The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (66 page)

Sati is not mentioned in
Manu-Smriti
, but it says that a widow ‘may, if she so chooses, emasculate her body by subsisting on flowers, roots and fruits.’ Kautilya prohibited sati as a punishable crime. In medieval times Sankaracharya condemned sati.

Mahatma Gandhi in
Young India
, 21 May 1931: ‘If the wife has to prove her loyalty and undivided devotion to her husband, so had the husband to prove his allegiance and devotion to his wife. Yet, we have never heard of a husband mounting the funeral pyre of his deceased wife.’

Barbosa on coconut: Coconut is ‘very sweet … when green … and each one when green has within it a pint of fresh and pleasant water, better than that from a spring. When they are dry this same water thickens within them into a white fruit as large as an apple which also is very sweet and dainty. The coconut itself after being dried is eaten, and from it they get much oil by pressing it … And from its shell … is made charcoal for the goldsmiths who work with no other kind. And from the outer husk … they make all the cord which they use … And from the sap of the tree itself they extract a
must
, from
which they make wine … From this same
must
they make very good vinegar, and also a sugar of extreme sweetness which is much sought after in India. From the leaf of the tree they make many things, in accordance with the size of the branch. They thatch the houses with them … No house is roofed with tiles save temples or palaces … From the same tree they get timber for their houses and firewood as well …’

In Islamic countries medical studies were part of the general curriculum in educational institutions, and some of the sultans—Muhammad and Firuz Tughluq, for instance—were hakims. The system of medicine they used was the Unani system, a Graeco-Arabic system formulated by Avicenna in the early eleventh century. Avicenna’s system became increasingly popular in Delhi from the time of Sikandar Lodi.

Medieval writers were not given to modesty. Nizami, for instance, claimed that his work was ‘superior to anything written by ancients or moderns.’

Poet Amir Khusrav was extolled as the Parrot of Hind. ‘Amir Khusrav … is the prince of poets and the first among philosophers, for he was one of those steeped in spiritual wisdom, and such skill as he possessed in every kind and manner of literary composition, both in the use of ordinary or unusual phraseology, and of plain or obscure terms, has seldom been allotted to anyone,’ comments medieval writer Abdu-l Hakk Dehlawi.

Khusrav on Indian literature: ‘The language of Hind is like Arabic … If there is grammar and syntax in Arabic, there is not one letter less of them in Hindi. If you ask whether there are the sciences of exposition and rhetoric, I answer that Hindi is in no way deficient in these respects.’

Khusrav on Sanskrit: ‘The common people know nothing of it. Brahmins know it, but Brahmin women do not understand a word of it. It bears a resemblance to Arabic in some respects, in its permutations of letters, its grammar, its conjugations, and polish.’

Khusrav: ‘Brahmins here are as learned as Aristotle and there are among them many scholars in various fields …’

Abdur Razzak on musicians in Vijayanagar: ‘The singers were for the most part young girls, with cheeks like the moon, and faces more blooming than the spring, adorned with beautiful garments, and displaying figures which ravished the heart like fresh roses. They were seated behind a beautiful curtain opposite the king. On a sudden the curtain was removed on both sides, and the girls began to move their feet with such grace that wisdom lost its senses, and the soul was intoxicated with delight.’

‘The contrast between the Hindu temples and the Muslim mosques could hardly have been more striking,’ writes John Marshall, an early twentieth century British archaeologist in India. ‘The shrine of the former was relatively small and constricted; the prayer chamber of the latter was broad and spacious. One was gloomy and mysterious, the other light and open to the winds of heaven. The Hindu system of construction was trabeate, based on column and architrave; the Muslim system was arcuate, based on arch and vault. The temple was crowned with slender spires or pyramidal towers; the mosque with expansive domes … [Hindu] monuments were enriched with countless idols of its deities; Islam rigidly forbade idolatry or the portrayal of any living thing. Decorative ornament in Hindu architecture delighted in plastic modelling; it was naturalistic … and … exuberant; Islamic ornament, on the other hand, inclined to colour and line or flat surface carving, and took the form of conventional arabesques or ingenious geometric patterning.’