Music under Mughal patronage: the place of pleasure

TY - CHAP

T1 - Music under Mughal patronage

T2 - the place of pleasure

AU - Schofield, Katherine Ruth

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - This chapter establishes an overarching theory of the place of Hindustani music in Mughal thought and social life, roughly from the last decades of Akbar’s reign (from 1593) until the death of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1707). My discussion is based on a range of Mughal sources in Persian on sound, listening, and music, notably music-technical treatises from the 1660s onwards that drew upon the Sanskrit tradition of written music theory (saṅgīta-śāstra). Mughal understandings of the human being, and thus of the social and political worlds, were dominated by two parallel binarisms deriving from the discourse on ethics and proper governance embodied in Persianate akhlāq literature: 1) the inner struggle between reason and the emotions anger and desire (or, in more technical terms, between the practical intellect,‘aql-i ‘amalī, and the irascible and concupiscible faculties, quwwat-i ghazabī and quwwat-i shahwī); and 2) this struggle’s outworkings in the social and political world as the need to maintain balance—‘adālat/i‘tidāl—between the domains of duty and, in the case of desire, pleasure. For virtue to prevail, reason and duty must ultimately win over desire and pleasure. But this victory did not entail the annihilation of desire and pleasure, rather mastery over these domains. This mastery had to be displayed to the world if it were to be deemed a virtue at all. Hindustani music was understood in Mughal writings as the sonic vehicle of the emotions joy, love, and longing, all of which belonged to the domain of desire. Musical patronage and connoisseurship therefore became a major social and political arena in which the inner struggle to place desire under rational control could be outwardly manifested. Patronage and connoisseurship of music, recited poetry, dance, youthful beauty, and other evanescent phenomena were the core practices of the domain of pleasure in the Mughal world, conducted largely within the intimate social institution of the majlis or maḥfil (assembly). While listening to music in the majlis could be dangerous to the Mughal official because of its exploration of desire, at the same time music was indispensible to Mughal courtiers because of its use value in fortifying the primary Mughal virtue of male-to-male affection, as a means to spiritual union with the Divine Beloved, and as a medicinal cure for physical and mental disease.

AB - This chapter establishes an overarching theory of the place of Hindustani music in Mughal thought and social life, roughly from the last decades of Akbar’s reign (from 1593) until the death of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1707). My discussion is based on a range of Mughal sources in Persian on sound, listening, and music, notably music-technical treatises from the 1660s onwards that drew upon the Sanskrit tradition of written music theory (saṅgīta-śāstra). Mughal understandings of the human being, and thus of the social and political worlds, were dominated by two parallel binarisms deriving from the discourse on ethics and proper governance embodied in Persianate akhlāq literature: 1) the inner struggle between reason and the emotions anger and desire (or, in more technical terms, between the practical intellect,‘aql-i ‘amalī, and the irascible and concupiscible faculties, quwwat-i ghazabī and quwwat-i shahwī); and 2) this struggle’s outworkings in the social and political world as the need to maintain balance—‘adālat/i‘tidāl—between the domains of duty and, in the case of desire, pleasure. For virtue to prevail, reason and duty must ultimately win over desire and pleasure. But this victory did not entail the annihilation of desire and pleasure, rather mastery over these domains. This mastery had to be displayed to the world if it were to be deemed a virtue at all. Hindustani music was understood in Mughal writings as the sonic vehicle of the emotions joy, love, and longing, all of which belonged to the domain of desire. Musical patronage and connoisseurship therefore became a major social and political arena in which the inner struggle to place desire under rational control could be outwardly manifested. Patronage and connoisseurship of music, recited poetry, dance, youthful beauty, and other evanescent phenomena were the core practices of the domain of pleasure in the Mughal world, conducted largely within the intimate social institution of the majlis or maḥfil (assembly). While listening to music in the majlis could be dangerous to the Mughal official because of its exploration of desire, at the same time music was indispensible to Mughal courtiers because of its use value in fortifying the primary Mughal virtue of male-to-male affection, as a means to spiritual union with the Divine Beloved, and as a medicinal cure for physical and mental disease.

M3 - Chapter

BT - Oxford Handbook to the Mughal Empire

A2 - Eaton, Richard

A2 - Sreenivasan, Ramya

PB - Oxford Univerity Press; Oxford

ER -