Asian and African studies blog

For over three centuries scholars have been intrigued with the life and poetry of the Mughal princess, Zebunnisa (1639-1702), the eldest daughter of Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707). True to her name which means ‘Ornament of Women’, she was learned, and an active patron of poets and scholars. She collected books and corresponded with prominent Sufis of the time.[1]  That she would have composed verses in Persian would have been natural since many elite women in Persianate societies did so, but the attribution to her of a substantial body of poetry in the form of a dīvān, comprising about five hundred ghazals and some other poems, actually dates to a few decades after her death and later. In keeping with the spirit of the spurious and suggestive portrait below that was meant to represent Zebunnisa, along with poems attributed to her, over time her biography was spiced up with the inclusion of scurrilous stories of romantic escapades.[2]

A Bejeweled Maiden with a Parakeet (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011.585)
Public domain

The corpus of poems known to be composed by Zebunnisa is known as the Dīvān-i Makhfī (makhfī means 'the hidden one'). This was thought to be an appropriate penname (takhallus), a common convention in premodern Persian and Persianate poetry, for a Mughal princess. It is true that female poets particularly used pennames such as makhfī, nihānī, and ‘ismat, and often there were multiple poets who wrote under the same name. Among Mughal women, Salima Begum (granddaughter of Humayun by his daughter Gulrukh Begum), Salima Sultan Begum (Akbar’s wife), Nur Jahan (Jahangir’s wife), and Zebunnisa are all said to have chosen the penname Makhfī, but there are only a few lines attributed to the first two. To complicate matters, there were also at least two male poets who also wrote as Makhfī: one was Makhfi Rashti, who flourished in Safavid Iran in the sixteenth century, and the other was Makhfi Khurasani, an Iranian émigré in Mughal India in the seventeenth century.[3]  A close examination of the poems would suggest that some or many of them were by the second of these two male Makhfis and not by Zebunnisa. This, however, is a complicated philological problem that cannot be solved here.

Writing a few decades after she lived, Mughal men of letters of the mid-eighteenth century such as Azad Bilgrami in his biographical dictionary, Yad-i bayz̤ā (IOL Islamic 3966, ff. 112-263), and Lachhmi Narayan Shafiq in his Gul-i ra‘nā (IO Islamic 3692 and 3693 and Or. 2044), only mentioned a few verses by Zebunnisa Begum.


Entry on Zebunnisa, Lachhmi Narayan Shafiq, Gul-i ra‘nā (British Library Or. 2044, ff. 79v-80r)
Public domain

Interestingly, it is in early nineteenth century Iran that a Qajar prince, Mahmud Mirza, who in his Nuql-i majlis, first mentions seeing a copy of Zebunnisa's dīvān that someone had brought to Iran from India. By the nineteenth century, anecdotes about her witty exchanges and dalliances with male poets appeared in works such as Muhammad Riza Abu’l-Qasim Tabataba’s miscellany, Naghmah-yi ‘andalīb (British Library Or. 1811), as well as in published anthologies of Persian and Urdu poetry composed by women. By the end of the century, several short biographies of her became popular which provided romanticized narratives of her as a learned but lonely princess who ended her life as a prisoner due to her father’s cruelty. As far as her poetry was concerned, serious scholars such as Shibli Numani and Abdul Muqtadir did not accept the attribution of the Dīvān-i Makhfī to Zebunnisa.

The British Library Or. 311, an eighteenth-century Mughal copy, is the oldest manuscript of the Dīvān-i Makhfī. The text of this manuscript forms the basis of the most recent edition of the poems.[4]

Dīvān-i Makhfī, 18th century (British Library Or. 311, ff. 19v–20)
Public domain

This manuscript includes these autobiographical verses from a ghazal:

garche man Layla-asasam dil chu Majnun dar nava-st
sar ba-sahra mizadam likan haya zanjir-i pa-st …
dukhtar-i shahim likan ru ba-faqr avarda’im
zeb o zinat sukhtim o nam-i ma Zebunnisa-st

Although I am Layla-like, my heart is plaintive Majnun-like,
I traverse the desert, but my feet are in chains of modesty.
I am a king’s daughter, but I am beset with poverty,
I discarded all ornaments—my name is Ornament of Women!

These verses do seem to be in Zebunnisa’s authentic voice.

The first printed edition of the Dīvān-i Makhfī appeared as a lithograph in 1268/1852 in Kanpur:


Dīvān-i Makhfī. Kanpur, 1268/1852 (British Library VT138(g))
Public domain

The book was popular and was reprinted frequently in Kanpur, Lucknow and Lahore, most famously by the Naval Kishor Press in 1293/1876, in whose edition the author of the book is described as Makhfi Rashti, the Iranian émigré poet, an attribution that disappeared in subsequent editions.

Two small volumes of English translations of Zebunnisa’s poems appeared, astonishingly, in the same year, 1913. One of them was in the series, “Wisdom of the East”, translated by Magan Lal and Jessie Duncan Westbrook.


The Diwan of  Zeb-un-Nissa, translated by Magan Lal and Jessie Duncan Westbrook. New York, 1913
Photograph from the author’s library

In the introduction, Westbrook provides some enigmatic information about the Dīvān-i Makhfī’s transmission history that is not corroborated by  other sources: “In 1724, thirty-five years after her death, what could be found of her scattered writings were collected … [The book] contained four hundred and twenty-one ghazals and several rubais. In 1730 other ghazals were added.” A contemporary reviewer wrote in appreciation of the translations: “The book is particularly valuable at the moment when a great movement is drawing the women of the nations into closer touch and fuller understanding.”[5]  Another reviewer emphasized the mystical quality of the poems: “Miss Westbrook supplies an interesting biographical sketch and some useful remarks on the poetry. She is mistaken, however, in saying that the poems have a special Indian flavor of their own, derived from ‘the Akbar tradition of the unification of religions.’  The doctrine that, notwithstanding the difference of rites and objects of worship, all religions are essentially one occurs repeatedly in Sūfī literature of a much earlier period.”[6]  Given the ambiguity with regard to the object of devotion inherent in the premodern Persian ghazal, it is not surprising that the poems were read in a predetermined mystical way.

The second book, The Tears of Zebunnisa, was published in the same year and had translations by Paul Whalley, a retired Indian civil servant who also translated some quatrains of Omar Khayyam.


The Tears of Zebunnisa, translated by Paul Whalley. London, 1913 (British Library 757.aa.9)
Public domain

In a poetic invocation, Whalley addresses the Mughal princess, who “belonged to the mystical school of which the most eminent exponents were Fariduddin Attar and Jalaluddin Rumi”:

INVOCATION
Rise from the far dim East and the mouldered pomp of the Moguls,
Daughter of Aurangzeb, priestess and martyr of Love!
Dawn as a lone bright star in the infinite gloom of the heavens,
Throbbing with love and shedding around thee the music of night.
Sweet as the voice of the bulbul that whispers its woes to the twilight
Come to us out of the ages the echoes of songs thou hast sung.

Like other translators of his time Whalley also preferred a romantic pseudo-mystical reading of Persian poetry. In addition to forty-nine translated poems, he also included five “imitations” and seven “examples of Persian metres”, showing his deep engagement with Persian poetry. His translation of the entire Dīvān-i Makhfī, whose unpublished manuscript is a typescript held by the British Library (IO Islamic 4587), was an immense project that included his fascination with the metres of Persian poetry. Below is his rendering of Zebunnisa’s autobiographical poem discussed above:

Typescript copy of Paul Whalley's translation (British Library IO Islamic 4587, f. 94)
Public domain

Whalley’s translations were literal and furnished with extensive notes. He also prepared a detailed concordance of metaphors and allusions to people and places in the Dīvān-i Makhfī. He considered Zebunnisa to be an important poet of the Persian tradition because of  “her sex and rank and social environment” as well as “the intrinsic beauty” of her poems.

Even if Zebunnisa did not compose all the poems in the Dīvān-i Makhfī, her persona as a poet has been crucial to bolstering the existence of a female textual tradition that is ephemeral at best until the twentieth century. In an interesting parallel with her poetry, the site of her final resting place has also been a matter of uncertainty. Although in the mid-nineteenth century Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan recorded in his Ās̱ār al-sanādīd that a railway line was built over her grave near the Kabuli Gate in Old Delhi, there is also a small memorial tomb in Lahore, tucked away in a bustling commercial part of the city near Chauburji, that has been connected to her name. It seems as if Zebunnisa is fated to remain a mystery in more ways than one.

Zebunnisa's supposed tomb in Lahore.
Photograph by the author

Sunil Sharma, Professor of Persianate and Comparative Literature, Boston University

Notes

[1] Muzaffar Alam, The Mughals and the Sufis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021), 301-3.
[2] See my article, “Forbidden Love, Persianate Style: Re-reading Tales of Iranian Poets and Mughal Patrons,” Iranian Studies 42 (2009): 765-79.
[3] Ahmad Gulchin-Ma‘ani, Kārvān-i Hind (Mashhad: Astan-i Quds-i Razavi, 1369/1990), 1263-64.
[4] Divan-i Zebunnisa, ed. Mahindokht Seddiqiyan and Sayyed Abu Taleb Mir ‘Abedini (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1381/2002).
[5] The Indian Magazine and Review (January 1915), 62.
[6] The Athenaeum (August 9, 1913), 131.

With the British Library exhibition Alexander the Great: The making of a Myth drawing to a close, I would like to highlight one of my special favourites: the Emperor Akbar’s personal copy of Nizami’s Khamsah (Quintet) of which the fifth poem, the Iskandarnamah, is a two part account of the life of Alexander the Great or Iskandar as he is called in Persian.

The priestess pleads with Iskandar to spare the sanctuary idol from destruction. Artists La'l and Mukund. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, ff.317v-318r)

Commissioned by Akbar (r.1556–1605) in Lahore between 1593 and 1595, this manuscript represents what was without doubt an intensely personal project and combines the work of the best artists at his court. With 37 highly original paintings, luxurious illumination, marginal decorations and binding, this Khamsah  was one of a small group of deluxe Persian manuscripts which also include Jami’s  Baharistan (Bodleian MS. Elliott 254) and the Khamsah  of Amir Khusraw (Walters Ms. W. 624), all produced around the same time in Lahore. In his monumental survey of 1912, the collector and art historian F.R. Martin wrote of it: “Without exception it is the most wonderful Indian manuscript in Europe.” Originally the manuscript contained 44 illustrations, but at some point 39 folios including five illustrated leaves, were extracted and are now in the Walters Art Museum Baltimore Walters Ms. W.613. Two of the original paintings are now lost and an additional portrait of the calligrapher ʻAbd al-Raḥīm ʻAnbarīn Qalam and the artist Dawlat were added at the end in 1610 by order of Jahangir.

With 16 of the 44 illustrations devoted to the Iskandarnamah, it is easy to see Akbar's special affinity with Alexander the Great. Nizami in the early 12th century was the first to qualify Iskandar (Iqbalnamah 29:4) with the adjective Sahib-qiran (Lord of the Conjunction)[1]. Several rulers styled themselves this way, most notably Akbar’s honoured ancestor Timur, founder of the Timurid dynasty in 1370[2]. Like Alexander, Akbar was a successful conqueror, but more particularly Nizami’s portrayal of Alexander as a philosopher-king would have appealed to Akbar who promoted himself as a just and tolerant ruler.

In the opening we used for the exhibition (see above) the double-page illustration has a special significance. Here we see Iskandar at a Buddhist sanctuary at Kandahar receiving an impassioned plea from the priestess who asks for the golden statue, with precious jewels as its eyes, to be left unharmed. Iskandar had ordered it to be dismantled but moved by her passion and beauty, he agreed to spare it. Placed right at at the end of the Khamsah, this painting has a special significance, as pointed out by Barbara Brend (Akbar's Khamsa, p. 61). Iskandar is compared by implication with the Mughal emperor Akbar who had taken Kandahar from the Safavids of Iran without bloodshed in April 1595, while this manuscript was still in the process of completion. Akbar’s interest in other religions apart from Islam, exemplified by the establishment of his own syncretic faith, the Din-i ilahi (Divine Faith) in 1582, parallels here Iskandar’s own role as a tolerant philosopher-king.

Sadly, in the exhibition we could only display one opening from each manuscript, so to give a flavour of the whole volume, I have described some further examples here.

Iskandar with Nushabah, queen of the women-only city of Barda, in today’s Azerbaijan. Iskandar had visited the queen in disguise, but she immediately exposed him as an imposter by presenting him with his own portrait which she had had painted earlier. Reprimanding him, she nevertheless forgave him and they feasted together before he went on his way.
Artist, Bhura. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, f. 244v)

Not wishing to engage in war, King Kayd of Hind offered Iskandar four gifts as tribute: his daughter in marriage, his all-knowing philosopher, his personal physician and his never-emptying goblet. This scene shows his envoy's reception at Iskandar's camp. Iskandar accepted Kayd's gifts and so bloodshed was avoided.
Artist, Dharamdas. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, f. 254r)

The story of Mani the 3rd-century founder of Manichaeism who was also famous as an artist, is told as an interlude in a contest between the artists of Chin and Rum. Hearing that the prophet Mani was on his way to China, the Chinese, to discourage him, created a false reservoir out of crystal. When the thirsty Mani placed his earthenware drinking vessel on it, it broke. To prevent others from doing the same, Mani, pictured here with his tools, painted the decaying corpse of a dead dog on the surface. Through this action and his wisdom, Nizami tells us, Mani made many converts.
Artist, Sur Gujarati. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, f.262v)

As Iskandar’s power and dominions increased, so too did his preoccupation with dying. Searching for immortality, his journey led him into the Land of Darkness in an unsuccessful search for the Water of Life. Nizami gives three different accounts of the search for the Water of Life, which he refers to as Zoroastrian, Byzantine, and Arab versions. Pictured here is the so-called Zoroastrian version in which Iskandar gave the prophet Khizr his grey horse – a gift from the ruler of Chin – and sent him into the Darkness with a special stone which would light up and reveal the fountain. Khizr located it, drank and washed himself and his horse, but when they had finished, the fountain disappeared.
Artist, Kanak Singh Chela. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, f.281r)

This illustration comes in the Iqbalnamah, the second of the two books of the Iskandarnamah, which describes Iskandar's prophetic mission. In this episode, after solitary reflection in a barrel (echoes of Diogenes), Aflatun (Plato) obtained full comprehension of the music of the spheres and created an instrument whereby he could make all animals sleep and then rouse them again to consciousness. The scene itself is reminiscent of hunting scenes in which Akbar surveys his catch, as for example on the doublure of the binding of this same volume.
Artist, Madhu. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, f.298r)

Here Alexander is depicted as a philosopher-king and questions the origin of the universe from his seven philosophers: Valens, Apollonius, Socrates, Porphyry, Hermes and Plato. Having listened to each in turn, he declared that, in view of their contradictory opinions, the only certainty could be that there was no creation without a creator. By resorting to enlightenment rather than reason, Iskandar was acknowledged as supremely wise and thereby achieved prophethood.
Artist, Nanha. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, f.305r)

Despatched on a prophetic mission by the angel Srosh, Iskandar explored the Western regions and at the edge of the world encountered a shore where there were many coloured stones, blue, red, yellow and black, each weighing about five to ten pounds. If a person looked at one of these stones, he laughed so much that he died. Iskandar ordered the rocks to be covered with cloth and loaded onto 100 camels. Hastening along the shore he used them to build a fortress without doors and covered the exterior with clay to protect passers by. But whoever climbed over to see the interior, would be exposed to the bare rocks and die.
Artist, Bhem Gujarati. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, f.312v)

We are indebted to the Kusuma Trust, the Patricia G. and Jonathan S. England – British Library Innovation Fund and Ubisoft for their support towards the exhibition, as well as other trusts and private donors.

Ursula Sims-Wiliams, Lead Curator Persian, British Library

Other illustrations in Akbar's Iskandarnamah

• The invention of the mirror in the presence of Alexander the Great. Artists, Nanha and Shivdas (Walters Ms. W.613, f.16b and f.17a)
• The death of Darius. Artist, Dharamdas (Walters Ms. W613, f.26b)
• Alexander the Great enthroned at Persepolis. Artist, Bem Gujarati (Walters Ms. W613, f.34a)
• The women of Qipchak are persuaded to veil themselves on seeing a veiled talisman. Artist, Mukund (Or.12208, f.266v)
• The Russian champion who tore off an elephant's trunk. Artist, Farrukh Chela (Or.12208, f.273r)
• Maria, the Copt trained in the art of alchemy consulted by other alchemists. Artist, Sanwala. Lahore, 1593-5 (Or.12208, f.294r)

Further reading

Barbara Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Niẓāmī. London: British Library, 1995.
J.P. Losty and Malini Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire. London: The British Library, 1912, pp. 48-55.
Haila Manteghi, Alexander the Great in the Persian Tradition: History, Myth and Legend in Medieval Iran. London: I.B. Tauris, 2018.

Related posts

• Alexander the ‘Accursed’ and Zoroastrianism
• Alexander’s origins: a Persian Perspective
• Alexander / Iskandar: Ancestor of Malay Kings
• A beloved in every port: Iskandar's encounters with women
• Alexander, Meet İskender: Turkic Manuscripts on Alexander the Great
• Alexander the Great in Firdawsi's Book of Kings
• Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth

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[1] Owen Cornwall, Alexander and the Persian Cosmopolis, 1000-1500, PhD thesis Columbia Unversity, 2016, pp. 91-9.
[2] Naindeep Singh Chann, “Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction: Origins of the Ṣāḥib-Qirān” Iran and the Caucasus 13 (2009) 93-110

A portrait of a heavily-armed East India vessel painted by Isaac Sailmaker around 1685. (Royal Museums Greenwich BHC1676)
CC-BY-NC-ND provided graciously by the Royal Museums Greenwich.

The legendary life of Alexander the Great is the subject of the British Library’s new exhibition Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth which opened on Friday 21 October. A visual feast of stories spanning more than 2000 years, it centres on the Alexander Romance originally composed in Greek around the third century AD and shares narratives from East and West side by side in more than twenty languages.  One of the most richly illustrated sources is the Persian Shahnamah (Book of Kings) completed by the poet Firdawsi in 1010 AD. There are no less than fourteen copies of this national epic in the exhibition ranging from the beginning of the fourteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. A selection of these is shown below. While the details sometimes differ from the Alexander Romance, the Shahnamah tells the same stories in a common context.

The history of Alexander in the Shahnamah begins with a peace treaty between King Darab of Persia and Filqus (Philip) of Greece in which Filqus’ daughter Nahid is married to the Persian king. Though she outshone all others in her beauty, she proved to suffer from bad breath and the marriage broke down irretrievably. Nahid was sent home to her father, rejected, but unknowingly pregnant with Alexander (Iskandar or Sikandar in Persian) who was subsequently brought up as Philip’s son and heir. Meanwhile King Darab took another wife who gave birth to Dara (Darius) who would succeed his father before being ultimately defeated in battle by his half-brother Alexander.

The death of Dara, one of the most frequently illustrated subjects in the Shahnamah, in a hand-coloured lithograph edition published in Bombay in 1849.  British Library, 14807.h.4

Three decisive battles took place in the last of which, at Gaugamela in northern Iraq in 331 BC, the Persian army was irrevocably defeated. Dara escaped but was mortally wounded by two of his own men. Iskandar, who had wanted Dara alive, was dismayed when he found him. Cradling Dara’s head on his knees, he promised to fulfil Dara’s dying wishes: to look after his family, to marry his daughter Roshanak (Roxana) and to safeguard the Zoroastrian religion.

Indeed Iskandar married Roshanak with much pomp and ceremony and then moved on to India where he conquered King Kayd of Hind by peaceful means. As part of their agreement he received four gifts: King Kayd’s daughter in marriage, his all-knowing seer to advise him, his physician who could cure any disease and his never-emptying goblet.

Iskandar marries the daughter of King Kayd of Hind (India). Sultanate India, 1438. British Library, Or.1403, f. 318r

Moving on, Iskandar challenged another Indian ruler, King Fur (Porus). On this occasion a fierce battle took place. Iskandar had been forewarned about Fur’s invincible army of elephants and to counter them, recruited more than 1200 blacksmiths who forged 1000 iron horses and riders on wheels. These were filled with oil and set alight at the head of the advancing army. The whole army was put to rout leaving Iskandar to kill Fur in single combat.

The battle between Iskandar and Fur. Artist: Kamal, Mughal India, about 1616. British Library, Add MS 5600, f. 361v

From India Iskandar travelled in search of riches and new experiences. He went to Mecca, Egypt and Andalus — in this context most likely a city in western Asia representing  ‘the West’— where he encountered Queen Qaydafah (Candace in the Greek Alexander Romance). Iskandar approached her court disguised as a messenger, but she already had a portrait of him and so immediately recognised him. His deception exposed, Iskandar feared for his life, but instead was admonished and sent safely on his way. A similarly peaceful encounter took place with the Amazons, the virgin warriors of Harum, located in the Caucasus.

Iskandar’s peaceful visit to the woman-only city of Harum. Iran, 1536. British Library Add MS 15531, f. 345r

Travelling further Iskandar encountered the philosophical Brahmans, people with heads on their chests and without bones, dragons and all manner of mythical creatures. He fought battles in China and against the Russians, and constructed a wall to contain the barbarous peoples of Gog and Magog.

Iskandar kills a dragon by feeding it cow-hides stuffed with poison and oil. Isfahan, 1614. British Library, Add MS 16761, f. 190v

Increasingly, however, Iskandar became pre-occupied with his own mortality. Would he ever see his native land again, when would he die? Seeking, but never finding, the waters of everlasting life he met the angel of death Israfil who told him his time would come. Then at the edge of the world he came to the talking tree which had two trunks, one male and one female. At midday the male trunk spoke, foretelling the end of his fourteen-year rule, and at nightfall its female counterpart announced: ‘Death will come soon.’

Iskandar and the talking tree. Shiraz, c. 1420-25. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford MS Ouseley, Add. 176, f. 311v

Now at the end of his journey, Iskandar returned to Babylon where he was greeted with more omens of death: a stillborn child with a lion’s head, a human chest and shoulders, and a cow’s tail and hooves.

Iskandar sees an omen of his imminent death in Babylon. Iran, c. 1300. Chester Beatty, Dublin, Per 104.49.  

His fate sealed, Iskandar fell ill that very day. He ordered that he should be carried outside and in full view of his soldiers he advised them to live humbly and follow his example. As depicted below, a physician takes his pulse while another is making notes. In the background courtiers and soldiers wipe away their tears.

The moment of Iskandar’s death. Qazvin, 1585-6. British Library, Add. MS 27302, f. 414r

Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth runs until 19 February 2023. It is accompanied by a book of the same title. Edited by Richard Stoneman, it includes nine essays by leading scholars together with images and descriptions of the exhibition items. Tickets are on sale and may be booked on our Events page, and more information can be found on our dedicated exhibition website.

We are indebted to the Kusuma Trust, the Patricia G. and Jonathan S. England – British Library Innovation Fund and Ubisoft for their support towards the exhibition, as well as other trusts and private donors.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Lead Curator Persian, British Library

Further Reading

Firdawsi, Shahnamah, trans. Dick Davis, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, rev. edn. New York: Penguin, 2016.
— The Sháhnáma of Firdausí, trans. Arthur George and Edmond Warner, vol 6. London: Routledge, 1912.
Manteghi, Haila, Alexander the Great in the Persian Tradition: History, Myth and Legend in Medieval Iran. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2018.

Today's post is by guest contributor and regular visitor to Asian and African Collections, Sunil Sharma, Professor of Persianate and Comparative Literature at Boston University.

The British Library has one of the largest collections of manuscripts of the Persian works of Amir Khusraw of Delhi (d. 1325). There are around fifty manuscripts, listed in the Ethé, Rieu, and Ross and Brown catalogues, as well as a few in the Delhi Persian Collection, dating from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, including some early compilations of his collected poetry (kulliyat), selections of ghazals, and long narrative poems (masnavis). An eclectic range of codices from sumptuous royal copies to pedestrian books can be found here, many with seals and inscriptions by owners, and colophons by various calligraphers, and illustrations from different schools of painting. This rich collection highlights, on the one hand, the enormous corpus of the poet’s works in many different forms and literary genres, and on the other hand, the daunting problem of compiling standard and complete editions of his poems.

Shirin visits the sculptor Farhad on Mt Bisitun. From the masnavi Layla Majnun, 16th century but heavily overpainted in the 18th or 19th century (BL Add. 7751, f. 71v)

Amir Khusraw, a medieval Persian poet who was much admired and read in Persianate societies, is sometimes written out of the classical canon in our times. A master of every existing poetic form, the poet particularly distinguished himself in his mastery of courtly and devotional panegyric and love lyrics. His output was prolific in these forms, and according to Dawlatshah writing in the late fifteenth-century in his biographical dictionary, Tazkirat al-shu‘ara, bibliophiles at the Timurid court gave up attempting to collect all his verses. This continues to be the fate of modern-day scholars who work on the Amir Khusraw’s poetry.

There are a number of manuscripts of Amir Khusraw’s works dating from the second half of the fifteenth century to the very beginning of the seventeenth in the form of Kulliyat, i.e. his entire corpus of poems that was available at specific places and moments of time. Some of the manuscripts in this group, along with others described below, share several codicological features and many of the copies were produced in Herat. The writing in them is small, metres of individual poems are identified in some cases, and the margins contain poems in order to maximize every bit of space. One of these (IO Islamic 338), which was copied in Delhi ca. 1603, was once part of the library of Tipu Sultan — who incidentally had at least six other copies of works by Amir Khusraw in his collection.

The opening to Baqiyah-i naqiyah, Amir Khusraw’s fourth Divan in this copy of his collected works (BL IO Islamic 338, f. 337v)

The earliest Kulliyat manuscripts also included his narrative poems, since Amir Khusraw was also celebrated for his quintet (Khamsah) modelled on Nizami’s own set of verse romances of the same title. No slavish imitator of his predecessor, Amir Khusraw modified the plots of well-known romances such as Layla and Majnun, Khusraw and Shirin, and Hasht Bihisht. The aforementioned Dawlatshah also mentions that the Timurd prince Baysunghur (1397 – 1433) used to prefer the Khamsah of Amir Khusraw to Nizami’s. In comparing Khusraw’s Khamsah comprising 18,000 verses to Nizami’s comprising 28,000, Dawlatshah writes, “It is amazing how in some expressions [Khusraw] is long-winded and in some concise; the conciseness, rhetoric, and eloquence are charming.” While Baysunghur's brother, the amir Ulugh Beg, preferred Nizami's Khamsah, the two would argue and compare individual verses in the two works. Dawlatshah adds, “The special meanings and subtleties of Amir Khusraw’s exciting poetry kindles a fire in people’s minds and shakes the foundation of the fortitude of lovers.” In this Timurid milieu, an unillustrated Khamsah (Add. 24983) was copied in Herat by the master calligrapher Muhammad ‘Ali Samarqandi for the library of Sultan Husayn Bahadur Khan Bayqara (d. 1506), which subsequently belonged to the Mughal Imperial Library.

Dedication to Sultan Husayn Bayqara in the centre with a list of the contents round the edge. By the time the manuscript was completed in 1511, the Sultan had been dead for six years (BL Add. 24983, f. 2r)

One of the Kulliyat manuscripts, dated 923/1517 (Add. 21104) is furnished with seventeen illustrations, some of which were added or touched up later. B.W. Robinson tentatively suggested that due to the not so “easily recognizable style” of the paintings, it was one of a group of illustrated quintets probably originating in Transoxiana or Khurasan.^[1]

Lovers in a garden, from Amir Khusraw’s Divan Ghurrat al-kamal (BL Add.21104, f.251r)

The earliest manuscript of Amir Khusraw’s Khamsah dated 1421 (Or.13802)^[2] was actually copied in the margins of Nizami’s quintet, indicating that the texts were often read together. It bears the Gujarati inscription of a later Parsi owner and is only partially preserved.

Khusraw and Shirin enthroned. (BL Or. 13802, f. 119v)

Another such illustrated manuscript (IO Islamic 387) where both quintets appear together is thought to date from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century and is in much better condition. In Amir Khusraw’s version of the Alexander romance, A’inah-ʼi Iskandari, Nizami’s philosopher-king is transformed into an intrepid explorer and scientist.

Iskandar crossing the sea in a ship of European type, from Aʼinah-ʼi Iskandari (BL IO Islamic 387, f.466r)

This work also exists in a stand-alone copy (Add. 24,054) apparently dated 885/1479. Other poems from the quintet were also copied on their own without any paintings, such as two copies of Matla‘ al-anvar and four copies of Hasht Bihisht. Three of Amir Khusraw’s versified romances on contemporary themes, which are not part of his quintet, also had a readership. Along with an eighteenth-century copy of the Nuh Sipihr there are seven copies of the Qiran al-Sa‘dayn, one of which, dated 921/1515 at Herat (Add. 7753), was copied by the famous calligrapher Sultan Muhammad Khandan, while several others are eighteenth or nineteenth-century humbler manuscripts that were clearly read by non-elite readers.

The opening of Amir Khusraw's Qiran al-saʻdayn, copied at Herat in 1515 by the famous calligrapher Sultan Muhammad Khandan (BL Add. 7753, f. 1v)

Qiran al-saʻdayn. An unillustrated copy made in Ramnagar in the 18th century (BL Egerton 1033)

There are also three copies of the popular Indo-Persian romance, Khizr Khan va Duvalrani, also known as  ‘Ashiqah, one of which (Or.335) has some unusual illustrations, such as the rare depiction of the beheading of the prince at the end of the story.

Prince Khizr Khan murdered on order of the Delhi Sultan Qutb al-Din Mubarak. From Khizr Khan va Duvalrani, dated 982/1574  (BL Or.335, f.142v)

Attempts to collect and produce large copies of Amir Khusraw’s poetry ceased for the most part in the Safavid and Mughal periods when more copies of selections of his non-narrative poems were made, specifically of the five Divans that marked the different stages of his development as a poet. At this time the ghazal had become the privileged poetic form which only increased the popularity of Amir Khusraw’s love lyrics. Among the most popular of a dozen or so copies of poems from his Divans is the Ghurrat al-Kamal that includes a long partly autobiographical preface followed by copies of his Vasat-i Hayat. A particularly fine Timurid copy of his Divan (IO Islamic 512) also includes the poems of Hasan Sijzi and Jami in the margins.

The colophon of the Divan of Amir Khusraw in the centre, and poems of Jami in the margins (BL IO Islamic 512, ff. 618v-619r)

The wide range in this group of manuscripts is due to the fact that some were prepared for Mughal patrons such as Bayram Khan, others circulated among Ottoman Turkish readers. Another belonged to the library of a Qadiriya Sufi order in Bijapur, and at least one (IO Islamic 2470) was prepared for Robert Watherston, a British officer in India.

The final page and colophon of a selection from Amir Khusraw’s divans commissioned by Robert Watherston in 1790 (BL IO Islamic 2470, f.91r)

In addition to his poetry, an example of Amir Khusraw’s prose exists in a single voluminous collection of epistolographic writings, I’jaz-i Khusravi. The manuscript dated 1697-8 (IO Islamic 4714) was calligraphed by Anup Rai and has the seal of one Qutbuddin Bahadur Jang.

In lieu of a complete bibliography or database of the manuscripts of Amir Khusraw, the British Library collection is an excellent sampling that provides a rich history of the copying and readership of the poet’s collected and individual works across five centuries. The manuscripts were produced and circulated in the Persianate world, the inscriptions and seals showing their sojourn in important centres of artistic production such as Herat, Shiraz, Istanbul, and Delhi, as well as provincial Indian towns such as Ramnagar in UP and Rohinkhed in Maharashtra. At times, the archives also reveal an exciting history of use of some of these manuscripts in the early twentieth century by renowned scholars such as M. Wahid Mirza, whose pioneering scholarship on Amir Khusraw which was originally his PhD thesis at the University of London is still the authoritative book on the subject. Based on the borrowing slip pasted into the back of IO Islamic 51, which dates from 866-7/1462, the manuscript was even checked out and sent to Aligarh in 1935!

Borrowing slip pasted into the back of the Kulliyat of Amir Khusraw recording a distinguished list of external loans (BL IO Islamic 51)

Several other libraries in the UK have smaller collections of Amir Khusraw manuscripts that are listed in FIHRIST.^[3] Some of the poet’s verses are also found in numerous anthologies of poetry by multiple poets that were compiled during the same centuries. It is also noteworthy that there is no evidence of his Hindavi poems in this collection, which belies the situation in contemporary South Asia where he is celebrated for those verses that were probably transmitted in an oral tradition or are apocryphal. With respect to his Persian body of work, the philological problem is not of lines or entire poems being added by later poets, as in the case with Firdawsi’s Shahnamah or Hafiz’s Divan, but it is that Amir Khusraw just composed a great deal of poetry.

With thanks to Ursula Sims-Williams and Shiva Mihan for their insights and help with making sense of the treasure trove described in this blog

Sunil Sharma, Boston University

Further reading

Mohammad Wahid Mirza, The Life and Times of Amir Khusrau (Calcutta, 1935). The thesis was submitted in 1929 (SOAS Library, Thesis 47; online at Proquest).
Barbara Brend,  Perspectives of Persian Painting: Illustrations to Amir Khusrau’s Khamsah. London, 2003.

--------------

[1] B.W. Robinson, “An Amir Khusraw Khamsa of 1581”, Iran 35 (1997), 36.
[2] Norah Titley, “A Khamsah of Nizami Dated Herat 1421”, British Library Journal 4/2 (1978): 161-86.
[3] Other lists of manuscripts of Amir Khusraw’s poetic works are described in: Amir Hasan ‘Abidi, “Amir Khusraw ki nadir tasnifat Turki men”, Ajkal 33/4 (1974): 39-44; Chander Shekhar, “Maghribi mamalik ke kitabkhanon men Amir Khusraw ke nadir qalami nuskhe.” In 1947 ke ba‘d Farsi zaban o adab o Professor Nazir Ahmad, ed. Sayyid Raza Haidar (New Delhi, 2016), pp, 53-78; John Seyller, Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Walters Art Museum Khamsa of Amīr Khusraw of Delhi (Baltimore, 2001), pp. 143-58.

Readers may have noticed the new placards and billboards at the British Library announcing Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth which opens exactly four weeks today. Son of Philip II of Macedon and his wife Olympias, the historical Alexander was born in Pella, capital of Macedon in July 356 BC. By July 330 BC he had defeated the Persian army, becoming, at the age of twenty-five, ruler of Asia Minor, pharaoh of Egypt and successor to Darius III, the ‘Great King’ of Persia. During the next seven years, Alexander created an empire that stretched from Greece in the west to beyond the Indus river in the east – before his early death in Babylon aged thirty-two.

This exhibition, however, is not about history, but the first of its kind to explore 2,000 years of  storytelling and mythmaking. With objects from 25 countries in 21 languages, it shows how one figure could serve so many purposes, creating shared narratives of universal appeal. The Alexander Romance, composed originally in Greek in the third century AD, was at the heart of this storytelling. But legends also found their way into epic poetry and drama, and more recently into novels, comics, films and video games. You will see examples of all of these in the exhibition.

Out of approximately 140 objects, some eighty-six are from the British Library's collections. To give a taste of what’s in store, I have chosen to highlight a few of the thirty-eight exhibits from our own Asian and African collections.

A Christian Alexander described as ‘enemy of devils’ heads this amulet scroll in the Ethiopian Ge‘ez language. Ethiopia, 18th century? (British Library Or.12859)

The exhibition is arranged in six sections based around Alexander’s legendary life. After an introduction,  A Conqueror in the Making explores the different versions of Alexander’s origins, his education by the philosopher Aristotle and Bucephalus, his faithful warhorse.

Nahid, daughter of Philip of Macedon, is here married to the Persian emperor as part of a diplomatic alliance. Rejected on account of her bad breath, she was sent home, unknowingly pregnant, to Greece where she gave birth to a son, Alexander. This version of Alexander’s origins saw him, in Persian eyes, as the legitimate heir and successor to the throne. From the Darabnamah (Story of Darab), by Abu Tahir Muhammad Tarsusi, Mughal India, 1580–85 (British Library Or.4615, f. 129r)

Aristotle instructs a pupil in the Kitab na‘t al-hayawan (On the Characteristics of Animals). Baghdad?, about 1225 (British Library Or.2784, f. 96r)

Section three, Building an Empire, describes Alexander’s victory over Darius III of Persia and his expeditions further east to India and China — by the way Alexander did reach India but he never went to China!

Alexander comforts the dying Darius and agrees to his final requests in Firdawsi’s Shahnamah (Book of Kings). According to one Persian tradition, Darius was in fact his half-brother. Isfahan?, Iran, 1604 (British Library IO Islamic 966, f. 335r)

In Kandahar, Alexander was persuaded by a beautiful priestess not to destroy the sacred statue. This copy of the twelfth-century poet Nizami’s Khamsah (Five Poems) was especially commissioned by the Mughal Emperor Akbar who had conquered Kandahar in 1595 while this manuscript was still being copied. The painting would have deliberately invited comparison between Akbar, famous for his religious tolerance, and Alexander. Artists: Mukund and La‘l, Lahore, 1593–95 (British Library Or.12208, ff. 317v–318r)

In a section on Alexander’s relationships, we introduce the important people in his life: his wives, the powerful women he encountered, his general Hephaestion and the eunuch slave Bagoas.

The wedding of Alexander and Darius’ daughter, Roxana. From Firdawsi's Shahnamah (Book of Kings), Qazvin, Iran, about 1590–95 (British Library Add MS 27257, f. 326v)

The Mythical Quest is the most fantastical section. Here Alexander travels through strange lands inhabited by people with faces in their chests, sirens, griffins and dragons. His journey leads him to the ends of the earth, into the skies above and to the bottom of the ocean, always seeking new experiences and the key to immortality.

This Coptic fragment of the Alexander Romance describes Alexander setting off to explore the Land of Darkness. When a mysterious voice predicted his imminent death, he turned back bringing with him some objects he had gathered in the dark. These later turned out to be diamonds. Atripe, Upper Egypt, 14th century (British Library Or.3367/2)

The final section, Journey’s End, describes Alexander’s return to Babylon and the mystery of his subsequent death. His body was transported on a magnificent carriage to Egypt, where it was eventually placed in a mausoleum at Alexandria. The tomb is now lost, but his final resting place is still a subject of debate.

This popular prose version of Alexander’s life reflects a Persian tradition. In accordance with his final wishes Alexander’s coffin was carried through his dominions with his arm hanging loose to show that he travelled to the grave empty-handed. From the Iskandarnamah (Story of Alexander) by Manuchihr Khan Hakim, Tehran, 1857–58 (British Library 14787.k.8)

Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth opens on 21 October. It will be accompanied by a book of the same title. Edited by Richard Stoneman, it includes nine essays by leading scholars together with images and descriptions of the exhibition items. During the next few months we’ll be writing blogs about several of the items in the exhibition, and also some which we were not able to include. Meanwhile tickets are already on sale and may be booked on our Events page.

Ursula Sims-Williams, Lead Curator Persian

We are indebted to the Kusuma Trust, the Patricia G. and Jonathan S. England – British Library Innovation Fund and Ubisoft for their support towards the exhibition, as well as other trusts and private donors.

This guest blog post is by Souvik Mukherjee, an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of English at Presidency University in Kolkata. His research looks at the narrative and the literary through the emerging discourse of videogames as storytelling media and at how these games inform and challenge our conceptions of narratives, identity and culture. 

Salman Rushdie, in his novel, Midnight’s Children, writes about the game of Snakes and Ladders that ‘all games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate’ (Rushdie 2016, 160). Whether Rushdie is aware one does not know but Snakes and Ladders indeed has its beginnings as a game of morals, or even more than that – a game about life and karma. When Frederick Henry Ayres, the famous toymaker from Aldgate, London, patented the game in 1892, the squares of the game-board had lost their moral connotations. There were earlier examples in Victorian England and mainland Europe that had a very Christian morality encoded into the boards but the game actually originated in India as Gyan Chaupar (it had other local variations such as Moksha Pat, Paramapada Sopanam and other adaptations such as the Bengali Golok Dham and the Tibetan Sa nam lam sha). Victorian versions of the game include the Kismet boardgame (c.a. 1895) now in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection (fig. 1). There were other similar games such as Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished (1818) and the New Game of Human Life (1790) although the latter did not contain snakes and ladders on its board.

Fig. 1. Kismet, c.1895. Chromolithograph on paper and card. Designed in England, manufactured in Bavaria. Victoria & Albert Museum, MISC.423-1981. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

    In the Indian versions, it was not a racing-game as it became in its Western adaptations. It was a game that did not end in square hundred but one that people could play over and over until they reached Vaikuntha (the sacred domain of Vishnu) after journeying though many rebirths and corresponding human experiences. Every square in the game signified a moral action, a celestial location or a state of being all of which were important in the Karmic journey. Here is the story of two game-boards in the British Library’s archives and how an Indian game designed to teach the workings of Karma and religion became the Snakes and Ladders that children play the world over, today.

    One of the oldest Gyan Chaupar boards that have been traced so far is now in the British Library (Topsfield 1985, 203-226), originally in the collection of the East India Company officer Richard Johnson (1753-1807) (fig. 2). There are claims that the game originated much earlier – in the Kridakaushalya section of his 1871 Sanskrit magnum opus Brihad Jyotish Arnava, Venkatarama Harikrishna of Aurangabad states that the game was invented by the Marathi saint Dnyaneshwar (1275 – 1296). Andrew Topsfield lists around forty-four game-boards in his two articles published two decades apart and these boards belong to multiple religious traditions, Hindu, Jain and Muslim (Sufi). Topsfield mentions older boards that date back to the late 15^th century and also ones that have 128 squares, 84 squares or a 100 squares instead of the 72 squares as on the Johnson board. There is, however, another board in the British Library that has probably not been written about yet. Listed as the Paramapada Sopanam Pata (fig. 3), it is described in the catalogue as: ‘Lithograph in Blockwood printing. of the game Paramapada sōpānam, a traditional Indian indoor game: in a chart titled: Paramapada Sopanam, in which the highest ascent indicates reaching Heaven and anywhere else where the pawn lands indicate various worlds according to Hindu mythology. Language note: In Kannada and Devanagari’. These two boards tell the story of the transculturation of a game that started out as a pedagogical tool to teach the ways of karma and ended up as Hasbro Inc.’s Chutes and Ladders.

Designs for a game of snakes and ladders, gyan chaupur, commissioned by Richard Johnson, Lucknow, 1780-82. Johnson Album 5,8. 

Paramapada Sopanam Pata, board game printed in Karnataka, c. 1800-1850. British Library, ORB 40/1046.

    Around 1832, a Captain Henry Dundas Robertson would present what he called the Shastree’s Game of Heaven and Hell to the Royal Asiatic Society in London where the 128-square Vaishnav Gyan Chaupar board can still be seen. Around 1895, when the game was being sold in England as a children’s game, the civil servant Gerald Robert Dampier was sending a detailed report on the game to North Indian Notes and Queries. Around a century before Dampier and fifty years before Robertson, Richard Johnson’s possession of a Gyan Chaupar board around 1780-2 is in itself a curious affair. This board is now part of the British Library’s collection. Johnson, the deputy resident at Lucknow, is among the lesser-known Orientalists despite his prodigious collection of Indian art and his close connection with orientalists of greater repute such as Sir William Jones. Johnson was supposedly a competent official but he made a fortune through corruption and was called ‘Rupee Johnson’; he was also involved in Warren Hastings’s infamous looting of the Begums of Oudh. In his two years in Oudh (1780-82) Johnson was, however, seems to have been popular and was given the title Mumtāz al-Dawlah Mufakhkhar al-Mulk Richārd Jānsan Bahādur Ḥusām Jang, 1194 or ʻRichard Johnson chosen of the dynasty, exalted of the kingdom, sharp blade in war’, 1780 together with a mansab and an insignia by the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam. Johnson was also an eclectic collector and commissioned work by many Indian artists and scholars  of which 64 albums of paintings (over 1,000 individual items) and an estimated 1000 manuscripts in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Sanskrit, Bengali, Panjabi, Hindi and Assamese form the ‘backbone of the East India Company library’ (now at the British Library, see Sims-Williams 2014). While other orientalists such as Jones and Hiram Cox wrote on Chess, Johnson seems to have been interested in other games. Besides the Gyan Chaupar board, the Johnson collection contains the Persian game of Ganj (Treasure) and sketches for Ganjifa cards – the round playing cards that were common in India before the advent of European cards (British Library, Johnson Album 5).

    Johnson’s contribution to boardgame studies is no less important than that of the other orientalists although it has taken over two centuries to appreciate this. The Gyan Chaupar board was in his possession a good century before the game was imported to the West and transformed into a race-game. Johnson seems to have been interested in the original game and besides the Devanagari script, each square also contains a farsi transliteration. The words are not Persian but the script is.[i] It is difficult to identify the painter or the source – Malini Roy points out that ‘artists affiliated with Johnson’s studio include Mohan Singh, Ghulam Reza, Gobind Singh, Muhammad Ashiq, Udwat Singh, Sital Das, and Ram Sahai’ (Roy 2010, 181). Whether Johnson read the game-board is a moot question but he certainly cared to get the words transliterated into Persian. Beginning the game on utpatti or ‘origin’, the player can move to maya or ‘illusion’ (square 2), krodh or lobh – ‘anger’ and ‘greed’ respectively (squares 3 and 4) and ascend higher towards salvation via the ladders in the squares that represent daya or mercy (square 13) or Bhakti or devotion (square 54). Bhakti will take the player directly to Vaikuntha and salvation from the cycle of rebirths and the game ends here. For a game purportedly invented by a major figure of the Bhakti Movement, this is no surprise. If the throw of the dice takes the player beyond square 68, then the long snake on square 72 brings the player back to Earth and the cycle of rebirths continues. Johnson’s board is unique among the Gyan Chaupar boards that are known to scholars in that it contains two scorpions in addition to the snakes and the ladders also look somewhat serpentine.

    One more detail is not obvious from the board. None of these boards comes with playing pieces or dice but writing in 1895, Dampier claims that the game was played with cowrie shells as dice and he also adds that the game is ‘very contrary to our Western teachings […] it is not clear why Love of Violence (sq. 72) should lead to Darkness (sq. 51)’. Dampier notes that the game has been ‘lately introduced in England and with ordinary dice for cowries and [with] a somewhere revised set of rules been patented there as a children’s game’ (Dampier 1895, 25-27).

    Dampier’s short but detailed account of Gyan Chaupar provides a clearer entry point into how and why an ‘oriental’ game of karma needed to be Westernised as a children’s game. The transition from the karmic game to the game on Christian morality and then to a race-game for children embodying competition rather than soul-searching is evident from his pithy notes sent to the journal North Indian Notes and Queries. One might assume that the principles working here would have been very different from Johnson’s approach to the game. The story, nevertheless, does not end here. I was fortunate to discover another game-board in the British Library as I mention above. The Paramapada Sopanam or the Ladder to Heaven is similar to the Johnson board in most ways except that there are only snakes on the board. Some snakes help the player ascend and the others are for descent (I purposely eschew terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ here). Square 54 or Bhakti, a many-headed serpent leads the player to Vaikuntha (the board is damaged here) and one might assume that it is Ananta, the celestial snake on which Vishnu reclines. There are some differences with the Johnson board although both relate to the Vaishnav sect of Hinduism. While Gyan Chaupar is largely forgotten in Northern India (except in the Jain tradition where it is reportedly played by some during the Jain festival Paryushan), Paramapada Sopanam is regularly played on the festive day of Vaikuntha Ekadasi in the Indian states of Telengana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. In fact, Carl Gustav Jung supposedly obtained a copy of the game when he visited Tamil Nadu in 1938 and took it back to Zurich; Sulagna Sengupta concludes that Jung read the matrix of the game as the play of opposites in the psyche (Sengupta 2017).

    From the karmic game to Jung’s model for the play of psychological opposites, Gyan Chaupar in its many forms is certainly much more than the race game that it has been changed into after its appropriation by the colonial apparatus. Recent research has been able to identify many of these game-boards and these two boards in the British Library are crucial for the ‘recovery research’ into Gyan Chaupar and its variants as well as the cultures in which they were conceived. Recent research on games talks of ‘gamification’ or the application of ludic principles to real-life activities – a closer look at the original Gyan Chaupar will show its merit as a gamified text, an instructional manual on the ways of life and on Indic soteriology.

Notes
[i] I am indebted to Ms Azadeh Mazlousaki Isaksen of the University of Tromso, Norway, for the translations. Ms Isaksen initially struggled to translate the words as she found them unfamiliar. The reason was that these were Hindi or Sanskrit words written in the Persian script.

Bibliography
Cannon, Garland, and Andrew Grout. “Notes and Communications.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 55, no. 2, 1992, pp. 316–318. 

Dampier, Gerald Roberts. “A Primitive Game.” North Indian Notes and Queries V (1895): p. 25-27.

Roy, Malini. “Origins of the Late Mughal Painting Tradition in Awadh.” India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow. Ed. Stephen Markel and Tushara Bindu Gude. Los Angeles: Prestel, 2010.

Rushdie, Salman. Midnights Children. London: Random House, 2016.

Sengupta, Sulagna. “Parama Pada Sopanam : The Divine Game of Rebirth and Renewal.” Jungian Perspectives on Rebirth and Renewal: Phoenix Rising. Ed. Elizabeth Brodersen and Michael Glock. London ; New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

Sims-Williams, Ursula. “‘White Mughal’ Richard Johnson and Mir Qamar al-Din Minnat.” British Library Asian and African Studies Blog, 1 May 2014.

Topsfield, Andrew. “The Indian Game of Snakes and Ladders.” Artibus Asiae, vol. 46, no. 3, 1985, pp. 203–226. 

By Dr. Souvik Mukherjee