Somanatha by Romila Thapar

Author:Romila Thapar [Thapar, Romila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351180210
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-06-19T05:00:00+00:00

6

The Perceptions of Yet Others

Parallel to the Turko-Persian versions of Mahmud’s raid on Somanatha and the Rajput epic poems, there are some other versions reflecting the more widespread and popular perceptions of Mahmud and those connected with him in an interesting mix of traditions. The mix tells its own story. Those that seem to have been familiar in a general sense with the Turko-Persian tradition refer to Mahmud in the context of the raid, but others even when they refer to him, ignore the raid. There may well be more such statements that have yet to be garnered and investigated by historians.

The data is valuable as it provides a perspective from sources that have only recently begun to be taken seriously by historians. Their neglect was because they were legends and this denied them a place as possible sources in investigating the past. This is not to argue that legends state what actually took place in the past, in fact often far from it, but to suggest that they can provide another dimension to history in as much as legends can be examined as perceptions of past events. An attempt can be made to understand why such perceptions took shape, how they differed from the perceptions of chroniclers in the past, and what were the politics of these genres. Popular legends provide a perspective dissimilar from that of court chronicles, given that their authors and the audience to which the compositions were addressed were different. The agenda of each therefore varied. Their contribution is not necessarily to reconstruct events as they actually happened but to understand why some people propagated and believed certain versions about these events. Our notions of what constitute historical sources have undergone a change and these narratives and references, although fanciful, do provide some understanding of the perceptions of the groups from which they have originated. They need to be subjected to the kinds of analyses that are becoming common in the recording and use of oral traditions.

I am taking as my examples some stories from the popular tradition in which Mahmud figures, directly or indirectly. One is a story narrated by Watson, which some have identified as the Kissa Mangroli Shah. Another has become the focus of a place of pilgrimage connected to the pir, Ghazi Miyan. These stories are in some ways stereotypical but the stereotypes used are of interest. Apart from these, there are also the compositions of itinerant singers, preachers and performers of, what are perceived as, magical formulae and invocations to deities and holy men, some of which strangely enough, invoke Mahmud.

In the early nineteenth century, James Tod in his Travels in Western India, refers to a ballad on the fall of Patan Somanath that he heard in Saurashtra.1 It was a fragment of a poem in Hindi, a garbled version of what was said to have been originally a poem in Persian. The story concerns a Haji who came from Mecca and saved the life of a widow’s son when he had to be sacrificed to the deity at Somanatha, and the Haji invited Mahmud to raid Somanatha.

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