80 DEAR SON, WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?
After a short while, he turned to his work, and I sat quietly ob-
serving. He received many visitors early in the morning-men going
about their business who stopped to ask about his well-being and to
give him news of theirs. These meetings, often no more than al hand-
shake and a quick exchange, were conducted in Seraiki, in Punjabi, or
in Brohi. The status offered to Murad Sahib as a historian of the com-
munity was clear in each encounter that I witnessed that morning.
Many of the visitors engaged in long conversations about inheritances,
work, marriages, and business, asking Murad Sahib to correct their
account or give an account for their understanding.
That morning there were two men who had complaints lodged
against them for diverting water meant for other fields, and they were
at the courthouse to submit a statement in their defense. Murad Sahib
listened carefully to their story and asked them questions to clarify
their narrative. Once the account was settled, he took out a sheet of
300-rupee stationary and began to write the statement in his looping
script. As he wrote, he spoke about daily business to the other scribes,
to passersby, and to me (occasionally). His customers, the two men, sat
quietly. After he was done, he advised them on where to go to file the
paperwork as well as what to say, and he gave them specific names of
clerks inside the building. The business concluded, the two men re-
spectfully took their leave and departed with their letter.
Near the end of our conversation, Murad Sahib described how he
knew the stories and lessons of Chachnama from oral accounts, and
excerpted translations republished in cheap editions. When he was
visiting the district court in Hyderabad, he had visited the Bhambore
archeological site and thought about the distant history of this land.
"Chachnama is a wise book of this very soil," he exclaimed, "with
many lessons for us!" I began to understand through this conversation
that Chachnama was a living·text in Uch, with resonances in daily
social life. This dimension of the history of a medieval text had not
been apparent to me earlier. Our business concluded, I walked away
from the courtyard, thinking about. this question of "lessons." What
lessons are embedded in this text from this soil? What precisely is the
rubric for advice in Chachnama/^2
Chachnama is a product of its time. It was written in the political
capital of Qabacha's court, Uch, in the thirteenth century, and it re-
flected the political concerns of that time and place. In Chapter 2, I