Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t5: V. Minor Sources : Correspondence

Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t5

Language: English

V. Minor Sources : Correspondence

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Among minor sources of information may be mentioned some collections of official and private letters : the Riaz-ul-Insha of Mahmud Gawan, the Insha-nama of Tahir-ul-Husaini, and the letters of Bayazid I and Mahmud II of Turkey, all of which make slight references to Indian conditions. This is all the evidence I can offer at present for the study of social life of Hindustan during the period under review.

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An objection is sometimes made, not without reason, that a picture of social life coming more or less exclusively from Muslim and other sources will fail to do justice to Hindu society or paint it in sympathetic and vivid colours. I have found no occasion to agree with the observation inasmuch as it implies that the Muslim historian or man of letters purposely misrepresented the facts of Hindu social life. There was no cultural conflict between the Muslims and the Hindus. In fact the cultural forces were rapidly leading to a complete fusion between the two, so that there was hardly any room for such discrimination. The development of historical literature had a very long and healthy tradition among the Muslims and the examples of intellectual honesty are to be found even among conspicuously dogmatic persons, for instance, Ziya-ud-din Barani and Abdul Qadir Buda'uni. With Amir Khusrau and Malik Muhammad Jaisi we enter on a very different and a more or less national outlook. On the other hand, if there were any Hindu scholars, they lived in the seclusion of a few intellectual centres like Kashmir or Benares and were completely isolated from the main currents of social life. It is further to be doubted if they inherited proper cultural traditions or even right attitudes of mind to make good historians.

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However, though Muslim sources cannot perhaps be accused of a bias, other limitations are equally serious. The social content of Muslim histories is meagre. Life is unattractive for them outside court and cities, or a few religious and literary circles. They are not, as a rule, directly interested in knowing about the Hindu society, or even the life of the lower classes of Muslims who were not very different from the Hindu masses. This, obviously, is an insufficient basis for the study of Hindu society. Unfortunately, the records of Rajputana, the solitary home of Hindu culture and polity, have not yet been worked out. The brilliant but old work of James Tod still remains the main source of our information. We hope that a critical study of Rajput records and other sources of information will some day add to our knowledge of the contemporary Hindu society.

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With such materials as are enumerated above it is obviously impossible to give a complete picture of the society in Hindustan. A consoling thought under such conditions suggests itself, that in the more or less static condition of Indian society a student of social history can always check his facts and conclusions by comparing them with present-day survivals, and thus succeed in giving a more complete picture of the past in the light of the present observations. Though generally helpful, such a view of Indian history is subject to two reservations. The intervening period in our case covers the social developments of about four centuries and includes the operation of a new social force from the industrialized West. It is not unlikely that the events of the intervening period have succeeded in giving a new social meaning and content to the growing complexity of social phenomena in India. Secondly, except for the Imperial Gazetteer of India, a few writers like Crooke and Grierson and a few government reports, no systematic and scientific social survey of India has been undertaken. This work awaits the attention of experienced folklorists and of sociologists in general. I have given references to present-day survivals from the modern works in footnotes where necessary.

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As to the plan of the work, I have included the study of a number of political and economic factors which appear to me helpful in giving a proper perspective of social developments in Hindustan. In dealing with economic conditions, my object is only to give some economic data for a better appreciation of social life.¹ As regards the original texts, I have made a free rather than a literal translation; in some cases I have contented myself only with a summary of a longer passage. Abbreviations are used to indicate most of the original and published texts. These are noted against the text in the bibliography. Two appendices are added at the close of the thesis for a better appreciation of some general data, as the measurements of time and space, the coins, etc., and for the chronology of the reigns of the Sultans of Delhi.

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¹ Compare J.I.H., 1929, p. 167, for Moreland's views on the composition of a definitive treatise on the economic conditions of the period.

Linked texts (1)

Riyāḍ al-inshāʾ — Maḥmūd Gāwān