MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 92 of 100

Correct — option (2), Al-Biruni. The book named in the stem is Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind, usually shortened to Tahqiq-i-Hind or Kitab-ul-Hind and known in English translation as Alberuni's India. Its full title translates roughly as a critical study of what India says, whether accepted by reason or refused, and the title states the method: al-Biruni set out to record Indian doctrine as Indians themselves held it, and then to weigh it. Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, who lived from about 973 to about 1050, was a Khwarazmian scholar of the Islamic golden age — an astronomer, mathematician, geographer, chronologist and linguist who spent much of his life at Ghazni and who travelled to the Indian subcontinent in 1017 in the wake of the Ghaznavid campaigns. He learnt Sanskrit, read Indian astronomical and philosophical texts in the original, and produced a work that deliberately left aside military and political history in favour of religion, philosophy, astronomy, the sciences, law, custom, festivals and the calendar. He worked out a method for converting dates of the Hindu calendar into the Greek, Arab and Persian reckonings; he distinguished between the monotheism of the learned and the popular worship of images; and he stated his own rule of writing plainly — that he would set out the theories of the Hindus exactly as they are, and place beside them the similar theories of the Greeks. That temper of enquiry is why he is called a founder of Indology and a pioneer of comparative religion. Note two things about the phrasing of the stem. First, the book is a description of the India al-Biruni could reach and read about, in the north and north-west, and the paper's 'North India' reflects that. Second, the book is one of two texts on which his reputation as an Indologist rests, the other being his translations from and commentary on Indian astronomy. He wrote a great deal else — his own catalogue of his output up to his sixty-fifth lunar year lists one hundred and three titles across astronomy, mathematics, geography, chronology and religion. The answer to be marked is option (2).

• (1)Mahmud Ghazni — Mahmud of Ghazni, who lived from 2 October 971 to 30 April 1030 and ruled the Ghaznavid empire from 998, is the ruler in whose reign al-Biruni came to India, not the author of the book. He is remembered in Indian history for repeated raids into the subcontinent, for the plunder of temple towns and above all for the sack of the temple of Somnath in Gujarat, and for turning Ghazni into a wealthy capital that attracted scholars and poets from across the Islamic world — Firdausi, the author of the Shahnama, and al-Biruni himself among them. The confusion the option invites is a real one and worth naming: al-Biruni's presence in India is a consequence of Mahmud's campaigns, so the two names appear in the same sentence in every textbook. But the patron is not the author, and this is a distinction MPSC tests in several forms — Amir Khusrau and Alauddin Khalji, Abul Fazl and Akbar, al-Biruni and Mahmud.
• (3)Ibn Battuta — Ibn Battuta is the wrong traveller by three centuries. Born at Tangier in Morocco on 24 February 1304 and dead in 1368 or 1369, he travelled for thirty years from 1325 across Africa, Asia and the Iberian peninsula, covering a distance greater than any traveller of the pre-modern world, and dictated his account near the end of his life under a title meaning a gift to those who contemplate the wonders of cities and the marvels of travelling — the book universally called the Rihla. He reached India in the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who made him qazi of Delhi and later sent him as an envoy to China, and his account is a first-rate source for the fourteenth century: the sultan's character and his experiments, the postal system, the cities, the coinage, the customs of the court. He is the standard answer to a question about a fourteenth-century description of India, which is exactly why he is offered against an eleventh-century book.
• (4)Abdul Razzak — Abd-al-Razzaq Samarqandi, who lived from 1413 to 1482, is later still and belongs to the south rather than the north. He was a Persian chronicler of the Timurid court and served for a time as ambassador of Shah Rukh, in which capacity he came to Kozhikode — Calicut — in the early 1440s; his narrative of what he saw on the Malabar coast and at the court he visited in the Deccan is a valuable source for fifteenth-century south India and for the Vijayanagara empire of that period. He also wrote a long chronicle of the Timurid dynasty. Nothing in his work answers to Tahqiq-i-Hind or to a description of the north in the eleventh century. Placing the four options on a timeline settles the question at once: al-Biruni in the eleventh century, Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth and Abd-al-Razzaq in the fifteenth, with Mahmud of Ghazni as the ruler contemporary with the first of them.

Foreign accounts are among the most important sources for medieval Indian history, because they record what Indian court chronicles took for granted or preferred not to say, and because their authors were outsiders describing what struck them as strange. They should be learnt as a chronological series with the ruler or dynasty each is attached to. Al-Biruni came in 1017 with the Ghaznavids and wrote Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind, an encyclopaedic account of Indian religion, philosophy, astronomy, custom and calendar, written from the Sanskrit sources he had learnt to read. Marco Polo touched the southern coast at the end of the thirteenth century. Ibn Battuta arrived from Morocco in the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, served as qazi of Delhi and left the Rihla. Abd-al-Razzaq Samarqandi came as a Timurid envoy to Calicut and the Deccan in the 1440s, Nicolo Conti and Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz described Vijayanagara in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the seventeenth century brought the European travellers of the Mughal period — Thomas Roe, Francois Bernier, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Niccolao Manucci. Al-Biruni stands apart from all of them in method: he was not a traveller recording impressions but a scholar reading Indian texts in Sanskrit and comparing Indian doctrines with Greek ones, which is why he is described as a founder of Indology and a pioneer of the comparative study of religion.

Questions on foreign travellers and their books are a fixed feature of the ancient and medieval history sections of MPSC papers, and they are set in the simplest form — book to author, author to book, traveller to ruler, or traveller to century. The reason they recur is that they are unambiguous and can be marked without dispute. The options in such questions are almost always drawn from the same family of travellers, as here, so recognition of the names is not enough; what is needed is a timeline. A candidate who can place al-Biruni in the eleventh century, Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth and Abd-al-Razzaq in the fifteenth will answer most versions of this question without knowing anything more, because the stem usually contains a period marker, a ruler's name or a distinctive subject. The one further discrimination worth practising is between the patron and the writer, since the Commission likes to offer a ruler among the options for a question about a book; here Mahmud of Ghazni is offered against al-Biruni, whose journey to India was a by-product of Mahmud's campaigns. Note also that the book title is printed in italics in both language columns of this paper, which is a typographic detail and not a clue.

• Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind, popularly Kitab-ul-Hind and translated into English as Alberuni's India, was written by Abu Rayhan al-Biruni and is a compendium of Indian religion, philosophy, science and custom.
• Al-Biruni lived from about 973 to about 1050, was a Khwarazmian scholar of physics, mathematics, astronomy, chronology and languages, spent much of his life at Ghazni and travelled to the Indian subcontinent in 1017.
• He learnt Sanskrit and read Indian texts in the original, devised a method for converting dates of the Hindu calendar into the Greek, Arab and Persian systems, and is called a founder of Indology and a pioneer of comparative religion.
• Mahmud of Ghazni, who ruled from 998 to 1030 and raided India repeatedly, including the sack of Somnath, was the ruler whose campaigns brought al-Biruni to India; he was the patron, not the author.
• Ibn Battuta of Tangier, who travelled from 1325 and wrote the Rihla, came to India under Muhammad bin Tughlaq and was made qazi of Delhi, while Abd-al-Razzaq Samarqandi came as a Timurid envoy to Calicut in the 1440s — both belong to centuries later than al-Biruni.

• Attributing the book to the ruler in whose reign it was written; Mahmud of Ghazni was the patron under whose campaigns al-Biruni came to India, not the author of Tahqiq-i-Hind
• Confusing the eleventh-century account with the fourteenth-century Rihla of Ibn Battuta, which describes the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq
• Placing Abd-al-Razzaq in the north when his account concerns the Malabar coast and the Deccan of the 1440s
• Treating al-Biruni as a traveller who recorded impressions, when his distinctive method was to read Indian texts in Sanskrit and compare their doctrines with Greek philosophy

Foreign travellers are examined by MPSC in four interchangeable ways: name the author of a named book, name the book of a named author, name the ruler in whose reign a traveller came, and identify the region a traveller described. The safest preparation is a table with four columns — traveller, book, century, ruler or dynasty — running from Megasthenes to Manucci, since any question that can be set is answered from one row of it. The Commission tends to place a ruler among the options when it asks about a book, and to place travellers of adjacent centuries when it asks about a period, so the table needs to be accurate on dates rather than merely on names. Questions on al-Biruni in particular usually mention either the title of the book or the fact that its author knew Sanskrit, both of which are distinctive enough to settle the answer immediately.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following statements about al-Biruni's Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind is correct ?

  • (a)It is principally a military history of the Ghaznavid campaigns in India
  • (b)It is an account of Indian religion, philosophy, science and custom, written by an author who had learnt Sanskrit
  • (c)It was written in Persian at the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq
  • (d)It describes the Vijayanagara empire under Devaraya II

  Answer(b) It is an account of Indian religion, philosophy, science and custom, written by an author who had learnt Sanskrit. Al-Biruni deliberately left aside military and political history and set out to record what Indians themselves held, reading their texts in the original and comparing their doctrines with those of the Greeks; he also worked out a method for converting Hindu calendar dates into the Greek, Arab and Persian reckonings. Option (3) describes the world of Ibn Battuta and option (4) that of Abd-al-Razzaq, both of them centuries later.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Arrange the following visitors to India in correct chronological order : (a) Ibn Battuta (b) Al-Biruni (c) Abd-al-Razzaq Samarqandi

  • (a)(b), (a), (c)
  • (b)(a), (b), (c)
  • (c)(c), (b), (a)
  • (d)(b), (c), (a)

  Answer(a) (b), (a), (c). Al-Biruni came to the subcontinent in 1017 in the period of the Ghaznavid campaigns and wrote Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind; Ibn Battuta arrived in the fourteenth century, in the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who appointed him qazi of Delhi; and Abd-al-Razzaq Samarqandi came in the early 1440s as an envoy of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, visiting Calicut and the Deccan. Placing foreign accounts on a timeline is the quickest way to answer almost any question set on them.