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The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c19.s4.t4: The Padmini episode

The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c19.s4.t4

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The Padmini episode

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It has been mentioned that modern scholars have rejected as unhistorical the story that, baffled in his design to obtain possession of the fair Padmini, Ala-ud-din agreed to raise the siege and retire, if Ratna Singh only showed her beautiful face in a mirror, that he had the Rana arrested as soon as the latter conducted the gratified Sultan out of the fort to the latter’s tents, and that he was rescued by the igenuity of his gifted spouse. Their reasons for rejecting the story are : (1) Amir Khusrav, who accompanied Ala-ud-din to Chittor and was present during the siege, has said nothing about it; (2) other contemporary writers, too, have made no mention of it; and (3) the story is a literary concoction of Malik Muhammad Jayasi, who wrote his *Padmavat* in 1540 A.D., and all the later writers have borrowed it from him. These arguments are based on a superficial reading of Khusrav’s works and are fallacious. Amir Khusrav does throw a hint about the episode when he compares Ala-ud-din with Solomon, refers to his Seba as being in the fort of Chittor, and of himself as ‘Hud-Hud’, the bird that brought the news of the beautiful Bilquis, the queen of Seba,² to king Solomon of Ethiopia.³ Khusrav’s narrative makes it clear that Ala-ud-din entered the fort, accompanied by him, before it had capitulated “a fort to which birds were unable to fly." The Rana came to Ala-ud-din’s tents and submitted only after the Sultan had returned from the fort. After the Rana’s submission the massacre of 30,000 Hindus took place by the disappointed Sultan’s orders.⁴ Reading between the lines brings to light the main incidents of the story. Khusrav, who was a court poet, was not in a position to write anything more than he actually did. And we know that he had omitted many an unpalatable truth, such as, Ala-ud-din’s murder of his uncle Jalal-ud-din, the Sultan’s defeat at the hands of the Mongols, the Mongol siege of Delhi, etc. It is wrong to say, as Ojha, K. S. Lal and others have contended, that the incident was concocted by Jayasi. The fact is that Jayasi wrote out a romance, the plot of which he had derived from Amir Khusrav’s *Khazain-ul-Futuh*. Most of the romantic details of Jayasi’s *Padmavat* are imaginary; but the main plot of the story that Padmini was coveted by Ala-ud-din and was shown in a mirror to the lustful Sultan, who had her husband arrested, is most probably based on historical truth. It seems the women performed *jauhar* after Ratna Singh’s arrest and then the Rajputs fell on the invaders and rescued the Rana. But they were cut down to a man and the fort and the country passed into Ala-ud-din’s hands.

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² Mr. Shrinetra Pande in his *History of Medieval India* (Hindi ed.) attempts to argue in favour of older writers and compares ‘the queen of Seba’ with ‘wealth’, an inanimate object. He ignores Habib’s note that probably the poet refers to the fair Padmini.

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³ Khusrav’s *Khazain-ul-Futuh*, translated by M. Habib, p. 48.

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⁴ *Ibid*, p. 49.

Cites (1)