Becoming Turk the Rajput way: Conversion and identity in an Indian warrior narrative

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 43, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 211-243

  Talbot, Cynthia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONFERENCE PROCEEDING; CULTURAL HISTORY; CULTURAL IDENTITY; ETHNIC GROUP; ISLAMISM; SEVENTEENTH CENTURY;

ASIA; EURASIA; INDIA; RAJASTHAN; SOUTH ASIA;

PEDICULARIS DENSIFLORA;

EID: 57049092384     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X07003381     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (112)

1. The Islamic Frontier in the East: Expansion into South Asia," South Asia 4 (1974), p. 91.
2. Jan (Kavi), in Dasaratha Sharma, Agarcand Nahata and Bhamvarlal Nahata (eds.), Hindi trans. Ratardal Misra, Kyamkhan Rasa, 3rded. (Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracya Vidya Pratishthan, 1996).
3. In KKR, Jan Kavi states that his father was Alaf Khan, but does not give his own name; it is provided in another of his poems, however. He was the second of five sons (Dasaratha Sharma, "Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta Kavivar Jan aur Unke Granth," in Kyamkhan Rasa, by Jan Kavi, pp. 2-3).
4. KKR, vv. 377-81.
5. Dasaratha Sharma, "Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta," p. 45.
6. KKR, vv. 317, 328-9.
7. KKR, v. 121.
8. Abu al-Fazl ibn Mubarak, Ain-i Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann and H. S. Jarrett (Osnabruck: Biblio Verlag, 1983), Vol. 2, pp. 194 & 277.
9. Jos J. L. Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500-1700 (London & NY: Routledge, 2002), p. 74.
10. For more on the significance of these statistics, see Sumit Guha, "The Politics of Identity and Enumeration in India, c. 1600-1990," Comparative Studies in Society and History 45.1 (2003), pp. 151-2.
11. The story of how Karamcand became a Turk is narrated in KKR, vv. 122-62.
12. Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 150.
13. Mumhata Nainsi, in Badriprasad Sakariya (ed.), Mumhata Nainsi ri Khyat, Vol. 3, (Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracya Vidya Pratisthan, 1993), pp. 273-4.
14. Richard D. Saran and Norman P. Ziegler, The Mertiyo Rathors of Merto, Rajasthan: Select Translations Bearing on the History of a Rajput Family, 1462-1660 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 2001), Vol. 1, pp. 10-11.
15. The Cauhans and Jats are both major landholding communities in the Haryana region. Cauhans, as members of the broader Rajput category, are typically ranked higher in social status than Jats.
16. This is a loose translation, based on the Hindi rendition provided by Sakariya, Khyat, Vol. 3, p. 275.
17. The word I gloss as dependant is bandi, which can mean prisoner or slave; it may also here be a variant of banda (slave, servant, dependant). Another label applied to Kyam Khan in the Khyat verses is gola, a term that implies a condition of servitude, as well as inferiority (Ramya Sreenivasan, "Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines: Female Slaves in Rajput Polity, 1500-1850," in Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (eds.), Slavery & South Asian History, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 144).
18. For biographical details on Nainsi, see Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 1, pp. 15-24.
19. Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 1, p. 11.
20. Dirk H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 72-4.
21. For a discussion of some of the historical texts, both literary and visual, produced at the seventeenth-century Mewar court, see Cynthia Talbot, "The Mewar Court's Construction of History," in Joanna Williams (ed.), The Kingdom of the Sun: Indian Court and Village Art from the Princely State of Mewar, (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2007), pp. 12-33.
22. Norman P. Ziegler, "Marvari Historical Chronicles: Sources for the Social and Cultural History of Rajasthan," Indian Economic and Social History Review 13 (1976), pp. 231-3.
23. Ziegler, "Marvari Historical Chronicles," pp. 233-35, 240-44.
24. KKR vv. 184-242.
25. Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 306-13, 318-21.
26. KKR vv. 187-8, 192-3.
27. There was a range of unfree statuses in medieval India, making it difficult to translate words like banda or cera; nor were the boundaries between free and unfree status entirely clear. Richard M. Eaton has advanced the following definition of slavery: "the condition of uprooted outsiders, impoverished insiders - or descendants of either-serving persons or institutions on which they are wholly dependent" ("Introduction," in Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (ed.), Slaveg & South Asian History, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 2). An important feature of slavery was an individual's alienation from his/her natal family, a situation that was true for Kyam Khan in both KKR and Khyat
28. The following summary is based on the English translation by Edward Clive Bayley (The Local Muhammadan Dynasties: Gujarat [London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1886], 67-72)
29. and a Hindi translation (Iskandar ibn Muhammad Manju, Mirate Sikandari [Jaipur: Sabd Mahima Prakasan, 2002], pp. 1-6).
30. Bayley, Local Muhammadan Dynasties, p. 72.
31. References to Qawam Khan appear in Tarikh-i Mubarakshahi, trans. K. K. Basu (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1932), pp. 182, 183, 186, 195.
32. The date of the text is given in Peter Hardy, Historians of Medieval India: Studies in Indo-Muslim Historical Writing, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997), p. 56.
33. Approximately 120 verses of the KKR cover the period from Firuz Shah Tughluq's death to Kyam Khan's death, out of a total Of 1,045 verses. Alternatively, Jan Kavi may have been familiar with Indo-Persian historical literature and/or traditions and fleshed out this portion of his text with their help, although the considerable divergence in particulars makes this scenario less plausible.
34. KKR vv. 242-303;
35. cf. Jackson, Delhi Sultanate, pp. 321-2.
36. See the extract from Futuhat-i Firuz Shahi, a text intended to be made public as an inscription, in H. M. Elliot, in John Dowson (ed.), The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1996), Vol. 3, p. 386.
37. Shail Mayaram, Against History, against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins (NY: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 23.
38. For more on Maqbul's career, see R. C. Jauhri, Medieval India in Transition - Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, a First Hand Account (New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 2001), pp. 221-34.
39. For the political history of Shams Khan of Nagaur and his descendants, see Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 2, pp. 439-42.
40. Musalman appears in vv. 14 & 153;
41. Turk (turak) in vv. i2o, 122, 131, 140, 816, 859;
42. and Hindu in vv. 14, 121, 130, 385, 429, 511, 640, 818.
43. KKR vv. 385, 640.
44. See also v. 816.
45. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 116.
46. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Vol. 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 538.
47. Jauhri, Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, pp. 158-9.
48. "Service, Status, and Military Slavery in the Delhi Sultanate: Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries," in Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (ed.), Slavery & South Asian History, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 97-102;
49. see also Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, "Social Mobility in the Delhi Sultanate," in Irfan Habib (ed.), Medieval India I, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 27-8, 37-42.
50. For recent scholarship on conversion as an often ambiguous and protracted process, see Rowena Robinson and Sathianathan Clarke (eds.), Religious Conversion in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003).
51. Simon Digby, "Before Timur Came: Provincialization of the Delhi Sultanate through the Fourteenth Century," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47.3 (2004), pp. 302-25.
52. The marriages are mentioned in KKR, vv. 433-5, 438-44 and 581-2, respectively. For the dates olJodha and Lunkaran, I have relied on Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, pp. 194 and 256.
53. Norman P. Ziegler, "Action, Power and Service in Rajasthani Culture: A Social History of the Rajputs of Middle Period Rajasthan" (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1973), pp. 61-3.
54. According to KKR, the first Kyamkhani to have contact with the Mughals was Daulat Khan I, whom Babur supposedly visited and described as one of the three most renowned men in Hindustan (vv. 517-31). This is highly implausible. KKR also states that Fadan Khan, Taj Khan's father, was honoured by both Humayun and Akbar and gave a daughter in marriage to the latter (vv. 627-42) - While this is possible, Fadan Khan is not mentioned in any Mughal sources.
55. Taj Khan Khatria is No. 404 in the list of mansabdars in Ain-i Akbari (Vol. 1, p. 526), whereas the other Taj Khan is No. 172 (Vol. 1, p. 457).
56. It should be noted that numerical mansab ranks were considerably lower during Akbar's reign than in later times. The Ain-i Akbari lists only 57 mansabdars at 1,000 zat or higher, another 145 in ranks from 900 down to 250 zat, and 81 at 200 zatt; for a total of 283 men (Shireen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire c. 1595 [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 19871, Table 9.2 on p. 214). Hence, despite his seeminglylow rank, Taj Khan was a member of a very select circle. The rankings initially indicated the number of horsemen that an officer was supposed to maintain for the imperial service, but inflation in the rankings during the seventeenth century led to the introduction of complicated ratios between mansab rank and the required level of troop support.
57. Alaf Khan's highest rank was 2,000 zat/1,500 sawar (M. Athar Ali, The Apparatus of Empire: Awards of Ranks, Offices and Titles to the Mughal Nobiliy, 1574-1658 [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 19851, pp. 80, 84).
58. He is mentioned in Jahangir's memoirs, sometimes with the suffix Qiyamkhani Uahangir, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston [Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; NY: Oxford University Press, 1999], pp. 94, 180, 353, 374-5, 381, 410).
59. Firdos Anwar, Nobiliy under the Mughals (1621-1658) (Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 200 1), P. 21.
60. Daulat Khan's highest rank was 1,500 zat/1,000 sawar, achieved in the i 640s-Mention of him in Mughal sources is noted in Athar Ali, Apparatus of Empire, pp. 100, 147, 169, 194, 216.
61. John F. Richards, Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 132-5.
62. KKR, v. 939.
63. Muzaffar Alam, "The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics," Modern Asian Studies 32.2 (1998), pp. 323-30.
64. He also prepared a Braj Bhasa version of the Sanskrit Pancatantra animal fables, which was presented to emperor Shah Jahan (Sharma, "Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta," pp. 3, 6, 9)
65. For more on these two genres in Braj Bhasa literature, see Allison Busch, "The Anxiety of Literary Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in Hindi/Riti Tradition, "Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24.2 (2004), pp. 45-60;
66. "Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of Kesavdas," South Asia Research 25. 1 (2005), pp. 31-54.
67. R. S. McGregor, Hindi Literature from Its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 1984), pp. 126-29, 173-74.
68. Rupert Snell, The Hindi Classical Tradition: A Braj Bhasa Reader (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 199 1), P. 43.
69. Two volumes of Jan's poems have recently been published (Vina Lahoti et al. (ed.), Jan Granthavali, Vol. 3: Premakhyan Sangrah, [Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracya Vidya Pratishthan, 2004];
70. Vandana Singhvi et al. (ed.), Jan Granthavali, Vol. 4: Premakhyan Sangrah, [Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracya Vidya Pratishthan, 20051). A good number of Jan's poems (some of which are quite short) are classified as premakhyans or romantic adventure tales. Unlike the famous romances written earlier in Avadhi by Jayasi and others, however, Jan's poems do not reveal any Sufi influence (Om Prakash Sharma, "Foreword," in Jan Granthavali Vol. 3, p. vi).
71. Dasaratha Sharma, "Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta," pp. 3, 11-12.
72. The information on Sundardas and Dadu in the previous sentences has been taken from Monika Thiel-Horstmann, Crossing the Ocean of Existence: Braj Bhasa Religious Poetry from Rajasthan (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983), pp. 3-14.
73. Dasaratha Sharma, "Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta," pp. 11-12.
74. A pioneering study of the transregional character of Braj Bhasa is Allison Busch, "The Courtly Vernacular: The Transformation of Braj Bhasa Literary Culture (1590-1690)," PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2003.
75. On Bikat Kahani, see Shantanu Phukan, "'Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet': The Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian," Indian Economic and Social History Review 38. 1 (2001), pp. 37-41;
76. on Tuhfatu'l Hind, see R. S. McGregor, "The Progress of Hindi, Part I: The Development of a Transregional Idiom," in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 942-4.
77. Snell, Hindi Classical Tradition, pp. 33-4, 39-40.
78. Phukan, "'Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet'," pp. 43-8, 54.
79. KKR, vv. 14-15.
80. The word Rajput appears in KKR, vv. 68, 605, 635, 1041.
81. KKR, vv. 458, 557.
82. KKR, v. 68.
83. KKR, vv. 895, 936.
84. Abu al-Fazl ibn Mubarak, The Akbarnama of Abu-l-Fazl, trans. H. Beveridge (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1897), Vol. 1, pp. 155-69.
85. Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 28-61.
86. Trautmann, Aryans and British India, p. 53.
87. KKR, v. 32.
88. KKR, vv. 110-111.
89. G. W. Briggs, Goraknath and the Kanphata Yogis (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973 [1938]), pp. 235-6;
90. Elwyn C. Lapoint, "The Epic of Guga: A North Indian Oral Tradition," in Sylvia Vatuk (ed.), American Studies in the Anthropology of India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1978), pp. 281-308.
91. William Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India 2nd ed. (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), Vol. 1, pp. 211-13.
92. E.g., Nainsi identifies Daraira/Dadreva as Guga's residence (John D. Smith, The Epic of Pabuji [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], pp. 72, 488).
93. Dadreva appears to have long been under Cauhan sway, for an inscription there dated 1217 AD cites a Cauhan lord who appears four generations before Karamcand's father, Mote Ray, in the Kyamkhani genealogy (Dasaratha Sharma, Early Chauhan Dynasties, 2nd ed., [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1975], p. 365). Scholars have placed considerable credence in the genealogy because of its correspondence with the inscription, without considering the possibility that the Kyamkhanis were somehow aware of the inscription's contents.
94. KKR, v. 740. Other references to Kyamkhani greatness as a result of their descent from Hammir and Prithviraj Cauhan are found in vv. 612 and 1032.
95. On laj, see Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 1, p. 96 n. 120.
96. The word raj, meaning pride in one's bravery or honourable reputation, is sometimes paired with laj in KKR (vv. 881, 952).
97. KKR, vv. 879-928.
98. KKR, vv. 879, 927.
99. KKR, vv. 934, 936-7.
100. Stewart Gordon, "Zones of Military Entrepreneurship in India, 1500-1700," in Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 189-92.
101. KKR, v. 936.
102. See John F. Richards, "The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir," in J. F. Richards (ed.), Kingship & Authority in South Asia, (Madison: South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1978), pp. 253-4, 271-2.
103. Ziegler, "Action, Power and Service," pp. 58-60.
104. Riport Mardumsumari Rajmarvar San 1891 Isvi: Marwar Census Report 1891 (Jodhpur :SRi Jagadisasingh Gahlot Sodh Sansthan, 1997), p. 77.
105. B. K. Lavania et. al (ed.), People of India, Vol. 38 pt. 2: Rajasthan (Mumbai: Anthropological Survey of India & Popular Prakashan, 1998), p. 311.
106. Frances H. Taft, "The Origins of the Shekhavat Thikanas of Jaipur," in N. K. Singhi and Rajendra Joshi (ed.), Religion, Ritual and Royalty (Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 1999), pp. 289-95.
107. Census of India 1911, Vol. 22 pt. 1, p. 253.
108. People of India: Rajasthan, p. 510.
109. The Meos are a much larger group than the Kyamkhanis, comprising 165, 416 individuals in the 1911 census. Although they are considered a dominant landed caste comparable to rural Rajputs, they never possessed the elite status that is characteristic of the aristocratic Rajput lineages of Rajasthan. For more on the Meos, see Shail Mayaram, Against History, against State, and Raymond Jamous, Kinship and Rituals among the Meo of Northern India: Locating Sibling Relationships trans. Nora Scott (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003).
110. For descriptions of a range of Muslim communities in Rajasthan, see S. Inayat A. Zaidi and Sunita Zaidi, "Conversion to Islam and Formation of Castes in Medieval Rajasthan," in Ahsan Jan Qaisar and Som Prakash Verma (eds.) Art and Culture: Felicitation Volume in Honour of Professor S. Nurul Hasan, [Jaipur: Publication Scheme, 1993], pp. 27-42.
111. KKR, vv. 710-717.
112. A. G. Hopkins, "Introduction," in A. G. Hopkins (ed.), Global History: Interactions between the Universal and the Local, (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 6.