Avadh or Oudh is the Gangetic region southeast of Delhi. Its cultural capitals included Jaunpur, Banaras, and Lucknow, but Sufi centers such as Jais and Kalpi also figured in the mix. Hindus, though, often conceive the capital of Avadh to be Ayodhya (you can hear the resemblance), since Ayodhya is regarded as the city where the god Rām held sway. It was the Hindu poet Tulsı ̄dās who, writing toward the end of the sixteenth century, crystallized the epic of Rām—the Rāmāyana—in a vernacular form that many people consider to be Avadhı ̄’s greatest classic. Yet in doing so, Tulsı ̄dās made use of epic and poetic conventions that had been established by Avadhı ̄ writers whose subjects were less Hindu than Sufi. Examples are Maulānā Dāūd’s Candāyan and Mañjhan’s Madhumālatī, written in 1379 and 1545. Interestingly, these two authors called the language in which they composed Hindukı ̄ or Hindavı ̄, that is, Hindi or simply “Indian.” The more restrictive label Avadhı ̄ was applied only considerably later.
The other major stream that contributes to the literary and linguistic confluence we recognize today as Hindi is Brajbhāshā. It rose somewhat farther west and, like its eastern cousin, was designated only generically in its earliest phrases—as bhāshā, “what is spoken,” by contrast to the more self-consciously literary idioms of Sanskrit and Persian. Brajbhāshā is “the speech of Braj,” and Braj is the region south of Delhi where the river Jamunā flows. Its ancient cultural capital is Mathura, birthplace of Krishna. Mathura sits directly between Delhi and Agra, two of the three cities (with Lahore, farther north and west) that became principal axes for the Mughal Empire. As the Mughals established their hegemony across north India in the sixteenth century, they worked closely with several Rajput kings, including especially the Kachvāhā rulers of Amber (later Jaipur), in modern day Rajasthan. Mānsingh Kachvāhā served as a general for the great Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) in his Gujarat campaigns of 1572 and 1576, and he and his father were later dispatched by Akbar to govern Kabul, Lahore, and Bihar and Bengal; they also helped bring a number of other Rajput rulers within the Mughal orbit. The culture of Braj was a major beneficiary of this system of alliances, since from the sixteenth century onward the rajas of Amber were staunch—though not exclusive—devotees of the god Krishna. They regarded themselves as Krishna’s servants and protectors, and they played a major role in constructing in Braj some of the most impressive temples where Krishna could be worshiped in image form. Through a series of land grants and administrative protocols, in fact, and acting together with his Kachvāhā courtier-colleagues, the emperor Akbar came to be reckoned as a temple patron himself.
The legendry of Krishna locates him firmly in Braj. As the story goes, he was born several thousand years ago into the royal family of Mathura, just before the disintegration of the world age that preceded our present era. Because of a cruel, usurping uncle—a Herod if ever there was one—Krishna had to flee the city on the night of his birth. He was ferried across the Jamunā and raised as a cowherd in the surrounding Braj countryside. Almost by definition he must have spoken Brajbhāshā in one of its earlier forms. When Krishna reached adolescence, he set out to liberate his natal city, returning the rightful monarch to the throne, and from there went off to assume a throne of his own at Dvaraka on the shores of the Arabian Sea. With that as a base, he brokered the cataclysmic conflict reported in the epic Mahābhārata, a battle fought just northwest of Delhi.
Krishna was to Brajbhāshā what Rām was to Avadhı - in fact, even more so. His charmed life, clever exploits, and expertise in the arts of love and war made him a principal focus of cultured speech, song, and art throughout India in the first millennium C . E ., and the Braj region always asserted a special claim on his personality. Hence it is no surprise that when Brajbhāshā rose to literary prominence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the poetry of Krishna was very much to the fore. It was not, however, alone. From early on, Brajbhāshā also supported a broader tradition of courtly aesthetics. Similarly, although it offered itself as an intrinsically appropriate vehicle for expressions of devotion to Krishna, Brajbhāshā exercised no monopoly in that sphere. The Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jāyası ̄ felt quite at home composing his version of Krishna’s life, the Kanhāvat, in Avadhı ̄. Finally, in the same spirit, it cannot be said that the Braj region was solely responsible for the ascent of the language that would in time be named after it; Gwalior, farther south, also played a major role. Yet it is striking that Brajbhāshā attained its particular place of privilege among the vernaculars of north India in a context that had a true geographical bias in favor of Braj. The ascent of Brajbhāshā as a widely shared literary medium occurred only once it became part of the cultured diction of the Mughal court—and the Mughals ruled, essentially, from Braj. Given the Kachvāhās’ special religious interest in the region, it is perhaps no wonder that the poetry of Krishna emerged as central to the enterprise, even through the Mughal emperors, to whom the Kachvāhās gave daughters in marriage, remained Muslim.
~~The Memory of Love: Sūrdās Sings to Krishna -translated and notes by- John Stratton Hawley
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