Jain scholars helped the Mughals with astrology, something which was considered a taboo in islam
There is an uncanny resemblance in the way Right-wing groups operate across the world. With a little difference here and there; misinformation, red-herring and plain demagoguery are the go to word for such groups. These groups revel in misinformation of its target audience, as well as in the fact that none of them will go back and check if the things they were told are even true. The rise of internet Hindutva in India is a champion of this craft. Underemployed IT engineers—the force multiplier for this group—with an easy access to computer and internet are especially vocal in their demagoguery. Devoid of any training in history and sociology, the group holds forth on every single platform on the internet hound anyone who calls out their ignorance. While all sorts of liberal groups have been targeted by them, Muslims and anything having even a tenuous relationship with them are their favourite whipping dog. Lately, Mughals are in the centre of this storm. First, the decision to rename Aurangzeb Road and then the concentrated effort to the social media platform to erase Mughals from the history books only intensified this debate. Under the circumstances, Audrey Truschke’s Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court comes as a timely intervention. Audrey Truschke, a fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University and Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University- Newark, is proficient in both Persian and Sanskrit. Writing such a book appears to be a logical progression from there. But was it? The book chronicles the advent and flourishing of Sanskrit in the Mughal court, as well as the cultural encounters that the episode brought. This history of these encounters started when Brahmin and Jain historians and intellectuals were invited by Emperor Akbar to his court somewhere around the mid-1560s. Incidentally, this is around the same time that the teenage emperor was starting to find his feet after years of living in the shadow of his custodian Bairam Khan. It then details the translation and production of several Sanskrit texts into Persian under the patronage of the emperors that continued unhindered during the reign of Jahangir (1605–1627), Jain scholars helped the Mughals with astrology, something which was considered a taboo in islam and Shah Jahan (1628–1658). The translation included those of Mahabharata and Ramayana as well as other texts. It also elevated the position of Brahmin and Jain scholars who started finding themselves in vogue across the realm. The process also triggered unprecedented excitement and demand for such texts that was hitherto missing. Quote: “In the 1580s, Emperor Akbar ordered the translation of the Sanskrit Mahabharata into Persian. The newly minted Mughal epic, called the Razmnamah (Book of War), would prove a seminal work in imperial circles for decades. In the 20 years following the initial translation, Mughal literati composed a highly political preface for the Razmnamah and reworked portions of the text several times. The translation was even incorporated into the education of royal princes. While scholars have long been aware of Mughal engagements with the Mahabharata and the epic’s visibility at the imperial court, few have tried to parse the impacts of the translation on Mughal political and literary culture. Nobody has provided substantial textual analysis of the Razmnamah, and its two major subsequent rewritings remain unpublished altogether.” The book also discusses at length why such a thing came to pass. Truschke insists that Emperor Akbar had political designs— design not being anything sinister here—behind such an enthe cultural kaleid oscope Culture of Encounters Audrey Truschke Penguin/Allen Lane Edition: Hardcover ISBN: 9780670088942 Pages: 382 price: Rs 699 deavour. Akbar wanted to understand the psyche of the people he was going to rule and learn from the treasures of the ancient texts, how to do that. However, somewhere down the line such cultural encounters blurred, if not merged, the political and literary goals and what was produced was an example of a beautiful cultural amalgamation. It is also detailed how these encounters expanded in other realm, almost seamlessly. Brahmin and Jain scholars helped the Mughals with astrology, a subject which was taboo in Islam but was nonetheless patronised by the Mughals. There are instances where Brahmins made Sanskrit-based horoscopes for the royal family and the nobles. There’s an interesting mention of an eastern exorcism performed by Jains on one of Jahangir’s newborn daughter. The process itself is no less interesting. It is mentioned that Brahmin and Jain scholars first translated these texts from Sanskrit to Hindi and then in turn it was translated to Persian. It is explicitly mentioned however that in no point in time was any Mughal Emperor of that period proficient in either Sanskrit or Hindi, which had started to find its feet. Having said that, the most interesting part of the book is the one that deals with the decline of such a phenomenon. While this episode features Aurangzeb, his presence is incidental. After he defeated his brother Dara Shikoh, he wanted a clean break from latter’s Sanskrit dominated scholarship and thus shifted to by now strengthened Hindi. The withdrawal of patronage was a political decision, and not a religious one. But then, this political decision helped aggravate the decline of Sanskrit. The book is a scholarly read. It is a good and a bad thing in equal measure. Good because it lays several myths to rest with scholarly precision. Bad because those simple-minded internet Hindutva warriors will find it way too scholarly for their taste.
