Candrodaya
Why isn't anybody listening?
Joined: 09 Jun 2023
Posts: 643
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 Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2023 10:50 am Post subject: Shades and boxes. |
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There is an interesting manusript Ambar Hussaini - commentary on the gita by a Muslim poet named Ambar Hussain. See:
interesting manuscripts
Another all together different case is in Punjab, a brahmana clan that is half muslim/half hindu:
| Quote: |
Perhaps the most intriguing case of Hindu veneration of Imam Hussain
is to be found among the small Hussaini Brahmin sect, located mostly
in Punjab, also known as Dutts or Mohiyals. Unlike other Brahmin
clans, the Hussaini Brahmins have had a long martial tradition, which
they trace back to the event of Karbala. They believe that an ancestor
named Rahab traveled all the way from Punjab to Arabia and there
developed close relations with Imam Hussain. In the battle of Karbala,
Rahab fought in the army of the Imam against Yazid. His sons, too,
joined him, and most of them were killed. The Imam, seeing Rahab's
love for him, bestowed upon him the title of Sultan or king, and told
him to go back to India. It is because of this close bond between
their ancestor Rahab and Imam Hussain that the Hussaini Brahmins got
their name.
After Rahab and those of his sons who survived the battle of Karbala
reached India, they settled down in the western Punjab and gradually a
community grew around them. This sect, the Hussaini Brahmins,
practised an intriguing blend of Islamic and Hindu practices, because
of which they were commonly known as `half Hindu, half Muslim'. A
popular saying about the Hussainis has it thus:
Wah Dutt Sultan,
Hindu ka dharm
Musalman ka iman,
Adha Hindu adha Musalman
Oh! Dutt the king
With the religion of the Hindu
And the faith of the Muslim
Half Hindu, half Muslim)
But there is also another version of how the Dutts of Punjab came to
be known as Hussaini Brahmins. One of the wives of Imam Hussain, the
Persian princess Shahr Banu, was the sister of Chandra Lekha or Mehr
Banu, the wife of an Indian king called Chandragupta. When it became
clear that Yazid was adamant on wiping out the Imam, the Imam's son
`Ali ibn Hussain rushed off a letter to Chandragupta asking him for
help against Yazid. When Chandragupta received the letter, he
dispatched a large army to Iraq to assist the Imam. By the time they
arrived, however, the Imam had been slain. In the town of Kufa, in
present-day Iraq, they met with one Mukhtar Saqaffi, a disciple of the
Imam, who arranged for them to stay in a special part of the town,
which even today is known by the name of Dair-i-Hindiya or `the Indian
quarter'.
Some Dutt Brahmins, under the leadership of one Bhurya Dutt, got
together with Mukhtar Saqaffi to avenge the death of the Imam. They
stayed behind in Kufa, while the rest returned to India. Here they
built up a community of their own, calling themselves Hussaini
Brahmins, and although they did not convert to Islam they kept alive
the memory of their links with Imam Hussain.
The Hussaini Brahmins believe that Krishna had foretold the event of
the Imam's death at Karbala in the Gita. According to them, the
Kalanki Purana, the last of eighteen Puranas, as well as the Atharva
Veda, the fourth Veda, refer to Imam Hussain as the divine incarnation
or avatar of the Kali Yug, the present age. They hold Imam Ali, Imam
Hussain's father, and son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad,
in particular reverence, referring to him with the honorific title of
Om Murti.
The Hussaini Brahmins, along with other Hindu devotees of the Muslim
Imam, are today a rapidly vanishing community. The younger generation
abandoning their ancestral heritage, often now seen as embarrassingly
deviant. No longer, it seems, can a comfortable liminality be
sustained, and ambiguous identities seem crushed under the relentless
pressure to conform to the logic of neatly demarcated `Hindu' and
`Muslim' communities |
.full text here->
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