Ashoka, the third Mauryan Emperor

 Ashoka ranks among the greatest rulers in the history of mankind. It is with good reason the Lion capital of Asoka has been adopted by Indian Republic as its National Emblem. 

Early Life

For Asoka’s early life, we have to rely on traditional accounts.  Her mother has been referred to by different names in different Buddhist accounts. While she has been called Subhadrangi In one account, the other Buddhist texts refer to her as Janapada Kalyani and Dharma.

As a young prince, Ashoka served as a viceroy of Ujjain and Taxila. Apart from Devi or Vedisa Mahadevi whom Asoka married during his viceroyalty of Ujjai, Karuvaki and Asandhimitra were his other two queens. Karuvaki was the mother of Tivara, the only son of Asoka to be mentioned by name in his inscription.

Accession 

About 269 BC Asoka succeeded to the Mauryan throne as its third ruler.  The Buddhist sources would make us believe that his accession to the throne was accompanied by much violence. According to them after usurping the throne he killed all his possible rivals and began his rule as a tyrant. However, this story is not corroborated by Asoka’s own inscriptions which comprise a series of edicts issued by the emperor. .

In his Thirteenth Major Rock Edict, he claims to have won victories by this method among five Hellenic kings Antiochus II Theos of Syria, the grandson of Seleucus I; Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt , Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander of Epirus. 

However, though Ashoka abjured aggressive war, he by no means gave up his imperial ambitions and annexed Kalinga after its conquest into the Maurya Empire.

Ashoka proclaimed that all men were his children. He appointed a class of official known as dharma-mahamatras, or ministers of Righteousness, whose duty was to redress wrongs and public grievances and supervise the affairs of all religious bodies

Ashoka died in  232-33 BC. 

Raja Ram Mohan Roy, friend of Jeremy Bentham

                                                    Raja Ram Mohan Roy/Wikipedia Commons

Born in 1772 at Radhanagar (in the Hooghly district of West Bengal), Raja Ram Mohan was known for his advocacy of social reform and has been rightly called the father of Indian Renaissance. In 1815, he founded Atmiya Shabha in Calcutta to propagate monotheism and reforms in the Hindu society. In 1828, he founded a sect named Brahmo Sabha which was later renamed Brahmo Samaj in 1882.

He launched in 1821 a Bengali weekly newspaper Sambad Kaumudi or “The Moon of the Intelligence” through which he started a campaign for the abolition of Sati.  

Among his Persian literary works, Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (A Gift to Monotheists) published in 1803 and Manazarutul Adyan, a discussion on various religions deserve special mention. In 1822, he published a Persian journal titled Mirat-ul-Akbar. Precepts of Jesus was published by him in 1820.  

In 1830 Raja Ram Mohan Roy went to England as an envoy of the penultimate Mughal Emperor, Akbar Shah II, to the court of King William IV. It was Akbar Shah II who gave him the title of Raja,

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a friend of English philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham. He died in England in 1833. 

Was Delhi Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq Actually The Insane

Jauna Khan aka Ulugh Khan succeeded his father and first Tughluq ruler Ghiyas -ud -Din –Tughlaq under the title of Muhammad bin Tughluq whose death in 1351 after a 26-year reign, according to the 16th century historian Badauni, liberated the Sultan from his people and freed them from him. 

Muhammad bin Tughluq was among the most remarkable, enigmatic and controversial figures among the Sultans of Delhi. To his contemporaries, he was a mixture of cruelty and kindness.                                                                                                                            

For Barani, who enjoyed his patronage, the ideal ruler was the next Tughlaq monarch Firuz Shah Tughluq. Ibn Batuta, who was appointed Qazi of Delhi by the Sultan, failed to examine all the aspects of the Sultan’s personality in the right perspective. 

With an excellent command on Arabic and Persian, he was well versed in astronomy, jurisprudence, logic, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and rhetoric.

In 1327 one such rebellion by his cousin Bahauddin Gurshasp, governor of Sagar, prompted Muhammad bin Tughluq to transfer his capital from Delhi to centrally located Devagiri, which he named Daulatabad. However, this experiment of his did not go down well with the Delhi populace. This forced the Sultan to retransfer the capital to Delhi.    

Introduction of a token currency in 1329-30 by Muhammad bin Tughluq was his second experiment which has drawn controversy. Probably imitating the paper money issued by Kublai Khan in China, the Sultan issued bronze tankas at par with the value of silver tanks. A shortage of silver was the main reason for the introduction of this project. However, the experiment came to naught due to the circulation of counterfeit coins on a large scale, which caused economic chaos. To combat the chaos, the Sultan stopped the circulation of the token currency and was compelled to exchange all the token coins for the silver coins. 

Muhammad bin Tughluq in 1328-29 increased the land tax on the Doab farmers. The increase coincided with a sever famine in the Doab, followed by plague. The Sultan established a department of agriculture (diwan-i-kohli), got wells dug for irrigation and introduced improved agriculture methods through rotation of crops.

During his reign Muhammad bin Tughluq had to encounter as many as thirty four rebellions, twenty seven of them in the south. Three important states – the Vijayanagar Empire, the Bahmani kingdom and the Muslim sultanate of Madurai in extreme south India, came into existence at the cost of Sultanate territory. In fact, his end had come while fighting against the rebels in Thatta in Sindh.

Mir Jumla, Mughal Governor of Bengal

Mir Jumla was the subahdar of Bengal during the reign of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. A Persian by birth, his original name was Muhammad Saiyid. Before becoming the wazir under Shah Jahan and later during the reign of his successor Aurangzeb, Mir Jumla was originally in the service of the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda. He had conquered Karnataka on behalf of Golconda ruler Abdullah Qutb Shah.  

Mir Jumla was known for his martial and administrative ability. He was made governor of Bengal in 1659 by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. In 1661, he seized Cooch Behar and marched to Assam. However, the difficult terrain and the bad climate of the area forced Mir Jumla to retreat empty handed in 1663 and the subjugation of Assam remained incomplete.

Mir Jumla died in 1663 on his way to Dacca and has been entombed at Thakurbari on the Assam-Meghalaya border in the westernmost part of West Garo Hills . 

Firoz Tughlaq, the last prominent ruler of the Tughlaq dynasty

                            Firuz Shah Tughlaq's tomb in Delhi / Image credit

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309 – 1388 CE) was the third ruler of the Tughlaq dynasty of the famed Delhi Sultanate. He succeeded to the throne in 1351 after the demise of his cousin Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq who had become second Tughlaq sultan in 1325 AD. During his rule of 37 years, Firuz tried to bring a semblance of prosperity to his empire which had fallen into confusion and chaos during the rule of his predecessor due to the latter’s eccentric policies.

The early six years of his reign are documented in the Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, a contemporary account by medieval historian Ziauddin Barani. Another contemporary chronicle, also known as Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, written by Shams Siraj Afif, gives a detailed account of his reign.

He is credited with the founding of the cities of Jaunpur in 1359 (Uttar Pradesh), Hissar and Fatehabad (Haryana), Firozpur (Punjab). Jaunpur was named after Muhammad bin Tughluq who was known by the name of Juna Khan before his accession to the throne. Firozabad, the fifth city of Delhi, was also built by Feroz Shah Tughlaq. However, only the fortress and its crumbling remains in the forms of Jama Masjid (Friday mosque), a baoli (step-well), and a palace topped by a polished sandstone Ashoka Pillar brought by the Sultan from Ambala are found.

When the forth storey of Qutab Minar in Delhi was struck by lightning in 1370, Firoz replaced it with two more storeys, 

Firuz Shah Tughlaq was a religious bigot and this prevented him from being just to his non–Muslim subjects by imposing Jizya tax on them. 

He had prohibited Muslim women from worshipping the graves of saints. 

He is known to have as many as 180,000 slaves. According to Shams Siraj Afif, their rise brought disaster to the Tughlaqs. They annihilated Firuz's sons and played roles in destroying the Tughlaq dynasty. Firuz's eunuch named Malik Sarwar founded the  Sharqi dynasty of Jaunpur.   

Firuz died in 1388, aged eighty-two. 

Kamran Mirza, the Mughal prince

Kamran Mirza was the second son of Babur, the first Mughal emperor, who had appointed him to the position of governorship of Lahore during his rule. 

He had captured Bikaner’s famous Junagarh Fort, albeit for a day, which had otherwise remained unconquered in history. He tried to enlist the support of Sur ruler Islam Shah Sur against his brother Humayun but was rebuffed. He died in 1557 near Mecca to which he was on his way to perform the Hajj after being blinded on the order of Humayun.

Kamran Mirza is known to have built a baradari (a typical Mughal pavilion) at Lahore, one of the oldest Mughal structures.

 

Charaka, Master of Indian Medical science

An alumnus of the famed centre of learning Taxila (presently in the Punjab province of Pakistan) in ancient India, Charaka was the author of Charaka Samahita (Compendium of Charaka), basic textbook of Indian medicine.