Love's subtle magic : an Indian Islamic literary tradition, 1379-1545

416 Pages·2013·1.9 MB·English

by  Behl

Love’s Subtle Magic
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Love’s Subtle
Magic
A n Indian Islamic Literary
Tradition, 1379–1545
z
ADITYA BEHL
Edited by
WENDY DONIGER
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
B ehl, Aditya, 1966–2009.
L ove’s subtle magic : an Indian Islamic literary tradition, 1379–1545 / Aditya Behl ;
edited by Wendy Doniger.
pages cm
I ncludes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–514670–7
1. Sufi literature, Hindi—History and criticism. 2. India—Civilization. I. Doniger,
Wendy. II. Title.
PK2035.B45 2012
891.4′309921297—dc23
2012003729
ISBN 978–0–19–514670–7
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
P rinted in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents

The Reconstruction of the Text vii
Acknowledgments ix
1. Studying the Sultanate Period 1
2. Inaugurating Hindavī 30
3. Creating a New Genre: The Cāndāyan 59
4. Oceans and Stories: The M irigāvatī 109
5 . T he Landscape of Paradise and the Embodied City:
The P admāvat , Part 1 141
6. The Conquest of Chittaur: The Padmāvat , Part 2 177
7. Bodies That Signify: The Madhumālatī, Part 1 218
8. The Seasons of Madhumālatī’s Separation:
The M adhumālatī , Part 2 264
9. Hierarchies of Response 286
Epilogue: The Story of Stories 325
Notes 339
Index 383
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T he Reconstruction of the Text
a ditya behl finished a draft of a text that he called S hadows of Paradise in
2001; this was a greatly expanded revision of a text he had completed in 1995,
his doctoral dissertation, “Rasa and Romance: The M adhumālatī of Shaikh
Mañjhan Shattari.” But by 2001 he had extended it to include three more Sufi
poems. He began with the Madhumālatī, of which he had by then published
a translation (M adhumālatī: An Indian Sufi Romance, translated by Aditya
Behl and Simon Weightman; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Then
there was Qut" b an’s Mirigāvatī, of which his translation was published post-
humously in 2011 (T he Magic Doe: Shaikh Qut b" an Suhravardī’s Mirigāvatī. A
New Translation by Aditya Behl , edited by Wendy Doniger; New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011). Next came Malik Muḥ a mmad Jāyasī’s Padmāvat , of
which he had completed a partial translation at the time of his death, and,
fi nally, Maulānā Dā’ūd’s Cāndāyan. That 2001 version of the book consisted of
ten chapters: three general chapters as well as one chapter each on C āndāyan
and M irigāvatī and two each on Padmāvat and Madhumālatī .
H e continued to work on the text, and in 2004–05 he delivered, at the
École des Hautes Études in Paris, seven lectures, now renamed Love’s Subtle
Magic , consisting of revised versions of seven of the chapters of the 2001 text.
Then, in 2008, at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University
of London he delivered four lectures, of which we have only one in a complete
draft, “The Landscape of Paradise and the Embodied City” (a revision of one
of the Paris lectures) and two in partial draft: “On Rupa: Form, Embodiment
and Technique in the Hindavi Sufi Romances” (which was published, posthu-
mously, in 2011, as the centerpiece of the introduction to his translation of the
Mirigāvatī ), and “The Seasons of Madhumālatī’s Separation” (a revision of one
of the original 2001 chapters). He also made a new outline of the book he
intended to fi nish, still devoting one chapter each to C āndāyan and Mirigāvatī
and two each to P admāvat and Madhumālatī, now framing them with four
general chapters, two introductory and two at the end. He died, in August
2009, before he could fi nish revising that book.
viii the reconstruction of the text
In editing this book, my basic principle has been to follow his fi nal plan for
the book and to include the latest available version of each of the ten chapters
that he sketched in that plan. So I have taken six of the 2004–05 Paris lec-
tures as my basic text (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7) and added to that core the
two unpublished 2008 London lectures, “The Landscape of Paradise and the
Embodied City” (Chapter 5) and “The Seasons of Madhumalati’s Separation”
(Chapter 8). Following Aditya’s intentions as expressed his fi nal draft of the
introductory chapter and his fi nal outline, I constructed Chapters 9 and 10 out
of portions of the 2004 draft of Chapters 4 and 2, respectively.
B ecause Aditya kept coming back to the book over the years and never
edited the fi nal copy, there were a number of duplications, not only between
diff erent versions but between chapters in a single version, and on the level
of both phrases and whole paragraphs. In order to minimize such repetitions,
I cut words, sentences, sometimes paragraphs, and to clarify the structure of
the arguments within each chapter I moved paragraphs, sometimes sentences,
sometimes words, sometimes whole sections. I added nothing but subhead-
ings and a few explanatory parenthetical paraphrases. How often I longed to
ask Aditya what he meant by a certain puzzling phrase, and since he could not
answer I usually left it in enigmatic form, hoping that other readers would be
able to tease out the meaning better than I had; and rarely, when I thought I
did know what he was getting at I rearranged clauses to clarify the passage.
The result is, as I am painfully aware, not the book he intended to write,
but it is not a patchwork. Eight of the ten chapters are taken from one text
(the 2004–05 Paris lectures), and the other two are from a draft made four
years later. Moreover, the basic materials and ideas remained consistent in
tone and substance between the earliest and latest versions; what he added
were new interpretations and insights that enriched but did not cancel out his
earlier understandings.
I think he would have gone on fi nding new meanings in these texts for
years to come; the process was cut short only by his death. As I edited his text,
I found myself falling under the spell of his perfectionist ghost, going over
the chapters again and again to trim the excess, fi t the pieces together more
snugly, smooth the transitions. It was hard to stop, in part because it was
hard for me to end our collaborative eff ort, fi rst begun when Aditya was my
student twenty years ago. The result is still unfi nished, imperfect. But what he
was writing is a book of stunning originality, scholarly depth, and intellectual
excitement, of great importance for our understanding of Sufi sm as well as of
the relationship between Hindus and Muslims during a marvelously fruitful
period of Indian history. It is his legacy to us, and a very precious one.
Wendy Doniger
Acknowledgments
aditya did not get around to writing a fi le of acknowledgment of the many
people who helped him write his book, and I cannot construct such a fi le, but
I am sure they know who they are, and I hope they will take pride in this
book. For my part, I acknowledge, with gratitude, the generous and expert
help of John Stratton Hawley, Philip Lutgendorf, Aradhna Behl, Ayesha Irani,
A. Sean Pue, Francesca Orsini, Carl Ernst, Thibaut d’Hubert, and Vasudha
Paramasivan in assembling and editing this text. Thanks to Katherine Ulrich
for making the index. And I believe that Aditya would have wanted to dedicate
this book to his parents, Colonel S. K. Behl and Mrs. Purnima Behl, to his
sister, Aradhna, and his nephew, Anhad, and his niece and namesake, Aditi.
And so we dedicate it to them.
Wendy Doniger
N ote on the Romanization of Sanskrit, Avadhi,
Persian, Arabic, and Urdu
Aditya Behl wrote the chapters of this book at diff erent times, and often spelt
the same word diff erently in diff erent languages; moreover, he transliterated
Avadhi, Persian, Arabic, and Urdu in several diff erent ways. In romanizing
Indic languages, we have not changed the transliteration of words within quoted
material, which therefore still show a great range of systems of romanization,
but we have tried to make the text as consistent as possible, while retaining
Behl’s own preferences. We have followed his custom of leaving out the diacrit-
ics on words that are well known to English-speakers as well as on place names
and clan names. We have kept his preferred spelling of “Mañjhan,” using the
Avadhi rather than Persian (Manjhan) romanization, and we have honored his
preference for spelling ‘Alāuddīn, ‘Abdul, ‘Abdullāh, and Sher Shāh as such
rather than as ‘Alā’ al-dīn, ‘Abd al, ‘Abd Allāh, and Shīr Shāh.
For Sanskrit, we have used the International Alphabet of Sanskrit
Transliteration. In order to avoid romanizing a single term diff erently across
linguistic contexts, Sanskrit spelling has been preferred over Hindi, with a few