Essay:
The Mughal Book of War: A Persian Translation of the Sanskrit Mahabharata
By Audrey Truschke

In 1582 the Mughal emperor Akbar underwrote a Persian translation of the Sanskrit Mahabharata, thus transforming the great Indian epic into a Mughal courtly text. The court poured many resources into producing the translation, and the resulting text, called the Razmnamah (Book of War), remained a seminal literary work in Mughal circles for decades. While scholars have long been aware of the Razmnamah and its centrality to Mughal literary culture, few have seriously treated the textual content of this translation. Indologists have spilled much ink in repeatedly listing the dozen or so Sanskrit-Persian translations produced in Akbar’s court, including the Razmnamah. Some have tried to account for Akbar’s translation project as a whole and framed his endeavor as an enlightened religious policy or an act of political legitimation. The Razmnamah in particular has drawn attention from scholars who have studied the illustrations of the text and Abu al-Fazl ibn Mubarak’s preface to the work.

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Image:
The Lord Krishna in the Golden City from the Harivamsha (Geneology of Vishnu) - ca. 1600
Miskin
Mughal dynasty
Akbar(r. 1556 - 1605)
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
H: 34.9 W: 23.2 cm
India

The painting represents the mythical city of Dwarka, where the blue-skinned Krishna, an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu, is enthroned on a golden palace and surrounded by his kinsmen. A pastoral scene in the foreground evokes a familiar village setting and a sense that the gods are present in everyday life. This manuscript was painted for the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) who was quite interested in other religions. Akbar had translations made of major Hindu texts, including the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata, known in its Persian translation as Razmnama (Book of Wars). This page is from a section appended to the Razmnama known as the Harivamsa (Genealogy of Vishnu), which narrates of the life of Krishna.

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