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Mughal Courtly Literature: Perspectives on Gender, Politics, and Religion
Organizer: Rajeev K. Kinra, University of Chicago
Chair: Sunil Sharma, Boston University
Discussant: Allison R. Busch, Columbia University
The papers on this panel will examine multiple ways in which specific cultural and political currents in seventeenth-century Mughal India re-imagined traditional forms of Persian literary production. The literary culture of the high Mughal period was a courtly enterprise, linked to a complex patronage system, encompassing multiple languages and groups. Moreover, by the seventeenth century the second and third generations of Mughals in India, having attained a certain distance from their Timurid ancestors, had become quite comfortable with local Indic traditions and non-courtly milieus. The nature of their textual production reflects this increased familiarity, even as it augurs the twilight of the existing high Persianate culture, before the onset of more well-known eighteenth-century transformations (the flowering of Urdu, the consolidation of British power, etc.). In this context literary texts, whether by professional writers or the Mughals themselves, also served as one among many strategies for promoting the imperial vision of a non-sectarian religio-political ethic of “peace with all”—a process that not only involved the production of Persian translations of Sanskrit texts, culminating in Dara Shikoh’s expansive intellectual projects, but also opened up spaces for women such as the princesses Jahanara and Zebunnisa to express their poetry and piety. Unfortunately, previous scholarship has not fully been able to link all these aspects of the Mughal literary cultural ethos with the innovative ways in which such texts also address religious, political and gender issues. This panel thus hopes to be an initial step toward rectifying this oversight.
The Loves of a Princess: Zebunnisa and Persian Poets and Poetry
Sunil Sharma, Boston University
Mughal princesses had a marginal involvement in the literary scene of their time, which was characterized by a distinctively homoerotic ethos. The empress Nur Jahan, Princess Jahanara, daughter of the emperor Shah Jahan, and her niece Princess Zebunnisa, daughter of the emperor Aurangzeb, were patrons of the arts, but were also poets in their own right. The largest body of poetry, chiefly in the form of ghazals, is attributed to Zebunnisa, whose name is linked to various prominent men of letters of the time. These relationships are represented by sources as either scandalous sexual liaisons or frustrated attempts at breaking out of enforced chastity that was the lot of Mughal princesses. Such anecdotes have persisted until modern times and continue to challenge received notions about the complexities of gender and sexuality in Mughal courtly life. In the process of understanding how and why this persona of Zebunnisa emerged when it did, this paper will deal with a set of pertinent problems that are central to understanding Mughal court culture in the late seventeenth century: the changing dynamics and nature of the production of Persian literary texts following the golden age of high Mughal culture, the observations of outsiders in the form of European travelers who offer an alternate perspective on the domestic life of the Mughals, and most importantly the emergence of female voices in this poetic tradition.
Illuminator of the Timurid Flame: Jahanara Begum’s Patronage, Piety and Poetic Prowess
Afshan Bokhari, Suffolk University
This paper examines the role Sufism and its ideology played in the patronage and piety of the 17th century Mughal princess, Jahanara Begum (c. 1614-1681), daughter of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (c. 1592-1666). In the seventeenth century Risala i Sahibbiyya (Madam’s treatise), the Mughal princess Jahanara Begum records her initiation and journey into the Qadiriyaah order of Sufism under the auspices of her Sufi master mullah Shah Badakhshi. The treatise, interspersed with Jahanara’s personal poetic ruminations, is a narrative of the princess’ spiritual and inner journey guided by Sufi principles which ultimately glorify and perpetuate the Mughal’s Timurid legacy and history as a function of her piety. Through this manuscript we gain access to a rare personal account of an elite Muslim woman’s spiritual quest and consider how Sufism and its doctrine ‘constructed’ a sacred and genderless sphere in which Jahanara Begum cultivated her spiritual ‘voice’ and identity as a Sufi disciple, patron of the arts and scholar in the literary and spiritual landscape of seventeenth century Mughal, India. Further, the treatise serves as visible evidence of the princess’ piety and patronage of Sufi ritual and practice and how these mystical affinities may have sanctioned a weaker parda (veiled) hold on the unmarried princess and facilitated participation in the public socio-religious milieu not as a ‘veiled’ spectator but as an active contributor.
“The Heart is Me and You”: A Mughal Conversation about Familiarity and Difference
Rajeev K. Kinra, University of Chicago
In 1653, Prince Dara Shukoh visited a renowned Hindu yogi, one Baba Lal Dayal, with whom he held a number of dialogues not only about abstruse principles of Hindu theology (metempsychosis, paramatma, and the like), but also, significantly, on the nature of kingship, numerous Islamic precepts, Sufi traditions, “Persian books,” and Qur’anic exegesis. Throughout, these conversations reflect a mood not of incommensurate other-ness, but rather of a priori familiarity, of a mutually intelligible religio-political idiom that informs and structures even the articulation of specific difference. The broad applicability of such an idiom in Mughal India is also reflected in the dialogues’ literary afterlife. Originally conducted in “Hindi,” they were transformed for public dissemination into ornate Persian by the celebrated munshi Chandar Bhan “Brahman,” and maintained a place in the Hindustani intellectual imaginaire well into the 18th century, when a versified version was incorporated into Anandaghana’s eclectic Persian Masnavi-yi Kajkulah (1794). This long trajectory prompts serious critical reflection on the prevailing image of Dara’s intellectual project as an exceptional “experiment in Hindu-Muslim unity” (cf. Massignon). This paper will thus try to situate the dialogues and their complex textual reception as part of an ongoing Mughal project to comprehend, transfer, and consume the shared idiom and sensibility of which they are only one instance—a context in which facile notions of “otherness” and “identity” become, at best, elusive, and are replaced by what Baba Lal himself calls “affirmative duality vis-à-vis the friend.”
The Topography of Hindustan in a Persian Ramayana: Masih Panipati's Masnavi-yi Ram va Sita
Supriya Gandhi, Harvard University
The numerous Persian renditions of the Rama story produced during the Mughal era are often cited in modern scholarship as initiatives towards Hindu-Muslim rapprochement. Notable among them is the prose translation commissioned by the emperor Akbar, completed in 1580 by his unwilling courtier Badayuni. Akbar’s move of rendering the Rama story into Persian addressed various facets of his imperial project including his aim of countering sectarian divisiveness. This paper seeks to highlight the diverse range of Mughal responses to the Rama story through examining the Masnavi-yi Ram va Sita of Sa’dullah ‘Masih’ Panipati, a poet writing during the reign of the Mughal emperor Jahangir (1605-1627). Masih’s narrative poem eludes categorization as an exercise in Hindu-Muslim dialogue. Rather, I argue, Masih’s creative casting of the Rama story as a tale of both mystical and earthly love, set in an imaginary Indic landscape, speaks to an audience of mystically-inclined afficionados of Persian literature. I situate this poem within literary conventions regarding such engagements with Indic themes that were emerging by Masih's time, exploring how Masih builds on the works of his forbears to depict an idealized topography of India as a land peopled by exemplary lovers and beloveds, such as Rama and Sita.