ADDRESS OF SHRI M. HAMID ANSARI, FORMER VICE-PRESIDENT OF INDIA, AT LAUNCH OF THE BOOK ‘A SHORT HISTORY OF PERSIAN LITERTATURE : AT THE BAHAMANI, THE ADILSHAHI AND THE QUTUBSHAHI COURTS – DECCAN ON AUGUST 7, 2018, AT 6.30 PM AT INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE, NEW DELHI.


Persian Literature in the Deccan States

It is not often that a PhD thesis, written and published many decades earlier, is republished. For this reasons, today’s function is in a class of its own. Both subjective and objective factors have made it possible; the first being the initiative of a diligent son and the second arising from the importance of a little known, almost forgotten, aspect of our cultural history.

Most of us who studied history at school or as an under-graduate know the period from 13th to the 18th century of our medieval history as one dominated by Delhi-based land powers, pre-Moghul and Moghul. Incidental mention is made in most text books of the states and kingdom in peninsular India that were subsumed by conquest by the north Indian hegemon represented in the final stages by emperors Shahjahan and Aurangzeb.

It is a known fact that for six centuries or so Persian was the official or court language for the great majority of governments in all parts of India. The book before us concerns the role of this language in the Deccan kingdoms that together had an independent existence for over three centuries. Persian came to southern states through Sufis and travelers fron the north. The social impact of the former was deep and pervasive. Prof. Richard Eaton’s seminal work, Sufis of Bijapur testifies to it in ample measure.

Southern India in the year 1400 was dominated by two major powers, the Bahmani Sultanate and the Vijayanagra Empire. A century later, after the breakup of the Bahmani state, the Deccan sultanates emerged. Bijapur and Berar in 1490, Golkonda in 1518 and Bidar in 1528. By 1619 Vijayanagra lost most of its territory to Golconda and Bijaput, Bidar was absorbed by Bijapur, Ahmadnagar was absorbed by the Moghul Empire in 1636 and Bidar was absorbed by Bijapur. In 1646, Vijayanagra disintegrated and was succeeded by the principalities of Mysore, Tanjore and Madurai.

The book before us is focused on three of the most important states of the Deccan – the Bahmani, Adilshahi and Qutbshahi. They distinguished themselves in patronage of arts and culture. In all of them, as in other parts of the subcontinent, Persian was the language of administration and culture and the focus of the book is on the contributions made to it by the rulers and scholars.

An idea of the dazzling art work, opulence and fantasy of these kingdoms was given three years’ back by the exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, on the Sultans of Deccan.

I am not a scholar of Persian languages and literature and cannot therefore comment on the book’s survey of the work of individual scholars of that period. The literary works were undoubtedly influenced by the great figures of Persian literature and were in many cases imitative. A history in verse, on he style of Firdausi’s Shahname, was penned by Abdul Malik Isami. It bore the title Futuh-us-Salatin or Shah-Nama-e- Hind. Another historian of note was Muhammad Qasim Ferishta.

A few points about the relevance of the history of the Deccan states need to be noted:

  • The state system of the Deccan states, while they lasted, is important from the viewpoint of diplomatic history. Each of them maintained nuanced relations with Safavid Persia generally in defiance of the Delhi-based Moghul power. Their prosperity and foreign trade allowed them this leeway.
  • While Persian was generally the language of the courts, a newer language in the shape of Dakkani, emerged and occupied an important place particularly in the later period of the Qutbshahi sultans of Golkonda who also consciously promoted Telugu.
  • Dakhni took roots and developed as a rich language and in many senses became the precursor of Urdu.
  • Similarly, Marathi as the local language of the people left an impact on daily life. The last chapter of the book sheds some interesting light on the influence of Persian on Dakhani and Marathi and, in regard to the latter, quotes the Marathi historian K.V. Rajwade’s observation that “Persian has left such a deep impression on the usage and common conversational idiom of the Marathi that so long as Marathi will exists as as a spoke or written language on the surface of the earth, it will bear testimony to the Muslim rule in the Deccan through its Persian vocabulary, construction and case termination.” The late Dr. Devare’s own conclusion is also note worthy: “Narrow-minded protagonists of purism in Marathi do not perhaps realize the real extent of debt which Marathi owes to Persian, when they rashly advocate the total eradication of Persian element from Marathi on the ground ot its being alien to the genius of the language…Progress of a language depends more on the healthy tendency of expansion by assimilating alien influences in the in its organism and not by the conservative instinct of assimilation.”

We would all have benefited from this sane piece of advice had it been availed of in the case of language that Mahatma Gandhi called Hindustani that now figures neither in the Eight schedule nor in the listing of languages by the linguistic Survey of India.