Vatapi Ganapati

 

"Vatapi Ganapati" is a much loved composition in Carnatic Music, one of the two branches of classical music in India. Composed by the great poet-composer Mutthuswami Dixitar (1775-1885), it is a hymn praising a specific idol of Ganapati,  worshipped in a small shrine in Tiruchenkattankudi Utrapatishwaraswamy Temple, in Thiruvarur district in the Tamil Nadu state of India.

The name of this place may seem long and complicated to those who are unfamiliar with South Indian languages, but so is the distance covered by this Ganapati. Vatapi (present day Badami), is a place located about 1000 km away from this coastal town. According to the g-maps, it would take a brisk walker about 190 hours or a week to cover this distance. 

How did a temple idol get its name from a place so far away? 

Anirudh Kanisetti's answers this question (and many others) through his fascinating new book titled, "Lords of the Deccan". For the vast majority of us who had been brought up on passing references in our history books to this part of this country, Kanisetti's book is a revelation, an eye-opener to the array of kingdoms that had ruled this vast area in central India from 500 to 1200 CE. 

Is is the story of the powerful dynasties that ruled this part of the country before the Islamic invasions - the Chalukyas, Pallavas, Rashtrskutas, and the Cholas. It is also a rather sad commentary on the shortage of written records that tells us about the life and times of those who built some of the massive temples of South India. Among these is the Kailashnatha temple at Ellora that was 'built' top-down by cutting through solid rock on a cliffside, after carefully chipping away more than 200,000 tonnes of granite stone!

Coming back to the story of Vatapi Ganapathi, it turns out that this idol was actually war booty that was brought here more than 1300 years earlier by the Pallava kings of Kanchipuram.  Tiruchenkattankudi was the birthplace of Paranjothi, the commander-in-chief of the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I (reign: 630–668 CE). 

Contrary to the Hindutva tropes about Hindu temples getting destroyed by exclusively by Muslim invaders, it is interesting to know that ever since temple building became a popular symbol of power projection after 500 CE, it was fairly common for Hindu kings to loot and destroy the temples of their rivals. 

Some other nuggets are even more surprising, such as the extent to which foreigners, especially West Asians, were welcomed by the kingdoms of ancient India. Muslim Persians and Arabs, as well as Zoroashtrians, Jews and Christians of diverse ethnicities, had not only settled in large numbers in the port cities but also rose to high positions in the civil and military hierarchies:

One fascinating example is a Persian Muslim known to us a Madhumati, son of Sahiyarahara (a Sanskritised version of Muhammad, son of Shahryar). In the tenth century, Madhumati was appointed the Rashtrakuta governor of the entire region of Sanjan, including much of northern Konkan.

Long before "Globalisation" became a buzzword, the Rashtrakutas, Pallavas and Cholas were already convinced of the strategic, political and economic benefits of encouraging meritocracies that were multi-ethnic, multilingual and cosmopolitan!

Black Sheep and Deccan History

I love the way history is being re-examined and re-written by a new band of writers. Until a few years ago I only knew of William Darlymple as a somebody who could tranform meticulous research into narratives that appealed to a wider audience. I often wished we had Indians writers who could go beyond the colonial period and breathe some life into it.

In this context I was glad to see Sanjeev Sanyal's "Land of Seven Rivers", and Manu Pillai's "Ivory Throne".

My first book this year was the much acclaimed second book by Manu Pillai -  "Rebel Sultans". This one chronicles the deep linkages South India once had with what is now called the Middle East - especially Iran, Iraq and Arabia.

Despite the fact that I grew up in Hyderabad, I knew practically nothing about Deccan history. I was aware of a few names and places,  of the fabulous collections at the Salar Jung Museum, vaguely remembered visiting the Golkonda Fort a couple of times, and often noticed the Falaknuma Palace from the school playgrounds.  But until I read this book I never knew that Nizams who built all this -  the Quli dynasty -  traced its origins to a family that once ruled the Levant - the House of Black Sheep, also known as the Black Sheep Turkmans.

Who were the Black Sheep Turkmans?  It was aparently a title - "Kara Koyunlu" - of a monarchy that ruled over vast areas of present-day Iran, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan from 1394 to 1498. After more than a century of rule this ruling family was ousted by a rival clan known as the House of the White Sheep. Ousting a royal family in the Middle Ages usually meant only two things - death or blinding of all the male heirs. A young boy from the House of Black Sheep ran away to India to escape this fate. He first enlisted as a mercenary in the Deccan Bahmani Sultanate, and then went on to set up his own feifdom at Golkonda in present-day Hyderabad.

The "Rebel Sultans" is also a window into the colorful history of the rest of the Deccan. It tells you how Aurangabad was originally the city of Khirki by an Ethiopian-born military leader named Malik Ambar. It tells you that contrary to popular narratives, the Battle of Talikota was not a war between a Hindu kingdom and a coalition of perfidious Muslim warlords. The kingdom of Vijayanagara which was utterly destroyed after this war had its own share of double-dealings, political miscalculations and hubris.

The book also has many tantalising threads that need to be knitted together. It leaves me with a wish to know more about Timur the Lame, the Turkman raider who later inspired his clansman Babur, to raid India for its riches after having been beaten out of Samarkand. I want to know more about the Kakathiyas who were perhaps the most egalitarian rulers in medieval India, and I need to  have a better understanding of philosophy and preachings of Eknath, who, like Kabir, bridged differences across castes and religions.

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LINKS

- Amazon - "Rebel Sultans"