The Language of Praśasti

Let me begin with an examination of the Malla inscriptions in praise of both the kings and queens of the polity. Although the first Malla temple was built in 1603, their first major temple was constructed in 1643 in Bishnupur. Dedicated to Rādhā and Kṣṇa, this temple is their first navaratna (new-jeweled) temple: a new, large temple type of the period (P. Ghosh Reference Ghosh2005, 9–11). The temple's inscription is important because it is the first time that a Malla king, Raghunātha Siṃha, specifies the reason for constructing a temple. Rather than simply saying, as was done earlier, that his temple is “given” or “presented” to Rādhā and Kṣṇa, Raghunātha says—using an objective genitive—that his temple is given “for delight [on the part of himself] of Śrī Rādhikā and Kṣṇa (śrī-rādhikā-kṣṇa-mude. . .)” (Bhattacharyya Reference Bhattacharyya1982, 70). The significance here is that he uses the term mud (delight) in explaining his action and that the phrase uses the grammatical construction of an objective genitive, which serves to specify his orientation to Rādhā and Kṣṇa: it is out of his delight of Rādhā and Kṣṇa that the temple is built.Footnote ⁸

After Raghunātha's inscription, this term and this grammatical usage become the de facto standard in inscriptional writing given for temple construction by the Malla polity. Raghunātha's son, Mādhava Siṃha (c. 1658), and King Vīra Siṃha (r. 1670–78) employed the same usage in their inscriptions (Bhattacharyya Reference Bhattacharyya1982, 83, 84, 100, 104, 106). Other inscriptions occasionally substitute the words “prīti” (love) or “pramoda” (pleasure). In an inscription dating to 1665, Queen Cūḍāmaṇi says that her temple is offered “for love (prīti) of Śrī Rādhikā and Kṣṇa” (90). In 1695, King Durjana says in his inscription that the temple is presented “for love (prīti)” of Rādhā and Kṣṇa (114). While usually in the dative case ending, these terms are also in the instrumental: in 1665, Queen Śrī Śiromaṇi, wife of Vīra Siṃha, says that her temple is presented “with great pleasure (ati-pramoda)” (91). An inscription of Raghunātha's mother in 1644 says it is presented “with delight (mud) at the feet of Rādhā and Kṣṇa” (75). In total, out of the seventeen Rādhā-Kṣṇa temple inscriptions available from the Malla dynasty following Raghunātha's inscription, fifteen employ these terms.Footnote ⁹

The employment of these lexical choices in the inscriptional language by the Malla royal family raises some important questions about why they chose these terms. Indeed, one could argue that these lexical choices—mud, prīti, and pramoda—are not made at random; rather, that these choices are deliberate and serve to reference a religio-philosophical position of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. This position is mapped out, for example, in Jīva Gosvami's Prītisandarbha (A composition on love), a definitive treatise for Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism on prīti and its role in devotion to Kṣṇa composed in the sixteenth century. In this work, Jīva discusses what the word prīti connotes:

In this passage, Jīva specifies the religious and philosophical significance of a number of terms for Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, many of which are the same as those in the Malla inscriptions, and subsumes them into a specific emotive and epistemic perspective of sukha (happiness). This perspective is not just a scholastic invention, however: it is also referenced by writers of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava devotional lyrics (padas), who employ the term ullāsa (joy) in their signature lines as early as Caṇḍidāsa (fifteenth century) in order to express a specific attitude and, thus, devotion to Kṣṇa.Footnote ¹⁰

In the context of Jīva's Prītisandarbha, as well as, more broadly, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava padas, these lexical choices in the Malla inscriptions become more meaningful. Being synonymous with and so referencing this special type of sukha, the inscriptions publicly announce a specific epistemological and emotional attitude on the part of the Malla kings and queens. This has the consequence that a devotional orientation towards Rādhā and Kṣṇa is referenced using terminology shared with Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. Importantly, what this inscriptional language displays via these lexical choices is the way in which devotion of Rādhā and Kṣṇa is used as a basis and justification for political action.

This basis of political action enables the Malla kings and queens to formulate a specific political language made up of śleṣas that contain mythical references to Rādhā and Kṣṇa and that often equate the queens and kings with Rādhā and Kṣṇa. Consider an inscription by Queen Cūḍāmaṇi in 1665 CE, which employs a series of śleṣas. I first present the inscription without the śleṣas and then with the śleṣas.

In addition to allowing one to read the names of kings Vīra Siṃha (most excellent hero) and Durjana Siṃha (most mischievous) in a literal manner, the inscription presents four śleṣas using the words “śrī,” “mahiṣī,” “vallabha,” and “jananī.”

These śleṣas allow one to read Cūḍāmaṇi as playing a very different role than simply a Malla queen. She is also “Śrī,” a name given to Rādhā in the second verse of Jayadeva's Gītagovinda (Reference Telang1937, 1.2). She is also a “mahiṣī,” a title given to the princesses who married Kṣṇa in Dvārakā, as narrated in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Schweig Reference Schweig and Bryant2007, 441). She is also in a relationship with the “lover” or “vallabha” in the land of the Mallas—“vallabha” being a descriptor of Kṣṇa in the Gītagovinda (Jayadeva Reference Telang1937, 7.6). And finally, the word “jananī,” meaning also “tenderness” in addition to “mother,” expresses Cūḍāmaṇi's fondness for the “mischievous” Kṣṇa—evoking the stories of his erotic interludes with Rādhā also elaborated in the Gītagovinda. Employing these four śleṣas, the inscription places Cūḍāmaṇi in the position of queen of the polity and yet simultaneously partaking in different identities related to the mythological accounts of Kṣṇa found in different literary works central to Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.

Additional uses of śleṣa in the Malla inscriptions are just as informative about the polity's political language. An inscription of King Durjana Siṃha in 1686 CE identifies him with Kṣṇa. The inscription, with its embedded śleṣa (rendered here with “in the one case . . . and in another”), reads:

Playing on the word “ramaṇa,” which means “king” in this context, but generally means “lover,” the inscription allows one to read Durjana as more than a king: he is also Kṣṇa, the lover of Rādhā in the Malla territory. Specifying where Durjana as Kṣṇa is a lover of Rādhā should not strike readers as peculiar. As Pika Ghosh has shown, the capital of the Malla polity, Bishnupur, was envisioned in the seventeenth century as a mirror image of Vrindavan—the setting of the Gītagovinda—such that the mythical identity of the latter was equally part of the former (P. Ghosh Reference Ghosh2002; Reference Ghosh2005, 185–86).Footnote ¹² Exploiting this geographical presupposition, Durjana's inscription overlays the erotic landscape of Vrindavan onto the Malla territory and so transforms Durjana's kingly role into that of Kṣṇa.

Another inscription from 1644 CE identifies the patron, the queen of King Vīra Sāha, as Rādhā. The inscription reads:

The inscription plays on a number of words here to portray the queen as partnered with Kṣṇa. As the compound “kṣiti-pāla” can mean literally either “king of the land” or “herdsman of the region,” it prevents a single interpretation of the word “yoṣitā,” which means “woman” or “girl.” If “kṣiti-pāla” is taken as the first translation, then “yoṣitā” is surely a woman who is a wife (queen) to the king. But, if the latter translation is used, then “yoṣitā” is a woman or maiden of a herdsman.

Kṣṇa can be identified as this herdsman because the inscription, through its śleṣa, reveals what he is doing: “subduing the fire of Rādhā (śrī-vīra-sāha)”—the word śrī taken here as the name of Rādhā just as was done above, “vīra” interpreted as “fire,” and “sāha” interpreted as “subduing.”Footnote ¹³ Importantly, the motif of “Rādhā's fire”—referencing her longing for Kṣṇa when she is separated from him—occurs not only in the Gītagovinda (Jayadeva Reference Telang1937, 7.3) but also in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava padas. For example, Govindadāsa (sixteenth century, Bengal) writes in a couplet from one of his padas:

This similarity of the inscriptional language with regional literary culture—in both Sanskrit and the vernacular—allows the queen to place herself within the mythical narrative of Rādhā and Kṣṇa precisely because it makes sense within local literary imagination.

Aside from the use of śleṣa, the inscriptions also employ specific poetic imagery. Consider this representative example:

While bees and lotus-feet as tropes in devotional poetry are common in Sanskrit works (Hospital Reference Hospital1978), these tropes are also used within Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava padas. Early poets, such as Caṇḍidāsa and Govindadāsa, referred to devotees as bees at Kṣṇa's lotus-feet (Narahari 1948, 332–33, nos. 3, 5, and 130; S. Sen Reference Sen1935, 111; Vaiṣṇavadāsa Reference Ray1915–23, 1.67). Later poets, such as Anantadāsa (pre-1700), Rādhāmohanadāsa (c. 1720), and Narahari Cakravartī (c. 1725), also compared devotees to bumblebees (Narahari 1948, 124, no. 70; Rādhāmohana Reference Ray1984, nos. 262, 687). Using poetic tropes found in regional literary culture, Durjana's inscription conflates his identity as king and devotee and, in the process, presents the temple as both a political and devotional act.

Let me now turn to examine the inscriptions of the Nadia Raj before undertaking a full analysis of the Malla polity's inscriptional language. Remember, for the Nadia Raj there are only three known inscriptions from the seventeenth century—all from Rāghava Rāy (r. 1632–83). This small number of inscriptions means that each of them can be examined below.

As will be noticed immediately, the language of the Nadia inscriptions differs considerably from the Malla inscriptions. Consider Rāghava's first inscription from a temple dated to 1669 CE:

Rāghava's first inscription performs two primary functions. First, it connects him with a major public works program: the building of a lake. Connecting him to this project, the inscription touts Rāghava's role in bringing material benefits to this area of the polity at a time when, according to local tradition, the area was afflicted by a drought (S. P. Ghosh Reference Ghosh1982, 33). Second, the lake associates Rāghava with enabling religious actions enumerated in the Śiva Purāṇa: ponds or lakes constructed next to Śiva temples are considered “Śiva-Gaṅgā” and are important places of ritual bathing for those worshiping Śiva (J. L. Shastri Reference Shastri1971, 1.11.57–58, 1.12.8, 3.14.53).

Yet, what might strike readers as most dissimilar to the inscriptions of the Malla polity is the declaration of his social status: a “twice-born (dvija).” This lexical choice is entirely absent in the Malla inscriptions, indicating that Rāghava is relying on a completely different set of values and beliefs for his political actions. More specifically, what is displayed here is a political language that uses vaidika ^† categories in order to generate meaning.

These vaidika categories are even more on display in Rāghava's second inscription, particularly when its embedded śleṣa is examined:

The inscription plays on the meanings of the word “indu” in order to endow Rāghava with powerful vaidika identities. Aside from “moon,” “indu” can also mean a “drop of Soma”—the sacred drink that enables immortality and is the center of the sacrifice in the gveda (MacDonell Reference MacDonell1951, 163–65); it also serves as another name of Vāstoṣpati—a Vedic god who protects property and wealth (V. B. Shastri Reference Shastri1963–65, 7.54.2–3).

Identifying Rāghava as Soma, the inscription presents him as the essential portion and center of the polity just as Soma is the essential component to the immortality of those who have drunk it and the focal point of the sacrifice in the gveda. As Vāstoṣpati, the inscription communicates that Rāghava is the protector of livelihoods and the material goods of those in the polity. Fulfilling both these roles, Rāghava presents himself as both the sustaining element and patronus of the entire Nadia polity.

Rāghava's inscriptions also convey a high valuation and support of scholars. Consider his last inscription:

In this inscription, Rāghava very explicitly announces his support for scholars and their activities. This pronouncement is couched in a śleṣa that identifies Rāghava as the moon that Śiva wears on his head, a major component of Śiva's iconography. The word “vimba” means “a disc of the sun or moon” and the word “bhānu” can mean “a ray of light” or “the sun,” but is also another name of Śiva enumerated in the Śivasahasranāma (The one thousand names of Śiva) in the Mahābhārata (Sukthankar Reference Sukthankar1927–66, 13.17.30). If the word “bhānu” is interpreted to refer to Śiva, then the word “vimba” would mean a disc of the moon—referring to Śiva's moon-disc.

While there are three different stories recounting how the moon became situated in Śiva's hair (Chakravarti Reference Chakravarti1986, 58), the importance for this discussion is that the inscription situates the polity in a cosmological connection to Śiva through the proxy of Rāghava. Taking the śleṣa as the primary reading, the inscription says that scholars in Nadia are in the vicinity of Śiva's moon-disc (i.e., Rāghava) and thus next to Śiva—the added import being that Śiva is also supporting Nadia scholars. Noticeable here is an expansion of Rāghava's political language incorporating Śiva. While all of Rāghava's temples are dedicated to Śiva, this final inscription inextricably connects Rāghava with Śiva so that Rāghava can fulfill the role of supporting intellectual activities.

Political Culture

Having finished a close reading of the inscriptional corpus of both polities, let me provide a larger analysis of the political cultures of these polities, beginning with some brief remarks on their respective political language. As the Malla inscriptions illustrate, a political language is presented that generates meaning through the devotion to Rādhā and Kṣṇa. Most crucially, this language makes use of a specific lexical set that communicates a certain epistemological attitude from which the polity acts. Moreover, the political language of the polity often employs śleṣas in order to place the kings and queens of the polity into the mythical roles of Kṣṇa and Rādhā. The inscriptions of the Nadia polity, on the other hand, present a political language that generates its meaning through vaidika categories and the mythology of Śiva. Through this language, Rāghava is placed within a certain social category (dvija), identified with Vedic deities (Soma and Vāstoṣpati), and situated in an iconic relationship with Śiva through which he enables intellectual practice.

Both sets of political language speak to how each polity constructs its political culture. In terms of the Malla polity, its political culture is expressed through and constituted by values and beliefs associated with regional culture: Rādhā-Kṣṇa devotion, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava philosophy, and Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava literary culture. This use of regional culture is presented perhaps most explicitly in how the Malla polity conceives of the agents of this political culture, namely, its kings and queens. These individuals in the inscriptions are positioned in either of two manners. On the one hand, the inscriptions position them in an identity relation with Kṣṇa and Rādhā, respectively. In other words, the kings and queens do not share but rather subsume their identity into Kṣṇa and Rādhā so that their role in the polity as political actors is subordinate to their role as mythical actors in the Malla territory, which, in turn, is presented as the erotic landscape of Vrindavan. On the other hand, the rulers of the Malla polity are positioned as devotees of Rādhā and Kṣṇa such that their political identity becomes secondary to, or simultaneous with, their devotional identity.

The conclusion that Malla political culture is constituted by regional culture is not without debate, however, nor is it a novel conclusion (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee2009, 149–51). Kumkum Chatterjee has recently argued that in addition to regional culture the Malla polity also attempted to “appropriate . . . a form of Mughal/North Indian cosmopolitanism” (150). Chatterjee demonstrates that the Mallas accommodated certain cultural forms specific to north India in such areas as material culture and the arts (168–75). While these accommodations should not be ignored, the extent of their influence in, or constituting of, Malla political culture is complicated by the fact that Malla political language remains distinctly localized and does not reference north Indian political spheres in explaining temple construction. In short, they show no concern in speaking to those outside of the polity or outside of Bengal even though they could have done so just as others did in the seventeenth century (Bhattacharyya Reference Bhattacharyya1982, 61, 64). While this dynamic between the Malla polity's adoption of certain north Indian cultural practices and their political culture, as discussed above in the context of their temple construction, needs to be examined further, it cannot be ignored that the inscriptions exhibit the Malla polity using exclusively regionally significant referents in speaking about their political actions, which produces a political culture distinct from not only larger political spheres in north India but other regional polities in Bengal as well. Let me now turn, then, to the other regional polity under discussion, the Nadia Raj.

The political culture of the Nadia Raj is expressed through and constituted by values and beliefs that have a long history across time and space in India—the Vedas, caste, Śaiva^† mythology—and so is less concerned with structuring their political culture around regional or local referents as compared to the Malla polity. This means that any localized concern (such as scholarly practice) is placed within a temporally and spatially diffuse conception of political culture. This is seen most clearly in a conception of kingship for Rāghava that follows a model voiced as early as the sixth century in the Bhatsaṃhitā. This text details an explicit connection between the king, his land, the temple, and the deity, and presents a model of a “shared sovereignty of king and deity” (Eaton Reference Eaton2000, 293–95). This model is a significant difference from the Malla polity, whose royal sovereignty is not shared with, but rather subsumed in, Rādhā and Kṣṇa. In the Nadia polity's inscriptions, Rāghava's identity is kept intact; he is a ruler in his own right, not a ruler who acts as Śiva. In addition, through the use of śleṣas, Rāghava employs vaidika references to present himself as the political center of the polity akin to the centrality of Soma in Vedic sacrifices and the protector of the physical area of the polity akin to the Vedic god, Vāstoṣpati. This should not be interpreted as hyperbole but instead as referencing kingly roles found in the Viṣṇudharmottara (c. 750 CE), in which the king is positioned at the center of the polity while the polity is a microcosm of the world. In exerting control over his polity, the king realizes control over the entire world (Inden Reference Inden and Richards1998, 43–50).

These differences in political culture demonstrate that although these zamīndārs of western Bengal are often presented as conforming to the ideals of “Hindu kingship” (McLane Reference McLane1993, 11, 15, 138), the political culture of this area was by no means monolithic but was rather constituted by multiple, even incompatible, structures—incompatible in the sense that the conception of kingship and the values and beliefs by which a polity engaged in political action were not transferable between polities despite those polities falling under the identity of “Hindu.” While the inscriptional corpus might encourage one to distinguish between Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva zamīndārs as a way to explain differences in political culture, it is more productive to set aside religion as an explanatory tool in addressing these differences. Instead, the inscriptions point to a difference between a polity (the Malla dynasty) that situates itself in a regional place versus a polity (the Nadia Raj) that situates itself in cosmopolitan space—what Sheldon Pollock (Reference Pollock2006, 10–19, 410–23) has termed a difference between “vernacular polities” and polities of the “Sanskrit cosmopolis” in premodern South Asia. While Pollock is admittedly concerned with pre-Mughal India (411, 421), his conceptual mapping of premodern, South Asian polities can still be employed for the seventeenth century given an important caveat: neither of the polities is using the vernacular in their inscriptions, which means a major component of Pollock's theorization of vernacular polities is missing. Yet, despite this absence, the Malla polity does bear characteristics of the vernacular polity as formulated by Pollock (418–23). The polity is concerned with articulating actions and situating actors within a space that is politically defined—using such terms as malla-bhū (region of the Mallas) and mallâvanī (place of the Mallas) (Bhattacharyya Reference Bhattacharyya1982, 109, 90). The polity also references literary cultures and religio-philosophical commitments primarily restricted to Bengal: motifs from the Gītagovinda and Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava padas as well as arguments in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava philosophy all play a key role in making sense of the Malla polity's inscriptional language. Moreover, this articulation occurs exclusively within the Malla polity's own delineation of cultural-political time: the Malla Śaka or Mallābda (Malla Era). The Malla polity was the only polity in western Bengal to have created its own calendric system—a calendar that was also employed in the colophons of literary and hagiographic works by scribes of the period and at times self-consciously referenced by the polity.Footnote ¹⁶ These considerations point to a localization of political culture by the Malla polity without, per my caveat, the use of the vernacular in the inscriptions.

The Nadia polity, on the contrary, eschews regional markers. Rather, its political culture employs values and beliefs that go beyond cultural expressions found exclusively in Bengal, which speaks to the polity referencing, in theory, the Sanskrit cosmopolis: a transregional sphere of cultural and political expressions voiced in and constituted by the Sanskrit language (Pollock Reference Pollock2006, 12). This referencing occurs when Rāghava endows his political power or status with transregional applicability: “a jewel among [all] twice borns,” “foremost among [all] rulers,” or “the moon among [all] kings” (Bhattacharyya Reference Bhattacharyya1982, 96, 99).Footnote ¹⁷ These epithets serve to dislocate him from the finite geography of Nadia and of Bengal. Moreover, śleṣas equating him with Soma and Vāstoṣpati project the polity's participation in vaidika culture, which claims trans-historical applicability due to the ahistoricity of the Veda; his support of scholars signals the protection of Sanskrit intellectual practice, which claims semantic, and thus epistemological, authority against intellectual practice in regional languages (Pollock Reference Pollock2001, 26).

Though one should not carry Pollock's formulation too far due to my caveat, his conceptual framework at the very least allows one to side-step a deterministic model of religious identity for political culture and position the political cultures of these two polities in a more historicized manner vis-à-vis South Asian polities prior to the seventeenth century. Specifically, the different political cultures of the Nadia and Malla polities are the outcomes of different choices made by each polity from the options available to them regarding political culture—options which could and did occur simultaneously in premodern India (Pollock Reference Pollock2006, 420).

Patronage and Reception

The discussion in the above two sections has remained confined to the inscriptions and the political language or political culture expressed therein. In this section, I remain grounded in the language of the inscriptions, but shift to examine how this public language and the political culture expressed through this language intersect with the public settings of each polity. What consequences for patronage can be identified in the inscriptional language or what was the reception of the political culture expressed in inscriptional pronouncements? These are large and difficult types of questions, but they are worth addressing, even if briefly. Moreover, my commitment to remaining grounded in the inscriptional language limits me as well: the Nadia inscriptions allow me to address only the question of patronage, whereas the Malla inscriptions allow me to address only the question of reception with any specificity.

I will begin the discussion with the easier case, the Nadia polity. In a rare occurrence, the Nadia inscriptions mention an actual constituency in the polity, namely, scholars. As discussed above, the Nadia inscription referring to scholars identifies Rāghava as the sun that causes scholars to flourish and, in the śleṣa-reading, as the moon-disc of Śiva that causes scholars to flourish. How, then, does Rāghava perform these political and mythical roles, if at all? It is well known that Rāghava invited scholars to Nadia from across all of India to engage in debate and learning (Ganeri Reference Ganeri2011, 52–53). Less known, however, is the larger, programmatic patronage of Sanskrit scholars and scholarship that was inaugurated by Rāghava and continued throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

While some examples of this patronage are part of the traditional narrative of the Nadia polity, three examples are available for Rāghava. The first two examples occur in 1661 CE when Rāghava granted land to two well-known scholars in the nyāya (logic) philosophical tradition, Gadādhara Bhaṭṭācārya and Govinda Nyāyavāgīśa. Gadādhara's grant from the 22nd of āṣāṛh, Baṅgābda^† 1068 (July 23, 1661) totaled 360 bighās^† (120 acres) and is said to be in the village of Malipota, approximately 24 kilometers southeast from Navadvip (D. Bhattacharya Reference Bhattacharya1952, 185). Govinda's grant from the 11th of phālgun, Baṅgābda 1067 (March 16, 1661) totaled 1,000 bighās (333 acres) of land and is in the village of Arbandi, approximately 18 kilometers southeast from Navadvip (K. Simha Reference Simha1999, 105). While granting land to Brahmans, in general, is an activity in which the Malla polity also seems to have engaged (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee2009, 170; Dasgupta Reference Dasgupta and Chakrabarti2003, 74), Rāghava's land grants, as discussed below, appear to be much larger than average in the seventeenth century, indicating that this role of supporting scholars was extremely important for the polity.

Rāghava's grants can be contextualized by comparing these two land grants with other available land grants and land surveys from this period. First, the amount of land granted to these scholars is far above average for this period. In a discussion on seventeenth-century Bangla prose, Anima Mukhopadhyay (Reference Mukhopadhyay1990) discusses a number of land grant documents from various districts surrounding Nadia in Hooghly, Malda, and Midnapore. The documents show grants that range between 1 and 96 bighās (1/3 acre to 32 acres). Pancanan Mandal (Reference Mandal1968) has also discussed a grant from Murshidabad during this period that amounts to only 10 kāṭhās^† (1/2 bighā or 1/6 acre). These available examples are all far below the amount of land provided by Rāghava to Gadādhara and Govinda.Footnote ¹⁸ Second, the amount of land held by Gadādhara and Govinda remained significant among Brahmans, in general, even into the early eighteenth century. East India Company survey records from June 1707 show that the amount of land held by Brahmans in the company's property totaled 303 bighās (101 acres); this stands in stark contrast to the 1,360 bighās (453 acres) held jointly by Gadādhara and Govinda (Wilson Reference Wilson1983, 284–86).Footnote ¹⁹ Finally, Rāghava's grants were on par with land grants given to important religious figures by governors of Bengal. In the second half of the seventeenth century, a land grant of 400 bighās (133 acres) in the Malda district was given to Shāh Ni‘mat Allāh Fīrūzpūrī (d. 1699), a Panjabi shaikh, by Governor Prince Muhammad Shūjā‘ (r. 1639–60). Prince Shūjā‘ later became the shaikh’s disciple (Eaton Reference Eaton1993, 169 fn. 31).

While the data is admittedly limited, one can tentatively conclude that Rāghava's land grants enabled both Gadādhara and Govinda to become major landholders in seventeenth-century western Bengal. One can only speculate on the benefits of this land for these two scholars, but at the very least Rāghava's land grants—which became hereditary property with rights to gift, sell, or own—demonstrate one aspect of how Rāghava enabled scholars to economically flourish during the period.Footnote ²⁰

Finally, Rāghava also commissioned scholarly works. In 1661, Rāghava commissioned a smti ^† work, entitled the Smārtavyavasthārṇava, written by Raghunātha Sārvabhauma, a well-known scholar, who refers to “King Rāghava (rāghavâvani-pati)” in his text as a “pool of wisdom” (Pingree Reference Pingree1970–, 376–77). This demonstrates Rāghava using his kingly position to influence the type of scholarly output in Nadia and support scholarly activities.

The policy of supporting scholars did not stop with Rāghava, however. His son and successor, Rudra Rāy (r. 1683–94), took part in scholarly activities by composing a Sanskrit work entitled the Purāṇasāra (The essence of the Purāṇas), which he wrote after consulting various Purāṇas (Chauduri Reference Chauduri2004, 178). Rudra's son, Rāmakṣṇa (r. 1694–1715?), patronized the nyāya scholar Jayarāma Nyāyapañcānana (Vidyabhushan Reference Vidyabhushan1971, 477), and his court hosted other scholars, such as Kṣṇarāma Bhaṭṭācārya, who took part in a council on the merits of the doctrines svakīyā ^† and parakīyā ^† (Chauduri Reference Chauduri2004, 179–81, 343). Rudra's grandson, Raghurāma (r. 1715?–28), provided a land grant of 266 bighās (86 acres) to Gadādhara Bhaṭṭācārya's third son, Rāmadeva Tarkavāgīśa—making Gadādhara's family in possession of 626 bighās (207 acres) of alienated land in Nadia by the early eighteenth century (D. Bhattacharya Reference Bhattacharya1952, 183).

This patronage of Nadia scholars and the policy of Nadia zamīndārs to support their activities, occasionally also taking part in them, suggests that the inscription in both its literal and figurative senses is not merely empty political rhetoric that has no bearing on actual policy decisions made by the polity, but rather expresses values that have real consequences for governing decisions in the polity. In short, this policy showcases the ways in which the mythical performance of supporting scholars as the moon-disc of Śiva is attained politically by Rāghava and the polity, in general: large land grants to scholars, commissioning scholarly works, maintaining court scholars, and royal participation in scholarly activity.

The more difficult case here, however, is the Malla polity. Because no constituencies are explicitly mentioned in the Malla inscriptions, an approach similar to the Nadia inscriptions above is, unfortunately, not feasible. To be sure, a number of communities were closely connected with the Malla polity. Weaving communities, for example, lived next to the temples during this period (Dasgupta Reference Dasgupta and Chakrabarti2003), and the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community, which assigns Vīra Hāṃvīra a central role in the spread of Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal, was also closely connected to the polity (Stewart Reference Stewart2010, 38–43). But these communities are not explicitly registered in their inscriptions. Nevertheless, while no explicit reference is made to the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community, the Malla inscriptions do contain terminology that, as argued in section one, is found in religio-philosophical positions of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, and their inscriptional language is in some cases similar to Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava padas. Due to these similarities, the political language and political culture of the Malla polity as expressed in their inscriptions can be justifiably examined in relation to Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava padas.Footnote ²¹

An examination of the padas yields three significant facts. First, King Vīra Hāṃvīra is credited with writing two padas. While it is not certain that he actually composed these padas, it can be stipulated that his padas are no later than circa 1750 CE since one first appears in the Padakalpataru, a large collection of padas compiled by Vaiṣṇavadāsa in approximately 1750 CE, and the other first appears in the Karṇānanda of Yadunandanadāsa and then later in the Bhaktiratnākara of Narahari Cakravartī (c. 1700 CE). Second, Vīra Hāṃvīra's son and successor, Dhāṛi Hāṃvīra, is mentioned in a stotra (panegyric) attributed to Śrīnivāsācārya but recorded by Narottamadāsa (late sixteenth century) still preserved in manuscript form with a scribal date of 1228 Bengali San Era (1821–22 CE). Third, the kings of the Malla polity are referenced in two padas contained in the Padakalpatru, each of which provides important information on the reception of the polity.

Despite the fact of the uncertain authorship of Vīra Hāṃvīra's padas and the stotra in which Dhāṛi Hāṃvīra is mentioned, the way in which the two kings are presented is important. These lyrics present these kings as devoted not only to Caitanya (1486–1533) and Kṣṇa but also to Śrīnivāsācārya—the individual credited with engendering King Vīra Hāṃvīra's interest in Vaiṣṇavism. The line praising Dhāṛi reads:

In this verse, Dhāṛi is presented exclusively as a devotee of Caitanya rather than as a king. The significance here is that Dhāṛi's royal identity is subsumed within the devotional—approaching the way in which kings in the inscriptions conflate their political and devotional identity. Vīra Hāṃvīra's padas also fulfill similar purposes. A signature line reads:

Vīra Hāṃvīra's other pada pronounces his devotion to Śrīnivāsācārya in addition to Kṣṇa. The signature line reads:

The lyrics present these two kings of the polity as deeply connected and personally committed to Vaiṣṇavism in its Bengali form—devoted to Caitanya, Kṣṇa, and Śrīnivāsācārya. Moreover, Vīra Hāṃvīra's first pada above uses imagery that is similar to King Durjana's inscription examined in section one: each compares the devotee of Kṣṇa to bumblebees. While the imagery may be conventional, it is significant because it provides more evidence of the regional contingency of Malla political language.

Importantly, these lyrics present these kings as enmeshed in the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community. This strong connection of the Malla royal family to the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community is voiced in a pada by Vaiṣṇavadāsa at the beginning of his Padakalpataru. After praising major personalities of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, he includes Vīra Hāṃvīra and the Malla polity:

Including many other well-known individuals in his pada, Vaiṣṇavadāsa provides a definitive list of the scholastic, literary, and political figures who constitute the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community. Significantly, Vīra Hāṃvīra is the only political figure listed in the pada, which highlights the importance of Vīra Hāṃvīra and the Malla polity in constituting Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism and, thus, the importance of the Malla polity as a constituent part of regional culture.

Finally, a pada by Rādhāvallabhadāsa (fl. 1731) that praises Śrīnivāsācārya's work in spreading Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal specifies that the Malla kings are utterly dedicated to Kṣṇa:

In this pada, Rādhāvallabhadāsa identifies an important result of Śrīnivāsa's efforts: the Malla kings responded by embracing the devotional commitment to Kṣṇa emphasized in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. While the rhetorical style of Rādhāvallabhadāsa's pada must be acknowledged, his presentation of the Malla kings is similar to what can be observed in their inscriptional language: devotion of Rādhā and Kṣṇa is a reason for kingly or political action. The significance of Rādhāvallabhadāsa's pada, in the context of the inscriptions, is that he is outside of the Malla royal family yet still making this claim about the polity's rulers. Moreover, his statement is not mere hearsay; rather, it is from direct observation of the Malla kings. In 1731, Rādhāvallabhadāsa signed a letter written by Kṣṇadeva Bhaṭṭācārya, who had traveled to Bengal on the order of Mahārāja Jayasiṃha II (1688–1743, Amber) in order to convince (albeit unsuccessfully) Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava scholars that the svakīyā doctrine was correct—not the parakīyā doctrine, which was widely held in Bengal at the time, according to the letter. Rādhāvallabhadāsa signed the letter and as was customary at the time included his place of residence: Bishnupur, the Malla capital (Chauduri Reference Chauduri2004, 344–46).

The above examples demonstrate that even though the polity is writing in Sanskrit in order to speak publicly and promulgate a public image, the Malla polity's political culture engenders a strong response in vernacular literary culture. Pada authors after kings Vīra and Dhāṛi Hāṃvīra described these kings using motifs also found in the language of the temple inscriptions, and pada authors, such as Vaiṣṇavadāsa and Rādhāvallabhadāsa, used the polity for literary inspiration and specified the institutional and psychological connections between the Malla polity and Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. In fact, this response in vernacular literary culture demonstrates that the public image to which the Malla polity aspired was perceived to have been attained by some outside the ruling family: the Malla polity was understood as part of the core Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community for Vaiṣṇavadāsa, and kingly action was understood to be motivated, in part, by the love of Kṣṇa according to Rādhāvallabhadāsa. This reception history helps explain what it meant for the Malla polity to position kings and queens in an identity relation with Kṣṇa and Rādhā in their inscriptions or simply present the kings and queens of the polity as devotees of Rādhā and Kṣṇa. Far from being a bombastic attempt by the polity to blithely insert the kings and queens into a divine role or arbitrarily present them as devotees, it is rather a purposeful attempt to make the Malla royal family part of the mythical narratives related to Rādhā and Kṣṇa and so maintain the polity's position as a constituent part of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community.