At the time when the Sultanate Hyenas, particularly the Tughlaqs in Turko-Afghan factional India advertised their sordid saga of assassinations, usurpations and rebellions, the political scene of India changed dramatically. The cause of this change was the invasion of India by Tamerlane and his Tartar-Mongol-Turkish hordes from Transoxiana in Central Asia, Turkish in language and identity, Persianised in culture and Islamised in religion. Henceforth, the Delhi Sultanate ruled subservient to the Timurid Empire of Central Asia. The death rattle to the Sultanate came under the Lodis, when they invited the Timurid Tornado Babur to invade and liberate India. The best of the Sultanate clashed with the fiercest of Mongols, only to be slain and snuffed out from history. Babur thus became the founder of an empire in India, the Mughal Empire.
The Mughals may have historically been nomadic plunderers and marauders, but in India, all notable Mughal Emperors, both Jahanpanahs and Shahinshahs, nurtured and stimulated creative art – poetry, painting, architecture, music and historiography. The third Mughal Emperor Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar, though a ruthless medieval warlord driven by earth hunger and blood thirst, was aesthetically and intellectually refined in taste. Akbar was keenly aware of the attested divide between Hindus and Muslims, the Sufi doctrine of Islam and Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism, the inaudible insubordinate pandits and the radical dogmatist mullahs. To inter-stitch the fragile social fabric in Mughal India, Akbar came out with novel experimentations – the Tasvir Khana, the Ibadat Khana and the Maktab Khana to amalgamate the aesthetic elements of Hindu world and Islamic world.
Maktab Khana (the imperial translation bureau) had an assortment of painters from both the Hindu India and Mughal catalogue. Those painters had translated a range of Sanskrit texts like Rajtarangini and Ramayana into Persian, as much as they had prepared illustrated copies of Qissa-i Amir Hamza, Gulistan, Shahnama, Tutinama, among many other Persian masterpieces. During this time, the Persian translation of the Mahabharata, the revered Smriti text of Ancient India, commenced as the Razmnamah (The Book of War) in the Nasta’liq script under the order of Akbar by noted theologians, philosophers and courtiers of the Mughal Court. Remarkable concise explanations of the expansive Sanskrit text were prepared, sketched out in Persian and finally rearranged into an exquisite literary form. The translation includes all eighteen books of the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa appendix. The translation is based primarily on the Devanagari version of the Sanskrit Mahabharata, though over time, other versions have been recorded.
The first volume of Razmnamah brilliantly illustrates the Adi, Sabha, Vana, Virata, Udyoga and Bhisma parvas. The second volume adorns the Drona, Karna, Salya, Samptika, Stri and Santi parvas, whereas the third volume embellishes the Anusasana, Asvamedhika, Mausala, Mahaprasthana and Swargarohana parvas. The effective portrayal and depiction of a Hindu text through Islamic lens is historically illustrious. While the Razmnamah stands out as an ultra-fine elegance of merging Indian and Persian indigenous styles, it is flabbergasting to be cognizant of Akbar being an illiterate Emperor. In consequence to the sudden ascent of Akbar on the Mughal throne at a juvenile age, when Mughal Empire was nascently incipient in the Indian sub-continent and Mughal Princes were battle-hardened ambitious heir-apparent in the Timurid tradition of partition, Akbar never had the pleasure to be illuminated with literacy. Despite this, the curious, open-minded and tactful ruler Akbar was, his sponsoring of the abridged translation is testament to his considerate diplomacy and patronising of the Rajputs, whom he viewed as E Pluribus Unum.
Dr Shadab Ahmed is an Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon, and a translator of several books on Historical & Ethnic poetry.
