Book Review

Audrey Truschke, The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of

Muslim Pasts (New Delhi: Penguin Random House India), 2021,
xlviii + 354 pp., Rs. 699/-

ANUSMITA BHATTACHARJEE

(Department of History: North Campus)

Forms of Historical Writing in Medieval and Early Modern India

Prof. Raziuddin Aquil

May 16th, 2024

 Jin javanan tuv dharam nari dhan tinhon linhon
(You Muslim foreigners! You have robbed us [Hindus] of [our] dharma, women and
wealth – all three.)
- Bharatendu Harishchandra1

Our understanding of the past is always constructed in and conditioned by the present.2 In fact,
using the past to derive meaning for the present was an activity that Indians engaged in long
before the advent of colonialism.3 Despite all the challenges that have come up throughout the
years, historians have been dealing with “whole range of themes and issues” “from a variety
of perspectives with reference to source and evidence.”4 Although medieval Indian history
continues to be a contested space characterised by “encounter, clash and conquest,” 5 yet,
scholarship persists to grow with considerable momentum.

Audrey Truschke’s daunting endeavour of analysing outlandish Sanskrit texts dealing with
Indo-Persian political events dating from 1190s till 1721, parturiated her third book titled The
Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Muslim Pasts. By focussing more on
historiography, rather than that on political history, Truschke claims her book to be one of a
kind as it seeks, “for the first time, to collect, analyse and theorize Sanskrit histories of Muslim-
led rule and, later, as Muslims became an integral part of the Indian cultural and political
worlds, Indo-Muslim rule as a body of historical materials.”6

However, while treating literature as a historical source, it is necessary to bear in mind that
every piece of literature carries the reflection of its author's personality – his/her ideology,
personal sympathies and antipathies, intellect, character, etc. – which distinguishes it from

1 Quoted in Shahid Amin, Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior Saint Ghazi Miyan (New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan Private Limited, 2015), 2.

2 Cynthia Talbot, The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past 1200-2000 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2016), 12.

3 Ibid., 8.

4 Raziuddin Aquil, History in the Public Domain (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2023), 27.

5 Amin, Conquest and Community, 6.

6 Audrey Truschke, The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Muslim Pasts (New Delhi: Penguin Random
House India Pvt. Ltd., 2021), xxii.
other sources.7 In fact, all works of art are politically biased, no matter whether their creators
recognize this or not. In analysing a work of literature as a source for the study of history, it is
therefore necessary to define the writer's position in the realm of ideas and to review both the
author's own time and the social world that became the soil out of which seed of the given work
was sown.8

The book is divided into seven chapters, each of which engages with Sanskrit texts composed
in distinct spatio-temporal contexts. Besides, the appendix of the book is very useful as it
contains English translations of some selected Sanskrit histories discussed by the author in the
preceding seven chapters. The first chapter of the book revolves around Sanskrit epigraphs and
other forms of texts belonging to 8th century CE that were narrativized to mark Muslim
presence in the subcontinent. Audrey Truschke has divided these Sanskrit materials into two
groups based on the target audience. The first group of such texts include numerous public
speeches of praise written for kings of western India, stretching across a span of four hundred
years in which Muslims have been labelled as outsiders, and often as a military threat. Between
roughly 700 and 1000 CE, Sanskrit scholars generally denoted the Muslims as turushka and
tajika, which, according to Truschke, refer to Turks and Arabs respectively.9 Romila Thapar,
in her article The Tyranny of Labels, has sought to explain the historicity of terminologies such
as Tajika, Yavana, Saka, Turuska and Mleccha, that were used to denote the “new entrants.”10
According to Thapar, inscriptions from the 8th century CE, which refer to Arab incursions from
Sind and Gujarat into the Narmada delta, mention the Arabs as Tajikas.11 So far as the term
Turuska is concerned, initially it was a geographical and ethnic name, which became popular
as bearing a historical link with earlier historical perceptions of central Asia when Kalhana
used the term retrospectively in his Rajatarangini.12 Nevertheless, Truschke compellingly

7 N.I. Mironets, “Literature as a Historical Source (Toward the Historiography of the Problem).” Soviet Studies in
History 17 (2) (1978): 74.

8 Ibid., 75-76.

9 Truschke, Language of History, 4.

10 See Romila Thapar, “The Tyranny of Labels.” Social Scientist 24 (9/10) (Sep. - Oct., 1996): 3-23.

11 Ibid, 9.

12 Ibid., 12. Also see, Truschke, Language of History, 5.

states that in early Sanskrit inscriptions, the authors made sure not to use religion as identity
markers of allies or foes.13

The second group of texts that Truschke refers to in this chapter consists of 11th century esoteric
Buddhist materials, known as the Kalachakra tradition, which not only describes Islam
negatively as a religion of violence (himsadharma) inspiring savage behaviour
(raudrakarman), but also praises those who could convert Muslims to the Kalachakra path.
Thus, on one hand, we have Sanskrit inscriptions that seldom sought to otherize Muslims in
certain specific ways, while on the other, the Kalachakra texts that used Islam to justify its own
existence. Audrey Truschke, through these two sets of examples, has concluded that such
endeavours showcase how “India’s traditional learned elite elected to describe Muslim
communities in different contexts and for different audiences.”14

Defeat of the 12th century Indian ruler Prithviraj Chauhan (r. 1177-1192) at the hands of Muiz
ud-Din Ghori (r. 1173-1206), the Afghan ruler of Ghazni, during the second battle of Tarain in
1192, culminated in the founding of the Delhi Sultanate in 1206,15 that left an everlasting
impact on Delhi’s “social hierarchies, settlement patterns, and ideologies touching on morality,
social conduct, and public service.”16 In the second chapter, Truschke states that the Ghurids
brought with them new languages - Persian, Turkish and Arabic, an uncommon religion –
Islam, and a culture of rulership that the indigenous Sanskrit-based rulers of the time were not
acquainted with. The Ghurids were indeed different from their north Indian counterparts.
Therefore, in this chapter, Truschke’s narrative deals with how the contemporary Sanskrit
intelligentsia perceived such differences. Truschke, very carefully points out that it would be
anachronistic to colour the conflict between the Ghurids and the Chauhans with the modern
understanding of Hindu-Muslim dichotomy. According to her, during the 1190s, neither the
Chauhans called themselves Hindus, nor the Ghurids were considered typical Muslims by the
mainstream Sunnis as the Ghurids adhered to an obscure sect of Islam known as the Karramiya
through 1199.17

13 Truschke, Language of History, 5.

14 Ibid., 17.

15 Talbot, Prithviraj Chauhan, 1.

16 Sunil Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate: 1192-1286 (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007), xii.

17 Truschke, Language of History, 20.

In order to deal with such complexities, Truschke has cited the reference of Jayanaka’s
Prṭhvīrājavijaya (Victory of Prithviraj Chauhan), which abstains from projecting this struggle
as that of Hindus versus Muslims. Jayanaka’s venture to project Prithviraj as the Vishnu
incarnate, saving a tirtha - Pushkar, instead of Prithviraj’s own capital – Ajmer, shows that for
the poet, the Ghurid political conquest posed threat on the sacred space, rather than on the
profane administrative one. Although Jayanaka has used a number of terms to refer to the
Ghurids as low caste, demons, barbarians, etc., Truschke points out that Jayanaka gives no
indication of looking down upon the Ghurids due to their religious affiliation and he was only
concerned with the Ghurids’ inability to speak Sanskrit, which reflected a major flaw.18

On the other hand, Cynthia Talbot, in The Last Hindu Emperor, has drawn our attention to the
fact that unlike the Ghurid and Ghaznavid rivals, the composer of Prṭhvīrājavijaya has not
demonised or insulted the other long-standing foes of the Chauhans, such as the Chalukya kings
of Gujarat. Talbot thus argues that while analysing this text, the composer’s deliberate effort
to elevate his patron at the cost of “military rivals who were socially and geographically
distant” by intelligently deploying the rhetoric of “othering” cannot be ignored.19

In the third chapter, Audrey Truschke has emphatically shed light on the phrase –
hindurayasuratrana – which was used by Bukka20 to proclaim himself as a sultan (suratrana)
standing out among Hindu kings (hinduraya). In this context, ‘Hindu’ did not denote a religious
identity but a royal claim to authority, such that the features defining these terminologies appear
to be largely cultural, rather than religious.21 Philip B. Wagoner has fitted this process of
cultural change within a broader theoretical model of what he calls “Islamicization,” that
“refers to a political strategy, by means of which indigenous elites attempt to enhance their
political status and authority through participation in the more “universal” culture of Islam”
and this process does not occur at the cost of indigenous cultural traditions.22 Wagoner has
drawn this idea from Marshall Hodgson, who has pointedly characterized these cultural
phenomena as “Islamicate,” rather than Islamic, thus showing that this cultural hegemony was

18 See, Truschke, Language of History, 24-33.

19 Talbot, Prithviraj Chauhan, 42-43.

20 One of the Vijayanagara founders.

21 Truschke, Language of History, 43-45.

22 Philip B. Wagoner, ““Sultan among Hindu Kings”: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at
Vijayanagara.” The Journal of Asian Studies 55 (4) (Nov., 1996): 853-854.
associated with the profane realm, rather than the religious realm.23 It is due to this reason that
we find subsequent references of several other non-Muslim rulers in south India claiming the
title ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings’ as well as being other types of suratranas, such as andhra-
suratrānạ (Sultan of Andhra).

So far as the Muslim rulers were concerned, they too were highly influenced by these cultural
innovations and they used the title Hammira for expressing their political ambitions in Sanskrit.
Truschke has cited examples of the coins of Muhammad Ghori (d. 1206) bearing, in
Devanagari script, the Sanskrit titles śrihammīra and śrimad hammīra (Glorious Hammira).
Delhi Sultan Iltutmish (r. 1210–36) too issued coins heralding himself as suratāna
śrīsamsadīna (Glorious Sultan Shamsuddin).24 Besides, we also find similar trend in the Palam
Baoli inscription, dated 13th August 1276, which, despite not being patronised by the
contemporaneous Delhi Sultan Ghiyas ud-Din Balban (r. 1265–1287), refers to the Sultan as
“Nayaka Sri Hammira Gayasdina.”25

Truschke then shifts her focus onto two literary sources: Gangadevi’s Madhuravijaya (Victory
at Madurai, c. 1380) and Nayachandra’s Hammiramahakavya (Great Poem on Hammira
Chauhan, c.1410). The Madhuravijaya, narrates the 1371 overthrow of the Sultanate of
Madurai (Sultanate of Malabar according to Persian and Arabic sources), in which Gangadevi
uses “Sanskrit-based cultural and aesthetic values” as the paradigm against which Muslim
military opponents are measured. Truschke, however, argues that the Sultanate was the
political, rather than religious foe of the Vijayanagara kingdom and Gangadevi’s language
suggests that “region more than religion qualified the Sultanate of Madurai as different.”26 The
second text, Nayachandra Suri’s Hammīramahākāvya narrates the history of the Chauhan
dynasty’s conflicts with Muslim and Indo-Muslim rulers, leading to Hammira Chauhan’s futile
attempts to resist Alauddin Khalji’s 1301 assault on Ranthambhor Fort in Rajasthan. Although
the two literary texts contrastingly articulate how a ‘Hindu’ power achieved victory over a

23 Ibid., 855. Also see, David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, “Introduction,” in Beyond Turk and Hindu:
Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, ed. David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2000), 2.

24 Truschke, Language of History, 46.

25 Babu Rajendralala Mitra, “Note on the Palam Baoli Inscription.” The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 43
(2) (1874): 106.

26 Truschke, Language of History, 58.

‘Muslim’ one and vice versa respectively, but, in both the cases, the anxiety to connect with
the recent past for claiming current legitimacy is apparent.27

In the fourth chapter, Audrey Truschke puts forward a comparative analysis of two regional
traditions belonging to the 14th and 15th centuries respectively – Gujarati prabandhas
composed by Shvetambara Jains and Kashmiri rajataranginis composed by Kashmiri
Brahmins. Truschke has tried to show through several examples how the composers of
concerned Jain prabandhas projected the Ghurids as “instruments” and not the “instigators” of
political change. Their recurring tendency to hold divine interventions responsible for massive
casualties reveals their intention of not considering the Muslims as the primary cause behind
such unfortunate circumstances.28

While defining the Kashmiri rajatangini tradition, Truschke precisely emphasizes on the ones
by Kalhana, Jonaraja and Shrivar composed subsequently in 1149, 1459, 1486 respectively.
Kalhana’s Rājataranginī ̣ contains substantial references to Muslim political figures and
specific vocabularies such as ‘mleccha,’ ‘turushka,’ ‘shaka,’ ‘yavana,’ ‘chandala’ and
‘hammira’ have been used for the Muslims, who have been considered both as military foes as
well as allies by Kalhana. Truschke has argued that Kalhana’s endeavours do not reflect any
intention of setting Muslims apart. In Jonaraja’s narrative, however, Muslim political figures
do not play a primary role and terms such ‘yavana,’ ‘mleccha’ and ‘turushka,’ have been
employed to denote those who belonged to West and Central Asia. In fact, his own patron,
Sultan Zain al-Abidin was a Muslim who has often been praised as being superior to other
rulers of Kashmir and is likened to Vishnu. Truschke, therefore, argues that Jonaraja employed
the term ‘mleccha’ to distinguish tyrannical kings from virtuous ones. Further, in Shrivar’s
narrative, Zain al-Abidin is identified as Shiva on one hand, and we find a robust presence of
the Muslims on the other.29 Athough the two genres of literature discussed in this chapter share
more differences than similarities, yet these captivating narratives about the political past are
impregnated with the ideas of resistance, accommodation, participation and appropriation.

27 R. Mahalakshmi, “Review Article,” Review of The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Muslim Pasts, by
Audrey Truschke, Studies in People’s History 9 (1) (2022): 87.

28 Truschke, Language of History, 83.

29 Truschke, Language of History, 86-107.

In the fifth chapter, Audrey Truschke has studied the texts on Jain-Mughal ties, authored by
Jain monks from the Tapa Gaccha and the Kharatara Gaccha, two Shvetambara branches
largely based in Gujarat. Shvetambara Jains entered the Mughal court in the early 1560s and
they maintained a consistent presence in the courts of Akbar and Jahangir from 1583 to 1618.
The Jain monks, therefore, composed accounts highlighting Mughal politics – some from
within the court. In their narratives, the Jain authors created a Cartesian plane on which they
located the coordinates of Mughal imperial interest and Jain religious ideologies along the two
axes.

Truschke then draws our attention to Siddhichandra’s Bhānucandraganịcarita, in which he

equates Akbar with Rama, Krishna, Indra and other deities, followed by Jahangir whose
activities are compared to that of Indra and Nur Jahan is compared to Lakshmi. Besides, Abul
Fazl is represented as “a paradigm of Sanskrit learning.”30 Truschke takes note of
Siddhichandra’s ironical endeavour to project Jains as the “Mughal Other,” and conversely, the
Mughals as indistinguishable from traditional Indian kings. In Truschke’s opinion, the
Bhānucandraganịcarita “is arguably the first Sanskrit text to treat cross-cultural relations with
Indo-Persian political elites as its main subject.”31

In the sixth chapter, Truschke discusses about Rajput and Maratha Sanskrit histories, which
reveal that the identities associated with ‘Rajput’ and ‘Maratha’ were not “timeless” but fluid,
such that “they fought on all sides.”32 Dirk Kolff’s monumental work on the military labour
market, that generated socio-religious identities adapted and shaped by new alliances, sheds
more light in this respect.33 Audrey Truschke attempts to investigate how this aspect of “fluid
alliances” was received among the contemporary Sanskrit literati.

Against this contextual backdrop, Truschke has sought to pair two texts for her study –
Chandrashekhara’s Surjanacarita (Surjan’s Deeds) composed in the 1590s in Benares, and
Rudrakavi’s Rāsṭṛaudḥavamś ̣amahākāvya (Great Poem on the Rashtraudha Dynasty)
composed in 1596 in Baglan. The narrative of Surjanacarita revolves around Rao Surjan of

30 Ibid., 132-133.

31 Ibid., 135.

32 Ibid., 139.

33 See, Dirk H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan,
1450-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Hada (r. 1554–85), a Chauhan Rajput based in Bundi, and this text was probably patronised by
Surjan’s son Bhoj (r. 1585–1607). The text accepts the Mughals as the superior political
counterpart with respect to its patron and the author considers his patron’s alliance with the
Mughals as a positive development. Rudrakavi’s Rāsṭṛaudḥavamś ̣amahākāvya, on the other
hand, is dedicated primarily to the exploits of its patron, Narayan Shah, the Baglan king in
1596, whose political affiliation(s) used to be quite fluid with no obsession for loyalty. Narayan
Shah and his heir Pratap Shah fought on behalf of Indo-Persian dynasties to retain their power
such that they supported the Nizam Shahis in one of the wars and a few years later, they
changed sides. Besides, the text also brings to light a strong sense of belonging associated with
region, but not religion.

Truschke then shifts her focus onto Sanskrit works composed for the Maratha Bhonsle clan -
Sūryavamś ̣a (Dynasty of the Sun, 1675), Śambhurājacarita (Sambhaji’s Deeds, 1685) and
Rājārāmacarita (Rajaram’s Deeds, 1690) - patronised by Shivaji (d. 1680), Sambhaji (r. 1680–
89) and Rajaram (r. 1689–1700) respectively, followed by two additional texts on Shivaji and
Sambhaji - Jayarama’s Parnlaparvatagrahankhyna and Paramānandakāvya composed by
Paramananda (or somebody using his name). Truschke has asserted that in such Maratha-
sponsored histories, a strong sense of “Us versus Them” is often fostered such that identities
of “us” and “them” were carved out in relation to military and political terms.34 Truschke draws
our attention specifically to Paramananda’s text, in which the term “Yavana” has not only been
used to depict Muslim rulers but also to refer to those Rajputs and Marathas who fought in
support of Indo-Persian rulers – “an identity overlap that is presented as unproblematic.”35

Besides, these works also contain reference of several terms denoting Indo-Persian polities and
Muslim communities that have been appropriated from contemporary Persian, Marathi, etc.
Truschke argues that these “textured vocabulary” must not be analysed as something associated
with the modern construct of Hindu-Muslim dichotomy, which had been in circulation since
the mid-19th century, finding legitimate voice in the works of Jadunath Sarkar.36 Categories
associated with Hindu Shivaji and Muslim Aurangzeb had been promoted to such an extent

34 Truschke, Language of History, 155.

35 Ibid., 156.

36 Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzeb Vol I–V (Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar and Sons) published between 1912-1924,
mentioned in Anas Zaman, “The Reign of Emperor Aurangzeb: Some Historiographical Considerations.” MPhil Dissertation,
Department of History, University of Delhi (2022): 90 (Refer to Footnote 108).
that Sarkar went on to project Shivaji as “a new hope, the protector of Hindus and a saviour of
Brahmans from the atrocities of Aurangzeb.”37 As a result of such endeavours, the popular
modern-day Shivaji has become a site of contestation, which, according to Truschke, is in grave
contrast with the Maratha sponsored Sanskrit histories38 that put forward a more nuanced
understanding of the early modern ways of seeing the world.

In the seventh chapter, Audrey Truschke has undertaken the study of four texts: Padmasagara’s
Jagadgurukāvya, a Sanskrit translation of part of Abul Fazl’s Akbarnāma (Akbar’s Book) and
Lakshmipati’s pair of texts - Nrpatinītigarbhitavrṭta
̣ and Abdullacarita. Truschke opines that
in the Jagadgurukāvya, an example of “quasi-fictional history,”39 Padmasagara has
endeavoured to omit Babur as well as the interlude of Sher Shah Suri. Besides, he has also
expressed unfavourable view of Rajput rulers, pointing them out as ‘demonic Hindus,’ against
whom the Mughal rulers Humayun and Akbar proved superior. Truschke has preferred to stay
silent about the possible motive behind such literary devices employed by these monks, who,
ironically enough, were writing for a restricted Jain audience and were not patronised by the
Mughal court.40

Truschke then talks about a Sanskrit translation of Abul Fazl’s Akbarnama which was
composed during the 17th century under the title of Sarvadeśavrṭtāntasangraha (Collection of
Events across the Land). According to Truschke, the work “sets itself apart as a distinctively
Sanskrit text” since it furnishes certain additional information regarding Sanskrit philosophy
and Hindu religious tradition that cannot be encountered in the original Persian version.41

In the final section, Audrey Truschke focusses on Lakshmipati’s pair of texts -

Nrpatinītigarbhitavrṭta
̣ and Abdullacarita – two Mughal political histories written in rapid
succession during the 1720s. Both works focus on the Sayyid brothers of Baraha - Hasan Ali
Khan and Husain Ali Khan - who exercised unrivalled power over the later Mughal kings. The
first text narrates the increasing influence of the two Sayyid brothers during the reign of Mughal

37 Quoted from Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzeb Vol IV (New Delhi: Orient Longman Limited, 1919), 188 in
Zaman, “The Reign of Emperor Aurangzeb,” 91 (Refer to Footnote 115).

38 Truschke, Language of History, 163.

39 Quoted from ibid., 169.

40 Mahalakshmi, “Review Article,” 88-89.

41 Truschke, Language of History, 176.

Emperor Farrukh Siyar (r. 1713–19) while the second text informs us about the Sayyid
brothers’ decline during Muhammad Shah Rangila’s reign (r.1719–48). Through his twin
narratives, Lakshmipati reflects on the major shift in Mughal politics witnessed by him.

It is important to note that the identities associated with being Hindu or Muslim were not
formed in isolation but emerged as a response to stimulus caused by the presence of the Other.
In fact, Cynthia Talbot has pointed out that the term ‘Hindu’ was coined by Muslims to denote
their non-Muslim counterparts of the subcontinent.42 It was with the advent of the Muslims in
South Asia that “a broader, more inclusive, Indic identity began to develop” among the non-
Muslim inhabitants.43 It is therefore necessary to deconstruct the modern understanding of
Hindu-Muslim dichotomy and then reconstruct the history of Hindu-Muslim interactions with
reference to the space and time they belong to. B.D. Chattopadhyaya is of the opinion that, so
far as the historiography of ‘pre-medieval-medieval’ is concerned, the notion of Hindu-Muslim
divide still separates one Indian past from the other, as a consequence of which, the histories
of interaction, assimilation, appropriation, continuity and resistance between the two
communities is often marginalised.44 Being very critical about the way historians have
endeavoured to explain this sense of “otherness,” Chattopadhyaya condemns Sheldon
Pollock’s argument of inventing the king as Rama, beginning in the 12th century as a necessity
due to the perception of threat posed by the “Turushka marauders” “against the ideal political
and moral order of Ramarajya.”45 Sheldon Pollock has termed the Ramayana epic as
“profoundly and fundamentally a text of ‘othering’,” the perfect legitimate vehicle for
demonizing the alien intruders.46

With the emergence of colonial historiography, medieval past began to be perceived as a dark
age – the medieval Muslim sovereigns being projected as the “embodiments of all previous

42 Cynthia Talbot, “Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India.”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (4) (Oct., 1995): 694.

43 Ibid., 700.

44 Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims (Eight to Fourteenth
Century) (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1998), 16.

45 Ibid., 17-18. For Sheldon Pollock’s arguments, see, Sheldon Pollock, “Ramayana and Political Imagination in
India.” The Journal of Asian Studies 52 (2) (May, 1993): 261-297.

46 Quoted by Talbot in “Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self,” 696.

atrocities and religious fanaticism.”47 James Mill, in his The History of British India has pointed
out India as being “stationary” with nothing of consequence occurring in the period between
the invasion of Alexander in 4th century BCE and the arrival of Europeans during the 16th
century CE.48 The notion of medieval decline was further aggravated when it was incorporated
into Vincent Smith's Early History of India, which superseded Mill's text in the early 20th
century.49 Colonial scholars attempted to paint the medieval past with the colours of
communalism, bringing to light how the Muslim invaders destroyed the country, established
despotic rule, desecrated Hindu temples, imposed religious doctrines, forced conversions, etc.50
Emergence of the two nation theory in the second quarter of the 20th century further
strengthened this sense of communal divide in terms of religion, politics and culture, and one
of the most brutal manifestations of this unstoppable fatal epistemological epidemic happened
on December 6, 1992, with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.51

It was in response to such a vulnerable narrative that various strands of secular nationalist
historiography emerged, blaming the British colonial policies of 19th and first half of 20th
centuries for all the violent distortions they inflicted on the existing episteme.52 Secular
historians, however, have the tendency to create explicit binary of political/economic and
religious, use facts selectively and narrativize “syncretic and tolerant narratives to counter the
communal history,” which may lead to “certain erasures and silences.”53 This set of scholarship
often glosses over the importance of religion in public life, effortlessly ignoring the possible

47 Zaman, “The Reign of Emperor Aurangzeb,” 109.

48 Cynthia Talbot, Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Religion and Identity in Medieval Andhra (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 1.

49 Ibid., 2.

50 Zaman, “The Reign of Emperor Aurangzeb,” 109.

51 N. R. Farooqi, “Revisiting the Identity Question,” Review of Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious
Identities in Islamicate South Asia, edited by David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, Economic and Political Weekly 37 (21)
(2002): 1992.

52 Aquil, Public Domain, 24.

53 Zaman, “The Reign of Emperor Aurangzeb,” 110.

chances of communal hatred and abuse – an act characterised by Neeladri Bhattacharya as
‘predicament of secular history.’54

Our author, Audrey Truschke, too has endeavoured to take a secular position over the years.
We are already aware about the criticism that circulated in both academic as well as popular
domains post her second book – Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial
King – was published in 2017, in which she endeavoured to articulate a secular interpretation
of Aurangzeb’s reign.55 Moving away from the exclusive subject matter of Aurangzeb, in her
third book, Truschke has rather preferred to focus on around thirty-five Sanskrit works
composed across diverse space and time,56 and claims to have offered “a substantial revision
to Sanskrit intellectual history,”57 which is indeed a herculean task. Yet, it is necessary to take
note of the possible omissions, selective readings of primary texts, deliberate attempts to
furnish syncretic interpretations, etc. – that might have occurred on the part of the author –
either intentionally or unintentionally. Critical attention should, therefore, be paid to further
nuance the understanding of the subjectivity of both the composers and the patrons of these
Sanskrit texts, the politics of such representations, the target audience, the impact caused on
them and the reactions received from them.

As Manan Ahmed Asif has pointed out, due to the sense of “encounter as conquest,” “Arabs
and Muslims in India” have been considered as “outsiders,” “fanatic, foreign invaders”58 such
that the categories of Arab, India, Hindu-Muslim have become “historically contingent yet
conceptually unstable.”59 In spite of being an integral part of South Asia for over a thousand
years, Muslims are hardly defined as “indigenous,” for in the popular realm, Islam and
Hinduism have already been understood as alternative belief systems - “competitive and

54 Neeladri Bhattacharya, “Predicaments of Secular Histories.” Public Culture 20 (1) (2008): 57-73, mentioned in
Aquil, Public Domain, 25. Also see, Raziuddin Aquil, “Introduction: Early Modern Bengal” in An Earthly Paradise: Trade,
Politics and Culture in Early Modern Bengal, ed. Raziuddin Aquil and Tilottama Mukherjee (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers,
2019), 24-26.

55 See, Zaman, “The Reign of Emperor Aurangzeb,” 124-125.

56 Mahalakshmi, “Review Article,” 86.

57 Truschke, Language of History, xxiii.

58 Manan Ahmed Asif, “Narratives of Earliest Hindu–Muslim Encounters.” in The Oxford Handbook of the Mughal
World (In Progress), edited by Richard M. Eaton and Ramya Sreenivasan, Published online in October 2020: 4.

59 Ibid., 3.
irreconcilable in their differences.”60 David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence have, therefore,
argued that it is necessary to move beyond the modern connotation of Hindu-Muslim identity
and use terms such as Islamicate and Indic – which “define broad cosmologies of human
existence,” instead of “simply bounded groups self-defined as Muslim or Hindu.”61 Truschke’s
efforts appear to be less promising in this regard as she has preferred to limit herself strictly
within the precincts of Muslim–Non-Muslim dichotomy in general, and Hindu-Muslim
dichotomy in particular, trying to “sweep under the carpet” the “ugliness of community
relations”62 between the two ethno-religio-cultural categories and contribute generously to the
broader scholarship on secular history. Although no scholarly work is beyond criticism,
nevertheless, this book opens access to a thought-provoking archive of an “under-studied phase
of Sanskrit literary history.”63

60 Gilmartin and Lawrence ed., Beyond Turk and Hindu, 1.

61 Ibid., 2.

62 Quoted from Aquil, “Introduction: Early Modern Bengal,” 25

63 Quoted from Mahalakshmi, “Review Article,” 91.

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