The dreams of Tipu Sultan or
Tippuvina Kanasugalu is a Kannada play written by
playwright Girish Karnad. The play traces the story of Tipu and follows
the last days of the Tiger of Mysore.
However, this post is not
about this play. It is about the dreams of Tipu Sultan and it is these dreams
that Tipu compiled in the form of a book.
The book, as can be expected,
is not in India .
It was looted from Srirangapatna along with other books, artifacts and other
items by the British when they killed Tipu and overran Srirangapatna his
capital on May 4, 1799.
The book, -dreams of Tipu-was
not in the library or the royal library in Srirangapatna. It was discovered
hidden in the bed chamber of the Sultan in his palace Lal Mahal the ruins of
which can be seen today in front of the Sri Ranganatha
Swamy Temple .
Tipu has recorded 38 dreams
in this book. He was always careful t ensure that nobody saw the book or had an
occasion to read it. He kept it so well hidden that even his personal servants
and body guards could not locate it.
What makes this book unique
is that it can give us a clear and umambiguous portrait of the man that Tipu
was, his inner conflict and his ambition.
The dreams are recorded in
flawless Persian, a tribute to the language skills of the Sultan. Most of the
dreams are about his conflict with the British and the volatile political
situation of the times.
The dreams tell us that Tipu
was as human as anyone like us and that the hectic life he lived was reflected
in his dreams too. The dreams are the inner reflection of his personality and a
mirror to his unconscious self.
The dreams are in his won
handwriting and reflect his inner most thoughts. It was discovered in his bed
chamber after a thorough search by none
other than Col. Kirkpatirck who was assigned the task of indexing Tipu’s library.
Habibullah,
the Munshi of Tipu Sultan, was present at the
time
the manuscript was discovered. But he too had only heard of the dreams and
never seen it.
Kirkpatrick,
in his letters and book on Tipu’s Library, acknowledges the fact that Habibullah
knew of the manuscript but Tipu had concealed it even from him as he did not
want anyone to read it.
Habibullah
told Kirkpatrick that Tipu Sultan was always anxious to hide the book from the
view of anyone who happened to approach him while he was either
reading or writing in it.
Later, on April 23, 1805 this
book was presented in
the name of the Marquis
Wellesley to Hugh Inglis, Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, by Major Alexander
Beatson.
This was how the book was first
taken to the library of the India
office in London and subsequently it became a
part of the collection of the British
Museum . A copy of this is
available in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris which was made for it in 1822
The dreams and other notes in
the book are recorded on the first thirty- two pages and again on eleven pages
towards the end of it. In between, a large number of pages are left blank. The
size of the register is 7 inches by 5I inches.
The first of the recorded dreams
is dated 1785 and the last 1798, just a
year before he was killed in the fourth and final war with the British. The dreams
cover thirteen years of his reign. By the way, Tipu has himself given his own
interpretations to some dreams.
Six of these dreams (Nos. 12,
13, 14, 17, 24 and 28) have
been translated by Beatson
and given in the form of an
appendix to his book.
Beatson notes in his “ A View
of the Origin and Conduct of War with Tippoo Sultauny London, 1800, p. 196”, that “...the
destruction of Caufirs (English) were subjects of a sleeping (no less than)
that of his waking thoughts.”
The
language is good but on some places defective and even ungrammatical. But what
has astonished its readers is that it has some spelling mistakes. Was this
because Tipu woke himself forcefully from his sleep after his dreams and
immediately recorded them without caring for either language or spelling. He
himself agrees that he has recorded some of the dreams as soon as he woke up.
There
are several dreams which give Tipu tidings of general success and victory in war
such as dreams II, IV, V, VI, IX, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXII,
XXIII, XXVII, XXVIII, and
XXXIII. Many dreams show us Tipu’s intense love and veneration for the Prophet,
Hazrat
Ali, other Muslim saints and even sufis. This can be seen in dreams VIII, X,
XII, XXXI XXXIV and
XXXV.
In
some of the dreams, Tipu says he write them down almost immediately after he woke
up. The Sultan also interpreted some of
his dreams as in dreams
XIII, XVII, XXVIII and XXXI. Some
of the interpretations are highly interesting and they show us the interpretative
ability of the Sultan. For example, in dream XIII Tipu
interprets the woman in man's
dress as the Marhattas, against whom he was waging a war at that time. In
dream XXVIII the three silver
trays of fresh dates are seen as the dominions
of his three enemies, the British, the Marhattas and the Nizam, which he hoped,
would fall into his hands.
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