Abstract
S
Sharma’s book is an extended examination of the Riti kal genre of Braja poetry as a source for the history of Mughal North India during the period 1550–1800. As Sharma points out, until recently the genre of Riti kal has attracted little scholarly attention from either literary critics or from historians due to its courtly origins, its intricate imagery and ornate language and its supposedly prurient character. Sharma’s work fits into a recently burgeoning trend of scholarly interest in South Asian literary cultures and a new sensitivity to the varied narrative and literary forms in which ‘history’ may be found. Riti literature in particular is a beneficiary of this trend: 2011 sees the publication of both the book under review and Allison Busch’s Poetry of Kings.
Following the introduction, Chapter 2 foregrounds the social world of the Riti Kal poets through an investigation of references to kinship, caste and gender in Riti poetry. A discussion of the meanings and uses of words like kula and kutumba leads into a broader examination of the poets’ representations of consanguine, affinal and corporate social groups and the roles of individuals within such relationships, in a time of social and political transition. Sharma argues that the rise in occupational and professional mobility helped decrease the importance of lineage vis-à-vis occupational and regional identities. Gender relations seem to have been less subject to change, however. Sharma pays particular attention to three female figures in Riti poetry: the wife, the ‘prostitute’ and the widow, suggesting that the Riti poets showed an awareness of social restrictions on women as well as a keen sense of female sexuality, especially in their descriptions of the nayika and her amorous relations with the nayaka.
Chapter 3 focuses on one of the commonest themes of Riti Kal poetry, the love play between Krishna and Radha. Although Radha–Krishna were also key protagonists in Bhakti poetry, Sharma argues that the Riti Kal portrayal is distinctive, because of the predominance given to Radha who begins to take on attributes of power and authority once seen as the monopoly of Krishna. Against the background of the growth in Vaishnavite sects, the divine couple are transformed—or as Sharma terms it ‘secularised’—into the pre-eminent nayak–nayika dyad and much emphasis is placed on their love-making. Sharma traces much of the nineteenth century distaste for Riti Kal to this aspect of the poetry.
Chapter 4 discusses another common theme in Riti Kal poetry—the Braja versification of Sanskrit literature, often written for Mughal patrons. Sharma discusses the Braja version of Sanskrit plays like Shakuntala by the Muslim poet Newaj, which was partially based on Kalidas’ Abhijnan Shakuntalam; two Braja versions of the eleventh century play Prabodh Chandrodaya by Krishna Mitra; and discourses about kingship based on the Sanskrit text Singhasan Dwa Trinsinca. Yet none of these texts were merely translations in the strict sense of the word; in this chapter Sharma traces the modifications made by the Riti poets to the original texts. In the Braja Shakuntala for example, the love between Dushyanta and Shakuntala resembles the carnal love of a nayak–nayika dyad rather than the emotional love of the couple in Kalidas’ moral text. Moreover, the thematic focus on past traditions of Sanskrit culture did not signify a disengagement from Persianate society; these Riti Kal poems included references to Mughal court etiquette and used Persian vocabulary, and at least one poet, Brijwasidas, freely admitted using a Persian version of the Prabodh Chandrodaya as his source rather than the Sanskrit original.
In the final chapter, Sharma turns to versified histories, including the Veer Charitra of Keshavdas, which deals with the reigns of the Bundela kings; the Jangnama of Shridhar Ojha which describes the war of succession between the Mughal rulers Farrukhsiya and Jahandar Shah; and the Sujan Charitra of Sudan, which describes eight battles fought by the eighteenth century Jat ruler Suraj Mal. Rather than dismissing these histories as ‘fanciful accounts’, Sharma considers the poems as both alternative regional perspectives, which add to, corroborate or correct accounts from Persian chronicles, and as forums in which the poets could advise their patrons on kingship. The extent to which the Mughal empire had fully localised itself throughout the empire is an oft-posed question; through her study of Riti Kal poetry Sharma argues that while the regions were sometimes rivals to the empire in contesting for a larger share of power, the poets themselves, even in the wake of declining imperial authority in the eighteenth century, often considered the regions as indispensible to the making of the empire.
Throughout this book, Sharma situates the emergence of Riti Kal poetry against the background of dynamic and rapid social change, tracing the way in which changes in ideas about caste and gender; the proliferation of a variety of religious movements and the rise of regional states, find reflection in this poetry. This is a welcome contribution to the study of this comparatively neglected genre and a useful addition to ongoing scholarly research on South Asian literary cultures. However I think the book would have benefitted from a more sustained discussion of the audience of Riti Kal poetry. Based on the choice of Braja Bhasha rather than Persian or Sanskrit, Sharma frequently makes the claim that Riti Kal poetry was written for the ‘masses’, without further interrogation of this term. Some mention of some of the patrons of these works is made, yet it would be interesting to hear more about the world in which this poetry circulated; can other contemporary texts or the location of surviving manuscripts of Riti Kal poetry tell us anything about the reception and afterlife of this poetry—who read it, where and how? Such a perspective would further contribute to broader scholarly investigations into how language and literature both contributed to and reflected changing social trends.