Padmavat

01Jayasi of Jais

Malik Muhammad lived at Jais, a small town in Awadh, and is known by its name. He was a Sufi of the Chishti line, a man who had lost an eye to smallpox and, the story goes, silenced a laughing king by asking whether he laughed at the pot or at the potter. He wrote in the spoken Awadhi of his villages, in the doha-chaupai form that Tulsidas would use a generation later for the Ramcharitmanas. Padmavat opens with praise of the one Creator, of the Prophet and his companions, of Sher Shah, then ruling at Delhi, and of the poet’s own teachers, and gives its date as the Hijri year 947, that is 1540 CE.

02Singhal and the parrot Hiraman

The tale begins in Singhaldvip, whose king Gandharvasen has a daughter, Padmavati, beautiful beyond words. Her companion is a learned parrot, Hiraman, who can recite the Vedas. When her father, fearing gossip, orders the bird killed, it escapes, is caught by a fowler and sold to a brahmin, who sells it to Ratansen, king of Chittor. At Chittor the parrot speaks of Padmavati, and Queen Nagmati, hearing that a woman lives somewhere more beautiful than herself, orders a maid to kill it. The maid hides it instead. Ratansen finds the bird alive and asks it to tell him everything, and the description of Padmavati from head to foot in the tenth khand undoes him.

03The king turns yogi

Ratansen puts on the yogi’s ochre, earrings and begging bowl, leaves Nagmati weeping, and sets out with sixteen thousand princes dressed as yogis, the parrot as guide. They take ship from Kalinga across the seven seas, each with its own trial. In Singhal, at the Shiva temple on Vasant Panchami, Padmavati comes to worship and Ratansen faints at the sight of her. She writes on his chest in sandal paste and leaves. Waking, he resolves to burn himself, and Mahadev and Mata Parvati appear; Parvati tests his love in the form of an apsara, and Mahadev shows him the way into the fort. He is caught and sentenced to impalement, until Gandharvasen learns who he is and gives him Padmavati in marriage.

04Nagmati’s twelve months

The canto most loved in Hindi is not the siege but Nagmati’s viraha. Left at Chittor, the queen counts out the twelve months from Asharh to Jeth, each season turning its pleasures against her: the first rains, the swings of Sawan, the festival lamps of Kartik, the cold of Poos. She asks the bee and the crow to carry word that she has burnt to death in separation, and that its smoke has blackened them. Acharya Ramchandra Shukla, who edited the Jayasi Granthavali in 1924, held it among the finest passages in Hindi poetry, and singled out the way the queen forgets she is a queen and grieves as any village wife would.

05The voyage home

A bird carries Nagmati’s message to Singhal, and Ratansen sets out for home with his bride and the treasure of Gandharvasen. At sea a storm wrecks the ships. Padmavati is washed ashore where Lakshmi, the daughter of the ocean, finds her; Ratansen drifts elsewhere, nearly mad with grief. Lakshmi tests him by taking Padmavati’s form, and he knows at once she is not his wife. Satisfied, the ocean restores the lovers to each other with gifts. At Chittor the two queens quarrel bitterly in a garden, Ratansen makes peace between them, and each bears him a son.

06Raghav Chetan and the Sultan

At Ratansen’s court the brahmin Raghav Chetan, master of a yakshini, makes the moon appear on the night of amavasya to win an argument about the date. He is banished for the trick. Padmavati, from her window, gives him a gold bracelet as he leaves, and he carries it and his anger to Delhi. Shown the bracelet, Alauddin asks about its owner, and Raghav describes the kinds of women and then Padmavati, until the Sultan demands her. Chittor refuses. The siege lasts years. At last Alauddin offers peace and is feasted in the fort, plays chess with Ratansen and glimpses Padmavati in a mirror. When Ratansen courteously walks him to the gate, he is seized and carried to Delhi in chains.

07Gora, Badal and the end of Chittor

While the king is a prisoner, Devpal of Kumbhalner sends an old woman to tempt Padmavati, and Alauddin sends another disguised as a yogini; both are turned away. Padmavati goes to the warriors Gora and Badal, uncle and nephew, and together they plan the rescue: a train of palanquins said to carry the queen and her women to Delhi, each one holding armed men. Ratansen is freed. Gora holds the pursuit and falls, and Badal brings the king home. Ratansen rides at once against Devpal, kills him in single combat and dies of his wounds. Padmavati and Nagmati go to the pyre with his body. When Alauddin finally enters Chittor, he finds a handful of ash, and throws it into the air.

08The key to the allegory

Padmavat is a Sufi masnavi, a love story whose lover is the seeking soul, and the closing khand in Shukla’s text gives the key. The body is Chittor, the mind is the king; the heart is Singhal, and wisdom is Padmini. The parrot who showed the way is the guru, without whom no one finds the formless; Nagmati is the business of the world; Raghav the messenger is Satan, and Alauddin is maya. The poet ends as an old man, his eyes and teeth gone, hoping only that whoever reads the tale will remember him with two kind words. Some scholars doubt the key stanza is Jayasi’s own; readers have taken it to heart either way.

09Poem and history

Alauddin Khalji’s siege and capture of Chittor in 1303 is recorded by his court poet Amir Khusrau, who was with the army; Khusrau does not mention a queen Padmini. Jayasi’s poem of 1540 is the earliest full telling of her that survives, and later Rajput chronicles and bardic accounts tell her jauhar in their own versions, where she is the queen of Rawal Ratan Singh. Historians debate how much of the story is history. In Rajasthan Rani Padmini is honoured as the queen who chose the fire over capture, and the jauhar of Chittor is remembered at the fort to this day.

10Manuscripts, editions and readers

Jayasi wrote in the Persian script, and early copies also survive in Kaithi and Nagari, which is one reason the text varies so much. In the seventeenth century Alaol retold the poem in Bengali at the court of Arakan. George Grierson and Sudhakar Dvivedi brought out the first critical edition in the Bibliotheca Indica, Ramchandra Shukla’s Jayasi Granthavali of 1924 made it a pillar of the Hindi syllabus, and Mataprasad Gupta and Vasudev Sharan Agrawala later gave fuller texts and commentary. Students of Awadhi still begin here, and Nagmati’s barahmasa is sung in the villages of Awadh.

What it contains

1. 1
   Khands 1–4: Praise and Singhal

   Praise of the Creator, the Prophet, Sher Shah and the poet’s teachers, with the date of composition. Singhaldvip described, Padmavati’s birth, and her bathing with her companions in the Mansarodak lake.

2. 2
   Khands 5–9: The parrot’s flight

   Hiraman flees Singhal, is caught and sold, and reaches Chittor, where Ratansen’s birth is told. Nagmati orders the parrot killed, and it is saved to speak with the king.

3. 3
   Khands 10–15: The yogi sets out

   Padmavati described from head to foot, Ratansen’s love-sickness and renunciation, his parting from the king of Kalinga’s port, and the crossing of the seven seas.

4. 4
   Khands 16–28: Winning Padmavati

   The Shiva temple at Vasant Panchami, Ratansen’s swoon and resolve to burn himself, the appearance of Parvati and Mahesh, the attack on the fort, the sentence of impalement, and at last the wedding. The companions are married too.

5. 5
   Khands 29–31: The seasons and Nagmati

   The six seasons of the lovers’ joy in Singhal set against Nagmati’s twelve months of grief at Chittor, and her message sent by a bird.

6. 6
   Khands 32–37: Return to Chittor

   Farewell from Singhal, the shipwreck and Lakshmi’s test, the homecoming, the quarrel of the two queens and the birth of their sons.

7. 7
   Khands 38–41: Raghav Chetan

   Raghav Chetan’s trick with the moon and his banishment, his flight to Delhi, his account of the kinds of women, and his praise of Padmavati before Alauddin.

8. 8
   Khands 42–47: The siege and the trap

   Alauddin’s march, the long war, the false peace and the feast in the fort, Chittorgarh described, and Ratansen taken prisoner at the gate.

9. 9
   Khands 48–54: Gora and Badal

   The queens’ lament, the two procuresses sent by Devpal and Alauddin, Padmavati’s appeal to Gora and Badal, the palanquin stratagem, Gora’s last fight and the king’s release.

10. 10
    Khands 55–57: The end

    Ratansen’s duel with Devpal and death, the two queens’ sati, and Alauddin’s arrival at an empty Chittor while the women of the fort perform jauhar and the men fall in battle.

11. 11
    Upasamhar (Epilogue)

    The key to the allegory, the poet’s account of how he wrote the tale, and his lament for old age. Printed as khand 58 in Shukla’s edition.

Famous verses

सुमिरौं आदि एक करतारू। जेहि जिउ दीन्ह कीन्ह संसारू॥

I remember first the one Creator, who gave life and made the world.Padmavat, Stuti Khand (khand 1), opening chaupai (Shukla, Jayasi Granthavali)

मानुष पेम भएउ बैकुंठी। नाहिं त काह, छार भरि मूठी॥

Through love a human being becomes fit for Vaikuntha; without it, what is he but a fistful of dust?Padmavat, Mandapgaman Khand (khand 17), stanza 2

पिउ सौं कहेहु सँदेसड़ा, हे भौंरा! हे काग। सो धनि विरहै जरि मुई, तेहि क धुवाँ हम्ह लाग॥

O bee, O crow, carry this little message to my beloved: that woman has burnt to death in separation, and it is her smoke that has blackened us.Padmavat, Nagmati Viyog Khand (khand 30), doha 6, as quoted in Shukla’s introduction

तन चितउर, मन राजा कीन्हा। हिय सिंघल, बुधि पदमिनि चीन्हा॥

The body I made Chittor and the mind its king; the heart is Singhal, and wisdom I knew as Padmini.Padmavat, Upasamhar (khand 58), stanza 1

धनि सोई जस कीरति जासू। फूल मरै, पै मरे न बासू॥

Blessed is he whose fame lives on: the flower dies, but its fragrance does not.Padmavat, Upasamhar (khand 58), stanza 2