वो चाँद खिला, वो तारे हँसे ये रात अजब मतवाली है...Omar Khayyam and Shailendra

From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edmund Dulac

तळमळत असून कवी बनणे, श्रीमान योगी बनणे... 17th Century

मराठी भाषिकांसाठी १७वे शतक हे मंतरलेले आहे- शहाजी, जिजाबाई,  शिवाजी, तुकाराम, आणि रामदास ही पाच  महान व्यक्तिमत्व त्यात जगली.

मराठीत '१७वे शतक' असे एखादे पुस्तक लिहायला जायला पाहिजे होते. गेलेही असेल तर मला माहित नाहीये. जेंव्हा ते लिहले जाईल त्या वेळी त्या पुस्तकात त्या शतकाचा सर्वांगीण आढावा घेतला जावा.

माझी तत्कालीन महाराष्ट्राची माहिती ही काही पुस्तकांवर आधारित आहे.

कै. दिलीप पुरुषोत्तम चित्रे त्यांच्या 'पुन्हा तुकाराम', १९९० मध्ये तो प्रयत्न करतात. पण ते सगळ फारच मोघम आहे. त्यातून आपल्याला एवढ मात्र समजत की १७व्या शतकातील सामान्य माणसाचे जीवन किती कठीण होते (ते केंव्हा नसते?).  "... इ स १६२९च्या दुष्काळात तुकोबांची पहिली पत्नी अन्नान अवस्थेत त्यांच्यासमक्ष तडफडत मेली. देहूतील अनेक नात्याची आणि ओळखीची , इतर लोक , गुरेढोरे सर्वच जीव दुष्काळात होरपळून निघाले...."

रा भा पाटणकर त्यांच्या 'अपूर्ण क्रांती', १९९९ मध्ये लिहतात : "...शिवाजीने रयतेच्या भल्यासाठी केलेल्या गोष्टी सर्वश्रुत आहेत. पण तरीही तेथील सामान्य रयत सुखात होती असे म्हणता येणार नाही... अव्वल दर्जाच्या जमिनीची कमतरता , पावसाची अनिश्चितता , नेहमीच युद्धाचा प्रसंग, २/५ सारा व वतनदारांच्या विविध पट्ट्या , सावकारांचे मोठे दर- अशा परिस्थितीतला शिवकालीन शेतकरी संपन्न असू शकेल का? "

पण याच्याच बरोबरीने आपल्याला खालील एक-दोन गोष्टी पण विचारात घ्यायला लागतील.

दुष्काळ हा भारतासाठी एक मोठा शाप आहे हे खरे पण त्यांची भयंकरता इंग्रजी आमदनी मध्ये प्रचंड वाढली. Jon Wilson यांचे 'India Conquered: Britain's Raj and the Chaos of Empire' , २०१६ वाचून हे समजले की त्याची सुरवात प्लासीच्या लढाईनंतर झाली आणि आधीच्या आणि नंतरच्या भारतीय राजवटी, कशाही असोत,  त्या इतक्या टोकाचे अकाल टाळायच्या. 

"To collect cash from the new territories in Bengal acquired with the diwani, Robert Clive ordered ten companies of troops to march into the countryside and enforce payment. In his two last years as Governor of Bengal, 1766–7, Clive tried to focus the Company’s servants’ attention more emphatically on the goal of collecting revenue, banning officers from engaging in private trade and allowing them a commission on the Company’s private trade instead of private profits. This met with much resistance, and Company servants continued to make fortunes from personal commerce for another twenty years. But the impatient focus on the collection of revenue at all costs undermined the capacity of political authorities in Bengal to respond to economic crises. The consequences were catastrophic... 

... Later British officers saw Bengal as a place peculiarly vulnerable to these malign natural forces. In reality, though, they found it very difficult to find evidence for such a devastating famine in Bengal’s recent history. The last similar event occured in 1574, when the Mughal conquest of Bengal had only just begun. Between then and 1769, the back and forth of Mughal politics ensured ecological shocks did not cause human disasters. Good years created surpluses of food and money, which could then be redistributed to feed people in lean times. Bengal’s little kings and Mughal rulers used their reserves to buy grain, to feed the poor, to accept the late payment of land revenue and lend money to farmers to get them started again if their crops were wiped out. This was not an economy with a high rate of growth, and living standards were poor by today’s standards. But bad harvests, in 1737 and 1738 for example, did not create large mortality rates. India before the British was, after all, a polity where power depended partly on consent, and resistance and flight were options for subjects who did not like the way a ruler behaved. Maintaining political authority needed political leaders to be sensitive to the needs of subjects when their livelihood was under threat. It was that sensitivity the British lacked..."

भारत जवळजवळ १९व्या शतकापर्यंत, इंग्रज स्थायिक होई पर्यंत, जगात आर्थिक दृष्ट्या बलाढ्य राष्ट्र होते. ["...Strachey argued that the Raj was bad for Britain and the British. In Inglorious Empire, Shashi Tharoor argues, with equal passion, that it was much worse for India and the Indians. In 1700, when the British were mere traders clinging on to a few coastal toeholds, the Emperor Aurangzeb ruled over a country that accounted for a quarter of the world’s economy. By the time the British left, India’s share of global GDP had sunk to just over 3 per cent..." (Ferdinand Mount, 'Umbrageousness', LRB, September 2017)].

मराठीत एकूणच लिखित इतिहासाची वानवा. त्यात नैसर्गिक घटनांची नोंद आणखी अवघड.

SN 1054 (Crab Supernova) was a supernova that was widely seen on Earth in the year 1054. It was recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers as being bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days, outshining the most brilliant stars in the heavens.

Dr. Jayant Narlikar writes in his book “The Scientific Edge”, 2003:

"...Our searches did not lead to anything definitive that can stand alongside the Chinese or Japanese notings of the Crab supernova, nor are they even broadly confirmatory, as in the case of Ibn Butan’s records... 

Thus the practice of writing down some fact or idea and preserving it for posterity, common to Europe, China and the Middle East, was not so common in India. Also the practice of debating at length deep philosophical concepts in preference to experiments and observations must have played a role. Even the written material cannot be authenticated vis-à-vis dates, for in some cases portions from earlier manuscripts were simply copied in later ones, presumably because the author felt that it would enhance the overall credibility of the entire text. In other cases, portions were added later and made to appear to be from the original text. This was done presumably so that the later insertions would command the same authority as the original text..."

तेंव्हा १७व्या शतकातील महाराष्ट्राच्या पर्यावरणात कोणते आणि किती बदल झाले याबद्दल मी तरी अजुन वाचलेले नाही. 

१७व्या शतकावर लिहले गेलेले इंग्लिश मधील पुस्तक 'Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century' by Geoffrey Parker, २०१३ च्या परीक्षणात, डेव्हिड पॅरट 'लंडन रिव्यू ऑफ बुक्स' (LRB) मध्ये लिहतात:

"Contemporary accounts leave little ambiguity about the character of the 17th century. Natural disasters, warfare, political unrest and rebellion combined to bring about levels of mortality, destruction and collective trauma unmatched until the mid-20th century. The confessional conflicts, rebellions, plagues and famines of the 16th century were mild by comparison ..."

The Sudden Pounce, the Rapid Penetration, the Unfailing Female Orgasm, and the Retreat into the Study...Georges Simenon

I am bewitched by the prose of Georges Simenon.

I was startled to read the essay by Julian Barnes in March 1983 issue on Mr. Simenon.

"...Here is a typical sexual encounter from the Twenties, at the time of the writer’s engagement to his first wife:
With Simenon, early one morning, lying awake in the Hotel Berthe, the need was so great that when he heard a chambermaid outside in the hallway cleaning the guests’ shoes, he got up, opened the door, lifted the girl’s skirt and possessed her on the spot – while she was brushing away. She did not even stop what she was doing but merely said: ‘Oh Monsieur!’

Now skip two marriages, 40 years and nine thousand-odd other women, and catch the truth-seeker’s first sexual encounter with Teresa, his present housekeeper-companion:

A month after she started work at Echandens, I unexpectedly walked into a room and found her bending over a table that she was polishing. The sight was too much for me. I advanced upon her, feverishly pulled down her knickers and penetrated her ... Teresa did not play the coquette. She had an orgasm as violent as mine, still bent over the table, with a duster or chamois leather in her hand ... We did not even look at each other. I just walked out of the room and locked myself in my office.

Simenon doesn’t elaborate on which particular truth he was confirming on this latter occasion – perhaps it was that the conscientiousness of domestic staff had not declined over a period of 40 years. But the encounters are typical of Simenon’s vaunted manner: the sudden pounce, the rapid penetration, the unfailing female orgasm, and the retreat into the study (where his technique, of course, was not all that different: literature’s pouncer, he wrote each novel in a swift, uninterruptible burst)...."

पूर्णात् पूर्णमुदच्यते...Getting Better All the Time?

Artist: Saul Steinberg, 1965

जी ए कुलकर्णी:
".... मग अखेर हा गोलक  आहे तरी कसला? क्षणाक्षणाला भीषण स्फोट करत अनेकरंगी चांदण्या आभाळात फेकणारा, पण आभाळातील चांदण्यांचा विध्वंस करणारा; एका बाजूला सहस्त्र डोळ्यांची रास धारण करणारा तर दुसऱ्या बाजूला निव्वळ रित्या खोबण्यांच्या दैवी खुणांची चाळण मांडणारा, एका बाजूला खडक वितळवणाऱ्या धगीने पेटलेला, तर दुसऱ्या जागी अंगातले रक्त गोठवणारा थंडगार.
हा गोलक आहे तरी कसला ? की तो कसला हे सांगता येत नाही हेच अखेरचे खरे उत्तर?...
... आणि शेवटी राहते काय? तर सगळे नोंदून, पण काहीच अंगाला लावून न घेता निर्लेप, निर्विकार राहणारे हे एवढेच भिंग.
पूर्णात् पूर्णम् उदच्यते ।"
(पृष्ठ ४५-४६, स्वामी, पिंगळवेळ, १९७२)

...कारण टिपू सुलतान ब्रिटिशांसाठी एक सेलिब्रिटी होता....Tipu, a Celebrity

Linda Colley , 'Captives: The story of Britain's pursuit of empire and how its soldiers and civilians were held captive by the dream of global supremacy 1600-1850‘, 2003:

“...But Tipu, in the British imagination, was not just an Asian Napoleon. He was also – as his own court rituals and chosen symbolism proclaimed – a tiger prince, the personification of all that seemed to the British dangerous and unpredictable about India. And it was partly as a tiger, ‘tearing in pieces the helpless victims of his craft, or his rapacity’, that British propagandists now began describing him. This was something of a departure. Back in the 1780s, even captive Britons had generally described Tipu in moderate or even respectful terms. ‘He bore his success like a man accustomed to victory,’ wrote a colonel who had been captured at Tanjore: ‘nothing haughty or imperious about him.’ ‘His manners were easy and affable; his address and behaviour agreeable,’ recorded another British officer who was brought face to face with Tipu after the fall of Mangalore. ‘Easy’, ‘affable’, ‘agreeable’: these are the sort of words that Jane Austen employed in her novels to alert readers to one of her more acceptable gentlemanly characters. And the use of code terms denoting an English gentleman in these early British descriptions of Tipu is surely no accident. Nor was it accidental that – like his father – Tipu was often described as pale-skinned. Robert Cameron, an army lieutenant captured at Pollilur in 1780, customarily referred to the guards in his prison as ‘blacks’. Brought before Tipu, however, he saw him as ‘fair, with a pleasing countenance’. Another Scottish officer-captive of Mysore, Innes Munro, was critical in his narrative of miscegenation in India lest it ‘give a sallow tinge to the complexion of Britons’, but thought nothing of comparing Haidar Ali approvingly to Frederick the Great of Prussia.58 Even in 1790, an English observer could liken Tipu to Achilles, with all that this implied in terms of martial valour and classical physique. As would always be the case, non-Europeans of power, rank, and – in the case of Haidar and Tipu proven military success – could deflect and correct a racially hostile European gaze (and vice versa).

By the end of the eighteenth century, however, private and public British descriptions of Tipu had darkened in every sense....”

“...From the 1750s onwards, tigers stalk the British imagination. Sarah herself was mauled by a tiger in the early years of her marriage to John Cuff. Her arms were permanently scarified by its claws. She had another confrontation with the animal, when she witnessed one devouring the pregnant Indian companion of a Company army officer. (Or was this perhaps an addition by her ghost-writers worried at what was known about levels of cross-racial sex in the Company’s legions?) Building on the horror of these fierce encounters, Sarah’s publishers inserted a special appendix in her captivity narrative describing the wild animals of India, of which the tiger, they insisted, was by far the worst:

A tiger is one of the most ferocious animals that Nature has produced; stately and majestic in appearance, yet cowardly and artfully cunning in his actions; never openly facing his prey, but springing upon it from ambush.

The tensions in this description are interesting and suggestive. The tiger, in this version, is at once a magnificent beast and lacking in courage, both dangerous and devious. Most of all, it is unpredictable, as India itself seemed unpredictable. By this stage, anthropomorphic tiger references of this sort had become common in British literature and art. Before the battle of Plassey, however, Britons had known little of tigers outside of wildly inaccurate images in ancient bestiaries and books of heraldry. It was the conquest of Bengal that brought these animals to their notice....”

विल्यम डालरिम्पल यांनी नाना फडणवीस आणि महादजी शिंदे यांचा त्यांच्या नव्या पुस्तकात करून दिलेला त्रोटक परिचय वाचण्यासारखा आहे....

Nana Phadnavis
1742–1800
Pune-based statesman and minister to the Peshwas, known as ‘the Maratha Machiavelli’. He was one of the first to realise that the East India Company posed an existential threat to India and tried to organise a Triple Alliance with the Hyderabadis and the Sultans of Mysore to drive them out, but failed to carry the project through to its conclusion.

Mahadji Scindia
1730–94
Maratha chieftain and statesman who was the most powerful Indian ruler in northern Hindustan for twenty years, from the 1770s onwards. Badly wounded at the Battle of Panipat in 1761, he limped for the rest of his life and became hugely fat, but he was a shrewd politician who took Shah Alam under his wing from 1771 onwards and turned the Mughals into Maratha puppets. He created a powerful modern army under the Savoyard General Benoît de Boigne, but towards the end of his life his rivalry with Tukoji Holkar and his unilateral peace with the East India Company at the Treaty of Salbai both did much to undermine Maratha unity and created the conditions for the final Company victory over the Marathas nine years after his death.

('The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire', २०१९)

आता ही दोघे- विशेषतः नाना जे इंग्रजांच्या भारताला गुलाम करणाच्या वाटेतील सर्वात मोठा काटा होते- ब्रिटिश जनतेसाठी सेलिब्रिटी कधीच बनली नाहीत आणि त्यांच्याबद्दल तेंव्हा आणि आजही ब्रिटिश समाजात अज्ञान आहे. पण टिपूची गोष्ट वेगळी.... 

Ruth Scobie, History Today, December 2019:

“…Tipu, Sultan of Mysore, was the Company’s most formidable military enemy but also one of the most recognisable figures in British popular culture. Stories circulated in newspapers about his many wives, the luxury of his court, his vast ambition and his alliances with pre- and post-Revolution France. In 1792, the Sadlers Wells musical Tippoo Saib celebrated – a little prematurely – his defeat, while sentimental engravings depicted the Company’s hostage-taking of his two young sons. A bigger wave of melodramatic pictures in 1799 imagined Tipu’s death in the siege of Seringapatam and the finding of his corpse in the ruins of the fallen city. The Company funded and promoted its own propaganda about Tipu, including reports of torture, forced circumcisions and the cruel executions he had ordered carried out on British prisoners. ‘Nature shudders at the thought of Indian ferocity, as of late practised in the East by the orders of that sanguinary tyrant, the Nabob Tippoo Sultan’, sobbed the Gazetteer:

‘Grant us the indulgence of an hour! – on our knees we implore it!’ – said two brave officers (General Matthews’s brother and another) – ‘No! not a moment!’ was the answer; and their throats were cut from ear to ear!

By the late 1790s Tipu’s effective if unsubtle image as a Gothic villain was so well established in the British imagination that he appeared in popular novels. In the Minerva Press’ The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors, Tipu imprisons and threatens the heroine’s father for several volumes, ‘feasts on their agonies, and drinks their tears’.

Tipu’s celebrity sometimes also reflected a more ambiguous Orientalist fascination with pleasure and luxury. ‘La Robe a la Tippoo Saib’, according to the World in 1788, was ‘a new sort among the ton’, with ‘a very long train, after the Eastern manner, of Citron green taffaty, spotted with rose colour’ and ‘a plain rose colour taffaty petticoat, cut in points at the bottom’. A printed paper board for ‘The New Game of Tippoo Saib’, now in the British Library, shows a turbaned ‘sultan’ surrounded by colourful floral motifs. As Charlotte Smith joked in her comedy What Is She?, ‘the Bengal tyger, the amours of Tippoo Saib, or some secret history of a Nabob’ all sold well. Tipu’s celebrity fitted into the Orientalist tradition of fictional and fictionalised despots – but it also confirmed this tradition and gave it a ‘real life’ figurehead. Tipu, to a British public who knew him through all this print and performance, came often to seem a figure of gossip and entertainment – a commodity to be consumed…”

Clockwise from top left: 19th-century Staffordshire pearlware (photograph © Myrna Schkolne); Karen Thompson’s ‘Death of a Species’ (2013); Michell and Napiorkowska’s ‘Sauce Boat Inspired by Tipu’s Tiger’ (1976); the V&A’s mechanical organ.

courtesy: LRB, January 2018

अश्वमेध...Yudhisthira, Nietzsche and Schrödinger

Sue Prideaux :

“…It is not clear what exactly happened on the morning of 3 January 1889. The story is they saw him as usual leaving Davide Fino’s corner house on the Piazza Carlo Alberto. They were used to the sad and solitary figure wrapped in thought, often on his way to the bookshop, where he was known to sit for hours with the book pressed very close to his face, reading but never making a purchase. The piazza was full of tired old horses drooping between the traces of carts and cabs waiting for fares: miserable jut-ribbed nags being tormented into some semblance of work by their masters. On seeing a cabbie mercilessly beating his horse, Nietzsche broke down. Overwhelmed by compassion, sobbing at the sight of it, he threw his arms protectively around the horse’s neck, and collapsed. Or so they said. Crises are so quickly come and gone. Eyewitnesses see so many different truths….”

(‘THE CAVE MINOTAUR ·’, “I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche”, 2018)

Benjamín Labatut :

“…The streets of Vienna filled with mutilated soldiers who had brought back with them the spectres of the battlefield; their nerves, damaged by gas in the trenches, twisted their faces into ghoulish grimaces, spasms shook their muscles, rattling the medals that hung from their tattered uniforms and making them chime like the bells in a leper colony. Control of the population was left in the hands of an army whose soldiers were as weak and famished as those they were meant to govern; fat white maggots infested their rations of meat, less than a hundred grams per person per day. When the troops distributed what little foodstuffs arrived in their country from Germany, total chaos ensued: during one of the disturbances, Schrödinger watched the mob knock a policeman from his horse. In five minutes, the beast was dismembered by a hundred women, who flocked around the cadaver to tear away the very last strips of its flesh….”

(“When We Cease to Understand the World”, 2020)

Ashwamedha yagna of Yudhisthira By Mughal artist - From Birla Razmnama (courtesy: Wikipedia)