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Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal Court*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2010

ALLISON BUSCH
ALLISON BUSCH*
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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

Type
Forum: Knowledges in circulation in early modern India
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , March 2010 , pp. 267 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 ‘Brajbhasha’ had many names in the premodern period, including ‘Bhasha’, ‘Hindi’, and ‘Gwaliyari’ (among others). I employ the term ‘Brajbhasha’ because it is the standard designation today, while registering that the very name reinforces the dominant Vaishnava perspective that this paper seeks to nuance.

2 The rise of Persian as the Mughal court language has been magisterially traced in Alam, Muzaffar, ‘The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1998), pp. 317–349CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He does mention a few eighteenth-century vernacular poets (see especially pp. 343–346), but does not treat those who were active in earlier periods, which is the primary concern of this investigation. Owing to scholars such as Nalini Delvoye, dhrupad, a type of Braj composition that was sung in Mughal music circles, is somewhat better understood than poetry more generally. A good overview is Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye, ‘Les chants dhrupad en langue braj des poètes-musiciens de l'Inde Moghole’ in Mallison, Françoise (ed.), Littératures médiévales de l'Inde du nord (Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient 1991), pp. 139–185Google Scholar.

3 The Hindi-Urdu struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been well studied and need no rehearsing here. A now classic account is King, Christopher, One Language, Two Scripts: the Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

4 The canonical periodization of Hindi literature is Shukla, Ramcandra, Hindī sāhitya kā itihās (Varanasi, 1994 [1929])Google Scholar. A critique of this paradigm is Busch, Allison, ‘Questioning the Tropes about “Bhakti” and “Rīti” in Hindi Literary Historiography’ in Horstmann, Monika (ed.), Bhakti in Current Research, 2001–2003 (Delhi: Manohar, 2006), pp. 33–47Google Scholar.

5 See, for instance, Nagendra (ed.), Hindī sāhitya kā itihās (New Delhi: Mayur Paperbacks, 1995 [1973]), pp. 281–287.

6 Braj couplets have been attributed to most of the Mughal emperors in Pandey, Candrabali, Mughal bādśāhõ kī hindī (Varanasi: Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1940)Google Scholar.

7 See ‘Glossary’ at the end of this paper for English translations.

8 For this and other verses attributed to the poetess Pravin Ray see Pandey, Sudhakar (ed.), Hindī Kāvyagaṅgā (Varanasi: Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1990), Vol. 1, p. 201Google Scholar.

9 An analysis of this episode is Hawley, John Stratton, Three Bhakti Voices (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 182–183Google Scholar. According to McGregor, R.S., six of the eight Braj poets consecrated by the Vallabhans as aṣṭachāp (eight seals) are said to have been brought before Akbar. See his The Round Dance of Krishna and Uddhav's Message (London: Luzac, 1973), p. 32Google Scholar, note 7.

10 Similar processes of literary memory formation in South India have been discussed in Rao, Velcheru Narayana and Shulman, David, A Poem at the Right Moment (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 1–25Google Scholar.

11 The lost dīvān of Masud Sad Salman of the Ghaznavid court and other instances of early vernacular poetry in Indo-Muslim settings are discussed in Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman, ‘A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 1’ in Pollock, Sheldon (ed.), Literary Cultures in History (Berkeley: University of California, 2003), pp. 819–825Google Scholar. Also see McGregor, R.S., Hindi Literature from its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984), pp. 8–28Google Scholar.

12 On Manjhan's work and the genre of Sufi love stories see Behl, Aditya and Weightman, Simon (trans.), Madhumālatī: An Indian Sufi Romance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. xiv–xixGoogle Scholar; some details about Farmuli are in the Ma’ā ir-al Kirām of Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami (Hyderabad, Kutubkhanah-i Asifiyah, 1913), pp. 352–356.

13 Alam, ‘Pursuit of Persian’ (1998), p. 317.

14 As Derryl MacLean has noted, transcriptions of religious debates that took place at Fatehpur Sikri between Sheikh Mustafa Gujarati, a Mahdavi leader, and members of Akbar's court ‘reveal a congenial if slightly dim-witted and naïve Akbar who delights in exemplary tales and poetry, especially dohras [i.e. dohās] in the vernacular.’ Apparently the only Hindavi portions of this text occur in sessions where Akbar is present and, whereas the Arabic portions were translated into Persian for the emperor's benefit, Hindavi needed no such mediation. See MacLean, Derryl N., ‘Real Men and False Men at the Court of Akbar’ in Gilmartin, David and Lawrence, Bruce B. (eds.), Beyond Turk and Hindu (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), p. 203Google Scholar, and note 17.

15 According to Wheeler Thackston, Jahangir occasionally included Hindi words in his Persian memoirs. He also took pride in his Timurid ancestry: upon reading his grandfather's Turkish memoirs he wrote a sentence in Turkish and declaimed, ‘Although I grew up in Hindustan, I am not ignorant of how to speak or write Turkish.’ See Wheeler Thackston, (ed. and tr.), Jahāngīrnāma (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. xvi, 77.

16 Entwistle, Alan, Braj: Centre of Krishna Pilgrimage (Groningen: E Forsten, 1987), pp. 151–166Google Scholar.

17 Alam, ‘Pursuit of Persian’ (1998), p. 343. Babur, like Jahangir, also mentions some local Hindi words in his memoirs.

18 Shaikh Abdul Bilgrami and Shaikh Gadai Delhavi, both associated with Humayun's court, are said to have sung compositions in Hindi. See Pandey, Mughal bādśāhõ, pp. 6–7. Humayun's patronage of Braj poets is discussed in Agraval, Sarayu Prasad, Akbarī darbār ke hindī kavi (Lucknow: Lucknow University, 1950), pp. 27–29, 298–304, 309–333Google Scholar.

19 H. Blochmann and H.S. Jarrett (ed. and tr.), Ā’īn-i Akbarī of Abu'l Fazl (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1994 [1927–1949]), Vol. 3, pp. 260–273. A more general discussion of music at Akbar's court (in which Tansen is mentioned) is Vol 1, pp. 680–682.

20 Poems attributed to Karnesh and Manohar are excerpted in Pandey (ed.), Hindī Kāvyagaṅgā (1990), pp. 184, 467. Discussions of Braj poets at Akbar's court include Agraval (1950), Akbarī darbār, and McGregor, Hindi Literature (1984), pp. 118–22. Two verses attributed to Faizi are discussed in Zaidi, Shailesh, Hindī ke katipay musalmān kavi (Aligarh: University Publishing House, 1977), pp. 97–110, 135–140Google Scholar.

21 (‘ab’-i ilhām-pazīr-i ān ḥarat bih guftan-i naẓm-i hindī ū fārsī bih ghayāt-i muvāfiq uftādah dar daqā’iq-i takhayyulāt-i shi'rī-yi nuktah-sanjī ū mū-shigāfī [i.e. shikāfī] mīfarmāyand.) My translation is modified from Beveridge, Henry (trans.), The Akbarnāma of Abul Fazl: History of the Reign of Akbar Including an Account of His Predecessors (Delhi: Ess Ess Publications, 1977), Vol 1, p. 520Google Scholar; a sampling of Hindi verses attributed to Akbar is in Pandey (ed.), Hindī Kāvyagaṅgā (1990), p. 463.

22 Birbal's title is mentioned in W.H. Lowe (ed. and tr.), Muntakhab ut Tavārīkh of Abdul Qadir al-Badauni (Karachi: Karimsons, 1976 [1884]), Vol 2, p. 164, and Vrajratna Das (ed. and tr.), Ma’ā ir al-Umarā of Shah Newaz Khan (Varanasi: Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1984), Vol 1, p. 128. Birbal's purported Hindi compositions are anthologized in Sinha, Parmeshwar Prasad, Raja Birbal, Life and Times (Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1980), pp. 170–177Google Scholar. Birbal's inclusion in the Hindi canon of the eighteenth century is evident from Vishvanathprasad Mishra (ed.), Kāvyanirṇay of Bhikharidas in Bhikhārīdāsgranthāvalī (Varanasi: Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1957), Vol 2, v. 1.17.

23 Krishna, Bate (ed.), Gaṅg-kabitt (Varanasi: Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1960), p. 8Google Scholar. The author compiled this collection from both printed and manuscript copies of Hindi poetry anthologies.

24 Ibid, pp. 88–117; also see Agraval, Sarayu Prasad (ed.), Gaṅggranthāvalī (New Delhi: Kendriya Hindi Nideshalay, 1970), pp. 234–269Google Scholar.

25 Mishra (ed.), Kāvyanirṇay (1957), v. 1.17.

26 The others were Chand Bardai, Kabir, Tulsi, Bihari, Keshavdas and Sur. See Price, William, Hindee and Hindoostanee Selections (Calcutta: Hindoostanee Press, 1827), Vol 1, pp. viii–xGoogle Scholar.

27 Vishvanathprasad Mishra (ed.), Kavipriyā, in Keśavgranthāvalī (Allahabad: Hindustani Academy, 1954–1959), Vol 1, vv. 2.18–20.

28 Mishra (ed.), Kavipriyā (1954), vv. 6.62–76. Keshavdas also laments the death of Birbal while praising his generosity in Vīrsiṃhdevcarit (Deeds of Bir Singh Deo, 1607), v. 1.64, in Mishra (ed.), Keśavgranthāvalī.

29 Iraj Khan, like his father, had a distinguished military career and participated in many Mughal campaigns in the Deccan. Some highlights are in the biographical notes of Ā’īn-i Akbarī, Vol 1, pp. 550–551.

30 Kishori Lal (ed.), Jahāngīrjascandrikā of Keshavdas (Allahabad: Sahitya Bhavan, 1994), vv. 9–10.

31 See Lal (ed.), Jahāngīrjascandrikā, vv. 51–98. It is notable that v. 87, which is in honour of Birbal's son ‘Dhiradharu’, again showcases Birbal's generosity.

32 Thackston (ed.), Jahāngīrnāma, p. 93.

33 Ibid., 239. Nalini Delvoye has also called attention to how this passage signals Jahangir's ‘thorough knowledge of the literary Braj language and his familiarity with the Indian imagery which. . . [the poets] employ.’ See Françoise ‘Nalini’ Delvoye, ‘Dhrupad Songs Attributed to Tānsen, Foremost Court-Musician of the Mughal Emperor Akbar’ in Entwistle, Alan W. and Mallison, Françoise (eds.), Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature (Delhi: Manohar, 1994), pp. 414–415Google Scholar.

34 Lal (ed.), Jahāngīrjascandrikā (1994), v. 34. As usual, though, it is difficult to assess whether Keshavdas is describing reality or invoking a classical injunction that kings should be connoisseurs of literature. Compare the same poet's Kavipriyā, v. 11.23, in which a nearly identical verse references Raja Indrajit. Vishvanathprasad Mishra (ed.), Kavipriyā, in Keśavgranthāvalī, Vol 1.

35 Keshavdas had also mentioned his desire to retire in his penultimate work, Vijñāngītā (Discourse on Wisdom, 1610) written for Bir Singh Deo Bundela. Vishvanathprasad Mishra (ed.), Vijñāngītā, in Keśavgranthāvalī, Vol 3, vv. 21.69–71.

36 Bir Singh was a neighbour of Man Singh Kachhwaha. Kolff, Dirk H.A., Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 128Google Scholar.

37 Thackston (ed.), Jahāngīrnāma, p. 123.

38 Audrey Truschke reminds us that praśasti poetry (in this case Sanskrit) was sometimes commissioned by the nobility as a gesture of respect to the Mughal emperor. Thus, even if a work is about the emperor, we should not always assume direct imperial patronage. See Audrey Truschke, Sanskrit and Persian Textual Conversations at the Mughal Court, M.A. Thesis (New York: Columbia University, 2007).

39 Rahim's Braj literary patronage is discussed (if not always on the basis of reliable sources) in Naik, Chhotubhai Ranchhhodji, Abdu'r-Raḥīm Khān-i-Khānān and His Literary Circle (Ahmedabad: Gujarat University, 1966), pp. 280–462Google Scholar.

40 For an analysis of the different perceptions of Rahim in the Hindi and Persian traditions see Corinne Lefèvre, ‘The Court of ˓Abd-ur-Raḥīm Khān-i Khānān as a Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions.’ Revised paper originally presented at the 19th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (Leiden, 2006). An overview of Rahim's Hindi compositions can be found in Busch, Allison, ‘Rīti and Register’ in Orsini, Francesca (ed.), Hindi-Urdu before the Divide (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2009), pp. 114–120Google Scholar. Also see Snell, Rupert, ‘‘Barvai’ Metre in Tulsīdās and Rahīm’ in Entwistle, Alan W. and Mallison, Françoise (eds.), Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature (New Delhi: Manohar, 1994), pp. 373–405Google Scholar.

41 These are respectively labelled ‘barvai (bhaktiparak)’ and ‘barvai-nāyikā-bhed’ in Mishra, Vidyanivas and Rajnish, Govind (eds.), Rahīmgranthāvalī (New Delhi: Vani Prakashan, 1994), pp. 117–144Google Scholar.

42 ‘Barvai-nāyikā-bhed’, v. 6, in Mishra and Rajnish (eds.), Rahīmgranthāvalī.

43 The navoṛhā and ajñātayauvana-nāyikā are illustrated in ibid., v. 12 and v.9, respectively.

44 Ā’īn-i Akbarī, Vol 3, p. 260.

45 The Pādshāhnāmah mentions that Lal Khan was rewarded with an elephant and the title ‘guna-samudra’ (ocean of talent). Another musician named Darang Khan was weighed against silver and given a substantial royal gift in 1636. See Qanungo, K.R., ‘Some Side-lights on the Character and Court-life of Shah Jahan’ in Journal of Indian History, Vol. 8 (1929), pp. 45–52Google Scholar. I am grateful to Audrey Truschke for the reference.

46 Delvoye, ‘Les Chants Dhrupad’, pp. 168–174; Premlata Sharma (ed.), Sahasras; nāyak bakhśū ke dhrupadoṃ kā sañgrah (New Delhi: Sangit Natak Academy, 1972).

47 Qanungo, ‘Court-life of Shah Jahan’ (1929), p. 51.

48 On Shiromani see Miśrabandhuvinod of Ganeshbihari, Shyambihari, and Shukdevbihari Mishra (Allahabad: Hindi-granth-prasarak Mandali, 1913), Vol. 2, p. 467, and Kishorilal Gupta (ed.), Śivsiṃhsaroj of Shivsingh Sengar (Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1970 [1878]), pp. 581–582. An almost certainly spurious Braj biography of Bihari, the ‘Bihārī-vihār’, records an encounter between the poet and Shah Jahan. See Pandey, Sudhakar (ed.), Bihārīsatsaī (Varanasi: Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1999), pp. 32–35Google Scholar.

49 Sundarś ṅgār, vv. 2–3, vv. 10–12, in Sharma, Ramanand (ed.), Sundar kavirāy granthāvalī (Delhi: Lokvani Samsthan, 2004)Google Scholar.

50 Keshavdas, for instance, had praised Jahangir for ‘causing the talent-trees of the talented to come to fruition’ (gunin ke guna-taru phalita karanu hai). Lal (ed.), Jahāngīrjascandrikā, v. 33.

51 Shahab Sarmadee (ed.), Tarjumah-i mānkutūhal va risālah-i rāgdarpan of Faqirullah (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Motilal Banarsidass, 1996), p. ix.

52 Sharma (ed.), Sundarś ṅgār, vv. 373–74.

53 Seyller, John, Workshop and Patron in Mughal India (Zürich and Washington, D.C.: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1999), p. 14Google Scholar. A re-translation of the same text was ordered during Jahangir's period, too. See Truschke, Textual Conversations.

54 Another Braj poet of the day, Jan Kavi, reportedly presented the emperor with a Braj translation of the Pañcatantra known as Buddhisāgar. See Dasaratha Sharma, ‘Kyāmkhān rāsā ke karttā kavivar jān aur unke granth’ in Kyāmkhān rāsā, jointly edited with Agarcand Nahata and Bamvarlal Nahata, (Jodhpur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, 1996), p. 9. Cited in Talbot, Cynthia, ‘Becoming Turk the Rajput Way: Conversion and Identity in an Indian Warrior Narrative’ in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2009), p. 230CrossRefGoogle Scholar, note 55.

55 Meerza Kazim Ulee Juwan and Shree Lulloo Lal Kub (trans.), Singhasun Butteesee of Sundar (Calcutta: Hindoostanee Press, 1805), p. 1. (Yih kahānī siṃhāsan battīsī kī saṃskṅt mẽ thī—shāh jahān bādśāh kī farmāiś se—sundar kabīśvar ne braj ki bolī mẽ kahī.) Garcin de Tassy, who wrote a historical account of the Hindi-Urdu tradition a few decades later, confirms their testimony concerning the text: ‘ouvrage qu'il traduisit du sanscrit par ordre de l'empereur Schâh Jahân’ [a work that he translated from Sanskrit at the order of Emperor Shah Jahan]. de Tassy, M. Garcin, Histoire de la littérature hindouie et hindoustanie (New York: Burt Franklin, 1968 [1870]), Vol. 3, p. 178Google Scholar.

56 Syed Abdoollah (ed.), Singhāsan Battīsī of Lalluji Lal Kabi (London: Wm. H. Allen, 1869), p. ix.

57 There is no way to write a word final short vowel in Persian, so the word ‘kabi’ is written (and read) as ‘kab.’ The switch from ‘v’ to ‘b’ (i.e. kavi to kabi) must represent a typical seventeenth-century pronunciation of the word.

58 Sundar (here confusingly labelled Sundar Das) is described as one of the prince's ‘chosen. . . men who stuck to him through thick and thin’. Saksena, Banarsi Prasad, History of Shahjahan of Dihli (Allahabad: Central Book Depot, 1958), p. 17Google Scholar.

59 Sundar's role as an intermediary between the Mughal armies and Jujhar Singh as well as his intercessions during the rebellions of Babu Lakshman Singh of Ratanpur and Raja Jagat Singh of Nurpur are described in Ghulam Yazdani (ed.), ‘Amal-i-Ṣāliḥ of Muhammad Salih Kanbo (Calcutta: Bibliotheca Indica, 1923–1946), Vol. 2, pp. 100–107, 83–84. Additional details (including those that derive from the Pādshāhnāmah as well as unpublished court histories) are in Saksena, History of Shahjahan, pp. 70–96.

60 Beach, Milo Cleveland, Koch, Ebba, and Thackston, Wheeler. King of the World (London: Azimuth, 1997), pp. 88–91Google Scholar.

61 Raghavan, V., ‘Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī’ in D.R. Bhandarkar Volume (Calcutta, Indian Research Institute, 1940), pp. 160–161Google Scholar.

62 As noted by V. Raghavan, there are also passages on the science of gems and nāyikābheda. Raghavan, V., ‘The Kavīndrakalpalatikā of Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī’ in Indica; The Indian Historical Research Institute Silver Jubilee Commemoration Volume (Bombay: St. Xavier's College, 1953), pp. 38–40Google Scholar.

63 ‘Bhāṣā karata āvati lāja, kīne grantha parāe kāja.’ Rani Lakshmikumari Cundavat (ed.), Kavīndrakalpalatā of Kavindracarya Sarasvati (Jaipur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, 1958), p. 1, v. 13. This was a common sentiment in the period. See Busch, Allison, ‘The Anxiety of Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in the Hindi Riti Tradition’ in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2004), pp. 45–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an example from the Deccan see Eaton, Richard, Sufis of Bijapur 1300–1700 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996), p. 143Google Scholar.

64 Cundavat (ed.), Kavīndrakalpalatā (1958), p. 4, v. 8. The unusual phrasing is indicated in bold type here and in subsequent citations.

65 Ibid., p. 6, v. 13.

66 Ibid., p. 6, v. 14. For further discussion of the nuances of Perso-Arabic register in Brajbhasha see Busch, ‘Rīti and Register’.

67 Some information about both poetry collections is in Divakar, Krishna, Kavīndracandrikā, Pune, 1966, pp. 40–48Google Scholar.

68 This point is made forcefully in Bayly, C.A., Empire and Information (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 180–211Google Scholar. Also see Christian Novetzke, Lee, ‘Bhakti and its Public’ in International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2007), pp. 255–272CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Cundavat suggests this point in her introduction to Kavīndrakalpalatā, p. 2. On Shah Jahan's control of the process of history writing at his court see Begley, W.E. and Desai, Z.A. (eds.), The Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. xv–xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

70 Yazdani (ed.), ‘Amal-i Ṣāliḥ (1923), Vol 3, p. 122.

71 Raghavan, ‘Kavīndrācārya Sarasvatī’ (1940), p. 161.

72 ‘Mata nānā vidha taise jānaũ, eka bhānti ko alakhu bakhāno’, Cundavat (ed.), Kavīndrakalpalatā, p. 37, v. 5.

73 ‘Kāhe ko nimāja rojā turuka karata hai’, ibid., v. 24.

74 The manuscript (no. 274) is housed at the Anup Sanskrit Library, Bikaner. The royal family has been unwilling to allow scholars to photograph the text; thus, my assessment is based on what I could glean from a short visit to the library in December 2005. Vidyadhar Mishra, who has also viewed the manuscript, has suggested that Cintamani attended Shah Jahan's court early in his career. Mishra, Vidyadhar, Cintāmaṇi: kavi aur ācārya (Allahabad: Vidya Sahitya Samsthan, 1990), pp. 39–40Google Scholar.

75 I have corrected the Persian from ‘ananya’ to ‘ananvaya’, a well-attested Indic trope in which the upameya (subject of the comparison) and upamāna (standard of comparison) are identical.

76 Ma’ā ir-al Kirām (1913), pp. 364–366.

77 Keshavdas’ Rasikpriyā and Sundar's Sundarś ṅgār are mentioned in V. Raghavan (ed.), Ś ṅgāramañjarī of Shah Akbar (Hyderabad: Hyderabad Archaeological Department, 1951), p. 2. The Braj translation is Bhagirath Mishra (ed.), Ś ṅgāramañjarī of Cintamani, (Lucknow: Lucknow University, 1956).

78 Brown, Katherine Butler, ‘Did Aurangzeb Ban Music? Questions for the Historiography of his Reign’ in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2007), pp. 77–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shahab Sarmadee (ed.), Tarjumah-i mānkutūhal va risālah-i rāgdarpan (1996), pp. xii and xl–xli.

79 S.K. Chatterji notes that in the Ma’ā ir-i ‘Alamgīrī Aurangzeb quotes a Hindi verse by Guru Nanak, suggesting his familiarity with vernacular poetry. Chatterji, S.K., ‘A Verse by Guru Nanak in the ‘Ādigranth Quoted by Emperor Aurangzib Alamgir’ in Select Papers (New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1979), Vol. 2, pp. 185–193Google Scholar. Shailesh Zaidi, one of the few scholars conversant with both Braj and Persian traditions, has tracked numerous Braj poets connected to Aurangzeb, including Ishvar, Samant, Krishna, Dvivedi, Nehi, Madhanayak, and Mir Jalil. Poems attributed to ‘Alamgir’ and ‘Shah Aurangzeb’ are found in the nineteenth-century anthology Saṅgīt Rāg Kalpadrum. See Zaidi, Musalmān kavi (1977), p. 180, note 1.

80 Translation slightly modified from Syed, Aurangzeb in Muntakhab-al Lubab (Bombay: Somaiya, 1977), p. 85.

81 Ibid., p. 114; for further details see Zaidi, Musalmān kavi (who draws on the work of Persian biographers Sher Khan Lodi and Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami) (1977), pp. 143–45.

82 Zaidi, Musalmān kavi (1977), pp. 152–153, vv. 3–5.

83 Shivgopal Mishra (ed.), Satkavigirāvilās of Baldev Mishra (Allahabad: Hindustani Academy, 2001), p. 84 (v. 310 corresponds to v. 26 in Zaidi's edition). R. Das (ed.), Sujān-caritra of Sudan, (Allahabad: Indian Press, 1902), v. 5. Sudan also praised the now obscure poet Narhari (mentioned above as active during the reigns of Humayun and Akbar), as well as Shiromani, who is thought to have been at Shah Jahan's court.

84 Quoted in Brown, ‘Did Aurangzeb Ban Music’ (2007), p. 105.

85 The colophons of the manuscripts of Bhāvvilās (Play of Emotion, 1689), a rītigranth based on the Sanskrit Rasataraṅgiṇī of Bhanudatta, differ in attributing patronage to Azam Shah. The older of the two manuscripts I consulted (Bhāvvilās, Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Alwar, accession number 4771, 1796, p. 165) does mention that Azam Shah listened to and appreciated the work, but this statement is absent from at least one later version (Bhāvvilās, Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Bharatpur, accession number 212, 1837, p. 74). The verse in question is mentioned by (but not printed by) the text's recent editor. See Dindayal Dev aur unkā bhāvvilās (Delhi: Navlok, 2004), p. 11.

86 A detailed outline of the contents is Ziauddin, M., A Grammar of the Braj Bhakha by Mīrzā Khān (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati Bookshop, 1935), pp. 10–33Google Scholar.

87 Alam, ‘Pursuit of Persian’ (1998), p. 343.

88 Janardan Rao Celer, V ṅnd aur unkā sāhitya (Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir, 1973), pp. 45–46.

89 Note the similarity to ‘Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth’ in Qur'ān 24:3. I thank Muzaffar Alam for the reference.

90 Ś ṅgārśikṣā of Vrind, vv. 1–6, in Janardan Rao Celer (ed.), V ṅndgranthāvalī (Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir, 1971). The introduction seems to follow—albeit in telescoped fashion—conventions more akin to those of the Persian ma navī than the Sanskrit and Braj styles with which Vrind would have been most familiar.

91 These traits are expressed with a combination of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic epithets: mahābalī, mehrbān, ṣubiḥān. Ibid., v. 4.

92 Ibid., vv. 7–9.

93 Ibid., v. 10 (and a sentiment repeated in v. 11).

94 Celer, V ṅnd aur unkā sāhitya (1973), pp. 82–83. The discussion of ‘byāh bidhi’ is in Ś ṅgārśikṣā, vv. 18–32.

95 On the mīrzānāmah texts see O'Hanlon, Rosalind, ‘Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India’ in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 42, No. 1 (1999), pp. 47–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shantanu Phukan takes up related matters for this period in ‘“Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet”: the Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian’ in Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2001, pp. 33–58); for the medieval period see Ali, Daud, Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 69–96, 183–206Google Scholar. In formulating this argument about the education of the senses among Indo-Muslim elites I also benefited from conversations with Aditya Behl.

96 Caran, Omkardan and Singh, Raghubir (eds.), Jangnāmā (Varanasi: Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1989)Google Scholar.

97 Alam, ‘Pursuit of Persian’ (1998), 345; Iqbal Ahmad (ed.), Nakh-śikh of Mirza Abdurrahman'Premī’ (Bombay: Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Research Centre, 1972).

98 A Braj poet and literary theorist associated with Muhammad Shah is Surati Mishra. Yogendrapratap Singh (ed.), Jorāvarprakās of Surati Mishra (Allahabad: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1992), pp. 7–8. On Nagridas see Heidi Pauwels, ‘Culture in Circulation in Eighteenth-century North India: Urdu Poetry by a Rajput Krishna Devotee’. Revised paper originally presented at the 19th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (Leiden, 2006).

99 Pritchett, Frances, Nets of Awareness (Berkeley: University of California, 1994), pp. 4–5Google Scholar. Examples of Shah Alam's Braj poetry are in Nādirāt-i Shāhī (Rampur: Rampur Raza Library, 2006 [1944]).

100 Phukan, ‘Ecology of Hindi’ (2001), p. 36.

101 The hierarchy between Persian and Hindi composition at Akbar's court, for instance, has been made clear in Alam, ‘Pursuit of Persian’ (1998), p. 323. Still, in the same article variation across reigns is noted: Farrukh Siyar had a Braj poet laureate but not a Persian one (p. 346).

102 Syed Hasan Askari, ‘Mirat-ul-Muluk: a Contemporary Work Containing Reflections on Later Mughal Administration’ in Indica; the Indian Historical Research Institute Silver Jubilee Commemoration Volume, (Bombay: St. Xavier's College, pp. 29–31), cited in Bayly, Empire and Information (1997), p. 194.

103 Phukan, ‘Ecology of Hindi’ (2001), pp. 43FF.

104 This point is made forcefully in Pollock, Sheldon, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley: University of California, 2006), pp. 511–524Google Scholar.

105 Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur (1996), pp. 89–106.

106 Cf. Bayly, Empire and Information (1997), pp. 10–14.

107 Cited in Askari, Syed Hasan and Ahmad, Qeyamuddin, Comprehensive History of Bihar Vol. II, Part II (Patna: Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute, 1987), pp. 59–60Google Scholar.

108 Lefèvre, ‘The court of ‘Abd-ur-Raḥīm Khān-i Khānān’, (2006). For further analysis of such literary hierarchies perceived by some Persian writers see Phukan, Through a Persian Prism: Hindi and Padmavat in the Mughal Imagination (University of Chicago Ph.D. Dissertation, 2000), pp. 56–69.