Another fascinating cultural development in India during the early middle ages was the shift of creative activity from mainstream culture to regional culture, particularly in literature. Though a good number of new works continued to be written in Sanskrit at this time, these were all of little merit. But the decline of Sanskrit literature opened up literary space for regional languages to grow and flourish. Sanskrit, or rather Prakrit, had spawned a number of regional offshoots in North India in the late classical period, and from around the eighth century on some of these languages began to produce literatures of their own, and this gathered considerable momentum in the succeeding years.
One of the most interesting cultural developments of the middle ages was that, in contrast to the moribund state of Sanskrit literature, Tamil, the only other ancient Indian language which had a literature of its own, remained vibrantly alive at this time. But the ethos of Tamil literature in medieval times changed totally from what it had been in the classical period. While Tamil in the classical period produced sensitive secular literature, depicting the chiaroscuro of everyday life, its miseries and pleasures, mainly under Buddhist and Jain influence, its emphasis now shifted to religious literature, both devotional and expository, under the influence of resurgent Hinduism and its devotional cults. Religious fervour now replaced the calm reflective tone that had earlier characterised Tamil literature. There was also a good amount of fascinating literary activity in the regional offshoots of Tamil at this time—in Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam. Also, there was some high-quality creative activity in Persian literature in India during the Sultanate period, and some of these writers, particularly Amir Khusrav, were admirers of the Indian literary tradition and were influenced by it.
SUCH CREATIVE INTERACTIONS between Hindu and Muslim cultures were, however, rare, because of their totally contrary nature. This was particularly evident in the architecture of temples and mosques. While the structure of the Hindu temple was complex, dark and mysterious, the structure of the mosque was bright and open, its lines smooth, simple and elegant. Their very construction methods were different—while arch and dome were the defining characteristics of Muslim architecture, India had no tradition of dome building, and arches were built in India by the method of corbelled horizontal courses, unlike the superior Muslim practice of building them with voussoirs.
Similarly, while Muslims abhorred the depiction of living beings in art as sinful imitations of god’s work, Hindu art was primarily figurative, in painting as well as in sculpture. Mosques were entirely free of figurative art, and used only floral, calligraphic, arabesque and geometric designs for decoration, but Hindu temples generally teemed with the sculptures and paintings of people, gods, animals and mythological creatures. Furthermore, Hindu temple art often depicted men and women in erotic play, which Muslims considered as totally repugnant.
The only cultural field in which Hindu and Muslim traditions exerted any notable mutual influence was in music. In early medieval times Indian classical music split into two distinct streams, Carnatic music of South India, and Hindustani music of North India, because North Indian music at this time came under the influence of Perso-Arabic musical tradition, while South Indian music remained virtually unaffected by it. Further, Hindustani music at this time became primarily court music (because its main patrons now, consequent of the collapse of the Hindu political power in North India, were sultans and Muslim nobles) while Carnatic music (flourishing mainly in peninsular India, in regions outside Muslim rule) largely retained its old character as devotional music. Besides, Carnatic music remained primarily vocal music, as most of its compositions were written to be sung; in contrast, musical instruments came to play a much larger role in Hindustani music, and it used far more instruments than Carnatic music.
THE TURKISH INVASION of India and the establishment of Islam as the religion of the dominant ruling class in India dramatically changed the religious ethos of the subcontinent. Over the millennia Hinduism had absorbed into it the beliefs and practices of numerous Indian tribes as well as of many foreign migrants. Hinduism could possibly have accommodated Islam too into its capacious multi-sectarian fold, but Islam was not susceptible to such absorption, for its monotheism was totally incompatible with Hindu polytheism. ‘They (Hindus) totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe, and vice versa,’ comments Al-Biruni. Because of this total contrariness between Hinduism and Islam they did not even exert any notable influence on each other.
This however was true only of the orthodox sects of both religions. In contrast to this, there were some intensely devotional new movements in both religions at this time, and there was a fair amount of interaction between these various movements. In Hinduism, the most notable of the devotional movements were the Bhakti cults that came to prominence in the centuries immediately preceding the Turkish invasion of India. These supercharged devotional cults originated in South India around the sixth century, and, gradually, over the next few centuries, spread all over the subcontinent.
The Bhakti sages held that only total and unswerving bhakti (devotion to god) could save man from the pitfalls of life and earn him salvation. And for this one did not have to go to temples or perform rituals, for god is latent in every man, and this god within can be roused through loving devotion. This was also the view of Sufis in Islam. They held that god realisation cannot be achieved through conventional religious practices, but only though obsessive, passionate devotion to god, and by awakening one’s intuitive faculties through intense meditation. Such meditation, Sufis believed, would enable the devotee to gain insights into the true nature of god, and that this knowledge would liberate him from all worldly bonds, so that he becomes one with god.
Another fascinating religious development in the middle ages was the rise to prominence of several mystical religious movements in India, in both Hinduism and Islam. The mystics disregarded conventional religious barriers and drew their followers from both Hinduism and Islam, and they had no hesitation to freely incorporate elements of different faiths in their teachings. ‘There is only one god, though Hindus and Muslims call him by different names,’ stated Haridasa. And Kabir asserted:
All that lives and dies,
They are all one.
The this and that haggling
is done.
Part II
PRELUDE
The Hindu Shahi dynasty is now extinct, and of the whole house there is no longer the slightest remnant in existence. We must say that, in all their grandeur, they never slackened in their ardent desire for doing that which is good and right, that they were men of noble sentiment and noble bearing.
—AL-BIRUNI
{1}
Triumph and Tragedy
The Arab imperial expansion is one of the most dazzling military sagas in world history, a tornado of awesome kinetic energy and speed that swept through a vast stretch of land from the frontiers of China to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, covering Central Asia, Afghanistan, the Middle East, North Africa, as well as Spain and southern France, an area more extensive than the Roman empire at its height. And all this was achieved within the span of just a century after the death of Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, in CE 632. Arabs believed that they had the power of god with them and were therefore invincible. And indeed they did prove to be invincible.
Inexplicably it was only in the last phase of this imperial expansion, in the second decade of the eighth century, that Arabs made their first major military move into India, although India was at this time famed for its riches, and Arab chieftains had been for over half a century right at the border of India, in Afghanistan, and India was a familiar country for them, for they, as seafaring traders, had a many-centuries-long commercial relationship with Indians.
The history of the commercial relationship between India and Arabia goes back to ancient times, and this amicable relationship continued even after Arabs, galvanised by Islam, turned their primary interest from trade t
o empire-building. Arab traders had many settlements in India in early medieval times, at port cities and royal capitals, where Indian kings in their characteristic tolerant religious spirit had allowed them to build their homes and mosques, practice their religion without any restriction, and maintain their distinctive lifestyle. Some Indian kings even employed Arabs in top administrative and military positions, and some had Arab contingents in their armies.
There was however an irritant in the Indo-Arab relationship, the menace of pirates operating out of Indian harbours, which hampered Arab shipping and trade. This prompted Arab rulers to send a couple of naval expeditions into Indian coastal waters, to chastise the pirates. But these were minor incidents. And their purpose was to secure the sea trade, not to conquer territory. It was in any case impossible to conquer land from the sea in that age.
There is only one recorded instance of a caliph even considering sending an exploratory contingent into India. This was by Caliph Usman of the mid-seventh century, who at one time thought of sending an army into Sind. But he was, according to the ninth-century Persian historian Al-Biladuri, advised against it by an explorer. ‘Water is scarce there, the fruits are poor, and the robbers are bold,’ the explorer warned. ‘If few troops are sent there, they will be slain; if many, they will starve.’
What finally made Arabs send an army into Sind was a piracy related incident. There are three different versions of what provoked this action, but the generally accepted account is that what led to it was the capture of an Arab ship by pirates off the port city of Debal in the Indus delta. The pirates not only plundered the ship but also seized the Arab girls who were on it, the orphan daughters of the Muslim traders who had died in Sri Lanka. The incident, particularly the capture of the girls, roused the wrath of Hajjaj, the pugnacious Arab governor of Iraq, and he then sent an imperative letter to Dahar, the king of Sind, demanding that he should immediately free the girls, punish the pirates, and make reparation for the damage caused. But Dahar claimed that he was helpless to do anything in the matter. ‘They are pirates who have captured these women, and over them I have no authority,’ he wrote to Hajjaj. The reply was probably disingenuous, for several of the coastal rulers of India at this time were known to connive with pirates and share their booty. In any case, Hajjaj considered the reply evasive or deceitful, and he sent two punitive forces against Dahar, one by land and the other by sea. But both these forces were routed in Sind, and their commanders slain.
HAJJAJ THEN SENT, with the Caliph’s permission, a full-fledged army to invade Sind, and gave the command of this campaign to Muhammad Qasim, his nephew and son-in-law, who was then the governor of Shiraz in Persia. Muhammad was only seventeen years old at this time, but he conducted the Sind campaign with a sagacity way beyond his age, and proved to be resourceful and ingenious in military strategies as well as in diplomacy and administration.
The Caliph took care to provide Muhammad with a strong army for this campaign: 6000 picked Syrian cavalry, the flower of the Arab armies, backed by a large camel corps and a baggage train of some 3000 camels. Several more troops and adventurers joined the army on its way to India, motivated by religious zeal and the prospect of plunder. Heavy siege weapons were sent to Sind by sea, and this included a monstrously huge ballista ironically named ‘Bride’, which required some 500 men to operate it. Muhammad, states Al-Biladuri, ‘was provided with all he could require, without omitting even thread and needles.’
Setting out on the campaign, Muhammad adventurously took the hazardous but short Makran seacoast route—the ‘waterless inferno’ through which Alexander had retreated from India in the fourth century BCE—to advance into Sind. The army seems to have endured the perils of the journey well, and it reached Sind in good shape. And, although it suffered some initial reverses in Sind, it had little difficulty in storming into Debal by scaling its ramparts.
Muhammad was usually humane and fair in his treatment of the defeated enemy, but at Debal, where he had his first major military engagement in India, he was utterly ruthless in the carnage he inflicted on the people there, presumably to terrify the chieftains of Sind into submission by a demonstration of the doom that awaited them if they resisted him, and no doubt also to rouse the ferocity of his own soldiers with bloodlust and the prospect of plunder. Arabs ravaged Debal for three whole days, slaughtering all the adult men who refused to become Muslims, enslaving their wives and children, and plundering the town of all its wealth. Muhammad then sent the customary one-fifth of the plunder to the Caliph, and divided the rest among his soldiers.
Muhammad stationed a garrison in Debal to secure his line of communication and supply, and then proceeded northward along the Indus, to confront his main adversary, the king Dahar. He met very little resistance as he advanced, and a couple of towns along his route surrendered to him peacefully, though there were also a few places where he had to fight his way through. Muhammad, notes Al-Biruni in his eleventh-century chronicle, advanced ‘sometimes fighting with sword in hand, sometimes gaining his ends by treaties, leaving to the people their ancient beliefs, except in the case of those who wanted to become Muslims.’
MUHAMMAD WAS OFTEN brilliantly innovative in his military tactics. One such tactic he used was to divide his army into two divisions while attacking forts, one to fight during daytime, and the other to fight at night, thus giving no rest to the defenders, while his own soldiers always remained well-rested and fresh. Because of such tactics, and the sheer ferocity of his soldiers, Muhammad was usually victorious in his battles.
As in military tactics, so also in diplomacy Muhammad was quite ingenious, winning over the local chieftains to his side. According to Al-Biladuri, Muhammad counselled the people of Sind to surrender to him peacefully, promising them that if they did so they would not be molested in any way, but would be given full protection, and that their ‘temples shall be unto us, like the churches of Christians, the synagogues of Jews, and the fire temple of the Magians.’ But he also warned them that if they resisted him, he would be absolutely ruthless in suppressing them. And this warning was demonstrated by him in several places, where he faced resistance, by indiscriminately slaughtering the enemy soldiers as well as the common people, and by enslaving their women and children. He also desecrated a number of temples, or demolished them to build mosques in their place. In one temple he defiled the idol by attaching a piece of beef to its neck.
This dual policy of Muhammad was quite successful. His military ferocity scared off many of his potential adversaries—sometimes they fled by the back gate of their fort when Arabs entered it by its front gate—or induced them to submit to him prudently, without resistance. Some chieftains even sided with Muhammad and assisted him in his campaign. As for the general public, according to Chach-nama, a near-contemporary chronicle of the Arab conquest of Sind, Muhammad won them over by his ‘honesty, prudence, justice, equity, and generosity.’ He took particular care to give ‘protection to artificers, merchants and the common people,’ and at times even compensated those whose properties were plundered by his soldiers. Because of all this, in some places people even greeted Muhammad as a saviour, by ‘ringing bells, beating drums and dancing.’
Muhammad’s magnanimous treatment of the local people—mostly Hindus and Buddhists—involved a liberal interpretation of the injunctions of Koran, which allow Muslim armies to spare only the ‘people of the book’ (Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians) and their religious places, but require all other infidels to be put to death if they did not become Muslims. Hajjaj in fact cautioned Muhammad on this. ‘The great god says in Koran, “O true believers, when you encounter unbelievers, strike off their heads.” The above command of the great god is a great command and must be respected and followed,’ he warned. ‘You should not be so fond of showing mercy, as to nullify the virtue of the act. Henceforth grant pardon to none of the enemy and spare none of them, or else all will consider you a weak-minded man.’
Koran, however, is not entirely consistent i
n its injunctions on this, and in one place it says, ‘Make war upon such of those … who believe not in god … until they pay tribute out of hand, and are humbled.’ This command was often liberally interpreted to mean that non-Muslims should not be harried in any way if they paid jizya and conducted themselves humbly. It was this policy that Muhammad adopted. And Hajjaj himself later approved it. As ‘the chief inhabitants [of Sind] … have made submission, and have agreed to pay taxes to the Caliph, nothing more can be properly required from them,’ he wrote to Muhammad. ‘They have been taken under our protection, and we cannot in any way stretch out our hands upon their lives or property. Permission is given to them to worship their gods. Nobody must be forbidden or prevented from following his own religion. They may live in their houses in whatever manner they like … [They should be allowed to] live without any fear, and strive to better themselves … You deserve praise and commendation for your military conduct, and for the pains you have taken in protecting the people, ameliorating their condition, and managing the affairs of the government.’
The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate Page 4
