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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s1: Hindu Impacts on Islam

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s1

Language
English

Hindu Impacts on Islam

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The *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* (VII, 15) philosophy of *charaiveti* (march on) should appear to have continued unhampered even in the epoch of Moslem intercourse with the Hindus. The tenacity of Hindu positivism made itself felt in Islamic circles. And if there were no converts to formal Hinduism among the Mussalmans there were at any rate signs of spiritual assimilation by them of the gifts of Hindu culture. The impact of Hindu arts and sciences on the Mussalmans was considerable.

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It is not perhaps possible to say in this instance as in many others that "captive Greece captured Rome." But there is no doubt that a large section of the Mussalmans,—rulers, scholars, authors, and the public,—came to be Hinduized in morals, manners and sentiments.

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Indianized Persian or Persianized Hindi evolved us Urdu in the fourteenth or even in the thirteenth century.

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Perhaps one of the first Urdu writers is Amir Khusru who flourished under the Khiljis (1290-1320) and is known to have died in 1325.

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The translation of Sanskrit works into Persian is at least as old as Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlak (1351-1388). It was on the strength of such translations that the Hindu physical sciences had a place in *Dalail-i-Firuz Shahi*,¹ a lengthy poem by Izzul-din Khalid.

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¹ *Maathirul-Umara*, Vol. II. p. 190, in M. Z. Siddiqi: "The Services of the Muslims to Sanskrit Literature" (*Calcutta Review*, February, 1933).

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While on the one hand Sanskrit texts were being rendered into Persian and mainly through Moslem interest and under Moslem auspices it is significant to observe that Sanskrit works were being rendered into the spoken languages of the Indian people,—the vernaculars,—and this also through Moslem interest. The first translation of the Sanskrit *Mahābhārata* into Bengali, for instance, was accomplished under the order of King Nasir Shah (1282-1325).

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The translation of the *Bhāgavata Purāṇa* into Bengali by Mālādhar Basu was done under the orders of Husain Shah (1493-1518). Parāgal Khān, a general of this ruler, as well as Parāgal's son Chhuṭi Khān are famous in Bengal as inspirers of the Bengali translation of portions of the *Mahābhārata* by Kavīndra Parameśvara and Śrī Karaṇa Nandi.²

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² D. C. Sen; *History of Bengali Language and Literature* (Calcutta, 1911), pp. 10-12, 14; N. N. Law: *The Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule by Muhammadans* (London, 1916), pp. 107-111.

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Hindu-Moslem *rapprochement* was thus in evidence in Pre-Moghul India. The movement got a fillip under the Moghuls.

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The translation bureau of Akbar the Great published Persian renderings of the *Mahābhārata*, the *Rāmāyaṇa*, the *Gītā*, the *Atharva Veda*, the *Yogavāśiṣṭha*, the *Maheśamahānanda*, the *Harivamśa* and other treatises. Hindu texts had another great Moslem patron in Prince Dara Shikoh (1614-1659), the eldest brother of Aurangzeb or rather the eldest son of Shah Jahan (1628-1659). The translation and in certain instances the retranslation of the *Vedas* into Persian was undertaken on account of the interest of Dara Shikoh.

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With the help of Benares *Paṇḍits* Dara Shikoh is known to have translated several Hindu philosophical works into Persian. In 1657 was ready *Sirr-ul-Asrar* (The Secret of Secrets). This is the title of his rendering of the *Upaniṣads*. He was the translator also of the *Gītā*, the *Yogavāśiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa* etc. His attempt to reconcile Sufism and Hindu pantheism found shape in the work *Majima-ul Bahrain* (1654).³

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³ N. N. Law : *Promotion of Learning etc.* (London, 1916), pp. 185-186.

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Interest in Hindu prosody, *kāmaśāstra* (sexology), *alamkāra* (rhetoric), music, physiognomy etc. was keen among the Mussalmans in the time of Aurangzeb (1659-1707) also. It was for his grandson, Prince Jahandar Shah, that these Hindu *vidyās* were incorporated in a Persian textbook entitled *Tuhfatul-Hind*.

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Hindu-Moslem cultural co-operation was manifest in the eighteenth century in the establishment in 1724 at Delhi under Muhammad Shah's orders of an observatory by the Hindu astronomer and ruler of Ambar (Jaipur), Jai Singh.

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