THE REVIVAL OF RAHIM IN MODERN INDIA T. C. A. Raghavan
‘Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan (1556–1627), the only son of Akbar’s regent, Bairam Khan, is a prominent figure in Mughal political, military and intellectual history during the reigns of Akbar and Jahangir. Rahim’s political achievements include the re-establishment of Mughal control over Gujarat after a major rebellion (1584), the conquest of Sindh (1592), campaigns in Berar and Ahmednagar in the 1590s and a long tenure as Governor of the Deccan in the 1590s and in the first two decades of the 17th century. Like many prominent families at the heart of the imperial system, his family, too, faced annihilation on account of internecine conflicts within the royal family and the consequent civil wars. Rahim’s last days were spent as a prisoner of the very court he had served with distinction, and he was also to see the physical destruction of his family at the hands of feuding princes. Rahim was at the centre of the court’s patronage of Persian literature. His translation of Emperor Babur’s memoirs from Turkish into Persian in 1589 is a milestone in Mughal literary history. Many Persian poets gravitated to Rahim, and his personal library was a centre of patronage for calligraphers, book binders and painters. However, he also stands out in areas outside the traditional parameters of intellectual and political achievement of the Mughal nobility in India and has come down to us as a Hindi poet of distinction. Major works attributed to him range from mixed Sanskrit and Persian verses on astrology, as in Khet Kautukam; eight verses in a traditional bhakti idiom on devotion and attraction to Krishna of the gopīs of Vrindavan, as in Madanāshtaka;1 sensuous and erotic verses in Nagarshobhā,2 Shringār Sorthā;3 and those in a nāyaknāyikā bhed format, as in the Barvai Nāyikā Bhed.4 The latter is an important work because it is the first to use in Hindi the Sanskrit genre of nāyak-nāyikā bhed and also the first to use the barvai5 couplet. Rahim is,
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Celebrating Rahim
