Life in The Mughal Era: Ardhakathnak’s Greatest Achievement Is Its Astonishing Ability to Collapse the Centuries
By
Aparna Kapadia
Aug 08,
2020
Imagine a
historian centuries far into the future looking back at our present times. If
they can access the digital detritus of our limitless traces of social media,
the one thing they will have no dearth of is a glimpse into our personal lives:
what we ate, what we read, what opinions we had on simple everyday matters or
complex political issues. Even if it turns out that futurists are right about
the unreliability of digital archives, tree books depicting the varied aspects
of our quotidian lives will not be in short supply.
Emperor Jahangir weighs Prince Khurram (later crowned Shah Jahan) in
precious goods. | Manohar / Public domain
------
Now think
of the contrast for a historian of the medieval or early modern eras, like
myself. For us, such details about people’s everyday existence, feelings, and
experiences, are almost impossible to come by.
Banarasidas
(b. 1586), a seventeenth-century Jain merchant, is therefore a rare and
valuable voice. Sometime in the year 1610, five years into the Mughal emperor
Jahangir’s reign (r. 1605-1627), Banarasidas, set out on a journey from Jaunpur
in present-day central India to Agra. At the time, Agra was a thriving
commercial and political centre at the heart of the Mughal empire. As John E
Cort, Professor Emeritus at Denison College, has written, “thousands of Jains
migrated to the city in response to the opportunities available there. Many of
them occupied positions at all levels of the Mughal administration. Others used
the city as the base for trading networks.”
Banarasi,
it seems, was also interested in trying his luck in Agra. His father, Kharagsen
– himself a successful gems and jewels merchant who had also served the Mughal
administration – had been disappointed at his 24-year-old son’s wayward ways in
the past. Yet, on this occasion, and with some careful consideration, Kharagsen
fitted the young man with an assortment of goods to sell in Agra: “loose jewels
and ornaments”, including “two bracelets, two rings” and some rubies,
sapphires, and “bags filled with the dust of precious stones”, and sundry items
including ghee, oil, and fine Jaunpur cloth.
A Half
Story
It is
Banarasi himself who tells us of these matters in an account of his life
written in verse – a text entitled Ardhakathanak, meaning “a half
story”. Completed sometime in the winter of 1641, Banarasi called his work
ardha kathanak because, at the time, he was 55 years old, and believed,
following the Jain tradition, that a person’s life span was 110 years. His
675-verse composition is primarily in the third person and is written in what
he calls the “common speech of Madhyadesh”: a mixture of the literary
vernacular, Brajbhasha and Khari Boli, akin to the standard Hindi recognised
today.
As a
literate male well versed in the art of poetry writing – he is also the author
and translator of several well-respected works on Jainism – Banarasi was certainly
not without privilege. But neither was he among the wealthiest people at the
time, nor a member of the aristocracy. He may well have dropped off the
historical record, if the Ardhakathanak, and the handful of other works
he composed, had not survived. What we do know of him indicates that he and his
family occupied a place in the middle of the social hierarchy in early modern
(1450 to 1750 CE) Northern India.
Palace of a Mughal emperor.
-----
By the time
Banarasi wrote his life narrative, two Mughal emperors, Babur and Jahangir, had
both produced personal memoirs, in Turki and Persian respectively. It is
unlikely that Banarasi had read either of those works. He mentions his
knowledge of Sanskrit and Prakrit and his narrative also reveals some of the literature
he and his friends were reading at the time. But even though this was an
eclectic mix of Jain philosophical and Sufi tracts – discussed in gatherings
akin to modern-day book clubs – none seem to have been what we could call
biographies or autobiographies. This is what makes the Ardhakathanak
even more remarkable: the fact that it lacks, as one of its translators, Mukund
Lath notes, “a concrete model or any tangible influence”. Banarasi’s story is
indeed one of its kind for its times – delightfully authentic, checkered, and
self-revelatory.
Banarasi’s
father who had set great store, as fathers do, by his son’s success, was
destined to be disappointed. Banarasi did manage to get to Agra despite bad
weather and other safety hazards but found the city’s fast-moving ways too
difficult to cope with. He claims to have faced disasters one after the other
as soon as he got there, some on account of his own inexperience and lack of
interest in the trade. The Jaunpur cloth he had brought along with him sold at
a loss and he unwisely entrusted the precious jewellery and gems to strangers
who made away with them. Banarasi says:
“The ways of doing business in the city of
Agra,
The
ignorant and rustic Banarasi did not understand.
His bad
luck began,
Banarasi
kept losing money on all fronts.”
The saga
did not end there. In a tale that to us today may have the ring of “the dog ate
my homework” excuse, Banarasi lost his pearls and other gems that he had hidden
in the sheath of his pyjama strings because the string unexpectedly broke; on
another occasion, “mice cut through the pyjama strings (presumably a different
set) and ran away with his rubies”. As if this were not enough, a tax collector
confiscated the money he had received for the sale of some bracelets. This
series of misfortunes culminated with what must only have felt like the
proverbial rubbing of salt on his wounds, as a jewel-studded ring that he had
‘tied with a knot’ was lost too: “The ring had fallen somewhere; he never found
it again.”
Through
such tales, elaborate and detailed, the Ardhakathanak offer flashes of
daily life that no dry, discursive historical narrative can capture. For
instance, we know a great deal about the Mughal courts, royal patronage, and
administration from the courtly documents, but what the Ardhakathanak
tells us about are the ways in which small and moderately successful merchants
conducted their trade and interacted with the Mughal state.
Palace of a Mughal emperor.
-----
The Shrimal
clan to which Banarasi’s family belonged were well-established traders in many
Mughal cities at the time. Kinship ties and family relations were consequently
very crucial for conducting business and forging commercial partnerships.
Banarasi mentions that he turned to such networks on multiple occasions,
including after he first reached Agra. As he was wondering where he might go in
the city, he recalled his brother-in-law, his younger sister’s husband,
Bandidas, also lived there; it was to him that Banarasi turned to start his new
life. Says Banarasi, “He [Banarasi] had heard said – one can always rely on
relatives and saints.”
Banarasidas
lived through a number of local-level administrative changes, most
extraordinary of them all is that he experienced the reigns of three Mughal
emperors: Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan. Banarasi’s descriptions of the chaos
that the city was thrown into when the news of Akbar and decades later,
Jahangir’s death, reached them are vivid. He was in Jaunpur, and in his early twenties,
when Akbar died in Agra in 1605, for instance. Not only did Banarasi fall off
the stairs of his home and hurt himself badly due to the shocking news, but he
also notes: “riots broke out everywhere” and people feared for their safety. It
was only when the deceased emperor’s eldest son, “Sahib Shah Salim” or Jahangir
was declared the king that matters calmed down.
This is not
all. The Ardhakathanak is replete with personal details, and is, in
fact, a clever work of creative writing. Throughout the journey of his
half-life that Banarasidas walks his readers through, he himself appears
fascinating and witty, and also introduces us to a wonderful cast of relatable
characters that make up his world: his father with whom he clearly had a
complicated relationship; his mother, grandmother, and three wives
(sequentially), who remain unnamed but seem to have played crucial roles in his
emotional life; and a number of close friends and associates with whom he spent
much of his professional and leisure time.
In a touching
verse dedicated to Narottamdas, a fellow trader and someone he refers to as his
“bosom friend”, Banarasi skillfully honours his mate with an acrostic: each of
the sentences in the verse begin with the letters that make up Narottam’s name.
Palace of a Mughal emperor.
-----
Banarasi’s
account matters for many reasons, but two stand out. First, the Ardhakathanak
contests a currently divisive perception that it was their religious and
community identities that primarily motivated people in Mughal India. Even
though religious beliefs and a broader pursuit of Jain philosophy shape
Banarasi’s telling of his own life, the Ardhakathank reveals that Banarasi and
the others around him did not always view their social interactions through
these collective lenses.
Indeed, the
traders in Banarasi’s world were constantly affected by the quirks of Mughal
functionaries on the ground but at no point did the question of the officials’
religious affiliation come into play. Instead, what comes through is a more
universal tension between the potential influence of wealthy merchants and the
administration at the local level, rather than any imperial interference.
This is
depicted in one instance when a certain Nawab Qilich, Jaunpur’s governor,
rounded up all the jewellers in the city and tried to take their money by
force. On the other hand, Banarasi’s own father briefly served in the revenue
administration under a diwan who was a fellow Shrimal named Rai Dhana. Rai
Dhana in turn served under the Pathan governor of Bengal. Society as reflected
in Banarasi’s account, and as David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn have written on
South Asian life narratives more generally, is complex and one where
“collectivity and individuality are coming together and are constantly in
dialogue”.
A Timeless
Story
The second
telling revelation is less surprising once we think about it, but it is perhaps
the Ardhakathnak’s greatest achievement as far as even the most casual
of modern readers is concerned. Scholar of Hindi and Professor Emeritus at University
of Texas Austin, Rupert Snell, captures this eloquently when he says: “The most
remarkable aspect of this text is its astonishing ability to collapse the
centuries, and to make the 17th century understandable to the reader today. If
the Ardhakathanak is a unique witness to a particular time in the
history of India and the world, it is equally a remarkable statement about the
timelessness of human experience…Despite its remoteness in time (for all modern
readers) and also in place (for those of us living outside Northern India),
Banarasi’s tale makes frequent and profound contact with our own experience.”
At the end
of his poem, Banarasidas writes his farewell: “To those who recite it, hear it,
read it, To them, his [Banarasi’s] good wishes,” Banarasi would pass away soon
after completing the Ardhakathanak: his half a tale, would in fact be
the story of his entire life. I suspect, it is this shared sense of the
ephemeral nature of the human existence – Banarasidas, by his own admission
falls in love twice, suffers severe illnesses, and talks about losing all of
his nine children – that will stay with us in our own Covid-ridden times.
As he
brings his narrative to a close, Banarasi, true to his mercantile profession,
lists his own virtues and faults, like a balance sheet. The ledger of good and
bad is, as we have by now come to expect from Banarasi, variegated. And among
the “faults” there is one we should all emulate: “Sometimes finding himself
alone, he [Banarasi] breaks into a dance.”
Note: I
have used Rohini’s Chowdhury’s translation of Banarasidas’s Ardhakathanak
for all citation of the work (Penguin Books, 2009).
Aparna
Kapadia is a historian of South Asia at Williams College in the US. She is the
author of In Praise of Kings: Rajputs, Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-Century
Gujarat.
Original
Headline: What a Jain merchant’s rare and candid autobiography tells us about
life in the Mughal era
Source: The Scroll In
URL: https://newageislam.com/books-documents/life-mughal-era-ardhakathnak’s-greatest/d/122654