He can be termed as one of
the first, if not, the first statistician of
the world. He was also a scribe and he was born in a clan of scribes. A
multi-talented man, he is best remembered for his revenue reforms which formed
the basis for land reforms carried out by the British and subsequently by
independent India.
An astute solider, he was
also a well-known for building forts and it was he who built the imposing Rohtas
fort, now in Pakistan .
He was also the first Hindu to lead a full-fledged Mughal Army.
One of the nine gems of the
Mughal Emperor, Akbar, he was also a highly skilled soldier. A little known
fact about him is that he was responsible for providing internal security to
Akbar.
A devout Hindu apart from
being a man of literary tastes, he repaired, renovated and built several
temples across India .
He came to the help of the Tirumala temple
of Srinivasa when the
Nizam of Hyderabad tried to capture it.
He is even credited with
having repaired a temple in Karnataka and contributed significantly to the Srinivasa Temple in Tirumala apart from the Kashi
Vishwanatha temple in Benaras.
This man is none other than Raja
Todar Mal (Todarmal), one of the Navaratnas or nine gems in the court of Akbar.
He is remembered even today for his revenue reforms that were first adopted by
the Afghan ruler, Sher Shah Suri and subsequently by the Mughals. Later, they
formed the basis for Sir Thomas Munroe during the period of British India to
introduce the ryotwari system in India .
Todarmal was born in
Laharpur, Uttar Pradesh, in a Bhatnagar family. While one account says that he
was a Kayastha Brahmin, others say he was a Khatri from the Punjab and that his
place of birth was in the Punjab .
Whatever the history of his
birth, we know that he first served under the renowned Afghan ruler, Sher Shah
Suri. When Sher Shah died and Humanyun, the Mughal, managed to regain the Delhi throne, he imprisoned
Todar Mal but released him after being told of his academic and scholastic
qualifications.
After several years, Todarmal
joined in the service of Akbar as a
clerk and rose in 1560 to become the Finance Minister of Mughal India .
He held several other positions and was also in charge of the Mughal Mint.
He built the magnificent
Rohtas fort under direction from Sher Shah Suri. The fort today is a UNESCO
World Heritage monument, testifying to the engineering skill of Todar Mal.
He also built a fortress
palace at Laharpur in Uttar Pradesh.
He was also actively involved
in the construction of the Mughal forts at Fathepur Sikri and Lahore
in 1583 and also the Allahabad
fort which was originally built by Emperor Ashoka.
He also built the magnificent
Moti Mahal palace in Allahabad
which still exists today.
Todar Mal rebuilt or
renovated several temples cross India
and in Karnataka, he rebuilt the Anjaneya temple in Mulabagal, Kolar.
This temple was built by
Arjuna, one of the Pandavas, after the Kurukshetra war. There is a small statue
of Todar Mal in the temple
Another temple that is
associated with Todar Mal is that of Srinivasa in Tirumala. This temple too has
a statue of Todar Mal. He also renovated the Kashi Vishwanatha temple in Kashi.
Todar Mal is also credited
with having built the temple to Chitragupta in Patna ,
Bihar .
Members of the Kayastha community
worship Chitragupta among other Gods. Chitragupta is a scribe for the Gods and
Kayastha means scribe in Sanskrit and it goes without saying that Todar Mal was
a renown scribe.
The Kayastha caste reflects its
traditional role as record-keepers and administrators of the State. Kayasthas from
historical times have occupied the highest government offices, serving as
ministers and advisors during mediaeval Indian period and the Mughal Empire,
and they also held important administrative positions during the British period.
Todar Mal, historians agree,
was true to his caste and he was a scribe of the highest order. Not only was an
excellent book keeper, he was also a competent accountant. He also managed the
Mughal mint in Bengal . He also introduced
standard weights and measures. He understood statecraft well and Emperor Akbar
had high regard for him.
He became the Finance
Minister of the Mughal
Kingdom in 1575 and the
Chief Finance Minister in 1582. He came up with a book on land records which
then was known as Todar Mal’s Rentroll.
Very few know that Todar Mal
was a man of letters. He translated the Bhagavatha Purana from Sanskrit into Persian. He believed a single language
could unify the people and its country and he, therefore, batted for Persian as
the administrative language and sole language of the Mughal Kingdom ..
According to the Puranas, Kayasthas
are descended from Chitragupta. The Puranas invest Chitragupta with the task of
recording the deeds of humanity, upholding the rule of law and judging whether
human beings go to heaven or hell upon death
Raja
Todar Mal also
The Mathurs also claim Todar
Mal as their own. They are a sub-caste of Kayastha.
The Mathurs are the only sect who are referred to
as direct descendants of a Vedic God in the religious texts and the only
ancestor worshipping sect of Hinduism also called Chitranshi/Devputra. Kayasth’s
are said, in the Vedas and Puranas, to have a dual-caste as of Kshatriya and
Brahmin. Mathurs today are concentrated across
North Indian states of Bihar, Uttar
Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi
and Rajasthan. They too were scribes.
Even in the ancient times,
they were the people whose profession was writing.
The Mathurs trace their
genealogy to Brahma. This is how it goes. When Brahma had created all the fourVarnas,
he thought that there must be someone to keep records and account of each Varna . He then started
meditating and closed his eyes.
When his meditation was over,
he found a radiant figure holding a pen and an inkpot standing before him. Brahma
then called him Chitragupta and asked him to be the keeper of records. He said as he had been created from
Brahma, he shall be called Kaya and his progeny Kayastha.
This is how the word Kayastha
originated. Since then, reading and
writing has been the hereditary occupation of the Kayasthas.
As far as Mathurs go, they
are one of the many sub-castes of the Kayasthas.
The Mathurs trace their
ancestry to Charu, one of the twelve sons of
Chitragupta and Irawati. Incidentally, there are a class of Brahmins who
call themselves Mathurs and they trace their ancestry to Mathura .
There are also a class of Vaishya
who call themselves Mathur Vaishya and trace their ancestry to Mathura . There are also
some Bengalis who are known as Mathur Babus. According to the Puranas, Charu resided
at Mathura -and
so his descendants came to be known as Mathurs.
The Mathurs served under the
Hindu Kings of Mathura till Qutb-ud-din conquered it. Subsequently, some of
them learned Arabic and served under the courts of Turkish and Mughal Emperors
while others fled Mathura
in search of work.
In the ancient times, the
Mathurs worked in the posts of Dewan under the Surya Vanshi Kings who ruled
Ayodhya. The Suryavanshi kings included Ikshvaku, Raghu, Dashrata and Rama and
it is said that Mathurs have worked under them and served them. The Mathurs are
subdivided into als and gotras. People belonging to the same al claim to have
descended from the same immediate ancestor and share a common totem.
Gotra is a larger group being
composed of a number of al.
According to tradition, there
were only eighty-four big villages in Brij Bhoomi, the empire of Mathura . It is probably
on that account that there are eighty-four further sub-sects called Als of the
Mathurs.
Coming back to Todar Mal, he
died in 1589.
Another Todarmal was Pandit
Todarmal (1719–1766). He was a Jain and an eminent scholar and writer. He
stayed in Jaipur. His son, Gumani Ram, founded Gumanpanth, a strict form of
Jainism.
We also have a Todar Mal in
the Punjab . He was called Diwan Todar Mal Jain
and he was a businessman. He belonged to Kakra village, a few miles from Patiala . In Sikh history,
he is remembered for buying a small piece of land for the cremation of the dead
bodies of Mata Gurji, , the mother and Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh, the two
younger sons of 10th Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh in 1704 A.D, by paying an
exorbitant price to the owner of the land.
He had to cover the whole
piece of land with gold coins (ashrafis) in a vertical position, as he was
asked to vertically place gold coins on the land and only that much land was
given to him which he could cover with gold coins. He later also made
arrangements for their cremation.
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