The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics

Author(s): Muzaffar Alam

Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 317-349
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/313001 .
Accessed: 15/02/2011 11:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern
Asian Studies.

http://www.jstor.org
ModernAsian Studies 32, 2 (1998), pp. 317-349. ? 1998 Cambridge University Press
Printed in the United Kingdom

The Pursuit of Persian:Language in Mughal

Politics
MUZAFFAR ALAM

Centre
for HistoricalStudies,JawaharlalNehru University,New Delhi

The Mughal literary culture has been noted for its notable achieve-
ments in poetry and a wide range of prose writings in Persian. In
terms of profusion and variety of themes this literary output was
also perhaps incomparable. The court's patronage has rightly been
suggested as an important reason for this. This patronage, however,
was not consistent throughout; much of the detail of its detour thus
requires a closer scrutiny. The phenomenal rise of the language
defies explanation in the first instance. The Mughals were Chaghta'i
Turks and we know that, unlike them, the other Turkic rulers out-
side of Iran, such as the Ottomans in Turkey and the Uzbeks in
Central Asia, were not so enthusiastic about Persian. Indeed, in India
also, Persian did not appear to hold such dominance at the courts
of the early Mughals. In his memoir, Babur (d. 1530), the founder
of the Mughal empire in India, recounted the story of his exploits
in Turkish. The Prince was a noted poet and writer of Turkish of
his time, second only to 'AlI Sher Nawa'i (d. 1526).' Turkish was
the first language of his son and successor, Humayan (d. 1556), as
well. Turkish poetry enjoyed an appreciable audience at his court
even after his return from Persia, when he came reinforced with

An earlier draft of the paper was presented at a Workshop on Language, Literat-

ure and Empire at Chicago Humanities Institute, University of Chicago, 7-8
October 1994. Richard Eaton, Cornell Fleischer, John Perry and Sheldon Pollock
made valuable comments. Professors A. W. Azhar and S. H. Qasemi responded to
my queries and requests for relevant materials with unstinting generosity. Seema
Alavi, Shahid Amin, Chris Bayly, Shantanu Phukan, Sunil Sharma and Sanjay Sub-
rahmanyam helped me in preparing this version. I am grateful to them all, even
though
' Fuad they may not recognize the benefits of their comments.
Koprulu, 'Babur--Literary Works' in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition,
vol. 1, pt 2, pp. 848-85; Mohibbul Hasan, Babur:Founderof theMughalEmpirein India
(Delhi, 1985), pp. 192-3; for a recent study of Babur's poetry, see 'The Poetry and
Autobiography of the Babur-nama',Journal of Asian Studies, 55, no. 3 (August 1996),
pp. 635-64-

oo0026-749X/98/$7.50+$O.o10
317
318 MUZAFFAR ALAM

Persian support to reconquer Hindustan.2 Further, Bairam Khan-

a most notable early Mughal noble virtually in full command during
the early years of Akbar's time (1556-1605)-also made his mark
as a poet of Turkish.
One may conjecture that in matters of language the Mughals had
no other choice, and that they simply inherited a legacy and con-
tinued with it. Such a conjecture sounds plausible, in a measure.
Long before the coming of the Mughals, Persian had established
itself in India as the language of the Muslim elite. Northern India
had seen many poets and prose writers, including Mas'id Sa'd
Salman, Zia-ud-DIn Nakhshabi, Amir Khusrau and Hasan SijizI, in
the Ghaznavid Punjab and in the territory of the Sultans of Delhi.4
The famous line of Hafiz of Shiraz (d. 1389)5
Shakkarshikanshawandhamatatiyan-iHind
Zrn qand-iParsf ki ba Bangdlamf rawad
(All the Indian parrots will turn to crunching sugar with this Persian candy
which goes to Bengal)
was a testimony of the receptive audience that the Persian poetry
had in India.
But pre-Mughal northern India also witnessed the rise of Hindavi
which gradually incorporated much of Persian culture, in particular
through sufic hospices, and then expressed it forcefully in its poetry.
There was hardly any notable Persian writer in the late fifteenth-
early sixteenth centuries, while in Hindavi Malik Muhammad
Jayasi's Padmdvat, recording an Indian fable, represented the best
expression of Islamic ideas in the period.6 Persian did not appear to
be very strong under the Afghans from whom the Mughals took over
the keys of power. In spite of their close association with Persian,

2
Sidi Ali Reis, The Travelsand Adventuresof TurkishSidi Ali Reis, translated from
the Turkish with notes by A. Vambery, reprint (Lahore, 1975), PP- 47, 49-51 and
52-3.
3 Cf. Bairam Khan,
Dfwan, edited by S. Husamuddin Rashidi and Muhammad
Sabir with Introduction by Mahmudul Hasan Siddiqi, Karachi, Institute of Central
and West Asian Studies, 1971.
4 M. A. Ghani, Pre-Mughal Persian in Hindustan (Allahabad, 1941), pp. 155-233
and 381-485, for Persian literature under the Ghaznavids and the Khaljis and
Tughlaqs.
5 Hafiz Shirazi, Dfwan, edited with notes by Qazi Sajjad Husain (Delhi, 1972), p.
172.
6 For the history of Persian in the period, S. B. F. Husaini, A Critical Study of
Indo-PersianLiteratureduringSayyidand Lodi Period, 1414-1526 (Delhi, 1988). Anne-
marie Schimmel, IslamicLiteraturesin India, part of vol. VII of Jan Gonda (ed.), A
History of Indian Literature (Wiesbaden, 1973), P. 21.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 319
most of the Afghan chiefs could not speak Persian.7 Hindavi was
recognized as a semi-official language by the Sor Sultans (1540-55)
and their chancellery rescripts bore transcriptions in the Devanagari
script of the Persian contents. The practice is said to have been intro-
duced by the Lodis (1451-1526).8
For the growth of Persian under the Mughals, the explanation may
thus be sought more in the convergence of factors within the Mughal
regime than in the Indo-Persian heritage of the earlier Muslim
regimes. I have tried to identify some of the factors which created
the conditions for the extraordinary rise of Persian in Mughal India
and to examine the trajectory of its development. Since Persian occu-
pied the indubitable position of the language of the empire, I have
asked if it had any intrinsic strength to explain its wide use and if
because of the Mughals' nearly total association with it their empire
confronted any difficulties. Did Persian have any bearing on the
formation of Mughal political identity? In what way did Persian
influence the vicissitudes of Hindavi in northern India? Does religion
come in anywhere in this politics?

Early Mughal Contacts with Iran

A large number of Iranians accompanied Humayan on his return

from Iran where he had taken refuge following his defeat by the
Afghans. They assisted him in reconquering Hindustan. Later, Akbar
needed their help further and encouraged them to join the imperial
service to overcome the difficulties he faced from the ambitious
Chaghta'I nobles. Earlier the Iranians had also helped Babur in his
fight against the Uzbeks following the destruction of the Timurid
power in Herat.9 All this contributed to the expansion of the frontiers
of Persian in Mughal India. Particularly to be noted is Akbar's
unusual interest in promoting social, cultural and intellectual con-

7 Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, Babur-nama,translated by A. S. Beveridge,

reprint (Delhi, 1970), pp. 459-60.
8 Momin Mohiuddin, The Chancelleryand PersianEpistolography underthe Mughals,
from Baburto Shahjahan,1526-1658 (Calcutta, 1971), p. 28. Mohiuddin cites from
Maulavi Muhammad Shafi's article in OrientalCollegeMagazine(Lahore), May 1933,
for a reference to a UP State Archives Document, No. 318, an edict of Sher Shah
dated 947 AH.
9 J. F. Richards, The Mughal Empire: The New CambridgeHistory of India, 1.5
(Cambridge, 1993), pp. 11 and 19; for Shah Ismail Safavi's help to Babur, see
Mohibbul Hasan, Babur,pp. 40-3-
320 MUZAFFAR ALAM

tacts with Iran. In 994 AH/1585-86 Hakim Humam, a brother of the

famous Hakim Abul Fath Gilani, was sent to and Iran with a
Tohran
mission to persuade the people there for increased friendly contacts
(dostT-o-ashhla')with his empire.'0 The purpose of this mission was to
identify the literati and persuade them to come and settle in India.
Later the Emperor commissioned the famous poet Faizi (about 999/
1591) to submit a report on the literati in Iran. After making en-
quiries from travellers and traders arriving from Iran, Faizi prepared
a report which he submitted to Akbar in which he says:

Chalapi Beg is a savant of excellent disposition and wide culture, and he

deserves a place in His Majesty's majlis.Educated at Qazwin, he has during
the last twelve years made a great name for himself and is universally
well-spoken of. He now lives at Shiraz.
Evidently, it was in consequence of this report that Akbar sent an
invitation to Chalapi Beg and issued orders to an Iranian trader to
make arrangements for the scholar's journey to India." On his
arrival, Chalapi Beg was made the principal teacher at a royal
madrasa at Agra.12
Even prior to his invitation to Chalapi Beg, Akbar sent an invita-
tion to Mir Sadr ud-Din Muhammad Naqib who had communicated
his wish to join Akbar's service. The farman inviting him was issued
in 1591 and reads:13
This court's patronage of men of learning ... is well-known. Now Ghiyath
ud-din Naqib Khan of this court has spoken highly of Mir Sadr ud-din.
Therefore it is hereby commanded that loo Iranian tumans(taman-ird'iji-i
'Iraqf)be paid at once to the distinguished trader Khwaja Chalapi Qazwini
who is forthwith given cong6 so as to carry the money to the Mir who is to
use it as travelling expenses.
If the amount thus remitted was insufficient, Mir Sadr ud-Din was
authorized to take more money from Khwaja Qazwini or from the
traders who had business in India.
Akbar received an encouraging response. A very large number of
Persian writers and poets came to India, many of them in search of
0oAbul Fath Gilani, Ruq'at-iAbulFath Gflanf,ed. MuhammadBashir Husain
(Lahore,
" 1968), pp. 116-20.
Riyazul Islam, A Calendarof Documentson Indo-PersianRelations, 150oo-0-1750
(Karachi, 1979), I, pp. 117-20.
12 Abul Fazl,Akbar-nama, ed. Agha AhmadAli and AbdurRahim,III (Calcutta,
1886), p. 747; Mulla Qati' Heravi, TazkiraMajma'-ush-Shu'ard-i
Jahangfr Shahf, ed.
Saleem Akhtar (Karachi, 1979), pp. 35 and 203-
13 R. Islam,Calendar,
I, pp. 106-7.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 321

better fortunes, others fleeing from religious or political persecutions

of the sectarian Safavid regime.14 Akbar's India earned the distinc-
tion of being the place of refuge and abode of peace (dar ul-aman)
where the wise and the learned received encouragement." How
Akbar succeeded in creating conditions in his territory to welcome
the Iranian scholars, be they non-conformists, is illustrated from the
way Mulla 'Abd-ul-Qadir Badaoni, the well-known historian of
Akbar's time, records Mir Sharif Amuli's arrival in India. Amuli was
a Nuqtavi and he, in Badaoni's view, was made welcome by Akbar
and his courtiers because of the extraordinarily tolerant atmosphere
in India.'6 This was largely true, but generous welcome to the Iranian
scholars may have been caused by the Emperor's desire to pay back
the debt the Mughals owed the Iranians for their support in recon-
quering India.
Iran under the Safavids had turned Shi'ite, in a very narrow sense
of the term. In Mughal India, on the other hand, the space for accom-
modating oppositions and conflicts was widening, subsequent to the
Mughal policy of sulh-i kul (peace with all). The policy, as we know,
was a result of Akbar's bold initiatives, but it could also be explained
in the light of the nature of the country where people with diverse
beliefs and social practices had learnt to live together, their clashes
notwithstanding. The non-conformist and dissident Iranians then
found a natural refuge in India. As an ambitious ruler in obvious
competition with the Iranian Shah, Akbar thus also tried to exploit
this situation to extend the frontiers of his authority into the Safavid
domain. Akbar intended thus to neutralize the awe and the impact
the Iranian Shah had exercised over the Mughal household because
of the Iranians' help to Babur and Humayan. The following letter
of the Emperor (Akbar) to Amir Ahmad Kashi is of special interest
here:17

14 Aziz Ahmad, 'Safavid Poets and India', Iran, 14 (1976), pp. 117-32; see also
Hadi Hasan, MughalPoetry:Its Culturaland Historical Value (Madras, 1952), passim,
and Zabihullah Safa, Tarfkh-iAdabfzyat-i
Iran (Tehran, 1363), pt 1, for some Iranian
poets in India.
15 'Abd-un Nabi Qazwini, Tazkira-i Maikhana (Tehran, 1340), p. 809.
16 'Abd-ul-QadirBadaoni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawdrfkh,
tr. W. H. Lowe, reprint (Delhi,
1973), II, p. 253-
17 R. Islam, Calendar,I, pp. 1io-2, emphasis added; see also his 'Akbar'sIntellec-
tual Contacts with Iran' in Milton Israel and N. K. Wagle (eds), Islamic Cultureand
Society:Essaysin HonourofAziz Ahmad(Delhi, 1983), PP- 351-73, for the text of the
letter.
322 MUZAFFAR ALAM

The supremely important thing is spiritual relationship and proximity. God

be paised that Safi ud-din Amir Ahmad Kashi has realised this truth, and
has placed himself under the guidance of this humble servant of God (sc.
Akbar). Let Amir Ahmad be not discouraged by the spatial distance, for the
writer is [spiritually] close at hand to give him succour. Loveof thepeopleof
Iran has beendeeplyingrainedin his (Akbar's)heartfrom the verybeginning;it is his
desirethat this exaltedcommunityshould comeclose to him spirituallyas well as
materially,and thereby prospermateriallyand spiritually,and the high and low (that
is, all classes)of that communityshouldpartakeof imperialfavour. It is indeed
fortunate that Amir Ahmad is there among them to guide them on the
right path. He should write regularly and seek guidance about his spiritual
experience (waridat-ighaibiya, lit. things coming in from the heavens) and
mystic problems to the Emperor who is indeed the solver of problems spir-
itual and universal. He (Amir Ahmad) should assure Sadid ud-din Darwesh
Khusrau, whose excellence has been brought to royal notice by Abul Fazl
of royal esteem and favour. He (Amir Ahmad) should look after the guid-
ance of the group for the Emperor is deeply impressed by what he has come
to know about that capable young man. It will be desirable if Rashid ud-din
Ishaq who is a man of great talent and ability and has partaken of the
divine mashrabin a large measure, should come in person to the imperial
court. It will be appropriate if the enlightened one (sc. Amir Ahmad) keeps
the Emperor posted of the affairs of the tabaqa-iillhya-iumand'in that coun-
try (Iran). Blessedbe thepersonwho comesto this (Akbar's)sacredpresence(huzar-i
muqaddas-ima).Iffor somereason,this desire(umniyat)is notfulfilled, the members
of thegroupwill nevertheless be rememberedin thesacredassembly(ofAkbar).

Persian at the Mughal Court

To what extent Ahmad Kashi and SafI ud-Din, or for that matter
the other scholars to whom Akbar chose to write in person, could
extend his influence in Iran is a matter of debate. They were
executed by the Shah together with many others like them."8How-
ever, the Mughal emperor's desire of bringing 'the exalted [Iranian]
community close to him spiritually and materially' prepared the
grounds for many of them to make India their second home. The
Iranian talents flourished more in Mughal India. Surely, Iranians
never accepted Akbar's claim of being 'the solver of their spiritual
problems' which pertained to the life hereafter; soon, however, the
belief in literate Iran was widespread that a visit to India promised
material comforts and honoured position in this world:
Nist darIran zamfnsaman-itahsfl-ikamal
ta naydyads:-i Hindustanhina rangn na-shud

18 Israel and Wagle (eds),IslamicCulture,

p. 356.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 323
(The means of acquiring perfection do not exist in Iran.
The henna does not acquire colour till it comes to India)
In the process India drew close to Iran culturally, and this, among
other things, helped Persian attain the status of being the first lan-
guage of the king and the court in Mughal India.
Among the first literary works of the reign of Akbar, at a time
when he was consolidating Mughal power in India, was the prepara-
tion of a Persian translation of Babur-nama. Ironically, the translator
was 'Abd-ur Rahim Khan, Khan-i Khanan, the son of Bairam Khan,
who, as we noticed above, was also a poet in Turkish. But it was not
simply that Babur's memoir was to be rendered into Persian, the
Emperor also desired that the sources of the new court history
recording Mughal achievements be compiled in Persian. Humaytin's
sister, Gulbadan Begum's Humayan-nama,was written in Persian,
even though Turkish was the native tongue of the Princess and her
husband, Khizr Khwaja Khan. Indeed, Mrs Beveridge, who trans-
lated Gulbadan's account into English, suspects that the book was
originally composed in Turkish."'Similar was the case with the other
two accounts of Humaytin's time, Tazkira-iHumayin wa Akbar and
Tazkiratul-Waq'iat,meant to serve as sources of Abul Fazl's history,
Akbarnama,while their authors, Bayazid Bayat and Jauhar Aftabchi,
could manage little beyond a 'shaky and rustic' spoken Persian.
Jauhar, in fact, got the language of his account revised and improved
by Ilahdad Faizi Sirhindi before presenting it to the Emperor.20
Akbar did not have any formal education. Important books were
therefore read out to him regularly in his assembly hall. His library
consisted of hundreds of prose books and poetical works in Arabic,
Persian, Hindi, Greek and Kashmiri. But the books which the
Emperor heard repeatedly were all in Persian.2'
Akbar, according to a report, could also compose verses in Persian
and Hindi; but Mughal sources record generally only his Persian
couplets, and we have to wade through them to find just a few Hindi
verses attributed to him. Further, only Persian poets had the privil-
ege of enjoying royal patronage at Akbar's court.
Among the Muslim rulers of northern India, Akbar was possibly
the first to institute a formal position of malik-ush-shu'ard' (poet

19
20
Gulbadan Begum, Humayan-nama,tr. A. S. Beveridge (London, 1902), p. 79.
Compare H. Eth6, Catalogueof the PersianManuscriptsin the Libraryof the India
Office(Oxford, I, 1903), 222, ff. 2. Sirhindi was a reputed litterateur and philologist.
Cf. his Madarul-Afazil, ed. Muhammad Baqar (Lahore, 1345).
21 Abul Fazl, Akbar-nama, I (Calcutta, 1873), p. 271.
324 MUZAFFAR ALAM

laureate) at the court. To be awarded to a Persian poet only, this

position continued until Shahjahan's time (1626-56). The malik-ush-
shu'rd'during the period were-Ghaza-li, Mashhadi, Husain Sana'i,
Talib Amuli, Kalim Kashani and Qudsi Meshhadi-all Iranians;
Faizi (1547-95) was the sole exception. Further, only nine out of
fifty-nine rated as the best amongst the thousand poets of Persian
who completed a dfwan or wrote a masnawfcould be identified as
non-Iranians.22Again, a large number of other Persian poets and
writers-eighty-one according to Nizam-ud-Din Bakhshi and one
hundred and sixty-eight according to Badaoni-received the patron-
age of the Emperor or his nobles.23Over a hundred poets and thirty-
one scholars were associated with the establishment of 'Abd-ur-
Rahim Khan-i Khanan alone.24
Persian thus emerged as the languageof the king, the royal house-
hold and the high Mughal elite. Akbar's son and successor, Jahangir
(1605-26), was not good in Turkish, but he had his own style in
Persian and wrote his memoir in an elegant prose. He was also a
good critic of Persian poetry and composed several verses and ghaz-
als.25It was for him that Jayasi's Padmdvatwas translated into Per-
sian, but the work was recognized only as an Indian fable (afsana-i
Hindf) and not as a book on Islamic mysticism in Hindi.26Still later,
with volumes of letters and edicts, Aurangzeb (1656-1707) estab-
lished himself as a fine prose writer of his time.27The formal aboli-

22 Abul Fazl, A'Mn-iAkbarr,ed. H. Blochmann (Calcutta, I, 1872), pp. 617-80.

23 Badaoni, III, pp. 171-388; Khwaja Nizam-ud-DIn Ahmad, Tabaqat-iAkbart,ed.
B. De (Calcutta, II, 1927), pp.
484-52o.
24 'Abd-ul-Baqi Nihawandi, Ma'asir-i
Rahfmf, ed. H. Hosain (Calcutta, III, 1931),
pp. 9-114 and 115-1576. Evidently many of these poets were also from Central
Asia, but few of them could earn a coveted place in Mughal courts. Mutribi Sam-
arqandi also notes some Central Asian Persian poets in his report on his meetings
and conversations with Jahangir, cf. Khatirat,ed. A. G. Mirzoyef (Karachi, 1977).
25 Cf. Nir-ud-DinJahangir, Tuzak-iJahangfrf,ed. Syud Ahmad, Allygurh (Aligarh,
1863-64), pp. 103, 245, 303, 316 and 431; Tazkirat-ush-Shu'ara, ed. Abdul Ghani
Mirzoyef (Karachi, 1976), passim;Mutribi Samarqandi, Khatirat,pp. 44, 48-9, 56-
61 and 66; see also Shibli Numani, Shi'r-ul-'Ajam(Azamgarh, 1945), III, pp. 5 and
148.
26 Compare 'Abd-ush-ShakarBazmi, Dastan-i
Padmavat,ed. A. H. Abidi (Tehran,
1350). See also editor's Introduction for twelve other renderings of Padmavat,pp.
16-26.
27 Compare recently edited published volumes of Aurangzeb's writings, e.g.
Shaikh Abul Fath Qabil Khan, Adab-i 'Alamgirf,ed. Abdul Ghafur Chaudhari, 2 vols
(Lahore, 1971); 'Inayatullah Khan Kashmiri, Kalimat-i Tayyibat,ed. S. Azizuddin
Husain (Delhi, 1982); Ashraf Khan Husaini, Ragaim-i Kardim, ed. S. Azizuddin
Husain (Delhi, 199o); see also Najib Ashraf Nadvi, Muqaddima-iRuqa'at-i
'Alamgfr
(Azamgarh, 1981).
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 325
tion of the institution of malik-ush-shu'ard'affected little the supreme
status of Persian. Indeed, later seventeenth-century northern India
witnessed numerous native poets of high standard in Persian, includ-
ing the great Mirza 'Abd-ul-Qadir Bidil (d. 1719) and Nasir Ali
Sirhindi (d. 1696).

Language of the Empire

The frontiers of Persian, however, extended far beyond the circle of

the emperor, the princes and the high nobles. Akbar was also the first
among the Indo-Islamic kings of northern India formally to declare
Persian to be the language of administration at all levels. The pro-
clamation to this effect was issued by his famous Khatri Hindu rev-
enue minister, Todal Mal, accompanied by reorganization of the rev-
enue and the other administrative offices by the equally famous
Iranian noble, Mir Fathullah Shirazi. How an eighteenth-century his-
torian, Ghulam Husain Tabataba'i remembered and recorded this
changeover is significant;
Earlier in India the government accounts were written in Hindi accordingto
theHindu rule. Raja Todar Mal acquired new regulations (zawabit)from the
clerks (nawisindagan)of Iran, and the government offices then were reorgan-
ized as they were there in Wilayat.28
These Iranian clerks remained in noticeable control of accounts and
carried their jobs with unmatched efficiency and integrity through-
out the heyday of the Mughal empire. Aurangzeb, the last of 'the
Great Mughals' writes:
No other nation is better than the Persians for acting as clerks. And in war,
too, from the age of Emperor Humaytin to the present time, none of this
nation has turned his face away from the field, and their firm feet have
never been shaken. Moreover, they have not once been guilty of disobed-
ience and treachery to their master. But, as they insist on being treated
with great honour, it is very difficult to get on well with them. You have
anyhow to pacify them, and should employ subterfuges.29
Thus, it was not simply the royal household and the court which
bore the Iranian impress. The Iranians as mutasaddrsand minor func-
tionaries could also be seen everywhere in the government offices,

28 Ghulam Husain Tabataba'i, Siyar-ul-Muta'akhkhirrn(Lucknow, 1876), I, p. 2oo.

29 Hamid-ud-Din, Ahkam-i'Alamgfrt,ed. and tr. J. N. Sarkar (Calcutta, 1912), p.
53.
326 MUZAFFAR ALAM

even though they were not in exclusive control of these offices. A

substantial part of the administration was carried out by the indigen-
ous Hindu communities who had hitherto worked in Hindi. This was
of greater consequence for our purpose. They learnt Persian and
joined these Iranians as clerks, scribes and secretaries (muharrirsand
munshfs). Their achievements in the language were soon to be extra-
ordinary. To this development Akbar's reform in the prevailing
maktaband madrasaeducation, influenced again by the Iranian Mir
Fathullah Shirazi, contributed considerably. The Hindus began to
learn Persian in Sikandar Lodi's time. Badaoni mentions one
Brahman as an Arabic and Persian teacher of this period."3 Akbar's
enlightened policy and introduction of 'secular' themes in the syl-
labuses at middle levels 'stimulated a wide application to Persian
studies'. Hindus-Kayasthas and Khatris in particular-joined
madrasasin large numbers to acquire excellence in Persian language
and literature, which now promised good careers in imperial service.
Akbar's reform pertained in the first place to the learning of the
Persian alphabets and the basic words. Children were not to spend
too much time, as was the practice, on alphabet. After learning and
practising the shape and name of the words they were required to
commit to memory some Persian couplets or moral phrases directly
and thus appropriate the ethos of the language at a very young age.
Then they studied the prescribed curriculum which included ethics
(akhlaq),arithmetic (hisab), notations peculiar to arithmetic (siyaq),
agriculture (falahat), measurement (masahat),geometry, astronomy,
physiognomy, household economy (tadbfr-imanzil), the rules of gov-
ernment (siydsat-imudun),medicine, logic, mathematics (riyazf) and
physical and metaphysical (tab'Fand I1dhf) sciences.3'
At an advanced level works of classical masters were studied in
order to acquire proficiency in Persian composition and poetry. Texts
prescribed at this stage were Bastan and Gulistan of Shaikh Sa'di,
Akhlaq-iNasirTof Khwaja Nasir-ud-Din Tasi, Akhlaq-iJalalf of Jalal-
du-Din Dawwani and Akhlaq-i MuhsinTof Mulla Husain Wa'iz al-
Kashifi. Among chronicles the students generally read Habfb-us-Siyar,
Rauzat-us-Safa, Tarfkh-i Guzfda and Zafar-nama.Later, Abul Fazl's
Akbar-namatogether with his insha also figured in the essential read-

3o Badaoni, III.
3'
Abul Fazl, A'ln, I, pp. 201-2; see also N. N. Law, Promotionof Learningin India
during Mohammadan Rule (London, 1916), pp. 161-71.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 327
ings.32 Most of the students discontinued their studies after complet-
ing their secondary education, since that was a sufficient qualifica-
tion to secure employment on the clerical staff in local daflars. The
accountancy department attracted them most because it promised
better salaries. The art of a munshT(secretary) was a difficult task,
'a whole life was required to acquire proficiency in that art'.33
The teachers in charge of these madrasas were initially often the
masters of Fars and Shiraz (ustadan-i Fars-o-Shiraz). But in the course
of time, Indians including Hindu masters also began to teach. Their
writings, in particular the specimens of their insha, formed part of
Persian syllabi.34
In India there was always a 'set ready and a fixed caste (jami') of
workmen of every profession and trade, for any employment, to
whom vocation descends as a family heirloom'.35 These trainees, like
many other workmen, thus crystallized into 'a fixed caste' of scribes,
accountants and secretaries. The son of a clerk (muharrir) was des-
tined to be a clerk not because he may have preferred this profession
but in order to keep up the family tradition, and if he worked hard,
he would rise to the stature of a chief secretary (mfr munshr). In most
cases the munshf families trained their own relatives as a father would
do his son, either under his own direct care or through correspond-
ence. This is illustrated best from Chandrabhan's advice to his son
Khwaja Tej Bhan.36
From the middle of the seventeenth century, the departments of
accountancy (siyaq), draftmanship (insha) and the offices of revenue
minister (dfwan) were mostly filled by the Kayastha and Khatri
munshzs and muharrirs.Harkaran Das Kambuh of Multan is the first
known Hindu munshf whose writings were taken as models by later
munshfs.37Chandrabhan was another influential, rated second only to
Abul Fazl. Chandrabhan also wrote poetry of high merit.38 And then

32 Balkrishan, Arzdasht..., Br. M. Add. 16859 cited in Mohiuddin, Chancellery,

p.
41; see also Syed Muhammad Abdullah, Adabpyat-iFdrsf men Hindz-on ka Hissa
(Lahore, 1967), pp. 240-3.
33 Ibid., p. 42.
34 Abul Hasanat Nadvi, Hindustankr QadfmIslamf Darsgahin (Azamgarh, 1971),
pp. 28-9; Abdullah, Adabpyat,p. 240o.
35 Babur-nama, p. 518.
36 Chandrabhan Brahman, CharChaman,cited in Abdullah,
Adabydt, pp. 241-3-
37 For an analysis, see Mohiuddin, Chancellery,
pp. 215-20.
38 Muhammad Abdul Hamid Faruqui, ChandraBhan Brahman:Life and Workswith
a CriticalEdition of his Dfwan (Ahmadabad, 1966); for his prose, see Mohiuddin,
Chancellery,
pp. 228-34.
328 MUZAFFAR ALAM

followed a large number of Kayastha and Khatri munshrs, including

the well-known Madho Ram, Sujan Rai, Malikzadah, Anand Ram
'Mukhlis', Bindraban 'Khwushgo', who made splendid contributions
to Persian language and literature and whose writings formed part
of the syllabi of Persian studies at madrasas. Certain fields hitherto
unexplored or neglected found skilled investigators, chiefly Hindus.
On the philological sciences the Hindus produced excellent works in
the eighteenth century. Mir'at ul Istildh of Anand Ram, Bahar-i 'Ajam
of Tek Chand 'Bahar' and Mustalahat-us-Shu'ard of Siyalkoti Mal
'Warasta' are among the most exhaustive lexicons compiled in India.
Their Persian Grammars and Commentaries on idioms, phrases and
poetical proverbs show their keen interest, admirable research and
accomplishments in the Persian language.39
The masters of the Iranian classics thus found an increasingly
appreciative audience even among the middle-order people in big
and small towns as well as among the village-based revenue officials
and the other hereditary functionaries and intermediaries. All
Mughal government papers from the imperial orders (farmans) to
the bonds and acceptance letter (muchalka, tamassuk qabaliat) that a
village intermediary (chaudhuri) wrote were prepared in Persian.40
On the other hand, there was no bookseller in the bazaars and
streets of Agra, Delhi and Lahore who did not sell the anthologies
of Persian poetry. The madrasa pupils in general were familiar with
the Persian classics.41
In two separate letters, one, an arzdasht, addressed to the Emperor
Akbar and the other, a dastar-ul-'amal, meant to be a manual for the
officials, Abul Fazl, the premier ideologue and the mrr munshr of the
Mughal empire, had suggested Akhlaq-i NasirT, Kimyd-i Sa'adat,
Masnawr of Maulana Jalal-ud-Din Rami, as essential readings.42 In
Abul Fazl's own time only the high nobles could have read them. By
Shahjahan's time (1626-56), these books and many more similar
titles began to figure as routine readings even among the middle-
order Hindus associated with the Mughal state.

39 Abdullah, Adabpyat,pp. 121-68.

40 Even in Bengal, the administrative papers prepared and issued in the name of
the local Hindu intermediaries were in Persian. Persian insha, indeed, had influ-
enced the Bengali prose, Promesh Acharya, 'Pedagogy and Social Learning: Tol and
Pathsala in Bengal', Studies in History (New Series), 10o, 2 (July-December 1994), PP.
255-72.
41Badaoni, II, pp. 285-
42Insha-iAbul Fazl (Lucknow, I, 1280 AH), pp. 57-67; Majma'-ul-Inshdof Muham-
mad Amin BanI Israil, MS Paris, Persian Supplement, 461, ff. 38a-41a.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 329
Persian was then their first language. They appropriated and used
the Perso-Islamic expressions like Bismilldh (with the name of Allah)
lab-ba-qar (at the door of the grave) and ba-jahannam rasfd (damned
injahannam = hell) as their Iranian and non-Iranian Muslim counter-
parts did. They would also now look for and like the Persian render-
ings of their texts and traditions. Lest they be forgotten, the religious
scriptures were then rendered in full into Persian by individual
Hindu authors.43
If, on the one hand, for the Hindus, prospects of good careers and
also possibly of direct access to the ancient scriptures now available
in Persian provided incentives for learning Persian, on the other,
the language acquired a kind of religious sanctity for the Muslims.
Jamal-ud-Din Inja, author of Farhang-i Jahangfrf, the first compre-
hensive Persian lexicon, dwells at length on the point that Persian
together with Arabic is the language of Islam. The Prophet of Islam,
he reports from various sources, knew and spoke Persian. The
Prophet, according to Inja, spoke highly of the merits of the people
of Pars; he cites verses from the Quran in appreciation of the people
of Pars for their bravery and courage to fight for a noble cause. Faith
(fman) according to Injui is integral to their (people of Pars) charac-
ter. They would have acquired faith even if it were far in the sky.44
Injfi began to compile the Farhang at Akbar's instance and since it
was completed after the Emperor's death, it was dedicated to his
son, Jahangir.45
The message through such construction was possibly intended to
be communicated to the Indian converts, whose native language was
some form of Hindavi. There was certainly wide application of Per-
sian studies among the shurafa, the Muslim landed magnates, the
revenue-free land holders in the rural areas, those who had daily
allowance (a'imma, wazzfa) in towns and petty officials. Even ordinary
literate Muslims like soldiers, for instance, were expected now to
read simple Persian. In Shahjahan's time treatises on religious dispu-
tations in simple prose were written for common poor Muslims in
order to prevent them from falling into the Brahmanical 'trap' and
thus leaning towards innovation, idolatrous practices and infidelity.

43 Compare Gopal bin Govind's Preface to his Persian translation of Rdmdyana,

Paris, MS, Blochet, I, 222.
44 Mir Jamal-ud-Din Husain Inja Shirazi, Farhang-iJahangirr, ed. Rahim Afifi, 3
vols (Meshhed, 1972), I, pp. 14-22; Siraj-ud-Din Alli Khan Arzti, Muthmir, ed.
Rehana Khatoon (Karachi, 1991), pp. 6, 7 and 14-17.
45 Ibid., pp. 4 and io.
330 MUZAFFAR ALAM

One such treatise, Hujjat-ul-Hind, as the author claims, was trans-

lated from Hindavi into simple Persian for the benefit of 'the Mus-
lims who live in the villages' where 'the elites are generally the
infidels'.46

Persian, Prestige and the Mughal Political Culture

Learning, knowledge and high culture began to be associated with

Persian at many levels in Mughal Indian society. Command over
good Persian was a matter of pride; deficiency in elegant self-
expression in Persian meant cultural failure. For Mirza Muhammad
Bakhsh Ashab, a noted poet and writer of the later Mughal era, a
major failure of Samsam-ud-Daulah, Khan-i Dauran, the well-known
early eighteenth-century Mughal noble, was his inability to speak
good Persian; Khan-i Dauran generally spoke in 'Hindi'. On occasion
he would embellish his conversation with Persian couplets and hemi-
stichs, with a remark that 'to speak in Persian for an Indian is to
make oneself a butt of ridicule'.47
Khan-i Dauran was, however, an exception. In general, Persian
was held to be the only effective language to express cultural accom-
plishments. Persian came to be recognized as the language of politics
in nearly the whole of the sub-continent.48 This status received nour-
ishment from the Mughal power it sustained, and the belief that
Persian was the most functional pragmatic and accomplished vehicle
of communication remained unshaken even after the virtual demise
of the Mughal empire. Mirza Asadullah Ghalib (d. 1869), the last of
the great Mughal poets, believed that the depth, complexity and
variety of his ideas could be conveyed only through Persian words.
Note the poet's plea with his audience to evaluate him on the
strength of his Persian compositions, even as he earned a high place
in literature due to his Urdu poetry:49

46 Hujjat-ul-Hind,British Museum, Add.

5602, ff. 11.
47 Mirza Muhammad Bakhsh 'Ashifb', Tdrikh-iShahddat-iFarrukhSiyar waJulas-i
MuhammadShah, Br. M. Or. 1832, ff. 726.
48 For Persian's position in the East India Company territories in the late eight-
eenth century, see Bernard Cohn, 'The Command of Language and the Language
of Command' in Ranajit Guha (ed.), SubalternStudies IV: Writingson South Asian
Historyand Society(Delhi, 1985), pp. 284-95-
49 Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Kulliydt-i Ghdlib, ed. Syed Murtaza Husain
(Lahore, 1967), vol. 1, p. 161.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 331
Farsrbin td ba-bfnfnaqshaha-irangrang
ba-guzaraz majma'a-iUrdaki bi-rang-iman ast
(See my Persian [poetry] so that you may see colourful pictures,
Leave my Urdu collection which has no colour)
With a section of the fallen Mughal elite Persian was now to stay
also as a symbol of the glory of the past. Noteworthy here is the way
a minister in Hyderabad in the Deccan in the nineteenth century
reacted to the suggestion for a changeover from Persian to Urdu as
the language of government. One Maulavi Mushtaq Husain, who
hailed from North India and held a high office in Hyderabad, had
suggested this change to Salar Jang. Subsequently, Salar Jang men-
tioned it in the course of a conversation with Sarwar ul-Mulk, who
was also from North India and held an important position in Hydera-
bad. Sarwar ul-Mulk supported Maulavi Mushtaq's idea. Thereupon
Salar Jang who was reclining against a pillow, got up with a jerk and
said:50
You Hindustani (Northern Indian) people have little practice in Persian
speech and writing. Persian language is the symbol of the victory of the
Muslims. We have conquered this land with the sword. Having destroyed
this symbol in your own country [North India], you people now want dark-
ness here too. Persian shall remain here and flourish so long as I am alive.

Long association of the Mughals, their supporters and successors

with Persian in political and military management created a memory
of the language as an instrument of conquest. The memory was not
a nineteenth-century construction. Persian did facilitate the Mughal
triumph. The intrinsic strength of the language, combined with the
emperor's decision, prepared the ground for forging the links
between the court and the remote village. We may ask here if Per-
sian offered anything positive for its being favoured by the Mughals
as the language of their empire.
The Mughals were not content with establishing a mere para-
mount and imperial authority over the numerous local and regional
power groups. They aspired also to evolve a political culture, over-
arching the diverse religious and cultural identities. Persian, in the
existing circumstances, promised to be the most appropriate vehicle
to communicate and sustain such an ideal. Persian was known to the
Indians, from the banks of the river Sind to the Bay of Bengal. If
Amir Khusrau is to be believed, as early as in the fourteenth century,
'Persian parlance enjoyed uniformity of idiom throughout the length

50 S. M. Kamal, Hyderabadmen Urdi ka Irtiqd (Hyderabad, 199o), p. lo2.

332 MUZAFFAR ALAM

of four thousandparasangs,unlike the Hindavi tongue, which had

no settled idiom andvariedafter everyhundredmiles and with every
groupof people'."'As late as the eighteenth centuryHindavidid not
evolve a uniform idiom even in northern India. Siraj-ud-Din'Ali
Khan Arza (d. 1756), a noted eighteenth-century poet, writer and
lexicographer, mentions Gwaliori, Braj, Rajpati, Kashmiri, Hary-
anavi, Hindi and Punjabi as diverse authentic forms of Hindavi,
besides the dialects of Shahjahanabad-Delhi and Akbarabad Agra.52
Sanskrit or Hindi-ye kitabf (Hindi of the Book) as Arza calls it could
have been a choice in place of Persian as a language of the empire.
But Sanskrit, as Mirza Khan, the author of Tuhfat-ul-Hind, noted in
Aurangzeb's time, was not taken as an ordinary human tongue; it
was a Deva-banf and Akash-banf. The language was too scared, too
divine. No mlechha would perhaps have been allowed to pollute it by
choosing it as a symbol and vehicle of his power. The mlechha could
not have used it to create the world of his vision. On the contrary,
Prakrit, which was Patal-banf, the language of the underground, of
the snakes, was considered too low for the Mughals to be approp-
riated for lofty ideals. Braj or Bhakha, the language of this world,
was also a regional dialect. Furthermore, Bhakha, in the Mughal
view, was suitable only for music and love poetry.53
Again, in Persian, in particular in the poetry produced during the
second phase (6th-8th centuries AH/12th-14th centuries AD) of its
history which belonged to the Sabk-i 'Iraqf (the Southern Iranian
Diction), the tradition of non-sectarianism had been very strong.
Persian poetry, which had integrated many things from pre-
Islamic Persia and had been an important vehicle of liberalism in
the medieval Muslim world, helped in no insignificant way in creat-
ing and supporting the Mughal attempt to accommodate diverse reli-
gious traditions. Akbar must have got support for his policy of non-
sectarianism from the verses like the ones of Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
whose masnawf the Emperor heard regularly and nearly learnt by
heart:54

51 Compare Amir Khusrau, Nuh Siphr, ed. Wahid Mirza (Oxford, 1950), Preface
and p. 173.
52 Siraj-ud-Din
'Ali Khan Arza, Nawadir-ul-Alfaz,Preface cited in Syed Muham-
mad Abdullah, Mabahis(Delhi, 1968), pt I, p. 75-
53 Mirza Khan bin Fakhr-ud-Din Muhammad, Tuhfat-ul-Hind,ed. Nurul Hasan
Ansari (Tehran, 1356), vol. I, pp. 51-2.
54 Jalal-ud-Din Rami, Masnawf-ye MauldnaRam, ed. Qazi Sajjad Husain, II (Delhi,
1976), p. 173. For Akbar's administration and fondness for the Masnawf,Abul Fazl,
Akbar-nama, I, p. 271.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 333
Ta bard-iwasl kardanamdr
ne bard-ifasl kardandmdi
Hindiyanrd istildh-iHind madh
Sindiyanrd istildh-i Sind madh
(Thou hast come to unite,
not to separate
For the people of Hind, the idiom of Hindi is praiseworthy
For the people of Sind, their own is to be praised)

The echoes of these messages and the general suspicion of mere

'formalism' of the faith are unmistakable in the Mughal Persian
poetry as well. Faizi had the ambition of building 'a new Ka'ba' out
of the stones from the Sinai:55

Biyd ki rai ba mihrab-gah-inau ba-nihfm

Bind-i Ka'ba-idigarze sang-i tairnihfm
(Come, we turn our face toward a new alter
We take stones from the Sinai and build a new Ka'ba)

The Mughal poets, like their predecessors, portrayed, for instance,

the pious (zahid) and the Shaikh as hypocrites. It was with the master
of the wine house (mughan) and in the temple, instead of the mosque,
they believed, that the eternal and Divine secrets were to be
sought:56

Shi'ar-i millat-i Islmidn ba-guzargar khwlah

ki dar dair-i mughand'i wa asrar-inihanbfnf
(Give up the path of the Muslims, come to the temple, to the master of
the wine house
so that you may see the Divine secrets)

The idol (but), to them, was the symbol of the Divine beauty; idolatry
(but-parastf) represented the love of the Absolute; and, significantly,
they emphasized that the Brahman be held in high esteem because
of his sincerity, devotion and faithfulness to the idol: to Faizi it is a
matter of privilege that his love for the idol led him to embrace the
religion of the Brahman:57
Shukr-ikhudaki ishq-ibutanast rahbaram
bar millat-i brahman-obardfn-iAzaram
(Thanks God, the love of the idols is my guide,
I follow the religion of the Brahman and Azar)

55 Abul Faiz Faizi Faiyazi, Dfwan, ed. A. D. Arshad (Lahore, 1362), p. 470.
56 Muhammad Jamal-ud-DIn 'Urfi Shirazi, Kulliyat, ed. Jawahiri Vajdi (Tehran,
3rd reprint, 1369), p. 152.
57 Faizi, Dfwan, p. 53.
334 MUZAFFAR ALAM

The temple (dair, but-kada), the wine-house (mai-khana), the mosque

and Ka'ba were the same to 'Urfl; the Divine Spirit pervaded
everywhere:58
Chiragh-iSomnatast atish-i Tar
buwadzan harjihat ra nar dar nar
(The lamp of Somnath is [the same as] the fire at the Sinai,
the light spreads all around from that)
This feature of the Persian poetry remained unimpaired even when
Aurangzeb (1658-1707) tried to associate the Mughal state with
Sunni orthodoxy. Nasir 'Ali Sirhindi (d. 1696), a major poet of his
time, echoed 'UrfI's message with equal enthusiasm:59
Nzstghair azyak sanamdarparda-idair-oharam
kai shawadatish du rangaz ikhtilaf-isangaha
(The image is the same behind the veil in the temple and haram
With diverse firestones, there is no change in the colour of the fire)
In fact, neither the mosque nor the temple were illumined by Divine
beauty; it is the heart (dil) of the true lover in which it abides. The
message was thus to aspire for the high place of the lovers. Talib
Amuli then called to transcend the difference of Shaikh and
Brahman:60
Na malamat-gar-ikufram na ta'assub-kash-idin
khanda-hd barjadl-i Shaikh-oBarhaman daram
(I do not condemn infidelity, nor am I a bigoted believer,
I laugh at both, the Shaikh and the Brahman)
Persian thus facilitated the Mughal conquest in India even though
not necessarily in the way Salar Jang of Hyderabad remembered it
in the nineteenth century. In fact, this conquest, as 'Urfi declared,
was intended to be bloodless:61

Zakhm-habardashtfm o-fath-hakardfmlek
harqizaz khan-i kas-erangfnna-shuddaman-ima
(We have received wounds, we have scored victories,
but our skirts have never been stained with the blood of anyone)
The desire to build an empire, where both Shaikh and Brahman
could live with minimum possible conflicts, necessitated the genera-
tion of adequate information about the diverse traditions of the land.

58 'Urft Shirazi,Dfwan (Kanpur, 1915), P- 44-

59 Nasir 'All Sirhindi, Dfwan (Lucknow, 1872), p. 15-
60 Talib Amuli, Kulliyat-Ash'ar-iMalik-ush-Shu'raTalib Amulr, ed. Tahiri Shihab
(Tehran, 1967), p. 668.
61 'Urfi Shirazi, Dfwdn, p. 3.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 335
Akbar's historian, Abul Fazl, is not content in his Akbar-nama with a
mere description of the heroic achievements of his master; he con-
cludes his account in what he calls the A'Tn (institutes) of Akbar. In
particular are notable the third book of the A'Tn which contains the
survey of the land, the revenues, the peoples or the castes in control
thereof, and, above all, the fourth book which 'treats of the social
conditions and literary activity, especially in philosophy and law, of
the Hindus, who form the bulk of the population, and in whose polit-
ical advancement the emperor saw the guarantee of the stability of
his realm'.62 Further, to make the major local texts accessible and
thus to dispel the ignorance about the Hindu traditions Akbar took
special care in rendering Mahabhdrata and Ramdyana into Persian.
The translations of these religious texts were followed in Akbar's
own time and later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by
Persian renderings of a large number of texts on Indian religions,
Hindu law and ethics, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, romance,
moral fables and music.63
Persian generated and promoted conditions in which the Mughals
could create out of heterogenous social groups a class of their allies
and subordinate rulers. Like the emperor and his nobility in general,
this class also cherished the universal human values and visions. But
we ought not to ignore the fact that with Persian as the sole privil-
eged language of the state and its 'apparatus', it also drove a wedge
between the Mughals and the people. Persian was not an Indian
language, but it had begun to assume an autonomous Indian identity
in pre-Mughal India. Under the Mughals the Indian Persian diction
matured, with some of the most brilliant writings in Persian. How-
ever, the Iranian idiom of Persian also emerged as the favoured ref-
erence point in Mughal India.

Indian Persian vs. Iranian Persian

Amir Khusrau (1253-1325), with whose poetry and writings the

Indian diction assumed a distinct personality of its own, had disap-

62 H. Blockmann's Preface to his translation of the A'in-i

Akbarf, I (reprint, Delhi,
1965).
63 S. A. A. Rizvi, Religious and IntellectualHistory of the Muslims in Akbar'sReign
(Delhi, 1975), pp. 203-22; F. Mujtabai, Aspects of Hindu-Muslim Cultural Relations
(Delhi, 1978), pp. 6o-91, for a brief description of Persian translations of religious
texts.
336 MUZAFFARALAM

proved of the 'Khurasanzf'idiom and had noted that in India Persian

was written and pronounced according to the standard of Taran.64
The models in particular in prose then were the authors of Transoxi-
ana. The writings of Rashid-ud-Din Watwat and Baha-ud-Din of
Khwarizm, for instance, were read and imitated by the Indian Per-
sian writers. Khusrau then innovated a new Indo-Persian style.65 To
the pre-Mughal lexicographers the languages spoken in Shiraz,
Mawara-an-Nahr and Farghana were just dialects of the same Per-
sian tongue. They incorporated in their lexicons the words used in
'Fars, Samarqand, Mawara-an-Nahr and Turkistan'. They also give
as a matter of routine their Hindavi synonyms.66
The Mughal court, on the contrary, was concerned with the puri-
fication of Persian (tathir-i Farsf). The objective of the lexicon Akbar
asked Jamal-ud-Din Husain Inja to prepare in his name was to clean
the Persian of non-Persian words and expressions.67 The drive at
purification continued later. Inja's Farhang together with Majma-ul-
Furs Surarf were taken as the sole standard lexicons in the first half
of the seventeenth century. By the middle of the century Mulla 'Abd-
ur-Rashid Thattawi felt the necessity of compiling a new dictionary,
among other things, because (a) in the existing two major diction-
aries (Jahangfrf and Surarf) certain Arabic and Turkish words were
enlisted without clarifying that they were not Persian, and that (b)
many words were wrongly pronounced by Inja and Suriri.68
If in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the most sub-
lime and the best poetry of the time was produced in India, the
eighteenth century was the richest in terms of the number and var-
ieties of prose and poetic works in Persian. Take, for instance, the
poetry. Seventy-seven of the Persian poets who lived during the earl-
ier half of the century found the place of honour in the tazkira, titled
as Majma'-un-Nafa'is of Siraj-ud-Din 'Ali Khan Arza who was the best
and the most revered scholar, poet and critic of the period.69 Many
64 Amir Khusrau, Dibacha-i Dfwan Ghurratal-Kamal, ed. S. Ali Haider (Patna,
1988), p. 92; Wahid Mirza, The Life and WorksofAmfr Khusrau (Calcutta, 1935), p.
16o.
65 Mohiuddin, Chancellery, p. 23. Later, however, Watwat's Haddiq-us-Sihrinspired
Warasta's Matla'-us-Sa'dain.Cf. Abdullah, Adaboat, p. 144-
66
Husaini, Indo-PersianLiterature,pp. 201-26.
67 Injfi Shirazi, Farhang-iJahangfrr,Preface, p. 4.
68 Zahuruddin Ahmad, PakistanmenFarsf Adabkf
Tarfkh(Jahangir to Aurangzeb)
(Lahore, 1974), P- 542.
69 Cf. a selection (intikhab)of the work, India Office Library, London, MS., I.O.
4015-
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 337
tazkiras were written in this period. Among these, 'All Ibrahim
Khalil's (d. 1793) Suhuf-i IbrahTm,which was a most comprehensive
one, at least, for the northern Indian poets, notes no less than four
hundred and sixty poets from amongst those who lived in the eight-
eenth century and whose works he considered of any worth.70 No less
than fifty-six of them were non-Muslims.71
Much more significant was the height of excellence the Persian
poetry scaled under the Mughals. The Mughal age signals a signific-
ant stage in the development of the Persian literary sensibilities.
The poetry was marked by an outspoken spirit of innovation and
experimentation, showing due regard to the past literary heritage of
Iran as well as Central Asia. In Central Asia, at the court of the late
Timurids, Daulat Shah Samarqandi and 'Ali Sher Nawa'I tried to
establish a canon which, in a measure, was represented in the poetry
of 'Abd-ur-Rahman Jami (d. 1492) and which later was refined and
reformulated by Babur. In this tradition emphasis was on rhetorical
artistry, even as Babur pointed to the importance of meaning (ma'nT)
and ecstasy (hal), together with colour (rang), in a good poetry. In
Iran, too, there were attempts like the one by Sam Mirza to evolve
the standards of literary criticism, close to Herat School. Simultan-
eously, however, Baba Fughani Shirazi (d. 1519) made a plea for
concerns in the poetry for the routine matters of love, but with an
eye for new meanings of old words.72
The Mughal poetry signified a fine blending of the two, with judi-
cious balance (tawazun) between the rhetorical excellences (mazayd-i
balaghat) and the grandeurs of thoughts (jald'il-i ma'anf).73 The
thought was to occupy a distinct and uncontested superior position;
and while Abul Fazl emphasized the splendours of ideas, his poet
brother, Faizi advocated their sublimity and emotional texture:74
Gardurdnist darsukhan-iman 'ajabmaddr
kin badara baparda-idil saf karda-fm
(Do not be surprised if there are no dregs in my poetry
because I have refined this wine by filtering it through the heart)

70
Cf. Sukuf-i Ibrahfm(portion dealing with the accounts of the twelfth century
AH), ed. A. R. Bedar (Patna, 1981).
71 S. Abdullah, Adabryat,pp. 169-84.
72 Abdul Ghani, 'Tanqidi Shu'ar ka Irtiqa' in Maqbul Beg Badakhshani (ed.),
Tahrkh-iAdabjyat-iMusalmanan-iHind-o-Pak(Lahore, 1976), pp. 455-61.
7 Abul Fazl, Akbar-nama, II (Calcutta, 1879), p. 381.
74 Faizi, Dfwan, p. 405.
338 MUZAFFAR ALAM

Elaborate style and ornate phraseology with artistic devices and sen-
suousness both in words and meanings together with magnificent
and sublime thoughts thus symbolized the Mughal poetics. The fol-
lowing verse of Ghani Kashmiri (d. 1688) perhaps best expressed
the all-sided splendour of the Mughal poetry:75
Jalwa-i husn-ita awurdmarabarsar-ifikr
ta hina bastfwa man manf-yeranqznbastam
(With the brilliance of your beauty I began to think
You applied the henna and I created the colourful meaning)
The resplendent thought or the serious philosophical reflections
expressed in pleasingly florid diction was a marked feature of what
has been noted as the taza-ga'T (speaking the fresh) of the Mughal
poets. Taza-ga'r was the major tenet of the Mughal poetry.76 The call
for new and fresh meaning is reiterated throughout the Mughal age.
FaizI detested imitation (taqlrd).77
Qasd-ikhayal-idAgaran ta ba kai
jad ba mal-i ta
dAgaran ba kai
(How long will you look to others for ideas?
How long will you be generous with the wealth of the others?)
He then invited his audience to rise to break from the past.78
Biya wa raunaq-ibazarba-shikan
ba chashm-ibaghbanankharba-shikan
za had ba-guzashtndz-i kaj-kulahan
ba-shakhfgasha-idastarba-shikan
qadahnashanza pfsh-i Ka'baba-guzar
za bad mastfdar-o-diwarba-shikan
(Come, destroy the glitter of the bazaar.
Extricate the thorn with the eye of the gardeners
Exceed the limits of the beloved's coquetry
Defiantly tear the loop of the turban
Go across the Ka'ba, sipping the goblet
Pull down the structures in drunkenness)

Poetry and the poetic imagination to Faizi was something beyond

this world. The poet was to scale the heights, insurmountable for an
average human soul.79
75Muhammad Tahir Ghani Kashmiri, Dfwan (Lucknow, 1931), p. 101.
76Nihawandi, Ma'asir-iRahfmf, p. 848; Shibli Numani, Shi'r-ul-'Ajam,IV, p. 21;
Abdullah, 'Taza-gat: Ek Adabi Tahrik' in idem,Farsf Zuban-o-Adab(Lahore, 1977),
pp. 114-26.
77 Cited in Safa, Tarzkh,V, p. 852-
78 Cited in Nabi Hadi, Mughalonke Malik-ush-Shu'ard(Allahabad, 1978), p. 150.
79 Ibid., p. 90.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 339
Man ba-rah-i mf rawam k-anja qadam na-mahram ast
az maqdm-iharf mt gayam ki dam na-mahram ast
(I walk where steps hesitate treading
I speak from a place where breathing is stifled)
With his poetry the Mughal poet thus aspired to unearth 'the secret
treasures of the unseen world' (ganjfna-i asrar-i ghaibf).80 The poetry
to Naziri was divine.81
Ta ma-pindar kfn qissa ba-khud mi gayam
gash nazdfk labam ar ki dwdz-i hast
(Do not think the story I tell you comes from within me
Come close to me, and you will hear a voice (divine)
This taza-ga'f was inspired in a measure by the poetry of Baba
Fughani;82 but its most distinguishing feature in our period was its
humaneness and here its achievements were unprecedented. While
Faizi gave a call to go beyond 'the limits of the beloved's coquetry',
'Urfi celebrated the enlargement of self where the line between the
success and failure of the individual on the one hand, and his con-
cerns for humanity, on the other, blurs:83
Dar dil-i ma gham-i dunyd gham-i ma'shaq shawad
bada gar kham buwad pukhta kunad shfsha-i ma
(The worries of the world turn in my heart into the ones
for the loved one.
If the wine is unripe, it matures in our goblet)
The sufferings of others the poet thus narrated with the same
intensity as he lamented the afflictions of his heart. Then poetry did
not simply echo the zest of the conqueror, offering a way out from
the prevailing social turmoil; it gave expression to the susceptibilities
of others as well.84

Hamfsha girya-i talkhf dar astfn daram

ba nirkh-i zahrfirosham gar angbfn daram
kas-e ki khana ba hamsayagf-yeman darad
madam khush-dil-ash az nala-i hazfn daram
za dair ta but-o-butkhanamf burad ishqam
khajalat az rukh-i mardan-i rah-i dfn daram
(I have nothing but tears of distress in my sleeves
80 Badakhshani (ed.), Tarikh-iAdabyadt,p. 467.
81 Muhammad Husain Nazirl Nishaparl, Dfwan, ed. Mazahir Musaffa (Tehran,
1340), p. lox.
82 For a discussion around this view, see Razia Akbar, Sharh-iAhwal-o-Asdr-i
Baba
FughanfShirrzi(Hyderabad, 1974), PP- 133-49; see also Abdullah, 'Tdza-gau...'
83 'Urfi Shirazi,
Dfwan, p. 4.
84 Naziri Nishapari, Dfwan, p. 294-
340 MUZAFFAR ALAM

I sell it as a poison [even] if have honey

Whosoever has his house in my neighbourhood
I keep him happy with my cries of woe.
My love takes me from temple to the idol and idolhouse
I am ashamed over the attitude [lit. face] of the people who follow the
path of Faith)
The wounded ego of the vanquished in this poetry then found con-
solation for what they lost, and, more than that, an exaggerated
appreciation for the things of their world.85
Rumaz-iatish mihrfki brahmanna-shigdft
za ahl-i dil na-shunfdam
ki nam mf guftand
(The mysteries of the fire of love which the brahman did not disclose
I did not hear from the people of heart any [other] name [competent to
unveil them])

Throughout the Mughal age, the poet thus showed awareness of

the fact that the realm of the new poetry expanded much beyond
its erstwhile frontiers. In relation to their predecessors, they saw
themselves collectively as original, creative and innovative, even
though each of them diverged from the other and experimented with
new images and tropes in his/her own individual style. Enthralled
with the poetry of his own time, the Mughal poet is obsessed with
a sort of collective ego. Mirza 'Abd-ul-Qadir Bidil (d. 1712), for
instance, had not much in common with 'Urfi, and yet he seems to
be conscious of the fact they both belong to the same group.86
Bafikr-i taza-gayangar khayalampartavandazad
par-i taasgardad,jadwal-i auraq-idiwanha
(If my fantasies radiate the vision of the fresh-speakers
The pages of the divansbecome [colourful like] the wings of the peacock)
Nasir 'Ali Sirhindi (d. 1696), sensitive to the accomplishments of
the Mughal poet, emphasized the difference between the Indian dic-
tion and the one popular with the Iranians and declared boastfully
that 'The Iranian nightingale possessed little [similar] to the grand-
eur of the Indian peacock'.
Bulbul-iIran nadaradjalwa-itais-i Hind87

Still, the Iranians' enviable strength enabled them to dictate terms

in Mughal India as much as in their own home in Iran. The incom-
parable accomplishments of hundreds of Indian Persian writers and
85 'Urfi Shirazi, Dfwan, p. 87.
86 Mirza 'Abd-ul-Qadir Bidil, Kulliydt (Kabul, 1341), p. 81.
87 Badakhshani (ed.), Tarfkh-iAdabryat,p. 465-
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 341
poets and the enthusiasm of thousands of their audience apart, the
Iranians generally rejected outright the Indian usages (istimdl-i Hind,
tasarruf-iHind), following the Indians' centuries-old contact with, and
command over, Persian. This was the case not simply with the Indian
words and phrases; Indian ideas translated into Persian, Indian pro-
nunciation and spellings of certain words were also unacceptable.
The principal Persian philological works of the period, including
Siraj-ul-Lughat of Arzii, Mir'at-ul-Istildhdt of Anand Ram 'Mukhlis',
Mustalahat-ush-Shu'ara' of Siyalkoti Mal 'Warasta' and Bahar-i 'Ajam
of Munshi Tek Chand 'Bahar', were all oriented to update the lan-
guage in the light of the current usages in Iran.88
True, there were some attempts for Indian Persian to acquire an
autonomous position, but these were feeble and exceptional. Arza,
for instance, defends the tasarrufof masters like Mirza Bidil. In fact,
in a bid to legitimize the use of the Indian words in Persian he
earned the distinction of being the first to discover and point out
the correspondence (tawafuq) between Persian and Sanskrit. Besides
Siraj-ul-Lughat and Chirdgh-i Hiddyat, he discusses this at length in
Musmir to show how these two languages are identical. He is con-
scious of his achievement. He writes:"89
To date no one, excepting this humble Arza and his followers, has disco-
vered the tawdfuq(lit. agreement, concord) between Hindi and Persian, even
though there have been numerous lexicographers and other researchers in
both these languages. I have based on this principle in assessing the cor-
rectness of some of the Persian words, which I have illustrated in my books
like Siraj-ul-Lughatand Chiragh-iHidayat.
It is strange that even the author of Farhang-iRashfdfand those others
who lived in India have neglected the tawafuqbetween these two languages.

However., Arza's own writings are largely free from this tasarruf,
implying, perhaps, that the ideal Persian was the unalloyed Iranian
one."9 Even if it may not sound very much relevant here, AmIr Khus-
rau's pride in his Hindavi is noteworthy:9'
Shakkar-iMisrf na-daramkazArabgayamsukhan

88 H. Blochmann, 'Contributions to Persian

Lexicography',Journalof theRoyalAsi-
atic Societyof Bengal (JRASB), vol. 37, pt 1 (1868-69), pp. 1-72.
89 Siraj-ud-Din 'All Khan Arza, Muthmir,ed. Rehana Khatoon (Karachi, 1991),
p. 221; see also Abdullah, Mabahis, I, pp. 70-1. Interestingly, Arzi's theory of tawdfuq
is similar to, perhaps an earlier Indigenous of, William Jones's declaration of the
relationship between the classical languages in 1785, which in turn laid the ground
for the development of comparative philology.
90 I.O. 4015, f. 44b.
9' Mohiuddin, Chancellery,
pp. 23 and 26.
342 MUZAFFAR ALAM

Turk-iHindustani-yamdarHindavfgayamjawab.
(I have no Egyptian sugar with which to talk to an Arab,
I am an Indian Turk, I reply in Hindavi)
And he assertively boasted of the style mixed with the Indian delight-
ful artifices, unmindful of how the Tranxonians and the Khurasanis
reacted.
Possibly eighteenth-century social and political conditions had a
bearing on Arzo's position, which can be called ambiguous. On the
one hand, there was pressure from the high Mughal culture which
was more in support of an unmixed Iranized idiom, on the other, as
a reaction to this influence, the newly risen Indian 'upstarts'
threatened, sometimes, to dislodge the established elite.92 Arzi
attempted a kind of a compromise. He discovered Hindi's affinity
with Persian, which incidentally was not a mere political ploy, and
thus satisfied the urge of the upcoming elite. But in practice he
maintained a position close to the one favoured by the established
elite.
Arza also led a literary debate against Shaikh 'Ali 'Hazin' (d.
1766), the eminent Iranian poet who came and settled in India in
the period and who was generally dismissive about the Indian Persian
poetry just because in his assessment it did not come up to the con-
temporary Iranian linguistic standards. But, interestingly, here
again, Arza ventured to correct Hazin in the light of the old estab-
lished Persian usages,93 or he simply pointed out the illogicality of
some of the expressions in Hazin's verses. At any rate, Hazin had
many followers (kasa-lUsan= cup-lickers) among the Indians. Some
were unhappy with Arza's criticism and wrote rejoinders in support
of Hazin.94

Persian, Hindavi and the Mughals: Indifference and

Appropriation

Persian in Mughal India, its wide use, long career and unparalleled
contributions apart, continued to be taken as a foreign language.
92 Compare, for some evidence, Khwushal Chand,
Nddir-uz-Zamanr,British
Museum Ms. Or. 1654, ff- 95b-96a and 11 la-13a; see also M. Alam, 'Eastern India
in Early 18th Century Crisis', Indian Economicand Social HistoryReview,vol. 28, no.
1 (January-March 1991), pp. 69-71.
93 Compare, Arza, Tanbfh-ul-Ghafilfn,ed. S. M. Akram, 'Ikram' (Lahore, 1981).
94 Warasta, for instance, wrote Rajm-ush-Shayatin;
Azad Bilgrami was also critical
of Arzo, cf. Ikram's Introduction to Tanbfh-ul-Ghafilin.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 343
Indeed, it was through the vicissitudes of its growth under the Mug-
hals that it acquired a rather unequivocal Iranian identity. And as
Persian signified high culture, being a language alien to the vast
number of people, it perpetuated the distance between the rulers
and the ruled. The Mughals in their fascination for Persian failed to
give meaningful patronage to any language of the land. It was only
in the late seventeenth century, when the regions began to assert
their autonomy, that there seems to be a kind of Mughal policy to
learn and encourage Hindavi.
This is not to suggest that the Mughals were totally indifferent
to the Indian languages. Far from it. In fact Babur mentions many
Hindustani words in his Memoir, and in a dfwzn of his preserved in
Riza Library, Rampur, scholars have also noticed a Hindavi couplet.95
There is not much information for this purpose from Humayin's
reign. Akbar grew up in India, married a Rajput princess and there-
fore it is not illogical to believe that he spoke good Hindavi, at least
in its Rajputana form. Akbar's chroniclers attribute to him a large
number of words and expressions, for almost every occasion, while
many phrases in the Memoir of the next Mughal ruler,Jahangir, who
was born to a Rajput mother, appear to be the obvious translations of
Hindavi expressions.96 Both Akbar and Jahangir were also fond of
giving Hindi names to their pets and favourite animals. We come
across elephants in the royal stable called Rap-sundar, Ratan-gaj,
Ran-rawat, Gaj-raj, Fauj-singar, etc. A very special deer of Jahangir
was called Hans-raj.97 It is interesting to note that Jahangir some-
times distinguishes common Hindavi from the language of the
Hindus.98 Jahangir's successors, Shahjahan and then Aurangzeb,
according to their court chroniclers, had full command over 'Hindus-
tani'.99 With the Great Mughals are also associated the names of

95 Denison Ross's edition of Dfvdn-iBaburPadishahwith comments and Introduc-

tion inJRASB, vol. 6, New Series (Extra number, 1910), pp. 1-43.
96 Note, for instance, zada zada in Tuzak-iJahangfri,p. 103: wa zada zada dn makh-
zalan ra dar mahall-iki ddirakardabadand,dar mf awurdand;and surkhsurkhon p. 105;
waqt-i ki dar mastfast, surkhsurkhast, gaya ki tamdmrd ba marjan-imurassa'sakhta;and
kalankalan on p. 240; wa mauja-hakalankalanba-nazardar-dmad.
97 Tuzak, pp. 44, 66, 141, 167 and 189.
98 Tuzak, p. 144.
99 'Abdul Hamid Lahori, Badshdh-ndma, ed. by Kabiruddin and Abdur Rahim, Bibl.
Ind. (Calcutta, 1866) vol. I, p. 132; Muhammad Kazim, 'Alamgfr-nama, ed. Khadim
Husain and Abdul Hai (Calcutta, 1873), p. 1095; for Aurangzeb's and his son
Muhammad A'zam's interest in Hindi, see also Suniti Kumar Chatterji, 'A Verse
by Guru Nanak in the Adi GranthQuoted by Emperor Aurangzib Alamgir', Selected
Papers,II, New Delhi, May 1978, pp. 185-93-
344 MUZAFFAR ALAM

some Hindavi poets and of a couple of Sanskrit lexicographers.100

Further, the compositions of the Indian musicians encouraged so
generously by the Mughals were, in general, in Indian languages.'o1
However, there is little in our sources to suggest if Hindavi at any
stage in the seventeenth century was regarded as a language of the
Mughal court or administration.102This was in sharp contrast to the
developments in the regional Sultanates. Ibrahim 'Adil Shah, who
ascended the throne in Bijapur, the Deccan, in 942/1535-36, is
reported to have proclaimed Hindavi (in this case Marathi) as the
language of his government, entrusting all the important adminis-
trative and financial offices to the Brahmans.'03 Further, from the
Barid Shahi Sultanate of Bidar (1503-1619), we have at least some
inscriptions both in Persian and Marathi,'04while local language had
the honour of being the language of the Sultan in Golconda. Ibrahim
Qutb Shah encouraged the growth of Telugu and his successor
Muhammad QulI Qutb Shah patronized and himself wrote poetry in
Telugu and in Dakhni.'05 Abdullah Qutb Shah instituted a special
office to prepare the royal edicts in Telugu (dabfrf-yefaramrn-i
Hindavr).While administrative and revenue papers at local levels in
the Qutb Shahi Sultanate were prepared largely in Telugu, the royal
edicts were often bilingual.'06 The last Qutb Shahi Sultan, Abul
Hasan Tana Shah, sometimes issued his orders only in Telugu, with
a Persian summary given on the back of thefarmans.'07

100 Compare, for instance, Keshavdas'sJahdngfrJas Chandrikain KeshavdasGran-

thavalr, ed. V. P. Misra (V. Samvat 2026), and a Sanskrit-Persian dictionary by
Karnpur prepared on Jahangir's order. The dictionary has been edited by Narharin-
ath Yogi and published in 2009 Vikram Samvat from Gorakshpith, Nepal.
101
Dhrupadand Khayalcompositions, for instance, from Shahjahan's time.
102Some historians of Urda language, however, claim that in Shahjahan's time
familiarity with Urdi (Hindavi) was an essential requirement for state service. Cf.
Jamil Jalibi, Tdrrkh-iAdab-i Urda, reprint (Delhi, 1989), I, pp. 69-70.
103 Muhammad Ibrahim Farishta, Tarfkh-iFarishta (Lucknow, 1281/1864),
II, p.
49; see also Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan, Muntakhab-ul-Lubdb, ed. K. D. Ahmad
and Woseley Haig (Calcutta, 1925), III, pp. 20o6-7.
104G. Yazdani, Bidar:Its Historyand Monuments,pp. 140-203, cited in P. M. Joshi
and H. K. Sherwani (eds), Histotyof MedievalDeccan(Hyderabad, 1973), I, PP- 395-6.
'05 H. K. Sherwani, MuhammadQulf Qutb Shah: Founderof Haiderabad(Bombay,
1967), pp. 44-55-
106 Mirza Nizam-ud-Din Ahmad al-Sa'idi al-Shirazi,
Hadrqat-us-Salatin,ed. S.
Asghar Ali Bilgrami (Hyderabad, 1931), pp. 36 and 41; see alsoJoshi and Sherwani
(eds), Historyof MedievalDeccan,I, pp. 40 and 48.
107 Andhra Pradesh State Archives, farmans dated (a) lo88/1677 about a land
grant; (b) oo1090/1679 pertaining to the weekly marts of Wanepur, Ibrahimpattan;
(c) 1093/1682 about a land grant; and (d) lo087/1676 about the construction of a
temple at Wanipur, Ibrahimpattan.
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 345
On the contrary, the memory about the Great Mughals in the
regions was that they discouraged the local languages. Legend goes
that when Akbar conquered Gujarat, all the poets and writers of the
local language of the province fled to, and took shelter in, the courts
of the Deccan Sultans.'08 However, the compilation of Tuhfat-ul-Hind
by Mirza Khan later in Aurangzeb's reign possibly signified a serious
and organized effort to persuade the Mughal elite to learn the local
language and script. The book, divided into seven chapters dealing
with different popular branches of Indian sciences, begins with an
analysis of Hindi alphabets, script and essential grammar. At the
end of the book (khatima) is a detailed glossary of the words, phrases,
idioms and similes used by the people of Hind.109 Mirza Khan wrote
the book for the princes with an intention to inspire them and equip
them to learn current traditional Indian sciences ('ulam-i mutadaw-
ila-i Hindryya). The noted late seventeenth-early eighteenth-century
Hindi poet, Vrind, was reportedly among the teachers of Prince
Muhammad 'Azim."0 Again, the preparation of formal Hindi-Per-
sian dictionaries, in particular Ghard'ib-ul-Lughat by Mir 'Abd-ul-
Wasi' of Hansi, at this stage was also perhaps an attempt in this
direction, even though the principal objective of these dictionaries,
as their compilers stated, was to provide Persian equivalents to the
Hindavi words in common use."'
There is evidence of increasing interest of the Mughals in Hindavi/
Braj poetry in the early eighteenth century. Aurangzeb's grandson,
Prince Muhammad Rafi-ush-Shan wrote poetry in Hindi under the
pen-name of 'Nyayi'."2 'Abd-ur-Rahman Premi, a well-known Reeti-
kal poet, was patronized by the Emperor Farrukh Siyar (1712-19).113

108 Cf. Abdul Majid Siddiqi, Thrfkh-iGolconda(Hyderabad,1964), p. 395-

109Compare, for instance, the Biblioth'que Nationale, Paris MS., Blochet I, 235-
Nurul Hasan Ansari edited the Introduction first five chapters and published the
book from Tehran, 1536. In this edition, however, the first part, Introduction
(muqaddima)is not printed in full. The Hindi alphabets in Nagri character have
invariably been omitted.
10 Compare Vrind, VrindSatsai, ed. Bhagwandeen (Allahabad, 190o8), editor's
Introduction; see also R. C. Shukl, Hindf Sahitya ka Itihas (Kashi, Samvat 2035), p.
225.
"'
Compare Masud Husain Rizvi Adeeb, 'Urdi kI Qadim Lughat', reprinted in
the Journal of theKhudaBakhshOrientalPublicLibrary(Patna, 1993), Special No. Inti-
khabaz Risala Hindustani (Allahabad, 1931-48), p. 18, for the Preface of 'Aja'ib-ul-
Lughat,which Ajmeri Palwali compiled, based on 'Abd-ul-Wasi'sGhara'ib,sometime
in the early eighteenth century.
112 Muhammad Hadi Kamwar Khan, Tazkirat-us-SalatfnChaghta, ed. Muzaffar
Alam (Bombay, 1980), p. 157-
113 'Abd-ur-RahmanPremi, Nakh-Sikh,ed. Iqbal Ahmad (Bombay, 1959), editor's
Introduction. For an analysis of his poetry, see also Sandhya Sharma, 'Aspects of
346 MUZAFFAR ALAM

One of his nobles patronized Nawaz, a Braj poet, who rewrote Shan-
kuntala, adapting from both the story of the Mahabhdrat and the
drama of Kalidas. Nawaz then earned the coveted title of 'Kabish-
war' or poet laureate from the Emperor."14 The title, in contrast to
the one of Kab-rdi awarded by Shahjahan, assumes special signific-
ance in view of the fact that at Farrukh Siyar's court there was no
poet laureate in Persian. Later, Emperor Shah Alam II (1761-1818)
composed poetry in Hindi, using both the Nagri and Persian
scripts."" All this must have affected the dominance of Persian. A
simultaneous drive at Persianization of Hindavi, however, offset the
balance.
In the face of the asserting regional forces in the eighteenth cen-
tury the Mughals accorded a respectable position to Hindavi by
admitting it in their sarkars, but many of them also saw to it that it
was heavily Persianized. In the first place, even as Mirza Khan pre-
pared a manual for the Mughal elites to learn Hindi script, Hindavi,
if it was to be a language of this class, was to be written only in
Persian script. Secondly, it would thenceforth be given the name of
the language of the imperial camp (zubdn-i Urdz-i mu'alla, zuban-i
Urda-i Shahf). In other words, it was the language that evolved at
the Mughal camp, and not the language of the region, which the
Mughals recognized and appropriated.
Both these positions have been argued out fairly cogently in the
writings of Arza, which represented best the Mughal stand during
the period. He prepared his own Hindi-Persian dictionary, Nawadir-
ul-Alfaz, and even if he based it on MIr 'Abd-ul-Wasi"s Ghard'ib, he
dismissed many words used by him as the ones belonging to 'the
tongue of the illiterates (zubdn-ijuhhal)'. While 'Abd-ul-Wasi' charac-
terized as correct and lucid (fasfh) in Hindavi many of the Indianized
or rather locally corrupt spellings/pronunciations of the Persian
words, Arza insisted on their original Persian forms. In a discussion
on Persian, Pahlavi and Darn, Arzai says that the most accurate and
elegant form of a language is the one spoken at a royal camp. For it

Society and Culture in Reeti Poetry', unpublished M.Phil. Dissertation, Jawaharlal

Nehru University (New Delhi, 1991).
114 Nawaz Kabishwar, Shakuntala
(Varanasi, 1924). See also an Urdu prose ver-
sion of the same prepared by Kazim At Jawan in 18oi01,reprinted with Introduction
and notes by Muhammad Aslam Quraishi (Lahore, 1963); Masud Hasan Rizvi
Adeeb, 'Nawaz aur Shakuntala Natak', Nuqoosh(Lahore,June 1963).
"5 Compare Shah Alam II, Nadirat-i Shahf, ed. Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi (Rampur,
1944)-
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 347
is the language of the camp which the king and his nobles speak,
and which is distinctly different from the language of the villagers
and the people of petty towns. Prose and poetry of high standards
are written only in this language."6
Again, Hindavi poetry was made to conform to the Persian stand-
ards. The transition in the poetry of Wall Dakkani (d. 1712), which
was composed earlier, dominantly in 'Indo-Aryan traditions', to a
diction full of 'Persian subjects and themes', illustrated the extent
of Persianization of Hindavi.L
By Persianizing Hindavi, the Mughals intended to purify the lan-
guage and thus raise it to a level commensurate with their culture
and life-style. We have seen how Arzf refused to incorporate in his
'language of the royal camp' the Hindavized Persian words. Here,
again, Arzii's position deserves special notice. In the matter of Per-
sian he defended, even if with a reservation, tasarruf-iHind or Mughal
Indian Persian in the face of the onslaught against it by the Iranians
and their Indian 'cup-lickers' and thus asserted the sovereignty of
the Mughals. In the matter of Hindavi, he took a position of recon-
ciliation and, having done assiduous research on tawafuq and thus
legitimating his stand, adjusted to the demands of the rising regions.
None the less, he firmly declined to compromise on the supremacy
of the culture of the Mughal court.
Arza found strong support for this in Shah Hatim, another notable
Mughal writer and poet of the period. In 1755, Hatim laid down
principles to replace the local words by Perso-Arabic ones with their
original spellings."8 Arza and Hatim's positions echoed the delibera-
tions of the meetings which used to take place at the havelf of Amir
Khan (d. 1744) and where a number of nobles and notables
assembled to listen to Persian poetry and consider 'reforms' of
Hindavi poetry and prose."9 Amir Khan, it may be noted, was a
patron of Persian poets and an important leader of 'the Iranian
lobby' in Muhammad Shah's reign (1719-48). It was Amir Khan who
first welcomed Hazin and arranged his jqgfr on the latter's arrival
from Iran.'20 As the Persianized Mughals adopted Hindavi, they

116 Arza, Muthmir,p. 9; Abdullah, Mahahis,pp. 59-82 and 76-7.

17 For a discussion on Persianization of Hindavi, see Amrit Rai, A HouseDivided:
The Originand Developmentof Hindi/Hindavf (Delhi, 1984), pp. 226-84. Amrit Rai's
argument is, however, centred on cultural (read religious) factors only.
118 Ibid., pp. 249-50.
S. Nasir Husain Khan, Mughalaur
119 Urda (Calcutta, 1933), pp. 50-61.
120 Ahmad All Sandilavi, Makhzan-ul-Ghard'ib,ed. Muhammad Baqar (Lahore,
1968), I, p. 8oi.
348 MUZAFFAR ALAM

changed its direction as well. From the language of a region it turned

to be the language of the royal camp.

Conclusion

There may have been many reasons for the unprecedented rise of
Persian in Mughal India-a desire on the part of Akbar to pay off
the debt the Mughals owed to Iran, the necessity to counteract the
ambitious Chaghtai nobles and thus promote Iranians in Mughal
service, an urge to compete with and excel the Iranian Shah, among
other things by encouraging the Iranian intellectuals and poets to
come over and settle in India, the sheer force of the Persianized
Muslim civilization of Central and West Asia and its inevitable and
logical extension to Mughal India. All of them may have influenced
the trajectory of the development of the language; or just one of
them or a combination of two or three would have been decisive for
its dominance at a given stage. It is a moot point if Akbar by patron-
izing the Iranians could neutralize the awe the Iranian Shah had
exercised over the Mughal household in the early phase. In his
regime, certainly, a process set in to rapidly Iranize the Mughal liter-
ary culture. However, the choice of Persian, as the language of the
empire was, in a very large measure, also in consideration of the
specific Indian conditions. The non-sectarian and liberal feature of
Persian made it an ideal forum through which the Mughals could
effectively negotiate the diversities of the Indian society. The culture
and the ethos of the language matched with their vision of an over-
arching empire. Persian became a particularly useful instrument for
political manoeuvrability, also because pre-Mughal India had
developed familiarity with the language.
A large part of the long spell of Mughal rule saw the evolution of
the language from a merely state-building tool to a social and cul-
tural signifier, and eventually to a major definer of Mughal identity.
Knowledge of Persian, to begin with, remained confined to the court,
from the exalted portals of which it demarcated the conquerors from
the vanquished. But soon it moved beyond and percolated down to
the lower rungs of administration.
With the popularization of Persian along the chain of administrat-
ive and political command also continued its Islamic overtone. Per-
sian, like Arabic, was seen as the language of Islam. The elite
Mughal identity which was not necessarily religiously defined then
 LANGUAGE IN MUGHAL POLITICS 349
came to acquire an Islamic tinge as well. However, in the Mughals'
efforts to purge Persian from the non-Persian, including the Arabic,
words, conflict between the Indian and Iranian diction and in the
eventual domination of the latter over the former one could also see
a continuous endeavour to define their power and political identity
in non-religious idioms.
Late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century politics brought to
the fore a serious threat from the region to the central elite identity.
The initial Mughal response to this danger was one of modifying the
provincial institutions. Soon, however, the increasing cultural
affirmation of the region expressed in its linguistic diversity had to
be accommodated in more meaningful ways. They recognized the
need to culturally integrate and accommodate with, and not simply
to dominate, the regions. This could be illustrated from the interest
they showed in Hindavi. Yet Hindavi was first Persianized before its
entry into the charmed circle of the Mughal echelons. The linguistic
contestations had no religious bearings; they reflected, however, once
again the tensions between the peoples in the regions and the Pers-
ianized Mughal elites. It is difficult to say if it was because of the
intrinsic strength of the language or just in consideration of its asso-
ciation with power and prestige that the indigenous subordinate
ruling groups and 'bureaucracy' appropriated Persian.