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Becoming Turk the Rajput Way: Conversion and Identity in an Indian Warrior Narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2009

CYNTHIA TALBOT
CYNTHIA TALBOT*
Affiliation:
History Department, University of Texas at Austin, 1 Univ Sta B7000, Austin, TX 78712-0220, USA E-mail: ctalbot@mail.utexas.edu
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Abstract

The Kyamkhanis were a small Indian Muslim community who flourished in northern Rajasthan from c. 1450 to 1730. This article examines memories of the Kyamkhani past recorded in a seventeenth-century history of the ruling lineage, as a case study of both the process of Islamic expansionism in South Asia and the self-identity of rural Muslim gentry. While celebrating the ancestor who had converted to Islam generations earlier, the Kyamkhanis also represented themselves as local warriors of the Rajput class, an affiliation that is considered exclusively Hindu in India today. Their history was written in a local literary language, Braj Bhasa, rather than in the more cosmopolitan Persian that was widely used by Muslim elites at the time. The Kyamkhanis of the early modern era thus negotiated multiple social and cultural spheres, simultaneously participating in the local/vernacular as well as global/cosmopolitan arenas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 211 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

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15 This is a loose translation, based on the Hindi rendition provided by Sakariya, Khyat, Vol. 3, p. 275. The word I gloss as dependant is bandi, which can mean prisoner or slave; it may also here be a variant of banda (slave, servant, dependant). Another label applied to Kyam Khan in the Khyat verses is gola, a term that implies a condition of servitude, as well as inferiority (Sreenivasan, Ramya, “Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines: Female Slaves in Rajput Polity, 1500–1850,” in Chatterjee, Indrani and Eaton, Richard M. (eds.), Slavery & South Asian History, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 144)Google Scholar.

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26 The following summary is based on the English translation by Edward Clive Bayley (The Local Muhammadan Dynasties: Gujarat [London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1886], 67–72) and a Hindi translation (Manju, Iskandar ibn Muhammad, Mirate Sikandari [Jaipur: Sabd Mahima Prakasan, 2002], pp. 1–6Google Scholar).

27 Bayley, Local Muhammadan Dynasties, p. 72.

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30 Approximately 120 verses of the KKR cover the period from Firuz Shah Tughluq's death to Kyam Khan's death, out of a total of 1,045 verses. Alternatively, Jan Kavi may have been familiar with Indo-Persian historical literature and/or traditions and fleshed out this portion of his text with their help, although the considerable divergence in particulars makes this scenario less plausible.

31 KKR vv. 242–303; cf. Jackson, Delhi Sultanate, pp. 321–2.

32 See the extract from Futuhat-i Firuz Shahi, a text intended to be made public as an inscription, in Elliot, H. M., in Dowson, John (ed.), The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1996), Vol. 3, p. 386Google Scholar.

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35 For the political history of Shams Khan of Nagaur and his descendants, see Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 2, pp. 439–42.

36 Musalman appears in vv. 14 & 153; Turk (turak) in vv. 120, 122, 131, 140, 816, 859; and Hindu in vv. 14, 121, 130, 385, 429, 511, 640, 818.

37 KKR vv. 385, 640. See also v. 816.

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45 Norman P. Ziegler, “Action, Power and Service in Rajasthani Culture: A Social History of the Rajputs of Middle Period Rajasthan” (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1973), pp. 61–3.

46 According to KKR, the first Kyamkhani to have contact with the Mughals was Daulat Khan I, whom Babur supposedly visited and described as one of the three most renowned men in Hindustan (vv. 517–31). This is highly implausible. KKR also states that Fadan Khan, Taj Khan's father, was honoured by both Humayun and Akbar and gave a daughter in marriage to the latter (vv. 627–42). While this is possible, Fadan Khan is not mentioned in any Mughal sources.

47 Taj Khan Khatria is No. 404 in the list of mansabdars in Ain-i Akbari (Vol. 1, p. 526), whereas the other Taj Khan is No. 172 (Vol. 1, p. 457).

48 It should be noted that numerical mansab ranks were considerably lower during Akbar's reign than in later times. The Ain-i Akbari lists only 57 mansabdars at 1,000 zat or higher, another 145 in ranks from 900 down to 250 zat, and 81 at 200 zat; for a total of 283 men (Shireen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire c. 1595 [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987], Table 9.2 on p. 214). Hence, despite his seemingly low rank, Taj Khan was a member of a very select circle. The rankings initially indicated the number of horsemen that an officer was supposed to maintain for the imperial service, but inflation in the rankings during the seventeenth century led to the introduction of complicated ratios between mansab rank and the required level of troop support.

49 Alaf Khan's highest rank was 2,000 zat/1,500 sawar (Ali, M. Athar, The Apparatus of Empire: Awards of Ranks, Offices and Titles to the Mughal Nobility, 1574–1658 [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985], pp. 80, 84Google Scholar). He is mentioned in Jahangir's memoirs, sometimes with the suffix Qiyamkhani (Jahangir, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston [Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; NY: Oxford University Press, 1999], pp. 94, 180, 353, 374–5, 381, 410).

50 Anwar, Firdos, Nobility under the Mughals (1628–1658) (Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2001), p. 21Google Scholar.

51 Daulat Khan's highest rank was 1,500 zat/1,000 sawar, achieved in the 1640s. Mention of him in Mughal sources is noted in Athar Ali, Apparatus of Empire, pp. 100, 147, 169, 194, 216.

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55 He also prepared a Braj Bhasa version of the Sanskrit Pancatantra animal fables, which was presented to emperor Shah Jahan (Sharma, “Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta,” pp. 3, 6, 9)

56 For more on these two genres in Braj Bhasa literature, see Busch, Allison, “The Anxiety of Literary Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in Hindi/Riti Tradition,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24.2 (2004), pp. 45–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of Kesavdas,” South Asia Research 25. 1 (2005), pp. 31–54.

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60 Dasaratha Sharma, “Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta,” pp. 3, 11–12.

61 The information on Sundardas and Dadu in the previous sentences has been taken from Thiel-Horstmann, Monika, Crossing the Ocean of Existence: Braj Bhasa Religious Poetry from Rajasthan (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983), pp. 3–14Google Scholar.

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70 KKR, v. 68.

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80 KKR, v. 740. Other references to Kyamkhani greatness as a result of their descent from Hammir and Prithviraj Cauhan are found in vv. 612 and 1032.

81 On laj, see Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 1, p. 96 n. 120. The word raj, meaning pride in one's bravery or honourable reputation, is sometimes paired with laj in KKR (vv. 881, 952).

82 KKR, vv. 879–928.

83 KKR, vv. 879, 927.

84 KKR, vv. 934, 936–7.

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