The Mughal Court chronicles were written in which of the following languages:
A. Arabic
B. Pashtun
C. Turkish
D. Urdu
E. Persian
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → C, E only
A. Arabic Incorrect. Abu’l Fazl, the author of the Akbar Nama, was widely read in Arabic, but the chronicles themselves were written in Persian.
B. Pashtun Incorrect. The Mughals were Chaghtai Turks by origin; their own language was Turkish and their court language was Persian. Pashtun does not come into the writing of their chronicles.
C. Turkish Correct. Turkish was the mother tongue of the Mughals. Babur, their first ruler, wrote his memoirs in Turkish; these were later translated into the Persian Babur Nama.
D. Urdu Incorrect. Urdu was a new language that sprang from the interaction of Persian with Hindavi; the Mughal chronicles were not written in it.
E. Persian Correct. Mughal court chronicles were written in Persian, which Akbar consciously made the leading language of the Mughal court.
Note: This question is taken from the chapter ‘Kings and Chronicles’ which was there in the pre-rationalised NCERT and has been deleted from subsequent editions of NCERT, including the NCERT book (2026-27).
NCERT (Pre-rationalised): “2.1 From Turkish to Persian … Mughal court chronicles were written in Persian. Under the Sultans of Delhi it flourished as a language of the court and of literary writings, alongside north Indian languages, especially Hindavi and its regional variants. As the Mughals were Chaghtai Turks by origin, Turkish was their mother tongue. Their first ruler Babur wrote poetry and his memoirs in this language. It was Akbar who consciously set out to make Persian the leading language of the Mughal court. Cultural and intellectual contacts with Iran, as well as a regular stream of Iranian and Central Asian migrants seeking positions at the Mughal court, might have motivated the emperor to adopt the language. Persian was elevated to a language of empire, conferring power and prestige on those who had a command of it. It was spoken by the king, the royal household and the elite at court. Further, it became the language of administration at all levels so that accountants, clerks and other functionaries also learnt it. Even when Persian was not directly used, its vocabulary and idiom heavily influenced the language of official records in Rajasthani and Marathi and even Tamil. Since the people using Persian in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries came from many different regions of the subcontinent and spoke other Indian languages, Persian too became Indianised by absorbing local idioms. A new language, Urdu, sprang from the interaction of Persian with Hindavi. Mughal chronicles such as the Akbar Nama were written in Persian, others, like Babur’s memoirs, were translated from the Turkish into the Persian Babur Nama. Translations of Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana into Persian were commissioned by the Mughal emperors. The Mahabharata was translated as the Razmnama (Book of Wars).…” |