A History of Agriculture in India v2.c59.s13: Culture
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c59.s13
- Language
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Culture
v2.c59.s13.1
Reference has already been made to the development of Hindustani music, and the contribution made by Amir Khusrau; political unity in Northern India, fostered by the Delhi Sultanate, also stimulated the process of evolution of a common langauge. The language of Delhi at that time was *Khari Boli* mixed with Hariyanvi. Amir Khusrau called it *Zaban-i-Dehlavi*, or the speech of Delhi. Khusrau is reckoned as a writer of Urdu. The army of the Sultans consisted of Turks and Indian converts to Islam, who spoke either Persian or Punjabi. A number of Punjabi and Persian words
v2.c59.s13.2
⁶Majumdar, R.C. *History and Culture of the Indian People—the Delhi Sultanate*, pp. 648-650 ⁷Gibb, H.A.R. *Rehla of Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa*, pp. 235, 236 got absorbed in *Zaban-i-Dehlavi*. This ‘speech of Delhi’, also called Hindavi, was carried by the Imperial troops, traders and *faqeers* to the Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Central India, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Deccan. It adapted Persian script and became a respectable medium for poetry. Ultimately in the reign of Shah Jahan it came to be known as Urdu and became the *lingua franca* of northern India. Urdu is a Turkish word, which means ‘camp’. Urdu is a Persianized form of western Hindi.
v2.c59.s13.3
The greatest contribution of the Sultanate to Indian culture was paper. Indians used *bhojapatra* or birch-bark and slips of palm leaves for writing and painting. In the thirteenth century Moslems introduced paper from Central Asia. They had learnt the technique of paper-making from some Chinese whom they had captured in Samarkand. In the fourteenth century paper came into use in India for writing and painting. Jain paintings of the fourteenth century are on paper, but the oblong format of palm-leaf manuscripts persists. Indirectly the Moslems also stimulated the development of Jain painting. Construction of temples was forbidden and as such the rich Jain merchants as an act of merit employed artists who painted their religious texts, the *kalpasutaras*, which were concealed in underground libraries.
v2.c59.s13.4
The large number of plain and illuminated manuscripts and other documents that have come down to us from the period indicate the existence of a paper industry. Mention is even made of a market of booksellers in Delhi. The quantity of the paper however was not sufficient to cope with the demand.
v2.c59.s13.5
Most conspicuous contribution of the Sultans was in the field of architecture. The Hindus had no conception of the device of arch. The Moslems introduced the arch and the dome in Indian architecture. Hindu masons adapted the arch, the dome and minaret for the buildings they constructed for their Turkish rulers. The Sultans constructed their mausoleums during their life-time so that their remains were interred with due dignity. In fact, after meeting the expense on the maintenance of the army, the surplus was spent on building mosques and mausoleums, a number of which can be seen in South Delhi.