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Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c3: Foreword

Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c3

Language
English

Foreword

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My friend, Mr. Narendra Nath Law, the grandson of a famous citizen of Calcutta, has asked me to write an introduction to his book on the *Promotion of Learning in India*, and I willingly comply with his request, as it is always a great pleasure to see Indian gentlemen taking an interest in the history of their country. But some practice during a long life has never made composition an easy matter, and the subject which Mr. Law has chosen is only partially familiar to me. My studies in Indian history began late, and were mainly concerned with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whereas Mr. Law’s work covers, like Livy’s *History of Rome*, a period of over seven centuries. He begins with Sulṭān Maḥmūd of Ghaznī, whose date is some forty years earlier than the Norman Conquest, and ends, for the present, with the close of the eighteenth century. This volume, which is in two books, the first dealing with the Pre-Mughal Period, and the second with the Mughal Dynasty, is now before me. It breaks new ground, for though there have been several literary histories

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of India, this is, I think, the first work which specially deals with the share taken by her Muhammadan conquerors in the promotion of Indian learning. As Mr. Law puts it in his Preface, “So far as I am aware, the subject-matter of this work has not anywhere been systematically treated. The materials for its compilation lie scattered in works published and unpublished, in most of which they are only indirectly and incidentally referred to.”

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As I have said, Mr. Law begins with Sulṭān Maḥmūd of Ghaznī. He was the son of a Turkish slave, and a great iconoclast. A village in Afghanistan is still known by the name of Būtkhāk, or Idol-dust, because Maḥmūd is said there to have had Hindu idols broken to pieces. Maḥmūd is, perhaps, chiefly remembered nowadays for his rapacity, and for his breach of promise to Firdausī; so far is it from being true that genius and priority of enterprise have the privilege of being able to commit great mistakes with impunity. The remark is made by Voltaire, who says, in his *Siècles de Louis XIV. et de Louis XV.*, “*C’est le privilege du vrai génie, et surtout du génie qui ouvre une carrière, de faire impunément de grandes fautes.*” Voltaire is here speaking of the Great Condé, and Count Noer applies it to Akbar with reference to his claim to Divine honours. But the remark is not satisfactory in respect of either of these heroes, and Voltaire is in himself a striking instance of its

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falsehood, for he is seldom thought of without the *amari aliquid* arising of his ribald treatment of Joan of Arc. Such was the impression produced by Sulṭān Maḥmūd’s love of plunder that the poet Sa’dī represents a Persian king as seeing Maḥmūd in a dream, a hundred years after the Sulṭān was dead. “The body had decayed and crumbled into dust, all save the eyeballs which rolled in their sockets, looking hither and thither. None of the soothsayers could give the interpretation; but a certain poor man put in his word and said, ‘He is searching because his kingdoms have passed away to another.’”

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But Maḥmūd was much more than a ruthless buccaneer. He was a magnificent prince and a liberal patron of literature. He loved Afghanistan and his mountain-nest of Ghaznī, and adorned it with buildings and tanks, and made it a centre of light and leading. One would have thought that this would have appealed to the Emperor Bābur, who also loved Afghanistan and directed that he should be buried in Kabul. But he forgot what Ghaznī was before a brutal Afghan—’Alāu-d-dīn Ghorī, the World-Burner (Jahānsoz)—had destroyed it, and says in his *Memoirs*, “Ghaznī is but a poor, mean place, and I have always wondered how its princes, who possessed India and Persia could have chosen such a wretched country for the seat of their government.” The Troll-gardens of Agra and

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Bengal soon killed off Bābur, just as Gaur enervated his opium-eating son. Possibly, when Bābur wrote the above remarks, he was thinking bitterly of how his life-long friend and comrade in arms, Khwāja Kilan, the Crillon of many forays, had flouted the glories of India, and had abandoned it and his master in order to return to the snows of Ghaznī.

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Sulṭān Maḥmūd’s injustice to Firdausī did not take place till after many years of patronage, and was the inevitable result of morose old age and religious bigotry. It may be said too with truth that his extravagant promise of a gold coin for every line that Firdausī wrote, by awaking dreams of the potentiality of wealth, did more harm to the poet than was caused by the subsequent repudiation. It encouraged Firdausī to spin out his poem to the length of nearly 120,000 lines, and so caused the repetitions and the “intolerable length” of which his editor, Captain Turner-Macan, so justly complains. And though Maḥmūd’s reputation must suffer for his faithlessness, yet it brought this compensation, that it called forth from Firdausī in his old age the *Satire*, which is perhaps the most forcible and heart-felt thing that any poet, Eastern or Western, ever wrote. Here we are reminded how literature is indebted to Chesterfield’s neglect of Johnson for rare old Samuel’s celebrated letter. Firdausī’s *Satire* was not all just, and he forgot

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past favours, just as Johnson forgot or ignored the fact that Chesterfield had given him when he was needy and ragged the handsome present of ten pounds.

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Maḥmūd seems also to have been unfortunate in his relations with Alberuni, the other immortal of the Sulṭān’s court. It should, however, be noted that the words quoted by Mr. Law in his first chapter, p. 13, from Sachau are only the latter’s inference from some remark of Alberuni. Alberuni does not, I understand, name Maḥmūd, nor accuse him of not doing his duty as a patron. It is just as likely that he is referring to the apathy of Indian Rajahs. Even if Maḥmūd be meant, it is to be remembered that he belonged to a hostile country, and that he owed his imprisonment and exile to Maḥmūd. This would not help to make him just to the Sulṭān. The probability is that Alberuni was very little at Ghaznī during Maḥmūd’s lifetime, and so had small opportunity of experiencing his bounty. His great work, the *Canon Masudicus*, was dedicated to Maḥmūd’s son, after returning from India, where he must have spent years. Here I should note that the *Canon Masudicus* is still unedited, though there are several copies in Europe, and also one in the Mullā Fīrūz Library at Bombay. It should also be noted that the name Anwar Khān, in the quotation from Ferishta on p. 12 of Mr. Law’s first chapter, is a mistake of Briggs’s for Abu Rihān.

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From Maḥmūd, Mr. Law passes on to the House of Ghor. He rigorously sticks to his thesis of the promotion of learning, and so says very little about Muḥammad Ghorī (Mu’izzu-d-dīn b. Sām), whose conquests, as Elphinstone truly says, were far greater as regards India than those of Maḥmūd. It was he who defeated the Rajah of Ajmere, and was the first real conqueror of India. It is his victories over Hindus that earned him the title of Sulṭān Ghāzī. Nor does Mr. Law say much about Muḥammad Ghorī’s slave and viceroy, Quṭbu-d-dīn Aibak, who ruled India for four and twenty years and founded the Quṭb Minār which implies that he promoted Art, if not Letters. It was completed by Shamsu-d-dīn Altamash, who was Quṭbu-d-dīn’s son-in-law. He too was originally a Turkish slave, and is said to owe his curious sobriquet to his having been born during an eclipse of the moon (Badā’ūnī I., Ranking’s translation, p. 88). Altamash was an enlightened prince, and showed his sense by appointing his daughter, Sulṭān Rezia, as his successor, instead of his sons.

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The Slave-kings were followed by the House of Khiljī. The most distinguished member of this house was ’Alāu-d-dīn Khiljī. Among other things, it was he who brought the Koh-i-Nūr to Northern India. He was brutal and ignorant, but he was a great administrator, and many of his measures were adopted by Sher Shāh and Akbar. Lord Bryce

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somewhere says that President Krüger’s natural vigour of mind was not diluted by education, and the same may be said of ’Alāu-d-dīn, who could not even read or write.

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In his chapter on Akbar, Mr. Law disbelieves the story of his illiteracy, in spite of his son’s statements, as well as those of the Catholic missionaries, and he relies on the spurious Memoirs which were translated by Major Price. That these Memoirs are spurious is the view of so great an authority as Dr. Rieu, and is also proved by the fact that they contain statements which it is impossible that Jahāngīr can have written. Mr. Law also thinks that though ’Alāu-d-dīn was originally unlettered, he afterwards took to study, learnt to read royal addresses and became acquainted with the best Persian authors. For this he relies upon a passage in Briggs’ translation of Ferishta. The sentence in the original Persian is a little obscure, and I am not quite certain of the meaning, but judging from the Newal Kishore text, p. 110 (describing ’Alāu-d-dīn’s reign), it seems to me that the passage in Briggs is partly a flourish of the General’s and partly a mistranslation. What, I think, Ferishta says is that ’Alāu-d-dīn used to have papers and books read to him, but he found that his munshīs falsified the purports, and so gave up the practice. Afterwards he substituted for these readings the putting of questions to learned men,

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and getting their *vivâ voce* answers. But whatever Ferishta meant to say, it is clear that he is merely abstracting Barnī, who is his chief authority for the reign of ’Alāu-d-dīn. Barnī’s accounts will be found in the Bib. Ind. edition of his work, p. 289 *et seq.*, and also, though with many lacunæ, in Elliot’s *History of India*, iii. 183, etc. Barnī says nothing about ’Alāu-d-dīn’s proficiency, any more than does Ferishta, in the Persian, speak of his private studies. According to Barnī, ’Alāu-d-dīn had no acquaintance with learning, and never associated with the learned. He also represents ’Alāu-d-dīn as saying, “Although I have not studied the Science or the Book, I am a Musalmān of a Musalmān stock” (Elliot, iii. 189). The original of this passage will be found at p. 295, six lines from foot of the Bib. Ind. ed., and is more explicit than in Elliot. What ’Alāu-d-dīn says there is, “Though I have not any knowledge, and have not read anything—*agarchi ’ilmi u kitābi nakhwānda ām*—yet I am Muhammadan-born, and my family has been Muhammadan for generations.”

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But Mr. Law need not have doubted Akbar’s illiteracy, for the East teems with instances of distinguished administrators who could neither read nor write. For example, we have the Prophet Muḥammad, who was known as the unlessoned prophet, and we have ’Alāu-d-dīn Khiljī, and Ḥaidar ’Alī. The view that ’Alāu-d-dīn and Akbar

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must have been able to read in order to govern, reminds us of Macaulay’s criticism on Dr. Johnson’s saying that “the Athenians were barbarians. The mass of every people must be barbarous where there is no printing.” “Yes,” says Macaulay, “an Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes, and the largest library to which he had access might be much less valuable than Johnson’s bookcase at Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates,” etc., etc. Like Wordsworth’s pedlar, Eastern prophets and kings had small need of books. It should be borne in mind too that the East in those days there were no printed books. The only reading he had was from MSS. which were often in *Shikast* handwriting, and wanting in vowels and diacritical marks. Reading, therefore, was almost, if not quite, as difficult an attainment as that of writing, and unless ’Alāu-d-dīn and Akbar could read shorthand, which is really what Persian transcript amounts to, a knowledge of the alphabet and of the meaning of words would be of small help. The art of manuscript-reading is one of slow acquirement, and so we find that though Elphinstone could speak Persian, and admired Omar Khāyyām and other Persian poets, he could not read Persian MSS. and had to rely on his munshī or on a translation.

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After the House of Khiljī comes the Tughlaq

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Dynasty. The *enfant terrible* of this line was Muḥammad Tughlaq. He is the man who made Delhi a desert, and who put Ibn Batuta in fear of his life. Apparently this Tughlaq was partially insane. The glory of the dynasty was Fīrūz Shāh. He was, perhaps, the best of the Muhammadan emperors of India. He was more humane and less whimsical and revolutionary than Akbar, and more warm-hearted and human than Aurangzeb. And he had the advantage of a long reign, for he lived to a great age, and ruled nearly thirty years. He was not, perhaps, so clever as some other Emperors, but he loved his people, and was beloved by them. It is not too fanciful to hold that his happy nature was the result of the blending of two noble races, the Persian and the Indian. His father was named Rajab, and was Sipahsalar, or Commander-in-chief, and so held the office of which Abul Faẓl gives such a glowing description in the *Ā'īn* (Jarrett’s translation, p. 37), and his mother was the daughter of the Rānā of Dipalpur in the Punjab, and belonged to the Bhaṭṭī caste. Her name was originally Bībī Nā'ila, but it became Sulṭān Bībī Kadbānū on her marriage to the Muhammadan Commander-in-chief. As a little girl, she showed her courage and spirit of self-sacrifice by offering herself as a ransom for her parents and her people, when they were being persecuted in order to win her as a bride for Sulṭān 'Alāu-d-dīn's friend Rajab. Probably, as in the

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Scottish case in the days of Protector Somerset, they thought to themselves that they liked the marriage, but not the fashion of the wooing. Mr. Law has in this part of his work done full justice to Fīrūz Shāh. At p. 55 he refers to Fīrūz Shāh’s contrivance of a Ṭāsi-gharyāl, or water-clock. This really is the Clepsydra, of which Abul Faẓl gives a description in vol. iii. of the *A’īn* (Jarrett, iii. 15). The historian Shams Sirāj claims that Fīrūz Shāh invented the water-clock, but this cannot be correct, for it was known to the Hindus at a much earlier period. (See Mr. Fleet’s article in the *J.R.A.S.* for April last.) Nor does Fīrūz Shāh claim it as his invention in his *Fatuḥāt*. The translation of the Ṭāsi-gharyāl passage in Elliot, p. 338, is very brief. The Persian text, Bib. Ind. ed., p. 254, is much longer, but does not add to our knowledge of the machinery. Fīrūz Shah did not confine himself to the building of mosques and theological colleges. He also dug canals, and it was an incident of this work that the fossils of the Sivaliks were first discovered. It is said that Fīrūz Shāh founded Jaunpūr (Elliot, iii. 307). It is also said that he called it Jaunānpūr after Jaunān, one of the names of Sulṭān Muḥammad b. Tughlaq. But is it not more probable that Sulṭān Muḥammad’s name was Jūna or Jona? We find that Jūna was the name of the Tughlaq who transferred the capital from Delhi to Daulatābād. It is interesting, at all

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events, that once or twice in the Ḥaidarābād copy of Bābur’s Memoirs, the name of the city is spelt Jūnagarh. (See also *Imperial Gazetteer*, xiv. 82, article “Jaunpūr.”)

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Chapter VIII. gives an account of the Minor Muslim kingdoms. Ferishta is chiefly followed here, and he is a good authority, for he long served in the Deccan. Jonathan Scott translated this part of Ferishta’s history. Mr. Law pays a deserved tribute to the memory of the great statesman, Maḥmūd Gāwān. Unfortunately, Gāwān was put to death by his ungrateful master in 1481 (*Beale’s Oriental Biography*).

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Book II. deals with the Mughal Dynasty. It is too late now to alter the phrase Mughal Dynasty, and after all it is not incorrect, for Bābur was at least half a Mughal by descent. But it would almost have made him turn in his grave to find the dynasty which he founded designated by the word “Mughal,” for he hated the name and the tribes who bore it. Chapter I. contains an interesting account of this great prince. In the passage quoted at p. 122 from Mīrzā Ḥaidar, the phrase “his Holiness” means the great saint of Samarqand called Khwāja Aḥrār, and also Naṣīru-d-dīn ’Ubaidullāh. He is likewise often designated by the phrase Ḥaẓrat Īshān.

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With reference to the remark at p. 124 about Bābur’s saying that there were no Colleges in India,

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it should be stated, in justice to him, that he is speaking of Madrasahs, *i.e.* Muhammadan Colleges, and that by Hindustan he means Upper India, which was the only part known to him. Thus limited, his statement is probably correct.

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Bābur is commonly supposed to have spoken very contemptuously of the attractions of India, and there is a famous passage at p. 333 of Leyden and Erskine which begins with the remark, “Hindustan is a country that has few pleasures to recommend it.” But it seems questionable if this translation of his words be correct. It all turns on whether the word in the Turkī be *kam*, “few,” or *kīm*, “which.” The word certainly seems to be *kam* in the Gibb Trust and Ilminsky editions, but there is only a difference of two dots between *kam* and *kīm*, and *kīm* is Turkī, while *kam* is not. P. de Courteille, a thorough Turkī scholar, has read it *kīm*, and translates, “*Quoique l’Hindustan soit un pays naturellement plein de charme*” (vol. iii. p. 226). The corresponding passage on the Ḥaidarābād MSS. is at p. 290, second line from the top. If Erskine’s translation be correct, it contradicts what he represents Bābur as saying some pages earlier, viz. 312, where we have the rendering, “It (India) is a remarkably fine country.” Unfortunately, the word, both in the Turkī and the Persian, in this passage is *gharīb*, which means “strange and wonderful,” rather than “fine,” and M.

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de Courteille’s translation is, “*C’est un pays tout à fait étrange.*” Personally, I am inclined to think that *kīm*, “which,” is right, and that Bābur did not mean to abuse the country, but to distinguish it from the inhabitants. He disliked the latter because they did not like him, and their former king’s mother had tried to poison him. But his persistence in refusing to quit India, as his ancestor Tīmūr had done, shows that he admired the country, and he vigorously defended its attractions when his old friend Khwāja Kilan abused it. His description, too, of India, and its beasts and birds shows how much he was impressed by its wonders.

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Mr. Law’s notice of Sher Shah is brief, but as full as is consistent with the purpose of the book. Sher Shah, as he himself lamented, only came by his own at evensong, and when his hair was grey. He was also prematurely slain. But in spite of his perfidies, and of his supplementing the lion’s skin with the fox’s, he was a great prince and much superior to his adversary, Humāyūn. He earned the enthusiastic praise of Badā’ūnī, who, in imitation of a saying of the Prophet, thanked God that he had been born in the reign of so just a king.

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Mr. Law’s account of Akbar is full and appreciative.

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Jahāngīr (p. 174) deserves mention on account of his patronage of the lexicographer Jamālu-d-dīn

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Ḥusain Injīr, and of his attempt to have the Qur’ān translated into Persian (*Memoirs*, translation, II. p. 34).

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Shāh Jahān deserves praise for the love of books which prompted him to make notes on MSS. It is to him that we are indebted for the preservation of Bābur’s *Dīvān*. His love of music and song led him to be kind to even Armenian Christians.

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Aurangzeb was a patron of Muhammadan learning and a great letter-writer, though such of his letters as I have seen are very uninteresting. His sister Jahān Ārā was an authoress, and wrote a tract about the Ajmere Saint, of which there is a copy in the British Museum. Aurangzeb’s daughter Zebu-n-nisā was a poet, as well as an encourager of learning, and her *Dīvān* has lately attracted a good deal of attention.

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In the chapter on female education (p. 202), a circumstance, which is worth mentioning in a book dealing with the promotion of learning, as showing Salīma’s love of reading, is that Badā’ūnī apparently fell into disgrace because he, or somebody else, had lost a book which she had been studying (Lowe’s *Badā’ūnī*, pp. 186 and 389). The book was either the original *Thirty-two Thrones*, or it was Badā’ūnī’s own translation of it, to which he gave the name of the *Khirad-afzā*. It is the tales about a demon to which

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Burton gave the title of *Vikram and the Vampyre*. We have again an early instance of an educated lady in Māh Malik, also called Jalālu-d-duniyāu-uddīn, the granddaughter of ’Alāu-d-dīn Jahānsoz. Minhāj, who was in a manner brought up by her, speaks of her with great admiration in his *Ṭabaqāt-i-Nāṣirī*, and says (vol. i. p. 392 of Raverty) that her handwriting was like royal pearls. Then there was Sulṭān Rezia, in whom Ferishta finds that there was nothing wanting except that she was not a man. Minhāj makes the same remark, and adds that as her evil fate did not make her a man, all her talents were useless to her. Indeed, it seems that she, and Durgāvatī of the Gond country, and Chānd Bībī, and many others, were all born too soon.

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Mr. Law is to be congratulated upon the successful accomplishment of a laborious and important task, which will be a substantial contribution to the history of India. The value of the book has been considerably heightened by the interesting illustrations which he has been at such pains to bring together from a variety of sources.

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H. BEVERIDGE.

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SHOTTERMILL, 11 May, 1915.

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