Abstract
In the formation of vernacular North Indian literature in “Hindavī,” an important role is played by “Sufi romance” (premākhyān). The earliest love narrative known as Cāndāyan, written in 1379–80, by Maulānā Dāūd has been cited as evidence supporting arguments about the rise of literary vernaculars by scholars foregrounding religious and political factors in that process. The purpose of this article is to rethink the broader arguments by revisiting the historical circumstances at the time and through a close reading for affect. It invites a shift in perception by demonstrating Cāndāyan’s roots in folk narrative performativity. Concurrent with that, it is a revision of the view that the author, Dāūd, was a member of the sultanate elite. Closely reading the text’s aesthetic elements also creates a new perspective regarding who its audience was. Finally, the article explores what constitutes a vernacular emotional regime and the role of emotional communities in the emergence of Hindavī. It goes beyond the specific case study in looking for new ways to conceptualize the connections between regional centers of power and early devotional communities, highlighting their deployment of interlinkages through multiple networks of cultural production.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For North India, the term “vernacular” typically refers to New Indo-Aryan (NIA) literary languages in contrast to “cosmopolitan languages” such as Sanskrit and Persian.
Though usually discussed in the singular, Hawley (2015) has questioned the monolinear model of the historical emergence and spread of a singular Bhakti movement and convincingly shown the plurality of Bhakti movements.
For later developments, see d’Hubert 2018: 226–53.
The nomenclature of the NIA language of North India is problematic (Pauwels 2010). Various terms are used to refer to the language of NIA texts in the texts themselves. The linguistic features of the language itself are fluid in the manuscripts yet often standardized in editions to conform to later politico-linguistic agendas. Consequently, regional terms like “Avadhī,” “Braj,” “Bihārī,” “Dakhanī,” “Gurjarī,” “Gvaliyārī,” “Hindavī,” “Hindī,” “Madhyadeśīya,” “Mārvārī,” “Mevārī,” “Pūrbī,” “Rājasthānī,” etc., are largely anachronistic labels for the early documents. Throughout this article, I have used “Hindavī” for early forms of what later came to be seen as Hindi/Urdu. Perhaps it would have been more apt to use “(Deśa)bhāṣā,” or regional language, but that is often confused with Brajbhāṣā. Behl (2012b) uses Hindavī in connection with Sufi texts in an unarticulated attempt to counter the designation Avadhī, which claims them for early Hindi rather than Urdu. I do not have any such agenda, and I only wish to avoid anachronistically compartmentalized milieus of Hindi and Urdu.
The late scholar Simon Digby anticipated that such changes were in the works, as he ventured that “linguistic consequences of the provincial political developments of the fourteenth century” affect “changes in North Indian climates of sensibility” (2004: 298, and further elaborated on pages 348–52).
See, however, footnote 4 above.
For defining “folk,” genre, and region for the Lorik-Cāndā cycle, see Flueckiger 1996: 1–25.
It is Pandey’s edition that is cited in this paper.
I am grateful to Richard Cohen for sharing his translation with me. It allowed me to quickly identify relevant passages for the last part of this article. I provide here my working translation, which is literal with least possible additions to do justice to the historical information contained therein. Still, I have greatly benefited from having had the chance to see his more elegant translation.
The translator, R. C. Jauhri, adds “Malik” Tun Tun, but the edition does not read malik but malīḥ “charming.” The epithet is used several times on the following pages, indicating it may have been a proper name (‘Afīf 1888–91: 59–60).
The exact date is VS 1673 Māgha Śukla 7. The colophon specifies that it was written in Fatehpur during the reign of ‘Alif Khān and “Salīm in Delhi.” This manuscript is referred to as the Bikaner manuscript as it was written by a Brāhmaṇa called Durgā (son of Gauḍānya Pradhān Mahārasiyā Amaru) for the reading pleasure of a Sūr Vāstavya of Bikaner, son of Vośvāl Mahārāja Śrī Rāi Syāh (Pandey 2018, 1: 14; Gupta 1967: 52).
The manuscript is preserved in the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
Canto 554 on folio 175r.
It is hyper-metrical, as it renders eighteen mātrās instead of the usual sixteen for each half-line (arddhalī) of the caupāī.
“ākhir-e besahar khand cand sukhan farmūdan-e maulānā nathan.” More on maulānā Nathan below.
For example, Behl 2012b: 36–40.
Persian munādī (Arabic munādiṉ), a crier, herald, proclaimer, preacher (Platts 1974).
See Digby 2004: 345.
This likely refers to the eight syllables of the kalma, the Muslim profession of faith: lā ilāha illaʼl-lāh, “There is no god but God.”
This is usually rendered as hindukī, which is an unusual form. Still, of course, this is one of the earliest texts in the language, so one can hardly expect it to conform to later standards of naming the language Hindavī. I propose splitting it up as Hindu-kī, surmising that it is an adjective in agreement with an implicit bāt or bhāṣā. The contrasting pair of words Hindū and Turk is well-attested even in Cāndāyan itself, and this may alternatively be a somewhat inelegant attempt to create a matching invariable adjective to go with Turkī.
I am following here the traditional interpretation, among others by Pandey (2018, 2: 13). Still, one could also see a relative (tyahu)-correlative (jiha) construction that could be translated as “that person’s house remains pure, whose heart remains attracted [to the pīr].”
The less likely candidate by the name Zain ud-Dīn was known as Shirāzī (d. 1370), and a follower of another Chistīya, the influential Burhān al-Dīn Gharīb of Burhanpur (d. 1344), who was influential with the Bahmani rulers (Adamjee 2011: 44).
His role in the disputed succession of Chirāgh-i Dihlī in 1356 is discussed by Digby (1986: 81–87).
Each canto consists of caupāīs (couplets in a specific meter) but ends with a dohā (shorter couplets in a different meter). I give the line numbers for the caupāī lines but indicate dohā when it is the last couplet.
Kalma is etymologically related to Arabic kalimāt, from the word for “writing” kalām.
Incidentally, that is a Devanāgarī manuscript, see Gupta 1967: 52–53.
Some have drawn attention to “illiterate” renditions of the names of the patrons and Sufis that are difficult to account for if the author were part of the Muslim elite and had enjoyed an education in Persian (Digby 2004: 342). This may be a feature simply of the survival of the prologue with the names only in the Devanāgarī manuscript, which provides only an approximation of the pronunciation of the Perso-Arabic phonetic features.
On the meter, see also Hines 2009: 92–100.
For which, see Hines 2009: 118–27.
Note the reference to “pondering the letters” in the fourth line.
Behl (2012b: 84–85) providing an overview of the contents of this handbook for writing poetry in the vernacular presumes Dāūd used its topoi but indicates there is no direct overlap with Cāndāyan.
‘Afīf (2001: 51) presents this version of the events as a corrective to the one then prevailing “amongst the people” that cast the Khwājā-i Jahān as actively involved in subordinating Firoz Shāh’s cause. This more conciliatory take on the aged Khwājā-i Jahān’s role is attributed to a “reliable” survivor of the times (Kishwar Khān, son of Lashkar Khān Bahram Aiba). Likely when referencing the later consensus of events, he has in mind Barānī’s account (2015: 331–35), which villainizes the Khwājā and his supporters.
‘Afīf (2001: 57) mentions only Ajodhan.
This Qutub al-Dīn is not to be confused with the famous ‘Bakhtiyār Kākī’ of that name, who had died in 1235. The incident of this shaykh’s blessings is related based on the testimony of one of the shaykh’s sons, who was close to ‘Afīf (see ‘Afīf 2001: 66). Also mentioned by Barānī 2015: 334; see also Digby 1986: 79, 100–101n30.
Though as Eaton has observed insightfully, “the charismatic authority of eminent Sufi shaykhs, however, was a double-edged sword” that could work in favor of central as well as provincial authorities (2019: 74–76).
It is not impossible that the sultān visited Dalmau, where one late source asserts, he founded a madrasa (Anonymous 1877–78, 3: 355).
See also Kumar 2014a.
See Pandey 2018, 1: 121. The manuscript, dated around 1500 or early in the sixteenth century, was originally in possession of an old Muslim family from Bhopal. Most folios ended up in what was formerly called the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay (Mumbai), now Chatrapati Shivājī Mahārāj Museum. This folio was one of the two from Francis Hofer’s collection in Massachusetts, now in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (published in Dye 2001: 208).
Spelled thus in canto 15 on the reverse of the image of Jaunā Khān, but as “Mamārakhu” in the corresponding canto in the Devanāgarī Bikaner manuscript. Digby (2004: 307n12) explains that the title malik is used for military commanders, which fits the description Dāūd gives of him.
His tomb in Dalmau fort was still marked five hundred years later, according to the Gazetteer of Oudh (Anonymous 1877–78, 3: 219). This information was based on Benett’s A Report on the Family History of the Chief Clans of the Roy Bareilly District (1870), whom, on his visit to the tomb, was given the information on “Malik Mubarik” based on an “old Hindi story book” dated 1043 H copied from one dated 779 H (page 2). Pandey (2018, 1: 13, 21n4) ingeniously speculates this was a manuscript of the 781 H Cāndāyan (one might add that the difference in date is easily explained by the resemblance of unyāsī or 79 to ikyāsī or 81).
Adamjee has brought to light a reference to a Malik Mubārak Kabīr in charge of the sultān’s royal kārkhānās (storehouse departments) of arms and arsenal (zarrād-khāna or armorer’s shop and silāḥ-khāna or armory; Steingass, 1892; see ‘Afīf, book 4, chapter 13, 1888–91 [edition]: 303, 2001 [translation]: 191). Adamjee (2011: 40–41) reasonably assumes that it is possible that he was a high-placed courtier in Delhi who was also a landholder in Dalmau. However, it seems unlikely he is the same person praised in Cāndāyan.
Perhaps udhanī is derived from odh- [compare ābaddha-], v.t. Av. to bind, to join (as battle) (OHED).
See Anonymous 1877–78, 1: 355. Neither Mubārak, nor Nāṣir al-Mulk, nor even the wazīr are mentioned.
Charaharā is attested as synonymous with bahurupiyā (“showman”) (HŚS).
Perhaps bhaṇḍuvā, a mendicant group (bhikhārī) enumerated in Varṇaratnākara (text page 2, folio 10r).
Taking nisehiṃ carāvahiṃ as a variant of nis-carāī karnā, “to prowl at night,” concerning nis-carī, s.f. a harlot. Murnā (muṛnā), v.n. (dialec.) “to be absorbed or wrapt (in)” (Platts). Alternatively, from mūṁṛnā [muṇḍayati], v.t. which can mean “to cheat, to fleece” (OHED).
Paṁvāṛā [pravāda- + MIA -ḍa-], m. an encomium; a long or boring tale (OHED).
This half-line varies substantially in different editions. The first two words could be bhāṁṛ [bhāṇḍa-2], m. “jester, joker; buffoon” and bhagālī, adj. reg. wearing a necklace of skulls: a title of Śiva (OHED).
Badhāvā [cf. vardhāpayati], m. Av. festivity (OHED).
Several of these terms for performers and their shows are now obscure but may well be part of stock city descriptions (nagara-varṇana), like those attested in the fourteenth-century work Varṇaratnākara by Jyotirīśvara Kaviśekhara, where “the Lorik Dance” (lorika nācau) itself was listed (text page 2, folio 10r).
Similar to baru idiomatically used with the verb ā- “to have a good outcome, to turn out very well” (OHED).
An interesting exception is the description of the mole (tila), borrowed from Persian traditions (Persian khāl) with heavy Sufi connotations, not found in Sanskrit poetry (see Pandey 1999: 148–53).
Possibly it can also be read as “bird” or “bee.” The word bhujaṅga [S.], as an adj. “moving by bending,” can mean as a n.m. “snake” or “bird” (OHED). If read as bhṛṅga [S.], it could be “a large black bee” (it is relevant that her friends compare him to a bee or bhavara in canto 221 dohā).
See Ḥamīd 2010: for example, 71–73 (assembly 29).
Probably misspelling for Cāndāyan.
Compare Behl 2012b: 37, 39, 46: the author “created paradigm…out of romances of Nizami Ganjavi and Amir Khusrau.”
References
Adamjee, Qamar. 2011. “Strategies for Visual Narration in the Illustrated Chandayan Manuscripts.” Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University.
‘Afīf, Shams Sirāj. 1888–91. Tārīḵẖ-i Firoz Shāhī (ed. Maulavī Vilāyat Husain). Calcutta: Asiatic Society.
‘Afīf, Shams Sirāj. 2001. Medieval India in Transition—Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi: A First Hand Account (trans. R. C. Jauhri). New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan.
Anonymous. 1877–78. The Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh (ed. W. C. Benett). 3 volumes. Allahabad: Northwestern Provinces and Oudh Government Press.
Aquil, Raziuddin. 2020. Lovers of God: Sufism and the Politics of Islam in Medieval India. Abingdon: Routledge.
Badāūnī, ʻAbd al-Qādir ibn Mulūk Shāh. 1868. Muntaḵẖab ut-Tawārīḵẖ (ed. Maulavī Aḥmad ‘Alī). Volume 1. Calcutta: Asiatic Society.
Badāūnī, ʻAbd al-Qādir ibn Mulūk Shāh. 1973 [1898]. Muntaḵẖabu-t-Tawārīḵẖ (trans. and eds. George S. A. Ranking, W. H. Lowe, and Wolseley Haig). Volume 1. New Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli.
Barānī, Ziā al-Dīn. 2015 [1357]. Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi: An English Translation (trans. Ishtiyaq Ahmad Zilli). New Delhi: Primus.
Behl, Aditya, trans. 2012a. The Magic Doe: Qutban Suhrawardī’s Mirigāvatī (ed. Wendy Doniger). New York: Oxford University Press.
Behl, Aditya. 2012b. Love’s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379–1545 (ed. Wendy Doniger). New York: Oxford University Press.
Benett, W. C. 1870. A Report on the Family History of the Chief Clans of the Roy Bareilly District. Lucknow: Printed at the Oudh Government Press.
Cohen, Richard J., trans. Forthcoming. Chandayan: The Secular and Profane in Medieval Indian Sufism. Mumbai: Marg Publications.
d’Hubert, Thibaut. 2018. In the Shade of the Golden Palace: Ālāol and the Middle Bengali Poetics in Arakan. New York: Oxford University Press.
Digby, Simon. 1975. “‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537 A.D.): The Personality and Attitudes of a Medieval Indian Sufi.” In K. A. Nizami, ed., Medieval India: A Miscellany, 3: 1–66. New York: Asia Publishing House.
Digby, Simon. 1986. “Tabarrukāt and Succession Among the Great Chishtī Shaykhs of the Delhi Sultanate.” In R. E. Frykenberg, ed., Delhi Through the Ages: Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society, 63–103. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Digby, Simon. 2004. “Before Timur Came: Provincialization of the Delhi Sultanate Through the Fourteenth Century.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47, 3: 298–356.
Dye, Joseph M. III. 2001. The Arts of India: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Eaton, Richard. 2014. “The Rise of Written Vernaculars: The Deccan, 1450–1650.” In Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh, eds., After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India, 111–29. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Eaton, Richard M. 2019. India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765. Oakland: University of California Press.
Flueckiger, Joyce Burkhalter. 1996. Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Gupta, Mātāprasād, ed. 1967. Candāyan: Dāūd Viracit Pratham Hindī Sūfī Premakāvya. Agra: Prāmāṇik Prakāśan.
Ḥamīd, Qalandar. 2010. Ḵẖair-ul-Majalis (trans. Ishrat Husain Ansari and Hamid Afaq Siddiqi). New Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli.
Hawley, John Stratton. 2015. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hines, Naseem. 2009. Maulānā Dāūd’s Cāndāyan: A Critical Study. New Delhi: Manohar.
HŚS. See Śyāmsundardās 1965–75.
Jyotirīśvara Kaviśekhara. 1940. Varṇaratnākara (eds. Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Babua Misra). Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press.
Kumar, Sunil. 2014a. “An Inconvenient Heritage: The Central Asian Background of the Delhi Sultans.” In Upinder Singh and Parul Pandya Dhar, eds., Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories, 86–107. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Kumar, Sunil. 2014b. “Bandagi and Naukarī: Studying Transitions in Political Culture and Service under the North Indian Sultanates, Thirteenth–Sixteenth Centuries.” In Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh, eds., After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India, 60–108. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
McGregor, R. S., ed. 1993. Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [cited as OHED]
McGregor, [Ronald] Stuart. 2003. “The Progress of Hindi, Part I: The Development of a Transregional Idiom.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, 912–57. Berkeley: University of California Press.
OHED. See McGregor 1993.
Orsini, Francesca. 2017. “The Social History of a Genre: Kathas Across Languages in Early Modern North India.” The Medieval History Genre 20, 1: 1–37.
Pandey, Shyam Manohar. 1979. The Hindi Oral Epic Loriki: The Tale of Lorik and Candā. Allahabad: Sahitya Bhawan.
Pandey, Shyam Manohar. 1982. The Hindi Oral Epic Canainī: The Tale of Lorik and Candā. Allahabad: Sahitya Bhawan.
Pandey, Shyam Manohar. 1983. “Love Symbolism in Candāyan.” In Monika Thiel-Horstmann, ed., Bhakti in Current Research, 1979–1982, 269–93. Berlin: Dietrich Rheimer Verlag.
Pandey, Shyam Manohar. 1987. The Hindi Oral Epic Lorikāyan. Allahabad: Sahitya Bhawan.
Pandey, Shyam Manohar. 1999. Poetic Influence on Bhakti. New Delhi: Aravali Books.
Pandey, Shyam Manohar. 2018. Dāūd kṛt Čandāyan. 2 volumes. Allahabad: Sāhitya Bhavan.
Pauwels, Heidi. 2010. “Languages and Literatures of the Vernaculars.” In Knut A. Jacobsen, ed., and Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, Vasudha Narayanan, assoc. eds., Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism, 2: 208–24. Leiden: Brill.
Pauwels, Heidi. 2021. “Cultivating Emotion and the Rise of the Vernacular: The Role of Affect in ‘Early Hindi-Urdu’ Song.” South Asian History and Culture 12, 2: 146–65.
Pernau, Margrit. 2017. “Feeling Communities: Introduction.” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 54, 1: 1–20.
Pernau, Margrit. 2021. “Studying Emotions in South Asia.” South Asian History and Culture 12, 2: 111–28.
Phukan, Shantanu. 2001. “Through A Persian Prism: Hindi and Padmāvat in the Mughal Imagination.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago.
Platts, John T. 1974 [1930 (1884)]. A Dictionary of Urdū, Classical Hindī, and English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rajamani, Imke, Margrit Pernau, and Katherine Butler Schofield, eds. 2018. Monsoon Feelings a History of Emotions in the Rain. New Delhi: Niyogi Books.
Sheikh, Samira. 2017. “A Makeshift Renaissance: North India in the ‘Long’ Fifteenth Century.” In William Caferro, ed., The Routledge History of the Renaissance, 1: 30–45. Abingdon: Routledge.
Sirhindī, Yāḥiyā ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Abdullāh. 1986 [1932]. The Tārīḵẖ-i Mubārak Shāhī (trans. H. Beveridge). New Delhi: Durga Publications.
Sreenivasan, Ramya. 2014. “Warrior-Tales at Hinterland Courts in North India, c. 1370–1550.” In Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh, eds., After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India, 242–72. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Steingass, Francis Joseph. 1892. A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary. London: Routledge and K. Paul.
Śyāmsundardās. 1965–75 [1916–28]. Hindī śabdsāgar, arthāt, Hindī bhāṣā kā ek bṛhat kōś. 11 volumes. Benares: Nagaripracarini Sabha. [cited as HŚS]
Acknowledgments
I want to express my gratitude to Margrit Pernau (Max Planck Institute, Berlin) for inviting me to join her project to stimulate thinking about the history of emotion in connection with various kinds of South Asian literature. This article came about as a side product of Pauwels 2021, which was part of that more extensive project. It was first presented at the symposium “Connected Courts: Arts of the South Asian Sultanates,” organized by Emily Shovelton and Vivek Gupta, at Wolfson College, Oxford, September 20–21, 2019. I am grateful for the insightful responses of the audience members present there, and in particular Professor Shyam Manohar Pandey. Finally, I am much indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their stimulating and helpful feedback, in particular the suggestion to think through the social communities involved.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Pauwels, H. Rethinking the Early Sufi Romance: The Case of Cāndāyan. Hindu Studies 27, 253–279 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-023-09340-7
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-023-09340-7