Several facets of the history of the colonial ‘discovery of India’ with the ascendancy of the English East India Company (EEIC) remain imperfectly illuminated. As the EEIC, gained a stronger and wider foothold in the Indian sub-continent by the end of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, its officers made several discoveries of the art of the past and prompted individuals to pen works on structures across many regions – Agra, Gaur-Lakhnauti, Hampi, Mysore and more.
This was before architects and engineers from England, Scotland, etc., descended here to write technical tomes on Indian art and architecture and in the bargain saddled the fluidity in art and architecture with rigid periodisation and stylisation.
One of the earliest works of this genre exists as a set of manuscripts on Delhi entitled Sair-ul Manazil by Mirza Sangin Beg. We know of four copies of this work, each a different version. Sangin Beg’s narrative, features Shahjahanabad/Delhi as its protagonist, with the story encompassing its extensive environs, making it a pioneering work that predates the efforts of educated elites to explore and record the built heritage of the subcontinent.
Arab Sarai Mandi Gate. Photo: Arranged by the author
A narrative? Full of anecdotes? Was this what William Fraser, a senior EEIC official, wanted when he commissioned Sangin Beg to write about Delhi? Why did Sangin Beg manacle his expansive work with a title like Sair-ul Manazil (‘a walk across structures’)? Was he naïve to shackle his wide-ranging work with a restricted title or smart enough to understand that since he did not privilege structures in his work, other than incorporating inscriptions, as was perhaps expected of him, a title like this would absolve him from supposed shortcomings. He wrote in his introduction:
“Mister William Fraser Sahib Bahadur, may his good fortune be perpetuated, expressed a desire to have the buildings and conditions of Delhi classified, arranged and presented to him.”
Sair-ul Manazil is a rare gem that emerged in 1821 from an unlikely author, who, far from being a brilliant trailblazer, was reportedly uncertain about how to handle the commission extended to him by Fraser to write about (the structures) of Delhi. Fraser was deputy superintendent under David Ochterlony, EEIC resident at the Mughal court and the principal colonial official in Delhi.
A map that finds mention in the book. Photo: Source: Maps of Delhi | Pilar Maria Guerrieri
In order to make something of his commission, Sangin Beg detailed everything he saw on the streets of Delhi and in the suburbs, including people, merchants, businesses, the elite, popular and little cultures, shops and their commodities, bazars, ashraf and arazil, habitations of rich and poor, professions, various skills and crafts, areas identified with certain qaums, individuals who worked in the offices of the British officials, the relics of piety for Muslims, temples, habitations based on caste and professions, the structures with inscriptions, morphology and the settlement patterns of the city, the secular entertainments, new forms of celebration in Sair-e Gulfarroshan and anecdotal information.
Why did the British seek to commission such works? Scholars have expressed different views which though contrary to one another, stem from the singular idea of capturing the movement and elasticity of Sair-ul Manazil within a stern or inflexible framework. It has, thus, been known as a book on structures and a precursor to Saiyid Ahmad Khan’s Asar-us Sanadid by some, a directory of streets, an elegy to a dying culture and a work to provide a gaze to the powers that be. The work falls in a category of literature that defies classification or categorisation. Perhaps like the great rulers across the world the motive was to have their memory perpetuated as patrons who patronised works across the sub-continent.
Badarpur Sarai Gate. Photo: Arranged by the author
1821 was a peculiar time. The EEIC’s architectural projects were progressing slowly in Delhi, and the Delhi College had not yet gained enough traction to facilitate a smooth acceptance of the company’s rule by the local population. There was consequently a lot of ambivalence towards the dominance of Delhi by the company for it just might prove to be as short lived as the control of the Rohillas and the Marathas.
Nevertheless, the era of old traditions and new realities was evidently in place and burgeoning. Although the structural aspects may not have been visible, the power dynamics and the ability to extend patronage and be perceived as patrons were certainly in place.
There were some like Sangin Beg who understood that the British, irrespective of their different sensibilities, were here to stay. It was from the Raji Dandi (residency) that employment and patronage would emanate and not from the hallowed precincts of the Diwan-i Khas where the Mughal Badshah, increasingly known as the Badshah of Delhi, sat on the throne with prestige but rapidly dwindling power, control and means to extend patronage.
Wazirabad Tomb and Mosque. Photo: Arranged by the author
People like Sangin Beg, with nothing to lose and all to gain, grasped this reality very quickly. He showed a complete lack of subtlety in Sair-ul Manazil when he heaped praises on the company officials and compared their sense of fairness and justice with exemplars across cultures, like Solomon and Nausherwan.
Sair-ul Manazil also exemplifies the passing away of old traditions. It is perhaps the swan song of worthy literature written in Persian, albeit Hindustani Persian, in Delhi. The new reality was that Urdu was gaining ground by increasingly becoming both the lingua franca and the language of literary expressions.
Even though Sair-ul Manazil brings forth very evocative images of Delhi at the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century it is imbued with a set of mysterious features that have not been resolved till date. The paragraph of dedication in the work is suggestive of some friction, or at least a one-upmanship amongst two company officials, Fraser and Charles Metcalfe.
A map of Delhi that finds mention in Sair-ul Manazil by Mirza Sangin Beg. Source: Maps of Delhi | Pilar Maria Guerrieri
So far, we know of four manuscripts of Sair-ul Manazil in four different libraries.
The original text of Sair-ul Manazil was commissioned by Fraser and finished and handed over to him on July 10, 1821. The twenty-four paintings which accompany the text are located exclusively in this manuscript. Since its last custodian has been Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, it is called the Berlin Manuscript. Sangin Beg states in this manuscript that:
“The highly placed gentleman and the refuge of the poor and the honourable and generous Mister William Fraser Sahib Bahadur, may his good fortune be perpetuated, expressed a desire to have the buildings and conditions of Delhi classified, arranged and presented to him, I put these details in order, I am extremely grateful to him for this, … I also presented this book in his service with humility and in return I was remunerated magnanimously.”
Another manuscript, undated and solely dedicated to Metcalfe, is located in the British Library, London. In this the paragraph of dedication remains the same, only Fraser’s name is substituted with Metcalfe’s. Further, two manuscripts dedicated to both officers are located in the Red Fort Library and the National Archives of India, Delhi.
“As Mister Charles Theophilus Metcalfe Sahib the highly placed gentleman and the refuge of the poor and the honourable and generous Mister William Fraser Sahib Bahadur, may his good fortune be perpetuated with prosperity, expressed a desire to have the buildings and conditions of Delhi classified, arranged and presented to them, I put these details in order, … I also presented this book in their service with humility and in return I was remunerated magnanimously.”
The greatest mystery, however, is that there are major variations in the manuscripts. In spite of the latitude one may extend for scribal errors, the enigma is much deeper. The Berlin and National Archives manuscripts are of the same length and are dated 1821 and 1854, respectively.
The longest and the shortest manuscripts are located in the Red Fort Museum Library and the British Library, respectively, and are not dated.
The Berlin manuscript has a very large section on the ‘Travels of Makhdum Jahanian Jahan Gasht’, a saint in the fourteenth century, of the time of Firuz Shah Tughlaq. He travelled across Central and West Asia and Egypt and brought back with him a sacred stone with the footprint of Prophet Muhammad, which he gifted to the Tughlaq Sultan. The British manuscript has a list of rulers in Delhi and Kannauj from Yudhisthir to Akbar and the Red Fort manuscript has a section on the inscriptions on structures outside Delhi. The Archives version has no additional information. The Red Fort manuscript is not only the longest but carries inscriptions dated from 1828 to 1852.
If the author was the sole agency bringing about these changes, it is to be wondered what stopped him from updating the text and including those aspects of the city that were new, be it structures, bazars or institutions, political appointments and developments or the coming of age of prominent people.
In the scenario where the author himself was not the agency, who suggested or ordered changes to the text, change of the name of the patron, removal of many names and addition of a few others, indiscriminate removal of several inscriptions and Quranic verses, slipping in of certain pieces of information and the deletion of several other parts, the termination of the text before it ended or adding to the text much beyond where it ended? Who decided that the manuscripts will contain different sets of extra information and who constantly tinkered with it.
Basant Sarai. Photo: Arranged by the author
What was the chain of custody of these manuscripts? How did Aloys Sprenger, orientalist and principal of Delhi College 1845-48, come into possession of the most beautiful and the first manuscript of Sair- ul Manazil, the Berlin copy? Did he buy this and other works which were part of his enormous collection of manuscripts of which he made an expensive sale to the Royal Library of Berlin?
Rester mystérieux.
Shama Mitra Chenoy taught History at Shivaji College, University of Delhi. She writes on Later Medieval and Early Modern Delhi.
