History: The Legend of Padmavati and Epic Poem of Malik Muhammad Jayasi

Malik Muhammad Jayasi was a Sufi poet who wrote in Avadhi language. Born in Jayas near Raibareli, UP, he lived during 1477-1542 and wrote an epic poem "Padmavat" in 1540. He wrote it 237 years after the historical event of Alauddin Khilji's conquest of Chittor. Alauddin Khalji (1266-1316) of Khalji dynasty of Delhi Sultanate had invaded Chittor in 1303 which was ruled by Rajput king Ratnasiṃha of Guhila dynasty.

An article by Ruchika Sharma on Scroll.in makes strong points on the actual history. You can read it here.

“I have made up the story and related it,” are the words with which Malik Muhammad Jayasi ends his Awadhi masnavi, Padmavat.

Jayasi’s masnavi, completed in 1540, drew heavily on an earlier source, Nayachandra Suri’s Hammira Mahakavya.

The epic penned by Nayachandra Suri in the 15th century is largely a legendary biography of the 14th-century Chauhana king Hammira Mahadeva. Before Suri committed it to writing, the legend of Hammira’s gallant fight against Khilji’s attack on Chittor was orally transmitted. In the epic, Khilji has to mount a series of three expeditions against Chittor, following Hammira’s refusal to pay tribute to the Delhi sultan, before finally capturing it. The first expedition is inconclusive while the second results in the defeat of the sultanate army by the Rajputs and in the capture of several Muslim women, who are humiliated and forced “to sell buttermilk in every town they pass through”.

Cut to the 16th century, Suri’s dauntless Hammira becomes Jayasi’s Ratan Sen.

Padmavat, however, is not merely a copy of Suri’s work. Jayasi also drew a lot from the current political milieu of his time. For example, Ratan Sen, (1527-’32 AD) who was the rana of Chittor more than 300 years after Khilji’s death, is a contemporary of Jayasi and, hence, his name is borrowed for Padmavat’s hero, a move made perhaps to impress the rana (given the poet’s close association with the Rajputs). Furthermore, captivating tropes employed in the story, such as smuggling Khilji’s army into the Chittor fort through women’s palanquins, was an actual move employed by emperor Sher Shah Suri (Jayasi’s contemporary) in his conquest of Rohtas.

Jayasi quite explicitly mentions that Ratan Sen is an allegory for the human soul, Padmini represents intelligence, Alauddin Khilji is illusion (maya) and Chittor stands for the human body. Thus, the tale is that of the travails that the human soul has to suffer in order to be one with the human mind where both illusion and the human body act as deterrents.

Jayasi’s work is such a marvel of creativity that to claim it as history would be the real “tampering of history”.

Read full article at below link:

https://scroll.in/article/828538/the-epic-poem-padmavat-is-fiction-to-claim-it-as-history-would-be-the-real-tampering-of-history

You can also read the Epic "Padmavat" here on Kavita Kosh. 

- Rahul Tiwary