Persian Histories and

UNIT 1 PERSIAN HISTORIES AND Memoirs

MEMOIRS*
Structure

1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Expanding Domain of Persian
1.2.1 Training in Persian
1.2.2 Writings of Scribes
1.3 Memoirs
1.3.1 Jahangirnama
1.3.2 Padshahnama
1.4 Namah Traditions
1.5 Dabistan-i Mazahib
1.6 Dictionaries
1.7 Spread Much Beyond Mughal Court
1.7.1 Regional Imitations
1.8 Persian and Vernaculars
1.8.1 Emergence of Urdu
1.8.2 Dobhasi
1.9 Let Us Sum Up
1.10 Key Words
1.11 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

1.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit, you will:
• be acquaint with some of the representative Persian texts written during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;
• know the evolution of Persian scribal class in Mughal India;
• understand the growth of Persian as a language of courts as well as it’s penetration
in the hinterland; and
• appreciate the impacts of Persian language on Indian vernacular languages.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are marked by further development of Persian
language in India by leaps and bounds. The process that had gained momentum during
Emperor Akbar’s reign showed more rigour during the next two centuries due to the

*
Dr. Prateek, Motilal Nehru College, Delhi University, Delhi 11
Sources and Literary all-encompassing pervasion of the Persian language in the spheres of adab, akhlaq,
Traditions
literature and courtly manners. The development of Persian in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries can be understood by three significant processes happening
simultaneously. First, the political might of the Mughal Empire had established itself
firmly leading to the intensification of state formation which needed an elaborate
administrative setup to manage the juggernaut of the empire. Persian, being the official
language of the Mughal Empire saw tremendous rise in production of all kinds of
administrative documents, records and communications written primarily in Persian
language. Secondly, Mughal court was the dissemination centre of high culture
inculcating moral values, code of conduct, courtly manners and set an ideal example to
be followed and imitated by the political elites of India. Thus, Persian became the
language of the power, high culture and refinement. The Persian adab (refined conduct)
and akhlaq (ethics) literature thus produced, helped the Mughals in their political
endeavour to put them at the centre in India and in the larger Persianate world as well.
The proliferation of Persian literary production from all across the regions of India was
a defining feature of this period. Thirdly, the Persian exerted great influence on the
various local cultures and vernacular languages of India by introducing the Persian
sensibilities, imagery, poetic forms and genres. Persian interacted with the vernacular
languages and dialects with the help of large number of polyglots, native poets,
bureaucrats and literati who could bring out the cultural exchanges between different
regional languages. The vibrant eighteenth century saw the rise of Rekhta due to this
interaction which culminated in the development of a full-fledged language of Urdu
which virtually replaced it during the later Mughals’ period.
Persian, also known as ‘Farsi,’ had been the literary language in several premodern
societies and served as the lingua-franca in the non-Arab Islamic world. It was a
language that connected India to the wider Central Asia and Middle East areas. It
became a vehicle of constituting the knowledge about India in the Persophone world.
India attracted the talents from across the world especially the Persian speaking Islamic
world by constituting India’s image as a fabled land of wealth and luxury. Marshal
Hodgson had coined the term Persianate in his book, The Venture of Islam: The
Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods, wherein he qualifies that Persian “was to
form the chief model for the rise of still other languages to the literary level… Most of
the local languages of high culture that were later used by Muslims likewise depended
upon Persian wholly or in part for their literary inspiration. We may call these cultural
traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, ‘Persianate’ by extension”.
This concept of Persianate is now widely used by scholars to study the history and
literature of the non-Arabic Muslim world generally. Highlighting the important position
enjoyed by the rulers of Indian subcontinent, in the larger political culture of the Middle-
Eastern region and Central Asian region, Richard M. Eaton has defined the period
between 1000-1765 CE as Persianate Age in Indian history. However, it is important
to understand the difference between Iranian and Persian. Persian denotes the both
the culture of Iran and also the semantic world of ‘Farsi,’ so being Persian does not
necessarily mean Iranian. The examples from the Indian subcontinent clarifies this
difference further; Amir Khusrau was a Persian poet who was not Iranian, but an
Indian who wrote in Persian language. Persian literature was not exclusive to Iran
alone but had currency in large part of Asia. Sunil Sharma, in his book Mughal Arcadia:
Persian Literature in an Indian Court, defines Indo-Persian literature as “the body
of Persian literature that was produced in and consciously crafted as belonging to the
subcontinent, whether the author was of Indian or Iranian origin”. The Indo-Persian
12
literature had made a distinctive space and identity for itself in the Persianate world Persian Histories and
Memoirs
with its distinctive style known as Sabk-i Hindi and Istemal-i Hindi.

1.2 EXPANDING DOMAIN OF PERSIAN

There were many genres of Persian prevalent in India such as Tarikh (history), memoirs,
Malfuzat (Sufi instructional literature), Tazkirah (biographical compendium), Nasihat-
namah (advice literature), Waqa’i (reports of the proceedings at the court), Akhbarat
(news reports), Dastur al-Amal (revenue manuals), Insha (composition of state
documents and letters), manaqib (panegyric accounts), Farhang (lexicography) Adab
(didactic texts), Akhlaq (ethics) etc. among many others. The poems had masnawi
(long versified narrative), ghazal (love poems) and qasida (ode) as major genres of
Persian.
The Persian language got a boost in India by Akbar’s decision to adopt it as the official
language of administration at all levels. This change over was brought about by the
well-known Iranian noble Fathullah Shirazi who helped the Mughals to streamline the
revenue system and other administrative offices. It were the Iranian clerks
(nawisindagan) and mutsaddis who held important positions in the Mughal
administrative system due to their efficiency in the Persian language and accounts. But
soon due to the rise in tradition of record keeping and written communication, a class
of Hindu scribes emerged in seventeenth century who adopted to the changing political
and economic conditions after the firm establishment of Mughals in India. Persian opened
the doors of opportunities to the Kayasthas, Khatris, Vaishyas and Brahmins who
were expert accountants, clerks and secretaries of India. The displacement of Hindawi
with Persian pushed these castes to learn Persian in the village maktabs (schools) and
madrasas where they acquired the skills to become revenue reporters, land registrars
(qanungo), village accountants (patwari), surveyors, petition writers, letter writing
(insha), accountancy (siyaq), court readers, secretaries and scribes (munshis,
munims).

1.2.1 Training in Persian

The students of Persian studying in the madrasas first learnt some basics of the arithmetic
(siyaq, hisab), measurement (masahat), mathematics (riyazi), geometry, household
economics (tadbir-i manzil), medicine, logic, rules of government (siyasat-i mudun),
physical and metaphysical sciences (tabi and Ilahi) etc. The advanced level included
studying Shaikh Sadi’s Bustan and Gulistan, Akhlaq-i-Nasiri of Khwaja
NasiruddinTusi etc. The essential chronicles prescribed for reading were Tarikh-i
Guzida, Zafarnama, Habib-us-Siyar, Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl etc. The art of insha
writings of Abu’l Fazl was also an essential reading.

Emperor Aurangzeb’s letter to his son Muhammad Sultan in 1654 depicts that Persian
was privileged over other languages in learning and teaching of the royal household.
He advised him to learn reading and writing Persian prose and poetry. He further
elaborated, “Read the Akbarnamah at leisure, so that the style of your conversation
and writing may become pure and elegant. Before you have thoroughly mastered the
meanings of words and the proper connection in which they may be used, do not
employ them in your speeches or letters. Ponder carefully on what you speak or
write.”
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Sources and Literary 1.2.2 Writings of Scribes
Traditions
One of the finest examples of a book produced by a Munshi is Chahar Chaman
(The Four Gardens) by Chandar Bhan Brahman (d. ca. 1666-70). He was born in late
sixteenth century in Lahore, Punjab and had experience of serving three emperors
namely Jahangir, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. He was an elite state secretary, Persian
poet and prose writer whose book Chahar Chaman was an account of his personal
experiences of serving the Mughals and a manual for the aspirants to become the
expert secretaries. So, the genre of the book was memoir cum advice book (nasihat-
nama) that emphasised on the ethical behaviour (akhlaq), mystical sensibilities, civility,
efficiency, public morality, righteousness etc. He was proud of his Brahman lineage
and credited to his religious Brahmanical background that made him understand the
Perso-Islamic Sufi mysticism. His book is particularly significant for his lively descriptions
of the cities of Shahjahanabad (dar al-hukumat) and Lahore (dar al-salamat).
There was a tradition among the scribal families to join the state services. Munshi
Chandar Bhan had trained his son Khwaja Tej Bhan, who was expected to continue
the family tradition of joining the Mughal service as an accomplished Munshi. Chandar
Bhan’s letter to his son is a valuable example of the training method, syllabus followed
and didactic values prescribed to such aspirant trainees. He advised that a Munshi,
“should undergo training in the Mughal system of norms or akhlaq, for it led to the
acquisition of the knowledge; read the works of history, diwans, and masnawis; learn
the skills of siyaq and nawisindagi (scribal techniques), for a man who could combine
good prose with accountancy ‘is a bright light even among lights’; be discreet and
virtuous; and above all, increase and improve his linguistic abilities.”
The Chahar Chaman along with another work of Chandar Bhan, Munsha’at-i
Brahman were two of the most circulated works in Persian prose writing in seventeen
and eighteenth centuries. He remained an inspiration for the scribal community as
observed by the example of Balkrishan Brahman of Hisar who wrote Chahar Bahar
by emulating his idol Chandar Bhan’s style. He was in the Mughal administrative service
during the reign of Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. Some of the important works produced
by the scribes and secretaries of Mughal administration are Insha-i Harkaran by
Harkaran Das Kamboh of Multan written during Jahangir’s reign; Sujan Rai Bhandari’s
(Batalvi) Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh (Essence of Histories); Nigarnama-i-Munshi of an
anonymous author with the pen names of Munshi and Malikzada written during
Aurangzeb’s reign; Rai Chaturman Saksena’s Chahar Gulshan written in eighteenth
century.

1.3 MEMOIRS
There has been a well established tradition of writing memoirs and auto/biographies
during this period. Babur wrote his memoirs, though in Turkish. Banarsi Das has been
credited with writing autobiography in vernacular during the reign of Jahangir. In Persian
we have Jahangirnama.

1.3.1 Jahangirnama
The Jahangirnama or Tuzuk-i Jahangiri is an important Persian text written in
seventeenth century composed in memoir genre that deals with the compilation of
personal memories much similar in style to the diary writing. Emperor Jahangir (1569-
14
1627) wrote this autobiography following the literary tradition laid down by his great- Persian Histories and
Memoirs
grandfather Babur who composed the Baburnama or Tuzuk-i Baburi. Jahangir
authored this book himself up to 1622, and then asked Mu’tamad Khan, his court
chronicler to carry on the narration. Mu’tamad Khan wrote Jahangirnama in
collaboration with the Emperor Jahangir till 1624 where the narration abruptly ends.
The Tehran edition of the Jahangirnama manuscript has record of events after 1624
to 1627 written by Muhammad Hadi.
Jahangirnama is written in simple but fluent style of Persian with vocabulary coalesced
in Turkish, Hindustani and Kashmiri. It is written in chronological annalistic manner that
represented Jahangir’s worldview about politics, religion, social issues and his own
image as a naturalist, intelligent, just and great patron of art. Jahangir wanted his
autobiography to serve as an exemplary advice book on kingship, therefore he get it
translated into Ottoman Turkish as well. He sent the beautifully painted copies of
Jahangirnama to different parts of the world.

1.3.2 Padshahnama
Shahjahan (1592-1666) commissioned the writing of a court chronicle Padshahnama
(1638) to Muhammad Amin Qazwini who covered the first ten years of Shahjahan’s
reign (1627-1637). This genre of history writing is known as Tawarikh (histories).
Qazwini informs that Shahjahan took great interest in the project of Padshahnama
just as his ancestor Timur. Shahjahan entrusted the work of rewriting the narrative of
first ten years to Abdul Hamid Lahori because he wanted to change the solar calendar
dates to lunar calendar dates ascribing to a more Islamic way of recording history.
Lahori composed a detailed account of Shahjahan’s twenty years of reign by the name
of Padshahnama. The description of construction of Shahjahanabad, its architecture,
the fort and bazars of Delhi is beautifully captured by Lahori. The account of third
decade of Shahjahan’s reign was written by Lahori’s disciple Muhammad Waris.

1.4 NAMAH TRADITION

The reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) was one without any complete official court
chronicle of history. Aurangzeb initially ordered to write the history of his reign called
Alamgirnama to Mirza Muhammad Kazim in the typical namah or official annals
style which was a highly scrutinised and favourable version of history. The sources
used for writing such chronicles were same as used during the time of Akbarnamah
by Abul Fazl like records of waqainavis (recorder of events), secret news reports
sent to the centre from provinces and akhbarat-i darbar-i mualla (report of court
proceedings and Emperor’s camp). The historians used these resources skilfully to
create an accurately dated and detailed version of history written from the Emperor’s
perspective.
Aurangzeb stopped the project of history writing in his tenth year of reign (1668) and
ordered codification of Islamic laws under the title of Fatwa-i Alamgiri in Arabic.
Jadunath Sarkar has reasoned that the depreciating state finances was the prime factor
behind the ceasure of highly expensive project of history writing. Therefore, the official
history Alamgirnama is only until the first ten years of Aurangzeb’s reign. This work of
completing the history of his reign was carried forward by Saqi Mustaid Khan, at the
request of Inayatullah Khan, wazir of Aurangzeb’s son Bahadur Shah. This work is
known as Maasir-i Alamgiri that was compiled in two parts; first was a shorter version
15
Sources and Literary of Alamgirnama covering the first ten years of the Emperor Aurangzeb’s reign and
Traditions
second part dealt with the remaining forty years of his reign. The other history texts
produced about Aurangzeb Alamgir’s reign are Mir’at al-Alam of Muhammad
Bakhtawar Khan; Abu’l Fazl Mamuri’s untitled history which was largely incorporated
by Khafi Khan in his work Muntakhab al-Lubab (1731); Bhimsen’s Nuskha-i Dilkusha
(1709); and Tarikh-i Shivaji (1777) by an anonymous historian which was based on
Marathi vernacular sources called Bakhar.

1.5 DABISTAN-I MAZAHIB

Dabistan-i Mazahib (School of Religions) was compiled in or a little after 1653 by an
anonymous author variously identified as Mobad, Muhsin Fani, Mirza Zulfiqar Baig
and Kaikhusrau Isfandyar. The book provides accounts of various religions and sects
popular in contemporary India. It is divided in twelve ta’lims or chapters that cover
Parsi religion (including Zoroastrianism), Hinduism and other Indian sects, Buddhism,
Judaism and Christianity in first five chapters, the rest of the seven chapters deal with
Islam and its sects. It is a unique and important source in many ways especially because
it is based on personal field survey along with use of the textual resources. It is specially
known for providing the first ever known biographical account on Kabir, the
monotheistsant. The details regarding Sikhism are much appreciated by the historians
because they are first hand observations of the author that presents a nuanced
understanding of Nanakpanth. Irfan Habib has called this work as a fairly sincere,
dispassionate and unbiased intellectual attempt of knowledge production about as
difficult and complex issue as religion.

1.6 DICTIONARIES
Gharaib al-lughat is an important text that testifies the fact that Persian had integrated
into the life world of India. It was composed by Abdul Wasi Hansawi (fl. late 17th c.)
who was a teacher and leading intellectual based in the town of Hansi, situated 150 km
northwest of Delhi. The exact date of composition of Gharaib al-lughat is not known
but most of the manuscripts date to 1730s. Gharaib-al lughat was a record of ‘Indic
words of which the Persian, Arabic or Turkish [synonyms] were less common in the
speech of the people of the provinces.’ It indicates that there was more than one
version of Persian popular among the people. It existed in the hinterland and towns
away from the Imperial cities like Delhi and Lahore. Persian interacted freely with the
vernaculars in such places wherein local words entered into the vocabulary of Persian.
The lexicon of Gharaib al-lughat was part of the series of such dictionaries that
appeared in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries like Farhang-i Jahangiri, Farhang-
i Sururi and Farhang-i Rashidi, etc. Sirajal-Din Ali Khan Arzu (d.1756), the famous
eighteenth century poet and intellectual edited and published an enlarged version of
Wasi’s Gharaib al-lughat by the title of Nawadir al-Alfaz. He modified Wasi’s work
to reconfigure the vernacular Persian into an imperial high Persian used in the courts.
The works of Abdul Wasi Hansawi remained popular even in the nineteenth century,
known by the fact that Ghalib had also criticised the provincial register of Persian in
Gharaib al-lughat.
The example of Gharaib al-lughat becomes special from another perspective that its
writer, Abdul Wasi Hansawi was not part of the coterie that received patronage from
the imperial courts. He was an educator who produced the most influential works on
16 Persian learning and teaching such as Samad Bari (Nisab), commentaries on Sadi’s
works, Zawaid al-Fawaid (Persian grammar) and the most influential Risalah (Essay) Persian Histories and
Memoirs
that made him a household name. The Persian had created a space and economy for
itself that could survive without the patronage from the elites in qasbah (town) like
Hansi. Intellectuals like Abdul Wasi who was not a poet, had established himself as the
authority on the Persian language in India signifies that Persian was not limited to just
poetry or administrative language in the early modern India.
Check Your Progress 1
1. What are the major impacts of the Mughal policy of treating Persian as the official
language of India?
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2. Write summary of some of the main Persian books authored during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
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1.7 SPREAD MUCH BEYOND MUGHAL COURT

It is generally understood that being the language of administration and high culture
Persian had an overarching authoritative presence over and above all the native. The
cosmopolitan and foreign tongue, Persian received maximum patronage and attention
from the elites of India. It thrived for centuries and reached every part of the Indian
subcontinent travelling on the wheels of courtly patronage, education, intellectual
knowledge production and most importantly the interaction with hundreds of native
languages and dialects of India. This interaction with the common people of India
happened at bazars, small towns, and villages and far out places that are away from
the high cultured courtly influences. The interplay of the Persian with both the local
tongues which were non-literarized and the vernaculars known as Bhakha or Hindawi,
the literarized languages led to the formation of new languages and dialects in different
parts of the Indian subcontinent. It needs to be emphasised that Persian had been well
entrenched in the Indian society during the course of many centuries from Sultanate to
Mughal period. The common Hindi proverb “hath kangan ko aarsi kya, padhe likhe
ko Farsi kya” is the best example that being educated was equivalent to knowing
Persian. Persian words had trickled down to the speech of common masses throughout
India leading to the proliferation of bilingual wordbooks or dictionaries that explained
the meaning of Hindawi words to Persian speaking persons and vice versa as well.

1.7.1 Regional Imitations

The tradition of history writing in Persian under the Mughals deeply influenced the
regional elites’ sense of history and archive. As discussed in unit-12 Nainsi ri Khyat 17
Sources and Literary and Marwar ra pargana ri Vigat compiled in Jodhpur by Nainsi was directly influenced
Traditions
by Abul Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari. Similarly, Mirat-i Ahmadi was compiled in Gujarat by
Muhammad Ali Khan, revenue minister of Gujarat province. It was written between
1748 and 1762. It is a fine example of a text that contains the historical narrative of the
regional history supplemented by exhaustive empirical data. He provides the details
about basic political structure of the province, its geographical features and revenue
amount earned from different sources and distribution of military retainers. The historical
account of Gujarat has been started from the times of Rajput rulers prior to triumph of
Turkish forces and then Sultanate rulers of Delhi have been covered by him. He has
borrowed much from the Mirat-i-Sikandari (1611) of Sikandar bin Muhammad alias
Manjhu to write the history of Gujarat Sultanate. However, it contributes valuable
information about the history of Jahangir, Shahjahan, Aurangzeb and the defeat of
Marathas at the battle of Panipat in 1761. The khatimah or appendix of the book
contains important details of the towns, parganas, religious places etc.

1.8 PERSIAN AND VERNACULARS

As argued above, it will be erroneous to believe that Persian remained confined solely
to Mughal courts or at the courts of regional powers. Seventeenth century witnessed
tremendous interaction between Persian and vernaculars often enriching the vocabulary
and literary sensibilities of both.

1.8.1 Emergence of Urdu

The emergence of Urdu in the eighteenth century India is much akin to a chemical
reaction wherein a foreign element when introduced to a mixture of chemicals agitates
the chemicals to produce a new chemical altogether. Persian, which once was a foreign
language got introduced in India but well received and inherited by the people of India
speaking a plethora of different dialects and languages. It influenced the literary cultures
of India by introducing new genres and imageries commonly used in Persian language.
It interplayed with the spoken language of in and around Delhi, Khari Boli (pure
speech) led to emergence of a new language called Urdu. There were many stages in
development of Urdu as a full-fledged language wherein Rekhta represents the early
stage of its experimentation with the native tongue. Rekhta is a Persian word that
means mixed, poured, interspersed that represents the poetry when one line of Persian
alternated with one in Hindi. Mir Taqi Mir, is hailed as the greatest Urdu poet of the
eighteenth century, called himself a poet of Rekhta. Mir, in his tazkirah, Nikat ash-
shuara defined Rekhta as ‘poetry which is in style and manner of Persian poetry, but
in the language of the exalted court of Delhi.’ Let’s look at one example which is most
famous lines of a Rekhta poem wrongly attributed to Amir Khusrau (c. 1253-1325). It
has the first half of each line in Persian the other second half is in Brajbhasha.
Zihal-imiskin makun tagaful, duraya na ina banaya batya;
Kitab-i Hijrannadaramaijan, nalehu kahe lagaya chatya.
Do not be negligent towards this poor one – You hide your eyes and invent excuses.
Since I don’t have the strength to bear the separation, o my love, why don’t you
embrace me at once?
It is interesting to note that this new form of Rekhta was not limited to the Persian script
and Khari Boli but it had created several other combinations of mixed languages in
Nagari script. Imre Bangha states that Rekhta can be called as “any poetry either in
18 extended Persian, Gurmukhi, the Kaithi or the Nagari scripts, which consciously mixes
the vernacular Hindawi (including Braj Bhasha) and the cosmopolitan Persian.” Persian Histories and
Memoirs
Therefore, it is clear that Persian was internalised in the sections of literati active in
vernacular languages to create some new mixed versions of languages with high content
of Perso-Arabic vocabulary. Such examples of intermixing and amalgamation
disapprove the impression that Persian was a hegemonic foreign language with
magisterial presence over the Indian vernaculars.

1.8.2 Dobhasi
Bengal province is the eastern most part of the Indian subcontinent where Persian had
established a strong presence during the Sultanate period. Akbar’s policy regarding
the use of Persian in administration bore quite similar fruits as in other regions of Mughal
India. A large bureaucratic class developed in Bengal that prepared ground for popularity
of Persian in Bengal that continued till the nineteenth century. Experiments in literature
started happening during the fourteenth and fifteenth century in Bengal in the form of
literature which amalgamated Persian and various Bangla dialects. This process of
mixing, which we know by the name of Rekhta in northern India got accelerated in
popularising a new register of Bengali known as Dobhasi. Dobhasi meaning bilingual,
as a new genre was first started by writers who were experts of Arabic, Persian and
Bangla languages. The early literature produced in Dobhasi shows strong Islamic
influences in the content, subjects, themes and characters especially because these
were produced by Muslim scholars.
Fakir Garibullah (c. 1680-1770) popularised this further with his work Amir Hamza
which differed with the earlier Bangla literature because of its highly Persianised
vocabulary. Fakir Garibullah and his disciple Syed Hamza popularised the Dobhasi by
composing many epics and poems such as Hatem Tai (1804), Jangnama, Jaiguner
Puthi (1798) in a dialect spoken by Hughli-Howrah area. Dobhasi is known by other
names as well such as Puthi (Book) and Muslim Bangla. These epic poems were
written in Persian script adapted to a versatile vernacular Bangla that could effortlessly
use the Persian grammar. Dobhasi was not only a literary language only but it was
spoken by large population of Muslims living in Howrah, Hughli, Sylhet and Chittagong
where it was written in eastern Nagari and Sylhet Nagari script.
Check Your Progress-2
1. Is it correct to say that Persian remained a foreign language in India in the early
modern period? Give examples to substantiate your argument.
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2. Describe the phenomenon of evolution of Rekhta literature in India. What are the
different types of Rekhta that are found in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
India?
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Sources and Literary
Traditions 1.9 LET US SUM UP
The immediate effect of Persianisation of the administration was the evolution of a
large class of scribes who learnt Persian to gain access to the lucrative bureaucratic
jobs in the Mughal administration. The seventeenth and eighteenth century were the
centuries when Indians deeply engaged with Persian in numerous fields of education,
science, literature, ethics, politics, culture and semantics. The Indians mastered not
only the language and created a niche Sabk-i Hindi in the Persianate world but
internalised the sensibilities, imagery, intellectual and cultural tradition that the Persian
language offered as well. The propagation of Persian increased manifold with the
consolidation of Mughal state where it emerged as the language of refined high culture.
The proliferation of books and imperial documents are the hallmark of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Persian reached deep down to the masses in eighteenth century
whereby creating a plethora of new mixed indigenous languages and registers in the
form of Rekhta, Nagari Rekhta, Dobhasi etc.

1.10 KEY WORDS

Persian : Persian is also known as its endonym Farsi, is an Iranian
language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian
sub branch of the Indo-European languages.
Rekhta : Rekhta is a Persian word that means poured, interspersed,
mixed. It appeared in eighteenth century as a name for Khari
Boli mixed with Perso-Arabic vocabulary.
Munshi : A writer, secretary, clerk, scribe author, or a language
master, a composer in prose.
Dobhasi : Dobhasi was a highly Persianised register of Bengali
language written in Eastern Nagari, Sylheti Nagari, and
Perso-Arabic script as well.
Persianate World : It is an interregional or “world” system generated by shared
knowledge of religiosity, statecraft, diplomacy, trade,
sociability, or subjectivity that was accessed and circulated
through the common use of written Persian across
interconnected nodal points of Eurasia.

1.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES
Check Your Progress 1
1) The one of the most important result of the Persianisation of the administration
was emergence of an indigenous bureaucratic class. The education system of India
was changed significantly by introducing basic to advanced Persian that could
help students to attain jobs in the Mughal administration. Soon, India became the
most Persian literate region in the Persianate world, even surpassing Iran.
20
2) There are a number of Persian books written during the sixteenth and seventeenth Persian Histories and
Memoirs
century. Some of them are Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, Chahar Chaman, Khulasat ut-
Tawarikh, Padshahnama, Ma’asir-i Alamgiri etc.

Check Your Progress-2

1) There is a generally held view that Urdu could easily wipe out Persian in the late
eighteenth century because Persian was the language of a small minority in India. It
remained as a foreign language to the masses at large, who accepted Urdu
wholeheartedly because that was a local a language.

2) The meaning of Rekhta is mixed and broken. The pan Indian presence of Persian
led to the growth of several mixed languages in different regions of India written in
multiple scripts with Persian as a common factor. It could be seen in Nagari script
of nirgun sants such as Dadu Dayal and Sundardas; and early Rekhta poetry of
Persian script composed in Deccan and Delhi.

Recommended Readings

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, and Muzaffar Alam. 2001. Writing the Mughal World: Studies
on Culture and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. doi:10.7312/columbia/
9780231158114.001.0001

Habib, Irfan. 2000. “A Fragmentary Exploration Of An Indian Text On Religions And

Sects: Notes On The Earlier Version Of The ‘Dabistan-I Mazahib.’” Proceedings of
the Indian History Congress, Vol. 61, pp. 474–91. [Link]
44148125.

Alam, Muzaffar. 1988. “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics.” Modern
Asian Studies Vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 317–49. [Link]

Chatterjee, Kumkum. 2008. “The Persianization of ‘Itihasa’: Performance Narratives

and Mughal Political Culture in Eighteenth-Century Bengal.” The Journal of Asian
Studies, Vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 513–43. [Link]

Bangha, Imre. 2012. “Rekhta, Poetry in the Mixed Language: The Emergence of Khari
Boli Literature in North India” in Francesca Orsini ed. Before the Divide: Hindi and
Urdu Literary Culture. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 22-88. Doi: (PDF) Rekhta,
Poetry in Mixed Language | ImreBangha - [Link].

Hakala, Walter. 2016. Negotiating Languages, Urdu, Hindi and the Definition of
Modern South Asia, New York: Columbia University Press.

Sharma, Sunil. 2017. Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Kinra, Rajeev. 2015. Writing Self, Writing Empire: ChandarBhan Brahman and
the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary. Oakland: University of
California Press. [Link]
Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan. The Jahangirnama. Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M.
Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1999. [Link]
sil.849796.39088018028456
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Sources and Literary Green Nile. 2019. The Persianate World. California: University of California Press.
Traditions
DOI: [Link]
Rezavi, Ali Nadeem. “Sources of Aurangzeb’s Reign.” 14 October 2021. https://
[Link]/2021/10/14/sources-of-aurangzebs-reign/.
Dudney, Arthur. 2019. ‘Persian-Language Education in Mughal India from Qasbah to
Capital’, in Maya Burger and Nadia Cattoni, Eds., Early Modern India: Literatures
and Images, Texts and Languages. Reprint, Heidelberg/ ; Berlin: Cross Asia-eBooks.
[Link]

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