Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

Intellectuals and creative people from many regions of the Muslim world migrated to India at this time, for the Delhi Sultanate was one of the most powerful Muslim kingdoms of the age, and most of the sultans were generous patrons of scholars and writers. A notable exception to this was Ala-ud-din Khalji, who considered cultural pursuits a waste of time and resources. But even during his reign, Delhi continued to attract cultural leaders from around the Muslim world, drawn by the great prosperity of the sultanate at this time. ‘During the time of Sultan Ala-ud-din, Delhi was the great rendezvous for all the most learned and erudite personages,’ writes Abdul Hakk Dehlawi, a chronicler of the Mughal age. ‘For, notwithstanding the pride and hauteur, the neglect and superciliousness, and the want of kindness and cordiality, with which that monarch treated this class of people, the spirit of the age remained the same.’

The benefaction of Delhi sultans, as had to be expected, was primarily for Muslim scholars and writers, but some of the sultans also extended their favour to Hindu scholars and to the promotion of the traditional knowledge of India, particularly to the study of secular subjects. And they took the initiative to get several ancient Indian texts on scientific subjects, such as medicine, translated into Persian. Thus when Firuz Tughluq found a vast collection of manuscripts in the temple of Jvalamukhi at Nagarkot (Kangra) in Himachal Pradesh, he took care to have several of them translated into Persian. ‘In this temple was a fine library of Hindu books, consisting of 13,000 volumes,’ records Ferishta. ‘Firuz sent for some of the wise men of that religion and ordered some of the books to be translated, and especially directed one of those books, which dealt with philosophy, astrology and divination, to be translated [into Persian] … It is in truth a book replete with various kinds of knowledge, both practical and theoretical.’ According to Mughal historian Badauni, some ‘unprofitable and trivial works on prosody, music and dancing’ were also translated under the sultan’s patronage.

The patronage of culture by kings was an ancient tradition in India, and even in medieval times, despite the general decline of Hindu political power, there were several rajas who had serious cultural interests and accomplishments. Particularly noteworthy among them was Rana Kumbha of Mewar, who, notwithstanding his many military engagements, found time and interest not only to earnestly promote culture, but also to turn himself into a distinguished scholar in several fields, from ancient Hindu scriptures to political theory, grammar, literature, and music. He also wrote four plays, three texts on music, and had to his credit the writing a highly regarded commentary on Jayadeva’s Gita-Govinda . Unfortunately he went insane towards the end of his life, and was murdered by his son.

SUCH EARNEST SCHOLARSHIP and creativity as that of Rana Kumbha were relatively rare in Hindu society in medieval times, compared to its marvellous cultural luxuriance in the earlier age. Even the study of the ancient Indian systems of knowledge was in a dismal state of decay at this time, particularly in North India, though there were some lingering sparks of vitality in them in South India. Generally speaking, the purpose of scholarly pursuits by Indians in this age was not for advancing knowledge, but almost entirely for learning old texts by rote. And since many of the old texts had become hopelessly corrupt over the centuries, this mode of learning meant the perpetuation of flawed, decayed knowledge.

There were however still a few major centres of traditional learning in India at this time. Varanasi (Benares) was one such centre. The city specialised in the gurukula system of education, of eminent scholars taking under their care a few chosen students. ‘The town of Benares situated on the Ganges … in the midst of an extremely rich and fertile country may be considered the general school of gentiles,’ writes Bernier, a late seventeenth century French physician in India. ‘It is the Athens of India, whither resort Brahmins and other devotees … The town contains no colleges or regular classes as in our universities, but resembles rather the schools of the ancients, the masters being dispersed over different parts of the town in private houses, principally in the gardens of the suburbs, which the rich merchants permit them to occupy. Some of these masters have four disciples, others six or seven and the most eminent may have twelve, but this is the greatest number.’

Varanasi was a Hindu centre of learning, but there were also a few major Buddhist and Jain centres of learning in early medieval India. These, unlike the guru-centred Hindu educational system, provided institutionalised education, in large university-like campuses, which had a good number of teachers in diverse subjects. The most renowned of the Buddhist educational centres of the age was the University of Nalanda in Bihar, which, because it was a walled campus, was mistaken for a fort and was destroyed by Turkish commander Bakhtiyar Khalji in the early thirteenth century, during the reign of Qutb-ud-din Aibak. ‘Most of the inhabitants of the place were Brahmins with shaven heads,’ writes Siraj, an early medieval chronicler, mistaking Buddhist monks for Brahmins. ‘They were all put to death. A large numbers of books were found there, and when the Mohammedans saw them, they called for some persons to explain their contents, but all the men had been killed. It was then discovered that the whole fort and city was a place of study.’ There were several other such instances of wanton destruction of Indian cultural and religious centres by Turks.

ON THE POSITIVE side, one of the major cultural developments of the early medieval period was the spread of Persian language and literature in India. Persian was the favoured language of the sultans and the Muslim elite in India, for official business as well as for cultural pursuits. The language was also increasingly cultivated by upper class Hindus — especially by those who were in any way connected with the administration of Muslim kingdoms — somewhat in the same manner in which many Indians would later take to the study of English during the British rule. And, along with the use of Persian language, the adoption of Persian dress and lifestyle became the mark of high culture among the political elite — among Muslims as well as Hindus — in most regions of India, except in the deep south, which was outside the pale of Muslim rule and direct Muslim cultural influence.

A number of books on India were written by Muslim scholars in the early medieval period, and they provide invaluable information on many aspects of life in India in that age. One of the earliest and finest of these works is al-Biruni’s Ta’rikh al-Hind : Chronicles of India. Hardly anything is known about al-Biruni’s family background or about his early life, except that he was a Persian by birth, and spent his early life in Khwarazm. He was a contemporary and one-time colleague of Avicenna, the renowned intellectual and physician of the age. When Mahmud Ghazni conquered Khwarazm, he induced or forced al-Biruni (along with several other scholars) to move to Ghazni, and there the young scholar immersed himself in his studies under the patronage of Mahmud and his successors.

Al-Biruni, according his medieval biographer Shams-ud-din Muhammad Shahrazuri, was so dedicated to his studies that ‘he never had a pen out of his hand, nor his eye off a book, and his thoughts were always directed to his studies … [He had no interest in temporal acquisitions, and was content with] procuring the necessaries of life on such a moderate scale as to afford him bare sustenance and clothing.’ Once when sultan Masud rewarded him with an elephant load of silver, he politely declined to accept the gift and returned it to the treasury. This indifference to temporal gains was a major factor that enabled al-Biruni to be totally unbiased in his works — he did not write to please anyone but himself. He had ‘a most rigid regard for truth,’ comments Baihaqi, who lived half a century after al-Biruni.