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Title Pages

Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Title Pages
(p.i) Poetry of Kings

(p.ii) SOUTH ASIA RESEARCH

(p.iii) Poetry of Kings

(p.xxi) (p.1) (p.2) Poetry of Kings

SERIES EDITOR

Patrick Olivelle

A Publication Series of
The University of Texas South Asia Institute
And
Oxford University Press

THE EARLY UPANISADS

Annotated Text and Translation
Patrick Olivelle

INDIAN EPIGRAPHY
A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit,
Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages
Richard Salomon

A DICTIONARY OF OLD MARATHI

Page 1 of 4

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2020. All
Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.
Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 30 May 2020
Title Pages

S. G. Tulpule and Anne Feldhaus

DONORS, DEVOTEES, AND DAUGHTERS OF GOD

Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu
Leslie C. Orr

JIMUTAVAHANA’S DAYABHAGA
The Hindu Law of Inheritance in Bengal
Edited and Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
Ludo Rocher

A PORTRAIT OF THE HINDUS

Balthazar Solvyns & the European Image of India 1740–1824
Robert L. Hardgrave

MANU’S CODE OF LAW

A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra
Patrick Olivelle

NECTAR GAZE AND POISON BREATH

An Analysis and Translation of the Rajasthani Oral Narrative of
Devnarayan
Aditya Malik

BETWEEN THE EMPIRES

Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE
Patrick Olivelle

MANAGING MONKS
Administrators and Administrative Roles in
Indian Buddhist Monasticism
Jonathan A. Silk

SIVA IN TROUBLE
Festivals and Rituals at the Pasupatinatha Temple of Deopatan
Axel Michaels

A PRIEST’S GUIDE FOR THE GREAT FESTIVAL

Aghorasiva's Mahotsavavidhi
Richard H. Davis

DHARMA
Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative
Alf Hiltebeitel

POETRY OF KINGS
The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India
Allison Busch

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(p.iv)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Busch, Allison.
Poetry of kings : the classical Hindi literature of Mughal India /
Allison Busch.
p. cm.—(South Asia research)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–976592–8
1. Braj poetry—1500–1800—History and criticism. 2. Mogul
Empire—Court and
courtiers—History. I. Title.
PK1967.2.B87 2011

Page 3 of 4

891'.1—dc22 2010033230

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper

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Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Dedication
(p.v) For my parents,

BJ and Robert Busch

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Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

(p.vi) (p.vii) Preface and Acknowledgments

To provide an exhaustive account of the classical Hindi tradition that thrived in
the courts of Mughal-period India is simply not possible given the state of
research. While bhakti literature in Brajbhasha, which has its own archival
challenges, has been comparatively well-served by scholars of Indian religious
history, the domains of Mughal court culture and Rajput literature have
attracted relatively little attention. As a rule, we know too little about the more
secular forms of early modern Hindi literary culture.

We know too little, in part, because the data are poor: premodern writers were
not overly given to self-reporting. There are better data for some than for others,
but trying to form comprehensive theories about the thought-worlds of classical
Hindi writers from the few traces they left is daunting. I looked as much as
possible for guidance to actual writers from the tradition but in some cases very
little is known about even very important poets. Since only rarely could a
particular court, poet, or text provide complete enough information on its own, I
adopted a synecdochic method—seeking out aspects of individual works or
authors or patronage contexts that are in all likelihood generalizable. I have thus
been able to present a composite view of the main concerns of early modern
courtly intellectual and literary life. Working with such disparate scraps of data
to compile a broad overview felt at times like a herculean or, perhaps more aptly,
quixotic task. I will perhaps prove to have been off the mark at times. But to
insist on thoroughness would have been to abandon the very hope of
understanding Hindi's late precolonial traditions.

(p.viii) Here my emphasis is on the long seventeenth century, but I also draw
upon eighteenth- and nineteenth-century materials by later writers, anthologists,
and commentators that can help to shed light on earlier practices, as well as
texts by contemporary Persian and Sanskrit writers. Generally, some historical
information is available about the courts that rīti poets frequented. There are
Page 1 of 5

also more robust traditions of scholarship in the connected disciplines of Rajput

painting and architecture, as well as recent studies by social and intellectual
historians of Mughal India.

Another formidable challenge to literary historians of this period is

infrastructural: the spotty availability of published editions of important books
by classical Hindi authors and, in the case of unpublished works, lack of reliable
access to manuscript collections. A century ago, large-scale manuscript missions
such as the search undertaken by the Nāgarā Pracārin.ā Sabhā (Council for the
dissemination of the Nagari script) brought to light thousands of Brajbhasha
texts, an alarming number of which still remain unpublished. Accessing Indian
manuscript collections can be a trying task, certainly one that yields uneven
results. Many royal collections—naturally the best sources for the works
patronized so assiduously by early modern courts—have changed hands since
the early surveys of Hindi manuscripts were published. The estates of several
erstwhile rajas have collapsed. Collections have been sold, pilfered, frozen in
litigation by acrimonious heirs, eaten by white ants. When an old courtly
collection is reasonably intact, to overcome the bureaucracy required to see a
catalogue of manuscripts, let alone being permitted to read the manuscripts in
situ, or actually procuring a copy for personal use, can be beyond the stamina of
even the most dedicated scholar. I met with occasional success in my efforts to
obtain unpublished manuscripts and have incorporated data based on some of
those here. Still, a more complete understanding of early modern literary
practices awaits the unimpeded access to Indian manuscript collections and the
publishing and interpretation of far more material.

A last obstacle to confront is a linguistic one. Since the dismantling of Indian

courtly culture during the colonial period and the expulsion of Brajbhasha from
the official Hindi literary arena in the early decades of the twentieth century
(see chapter 6), the literary language that flowed from the tongues and pens of
cultured North Indians only a century ago is nowadays readily intelligible to few.
Brajbhasha is still a vehicle for Vaishnava bhajans (devotional songs) and retains
some status among the practitioners of classical Hindustani vocal music. Except
for a few restricted cultural domains, however, Braj long ago ceased to be a vital
literary language.

The fact that most pre-twentieth-century Hindi literature is written in Braj, and
most post-twentieth-century Hindi speakers do not know Braj, has (p.ix)
inevitably had its impact on modern scholarship and reading practices.
Brajbhasha is only rarely taught in any formal institutional context either in
India or the West, and very few scholars today are fully conversant with the
idioms of classical Hindi texts. I have immersed myself in careful self-study of
Braj court literature for more than fifteen years as well as training extensively in
Sanskrit, a classical language that is still, thankfully, widely taught. But Braj
courtly texts are far from easy to understand, and I feel humble about my

Page 2 of 5

knowledge in the face of what my authors, and readers even fifty years ago, once
knew.

In the near-total absence of scholarship on rīti literature in Western languages, I

have benefited immensely from Hindi-language sources for general background
information about poets and courts. Although rīti studies can hardly be
described as flourishing in Hindi, a few dedicated scholars, such as
Vishvanathprasad Mishra, Dr. Kishorilal, and Ramanand Sharma, have made
available the oeuvres of important rīti authors in collected works editions known
as granthāvalīs. These often include valuable introductory material. Hindi also
boasts numerous monographs on individual poets, as well as more comparative
and synthetic studies. I will not presume to catalogue all the successes and
failings of Hindi scholarship on rīti literature here except to say that the
questions of Indian specialists have largely been different from mine. They have
laid the critical groundwork, establishing biographical details of individual poets
and their patrons; verifying the authenticity of works and dating them; and
tracing the influence of specific Sanskrit intellectuals on classical Hindi poetics.
With the exception of chapter 3 on rīti intellectual life, where the nature of the
subject matter demanded that I work with a well-focused lens, I have avoided
this more detail-oriented style of inquiry, trying for a wide-angle view of the
forest, rather than zooming in on the trees. The works and lives of many rīti
poets and patrons weave in and out of the discussions, and I certainly do not
pretend to have done justice to all of them. In this book, readers may not see all
the trees up close, but I hope they will get a sense of the forest constituted by
the intellectual and cultural practices of Brajbhasha writers, and why they
matter for early modern cultural history.

To mention all of the mentors and colleagues who have aided me is to exceed
any reasonable word count for a preface. I acknowledge first the many teachers
from India, Europe, and North America who have channeled Sarasvati's grace. A
towering figure is R.S. McGregor, whose pioneering books have laid the very
foundations of research on classical Hindi outside of India. I also owe a special
debt to several close companions on the path of premodern Hindi literary study:
Imre Bangha, Thomas de Bruijn, Nalini Delvoye, Jack Hawley, Francesca Orsini,
and Rupert Snell. This path now feels lonely without Aditya Behl, a cherished
hamsafar. To Cynthia Talbot I must pay special tribute not (p.x) only for her
tireless reading of countless drafts of my work, but also for spurring me to orient
my scholarly compass farther to the west. Her thumbs holding down the bendy
manuscript pages in my photos from the archives at Udaipur only hint at the
weight of her presence in my intellectual engagement with Rajput literature.
Muzaffar Alam, Catherine Asher, Janaki Bakhle, Anna Bigelow, Bronwen Bledsoe,
Pika Ghosh, Charles Hobart, Ann Kumar, Janice Leoshko, Patrick Olivelle,
Frances Pritchett, and Rakesh Ranjan have each lent valuable intellectual and
moral support as this book moved toward publication. Carol Breckenridge, who
did not live to see the book in print, somehow always knew it would get there,
Page 3 of 5

even when I did not. For help with the images, I thank Marta Becherini and
Edward Rotharb. I am grateful to Leslie Kriesel and Katherine Ulrich for their
fine editing, and to Dalpat Rajpurohit for consulting on some of my Braj and
Rajasthani translations.

The remarkable graduate students who enliven the seminar rooms of Columbia
University deserve collective mention, but thanks are especially due to Patton
Burchett, Divya Cherian, Arthur Dudney, Matt Kurlanzik, Audrey Truschke, and
Tyler Williams, who have been indefatigable research assistants during various
stages in the preparation of this manuscript (their remuneration was generously
supported by the Columbia University Summer Grant Program in the
Humanities). Simran Jeet Singh has deepened my knowledge of Brajbhasha's
Sikh heritage, even if that rich archive could not be a focus of this study.

Numerous institutions and grants have made this project possible. For PhD
fellowships, I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, the University of Chicago, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral
Dissertation Research Program, and the American Institute of Indian Studies.
The revisions process occasioned numerous additional trips to India, which were
generously funded by a Partners Grant from the University of North Carolina,
the Franklin Grant program of the American Philosophical Society, and a senior
fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies in cooperation with the
National Endowment for the Humanities. The Institute for Advanced Study,
Shimla, provided a congenial environment for the writing of my last chapter and
the intellectual companionship of fellow Hindi scholars. An International and
Area Studies Fellowship awarded by the American Council of Learned Societies
(cosponsored by the Social Sciences Research Council and the National
Endowment for the Humanities) as well as the Chamberlain Fellowship at
Columbia University supported leave for the final research and editing. I
gratefully acknowledge contributions from the Department of Middle Eastern,
South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia toward the costs of book
production. Many institutions have helped me to (p.xi) procure manuscripts
and images for the book. I especially thank the directors and staff of the Asian
Art Archives, University of Michigan; Bodleian Library, Oxford; Freer Gallery of
Art; the Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan, Allahabad; Jnana-Pravaha, Varanasi; the
Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute; the Royal Collection, Windsor Palace;
Sotheby's, New York; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

I am grateful to Sage Publications, Cambridge University Press, and Duke

University Press for permission to reprint portions of earlier articles.
Discussions of Keshavdas's historical works in chapter 1 draw on my 2005 article
“Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of
Keśavdās,” originally published in South Asia Research 25 (1). Copyright © Sage
Publications (All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the
copyright holders and the publishers, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd, New

Page 4 of 5

Delhi). Select discussions of rīti poets’ scholarship were earlier published in “The
Anxiety of Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in the Hindi Riti
Tradition,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24 (2):
45–59. Chapter 4 is an updated version of “Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha
Poets at the Mughal Court,” which first appeared in Modern Asian Studies 44
(2): 267–309.

Last, I thank my parents for never doubting me, even when they surely doubted
whether my Sanskrit and Hindi studies would ever lead to fruitful employment.
My sisters, Jennifer and Lorraine, my Aunt Beverly, my cousins Barb and Mark,
and my oldest friends, Rebecca and Lisa, have been a regular source of strength.
I also now understand in ways I never could before that when authors commend
their spouses for all their forbearance it is no empty tribute. Thank you, Shelly.

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Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

(p.xvii) Note on Transliteration and Other

Scholarly Conventions
I have eschewed the use of diacritics for names, places, and languages. I do
adopt them for Hindi, Sanskrit, and Persian titles, as well as technical terms. I
prefer Hindi over Sanskrit spelling in the case of most modern Indic words and
Brajbhasha titles. Exceptions are vocabulary that derives from Sanskrit poetics
(hence nāyaka, not nāyak) and representations of original Brajbhasha verse,
which require the word-final short a for metrical reasons. I do not hyper-correct
typical Brajbhasha variants of Sanskrit words as when rīti poets use dental for
retroflex na (hence hittaraṅginī, not hittaraṅgiṇī, gunī, not guṇī)

Sanskrit and Hindi diacritics are represented in accordance with general

convention, as exemplified by the usages of R.S. McGregor in the Oxford Hindi-
English Dictionary. I do not bother to distinguish between nasalized vowels in
Hindi and true anusvāra: both are represented as ṃ. The system adopted for
representing Persian words is generally in keeping with that used by the Library
of Congress (ALA-LC). Calendrical conversions from vikram saṃvat were
calculated by subtracting 57 and are thus only approximate.

All translations from foreign languages (Hindi, Persian, Sanskrit, and French)
are my own unless otherwise noted. Citations of Mughal histories refer to
Persian texts unless a specific translation is noted. In cases where special
attention to the original is warranted, I provide a transcription in the body of the
text (if the passage is critical to the argument or poetic analysis) or in a footnote
(if the passage is from a rare or unpublished text, and in cases where the exact
language is likely to be of interest to specialists).

Access brought to you by:

Page 1 of 1

Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Map
(p.xviii) (p.xix)

(p.xx)

Map I Early modern India, c. 1575–1650

Page 1 of 2

Map 2 Select sites for the production of

rīti literature, c. 1650–1800

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Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Introduction
A Forgetting of Things Past

Allison Busch

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter introduces rīti literature in Brajbhasha and outlines the premises of
the book. One aim is to expose some of the fault lines in the historiography of
premodern Hindi literature. One reason that Brajbhasha court literature has not
attracted the kind of deep, sympathetic study it merits is because literary
historians have been too quick to stamp the stigma of decadence on late
precolonial traditions. The study of rīti literature has been trapped in stale
paradigms of Mughal decline that have long been discredited in other
disciplines. This chapter proposes a new approach to classical Hindi literature
that recognizes the value of this early modern archive both as literature and for
reconstructing elements of India’s social, intellectual, and political history.

Keywords: rīti literature, Brajbhasha, historiography, court literature, Mughal, early modern

Rīti Literature and its Discontents

Imagine an English-literature classroom in which Milton was derided for
retelling a story using the classical epic form. The remonstrating teacher would
shake her head and scold the poet for imitating Virgil, dismiss his Latinate
vocabulary and style as pure pedantry, and wonder why he did not derive his
subject matter from personal observation, writing poems that expressed his
inner feelings in the language of everyday speech. Or imagine reading a history
of French literature that privileged fourteenth- and fifteenth-century hymnals or
saints’ lives, decrying great seventeenth-century playwrights like Corneille,
Racine, and Molière on the grounds that their work is inadequately spiritual, too

Page 1 of 23

elaborate and contrived in its classical allusions, and morally reprehensible

because it is the product of a dissolute aristocratic milieu. Whereas these
scenarios are scarcely possible to envision in the context of European literary
history, it is an actual and alarming fact that Indian courtly literature from the
same period exhibiting similar classicizing tendencies has been shunned by
modern Hindi scholars. An astonishing number of discussions of classical Hindi
literature, by which I mean the rīti (high-style) texts produced in Indian courts
from the late sixteenth century until well into the nineteenth, center on the
authors’ distaste for it, or disapproval, and, most exasperating of all, their sense
that it fails to live up to the standards of a literature composed in another (p.4)
time and place—more often than not, given India's colonial legacy, Victorian
England.

In his wonderfully sardonic essay “How Not to Write the History of Urdu
Literature,” Ralph Russell waxes autobiographical about his earliest encounters
with Urdu literary historiography. The gist of his complaint closely mirrors my
sentiments about the modern reception of classical Hindi literature:

If you don’t think much of Urdu literature, please don’t go to the trouble of
writing a history of it. You are under no obligation to do so, and it would be
much better for all concerned if you spared yourself the labour and your
readers the disappointment.1

Like Russell, I began the study of my subject with an acute bout of

disappointment. As a graduate student with a keen interest in both Hindi and
Sanskrit, I was excited to learn of the existence of a classical courtly Hindi
literary tradition. I remember the dismay I felt when I began to learn more about
it. No one, it seemed, could recommend the subject to a prospective researcher.
The scholars to whom I turned, first in English and later in Hindi, proclaimed
that rīti was a decadent literature. It was completely unnatural. It was
mannered. It was derivative. It was shockingly sensual and thus morally suspect.
It was, above all (or so the line of reasoning generally went), the product of a
declining late-medieval culture. This decline was variously attributed to a
generalized Indian cultural fatigue in the lead up to colonialism; feudal social
conditions; the supposed depredations of Mughal rule, particularly from the time
of the emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707); the weakening or even corruption of
religious sentiments after the glorious bhakti (devotional) period had played
itself out. The reasons varied somewhat, but the story was largely uniform: a tale
of literary disaster.

It is difficult to forget my first impressions of Keshavdas (fl. 1600), Hindi

literature's preeminent classicist, afforded by K. B. Jindal's A History of Hindi
Literature, the first source I happened to consult. Sanskrit, the classical
literature par excellence, provided a defining frame of reference for virtually all
early South Asian vernaculars,2 and had become foundational to courtly Hindi

Page 2 of 23

literature in particular from the late sixteenth century. Here is how Jindal views
this legacy:

In vain one seeks for originality in Keshav[das]. We can always find

Sanskrit parallels for Keshav's verses, while most of them are verbatim
translations.… Fortunate for our language, the laws laid (p.5) down by
Keshav were not followed in all particulars by his successors.… Kavipriyā is
almost a vernacular rendering of Dandin's Sanskrit work Kāvyādars´a.…
Thirteen chapters are devoted to hairsplitting differences between the
various figures of speech.… The average reader is baffled by the long list
of qualities which should mark a good poem.… When Keshavdas can rid
himself from the trammels of scholastic training, he can be very
expressive.… Had Keshav had as much inspiration as he had brains, he
would have ranked among the greatest. As it is, his poetry lacks that
genuine religious glow which took Sur and Tulsi far beyond their
contemporary.3

In the following chapters, a less judgmental reading of Keshavdas and other rīti
poets, engaging seriously with their preference for classicism and trying to make
sense of it for their literary world, will prove these statements to be false. But it
is not a simple question of correcting a few inaccuracies in the scholarly record.
If only such extremes of expository tactlessness could be dismissed as the
cantankerousness of a single unsympathetic literary historian. Instead, Jindal's
discussion of Keshavdas epitomizes a constellation of larger hermeneutic
problems in the field of Hindi studies. Consider for a moment the judgment that
Keshavdas lacks the “religious glow” of Tulsi and Sur. By what yardstick is a
“religious glow” a necessary indicator of poetic achievement and, if it is, who
established this measure, and when? Nobody would dispute that religious genres
are an important component of the premodern Hindi canon, but this vast, and
vastly interesting, canon encompasses far more than devotional songs. I share
the frustration of an anonymous colleague at a conference on Keshavdas in
India, who once quipped, “Why must discussions of Keshavdas always begin by
apologizing for the fact that he is not Tulsi?” (Nobody seems to mind that
Tulsidas, a revered bhakti poet, recycled classical materials himself.)

In the very same century in which Keshavdas (and Tulsi) mined Sanskrit poetry
and literary theory for subject matter and stylistic protocols, French poets, too,
returned to the classics and experimented with creating modern vernacular
versions. It was quickly understood that vernacular writing need not be just a
rustic idiom, a paltry substitute for Latin texts. Just as the North Indian poet
Keshavdas felt emboldened to leave behind the Sanskrit of his forefathers to
develop a beautifully, sophisticated form of Hindi writing, early modern French
writers moved out from under the shadow of their own classical tradition and
realized that its cultural dominance could now be challenged. Sophisticated
vernacular literatures became not only possible but also much acclaimed in

Page 3 of 23

courtly circles in both Europe and India. The point is not that the trajectories of
French and classical Hindi literary history should be (p.6) unreflectingly
assumed to be analogous, although tracing cross-regional parallels in the early
modern period is instructive. But it is cause for consternation that whereas
Corneille and Racine were and remain celebrated in the French literary canon,
Keshavdas and his fellow rīti poets, once similarly celebrated, have become
objects of routine denigration in modern Hindi literary criticism and
historiography—examples of what went wrong with Indian culture, rather than
what went right. It is unthinkable that European literary historians could subject
seventeenth-century French poets to the treatment that Jindal and others have
meted out to Keshavdas. A French department where new research on Racine or
Corneille was not encouraged would be acknowledged as deficient; a library that
possessed unpublished manuscripts of theirs and left them to molder would be
denounced.

What are the peculiar historical conditions that enable one culture to despise
and largely forget their literary heritage while others embrace theirs? This book
is, in part, an exploration of this question but it is, more centrally, an act of
memory. I seek to recover the story of rīti literature and to understand the vital
cultural economy that gave rise to it. I want my readers to understand the rich
aesthetic worlds of classical Hindi, as well as the vibrant scholarly lives and
dynamic social histories of the poets who dignified the courts of early modern
India with their literary achievements.

Introducing Rīti Literature in Brajbhasha

In the context of this book, the term “Hindi” does not signify the language of
Khari Boli (current speech) that would much later be enshrined alongside
English as one of independent India's two official languages. In the early modern
period examined here, Hindi looked altogether different. Absent the
standardizing imperatives of the modern nation-state, the linguistic terrain of
old Hindi was populated by many dialects, and the poets who cultivated
vernacular literature did not as a rule write the same language they spoke.
Literature, particularly of the type composed in courtly settings, was considered
a special arena of culture: it was formal, often tradition-bound, and could only be
written in languages that, by a complex process, earned the dignity of being
considered literary. rīti poets, regardless of their birthplace or native idiom,
wrote their Hindi texts in a specific literary dialect today called Brajbhasha
(language of Braj) or, more informally, Braj, which has a story of its own in need
of telling.

Around the turn of the seventeenth century, a convenient if not absolute

beginning point for rīti literature, Brajbhasha was a newly ascendant form of (p.
7) Hindi. The social and religious processes, however, that would give rise to
both the literary language and its name had been underway for more than fifty
years. Communities of North Indian Vaishnavas (devotees of the god Vishnu) had

Page 4 of 23

been garnering a massive following throughout the sixteenth century, laying

claim to the sites mythopoetically associated with the Braj region, the locus of
the deeds of Vishnu in his Krishna avatar.4 Master poets such as Surdas, as well
as the extraordinarily successful Tulsidas (he attained more spectacular fame,
however, for his Rāmcaritmānas in the Avadhi or eastern dialect of Hindi),
crafted works of deep piety in a vernacular that had at the core of its literary
imaginaire the childhood of Krishna, his boyhood antics amid the cowherds of
Vrindavan, and his love games with the gopīs, the milkmaidens of Braj.

The religious developments that helped to underwrite Brajbhasha's rise to

success coincided with a larger political process: the consolidation of Mughal
rule during the long reign of Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). Akbar's early
capital at Fatehpur Sikri and the adjacent Mughal stronghold of Agra were
situated near the sacred Hindu sites of Vrindavan and Mathura (often
collectively labeled the Braj maṇḍal or cultural sphere), the locus of a
burgeoning bhakti piety. Rajput rulers who had been recently incorporated into
the Mughal imperial system, including one of Keshavdas's patrons, Bir Singh
Deo Bundela of Orchha (r. 1605–27), were major sponsors of temples in the Braj
maṇḍal, and Akbar's farmāns (imperial commands) on behalf of Vaishnava
communities further augmented the cultural status of the region.5 This
conjuncture of Vaishnava fervor with Rajput and Mughal patronage of the Braj
built environment helped to foster a new interest in the language of the place.
Whatever its name may suggest about its origin in Hindu communities, however,
Brajbhasha was from the beginning a highly versatile poetic idiom that appealed
to many people: used by Vaishnavas as a vehicle for devotion, it was transformed
—and, the historical record suggests, suddenly and with great éclat—into a
major court language from Akbar's day. It was the literature produced in
Brajbhasha and specifically in courtly environments that has come to be called,
through a historiographical consensus forged only in the modern period, rīti.

While the terms Brajbhasha and rīti are not entirely satisfactory descriptors for
North India's most important literary vernacular and the courtly texts that
comprise a large volume of the language's heritage, we cannot get by without
terminology. Premodern Hindi literature is complex and highly variable in both
literary and social register; it has a vast, and vastly confusing, geographical
domain in comparison to other Indian vernaculars. Moreover, nobody can
particularly agree on what exactly Hindi is, when its literature began, and what
its most salient features are. Uses of Hindi can be tracked from the
northernmost reaches of Hindustan to the Deccan, from Gujarat to (p.8)
Bengal, and each place Hindi went it was marked by regional touches, a fact
reflected in the perplexing array of names that accrued to the language (if
indeed it can be unproblematically seen as one language). Avadhi, Brajbhasha,
Gujri, Rajasthani, Pingal, Dingal, Sadhukkari, Hindustani, Dihlavi, Purbi Zaban,
Dakani and Rekhta are just a sampling of terms referring to some kind of proto-
Hindi (or the closely related proto-Urdu) literary culture, and attempting to
Page 5 of 23

understand what these names meant to all the people who used them over the
last half millennium or more is a losing proposition.6 If some poets saw their
vernacular from a very local perspective, naming it after their town or region,
others were completely unconcerned with labels, and when they did bother with
naming they used only generic expressions such as Hindavi (Indian/Hindu) or
simply Bhasha (the spoken language).7

Although widely used today, the actual terms “Brajbhasha” and “Braj” had
surprisingly little currency before the modern period.8 An early, if not the
earliest, overt statement of classical Hindi's connection to the Braj region
appears in a Persian text written by an Indo-Muslim enthusiast of Indian
literature in the late seventeenth century. In his Tuḥfat al-hind (Gift of India, c.
1675), Mirza Khan defines what he calls Bhakha (i.e., Bhasha) as zabān-i ahl-i
birj (the language of the people of Braj), and goes on to explain the Braj area's
boundaries and proximity to Mathura with reasonable geographical accuracy.9
While no one has been able to survey the thousands of extant Brajbhasha works
still in manuscript, the term “Brajbhasha” itself does not seem to be attested
before the late seventeenth century.10 The language was instead widely
designated by other terms. Mirza Khan's approximate contemporary Faqirullah,
a high-ranking administrator under Aurangzeb, speaks of the literary vernacular
of the day as the Language of Sudesha (the fine country), and his description
maps well against the general territory of the Braj maṇḍal.11 Also in circulation
was Madhyadesh ki Boli (dialect of middle India), and its variant
Madhyadeshiya.12 Another well attested name is Gvaliyari or, as was the
parlance in Persian circles, Zaban-i Gvaliyar (language of Gwalior).13 How and
when the specific term “Braj” gained currency is not entirely clear, but the word
naturally suggests the agency of the Vaishnava communities who had been
actively appropriating the religious cachet of the Braj maṇḍal since the sixteenth
century.

Not wanting to get waylaid too long in this terminological thicket, let me state
for the record that in this book I employ “Brajbhasha” because it has
considerable salience for the classical literary culture it purports to describe,
and because it is the name that stuck. It suffers from a definitional impairment
that the Sanskrit tradition would call avyāpti (insufficiency of scope): many
things are written in Brajbhasha that have nothing whatsoever to do with Braj,
either geographically or conceptually; yet I see no reason to insist upon another
name, (p.9) which would in any case be bound to have its own deficiencies.
Still, let me at the same time register that the name Brajbhasha not only is
somewhat anachronistic for this period but also reinforces the dominant
Vaishnava orientation on the Hindi past that this book seeks to recalibrate. To
conceptualize that past in terms of a specific domain of Hindu religiosity
obscures far too much that was part of the corpus, for Hindi writers of the
Mughal period operated in a religiously pluralistic landscape and served varying
clientele. Brajbhasha was extremely popular at the Mughal court, and an
Page 6 of 23

extensive network of itinerant poets connected the imperial centers of the day
with diverse Rajput, Vaishnava, and mercantile communities. Brajbhasha is also
the language of some of the poems that were beginning to anchor the Sikh
religious community from the sixteenth century, eventually to coalesce in
scriptural form as the Guru Granth Sahib.14 Thus, maintaining some awareness
of the religious and cultural diversity that a Hinducentric term like “Braj” masks
is indispensible for historians of early modern Hindi texts.

Like the name Braj, the word rīti is attested only infrequently as a distinct
literary category prior to the modern period, and one could adduce all kinds of
objections to using a twentieth-century term for describing a pre-twentieth-
century corpus. Despite its modern pedigree, the word is entirely appropriate for
the courtly literary culture it has come to designate because it signals the rīti
poets’ fundamental interest in adapting older Sanskrit practices, particularly
courtly genres, to the vernacular literary culture of their own day. One good
translation of the term rīti (“going,” from the Sanskrit root ṛ) is “method,” as in
the phrase, well attested in the writings of rīti poets, kavitta kī rīti (poetic
method).15 Questions of method were central to the community of vernacular
court intellectuals that came into its own during the early modern period. While
Vaishnava bhakti poets generally employed a less formal mode of writing, one
well suited to the bhajan (devotional song) performance context and the intimate
relationship with divinity they sought to express, the new courtly patronage
milieu encouraged the development of an elevated form of vernacular language
and textuality. Sanskrit had the prestige of centuries behind it, and its literary
heritage was supremely well-equipped to provide appropriate models. The
predominantly Brahman class of rīti authors assiduously took to writing treatises
on topics from classical poetic theory, giving rise to a new Brajbhasha
embodiment of the old Sanskrit discipline of alaṅkāraśāstra (rhetoric).

If there is one genre that epitomizes the principal literary and intellectual trends
of rīti authors it is the Brajbhasha rītigranth (book of method). A rītigranth is
basically a poetics manual in which the author both defines and illustrates the
primary concepts from Sanskrit rhetoric, such as rasa (literary emotion), (p.10)
nāyikābheda (catalogues of female characters) or alaṅkāra (figures of speech).
Some rīti writers were principally interested in the method, while others cared
more about the poetry; the most learned and versatile writers were astute at
both theory and practice. These combined works of rhetoric and poetry, which
have been known to bewilder modern readers for their melding of scholarly and
literary features, became astoundingly popular in Hindustan from the
seventeenth century. Evidence of extensive patronage can be found in Mughal
contexts, in the Rajput courts of central and western India, and also, albeit more
sporadically, as far south as the Deccan. In fact, as the patronage patterns of the
rītigranth genre show, the circulatory sphere of this literary culture maps very
well against the territorial aspirations of the Mughal Empire, for reasons that
will become clear over the course of this book (see map 2). Most kings of the day
Page 7 of 23

commissioned rīti literature. And throughout the early modern period the
rītigranth in particular was the premier genre cultivated by Hindi court poets
and intellectuals, though many writers served the needs of various patrons by
diversifying their oeuvres with other offerings, including courtly epics, religious
poetry, and historical ballads. Hundreds, if not thousands, of rīti works are
extant, but scholarly understanding of these texts is in inverse proportion to
their quantity, their quality, and their historical significance for the development
of Hindi.

What Happened to Rīti Literature?

With the consolidation of British colonial rule, the production of rīti texts began
to diminish. It did not cease overnight—important rīti works were produced in
the Indian princely states well into the 1840s and even the so-called founder of
ādhunik (modern) Hindi literature, Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850–85), wrote
countless poems that could justifiably be termed rīti. But the nineteenth century
witnessed far more disruptions than continuities. British civil servants in tandem
with reform-minded Indians reengineered many features of North Indian
linguistic, literary, and intellectual life. The standardizing of Indian languages,
suddenly perceived as too chaotic; the spread of printing presses and new
educational methods; and the promulgation of radically different ideas about the
very point of literature, were just some of the cultural byproducts of the colonial
political machinery. New themes and genres from modern European literature
were transplanted into Indian soil. The traditional patronage networks that had
supported Indian learning and belles lettres for centuries were also displaced, or
radically reconfigured. Rīti works and the courtly institutions that had supported
them became relics of the past.

(p.11) It is not just that rīti works one day ceased to be produced, however.
Their death was orchestrated. From a colonial perspective, the Hindi literature
of the late Mughal-period was made to play a central role in the myth of India's
cultural decline and consequent need for the “civilizing influence” of colonial
rule.16 Later, during the early twentieth century, heartland intellectuals who
were hard at work forging Hindi literature into a modern academic discipline
drew upon nineteenth-century reformist logic in combination with newer
currents in nationalist thought and radically transformed Hindi, seeking to shape
a literary and scholarly agenda suitable for an aspiring nation. In the hands of
Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi (1864–1938) and Ramchandra Shukla (1884–1941),
among other founding fathers of Hindi studies, both the language and its
literature were conscripted into the service of nation building, liberating India
from the shackles of a sāmantvādī (feudal) past and the patanonmukh (decadent)
literature that, it was now felt, characterized it. The new emphasis was on
creating a socially useful literature for the people, with the result that Hindi's
aristocratic literary heritage suddenly became suspect.

Page 8 of 23

Many aspects of Indian culture came to bear the stigma of decadence by this
period, but rīti literature fared particularly poorly under the new epistemological
regimes of colonialism and nationalism. First, rīti literature stemmed from the
by-now-reviled epoch immediately preceding the colonial era, and thus was
inextricably associated with the supposed cultural weakness that had made India
susceptible to colonization. Second, the subject matter of the literature no
longer seemed relevant: chronicles of politically emasculated rajas and the
trumped-up glories of their erstwhile kingdoms, erotically charged court poems,
and poetics treatises that appeared to look backward in time to classical
Sanskrit themes rather than forward to the needs of the nation. Third, change
was everywhere in the air. New ideas were imported from the West, displacing
the old, and writers began to embrace new aesthetic norms, eschewing the
conventionality of classical Indian poetry in favor of the more naturalistic motifs
that had been popularized by European Romanticism. In short, a constellation of
factors led to a reevaluation of the Hindi literary past and an endorsement of
new criteria for literary excellence that would help India to become both more
modernized and more civilized.

The Persistence of Colonial-Period Paradigms

It is not in the least surprising that there should have been radical changes in
the way Hindi literature was produced, consumed, and conceptualized during
the colonial and nationalist periods, which were characterized by dramatic (p.
12) upheavals on many fronts. What is surprising is the unflagging endurance of
colonial-period paradigms more than sixty years into political independence.
That assertions about India's medieval decadence can still be made despite the
rise of postcolonial scholarship with its healthy suspicion of the colonizers’ view
of the world and an overall academic climate favorably disposed toward
understanding India's cultural structures and knowledge formations on their
own terms, suggests how necessary and timely it is to completely reassess
everything to do with classical Hindi literature.17

One component of Hindi literary historiography that is prime for

reconceptualization is the standard periodization, which has been entrenched
for more than three-quarters of a century. Since the publication in 1929 of
Ramchandra Shukla's Hindī sāhitya kā itihās (History of Hindi literature), the
foundational work of modern Hindi literary history, it has been common to
characterize the literature produced between the fourteenth and mid-nineteenth
centuries as madhyakālīn (medieval). Typically, this period is further subdivided
into an earlier bhaktikāl (era of devotion, 1318–1643), vaunted in Hindi literary
histories as the high point of achievement for poets, and a later rītikāl (era of
high style, 1643–1843), universally considered inferior. Even a superficial glance
at this periodization should prompt the question of how a medieval era can
extend all the way into the mid-nineteenth century, when the expiration date for
anything that could reasonably be called “medieval” had long passed in the
West, to say nothing of the increasingly compelling arguments that the years
Page 9 of 23

1500 to 1800 mark, globally, the “early modern” epoch.18 The idea that Hindi
literature (like India) could only achieve modernity with the advent of the British
is an unexamined relic of a colonial worldview rather than a sound classificatory
principle for literature.19

Hindi literature of the Mughal period is not “medieval” either temporally or in

terms of its ethos. Although rīti literature doubtless evinces a complex
relationship to both Sanskrit classicism and newer cultural currents of the early
modern world, uncritically importing that term from Western intellectual history
has obstructed a rigorous investigation of the specificities of the Indian case.
Another problematic component of Shukla's conceptualization of “medieval”
Hindi is his bifurcation of bhakti and rīti literature. The idea is only nascent in
Shukla's work, but a historiographical consensus grew out of it that religious
literature of the bhakti era degenerated into a courtly style during the Mughal
period. This is tantamount to conceptualizing Hindi literary history in terms of a
long-outdated paradigm of late Mughal decline.20 In recent years, the nature—
and even the very idea—of India's eighteenth-century decline under the Mughals
has been rethought.21 A pivotal building block of imperial and nationalist
historiography for far too long, this model continues to hold sway in (p.13)
Hindi scholarship, with damaging consequences for our understanding of the
period.

Another concern about the state of early modern Hindi literary study is the
almost complete dearth of research on non-religious topics, particularly in the
West. This may be because much of humanistic teaching and research about
premodern India—at least in North America—has historically taken place in
departments of religious studies instead of literature or history programs. A
triennial international meeting in Europe known as “the bhakti conference” was
for nearly twenty-five years the only regular scholarly gathering for premodern
Hindi studies.22 A substantial body of scholarship has now emerged on North
Indian bhakti traditions, and an interested Western reader or college teacher can
pick from among several good translations of canonical poets such as Kabir.23
Other scholars have naturally turned their attention to the social registers of
bhakti, a topic given immediacy by the astounding success of Dalit movements,
the political mobilization of the historically oppressed groups once known as
“untouchables” in the Hindu caste system, and consequently Dalit literature, in
contemporary India.24

A less welcome consequence of the trends I am outlining is that the research on

this period has been almost entirely skewed toward the history and sociology of
religions. Very little has been written in a language other than Hindi on any of
the classical rīti poets, let alone on any of the fundamental social, political, and
intellectual questions that their literary culture prompts us to investigate. A
surprising number of rīti texts remain unpublished—a conservative estimate is
30 percent—and most remain untranslated and thus completely inaccessible to

Page 10 of 23

the non-Hindi-reading public.25 The neglect of rīti literature may be partly

explained in practical terms. Rīti is a learned idiom, and a more difficult corpus
to master than its bhakti counterpart. It requires years of training in Sanskrit,
Brajbhasha, and Indian literary theory, skills more easily acquired by Indian than
Western scholars, who generally are only able to start their training in South
Asian languages as adults. One fears, however, that Western scholars’ startling
lack of interest in Hindi court literature may stem from a more insidious bias
that puts religious questions at the heart of any study of Indian premodernity,
reinforcing a long-enduring Orientalist topos of India as “the spiritual East.”26
The tide has recently begun to turn, however, with several important new
studies that engage the multiple cultural streams that fed the Hindi past.27

Although Hindi literary history written in India as a rule holds rīti literature in
less esteem than its bhakti counterpart, at least Indian scholars have not ignored
it. They have considerably improved the general state of knowledge about rīti
poets and the courts they frequented. Many (but by no means all) (p.14)
important works have been edited. Still, most scholarship on this corpus was
produced in a flurry of activity in the decades immediately after India's
independence; shockingly few significant studies have been published in the last
thirty years. A few books continue to trickle out due to the painstaking efforts of
Hindi professors at regional universities where Hindi monolingualism prevails,
but it is difficult to divine in these publications much awareness of global trends
in postcolonial research, much less the kinds of reconceptualization that this
important archive merits.28

There is some justification for intellectual conservatism in Hindi studies.

Whereas scholars working in English can be expected to know the major critical
interventions that have transformed South Asian studies in recent decades,
Hindi scholars in the regional cities and towns of north India do not necessarily
have the facility in English, library resources, or travel opportunities to
familiarize themselves in any significant way with Western research trends.
There is an irony here that persistently troubles me. Indian scholars have been
among the most significant contributors to the field of postcolonial studies, and
yet the field is dominated by Indians writing in English, either in universities
outside of India or in metropolitan India. Their findings do not easily reach the
researchers working principally in the Hindi language,29 who are naturally the
authors of most works of scholarship in a specialized area of research like
Brajbhasha literature. The field of Hindi in the West remains miniscule, and
scholars there have perhaps not done enough to promote international
collaboration with Indian colleagues.

Whereas most English scholarship long ago discarded notions of India's

medieval “decline” and cultural “decadence,” these remain foundational to
current conceptualizations of Hindi court literature. The tyrannies of orientalism
and nationalism may have been toppled in many disciplines, but they reign

Page 11 of 23

unchecked in the study of precolonial Hindi literature, which risks asphyxiation

in a stranglehold of clichés: Hindi scholars celebrate India's religious character
through its bhakti literature; they see in rīti literature a reflection of “Hindu
India's” late-medieval decline under Muslim rule; they implicitly sing the glories
of the colonial state for bestowing upon India the novel and other facets of
literary modernity. An extreme formulation of this problem would be to suggest
that in the early twenty-first century, the voice of the postcolonial speaks in
English, whereas the Orientalist voice is still alive, and speaking in Hindi.

Another troubling manifestation of critical disjunction is the production of

postcolonial scholarship from squarely within a modernist framework. Pasts—not
just presents—were created during the colonial period, and they must therefore
be an important part of postcolonial reconstructions. Knowledge is (p.15) too
easily carved up into the dichotomous categories of “modern” versus
“premodern,” and its practitioners are too often ignorant of debates on each
other's side of the colonial divide. How can scholars claim to know that
colonialism irrevocably changed traditional Indian ways of being, a fundamental
tenet of postcolonial theory, if they fail to investigate, or adequately to theorize,
what those “traditional ways” actually were?

One aim of this book is to investigate a set of traditional literary ways—that,

upon closer scrutiny, prove to be not so much traditional as newly and
deliberately created in response to early modern conditions—those of Indian
courtly intellectuals writing in Brajbhasha from 1600 to 1850. I am
predominantly concerned with how the cultural complex of rīti literature was
invented and functioned prior to the nineteenth century, but of necessity I also
discuss the ruptures that brought it to an end during the colonial era, and the
history subsequently invented for it by the agents of those ruptures. This is the
history in which the study of rīti literature remains trapped. The time has come
to establish a fresh paradigm for understanding the courtly traditions of
precolonial North India, one that does not prejudge them from the outset as
failures.

Developing new approaches requires us to perform a critical reading of the

narratives that have crystallized about Hindi literary history, but it also
necessitates that we move beyond a critique of colonial epistemology toward
historical reconstruction. This requires a sincere engagement with the literary
and intellectual values of precolonial India. My study of rīti begins from a
location of profound interest in and respect for classical Hindi writers. The
animating premise is that the poets who constituted the tradition were not lost
in a medieval fog; they acted with purposefulness and intelligence. Their poetry
and scholarship were at once popular and prestigious in their own day, and it
behooves modern literary and cultural historians to try to understand why. If we
are to appreciate the world of rīti literary culture, we must attempt to see it from
the point of view of the people who created it. And this means in some sense

Page 12 of 23

leaving behind our very selves, or at least our own literary socialization, to
experience another culture's ways of being literary.

Discomfort with Courtliness

Anachronism has loomed large in the reception of Indian literature. We need to
be wary of unreflectively measuring premodern poetry in terms of the Romantic
(and Protestant) cultural values imported to India in the colonial period.30
Another form of socialization that merits greater self-awareness is a presentist
discomfort with both courtliness and a high culture produced by (p.16)
Brahman intellectuals. The last thirty years have witnessed a trend toward the
study of history from below, as epitomized by the rise of subaltern studies and,
more recently, the interest in Dalit archives. While recovering the voices of non-
elites is an invaluable contribution to historiography and literary study, to which
Hindi texts have much to add, is it possible for the pendulum to swing too far? In
recent conversations with dozens of students and colleagues at Jawaharlal
Nehru University in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla,
I was struck that not a single researcher worked on Hindi's courtly past. Several
people even felt the need to chide me for my choice of research topics. The
spiritual supremacy of earlier bhakti literature and the moral degeneracy of its
later rīti counterpart have been such unchallenged literary-historical
presuppositions since the nationalist period that the only premodern texts
apparently considered worth studying today are those of the bhakti tradition. It
takes nothing away from the greatness of bhakti poetry to acknowledge that it
has sometimes been uncritically romanticized as the great precursor to today's
Dalit movements, the voice of freedom in a proto-democratic struggle against
Brahmanical hegemony. Some (especially nirguṇ) bhakti communities were
indeed outspoken opponents of the caste system, but there were also plenty of
Brahman bhakti poets. In modern democratic India's climate of anti-casteism,
what could be more retrograde—or so seemingly runs the logic—than to study
the rīti literature of Brahman intellectuals produced in the courts of “feudal”
India? According to the unrelenting orthodoxy of vulgar Marxism, it is as though
even to study the literary production of the higher castes automatically marks
one as a reactionary.31 Granted, a full account of Indian history is impossible if
we consider only the sources produced by and for the ruling powers, but we
cannot have anything approaching a reasonable account without them. A literary
history of India without Brahmans and courts is as absurd as a literary history of
France that ignores aristocrats and Paris.

Still, in the modern world where democracy has emerged as the supreme form
of polity, it has become more of a challenge to insist that courts need to be taken
seriously as cultural institutions. Courts were the major political and cultural
centers and the financial basis of much of premodern life the world over, but
they carry a lot of baggage these days, perhaps nowhere more than in India,
where there were just so many of them. Courts are now mostly dead as an
institution, and this gives rise to a vexing historiographical problem. Ian Copland
Page 13 of 23

in his work on Indian princes in the lead-up to independence has drawn

attention to the teleology of failure that suffuses discussions of Indian courts in
the modern period.32 In a post-courtly world, it is not easy to find the right
vocabulary and analytical models for discussing courts and court culture.
Another problem is that monarchy is today considered direly (p.17) unmodern
or, worse, extravagant and socially exploitative. Some of the very structures and
associations built into the English language disclose a deep ambivalence about
courtliness. A casual glance at any thesaurus reveals how courtliness is
positively valued in terms such as politesse, civility, and elegance, but
simultaneously conjures up an entirely different semantic range, whose
synonyms include flattery, obsequiousness, and sycophancy.33 A similar
uneasiness surrounds the idea of luxury, which is arguably one of the defining
attributes of courtly life. Whereas a few glosses, such as splendor, affluence,
pleasure, and elegance, are positive, most are not only blatantly negative, but
even outright judgmental: excessiveness, indulgence, self-indulgence, hedonism,
sybaritism, immoderation, and intemperance.34 Have Protestant values so
permeated the modern English language that we cannot even speak of courtly
splendor without dooming it to decadence and excess? Words are not, after all,
mere words. They encode the very history and thought structures at the core of
a culture.35

A similar, and similarly modern, discomfort often attends the very idea of Indian
court poetry and the professional writers who produced it. Under nineteenth-
century Romanticism, court poetry began to be stigmatized as too lavish and too
slavish, too elaborate and too learned. The traditions of Brahmans, who wrote
most of this poetry, have come to be synonymous with pedantry and rhetorical
excess.36 The very word “punditry,” which well-informed readers know to be
derived from Sansrkit paṇḍita (scholar), in English carries the association not of
intellectual achievement but of caviling. In a related vein, it is also too readily
assumed that court poets were employed merely to flatter a king and to
underwrite his political legitimation, which precludes any nuanced
understanding of the complexities of court life.37 In the course of this book,
there will be many occasions to observe the varied roles that poets played in the
knowledge economy of the Indian court. Rīti littérateurs could be, among other
things, teachers, advisors, historians, political commentators, diplomats, and
military men. They were essential not only to the literary culture, but also to the
society of their day; that courtly modes of cultural behavior are obsolete today
does not mean they were unimportant in their own era. On the contrary,
understanding them is mandatory for anybody who wishes to be proficient in
Indian cultural history. Given the sophistication of scholarship on the courtly
texts of a comparable realm such as premodern East Asia, and the attention still
lavished on the Confucian and Japanese classics by modern intellectual and
literary historians,38 one feels a bit silly needing to spell these matters out for
India, but court culture remains so underdeveloped a domain of Indian historical

Page 14 of 23

and literary study, particularly in the field of Hindi, that one is in fact driven to
the brink of silliness.39

(p.18) Organization of the Book

A natural entry point into the world of rīti literature is the time and place where
it began, with Keshavdas Mishra at the court of Orchha toward the end of the
sixteenth century. Although traces of practices that could justifiably be called rīti
are found slightly earlier, a particularly compelling case can be made for
Keshavdas as the first rīti poet. His particular social history and the political
history of the court that patronized him are helpful for gauging the kinds of
innovations that mark the beginnings of rīti literary culture. Keshavdas's distant
forefathers had been Sanskrit pandits at Gwalior, a thriving cultural and political
center of pre-Mughal North India, before they relocated in the early sixteenth
century to Orchha, a then-obscure polity emerging in the frontier zones of
Bundelkhand (in what is today Madhya Pradesh). Although Keshavdas took up
the same vocation of court pandit as his father, Kashinatha Mishra, he did
something strikingly unconventional at the same time by abandoning Sanskrit as
his primary medium of expression and declaring himself a Bhasha (vernacular)
poet. Keshavdas was not the originator of the Braj rītigranth, but he was the
most significant early exponent of the genre, writing two lengthy treatises on the
subject of classical poetics as well as a shorter one on metrics, and in the
process laying the foundations for a vernacular systematization of rhetoric that
would be further developed by later generations of writers. He also dramatically
expanded the expressive range of Braj literature, which in his day was largely
limited to devotional songs and translations of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, a
celebrated tenth-century Sanskrit scriptural work.

These significant shifts in language and literary practice were exactly

contemporaneous with a major political shift: during Keshavdas's own lifetime,
the kingdom of Orchha came under Mughal dominion. Although in general
Keshavdas did not depart radically from classical literary models, his writing,
particularly later in life, evinces fascinating traces of his exposure to the Mughal
court. Chapter 1 provides an overview of Keshavdas's oeuvre and the political
context in which he lived and worked, both of which are paradigmatic for rīti
literature.

If an introduction to Keshavdas can be considered an introduction to rīti

literature, it is still only a partial one. This literature is so little known to
scholars, especially in comparison to the visual repertoires of Rajput painting
and architecture, which were commissioned by the same courts and are to a
large extent products of similar mentalities, political developments, and cultural
processes, that I felt it essential to devote the following chapter to a survey of its
genres and poetic sensibilities. Rīti was a hybrid tradition shared by multiple
communities, and, though rooted in a larger pan-Indic system of courtly (p.19)
literature, it also has distinct features that stem from its Vaishnava antecedents

Page 15 of 23

and rīti poets’ contact with the Persianate cultural order. The aim is to highlight
some of the attractions of Brajbhasha poetry, which were so extraordinary that
connoisseurs of various persuasions sought to partake of its beauty and cachet
by patronizing scores of Braj poets across much of early modern Hindustan.

Chapters 3 through 5 are concerned with the intellectual, political, and social
spaces in which rīti authors operated, with a special focus on the long
seventeenth century. I examine the writings and career trajectories of
representative authors with a view to documenting their literary orientations
and worldviews. Like other court professionals of the period, poets moved
between Mughal and regional courts. A few writers were associated with a
specific court; others were part of a more diffuse patronage circuit, attracting
the notice of multiple rulers, members of the local gentry, and merchant
communities. All of this made for a widespread network of both texts and
literary personnel.

Chapter 3 is more narrowly focused on questions pertinent to intellectual

history: the rīti tradition as a new branch of vernacular scholarship. Not all rīti
poets were literary theorists in the manner of Sanskrit greats like Dandin or
Anandavardhana (from the seventh and ninth centuries, respectively), but most
wrote at least one rītigranth. What I want to understand here is why this literary
genre—by no means an obvious choice—became so prominent in the courtly
circles of early modern India. Taking cues from rīti writers themselves, I also
investigate what it meant to traverse the frontier between Sanskrit and Hindi in
an era of vernacular self-determination. Rītigranths fulfilled a variety of needs:
they were modes of intellectual expression for the Sanskrit-trained but Braj-
writing literati of the period; they were textbooks for aspiring poets as well as
showcases for poetic creativity. Rīti authors also felt themselves to be continuing
and to some extent renewing a venerated tradition of Sanskrit literary theory
extending back a thousand years, by giving it a new vernacular impress that
made sense amid the changed cultural conditions of Mughal India.

Chapter 4 turns to specific conditions at the Mughal court that were pivotal for
the rise of rīti poetry and scholarship. Although today considered the self-evident
patrimony of Hindus, Braj literature would never have attained the status it
came to enjoy without the sponsorship of Mughal patrons. While the major court
language of the Mughals was Persian, a surprising number of Braj musicians,
poets, and poeticians worked at the court. The very idea of Hindus and Muslims
broadly sharing a literary culture has come to seem unthinkable in modern
South Asia, and thus a special value attaches to (p.20) learning about a cultural
system where strikingly different conditions of pluralism obtained.

Chapter 5 shifts to the rīti tradition as cultivated in greater Hindustan, with a

special focus on the adoption of these new cultural styles by Rajput courts.
Although there was naturally some overlap between poets and genres in vogue

Page 16 of 23

at Mughal and Rajput courts, the patronage extended by the latter was far more
extensive, especially in the domain of Braj scholarship. As an emergent
vernacular community striving for recognition in a courtly arena once dominated
by Sanskrit writers, rīti poets felt a sense of kinship with their classical
forebears, but they were also in dialogue with one another as they participated
in the learned assemblies of their day. They often speak of themselves as
constituting a kavikul (family of poets), and mapping out this social network
teaches us about the literary culture of the period as well as the mentalities and
aspirations of early modern intellectuals. We also stand to learn about the
aesthetic and political programs of the Rajput patrons who underwrote so much
of rīti literature.

The sixth chapter begins at the point where rīti literary culture came to an end
under the profoundly transformative circumstances of colonialism. It traces how
the widespread cultural changes effected by the British influenced conceptions
of both the Hindi literary past and its desired future. I outline the processes by
which “bhakti” and “rīti” were newly conceived as literary-historical categories,
and how religious literature come to be placed on a pedestal while courtly styles,
widely viewed as decadent, were newly cast as shameful, and even hateful, relics
of the past. As evident from the citations of Jindal and other literary scholars
noticed above, the tradition never recovered from its treatment at the hands of
early nationalists, and this has had dire ramifications for the study of classical
Hindi today. With the interpretive lens reoriented by the book's preceding
chapters, I suggest some new ways forward in a brief conclusion.

Toward New Intellectual Formations of the Hindi Past

Although rīti literature has much to recommend it to the student of Indian
poetry, whether or not I succeed in leading readers to share my deep
appreciation for it is of less concern to me than that they come to learn
something about it. Why is this material not better known? Why has everybody
heard of Kabir and Mirabai, whereas the name Keshavdas draws a blank?
Literary preferences change. Canons change. Some literary trends are long-
lived, others fall by the wayside. These are the ineluctable consequences of (p.
21) interpretive communities responding to the complexities of historical
change. Modernity has begotten new world-literary genres like the novel that
appear especially suited for expressing the needs of our times. I am of course
not advocating anything as absurd as a return to the courtly styles of India's
past. What I do aim to do, however, is to eliminate the huge amount of
conceptual static that prohibits us from even tuning in to centuries of literary
heritage. With modern Hindi scholarship so committed to the view that
premodern courtly literature is inane and irrelevant, with the very study of this
literature virtually nonexistent in the West and vanishing even in India itself, the
ability to understand the world and work of a literary culture that was North
India's glory before colonialism and nationalism destroyed it has been almost

Page 17 of 23

completely foreclosed. This book aims to provide some critical tools that can
help restore both scholarly balance and access.

Restoring access to more than two centuries of Hindi and its superb courtly
culture is a project of interest to all those who care about Indian literature as
well as those who would like to see the debates of postcolonialism engage more
substantially with precolonialism. It also has the potential to open up new vistas
on the social, intellectual, and even political history of the early modern period.
Understanding the dynamics of secular modes of social formation, such as how
courts functioned, or how literary and intellectual groups were constituted, is a
useful complement to the scholarship that has already been done on bhakti
religious movements. Modern types of cultural—particularly national—belonging
are assumed, for instance, to have been enabled through the technology of print
culture. But the evidence under consideration here—Brajbhasha poets were
extremely self-aware about their literary identity, and some manuscripts
circulated both rapidly and in astonishing numbers—suggests the necessity of
bringing the precolonial evidence into dialogue with the findings of modern
social science theory.40

Given that rīti literature was commissioned primarily by Rajput and Mughal
courts, the field of early modern history also benefits from more attention to
classical Hindi sources, which can considerably augment the range of what we
know from Persian and European writers of the same period. Many questions of
critical importance to the cultural history of this period are only beginning to be
asked.41 We need to move beyond the basic political and economic issues—the
processes and personnel of state formation, catalogues of military conquests, the
vicissitudes of extracting agrarian surplus, which have been the unstinting focus
of Mughal historians for decades—to understand the conceptual underpinnings
of early modern life. This requires knowing much more about the texts people
read, modes of connoisseurship, and the aesthetic but also political valences of
sponsoring particular types of literary (p.22) culture. We understand early
modern India better the better we understand the social worlds and cultural
choices of its inhabitants. Rīti writers were primarily poets, to be sure, but they
also have something important to tell us about politics (such as Rajput-Mughal
relationships), mentalities (what really mattered to these writers and why), and
modes of social intercourse (such as courtly protocols and early modern
inflections of multiculturalism).

The mixed patronage climate for classical Hindi literature is particularly

stunning. Rīti poets were certainly concerned with transmitting Sanskrit poetry
styles into Bhasha, a fact that is rightly stressed by Hindi scholars, but to focus
solely on that would be to miss something important about their complex
mission and literary identity. Mughal patronage was indubitably central to the
development of the rīti tradition in its early days and, prior to the rise of Urdu in
the eighteenth century, this literary culture always had a sizable contingent of

Page 18 of 23

Indo-Muslim connoisseurs and poets. Courtly Brajbhasha served as a middle

ground between Sanskrit and Persian and the Hindu and Muslim cultural
sensibilities that they generally represented. And it was a hospitable ground that
welcomed many from different worlds.

Let us now try to take ourselves back to a time when rīti poets were at the very
center of North Indian literary life. We turn our looking glass toward the
moment when rīti literature may be said to have begun, with the poet Keshavdas.

Notes:
(1.) Russell 1999: 39.

(2.) Pollock 2006: 283–329.

(3.) Jindal 1993: 143–47 (with spelling and punctuation lightly emended for the
sake of clarity).

(4.) Vaudeville 1996: 47–71.

(5.) Entwistle 1987: 161; also see the references noted in Pauwels 2002: 239.

(6.) A useful review of this nomenclatural morass in quest of Urdu's literary

beginnings is Faruqi 2003: 806–19.

(7.) Muslim authors in particular often called their vernacular “Hindavi.” For
them the operative distinction was that the language was not Persian (or
Arabic). The term “Bhasha,” for its part, generally highlights a contrastive
relationship to Sanskrit.

(8.) Hariharnivas Dvivedi proposes that the term Brajbhasha may have come into
currency during the seventeenth century due to the agency of Bengali
Vaishnavas, who had developed their own poetic idiom, Brajbuli, imagined to be
the speech of Krishna and Radha. Dvivedi 1955: 59–62.

(9.) Tuḥfat al-hind, p. 54.

(10.) See the two couplets excerpted in Kishorilal (1971: 473–74), one of which
is also briefly referenced in chap 3, note 63.

(11.) For Faqirullah, the region of Sudesha includes Gwalior and Agra and is
bordered by Mathura to the north, Etawah to the east, Orchha to the south, and
Bhusawar and Bayanah to the west. Tarjumah-i mānkutūhal va risālah-i
rāgdarpan, pp. 98–99.

(12.) The first is attested in the Ardhkathānak (Story of half a life, 1641), v. 7. On
Madhyadeshiya, see Dvivedi 1955. Delvoye (1991: 158) raises related issues
about how to name the literary language of this period.

Page 19 of 23

(13.) The rīti poet Chintamani Tripathi praised the language of the Mathura
maṇḍal and Gwalior in his Kavikulkalptaru, 4.6; 4.9 (a passage discussed briefly
in chapter 3). The term Zaban-i Gvaliyar was used by the Persian poet
Banvalidas to designate the language of the Braj poet Nanddas. McGregor 1984:
36 n. 92. The term Gwaliyari was apparently first used by Jaykirti in 1629. See
Kishorilal 1971: 473 (citing Agarchand Nahta).

(14.) See Mann 2001: 5.

(15.) Some attestations of the term rīti were helpfully compiled by Sudhakar
Pandey (1987: 21–22). As used by Brajbhasha poets, the term rīti is unrelated to
the literary system of three rītis or regionalized literary styles (Vaidarbha,
Gauḍa, and Pāñcāla) articulated by the Sanskrit poetician Vamana (c. 800).

(16.) Many other venerable literary traditions, including those of Urdu, Bengali,
and Telugu, endured a similar fate.

(17.) Some foundational critiques of colonial knowledge formations and their

interactions with local systems include Said 1978; Inden 1992; Breckenridge and
van der Veer 1993; Chatterjee 1993b; Cohn 1996. One recent study of early
modern South Asian intellectual history that takes its cues from the traditions
themselves is Pollock 2011.

(18.) The deferment of modernity until the nineteenth century is part of a

broader trend in Indian literary history. For the case of Bengali, see Seely 2004:
3. On reconceptualizing the period from 1500 to 1800 as “early modern,” see
Richards 1997 and Subrahmanyam 1998.

(19.) The perception that Indians were static inhabitants of a culturally depleted
medieval realm (a depletion often blamed on Muslim rule) prior to the arrival of
the British is a staple of colonial and nationalist discourse. See Chatterjee
1993a: 92–115.

(20.) Typical is Ahmad 1972: 1–3. Early modern Hindi is not the only major
literary tradition that has been stigmatized by the rhetoric of decline. On the
general scholarly disdain for Arabic literature of the same period, see Toorawa
2008: 249–50.

(21.) Early interventions in the “decline” model were Bayly 1983; Alam 1986;
Washbrook 1988. Also see Alam and Subrahmanyam 1998: 55–68; Alavi 2002;
Brown 2003: 14–26; Marshall 2003.

(22.) This conference generated a regular series of publications. For some of the
most recent ones, see McGregor 1992; Entwistle and Mallison 1994; Entwistle
and Salomon 1999; Offredi 2002; Callewaert and Taillieu 2002; Horstmann 2006.

Page 20 of 23

(23.) Select contributions to our understanding of Hindi bhakti literature from

the point of view of scholars writing in English are McGregor 1973; Bryant 1978;
Hess and Singh 1983; Hawley 1984, 2005, 2009; Hawley and Juergensmeyer
1988; Lutgendorf 1991; Snell 1991b; Callewaert and Friedlander 1992;
Vaudeville 1993; Pauwels 1996 and 2002; Rosenstein 1997; Horstmann 2002;
Dharwadker 2003.

(24.) An analysis of the social and political dimensions of premodern bhakti is

Lorenzen 1995; for a Dalit perspective on Kabir, see Dharmvir 2008.

(25.) There are several translations of the couplets of the most famous rīti poet,
Biharilal (Grierson 1896; Holland 1969; Bahadur 1990; Choudhary 2002; Snell,
forthcoming). Bahadur has also translated the Rasikpriyā (1972) and parts of the
Rāmcandracandrikā (also known as Rāmacandrikā ) (1976) by Keshavdas;
Ramanand Sharma and Harsha Dehejia have recently prepared an anthology,
exquisitely illustrated, of verses by “forgotten” rīti poets, translated into both
English and Modern Standard Hindi.

(26.) For a welcome critique of South Asia scholars’ unreflecting tendency to link
much of premodern Indian cultural history to religious currents, without
considering the role played by courts and political formations, see Pollock 1998:
29–31.

(27.) Articles by Bahl (1974) and Schokker (1983) on the Rasikpriyā made some
inroads into our understanding of Keshavdas, but both pieces were intended as
preludes to more in-depth studies that never materialized. More recent work on
rīti literature by Rupert Snell (1991b, 1994b, forthcoming), Imre Bangha (1999,
2000, 2005), Heidi Pauwels (2005), Stefania Cavaliere (2010a), and Sandhya
Sharma (2011) are welcome indications of a more balanced trend in Hindi
scholarship, where non-bhakti literature is given its due. New research by early
modern historians, such as Sreenivasan 2007 and Talbot 2009, is also increasing
the range of scholarly questions being asked of the premodern Hindi corpus.

(28.) For a few exceptions, see chapter 6, n. 130.

(29.) For some indication of the differential prestige and gatekeeping factors
pertinent to Hindi and English literary institutions in contemporary India, see
Orsini 2002a: 82–85; Sadana 2007.

(30.) On Romanticism and the hermeneutics of Urdu literature, see Pritchett

1994: 127–83; for a discussion of “protestant presuppositions” in the
reconstructing of India's cultural past, see Schopen 1991.

(31.) Thus, a recent discussion of John Stuart Mill claims that his “love of poetry
and music and art also led him toward conservative thought. Aesthetes always
bend to the right … To love old art is to honor old arrangements” (Gopnik 2008:

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86). On the pitfalls of a literary history driven by identity politics, with a

particular concern for how modern critics have tried to rescue Kabir from
Brahmanical appropriation, see Agrawal 2009b.

(32.) Copland 1997: 13–14.

(33.) Rodale 1986: 237 (and this is only a partial list).

(34.) Ibid., 691.

(35.) Lakoff and Johnson 1980.

(36.) Cohn 1996: 51–53. Compare Bronner 2010: 9–13 on the generalized
distaste for the complexities of classical Sanskrit poetry among Western readers.

(37.) On the simplemindedness of such an approach, see Islam and Russell 1998:
5–7; Meisami 1987: 40–76.

(38.) A magisterial work of intellectual history by a historian of China who

seriously engages a wealth of textual materials is Elman 2000; on The Tale of
Genji, see Shirane 2008; a useful comparative study of European and East Asian
court culture is Knechtges and Vance 2005.

(39.) Recent books by Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam (1992), Ali (2004), and
Pollock (2006) epitomize the kind of sophisticated, fine-grained history that one
can do by taking seriously the literary archives produced at premodern Indian
courts.

(40.) Pauwels (2002, 296) examined the precolonial record and found the
Andersonian model of print culture largely irrelevant. Dimock and Stewart
(1999: 51–57) have stressed the mass circulation and standardization of the
Caitanyacaritāmṛta in Gaudiya circles long before modernity. On Vallabhan
community formation, see Barz 1976 and Shah 2004.

(41.) On the need to widen the net of inquiry in Mughal research, cf.
Subrahmanyam 2001: 10; Aquil 2007: 2–10. This is not to say that scholarship on
Mughal-period culture is entirely lacking. Some fields, like the visual arts and
architecture, are relatively well served (eg., Beach 1992; Asher 1995a; Seyller
1999; Koch 2001). Important studies of Indian music as a domain of Mughal
culture include Delvoye 1991 and Brown 2003. Persian literature of the period
has been explored in Losensky 1998; Alam 2003: 159–86; Kinra 2008. Some
advances in Mughal social history and in conceptualizing the cultural
underpinnings of Mughal power include O’Hanlon 1999, 2007a; Alam and
Subrahmanyam 2004; Lal 2005; Alam 2009. On Mughal engagements with
specifically Hindi literary culture, see Phukan 2000 and 2001.

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Access brought to you by:

Page 23 of 23

Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Keshavdas of Orchha
Allison Busch

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the works of Keshavdas and the political
context in which he lived and wrote, both of which are paradigmatic for rīti
literature. The Bundelas of Orchha were forced to submit to Mughal authority
during the reign of Madhukar Shah (1554-92), which occasioned a new concern
with status and cultural patronage. The Bundelas’ competition with other Rajput
polities that had entered Mughal service became pronounced under King Bir
Singh Deo (r. 1605-27), who was a famously generous patron of both literature
and architecture. Keshavdas wrote eight major works over the course of his
career. Several, including the Rasikpriyā, Kavipriyā, and Rāmcandracandrikā,
are hailed as classics of the rīti tradition. This new turn towards classicism in
Hindi literature can be linked to broader trends in Rajput and Mughal court
culture.

Keywords: Keshavdas, Rasikpriyā, Kavipriyā, Ramcandracandrikā, Bundelas, Orchha, Madhukar Shah

Bundela, Bir Singh Deo Bundela, Mughal Rajput

In a family where even the servants did not know how to speak the
vernacular, Keshavdas became a slow-witted Hindi poet.

—Kavipriyā, 2.17

A Slow-Witted Hindi Poet

Nothing illustrates more powerfully the literary transformations that were
underway in India around the turn of the seventeenth century than the words of
Keshavdas Mishra, whose career marks a decisive milestone in North Indian
literary culture. When he introduces himself to his readers in chapter two of his

Page 1 of 49

Kavipriyā (Handbook for poets, 1601), the poet insists that even the servants in
his family did not know how to speak Hindi—because, we are to infer, they spoke
Sanskrit. His was a lineage of pandits, which made his linguistic defection all the
more remarkable.

More precise details about the poet's family can be assembled from various
clues sprinkled throughout his oeuvre. His distant ancestors Dinakara Mishra
and Tribikrama Mishra had both earned the Sanskrit title paṇḍitarāja (king
among scholars) from the Tomar kings, who were based in Delhi and later
Gwalior; the poet's great-great grandfather Shiromani Mishra was an authority
on the six canonical philosophical systems; more recently, his grandfather
Krishnadatta Mishra had been employed by the founder of Orchha, King
Rudrapratap (r. 1501–31), as a scholar of the purāṇas (lore of (p.24) past
times); Keshavdas's father, Kashinatha Mishra, was a master of the Sanskrit
śāstras (sciences) honored at the court of Rudrapratap's younger son, Madhukar
Shah (r. 1554–92). This is a most distinguished family history.1 Coloring
Keshavdas's evident pride in his ancestors’ Sanskrit prowess, however, is a sense
of disquiet about not continuing the tradition. Hence his self-deprecating
identification as a “slow-witted” Hindi poet.

Let us not take him too much at his word. Indeed, this chapter will prove
Keshavdas's self-characterization to be entirely false. The poet's posture of
literary infirmity, one much resorted to by vernacular writers, highlights the
anxiety that attended early vernacular literacy.2 Central to Keshavdas's couplet,
and a salient characteristic of the rīti tradition more broadly, is an awareness
that abandoning Sanskrit in favor of Brajbhasha was a monumental step. As he
carved out a path for elevated styles of courtly vernacular writing, the poet
evidently felt the imposing grandeur of the Sanskrit past towering over him. And
it has a way of casting a long shadow.

Sanskrit literature, nurtured by the luminaries of Indian courts since early in the
first millennium, is one of the most brilliant and erudite traditions the world has
ever seen. Alongside a formidable body of Sanskrit poetry evolved a complex
field of rhetoric, widely known as alaṅkāraśāstra. In dozens of authoritative
treatises, not to mention an entire subdiscipline of learned commentary, Sanskrit
intellectuals had debated and dictated the protocols of literary expression for
centuries, probing fundamental questions about the very purpose of literature.
They developed powerful theories about aesthetic response and the mechanics
of facilitating it through the careful manipulation of literary cues and
compositional elements. Dozens of different figures of speech—termed alaṅkāras
or “ornaments”—had been theorized, which added layers to a highly cultivated
metadiscourse on aesthetic experience. To be a court poet, or indeed any kind of
poet, was to participate in this elaborate Sanskrit literary system. And no such

Page 2 of 49

system existed for Hindi poetry. The very thought would have struck many as
preposterous.

To be sure, Hindi poets of various types had been using the vernacular creatively
long before Keshavdas wrote his first word. The mystical utterances of naths
(spiritual seekers) and yogis had been on the lips of itinerant religious men for
generations; narratives in early Hindi's signature dohā-caupāī meter had been
cultivated by Sufi writers in the East and Jains in the West from the fourteenth
century; odes in the rāso (martial ballad) style were being declaimed by
Keshavdas's own contemporaries, the bards of Rajasthan; Hindi songs were
performed in stunningly diverse communities and venues: by Sants (holy men),
Jains, Vaishnavas, and Sufis, in informal gatherings, temples, khānqāhs (Sufi
residential communities), and courts. Keshavdas was thus heir to a rich (p.25)
array of expressive possibilities in Hindi, albeit more of it still in oral rather than
in written form.

Cultural attitudes militating against formal vernacular kāvya (poetry) remained

deeply entrenched, however, particularly in pandit communities.3 From the
perspective of one firmly rooted in a Sanskrit worldview, the movement between
classical and vernacular languages was unidirectional, and that direction could
only be downward. To be a vernacular writer was to exhibit both a linguistic and
an intellectual failing. The hierarchies involved are implicit at the most basic
lexical level. Vernaculars were by definition apabhraṣṭa (corrupted) languages,
and their low status may be divined from the fact that they did not even merit
their own names; they were often just called bhāṣā (language). The word
saṃskṛta (i.e., Sanskrit), in contrast, denotes (and connotes) the height of
dignity: it means “perfectly executed.” Sanskrit was also widely venerated as the
devavāṇī or suravāṇī (language of the gods). How could a Hindi poet—
particularly one of Keshavdas's Brahmanical background—feel anything other
than diffidence in the face of a language that claimed for itself not only
perfection but divine status?

And yet “slow-witted” Hindi writers did take up the challenge, adopting various
stances toward the authority of their classical predecessors. In carving out a
space for themselves within a literary arena historically dominated by Sanskrit,
they usually needed to stake some kind of a claim for the validity of their less
refined compositions. One defense of the vernacular—and one frequently
mounted by bhakti writers—was to highlight the freshness of an idiom
unencumbered by tradition. A popular verse attributed to Kabir (fl. 1450?) likens
Hindi to a flowing stream, contrasting it with the stagnant well waters of
Sanskrit.4 As a weaver on the bottom rung of the social ladder whose
opportunities for education would have been slight at best, Kabir could hardly
have written in Sanskrit even if he had wanted to. More complicated is the
choice—for it must be seen as a choice—of a Brahman poet such as Tulsidas, an
early contemporary of Keshavdas who by all indications could have written in

Page 3 of 49

Sanskrit.5 Tulsidas instead pretends ignorance of the entire Sanskrit literary

apparatus, wearing his putative inexpertness almost like a badge of honor:

I am not a poet, I am not clever with words—

I am completely devoid of artistry and knowledge.
Words and meanings abound,
and endless are the ornaments of speech.
Multiple are the discourses on meter
(chanda prabandha aneka vidhānā),
(p.26) Endless are the categories of literary emotion
(bhāva bheda rasa bheda apārā),
Equally varied are the flaws (doṣa) and virtues (guṇa) of poetry.
I lack even a modicum of poetic skill—
I just write the truth, on the blank page before me.6

In this brief manifesto, in which Tulsidas employs an array of technical

vocabulary from the domain of Sanskrit alaṅkāraśāstra, the poet asserts the
primacy of innate expressive talent, which trumps the systematic training
considered a sine qua non of participation in classical literary culture. Of course,
one would not want to subject the venerable Tulsi to the indignity of having his
principles of counter-aesthetics too closely scrutinized, for his claims to
ignorance of the śāstras are certainly spurious. Despite its avowed vernacular
simplicity, his Rāmcaritmānas is a carefully crafted work informed by both the
thematics and pragmatics of age-old literary systems.7 But many bhakti poets
such as Kabir and Tulsi presented themselves as rebels against classical literary
norms. This insurrectionist stance was one common means of circumventing the
Sanskrit shadow in the early modern era.

Keshavdas took another, historically highly consequential approach. Utterly

belying his professions of slow-wittedness, he proved himself to be a vernacular
poet with a very special set of skills—foremost among them, paradoxically, his
deep knowledge of Sanskrit. Instead of rejecting Sanskrit literary authority, he
embraced it fully by cultivating a new, self-consciously classicizing idiom of
Hindi. By writing largely Sanskrit-based works in a highly complex—and
spectacularly innovative—Brajbhasha style, he showed the world that the
vernacular was a versatile, even elegant, literary medium and helped to set the
stage for its acceptance as a major court language.

Bhakti Literature in the Braj Maṇḍal

In making the claim that Keshavdas is in an important sense the founder of the
cultural phenomenon we now call rīti literature, it will be essential to highlight
what he did and did not found, that is, where measurable newness exists, and
where antecedents are in need of a footnote. The second half of this chapter is
devoted to a discussion of Keshavdas's wide-ranging literary accomplishments, a
necessary backdrop to which is an overview of the types of religious, political,
and poetic cultures that he inherited. The first matter to consider is the dramatic

Page 4 of 49

rise of Brajbhasha as a literary language in the preceding two generations. By

the middle of the sixteenth century, a number of important Braj poets can be
traced to the bhakti centers of Vrindavan and Mathura, all connected to new (p.
27) forms of Krishna worship that were coalescing in the region as part of an
intense effort on the part of devout communities to reclaim Vaishnava heritage
sites.8 The Hindi dialect of the Braj region took on a special resonance for
worshipers because it was imagined to have been spoken by god himself during
his sojourns on earth as the Krishna avatar of Vishnu.

At a time when theological and formal literary texts were still largely being
written in Sanskrit, pioneering authors such as Hit Harivamsh, Svami Haridas,
Hariram Vyas, and Surdas were avidly composing beautiful devotional songs in a
vernacular genre known as the pad (“foot” or verse). A wave of interest in the
Bhāgavatapurāṇa, a revered bhakti scripture originally composed in Sanskrit
and a popular source for Krishnaite poetry, was also beginning to generate
vernacular versions of its hallowed tales. Vaishnava poets memorialized
Krishna's exploits in a variety of aesthetic moods, in some cases interweaving
fervent religiosity with the motifs of Sanskrit alaṅkāraśāstra. They drew not only
on the legends of Krishna as laid out in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, but also on
classical traditions of śṛṅgāra rasa (aestheticized love) in both its sambhoga (love
fulfilled) and vipralambha (frustrated love) forms. Particularly cherished was the
theme of the gopīs’ (especially Radha's) passion for Krishna during his
adolescence, and their viraha—intensely painful longing for him—after he
departed from their village of Gokul to attend to his adult responsibilities in the
city of Mathura.

Celebrating Krishna's deeds through the collective singing of pads was a

powerful medium of religious experience for various emergent Vaishnava
communities, whether Gaudiyas, Vallabhans, Radhavallabhans, or Haridasis.9
Temples sprang up across the region, sporting new architectural configurations
that could accommodate this demand for congregational singing. In some cases
—the most famous example being Surdas and the Vallabhans—the pads of
popular poets were appropriated into the liturgy of a devotional community, and
stories were later invented to naturalize the association.10 Precise biographical
and historical details about many foundational religious figures and poets from
Braj have for the most part been irretrievably obscured by a voluminous
hagiographical tradition and competing sectarian claims. Still, it is beyond doubt
that by the second half of the sixteenth century, Vaishnava impulses were
transforming the aural and architectural landscape of Braj, giving voice and
shape to an exciting new vernacular literary tradition.

The Braj efflorescence was not a product solely of the Braj maṇḍal, as the region
encompassing Vrindavan and Mathura is known. Centers farther to the west in
today's Rajasthan, like Fatehpur, where the most significant collection of early
Braj pads was inscribed in 1582,11 and Galta, a Ramanandi center and spiritual

Page 5 of 49

home of the nascent Dadupanth, were both attracting communities of

worshipers and fostering the creation of new textual communities. It was in (p.
28) Galta at the turn of the seventeenth century that Nabhadas wrote his
acclaimed Bhaktamāl (Garland of devotees), a celebrated text that memorialized
the deeds of influential Vaishnavas and thus inspired others to become part of
the movement.12

Developments in Bundelkhand to the east also played an important role in the

crystallization of new forms of religious and literary expression. Aside from
Keshavdas, the poets Kriparam and Hariram Vyas have been linked to Orchha.
Little is definitively known about Kriparam, whose Hittaraṅginī (River of love)
mentions the Betwa River, a tributary of the Yamuna that flows through the
kingdom, the rationale for the entirely reasonable assumption that he was based
there.13 The Hittaraṅginī, if indeed it dates from 1541 as the chronogram that
caps the work suggests, would be the earliest Braj rītigranth, anticipating some
of the achievements of Keshavdas by a full fifty years, perhaps at the very same
court.14 Like the Rasikpriyā, discussed in detail below, the Hittaraṅginī is a
treatise on the courtly topic of nāyikābheda with a distinctly Vaishnava ethos, a
hybrid product of the earlier Sanskrit literary heritage and sixteenth-century
religious fervor. Like so much about him, Kriparam's precise sectarian
affiliations are unknown, but his repeated use of the word hit (love) both in his
title and throughout the text evinces a sensibility that bears comparison
(although not necessarily direct affiliation) with other specimens of early
Vaishnava poetry, notably that of the Braj poet Hit Harivamsh (1502–52?),
revered as the founder of the Radhavallabhan sampradāy.15

Also suggestively connected to Orchha is Hariram Vyas, a member of the first

generation of settlers in Vrindavan and an early exponent of the pad genre.
Although Vyas is held to have spent most of his life in Vrindavan, several sources
link him to the Orchha ruler Madhukar Shah (r. 1554–92), who was himself a
famous bhakta. As is so often the case with the foundational Brajbhasha bhakti
poets, the evidence is not definitive, but three of Vyas's poems mention
Madhukar Shah directly, and Vaishnava hagiographies from the seventeenth
century confirm his association with the Bundela king.16 The presumed
patronage relationship here between a religious devotee and a king is also
consistent with the court's apparent conversion to Vaishnavism around the
middle of the sixteenth century.17 Vyas wrote pads in the manner of many early
bhakti writers but he is probably the first to have written a Braj
Rāsapañcādhyāyī, the five chapters of book ten of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa that
recount the story of Krishna's round dance with the gopīs, a genre that was
adopted by other Braj writers, including Nanddas (fl. 1570) and Bhupati (fl.
1687).18 This keen interest in the vernacularization of Sanskrit source texts,
albeit in this case generally religious ones, would surface later as a major
concern of Keshavdas and other rīti poets.

Page 6 of 49

(p.29) Here Come the Mughal Armies

If the cultural legacy of bhakti was a vital condition for the emergence of new
literary styles during Keshavdas's long and distinguished career at the Orchha
court, political factors were no less crucial. A reader familiar with central Indian
geography may be wondering how an influential polity and a major literary
tradition could just spring up out of the badlands of Bundelkhand in the
sixteenth century. Although Keshavdas—ever the dutiful court poet—would trace
the lineage of his patrons back to Rama, scion of the solar dynasty, as well as to
more historically traceable kings like the Gahadavalas, Orchha was founded only
in 1531, when Rudrapratap exploited the political instability of the late Lodi
period for territorial gain and moved from the fortress of Garhkundar to
establish a new capital on the banks of the Betwa River.19

Urgent political concerns put severe pressure on the next two generations of
Orchha rulers. Rudrapratap died the year his capital was founded, and the
succession passed to his elder son, Bharatichand (r. 1531–54). When
Bharaticand died without an heir, it fell to Rudrapratap's younger son, Madhukar
Shah, to maintain the family's hegemony in Bundelkhand. A major political
threat came from the Sur dynasty, an upstart group of Afghan warlords. Sher
Shah Sur had ousted no less than the Mughal Emperor Humayun in 1540,
prompting his flight to Persia and a subsequent fifteen-year exile from India.
Although successful in warding off Sher Shah's son Islam Shah, Orchha was
again subject to attack during the reign of Akbar.20 By the 1570s, the Bundela
principality could not continue to hold its own.21 Madhukar Shah capitulated to
the superior Mughal forces in the manner of so many regional kings of the
period: by agreeing to accept tributary status and inducting himself, his sons,
and his troops into Mughal service.

This process coincides notably with the rise of Keshavdas as a poet, and the rise
to courtly grandeur of the Brajbhasha literary tradition. As Mughal power took
root, the regional rulers of central and western India did retain a restricted form
of sovereignty, which, if almost indiscernible in the Persian historical record, can
be traced in the cultural achievements, particularly the literary and visual
records, of their own courts. Here is where Keshavdas comes crucially into the
picture. He contributed immeasurably to the prestige of the Orchha house,
serving in various capacities during the reign of Madhukar Shah and his sons.
Keshavdas was a friend, advisor, and guru to the Orchha kings, but he was also a
consummate poet and intellectual. He wrote a total of eight significant works on
a wide range of subjects, many of which were completely unprecedented in the
field of vernacular writing.22 His extraordinary oeuvre gave voice at once to his
own aspirations as a poet and scholar and to the cultural, (p.30) religious, and
political aspirations of his patrons at a critical turning point in North Indian
history.

Page 7 of 49

The Ratnabāvanī (Fifty-two verses about Ratna), undated but generally

considered Keshavdas's first work, is—entirely fittingly—a martial tale that
centers on the Mughal takeover of Orchha. The hero of the story is Ratnasena
Bundela, the fourth of Madhukar Shah's eight sons,23 who valiantly leads the
Orchha troops in a doomed battle against Akbar's army. Keshavdas is silent
about the work's patron, but it does not strain credulity to suppose that it was
commissioned by Madhukar Shah in the years when Orchha was first subject to
Mughal incursions, during the late 1570s or early 1580s.

Although the precise date and patronage circumstances of the Ratnabāvanī are
obscure, the text can be contextualized somewhat by its genre. It has strong
affinities to the western Indian rāso, with the addition of unmistakable Vaishnava
inflections. The work is written in chappays (sextets), one of the favored meters
of the rāso poets; its language is replete with the Prakrit-style archaisms that are
consistent with the genre and in marked contrast to the more Sanskritized kāvya
works that would characterize the poet's mature idiom. If the text's language is
opaque in places, its message is crystal clear: Prince Ratnasena is a brave
Kshatriya, and Vishnu is his stalwart champion. In a passage that mirrors, albeit
with a surreal twist, Arjuna's encounter with Krishna on the eve of the
Mahābhārata battle, a svarūpa (incarnation) of the god Rama disguised as a
Brahman appears to the prince as he sets out to battle.24 Promulgating exactly
the opposite message of niṣkāma karma (selfless action) that is the hallmark of
the Bhagavadgītā, Rama tries to convince Ratnasena to surrender, flee the
battlefield, and save his skin, while summing up Orchha's pathetic plight in the
face of the Mughal invasion in the following words:

When the Pathan forces are upon you,

who will stay by your side and fight?
Listen, Ratnasena, son of Madhukar Shah,
how will you avoid humiliation?25

These remarks prompt an intense debate between Rama and Ratnasena, a lively
instance of the saṃvād (dialogue) style for which Keshavdas would become justly
famous. Each of Rama's attempts to forestall Ratnasena's virtually certain death
in battle is introduced by the Sanskrit phrase vipra uvāca (the Brahman said),
further underscoring a connection with the exhortatory ambience of the Gītā, in
which the term uvāca is similarly used to introduce dialogues of momentous
import. The good Rajput, predictably, will have none of it, furnishing vehement
rejoinders to the Brahman/Rama's self-preserving but pusillanimous rhetoric:

(p.31) I am the son of Madhukar Shah, who uprooted his enemies,

I am the brother of Ram Shah, crusher of armies.
My valiant troops wipe out evil enemy kings on the battlefield.
My battalion is fierce and able to destroy our foes.
Lord Rama, the deity revered by our lineage, killed Ravana.
Now his glories are sung in this world.

Page 8 of 49

I am Ratnasena, junior prince of the [Orchha] clan—

why should I do what others do, and flee the battlefield?26

It turns out that god has just been testing Ratnasena. When he is satisfied with
the prince's Kshatriya integrity, he rewards him by revealing his divine form.
Again, intertextual resonances loom large, for who could read such a passage
without recalling how Krishna famously revealed his viśvarūpa (universal form)
to Arjuna in the eleventh chapter of the Gītā? Other deities from on high then
magically appear and compose eulogies to the prince, saluting his brave resolve
to fight. In the end, however, Rama's predictions all come true. Ratnasena's
troops are indeed overwhelmed, and the young prince dies a heroic death in
combat, his self-sacrifice prompting the admiration of even Emperor Akbar, who
makes a cameo appearance at the end of the work.27

There is some uncertainty about how to interpret the Ratnabāvanī, especially its
bearing on the history of Orchha-Mughal political relations.28 Should the text be
seen as a mouthpiece for the warlord ethos that characterized pre-Mughal
Orchha, or is it a more complex commentary on the events that attended the
court's transition to Mughal tributary status? The Persian sources do outline
some details about the Orchha submission to the Mughals, often with an
imperialist slant, but nowhere is Ratnasena's last stand mentioned.29 Keshavdas,
for his part, conveniently omits the fact that Ratnasena fought on the side of
Akbar in the Bengal campaigns. He preferred to “improve on history” in his
account of the Mughal invasion, stressing a single battle that showcases how the
Bundelas admirably resisted the enemy instead of cravenly capitulating.30

Whatever we may say about Keshavdas's credentials as a historian, the

Ratnabāvanī is a poignant celebration of Bundela valor even in the face of
defeat, and in operationalizing the ethos of Kshatriya dharma, often called
simply pat or pati (honor), it betokens the court's participation in an evolving
system of pan-Rajput values, connecting it to other regional polities that were
critically embroiled in Mughal power dynamics, such as the Kachhwahas of
Amber and the Ranas of Mewar farther to the west. Keshavdas skillfully musters
a range of literary resources to his political task: the militancy of the rāso;
bhakti's theology of intimacy and self-surrender; the epic grandeur of the (p.32)
Bhagavadgītā. Even his first poem shows him to be a master at reworking
classical themes and infusing them with the local perspectives for which a
vernacular language like Brajbhasha was eminently suitable. Keshavdas's
account of Ratnasena's putative heroism and lord Rama's avowed support must
have had great resonance, and perhaps even provided some solace, for this
newly defeated, and newly Vaishnavized, principality.

The Birth of Hindi Classicism

In the works to come, Keshavdas would not return to either this genre or the
anti-Mughal political stance to which it gave voice.31 The next phase of his

Page 9 of 49

career, spanning the years 1591 to 1602, marks a strong departure, propelling
the poet, and by extension the Brajbhasha literary tradition, in a more scholarly
direction. Now Keshavdas would begin to exhibit his skills as a literary theorist
and teacher, tasks to which his pandit background made him eminently well
suited. It is in this period that he wrote his three rītigranths, the Rasikpriyā,
Kavipriyā, and Chandmālā, which together constitute the first comprehensive
vernacular statement on classical aesthetics theory in North India. With these
works, some of the defining features of rīti literature come into focus: a strong
engagement with Sanskrit śāstra and a new stress on vernacular erudition in a
courtly setting.

Raja Indrajit, the fifth son of Madhukar Shah, was Keshavdas's patron during
this phase of his career. Indrajit, who maintained a court at Kachova, never
achieved the political stature of his more famous brothers Ram Shah and Bir
Singh Deo (on whom more below), but he did garner some prestige as an
intellectual and seems wholeheartedly to have shared the scholarly proclivities
of the poet he sponsored. Indrajit is known to the Braj tradition for his Bhasha
commentaries on the great Sanskrit poet Bhartrihari, two of which survive. Like
his famous court poet, the king fashioned works of Braj scholarship from a
Sanskrit template; he also expressed himself in a high, Sanskritized register,
which was certainly encouraged by the source text of his commentaries. Indrajit
was also a poet, at least an occasional one. Even if he did not leave behind a
major literary work, he has been credited with some verses under the chāp, or
pen name, “Dhiraj Narind.”32

While Indrajit's learned expositions of Bhartrihari are of a secular bent,

Keshavdas's scholarship reveals important ties to recent bhakti trends,
particularly in the first of his rītigranths, the Rasikpriyā (1591), a work of
aesthetic theory loosely based on Rudrabhatta's Sanskrit Śṛṅgāratilaka
(Ornament of passion, written in perhaps the eleventh century). Aesthetic theory
was a staple of (p.33) courtly kāvya traditions in Sanskrit and a natural subject
for this pioneering Braj poet to take up, but his rendition has a markedly
different character because of its reverential stance toward Radha and Krishna.
Although in brute chronological terms not the first Braj rītigranth (this
distinction goes to the Hittaraṅginī of Kriparam), the Rasikpriyā is the most
influential of the genre and serves as a good introduction to the concerns of rīti
literary culture.

Several impulses compete in this work. The first is the desire to explicate
principal ideas from Sanskrit literary theory: defining rasa and its corresponding
emotional and physical states, the types of nāyikās and nāyakas (female and
male characters), as well as the canonical aspects of love in union and love in
separation. This emphasis on the essentials of poetry according to a Sanskrit-
based literary model explains the general structure of rītigranths. The works
have the appearance of poetry textbooks, consisting primarily of two types of

Page 10 of 49

verses: definitions and examples. The lakṣaṇ (definition) verses are carefully
crafted dohās (couplets) that encapsulate the most essential features of a given
Sanskrit literary topic. But a scholarly exegesis of classical literary theory is only
one focus. Interspersed with the definition verses are original poems (usually
quatrains in either the savaiyā or the kavitt meter) that illustrate the theoretical
propositions. Given the predilection of Braj poets for bhakti themes, most
illustration verses—or udāharaṇs as they are known in Hindi—feature episodes
from the love story of Krishna and Radha.

This emphasis on at least ostensibly religious subject matter constituted a major

departure from earlier Sanskrit tradition. The poems of Sanskrit alaṅkāraśāstra
texts, tending to center on erotic themes, were as a rule peopled by more
generic nāyakas and nāyikās and directed at courtly audiences. During the
sixteenth century, however, a strain of new Vaishnava theology was forged in
dialogue with ancient canons of aesthetic theory when Sanatana and Rupa
Gosvāmin (fl. 1540) left the service of Husain Shah of Bengal (r. 1493–1518) to
take up residence in the Braj maṇḍal (fewer than two hundred miles northwest
of Orchha), contributing substantially to the development of Gaudiya scripture.
Keshavdas may have had at least a passing knowledge of texts like Rupa
Gosvāmin's Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu (Nectar-ocean of the devotional sentiment) or
Ujjvalanīlamaṇi (Brilliant sapphire), which similarly applied the terminology of
classical aesthetics to bhakti spirituality.33 Whatever may be the case, śṛṅgāra or
passion, long enshrined as the primary rasa in Sanskrit court literature, became
associated with passionate yearning for god, and would now be frequently
instantiated through the love story of Radha and Krishna. These new sixteenth-
century developments in Vaishnava aesthetics contributed substantially to the
development of the Braj rītigranth genre.

(p.34) A brief excerpt from the discussion of love in separation from chapter
eight of Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā illustrates how the textual dispositions of
scholasticism, passion, and devotion interplay. Keshavdas begins the chapter
with a series of scholarly lakṣaṇs that outline the general categories of this
foundational literary motif:

Definition of frustrated love

When lovers are separated a particular emotion arises,

which the master poets define as frustrated love.
Four types of frustrated love have been clearly laid out.
The first is a separation after love's initial infatuation (pūrvānurāga);
other categories concern a sorrowful incident (karuṇā),
when the lovers quarrel (māna),
or a journey away from home (pravāsa).34

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The definition verses in a rītigranth generally adapt ideas from Sanskrit sources,
with the poet retaining the technical vocabulary, or some Braj adaptation of it
that conforms to vernacular metrics. Often the poet signals, as Keshavdas does
here with the phrase baranata kabi siramaura (the master poets define), his
reliance on classical authorities. The operative principle is that each aspect of
the literary topic needs to be treated with taxonomical and exegetical precision
in keeping with the śāstras. Accordingly, Keshavdas proceeds to discuss each of
the subtypes of love in separation, beginning with the first adduced:
pūrvānurāga. He defines the concept, following up with a poem that serves to
explicate it further:

Definition of a separation after love's initial infatuation

Love arises in the couple after seeing each other's beauty. Then they feel
pain when they cannot meet—this is what they call a separation
subsequent to love's initial infatuation.

Example of Radha's hidden suffering after love's initial infatuation

Don’t show me flowers—without Hari they are oppressive thorns.
Take away the garland, it upsets me as though it were a snake.
Don’t fan me with fly-whisks or fans.
Keshav says, a fragrant breeze maddens me like a whirlwind.
Don’t apply sandal paste, it's akin to scorching my body.
I don’t want the vermilion powder, it's a fire to my limbs.
And don’t feed me any betel, friend—it's poison to me.35

(p.35) The last verse is the udāharaṇ, in which a rīti poet had greatest scope
for creative expression. Here Keshavdas focuses on Radha's longing, leading the
reader beyond a scholarly delineation of literary conventions to craft a poignant
poem about the torments that separated lovers endure. This particular poem
draws on the tradition of the virahiṇī (a woman separated from her lover), a
nāyikā found in the repertoire of religious, courtly, and more popular poetry.36
All the accoutrements of her toilette bring pain in the absence of her lover.
Sandal paste, which is supposed to have cooling properties, burns with the heat
of her lovelorn body. A breeze, instead of soothing her, has the perverse effect of
fanning the flames of her passion. Much of the verse's imagery is generic, but
the explicit mention of Radha and Hari (an epithet of Krishna) allows for a
devotional interpretation. Is the Rasikpriyā an example of scholarship or erotic
poetry or an invitation to religious experience? All three concerns are skillfully
interwoven.

The very title of the work cleverly hints at these multiple uses. It literally means
“dear to connoisseurs,” promising poetic delight. In Vaishnava contexts, the
word rasik carries the extended meaning of not just connoisseur but devotee,
allowing the same compound to be interpreted in the sense of “cherished by
devotees.”37 To add yet another rich layer of signification, rasik is a synonym for

Page 12 of 49

Krishna and priyā (with the feminine long-ā ending) would then mean his
“beloved” Radha. From this angle, the work presents itself as a Vaishnava
meditation upon god and his lover.

Keshavdas does not insist that we commit to a single interpretation. Indeed,

many passages in the Rasikpriyā skillfully merge the terminology of classical
aesthetics with the idiom of spiritual practice. In his opening address to his
readers (whom he calls “rasikas”), the poet presents Krishna as the deity whose
salvific activities span all nine rasas and establishes him as the underlying
foundation of all aesthetic experience:

When it came to the daughter of Vrishabhanu [i.e., Radha],

he displayed his erotic mood (śṛṅgāra).
When he stole the gopīs’ clothes,
he exemplified the comic sentiment (hāsa).
When his mother bound him to the mortar,
the sorrowful sentiment (karuṇā ) was in evidence.
When it came to the demon Keshi,
he was unrelentingly fierce terrifying (raudra).
When he killed the evil demon Vatsa,
he was the embodiment of the heroic sentiment (vīra).
(p.36) When he consumed the forest fire,
it was fear (bhaya) that predominated.
When he sucked the life out of the demoness Putana,
he manifested the repugnant mood (bībhatsa).
When he conjured up the hidden cows,
Brahma was overcome with wonder (adbhuta).
Krishna's heart is always in a state of quiescence (śānta).
Keshavdas says, O rasikas, the lord of Braj
embodies all nine rasas (navarasamaya)—
worship him (sevahu) unceasingly in your hearts.38

This verse telescopically retells key incidents from the Krishna legend, using
semantically charged language from both Sanskrit literary theory and the
theology of devotion. Each of Krishna's exploits illustrates a classical rasa, while
the imperative to worship the deity is a call for spiritual action.

A similar repurposing of aesthetics’ terminology occurs in chapter three of the

Rasikpriyā, which outlines the main subtypes of female lovers, the svakīyā and
parakīyā (one's own wife and the wife of another, respectively).39 The final verse,
which simultaneously brings the section to a close and sets the stage for the
next chapter, runs as follows:

I, Keshavdas, have described the heroine of the world's hero.

Now I will speak of their rapture in beholding each other.
Listen to the different types, both secretive and out in the open.
Jaganāyaka kī nāyikā, baranī ‘Kesavadāsa,’
Tinake darsana-rasa kahauṃ, sunau prachanna prakāsa.40

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Here the poet's veneration of Radha as jaganāyaka kī nāyikā (“heroine of the

world's hero”) playfully alludes to the majesty of the divine couple in the
language of Sanskrit poetics. When he uses the term darsana rasa in the next
line, quite apart from elucidating the technical subject under discussion, he
subtly references the Hindu practice of darśan, a devotee's intimate engagement
with an icon in a temple.

It will be clear that the Rasikpriyā is thoroughly imbued with the fervent
Vaishnava spirituality that inspired many a Braj poet in the sixteenth century.
What is new, however, is the text's sustained interest in the science of kāvya.
Keshavdas was a scholar of literature and profoundly concerned with
classificatory rigor in a way that sets his work apart from that of his
predecessors.41 He also saw himself as serving the needs of a new class of
writers who, like the poet himself, were now choosing to express themselves in
Braj instead of (p.37) Sanskrit. His mission is effectively conveyed in a
valediction to his readers from the colophon:

In this manner, Keshavdas has pronounced his opinions on success and

failure in the expression of emotion in literature. May the community of
poets (kavikula) correct him where he has erred. All vernacular poets
would be lost (bhāṣā-kabi sabai hīna) without the Rasikpriyā, as lovers pine
when days go by without a glimpse of the beloved.42 If you have regard for
the Rasikpriyā, both your passion and your wisdom will grow. You will
come to know the ways of rasa (rasarīti). You will attain both worldly
(svārtha) and spiritual (paramārtha) goals.43

Keshavdas here positions himself squarely within a nascent community of

Bhasha poets and calls upon posterity to recognize the importance of his work.
Posterity responded quickly. The Rasikpriyā became an instant classic among
scholars, poets, and Krishna devotees. Countless manuscripts and several
commentaries are still extant today in archives throughout India.44 The work
was also a popular subject for painters. In fact, the first known illustrated
manuscript of the Rasikpriyā, executed in the intriguing style known to art
historians as “popular Mughal,” has been dated to c. 1610–24, raising the
possibility that it was commissioned during the poet's own lifetime. This
important manuscript, fashioned in accordance with the vertically oriented
Persian book format rather than the horizontally oriented Indic pothī, bears
signs of contemporary Mughal painting styles (figure 1.1). By the 1630s,
illustrated manuscripts of the Rasikpriyā were also being commissioned at major
Rajput courts including Malwa, Amber, and Mewar (figure 2.2).45 Before long,
Keshavdas's classic Braj treatise on poetics became a must-have in the libraries
of all self-respecting Rajput kings.

Page 14 of 49

The Courtly Vernacular

Keshavdas's third work, the Kavipriyā (Handbook for poets, 1601), proved to be
similarly influential. Written a full decade after the Rasikpriyā, it is in many
respects a similar enterprise and the texts’ parallels are heightened by
analogous names and sixteen-chapter formats. Whereas his first rītigranth took
up the subject of rasa theory, the second is devoted to the complementary
subject of alaṅkāras, or figures of speech. Another way of framing the distinction
is to say that the Rasikpriyā emphasizes interpretation—a rasika's or
connoisseur's perspective—whereas the Kavipriyā is geared toward
compositional principles—a poet's tools. The two works nonetheless share the
fundamental objective (p.38)

Page 15 of 49

(p.39) of making the literary

values and systems of Sanskrit
poetry accessible to a new
community of vernacular literati.
The Kavipriyā teaches poets how
to infuse Brajbhasha with
classical, and courtly, dignity by
adopting and adapting the
expressive functions of Sanskrit.
The Kavipriyā hardly lacks the
Radha-Krishna verses that were
ubiquitous in the Rasikpriyā,
but the tone noticeably shifts.
The overall ambience of the
work is far more worldly. A
sense of the poet's intense
engagement with court culture
in particular comes across
dramatically in the opening
chapter on the rājavaṃśa (royal
lineage). The Rasikpriyā
contained only the briefest
mention of anything to do with
kings or kingship, even largely
ignoring Raja Indrajit himself,
the presumed patron of the
work. In contrast, the Kavipriyā figure 1.1 Heroine who sets out to meet
goes into lavish detail about her lover out of pride (garvābhisārikā
Indrajit's family history, the nāyikā), from a Popular Mughal
story of the founding of Orchha, manuscript of Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā, c.
and contemporary affairs at 1610–24.
court. Not content just to Courtesy of Kanoria Collection © Asian
provide the usual eulogistic Art Archives, University of Michigan
flourishes and plodding details
of royal genealogy (King A
begot King B, who begot King C, and so forth), the poet also gives a lengthy and
vibrant account of contemporary courtly culture, typified by his description of
six pāturas (courtesans) who brought musical and literary refinement to the
assemblies hosted by Indrajit.

Navrang Ray is adept in the arts of womanly comportment.

Captivating like a swing, she constantly unsettles her lover's heart.
Nayanbicitra has mastered the Bhairav and Gauri rāgs,
and delights in sexual pleasure.
She is as lustrous as the moon in Shiva's hair.46…
Clever Tantarang has immersed herself in the ocean of rāgs,

Page 16 of 49

becoming a veritable wave of melody.

Beholding the full-moon face of her lover,
the tide of her music expands.47
The fingers of Rang Ray are the epitome of expertise.
As soon as she touches the drum,
the room comes to life with sound.…
The experts have expounded every theoretical aspect (aṅga) of
music,
but Rangmurti reigns over them all,
embodying perfection in her dance poses.48
These courtesans are skilled in dancing, singing,
and playing the bīn.
They are all studious (paṛhati saba),
and the incomparable Pravin Ray even composes poetry.
Pravin Ray's bīn delights the hearts of sophisticated connoisseurs.
Rival lute players despair of their own talents, to say nothing of those
less gifted.49

(p.40) This passage is filled with double and even triple entendres. Particularly
virtuosic is Keshavdas's manipulation of the word pravīna, which he uses in the
sense of both the proper name Pravin Ray and “rival lute [player]” (para-bīna).50
The basic meaning of the word, however, is “skilled,” underscoring the new
emphasis in the Kavipriyā on courtly expertise and connoisseurship. Although
little is known about the other women—the very preservation of their names is
something of a feat in the androcentric annals of premodern history—Pravin Ray
was a famous courtesan, a lover of the king, and a student of Keshavdas.51

While both the Rasikpriyā and the Kavipriyā are written in the textbook format
that undergirds all rītigranths, the latter in particular gives the impression that
it was actually used for instruction. It was almost certainly used to teach Pravin
Ray, for whom, according to the poet's explicit statement, the Kavipriyā was
composed.52 When he further elaborates the objective of his work—that “girls
and boys” (bālā-bālakani) come to understand the depth of literary traditions
(pantha agādha)—he goes out of his way to include a feminine noun instead of a
generic masculine plural, as though he wanted especially to stress that girls
were among the objects of his pedagogical concern.53 He also exhibits a
penchant for the vocative pravīna, which could mean just any intelligent person
(thus being intended as a general address to his audience), but is in all
likelihood a nod toward his charismatic female student. She seems to have
learned her lessons well, for Keshavdas is manifestly proud of her
accomplishments when he singles her out as a gifted poetess in his opening
passage on the Orchha rājavaṃśa.54

The subsequent section of the Kavipriyā, which concludes the preamble, singles
out another poet of the court: Keshavdas himself. Apart from proclaiming to the
world his slow-wittedness in the now-famous verse that heads this chapter, this

Page 17 of 49

section is devoted to Keshavdas's own kavivaṃśa (poet's lineage). A rare self-

introduction by a Braj poet, albeit in places a cryptic one, it furnishes important
clues about the circulation of court professionals in this period. In recording his
family history, Keshavdas makes clear that his earliest ancestors were in the
service of the Tomar kings, first in Delhi and later in Gwalior, but by the time of
his grandfather Krishnadatta, mentioned above as a puranic scholar, their
residence had shifted to Orchha. Since the poet provides no context for the
sudden move, we have to read between the lines. The most likely scenario is that
his family was displaced from their traditional service to the Tomars when
Gwalior was conquered by Ibrahim Lodi in 1518. The court's pandits, musicians,
architects, and literary figures are assumed to have dispersed to various locales,
including Delhi, Agra, Orchha, and Rewa in Baghelkhand (the southeastern part
of today's Madhya Pradesh).55 Recall that Rudrapratap established his new court
in Orchha in 1531, which would have required the recruitment of suitable
personnel—ritual specialists, astrologers, (p.41) scholars, poets, and the like.
In juxtaposing his own kavivaṃśa to the rājavaṃśa in chapter one, Keshavdas
seems to suggest that his own story merited equal weight. His unusually
sustained interest in recording his genealogy may also stem from the still-fresh
memory of the violent historical events that had uprooted his family.

By the time Keshavdas was writing two generations later, Orchha was well on its
way to becoming an important regional power and a major center of cultural
innovation. The ability to compose sophisticated Braj poetry was soon to become
a standard measure of connoisseurship and courtliness throughout greater
Hindustan, to no small degree due to the proliferation of texts precisely like the
Kavipriyā, which teaches mastery of this courtly craft. The work deals with the
specific building blocks of poetry at the level of composing individual verses:
basic rules of metrics, rhetorical tropes (similes, metaphors, and many other
complex subtypes dreamed up by earlier Indian authors), poetic conventions,
and—of never-ending concern to fledgling poets—doṣas (flaws). Although the
norm today is to think of poetry as an expression of one's inner feelings,
traditional Indian kāvya operates according to a different logic. Poetry must
follow well-established rules. Not to write by the rules is not to write poetry.

This principle is particularly well illustrated by Keshavdas's notion of a sāmānya

alaṅkāra (conventional trope). The poet devotes four full chapters—a quarter of
the book—to this topic, which is subdivided into sections about colors, the
properties of objects, the natural world,56 and the accoutrements of a court.57
One might suppose that the color of an object or its characteristic property
would be a simple matter of realistic representation, hardly requiring sustained
reflection over entire chapters. Not so in this poetic universe. Certain principles
must be followed when describing the outside world from a poet's perspective,
as in the following learned discourses on “yellow” and “fleeting.”

An account of yellow (atha pīta varṇana)

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[When writing poetry, some things are conventionally described as yellow

yuga.] These include Vishnu's mount Garuda, Lord Brahma, Shiva's matted
hair, Parvati,58 turmeric, orpiment, campaka flowers, lamps, the heroic
sentiment, Jupiter, honey, Indra, Mount Meru, the earth, mineral
ointments, cow urine, cakravāka birds, the dvāpara, baby monkeys, lotus
calixes, Vishnu's robes, saffron, auspicious gold, the face of a mynah bird,
lightning, pollen, and brass.

(p.42) Example
Lord Brahma fashioned turmeric out of Parvati's fair-hued body
so they share the name maṅgalī (auspicious one).
He took the brightness of her body and created lightning that
flashes,
singeing the clouds in the sky.
From her fragrance he created various ointments,
campaka and other flowers.
Slightly soiling her fair color with the hue of gold, he created the
lotus calix.59

An account of fleeting (atha cañcala varṇana)

Cantering horses, a herd of deer, monkeys, the leaves of peepal trees, the
hearts of greedy people, jackals, children, the passage of time, women of
easy virtue, oblique sidelong glances, hearts, dreams, youth, fish, wagtail
birds, bees, elephant ears, wealth, lightning, and the wind. (Pravin,60 these
are to be described as fleeting.)

Example
I don’t understand what you see in Krishna.
You stand there speechless, staring at him, that
pleasure palace of good looks and enchantment.
He is just a bee flitting about in the vines,
seeking the nectar of beautiful young women.
He's about as steady as a wagtail bird on land
or a fish in water.
He is a transient dream:
though you try to grasp him, he slips through your fingers.
Don’t be fooled by his words,
they yield nothing but bitter fruit.
He dazzles like lightning flashing through the sky.
His love lasts as long as the leaves on a pipal tree.61

One might suppose that following the rulebook must make for stilted poetry, but
the rules just as often served as a generative force for creativity. Here
Keshavdas has crafted a beautiful poem that highlights a sakhī's (girlfriend's)
chiding of a vulnerable, lovelorn gopī. The theme is a universal one: love is
dangerous, yet utterly irresistible to those in its thrall.

Page 19 of 49

In some cultures, the literary consensus remained tacit. In India, however, the
grounds of literary consensus were much more explicitly enunciated in the (p.
43) richly developed field of alaṅkāraśāstra. When Keshavdas undertook to
write four chapters on sāmānya alaṅkāras he did so because an elaborate system
of conventions was recognized by the kavikul, the community of poets, and the
rasikas who participated in literary culture. One of Keshavdas's more striking
“conventional tropes,” which occupies the whole of chapter eight, concerns the
subject of rājyaśrībhūṣaṇa-varṇana (descriptions of the ornaments of royal
luster)—in other words, how to write poetry about a court. Keshavdas shares the
following tips:

A poet should portray the ornaments of royal luster by describing the king,
queens and princes, the priests, generals, messengers, ministers, and the
advice they give. The launching of a campaign should be mentioned, along
with the war horses, elephants, and unique battle feats. Recount the
hunting expeditions, enjoying a swim, the winning of brides in marriage
contests, the longing for an absent lover, and the joys of sexual union.62

With the taxonomical punctiliousness that would become the hallmark of rīti
authors, Keshavdas develops the theme of courtly description at great length,
diligently providing definition and illustration verses for each topic. Notably
absent from this discussion, especially considering the historical specificity of
chapters one and two of the Kavipriyā (in which a host of contemporaries and
ancestors are named), are any details about Keshavdas's own court. He keeps
the entire discussion in the abstract realm of classical poetic ideals. Indeed, the
illustrative verses overwhelmingly feature the paradigmatic king Rama.

The concern with the paradigmatic makes good sense for a poet who is, after all,
teaching a lesson in poetry composition. Still, in invoking the principles of
Rāmrājya, or the utopian reign of King Rama, Keshavdas may have had in mind
far more than a mere poetry lesson. No doubt he considered it his duty as a poet
to instruct his charges and royal patron in kingly ethics. For centuries Sanskrit
(and Persian) poetry had been deeply invested in the preservation of the moral
and political order, an ethos amply evident in Braj courtly literature, as well.63
Keshavdas's manifestly classicist approach to literary matters may have been
operating on more than one level. As much as the poet's sāmānya alaṅkāras are
an induction into the Sanskrit aesthetic universe, they also speak to the self-
fashioning strategies of the Bundela kings, an arriviste clan that was starting to
come into its own under Mughal rule. The Indian tradition produced no more
potent symbol of political authority than Rāmrājya, making the adoption of this
imagery into one's aesthetic program an obvious choice for kings, and their
court poets. The erasure of contemporaneity in favor of the mythic may also
have been a face-saving measure for a court that was still struggling with its loss
of independence during the previous generation.

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(p.44) Rāmrājya and Rāmbhakti

Keshavdas's third and least known rītigranth, the Chandmālā (Garland of
prosody, 1602), rounds out the poet's interest in literary theory with a
particularly avid focus on timeless Rāmāyaṇa themes. The short work,
comprising just two chapters, covers the two basic metrical subdivisions of
vārṇik and mātrik (in technical terms, the syllabic and moraic forms of prosody)
in a series of definitions, illustrating each one with a verse, usually about
Rama.64 It is the first known treatise on Brajbhasha metrics.65 Keshavdas
attempted a systematic classification of the meters, dramatically expanding the
repertoire of vernacular verse forms. Perhaps he wrote the work as a series of
lectures for Indrajit, Pravin Ray, or another student. His educational mission is
clearly stated in the opening: “I want all vernacular poets (bhāṣākavi) to be able
to understand readily the complexities of metrics. That is why I wrote this
beautiful book.”66 The Chandmālā is fully consistent with Keshavdas's overall
mission to refine Brajbhasha so that vernacular poets would be able to speak as
elegantly as their classical predecessors.

It has been proposed that the Chandmālā served as a companion work to

Keshavdas's Rāmcandracandrikā (Moonlight on Ramacandra), a remarkable Braj
Rāmāyaṇa completed during the previous year.67 More than half of the
Chandmālā's example verses are taken verbatim from the epic. The
Rāmcandracandrikā, for its part, evinces a profound interest in new metrical
forms, strengthening the connection between the two texts. Whereas Tulsi's
slightly earlier and more famous Rāmcaritmānas was composed predominantly
in familiar dohās and caupaīs̄, Keshavdas used meters that had never before
been seen in Hindi literature (and some have never been seen since). In the
introductory chapter the poet states his mission explicitly: “Using an abundance
of meters, I will describe the moonlight of Lord Rama, whose constant radiance
animates the world at will.”68

The introduction to Rāmcandracandrikā contains further clues about the poet's

approach to his subject matter. Valmiki, the famed author of the Sanskrit
Rāmāyaṇa, appears to Keshavdas in a dream. When asked about the secret to
happiness (sukhasāra), Valmiki instructs Keshavdas in the benefits of chanting
Rama's name. The Braj poet then becomes a devotee of Rama (karyo
rāmacandrajū iṣṭa) and is inspired to write his own vernacular Rāmāyaṇa. This
episode seems to signal both a religious epiphany and a literary one. The events
described also constitute an almost-classic topos of vernacular inauguration,
with Keshavdas's Braj Rāmāyaṇa being authorized by the premier poet of the
Sanskrit tradition. One ādi kavi (first poet) passes the baton to another.69

(p.45) Keshavdas shows himself to be fully worthy of Valmiki's charge. Already

striking for its prosodic innovation—as was Valmiki's own Rāmāyaṇa, which
artfully purported to invent versified language as such—the Rāmcandracandrikā
is the work of a master poet able to manipulate rasas and alaṅkāras to beautiful

Page 21 of 49

and sophisticated expressive effect. Keshavdas has taken a page out of his own
rītigranth, so to speak, and here Brajbhasha literature is enriched with the
fullest complement of Sanskrit aesthetics. The Rāmcandracandrikā can be
considered the first major Braj experiment with the Sanskrit mahākāvya (courtly
epic) style. There are certainly lively, action-packed scenes where Keshavdas
moves the plot forward, but he also takes his time over the course of thirty-nine
cantos, pausing to describe a forest or a moonrise in prodigious detail, or to
linger lovingly over Rama's divine form in a śikh-nakh (head-to-toe description).
This is rasa-filled poetry of supreme beauty.70 It manages to be distinguished like
Sanskrit while preserving the immediacy and vigor of a more colloquial style.
Keshavdas ranges across different meters and registers, giving the work a rich
texture characteristic of the greatest Sanskrit court poetry.

The Rāmcandracandrikā was something entirely unprecedented in Brajbhasha,

and yet this text's newness is in harmony with the perspectives and themes of
the poet's earlier rītigranths. It is—and this seems the only correct term—a
neoclassical work, which reflects Keshavdas's consummate scholarship and
deliberate cultivation of a refined style based on Sanskrit models. Although the
Rāmcandracandrikā is suffused with the exemplary royal themes that the Valmiki
Rāmāyaṇa epitomizes, it is at the same time a powerful work of bhakti literature.
Valmiki's instruction to Keshavdas that he worship Rama clearly did not go
unheeded. Whatever personal inclinations the poet may have had, a directive
from the work's probable patron Raja Indrajit, known to have been a devotee of
Rama, was also no doubt an important factor in Keshavdas's choice of subject
matter.71 The realms of kāvya and bhakti are far from incompatible, as
Keshavdas had already established in his Rasikpriyā.72

The Rāmcandracandrikā naturally invites comparison to Tulsi's Rāmāyaṇa,

written in Avadhi (Eastern Hindi) nearly thirty years earlier, when Braj had not
yet become the dominant literary language (Tulsi would himself show a
preference for Brajbhasha later in his career). Whether or not the poets ever
met, the Hindi literary tradition, which recorded various supposed conversations
between the two famous authors, clearly feels they should have.73 Although not
necessarily documenting something that “really happened,” such kiṃvadantiyāṃ
(folk legends), as they are called in Hindi, comprise a domain of cultural memory
that evokes contestations within different vernacular literary spaces during this
generation. While the two epics do have bhakti in common, their aesthetic
profiles and intended audiences are distinct. Tulsidas hardly eschews (p.46)
rhetorical finery in the manner that he claimed, but he is less interested in kāvya
as art than in conveying a profound spiritual message to holy men and devotees.
Keshavdas's rendition of the Rama story, in contrast, is foremost a literary
enterprise intended for delectation by a king, albeit a devout one.

Page 22 of 49

A New Kind of Politics

Keshavdas's next work, Vīrsiṃhdevcarit (Deeds of Bir Singh Deo,74 1607) is
another monumental poem in the author's signature mahākāvya style. Here the
poet exhibits extraordinary versatility, shifting from the timeless mytho-epic
landscape to a new concern with aestheticizing contemporary kingly grandeur.
The title of the work proclaims its affiliation with the genre of the courtly carita,
an idealized biography of a king or other exemplary figure. In this case, the king
was Keshavdas's new patron, and Orchha's new ruler, Bir Singh Deo Bundela.

The late sixteenth-century Mughal takeover of Orchha had catapulted the

kingdom into a new constellation of political relationships. The Bundela rulers
were henceforth exposed not only to the Mughals’ Persianate ways but also to a
transregional Rajput courtly culture that was evolving in dialogue with the
Mughal imperial system. No longer a frontier outpost in the tribal lands of
central India controlled by spurious Rajputs (as western Rajputs and, in later
days, the British characterized them) or jungle robbers (as Badauni, the
famously crotchety historian of Akbar's reign, viewed them), Orchha had begun
to garner more recognition as a courtly center.75

After Madhukar Shah died in 1592, his eldest son Ram Shah was entitled to the
throne in accordance with primogeniture, while the other brothers, such as
Keshavdas's earlier patron Indrajit, were to maintain their apportioned estates.
But Orchha's royal succession did not unfold according to an orderly plan. Bir
Singh Deo, the sixth of Madhukar's eight sons, rebelled repeatedly against Ram
Shah and Ram Shah's overlord, Emperor Akbar himself. When at the turn of the
seventeenth century Prince Salim became estranged from his father, Akbar, he
sparked his own rebellion of sorts, setting up a competing court in Allahabad. At
this juncture, Bir Singh strategically threw in his lot with the younger
generation, and he earned the future emperor's undying gratitude in 1602 for
his assassination of Abu al-Fazl, a close friend and advisor of Akbar, and a
powerful courtier who Prince Salim feared was a direct impediment to his
political success. When Akbar died in 1605 and Salim acceded to the throne as
Emperor Jahangir, he was now in a position to reward the Orchha rebel. Bir
Singh effectively usurped the throne from his elder brother Ram Shah, not as an
illegitimate jungle robber but with the backing of an imperial edict.

(p.47) Whereas Raja Madhukar Shah had resisted Mughal authority to the
point of frequent insurrection, his son Bir Singh Deo Bundela became an active,
and more reliable, player in the new manṣabdārī system, the now-dominant
Mughal political and military regime of service to the emperor.76 Having
arrogated to himself the Orchha throne under unseemly circumstances, Bir
Singh set about refurbishing his reputation in a variety of ways. In fashioning his
royal self-image he drew upon the classical past, but his political aesthetic also
included a judicious assemblage of new Vaishnava, Mughal, and pan-Rajput
styles. His court maintained the interest in bhakti that had been cultivated under

Page 23 of 49

his father. This reached its apogee in 1614, when the king embarked on a stately
pilgrimage to the Braj maṇḍal, which he marked with great fanfare by the
ancient kingly ritual (a practice also recently adopted by the Mughals) of
distributing his weight in gold.77 Known more as a builder than a bhakta, Bir
Singh was far more ostentatious than Madhukar Shah, sponsoring major
architectural projects at Orchha, the new city of Datiya that he founded, and
further afield. His Keshavdev temple in Mathura was described by Jean-Baptiste
Tavernier, a European visitor to the Mughal court in the next generation, as “one
of the most sumptuous buildings in all India.”78 He was also heralded in other
Mughal-period sources for his munificence at the site of the famous
Vishveshvara temple in Banaras.79

Bhakti was both a spiritual and a political resource for many Rajput kings.
Building monuments at home, such as the Chaturbhuj temple begun by
Madhukar Shah and renovated by Bir Singh Deo, or the samādhi (memorial)
erected by the latter to the bhakti poet Hariram Vyas in 1618, was an important
public gesture of piety that served a local constituency; undertaking lavish
architectural patronage in the Braj region was an active commitment to the
idiom of empire, one completely new to the age (it was notably absent from the
reign of Madhukar Shah). In building at Mathura, Bir Singh adopted a type of
royal behavior consistent with expectations for elite officers in the Mughal
manṣabdārī system as typified by Man Singh Kachhwaha, Akbar's leading Rajput
ally. During this period, Rajput kings frequently sponsored architectural projects
that gave visual shape to the imperial presence.80 Akbar's commitment to
religious pluralism meant that Hindu places of worship in the Braj maṇḍal were
also supported by the Mughal state, as in the case of Man Singh's most famous
building, the Govindadeva temple at Vrindavan (1590), which despite being a
Hindu house of worship drew on the visual vocabulary of Akbar's recent
constructions at Fatehpur Sikri, linking a Vaishnava monument to the very seat
of power.81 The Chaturbhuj temple at Orchha, to which Keshavdas devotes an
entire canto in his Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, is in a related architectural style that shows
awareness of Mughal registers (figure 1.2).82 Vaishnava (p.48)

architecture, whether built on

one's own territory or far away,
was a statement not only about
piety but also, and profoundly,
about politics. Bir Singh Deo
Bundela acclimated fully to the
new expectations for manṣabdārs
under Mughal rule, even, it has
been suggested, usurping some of
the considerable limelight that
had accrued to the Kachhwaha
dynasty of Amber under Man
Singh.83

Page 24 of 49

While the Orchha court of Bir figure 1.2 Chaturbhuj temple, Orchha
Singh's day is relatively well
Courtesy of Edward Rotharb
known for its architectural
contributions to the
“topography of power,”84 his reign also has a literary legacy. The Vīrsiṃhdevcarit
that he commissioned from Keshavdas was an extraordinary literary assignment,
executed at an extraordinary political moment. The date of the work closely
coincides with Bir Singh's formal accession to the Orchha throne.85 It is an
elaborate literary, moral, and political argument about Bir Singh's fitness to rule,
conceived at a time when this claim would have seemed most dubious to a
contingent of his Bundela compatriots—and, as we occasionally detect in the
narrative, to the poet himself.

Whatever his occasional misgivings about his subject matter, Keshavdas took to
his writerly task with dedication, composing thirty-three cantos about his new
patron in the type of kāvya style he had been honing to perfection in the
Rāmcandracandrikā, while also drawing on a long tradition of praśasti (political
poetry) from Sanskrit. The work is also one of the earliest examples of (p.49)
Braj historical poems that can be traced to the Mughal period: roughly the first
third comprises a fairly factual account of known historical events, with a special
emphasis on the competition between Bir Singh and Ram Shah for the Orchha
throne. That Keshavdas was actually a witness to much of what he describes is
not in doubt. In several places he inserts himself into the narrative as a
spectator and even as a political advisor.86

What immediately strikes a modern reader is that the reality of Orchha politics
was far from consonant with the classical ideals of kingly literary representation
that Keshavdas's genre required: his “hero” Bir Singh did not always behave so
heroically, nor were the ostensible villains (his elder brother, Ram Shah, and
Emperor Akbar) so unequivocally villainous. Whereas the Rāmcandracandrikā
featured none other than Rama, the paragon of kingly behavior, it must have
been considerably more challenging to transpose the treachery and bloodshed of
recent Orchha history into the utopian domain of classical courtly kāvya. As
though precisely to set the stage for making sense of this moral confusion, the
poet's frame story features a saṃvād between the personified character traits of
Dāna (Generosity) and Lobha (Greed). The dialogue foreshadows the impropriety
of brotherly strife and the greed for political power, which become as recurring
problems in the Vīrsiṃhdevcarit just as they had in the Bundela kingdom. These
issues are first raised by Greed, and appropriately so:

I am all confused upon hearing of this new kind of politics

(rājanīti yaha naī)87.
One hears that a father may bear two sons,
and both may grow to be law-abiding and dutiful.
But I’ve never heard of a case where both sons can be king!

Page 25 of 49

Explain to me what happened—who lost, and who emerged

victorious?88

In writing of the struggles between Ram Shah and Bir Singh, Keshavdas is
constantly forced to confront tensions between describing the imperfections of
the political intrigues he observed and adhering to the idealizing modes
demanded by the carit genre. The text is replete with telling inversions of kāvya
ideals. Keshavdas's manipulation of traditional Rāmāyaṇa imagery is a case in
point: instead of evoking the moral perfection and adulation of epic themes, it
often creates a sense of dramatic irony.

Brotherly sevā (service) is one of the core moral concerns of Valmiki's epic, as
when Lakshmana follows Rama to the forest, or Bharata adamantly refuses the
Ayodhya throne upon hearing of his mother Kaikeyi's deception.89 Keshavdas's
rendering of the power struggle between Ram Shah and Bir Singh draws
unmistakably upon the dramatic section of his Rāmcandracandrikā in which
Bharata (p.50) meets his revered elder brother shortly upon the latter's exile.
When Bharata goes to find Rama in the forest, he is accompanied by a full
retinue, and Rama's party at first thinks that the younger prince has come with
hostile intentions. In the classical Rāmāyaṇa story, the misconception is quickly
cleared up. The brothers are happily, if briefly, reunited before Bharata agrees to
act as Rama's regent and dutifully takes his elder brother's sandals with him
back to Ayodhya as token of the rightful king's royal presence. This is where
Keshavdas's Vīrsiṃhdevcarit diverges crucially from the epic, a narrative
departure that would have been lost on no one hearing the text in Orchha.
Keshavdas describes the younger brother Bir Singh approaching Ram Shah's
palace in almost exactly the same terms as in the Bharata-Rama scene of the
Rāmcandracandrikā.90 But, in a complete inversion of the Rāmāyaṇa storyline,
the junior Orchha prince incites war against his elder brother and succeeds in
usurping the throne. For Keshavdas, classical literary modes were a powerful
vehicle for processing contemporary historical events and measuring them
against the sanctioned cultural models of the past. The parallels he draws
throughout this scene between his own kings and Rama and Bharata (or,
perhaps more accurately, the contrasts he highlights) serve as a telling comment
on the power relations of his own day.

This problem of contemporary politics conflicting with lofty literary ideals is

similarly pronounced when Keshavdas recounts Bir Singh's gruesome
assassination of Abu al-Fazl, the eminent Mughal intellectual and adviser of
Akbar. It is true that high kāvya norms prescribe a nāyaka who is a fearsome
opponent on the battlefield. But in no rītigranth is it written that he should be an
assassin. Keshavdas, ever the masterful writer and tactful courtier, handles this
hitch in the real-life story through deft characterization and careful manipulation
of the emotional tenor of the relevant scenes. In a prefatory dialogue, Bir Singh
tries to dissuade Prince Salim from insisting on this rash and abhorrent

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undertaking, allowing Keshavdas's hero to accrue some readerly goodwill.91

When the inevitable murder scene takes place, the poet glosses over it as
quickly as possible, and a string of eulogies divert attention away from the
nāyaka, emphasizing Abu al-Fazl's noble demeanor, his bravery in battle, even
his support for Brahmans—all terms of high praise in the classical literary
imagination. This temporary moral elevation of Abu al-Fazl above Keshavdas's
own patron culminates in an entire subsequent canto devoted to Akbar's grief at
the loss of his dear friend.92

When Keshavdas celebrates the dignity and bravery of Sheikh Abu al-Fazl or
lingers over Akbar's sorrow, he skillfully builds narrative tension and drama, but
one suspects that far more is involved here than simply issues of literary mood
or compositional strategy. Were these poetics a critique of his patron's (p.51)
politics? Or was the poet giving voice to a terrible disquiet Bir Singh himself may
have felt when forced—and as a subordinate who depended on the goodwill of
the emperor to be, he must have felt forced—to carry out the assassination?
What is certain is that the text's probing, almost-modernist manipulation of
traditional themes, its rejection or at least undercutting of the more typological
kāvya characterizations, are perfect for bringing to the fore the complex moral
shades demanded by a new kind of politics.

Royal Affirmation
Beginning in canto fifteen of the carit, Keshavdas takes a new tack. He abandons
his concern with emotionally layered realism to embark on a different type of
literary mission: illustrating through lush poetic imagery the proposition that Bir
Singh is, in fact, a perfect king. Notably absent are the moments of authorial
ambivalence that cast their shadow over the earlier part of the work. It is as
though Bir Singh's definitive victory over his brother Ram Shah and Jahangir's
support for the junior Orchha prince require a new, unambiguous tone of royal
affirmation.

We are returned to the frame story: Generosity and Greed set out to visit Bir
Singh's capital at Orchha, newly named “Jahangirpur,”93 and hundreds of verses
on the king's realm and moral perfection follow. As these two characters stroll
through the Bundela territories, they praise everything in sight, beginning, it
bears mentioning, with Bir Singh's architectural achievements. While
Keshavdas's text is not devoid of realism in its detailing of Bir Singh's well-
known contributions to the built environment of Bundelkhand,94 the emphasis is
generally not so much on specific details as on pure, aestheticized description.
Consider the following account of Bir Sagar, the man-made lake constructed by
the king (and keep in mind the ferocious heat of an Indian summer):

When Generosity and Greed set out to visit Jahangirpur [Orchha]

they saw a huge array of forts, towns, and villages—
how could I possibly recount all their names?
They saw gladdening lakes and rivers as they approached Bir Sagar.
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Seeing the magnificent lake,

they sought the right terms for describing it.
It gives such pleasure on earth, this body of water!
It is marvelous, clear, vast, and profound in its depths.
(p.52) It is home to blossoming flowers,
as though lighting up the sky with stars.
It is a place of sheer coolness,
where the heat of summer is forbidden entry:
abode of scents, a place of beauty, effacer of the world's cares,
like the goddess Chandika in its dark hue.
The tall waves are a cluster of clouds
releasing their spray in the wind;
at sunset the water takes on a red quality,
waves shimmering like lightning, dispelling the sorrow of men's
hearts.
Night and day peacocks dance in all directions,
animated by the mist of the lake;
the lotuses bloom, their white luster like moonlight.…95

Although Keshavdas's poetry commends a real-life charitable action on the part

of the king in the domain of waterworks,96 the larger argument of the text is that
Bir Singh's kingdom is paradisiacal. It is a protective realm where all
unpleasantness, like the grueling hot summer of the Indian midlands, is filtered
out; it is a joyful place, “effacer of the world's cares”—a precise analogue of the
expectations the subjects would have for the efficacy of Bir Singh's rule.

The same logic informs the poet's expansive treatment of the king's daily
routine, a small portion of which is excerpted here:

Bir Singh bathed in Ganges water and honored all the gods.
He heard the purāṇas recited, and gave the gift of a cow
before taking his meal.
After eating, he went into the women's quarters to take pleasure.
He then climbed to the jewel-studded terrace,
looking out in joy at the forest expanse.
Bir Singh saw the mango trees in bloom, and felt the gentle Malabar
wind as it picked up.
The budding mangoes were like the limbs of the god of love
or a fluttering banner woven of rope.
The charming clove vines swayed,
alive with bees stirred in their passions.
The beautiful cuckoos cooed gently,
as though delivering a message from spring.
Then the king looked over at the festival pavilion,
and accompanied by beautiful women he went to hear the special
program.
(p.53) The drums of Kamadeva resounded in victory,
all were steeped in love's magic.…97

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The poet expatiates almost reverently upon a combination of his patron's

religious duties (listening to didactic recitations, the donation of a cow to a
Brahman) and the idyllic vinoda (royal diversions) that foreground his personal
beauty and charisma. This departure from the storyline—from any real focus on
the actions and conversations of the characters—in favor of pure, ornate
description has a long history in Sanskrit mahākāvya and, as in Keshavdas's own
Kavipriyā, poets are enjoined to dilate upon the perfections of a king's
personhood and dominions not necessarily in terms of what they observe with
their own eyes but with time-tested imagery that draws on an established
rhetoric of royal description.98

Since the invention of Sanskrit kāvya early in the first millennium, kingliness had
always evoked, and perhaps required, an elaborate idiom; poetry was the
rhetorical embodiment of moral and political competence. Similarly, in
Keshavdas's vernacular poem, canto after canto celebrates in painstaking detail
every aspect of the majesty of King Bir Singh and the bounty of the land over
which he rules. Following immediately upon the more action-packed, realistic
opening, these leisurely descriptive cantos construct a perfect king in
accordance with classical norms, from whom the stains of an earlier political
coup and murder have been washed completely. The point is driven home at the
very end of the work by a long excursus into rājyaśrī and rājadharma, royal
luster and royal norms, where a healthy dose of Sanskrit verses helps to
underscore the political message.99

It can take real effort for a modern reader to understand how and why this type
of poetry works and matters. The complexities of rīti literature, with its reliance
on Sanskrit expressive techniques and classical courtly imagery, are often
shunned as ornate and overdone. We miss the point entirely, however, if we
cannot understand how critical it is to the logic of this text that these cantos are
here, and that their form (and what may appear to unaccustomed modern
readers as an almost painful wordiness) is inseparable from their content. For
this section, far from being a superfluous addition pasted into the narrative or a
mere sycophant's participation in the distasteful legitimizing of political power,
is a rich, sensory celebration of the kind of courtliness the Bundela kings were
aspiring to cultivate in this period. The question of cultural cachet was indeed no
small one for the Bundelas, whom other Rajputs initially spurned as low-caste
upstarts. Tapping into the prestige of the Mughals through strategic alliance, as
Bir Singh Deo so adroitly did, was one method of redressing their social
disadvantages. Sponsoring art, literature, and intellectual life was (p.54)
another. Nor was Keshavdas the sole participant in the king's multi-staged royal
self-fashioning. The Vīramitrodaya, which at a verse count of two hundred
thousand is twice the size of the Mahābhārata and the largest work of
dharmaśāstra ever composed, was produced slightly later at the same court by
Mitra Mishra, a Brahman whose family, like that of Keshavdas, had recently been
drawn to Orchha from Gwalior.100 Whether proclaimed through architecture, in
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a Brajbhasha literary work, or in a Sanskrit treatise on religious and social

behavior, this prodigious interest in the classical codes of kingship and a
penchant for cultural superlatives proclaimed Bir Singh's status both at home
and in greater Hindustan.

The Wisdom of Old Age

Bir Singh, like his famous court poet, was a man of wide-ranging ability and
taste. If the products of his patronage are any sure guide, he was a real
connoisseur of architecture and literature, versed in the classical law books of
kings, but also keenly interested in spirituality. His public displays of bhakti in a
royal idiom have already been mentioned, but some of his commissions were
also evidently for more private consumption. Such is the case with Keshavdas's
Vijñāngītā (The rise of wisdom moon), a Braj adaptation of Krishna Mishra's
Prabodhacandrodaya (Rise of the moon of enlightenment), a Sanskrit allegorical
play originally written at the Chandella court in the eleventh century.101 The
Vijñāngītā is a staid work, a mouthpiece for the Indian philosophical system of
Vedanta distinctly different in tone from the lighthearted treatment of Krishna
and the gopīs in the Rasikpriyā or the royal majesty that infuses the
Rāmcandracandrikā. Contributing to the sober atmosphere is a liberal sprinkling
of untranslated Sanskrit quotations from powerhouse texts like the Bhagavadgītā
and Yogavāsiṣṭha. As in the Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, when the poet needs to get serious
about dharma, Sanskrit is the medium of choice.

Despite the unmistakably learned style, here too the pandit does not fail to
signal his identity as a vernacular writer, this time mixing his familiar posture of
diffidence with a more forthright statement about—almost a defense of—his
choice:

He [Kashinatha Mishra] had a son named Keshavray,102 a slow-witted

Hindi poet, who created the Discourse on Wisdom, source of highest bliss.
Gods compose in the language of the gods [Sanskrit] and Nagas in the
language of serpents [Prakrit]. Since I am a man, I wrote the Discourse on
Wisdom in the language of men, drawing on the (p.55) authority of the
Gītā (nara hoi narabhāṣā karī gītā jñāna pramāni). I have written in Bhasha
so that even a fool can grasp the hidden doctrine, measureless,
unfathomable, without end. May the learned forgive any offense.103

Once again, the poet's assertions about his own slow-wittedness are not very
credible. Many learned individuals—the gods Shiva and Sarasvati, the sages
Agastya and Vasishtha, just to name a few—feature in the narrative, but
Keshavdas evidently considers his own advice to be far from trifling, writing
himself into the story in the role of guru to the king. Bir Singh looks to
Keshavdas for spiritual and moral guidance, some of which is dispensed through
the poet's signature saṃvāds, here staged between the gods as well as

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personified character traits like mahāmoha (Great Delusion) and viveka

(Discrimination).

We need not pause too long over the content of the text, which is essentially an
encyclopedic work of wisdom literature directed toward the edification of his
patron. But the Vijñāngītā does serve as a useful reminder about the expressive
range of not just Keshavdas but also the Brajbhasha language. By 1610, it was
no longer primarily a medium of devotional songs; it had become the vehicle for
the full range of literary forms, including scholarly treatises on aesthetics, the
elevated themes of kāvya, local history, theology, and philosophy. The Vijñāngītā
also helps to round out our knowledge of the multiple roles that Keshavdas
played at the Orchha court. As the leading writer of his day, he was naturally
called upon to celebrate the valor and worthiness of the Orchha kings; he taught
the princes and courtesans the skills of poetry writing and connoisseurship; he
beautified everyday life with his verses; he contributed to his patrons’ noblesse
and royal self-presentation, a kind of early modern equivalent of a public
relations manager; he reminded the king of his duties to his subjects with
learned disquisitions on rājadharma; he also served as a spiritual mentor.104 In
short, Brajbhasha poets, like their Persian and Sanskrit counterparts, were vital
to the larger cultural economy of a court. The best poets were well-rounded
literati who could write on diverse subjects and assist their patrons in various
capacities.105

The Vijñāngītā marks the end of Keshavdas's period of service to the Orchha
dynasty. If the subtle criticisms of his patron that we detected in his
Vīrsiṃhdevcarit are any indication, perhaps he had had enough of the “new kind
of politics” that had swept through his kingdom in recent decades. Or perhaps
he was just feeling the weight of his years and was ready to retire after a
successful career spanning nearly three decades. This is the impression he gives
in the closing of his work when he requests, and is granted, both the leave (p.
56) and the resources to take up residence on the banks of the Ganges—a
retirement package of sorts, according to classical Hindu thinking.106

Keshavdas's Contact with the Mughal Court

Keshavdas did not retire at once, however. He stayed active long enough to write
one more work: the Jahāngīrjascandrikā (Moonlight of the fame of Jahangir,
1612). Clearly much had changed since he first took up the vocation of poet.
While Keshavdas's Ratnabāvanī featured an Orchha prince leading his troops
against the Mughals on the battlefield, his last work is a panegyric to the
Mughal emperor set in Agra, the imperial city.

This text, like so much else in Keshavdas's life and works, naturally prompts the
question of how much the poet had been exposed to Mughal court life. Bir
Singh's close connections to Jahangir and to the imperial political establishment
are well documented by Keshavdas, contemporary Persian writers, and the

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architectural record of his reign. One of the principal palace structures at

Orchha, the Jahangir Mandir, is named after the emperor, and local residents
today avow that the structure was built for an imperial visit (figure 1.3).107 Like
other manṣabdārs, Bir Singh was also often resident in Agra, where he built a
house on the banks of the Yamuna River. Less clear is the extent of Keshavdas's
own direct involvement with the Mughal court, and what evidence of such
involvement might mean for how we understand the early development of rīti
literature. Let us now weigh the available evidence.

Keshavdas does not directly reveal who commissioned the Jahāngīrjascandrikā,

but despite the text's name, it was probably not the emperor himself. The most
likely patron is a Mughal courtier, Iraj Shahnawaz Khan, which is suggested by
the opening praise poems to Iraj; to his father, the famous general (and Hindi
poet) Abdurrahim Khan-i Khanan; and to Iraj's grandfather Bairam Khan, who
had served as Akbar's regent.108 A special relationship between Keshavdas and
Iraj Khan is intimated in the introduction when the young amir approaches the
wise elder poet seeking guidance.109 Further evidence from outside the text
lends itself to a more precise hypothesis about its provenance. Knowing that
Jahangir favored Iraj with the title Shahnawaz (“soothing to the emperor”) Khan
in 1612,110 the same year the Jahāngīrjascandrikā was written, suggests he
commissioned the work as a way of showing his gratitude. If so, we need to
seriously qualify our understanding of the place of Braj at the Mughal court and
rethink the standard assessment about the exclusivity of Persian poetry in that
milieu.111

(p.57)

Select poems from the Kavipriyā

and the Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, in which
Keshavdas mentions the Mughal
aristocrat Birbal, a leading
courtier of Akbar, are also
pertinent to this discussion. The
way these are presented—in close
proximity to verses about Raja
Indrajit of Orchha, a known patron
—suggests a similar relationship
obtained in the case of Birbal:
And one day while they were
figure 1.3 Jahangir Mandir, Orchha
in Prayag, Indrajit told
Keshavdas to make a Courtesy of Edward Rotharb
request. The poet said,
“Fortunate one, show your
grace so that I may pass my days without worry.”

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And Birbal, too, told Keshavdas to ask for his heart's desire. Keshavdas
requested, “May no one block me at court.” (māṃgyo taba darabāra meṃ
“mohi na rokai koi”)

Indrajit showed him kindness, considering him his guru. He washed his
feet, and bestowed upon him twenty-one villages.112

Although his request of Indrajit was honored at once through a generous land
grant, we do not know if Keshavdas ever got his wish from Birbal. But the nature
of the wish itself is of interest: the poet's desire to have access to the court. In
another cluster of verses from chapter six of the Kavipriyā that showcases the
subject of dāna (generosity), he again mentions Birbal and Indrajit in tandem.
The section concludes with praśastis to both, with the former eulogized as
follows:

(p.58) When Birbal passed away, there was a jubilee in Poverty's

court.
The pakhāvaj drums of Evil began to play,
the conch shells of Grief resounded exuberantly, and kettledrums
blared.
The house of kaliyuga was merry with the songs of Falsehood,
the tambourines of Fear, the pipes of Discord,
and the gongs of Disgrace.113

A later verse from the Vīrsiṃhdevcarit similarly commemorates Birbal's

generosity.114 In an incident reported in the Hindī navratna (Nine jewels, 1910),
a work of Hindi literary criticism written a century ago by authors who gave
more weight to oral traditions than many scholars of today, Keshavdas is said to
have gone to Agra when Akbar became enraged with the poet's patron Indrajit,
whereupon Birbal interceded to have a fine of 10 million rupees waived. As often
with such kiṃvadantiyāṃ, it is difficult to access the factual truth of this episode
(although one suspects that 10 million rupees is a rather inflated number for the
late sixteenth century), but another kind of truth may lie buried in the very
linkage between Indrajit and Birbal and, by extension, Keshavdas and Birbal.115
Since Birbal died in 1586, Keshavdas would have had to meet him at the very
outset of his career, before he wrote even an early work like the Rasikpriyā in
1591. This is not impossible, of course, and the references to Birbal are real and
need to be explained. And yet, if their acquaintance had been in any sense long-
lived or transformative, it would be hard to account for why there should
otherwise be so very little in Keshavdas's extensive corpus to suggest Mughal
contact.

Another vexing problem, albeit one hardly unique to Keshavdas's oeuvre, is how
to construe his poetic signature. Hindi poets frequently signal their authorship
by inserting their name, or some variant of it, into their verses. Keshavdas does
not always include a signature, particularly in short verses such as the dohā,

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which do not leave much space for extraneous material. The chāp may be used to
mark emphasis or to signal an ardent belief of the writer. Occasionally the chāp
adds a special semantic resonance, as when “Keshav,” which means Vishnu,
stands for both the poet and Krishna. As already mentioned, sometimes
Keshavdas is himself present as a character in his own stories, and in such cases
it can be hard to decide whether his poetic signature is intended to signal his
actual speech or participation in events. To make matters more difficult, a
leading manṣabdār of the period who was routinely involved in Orchha-Mughal
political negotiations was named Keshavdas (Maru), and sometimes the poet's
chāp refers to him instead. At a heated moment during the Orchha succession
struggle, for instance, when Bir Singh Deo is on the run and Indrajit is called to
court, Keshavdas completes a dohā (p.59) with the phrase “gae āgreṃ
kesaudāsa.” This could mean Keshavdas (the poet) went to Agra. Or it could
mean the manṣabdār Keshavdas Maru went to Agra. Or the first two words,
“went to Agra,” could simply be taken with the subject of the previous lines, with
“Keshavdas” being only a signature. It is not always possible to decide these
matters definitively; only when Keshavdas includes his surname Mishra (which
he rarely does) is it an unambiguous indicator of his participation in the
events.116 One thing is clear: the poet hardly foregrounded his experiences at
the Mughal court. The very fact that it is so difficult to tell if he was even there
suggests that either his life was not much touched by it, or he did not want to
talk about the matter.

Nor is it easy to trace significant levels of Mughal exposure through his work. If
he did spend some of his days surrounded by Persian writers or hearing the
poetry of Rumi and Hafiz, he does not seem to have imbibed very much from
them. Certainly not one to eschew literary change—after all, choosing to write in
Braj instead of Sanskrit was nothing if not a momentous shift—Keshavdas wrote
most of his praśasti poetry, including his poetry to Iraj Khan and the emperor, in
the same classicizing style he had cultivated in earlier kāvya works. Indeed, to
look for an obvious measure of stylistic or thematic difference that would set
apart literary representations of a “Muslim” Emperor like Jahangir and a
“Hindu” king like Rama or Bir Singh Deo is to look in vain.117 The poet mostly
keeps to time-tested imagery—as when Jahangir is likened to Rama in a
somewhat-tired literary maneuver that underscores heroism and kingly
perfection:

Seeing the moonlight of his deeds,

the generals of other emperors lose their courage.
The dread of Akbar's invincible son Emperor Jahangir
terrifies even Ravana.118

In keeping with Keshavdas's own prescriptions for kingly description, the

emperor's realm is depicted not in terms of specific physical features like the
ornamental gardens or architecture for which the Mughals were famous, but

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through a range of stock literary tableaux and ancient Sanskrit-style rhetoric

that conjure up the image of an almost-perfect moral commonwealth:

In Jahangir's cities the only thunderous sound is that of a storm

rolling in
[i.e., never that of an attacking army].
(p.60) There is no fear of calamity;
the only concern is to protect the populace from poverty and
instability.
There is no illicit sex with improper women;
the only sneaking around is to attack an enemy fort.
The only inconstancy is in literary representations of emotion.
The only theft is of others’ pain.
The only land-grabber to be seen is Sheshanaga, holding up the
earth.
The people are all able-bodied,
says Keshavdas,119 the only deformities
are the mazes of impenetrable labyrinthine fortresses.
On hilltops, all you see are temples [i.e., never warring rivals].
Jahangir's rule is ideal in every respect.

This last verse had appeared earlier with very minor variations in the Kavipriyā
(in the rājyaśrībhūṣaṇa section, where he instructs poets in constructing literary
images of kingly glory). The original poem in the Kavipriyā had been about
Rama, but in adapting the verse to his new Mughal context, Keshavdas
conveniently substituted the word “Jahāṃgīra” for “Raghubīra” (hero of the
Raghu clan, an epithet of Rama).120 Modern Hindi critics are prone to viewing
this kind of literary maneuver as the “problem of rīti” run amok, faulting the
laziness, conservatism, or shameless sycophancy of the Indian court poet. But to
do so is to miss an all-important point: Keshavdas constructed, or could
construct, images of Jahangir in this poetically rich, classicizing fashion because
Mughal rule had become fully routinized and was entirely comprehensible to the
poet within the traditional Sanskritic episteme of Hindu dharma and kingship.121

Despite its subject matter and its setting, the Jahāngīrjascandrikā is at its core a
Hindu-centric text, even when it comes to depictions of Muslim lawmakers and
Sufis. When a qazi (Islamic judge) gives Jahangir a benediction, it is to procure
victory in the manner of Rama's sons Kusha and Lava; a sheikh likens the
emperor's fierce might to that of the goddess Kali.122 The same scene has
Jahangir engaging in pūjā (ritual obeisance) to Hindu deities; for a brief moment
it is as if the emperor stands before an idol in a Vrindavan temple rather than
before his court in Agra: he lights incense, performs āratī (worship), and feeds
and adorns the gods who have just manifested themselves in his presence.123
Quite apart from the fact that such a portrayal flies in the face of a report of a
visit Jahangir is known to have paid to Vrindavan—in which all he could do was
complain about the smell of the bats124—some of the Muslim courtiers might not

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entirely have approved of these verses, which contravene the most basic Islamic
proscriptions against idol worship. If Keshavdas knew something about Islam, it
cannot be gauged from his writing.

(p.61) There are only a few places in the Jahāngīrjascandrikā where

Keshavdas's imagery diverges from the boilerplate styles with minor, yet telling
adjustments to his habitually Sanskritized linguistic repertoire, providing a
foretaste of the hybridity and multiculturalism that would become one of the
defining features of later rīti literature.125 Interlaced with the manifold Sanskrit
epithets typical of kāvya are some unusual strings of Perso-Arabic words, as
when Jahangir is addressed as ālama panāha kulli ālama ke ādamī (shelter of the
world, man of the whole world), or his son Prince Khusrau is described as
khalaka kī khūbī ko khajāno (treasure house of all earthly good qualities).126
These and other Persianized phrases did not flow naturally from Keshavdas's
pen; in the context of his corpus, they are anomalous and seem carefully studied.
The skilled manipulation of Perso-Arabic vocabulary, a gesture toward a new
kind of Persianized Braj praśasti style, has the effect of “Mughalizing” the text.

These smidgeons of Persian evoke the Mughal courtly environment, but they still
do not say much about the extent of Keshavdas's involvement with Persianate
culture and, again, they appear very late in his career. The poet does mention
the dīvān-i khās and dīvān-i ‘ām, assembly arrangements for elite and general
members of the court, respectively. The text also includes praśasti verses to
more than twenty known princes, rajas, and members of the nobility.127 When
Uday, one of the main characters, makes remarks such as, “Who is the
handsome king to the left of Man Singh, talking to [Prince] Parvez?” one is
inclined to believe that Keshavdas did see with his own eyes some of what he
describes. Perhaps Birbal granted his wish, after all.

Particularly tantalizing are a couple of verses at the very end of the work where
Keshavdas inserts himself into the narrative. In a similar speech to the one in
the Vijñāngītā, the poet once again expresses his desire to retire to the banks of
the Ganges and pursue a life of meditation. Jahangir tells Keshavdas that he is
pleased with the compositions (tuva kavitā sukha pāya) and rewards him
handsomely.128 Should we see the doubling of these passages in works written
just two years apart as mere literary formula, the poet's wishful thinking, or
further corroboration of his retirement plan? As it turns out, Keshavdas was
never to be heard from again.129 Perhaps he did indeed perform his poetry at the
Mughal court and receive an emolument from the emperor (and Bir Singh Deo
before him) sufficient to support some kind of retirement.

Conclusion
Keshavdas is rightly recognized as the first rīti poet. This chapter has shown the
extent to which his literary orientation supports such an assessment. To (p.62)
be sure, a major courtly vernacular tradition did not just come out of nowhere,

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and a number of precedent factors contributed to the success of Keshavdas in

this period. One condition of possibility was a long-standing tradition of Sanskrit
kāvya that could act as a language of “superposition,” by providing the models to
emulate and the air of dignity that afforded a fledgling vernacular literature
credibility.130 Keshavdas's family background made him the perfect candidate
for establishing a new tradition of vernacular kāvya. The dispersal of the Tomar
court by 1523 led his ancestors to Orchha, and he grew up immersed in the
Sanskrit traditions that would help him to bring incomparable luster to both
Hindi and the regional court that he served.

This was a heritage in which Keshavdas took considerable pride, even if he did
not continue the family tradition. Sanskrit learning—particularly literary theory
—would infuse his work deeply, but something must have triggered in Keshavdas
the idea to write in Bhasha instead of the language of his forefathers. Access to
the new bhakti styles that were popular in Vrindavan is certainly one
explanation, particularly given the court's conversion to Vaishnavism and the
association of Madhukar Shah with the pioneering Braj poet Hariram Vyas.
While much of the earlier Braj corpus consisted of songs, several more formal
texts anticipate the work of Keshavdas by a few decades. The Hittaraṅginī of
Kriparam and Nanddas's Rasmañjarī, two forerunners of the rītigranth genre,
had already paved some of the way toward the classicization and elaboration of
Hindi literary culture that would characterize the oeuvre of Keshavdas, even if
their work lacks the complexity and scale of his more comprehensive initiatives.
Nanddas and his senior contemporary Hariram Vyas had adapted bhakti
scripture, especially the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, for new vernacular audiences,
contributing to the development of Brajbhasha as a medium of formal writing.
Hit Harivamsh, another Braj pioneer, used a heavily Sanskritized style for his
pads, but the fact that he wrote some of his works in Sanskrit suggests that he
did not place full confidence in Bhasha for all of his expressive needs.131

Keshavdas may have been familiar with two remarkable vernacular epics
produced by Vishnudas in Gwalior during the fifteenth century: the Pāṇḍavcarit
(Deeds of the Pandavas, 1435) and Rāmāyaṇkathā (Ramayana tale, 1442).
Although these texts bear no direct connection to Braj works of the sixteenth
century and seem to have been mostly forgotten until the modern period, it is
arresting to find more than a century before Keshavdas evidence of poetry in a
similar Hindi dialect at the very court known to have been frequented by his
ancestors.132 Nothing indicates that Keshavdas's forefathers ever wrote a word
in the vernacular, but perhaps some latent sense of the potential for refined
vernacular expression traveled with the Mishra family from Gwalior to its new
(p.63) home at the Orchha court, and helped to make the choice of Braj
possible for Keshavdas in the late sixteenth century.

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Another domain of Gwaliyari heritage closely connected to forms of Brajbhasha

courtly expression, although one of less relevance to Keshavdas specifically, is
music. The court of Man Singh Tomar (r. 1486–1516) is acclaimed as the place
where the prestigious genre of vocal music known as dhrupad was invented, and
its tremendous appeal was a major factor in the Mughal rulers’ fascination with
Brajbhasha and its literature.133 These same dhrupad styles have an early
connection to bhakti singing traditions, too. In fact, a counterclaim ascribes the
invention of dhrupad to Svami Haridas, already mentioned as one of the most
important Braj authors of the early Vaishnava community. He is said to be not
only its progenitor but also a teacher of Tansen, Akbar's famous court musician.
According to one scholar, “What seems more probable is that they were
contemporaries who had, directly or indirectly, learned to sing dhrupad from
musicians associated with the court of the Tomar rulers of Gwalior.”134 Whatever
the truth about the origins of dhrupad, it is certain that the Tomar court was a
fertile environment where new cultural possibilities were generated, with
considerable relevance to both music and poetry of the period. Even if the
compositions of Keshavdas never became a music tradition in the manner of
bhakti songs, it is worth recalling how the poet celebrates the musical culture of
Indrajit's court in the opening of his Kavipriyā.135

The rise of Mughal power is also partly responsible for creating new
opportunities for vernacular court poets, and whatever antecedents one could
trace in Gwalior or the Braj maṇḍal, there is much more support for the idea that
the Brajbhasha courtly style is a specifically Mughal-period enterprise. The
second half of the sixteenth century during which Keshavdas came of age
witnessed Akbar's long reign, helping to create the conditions under which Braj
court culture could flourish. The trajectory of Keshavdas's career illustrates how
Brajbhasha literature became a major presence in a widening arena of courtly
life. It was making its debut as a cosmopolitan idiom, borrowing from Sanskrit
but articulating courtliness in a new Bhasha mode. Keshavdas's Bundela patrons
were an upwardly mobile dynasty concerned with asserting their status in an
evolving Mughal state system. Their intense investment in the idiom of royal
classicism, particularly in the case of Bir Singh Deo, spoke to these new cultural
and political aspirations. Although still only inchoate in this period, rīti literature
signaled a new way of asserting Rajput values in a vernacular, if still largely
Brahmanical, idiom. This Braj classicism was a courtly repertoire that dovetailed
well with the cultural needs of the Bundelas circa 1600, and it would be
cultivated by many a manṣabdārī court later in the seventeenth century.136

(p.64) To insist on a single beginning point for rīti poetry is probably a fool's
game. On the time line of Hindi literary history, its commencement is not a
pinpoint but a longish line. Keshavdas himself might not have been in a position
to state exactly what was new about his work and, as I stressed in the case of
both the Rasikpriyā and Rāmcandracandrikā, some of his poetry can be
appreciated for both its bhakti and rīti sensibilities. Nonetheless, to speak of
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beginnings has some heuristic value; there are unquestionably elements in

seventeenth-century Braj literary culture that were not there in the sixteenth
century whether measured in formal features such as metrics or tropology or in
genres, the larger ethos of the corpus, or the diversity of patronage contexts.

Nor can we discount the less measurable qualities of personal genius and
creativity. Why is it that Keshavdas's works were avidly read and collected by the
literati of early modern India while his brother Balabhadra Mishra, who was part
of the same cultural environment and produced a couple of minor works in
Brajbhasha, was largely forgotten?137 None of Keshavdas's ancestors was a poet.
They were Sanskrit priests and scholars. It is not simply the availability of
cultural resources like Sanskrit learning, the historical memory of courtly life at
Gwalior, or Braj bhakti traditions that made Keshavdas's poetry possible; it is
what he did with them. Orchha offered special intellectual resources, and
Keshavdas drew upon them to extend literary culture in new directions.

This chapter has been primarily concerned with literary developments at the
provincial kingdom of Orchha. In the wake of Keshavdas's innovations and
without doubt in consequence of them, the world of Brajbhasha poetry expanded
vastly. This is true in a geographical sense: rīti poetry quickly became a desired
commodity at courts throughout greater Hindustan. It is also true of
Brajbhasha's expressive range, to which we now turn: to explore how the
aesthetic power of this language, the cultural resonances it evoked, and the
discursive spaces it enabled made it so suitable a vehicle for the tastes and
aspirations of courtly patrons and poets across the wide expanse of Mughal
India.

Notes:
(1.) The main sources for details about Keshavdas's ancestors are Kavipriyā,
chap. 2; Rāmcandracandrikā, 1.4; Vijñāngītā, 1.5.

(2.) R. S. McGregor is surely right to point out that Keshavdas's self-deprecating

remarks are “only nominal” (2003: 928). Indeed, Keshavdas elsewhere
contradicts his own professions of slow-wittedness, calling himself sumati (wise).
See, for example, Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 1.3. Other instances of this widespread Indic
topos of literary incompetence are discussed in Pollock 2006: 320 n. 67, 395;
Yashaschandra 2003: 578 n. 19. Examples by Keshavdas's contemporary
Tulsidas include Rāmcaritmānas 1.9, 1.10, 1.100, 1.103 (the first of these is cited
below).

(3.) Busch 2004.

(4.) “Saṃskirita (jāniya) kūpajala, bhākhā bahatā nīra.” Several variants of this
saying exist. For a published version inflected by Khari Boli, see Prakash 2006:
55.

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(5.) Tulsi begins each canto of his Rāmcaritmānas with a series of prayers in
Sanskrit. He also drew inspiration from the Sanskrit Adhyātmarāmāyaṇa. Other
possible “devavāṇī” sources include the Prasannarāghava and perhaps even the
Bhāgavatapurāṇa for episodes pertaining to Rama's childhood. Lutgendorf 1991:
7.

(6.) Rāmcaritmānas, 1.9. Cited by Vijaypal Singh (1998: 51); cf. Lutgendorf 1991:
8. According to the authoritative Tulsi commentary Mānas Pīyūṣ (p. 190), the
reference to writing on a blank page (kāgad kore) carries the sense of a solemn
oath made with a pure heart.

(7.) Alongside the Sanskrit precedents for Tulsi's oeuvre were two centuries of
Sufi writing in Avadhi demonstrating a complex engagement with Indian
aesthetic theory, which need to be seen as contributors to the intellectual and
spiritual conversations that were giving rise to new modes of bhakti expression.
See Entwistle 1987: 42–43; de Bruijn 2005; Behl 2007.

(8.) On the reclamation of Braj and invention of many Vaishnava traditions in the
sixteenth century, see Entwistle 1987: 136–73; Vaudeville 1996: 47–71. A good
introduction to the early Braj literary milieu is Pauwels 2002: 1–12.

(9.) The manuscript traditions of early Braj authors overwhelmingly attest to

their use in performance (such signs are almost entirely lacking for rīti texts).
The primary organizing structure of the Caurāsī pad (Eighty-four verses) of Hit
Harivamsh, for instance, is the rāg and the penchant for quatrains in a portion of
the work points toward a connection to dhrupad (Snell 1991b: 312, 329 n. 1); on
Sur, see Hawley 1984: 44–45; on Hariram Vyas, see Pauwels 2002: 33–35. Many
hymns from the Sikh tradition are also associated with rāgs (Mann 2001: 5).

(10.) On the Vallabhan appropriation of Surdas, see Hawley 1984: 5–20.

(11.) Bryant 1982.

(12.) See Pinch 2002.

(13.) See Hittaraṅginī, v. 308 (noted in McGregor 1984: 124). Sudhakar Pandey
(1969: 42–44) and Umashankar Pathak (1999: 141) have also argued that
Kriparam hailed from Orchha.

(14.) The chronogram yielding the figure 1541 has been disputed but, as R. S.
McGregor notes, no argument has definitively disproven this early date (1984:
124). A recent discussion of the dating of this text is Yadav 2008: 18–19.

(15.) Pandey 1969: 43, 60.

(16.) Pauwels 2002: 19–20, 106–9; Do sau bāvan vaiṣṇavan kī vārtā, pp. 348–49;
Bhaktamāl, p. 731.

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(17.) McGregor mentions both Gaudiya and Radhavallabhan influences (1984:

124). Kolff sees this process as attended by a new level of “participation in all-
India concerns” (2002: 121).

(18.) Niemann 1983; Pauwels 1996. An even earlier vernacular Bhāgavata in

Avadhi is attributed to Lalach Kavi. See McGregor 1984: 96–99. I am grateful to
Francesca Orsini for the reference.

(19.) Entwistle 1987: 175; Gupta 2001: 1–2; Kolff 2002: 121; Rotharb 2009: chap.
1.

(20.) Skirmishes between the Orchha ruler Bharatichand and Islam Shah Sur (r.
1545–53) are mentioned by Keshavdas in Kavipriyā, 1.19–20.

(21.) Madhukar Shah was forced to cede territory to the Mughals first in 1577
and then again in 1588 (Entwistle 1987: 175, drawing on Akbarnāmah). Badauni
mentions him as a rebel from 1583 (Muntakhab al-tavārīkh, 2: 378–79).

(22.) There is some confusion about the exact number of Keshavdas's works,
largely because the bārah-māsa and nakh-śikh from the Kavipriyā (which form
part of chapters 10 and 14, respectively) sometimes circulated independently.
Keshavdas is credited with an additional śikh-nakh, a minor composition of
twenty-eight verses, which Vishvanathprasad Mishra included in his
Keśavgranthāval ī, for a total of nine published works. See Mishra 1959a: 7–8.

(23.) Ratnasena is described as the fourth son of Madhukar Shah in

Vīrsiṃdevcarit, 2.42. (The two places where Keshavdas lists the Orchha princes,
Vīrsiṃdevcarit, 2.39–50 and Kavipriyā, 1.27–30, contain some discrepancies.)

(24.) Rama is, strangely, called “Gopala” at first appearance. Ratnabāvanī, v. 8.

(25.) Ratnabāvanī, v. 9.

(26.) Ibid., v. 17.

(27.) Akbar commends Ratnasena's bravery in v. 52.

(28.) Heidi Pauwels (2009) has recently made a good case for correlating the
events of the Ratnabāvanī closely with the Mughal invasion of Orchha of 1577–
78, as reported in chapter 41 of Abu al-Fazl's Akbarnāmah. McGregor (1984:
129) was content to see the work as “a poetic exercise” that did not aim for
congruence with historical fact; Vijaypal Singh also viewed the work as more
imaginative than realistic and an excellent specimen of poetry in the traditional
vīra rasa or martial style (1993: 64). Also see Gupta 2001: 16–21; Busch 2005:
34–37.

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(29.) Like the Akbarnāmah, the Ma’as̤ir al-umarā (2:131–34) disregards

Ratnasena.

(30.) Cynthia Talbot remarks that improving on history is one of the strategies of
the Pṛthvīrājrāso, a renowned Rajput tale from western India (2007: 25).

(31.) On the rāso as a “counter-epic,” that is to say a “Hindu” response to

“Muslim” conquest, see Ahmad 1964.

(32.) For a few details about Raja Indrajit's scholarship, see McGregor 1968: 5–
15. On his poetry, see Miśrabandhuvinod, 1:404.

(33.) Haberman 1988: 30–39; Delmonico 1998.

(34.) Rasikpriyā, 8.1–2. Keshavdas follows the Sanskrit aesthetic tradition in

differentiating the pathos of love in separation (karuṇā viraha) from a truly
tragic situation (karuṇa rasa): “When all hope is lost of a happy outcome, then
the compassionate emotion arises.” Rasikpriyā, 11.1.

(35.) Ibid., 8.3–4. This is only one of the example verses on pūrvānurāga. In the
Rasikpriyā, Keshavdas normally provides four examples for each set of
definitions: two about Radha and two about Krishna, exhibiting their love in both
pracchann (secretive) and prakāś (out in the open) forms.

(36.) The classic account in the Krishna tradition is Hardy 1983.

(37.) The collocation rasiktrayī (triad of devotees) was commonly used to

designate Hariram Vyas, Hit Harivamsh, and Svami Haridas, three of the most
important early settlers in Vrindavan. See Pauwels 2002: 2.

(38.) Rasikpriyā, 1.2 (drawing on Surati Mishra's commentary, Jorāvarprakāś, pp.

54–57.

(39.) The topic of nāyikābheda is further elaborated in chapter 2 of this book.

(40.) Rasikpriyā, 3.74.

(41.) Chapter 3 of this book explores Keshavdas's contributions to Indian

aesthetic theory in further detail.

(42.) This phrase can also refer to Krishna being separated from Radha.

(43.) Rasikpriyā, 16.14–16.

(44.) Vishvanathprasad Mishra (1959b: 6, 1970) has discussed some of the

important manuscripts and commentaries.

(45.) See (respectively) Desai 1984: 60–61, 100–4; Das 2000: 4; Dehejia 2009:
178.
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(46.) Kavipriyā, 1.48–49 (drawing on the insights of Maharao Bakhtavar Singh

from his unpublished Kavipriyā kī ṭīkā). The second verse is an example of śleṣa,
a figure of speech in which words are construed doubly. For instance, in the case
of Nayanbichitra, bhairau-jut and gaurī-saṃjut mean “along with the Bhairav and
Gauri [rāgs],” indicators of her musical talent; the same words can also be
interpreted as “accompanied by Bhairava and Gauri (one of Shiva's companions
and an epithet of Shiva's wife Parvati, respectively).” The compound
surataraṃginī can be split two ways: applied to the courtesan, it means surata-
raṃginī (delighting in sexual pleasure) but in the case of Shiva the correct
reading is sura-taraṃginī (possessing the celestial river [i.e. Ganga]),
referencing the well-known legend that the Ganges river flows from Shiva's hair.

(47.) Ibid., 1.51. The poet plays on the two parts of the courtesan's name: tān
means melody; taraṅg means wave.

(48.) Ibid., 1.53, 1.55. In the latter verse, Keshavdas ingeniously uses the word
aṅga in the double sense of branches of technical knowledge and the physical
limbs of Rangmurti, the dancer.

(49.) Ibid., 1.56–57. There is scope for different interpretations here. In his
Priyāprakāś commentary, Lala Bhagvandin suggests that the lutes of rival
players are disconsolate because they do not have a gifted musician like Pravin
Ray playing them. Additionally, if one includes the chāp (poet's signature), the
first half of the last line can be taken in a self-deprecatory fashion consistent
with the poet's posture of slow-wittedness: “to say nothing of the untalented
Keshavdas.” I am grateful to Imre Bangha for this insight.

(50.) “Rival lute player” is possible due to the lexical fudging that is a special
feature of vernacular language. Such techniques are discussed in greater detail
in the next chapter.

(51.) Further details about Pravin Ray can be assembled from elsewhere in the
work. See Kavipriyā, 1.46; 1.61; 3.1; 7.15 (this last verse is a stylized poetic
description of her garden, which can still be seen in Orchha today. See figure
2.1). On her poetry, see chap. 4, n. 6. Tantarang has been credited with a work
on music, the Saṅgītākhāṛā (Assembly for music), in Pathak 1999: 157.

(52.) Kavipriyā, 1.61.

(53.) Ibid., 3.1.

(54.) One of Pravin Ray's purported poems is discussed in chapter 4.

(55.) Dvivedi 1955: 7–8. Also note how Keshavdas refers to his grandfather's
taking up residence in Orchha as a prabāsa so nivāsa (dwelling as if in exile) in
Vijñāngītā, 1.5.

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(56.) This chapter is briefly discussed in Stasik 2005.

(57.) Otherwise more generally indebted to Dandin's Kāvyādarśa (Mirror on

poetry, seventh century) in the Kavipriyā, Keshavdas here builds upon a
framework established in two other Sanskrit texts: the Kāvyakalpalatāvṛtti (Vine
of poetic imagination with extended commentary, c. 1250) of Amaracandra Yati
and the Alaṅkāraśekhara (Crown of figuration) of Keshava Mishra, written in
Delhi in the generation preceding Keshavdas.

(58.) Reading harā for harī, as does Lakshminidhi Chaturvedi in his edition of the
Kavipriyā (p. 48).

(59.) Kavipriyā, 5.16–19.

(60.) Or “clever people.”

(61.) Kavipriyā, 6.25–27.

(62.) Kavipriyā, 8.1–2.

(63.) On Sanskrit, see Pollock 2001b.

(64.) Vārṇik meters are governed by the Sanskrit gaṇa system, using invariant
combinations and counts of long and short syllables. Mātrik meters (such as the
popular dohā) derive from Apabhramsha and are freer in form: a prescribed total
number of measures is prescribed for different segments of the verse, but there
are no restrictions on the overall number of syllables. On the various Sanskrit,
Apabhramsha, and Prakrit antecedents that Keshavdas would have been drawing
on, see Bhatnagar 1991: 300–36.

(65.) It is not clear what relationship might obtain between this text and the
Piṅgalśiromani, a work of prosody acclaimed by Dimgal poets that is said to date
from the sixteenth century. See Kamphorst 2008: 90 n. 163.

(66.) Chandmālā, 1.3.

(67.) The suggestion that this work may have been an afterthought upon
completing the Rāmcandracandrikā is that of Satyadev Chaudhari 1973: 234.

(68.) Rāmcandracandrikā, 1.21.

(69.) Rāmcandracandrikā, 1.7–21. On similar topoi associated with vernacular

beginnings, see Pollock 2006: 309–16.

(70.) A recent exploration of select kāvya elements in the Rāmcandracandrikā is

Cavaliere 2010b. A good general discussion of the text in light of the Hindi
Rāmāyaṇa tradition is Stasik 2009: 115–26.

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(71.) That Indrajit was a devotee of Rama is evident from the opening words of
his commentary on Bhartrihari: “śrīrāmāya namaḥ”(I salute Lord Rama). See
McGregor 1968: 17. Madhukar Shah's chief queen (and presumably Indrajit's
mother), Ganesh De, was also a celebrated devotee of Ram. See Bhaktamāl, pp.
659–62.

(72.) The critical interplay between kāvya and bhakti during the early modern
period is discussed further in chapter 3.

(73.) Encounters between the two famous poets are recorded by

Vishvanathprasad Mishra (1966: 420) and Vijaypal Singh (1993: 20–21).

(74.) I adopt the English spelling Bir Singh Deo because it is standard in history
books today. Bir Singh is a tadbhava (vernacular derivative) of the more classical
spelling used in Keshavdas's title, Vīr(a)siṃha, “lion among warriors.”

(75.) Kolff 2002: 82–5, 121; Muntakhab al-tavārīkh, 2:378.

(76.) For insight into Madhukar Shah's complex position as an older-style Rajput
warlord who did not fully acclimate to the expectations of the new regime, see
Kolff 2002: 122–24 and Pauwels 2009.

(77.) Entwistle 1987: 175–76.

(78.) The temple was later destroyed by Aurangzeb, and its idols buried under
the steps of Jahanara's mosque in Agra (ibid., 176, 181).

(79.) O’Hanlon 2011: 264–65.

(80.) Asher 1995b.

(81.) Case 1996 is a multi-faceted investigation of the temple's historical and

artistic context.

(82.) On the Bundela architectural program, see Asher 1995a: 162–64 and
Rotharb 2009.

(83.) Kolff 2002: 133.

(84.) The apt phrase is that of Monika Horstmann (2005: 21), who uses it in
relation to the religious and political dynamics of the Jaipur built environment
under Savai Jai Singh II (r. 1700–43).

(85.) Note the description of Bir Singh's coronation in the last canto.

(86.) See, for instance, Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 11.40–53.

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(87.) Keshavdas's remarks about a “new kind of politics” not only are a clear
reference to the contemporary struggle for the throne that the poet witnessed
but also lend credence to the findings of Dirk Kolff (2002: 71–158), namely that
the Orchha kingdom was undergoing a transition from the codes of an earlier
pūrbīya mode of warlord politics to the newer manṣabdārī system under the
Mughals.

(88.) Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 3.1–2. Also note the similar sense of foreboding regarding
the problem of more than one claimant for power in Rāmcandracandrikā, 10.26.

(89.) The Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa epitomizes the new social and political structures
that came into being in the classical period, which mandated that younger
brothers submit to older ones. See Pollock 2005b: 18–22.

(90.) Compare Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 12.14–28 with Rāmcandracandrikā, 10.18–24.

(91.) Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 5.63–65.

(92.) A more detailed analysis of this striking episode is Busch 2005: 38–43.

(93.) It would be difficult to think of a more potent sign of the new Mughal
hegemony than the renaming of this Bundela stronghold after the emperor.

(94.) Canto 15 is on Bir Sagar; 16 is on the Chaturbhuj temple; subsequent

cantos contain yet other details—some stylized, some perhaps more realistic—of
the Orchha environs, including the layout of the bazaar in canto 17, a nagara-
varṇana (description of the city) in 18; the polo grounds in 19; the palace in 20.

(95.) Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 15.1–7.

(96.) Bir Singh's waterworks project is mentioned in a nineteenth-century

Bundela clan history (Kolff 2002: 129).

(97.) Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 22.16–20.

(98.) Sanskrit mahākāvya is notorious for its seemingly extraneous set pieces
and other conventionalized diversions from the main narrative, such as a
couple's jala-krīḍā (frolicking in the water). Prabha 1976 is a good overview of
the genre. The convention, to my mind, persists even today in the mountain and
meadow backdrops of the song interludes of modern Bollywood films.

(99.) See cantos 28–32.

(100.) Pollock 2005a: 65–67.

(101.) This work had tremendous appeal in both bhakti and courtly contexts. In
the words of the Prabodhacandrodaya's recent English translator, “Starting with
its impact within Sanskrit literary culture itself, the play became established as a

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touchstone for the form of the allegorical drama, and more specifically a model
for literary instruction in philosophical matters” (Kapstein 2009: xliv). The text
generated a substantial number of Braj renditions and even a Persian translation
by Banwalidas, a writer closely connected to the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh. On
the Prabodhacandrodaya's literary life in Braj, see Agraval 1962; the Persian
version is entitled Gulzār-i ḥāl (Rose garden of gnosis, c. 1662).

(102.) Keshavray is one of the poet's chāp or poetic signatures. It was possibly a
title bestowed by one of his patrons in the manner of kavirāy (the latter
frequently awarded to Hindi and Sanskrit poets by Shah Jahan). According to
Vijaypal Singh (1993: 49), rāy is also a title found in the Bhat community.

(103.) Vijñāngītā, 1.6–8. We trust that Keshavdas's use of the word mūṛha (fool)
was merely a convenient partner in rhyme to gūṛha (hidden) and does not reflect
the “Keshavdas's” actual sentiments about his patron.

(104.) That he had also been the rājguru (royal preceptor) to Indrajit is made
clear in Kavipriyā, 2.20 (cited later in this chapter); cf. Rasikpriyā, 1.10.

(105.) The social complexities of the vocation of a Brajbhasha poet at the Mughal
court are discussed in Busch 2010a and chapter 4.

(106.) Vijñāngītā, 21.69–71.

(107.) On this monument, which marks a turning point in Bundela palatine

architecture, see Rotharb 2009: chap. 3.

(108.) Jahāngīrjascandrikā, vv. 3–8.

(109.) Ibid., vv. 9–10.

(110.) Jahāngīrnāmah, Thackston trans., p. 123.

(111.) A wealth of further evidence is discussed in chapter 4.

(112.) Kavipriyā, 2.18–20.

(113.) Ibid., 6.76.

(114.) Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 1.64. Birbal is here considered a friend of Dana, in

contrast to Todar Mal (responsible for raising taxes), who is said to be an
accomplice of Lobha.

(115.) Hindī navratna, pp. 330–31. The Mishra brothers do not give a source.
Also see the legends concerning Keshavdas in Mughal contexts referenced by
Vijaypal Singh (1993: 21–23).

Page 47 of 49

(116.) The text's recent editor and commentator, Kishorilal, seems more
confident than I am about routinely construing the word Keshavdas to mean the
poet as eyewitness and actor. See, for instance, Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, pp. 207–8, 219–
20.

(117.) The use of scare quotes is to signal that these religious categories were
far less clearly defined in the early modern period than they have become today.

(118.) Jahāngīrjascandrikā, v. 32. In line two Keshavdas puns on the word

cakravāka, which means both general and a bird famous in Indian poetry for
pining at night for its beloved.

(119.) This is a good example of the poet's chāp being used in a merely
declarative sense without adding other semantic layers.

(120.) Compare Jahāngīrjascandrikā, v. 35 with the only slight variant in

Kavipriyā, 8.5. The change from Raghubīra to Jahāṃgīra in this verse (along with
a few other minor word substitutions) is simple to execute without affecting the
integrity of the kavitt structure, for which only the total number of (31 or 32)
syllables counts rather than syllable weight.

(121.) Cf. Chattopadhyay 1998: 52–60.

(122.) Jahāngīrjascandrikā, vv.185–86.

(123.) Ibid., v. 163.

(124.) Entwistle 1987: 173.

(125.) See chapter 2.

(126.) Jahāngīrjascandrikā, vv. 167–168; v. 55. Here Keshavdas has employed

Braj forms of the Persian words ‘ālam (world), panāh (shelter), kul (whole), ādamī
(born of Adam, i.e., man), khalq (earth/creation), khūbī (good quality), and
khizānah (treasure).

(127.) Ibid., vv. 51–98. It is notable that v. 87, which is in honor of Birbal's son
“Dhiradharu,” again showcases Birbal's generosity.

(128.) Jahāngīrjascandrikā, vv. 198–201.

(129.) Keshavdas's exact date of death is not recorded in any contemporary

source, but Vijaypal Singh, a leading scholar of his work, suggests the year
1623. For an overview of various literary historians’ propositions about
Keshavdas's dates, see Singh 1993: 31–33, 61–62.

(130.) Sheldon Pollock sees superposition as an important stage in South Asia's

vernacular literarization (2006: 318–29).

Page 48 of 49

(131.) For a discussion of the register preferred by Hit Harivamsh and a brief
outline of his Sanskrit oeuvre, see Snell 1991b: xiii, 5.

(132.) Only the final portion of Vishnudas's version of the Mahābhārata, the
Svargārohaṇa, had much currency in early modern manuscripts. An obscure
vernacular Bhagavadgītā by one Theghnath and Manik's adaptation of the Vetāla
pañcaviṃśati into Braj caupāīs also originated in Gwalior, probably at the court
of Man Singh Tomar. McGregor 1984: 103, 122.

(133.) Nayak Bakshu, one of the most acclaimed practitioners of his day, took the
tradition from Gwalior to Gujarat, and his compositions would later be
anthologized in the Sahasras at the instigation of the Mughal Emperor Shah
Jahan. Delvoye 1994b: 270.

(134.) Entwistle 1987: 156.

(135.) Kavipriyā, 1.41–61.

(136.) See chapter 5.

(137.) Although he never attained the same stature as his brother, Balabhadra
Mishra did not go completely unnoticed. Several manuscripts of his Rasvilās and
a Śikh-nakh are preserved in the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, and his
work was sought out enough to generate at least two commentaries, by Pratap
Shah and Gopal Kavi. McGregor 1984: 130, 192. Also see Pandey 1992.

Access brought to you by:

Page 49 of 49

Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

The Aesthetic World of Rīti Poetry

Allison Busch

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter introduces the most important genres and themes of rīti literature.
Selections of poetry are analyzed to showcase the techniques of Brajbhasha
writers from early modern India. Some of rīti literature is deeply embedded in
classical traditions of Indian poetics, such as rasa theory, alaṅkāraśāstra, and
nāyikabheda. Other components, notably the concern with bhakti, satire and
new forms of historical poetry, are closely connected to contemporary cultural
and political developments. Rīti writers experimented with the expressive
potential of vernacular language, blending Persian, Sanskrit, and local words in
highly innovative ways. Absent the grammatical standardization that would later
be imposed on Hindi in the colonial period, Brajbhasha was a flexible idiom that
could speak to a variety of communities.

Keywords: Indian poetics, rasa, ala ṅkāraśāstra, nāyikabheda, historical poetry, satire, Brajbhasha,
bhakti

All people of developed sensibility agree about the beauty of Brajbhasha.

—Bhikharidas

Reading Rīti Literature

The previous chapter's treatment of Keshavdas's oeuvre and his milieu outlined
some of the basic characteristics of rīti literature. But the workings of
premodern Braj courtly culture are almost wholly unknown to modern readers,
necessitating a more in-depth account of the tradition's genres and registers as
well as some of its theoretical underpinnings—its relationship to classical styles
and its significant departures from them. This and the following chapter give a

Page 1 of 40

detailed, if necessarily incomplete, account of rīti aesthetic principles and

scholarly concerns.1

Rīti literature was infused with the ethos of earlier Sanskrit court poetry. Braj
poets were especially drawn to compositions in the śṛṅgāra (erotic) style, while
some eulogized their patrons with that other staple of the Sanskrit literary
assembly, praśasti (panegyric). Most rīti writers were deeply grounded in
classical alaṅkāraśāstra, the formal systems of Sanskrit poetic theory. But there
were also specifically vernacular concerns of rīti literary culture. As evident from
the literary profile of Keshavdas, Vaishnava devotion was a vital spiritual and
poetic inspiration for many courtly authors. (p.66) With respect to genres, rāso
(martial ballad) literature from Rajasthan, the eastern reaches of which are
contiguous with the Braj maṇḍal, further enlivened the repertoire. Not unrelated
to rāso or to the earlier Sanskrit poems foregrounding the vīra rasa (martial
sentiment) was a heightened interest in historical genres in this period, which
must be viewed as a new cultural inclination of the Mughal-period vernacular
polity. Stylistically, the tendency to incorporate Persian and Arabic vocabulary in
some rīti poetry, already evident in the late compositions of Keshavdas,
increased with increased exposure to Indo-Muslim court culture and became a
defining feature of early modern Hindi style. In short, the rīti aesthetic was a
unique blend of the old and the new, the familiar and the unfamiliar, the
cosmopolitan and the regional. This chapter simultaneously demonstrates
elements of the rīti poets’ classicist stance and their capacity for blending,
mixing, and reinventing traditions. These features, at first glance contradictory,
are some of the chief characteristics of Braj courtly literature as well as factors
that contributed to its tremendous appeal.

In the modern Euro-American cultural complex, particular beliefs have evolved

about what constitutes good poetry. It is often taken for granted that poetry
should emanate from deep within the human psyche and give voice to a writer's
personal emotional yearnings. In approaching rīti literature, the modern reader
should discard this notion immediately. This seemingly self-evident standard of
literary excellence is born of a specific moment in European cultural and
intellectual history: nineteenth-century Romanticism. An aetiology of poetry
lacking a long pedigree even in the West should not be taken to be of global,
transhistorical relevance. As in the Rome of classical antiquity or seventeenth-
century France—indeed, throughout much of world history—complex protocols
governed the composition of literature in premodern India and conditioned its
modes of reception by contemporary readers and listeners. For instance, past
literary authorities were admired, and it was fully expected that they should be
imitated. Thus, originality—another literary obsession of moderns—was not a
prerequisite for successful poetry. Although rīti poets were demonstrably
innovative, they were crucially in dialogue with tradition, and sometimes
circumscribed by it. Several prescriptions militating against new poetic motifs
can be found in one of the tradition's foundational texts: Keshavdas's Kavipriyā.2
Page 2 of 40

Another modernist preconception that may hinder more than help is the
assumption that poetry should be simple, shorn of rhetorical excess, and not too
“learned.” Rīti poetry is lost on anybody who is not willing to engage with its
elaborate poetic flourishes and literary techniques.

Unfortunately, rīti poetry has been lost on many a reader in the modern period,
especially Indian literary historians. A common complaint is that its (p.67)
famed alaṅkāras (ornaments) are a burden rather than an enhancement, and the
poetry pāṇḍityapūrṇ (recherché) rather than heartfelt.3 Poor Keshavdas has been
stigmatized by none other than the founding father of modern Hindi criticism,
Ramchandra Shukla, as hṛdayhīn (the poet who didn’t have a heart) and by a
host of subsequent scholars as kaṭhin kāvya kā pret (the devil of difficult
poetry).4 A dohā (couplet) of uncertain provenance circulates apropos of this
latter attribute:

When a king wanted to avoid awarding a prize to one of his court

poets,
he would ask him to explain a Keshavdas verse.5

Keshavdas's high literary style, with its complex and famously inscrutable
imagery, elicited the awe of early modern connoisseurs for its elegance and
rhetorical flourish. It now invokes among some readers feelings of bewilderment
or, worse, disdain.

Although modern Hindi critics regularly forget this, it cannot be stressed too
much that Romantic simplicity was never the point of rīti literature. These poets
were indeed learned, and their verse was designed to demonstrate deep learning
through the use of ornaments and allusive (and sometimes elusive) meanings. It
is no accident that the entire discipline of Sanskrit (and Braj) literary theory is
known as alaṅkāraśāstra, the science of ornamentation. Even if a strong
emphasis on complexity and literary adornment is a poetic principle
fundamentally different from our own, we owe Keshavdas and other writers of
premodern India the interpretive charity to approach their work first on their
terms, not ours.6

This problem of hermeneutical distance from rīti literature has a complicated

history dating to the colonial period, and it has been further exacerbated by a
more generalized estrangement of many Hindi speakers today from their
precolonial literary heritage. Colonialism brought not only political but also
aesthetic tyranny to India from distant shores.7 New criteria for poetic merit
were enshrined by the colonial state and Indian reformist groups alike, who
advocated for the primacy of social utility in literature. Another new concern
was that poets should seek an experiential basis for their work rather than
adhering to traditional formalistic criteria. I will return at the end of the book to
consider this major epistemological overhaul and the discrediting of Brajbhasha
literary traditions under colonialism and in particular nationalism. But it is worth
Page 3 of 40

mentioning the additional—and for some readers perhaps unanticipated—

linguistic fact that mastery of modern standard Hindi does not qualify one to
read rīti literature in Brajbhasha. The distance between the two dialects is
appreciable, as is the gulf between their two literary systems.

(p.68) Just as we appreciate Shakespeare better the more deeply grounded we

are in his language and Elizabethan poetic norms, so reading Braj poetry with
any understanding means educating ourselves about its conventions and
practices. In addition to being self-aware about the literary biases we bring to
poetry of the past, we need to be attentive to some general principles of literary
history. Take classicism, which has been an important factor in the development
of many vernacular literary cultures across the globe. Leaving aside the case of
India for a moment, how did Japanese literature come about? Through a deep
engagement with classical Chinese traditions. How was Roman literature born?
In imitation of the Greeks. What lent credibility to Italian and French luminaries
like Dante and Corneille, as each forged new vernacular styles at turning points
in European literary history? Their reliance on poetic models from the ancient
world. From the Renaissance well into the nineteenth century, poets and artists
regularly looked to classical writers for artistic nourishment, and even many of
the literary paragons like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides themselves
refashioned stories fully familiar to their audiences. Nobody would have thought
to accuse Shakespeare of plagiarism for going back to classical themes from
Plutarch.8 Freshness did not invariably mean rejecting what came before.
Freshness, to the extent that it was a literary value, could consist in new
approaches to earlier subjects.9 Keeping this point in mind will go a long way
toward helping modern readers to appreciate the techniques and concerns of
the Hindi rīti tradition.

Some Basic Principles of Indian Alaṅkāraśāstra

Most rīti writers, particularly the pioneering ones, adopted the genres and
literary systems of classical poetry.10 This was practically inevitable, given the
prestige of Sanskrit and the typical sociocultural profile of the authors: they
were almost exclusively Brahmans, a class generally well versed in Sanskrit
traditions. While the reflex is to think of vernacular texts as simplifications of
classical forms, they can also be spectacularly erudite. Keshavdas's signature
contribution to literary history was to find ways of writing vernacular kāvya
without sacrificing Sanskrit elegance. Not all rīti literature exhibits the
complexity of his texts, but some Braj authors did embrace his high style,
particularly in technical works on literary theory and in lengthy kāvyas that drew
heavily on classical precedent.

An important classificatory principle that derives from Sanskrit but is of

continuing relevance to theorizing rīti textual culture is the distinction between
longer narrative works known as prabandha kāvya and the shorter muktaka, or
freestanding poem. The word prabandha simply means a connected narrative,

Page 4 of 40

(p.69) and the blanket term encompasses several different subgenres like
mahākāvya (courtly epic), carita (idealized biography of an exemplary figure),
various forms of drama, and indeed any vernacular rendition of a classical work.
Prabandhas are the high genre of rīti literary culture. These texts belong to a
world of carefully crafted kāvya and are frequently composed using complex
meters and dense figuration. Not all Braj authors took up the prabandha form.
Many confined themselves to muktakas, which were well suited for performance
in a literary assembly. Muktakas were also appropriate for illustrating the
classical literary precepts of central importance to the rītigranth genre.

Whether poets wrote longer works or more compact freestanding verses, an

elaborate series of conventions governed the creative process. In the context of
Indian poetry, “conventional” should never be taken as synonymous with
uncreative. One function of literary convention is to guide a reader toward the
goal of rasa or aestheticized emotion. Treatises on classical Indian aesthetics
held that there were eight possible rasas: the erotic, the comic, the sorrowful,
the heroic, the terrifying, the fierce, the wondrous, and the disgusting. Later in
the medieval and early modern periods additional sentiments were included in
the canon, notably the śānta, vātsalya, and bhakti rasas, which centered
(respectively) on quiescence, tenderness, and devotion. The point of rasa poetry
is to create a sustained emotional experience in the reader. While experiencing
the emotional impact of poetry is desirable to readers everywhere, in Indian
literature the process was held to unfold according to highly structured
protocols. A rasika (connoisseur or, more literally, an emotionally attuned reader)
fully conversant with the system would know how to interpret the cues and clues
that the poet deliberately embedded in the text.

To begin with the favorite subject of Sanskrit and Braj court poets alike, śṛṅgāra
poetry had as its ālambana vibhāva (underlying cause) the nāyikā (heroine) who
was pursued by a nāyaka (hero). Although the boy meets girl scenario is a
universal literary formula, in Indian kāvya the criteria for aesthetic
representations of love were painstakingly spelled out. The characters should be
delineated according to particular moral and social parameters. They must be
youthful, attractive, and of noble birth.11 Once the main characters are
introduced, love is sparked, often because the nāyaka first hears of or lays eyes
on the nāyikā.12 In the case of a prabandha narrative, where there is
considerable scope for literary elaboration, the rasa is generally heightened by
detailed descriptions of the nāyikā that afford a chance for the poet to expatiate
on the beauty of his heroine and deepen the mood of śṛṅgāra rasa. But just as
premodern Indian portraiture does not typically function according to realist
modes, the poet was expected to portray his heroine in terms of accepted codes
of beauty.13 In a luminous Braj retelling of Kalidasa's Śākuntala, the rīti poet (p.
70) Nevaj at first stresses the idyllic ashram of Shakuntala's adoptive father,
Kanva, and the childish innocence of his heroine. Then, in order to build the
mood of śṛṅgāra, he recounts step by step the stages of her coming of age, as
Page 5 of 40

with the following kavitt, the longest of the quatrain styles preferred by rīti poets
and a meter eminently suited to poetic elaboration:

She has begun to shed the innocence of childhood,

her girlfriends conspire to impart knowingness.
Her glances have narrowed, and now she moves more slowly.
A few sighs rise up from that chest of hers.
Youth shines forth from her body, and slowly her childish form is
chiseled away.
Her waist has slimmed, giving her a curvy shape.14
She is a rare beauty, like a two-day-old moon,
whose loveliness will now be burnished in the waxing.15

Very little of what is beautiful in this verse is a function of its newness. The basic
imagery is entirely expected. The tirchā (crooked) glances of an adolescent girl
and her increasingly slow gait (which, as all rasikas know, is not simply because
she has forsaken childish games but because her hips and breasts have become
heavy) are the stuff of thousands of Sanskrit and Braj poems in the śṛṅgāra style.
Nor is the reader likely to be surprised by plot twists. What Indian connoisseur
did not already know the story of Shakuntala? Familiarity is no bar to literary
success, however. On the contrary, it frees the reader to immerse himself in the
mood of the poem and to relish a given author's variations on an older theme.16

A common means of intensifying the erotic mood was to write a śikh-nakh or

“head-to-toe” description of the heroine. Quite apart from the fact that court
poets did not necessarily have a chance to meet the women of the royal harem,
stylized description was the preference. The nāyikā's hair is supposed to be jet
black; it is usually braided; the poet should not neglect to mention her sparkling
forehead ornament, her arched brows, her full lips red like bimba fruit, the
downy hair that graces her midriff, and all her other alluring features down to
her ankleted and hennaed feet. A few verses from one of the more
comprehensive Braj śikh-nakhs serve as an introduction to the genre. Here is
how Keshavdas begins a passage on the women who adorn the harem of Bir
Singh Deo Bundela:

Their hair shimmered with an intense shine, and gave off a beautiful
scent.
The king's heart was enslaved upon seeing it.
Their braids had been woven meticulously,
resembling a sword in the hand of King Beauty.

(p.71) Are these braids swords to guard the lover's affection,

warding off that rival, Deceit?
Or are they pleasing rivers of passion, carrying off in their streams
all disloyal acts?

Or are these braids—interleaved with golden ornaments—

staircases to the realm of erotic delight?
Page 6 of 40

Or carpets of sumptuous beauty designed to welcome love?

The splendor where their hair is parted dazzles the heart,

like lightning flashing amid storm clouds.
The vermilion-filled parts are luminous, crowned with a string of
pearls.

It is as though the Ganges and Sarasvati Rivers have united and

burst forth from the Yamuna waters.17
Their heads are adorned with gem-encrusted ornaments,
their parted hair glitters with splendid jewelry.

Woven into their braids are the finest garlands,

upon their foreheads are bindis of ruby and gemstones.
Their twelve hair ornaments light up the night,
gracing the city like twelve suns.

Their arched brows are expressive.

The rubies on their foreheads sparkle intensely.
Two decorative lines of musk augment the splendor … .

The glow from their pearl-brightened noses enchants the whole

world.
Their beauty offers up a ritual lamp to the red forehead ornament,
as though performing sun worship.

The eyes plunge for these nose-pearls hat look like stars at sunrise
or flowers in a vine of bliss, scented like the moon's nectar.

Their perfect, round, fair cheeks are delicately molded

with beauty and playfulness.
They are spectacularly lovely, an oasis to the eyes.

(p.72) Behold their ears bedecked with ornaments—they look like

the sun's one-wheeled chariot. Their dangling earrings sparkle,
fluttering like golden banners.…

Shiny curls frame their foreheads,

which are bathed in a fine black radiance.
The dark night of their hair is graced by light from the lamp of their
nose pearls.18

The poet continues in this vein for some twenty more verses, but the technique
is already more than clear. Again, the point is not so much to astound the reader
with a new approach to describing women as to innovate within a set genre.
Keshavdas cannot invent any new body parts, but his rendition is original and
deeply satisfying in other respects. His color and light imagery add a dramatic
visual layer to his poetic description. The braid motif also delightfully carries
him away. When the poet wonders if the royal women's braids are “pleasing
rivers of passion,” “staircases to the realm of erotic delight,” or “carpets

Page 7 of 40

designed to welcome love,” he employs the sandeha alaṅkāra (ornament of

doubt) to interesting effect. This is just one of the many ingenious figures of
speech developed by Indian writers. The conceit centers on the poet's avowed
confusion about the object of his gaze: he claims to be so astonished by the
beauty of the braids that he cannot even ascertain what they are.

Here we have barely touched on a few approaches to handling the ālambana

vibhāvas—particularly women—in classical Indian literature. The poet was also
enjoined to invoke uddīpana vibhāvas (kindling elements) in order to heighten
the rasa. A description of the springtime is an attractive option. Perhaps the
cuckoo birds are out singing, or the mango trees have started to blossom. As in
the case of a śikh-nakh, Indian literary theorists laid out precise codes for how a
poet should handle descriptions of beautiful settings. Keshavdas, for instance,
suggested:

A garden should be enticing. Mention the hanging vines, beautiful trees

and flowers, the sweet cooing of cuckoos and peacocks, the bees buzzing
all around.19

Keshavdas does proceed to describe a real-life garden in the accompanying

example verse—the garden of his student, the courtesan Pravin Ray (figure 2.1)
—but verisimilitude is not his preferred style. In a courtly setting, gardens
redound to the builder's honor. Descriptions of them should also stir up emotion
because fostering emotion is one of the primary goals of kāvya.

(p.73)

In a scene that leads up to the

consummation of Shakuntala's
affair with King Dushyanta, the
poet Nevaj heightens the mood of
śṛṅgāra with his own focus on
spectacularly enticing imagery:
The king couldn’t wait
to see her. He rushed
to the bank of the
Malini River.
The lotuses were in
bloom, the peacocks
cried,
a cool breeze swayed figure 2.1 Pravin Ray's garden, Orchha
gently, peacocks
Courtesy of Edward Rotharb
pranced, cuckoos
cooed.
The lushly laden
branches of the trees sank down low,
sheltering with cool, dense shade a bed of lotus petals.20

Page 8 of 40

Nevaj's images are not something he invented out of whole cloth, but are instead
crafted from a repertoire of conventions for maximum erotic effect. Peacocks—
associated with the rainy season—are a metonym for desire in Indian poetry, and
lush trees help to conjure up both eros and fertility. The poet's apt choice of the
caupāī meter, whose very structure helps to suggest forward motion and is thus
perfect for leading up to an urgent crescendo, almost propels the reader into the
forest arbor along with Dushyanta. Such lavish descriptions of beautiful settings
are marshaled to heighten the bhāva (feeling) (p.74) of rati (passion), which,
according to classical thinking, is a prelude to the development of full-blown
śṛṅgāra rasa.

This is just a sampling (necessarily simplified) of an intricate complex of literary

codes that relate to sambhoga śṛṅgāra (love fulfilled). Yet other codes are
relevant when it comes to conveying the pathos of vipralambha śṛṅgāra
(frustrated love). A poignant kuṇḍaliyā verse from Narottam Kavi's Māncarit
(Biography of Man Singh, c. 1600) reports the deleterious effects of a beautiful
garden on separated lovers:

The lovelorn, stricken with separation, visit the beautiful garden.

The jasmine scent, a breeze in the arbor, a conflagration sparked in
the body.
A conflagration sparked in the body, how can it be quenched?
Listening to melodies intensifies the pain.
The scented breeze keeps blowing through the garden.
Not bearing to look at other women, they flee, the lovelorn.21

This verse uses uddīpana vibhāvas like jasmine, music, and the breeze to focalize
the devastating condition known as viraha (anguished separation from one's
lover). Here we see the flipside of the beauties of a garden. It brings joy to
lovers, but unbearable suffering to those cursed to experience it alone. The
formal features of the kuṇḍaliyā underscore the inescapable pain of separated
lovers with the mirroring effects of the repeated opening and closing phrase je
birahī (the lovelorn) and the structured repetitions in lines two and three, which
are defining features of the meter.

A much-anthologized kavitt by Keshavdas can serve as a final illustration of the

function of uddīpana vibhāvas in the depiction of śṛṅgāra rasa.

Oh, my friend, keep out the cooling breeze

and don’t let me see the moonlight.
They only dampen my spirits.
Cast away the flowers, brush off the camphor,
wash away the sandalwood paste—
my heart just blazes all the more.
I languish like a fish out of water,
not to be revived with a mere sprinkle.
Don’t you understand what's wrong?

Page 9 of 40

Why do you persist with these cooling remedies?

My body's fire can only be quenched by the fire of my beloved.22

Grasping the meaning of this poem is contingent on knowledge of two related

conventions. One is already familiar from Narottam's verse: unrequited love is
(p.75) a fire. The second is that specific substances such as moon rays,
camphor, and sandalwood are held to soothe the body with their cooling effects.
Here the fire of separation is so strong that it renders all such remedies futile.
Passion is likened to a bout of crippling fever, which only the presence of the
beloved can cure.

Vipralambha śṛṅgāra has many different causes, and these too merited full
description and analysis on the part of Indian pandits. Māna (jealous rage) and
its corollary māna-mocana (reconciliation) were much theorized, and much
poeticized, subjects. And when a nāyikā's lover goes abroad a particularly
protracted period of viraha ensues, meriting expression in a popular genre
known as bārah-māsa (lament over twelve months).23 This was both a stand-
alone genre and a stylized subgenre that was skillfully incorporated into Hindi
prabandha texts to contribute to the development of śṛṅgāra in its vipralambha
form. Yet another method for elaborating on vipralambha was to invoke the
system of ten daśās (states) that a lover would pass through in grief over a
beloved's absence: intense longing, worry, cataloguing the lover's virtues,
remembrance, agitation, lamentation, madness, anguish, apathy, and ultimately
death. The Indian tradition not only understood deeply but also attempted to
articulate with unparalleled sophistication the way emotion works in literature,
and the nuances of how a connoisseur experiences it.

All literary cultures generate meaning by working with tacit cues available to
their members, but the Indian system was far more explicitly codified than most.
Kāvya was a complex art, and it was based on science. The prodigious talents of
hundreds of Sanskrit poetry virtuosos writing over a millennium gave rise to a
commensurably erudite body of literary theory adopted, with creative
modifications, by the Braj court poets of the Mughal period. The uniquely Indian
concept of rasa originated in the dramaturgical tradition of classical India, but
rasa theory was later complemented (and complicated) by intensely
philosophical thinking on poetry as a special domain of language that required
sustained attention to its formal features and its own systematic discipline:
alaṅkāraśāstra.

The Sanskrit term alaṅkāraśāstra is used in two senses. It can refer to any work
of rhetoric (whether or not it is restricted to the topic of alaṅkāras) and can thus
encompass rasa or any other domain of Indian poetics. In its narrower sense,
however, alaṅkāraśāstra refers to the subdiscipline of tropology—figures of
speech such as similes and metaphors. In Braj, as in Sanskrit, some writers of
alaṅkāraśāstra took up the subject of tropes exclusively. Other authors treated

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them as one of many elements of poetic composition, devoting just a chapter or

two of a larger book to the matter. Some writers, most famously the Sanskrit
theoretician Anandavardhana (fl. 850), criticized an alaṅkāra-centered approach
(p.76) to poetics as missing the “soul” of poetry, and he advocated instead a
focus on the art of dhvani (suggestion), the subtler semiotic powers of
language.24 But whether alaṅkāra was the primary focus of literary attention or
just a subsidiary domain, whether one advocated its use or minimized it, all
poets and readers needed to be conversant with the science of literary
ornamentation. In the words of Keshavdas,

A woman may be noble, she may have good features. She may be shapely,
beautiful, and passionate. But without ornaments, my friend, there is
something missing. The same goes for poetry.25

Some of the literary devices that Indians theorized as alaṅkāras are of course
known to other poetry traditions, but the finesse of Sanskrit and Braj poets is
unsurpassed. With the śleṣa alaṅkāra, for instance, writers took punning to
spectacular lengths, composing verses and—in extreme cases—entire works that
tell two or more stories at the same time.26 In addition to the usual similes and
metaphors, there are dozens of ingenious categories such as sandeha
(expressing a doubt), ananvaya, (incomparability), utprekṣā (extended parallel),
vyatireka (exceeding expectation), vyājastuti (praising while blaming), just to
name a few, bringing an extraordinary complexity and detailed classificatory
rigor to the enterprise.

Braj courtly authors exhibited a special flair in the domain of alaṅkāraśāstra,

lovingly defining and illustrating hundreds of bhedas (types) of ornament in their
rītigranths. The following definition of a vyājastuti complete with udāharaṇ by
Matiram Tripathi, one of the leading rīti poets from the second half of the
seventeenth century, is a beautiful example of the motif. He begins with a dohā
that defines the figure of speech and, as is typical, follows with a quatrain (in
this case a kavitt) that exemplifies the theoretical point.

Definition of “praising while blaming”

Praise is indicated through blame, or blame through praise.
All the clever poets call this vyājastuti.
Example
You lawlessly steal the hearts of those you behold,
never to return them.
Your sidelong glances, sharper than Kamadeva's arrows,
pierce the heart and dig themselves in deep.
Your eyes have tussled with wagtails, fish, and deer,
snatching away their beauty.
I have caught your eyes engaged in these cruel acts,
and yet everybody sings their praises.27

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(p.77) In this poem, the nāyaka inveighs against his beloved's eyes, accusing
them of every sort of destructive behavior, and yet the net effect of the verse is
of course to pay her a compliment. Here Matiram may rely on conventional
imagery—glances like arrows, eyes like darting fish, and so on—but he cleverly
subverts these tropes in the punch line. Rīti writers theorized many other types
of unusual figures of speech, often playing with convention in inventive ways.

In the following example by Keshavdas of a sabhāvahetu alaṅkāra, a trope

predicated on “a cause due to presence,” the lovelorn nāyikā waiting patiently
for her lover to arrive is stricken by a breeze that has “stolen” its scents in
various encounters along the route, also plundering her ability to wait for her
lover's return.

Definition of a cause

All the master poets speak of two types of cause. Keshavdas illustrates
them here: one is a cause due to presence, the other due to absence.

Example of a cause due to presence

First it took on a thick coat of sandalwood,
then rubbed up against lotus pollen.
It grazed the jasmine vines and roses,
fondling how many pine flowers?
It was tinted yellow in a field of champa flowers,
and embraced the banana tree along the way.
The gentle breeze, crisp and fragrant, was cooled by a waft of
camphor.
It blew right by her and carried off her composure, too.28

Here the reader becomes a companion on the breeze's journey, whisked along by
the momentum of the poem, swept up in the brisk, choppy cadence of the
savaiyā meter. Keshavdas masterfully creates suspense by not unveiling the
mysterious “cause due to a presence” until the very end of the poem: the
nāyikā's suffering at the hands of the cruelly enticing breeze. The pain of
unrequited love is universal, but these examples by two of the rīti tradition's
most renowned poet-scholars illustrate how alaṅkāraśāstra served as a
specifically Indian tool for both theorizing and actualizing sophisticated poetic
nuances.

Some rīti writers continued to improve on the classical systems, as we shall see
in the next chapter, but many took the theory as given, without exerting too
much effort to develop it in new directions. The major Sanskrit ālaṅkārikas had
operated differently. Their primary concern was articulating precise and
intellectually rigorous definitions that either contested or more subtly modified
the (p.78) formulations of past authorities. They were not, for the most part,
inspired poets. For their example verses, Sanskrit writers usually excerpted
poetry from famous classics such as the śatakas of Amaru or Bhartrihari rather

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than composing their own.29 In contrast, for the rīti author, writing original
poetry was the essence of the matter.

In some cases, rīti writers turned the theory itself into an opportunity for poetic
expression. The Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ (Ornament to the vernacular, c. 1660), attributed
to the Marwar king Jaswant Singh, is a superbly concise rīti work in which the
author cleverly combines definitions and examples in a striking display of poetic
virtuosity. The majority of rītigranth authors use the dohā (couplet) only for the
lakṣaṇs, employing either the kavitt or the savaiyā for the udāharaṇs. In the
Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ, Jaswant Singh uses only couplets, as though setting himself a
special expository and poetic challenge. A measure of artistic success in the
dohā form is the ability to telescope a narrative into just two brief lines. In the
Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ, an already-challenging task becomes doubly challenging when the
poet combines lakṣaṇ and udāharaṇ in a single couplet.30 Imagine the theorical
and poetic mastery required for the composition of verses such as this one on
the gūḍhottara (sly answer) alaṅkāra:

The “sly answer” occurs when an answer is

given with an ulterior motive.
“There is a stream over there by the grove, traveler,
perfect for resting.”
Gūṛhottara kachu bhāva teṃ, uttara dīnhe hota
Uta betasataru meṃ, pathika, utarana lāyaka srota31

This terse dohā of necessity draws on a repertoire of extra textual meanings. The
subtext for the “sly answer” is that the nāyikā finds the traveler attractive and
wants to meet him alone in the grove. To onlookers (her family, etc.), she would
innocently be giving helpful directions to a wayfarer looking for a place to halt
for the night. But whereas the nāyikā's family doesn’t get it, the reader (who for
a titillating moment becomes the traveler being addressed) does understand her
suggestive message. The Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ is, in terms of genre, a rītigranth, but it is
primarily—even in the construction of its technical verses—a finely wrought
poetic creation.

Hundreds of Brajbhasha treatises on alaṅkāras were produced in the courtly

milieu of early modern India. Such rītigranths were showcases for poetry as well
as a resource for budding writers and connoisseurs who took pride and pleasure
in their knowledge of the fine points. And this beautifully conceived discourse on
ornaments was just one of the sophisticated knowledge systems cultivated by
Braj literati.

Let Me Count the Ways

(p.79) A subdiscipline of alaṅkāraśāstra known as nāyikābheda, a typology of
different female characters, was particularly well developed in Brajbhasha. As
noted, the nāyikā is the foundation of śṛṅgāra rasa, considered its ālambana
vibhāva or underlying cause. Traditional Sanskrit theoreticians generally

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subsumed nāyikābheda within the larger discipline of rasa theory, but in the
early modern period this subject became a new discipline in its own right.

Love cannot arise in classical Indian poetry without a woman, but not all women
are the same. A particular fascination of rīti literary theorists was to produce the
perfect catalogue of female characters. What are their different qualities, and
how do they show their love? More importantly, how should a writer portray
them in all their nuances? For example, in the case of a svakīyā (one's own wife),
the consensus was that a poet should emphasize a woman's modesty, as the
famous Mughal poet Rahim (fl. 1600) does in the following couplet:

A shadow of a glance hovers at the corner of her eye.

When she moves you can’t even hear her anklets.32

A subcategory of svakīyā and a favorite of poets was the navoṛhā nāyikā (new
bride). Such a woman refuses a lover's sexual advances in bed by struggling to
keep her blouse done up or locking her thighs tightly together. Some poets set
their sights on even younger women, such as the mugdhā (innocent), the girl just
entering puberty. Part of this series is the ajñātayauvanā nāyikā, a still-
unmarried girl who is so naϯve that she does not even know about puberty or
lovemaking yet. She typically panics upon first noticing her budding breasts,
thinking she has contracted some kind of disease until a girlfriend or nanny
explains to her the ways of the world.33 Braj poets, like their Sanskrit
predecessors, were also intrigued by racier types of passion. Many a bheda was
forged in describing the dynamics of a liaison with a parakīyā (the wife of
another man). In some cases, love is directed toward a courtesan.
Unsurprisingly, there is a name for that, too: the sāmānyā nāyikā or “woman
available to all.”

Indian theorists of nāyikābheda seem to have had a penchant for threefold

typologies. Aside from the triplet svakīyā-parakīyā-sāmānyā is a tripartite
division according to stages in the relationship. After a woman gains some
experience in love she ceases to be mugdhā. She qualifies for promotion to
madhyā (somewhat knowledgeable) and eventually to the status of prauḍhā
(mature). A prauḍhā nāyikā is wise in the ways of the world and in full command
of an arsenal of feminine wiles. She enjoys sex and knows how to manipulate her
lover in manifold ways (these two attributes have also been (p.80) theorized as
subtypes: the ratipriyā and svādhīnapatikā). Another triple division hinges on
whether a woman is uttamā, madhyamā, or adhamā (best, middling, and worst,
respectively). The principal metric here is how quick a woman is to anger. The
uttamā does not mind too much if her lover strays; the madhyamā can be
appeased after an indiscretion, but the adhamā unleashes a jealous tirade.34 The
issue of māna, or jealous rage, technically a subtopic of “frustrated love,” was
also subject to the classification of pandits (māna can be light, middling, or
severe), giving us yet another favorite bheda: the māninī (indignant woman).

Page 14 of 40

Even a woman's style of expressing anger was subject to a threefold scheme. An

adhīrā (volatile) woman lashes out indiscriminately at her man. A dhīrādhīrā
(sometimes self-possessed, sometimes volatile) woman has learned to
occasionally control her temper toward strategic ends. The dhīrā woman is the
canniest: she knows that the best way to get back at him may be to give him the
silent treatment or to let loose with a few well-timed sarcastic remarks.

To the unaccustomed observer this may seem like a surprising or even excessive
degree of categorization, but it is just the tip of an iceberg in the ocean of
nāyikābheda. There is also a well-known eightfold system called
aṣṭanāyikābheda, a detailed exploration of the emotional landscape of women in
love.

1) svādhīnapatikā (has her lover under control)

2) utkā (anxious)
3) vāsakasajjā (waiting, having decorated her bed)
4) abhisandhitā (stubborn)
5) khaṇḍitā (reproachful; see figure 4.2)
6) proṣitapatikā (sad because her lover has gone far away)
7) vipralabdhā (sad because her lover did not keep the rendezvous)
8) abhisārikā (setting forth boldly to meet her lover; see figure 1.1)

This and the other systems just outlined can be combined in various ways to
generate yet additional systems, and subsystems, and sub-subsystems. Some rīti
authors took special care to put their own stamp on the subject by modifying the
existing bhedas. For instance, in his Rasikpriyā, Keshavdas augmented the
traditional wisdom on the abhisārikā nāyikā with the addition of a new category:
the premābhisārikā or “woman who goes forth boldly to meet her sweetheart out
of love.”35

Keshavdas additionally divided nāyikās into prachhanna (secretive) and prakāśa

(out in the open), the operative distinction being whether the affair is a private
matter known only to the lovers and perhaps a close sakhī (confidante), (p.81)
or is common knowledge. This single classificatory move effectively doubled the
number of nāyikās as exemplified by the poet's dual exposition of the utkā
(anxious), which begins with a definition followed by twinned verses that
illustrate both “secretive” and “out in the open.”

Definition of anxious

Keshavdas says that the “anxious” is a woman whose lover does not show
up for some reason, causing her heart to brim with sorrow.

An example of the “secretive anxious”

Is it some matter at home?
Or did his cowherd friends detain him?

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Is he fasting today?
Did he fail to pay a debt?
Did he get into a fight?
Has he suddenly taken a religious turn?
Perhaps he is unwell?
Or his love for me is false?
Did he see the clouds and hesitate to come in the middle of the
night?
Or is he testing my love?
Again today he hasn’t come!
What could be the matter?

In this example—note the use of the sandeha alaṅkāra (the nāyikā cannot decide
on the exact reason for her lover not showing up)—the worry that the heroine
feels is entirely private. A second poem in which the nāyikā shares her concern
with another woman (but not a close confidante, in which case the category of
“secretive” would still apply) distinguishes the prakāśā (figure 2.2) from the
prachhannā utkā:

An example of the “openly anxious”

Did he just forget?
Or has somebody cast a spell on him?
Has he lost his way?
Is he afraid of someone?
Perhaps he's met another woman more beautiful than I.
He may have left already.
Or it could be that he's just arriving now, or will arrive at any
moment.
My friend, comfort me—
Nanda's son is delayed, and I don’t know the reason.36

(p.82) Whether Keshavdas explores the emotions of an anxious nāyikā talking

to herself or to another, the anguished urgency of her viraha state comes
through powerfully, evoking the rasa of vipralambha śṛṅgāra in the reader.

Page 16 of 40

(p.83) The various

permutations of nāyikās are
many. They can add up quickly,
even exponentially. Keshavdas
calculated a total of 360
possibilities in his Rasikpriyā,
and even higher counts have
been registered.37 And this tally
does not include all the other
women who show up in
literature and can therefore be
classified, such as the nāyikā's
sakhīs and dutīs (messengers),
not to mention a raft of servants
including the midwife, barber's
wife, gardener's wife, and so on.
The male characters, nāyakas,
also merited categorization, but
they were never treated with
anything approaching the same
zeal. Indian poetry may often figure 2.2 Openly anxious heroine
have a female voice, but it has a (prakāśā utkā nāyikā), attributed to
male gaze. Sahibdin. Mewar, c. 1630–35.

Why so Much Ado about Courtesy of Jnana-pravaha, Varanasi

Typology?
The existence of so many
nāyikābheda works has perplexed many modern readers. Those who lack
training in Indian poetic theory might also assume that the immense number of
rules could only produce some kind of stilted and inferior literary experience. Or
a person sensitive to gender issues might wonder whether all this nāyikābheda is
some kind of bizarre testosterone-driven fantasy, the male gaze on overdrive.
One modern interpreter of Braj poetry, who has identified poetic features that
traditional Indian scholars, for all their systematizing, ironically never
addressed, is correct to point out that Indian aesthetic theory can be too limiting
an interpretative system.38 Rīti styles have usually been derided as emblematic
of Hindi literature's mannerist phase, in which poets were supposedly so busy
typologizing that they neglected to write good poetry. When the crudest of
historical analyses collided with colonial and nationalist discourse in the early
twentieth century, genres like nāyikābheda came to be considered evidence of a
decadent (not to mention oversexed) culture that had lost its classical vibrancy
and sunk to new lows of repetition and staleness.39

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While rejecting the traditional literary categories out of hand is easy, the
intellectually rigorous approach is to try to understand what these categories
meant to the people who used them, and why they mattered so much. European
epistemological and aesthetic regimes have come to dominate the globe since
colonial times, obscuring and discrediting the sophisticated literary disciplines
and interpretive codes of other cultures. Postcolonial literary theory has done
much to articulate cogent critiques of the travesties of imperialism, but the focus
in India has been largely on modern texts. The precolonial literary past must
also be read postcolonially. And any such reading must begin by sincerely
engaging with the literary values of Indian premodernity.

Questions worth posing when studying premodern culture generally concern the
shape of innovation in conservative genres. What were the markers of (p.84)
poetic beauty in a world of literary systematicity? Where was the author's
chance to display originality when so much had been prescribed? Does an overly
prescriptive system hinder rather than enhance the potential for poetic
creativity? In fact, infinite creative possibilities were always available at the
level of an individual verse, and constraint creates its own exquisite forms of
freedom. Occasionally poets proposed a new bheda of nāyikā, but even when
they wrote about the same time-tested ones, there was still scope for newness.
Sometimes rīti poets sought the small twist on an old theme or a beautiful turn
of phrase. It has become commonplace to note that there are hundreds of
Rāmāyaṇas in southern Asia, but each was told with different emphases and
outcomes.40 The fact that everybody already knew the story did not detract from
the experience. On the contrary, prior knowledge enhanced enjoyment, as when,
to use a modern analogy, listeners hear a favorite old song being “covered” by a
newer band. The rīti themes that were crafted from the template of
alaṅkāraśāstra by the members of the Braj kavikul (community of poets)
functioned in a similar way. New emphases were always being dreamed up,
testament to the vibrancy of the tradition.41

rīti poets’ penchant for hyper-systematicity also has to be understood in its own
cultural environment. India had always been a culture of śāstra producers.
Virtually no domain of cultural, social, or political practice went untheorized. In
many fields, including darśana (philosophy), vāstu (architecture), saṅgīta (music),
gaṇita (mathematics), jyotiṣa (astrology), and even kāma (sex), Indians did it by
the book. Whether or not one followed it to the letter (and, to be sure, many did
not), there was a deep-seated belief that theory made practice more efficacious.
In the classical Sanskrit thought-world, theory was even held to be an
epistemological necessity, one that preceded practice.42

In the knowledge system of alaṅkāraśāstra, crucial principles of literary

hermeneutics were also at work. Rīti literary theory is a highly structured
semiotic system that enabled the production, performance, and interpretation of
Brajbhasha court poetry. Intelligibility and literary success in courtly venues

Page 18 of 40

depended on poets and audiences being conversant with the principal

components. Rītigranths were an important means of enabling these social and
communicative processes. We do not know nearly as much as we would like
about the performance conditions of rīti poetry, but it is certain that bhakti
poetry in the pad genre was a sung tradition, as was dhrupad, a style that
became spectacularly popular in Mughal circles.43 It is easy to envision a
context, much like the maḥfil associated with Urdu literary culture, in which a
poet presented his couplets or quatrains to a specialized audience of
connoisseurs. One corroborating clue about courtly performance in the
seventeenth century comes from Jayarama Pindye's Rādhāmādhavavilāsacampū
(Love play of Radha and Krishna, (p.85) c. 1650), a collection of mixed Sanskrit
and vernacular poetry produced under the patronage of Shahaji Bhonsle in the
Deccan. The work documents a samasyāpūrti (extemporaneous composition)
competition in which the poets in Shahaji's assembly were asked to present
verses that could elucidate the difference between nāyikās of the jñātayauvanā
and ajñātayauvanā types (conscious and unconscious of the arrival of puberty)
according to the Sanskrit rhetorician Bhanudatta's description of them.44 This
kind of situation, in which nāyikābheda was a basis for performance as well as a
subject of debate among connoisseurs, is probably generalizable to rīti contexts,
as well.45 The very structure of a rītigranth, predicated upon proposing a
definition and composing a suitable example verse, may be seen as a textual
embodiment of the oral practice of samasyāpūrti from the courtly sabhā
(assembly).

Thorough immersion in alaṅkāraśāstra would have been essential for the

appreciation of muktakas. Unlike the verses of a prabandha work, a muktaka is
not part of a larger narrative. The charm of this verse style is that the reader or
listener steps into the middle of a story. The full story is never told in the poem
itself, especially in the case of a dohā, where there is room for only the sparsest
narrative detail. Consider the literary infrastructure that must be in place for a
couplet like the following one by Bihari to generate meaning:

Why do you drive me crazy with all your lies? You can’t hide the
truth.
Your eyes, dripping with redness, tell the tale of last night's
pleasures.46

The speaker, the addressee, and the subject of the conversation are nowhere
directly enunciated. As far as the minimal narrative content of the poem goes, all
we are told is that upon seeing somebody's red eyes another person gets angry.
But the metadiscourse of nāyikābheda allows us easily to fill in the rest of the
story. In the most likely reading of the verse, Bihari is depicting an encounter
between a khaṇḍitā nāyikā (reproachful beloved) and a śaṭha nāyaka (unfaithful
lover). According to the conventions of rīti literature, red eyes in a man are a
clue that he has been up all night making love to another woman. His eyes may

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be red either from lack of sleep or, more extremely, because during the heat of
passion things got a little messy and betel juice stained his face. The verse would
then be about his angry girlfriend taking him to task for his infidelity.

However, such a reconstruction of the context does not begin to exhaust the
interpretive possibilities of this poem. We cannot know for certain how a given
rīti muktaka was interpreted by its many readers and listeners in early modern
India, though the possibilities are circumscribed by the formalized literary
systems just outlined. Fortunately, commentators afford valuable clues. For the
poem just cited, Lallulal (fl. 1800) suggests two other potential readings (p.86)
in his Lālcandrikā commentary on the Bihārīsatsaī. Instead of recording the
harsh words of a woman whose lover has cheated on her, this muktaka of Bihari
may also be taken as a conversation between two girlfriends. In this case, the
nāyikā is of the bheda known as lakṣitā (found out), and the verse has a less shrill
tone: the sakhī, the nāyikā's girlfriend, is teasing her about her red eyes with a
wink and a nudge that suggest she knows all about her friend's naughty
escapades with her lover. But if the speakers are reversed, and these are the
words of the nāyikā instead of the sakhī, an altogether different scenario arises
from within the framework of nāyikābheda: that of the anyasambhogaduhkhitā, a
jealous nāyikā who is furious at her girlfriend for spending the night with the
nāyikā's own lover.47 In short, the mere seventeen words of this short dohā
produce an array of interpretations from within a structured grid of possibilities,
and the reader's puzzling over them—indeed, his ability to create new
possibilities by his mastery of the poet's unique grammar of love—is precisely
one of the joys of experiencing rīti poetry. Bihari's dohās have frequently been
celebrated for their quality of being gāgar meṃ sāgar (a small pot that contains
the ocean). The reason this rīti poet can say so much in so few words is that a
centuries-old system of literary shorthand serves as a potent mechanism for
signification and connoisseurship.

The encoding of pointed images by skilled poets and its corollary, the existence
of a sophisticated audience attuned to the fine points of classical theory, were
the critical underpinning of this literary culture. It is through immersion in the
system that we can identify the newly married nāyikā from the Rahim poem
excerpted above: her sidelong glances suggest a woman too modest to look
directly at her husband, and her quiet anklets bespeak a woman so unassertive
as to make no sound when she moves. An uninitiated reader would feel mystified
as to why a female character appears sad about the harvesting of the sugarcane,
but those in the know understand her to be an anuśayanā (apprehensive) nāyikā,
and the cause of her concern the destruction of the hiding spot—sugarcane
grows tall—where she had been able to meet her lover, their affair thus
undetected. Connoisseurs of Indian poetry know that an adhīrā nāyikā is prone
to lashing out in anger, and that the cure for gurumāna (a woman's most extreme
form of jealous rage, sparked by a lover's infidelity) is praṇati (the man's bowing
down at her feet). The system of nāyikābheda encodes thousands of possible
Page 20 of 40

exchanges between lovers in poetry, allowing the kavikul to bypass the need for
cumbersome background detail.

Besides these elements of rīti literary culture that derive primarily from
Sanskrit, much was new in the world of Brajbhasha textuality. For one thing,
bhakti was a major concern, even for court poets. For another, earlier genres
from Sanskrit could be given a new vernacular twist. Occasionally more
pronounced (p.87) innovations are evident, as in Braj writers’ exploitation of
uniquely vernacular registers or their penchant for rhymed poetry. We also find
hybrid poetic styles that draw upon the resources of Persian. I turn now to
explore some of these departures.

Rīti Poets and Bhakti

In the modern period, the Sanskrit language is too readily equated with religious
life, obscuring the sophisticated, worldly side of its intellectual and political
culture.48 The śāstras, prabandhas, and muktakas discussed above, the principal
genres of the courtly sabhā, had largely been secular matters for the Sanskrit
pandits of premodern India. But while rīti poets shared their Sanskrit
predecessors’ interest in these and the courtly styles of śṛṅgāra, praśasti, and
scholasticism, their works were also profoundly informed by more recent bhakti
trends.

A number of courtly genres may well have originated in Sanskrit but upon being
transplanted into Brajbhasha were put to more religious use—or at least subject
to simultaneous readings as both courtly and religious. As explored in the
previous chapter, Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā is profoundly imbued with bhakti.
Recall how the figure of Radha is cast in rīti imagery that is simultaneously
reverential, as the jaganāyaka kī nāyikā, heroine of the world's hero (i.e.,
Krishna). The works of proto–rīti poets like Kriparam and Nanddas are primarily
devotional in orientation even if their formal features affiliate them with rīti
śāstra. Later Braj rhetoricians such as Chintamani Tripathi (fl. 1650) and
Bhikharidas (fl. 1740) would revise earlier Sanskrit theories to bring them in line
with bhakti; many other rīti authors, even while elucidating scholastic points
from Sanskrit poetics, explicitly depicted love scenes about Radha and Krishna,
allowing for both spiritual and secular interpretations. This ambiguity was
particularly exploited by Rajput and Pahari painters, who generally signal that
the nāyaka of their painted poems is Krishna by using blue pigment for the male
character (see figure 4.2). The Krishna in question may be a sumptuously
dressed courtier as opposed to a cowherder playing his flute in a grove in
Vrindavan, but it is Krishna nonetheless, and for some viewers the experience
would not have been as much courtly delectation as religious reverence—or
perhaps both at the same time.49 Some of the longer prabandha kāvyas were
also influenced by the new Vaishnava currents of Mughal-period India.
Keshavdas's Rāmcandracandrikā is a bhakti-infused prabandha on the life of
Rama, although otherwise very much in the style of Sanskrit high kāvya. The

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Sudāmācarita (Life of Sudama), based on Vaishnava lore about Krishna's

indigent childhood friend (p.88) Sudama, became a popular subject with Braj
poets.50 The infusion of earlier court genres with Vaishnava bhakti is just one of
the new hybrid styles in this period.

Braj Historiography
Another textual domain that drew from several sources, including Sanskrit, is
that of Brajbhasha historiography. Although it was never a major focus of
Sanskrit writers, Bana's Harṣacarita (Biography of Harsha, c. 640), the
Vikramāṅkadevacarita (Biography of Vikramanka Deva, c. 1080) of Bilhana, and
the Rājataraṅgiṇī (Genealogy of kings, 1148) of Kalhana are important instances
of historical literature from the classical tradition. Early rīti writers showed an
affinity for the genre, which inhabits an interstitial space between history and
literature, with its elements of quasi reportage intermingled with less realistic
scenes of great rhetorical flourish. Many local cultural streams also fed into Braj
historical writing. Although the vīra or heroic sentiment was a foundational
component of the Sanskrit literary repertoire, the rāso was a specifically western
Indian genre that became prominent from the sixteenth century. We noted that
the rāso must have been a model for Keshavdas's early Ratnabāvanī and such
ballads remained current in Rajput courts of the Mughal period. This was a time
when the oral, bardic traditions of Rajasthan were giving way to a new cultural
preference for formal written texts.51

One new and pervasive phenomenon of early modern India that markedly
affected Braj historiographical developments was Mughal power. Several rīti
works are significant articulations of historical events for a local readership,
composed in the genres that had currency in their own communities. As noted in
chapter 1, the first portion of Keshavdas's Vīrsiṃhdevcarit is a detailed account
of Mughal-Orchha political relations around 1600, in which Keshavdas
chronicles the key events almost as if he were a court historian and with a
specificity that had been rare in Sanskrit kāvya. In later cantos of the work,
however, he departs from this historical approach, interweaving elements of
elegant kāvya and political sermons that derive from the Sanskrit textual past.
To invoke the formulation of a recent book on South Indian historiography from
the same period, an attuned reader can differentiate between the poetic and
historical “textures.”52

Narottam Kavi's Māncarit is another paradigmatic example from the Kachhwaha

court at Amber. The following chappay evinces the poet's interest in recording
Mughal genealogy as well as reporting on recent political events:

(p.89) Babur, lord of the earth, conquered countless territories.

Humayun challenged many rulers,
and increased the boundaries of the kingdom.
The kingdom was strengthened by mighty Akbar,
glory be upon him.

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The nobility and Afghans serve him in the imperial court.

Chaghtais hold sway over the four corners of the earth,
their laws are obeyed.
But everybody says the sword of Man Singh
is instrumental to their power.53

The poet here projects a dramatic vision of local sovereignty within the imperial
system: the Mughals may rule the earth, but it is only because of Rajputs like
Man Singh that they can do so. Elsewhere in the work, Narottam assiduously
catalogues the many battles where Man Singh made himself indispensable to
Akbar. He was a major force in removing the threat of Akbar's half-brother Mirza
Hakim in Kabul; he lead a battalion against Rana Pratap Singh of Mewar at the
battle of Haldighati; he castigated the Yousufzais who had taken the life of Birbal
in a murderous ambush. Not all the battle descriptions are in keeping with the
rigorous annalistic approaches and evidentiary standards that have become
defining features of history in the modern sense. Narottam—and rīti poets across
the board—felt free to embellish history with poetic flourishes. He was especially
fond of constructing long onomatopoeic passages that conjure up the aural
landscape of war. A few lines from a description of Man Singh arraying his
forces for the battle of Haldighati give a feel for his style:

The forces assembled, platoons merging into a vast army.

The troops donned full body armor,
shields at the ready, their many-hued ensigns
streaming into a colorful tableau.
The kettle drums blared, a deafening din
drowning out tablas and drones.
Rattles and gongs and war drums, trumpets and bugles sounded…
caḍhī sena senā ji senā samāha, saje aṃga aṃgeni aṃge sanāhaṃ,
ḍhalī ḍhāla lālati hālati sete, milīṃ raṃga raṃgeni vairakhkha pīte
bhaye ḍhimaḍhimaṃ ji ḍholaṃ nisānaṃ,taballe na tadūra jānaṃti
kānaṃ
bajai jhiṃjhi jhalleri mṛddaṃga tete, sahannāi bheryeṃ ru naphphīra
kete…54

(p.90) Narottam's biography of Man Singh is a form of what I would call

enriched history, in which poetry played an important role. The poetic punch of
this verse in the bhujaṅgprayāt meter stems from the writer's facility with vaiṇa
sagāī (kindred sounds), an alliterative technique perfected by the bardic
performers of Rajasthan.55 The structured assonances and onomatopoeia evoke
the sounds of war drums and the bustle of an army, bringing history alive for his
audience.

Whatever the poetic medium, the tremendous currency of Mughal political

themes in Brajbhasha courtly texts compels us to see this kind of writing as a
new and significant, if as yet undertheorized, trend in Hindi literary history.
Perhaps some awareness of the Indo-Persian tārīkh (royal chronicle) tradition

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was seeping into the consciousness of rīti authors, who themselves occasionally
spent time in residence at the Mughal court, and whose patrons regularly did.
Some works, including Vrind's Satyasarūprūpak and the Jangnāmā of Shridhar
(both from the early eighteenth century), which respectively recount the wars of
succession between Aurangzeb's sons Muazzam (the victor and future emperor
Bahadur Shah) and Azam Shah in 1707 and Jahandar Shah and Farrukh Siyar in
1712–13, read less like kāvya than as chronicles of epoch-making historical
events. The Chatraprakāś (Light on Chatrasal, 1710) by Lal Kavi of the Panna
court, a retrospective account of the political career of the Bundela leader
Chatrasal (1649–1732), adopts a similar approach. Already a component of the
rīti tradition even in the early days of Keshavdas and Narottam, historical
genres, although present in Sanskrit, took on a new importance in the Braj
milieu, with some input from Rajasthani narrative poetry and—it seems likely—
the Mughal documentary state.

Brajbhasha Register and Rhyme

The development of new—or at least refurbished—literary genres was crucial to
the success of Brajbhasha poets in the early modern period. So was their ability
to manipulate the register of their vernacular literary language in exciting new
ways. This is also an area where Sanskrit and Brajbhasha decisively part ways.
Sanskrit was notionally a fixed language and—at least in theory—a closed
system, the rules of which had been codified in antiquity by famous
grammarians such as Panini and Patanjali (fourth and first century BCE,
respectively).56 Brajbhasha, in contrast, was highly adaptable. The precursor to
modern Hindi-Urdu, which shares the same flexibility, Brajbhasha's broad
spectrum of lexical registers contributed in powerful ways to its poetic charm; it
also helped to foster a literature that could be appreciated by multiple
communities.

(p.91) Some writers were predisposed toward a particular style; others tapped
into more than one register or dialect, freely employing whatever word or
phrase seemed best depending on the needs of a specific poem or context or
patron. And these choices were made with forethought and flair. To use a
tadbhava word like kānha or its diminutive kanhaiya, for instance, instead of
kṛṣṇa, a tatsama (pure Sanskrit word), conjures up feelings of intimacy and
rusticity that are especially appropriate for expressing the longings of the village
maidens who are at the center of this Vaishnava narrative cycle. In a poem that
features a gopī taking Krishna to task, her speech is best reported in a lively
colloquial style such as “chāṛahu bolibo bola haṃsauṃhaiṃ (stop it already with
your pleasantries!)” rather than in a more formal register.57

Battle scenes follow a completely different linguistic logic. In some cases—as in

Narottam's descriptions of Man Singh's army at Haldighati—Rajasthani textures
contribute just the right mood to a martial poem. Other poets simulate an

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almost-Prakrit archaicism, as in the opening lines of a chappay by Padmakar (fl.

1800) with its highly marked repetitions of cha, ka, and dha:

The sky is adorned with weapons all the way to the horizon.
Behold the beauty of the imperial parasols affording shade!
Panic spreads in all directions, the terrified enemies become
flustered.
Chiti ati chajjiya atra, chatra-chāhana chabi chakkiya
cahuṃva cakka dhakapakka, arina akabakka dharakkiya58

Padmakar's studied repetition of dissonant sounds invokes both the clamor and
the terror of a battlefield, while fostering the experience of vīra rasa in the
audience.

Tatsama language also retained its importance in select rīti contexts. Since early
Braj writers were indebted to Sanskrit authorities for the composition of their
works on alaṅkāraśāstra, it makes good sense that the technical vocabulary in
the lakṣaṇ portions of rītigranths would be Sanskritized. Raised in a traditional
pandit family, Keshavdas in particular had tremendous facility with tatsama
style. (His occasionally heavy doses of Sanskrit vocabulary did not help the
cause of his famous inscrutability.) When delivering a sermon to a royal patron
on moral conduct or spiritual matters, as he does in the final cantos of his
Vīrsimḥdevcarit and throughout the Vijñāngītā, he deploys tatsama language in
full force. Both of these works also contain pure Sanskrit quotations that
contribute to the stately, elevated tone he sought. In the opening verse of the
latter work, which is of a broadly vedantic bent, Keshavdas cultivates śānta rasa
with long, almost incantatory, strings of quasi Sanskrit, apparently mobilized in
an attempt to express the inexpressible nature of the divine:

(p.92) Know [god] to be a light without beginning or end,

immeasurable, wondrous, formless, renowned as the greatest bliss
on earth, and, moreover, as full effulgence.
Jyoti anādi ananta amita adbhuta arūpa guni
Paramānanda puhumi prasiddha pūrana prakāsa puni59

A few words, such as puhumi (earth, from Sanskrit bhūmi) and puni (moreover,
from Sanskrit punaḥ), signal that the Vijñāngītā is in fact a vernacular text, but
just barely.

Another verse that comes as close as is conceivable to Sanskrit without actually

being so is this remarkable kavitt from Keshavdas's Jahāngīrjascandrikā, an
almost-classic instance of praśasti, or panegyric:

See how the emperor Jahangir is as astonishing as the god Indra.

In his court are poets and generals,
skilled artists and discerning scholars,
warriors, officers, stable masters, sheikhs, masterminds,

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the clever, the glamorous, the lustrous,

a range of entertainers and their companions.
There are beautiful songs, haunting to the soul.
Keshavdas says, Jahangir is a capable ruler in every respect—
he is kind to the deserving and
harsh toward those who break the law.
Kavi, senāpati, kusala kalānidhi, gunī gīrapati
Sūra, ganesa, mahesa, śeṣa, bahu bibudha mahāmati
Caturānana, sobhānivāsa, śrī dhara, vidyādhara
Bidyādharī aneka, mañju ghoṣādi cittahara
Dṛṣṭi anugraha-nigrahani juta kahiṃ ‘kesava,’ saba bhāṃti chama
Imi jahāṃgīra suratāna aba dekhahu adbhuta indra sama60

The Brajbhasha employed here is almost pure Sanskrit (with due allowance
made for standard Braj conversions of “śa” to “sa” and the like) and traditionally
Indic in its imagery, with the Mughal emperor Jahangir compared to Indra, king
of the Hindu gods.

Nonetheless, closer scrutiny reveals an interesting twist. The verse can be read
as an extended śleṣa, in which all the terms of the praśasti apply equally to
Jahangir and to Indra.61 Barely perceptible in the presence of such hyper-
Sanskritized style, it turns out, is a multilingual pun that hinges on two possible
pronunciations of the word “śeṣa” in line two. Read as a Sanskrit word in
relation to Indra's court, it means Sheshanaga, the serpent companion of Vishnu.
But the same word, when pronounced in the Braj manner, sounds like “sheikh,”
(p.93) allowing it to double as the Arabic word for a venerated religious
leader.62 Despite being rooted in a Sanskritic thought-world, the verse subtly
divulges its Mughal provenance.

The connection of rīti authors to Indo-Muslim court culture sparked many

instances of literary hybridity at the level of register. The Kavīndrakalpalatā
(Wish-fulfilling vine of Kavindra, c. 1650) of Kavindracharya Sarasvati, a
Brajbhasha work written for Jahangir's son Shah Jahan, contains fascinating
variations on classical panegyric styles that are made possible precisely by the
judicious manipulation of Perso-Arabic words. At first glance, many of his verses
seem like quite standard fare, the kinds of encomia Sanskrit poets had been
writing for centuries. However, the fact that the poet writes in Brajbhasha, and
addresses the Mughal emperor rather than Bhoja or some other Hindu king of
old, makes several of his verses far from standard, as when Kavindra celebrates
the emperor's multicultural competency with the following lines extracted from
one of his kavitts:

He knows the Qur’ān and the Purāṇas,

he knows the secrets of the Vedas.
Say, where else can one find so much connoisseurship,
so much understanding?
He gives a Mount Meru worth of gold,

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he gives this world and the next.

Kurāna purāna jāneṃ, vedani ke bheda jāne,
Etī rījha etī būjha aura kaho kāhi haiṃ
Sumera ko sauno deta, dīna dunī dono deta63

The pairing of kurāna, a Braj pronunciation of Qur’ān, with Purāṇa deftly

underscores Shah Jahan's ecumenism: rhyme has a magical way of
demonstrating the ontological unity of things otherwise thought to be completely
separate. This literary technique would have been virtually impossible in
Sanskrit, where rhyme was rare. The use of Braj instead of Sanskrit also allows
Kavindra to tap into the Muslim thought-world with the Arabic concepts dīn-dunī
[i.e., duniyā, religion and worldly life]. Similarly, in celebrating the emperor's
military prowess the pandit-poet is free to use the Perso-Arabic word fatuḥ
(victory) rather than the more typical Sanskritic vijaya:

No sooner have the victory poems of the last battle been composed,
than more battles have already been won.
Jau lauṃ pāchilī fatūha ko kavitta kareṃ,
Tau lagi fatūha aura aure kījiyati hai64

These adjustments in vocabulary no doubt aided comprehension in a

performance attended primarily by speakers of Persian—but they were also (p.
94) effective aesthetically, rhetorically, and, by all indications, politically.65 The
key point is that Brajbhasha poets had a distinct advantage over Sanskrit in
certain contexts because their language could interact with the Persianate world
of Mughal India in ways that were foreclosed by classical tradition.

With the addition of Perso-Arabic possibilities and the freedom to manipulate

words in unusual ways, rīti poets reveled in mixed-register rhyming patterns and
other poetic exuberances. Take this line by Jaswant Singh:

The dense clouds darken. A sweet girl in the bloom of youth.

With her lover abroad, she is anxious—
why has he not sent any message?
Ati kārī bhārī ghaṭā pyārī bārī bais
Piya paradesa aṃdesa yaha āvata nāhiṃ sandesa66

In this ultra-concise rendition of a typical viraha theme, the two Sanskrit-derived

words paradesa (foreign country) and sandesa (message) are expertly linked with
a modified form of the Persian word andīshah (anxiety) to create beautiful
alliterative effects and internal rhyme.

The oeuvre of the Mughal poet Rahim is particularly rich in rhyme and clever
word play. His Nagarśobhā (Lament for the city) is a series of vignettes about the
traits of Indian women of different castes. The genre he employed was distinctly
Persian—Nagarśobhā has much in common with the shahrāshūb (disturber of the
city), conventional poems that celebrate the exquisite charms of a particular

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city's handsome youth—but his language is quintessentially vernacular.67 He

modifies both Sanskrit and Persian words freely to create interesting end
rhymes. The mahout's wife, who proudly rides atop an elephant while her
husband drives, is eulogized as follows:

The young woman donned bright yellow armor,

holding a quiver of arrows.
Indiscriminate in their destruction were
the arrow-glances of that haughty one riding alongside her lover.
Pīta kāṃci kañcuka tanahi, bālā gahe kalāba
Jāhi tāhi mārata phirai, apane piya ke tāba68

Here the Persian word tāb (generally heat, but also pride or passion) becomes
tāba in conformity with the target language's metrics. More striking is how the
Sanskrit word kalāpa (quiver) is cavalierly converted into kalāba so that it can fit
the rhyme scheme.69 The principle in evidence here is, “if the word doesn’t fit,
make it fit.”

In Rahim's barvai (short couplets) on the subject of nāyikābheda, he takes

another approach, cherry-picking words and forcing them into unusual linguistic
(p.95) and poetic molds. The addition of the suffix “va,” sometimes
accompanied by a shortening of the preceding vowel, produces a diminutive
effect in eastern Hindi dialects, but sounds highly incongruous in its repeated
application to highfalutin’ Sanskritic compounds, as in this illustration of the
madhyā vipralabdhā nāyikā (middling type of woman who is sad because her
lover did not keep the rendezvous, a subset of the aṣṭanāyikā system referenced
above):

She did not see Nanda's son in the pleasure-house.

Sighing long and hard, she became restless.
Dekhi na keli-bhavanavā, nandakumāra
Lai lai ūṃca usasavā, bhai bikarāra70

Forming a diminutive from a tatsama like “kelibhavana” (pleasure-house) is a

rather ludicrous thing to do, and the literary impact of the poem lies precisely in
this lexical play. Regal Sanskrit words are suddenly made cute. Nor are Persian
words spared, as in the treatment of “gumān” (pride/haughtiness) in this
example of an adhamā nāyikā (irascible woman):

Oh woman, don’t go and get in a huff all the time,

remaining angry until I shower you with rubies and pearls.
Berihi bera gumanavā, jani karu nāri
Mānika au gajamukutā, jau lagi bāri71

These unusual modifications of words to produce the impression of eastern

language are highly structured poetic effects that were no doubt encouraged by
the need to generate the right metrical weight in each part of the tightly

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controlled and ultra-concise barvai line.72 They are also the delightful
adventures of a prominent member of the Persian literati in the new territory of
vernacular poetry, a domain eminently suited to hybridity and experimentation.

Political Satire
Some instances of Brajbhasha's signature lexical hybridity are highly polemical.
A case in point is the Braj style adopted by Bhushan Tripathi, court poet to King
Shivaji (r. 1674–1680). Bhushan, like Keshavdas, is perfectly capable of using
recherché tatsamas, Sanskrit compounding techniques, and all manner of
classical poetic devices when he wishes, but several examples of fascinating
wordplay hinge on his manipulation of Persian words to devastating ironic effect.
The Śivrājbhūṣaṇ (Ornament to King Shivaji, 1673), his magnum opus written
shortly before the Maratha ruler's coronation, is ostensibly a rītigranth on the
subject of figures of speech, but the work doubles as a eulogy in which (p.96)
the example verses recount Shivaji's successes in battle and the laments of his
beleaguered enemies. Partly a celebration of the military feats of Bhushan's
famous patron, the Śivrājbhūṣaṇ also trenchantly articulates Shivaji's
disillusionment with the Mughal political establishment under Emperor
Aurangzeb.

A few stunning multilingual puns illustrate the unique ability of select Braj
words to be read simultaneously in both Sanskrit and Persian registers, which
here generate bitterly sarcastic effects. Note the play on pīra in these lines:

Shivaji, son of Shahji, struck such terror in the hearts of Muslim

nobles
that even the bravest lost their nerve.
Their affliction grew, causing them to forget the teachings of the
Sufis.
Sāhitanai sivarāja kī dhākani, chūṭị gaī dhṛti dhīranahū kī
Mīrana ke ura pīra barḥī yauṃ, ju bhūli gaī sudhī pīranahū kī

This punning technique depends on the repetition of a single word in multiple

senses, a figure of speech theorized as yamaka, “twinning,” in the classical
tradition.73 But here the effect is dramatically different from the doubling of
sheikh with Shesha(naga) in the verse from the Jahangirjascandrikā cited above.
The first usage of the word pīra yields the Sanskrit meaning pīḍā (affliction); in
the Persian lexicon, the same word as it is typically written in Braj can also mean
a Sufi pīr. A similar bilingual mocking of Shivaji's enemies is evident in:

There is no one in the world as merciful to the oppressed as you

And yet you wipe out the faith of the barbarians [here Muslims].
Dīnadāyalu na to so dunī aru mleccha ke dīnahiṃ māri miṭāvai74

Here dīna first occurs as part of a Sanskritized compound meaning “merciful to

the oppressed,” an entirely appropriate, if anodyne, kingly epithet for Shivaji.
The second half of the line, however, is anything but anodyne when we suddenly

Page 29 of 40

realize that the same word, dīna, has been used in the Arabic sense of religious
faith, which Shivaji is said to be obliterating. Here Bhushan with his signature
virtuosity inverts the stereotypical image of Aurangzeb's razing of Hindu
temples, highlighting that in his view a true Hindu king's concern with the
oppressed entails the oppression of the Muslim oppressor.

Another powerful instance of Bhushan's derisive multilingual wordplay is his

thematically brilliant but etymologically corrupt handling of Emperor
Aurangzeb's name. In Persian, the word aurangzīb is a flattering title, meaning
“adorning the throne.” In Bhushan's hands, the first part of the compound, (p.
97) “aurang” (throne), is transformed into “avaraṅga.” According to Braj
phonetics, this is a plausible enough pronunciation of the emperor's name, but it
also invokes the combination of the Sanskrit lexemes ava and raṅga, which
together mean something like “sickly pale”—a point that would have been
immediately apparent to a Sanskrit-trained Brahman like Bhushan or to
members of the Maratha court.75 This deliberate Sanskritization of the
emperor's Persian name suggests Aurangzeb's overwhelming trepidation in the
face of Shivaji, transforming his exalted title into a source of derision.

Another example of a Brajbhasha yamaka, this one a milder form of satire

ingeniously conceived by Lal Kavi, historian cum poet of the Panna court in
Bundelkhand, takes a different tack, Brajifying two distinct Persian words to
sound the same. Lal recounts how Mirza Raja Jai Singh enlisted the Panna ruler
Chatrasal Bundela and his brother Angad to fight in the Mughal army:

Chatrasal met with King Jai Singh and then summoned his brother
Angad.
Both were granted a manṣab and were happily reunited.
They remained with the Kurma Raja (Jai Singh)76
like the Pandavas in the realm of King Virata.
Even though the manṣab was not appropriate,
their hearts rejoiced.
Milikai nṛpa jayasimha sauṃ, angada lie bulāi
Manasiba bhayau duhūna kau, rahe sanga sukha pāi
Rahe sanga kūrama ke aise, nṛpa virāṭa ke paṇḍava jaise,
Yadyapi manasiba manasiba77 nāhīṃ, Saba taiṃ umagi adhika mana
māhīṃ78

It is impossible to capture in translation the finesse of line four of the original

Braj text with its play on the Perso-Arabic words manṣab (Mughal administrative
unit) and munāsib (appropriate). In Persian, these two words are completely
unrelated (the s's are written with the distinct letters ‫ ﺹ‬sād and ‫ ﺱ‬sīn,
respectively), but that is irrelevant to the poet. The vowel character and length
can also be fudged in Brajbhasha, allowing munāsib magically to become
manasiba and resulting in a clever pun based on two invented homonyms.79 The
choice of Brajified Persian words creates a Mughalizing effect appropriate to a

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scene in which two Rajput leaders are recruited into the Mughal army. Lal Kavi
simultaneously takes a potshot at the manṣabdārī system, a crucial component of
the Mughal political establishment that was fraying by the late seventeenth
century.80

Political unrest is also at the heart of a satirical verse from the Jangnāmā of
Shridhar, another instance of the historicism that infiltrated the early modern
(p.98) Braj corpus. This heavily Persianized Braj poem centers on the battle
between Farrukh Siyar and Jahandar Shah for the Delhi throne that led to the
ousting of the latter in 1713. Here is how Shridhar intimates his low opinion of
Jahandar Shah just at the turning point of the narrative:

One day Moizuddin [Jahandar Shah] was sitting,

intoxicated with wine.
He was filled with the urge to celebrate Navroz, so he gave the
order.
Just then he got the news that Farrukh Siyar had reached Kannauj,
and Aizuddin [Jahandar Shah's son] had fled,
taking the whole army with him.
Ika roja baiṭhe maujadī madirā baḍhāyo mauja ko
Utsāha soṃ cita cāi bhari kari hukuma navaroja ko
Tehi bīca āī khabari, āe farukh shāhi kanoja ko
Aru ejudīṃ bhāge lae hamarāha sigarī fauja ko81

Shridhar's satire depends on contrived rhymes, such as his inimitable pairing of

the Persian New Year festival Navroz with the Indian city of Kannauj, as well as
his deft manipulation of register. The name Moizuddin (a.k.a., Jahandar Shah),
which is supposed to be an elevated Arabic title (Mo’izz al-Dīn, “strengthener of
the faith”), is humorously lampooned by reducing it to Maujuddin, suggesting
that the emperor is a drunken playboy caught up in mauj-masti (frivolous
pleasure) and unfit to rule.

Vernacular Lawlessness in the Face of Modern Linguistic Regimes

The lexical variety of Braj poetry came under attack during the modern period
when the older style of Hindi was superseded by a revamped form of
Sanskritized Khari Boli that could be disciplined by grammar. In the manner of
so many things Indian under colonialism, Brajbhasha was constructed as faulty,
disorderly, and fatally medieval. The flexibility in usage we have been outlining
was decried as unsystematic toṛ-maroṛ (bending and twisting) rather than
appreciated for its expressive potential or its literary beauty.82 Braj's lack of
codified grammar was now taken metonymically to signify a pressing Indian
cultural lacuna. And for staunch Hindi and Hindu nationalists, Persianization
would come to symbolize the taint of Islamic conquest.

Like so much colonial and nationalist discourse, decrying Brajbhasha's

ungrammaticality as some worrisome Indian deficiency is profoundly misguided.
The workings of the Sanskrit language had been brilliantly studied and theorized
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by ancient Indian grammarians, giving birth to the sophisticated (p.99) field of

vyākaraṇa (language analysis). However, while of utmost importance to devavāṇī,
the language of the gods, grammar was not universally applicable to narabhāṣā,
the language of men. On just two occasions prior to colonialism had it been
considered necessary to write a grammar of Brajbhasha. The first instance is a
seventeenth-century text written for a Persianate audience: the Tuḥfat al-hind
(Gift of India, 1675) by Mirza Khan.83 The second, a Bhāṣāvyākaraṇ (Grammar of
the vernacular, 1717) attributed to Kavi Ratnajit, hails from Gujarat.84 The
technology of grammar was available to Indians. It was simply not implemented
for the Braj language (or any other North Indian vernacular in premodernity85),
presumably because it was considered unnecessary or somehow unsuitable for a
Bhasha.

The variability of Braj was never a liability in the judgment of early modern
Indians. Its inherent potential for diversity was in fact celebrated, even within
the relatively conservative paradigms of the rītigranth genre. In his Kāvyanirṇay
(Critical perspective on literature, 1746), Bhikharidas spoke enthusiastically of
Brajbhasha as a literary language beautifully mixed with Sanskrit and Persian.86
It is an arresting irony that some of Braj's literary power stems from its very
“corruptedness”—the one feature that Sanskrit by definition does not have.87
Some traditional Indian theorists were deeply suspicious of the truth value of
vernacular utterances, believing that “apabhraṣṭa [i.e., non-Sanskrit] language
communicates meaning only by reminding the listener of the original,
predialectal [i.e., Sanskrit] word from which the apabhraṣṭa word was presumed
to have been corrupted.”88 As late as the seventeenth century, the Sanskrit
philosopher Khandadeva, facing a radically changed sociolinguistic environment
but reluctant to give up on an older thought-world, argued that the language of
the mlecchas (barbarians, often Muslim speakers of Persian or Arabic) was not
even capable of signification.89 Meanwhile, Brajbhasha poets were adopting
mleccha words with great abandon. For a rīti writer, literary elegance was
possible in both Perso-Arabic and Sanskrit registers, and there was not only flair
in mixing them, but also a very wide range of new meanings and poetic
possibilities that could be explored.

Conclusion
To observe the rise of Brajbhasha court poetry in the Mughal period is to
observe a powerful new hybrid literary tradition in the making. It is to observe
Hindi in the process of becoming Hindi. The courtly writers of early modern
India wrote in bhakti and śṛṅgāra modes (often in the same poem). They crafted
martial ballads, some in the high kāvya registers long associated with Sanskrit
praśasti, and others in the more vernacular rāso idiom. They wrote histories, (p.
100) scholarly works, and intricately wrought multi-canto prabandha kāvyas.
Their concerns were both timeless and topical, and their corpus resists any
straitjacket that literary historians might try to fit on it.

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Perhaps most important, rīti literature developed an extraordinary capacity to

speak across cultural barriers to a wide variety of people in a way that neither
Persian nor Sanskrit could ever do. Although rīti literature's most obvious textual
antecedents were from the classical Sanskrit world, it also successfully
addressed contemporary Indo-Muslim communities, sometimes in their own
idiom. I do not want to give the impression that Braj writers suddenly started
churning out ghazals or mas̤navīs, two of the hallmark literary genres of the
Persian tradition. Some responded enthusiastically to the new poetic possibilities
of their multicultural world. Some responded enthusiastically but satirically, and
some hardly at all. Indeed, despite the close contact of a significant number of
early rīti writers with Indo-Muslim court culture, it remains surprising how few
Persian genres, motifs, and verse forms made it into the Braj repertoire.
Exposure to the tārīkh tradition may have encouraged Braj authors to
experiment with new forms of historical writing, as suggested above. Rahim's
Nagarśobhā resonates with the Persian tradition of shahrāshūb. And there are
certainly a few ideas from Persian poetry in rīti poetics, as when Rasnidhi (late
seventeenth century?) invokes the paradigmatic lovers Laila and Majnun or
Bodha (c. 1760?) adopts the dual Sufi framework of ‘ishq-i majāzī versus ‘ishq-i
ḥaqīqī (loosely: worldly versus spiritual love, respectively).90 It is also very likely
that the importance of rhyming couplets, and perhaps rhyme in general, to
Brajbhasha owes a debt to Persian literary culture.91 But the ability of Braj poets
to embrace newness had its limits; it is best to think of rīti literature as a cultural
arena with permeable but not completely open boundaries.

While rīti poets used the resources of Brajbhasha in variable and skillful ways,
they were especially amenable to lexical innovation. Responding creatively to
different contexts, they exploited the literary potential of their comparatively
lawless vernacular, “bending and twisting” Sanskrit and Hindi words and
introducing Persian ones. Some Braj writers opted to Sanskritize or Persianize in
accordance with the needs of a particular genre or patron. In writing a praśasti
to a Mughal emperor, Sanskritized style made good sense because of its long
history of underwriting royal authority, but Persianized language gave
contemporary rather than classical inflections to political rhetoric. In some
cases, the choice to Persianize reinforces an aesthetics of cultural
rapprochement, as when Kavindracharya stresses the ecumenicism of Shah
Jahan. In other cases, most dramatically in the poems of Bhushan, Mughal
politics and an unpopular emperor are handled with scathing reproach. For
some rīti (p.101) poets, however, politics was irrelevant; their goal was simply
to fashion the most beautiful verse possible with the best ingredients from any
language available.

Despite all the innovations in rīti poetry, the tradition remained profoundly
marked by its inheritance from Sanskrit, particularly the systems of aesthetic
moods, catalogues of female characters, and figures of speech so punctiliously
expounded in the rītigranth, which in terms of sheer abundance was the most
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important genre of Hindi courtly culture. Whether written in Sanskrit or in Braj,

alaṅkāraśāstra was a scholarly apparatus that calibrated aesthetic experience,
theorizing how it works in terms of both how poets produce it and how
audiences feel it. This is not to suggest that every reader, writer, or listener of
rīti poetry carefully studied a rulebook before stepping into an assembly, but the
existence of the system was a fundamental underpinning of literary practice. At
stake in these vernacular rītigranths was the continuation of an ancient and
normative set of both compositional and interpretative principles for poetry. The
vernacularization of an ancient domain of Indian śāstra was also a significant
development in Indian intellectual history.

Notes:
(1.) For more information about the formal features of Brajbhasha poetry, Snell
1991a is an excellent resource.

(2.) See the discussion of his conception of doṣas (flaws), especially the
andhadoṣa (flaw of blindness), in the next chapter.

(3.) Typical such formulations are by Satyadev Chaudhari (1973: 237) and
Sudhakar Pandey (1999: 5–7).

(4.) Vijaypal Singh (1998: 10) and Kishorilal (1993: 9), both important scholars
of Keshavdas, rue this misguided assessment of the Braj tradition's pioneering
classical poet.

(5.) Cited by Anandnarayan Sharma (1970: 41).

(6.) On the philosophical necessity of allowing for the truth claims of others, an
idea that can perhaps be loosely extended to the hermeneutics of aesthetic texts,
see Davidson 2001.

(7.) Pritchett 1994 is an excellent account of the tyranny of Romanticist

aesthetics in the reform of Urdu literature during the colonial period.

(8.) Recall K. B. Jindal's criticism of Keshavdas for drawing on Dandin, cited in

the opening pages of this book.

(9.) Cf. Losensky 1998: 100–33.

(10.) Although my focus here is the interface with Sanskrit, some rīti genres like
the satsaī (collection of seven hundred poems) also have roots in Prakrit. On the
complex literary antecedents of the Bihārīsatsaī, a rīti masterpiece, see Holland
1969: 44–99.

(11.) Keshavdas defines a nāyaka as follows: “A hero is self-confident, willing to

sacrifice, young, and skilled in the arts of love. He should be charismatic,

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tolerant, handsome, wealthy, well-groomed, and always from a good family.”

Rasikpriyā, 2.1.

(12.) The initial meeting of lovers is called pūrvānurāga, which was also
described in accordance with specific literary codes. For a brief discussion of
this concept, as well as a general introduction to the structure of a rītigranth,
see chapter 1.

(13.) On the Indian portrait traditions that were more or less contemporary with
the rīti literature commissioned at Rajput courts, see Aitken 2002.

(14.) Literally “curved like a pot,” referencing the curved shape of a terra cotta
container that women carry on their heads.

(15.) Sakuntalā nāṭak, v. 28.

(16.) A careful reader of Nevaj will certainly appreciate some of his variations on
the classical story (he dispenses with the vidūṣaka or buffoon character, for
instance) as well as the pleasing rhythms and clever word play of the original
Braj, such as his pairing of the phrases bālapana ko ayānapa and sakhina so
sayānapa.

(17.) This verse extends the imagery of the previous lines by likening the
women's dazzling white pearl ornaments and their (vermilion-filled red) part on
a backdrop of black hair to the triveṇī or confluence of three rivers in Prayag.
(The Ganges River is conventionally white in color, the Sarasvati red, and the
Yamuna black.)

(18.) Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, vv. 22.51–57, 22.59–62, 22.66.

(19.) Kavipriyā, 7.14.

(20.) Sakuntalā nāṭak, v. 67.

(21.) Māncarit, v. 117.

(22.) Kavipriyā, 6.38. The same verse also occurs as an example of rādhikā ko
prakāśa viyoga śṛṅgāra (Radha's manifest love in separation) in Rasikpriyā, 1.25.

(23.) This important Hindi genre, shared across folk, bhakti, Sufi, and courtly
contexts, has been elucidated by Charlotte Vaudeville (1986); Shyam Manohar
Pandey (1999); and Francesca Orsini (2010).

(24.) On Anandavardhana, see Ingalls 1990 and McCrea 2008. Some Braj
writers, notably Bhikharidas in his Kāvyanirṇay, also treat dhvani theory.

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(25.) Kavipriyā, 5.1. In fact, according to an earlier verse (Kavipriyā, 3.7),

Keshavdas considered poetry without alaṅkāras to be “naked” and therefore
flawed.

(26.) A masterful study of the Sanskrit śleṣa tradition is Bronner 2010. A few
examples of Keshavdas's use of śleṣa that occur in his verses about courtesans in
the Kavipriyā were noted in chapter 1. Also see below for a śleṣa poem that is
simultaneously about the Mughal emperor Jahangir and the Hindu god Indra.

(27.) Lalitlalām, vv. 182–83.

(28.) Kavipriyā, 9.15–16, preferring the reading kari for saba and sīro for jīro, as
printed in Lala Bhagvandin's Priyāprakāś.

(29.) Although there are a few notable early exceptions such as Dandin and
Udbhata, the general practice from the ninth century until c. 1500 was for the
theoretical and literary function to remain separate. Pollock 2009: xxiv–xxv.

(30.) There were Sanskrit precedents for this masterful conciseness. The
Kuvalayānanda (Joy of the water lily, 16th century) of Appayya Dikshita and the
Candrāloka (Moonlight, 13th century) of Jayadeva are two well-known examples.
Another from the later Braj tradition is Dulah Trivedi's Kavikulkaṇṭhābharaṇ
(Necklace of the community of poets, 18th century).

(31.) Bhāsābhūṣaṇ, v. 177. This verse is comparable to Kuvalayānanda, v. 153,

although Jaswant Singh has modified both the name of the alaṅkāra and the
example verse. The example verse has elements of the vastudhvani or
“suggestion with reference to content” theorized by Anandavardhana (compare,
for instance, Dhvanyāloka, p. 71), but Jaswant Singh, apparently following
Appayya Dikshita, has preferred to theorize such scenarios as literary ornaments
rather than giving credence to dhvani theory. On Appayya Dikshita's
Kuvalayānanda as a response to the domination of dhvani-centered poetics, see
Bronner 2004: 65–73.

(32.) Barvaināyikābhed, v. 6.

(33.) The navoṛhā and ajñātayauvanā nāyikā are illustrated in ibid., v. 11 and v. 9,
respectively.

(34.) As explicated in Rasikpriyā, 7.36–41.

(35.) Rasikpriyā, 7.28–29.

(36.) Rasikpriyā, 7.7–9. According to the commentator Surati Mishra, the reason
we know this verse outlines a case of prakāśā utkā is that the sakhī is given the

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epithet sukhadāī (giver of comfort or pleasure), signaling a servant's role.

Jorāvarprakāś, p. 185.

(37.) Rasikpriyā, 7.34–35. 384 is a typical count, according to S.K. De (1988:

271, cited in Hawley 2005: 170). Bhanudatta even raises the possibility of 1152
permutations but rejects it. See Pollock 2009: xxxv.

(38.) Bryant 1978: 21–24.

(39.) The disparagement of rīti literary styles by Hindi writers of the nationalist
period is a major theme of chapter 6.

(40.) The classic formulation is Richman 1991.

(41.) A comparable situation obtains for Persian and Urdu poetry of the early
modern period. See this chapter, n. 9 and Faruqi 1999.

(42.) Pollock 1985.

(43.) R. S. McGregor (1984: 118) proposes that the characteristic rīti kavitts and
savaiyās were “chanted or sung.”

(44.) Rādhāmādhavavilāsacampū, p. 233.

(45.) At least one rīti poet, Chintamani Tripathi, was patronized by Shahaji
Bhonsle. A few related details about the performance of Chintamani's poetry in a
Mughal maḥfil are discussed in chapter 4.

(46.) Bihārīsatsaī, v. 11.

(47.) Lālcandrikā, p. 36.

(48.) Sheldon Pollock (2006) has recently demonstrated how the “language of
the gods” had a distinctly more urbane existence in the “world of men.”

(49.) On the blurring of such distinctions, see Dehejia 2009. Some modern
commentators on the rīti tradition have disapproved of this boundary-crossing
between śṛṅgāra and bhakti forms, seeing rīti as a corrupted form of bhakti,
whereby Radha and Krishna began to be depicted in terms of courtly luxury
rather than with appropriate reverence. See, for example, the remarks by
Sudhakar Pandey (1999: 4–5).

(50.) Snell 1992.

(51.) New (or in some cases retooled) Rajasthani genres like the vigat and khyāt,
as well as more transregional Braj styles, were adopted by courts whose patrons
were developing an interest in history. See Ziegler 1976 and chapter 5.

(52.) Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam 2003.

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(53.) Māncarit, v. 122.

(54.) ibid., v. 219. The English translation is only an approximation of the Dingal
(laced with Marwari) text, which contains many onomatopoeic words that are
difficult to render literally.

(55.) The techniques of vaiṇa sagāī, a staple of Dingal poetry, are helpfully
elucidated in Kamphorst 2008: 89–108.

(56.) Deshpande 1993 discusses some of the gaps between theory and practice.
Bronner and Shulman 2006 make a powerful case for the influence of region on
the usages of Sanskrit poets. Also germane to the rīti context is the work of
Truschke (2007), who illustrates how Persian words are occasionally adopted by
Sanskrit writers in Mughal texts. One example by Rahim is Kheṭa-kautukam. See
Das 1997.

(57.) Rasikpriyā, 3.66.

(58.) Himmatbahādurvirudāvalī, v. 76. Onomatopoeic renditions of battle scenes

are, of course, attested elsewhere in Sanskrit and Hindi literature. See
Lutgendorf (1991: 31) for a powerful line by Tulsi in a similar vein.

(59.) Vijñāngītā, 1.1

(60.) This interpretation is based on the modern Hindi translation of the verse by
Kishorilal. Jahāngīrjascandrikā, v. 114. A second translation of the verse from the
Indra pakṣa (perspective):

See how the emperor Jahangir is as astonishing as the god Indra.

In his court all kinds of wise deities are present:
Venus and Karttikeya, the clever moon, learned Jupiter,
the sun, Ganesha, Shiva, Sheshanaga,
Brahma, Kamadeva, Vishnu, the Vidyadharas and their lovers,
and the apsaras like Manjughosha to captivate a man's heart.
Indra is a capable ruler in every respect—
he is kind to the deserving, and harsh toward those who break the
law.

(61.) The deliberate conflating of a king with divinity is a typical use of śleṣa. See
Bronner 2010: 6, 85.

(62.) In Braj, the Sanskrit phoneme “ṣa” is routinely pronounced, and often
written, “kha.”

(63.) Kavīndrakalpalatā, p. 4, v. 8.

(64.) ibid., p. 6, v. 13.

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(65.) Kavindra's political intercessions with Shah Jahan are discussed in chapter
4.

(66.) Bhāsābhūṣaṇ, v. 204. This verse is an example of upanāgarikā bṛtti, or

“sophisticated repetition.”

(67.) The Indo-Persian shahrāshūb, is discussed by Sunil Sharma (2011).

(68.) Nagarśobhā, v. 131 (here taking kāṃci from the verb kācnā, to wear); there
is a lovely play on the word kañcuka, which means both armor and blouse;
kalāpa is construed in the sense of arrow/quiver, as attested in Apte 1957: 546.
The context for this terse couplet is set by the previous verse.

(69.) In Nastaliq, the letters “be” and “pe “are not always distinguished, which
would make this a more legitimate rhyme in Persian script than in Nagari.

(70.) Barvaināyikābhed, v. 63. Compare “gulabavā” (rose) in v. 18 and

“kopabhavanavā” (anger-house) in v. 49. Rahim's distinctive use of Avadhi
diminutives has also been remarked by McGregor 1984: 122 and Snell 1994a:
382.

(71.) Barvaināyikābhed, v. 5. The subtext is that the nāyaka has been with
another woman, causing the nāyikā to contract a case of gurumāna or serious
jealous rage, a remedy for which is a significant investment in jewelry.

(72.) An informative discussion of the barvai, with its distinctively short nineteen
mātras per line, is Snell 1994a.

(73.) The apt translation “twinning” is that of Bronner 2010: 21.

(74.) Śivrājbhūṣaṇ, vv. 110, 167.

(75.) See, for instance, Śivrājbhūṣaṇ, vv. 58, 74, 113. In this last the satire is
further heightened by the paired rhyme badaraṅga (ill-colored, from Persian
badrang).

(76.) I believe Lal Kavi here references the Kachhwaha title Kurma (as used by
Narottam in Māncarit).

(77.) I have standardized the printed “manasiva” to “manasiba.” Possibly the

text's editor was reproducing a tendency in the original, and one attested in
many Braj manuscripts, not to distinguish the character “ba” from “va.”

(78.) Chatraprakāś, p. 79. As reported in the fourth book of the Mahābhārata the
Pandavas spent their last of thirteen stipulated years in exile in disguise at the
court of King Virata, who gave them shelter.

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(79.) This is not unlike Bhushan's fudging of the word pīra, discussed above. Also
recall from chapter 1 Keshavdas's play on the word prabīna/parabīna, which
means Pravin Ray, clever person, and rival lute player.

(80.) Tensions in the manṣabdārī system are generally held to be a factor in the
weakening of the Mughal state under Aurangzeb. Asher and Talbot 2006: 235–
36.

(81.) Jangnāmā, v. 201.

(82.) Ramchandra Shukla singled out Bhushan in particular as a culprit. See

Shukla 1994: 132–33, 141.

(83.) Grammar is only one of many topics of this fascinating work, which also
contains the most important early discussion of Braj rhyme. Some premodern
efforts to regulate the lexicography of Braj are explored in McGregor 2001.

(84.) Mallison 2011: 174 (citing the edition by Bhayani and Patel).

(85.) Notes on the Grammar of Tulsidas by Edwin Greaves makes for amusing
reading today because of the stark mismatch between the British colonial
approach to standardizing Indian languages and the delightful lawlessness of
premodern poetic practice. Greaves gamely tried to explain the famous poet's
bewildering array of Avadhi usages, even if he had to admit that “any attempt to
voice all the modifications and changes to which a word is liable in the hands of
Tulsi Das would be quite vain” (1895: 9).

(86.) Kāvyanirṇay, 1.14. Bhikharidas's theorizations are discussed more fully in

the next chapter.

(87.) See chapter 1.

(88.) Pollock 2006: 309.

(89.) Pollock 2007: 212–16.

(90.) On Rasnidhi, see Shukla 1994: 189; on Bodha, see Prakash 2003: 81.

(91.) Holland 1969: 105. Holland also traces some of Biharilal's themes to
precedents in Persian poetry, such as “the satirical description of beauty” and
“the exaggeration of female delicacy.”

Access brought to you by:

Page 40 of 40

Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Brajbhasha Intellectuals
Allison Busch

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter surveys the archive of Brajbhasha scholarship on poetics with
special reference to the Rasikpriyā of Keshavdas (fl. 1600), the Kavikulkalptaru
of Chintamani Tripathi (fl. 1650), and the Kāvyanirṇay of Bhikharidas (fl. 1740).
Rīti scholarly traditions have been wrongly derided as derivative of classical
works and the corpus, like too much of premodern Indian intellectual history,
ignored. A fine-grained reading of both primary works and commentaries reveals
the crucial interplay between innovation and tradition that was at the heart of
the rīti enterprise. Different ways of viewing and marking change are explored,
as are the techniques and worldviews of early modern scholars. Another major
theme is vernacularization, the process by which Brajbhasha began to supersede
Sanskrit as a language of poetry and intellectual life, with major consequences
for the rise of Hindi as we know it today.

Keywords: intellectual history, vernacularization, Keshavdas, Rasikpriyā, Chintamani Tripathi,

Kavikulkalptaru, Bhikharidas, Kāvyanir ṇay, commentaries

Everybody says Brajbhasha is equivalent to the language of the gods.

—Krishna Kavi

Vernacular Scholarship in Early Modern India

Now acquainted with the most important poetic contours of the rīti tradition,
including elements of the Sanskrit systems that helped to shape it, in this
chapter we look more closely at the characteristics of rītigranths themselves as
documents of early modern intellectual life. A new community of Bhasha writers
that was garnering unprecedented attention in the courtly circles of early

Page 1 of 32

modern India, rī̄ti poets were positioning themselves as new authorities on

literary practice. Key to this effort was the development of a knowledge
infrastructure: a new vernacular domain of śāstra, or systematic thought. While
a comprehensive understanding of the vernacular intellectual topography of this
period would require far more investigation than is possible here, reasonably
satisfactory data are available for the field of alaṅkāraśāstra, which was at any
rate the principal scholarly concern of Brajbhasha writers.

Works of poetic theory in the rī̄tigranth genre have come down to us in

astonishing quantities from this period. Since many texts by lesser authors (and
even some by famous ones) remain unpublished, nobody really knows how many
of them exist, but a conservative estimate based on surveying some of the most
important manuscript (p.103) catalogues is five hundred independent treatises,
and the actual number may well be over a thousand. Nearly every Brajbhasha
court poet penned a rītigranth; some authors, such as Keshavdas and Surati
Mishra, wrote multiple works addressing the major topics.1 These rītigranths
were for the most part fairly straightforward treatises on female characters,
figures of speech, and metrics. Some, however, are more extensive reworkings
of Sanskrit śāstras, and a few were by all appearances written with the intention
of contributing new insight to centuries-old Indian literary debates. This massive
commitment to rhetoric of early modern Braj writers was partly underwritten by
the patronage of Rajput courts. The fascination of some Indo-Muslim
connoisseurs with India's poetic heritage was another factor in the tradition's
broad appeal. The rise of rīti scholarship also reflects the diligent efforts of an
increasingly vernacular kavikul, or community of poets, to keep alive an ancient
system of literary science.

One goal of this chapter is to understand the precise nature of Brajbhasha

alaṅkāraśāstra. The concerns of rīti writers were in some respects fundamentally
different from those of their Sanskrit counterparts. From the seventh century
(Bhamaha) to the seventeenth (Jagannatha), Sanskrit culture continued to
update new theory with impressive regularity, expounding new theories of
literary signification, renouncing or reconfiguring the older ones, or debating
the locus and method of producing rasa. By contrast, Braj authors were
generally not interested in tackling the big theoretical questions in the same
way.2 The rīti approach to the “Sanskrit shadow,” the inferiority complex that
disquieted early vernacular writers, was not to rebel against it but actively to
engage with it, tapping into the cultural cachet of a major classical literary
tradition.3 Sanskrit predecessors were invoked by both direct and indirect
quotation; foundational classics were translated and reworked. As noted,
Keshavdas based his Rasikpriyā in large part on an earlier Sanskrit text, the
Śṛṅgāratilaka of Rudrabhatta. In composing his Kavipriyā, he worked closely
with three different Sanskrit source texts: Dandin's Kāvyādarśa (Mirror of
poetry, seventh century), Amaracandra Yati's Kāvyakalpalatāvṛtti (Vine of poetic
imagination with extended commentary, c. 1250) and Keshava Mishra's
Page 2 of 32

Alaṅkāraśekhara (Crown of figuration, c. 1560). Chintamani Tripathi (fl. 1650),

the elder brother of Matiram and Bhushan, whose poetry we have already
encountered, was indebted to the great Sanskrit theoreticians Mammata,
Vidyanatha, Dhananjaya, and Appayya Dikshita. Some rīti poets (like
Chintamani) acknowledged their debt, whereas others (like Keshavdas)
remained completely silent about their sources.4 Regardless, it can often be
conclusively demonstrated that one or more Sanskrit sources hovers some
where in the background of a given rīti text. This emphatically does not mean,
however, that rīti writers should be dismissed (p.104) as mere plagiarists. For
starters, the modern notion of plagiarism carries assumptions about authorship
and individuality that are not generally pertinent to India during this period.5
Rīti authors employed a highly nuanced form of appropriation. Still, it is fair to
say that the scholarly practices of rīti intellectuals were largely based in a
Sanskrit worldview.

While Sanskrit alaṅkāraśāstra is a well studied set of knowledge practices,

researching its Braj counterpart presents challenges. Premodern commentaries,
a staple of Indic literary hermeneutics, are almost invariably printed in editions
of Sanskrit texts, but this never became a habit in Hindi publishing. Of all the
Indian regional languages, only Brajbhasha has a substantial commentarial
tradition, and that we know so little about it constitutes a major scholarly
lacuna. Braj commentaries merit a far more extensive analysis than can be
attempted here, but where possible I draw on this important corpus, a window
onto the precolonial kavikul and the workings of the rīti textual enterprise. Of the
numerous extant works of rīti scholarship, a representative sample, drawn
especially from leading theorists such as Keshavdas, Chintamani, and
Bhikharidas, affords substantial insight into how rīti intellectuals understood
their roles as scholars and littérateurs. Their own perspectives are often
fundamentally at odds with modern conceptions of the rīti tradition, which
suggests the need to reassess this intellectual culture. Throughout this chapter,
the emphasis is on accessing the premodern Hindi tradition's own procedures,
hermeneutics, and literary canons, because the goals are to learn to see from
the vantage point of the writers who participated in it and to analyze the idioms
in which vernacular pioneers like Keshavdas found the voice to speak. In trying
to understand the raison d’être for rīti traditions and in developing hypotheses
about the period's conceptual landscape, one is forced to piece together snippets
of data—a few introductory lines here, a colophon there—teasing out their
implications. Sometimes it is seemingly by accident that an author reveals how
he perceived his place in the intellectual life of his day, why he undertook the
project of writing a śāstra or commentary, what his methods were, and—of
particular interest in the formulations of this chapter—what it meant to him to
now be using Brajbhasha instead of Sanskrit.

Page 3 of 32

The Paradox of Vernacular Newness

The implications for Indian intellectual history of a centuries-old tradition of
literary scholarship in Brajbhasha are not well understood, but a few painstaking
studies of select works of rīti alaṅkāraśāstra do exist. Refreshingly, rather than
seeing the enterprise as marking a lamentable decline from Sanskrit, (p.105)
several scholars have undertaken to identify the contributions of rīti
rhetoricians, arguing for both the ācāryatva (intellectual merit) and the mauliktā
(originality) of their treatises on poetics.6 I take my cue from them, operating
from the premise that Braj writers grappled in meaningful ways with their
classical heritage, seeking to move it forward in new directions.

In the last chapter, it was proposed that modern literary values such as prizing
originality and despising conventionality are hindrances to a culturally
appropriate hermeneutics of Braj court poetry. What will be helpful in the
discussion of alaṅkāraśāstra here is a willingness to recognize forms of
intellectual virtuosity and change that are small rather than grandiose in scale.
Surveying the corpus of rīti scholarship as a whole makes it clear that Braj
rhetoricians felt the tradition they inherited to be largely still relevant and thus
not in need of a complete overhaul. Indeed, the very thought that ancient
classical norms should be questioned, much less rejected, would have struck
many scholars of the day as profoundly misguided. And yet change did prove
necessary. More than a millennium had passed since the foundations of Sanskrit
poetic theory had been laid. The mere fact that Keshavdas abandoned the path
of his ancestors to begin a career as a vernacular scholar and poet meant that
he, and those who followed in his footsteps, would embrace tremendous change.
Brajbhasha writers responded to the Sanskrit tradition by making painstaking
and deliberate alterations to the ancient śāstras, alterations that on occasion
require a comparable degree of attentiveness and deliberation to excavate. But
this archaeological expedition, at times deeply philological and perhaps even
arcane to the non-specialist, is necessary to demonstrate how Braj pandits
thought and worked.

For all their apparent radicalism in eschewing the time-honored language of

courtly intellectual life, and even in some cases trumpeting their vernacular
works as new theorizations, most Brajbhasha scholars also seem keen to insist
that they have not departed from existing Sanskrit traditions. This somewhat
paradoxical nature of vernacular newness is well illustrated by the logic and
concerns of chapter three of Keshavdas's Kavipriyā. After preliminary chapters
about his court and himself, the author embarks upon his treatment of
alaṅkāraśāstra with the much-discussed subject of doṣas, literary flaws that mar
the beauty of poetry. In composing this compendium of introductory literary
principles, Keshavdas does not strictly follow Dandin's Kāvyādarśa, otherwise a
major Sanskrit source for the Kavipriyā. His opening gambit is instead to lay out

Page 4 of 32

several entirely new categories of doṣas by analogizing flawed poetry to various

forms of physical impairment:

(p.106) Flaws are a serious liability in poetry, women, and friends. A tiny
drop of liquor renders the whole jug of Ganges water impure. They say
never to make a Brahman one's dependent (negī), to make friends with
fools, or to serve an ungrateful master. Also avoid flaws in poetry. The wise
pronounce poetry flawed when it is blind, deaf, lame, naked, or dead
(mṛtaka). “Blind” poetry contravenes tradition (birodhī pantha ko), and
“deaf ” poetry has no sense of the harmony of words. “Lame” poetry is
unmetrical. “Naked” poetry lacks ornamentation. “Dead” poetry is
meaningless. So says Keshavdas. Listen, clever people.7

So far the discussion is completely new. Upon closer investigation, however, the
poet's innovation would appear to be not only measured but seriously
compromised. The first flaw, the andhadoṣa (flaw of blindness), an entirely
original Keshavdasian category, proscribes poems that violate tradition. Now, the
very act of forging a new vernacular style and writing some of the earliest
treatises on Brajbhasha poetics means that in some important sense Keshavdas
did question the supremacy of Sanskrit and thereby violated tradition. Yet the
new “flaw” of “contravening tradition” helps to capture the very special
character of Braj poetic theory, which sought energetically to maintain the
validity of the classical Indic literary system even while transgressing it.

As is the standard procedure in a rītigranth, Keshavdas reinforces his definition

of the andhadoṣa with an example verse that develops his point. This takes the
form of a parody and serves as a warning about the potential aesthetic disaster
that lies in wait for an inexperienced poet striking out on his own:

Seeing her soft lotus-like breasts in bloom,

the moon face of her lover beams in delight.
Her eyes dart quickly like monkeys,
the corners red like Sindur powder.
Her lower lip is sweet like butter.
Seeking metaphors for her beauty, Keshavdas despairs.
There she stands, that desirable woman,
like lightning or a roaming deer—
she moves slowly like an elephant.8

The mixed metaphors and infelicities in this verse are painfully obvious to any
experienced reader of Sanskrit poetry. Note how the most egregious errors
concern the flagrant disregard for tradition. First of all, a woman's breasts
should be firm like lotus buds, not soft like blooming lotuses. The images in the
next line are a precarious combination because according to classical literary
(p.107) thinking the moon causes certain lotuses to wither. In line three,
Keshavdas's imaginary clumsy poet gets one image right—the part about

Page 5 of 32

women's eyes darting quickly—but when it comes to the upamāna (standard of

comparison), he makes a serious blunder in choosing the animal: in Sanskrit
poetry beautiful women are mṛga-nayanī—doe-eyed, not monkey-eyed.
Furthermore, when it is a question of the movement of eyes, the mīna (fish) or
khañjana (wagtail) are preferable images because they are consecrated by
tradition as metaphors for fast-moving objects.9 In line five, the hapless poet has
bungled things again. Lower lips are indeed soft and sweet, but they should be
compared to the red bimba fruit—not to pale yellow butter. The message any
would-be poet takes away from this opening passage of the Kavipriyā is that
vernacular composition must be rooted in classical imagery. In short,
Keshavdas's foundational premise of vernacular poetics automatically constrains
its potential for innovation. This striking of a careful balance between innovation
and adherence to tradition is not peculiar to Keshavdas; it continued to define
the scholarly comportment of many Brajbhasha intellectuals.

Chintamani Tripathi, one of the most important Braj theorists of the mid-
seventeenth century, expresses a similar logic about the nature of vernacular
newness in the opening to his Kavikulkalptaru (Wish-fulfilling tree for the family
of poets, c. 1670):

I, Chintamani, have carefully considered the precepts of books written in

the language of the gods [i.e., Sanskrit], and I am expounding a theory of
vernacular literature … I describe the system of vernacular literature
according to my intellectual ability (budha anusāra).10

If his word choices have the significance I think they do, Chintamani viewed
himself not so much as a translator of his Sanskrit source texts but as a scholar
engaged in a new vicāra (theorization) of bhāṣā kavita (vernacular literature).
The statement “according to my intellectual ability” further suggests not just the
poet's modesty, but also that he is providing his own perspective. Evidently, the
very enterprise of writing new literary theory in Brajbhasha was not only
complicated but also epistemologically fraught. That it could be done only upon
consulting Sanskrit precepts reveals a core dependency on the classical
language. This dependency is in evidence throughout the work. Far from
trumpeting some new vernacular theory, the Kavikulkalptaru is mostly
concerned with laying out the fundamental structures of Sanskrit theoretical
discourses on literature. Chintamani's style is to mix and match key treatments
of particular topics from various Sanskrit authors. And yet for all the work's
intellectual debts, it is ultimately a successful, rigorous example of Braj śāstra.
Rarely is the (p.108) discussion of any given topic taken wholly from one
author. Chintamani chooses the treatments he considers most cogent,
reconfiguring them into a new synthetic account. The Kavikulkalptaru is
pervaded by the implicit logic that Brajbhasha intellectuals saw their literary

Page 6 of 32

culture as a continuation of Sanskrit practice rather than an entirely separate

sphere.

A similar emphasis on tweaking and rearranging past theories is attested

throughout the rīti corpus. Kulapati Mishra, an exact contemporary of
Chintamani who served the Amber court, reworked Mammata's authoritative
Kāvyaprakāśa (Light on poetry, eleventh century) in his major rītigranth, the
Rasrahasya (The secret of literary emotion, 1670). In the process of transmitting
Mammata's theories about literature to his early modern Braj readers, Kulapati
did not hesitate to add a few ideas of his own. One of Mammata's most famous
verses is his Kāvyalakṣaṇa (definition of poetry). (p.109) Kulapati is careful to
cite this in the opening to Rasrahasya, but he prefaces it with a definition of his
own making:

Poetry consists of sound and sense. It affords wondrous rapture in

this world.
I fashioned this definition after mastering numerous works.
Jagataiṃ adbhuta sukhasadana, śabda’ru artha kavitta
Yaha lakṣana mai ne kiyo, samujhi grantha bahu citta11

Like Chintamani, Kulapati tells us that he has consulted many books before
arriving at his own position, suggesting, again, the weighty influence of the
Sanskrit past on a new vernacular domain of scholarship. But this did not
preclude the possibility of new knowledge. On the contrary, when Kulapati
presents his definition of poetry he not only puts it ahead of Mammata's but also
boldly foregrounds his own authorship (mai ne kiyo). His colophon also contains
a revealing statement about how he conceptualized his scholarly mission:

I have presented the categories succinctly, according to my own

understanding.
Poets and connoisseurs, read them thoroughly and consider them.
I have presented figures of both sound and sense in accordance with
Mammata,
giving definitions and example verses of all the tropes at great
length.
Kahe bheda saṃkṣepa so, apanī mati anusāra,
Kavi suhṛdaya saba pāra kari, ina ko karo vicāra
Sabda artha aru duhuna ko, mamāṭa mati anusāra
Kahe lakṣya lakṣana, sakala alaṅkāra vistāra12

Kulapati's paired phrases apanī mati anusāra and mamāṭa (i.e., Mammata) mati
anusāra perfectly encapsulate how Brajbhasha rītigranths are new and old at the
same time, the creative products of early modern writers who were deeply
immersed in classical thought.

Page 7 of 32

“According to My Own Understanding”

Premodern indexes of literary and intellectual change are not always easy to
gauge. Such markers often have to be excavated, and we risk missing the signs
if we adhere too closely to the paradigm of how change looks from the viewpoint
of Western modernity. Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā is a particularly good instantiation
of how early vernacular scholarship manifests newness. At first glance, the work
appears to be a very close adaptation of the Śṛṅgāratilaka (Ornament of
passion), composed by the Sanskrit rhetorician Rudrabhatta in perhaps the
eleventh century.13 Keshavdas takes up most of the same subjects (and mostly in
the same order) as his source, and when he uses identical vocabulary in the
definition verses, his reliance on Rudrabhatta is proven beyond a doubt. Looking
no further than these obvious similarities, it would be easy to conclude,
erroneously, that Keshavdas simply appropriated the theories of his Sanskrit
predecessor. The reality is much more interesting. The Śṛṅgāratilaka may be
Keshavdas's guide through the principles of alaṅkāraśāstra, but as often as not
he veers off on his own detours.

One such detour is to invent variations on his predecessor's bhedas or

organizing categories, particularly in places where the original Sanskrit text
handles its subject in a cursory, even desultory fashion. Take the Śṛṅgāratilaka's
treatment of milana-sthāna (lovers’ meeting places). Rudrabhatta lists a few
occasions for lovers’ rendezvous briskly, in a single verse, and then considers the
subject closed, not bothering to furnish even one example. Keshavdas, seizing an
opportunity for creative ramification, develops the kernel of Rudrabhatta's idea
into a significant component of an entirely new chapter on the courting of lovers,
adding many original example verses as well as proposing entirely new
categories of his own.14 In this verse, Keshavdas presents the ingenious idea of
an atibhaya ko milana, meeting during an emergency (figure 3.1):

Hearing that the house next door to Vrishabhanu15 had caught fire,
the residents of Braj fled, scattering in all directions.
Pandemonium reigned, as men and women jostled,
confounded, calling out in grief.
Seeing the commotion, Kanha rushed to free the parrot and mynah
bird
and woke up Radha and the other young women.
(p.110) Radha, delicate like a campā garland, looked wide-eyed at
Lal
as he took her into his arms and stole a kiss.16

As though to hold up a signboard proclaiming his innovations, Keshavdas closes

this particular chapter with a statement that proves to be the refrain of rīti poet-
intellectuals: “I have composed this passage according to my own

Page 8 of 32

(p.111) understanding.”17
However else one might view
Keshavdas's relationship to
Sanskrit tradition, in the writer's
own estimation, he intended to
create new knowledge.
In the poem just cited,
Keshavdas also localizes his
theme to a specifically Braj
milieu, for if classical Sanskrit
alaṅkāraśāstra was his main
wellspring, early modern bhakti
styles also contributed in
significant ways to the shaping
of his scholarly approaches.
Rudrabhatta happens to have
been a Shaiva, not a Vaishnava,
but religion was in any case
irrelevant to his theorization of
literature. The focus on god in
the Śṛṅgāratilaka occurs just figure 3.1 Meeting during an emergency
where one would expect it to: in (atibhaya ko milana), from Keshavdas's
the opening maṅgalācaraṇa Rasikpriyā, Mewar c. 1660
(invocation) and nowhere else. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian
In the Rasikpriyā, in contrast, Institution, Washington, D.C.: Purchase, F
Radha and Krishna are 1998.309
omnipresent, with nearly every
definition in the work followed
by alternating sequences of example verses lovingly devoted to each deity.

Keshavdas's reverence for Radha and Krishna underpins numerous points of

theoretical divergence from his Sanskrit predecessor. Not all of Keshavdas's
innovations are in the service of his bhakti, but many are. For instance, whereas
neither he nor Rudrabhatta approves of literary representations of lovers who
pine so much for their beloved as to reach the point of death (maraṇāvasthā),
Rudrabhatta eschews the category on wholly aesthetic grounds, because such
poems lack beauty (asaundaryāt); for Keshavdas, in contrast, the crucial point is
that his poems are about a god, and he could not possibly describe the death of
an immortal deity.18

When it comes to the three broad types of nāyikās that had been recognized by
Sanskrit theoreticians from time immemorial, Keshavdas entirely omits one of
the categories, the sāmānyā nāyikā (courtesan), again trumpeting the decision as
a deliberate departure from tradition based on his own reasoning:

Page 9 of 32

And as for the third type of nāyikā, why should I describe her here? The
best poets have said that one should not ruin good poetry by including
tasteless (birasa) subjects. Here I have described all the nāyikās according
to my own understanding of them.19

The omission of the sāmānyā nāyikā makes perfect sense in Keshavdas's more
bhakti-oriented universe: in a text where Radha is the principal nāyikā, it would
hardly have been possible to treat the morally questionable figure of the
courtesan.20 Radha's central role as the nāyikā could be construed as a radical
new Vaishnava approach.

A devotional orientation toward Krishna and Radha informs Keshavdas's

treatment of the domain of rasa theory, as well. In the opening to Rasikpriyā, he
argues that Krishna is navarasamaya—that is, the deity embodies all nine (p.
112) rasas—which his eighteenth-century commentator Surati Mishra came to
consider one of the major postulates of the work.21 In his treatment of the
various canonical bhāvas and hāvas (emotions and lovers’ coquetries) that
interplay to contribute to the full complement of śṛṅgāra rasa, the love of Radha
and Krishna is posited as the substratum:

Passion arises from the love of Radha and Krishna. From the force of their
emotion arises my theory (bicāra) about lovers’ coquetries.22

In this case, too, Keshavdas's new formulation of his subject matter is absolutely
deliberate, as is evident from the way he concludes the discussion:

Keshavdas has described the various gestures of Radha and her lover
according to his understanding of them. May master poets forgive his
audacity.23

Keshavdas again foregrounds his recasting of tradition, although in this case (if
we are to take him at his word), his otherwise bold assertion of independence
from the Sanskrit source material is tempered by a qualm about whether his
proposed changes are too daring. Indubitably, the Sanskrit authorities were
foundational for Keshavdas and not to be transgressed lightly, but these are not
the words of someone mindlessly following tradition.24

Although Keshavdas takes an unusual approach in developing the idea, the

Rasikpriyā also restates an important doctrinal position from Sanskrit
alaṅkāraśāstra: śṛṅgāra is the paramount rasa, and the others may be subsumed
within it. In the opening to his book, he proclaims outright that śṛṅgāra is the
preeminent literary emotion25 and devotes the first thirteen of the sixteen
chapters to topics that develop this point. The remaining rasas are treated only
very briefly in a single chapter (fourteen). The lakṣaṇs of this chapter are
unremarkable, explaining the comic, sorrowful, heroic, and other emotions in
perfunctory fashion, but when it comes to the udāharaṇ verses, all the subsidiary

Page 10 of 32

rasas are rallied to the task of confirming Keshavdas's basic tenet on the
supremacy of śṛṅgāra, losing their theoretical precision as separate rasas. To
appreciate his method, consider how this verse on Radha's manifestation of vīra
rasa (the heroic sentiment) converts the conventional battlefield filled with
clashing swords and headless trunks into a ratiraṇa (battlefield of passion):

Radha set out for battle, deploying the war elephant of her gait.
For cavalry she had her beauty,
for infantry her feelings.
Her various gestures were a chariot,
her sweet smile was her sword.
(p.113) Says Keshavdas, Her breasts were warriors,
her nails spears to her lover's back.
She conquered shame and fear,
and worry over what people might say.
She drew the bow of her eyebrows,
then shot piercing glance-arrows.
She had put on the armor of love,
and courage was her companion.
Today she conquered Gopal on the battlefield of passion.26

In the case of Krishna's adhbuta or wondrous qualities, which are not difficult to
demonstrate since he is a deity, Keshavdas clinches the argument with a
śṛṅgārik point: he loses all composure in the presence of Radha (figure 3.2):

“He steals butter, he steals ghee, he steals curd and milk

and then vanishes unseen.
But as soon as anybody lays eyes on him, he steals their heart.
Why do the Purān.as and the sages of old
speak of him as the primal being?”
So wondered the wives of the gods in their perfect wisdom.
“And no sooner does he see the gait of a gopī
then he forgets his own nature.
How can one so hapless be heralded the savior of the hopeless?”27

A similar technique is adopted for the other rasas: an example of raudra

(terrifying) rasa depicts a Radha so ruthless and fierce with the animals of the
forest that she plunders their various attributes, hence her doe-like eyes,
elephant-like gait, and so on; an example of bhayānaka (fearsome) rasa features
a Radha so terrified by rain during a storm that she clings to Krishna in a tight
embrace—again, the dominant ethos is love rather than fear. Even sama (more
commonly known as śānta, the quiescent) rasa, which epitomizes the Indian
ideal of detachment from the world, paradoxically takes on carnal hues when
Keshavdas portrays Krishna as so enamored of Radha's sweet lips that he has
become indifferent to all other sweet things in this world.28 Chapter fourteen of
the Rasikpriyā, while striking one unsympathetic modern critic as “unscientific

Page 11 of 32

and ridiculous,”29 is actually making a powerful Vaishnava argument about

aesthetic response.

(p.114)

(p.115) Keshavdas's
theorizations and the example
verses he designed to
substantiate them make perfect
sense for a devout Krishna
bhakta. In an unambiguous
proclamation of his literary
values, he would later classify
poets according to the following
threefold system:

Poets may be considered

best, middling, and worst.
The best are steeped in the
rasa of Hari. Middling poets
honor men. Clever girl, the
worst write verses filled with
flaws.30

Keshavdas's hierarchy of
subjects was a common one in
the early modern period. His
commentator Surati Mishra
recalls being introduced to the
Mughal Emperor Muhammad
Shah (r. 1719–48) as follows:
figure 3.2 Krishna's wondrous qualities
“He (i.e., Surati Mishra) does
(Krishnaju ko adbhuta rasa), from
not usually write poems about
Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā, Bundi, c. 1725
men but has written much on
Courtesy of Asian Art Archives,
the subject of god. Since
University of Michigan
everybody speaks of kings as
being incarnations of god he
has, to the best of his ability,
composed some poems about the emperor.”31 Keshavdas was likewise “steeped
in the rasa of Hari,” though we have seen that he wrote many poems honoring
all-too-human kings. Even if the poet does not always overtly link his bhakti to
his intellectual positions, the obsessive parallelism of the Rasikpriyā, in which
nearly every single literary concept has to apply to both Radha and Krishna, may
stem from Vaishnava values such as smaraṇ (remembering the deity) and līlā
( play of the divine couple).32 Moreover, rewriting Sanskrit śāstra in a manner

Page 12 of 32

that insists on its theoretical relevance to both Radha and Krishna leads to other
truly major departures from the classical norms. An example is when Krishna is
made to display what previous Indian thinkers considered a quintessentially
female trait: māna (jealous rage). Rudrabhatta's perspective, and that of the
Sanskrit courtly tradition in general, is that of the “male gaze” focusing in upon
a nāyikā's actions.33 In Sanskrit poetry, women experience but never inspire
anger; māna is the exclusive preserve of a nāyikā who has been wronged by her
lover. Keshavdas's chapters on māna and its corollary, māna-mocana
(reconciliation), never fail to fix the gaze of Radha—a woman's gaze—on
Krishna, as well.

The nāyaka's and nāyikā's emotions are understandably manifested in different

ways, and gender norms prevent true parallelism in many of the example verses.
Sometimes the very rules of the game are different for men and women. For
instance, gurumāna, the most serious form of jealous rage in a woman, is
sparked when she suspects her lover has been unfaithful:

Keshavdas says,

When the nāyikā sees evidence of another woman, or when she hears
another woman's name, it is natural to experience intense anger.

Keshavdas's insistence on applying every literary concept to Radha and Krishna

becomes a theoretical challenge when he then needs to compose a
complementary verse about Krishna's anger. What are the grounds for Krishna's
getting angry? With the gopīs an arguable exception, in Indian poetry women do
not stay out all night and then swagger home bleary-eyed in the morning after
(p.116) making love to a paramour on the sly. That is what men do. Keshavdas
thus has to invent a whole new scenario for why Krishna might get angry enough
to lash out at his beloved. Here is his lakṣaṇ:

When a woman speaks harsh words that go beyond all sense of

decorum,
intense anger arises in her lover's heart.

In describing how to appease a lover, again Keshavdas has to retool his inherited
theoretical apparatus to come up with gender-specific rationales for praṇati:

A woman falls at the feet of her beloved out of great love, but never out of
passion or because she has committed a serious mistake. To describe such
things would ruin the aesthetic experience.34

Far from slavishly imitating his Sanskrit models, Keshavdas's method is to take
cues from them, while frequently offering his own perspective on individual
topics and in some cases going off in highly original directions.

Page 13 of 32

These intellectual processes and attitudes are widely applicable to both bhakti
and rīti authors (at times distinctly overlapping categories, as the case of
Keshavdas well illustrates) who engaged with their classical heritage. It requires
meticulous research, and familiarity with both Brajbhasha and Sanskrit, to
understand the mentality of vernacular writers of the early modern period, but
every scholar who has taken the time to read a Braj text in tandem with its
Sanskrit source(s) has arrived at the same conclusion: vernacular writers sought
to reshape the classical tradition “according to their own understanding.” More
often than not, they even tell us that this is what they are doing. A few additional
examples will suffice.

One major concern of the bhakti poet Nanddas (fl. 1570), active in the
generation before Keshavdas, was to make Sanskrit texts available to a growing
Brajbhasha reading community. He produced Bhasha versions of the
Rasamañjarī of Bhanudatta, the Rāsapañcādhyāyī (Five chapters on the round
dance, from the Bhāgavatapurāṇa), and the Prabodhacandrodaya of Krishna
Mishra; his Mānamañjarī and Anekārthamañjarī, two much-consulted Braj
dictionaries, were based on the Amarakośa.35 Not one of these is a mere
translation of a Sanskrit source. The Rasamañjarī, for instance, is imbued with
Krishna bhakti and marks a significant change from the version of Bhanudatta,
who, although not ignoring god entirely in the manner of Rudrabhatta, does not
give him pride of place. In this particular case and more generally, Nanddas
demonstrably uses his own mati; furthermore, he announces it with his typical
signature, nanda sumati yathā (Nanddas, in keeping with his judicious
understanding).36

(p.117) Hariram Vyas, an approximate contemporary of Nanddas, was also

demonstrably creative in his approach to vernacularizing the Rāsapañcādhyāyī
segment of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Heidi Pauwels has done a close comparison of
the Braj and Sanskrit texts, and for all that they are supposed to tell the same
story, the two versions in some respects hardly resemble each other.37 Vyas felt
himself at liberty to skip some of the chapters and to add one that was not in the
original—no trivial matter, since the canonical segment of this Vaishnava
scripture has only five chapters. The substance, not just the form, also
underwent a radical transformation. Radha, who was never named as a gopī in
the Sanskrit Bhāgavata, is accorded a dramatic new role as Krishna's chief love
interest. In another major departure, Vyas proves uninterested in viraha, the
pain of separated lovers, which in some ways is the core aesthetic mood of the
Sanskrit original. “What joy is there in the story of separation?” he asks.38 The
emphasis on sambhoga śṛṅgāra (love fulfilled) is consistent with the new
Vaishnava focus on mādhurya, the sweetness of Radha and Krishna's amorous
play in the groves of Vrindavan.

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Another example from the rīti tradition of reworking a staple from the Sanskrit
thought-world to fit with new Vaishnava doctrines is Chintamani's treatment of
the classical subject of guṇas (phonological principles) in the opening of his
Kavikulkalptaru. At first glance, Chintamani's ideas appear mostly to mimic
those of a Sanskrit predecessor, Mammata's Kāvyaprakāśa. Much of his
technical terminology is taken from this work, and both the manner and the
order in which he treats the guṇas conform to Mammata's approach.39 But
closer scrutiny reveals a new take on the subject matter.

Chintamani does not merely repeat verbatim Mammata's literary propositions.

He elaborates on competing systems from other Sanskrit masters, laying out the
basic concepts and points of debate. In some cases, he composes original poetry
to illustrate categories omitted by Mammata. And some of this thinking is
completely new, notably Chintamani's theorization of mādhurya guṇa. We can
appreciate this newness best by studying the relevant passages side by side.

Chintamani:
In the case of love in union a pleasurable experience melts the heart.
This is called mādhurya—the very essence of poetry.
Jo saṃyoga sigāra maiṃ sukhada dravāvai citta
So mādhurya bakhāniyaiṃ yahai tattva kavitta40
Mammata:
Mādhurya is that which produces joy. It is the underlying reason for
melting in love (he continues with a gloss: by the expression “in love”
I mean “during love in union” and by melting I mean “dissolving”).
(p.118) āhlādakatvaṃ mādhuryaṃ śṛṅgāre drutikāraṇam
(śṛṅgāre arthāt saṃbhoge drutir galitvam iva)41

These two definitions are demonstrably similar. With the special prerogative of a
vernacular poet—Braj poets did not have to follow rigid grammar rules—
Chintamani can even coin a Braj verb (dravāvai, “melts”) to express Mammata's
concept of the druti (melting) that attends a connoisseur's deep immersion in a
poem. But in Chintamani's verse he unexpectedly declares mādhurya to be the
tattva, the very essence of poetry. No Sanskrit theorist had ever singled out any
one guṇa as superior to the others—certainly not to declare it poetry's essential
feature. In isolating mādhurya as a special poetic property, Chintamani subtly
yet tellingly offers a new assessment of vernacular literature, and one very much
in dialogue with recent debates in the Vaishnava community.42 In what we can
now confidently recognize as a larger trend among rīti intellectuals, Chintamani
does not allow his revised treatment of the Sanskrit guṇa systems to go
unremarked. He proclaims, “Certain categories of guṇas were theorized by the
ancients, and I am writing about all of them here according to my own
understanding.”43

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A close comparison between Mammata and a later Braj author on another

typical topic of alaṅkāraśāstra clinches the case for the originality of Braj
scholars. Bhikharidas, a major eighteenth-century ālaṅkārika from the Avadh
region who was unusually detailed in his discussions of literature, literary
theory, and literary persons, emended Mammata's definition of the kāvya
prayojana (purposes of poetry) from the Kāvyaprakāśa in a way that foregrounds
bhakti:

Bhikharidas:
Some acquire religious merit,
such as the spiritual masters Tulsi and Sur.
Others seek wealth, in the manner of
Keshavdas, Bhushan, and Birbal.
There are the Rahims and Raskhans
who concern themselves with fame alone.
Says [Bhikhari] Das, Discussing poetry is
in every case pleasing to scholars.
Ekai lahaiṃ tapapuñjani ke phala jyoṃ tulasī̄ aru sūra gosaī̄ṃ,
Ekai lahaiṃ bahusaṃpati kesava bhūṣaṇa jyoṃ barabī̄ra baṛāī̄,
Ekani koṃ jasa hī soṃ prayojana hai rasakhāni rahīma kī̄ naī̄ṃ,
Dāsa kabittani kī caracā budhivantani koṃ sukhadai saba ṭhaī̄ṃ.44
Mammata:
(p.119) Poetry is for the sake of fame, wealth, practical knowledge,
warding off illness,
for the aesthetic rapture that arises suddenly (upon hearing a poem),
and for instructing—the way a beloved does.
Kāvyaṃ yaśase ’rthakṛte vyavahāravide śivetarakṣataye
Sadyaḥ paranirvṛtaye kāntāsaṃmitatayopadeśayuje45

It is beyond doubt that here and elsewhere in his Kāvyanirṇay (Critical

perspective on literature, 1746) Bhikharidas bases many of his arguments on
those of Mammata.46 But whereas for Mammata kāvya was (or was generally
presented as) a largely secular pursuit, Bhikharidas considered spiritual gain
one of the three primary rationales, and it is the one he places first in his list
when he invokes the bhakti poets Tulsi and Sur. That he took the trouble to
rewrite Mammata's well-known kāvyaprayojana verse dramatically underscores
this crucial shift in conceptions of the literary between Sanskrit in the eleventh
century and Brajbhasha in the eighteenth.47

Bhikharidas's Kāvyanirṇay contains several other passages of interest to those

seeking to understand the conceptual world of Braj intellectuals, reminding us
that not all the important theoretical shifts in rīti are related to bhakti. Some
new arguments derive from the literary and linguistic specificities of Brajbhasha.
Bhikharidas was the first rīti author to treat rhyme, one of the hallmarks of the
Hindi vernacular transformation (as it was in the changeover from Latin to
Romance languages48), and he views it as a specifically vernacular stylistic trait.
He devotes all of chapter twenty-two of Kāvyanirṇay to the subject, opening with

Page 16 of 32

the proclamation, “First of all, in a vernacular composition rhyme is particularly

desired.”49 Still, it is arresting that attempts to theorize such a new and
essentially vernacular subject did not appear until one hundred and fifty years
after rīti scholarship had begun (and Hindi poets themselves had been using
rhyme much longer than that). The chapter is admittedly short, consisting of a
mere seventeen stanzas, but the mission is entirely new. As always, the point for
Braj intellectuals was not to present a radical overhaul of classical theory but to
make relatively minor adjustments within the older paradigms.

Another innovation of Bhikharidas—which must have been forced by real

changes in language use—is his intriguing if enigmatic discussion of linguistic
register. Sanskrit had always been theorized in the Indian tradition as a pure,
unchangeable language (the facts of the matter are different but irrelevant to
the dominant language ideology). Clearly this conception of language could not
make theoretical sense of Brajbhasha, which—among other signature hybridities
—bears numerous lexical traces of rīti poets’ exposure to Persian. In the (p.120)
first chapter of Kāvyanirṇay, Bhikharidas presents Brajbhasha as a language
that is mixed to its very core, and beautiful precisely for being so.

All people of developed sensibility agree about the beauty of Brajbhasha.

Braj may be mixed with Sanskrit, and also Persian, but it still remains
altogether clear. Braj, Avadhi, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Arabic, and native Persian
are found (or mixed, another meaning of milai)—they say that poetry is of
six different types.

Bhāṣā bṛjabhāṣā rucira, kahaiṃ sumati saba koi

Milai saṃsakṛta pārasyau, pai ati pragaṭa ju hoi
Bṛja māgadhī milai amara, nāga jamana bhāṣāni
Sahaja pārasīhūṃ mile, ṣaṭabidhi kabita bakhāni50

This passage does not yield its meaning easily. It is not clear, for instance,
whether the term māgadhī means Apabhramsha or Avadhi. Nor is the intended
distinction between jamana (i.e., yavana, Arabic? Turkish?) and sahaja pārasī
(native Persian?) transparent.51 What is not in doubt is that three of the literary
languages (Braj, Jamana, and Persian) mentioned by Bhikharidas were not part
of any classical thinking from the kāvya tradition. As with his treatment of
rhyme, here was a chance to say something completely new about literature. Did
Bhikharidas take it?

Yes and no. To write Braj scholarship in this period was a delicate balancing act.
It is emblematic of the epistemological complexities of preserving a revered
scholarly tradition while incorporating new developments that Bhikharidas
articulated radical linguistic change using an archaic, typologizing scheme.
Instead of trumpeting a bold new insight, he conceptualized Brajbhasha register
as ṣaṭvidhā (sixfold), a term that had been used long before by the Sanskrit
theorist Simhabhupala to designate the non-Sanskrit literary languages Prakrit,

Page 17 of 32

Shauraseni, Magadhi, Paishachi, Chulika Paishachi, and Apabhramsha.52

Although half of the components of Bhikharidas's proposed sextet of kāvya
bhāṣās are a clear break with tradition, the retention of a sixfold frame means
that this otherwise highly inventive vernacular writer must have felt it necessary
to theorize literary language not in accordance with his lived experience but in
terms of established categories. To be valid, vernacular innovation needed to be
authorized by the writers and systems of the classical past or even, on occasion,
disguised. Sudipta Kaviraj has usefully distinguished between modern and
premodern modes of cultural change: “Modern rebellions announce themselves
even before they are wholly successful; revolutions in traditional cultures tended
to hide the fact of their being revolts.”53 Brajbhasha intellectuals were waging a
revolution, to be sure, but it was a surreptitious one.

(p.121) Suravāṇī and Naravāṇī

Conservative or not, as Brajbhasha poets encroached on the cultural space that
Sanskrit had occupied for some 1,500 years, they managed to dismantle the
traditional conceptions about its preeminence. Several poets hint at this
dramatic upending of centuries of Sanskrit literary monopolization—even if they
do so with very little drama. Chintamani's kāvyalakṣaṇ (definition of poetry) from
the opening of his Kavikulkalptaru is a case in point:

Literature is defined as expression replete with aesthetic sentiment. In

Sanskrit, literature is twofold: prose and poetry. A composition in meter is
called “verse,” and “prose” lacks meter. Good poets derive pleasure from
hearing verse composition in the vernacular.54

At first glance his bifurcation of literature into the categories of “prose” and
“poetry” may appear to be a banal, mechanical reiteration of one of the most
basic tenets of Sanskrit literary thinking. But upon closer reflection, two points
of great significance come into focus. First, Bhasha poetry is associated with
pleasure—not Sanskrit. Second, prose is not mentioned as a concern of
vernacular writers. Chintamani does not overtly rule out the idea of Bhasha
prose (and indeed Braj writers, including Chintamani, did use prose from time to
time), but the theoretical point is that, for this ālaṅkārika, chandanibaddha
(versified) literary discourse was the special purview of vernacular writing.

Another telling conceptualization of Brajbhasha's relationship to Sanskrit is

found in Chintamani's treatment of doṣas. Like Keshavdas before him,
Chintamani was not in the least reticent about proposing new flaws, indicating
that for vernacular poets the proliferation of subcategories was one important
mechanism for creative self-expression. His kācīdoṣa (flaw of unripeness) plays
on the imagery of the harvest to critique unpolished language:

Language that does not follow the usage of good poets is known as
“unripe.” [The language of ] the area encompassing Mathura and Gwalior

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(i.e., Brajbhasha) is considered fully ripe.… And some say the [language of
the] Mathura-Gwalior region is the “language of the gods.”

Jo nahi progī sat-kavina, kācī bhāsā jāna

Mathurā-maṇḍala gvāriyai(gvāriyara?) kī paripaka bakhāna … .
Mathurā-maṇḍala gvāriyara kī suravānī koi55

Of interest here are some ideas that prove to be far more radical than the
upabheda (subcategory) in which they are couched. Quite apart from proscribing
another type of inferior poetry, Chintamani is striving to articulate the special
(p.122) status of Brajbhasha. Braj is the “ripe” standard against which
“unripe” languages fail to measure up. Even more extraordinary is the notion
that, due to its literary excellence, Brajbhasha can now be designated by the
term suravāṇī, a long-standing reverential epithet for Sanskrit and for Sanskrit
alone.

The idea that Brajbhasha was on some level becoming equivalent to Sanskrit can
be found even in Sanskrit works of the early modern period, notably the
Śṛṅgāramañjarī (Bouquet of passion, c. 1670) of Akbar Shah, a member of the
Indo-Muslim literati from the Golkonda court.56 Both the work's textual history
and its modes of argumentation proclaim that perceptions about the validity of
vernacular texts were altering irrevocably by the late seventeenth century. In a
momentous reversal of the normal trajectories of source and target language,
the work was first composed in Telugu (āndhrabhāṣā), and only then translated
into Sanskrit (suravāṇī). It was the Sanskrit version, not the Telugu one, that
Chintamani translated into Brajbhasha during his stay at Golkonda.57 That
Sanskrit is not the language of the original composition is one testament to the
new status of the vernacular as a medium of scholarly writing. Another is the
Śṛṅgāramañjarī's unprecedented mentioning of Brajbhasha authors in the same
company as Sanskrit literary authorities—as though they were now perceived to
be intellectually comparable. Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā is one of two Braj texts to
share the designation pramukhagrantha (principal text) with such illustrious
Sanskrit works as Dhananjaya's Daśarūpaka, Mammata's Kāvyaprakāśa, and
Bhanudatta's Rasamañjarī, betokening the erosion of age-old language
hierarchies.58

Although it never became very common for Sanskrit ālaṅkārikas to refer to their
Braj counterparts, we have evidence that they were reading them. Venidatta
Bhattacharya, a Bengali scholar and poet writing in the eighteenth century, cites
Keshavdas's definition of a bhāva (emotion) in his Rasikarañjana (Delighter of
connoisseurs), a commentary on the Rasataraṅgiṇī (River of emotion, c. 1500) by
the Sanskrit theorist Bhanudatta. Intriguingly, he translates the definition into
Sanskrit rather than quoting the original Braj.

As stated in the Rasikpriyā,

Page 19 of 32

A mental event can be manifested by way of facial expressions, or

the eyes,
or words. That very thing is what is known as “emotion,” which
sensitive people turn into an object of their own experience. All
power to it.
Tathā coktaṃ rasikapriyāyāṃ
Mukhanetravacanamārgaiḥ prakaṭībhavati mānasikapadārthaḥ
Sa eva bhāvo vijñaiḥ svānubhavaviṣayīkṛto jayati59

The Sanskrit does not quite scan as a recognizable meter, an awkwardness that
perhaps stems from the linguistic transplantation. Nor is the last quarter of the
(p.123) verse quite an exact translation. This Sanskrit pandit may have been
doing something that Braj authors had long known to do: invoking a literary
authority in a manner that was simultaneously apanī mati anusāra, “according to
his own understanding.”60

Citations of Keshavdas by Akbar Shah and Venidatta Bhattacharya are only some
of the evidence that points to a shared community of Sanskrit and Bhasha
intellectuals in this period. The great Sanskrit ālaṅkārika Jagannatha Panditaraja
(fl. 1650) was the revered guru of Kulapati Mishra, the rīti writer from the
Amber court whose Rasrahasya and other works were thoroughly in dialogue
with Sanskrit. Jagannatha, for his part, is thought to have been influenced by
contemporary trends in Bhasha poetry.61 It was not uncommon for Braj writers
(Narottam and Keshavdas, for example) to pepper their vernacular works with
Sanskrit ślokas. In his Braj commentary on Jaswant Singh's Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ,
Haricharandas moves freely between Braj and Sanskrit, citing sometimes a dohā
by Biharilal, at other times a śloka by Appayya Dikshita. He proposes corrections
to some of Jaswant Singh's Braj lakṣaṇs, but when he does so it is on the
authority of a Sanskrit text, Jayadeva's Candrāloka.62 The kavikul consisted of
both Sanskrit and Braj writers and, even if there had been historically
asymmetrical relations between them, this situation was now changing and they
began to influence one another, whether or not they acknowledged that this was
the case.

The existence of Sanskrit commentaries on rīti works, little studied though they
are, offers yet further confirmation that these literary cultures overlapped to
some degree. Samartha, author of a Sanskrit commentary on the Rasikpriyā
entitled Pramodinī (Giver of gladness, 1698), announced in his colophon that he
had “greater affection for Braj than for the language of the gods.”63 Krishna
Kavi, writing during the next generation, echoes Samartha's sentiments in his
exegesis of the Bihārīsatsaī:

Everybody says Brajbhasha is equivalent to the language of the gods

(suravāṇī).
So say all poets, knowing it to be the foundation for great aesthetic
enjoyment.64

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Braj writers had come a long way since the days of Keshavdas with his
professions of slow-wittedness.

Yet, if the confidence of Brajbhasha intellectuals increased over time as

vernacular texts on alaṅkāraśāstra gained tremendous currency in courtly
venues and beyond, many rīti writers continued to express deference to their
classical predecessors and voiced apparent anxieties about their own ability to
contribute new ideas. Bhikharidas, one of the greatest vernacular rhetoricians
that the Indian tradition produced, felt compelled to say:

(p.124) I studied the Sanskrit texts Candrāloka and Kāvyaprakāśa.

I understood them and made their ideas beautiful in the vernacular.
From other sources, too, I adopted the path of poets (kabipatha) … .
But even though I may express my own opinions,
I still feel anxiety about that which I have created myself (rahai
svakalpita saṅka).
Therefore, I have mixed my own opinions with classical precepts—
may poets forgive any faults.65

A century and a half after Keshavdas had shown scholars of systematic literary
thought that such systematicity was not only possible but also necessary in the
vernacular, did the very execution of the project remain doubtful? Bhikharidas
may instead be simply outlining his scholarly method. To write Bhasha śāstra
meant to mix newer ideas with older ones, not to compose new theory from
scratch (svakalpita).66 This is consistent with earlier statements by Keshavdas
and Chintamani, who stressed the necessity of classical precepts to the
vernacular scholarly enterprise.67

In the very same chapter of Bhikharidas's Kāvyanirṇay, however, are

unmistakable indicators that classical authority was less important than he
avowed. Once again, we observe the intricate balancing act of trying to give
both older authorities and newer ones their due. Bhikharidas opens his work
with a kavi-praśaṃsā (ode to past poets), a genre of particular value to modern
literary historians for retrieving the literary self-understanding of premodern
writers.68 Bhikharidas does give Sanskrit authors pride of place in his opening
verses, but he mentions only two, Jayadeva and Mammata, while he
memorializes more than two dozen Brajbhasha kavis.69 Thus, whatever anxiety
may have attended the production of vernacular scholarship in the early modern
period, there is unmistakable evidence of the increasing self-assurance that the
consolidation of a tradition can instill.

A similar discrepancy between avowing the greatness of the Sanskrit past and
the reality of contemporary Braj achievements can be found in the Sujāncaritra
of Sudan, an approximate contemporary of Bhikharidas who served the kings of

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Bharatpur. He frames the very existence of the Bhasha tradition as a decline

necessitated by the waning of intelligence in the kaliyuga:

As the kaliyuga became overweening, intelligence waned.

The poets of today speak Bhasha, and even still their grasp is
incomplete.70

Clearly the older ideas about Sanskrit supremacy and Bhasha degeneracy
lingered on. And yet, whatever he might say about vernacular incompetency,
Sudan's own kavi-praśaṃsā, like that of Bhikharidas, attests to the unmistakable
strength of Braj literary culture. Braj writers outnumbered their Sanskrit (p.
125) counterparts by a very large margin: whereas Sudan devotes a single
chappay to the Sanskrit past, fully six are needed to account for the important
Bhasha writers of recent centuries.71

In the Satkavigirāvilās (Play of the language of true poets, c.1750?72) of Baldev

Mishra, a rītigranth commissioned by Raja Vikram Shah of Charkhari in
Baghelkhand (in today's southeastern Madhya Pradesh), is yet another kavi-
praśaṃsā. This time, Sanskrit poets have been completely omitted. Writers of
this place and time—just a decade or so later than Bhikharidas—apparently no
longer felt the need to look back reverently to major Sanskrit thinkers like
Mammata. More recent Braj luminaries such as Keshavdas had taken their
place. Baldev says,

Taking definitions and example poems from the pioneering poets

Keshav[das], [Chinta]mani, Matiram, and Sukhdev, and those who are
discriminating when it comes to rasa, I have mixed in my own ideas to
describe the nine rasas and characters both male and female, bringing
intellectual delight.

kesava mani matirāma kabi, sukhadevādi aneka

inhaiṃ ādi kavi aura je rasa mai sahita viveka
tinake lakṣana lakṣya lai āpani ukuti milāi
barno nava rasa nāyakā nāyaka mati sarasāi73

The phrase “āpani ukuti milāi” reinforces the importance to these authors of the
now-familiar compositional strategy of mixing the old with the new. Also note
how Baldev Mishra is simultaneously concerned with composing and
anthologizing the most popular poems of what could finally be seen as a
Brajbhasha canon. The Braj tradition possessed its own classics now, and poets
could dispense with Sanskrit authority altogether. The process of
vernacularization was coming to a close.

Conclusion
The scholarly methods of early modern writers working in Brajbhasha are barely
charted terrain, and this discussion has raised just a few questions of interest for
a single field.74 At stake are important concerns for Hindi scholars but also,

Page 22 of 32

more generally, for intellectual historians, including our ability to understand the
conceptual world of Indian pandits before the transition to colonialism. The
relatively conservative stance of Brajbhasha writers even in a highly developed
vernacular field such as rhetoric merits a more nuanced analysis than it has
attracted so far. The degree to which these writers based their (p.126)
alaṅkāraśāstra discourse on Sanskrit models has usually been interpreted as a
sign of deficiency, sometimes explained by a decline in India's intellectual
vibrancy, a result of medieval stagnation during the late precolonial period.75

Although we should reject both “medieval” and “stagnation” as descriptions of

this intellectual culture—one is an unreflective import from European
intellectual history, the other a judgmental reaction to an epistemological system
that does not have progress as a core value—it is perfectly natural to wonder
why vernacular writers were committed to subtly reworking Sanskrit literary
concepts rather than to forging a bold new literary system. In certain cases, the
purpose of the rītigranth genre was not necessarily to propose new theory: some
of these works had an educational mandate, while others were more of a poetic
enterprise.76 But a number of rīti writers were seriously interested in being
theoreticians, and it remains something of a puzzle that their intellectual style
was so unassuming because matters could, of course, have been different.
Brajbhasha authors, some of whom worked at the Mughal court or were
otherwise firsthand witnesses to political and cultural conditions very different
from the Sanskrit sabhās where kāvya began, developed entirely new aesthetic
practices like multilingual punning by infusing Persian words into the language.
Despite being an important site of difference from Sanskrit, the new Perso-
Arabic lexical streams (which still characterize spoken Hindi today) were never
taken as a basis for dramatic new conceptualizations of language use; nor was
rhyme, another specifically vernacular domain. Bhikharidas, almost alone of rīti
scholars, called attention to some elements of change, but in a surprisingly
bland manner that seems to disguise rather than highlight innovation. Nowhere
in his oeuvre can we find a radically new theory of Brajbhasha literature. Why
should this have been the case across the spectrum of the hundreds of works of
rīti śāstra?

One widespread theory that became current during the nineteenth century
stresses Brajbhasha's innate expressive limitations as a linguistic medium,
particularly the rīti authors’ preference for poetry over prose. Retarded
development in the area of prose is just one of a litany of complaints lodged
against Braj and other premodern Indian vernaculars from Bengali to Tamil.
Since it is rooted in colonial bias rather than any serious engagement with
Indian intellectual history, it can be safely dismissed. Numerous works in both
Hindi and Sanskrit demonstrate amply that prose is not a requirement for
reasoned argument. The dohā meter of Hindi, like the Sanskrit śloka, could be
prose-like in its function. Even in Sanskrit, whose intellectual merits as India's
preeminent classical language are less disputed than those of Brajbhasha, prose
Page 23 of 32

was never used in the field of alaṅkāraśāstra until the time of Vamana in the
early ninth century (and Vamana's contemporary Udbhata still wrote verse).
When two (p.127) generations later Anandavardhana adapted the more
complex style of philosophical prose to the discipline, many authors continued to
compose Sanskrit definitions in verse. Verse was an entirely legitimate medium
of formal scholarly expression in precolonial India. Regardless, it is erroneous to
state that Brajbhasha lacked a prose tradition. Countless plays were written in
Brajbhasha prose, as was a vast corpus of Vaishnava vārtās, quasi-historical
hagiographies. Some rīti authors, notably Chintamani and Bhikharidas, used the
exact same vṛtti (expository prose style) as their Sanskrit predecessors.77 The
Braj commentarial tradition occasionally referenced above is another important
corpus of vernacular prose. And some Braj commentaries, such as those on
Bhartrihari written by Keshavdas's patron Indrajit of Orchha, are of a complexity
that makes it impossible to argue that the language was somehow inherently
unsuited to subtle reasoning.78 Brajbhasha prose existed; Brajbhasha
intellectuals simply did not avail themselves of it for writing alaṅkāraśāstra. The
reasons for rīti writers’ lack of interest in developing radically inventive poetic
theory need to be sought elsewhere.

An intellectual propensity for neoclassicism is one good reason, and was a

broader trend in both intellectual and social history. Rīti theorists were animated
by the mission of both continuing and updating the erudite traditions of their
Sanskrit forebears; they were also in the process of constituting themselves as a
major literary community. The members of this Braj kavikul were in dialogue
with one other but also with their Sanskrit predecessors, who had crafted a well-
defined theoretical system eminently suited to the type of vernacular
cosmopolitanism cultivated by rīti poets.79

The disavowal of the old is generally a more modern cultural value, and
expectations that writers should exhibit “originality” were not the same in
premodernity—not in India, and not elsewhere. Many forms of vernacular
literature could only be deemed literary to the extent that they encapsulated the
literary values of the past. In an Indian context, neoclassicist writings were
sometimes theorized as mārga, a term that precisely encodes those traditional
values, and contrasted to more localized, idiosyncratic deśī styles.80 Elsewhere
in world literary culture, as already signaled, imitation of the classics was an
important precondition for the rise of French literary culture (and Italian, and
many other European languages). By appropriating the very features that made
Latin elevated, French writers associated with the early modern courts lent
dignity, majesty, and reason to their works. A comparable process, unfolding
according to its own local logic, was underway nearly contemporaneously in rīti
literature. By adopting Sanskrit protocols and genres—a Sanskritized high style
—rīti authors imparted dignity to the vernacular and made it suitable for an
evolving courtly setting that was no longer the exclusive preserve of (p.128)
classical poets. This was a deliberate decision on the part of rational people and
Page 24 of 32

should not be seen, as it too often is, as evidence of mannerism or a failure in

scholarly creativity. In short, the widespread imitation of classical authority is
universally recognized as a critical stage in the vernacularization process
elsewhere in the world and should be recognized as such for India, as well.81

Still, Brajbhasha scholarship cannot just be reduced to a feeble recapitulation of

Sanskrit norms. Furthermore, though based on Sanskrit sources, these texts
differ from translations in the modern sense of the term. As discussed by A. K.
Ramanujan and, more recently, John Cort, the tendency in premodern India was
always toward “indexical”styles of translation rather than the word-for-word
“iconic” method dominant today.82 Indexical translation signals a complicated
engagement with the source text and stems from radically different ideas of
authorship and newness. This was the method used by many rīti authors, a style
of scholarship both creative and derivative, for Braj authors did not fail to
imprint their own stamp upon the material even while working in classical
genres. And they often stated precisely this, using the clear, if unassuming
phrase, “according to my own understanding.”83

The claim that rīti authors were expressing their own opinion should be taken
seriously. These are not sporadic, insignificant assertions: they are frequent and
central not only to Braj theorizations of rhetoric but also to the identities of the
poet-intellectuals who constituted this cultural world. The act of translating core
Sanskrit ideas into the vernacular was only part of the rīti intellectual enterprise.
These poet-theorists also subtly reworked the śāstras, modifying Sanskrit
themes and localizing them to a specifically Brajbhasha milieu. In some cases,
bhakti impulses were driving new theorizations. Why the rīti writers never
embraced the idea of a bhakti rasa, a radical new concept embraced by Sanskrit
theologians of the Gaudiya Vaishnava community in the sixteenth century,
remains an enigma, when so much else about their poetry and theory shows the
influence of Krishna bhakti. Perhaps it was just too much of a departure to add
another entirely new rasa, or was it that Jagannatha Panditaraja's indignant,
traditionalist rejection of the idea in the middle of the seventeenth century held
sway?84 Whatever may be the case, rīti intellectuals adhered to a much older
idea from the Sanskrit tradition, championing the primacy of śṛṅgāra, the
aesthetics of love, even for devotional poetry.

For moderns, it is not always easy to appreciate the significance of what at first
glance appear to be mere micro-refinements of preexisting theories, as in many
of the examples presented here. This is not because newness is not there, but
because our modernist minds are not well attuned to the value of such subtle
gradations. In early modern India, newness was interwoven into older systems.85
This innovation through renovation may have been far more than an (p.129)
act of deference to tradition. Affiliation with the dignity and power of a classical
literary culture of the past helped to ensure Brajbhasha's intellectual and
aesthetic success in the present. Perhaps this helps solve the paradox of

Page 25 of 32

vernacular newness as epitomized by Keshavdas's proscribing the flaw of

“blindness to tradition” in the Kavipriyā. The enriching of Bhasha literary culture
with Sanskrit ideas may actually have been a discerning power play on the part
of rīti poets. Keshavdas and his many successors in seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century India contributed to a larger intellectual-historical process by which
Brajbhasha began to encroach upon the cultural space that Sanskrit had once
monopolized, eventually to usurp its place. By appropriating Sanskrit style,
Brajbhasha appropriated Sanskrit space, rendering the classical language
increasingly irrelevant.

Focusing on rīti authors’ intellectual relationship to the Sanskrit past, as I have

done in this chapter, risks projecting the idea that Brajbhasha courtly literature
was exclusively the domain of Hindu pandit communities. It was not. It is time to
focus more fully on the important issue of how rīti writers interfaced with more
contemporary styles of Indian culture across wide social domains. One
particularly important group of connoisseurs but also writers of rīti literature
was the Persianized Mughal elite. Their engagement with Brajbhasha was not
just one factor among many in the rise of rīti literary culture: it may have been
decisive.

Notes:
(1.) On Surati Mishra's contributions to Braj alaṅkāraśāstra, see the study by
Ramgopal Sharma (1975).

(2.) The special features of Sanskrit alaṅkāraśāstra, including its complex

developmental trajectories and the tradition's own dialectic between
conservatism and innovation, are discussed in Bronner and Tubb 2008; on the
rather different aims and scope of the Braj tradition, see Chaudhari 1992: 3–4.

(3.) See chapter 1. We did observe, however, that in the case of Keshavdas
deference to classical authors may have been more of a posture than a heart-felt
sentiment.

(4.) Keshavdas does reveal that he was familiar with various positions in the field
of Sanskrit literary theory in Kavipriyā, 3.2. Although he never names any
Sanskrit theoretician, his mention of “one master poet” (eka kabirāja) in
Kavipriyā, 3.51 must be a reference to Dandin.

(5.) For some methodological perspectives on authorship in the domain of bhakti

texts, see Hawley 1988; Novetzke 2003.

(6.) Careful, sympathetic studies of rīti intellectual traditions include those by

Vishvanathprasad Mishra (1959a, 1959b, 1972, 1994); Sudhakar Pandey (1969);
Kishorilal (1971); Kumvar Ray (1979); Vidyadhar Mishra (1990); Renu Bhatnagar

Page 26 of 32

(1991); Satyadev Chaudhari (1992); Ramanand Sharma (1998, 2003, 2004);

Vijaypal Singh (1998).

(7.) Kavipriyā, 3.4–7. Bhagvandin takes negī differently: as dhan sampatti kā

prabandhkartā (administrator of finances). See Priyāprakāś, p. 15. The last
phrase, sunahu prabīna, “listen, clever people” may also be taken as an
invocation to Keshavdas's student Pravin Ray.

(8.) Kavipriyā, 3.8.

(9.) This is a point the author himself makes in his discussion of cañcala
(fleeting) in the same work, which was excerpted in chapter 1. The commentator
Bakhtavar Singh also objects to the idea that a beautiful woman's eyes should be
described as red, a color that is associated with anger. Kavipriyā kī ṭīkā, folio
16a.

(10.) Kavikulkalptaru, 1.3, 1.6.

(11.) Rasrahasya, folios 2a-b. Unfortunately, Kulapati Mishra's work is mostly

unpublished, making his ideas difficult to access. Vishnudatt Sharma's study
(1970) provides a helpful overview. Also see Ray 1979.

(12.) Rasrahasya, folio 84a (lightly emended for clarity).

(13.) Similarities between the Rasikpriyā and Śṛṅgāratilaka have also been noted
by G. H. Schokker (1983).

(14.) Compare Rasikpriyā, 5.24–38 with Rudrabhatta's original discussion in

Śṛṅgāratilaka, 2.38.

(15.) Vrishabhanu is Radha's father.

(16.) Rasikpriyā, 5.31.

(17.) “Kahe apanī mati anusāra,” Rasikpriyā, 5.41.

(18.) Compare the arguments in Śṛṅgāratilaka, 2.28, with those of Rasikpriyā,

8.54.

(19.) Rasikpriyā, 5.39–40.

(20.) It is easy to see how the figure of the courtesan would have seemed
problematic to Keshavdas when moral debates raged in contemporary bhakti
circles on the question of the parakīyā status of the gopīs. See Kinsley 1975: 37–
38 n. 59. On the special status of the parakīyā in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, see
Haberman 1988: 55–56.

Page 27 of 32

(21.) Rasikpriyā, 1.2 (this verse has already been translated in chapter 1.) See
Jorāvarprakāś, pp. 54–57. The concept of navarasamaya does have an analogue
in Rudrabhatta's idea of Shiva as sarvarasāśrayaḥ in Śṛṅgāratilaka, 1.1.

(22.) Rasikpriyā, 6.15.

(23.) Ibid., 6.57.

(24.) Indian cultural theory has yet to develop an adequate framework for
understanding the complex and thoughtful ways that premodern writers
engaged with their models. The use of tradition is not simply retrenched
conservatism; it has many nuances. A useful approach to “the intelligence of
tradition” in Rajput painting is Aitken 2010.

(25.) Rasikpriyā, 1.16. This was also the position of Rudrabhatta, and
subsequently elaborated by Bhoja in the eleventh century, as well as many later
theorists working in both Sanskrit and Braj. As signaled by the choice of title for
his most important rītigranth, Rasrāj (King of rasas), Matiram also avows the
supremacy of śṛṅgāra rasa.

(26.) Rasikpriyā, 14.25.

(27.) Ibid., 14.36. In the last line of this kavitt, Keshavdas uses the word gati four
times in an untranslatably brilliant way: dekhi gati gopikā kī bhūli jāta nija gati,
agatina kaiseṃ dhauṃ parama gati deta haiṃ.

(28.) Ibid., 14.22, 14.28, 14.39.

(29.) Chaudhari 1973: 231. Jindal (1993: 144), for his part, finds this approach a
mark of Keshavdas's immaturity. Pollock has noted a similarly dismissive
reaction by modern Kannada scholars to classical authors’ appropriation of
Sanskrit categories, an attitude that led them to completely misunderstand the
theoretical significance of new vernacular localizations (1998: 22–23).

(30.) Kavipriyā, 4.2. Again, the word prabīna can refer to Pravin Ray, as I
translate it, or simply mean a clever person in general.

(31.) (Nahīṃ mānuṣī kabita karata, aru prabhu ke bahuta banāye, pai sabahī ke
mata maiṃ nṛpati, prabhu kau rūpa bakhānyoṃ, tāteṃ pātisāha ke kabita su
kiye yatha mata ānyoṃ). Rasgāhakcandrikā, folio 1.

(32.) Recall from discussions in chapter 1 how celebrating the acts of Radha and
Krishna in various moods was conceptualized as both an aesthetic and religious
experience.

(33.) The classic statement on the male gaze as applied to cinema, which has
elements that can be extended to literature, is Mulvey 1988.

Page 28 of 32

(34.) Rasikpriyā, 9.3, 9.6, 10.18.

(35.) McGregor 1973; 2001; 2003: 923–26.

(36.) McGregor 1971: 493. According to McGregor, Nanddas employs this and
other similar phrases specifically to signal that he is reworking a passage from a
Sanskrit source. Other variants include nanda sumati anusāra; maiṃ yaha kathā
yathāmati bhāṣā kīnī (“Nanddas, according to his judicious understanding”; “I
translated this story into Brajbhasha in keeping with my understanding”).

(37.) The information in this paragraph is based on Pauwels 1996: 163–82.

(38.) Ibid., 165.

(39.) The comparable passages on the subject of guṇas are from Kavikulkalptaru,
1.12–28 and Mammata, Kāvyaprakāśa, 8.66–77. Broadly speaking, Chintamani
follows Mammata closely in endorsing the threefold set of guṇas, and not the
tenfold set espoused by early Sanskrit theorists such as Vamana.

(40.) Kavikulkalptaru, 1.14.

(41.) Kāvyaprakāśa, 8.68.

(42.) Vidyadhar Mishra has discussed this particular innovation of Chintamani's

(1990: 152, 161).

(43.) Kavikulkalptaru, 1.30.

(44.) Kāvyanirṇay, 1.10.

(45.) Kāvyaprakāśa, 1.2.

(46.) Bhikharidas specifically mentions Mammata's Kāvyaprakāśa as one of his

sources in Kāvyanirṇay, 1.5.

(47.) I am indebted to Yigal Bronner, Whitney Cox, and Larry McCrea for
alerting me to the importance of Bhikharidas's critical engagement with
Mammata on this point.

(48.) See Pollock 2006: 472.

(49.) Bhāṣā-baranana meṃ prathama, tuka cāhiye biseṣi, Kāvyanirṇay, 22.1. The
importance of Bhikharidas's theorization of rhyme has also been noticed in
McGregor 2003: 941 and Shukla 1994: 130.

(50.) Kāvyanirṇay, 1.14–15.

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(51.) For just a few interpretations of these two verses, see Chaturvedi 1962: 7;
Shukla 1994: 132; McGregor 2003: 942; Prakash 2006: 55. Alternative readings
of a few key words, such as so for pai (“that” instead of “but”) and avara for
amara (“and” instead of “immortal,” i.e., Sanskrit), compound the problem.
There is also some tension in the last two lines, and one that cannot be resolved
grammatically, about whether Bhikharidas is trying to indicate that Braj is one of
six languages for kāvya or whether he is really continuing an idea raised in the
first two lines, that Braj can be used in many different registers, mixing in words
from Avadhi (or Apabhramsha), Prakrit, Sanskrit, and so on.

(52.) See Rasārṇavasudhākara, 3.306. According to Chaturvedi's modern Hindi

commentary on Kāvyanirṇay 1.10 (1962: 7), a similar concept, that of ṣaḍbhāṣā
(six languages), was invoked by Chand Bardai in the Pṛthvīrājrāso, who was
referring to Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Rajasthani, Braj, and Avadhi.

(53.) Kaviraj 1992: 35.

(54.) Kavikulkalptaru, 1.4–5.

(55.) Kavikulkalptaru, 4.6, 4.9.

(56.) Akbar Shah was the son of Shah Raja, teacher to Sultan Abul Hasan Qutb
Shah of Golkonda (r. 1672–87). Raghavan 1951: 7.

(57.) See Śṛṅgārmañjarī (ed. Mishra). Look to chapters 4 and 5 for further
discussion of Chintamani's remarkably peripatetic career and what it means for
the circulation of the Brajbhasha courtly ethos in the seventeenth century.

(58.) The other was Sundar's Sundarśṛṅgār (Sundar's love poems, 1631). See
Śṛṅgāramañjarī (ed. Raghavan), p. 2.

(59.) Rasikarañjana, folio 25, recto, line 11. I am grateful to Sheldon Pollock for
the reference.

(60.) The Braj reads, “ānana locana bacana maga, prakaṭata mana kī bāta/tāhī
soṃ saba kahata haiṃ, bhāva kabini ke tāta.” Rasikpriyā, 6.1. Completely absent
from the Braj is Venidatta Bhattacharya's idea of “svānubhavaviṣayīkṛto jayati,”
which shows that he was improvising.

(61.) A Brajbhasha pad purported to have been composed by Jagannatha is

excerpted in Athavale 1968: 420. Jagannatha's penchant for rhyme is in all
likelihood due to the influence of Bhasha; he may also have adopted the practice
of writing his own poetry (instead of merely excerpting that of earlier writers)
from Bhasha poets. The relationship of his oeuvre to contemporary Braj styles
has been mentioned by Vishvanathprasad Mishra (1959b: 57) and Sheldon
Pollock (2001a: 408).

Page 30 of 32

(62.) Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ ṭīkā, folio 1a.

(63.) “Surabhāṣā teṃ adhika hai, brajabhāṣā soṃ heta.” Quoted by

Vishvanathprasad Mishra (1970: 230); cf. Kishorilal 1971: 474.

(64.) “Brajabhāṣā bhāṣata sakala, suravāṇī sama tūla, tāhi bakhānata sakala
kavi, jāni mahārasa mūla.” Quoted in Kishorilal 1971: 474.

(65.) Excerpted from Kāvyanirṇay, 1.5–7.

(66.) The term svakalpita had earlier been used disparagingly by Sanskrit
authors to describe idiosyncratic theoretical and literary concepts that were not
sanctioned by tradition. See Jagannatha: “Once we have established that only a
particular kind of language use counts as this entity “poetry” can we properly
proceed to define poetry; we do not define a “poetry” that we have just invented
ourselves (… na tu svakalpitasya kāvyapadārthasya),” Rasagaṅgādhara, p. 6.

(67.) Persian authors of the early modern period adopted a similar strategy of
improving on earlier treatises. Katherine Brown (2003: 45–50, 75–76) observes
that many enthusiasts of Indian music, such as Faqirullah and Mirza Khan, relied
heavily on Abu al-Fazl's discussion of Sangit in the Ā’īn-i akbarī (without
necessarily acknowledging the source), adapting it with minor tweaks. Clearly
different conceptions of scholarship were in play from those of the present day,
when invoking the textual authority of a past work was sometimes more
important than recording contemporary practice.

(68.) A useful methodology for approaching the kavi-praśaṃsā genre has been
outlined in Pollock 1995.

(69.) Kāvyanirṇay, 1.5, 1.8, 1.10, 1.16, 1.17.

(70.) Sujāncaritra, 1.3 (jyauṃ jyauṃ kali uddhata bhayo, tyauṃ tyauṃ ghaṭi gaī
buddha/aba ke kavi bhāṣā kahata, taū na samajhata suddha).

(71.) Ibid., 1.2, 1.4–9.

(72.) Little was known about this text until the recent edition by Shivgopal
Mishra.

(73.) Satkavigirāvilās, v. 46.

(74.) The holdings of Indian manuscript libraries reveal that Braj writers, in fact,
produced many types of śāstra in the early modern period, including works on
astronomy, erotics, physiognomy, medicine, and equestrian science, but virtually
none of this material has been published, let alone studied, making it difficult to
assess its character or importance. A preliminary overview of the scope of early
modern Braj textual culture is Busch 2003: 162–66; cf. Pollock 2007: 209–11.

Page 31 of 32

(75.) The classic case is Ramchandra Shukla's treatment of the rītigranth genre,
discussed in chapter 6.

(76.) The variable uses of the rītigranth are discussed in Busch 2004: 53–56.

(77.) See the Śṛṅgārmañjarī (ed. Mishra) and the passages designated “tilak” in
Bhikharidas's Kāvyanirṇay.

(78.) Indrajit's Brajbhasha is highly sophisticated with its predilection for

tatsama (pure Sanskrit) lexical forms. See McGregor 1968 and 2003: 928–29.

(79.) The concept of a cosmopolitan vernacular is that of Sheldon Pollock, who

has critiqued the long-held scholarly consensus that Indian vernacularization
should be seen as a primarily demotic or religious imperative driven by the aim
of speaking simply in the idiom of the people. It was often, on the contrary, a
profoundly erudite literary enterprise marked by superposition or intensive
borrowing from Sanskrit—its lexicon, themes, and śāstras—and one closely tied
to courtly centers. Pollock 2006: 283–329, 423–36.

(80.) On the relevance of the categories mārga and deśī in Telugu literature, see
Rao 1995; for Kannada, see Pollock 1998: 21–25.

(81.) In his influential sixteenth-century Défence et illustration de la langue

françoise (Defense and refinement of the French language), Joachim du Bellay
enjoined French poets to classicize their literature by imitating the great works
of Latin and Greek (1904: 22–25). Cf. Fumaroli 1984: 157–58.

(82.) Ramanujan 1991: 44–46; Cort 2009.

(83.) These types of tags are everywhere in premodern intellectual culture, if

one only knows how to spot them. For instance, Bronner and Tubb have noted
that both Appayya Dikshita and Jagannatha use the phrase vastutas tu (but
really) to signal that they are offering their own opinions (2008: 626, 628).

(84.) Rasagaṅgādhara, pp. 56–57.

(85.) A powerful example of this from the Sanskrit intellectual milieu is the
Kuvalāyānanda of Appayya Dikshita, a complex engagement with the thirteenth-
century Candrāloka. See Bronner 2004.

Access brought to you by:

Page 32 of 32

Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Rīti Literature at the Mughal Court

Allison Busch

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter looks at the lives and texts of important Brajbhasha writers who
were associated with the Mughal court. Although this court is most often linked
to Persian literature, a surprising number of Brajbhasha poets also attracted the
notice of Mughal patrons. Their achievements have been largely lost to the
historical record; thus, uncovering the nature of the social, political and cultural
interactions that the Mughal patronage of Brajbhasha represents opens up new
perspectives on the period. Brajbhasha writers—prominent figures include
Kavindracharya Sarasvati, Sundar, and Vrind—performed a variety of functions
for the court. They could be teachers, poets, musicians, even ambassadors.
Some members of the Mughal political establishment, such as Rahim, also tried
their hand at Hindi literary composition. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this
pattern continued into the reign of Aurangzeb and beyond.

Keywords: Mughalcourt, Brajbhasha, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, Kavindracharya

Sarasvati, Sundar, Rahim, Vrind

This language contains poetry full of colour and sweet expressions of the
praise of the lover and the beloved, and is much in vogue among poets and
people of culture.

—Mirza Khan

Mughal-Period Hindi and its Archival Disarray

One way to study the beginnings of rīti literature, and the approach adopted in
chapter 1, is to look closely at the figure of Keshavdas in relation to the cultural
forces that converged at Orchha in the second half of the sixteenth century. A

Page 1 of 44

newly Vaishnava court, in a newly Mughal realm, created highly favorable

conditions for literary experimentation, albeit experimentation that was crucially
in dialogue with the Sanskrit past and the Persianate and bhakti present.
Chapters 2 and 3 explored courtly Brajbhasha as a textual tradition: its poetics
and scholarly profile. Now we turn to the subject of royal patronage, without
which little of this would have been possible. What transpired in North Indian
courtly communities during the heyday of Mughal rule such that by 1650, Braj
poets were in demand in all the places that mattered in the empire? In other
words, how was Brajbhasha literature transformed into a poetry of kings? Here
and in the next chapter, we will learn more about the gunīs, the court
professionals who enlivened the assemblies of early modern kings, and the
important roles that Braj poets played in their society. While (p.131)
emphasizing the function of rīti texts in their courtly contexts, these chapters
continue to highlight key features of the poetry itself.

A central theme of chapter 1 was the shifting political culture of Orchha during
the consolidation of Mughal hegemony and some of its traces in the work of
Keshavdas. This chapter returns to tracking the decisive interfaces between
political and literary history, shifting the focus from the sidelines to the very
center of empire. The oeuvre of Keshavdas is with good reason considered a
crucial beginning point for rīti literature, but a nearly parallel career of
Brajbhasha can also be traced at the Mughal court. The Mughal patronage of
Braj poets, although challenging to document, was early, copious, and critical to
the consolidation of Hindi's courtly style. Brajbhasha's rise to success and
indeed its entire lifespan as a literary language were largely contemporaneous
with Mughal rule, and this was no mere coincidence. We must first trace the
Mughal part of the story in order to understand the deeply interconnected
subject of the phenomenal proliferation of Braj poets and texts in Rajput courts
throughout Hindustan, which is treated in chapter 5.

To attempt even a partial reconstruction of the role of the Mughals and Indo-
Muslims more generally in the history of Braj literary culture is truly daunting.
First of all, there are enormous holes in the data. Many Braj poets said to be
associated with the Mughal court are only shadowy figures whose biographies
were never recorded. Some Mughal Braj texts have been lost; others molder
unpublished in scarcely accessible archives. Even when published texts are
available, most Braj poets prove uncommunicative about matters beyond their
immediate literary and scholarly aims. Recall just how little we know for a fact
about Keshavdas's exposure to Mughal court life even after carefully combing all
eight of his major works. And we know a lot about Keshavdas in comparison with
other Braj poets, whose biographies are often startlingly scant.

These very real practical difficulties have been compounded by conceptual

obstacles, which must be faced if we are ever to achieve a post-nationalist
history of Hindi literature. In modern times, the tendency has been to see

Page 2 of 44

anything connected with Brajbhasha as centrally Vaishnava, and thus inherently

Hindu, in orientation. This is a gross anachronism. Mughal literary culture, to
the small extent that it has been studied, has too often been approached as
though the only language that counted at the court was Persian.1 The Mughal
sponsorship of Braj musicians is somewhat better understood.2 There are also
isolated monographs in Hindi on individual Braj writers, such as Vrind and
Sundar, who are known to have commanded Mughal patronage.3 But we do not
yet have anywhere near a satisfactory picture of what the Mughal literary
landscape looked like.

(p.132) It has not helped that too often Hindi literary historians have been
severely critical of Brajbhasha's courtly tendencies, seeing them as emblematic
of a wrong turn that the Hindi language took on its developmental path. Rīti
authors, known especially for their praśasti poems to kings and their penchant
for erotic subject matter, are frequently unfavorably compared to their more
spiritual bhakti counterparts, who kept themselves at a remove from courts with
their attendant politics and pleasures. In modern India, the stigma of decadence
is too quickly stamped on writers associated with Mughal courtly life. Another
commonplace in the narrative of literary waywardness is the idea that rīti
literature with its emphasis on alaṅkāras is characterized by untoward
showiness, a camatkār (flashiness) that is felt to have its analogue in the same
yug kī paristhitiyāṃ (conditions of the age) that produced the Taj Mahal and
other opulent symbols of Mughal grandeur. This paradigm, while at least
acknowledging Braj poets’ associations with the Mughals, finds that contact in
large part to have been a corrupting one, with rīti poetry considered long on
style but short on substance.4

Another historiographical concern is whether to admit evidence drawn from oral

tradition as well as Hindi's copious heritage of poetry anthologies. Over the
centuries, oral forms of literary culture circulated through sophisticated local
mechanisms in tandem with written streams, generating a robust corpus of
legends about Hindi literati, their personas in some cases accruing countless
phuṭkal (miscellaneous) verses that are not necessarily well attested in
manuscript traditions.5 Take, for example, the popular genre of stories about
Braj poets’ encounters with Mughal emperors that are often reproduced in
modern scholarship. One such tale concerns the poetess Pravin Ray, the
courtesan of Raja Indrajit of Orchha and a student of Keshavdas. Akbar, hearing
of her legendary beauty, purportedly summoned her to appear at his court.
Pravin Ray defiantly sent the emperor the following couplet:

Pay heed, wise emperor, to what Pravin Ray has to say.

Only low-caste people, crows, and dogs eat off plates used by
others.6

Page 3 of 44

Dozens of such tales chronicling encounters between Braj poets and Mughal
emperors have come down to us. A famous example from the Caurāsī vaiṣṇavan
kī vārtā (Tales of eighty-four Vaishnavas, seventeenth century) relates that Akbar
visited Surdas in Mathura and became enchanted with his pads. Surdas, for his
part, was considerably less enchanted with Akbar. He could have commanded
any reward from the emperor but instead told him, “Please don’t ever summon
or visit me again.”7 Many such narratives may not be true in a historically
positivist sense, but their sheer abundance suggests a larger composite truth
about the acclaim for Brajbhasha poetry at the Mughal court. The fact that (p.
133) in the two instances just cited the poets wanted nothing to do with the
court adds a layer of meaning about resistance to Mughal power during an age
when most of North India had come under its sway. The various legends about
Braj poets and the pithy, if unverifiable, verses ascribed to them form a parallel
domain of cultural and historical memory that, while subject to a truth regime at
odds with the methodologies of modern scholars, cannot be entirely discounted.8

The problem is how to get at some approximation of the more conventional

historical truth that hovers behind various tales, undated texts, and ghostly
authors—in short, the archival mess that constitutes the historical record on rīti
literature as an arena of Mughal cultural life. Mughal texts are not the only part
of the Hindi corpus that poses historiographical challenges.9 We would have to
throw out many celebrities of the Hindi canon—Surdas, Kabir, and Mirabai, for
starters—if we insisted on biographical precision; if every verse attributed to
them had to be authenticated, Hindi literary study would grind to a halt. Given
the limitations of the archive, then, reconstructing the story of Braj poets at the
Mughal court is an imperfect science, and at times requires a creative approach.
I will in some cases be piecing together circumstantial evidence, or relying on
informed conjecture made possible by following the faint but tantalizing tracks
some poets left behind in their texts. If too often the documentation is
unsatisfactory—particularly for the early Mughal period—there are more
traceable, datable texts and individuals that can help to anchor this
investigation, particularly when the more conventional Hindi sources are put in
dialogue with the historical memory of the Persian tradition. A multilingual
archive, in fact, proves critical to understanding India's prenationalist literary
past, in which Hindi connoisseurship had very little to do with being Hindu.

Literary Choices in a Multilingual World

In the early modern period, literatures in both classical and vernacular
languages occupied variable positions in a complex cultural system. In the
courts of western India, textual traditions in Sanskrit, Braj, and Rajasthani were
at times simultaneously accorded patronage; but since many Rajput kings were
also elite manṣabdārs in the Mughal administration, they were familiar with
Persian culture, as well. Persian was especially dominant in the court circles of
the Mughals and the Deccan sultanates, but other languages, notably Sanskrit,
Braj, Dakani, and Telugu, figure—sometimes substantially—in the literary
Page 4 of 44

histories of these same courts.10 Yet another choice for the Mughal emperors,
(p.134) ethnically a Timurid clan that hailed from Central Asia, was Chaghtai
Turkish, at least in the early generations. This is the language in which Babur (r.
1526–30), the first of the Mughal emperors, wrote both the Bāburnāmah, his
memoirs, and a dīvān (poetry collection).

Mughal language and literary practices shifted over time. Babur's son Humayun
(r. 1530–40; 1555–56) continued to host Turkish poets but was also inspired by
the Persianate ways of the Safavid court, where he spent part of a lengthy period
of exile from 1540 to 1555.11 There is also evidence that his court sponsored
some Hindi singers, and even, it has been suggested, the little-known Braj poet
Narhari, who had been one of several vernacular poets to attract the patronage
of Islam Shah Sur (r. 1545–54) during the Sur interregnum and who is thought
to have become a court poet of Akbar.12 Akbar inherited the Persophilia of his
father but was also profoundly attracted to vernacular songs and poetic
compositions. The practices of the Sur court perhaps influenced his literary
tastes. The court of Islam Shah Sur in particular was by all indications a
congenial place for Hindi writers. Two towering figures were the Avadhi poet
Manjhan (author of Madhumālatī, 1545) and the Afghan nobleman Shah
Muhammad Farmuli, whose vernacular poems are fondly remembered by
Persian literary biographers.13 In the middle of the sixteenth century, Braj was
still not the dominant idiom for Hindi poetry, but it would begin to eclipse Avadhi
toward the end of Akbar's reign. Braj was already well established in bhakti
circles, however. It was also a major language of music.

Akbar was a fervent connoisseur of music, especially dhrupad songs composed in

Brajbhasha. His celebrated court musician Tansen needs no introduction here.14
The Ā’īn-i akbarī (Edicts of Akbar, c. 1595) (p.135) of Abu al-Fazl, one of the
leading intellectuals and historians of Akbar's court and a dear friend of the
emperor, takes special note of music and also includes a section on localiz
singing styles, including dhrupad and bishnupad (songs about Vishnu).15
Nonetheless, it is puzzling that Abu al-Fazl does not mention any of the
numerous Hindi poets now associated with Akbar's court. His lengthy discussion
of poets is entirely devoted to Persian writers. Despite this silence (part of a
larger pattern in Persian historiography, compounding an already-daunting
archival challenge), the names and even a few purported compositions of some
Hindi poets routinely appear in Hindi literary histories. One such figure is
Karnes, to whom, incredibly, three rītigranths—the Karṇābharaṇ, Śrutibhūṣaṇ,
and Bhūpbhūṣaṇ—have been attributed. None survives. Another name
frequently encountered is Manohar Kachhwaha.16 In his memoirs, Akbar's son
does mention that Manohar composed poetry, but it was in Persian.17
Distinguished Mughal courtiers such as Todar Mal, Akbar's revenue
administrator, and Faizi, Akbar's Persian-language poet laureate (and brother of
Abu al-Fazl), are occasionally credited with writing Braj poetry.18 Akbar himself
is also ascribed a few compositions. In the words of Abu al-Fazl, “The inspired
Page 5 of 44

nature of His Majesty is strongly drawn to composing poetry in Hindi and

Persian, and he exhibits a subtle understanding of the finest points of literary
conceits.”19 Although one could certainly wish for more corroborating evidence,
there is no good reason for Abu al-Fazl to have mentioned Akbar's abilities in
Hindi poetry if that poetry were not a part of Mughal court culture.

That Akbar, for all his Timurid ancestry and much-touted Persophilia, was fully
conversant with Hindi is not in question. As Derryl MacLean has noted,
transcriptions of religious debates that took place at Fatehpur Sikri between
Sheikh Mustafa Gujarati, a Mahdavi leader, and members of Akbar's court
“reveal a congenial if slightly dim-witted and naϯve Akbar who delights in
exemplary tales and poetry, especially dohras (i.e., dohās) in the vernacular.”
Apparently, the only Hindi portions of these transcriptions occur in sessions
where Akbar is present; whereas the Arabic portions were translated into
Persian for the emperor's benefit, Hindi needed no such mediation.20

A major political imperative of Akbar's period was to build consensus with local
Rajput kings who were not yet Persianized and spoke various Hindi dialects. In
forging new Rajput-Mughal alliances, the emperor began to accept Rajput
princesses as brides, bringing Hindi into the heart of the Mughal harem. Akbar's
son Salim and grandson Prince Khurram (the future emperors Jahangir and
Shah Jahan, respectively) were born to Rajput mothers, which means that Hindi
was literally becoming the mother tongue of the Mughal princes even if Persian
was the primary public language and ties to Turkish were maintained.21 This
must undoubtedly have been a factor in the court's interest in vernacular poetry.

Religious developments are also relevant to the story of Brajbhasha at the

Mughal court. Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's early capital built on lands adjacent to
Agra, was situated close to the Braj heartland of Vrindavan and Mathura, the
locus of new Vaishnava communities that were gaining power with both Mughal
and Rajput support. Important members of Akbar's administration such as Todar
Mal and Man Singh were major patrons of Vaishnava monuments and
institutions. By 1580, Mathura had become part of the ṣūbah (administrative
province) of Agra.22 The Braj dialect would not have been too distant from the
type of Hindi spoken in Agra; it would have been readily comprehensible to the
Mughals, especially compared to Avadhi, which, as its name indicates, originated
farther east. At any rate, the new types of song and poetry emerging from a
major Hindu cultural center backed by members of his own elite circle, in such
close proximity to the capital, naturally would have been of interest to the
emperor. Persian literary patronage betokened the Mughal (p.136) rulers’
participation in a cosmopolitan Islamicate world; listening to Braj poetry and
music was a means of engaging with the local. This would have been at once a
political and a cultural choice.

Page 6 of 44

Major Braj Poets Associated with Akbar and Jahangir

The association of some Braj poets with the Mughal court during Akbar's reign is
less speculative, even if we are still reduced to speculating about the poets
themselves. One widely known to, if today little studied by, Hindi scholars is
Gang. He apparently did not write any prabandha works, but hundreds of Braj
muktaka poems survive with his chāp. They were widely anthologized in the
early modern period; their popularity in diverse communities is evident from the
numerous manuscripts that survive in royal libraries and, in at least one case, a
Sufi khānqāh of the Chishti order.23 A century and a half later, Bhikharidas not
only included him in his kavi-praśaṃsā but crowned him one of two sardārs
(masters) among Hindi poets, the other being Tulsidas.24 If Gang could be
mentioned in the same breath as Tulsi, then we can feel quite confident of his
high status in the precolonial Braj tradition. Such confidence is bolstered by the
remarks of Tarinee Churun Mitra and William Price, who in a grammar book
written for British military recruits in 1827 noted that Gang was among the half
dozen most celebrated Hindi literary figures.25 Since then the Hindi tradition
seems to have suffered from an astonishing case of literary amnesia.

Although the authenticity of the verses today attributed to Gang is not always
easy to gauge, there is no doubt that Gang existed, that some of the surviving
poems are actually his, and that he performed them for Mughal patrons.26 His
work exhibits a fairly typical rīti profile: bhakti and śṛṅgāra verses—some in the
nāyikābheda style—are well represented, and there are more than seventy-five
praise addresses to Mughal princes, emperors, and members of the nobility,
including Akbar; his leading general and governor Abdul Rahim Khan-i Khanan
(often simply known as “Rahim”); the latter's sons Iraj Shahnawaz and Darab
Khan; Prince Salim (the future Jahangir); Prince Daniyal (Salim's brother); Man
Singh Kachhwaha; and Birbal.27

The scholarship on Gang is a prime example of the methodological and

interpretive problems that beset the study of Mughal Hindi poets. In addition to
the uncertainty of his oeuvre, almost nothing is known about his biography that
can be verified or confidently asserted.28 All signs point to his close contact with
the Mughal court, yet no Persian source mentions him.29 Hindi cultural memory,
however, considers him not just a fine poet but also a political critic. He is
thought to have voiced opposition to an alleged act of (p.137) cruelty condoned
by Jahangir—the killing of Brahmans in the town of Eknaur by one Zain Khan —
for which Jahangir had the poet crushed to death by an elephant. Or at least so
say the Hindi kiṃvadantiyāṃ (folk legends) that have coalesced about him.

Was Gang truly a vociferous critic of Jahangir, a poet-hero willing to face death
rather than allow an injustice to stand? Or was he, perhaps in the manner of
Pravin Ray and Surdas, simply the vehicle for a popular genre that has been
aptly characterized as “talking back to empire”?30 A generic signature line such
as kahai kavi gaṅga (“so says the poet Gang”), found in many of the kavitts

Page 7 of 44

attributed to him, is easily interpolated, and it is not hard to see how poetry
attributed to Gang could have become the carrier of anti-Mughal attitudes that
became prevalent only much later. Jahangir, often stereotyped as a dissolute,
ineffective ruler, is an especially vulnerable target.31 The alleged Eknaur
massacre is not referenced in the Jahāngīrnāmah (Jahangir's memoirs) or any
other Persian text. Badauni mentions Zain Khan Koka's love of Hindi music
(sāzhā-i hindī); he also refers to one Malik Nahv Tuhfa, who (in the words of his
nineteenth-century translator) “inflicted condign punishment upon the infidels of
Etawah [the district where Eknaur is located].”32 But this event occurred in the
fifteenth century. The eighteenth-century Persian historian Shah Nawaz Khan
stresses Zain Khan Koka's love of Hindi kavitts and rāgs (Zain Khan bikavitt ūrāg
shīftah būd), as well as mentioning the nobleman's fondness for elephants.33
Non-Mughal sources, for their part, are unanimous that Gang met a sorry end
under the feet of an elephant. And yet many versions of the tale omit the name
of Jahangir; here it is a more generic royal figure (sometimes a nawab,
sometimes a raja) who pronounces the cruel sentence. The
Bhānucandragaṇicarita (Biography of the mendicant Bhanuchandra), the Jain
ascetic Siddhichandra's Sanskrit biography of his guru Bhanuchandra written
during the reign of Jahangir, mentions that Jahangir threatened the monk with
death by a ferocious elephant if he refused to give up his celibate ways.34
Although not related to Gang specifically, Siddhichandra does attest to the motif
of the cruel emperor and the elephant. Another twist on the legend, this one in
the Mūl gosaīṃ carit, a spurious late biography of Tulsidas, has Gang insulting
not Jahangir but Tulsidas, resulting in his being cursed to be killed by an
elephant.35 Perhaps these various details about a pre-Mughal massacre of
Hindus, a courageous Braj poet, a Mughal notable's engagement with Hindi
poetry (combined with his large stable of elephants), and a mercurial emperor
too quick with the sentence of death-by-elephant, were conflated in popular
memory. Although none of this evidence feels very trustworthy as historical fact,
the linked tales at least allow us to confidently infer that Gang was indeed a
famous Brajbhasha poet during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries and that he had critical (p.138) linkages to elite Mughal society. That
Zain Khan Koka (d. 1601) was a connoisseur of Hindi rāgs and kavitts (one of the
two meters favored by rīti poets) is also important testimony about Mughal
cultural preferences of the late Akbar period.

Another Mughal Braj poet whose biography was subject to a range of fantastical
accretions is Birbal (d. 1586). He is fondly remembered as one of the navratna
(nine jewels) of Akbar's court, and Indian children to this day are regaled with
stories of his clever escapades. Even if more legend than fact surrounds some
aspects of his courtly persona (a phenomenon to which we have now become
accustomed), there is no reason to doubt that this famous Mughal courtier was
also a Braj poet. Both Badauni and Shah Nawaz Khan mention Akbar's awarding
Birbal the title kavirāy (king of poets), though with the characteristic silence of

Page 8 of 44

Persian historians about Hindi literary culture neither provides any details about
his poems.36 A few dozen of Birbal's Braj verses have, however, come down to us
under the chāp of “Brahma.” Bhikharidas never accorded Birbal the same status
as a major poet in the manner of Gang and Tulsidas, but he does include him in
his kavi-praśaṃsā, and Birbal's work was much anthologized in the precolonial
period.37

Another Mughal administrator who moonlighted as a Braj poet, and whose name
is already familiar from chapter 2, is Rahim (1556–1627, figure 4.1), the son of
Bairam Khan, who served as Akbar's regent when Humayun abruptly died in
1556. After Bairam Khan's assassination in 1561, Rahim was raised at Akbar's
court and assumed various roles in the Mughal political and cultural
establishment. He was employed early on as Prince Salim's tutor and would
become renowned for his military successes as well as his lavish support of the
arts. Rahim is remembered as a major literary figure, too: he was both an avid
connoisseur and a versatile poet. He mostly hosted Persian poets at his literary
gatherings, but some sources also indicate the patronage of Brajbhasha writers,
including Gang, to whom a substantial number of praśasti verses in Rahim's
honor are attributed.38

Rahim's own oeuvre is striking for its multilingualism—even by the impressive

standards of polyglot India. It goes without saying that Rahim spoke Persian, the
imperial language of the Mughals, but he also knew Chaghtai Turkish, the native
tongue of his father Bairam Khan and of the earliest Mughal rulers. It was
through Rahim's Persian translation of Emperor Babur's memoirs, Vāqi‘āt-i
bābarī, that the text became accessible at all to the Mughal readers of his day
(most of whom did not know Turkish). Rahim is also thought to have been one of
the earliest Indians to learn Portuguese, which was spoken by the Jesuits who
became a visible presence at the Mughal court during Akbar's period; he is even
said to have studied Sanskrit.39 But (p.139)

Page 9 of 44

(p.140) when Rahim is

remembered in Hindi circles
today, it is for his poetry in Avadhi
and Brajbhasha.40 Most of his
corpus consists of loosely
organized collections of muktakas
and, as in the case of Gang, it is
difficult to assess how much of
Rahim's attributed poetry was
actually written by him. No work
is dated or contains a colophon,
and the available published
editions in Hindi are less than
transparent when it comes to
revealing their manuscript
sources. If the collections are
authentic (i.e., not pseudonymous
or massively interpolated), they
would be crucial testimony to the
importance of Indo-Muslims as
writers and not just patrons of rīti
literature from the very inception
of the tradition. Rahim and
Keshavdas were almost exact
contemporaries. figure 4.1 Portrait of Rahim by Mir
Two remarkable collections of Hashim, c. 1626
verses in the barvai (short Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian
couplet) meter, one on bhakti Institution, Washington, D.C.: Purchase, F
themes, the other a short 1939.50a
quasi-rītigranth, are strikingly
consonant with late sixteenth-
century literary trends in Brajbhasha. The bhakti-oriented barvai verses are an
experiment with the Indic bārah-māsa motif that simultaneously exhibits the
poet's deep knowledge of Krishnaite poetic conventions. Most of the poems are
in the voice of a gopī who is chagrined that Krishna has not returned in time for
the monsoon, a season that is supposed to be one of joy for reunited lovers. A
few muktakas take up the theme of Uddhava's sermonizing to the gopı̄s, another
popular motif of the day. An intermingling of four Persian verses in a Braj barvai
collection are a highly unusual feature, however, and add a distinctive Mughal
touch.41

The other barvai collection draws on themes from the quintessentially rīti topic
of nāyikābheda. Although the concise barvai meter did not afford scope for a
rigorous and detailed treatment of Indian literary theory, this beautiful collection
of poems shows that the author was fully conversant with the system.42 It also
testifies to the rītigranth's importance to a Mughal readership by the late
sixteenth century. Abu al-Fazl's discussion of sāhitya (literature) in the Ā’īn-i
Page 10 of 44

akbarī is principally devoted to precisely this subject. A comment in the

conclusion to his discussion of nāyikābheda prompts one to wonder if these Braj
works were already widely available in Mughal circles: “In this art the manners
and bearing of the hero and the heroine are set forth with much variety of
exposition, and illustrated by delightful examples. The works on this subject
should be consulted by those who are interested in its study.”43 Since Abu al-Fazl
was writing in Persian for an Indo-Muslim audience not conversant with
Sanskrit, this suggestion may well have been an invitation to read an emerging
class of Braj poetry handbooks, one of the lost works of Karnes (if they ever
existed), the Rasmañjarī (Bouquet of sentiment) of Nanddas (fl. 1570),
Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā (Handbook for poetry connoisseurs, 1591), or perhaps
even Rahim's own barvai sequence on nāyikābheda.44

(p.141) Altogether too little is known for a fact about the patronage of rīti
poetry by the early Mughal rulers, but the sheer amount of evidence we can
amass makes a strong case. We will probably never know if the mysterious
figure Karnes was an Akbari poet or if he did write three rītigranths for Akbar, as
claimed by Shukla and reiterated by many subsequent Hindi literary historians.
But we do know that Abu al-Fazl praised Akbar's knowledge of Hindi poetry, and
his own brother Faizi may have written some. Abu al-Fazl was also
knowledgeable about one of the most important rīti motifs, providing an
elaborate account of nāyikābheda for his Persian readers. There are numerous
connections between Braj and the nobility who served as agents of empire,
including the strong possibility that leading Mughal officials such as Birbal,
Todar Mal, Zain Khan Koka, and Rahim were composing poetry in the language.
By the turn of the seventeenth century, Braj poetry had begun to make a
dramatic entrance into Indian courtly life—not just in the frontier lands of
Orchha but in the political heartland.

How does all this connect with what was happening at Orchha? Given the
patronage relationship between Keshavdas and Rahim's son Iraj Shahnawaz
Khan suggested in the poet's Jahāngīrjascandrikā, it is entirely likely that Rahim
would have had some knowledge of Keshavdas's work.45 They may have known
each other personally, even exchanging couplets or literary ideas. Close
connections can be readily posited for several other early rīti poets associated
with the Mughal court. Recall the evidence already presented that Keshavdas
knew Birbal. Gang can be connected to both Birbal and Rahim by virtue of the
praśasti verses that he wrote for them. Both Keshavdas and Gang can be linked,
if circumstantially, to Emperor Jahangir. Indeed, one implication of Keshavdas's
Jahāngīrjascandrika&̄, by virtue of its very existence, of course, but also its
specific contents, is that Jahangir was a connoisseur of Brajbhasha poetry.
Although it is possible that Iraj Khan commissioned an elaborate Braj praśasti
from Keshavdas for its symbolic value as a token of his esteem, it seems unlikely

Page 11 of 44

that he would have gone to the trouble had the emperor not been interested in
Brajbhasha literature.

The tendency of Braj poets to speak in typologizing terms makes the

interpretation of the literary record a delicate matter, but it seems highly
significant that in one of Keshavdas's praśasti verses to Jahangir, the poet
praises the emperor for his knowledge of nāyikābheda. Before we take this as a
straightforward description of Jahangir's own personal tastes and habits, it
should be noted that a similar verse (except for the last line in which the royal
patron is mentioned) occurs in Keshavdas's Kavipriyā as a praise address to Raja
Indrajit of Orchha.46 Nonetheless, it is striking that when Keshavdas could have
chosen from hundreds of praśasti verses in his repertoire, he decided to retool
this particular one for this particular (p.142) Mughal patron. A similar dilemma
confounds the interpretation of the work's darbār scene, in which an astounding
number of people, including the main characters Fate and Human Effort, a Bhat
(a traditional bard), various Brahmans, a sheikh, a qazi, an anonymous raja, a
chorus each of poets and ministers, and finally Keshavdas himself present Braj
poems to the emperor.47 It is tempting to speculate that such a veritable crowd
of poets might mean that Braj performance was a fairly routine affair at
Jahangir's court. However, some of the same poems are repeated nearly
verbatim from Keshavdas's Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, where they were presented to Raja
Bir Singh Deo.48 These acts of literary recycling suggest the need for caution in
taking any passage from the Jahāngīrjascandrikā too literally, but they cannot be
dismissed altogether.

If we pair even this vague and admittedly dubious evidence for Braj performance
with several references to Hindi poets and singers from Jahangir's memoirs, it
becomes clear that Persian had no monopoly on the literary esteem of Mughal
rulers. The emperor is generally quiet about Hindi poets, but not entirely silent.
Of his brother Danyal, he remarks in passing: “He was fond of Indian singing.
Occasionally he composed poetry in the language and idiom of the people of
India that wasn’t bad.”49 In an entry for the year 1608, Jahangir records with
some excitement his pleasure at hearing a Hindi poem whose performance was
orchestrated by Raja Suraj Singh of Marwar (uncle of Prince Khurram, the
future Shah Jahan). Jahangir does not provide the original Hindi, preferring to
explain the poem to his readers in Persian. He does, however, conclude with
remarks that demonstrate his participation, at least to an extent, in Hindi
literary culture: “Rarely have I heard such subtle conceits from the poets of
India. As a reward for this eulogy I gave him an elephant. The Rajputs call a poet
charan.”50 Elsewhere the emperor mentions his regard for a singer in terms that
once again stress patronage and knowledge of Hindi: “I awarded Shawqi the
tamboura-player, one of the wonders of the age, the title of Anand Khan. He
sings Hindi and Persian songs in a manner that soothes the soul. In the Hindi
language anand means pleasure and repose.”51

Page 12 of 44

Perhaps the most striking evidence available from the emperor's memoirs is this
passage in which Jahangir becomes almost rapturous about bee imagery in Hindi
poetry:

The lotus flower often closes up and traps the bhaunra [bee] inside for the
whole night. It also happens with the water lily. But when they open it
comes out and flies away. Because the black bee is a constant visitor to
these flowers, the Hindi poets consider it to be like the nightingale in love
with the rose, and they produce marvellous poetic conceits based on it.

(p.143) One such poet was Tan Sen Kalawant [musician], who was in my
father's service and without equal in his own time—or any other for that
matter. In one of his songs he likened the face of a youth to the sun and the
opening of his eye to the blossoming of the lotus and the emerging of the
bhaunra. In another one he likened the beloved's wink to the motion of the
lotus flower when the bhaunra alights on it.52

In referencing not just the musician Tansen but a larger class of “Hindi
poets” (shu‘arā-yi hindī), Jahangir again signals his appreciation of
contemporary vernacular literary trends. The bee imagery may be a reference to
the bhramargīt (songs of the bee) popularized by the bhakti poets Surdas and
Nanddas during Akbar's time.53 (Note how Jahangir uses the Hindi word
bhaunra, a colloquial form of the word bhramar.) Although no major Hindi
patronage can be conclusively traced to Jahangir, it seems certain that
Brajbhasha had more currency at his court than we have been able to
corroborate from Persian records or extant poetry.54

That Jahangir spoke of Tansen and Hindi poetry in the same breath once again
underscores the deep link between music and poetry traditions in the Mughal
environment. There is even some intriguing evidence that the same people
considered poets by the Hindi tradition are treated as musicians in Persian texts.
Jagannatha Panditaraja, regarded as a major poet and literary theoretician by
the Sanskrit community, is called kalāvant (musician) in Persian court
chronicles.55 When Abu al-Fazl listed Hindi singers, but not Hindi poets, in his
Ā’īn-i akbarī, was he classifying a diverse array of literary and artistic
professionals in accordance with a cultural logic very different from ours today?
Or perhaps only Persian writers counted as poets for the Persian readership of
the official court histories. Regardless of how little we can glean with verifiable
certainty in the sources, strong indicators point to the importance of Braj poetry
(and music) in the court culture of Mughal rulers.

The Patronage of Braj Poets under Shah Jahan

Jahangir's successor, Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58), was an avid patron of both Braj
poets and musicians, and in his case the data are both compelling and
unambiguous. He, perhaps more than any other Mughal emperor, evinces not
only a fascination with Braj texts but also a personal relationship with several
Page 13 of 44

rīti poets. Like Akbar, Shah Jahan was a keen connoisseur of music. Heirs to the
expertise and patronage of Tansen such as Lal Khan (son-in-law of Tansen's (p.
144) son Bilas) and Lal Khan's sons, Khushhal and Vishram, maintained the
tradition of dhrupad at the Mughal court. Another musician named Darang Khan
was weighed against silver and given a substantial royal gift in 1636.56 Shah
Jahan also commissioned a massive compilation of Braj verses attributed to
Nayak Bakshu (a court musician of Raja Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior), whose
compositions were popular in the repertoires of mid-seventeenth-century
singers. The work, known as Sahasras (A thousand emotions, c. 1640), contains
more than one thousand verses and is important testimony not only to the
general literary and musical climate of the day but also to the specific tastes of
the emperor.57

The names of numerous Braj poets can also be connected with Shah Jahan. As in
the earlier Mughal period, some are obscure figures, about whom little is known
except for the occasional detail mentioned in passing by Mughal court
chroniclers. In the Bādshāhnāmah, the monumental court-sponsored history of
Shah Jahan's own reign, Harinath, the son of Narhari (mentioned earlier in
connection with the reigns of Humayun, Islam Shah, and Akbar), is said to have
enjoyed the hereditary patronage of the imperial house.58 (As always, it is not
much to go by, but an expression like “hereditary patronage” does suggest
imperial sponsorship of Hindi poets in Akbar's and Jahangir's eras.) The
eighteenth-century Mughal historian Khafi Khan reports that an unnamed Hindi
poet was given an elephant and a 2,000 rupee cash reward at Shah Jahan's
court.59 Modern Hindi literary historians, for their part, recount Shah Jahan's
encounters with Shiromani and the famed Braj poet Biharilal, but solid
corroboration in Mughal-period Hindi and Persian sources is lacking.60

Several poets really stand out, however, for both the quality of their work and
the quality of our information about them. One is the Brahman poet Sundar
Kaviray of Gwalior. Here at last is a figure who can be securely located at the
Mughal court at a precise time, and easily tracked in both Hindi and Persian
texts. The preface of the poet's major Braj work, Sundarśṛṅgār (Sundar's love
poems,61 1631), contains a eulogy to the emperor in typical rīti style, as well as
personal details about the author and the favor he received at court. A sense of
the preface can be gleaned from the following excerpts:

Shah Jahan assumed power and rules from the city of Agra,
a beautiful place on the banks of the Yamuna.
The emperor is great, and the mouth of a poet small!
How can his virtues be described?
All the stars in the firmament cannot fit into the palm of one's hand.

(p.145) Shah Jahan gave untold wealth to talented men (gunina).

Among them he honored the fine poet Sundar with much respect.

Page 14 of 44

He gave gemstones, ornaments, rubies, horses, elephants, a gift of

cloth.
First, he bestowed the title kavirāy, then mahākavirāy.
Sundar Kaviray hails from the city of Gwalior.
The emperor, ever merciful toward the poor (garība-nevāja),
showed him kindness.62

This is the first unambiguous statement by a Braj poet of his Mughal patronage
context. Of special note is Sundar's use of the term gunina (the Braj plural of
gunī, “talented man,” derived from the Sanskrit guṇī), which occurs regularly in
Braj courtly works of the seventeenth century, denoting the literati and other
court professionals who sought royal patronage. They were rewarded for their
intellectual and creative powers with costly gifts and markers of symbolic
capital, such as the two titles Sundar received from Shah Jahan, kavirāy (king of
poets) and mahākavirāy (emperor of poets). Keshavdas had already used the
term gunī in 1612: in the very same praśasti series where he praises Jahangir for
his knowledge of nāyikābheda, he also eulogizes the emperor for “causing the
talent-trees of the talented to come to fruition”—yet another suggestive
indicator about Braj patronage.63

Like the Rasikpriyā of Keshavdas, Sundarśṛṅgār is a rīti classic that circulated

profusely in early modern India, becoming popular with connoisseurs of both
poetry and painting (figure 4.2).64 This fine collection of poetry expounds the
basic principles of Indian aesthetics with a special focus on nāyikābheda. In
contrast to Rahim's barvai collection, Sundarśṛṅgār is a more typical rītigranth
containing both definitions and example verses. Several of the poems flatter the
patron by inserting him into the text as the nāyaka, the attractive hero desired
by beautiful women. A kavitt illustrating sākṣāt darśan (meeting in person), for
instance, concludes with the line, “Catching a glimpse of Shah Jahan makes the
heart leap up, pleasure courses through the body.”65 In addition to its technical
meaning in literary theory, the idea of sākṣāt darśan also suggests the Mughal
court practice of jharoka-i darshan, the daily court ritual in which the emperor
showed himself from a window.66

Quite aside from flattering his patron, one likely aim of Sundarśṛṅgār was to
educate the emperor in the subject of Indian aesthetic theory. A technical
manual of this type may have been especially appealing to Shah Jahan because
of his passion for Braj singing: some of the love scenes typical of rīti poetry are
shared by the dhrupad repertoire.67 As we have seen, Abu al-Fazl's comments in
the Ā’īn-i akbarī imply that works on nāyikābheda were beginning to attract (p.
146)

Page 15 of 44

a Mughal readership and this

point seems to be corroborated by
Keshavdas's praising Jahangir's
knowledge of the subject. Written
only a couple decades later, the
Sundarśṛṅgār points conclusively
to a Mughal interest in Indic
literary culture that was mediated
through vernacular manuals.
Finally, it becomes possible to
reconstruct more concretely some
of the patronage conditions for figure 4.2 Krishna faces a reproachful
Braj poetry that, one suspects, had Radha, from a manuscript of
already been in effect for at least
Sundarśṛṅgār, Kangra or Guler, c. 1780
two generations.
Although Sanskrit texts were Photograph Courtesy of Sotheby's, Inc. ©
occasionally commissioned at 2008
the Mughal court, compositions
in Brajbhasha would have been
far more accessible to an Indo-Muslim readership. In his colophon, Sundar
explicitly addresses the issue of his work's comprehensibility:

I carefully composed this work, Sundar's Beautiful Poems, bringing it from

the language of the gods (surabānī) into the language of men (narabānī) so
that the path of rasa could be understood by everybody (jāteṃ maga
rasarīti ko, saba pai samujhyo jāi).68

The last chapter looked carefully at evidence from Hindu pandit communities
that showed how the “language of men” began to gain ground over the
“language of the gods” during the early modern period. The Mughal emperors
were also contributing to this major linguistic transformation in an altogether
different social setting.

(p.147) Accessibility must have been an important factor behind another of

Sundar's works that is also said to have been commissioned by Shah Jahan: the
Siṃhāsanbattīsī (Thirty-two tales of the lion-throne). Mughal interest in this
work dates to Akbar's period, when a translation from the original Sanskrit into
Persian was made at the court.69 The Siṃhāsanbattīsī, like the Pañcatantra (or
any number of its translations in the Islamicate world such as Anvār-i suhaylī or
Kalila wa Dimna), is a collection of moral fables that was particularly popular
with royalty. In a similar manner to the Persian akhlāq (mirror for princes)
genre, the tales educated princes in the responsibilities and ethics of their
privileged position. Sundar's translation of the Siṃhāsanbattīsī shows that by
Shah Jahan's time (and again, probably much earlier) Braj, not just Persian, was
functioning as a target language for Indo-Muslim readers.70 The poet's original
text is now unfortunately lost, but it was known to Kazim Ali Jawan and Lallulal,

Page 16 of 44

two Bhasha munshis who produced a Hindustani version of it at Fort William

College. The frontispiece of the 1805 edition states, “This story of thirty-two
tales of the lion throne was in Sanskrit. At the request of Emperor Shah Jahan,
Sundar Kavishvar [i.e., Kaviray] told it in the dialect of Braj.”71 Over the course
of the many reprintings of this version in the nineteenth century (it was chosen
as a set text for the civil service exam in 186672), the attribution to Sundar
disappeared along with all references to its original Mughal patronage context,
but the very fact of its existence, especially when considered in relation to
evidence from the same poet's Sundarśṛṅgār, suggests that one reason Mughal
patrons sponsored Braj works was that they served as a gateway into local
literary culture.

In recollections of Sundar from the Indo-Persian tradition, which are

refreshingly abundant, the Persian court historians Abdul Hamid Lahori (author
of Bādshāhnāmah) and Muhammad Salih Kanbo (author of ‘Amal-i ṣāliḥ) think of
him, unexpectedly, not primarily as a Braj poet but as a diplomat. Although they
call him Sundar Kab73 Ray (i.e., Kaviray), “Sundar, king of poets,” they give no
inkling that they actually know anything about his poetry, recounting instead the
details of the various occasions when he was dispatched by Shah Jahan to
negotiate with recalcitrant rajas. The incorporation of Rajputs into the Mughal
system in force since Akbar's day was attended by intermittent successes and
failures. One spectacular failure was the breakdown of Mughal-Orchha political
relations in the years following Jahangir's death, which occasioned Sundar's
diplomatic mission to King Jujhar Singh Bundela (r. 1627–34), the son and
immediate successor of Keshavdas's patron Bir Singh Deo, who rebelled twice
early in Shah Jahan's reign. As a Hindu and a Hindi speaker from nearby
Gwalior, Sundar was presumably thought to have a diplomatic edge over a
Central Asian or Iranian Muslim member of the court. Sundar's attempt to quell
the reckless ambitions of the Orchha king was ultimately unsuccessful, for (p.
148) Jujhar Singh and his son Bikramajit were executed in 1636, an incident
grimly illustrated by Shah Jahan's court painters (figures 4.3, 4.4).74 Regardless
of the outcome, the case of Sundar Kab Ray dramatically highlights that Braj
poets not only were present at the Mughal court as esteemed literati but that
they served in other capacities, such as trusted diplomats. And note again how
markedly perceptions of them can differ in Persian and Hindi sources.

Page 17 of 44

Another gunī of Shah Jahan's court—this one known from Hindi, Sanskrit, and
Persian sources—is Kavindracharya Sarasvati, a Maharashtrian pandit whose
very name signals his contribution to the literary life of his day.75 His
Kavīndrakalpalatā (Wish-fulfilling vine of Kavindra) is a multitasking Braj text
that combines praśasti and śṛṅgāra elements from rīti poetry with the musical
traditions of dhrupad and bishnupad. He even throws in a few religious sermons.
Intriguingly, Kavindra, like Sundar Kaviray, draws attention to his choice to write
in the vernacular, introducing his work as follows:

I am an expert in the Asulāyana branch of the Rig Veda.

I have composed Bhasha poetry.
My work's name is Kalpalatā, and you will find in it all poetic
pleasures.
“Wish-fulfilling vine” is a suitable title—the work is full of figures of
speech, carefully orchestrated sounds, and sentiments (alaṃkāra
guna rasa sauṃ sanī76).
Everything is described within, and everybody can take pleasure
from it.
I have written countless works, expounding the meaning of the
Vedas.
I feel ashamed to use the vernacular (bhāṣā karata āvati lāja).
I wrote this book for the sake of others.77

As a learned pandit who prided himself on his Sanskrit treatises, Kavindracharya

felt that the choice to use naravāṇī instead of suravāṇī needed to be defended.78
Note his variation on the now familiar theme of vernacular anxiety when he
foregrounds his lāja (shame). The unnamed “others” for whose sake he claims to
have written in Bhasha were hardly the kind of patrons that should induce
shame: the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and his son Dara Shikoh. Once again,
there is the distinct sense that Mughal cultural needs were an important factor
in the impetus toward vernacularization.

The Kavīndrakalpalatā contains both familiar fare and unusual elements that set
it apart from other rīti texts. Many of the praśasti poems are predictably focused
on the emperor's military might and dharmic rule. A variation on the nagara-
varṇana (description of the city) adds a topical twist when Kavindra praises the
emperor's newly founded city of Shahjahanabad.79 Strikingly (p.149)

Page 18 of 44

(p.150)

figure 4.3 The capture of Orchha by

imperial forces, from the Windsor Castle
Padshahnama, an illustrated chronicle of
Shah Jahan's reign
The Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II

Page 19 of 44

(p.151) atypical of the genre is

the addition of a sequence of
dhrupad songs set to rāgs (rīti
texts are otherwise largely
unmarked by such signs of
performance). As in some verses
from the Sundarśṛṅgār, Kavindra's
dhrupads cast Shah Jahan in the
role of the nāyaka. These lyrics
stress the perfection of his
physical appearance and his
supercharged eroticism, respected
kingly traits in the Indic literary
imagination. Although the
Kavīndrakalpalatā is no poetry
manual, Kavindra incorporates
many distinctively rīti topics into
his song texts, as when he praises
Shah Jahan's dexterity as a
dakṣina nāyaka (lady's man).80 In
a song that depicts Shah Jahan
playing Holi, his beautiful female
companions are described in the
technical terms of nāyikābheda:
In springtime, the king figure 4.4 Jujhar Singh and his son
plays Holi in the golden Bikramajit beheaded, from the Windsor
palace. Decked out in Castle Padshahnama, an illustrated
beautiful garments and chronicle of Shah Jahan's reign
jewels are the mature,
The Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty
innocent,
and somewhat Queen Elizabeth II
experienced beauties.
Kanaka mahala madhi
ritu vasanta maiṃ, khelata śāhi ihi vidhi kī horī
Vasana amola ābhūṣaṇa pahiraiṃ, prauḍhā mugdhā madhyā gaurī.…
81

The dhrupad verses also emphasize Shah Jahan's connoisseurship, signaled by a

range of complimentary epithets, including mahājān (greatly knowledgeable),
sura-jñān (connoisseur of music), mahārasī (emotionally sensitive), and mahādānī
(generous patron).

That Shah Jahan was indeed just such a connoisseur of Kabindra's own
compositions is attested by the court historian Kanbo, who describes the
emperor's appreciation for the talents of one “Kabindra Sannyasi” (Kabindra the
renunciant82) and records the emperor's generous cash gift and a robe of honor:

Page 20 of 44

Kabindra Sannyasi, who composed exquisite, perfect dhrupads and Hindi

compositions (taṣnīfāt-i hindī), arrived at the court of The Refuge of the
World (i.e., Shah Jahan) and received permission to enter. When his
compositions had pleased those with blessed minds, he was honored with a
robe and a gift of 2000 rupees and his esteem illuminated the peak of the
sky.83

Although the text provides no further details, it is virtually certain that this
reward was granted specifically for Kavīndrakalpalatā, which fits Kanbo's
description perfectly since it contains both dhrupad verses and “Hindi
compositions.” Either the Mughal court's sponsorship of Braj texts was on the
rise in Shah Jahan's period or something had shifted in the historiography that
made it more acceptable for Persian writers to mention Hindi poets. Were Hindi
writers now so prevalent that they could not be ignored?

Also important in Kavindra's Braj text is the theme of religious dialogue. In a

verse already excerpted in chapter 2, Kavindra praises Shah Jahan's
ecumenicism, (p.152) fashioning a strategic rhyme to commend the emperor's
Quranic and puranic knowledge. Several praśasti verses to Prince Dara Shikoh
similarly stress religious ecumenicism and spiritual understanding. In a clever
yamaka that plays on the word dīna, which means “oppressed” in Braj but
“religion” in Arabic, the poet proclaims that Dara is “merciful to the oppressed,
extinguishing the sorrows of the two religious communities.”84 The prince has “a
highly sensitive heart; he knows the intricacies of dharma.”85 The Sanskrit
pandit also employs a central dyad of Indian religious thought, likening Dara
Shikoh to “formless brahma incarnate in human form.”86 Here Kavindra confirms
the commonly attributed traits of a Mughal prince who to this day is famous for
conversing with Hindu ascetics and commissioning translations of Indian
spiritual texts into Persian.87

Some of the court's knowledge of Indian spirituality must have come from
Kavindra himself, for he was not just a musical performer but also a teacher. A
verse from a Sanskrit text of the day, the Kavīndracandrodaya (Moonrise of
Kavindra, c. 1650), stresses this role:

Every day the king of poets in the three worlds (i.e., Kavindracharya)
wisely expounds the Vedas, auxiliary texts, and
śāstras to the Lord of Delhi.…88

This detail helps to fill out the context for a more than sixty-verse excursus into
tattvajñān or metaphysics, another unusual (but not unprecedented89) feature of
the Kavīndrakalpalatā. In this section, Kavindra takes the reader on a whirlwind
tour through basic principles of Indian philosophy, briefly making stopovers in
the thought systems of Samkhya, Yoga, Pancaratra, and Jainism, with a decided
preference for Vedanta. We are told about overcoming ego, distrusting the sense
organs, and sharpening the mind to become receptive to the divine presence.90
Page 21 of 44

One wonders if in a multi-confessional environment a special resonance accrued

to statements such as, “Know there to be doctrines of many types, [but] they say
that God is one.”91 More puzzling, considering that the work was presumably
performed at court in the presence of many Muslims, is the capping of a verse
with the rather pointed query, “Why do the Turks pray and fast?”92 Perhaps the
aim was—and here Kavindra would have been in the good company of Kabir—to
question all external manifestations of religiosity, Hindu or otherwise. That the
pandit Kavindracharya was free to educate Shah Jahan and his son in Hindu
religious matters suggests that he had special favor at the court; it is also
another telling indicator of the celebrated religious openness of this milieu. That
Brajbhasha was a medium of religious instruction is (p.153) hardly surprising
given the language's bhakti heritage. Still, the inclusion of such a sermon in the
Kavīndrakalpalatā expands our conception of how rīti texts were used in Mughal
settings.

Much more could be said about the fascinating figure of Kavindracharya, whose
charisma was enthusiastically celebrated in the Hindi, Sanskrit, and Persian
texts of his day.93 The ‘Amal-i ṣāliḥ of Muhammad Kanbo contains the briefest of
references, and there the dominant impression is of Kavindra the singer cum
Hindi poet. We know from a contemporary Sanskrit text, the
Kavīndracandrodaya, and strongly suspect from verses in Kavindracharya's own
work that the pandit served as a guru at the court. His surviving texts in both
Brajbhasha and Sanskrit also attest to his role as a scholar. Another remarkable
achievement—not unrelated to the emphasis on religious discussions highlighted
above—is that Kavindra convinced the emperor to rescind the tax levied on
pilgrims visiting Hindu holy centers such as Prayag and Kashi. Kavindra refers
to this powerful act of political advocacy himself,94 but it left an even more
lasting impression on Braj and Sanskrit writers of his day. Poets from far and
wide wrote praśasti verses in the pandit's honor, which have come down to us in
two separate volumes: the Kavīndracandrodaya (in Sanskrit) and
Kavīndracandrikā (in Braj).95 Not only royalty were entitled to poetic accolades:
Kavindra, himself an author of praśastis, became a recipient of them. Although
the process by which the verses were solicited is obscure, they illustrate
powerfully how literati and intellectuals long before the modern age functioned
collectively in the public domain.96 It is odd that Kavindracharya's lobbying on
behalf of Hindu pilgrims was never recorded in the Persian histories when it
sparked the attention of more than one hundred Hindu literati. Shah Jahan is
well known to have kept tight control over his public image. Perhaps the reversal
of an imperial policy, particularly as an accommodation to Hindu interest groups,
was not the kind of thing to be discussed in an official court history.97 As with
Sundar Kaviray, accounts of the same people diverge considerably in Persian-
and Indic-language sources.

Page 22 of 44

Chintamani Tripathi is another Braj poet who left his mark on diverse
communities, although in his case a direct connection to the imperial court is
less certain. It is emblematic of the challenges that confront a historian of rīti
literature that the most essential source, the poet's own Rasvilās (Play of rasa),
has never been published. Chintamani is thought to have written this rītigranth
for Shah Jahan early in his career, perhaps during the 1630s. Any definitive
assessment of the Rasvilās and Chintamani's connection to the court awaits a
more detailed study of the two surviving manuscripts than has been possible for
scholars to date, but a few points are beyond dispute.98 The main focus of the
work is rasa theory, including a section—now something we have come to (p.
154) expect in Mughal contexts—on nāyikābheda. As with Sundarśṛṅgār, such a
handbook probably had a pedagogical function, but the Rasvilās also contains an
abundance of political poetry, including an elaborate virudāvalī to Shah Jahan.
The virudāvalī or “necklace of heroic epithets” is a traditional, almost
incantatory genre in which the hero's glory is aurally manifested through the
recitation of a long list of titles. That the work contains such a praise address to
the emperor naturally suggests a close patronage relationship. The poet refers
to himself as “Cintāmani kavirāu” (Chintamani, king of poets), using a title akin
to those given by Shah Jahan to Sundar and the Sanskrit writer Jagannatha
Panditaraja, but kavirao could also be a more generic term for an authoritative
poet.99 In addition to praising the emperor, a few praśasti poems address other
contemporary Mughal notables, including Dara Shikoh; Shah Jahan's grandson
Zainuddin Muhammad (son of Shah Shuja); Hriday Shah (r. 1634–78), the raja of
a principality in southern Bundelkhand; and Jafar Khan, a Mughal manṣabdār. In
theory, any of these figures, rather than Shah Jahan, could have sponsored the
work. Recall that Keshavdas's Jahāngīrjascandrikā, its title notwithstanding, was
probably commissioned not by Jahangir himself but by Rahim's son, Iraj
Shahnawaz Khan.

More definitive evidence about the reception of Chintamani's rītigranths in elite

Mughal settings comes from a later Persian text, Ma’ās̤ir al-kirām, an
eighteenth-century Persian tazˍkirah (anthology of poets’ biographies) compiled
by Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami. Azad was one of the great polymaths of his day,
and his intellectual curiosity ranged to the field of Indian poetic theory.100 His
Ma’ās̤ir al-kirām is unusual in the Persian tazˍkirah tradition for including a
section on Hindi poets. By Azad's time, the Indo-Muslim elite had become avid
participants in Braj literary culture, but his retrospective account of Chintamani
(based on a source he never identifies) makes it amply clear that this was the
case in the seventeenth century, as well. Azad's entry on Chintamani begins with
a few biographical details:

Chintamani lived in the town of Jahanabad and he had two brothers,

Bhushan and Matiram, who are also famous, inspired poets. Chintamani
excelled above his peers in the science of Sanskrit. He lived with honor in

Page 23 of 44

the district of Shah Shuja, son of Shah Jahan. And his Kavittvicār, as it was
commonly called among the poets, is much esteemed.

In mentioning Bhushan, the Braj court poet of Shivaji, and Matiram, who served
the court of Bundi, Azad confirms the consensus of the premodern Hindi
tradition that the three were brothers. He also references one of Chintamani's
now-lost rītigranths, the Kavittvicār (Reflections on poetry). More (p.155)
important, he goes on to furnish precious clues about the reception of rīti texts
among the Mughal elite.

That Chintamani Tripathi had found favor in Indo-Muslim court settings has
already been established through his Braj translation of Akbar Shah's
Śṛṅgāramañjarī, a work of Sanskrit rhetoric, which was commissioned by the
Golkonda court in the 1660s.101 From Azad Bilgrami, we learn of his association
with another Indo-Muslim patron: Sayyid Rahmatullah, the diwan of Jajmau
(near modern Kanpur). A student of Chintamani is mentioned as a participant in
the maḥfil of the diwan. He shares with those assembled a dohā that his teacher
had written on the rhetorical trope known as ananvaya alaṅkāra.102 Azad begins
by explaining the concept to his Persian readers:

Ananvaya alaṅkāra occurs when the subject and standard of comparison

are one and the same. It has not come within the purview of this poor
author's (faqīr) investigation whether or not one of the wise men of Arabia
or Persia has explained this simile. Nevertheless, I know it exists.

Azad proceeds to improvise some examples of ananvaya, including “There is

nobody like Zuhuri except Zuhuri”103 and

Your coquetry comes to me, O heart-ravishing one.

You are like yourself in the happy thoughts of lovers.

Now confident that his audience understands the rhetorical device he is trying
to explain, Azad records the poem that Chintamani's student presented to the
maḥfil in illustration of it:

I saw the eyes of that doe-eyed girl, which were like herself.
Vā mriga-nainī kī lakhī, vāhī kī sī naina

The student made a slight error, which Sayyid Rahmatullah, fully conversant
with Chintamani's writing on Indian poetic theory, is not shy in pointing out. The
poem proves deficient because in accordance with the norms of an ananvaya
alaṅkāra, the nāyikā's eyes should be compared to her own eyes (since there is
no adequate standard of comparison aside from her own eyes), whereas this
example muddies the waters by calling her doe-eyed. Chintamani is later asked
to correct his student's verse, which is emended to:

I saw the eyes of that beautiful girl, which were like herself.

Page 24 of 44

Vā sundari kī maiṃ lakhī, vāhī kī sī naina

In critiquing the Braj verse, the diwan is following the ideals of nuktah-sanjī
(weighing the points) and iṣlāḥ (correction of others) that betokened expertise
(p.156) in Persian and Urdu literary cultures.104 But the key point is that
Sayyid Rahmatullah has manifest admiration for the Indian system of alaṅkāras,
and his display of finesse in the subject marks him as a poetry connoisseur. In a
related episode, Chintamani is invited to stay for a period with Sayyid
Rahmatullah, who, we learn from Azad, rewarded the learned Braj author with
gold coins and a robe of honor. Evidently inspired by his exposure to Indian rasa
theory, the diwan himself authored a collection of Hindi poetry called Pūranras
(Aesthetic plenitude).105

The Ma’ās̤ir al-kirām affords a rare glimpse of how rīti works were actually used
in practice. The literary categories were introduced, discussed, and debated—
not just by the scholars who wrote the works, but also by connoisseurs in an
assembly.106 Azad's account boldly underscores that Indo-Muslim literati were
one of the main audiences for both Braj poetry and literary theory. Some of them
—such as Rahim and Diwan Rahmatullah—even tried their hand at Braj
composition.

Braj Poets during Aurangzeb's Reign and Beyond

The evidence adduced thus far shows beyond doubt how Brajbhasha literature
was an important domain of Mughal court culture. This did not stop with Shah
Jahan. Constraints of space preclude a thorough assessment of patronage
conditions during Aurangzeb's extended reign (1658–1707), not to speak of the
long eighteenth century, but even a brisk review of the evidence confirms that
there was a lively and encouraging climate, fostered more by the princes and
nobility than by the emperor himself. The reception of Chintamani Tripathi's
work reminds us that the purview of court culture extended far beyond the
imperial court to include the maḥfils of governors and various elite officials, who
actively contributed to fashioning what we now think of as the Mughal style.
During Aurangzeb's reign a new capital, Aurangabad, was founded in the
Deccan, but even with the shifting of the political center of gravity southward,
Hindi court culture continued to flourish in the maḥfils of princes and amirs in
the north.

The extent of Emperor Aurangzeb's own patronage of Braj poets is not easy to
establish. The stereotype that he was antagonistic toward Hindus, which in the
nationalist imagination also means he was antagonistic toward Hindi, is a
misconception. Recent work by Katherine Brown has shown how his supposed
ban on music has been grossly exaggerated, which underscores the need for
caution regarding the received wisdom in the case of poetry, as well.107 For all
the clichés in Mughal historiography about Aurangzeb's tyrannical orthodoxy,
(p.157) his love of music, particularly in the early days of his reign, is well

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attested, and in fact it was only in this period that major treatises on music
began to appear in Persian after a hiatus of a century and a half. The Risālah-i
rāgdarpan (Treatise elucidating rāgs, 1666) of Faqirullah, who served as
governor of Kashmir under Aurangzeb, is positively brimming with evidence of
Aurangzeb's sponsorship of musicians.108 The emperor was known to cite Hindi
verse and, as reported in the Ma’ās̤ir-i ‘ālamgīrī, he also took an interest in Hindi
orthography, consulting Khan Mir Hadi, the diwan of his son Azam Shah, about
the matter. Some scholars have also attributed original Braj compositions to
Aurangzeb.109

There is certainly evidence for Braj poets being in his entourage, and it seems
likely that he directly sponsored some.110 In an episode reminiscent of the
Sundar Kab Ray mission to Orchha, at least one poet was also employed for
distinctly nonliterary activities during the war of succession between Aurangzeb
and his brothers. Khafi Khan, the author of Muntakhab al-lubāb (Compilation of
essential matters, early eighteenth century), reports that a Brahman simply
referred to as “Kab” was sent to negotiate with Jaswant Singh, the maharaja of
Jodhpur (who also happens to have been an acclaimed rīti poet):

Aurangzeb sent a Brahman named Kab, who was reputed for his Hindi
poetry and eloquence, to the Maharaja, with the message: “The object of
our movements is to pay our respects and offer our services to His Majesty,
our patron and the master and the qiblah111 of the two worlds. We are
going to the illuminated court as an act of pure religious devotion and have
no intention of opposition or war. It would be appropriate for you to have
the good fortune of accompanying us; but if this is not possible, remove
yourself from our path, go back to your vat̤n (i.e., Jodhpur), and do not
become the cause of strife and bloodshed among the people of God.”

The Maharaja put forward the orders of His Majesty (i.e., Shah Jahan) as
his reason for not accepting Aurangzeb's offer and gave an impertinent
reply. The next day, the two sides prepared for battle.112

This anonymous Hindi poet's intercession with Jaswant Singh was no more
successful than Sundar's visit to Jujhar Singh. Perhaps diplomacy was not the
strong suit of Hindi poets, after all. The episode nonetheless intriguingly places
a Hindi poet in the service of Aurangzeb, a reminder that poets were not just
poets but also served the court in myriad capacities—and that Persian and Hindi
writers can offer highly divergent accounts of the cultural history of their day.

(p.158) Another Hindi poet who served in Aurangzeb's administration is Mirza

Raushan Zamir. Like Faqirullah, he was a connoisseur of music; he also wrote
Persian poetry. One of his claims to fame is that he translated an Indian music
text, Saṅgītapārijāta[ka], into Persian.113 While “Zamir” (enlightened) was his
Persian takhalluṣ, when he wrote Braj poetry he used the penname “Nehi” (the

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lover). According to Khafi Khan, Zamir's “capacity in the composition of Persian

prose and verse and of Hindi poetry was so great that he could have been called
a second Amir Khusrau.”114 Nehi had a remarkable command of Braj literary
style: he was conversant with the Indic genre śikh-nakh (it had an analogue in
the Persian sarāpā) and also explored standard topics from nāyikābheda texts
like a woman's māna. While it is mostly in Persian sources that we find
information about him, Baldev Mishra included verses by Nehi alongside those
of luminaries such as Keshavdas, Chintamani, and Sundar in his mid-eighteenth-
century compilation Satkavigirāvilās. Nehi was also one of the poets in Sudan's
kavi-praśaṃsā, showing that the work of this now-forgotten Mughal poet was
considered part of the Hindi canon well into the eighteenth century.115

Patronage of Braj poets by several of Aurangzeb's other courtiers and at least

one of his sons is also well attested. Himmat Khan Mir Isa (d. 1681), a
manṣabdār of Aurangzeb, has been dubbed the “Rahim Khankhana of his age”
for his patronage of poets, including the Braj writers Shripati Bhatt (fl. 1674,
author of Himmatprakāś), Balbir, and Krishna Kavi. A few of Mir Isa's Braj
poems also survive under the chāp “Miran.”116 Fazil Ali, a minister of Aurangzeb,
commissioned Sukhdev Mishra to write the nāyikābheda work Fazilaliprakāś
(Light on Fazil Ali, 1676).117 During the same period, Aurangzeb's son Azam
Shah maintained what can now unhesitatingly be called a tradition of Mughal
interest in Braj music and Indian literary theory. According to Bindraban Das
Khushgu, compiler of the eighteenth-century biographical dictionary Safīnah-i
khūshgū, Azam Shah “possessed a perfect command of many genres of Hindavi
poetry, and he was above all famed for his excellent musical compositions.”118
Some Hindi scholars consider him (though the evidence is ambiguous) to have
been the first patron of the Braj poet Dev, whose poetry is among the most
admired in Brajbhasha.119 We can say with more certainty that he commissioned
the Tuḥfat al-hind from Mirza Khan, a unique Persian treatise that contains a
detailed section on Brajbhasha. Like the rītigranths by Sundar and Chintamani,
the Tuḥfat introduced Indo-Muslim readers to the major principles of Braj
literary culture. The work indeed bears a strong resemblance to a rītigranth with
treatments of prosody, rhyme, rasa, alaṅkāra, and nāyikābheda. Mirza Khan also
included discussions of grammar, music, kāmaśāstra (erotic science), and
sāmudrikaśāstra (physiognomy).120

(p.159) The remarkable Tuḥfat al-hind deserves close attention for its insight
into attitudes of the Persianized elite of the late seventeenth century toward
Indian languages. For Mirza Khan, three were considered worthy of mention:
Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Bhakha (i.e., Brajbhasha). While Sanskrit is treated
respectfully as the language of the gods and India's major language of
learning121 and Prakrit duly acknowledged (albeit in a slightly confused manner,
as an amalgam of Sanskrit and Bhakha resorted to by royalty and magical
serpents), the author's real esteem is reserved for Brajbhasha:

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Ornate poetry and the praise of the lover and the beloved are mostly
composed in this language. This is the language of the world in which we
live.… It is particularly the language of the Birj (i.e., Braj) people. Birj is the
name of a country in India … with its centre at Mathurā, which is quite a
well-known district. The language of the Birj people is the most eloquent of
all languages.… Since this language contains poetry full of colour and
sweet expressions of the praise of the lover and the beloved, and is much
in vogue among poets and people of culture, for that reason its
grammatical laws are here formulated.122

The perception that Braj is afṣaḥ-yi zabānhā (most eloquent of all languages) is
incontrovertible evidence—if more were needed—that at least some members of
the Mughal elite considered not just Persian but also Brajbhasha to be a literary
language of special elegance. Similar acclaim for the language of the Braj
maṇḍal and Gwalior is expressed in many texts of Aurangzeb's period. Faqirullah
uses a nearly identical expression, afṣaḥtarīn zabān (most eloquent language),
adding that it is comparable to the Persian spoken in Shiraz, a generous
compliment indeed coming from a Persian speaker.123 In short, Persian writers
of the early modern period were according considerable acclaim to Braj poetry,
and there had been an explosion in patronage at the very highest levels of
Mughal society. The Tuḥfat al-hind owes its very existence to the literary tastes
of Aurangzeb's son Azam Shah, who evidently was so enthusiastic about Braj
poetry that he wanted Persian readers everywhere to understand it. Several of
Aurangzeb's grandsons were also enthusiasts. Some of the poetry of Rafi us-
Shan (son of Azam Shah's elder brother Muazzam Shah) survives under the
takhalluṣ “Nyayi” (the just).124 His brother, Azim us-Shan, was a major patron of
the poet Vrind (1643–1723).

Vrind was a prolific author and, like many successful rīti poets, had multiple
patrons. Originally hailing from the Rajput kingdom of Kishangarh, he moved to
Delhi in 1673 upon being hired, probably as a tutor, to attend on Azim us-
Shan.125 When his patron later became governor of Bengal, Vrind moved with
him to Dhaka. There he composed his most celebrated work, (p.160) Nītisatsaī,
a collection of seven hundred aphorisms completed in 1704. Another of Vrind's
works, the Śṛṅgārśikṣā (Instruction in passion, 1691), was written for a
prominent Muslim family in Ajmer (near Kishangarh), thus helping to transmit
royal styles into wider social circles, as Braj poets of the day so often did.

Much about the Śṛṅgārśikṣā seems familiar since it is structured loosely as a

rītigranth, but a few less typical features bear witness to the types of retooling
such genres could undergo to suit the needs of specific patrons. The
introduction marks a subtle departure from typical Hindu practice. Most Braj
courtly works begin with a short maṅgalācaraṇ (invocation), usually to the deity
Ganesha, with an additional verse or two in honour of Sarasvati or Krishna. In
the Śṛṅgārśikṣā, Vrind operates within a different set of salutatory conventions

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seemingly tailored to an Indo-Muslim audience. The opening verse is indeed to a

god, but Vrind labels his object of reverence simply prabhu, a Sanskritic but
otherwise denominationally neutral word:

The supreme light manifest in all, emanation of effulgent joy—

To this god I pay obeisance in thought, word, and deed.
Parama jyoti saba maiṃ pragaṭa, paramānanda prakāsa,
Tā prabhu kauṃ bandana karauṃ, mana krama bacana bilāsa

Although expressed in a highly Sanskritic register, the emphasis on light

imagery in phrases like parama jyoti and paramānanda prakāsa arguably nods
toward the Qur’ān.126 There may also be Sufi resonances. The remainder of the
introduction follows—albeit in telescoped fashion—conventions more akin to
those of the Persian mas̤navī than the Sanskrit and Braj styles with which Vrind
would have been most familiar and which he generally follows elsewhere in his
oeuvre. He invokes first spiritual, then worldly authority with verses in honor of
Muinuddin Chishti, the revered saint whose tomb is the major landmark in
Ajmer, followed by praise addresses to the reigning monarch, Aurangzeb, as well
as the local governor of Ajmer, Muhammad Salih, the father of the patron.127

The verses dedicated to the patron, Mirza Qadiri, are less formal in tone and
provide additional clues about the reception contexts of rīti texts during this
period. While Aurangzeb is given royal traits (powerful, compassionate,
praiseworthy)128 and Muhammad Salih is celebrated for his moral probity (nekī),
Vrind presents Mirza Qadiri in terms that foreground his emotional qualities and
connoisseurship:

His son Mirza Qadiri is clever and responsive in every respect.

He is handsome, steadfast, valiant, and skilled with a bow.
(p.161) Generous, knowledgeable, appreciative, extremely
generous in spirit,
Mirza Qadiri is the jewel of his family.
Clever with emotion, experiencing delight,
he is a connoisseur who understands matters of sentiment
and pursues love wholeheartedly.
He longs night and day for music and pleasure.129

Mirza Qadiri is further praised because he recognizes men of talent (deta gunī-
lokana kauṃ māna), a self-serving argument on the part of the poet, no doubt,
but one that speaks to expectations of gentlemanly behavior among the nobility
of the day.130 The Śṛṅgārśikṣā contains much that is familiar from other
nāyikābheda texts, but it adds lively details about other markers of consummate
connoisseurship, such as furnishing a raṅg-maḥal (pleasure suite), savoring betel
nut, and appreciating music.

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The omissions are almost as interesting as the additions. Śṛṅgārśikṣā takes up

only the category of the svakīyā nāyikā, leaving out the two other major
categories typical of the genre, the parakīyā and sāmānyā. It has been suggested
that Qadiri commissioned the work for the education of a marriageable
daughter, a supposition strengthened by the text's excursus into byāh bidhi
(wedding procedures).131 Some of the discussion of solah śṛṅgār (a woman's
sixteen types of ornamentation) also seems didactic:

A young woman should augment

the beauty of her mouth with betel. (v. 63)
Thus apply kohl to delight a lover's heart. (v.65)
Vrind says, such elegant cleverness is needed
to please a clever lover. (v.73)
Keeping faithful, be a devoted wife (pativratā)
to your husband. (v. 78)

Regardless of who was the primary audience for the text in Mirza Qadiri's
household, the Śṛṅgārśikṣā is a bold celebration of sensual life. With its enticing
descriptions of passion, ornamented bodies, the boudoir, and the mouth-
watering tastes of betel nut and cardamom, and its exhortations to relish music
and other pleasures, it inducts the reader into a world of highly refined taste and
sensibility. Is this what sex education looks like in an early modern context?132
The stress on love and connoisseurship is certainly fitting for a work that
proclaims itself to be an instruction manual on śṛṅgār, but the critical point is
that the rītigranth genre should not be seen as only a literary one. Here the aim
is to inculcate the very building blocks of emotional life and civilized
comportment. (p.162) It is tempting to put Vrind's text in dialogue with a
contemporary Persian genre on gentlemanly conduct known as mīrzānāmah to
suggest that compositions in Braj with their sensory celebrations similarly
played a role in the cultural self-fashioning of Mughal elites. Also intriguing in
the case of Vrind's work is the possibility of a female readership. Very little work
has been done in the domain of either gender history or history of the emotions
for precolonial India (in contrast with, say, early modern Europe) and the full
exploration these topics surely merit cannot be attempted here. But Vrind's
Śṛṅgārśikṣā suggests that Braj courtly texts functioned within a larger repertoire
from both the Indian and Persian traditions that served to educate the senses.133

Conclusion
During Akbar's reign—in the same period when Keshavdas began his career—
Braj began to achieve astonishing popularity at the Mughal court. Although
Brajbhasha did not outstrip Persian in importance,134 its status was recognized
from within the Persian political ecumene, as when Abu al-Fazl praises Akbar's
knowledge of the finer points of Hindi poetry, or Tajjuddin, author of Mir’āt al-
mulūk, an eighteenth-century manual for princes, mentions on two occasions
that knowledge of Hindi poetry is necessary for Mughal royalty.135 The emphasis
in this chapter has been on the long seventeenth century, but it would be
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possible, given space enough and time, to document the continued success of
Braj poetry in elite Mughal circles throughout the eighteenth century and well
into the colonial period.

There can be no doubt that members of the Persianized elite were avid readers
of rīti literature. There is even some evidence of a commentarial tradition
written by or otherwise tailored to this community, including the Safrang-i satsaī
of Joshi Anandilal Sharma of Alwar.136 Nasirullah Khan, the governor of
Jahanabad, commissioned Surati Mishra to elucidate Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā by
writing Rasgāhakcandrikā.137 Mir Ghulam Ali Azad's lengthy discussion of Hindi
poets in his Ma’ās̤ir al-kirām also points to important signs of readership from
the Persian tazˍkirah tradition. Chintamani was just one of the poets
commemorated. Azad was if anything more effusive in his praise for a poet from
his own time and place, Sayyid Ghulam Nabi Bilgrami (1699–1750), an attendant
of Nawab Safdarjang of Avadh who used the Braj pen name “Raslin” (absorbed
in sentiment). Raslin wrote both Persian and Braj poetry, but it is the latter that
occasions rhapsodic notice in Azad's biography: “No parrot in Hindustan has
scattered sugary speech with the beauty of his pen, and no peacock in this
garden has spread its feathers with the magic of his (p.163) imagination.”138
Pervading the Ma’ās̤ir al-kirām is a sense that Hindi competency had become a
prerequisite of literary mastery, even for Persian poets. And Raslin's was no
ordinary Hindi competency. Azad emphasizes his knowledge of the minutiae of
rasa and nāyikābheda, and Raslin's Rasprabodh (Understanding of sentiment,
1742) must certainly be the most beautiful and theoretically precise rītigranth
ever to have been written by a Muslim poet.139 All of this suggests shared
literary communities across diverse linguistic, religious, and social landscapes,
even if the work of documenting them and parsing their specific cultural logic
has barely begun.140

By the late eighteenth century, Urdu began to supersede both Persian and Braj
among Indo-Muslim writers, but preferences did not change overnight, and
literary monolingualism does not seem to have become the norm. Emperor Shah
Alam II (r. 1759–1806) used two different pen names, “Aftab” (sun) when he
wrote in Persian and “Shah Alam” when he wrote in Braj; the critical point is
that he did both. The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah “Zafar” (r. 1837–57),
though best known for his Urdu compositions, is still remembered today as a
Braj poet.141 Whereas modern scholars have tended to compartmentalize, and
even communalize, the identities of precolonial Indian writers in terms that were
only fixed in the modern period (Persian and Urdu poets must be Muslim, and
Braj poets must be Hindu), the literary-historical record exhibits far greater
nuance. Literary identities were elective, not innate.

Braj poetry was hardly the only index of Mughal engagement with Indic literary
culture—Akbar in particular sponsored Persian renditions of many classics,
including the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, Harivaṃśa, Pañchatantra, and

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Kathāsaritsāgara—but Sanskrit texts remained largely inaccessible except

through the medium of translation. Rīti literature, in contrast, was a cultural
repertory in which the Mughals could participate firsthand. One need only call to
mind Akbar's courtier Rahim and how well versed he was in Indian languages,
Vaishnava bhakti, Hindu lore, and diverse technical details about Indic
literature. This raises an important issue from the perspective of intellectual
history: the contribution of Mughal courtly communities and genres such as the
rītigranth to the process of vernacularization in the early modern period.
Previous chapters explored how, in the hands of early exponents like Keshavdas,
rītigranths served as a vehicle for vernacularizing Sanskrit literary principles.
The next chapter will examine how the proliferation of such texts in Rajput
circles helped to anchor the Braj kavikul that was increasingly separating itself
off from Sanskrit. But any theorization of the reasons for the cachet of the
rītigranth as a cultural form and the diffusion of Brajbhasha in the early modern
period must also factor in the decisive role of Indo-Muslim patronage and
readership.

(p.164) The data are not always cooperative, and some of the patterns of
patronage and readership with Braj remain obscure; not all of the important
texts are published, and some archives remain inaccessible to scholars. That
Persian- and Hindi-reading scholarly communities largely work in isolation from
each other today compounds the problem of reconstructing a shared cultural
heritage.142 Another handicap, to which Shantanu Phukan (one of the few
scholars to think seriously about the use of Hindi among Mughal elites) has
usefully drawn attention, is the “pervasive and largely unexamined assumption
of monolingualism in the study of premodern Indian literature.”143 Practicing
monolingualism in the archive precludes capturing the complexities of a
multilingual, multi-literary realm. Much of Brajbhasha's social complexity
emerges only if both the Hindi and Persian archives are used, since each on its
own paints an incomplete picture, and in some cases the roles of poets are even
represented in dramatically different ways. Persian sources report on a Sundar
who was sent on diplomatic missions to help Shah Jahan settle affairs with
rebellious kings; they ignore his Braj poetry and fail to mention his magnum
opus, Sundarśṛṅgār. Rahim's apparent passion for Hindi cannot be
reconstructed from Persian sources, which stress instead his military and
administrative roles, as well as his patronage of Persian poets and large-scale
architectural commissions. From Sanskrit and Hindi texts we know that
Kavindracharya Sarasvati was influential in myriad ways: he served the cause of
Hindus in general as a political activist and was respected as a religious
authority by both the Mughals of Delhi and the Sanskrit scholars of greater
Hindustan. He was an author of books in both Braj and Sanskrit, reaching
diverse audiences. But Persian historiography remembers him largely for his
musical compositions and Hindi poetry, for which he was rewarded handsomely.
This fragmentation of knowledge across archives in different languages means

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that scholars with less linguistic range than their early modern subjects risk
missing important parts of the story.

Puzzling blind spots remain in the Mughal texts that have come down to us.
These have serious implications not just for Hindi literary history but also for
Mughal historiography. When Abdul Hamid Lahori, (p.165) Muhammad Salih
Kanbo, and other Persian historians of Shah Jahan's reign fail to mention the
poems of a major Braj writer such as Sundar, is it simply because they were not
aware of Hindi literary trends? This would mean that only some—not all—
Mughal elites were culturally competent in Braj. Or perhaps their silence can be
attributed to the frequently political, even imperialist, focus of the royal tārīkh
genre. Or perhaps some Persian writers were snobs and felt that the only poetry
worth the name was Persian poetry. In an episode from the Afsānah-i shāhān,
Mirza Kamran, the brother of Humayun, is reported to have told Muhammad
Shah Farmuli that if only he had written in Persian his reputation would have
been great.144 Abdul Baqi Nahawandi, author of Ma’ās̤ir-i raḥīmī, the
monumental Persian biography of Rahim, pays hardly any attention to Hindi
poetry, but when he does so he stresses that the rewards for Hindi writers were
one-tenth those accorded their Persian counterparts.145

Whatever the reason, the Persian tradition often fails to adequately represent
Brajbhasha literary life. The Ā’ īn-i akbarī is voluble about Hindi musicians but
silent about Braj poetry (although not about one of Hindi's most important
genres, nāyikābheda); yet we know that poets like Gang were notable literary
figures at Akbar's court. Keshavdas portrays himself at the darbār reciting
verses to Jahangir, an event that was never recorded in the Jahāngīrnāmah.
Persian sources say not one word about Shah Jahan's rescinding the pilgrimage
tax at the request of Kavindracharya, an event copiously recorded in Braj and
Sanskrit poetry of the same period. The existence of multiple languages in India
gave rise to arenas of shared culture, but also to separate textual spaces of
political and cultural expression, with their own social and literary norms.
Whether we are dealing with normative genres, deliberate omissions, or
understandably different emphases across a range of sources, we confront some
troubling limitations on our ability to understand the past through textual
means. At the very least, we need to keep in mind that silence in Persian sources
does not necessarily mean historical absence.

And silence is too often what we face when trying to understand the Hindi
literary culture of the Mughal rulers that by all indications coexisted with the
Persian one. Those indications allow an even stronger argument to be made: that
the rīti tradition would never have grown into a major literary culture if it had
not been accorded the stamp of excellence by the Mughal court and the higher
echelons of Indo-Muslim society. For all its resonance with bhakti communities of
the day, Braj literature achieved spectacular success because it was cultivated

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by urbane, cosmopolitan people. It was a poetry of kings, as its role in the court
culture of Rajput rulers incontrovertibly demonstrates.

Notes:
(1.) While no broad, historically rigorous study of imperial court sponsorship of
Braj poetry exists, Muzaffar Alam's excellent study (1998) of the Mughal
patronage of Persian poets does briefly discuss a few eighteenth-century
vernacular poets (see especially pp. 343–46), although it ignores earlier trends.
Phukan 2000 is an important corrective to the assumption that the Persian
corpus is the only Mughal literary culture.

(2.) See Delvoye 1991, 1994a; Brown 2006, 2007; Shofield 2010.

(3.) Two good overviews of Vrind are by Janardan Rao Cheler (1973) and Sudhir
Kumar Sharma (1998). Ramanand Sharma (2004) and his student Avanish Yadav
(2008) have recently published new studies of Sundar.

(4.) These and other challenges posed by the historiography of Hindi literature
are discussed more fully in chapter 6.

(5.) Two influential examples, together totaling more than two thousand printed
pages, the provenance and historicity of whose contents are not always easy to
verify, are the Śivsiṃhsaroj (1878) and Miśrabandhuvinod (1913).

(6.) For this and other verses attributed to the poet Pravin Ray, see Hindī
kāvyagaṅgā, p. 201.

(7.) The episode is excerpted in Snell 1991a: 71–73. An analysis is Hawley 2005:
182–83. According to R. S. McGregor, six of the eight Braj poets consecrated by
the Vallabhans as aṣṭachāp (eight seals) are said to have been brought before
Akbar (1973: 32 n. 7). A number of episodes that relate to Akbar's encounters
with Braj musical aficionados are discussed in Delvoye 2000: 202–10.

(8.) Similar processes of literary memory formation in South India have been
discussed in Rao and Shulman 1999.

(9.) On the bhakti corpus, see Bryant 1978: vii–xi.

(10.) The mixed literary culture of the Deccan is explored in Eaton 1996: 89–106.

(11.) Alam 1998: 317–19.

(12.) Sheikh Abdul Bilgrami and Sheikh Gadai Delhavi, both associated with
Humayun's court, are said to have sung compositions in Hindi. See Pandey 1940:
6–7. Humayun's interest in vernacular poetry is asserted in Agraval 1950: 27–29,
298–304, 309–33.

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(13.) On Manjhan, see Behl and Weightman 2000; on Farmuli, see Askari and
Ahmad 1987: 59–60 and Ma’as̤ir al-kirām, pp. 352–56.

(14.) See Delvoye 1994a; 2000.

(15.) Ā’īn-i akbarī, 3:265–67 (Blochmann and Jarrett trans.). A more general
discussion of music at Akbar's court (in which Tansen is given pride of place) is
in 1:680–82 (Blochmann trans.).

(16.) Shukla 1994: 113–15, 121. Hindi poems attributed to Manohar and Karnesh
are excerpted in Hindī kāvyagaṅgā, pp. 184, 467.

(17.) Jahāngīrnāmah (Thackston trans.), p. 30.

(18.) Select Braj poets from Akbar's court are treated in Agraval 1950 and
McGregor 1984: 118–22. Two verses attributed to Faizi are discussed in Zaidi
1977: 135–40. The likelihood that Todar Mal was the patron of the Avadhi poet
Alam, whose Mādhavānalkāmkandalā is dated to A.H. 991 (1582–83), is stressed
by Vanina 1993–94: 67.

(19.) (T̤ab’-i ilhām-pazīr-i ān ḥaz̤rat bih guftan-i naẓm-i hindī ū fārsī bih ghayāt-i
muvāfiq uftādah dar daqā’iq-i takhayyulāt-i shi‘rī-yi nuktah-sanjī ū mū-shigāfī
[i.e., shikāfī] mīfarmāyand). Akbarnāmah, 1:270–71. My translation modifies
Beveridge (Akbarnāmah, 1:520). A sampling of Hindi verses attributed to Akbar
is in Hindī kāvyagaṅgā, p. 463.

(20.) MacLean 2000: 203 (and n. 17).

(21.) Jahangir's mother, Harkha, titled Maryam uz-Zamani, was the daughter of
Bharmal (also known as Bihari Mal) Kachhwaha, the raja of Amber. One of
Jahangir's Rajput wives, Jagat Gosain (granddaughter of Raja Maldeo of
Jodhpur), was the mother of Shah Jahan. See Lal 2005: 170. While Akbar was
formally unlettered, his son Jahangir takes pride in his broad literary interests.
He wrote his memoirs in Persian, occasionally including Hindi words, but even
this fourth-generation Mughal was invested in his Timurid ancestry: upon
reading his grandfather's memoirs, he wrote a sentence in Turkish and
declaimed, “Although I grew up in Hindustan, I am not ignorant of how to speak
or write Turkish.” Jahāngīrnāmah (Thackston trans.), xvi, 77.

(22.) Entwistle 1987: 159.

(23.) See Krishna-rādhā of Gang-kab, originally housed in the Hazrat Pir

Muhammad Shah Library, Ahmedabad. Manuscript courtesy of Iran Culture
House, New Delhi. I am grateful to Muzaffar Alam for the reference.

(24.) Kāvyanirṇay, 1.17.

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(25.) The others were Chand Bardai, Kabir, Tulsi, Bihari, Keshavdas, and Sur.
Mitra and Price 1827: viii–x.

(26.) Bate Krishna, the editor of one of the better modern printed anthologies of
Gang's poetry, expresses doubt about the authenticity of some of the material he
collected. See Gaṅgkabitt, p. 8.

(27.) Ibid., pp. 88–117 and Gaṅggranthāvalī, pp. 234–69.

(28.) Some remarks, including what appears to be wild speculation, are Agraval
1970: 1–21.

(29.) Some Indo-Persian texts are not indexed and not all have been published,
which renders this assertion provisional.

(30.) On the idea of Hindi poets “talking back” to empire, see Pauwels 2009: 200.

(31.) The negative image of Jahangir in Mughal historiography, which became

pronounced from the time of his son Shah Jahan, is analyzed in Lefèvre 2007.

(32.) Muntakhab al-tavārīkh (Ranking trans.), 1:378 (kufār-i etāvah rā mālish-i

‘aẓīm dādah samt-i shihr murāja’at nimūd). In referring to Zain Khan Koka's
musical abilities, Badauni lauds him as “unrivalled in his age.” Muntakhab al-
tavārīkh (Haig trans.), 3:327.

(33.) Ma’as̤ir al-umarā, 2:369–70.

(34.) Bhānucandragaṇicarita, pp. 48–49.

(35.) A few variations on Gang and the death-by-elephant motif are Agraval
1970: 9–21. For useful methodological perspectives on the Mūl gosaīṃ carit and
other legends that accrued to the biography of Tulsidas, see Lutgendorf 1994.

(36.) Muntakhab al-tavārīkh (Lowe trans.), 2:164, and Ma’as̤ir al-umarā

(Beveridge trans.), 1:420. Samples of Birbal's purported Hindi compositions are
in Sinha 1980: 170–77.

(37.) The manuscript evidence includes entries from Rājasthānī-Hindī hastlikhit

granth-sūcī, 4:90, 5:28, 10:80, 13:96, 14:56.

(38.) Rahim's Braj literary patronage is discussed in Naik 1966: 280–462. Gang's
praśasti verses to Rahim are far more numerous than for any other patron. See
Gaṅgkabitt, vv. 297–318.

(39.) McGregor 1984: 121; on Kheṭakautukam, a Sanskrit astrological work with

some unusual (Persian) macaronic features attributed to Rahim, see Das 1997. A
few of Rahim's putative Sanskrit ślokas are in Rahīmgranthāvalī, pp. 163–66.

Page 36 of 44

(40.) Tulsidas (fl. 1575), an approximate contemporary, had switched from

Avadhi to Braj in mid-career as the latter language gained visibility. Perhaps
Rahim did the same.

(41.) See Barvai (bhaktiparak), vv. 86, 94–96. On Uddhava and the gopīs, see n.
53 below. A detailed study is McGregor 1973.

(42.) Rahim is to this day considered the undisputed master of the barvai form in
Hindi (Snell 1994a). A couple of his signature barvais were discussed in chapter
2. A brief overview of the Hindi compositions attributed to Rahim is Busch
2010b: 108–14.

(43.) Ā’īn akbarī (Blochmann and Jarrett trans.), 3:260.

(44.) Sheldon Pollock (2009: xix) notes that Abu al-Fazl knew the Sanskrit
Rasamañjarī (Bouquet of Literary Emotion, c. 1500) of Bhanudatta. He may also
have had some familiarity with the Śṛṅgāradarpaṇa (Mirror of passion, 1569), a
work of Sanskrit poetics by the Jain monk Padmasundara, who had attracted
Akbar's patronage. Abu al-Fazl could also have been drawing on information in
Braj rītigranths.

(45.) See chapter 1.

(46.) “Nāikā anekani ko nāyaka nagara nita, aṣṭa nāikānihīṃ sauṃ manu lāiyatu
hai,” (He is the stately lord of many women, but he devotes himself to studying
the eight nāyikās). Jahāngīrjascandrikā, v. 34. Compare Kavipriyā, 11.23. On the
eightfold classification of nāyikās, see chapter 2.

(47.) Jahāngīrjascandrikā, vv. 132–201.

(48.) Compare for instance Jahāngīrjascandrikā, vv. 185–92, with

Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 33.32–47.

(49.) Jahāngīrnāmah (Thackston trans.), p. 39.

(50.) Ibid., p. 93. (The original reads, “bih īn nāzukī-yi māz̤mūn az sh’uarā-yi hind
kam bih gūsh rasīdah. Bih jaldū- yi īn madaḥ f īlī bih ū marḥamat kardam.
Rājpūtān-i shā‘ir rā cāran mīguyand”, p. 80).

(51.) Ibid., p. 197.

(52.) Ibid., p. 239. Nalini Delvoye has also called attention to how this passage
signals Jahangir's “thorough knowledge of the literary Braj language and his
familiarity with the Indian imagery which they employ.” Delvoye 1994a: 414–15.

(53.) These delightful poems derive from the Bhāgavatapurāṇa episodes about
Krishna's famous messenger, Uddhava, and his dry sermons to the lovelorn

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gopīs. The gopīs seek Krishna's affections, not Uddhava's philosophizing, and
when they see a black bee, they focalize their longing and frustration upon it.

(54.) On the doubtful authenticity of a Jahangir-period colophon attached to the

Phūlmañjarī, a pedestrian work attributed to Matiram Tripathi, see chapter 5, n.
85.

(55.) Audrey Truschke, personal communication. Other instances of similar

category mismatches are evident in how the Persian historiographical tradition
views Sundar Kab Ray and Kavindracharya Sarasvati, discussed in the next
section.

(56.) The Bādshāhnāmah mentions that Lal Khan was rewarded with an elephant
and the title guṇasamudra (ocean of talents) in 1642. Qanungo 1929: 51–52. I am
grateful to Audrey Truschke for the reference.

(57.) Delvoye 1991: 168–74.

(58.) Qanungo 1929: 51.

(59.) Cited in Qanungo 1929: 51.

(60.) On Shiromani, see Miśrabandhuvinod, 2:467, and Śivsiṃhsaroj, pp. 581–82.

On Shiromani and Harinath (here called Haranath), see Bahura 1976: 29–30. For
further on Bihari and the Amber court, see chapter 5.

(61.) Sundar's title can be translated in several ways. One alternative is

“Resplendent passion.”

(62.) Sundarśṛṅgār, vv. 2–3, 10–12.

(63.) Gunina ke guna-taru phalita karanu hai, Jahāngīrjascandrikā, v. 33.

(64.) The visual tradition of the Sundarśṛṅgār has been little studied, but a few
images have been published. See, for instance, Topsfield 2001: 148. Leaves from
a manuscript evidently owned by a German collector have been recently
auctioned at Sotheby's, New York. At least one illustrated copy of the text is
currently housed at the Allahabad Museum (accession no. 91/1664). On a
manuscript from Baroda, see Goetz 1949: 62–66.I thank Holly Shaffer and
Audrey Truschke for calling some of this material to my attention.

(65.) Jī maiṃ jīva āyo, sukha aṅga aṅga chāyo, iha darasana pāyo sāhijahāṃ jū
koṃ jabahī, Sundarśṛṅgār, v. 272.

(66.) The ritual became an important component of the visual culture of Shah
Jahan's day. See Koch 1997: 133.

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(67.) According to Shahab Sarmadee (1996: ix) during the seventeenth century a
classification system was evolving for rāgs that was based on nāyikās, nāyakas,
and sakhīs (female companions to the nāyikā).

(68.) Sundarśṛṅgār, vv. 373–74.

(69.) Seyller 1999: 14. A retranslation of the same text was ordered during
Jahangir's period, too. See Truschke 2007: 14.

(70.) Cynthia Talbot discusses the preference of Jan Kavi, a prolific author active
in Shah Jahan's period, for Brajbhasha over Persian. Jan Kavi hailed from the
Kyamkhani community, a clan of Rajputs who had converted to Islam. Notably,
some of Jan Kavi's works are translations from Persian to Brajbhasha (2009:
229–33). Dasharatha Sharma mentions that he presented his Buddhisāgar, a Braj
rendition of the Pañcatantra, to Shah Jahan (cited in Talbot 2009: 230 n. 55).

(71.) “Yih kahānī siṃhāsan battīsī kī saṃskṛt meṃ thī—shāh jahān bādśāh kī
farmāiś se—sundar kabīśvar ne braj kī bolī meṃ kahī,” Singhasun Butteesee, p.
1. Garcin de Tassy, who wrote the first modern history of Hindi-Urdu literature a
few decades later, similarly described the Siṃhāsanbattīsī as “a work that
[Sundar] translated from Sanskrit at the order of Emperor Shah
Jahan” (Ouvrage qu’il traduisit du sanscrit par ordre de l’empereur Schâh
Jahân), Histoire de la littérature hindouie et hindoustanie, 3:178.

(72.) Singhāsanbattīsī, p. ix.

(73.) There is no way to write a word-final short vowel in Persian, so the word
kabi ends up being written (and read as) “kab.” The switch from “va” to
“ba” (i.e., kavi to kabi) represents a typical seventeenth-century pronunciation.

(74.) Sundar's role as an intermediary between the Mughal armies and Jujhar
Singh as well as his intercessions during the rebellions of Babu Lakshman Singh
of Ratanpur and Raja Jagat Singh of Nurpur are described in ‘Amal-i ṣāliḥ,
2:100–7, 83–84. Additional details (including those that derive from the
Bādshāhnāmah as well as unpublished court histories) are in Saksena 1958: 70–
96.

(75.) In Sanskrit Kavīndra means “king of poets” and the title ācārya signals
great learning.

(76.) Typically rīti is the poet's foregrounding of classical literary infrastructure.

(77.) Kavīndrakalpalatā, p. 1, vv. 8–13.

(78.) Professions of shame notwithstanding, Kavindracharya seems routinely to

have written in both Sanskrit and Braj. Extant and attributed Sanskrit works
include Kavīndrakalpadruma, a collection of devotional stotras, Padacandrikā, a

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commentary on Dandin's Daśakumāracarita, Jagadvijayachandas, a virudāvalī or

necklace of heroic epithets to Jahangir, Yogabhāskara, Mīmāṃsāsarvasva, and a
commentary on the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa. Aside from the Kavīndrakalpalatā, his
known Braj works are an unpublished Samarasāra, said to be on astrology, and a
Yogvāsiṣṭhsār (also called Jñānsār), a rendering of an acclaimed Sanskrit
Vedanta text into Braj dohās. Brief discussions of his oeuvre are Divakar 1966:
15, 34–39; Rahurkar 1969: 40–41.

(79.) Kavīndrakalpalatā, pp. 16–17, vv. 95–100.

(80.) Ibid, p. 23, v. 14.

(81.) Ibid., p. 25, v. 20.

(82.) Kavindra refers to his own vow of renunciation in the opening to

Kavīndrakalpalatā (p. 1, v. 6): saba viṣayani te bhae udāsa, bāla dasā meṃ layo
sanyāsa (I became indifferent to worldly pleasures and adopted the ways of
asceticism in my childhood).

(83.) “Kabindar Sanyāsī kih dar tālīf-i dhrupad ū taṣnīfāt-i hindī salīqah-‘i durust
ū mahārat-i tāmm dārad bih dargāh-i ‘ālam-panāh rasīdah rukhṣat bār yāft. Va
taṣnīfātish pasand-i khāṭir-i mubārak uftādah bih khil‘at ū in’ām-i dū hazār
rūpiyah mubāhī gashtah sar-i ‘izzat bih awj-i falak bar afrūkht.” ‘Amal-i ṣāliḥ,
3:122.

(84.) Dīna ko dayāla doū dīna ke dahata dukha, ibid., p. 49, v. 7.

(85.) Parama narama citta, dharama marama jāneṃ, Kavīndrakalpalatā, p. 47, v.

(86.) Saguna hvai pragaṭa bhayo ju hai brahma niraguna, ibid., p. 50, v. 11.

(87.) Recent scholarship, however, has painted a more nuanced picture of the
figure of Dara Shikoh than the one in the popular Indian imagination. See Kinra
2009; D’Onofrio 2010.

(88.) Translated from a Sanskrit verse cited in Raghavan 1940: 161.

Kavindracharya is held to have been Dara Shikoh's teacher; he may also have
written his Yogvāsiṣṭhsār for the prince but definitive evidence is lacking. See
Rahurkar 1969: 42.

(89.) Recall the philosophical content of Keshavdas's Vijñāngītā, composed for

Bir Singh Deo Bundela.

(90.) Kavīndrakalpalatā, pp. 35–46.

(91.) Mata nānā vidha taise jānauṃ, eka bhānti ko alakhu bakhāno, ibid., p. 37, v.
5.
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(92.) Kāhe ko nimāja rojā turuka karata hai, ibid., p. 41, v. 24.

(93.) An interested reader might turn to Raghavan 1940, 1953; Tarachand 1944;
Divakar 1966.

(94.) Kavīndrakalpalatā, p. 2, v.14, p. 6, v. 14.

(95.) Some information about both poetry collections is in Divakar 1966: 40–48.

(96.) This point has been made forcefully by other scholars, including Bayly 1996
and Novetzke 2007.

(97.) Chundavat suggests this point in her introduction to Kavīndrakalpalatā, p.

2. On Shah Jahan's control of the process of history writing at his court see
Begley and Desai 1990: xv–xxiii.

(98.) The two manuscripts (the one I was able to view, no. 274, was incomplete)
are housed at the Anup Sanskrit Library, Bikaner. The royal family did not permit
any reproduction of the documents; thus, my assessment is based on what I
could glean from a short trip in December 2005. The likelihood of Mughal
patronage and the complexities of dating are discussed by Vidyadhar Mishra
(1990: 39–40), who has viewed the manuscripts.

(99.) The reference occurs in pariccheda 5, and possibly in other places that
escaped my notice during a necessarily brief viewing of the manuscript.

(100.) Azad's biography and literary interests (his writings also include a largely
neglected corpus in Arabic) have recently been discussed in Toorawa 2008 and
Sharma 2009.

(101.) See chapter 3.

(102.) I have emended the Persian from ananya to ananvaya, a well-attested

figure of speech in which the upameya (subject of the comparison) and upamāna
(standard of comparison) are identical.

(103.) Zuhuri is a famous Mughal poet from the Deccan who was active during
the reigns of Akbar and Shah Jahan.

(104.) On iṣlāḥ, see Pritchett 1994: chap. 6.

(105.) Ma’ās̤ir al-kirām, pp. 364–66.

(106.) Compare the discussion of the eighteenth-century literary conference

convened in Agra, discussed in the next chapter.

(107.) Brown 2007. The standard Hindi textbook narrative is Sinha 1973: 8, 21.

(108.) Sarmadee 1996: xii, xl–xli.

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(109.) Chatterji 1979: 185–93 (citing Ma’ās̤ir-i ‘ālamgīrī); Ziauddin 1935: 3 n. 1.

According to Shailesh Zaidi (1977: 180 n. 1), poems attributed to “Alamgir” and
“Shah Aurangzeb” are found in late anthologies from the nineteenth century,
such as the Saṅgītrāgkalpadrum.

(110.) Zaidi, one of the few scholars conversant with both Braj and Persian
traditions, has tracked numerous Braj poets connected to Aurangzeb, including
Ishvar, Samant, Krishna, Dvivedi, Nehi, Madhanayak, and Mir Jalil. Zaidi 1977:
180 n. 1. Cf. Grierson 1889: 72.

(111.) The qiblah is the wall of a mosque that faces Mecca

(112.) The translation is slightly modified from Syed 1977: 85.

(113.) Zamir's musical contributions to Mughal society are discussed in Brown

2003: 68–71, 202–23.

(114.) Syed 1977: 114. For further details about Raushan Zamir drawn from the
Persian biographers Sher Khan Lodi and Ghulam Ali Azad Bilgrami, see Zaidi
1977: 143–45.

(115.) Satkavigirāvilās, p. 84 (v. 310 corresponds to v. 26 in Zaidi's edition);

Sujāncaritra, v. 5. Sudan also praised Narhari, mentioned above as active in the
early Mughal period, as well as Shiromani, who is thought to have been at Shah
Jahan's court. For a discussion of how Baldev Mishra's compilation and Sudan's
Sujāncaritra can shed light on Hindi canon formation in the premodern period,
see chapter 3.

(116.) The details of Hindi sponsorship and a few poems by “Miran” are in Zaidi
1977: 181–87. Cf. Ma’ās̤ir al-umarā, 3:948.

(117.) This by all indications remained an extremely popular work well into the
nineteenth century, extant in many manuscripts. See McGregor 1984: 187.

(118.) Quoted in Brown 2007: 105.

(119.) Dev may have begun his long and prolific career at Azam Shah's court
with a Braj rītigranth known as Bhāvvilās (Play of emotion, 1689), which was
based on the Sanskrit Rasataraṅgiṇī of Bhanudatta. The colophons of the
manuscripts differ in their attributions of patronage. The older (1796) of the two
manuscripts I consulted (Bhāvvilās, Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute,
Alwar, accession number 4771 [2], folio 165) does mention that Azam Shah
listened to and appreciated the work, but this statement is absent from a later
one from 1837 (Bhāvvilās, Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Bharatpur,
accession number 212, folio 74b). The verse in question is mentioned by (but not
printed by) the text's recent editor. See Dindayal 2004: 11, 368.

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(120.) A detailed outline of the contents is Ziauddin 1935: 16–32; the section on
music is briefly discussed in Brown 2003: 73–76.

(121.) “Books on various sciences and arts are mostly composed in this
language” (aqsām ‘ulūm ū anvā‘ fanūn bīshtar badīn zabān taṣnīf kunand).
Tuḥfat al-hind (trans. Ziauddin), pp. 34, 53.

(122.) Tuḥfat al-hind, pp. 34–35.

(123.) Cf. Delvoye 1991: 179. Tarjumah-i mānkutūhal va risālah-i rāgdarpan, pp.
98–99. Comparable remarks about the language of Mathura and Gwalior were
made by Faqirullah's contemporaries. See the discussion of Chintamani Tripathi
in chapter 3; cf. Alam and Subrahmanyam 2004: 67.

(124.) Alam 1998: 343.

(125.) Cheler 1973: 45–46.

(126.) Note the similarity with “Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth”
in Qur’ān 24:3. I thank Muzaffar Alam for the reference. Although Vrind's
approach is unusual for a Hindu, the reworking of Indic invocatory paradigms in
keeping with a Muslim cultural milieu was common among earlier Avadhi poets
such as Jayasi and Manjhan. Eugenia Vanina (1993–94: 74) notes a similarly
Islamicate opening to Alam's Mādhavānal-kāmkandalā, which was written in
Akbar's period.

(127.) Śṛṅgārśikṣā, vv. 1–6.

(128.) These traits are expressed with a combination of Sanskrit, Persian, and
Arabic epithets: mahābalī, mihrbān, ṣubiḥān. Śṛṅgārśikṣā, v. 4.

(129.) Śṛṅgārśikṣā, vv. 7–9. Recall Kavindracharya's similar portrayal of Shah

Jahan in his dhrupad verses.

(130.) Śṛṅgārśikṣā, v. 10 (and a sentiment repeated in v.11). Keshavdas makes a

similar remark about Emperor Jahangir. See n. 63, this chapter.

(131.) Cheler 1973: 82–83. The discussion of byāh bidhi is Śṛṅgārśikṣā, vv. 18–32.

(132.) Cf. Pachauri 2002: 128–29.

(133.) One attempt at a gender-sensitive literary history is Vanita and Kidwai

2000. On the mīrzānāmah texts, see O’Hanlon 1999. The relationship between
Hindi texts and emotion in the Mughal period is discussed in Phukan 2001.

(134.) The hierarchy between Persian and Hindi composition at Akbar's court,
for instance, has been made clear in Alam 1998: 323. Still, in the same article

Page 43 of 44

variation across reigns is noted, with eighteenth-century emperors such as

Farrukh Siyar and Shah Alam II much inclined toward Braj poetry (346).

(135.) Askari 1953: 29–31 (cited in Bayly 1996: 194).

(136.) For a detailed discussion of the commentarial tradition on Bihari, see

Mishra 1965a: 174–86.

(137.) See Singh 1992: 7–9, 23–25.

(138.) “hīch ṭūṭī dar hindūstān bikhūbī-’i kilkish shakar-afshānī nanamūdah va

hīch t̤ā’ūsī dar īn būstān bih nīrangī-‘i fikrish bāl ū par nagushūdah. Ma’ās̤ir al-
kirām, p. 371.

(139.) Ibid., pp. 372–73. Raslin's Braj poetry is discussed in Pandey 1987; Busch
2010b: 115–18.

(140.) A landmark study with a focus on the reception of Avadhi texts by the
Mughal elite is Phukan 2000.

(141.) Pritchett 1994: 4–5; Faruqi 2003: 807–8. Examples of Shah Alam's Braj
poetry are in Nādirāt-i shāhī.

(142.) The failure to collate Persian and vernacular (as well as Sanskrit) sources
from premodern India is symptomatic of a much larger historiographical
problem that urgently needs redress. Cf. Aquil 2007: 9–10.

(143.) Phukan 2001: 36.

(144.) Cited in Askari and Ahmad 1987: 59–60.

(145.) Lefèvre 2006. For further analysis of the literary hierarchies as seen from
within a Persian episteme, see Phukan 2000: 56–69.

Access brought to you by:

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Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Rīti Literature in Greater Hindustan

Allison Busch

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords

Chapter 5 is concerned with rīti poetry as a domain of Rajput literature. It looks
at the adoption of rīti styles by three major courts that had close ties to Mughal
power: Amber, Bundi, and Jodhpur. Their patronage helped to pave the way for
the wider acceptance of Brajbhasha courtly styles throughout greater Hindustan
and some Rajput kings, like Jaswant Singh, are hailed as rīti authors in their own
right. The transregional circulation of rīti literature is exemplified by examining
the careers of three major writers who also happen to have been brothers:
Matiram, Bhushan, and Chintamani Tripathi. These three were literally brothers,
but the larger community of rīti intellectuals was also conceptualized in kinship
terms, as a kavikul (family of poets). Tracing this network reveals much about
the literary culture of the period as well as the mentalities and aspirations of
early modern intellectuals that were fostered through literary education.

Keywords: Rajput literature, Amber, Bundi, Jodhpur, Jaswant Singh, Bhushan Tripathi, Matiram
Tripathi, Chintamani Tripathi, education, kavikul

Looking at the Sanskrit texts,

I have given shape to their ideas in the vernacular …

I have written this innovative work for the kind of person who is scholarly,
skilled in the vernacular, and clever with the literary arts.

—Jaswant Singh

Page 1 of 43

Rajput Literature and Royal Self-Fashioning

Mughal patronage may have been critical to the early efflorescence of rīti
literature, but Braj poets did not, of course, serve only an Indo-Muslim
constituency. Elevated registers of court poetry as well as the more scholarly
agenda epitomized by the rītigranth garnered a vast circulation over the course
of the next two centuries. Braj poets also continued to write for and belong to
bhakti communities. Vaishnava religious devotion, and one of its concomitants,
the performance of bhakti texts, was also being embraced at the courts of many
Rajput kings in the regional centers that had been absorbed into the imperial
system, another factor in the enormous appeal of Brajbhasha literature.

The experiments with scholarly writing in Bhasha, which seemed bold and by no
means guaranteed of success during the time of Keshavdas, met with increasing
acceptance in later generations. As Braj poets continued to innovate with the
classical genres of kāvya and alaṅkāraśāstra—textual realms that could now be
claimed as the domain of Hindi writers—the language began to serve, in the (p.
167) manner that Sanskrit had once served, the cultural needs of the Hindu
intelligentsia. Braj writers developed greater confidence, became more
numerous, and constituted an informal but broad-based sociocultural network
that they called the kavikul, a kind of nascent respublica literaria. In terms of
sheer volume of patronage, the most important centers for rīti writers were the
Rajput courts. By “Rajput,” I mean the rulers from today's Rajasthan but also the
subimperial kings, from across northern and eastern India as well as the Deccan,
who served as Mughal manṣabdārs and contributed to the forging of new styles
of kingly self-presentation in this period.

For all its early history in Bundelkhand and the intersections we have traced
with the Mughal court, rīti textual culture should also be considered a crucial
branch of Rajput literature. During the Mughal period, Rajput kingdoms
capitalized on new opportunities to augment their power, and these social and
political processes were attended by major cultural transformations. A well-
studied instance of how contact between Mughals and Rajputs stimulated new
forms of court culture is the growth of schools of Rajput painting. Although art
historians often use the term “Rajput painting” to capture the generally more
conservative, Indic registers of subimperial visual culture in the early modern
period, many painters and artistic repertoires were shared between Mughal and
regional ateliers, and the traditions of Mughal and Rajput painting are best
viewed in concert.1 The same courts that gave rise to Rajput painting styles also
patronized rīti literature, and nāyikās and nāyakas from rīti classics such as
Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā and Bihari's Satsaī became popular subjects, with the
poetry often being inscribed onto the paintings (see figures 2.2, 3.1, 3.2). The
development of Braj courtly literature was thus intimately connected with a
larger spectrum of contemporary practices. Both rīti texts and miniature
paintings fed the cultural aspirations of regional kings, who by sponsoring

Page 2 of 43

literary and artistic endeavors made a claim to the world that they were men of
cultivation and learning, as well as power.

In contrast to “Rajput painting,” “Rajput literature” has little currency in

academic parlance but the term usefully identifies an important cultural trend in
early modern India. That it has not been adequately theorized to date perhaps
stems in part from the general neglect (and even discrediting) of courtly sources
from this period, but also reflects some understandable confusion about a
complex linguistic and literary domain that does not lend itself to easy
categorization. The modern terminological apparatus of premodern Hindi
literary study must be handled with caution because many of the critical literary-
historical decisions about the field were made nearly a century ago. Most
scholars then were based in Banaras and Allahabad and evidently not always
conversant with the traditions of western India.2 There was, for example, a (p.
168) spate of early misinformation about the quintessentially Rajasthani genre
of rāsos, which was considered by pioneering literary historians like
Ramchandra Shukla to be an ancient bardic tradition dating to the twelfth
century but is (at least in its written form), like the rīti tradition, of largely
Mughal-era provenance.3 Such inaccuracies contributed to the mismapping of
literary boundaries during the developmental phase of Hindi literary
historiography.

Compounding the analytical confusion, the intended division of labor between

modern scholarly categories such as Hindī sāhitya kā itihās and Rājasthānī
sāhitya kā itihās (histories of Hindi and Rajasthani literature, respectively) is
frequently left unstated. Is a premodern text to be anachronistically labeled
Rajasthani because it was produced within the borders of the modern state of
Rajasthan, an administrative unit dating to the mid-twentieth century, or
because it bears linguistic features distinct from those of Brajbhasha? Since
regional languages were so ill defined in the precolonial period, it is difficult to
come up with hard and fast rules about what counts as “Rajasthani” (which for
decades was known more commonly as “western Hindi”) and what counts as
Brajbhasha. Fuzzy boundaries between languages have resulted in various
equivocations such as “Rajasthani-inflected Braj,” “Braj-inflected Rajasthani,”
“Braj-inflected Dingal,” and “Pingal,”4 and indeed some texts from the region are
hard to pigeonhole on linguistic grounds, freely combining Braj and Rajasthani
language, meters, and styles within the same work.5 As an overarching cultural
category, “Rajput literature” has the additional merit of helping to circumvent
the need to render a linguistically based verdict about literatures that are not
overly amenable to such precise disaggregation.

It is also far from easy to identify the grounds for distinguishing between rīti and
Rajasthani literatures. Both are important forms of Rajput literature that helped
articulate the cultural and political values of India's western kingdoms in the
early modern period. Recall that the Ratanbāvanī, Keshavdas's first composition

Page 3 of 43

at the Orchha court in central India, owes much to the rāso style, including its
chappay meter and militant ethos. The same writer went on to develop the
neoclassical genres now widely associated with rīti literary culture, underscoring
that the two literary realms were far from disconnected. Broadly speaking, the
term rīti references the neoclassical domains of Hindi literature. This
transregional cultural style debuted in Bundelkhand and at the Mughal court
before being adopted by most of the non-Persianate kingdoms in greater
Hindustan during the second half of the seventeenth century. If we must, we can
identify as “Rajasthani” texts that are strongly marked by western Indian
linguistic forms, such as Marwari (often called Dingal), or genres that tend to be
more localized. Rajasthani material covers a broader social spectrum than rīti,
too, from folk to courtly. Broadly defined, “Rajput literature” was a (p.169)
crossroads where local western traditions—notably the bardic rāso, Dingal
poetry, and Jain narrative styles—interacted with a more pan-Indic literary
system during the Mughal era. Charans, Bhats, and Bhils were the traditional
social base of local Rajasthani styles, whereas rīti poets, who were mostly
Brahman (and occasionally Kayasth), transmitted the more classical literary
modes into a language, Brajbhasha, that was far more accessible than Sanskrit
for most communities in this period.6

The Rajput rulers of early modern India, no less than the Mughals, had at their
disposal a remarkably diverse array of courtly resources. Various gunīs including
painters, architects, musicians, poets, and scholars, had an important role in the
expression of royal style, lending both prestige and pleasure to the court.
Although from the late sixteenth century Rajput kings were widely exposed to
Persianate culture—whether attending the emperor at court or serving in
imperial military campaigns—they did not as a rule patronize Persian literature.
Whether thereby asserting resistance or mere cultural preference, they fostered
both local Rajasthani traditions and rīti styles. Many courts continued to support
Sanskrit learning, as well.

Most Rajput kings had to address at least three constituencies: they negotiated
their prestige vis-à-vis the Mughals, who set their own high standards in cultural
taste; they jostled for power with rival Rajput houses; and they displayed their
royal worthiness to local prajā (subjects) in the home territory. The court culture
and building practices of Bir Singh Deo Bundela discussed in chapter 1 are the
perfect example of how a manṣabdār staged his power at multiple levels. When
Bir Singh Deo built temples in Orchha or in Mathura, he adopted a pan-Rajput
architectural idiom that leveraged Vaishnava cultural style to great political
effect, declaring his piety and regal stature at home. These building practices
also allowed the Orchha king to claim a more encompassing prestige in greater
India among fellow manṣabdārs, as well as displaying both wealth and taste in
an ostentatious manner that would be noticed by his Mughal overlords. Such
complex layers of self-fashioning characterize many local kings during this
period. Courtliness in India was in part an imitative behavior, which is to say
Page 4 of 43

that courts responded to what other courts were doing, particularly those that
were higher in status. At the Mughal court Rajput manṣabdārs came into contact
with the newest, most sophisticated cultural trends. Some of these—especially in
the fields of painting and architecture—they brought home, adapting the styles
in creative ways to serve their own needs. Gunīs were also shared among courts,
and in many cases (for example, miniature painting) imperial and local registers
of cultural production were in dialogue.

Different rulers at different moments made their own cultural choices, and it is
in some cases possible to theorize the complex political meanings of (p.170)
these choices. An older style of art-historical scholarship on Rajput-Mughal
relationships was too prone to equate the choice of Indic subject matter at
regional courts with a traditionalist or rebellious political stance.7 More recently,
hybridity and the fact of cultural interchange are the starting point for more
nuanced analyses. For instance, it is mechanical and reductionist to view as a
narrowly Hindu, local, or traditionalist decision the commissioning by the Mewar
King Rana Jagat Singh (r. 1628–52) of a monumental Rāmāyaṇa painting series,
as was once the scholarly consensus. For one thing, the Rāmāyaṇa, a rich
storehouse of kingly rhetoric since the classical period, had been recently
appropriated as a Mughal political idiom under Akbar, who ordered a
magnificently illustrated translation into Persian during the 1590s. Illustrated
manuscripts of the Rāmāyaṇa were not an ancient art form hearkening back to
classical times. They were a new, early modern style inaugurated by a Muslim
emperor. Jagat Singh was acutely aware of the recent commissions at the
Mughal court, and he may also have been responding to Shah Jahan's
contemporary Bādshāhnāmah, a similarly illustrated work of history that
forcefully proclaimed the stature of the emperor and his Timurid lineage. The
visual culture at Mewar was thus critically in dialogue with Mughal trends, even
in its commissioning of ostensibly Hindu subject matter.8 And sometimes, as with
rīti literature, it was Muslim kings who played a leading role in inaugurating new
but distinctly Indian cultural styles.

One major concern of this chapter is to explore the multilayered cultural

semiotics available to a Rajput court in Mughal India, especially with respect to
the cultivation of literary taste. Although it may not always be a clear-cut matter
to disentangle local Rajasthani from translocal Braj practices, it seems that the
older ballads and oral traditions of western India were no longer fully adequate
for enunciating the kingly prestige of a Mughal manṣabdār. During almost the
same period, Joachim du Bellay, writing under the French monarchy, called upon
his fellow poets to abandon the rustic French genres then current, in favor of a
refined, neoclassical style:

Read and, most important, reread, O future poet! Leaf through, day and
night, the pages of Greek and Latin models, and leave off writing these old
French rhymes of the flowery games from Toulouse and the literary

Page 5 of 43

assemblies of Rouen, the rondels, ballads, Virelais, royal chants, songs and
other frivolities that only corrupt the taste of our language, or worse bear
witness to our ignorance.9

New times require new literatures. Under the new conditions of Mughal imperial
rule Rajput literary patronage would also be transformed, although western
Indian courts did not so much abandon earlier traditions as foster a (p.171)
palimpsest of styles and genres. Nonetheless, under new political and social
pressures within the highly refined and stratified Mughal system, regional kings
sought ways of marking distinction within the early modern cultural field.10 One
was to adopt the new style of classicism that now goes by the name of rīti
literature. Rīti poetry became essential at most of the leading subimperial courts
from the second half of the seventeenth century onward.

To try to make sense of this complex transformation, I present three case studies
of its adoption: at Amber, Marwar, and Bundi. Able to draw on the royal
precedents of Sanskrit kāvya in a new vernacular idiom, rīti writers were ideally
suited to articulate the cultural and political aspirations of early modern courts.
We will be analyzing the rīti movement as a timely strategy of Rajput courtliness
and, moreover, a critical tool for the expression of Rajput identity during the
Mughal period, while also situating it in a larger context of royal self-expression
from the Sanskrit and Persian traditions. Understanding the relationship
between Mughal and Rajput engagements with this literary culture is another
aim. At the same time, we will learn something about the mechanisms for the
diffusion of rīti poetry and scholarship well beyond North India, and indeed well
beyond the royal court.

Brajbhasha Literary Patronage at the Amber Court

As in the Mughal case, it is not easy to pinpoint exactly how and when the
patronage of Braj poets became à la mode at Rajput courts, but it makes good
sense that Amber (modern Jaipur) should have been one of the pioneers. The
Kachhwahas of Amber played a leading role in the consolidation of Rajput
alliances with the Mughal state from the time of Bharmal Kachhwaha (r. 1547–
73), who brokered an alliance with Akbar and became the first of the Rajput
kings to offer a daughter in marriage to a Mughal emperor, initiating a highly
effective mode of political accommodation that would prove consequential for
the success of the empire. The court does not definitively enter the literary
record until a later generation, however, during the reign of Man Singh (r. 1589–
1614), who became Akbar's leading Rajput general and arguably the most
powerful Hindu of his day.11 Already in this early period there were signs in both
Sanskrit and vernacular languages of the classicism that would come into vogue
in Rajput courts in the next century. Man Singh sponsored several works in
Sanskrit: the Mānaprakāśa of Murari Dasa, an idealized biography of the king,
and Harinatha's Kāvyādarśa-mārjana and Sarasvatikaṇṭhābharaṇa-mārjana,
commentaries on authoritative treatises by two great Sanskrit poeticians,

Page 6 of 43

Dandin and Bhoja, indicators of an interest in literary theory at the court.12 Man
Singh's (p.172) connections to Brajbhasha literary culture in particular can be
traced both through Mughal ties and more locally. Several Braj poets of his
period, including Gang and Keshavdas, glorify Man Singh in their poetry.13 Two
major vernacular works of prabandha kāvya, variously labeled Māncarit and
Māncaritrāso, were commissioned at Amber and are harbingers of the rīti
efflorescence to come. The first, composed by Amrit Rai in 1585, is somewhat
more Rajasthani in its linguistic features (with a sprinkling of verses in
Apabhramsha); the second, a later but undated work by Narottam from perhaps
1600, is written in a combination of Rajasthani and Brajbhasha, with the
addition of a few strategically-placed Sanskrit couplets.14 The diversity in these
two works alone underscores that early Amber court poets did not consciously
adopt Braj to the exclusion of Rajasthani (or indeed Sanskrit). The two
prabandhas have the same general concerns, but Narottam's Māncarit exhibits
greater thematic range and is an especially fascinating early instance of the new
style of Rajput historical literature. In its combining of the rich literary registers
of high kāvya and praśasti with a vivid, quasi-realistic account of the vicissitudes
of a Mughal manṣabdār, the work bears comparison to the more lavishly
executed Vīrsiṃhdevcarit of Keshavdas, written a few years later.

Periodically, this study has turned to the question of the beginnings of rīti
literature, first positing Keshavdas of Orchha as a compelling candidate while
recognizing his indebtedness to recent bhakti trends. The previous chapter
highlighted some telling signs of the role of Muslim emperors in one of North
India's critical moments of vernacular literary inauguration. The Amber court is
also significant. In a kavi-praśaṃsā from the opening of Narottam's work, the
poet signals his own sense of literary history:

Many poets have inhabited the earth, consider them to be gods.

Nobody is the equal of Vyasa. Revere Kalidasa.
Bring to mind Vararuchi, clever Magha; remember Bilhana
and Jayadeva, whose devotion was rewarded with a vision of the lord.
Immortal is the name of Govardhana.
Chand [Bardai] created vernacular poetry.
I worshipped them all and, receiving their grace (pāiya prasādu),
I have recounted the virtues of Man Singh in a biography.15

Narottam Kavi, like Keshavdas, was very much aware of the Sanskrit kāvya past.
Unlike Keshavdas, however, he does not mark the transition to vernacular poetry
with himself, but instead with an earlier poet from his own region: Chand
Bardai, the eponymous author of the Pṛthvīrāj Rāso. This is a more local
perspective on vernacular literary beginnings from a western Indian court at
nearly the same time; the important point is that for both (p.173) authors the
transition from Sanskrit to Bhasha literature was a monumental occurrence.

Page 7 of 43

As noted in chapter 1, the beginning of rīti literature was not a point but “a
longish line.” That line can also be extended in the direction of the Kachhwaha
court at Amber. The near simultaneity of Narottam's Māncarit with Keshavdas's
Vīrsiṃhdevcarit is striking and is probably no accident. Bir Singh Deo and Man
Singh not only knew each other but also were neighbors on the Yamuna
riverfront when resident in Agra.16 These two Mughal manṣabdārs were key
patrons of a new kāvya idiom that was coming into being at regional courts. No
other work of Narottam is extant, and there is no good reason to believe he ever
wrote one, since he is otherwise quite detailed about signaling his literary
mission in his introduction.17 Keshavdas, it turns out, lived on in literary
memory, whereas Narottam was promptly forgotten except at his own court.

The single surviving copy of Narottam's Māncarit was prepared at the request of
Mirza Raja Jai Singh (r. 1621–67),18 during whose reign rīti literature reached
prodigious heights of acclaim and commanded new levels of royal support. The
preservation of the Māncarit is only one indication of Jai Singh's interest in the
typically rīti subjects of kingly representation and classicism. Like his great-
grandfather Man Singh, Jai Singh was a spectacularly successful politician and
general who led many important expeditions under Shah Jahan and
Aurangzeb.19 Maintaining poets and other court professionals such as royal
genealogists had been a long-standing practice in western India and Jain
communities had been avid manuscript collectors since medieval times,20 but
several signs point to a greater formalization of traditions at the courts of this
period. Written texts increasingly supplemented earlier oral practices and
Rajput rulers exhibited a new interest in the development of libraries, probably
as a result of Mughal influence.21 Perhaps some Mughal librarians migrated to
regional courts, for many books bear indications of imperial practice, including
Hijri dates and markings with a Persian seal. The earliest records of the Amber
library (later to become the Jaipur pothīkhāna, or royal archive) date from the
time of Jai Singh, but he inherited manuscripts from an earlier period.22
Regardless, this new interest in literacy and book culture must have been one
factor in the turn toward patronizing formal works of Braj kāvya, praśasti,
history, and literary theory.

Jai Singh's literary and scholarly patronage was not confined to a single
language. He robustly supported both Sanskrit and Brajbhasha poets. Sanskrit
and Hindi learning begin to flourish in the region; this emphasis on written texts
and classicism was a new orientation in Rajput literature. Jai (p.174) Singh
established a Sanskrit college in far away Banaras, to which he sent his sons for
their education; he also convened a paṇḍitsabhā (assembly of scholars) at
Amber. Numerous works of śāstra and literature were collected in the
pothīkhāna during this period, including manuscripts of the Sanskrit poets
Kalidasa and Shri Harsha, as well as Sanskrit commentaries on and Hindi
translations of the classics.23 More germane to this discussion is the illustrated
manuscript of Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā that was commissioned by Mirza Raja Jai
Page 8 of 43

Singh's Queen Chandravatji in 1639, evidence of the court's interest in rīti

literature.24

When it comes to Brajbhasha literary patronage, Jai Singh is famously associated

with Biharilal, whose single surviving work, Bihārīsatsaī (Bihari's collection of
seven hundred verses, 1662?),25 is one of the pinnacles of rīti poetry. Bihari's
exquisite dohās on varied themes, from contemplative Krishna devotion to
contemporary politics, were composed with the highest degree of ingenuity and
are recited with great enthusiasm even today.26 They were also frequently
illustrated. Very little is known for a historical fact about Biharilal; his celebrity
as a poet has made him legend-prone. In a spurious Braj biography, the
Bihārīvihār (Peregrinations of Bihari), the famous rīti author is said to have
learned Persian and to have attracted the notice of Shah Jahan.27 Whether or not
these details of exposure to Persian and the Mughal court are true of Biharilal,
they are certainly true of his patron Jai Singh, and it is not farfetched to suppose
that Bihari—the poet of a leading manṣabdār—was familiar with the ways of the
imperial court.28

Although the poet himself was inordinately stingy with autobiographical detail
and the veracity of legends is difficult to assess, the historical record can be
filled in somewhat by a more voluble rīti poet from the following generation:
Biharilal's nephew Kulapati Mishra, who also served the Amber court. Kulapati
was tutor to Jai Singh's successor, Ram Singh (r. 1667–89), and—as with
Keshavdas—there is intriguing evidence of this Brahman poet's mentorship of
some of the palace women.29 The figure of Keshavdas may be salient for other
reasons, too: in Kulapati's Saṅgrāmsār (Nature of war, 1676), a Bhasha
prabandha based on the Mahābhārata, the poet makes the following tantalizing
remarks:

Saluting my grandfather, the prominent poet Keshav Keshavray,

I tell the story of the Bhārata (war), composing it in vernacular verse.
Kavivara mātāmaha sumari, kesau kesorāya
Kahoṃ kathā bhārattha kī, bhāṣā chanda banāya30

Much ink has been spilled over the interpretation of this verse, which also
relates to an early twentieth-century debate over whether Biharilal was
Keshavdas's (p.175) father. The crux of the matter is a deep uncertainty about
how to interpret the second half of the first line of the dohā. “Kesau” (i.e.,
Keshav) and “Kesorāya” (i.e., Keshavray) are both well-attested signatures of
Keshavdas, and it seems likely that Kulapati does indeed refer to the Keshavdas
here. What other person of that name could have merited the designation
kavivara (prominent poet) during this period? Elsewhere in his Yuktitaraṅginī
(River of reason, 1686), the Braj poet pays homage to both Biharilal and
Keshavdas (among other literary predecessors) and, not surprisingly, Rasikpriyā
was a major influence on Kulapati's work.31 A few of the gotra (lineage) details

Page 9 of 43

do not quite add up, however, and some scholars reject the idea that Keshavdas
was Bihari's father and Kulapati's grandfather.32 A three-generation commitment
to court poetry on the part of the Mishra family is not only reasonable but
entirely likely, but that is insufficient grounds to establish the relationship
beyond the shadow of a doubt. Some Bundeli dialectal forms have been noticed
in the poetry of both Keshavdas and Bihari, underscoring the links between the
two poets as well as the importance of this specific region as the original
nucleus for rīti literary culture.33 His lineage aside, Bihari's surviving work is in
many respects sui generis: he did not write a major prabandha and was one of
the rare court poets who ignored the rītigranth genre. The interpretation of his
work nonetheless depends on the system of classical poetics that was central to
rīti literature.34 Perhaps some of Bihari's work was lost, or perhaps the literary-
theory gene skipped a generation, for the oeuvre of his nephew Kulapati Mishra
includes both high kāvya and śāstra and is thus far more consonant with that of
Keshavdas.

Kulapati provides a good reason for why this should be the case when he
mentions his guru, who was none other than Jagannatha Panditaraja, the famous
Sanskrit intellectual who attended the court of Shah Jahan.35 It is fitting that
Jagannatha should be considered the last major literary theorist in the Sanskrit
tradition.36 The baton of Sanskrit learning was in the process of being passed to
vernacular writers, one of whom was his very own student. While Jagannatha is
celebrated for his Sanskrit learning, Kulapati Mishra wrote not one word in the
language of the gods, even though he must have had an excellent classical
education. Like Keshavdas before him, he devoted himself entirely to Bhasha
writing.

Several remarks from his Rasrahasya (The secret of literary emotion, 1670), a
Braj treatise on aesthetics that closely follows the Sanskrit compendium
Kāvyaprakāśa, provide a window onto his literary milieu and motivations. In the
opening to the work, he explains its patronage circumstances:

We used to sit in the Victory Palace discussing vernacular poetry. The

Kurma37 prince Ram (Singh) gave a directive: “If all the poetic (p.176)
strategies manifested in Sanskrit were converted into Bhasha, everybody
would understand the ways of rasa.”38

When Keshavdas introduced himself to his readers in the Kavipriyā, his choice of
a vernacular medium was profoundly noteworthy, even slightly distressing to
him. In contrast, Kulapati speaks nonchalantly about Bhasha poetry, which was
now evidently a field in its own right, or at least something that one took the
trouble to discuss (bhāṣākavita vicāra). Still, for Kulapati Mishra's generation
vernacularization was very much an ongoing process, perhaps even a special

Page 10 of 43

mission. In his colophon, he again stresses that he is making available the

scholarship of Mammata for a community of Hindi readers:

I have articulated in Bhasha all of the components of poetry discussed by

Mammata, compiling them in The Secret of Literary Emotion.39

While the transition to the vernacular continued over many years, with both
Sanskrit and Braj intellectuals being accorded patronage at Rajput courts, from
the middle of the seventeenth century something new and irrevocable was
happening in Indian intellectual life: Bhasha scholars were gaining ground.
Elsewhere Kulapati mentions that bhāṣā kavis (vernacular poets) were present
at Ram Singh's coronation, signaling that they were now among the expected
court professionals at Amber.40 This would soon be the case in Rajput courts
everywhere.

Jaswant Singh: Maharaja of Marwar and Rīti Ālaṅkārika

The new cachet for vernacular scholarship and literature in Rajput settings from
the mid-seventeenth century is exemplified perhaps nowhere better than in the
figure of Jaswant Singh (r. 1638–78). Crowned at the tender age of eleven and a
half in defiance of the regnal claims of his elder brother, Amar Singh, Jaswant
Singh was not only the Maharaja of Marwar (Jodhpur) but also a leading
manṣabdār and general in the Mughal army (figure 5.1). Like Mirza Raja Jai
Singh, he served under both Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb and was rewarded with
generous honors and promotions. The maharaja's relationship with Aurangzeb
was somewhat rocky, not least because he supported Dara Shikoh in the war of
succession, but overall he remained a close ally of the Mughals throughout his
career, playing a critical role in countless military initiatives, particularly in the
northwest and in the Deccan. It is not, however, his soldierly persona that
concerns us here, but rather his poetic persona and what (p.177) it reveals
about the widespread adoption of rīti literary trends by Rajput courts in this
period.

Whether Jaswant Singh was truly a gifted writer or had gifted ghost-writers we
will never know, but he is credited with an extensive Braj oeuvre, as well as a
couple of works in Sanskrit.41 Some exhibit a metaphysical bent: a treatise on
Vedanta known as Ānandvilās, as well as Brajbhasha translations of the Gītā and
Prabodhacandrodaya. The king's most important work by far, however, is his
Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ (Ornament to the vernacular, c.1660), a masterful manual on
figures of speech that epitomizes the new rīti textual orientation at regional
courts. The work was nothing short of a bestseller in premodern India, and is
still viewed as a classic of the rīti style. More than fifty manuscripts of the
Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ are attested in those North Indian libraries whose collection
development began during the early modern period, and the text's popularity
was significant since it inspired at least six commentaries.42

Page 11 of 43

As was the norm with rīti writers, Jaswant Singh based his vernacular text on
Sanskrit sources while giving his work an elegant new Braj flair. The main
classical antecedents are Jayadeva's Candrāloka (thirteenth century) and a
sixteenth-century reworking of its alaṅkāra section by Appayya Dikshita: the
Kuvalayānanda. In the colophon, the king is both aware of and highly articulate
about the kind of work he is writing, and for whom it is intended:

(p.178) Looking at
the Sanskrit texts,
I have given shape to
their ideas in the
vernacular …
I have written this
innovative work for the
kind of person who is
scholarly, skilled in
Bhasha, and clever
with the literary arts.43
figure 5.1 Portrait of Maharaja Jaswant
Whereas just a half-century
Singh seated with nobles, c. 1645
prior the very collocation
Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum,
“skilled” and “Bhasha” would
London
have been perceived as an
oxymoron, here suddenly was a
new type of work (grantha
navīna) written for an implied audience (tāhi nara ke heta … ) defined in terms
of its association with vernacular expertise. The Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ is as neoclassical
as any text of its day, but note the self-confident tone: Jaswant Singh mentions
his Bhasha literary community with a sense of pride. A better sense of the
literary activities of this court will emerge only with further research but one
recent study credits Jaswant Singh with the patronage of fourteen writers, and
the poet Vrind is widely held to have made his literary debut at Jodhpur.44 One
thing is clear: the colophon of the Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ is a far cry from the type of
recusatio45 about vernacular slow-wittedness seen in Keshavdas's Kavipriyā.46
Alive to the rich new possibilities of Bhasha intellectual life, Jaswant Singh does
not belabor his lack of Sanskrit skill but on the contrary adopts a celebratory
tone.

It is arresting that one of the premier rītigranths of the seventeenth century

should be attributed to the maharaja of Jodhpur, one of North India's most
powerful regional kings. Although sophisticated poets were doubtless important
to courtly life in much of the premodern world,47 Jaswant Singh is a particularly
good example of the deep investment of Indian royalty in aesthetic pursuits. This
relationship cannot be reduced to the simplistic conception that rulers
supported court poets out of kingly duty, or that poets through their writings
merely served the ideological aims of their patrons. What Sheldon Pollock

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critiques as “legitimation theory” is not an adequate explanation for the

enormous commitment to aesthetics among Indian kings.48 The Rajputs who
served as Mughal manṣabdārs had two classical literary traditions at their
disposal: Sanskrit and Persian. Neither met their cultural needs entirely, but
both nonetheless contributed to the development of Rajput courtly styles and to
the rise of Brajbhasha as a refined literary idiom. Sanskrit kāvya and
alaṅkāraśāstra, the most direct inspiration for rīti poets, owed their origins and
creative dynamism to centuries of courtly patronage, and had thus been deeply
entwined with the personas of kings for more than a millennium. On the whole,
the Persian literary styles adopted by the Mughal emperors were not a direct
influence on the aesthetics or content of Rajput court poetry, but they were a
general cultural model for the newly literate royalty and gentry of western India.
In a climate where the emperor's education and the perceptions of his royal (p.
179) integrity centered on his knowing the classics of Persian literature,
composing and reciting Persian couplets marked one as a person of
sophistication and learning, and Persian literati and historians were among the
most honored members of the court, the Rajput kings would have been inspired
to foster literary elegance in their own settings.

Whether drawing on the older Sanskrit idiom or the newer Persian one,
literature was one of the cornerstones of Indian court culture in the early
modern period.49 The literary arts brought grandeur, dignity, and beauty to
courtly life, but they also helped to constitute the very atmosphere that made a
court possible. Literature served rhetorical aims; it was educational; it also
aided in the refinement of the nobility's moral and sensory faculties. That Indian
treatises on statecraft enjoined kings to know as much about the composition
and hermeneutics of classical literature as about military matters is more than a
matter of passing curiosity. If kings were expected to rule justly, they were also
expected to define cultural refinement. It is unsurprising that they should be
patrons, commissioning important artistic and literary works, as well as viewing
cultural performances. Not all the world's kings were expected to be writers or
scholars, however. This element of learning was particularly stressed in South
Asia. A list of kingly duties from a seventeenth-century Telugu treatise, the
Rāyavācakamu, reads in places like an index to a work of rhetoric rather than a
document about state policy. Among other subjects, a king is enjoined to know
the nine rasas; the ten typological stages of love; and the canonical eighteen
types of literary description. He must know the intricacies of figures of speech
and metrics and how to steer clear of literary flaws. These same topics were
central to the rītigranths produced in northern India in the same period.
According to the Rāyavācakamu, kings were also expected to “search out and
patronize good poets who can teach poetry, drama, and poetics through both
definition and example”; good kings were comfortable with several literary
dialects; they should beget the “seven progeny,” one of which is a literary
work.50 A crucial part of a prince's training was to cultivate his literary side; he

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was to be molded into a connoisseur-king who could both appreciate and write
poetry.

All of this helps explain why Jaswant Singh, king of Marwar, should have written
(or be credited with) a treatise on alaṅkāraśāstra. Writing poetry and rhetoric
was not a duty undertaken by all kings, to be sure, but it was fulfilled by
surprisingly many. In fact, I would venture that with cosmopolitan cultural
models available from both the Sanskrit and Persian traditions, South Asian
kings moonlighted as poets and theoreticians of literature to a degree
unprecedented in world history. An astounding number of Indian kings have
been credited with works of literature or literary theory (p.180) (or both):
Harsha of Kannauj, Bhoja of Dhara, Rana Kumbha of Mewar, Krishnadeva Raya
of Vijayanagara, Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah of
Golkonda, Indrajit of Orchha, Savant Singh of Kishangarh—the list could become
very long. Mughal royalty were no less active as writers: Babur composed a
Divan in Turkish; he and Jahangir both wrote autobiographies; Humayun's sister
Gulbadan Begum penned a biography of her brother.51 Jahangir's brother Danyal
wrote Hindi poetry. Recall from chapter 4 how Abu al-Fazl praised Akbar's
guftan-i naẓm and sh‘irī-yi nuktah-sanjī (poetic skill and literary-critical
acumen).52 Even if kings did not always compose the poetry themselves but
instead had their name ascribed to works written by others, Indian posterity
somehow thinks they should have. In short, canonical models of Indian kingship
stressed political and military might but were also profoundly concerned with
literary culture.53

Jaswant Singh's court was also the site of an important development in Hindi
historical writing that, like rīti literature, was new for Rajput communities. There
the Jain writer Mumhata Nainsi, who had also served under Jaswant Singh's
predecessor, Raja Gaj Singh (r. 1620–38), researched the history of the region,
giving it a new formal shape in Naiṇsī rī khyāt (Nainsi's chronicle, 1637–66).
Again, whereas Mughal influence may not have determined the language, style,
or content of a new Indic genre, the general historicizing impulses of the Mughal
state since Akbar's day made available a Persian model that contributed to the
enrichment and in some cases retooling of more culturally resonant local
historical practices.54 Nainsi's monumental work drew upon earlier genealogies
and accounts of the bards of western and central India while implementing
unprecedented documentary standards: a more chronological focus, new
methods of ordering knowledge, and sophisticated negotiations between the
truth claims of different sources. Significantly, Nainsi's source for the Bundela
polity was the rājavaṃśa from Keshavdas's Kavipriyā, further evidence of the
circulation of texts among manṣabdārī courts in this period via diffusion
mechanisms that we do not yet fully understand.55

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Rīti Literary Practices at Bundi

That new forms of history and classicism arose among the Rajputs during this
period is amply illustrated in Bundi. Bundi came to prominence at the time of
Surjan Rao Hada (r. 1554–85), whose treaty with Akbar in 1569 brought the
court into the Mughal ambit after the dispiriting loss of Ranthambhor Fort. As at
Amber, the court patronized both Sanskrit and Brajbhasha poets. The (p.181)
career of Surjan Hada, for instance, was given lavish historical (if not entirely
factual) treatment in Surjanacarita (Biography of Surjan, c. 1590), a Sanskrit
kāvya by Chandrashekhara, court poet to the Hada rulers.56 Bundi enters Hindi
literary history during the reign of Raja Bhao Singh (r. 1658–82), for whom
Matiram Tripathi, the brother of Bhushan and Chintamani Tripathi, wrote his
Lalitlalām (Finest lover, c. 166057), a short treatise on alaṅkāras and a classic
example of a rīti text that exhibits the courtly aspirations of a Rajput manṣabdār.

The preamble to the work, which does not begin its ostensibly literary subject in
earnest for several pages, is an assertive proclamation of Bundi's courtly
grandeur. After formulaic invocations to Ganesha and Krishna, the poet embarks
upon a bundī-varṇana (description of Bundi), whose mission is to tell the reader
about the opulence and beauty of the city in keeping with the norms of Sanskrit
kāvya. The poet begins,

The city of Bundi is world famous, a center of happiness and wealth.

The Golden Age (satyayuga) reposes here, even in the Iron Age
(kaliyuga).
In Bundi the people are clever, reading and listening attentively to
the Vedas, Purāṇas,
and authoritative traditions; they are connoisseurs of singing, poetry,
and the arts.…

The description elaborates on everything that makes Bundi a major center of

culture: its architecture, painting and music, markets with purveyors of finely
embroidered clothing, heart-ravishingly beautiful women, gardens, ponds, and
song birds.58 Such descriptions are common in both Sanskrit and Braj courtly
texts and must be viewed as indispensable to the rīti enterprise.59 Matiram's
descriptions are stylized—poets are supposed to depict the grandeur of royal
settings in accordance with classical norms60—but there are often a few local
inflections. Certainly rīti poets proclaimed the stature of their courts in the here
and now by highlighting their patrons’ contributions to culture, learning, and the
built environment.

The other passage of note in Matiram's preamble, similarly congruent with both
textual and political trends elsewhere in North India during this time, is a
vaṃśāvalī (genealogy) of the Bundi kings. In a telescoped history of the dynasty,
Matiram celebrates the exploits of each of his patron's ancestors in a
combination of idealizing and more factual registers. Surjan Rao's son Bhoj
Hada (r. 1585–1607) is said to have “protected the honor of the Hindus,

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rendering lame the foot of the Mughal Emperor's authority.” The grounds for
Matiram's assertion are not further elaborated in the Lalitlalām, although the
Ma’ās̤ir al-umarā refers to a dispute that putatively arose when Jahangir sought
to marry the daughter of Jagat Singh (Man Singh Kachhwaha's son).61
Elsewhere (p.182) in the genealogy the exigencies of Mughal militarism loom
large, as when Ratan Singh Hada (r. 1608–32) is said to have “prospered in the
joys of imperial battles” or Bhao Singh's father, Satrusal Hada (r. 1632–58), who
died fighting for Dara Shikoh in the war of succession that broke out in 1658,
“held his ground on the battlefield, knowing it to be a Kshatriya Kashi (city of
liberation for warriors).”62

The Lalitlalām is most directly concerned with Bundi's present-day ruler, who is
shown in a multifaceted light. The slightly cryptic title of the work appears to
signal the concept of a lalita nāyaka (romantic hero) from Indian literary
theory.63 This makes good sense for a work that is ostensibly about
alaṅkāraśāstra, but it may also be a flattering gesture toward the patron, for
whom Matiram actually uses the epithet lalitlalām in one verse.64 Perhaps he
means to suggest that in the manner of a lalita nāyaka (and indeed, in the
manner of many idealized kings from Sanskrit texts), Bhao Singh Hada is
sophisticated, attractive to women, and knowledgeable in the ways of love.
While the erotic verses generally cast Krishna in the role of the nāyaka rather
than the king, Bhao Singh is in one case depicted playing Holi in a manner that
strongly recalls Kavindracharya's portrayal of Shah Jahan.65 Such similarities in
representation are not merely coincidental but are yet another instance of
shared Rajput and Mughal cultural styles during this period.

Although crafted in a completely different idiom from a text like Shah Jahan's
approximately contemporary Bādshāhnāmah, the Lalitlalām is in its own way
very much about contemporary history. This brings us to a special feature of this
rītigranth: political concerns are often at the core of its aesthetic logic.
Matiram's definition verses are unremarkable, explicating the principal tropes
from the Sanskrit literary imagination for the benefit of his patron, but some of
the example poems do an entirely different kind of work, doubling as praśasti
verses that feature Bhao Singh or, on occasion, one of his illustrious ancestors.
Matiram's first example verse on the subject of the upamā (simile) sets the tone:

Diwan Bhao Singh is the one Rajput whose spirit

grows fourfold upon engaging in battle.
Matiram says, this is why the fame of Satrusal's son
spreads in the circles of kings.
The blazing heat of the Delhi sun has dried up the luster66
of Indian kings like water in a pond.
Under such conditions, all kingly pride (rāva maiṃ saram) has
contracted,
dissolving like salt in the ocean.67

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(p.183) Here and elsewhere in the work, the king of Bundi is presented as a
savior of Rajput sovereignty. Although the Sanskrit literary heritage upon which
so much of rīti kāvya is based had many ways of giving voice to vīra rasa, this
verse and many others like it speak not of the timeless ideals of kingly classicism
but of the here and now, getting to the heart of manṣabdārī anxiety in Mughal
India.

Rīti Political Culture

As these case studies show, rīti genres became an integral part of manṣabdārī
court culture from around the middle of the seventeenth century. Whether
writing poetics manuals on the principal topics from Sanskrit alaṅkāraśāstra or
prabandha kāvyas on royal themes, Brajbhasha authors like Matiram in Bundi,
and his close contemporaries Biharilal, Kulapati Mishra, and Jaswant Singh from
the nearby courts of Amber and Marwar, were in an important sense carrying
forward the classical past into the Mughal present. How are we to understand
this extraordinary commitment to classical aesthetics, which was so intense that
rīti poetry was almost universally adopted by the courts of the day?

Neoclassicism had much to offer the Rajput patrons who adopted it as a literary
style, both culturally and politically. When Brahman poets brought new types of
high vernacular rhetoric into the purview of Rajput courts, they made the
resources of a long-standing tradition of royal kāvya available for a new audience
that was no longer universally familiar with the older language. Brajbhasha was
unusually versatile as a linguistic medium because it could be refined like
Sanskrit, without sacrificing broad comprehensibility. Formal rīti works—
particularly those with intense compounding—are not very distant in register
from Sanskrit. Thus, adopting a vernacular idiom could allow for the elevated
feel of classical kāvya and theoretical works while remaining responsive to the
needs of a changing interpretive community. Although Rajput kings no doubt
had the functional Persian required for participation in Mughal court life,
Brajbhasha was more culturally relevant in their kingdoms than Persian could
ever be. The new Braj genres brought elegance, entertainment, but also potent
forms of erudition as well as vocabularies of political expression to the court.
Mastering rasa theory, knowing the principles of poetic excellence,
understanding the subtleties of nāyikās, alaṅkāras, and all the dimensions of
śṛṅgāra poetry were skills that distinguished a person of learning. As already
suggested in the discussion of Vrind (chapter 4), poetry and alaṅkāraśāstra were
beautiful literary arts, but they were also prerequisites—even cultural
technologies—of kingship because they contributed to the sensory, moral, and
literary education of the patron and other members of the court.

(p.184) Regardless of the traditional ideas about rulers enunciated by Indian

canons of dharmaśāstra (formal social and behavioral codes), such as the
stipulation that they be of Kshatriya caste and thus somehow congenitally suited
to kingly behavior, culture is by definition learned. And the acquisition of literary

Page 17 of 43

culture, with all its emotional and ethical accoutrements, was a mission to which
rīti poets were ideally equipped to contribute.68 The fact that the premier
vernacular court genre of the day—rītigranths—were literally handbooks is
highly consequential in this regard. Kings were in a very real sense
commissioning how-to manuals on courtliness.69 And many rīti poets doubled as
mentors who shared their cultural knowledge with the court.

Whatever overlay of ancient classicism characterizes rīti textual culture, present-

day, local concerns were also articulated. Many rītigranths and prabandhas gave
rhetorical shape to contemporary political power. In a day when the Mughal elite
set the cultural and political agenda, Rajput royalty sought ways to exercise
their own autonomy. We see in the texts of the time a strong genealogical
imperative, which was a way of establishing their own pedigrees and claims over
their regions but also a response to the system of Mughal rankings that helped
to underwrite political success.70 The seventeenth century was precisely when
prominent Rajput houses were consolidating their identity, moving away from an
earlier, more open-status warlord ethos toward the closed aristocratic lineages
normalized only in the early modern period. Rīti texts, many of which contain
vaṃśāvalīs, articulated the new “genealogical orthodoxy” of their courts.71

Another response to Mughal power, albeit somewhat sporadic, was a new

orientation toward history. The Braj and Rajasthani poets working in manṣabdārī
courts took a different tack from their Persian counterparts. They were not
annalists, documenting dates and details; rather, Braj poets generally wrote
what I call enriched histories, informed by kāvya standards and enduring
patterns of kingly protocol rather than attention to quotidian fact. Rīti histories
could be counter-histories as well, in which Rajput courts presented their own
version of the story. Keshavdas's Ratnabāvanī, a narration of the Mughal
takeover of his court radically different from that found in Mughal sources, is a
case in point.72 The Māncarit and the Lalitlalām, in their own ways instances of
Braj historical culture, are also filled with insights into the nature of Rajput
political culture.73 It is highly significant that the rīti genre of historical writing
was almost completely absent from the Mughal repertoire in Brajbhasha but
emerged as a powerful cultural technology at Rajput courts, an opportunity for
textualizing and thereby processing the Mughal present, but also for the self-
narration of Rajput courtly pasts. The Mughals, for their part, wrote their pasts
in Persian.

(p.185) Rīti poets were highly versatile and responsive to the various needs of
Rajput rulers who served in the Mughal administration as manṣabdārs. Their
patrons were interested in rīti literature because of its aesthetic attractions.
They must also have been drawn to the types of political self-fashioning afforded
by Braj texts, some elements of which stemmed from earlier forms of
transregional Sanskrit court kāvya. Modern updates to the kāvya tradition that
stressed bhakti sensibilities were also culturally resonant, given the Vaishnava

Page 18 of 43

public persona of many Rajput polities. One does not want to be too mechanistic
about all this—sometimes poetry is just poetry, after all—but the enormous
commitment to classicism, which could still be expressed through Sanskrit
literary patronage but was increasingly channeled toward the support of rīti
poets, augmented the dignity of Rajput courts, affiliating the rulers with ancient
traditions of Hindu kingship while serving as a response to the Mughals’ own
classical idiom in Persian.

For Rajputs, who generally did not host Persian scholars and poets at their
courts, rīti intellectuals working in Brajbhasha were also appreciated as an
important class of court professionals. To write or to (p.186) sponsor a
rītigranth betokened a king's participation in the sophisticated circles of the
kavikul, which not only added status to the court but also helped to foster the
development of vernacular intellectual life. All the courts of the day were
sponsoring short poetry manuals but Rajput kings were the most likely to
patronize complex works of rīti śāstra in Sanskritized style, such as the
Rasrahasya of Kulapati Mishra. Learned discourse of this type would naturally
have been of greatest relevance outside the Mughal court where the Hindu, and
increasingly Hindi, intelligentsia held sway. As R. S. McGregor has suggested, a
high Braj prose style grew up in North India from the seventeenth century
because it served “as a means of communication between Hindu courts, and
educated Hindu speakers of different local Western Hindi dialects, in much the
same way as modern standard Hindi now unites educated speakers of all the
regional dialects of Hindi.”74

Who Sponsored Rīti Poets First, the Mughals or the Rajputs?

The question of how Brajbhasha took root at Rajput courts bears further
reflection. Based on the linguistic logic of today's subcontinent, where Hindi has
become Hindu language, it is common sense to assume that Hindu Rajputs
transmitted rīti literary trends to the Mughal court. They, one might assume,
were the principal users of Hindi dialects, not the Mughals. We do know that
Man Singh Kachhwaha, the leading Hindu ruler of his generation, was an early
sponsor of vernacular kāvya in a royal idiom. Keshavdas, who similarly served a
Rajput statesman of great importance, wrote his last work in a Mughal context,
not his first one, again suggesting something potentially important about the
direction of transmission. Jahangir reported in his memoirs that the Raja of
Marwar, Suraj Singh (r. 1595–1620), the grandfather of Jaswant Singh, brought
a Hindi poet to court, whom he labeled as a local bard or Charan,75 another
seeming indicator that the trajectory of this cultural contact was from Rajput to
Mughal.

The process was almost certainly more interactive than this, however. The
evidence for large-scale Rajput patronage of rīti literature at courts outside of
Bundelkhand is surprisingly scant for the period before 1650 (the mixed
Rajasthani caritas patronized by Man Singh are not yet fully rīti in their profile);

Page 19 of 43

after this date, and quite suddenly, Braj poets can be traced at most of the
subimperial courts. With the proviso that no monocausal account would explain
something as complex as literary taste, one cannot help but be struck that the
rīti authors of the seventeenth century who worked in Rajput rather than
Mughal contexts operated out of regional centers that were intimately tied to
Mughal power, whether in Orchha, Amber, Jodhpur, or Bundi.76 They were,
conspicuously, not to be found in Mewar, the court that was constantly rebelling
against imperial authority. The Mewar court did sponsor a couple of illustrated
manuscripts of vernacular works, including the spectacular Sahibdin Rasikpriyā
dating to the 1630s (figure 2.2), but it was not a major contributor to the
development of Braj courtly literature, commissioning not a single original work
of the rītigranth genre. The court did offer patronage to one Braj poet late in the
reign of Raj Singh (1652–80), the Jain ascetic Man Kavi, whose Rājvilās is a
major prabandha on the life of the king composed between 1677 and 1680. Raj
Singh also sponsored a few Rajasthani works. Mostly, however, the Mewar court
followed an older pattern of Sanskrit literary patronage during the seventeenth
century, which accords well with their nostalgia for pre-Mughal building
practices.77 The inaugural works of rīti literature come from places with close
ties to the Mughals, a pattern that only makes sense if rīti literature was as an
integral part of imperial and manṣabdārī court culture.

It may seem counterintuitive—even preposterous—to Hindi scholars of today, but

the substantial evidence presented here suggests that the leading courts of the
mid-seventeenth century adopted rīti practices because they were exposed to
formal Braj styles through Mughal contact. Whereas evidence for the Rajput
cultivation of rīti poetry is scant before 1650, the evidence for it in Mughal
contexts is ample. To recapitulate just a few highlights from chapter 4, Birbal
wrote Braj poetry under the takhalluṣ “Brahma” and was rewarded by Akbar
with the title “Kaviray”; Gang wrote praśastis to most of the princes and leading
manṣabdārs of his (p.187) day; three lost rītigranths are associated—in this
case somewhat nebulously—with the court of Akbar; the attributed oeuvre of
Rahim, a leading Mughal general, epitomizes both bhakti and rīti themes of the
late sixteenth century; Abu al-Fazl goes out of his way to mention a class of texts
on nāyikābheda in his Ā’ īn-i akbarī; Keshavdas, who specifically references
Jahangir's knowledge of nāyikābheda, may have visited the Mughal court and
was in contact with Birbal much earlier, prior to the latter's death in 1586;
Rahim's son Iraj Shahnawaz Khan is the probable patron of Keshavdas's last
work, Jahāngīrjascandrikā. Moreover, the next rīti poet to emerge after
Keshavdas—and this is particularly hard to explain unless one considers rīti
literature a Mughal practice—was Sundar, a confidant and trusted ambassador
of Emperor Shah Jahan, who was awarded titles and gifts for his Braj poetry. The
other leading author of Braj alaṅkāraśāstra during that same period is
Chintamani Tripathi, who was also extensively patronized by Indo-Muslim

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nobility in both the Deccan and the north, and possibly by Emperor Shah Jahan
himself.

The clustering of rīti poets at the Mughal court during the late sixteenth century
and the first decades of the seventeenth, and the near absence of records of rīti
poets throughout western India during this time, at the very least demonstrates
that Indo-Muslim patronage was foundational to rather than peripheral to the
success of classical Hindi. It seems likely that the cachet accorded Brajbhasha
poets by the Mughals made them in demand as gunī in other contexts.
Somewhere in the process of Mughal-Rajput alliance building and
rapprochement poetry, not just politics, mattered. The evidence is of course
limited and imperfect, and naturally some texts could be lost or still unavailable
to scholars.78 But texts that really mattered, in early modern India at least, are
usually the ones that have been preserved—recopied or at least mentioned by
later people. And we do have some consensus about the literary canon from
premodern sources, especially from the kavi-praśaṃsā genre written by
knowledgeable poets and intellectuals.

The hypothesis of a Mughal-Rajput vector—that rīti literature was first seriously

cultivated largely in Mughal circles79 and only afterward radiated out to
subimperial courts across India, even those hostile to the Mughals—accords well
with related evidence about artistic practice and also with what we know about
vernacular inauguration among Indo-Muslim communities from an earlier
period. Although regional Indian painters were hired by the imperial atelier and
contributed creatively to the development of Mughal painting idioms, the main
trends were always set at Agra and Delhi, from where they spread to Rajput
courts—not the other way around. Rajput libraries, such as that at Amber, were
inspired by Mughal practice. Why should a similar situation not (p.188) obtain
in the case of Braj court poetry? If this offends common-sense notions that Hindi
must be Hindu, it is because that common sense is anachronistic, and largely
based on nationalist thinking.

Indo-Muslim communities had already contributed many beginning points in

Hindi literary history, not least of which is the first extant work of Avadhi
literature: Candāyan by Maulana Daud.80 That they should also play a pivotal
role in the invention and early development of the rītigranth genre is fitting,
since one function of these manuals was to be gateways into Indian literature for
non-specialists. Although most of the content of Braj rītigranths derives from
alaṅkāraśāstra, a thousand-year-old tradition of Sanskrit literary theory, the
rītigranth form—a truncated, relatively simple work on (usually) a single topic of
literary theory (whether nāyikās or rasas or alaṅkāras), as opposed to a complex,
wide-ranging scholarly discussion—attained prominence only in the early
modern period, with significant impetus from Muslim patrons. Indeed, the first
independent nāyikābheda work in the Sanskrit tradition, Bhanudatta's
Rasamañjarī (Bouquet of literary emotion, c. 1500), was probably commissioned

Page 21 of 43

by the Nizam Shah of Ahmednagar, which puts the very invention of the genre in
an Indo-Muslim patronage context.81 The Chhand chhandān and Bhāv’o bhed (on
metrics and rhetoric, respectively) of the Sufi writer Khub Muhammad Chishti
(1539–1614) are quasi rītigranths in Old Gujarati, a dialect closely related to
Braj.82 It seems highly plausible that Muslim communities were the force behind
the early adoption of the signature Hindi genre of Mughal-period courts, even if
Hindu communities later developed it into a major vehicle of intellectual life.

The Brajbhasha Kavikul

Regardless of exactly how it all started, the spread of the rīti kavikul was both
astonishing and far-reaching. If one could take a snapshot of Indian courtly life,
it would reveal that just about every king in the north and several in the Deccan
had rīti poetry in his cultural repertoire by the turn of the eighteenth century
(see map 2). Mughal and Rajput elites regularly sponsored Braj writers, and a
growing network of itinerant poets transmitted literary styles and techniques
from court to court. Since cultural historians of India know so little about the
functioning of premodern literary communities, it is worth trying to reconstruct
some of this picture, with the usual caveat that the data are unsatisfactory
(although in this case not impossibly scarce).

A compelling designation that aptly encompasses both the classicism of rīti poets
and the dynamism of their circulation is a term they used themselves: (p.189)
kavikul. This collocation of kavi, poet, and kul, family, gestures toward an
important, if little discussed, mechanism of community formation in the
premodern period. The word is of Sanskrit origin, but it took on a new
importance for Braj writers of the Mughal era. Early scholars of Bhasha
alaṅkāraśāstra, including Kriparam and Keshavdas, were already using the
term,83 and for later theorists it became a demonstrably central concept. Kavikul
can refer to both a conceptual and a physical community. In carefully
researching and crafting their texts, rīti poets were in dialogue with their
literary forefathers from the Sanskrit tradition, a kavikul of bygone days: they
were deeply invested in the formulations of alaṅkāraśāstra stretching back over
a millennium and concerned with developing a new body of Brajbhasha theory
that would hold poets to the older standards and methods of classical literary
composition while still permitting vernacular innovation. Simultaneously, rīti
writers were also in conversation with contemporary peers, which signals
another aspect of the term kavikul: as Braj poets embraced new trends and an
expanded range of patronage opportunities, they forged a new and highly self-
conscious vernacular community of poet-scholars.

This idea of a kavikul can in some cases be understood absolutely literally. Recall
the family connections linking Bihari to Kulapati Mishra, and possibly even to
Keshavdas. Presumably, once a poet established a foothold at a court, the
chances were greater that one of his relatives could gain an entrée. Another
notable case of a Brajbhasha kavikul—this one spectacularly peripatetic—is the

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Tripathi family: Matiram Tripathi, Bhushan Tripathi, and Chintamani Tripathi,

whom Hindi tradition remembers as brothers. Striking correspondences such as
their birthplace (Tikvanpur, near modern Kanpur), connections between patrons,
probable instances of textual borrowing, and the frequent juxtaposition of their
names in premodern works confirm the reliability of the consensus on this
point.84 Briefly tracing a few additional details about the lives and works of
these three poets, a “kavikul” in an ultra-literal sense, can serve as a
springboard for further discussion of the other, more abstract notion of a kavikul
—the extensive community of Braj court poets that rose to prominence in
seventeenth-century India—and yield insight into how it functioned.

Concerning Matiram, we know regrettably little with certitude. Once again, the
Mughal portion of a rīti poet's attributed oeuvre poses difficulty. A short
collection of dohās that goes by the name Phūlmañjarī (Bouquet of flowers)
contains a colophon that claims the work to have been commissioned by
Jahangir (r. 1605–27). The last verse of a work is easily interpolated, however,
and such a provenance seems suspiciously early given Matiram's much more
securely dated Lalitlalām, which must have been written after 1658 since it
mentions the succession struggle that began that year.85 His Rasrāj and Satsaī
(p.190) are well substantiated as authentic but undated and undateable. The
former is a major treatise on alaṅkāraśāstra, far more comprehensive (and less
concerned with Mughal politics) than the Lalitlalām that he wrote for Bhao
Singh of Bundi. The Satsaī, which shares the same title and format as Biharilal's
more famous poetry compilation, is an outstanding collection of seven hundred
muktaka verses. Intriguingly, one of these is a tribute to the Maratha king
Shivaji, the patron of Matiram's brother Bhushan; other verses from the same
work laud one “Bhognath,” about whom nothing is known, but he is the likely
patron.86 An alaṅkārpañcāśikā (Fifty verses on ornament, 1690) is dedicated to
Prince Jnancand of Kumaon, which suggests that he migrated north to the hills
late in life.87 We can, in the end, confirm little about Matiram beyond the fact
that he was a fine poet and literary theorist who traveled extensively; he also
shows occasional interest in recording aspects of the political life of his day.

The historical record is slightly better preserved when it comes to Matiram's

brother Bhushan, who is famous in the annals of Hindi literary history
(especially nationalist literary history) as the Braj court poet of the Maratha king
Shivaji (r. 1674–80). In his principal work, the Śivrājbhūṣaṇ (Ornament to King
Shivaji), a rītigranth on the subject of alaṅkāras, Bhushan reveals how he joined
the throng of gunīs who presented themselves at the court:

Shivaji built his capital there [at Raigarh], having defeated all the
Turks.
He set his heart on acts of munificence,
and his fame spread throughout the world.
From every region talented men (gunī) arrived, seeking favor.

Page 23 of 43

Among them was a poet called Bhushan.…

Having listened carefully to good poets,
and understanding something of the path of poets (kachuka samujhi
kavina ko pantha),
Bhushan was inspired to write poetry ornamented with figures of
speech.
He composed the beautiful work Ornament to King Shivaji.

The last line contains an almost untranslatable play on the word bhūṣaṇ, which
simultaneously references the poet, the title of his book, and the alaṅkāras of
classical poetry.88

Bhushan wrote his Śivrājbhūṣaṇ in the momentous year 1673 (the text is clearly
dated by the author himself ), when preparations were underway for Shivaji's
coronation. One of this Deccan king's pivotal strategies for asserting his royal
worthiness was to align himself with a transregional Rajput court culture that
had developed over the preceding generations. Another concern was an ancestry
problem that threatened to derail his coronation: Shivaji was (p.191) not a
Kshatriya as required by classical political thought. This proved not to be
insuperable, however. Shivaji postponed the coronation until 1674 and hired
Gaga Bhatt, a celebrated pandit, who was able to trace the Maratha king's
ancestry back to the Sisodiyas of Mewar, the highest ranking Rajput clan.89

Knowledge of the king's genealogical obstacles lends a special significance to

the vaṃśāvalī of the Bhonsles (the Maratha family from which Shivaji hailed)
that Bhushan provides in the opening to Śivrājbhūṣaṇ and is yet further
evidence, should it be needed, that rīti literature was an important instrument of
statecraft for regional kings of the day. Some highlights from Bhushan's
genealogy of the Maratha king are as follows:

The solar race reigns, adorning the earth,

in which Lord Vishnu, slayer of the demon Kamsa,
took birth again and again.
A heroic king was born in that race,
who gave his head to Lord Shiva,
and thus took the title “Sisodiya.”90
In that family all the kings were graced by good fortune.
A protector of the earth was born among them,
the great Mal Makarand [Maloji, Shivaji's grandfather].…
He was a close companion of the Nizam Shah [of Ahmednagar],
a pillar of the Devagiri fort.…
Bhushan says, To him was born King Shahji, an ornament to the
world;
all the kings remained in fear of him day and night.…
Just as Rama was the son of Dasharatha, and Krishna of Vasudeva,
So the illustrious king Shivaji was born of Shahji.
When Shivaji was born, Brahmans and gods delighted,

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the kaliyuga was over,

the arrogance of the mlecchas was checked.
The very day he graced this earth,
the Bhonsle crushed the spirit of his enemies.…
Bhushan says, It was child's play for him to vanquish forts.…
In his boyhood, he captured Bijapur and Golkonda,
with the onset of youth he conquered the emperor of Delhi.91

Taking some cues, it seems, from his brother Matiram, court poet to the Bundi
kings, Bhushan goes on to give an elaborate, idealizing description of Shivaji's
capital at Raigarh in the familiar nagara-varṇana genre. The opening verse
stresses the grandeur of Shivaji's fort at Raigarh (figure 5.2), as impressive as it
was impregnable:

(p.192) The court of Shivaji, son of Shahji, was splendid as Indra's.

Bhushan says, seeing its riches, Kubera felt ashamed.
Raigarh encompasses all three worlds.
The water of its moats reaches down to the netherworld;
the fort towers above, illuminated by the luster of the heavens.92

Bhushan then begins his treatment of alaṅkāraśāstra—this too perhaps a

technique adapted from his brother's book—that uses the rītigranth genre as a
forum for political poetry, the tenor of which may already be evident from
phrases such as “the arrogance of the mlecchas was checked” and “he
conquered the emperor of Delhi.”93

No less arresting than the style or content of the work is its provenance. How
did Bhushan Tripathi, a Braj poet whose family hailed from the midlands of
North India, find himself in the Deccan alongside Marathi and Sanskrit writers
as one of Shivaji's coterie of gunīs?94 That Sanskrit, Marathi, or even Persian
writers (Shivaji is himself the author of a major epistolary corpus in Persian)
might have been in attendance at Shivaji's court comes as no great surprise, but
it required a dramatic change in Hindi's prestige factor for a Braj

(p.193) poet to thus reach a

southern audience, receiving a
generous remuneration that would
command the admiration, indeed
envy, of future generations of
writers.95 That the Maratha king
should have bestowed his favor
upon Bhushan is an index of a
much broader cultural trend: not
just a particular poet, but a whole
language and literary culture had
found favor. It is hard to think of a
more telling index of Brajbhasha's
prestige than for it to be adopted as a cultural style far beyond the region where Hindi

Page 25 of 43

was spoken as a mother tongue. Brajbhasha was becoming the new cosmopolitan
idiom of its day and an important component of a pan-Rajput court culture. To be
suitably royal, Shivaji needed the correct genealogy, but he also needed rīti poetry.
Further details about Bhushan's figure 5.2 Shivaji's fort at Raigarh,
stay at the Maratha court are constructed in the late 17th century
unavailable, but we can track
Aerial photograph by the author
his ghostly footprints in a few
(helicopter courtesy of Ajit Gulabchand)
other localities. He seems to
have begun his career at the
court of an obscure raja, Rudrashah Solanki of Chitrakut, located south of
modern Lucknow on the border between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
There, the poet tells us, he was awarded the title “Bhūṣaṇ” (ornament),96 which
was so thoroughly to eclipse his given name that the Hindi tradition came to
know him only by this sobriquet. At another unspecified moment in his career,
Bhushan appears to have traveled to Panna in what is today eastern Madhya
Pradesh, which was then under the rule of Chatrasal, yet another regional king
who actively sponsored Braj poets. That Bhushan visited Chatrasal's court is a
logical conclusion to draw from the ten surviving verses in honor of the famous
rebel leader from Bundelkhand, which have been collected in Chatrasāldaśak
(Decade on Chatrasal).97 Other places Bhushan may have visited and patrons for
whom he wrote are suggested, if not proven conclusively, by the many phuṭkal
(miscellaneous) poems that bear his chāp (poetic signature). Attributed to
Bhushan are freestanding panegyric verses to several Rajput royalty, including
Mirza Raja Jai Singh, his son Ram Singh, Aniruddh Singh (r. 1682–95) and
Buddh Singh (r. 1696–1735) of Bundi, and King Avadhut Singh of Rewa (1700–
55).98 Bhushan may not have personally sought patronage at the courts of all
these kings. He may have encountered some at the courts of others, or have
been imagined to do so by later redactors. Regardless, Bhushan evidently had a
remarkably cosmopolitan life—taking him across modern Uttar Pradesh,
Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, and farther south to the Deccan—that would
have been unthinkable for an earlier Hindi poet like Keshavdas.

Chintamani, assumed to be the eldest of the Tripathi brothers, was the most
peripatetic of them all. Although shockingly little known to Hindi scholars today,
Chintamani moved in all the courtly literary circles that mattered in
seventeenth-century India: Mughal, Rajput, and Deccani. In the last chapter, we
were also able to track some of his movements in elite Indo-Muslim patronage
(p.194) settings; it has been conjectured that Rasvilās, his first rītigranth, was
written at the court of Shah Jahan. He can be connected to Kavindracharya
Sarasvati, who interceded with Shah Jahan to abrogate the pilgrimage tax: when
the Braj kavikul feted the pandit, it was Chintamani who contributed seventeen
praise addresses, more verses than any other poet, for the occasion.99 Recall
how he also received a warm reception in the maḥfil of Sayyid Rahmatullah,
diwan of Jahanabad, whose knowledge of rīti poetic systems betokened his
literary connoisseurship. Indo-Muslim communities in the Deccan, too, were
Page 26 of 43

reading and evaluating handbooks on Indian alaṅkāraśāstra, a process to which

Chintamani actively contributed when he moved to Golkonda, where he
translated into Brajbhasha a Sanskrit aesthetics treatise that drew inspiration
from the Sanskrit ālaṅkārika Bhanudatta: Akbar Shah's Śṛṅgāramañjarī (Bouquet
of passion, c. 1670).100 Chintamani's tenure at Golkonda was evidently the
culmination of a lengthy stay in the Deccan, for the poet had formerly served the
father of Shivaji, Shahji Bhonsle, yet another striking instance of how the reach
of the Braj kavikul extended well beyond North India. Shahji commissioned him
to write the Bhāṣāpiṅgal (Vernacular prosody, c. 1662), a treatise on metrics that
would garner a massive readership in the following centuries.101 Chintamani's
presence at that court was also recorded in the mixed Sanskrit-Bhasha kāvya
sponsored by Shahji: Jayarama's Rādhāmādhavavilāsacampū.102

The poet's last known work, the Kavikulkalptaru (Wish-fulfilling tree for the
family of poets, c. 1670), a monumental treatise on alaṅkāraśāstra, some
excerpts of which have already been discussed in chapter 3, is thought to have
been produced not in the Deccan but at a minor Rajput court further north: that
of Rudrashah Solanki in central India. The only published edition of the text, a
lithograph from 1875, does not contain an attribution of patronage, but
Shivsingh Sengar, the author of a pioneering Hindi literary history written in
1878, cites a dedication to Rudrashah Solanki of Chitrakut, which if authentic
means that Chintamani shared this patron (as well as a connection to the
Maratha court) with his brother Bhushan.103 The most important specimen of
Chintamani's alaṅkāraśāstra to survive (the Kavittvicār, which was much praised
by Mir Ghulam Ali Azad in his biography of Hindi and Persian poets, the Ma’ās̤ir
al-kirām, is not extant), the Kavikulkalptaru is a compendious, reasoned work
that elegantly synthesizes the major arguments of classical literary theory. Note
how the idea of a kavikul was so central to Chintamani that he featured it in the
title of his magnum opus.104

Mapping the careers of Matiram, Bhushan, and Chintamani Tripathi helps in

visualizing the phenomenal spread of rīti literary culture during the second half
of the seventeenth century. Just these three brothers can be traced to at least a
dozen courts throughout northern, southern, western, and central India, (p.
195) and they typify a whole new class of circulating Braj court poets.
Hundreds of writers constituted the kavikul of early modern India, as rīti poets
became truly ubiquitous in both imperial centers and the regional courts of the
realm.105 Rīti poets were working in Mughal circles; scattered throughout
Bundelkhand; in Bengal; at most of the courts of Rajasthan. Eventually, as with
Indian painting traditions, rīti poetry developed an even more extensive clientele
in both Hindu and Sikh courts in the hills. Braj poets were also attracting
readership and patronage in the Deccan, at the Maratha court and Golkonda.
Truly, Braj was now the language of an extended “family”of poets.

Page 27 of 43

The cultivation of Braj literature well beyond the domain of its currency as a
spoken language in North India may seem surprising at first, but we can identify
a number of factors that explain this trend, especially for the Deccan. The
popularity of Hindi far to the south of its traditional linguistic zone is readily
comprehensible if we recall that as early as the fourteenth century, the southern
forays of the Sultanate armies had carried North Indians, and with them their
language, to the Deccan. Also in place was a long-standing tradition of itinerant
Marathi poets who moonlighted as Hindi writers. The sant poets Namdev
(1350?) and Tukaram (b. 1598) are famous examples, but bilingualism along this
particular literary frontier was quite common.106 That the Mughal court was on
occasion stationed in southern cities such as Burhanpur and Aurangabad also
contributed to Hindi transregionalism. For all we know, the Braj poetry of Rahim
and Jaswant Singh could have been composed while these generals were
camped in the Deccan fighting the Mughal wars. It is telling that Bhao Singh of
Bundi, Jaswant Singh, and Jai Singh, all major patrons or writers of rīti literature
from the key manṣabdārī courts, served together in these southern military
campaigns. And it was in the south that the poet Vrind from the following
generation, who was sponsored by both Mughal and Rajput courts (he later took
up residence in Dhaka), wrote several of his works.107

A more general factor in the mobility of Braj poets was Mughal political
expansion and the peripatetic nature of the Mughals’ own ruling style, which
favored the development of the networks of circulating people and texts that
enabled rīti literary culture to flourish. The tendency toward cultural emulation
among rulers has already been mentioned. Whereas for the kings of classical
India Sanskrit kāvya was an index of courtly status, in the early modern era,
Rajput and Mughal court cultures—which now included Braj literati—were the
high-status transregional styles. Thus, literary Braj was never limited to one
community or place—certainly not the geographical place from which the
language is believed to hail. Indeed, the circulation of Brajbhasha belies its very
name, “language of the Braj area.” The literary salons of India were populated
by large numbers of traveling court poets; as Bhikharidas once remarked, “one
need (p.196) not live in Braj to write in Braj.”108 An overt theorization of
Brajbhasha as a cosmopolitan language of letters may have awaited the
perspicacity of that eighteenth-century rīti writer, who often made interesting
observations about the language practices of his day, including those of his own
court—Pratapgarh in remote Avadh—but for seventeenth-century poets like
Chintamani, Vrind, and Jaswant Singh, who moved between North India and the
Deccan, between Mughal and subimperial courts, and between Persianate and
Indic milieus, this Braj transregionalism was a matter not just of theory but of
practice. When rīti poets traveled from court to court, from city to city, they
participated in their community intellectually and also enacted it physically by
traversing space and taking along their texts, their ideas, and other forms of
cultural capital.

Page 28 of 43

The circulation of poets and texts across a broad geographical range had once
been the defining characteristic of Sanskrit cultural space.109 More recently,
with the spread of Indo-Muslim rule, Persian was cultivated as a major
transregional language. Such cosmopolitanism is thought to characterize only
classical languages, and much of this study has been concerned with the rise of
Brajbhasha literature as a process of vernacularization. But as the Braj kavikul
gained an enormous following in far-flung courtly circles due to the favorable
patronage opportunities available in Mughal India, the language also underwent
cosmopolitanization. The brothers Tripathi serve as a paradigmatic case for how
Braj texts and practices—and, naturally, the court intellectuals who created
them—began to move in a much larger world and define a new cultural space
during the early modern period. These were the gunīs, the “talented”
professionals, without whom the very existence of court culture was impossible.

Literary Communities and the Reproduction of Tradition

Much evidence about the Brajbhasha gunīs of early modern India projects the
image of a network of like-minded writers who shared literary presuppositions,
practices, and courtly predilections across vast spaces, as when Jaswant Singh
invoked the fellowship of skilled vernacular literati in the colophon of his
Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ. Similar references to literary community are ubiquitous in rīti
literature, as two examples from the works of the Tripathi brothers demonstrate.
In the colophon of his Rasrāj, Matiram remarks,

I have composed this new work, The Primary Rasa, for the
delectation of connoisseurs. May the community of master poets
understand my work and take pleasure from it.
(p.197) Samujhi samujhi saba rījhihaiṃ, sajjana sukabi samāja
Rasikana ke rasa ko kiyo, nayo grantha rasarāja110

In a more technical verse by Bhushan, the poetic community is invoked as a

means of authorizing the writer's definition:

When two separate objects resemble each other and cannot be told
apart
Bhushan says, The community of poets calls this the rhetorical
device of “similarity.”
Bhinna rūpa aru sadṛsa meṃ, bheda na jānyau jāya
Tāhi kahata “sāmānya” haiṃ, Bhūṣana kavisamudāya111

If these references to literary community were merely sporadic, they might be

passed over as merely formulaic expressions. It was always something of a trope
for Indian writers to address the kavikul, often with a request that their errors
be overlooked.112 Sometimes these expressions also acted as “verse-fillers.”113
But the sheer number of such references, especially when combined with the
prodigious number of poets and rītigranths, proclaims across the gap of

Page 29 of 43

centuries the pride of an articulate and self-aware literary movement that was
confident in its expertise.

These formulations prompt questions about the boundaries of the rīti community
and the mechanisms by which poetry and literary values were shared among its
members. The focus of this book has been almost exclusively on the elite social
spheres of Brajbhasha literary culture, with an emphasis on its courtly heritage.
Rīti poetry was in fact much wider in appeal and social basis, its audience
including members of the nobility, the intelligentsia, soldiers, and merchant
classes. Banarsidas, a prolific author resident in Agra who was active in the
vernacular kavikul toward the middle of the seventeenth century, speaks of his
immersion as a youth in the formal disciplines of poetry such as metrics and
alaṅkāra, clear evidence of the accessibility to Jain merchants of rīti literary
culture from an early point in the tradition.114 By the late eighteenth century, rīti
literature, perhaps via some kind of “trickle-down” effect, had permeated much
of Indian society.115

A rare chance to observe how the kavikul came to operate outside of courtly
contexts is the opening to the unpublished Sarassār (Essence of the aesthetic) of
Ray Shivdas, who provides a lively account of a gathering of Brajbhasha poets
that took place in Agra in 1737 under the direction of the Braj scholar Surati
Mishra:

In Agra there was once a meeting of the poets’ community

(kavisamāja).
(p.198) Those who had a penchant for poetry came and met with
glad hearts.
Together the wise poets resolved to create a new book,
excited by the prospect of new categories (nae bheda rasa ṭhāna?)
The poets collectively shared their ideas,
each according to his ability, mindful of the literary system (lahi rīti).
With pleasure, all who were present listed the possible categories.
To the extent of their knowledge (apanī mati paramāna so),
they set out the extensive range of categories (bheda vistāra)
When poets perceived an error they would correct it.
The poets were of differing opinions, but wise authorities presided,
in keeping with whose opinions this new book was composed.116

Shivdas specifically references the concept of a poets’ community, while also

using many of the technical terms associated with rīti literature. A detailed
awareness of the plethora of classical poetics formed the core knowledge that
allowed the members of the kavikul to be in dialogue with one another and
participate in a system of meanings intelligible to all. Literary values were
authorized by consensus: poets gathered together to assess the continuing
viability of their rīti literary system, reconfigured elements as necessary, and
also proposed some new formulations. Although too much remains unclear about

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the mechanisms of premodern literary culture, similar evidence from music

contexts of the seventeenth century suggests that such gatherings among
aficionados might have been routine.117

Another means of achieving a widespread consensus about literary norms was

education. Although few educational records survive from the precolonial
period, rītigranths were clearly an important component of the curriculum. That
some rīti manuals had an educational mandate is not in question: the lakṣaṇs of
these texts are peppered with imperatives and vocatives that directly address
the audience. Such vestiges of oral culture intimate that some of these texts
might be the formalized lecture notes of early modern teachers. Keshavdas, as
already remarked, repeatedly uses the word “Pravin” in his Kavipriyā, as though
calling out to his student Pravin Ray. Also evoking a teaching context are
phrases like kabikula, tajahu prasaṅga (Community of poets, avoid [such]
scenarios!), and sunahu, sakala kabirāja (Listen, all you master poets!).118 One
can almost picture the author addressing students in a classroom. Nor is there a
shortage of evidence that rīti poets served as teachers. Kulapati Mishra taught
not only Raja Ram Singh Kachhwaha but also some of the palace women and
was himself taught by Jagannatha Panditaraja, author of a Sanskrit rītigranth of
sorts (if a highly complex one). Vrind was probably a teacher of the Mughal (p.
199) Prince Azim us-Shan, as well as—or so seems likely from the context and
content of Śṛṅgārśikṣā—the family of the governor of Ajmer.119 Udaynath
Kavindra, the court poet to King Gurudatt Singh of Amethi, and Mohanlal Mishra
of the Charkhari court mention that they wrote rītigranths for the education of
their own sons.120 Occasionally evidence surfaces about more formal
establishments, such as the Sanskrit school founded by Mirza Raja Jai Singh.
There were also Brajbhasha poetry schools.

One remarkable institution was the Brajbhasha pāṭhśālā of Bhuj, founded in

1749 by Lakhpati Sinha (r. 1741–61), the raja of Kutch. The catchment area for
the school was vast: it naturally included parts of the traditional Hindi belt as
well as western Gujarat, where the school was located, but students were also
drawn from much farther afield, including the Marathi and Punjabi linguistic
zones. Regional kings underwrote the five-year training program of some of the
students, who were evidently sent there in preparation for the vocation of court
poet. This particular school attracted diverse social groups, but especially
clientele from the bardic castes.121 Students were trained in the cosmopolitan
techniques of rīti kāvya, as well as in regional literary styles like Dingal. They
were taught singing, the preparation of manuscripts, and performing in the
samasyāpūrti contests that rewarded virtuosity in extemporaneous composition,
as well as less literary topics such as the military arts, medicine, and
horsemanship.122 It is difficult to say how typical the Bhuj pāṭhśālā was in the
eighteenth century or whether its curriculum, which included works by
Nanddas, Keshavdas, Sundar, Bihari, Kulapati Mishra, Jaswant Singh, and Vrind,
among many others, is representative. That numerous manuscripts of all these
Page 31 of 43

authors are well attested in western India from the early modern period
suggests that it was not an exception. The broad social and geographical base of
the student body, together with the very fact of a Braj school being founded in
Gujarat, testifies to the transregional importance of this literary culture and
hints at well-developed infrastructural mechanisms for its reproduction from
generation to generation.

Conclusion
This and the preceding chapter have tracked the diverse constituencies of rīti
literature as well as where it went, who transmitted it, and what kinds of
cultural needs it served. We have studied the movement of rīti poets and their
texts as an important development in its own right; along the way, we have also
explored some of the literary publics and social spaces of premodern literary
culture. Much social science theory used to explain both vernacularization and
(p.200) “imagined communities,” to use Benedict Anderson's term, has tended
to focus on the modern period, emphasizing factors like print culture, the
expansion of literacy, and a heightened cognition of and investment in national
belonging.123 None of these was an important factor in Brajbhasha's diffusion.

As evidence presented here has shown, this was a widely successful tradition
that was exclusively a manuscript culture, written by a literate few although
heard, appreciated, and disseminated by many more. The aesthetic world in
which its exponents participated did not require allegiance to any specific
geographical, religious, or political group. Many people partook of this culture,
and all had their reasons and readings. Although a vastly important component
of Brajbhasha literature—the Radha-Krishna narrative cycle—conjures up a
localized Hindu world, the divine play of god among the cowherd communities of
Vrindavan and Gokul, the circulation and readership of the Braj language was
never exclusively tied to that region. Nor was it solely a carrier of Vaishnava
sensibilities. Moreover, whereas Rajput painting traditions, which offer a useful
visual parallel to rīti literature, are marked by and indeed classified in terms of
regional styles such as “Mewar” and “Bundi,” Brajbhasha court poetry
maintained a remarkable uniformity of style and substance across regions.124

This uniformity reflects the growing cosmopolitanism of Hindi at the time, as

well as the collective understanding of a broad-based kavikul. At the 1737
conference hosted in Agra, a group of Brajbhasha intellectuals came together to
deliberate on theories of poetics, which shows how the components of the
classical literary system were, quite literally, the focal point around which
premodern scholars converged. In a teaching environment such as the Bhuj
literary college, educational practices, literary canons, and textbooks helped to
ensure the continuation of the system. But the kavikul was far more extensive
than a single gathering of people at a particular court or school. The actual
physical co-presence of poets, students, and scholars was not necessary for the
constitution of a shared literary culture. It was a more abstract, conceptual

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entity, a cognitive space where writers felt themselves to be part of a larger (p.
201) cultural network whether or not they actually met. The textbook genre
favored by rīti poets, which invoked classical authority, illustrated the
mechanisms of literary composition, and at the same time underwrote practices
of connoisseurship, was particularly well suited for structuring a powerful sense
of literary belonging within the confines of a manuscript culture. The most
successful of these works, such as the Rasikpriyā of Keshavdas, were widely
disseminated (and illustrated); thus, the will of the kavikul was also expressed
through physical artifacts like manuscripts that extended beyond the
chronological moment of a poet's lifetime as an enduring legacy. Whatever
moment of fame literary theories and compositions enjoyed in the present, they
also survived in cultural memory through the recognition of the kavikul as it
sifted and selectively remembered, bestowing the prize of long-standing
recognition in the canon. This cultural capital translated into the continued
reproduction of manuscripts and the generation of poetry collections and
commentaries by future connoisseurs and scholars.

The kavikul, in short, was a complex structure of cultural power. At the center of
early modern literary life across greater Hindustan was a well-defined
knowledge system in which poets participated, a set of ground rules that were
sanctioned by community consensus and subject to periodic reformulation. It
was a mechanism by which writers transmitted cherished cultural traditions.
These traditions would not, however, be allowed to continue indefinitely. Radical
shifts in the norms and practices of the kavikul during colonial rule and its
nationalist aftermath subjected Brajbhasha literary culture to devastating
interruptions, from which it would never recover.

Notes:
(1.) Desai 1990; Beach 1992; Joffee 2005.

(2.) It was in Banaras in 1893 that the Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabha, an organization
devoted to the propagation of Hindi in Devanagari script and one of the most
important early institutions of the Hindi movement, was founded. Slightly later
but no less influential was the Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan, founded in Allahabad in
1910. All the major literati of the day belonged to these institutions, and some of
the same people who were active in them, such as Pandit Madanmohan Malviya
in the case of Banaras Hindi University, lobbied for the foundation of the new
universities and programs where academic approaches to Hindi would take root.

(3.) On the textual problems and dating of the Pṛthvīrājrāso, see Dvivedi 1957:
54–57; Talbot 2007: 26–28.

(4.) Pingal, named after a shadowy figure who purportedly contributed to both
Sanskrit metrics and Prakrit grammar, is a synonym for Braj, often used in
western India in contrast to Dingal, a literary dialect of Marwari. Typical of the

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vacillation that attends the linguistic categorization of some texts from this
period is Jinavijay's description of the Binhairāso of Maheshdas, a historical
poem that foregrounds the succession struggle of Shah Jahan's sons, as
“brajbhāṣā-prabhāvit ḍiṇgal … jisko ki rājasthānī hī mānnā cāhie” ([a work of]
Brajbhasha-inflected Dingal, which should be considered Rajasthani). Jinavijay
1966: 2.

(5.) The Pṛthvīrājrāso exhibits a classic profile of Braj-Rajasthani admixture. See

Talbot 2007: 32 n. 49. On differentiating the literary languages of early modern
western India, especially Dingal and Pingal, see Kamphorst 2008: 32–36. On the
language topography of precolonial India more broadly, with its “fuzzy
boundaries” between dialects, see Kaviraj 1992: 39–41.

(6.) To loosely characterize them, Charans were agricultural professionals

trained as oral bards; Bhats were literate poets; Bhils were singers from western
India's nomadic communities. A recent study of Dingal poetry with a special
emphasis on its diverse caste groups is Kamphorst 2008.

(7.) Paradigmatic is Coomaraswamy 1916. Useful reflections on the

historiography of Rajput painting with particular reference to conceptualizing its
relationship to Mughal styles are Desai 1990; Diamond 2000: 42–46; Aitken
2010: 11–14.

(8.) Joffee 2005: 63–79; Talbot 2007: 23–24.

(9.) “Ly donques et rely premierement (ò Poëte futur) fueillete de main nocturne
et journelle les exemplaires grecz et latins: puis me laisse toutes ces vieilles
poësies francoyses aux Jeuz Floraux de Thoulouze et au Púy de Rouan: comme
rondeaux, ballades, vyrelaiz, chantz royaulx, chansons, et autres telles
episseries, qui corrumpent le goust de nostre langue, et ne servent si non à
porter temoingnaige de notre ignorance. Du Bellay 1904: 201–3.

(10.) Useful theorizations of the concepts of distinction and the cultural field are
respectively laid out in Bourdieu 1984, 1993.

(11.) When Akbar promoted Man Singh to the rank of 7000 in 1601, Man Singh
was for a time ranked higher than any other Mughal noble. Blochmann, in Ā’īn-i
akbarī, 1:363.

(12.) For details of the Mānaprakāśa, see Dube 1991. The literary patronage of
Man Singh as well as the less traceable heritage of the courts of his
predecessors at Amber is discussed by G.N. Sharma (1970, 50–51) and G.N.
Bahura (1976, 5–34). Unfortunately, the general inaccessibility of the Jaipur
palace archives to modern scholars precludes a comprehensive account of
Amber literary history.

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(13.) Gang's praśasti poems to Man Singh are in Gaṅggranthāvalī, pp. 244–48;
compare Keshavdas's Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 1.2 and Jahāngīrjascandrikā, v. 65.

(14.) Amrit Rai's text is unambiguously dated to the twenty-ninth regnal year of
Akbar (i.e., 1585). Narottam's Māncarit does not refer to any event after Man
Singh's founding of Rohtas, which means it could be as early as 1597. Cf. Bahura
1990: 20, 34.

(15.) Māncarit, v. 19.

(16.) Kolff 2002: 128. Keshavdas also includes Man Singh in a list of notable
people who attended Bir Singh Deo's coronation. See Vīrsiṃhdevcarit, 33.15.

(17.) See Māncarit, vv. 19–53.

(18.) Bahura 1990: 34. The manuscript was copied in 1640.

(19.) He has been considered a “principal advisor” to the latter. Chandra 1989:
37. Some details of his military career are in Ma’ās̤ir al-umarā, Beveridge trans.,
1:731–34.

(20.) Cort 1995 highlights Jain practices of manuscript collection.

(21.) Ziegler 1976 discusses several indicators of the transition to literacy among
Rajasthani bards from the late sixteenth century, probably because they were
exposed to new trends in Mughal historiography and, while Dingal traditions
may date back to the thirteenth century, written records survive from only a
much later period: from the sixteenth century onwards. Also see Kamphorst
2008: 43–45.

(22.) On the history of the pothīkhāna, see Bahura 1976: 12–21; Das (2000: 44)
suggests that the library was founded during Man Singh's reign.

(23.) Bahura 1976: 38–39.

(24.) Das 2000: 44. I thank Patton Burchett for the reference.

(25.) Not all manuscripts of his satsaī contain a colophon dating the text to 1662.
The relevant verse is printed in Bihārīsatsaī, v. 708.

(26.) Bihari's literary craftsmanship is discussed in Snell 1994b.

(27.) The original text of Bihārīvihār, edited by Shyamsundar Das, is reprinted by

Sudhakar Pandey (1999: 32–35).

(28.) The general congruence of Mughal and Amber court culture in Jai Singh's
time is well known. See, for instance, Asher and Talbot 2006: 211–13. Bhagirath
Mishra mentions that Bihari learned Persian poetry and met with Shah Jahan, on

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what grounds it is difficult to say (1973: 348). Bihari certainly uses Perso-Arabic
vocabulary in striking ways. See Dewhurst 1915.

(29.) Bahura 1976: 39.

(30.) Cited by Vishnudatt Sharma (1970: 49 n. 1).

(31.) Kulapati also mentions Pingalacharya, Surdas, Alam, Gang, and Bihari.
Ibid., 70–71.

(32.) Arguments in favor of the proposition are ibid., 48–52; Ganapaticandra

Gupta 1972: 106–18; Vijaypal Singh 1993: 49–55. The influential scholar
Vishvanathprasad Mishra had rejected the possibility (1966: 503).

(33.) Vishvanathprasad Mishra is just one of many scholars to note the Bundeli
forms (1965a: 155, 179).

(34.) Ibid., 8–9.

(35.) Kulapati Mishra mentions his guru directly in a passage excerpted in

Vishnudatt Sharma 1970: 55.

(36.) See Pollock 2001a: 404–12.

(37.) Kurma is a title of the Amber kings.

(38.) Rasrahasya, folio 2a, vv. 9–10 (vijai mahala baiṭhe karata, bhāṣākavita
vicāra, tahām hukuma kīno … (sahaja?) kūrama rāma kumāra/jitī devavāni
pragaṭa hai kavitā kī ghāta, bhāṣā meṃ jo hoi to saba samujhaiṃ rasa bāta). The
ellipsis indicates a word obscured by an ink blot.

(39.) Rasrahasya, folio 84, v. 570 (jite sāja haiṃ kavita ke māmaṭa kahe vaṣāni
(bakhāni), te saba bhāṣā me kahe rasarahasya mai āni).

(40.) “Many scholars were present there, as were numerous Hindi poets” (hute
tahāṃ paṇḍita bahuta, bhāṣā kavyau aneka), cited by Vishnudatt Sharma 1970:
59.

(41.) The maharaja also sponsored Rajasthani poetry. Ladhraj, for instance, is an
acclaimed Dingal poet associated with the courts of Jaswant Singh and Gaj Singh
(Jaswant Singh's father). See Kamphorst 2008: 47–49.

(42.) Jaswant Singh's oeuvre and its manuscript and commentarial history are
outlined by Vishnvanathprasad Mishra (1972: 31–51) and Kaliprasad Singh
(2009: 30–37). Examples of his poetry are in chapter 2 of this book.

(43.) Bhāṣābhūṣaṇ, vv. 207, 209.

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(44.) Kaliprasad Singh (2009: 24–26) provides a brief overview of writers said to
be associated with Jaswant Singh's court. One wishes the evidence were more
robust. Sudhir Sharma (1998: 10–11) discusses the association between Vrind
and Jaswant Singh.

(45.) In a recusatio, a trope from Latin literature, the poet introduces his work
with a diffident statement or even an overt disavowal of his competence as a
writer.

(46.) See the discussion of “the slow-witted Hindi poet” at the beginning of
chapter 1.

(47.) According to Geoffrey Lewis, seventeen of the thirty-six Ottoman Sultans

wrote (generally Persian) poetry (1999: 11); on the centrality of poetry in ancient
and medieval China, see Yu 2005.

(48.) Pollock 2006: 18–19, 514–24.

(49.) A suggestive description of how poetic performance was an integral part of

the daily life of Rajput kings is Bahura 1983 3–7; cf. Bangha 2007: 312–14.
Although their examples are drawn from eighteenth-century rīti texts, the
practices are almost certainly generalizable for an earlier period.

(50.) Examples culled from Wagoner 1993: 90–94.

(51.) All three Mughal memoirs have been translated by Thackston:

Bāburnāmah, Jahāngīrnāmah, and Humāyūnnāmah respectively.

(52.) Akbarnāmah, 1:270–71.

(53.) Rosalind O’Hanlon has suggested that this emphasis on the literary and
aesthetic in royal circles may have something to do with forms of specifically
Indian political culture, where kings projected power through close personal ties
that could be better fostered through the moral and emotional codes of poetry
and the bonding at literary gatherings than through political coercion (2007b:
368–69).

(54.) Ziegler 1976: 131–35; Sreenivasan 2007: 80–84.

(55.) Naiṇsī rī khyāt, 1:128–31. I thank Dalpat Rajpurohit for the reference.

(56.) See Talbot (forthcoming). Hada is a title of the Bundi kings.

(57.) The terminus post quem for the work is 1658, since the Lalitlalām mentions
the war of succession between Aurangzeb and his brothers.

(58.) Lalitlalām, vv. 6–22.

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(59.) Compare the descriptions of Amber and Rohtas in the Māncarit of

Narottam (vv. 82–87, 100–120, 406–410); Orchha in the Vīrsiṃhdevcarit of
Keshavdas (especially chaps. 16 through 18), and Raigarh in the Śivrājbhūṣaṇ of
Bhushan (vv. 15–24), this last segment briefly referenced below.

(60.) Recall Keshavdas's injunctions from the Kavipriyā about how to describe a
court, discussed in chapter 1.

(61.) “Hinduna kī rākhī sarama…sāhi ko hukuma-paga paṅga bhau.” Lalitlalām,

vv. 25–26. Ma’ās̤ir al-umarā, Beveridge trans., 1:408–9. The historian R.S.
Mathur (1986: 81–83) is not inclined to believe the account given in the Ma’ās̤ir
al-umarā, which was written more than a century later.

(62.) “Sāhani sauṃ rana-raṅga maiṃ jītyo bakhta-bilanda,” and “jisa jāni kai
chatrina kauṃ rana-kāsī.” Lalitlalām, vv. 27, 33. On the succession struggle, cf. v.
195. Satrusal's death is also given brief attention in Ma’ās̤ir al-umarā, Beveridge
trans., 1:405.

(63.) Omprakash Sharma (1983: 7) suggests other possible ways of resolving the
compound in Matiram's title Lalitlalām, settling on cāru–camatkār (beautiful
wonderment). That Lalām can mean “finest” as the second member of a
compound is attested in Tulsi's Rāmcaritmānas 1.178.2 where Mandodari is
described as “parama sundarī, nārī-lalāma” (supremely beautiful, the finest of
women).

(64.) The patron is called “lalitlalām” in v. 250. Cf. v. 122, where Bhao Singh is
described as saina sobhā ke lalāma (ornament that gives luster to the army).

(65.) Compare Lalitlalām, v. 103 with Kavīndrakalpalatā, p. 25, v. 19.

(66.) The Braj word pānipa means both water and luster.

(67.) Lalitlalām, v. 41.

(68.) Asher and Talbot deemphasize the importance of education among Rajput
communities (2006: 214), but clearly rīti poets and their texts did play some kind
of an educational role in these settings, while also generally promoting codes of
elegance, civility, and gentlemanly comportment. Formal works of Sanskrit
śāstra and kāvya similarly helped to foster a courtly ethos during the medieval
period. See Ali 2004.

(69.) Such manuals were also common in Europe during the same period. A
celebrated example is Castiglione's manual on etiquette, Il Libro del Cortegiano
(The Book of the Courtier), discussed in Pugliese 2008. A sampling of French
manuals on rhetoric is Goyet 1990.

(70.) Ziegler 1976: 133–34.

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(71.) Kolff 2002: 73.

(72.) See chapter 1.

(73.) Also see the discussion of Bhushan's Śivrājbhūṣaṇ in chapter 2 and below,
this chapter. Such texts from the rīti tradition are the focus of my forthcoming
book on vernacular histories of the Mughal period.

(74.) McGregor 1968: 10. Several early modern writers, including Nanddas, even
refer to scholarly communities that were no longer using Sanskrit. See
McGregor 2003: 925.

(75.) See chapter 4.

(76.) Bhushan, for his part, worked for Shivaji, one of Aurangzeb's arch-rivals,
who had tried his hand at manṣabdārī politics but then distanced himself. On the
breakdown of Mughal-Maratha relations under Shivaji, see Gordon 1993: 70–80.

(77.) I am indebted to Cynthia Talbot for bringing the Braj Rājvilās to my

attention. Mewar literary and architectural initiatives under Raj Singh are
discussed in Joffee 2005: 95–123. On Rajasthani and Sanskrit literary patronage
at Mewar, see various discussions by G. N. Sharma (1962: 198–99; 1965: 75, 83–
84; 1968: 259; 1974: 116–17).

(78.) It is also possible, given the uneven publishing record for rīti manuscripts,
that entire literary histories of Rajput courts are still waiting to be written. If
two Māncarits about the leading manṣabdār of their day were published only in
1990, then perhaps other important rīti texts from this period may still be
brought to light.

(79.) Here I distinguish courtly poetry from bhakti literature and Braj song
traditions, which both have demonstrably earlier links to the Braj maṇḍal and to
Gwalior.

(80.) The defining role played by Indo-Muslims in North India's vernacular

literary inauguration is recognized in McGregor 1984: 1–28; Shackle 1993: 281–
282; Pollock 2006: 392–93; Busch 2011.

(81.) See Pollock 2009: xx–xxiii.

(82.) Faruqi 2003: 832.

(83.) Hittaraṅginī, v. 11; the colophon of Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā (16.14–16),

which is translated in chapter 1, contains one of Keshavdas's invocations to the
kavikul.

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(84.) Vidyadhar Mishra outlines the arguments in favor of their fraternal ties
(1990: 12–19). A fourth brother, Jatashankar Tripathi, is also mentioned in
several sources, but he evidently chose a different line of work. The medieval
Hindi consensus is also confirmed by the Persian writer Azad, whose biographies
of Hindi poets were discussed in chapter 4.

(85.) It is suspicious that, aside from the final verse, no other dohā in the
Phūlmañjarī contains Matiram's signature. To my mind, this collection of
manifestly pedestrian poetry about flower types is not consistent with the more
accomplished, certainly attributed works of the poet. Krishnabihari Mishra
(1964: 174–75) wonders if Matiram could have written the work as a teenager
and presented the composition to Jahangir at the Navroz festival held at the
beginning of his sixteenth regnal year in 1621 (Jahangir here mentions the
Nurafshan Garden, see Jahāngīrnāmah, Thackston trans, p. 359) but concedes
that he is merely speculating. Jahangir was demonstrably interested in Indian
flowers, but there is no compelling reason to link this or any other passage from
the Jahāngīrnāmah to the Phūlmañjarī.

(86.) Shivaji is mentioned in v. 324; verses in praise of Bhognath are 612–13,

623, 643, 693–99, 701.

(87.) Krishnabihari Mishra excerpts a few of the verses from this (lost?) work
(1964: 177–79), one of which contains an intriguing reference to
vernacularization: “saṃskirata ko artha lai, bhāṣā suddha bicāra” (I have taken
the Sanskrit meanings and carefully rendered them in Bhasha).

(88.) Excerpted from the opening to Śivrājbhūṣaṇ, vv. 24–25, 29. The last line
reads, “bhūṣaṇa bhūṣaṇamaya karata, siva bhūṣaṇa subha grantha.”

(89.) Gordon 1993: 87.

(90.) Here the poet inventively explains the exalted Mewar title “Sisodiya” by
giving a Brajbhasha etymology: “diyau īsa ko sīsa” (gave his head to Lord
[Shiva]).

(91.) Śivrājbhūṣaṇ, vv. 4–7, 9, 11–13.

(92.) Ibid., v. 15.

(93.) Examples of Bhushan's special blend of praśasti with satire were analyzed
in chapter 2. Bhushan and his brother Matiram may have known the Sanskrit
works Pratāparudrīya of Vidyanatha and the Ekāvalī of Vidyadhara (from the
fourteenth-century Deccan), which similarly embed political encomium within
works of rhetoric.

(94.) According to Rajmal Bora, there were three main literary languages in use
at Shivaji's court: Sanskrit, Marathi, and Braj (1987: 35).

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(95.) Bhikharidas remembers Bhushan (alongside Keshavdas and Birbal) as a

poet whose literary success brought him great wealth: “Ekai lahaiṃ
bahusaṃpati kesava bhūṣaṇa jyoṃ barabīra baṣāī.” Kāvyanirṇay, 1.10 (the full
verse is excerpted in chapter 3).

(96.) Śivrājbhūṣaṇ, v. 28.

(97.) Vishvanathprasad Mishra considers only the six verses that contain the
signature of the poet to be authentic (1994: 75–80). A connection between
Chatrasal and Shivaji (and therefore a greater likelihood of overlap between
their court poets) is recorded by the rīti poet and historian Lal in his
Chatraprakāś (Light on Chatrasal, 1710?), who mentions a visit by Chatrasal to
Shivaji's court in 1670. Chatraprakāś, pp. 88–89; also see Busch 2003: 243–53.

(98.) I have culled these names from Vishvanathprasad Mishra's discussion of

Bhushan's possible patrons (1994: 93–105). Other not entirely certain verses
attributed to Bhushan include addresses to Bajirao Peshwa, Aurangzeb, Dara
Shikoh, Sawai Jai Singh II, Fateh Shah of Garhwal, Bhagvant Rai Khichi of
Asothar, and Jnancand of Kumaon (also a patron of Matiram). See Divakar 1969:
124, 126, 133.

(99.) See chapter 4 and Kavīndracandrikā, vv. 68–84.

(100.) As noted in chapter 3, n. 58, the Sanskrit source text contains important
evidence that members of the Golkonda court were reading two Braj authors
from the North: Keshavdas and Sundar.

(101.) Krishna Divakar (1969: 8, 36) notes that this work (which goes by several
names, including Chandlatā) is found in several scripts and was collected by the
major libraries of premodern India (one copy is at Alwar). It has never been
published.

(102.) Rādhāmādhavavilāsacampū, p. 275. An insightful contextualization of this

campū is Guha 2004: 27–28.

(103.) See Divakar 1969: 47–48; Mishra 1990: 55–56.

(104.) Several later rīti works have comparable titles. Ramanand Sharma (2003:
16) mentions the Kavikultilakprakāś (Light of the forehead ornament of the
family of poets, 1709) by King Himmat Singh of Amethi, who used the takhalluṣ
“Mahipati.” Better known is the Kavikulkaṇṭhābharaṇ (Necklace of the family of
poets) of Dulah Trivedi (fl. 1750).

(105.) A reader interested in the phenomenal explosion of Hindi courtly texts

might begin by looking to Tivari 1972: 338–45; Snatak 1973: 132–36.

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(106.) On Namdev, see Callewaert and Lath 1989; Novetzke 2008; more general
studies are by Krishna Divakar (1969) and Vinaymohan Sharma (2005).

(107.) See the entry on Bhao Singh Hada in Ma’ās̤ir al-umarā, Beveridge trans.,
1:406. According to Cheler (1973: 75–82), Vrind's Akṣarādi dohe, Nainbattīsī,
and Bhāvpañcāśikā were composed in the Deccan in 1685–86.

(108.) “Bṛjabhāṣā heta Bṛjabāsa hī na anumāno,” Kāvyanirṇay, 1.16. Note the

poet's use of yamaka, made possible by the similarity between the words bhāṣā
(language) and bāsa (residence).

(109.) Pollock 1996 and 2006: 115–34.

(110.) Rasrāj, v. 427.

(111.) Śivrājbhūṣaṇ, v. 281.

(112.) Typical are Rasikpriyā, 6.57 and Kāvyanirṇay, 1.7.

(113.) In the second example by Bhushan, the phrase “Bhūṣana kavisamudāya”

conveniently has the eleven-mātrā (count) metrical weight to fill out the last
quarter of the dohā.

(114.) See, for example, Ardhkathānak, 168–69, 177, 455.

(115.) R. S. McGregor has suggested that court poetry underwent a process of

popularization in the late eighteenth century (1984: 155, 199). Compare the
remarks of Sudhakar Pandey (1969: 90). Also see the discussion of Selections
from the Popular Poetry of the Hindoos (1814), compiled by Thomas Broughton,
in chapter 6 of this book.

(116.) This portion of Ray Shivdas's unpublished Sarassār is excerpted in Gupta

1982: 21–22.

(117.) Aurangzeb's minister Faqirullah reported that in the days of Man Singh
Tomar of Gwalior (r. 1486–1516), various experts had gathered to codify rāgas,
and a book known as Mānkutūhal (Investigations of Man Singh) was compiled
from the proceedings. Tarjumah-i mānkutūhal va risālah-i rāgdarpan, pp. 10–13.

(118.) Kavipriyā, 3.14, 15.

(119.) See chapter 4.

(120.) In the colophon of his Rascandroday (Moonrise on rasa, first quarter of

the seventeenth century) Udaynath Kavindra says, “Kavindra had a son named
Dulah, and he conceived the idea to write the Rascandroday for his
education” (tāsu tanaya dūlaha bhayo, tāke paṛhibe hetu/rasacandrodaya taba
kiyo, kavi kavindra kari cetu, v. 282, cited in Ramanand Sharma 2003: 20). Dulah

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Trivedi is the author of the Kavikulkaṇṭhābharaṇ, mentioned above. On Mohanlal

Mishra's Śṛṅgārsāgar, see Asnani 1997: 28. Francesca Orsini (2002b: 45) found
similar evidence of such “family saṃskāras” among Brahman literatteurs of the
early twentieth century.

(121.) The alumni included Dalpat Ram, one of the early modernizing Gujarati
poets of the mid-nineteenth century. See Mallison 2011: 173–75.

(122.) This paragraph on the Braj pāṭhśālā at Bhuj draws on Asnani 1996 and
Mallison 2011.

(123.) Anderson 1991; Lodge 1993: 128–35.

(124.) One does see some regional inflections in Brajbhasha usages. The Bundeli
touches in the work of Keshavdas and Bihari were mentioned above. Another
example (and many more could be given) is the language of Sudan, court poet to
three generations of Bharatpur kings, whose Brajbhasha exhibits Khari Boli and
Punjabi features. See McGregor 1984: 197.

Access brought to you by:

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Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

The Fate of Rīti Literature in Colonial India

Allison Busch

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines the fate of rīti literature under the new political and
epistemological regimes of colonialism and nationalism. Radical upheavals were
spurred by new nineteenth-century developments in print culture and the
textbook industry stewarded by colonial officials, along with reforms in language
and literary tastes. Hindi modernity meant that new genres such as the essay
and the novel began to supplant the older Brajbhasha verse forms. By the early
twentieth century, many Hindi intellectuals, such as Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi,
were publicly distancing themselves from traditional Indian poetics and
repudiating Brajbhasha, Hindi’s preeminent literary dialect, in favor of Khari
Boli. Also considered here is the nationalist vision of Hindi literary history
epitomized by the writings of Ramchandra Shukla. Under the new
historiography dictated by the discourse of Hindi modernity, bhakti literature
became the language’s salvageable past and Hindi’s once thriving courtly
traditions would now carry the taint of medieval decadence.

Keywords: Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi, Ramchandra Shukla, colonialism, nationalism, reform, print
culture, Khari Boli, Brajbhasha, modernity, historiography

Science and literature are in a progressive state of decay among the

natives of India.

—Lord Minto, 1811

Though nearly everything in India after Shankara may be said to have

entered a state of decline, nonetheless literature should be regarded as an
exception.… Our depth of literary expression is excellent—we just do not
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have the range of subjects of English. After living in a state of decline and
dwelling upon our inferiority in every discipline, our self-reliance has sunk
to such depths that nothing of our own seems of any value when compared
to its Western counterpart.

—Mishra brothers, 1913

A New Order
We may already know the unhappy ending of the story of the fateful meeting of
Brajbhasha poetry and colonialism—Brajbhasha is the losing party—but no
account of rīti literature can conclude without explaining the circumstances of
its demise. Examining the moment of transition to colonial rule will function as a
prelude to understanding the changes to the literary field under print culture
and the new conceptions of language and prescriptions for literary excellence
that were a direct result of British cultural hegemony. Much of this (p.203)
ground has been well traversed in other studies.1 Here the aim is to provide an
overview of modern Hindi literary history that highlights the points most
germane to understanding the fate of rīti genres and styles as the tides of
colonialism and later nationalism washed over them. Exponents of the old order
would increasingly give way in their losing battle with reformist Hindi
intellectuals who advocated radically new approaches to literature. Brajbhasha
had more than three strikes against it in the serious game of culture that played
out amid the conceptual revolutions (or tyrannies) of the nineteenth century: the
morality police of the Victorian era who sought to proscribe sensuality; the
crystallization of colonial and later nationalist ideas about India's cultural
weakness under “Muslim” rule; a general unease about courtliness and literary
ostentation in the face of Protestantism and utilitarianism; and new social and
educational endeavors directed at India's uplift. The very language of
Brajbhasha would come under serious threat in the early twentieth century, to
be abruptly replaced within a few decades by a newly standardized Khari Boli
dialect, the style of Hindi now in wide use today. The birth of Hindi literary
historiography played a role, too, which was constrained by colonial and
nationalist cultural logic. The very idea that Hindi literature has separate and
unequal literary eras marked by bhakti and rīti, which is taken for granted today,
is an entirely modern notion proposed by Ramchandra Shukla, one of the
founding fathers of modern Hindi academic study. The basis of this conception
and its implications for the future reception of Hindi's precolonial past need to
be carefully examined.

Rīti Literature on the Eve of Colonialism

The eighteenth century was a time of consolidation but also continued invention
in the rīti tradition. The emphasis of this study has been on the early Mughal
period, with the spotlight on the imperial court and the rise of new forms of
cultural expression among leading Rajput polities of the seventeenth century. A
separate book-length study would be required to do justice to the complexities of

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the later rīti period, an age of political repositioning in which rīti poets were in
even greater demand. New rītigranths continued to be composed, as well as
prabandhas on both classical and topical themes. As noted in chapter 3,
eighteenth-century writers such as Baldev Mishra exhibited more confidence
about the status of Bhasha, increasingly turning to Hindi authorities rather than
ancient Sanskrit ones for validation. More than two centuries of continuous
literary production and refinement had given the members of the Braj kavikul a
tremendous sense of pride in their own achievements. By any measure this was
(p.204) a highly rational and sophisticated literary community with well-
developed canons and critical protocols, although Brajbhasha writers proved
ever-versatile, continuing to adapt creatively to new circumstances and patrons.

Outside the domain of Brajbhasha texts, however, the world began to change
dramatically, as Mughal hegemony experienced ever more serious fissures and
new contenders for power asserted their claims. The British were now a force to
be reckoned with, even if their influence was at first largely confined to the
coastal areas of Bengal rather than the Hindi heartland. It would become almost
obligatory in colonial India to represent this late Mughal period as one of
precipitous decline. According to the narrative that gained currency in the
nineteenth century and was to become standard, the orthodoxy of Emperor
Aurangzeb led to disaffection among the Rajput and Mughal nobility. Centrifugal
tendencies, economic downturn, and, after his death, a series of weak,
dissipated, and often short-lived rulers hastened the deterioration of empire,
leaving a power vacuum that was filled by Afghan invaders from the northwest
and upstart groups like the Marathas, Jats, and Bundelkhand warlords from
closer to home. In the last three decades, historians of Mughal India have added
considerable nuance to the way we view the eighteenth century.2 Although no
longer seen as a time of unmitigated disaster for India, this was a period of
decentralization of power and devastating incursions by the Afghans Nadir Shah
in 1739 and Ahmad Shah Abdali from the 1750s. Delhi was sacked, and so was
Mathura, the very center of Braj religious, although not literary, culture. On the
watch of the beleaguered Emperor Shah Alam II (r. 1759–1806), the East India
Company took decisive control of the subcontinent.3 The question for us is how
rīti literature, which had such close links to court patronage, fared amid such
upheaval.

Despite a rapidly changing political climate, nothing very significant happened

in the realm of Braj belles lettres, at least not right away. Just because the
residents of Delhi or Mathura experienced hardship does not mean that all
literary culture suddenly imploded. Older historiographical models made the
crudest of links between the robustness of an era's polity and the robustness of
its literature. The case of rīti belies such facile linkages, no less than Urdu,
which rose to prominence as a major literary tradition in precisely this period of
“Mughal decline” from the eighteenth century. Similarly, at least by some
measures, such as self-confidence of writers and number of poets and patrons in
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the literary field, the domain of rīti literature was stronger in the eighteenth
century than at any other point in its history.4

Rīti poets had typically operated within multiple networks in North India.
Although supported in healthy numbers at the Mughal court, they would always
be especially tied to regional polities. The manṣabdārī courts of Orchha, (p.205)
Amber, Bundi, and Jodhpur were the pioneers of the rīti style, but eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century rajas were no less significant patrons, including the
chiefs of entirely new courts that had proliferated. Nearly all courts of the day
hosted Brajbhasha writers: Amethi, Asothar, Charkhari, Panna, Rai Bareilly,
Rewa, Banda, Banaras, Jaitpur, Nimrana, Samthar, Patiala, Darbhanga, and
Pratapgarh, alongside dozens of others (see map 2). Vernacular poets were part
of an expansive, cosmopolitan community, but the actual practice of poetry was a
decentralized operation; if one court was in political turmoil, Braj writers always
had somewhere else to go. For instance, when Mathura was sacked by Shah
Ahmed Abdali in 1757 and then again in 1760, the Radhavallabhan poet
Vrindavandas first took refuge at the court of Sujan Singh, the Jat ruler of
Bharatpur, later moving on to Kishangarh, where he was patronized by Bahadur
Singh (the brother of the famous poet-king Nagridas). In his writings,
Vrindavandas did not fail to take note of the changed political circumstances,
but when he records his outrage with the Afghan invasions that were tormenting
North India, he does so in fully Krishnaite genres such as Harikalābelī (Vine of
Hari's art, 1760), the Lāṛsāgar, a story of the childhood and marriage of Radha
and Krishna composed in c. 1775, and Ārtipatrikā (Discourse on worship, 1778).
Braj writers as a rule continued in the same modes and genres that had
animated them since the days of Keshavdas, but generally with local inflections
and important variations upon traditional themes. Somnath, court poet to three
generations of Bharatpur rulers, wrote the expected rītigranths and vaṃśāvalīs
for his patrons, but also brought new genres into play, such as his
Saṅgrāmdarpan (Mirror of war), a remarkable Braj treatise that combines
elements of astrology, weaponry, and medicine.5 Sudan, working at the same
court, wrote a lively historical work, Sujāncaritra; he employs many classical
motifs but is also deeply concerned with the present day: he recounts in detail
Bharatpur's skirmishes with the Mughals, the Afghans, and the Marathas. In
short, the rulers of central and western India continued to depend on Braj gunīs
to serve as literati, knowledge professionals, and historians.

Braj and Rīti Traditions in Early Colonial India

Long after the British took Delhi in 1803, and their influence began to radiate
across North India, rīti poetry remained very much alive. Soon alien cultural
infusions would begin to complicate the literary terrain. It has generally been
held, at least in Western scholarship, that radically transformative ways of
understanding the world were engineered by the British through their
institutions, notably (especially in the case of language and literature) at Fort
William (p.206) College in Calcutta.6 An often-heard assessment of Indian
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languages by the British in this period is that they were disorderly, needing
rectification through the colonial discipline of grammars and dictionaries, the
production of which was a major industry of the college. Depending on one's
definition of disorder, there is some truth to this claim. Braj poets were as a rule
manifestly uninterested in linguistic conformity. Yet poets knew very well what
they were doing in the domain of language use, and this, along with the rigorous
codes of literary systematization central to the rīti tradition, suffices to render
British accusations about Hindi's disorderliness, in any deep sense of the
concept, absurd.

Despite the colonial state's major intrusion into India's cultural life from the
early nineteenth century, the literary effects on Hindi were relatively minor
before the middle of the century. Fort William College was at any rate only
marginally interested in Hindi (Hindustani, also called Urdu, was another story).
Most of the college-sponsored Hindi texts were of a distinctly traditionalist bent,
even when their linguistic features were manipulated to subserve non-
traditionalist (not to mention ill-informed) British notions about “Hindi” and
“Hindustani.”7 Just consider the oeuvre of Lallulal (c. 1763–1825), the most
prominent of the staff of munshis working on Bhasha. As R. S. McGregor has
rightly noted, “Although Lalluji's fame is as an innovator, almost all his work is
concerned directly or indirectly with Brajbhasha.”8 His Rājnīti (Conduct of kings,
1809), an adaptation of the Sanskrit Hitopadeśa, was written wholly in Braj, and
even the munshi's Khari Boli works owe much to Braj precedents. Despite being
part of a cadre charged with the mission of modernizing Hindi, Lallulal's most
popular work paradoxically proved to be the Premsāgar (1803–10), a Khari Boli
adaptation of a now-lost seventeenth-century Braj text by Chaturbhuj Mishra,
the Dasam skandh (tenth book of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa).9 Several early books
from Fort William College can also be linked to specifically rīti traditions. The
Sinhasun Butteesee (Thirty-two tales of the lion throne), as this edition
transliterates the title, compiled by Mirza Kazim Ali Jawan with the help of
Lallulal in 1801, turns out to be basically a Khari Boli rendition of a now-lost rīti
text of the same name authored by Sundar Kaviray at the Mughal court.10 The
Khari Boli translation of the Sakuntalā of Nevaj, published in 1802 by Fort
William College, was also a Mughal rīti text in its earlier Braj incarnation.
Several other works by Lallulal can equally be connected to courtly traditions,
including Lālcandrikā (Moonlight of Lal, 1818), a commentary on the
Bihārīsatsaī, and Sabhāvilās (Delight of the assembly, 1828), an early printed
collection of Braj verse.

Another site of early contact between the British and the Braj literary sphere
was the British army. That rīti poetry was very much in circulation among the
Indian sipāhīs (sepoys) is something we know from Thomas Duer (p.207)
Broughton, who took an interest in Hindi poetry for aesthetic reasons, in
contrast to the more pragmatic concerns of his Fort William College
contemporaries. In his Selections from the Popular Poetry of the Hindoos of
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1814, which has the distinction of being the first published collection of Hindi
poetry, Broughton vividly describes how he sat with his soldiers (overwhelmingly
Brahmans and Rajputs, he reports) and documented the Brajbhasha poems that
they knew by heart; the soldiers in the process transmitted their sense of their
own literary heritage.11

Broughton's collection represents two major styles, here called the “Bukt-
marg” (bhakt/bhakti mārg, i.e., devotional style) and the “Rusadik” (rasādik,
termed “amatory” by Broughton).12 The “amatory” poems focus on aspects of
śṛṅgāra rasa and correspond closely to the category of rīti literature as we
understand it today. Although Broughton misunderstands some of the
terminology, it seems clear that his well-educated informants were versed in the
technical details of Braj poetry, including metrics, knowledge they perhaps
gained from rītigranths.13 Religious poets such as Surdas and Tulsidas are
acclaimed in Broughton's introduction, but only a few bhakti poems actually
made it into the collection (three by Surdas, and a handful by lesser known
devotional authors). Perhaps it was the broad appeal of rīti literature that
informed his editorial decision: “The Rusadik, or amatory Kubits [i.e., kavitts],
are the most admired, and of course the most common.”14 Compositions by
Biharilal and Keshavdas dominate the Broughton collection, with sixteen and
twelve verses anthologized, respectively.

Broughton's anthology provides a precious glimpse of Hindi canons and literary

taste prior to the penetration of colonial thought. In the year 1814 and for
decades after, “amatory” poems were considered one of the highlights of the
Hindi classical tradition. Within just a century, however, Indian poetry values
would be radically transvalued. Another striking feature of Broughton's
collection, to which the text's editor, Imre Bangha, calls attention, is that it
challenges the common perception that rīti literature was only an elite, courtly
tradition. By 1814, these poems could even be considered “rustic” and
“popular”; if the poems of Bihari and Keshavdas were on the tongues of soldiers,
the social reach of rīti literature may have become as vast as its geographical
one.

Rīti Literature in Nineteenth-Century Indian Courts, 1800–1860

Other documentation of the circulation—and, it should be stressed, continued
production—of rīti literature in this period must be sought in non-British
sources. Accounts of Hindi from 1800 have tended to present the nineteenth (p.
208) century in overly deterministic terms as one long, teleological progression
toward ādhuniktā (modernity). Most Hindi literary historians begin discussions
of this period with Fort William College and then skip to Harishchandra (1850–
85), with brief stopovers in the oeuvres of a few select figures, usually Raja
Shivprasad Singh (1823–95) and Lakshman Singh (1826–96), two early Hindi
prose stylists, each with different agendas, who contributed to the development
of modern Khari Boli.15 The period from c. 1820 to 1860 is almost completely

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elided. This was, no doubt an inactive time for the colonial state in the realm of
Hindi literature, and only an incipient one for Hindi print culture (in general,
Hindi publishing lagged decades behind that of Bengali and Urdu, the other
major languages in the North Indian literary field). A few early Hindi books were
produced in Calcutta, where publishing houses were well developed owing to
the British and Marwari presence, but financially viable printing ventures in the
Hindi heartland were not in place until after 1857 and print did not really take
off until the 1860s.16 If we accept that printing was largely confined to a few fits
and starts, can these begin to account for the sum total of Hindi reading,
writing, and literary connoisseurship throughout greater Hindustan in the
nineteenth century? In particular, what was happening between 1820 and 1860,
that is, between the dwindling of the Fort William College enterprises and the
time when print culture really began to thrive? Was it as empty an interstice as
literary history suggests? Are the extent and nature of Brajbhasha textual
culture during the first half of the nineteenth century so little studied because
there is so little to study? What do we actually know about any of this?

The first point to make is also the most basic: there was very much a lively
sphere of rīti literary production in the nineteenth century. Even if reliable
details about written Hindi culture outside the zones of colonial control are hard
to come by, the available evidence suggests that many practices of rīti literature
continued under the radar of colonialism and nascent print culture. Some texts
remain unpublished, making it difficult to say for sure how many there are, but
even a conservative estimate—they seem to number in the hundreds—suggests
that rīti textual culture utterly dwarfed anything that was happening
elsewhere.17

Nineteenth-century rīti literature merits a much fuller treatment than is possible

here, but it is worth glancing at a few examples, since the whole topic has fallen
off the conceptual grid of scholarship on modern Hindi and is hardly known
except to a few specialists in India. Literary historians who do bother to mention
nineteenth-century rīti literary culture tend to see it as a mere prolongation of
earlier tendencies, hardly worthy of remark.18 In a world where modernity was
everywhere in the air, rīti poets, it is thought, ignored it and continued (p.209)
to write age-old śṛṅgāra poetry, treatises on rasa, and royal panegyrics,
laboriously copying manuscripts when everybody else was upgrading to the new
material technology of print and conceptual technology of reform.

We have seen repeatedly that rīti poets, conservative in the sense of honoring
and preserving a successful literary tradition, were not immune to change. Braj
poets frequently updated earlier Sanskrit concepts—recall that oft-repeated
proclamation of the rīti writer that he had composed his work apanī mati anusāra
(according to his own understanding); in some cases, they actively pursued new
aesthetic approaches. Mughal cultural contexts prompted some Braj poets,
including Keshavdas and Kavindracharya Sarasvati, to experiment with unusual

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forms of Persianized register. Bhushan, Matiram, and Lal Kavi, among others,
proved highly sensitive to their political environment. Yet we can also find Braj
poets like Sundar Kaviray, who hardly mention the world beyond their immediate
literary concerns, even when that world seems unusual enough—he was, after
all, a pandit employed as a diplomat at the Mughal court—to have merited
comment. The level of engagement with the world outside the text was thus
highly varied, in the nineteenth century as in the seventeenth.

Whether they talked about British power or not, whether they responded to their
changed cultural environment or not, rīti poets continued to be sponsored in
countless local courts well into the colonial period.19 When Anupgiri Gosaim (d.
1804), a Bundelkhand warlord who made trouble for the British and just about
every other claimant to power in the late eighteenth century,20 strategically
situated himself as a maharaja in the last ten years of his life, he did what kings
had been doing for centuries: he hired a rīti poet. But if one were trying to gauge
how the advent of the British was perceived by this court, there would be little
gleaned from the work that he sponsored, Padmakar's
Himmatbahādurvirudāvalī, a vīr kāvya consistent with a centuries-old pattern of
Braj (and Sanskrit) political poetry. The work does contain many contemporary
vignettes, including a vivid description of a famous battle between Anupgiri and
his rival Arjun Singh in which the latter lost his life, but the British presence in
the region is intimated in a single line.21 When a few years later Padmakar, who
would go on to establish himself as the leading poet of his day, wrote his
rītigranth Jagatvinod for Sawai Jagat Singh (r. 1803–18), the Jaipur ruler
crowned the same year that Lord Lake took Delhi, he seems to have been far
more concerned with vinod (pleasure) than jagat (the world).22

Not all late rīti texts disappoint the reader who insists on trawling for evidence
of literary and cultural change. It is not voluminous, but it is there for those who
have eyes to see. Even the conservative Padmakar is credited with (p.210) the
following praśasti verse to the Gwalior ruler Daulat Rao Scindia (r. 1794–1827),
in which he speaks out vociferously against the British:

May you conquer Minagarh and render Bombay impotent.

May you shut down their ports so that
they revert to a jungle inhabited by monkeys.
Padmakar says, may you raze Kashmir, too,
and liberate Kalinjar [a fort town in Bundelkhand], encircling it like a
cage.
Brave King Daulat Rao, may you marshal your troops,
attack, and crush the firaṅgīs.
Ravage Delhi, pounce on Patna, too.
When will you tear Calcutta to shreds?23

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In his approximately contemporary Ānandraghunandan, Maharaja Vishvanath

Singh (1789–1854) of Rewa (in eastern Madhya Pradesh), scion of a court that
had a long and distinguished tradition of Braj patronage, mentions cannon
salutes; the work also contains examples of (notably incorrect) English.24 The
poetry of Gwal (d. 1868), whose voluminous oeuvre includes Vijayvinod
(Celebration of victory), which partly concerns the Sikh leader Ranjit Singh, also
contains topical references, such as a satirical verse on rel kī savārī (train
travel).25 There is even a small corpus of Braj poetry that deals with the Indian
revolt of 1857, incorporating words such as “angrej” (English), “company,”
“captain,” and “lat (lord) sahib.”26 This evidence of rīti poets’ linguistic
adaptation to English is consistent with a long-standing tradition of Brajifying
the exogenous, but is also an inkling of modernizing themes that would be
further developed during the following generation under the literary
stewardship of Harishchandra. Rīti textual culture was beginning to be cognizant
of colonial rule. There were also changes of a more material nature, as print
culture interacted with traditional modes of book production.

Rīti Texts and the Transition to Print Culture

The book culture and literary tastes of centuries past lived on well into the age
of Indian print.27 Indian maharajas and older courtly practices played a
significant role in the transition, which means that often early nineteenth-
century literary styles and the first of the newfangled books do not look very
new, at least to the casual observer. Good illustrations of this principle emerge
from surveying the literary habits of the Banaras court. Just a few hundred miles
inland from Calcutta it is difficult to find evidence of colonial contact in the (p.
211) writings of Gokulnath, a Brajbhasha poet active during the reign of
Maharaja Udit Narayan Singh (r. 1795–1835). To all appearances, his
Cetcandrikā, a family history of the Banaras rajas, as well as the
Rādhākṛṣṇavilās and Kavimukhmaṇḍan (respectively on rasa and rhetoric), could
just as easily have been written two hundred years earlier, which is perhaps the
effect intended: to reduce colonial power to a virtual cipher by barring any trace
of it from one's repertoire of literary and political expression. More overtly
revolutionary in its mode of production, at least, is a monumental Braj
Mahābhārata, a collaboration undertaken by Gokulnath, his son Gopinath, and
his son's pupil Manidev. Upon its completion, the Mahābhārata was sent to
Calcutta for publication in 1829, becoming the first text of this court to enter
print culture. Udit Narayan's successor, Maharaja Ishvari Narayan Singh (r.
1835–89), continued to sponsor rīti texts. Sardar Kavi (fl. 1850) was well-
regarded for his writings on metrics and rhetoric, as well as commentaries on
classics of rīti literature: Bihārīsatsaī, Kavipriyā, and Rasikpriyā.28 The dynamic
success of print culture in the second half of the nineteenth century made some
of these and many other Brajbhasha works readily available well beyond the
court, but these changes were quantitative shifts in numbers of readers, not
qualitative shifts in literary theme.29

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This coexistence of multiple production and reception modalities points to an

interesting feature of nineteenth-century literary culture that belies the idea that
poor outmoded rīti literature came to an unceremonious end the moment that
the British exhibited their more enlightened ways. Many works that originated in
traditional rīti settings early in the nineteenth century found their way into print
after a time lag. Just consider the fate of a few of the texts already mentioned.
Padmakar's Jagatvinod, commissioned by the maharaja of Jaipur, may epitomize
age-old themes and production values, but it became a major commercial
success with at least eight print runs between 1865 and 1896.30 The
Ānandraghunandan of Maharaja Vishvanath Singh was first composed at the
court of Rewa, but was eventually printed in 1871.31 The Banaras court's
Mahābhārata, though composed by Braj intellectuals working in a traditional
fashion, was reissued three times after the text's Calcutta debut, by Naval
Kishore Press from 1874 to 1891.32 Traditionalist practices thus interacted with
newer colonial ones, and not in entirely predictable ways.

Many (supposedly) traditionalist courts, in fact, were the first to partake of the
new print technologies. Who better than kings, after all, to lay out the capital for
presses and to underwrite expensive and risky printing ventures?33 The Banāras
akbhār, the first Hindi periodical in Nagari script to be printed outside of
Calcutta, was made possible only with a large subvention from the maharaja of
Nepal. Several books in Hindi were commissioned by the maharaja of (p.212)
Banaras in the 1850s, during the same time that Sardar Kavi would have been
blotting the ink on his rīti commentaries. Maharajas were still acting as the
major literary patrons and thus had a say in selecting the earliest texts to be
printed. The bhakti classic Rāmcaritmānas was a major popular success, as were
collections of śṛṅgārik poetry and the classics of the Brajbhasha canon by Bihari,
Keshavdas, and Sundar. Editions and commentaries on older rīti books were
published in this period, as well as contemporary anthologies and manuals on
traditional poetics themes, allowing a widening reading public to partake of the
Hindi literary heritage.34 In short, rīti literature remained a vibrant enterprise
long into the colonial era.

Literary Reform and Early Experiments with Modernism

With the growing influence of reformist movements during the second half of the
nineteenth century, some of the themes and premises of Hindi literature began
to seem fatally unmodern. Various aspects of Indian culture were constructed as
outmoded, or worse, degraded, and literature quickly emerged as a prime
candidate for a makeover. It did not matter that Hindi literature had centuries of
tradition and the self-reflection of a sophisticated kavikul behind it. Under high
colonialism, Europeans set the standards to which Indian literature should
aspire, and across the many Indian regional languages, Western genres and
themes were widely adopted. Upon the establishment in 1854 of the Education
Committee (which later became the Education Department), the lack of good
vernacular books for teaching was raised as an urgent concern.35 With the
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increasing penetration of colonial power and educational institutions, not to

mention the brutal crackdown on “disloyal princes” in the aftermath of 1857, the
traditional patronage structures for Indian literature began to crumble. The
British stepped into this vacuum—one they of course created—by sponsoring
poetry competitions and offering prizes for the best examples of new plays,
essays, and novels. Poets everywhere in India were modifying their styles in
accordance with Western norms. The literary function, once primarily aesthetic,
now veered sharply toward the utilitarian; the point was to raise awareness of
society's ills and to enact social change.

Bengali writers were the first to embrace reform. Whereas in the Mughal period
Bengali Vaishnavas had taken many a literary cue from Brajbhasha poets, in the
nineteenth century the direction of cultural flow was reversed.36 Not only were
the earliest presses located in Bengal, but so too were the most zealously
modernizing literati, among whom Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Michael
Madhusudan Datt are two of the more famous examples.37 In (p.213) irony that
cannot be lost on anybody who has studied rīti literature, one of the most
important “modernist” literary trends of the nineteenth century was adapting
the Sanskrit and Western classics into modern vernacular prose. Constituting a
“new” tradition, even a radically reformist one, meant looking to respected
models of the past. It is a wonder that modern literary historians have not
denounced this “derivative” literature, as they have so resoundingly denounced
rīti styles.38

Alongside the new iteration of classicism, Indian writers were also pressured to
shun merely decorative themes. Poets had an obligation to contribute to the
uplift of their “fallen” society, a transformational literary bent that characterized
most of India during this period. Susie Tharu has commented on how a majority
of the early novels written in Indian languages were responses “to an ideological
ambience in which a totally new sense of the responsibilities of the writer as well
as the social function of literature and literary study featured prominently.”39
The proceedings of a meeting of the Anjuman-e Panjāb (Punjab society)
convened in 1874 by the British administrator Colonel Holroyd dramatically
illustrate this point. Holroyd enjoined Urdu poets to give up their proverbial
attention to wine and intractable beloveds in favor of more practical and edifying
subjects. His rather dreary new mushā‘irah (literary soirée) themes, designed to
help Urdu poets rescue themselves from the harmful decadence into which they
had supposedly fallen, included subjects like “patriotism,” “peace,” “justice,”
“compassion,” “contentment,” “hope,” and “civilization.”40

Hindi writers, too, took to this reformist enterprise with zeal. In their case, it
was not just the themes of literature that needed reform. The Hindi language
itself was subject to unprecedented scrutiny, with the dialect of Khari Boli Hindi
(spoken especially in the Delhi-Meerut region) increasingly fostered as the
language of modern prose. Braj was still the choice of most poets for aesthetic

Page 11 of 46

undertakings, but workaday topics and especially new Western genres—essays,

travelogues, histories, educational material—were now to be handled in Khari
Boli. One influential Holroyd-like figure for Hindi was the civil servant Mathew
Kempson, head of Bareilly College, who encouraged Hindi writers to compose
Khari Boli versions of Sanskrit works and offered prizes for good translations
from English. The scheme was not a resounding success. Useful book initiatives
made more headway in Urdu than in Hindi during this period.41 In fact, Urdu's
literary arena as a whole was much more energetic than Hindi's, and would
remain so until the second decade of the twentieth century.

Banaras is an important exception. No discussion of Hindi literature in the

nineteenth century would be adequate without at least a few remarks about
Bharatendu Harishchandra, a leading member of the Banaras aristocracy and
(p.214) a remarkable cultural innovator. With his enthusiasm for writing
Western-style dramas and essays, Harishchandra was instrumental in some of
the first processes of literary modernization in the Hindi milieu. His play
Bhāratdurdaśā (India's deplorable condition, 1880) as well as countless essays
and editorial pieces on language were infused with a reformist vision that
prefigures many elements of Hindi's twentieth-century career under nationalism.
His editorship of periodicals like Harishcandra Magazine and Kavivacansudhā
(Nectar of poetic expression) was foundational to the modern Hindi public
sphere, a latter-day incarnation of the Brajbhasha kavikul, for in venues such as
these new identities for Khari Boli writing were being conceived. In-depth
studies by Sagaree Sengupta and Vasudha Dalmia have done much to elucidate
his extensive oeuvre, his pioneering endeavors on behalf of Hindi, and his place
in the social and intellectual history of the period.42 None of this ground needs
to be tread again here.

Hindi textbooks today generally venerate Harishchandra as the “father of

modern Hindi,” an adage that obscures the degree to which traditional literature
was very much alive to him and not in the least incompatible with his active role
in propagating new genres and media. Harishchandra and his contemporaries
are not easy to pigeonhole, and being too quick to label them “modern” flattens
out the complex interplay of cultural streams that fed into the thought-worlds of
colonial-period intellectuals and writers. Much about Harishcandra's poetic
oeuvre and social positioning as a zamīndār from a prosperous Agrawal trading
family links him to earlier practices: his fervent Vaishnavism (his family were
adherents of the Vallabhan sampradāy) situates him squarely in the literary
universe of bhakti, whereas his elite social circuit—in terms of both the
patronage he afforded poets and the poetry he himself wrote in an erotic vein—
link him unequivocally to rīti traditions.

Harishcandra advocated change, but his program called more for supplementing
than superseding existing Hindi literary practices. He was an avid, sensitive
reader of the classical Braj heritage, and some of the earliest examples of

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modern Hindi literary criticism can be found in the pages of his journals. Clearly,
the conceptual divide between bhakti and rīti literature that is entrenched in the
field of Hindi today was not relevant to him; or, both styles were equally relevant
to him. He wrote criticism on Surdas, but also fashioned kuṇḍaliyās (sextets)
based on the Bihārīsatsaī.43 Rīti literature was a crucial domain of the emerging
literary canon for Hindi, and it was still held in high esteem by even writers of
“modern” sensibility during this period.

Besides being an early adopter of the new Khari Boli prose, the single most
important force behind the development of Hindi print culture during his
lifetime, and a major literary critic, Harishchandra was also, like his father (p.
215) Giridhardas (1833–60) before him, a Brajbhasha poet.44 Given his stature
today as Hindi's great modernizer, the amount of his work in a traditionalist vein
is surprisingly large: a Kṛṣṇacarit, or biography of Krishna; a Candrāvalī, on the
subject of age-old rāsapañcādhyāyī themes; an Uttarārdhbhaktamāl (Latter-day
garland of poets) that hearkens back to Nabhadas in the early seventeenth
century. Even his texts centered on contemporary themes are filled with Braj
poetry, since Harishchandra generally mixed Khari Boli prose and Braj verse in
his dramas.

Although Khari Boli prose was gaining much ground in the nineteenth century,
Hindi poetry was mostly still written in Braj. By the 1870s a few poets had begun
to experiment with Khari Boli, but for many, the very thought that poetry could
be composed in this upstart language engendered disbelief, if not outright
ridicule. Experts no less authoritative than George Abraham Grierson, founder of
that modernist project par excellence, The Linguistic Survey of India, had
dismissed the very idea,45 while Harishchandra himself, otherwise hardly one to
eschew innovation, made it amply clear in Hindībhāṣā (The Hindi language,
1883), an essay written late in his career, that he considered Khari Boli too
harsh and unsophisticated for poetry. This verse lampooning Khari Boli poetics
makes his position amply clear:

Sing the glories of Lord Krishna, everyone together!

All your desires will be fulfilled, all sorrow will vanish.
Bhajan karo śrī krṣṇa kā, mil kar ke sab log
Siddh hoygā kām aur chutaigā sab sog46

The long vowels that dominate here, which are generally characteristic of Khari
Boli Hindi, would have sounded disastrously clumsy and cacophonous to a
nineteenth-century ear attuned to the mellifluous cadences of Braj.47 This is to
say nothing of the utterly pedestrian quality of the verse, a flaw that would
continue to mar many an experiment with Khari Boli poetry decades into the
future. For Harishcandra and the majority of his contemporaries in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century, Brajbhasha unquestionably remained the
literary dialect of choice.

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Whatever its relationship to the Vaishnava and courtly past, for Harishchandra's
generation Brajbhasha poetry was not yet seen as incommensurate with Indian
progress. Hindi literary modernity felt like a capacious enterprise. It will sound
oxymoronic to those schooled in nationalist literary historiography, but even rīti
literature could be a vehicle for ādhuniktā (modernity) well into the twentieth
century. The tremendous genius, productivity, and stature of Harishchandra tend
to eclipse the contributions of other writers of this period, many of whom were
closely associated with the literary giant. (p.216) Thakur Jagmohan Singh
(1857–99), a lifelong friend of Harishchandra, shared his penchant for poetic
experimentation and is emblematic of a whole generation of Hindi writers who
grappled intensely with the penetration of colonialist thought without
necessarily rejecting their own literary heritage.

Jagmohan Singh, like Harishchandra, was a member of North India's landed

elite. He hailed from the obscure princely state of Bijeraghogarh in central India,
whose fortunes had waned since 1857. During his childhood, upon the suicide of
his father, Raja Saryuprasad Singh, who was arrested for treason in the
aftermath of the Indian revolt, Jagmohan became a charge of the Court of Wards
and was catapulted into a social and intellectual universe drastically different
from the world of Rajput privilege into which he had been born.48 The British-
style education he received in Banaras, coupled with the general spirit of
reform, afforded him access to a literary world nothing like the traditions of rīti
poetry that had been fostered in India's courts for centuries.

Jagmohan Singh's oeuvre epitomizes how poets were able to use a “traditional”
medium like Brajbhasha while contributing creatively to modernizing literary
trends. His Pralay (The deluge, 1889), a Brajbhasha poem about a flood that
beset the village of Seorinarayan during his tenure as a civil servant in the
Central Provinces, combines the older forms of kāvya-style poetic description
with newer modes, such as the expectation that literature be anubhav-siddh
(based on experience).49 Another modernizing turn is the poet's Khari Boli
preface, which reports on the customs and general backwardness of the
villagers in a tone reminiscent of contemporary colonial sociology. His
Omkārcandrikā (Moonlight of the sacred syllable, 1894) is, like Pralay, a hybrid
work that ingeniously combines a long tradition of māhātmyas on Hindu holy
places (in this case, Omkareshwar in southern Madhya Pradesh) with the
imported genre of the travelogue told from an eyewitness perspective. In
Jagmohan's conceptual world, reverence for a Shaiva temple is not incompatible
with a eulogistic treatment of the modern convenience of rail service.

New forms of literary experimentation were not the only changes in the Hindi
heartland during the late nineteenth century. This is not the place to enter into a
discussion of the increasing polarization between Hindi and Urdu supporters—
another defining feature of the period—as a crystallization of Hindu and Muslim
religious identities, in combination with the competition for employment

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opportunities in colonial India, led to ever more strident feelings of linguistic

and religious nationalism.50 The pluralism that was inherent to Brajbhasha
literary culture would soon be a thing of the past. As the investment in Hindi as
a language of one nation and one religion grew ever greater, so too did the
investment in fostering awareness about it, and an infrastructure was developed
to subserve the aims of its vociferous advocates. The Nāgarī Pracāriṇī (p.217)
Sabhā, founded in Banaras in 1893, was just one of the important institutions to
arise in this period. Another, equally consequential, development was the birth
of Hindi literary history.

The New Science of Literary History

The kavikul of precolonial North India ordered literary knowledge in many
different ways. Only one was chronological. When Bhikharidas mentioned the
canonical writers of Brajbhasha literature in his Kāvyanirṇay, he began with two
of the earliest: Surdas and Keshavdas. Sudan Kavi, employing the same
convention in his preface, exhibits a historical sensibility (he starts with
Keshavdas) but then proceeds alphabetically.51 The most common way of
conceptualizing literary collectivity, however, was to compile favorite poems in a
saṅgrah (anthology), the organizing principle of which had nothing to do with
historical time. Some anthologies were driven by a commemorative impulse, as
with the Kavīndracandrikā, the collection of praśasti poems honoring
Kavindracharya Sarasvati, or the Sarvāṅgī of Gopaldas, which memorialized the
key poets of the Dadupanthi community.52 In Vaishnava circles, collocations of
authors, and not just poems, took on a special importance, signifying prominent
figures in the spiritual lineage; thus, for example, the designation aṣṭatachāp
(eight signature poets) among the Vallabhans.53 The Vaiṣṇavan kī vārtā and the
bhaktamāl genres—collections of biographies or indeed hagiographies of
exemplary spiritual figures—helped to circumscribe the boundaries of a religious
community that sometimes overlapped with a literary one.54 Groups of bhaktas
were collected in sets that filled out auspicious numbers such as eighty-four or
two hundred and fifty-two. But there was no unambiguous chronologic logic to
the bhaktamāl genre, any more than there is to the beads of the mālā (garland)
that grounded the analogy. The members of the premodern kavikul could inhabit
the same cultural space across great expanses of time and place.55

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, the historical mode
emerged as a new and increasingly dominant way of conceptualizing Hindi
literature, superseding the more diverse logics of earlier practices. Although it is
difficult to argue against the relevance of historical circumstances to the
creation of literature—the rise of Brajbhasha literary culture is, after all, a
historical fact closely tied to the rise of a new historical political formation,
Mughal rule—literary history is susceptible to extremes of mechanical thinking.
The model frequently falls prey to the biological narrative that literatures come
into being, experience a period of growth, mature, and then fall ineluctably into
(p.218) senescence. Furthermore, great political dynasties are thought to
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engender great literature, whereas weaker polities are assumed a priori to give
rise to works of inferior quality. There is no reason at all that literature should
conform to such a simplistic pattern, but this proposition is strangely
widespread.56 In the case of Hindi, it is possible to trace with uncommon
precision the advent of literary-historical thinking and to pinpoint the
assumptions that marred the new formulations. The most detrimental by far was
the notion that the subcontinent had sunk into a period of lamentable cultural
decline prior to British rule.

The power of this notion to alter Indians’ sense of their literary past becomes
clear when we scrutinize the process of transition to the new model of literary
history. Garcin de Tassy's L’Histoire de la littérature hindouie et hindustanie
(1839) and Shivsingh Sengar's Śivsiṃhsaroj (Lotus of Shivsingh, 1878), two
influential early works about the premodern Hindi-Urdu tradition, have much
more in common with Indic tazˍkirahs and saṅgrahs than with modern literary
histories.57 Poets, patrons, and floruits are duly noted, and both authors are
aware of the need to identify broad trends and major poets, but neither tried to
construct a totalizing narrative that would explain centuries of multifaceted
literary achievement in terms of a single, brute, temporal logic.58 More
significant, neither set out to account for North Indian literature's supposed
precolonial decline, which would become a central topos of subsequent works in
the genre. Garcin de Tassy and Sengar did not even perceive a decline, let alone
one that needed to be explained. To go back and read the work of Sengar in
particular today, after an interval of nearly a century of derisive accounts of rīti
literature, is to reconnect with an ethos refreshingly untainted by either colonial
or nationalist prejudice. With reference to the seventeenth century of the Indian
Vikram era (c. 1650–1750), Sengar caps a long list of writers with the statement,
“They wrote really spectacular works of vernacular poetry.” Concerning the next
century (c. 1750–1850), he is even more enthusiastic: “There were never better
poets in any other century than in the eighteenth.”59

Page 16 of 46

A decade after Sengar, George Grierson presented a very different view in The
Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan (1889), the first historical account of
Hindi literature to be written in English. Along with Garcin de Tassy, Grierson is
to be credited for his advocacy of vernacular literature, marking a break from
previous Indologists, who had for the most part concentrated on classical
texts.60 This was coupled, however, with the irrepressible arrogance of many
British civil servants toward Indian culture. In some respects, the work is
patently derivative: Grierson drew much of his data from the work of Sengar, a
fact that he was at least candid enough to admit.61 Aside (p.219) from writing
in English, his crucial alteration was the addition of a new chronology. Since
most subsequent Hindi literary histories reprise themes taken up in Grierson's
work, it is worth recording in full his conceptualization of the Hindi literary
tradition. He divides his book into eleven chapters:

1. The Bardic Period (700–1300)

2. The Religious Revival of the Fifteenth Century
3. The Romantic Poetry of Malik Muḥammad (1540)
4. The Kṛṣṇa-cult of Braj (1500–1600)
5. The Mughal Court
6. Tulsī Dās
7. The Ars Poetica (1580–1692)
8. Other successors of Tulsī Dās (1600–1700)
9. The Eighteenth Century
10. Hindustan under the Company (1800–1857)
11. Hindustan under the Queen (1857–1887)

Grierson manages to capture what many scholars would still agree are the major
milestones of premodern Hindi literature. For instance, it is possible to trace the
origins of Ramchandra Shukla's Vīrgāthākāl (age of heroic songs, see below) in
Grierson's “bardic period,” even if extending it back as far as 700 CE claims an
antiquity for Hindi not endorsed by serious scholars today. Several chapter
headings anticipate what came to be known as the bhakti period (chapters two,
three, four, and six). The rīti period of post-Shukla historiography is
encompassed by chapters five (the Mughal Court), seven (The Ars Poetica), eight
(Other Successors of Tulsī Dās), and nine (The Eighteenth Century). The chapter
headings in themselves are not the issue.

The glaring problem with Grierson's model is the larger narrative that
overdetermines it: Hindi literary culture is made to follow a trajectory that
culminates in colonial rule. The early chapters contain favorable appraisals of
Hindi's literary heritage, but all positive judgments cease abruptly in chapter
nine, ominously entitled “The Eighteenth Century,” as though that in itself were
enough to be said on the subject. His teleological approach is also painfully
evident from the fact that, whereas all the previous chapters reference themes
more or less relevant to Hindi literary processes, the last three (coinciding with

Page 17 of 46

the rise of British power) describe instead the course of colonial history.
Grierson did not lack opinions on the literature of these three periods, however.
In marked contrast to Sengar's glowing view of eighteenth-century literature,
Grierson finds it a cultural wasteland emblematic of India's political turmoil:

(p.220) Bards there were few, and, as these could only sing of bloodshed
and treachery, they preferred to remain silent. In other branches of
literature there was a similar decay. No original authors of the first rank
appeared.62

The Hindi literary tradition, in earlier assessments perceived to be characterized

by sustained virtuosity and excellence, had suddenly encountered a late
precolonial hitch. British rule is presented as the beacon of a more optimistic
future:

The first half of the 19th century, commencing with the downfall of the
Maratha power and ending with the Mutiny, forms another well-marked
epoch. It was the period of renascence after the literary dearth of the
previous century.63

It is hard to envision a cruder model of literary history than one that so

transparently links Hindi's sophisticated centuries-old traditions of poetic
engagement to the rise and fall of India's political fortunes, and its chances for
future success to colonial intercession. Astonishingly, its premises would be
given even greater credence by colonial subjects themselves in the coming
decades, due in no small part to Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi and other nationalist
writers fervently devoted to the cause of Hindi's renaissance.

Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi, Hindi's “Renaissance,” and the Repudiation of

Brajbhasha
Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi (1864–1938), whose powerful persona lent his name to a
literary epoch and a considerable amount of ideological backing to the
nationalist literary enterprise, was one of the most significant architects of Hindi
modernity even if Bharatendu Harishchandra would be the one to nab the title
“father of modern Hindi. ” As Maithilisharan Gupta, one of the leading poets of
the early twentieth century and a student of Dvivedi, aptly put it: “If Bharatendu
gave a new birth to Hindi, it was Dwivedi-ji who brought it up.”64 Dvivedi's views
were espoused by many like-minded Hindi reformers, but his long tenure (from
1903 to 1920) as editor of Sarasvatī, the most influential Hindi journal of the
period, gave him far-reaching power in the burgeoning Hindi public sphere.

In a region where rigid grammar regimes had never dictated the uses of
vernacular language, Sarasvatī became a new authority on correct Hindi. And
“correct Hindi” would now have a highly circumscribed range. In a linguistic
coup d’état to which he recruited many willing soldiers, Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi
(p.221) set out to enthrone Khari Boli as the only legitimate form of Hindi

Page 18 of 46

literary expression. He implemented a draconian editorial policy for Sarasvatī

magazine, accepting only Khari Boli poetry submissions. He generally frowned
upon dialectal variants, promoting a new kind of standardized, and frequently
Sanskritized, Hindi. It would be difficult to overstate the extent to which this
reformed Khari Boli Hindi, naturalized today, was to many an unfamiliar idiom in
its own day. Nirala, a native speaker of the Baisvari dialect of Hindi and a
leading voice in the turn to Chāyāvād (Romanticism) during the following
generation, would later recall his humiliating ignorance of Khari Boli as a youth
and the tutoring that he sought in the pages of nationalist periodicals like
Sarasvatī and other arbiters of the modern style.65

Brajbhasha was far too cherished a literary language to be ushered out of

existence quite so easily, but Dvivedi's vociferous rejection of it was as unsparing
as it was influential. An early essay entitled “Kavikartavya” (The responsibility of
a poet), first published in Sarasvatī in 1901, was larded with disdain for Braj. He
ridiculed what he perceived to be Braj poets’ unrelieved repetitiveness: “Enough
already! Do we really need any more poetry about the dalliances [of Radha and
Krishna] on the banks of the Yamuna River?” This single cruel sentence reduced
the extensive literary corpus to a caricature, and he wrote thousands just like it
in the course of his career.66 Another target was the crystallizing diglossia
between older Braj poetry genres and the new forms of Khari Boli prose that had
been cultivated in response to colonial education mandates. This appeared to
Dvivedi a bizarre and illogical division of linguistic and literary labor:

The language of prose and poetry should not be separate. It is only in the
case of Hindi that different types of language are used for prose and
poetry. The language of a civilized society should have both prose and
poetic literature.… To speak one language, and to write poetry in another,
goes against every natural principle.67

Although a prose tradition was inarguably a long-standing component of the

classical Hindi heritage—a fact ignored by Dvivedi and many scholars since—it
is true that verse had always been the preferred medium, even for scholarly
pursuits such as composing śāstra.68 Regardless, the continuing use of
Brajbhasha was now being constructed as a sign of cultural backwardness. The
language's long association with both religious poetry and the early modern
courts appeared to render it congenitally unsuited to the modernizing,
democratizing, and technologizing needs of an India ever more sensitized to the
need for combating colonial oppression. It was stigmatized as “decadent” in the
manner of so much of premodern Indian culture during this period, and (p.222)
increasingly came to symbolize the sāmantvād or medieval feudal order from
which Indians needed urgently to disassociate themselves.

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During this period of nationalist fervor, Hindi poets—increasingly narrowly

construed as Khari Boli poets—were assigned a mission that would have had
Colonel Holroyd and his compatriots of the previous generation nodding their
approval from the grave: to write on upadeśjanak (edifying) themes. In the words
of Charu Gupta, during the Dvivedi Age—for such was his influence that later
literary historians would name the whole era after him—“aesthetics became an
exercise in ethics.”69 Hindi poets were now enjoined to be foremost patriots, and
to speak about urgent social and political topics such as untouchability, widow
remarriage, khādī (homespun cloth), and the carkhā (spinning wheel), these last
two particularly laden symbols of Indian self-sufficiency in the growing
anticolonial struggle.70

Khari Boli poetry was perhaps not beautiful the way Braj was (recall
Harishchandra's disparaging remarks on this subject), but it had modern,
utilitarian virtues.71 Besides, the very mādhurya (sweetness) that even
detractors had to admit was Braj's special attraction would now be posited as an
embarrassing flaw. When Indian nationhood was at stake, what good was a
literary system founded on concepts like alaṅkāra? Brajbhasha was now
evaluated in the terms of colonial and nationalist discourse that constructed
premodern Hindus as effete or too feminine.72 “In an age when India needed
men,” averred a scholar who spoke at the second annual assembly of the Hindī
Sāhitya Sammelan of Allahabad in 1911, “the excessive sweetness and
melodiousness of Braj had turned Indians into eunuchs.”73 Khari Boli was
promoted in its stead as a “virile” language for the nation. The days of
Brajbhasha's viability were now numbered.

Some of this story, centering on a dramatic reconceptualization of literary values

under colonialism and nationalism, epitomizes a trend generally mirrored in
regional languages throughout India from the nineteenth century, but the
sweeping linguistic reforms in the Hindi belt are unparalleled. During the first
decades of the twentieth century, known by specialists today not just as the
Dvivedī yug (Dvivedi period) but also styled more grandiosely as the Hindī
navjāgaraṇ (Hindi renaissance), Hindi was called upon to do more ideological
work than its counterparts in other provinces because it alone of India's
languages had a strong transregional presence with nation-building potential. A
concomitant to the drive for independence was the need to promote a language
that could represent all of India. Hindi's unique status as a deśvyāpak bhāṣā
(language with national reach) was one of Dvivedi's main arguments for its
suitability as a national language.74 Of course, that Hindi could become
deśvyāpak at all was in no small measure due to the Brajbhasha kavikul.

(p.223) Dvivedi's was not the only vision for Hindi. His linguistic eugenics
seemed dysgenic to some, and ardent supporters of Brajbhasha retained their
influence for a couple more decades. The figure of Dularelal Bhargava, chief
editor of Mādhurī, which became even more influential than Sarasvatī after its

Page 20 of 46

founding in 1922, serves as a counterweight. As rightly noted by Francesca

Orsini, the Hindi public sphere was a diverse arena in which many literary
saṃskāras (loosely: tastes or proclivities) intersected, as poets, journalists,
teachers, and intellectuals from different backgrounds (landed aristocrats,
merchants, Brahmans, Persianized Kayasths) joined forces to serve the cause of
Hindi and the nation.75 In contrast to the more circumscribed linguistic and
literary styles found in the pages of Sarasvatī, the profile of Mādhurī was far
more open and eclectic. The new Chāyāvād or Romantic poetry was featured, but
so were venerated kavitts of old. There was even a regular column on
Brajbhasha literature, known as kavi-carcā (featured poet). The younger
generation flocked to this journal, and even some stalwarts of the Dvivedī yug
became ardent supporters.76 Many who were perfectly content to adopt the new
Sanskritized Khari Boli for poetry still drew heavily on the Brajbhasha past. Age-
old literary staples such as the bārah-māsā and śikh-nakh were by no means
phased out overnight, and Braj verses were integral to the early Hindi novel (as
they had been to Harishchandra's plays).77 Thus, Brajbhasha literary culture,
though mortally wounded during Dvivedi's generation, did not expire at once.

On the contrary, there was even a brief moment of revival during the 1920s.
Pandit Jagannathdas Ratnakar (1866–1932), a prolific early editor of rīti texts
and a leading contributor to the Sūrsāgar project at the Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā,
continued both to write and to advocate for Brajbhasha poetry throughout his
career. Much of his oeuvre is consistent with age-old themes of rasa and
nāyikābheda, but in the manner of writers such as Harishchandra and Thakur
Jagmohan Singh, Ratnakar also considered Braj an entirely appropriate vehicle
of modernization and reform. Like Dvivedi, he concerned himself with linguistic
standardization, but he directed his energies toward Brajbhasha. In 1925 he
gave a public address calling for Braj poets to update their repertoires.78 His
contemporary Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay “Hariaudh” was just such a self-
conscious modernizer of older Braj motifs. His Priyapravās (Lament for a
departed lover, 1914) only sounds like a tale about a lovelorn gopī from classical
poetry; it actually presented an earnest new reformist message, with Radha
portrayed not as a physical lover but as a woman selflessly dedicated to social
service.79

In fact, numerous intellectuals of the day found it possible to live in radically

different cultural worlds simultaneously. Yet another case are the brothers
Shyambihari, Shukdevbihari, and Ganeshbihari Mishra, bicultural (p.224)
intellectuals from an old aristocratic family based in Lucknow, who played a
major role in Hindi literary life.80 The younger two were English-educated but
still steeped in traditional cultural values, employed in the modern British civil
service but also as administrators in the princely states of Orchha and
Bharatpur. They warrant special attention as coauthors of the Miśrabandhuvinod
(Delight of the Mishra brothers), a monumental work of Hindi literary history

Page 21 of 46

completed in 1913. Their Vinod straddles the divergent social landscapes and
thought-worlds of the period, as did the careers of the authors.

The Mishra brothers frequently evince acute Dvivedism, as when they express
concern that Braj poetry is too narrow in scope, which with charming illogic they
blame on India's dearth of the communication infrastructure that colonialism
would bring:

Hundreds of books were lost or destroyed in ancient times because we did

not have trains, telephones, a postal system, printing presses or libraries.…
Poets could not find out what others were writing, with the result that
hundreds and thousands of books kept getting produced on the same
subject.81

“Hundreds and thousands of books” seems to be a thinly veiled critique of the

rītigranth, whereby the actions of a centuries-old Brajbhasha kavikul with its
well-structured systems of articulating literary consensus are made to appear,
through the skewed interpretive lens of colonial and nationalist discourse, as
simply mindless. The Mishra brothers also at least pay lip service to the idea of
Hindi's deficiencies and herald the dawning age of literary reform: “Until now
our language was characterized by pleasing but impractical subjects, but now
with British rule, people have become more concerned with subject matter that
can benefit society.”82 This emphasis on social benefit also figured prominently
in their mission as literary critics. In Hindī Navratna (Nine jewels of Hindi,
1910), Ganeshbihari and Shukdevbihari Mishra had weighed the merits of ten
prominent poets from the Hindi past: Tulsidas, Sur, Dev, Bihari, Matiram and
Bhushan Tripathi, Keshavdas, Kabir, Chand Bardai, and Harishchandra. (The
reason they list ten poets instead of the expected nine of a navratna is that the
two Tripathi brothers are oddly considered a single unit.) One of the criteria for
excellence was whether a given poet's work could be said to contain a sandeś or
message.83 The Mishra brothers clearly have immense regard for the artistry of
rīti poetry, but their Navratna already exhibits a tendency that would come to
dominate Hindi criticism over the next century: to treat bhakti poets with
greater reverence than court poets because of the moral lessons to be gleaned
from their work. The Mishra brothers even (p.225) dignify bhakti poets with
titles such as gosvāmī and mahātmā, whereas other writers are simply styled
kavis.84

Although the Mishra brothers were adapting to the new criteria for successful
literature that were promoted in Sarasvatī and like-minded forums during this
period, their work is refreshingly free of disparaging remarks about their
literary past. On the subject of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century poetry,
for instance, their opinion could not be more at odds with the sentiments of
Dvivedi (and Grierson):

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Many of the finest poets lived during this period. One hears their names
and wonders how anyone can speak of any kind of a deficiency when there
are such fantastic poets! In truth, Hindi literature is excellent and
glorious.85

One senses throughout their oeuvre that the Mishra brothers were struggling to
incorporate into their understanding of Hindi's literary past the dominant idea,
espoused by colonizers and nationalists alike, of India's recent civilizational
collapse. Such intellectual confusion illustrates the striking blend of nationalist
pride with shame that a colonized people could be made to feel toward their
cultural heritage.86 Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's comment on the addled reformers
of Urdu poetry is relevant to Hindi littérateurs: they were “in love with the old
poetry, but also want[ed] it dead.”87

Working through the 1,500 rambling pages of Miśrabandhuvinod, a remarkable

period piece little visited by Hindi scholars today, leaves the unmistakable
impression that the Mishra brothers are, in the end, only half-hearted in their
condemnation of Hindi's supposed decline and fall. You can just see them in their
studies during an unguarded moment, lovingly poring over old Brajbhasha
kavitts on Krishna and Radha, and in all likelihood not relishing the more
bracing airs of a Khari Boli verse on a citizen's duty to the nation. Like many
Hindi intellectuals of the period, they outwardly subscribed to a belief in the
merits of a stridently reformist literature, without always putting their hearts in
it. Indeed, if one looks beyond the pages of nationalist literary history with its
insistence on the paradigm of Hindi's renaissance, it is striking just how many
literati continued to cherish the classical culture. The Braj classics were still
performed in assemblies of poets and maintained a broad appeal. They were
included in the new textbooks being produced for schools and colleges and by
the 1920s were enshrined in the university curricula for Hindi, although the
importance of “uplifting” themes meant that the rīti literature of the courts
would have little role to play in the new public face of Hindi.88

(p.226) Ramchandra Shukla and the Category of Rīti Literature

We owe much of our understanding of the classical Hindi canon to the
publication of Ramchandra Shukla's Hindī sāhitya kā itihās (History of Hindi
literature, 1929, henceforth Itihās), which represents the culmination of several
decades of radical rethinking of the Hindi literary field under early nationalism.
Shukla's major contribution was a more comprehensive vision of the historical
development of Hindi literature than any to date, and new perspectives for
understanding it. For Shukla, Hindi was a capacious category that extended well
beyond Brajbhasha or Khari Boli, including Sufi literature in Avadhi (albeit
subsumed under and arguably co-opted by the Hindu category of bhakti), the
poetry of medieval saints and, more problematically, scattered verses of
Apabhramsha, which helped him to lend the tradition greater historical depth.89
New nations need old literatures. It cannot be my task here to assess all the

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successes and failings of Shukla's far-ranging work,90 but his findings on the
subject of rīti literature must be examined, not least because he is the one who
bequeathed us the very category.

Shukla's kāl vibhāg (periodization) sought to improve upon earlier literary-

historical conceptions with a more streamlined system, reproduced here in full
(the terms marked with an asterisk are the ones still current today91):

NAME CHARACTERISTIC DATE

STYLE

I. Beginning period Age of Heroic Songs 993–1318 CE Vikram 1050–

1375

Ādikāl* Vīrgāthākāl

II. Early medieval Age of Devotion 1318–1643 CE Vikram

period 1375–1700

Pūrvmadhyakāl Bhaktikā2*

III. Late medieval Age of Style 1643–1843 CE Vikram

period 1700–1900

Uttarmadhyakāl Rītikāl*

IV. Modern period Age of Prose 1843–1927 CE Vikram

1900–1984

Ādhunik kāl* Gadyakāl

That Hindi's earliest and latest stages are labeled “beginning” and “modern,”
respectively, is no surprise, nor do intervening periods termed “medieval” raise
an eyebrow. In adopting the term “medieval,” Shukla was reusing a label already
in circulation for Hindi since at least the time of the Mishra brothers.92 But
whereas they ended Hindi's “medieval period” in 1623, Shukla extended it to
1843. As if the somnolence implied by a mid-nineteenth-century medievality
were not enough, Shukla offers the historiographically unprecedented idea that
the bhakti component of Hindi's premodern literary heritage belongs in an (p.
227) entirely separate, earlier period from its rīti counterpart. He took two
major trends in premodern Hindi literature, the devotional and the courtly,
which are far more logically distinguishable in terms of stylistic features,
performance factors, and patronage contexts, and accorded them a new
temporal significance. Although the devotional styles in Brajbhasha are arguably
attested a few decades earlier than the courtly, the two are historically
intertwined, and often indistinguishable within the oeuvres of the many poets
who wrote both religious and more secular poetry.

Page 24 of 46

Nowhere does Shukla justify dividing the category of medieval Hindi literature
into two at the particular point he proposed, and nothing in the year 1700 of the
Indian Vikram calendar (equivalent to 1643 CE) serves to elevate it into a
turning point for Hindi literature. No major political event occurred, nor was any
epoch-making literary text produced. On the contrary, the 1640s was a decade of
almost-total quiescence in the otherwise remarkably dynamic seventeenth
century. Perhaps it was just convenient to mark a milestone with the round
number of 1700 in the Vikram calendar. There is no argument from convenience,
however, to salvage Shukla's handling of the poet Keshavdas, which exemplifies
the historiographical confusion that plagued this new division between bhakti
and rīti. Once Shukla decided on 1700/1643 as a cut-off point, he had no choice
but to place Keshavdas in the bhakti period. A potent illustration of the mismatch
is that Shukla relegated his work to an appendix-like section on phuṭkal racnāeṃ
(miscellaneous texts). This was a considerable demotion for a poet who had once
been venerated as ādi kavi (inaugural poet).93

New periods were not all that was being proposed in Shukla's Itihās. Inherent in
his model (although its full enunciation would await the rash of post-
Independence literary histories) is a sense of pronounced hierarchy between
bhakti and rīti in terms of literary and sociocultural merit. Whereas the category
of bhakti, pregnant with positive connotations of spirituality, betokens a
hallowed Indian cultural trait, the very idea of rīti, a term that since Shukla's day
has stigmatized Brajbhasha courtly literature, suggests stilted pedantry.
Frequently glossed in English by the unfortunate term “mannerist,” the word rīti
does not just innocently connote “style,” a reasonably accurate translation of the
Hindi word, but carries the derogatory implication of “too much style.”

Shukla was not one to mince words, and he leaves no doubt about his view of the
literature he was newly terming rīti: he found it disappointing on linguistic,
literary, and intellectual grounds. Recapitulating the consensus that had evolved
during the Dvivedī yug, Shukla laments that “medieval” Hindi writers never
developed a strong prose tradition, nor did they adequately refine Brajbhasha
with the requisite attention to grammar (he levels particular (p.228) criticism
against poets’ conjugating the same verb in completely different ways according
to the exigencies of meter and rhyme). Lexical miscegenation also disturbed
him: in an age that saw Hindi moving further and further away from its more
pluralistic Hindustani past to a restrictive—and some might say sterile—
śuddhatā (purity), Shukla disapproved of the use of too many videśī (foreign)
words, a criticism clearly directed at the Perso-Arabic vocabulary employed by
many Braj poets of the early modern period.94 Brajbhasha's hybridity is a
linguistic fact, but the cultural evaluation of that fact and its history had shifted.
For centuries, rīti writers had lovingly experimented with the possibilities of
their quirky, pliable language and their mixed-register wordplay is an important
component of Brajbhasha's poetic appeal and a condition of its transregional and
trans-social success. For Shukla and others schooled in the linguistic puritanism
Page 25 of 46

of the Hindi movement, this multicultural hybridity was a derisible flaw that a
better class of poets would have expunged from the language. Although Shukla
cannot help but concede that rīti poetry is beautiful,95 beauty itself had become
suspect for nationalists. Literature was now supposed to be useful, not beautiful.

Most of all, Shukla regretted the proliferation of the rītigranth, denouncing the
genre for stifling literary creativity. This was the first time a modern Hindi critic
had ever paid sustained attention to the rītigranth texts as works of scholarship,
and in this respect too, he set the tone for the future reception of the corpus.
Grierson, whatever one might say about his teleological model of an Indian
literary history that culminated in the British civilizing mission, had lauded the
seventeenth-century Braj poetics texts as evidence of an Indic “Ars Poetica.”96
The Mishra brothers, while expressing bewilderment at their vast quantity, did
not so much decry the trend as wish writers had done something more useful
than all ending up, as they saw it, writing the same book over and over again.
But no earlier literary historian had weighed the merits of Braj alaṅkāraśāstra as
an intellectual practice. One wishes that Shukla had not broken the silence.
Misperceiving the very objectives of rīti classicism, he tirelessly laments the lack
of original ideas in Brajbhasha poetics theory. Worse, he accuses rīti poets of not
even being able to transmit the Sanskrit ideas properly.97 In his extended
account of the rīti period's preeminent genre, Shukla catalogs the poets’
“errors” (bhram/bhrānt dhāraṇā), repeatedly referencing their
“bungling” (gaṛbaṛī), and their “mistaken” (pramādvaś) and
“incoherent” (asaṅgat) ideas. The ironies here are rich, for it is often in
discussing precisely the rīti poets’ innovations that Shukla unleashes his
harshest criticism. On the one hand, he says the poets lack originality, but on the
other, when they did invent new bhedas (categories) of alaṅkāras or nāyikās,
which we saw in chapter 3 was one of the primary (p.229) strategies for
intellectual innovation in the Braj kavikul, he denounces them for departing from
the Sanskrit tradition.98

The estimation of Brajbhasha courtly writing had suffered from three decades of
Dvivedi-style reform, but the publication of Hindī sāhitya kā itihās sealed its fate.
Shukla excoriated rīti authors so thoroughly, and so completely misrepresented
the very premises of their literary and intellectual existence, that there was no
hope of their ever recovering their standing. Rīti's loss was bhakti's gain:
devotional poetry with its spiritual and edifying content was accorded the
highest status in literary history, a position it has retained ever since.99

Shukla's idea that rīti writers lacked the intellectual strengths of their Sanskrit
forebears can, some might argue, be traced to early modern poets themselves.
Keshavdas, after all, introduced himself to his readers as a slow-witted bhāṣā
kavi. Kavindracharya Sarasvati, who, unlike Keshavdas, composed both Bhasha
and Sanskrit works, spoke of his lāj (shame) at writing in the vernacular, which
can hardly be taken as a compelling vote of confidence in Hindi's intellectual

Page 26 of 46

merits. Sudan, for his part, conceptualized Bhasha writing as a necessary

concession to the kaliyuga, an ancient notion of India's ineluctable periodic
regression.100 Although these seem to be stereotypical professions of literary
humility rather than heartfelt belief, they need at least to be recorded as
evidence of misgivings about Hindi's scholarly traditions that long predate
Ramchandra Shukla.

In addition to expressing the general notion that the very act of writing in the
Hindi language is automatically a fall from a Sanskrit state of grace, occasionally
premodern poets voiced more specific forms of discontent with literary trends
and methods; however, interpreting their intentions is far from easy. Premodern
writers sometimes express even their own opinions typologically. In a verse that
has sometimes been read as a harbinger of the need for Hindi's reform, the late
eighteenth-century poet Thakur speaks with apparent exasperation of the stock
imagery so central to rīti literature:

They have learned to say that eyes are fish, deer, wagtails, or lotuses;
they have told of [the patron's] fame and valor;
they have learned of magical trees, cows, and jewels that bestow
wishes;
they have learned when to say Mount Meru or Kubera.
But Thakur says: poetry is a most difficult matter.
Never think for a moment that words could possibly confine it;
still people churn it out and introduce it to the assembly.
They think writing poetry is an easy game.101

Some remarks by Bhikharidas to the effect that poetry, if it fails to please, can at
least be a pretext for the worship of Radha and Krishna (rādhikā kanhaī¯̄ (p.
230) sumirana ko bahāno hai), have been interpreted by Hindi scholars as
marking a consciousness of the weakening of bhakti, an idea not dissimilar from
the modern notion that rīti marks a decline from an earlier period of bhakti
vitality.102

Nor did Shukla invent out of whole cloth the idea of a separation between bhakti
and more erotic courtly compositions. General Broughton's sepoys (canvassed in
the early nineteenth century) had identified the bhukt mārg and rusādik poetry
as two major literary styles. While Broughton's informants evidently found the
latter worthier of transmission, several early modern poets articulated a
contrasting preference for religious poetry. As noted in chapter 3, Keshavdas had
stipulated that the highest form of poetry was harirasalīna (steeped in the rasa of
Hari), after which he ranked poetry written for kings. Surati Mishra, who
described himself as an author of bhaktikāvya, expressed misgivings about
writing poetry for men instead of god. And yet whatever these two authors might
have professed (and one senses that the profession counted more than anything
else), they wrote both bhakti and rīti poetry and are especially remembered for

Page 27 of 46

the latter: they not only wrote for kings but also did their best work under royal
patronage, as was the case for many poets of the day.

The fact is that any kind of strict boundary between bhakti and rīti tends to
crumble when we apply the slightest bit of pressure. This principle is perhaps
best illustrated by a famous verse from Bhikharidas's Kāvyanirṇay, the most
explicit conceptualization of the Brajbhasha literary canon that we have from the
precolonial period:

We all know of Sur, Keshav, Mandan, Bihari, Kalidas [Trivedi],

Brahma [i.e., Birbal],
Chintamani, Matiram and Bhushan.
Liladhar, Senapati, Nipat [Niranji], Newaj and Nidhi,
Nilkanth Mishra, Sukhdev, and Dev are respected.
Alam, Rahim, Raskhan, Sundar, and others—
so many insightful poets! They cannot all be listed here.
One need not live in Braj to write in Braj,
for one can learn the language from these poets of the past.
Tulsi and Gang, whose works are varied in language,
are heralded as the master poets (bhae sukabina ke sardāra).103

Here famous bhakti poets like Sur, Nipat Niranji, Raskhan, and Tulsi dwell
comfortably among their rīti companions, underscoring that for this eighteenth-
century literary scholar, poets we today distinguish as either bhakti or rīti
inhabited the same literary universe. Religious poets were not ranked higher (p.
231) than courtly ones. Of the two heralded as “masters,” one (Tulsi) was from
the bhakti tradition and the other (Gang) was at the Mughal court.

Although traces can indeed be found of distinctions (“poetry for god” versus
“poetry for kings”), even hierarchies, between bhakti and courtly literature in
the premodern period, more often the two styles overlapped. It is fair to use the
terms rīti and bhakti to designate different social worlds, roughly captured by
the idea of court versus temple, but as literary tendencies they are, again, often
present in one and the same author, and sometimes even within the same
work.104 And nowhere in the centuries that preceded the colonial period do we
find evidence for Shukla's notion of an earlier devotional period of great literary
merit succeeded by two-hundred years when creativity was scarce, if not
outright imperiled. What are the origins of this idea?

Bhakti Literature and Hindi's Salvageable Past

The idea of Hindi literature's late precolonial decline suspiciously mirrors
another story: that of India itself in colonial and nationalist history. Grierson's
1889 account of the Hindi past contained, as we saw, a worrisome eighteenth-
century interlude marked by “decay.” Although there is a time lag before Indian
decline becomes a central organizing principle of Hindi-language literary
history,105 it was easy enough for the Hindi literati to imbibe the idea from other
sources. The conceptual underpinning of reformist movements since the
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nineteenth century was that India had lost its way. A fundamental premise of
orientalists, absorbed by Indians through new translations of the Sanskrit
classics under the auspices of colonial education departments, was that the
classical Hindu past was India's civilizational peak. The glory days of the Gupta
monarchs and the great poet-playwright Kalidasa (fourth or early fifth century)
were long gone, however; the question was how India had been allowed to fall
into its present, weakened state. Many narratives about India's decline and
decadence entered cultural discourse in this period.

Muslims became a compelling new scapegoat in the evolving historiography. If

Indian Muslims were wringing their hands over having lost their great Mughal
Empire to a British trading company, the Hindus faced a double dose of shame:
they had been conquered by the Muslims and the British. As Partha Chatterjee
has shown, by the 1870s a new mode of framing Indian history had gained
currency, with the Hindu nation as its subject.106 This entwining of Indian
history with conceptions of the Hindu self (and its Muslim other) was adopted by
Hindi literati, perhaps under the influence of Colonel Tod, (p.232) whose
Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan is thought to have been translated into Hindi
in the 1880s.107 India's long period of Muslim rule served as a critical rallying
point, with Muslims being blamed in some accounts (although by no means
all)108 for the pain and humiliation of colonial rule. It was Muslims (or so the
story would now run) who first conquered India and came in wave after
marauding wave over the centuries, at once looting temples and trampling
Hindu self-esteem. It was the Muslims who had enslaved themselves with luxury,
giving way to decadence, instability, and—inevitably—political defeat.

If Hindus had a double shame to atone for after being defeated by two
civilizations, the Muslims were accorded double blame, first for conquering
Hindus and then for being conquered by the British. The story of Hindi, whose
supporters in the period 1890–1947 were embroiled in a pitched battle against
Muslim advocates of Urdu, could not help but be inflected (and infected) by the
anti-Muslim and anti-Mughal rhetoric that was becoming more and more a part
of mainstream Hindu thought. Brajbhasha literature, whose courtly component
always had a sizable contingent of Muslim writers and patrons, was caught in
the crossfire. Now courtly texts, already a weak link in Hindi literary history for
those of a utilitarian bent, seemed more and more suspicious: who could defend
all those praśasti poems to Mughal emperors and their Rajput collaborators?
And what about those works of nāyikābheda filled with erotic poetry meant to
satisfy the lascivious tastes of depraved rulers during Hindus’ period of
disgrace?

Erotic poetry in general became a severe problem for the Hindi intelligentsia
from the late nineteenth century. Modernizing conceptions of Hindi began to
take shape amid a flurry of anti-Muslim sentiment, but Victorianism also had a
role in shaping new standards of literary taste. A natural target for reform was

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Brajbhasha poets’ customary emphasis on śṛṅgāra. The British did not

distinguish between the obscene and the erotic, tarring anything that sniffed of
sensuality with the same crude brush.109 Although the other major staple of the
Braj literary canon, Krishna-Radha poetry, evinced at least the arguable merit of
having god on its side, if even this more sacred domain of aesthetics could hover
dangerously close to aślīltā (obscenity), nothing could redeem the more courtly
styles.

Complex gender issues also entered into play in an age when reformist debates
raged over what to do about the education of women. On the one hand, Indian
women were held to be backward, abject slaves, mere objects of pleasure and
not spousal companions in the manner of better-educated European women.
Education would bring about both their moral and social uplift. On the (p.233)
other hand, the type of woman who had traditionally been educated (such as
Keshavdas's prize student Pravin Ray), and the subject matter of that education
—rītigranths being an important component of early modern education—were
distinctly not in keeping with the prescriptions of nineteenth-century reformers.
The sensual content of rītigranths, it was feared, would corrupt rather than
nurture morality. What kind of role models were all these nāyikās and their
oversexed lovers, especially when an inability to control their libidinous desires
was considered a characteristic failing of Hindu women?110 Harishchandra
proscribed Brajbhasha poems from Bālābodhinī, the magazine he edited for
women and children, which illustrates that not only rīti literature but the very
Brajbhasha language itself was invested with a problematic sensuality during
the Victorian period.111

By the time of the Dvivedī yug, when nationalism co-opted Indian womanhood
into the service of the motherland, any continued appreciation of the female
figures from Indian court literature was out of the question. The Indian nation
was constructed as feminine, to be sure, but such femininity was demure and
controlled, the very antithesis of the open sexuality of the type to be found in rīti
poetry. Indian womanhood (and nationhood) was synonymous with motherhood—
chaste, self-sacrificing, and worthy of the sacrifice. Men's sexuality needed to be
checked as well. Men had to rally their vīrya (a word for heroism but also,
appropriately, semen) to the cause of the Indian nation, not fritter away their
energy in idle sensual pleasures. It was precisely such sensuality that had been
the downfall of Muslim rulers.112

The findings of Ramchandra Shukla in his Itihās must thus be viewed as the
distillation of a complex zeitgeist rather than the workings of a maverick literary
historian. He may have invented the category of rīti literature, but he certainly
did not invent bhakti literature, nor was he the first to idealize it. But he was the
first to emplot bhakti and rīti on a timeline that, given historiographical
assumptions of precolonial decline under Muslim rule, had the effect of setting
rīti off from bhakti as later, and therefore part of a cultural turn for the worse. In

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contrast to rīti literature, bhakti also contained little that was objectionable and
much that resonated with contemporary needs. If Indians had failed to maintain
their greatness in this world in the centuries prior to colonialism, they could feel
that they reigned supreme in the spiritual arena, an area of cultural autonomy in
which they could still take pride.113 Quite aside from its connotations of
wholesome Hindu spirituality, bhakti also spoke to contemporary political needs:
one of the new coinages for patriotism, deśbhakti, gave an older term an
expanded scope and a modern, purposeful ring.114

(p.234) The Legacy of Ramchandra Shukla

The Chāyāvād movement, a homegrown Hindi Romanticism that was already
coming to prominence in Ramchandra Shukla's day, did not help the cause of rīti
literature. Chāyāvādī poets exhibit a complicated relationship to both
nationalism and the rīti past.115 They were frustrated with the unrelieved
prosaicness of Dvivedī yug literature and sought to move poetry away from
patriotic and reformist themes, striving to reclaim beauty as a literary value. But
such an orientation could appear dangerously close to the stress on art for art's
sake that seemed to have characterized rīti literature and, in the years leading
up to Indian independence, risked appearing reactionary and insufficiently
engaged with political struggle. Perhaps this is why Sumitranandan Pant (1900–
77), one of the movement's prominent spokesmen, took special care to distance
Chāyāvādī aesthetics from those of rīti literature. This excerpt from Pallav, one of
Pant's most popular works, sounds like he has taken a page from Dvivedi's book
(or perhaps a page from a manuscript of the eighteenth-century poet Thakur):

No matter which of these literary gardeners’ pleasure gardens (vilās

bāṭikā) you enter, you will mainly find in all of them the same banana
trunks, lotus stalks, pomegranate seeds, parrots, cuckoos, wagtails, conch
shells, lotuses, serpents, lions, deer, moons, lovers’ gazes, sidelong
glances, heaving sighs, horripilating, the sending of messengers, moaning,
fainting, dreaming, setting forth for a tryst—only this, nothing else!116

Although the high style, even classicism, of some Chāyāvādī poetry would be
familiar to any lover of rīti literature, Pant, Mahadevi Varma, Nirala, Jai Shankar
Prasad, and other sympathizers of the movement self-identified as Romantics.
They were bringing a new personal voice to poetry that, in the case of both rīti
and reformist literature of the Dvivedī yug, was in their view too mechanistic and
stilted.

A couple of decades after Chāyāvād had run its course, rīti literature would
briefly return to favor—not for writers but for scholars—in a flurry of Hindi
research that took place in the wake of independence. India's freedom from
colonial rule was attended by tragedy and disillusionment in the bloody
aftermath of Partition, but the currents of nationalist optimism, which had been
a defining feature of Hindi literary study for half a century, were a countervailing

Page 31 of 46

buoyant force. The 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s witnessed many advances in research
on the rīti period. New texts had been discovered and granthāvalīs (editions) of
(p.235) old ones continued to be made. The field of Hindi scholarship, which
had scarcely existed even fifty years earlier, was by now a thriving and
substantial enterprise in Indian universities (it would take much longer to
develop in the West). The career of Vishvanathprasad Mishra (1906–82) in
particular illustrates how the study of rīti literature seemed poised for a
remarkable comeback. A talented student of the Braj aficionado Lala
Bhagvandin (along with Ramchandra Shukla, one of two Hindi lecturers
appointed in 1921 when Hindi study was inaugurated at Banaras Hindu
University117), Mishra singlehandedly edited the granthāvalīs of many rīti poets,
including Keshavdas, Bhushan, Bhikharidas, Bodha, Jaswant Singh, and
Padmakar, writing substantial introductions to each. Much of this work has yet
to be superseded. Mishra also wrote a major two-volume literary history: Hindī
sāhitya kā atīt (Hindi's literary past, first published in 1959–60).

A major historiographical overhaul was not on offer, but it was an influential

work, and some of Mishra's ideas about rīti literature proved to have longevity.
Most famously, Mishra proposed that the name rītikāl (rīti period) be changed to
śṛṅgārkāl. He did keep the term rīti, however, using it to frame three
subdivisions of the śṛṅgārkāl. The period's hallmark poetry textbooks were typed
rītibaddh, “bound by convention” or, in other, more enticing words, “classical.”
The remaining poetry could be categorized as either rītisiddh (informed by
classicism) or rītimukt (free from classical influence).118 Mishra's proposed
system had the virtue of recognizing the importance of the classical śṛṅgāra rasa
to the rīti enterprise, but a name change centered on eros was not likely to
advance the cause of recuperating the tradition, for its defining concept was still
susceptible to the same old colonial and nationalist tropes about Indian
decadence. Mishra's system did, however, set the stage for a wider acceptance
of rītimukt poets like Anandghan and Bodha, whose work has since attracted
acclaim for its relative independence from courtly convention, and its personal,
even Romantic, voice. While Mishra is to be credited for his immense labors on
behalf of rīti literature—without his scholarship the present book could certainly
not have been written—he remained deeply troubled by what he saw as the
vilāsitā (hedonism, decadence) of the period.119 One also detects here a
recurrence of the cultural schizophrenia that marred early histories like the
Miśrabandhuvinod: one of rīti literature's greatest advocates on some level
simultaneously disparages it.

The veteran Hindi critic Nagendra, an approximate contemporary of

Vishvanathprasad Mishra who presided over the Hindi department at Delhi
University—one of India's best—in the decades after independence, shows
similar symptoms. In his Rītikāvya kī bhūmikā (Backdrop to rīti literature), first
published in 1949, Nagendra ostensibly set out to restore the tradition to (p.
236) the esteem it had once commanded among cultured people in Hindustan.
Page 32 of 46

He not only countered the misunderstandings that had come to plague this
component of the Brajbhasha past but also, during his chairmanship of the
department, rallied countless Ph.D. students to the task of writing on rīti
subjects.120 Inexplicably, but perhaps inevitably given Hindi's now firm
congruence with the history of the Hindu nation, Nagendra framed rīti literature
in terms of a series of tired arguments about Hindu patan (decline) under
Muslim rule and the lamentable sensuality of sāmantvādī (feudal) cultural life.
Like the Mishra brothers and Dvivedi before him, he wondered why Braj poets
did not employ their pens to more useful ends. In his Rītikāvya kī bhūmikā, he
asked the withering question, “In the end, what did Hindi poets do for two
hundred years?”121

It is Nagendra, I suspect, who bequeathed to us the discussion of the rīti period's

“paristhitiyāṃ” (conditions), which became a staple of historiography and
criticism from the 1970s. The volume on rītibaddh literature in the massive Hindī
sāhitya kā bṛhat itihās (Comprehensive history of Hindi literature), at fifteen
volumes among the longest histories of any literature ever produced, was
compiled under his editorship. Before readers encounter a single rīti poem they
are bombarded by an arsenal of diatribes against India's lamentable medieval
feudal conditions, which are then painstakingly detailed as the purportedly
necessary backdrop for understanding rīti literature. The śṛṅgāra elements of
Braj court poetry are presented not in terms of their congruence with classical
norms but as the actually wayward practices of late Mughal society, when
morality and self-control had sunk to an all-time low.122 Dilating upon the
excesses of Mughal rulers—their supposed obsession with luxury, wine, and
women—and harping on the waning political fortunes of India from the time of
Aurangzeb, who is predictably misrepresented as a cruel, iconoclastic, and
Hindu-hating tyrant, Nagendra invites readers to view rīti literature as the
product of a diseased, moribund culture and could have no other effect than to
predispose them against it.123

Literary histories by the dozens have been written in the ensuing decades, yet
none has attempted to correct the nationalist bias that entered the field of Hindi
a century ago and—or so it often seems—is actually constitutive of it. Even self-
styled “new” theorizations reproduce the old. A Hindī sāhitya kā navīn itihās (A
new history of Hindi literature, 1998) by Lal Sahab Singh, whose title promises
field-changing insights, describes the rīti period as follows:

As far as the social order is concerned, this was through and through an
epoch of terrible decline. It was the heyday of feudalism.… The (p.237)
ruling classes were steeped up to their neck in decadence and luxury, the
greater part of their days spent indulging in wine and women.124

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The paristhitiyāṃ section remains an unshakable feature of rīti literary

criticism.125 The practice of framing rīti literature in this manner is so
widespread that I have actually found myself wondering if Indian Ph.D. advisors
feel compelled to tell their students that they must begin their thesis on a rīti
topic with a discussion of Mughal-period decadence. This relentless,
unquestioning normativity about the early modern Hindi past not only is
historiographically questionable but also harmfully forecloses new research into
fresh conceptual terrain. The study of rīti literature has been trapped by Hindi
textbooks, trapped by historiography, trapped—and this last most cruelly—even
by its admirers.

Conclusion
Nothing that happened to rīti literature in the modern period was a given. The
logic of colonialism (India needed to be rescued from its political and cultural
decline under Mughal rule) and nationalism (literature needed to be more
vigorous, and to serve the Hindu motherland) constructs the story of Hindi's
dramatic literary overhaul as one of necessity. Brajbhasha literary culture
entered the nineteenth century as strong as it had ever been. It was never in
decline, as we know from countless sources: Lallulal, Broughton, Padmakar,
Gokulnath, Sardar Kavi, and many others. Rīti poetry in particular was very
much alive to Harishchandra and the writers of his generation, attracting an
avid readership during the early phase of Hindi print culture. Rīti poets
remained active even into the twentieth century. They wrote some traditional
works, but were also still experimenting with new cultural forms—a sign of
literary vitality by any measure.

There is still probably much that we do not adequately understand about late rīti
writers. For one thing, scholars tend to focus on the literary production of Indian
territory that was under direct British rule, even though many of the princely
states were only sporadically assimilating to colonial trends. Indigenous culture
zones of this type may still have something to teach us about the period. A
recent study of northwestern India shows how Punjabi literature was a largely
unregulated, even subversive circulatory arena outside the control of the Urdu-
language print mechanisms supported by the British.126 Rīti literary culture,
although not demotic in its register and intended audience in the manner of
Punjabi texts, would also have operated beneath the radar of colonialism,
especially in the two-fifths of India that were not under British control. Typically,
(p.238) however, scholars frame the Hindi literature of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries as a call and response between Brajbhasha traditionalism
and Khari Boli modernity. Such conceptual binaries are clearly inadequate.
Although we have only been able to glance at nineteenth-century rīti texts here,
evidence from the poetry of Thakur Jagmohan Singh suggests a far more
complex mode of interaction between the colonial state and “traditionalist”
culture zones than any dyadic analytic could capture.127

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In order to disrupt the neat packaging of Hindi modernity, this chapter has also
called into question cherished notions about literary historiography. In the
nineteenth century, a clearly defined historical account of Hindi literature did
not exist. It had to be invented, and few of the building blocks of this new
construction lay to hand. A centuries-old amorphous mass of diverse texts began
to be conceptualized in unprecedented ways and apportioned to new symbolic
realms. When Hindi was first taken up as a suitable subject for history, the
historiography was already compromised, shaped by the colonial construction of
India's supposed medieval weakness under Mughal rule, a thinly veiled
justification for a British takeover. Colonialist logic operates in full force in
Grierson's treatment of the eighteenth century in The Modern Vernacular
Literature of Hindustan, but the nationalist logic that informs much of the Hindi
historiography that followed is no less skewed. Ramchandra Shukla's
disaggregation on chronological grounds, as found first in Hindī sāhitya kā
itihās, of what were for Brajbhasha two highly synchronous literary trends—
devotional and courtly—is inflected by the high utilitarianism and reformist
spirit of its age rather than by any defensible principle of literary or intellectual
history.

The Hindi public sphere developed dynamically in the early decades of the
twentieth century, and literary history as well as much of Khari Boli's modern
literature and critical apparatus participated in the programmatic discourse of
the nation. In the eyes of Hindi activists, chief among them Mahavir Prasad
Dvivedi, the Brajbhasha kavikul had led the language astray. Aside from
Brajbhasha's putative insufficiencies with respect to grammar and prose genres,
the language also made at least some critics nervous for its lexical impurity. But
“purity” was never a cultural value for Brajbhasha poets. Brajbhasha was
congenitally and joyfully impure—hybrid and multi-registered—in an almost-
direct challenge to Sanskrit with its sanctimonious claims to being an
unadulterated “language of the gods.” Brajbhasha's linguistic diversity was not
just a theoretical liability in the judgment of modernizing Hindi critics; it was
also a practical debility at a time when Hindi and Urdu were increasingly being
carved out into separate domains. Promoting the new Sanskritized Khari Boli
over Brajbhasha in the early twentieth century was perceived as an act of
linguistic nation-building.

(p.239) There were holdouts, to be sure. Defenders of Brajbhasha as a

linguistic medium and those who had a more capacious vision of Hindi's literary
heritage lent their voice to the tumultuous debates of the day. But whatever
resistance, or ambivalence, was in the air, the new vision for standardized,
modernized Hindi won out. The explosive popularity of Premchand's Khari Boli
novels on themes of social uplift and the nation, the continued growth of the
Hindi public sphere, and the rising tide of svadeśī (patriotic) populism under
Gandhi meant that by 1930 there was no turning back.128 Hindi, fully reformed
and donning a new nationalist armor, hardly resembled the language it had been
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even a generation earlier. Some aspects of Brajbhasha textual culture were now
completely suspect. When Hindi became a metonym for the nation, literary
energies, like political ones, were harnessed to the cause of Indian progress, and
bhakti literature seemed on all counts a more relevant and salvageable corpus.
For nationalist thinkers, the ethos of rebelliousness that is prominent in, say,
some nirguṇ sant poetry could be reconfigured in light of more modern struggles
against the British, and made to subserve new democratic political aspirations.
The love of god could be potently redirected toward the motherland. Rīti texts,
however, were constructed as tired relics from the feudal past and the very sign
of the “medieval” Hindi literary heritage, laden with the shame and regret of a
colonized people.

Although nothing can change the fact that Brajbhasha went from being a living
language to a historical relic in the 1920s, the battle for the language's history
can still be fought. The dominance of Khari Boli did not have to entail the
cultural erasure of large swathes of Brajbhasha literature, which is precisely
what we face at present. Many Indians became alienated from their own
regional literary traditions during the colonial period, but the process of
reeducation was nowhere more sweeping than in Hindi circles. During the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the classical tradition of Brajbhasha,
in a manner virtually unique in world literary history, was supplanted by an
entirely different dialect and rendered antiquated within a generation. This
“catastrophic success” in the domain of linguistic and poetic reform meant that
the older language would become increasingly unintelligible to speakers of Khari
Boli Hindi as the decades passed.129 Meanwhile, postcolonial criticism—
otherwise such a dynamic field in Indian studies—has almost completely
bypassed the historiography of precolonial Hindi literature.130 There can be no
serious postcolonialism without a committed engagement with precolonialism.
More than sixty years after decolonization, the study of the classical Hindi past
remains enmeshed in a paradigm of Indian failure so tired, untrue, and
dispiriting that postcolonialists, nationalists, and lovers of India everywhere
should surely be dismayed.

Notes:
(1.) Chandra 1992; Lelyveld 1993; Dalmia 1999; Rai 2001; Blackburn and Dalmia
2004; Stark 2007; Orsini 2009.

(2.) See introduction, n. 21.

(3.) For a dramatic account of the political complexities of the day, see Pinch
2006: 1–5.

(4.) Some scholars, notably R. S. McGregor, find a pattern of diminishing literary

vigor: “Although changes and new developments took place, court poetry during
this long period leaves the impression of a literary culture increasingly static,

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not stimulated by new religious developments, its poets engaged to a large

extent in studying and following models laid down by their predecessors and
finding progressively less scope for innovation” (1984: 172). For a contrasting
view, see the discussion below of early Hindi literary historians Shiv Singh
Sengar and the Mishra brothers.

(5.) On Vrindavandas, see McGregor 1984: 162 and Bangha 2007: 319. The
works of Somnath are collected in Somnāthgranthāvalī.

(6.) See the essays collected in Breckenridge and van der Veer 1993; Cohn 1996.

(7.) See Vedalankar 1969: 28–76.

(8.) McGregor 1974: 68. This discussion of the oeuvre of Lallulal draws
predominantly on the findings of McGregor (1974: 66–68).

(9.) According to McGregor, this work, which was written in a Khari Boli that
preserves some Braj linguistic features, was popular not just among Indians but
also among British civil servants, for whom it served as a Hindi textbook. On the
superseding of earlier Braj Bhāgavata texts by Lallulal's highly successful
printed version, see McGregor 1984: 156.

(10.) Further details about Sundar Kaviray are in chapter 4.

(11.) Broughton 2000: 37–39.

(12.) Other styles that he notes, but does not anthologize, include the “Atunk, or
Bheer” (ātaṅk/bīr), the “Jugt burnun” (jagat-varṇan), and the “Bishnupud,” a
popular Vaishnava song genre. Ibid., 42–43.

(13.) The Brahmans among his troops “not seldom have attained the degree of
Pundit, when they enlist as soldiers in the Company's army, he declares. Ibid., p.
38.

(14.) Ibid., p. 44. Kavitt is both a generic term for poetry and a particular style of
Braj quatrain. A helpful analysis of the contours of the collection is Bangha
2000.

(15.) McGregor, for instance, states, “The educationist Śivprasād Siṃh … is the
first important individual figure in the history of Hindi after the opening years of
the century” (1974: 71). Cf. Stark 2007: 25 n. 30.

(16.) Stark 2007: 49, 59–65. This paragraph and indeed much of my information
about nineteenth-century Hindi printing draws on this valuable book.

(17.) Lakshmisagar Varshney (1963: 73–76) and Bhagvansahay Pachauri (1973:

62–72) have excavated compelling indicators of a large volume of rīti literature

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(including original works and prose commentaries) produced in the first half of
the nineteenth century.

(18.) McGregor strangely excluded rīti poetry from his book on nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Hindi (1974), including even very late British-period
court poets in the volume on premodern Hindi (1984). On the supposedly
retrenched medievalism of most nineteenth-century court poets, see Pachauri
1973: 13–14, 77 (although here the statement is contradicted by the author's
own evidence on the following page); Varshney 1963: 20–22 (again, some
excerpted poems seem to gainsay the argument).

(19.) Late rīti poets are briefly discussed in McGregor 1984: 183–84, 198–203;
Asnani 1997.

(20.) See Pinch 2006, especially pp. 108–47.

(21.) Asibara aṃgarejaiṃ ghali ghali tejaiṃ arigana bhejaiṃ surapura koṃ
(stabbed repeatedly by the finest English sword, the enemy army was dispatched
to heaven), v. 200.

(22.) Further details about Padmakar's career are in Mishra 1959b: 5–79.

(23.) This is one of Padmakar's prakīrṇak (occasional) verses that is neither part
of a prabandha nor a set anthology. Padmākargranthāvalī, p. 311 (prakīrṇak v.
27, quoted in Pachauri 1973: 77). For another of Padmakar's poems that uses
English words with a military resonance, such as “major” and “captain,” see
Telang 1972: 7.

(24.) The issue has been debated, but Ānandraghunandan is considered by some
scholars to be the first modern Hindi drama. See Chhabra 1976; McGregor 1984:
170–71; Stasik 2007. Vishvanath Singh's son Raghuraj Singh (1833–79) was also
a Hindi poet.

(25.) Pachauri 1973: 80; Vidyarthi 1983: 351–63.

(26.) See Varshney 1963: 156–57.

(27.) Continuities between premodern and print-inflected literary tastes can be

traced throughout South Asia. For the Tamil case, see Blackburn 2004. Orsini
(2004a: 435–36) usefully distinguishes between “genres reproduced” and
“genres introduced” in early Indian print culture.

(28.) These details about literary patronage at the Banaras court are derived
from McGregor 1984: 198, 202. Also see Dalmia 1999: 69–71.

(29.) Sardar's commentary on the Kavipriyā was published at least twice, by the
Banaras Raja's own press in 1865 and by Naval Kishore in 1886. See McGregor

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1984: 202 n. 374. On the general popularity of Keshavdas's work in nineteenth-

century print culture, see Stark 2004: 262.

(30.) Some publication details are available in Mishra 1959b: 20–22.

(31.) See Stasik 2007: 363. Maharaja Vishvanath Singh's ṭīkā on Kabir's Bijak
also made it into print in 1883. Stark 2004: 262.

(32.) Stark 2007: 320–21.

(33.) Presses were also purchased by Serfoji II (1805), raja of Tanjore, the nizam
of Hyderabad (1810), and Ghaziuddin Haider of Lucknow (1817). Ibid., 42,

(34.) Stark 2004: 259–63. Cf. Orsini 2004b: 119–20.

(35.) Mir 2006: 420.

(36.) On Bengali literary cosmopolitanism in the modern period, see Kaviraj

2003: 553–54; on the currency of Braj poetry in Bengal during early modern
times, see Chatterjee 2009: 227–28.

(37.) See Kaviraj 1995 and Seely 2004, respectively.

(38.) On the respect accorded to Sanskrit classics by Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi

and other Hindi modernists, see Ramvilas Sharma 1977: 274–77.

(39.) Tharu 1994: 168. A classic illustration of this for Urdu literature is Naim
1984.

(40.) Pritchett 1994: 36.

(41.) Stark 2007: 101.

(42.) Sengupta 1992; Dalmia 1999. Also see Chandra 1992.

(43.) McGregor 1974: 80–82; Sengupta 1992: 1–38.

(44.) Giridhardas, like Vishvanath Singh of Rewa, is another candidate for the
designation “first modern Hindi dramatist,” a title that evidently has multiple
claimants. On Giridhardas, see McGregor 1984: 202. The discussion of
Harishchandra's oeuvre in this paragraph draws mainly on McGregor 1974: 75–
83.

(45.) Of Khari Boli, Grierson (1889: 107) noted, “it has never been successfully
used for poetry. The greatest geniuses have tried, and it has been found wanting
at their hands.”

(46.) Bhāratendu ke nibandh, p. 63.

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(47.) In a prosodic system based on syllable weight, Khari Boli is hindered from
the start by verb forms that end in long vowels (for instance, Khari Boli kartā
instead of Braj karata). Brajbhasha, in contrast, favors short vowels and
breaking up consonant clusters with an epenthetic short “a,” as in parabīna for
prabīna.

(48.) The information in this and the following paragraph is based on the work of
Robert van de Walle 2006.

(49.) On anubhav-siddh as a new literary criterion for Harishchandra, see Dalmia

1999: 280.

(50.) The standard study of this contentious intellectual-historical terrain is King

1999. Cf. Rai 2001.

(51.) The Bhikharidas verse is excerpted below. Sudan's method can be gleaned
from Sujāncaritra, 1.4–9.

(52.) See, respectively, Divakar 1966 and Callewaert 1993.

(53.) The aṣṭachāp poets were Surdas, Krishnadas, Parmananddas, Kumbhandas,

Nanddas, Chaturbhujdas, Chhitsvami, and Govindsvami. See McGregor 1984:
83–88.

(54.) On the Bhaktamāl of Nabhadas, see Hare 2011.

(55.) This point has been made by scholars of other Indian literary traditions. For
the Tamil and Telugu cases, see Rao and Shulman 1999: 9. Frances Pritchett
notes that the tazkirahs memorializing Urdu poets were arranged
chronologically, but this was just one of many organizational strategies (2003:
865–66).

(56.) Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (1995) has pointed out some of the travesties that
attended Urdu writers’ assimilation of the literary-historical model under
colonial conditions.

(57.) On de Tassy's sources (mostly Urdu tazkirahs), see Histoire de la littérature

hindouie et hindoustanie, 1:40–51. Sengar drew on Hindi's voluminous heritage
of anthologies, including the recently published Bhāṣākāvya saṅgrah (1875).
Śivsiṃhsaroj, pp. 2–3; cf. Lutgendorf 1994: 66.

(58.) Garcin de Tassy, for his part, wanted to adopt the new literary-historical
method, but he claimed it would be difficult given the lack of attention to
chronology in his sources. Histoire de la littérature hindouie et hindoustanie,
1:52.

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(59.) (Saṃvat 1700 meṃ … kaviyoṃ ne bhāṣā kāvya ke baṛe-baṛe adbhut granth
banāe. Saṃvat 1800 meṃ jaise acche kavi hue aise kisī saikarā ke bhītar nahiṃ
hue the. Śivsiṃhsaroj, pp. 8–9.) These two centuries are more or less
coextensive with the rīti period as defined by Ramchandra Shukla.

(60.) Note in particular Grierson's impassioned tribute to vernacular language

and literature in the opening to Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan. See
Grierson 1889: x–xi.

(61.) Ibid., pp. 128, 145.

(62.) Ibid., p. xxii.

(63.) Ibid., p. xxii.

(64.) Quoted in Trivedi 2003: 988.

(65.) Noted in Pauwels 2001: 460. For some examples of the kinds of linguistic
standards that Dvivedi imposed, see Mahāvīrprasāddvivedīracnāvalī, 1:452–83.
During the same period, other now-canonical Hindi writers, such as Premchand
and Ashk, were transitioning from Urdu in Nastaliq script to the new Khari Boli
written in Devanagari. See Orsini 2004c: x; Rockwell 2004: 20–22.

(66.) “Yamunā ke kināre-kināre keli-kautuhal kā adbhut-adbhut varṇan bahut ho

cukā.” Mahāvīrprasāddvivedīracnāvalī, 2:49. Many choice quotes from Dvivedi,
who had a particular animus against nāyikābheda, are compiled in Sharma 1977:
270–304.

(67.) Mahāvīrprasāddvivedīracnāvalī, 2:47. Dvivedi was not, of course, the first

to express this criticism. See, for instance, the remarks of the English publisher
Frederic Pincott in 1889, discussed in Ritter 2010: 251–52.

(68.) On the existence of precolonial prose traditions in Hindi, see McGregor

1968 and 1974: 64; Dalmia 1999: 159–60. On the prose traditions of the rītikāl,
see Gautam 1972.

(69.) Gupta 2000: 105.

(70.) Orsini 2002b: 82 (citing Harivamshray Bachchan).

(71.) As noted by Francesca Orsini, Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi (alongside other

stalwart Hindi leader like, Shyamsundar Das and Ramchandra Shukla) was
strongly influenced by English utilitarian thinkers (2002b: 145).

(72.) On the fraught intersection of politics, gender, and language choice in this
period, see Pauwels 2001: 455–59, 465; King 1999: 33–37.

(73.) King 1999: 36 (cited in Pauwels 2001: 455).

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(74.) Mahāvīrprasāddvivedīracnāvalī, 1:125–34.

(75.) Orsini 2002b: 43–48.

(76.) Ibid., 55–57.

(77.) On the endurance of Brajbhasha in this period, see McGregor 1974: 98–
111.

(78.) Ritter 2010: 269–70.

(79.) Ritter 2004: 417. Cf. Schomer 1998: 10.

(80.) For more details about their contributions to the Hindi public sphere and
their complex social location in both princely India and the colonial civil service,
see Gaeffke 1978: 20; Orsini 2002b: 408–9; Busch 2010c.

(81.) Miśrabandhuvinod, 1:30–31.

(82.) Miśrabandhuvinod, 1:162–63.

(83.) Hindī navratna, p. 32.

(84.) Schomer 1998: 57 n. 75 (cited in Orsini 2002b: 144).

(85.) Miśrabandhuvinod, 2:679.

(86.) Cf. Chandra 1992: 17–70.

(87.) Faruqi 1995: 90.

(88.) Orsini 2002b: 40–44, 101–11. Orsini also exposes the discrepancy between
officially approved, “serious” Hindi and what people actually read and enjoyed
(e.g., 2002b: 6, 7, 12).

(89.) A historiographical objection to sneaking Apabhramsha in under the rubric

of Hindi is raised in Busch 2011.

(90.) An interested reader might look to discussions by Ramvilas Sharma (1973);

Krishna Dhavan (1980); Mahendrapal Sharma (1986); Bachchan Singh (1989);
Milind Wakankar (2002).

(91.) Shukla 1994: 1.

(92.) Their periodization is as follows: “the Dawn of Hindi” (650–1286), “the

Second Stage” (1286–1387), “Early Mediaeval Hindi” (1387–1503), “Advanced
Mediaeval Hindi” (1503–1623), “Early Adorned Hindi” (1623–1733), “Advanced
Adorned Hindi” (1733–1832)—these last two approximately designating rīti

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literature—followed by “The Transition” (1832–1868) and “Modern Hindi” (from

1868). Miśrabandhuvinod, 1:v.

(93.) Shukla 1994: 114–19. For further discussion of Shukla's preposterous

handling of Keshavdas, see Pachauri 2002: 143–47.

(94.) Shukla 1994: 133. Vishvanathprasad Mishra's account of Brajbhasha's

linguistic and grammatical variation, considered perfectly reasonable in a
transregional language, is far more balanced. See Mishra 1965a: 152–63.

(95.) In an uncharacteristically generous spirit, at one juncture he says, “aise

saras aur manohar udāharaṇ saṃskṛt ke sāre lakṣaṇoṃ se cunkar ikaṭhṭha
kareṃ to bhī unkī itnī adhik saṃkhyā na hogī” (Even if one could choose from all
of the Sanskrit [verses on these] literary topics the number of charming,
beautiful examples would not exceed those to be found in Hindi). Shukla 1994:
131.

(96.) He also dignified the classical turn in Hindi literature with the title
“Augustan age.” Grierson 1889: xxi, 58.

(97.) Cf. the remarks of Mahendrapal Sharma (1986: 109–10).

(98.) Shukla 1994: 129–31.

(99.) Tulsi's poetry had already been much acclaimed in Orientalist circles for its
religious message. See Lutgendorf 1991: 29. Mahavir Prasad Dvivedi had
exalted Sur and Tulsi above court poets in a review of the Mishra brothers’ Hindī
navratna published in his journal Sarasvatī in 1912 (Sharma 1977: 275–76). For
an unflattering depiction of Keshavdas in light of his bhakti contemporaries, see
Mahāvīrprasāddvivedīracnāvalī, 2:151.

(100.) These citations are in chapters 1, 4, and 3, respectively.

(101.) This verse is modified from the translation excerpted and elucidated in
Bangha 2005: 20–24 (note especially his caution about anachronistic
interpretations based on modern stigmatizations of rīti literature).

(102.) See Kāvyanirṇay, 1.8 and McGregor 2003: 941–42.

(103.) Kāvyanirṇay, 1.16–17.

(104.) Thus, the eighteenth-century poet Anandghan, who since Shukla's time
would have to be considered a rīti poet on the basis of his date, moved from
court to temple in the course of his literary career, engendering two separate rīti
and bhakti literary personas. See Bangha 2001: 180–89. Keshavdas's Rasikpriyā,
as noted in chapter 1, is simultaneously a rīti and a bhakti work. On the bhakti
and rīti registers of Bihari's poetry, which operate in tandem, see Snell 1994b.

Page 43 of 46

(105.) The Mishra brothers, writing in 1913, contested the idea of Indian
decline, suggesting the notion was common in their day. See the epigraph to this
chapter, excerpted from Miśrabandhuvinod, pp. 28, 31 (the full passage is
translated in Busch 2010c). Other attestations could be given, such as the
infamous remarks by Lord Minto recorded in this chapter's other epigraph (cited
in Majumdar 1941: 223). An account of Hindi's literary past by Frank Keay, a
British missionary writing in 1920 who was evidently much influenced by
Grierson, introduces his chapter ten on “the modern period (from 1800)” with
remarks such as, “The eighteenth century had been largely a time of literary
dearth, but a renascence now began…. The peace and security which the British
rule brought to India, after the long period of internecine strife and disorder
through which the country had been passing, also gave the genius of Hindi
literature the opportunity of reasserting itself, and of recovering from the decay
into which it had fallen in the eighteenth century.” Keay 1920: 87.

(106.) Chatterjee 1993a: 92–106.

(107.) On Hindi writers’ increasing engagement with historical subjects during

this period, see Orsini 2002b: 175–224.

(108.) Orsini notes that Maithilisharan Gupta traced Indian decadence all the
way back to the Mahābhārata war. Ibid., 185–86. Bankimchandra, for his part,
blamed Mughals but not Pathans, a nuance illustrating that as late as the 1880s
the Muslim other was not a monolithic construction. See Chatterjee 1993a: 113–
15.

(109.) Gupta 2000; cf. Stark 2007: 90–100.

(110.) On the debates about educating women colonial India, see Chatterjee
1993a: 116–34; Sangari 2002: 96–163. Cf. Pachauri 2001: 184–90.

(111.) See Dalmia 1999: 247.

(112.) See Gupta 2000: 95–105. But, as she remarks in the conclusion (pp. 117–
18), while Brahmanical patriarchy won out in official discourse, “dirty” literature
and erotic manuals continued to be wildly popular throughout the Dvivedi
period.

(113.) Chatterjee 1993a: 119–21.

(114.) As noted by Harish Trivedi, the nationalist poet Maithilisharan Gupta

exhibited a striking blend of patriotism and bhakti in his famous poem Sāket
(2003: 990). Hariaudh's Priyāpravās was mentioned above as an instance of
retooling bhakti themes in the service of nationalism. Patriotism was also a
theme of some of Harischandra's bhakti poems. See Chandra 1992: 25.

Page 44 of 46

(115.) See Schomer 1998: 1–123; for a more recent study of the Chāyāvād
movement, see Green 2008.

(116.) Pant 1963: 21–22 (translation slightly modified from the citation in
Bangha 2005: 25).

(117.) Orsini 2002b: 106–7.

(118.) The argument for a śṛṅgārkāl is detailed in Mishra 1966: 374–400. The
debates on both the naming practices and periodization of Hindi literary
historians are helpfully discussed in Mahendrakumar 1995: 277–80; Bangha
2005: 16–19.

(119.) Pachauri 2002: 139.

(120.) Pachauri 2001: 183.

(121.) “Ākhir pūre do sau varṣ tak hindī ke kaviyoṃ ne kiyā hī kyā?” (cited in
ibid., p. 184).

(122.) Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (1999: 16) has noted a similarly absurd
misreading of poetic motif as biography in the case of a love poem written by the
Urdu poet Mir when he was nearly 88 years old.

(123.) Nagendra 1973: 3–23. Some of the more damaging subtitles of the section
include “rājnītik aur sāmājik durvyavasthā” (political and social upheaval) and
“vilāspradhān jīvandarśan tathā patanonmukh yugdharm” (decadent lifestyles
and an epoch characterized by decline morality). The specific passage was
written by Savitri Sinha but it was presumably Nagendra's choice to begin the
volume in this fashion, since a shorter digest of Indian literary history produced
under his co-editorship the same year has a similar section (this one credited to
one Mahendrakumar). See Nagendra and Gupta 1995: 281–87.

(124.) Singh 1998: 98.

(125.) Representative are Cheler 1973: 1–20; Singh 1999: 21–27. Even a very
recent study of the Mughal poet Sundar, while a welcome contribution to
scholarship in many respects, regrets the vilāsitāpūrṇ vātāvaraṇ (environment
overly given to hedonism) of the Mughal courts, which is held up as a reason for
the erotic focus and even, improbably, the occasional intellectual lapses of the
writer. See Yadav 2008: 7.

(126.) Mir 2006.

(127.) Also consider how Harishchandra still had access to precolonial practices
and responded dynamically to colonial ones, simultaneously laying the grounds

Page 45 of 46

for what Vasudha Dalmia sees as a “third idiom of Indian nationalist modernity
(1999: 13–20). Cf. Chandra 1992.

(128.) Insightful discussions of the Hindi public sphere and Premchand's oeuvre
are Orsini 2002b and 2004c, respectively.

(129.) Geoffrey Lewis (1999) uses the term “catastrophic success” for the
somewhat comparable case of Turkish language reform in the same period,
which saw the expunging of Ottoman in favor of barely comprehensible
neologisms, not to mention the almost-immediate alienation of modern readers
from a rich textual heritage developed over centuries.

(130.) Notable exceptions include recent studies by Charu Gupta (2000),

Sudhish Pachauri (2001, 2002), and Purushottam Agrawal (2009a).

Access brought to you by:

Page 46 of 46

Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

Conclusion
Remembering Things Past

Allison Busch

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter briefly sums up some of the central findings of the book, while also
making a larger argument about the value—indeed the necessity—of studying
and reflecting on the Hindi literary past. Modern nationalism has been such a
defining force in the field of Hindi literature that divergent narratives, such as
the story of Hindi’s Mughal and Muslim past foregrounded here, have been
almost completely foreclosed. The revisionist history outlined in this book
suggests that fresh, postcolonial perspectives on the premodern Hindi archive
are not only possible but essential for the health of literary studies and also have
the potential to define new areas of Indian intellectual and social history. It is
also advocated that precolonialism be a part of postcolonialism.

Keywords: nationalism, Hindi literature, historiography, intellectual history, social history,

postcolonialism

Reckoning Gains and Losses: Presentism in Hindi Studies

Various filters cloud our vision when we look back at the Hindi literature of
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North India, the period designated since
Ramchandra Shukla's day by the term rīti. Monumental ruptures have severed
many links with India's premodern literary past and changed fundamentally the
way it is viewed. The very category “Hindi literature” was born in the modern
period, under the peculiarly entwined forces of colonialism and nationalism.
Simultaneously engendered was an account of what Hindi literature was and
how it came to be, a process that gave narrative shape to something much

Page 1 of 10

larger. At the turn of the twentieth century—in many places in the world—
speaking of a literature was a synecdochic enterprise. Speaking of Hindi
literature in particular meant speaking of the trajectory of the Indian people:
their past, their present, and—perhaps most crucially for a country of colonized
subjects—their future, a time when they could imagine themselves free from the
supposed weaknesses that had allowed the country to be taken over by a foreign
power in the first place.

In this book, I have tried to assay the sufficiency of this narrative with specific
reference to the late precolonial past. Hindi literature as a field of academic
study was created under conditions that were especially fraught, and many
powerful ideas that have come to dominate it are not absolute but highly
contingent truths with a (p.241) peculiar sociohistorical provenance. Hindi
literary history came into being in a fight against both the colonizers and Muslim
advocates of Urdu. Is it Hindi's destiny to be forever hobbled by its nationalist
origins? Although much newness has entered the contemporary literary field in
recent decades, surprisingly little has changed in the core approaches to
precolonial literature.

According to the logic of colonialism and nationalism, the story of Hindi should
be framed as the story of Indian progress. Replacing the weak, depleted
Brajbhasha, Hindi was finally able to attain a vigorous embodiment and forward-
looking demeanor. Reformist poets of the Dvivedī yug were conscripted into the
ideological army that would carry out its great leap forward. Hindi gained; the
nation gained. It is not my point here to dispute the achievements of the
twentieth and now twenty-first centuries. They are many; indeed, there is much
that any citizen of any nation in the world could envy about the dynamism and
creativity of modern Hindi literary life. Hindi literature continued to be cross-
pollinated with genres from the West, and not just those of the colonial masters,
long after the initial reformist moment: great works of European literature were
translated into Hindi and the writings of modernists such as Nirmal Verma were
conscious, hybridizing engagements with the West, not imitations. As this study
has suggested throughout, literary imitation is always a dynamic process.1 It is
right to frame all of this as a gain for Hindi. Hindi writers have been
progressivists, Romantics, experimentalists. In the aftermath of Partition, some
became high modernists, when the deep cynicism and alienation of nayī kahānī
writers captured perfectly the anxieties and contradictions of deracinated urban
existence. In the six decades since, Hindi writers have shown themselves to be
admirably agile at inhabiting both the deśī (local) and the mārga (cosmopolitan)
worlds, whether cultivating āṃcalik (regional) styles, encompassing new voices
through Dalit or feminist literature, or engaging the modes of global English (the
new mārga).

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When we speak of Hindi modernity, we always speak of gain, and there are many
reasons why we should. I want, nonetheless, to speak of loss. The Hindi literary
community of today has lost access to much of its past, which is either
inadequately studied or alarmingly misrepresented (the two problems are
related). It is not a sign of intellectual health to consign one's classical past to
oblivion or to allow colonial error to reign long after independence. Nowadays,
for many students and researchers the story of Hindi starts in the middle of the
nineteenth century and is inextricably linked to India's rebellion against its
colonial masters. It is the story of Khari Boli and the Hindi sphere's encounter
with the West, followed by the struggle for Indian nationhood. Hindi literature
did not begin in the nineteenth century. It is hard to say when it did—in part
because we can always dispute what precisely we mean by “Hindi,” or indeed
(p.242) by “literature” or “beginning”—but for much responsible
historiography, the beautiful Avadhi tradition of kāvya cultivated by Sufi writers,
which started by the fourteenth century, has been a sensible place to put this
inauguration; another kind of Hindi, the tradition of courtly Brajbhasha, began
some two centuries later. But the story of Hindi is decidedly not the triumphalist
story of the nation, of the struggles of its Hindu citizens acting purposefully to
revive their traditions after a Muslim (and British) interregnum despoiled them.

When we tell the story of Hindi as the gainful trek to nationhood and modernity
—emphasizing the crucial literary, moral, developmental, and civilizational
components that Brajbhasha lacked, which were restored through a vigorous
colonial and nationalist regimen—we lose any and all nuance about its past.2
Brajbhasha is not just a foil for the narrative of Hindi uplift, no more than rīti
should be a foil for bhakti. These are sheer caricatures, which efface the
historical and aesthetic complexity of literary premodernity. We cannot change
the fact that during the Dvivedi period Brajbhasha was definitively superseded
by Khari Boli Hindi, or that rīti literature was repudiated as a medieval, decadent
tradition. We can, however, be cognizant of the colonial and nationalist
conditions that governed the process. More important, we can choose to
remember, and not to forget, the centuries of literary activity that preceded
British colonialism—all of them, not just the parts of the Hindi heritage that
resonate most readily with modern concerns.3 The texts from this period have a
rich and deeply layered story to tell.

Hindi's lost pasts

The Hindi pasts are of course many. The most conspicuous loss is Hindi's early
modern past. Not all of it, to be sure—the bhakti past did have many heroes who
could be recuperated during the Hindi renaissance—poet-bhaktas like Tulsi and
Sur; the “good Muslims” Kabir and Raskhan; the beleaguered but brave Mira,
honored feminist avant la lettre.4 What we do not have so readily available is
Hindi's courtly past, its Mughal past, and—dare I say it?—its Muslim past. These
have always been a poor archive for the strategists of nationalist mythmaking.

Page 3 of 10

When I began this book, shockingly little was available to me beyond a few stale
stereotypes about Hindi court literature produced in the period from 1560 to
1860. There were annotated editions of rīti literature and detailed studies of
Hindi alaṅkāraśāstra,5 but scholars have generally not posed the kinds of
questions that could so profitably be asked, questions that bear critically on
poetry (p.243) and aesthetic concerns but also on social, intellectual, and
political history. In loss, then, there is the potential for gain.

I have tried to demonstrate what we gain from studying the Hindi past of the
Mughal period, and its corollary, what we lose by failing to understand it. Some
scholars of postcolonialism (who tend not to read precolonial sources in Indian
languages) might hold that the precolonial past is forever unknowable because
of the epistemic ruptures that attended India's colonization. Some postcolonial
theory also tends to be suspicious of textual forms of knowledge because
colonial-period Orientalists privileged texts over practices (especially oral
literary practices). Indians were of course great textualizers for two millennia
before the colonizers came—both the Sanskrit and rīti literary cultures are
ample testimony to this—and it can hardly be sound intellectual-historical
method not to weigh the precolonial evidence. Moreover, what could be more
effective in countering India's cultural denigration under colonialism or in
coming to terms with its devastating epistemological shifts than a rich,
historically nuanced account of India's textual cultures before the colonizers
arrived? To be sure, such nuance is not easily acquired because the Hindi
literary archive challenges would-be researchers in everything from
intelligibility to sheer accessibility. But knowledge, I would say, is always better
than ignorance, remembering is better than forgetting, and trying to piece
together a literary past is better than walking away from it. Or at least these are
some of the premises that animated me in my mission to write this book.

As long as entire centuries of literary creation continue to be rejected as an

andhkār yug (benighted time), there is only so much a reconstructive effort like
this one can hope to achieve. We need substantial philological and manuscript
work; new texts need to be published and older ones reprinted;6 we need
translations—almost none of any of this literature is available in any European-
or Indian-language translation. The Indian textbooks and curricula that
represent rīti literature in such a demeaning light should be overhauled. But
even without a major outlay of resources and infrastructural shifts in the literary
field, we can understand a satisfying amount about Hindi poets in the centuries
before colonialism if we simply rake away some of the dead undergrowth of
colonial and nationalist thought. If we stop conceiving of Mughal and Rajput
courts as sites of shame and decadence with only rare moments of absolution—
let us call them instances of Akbarian (or indeed Rana Pratapian) exceptionalism
—then the presuppositions about Indian deficiency that have plagued most of
the historiography of the period fall away. If we take away the end point of

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colonialism, a rather vast expanse opens up before us. Let me propose how we
might begin to repopulate this cultural and historiographical landscape.

(p.244) Toward a New Literary, Intellectual, and Social History of Hindi

Court Culture
Unsurprisingly, the premodern history of India's rāṣṭrabhāṣā (national language)
looks completely different if we do not overdetermine the narrative as a story of
failure. And the data presented in this book do not support such a narrative.
When we set out to understand the texts and actions of rīti poets on their own
terms instead of retrofitting modern, anachronistic ones, we find many stories of
astonishing and enduring success.

Take the life and work of the poet Keshavdas. He was not the derivative, cold-
hearted character that modern scholars too often say he was. What a
devastating misunderstanding, and a grave injustice to Hindi's preeminent
classical poet. Keshavdas, heir to a long tradition of Sanskrit learning, guided
Brajbhasha, the literary language of his day, down a new, classicizing path. And
it is in part because he did so that Brajbhasha—and by extension Hindi—came to
have the extraordinary career that it did. He took a language predominantly
cultivated by Vaishnava hymnists, enriched it with the treasures of Sanskrit
kāvya style, and presented his innovative works to his Orchha (and eventually, it
seems, Mughal) patrons. Brajbhasha literature decisively entered the domain of
kings. And within a few decades, kings could not be kings without it.

These new social uses of the language—the linking of Braj aesthetics with the
politics and court culture of Mughal India—should not be seen as some kind of
wrong turn in Hindi's developmental path, and they will continue to be seen as
such unless we relinquish naϯve, economist constructions of literary life. We
observe instead a language and literary culture being spectacularly enriched
upon coming into contact with varied groups of connoisseurs and patrons.
Earlier scholars have rightly stressed that Brajbhasha literary culture was an
important spiritual domain of the early modern period; it was also an aesthetic
and political resource. This was the case in both Mughal and Rajput court
settings.

Because the career of Keshavdas commenced at the moment that Mughal power
in Bundelkhand commenced, it is difficult to determine whether he had any role
in transmitting rīti literary styles to the Mughal court. It is equally, if not more
plausible that the refined culture of the Mughals played a decisive role in
spurring local courts like that of Orchha toward new modes of literary elegance.
Keshavdas may or may not have visited Agra, but in his last work, the
Jahāngīrjascandrikā of 1612, he tells us that he performed for the Mughal
emperor. He also experimented with new types of quasi Persianized Braj,
creatively adapting exogenous words into a Hindi milieu.

Page 5 of 10

(p.245) There is no good reason to doubt that Keshavdas visited Jahangir's

court but, as is the case with so much of the premodern Hindi past, we know too
little for a fact. However, this past still has much to teach us. To study the works
of Keshavdas and his successors is to observe new aesthetic worlds in the
making. We perceive a lively engagement of court intellectuals with the
spirituality of bhakti; we also see them trying to make sense of this world. The
oeuvre of Keshavdas, like rīti literature more generally, offers a chance to study
cultures at the point where they intersect. We see Brajbhasha interacting with
Sanskrit, but also with Persian, as poets and their patrons encountered new
realms of sociolinguistic difference and entered new zones of political and
cultural contact. Tracking the development of Brajbhasha as a court language
opens up access to an unfamiliar prenationalist world in which Hindus and
Muslims, not to mention Jains and Sikhs (and many others), shared a literary
language and aesthetic for some of their most important cultural needs.

These zones of epistemic difference, though no less difficult to access than the
frequently elusive lives of many of the poets themselves, are one of the most
precious gifts that India's precolonial literary record can offer. Hindi students of
today might ask themselves, “What do I have to learn from hundreds of
centuries-old treatises on literary theory or the social history of writers in
Mughal-period courts?” I would venture that not to study premodern literature
with thought and care is to miss a chance to learn something important about
past humanity. To be richly human is to experience many layers of history, not to
remain content with the familiar patterns one already knows. The great works of
the past—the well-known classical traditions of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, but
also, I would venture, the Braj classics—can and should still animate readers
today. These texts are not just repositories of the arcana of past history, but are
an extraordinary opportunity to converse with those who lived and thought
before us. Quite aside from everything we stand to gain from a study of rīti
literature—the joys of reading beautiful poetry, learning about the richly
multicultural patronage contexts or the mechanisms of poetic performance and
manuscript circulation in a preprint society—we gain access to past thought-
worlds and unfamiliar modes of political life and sociality, including aesthetic
processes of political incorporation and the importance of connoisseurship to
community formation. The reason that present-day constructions of rīti
literature's madhyakālīntā (medievalism) are so disabling is that they operate
from within the predictable logic of modernity discourse, where there is no
conceptual room for the unpredictable, un-pregiven facets of past forms of
cultural expression and belonging.

(p.246) As much as I have intended to showcase the ways of thinking and

being of the past, to an extent the questions I have posed of the Brajbhasha
literary tradition remain those of a modern interlocutor. When I have sought to
intervene in Hindi literary historiography or to complicate the supposedly
airtight relationship between premodern literary and religious life (showcasing
Page 6 of 10

instead Brajbhasha's rich aesthetic and political life), or wondered why rīti
literature has rarely been viewed positively for a classicism that parallels
cultural developments considered highpoints in early modern European literary
history, the questions I have brought to the Braj corpus were brought along in
advance, and they were indubitably questions that demanded to be asked. But
equally interesting to me at the conclusion of this research project is to reflect
on the answers that Brajbhasha literature gave to questions I never intended to
ask in the first place.7

The most startling discoveries for me were made when the literary-historical
record spoke of its own accord. For example, I had never conceived of making an
argument for the independence of Brajbhasha literary theory from its Sanskrit
source material—which turned out to be a central tenet of chapter 3. Shukla's
stance on this subject, as dominant in the historiography of the period as it is
damaging to it, could not have given me access to that research question. And
yet a very large chorus of authors spoke from across the centuries, proclaiming
that they had written their works “apanī mati anusāra”—according to their own
understanding. The shape this understanding took does not mesh very well with
modern concepts of originality, and is one reason rīti writers have been
consistently denigrated as mere imitators of classical authority. It therefore
became important to me as a scholar to counter that anachronistic construction,
driven by modernist presuppositions, by not only tapping into but also actually
privileging a premodern Indian perspective on how scholarly creativity works.
From this perspective, the writings of rīti intellectuals are a realm of almost-
complete alterity. For them change was something that needed to be managed.
Not all cultural systems work according to a progressivist logic: some are
considered just fine as they are. The point to cultural creation, then, is not to
effect change but to enhance stability.8 Work that proceeds according to the
logic of managing change is not the work of inferior minds; it simply operates
differently. The ability to appreciate and theorize profound cultural and
conceptual difference is just one of many lessons to be learned from listening to
rīti poets.

In fact, many of the arguments of this book have come to me through listening.
By listening to rīti writers I understood the importance of the kavikul, the broad-
based literary community that was critical to their identity as writers and to the
flourishing of a Hindi poetry of kings in the early modern period. (p.247) I also
learned all kinds of unexpected things about the literary life of Brajbhasha at the
Mughal court. At least as judged from its name, Brajbhasha was supposed to be
a Hindu language—I never set out to prove that it had a major, perhaps decisive,
Mughal component. Nor did I expect to find Persian to be any kind of a resource
for learning about Brajbhasha literary creativity. I had no idea that Braj was so
intimately tied to the political and aesthetic programs of regional kings, so much
so that it demands to be seen in a new light as a critical domain of Rajput
literature. The evidence itself pointed in many unexpected directions. Learning
Page 7 of 10

things you did not set out to learn is exciting for any researcher, no doubt, but
there is something particularly thrilling about performing an archaeology of
culture—accessing the social, intellectual, and literary lives of people from the
past.

There are many more questions of rīti literary culture churned up in the course
of my research that I was never able to satisfactorily address. We have a long
way to go toward understanding the different conceptual and political spaces of
Brajbhasha and the complex premodern literary values that underwrote this
dynamic tradition. We have much yet to learn about the social history of these
poets. Some things will forever remain obscure about people who were in many
cases constitutionally averse to self-celebration, but some of their story can
perhaps be still reconstructed by putting Persian and Hindi sources in dialogue.
Persian was once widely known to educated Hindus, but that has not been the
case for a century or so, which means that Hindi scholars working today (who
tend to use only Hindi sources) are missing essential components of the archive.
I have also not been able to treat in any serious way the countless Brajbhasha
texts that circulated to Punjab, or Gujarat, or Bengal, as Sikhs, Jain merchants,
and all those who aspired to courtliness partook of its literary cachet. The world
of Brajbhasha is thus even more transregional, multicultural, and multi-
confessional than could adequately be captured in a single book, in this case one
primarily focused on courtly communities during the height of Mughal rule.

Nor could I do full justice to the staggering multidisciplinarity of Brajbhasha, a

signal characteristic of the tradition that has been denied for more than one
hundred years. Aside from serving as a vehicle for spiritual discourse, politics,
history, and literary theory, Brajbhasha was also widely used for treatises on
astrology, medicine, equestrian science, and—even pākaśāstra (the science of
cooking). We know almost nothing about any of this material and there is a
considerable volume of it. It may be that there is no great intellectual revolution
to be discovered in this archive (at least no revolution as defined by us
moderns), no seventeenth-century Indian renaissance that preceded the so-
called colonial one in the nineteenth century. But we should recognize that until
(p.248) scholars read and publish the vast quantities of early modern Hindi
texts that lie in Indian archives, we really do not know what we have and do not
have. Some of this material will almost certainly change the way we think about
the Mughal-period Hindi past. At the very least we could reconstruct more of
India's intellectual and social history. When we frame Brajbhasha textual culture
as primarily either Vaishnava or belletristic, as the categories of bhakti and rīti
proposed by Shukla constrain it to be, we are failing to hear many of the voices
—of scientists or intellectuals or historians—of the Hindi past.9 Other important
voices are those of late rīti writers. If the antecedent period is anything to go by,
the courtly texts produced in the early days of colonialism—a corpus that has not
been adequately studied—will yield insights we have not even begun to imagine.

Page 8 of 10

But it is for the questions I do not even know yet to ask that I will continue to
listen to, and learn from, the Hindi past.

Notes:
(1.) On the creative engagements of Indian writers with Western genres, see
Mukherjee 1985; Trivedi 1994.

(2.) The essays collected in Orsini, ed. 2010 are an attempt to map out some of
the Hindi-Urdu traditions obscured by modern nationalist perspectives.

(3.) I know that I also speak for some Hindi scholars working in India. See the
poignant cri de coeur about the erosion of skills in classical Hindi of Kishorilal
(1991: 11–12), whose kind mentorship and tireless editing of rīti texts have
certainly been conditions of possibility for this book. Ramanand Sharma and
several of his students have also been actively working to prevent the loss of
knowledge about the literary past. In his words, “madhyakālīn kāvya vilupt hone
se bac jāye” (may medieval literature be saved from extinction). Sharma 2008: 2.
Cf. Tandon 2002.

(4.) The biographical details of most of these bhakti figures have been heavily
mythologized, their historical lives forever now unknowable, but their poetry is
nonetheless still acclaimed.

(5.) See chapter 3 n. 6.

(6.) It is impossible, for instance, to reconcile the colossal importance of a

seventeenth-century author such as Chintamani Tripathi, a figure frequently
referenced in this book, with the abysmal publishing record of his oeuvre.
Neither his Rasvilās, which may have been written for Shah Jahan, nor his
Bhāṣāpiṅgal, written for Shahji Bhonsle, Shivaji's father, has ever been
published. The only text of his ever to be formally published, his Śṛṅgārmañjarī,
eluded my search in both Indian and Western libraries for years before I was
able to obtain a photocopy from the Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan of Allahabad. The
sole work of this author that is available outside India—and that only in
microfilm—is a lithograph printed in 1875 of the Kavikulkalptaru.

(7.) The Romanist Erich Auerbach reminds us that the goal is not so much for us
to speak for the premodern texts that we study but to allow the texts to speak
for themselves: “The starting point should not be a category which we ourselves
impose on the material, to which the material must be fitted, but a characteristic
found in the subject itself, essential to its history, which, when stressed and
developed, clarifies the subject matter in its particularity and other topics in
relation to it” (1965: 19).

Page 9 of 10

(8.) This is consistent with the arguments of Bronner and Tubb (2008), who have
studied the works of early modern Sanskrit ālaṅkārikas and find that “[t]he role
of the new poetician is not to ruffle the body of analysis but to redeem it; to turn
back to the history of his tradition and rescue from it what is already there”;
many intellectuals of the past saw “no need for an overall theoretical revolution
but rather for a kind of renovation” (630, 631).

(9.) Sudhakar Pandey (1972: 79–81), rare among Braj scholars in treating an
astrology text by the Bharatpur court writer Somnath, long ago pointed out that
Braj textual culture is far more encompassing than the realms of devotional and
literary texts. Also see chap. 3, n. 74.

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Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

(p.249) Glossary
adbhuta (rasa) – wonder
adhama – “worst,” a common term in Indic classification systems; also
irascible woman (adhamā)
adhīrā nāyikā – a volatile woman who is quick to anger
ādhunik – modern
ādhuniktā – modernity
ajñātayauvanā nāyikā – a woman so naϯve that she does not know
about puberty or lovemaking
ālambana vibhāva – underlying cause (of literary emotion)
alaṅkāra – lit., “ornament”; figure of speech
alaṅkāraśāstra – lit., “the science of ornament”; rhetoric, tropology
ālaṅkārika – rhetorician
ananvaya alaṅkāra – trope of incomparability
Apabhramsha – literary language of ancient and medieval India
apabhraṣṭa – corrupted
aṣṭachāp – lit., “eight seals”; the canonical eight poets of the
Vallabhan sampradāy
aṣṭanāyikābheda – a popular eightfold classification of female
characters
bārah-māsā – lament over twelve months, an Indic genre
barvai – short couplet
bhajan – devotional song
bhakta – devotee
bhakti – devotion, devotional
bhaktikāl – era of devotion
bhāṣā/Bhakha/Bhasha – lit., “language”; vernacular language
(p.250) bhāṣā kavi – vernacular poet
Bhat – traditional bard (especially in Rajasthan)

Page 1 of 6

bhaya (rasa) – fear

bheda – lit., "type" organizing category
bībhatsa (rasa) – the repugnant
bishnupad – songs about Vishnu
bolī– dialect
Braj – area encompassing the towns of Mathura and Vrindavan (in
modern Uttar Pradesh); also shorthand for “Brajbhasha”
Braj maṇḍal – area in the vicinity of the towns of Mathura and
Vrindavan, Vaishnava sacred sites
Brajbhasha – literary dialect of classical Hindi
carita – idealized biography of an exemplary figure
caupāī – popular Hindi quatrain
chāp – “stamp” or signature, pen name (also takhalluṣ)
chappay – sextet
Chāyāvād – Hindi Romanticism
Dalit – lit., “crushed”; designation adopted in the twentieth century
by members of communities considered ritually impure and
untouchable in the Brahmanical worldview
dāna – generosity, charity
darbār – royal court
daśā – “state,” one of the canonical moods suffered by separated
lovers
devavāṇī – lit., “language of the gods”; Sanskrit; also devabāni,
suravāṇī
dharma – duty, morality
dhīrādhīrā nāyikā – a woman who wavers between volatility and self-
possession
dhīrā nāyikā – a woman who is self-possessed when expressing anger
dhrupad – genre of singing in Hindustani classical music
dhvani – “suggestion,” an important hermeneutic concept in classical
Indian poetics
dīvān – collection of poems
diwan – governor, administrative officer
dohā – couplet, a signature Hindi meter
doṣa – flaw, a technical term from classical Indian poetics
Dvivedī yug – Dvivedi period
farmān – imperial command
firan˙gī – foreigner
gopī – milkmaiden of Braj
guṇa – phonological principle, a technical term from classical Indian
poetics
gunī/gunin – man/men of talent; court professional, from Sanskrit
guṇī
gurumāna – serious jealous rage

Page 2 of 6

hāsa (rasa) – the comic

Hijri – the Islamic calendar
Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan – Hindi Literary Society
hit – love
jāgīrdār – holder of land-revenue assignment
kalāvant – singer
kaliyuga – the last of four progressively worse cycles through which
humanity passes
karuṇā/karuṇa rasa – sorrow; the sorrowful sentiment”
kavi – poet
(p.251) kavikul – lit., “family of poets”; literary community
kavi-praśaṃsā – ode to past poets
kavirāy – king of poets (a royal title)
kavitt – one of two quatrain styles (the other is savaiyā) widely found
in rīti poetry
kavivaṃśa – poet's lineage
kāvya – (formal) poetry
kāvyalakṣaṇ – definition of poetry, also kāvyalakṣaṇa
kāvya prayojana – purposes of poetry
Kayasth – a caste associated with literacy and learning, especially in
the Mughal period
khānqāh – Sufi residential community
Khari Boli – lit., “current speech”; modern standard Hindi
kiṃvadantiyāṃ – folk legends
kuṇḍaliyā – a Braj sextet
lakṣaṇ – definition
lalita nāyaka – romantic hero
mādhurya – sweetness; one of the guṇas in Sanskrit poetics; a
Gaudiya vision of divine love
madhyakāl – medieval period
madhyama – “middling,” a common term used in Indic classification
systems
mahākāvya – courtly epic
maḥfil – gathering of poets
māna – jealous rage, a technical term from classical Indian poetics
māninī – indignant woman
manṣabdār – highly ranked officer in the Mughal administrative
system
manṣabdārī – relating to or governed by a manṣabdār
mas̤navī – narrative poem
mātrā – metrical count
mātrik – moraic form of prosody
mugdhā nāyikā – innocent girl
muktaka – freestanding poem

Page 3 of 6

munshi –clerk
nagara-varṇana – description of the city, a traditional Indic genre
Nagari – the most common script for representing Hindi characters,
also Devanagari
Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā – Council for the dissemination of Nagari
script
nakh-śikh – see “śikh-nakh”
narabānī/narabhāṣā/naravāṇī– the language of men (vernacular),
same as Bhasha
Nastaliq – a type of Perso-Arabic script (also used for Urdu)
nava rasa – the nine literary emotions
navoṛhā nāyikā – new bride
nāyaka – male character, hero
nāyikā – female character, heroine
nāyikābheda – catalogue of female characters, a classification from
Indian poetics
nirguṇ – “without attributes,” opposed to saguṇa (god who takes a
form) in Indian theology
pad – lit., “foot”; a song form associated with bhakti literature
(p.252) paṇḍitarāja – king among scholars (a royal title)
paṇḍitsabhā – assembly of scholars
parakīyā – the wife of another, a term from nāyikabheda
patan – decline
pāṭhśālā – school
pātura – courtesan
phuṭkal – miscellaneous
prabandha – connected narrative, encompassing subgenres such as
mahākāvya, carita, etc.
pracchann – secretive (also prachanna)
prakāś – out in the open (also prakāśa)
praṇati – bowing down in utter self-abasement
praśasti – political poetry; panegyric or praise address
prauḍhā nāyikā – mature woman
Purāṇas –lore of past times
pūrvānurāga – love's initial infatuation
qazi – Islamic judge
rājadharma – the correct conduct of kings
rājavaṃśa – royal lineage or genealogy
rājyaśribhūṣaṇa-varṇana – descriptions of the ornaments of royal
luster
Rāmrājya – utopian reign of King Rama.
rasa – literary emotion, a term from classical Indian poetics
rasika – connoisseur (also rasik)
rāso – martial ballad

Page 4 of 6

rāṣṭrabhāṣā – national language

raudra (rasa) – terror
Rekhta – Persianized vernacular, also macaronic poetry
rīti – the courtly style of classical Hindi literature
rītibaddh – lit., “bound by convention”; classical
rītigranth – lit., “book of method”; handbook on rhetoric
rītikāl – era of high style
rītimukt – free from classicism
rītisiddh – inflected by classicism
sabhā – assembly
saguṇ– lit., “with attributes,” god who takes a form, opposed to
nirguṇ in Indian theology
sāhitya – literature
sakhī – girlfriend, female companion to the heroine
sāmantvād – feudalism
sāmānya alaṅkāra – conventional trope
sāmānyā nāyikā – courtesan
samasyāpūrti – contest that rewards excellence in extemporaneous
composition
sambhoga śṛṅgāra – love fulfilled, a term from Indian poetics
sampradāy – community, especially a religious community
saṃvād – dialogue
(p.253) sandeha alaṅkāra – ornament of doubt
saṅgrah – anthology
śānta (rasa) – quiescence
śāstra – science, used generally of Indian domains of systematic
thought
savaiyā – one of two quatrain styles (the other is kavitt) widely found
in rīti poetry
shahrāshūb – “lament for the city,” a Persian genre
śikh-nakh – head to toe description, an Indic genre (also nakh-śikh)
śleṣa – a special Indian technique of punning; bitextual poem
śṛṅgāra (rasa) – aestheticized love, the erotic sentiment
śṛṅgārik – erotic
śṛṅgārkāl – an alternative name for rītikāl foregrounding the erotic
sentiment
s˙ūbah – Mughal administrative province
suravāṇi – lit., “language of the gods”; an epithet for Sanskrit (also
surabānī, devavāṇī)
svakīyā – one's own wife, a classification from nāyikābheda
tadbhava – vernacular derivative
takhalluṣ – pen name, also chāp
tārīkh – Persian royal chronicle
tatsama – pure Sanskrit word

Page 5 of 6

tazˍkirah – anthology of poets’ biographes

udāharaṇ – example verse
uddīpana vibhāva – kindling elements, a term from Indian poetics
upamā – simile
utprekṣā – extended parallel, a figure of speech
uttama – “best,” a common term used in Indic classification systems
Vaishnava – devotee of the Hindu god Vishnu
vaṃśāvalī – genealogy
varṇan – description
vārṇik – syllabic form of prosody
vārtā – hagiographical tradition of Vaishnavas
Vedanta – one of the six canonical schools of Indian philosophy
videśī – foreign
Vikram – a common Indian dating system approximately 57 years
ahead of the Common Era ; also vikram saṃvat
vipralambha śṛṅgāra – frustrated love, a term from Indian poetics
vīra (rasa) – the heroic
viraha – anguished separation from one's lover
virahiṇī – a woman separated from her lover
vīr kāvya – martial poetry
virudāvalī – “necklace of heroic epithets,” a martial and royal genre
vṛtti – expository prose style
vyājastuti – lit., “praising while blaming,” a figure of speech
yamaka – lit., “twinning,” a form of pun

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Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

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Page 35 of 35

Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of

Mughal India
Allison Busch

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780199765928
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765928.001.0001

(p.323) Index
Abdul Baqi Nahawandi, 165
Abdul Hamid Lahori, 147, 164
Abu al-Fazl, Sheikh, 46, 50, 134–35, 140–41, 143, 145, 162, 180, 187, 259 n28, 273 n67,
277 n44
quoted, 135, 140
Afsānah-i shāhān, 164–65
Aftab (see also Shah Alam II), 163
Ā’ īn-i akbarī, 134, 140, 143, 145, 165, 187
Akbar Shah (author of Śṛṅgāramañjarī), 122–23, 194
Akbar, Emperor, 7, 63, 132, 186–87
courtiers of, 46, 50, 57, 134–35, 138 (see also names of individual courtiers)
Hinduism or Jainism and, 7, 47, 135, 170, 277 n44
Orchha and, 29–31, 46, 49, 58
as patron or connoisseur, 132, 134–36, 138, 141, 143–44, 147, 162–63, 165, 170,
180, 186, 274 n7, 275 n15, 275 nn18–19, 275 n21, 282 n134
poems praising, 89
Rajputs and, 47, 135, 147, 171, 180
sons of, 46, 59, 134–35, 275 n21
alaṅkāras, 132, 155–56, 158, 181, 188, 190, 197, 222
ananvaya, 76, 155
importance of, 24, 76, 78, 266 n25
Indo-Muslim authors on, 155–56, 158
rīti authors on, 10, 37, 41–43, 45, 72, 75–78, 81, 190
denigration of, 67, 75–76, 132, 222
role in poetry, 75–76
sāmānya, 41–43
sandeha, 72, 76, 81
śleṣa, 40, 76, 92, 260 nn46–50, 266 n26, 267–68 nn60–61
types, 76–78
yamaka, 96–97, 152, 289 n108
alaṅkāraśāstra: 9, 24, 123, 101–12, 177–83, 187–94

Page 1 of 22

basic principles or concerns of, 68–78, 103, 269 n2

devotional literature and, 27, 33, 65–66, 111, 118
on hero(ines), 33, 79, 182 (see also nāyikābheda)
historiographic issues, 104, 126, 242
(p.324) influence of Sanskrit on Braj, 42–43, 65, 91, 103, 111–12, 118, 123, 125–
26, 166, 178, 183, 188–89
influence or importance of, 26, 67, 76–78, 85, 101–2
innovations in, 84, 105, 189, 228
kings and, 177, 179–80, 183–84, 192
non-Hindu readers of, 194, 197
prose and, 126–27
two senses of, 75–76. See also rīti; rītigranth
Alaṅkāraśekhara, 103
alliteration, 90, 94
‘Amal-i ṣāli ḥ, 147, 153
Amaracandra Yati, 103
Amarakośa, 116
Amaru, 78
Amber, court of, 31, 37, 48, 88, 108, 123, 171–74, 176, 180, 183, 186–87, 205, 277 n60,
283 n12, 284 n28, 284 n37, 285 n59
Amrit Rai, 172
Anandavardhana, 19, 75, 80, 127
Anandghan, 235, 295 n104
Ānandraghunandan, 210–11
Ānandvilās, 177
Anekārthamañjarī, 116
anger (māna). See jealous rage
Aniruddh Singh, King, 193
Anupgiri Gosaim, 209
apanī mati anusāra (according to my own understanding). See vernacular innovations
Appayya Dikshita, 103, 123, 177
architecture, viii, 7, 18, 27, 47–48, 51, 54–56, 59, 84, 164, 169, 181, 263 n107, 286 n77
Ārtipatrikā, 205
Aurangzeb, Emperor, 4, 90, 176, 262 n78, 269 n80
courtiers of, 8, 157–58, 289 n117 (see also names of individual courtiers)
historiographical issues, 4, 156–57, 204, 236
literary patronage by, 156–60, 280 n110, 288 n98
literary representations of, 96–97, 160
Avadhut Singh, King, 193
Azad, Mir Ghulam Ali (Bilgrami), 154–56, 162–63, 194, 280 n100
quoted, 154–55
Azam Shah, 90, 158–59
Azim us-Shan, Prince 159
Babur, Emperor, 89, 134, 180
Bāburnāmah, 134
Badauni, 46, 137–38, 258 n21, 276 n32
Bādshāhnāmah, 144, 147, 170
Bahadur Shah (I), Emperor, 90
Bahadur Shah (II) “Zafar,” Emperor, 163
Page 2 of 22

Balbir, 158
Baldev Mishra, 125, 158
Bana, 88
Banaras, city or court of, 47, 167, 174, 205, 210–13, 216–17, 291 n28
Banarsidas, 197
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, 212
bārah-māsa, 75, 140, 223, 258 n22
bards, Rajasthani, 24, 88, 90, 142, 169, 186, 199
barvai. See under meters, poetic
bees, poetic motif of, 42, 52, 72, 142–43
Bhagavadgītā, 30–32, 54–55, 163, 176
Bhāgavatapurāṇa, 18, 27–28, 62, 116–17, 206, 257 n5, 258 n18, 277 n52
Bhaktamāl, 28, 215, 217, 258 n16, 261 n71, 292 n54
bhakti: Brajbhasa and, 9, 26–28, 62
caste and, 13, 16
courts, kings, or politics and, 28, 47, 54, 130, 132, 231, 233, 239, 245
Hindi and, 12–13, 231–34, 185
history and historiography of, 7, 12–14, 16, 26–27, 219, 230, 233, 242 (see also
dichotomy or overlapping: of rīti and bhakti)
literature and literary impact of, 4, 9, 25–29, 33, 45, 62–64, 86–88, 118–19, 128,
130, 165 (p.325) (see also under Bhikharidas; Brajbhasha literature; Keshavdas
Mishra)
music and, viii, 5, 9, 18, 24, 27, 55, 63, 84, 134, 148, 151, 166
vs. rīti (see under dichotomy or overlapping). See also Vaishnavas
Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu, 33
Bhamaha, 103
Bhanudatta, 116, 122, 187, 194
Bhao Singh (Hada), King, 181–82, 190, 195
Bharatichand, King, 29, 258 n20
Bharatpur, court of, 124, 205, 224
Bhargava, Dularelal, 223
Bharmal Kachhwaha, 171, 275 n21
Bhartrihari, 32, 78, 127
Bhāṣābhū ṣaṇ, 78, 123, 177–79, 196
Bhāṣāpi ṅgal, 194
Bhāṣāvyākara ṇ, 99
Bhattacharya, Venidatta, 122–23
Bhikharidas, 104, 123–27, 235, 266 n24, 272 n49
bhakti and, 87, 229–30
on Brajbhasha language, 65, 99, 119–20, 195–96, 217, 230, 272 n51
innovations of, 119–20, 123–24, 126
kavi-praśaṃsā of, 136, 138, 217, 230, 288 n95
Mammata and, 118–20, 124, 127, 272 n46
on poetry's purpose, 118
quoted, 65, 118, 120, 124, 230. See also Kāvyanirṇay
Bhoj (Hada), King, 181
Bhoja, King, 93, 171, 180, 271 n25
Bhuj, Brajbhasa pāṭhśālā of, 199
bhujaṅgprayāt. See under meters, poetic
Page 3 of 22

Bhupati, 28
Bhūpbhūṣaṇ, 134
Bhushan Tripathi, 95–96, 100, 154, 189–94, 197, 209, 288 n95
quoted, 96, 190–92
Bihari(lal), 85–86, 123, 144, 167, 174, 183, 189, 199, 207, 230
quoted, 85
Bihārīsatsaī̄, 86, 167, 174, 190, 211
Bihārīvihār, 174
Bilhana, 88
bilingualism. See multilingualism
Bir Singh Deo Bundela, King, 7, 46–52, 56, 58, 63, 70, 142, 169, 173
Birbal, 57–58, 89, 136, 138, 141, 186–87, 230
Bodha, 100, 235
Brahmans: as Braj/rīti authors or connoisseurs, 9, 17, 25, 63, 68, 169, 183, 207, 223,
289 n120
courts or courtly culture and, 16, 160, 174, 183, 191
gifts to, 50, 53
hegemony of, 16, 256 n31, 295 n112
Mughals and, 137, 142, 144
in literature, 30, 106
Sanskrit and, 54, 97
Braj maṇḍal, 7–8, 26–27, 33, 47, 63, 66, 159
Brajbhasha language: in courts, 7, 9, 55, 63, 245
considered as poetic or literary language, 6–7, 120–21, 124, 159, 215
geographical ambit of, 7–8, 26–27, 62, 135, 193, 195, 199, 205, 247
grammar of, 98–99, 118, 159, 227–28, 238
Khari Boli Hindi and, viii, 6–7, 27, 67, 90, 99, 131–32, 134–36, 203, 221, 239, 242
history of, 6–9, 26, 98, 131, 133–34, 145
Brajbhasha literature: 17th-cent. trends, 6–8, 63–64, 159, 162, 185, 193
18th-cent. trends, 90, 129, 162–63, 199
19th-cent. trends, 10, 203, 205–8, 210–12, 215–16, 221, 237
20th-cent. trends, 225
bhakti and, 25, 55, 62, 119, 152–53, 164, 226–27 (see also dichotomy or
overlapping: of rīti and bhakti)
colonialism and, 202–3, 210
(p.326) Mughals and (see Mughals: as literary patrons)
non-Hindu heritage of, 9, 55, 129, 131, 140, 146–47, 154–56, 163, 195, 200, 210,
242, 245, 247–48
prose vs. poetry, 121, 126–27, 221, 238
replaces Sanskrit, 107–8, 121–25, 129, 145, 166–67, 172, 175, 183, 196
secular, 199, 205, 247, 273 n74
teaching of, 198–200 (see also Keshavdas Mishra, students of)
Broughton, Thomas Duer, 207–8, 230, 237
Buddh Singh, King, 193
Bundelas, 29–31, 43, 46, 48–49, 53, 63, 147, 180, 262 n82
Bundelkhand, 18, 28–29, 51, 97, 154, 167–68, 175, 186, 193, 195, 204, 209–10, 244
Bundi, court of, 154, 171, 180–83, 186, 191, 193, 200
poetic description of the city of, 181
Candāyan, 188
Page 4 of 22

Candrāloka, 123–24, 177, 223, 266 n30, 274 n85

carita, 46, 69, 88
categories: of alaṅkāras (see alaṅkāras)
of anger, 80
of heroines (see nāyikābheda)
historiographical issues about (see dichotomy or overlapping)
of love, 34–35
of lovers’ meeting places, 109–10
of poets, 115
problem with “medieval,” 12, 126, 226, 239
prose vs. poetry, 121, 126–27, 221, 238
of rasas (see under rasa)
rīti writers’ use of, 34, 43, 80, 83–84, 108–9, 121, 156, 198, 228–29
of wives, 161 (see also parakīyā; svakīyā)
caupāī. See under meters, poetic
Caurāsī vaiṣṇavan kī vārtā, 132
Cetcandrikā, 211
Chand Bardai, 172
Chandmālā, 32, 44
Chandrashekhara, 181
chāp, 32, 58–59, 136, 138, 158, 193
chappay. See under meters, poetic
Chatraprakāś, 90, 97, 288 n97
Chatrasal Bundela, 97, 193
Chatrasāldaśak, 193
Chaturbhuj Mishra, 206
Chaturbhuj temple, 47–48
Chāyāvād. See under Romanticism
Chhand chhandān, 188
Chintamani Tripathi, 87, 103–4, 107–8, 121–22, 124, 127, 158, 162, 181, 187, 189, 193–
94, 196, 230, 255 n13, 267 n45, 271 n39, 297 n6
patronized by Indo-Muslim courts, 153–56, 164, 187, 193–94
quoted, 107, 117–18, 121
Chishtis, 136, 160, 188
cities, descriptions of, 148, 181, 191–92, 262 n94; see also shahrāshūb
classicism: Braj or Hindi, 5, 32, 63, 244
Rajput, 171, 173, 183
rīti and, 184–85, 188–89, 198, 200, 209, 228, 246
role in literary history, 68, 244
Sanskrit, 12, 169, 185. See also neoclassicism
colonialism, aesthetic or cultural hegemony of, 10, 17, 67, 202, 206, 212, 237
commentaries, 24, 32, 37, 104, 123, 127, 162, 174, 177, 201, 211–12
courtesans, 39–40, 55, 79, 111, 132, 161, 270 n20. See also Pravin Ray
courtliness: modern view of, 15–17, 21, 167, 203, 221
role of literature in constructing, 179, 184–85
courts: circulation of poets and texts between, 9, 19, 40, 180, 188, 195–96, 204, 206
(p.327) as cultural institutions, 7, 16, 169, 180–81, 243. See also poets, court;
names of individual courts
Dadupanth, 27, 217
Page 5 of 22

Dalits, 13, 16
Dandin, 4, 19, 103, 105, 171, 260 n57, 266 n29, 269 n4
Danyal, Prince, 142, 180
Dara Shikoh, Prince, 152, 154, 176, 182
Daśarūpaka, 122
Datt, Michael Madhusudan, 212
Daud, Maulana, 188
Daulat Rao Scindia, King, 210
de Tassy, Garcin, 218, 278 n71, 292 n57
decadence narratives, 4, 11–12, 14, 17, 83, 132, 213, 221, 231–33, 235–37, 242–43, 295
n108, 296 n123
decline narratives, 4, 11–12, 14, 104, 124, 126, 132, 202–4, 217–20, 225, 230–33, 236–
37, 255 n20
definition verses: see lakṣa ṇ
Dev, 158, 224, 230
Dhananjaya, 103, 122
dhrupad, 63, 134, 144–45, 148, 151
dichotomy or overlapping: of aesthetic and religious interpretations of poetry, 33–35,
87, 115, 182, 229, 232, 267 n49, 271 n32
of Braj/Hindi and Rajasthani, 168, 283 n4
of Braj and Khari Boli, 238
of Hindi and Persian, 148, 164–65
of Hindi and Urdu, 163, 216, 232, 238, 241
of Hindu and Muslim, 59, 231, 263 n117
of physical and conceptual kavikul, 200
of premodern and modern, 15
of rīti and bhakti, 12–14, 16, 20, 45, 116, 132, 187, 203, 207, 214, 224–27, 229–31,
233, 238–39, 242, 248
dictionaries, 116, 206, 269 n83
diminutives, 91, 94–95, 268 n70
dohā. See under meters, poetic
dohā-caupāī. See under meters, poetic
doṣas, 41, 106, 121, 129
liability in poetry and women, 105
du Bellay, Joachim, 170, 274 n81, 283 n9
Dvivedi, Mahavir Prasad, 11, 220–25, 238
quoted 221, 293 n66
education: British or colonial-era, 10, 203, 212–13, 216, 221, 224, 231
precolonial, premodern, or early modern, 25, 174–75, 198
literature and, 44, 126, 161, 178–79, 183, 198–200, 233, 239, 286 n68, 289 n120
of women, 232–33
elephants, 42–43, 94, 137, 276 n35
as gift for poets, 142, 144–45, 277 n56
woman's gait like, 106, 112–13
European languages and literature, 3, 5–6, 10–11, 66, 68, 127, 138, 170, 210, 212, 241,
246
Example verses. See udāharaṇs
Faizi, 134
Faqirullah, 8, 157, 159
Page 6 of 22

Farmuli, Shah Muhammad, 134

Farrukh Siyar, Emperor, 90, 98, 282 n134
Fatehpur Sikri, 7, 47, 135
Fazilaliprakāś, 158
figure of speech. See alaṅkārā
folk legends: about poets, 45, 132–33, 137–38, 174
about gods, 27, 36, 260 n46
Fort William College, 147, 206–8
Gaj Singh, King, 180
Galta, 27–28
Gang, 136–40, 165, 172, 230–31
gardens, 59, 72–74, 162, 181, 260 n51
genealogies: of poets, 40–41 (see also kavi-praśaṃsā)
royal, 39–41, 88, 173, 180–82, 184, 191, 193, 205, 286 n71, 273 n68
(p.328) Gokulnath, 211, 237
gopīs, 7, 27–28, 35, 42, 54, 91, 113, 115, 117, 140, 223, 270 n20, 277 n53. See also
Radha
Govindadeva temple, 47, 262 n81
Grierson, George, 215, 218–19, 228, 231, 238, 295 n105
Gulbadan Begum, 180
gunīs, 130, 145, 148, 169, 187, 190, 192, 196, 205
Guru Granth Sahib, 9
Gwalior, court of, 8, 18, 23, 40, 54, 62–64, 121, 144, 147, 159, 210, 254 n11, 255 n13,
264 nn132–33, 281 n123, 287 n79
hagiographies, 27–28, 127, 217
“Hariaudh,” Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay, 223, 295 n114
Haricharandas, 123
Haridas, Svami, 27, 63, 259 n37
Harikalābelī, 205
Harinatha, 171
Hariram Vyas, 28, 47, 62, 117, 259 n37
Harishchandra, Bharatendu, 10, 208, 210, 213–16, 220, 222–24, 233, 237, 296 n127
quoted, 215
Harivamsh, Hit, 27–28, 62, 259 n37
Harsha, King, 174, 180
Harṣacarita, 88
hegemony: aesthetic or cultural, 67, 83, 202–3, 265 n7
Brahmanical or Sanskritic, 16, 20, 25
Mughal, 131, 138, 204, 262 n93
hero(ine). See nāyakas; nāyikās
Himmat Khan Mir Isa, 158
Himmatbahādurvirudāvalī, 209
Himmatprakāś, 158
Hindi language and literature: ādhunik (modern), 10, 208, 220, 226, 240–41
Avadhi, 7–8, 45, 120, 134–35, 140, 188, 226, 242
classical, definition of, 3
geographical ambit of, 7–8. See also Brajbhasha language; Brajbhasha literature;
Hindi studies; Rajasthani; see also under bhakti; classicism; dichotomy or
overlapping; Romanticism; translations
Page 7 of 22

history and periodization of, 12–14, 22, 99, 134, 166–67, 203, 208, 217–20, 226–28,
231–32, 238, 241–43
Khari Boli, 6, 98, 204, 206, 208, 213, 221–22, 225–26, 238–39, 241–42
as national language, 222, 244
nationalism and, 11–12, 16, 22, 98, 216, 220, 222, 234, 236–42
reform of, 203, 212–16, 220–25, 241
religion and, 185–86
Hindī navratna, 58, 224
Hindī sāhitya kā itihās, 12, 168, 226, 229, 238. See also Shukla, Ramchandra
Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan, 222, 282 n2
Hindi studies, challenges of, vii–ix, 5, 7, 21, 133, 243
in colonial era, 11, 58, 67, 136, 240
lacunae and misconceptions of, 3–6, 9, 11–14, 16, 98, 126, 131–32, 156, 165, 167–
68, 188, 204, 208, 217–20, 231–32, 236–45
in modern era, 60–61, 67, 131–32, 136, 140, 144, 164, 167, 235, 240. See also
Shukla, Ramchandra
nationalism and, 11, 20, 156, 188, 240–43
historiography, literary, 4, 12, 68, 88–90, 168, 203, 215, 217–18, 226–31, 238, 243, 246
Hittaraṅginī, 28, 33, 62
Hriday Shah, 154
Humayun, Emperor, 31, 134, 138, 180
Husain Shah, 33
hybridity, lexical. See multilingualism
illustrated manuscripts. See under manuscripts
illustration verses. See udāharaṇ
Indrajit, King: as author, 32, 180, 259 n32, 261 n71, 273 n78
(p.329) Mughals and, 46, 57–58, 132
as patron, 32, 39, 44–46, 57–58, 127
poetic representations of, 39, 57, 63, 141
innovation, poetic, 18, 26, 41, 45, 64, 66, 72, 83–86, 90, 100, 106, 128–29, 237
intellectual history: Hindi literature and, vii, 101, 104–5, 163, 214
European counterpoints, 12, 66, 126
rīti literature and the promise of, 244–48
Iraj, Shahnawaz Khan. See Shahnawaz Khan, Iraj
Ishvari Narayan Singh, King, 211
Islam Shah Sur, 134
Itihās, Hindī sāhitya kā. See Hindī sāhitya kā itihās
Jafar Khan, 154
Jagannatha Panditaraja, 103, 123, 128, 143, 154, 175, 198
Jagat Singh Sawai, King, 209
Jagatvinod, 209, 211
Jahandar Shah, Emperor, 98
Jahangir, Emperor: compared to Hindu gods, 59, 92, 267–68 n60
as Hindi speaker, 135, 142, 275 n21
historiographical issues about, 59, 137, 276 n31
Keshavdas on, 56, 59–61, 187, 244, 281 n130
Orchha and, 46, 51, 147
as patron or connoisseur, 61, 92, 136, 141–43, 145–46, 165, 187, 189, 244, 277 n52,
279 n78
Page 8 of 22

translated poems about, 59–60, 92, 267–68 n60

quoted, 142–43, 275 n21
Jahangir Mandir, 56–57
Jahāngīrjascandrikā, 56, 60–61, 92, 96, 141–42, 154, 187, 244
Jahāngīrnāmah, 137, 142, 165, 180, 186
Jai Singh Kacchwaha (I), Mirza Raja, 173–74, 176, 193, 195, 199
Jaipur. See Amber
Jangnāmā, 90, 97–98
Jaswant Singh, King, 78, 123, 157, 176–80, 183, 195–96, 199
quoted, 78, 94
Jayadeva (13th cent., Candrāloka's author), 123–24, 177–78, 266 n30
Jayadeva (Sanskrit bhakti poet), 172
Jayarama Pindye, 84–85, 194
jealous rage (māna), 34, 75, 80, 86, 115–16, 158
Jindal, K. B., 4–6, 20
Jodhpur, court of. See Marwar
Jujhar Singh Bundela, King, 147–48, 150
Kabir, 13, 20, 25–26, 133, 152, 224, 242
Kachhwahas. See Bharmal, Jai Singh (I and II); Man Singh; Manohar; Ram Singh
Kalhana, 88
Kalidasa, 69, 172, 174, 231
Kamran, Mirza (Humayun's brother), 164–65
Kanbo, Muhammad Salih, 147, 151, 153, 164
quoted, 151
Karṇābhara ṇ, 134
Karnes, 134, 140–41
Kashinatha Mishra, 18, 24
kavikul, 20, 37, 103, 123, 127, 158, 167, 194–201, 203, 212, 217, 222, 224, 229, 238,
246
18th-century conference of, 197–98, 200
definition and use of word, 188–89
as physical vs. conceptual entity, 200
Kavikulkalptaru, 107–8, 117, 121, 194
Kavimukhmaṇḍan, 211
Kavīndracandrikā, 153, 217
Kavīndracandrodaya, 152–53
Kavindracharya Sarasvati, 100, 151–53, 164–65, 194, 217, 229
quoted, 93, 148, 151
Kavīndrakalpalatā, 93, 148, 151–53
kavi-praś aṃsā, 124–25, 136, 138, 172, 187
(p.330) Kavipriyā, 37–43, 53, 63, 180, 198, 258 n22
commentaries on, 211, 291 n29
compared to Jahāngīrjascandrikā, 60, 141, 264 n120, 277 n46
compared to Rasikpriyā, 37–38, 40, 265 n22
importance of, 32, 37, 66
quoted, 23, 39, 41–43, 57–58, 106
Sanskrit sources for, 4, 103, 105, 107, 129, 269 n4
vernacular anxiety and, 23, 176, 178
kavitt. See under meters, poetic
Page 9 of 22

Kavittvicār, 154, 194

kāvya: muktaka, 68–69, 85–87, 136, 140, 190
prabandha, 68–69, 75, 85, 87, 100, 136, 172, 174–75, 183–84, 186, 203. See also
poetry
Kāvyādarśa, 5, 103, 105, 260 n57
Kāvyādarś a-mārjana, 171
Kāvyakalpalatāvṛtti, 103, 260 n57
Kāvyanirṇay, 99, 119–20, 124, 217, 230, 266 n24, 272 n52
Kāvyaprakāśa, 108, 117–18, 122, 124, 175, 272 n46
Kazim Ali Jawan, Mirza, 147, 206
Keshavdas Mishra: bhakti and, 5, 29–33, 36, 43–46, 49, 59–60, 62, 64, 87, 111–16, 172,
227, 230, 244
family of, 18, 23–24, 40, 62–64, 174–75, 189
importance of, 18, 23, 26, 37, 61–64, 67–68, 174, 199, 207, 217, 227, 244
Mughals and, 18, 56–61, 88, 131, 140–42, 145, 165, 186–87, 209, 244–45
oeuvre of, 18, 29, 62, 103, 245
patrons of, 18, 29–30, 32, 46, 48, 50–51, 56–61, 63, 141–42, 145, 165, 244, 246
Persianate culture and, 59, 61, 66, 209, 244
political context of, 18, 29–32, 39, 46–51, 55, 88, 130
quoted, 23, 30–31, 34–37, 39, 41–43, 49, 51–57, 70–72, 74, 77, 81, 92, 106, 109–
113, 115–16
Sanskrit and, 4–5, 18, 23, 32, 43–45, 48, 53–54, 59–62, 91–92, 103, 109–12, 116,
123–24, 163, 244
self-deprecation of, 23–24, 37, 40, 54–55, 112, 123, 178, 229
students of, 40, 44, 174, 198 (see also Pravin Ray)
Tulsidas and, 5, 25–26, 44–46. See also under Jahangir; Krishna; Rama
Keshavdev temple, 47
Khafi Khan, 144, 157
Khandadeva, 99
Khub Muhammad Chishti, 188
Khushgu, Bindraban Das, 158
kiṃvadantiyā ṃ. See folk legends
kings: aesthetic pursuits of, 43, 171, 178–79, 209, 244
as authors, 32, 178–80 (see also names of individual kings; see also under poets)
bhakti and (see under bhakti)
building projects of, 18, 47–48, 51, 54, 56, 59, 169, 181, 262 n82, 263 n107, 286
n77
idealized, 49–54, 60, 268 n61
as patrons, general remarks on, 10, 28, 54, 130–31, 133, 141, 144, 166–67, 179,
185 (see also names of individual patrons; see also under Chintamani Tripathi;
Keshavdas Mishra; Mughals; Rajputs; rītigranth)
self-presentation of 43, 47–55, 166–71, 178–80, 184–85
Kriparam, 28, 33, 62, 87
Krishna bhakti. See bhakti
Krishna: Braj and, 7, 27, 200, 254 n8
Keshavdas on, 30–31, 33, 35–37, 39, 54, 58, 87, 111–13, 115–16, 259 n35
martial exploits of, 30–31, 35–36
Radha and, 27, 33–36, 39, 84, 146 (see also Radha-Krishna poetry)
rasas and, 33, 35–36, 111–13
Page 10 of 22

(p.331) translated poems about, 34–36, 42, 109–10, 112–13, 215. See also gopīs;
Vaishnavas
Krishna Kavi, 158
quoted, 102, 123
Krishna Mishra, 54, 116
Krishnadatta Mishra, 23, 40
Kulapati Mishra, 108–9, 123, 183, 185, 189, 198–99
quoted, 108, 174–76
kuṇḍaliyā. See under meters, poetic
Kuvalayānanda, 177, 266 nn30–31, 274 n85
Lakhpati Sinha, King, 199
lakṣa ṇ (definition verse), 33, 91, 108, 112, 123, 125, 198
examples of, 34, 77–78, 81, 116, 197
Lal Kavi, 90, 209
quoted, 97
Lal Khan, 143
Lālcandrikā, 86, 206
Lalitlalām, 181, 184, 189
Lallulal, 85–86, 147, 206, 237
Lāṛsāgar, 205
libraries, 6, 14, 37, 136, 173–74, 177, 187
literature: See under bhakti; Brajbhasha; Hindi; Persian; poetry; Rajput; Urdu;
Vaishnavas
Ma’āṣịr al-kirām, 154–57, 162–63, 194
Ma’āṣịr al-umarā, 181
Ma’āṣ̣ịr-i ra ḥīmī, 165
Madhukar Shah, King, 24, 28–29, 46–47, 62
Madhumālatī, 134
mādhurya, 117–18
Mahābhārata, 30, 54, 163, 174, 211
mahākāvya, 45–46, 53, 69, 262 n98
Mammata, 103, 108–9, 117–19, 122, 125, 175
Man Singh Kachhwaha, 47–48, 61, 74, 89–91, 135–36, 170–73, 185–86
Man Singh Tomar, King, 63, 144
Mānamañjarī, 116
Mānaprakāś a, 171
Māncarit, 74, 88–90, 172–73, 184
Manjhan, 134, 281 n126
Manohar Kachhwaha, 134
manṣabdārs, 47, 49, 56, 58–59, 63, 97, 133, 154, 158, 167, 169–70, 172–74, 176, 178,
182, 185, 204–5
courtly culture of, 183
manuscripts: of Bhāṣābhū ṣaṇ, 177
illustrated, 37, 140, 148–50, 170, 174, 186, 200, 278 n64
number, condition, or use of Braj/rīti texts, viii, 8, 13, 21, 39, 102–3, 136, 199–201,
258 n9
published works and, viii, 140, 211, 235
production of, 187, 199, 201, 209
of Rāmāyaṇa, 170. See also libraries
Page 11 of 22

of Rasikpriyā, 37–38, 174, 186

of Rasvilās, 153, 264 n137
Marathas, 95–96, 193. See also Shivaji, King
Marwar, court of, 78, 142, 171, 176, 179, 183, 186, 205, 208
Mathura, 7–8, 26–27, 47, 121, 132, 135, 159, 169, 204–5
Matiram Tripathi, 76, 154, 181, 183, 189–91, 194–96, 209
quoted, 76, 181–82, 196
meters, poetic: barvai, 94–95, 140, 145
bhujaṅgprayāt, 90
caupāī, 44, 73, 264 n132
chappay, 30, 88, 91, 125, 168
dohā, 33, 44, 58, 67, 78, 126, 155, 174–75, 189
dohā-caupāī, 24, 44
kavitt, 33, 70, 74, 76, 78, 137–38, 145, 207, 223, 225
kuṇḍaliyā, 76
savaiyā, 33, 77–78
śloka, 123, 126, 276 n39
Mewar, court of, 31, 37, 89, 170, 180, 186, 191, 200, 286 n77
milana-sthāna, 109
Mir’āt al-mulūk, 162
Mirza Khan, 8, 99, 158–59
quoted, 130
Mirza Qadiri, 160–61
(p.332) Mishra brothers (Shyambihari, Shukdevbihari, and Ganeshbihari), 223–26,
228
quoted, 202, 224
Mishra, Vishvanathprasad, 234
Miśrabandhuvinod, 224–25, 235
Mitra Mishra, 56
Mitra, Tarinee Churun, 136
modernity, early: cross-regional, 6, 12, 246
study of, 9, 21–22, 245
“medieval” vs., 12
Mohanlal Mishra, 199
motifs, poetic. See bees; cities, descriptions of; elephants; rain; peacocks
Mughals: as literary patrons, 7, 10, 19, 21–22, 56, 63, 65, 90, 93, 103, 126, 131–65, 170,
180, 187, 244
Marathas and, 95–96
multilingualism of, 133–36, 142, 163–64, 228
music and, 131, 134, 137, 142–45, 156–58, 165
Rajputs and, 11, 89, 97, 133, 135, 147, 167, 169–70, 176, 181–82, 184–85, 187, 204.
See also names of Mughal emperors
Muhammad Salih, 160
Muhammad Shah, Emperor, 115
multilingualism, 6, 91–99, 126, 133, 135–36, 138, 142, 159, 163–64, 195, 238
Muntakhab al-lubāb, 157
Murari Dasa, 171
music and musicians: Brajbhasha and, 19, 62–63, 131, 134, 136, 143–44, 148, 158, 287
n79, 290 n12
Page 12 of 22

in courts, 19, 39–40, 63, 92, 131, 134, 136–37, 142–45, 151–52, 156–58, 161, 165,
169, 181, 256 n31, 257 n41, 260 n51
devotional, viii, 5, 9, 18, 24, 27, 55, 63, 134, 148, 151
rāgs, 138
treatises on, 84, 158
as uddīpana vibhāva, 74
Mustafa Gujarati, Sheikh, 135
Nabhadas, 28
Nagara-varṇana. See cities, descriptions of
Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā, viii, 216–17, 223, 282 n2
Nagarśobhā, 94, 100
Nagendra, 235–36
Nainsi, Mumhata, 180
Namdev, 195
Nanddas, 28, 62, 87, 116–17, 140, 143, 199, 255 n13, 271 n36, 286 n74, 292 n53
Narhari, 134, 144
Narottam Kavi, 74–75, 88–91, 123, 172–73
quoted, 74, 89, 172
Nasirullah Khan, 162
naths, 24
Nayak Bakshu, 144
nāyakas, 33, 50, 69, 85, 265 n11
Krishna as, 87, 109–10, 114, 182
patron as, 145, 151, 182
nāyikābheda, 10, 79–81, 84–86, 187, 228, 232
Chintamani on, 154
Gang on, 136
Indo-Muslims and, 94, 140–41, 145, 158, 163, 165, 187–88
Jahangir's knowledge of, 141, 145, 187
Kavindra on, 151
Keshavdas on, 111
Kriparam on, 28
popularity of, 83, 140
Rahim on, 94–95, 140, 268 n71
Ratnakar on, 223
Sukhdev Mishra on, 158
Sundar on, 145
Vrind on, 161
nāyikās, 33, 69, 75, 78
eyes of, 76–77, 79, 86, 106–7, 113, 155, 229, 270 n9
(p.333) paintings of, 38, 82, 110, 145–46, 167
as poor role models, 233
Radha as, 36, 87, 111
sāmānyā, 79, 111, 161
śikh-nakh of, 69–72
sorrow or suffering of, 77, 86, 95
śṛṅgāra rasa and, 79
types of, 79–83, 111
virahiṇī, 35, 82
Page 13 of 22

Nehi, 158
neoclassicism, 45, 127, 166, 168, 170, 178, 183. See also classicism
networks: patronage, 10, 19, 22, 196
of poets or texts, 9, 19, 21, 40, 180, 188, 195–96, 204, 206
Nevaj, 73, 206, 230, 283 n16
quoted, 70, 73,
Nītisatsaī, 160
novels, 14, 20, 212–13, 223, 239
Nyayi, 159
oral traditions, 25, 58, 85, 132, 170, 173, 198, 243. See also bards; folk legends
Orchha, court of, 29–33, 52, 224
cultural and literary center, 7, 28–29, 40–41, 186, 204–5
Mughals and, 18, 29–31, 46–47, 53, 55, 58, 90, 147–48, 244
poetic descriptions of, 51–53
Rajputs and, 31, 46, 53
Orientalism, 13–14
tropes of:
decadence and decline (see decadence narratives; decline narratives),
“effete Hindu,” 222, 233
primacy of texts, 243
Sanskrit/Gupta golden age, 231
“spiritual East,” 13
originality, 4, 66, 105, 127, 228, 246. See also vernacular innovation
pad (genre), 27–28
Padmakar, 209–11, 237
quoted, 91, 210
Pāṇḍavcarit, 62
Panini, 90
Pant, Sumitranandan, 234
parakīyā, 36, 79, 161, 270 n20
Patanjali, 90
peacocks, poetic motif of, 52, 72–73, 162
Persian language and literature: akhlāq, 147
book formats, 37
Brajbhasha and, 8, 19, 59, 61, 66, 87, 90, 94–100, 119–20, 126, 162, 244, 247
at court, 19, 22, 46, 55–56, 131, 133, 135–36, 138, 178–79, 196
Hindu nationalism and, 98
histories, 21, 29, 31, 56, 90, 99, 100, 137–38, 143, 153, 184
poetry and poets, 43, 55–56, 100, 134–35, 138, 143, 162–63
maṣnavī, 160
sarāpā, 158
tazkirah, 154, 165
tārīkh, 90, 100, 164. See also under dichotomy or overlapping
Phūlmañjarī, 189, 287 n85
poetry: anthologies or collections of, 125, 132, 134, 136, 138, 156, 190, 207, 212, 217
bhakti (see bhakti) hermeneutic biases about, 66–68, 105, 225, 232 (see also Hindi
studies: lacunae and misconceptions)
building blocks of, 33, 41 (see also alaṅkāraśāstra; rīti; rītigranth)
canons of, 13, 125, 133, 158, 187, 212, 214, 217, 224, 230
Page 14 of 22

Chintamani on essence of, 118

court, 17, 24, 32, 43, 49–51, 55, 84–86, 93, 95–96, 99, 172, 178
definitions of, 108
erotic (see śṛṅgāra rasa)
flaws in (see doṣas)
gender and, 76, 83, 105, 115
history and, 88–90, 97, 184
inscribed on paintings, 167
(p.334) linked to music, 143, 145, 148 (see also music and musicians)
Mammata on purposes of, 118–19
performances of, 61, 68–69, 225
political, 17, 43, 88–90, 93, 154, 161, 192, 209–10 (see also praśasti; genealogies:
of kings)
vs. prose, 121, 126–27, 221, 238
rules for, 41, 68–69, 83–84, 86, 107, 201
Sanskrit and, 25, 28, 54, 75, 90, 99, 103, 105 (see also under alaṅkāraśāstra;
Brajbhasha literature; Keshavdas Mishra; rīti)
schools for, 199
six languages of, 120
poets: aspiring or inexperienced, 19, 33, 37, 41, 78, 106–7
bhakti (see bhakti)
categories of, 115
court, 17, 24, 29, 60, 63, 67, 70, 75
as diplomats, 17, 147–48, 157, 164, 187, 209
family of (see kavikul)
handbooks for aspiring (see under rītigranth)
itinerant, 9, 19, 24, 40, 180, 188, 195–96, 199, 204–6
kings as, 32, 135, 163, 179–80
language choices for, 6–7, 25, 215
master, 34, 77, 112, 196, 198, 230, 269 n4
self-awareness of (see vernacular anxiety; vernacular self-confidence)
signatures of (chāp), 32, 58–59, 136, 138, 158, 193
as teachers, 17, 43, 91, 183–84, 198
postcolonialism, 12, 14–15, 83, 239, 243
and precolonialism, 14–15, 21, 239
Prabodhacandrodaya, 54, 116, 177
Pramodinī, 123
praṇati, 86, 116
praśasti, 48, 57, 61, 65, 87, 99–100, 132, 138, 141, 148, 152–54, 172–73, 186, 217, 232,
276 n38, 283 n13, 288 n93
examples of, 58–59, 92, 145, 182, 210
Pravin Ray, 39–40, 44, 72–73, 132, 137, 198, 233
quoted, 132
precolonialism, 21, 27, 83, 239, 241, 243
Premchand, 239
Premsāgar, 206
Price, William, 136
print culture, 10, 21, 104, 200, 202, 208–14, 224, 237, 243, 257 n40, 291 n27
courts and, 210–12
Page 15 of 22

Priyapravās, 223
prose, 121, 126–27, 158, 185, 208, 213, 221, 227, 238
Pṛthvīrāj Rāso, 172
Pūranras, 156
Radha: in Braj/rīti texts, 33–35, 84, 87, 109–17, 200, 221, 229, 232, 259 n35, 267 n49
as nāyikā, 36, 87, 111
as social reformer, 223
in Vaishnava religion, 27, 33, 35–36, 111, 115, 117, 200, 205
Radha-Krishna poetry: dual aesthetic-spiritual interpretations of, 33–35, 87, 115, 182,
229, 232, 267 n49, 271 n32
examples of, 34–36, 42, 112–13, 109–10
Rādhākṛṣṇavilās, 211
Rādhāmādhavavilāsacampū, 84–85, 194
Radhavallabhans, 27–28, 205, 258 n17
Rafi us-Shan, Prince 159
Rahim Khan-i Khanan, Abdul, 86, 100, 136, 138–40, 163–65, 187, 195, 230
barvai of, 94–95, 140, 145, 277 n42
quoted, 79, 94–95
Rahmatullah, Sayyid, 155–56, 194
Raigarh (Shivaji's capital), 191–92, 286 n59
(p.335) rain, poetic motif of, 73, 113, 140
Rajasthani language and literature, 167–69, 172. See also Rajput literature
Rājataraṅgi ṇī, 88
Rājnīti, 206
Rajput literature: Brajbhasha and, 167, 247
historical genres, 172–73, 180, 184, 186
use of term, 167–69
Rajputs:
defined, 167
ethos, 31, 63
Mughals and, 9, 89, 97, 133, 135, 147, 167, 169–70, 176
as patrons of art, 7, 18, 47, 167, 169, 200
as patrons of literature, 10, 20–21, 103, 166–72, 181–86
Persian and, 169, 178, 183, 185. See also names of individual courts and kings
Ram Singh Kachhwaha, King, 174, 193, 198
Rama (Hindu god): Keshavdas on, 43–46, 49–50, 59–60, 62, 87
in Ratnabāvanī, 30–32
in royal genealogies, 29, 191. See also Rāmāyaṇa; Rāmāyaṇkathā,
Rāmcandracandrikā, Rāmcaritmānas
Ramanandis, 27
Rāmāyaṇa, 44–45, 49–50, 84, 163, 170
Rāmāyaṇkathā, 62
Rāmcandracandrikā, 44–45, 48–50, 54, 87
Rāmcaritmānas, 7, 26, 44, 212, 257 n2, 257 nn5–6
Rana Jagat Singh, King, 170
Ranjit Singh, 210
rasas: 9, 26, 33, 37, 45, 69, 75, 79, 82, 103, 111–13, 125, 146, 223
bhakti, 69, 99, 128
drama and, 75
Page 16 of 22

śānta, 36, 69, 91, 113

śṛṅgāra (see śṛṅgāra rasa)
Tulsidas on, 26
types of, 35–36, 69, 113
vīra, 35, 65, 69, 88, 91, 112, 183
Rasamañjarī of Bhanudatta, 116, 188
Rāsapañcādhyāyī, 28, 116–17, 215
Rasataraṅgi ṇī, 122, 281 n119
Rasgāhakcandrikā, 162, 271 n31
rasika, 35–37, 43, 69–70
Rasikarañjana, 122
Rasikpriyā, 28, 32–40, 58, 64, 103, 109–15, 175, 200, 211, 256 n27, 259 nn34–35, 265
n11, 295 n104
aesthetic and religious tones of, 35–37, 45, 64, 87, 111–13, 115
commentaries on, 123, 162, 211
compared to Hittaraṅginī, 28, 33
compared to Kavipriyā, 37–38, 40, 265 n22
compared to Śṛṅgāratilaka, 109, 111
compared to Sundarśṛṅgār, 145
compared to Vijñāngītā, 54
courtly culture and, 39
importance of, 33, 37, 109, 122, 140, 167, 200
manuscripts of, 37–38, 174, 186
nāyikās in, 80, 83
Sanskrit sources of, 32, 103, 112
Raslin, Sayyid Ghulam Nabi Bilgrami, 162–63, 282 n139
Rasmañjarī of Nanddas, 62, 140
Rasnidhi, 100
rāso (martial ballad; genre), 24, 30–31, 66, 88, 99, 168–69, 259 n31
Rasprabodh, 163
Rasrahasya, 108, 123, 175–76, 185
Rasraj, 189, 196
Rasvilās, 153–54, 194
Ratan Singh (Hada), King, 182
Ratnabāvanī, 30–32, 56, 88, 168, 184, 259 n28
Ratnajit, Kavi, 99
Ratnakar, Pandit Jagannathdas, 223
Ratnasena Bundela, 30–32
Rāyavācakamu, 179
Revolt of 1857, 210, 212, 220
(p.336) Rewa, court of, 40, 193, 205, 210–11
rhetoric. See alaṅkāraśāstra
rhyme, 87, 93–94, 100, 119, 126
Risālah-i rāgdarpan, 157
rīti: 17th-cent. trends, 10, 84, 122, 171, 173, 176, 183–88, 194, 196
18th-cent. trends, 18, 188, 197, 203–4
19th-cent. trends, 10, 15, 205, 207–11, 238
alaṅkāras and (see under alaṅkāras)
beginnings of, 6, 18, 22, 26, 33, 130–31, 173, 185–88
Page 17 of 22

bhakti and, 12, 16, 20, 87–88, 99, 128, 132, 203, 224
characteristics, 3–4, 9–10, 24, 32–33, 65
colonialism and, 4, 10, 15, 20, 67, 201–7, 211
courts and, 10, 84, 90, 93, 102, 132, 163–64, 166–67, 170, 183–86, 197, 204, 209–
11
decline narratives of, 4, 10–12, 15, 20, 202–3, 211
defining, 3, 6–7, 9–10, 168
early works, 6, 22, 26, 28, 32–33, 62, 64, 88, 100, 172–73
as instrument of statecraft, 182, 191–92, 194 (see also poetry: political; poets: as
diplomats)
language choice for, 6, 91, 127–28
manuscripts (see under manuscripts)
opinions about, 3–6, 10–11, 60, 66–67, 83, 132, 224–28, 242, 246
Persian and, 19, 61, 66, 90, 93–100, 119
popularity of, 10, 15, 19, 21, 64, 66, 78, 101–2, 140, 162, 166, 170, 188, 195, 197
post-Independence era, 234–37
Sanskrit and, 5, 9, 19–20, 24, 32, 53, 65, 86, 91, 101–4, 116, 123–24, 188 (see also
under alaṅkāraśāstra)
soldiers and, 17, 56, 136, 138, 171–73, 176, 187, 195, 197, 206–7, 209, 230
use or performance of, 84–85, 155–56, 197–99
Vaishnava influence on, 19, 33, 65, 87, 113, 115, 130, 185
rītigranths: defined, 9–10
as handbooks for poets, 19, 33, 37, 39, 41, 78, 101, 126, 200
as platforms for innovation, 19, 66, 78, 121
as mode of intellectual expression, 19, 102, 104–5, 119, 120, 125–29
non-Hindu authors and patrons of, 22, 100, 103, 122, 140, 156, 158, 160, 163, 165,
187–88, 194–95, 197 (see also Brajbhasha: non-Hindu heritage of). See also
alaṅkāraśāstra
Romanticism: Chāyāvād, 221, 223, 234–35, 241
European, 11, 15, 17, 66–67
Rudrabhatta, 32, 103, 109, 111, 115–16
Rudrapratap, King, 23, 29, 40
Rudrashah Solanki, 194
Rupa Gosvamin, 33
Sabhāvilās, 206
Saf īnah-i khūshgū, 158
Safrang-i satsaī, 162
Sahasras, 144
sāmānya alaṅkāra. See under alaṅkāra
sāmānyā nāyikā. See under nāyikā
Samartha, 123
saṃvād, 30, 49, 55
Sanatana Gosvamin, 35
Saṅgītapārijāta[ ka], 158
Saṅgrāmdarpan, 205
Saṅgrāmsār, 174
Sanskrit: as divine language, 25, 54, 99, 107, 121–23, 148, 159
vernacular languages and, 25, 99. See also under alaṅkāraśāstra; Brahmans;
Brajbhasha literature; classicism; Keshavdas Mishra; poetry; rīti; translations
Page 18 of 22

Sarassār, 197–98
Sarasvatikaṇṭhābhara ṇa-mārjana, 171
(p.337) Sardar Kavi, 211–12, 237
Sarvāṅgī, 217
satire, 95–98, 215
Satkavigirāvilās, 125, 158
Satsaī of Biharilal. See Bihārīsatsaī
Satsaī of Matiram Tripathi, 189–90
Satyasarūprūpak, 90
savaiyā. See under meters, poetic
scripts: Nagari, viii, 211, 268 n69, 282 n2, 293 n65
Nastaliq, 268 n69, 293 n65
Sengar, Shivsingh, 218
Shah Alam II, Emperor, 163
Shah Jahan, Emperor, 135, 142–44, 148, 151–52, 170, 175, 187
literary representations of, 93, 144–45, 151, 182
as patron or connoisseur, 143–47, 151, 194
Shah Nawaz Khan (18th-cent. Mughal biographer), 138
Shahjahanabad, 148
Shahji Bhonsle, 194
Shahnawaz Khan, Iraj (17th cent., son of Rahim), 56, 59, 136–38, 141, 154, 187
shahrāshūb, 94, 100, 268 n67
Shakuntala, 69–70, 73, 206, 283 n16
Sharma, Joshi Anandilal 162
Shiromani (Braj poet), 144, 277 n60, 281 n115
Shiromani Mishra (Sanskrit scholar), 25
Shiva, 39, 41, 55, 191, 260 n46, 268 n60, 270 n21
Shivaji, King, 95–96, 190–92
Shivdas, Ray, 197–98
Shivprasad Singh, Raja, 208
Shridhar, 90, 97–98
quoted, 98
Shripati Bhatt, 158
Shukla, Ramchandra, 141, 168, 226–35, 238, 240, 246, 248, 269 n82, 273 n75, 293 n71
assessment of, 11–12, 226
on the category rīti, 67, 203, 227–29, 233
periodization of Hindi literature, 12, 219, 226–27, 231, 238
śikh-nakh, 45, 70, 72, 158, 223, 258 n22, 264 n137
Simhabhupala, 120
Siṃhāsanbattīsī (Sinhasun Butteesee), 147, 206
Singh, Lakshman, 208
Singh, Thakur Jagmohan, 223, 238
Śivrājbhūṣa ṇ, 95–96, 190–91
śleṣa. See under alaṅkāra
śloka. See under meters, poetic
social history, rīti poets, 17–19, 55, 127, 130, 145, 164–65, 169, 176, 185, 245. See also
kavikul; Tripathi brothers
solah śṛṅgār, 161

Page 19 of 22

soldiers, rīti poetry/Braj and, 17, 56, 136, 138, 171–73, 176, 187, 195, 197, 206–7, 209,
230
Somnath (Braj poet), 205, 297 n9
songs, devotional. See music, devotional
speech, figure of. See alaṅkārā
śṛṅgāra rasa, 27, 33, 35, 65, 69, 73–74, 79, 206, 209, 236
importance of, 112, 128, 235
Radha-Krishna and, 112
sambhoga, 27, 74, 117
vipralambha, 27, 34, 74–75, 82
Śṛṅgāramañjarī, 122, 155, 194
Śṛṅgāratilaka, 32, 103, 109, 111
Śṛṅgārśik ṣā, 160–61, 199
Śrutibhūṣa ṇ, 134
Sudāmācarita, 87
Sudan Kavi, 124–25, 205, 217
quoted, 124
Sufis, 24, 60, 96, 100, 136, 160, 188, 226, 242, 257 n7, 266 n23. See also Chishtis
Sujāncaritra, 124, 205
Sukhdev Mishra, 158
Sundar Kaviray, 131, 144–47, 153, 164, 187, 199, 206, 209, 230
quoted, 144–45
Sundarśṛṅgār, 144–47, 164, 278 n64
Sur, Islam Shah, 134
(p.338) Suraj Singh, King, 186
Surati Mishra, 103, 115, 162, 230
quoted, 115
Surdas, 5, 7, 27–28, 132, 136, 143, 207, 217, 224, 230, 242
Surjan Rao (Hada), King, 180–81
Surjanacarita, 181
svakīyā, 36, 79, 161
Svami Haridas, 27, 63, 259 n37
Tajjuddin, 162
Tansen, 63, 134, 143
tārīkh, 90, 100, 164
Thakur (18th cent. poet), 229, 234
Todar Mal, 134–35, 141
topics, edifying literary, 11, 67, 203, 212–13, 222–24, 228
translations, 128, 138
English to Hindi, 232
Sanskrit to Braj or Hindi, 18, 116, 174, 177, 194
Sanskrit to Persian, 147, 152, 158, 163
Sanskrit or European classics to vernaculars, 213, 241
Tripathi brothers, 181, 189–96, 224, 230, 287 n84. See also Bhushan, Chintamani, and
Matiram Tripathi
Tuḥfat al-hind, 8, 99, 158–59
Tukaram, 195
Tulsidas, 5, 7, 25–26, 44–45, 118–19, 136–38, 207, 219, 224, 230–31, 242, 257 n2, 269
n85, 276 n35, 276 n40, 294 n99
Page 20 of 22

quoted, 25–26
udāharaṇs, 33, 35, 76, 78, 112
Udaynath Kavindra, 199
Udbhata, 126
Uddhava, 140, 277 n53
Udit Narayan Singh, King, 211
Ujjvalanīlamaṇi, 33
understanding, according to my own (apanī mati anusāra). See vernacular innovations
Urdu language and literature, 4, 8, 22, 84, 90, 156, 163, 204, 206, 208, 213, 216, 218,
225, 232, 237–38, 241, 254 n6, 255 n16, 256 n30, 265 n7, 267 n41, 278 n71, 292 n39,
292 n56–57, 293 n65, 296 n122, 297 n2
Vaishnavas: Bengali, 212, 254 n8
Brajbhasha and, viii, 7–9, 26–27, 131, 135, 166, 200, 244, 248
courts and, 28, 30, 32, 47, 62, 65, 130, 132, 135, 163, 166, 169, 185
Gaudiya, 27, 33, 128, 258 n17, 270 n20
literature and, 19, 24, 27–28, 30, 33, 35–36, 63, 65, 87–88, 91, 111, 113, 115, 117–
18, 127–28, 166, 214–15, 217, 244
sacred sites of, 7–8, 26–27, 33, 47, 135
Vallabhans, 27, 217, 257 n40, 258 n10, 275 n7
Valmiki, 44–45, 49, 262 n89
Vamana, 126, 255 n15, 271 n39
vaṃśāvalīs. See genealogies, royal
Varanasi. See Banaras
Verma, Nirmal, 241
vernacular anxiety, 24–26, 62, 103, 123–24, 148, 178, 229, 257 n2
vernacular innovations, 33, 65–66, 84, 100, 102–3, 105, 107, 116, 118–20, 124, 126,
178, 203, 209, 228–29, 246
apanī mati anusāra refrain for, 108–10, 123, 209, 246, 271 n36
vernacular self-confidence, 123, 167, 178, 197, 203–4
vernacularization, 28, 101, 125, 128, 148, 163, 176, 196, 199, 274 n79, 287 n87
vibhāva: ālambana, 69–70, 72, 79
uddīpana, 72, 74
Vidyanatha, 103
views, modern: of courtliness, 15–17, 21, 167, 203, 221
of “medieval,” 12, 126, 226, 239
of originality (see originality)
(p.339) of plagiarism, 103–4. See also Hindi studies: lacunae and
misconceptions; poetry: hermeneutic biases about
Vijñāngītā, 54–55, 61, 91
Vikramāṅkadevacarita, 88
Vinod. See Miśrabandhuvinod
viraha, 29, 75, 82, 94, 117
virahiṇī. See under nāyikā; see also viraha
V īramitrodaya, 54
V īrsiṃhdevcarit, 46–55, 57–58, 88, 91, 142, 172–73
virudāvalī, 154, 279 n78
Vishnudas, 62
Vishvanath Singh, King, 210–11
Vishveshvara temple, 47
Page 21 of 22

Vrind, 90, 131, 159–61, 178, 195–96, 198–99

quoted, 160–61
Vrindavan, 7, 117, 135
Vrindavandas, 205
Vyas, Hariram, 28, 47, 62, 117, 259 n37
wives, other's. See parakīyā
wives, own. See svakīyā
women: catalogues of (see nāyikābheda)
education of (see under education)
Yogavāsiṣṭha, 54
Yuktitaraṅginī, 175
Zain Khan Koka, 137–38, 141
Zainuddin Muhammad, 154
Zamir, Mirza Raushan, 158

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