Name: Deedhiti Das

2nd History
With reference to the Braj literature discuss the significance of vernacular tradition in studying
the sixteenth century.
The term ‘Brajbhasha’ is likely to suggest associations with Krishna devotion i.e. meaning
‘language of Braj’. While Braj indeed owes some of its popularity to its cultivation by
Krishna-worshiping literati, it was also a major court language. Braj bhasha was a form of north
Indian language, closely related to Hindi, were in use as literary languages from at least the
fourteenth century. Brajbhasha, the speech of the Agra district to the south of Delhi, became the
standard language of Krishna poetry and court poetry; from around 1600 until the rise of literary
Urdu in the later eighteenth century, it was recognized along with Persian as the leading literary
language of the whole northern region. The origin, spread and acceptance of Braj poetry was
the outcome of the simplicity of the language and court patronage.
In the histories of Mughal India written so far, Persian chronicles were recorded as an important
source of history. Even if Persian occupied the position of highest prestige in the hierarchy of
Mughal literary forms, a number of emperors as well as members of the Mughal nobility also
sponsored the production of Brajbhasha texts.
Brajbhasha poets composed short muktak (free-standing) poems, usually on devotional or royal
themes, as well as treatises on classical Indian aesthetics known as Ritigranth (poetry
textbooks). The Braj dialect is not too distant from the Hindi spoken in Agra and it would in all
likelihood have been comprehensible to the Mughals.
Despite its importance as a literary source, the extent of Mughal participation in Braj literary
culture has not been systematically traced. There are enormous holes in the archive. Some
texts have simply been lost, others have never been published. Also, the common tendency has
been to see anything related Braj as Vaishnava and inherently Hindu in orientation. Mughal
literary culture has been studied in such a way as if Persian was the only language at court.
Often Hindi literary artisans have viewed Brajbhasha’s courtly tendencies as a wrong turn of
Hindi language in its developmental path. Riti authors known for their prashasti poems and
erotic subject matter are often unfavourably viewed in relation to their more spiritual Bhakti
counterparts, who kept themselves away from court politics and pleasure.
A major political ambition of the Mughals was to consolidate the empire by building consensus
with local Rajput kings, who were not yet Persianized and spoke various local Hindi dialects. In
forging Mughal-Rajput alliances, the Emperor began to accept Rajput princesses as brides and
thus brought Hindi to the heart of the Mughal Harem. The mothers of Akbar’s son Jahangir and
grandson Shah Jahan were both Indian Rajputs. Thus, over the course of Akbar’s reign Hindi
was in some cases literally becoming the mother tongue of the Mughal princes, even if Persian
remained the primary public language.
Additional political factors contributed to the Mughal interest in Brajbhasha. Their capital at Agra
was situated close to the Hindu cultural centres of Vrindavan and Mathura, the locus of new
Vaishnava religious communities that were gaining power with both Mughal and Rajput state
support. Important members of Akbar’s administration such as Todar Mal and Man Singh were
patrons of Vaishnava institutions and, in1580, Mathura became part of the suba of Agra.
Listening to Braj poetry and music was a means of engaging with the local. Therefore, this
would have been a political choice. With the accession of Akbar, information becomes richer.
Akbar was tremendously fond of music, especially dhrupad songs composed in Brajbhasha.
A major poet with clear associations to the Mughal court during Akbar’s period and one widely
known, if little studied by Hindi scholars, is Gang. A number of prashasti verses to Mughal
personalities have been attributed to Gang. This proves that he was associated with the court.
There are compositions in honour of Akbar, Abdur Rahim Khan-i Khanan, Prince Salim, Prince
Daniyal, Man Singh Kachhwaha, Birbal, amongst others.
Abdur Rahim Khan-i Khanan was a man of many talents, among which the composition of Braj
poetry was just one. Several works in Braj are attributed to him. Two collections of verses in the
barvai (short couplet) meter are particularly striking for their similarity with major
sixteenth-century literary trends in Brajbhasha. In one collection, Krishna bhakti themes are
prominent; the other draws on the genre of nayikabheda. This features the many different types
of female character who inhabit the world of Indian poetry.
The poetry of the Mughal administrator Abdur Rahim Khan-i Khanan is a particularly promising
site for an investigation of Hindi language. He was well versed in many languages and this was
reflected on his Hindi literary style. The poetry through its mixed language enacts a kind of
Mughal cosmopolitanism. Both in lexicon and topoi the Madanastaka carries us back and forth
from the kunj of vrindavan to the poetic world of the Persian ghazal. Krishna plays his flute on a
moonlit night, enchanting the gopis in a manner similar to Indic poetic representation; but he is
also enraptured by a gopi's hair which is expressed in the language of ghazals: zulfe, and sips
from the cup (pyala) of the lovelorn, in a style evocative of images from Persian poetry. The
literary abilities of Rahim seem to represent a cultural reconciliation between the Mughals and
their local Hindu subjects. Rahim embraced not only Indic lexical styles but also themes. Rahim
seems to have been conversant with many aspects of Indian culture: a whole range of
languages, Vaishnava bhakti, Indian mythology, as well as technical details about Sanskrit and
Hindi literary systems.
Three other localities feature as sites of innovation or achievement on Braj Literature: Gwalior to
the south of Agra, the Braj district to the north of Agra and Orchha. Gwalior has the significance
of being almost the earliest identifiable centre of cultivation of Brajbhasha poetry. Here a
fifteenth century poet named Vishnudas became the inaugurator of a tradition of narrative on
Sanskritic themes, adapted to use in a new, modern way. The Braj district came to new literary
prominence with the awakening, around 1500, of a new Krishna devotion all across north India,
Bengal, and Gujarat. Sectarian groups established themselves in the traditional sacred sites of
Braj; a flourishing oral poetry of Krishna songs, both sectarian and non-sectarian, rapidly
developed, as well as a literature of more elaborate narrative poetry that was early on
committed to writing, and some sectarian prose.
Orchha, a small principality in Bundelkhand, became an important centre of Sanskritic culture
and Brajbhasha poetry in the late sixteenth century and produced in Keshavdas one of the
leading poets of Brajbhasha. One of the founding figures of the courtly Braj literary tradition is
Keshavdas Mishra. Keshavdas belonged to a family of learned Sanskrit pandits but chose to
take up a new type of career as a vernacular writer. Keshavdas made a significant break with
tradition by avoiding Sanskrit, the time-honoured language central to Indian courtly life, in favour
of the humbler Hindi dialect of Brajbhasha. He widened Brajbhasha’s horizons from one that is
considered suitable for composing poetry about Krishna to one that could include a range of
more worldly themes and genres.
Keshavdas is famous in Hindi literary circles as one of the forerunners of the Brajbhasha Riti
tradition, a collection of courtly and intellectual practices that flourished in an environment of
mixed Mughal and sub-imperial patronage.
Riti Literature demands serious attention. Their poetry would record different trends, attitudes
and perceptions. Their statements if examined in specific literary and historical contexts may be
well considered historical.
Unlike his Persian-writing contemporaries Keshavdas did not process political events in a mode
that would be recognized as historical, in the modern Western sense of the term. These texts
according to the rule of panegyric poetry in Sanskrit need to cultivate the heroic mood (vira
rasa) or emphasize the idealism of the hero. There are times when a literary necessity conflicted
with a historical reality. This conflict between eulogizing and historical tendencies give rise to
interpretive challenges. The historian is often discouraged by the literary superfluities of court
poets.
But trying to isolate the ‘literary’ from the ‘historical’ has various problems. A model that
separates the historical and literary strains of discourse do not hold in light of recent theories
about the rooting of all historical discourse in structures of narrativity. Therefore, poetry and
history should not, and cannot, be neatly pried apart. In the works of Keshavdas the strands of
historical and literary discourse are deeply interwoven.
During the poet’s own lifetime, the kingdom of Orchha was subsumed into the Mughal empire.
The advent of Mughal rule stimulated a desire to record it, and to try to fathom its nature. Allison
Busch’s study of Keshavdas’s three historical poems brought into our view how these works
serve as an invaluable window into a critical moment in Orchha history and Orchha-Mughal
political relations.
The Ratnabhavani is a narrative poem that highlights the valour of the Orchha prince Ratnasena
who died resisting the forces of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. Particular details in these historical
poems may not be true but when Keshavdas ignores events that interfere with his themes of
kingly splendour and glory, such omissions can be historically revealing. Although the Bhavani
does not accord the Orchha state an actual victory over the Mughals, the text through its
stylistic, lexical and thematic profile establish Ratnasena’s moral victory, indirectly undermining
Mughal authority. It has been argued that the primary function of the raso was to express Rajput
resistance to Muslim power.
In the Bhavani version of the Mughal takeover accords Ratnasena chooses his fate of dying on
the battlefield, and it is an honourable end: the self-sacrifice of a noble and loyal warrior who
tried to save his father’s kingdom from defeat.
However, the most confusing thing is that the Ratnabhavani’s account is completely
contradicted by the events reported in Keshavdas’s later Virsimhdevcharit. In the latter text
Ratnasena is said to have served on Akbar’s side. Corroboration from other sources allows us
to conclude that the Charit version of events is the ‘historically true’ one. Ratnasena did not die
in 1578 at the hands of Akbar’s invading army. When King Madhukar Shah could resist Mughal
power no longer, Ratnasena and several other Orchha princes were placed in Mughal service,
and Ratnasena actually died fighting for Akbar in the 1582 Bengal campaign. The literary
account of Ratnasena’s death can be interpreted as an expression of the pain the members of
the independent Bundela royal clan felt at being forced ultimately to submit to the Mughals.
Ratnasena’s death is thus a metaphor for the death of Orchha sovereignty. The Bhavani which
depicted an early hostile moment of Mughal-Orchha contact, showed zero Persianization in its
style. Sanskrit literary models seem to dictate both style and lexical content.
Keshavdas’s second historical poem, the Virsimhdevcharit, takes place in a considerably altered
political landscape of the early 17th century which is evident even from the poet’s choice of
vocabulary and stylistic registers. The Mughals, although referred to as the ‘Pathan’ and ‘Turk’
do not have the negative connotation that characterized their usage in the Bhavani, and the
term ‘Mleccha’ has completely vanished from the vocabulary. The composition of this work
coincides with the accession of Bir Singh to the Orchha throne after he ousted his elder brother
from power. Intimately related to the chronicling of Bir Singh’s life story, it turns out, is not just
the local dynastic struggle, but also a larger story of how Orchha came under full Mughal
hegemony.
This historical poems by Keshavdas is a fascinating literary map of the responses of one
particular regional kingdom as Mughal authority became increasingly rooted. The initial Mughal
incursions under Akbar’s reign provoked resentment and hatred of the outsiders, as reflected in
Keshavdas’s earliest poem the Ratnabhavani. But this tone of hatred does not persist in
Keshavdas’s later works by the time he wrote the Virsimdevcharit Orchha-Mughal political
dynamics were much more complex, with each Orchha brother being backed by a different
Mughal faction.
In Keshavdas’s last work, the Jahangırjascandrika, the Mughal emperor is compared to Hindu
god-kings like Rama or Indra, and portrayed in the classical Kavya styles, with an occasional
Persianizing twist providing Mughals’ new legitimacy as rulers. A new tendency towards
Perso-Arabic vocabulary is seen in certain parts of his last two works.
Sandhya Sharma examines some of these poems to show how and in what sense these poems
could be used as sources of history. They were historian poets and not simply panegyrists.
Besides constructing genealogies as a source of legitimation, they acted to mobilize public
support for their patrons. Expressions of Rajdharma in the vernacular also served to acquaint
the masses about kingship.
Virsimhcharit of Keshavdas also coincides with a period of state formation in Bundelkhand.
Virsimhcharit opens with a description of three great kings- Man Singh, the Kachwaha, Rana
Amar Sing, the Sisodia and Bir Singh Deo Bundela of Orchha. The poet deliberately equated Bir
Singh with two other rulers of two dominant Rajput clans in an attempt to promote the status of
the ruler and his clan.
A deliberate attempt to identify the Bundelas as Suryavanshi indicates an attempt to assign
them a Kshatriya status. The genealogies were therefore not necessarily historically accurate
but carefully fabricated to support the claims of the emerging King’s authority, to rationalize his
political status. The Bundelas through the poetry of Keshavdas gradually shed their obscure
identity through a process of Kshatriyaization to legitimise their freshly acquired political power.
Bir Singh as the newly acknowledged king of the Bundelas needed to legitimize his authority
and invited Keshavdas to teach him rajdharma. Clearly, Rajdharma was to be revealed to guide
the king and help create his image as protector of Dharma. He was aware that public support
was inevitably required to strengthen kingship which is why he advised his patron to treat his
subjects with utmost care and compassion.
Kingship was perceived as a manifestation of divinity. The king was not only the shadow of God
on Earth but also God incarnate. Keshavdas projected his patron as the incarnation of Vishnu.
Another important contribution of the poets was the secularization of kingship in Medieval India.
The Mughal emperors could be incorporated within the Hindu pantheon as God’s incarnate.
Keshavdas who lived in a court propagating Vaishnavism applied religious and mythological
attributes to Jahangir. The Mughal emperor also permitted the use of such images which might
have percolated down through the different social circles in the language of the masses.
Braj poems furnish details about the role of kings and nobles and about imperial and regional
polities. Some of the facts available in these narratives may not be recorded in other sources
and therefore may not be verified, but these poets were eye-witnesses to the historical
developments and their perspectives were different from that of the Persian chronicles. The
formulation of Akbar’s imperial authority demanded excluding his initiatives to negotiate with Bir
Singh in Persian sources, but it was essential for Keshavdas to register these proceedings to
elevate his patron’s image. Thus, despite being poetic in style they read like historical chronicles
and defy the notion of premodern India remaining ahistorical.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sandhya Sharma - Literature, Culture and History in Mughal North India 1550 – 1800
Allison Busch - Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India.
Allison Busch - Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of
Keshavdas
Allison Busch - Braj Beyond Braj: Classical Hindi in the Mughal World
Allison Busch - Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal Court
Stuart McGregor- The Progress of Hindi, Part 1 The Development of a Transregional Idiom in
Sheldon Pollock: Literary Cultures in History.