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SIRHINDI’S NARRATIVE , A LONG STORY OF BALBAN’S ALLIANCE
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Author(s):
SUSHIL MALIK
Vol - 3, Issue- 1 ,
Page(s) : 145 - 148
(2012 )
DOI : https://doi.org/10.32804/IRJMST
Abstract
A large part of Sirhindi’s narrative does not depart significantly from Barani’s plot, but for the insertion of a long story of Balban’s alliance with Raja Dhanuj of an unnamed region (and not Raja Bhoj of Sonargaon as in Barani). This was an unusual discursive interpellation for the normally taciturn Sirhindi, and its main focus was the protocol surrounding the meeting between the two monarchs. Sirhindi has Raja Dhanuj demand that the Delhi Sultan display appropriate honour by standing up to receive him. ‘But how’, Sirhindi had Balban anxiously ask to his readers, ‘could a Muslim ruler show respect to an infidel?’ The resolution to this problem, Sirhindi reported, was to have Balban sit on the throne with a falcon on his arm, and to stand to release the bird as Raja Dhanuj approached the throne. The expectations of the Raja were met with Balban standing to receive him, and the honour of the Delhi Sultan saved, even if by a contrivance.
- Yahya Sirhindi, Ta’rīkh-i Mubārak Shāhī, p. 42. This is an idiomatic translation of the text: ‘Sulṭān mutafakkir shud keh ūlū ‘l-amr-ra ta‘żīm kāfirī wajib nabāshad’.
- Badauni, Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh, vol. 1, p. 266. Badauni was communicating his opinion of conditions in Delhi in 1394, when the different cities of Delhi hosted two Tughluq Sultans: Sultan Mahmud and Nasir al-Din Nusrat Shah.
- For the Baghelas, see Nirodbhusan Roy, Niamutallah’s History of the Afghans, Part 1 – Lodi Period, translated with variorum notes, Calcutta: Santiniketan Press, 1958, pp. 195-202, Akhtar Husain Nizami, ‘The Baghela Dynasty of Rewa’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 9, 1946: 242-45, S. H. Askari, ‘Bihar in the time of the last two Lodi Sultans of Delhi’, The Journal of the Bihar Research Society, 41, 1955: 357-376, and Simon Digby (unpublished manuscript-A).
- Mahmud Kirmani, Ma’āsir al-Maḥmūd Shāhī, edited by Nurul Hasan Ansari, Delhi: Jamal Printing Press, 1968, p. 59. The text was completed ca. 872/1467-68 in the court of the Malwa Sultan Mahmud Khalaji (1436-69). For a contrasting complaint from the Sharqis regarding the Kalpi Sultan’s actions against Muslims, see Nizam al-Din Ahmad, Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī, translated by B. De, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1996 reprint, vol. 3, p. 454. For a full discussion of this campaign, see also Simon Digby (unpublished manuscript-A), pp. 9-10.
- Rizq Allah Mushtaqi, Wāqi‘āt-i Mushtāqī, edited by Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui and Waqarul Hasan Siddiqi, Rampur: Reza Library, 2002, p. 28. On Mushtaqi’s contrasting usage of chakar and naukar see the discussion below.
- See references to the Baghelas above for details.
- Mushtaqi’s Wāqi‘āt had a brief mention on the Malwa Sultanate and the early Mughals, but this was not a chronicle of the reigns of these dynasts, but anecdotes of curious events that occurred during their rule.
- Vidyapati, Puruṣa Parīkṣā, edited and translated into Maithili by Surendar Jha ‘Suman’, Patna: Maithili Academy, 1988, second edition, lists forty-eight stories while the English translation by George A. Grierson, London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1935, has forty-four. The difference seems to lie in the subdivisions introduced by Surendar Jha that divided some stories into two.
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