Nānak's religious thought was particularly eclectic. That he should have gained his principal following in the Punjab, where the confrontation of Islam and Hinduism was particu- larly salient, is hardly surprising; yet he appears to have gained converts wherever his wide travels took him. His teaching stressed the oneness of God, whom he called Sat Nām (True Name), and the equality of all men. He denounced image wor- ship and all distinctions of caste or creed. Yet he adhered to such Hindu doctrines as karma and rebirth. He named his own spiritual successor, the second of a line of ten successive guruss (teachers) under whom a distinct militant faith, Sikhism, ulti- mately evolved. The name of the faith stems from śi&stod;ya (dis- ciple) and suggests the importance Nānak attached to the guru-śi&stod;ya (teacher-disciple) relationship. Many of Nānak's hymns are preserved in the sacred text of the Sikhs, the Granth Sāhib, which also contains prose and poems by Kabīr and other religious teachers of the period. More will be said of Sikhism in the text for plate VI.A.4.

Sufism, or Islamic mysticism (tasawwuf), is a term derived from the Arabic word sūf (wool), referring to the coarse woolen garments worn by the earliest ascetics, who were often also mendicants. The first Sufis were Arabs, but in later times Sufism came to be associated with the Iranians and the Turks and with the Central Asian and Indian borderlands of the Is- lamic world.

Typically, a Sufi either was an itinerant dervish or belonged to a Sufi order or brotherhood (tarīqa), frequently living in a hospice (khānqāh) under a communal discipline. Authority within the order was exercised by a shaikh (also known as a murshīd or pīr) who, prior to his death, designated a successor (often a son or grandson) who would uphold the spiritual rule of the order, which was thus transmitted by a chain of authority (silsila) from one shaikh to the next. Famous shaikhs were held to radiate a spiritual charisma (baraka) that invested their surroundings with peculiar sanctity. Miraculous powers were often attributed to them, and after their death their tombs would bcome places of popular pilgramage.

Sufism first appeared in India late in the 11th century and thereafter played a major part in the spread of Islam in the sub- continent. Among the various orders brought into India the most important were the Suhrāwardiya, introduced into the Punjab by Shaikh Bahā' ud-dīn Zakariya (1182–1262), whose mausoleum can still be seen in Multan, and the Chishtiya, established by Shaikh Mu'īn ud-dīn Chishtī (d. 1236), who settled in Ajmer, where his tomb remains an important pil- gramage center. These orders, as well as others like the Qādiriya and the Shattāriya, which did not reach India until much later, were generally regarded as orthodox (bā-shar'); but others, in which the accommodation to indigenous cults had gone too far, were stigmatized as heterodox (bī-shar')— that is, outside the Sharī'a, the Muslim Law.

During the 13th and 14th centuries the Chishtiya was the most influential order in India, owing partly to four famous Sufi personalities: Shaikh Farid ud-dīn Ganj-i Shakar (d. 1265), who settled first at Hansi and later at Ajodhan (Pakpattan) in the Punjab; Shaikh Qutb ud-dīn Bakhtyār Kākī (d. 1236), who established himself outside Delhi at Mahraulī; Shaikh Nizām ud-dīn Auliyā (d. 1325), who counted among his disciples the poet Amīr Khusrau (d. 1325); and Shaikh Nasir ud-dīn Chirāg-i-Dehlī (d. 1356), regarded as the last of the great Chishtī saints.

The relations of the Sufis with the government were often ambiguous, resulting from the extraordinary influence they ex- ercised over the masses. Some sultans, such as Shams ud-dīn Iltutmish (1211–36) and Ghiyās ud-dīn Balban (1266–87), paid them extravagant honours. Muhammad bin Tughluq (1325–51), however, jealous that the Chishtī order was becom- ing "a state within a state," endeavoured to integrate them into the religious establishment by forcing state pensions upon them. Their refusal to acquiesce led to their forcible dispersal throughout the sultanate, resulting in a diffusion of Sufi Islam into areas where hitherto Islam had hardly penetrated.

Medieval Islamic society in India remains largely incom- prehensible unless due allowance is made for the impact of Sufism on all levels of society. It was a major factor in the dis- semination of Islam among the indigenous population; its litera- ture embodied popular beliefs and a folk culture that found little or no echo in the writings of Muslim officials and theo- logians; and it served as the principal catalyst for such cultural interaction as there was between Muslims and Hindus.

The growth of the Islamic community within South Asia during the Sultanate Period is a matter on which opinions vary considerably; but in any consideration of the matter the role of Sufism must be taken into account. In a recent careful, but necessarily speculative, study of a great mass and variety of relevant data, K. S. Lal (1973) estimates that in the year 1200 Muslims constituted, within the present areas of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, no more than 400,000 persons (0.2% of the total population); that their numbers rose to 3.2 million by 1400 (1.8%); and that they were as many as 12.8 million (roughly 10%) by 1535.⁸ Thereafter the rate of growth obvi- ously slackened, though the absolute increase was of a very high order.

Although we have not seen fit to map their principal centers and areas of strength on plate V.5, numerous Hindu sects, particularly Vai&stod;&ntod;avism and Śaivism and their largely regional subdivisions, continued to be of great importance during the period of the Delhi Sultanate. Indeed, it is virtually certain that their active adherents were far more numerous than those of the Bhakti movement as a whole.

Yet there was relatively little innovation within the tradi- tional Hindu sects during the period, and what one might wish to map about them is already largely evident from the detailed presentation of plate IV.4 (see also text for same), the general sectarian pattern of which carries over to the Sultanate Period. Some changes in the nature of state patronage of religion did, to be sure, occur in those parts of India remaining under Hindu rule, which could not help but affect the relative status of par- ticular sects and their principal centers. The early Sa&ndot;gama rulers of Vijayanagara, for example, were ardent Śaivites, while under the Sāluva and Tuluva monarchs who followed, partiality was generally shown for Vai&stod;&ntod;avism. The great monarch K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;adeva Rāya, however, was singularly eclectic in his views. In and around Karnataka Vīraśaivism continued to flourish and expand.

Among indigenous religions other than Brahmanical Hindu- ism, Jainism maintained its modest strength in western India, especially in Rajasthan and Gujarat but also in parts of Maharashtra and Karnataka. Buddhism, on the other hand, became virtually extinct in India proper, while retaining its vigor along and beyond India's northern mountain wall and in Sri Lanka. In the former region its practice was highly syn- cretistic; although essentially Mahāyāna, it was permeated with esoteric Tantric rituals and magical practices. In the late 14th century, however, it was largely reformed by the lama Tsong- khapa, founder of the Gelukpa order (commonly called the "Yellow Hats"), from within which the institution of the divine Dalai Lama was later (1641) established. In Sri Lanka Thera- vāda Buddhism remained the state religion over most of the island.

Sources (in addition to those in the General Bibliography)

General References

Encyclopedia of religion and ethics (1928); Imperial Gazetteer . . . (1907–9).

On Indigenous Indian Religions in General and Bhakti in Particular

J. E. Abbott (1926–41); P. D. Barthwal (1936); B. Behari (1970); R. G. Bhandarkar (1913); J. E. Carpenter (1921); P. Chaturvedi (1967); S. K. De (1961); W. T. De Bary (1964); E. C. Dimock and D. Levertov (1967); R. Gupta (1968); J. S. T. Hooper (1929); S. S. Johar (1969); Karsandas Mulji (1865); Krishnadasa Kaviraja (1932); W. H. McLeod (1968); N. Macnicol (1919); A. K. Majumdar (1969); B. Miśra (1969); H. Singh (1969); Mohan Singh (1934); K. W. Mor- gan (1953); M. C. Parekh (1969); A. K. Ramanujan (1972); R. D. Ranade (1961); Khushwant Singh (1963–66).

On Islam in General and Sufism in Particular

S. 'Abdurra&htod;mān (1971); A. J. Arberry (1950); Aziz Ahmad (1969); T. Chand (1963); S. M. Ikram and P. Spear (1955); M. Mujeeb (1967); K. A. Nizami (1961); I. H. Qureshi (1962); C. Rice (1964); S. A. A. Rizvi (1965); A. L. Sri- vastava (1964b); J. A. Subhan (1970); R. Tiwari (1968); J. S. Trimingham (1971).

V.6. Monuments of South Asia, c. 1200–1550

The period of the Delhi Sultanate in northern India is marked by the confrontation between Islam and India's indig- enous faiths. Elsewhere in the Muslim world acceptance of Islam by the majority of the population had swiftly followed military conquest. This was not the case in India, and Islam's position as the religion of the ruling minority affected its arts from the outset.

Islam's architecture contrasts abruptly with much of that of Hinduism. Its mosques are formed around large, open court- yards, bathed in light, whereas Hindu temples are heavier, darker, and more massive. While Hinduism relies on figural icons from its vast pantheon to cover the surface of its build- ings, Islam rejects the representation of figures in its religious architecture and relies instead on calligraphy and geometric design. Having neither cult object nor priesthood, Islam re- quires no processional accents in its mosques.

Other new forms also appear. The minaret serves as a land- mark emphasizing Islam's dominance, while the tomb, a struc- ture never utilized by India's other major faiths and even re- garded with suspicion by much of orthodox Islam, flourishes in more heterodox India. Despite these radical innovations in India, the rulers of the Delhi Sultanate did not entirely ignore the rich past of non-Muslim India. Although explanations of their dramatic use of "Aśokan" pillars in the Quwwat al-Islam mosque (figure (a)) and the citadel of Firūz Shāh are still problematic, they clearly indicate the sultans' awareness of the strengths of India's earlier cultures.

Photo Credits

(a), photo by Anita Pearlroth; (b), (c), and (g), photos by Anthony Welch; (d), (h), and (i), photos by Catherine Asher; (e) by courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Boston; (f), photo by Anthony Welch, by courtesy of the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan.

V.7. Southeast Asia, c. 1250–1550

In the period from c. 1250 to 1550 three sets of forces emanating largely from areas beyond South and Southeast Asia were to exert a profound effect on both those regions and to radically alter the relations between them. Two of these, the changes set in motion by the diffusion of Islam and those resulting from the Mongol conquests of the greater part of Eurasia, operated simultaneously for much of the time span covered by plate V.7 and had in fact already been set in mo- tion before it began (see plate V.1); the third set of forces, those associated with the spread of European commercial and political influence, became manifest only in the last half-cen- tury of the period under review and were not to reach their culmination for another several centuries. Although the ex- plosive burst of the Mongols across the stage of history came much later than the similarly dramatic expansion of Islam after the death of the Prophet, the intervention of the Mon- gols in affairs bearing on South and Southeast Asia came to an end much sooner than was the case for Islam; it will therefore be convenient to consider them first.

For a statement on the nature of the source materials drawn upon in preparing plate V.7 and the text below and their lim- itations the reader is referred to the text for plate III.D.6, the first of three in the atlas that focus on Southeast Asia. The second of those plates, IV.6, and the relevant text will pro- vide a useful background for understanding the analysis that follows.

The role the Mongols played in Southeast Asia was both direct and indirect, military and diplomatic, political and eco- nomic. Possibly their most significant political act was their de- struction of the large Thai state of Nan-chao in what is today southwest China proper. That event greatly accelerated the southward drift of Thai peoples into the present areas of Thai- land, Burma, and Laos and led to the establishment of a num- ber of new Thai states. Of the states outlined on map (b), those whose founders were ethnically Thai were Sukhothai, Ayuthia, Lan Chang, and Ava. Other Thai polities, shown on map (a) only, were the states of Lan Na/Chiengmai and Phayao and the tribes of Maw Shans. (Numerous other Thai tribal groups entering the area have not been shown at all.) Among the Thai states, Sukhothai, the earliest of note, was founded well before the fall of Nan-chao; and while its origin cannot therefore be attributed to Mongol intervention in the region, its later rise to prominence was linked to the close diplomatic relations it established with Kublai Khān, founder of the Mongol Yüan dynasty of China, and the mutual desire of the two states to curb the power of the Khmers of Kambuja- deśa. The later Thai state of Ayuthia, like Sukhothai, virtually all of whose territories it absorbed, followed a policy of ac- cepting the nominal status of a Chinese tributary while re- maining free to expand as best it could. Its conquests greatly diminished the power and extent of Kambujadeśa (whose cap- ital, Angkor, was twice seized by Thai forces), and extended Thai suzerainty southward to the limits of the Malay Penin- sula. Lan Chang, never a power of the first rank, is noteworthy as the forerunner of the modern state of Laos. Finally, of the Thai states shown on map (b), Ava owes its origin to the suc- cessful establishment of Shan rule in the political void created by the Mongol destruction of Pagan in 1283–87.

All the non-Thai states of the Indo-Pacific Peninsula were greatly affected by events set in motion by the Mongols. Dai Viet, thrice invaded from southern China, accepted the status of a vassal of the Great Khān in 1288. Champa, after success- fully withstanding a Mongol invasion by sea, also prudently