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The History of Bengal (Vol. I: Hindu Period; Vol. II: Muslim Period 1200–1757) v2.c35: Chapter V. The Intervening Hindu Dynasty

The History of Bengal (Vol. I: Hindu Period; Vol. II: Muslim Period 1200–1757) v2.c35

Language
English

Contents

Chapter V. The Intervening Hindu Dynasty

I. The Problem of the Hindu Dynasty

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Between the last Sultan of the first series of Ilyās Shāhi kings, who died in 817 A.H., and the restoration of that dynasty under Nāsir-ud-din Mahmud in 846, there lies a period of 29 years, when a family of Hindu origin but subsequently Islamised, reigned over Bengal, whose coins and traditions present the most interesting but baffling problem of the mediæval history of our province. All the authorities,—from the earliest writer (Bakhshi Nizāmuddin Ahmad writing in 1593) down to the late 18th century recorders of tradition, are agreed on the outlines of the story of this intruding dynasty, which was this: Under the declining successors of Ilyās Shāh's son, towards the end of the 8th century of the Hijera, a Hindu baron of North Bengal named Ganesh (misread in Persian manuscripts as Kans) became all in all in the State as regent and king-maker, and ultimately seized the throne in his own name. After his death, his eldest son (variously named Jitmal, Jaymal, Jadu and Jadusen) came to the throne, turning Muslim with the title of Jalāluddin. With this Jalāluddin's son Shams-ud-din Ahmad Shah the dynasty ended and after a short interval of usurpation and bloodshed, the second branch of the Ilyās Shāhi family became kings of Bengal.

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About the events of the reign of Ganesh and the religious policy of this king and his son, the earlier authorities are disappointingly silent or in direct contradiction to the later and more detailed accounts written three and a half centuries after the events (by Ghulam Husain Salim in 1788) or found in the book of saints' legends compiled for the Muslim monastery at Pānduah. These latter represent Ganesh as a cruel persecutor of the Muslims and his renegade son in turn as a scourge of the Hindus, and they allege an invasion of Bengal in 818 A.H. by Ibrāhim Shah Sharqi of Jaunpur and the double conversion and double reign of Ganesh's eldest son.

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The puzzle has been further complicated by the finding of coins of Jalāluddin struck in the year 818 and again from 821 to 835, with a mysterious gap in 819 and 820, and the discovery of many coins in the Bengali character issued by "devoted to the feet of Chandi" (goddess) Danuja-mardan Dev and Mahendra Dev, with Shaka dates (1339 and 1340) corresponding to the Hijera years 820 and 821. To Dr. Nalini Kanta Bhattasali belongs the credit of first proving that Danuja-mardan Dev was the highly significant title which Ganesh assumed when he openly ascended the throne after crushing the Islamic party in the State. This view has been accepted by practically all scholars now. Dr. Bhattasali's second identification, namely that of Mahendra Dev with Jalāluddin,—after that prince's restoration to Hinduism and before his second conversion to Islam and second reign,—is more open to dispute and the present writer is unable to accept it. I prefer Mr. Stapleton's view that Mahendra Dev was the title of Ganesh's second son, a boy-puppet who was raised to the throne after his father's death by the Hindu party and who reigned for a few months only over some districts of Bengal but was crushed by the partisans of the restored Jalāluddin. This would easily explain Jalāl-ud-din's relentless persecution of his Hindu subjects as political enemies.

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Lastly, the stories, told by G. Husain Salim only, of the persecution of the Muslim Shaikhs by Ganesh are not only contradicted by Firishtāh, but have been discredited with cogent arguments by Rakhal Das Banerji, and the present writer entirely agrees with that lamented scholar on this point.

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The "purification" of the lad Jalāl-ud-din by his father Ganesh in order to ensure his readmission into the fold of Hinduism by certain well-known rites, his confinement in the palace during his father's open reign, and his restoration to the throne and to the Islamic faith after his father's death, seem quite credible events, and agree quite easily with Firishtāh's account (written about 1610) that Jalāluddin renounced Hinduism in favour of Islam after his father's death and as a condition precedent to his acceptance of the throne. This conversion (or, as some hold, reconversion) to Islam extinguished the religious war in the State and gave unity and vigour to the government of the province.

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Two things have to be said in conclusion: The usurper's name was carelessly written in Persian mss and misread as Kans (with Kaf instead of gaf). No Hindu can name his son Kansa, the tyrant who tried to murder the god Krishna, any more than a Christian can name his son Apollyon or Satan. The story so confidently told by Durgacharan Sanyal that Ganesh was a Bengali Brahman of the Varendra section and that the Bhaturia pargana in North Bengal is the second home of the Bhaduri family of Varendra Brahmans and that the latter gave their name to the district of Bhadawar in Northern Malwa and even supplied a subahdar for that province under the Mughal Emperors,—is a delightful howler created by what is called *Volk-Etymologie* in German. The true Bhadawar (not Bhaturia) gave its name to a Rajput clan who served under the Mughal Emperors as we can learn from the *Maasir-ul-umara*, but not to any Brahman family. Similarly, the tracing of the Chandradwip Kayestha Raj family to this Danuja-mardan Dev, is a modern fabrication of the venal heralds (*ghatak* writers of *Kārikās*).

II. Traditional Accounts of Ganesh and His Sons

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*Tabaqat-i-Akbari* (Luck. ed. p. 524) :—"When Sultan Shams-uddin (II Ilyās Shāhi) died, a zamindar named Kans acquired domination over the country of Bengal . . . The period of his power (*istila*) was seven years . . . After the death of Kans, his son out of desire for kingship turned Muslim, took the title of Sultan Jalāl-ud-din. In his reign the people were at ease and prosperous . . . He reigned for 17 years."

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*Ain-i-Akbari* (Jarrett's tr. ii. 147-149) :—"A native of Bengal named Kans fraudulently dispossessed Shams-ud-din (II Ilyās Shahi), who was Ghiyās-ud-din's grandson. When he (Kans) died, his son embraced Islam and took the name of Sultan Jalāluddin.

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*Tārikh-i-Firishta* (Luck. ed. ii. 297) :—When Sultan-us-salātin (Saifuddin Hamza Shāh) died, his nobles placed his son on the throne, giving him the title of Shamsuddin (the Second). He was of poor intellect, owing to his tender age; a Hindu named Kans, which was one of the nobles of this dynasty, attained to great power and predominance during his reign and became the *de facto* master of the treasury and the kingdom (*sahib-i-ikhtiyar-i-mulk-o-mal*). When in the year 787 (correct as 817) he died, Kans uplifting the standard of kingship, seized the throne . . . He (Shams-ud-din) reigned for 3 years and some months.

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Although Rajah Kans was not a Muslim, he maintained cordial intercourse (*amezish*) and friendship with the Musalmans, so much so that some Muslims, declaring that he was a Muslim, wished to bury him in the ground as is the practice with Islamites. When he put the crown of kingship on his head, and was adorned with the umbrella and (other) symbols of Sultanship, he reigned for seven years with perfect predominance and in the best manner, and then took the inevitable path to the world of Death; his son, gaining the honour of conversion to Islam, ascended the royal throne.

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Jitmal, son of Kans, surnamed Sultan Jalāl-ud-din.

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After the death of his father, Jitmal assembled the nobles and ministers and said "I believe in the truth of the religion of Muhammad, and I shall not deviate from this (belief). If you accept me and do not turn against my royal authority, then only shall I sit on this august throne; if not, you may raise your younger brother to the throne and excuse me.” All the people who could bind and loosen (the realm) replied with one voice, “We are obedient to the monarch. Earthly affairs have no connection with religion.” Then Jitmal summoned the scholars and theologians of Lakhnawati and repeated the Islamic confession of faith, gave himself the title of Sultan Jalāl-ud-din, ascended the throne, made justice and fair play his aim, and thus became a modern Nau-shirwan. After reigning as king over Bangalah and Lakhnawati with the greatest power for 17 years and some months, he died in the year 812 A.H. (correct as 835). His son Ahmad Shāh succeeded . . . who followed his father’s steps and ruled with great justice and liberality for 16 (correct as 10) years.

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Buchanan-Hamilton’s account of Dinajpur, compiled about 1810 (in Martin’s *Eastern India*, ii. 618):—Ghiyās-ud-din governed 16 years, and was succeeded by his son Saif-ud-din, who governed three years, and was succeeded by his slave Shihab-ud-din, who also governed three years.

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Then Ganesh, a Hindu and hakim of Dinwaj (perhaps a petty Hindu chief of Dinajpur), seized the Government. Enraged at Shaikh Badr-i-Islam and his son Faiz-i-Islam, who refused to give him the compliment due to the rank he had assumed, he put them to death. The Saint Qutb Shah . . . wrote to Sultan Ibrahim, who . . . in compliance with the request, came from Rajmahal with an army, and encamped at Satra. The Rajah of Dinwaj was then terrified, and applied in great penitence to Qutb Shah, and obtained his forgiveness, by making his son Gadusen (? Jadusen) a Muhammadan. This convert assumed the government under the name of Jalāluddin, and having been reconciled to the saint, attacked Ibrāhim Shāh, grandfather of Husain Shāh, and having put him to death, seized his government. The old man Ganesh then confined his son and seized on the whole kingdom. After having been four years in confinement, Jalāluddin recovered the government and compelled the Hindus to become Muhammadans. He governed seven years and was succeeded by his son Ahmad Shāh, who reigned three years.

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(This account is professedly based upon “a manuscript account which Buchanan procured at Panduah,” but it looks like a careless and incorrect summary of *Riyaz-us-salatin*).

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*Riyāz-us-Salātīn* (1788 A.D.), (Text, p. 110):—When Sultan Shams-ud-din died, Rajah Kans, a Hindu zamindar, gaining supremacy over all the country of Bengal, sat down on the seat of the ruler, and began to practise oppression and bloodshed. Setting himself to the slaughter of Muslims, he put to the sword many of the theological scholars and Shaikhs, and wished to root out Islam from his realm. The story runs that one day Shaikh Badr-ul-Islam, the father of Shaikh Muinuddin Abbas, sat down before this infidel without salaming him, and when asked the reason for this conduct gave an abusive reply. Another day the Rajah sat down in a room which had a low and narrow entrance door (p. 111) and summoned the Shaikh, who divining his purpose first put his foot inside the room and then entered it, without having had to lower his head. The wretch, flaming up in anger, had the Shaikh put to death at once. The remaining ulama were that very day placed in a boat and drowned in the river.

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The saint Nur Qutb-ul-‘Alam, excited by the news of the infidel’s supremacy and his slaughter of Muslims, wrote to Sultan Ibrāhim Sharqi, who then possessed the country up to the frontier of Bihar, to invade Bengal and save Islam . . . (p. 112). Sultan Ibrāhim, with an army numerous like the waves of the ocean, marched into Bengal and pitched his camp at Sarāi Firuzpur. On learning of it, Rajah Kans became bewildered, humbled himself before saint Qutb-ul-‘Alam, and begged him to pardon his offences and remove Sultan Ibrāhim’s domination over the country. The saint demanded as the condition of his intercession with the invader that the Rajah should turn Muslim. Kans agreed, but the old man’s wife forbade him. At last (p. 113) he took his son named Jadu, aged 12 years to the saint and proposed that the boy should be converted to Islam and made king of Bengal instead of his old father. It was done, and he was given the name of Jalāluddin and proclaimed in the capital as Sultan, and Islamic ordinances were enforced again.

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When the saint went to Sultan Ibrāhim with the request that he should leave Bengal, now that its king was a Muslim, the Sultan was displeased and an angry dispute followed, (p. 114) at the end of which the saint cursed the Sultan’s chief Qāzi and cast an evil eye on the Sultan himself. Sultan Ibrāhim, in displeasure, went back to Jaunpur, and it is said that in that very year both he and his Qāzi died.

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But Rajah Kans, on hearing of the departure of the Jaunpur Sultan, deposed his son Jalāluddin, reoccupied the throne himself, and converted his son back to Hinduism (by the purificatory rites known as suvarna-dhenu,—details not translated here) and gave away the gold plates of the cow to the Brahmans. Jalāluddin, however, held fast to Islam, and Kans engaged in uprooting the Muslims (p. 115).

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Kans became even more tyrannical and violent than before, and began to oppress the followers and relatives of saint Qutb-ul-‘Alam and plunder their property. He sent Shaikh Anwār (the son) and Shaikh Zāhid, the grandson of Qutb-ul-‘Alam, under arrest to Sonārgānw, to make them disclose the buried treasure of their father and grandfather. The expected wealth not having been found there, he put Shaikh Anwār to death, (p. 116). On the very day of the execution of Shaikh Anwār at Sonārgānw, Kans died in his capital; some say that his son Jalāluddin from prison got him murdered by corrupting his servants. This tyrant's rule lasted seven years.

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After him, Jalāluddin sat on the throne with full power. He made many men Muslims, out of disgust with his father. The Brahmans who had accepted gifts of the gold plates of the cows, were tortured till they ate beef. He conducted the affairs of the country and of the administration in the proper way. During his reign of seven years, the people lived in perfect peace and happiness. He built in Gaur a mosque, a reservoir (hauz), the Jalāli tank, and sarāis, and the city of Gaur was populated anew in his time, (p. 117). He died in 812 A.H., (1409 A.D.). In Pandua a vast dome still covers his tomb, with the graves of his wife and son by the side of it.

III. Modern Reconstruction of the History of Ganesh and His Sons

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The above legends about Rajah Ganesh reduced to writing 370 years after his death (in the Riyāzus-Salātin and the Pandua manuscript of Buchanan) prove to be pious frauds when confronted with more reasonable account given by Nizām-ud-din Ahmad and Firishta. But this destructive criticism relates only to the details and decorative flowers of the more modern narrative. Keeping our eyes fixed on the basic points of agreement among all these sources and using a certain amount of legitimate historical imagination from the analogy of the histories of other countries and dynasties, we offer a tentative reconstruction of the story of Ganesh and his line in the following form. This narrative is admittedly conjectural and it can be confirmed or corrected only when the earth gives up contemporary records of this dynasty,—of which, however the hope is very small. No inscription of Ganesh or Jalāluddin or of the latter's son Ahmad Shāh, nor any 15th century writing about them has been yet discovered.

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The first three Sultans of the Ilyās Shāhi dynasty came to the throne as grown up men who had already given proofs of their ability and power of command. They were followed by three cyphers in succession,—often very young princes, taken from the harem, who remained mere tools in the hands of their ministers. In the selection of one out of several minor princes for the throne, the selfish ambition of the nobles had full play, and the support of these king-makers was solicited by the queens in the interests of their respective sons. Nizāmuddin Ahmad—and following him Firishta and Ghulam H. Salim, state significantly of each of these sultans that on his father's death he was placed on the throne by the nobles and the ministers.

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The most powerful of these nobles at the close of Ghiyās-ud-din Azam Shāh's reign was Ganesh, a baron of Dinājpur who had an independent and hereditary source of strength in his large ancestral estate and personal contingent of troops not in the Sultan's pay. His infantry, recruited from the sturdy Mongoloid tribes of the submontane country, were tougher fighters than the ordinary natives of lower Bengal. His ability and experience, added to these material resources, had made him the foremost man at the Court of Ghiyās-ud-din Azam. And when that Sultan left behind him only raw youths for his successors, Ganesh naturally became the *de facto* ruler of the State. From the analogy of another king-maker, Shāhji Bhonsla in the decadent Nizām-Shāhi monarchy of Ahmadnagar, we can safely assume that Ganesh worked in concert with certain dowager queens and was followed by such Muslim nobles as were attached to the faction of these ladies. This naturally set up against him the mothers of the other princes and the disappointed nobles who followed the fortunes of the latter. Plots against Ganesh and attempts to stir up civil war resulted and the cypher Sultan may have been lured into rising against his regent, exactly as we find in the case of the royal puppets crowned by Malik Ambar during his regency two centuries later.

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At the very last, Ganesh (now an old man) assumed the crown himself in 817 A.H. after the last Ilyās Shāhi prince Ala-ud-din Firuz Shāh had met with his death probably in some futile palace intrigue against his regent. This act of usurpation outraged Muslim sentiment, and an invitation was sent to Ibrāhim Shāh Sharqi, the Sultan of Jaunpur, to invade Bengal and deliver this land of Islam from the *kafir* on the throne. The lead in this move was taken by the Islamic theologians and the vast horde of unruly and ambitious disciples of the Shaikhs and Muslim monks, whose wealth and power had lately begun to overshadow the civil power.

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True history shows that the story of Ibrāhim Shāh having invaded Bengal in person in 818 A.H. cannot be true. But that does not necessarily mean that no general of the Jaunpur kingdom led an army into Bengal. Against the mail-clad heavy cavalry of upper India the Bengal irregular infantry of pāiks and dhālis and small force of ragged horsemen mounted on diminutive Morang ponies, could make no stand. On the other hand, the invaders from the dry Oudh country too, could not maintain their hold on the population nor keep their men and horses fit in the steaming swamps of Bengal when the monsoon started. So a truce was patched up by mutual consent, and the Jaunpur force went back, probably for a money consideration and certainly on the promise that Ganesh would convert his son Jadusen to Islam and make him Sultan of Bengal in his own place.

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The invasion having been thus bought off and the Jaunpur kingdom being next entangled in wars with the Sayyids and other up-country Powers, Ganesh placed his son, a lad of twelve only, under protective watch in his harem and ruled on his own account under the proud title of Danuj-mardan Dev “Devoted to the feet of the goddess Chandi.” His position during the remaining year or two of his life was unassailable, because he had the wisdom to govern the country “in the best manner” and to treat his Muslim subjects so lovingly that according to the story that reached Firishta, after his death “some Muslims, wanted to bury him in the ground according to Islamic rites.” The charge against him of having vowed to extirpate the ulama and shaikhs which we find only in the late monkish legends of Pandua and Malda, clearly sprang from his attempt to reduce the overgrown and unruly Muslim monastic orders to obedience and to squeeze out of them a portion of vast treasures they had accumulated by beguiling Sultan Ghiyās-ud-din Azam in his old age and taking leases of the administration of districts (like Sātgānw). Their position was exactly parallel to that of the Buddhist monks to whom the Emperor Asoka gave away all his State treasures in his dotage.

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I see no valid reason for disbelieving the story that Ganesh tried to turn his son into a Hindu again by the well-known purificatory ceremony of making him seem to take a new and uncontaminated birth by passing through the womb of a cow made of gold plates which were given away to the priests. But we may be quite sure that the backward Hindu society of those early days refused to accept suddhi (reconversion to Hinduism) however richly gilt. So, poor Jadusen-Jalāluddin had to live in misery during the rest of his father’s reign, as a social outcaste, neither publicly accepted by Hindu society nor allowed to join the Muslims. This explains his refusal to take his dead father's throne unless he was allowed to embrace Islam (again) and his bitter "persecution of the Brahmans, especially the recipients of the golden cow," as deceivers who had taken their hire but did not keep their promise. We know for certain of a similar outburst of anger on the part of the great Shivaji against the Brahmans who had been profusely fed at his Coronation (1674) but refused to recognise him as a "twice-born" Kshatriya entitled to hear the Vedic chant.

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Ganesh died peacefully in old age, not murdered by his son Jalāluddin as piously imagined by Ghulām Husain Salim on the "gossip of some" (*bagaul-i-ba'ze*). He left contented subjects and nobles behind him (see Firishta). Then Jadusen succeeded (821 A.H.=1418 A.D.) and resumed his former title of Jalāluddin and the Islamic faith. In this very year we find coins with Bengali lettering issued from Pandua and Chatgaon by a king named "Mahendra Dev, devoted to the feet of the goddess Chandi," exactly resembling those of Danuj-mardan Dev. He was most probably the younger son of Ganesh, who had remained a Hindu and to whom his elder brother Jadusen-Jalāluddin had offered to leave the paternal throne in case he was not permitted to embrace Islam. Mahendra was evidently set up on the throne by the Hindu ministers just after the death of Ganesh and before the recently liberated Jalāluddin could go over to Muslim society and gather partisans round himself. I believe that Mahendra (then not more than twelve years old) was a mere puppet in the hands of a selfish ministerial faction, who planned to rule in his name,—just as after the death of Shivaji, his younger son Rājārām (a helpless boy of ten) was crowned at Raigarh by a ministerial party against his elder brother Shambhuji, who was then under detention at Panhala. It was no Hindu revolt at all, nor was there a civil war between the two brothers, in the sense of actual fighting. The attempt of the kingmakers was short-lived and ended in their speedy defeat, as no coin was struck in Mahendra's name after that one year 1418 A.D. But it intensified Jalāluddin's hatred of the Hindus as political enemies. (See also Abid Ali Khan's *Memoirs of Gaur and Pandua*, p. 29, note by H. E. Stapleton).

IV. End of the Line of Ganesh

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No inscription of Jalāluddin Muhammad's reign has been yet discovered. His extant coins run to the year 834 A.H.¹, and from them we can confidently assert that the whole of Bengal, including East Bengal (Muazzamabad) and Chittagong, was included in his realm. Tradition, as recorded by Ghulām Husain Salim ascribes to him the transfer of his capital from Pandua back again to Gaur, though he embellished the former city (no doubt early in his reign) with many splendid buildings, and constructed at Gaur one mosque, two tanks, and one sarai, of none of which is any trace to be found today. We can well believe that the province grew in wealth and population during his peaceful reign. The Ek-Lakhi tomb at Pandua, according to Ghulām Husain, covers the mortal remains of Jalāl-ud-din, his wife and their son. Cunningham praises this sepulchre as a very fine example of the Muslim architecture of Bengal in the age before the Mughals. It covers a square, 57½ cubits on each face, with a single arch. Many of its stones are clearly seen to have once formed parts of Hindu and Buddhist shrines, and its gateway is distinctly of such origin.

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¹ One coin of 840 A.H. bears his name. It was probably posthumous, as we have a coin of his son Shamsuddin Ahmad, dated 886 A.H.

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On the death of Jalāluddin Muhammad (about 835 A.H./1431 A.D.) his son Shamsuddin Ahmad, ascended the throne. But his reign was darkened by his crimes and follies, till the nobles finding it intolerable, got him murdered through his slaves Shādi Khan and Nāsir Khan, c. 1442 A.D.

Cites (2)