NEW HISTORIANS AND SIKANDER BUTSHIKAN

(Ruins of Martand Sun Temple in Kashmir , photo taken in 1868 by John Burke.The Temple was one among hundreds of temples demolished during the rule of Sultan Sikander Butshikan )

 NEW HISTORIANS  AND SIKANDER BUTSHIKAN

The reign of Sultan Sikandar Shahmiri, 1389–1413 CE, occupies a position of considerable clarity within the extant historiography of medieval Kashmir, notwithstanding recent attempts to obscure it. In both the Indo-Persian annalistic tradition  :Baharistan-i-Shahi, Tarikh-i-Firishta, Tohfatu’l-Ahbab and in the Sanskritic continuation of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini by Jonaraja and Srivara, he is recorded under the epithet Butshikan,  the Idol-Breaker. The convergence of Persian and Sanskrit testimony on this point is seldom encountered and ought to command the historian’s attention. To recast him as a ruler of toleration by recourse to tendentious translation, and in the absence of any competence in Persian, Sanskrit, or Sharada, is not scholarship but sophistry. Such endeavours do not illuminate the past; they darken it. They constitute a disservice to historical inquiry and to the public understanding of Kashmir’s medieval past.

The Historical Record

The reign of Sultan Sikandar Shahmiri, 1389–1413 CE, is consistently recorded as one of iconoclasm. Persian chronicles and the Sanskritic Rajatarangini continuations concur in designating him Butshikan.The archaeological record affirms this: from Verinag to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the ruins of major temples remain, some repurposed as graveyards, others with later superstructures erected upon their plinths.

Sultan Sikandar's rule  is detailed in Baharistan-i-Shahi, Tarikh-i-Firishta, and Tohfatu’l-Ahbab, and many more texts .  As in the Persian texts, the Sanskrit continuation of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini by Jonaraja, and thereafter by Srivara, record with consistency the destruction of temples, the levy of jizya, and measures of religious coercion during his reign. These accounts, written within living memory of the events, constitute our principal indigenous testimony.  To disregard these texts, or to read them through third-party translations alone, is to abandon the basic tenets of historiography.

 The Methodological Failure

A number of present-day commentators who style themselves as intellectuals and historians proceed without competence in the requisite languages : Sanskrit, Sharada, or Persian. Their arguments are constructed upon selective English renderings, taken out of context and made to serve a narrative conceived in advance.  This is not critical history. It is an exercise in presentism. By substituting supposition for textual engagement, they do not clarify the past. They obscure it. In doing so, they perform a positive disservice both to history as a discipline and to the public, whom they render more ignorant rather than enlightened. It is darkness masquerading as light.

Whereas historians employ epigraphy, stratigraphy and scientific dating to test such evidence, the present tendency is one of selective citation and tendentious translation by those without competence in Persian, Sanskrit, or Sharada. This constitutes not revision but fabrication , a narrative of limited circulation that collapses upon first scholarly examination beyond a geographical space . It is a disservice to history.

 The Greater Disservice: The Erasure of Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin

What makes this distortion particularly egregious is that it simultaneously belittles the singular legacy of Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin, r. 1420–1470 CE.  Within the Shahmiri lineage, Zain-ul-Abidin stands apart. The Persian and Sanskrit sources alike : Baharistan-i-Shahi, Tarikh-i-Kashmir, and the later portions of the Rajatarangini tradition  record his policies of religious toleration, the recall of exiled Pandits, the remittance of jizya, patronage of Sanskrit learning, and the translation of the Mahabharata and Rajatarangini into Persian.  

He is the only ruler of that dynasty whom both traditions acknowledge, with near unanimity, as liberal and just. 

By attempting to project the attributes of Zain-ul-Abidin backwards onto Sikandar, these so-called intellectuals do a twofold wrong. They misrepresent Sikandar, and they diminish Zain-ul-Abidin. They collapse the distinction between an iconoclast and a conciliator, and thereby rob Kashmiri history of its nuance. To deny Zain-ul-Abidin his unique status is to do violence to the very record they claim to uphold.

Conclusion 

History cannot be wished into conformity with contemporary preference. It must be read on its own terms, in its own languages. Anything less is not revision. It is reduction.  And to reduce the past in this manner is to fail both the dead and the living.

Should these historians be compelled to operate beyond their parochial remit, one may confidently anticipate further ingenuities. With the same methodological rigour, they would not scruple to advance the proposition that Mahmud of Ghazni did not, in fact, sack Somnath; that the devastation was wrought instead by a most obliging and localised earthquake, confining its attentions to precisely two square miles of temple precinct. Such is the poverty of scholarship that substitutes invention for evidence, and anecdote for archive.

( Avtar Mota )

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