The Arghūns, from whom Bābur had captured Kabul and Ghazni, were descended from the Īl-Khāns of Persia and had held Sīstān, Zamīndāwar, and Ghūr, with their capital at Kandahar, since 1479. As early as 1494 they began to expand southward, annexing Pishin, Shāl (Quetta), and Mastanj (Mastung) in what is now Baluchistan. According to some historians, the conquest of Bhakkar and Sehwān in Sind fol- lowed soon after; but others confirm only the capture of the forts of Siwī and Fathpur between 1511 and 1514. Bābur de- prived them of Kandahar in 1507, and, although they won it back through the help of the Uzbegs, they had to surrender it to him once more in 1522, together with other territories they held in that region, before they could settle down in Sind. Pressed from the north, they completed the conquest of Thatta (Lower Sind) and the occupation of Upper Sind by 1522, and in 1524 they chose Bhakkar as the new seat of their govern- ment. In 1526 they set siege to Multan, which fell to them in January 1527.

Sources (in addition to those in the General Bibliography)

Original Sources

'Abdullāh; Ahmad Yādgār; Firishtah; Haydar Mīrzā; Ma'&stod;um Nāmī; Muhammad Kabīr; Muhammad Sharif Wuqū'ī; Ni'mat Allah; Rizqullāh Mushtāqī (1 and 2); Shihāb-i Hakīm; Yahyā ibn A&htod;mad al-Sirhindī.

Other Works

A. C. Banerjee (1944); A. Halim (1961); Hamīd ud-Dīn (forthcoming, listed under Unpublished Works); K. S. Lal (1963); Muhammad Hyat Khan (1867); G. H. Ojha (1936–37); A. B. Pandey (1956); K. R. Qanungo (1960); M. M. Saeed (1972); G. Sarwar (1939); H. K. Sherwani (1953), (1974); R. Shyam (1966); P. Sykes (1940), (1951).

V.4 (c), (d), and (e). South India, c. 1485–1605

Sāluva Narasi&mtod;ha's usurpation in 1486 not only ended the career of the Sa&ndot;gama dynasty of Vijayanagara, but shifted major power at the imperial level from the descendents of the mixed Karnataka and Andhra family to warriors entirely from Telugu-speaking South India. Yet these dynastic changes from Sa&ndot;gama to Sāluva and then quite rapidly to the Tuluva dynasty (1504–70)⁷ caused little disruption. Soon K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;adeva Rāya (1509–29), the greatest of the Vijayanagara kings, raised the state to its apogee.

Succession disputes in the rival Bahmanī kingdom at about the same time were more consequential. The son of the Bahmanī Shāh, Muhammad III, proved incapable of holding that state together after his father's death in 1482. From the vast territory of the Bahmanī state emerged five independent sultanates within the next few years: the 'Imād Shāhīs of Berar in 1490; the Nizām Shāhīs of Ahmadnagar in 1490; the Barīd Shāhīs of Bidar in 1487; the 'Ādil Shāhīs of Bijapur in 1490; and the Qutb Shāhīs of Golkonda in 1512 (map (e)).

These dynastic changes in the late 15th and early 16th cen- turies brought new vigor to the contest for peninsular su- premacy between Hindu and Muslim powers. Under K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;adeva Rāya, decisive advantage shifted to Vijayanagara. Brilliant vic- tories over the Bahmanī, Mahmūd II, and several of his increas- ingly independent subordinates gave Vijayanagara secure hold over the long-disputed Rāicūr Doab. Several major Hindu chieftains, most notably Ga&ndot;garāya of Ummattur on the west- ern reaches of the Kaveri River, were subdued, and between 1513 and 1518 the Gajapatis of Orissa were also conquered. Though the latter were allowed to keep their territories up to the Krishna River, the state progressively weakened and the dynasty came to an end in 1540. Subsequently the state was divided in two, the southern part being gradually subjected to the Qutb Shāhīs and the northern part falling in 1568 to the Afghans of Bengal, who held it until the Mughal conquest in 1592.

In K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;adeva Rāya's time, the first signs of European polit- ical presence were manifested, and with them came the opening of a new era for India as a whole. At the outset of his campaign against the combined armies of the Deccani Muslims in 1510, K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;adeva Rāya was approached by the Portuguese governor of Goa, Albuquerque, with an offer to reserve for Vijayanagara all Arabian and Persian horses imported to the Malabar coastal ports in return for assistance to the Portuguese in their warfare ⁷ A Tuluva had been, in fact, ruling Vijayanagara as regent since 1491 during the minority of the last two heirs to the Sāluva throne. The last legitimate Tuluva ruler lived at least until 1576; he died in prison, however, after his throne was usurped in 1570 by Tiru- mala, founder of the Āravī&dtod;u dynasty. against the Zamorin of Calicut. Although this offer was not acted upon, it signaled two changes in the politics of South India. One of these was the new factor of Europeans, who soon came to participate as mercenaries in the warfare of the South and taught valuable lessons in the improved use of firearms (which had become a part of warfare between the Vijayanagara and Bahmanī states from the time of Bukkā I). The other change was the importance of the trade in superior war mounts. It became a policy of Vijayanagara to buy all the imported horses, paying even for dead ones, in order to monopolize their use.

By the middle of the 16th century, the armies of both Muslim and Hindu states of South India consisted of mixed soldiery: Hindus, Muslims, and Portuguese. Firearms and fortifications were given increased strategic attention. The terms of military advantage, after being with Vijayanagara for almost half a century, shifted sharply and decisively to the Deccani sultanates in 1565 when a Vijayanagara army under A&lline;iya Rāmarāya (Rāmarāj), K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;adeva Rāya's son-in-law, was defeated and the city of Vijayanagara sacked. The Rāyas retreated to more southern centers of power, Penugo&ntod;&dtod;a and Velūru (Vellore), both to escape the power of the Deccani Muslims and to take better advantage of the resource base in Tamil country (map (e)). There, Vijayanagara military leaders (nāyakas) estab- lished themselves as increasingly independent powers and laid the foundation for successor states, the "nāyaka kingdoms" of Tañjāvūr, Madurai, and Jiñjī. Together with the Ikkeri king- dom in Tulu country, these states became the fragmented heirs of the Vijayanagara state by the late 16th century, notwith- standing efforts by some of the kings of the last Vijayanagara dynasty, the Aravīdus (1570–1675), to restore a unified Hindu state.

Sources (in addition to those in the General Bibliography or for Maps V.4 (a) and (b))

Primary Sources

As for map V.3 (c).

Other Works

F. C. Danvers (1966); G. W. Goonewardena (1958); H. Heras (1927); K. V. Krishna Ayyar (1938); T. V. Mahalingam (1951), (1955), (1969a); P. Mukherjee (1953); K. M. Panik- kar (1929), (1953a), (1960); P. E. Pieris (1913, 1914); P. E. Pieris and M. A. H. Fitzler (1927); M. Rama Rao (1971); B. A. Saletore (1934); R. Satyanatha Aiyar (1924), (1966); H. K. Sherwani (1967), (1974); K. D. Swaminathan (1957); N. Venkata Ramanayya (1935); V. Vriddhagirisan (1942); R. S. Whiteway (1899); G. Yazdani (1947). See also items marked ** among sources for maps V.2 (b), (d), and (e).

V.5. Religious and Cultural Sites, c. 1200–1525; Sufi Orders, Shrines, and Associated Saints, Late 11th Century–Early 16th Century; Saints and Poets of the Bhakti Movement, 13th Century–Early 16th Century

This map plate portrays the spatial distribution of a variety of religious and cultural phenomena associated with the period of the Delhi Sultanate and, in the case of the Sufi orders within Islam, of a somewhat lengthier period beginning late in the 11th century.

In addition to its information on renowned religious figures, map (a) indicates the sites of many of the more important monuments of South Asia from the perspective of art history. The monuments depicted are a very selective sample of what the age produced. The predominance of mosques and tombs is striking and testifies to the widespread political dominance of Islam. Conversely, the absence of temples among the major monuments over virtually all of northern India and a large part of peninsular India as well indicates the ending of state patron- age to Hindu and other non-Muslim religious sects and orders and, in some instances, the destruction of existing temples by some of the Muslim conquerers in areas newly won by them. Areas to which Muslim control was never extended, such as Nepal and Sri Lanka, or over which it was only brief or tenu- ous, notably southern peninsular India, do show substantial numbers of Hindu and Buddhist temples among the principal monuments of the period. The text for plate V.6 comments on the major forms and stylistic elements characterizing the art of the age.

Map (a), in part, and maps (b) and (c) deal with religious personages and movements of the time. Within both Hinduism and Islam a characteristic feature of the age, from a religious point of view, was the popularity, diversity, and wide-ranging influence of mystical movements—the Bhakti movement (map (c)) for Hinduism, and Sufism (map (b)) for Islam. Most of the remainder of this text will be devoted to a consideration of these movements; but some brief observations will also be made on the distribution and importance of other Hindu sects and religions that are not mapped.

Both the Bhakti movement and Sufism were antitraditional, and both sought to do away with ritual aspects of the religions from which they emanated. Contacts between Hindu Bhaktas (devotees) and Islamic Sufis were frequent and cordial. Each believed in the saving qualities of personal devotion and ex- pressed this belief through poetry. Among the followers of prominent Sufis could be found many Hindus, and conversely Muslims were not infrequently attracted to the personality and teachings of leading Bhakti saints. Indeed, some eclectic re- ligious teachers have been claimed, during their lifetimes and since, by members of both communities, notably Kabīr and Guru Nānak, founder of the Sikh religion. Love of God and belief in the brotherhood and equality of man were common elements in both movements, and many of their greatest teach- ers strove to bridge the gap of enmity and misunderstanding that separated Hinduism and Islam.

The origins of the term bhakti, the principal characteristics of the Bhakti movement, its beginnings in South India, and its early spread to other regions have already been discussed (see text for plate IV.4). By the 13th century, under the influence of Jñānadeva, the devotional fervor of Bhakti was a widely ac- cepted religious form in Maharashtra; somewhat later it reached a peak in North India and Bengal, where Rāmānanda and Caitanya respectively were leading figures in the movement. Our map shows the places of birth and death (if known), the period, and the principal areas of influence of the leading Bhakti saints and poets from the 13th to the early 16th century. It also indicates whether a saint was identified with devotion to K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;a or to Rāma, as was so often the case, or whether he was syncretic or eclectic or both in his approach to worship.

The basic theological position of Bhakti is dualistic. A strict form of this was posited by Madhvācārya (1197–1276), and some of the later saints and poets follow this philosopher. The essence of the position is that worship is the true and only effi- cacious end of man, and that worship implies total separation between the devotee and his divine object. Later, as in the Bengal school of Caitanya (1486–1533), for example, modifi- cations took place, leading to a position of compromise with monistic thought called acintya bhedābheda, "incomprehensi- ble (simultaneous) immanence and transcendence."

The deities were several, with Rāma and K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;a in his various forms (as child, as cowherd-lover) being the most popular. &Sdot;iva, however, is the object of devotion in the early Vīraśaiva movements in Karnataka (see plate IV.4 and text) and of the Kashmiri poetess, Lallā Ded, while for some Bhaktas the object of worship was the mother goddess, called by a variety of names. Both Kabīr (1399–1518?) and Nānak (1469–1538) expressed a synthetic attitude in which God is not differentiated by name and in which devotional fervor and personal quality, rather than tradition or ritual, define religious faith. When Kabīr or other poet-saints used the name of the deity Rāma, what they often meant was not the divine hero of the Rāmāya&ntod;a epic, but the transcendent God.

Although, like most "protestant" movements, the Bhakti movement later developed its own orthodoxy and ritual, in the early phases the major—and in some cases the only—religious expression was poetry and song. The poems of Mīrābāi (1492– 1546), a woman, are beautiful are beautiful and poignant expressions of longing for K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;a, the divine lover; those of Vidyāpatī (15th century) are complex in both metrics and thought; and those of Kabīr are often somewhat more didactic. But even with in- dividual variations, as a whole the Bhakti movement stimulated some of the most beautiful and moving poetry ever produced in India.

Three of the figures shown on map (c), Guru Nānak, Val- labhācārya (Vallabha), and Caitanya, are also treated on map (a), where we indicate places prominently associated with their lives. Each traveled widely in India, both as a pilgrim and as a religious preceptor. In doing so, they followed in the tradition of Śa&ndot;karācārya and many other great religious lead- ers before them and contributed to the cultural unity of India. The fact of Muslim rule did not appreciably alter the situation from their perspective. Interestingly, however, it is alleged that in his years as a seeker of religious truth, Nānak also traveled to Mecca and Medina, though this cannot be substantiated. In- deed, the accounts of the itineraries of all three figures vary markedly, and one cannot reconstruct reliable routes on the basis of the available sources. In plotting the places associated with each, then, we have indicated only those places of signifi- cance about which there is a scholarly consensus.

Of the three saints dealt with, Vallabha (1479–1532) was the least important. Whether or not he is rightfully included as a Bhakti saint is open to question. Although he preached the wor- ship of K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;a, much after the fashion of the Bhakti movement, he differed from most Bhaktas in being closely associated with traditional Vai&stod;&ntod;avism and with a formal philosophical system, śuddhādvaita (pure monism). He also founded his own school, Pu&stod;timarga, (roughly "Path of Divine Grace"). Formerly widely revered over much of northern India, Vallabha's sec- tarian followers are today confined mainly to Gujarat.

Caitanya, one of medieval India's most revered saints, was also a devotee of K&rtod;&stod;&ntod;a and did much to reestablish the re- ligious importance of the sacred city and precincts of Vrindā- vana (Brindaban), with which the life of that deity is so closely associated. He introduced a form of emotive singing (kīrtan) and promoted a type of fervid devotion leading to the point of