Jauhar
Jauhar, sometimes spelled Jowhar or Juhar,[1][2] was a Hindu Rajput practice of mass self-immolation by females, both adults and children,[3] in the Indian subcontinent to avoid capture, enslavement[4] and rape by Turko-Persian Islamic invaders[5] when facing certain defeat during a war.[6][7][8] Some reports of jauhar mention women committing self-immolation along with their children.[9][10] This practice was historically observed in the northwest regions of India, with most famous jauhars in recorded history occurring during wars between Hindu Rajput kingdoms in Rajasthan and the opposing Turko-Persian Muslim armies.[11][12][13][7] Jauhar was only performed during war, usually when there was no chance of victory. The term jauhar often connotes jauhar-immolation. Jauhar involved Hindu Rajput women committing suicide with their children and valuables in a massive fire, in order to avoid capture and abuse in the face of inescapable military defeat.[7][14] At the same time or shortly thereafter, the men would ritualistically march to the battlefield expecting certain death, which in the regional tradition is called saka.[1] This practice was intended to show that those committing it valued their honor more highly than their lives.
Jauhar by Hindu kingdoms has been documented by Muslim historians of the Turko-Persian
There is an annual celebration of heroism called the Jauhar Mela in Chittorgarh where the local people commemorate their ancestors.[19]
Etymology
The word jauhar is connected to Sanskrit jatugr̥ha, meaning a "house plastered with lac and other combustible materials for burning people alive in".[20] It has also been incorrectly interpreted to have been derived from the Persian gōhar, which refers to "gem, worth, virtue". This confusion, as author John Stratton Hawley states, rose from the fact that jivhar and jauhar were written in the same manner with the same letter used to denote v and u. Thus, jivhar has also came to be incorrectly associated with the meaning of jauhar.[21]
Practice
The practice of jauhar has been claimed as being culturally related to Sati, with both being a form of suicide by women through self-immolation. However, the two are only superficially similar, with the underlying reason for both being significantly different. Sati was the custom of a widow committing suicide by sitting on her husband's funeral pyre.[22] Jauhar was collective self-immolation by women in order to escape being captured and forced into slavery by invaders[23] when defeat was imminent. Self-immolation was preferred over simple suicide because it would negate the possibility of any defilement of their dead bodies which their husbands, children and/or clansmen might have to watch.
Kaushik Roy states that jauhar was observed only during Hindu-Muslim wars, but not during internecine Hindu-Hindu wars among the Rajputs.
The phenomenon of jauhar has been reported and perceived by Hindus and Muslims differently. In Hindu traditions, jauhar was a heroic act by the women of a community facing certain defeat and abuse by the enemy.[7][27] For Muslim historians, jauhar was portrayed as an act forced upon women by their culture.[1] Amir Khusrau the poetic scholar described it, states Arvind Sharma – a professor of Comparative Religion, as "no doubt magical but nevertheless they are heroic".[28]
Occurrence
Among the most cited cases of jauhar are three occurrences at the fort of
Jauhar during invasion of Alexander of Macedon
The mass self-immolation by the
The
Jauhar of Sindh: Muhammad bin Qasim
In 712, Muhammed bin Qasim and his army attacked various kingdoms of the western regions of the Indian subcontinent. He laid siege to the capital of
Jauhar of Gwalior: Iltutmish
Shams ud-Din Iltutmish of the Delhi Sultanate attacked Gwalior in 1232, then under control of the Rajputs. The Rajput women committed jauhar instead of submitting to Iltutmish's army. The place where the women committed mass suicide, in the northern end of the Gwalior fort, is known as Jauhar-tal (or Johar kund, Jauhar Tank).[39][40][41]
Jauhar of Ranthambore: Alauddin Khalji
In 1301, Alauddin Khalji of Delhi Sultanate besieged and conquered the Ranthambore fort. When faced with certain defeat, the defending ruler Hammiradeva decided to fight to death with his soldiers, and his minister Jaja supervised the organization of a jauhar. The queens, daughters and other female relatives of Hammira Deva committed jauhar.[42]
Hammira Dev’s wife Rani Rang Devi and his daughter Padmala, along with other women, made the decision to commit jauhar in order to protect their honor from the invading Islamic army. However, they found no time to arrange a huge sacrificial fire and altar in which to commit jauhar, thus they committed mass suicide by jumping into the reservoir at the fort. In her honor the reservoir has been named "Padmala Talav"
The jauhar at Ranthambore was described by Alauddin's courtier Amir Khusrau,[43] which makes it the first jauhar to be described in a Persian language text.[44]
First Jauhar of Chittor: Alauddin Khalji
According to many scholars, the first jauhar of Chittorgarh occurred during the 1303 siege of the Chittor fort.[45][46][47] This jauhar became a subject of legendary Rajasthani poems, with Rani Padmini the main character, wherein she and other Rajput women commit jauhar to avoid being captured by Alauddin Khalji of Delhi Sultanate.[45] The historicity of the first jauhar of Chittor is based on Rajasthani traditional belief as well as Islamic Sufi literature such as Padmavat by Malik Muhammad Jayasi.[48]
Jauhar of Kampili: Muhammad bin Tughluq
The Hindu women of the
Jauhar of Chanderi: Babur
The Hindu Rajput king
Second Jauhar of Chittor: Bahadur Shah
As Chittorgarh faced an imminent attack from the Sultan of Gujarat, Karnavati sought the assistance of the Mughal emperor Humayun to whom she had once offered a rakhi. Bahadur Shah sacked the fort for the second time. Rani Karnavati with 13,000 women shut themselves with gunpowder, lit it and thus committed mass suicide.[51]
However, the narrative of Karnawati sending Rakhi to Humayun is a fictional story which wrongly became a part of folklore based on an unreliable gossip from the 17th century (200 years after the event). Contemporary Persian and Hindu authorities did not mention this story at all.[52]
Third Jauhar of Chittor: Akbar
The armies of Mughal Emperor
According to Lindsey Harlan, the jauhar of 1568 is a part of regional legend and is locally remembered on the Hindu festival of Holi as a day of Chittorgarh massacre by the Akbar army, with "the red color signifying the blood that flowed on that day".[55]
Three Jauhars of Raisen: Humayun
Raisen in Madhya Pradesh was repeatedly attacked by the Mughal Army in the early 16th century. In 1528, the first jauhar was led by Rani Chanderi.[57] After the Mughal army left, the kingdom refused to accept orders from Delhi. After a long siege of Raisen fort, that exhausted all supplies within the fort, Rani Durgavati and 700 Raisen women committed the second jauhar in 1532 while the men led by Lakshman Tuar committed saka.[58] This refusal to submit to Mughal rule repeated, and in 1543 the third jauhar was led by Rani Ratnavali.[57]
Jauhar of Bundelkhand: Aurangzeb
Aurangzeb with vast army laid siege to Bundela in Madhya Pradesh in December 1634 CE. The resident women committed jauhar as the fort fell. Those who had not completed the ritual and survived the jauhar in progress were forced into the harem. Men were forced to convert to Islam whereas those who refused were executed.[59][60]
Jauhar of Daddanala: Mir Fazlullah
In 1710 CE, Mir Fazlullah, a rebel Mughal amir, invaded Daddanala, a town in the Prakasam District of Andhra Pradesh that was the capital of the Dupati Sayapaneni Nayaks.[61] As Sayapaneni Pedda Venkatadri Nayudu, who was in charge, died during the conflict, all the assembled Sayapaneni women set fire to the houses in the fort and were burnt to death.[61] The five-year-old prince Mallikarjuna Nayudu was saved by a maidservant who had smuggled him out through an orifice in the walls of the fort and was raised by his relatives.[61]
Jauhar among Mughals
Practices like the jauhar however weren't limited to Hindus. Muslim rulers are recorded to have their women killed in order to prevent any degradation of their honour.[62]
Jahangir in his memoirs states that his nobleman Khan-i-Jahan ordered his wives to commit jauhar during a battle with his enemy, Sher Shah Suri. During a war with the Ahom kingdom, Mirza Nathan ordered all Mughal women in his camp to be killed if he died. He later ordered them to perform jauhar.[63]
See also
- Honor suicide
- Akbarnama
- Puputan practice of Hindu kingdoms of Indonesia and Malaysia
- Seppuku
- Sati (practice)
References
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- ^ ISBN 978-0-520-07339-5., Quote: "In this she resembles the sati who dies in jauhar. The jauhar sati dies before and while her husband fights what appears to be an unwinnable battle. By dying, she frees him from worry about her welfare and saves herself from the possible shame of rape by triumphant enemy forces."
- ISBN 9788120804647, page xi, 86
- ^ Margaret Pabst Battin. The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources. Oxford University Press. p. 285.
Jauhar specifically refers to the self-immolation of the women and children in anticipation of capture and abuse.
- ^ Mary Storm. Head and Heart: Valour and Self-Sacrifice in the Art of India. Routledge.
The women would build a great bonfire, and in their wedding finery, with their children and with all their valuables, they would immolate themselves en masse.
- ^ Pratibha Jain, Saṅgītā Śarmā, Honour, status & polity
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- ISBN 978-0195352771, page 26
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- ^ Veena Talwar Oldenburg, "Comment: The Continuing Invention of the Sati Tradition" in John Stratton Hawley (ed.), Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India, Oxford University Press (1994), p. 165
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- ^ The Anabasis of Alexander/Book VI by Arrian, translated by E. J. Chinnock, Wikisource
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- ^ For an image of the site, see Jauhar Kund, Gwalior Fort, Archaeology Dept, Government of Madhya Pradesh, page 2
- ^ Dasharatha Sharma 1959, pp. 118–119.
- ^ Banarsi Prasad Saksena 1992, p. 368.
- ^ Satish Chandra 2007, p. 97.
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- ^ R.K. Gupta, S.R. Bakshi, Studies In Indian History: Rajasthan Through The Ages The Heritage Of ..., page 125
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Bibliography
- OCLC 31870180.
- Dasharatha Sharma (1959). Early Chauhān Dynasties. S. Chand / Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 9780842606189.
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- Beny, Roland; Matheson, Sylvia A. (1984). Rajasthan - Land of Kings. London: Frederick Muller. p. 200 pages. ISBN 0-584-95061-6.
External links
- Media related to Jauhar at Wikimedia Commons