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Abstract
Confronted by an increasing number of mahārājādhirājas and shahanshāhs during the period between the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries, how do we characterise state-making and royal projections of authority, unencumbered by teleological impositions of “regional” and “imperial”? This paper examines the strategies used by the Baghel kingdom to consolidate its territorial and political control within a palimpsest of warring polities in early-modern North India. In contrast to other nascent Rajput polities of this period who were establishing themselves in opposition to the Sultans at Delhi, Gujarat, Malwa and Jaunpur through the articulation of a strong martial ethos, the Baghels employed strategies of friendship (bandhubhāva) and brotherhood (bhrātṛbhāva). In examining these strategies, this paper argues, the Baghels offer an alternate way of conceptualising the political landscape of the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries, one that does not solely rest on the asymmetrical relations of power associated with the study of “regional” polities. Put more directly, this paper posits the study of the regional polity during this period not in terms of language/literature/art nor in terms of successive levels of subordination, but as a politics of consolidating power.
Acknowledgements
This article evolved from a paper presented at the Courts of North India and the Deccan (c. 1347–1562) workshop, held at the University of Pennsylvania in April 2022. I am grateful to Daud Ali for his insightful observations and encouragement at various stages of the research, and to the participants of the workshop for their comments. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their meticulous reading and generous feedback.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Verses cited throughout the essay follow the printed edition of the Vīrabhānūdayakāvya. Mādhava Uravya and Sudyumna Ācārya, Vīrabhānūdayakāvyam (Satanā, Ma. Pra.: Veda Vāṇī Vitānam, 1995). The text is discussed in detail in section III.
2. For the Baghels, see Nirodbhusan Roy, Niamatullah’s History of the Afghans, Part 1—Lodi Period, Translated with Variorum Notes (Calcutta: Santiniketan Press, 1958), 195–202; Akhtar Husain Nizami, “The Baghela Dynasty of Rewa,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, IX (1946): 242–5, S.H. Askari, “Bihar in the Time of the Last Two Lodi Sultans of Delhi,” The Journal of the Bihar Research Society, Vol. XLI, Vol. III, (1955): 357–76. For their role in the military labour market, see Dirk Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 1450-1850 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Oriental Publications, 1990), 73.
3. Manuscript. Baghelavaṃśāvalī by Sanatkumar, Rewa Sarasvati Bhandar, Rewa, M.P. The Rewa Sarasvati Bhandar is part of the personal archives of the current Maharaja of Rewa, Pushpraj Singh. I am grateful to him for granting me access to this collection.
4. Simon Digby, “After Timur Left: North India in the Fifteenth Century,” in After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India, ed. Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 55. Ramya Sreenivasan, “Warrior-tales at Hinterland Courts in North India, c. 1370–1550,” in After Timur Left, 244.
5. For a survey of literary scholarship patronised by the Baghels see, Rajiv Lochan Agnihotri, Baghelkhand Ke Sanskrit Kavya, (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Vidyabhawan, 1973). Also see, Govinda Bhatta and Sudyumna Acharya, The Glorious Verses of Govinda Bhatta Alias Akbari Kalidasa (Satna, M.P.: Ved Vani Vitanam, 1997). The account by Rupani Misra has been reproduced in Hara Prasad Shastri ed., Descriptive Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. VII (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1934), 309-23. Sanatkumar’s Baghelavaṃśāvalī is discussed further below. Yugal Das’ Baghelavaṃśavarṇan has been published as an appendix in Kabīr, Bījaka Kabīra Sāhaba, (Bambaī: Śrī Veṅkaṭeśvara Pres, 1906), 659-731.
6. Even in Audrey Truschke’s recent monograph on Sanskrit histories from the Mughal period, the Vīrabhānūdayakāvya only finds a brief mention and Truschke does not extend her analysis of articulations of kingship to the Baghel text. See, Audrey Truschke, The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule (New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2021), 190. For a general survey study on the Baghels see, David Baker, Baghelkhand, or the Tiger’s Lair: Region and Nation in Indian History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). Other scholarship on the Baghel kingdom is limited to those examining its royal lineage for example, A.H. Nizami, “Nine gems of the court of Maharaja Bhavasimha of Rewa,” J. Ganganath Jha Oriental Research Institute Vol.VIII, No.4 (Allahabad, n.d.), 419-25. Har Dutt Sharma, “Some Vaghela rulers and the Sanskrit Poets patronised by them”, in Dr. S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar Commemoration Volume (1936), 48-55. For a comparative analysis of the Baghels and Mughals see, Harīścandra Siṃha, Baghela Nareśoṃ Aura Mugala Bādaśāhoṃ Ke Sambandhoṃ Kā Mūlyāṅkana, (unpublished dissertation, Kanhaiyālāla Basantalāla Snātakottara Mahāvidyālaya, Mirjāpura, 2005).
7. Ronald Inden, “Introduction: From Philological to Dialogical texts,” in Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia, eds Ronald Inden, Jonathan Walters, and Daud Ali (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12-3.
8. As has been done by Jesse Knutson for the twelfth-thirteenth-century Sena dynasty of Bengal or by Heidi Pauwels for the sixteenth-century Bundelas. See Jesse Knutson, Into the Twilight of Sanskrit Court Poetry: The Sena Salon of Bengal and Beyond (University of California Press, 2014), 17-46. Heidi Pauwels, “The Saint, the Warlord, and the Emperor: Discourses of Braj Bhakti and Bundelā Loyalty” JESHO LII, no. II (2009): 187-228.
9. This intervention draws on earlier scholarship that theorised the formation of regional polities such as that by B.D. Chattopahdyaya, Hermann Kulke, Bhairabi Prasad Sahu, and Cynthia Talbot. See, B.D. Chattopadhyaya, The Making of Early Medieval India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994); Hermann Kulke, “The Early and the Imperial Kingdom: A Processural Model of Integrative State Formation in Early Medieval India”, in idem (ed), The State in India, 1000–1700 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 233–62; B.P. Sahu, The Making of Regions in Indian History: Society, State and Identity in Premodern Odisha (Delhi: Primus, 2020); Cynthia Talbot, Precolonial India In Practice: Society, Region, and Identity In Medieval Andhra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
10. Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 9.
11. Alexander Cunningham, Reports of a Tour In Bundelkhand and Rewa In 1883-84; and of A Tour In Rewa, Bundelkhand, Malwa, and Gwalior in 1884-85 (Varanasi: Indological Book House, 1969). C. E. Luard and Janaki Prasad, Rewah State Gazetteer (The Central India State Gazetteer Series), (Lucknow, 1907).
12. Cunnigham, Reports of a Tour, 103.
13. Baghelavaṃśāvalī, fol.1.
14. On the Vaghelas, see A. K. Majumdar, Chaulukyas of Gujarat: A Survey of the History and Culture of Gujarat From the Middle of the Tenth to the End of the Thirteenth Century (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1956), 22-185.
15. Aparna Kapadia, In Praise of Kings: Rajputs, Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 24-33. Z.A. Desai,“A Persian–Sanskrit Inscription of Raja Karna Dev Vaghela of Gujarat,” Epigraphia Indica Arabic and Persian Supplement (1975), 13-20.
16. Majumdar, Chaulukyas, 169.
17. For an overview of genealogical sources on the Baghels see, A.H. Nizami, “Genealogical Sources of the Baghela Dynasty of Rewa,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. VIII (1945), 150-153.
18. Baghelavaṃśāvalī, fol.8.
19. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, 73.
20. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.59.
21. The Baghelavaṃśāvalī also records their control over the fort at Kalinjar but I am not sure how seriously we can take this claim in the absence of other evidence.
22. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, II.59-60.
23. For scholarship on the early history of this region, see Nayanjot Lahiri, M.B. Rajani, Debdutta Sanyal, Samayita Banerjee & Satyendra Tiwari, “Tracing Ancient Itinerants and Early Medieval Rulers in the Forests of Bandhavgarh,” South Asian Studies Vol. XXXIX, No. I (2023), 1-24.
24. Lahiri et al., Tracing ancient itenerants, 7-8. Also see N.P. Chakravarti, “Brahmi Inscriptions from Bandhogarh,” Epigraphia Indica XXXI (1955-56), 167- 186; R. Chakravarti, “Merchants and Other Donors at Ancient Bandhogarh,” South Asian Studies XI (1995), 33-41.
25. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, II.59.
26. Abū al-Fazl ibn Mubārak and W. M Thackston, The History of Akbar Vol. VIII, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2022), 195.
27. Nizamuddin Ahmed, Tabaqat-i Akbari Vol. I, ed. and trans. Brajendranath De and Baini Prasad. Bibliotheca Indica series 225 (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1936), 365-6.
28. Padmanābha Miśra and Ḍā. Sudyumna Ācārya, Vīrabhadradevacampu, (Satanā, Ma. Pra.: Veda Vāṇī Vitānam, 1996) 7-8.
29. Rupani Misra, Kathāsaritasagara, v.40-58.
30. The fort is open to visitors only on two occasions during the year for religious festivities. Access is controlled and restricted by the Forest Department, Madhya Pradesh.
31. Abū al-Fazl ibn Mubārak and W. M Thackston, The History of Akbar Vol. III, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017), 565.
32. It seems that Simon Digby has written extensively on the Baghels in the latter half of his life. However, I am yet to see this unpublished manuscript, titled ‘The Kingdom of Bhatta and Muslim India’. (Cited in Sunil Kumar, “Bandagi and Naukari: Studying Transitions in Political Culture and Service under the North Indian Sultanates, Thirteenth–Sixteenth Centuries,” in After Timur Left, 86, fn72.
33. See Nizamuddin Ahmed, Tabaqat-i Akbari, 352. Another example of fluid alliance making strategies are the zamindars of Etawah region under the leadership of Rai Sumer Singh Chauhan who sided at various moments with the rulers of Kalpi, Delhi, and Jaunpur. See Nishat Manzar, “Zamindars of Etawah Region, c. AD. 1390-1450” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. LVI (1995), 301-311.
34. Similarly, although Raja Virasimha (Bir Singh Deo) gave 4000 horses in support of Rana Sanga in the 1527 Battle of Kanwah, he soon came over to Babur’s cause. See Zahiruddin Mohammad Babur, Baburnama, trans. A.S. Beveridge, The Baburnama in English Vol. II (1922), 562.
35. A.H. Nizami, “Biramdeo Baghela, Mukaddam of Gahora,” Journal of Indian History, Vol. XXXII (University of Travancore, 1954), 146.
36. See Kapadia, In Praise of Kings, 139.
37. Imre Bangha, “Early Hindi Epic Poetry in Gwalior: Beginnings and Continuities in the Rāmāyan of Vishnudas,” in After Timur Left, 368.
38. For discussion see H. Shastri, The Baghela Dynasty of Rewa, Memoir No. XXI (Calcutta: Archaeological Survey of India, 1926) 4-5.
39. The manuscript itself is significant for it contains two seals inscribed in nastaliq. The first, on folio 1 of the manuscript, contains the inscription ‘Virabhadara bandah shah Akabara 965 (AH i.e. 1558)’, and the second, on folio 55, contains the inscription ‘Virabhadara bandah Sultana Salīm. Given the anachronistic date on the first seal, Hiranand Shastri has expressed some misgivings regarding their genuineness. For a discussion on the seals, see, Shastri, Baghela Dynasty, 1-3.
40. For a literary analysis of the Vīrabhānūdayakāvya see, Mādhava Uravya and Sudyumna Ācārya, Vīrabhānūdayakāvyam, 3-12.
41. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.6.
42. See, Sabita Singh, “Socio-Political and Economic Aspects of Marriage,” in The Politics of Marriage in Medieval India: Gender and Alliance in Rajasthan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019), 48-84. Samira Sheikh, Forging a Region: Sultans, Traders, and Pilgrims in Gujarat, 1200–1500 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), 202. Nandini Sinha Kapur, State Formation in Rajasthan: Mewar during the Seventh-Fifteenth Centuries (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), 100-154.
43. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.98.
44. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.24.
45. Compare the case of the Chauhans of Champaner in Aparna Kapadia, “Universal Poet, Local Kings: Sanskrit, the Rhetoric of Kingship, and Local Kingdoms in Gujarat,” in After Timur Left, 220-22.
46. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.62.
47. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.86.
48. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.56.
49. Digby, After Timur Left, 55.
50. Digby, After Timur Left, 55.
51. It is quite incredible the number of forts, now mostly in various states of ruin, that dot this region. Also see Samira Sheikh, “Alliance, Genealogy and Political Power: The Cūdāsamās of Junagadh and the Sultans of Gujarat,” The Medieval History Journal XI, No. I (2008): 29-61.
52. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, II.59.
53. Sreenivasan, Warrior Tales, 244.
54. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.39.
55. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, I.44.
56. Nariman, father of Sam, is one of the mythical kings mentioned in the Shahnameh, known for his warrior attributes.
57. Muhammad Bihamid Khan, Tarikh-i Muhammadi, trans. Muhammad Zaki (Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University Press, 1972), 55.
58. Pankaj Jha, A Political History of Literature: Vidyapati and the Fifteenth Century, (Oxford University Press, 2018), 222. On an aside, the Kīrttilatā is significant to our discussions on the received notions of the regional and imperial dyad for it represents the Sharqi kingdom, regional in all other accounts, as an imperial centre. See Jha, A Political History, 221-30, for a discussion on Vidyapati’s literary rendering of the Sharqi court as an imperial formation.
59. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, II.63.
60. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, II.67.
61. Zahiruddin Mohammad Babur, Baburnama, 562. Babur also makes note of one ‘Bir sing deo’ who provides him news from the territories in Bihar.
62. Baghelavaṃśāvalī, fol.7v. This version of Akbar’s accession to the throne is still prevalent amongst the locals in the Rewa region and has been recorded in song as well. The title is a series of epithets, loosely translated as “King of kings, the crest-jewel of the exalted kings, the brave lord, brother Rama Singh Dev.”
63. Gulbadan Begum, Humayunnama, trans. A. S. Beveridge, (Royal Asiatic Society, 1902).
64. On an aside, Virabhadra and the young Salim (Jahangir) were married to two daughters of Rai Singh of Bikaner, and thus the Baghels and Mughals were related through marriage. On the occasion of Virabhadra’s unfortunate death, Akbar prevented the young widow from burning herself. Suffice to say that by Jahangir’s reign, the Baghels had become part of the Mughal administrative system, and their fort at Bandhavgarh was co-opted within the subah of Allahabad.
65. Vīrabhānūdayakāvya, XII.22–23.
66. Ramya Sreenivasan, “Rethinking Kingship and Authority in South Asia: Amber (Rajasthan), ca. 1560-1615,” JESHO LVII, No. IV (2014), 533.
67. Francesca Orsini, “How to do multilingual literary history? Lessons from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century north India,” IESHR XLIX(II) (2012), 225-246. See also her analysis of the circulation of katha-s in fifteenth-century North India – Francesca Orsini, “The Social History of a Genre: Kathas across Languages in Early Modern North India.” The Medieval History Journal XX, No.I (2017), 1-37.
68. Francesca Orsini, “Vernacular: Flawed but Necessary?,” South Asian Review 41:2 (2020), 205.