Tilakacharya : The Buddhist Counsellor in the Court of Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin
The figure of Tilakacharya occupies a singular, albeit briefly documented, position in the annals of the Kashmir Sultanate. He is referred to in early sources as a Bauddha Acharya or a Parmukh who was elevated to the rank of prominent counsellor under Sultan Ghiyas-ud-Din Zain-ul-Abidin, who ruled Kashmir from 1420 to 1470 and is remembered by his subjects as Budshah, the Great King.
To understand why Buddhist Parmukhs were sought by some Muslim rulers, one must look to Central Asia. The title Parmukh comes from Sanskrit Pramukha, meaning chief, and denoted the hereditary heads of the great Nava Vihara monastery at Balkh, many of whom were originally from Kashmir. They were rare polyglot scholars, versed in Sanskrit, Bactrian, Tibetan, Persian and Arabic. The invading Arabs in Central Asia were expressly directed not to kill them for their learning. Upon the Arab occupation of Balkh in 725 AD, the Umayyad Governor Asad ibn Abd Allah al-Qasri, under Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, spared them as being too learned to be put to the sword.
Embracing Islam as Mawali, they entered the Abbasid court and rose to be the architects of the Empire as the Barmakids: Khalid ibn Barmak as IVizier to Caliphs Al-Saffah and al-Mansur and confidant in the founding of circular Baghdad; his son Yahya ibn Khalid as tutor and grand vizier to al-Mahdi and Harun al-Rashid; and Yahya's illustrious sons Fadl and Jafar as generals, governors and foster-brothers to Harun. Caliph Harun al-Rashid valued their scholarship immensely, for their command of languages enabled them to translate Indian works on medicine, astronomy, mathematics and statecraft from Kashmir and India into Arabic.
To comprehend the appointment of a Buddhist to high office in a fifteenth-century Muslim Sultanate, it is essential to recall the religious demography of Kashmir. Buddhism, which had flourished under Kanishka, Lalitaditya and the Karkota and Utpala dynasties, had entered almost total decline by the fourteenth century. The advent of the Shah Mir dynasty, the activities of Rishis and Sufi missionaries, and the iconoclastic policies of Sultan Sikandar Butshikan (1389-1413), father of Zain-ul-Abidin, had resulted in the conversion or exodus of the Buddhist population towards Ladakh, Tibet and Baltistan. By the early fifteenth century, Buddhists constituted an almost negligible remnant in the Valley proper.
It is against this backdrop that Zain-ul-Abidin's decision assumes historical significance. Upon ascending the throne for the second time in 1420, the Sultan initiated a systematic reversal of his father's orthodoxy. Jonaraja and his pupil Srivara, authors of the Dvitiya and Tritiya Rajatarangini, note that he ordered the recall of Kashmiri Pandits who had fled to save their lives and honour, the restitution of their Agraharas and libraries, the reconstruction of some temples destroyed earlier, and the abolition of Jizya . He prohibited the slaughter of cows and personally participated in festivals such as Nagayatra, Ganachakra and pilgrimages to Sharada and Amarnath.
The administrative corollary of this tolerance was a cosmopolitan Shura or council. While retaining the Islamic nomenclature of offices : Wazir, Diwan-i-Kul, Mir Bakhshi, Qazi-ul-Quzat , the Sultan deliberately inducted non-Muslim intellectuals. The most powerful was Shriya Bhatta, a Hindu physician who cured the Sultan of a serious illness and was appointed Minister of Justice and Chief Physician with supervisory powers over all departments. In the same spirit, he appointed Tilakacharya.
Persian chronicles, notably Baharistan-i-Shahi and later translations of the Rajatarangini, render his name as Tilak Achar. He is described not as a military commander or revenue officer, but as a Sahib-i-mashwara and Danishmand, a learned counsellor. His function appears to have been threefold.
First, as representative of the residual Buddhist community and as a symbol of ecumenism. His presence alongside a Shaiva Pandit, a Buddhist Acharya, and Muslim Ulemas such as Mulla Ahmad, Qazi Syed Ali Shirazi and Sayyid Shams-ud-Din Andrabi projected the ideal of Sulh-i-Kul.
Second, as advisor on Tibet and Ladakh. Zain-ul-Abidin maintained close diplomatic and commercial ties with Tibet, knew Tibetan, and facilitated the trade of shawl wool and saffron. A Buddhist scholar conversant with Tibetan language and monastic networks would have been invaluable for frontier diplomacy.
Third, as polyglot and contributor to the intellectual renaissance. The Sultan commissioned the translation of Sanskrit works such as Kalhana's Rajatarangini, the Mahabharata, Brihatkatha and the Puranas into Persian, and ordered Persian and Arabic works to be rendered into Sanskrit. The court attracted Jonaraja, Srivara, Yodha Bhatta and Avatara Bhatta, who received land grants as Gramam and Agraharasn. Tilakacharya, versed in Buddhist logic and Sanskrit, is presumed to have participated in these scholastic deliberations.
No independent treatise or biography of Tilakacharya has survived. Unlike Shriya Bhatta, whose healing of the Sultan is narrated in detail, Tilakacharya's mention remains laconic: "Zain-ul-Abidin also appointed Tilakacharya, a Buddhist, as one of his prominent counsellors." Yet this very brevity is instructive. It demonstrates that in an age when religious identity dictated political patronage across much of the subcontinent, the court of Budshah in Srinagar retained space for a Buddhist voice.
In modern historiography, Tilakacharya is cited as a key example of Zain-ul-Abidin's policy of religious toleration and merit-based appointment, often paired with Shriya Bhatta to illustrate that the Sultan's secularism was not confined to Shaivism alone but encompassed Buddhism as well.
( Avtar Mota)
CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.
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