|
THE RULERS OF MITHILA WERE CLOSE ALLIES OF THE SHARQIS
1
Author(s):
SUSHIL MALIK
Vol - 2, Issue- 1 ,
Page(s) : 56 - 59
(2011 )
DOI : https://doi.org/10.32804/IRJMST
Abstract
The rulers of Mithila were close allies of the Sharqis and had for many centuries been associated with the history of the Delhi, Bengal and the Jaunpur Sultanate – we have already had an opportunity to notice its ruler as an ally of Qutlugh Khan in his conflict with Balban. Associations of this nature had not really threatened the autonomy of its Karnata dynasty in the thirteenth century, or the Oinivars that had supplanted it in the middle of the fourteenth century. Oinivar rule was briefly interrupted by a military adventurer, Malik Arsalan, in the late fourteenth century. But with the support of the Sharqi Sultan Ibrahim (1402-40), its rulers Kirti and Shiv Singh managed to re-establish Oinivar rule as allies of Jaunpur. Vidyapati was personally quite familiar with the Sharqis of Jaunpur; he had travelled to the city with his patrons, and described it in another text, the Kīrtilatā.
- For details on Mithila and Vidyapati, see Pankaj K. Jha, ‘Articulating Power in 15th Century Mithila: Conceptions of Gender, Caste and Other Sources of Authority in Vidyapati’s Compositions’, Nehru Memorial Library, Working Papers, forthcoming-A.
- Pankaj K. Jha, ‘Reading Vidyapati: Language, Literature and Cultural Values in 15th Century North Bihar’, PhD Thesis Department of History, Delhi University, forthcoming-B.
- Vidyapati, Puruṣa Parīkṣā, edited by Jha, p. 30, translated by Grierson, p. 19. I have used Grierson’s translation with a slight emendation.
- Ibid., edited by Jha, pp. 218-31, translated by Grierson, pp. 163-70.
- The classic work of Ronald Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: a History of Caste and Clan in Middle Period Bengal, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, is very suggestive on how caste rankings, service and marriage may have been reconceptualised in the thirteenth century. His study pertains to the Bengal region whose cultural ambits would spill into Mithila. The Puruṣa Parīkṣā locates several stories in Gaur and Rarh and has Raja Lakshmana Sena as a protagonist in more than one of them.
- Ibid., edited by Jha, pp. 14-21, translated by Grierson, pp. 9-18.
- Nayachandra Suri, Hammira Mahākāvya, English translation by N. J. Kirtane, Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1879.
- ‘Isami, Futūḥ al-salāṭīn, edited by Usha, pp. 271-77, translated Husain, vol. 2, pp. 445-51. Note that Barani’s and Amir Khusraw’s brief accounts of ‘Ala al-Din’s campaign against Ranthambhor do not draw any attention to Rai Hammir or the episode of sanctuary to Sultanate renegades. See Barani, Ta’rīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, edited by Khan, pp. 272, 276-7, and Amir Khusraw, Khaẓā’in al-futūḥ, edited by Muhammad Wahid Mirza, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1953, pp. 50-54
- Space forbids a consideration of Vidyapati’s Likhanāvalī, translated by Pankaj K. Jha, forthcoming-C. This is a writing manual of model letters and documents that administrators of different ranks could follow. The closest parallel to this text would be within the insha tradition but it differs from this genre in that it contains only model letters and no original documents.
|