Abstract
The author has studied the region of Gujarat in the fifteenth century, and given the relative dearth of quality work on the period, the present work is indeed quite welcome. Arguing that the fifteenth century saw the emergence of a distinct regional identity in Gujarat, the author has examined the Sanskrit and Gujarati source material to connect together the divergent threads of community formation, political processes and regional identity. The emphasis of the work is on the literary traditions, and the complex relations between language and the political process, a relationship that fostered the emergence of the ‘region’ as imbued with a distinctive socio-cultural identity.
Drawing upon the rich literary cultures that flourished at the courts of the petty chieftains and warrior elites, Kapadia’s work highlights their locally entrenched positions, and the control they exercised over the military labour market. Looking at the works that emerged from the resistance of these chiefs against the rulers in Delhi and later the Gujarat Sultanate, she draws out the contours of the martial ethos informing these communities, and the nature of relations they had with their adversaries and co-sharers in authority. While historians have seen these narratives as, following Aziz Ahmed, ‘epics of resistance’, her study suggests a more complex reading, for conflict and cooperation were contingent positions, and both occurred within a mutually enriching literary culture. Circulating within a multi-lingual tradition, these texts emerging from the petty courts of local chieftains were neither semantically distinct, nor culturally removed from the Indo-Persian ‘epics of conquest’. It is actually the communication between them—the Indic and the Indo-Persian– that provides the appropriate context to the emergence of Gujarat as a distinctive region during the fifteenth century, if not earlier.
The choice of language for the authors and their patrons makes for an interesting problem. In her reading of a Domal text, Ranmallachanda (Chapter II), Kapadia highlights the association of the language with orality, and how this helps its author, Sridhara Vyasa in composing the battle narrative. Furthermore, the text is multilingual and this enables Vyasa to communicate divergent meanings, and forms of representation, in different registers of language. Since Sanskrit was rooted in courtly culture, the more successful chieftains, aspiring to participate in the Indic traditions of sovereignty, patronised Sanskrit poetry (along with Gujarati) to represent themselves as rulers or kings, controlling resources and territories, holding ceremonial courts and patronising literary activities. The Rajput rulers of Champaner and Junagadh, each controlling sizeable resources, were two such chieftains, who patronised Sanskrit literature as a means to represent their authority in the Indic vocabulary of sovereignty. In her study of a couple of Sanskrit texts that were written at the behest of these petty rulers, Kapadia succinctly reveals the association of Sanskrit with forms of representation of authority.
It is often believed that the Gujarat Sultanate promoted Persian at the cost of other languages, and that they represented their sovereignty within an exclusive Perso-Islamic language. Recent scholarship, and I have in particular Samira Sheikh’s work in mind, has dispelled this impression and brought to light the extensive patronage that Sanskrit and Gujarati scholars received at the court of the sultans. In a similar vein, focusing on Rajavinoda, a Sanskrit text written by Udayaraj, Kapadia highlights the role of Sanskrit poetry in legitimating the Sultan’s authority. This text situates Sultan Mahmud Begada within a Brhamanical tradition of kingly authority, and invokes tropes and metaphors borrowed from the Sanskrit court language to depict his political command and supremacy. The text strongly suggests to us that in articulating their sovereignty, the Sultans depended on a multiplicity of resources, some Perso-Islamic, others Indic.
This is an interesting study, one that raises important issues concerning the culture and society in fifteenth-century Gujarat. It forces us to reconsider the stereotypical treatment of the fifteenth century in the dominant South Asian historiography as a dull and decadent moment in history; Kapadia’s work brings to light the dynamic changes and creative impulses that were beginning to emerge and take shape in the century. The work also suggests innovative ways of engaging with Gujarati and Sanskrit poetry for a social history of the period.