Dr. Etee Bahadur
Chandar Bhan Brahman is completely the obsure figure in the cultural memory of the intellectuals of seventeenth century India. Manuscript copies of Chandar Brahman’s work are available in the archives in plenty, his two books are Munsha at-i-brahman (2005) and Chahar Chaman (2007) are available in print with the editor’s introduction in Persian. The copy of the manuscript of Chahar Chaman is available in the manuscript section of the Maulana Azad Libraray, Aligarh Muslim University , Aligarh and the copy of the manuscript of being available at the Habib Ganj collection, the collection of Abdus Salam and Sir Sulaiman Collection. If you were to search the web you will find two unpublished PhD thesis of the 1970’s, one from Delhi University and the other from Aligarh Muslim University, both of which were written in 1970’s. S.M.Abdullah’s article was published in 1928 in the Oriental College Magazine, and a few more articles in English have been written over the years as well. M.A.H.Farooqui writes that Chandar Bhan Brahman was a man of versatile skill and wrote poetry of high merit (1966), historians we can gauge, have been less interested in the cultural networks of Chandra Bhan and his times and his sensibilities. Momim Abdullah (1971) also discusses Chandar Bhan in aspects of secretarial administration. Except for the editor’s introduction in Persian (2005/2007) none of his works have been translated into English except for a section of chahar chaman in 1795 by Galdwin. Muzzafar Alam and Sanjay Subramanian have written an article ‘On the Making of a Munshi’ (2004; also published in an edited book by Sheldon Pollock 2011)
Madhuri Dixit in a movie of the 1990’s is dressed like a Munshi when Salman Khan the hero sees her for the first time, that is the image of a Munshi that we have, an accountant rubbing his hands, well potrayed by Madhuri in the movie. But in the 17th Century India one became a Munshi with the knowledge tradition that one possessed.
So what is the modern image of Chandar Bhan Brahman!
Suppose you were to look for information on Chandra Bhan Brahman where would you find it maybe in a section on Islamic arts in the Encyclopedia Britannica or in books dealing with Dara Shukoh. Chandar Bhan Brahman who escaped the execution in the seventeenth century would be for the late Annemarie Schimmel who is the editor to the Volumes and also responsible for the entry would slot the Munshi as one of the highly esteemed scholars of the Indo-Islamicate world. Yes, of course the pertinent contribution of Chandar Bhan Brahman was that he was a hindu who wrote accounts of court life in Persian, which would be ” unacceptable to orthodoxy” if one was not a part of Mughal patrons in 17th Century india, shortchanging Dara’s own circle; it was not as if Chandar Bhan Brahman and Sarmad depended on his support for survival but the spot light on Dara in the construction of this historical narrative becomes important. However what becomes important to know at this point is that there are, no letters to Dara no poems are written in praise of Dara, in fact contemporary seventeenth century sources mention events which took place in 1650’s forty year after Chandar Bhan Brahman’s career into the Mughal service. The source connecting our Munshi to Dara is one which comes from the same time frame, is about Chandra Bhan translating Dara’s dialogue with Baba Lal (a punjabi) as Dara wished the conversation would reach a larger audience hence Chandar Bhan’s translation became necessary. Dara dialogue with Baba Lal are not only about Baba Lal explaining Hinduism to him, but in fact asking for advice on how to be a better Muslim and a better king (Rajeev Kinra, 2015). Among the interesting people who were around Dara along with the Munshi Chandar Bhan Brahman is seen Muhhammad Sa’id Hakim Sarmad . Sarmad seems to have developed a local following and is a fascinating person of the period. Sarmad was executed by Aurangzeb (1661) maybe for his obscenities as he would wander naked but more so maybe because he had publicly declared the victory of Dara (Journal of Persianate studies Kinra, 2003) Over the centuries of Muslim rule in North India the Persian frontiers came to extend far beyond , Akbar was the first among the Indo-islamic rulers of north India to declare Persian as the language of administration at all levels, now even those who worked in hindawi , the indigenous hindu communities learned Persian and joined the Iranians as clerks secretaries and munshis. Hindus, Khatris and Kayasthas now would join Madrasa to learn Persian literature and language as it got them a career in the imperial service and by the middle of the 17th Century siyaq (accountancy ) and insha (draftsmanship ) and the office of the diwan had kayastha and Khatri munshis in their departments (Alam and Subramanyyam 2004). The level of education required for a munshi to be successful has been examined by Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subramanyam for the Brahman was honoured with the title Rai (1656/1659A.D) and was promoted to the post of the chief secretary and the work of drafting was also entrusted to him.
The cultural memory of Chandar Bhan Brahman being formulated either in literary biographies or tazkiras of the seventeenth and eighteenth century Indo-Persian culture. Sarhwush in Words of the Poet (Kalimat al- Shu’ara ) compiled in 1682 , writes that Chandar Bhan Brahman gives an anecdote about the munshi’s career and about a couplet he recited which reads :
”I have the heart so acquainted with infidelity that, however many times”
”I took it to the ka’ba I brought it back still a Brahman ”
Emperor Shah Jahan is angered : ” This ill starred infidel is a heretic , He should be executed, however Afzal Khan is said to have recited a couplet of Hazrat Shikh Sa’di as an rejoinder which read
”[Even] if Jesus ‘s donkey goes to Mecca ”
”It’s still just a jackass when it comes back ”
Our Munshi, Chandar Bhan never ever mentions an encounter of the kind doesn’t necessarily mean that it did not happen, he [Chandar Bhan] would have been embarassed and reluctant to write about it (Kinra 2015:260) This however is the most commonly remembered moment of our Munshi’s career. Sher Khan Lodi in the late eighteenth century also included Sarhwush’s anecdote in his compendium (1690-1691). Lodi is seen to be suspicious about the Hindu munshi’s success in his anecdote, he is also seen making interventions in the anecdote.
One wonders how the tazkiras would circulate stories which would then have cultural symbolic value attached to them. One also wonders how Dara would favour Chandar Bhan over all the other capable men at the court. Lodi and Sarkhwush penned the same anecdote a generation after Chandar Bhan’s death. Did they see this as a threat of the Hindus’s by the time Lodi wrote more and more Hindus had begun to dominate the Mughal secretariat and were a part of the indo-Persianate world. Tazkira as a genre has been used to sacralise a cultural space by invoking the memories of the past. Rajeev Kinra (2015) has traced down the literary tazkira’s of the era. Tazkiras have been used in modern scholarship as data sources but are not yet seen as a part of the knowledge tradition with their own internal dynamics. Jadunath Sarkar (1920) in his book Mughal Administration acknowledges that the details in the epistolography and letters of munshi’s like Chandar Bhan are of ”inestimable service to the students of Mughal history.”
(The author is teaches Development Studies at the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies , Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi)
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