TUTORIAL: [M21409 Aspects of Indian Art and Architecture] How does the study of art and architectural traditions help us to reconstruct politico-cultural contestation and conflict as well as accommodation and assimilation? Discuss with reference to the monuments of Delhi.

COURSE NAME: M21409 Aspects of Indian Art and Architecture

M. A. SEMESTER 2

TUTORIAL 1     

TUTORIAL TOPIC: How does the study of art and architectural traditions help us to reconstruct politico-cultural contestation and conflict as well as accommodation and assimilation? Discuss with reference to the monuments of Delhi. 

SUBMITTED BY: Pranav Kushwaha

[DISCLAIMER: The following tutorial is being shared so students of CHS, JNU can get some idea regarding how a tutorial is to be written. This tutorial is by no means of high quality, and you might find some factual, spelling, and grammatical errors. Please refer to the BIBLIOGRAPHY section and the ENDNOTES for verifying the contents of the tutorial and for further study.

In the original file that I submitted, (i) the numbers in the square brackets were used to denote footnotes and were written in superscripts, and (ii) there was no dedicated section titled 'Endnotes', as each page contained footnotes. Endnotes are acceptable, but I'd advise you to use footnotes instead. Better yet, confirm from your professor what is required.]

                       

The first proper traceable origin of Delhi as a city — keeping aside the Pāṇḍava capital of Indraprastha mentioned in the Māhābhārata^[1] — comes from the Pṛthvīrāja Rāso of Chand Bardai. Raja Anangpal II Tomar established the city of Lal Kot in 1052 CE, the first of the “Seven Cities of Delhi” constructed in the mediaeval period. In the twelfth century, the Chauhan Rajputs of Ajmer overthrew the Tomars.^[2] In the aftermath of the Second Battle of Tarain in 1192 CE, Prithviraj III, the  Chauhan ruler also known as Rai Pithora, was defeated. The Qila Rai Pithora was occupied by Qutbuddin Aibak on behalf of Shahabuddin^[3] of Ghor.^[4]

Although the Delhi Sultanate won’t come into existence till 1206, and its capital won’t be shifted from Lahore to Delhi until 1211, a significant shift in power had occurred in the heartland of the Doab. The Ghorian-Turkish conquerors^[5] had come into a foreign land, and had carried with them a different set of customs and traditions. One of the first requirements that the foreigners must have felt was a place of worship; as for Aibak, he needed to commemorate the victory as a show of strength and to lay a claim to the Ghorid legacy.

In this tutorial, my main concern is how the conquerors tried to carve a space for themselves in a foreign land, how they tried to project their power, how they interacted with the natives, and how the efforts to do all this are reflected in the monuments of Delhi of the 12-13th century CE.

 

The Qutb Mosque

Although the mosque lies in ruin in the present day, the ruins themselves tell an interesting story. Spoils from some twenty-seven destroyed temples^[6] were used during the time of the construction of the mosque in circa 1192 CE. The pillars of the mosque were taken from the temples, which is evident in the idols — both untouched and defaced — that make up the columns of the mosque. As can be ascertained from the Shaivite, Vaishnavite, and Jain motifs existing close to each other in a random fashion, these columns were assembled without any regard for maintaining iconic symmetry since the main concern was to achieve a uniform height for the roof of the mosque.^[7]

If you were to visit the mosque, you would easily notice the kalaśa, the aforementioned idols, as well as the kīrtimukhas, the last of which were left untouched^[8] in the pillars of the mosque. On the screen of the mosque, side by side with the inscription in Arabic, one can identify the makara and the tortoise, the mounts of the river-goddesses Ganga and Yamuna, respectively, to depict the respective goddesses. Such motifs, both Islamic and Indic, occurring side by side demonstrate that even though the mosque was supposed to be an Islamic structure, a pre-Islamic Indian influence also factored into the construction of the mosque. Since the Ghorids hadn’t brought builders with them, they had to depend on the natives.

The natives had their own beliefs and traditions that they had been practising for centuries. Hence, it was natural that the builders would incorporate these beliefs, traditions, and architectural motifs into the construction of the mosque as well. The Ghorids, for their part, defaced and demolished idols as much as they could, but even they could not — or at least did not — damage the kīrtimukhas. The kīrtimukha was an auspicious symbol, present on the door frames of temples, and marked the entry into a structure complex. Thus, we see a form of accommodation taking place, at least in terms of architectural motifs, from the very beginning of Turkic rule.

In the words of the historian James Fergusson, “to understand the architecture [of the mosque], it is necessary to bear in mind that all the pillars are of Hindu, and all the walls of Muhammadan, architecture.”^[9]

 

 

The Qutb Minar

The same story is repeated in the case of the nearby Qutb Minar. The structure was built by the natives, as evidenced by the Nāgrī inscription with the name of the Muslim rulers along with samvat dates. The handwriting of the inscriptions on the Minar suggests that the carving was done by hands not well versed in Arabic owing to “disarranged Quranic texts and other Arabic expressions”.^[10]

The Minar was constructed in phases. The first storey was built under Aibak’s rule; Iltutmish built upon the structure and added the second, third, and fourth storeys. Repairs were undertaken under the reigns of Alauddin Khilji, Muhhamad bin Tughlaq, and Sikandar Lodi. But the most important alteration to the structure came under Firuz Shah Tughlaq’s rule when he repaired the Minar — as it had been struck by lightning — and added a fifth storey while shortening the fourth storey; the fourth and the fifth storeys were rendered in marble.^[11]

The Minar served two purposes: political and religious. In the political sphere, according to the contemporary historian Hasan Nizami, the Minar acted as a victory tower. The Nagari inscriptions accompanying the Minar refer to the structure as stambha, kirtistambha, and jayastambha.^[12] Thus, we can say that the Minar was built to commemorate the aforementioned Ghorid victory. Although the Minar was not attached with the mosque,^[13] one of the functions of the Minar was to serve as a place from where a muezzin could give the call to prayer. Amir Khusrau in Qiran-us-Saadain describes the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque and the Qutb Minar as,

“The public-crier stretched and extended his figure shouted the prayer-call by standing on the pillar…When the Muezzin (public-crier) went round the top of the shaft, his stature went beyond the height of the mosque of Christ (4th heaven where Jesus is supposed to reside)...The post where the crier's place rests, was beyond the reach of the crier's stature."^[14]

The architectural tradition of the Qutb Minar can be traced back to the Central Asian minarets of Nad-i-Ali, of Khwaja Siah Posh, and of Masud III at Ghazni. It is possible that these minarets inspired Aibak and Iltutmish for building the Qutb Minar. The other possibility is that the Qutb Minar is a milestone in the development of “saracenic architecture”, a successor and an advanced version of the earlier minarets of Central Asia. One can go into the architectural details of the structure — a list that runs long from the Persian-Arabic and Nagari inscriptional bands engraved in a horizontal fashion to the honeycomb like appearance of cusped niches^[15] — but it is suffice to say that the “calligraphic (tughra) decorations and the stalactite balconies [of the Qutb Minar] have been rare in the Indian sub-continent”.^[16]

 

 

Discussion

 Now that we know about the architectural elements of the two structures, we can contextualize the process of the construction of these elements.

One of the first things that comes to mind, as discussed before, is the destruction of temples and the usage of the temples’ architectural materials to build the mosque as well as the Minar. The iconoclastic nature of Islam is cited as the reason behind the destruction of the temples as well as the idols situated inside the temples. But as discussed in the example of the kīrtimukha,  the Muslim Turkic rulers did not deface or destroy every idol or symbol religiously, so to speak.

Moreover, destruction of the “Hindu” idols was not carried out blindly. For example, A sculpture of Lord Viṣṇu situated in the southeast of the Qutub Minar is dated 1147 CE and attributed to Chauhan rule by its inscription. Moreover, it stands well-preserved without any defacement to speak of. The sculpture suggests that the defacement carried out by the Turks was quite selective in nature: while the anthropomorphic features inside the mosque premises were defaced, whatever remained outside the mosque’s boundaries was left alone.^[17]

One should also bear in mind that the destruction of temples and idols was not a new element in the political scene of the subcontinent. From the seventh to the eleventh centuries CE — that is in the centuries prior to Tarain and the construction of the mosque and the Minar — there exist numerous examples of Hindu kings engaging in warfare with each other, targeting temples and stealing temple icons in order to assert their power over their defeated rivals. These clashes between the Hindu kings also resulted in the desecration of temples. This argument is supported by the following extensive quotation taken from Richard M. Eaton:

“In 642 AD, according to local tradition, the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I looted the image of Ganesha from the Chalukyan capital of Vatapi. Fifty years later armies of those same Chalukyas invaded north India and brought back to the Deccan what appear to be images of Ganga and Yamuna, looted from defeated powers there. In the eighth century Bengali troops sought revenge on king Lalitaditya by destroying what they thought was the image of Vishnu Vaikuntha, the state-deity of Lalitaditya’s kingdom in Kashmir.

In the early ninth century, Rashtrakuta king Govinda III invaded and occupied Kanchipuram, which so intimidated the king of Sri Lanka that he sent Govinda several (probably Buddhist) images that represented the Sinhala state, and which the Rashtrakuta king then installed in a Saiva temple in his capital. About the same time, the Pandyan king Srimara Srivallabha also invaded Sri Lanka and took back to his capital a golden Buddha image that had been installed in the kingdom’s Jewel Palace. In the early tenth century, the Pratihara king Herambapala seized a solid gold image of Vishnu Vaikuntha when he defeated the Sahi king of Kangra. By the mid-tenth century, the same image was seized from the Pratiharas by the Candella king Yasovarman and installed in the Lakshmana temple of Khajuraho.

Although the dominant pattern here was one of looting royal temples and carrying off images of state-deities, we also hear of Hindu kings engaging in the destruction of the royal temples of their political adversaries. In the early tenth century, the Rashtrakuta monarch Indra III not only destroyed the temple of Kalapriya (at Kalpa near the Yamuna river), patronised by the Rashtrakutas’ deadly enemies, the Pratiharas, but also took special delight in recording the fact.”^[18]

 

If one is looking for a contemporary source, one need not look further than Kalhaṇa’s Rājataranginī. The text mentions how the Hindu kings of Kashmir, like Harshadeva of the Lohāra dynasty, destroyed the temples of other Hindu and Buddhist kings, and even created assigned a devotpātana nāyaka for the carrying out the task. Other examples include the clashes between the Śaivas and the Vaiṣṇavas in south India, the persecution of Jains by Hindu rulers, and the destruction of Buddhist sites.^[19] Thus, we see that the practice of temple destruction by rulers was not an unprecedented phenomenon in the subcontinent when the Ghorids or the Turks arrived on the scene. Further, time and again, it has been shown that the practice was not limited to Muslim or Hindu kings alone.

On the other hand, the destruction of temples and usage of the temple spoils in the construction of the mosque had several effects. One was certainly that the Turks were asserting the superiority of their religion over the defeated polytheistic-idolatry heathens. The other impact was more political and economic in nature. Temples, especially royal temples that had the backing of the ruling dynasty, served as the “sites of redistributive and transactional relationships between the king, his subordinate chieftains, and the larger subject population”.^[20] By destroying the temple and constructing a mosque in its stead — that too the first mosque constructed in India^[21] — Aibak and his successors disturbed this status quo and made sure that new relationships between the ruling class and the local power shareholders would have to be established.^[22]

 

The assimilation and accommodation that can be perceived from the study of architectural studies in the case of the mosque and the Minar is discussed as follows.

In architectural terms, the Indians were constructing building which had at least a partial origin in Central Asia. They were not well versed in the self-buttressing construction of the true arch, and were using the technique of corbelling that they had been practicing for centuries.^[23] This fusion of two distinct architectural styles is also visible in the domes built in the Qutb Complex: the top is not spherical nor perfectly round, but is slightly flat, and one can easily spot ridges in the structure that is supposed to be smooth. It is perhaps for these reasons that the corbeled arches were seen as “decidedly inferior versions of the real thing”.^[24] Percy Brown, commenting on the screen of the mosque, said that “had there been an Isalmic master-builder present, it is highly improbable that he would have sanctioned these arches being put together on such a principle…all countries under Moslem rule had employed the true arch…with its radiating voussoirs, but here the rudimentary system of corbelling out the arch was used”.^[25]

As for the Hindu population, it is hard to imagine that they would have felt indifferent about the destruction of the temples. However, there is no epigraphic record that describes the sorrow or dismay of the Indian population. On the other hand, we have the incorporation of the kīrtimukha and of the mounts of the two river goddesses in the mosque and the Minar respectively. From Khilji’s reign (1296-1316 CE), we have an artisan who identified the Minar as Śrī Sultān Alāvadī Vijayastambha, i.e., the Sultan’s Pillar of Victory. The repairs carried out during Muhammad Shah Tughlaq’s reign (1325-51 CE), an inscription attributed to the architects Nānā and Sālhā mentions that the repair work successful due to the “grace of Śrī Viśwakarmā”.^[26]

If we move away from architectural elements and focus on the economic changes occurring during Turkic rule, we find that deliberate measures were carried out to ensure a sense of continuity with the patterns of commercial exchange under the previous regime. Gold coins carried both the image of Goddess Lakshmi as well as the title of the Sultan in the Nāgārī script. Ghorid coins were assimilated with the earlier Rajput coins, and both were valued equally.^[27] Thus, we see that the new regime, while asserting its elite and distinct nature from the indigenous population, was also trying to soothe relations with its subjects. Such a move was necessary if the Sultans hoped to rule the populace in peace.

 

Returning to architectural elements, it is not easy to figure out how much the Indo-Islamic art owes to India and how much to Islam. What can be said is that both the foreign Central Asian architectural monuments were being built in an Indian style. In 1985, Michael Willis noted that “the screen at Delhi is not so much an example of Islamic art, but of Indian art put to Islamic usage, just as the remains at Bharhut and Sanchi are not Buddhist art, but Indian art in the service of the Buddhist faith.”^[28] In the same year, Dogan Kuban noted in his book Muslim Religious Architecture that “the quality of its execution Indian architecture in the Muslim period is an incomparable expression of artistic imagination. But owing to its syncretism it must be acknowledged as the least Islamic of the great Muslim architectural styles. To such an extent were its regional developments always influenced by local traditions”.^[29]

 

I shall end this tutorial with Flood’s argument that a number of anomalies make the task of distinguishing art and architectural styles as “Indian” versus “Turk” and “Islamic” versus “Hindu” quite difficult. For example, beams or columns were imported from Sindh for the Friday Mosque of Ghazna, built by Sultan Mahmud in 1018. Similarly, craftsman from Turuṣkadeśa were employed by King Kalaśa, the Hindu ruler of the Kashmir Valley (r. 1063-1089) to gild a parasol (chatr) on a Shiva temple. Flood argues that recent evidence indicates that possibly Jain stonemasons from Rajasthan and northern Gujarat were working in southern and eastern Afghanistan in the 1190s. A most interesting argument that he presents is that “certain features of the Ghurid mosques in India are only comprehensible as the products of north Indian stonemasons who had worked for Muslim patrons in Afghanistan” and had returned to India after the Ghurid conquest.^[30]

ENDNOTES

^[1] Disregarding the Māhābhārata as a historical source.

^[2] R. E Frykenberg, “The Study of Delhi: An Historical Introudction,” in Delhi Through the Ages: Selected Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society, edited by R. E Frykenberg, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 6-7.

^[3]Also known as Mu'izz ad-Din Muhammad ibn Sam.

^[4] M. Athar Ali, “Capital of the Sultans: Delhi During the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” in Delhi Through the Ages: Selected Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society, edited by R. E Frykenberg, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 22.

^[5] Ali, “Capital of the Sultans”, p. 22.

^[6] Sunil Kumar, The Present in Delhi's Pasts, Delhi: Three Essays Press, 2002, p. 1.

^[7] Kumar, The Present in Delhi's Pasts, p. 4.

^[8] The reason has been discussed below.

^[9] Finbarr Barry Flood,  “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxonomy, and the Eastern ‘Turks.’” Muqarnas, vol. 24, 2007, p. 94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25482456.

^[10]  Ved Parkash, “The Qutb Minar From Contemporary And Near Contemporary Sources,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 26, 1964, p. 53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44140319.

^[11]  Zainab Hussain, “Professor Sudhir Ranjan Das Memorial Prize: Symbol Of Authority: Architectural Study Of Minar-I-Jam And Qutb Minar.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 78, 2017, pp. 1032-33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26906181.

^[12] Hussain, “Professor Sudhir Ranjan Das Memorial Prize: Symbol Of Authority: Architectural Study Of Minar-I-Jam And Qutb Minar”, p. 1032.

^[13] Hussain, “Professor Sudhir Ranjan Das Memorial Prize: Symbol Of Authority: Architectural Study Of Minar-I-Jam And Qutb Minar”, p. 1032. 

^[14] Parkash, “The Qutb Minar From Contemporary And Near Contemporary Sources,” p. 55.

^[15] Hussain, “Professor Sudhir Ranjan Das Memorial Prize: Symbol Of Authority: Architectural Study Of Minar-I-Jam And Qutb Minar”, p. 1035.

^[16] Hussain, “Professor Sudhir Ranjan Das Memorial Prize: Symbol Of Authority: Architectural Study Of Minar-I-Jam And Qutb Minar”, p. 1034.

^[17] Naman P. Ahuja, “Discourse on a Label: Exposing Narratives of Violence,” in Historians of Asia on Political Violence, edited by Anne Cheng and Sanchit Kumar, p. 36. Paris: Collège de France. doi:10.4000/books.cdf.11180.

^[18] Ahuja, “Discourse on a Label: Exposing Narratives of Violence,” pp. 32-33.

^[19] Ahuja, “Discourse on a Label: Exposing Narratives of Violence,” p. 33.

^[20] Sunil Kumar, The Present in Delhi's Pasts, Delhi: Three Essays Press, 2002, p. 28.

^[21] “Qutab Minar”, Delhi Tourism, accessed July 21, 2022, https://delhitourism.gov.in/delhitourism/tourist_place/qutab_minar.jsp .

^[22] Kumar, The Present in Delhi's Pasts, Delhi: Three Essays Press, 2002, p. 28.

^[23] Finbarr Barry Flood,  “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxonomy, and the Eastern ‘Turks,’” Muqarnas, vol. 24, 2007, p. 96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25482456.

^[24] Flood,  “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxonomy, and the Eastern ‘Turks,’” pp. 101-102.

^[25] Flood,  “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxonomy, and the Eastern ‘Turks,’” pp. 101-102.

^[26] Kumar, The Present in Delhi's Pasts, p. 27.

^[27] Kumar, The Present in Delhi's Pasts, p. 30.

^[28] Flood,  “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxonomy, and the Eastern ‘Turks,’” p. 91.

^[29] Flood,  “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxonomy, and the Eastern ‘Turks,’” p. 89.

^[30] Flood,  “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxonomy, and the Eastern ‘Turks,’” p. 111.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahuja, Naman P. “Discourse on a Label: Exposing Narratives of Violence.” In Historians of Asia on Political Violence, edited by Anne Cheng and Sanchit Kumar, pp. 19-70. Paris: Collège de France. doi:10.4000/books.cdf.11180. 

Chattopadhyaya, B.D. Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims: Eighth to Fourteenth Century. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 1998. 

Delhi Tourism. “Qutab Minar”. Accessed July 21, 2022. https://delhitourism.gov.in/delhitourism/tourist_place/qutab_minar.jsp. 

Flood, Finbarr Barry. “Lost in Translation: Architecture, Taxonomy, and the Eastern ‘Turks.’” Muqarnas, vol. 24, 2007, pp. 79–115. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25482456. 

Frykenberg, R. E (ed). Delhi Through the Ages: Selected Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. 

Hussain, Zainab. “Professor Sudhir Ranjan Das Memorial Prize: Symbol Of Authority: Architectural Study Of Minar-I-Jam And Qutb Minar.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 78, 2017, pp. 1031–40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26906181. 

Kumar, Sunil (ed). Demolishing Myths or Mosques and Temples? Readings on History and Temple Desecration in Medieval India. Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2008. 

Kumar, Sunil. The Present in Delhi's Pasts. Delhi: Three Essays Press, 2002. 

Parkash, Ved. “The Qutb Minar From Contemporary And Near Contemporary Sources.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 26, 1964, pp. 52–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44140319.