Introduction
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Mughal elite engaged Jain spiritual leaders in a series of theological debates. Members of the two groups discussed aspects of both Islam and Jainism at different points, including the veracity of Islam, whether Jains are monotheists, and the validity of Jain asceticism. Persianate court histories mention nothing about these conversations, but Jain authors narrate the exchanges in detail in numerous Sanskrit texts. Mughal historians are generally unaware of these Sanskrit historical records, and Indologists more broadly have typically failed to recognize the far-reaching implications of Jain-Mughal interactions for the political, religious, and intellectual histories of early modern India.Footnote 1 These cross-cultural debates showcase how the Mughals negotiated religious differences with diverse communities in their empire. Furthermore, the Sanskrit narratives of these dialogues outline complex theological visions of how Jain beliefs and practices could thrive within a potentially hazardous Islamicate imperial order. Jain and Mughal debates provide rich insight into the complex dynamics of religious precepts and local identities in Mughal political contexts.
These theological disputes all unfolded within the royal Mughal court, which was frequented by Jain monks from western India in substantial numbers from the 1580s to the 1610s. Members of the Tapa Gaccha, a Shvetambara sect, enjoyed particularly extensive imperial connections and became integrated into the fabric of Mughal court life.Footnote 2 They served as tutors to the royal princes, companions to the king, and informants for Persian accounts of Sanskrit knowledge systems. Tapa Gaccha affiliates relished the opportunities these positions afforded them to access, and possibly influence, the ruler. They successfully solicited the Mughal crown for many concessions to their regional and religious interests, including tax cuts, bans on animal slaughter, and control of pilgrimage sites.Footnote 3 But at times such intimate cross-cultural ties also exposed Jains to politically fraught confrontations, especially when their religious sensibilities clashed with those of the imperial Muslim elite.Footnote 4
Jains wrote about their interactions with the Mughals, including theological discussions, in numerous Sanskrit works that were composed between 1589 and 1653.Footnote 5 The majority of these texts were authored by Tapa Gaccha affiliates (the remainder were by Kharatara Gaccha members), and all were directed at local, often strictly sectarian audiences.Footnote 6 While the debates themselves almost certainly took place in either a form of Old Hindi or Persian, these accounts are in Sanskrit. Moreover, Jains continued to produce these narratives decades after courtly relations with their religious leaders had ceased in the 1610s, and Sanskrit inscriptions and later treatises also refer to Jain-Mughal ties, in a more limited fashion.Footnote 7 Several Jain-authored Gujarati works also discuss events at the Mughal court and have yet to be researched in any detail.Footnote 8 This sustained attention suggests that stories of cross-cultural connections became an integrated part of the Tapa Gaccha's self-conceptualization and were important to repeatedly recount for the faithful (even in the absence of ongoing relations between Jain monks and the imperial elite). These Sanskrit narratives served multiple community interests for a group whose recent past was thoroughly intertwined with powerful Islamic rulers. Each author explores different ways of reformulating the Tapa Gaccha's literary and religious traditions to be salient within a Mughal-defined world.
Among the numerous challenges that Jain leaders faced from the Mughals, three encounters stand out as major moments of navigating theological diversity in an imperial context. First, in the 1580s Akbar's chief vizier, Abu’l Fazl, allegedly questioned Hiravijaya, the leader of the Tapa Gaccha, about the legitimacy of Islam. The Jain account of this event offers one of the few expositions of basic Islamic beliefs in Sanskrit and promotes Hiravijaya and the Tapa Gaccha tradition as uniquely able to answer the threat of Mughal-supported Islam. Second, in 1592 Akbar was convinced by Brahmans to accuse the Tapa Gaccha of atheism, which prompted a vigorous rebuttal from Vijayasena, a community leader and later Hiravijaya's successor. Two Sanskrit authors describe this episode in notably dissimilar versions that invoke variant perspectives within Jain theology, including different identifications of the Jain God. Moreover, they each situate Vijayasena's defence in particular historical contexts that highlight the cultural and intellectual values of narrating these debates for a Jain readership. Last, in the early seventeenth century a Jain monk known as Siddhicandra incurred Jahangir's wrath when he refused the king's order to take a wife. Siddhicandra personally attests to the ensuing argument, which raised significant doubts about whether ascetic vows are consonant with Jain philosophical principles. Together, these three instances speak to crucial questions regarding religious differences and identities, Mughal imperial dynamics, and Indian intellectual culture in early modernity.
Jain and Mughal debates provide detailed, grounded instances of how early moderns perceived religious affiliation in an Indo-Islamic context. In the last few decades, scholars have overwhelmingly focused on syncretic or hybrid interactions in pre-colonial India.Footnote 9 Many have questioned the assumptions inherent in the concept of syncretism and proposed translation or, in the case of Akbar's court, the still poorly understood Islamicate notion of ‘peace for all’ (ṣulḥ-i kull) as fruitful alternatives.Footnote 10 While this scholarship has deepened our understanding of how religious lines were often fluid, not all early moderns aimed to transcend their theological specificities, even when they recognized some shared ground.Footnote 11 On the contrary, the Mughals and their Jain respondents attempted to work out the contrasts and similarities between their religious systems and the consequences of upholding various doctrinal convictions within an environment defined by royal authority.
In addition to elucidating how members of different communities related to one another within the Mughal Empire, these debates also furnish insight into the contours of religious affiliation in early modern India more generally. Scholars have largely abandoned the argument that Sanskrit thinkers lacked a concept of ‘religion’ simply because of the absence of a corresponding Sanskrit term. But the changing nature of religious identities in pre-colonial India still remains undertheorized. Jains who wrote about the Mughal court outline a complex vision of a specific and yet negotiable set of beliefs, practices, and political and social identities. This case-study also contributes a much-needed foundation to arguments that posit a break in how religious identities were formulated in South Asia before and after colonialism.
Moreover, Mughal interreligious discussions with Jains yield crucial clues regarding imperial dynamics. Most historians have ignored altogether the significant and varied roles of Jains and other non-Muslim Indian religious groups at the Mughal court, largely because Sanskrit and vernacular (rather than Persian) materials are the major sources for this social history. Moreover, when scholars describe religious debates in Akbar's court, they often speak narrowly of the ‘ibādatkhānah, a house of religious discussions that lasted only a few years, and envision a free-flowing exchange of ideas that bears little resemblance to the politically fraught realities of the Akbari dispensation.Footnote 12 Mughal disputes with Jain leaders allow a more thorough investigation into how theological questions intersected, sometimes perilously, with political concerns. Here we move beyond an idealized view of Akbar-led religious inquiries that operated outside any imperial consequences and instead begin to parse the nuanced workings of Mughal authority in interactions with leaders of different communities. Jahangir also initiated religious disagreements with Jain leaders. Jahangir's interest in cross-cultural conversations has come into greater prominence recently with the publication of the Majālis-i Jahāngīrī (Jahangir's Assemblies) and several astute analyses of this work.Footnote 13 Jain texts add further depth to our understanding of Jahangir's reign and Mughal modes of power that extended across the rules of multiple emperors.
Last, this set of exchanges captures a crucial moment in the intellectual history of early modern India. Over the past few decades, many scholars have filled in gaps in our knowledge of Indian critical thought ‘on the eve of colonialism’. The story of Jains at the Mughal court builds upon the work of Sanskritists who have analysed previously neglected materials from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Footnote 14 But, unlike most earlier studies, here I focus on Jain authors rather than Brahmans. Jains have often been unjustly disregarded in accounts of India's intellectual past, and nowhere is this oversight more detrimental than for the early modern period. Jains wrote vociferously about their encounters with the Mughals, whereas Brahmans maintained a nearly complete narrative silence in Sanskrit on their imperial activities. Elsewhere I have investigated the possible meanings and implications of this omission of Brahmanical textual memory.Footnote 15 Here it suffices to emphasize that Jains provide a unique perspective on what it meant to stretch the boundaries of Sanskrit literature to incorporate historical encounters with the Mughals and Islamic thought. In these Sanskrit works, Jains comment on radical social and political changes associated with the Mughal political order.
Before analysing particular discussions and texts, a few comments are warranted on the historical validity of Jain Sanskrit sources. These materials are far more than mere eyewitness reports, and Jain authors considered aesthetic taste and theological appropriateness alongside the prerogative to truthfully represent the past. Individual writers offer little overt commentary regarding their literary priorities, but two points are worth mentioning. First, all three meetings considered below are confirmed by numerous historical sources, and the basic outline of the latter two discussions is also true beyond a reasonable doubt.Footnote 16 Second, these narratives are enriched rather than flawed by being a ‘view from somewhere’ that incorporates religious and aesthetic sensibilities.Footnote 17 Instead of restricting themselves to dry facts, Jain writers proffer a non-imperial perspective on court dynamics and Mughal hegemony. These viewpoints can begin to balance modern interpretations of the Mughal imperium that are often overly and unapologetically reliant on Persian-language chronicles.Footnote 18 But, more importantly, Jain sources invite reflection on not only the minutiae of history but also literary practices, community memory, and religious identities in pre-colonial India.
Confronting Islam in Sanskrit
In 1582, Hiravijaya travelled to the Mughal court to meet with Emperor Akbar and remained in residence at the imperial capital in Fatehpur Sikri until 1585. Many Jain writers divulge various details of this extended visit.Footnote 19 But Devavimala alone tells the story that Abu’l Fazl instigated a debate with the Tapa Gaccha leader about the merits of Islam versus Jainism. Their resulting conversation showcases a striking and unprecedented description of Muslim beliefs in the Sanskrit literary world. After hearing about Islam, Hiravijaya provided a forceful theological response and even purportedly swayed Abu’l Fazl towards Jain convictions. Devavimala uses this episode to bolster the larger project of his work to deify Hiravijaya, who is presented as exceptionally capable of upholding the Tapa Gaccha tradition within the Mughal Empire.
Devavimala idolizes Hiravijaya throughout his biography, titled Hīrasaubhāgya (Good Fortune of Hiravijaya). He composed the lengthy 17-chapter text, along with an autocommentary, shortly after Hiravijaya Suri's ritual death by starvation in 1596.Footnote 20 Paul Dundas has written at length about how Devavimala venerates Hiravijaya by likening the Tapa Gaccha leader to important Jain and Hindu figures and also lauding him as embodying the ideals of classical Indian kingship.Footnote 21 These combined methods produce the image of a Jain spiritual sovereign whose authority is formidably articulated in numerous Indic idioms. Alongside these more tradition-bound claims, Devavimala also devotes a few chapters to Hiravijaya's interactions with the Mughals and here investigates how to express the Tapa Gaccha's weight in the Indo-Islamic world.
Devavimala begins by giving Hiravijaya a strong opponent to defeat, namely Abu’l Fazl, who is depicted as a learned theologian. From the beginning, Devavimala frames the vizier as a religious scholar, describing Abu’l Fazl as ‘seeing the far edge of the ocean of Islamic learning’.Footnote 22 In his commentary, Devavimala further specifies that Abu’l Fazl knows multiple Islamic scriptures including the Qur’an and Qur’anic exegesis.Footnote 23 After a brief interlude during which Akbar found himself distracted and asked Abu’l Fazl to meet with their guest, Devavimala again characterizes the vizier as ‘learned in the secrets of all śāstras’ and glosses śāstras as ‘Islamic scriptures beginning with the Qur’an’.Footnote 24
Hiravijaya exceeded the vizier's accreditations from the start, however, which set the stage for a decisive Tapa Gaccha victory. The discussion began when Abu’l Fazl recognized the Tapa Gaccha leader as a wise discriminator ‘regarding both Islamic and Jain creeds’ and so approached the sage respectfully, ‘like a student’.Footnote 25 Then, having gathered a crowd of people to act as an audience for the exchange, Abu’l Fazl asked Hiravijaya's opinion of Muslim convictions. At this point Devavimala breaks from traditional Sanskrit wisdom and includes Abu’l Fazl's exposition of Islam along with Hiravijaya's response. This passage is worth quoting at length for its astounding admission of Islam into Sanskrit discourse as a cogent system of belief. According to Devavimala, Abu’l Fazl said:
O Suri, this was laid out by the ancient prophets in our scriptures—all Muslims (yavana) who are deposited on earth as guests of the god of death will rise at the end of the earth and come before the court of the Supreme Lord called khudā, like they come to the court of an earthly king. He will cast good and bad qualities onto his own pure mind as if onto a mirror and bring about rightful judgement there, having refuted the false construction of mine versus another’s. Having reflected, he will bestow the appropriate result of [the Muslims’] virtues and vices, like the fertile soil generates plentiful grain from different seeds. Some will be brought to heaven by him, just as boats are led to the edge of the ocean by a favourable wind. Then they will live pleasurably, nearly overwhelmed by floods of suitable, amazing enjoyments. Others will be sent to hell by him due to sin. Like birds being crushed by hawks and pots being fired by potters, they will suffer great agonies at the mercies of hell's guards. O Suri, what is the validity of this Qur’anic speech (kurānavākyaṃ)? It is true like the speech of great-souled people, or is it false like a flower in the sky?Footnote 26
Devavimala's open exposition of Muslim beliefs contrasts sharply with the strong preference for eliding Islam in Sanskrit texts. Philosophers overwhelmingly refused to incorporate Islam into Sanskrit discourse as a tradition that could be considered alongside Buddhist, Jain, and Brahmanical thought. Sanskrit narratives frequently feature Muslim figures but refer to them using ethnic or social (rather than religious) categories.Footnote 27 Against this custom of unyielding rejection, Devavimala gives Islam a substantial platform as a theological system within a Sanskrit poem. He further refers to a body of Islamic texts, above all the Qur’an, and employs several Perso-Islamic terms that are transliterated into Sanskrit and defined in the commentary.Footnote 28 Thus, Devavimala presents Islam as a recognizable religious tradition with its own vocabulary and a solid textual basis.
In his commentary, Devavimala softens the brazen innovation of this passage by linking Islamic ideas with traditional Sanskrit thought. For example, he explains why Allah will refute ‘the false construction of mine versus another’s’ by citing a famous Sanskrit sentiment that the entire world is a single family: ‘only narrow-minded people make the distinction of mine versus another’s. For the right-minded, the whole world is a family.’Footnote 29 Variants of this verse appear in many texts, and Devavimala quotes a version found in the Hitopadeśa (Friendly Advice), a ubiquitous book of instructive fables.Footnote 30 Devavimala also connects the description of hell's vicious guards with a Prakrit verse from Dharmadasa's Vidagdhamukhamaṇḍana (Ornament of the Clever-mouthed), a popular work of riddles dating to the mid eleventh century or earlier.Footnote 31 Through such references, he attempts to render Islam explicable within the intellectual universe of Sanskrit, and suggests some measure of equivalence between Muslim and traditional Indian ideas. Despite his attempts to cushion the newness of this dialogue, however, Devavimala's ingenuity in detailing Islamic beliefs at all is arresting. Furthermore, Hiravijaya's retort indicates a wide gulf of understanding between Islamic and Jain world-views.
According to Devavimala, Hiravijaya deposed Abu’l Fazl's Islamic convictions by methodically questioning the logic of a creator God, heaven, hell, and judgement day. In lieu of Allah, Hiravijaya argued for the supremacy of the Jain doctrine of action (karma) as governing all things:
‘He—who is free of dirt like a shell, devoid of defects like the sun, made of flames like fire, and without a body like the god of love—is the Supreme Lord. In what form does he attend court like a living being that adopts many appearances in his wanderings through existence? There he sets a person on the path to heaven or hell for what reason? A previous action, once ripened, has the power to grant both joys and sorrows. Thus, let action (karma) alone be recognized as the creator of the world, since otherwise [God] has no purpose.’ When the lord of ascetics [Hiravijaya] fell silent after speaking, Shaykh [Abu’l Fazl] replied: ‘That book [commentary: Qur’an] is recognized as false just as inconsistency is recognized in the speech of a garrulous, vile person.’ The Lord [Hiravijaya] spoke again: ‘If the creator first makes this world and then later destroys it as if he were fire, he would have unparalleled distress. There is no creator or destroyer of the world whose variety is brought into being by its own karma. Therefore, the existence of a creator, like the birth of a son to a barren woman, appears false to me.’Footnote 32
Throughout his reply, Hiravijaya refuted Abu’l Fazl point by point, but he relied squarely on established Jain thinking. Jains had long denied any God or gods the role of being creators and instead contended that individuals have control over their own fate within the world. They frequently promoted this view against Brahmanical schools of thought that identified a particular God as the maker of reality.Footnote 33 Even when Abu’l Fazl interrupted to proclaim that this argument falsified the Qur’an, Hiravijaya did not adapt his views for an Islamic audience. Instead he continued to articulate Jain thinking on action (karma) as it had been elaborated for centuries. As we will see, later writers, such as Hemavijaya, sometimes present Tapa Gaccha representatives as answering religious questions from the Mughals in creative ways that allowed for correspondences with Islamic sensibilities. But Devavimala outlines a view more exclusively grounded in Jain theological discourse and even cites religious treatises, such as the Kalpasūtra, in his commentary.Footnote 34 In closing, Devavimala declares that through his words Hiravijaya placed dharma, whose basis is compassion (dayā), within the heart of Abu’l Fazl.Footnote 35
Whether this exchange actually happened remains dubious, and Abu’l Fazl's alleged conversion to Jainism is certainly a rhetorical flourish rather than a historical claim. But this narrative nonetheless presents three major insights concerning the implications of religious diversity at the Mughal court. First, in this anecdote, Devavimala establishes Jainism and Islam as comparable, although highly unequal, theological systems. As I mention above, Devavimala departs drastically from his predecessors and contemporaries in allowing Islam to penetrate the boundaries of Sanskrit literature at all, much less as an alternative to Jain ways of understanding the world. Furthermore, he deploys Abu’l Fazl, a prominent political figure and a leading intellectual of his day, as the mouthpiece for Muslim beliefs. He even permits Islam a fairly full hearing, equivalent in length to Hiravijaya's winning rebuttal. Here Devavimala invokes theology as a primary mode of expressing cultural difference and characterizes Jain and Mughal relations in terms of their incompatible religious doctrines.
Second, Devavimala uses this theological clash between Hiravijaya and Abu’l Fazl to advance a forceful argument that the Tapa Gaccha is a vibrant, competitive tradition within the Mughal imperium, a de facto Islamic space. In this sense, the Jain victory appears all the more potent for the authority and substance allocated to Islam and its prominent spokesman. Crucially, Devavimala argues that Hiravijaya could counter Islam because of the Tapa Gaccha's claims to theological certainty. He also promotes the strength of Jainism vis-à-vis the Mughals in other ways throughout his text. For example, immediately following this episode, Devavimala narrates how Hiravijaya taught a rather receptive Akbar about Jain dharma. Devavimala goes into more detail regarding Jain beliefs in this exchange and also compares this meeting to royal connections forged by earlier Jain leaders.Footnote 36 Other writers in both the Tapa Gaccha and the rival Kharatara Gaccha frequently offer similar stories about Jain teachers who allegedly ‘enlightened’ Akbar. This sort of interaction would have seemed familiar to early modern Jain readers as a laudable case where a pious monk leads a king to proper religious practice. But Hiravijaya's discussion with Abu’l Fazl highlights more pointedly how Jain perspectives were dynamic within the changing religious milieu of Mughal India and could even dominate politically supported Islam.
Last, Devavimala's description of Muslim beliefs constitutes an important break with the Sanskrit trend of denying Islam the status of a religious or philosophical system. Even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Brahmanical philosophers overwhelmingly did not recognize Islam.Footnote 37 By the mid eighteenth century exceptions began to surface, but they are rather limited. For instance, one author briefly denounced Islam in a Sanskrit treatise, but he switched to Rajasthani for this section of his work.Footnote 38 Andrew Nicholson has suggested that some early modern criticisms directed against Buddhists and Jains are vague enough to have been interpreted by astute readers as applicable to Muslims as well.Footnote 39 Nonetheless, Devavimala seems to stand apart in providing a Sanskrit exposition of Islamic theology within a specific historical context. This bold innovation showcases the elasticity of the early modern Sanskrit tradition and the contested boundaries of its intellectual domain.
Divergent proofs for Jain monotheism at Akbar's court
Jain intellectuals record multiple occasions when Akbar called upon Hiravijaya and his successor, Vijayasena, to explain the nature of ‘God’ within Tapa Gaccha theology. These discussions were sometimes benign but became confrontational when the Mughals doubted whether Jains were monotheists. Akbar and Jahangir tolerated different religious sensibilities at the royal court but perceived atheism as beyond the pale of acceptability.Footnote 40 In order to remain welcome members of the emperor's inner circle, Jain leaders necessarily proclaimed themselves to be monotheists before the Mughal assembly. Moreover, Jains developed highly divergent records of such discussions in Sanskrit for circulation within their communities. These debates and their narrativizations reveal how Jains navigated the treacherous boundaries of religious distinctions. These exchanges also highlight how Jains reformulated certain aspects of their own tradition in order to operate within a Mughal-defined world.
One exemplary case is the accusation of atheism lobbied against the Tapa Gaccha at the imperial court in the early 1590s. Vijayasena, who was next in line for leadership of the group, responded to Mughal horror at the prospect that Jains deny the existence of God. The two earliest chroniclers of this exchange, Hemavijaya and Siddhicandra, invoke variant perspectives within Jain philosophy to refute the charge of atheism, including different identifications of the Jain God. Moreover, they each situate Vijayasena's defence in particular historical contexts that highlight, respectively, the political and intellectual stakes of the debate. Taken together, these two writers show erudition and flexibility to be great strengths of the Jain tradition that allowed its followers to flourish in Mughal environs and perhaps even enabled them to literize their experiences.
Hemavijaya and Siddhicandra both wrote in the 1620s–1630s and include Vijayasena's testimony to Jain monotheism in larger hagiographies.Footnote 41 They begin this episode with the same frame story where Vijayasena impressed the Mughal assembly with his intellectual skills. The Jains and Akbar mutually rejoiced in their increasingly close relations, much to the chagrin of certain Brahmans and Rajputs at court who became jealous.Footnote 42 At this point Siddhicandra and Hemavijaya diverge in their accounts and offer differing attestations of both the Mughal charge and Vijayasena's answer. Hemavijaya emphasizes the dispute's immediate political consequences, whereas Siddhicandra underscores its significance in traditional Indian intellectual discourse.
According to Hemavijaya, the central issue at stake was whether Akbar was convinced that the Jains believed in a monotheistic God. Trouble began when, upon seeing the Tapa Gaccha rise in Akbar's esteem, a nameless Brahman articulated a rather detailed case against the sect that resonated with basic Islamic suppositions. He exclaimed:
Those idiot Jains do not believe that there is a pure one, without a physical form, changeless, sinless, emancipated from rebirth, free of emotional agitations, passionless, independent, the slayer of all sins, and the maker of all happiness, namely God (parameśvara). The path of those fools who do not believe God is the source of the world is always in vain like a fixed point without coordinates. Therefore, O Sun of the Courts of Shahs, the sight of those people is not good for kings like you, any more than the sight of menstruating women.Footnote 43
As intended, the Brahman's words infuriated Akbar who put a more basic query to Vijayasena: ‘“These great-souled cheats of all mankind with hoards of worldly practices certainly do not believe in God (parameśvara)”—O Guru, Let your words banish this doubt from my mind just as a cloth removes oil from water.’Footnote 44 In his reformulation of the Brahman's criticism, Akbar omitted many specific charges, most conspicuously the issue of a creator God, and asked more generally about Jain opinions regarding a supreme deity. This shift allowed Vijayasena to champion Jains as monotheists without disingenuously assenting to a creator.Footnote 45 Moreover, this reduced charge removed the encounter from the history of debates with Brahman opponents in favour of exploring a possible dissonance between Islamic and Jain world-views.
With the stage set for possible heresy, which could result in the disastrous expulsion of the Jains from court, Vijayasena defended his imperial alliance. Hemavijaya records the response in 61 verses as the Jain leader weaved eloquent descriptions of God with more pointed statements about Jain precepts. In the middle of his speech, Vijayasena offered his most direct answer to the king's challenge:
The Shaivas worship him as ‘Shiva’ and the Vedantins as ‘Brahma’, The Buddhists who are sharp in logic worship him as ‘Buddha’ and the Mimamsakas as ‘Karma’. Those who ascribes to the Jain scriptures worship him as ‘Arhat’, and the Naiyayikas as ‘Creator’. May that Hari, the Lord of the Three Worlds, give you whatever you desire.Footnote 46
Thus the Jain God is Arhat, also known as Jina, and is comparable to a range of deities in other Indian systems. Jain thinkers had often held that a similar expression of the ultimate commensurability between gods was found in texts such as the Bhaktāmarastotra, which they incidentally claim to have recited before Akbar and Jahangir.Footnote 47 Moreover, Jain philosophical compendiums had long followed a similar approach, identifying a specific deity (deva or devatā) for each tradition.Footnote 48 Hemavijaya clearly found the Jain penchant for compiling and comparing theistic ideas useful in articulating Vijayasena's response. However, these compendiums often defined theist (āstika) as an ethical rather than a doctrinal category that might be more aptly described as ‘non-materialist’.Footnote 49 In this sense, Hemavijaya depicts Vijayasena as making a far stronger claim than many of his intellectual predecessors whom the Jains qualified as monotheists according to Islamic standards.
Hemavijaya also judged the argument of comparability inadequate on its own merits and relays that Vijayasena punctuated his statement with a wish for Akbar's well-being that invokes a name of Vishnu (Hari). Vishnu was an appropriate God to call upon for royal blessings and would have been more familiar than other Indian gods to the Mughal elite.Footnote 50 Additionally, in having Vijayasena directly address the emperor, Hemavijaya reminds his readers of the Mughal king's centrality in this affair and indicates that Akbar alone will determine the Jains’ fate.Footnote 51
In Hemavijaya's telling, Vijayasena devoted the other 60 verses of his reply to elaborating the intricate Jain imagery surrounding Arhat, a two-fold deity. Vijayasena spent the first half of his speech defining a formless, eternal God ‘whose essence is knowledge and whose nature is inconceivable’.Footnote 52 His descriptions often refuted the specific Brahmanical objections that the Jains do not consent to a God who is pure, lacking a physical form, and so forth. He also drew upon a long Jain tradition of emphasizing God's inactivity in the world.Footnote 53 Vijayasena proclaimed in the closing line of his speech: ‘We always say that in this aspect God has no beginning, no birth, is free of a soul that links him to this world, is made of knowledge, and is without equal.’Footnote 54 In this view, Arhat is suitably vague and lofty as to be palatable to Islamic sensibilities, which often emphasize the all-powerful and unqualified nature of God. In other circumstances, the Mughals also pressured Brahmans to admit a higher power devoid of form and attributes.Footnote 55 Yet such syncretic possibilities do not preclude the second half of Vijayasena's analysis, which is more specifically situated within Jain thought.
Over 31 verses, Vijayasena portrayed Arhat as one of the Jain ford-makers (tīrthāṅkara) who descended to earth to spread the Jain teaching. Vijayasena focused on Arhat's first sermon as an enlightened individual, which took place in a divine assembly hall (samavasaraṇa) and is much celebrated in Jain literature and art.Footnote 56 His imagery follows traditional Jain ideals to the letter as gods, men, and animals peacefully gathered to hear the Jina's teachings.Footnote 57 Moreover, Gunavijaya added a commentary to the Vijayapraśastimahākāvya that brings out further nuances of this scene, such as identifying the 11 marks that show Arhat had overcome causality.Footnote 58 It is quite plausible that Vijayasena articulated this detailed description before the Mughal court. Abu’l Fazl crafted an extensive section on Jainism in his Ā’īn-i Akbarī (Akbar's Institutes), part of a major court history, and therein repeats some of these characteristics, such as Arhat's fragrant breath, white flesh and blood, and lack of sweat.Footnote 59 But the details of Arhat on earth would hardly have helped Vijayasena's case that the Jain God is comparable to Allah. Here Hemavijaya's retelling seems designed to assure a Jain audience that admitting some parallels with Islam did not infringe on their distinct theological precepts. In this way, Hemavijaya demonstrates the fitness of the Tapa Gaccha for the current political climate by balancing its flexibility of religious formulations with specific convictions.
At the end of Vijayasena's elaborate defence, Hemavijaya returns to the political peril of this debate and narrates the return of the Tapa Gaccha to a place of pride in Akbar's estimation. First, he proclaims that the emperor's doubts were fully allayed.Footnote 60 As for the Brahmans, ‘when the Brahmans were defeated by the Suri, they became so emasculated it is amazing the town people did not lust after them as if they were women’.Footnote 61 The Jains, on the other hand, were highly praised by the Mughal king, and their fame grew immeasurably as Vijayasena exited the court in triumph to return to a renunciant way of life. Hemavijaya marvels at how Vijayasena shone like the sun and commends his wisdom in this exchange, which resulted in increased political clout for the Tapa Gaccha.Footnote 62 For Hemavijaya, Mughal power as embodied in the emperor defined both the accusation of atheism and the benefits of overcoming this suspicion. Jain leaders were able to respond to Islamic concerns without compromising their theology precisely because their tradition understood God as possessing multiple aspects.
Siddhicandra relates a rather different version of these events that is far more grounded in traditional Indian philosophical disputes. He changes the audience for the exchange, the course of Vijayasena's argument, and the Jain God. Even more than Hemavijaya, Siddhicandra reformulates this episode for a Jain readership that is edified by reviewing complex doctrinal points. For Siddhicandra, Vijayasena's defence of Jain monotheism was an opportunity to engage in longstanding disagreements with Brahmanical schools of thought, and the Mughal court was primarily a stage for the exchange.
Siddhicandra opens with an objection that is a mix of Brahmanical and Mughal concerns. He places the initial accusation in the voice of Ramdas Kachhwaha, a Rajput in the service of the Mughals, who said to Akbar: ‘These [Jains] are outside of the Vedas, do not worship God (paramātma), and never do obeisance before the king.’Footnote 63 Here Ramdas surrounded the central charge of atheism with two other affronts that indicate the dual contexts of this debate. The last offence (refusal to bow) is not necessarily theological, but it pointedly underscores that Jains risked losing Akbar's approval if they did not meet imperial expectations. Ramdas frequently advanced Vaishnava interests at the royal court and so it seems reasonable that he sought to displace the Jains from Mughal favour.Footnote 64 But the mention of the Vedas is more enigmatic.
Siddhicandra likely uses the phrase ‘outside of the Vedas’ (vedabāhya) here in a deliberately ambivalent sense. In the context of the Mughal court, he probably intended ‘Veda’ in a broad sense of acceptable scriptures so that ‘outside of the Veda’ meant something like ‘separate from people of the book’.Footnote 65 Similar uses of ‘Veda’ are known from contemporary vernacular works.Footnote 66 Akbar included Hindus within the protected category of monotheistic ‘people of the book’ (ahl-i kitāb) and would have been concerned about whether Jains also qualified. But Jain readers would have recognized the category of vedabāhya from philosophical and legal discourses, where it indicated groups that rejected the Vedas and was frequently applied to Jains, Buddhists, Pashupatas, et cetera.Footnote 67 In the early modern period, this phrase was still in active use in disputes between religious communities.Footnote 68 Thus, in employing this expression, Siddhicandra signals the importance of the impending exchange within Indian philosophical contests. Writing about this episode several decades later in 1652/3, Vallabha Pathaka similarly presents the issue in terms of Jain-Brahmanical differences and portrays Akbar asking Vijayasena, ‘Why do you not believe in Rama and mother Ganga?’Footnote 69 Siddhicandra places the conversation in a more learned context than Vallabha Pathaka, however, which he also indicates through the set of people involved in the discussion.
According to Siddhicandra, Akbar put the Rajput's accusation to Vijayasena, who denied everything. Then Bhattacarya, a Brahmanical (likely Shaivite) leader, contended, ‘It may be assented by them verbally, but nothing of the kind is found in their scriptures (śāstra).’Footnote 70 At this point, Akbar asked his vizier, Abu’l Fazl, to settle the disagreement and retreated from the scene. Siddhicandra repeatedly presents Abu’l Fazl as a paragon of Sanskrit learning in his Bhānucandragaṇicarita. When he first introduces the vizier in the text, Siddhicandra marvels:
The wisdom [of Shaykh Abu’l Fazl] extended to all the śāstras, including Jainism, Mimamsa, Buddhism, Sankhya, Vaisheshika, Carvaka, Jaiminiya, literature (kāvya), yoga, Vedanta, lexicography, music, drama, aesthetic tropes, mythology (purāṇa), metrical works, the science of omens, astrology, mathematics, physiognomy, political science, erotics, veterinary sciences, and guardianship. In terms of writing (vāṅmaya), there is nothing that he has not seen or heard.Footnote 71
Elsewhere Siddhicandra notes that his teacher, Bhanucandra, tutored Abu’l Fazl in Sanskrit philosophy using the compendium Ṣaḍdarśanasamuccaya (Collection of the Six Schools).Footnote 72 In the current situation, Abu’l Fazl exercised his erudition in the entirety of Sanskrit learning to facilitate a consolidated tour of old Jain-Brahman debates that had been worked out over many centuries.
Siddhicandra's cryptic narrative of the exchange between Bhattacarya and Vijayasena is difficult to follow and assumes familiarity with frequently rehearsed arguments. But the core question revolved around whether there is a creator God, an issue that was dropped at the beginning of the discussion in Hemavijaya's version. Vijayasena used many practiced Jain arguments, and several of his contentions also correspond closely with those proffered by Kumarila in his Ślokavārttika.Footnote 73 At the end of their verbal spar, Vijayasena summarized the Tapa Gaccha position that any creator would be reliant on others and thus by definition not God: ‘if one who was dependent on action (karma) created, then he would not be independent and [instead] would be just like us. And given that all sorts of things are born from action (karma), then what need do we have of Vishnu?’Footnote 74 Thus, karma is God for the Jains in the sense of accounting for the cycle of cause and effect in the world, and all individuals qualify for the lesser status of creators because they initiate actions.Footnote 75 Moreover, Vijayasena contended in closing that it is ridiculous to require belief in a creator God in order to be considered theists:
Given this line of reasoning, because of not assenting to the state of being a creator in respect to man but in respect to natural matter that is insentient, how are the Sankhyas believers in God? And saying that ‘this world arose unprecedented, born from a sacrifice recorded in the Vedas’, how are the Vaisheshikas believers in God? And believing that ‘this world is an illusion, without God as a creator’, how are the Vedantins believers in God?Footnote 76
Thus, if Bhattacarya would deny that karma qualifies the Jains as theists, then he must also invalidate a variety of other Indian schools of thought. Siddhicandra celebrates that Vijayasena rendered the Brahmans speechless with this ‘powerful ocean of reasoning’.Footnote 77 Such logic would not appear to be particularly convincing to someone who ascribed to an Islamic-based conception of Almighty Allah. But here we are far from an Islamic Mughal court and deeply engulfed in the world of Sanskrit philosophy. Crucially, Siddhicandra ends the episode with Abu’l Fazl proclaiming that the Jains ‘spoke in accordance with their own teachings’.Footnote 78 Here Siddhicandra seems to forget about discrediting the accusation of atheism. Instead he names consistency within Jainism's own philosophical system as the standard of victory and proclaims the strength of the Tapa Gaccha's theological tradition to a sectarian readership.
Thus, Siddhicandra and Hemavijaya agree on the basic argument that the Tapa Gaccha espouses a monotheistic system but individually emphasize distinct nuances within Jain thought. Taken together, one is struck by the ability of these writers to articulate divergent but yet consonant ideas. Hemavijaya promotes two compatible views of God as a transcendent deity beyond attributes and an enlightened teacher incarnate on earth; Arhat is to be revered in both aspects and occupies a central place in Jain thought akin to Allah's position in Islam. Siddhicandra evades finding a Jain God that is to be worshipped and rather identifies the cycle of cause and effect that governs the world as providing the same explanatory power within Jainism in accounting for reality as God does in other religious traditions. All of these explanations are consistent with Jain philosophy and demonstrate how Tapa Gaccha thinkers could advantageously present select aspects of their theology.
The lesson for Jain readers of the works of Siddhicandra and Hemavijaya seems to be that while political alliances may give rise to religious challenges, the Jain system is well equipped to transform such threats into opportunities for even greater gain precisely because of its multiplicity of perspectives. Given that sustained relations between Tapa Gaccha monks and the Mughals ended in the 1610s, Jain ascetics had few further needs to invoke such flexibility in an imperial context. Nonetheless, Jains faced suspicions of atheism at several later points, for example from Hindu leaders and Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century when Jain thinkers outlined still additional views of their deity.Footnote 79 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the sophisticated ability to articulate congruent perspectives may partly explain why Jains wrote extensively and diversely about their experiences at the Mughal court while Brahmans frequently remained mute.
Last, particularly when consider in tandem, Hemavijaya and Siddhicandra demonstrate that Tapa Gaccha authors perceived immense value in narrating these altercations for a local audience. Others, such as Vallabha Pathaka, also discuss this exchange, as I mention above. Additionally, a long inscription carved in 1595 at Shatrunjaya, a pilgrimage destination in Gujarat, broadcasted Vijayasena's heroism in this episode:
[Vijayasena] openly established in the assembly of Shah Akbar that unparalleled Arhat was to be understood as God (parameśvaratva) using such lofty words that the bhattas, lords of the Brahmans, whose babbling was sheer madness, became blinded by powerful proofs like thieves confronted by a great light.Footnote 80
Through such continual recountings, this debate and other Jain-Mughal encounters became a constituent part of the Tapa Gaccha's self-identity that it was beneficial to remember even in the absence of ongoing imperial relations. Nonetheless, not all Mughal challenges to Jain theology ended so well, and Tapa Gaccha leaders ultimately fell from royal favour because of a religious conflict.
Defending Jain asceticism from imperial interference
While Tapa Gaccha monks eagerly engaged with the Mughals in many respects, they were also sensitive to the risk that political ties could undermine religious obligations. Moreover, intellectuals feared that lay followers and critics from other Jain sects might infer laxity, whether or not it actually came to pass. Many authors deploy stock tropes to counter these worries, such as that ascetic leaders refused monetary rewards from the Mughal kings to maintain their detachment from the world or declined to sit on luxurious carpets to avoid hurting small insects underneath.Footnote 81 Often these moments served as public glorifyings (prabhāvanā) where overcoming secular temptations actually enhanced the prestige of the Tapa Gaccha tradition and justified the involvement of monks in political affairs.Footnote 82 One thinker, Siddhicandra, offers a particularly complex story in this vein about how he resolutely remained committed to asceticism despite immense pressure from Jahangir and his wife, Nur Jahan.
Siddhicandra has featured in this discussion already as an author, but a few biographical details are helpful here. Siddhicandra was a Tapa Gaccha monk who spent significant time at Akbar's court. He was also the only Jain figure of his time known to be fluent in Persian and, by his own admission, read Persian texts to the Mughal king and princes.Footnote 83 Perhaps because of these markedly strong imperial links, Siddhicandra exhibited more anxiety about accepting Mughal patronage than his peers. In narrating disagreements over ascetic practice, Siddhicandra develops a robust Jain authority in contradistinction to the worldly Mughals and proclaims the Tapa Gaccha strong by virtue of its contrast rather than likeness to the ruling elite. He also voices some strong objections to monks being located in royal environs and offers an unsettling account of the hazards of such ties. Of the three debates discussed here, Siddhicandra's rejection of Jahangir's demands tenders the most ambivalent moral about whether the possible dangers of Jain relations with the Mughals outweighed the benefits.
The story commences with Emperor Jahangir observing that in both age and nature Siddhicandra was ill suited for an ascetic way of life:
You possess marks that show you capable of being an earthly king.
O friend, you are resplendent with the radiating beauty of youth.
Given that your age is suited for pursuing fiery young women,
why do you abandon the pleasure of sensual desires and give yourself to austerities?Footnote 84
In response, Siddhicandra chided Jahangir for poking fun at his dedication. He further retorted that the transience of the world makes people of all ages well advised to consider asceticism. In rather poor form, Jahangir, ‘his eyes rolling about from the influence of drink’, asked the monk directly how he could prevent himself from thinking about sex.Footnote 85 Siddhicandra then discoursed eloquently about the benefits of being detached from worldly things. Jahangir quieted down in amazement at this strong reasoning, perhaps mixed with an alcohol-induced stupor, until Nur Jahan (here called Nur Mahal) walked into the assembly hall.Footnote 86
At this point, Siddhicandra's narrative slips into the realm of fantasy, considering that purdah restrictions in the harem would have prevented Nur Jahan from appearing in court.Footnote 87 But the value of this particular encounter for Siddhicandra is far less its historical precision than its promise as a potent illustration of a Tapa Gaccha monk upholding his religious values while pursuing political influence.Footnote 88 Nur Jahan tried to undermine the monk's authority by positing: ‘Wherever there is youth, speech that reflects soundness of mind is impossible.’Footnote 89 In response, Siddhicandra cited the example of the king of Balkh, who gave up everything in order to become a renunciant in his youth. Although the Bhānucandragaṇicarita does not include the name of the ruler, this appears to be the saga of Ibrahim ibn Adham, a figure renowned in the Perso-Arabic tradition for his denial of all earthly possessions, including his crown.Footnote 90 Siddhicandra introduces this Islamicate reference with the lone Hindi verse in his text: ‘16,000 palaces, 18 lakh horses, and the city of Bilakkh (Balkh) were given up for the sake of his Lord.’Footnote 91 This brief foray into the Mughal cultural sphere, including the use of a language intelligible to the imperial elite, indicates the great political liability of this debate that called for the invocation of an idea designed to hit close to home for Jahangir and Nur Jahan.
Nonetheless, after invoking a Perso-Islamic precedent for young renunciants, Siddhicandra promptly steered the conversation back to his own tradition and frames both himself and his royal interlocutors as speaking in Indian terms. Nur Jahan proposed that it would be best to renounce as an old man, after having one's fill of sensual pleasures.Footnote 92 Siddhicandra responded that the degradation of the current age, the Kali Yuga, has had exactly the opposite effect, and people wantonly pursue pleasures virtually until the grave.Footnote 93 Next Jahangir, transformed from a drunkard into a skilful philosopher without explanation, articulated a series of compelling objections to the participation of Jain ascetics in government business. Some of his arguments carry rhetorical force, for example when he exclaimed: ‘Young man! Why do you want to bring sorrows such as plucking out hair by the root on your body, which is as delicate as the stem of a shirisha flower.’Footnote 94
Jahangir's most convincing argument, however, relied solidly upon Jain philosophy. The Mughal emperor argued that the Jain doctrine of manysidedness (syādvāda) made Siddhicandra's obstinacy untenable and that the monk should adopt a more relativist approach as trumpeted by his own tradition. Jahangir, described here as ‘grasping Jain doctrine’, said:Footnote 95
Only the minds of men adjudicate between virtue and vice. Without the mind, there is no shirking of duty. Even if there is some fault here, it is to be repelled with good intentions, just as leanness caused by fasting is to be curbed by eating wholesome food. There are rules and exceptions in the dharma of ascetics and both are to be remembered by all. Therefore it is foolish for everybody to grasp a single viewpoint. The truth of multiple viewpoints (syādvāda) is to be understood in all things by those who speak of manysidedness (syādvāda). For them, endorsing a single view would be called falsity. O wise one, having abandoned your obstinacy and consenting to my speech, enjoy pleasures as you wish. What wise man would error in his own advice?Footnote 96
Siddhicandra replied that exceptions to religious practice are for the weak and avoiding temptation altogether is the best method of resistance. But his only counter to Jahangir's use of syādvāda is to glibly quip that the doctrine itself admits that it cannot be taken as absolutely true and so dogmatism is sometimes justified.Footnote 97 This rhetorical sleight of hand signals the feebleness of Siddhicandra's position here, particularly in contrast to Jahangir's rather deft deployment of Jain thinking. At this point in the exchange, rational discussion ceased, and it is not clear who won intellectually. Especially in the latter portion of the discussion, Siddhicandra portrays Jahangir as more in tune with Jain doctrine than himself and allows the Mughal ruler to make several persuasive points against asceticism in one's youth.
But Siddhicandra does not allow his readers to dwell on the arguments and next narrates how Jahangir's anger flared as the king shouted:
Do you dare to show me contempt? Do you not know my power?
When angered, I am the God of Death (kṛtānta) before your eyes,
but when happy I am a wishing-tree of paradise.
Now you will reap what you have sown with your poisonous obstinacy.Footnote 98
Siddhicandra still stood firm, at which point Jahangir once more ordered him to take a wife along with other earthly rewards, including elephants, horses, and a position in the imperial administration.Footnote 99 He refused, and Jahangir ordered an elephant brought to crush the disobedient monk. When Siddhicandra rejected Jahangir's command to marry one last time, the elephant and the crowd roared, but the monk remained undisturbed. Impressed, Jahangir's anger dissipated slightly. He directed that the elephant be pulled back and imposed exile on Siddhicandra instead of execution.Footnote 100 In addition, Jahangir issued a farmān proclaiming: ‘Other renunciants that wander my kingdom are to dwell in the forest since [the forest] alone is an appropriate residence for ascetics who are free of desires.’Footnote 101
The moral of this story thus far is murky at best. Siddhicandra stayed true to his vows despite enormous pressure from the throne and severe consequences for himself and all other renunciants. Certain aspects of the tale communicate the strength of Jain convictions to a sectarian audience, such as when Siddhicandra proclaims to Jahangir, ‘I will not violate the dharma I have chosen, even a hair!’Footnote 102 But whether Siddhicandra justified his presence at court is a far more open-ended question. Tapa Gaccha followers were acutely aware of both the benefits and challenges their spiritual leaders faced in forging connections with the Mughal elite, but the former were what vindicated the latter. Given that Siddhicandra's steadfastness resulted in the eviction of Jain monks from court, he hardly demonstrated the value of the entire exercise.
However, Siddhicandra offers one more story to conclude his Bhānucandragaṇicarita that at least partially redeems politically affiliated monks. In brief, one day Jahangir noticed that Bhanucandra, the sole Jain ascetic allowed to remain at court, looked forlorn. Jahangir inquired, and Bhanucandra confessed that he missed his star pupil, at which point the emperor repented of his earlier harshness and called for Siddhicandra's return to court in a jubilant procession. Having reinstated the monk, Jahangir decreed that all ascetics could again go where they pleased, and with this the text closes.Footnote 103 Given this finale, it seems that the hazards of life at court are worth the trouble of monks, who will be vindicated, perhaps after significant hardship. Siddhicandra even puts a positive gloss on the saga by noting that Jahangir's anger and order of exile afforded him the opportunity to work off some bad karma and thus enabled his spiritual growth.Footnote 104 But even at this happy ending, the well-worded objections of Nur Jahan and Jahangir continue to percolate in readers’ minds. In particular, the king's farmān articulates an influential, time-honoured position among Jain thinkers: namely, monks belong in the forest rather than at court.
Jain intellectuals such as Siddhicandra vividly perceived the threats they faced by entering into a sphere where Mughal authority reigned supreme. Moreover, in enshrining their anxieties in writing they ensured that such concerns would be known to future generations. Siddhicandra's decision to narrate this particular cross-cultural encounter might be explained as having an educational value for Jain readers who might also form imperial links, but this is unlikely given that Jahangir again exiled Jain ascetics in 1618.Footnote 105 Although he quickly rescinded this second ban too, Mughal relations with Tapa Gaccha monks never recovered, and Jahangir referred to Bhanucandra in the 1620s as someone ‘whom I used to know’.Footnote 106 More likely, Siddhicandra wrote about this interaction because he found it valuable for the Tapa Gaccha community more generally. Perhaps in the 1620s, after more than 30 years of sustained imperial relations, the sect's identity was too intertwined with the Mughals to be imagined separately, at least by a young monk brought up in the royal court. Additionally, as the strongest and one of the more thoughtful interlocutors available to Gujarati Jains in early modern India, the Mughals provided a useful foil for the Tapa Gaccha to work through the arguments for and against their own religious practices.
Conclusion: formulating religious difference
Jain ascetic leaders participated in numerous theological disputes with members of the Mughal elite, which Sanskrit literati subsequently memorialized in a variety of written texts. The three debates I have described here each involved a different set of discussants who addressed rather disparate questions. Upon his initial sojourn at the royal court, Hiravijaya discussed the truth of Islam and the authority of the Qur’an with Abu’l Fazl, Akbar's vizier. A decade later, Vijayasena engaged with either Abu’l Fazl or Akbar to answer Brahman- or Rajput-inspired doubts about whether Jains qualified as monotheists. Last, Siddhicandra induced the first expulsion of Jain monks from the Mughal court when he rebuffed Jahangir's directive to enjoy earthly pleasures. All three episodes are interesting in their details, and they also suggest larger insights into questions of religion, politics, and community identity in early modern India.
First, these episodes demonstrate the depth and complexity of religious identity in the Mughal dispensation. Scholars frequently lament the shift on the subcontinent from traditional modes of pluralistic faith towards more contemporary religious ideologies.Footnote 107 Speaking of developments in Indian modernity, for instance, Sudipta Kaviraj has drawn a distinction between thick and thin religion where ‘thick religion’ is a layered belief system that is generally tolerant of other views, practiced locally, and typically separate from politics. In contrast, ‘thin religion’ is an intolerant brand of broad identity that is often focused on a political end.Footnote 108 But this sort of distinction does not accurately capture how Jains experienced religion in Mughal India as a deeply political phenomenon that recognized limits of tolerance while also propagating specific ideas.Footnote 109 Crucially, the mutual saturation of politics and theology did not flatten religion for the Jain community. Rather it enabled Jains to pursue groundbreaking paths, such as writing about the taboo topic of Islamic beliefs in Sanskrit, reframing debates about Jain theology, and disobeying royal Mughal commands.
In terms of relations between religious communities, Jain and Mughal debates offer a way to move beyond syncretism and instead glimpse some of the processes that led to a partially shared culture. Jains and the Mughals both recognized real similarities between their two religious traditions (not to mention Brahmanical views), and they also admitted unbridgeable disparities. They did not seek to resolve all their conflicts, nor did they proclaim differences between their traditions irrelevant. Their discussions lack any hint of the satire that undergirded some early modern religious exchanges written in vernacular languages.Footnote 110 Rather, Jain and Mughal leaders tried to identify a theologically sound bedrock of common ideas that would allow them to continue their close relations. At the time same, both maintained distinct markers of their traditions. In this sense, articulating the convergences and contradictions between Jainism and Islam was important for both the Mughal and Jain figures involved in these debates. Nonetheless, the two groups engaged in these discussions for rather different reasons, which give insight into their respective political and religious agendas.
For the Mughals, negotiating religious ideas was an important part of exercising imperial authority. Here we ought to distinguish between Hiravijaya's discrediting of Islam, which seems largely imagined, and the latter two encounters, which are attested in multiple historical sources in both Sanskrit and Gujarati. Nonetheless, Mughal court chronicles mention none of the debates. Abu’l Fazl's Akbarnāmah lists three Tapa Gaccha figures (Hiravijaya, Vijayasena, and Bhanucandra) among the learned men of the age but offers no explanation for this classification or even identification of these individuals.Footnote 111 For the Mughals, it was not appropriate to integrate narratives of interactions with Jain ascetics into a Persianate court history. But in terms of expressing state authority on the ground, the Mughal kings, particularly Akbar, wished to engage with other religions. Akbar is reported to have pursued connections with followers of other traditions too, for example requesting Jesuit missionaries to visit Fatehpur Sikri and ordering the construction of a hall of religious debate (‘ibādatkhānah). Jahangir also initiated conversations across theological divides, and, for both rulers, many of these disputes involved heavy political consequences. For example, the ‘ibādatkhānah was instituted largely to undermine the authority of the ‘ulama’ (Islamic religious scholars).Footnote 112 In their interactions with Jains, the Mughals sought to work out how their religious ideas coupled with political power might create space for and relate to this tradition.
Jain thinkers viewed Mughal challenges as valuable for articulating and even reformulating their own sense of a religious community. An Islamic Other was a real, useful interlocutor for Gujarati Jains who found themselves in an increasingly multicultural world. Particularly in narrating Mughal encounters well into the seventeenth century, even after they had lost the bulk of their imperial connections, Jain authors suggest that discussions of theological distinctions had become crucial, even foundational to Tapa Gaccha identity. Accordingly, the value of remembering disputes with the Mughals persisted even without ongoing relations, especially so long as the Mughals were the dominant political force in northern India.
Last, this set of encounters offers several models for how Sanskrit writers integrated Islamic views into their intellectual and religious universes. Jain thinkers recognized that Islam could be threatening, particularly when joined with Mughal hegemony. Perhaps Brahmans also identified dangers in incorporating Mughal-backed Islam into Sanskrit, although their views are difficult to infer due to a lack of Sanskrit narratives about their time at the royal court. But, for the Jains, writing in Sanskrit about their imperial experiences was not forbidden. On the contrary, such cross-cultural narratives opened up dynamic possibilities for repositioning their theological and literary traditions within a changing world.
