Alamgirnama: A Mughal Timeline
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got a question i don't know much about hinduism i heard when UK comtrolled india they coined Hinduism to describe all the local indian religions how has Hinduism as religion been developing?
Kaushlendra pratap singh
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you can say that Hinduism is term coin by British but there is a word called Sanatan Dharm(internal religion). and for many people saying Hinudsim is never single religion they have to say that Hindusim in India is like -many types of Christianity who does not fight in themselves and promote each other.(OTL)
and for This TL you can ask Madhav Deval.
A Question to the author- How far does direct imperial rule(rule with all bureaucracy and mansabdars) from Delhi extend to in the different directions?
The Dabistan-e-mazahib, a 1600s encyclopedia of Indian religion, groups Hindus into their own chapter separate from Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, etc.
Interlude- Hinduism
Sorry I didnt respond for so long, I've been caught up moving countries. The term Hindu had long been used in persian to refer to practitioners of what we now call hinduism, and the Dutch often simply translated it into indianen, or Indians because that's what the term means. Otl, the period now being covered was of incredible importance in forming colonial ideas of hindusim, including things like caste identities. The Deccan sultanates had nurtured a powerful class of brahmin administrators that controlled the daily working of much of the government. In fact, there was even a brief moment of a few years where the Golconda sultanate was effectively ruled by a pair of brahmin brothers just prior to the mughal conquest.
The most powerful corporate group would of course be the Marathi speaking brahmins, who dominated the intellectual life of the city of Banaras through much of the 17th century and who by virtue of dominating that city had enough authority that the Muslim faujdar of the southern Deccan felt the need to ask them which group had precedence in ritual proceedings. Otl, Aurangzeb destroyed the temple that was the seat of their power, and built the Gyanvapi mosque out of it. However there were repeated attempts by rich Hindus to rebuild it. Ittl, I'm assuming that even if Azam Shah was no special Hindu lover, holding onto the support of the brahmin class that knows about the taxes of the south means he'd need to allow it to be rebuilt, and thus the Brahmin court of Banaras has been operating as a court of Hindu ritual which will offer a ruling if consulted. I think to further gain legitimacy, they'd have to make good on their claims to represent brahmin groups from the ten subregions of brahmins that had been identified, five from the north and five from the south. Otl different areas had different specialties, with the Marathis being known for their adherence to the legalistic mimamsa framework, a school which had earlier denied the existence of any creator of the universe as it was not mentioned in the Vedas but had now been swept up in the devotional currents of bhakti and had admitted varyingly Krishna or Vishnu or Devi as the creator. Bengal is the region known for nyaya school, and it is this philosophy that has found the necessary similarities in epistemology and theories of logic to be receptive to the scientific revolution, but only the nyaya brahmins- most Hindu Bengalis are caught up in rather more devotionalist currents such as the Gaudiya Vaishnavas and their religion of pure love for Krishna, which is the one that is most missionary and easiest to spread due to powerful imagery and popularity amongst soldiers.
Otl the chaos that emerged with the fragmentation of empire, and the emergence of the Maratha regime that took upon the moral responsibility of enforcing norms of caste purity among brahmins of different sorts made it essential for Hindus to associate with their caste more and more. Additionally, the previous method of acquiring legitimacy, recognition by the Mughal emperor, no longer held the same weight and to replace it rulers turned to the religious sphere- such as when Jai Singh was the first in centuries to perform the Adhwamedha Yajna or horse sacrifice. Here, mughal recognition is more important than ever because it is gradated to accommodate tens of thousands in the masabdari system it didn't before and is a useful way to assert pre eminence. Though there is no Maratha empire, and thus the moralising mission never gets state backing, Maratha brahmins are still trying to get local rulers to perform sacrifices and acknowledge the ritual superiority of caste. One way they have been quite successful is the creation of a ritual similar to the shuddhi rituals invented to welcome back converts to Islam disenchanted with the new religion but for high caste individuals who travel overseas- it allows them to maintain their purity, be publicly seen supporting Brahmins and thus ethics while also performing their particular duty as mansabdars of traveling abroad. Of course, many rich and powerful Hindus with storied genealogies couldn't care less about such rituals, seeing them as useless when compared to the grace of their chosen god such as the gaudiyas mentioned above and the pushti Marg, which dominates the mercantile Hindus of Gujarat and sindh. And that's not even mentioning the mansabdars who despite low caste can still marry and dine with the most high caste of them all because of official recognition by the emperor combined with personal piety and good conduct or the shudra kings of the south. There is of course a lot else that I could mention- one update I'm working on is a look at changing technological and political views based on the changing oral versions of the great religious stories- these were always changing and existed almost independently of the brahmin controlled Sanskrit manuscriots. As such storytellers and poets, both Hindu and Muslim, felt able and willing to take a story from the Mahabharata or the Bhagavata Purana, rename characters, change the setting so it's near the venue, change the chronology of the story, add context to explain the characters actions better, take out the religion altogether and just use it as a story, and make up completely new stories featuring the characters from religion. This is one of my favourite things about hinduism- unlike many religions it does not require propagation of a fixed, unchanging narrative with sole claim to the truth, and when confronted on the changes creative storytellers made the Hindu view of cyclical time meant they could easily just go ”yes you're completely right, it did happen the way you described it, but it also went the way I told it in another yuga”. Rather hinduism is about an eternal discussion carrying on within a civilization about what constitutes right and wrong, with all the stories and philosophies tools to explain a particular viewpoint. It's no secret that the most famous Hindu text (though it will never achieve the same level of authority that it's apparent similarity to Christian thought brought it in colonial India and beyond ittl) the Bhagavad Gita is itself a debate on competing ethical frameworks, that strictly in terms of the merits of the arguments provided, God actually lost and his opponent was proved right in the end.
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Throughout all of modern South Asia and parts of Indonesia and central asia- not the territories federated to the mughal state but all territories under mughal rule. What this looks like is vastly different in practice as mansabdars are essentially a local court who don't have to back up their judicial opinion with anything like an Islamic school of law or normative texts like dharmashastras. Like all mughal rule, a mansabdar gives a ruling based on advice from local clerks who can inform him of the different nestled rights of that particular area, the system prevalent in the region and the imperial orders that changed this and at any point a ruling can be overturned by appeal to the court of the subahdar or a member of the imperial family, or you could convince the mansabdar who gave the original ruling to change his mind if you consulted someone with authority such as a brahmin court or court of mufti's or even a council of village wise men and their authority was personally recognised.
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to define mughal direct rule as the area where a qazi appointed by the central government notarises legal documents, which gives you a slightly wider definition than the areas where all the tax revenue enters the hands of the mughal tax collector. Despite intensive attempts to stop local kings or mughal officials from embezzling taxes or resorting to highway banditry, there are still many areas across mughal lands where people are willing to use military force to get their skim off the top. Aurangzebs uncle, Shaista Khan had by the time of his death embezzled 380 million rupees, more than the annual revenue of the entire empire. With the new punishments for those who attempt to do so and the granting of salaries to many so called spurious Rajput's and petty country zamjndars, things like this are unthinkable by the 1750s and while highway banditry remains a problem among even the most well connected subahs (just as it is in Britain at this time), the central government gets a lot more than it did before. This is largely due to the influx of Maratha bureaucracy, as otl they were very dismissive of the extent to which local rulers were allowed to add extra taxes at will.
1) That I think, would be due to Hinduism not actually spreading beyond the subcontinent and not much widespread communities beyond our home region or rather I would say, military achievements , beyond the subcontinent. That alone gained Christianity the authority it enjoys today, I would daresay.
I feel that Christianity is kind of, rigid, in terms of its understanding of divinity and the fervent insistence that only their narrative is correct, everything else, wrong. That inflexibility of Christianity becomes apparent with how they deal with differences of opinion; violent crackdowns, most of the time. Be it Arius of Alexandria and consequently Arians, Monophysites, Miaphysites, Paulicians, Bogomils, Hussites, and the newer Protestants, Anglicans and what not. That inflexibility is inherited by these above mentioned sects as well. The belief that only their way is correct, brooks no difference of opinion, which is regarded as heresy.
This rigidity of belief, gives rise to fanaticism, which has driven Christian militarism over the centuries. And with the victories they achieved, Christians believed to be a victory of their religious beliefs, which is not definitely not the case in my opinion. And these military achievements are the basis which many Christians have used to emphasize superiority over other religions, many a time. Hence, the treatment that Swami Vivekananda initially received at the Parliament of World Religions at Chicago, because he represented the religion of a "conquered colonial population", and hence, he and his religion was deemed to be inferior.
Hinduism lacking the same militant attitude and accomplishments deems it having less authority in the eyes of the Christians. Islam had been their mortal enemies for a long time, and fought against them a lot, so Islam seems more respectworthy than Hinduism which never had an opportunity and need to do so.
2) I am curious as to why you think so. If you would describe your thoughts, I would love to hear them.
No I mean within Hinduism, the Gitas authority was massively boosted because it was one of the few things that the colonial masters approved of, and the reason the British liked it is because they believed the concepts had been brought to India by Christian thinkers. Indians of course disagreed about the provenance, but on the other hand they thought that if the British liked it it was proof of India's modernity and vitality of civilization and so it became more important than other texts that were now relabelled decadent or immoral because they didn't fit with colonial values.
I thought Hinduism had thousand of different theologies, practices, and sacred texts.
I suggest you threadmark that Hinduism post.
How/why did the Marathi Brahmins become preeminent that early, and without state backing? Sure, they had to have been a cohesive and politically relevant group before their grand debut as de-facto rulers of the Maratha state, but how far back does this all go? Were these 1600s Marathis Citpavans or did they identify with other clans?
That is true, but the Bhagvad Gita is specially venerated due to its association (or rather a part of) the epic Mahabharata, as well as the fact of it being said by Lord Krishna himself.
But the veneration is more due to it laying out and explaining the principles a human ought to live by. Though it cannot be considered to be the total sum of Hindu wisdom, as Wikipedia would have you believe.
Moreover Bhagvad Gita is not the only Gita that there is, there are 8 more Gitas other than the Bhagvad Gita. Then there are several Puranas, of course the 4 Vedas (the true prime texts of Hinduism), the 108 known Upanishads, and many more.
The soul of Hinduism is not in its texts but rather its oral traditions like retelling of epics, stories, folk songs, bhajans, kirtans, etc.
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Well the Adil Shahi state had been using them as scholar bureaucrats, and the Bahmani state before them, so there was always state funding for their activities. These governments allowed Brahmins to accumulate offices, wealth and prestige, generating new power dynamics between brahmin communities that needed to be mediated. It appears that from the middle of the 16th century, Brahmins from the south began moving to and regenerating the city of Banaras, as well as developing the doctrine of Kasimaranamukti (death in Banaras instantly frees you from reincarnation) and established themselves as comprising a standard intellectual position of mimamsa legalism, association with the Godavari or the southern ganga, and use of the Marathi script even if they spoke Kannada or Konkani.
The Banaras Marathi brahmins included Desastha Brahmins, who were also interestingly the group that most resisted the rules and regulations of the Maratha state because they claimed higher status than citpavans. Also included at the assemblies were Citpavans, Karhades, and Devarukhes. Rosalind o Hanlon has done some really good work piecing together this area of history, if you're interested, which is available on JSTOR.
Well in the end, for all Krishna's philosophising and rhetoric, the war was incredibly destructive and it destroyed the flower of the aristocracy, with senseless and terrible acts of violence and just and upstanding characters brought to trickery and deceit in pursuit of victory. Sure, in the end, perhaps it really did mean nothing and Krishna was right but Arjuna's worrying is vindicated by the suffering and death that his decision to fight caused. The fact remains that multiple viewpoints are respected in the narrative and multiple conclusions can be drawn from it.
I don't think any time soon- the fiasco with the government essentially making up our exam results in the UK means the next two months for me are complete no gos. Rest assured it's still very much in my thoughts, and Im always fleshing out ideas especially regarding the Germanies and Italies (centred around Tuscany for the Italies) at the moment, but I just don't have the time to write it all up.
Wow, just wanted to say that reading through this was an absolute trip, I have absolutely fallen in love with the scenario you're setting up here, and the way it really paints a picture of just how diverse, rich, and varied the sub-continent is, both in OTL and TTL. Of especial interest to me is the detail with which you described the burgeoning philosophical and ideological innovations facing the empire, and just how these will affect the pax moghulica in the future.
Right.
I'm back.
I realise it's been a while, so I fully encourage you guys to take a quick refresher and take a look at some of what I'd posted before. As an extra incentive to do so, all past chapters now have relevant supporting artwork, so you should take a look at those just for the arts sake. If you don't feel like it, feel free to ask questions.
The update on the Romanian enlightenment has also had a makeover and it's very much required reading to take another look at that. I realised it didn't make much sense in world as people we call Romanians would call themselves vlachs if the Romanian identity is more tied to the Rum millet.
I'm back.
I realise it's been a while, so I fully encourage you guys to take a quick refresher and take a look at some of what I'd posted before. As an extra incentive to do so, all past chapters now have relevant supporting artwork, so you should take a look at those just for the arts sake. If you don't feel like it, feel free to ask questions.
The update on the Romanian enlightenment has also had a makeover and it's very much required reading to take another look at that. I realised it didn't make much sense in world as people we call Romanians would call themselves vlachs if the Romanian identity is more tied to the Rum millet.
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