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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2019
Various descriptions of the two Mughal capitals, Agra and Delhi, mention the gates of both royal forts as decorated with the statues of two warriors mounted on elephants. The list of those who had described these sculptures and reconstructed their history includes late-medieval Indian writers, European travellers to the Mughal empire, scholars from the nineteenth century onwards, authors of tourist guides; there is a popular oral narrative on them as well. The most widely spread version attributes the statues to the Rajput warriors who defended Chittor against the Mughal invasion and who were immortalised by the emperor Akbar in a sign of his recognition of their valour. This article is an attempt to ‘investigate’ the controversial story of a Mughal ruler glorifying his sworn enemies and to analyse historical circumstances that could be a background for such a narrative.
My research on this topic began as a part of the project ‘Under the Skies of South Asia’, run since 2011 by the Centre for Indian Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow, Russia (initiator and head Irina Glushkova, website http://ivran.ru/pnua). A short Russian version was published in the first volume of the project, Pod nebom Yuzhnoi Azii: Portret i skulptura (Under the Skies of South Asia: Portrait and Sculpture), (ed.) Irina Glushkova and Irina Prokofieva (Moscow, 2014), pp. 389–412. It has taken me four more years to rework the topic almost completely, accommodating newly acquired source material and focusing on different approaches to the theme. I am sincerely grateful to Irina Glushkova, Irina Prokofieva, Allison Busch, Harbans Mukhia and my anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
1 This was Monserrate's version of the first element Mughal emperor's full name: Jalal ad-din Muhammad Akbar.
2 Monserrate, A., The Commentary of Father Monserrate S. J. On His Journey to the Court of Akbar, translated by Hoyland, J. S. (London, 1922), p. 35Google Scholar.
3 J. S. Hoyland (1887–1957) was a British Quaker who came to India first as a missionary and then, up to 1928, taught English and history at Hislop College, Nagpur.
4 Various European sources, quoted in my study, differ in transliterating the names of the Chittor warriors. Jaimal was spelled as Jemel and Jaimall. Potta is a distortion of the name Patta (in Rajasthan they also spell it as Phatta).
5 The spelling of this city's name varies in different sources: Chitor, Chitur, Chittore, Chittor. I prefer the latter as closer to the original Cittauḍ.
6 Hoyland refers to the description of this gun in the translation of the first volume of the Ā`īn- i Akbarī by H. Blochmann.
7 The reference is to Bernier, F., Travels in the Mughal Empire, tr. Archibald Constable. 2nd. revised edition by Smith, Vincent A.. (London and New York, 1916), p. 256Google Scholar.
8 Monserrate, The Commentary, p. 35.
9 For example, Dodwell, H. H. (ed.), Cambridge Shorter History of India, II. By Alan, J., Sir Haig, T. Wolseley [and] Dodwell, H. H.. (New York, 1934), p. 349Google Scholar; Mehta, J. L., Advanced Study in the History of Medieval India, II (Delhi, 1984), p. 231Google Scholar; Hooja, R., A History of Rajasthan (Delhi, 2006), p. 464Google Scholar.
10 Forbes-Lindsay, C. H., India: Past and Present, I (Delhi, 2002, [1903]), pp. 75, 153Google Scholar; Singh, R. B., Maharana Pratap (Delhi, 2004), p. 35Google Scholar; Schreitmuller, K., India (Ostfildern, 2009), p. 36Google Scholar. Same is the Wikipedia version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaimal_and_Patta.
11 Rüsen, J., History: Narration, Interpretation, Orientation (Oxford and New York, 2005), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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14 For example, Partha Mitter's classic Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Chicago, 1977)Google Scholar and his subsequent Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922: Occidental Orientations (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar; also Davis, R. H., Lives of the Indian Images (Princeton, 1997)Google Scholar; Guha-Thakurta, T., Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (New York, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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16 Flood, F. B., Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton, 2009), p. 11Google Scholar.
17 Sculptors and painters were all designated in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, etc. by the word muṣavvir (‘giving form’), initially an epithet for the Creator; the usage of the term for mortals signified the abominable and sinful character of their occupation. See in more detail, Arnold, T. W., Painting in Islam. A Study of the Place of Pictorial Art in Muslim Culture (Oxford, 1928. A facsimile edition by Gorgias Press, 2004), pp. 5 – 6Google Scholar.
18 Eaton, Richard M., “Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States”, Journal of Islamic Studies 11, 3 (2000), pp. 283–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Futuhat-i Firuz-Shahi of Sultan Firuz Shah, (ed.) Rashid, Shaikh Abdur (Aligarh, 1954), p. 11Google Scholar (Persian text, my translation – E. V.).
20 Verma, Painting, p. 32.
21 Discussed in more detail in Vanina, E., Ideas & Society. India between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Second edition (Delhi, 2004), pp. 67 – 81Google Scholar.
22 Allami, Abu-l Fazl, Ā`īn- i Akbarī., I, translated by Blochmann, H. (Delhi, 1977, reprint), p. 115Google Scholar.
23 Foster, W., Early Travels in India (1583–1619) (Oxford, 1921), pp. 162 – 164Google Scholar.
24 Discussed in more detail by Mukhia, H., The Mughals of India (Malden US and Oxford UK, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 For instance, Kramrisch, S., Indian Sculpture (Delhi, 1981)Google Scholar; Morley, G. and Vatsyayan, K., Indian Sculpture (Delhi, 2006)Google Scholar.
26 The enlightening work on this subject is Settar, S. and Sontheimer, G. S. (eds.), Memorial Stones. A Study of Their Origin, Significance and Variety (Dharwad and Heidelberg, 1982)Google Scholar.
27 Smith, W., “Images of Divine Kings from the Mukteśvara Temple, Bhubaneswar”, Artibus Asiae 51, 1/2 (1991), pp. 90 – 106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaimal, P., “The Problem of Portraiture in South India, circa 870-970 A.D.”, Artibus Asiae 59, 1/2 (1999), pp. 59 – 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaimal, P., “The Problem of Portraiture in South India, circa 970-1000 A.D.”, Artibus Asiae 60, 1 (2000), pp. 139 – 179CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Discussed in more detail in Desai, D., “Social Dimensions of Art in Early India”, Social Scientist 18, 9 –10 (1990), p. 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vanina, E., Medieval Indian Mindscapes: Space, Time, Society, Man (Delhi, 2012), pp. 226 – 234Google Scholar.
29 Kaimal, “The Problem of Portraiture”, (2000), pp. 67 – 69; Granoff, P., “Portraits, Likenesses and Looking Glasses: Some Literary and Philosophical Reflections on Representation and Art in Medieval India”, in Representation in Religion. Studies in Honor of Moshe Barasch, (eds.) Barasch, M., Assmann, J., Baumgarten, A. I. (Leiden, 2001)Google Scholar; Lefevre, V., Portraiture in Early India: Between Transience and Eternity (Leiden, 2011), pp. 53 – 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Bhasa, Thirteen Plays of Bhasa, translated by A. C. Woolner and Lakshman Sarup (Delhi, 1985), p. 174 – 175. Discussed in Lefevre, Portraiture in Early India, pp. 72 – 76, 90 – 91.
31 Merutunga, The Prabandhacintāmaṇi or Wishingstone of Narratives Composed by Merutuṅga Ācārya, translated by Tawney, C. H.. Bibliotheca Indica, New Series, 931 (Calcutta, 1899), pp. 158 –159Google Scholar.
32 Bernier, Travels, p. 257. Almost simultaneously with Bernier, another French traveller, Jean de Thevenot, visited the Delhi Red Fort and likewise noticed the two statues of elephant-mounted warriors at the gate. He did not give any information and, in his own words, left a more detailed description to his compatriot Bernier who was more knowledgeable on the subject. See Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri. Being the Third Part of the Travels of M. de Thevenot into the Levant and the Third Part of a Voyage Round the World by Dr John Francis Gemelli Careri, (ed.) Sen, Surendranath (Delhi, 1949), pp. 59 – 60Google Scholar.
33 James Tod's life, career, and views have been analysed in the a number of high-level studies including Peabody, N., “Tod` s Rajast`han and the Boundaries of Imperial Rule in the Nineteenth-Century India”, Modern Asian Studies 36, 1 (1996), pp. 185 – 220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peabody, N., Hindu Kinship and Polity in Precolonial India (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar; Freitag., J.Serving Empire, Serving Nation. James Tod and the Rajputs of Rajasthan (Leiden and Boston, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Tod, J., Annals and Antiquities of Rajast`han of the Central and Western Rajput States of India, (ed.) Crooke, William, I (Oxford, 1920), p. 380Google Scholar.
35 A mistake by Tod, as Akbar's capital was Agra, not Delhi the capital of Shah Jahan, where Bernier saw the statues. A similar mistake was made by K. Shreitmuller in Baedeker's guide: Schreitmuller, India, p. 361.
36 Tod, Annals, p. 382.
37 Latif, S. M., Agra historical and descriptive with an account of Akbar and his court and of the modern city of Agra. (Delhi, 1896 [reprint 2003]), p. 76Google Scholar. This is the name for the gates nowadays as well.
38 The first was in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society I (1862–63), pp. 225–230. The second, and more detailed one, was in Cunningham, A., Archaeological Survey of India. Four Reports Made During the Years 1862 – 63 – 64 – 65 by Alexander Cunningham CSI, I (Simla, 1871)Google Scholar.
39 Charles Campbell was one of those British officers who found the statue pieces. One year afterwards, he published the inventory of the findings. According to him, there were 117 fragments of elephant bodies, three human body parts, four hand fragments and one full head, apart from a host of unidentifiable minor pieces. Campbell, C., “Memorandum of the life-sized statues, lately exhumed inside the palace of Delhi”, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 33 (1865), p. 159Google Scholar.
40 In his 1876 book on the archaeology and architecture of Delhi, Stephen Carr stated that, as the remains seen by him suggested, each elephant had two riders, the warrior and the driver (mahaut). Carr, S., The Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi (Calcutta, 1876), pp. 221 – 223Google Scholar. Curiously, no source quoted in my study mentioned the drivers. On one hand, the mahauts could be in place if the statues presented aristocratic Rajputs. On the other, Campbell's inventory also does not corroborate Carr's suggestion.
41 Cunningham, Archaeological Survey of India. Four Reports, pp. 227 – 230. Such a clear distinction between Hindus and Muslims with reference to the opening of their dresses over the right or left breast is doubtful.
42 Marshall, J. H., “Restoration of Two Elephant Statues, at the Fort of Delhi”, Archaeological Survey of India. Annual Report. 1905–1906 (Calcutta, India, 1909), pp. 33–42Google Scholar.
43 Cunningham's version of Hemu's death differs from the record by Abu-l Fazl. According to the latter, when Hemu, wounded and imprisoned, was brought before Akbar and Bairam Khan, the guardian of the thirteen-year old emperor and real commander of the Mughal army during the second Panipat battle (1556), Akbar refused to kill the prisoner who was ultimately slain by Bairam Khan. See Allami, Abu-l Fazl, Akbar Nāma, translated by H. Beveridge, II (Calcutta, 1907, reprint 2000), p. 229Google Scholar. In no less contradiction with historical records is the attempt by Cunningham to present Akbar as a Hindu-bashing Muslim fanatic.
44 Cunningham, Archaeological Survey of India. Four Reports, p. 220.
45 Ibid, p. 230. For a similar argumentation in a modern study, see Asher, C. E. B., Architecture of Mughal India, I (IV) (Cambridge, 1992), p. 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 Dodwell (ed.), Cambridge Shorter History of India, II, p. 350. I am grateful to Prof. Bir Good Gill from Amritsar for a convincing argument, in an oral communication: if Akbar had intended to humiliate the Chittor warriors and present them as his doorkeepers, the statues would have never been mounted on elephants, since the elephant had been for centuries associated in Indian culture with royalty, glory and honour.
47 Keene, H. G., Handbook for Visitors to Delhi and Its Neighbourhood (Calcutta, 1882), pp. 68– 69Google Scholar.
48 Foster, Early Travels, p. 183.
49 Ibid.
50 Samuel Purchas (1577– 1626), a British writer and diplomat, continued the project, initiated by Richard Hakluyt (1552/53-1616), of collecting and publishing the notes and memoirs by European travellers to various parts of the world. Purchas was the first editor and publisher of Finch` s travelogue.
51 Ibid.
52 Keene, Handbook, pp. 69 – 70.
53 Jahangir, , The Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī or Memoirs of Jahāngīr, translated by Rogers, Alexander, (ed.) Beveridge, Henry (London, 1909), pp. 29 – 30Google Scholar.
54 Allami, Abu-l Fazl, Ā`īn- i Akbarī., II, translated by Jarrett, H. S. (Delhi, 1978), p. 191Google Scholar.
55 A Contemporary Dutch Chronicle of Mughal India, translated and edited Brij, Narain M. A. and Sri Ram, Sharma M. A. (Calcutta, 1957), pp. 1– 4Google Scholar.
56 Ibid, p. 15.
57 The Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī, p. 332.
58 H. Beveridge, “The Elephant Statues of Agra and Delhi”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (July 1909), p. 743. The celebrated fortress of Gwalior had its own Elephant Gate adorned by a life-size elephant statue with a driver (mahaut) and a rider. Abu-l Fazl described it as one that “fills the beholder with astonishment”. Ā`īn- i Akbarī, II, p.192. This statue was mentioned by Babur and Monserrate as well. Cunningham suggested that this masterpiece was appropriated by “Muzaffar Khan, who held the fortress for 19 years, from the assession of Shah Jahan in A. D. 1628 to 1647”. Cunningham, Archaeological Survey of India. Four Reports, p. 337.
59 The Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī, p. 332, note 3.
60 Campbell, “Memorandum”, pp.160 – 161.
61 Unfortunately, it is not possible to see these footprints now in the Agra fort. The area adjacent to the Elephant gates is occupied by the garrison and, thus, not available to visitors.
62 Marshall, Restoration, p. 41; Havell, E. B., A Hand-Book of Agra and the Taj Sikandra, Fatehpur-Sikri and the Neighbourhood (Delhi, 1912 [reprint 2003]), pp. 40 – 41Google Scholar.
63 One of this article's anonymous reviewers suggested that in the Tārīkh-i Alfī, a millennial history of Islam commissioned by Akbar and completed by a group of Indo-Iranian scholars in 1592, the description of the siege of Chittor includes an episode when, after the final storm, Akbar mounted an elephant (bar fīl savār shud) and, accompanied by his court, entered the fort, which was followed by mass slaughter (qatl-i ‘ām) of the defenders [Qazi Ahmad Tatavi and Asaf Khan Qazvini, Tārīkh-i Alfī (Tārīkh-i hazār sālah-i Islām), (ed.) Ghulam Reza Tabatabai Majd, XIII (Tehran, 1382/2002), pp. 5 – 6]. The same text features two more ‘heroic’ elephants who, despite being wounded, caused great destruction in the enemy ranks. This evidence made the reviewer suggest that the statues in question could have been erected in the memory of this episode and later re-interpreted. This would somehow tally with Monserrate's version of the statues glorifying Akbar himself, not his adversaries. In this case, it is unclear why the statues were two in number. Moreover, in my opinion, such monumental eulogising of a Muslim king, and in his lifetime, would be too daring even for the liberal and innovative spirit of Akbar's epoch.
64 There is an oral narrative, corroborated by no reliable written source known to me, that to commemorate his victory Akbar ordered the placement of the gate of the Chittor fort in his Agra residence courtyard. There is indeed a beautifully carved gate in the Agra fort, which guides mention as the gate from Chittor.
65 It was written, as mentioned in the text itself, in Ajmer, which Akbar visited shortly after the conquest of Chittor to pray at the grave of the venerated Sufi saint, Muin ud-din Hasan Chishti. The original of the text is preserved in Aligarh as a part of the document collection compiled by a top Mughal official, Sayid Abdul Qasim Khan Namakin. In 1972, Ishtiaq Ahmed Zilli published an English translation of the text and in 2007 its Persian original. See Zilli, I.A., “Fathnama –i Chitor, March 1568. An Annotated Translation”, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 33rd Session, Muzaffarpur (Delhi, 1972)Google Scholar; Zilli, I. A., The Mughal State and Culture 1556-1598. Selected Letters and Documents from Munshaat-i Namakin (Delhi, 2007), pp. 55 – 61Google Scholar.
66 For a fresh view on the reasons of Badauni's opposition to Akbar see Anooshahr, Ali, “Mughal historians and the memory of the Islamic conquest of India”, Indian Economic and Social History Review 4, 3 (2006), pp. 274 – 300Google Scholar.
67 Abu-l Fazl narrated that one of the Rana's sons was in the emperor's retinue. Akbar ‘joked’ about his intention to punish Udai Singh for not paying respects; the prince took the joke seriously and fled the royal camp to inform his father about Akbar's plan to attack Chittor. As a result, ‘jest became earnest’ and the irate Akbar attacked Chittor. Abu-l Fazl Allami, Akbar Nāma, II, pp. 442 – 443.
68 Jaimal belonged to Merta and was a relative of the celebrated Bhakti poetess Mira Bai. When the army of the Mughal viceroy of Malwa besieged Merta he managed to break through the enemy camp with a handful of warriors. His gallantry was praised even by hostile Mughal historians such as Badauni and Nizam ud-din Ahmad. Badaoni, Abdu-l Qadir Ibn-i Muluk Shah, The Muntakhabu`t Tawārīkh. II, tr. and (ed.) Lowe, W. H. (Delhi, 1889 [reprint, 1972]), p. 105Google Scholar; Ahmad, Nizamuddin, The Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī. II, translated De, D. (Calcutta, 1936), p. 343Google Scholar.
69 According to the Rajput oral histories, Jaimal was not killed but only wounded by Akbar's shot and died later, in the final battle which he fought mounted upon the shoulders of his relative Kallaji. The latter, after Jaimal's death, cut off his head as a sacrifice to the goddess Jagadamba (Durga). Kallaji remains a revered hero-saint in Mewar, and his devotees believe that he still protects them from various diseases. His cremation place is marked with a chatrī (pavilion) where pūjā is being held in his memory. There I bought a small collection of hymns to Kallaji by local poets; the episode of the Chittor siege is pivotal to almost every one of them [Satsangi Shriram Samarth (ed), Śrī Kallā kāvya suman (Saroda, n. d.)], but, centered on Kallaji, they do not refer to the statues episode. The Kallaji cult has been discussed in detail by Harlan, L., The Goddesses’ Henchmen. Gender in Indian Hero Worship (New York, 2003), pp. 23 – 54Google Scholar.
70 Zilli, Fathnama –i Chitor, pp. 350 – 361; Abu-l Fazl Allami, Akbar Nāma, II, pp. 454 – 477; Abd al-Qadir Badaoni, The Muntakhabu`t Tawārīkh, II, pp. 104 – 106; Nizamuddin Ahmad, The Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī, II, pp. 343 – 348; Qandahari, Muhammad Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari. An Annotated Translation with Introduction by Tasneem Ahmad. Foreword by Habib, Irfan (Delhi, 1993), pp. 148 – 149Google Scholar.
71 Zilli (ed.), The Mughal State and Culture, pp. 55 – 61.
72 Mouhammad Arif Qandahari, Tarikh-i Akbari, pp. 148 – 149.
73 It was Bhagwant Das Kachhwaha of Amber, Akbar's brother-in-law, who, according to Abu-l Fazl, explained to the emperor that the spurts of flame visible from behind the bastions of Chittor signified the jauhar of women and the forthcoming final sally of the defenders. Abu-l Fazl Allami. Akbar Nāma, II, p. 472.
74 In some Rajput narratives, Udai Singh did not escape from Chittor but was away from the fortress during the Mughal attack and had no opportunity to return.
75 Ishwardas Chauhan, another Rajput general who had fought bravely against the Mughals in Chittor.
76 Ranchod Bhatta, Mahākavi Rañchoḍ Bhaṭṭa praṇītam Rājpraśastiḣ mahākāvyam. Sampādak Ḍā. Motīlāl Menāriyā (Udaipur, 1973), p. 41. Here we find the same mistake making Delhi, not Agra, Akbar` s capital. It was perhaps more natural for people in the seventeenth century and thereafter to refer to the Mughal emperors as ‘Delhi rulers’, not ‘Agra rulers’: the transfer of capital by Shah Jahan resulted, it seems, in this contamination of facts. Similarly, in folkloric jokes about Akbar and his keen-witted courtier Birbal, Akbar's capital is also Delhi.
77 In some ballads, the Chittor fort itself decries the flight of its ruler and prays to Jaimal for protection. The brave Rajput vows to die in battle but not break his fidelity to Udai Singh; Akbar, says he, will enter Chittor only after the death of all its defenders. Sharma, G. L. (ed.), Prācīn Rājasthānī Gīt Saṅgrah. Khāṇḍ 1. (Udaipur, 1955), pp. 18 – 24Google Scholar; Prācīn Rājasthānī Gīt Saṅgrah. Khāṇḍ 8 (Udaipur, 1957), pp. 54 – 57Google Scholar.
78 Corresponds to 1567 ce.
79 Nainsi's mistake. Jaimal belonged to the Rathor clan.
80 Munhta Nainsi, Munhtā Naiṇsī rī khyāt. Sampādak Badarīprasād Sākariyā. Khāṇḍ 1 (Jodhpur, 1960), p. 21.
81 Discussed in detail by Talbot, C., “Justifying Defeat. A Rajput Perspective on the Age of Akbar”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55, 2–3 (2012), pp. 329 – 368CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
82 The verb used in the text is māḍhiyā, which has meanings such as ‘depicted’, ‘decorated’. Badri Prasad Sakariya, the editor of the Khyāt, in a note to this fragment, suggested the translation to modern Hindi as ‘ordered to paint’ (citrit karvāye). It means that, in the Nainsi version, Jaimal and Patta were visualised not in sculptures but in paintings. However, the verb māḍhnā has other meanings such as ‘to wear’ and, maybe more importantly for this context, ‘to respect’, ‘to revere’. This makes it possible to translate the phrase as ‘ordered to be commemorated upon the Agra gate’, thus allowing to suggest that the heroes could be visualised in sculptures as well.
83 Munhtā Naiṇsī rī khyāt, Khāṇḍ 1, p. 112.
84 Talbot, “Justifying Defeat”, p. 348.
85 Discussed in more detail in Ahmad, A., “Epic and Counter-Epic in Medieval India”, Journal of American Oriental Society 83, 4 (1963), p. 470 – 476CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sreenivasan, R., “Alauddin Khalji Remembered: Conquest, Gender and Community in Medieval Rajput Narratives”, Studies in History XVIII, 2 (July–December 2002), pp. 275 – 296CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sreenivasan, R., The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen. Historic Pasts in India c. 1500 – 1900. (Seattle, 2007), pp. 12 – 14Google Scholar.
86 Harlan, The Goddesses’ Henchmen, p. 37. In distinction from other cultures where victories are celebrated while defeats are either mourned or ‘forgotten’, Rajasthan, as observed by Harlan, has a tradition of organising festivities in commemoration of historical catastrophes. For instance, the three episodes when Chittor was stormed (by Ala ud-din Khilji the Delhi sultan in 1303, by Bahadur Shah the sultan of Gujarat in 1535 and by Akbar in 1568) have been commemorated in Chittor since 1960s by a jovial festival with a paradoxical name Jauhar melā – ‘the jauhar fair’. The Rajasthani tradition of celebrating military defeats has also been discussed by Kamphorst, J., In Praise of Death: History and Poetry in Medieval Marwar (South Asia) (Amsterdam, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
87 Harlan, The Goddesses’ Henchmen, pp. 19 – 25: Vanina, Medieval Indian Mindscapes, pp. 148 –50.
88 The political and cultural aspects of Mughal-Rajput alliances have been researched in detail by a number of scholars. See Taft, F. H., “Honor and Alliance: Reconsidering Mughal-Rajput Marriages”, in The Idea of Rajasthan. Explorations in Regional Identity, (eds.) Schomer, K., Erdman, J. L., Lodrick, D. O. and Rudolph, L. T., II (Delhi, 1994), pp. 215 – 241Google Scholar; Gordon., S.Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in the Eighteenth Century India (Delhi, 1994), pp. 190 – 192Google Scholar; Ziegler, N. P., “Rajput Loyalties During the Mughal Period”, in Kingship and Authority in South Asia, (ed.) Richards, John F. (Delhi, 1998), pp. 242– 284Google Scholar; Richards, J. F., The Mughal Empire. The New Cambridge History of India. (Delhi, 2000), pp. 20 – 24Google Scholar; H. Mukhia, The Mughals of India, p. 148 – 155; Lal, R., Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 167 – 169, 170 – 175Google Scholar.
89 Resistance to Mughals made Maharana Pratap a cult hero of modern Hindu communalism, glorified by all its ideologues as a model of ‘Hindu resistance against Muslim invaders’. Pratap's mounted statues are observable in many cities of Rajasthan, his name is given to the University of Agriculture and Technology in Udaipur and other education centres. Apart from Rajasthan, Maharana Pratap is commemorated in Delhi and dozens of other Indian cities, which he had never visited. Even Chetak, Pratap's favourite war-horse, has become a cult figure: one of the trains from Delhi to Udaipur bears its name, perhaps a singular example of a train named after a horse. In 2013, the Sony Entertainment Television of India aired a TV serial ‘Maharana Pratap, A Glorious Son of India (Bhārat ke Vīr Putra Mahārānā Pratāp)’ wherein Maharana Pratap was portrayed as a valiant Hindu patriot of India and Akbar as a cruel and vicious invader.
90 Raj Singh's rebellion and his defeat of the punitive Mughal army made this Rajput prince popular with nineteenth-century Indian nationalist writers such as the celebrated Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay whose novel on Raj Singh depicts the latter as a gallant chevalier and a freedom fighter. Kaviraj, S., The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi, 1995), p. 146Google Scholar.
91 Bhadani, B. L., “The Profile of Akbar in Contemporary Rajasthani Literature”, Social Scientist 20, 9–10 (1992), pp. 47 – 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prācīn Rājasthānī Gīt Saṅgrah. Khāṇḍ 1, pp. 6 – 8, 21; Rājāsthānī Vīr Gīt Saṅgrah. Khāṇḍ I, pp. 145 – 146.
92 Rājāsthānī Vīr Gīt Saṅgrah. Khāṇḍ II, p. 167.
93 For example, in the Ratnabāvani, a historical poem by the celebrated poet Keshavdas, Akbar likewise praised his vanquished Rajput foe, Ratansen Bundela of Orcha. This has been discussed in detail in Busch, A., Poetry of Kings. The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India (New York, 2011), pp. 30 – 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
94 N. P. Ziegler, Rajput Loyalties, p. 269.
95 Narottam, , “Narottam kṛt Māncarit- rāsau”, in Māncaritāvalī. Āmber ke suprasiddh rājā Mān Siṅgh ke carit ke saṁbandhit pā̃c rājasthānī racnāõ kā saṅkalan, (ed.) Bahura, G. N. (Jaipur, 1990), p. 160–161Google Scholar. I am grateful to Allison Busch for sending me the copy of this text. See also Mukhia, The Mughals of India, pp. 62 – 63; Alam, Muzaffar, The Languages of Political Islam in India c. 1200–1800 (Delhi, 2004), pp. 139 – 140Google Scholar.
96 Sangari, K., “Tracing Akbar. Hagiographies, Popular Narratives, Traditions and the Subject of Conversion”, in Mapping Histories. Essays presented to Revinder Kumar, (ed.) Chandhoke, Neera (Delhi, 2000), pp. 9091Google Scholar; Vanina, E., “Describing the Common, Discovering the Individual: A Study in Some Medieval Indian Biographies”, in Mind over Matter. Essays on Mentalities in Medieval India, (eds.) Jha, D. N. and Vanina, Eugenia (Delhi, 2009), p. 85Google Scholar.
97 In an insightful article, Allison Busch has discussed the narratives on Akbar's general and nephew Man Singh Kachhwaha, praised by contemporary writers for loyal service to the Mughals. See Busch, A., “Portrait of a Raja in Badshah's World: Amrit Rai's Biography of Man Singh”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55 (2012), pp. 287 – 328CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
98 Kolff, D. H. A., Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: the Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 110 – 117Google Scholar; Gordon, Marathas, pp. 191 – 192.
99 Peabody, Hindu Kinship, p. 32.
100 One of the telling examples is the story of Mughal-Rajput response to the rising Maratha power. Rajput general Mirza Raja Jai Singh Kachhwaha led Mughal armies against the Maratha hero Shivaji Bhonsle. While the nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalist historiography viewed this as ‘treason’ by a Hindu general who had warred against his co-religionists, for contemporary narratives it was only natural that a Kachhwaha prince would fight on the side of his sovereign and, more importantly, blood-related Mughal emperor against an alien Maratha, albeit a Hindu. Discussed in more detail in Laine, J. W., The Epic of Shivaji. Kavindra Parmananda` s Śivabhārata. A translation and study by James W. Laine in collaboration with S. S. Bahulkar (Delhi, 2001), p. 258 – 271, 313Google Scholar; Vanina, Medieval Indian Mindscapes, pp. 166 – 167.
101 Marshall, Restoration, p. 36.
102 Access numbers 1003877 and 1003878. Available online at http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/photocoll/s/019pho000001003u00878000.html, http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/photocoll/s/019pho000001003u00877000.html (accessed July 2019).
103 The ‘Institute’ was an educational building later on converted into the Delhi Town Hall. For details see Hosagrahar, J., Indigenous Modernities. Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (London and New York, 2013), pp. 5354Google Scholar.
104 This was an old Delhi park, initially known as Jahanara Bagh, built by a Mughal princess especially for women and children. In colonial times it was reconstructed and renamed, first as Company Bagh (curiously, it is under this name, not the subsequent ones, that the local residents know it now), and then as Queen's Gardens. Only a small part of it has survived until the present day as Mahatma Gandhi Park. See Sharma, J. P., “Disciplining Delhi. The 1857 Uprising and Remodelling of the Urban Landscape”, in Architecture and Armed Conflict. The Politics of Destruction, (eds.) Mancini, J. M. and Bresnahan, K. (London and New York, 2014)Google Scholar.
105 Sanderson, G. and Shuaib, M., Delhi Fort: a Guide to the Buildings and Gardens (Delhi, 1914 [reprint, 2000]), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.
106 The Delhi gate belongs to the ‘military-administrative’ part of the Red fort, closed to tourists. I was fortunate to have a brief look at them and the elephants built on Curzon's order thanks to the courtesy of the ASI personnel and the guards.
107 Available online: http://asi.nic.in/asi_monu_alphalist_delhi.asp (accessed July 2019).
108 Campbell, “Memorandum”, p. 160.