Book review: A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern (ed.),Sacred Kingship in World History: Between Immanence and Transcendence

The cover aptly carries a reproduction of the bust of the ‘Priest-King’ from Mohenjo-daro (Sind, Pakistan), although the description (‘Priest-King’) is that of its excavators and not of the Indus sculptors. The first editor, Azfar Moin, should be well-known to Indian readers from his work, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam, New York, 2012.

This may sound parochial, but it is surely a matter of some disappointment that ancient India should have totally escaped notice in this volume, despite there being a text like Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra, now generally assigned to second century ad. An essay on how ‘Hindu’ monarchy was abolished in Nepal in recent years (pp. 271–98) is hardly any compensation for ignoring Kautilya.

J. Gommans and S.R. Huseini do provide us with a very scholarly essay on the political and philosophical views of the authors of the famous historical text prepared under the Mughal emperor. Akbar, the Tārīkh-i Alafī, a ‘1,000-year’ narrative of the history of the Islamic world. One needs, however, to point out that the text where the justification of Mughal sovereignty was really sought to be provided was not the Tārīkh-i Alafī, but Abū’l Fāẓl’s Ā’īn-i Akbarī, which is not even mentioned in the Gommans–Huseini essay. Here, Abū’l Fāẓl offers a straightforward theory of social contract and a rejection of the theocratic state, with a practically explicit reference to the experience of early Islam. Religious tolerance was promoted through the sovereign’s own preaching to his ‘disciples’. ¹ Akbar and Abū’l Fāẓl had a much larger public in mind to appeal to than learned scholars dabbling in waḥdat al-wujūd or ishrāq.

The world is wider than India, and the volume by its global sweep enables us to appreciate how sovereign power has always sought ideological props amidst the most diverse cultures. Despite a slight degree of disappointment expressed above, good libraries are advised to add this volume to their stock.