India As Seen By Early Muslim Chroniclers

Author: Syed Osman Sher
Publisher: Regency Publications
Pages: 296

A good collection of remembrances of India from the stand point of Muslim chroniclers spaced about a millenia from 8^th to 18^th centuries. The list include royal personages like Babur and Jehangir and also traders and itinerant travellers like Ibn Batuta. We get a glimpse of early India through the eyes of the most hostile historiographers who viewed with disdain the people, religion, customs and traditions of India. The author notes on an almost regretful tone that, “the Muslim chroniclers, and for that matter any Muslim mind, could not compromise with the existence of the vast array of gods in various forms and shades as worshipped by the Indian religious mentality, as also about the absence of the Day of Accountability. In no case or circumstance, the created one can acquire that quality which has bestowed on the Creator the unique position of Godhead. Once God acquires human qualities and human needs, how can he be worthy of worship by fellow humans? Islam, therefore, neither deifies humans nor humanizes God”. Obviously, the medieval Muslim mind could not transgress this narrow limit set by religion. Muslims believe that creation of man took place only 7000 years ago. Al Beruni says in Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh that “the opinion of the Hindus is that the world is very old, and that no age has been devoid of the human race, and that from that event 100 thousand thousand years have passed. And yet for all that they make no mention of Adam, whose creation took place only 7000 years ago. Hence it is evident that these events are not true at all, and are nothing but pure invention, and simple imagination”.

The pages are nothing but more and more professions of ignorance, intolerance and foolhardiness. Timur notes in his Autobiography on the requirement of conquering India as “By the order of God and the Prophet, it is incumbent upon me to make war upon these infidels and polytheists”, and also, “my object in the invasion of Hindustan is to lead an expedition against the infidels that, according to the law of Muhammad (upon whom and his family be the blessing and peace of God) we may convert to the true faith the people of that country, and purify the land itself from the filth of infidelity and polytheism; and that we may overthrow their temples and idols and become ghazis and mujahids before God”.

Al Beruni describes the victorious march of Mahmud of Ghazni as “He went to Mathra (Mathura) which is a place of worship of the infidels, and the birth place of Kishan, the son of Basudev, whom the Hindus worship as a divinity – where there are idol temples without number, and took it without any contest, and raised it to the ground”.

Ibn Batuta notes on the principal mosque of Delhi (not the present Juma Masjid, which was built by Shah Jehan) as “the cathedral mosque occupies a large area; its walls, roofs and paving are all constructed of white stones, admirably squared and firmly cemented with lead…at the eastern gate, there are two enormous idols of brass prostrate on the ground and held by stones, and everyone entering or leaving the mosque treads on them. The site was formerly occupied by an idol temple, and was converted into a mosque on the conquest of the city”.

Many Muslim and pseudo-secular historians suggest that Jizya, the poll tax to be paid by Hindus for living in their own homeland, was necessitated by economic and not religious considerations. The root of this argument crumbles if we consider Muntakhab-Al-Lubab by Mohammed Hashim Khafi Khan that “the income from Jizya, which at its height, amounted to fifty-two lakh was in addition (to these twenty crore); but it began to decrease from the reign of Bahadur Shah”. So, this means that this tax constituted only 2.6% of the total revenue which is hardly an economic motivator, particularly when we learn that Aurangzeb was ready to forego the considerable income from the export of Salt Petre which was used for making gun powder, on the argument that this may be used in wars against Muslim countries!

Babur notes in his diary, later called Babur Nama that, “The solid rock out-croppings around Urwahi (Gwalior) have been hewn into idols, large and small. On the southern side is a large idol, approximately twenty yards tall. They are shown stark naked with all their private parts exposed. Around the two large reservoirs inside Urwahi have been dug twenty to twenty-five wells, from which water is drawn to irrigate the vegetation, flowers and trees planted there. Urwahi is not a bad place. In fact, it is rather nice. Its one draw back was the idols, so I ordered them destroyed”. We can safely assume that the Taliban which destroyed Buddha statues in Bamiyan was emulating their illustrious medieval compatriot.

The cruel face of the spoilt son of Akbar, romantic and often inebriate Jehangir is exposed in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-I-Jehangiri when he comments about Guru Arjan Dev, a Sikh Guru who was beheaded by Jehangir. “In Gobindwal, which is on the river Biyah (Beas), there was a Hindu named Arjan, in the garment of sainthood and sanctity, so much so that he had captured many of the simple-hearted Hindus, and even of the ignorant and foolish followers of Islam, by his ways and manners, and they had loudly sounded the drum of his holiness. They called him Guru, and from all side stupid people crowded to worship and manifest complete faith in him. For three or four generations (of spiritual successors) they had kept this shop warm. Many times it occurred to me to put a stop to this vain affair or to bring him into the assembly of the people of Islam”.

Jehangir notes on Pushkar that, “On the 7^th Azar I went to see and shoot on the tank of Pushkar, which is one of the established praying places of the Hindus, with regard to the perfection which they give (excellent) accounts that are incredible to any intelligence, and which is situated at a distance of three kos from Ajmer. For two or three days I shot water fowls on that tank, and returned to Ajmer. Old and new temples which in the language of infidels, they call Deohara are to be seen around this tank. Among them, Rana Shankar, who is the uncle of the rebel Amar, and in my kingdom is among the high nobles had built a Deohara of great magnificence on which one lakh rupees had been spent. I went to see that temple. I found a form cut out of black stone, which from the neck above was in shape of a pig’s head, and rest of the body was like that of a man. The worthless religion of the Hindus is this, that once on a time for some particular object the Supreme Ruler thought it necessary to show himself in this shape; on this account they hold it dear and worship it. I ordered them to break that hideous form and throw it into the tank”.

A curious reference is also there on the practice of Polyandry in Malabar. Abdur Razzak notes in Matlau-s Sadain that, “among them is a tribe (in Kalikot) in which one woman has several husbands, of which each one engages in separate occupation. They divide the hours of the night and day amongst themselves, and as long as any one of them remains in the house during his appointed time, no other one can enter. The Samuri is of that tribe.”

Rating: 2 Star

Arctic Home in the Vedas

Arctic Home in the Vedas

Author: Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Publisher: Vijay Goel, Delhi

Pages: 188

Tilak, the renowned freedom fighter of India and a learned intellectual to adorn the pantheon of enlightened leaders of the 20^th century puts forward a new theory on the origin and birth place of the Aryan race. From the references in the Vedas and Zend Avesta, the sacred book of the Parsis, Tilak concludes that the original home of the Aryans was well to the north of Arctic circle, which had a pleasant and habitable climate in the inter-glacial period immediately after the last ice age around 8000 BC. They migrated from the place and travelled to diverse places like Western Europe, Persia and India. References from Vedas and Brahmanas are quoted extensively throughout the book giving the arguments credence and authority. Corroborative evidence from Avesta makes the arguments powerful and lends weight to stand upright even in the face of the fiercest criticisms.

Tilak’s language is pristine and unequivocal. Whether the theory is right or wrong, the style of presentation and the author’s knowledge of the topics he is handling is impeccable. The long bibliography testifies to the determination of the ‘hard liner’ in Indian politics in early 20^th century. The time period of Aryans’ migration is categorized thus:

10,000 or 8,000 BC – The destruction of the original Arctic home by the last Ice age and the commencement of the post-Glacial period.

8,000 – 5,000 BC – The age of migration from the original home. The vernal equinox was then in the constellation of Punarvasu.

5,000 – 3,000 BC – The Orion period, when the vernal equinox was in Orion. Many Vedic hymns can be traced to the early part of this period. It was at this time that first attempts to reform the calendar and the sacrificial system appear to have been systematically made.

3,000 – 1,400 BC – The Krittika period, when the Vernal equinox was in Pleiades. The traditions about the original Arctic home had grown dim by this time and very often misunderstood, making the Vedic hymns more and more unintelligible.

1,400 – 500 BC – The Pre-Buddhistic period, when the Sutras and the philosophical systems made their appearance.

When the arguments are however examined with the cold light of reason and hindsight, they fall to the ground. The author’s reasoning is mainly based on the passages in Rig Veda which refer to long nights and dawns. Instead of treating them as poetic fantasies, Tilak takes them to mean verbatim and concludes that the Arctic days and nights are longer, sometimes up to months, these are reproductions of the dim memory of the original home of the Aryans. In some passages, the justifications are really stretched to the verge of breaking. An example goes like this, “Aditi, Mitra and also Varuna forgive if we have committed any sin against you! May I obtain the wide fearless light, O Indra! May not the long darkness come over us! (Rig Veda II, 27,14). The expression in the original for ‘long darkness’ is dirghah tamisrah and means an ‘uninterrupted succession of dark nights rather than simply ‘long darkness’.

Tilak’s unabashed eulogy of Brahmins and supremacy of Aryans is discomfiting for those readers who expect a more cosmopolitan view from one of the stalwarts of Indian nationalism. Regarding Brahmins, he says, “The Asiatic Aryans (as against European Aryans) were able to preserve a good deal more of the original religion and culture, but it seems to be mainly due to their having incorporated the old traditions into their religious hymns or songs; and made it the exclusive business of a few to preserve and hand down with religious scrupulosity these prayers and songs to future generations by means of memory specially trained and cultivated for the purpose.” and also, “the vitality and superiority of the Aryans races, as disclosed by their conquest, by extermination or assimilation of the non-Aryan races, with whom they came in contact in their migrations in search of new lands from the North pole to the Equators, if not to the farther south, is intelligible only on the assumption of a high degree of civilisation in their original Arctic home”

Overall rating: 2 Star