A FOUNDATION FOR HISTORY 77
tals, forts, networks of roads, and houses of worship as political acts
with multiple agents-Muslim and Brahmin. It argues for the basis of a
polity to emerge from negotiation and dialog, and it situates itself
very consciously in an Indic milieu from which it gathers both cultural
and intellectual succor. It is a text that does the work of interpreta-
tion: It moves apparently foreign rituals into a language of recogniz-
able piety. But it does this not from a theological perspective, rather
from a perspective of governance and of justice.^72
The next three chapters offer close readings of Chachnama as po-
litical theory. These readings are informed by my encounters with the
people and landscape of contemporary Uch. I think through the text
via the ethnographic encounters I have had in Uch at the tree that
Muhammad bin Qasim planted next to the mosque he built and at the
jhund (cluster) of date-palm trees that Chach planted deep inside the
Cholistan desert. My reading of Chachnama and an excavation of
the imagined world of the thirteenth century would not be possible
without the questions which lingered after these encounters. In the
next three chapters, I offer a close reading of the Chachnama through
the lens of advice, of governance with difference, and of the calibra-
tion of gender and power.