Lighting Up Creation through the Creation of Light

BOOK REVIEW Lighting Up Creation through the Creation of Light Kashshaf Ghani M uhammad na hotey to kucch bhi na hota (nothing would have been created if Muhammad did not exist) goes the popular na’at (poetry praising Prophet Muhammad) celebrating the creation through Muhammad; also indicative of his primordial form as light (nur-i-Muhammadi) and the creation of everything else from that light. Although Adam is recognised as the first human being, orthodox Sunni traditions often do not recognise him as the first prophet, supported by references to Hadith through al-Tirmidhi (d 892), where Prophet Muhammad is believed to have remarked that he entered prophethood when Adam was between the spirit and the body. Such beliefs came to be adopted and circulated through multiple textual traditions across the Islamicate world, whose precise origins through an individual author and date are debated. The book under review, Meaningful Rituals: Persian, Arabic, and Bengali in the Nūrnāma Tradition of Eastern Bengal, by Thibaut d’Hubert, explores the Nūrnāma tradition through “a corpus of narrative texts that relate the creation of the world by God through his Prophet Muhammad in his pre-eternal form as a luminous entity” (p 1). These works provided knowledge on Islamic beliefs, ethics, 36 Meaningful Rituals: Persian, Arabic, and Bengali in the Nūrnāma Tradition of Eastern Bengal by Thibaut d’Hubert, Delhi: Primus Books, 2022; pp x + 183, `1,495. and cosmology, while as a text and artefact, their reading and physical preservation brought protection and prosperity to the household. Nūrnāma texts were written and translated between the 17th and 19th centuries, a period which also marked the high point of Islamisation of eastern Bengal through a combination of political and cultural processes. Sufism remains a major vehicle which introduced Islam in the region of Bengal (Haq 1975), while the expansion of the agrarian frontier into the heavily forested eastern Bengal allowed Sufis and pirs to preside over agrarian communities and urban centres (Eaton 1993). The book is an important addition to that field of research, opening up new avenues that allow us to grasp Islamisation in Bengal through practices of literacy and textual traditions. By selecting multiple versions of the Nūrnāma—written in Persian, carrying “motifs also found in Indic creation stories” (p 1), and translated into middle Bengali, written in Arabic script in middle Bengali—the author aims to show “the high degree of multilingual literacy that characterised the cultural landscape of pre-modern and early colonial Bengal,” and subsequently “contribute to the study of this narrative and the role it played in recording the views of Bengali Muslims on cosmology and the written word” (p 1). That rural Muslim authors of middle Bengali were embedded in the Perso–Arabic literary culture is made evident through the first Bengali Nūrnāma, also the most elaborate of the six Bengali versions, which was translated from an anonymous Persian text. The other Nūrnāma selected for the current book is by Muhammad Saphi, written in the Arabic script. This preference of the script brings into focus the debate in 17thcentury Bengal on the “legitimacy of the vernacular language and the regional Indic script to discuss Islamic topics” (p 4). Nūrnāma as Sufi Literature The author categorises the Nūrnāma tradition as Sufi literature, primarily because these texts were composed by Sufi authors who were mostly trained in the non-tariqa tradition. However, what kind of Sufi elements the Nūrnāma texts reflect is something the reader will be curious about. Sufism played a dominant role in the Islamisation of Bengal throughout the medieval and early modern period. Could Sufi authors write esoteric texts and works on Islamic cosmology and ethics in the same breath? The textual identification of the Nūrnāma, then, can be done accordingly. Chapter 1 elaborates on the Nūrnāma tradition as part of the Sufi textual corpus in middle Bengali, as well as in May 4, 2024 vol lix no 18 EPW Economic & Political Weekly BOOK REVIEW the larger context of Musalmani literacy through registers of language, script, and ritual use of Islamic texts in rural Bengal. The author mentions that textual analysis of middle Bengali literature allows for a better opportunity to understand Bengali Islam in the early modern period. He identifies three approaches as pertinent among the many that have been undertaken. As far as the translation of texts is concerned, Tony Stewart’s (2001) approach has been emphasised, which moves beyond the dated idea of syncretism, in favour of understanding Indic terminology in Bengali Muslim literature “as semantic phenomenon” (p 8). Shaman Hatley’s (2007) closer analysis of the contents of such texts allows us to understand how Bengali Muslim literature on yoga could incorporate Nath elements from Sanskrit. The author, however, argues that the practice of intertextuality in Bengali Sufi texts can be determined more conveniently in non-esoteric works than the esoteric, whose textual roots remain unclear. The third scholar referred to is Carl Ernst (2016), who studies yoga in the history of Sufism and the adoption of yoga practices by Sufi saints to achieve their spiritual goals. The author, however, argues that local traditions, like yoga and esoteric tantric practices, were not the only knowledge systems influencing middle Bengali Islamic texts. Rather, as he shows, the Nūrnāma case is a clear example of how Persian and Arabic works circulating across the Muslim world also influenced Muslim authors in Bengal who were drawn by “the genres and modes of didacticism of the texts” (p 10). The idea of the light of Muhammad (Nur Muhammad) constituted a critical component of middle Bengali Sufi works on yoga written between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was preceded by praises for God and Muhammad, and followed by the stages of spiritual realisation and teachings about various aspects of biocosmological knowledge (deha-tattva). But as the author argues, while we are unclear regarding the textual transmission of classical Sufi and Nath doctrines, it is the opposite in the Nūrnāma tradition which can be clearly traced to the Persian source text. The Persian text of the Economic & Political Weekly EPW May 4, 2024 Nūrnāma “fits remarkably well with Indic creation stories” (p 12), an observation which leads the author to argue, drawing from the works of earlier scholars, that the knowledge of Indic bio-cosmology was already a part of Persian texts in South Asia during the pre-Mughal period. The current work is a textual analysis of two Nūrnāma copies. The first one, housed in Paris, is written in Persian. The second one uses the Arabic script to write the Nūrnāma in middle Bengali. The Persian copy, translated by Abdul Hakim, begins with the creation story, followed by the importance of reciting the Nūrnāma, the merits gained from reading and listening to it, or just by keeping it in one’s house. Then comes the story of Imam Ghazali (d 1111) who supposedly sent a copy of the text to Sultan Mahmud so that the latter can read and relieve himself of sins. The author argues that from the 17th century onwards, “Nurnama was a ritual Persian text that was part of the daily environment of Bengali Muslims” (p 15). Language becomes a key element in the transmission of the Nūrnāma to its Bengali readership, particularly in the context of the debate as to whether Islamic texts and concepts should be (re) produced in regional vernacular. Thus, while the ritual reading and understanding the meaning of the text is emphasised, the latter exercise perhaps also made it imperative to translate the text into Bengali and use the Perso–Arabic script while retaining the middle Bengali language to avoid strong censure. Hakim inserts a long apologia for reproducing this religious work in Bengali. He also defends himself in favour of the use of the vernacular for “those friends who are not trained to read [such] books” (p 15). It was to honour and satisfy everybody’s wish “by rendering the poem about the creation of light into the language of Banga” (p 15). The other reason is more interesting, as it is connected to the emotion of reading. Hakim is clear that “treatises in Arabic convey no emotion, but one is deeply moved when he understands the work in the regional idiom” (p 15). Hakim continues “the lord doesn’t ignore any language; whatever the kingdom he knows vol lix no 18 its language” (p 16). However, as the author points out, the masses of eastern Bengal were exposed in many degrees and forms to Perso–Arabic literacy as part of their education and religious training. The Nūrnāma copies bring forth an interesting aspect where premodern texts can be defined through their language, the use of the alphabet (Persian/ Arabic/Bengali) or the format of the manuscript, which is understood by the author “as a codicological definition of the book’s religious identity” (p 16). While the Bengali alphabet is also identified as hinduyani (Indic), Hakim draws a strong parallel between the alif (first letter in Arabic) and the anji, since the latter is believed to have carried a “crucial function in the sanctification of Islamic texts written in Bengali” (p 16). Islamicisation of Vernacular Literacy The acceptance of anji, the author argues, recognised by Muslim authors of middle Bengali as non-contradictory to Islamic ethics, was weakened with the introduction of the Arabic naksh script to write middle Bengali texts, together with the spread of modern standardised Bengali alphabet. The strong reformist current also played a part in relegating Sufi texts on yoga like the Yoga-Kalandar from a premier social position in courts and literate milieus to the fringes of the heterodox communities like fakirs and bauls. The practice of yoga to meet Sufi goals was central to Sufi traditions in premodern Bengal. An undated manuscript of Saphi’s Nūrnāma is the second work analysed in the current volume. The author assumes EPW Index An author-title index for EPW has been prepared for the years from 1968 to 2012. The PDFs of the Index have been uploaded, year-wise, on the EPW website. Visitors can download the Index for all the years from the site. (The Index for a few years is yet to be prepared and will be uploaded when ready.) EPW would like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the library of the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai, in preparing the index under a project supported by the RD Tata Trust. 37 BOOK REVIEW the work to be from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The work is a translation from an Arabic original and is written in the Arabic script, allowing the author to argue—first, how Perso–Arabic literacy became important in the “transmission of local forms of religious discourse” (p 17), and second, adopting the Arabic script to write a Bengali text “was primarily motivated by a will to sacralize scribal practices” (p 17), using the status of Arabic. The author further discusses the trend of applying the Arabic script to write Bengali manuscripts, particularly from the regions of Chittagong and Arakan during the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. Though this practice seems to have started in the 17th century, there is a lack of a definitive reason as to why this began in the first place. The author argues that the Islamicisation of vernacular literacy could be a strong reason for this trend, though it may be erroneous to limit such a development to a single religious-centric cause. The author elaborates on the categorisation, along communal lines, between the idea of the Hinduyani and the Musalmani, where the former indicated the use of the esoteric sign ajni and Indic alphabets. Hinduyani, according to the author, did not indicate any religious or theological position, and was thus “not antithetical with one’s identity as a Muslim” (p 18). Being divorced from religion and theology, these terms were widely used in Bengali and Persian texts from medieval Bengal and contributed towards varied approaches to learning and intertextuality. The author mentions that the use of the Arabic script among the vernacular languages of South Asia began at the earliest during the 14th century with Awadhi, followed by Panjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and Tamil, among others. In comparison, Sanskrit texts written using Arabic scripts are very rare. The author concludes the chapter by emphasising the uniqueness of the practice of adopting the Arabic script for writing Bengali, creating a shift as to how texts came to be read and understood. Nonetheless, Muslim scholars were familiar with Hinduyani literacy and their defence of the Indic script to write Bengali 38 clearly demonstrates their multilinguality. An important point is the separation between religious identity and literary identity where the use of Arabic did not mean an Islamicisation of the content in the Bengali language, which nonetheless retained its highly Sanskritised nature along with elements of Indian poetics and religion. Chapter 2 focuses squarely on the Islamic concept of light through exegetical literature, theological facts, and devotional texts. Moving away from the model of high and low traditions, the author employs the binary of scholastic and non-scholastic in examining texts that treat light as a cosmological agent. The author emphasises that scholastic literature—like the Mishkat al-Anwar by al-Ghazali—is grounded on strong exegetical and speculative protocols. In texts that constitute the scholastic literature, “Muhammad’s light … draws its significance more as a cognitive process than a mythical creation story” (p 5). The author then goes on to argue that the distinction between scholastic and non-scholastic discourses on light lies in the “personification and embodied representation of Muhammad’s light in preeternity” (p 5). Light in the Islamic Tradition The author categorises the discussion on light in the Islamic tradition into three overlapping groups—the exegetical corpus of the Quran and Hadith scholarship, works based on canonical scriptures on the theme of light, like the Mishkat, and finally devotional texts which provide a mythological treatment of the role of light in creation. Given the categorisation of the Nūrnāma text as Sufi literature, the discussion on the Sufi interpretations of the Quranic light verse would have been pertinent to the ideas expressed in the Nūrnāma. At a time when Bengali Sufis were adopting texts like the Nūrnāma for a multilingual readership in Bengal, scholars like Abd al Haqq Muhaddith Dihlawi from Mughal Delhi acted as a major mediator between Arabic scholarship and Persianate readership through his works on the life of the Prophet, like the Madarij al-nubuwwa. The author, by including Dihlawi in the discussion, argues that the scholar “is an important link to connect these non-scholastic texts to the classical exegetical tradition” (p 31). And the Madarij helps us get a closer perspective on the issue of Muhammad’s light which we find in non-scholastic literature. Hence, the necessity to trace the larger context of the Nūrnāma tradition to 17th-century South Asian works. The author also surveys an Arabic text of the Daqaiq al-Akhbar, the first few sections of which describe the various elements of creation starting with the light of Muhammad. In this text, it is the sweat from Muhammad’s light that led to the various elements of creation. In the South Asian edition, the author states that the Daqaiq “provides an account of the creation of Muhammad’s light” (p 35). This account, according to the author, is much closer to the description one finds in the Persian Nūrnāma which was in circulation in Bengal and was the source of Bengali translations. Chapters 3 and 4 carry edited and translated versions of the Nūrnāma texts collected from various sources. The first one is an annotated edition and translation of the long recension of the Persian Nūrnāma, together with the middle Bengali version of the text. The author has chosen Hakim’s Bengali version to get a sense of how “such ritual works were read and commented by the vernacular literati” (p 5), and also to argue that Hakim’s strong defence of the use of Bengali vernacular allows us to look into “the linguistic economy of rural Bengal” beyond the binary opposition of Arabic– Persian and Bengali. What the author does in Chapter 3 is select a Persian version of the Nūrnāma, widely in circulation through multiple manuscripts across the world and currently preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, whose contents are close to Hakim’s middle Bengali version which allows to “understand how the Bengali author approached this tradition” (p 38). The author mentions that texts belonging to the Nūrnāma genre carry a common set of features—opening with a reference to the Hadith “First God Almighty created my light,” followed by a dialogue between God and the light of May 4, 2024 vol lix no 18 EPW Economic & Political Weekly BOOK REVIEW the Prophet, followed by how various parts were created from the drops of water coming out from the light of the Prophet, followed by the decision of God to finally create the four elements which will be the domain of Muhammad’s prophethood. The creation story is followed by the detailing of the rewards one would obtain from copying, reading, hearing, and owning the text of the Nūrnāma. The authority of the text and its powers is attested through Ghazali’s association with the work and his gifting of the Nūrnāma to Sultan Mahmud who thereafter rose to the heights of power and glory. This is followed by a reiteration of the powers of the Nūrnāma to protect the owner from various diseases. The next section “describes the heavenly origins of what constitutes each limb of the Prophet” (p 39). It is followed by an enumeration of the benefits gained by reading the Nūrnāma. The work ends with the final reminder that no soul can escape death and, thus, one needs to prepare for the afterlife by shedding worldly pleasures. Reception of the Nūrnāma The author argues that the genre of the Nūrnāma becomes critical in introducing the large masses of Muslim rural population in South Asia to the fundamental teachings of the Islamic scriptures; serves as a talismanic text; and helps believers obtain the merits from acts of devotion like the Hajj pilgrimage which are difficult to undertake for the rural masses (p 39). What then are the characteristic features of Hakim’s text? The author mentions that Hakim’s text is didactic in approach and thus does not require the presence of a Sufi master to elaborate on the esoteric principle as in the case of Saphi’s Nūrnāma. The text is both a translation as well a commentary on the original Perso–Arabic work. That Hakim resides in multiple linguistic and religious spaces is evident from his Sanskritised middle Bengali and the vocabulary of Indic terms used in the text— niranjana (attributeless God), prema (selfless love), and Hindu deities like Brahma, etc. His use of the Perso–Arabic terms also, according to the author, gives Economic & Political Weekly EPW May 4, 2024 a clear sense of his familiarity with Islamic canons and religious practices. Also, given the specific religious context of the Perso–Arabic terms, they are not translated directly into middle Bengali, but retained in their original manner. Hakim also foregrounds the basic principles of Muslim ethics (akhlaq), projects the understanding of virtues as being tied up to the essential traits of creation, and argues that the ethical teaching makes the Nūrnāma a very important work, almost a quasi-revealed text whose reading brings rewards equivalent to those of the Taurat, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the Quran. Hakim is also consciously in favour of a Bengali Islam, beyond the hegemonic discourses of Persian and Arabic that can be expressed and written in the regional vernacular to be made accessible to the residents of a distinct cultural space. The second Nūrnāma, also known as Nurkandil, which the author translates and analyses, is by Mohammad Saphi. The latter incorporated Indic elements through yogic teachings, making the text esoteric and obscure in its middle Bengali version. The current version of the text is an edition by Ahmed Sharif based on two manuscripts, of which one can be dated to the early 18th century. The text reflects many things—Islamic exoteric and esoteric knowledge, the middle Bengali vernacular, local scribal practices through the use of the sign anji, as well as the sacredness of Arabic as the language of revelation and religion (p 86). The author also cites another work by Saphi with the title Nurkandil, and the copyist of the manuscript was a low-caste Hindu called Madhuram Das, indicating a possible reception of the Nūrnāma even by the lower-caste Hindus, and a wide strata of people in and around Chittagong. Saphi’s Nūrnāma also witnesses a juxtaposition of Indic and Islamic elements— triveni and kausar, naginis and buraq among others. The author in the course of his analysis argues that a proper understanding of the Indic context becomes necessary on many occasions while reading and interpreting Saphi’s work. Saphi is clear in his intention when he states that he prefers not to repeat what has already been shared earlier, but the knowledge vol lix no 18 which is unknown till now and can be accessed only through one’s master (pir). The author concludes by arguing that while Hakim’s work was not meant to be an esoteric text, but something close to the revealed texts; Saphi’s Nūrnāma is an exclusive teaching of a master to his disciple through oral discourses. In Conclusion Meaningful Rituals brings forth many issues that concern the study of Islamicate experiences across the globe—regional history, language, the significance of the vernacular, the practices of intertextuality through Arabic–Persian–middle Bengali, Islamic cosmology, didacticism, esoteric learning, trends of conversion in frontier geographies, Sufi interactions with local practices of culture and forms of knowledge, etc. It is a valuable addition to the area of Bengal studies and opens up the scope of further research by undertaking the critical practice of translating and engaging with lesser accessible texts. Kashshaf Ghani (alkashshaf@gmail.com) teaches at the School of Historical Studies, Nalanda University, Bihar, and specialises in premodern South Asia (1000–1800) with a focus on Sufism. References Eaton, Richard (1993): The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204‒1760, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ernst, Carl (2016): Refractions of Islam in India: Situating Sufi sm and Yoga, New Delhi: Sage. Haq, Muhammad Enamul (1975): A History of Sufi sm in Bengal, Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Hatley, Shaman (2007): “Mapping the Esoteric Body in the Islamic Yoga of Bengal,” History of Religions, Vol 46, No 4, 351–68. Stewart, Tony (2001): “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim–Hindu Encounter through Translation Theory,” History of Religions, Vol 40, No 3, pp 260–87. Permission for Reproduction of Articles Published in EPW No article published in EPW or part thereof should be reproduced in any form without prior permission of the author(s). 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