra.75 Here we glimpse some of the limits of
what Brahmans thought it appropriate to
discuss in the transregional, cosmopolitan
idiom of Sanskrit. Exalting Kavīndra’s generosity was acceptable, but
specific solicitations ought not to be
enshrined in a high literary tongue.
3
Characterizing Mughal Imperial Culture in Sanskrit
Despite
writing to commend successful negotiations with Shah Jahan, many contributors to Kavīndra’s Sanskrit encomium
do not mention the Mughals or explicitly
discuss the imperial court. Sanskrit authors had long elided their social and political contexts. Given this
literary inheritance, avoiding overt ref erence to the Mughals was probably the
most time-honored option, especially for
those seeking to fit an already innovative idea—writing an entire Sanskrit work to honor the cross-cultural activities
of one Brahman—within a tradition that
favored continuity. But sidestepping the Mughals was not the only option available to Brahman authors of the day.
Several contributors openly invoke the
Mughal imperial context in their encomia to Kavīndra. Such mentions tend to be brief but nonetheless demonstrate
a notable range of approaches to
incorporating the Mughals into Sanskrit literature.
Some
of Kavīndra’s admirers present the Mughals in a negative light, if mildly. Predictably, given Kavīndra’s feat,
the oppressive taxes of the Mughals are
cited frequently, often along with the fear triggered by such hardship. Most writers simply speak about royal taxes,
however; only a handful note that these
taxes were imposed by the Lord of Delhi (dillīpati) or yavana (for eign or
Muslim) kings.76 Dillīpati (and synonyms, such as dillīśa) was widely used in Sanskrit as a neutral or positive
epithet for the Mughal emperor. The word
yavana likewise did not have a particularly negative connotation and is invoked elsewhere in the Kavīndracandrodaya
as a positive descriptor of Shah
Jahan.77 One writer, Jagadīśa Jānīka, refers to Kavīndra “raising up the
Hindu bulls who were drowning in a sea
of barbarians (mlecchas).”78 However, even
this division of barbarians from “Hindus” (whether that means
Brahmans, non-Muslim Indians, or all
Indians here)79 seems more of a rhetorical device to honor Kavīndra than a strong condemnation
of the Mughals. Nobody men tions Shah Jahan’s destruction of a temple (or
possibly multiple temples) in Benares in
1632.80 Several writers refer to the darkness of the current age, typi cally to
laud Kavīndra’s victory over such depravity, although none connects this degradation directly with Mughal rule.81
Numerous
writers in the Kavīndracandrodaya portray the Mughals in a pos itive light. A
few mention Shah Jahan by name and appropriate honorifics.82 More commonly, the writers simply refer to
the king as a powerful and victo rious monarch and even a universal emperor
(sārvabhauma).83 A few extol the Mughals
as compassionate in certain acts, such as honoring Kavīndra with the title “treasure house of knowledge”
(vidyānidhāna).84 While such mentions
may seem the opposite of those who condemn Mughal tax policies, the
two approaches actually have much in
common. Neither group of authors offers
many details about the Mughals, preferring instead to use well-worn
Sanskrit ways of describing and
accommodating an “Other.”85
One
poet, Hīrārāma Kavi, goes much further than his contempo raries in openly
discussing the Mughals. He penned three verses for the Kavīndracandrodaya. In the first, he mentions
that Kavīndra had relations with both
Shah Jahan and his son Dara Shikuh, at the time the heir apparent:
[Kavīndra]
brought Glorious Shah Jahan, the best of kings, under his own control. Shah Dara Shikuh certainly also
approached [Kavīndra] and was
instructed. The sole cause of releasing the grasp of taxes reinstated
on Prayag and Kashi is that glorious
Kavīndra, the teacher of poets, king of
Benares. May he be victorious!86
In
praising Kavīndra for controlling Shah Jahan, Hīrārāma probably intended to insinuate the tax relief. Kavīndra surely
encountered Dara Shikuh at Shah Jahan’s
court, and, given the prince’s interest in the Upaniṣads and other Sanskrit
texts,87 the two men probably had some relationship. Kavīndra’s own Kavīndrakalpalatā contains verses that laud
Dara Shikuh, as well as philosoph ical verses that were perhaps intended for
Dara’s edification.88 In mentioning Dara
here, Hīrārāma alludes to Dara Shikuh’s status as the favored son of Shah Jahan and as heir apparent. Hīrārāma’s third
verse acknowledges Kavīndra’s prowess in
debate, perhaps alluding to the religious debates at the Mughal court that I discuss above.89
Hīrārāma’s
second verse deserves particular attention as arguably the most unique and the most compelling verse in the
entire Kavīndracandrodaya. Here Hīrārāma
lists various social and ethnic groups present at Shah Jahan’s court, drawing upon both old and new categories in
order to express the heteroge neous composition of the Mughal elite:
In
the assembly of Glorious King Shah Jahan, those born in Kashmir, Iraq, Karaskara,90 Darada,91 Khurasan, and Habshan
(Abyssinia), Bengalis, Arabs, Firangis
(Westerners), Turks, Shakas (Scythians), Badakhshanis, Multanis, those from Balkh, Qandaharis, even
the lords of Kabul who rule the earth,
Magas (Iranians), and Ottomans, O Kavīndra, they all praise you.92
This
list contains a variety of traditional Sanskrit classifications alongside more contemporary and definitively
Perso-Islamic additions. The Karaskaras,
Daradas, and Shakas appear in classical Indian texts, and the latter two
are even said to have fought in the
Mahābhārata war.93 Many other groups were
more recently introduced into the Sanskrit imaginaire, including the
imported Persian term firangī (phiraṅga
in Sanskrit), meaning Europeans.94 Hīrārāma
also displays a nuanced appreciation of various places in Central Asia
that were politically salient identity
markers in Mughal culture.
Hīrārāma
Kavi was one of the few Kavīndracandrodaya poets also to contribute verses to the Kavīndracandrikā,
the parallel collection of Hindi
praises. In the Kavīndracandrikā, Hīrārāma offers a Hindi verse that
lists an assortment of place names
similar to his Sanskrit verse. In the Hindi verse, members of these groups are not at Shah
Jahan’s court. Hīrārāma instead enu merates the places to which Kavīndra’s fame
has traveled. He includes “Anga, Bengal,
Kalinga, and Darada, Firanga (the West), Kabul, Badakhshan, Multan, Tibet, Balkh, Habshan, Iran, the Ottoman
Empire, and Iraq.”95 A few contrasts
between Hīrārāma’s Sanskrit and Hindi verses are noteworthy. Slightly
fewer places are mentioned in Hindi,
although this could be the result of metrical
constraints. Most significantly, when writing in Sanskrit, a notably
inward looking tradition, Hīrārāma imagines representatives of various places
at a definitively Indian location,
namely the Mughal court. In contrast, in Hindi he writes about Kavīndra’s fame traveling
outward to the rest of the world. The
cosmopolitan and the vernacular offered different resources for
representing a changing world, within
India and beyond.
Even
in Sanskrit, Hīrārāma is an outlier. Nobody else in the Kavīndra candrodaya
seemed to follow his lead in introducing Mughal ethnic and social groups into Sanskrit. One writer whom
we have encountered already, Raghunātha
Bhaṭṭa Gurjara, describes Shah Jahan’s court as “luminescent with many kings” but does not elaborate
further.96 In contrast to Hīrārāma, one
writer openly invokes a pilgrimage-based geography of India, mentioning places such as Pushkar and Naimisha.97 Mughal
place names appear elsewhere in
Sanskrit, although rarely as densely as Hīrārāma gives them. For example, Harideva Miśra, author of a praise poem for
Jahangir, offers an alphabetical list of
about seventy-five places in or near the Subcontinent, including Khash and Khurasan.98 Persian writers in Shah
Jahan’s court, such as Chandar Bhān
Brahman, enumerated the diverse groups at the imperial court, although
they typically omitted traditional
Sanskrit classifications and listed Indian and
non-Indians separately.99 Open, detailed recognition of the Mughal
imperial reality was a limit of what it
was possible to include within Sanskrit historical memory.
4
History and Memory in Early Modern Sanskrit
Having
explored the Kavīndracandrodaya at some length, I now want to step back and offer a few thoughts on what this
text can tell us about historical
practices in early modern India. This work was envisioned for an
audience far beyond Kavīndra and
constitutes one of the few Sanskrit works that Brahmans authored specifically on their relations with
the Mughals. It occupies an impor tant place in the early modern Sanskrit
tradition as a self-conscious attempt to
write about cross-cultural events for the benefit of current and future
generations. In short, it is a historical work. The Moonrise of Kavīndra is
many other things also—an exuberant
encomium, an anthology of poetry, and an oppor tunity to display literary
skills. But we lack, in particular, an understanding of historical writing in early modern India, including
useful methods with which to approach
such works. Here I highlight a few key aspects of writing about real-world events in early modern Sanskrit
and draw out their implications for
contemporary scholarship.
First,
writing about cross-cultural relations was a contested practice in the Sanskrit tradition. What could be said—and,
perhaps more crucially, what should be
left out—were controversial issues. The Kavīndracandrodaya, with its more than seventy authors, offers acute
insight into some of the perceived
limits
of Sanskrit literature for the Brahmanical community, especially when we have only a single author exploring ideas
that are absent from other con tributions, such as the mention of Kavīndra’s
financial compensation from Shah Jahan
or the enumeration of the ethnic and regional groups present at the royal court. Such dissenting voices can
be few and far between, but we often
make the mistake of characterizing Sanskrit as a cohesive tradition with agreed-upon rules. On the contrary, people
frequently held different visions of
what was appropriate, and some pushed back against received practices. Crucially, these disagreements did not happen
in a vacuum. Rather, there were
important cultural stakes in terms of community identity, the
constitution of the Sanskrit literary
tradition, and the impacts of cross-cultural encounters tied to the creation of quasi-historical
Sanskrit records.
The
disputed nature of historical memory concerning the Indo-Persian world in early modern Sanskrit culture
becomes even clearer in light of other
collections of verses from the same period. Most Sanskrit anthologies are not devoted to a specific individual or
event, but many mention Perso Islamic figures. For instance, the Rasikajīvana
includes a verse in praise of Akbar by
an author known as Akbarīya Kālidāsa (Akbar’s Kālidāsa). Other mid-seventeenth-century anthologies,
including the Padyaveṇī and Harikavi’s
Subhāṣitaratnāvalī, contain several additional verses by this curiously
titled individual.100 The Padyaveṇī also
records praises of the martial prowess of
Jahangir and Parvez, a son of Jahangir who was a serious contender for
the Mughal throne before drinking
himself to death in 1626.101 Some compilations
of Sanskrit verses were created under cross-cultural patronage. For exam
ple, Caturbhuja compiled the Rasakalpadruma (“Wishing-Tree of Aesthetic Emotion”) in the late seventeenth century, on
the orders of Shaysta Khan, Aurangzeb
ʿAlamgir’s maternal uncle.102 The Rasakalpadruma includes verses devoted to many Mughal figures and even
earlier Islamicate kings, such as the
fourteenth-century Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq.103 This Sanskrit collection
also features several verses attributed
directly to Shaysta Khan, which introduces
the possibility of Persianate figures participating in the Sanskrit
tradition as authors, in addition to
being patrons, benefactors, and interlocutors.104 These works, along with the Kavīndracandrodaya,
negotiated a rarely agreed-upon issue:
how should the reality of Brahman-Mughal relations be reflected in the Sanskrit literary tradition? Overwhelmingly,
the answer involved integrating imperial
figures and cross-cultural ties into accepted literary frameworks. The challenge today is to recover the meanings of
those conventions, including the
possibilities for contestation and novelty.
In
continuing to think through the disputed nature of historical memory in Sanskrit, there are significant overlaps,
differences, and connections with ver nacular traditions that deserve further
investigation. The Sanskrit praises for
Kavīndra have a compelling counterpart in Hindi, and the two have yet to
be compared in detail. Further research
will need to take into account Kavīndra’s
own mixed feelings on vernacular composition. On the one hand, he
was unique among Sanskrit literati of
the time in writing in Hindi, but, on the
other, he disavowed the activity as merely “for the sake of others.”105
Kavīndra’s discomfort notwithstanding,
historical writing in various linguistic traditions was on the rise in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century India. This trend was
not confined to the Mughal Empire; in many ways, the most compelling
schol arship to date concerns South Indian sources and their dynamic
approaches to representing reality in
literature.106 While it poses practical challenges for modern scholars, we may be served best by
considering emerging literary prac tices and genres as cutting across
linguistic lines.
Nonetheless,
there were often important differences between the contents of vernacular and Sanskrit sources.
Kavīndrācārya served the Mughals as a ver nacular singer in addition to being a
representative of a Sanskrit-using commu nity, and his singing is known primarily
from Persian sources. We have a similar
situation for one of Kavīndra’s contemporaries, Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja,
who is perhaps the best-known Sanskrit
poet and literary theoretician of the seven teenth century. Yet he is
remembered in the Persian tradition as a vernacular singer. His name appears in two
Persian-language court histories from Shah
Jahan’s reign, where he is known as Jagannāth Kalāvant or Jagannāth
Kabrāy, a singer of vernacular dhrupads.
There are even fourteen dhrupads in a collectionfrom the late seventeenth
century attributed to Jagannāth Kabrāy, and a col lection of his bhajan songs
is extant in a single manuscript in Baroda.107 A Braj Bhasha work dated to 1673 details Jagannātha
Paṇḍitarāja’s life and confirms that the
singer and poet were indeed the same person.108 R.B. Athavale reports on this work that is now inaccessible to
scholars, a biography of Vallabhācārya
titled Sampradāyakalpadruma. The metered text reviews Jagannātha’s ancestry,
his early education in poetry and philosophy (nyāya), and his famed musi cal
skills. The Braj Bhasha work also corroborates a long-standing rumor in the Sanskrit tradition, that Jagannātha
enraged many of his contemporaries by
marrying a Muslim woman.109
In
light of the selective nature of many sources, we need to draw on numer ous
archives to reconstruct the lives of people, such as Jagannātha and
Kavīndra, who operated in multiple
cultural contexts. Only multilingual research can help us generate a more accurate picture of
the past. Moreover, working in multiple
languages and archives promises to reveal the sorts of things that were typically deemed appropriate to be mentioned
in specific linguistic traditions and
how historical memories were formed through both inclusion and omis
sion.
For instance, the Kavīndracandrodaya contains enough scattered infor mation to
reconstruct the basic contours of Kavīndra’s courtly activities, but most of the authors omit key details,
especially Kavīndra’s vernacular singing,
his financial arrangement with Shah Jahan, and descriptions of the
Mughal imperial milieu. In contrast,
Persian chronicles comfortably incorporated such topics but omitted altogether Kavīndra’s
Sanskrit abilities, the tax relief for
Hindu pilgrims, and Kavīndra’s status among learned Brahmans of the
period.
More
profoundly, the Kavīndracandrodaya offers no larger context for Kavīndra’s cross-cultural links. Of the
work’s dozens of authors, none gives any
indication of the nearly century-long history of Mughal-Brahmanical
relations. There is no mention of the
long-standing Mughal interest in Sanskrit intellec tuals and knowledge systems,
nor is there any recognition that all of Kavīndra’s activities at court—soliciting royal orders,
singing, and teaching Sanskrit texts—had
substantial precedents among Mughal-affiliated Sanskrit literati. Instead, the panegyrists provide a context
dominated by Sanskrit literary con ventions, references to well-known myths,
and other self-referential cultural and
literary features. A few explicit historical details slip through, but
they stand out against a largely
traditional backdrop. Kavīndra gaining tax breaks from Shah Jahan was an event special enough
to be remembered in Sanskrit but
primarily through a host of time-honored approaches and self-consciously timeless tropes.
Modern
scholars often invoke the strength of tradition and conventions when analyzing premodern and early modern
Indian texts, as I have here, but our
ideas of how novelty worked within specific genres, languages, and com munities
remain surprisingly fuzzy. My analysis of the Kavīndracandrodaya demonstrates
the need to read conventions for both their long literary history and their more pointed political resonances.
For example, Mauni Viśveśvara Bhaṭṭa
borrowed his contribution from Bāṇa’s Kādambarī and expected edu cated readers,
above all Kavīndra, to recognize and appreciate this literary reference. But he also punctuated his
borrowing with a call for Kavīndra to
“live long like a king,” an appeal that invoked the specific imperial
context of Kavīndra’s negotiations with
Shah Jahan.110 Others spoke of Kavīndra’s great
learning, a classic way of praising a pandit but also of particular
relevance in this case, given that it
was partly erudition that enabled Kavīndra to gain the ear of Shah Jahan. In such references,
tradition and novelty coexisted fruitfully as authors carefully deployed stock
tropes to speak to specific historical
circumstances.
The
Kavīndracandrodaya also compels us to recognize diversity within tra ditions.
Anthologies, with their multiple authors, are particularly useful in this regard. The Kavīndracandrodaya shows that,
while many mid-seventeenth century Brahmans who knew Sanskrit were conservative
in their literary pro duction, some were bolder. In the authors who chose to
describe those present at Shah Jahan’s court or note that Kavīndra instructed
the Mughals in Sanskrit texts, we can
see at work the uneven process of making history. Given our limited information about the reception of
the Kavīndracandrodaya, we have little
sense of how this bold work was received, but it seems reasonable to sup pose
that early modern readers would have noticed the same variety of views that I have highlighted here. Above all, the
message was that certain aspects of the
Indo-Persian realm were now a subject of debate in the Sanskrit literary universe.
While
the Kavīndracandrodaya honors a real-world event, it is self consciously a
literary creation. Many Sanskrit writers viewed representation and aesthetics as key concerns in writing
about the world, sometimes irrespec tive of empirical truth and other times as
the best way of expressing historical
truth. We ought not to miss the more basic point embedded in this encomi
um’s existence, which is that, contrary to many modern assumptions, Sanskrit writers were highly engaged with on-the-ground
reality and responded in a variety of
ways to Indo-Islamic rule. The Kavīndracandrodaya showcases more than seventy intellectuals of its day
commemorating in Sanskrit literature
Kavīndra’s cross-cultural, political feat at the Mughal court. But the
form of these responses is more
interesting than the mere fact of their existence. In order to analyze this work properly, we must
overcome our modern obsession with
historical accuracy. This preoccupation has even led some scholars to try to locate a form of code-switching in
premodern Indian texts, whereby authors
neatly transitioned from a literary to a historical mode.111 Such
approaches miss altogether how many
precolonial authors went about producing history, not in spite of their literary inheritances
but rather through these rich tradi tions complete with tropes, repetition, and
aesthetic expectations.
Privileging—and
even trying to distinguish—a straight account of the facts fails to capture the early modern
Brahmanical emphasis on the power of
texts to shape both memory and future realities. I intend no condemna tion here
of Sanskrit historical methods as imprecise. Rather, texts such as the Kavīndracandrodaya push us to recognize
that history in early modern India was a
more fluid, dynamic, and creative category than we typically allow today.112 The contributors to the Moonrise of
Kavīndra largely agreed on the need to
recast Kavīndra’s relations with Shah Jahan and other imperial figures in a Sanskrit literary framework, although, in
the end, they hardly present a uniform
picture. For some, such as Hīrārāma, accuracy and its associated innovation may have been a significant goal.
But, for many early moderns, brute
reality was too limiting. Brahmanical writers turned to the malleability of Sanskrit literature and the balance
afforded by standard tropes and tradi tional formulations in order to reimagine
an increasingly Indo-Persian world in
culturally intelligible terms. Significant novelty arose out of these
efforts, but the central project was not
conceived as adapting Sanskrit modes of writ ing and expression to accommodate
the Mughal world. Rather, the authors of
the Kavīndracandrodaya strove to incorporate the Mughals and
cross-cultural imperial engagements into
Sanskrit literature, a project that brought to the sur face contested ideas
about constructing history in an Indian classical tongue.
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Notes
*
I thank Anand Venkatkrishnan for his comments on an earlier draft of this
article. I also thank the participants
of the 2013 Oxford Early Modern South Asia Workshop: Discipline, Sect, Lineage and Community:
Scholar-Intellectuals in India, c. 1500-1800 for their feedback. I retain diacritics for the names of authors,
intellectuals, and texts but forgo them for kings, princes, and places.
1
Mahāpātra Kṛṣṇadāsa, of Orissa, and Narasiṃha, first associated with the court
of Gajapati Mukundadeva, are among the
earliest datable Mughal-sponsored Sanskrit intellectuals. See A. Truschke Culture of Encounters:
Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming): chap 1.
2
I outline this social history in ibid.: chap. 1.
3
In a few types of Sanskrit works, authors confronted the expanding Indo-Persian
sphere, including its imperial facets,
in limited ways, such as Sanskrit grammars of Persian. A. Truschke. “Defining the Other: An Intellectual History
of Sanskrit Lexicons and Grammars of Persian.”
Journal of Indian Philosophy 40/6 (2012): 635-68.
4
C. Minkowski, “On Sūryadāsa and the Invention of Bidirectional Poetry
(vilomakāvya).” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 121/1 (2001):
5
S. Pollock, “The Death of Sanskrit.” Comparative Studies in Society and History
43/2 (2001): 408-12.
6
Y. Bronner and G.A. Tubb, “Blaming the Messenger: A Controversy in Late
Sanskrit Poetics and Its Implications.”
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71/1 (2008): 87. 7 We
do not know when Kavīndra first entered Shah Jahan’s court, but he was known in
impe rial circles by at least 1652. K.R. Qanungo, “Some Side-Lights on the
Character and Court-Life of Shah Jahan.”
Journal of Indian History 8/9 (1929): 51.
8
A.K. Sastry, Kavindracharya List (Baroda: Central Library, 1921). As Gode
reminds us, how ever, this document is not to be taken as a fully accurate
picture of Kavīndra’s library. P.K.
Gode, “The Kavīndracārya-Sūcī: Is It a Dependable Means for the Reconstruction
of Literary Chronology?” New Indian
Antiquary 6/2 (1943): 41-42. Today, many of Kavīndra’s manuscripts are housed in the Anup Sanskrit
Library, the Sarasvati Bhavan in Varanasi, and
the Library of the Maharaja of Jammu.
9
The basic outline of Kavīndra’s gaining tax relief is clear enough from the
Kavīndra candrodaya, ed. H.D. Sharma and M.M. Patkar (Poona: Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute, 1939).
Several contributors specifically mention Varanasi and Prayag (e.g., Kavīndracandrodaya: verses 15, 24, 169, 180,
and 284). Kavīndra also names Kashi and
Prayag in his Kavīndrakalpadruma (kāśīprayāgau, verse 4) and in his
Kavīndrakalpalatā (p. 2, verse 14, kāsīkī aru prāgakī). Kavīndrakalpadruma, ed.
R.B. Athavale (Bombay: Asiatic Society
of Bombay, 1981); Kavīndrakalpalatā, ed. L. Cundavat (Jaipur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, 1958).
10
Truschke, Culture of Encounters: chap. 1 and conclusion.
11
P.K. Gode, “Some Evidence About the Location of the Manuscript Library of Kavindracharya Sarasvati at Benares in A.D.
1665.” In Jagadvijayacchandas, ed. C.K. Raja
(Bikaner: Anup Sanskrit Library, 1945): 47-57. More recently, see
Pollock, “Death of Sanskrit”: 407.
12
Kavīndra’s known Sanskrit oeuvre includes the anthology Kavīndrakalpadruma, a
com mentary on Daṇḍin’s Daśakumāracarita titled Padacandrikā, the
Jagadvijayacchandas, the Yogabhāskara, a
commentary on the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, the Mīmāṃsāsarvasva, and a (now fragmentary) commentary on the Ṛgveda.
Kavīndra’s Hindi works include the Bhāṣāyogavāsiṣṭhasār,
also known as Jñānsār (a version of the Laghuyogavāsiṣṭha), the Samarasār (on astrology, unpublished),
and the Kavīndrakalpalatā (a collec
tion
of poetry, songs, and various other materials). Most of these works are listed
in New Catalogus Catalogorum: An
Alphabetical Register of Sanskrit and Allied Works and Authors, ed. V. Raghavan, K.K. Raja, and T.
Aufrecht (Madras: University of Madras, 1949–):
3: 289-91. Kavīndra’s authorship of several of these works remains to be
confirmed. For example, Patkar notes the
thin evidence for Kavīndra’s authorship of the Padacandrikā. M.M. Patkar, “Padacandrikā: A Commentary on
the Daśakumāracarita by Kavīndrācārya
Sarasvatī.” The Poona Orientalist 4/3 (1939): 134-35.
13
One noteworthy precedent for the Kavīndracandrodaya is the Nṛsiṃhasarvasvakāvya, a collection of Sanskrit poetry and prose by
more than seventy authors compiled by
Saccidānandāśrama for Nṛsiṃhāśrama, a contemporary of Akbar. M.H.
Shastri. A Descriptive Catalogue of
Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Government Collection under the Care of the Asiatic Society, 2d ed. (Kolkata:
Asiatic Society, 2005): 4: 81-85.
14
Pollock, “Death of Sanskrit”: 407.
15
Sharma and Patkar list the sixty-nine named contributors (introd. to
Kavīndracandrodaya: v-ix), and there are
several anonymous contributions. The count of sixty-nine named authors is revised from Sharma’s prior
estimate of sixty-one named contributors based
on one manuscript of the Kavīndracandrodaya. H.D. Sharma, “Forgotten
Event of Shah Jehan’s Reign.” In
Mahamahopadhyaya Kuppuswami Sastri Commemoration Volume (Madras: G.S. Press,
1936): 56-60.
16
For more information on Sanskrit-knowing Brahmans (and Jains) at the Mughal
court, see Truschke, Culture of
Encounters: chap. 1.
17
The Kavīndracandrodaya specifically mentions that Kavīndra’s subhāṣita helped
con vince Shah Jahan to rescind the pilgrimage tax (verse 92). I translate this
verse below. 18 Dara Shikuh commissioned a Persian translation of the Yogavāsiṣṭha.
At the very least, this shows his
interest in the text. Kavīndra was known to be learned in this work (Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 12) and even
produced a Hindi summary of the work titled
Bhāṣāyogavāsiṣṭhasār. Additionally, like all Mughal-sponsored
translations of Sanskrit texts, Dara
Shikuh’s pandits probably produced their Persian version of the Yogavāsiṣṭha by
first having the Sanskrit text translated into Hindi. In many cases, such Hindi
transla tions probably remained oral, but it is possible that Kavīndra’s Bhāṣāyogavāsiṣṭhasār
con stitutes a written intermediary Hindi translation for Dara’s Persian
Yogavāsiṣṭha. For this suggestion, see
V.G. Rahurkar, “The Bhāṣāyogavāsiṣṭhasāra of Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī.” The Poona Orientalist 21 (1956): 97-98. On
Dara Shikuh’s Yogavāsiṣṭha, see C.W. Ernst,
“Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian
Translations from Indian Languages.”
Iranian Studies 36/2 (2003): 184.
19
To complicate matters further, modern scholars have often referred to this tax
as a jizya (poll tax). Akbar had rescinded the jizya, and it was not reinstated
fully until 1679, under Emperor
Aurangzeb ʿAlamgir.
20
V. Raghavan came to the same conclusion, based on his reading of the
Kavīndracandrodaya. “Kavīndrācārya
Sarasvatī.” In D.R. Bhandarkar Volume, ed. B.C. Law (Calcutta: Indian Research Institute, 1940): 161. I discuss
Kavīndra’s singing below.
21
Truschke, Culture of Encounters: chap. 5, and A. Truschke, “Setting the Record
Wrong: A Sanskrit Vision of Mughal
Conquests.” South Asian History and Culture 3/3 (2012): 373-96. 22 Regarding
Muslims in particular, e.g., B. Chattopadhyaya, Representing the Other?
Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims (Eighth
to Fourteenth Century) (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998); B. Leclère, “Ambivalent Representations of
Muslims in Medieval Indian Theatre.” Studies
in History 27/2 (2011): 155-95.
23
Some scholars have fruitfully suggested that we read certain references to
demons, infi dels, and the like as stand-ins for Islamic figures. See A.
Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy
and Identity in Indian Intellectual History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010): 190-196; S. Pollock, “Rāmāyaṇa
and Political Imagination in India.” Journal of
Asian Studies 52/2 (1993): 261-97. Such covert approaches are separate
from what I seek to discuss here.
24
The text has been edited by Sharma and Patkar, based on three manuscripts
(Sharma and Patkar, introd. to
Kavīndracandrodaya: iii). Several additional manuscript copies in north ern and
central India are listed (some twice) in New Catalogus Catalogorum: 3: 288-89.
25
For ease of reference, I give the names of all contributors as they appear in
the introduc tion to Kavīndracandrodaya: v-ix.
26
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 9.
27
In the introduction to the Kavīndracandrodaya, Sharma and Patkar identify
twenty-four of the sixty-nine named
contributors (v-ix). In addition, others have proposed the fol lowing identifications.
Brahmendra Sarasvatī is probably identical with Nṛsiṃhāśrama, known from a Sanskrit letter and a nirṇayapatra
(letter of judgment), dated 1657, regard ing a caste dispute. See P.K. Gode,
“The Identification of Gosvāmi Nṛsiṃhāśrama of Dara Shukoh’s Sanskrit Letter with Brahmendra
Sarasvatī of the Kavīndra-Candrodaya— Between A.D. 1628 and 1658.” In Studies
in Indian Literary History (Bombay: Singhi Jain
Sastra Sikshapith, 1954): 2: 447-51. A few additional contributors, such
as Pūrṇendra Sarasvatī, also signed the
1657 nirṇayapatra. See R. O’Hanlon, “Letters Home: Banaras Pandits and the Maratha Regions in Early
Modern India.” Modern Asian Studies 44/2
(2010): 229-33. Chaudhuri notes that Gurjara Kavi and Nageśa Paṇḍita,
son of Somarāja Paṇḍita, are also cited
in the Subhāṣitasārasamuccaya. J.B. Chaudhuri, “Some Unknown or Less Known Sanskrit Poets Discovered from
the Subhāṣitasārasamuccaya.” In B.C. Law
Volume, ed. D.R. Bhandarkar et al. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute, 1946): 2: 145-58. In
addition, Vrajabhūṣaṇa (Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 102) is probably the
same Vrajabhūṣaṇa who wrote the
Pārasīprakāśavinoda (“Play of the Light on Persian,” 1659).
28
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 2. In another verse (32), Kṛṣṇa similarly proclaims
that the encomium ought to be taught.
29
Kavīndra was trained in the Āśvalāyana śākhā (a Vedic school of thought),
renounced the world in his youth, and
received the titles kavīndra (lord of poets), vidyānidhāna (treasure house of
knowledge), and ācārya (teacher) (Kavīndracandrodaya: verses 3-8). Several secondary sources have summarized
Kavīndra’s life (e.g., Athavale, introduction
to Kavīndrakalpadruma and Raghavan, “Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī”).
30
I discuss below the plea for money. Līlādhara, a southerner, solicits
Kavīndra’s help in liberating the town
of Prakasha (prakāśā) in verse 159 (on this, also see Raghavan, “Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī”: 162).
31
Many verses use alliteration and other tropes. The display of metric versatility
is in verses 231-46, where Mahādeva Paṭṭavardhana
offers variants on the same verse in several
meters (including some unfamiliar to me). Between verses, he notes the
changes that will transform one meter
into the next. The same author offers prose praises that put Kavīndra in a succession of Sanskrit grammatical cases
(pp. 41-48).
32
Kavīndra wrote his Braj Bhasha (literary Hindi) version of the Laghuyogavāsiṣṭha, titled Bhāṣāyogavāsiṣṭhasār (also known as
Jñānsār), in 1656-1657. S. Pollock, “The
Languages of Science in Early Modern India.” In Forms of Knowledge in
Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the
Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 15001800, ed. S. Pollock (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011): 28. Compare
Kavīndracandrodaya: verses 174-80, and the
Bhāṣāyogavāsiṣṭhasār’s introductory verses printed in K.M.K. Sarma,
“Kavīndrācārya as a Hindi Scholar.”
Adyar Library Bulletin 7/1 (1943): 35. The Hindi text was translated into Persian in the mid-eighteenth century. T.
Chand, “Rāfiʾ-ul-Khilāf of Sita Ram Kayastha
Saksena, of Lucknow (Kavīndrācārya’s Jñānasāra and Its Persian
Translation).” Journal of the Ganganatha
Jha Research Institute 2/1 (1944): 712.
33
See manuscripts listed in New Catalogus Catalogorum: 3: 288-89.
34
K.M.K. Sarma prints the verses in his “Janārdana Vyāsa: A Protege of
Kavīndrācārya.” The Journal of Oriental
Research Madras, 16/4 (1947): 178-81. V. Raghavan discusses the overlap with verses from the
Kavīndracandrodaya in “A Note on Janārdana Vyāsa and Kavīndrācārya.” The Journal of Oriental
Research Madras 16/4 (1947): 182.
35
Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja, Āsaphavilāsa. In Pandita Raja Kavya Samgraha: Complete
Poetical Works of Panditaraja
Jagannatha, ed. K. Kamala (Hyderabad: Sanskrit Academy, Osmania University, 2002).
36
Truschke, Culture of Encounters: chap. 2, and A. Truschke, “Regional
Perceptions: Writing to the Mughal
Courts in Sanskrit.” In Cosmopolitismes en Asie du Sud. Sources, itinéraires, langues (XVIeXVIIIe siècle), ed. C. Lefèvre,
I. Županov, and J. Flores (Paris: Editions de
l’EHESS, 2015).
37
Vrajabhūṣaṇa composed the Pārasīprakāśavinoda (“Play of the Light on Persian,”
1659), an abridgment of Vedāṅgarāya’s
Sanskrit-Persian astronomical lexicon, titled Pārasīprakāśa (“Light on
Persian”), written for Shah Jahan. S.R. Sarma, “Persian-Sanskrit Lexica and
the Dissemination of Islamic Astronomy
and Astrology in India.” In Kayd: Studies in History of Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrology in
Memory of David Pingree, ed. G. Gnoli and
A. Panaino (Rome: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2009):
144-46.
38
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 102.
39
For example, Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 39 and verses 52 and 310, respectively.
40 For example, Kavīndracandrodaya: verses 96 and 136. Note also similar
comparisons to Karṇa (among other
figures) in verses 275 and 172.
41
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 309. The six schools are Mīmāṃsā, Vedānta, Sāṃkhya,
Yoga, Vaiśeṣika, and Nyāya.
42
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 269. Several other verses also compare Kavīndra
favorably to Kālidāsa or other poets
(e.g., Kavīndracandrodaya: verses 183, 304, 305, and 306). 43
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 50.
44
Kavīndracandrodaya: p. 31.
45
The Pañcatantra had been known in the Persianate world since the sixth century
CE, when it was translated into Middle
Persian. D. Riedel reviews the later Persian redactions in “Kalila wa Demna I. Redactions and
Circulation.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica (http://www .iranica.com/, 2010). Akbar
sponsored two Persian versions of the Pañcatantra: ʿIyāri Dānish (“Touchstone
of the Intellect”), which reworked an earlier Persian rendition, and another, Panchākhyāna, which was based on a
Jain recension of the Sanskrit work. 46 For example, Kavīndracandrodaya:
verses 39, 115, 116, and 118. The title is also mentioned in the majority of prose contributions in the
Kavīndracandrodaya. The Mughal emperors
Akbar and Jahangir bestowed Sanskrit, Hindi, and Persian titles on
Brahman intellectuals, so Shah Jahan was
acting within an established tradition in this regard (Truschke, Culture of Encounters: chap. 1).
47
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 115.
48
Respectively, śrīmatsāhijahāṃdilīpakṛpayā (Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 116)
and bhavatkṛpātaḥ (Kavīndracandrodaya:
verse 39).
49
Colophon to the Daśakumāracarita as quoted in M. Krishnamachariar, History of
Classical Sanskrit Literature, 3d ed.
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2004): 373-B. See also the colophon to sections of his Laghuyogavāsiṣṭhasār
(Sarma, “Kavīndrācārya as a Hindi Scholar”: 36). Sastry mentions the title being used on
Kavīndra’s manuscripts (Kavindracharya’s List: v).
50
Specific mentions of Kavīndra’s debating skills in the royal assembly are found
in Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 28 and
prose on p. 35.
51
See, e.g., S. Jain, “Piety, Laity and Royalty: Jains Under the Mughals in the
First Half of the Seventeenth Century.”
Indian Historical Review 40/1 (2013): 74, and Truschke, Culture of Encounters: chap. 5.
52
ʿAbd al-Sattār ibn Qāsim Lāhaurī, Majālisi Jahāngīrī, ed. A. Nawshahi and M.
Nizami (Tehran: Markaz-i Pizhuhishi
Miras-i Maktub, 2006): 95-98. C. Lefèvre discusses this epi sode in “Splendours
and Miseries of Scholar-Intellectuals at the Mughal Court: A View from the Majālisi Jahāngīrī (1608-1611)”
(paper presented at Paris, 2012).
53
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 56.
54
Sharma and Patkar suggest that this may be Bhaṭṭa Nīlakaṇṭha but do not appear
very confident in this identification
(introd. to Kavīndracandrodaya: vii).
55
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 92. The verse depends upon a śleṣa (double entendre),
which I have translated both ways by
introducing a simile (“just as”) for clarity. V. Raghavan read this verse as referring to Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya
(“Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī”: 161). Based on the
strong play on grammatical terms in the verse, however, I find it more
likely to refer to Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya
in the second reading. I am grateful to Victor D’Avella and an anonymous reviewer for their assistance
interpreting this verse.
56
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 324.
57
Ibid.: verse 307.
58
Ibid.: verse 45 (mānonnatiṃ tava narendrakṛtām).
59
mahendra iva ciraṃ jīvatu (Kavīndracandrodaya: p. 25). The corresponding
section of the Kādambarī is praising the
sage Jabali, not a sovereign. Bāṇa, Kādambarī, ed. by Kashinath Pandurang Parab (Bombay: Nirnaya Sagara
Press, 1890): 1: 89. This change suggests a con scious attempt to treat
Kavīndra as a royal figure, going beyond the parallel section of Bāṇa’s Kādambarī.
60
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 113.
61
Ibid.: verse 226.
62
Ibid.: verse 58. Similar imagery of a wise man refusing financial compensation
for greater gain appears elsewhere in
the Sanskrit tradition. For example, in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, Naciketas refuses Yama’s offer of horses,
gold, elephants, and other things in exchange
for learning about death and immortality. Kaṭhopaniṣadbhāṣya of Śrīraṅgarāmānuja,
ed. K.C. Varadachari and D.T. Tatacharya
(Tirupati: Sri Venkatesvara Oriental Institute, 1949): 1: 1: 24. I thank Anand Venkatkrishnan for
the reference.
63
Padmasāgara “Jagadgurukāvya.” In Vijayapraśastimahākāvya, ed. Hargovinddas
and Becardas (Benares: Harakhchand
Bhurabhai, 1911): verses 175-76.
64
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 163.
65
Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Kambūh, ʿAmali Ṣāliḥ or Shah Jahan Namah (a Complete History
of the Emperor Shah Jahan), ed. G.
Yazdani, 3 vols. (Bibliotheca Indica. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1923): 3: 122, and the
Pādshāhnāmah of Vāris̱ as cited in Chand, “Rāfiʾ ul-Khilāf”: 8-9. The wording
of these two works is similar. Using Kambūh’s version, Allison Busch has suggested that this episode records
Shah Jahan rewarding Kavīndra for the
Kavīndrakalpalatā. A. Busch, “Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha Poets at
the Mughal Court.” Modern Asian Studies
44/2 (2010): 291-92.
66
Cited in Qanungo, “Character and Court-Life of Shah Jahan”: 51.
67
F. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 16561668, ed. V.A. Smith, trans.
A. Constable (London: Oxford University
Press, 1914): 341-42. Bernier does not give Kavīndra’s name but offers a detailed description of a pandit
who assisted him in Benares. P.K. Gode first
identified Bernier’s pandit as Kavīndrācārya in “Bernier and
Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī at the Mughal
Court.” In Studies in Indian Literary History (Bombay: Singhi Jain Sastra Sikshapith, 1954): 2: 364-79. Gode later
provided additional evidence for this identifica tion from the Persian
tradition (“Location of the Manuscript Library of Kavindracharya”). Pollock has accepted that the two men are one
(“Languages of Science”: 27 and “Death of
Sanskrit”: 407-08).
68
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 126.
69
girīśagovindaguṇagaṇagāyakeṣu, ibid.: 28.
70
On Mughal kalāvants, see K.B. Schofield, “Chief Musicians to the Mughal
Emperors: The Delhi Kalāwant Birāderī,
17th to 19th Centuries.” Journal of the Indian Musicological Society (2013) Kalāvant can also mean moon,
which may well have been another intended
meaning here; I thank Robert Goldman for the suggestion.
71
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 146.
72
dīnāvalidīnāravṛndadāyakeṣu, ibid.: 28.
73
Ibid.: verse 116 (śrīviśveśvarakāśikāsuranadītīre suvarṇaṃ dadau). For this
reading, also see Rahurkar, “Bhāṣāyogavāsiṣṭhasāra
of Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī”: 101. On the impor tance of the Viśveśvara temple
during this period, see R. O’Hanlon, “Speaking from Siva’s Temple: Banaras
Scholar Households and the Brahman ‘ecumene’ of Mughal India.” South Asian History and Culture 2/2 (2011): 264-67.
74
Sharma and Patkar, introduction to Kavīndracandrodaya: v. Mahādeva Paṭṭavardhana contributed several verses (138-155 and
227-268) and prose passages to the
Kavīndracandrodaya.
75
R. O’Hanlon has noted the prevalence of Marathi among Deccani Brahman
migrants to North India during the
seventeenth century (“Letters Home”: 114). Kavīndra’s Maharashtrian origins are indicated by these
verses, several of Kavīndra’s Hindi works,
the Kavīndracandrikā, and also by Marathi words in Kavīndra’s
Padacandrikā, a commen tary on Daṇḍin’s Daśakumāracarita. M.D. Paradkar,
“Kavīndrācārya Saraswatī, a Native of
Mahārāṣṭra.” Journal of the Ganganatha Jha Research Institute 25 (1969):
377-80.
76
For mentions of yavanas in relation to Mughal taxes, see Kavīndracandrodaya:
verses 7, 21, 85, and 210.
77
Verse 59 of the Kavīndracandrodaya refers to Shah Jahan as “lord of the
yavanas” (yavanādhipa), “lord of Delhi”
(dillīśa), and “best of men” (naravara).
78
Ibid.: verse 83 (mlecchāmbhonidhimagnahaindavavṛṣoddhārāya).
79
The word hindū was originally a Perso-Arabic term that entered Sanskrit in the
mid fourteenth century. It was used widely in Sanskrit by the mid-seventeenth
century, although its exact valence
depended on the context. Writing in the early seventeenth cen tury, Kavi Karṇapūra
defined the Persian term hindū as “theistic Indians” (hindū viprādir āstiko lokaḥ) in his Saṃskṛtapārasīkapadaprakāśa,
ed. H. Yogi (Kashi: Goraksatilla
Yogapracarini, 1952): verse 222.
80
Several earlier scholars cited Shah Jahan’s tax on Hindu pilgrims to Benares
and Prayag as part of the supposed wider
Mughal persecution of Hindus, which also included tem ple destruction (Sharma,
“Forgotten Event of Shah Jahan’s Reign”: 54, and Raghavan, “Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī”: 159). More
recently, scholars have effectively disposed of the idea that the Mughals led any systematic,
religion-based attack on Hindus. In contrast,
as Richard Eaton has shown, Mughal temple destructions were primarily
political rather than religious acts. R.
Eaton, “Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States.” In Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious
Identities in Islamicate South Asia, ed. D. Gilmartin and B.B. Lawrence (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2000): 246-81.
81
See mentions of the Kali Yuga (e.g., Kavīndracandrodaya: verses 82, 96, 192,
193, 283, 291, 292, 294, 319, and prose
p. 25). Other scholars have pointed to instances in which actions by Islamicate figures that harmed
Brahmanical or Jain communities were subsumed under the explanation of the
degradation of the Kali Yuga; e.g., P. Granoff,
“Tales of Broken Limbs and Bleeding Wounds: Responses to Muslim
Iconoclasm in Medieval India.” East and
West 41 (1991): 189-203.
82
For example, śrīmatsāhijahāṃdilīpa, śrīnṛpasāhajāha (Kavīndracandrodaya: verses
116 and 156, respectively).
83
By the Mughal period, sārvabhauma had arguably become synonymous with the Mughals. Writing in the seventeenth century,
Veṇīdatta equates sārvabhauma and
dillīpati. Pañcatattvaprakāśa, Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS Orientali
172, fol. 1b, verse 18, printed in The
Sanskrit Grammar and Manuscripts of Father Heinrich Roth S.J. (1620 1668):
Facsimile Edition of Biblioteca Nazionale, Rome, Mss. Or. 171 and 172, ed. A.
Camps and J.-C. Muller (Leiden: Brill,
1988).
84
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 116.
85
The standard account of Sanskrit ways of describing Muslims is
Chattopadhyaya, Representing the Other?
86
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 169.
87
S. D’Onofrio, “A Persian Commentary to the Upaniṣads: Dārā Šikōh’s Sirri
Akbar.” In Muslim Cultures in the
IndoIranian World During the EarlyModern and Modern Periods, ed. F. Speziale, and D. Hermann (Berlin:
Klaus Schwarz, 2010): 533-63.
88
D. Sharma, “Kavīndrakalpalatā, a Hindī Work by Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī.” Annals
of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute 26 (1945): 153-54. Kavīndra also has verses in his Kavīndrakalpalatā that mention other Mughal
figures, including Murad, possibly Jahanara,
and even one “Sayyad Hayat Khān” (mentioned by Sharma in
“Kavīndrakalpalatā”: 154).
89
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 171.
90
The Karaskaras served in Yudhiṣṭhira’s household. The Mahābhārata for the First
Time Critically Edited [Mahābhārata],
ed. V.S. Sukthankar et al. 19 vols. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1933-): 2.46.21.
Later literature identifies their origins as
near the Narmada river valley, in central India, see The Dharmasūtras:
The Law Codes of Āpastamba, Gautama,
Baudhāyana, and Vasiṣṭha, ed. P. Olivelle (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): app. II, p.
343. However, the listing of Karaskara here, sur rounded by areas outside of
the Subcontinent or on its northern fringes, suggests that Hīrārāma may have had another location in
mind.
91
Darada is near Kashmir, and the Darada people appear in many Sanskrit texts,
including Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī: A
Chronicle of the Kings of Kaśmīr, ed. A. Stein (Mirpur, Azad Kashmir: Verinag, 1991): 1.312 and 7.911.
92
Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 170. I translate rūṃmaśāmāḥ, literally the “Empire of
Rome,” as “Ottomans.” Cf. a similar use
of the term in Marathi a few decades later, quoted by S. Guha in “Conviviality and Cosmopolitanism:
Recognition and Representation of ‘East’
and ‘West’ in Peninsular India C.1600-1800.” In Cosmopolitismes en Asie
du Sud. Sources,
itinéraires,
langues (XVIeXVIIIe siècle), ed. C. Lefèvre, I. Županov, and J. Flores
(Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 2015).
93
The Daradas and Shakas are listed among the warriors in many places (e.g.,
Mahābhārata: 7.19.7-8). Also note 1.165.35-36,
where the Shakas and Daradas are said to have been born from the wishing-cow through Vasiṣṭha’s
power.
94
Raghavan takes phiraṅga here as meaning the Portuguese in particular
(“Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī”: 161), but,
given the range of Westerners who visited Shah Jahan’s court, I think it more likely that Hīrārāma meant Europeans
generally.
95
Kavīndracandrikā, ed. K. Divakar (Pune: Maharashtra Rashtrabhasha Sabha,
1966): verse 24.
96
bhūribhūbhṛcchubhāyāṃ, Kavīndracandrodaya: verse 318.
97
Ibid.: verse 223.
98
Harideva Miśra, Jahāṅgīravirudāvalī, ed. J. Pathak (Allahabad: Ganganatha Jha
Kendriya Sanskrit Vidyapithan, 1978):
2-3.
99
See, e.g., Chandar Bhān’s Chahār chaman (“Four Gardens”), quoted and translated
in R. Kinra, “Handling Diversity with
Absolute Civility: The Global Historical Legacy of Mughal Ṣulḥi Kull.” The Medieval History
Journal 16/2 (2013): 253-54.
100
Athavale notes the inclusion of lines by Akbarīya Kālidāsa in Harikavi’s Subhāṣitaratnāvalī
(introd. to Kavīndrakalpadruma: v). On Akbarīya Kālidāsa, see also J.B.
Chaudhuri, Muslim Patronage to
Sanskritic Learning (Calcutta: Pracyavani, 1954): 33-45.
101
Veṇīdatta, The Padyaveṇī: Critically Edited for the First Time, ed. J.B.
Chaudhuri (Calcutta: Pracyavani, 1944):
verses 153 (on Jahangir) and 159 (on Parvez).
102
Caturbhujamiśra writes about wanting to please Shaysta Khan in Rasakalpadruma,
ed. B. Mishra (New Delhi: Eastern Book
Linkers, 1991): p. 4, verse 10.
103
For the verse on Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq, see Rasakalpadruma: p. 205, verse 14.
104
Rasakalpadruma: pp. 294 (śāntarasa), 311 (saṃkīrṇa), and the rest anyokti: pp.
330, 332, 343 (two verses), and 345.
105
Kavīndrakalpalatā quoted in Busch, “Hidden in Plain View”: 289. Pollock makes
the point that Kavīndra stood out for
his bilingual writing (“Languages of Science”: 28). 106 Most notably, V.N.
Rao, D.D. Shulman, and S. Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India (New York: Other
Press, 2003). While this book’s thesis is seldom fully accepted by scholars, it has provoked
much productive scholarship.
107
F.N. Delvoye mentions Jagannātha’s dhrupads collected in the Anūpasaṅgītaratnākara
in “Les chants dhrupad en langue Braj
des poètes-musiciens de l’Inde moghole.” In Littératures médiévales de l’Inde du nord, ed. F. Mallison
(Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient,
1991): 169. Pollock mentions the bhajan collection, titled Kīrtanapraṇālīpadasaṃgraha
(“Languages of Science”: 42 n. 31).
108
On this Braj Bhasha work, see R.B. Athavale, “New Light on the Life of Paṇḍitarāja Jagannātha.” Annals of the Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute 48-49 (1968): 418. 109 Sheldon Pollock discusses
Jagannātha’s mentions of this woman in his poetry in “Sanskrit
Literary
Culture from the Inside Out.” In Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions
from South Asia, ed. S. Pollock
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003): 97-98.
111
Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time.
112
Many Indologists (e.g., Allison Busch, Prachi Deshpande, Sumit Guha, Christian
Novetzke, and Ramya Sreenivasan) have
underscored the importance of memory and the fuzzy boundary between history and fiction in
precolonial India.