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Gist of History NCERT XII Class(Themes in Indian History P-II)

Modern Indian History NCERT

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Chapter 5
Through the Eyes of Travellers
Perceptions of Society
(c. Tenth to Seventeenth century)

Descriptions of the city of Vijayanagara in the 15^th century come from Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi, a diplomat who came visiting from Herat.
Al-Biruni came from Uzbekistan (11^th century),
Ibn Battuta who came from Morocco, in North- western Africa (14^th century)

Frenchman François Bernier (17^th century)

Al- Biruni and the Kitab-Ul-Hind

From Khwarizm to the Punjab-

Birth- 973, in Khwarizm in presentday Uzbekistan
Well versed in several languages: Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Sanskrit.
Although he did not know Greek, he was familiar with the works of Plato and other Greek philosophers, having read them in Arabic translations.
In 1017, when Sultan Mahmud invaded Khwarizm, he took several scholars and poets back to his capital, Ghazni; Al-Biruni was one of them
When the Punjab became a part of the Ghaznavid empire, contacts with the local population helped create an environment of mutual trust and understanding
Al-Biruni spent years in the company of Brahmana priests and scholars, learning Sanskrit, and studying religious and philosophical texts.
Travel literature dealt with lands as far apart as the Sahara desert in the west to the River Volga in the north.

The Kitab-ul-Hind

Al-Biruni’s Kitab-ul-Hind, written in Arabic
Subjects such as religion and philosophy, festivals, astronomy, alchemy, manners and customs, social life, weights and measures, iconography, laws and metrology
He was familiar with translations and adaptations of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit texts into Arabic
Poet Solon, lived in the 6^th century BCE

Ibn Battuta's Rihla

Ibn Battuta’s book of travels, called Rihla, written in Arabic, provides social and cultural life in the subcontinent in 14^th century
Before he set off for India in 1332-33, he had made pilgrimage trips to Mecca, and had already travelled extensively in Syria, Iraq, Persia, Yemen, Oman and a few trading ports on the coast of East Africa
Travelling - Central Asia, Sind
Muhammad bin Tughlaq, the Sultan of Delhi, was impressed by his scholarship, and appointed him the qazi or judge of Delhi.
In Maldives, he stayed for 18 months as the qazi, but eventually decided to proceed to Sri Lanka
His account is often compared with that of Marco Polo, who visited China (and also India) from his home base in Venice in the late thirteenth century
Ibn Battuta was attacked by bands of robbers several times
Ibn Battuta travelled through- north Africa, West Asia and parts of Central Asia (he may even have visited Russia), the Indian subcontinent (Malabar coast, Assam and Bengal), Maldives, Sumatra and China
Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi, visited south India in the 1440s
Mahmud wali Balkhi, travelled in 1620s
Shaikh Ali Hazin came to north India in 1740s

Places visited by Ibn Battuta in Afghanistan, Sind and Punjab

Francois Bernier-
A Doctor with a Difference

Jesuit Roberto Nobili, translated Indian texts into European languages
Portuguese writers, Duarte Barbosa, wrote a detailed account of trade and society in south India
French jeweller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, travelled to India at least six times
He was particularly fascinated with the trading conditions in India, and compared India to Iran and the Ottoman empire
Some of these travellers, like the Italian doctor Manucci, never returned to Europe, and settled down in India.
François Bernier, a Frenchman, was a doctor, political philosopher and historian.
Like many others, he came to the Mughal Empire in search of opportunities
He was in India from 1656 to 1668, and was closely associated with the Mughal court, as a physician to Prince Dara Shukoh, the eldest son of Emperor Shah Jahan, and later as an intellectual and scientist, with Danishmand Khan, an Armenian noble at the Mughal court.
He dedicated his major writing to Louis XIV, the king of France, and many of his other works were written in the form of letters to influential officials and ministers.
Bernier’s works were published in France in 1670-71 and translated into English, Dutch, German and Italian within the next five years.

Making sense of an alien world Al-Biruni and the Sanskritic Tradition

He discussed several “barriers” that he felt obstructed understanding.

1^st was language i.e. Sanskrit
2^nd was the difference in religious beliefs and practices
3^rd was the self-absorption and consequent insularity of the local population

Al-Biruni depended almost exclusively on the works of Brahmanas, often citing passages from the Vedas, the Puranas, the Bhagavad Gita, the works of Patanjali, the Manusmriti, etc., to provide an understanding of Indian society.
He attempted to suggest that social divisions were not unique to India and recognised 4 social categories
Al-Biruni disapproved of the notion of pollution
The conception of social pollution, intrinsic to the caste system, was according to him, contrary to the laws of nature
The categories defined as antyaja (literally, born outside the system) were often expected to provide inexpensive labour to both peasants and zamindars

Ibn Battuta and Indian cities

Ibn Battuta found cities full of opportunities for those who had the necessary drive, resources and skills.
They were densely populated and prosperous, except for the occasional disruptions caused by wars and invasions.
He said most cities had crowded streets and bright and colourful markets that were stacked with a wide variety of goods.
Ibn Battuta described Delhi as a vast city, with a great population, the largest in India.
Daulatabad (in Maharashtra) was no less, and easily rivalled Delhi in size.
The bazaars were hub of economic transactions, social and cultural activities.
Most bazaars had a mosque and a temple, and in some of them at least, spaces were marked for public performances by dancers, musicians and singers.
Ibn Battuta found Indian agriculture very productive because of the fertility of the soil, which allowed farmers to cultivate two crops a year.
Ibn Battuta was also amazed by the efficiency of the postal system
The horse post called Uluq and foot post has three stations per mile; it is called dawa, i.e. one-third of a mile

Bernier and the "Degenerate" East

Bernier’s Travels in the Mughal Empire is marked by detailed observations, critical insights and reflection.
He constantly compared Mughal India with contemporary Europe, generally emphasising the superiority of the latter.
His representation of India works on the model of binary opposition, where India is presented as the inverse of Europe.
He also ordered the perceived differences hierarchically, so that India appeared to be inferior to the Western world.

According to Bernier, one of the fundamental differences between Mughal India and Europe was the lack of private property in land in the former

Described Indian society as consisting of undifferentiated masses of impoverished people, subjugated by a small minority of a very rich and powerful ruling class.
Bernier’s descriptions influenced Western theorists from 18^th century onwards
The French philosopher Montesquieu, for instance, used this account to develop the idea of oriental despotism, according to which rulers in Asia (the Orient or the East) enjoyed absolute authority over their subjects, who were kept in conditions of subjugation and poverty, arguing that all land belonged to the king and that private property was non-existent.
This idea was further developed as the concept of the Asiatic mode of production by Karl Marx in 19^th century.
He argued that in India (and other Asian countries), before colonialism, surplus was appropriated by the state.
In fact, during 16^th & 17^th centuries, rural society was characterised by considerable social and economic differentiation.
At one end of the spectrum were the big zamindars, who enjoyed superior rights in land and, at the other, the “untouchable” landless labourers.
In between was the big peasant, who used hired labour and engaged in commodity production, and the smaller peasant who could barely produce for his subsistence.
He felt that artisans had no incentive to improve the quality of their manufactures, since profits were appropriated by the state
He conceded that vast quantities of the world’s precious metals flowed into India
Bernier described Mughal cities as “camp towns”, by which he meant towns that owed their existence, and depended for their survival, on the imperial camp.
Merchants often had strong community or kin ties, and were organised into their own caste-cum occupational bodies.
In western India these groups were called mahajans, and their chief, the sheth.
In urban centres such as Ahmedabad the mahajans were collectively represented by the chief of the merchant community who was called the nagarsheth.
Other urban groups included professional classes such as physicians (hakim or vaid), teachers (pundit or mulla), lawyers (wakil), painters, architects, musicians, calligraphers, etc.

Women- Slaves, sati and Labourers

Slaves were openly sold in markets
When Ibn Battuta reached Sind he purchased “horses, camels and slaves” as gifts for Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq.
Muhammad bin Tughlaq, informs Ibn Battuta, was so happy with the sermon of a preacher named Nasiruddin that he gave him “a hundred thousand tankas (coins) and two hundred slaves”
Female slaves were also employed by the Sultan to keep a watch on his nobles.
Bernier chose the practice of sati for detailed description.
He noted that while some women seemed to embrace death cheerfully, others were forced to die.
Women from merchant families participated in commercial activities, sometimes even taking mercantile disputes to the court of law

Chapter 6
Bhakti- Sufi Traditions
Changes in Religious Beliefs and Devotional Texts
(C. Eighth to Eighteenth century)

A 12^th century bronze sculpture of Manikkavachakar, a devotee of Shiva who composed beautiful devotional songs in Tamil
Brahmanical ideas are exemplified by the composition, compilation and preservation of Puranic texts in simple Sanskrit verse, explicitly meant to be accessible to women and Shudras, who were generally excluded from Vedic learning
Puri, Orissa, where the principal deity was identified, by the twelfth century, as Jagannatha (literally, the lord of the world), a form of Vishnu
Sculpture of a Buddhist goddess, Marichi (c. tenth century, Bihar), an example of the process of integration of different religious beliefs and practices
The principal deities of the Vedic pantheon, Agni, Indra and Soma, become marginal figures, rarely visible in textual or visual representations.
The singing and chanting of devotional compositions was often a part of such modes of worship (e.g. Vaishnava and Shaiva sects)

Poems of Prayer-
Early traditions of Bhakti

The historians of religion often classify bhakti traditions into two broad categories:
Saguna (with attributes) and nirguna (without attributes).
The former included traditions that focused on the worship of specific deities such as Shiva, Vishnu and his avatars (incarnations) and forms of the goddess or Devi, all often conceptualised in anthropomorphic forms.
Nirguna bhakti on the other hand was worship of an abstract form of god.

The Alvars and Nayanars of Tamil Nadu

Some of the earliest bhakti movements (c. 6^th century) were led by the Alvars (literally, those who are “immersed” in devotion to Vishnu) and Nayanars (literally, leaders who were devotees of Shiva).

They travelled from place to place singing hymns in Tamil in praise of their gods.

During their travels the Alvars and Nayanars identified certain shrines as abodes of their chosen deities.

Very often large temples were later built at these sacred places.

These developed as centres of pilgrimage.

Singing compositions of these poet-saints became part of temple rituals in these shrines, as did worship of the saints’ images.

Alvars and Nayanars initiated a movement of protest against the caste system and the dominance of Brahmanas or at least attempted to reform the system.

Compositions by the Alvars, the Nalayira Divyaprabandham, was frequently described as the Tamil Veda, thus claiming that the text was as significant as the four Vedas in Sanskrit that were cherished by the Brahmanas

Perhaps one of the most striking features of these traditions was the presence of women.

For instance, the compositions of Andal, a woman Alvar, were widely sung (and continue to be sung to date).

Andal saw herself as the beloved of Vishnu; her verses express her love for the deity.

Another woman, Karaikkal Ammaiyar, a devotee of Shiva, adopted the path of extreme asceticism in order to attain her goal

Relations with the state

Pallavas and Pandyas (c. sixth to ninth centuries CE).
While Buddhism and Jainism had been prevalent in this region for several centuries, drawing support from merchant and artisan communities, these religious traditions received occasional royal patronage.
Interestingly, one of the major themes in Tamil bhakti hymns is the poets’ opposition to Buddhism and Jainism.
This is particularly marked in the compositions of the Nayanars.
Shiva temples, including those at Chidambaram, Thanjavur and Gangaikondacholapuram, were constructed under the patronage of Chola rulers.
Both Nayanars and Alvars were revered by the Vellala peasants.
The Chola kings, for instance, often attempted to claim divine support and proclaim their own power and status by building splendid temples that were adorned with stone and metal sculpture to recreate the visions of these popular saints who sang in the language of the people.
These kings also introduced the singing of Tamil Shaiva hymns in the temples under royal patronage, taking the initiative to collect and organise them into a text (Tevaram).
Further, inscriptional evidence from around 945 suggests that the Chola ruler Parantaka I had consecrated metal images of Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar in a Shiva temple.

An image of Shiva as Nataraja

The Virashaiva tradition in Karnataka

12^th century witnessed the emergence of a new movement in Karnataka, led by a Brahmana named Basavanna (1106-68) who was initially a Jaina and a minister in the court of a Chalukya king.
His followers were known as Virashaivas (heroes of Shiva) or Lingayats (wearers of the linga).
Lingayats manifestation as a linga, and men usually wear a small linga in a silver case on a loop strung over the left shoulder.
Those who are revered include the jangama or wandering monks.
Lingayats believe that on death the devotee will be united with Shiva and will not return to this world.
Therefore they do not practise funerary rites such as cremation, prescribed in the Dharmashastras. Instead, they ceremonially bury their dead.
The Lingayats challenged the idea of caste and the “pollution” attributed to certain groups by Brahmanas.
They also questioned the theory of rebirth.
These won them followers amongst those who were marginalised within the Brahmanical social order.
The Lingayats also encouraged certain practices disapproved in the Dharmashastras, such as post-puberty marriage and the remarriage of widows.
Virashaiva tradition is derived from vachanas (literally, sayings) composed in Kannada by women and men who joined the movement.

Religious ferment in North India

Vishnu and Shiva were worshipped in temples, often built with the support of rulers.
However, historians have not found evidence of anything resembling the compositions of the Alvars and Nayanars till 14^th century
Several Rajput states emerged
In most of these states Brahmanas occupied positions of importance, performing a range of secular and ritual functions.
There seems to have been little or no attempt to challenge their position directly.
At the same time other religious leaders, who did not function within the orthodox Brahmanical framework, were gaining ground.
These included the Naths, Jogis and Siddhas.
Many of them came from artisanal groups, including weavers, who were becoming increasingly important with the development of organised craft production.
Demand for such production grew with the emergence of new urban centres, and long-distance trade with Central Asia and West Asia.
Many of these new religious leaders questioned the authority of the Vedas
A new element was the coming of the Turks which culminated in the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate (13^th century).
This undermined the power of many of the Rajput states and the Brahmanas who were associated with these kingdoms.
This was accompanied by marked changes in the realm of culture and religion.
The coming of the sufis (Section 6) was a significant part of these developments.

New Strands in the Fabric Islamic traditions

Arab merchants frequented ports along the western coast in the first millennium CE, while Central Asian people settled in the north-western parts
From 7^th century, with the advent of Islam, these regions became part of what is often termed the Islamic world.

Faiths of rulers and subjects

In 711 an Arab general named Muhammad Qasim conquered Sind, which became part of the Caliph’s domain.
Later (c. 13^th century) the Turks and Afghans established the Delhi Sultanate.
This was followed by the formation of Sultanates in the Deccan and other parts of the subcontinent; Islam was an acknowledged religion of rulers in several areas.
This continued with the establishment of the Mughal Empire in 16^th century as well as in many of the regional states that emerged in 18^th century.
Muslim rulers were to be guided by the ulama, ruled according to the shari‘a.
The category of the zimmi, meaning protected (derived from the Arabic word zimma, protection) developed for people who followed revealed scriptures, such as the Jews and Christians, and lived under Muslim rulership.
They paid a tax called jizya and gained the right to be protected by Muslims.
In India this status was extended to Hindus as well.
Rulers such as the Mughals came to regard themselves as emperors of not just Muslims but of all peoples.
Several rulers gave land endowments and granted tax exemptions to Hindu, Jaina, Zoroastrian, Christian and Jewish religious institutions and also expressed respect and devotion towards non-Muslim religious leaders.
These grants were made by several Mughal rulers, including Akbar and Aurangzeb.

The popular practice of Islam

All those who adopted Islam accepted, in principle, the five “pillars” of the faith:

there is one God, Allah, and Prophet Muhammad is his messenger (shahada);
offering prayers five times a day (namaz/Salat );
giving alms (zakat );
fasting during the month of Ramzan (sawm); and
performing the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj )
However, these universal features were often overlaid with diversities in practice derived from sectarian affiliations (Sunni, Shi‘a)

Khojahs, a branch of the Ismailis (a Shi‘a sect), developed new modes of communication, disseminating ideas derived from the Qur’an through indigenous literary genres.
These included the ginan (derived from the Sanskrit jnana, meaning “knowledge”), devotional poems in Punjabi, Multani, Sindhi, Kachchi, Hindi and Gujarati, sung in special ragas during daily prayer meetings.
Arab Muslim traders who settled along the Malabar coast (Kerala) adopted the local language, Malayalam.
They also adopted local customs such as matriliny and matrilocal residence

A Khojaki manuscript

The ginan were transmitted orally before being recorded in the Khojaki script that was derived from the local landa (“clipped” mercantile script) used by the linguistically diverse community of Khojahs in the Punjab, Sind and Gujarat.

Names for communities

People were occasionally identified in terms of the region from which they came

Turkish rulers were designated as Turushka,

Tajika were people from Tajikistan and

Parashika were people from Persia

Turks and Afghans were referred to as Shakas and Yavanas (a term used for Greeks).

A more general term for these migrant communities was mlechchha, indicating that they did not observe the norms of caste society and spoke languages that were not derived from Sanskrit.

The Shah Hamadan mosque in Srinagar, on the banks of the Jhelum, is often regarded as the “jewel in the crown” of all the existing mosques of Kashmir.

Built in 1395, it is one of the best examples of Kashmiri wooden architecture.

The growth of Sufism

In the early centuries of Islam a group of religious minded people called sufis turned to asceticism and mysticism in protest against the growing materialism of the Caliphate as a religious and political institution.
They were critical of the dogmatic definitions and scholastic methods of interpreting the Qur’an and sunna (traditions of the Prophet) adopted by theologians
Instead, they laid emphasis on seeking salvation through intense devotion and love for God by following his commands, and by following the example of the Prophet Muhammad whom they regarded as a perfect human being.
Thus sufis sought an interpretation of the Qur’an on the basis of their personal experience.

Sufis and the state

A major feature of the Chishti tradition was austerity, including maintaining a distance from worldly power.
However, this was by no means a situation of absolute isolation from political power.
The sufis accepted unsolicited grants and donations from the political elites.
The Sultans in turn set up charitable trusts (auqaf ) as endowments for hospices and granted tax-free land ( inam).
The Chishtis accepted donations in cash and kind.
They preferred to use these fully on immediate requirements such as food, clothes, living quarters and ritual necessities (such as sama‘).
All this enhanced the moral authority of the shaikhs, which in turn attracted people from all walks of life.
Further, their piety and scholarship, and people’s belief in their miraculous powers made sufis popular among the masses, whose support kings wished to secure.
Kings did not simply need to demonstrate their association with sufis; they also required legitimation from them.
When the Turks set up the Delhi Sultanate, they resisted the insistence of the ulama on imposing shari‘a as state law because they anticipated opposition from their subjects, the majority of whom were non-Muslims.
The Sultans then sought out the sufis – who derived their authority directly from God – and did not depend on jurists to interpret the shari‘a.
Besides, it was believed that the auliya could intercede with God in order to improve the material and spiritual conditions of ordinary human beings.
This explains why kings often wanted their tombs to be in the vicinity of sufi shrines and hospices.
Sultans and the sufis both expected that certain rituals be performed such as prostration and kissing of the feet.
Occasionally the Sufi shaikh was addressed with high-sounding titles.
For example, the disciples of Nizamuddin Auliya addressed him as sultan-ul-mashaikh (literally, Sultan amongst shaikhs).

Khanqahs and silsilas

By 11^th century Sufism evolved into a well developed movement with a body of literature on Quranic studies and sufi practices.
Institutionally, the sufis began to organise communities around the hospice or khanqah (Persian) controlled by a teaching master known as shaikh (in Arabic), pir or murshid (in Persian).
He enrolled disciples (murids) and appointed a successor (khalifa).
He established rules for spiritual conduct and interaction between inmates as well as between laypersons and the master.
Sufi silsilas began to crystallise in different parts of the Islamic world around the twelfth century.
The word silsila literally means a chain, signifying a continuous link between master and disciple, stretching as an unbroken spiritual genealogy to the Prophet Muhammad.
It was through this channel that spiritual power and blessings were transmitted to devotees.
When the shaikh died, his tomb-shrine (dargah, a Persian term meaning court) became the centre of devotion for his followers.
This encouraged the practice of pilgrimage or ziyarat to his grave, particularly on his death anniversary or urs (or marriage, signifying the union of his soul with God).
This was because people believed that in death saints were united with God, and were thus closer to Him than when living.
People sought their blessings to attain material and spiritual benefits.
Thus evolved the cult of the shaikh revered as wali

Outside the khanqah

Some mystics initiated movements based on a radical interpretation of sufi ideals.
Many scorned the khanqah and took to mendicancy and observed celibacy.
They ignored rituals and observed extreme forms of asceticism.
They were known by different names – Qalandars, Madaris, Malangs, Haidaris, etc.
Because of their deliberate defiance of the shari‘a they were often referred to as be-shari‘a, in contrast to the ba-shari‘a sufis who complied with it.

The Chishtis in the Subcontinent

Chishtis adapted successfully to the local environment and adopted several features of Indian devotional traditions.

Life in the Chishti khanqah

The khanqah was the centre of social life.
Shaikh Nizamuddin’s hospice (c. Fourteenth century) on the banks of the river Yamuna in Ghiyaspur, on the outskirts of what was then the city of Delhi.
It comprised several small rooms and a big hall ( jama’at khana) where the inmates and visitors lived and prayed.
The inmates included family members of the Shaikh, his attendants and disciples.
The Shaikh lived in a small room on the roof of the hall where he met visitors in the morning and evening.
A veranda surrounded the courtyard, and a boundary wall ran around the complex.
On one occasion, fearing a Mongol invasion, people from the neighbouring areas flocked into the khanqah to seek refuge.

There was an open kitchen (langar), run on futuh (unasked-for charity).
From morning till late night people from all walks of life – soldiers, slaves, singers, merchants, poets, travellers, rich and poor, Hindu jogis (yogi) and qalandars – came seeking discipleship, amulets for healing, and the intercession of the Shaikh in various matters.
Poets such as Amir Hasan Sijzi and Amir Khusrau and the court historian Ziyauddin Barani, all of whom wrote about the Shaikh.
Practices that were adopted, including bowing before the Shaikh, offering water to visitors, shaving the heads of initiates, and yogic exercises, represented attempts to assimilate local traditions.
Shaikh Nizamuddin appointed several spiritual successors and deputed them to set up hospices in various parts of the subcontinent.
As a result the teachings, practices and organisation of the Chishtis as well as the fame of the Shaikh spread rapidly.

Chishti devotionalism: ziyarat and qawwali

Pilgrimage, called ziyarat, to tombs of Sufi saints is prevalent all over the Muslim world.
This practice is an occasion for seeking the sufi’s spiritual grace (barakat).
For more than seven centuries people of various creeds, classes and social backgrounds have expressed their devotion at the dargahs of the five great Chishti saints
The most revered shrine is that of Khwaja Muinuddin, popularly known as “Gharib Nawaz” (comforter of the poor).
The earliest textual references to Khwaja Muinuddin’s dargah date to 14^th century
It was evidently popular because of the austerity and piety of its Shaikh, the greatness of his spiritual successors, and the patronage of royal visitors.
Muhammad bin Tughlaq (ruled, 1324-51) was the first Sultan to visit the shrine, but the earliest construction to house the tomb was funded in the late 15th century by Sultan Ghiyasuddin Khalji of Malwa.
Since the shrine was located on the trade route linking Delhi and Gujarat, it attracted a lot of travellers.
By 16^th century the shrine had become very popular; in fact it was the spirited singing of pilgrims bound for Ajmer that inspired Akbar to visit the tomb.
In 1568 he offered a huge cauldron (degh) to facilitate cooking for pilgrims.
He also had a mosque constructed within the compound of the dargah.
Also part of ziyarat is the use of music and dance including mystical chants performed by specially trained musicians or qawwals to evoke divine ecstasy.
The sufis remember God either by reciting the zikr (the Divine Names) or evoking His Presence through sama‘ (literally, “audition”) or performance of mystical music.
Sama‘ was integral to the Chishtis, and exemplified interaction with indigenous devotional traditions.

Languages and communication

Chishtis adopted local languages.
In Delhi, those associated with the Chishti silsila conversed in Hindavi, the language of the people.
Baba Farid composed verses in the local language, which were incorporated in the Guru Granth Sahib.
Others composed long poems or masnavis to express ideas of divine love using human love as an allegory.
For example, the prem- akhyan (love story) Padmavat composed by Malik Muhammad Jayasi revolved around the romance of Padmini and Ratansen, the king of Chittor.
Their trials were symbolic of the soul’s journey to the divine.
Such poetic compositions were often recited in hospices, usually during sama‘.
A different genre of sufi poetry was composed in and around the town of Bijapur, Karnataka.
These were short poems in Dakhani (a variant of Urdu) attributed to Chishti sufis who lived in this region during 17^th and 18^th centuries
These poems were probably sung by women while performing household chores like grinding grain and spinning.
Other compositions were in the form of lurinama or lullabies and shadinama or wedding songs.
Sufis of this region were inspired by the pre-existing bhakti tradition of the Kannada vachanas of the Lingayats and the Marathi abhangs of the sants of Pandharpur.
Islam gradually gained a place in the villages of the Deccan.

New Devotional Paths dialogue and dissent in Northern India

Kabir

c. fourteenth-fifteenth centuries
Verses ascribed to Kabir have been compiled in three distinct but overlapping traditions.
The Kabir Bijak is preserved by the Kabirpanth (the path or sect of Kabir) in Varanasi and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh;
the Kabir Granthavali is associated with the Dadupanth in Rajasthan, and many of his compositions are found in the Adi Granth Sahib
All these manuscript compilations were made long after the death of Kabir.
By 19^th century, anthologies of verses attributed to him circulated in print in regions as far apart as Bengal, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Kabir’s poems have survived in several languages and dialects; and some are composed in the special language of nirguna poets, the sant bhasha.
Others, known as ulatbansi (upside-down sayings), are written in a form in which everyday meanings are inverted.
Kabir drew on to describe the Ultimate Reality.
These include Islam:
He described the Ultimate Reality as Allah, Khuda, Hazrat and Pir.
He also used terms drawn from Vedantic traditions, alakh (the unseen), nirakar (formless), Brahman, Atman, etc.
Other terms with mystical connotations such as shabda (sound) or shunya (emptiness) were drawn from yogic traditions.
Some poems draw on Islamic ideas and use monotheism and iconoclasm to attack Hindu polytheism and idol worship; others use the sufi concept of zikr and ishq (love) to express the Hindu practice of nam-simaran (remembrance of God’s name).
Hagiographies within the Vaishnava tradition attempted to suggest that he was born a Hindu, Kabirdas (Kabir itself is an Arabic word meaning “great”), but was raised by a poor Muslim family belonging to the community of weavers or julahas, who were relatively recent converts to Islam.
They also suggested that he was initiated into bhakti by a guru, perhaps Ramananda.
However, the verses attributed to Kabir use the words guru and satguru, but do not mention the name of any specific preceptor.

Baba Guru Nanak and the Sacred Word

1469-1539
Was born in a Hindu merchant family in a village called Nankana Sahib near the river Ravi in the predominantly Muslim Punjab.
He trained to be an accountant and studied Persian. He was married at a young age but he spent most of his time among sufis and bhaktas.
The message of Baba Guru Nanak is spelt out in his hymns and teachings.
These suggest that he advocated a form of nirguna bhakti.
He firmly repudiated the external practices of the religions he saw around him. He rejected sacrifices, ritual baths, image worship, austerities and the scriptures of both Hindus and Muslims.
For Baba Guru Nanak, the Absolute or “rab” had no gender or form.
He proposed a simple way to connect to the Divine by remembering and repeating the Divine Name, expressing his ideas through hymns called “shabad” in Punjabi, the language of the region.
Baba Guru Nanak would sing these compositions in various ragas while his attendant Mardana played the rabab.
Baba Guru Nanak organised his followers into a community.
He set up rules for congregational worship (sangat ) involving collective recitation.
He appointed one of his disciples, Angad, to succeed him as the preceptor (guru), and this practice was followed for nearly 200 years.
It appears that Baba Guru Nanak did not wish to establish a new religion, but after his death his followers consolidated their own practices and distinguished themselves from both Hindus and Muslims.
The fifth preceptor, Guru Arjan, compiled Baba Guru Nanak’s hymns along with those of his four successors and other religious poets like Baba Farid, Ravidas (also known as Raidas) and Kabir in the Adi Granth Sahib.
These hymns, called “gurbani”, are composed in various languages
In the late 17^th century the tenth preceptor, Guru Gobind Singh, included the compositions of the ninth guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, and this scripture was called the Guru Granth Sahib.

Guru Gobind Singh also laid the foundation of the Khalsa Panth (army of the pure) and defined its five symbols:

uncut hair,
a dagger,
a pair of shorts,
a comb and
a steel bangle.

Under him the community got consolidated as a socio-religious and military force.

Mirabai, the devotee princess

c. fifteenth-sixteenth centuries
Bhajans attributed to her were transmitted orally for centuries.
Rajput princess from Merta in Marwar who was married against her wishes to a prince of the Sisodia clan of Mewar, Rajasthan.
She defied her husband and did not submit to the traditional role of wife and mother, instead recognising Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu, as her lover.
Her in-laws tried to poison her, but she escaped from the palace to live as a wandering saint composing songs that are characterised by intense expressions of emotion.
According to some traditions, her preceptor was Raidas, a leather worker.
This would indicate her defiance of the norms of caste society.
Although Mirabai did not attract a sect or group of followers, she has been recognised as a source of inspiration for centuries.
Her songs continue to be sung by women and men, especially those who are poor and considered “low caste” in Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Chapter 7
An Imperial Capital- Vijayanagara
(c. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century)

Vijayanagara or “city of victory” was the name of both a city and an empire.
The empire was founded in 14^th century.
It stretched from the river Krishna in the north to the extreme south of the peninsula.
In 1565 the city was sacked and subsequently deserted.

The discovery of hampi

The ruins at Hampi were brought to light in 1800 by an engineer and antiquarian named Colonel Colin Mackenzie.
He received was based on the memories of priests of the Virupaksha temple and the shrine of Pampadevi.
Several dozen inscriptions found at this and other temples at Hampi.

Rayas, Nayakas and Sultans

Two brothers, Harihara and Bukka, founded the Vijayanagara Empire in 1336.
This empire included within its fluctuating frontiers peoples who spoke different languages and followed different religious traditions.
On their northern frontier, the Vijayanagara kings competed with contemporary rulers – including the Sultans of the Deccan and the Gajapati rulers of Orissa – for control of the fertile river valleys and the resources generated by lucrative overseas trade.
At the same time, interaction between these states led to sharing of ideas, especially in the field of architecture.
The rulers of Vijayanagara borrowed concepts and building techniques which they then developed further.
Development of powerful states such as Cholas in Tamil Nadu and the Hoysalas in Karnataka.
Ruling elites in these areas had extended patronage to elaborate temples such as the Brihadishvara temple at Thanjavur and the Chennakeshava temple at Belur
The rulers of Vijayanagara, who called themselves rayas, built on these traditions and carried them, to new heights.

Kings and traders

The import of horses from Arabia and Central Asia
This trade was initially controlled by Arab traders.
Local communities of merchants known as kudirai Chettis or horse merchants also participated in these exchanges.
From 1498 Portuguese, who arrived on the west coast of the subcontinent and attempted to establish trading and military stations.
Their superior military technology, especially the use of muskets, enabled them to become important players in the tangled politics of the period.
In fact, Vijayanagara was also noted for its markets dealing in spices, textiles and precious stones.
Trade was often regarded as a status symbol for such cities, which boasted of a wealthy population that demanded high-value exotic goods, especially precious stones and jewellery.
The revenue derived from trade in turn contributed significantly to the prosperity of the state

The apogee and decline of the empire

The first dynasty, known as the Sangama dynasty, exercised control till 1485.
They were supplanted by the Saluvas, military commanders, who remained in power till 1503 when they were replaced by the Tuluvas.
Krishnadeva Raya belonged to the Tuluva dynasty.
Krishnadeva Raya’s rule was characterised by expansion and consolidation. This was the time when the land between the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers (the Raichur doab) was acquired (1512), the rulers of Orissa were subdued (1514) and severe defeats were inflicted on the Sultan of Bijapur (1520).
Although the kingdom remained in a constant state of military preparedness, it flourished under conditions of unparalleled peace and prosperity.
Krishnadeva Raya is credited with building some fine temples and adding impressive gopurams to many important south Indian temples.
He also founded a suburban township near Vijayanagara called Nagalapuram after his mother.

South India, c. fourteenth-eighteenth century

Although the armies of the Sultans were responsible for the destruction of the city of Vijayanagara, relations between the Sultans and the rayas were not always or inevitably hostile, in spite of religious differences.
Krishnadeva Raya, for example, supported some claimants to power in the Sultanates and took pride in the title “establisher of the Yavana kingdom”.
Similarly, the Sultan of Bijapur intervened to resolve succession disputes in Vijayanagara following the death of Krishnadeva Raya.
In fact the Vijayanagara kings were keen to ensure the stability of the Sultanates and vice versa.
It was the adventurous policy of Rama Raya who tried to play off one Sultan against another that led the Sultans to combine together and decisively defeat him.

The Rayas and the nayakas

Among those who exercised power in the empire were military chiefs who usually controlled forts and had armed supporters.
These chiefs often moved from one area to another, and in many cases were accompanied by peasants looking for fertile land on which to settle.
These chiefs were known as nayakas and they usually spoke Telugu or Kannada. Many nayakas submitted to the authority of the kings of Vijayanagara but they often rebelled and had to be subdued by military action.
The amara-nayaka system was a major political innovation of the Vijayanagara Empire. It is likely that many features of this system were derived from the iqta system of the Delhi Sultanate.
The amara-nayakas were military commanders who were given territories to govern by the raya.
They collected taxes and other dues from peasants, craftspersons and traders in the area.
They retained part of the revenue for personal use and for maintaining a stipulated contingent of horses and elephants.
These contingents provided the Vijayanagara kings with an effective fighting force with which they brought the entire southern peninsula under their control.
The amara-nayakas sent tribute to the king annually and personally appeared in the royal court with gifts to express their loyalty.
Kings occasionally asserted their control over them by transferring them from one place to another.
However, during the course of 17^th century, many of these nayakas established independent kingdoms.
This hastened the collapse of the central imperial structure.

Vijayanagara- The Capital and its Environs

Vijayanagara, was characterised by a distinctive physical layout and building style.

Water resources

Natural basin formed by the river Tungabhadra which flows in a north-easterly direction; Granite hills were there
A number of streams flow down to the river from these rocky outcrops.
In almost all cases embankments were built along these streams to create reservoirs of varying sizes.
The most important such tank was built in the early years of 15^th century and is now called Kamalapuram tank.
Water from this tank not only irrigated fields nearby but was also conducted through a channel to the “royal centre”.
One of the most prominent waterworks to be seen among the ruins is the Hiriya canal.
This canal drew water from a dam across the Tungabhadra; built by kings of the Sangama dynasty.

Fortifications and roads

Abdur Razzaq, an ambassador sent by the ruler of Persia to Calicut (present-day Kozhikode) in 15^th century, was greatly impressed by the fortifications, and mentioned seven lines of forts.
The outermost wall linked the hills surrounding the city.
No mortar or cementing agent was employed anywhere in the construction.
The stone blocks were wedge shaped, which held them in place, and the inner portion of the walls was of earth packed with rubble.
Square or rectangular bastions projected outwards.
Fortification enclosed agricultural tracts.
Abdur Razzaq noted that “ between the first, second and the third walls there are cultivated fields, gardens and houses”.
The objective of medieval sieges was to starve the defenders into submission.
These sieges could last for several months and sometimes even years.
Normally rulers tried to be prepared for such situations by building large granaries within fortified areas.
The rulers of Vijayanagara adopted a more expensive and elaborate strategy of protecting the agricultural belt itself.
A second line of fortification went round the inner core of the urban complex, and a third line surrounded the royal centre, within which each set of major buildings was surrounded by its own high walls.
The fort was entered through well-guarded gates, which linked the city to the major roads. Gateways were distinctive architectural features that often defined the structures to which they regulated access.
The arch on the gateway leading into the fortified settlement as well as the dome over the gate is regarded as typical features of the architecture introduced by the Turkish Sultans.
Art historians refer to this style as Indo-Islamic, as it grew continually through interaction with local building practices in different regions.
Roads generally wound around through the valleys, avoiding rocky terrain.
Some of the most important roads extended from temple gateways, and were lined by bazaars.

The urban core

Archaeologists have found fine Chinese porcelain in some areas, including in the north-eastern corner of the urban core and suggest that these areas may have been occupied by rich traders.
This was also the Muslim residential quarter.
Tombs and mosques located here have distinctive functions, yet their architecture resembles that of the mandapas found in the temples of Hampi.
In 16^th century Portuguese traveller Barbosa described the houses of ordinary people
Field surveys indicate that the entire area was dotted with numerous shrines and small temples, pointing to the prevalence of a variety of cults, perhaps supported by different communities.

The Royal centre

Located in the south-western part of the settlement
Included over 60 temples.
Clearly, the patronage of temples and cults was important for rulers who were trying to establish and legitimise their authority through association with the divinities housed in the shrines.
Palaces are relatively large structures that do not seem to have been associated with ritual functions.
One difference between these structures and temples is that the latter were constructed entirely of masonry, while the superstructure of the secular buildings was made of perishable materials.

The mahanavami dibba

The “king’s palace” is the largest of the enclosures but has not yielded definitive evidence of being a royal residence.
It has two of the most impressive platforms, usually called the “audience hall” and the “mahanavami dibba”.
The entire complex is surrounded by high double walls with a street running between them.
The audience hall is a high platform with slots for wooden pillars at close and regular intervals.
It had a staircase going up to the second floor, which rested on these pillars.
The pillars being closely spaced would have left little free space and thus it is not clear what the hall was used for.
Rituals associated with the structure probably coincided with Mahanavami (literally, the great ninth day) of the ten-day Hindu festival during the autumn months of September and October, known variously as Dusehra (northern India), Durga Puja (in Bengal) and Navaratri or Mahanavami (in peninsular India).
The Vijayanagara kings displayed their prestige, power and suzerainty on this occasion.
Dances, wrestling matches, and processions of caparisoned horses, elephants and chariots and soldiers, as well as ritual presentations before the king and his guests by the chief nayakas and subordinate kings marked the occasion.

Other buildings in the royal centre

Lotus Mahal, so named by British travellers in 19^th century
Hazara Rama temple- This was probably meant to be used only by the king and his family.
The images in the central shrine are missing; however, sculpted panels on the walls survive.
These include scenes from the Ramayana sculpted on the inner walls of the shrine.

The Sacred centre

Rocky northern end of the city on the banks of the Tungabhadra.
According to local tradition, these hills sheltered the monkey kingdom of Vali and Sugriva mentioned in the Ramayana.
Other traditions suggest that Pampadevi, the local mother goddess, did penance in these hills in order to marry Virupaksha, the guardian deity of the kingdom, also recognised as a form of Shiva.
To this day this marriage is celebrated annually in the Virupaksha temple.
Among these hills are found Jaina temples of the pre-Vijayanagara period as well.
Temple building in the region had a long history, going back to dynasties such as the Pallavas, Chalukyas, Hoysalas and Cholas. Rulers very often encouraged temple building as a means of associating themselves with the divine – often; the deity was explicitly or implicitly identified with the king.
The choice of the site of Vijayanagara was inspired by the existence of the shrines of Virupaksha and Pampadevi.
In fact the Vijayanagara kings claimed to rule on behalf of the god Virupaksha.
All royal orders were signed “Shri Virupaksha”, usually in the Kannada script. Rulers also indicated their close links with the gods by using the title “Hindu Suratrana”.
This was a Sanskritization of the Arabic term Sultan, meaning king, so it literally meant Hindu Sultan.
Royal portrait sculpture was now displayed in temples, and the king’s visits to temples were treated as important state occasions on which he was accompanied by the important nayakas of the empire.

Gopurams and mandapas

Raya gopurams or royal gateways that often dwarfed the towers on the central shrines, and signalled the presence of the temple from a great distance.
They were also probably meant as reminders of the power of kings, able to command the resources, techniques and skills needed to construct these towering gateways.
Other distinctive features include mandapas or pavilions and long, pillared corridors that often ran around the shrines within the temple complex.
E.g. Virupaksha temple and the Vitthala temple.
The Virupaksha temple’s hall in front of the main shrine was built by Krishnadeva Raya to mark his accession.
This was decorated with delicately carved pillars. He is also credited with the construction of the eastern gopuram.
These additions meant that the central shrine came to occupy a relatively small part of the complex.
The halls in the temple were used for a variety of purposes.
Some were spaces in which the images of gods were placed to witness special programmes of music, dance, drama, etc.
Others were used to celebrate the marriages of deities, and yet others were meant for the deities to swing in.
Special images, distinct from those kept in the small central shrine, were used on these occasions.
In Vitthala temple principal deity was Vitthala, a form of Vishnu generally worshipped in Maharashtra.
The introduction of the worship of the deity in Karnataka is another indication of the ways in which the rulers of Vijayanagara drew on different traditions to create an imperial culture.
As in the case of other temples, this temple too has several halls and a unique shrine designed as a chariot
A characteristic feature of the temple complexes is the chariot streets that extended from the temple gopuram in a straight line.
These streets were paved with stone slabs and lined with pillared pavilions in which merchants set up their shops.
Just as the nayakas continued with and elaborated on traditions of fortification, so they did with traditions of temple building.
Most spectacular gopurams were also built by the local nayakas.

Chapter 8
Peasants, Zamindars and the State
Agrarian society and the Mughal Empire
(c. Sixteenth- Seventeenth centuries)

16^th and 17^th century- 85 per cent of the population in villages
At that time agencies from outside also entered into the rural world

Peasants and Agricultural production

Basic unit of agricultural society was the village, inhabited by peasants
Contributed their labour to the production of agro-based goods
Ain-i Akbari authored by Akbar’s court historian Abu’l Fazl recorded the arrangements made by the state to ensure cultivation, to enable the collection of revenue by the agencies of the state and to regulate the relationship between the state and rural magnates, the zamindars.
Records of the East India Company provide us with useful descriptions of agrarian relations in eastern India

Peasants and their lands-

The term which Indo-Persian sources of the Mughal period most frequently used to denote a peasant was raiyat (plural, riaya) or muzarian.

Two kinds of peasants –

khud-kashta- residents of the village in which they held their lands
pahi-kashta- non-resident cultivators who belonged to some other village, but cultivated lands elsewhere on a contractual basis

Irrigation and technology-

The abundance of land, available labour and the mobility of peasants were three factors that accounted for the constant expansion of agriculture.
In northern India the state undertook digging of new canals (nahr, nala) and also repaired old ones like the shahnahr in the Punjab during Shah Jahan’s reign.
Agriculture was mainly labour intensive but peasants also used technologies
A drill, pulled by a pair of giant oxen, was used to plant seeds, but broadcasting of seed was the most prevalent method.
Hoeing and weeding were done simultaneously using a narrow iron blade with a small wooden handle.

An abundance of crops-

Two major seasonal cycles, the kharif (autumn) and the rabi (spring)
Mughal state also encouraged peasants to cultivate such crops as they brought in more revenue.
Crops such as cotton and sugarcane were jins-i kamil par excellence.
Cotton was grown over a great swath of territory spread over central India and the Deccan plateau, whereas Bengal was famous for its sugar
During the seventeenth century several new crops from different parts of the world reached the Indian subcontinent.
Maize (makka), for example, was introduced into India via Africa and Spain

The Village Community

Deep inequities on the basis of caste and other caste like distinctions meant that the cultivators were a highly heterogeneous group.
Among those who tilled the land, there was a sizeable number who worked as menials or agricultural labourers (majur)
In Muslim communities menials like the halalkhoran (scavengers) were housed outside the boundaries of the village; similarly the mallahzadas (literally, sons of boatmen) in Bihar were comparable to slaves.
There was a direct correlation between caste, poverty and social status at the lower strata of society.
In a manual from 17^th century Marwar, Rajputs are mentioned as peasants, sharing the same space with Jats, who were accorded a lower status in the caste hierarchy.
The Gauravas, who cultivated land around Vrindavan (Uttar Pradesh), sought Rajput status in 17^th century.
Castes such as the Ahirs, Gujars and Malis rose in the hierarchy because of the profitability of cattle rearing and horticulture.
In the eastern regions, intermediate pastoral and fishing castes like the Sadgops and Kaivartas acquired the status of peasants.

Panchayats and headmen-

The village panchayat was an assembly of elders, usually important people of the village with hereditary rights over their property.
In mixed-caste villages, the panchayat was usually a heterogeneous body.
An oligarchy, the panchayat represented various castes and communities in the village, though the village menial-cum-agricultural worker was unlikely to be represented there.
The decisions made by these panchayats were binding on the members.
The panchayat was headed by a headman known as muqaddam or mandal.
Some sources suggest that the headman was chosen through the consensus of the village elders, and that this choice had to be ratified by the zamindar.
Headmen held office as long as they enjoyed the confidence of the village elders, failing which they could be dismissed by them.
The chief function of the headman was to supervise the preparation of village accounts, assisted by the accountant or patwari of the panchayat.
The panchayat derived its funds from contributions made by individuals to a common financial pool.
These funds were used for defraying the costs of entertaining revenue officials who visited the village from time to time.

In eastern India all marriages were held in the presence of the mandal.

In other words one of the duties of the village headman was to oversee the conduct of the members of the village community “chiefly to prevent any offence against their caste”.
Panchayats also had the authority to levy fines and inflict more serious forms of punishment like expulsion from the community.
The latter was a drastic step and was in most cases meted out for a limited period.
It meant that a person forced to leave the village became an outcaste and lost his right to practise his profession.
Such a measure was intended as a deterrent to violation of caste norms.
In addition to the village panchayat each caste or jati in the village had its own jati panchayat.
In Rajasthan jati panchayats arbitrated civil disputes between members of different castes.
They mediated in contested claims on land, decided whether marriages were performed according to the norms laid down by a particular caste group, determined who had ritual precedence in village functions, and so on.
In most cases, except in matters of criminal justice, the state respected the decisions of jati panchayats.
Archival records from Rajasthan and Maharashtra – contain petitions presented to the panchayat complaining about extortionate taxation or the demand for unpaid labour (begar) imposed by the “superior” castes or officials of the state.
Often petitions were made collectively as well, by a caste group or a community protesting against what they considered were morally illegitimate demands on the part of elite groups.
In the eyes of the petitioners the right to the basic minimum for survival was sanctioned by custom.
They regarded the village panchayat as the court of appeal that would ensure that the state carried out its moral obligations and guaranteed justice.
The decision of the panchayat in conflicts between “lower-caste” peasants and state officials or the local zamindar could vary from case to case.
In cases of excessive revenue demands, the panchayat often suggested compromise.
In cases where reconciliation failed, peasants took recourse to more drastic forms of resistance, such as deserting the village.

Village artisans

25 per cent of the households in the villages were artisans
The distinction between artisans and peasants in village society was a fluid one, as many groups performed the tasks of both.
Cultivators and their families would also participate in craft production – such as dyeing, textile printing, baking and firing of pottery, making and repairing agricultural implements.
Phases in the agricultural calendar when there was a relative lull in activity, as between sowing and weeding or between weeding and harvesting, were a time when cultivators could engage in artisanal production.
Village artisans – potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, barbers, even goldsmiths – provided specialised services in return for which they were compensated by villagers by a variety of means.
The most common way of doing so was by giving them a share of the harvest, or an allotment of land, perhaps cultivable wastes, which was likely to be decided by the panchayat.
In Maharashtra such lands became the artisans’ miras or watan – their hereditary holding.
Another variant of this was a system where artisans and individual peasant households entered into a mutually negotiated system of remuneration, most of the time goods for services.
For example, 18^th century records tell us of zamindars in Bengal who remunerated blacksmiths, carpenters, even goldsmiths for their work by paying them “a small daily allowance and diet money”.
This later came to be described as the jajmani system, though the term was not in vogue in 16^th & 17^th centuries.
Cash remuneration was not entirely unknown either.

Women in Agrarian society

In many different societies, the production process often involves men and women performing certain specified roles.
Men tilled and ploughed, while women sowed, weeded, threshed and winnowed the harvest.
A gendered segregation between the home (for women) and the world (for men) was not possible in this context.
Nonetheless biases related to women’s biological functions did continue.
Menstruating women, for instance, were not allowed to touch the plough or the potter’s wheel in western India, or enter the groves where betel-leaves (paan) were grown in Bengal.
Artisanal tasks such as spinning yarn, sifting and kneading clay for pottery, and embroidery were among the many aspects of production dependent on female labour.
Women were considered an important resource in agrarian society also because they were child bearers in a society dependent on labour.
At the same time, high mortality rates among women – owing to malnutrition, frequent pregnancies, death during childbirth – often meant a shortage of wives.
This led to the emergence of social customs in peasant and artisan communities that were distinct from those prevalent among elite groups.
Marriages in many rural communities required the payment of bride-price rather than dowry to the bride’s family.
Remarriage was considered legitimate both among divorced and widowed women.
Household was headed by a male.
Wives protested against the infidelity of their husbands or the neglect of the wife and children by the male head of the household, the grihasthi.
When women petitioned to the panchayat, their names were excluded from the record: the petitioner was referred to as the mother, sister or wife of the male head of the household
Amongst the landed gentry, women had the right to inherit property.
Instances from the Punjab show that women, including widows, actively participated in the rural land market as sellers of property inherited by them.
Hindu and Muslim women inherited zamindaris which they were free to sell or mortgage.
Women zamindars were known in 18^th century Bengal.
Eg. Of women zamindar Rajshahi

Forests and Tribes

There was more to rural India than sedentary agriculture.
Apart from the intensively cultivated provinces in northern and north-western India, huge swathes of forests – dense forest (jangal) or scrubland (kharbandi) – existed all over eastern India, central India, northern India (including the Terai on the Indo-Nepal border), Jharkhand, and in peninsular India down the Western Ghats and the Deccan plateau.
Forest dwellers were termed jangli in contemporary texts.
Among the Bhils, for example, spring was reserved for collecting forest produce, summer for fishing, the monsoon months for cultivation, and autumn and winter for hunting.
For the state, the forest was a subversive place – a place of refuge (mawas) for troublemakers.
In the Mughal political ideology, the hunt symbolised the overwhelming concern of the state to ensure justice to all its subjects, rich and poor.
Regular hunting expeditions, so court historians tell us, enabled the emperor to travel across the extensive territories of his empire and personally attend to the grievances of its inhabitants.
The hunt was a subject frequently painted by court artists.
The spread of commercial agriculture was an important external factor that impinged on the lives of those who lived in the forests.
Some tribes, like the Lohanis in the Punjab, were engaged in overland trade, between India and Afghanistan, and in the town-country trade in the Punjab itself.
Like the “big men” of the village community, tribes also had their chieftains.
Tribes in the Sind region had armies
In Assam, the Ahom kings had their paiks, people who were obliged to render military service in exchange for land.
The capture of wild elephants was declared a royal monopoly by the Ahom kings.
War was a common occurrence.
For instance, the Koch kings fought and subjugated a number of neighbouring tribes in a long sequence of wars through 16^th & 17^th centuries.
Some historians have indeed suggested that sufi saints (pirs) played a major role in the slow acceptance of Islam among agricultural communities emerging in newly colonised places

The Zamindars

Zamindars were landed proprietors who also enjoyed certain social and economic privileges by virtue of their superior status in rural society.
Caste was one factor that accounted for the elevated status of zamindars; another factor was that they performed certain services (khidmat) for the state.
The zamindars held extensive personal lands termed milkiyat, meaning property.
Milkiyat lands were cultivated for the private use of zamindars, often with the help of hired or servile labour.
The zamindars could sell, bequeath or mortgage these lands at will.
Zamindars also derived their power from the fact that they could often collect revenue on behalf of the state, a service for which they were compensated financially.
Most zamindars had fortresses (qilachas) as well as an armed contingent comprising units of cavalry, artillery and infantry.
Thus if we visualise social relations in the Mughal countryside as a pyramid, zamindars clearly constituted its very narrow apex.
Abu’l Fazl’s account indicates that an “upper -caste”, Brahmana-Rajput combine had already established firm control over rural society.
The dispossession of weaker people by a powerful military chieftain was quite often a way of expanding a zamindari.
It is, however, unlikely that the state would have allowed such a show of aggression by a zamindar unless he had been confirmed by an imperial order (sanad).
Rajputs and Jats adopted strategies to consolidate their control over vast swathes of territory in northern India.
Likewise, peasant-pastoralists (like the Sadgops) carved out powerful zamindaris in areas of central and south- western Bengal.
Zamindars spearheaded the colonisation of agricultural land, and helped in settling cultivators by providing them with the means of cultivation, including cash loans.
The buying and selling of zamindaris accelerated the process of monetisation in the countryside.
In addition, zamindars sold the produce from their milkiyat lands.
There is evidence to show that zamindars often established markets (haats) to which peasants also came to sell their produce.
Although there can be little doubt that zamindars were an exploitative class, their relationship with the peasantry had an element of reciprocity, paternalism and patronage.

Land Revenue System

Revenue from the land was the economic mainstay of the Mughal Empire.
It was therefore vital for the state to create an administrative apparatus to ensure control over agricultural production, and to fix and collect revenue from across the length and breadth of the rapidly expanding empire.
This apparatus included the office (daftar) of the diwan who was responsible for supervising the fiscal system of the empire.
The jama was the amount assessed, as opposed to hasil, the amount collected.
In his list of duties of the amil-guzar or revenue collector, Akbar decreed that while he should strive to make cultivators pay in cash, the option of payment in kind was also to be kept open.
Both cultivated and cultivable lands were measured in each province.
The Ain compiled the aggregates of such lands during Akbar’s rule.
Efforts to measure lands continued under subsequent emperors.
For instance, in 1665, Aurangzeb expressly instructed his revenue officials to prepare annual records of the number of cultivators in each village.

The Flow of Silver

The Mughal Empire was among the large territorial empires in Asia that had managed to consolidate power and resources during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
These empires were the Ming (China), Safavid (Iran) and Ottoman (Turkey).
The political stability achieved by all these empires helped create vibrant networks of overland trade from China to the Mediterranean Sea.
Voyages of discovery and the opening up of the New World resulted in a massive expansion of Asia’s (particularly India’s) trade with Europe.
The period between the 16^th & 18^th centuries was also marked by a remarkable stability in the availability of metal currency, particularly the silver rupya in India.
This facilitated an unprecedented expansion of minting of coins and the circulation of money in the economy as well as the ability of the Mughal state to extract taxes and revenue in cash.
The testimony of an Italian traveller, Giovanni Careri, who passed through India c. 1690, provides a graphic account about the way silver travelled across the globe to reach India.

The Ain- I- Akbari of Abu'l Fazl Allami

It was completed in 1598
Akbar Nama, comprised three books.
The first two provided a historical narrative.
The Ain- i -Akbari, the third book, was organised as a compendium of imperial regulations and a gazetteer of the empire.
The Ain gives detailed accounts of the organisation of the court, administration and army, the sources of revenue and the physical layout of the provinces of Akbar’s empire and the literary, cultural and religious traditions of the people.
The Ain is made up of five books (daftars), of which the first three books describe the administration.
The first book, called manzil-abadi, concerns the imperial household and its maintenance.
The second book, sipah-abadi, covers the military and civil administration and the establishment of servants.
The third book, mulk-abadi, is the one which deals with the fiscal side of the empire and provides rich quantitative information on revenue rates, followed by the “Account of the Twelve Provinces”
The mulk-abadi gives a fascinating, detailed and highly complex view of agrarian society in northern India.
The 4^th & 5^th books (daftars) deal with the religious, literary and cultural traditions of the people of India and also contain a collection of Akbar’s “auspicious sayings”.

Chapter 9
Kings and Chronicles
The Mughal Courts
(c. Sixteenth- Seventeenth centuries)

The rulers of the Mughal Empire saw themselves as appointed by Divine Will to rule over a large and heterogeneous populace

The Mughals and their Empire

The name Mughal derives from Mongol.
Though today the term evokes the grandeur of an empire, it was not the name the rulers of the dynasty chose for themselves.
They referred to themselves as Timurids, as descendants of the Turkish ruler Timur on the paternal side.
Babur, the first Mughal ruler, was related to Ghenghiz Khan from his mother’s side.
He spoke Turkish and referred derisively to the Mongols as barbaric hordes.
During 16^th century, Europeans used the term Mughal to describe the Indian rulers of this branch of the family.
Over the past centuries the word has been frequently used – even the name Mowgli, the young hero of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, is derived from it.
The empire was carved out of a number of regional states of India through conquests and political alliances between the Mughals and local chieftains.
The founder of the empire, Zahiruddin Babur, was driven from his Central Asian homeland, Farghana, by the warring Uzbeks.
He first established himself at Kabul and then in 1526 pushed further into the Indian subcontinent in search of territories and resources to satisfy the needs of the members of his clan.
His successor, Nasiruddin Humayun (1530-40, 1555-56) expanded the frontiers of the empire, but lost it to the Afghan leader Sher Shah Sur, who drove him into exile.
Humayun took refuge in the court of the Safavid ruler of Iran.
In 1555 Humayun defeated the Surs, but died a year later.
Many consider Jalaluddin Akbar (1556-1605) the greatest of all the Mughal emperors, for he not only expanded but also consolidated his empire, making it the largest, strongest and richest kingdom of his time.
Akbar succeeded in extending the frontiers of the empire to the Hindukush mountains, and checked the expansionist designs of the Uzbeks of Turan (Central Asia) and the Safavids of Iran.
Akbar had three fairly able successors in Jahangir (1605-27), Shah Jahan (1628-58) and Aurangzeb (1658-1707), much as their characters varied.
Under them the territorial expansion continued, though at a much reduced pace.
The three rulers maintained and consolidated the various instruments of governance.
Institutions of an imperial structure included effective methods of administration and taxation.
The visible centre of Mughal power was the court.
Here political alliances and relationships were forged, status and hierarchies defined.
The political system devised by the Mughals was based on a combination of military power and conscious policy to accommodate the different traditions they encountered in the subcontinent.
After 1707, following the death of Aurangzeb, the power of the dynasty diminished.
In place of the vast apparatus of empire controlled from Delhi, Agra or Lahore – the different capital cities – regional powers acquired greater autonomy.
Yet symbolically the prestige of the Mughal ruler did not lose its aura.
In 1857 the last scion of this dynasty, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, was overthrown by the British.

The Production of Chronicles

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.
Chaghtai Turks traced descent from the eldest son of Ghengiz Khan.
It was Akbar who consciously set out to make Persian the leading language of the Mughal court.
Persian was elevated to a language of empire, conferring power and prestige on those who had a command of it.
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 16^th & 17^th centuries came from many different regions of the subcontinent and spoke other Indian languages, Persian too became indianized 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).

The making of manuscripts-

All books in Mughal India were handwritten.
The centre of manuscript production was the imperial kitabkhana.
The creation of a manuscript involved a number of people performing a variety of tasks.
Paper makers were needed to prepare the folios of the manuscript, scribes or calligraphers to copy the text, gilders to illuminate the pages, painters to illustrate scenes from the text, bookbinders to gather the individual folios and set them within ornamental covers
Calligraphy, the art of handwriting, was considered a skill of great importance.
It was practised using different styles.
Akbar’s favourite was the nastaliq, a fluid style with long horizontal strokes.
It is written using a piece of trimmed reed with a tip of five to 10 mm called qalam, dipped in carbon ink (siyahi).
The nib of the qalam is usually split in the middle to facilitate the absorption of ink

The Painted Image

Painters too were involved in the production of Mughal manuscripts.
Chronicles narrating the events of a Mughal emperor’s reign contained, alongside the written text, images that described an event in visual form.
These paintings were miniatures
A folio in nastaliq, the work of Muhammad Husayn of Kashmir (c.1575-1605), one of the finest calligraphers at Akbar’s court, who was honoured with the title “zarrin qalam” (golden pen) in recognition of the perfectly proportioned curvature of his letters
The calligrapher has signed his name on the lower section of the page, taking up almost one-fourth of its space.
The production of paintings portraying the emperor, his court and the people who were part of it, was a source of constant tension between rulers and representatives of the Muslim orthodoxy, the ulama.
The latter did not fail to invoke the Islamic prohibition of the portrayal of human beings enshrined in the Qur’an as well as the hadis, which described an incident from the life of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Safavid kings of Iran patronised the finest artists, who were trained in workshops set up at court.
The names of painters – such as that of Bihzad – contributed to spreading the cultural fame of the Safavid court far and wide.
Artists from Iran also made their way to Mughal India.
Some were brought to the Mughal court, as in the case of Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad, who were made to accompany Emperor Humayun to Delhi.
Others migrated in search of opportunities to win patronage and prestige.

The Akbar Nama and The Badshah Nama

Each manuscript contained an average of 150 full- or double-page paintings of battles, sieges, hunts, building construction, court scenes, etc.
The author of the Akbar Nama, Abu’l Fazl grew up in the Mughal capital of Agra.
He was widely read in Arabic, Persian, Greek philosophy and Sufism.
Moreover, he was a forceful debater and independent thinker who consistently opposed the views of the conservative ulama.
These qualities impressed Akbar, who found Abu’l Fazl ideally suited as an adviser and a spokesperson for his policies.
One major objective of the emperor was to free the state from the control of religious orthodoxy.
Abu’l Fazl both shaped and articulated the ideas associated with the reign of Akbar.
Beginning in 1589, Abu’l Fazl worked on the Akbar Nama for 13 years, repeatedly revising the draft.
The chronicle is based on a range of sources, including actual records of events (waqai), official documents and oral testimonies of knowledgeable persons.
The Akbar Nama is divided into three books of which the first two are chronicles.
The third book is the Ain-i Akbari.
The first volume contains the history of mankind from Adam to one celestial cycle of Akbar’s life (30 years).
The second volume closes in the 46th regnal year (1601) of Akbar.
The very next year Abu’l Fazl fell victim to a conspiracy hatched by Prince Salim, and was murdered by his accomplice, Bir Singh Bundela.
In the Ain-i Akbari the Mughal Empire is presented as having a diverse population consisting of Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists and Muslims and a composite culture.
Abu’l Fazl wrote in a language that was ornate and which attached importance to diction and rhythm, as texts were often read aloud.
This Indo- Persian style was patronised at court, and there were a large number of writers who wanted to write like Abu’l Fazl
A pupil of Abu’l Fazl, Abdul Hamid Lahori is known as the author of the Badshah Nama.
Emperor Shah Jahan, hearing of his talents, commissioned him to write a history of his reign modelled on the Akbar Nama.
The Badshah Nama is this official history in three volumes (daftars) of ten lunar years each.
Lahori wrote 1^st and 2^nd daftars comprising the first two decades of the emperor’s rule (1627-47); these volumes were later revised by Sadullah Khan, Shah Jahan’s wazir.
Infirmities of old age prevented Lahori from proceeding with the third decade which was then chronicled by the historian Waris.
During the colonial period, British administrators began to study Indian history and to create an archive of knowledge about the subcontinent to help them better understand the people and the cultures of the empire they sought to rule.
The Asiatic Society of Bengal, founded by Sir William Jones in 1784, undertook the editing, printing and translation of many Indian manuscripts.
Edited versions of the Akbar Nama and Badshah Nama were first published by the Asiatic Society in 19^th century.
In the early 20th century the Akbar Nama was translated into English by Henry Beveridge after years of hard labour.
Only excerpts of the Badshah Nama have been translated into English to date; the text in its entirety still awaits translation.

The Ideal Kingdom

Court chroniclers drew upon many sources to show that the power of the Mughal kings came directly from God.
One of the legends they narrated was that of the Mongol queen Alanqua, who was impregnated by a ray of sunshine while resting in her tent.
Abu’l Fazl placed Mughal kingship as the highest station in the hierarchy of objects receiving light emanating from God (farr-i izadi)
Here he was inspired by a famous Iranian Sufi, Shihabuddin Suhrawardi (d. 1191) who first developed this idea.
According to this idea, there was a hierarchy in which the Divine Light was transmitted to the king who then became the source of spiritual guidance for his subjects.
Paintings that accompanied the narrative of the chronicles transmitted these ideas in a way that left a lasting impression on the minds of viewers.
Mughal artists, from 17^th century onwards, began to portray emperors wearing the halo, which they saw on European paintings of Christ and the Virgin Mary to symbolise the light of God.

A unifying force

Mughal chronicles present the empire as comprising many different ethnic and religious communities –
Hindus, Jainas, Zoroastrians and Muslims. As the source of all peace and stability the emperor stood above all religious and ethnic groups, mediated among them, and ensured that justice and peace prevailed.
Abu’l Fazl describes the ideal of sulh-i kul (absolute peace) as the cornerstone of enlightened rule.
In sulh-i kul all religions and schools of thought had freedom of expression but on condition that they did not undermine the authority of the state or fight among themselves.
The ideal of sulh-i kul was implemented through state policies – the nobility under the Mughals was a composite one comprising Iranis, Turanis, Afghans, Rajputs, Deccanis – all of whom were given positions and awards purely on the basis of their service and loyalty to the king.
Akbar abolished the tax on pilgrimage in 1563 and jizya in 1564 as the two were based on religious discrimination. Instructions were sent to officers of the empire to follow the precept of sulh-i kul in administration.
All Mughal emperors gave grants to support the building and maintenance of places of worship.
Later on jizya was reimposed on non-Muslim subjects.

Just sovereignty as social contract

Abu’l Fazl defined sovereignty as a social contract: the emperor protects the four essences of his subjects, namely, life (jan), property (mal), honour (namus) and faith (din), and in return demands obedience and a share of resources.
A number of symbols were created for visual representation of the idea of justice which came to stand for the highest virtue of Mughal monarchy.
One of the favourite symbols used by artists was the motif of the lion and the lamb (or goat) peacefully nestling next to each other.
Court scenes from the illustrated Badshah Nama place such motifs in a niche directly below the emperor’s throne

Capitals and Courts

The capital cities of the Mughals frequently shifted during 16^th and 17^th centuries.
Babur took over the Lodi capital of Agra, though during the four years of his reign the court was frequently on the move.
During the 1560s Akbar had the fort of Agra constructed with red sandstone quarried from the adjoining regions.
In the 1570s he decided to build a new capital, Fatehpur Sikri.
One of the reasons prompting this may have been that Sikri was located on the direct road to Ajmer, where the dargah of Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti had become an important pilgrimage centre.
The Mughal emperors entered into a close relationship with sufis of the Chishti silsila.
Akbar commissioned the construction of a white marble tomb for Shaikh Salim Chishti next to the majestic Friday mosque at Sikri
The enormous arched gateway (Buland Darwaza) was meant to remind visitors of the Mughal victory in Gujarat.
In 1585 the capital was transferred to Lahore to bring the north-west under greater control and Akbar closely watched the frontier for thirteen years.
Shah Jahan pursued sound fiscal policies and accumulated enough money to indulge his passion for building.
Building activity in monarchical cultures, as you have seen in the case of earlier rulers, was the most visible and tangible sign of dynastic power, wealth and prestige.
In the case of Muslim rulers it was also considered an act of piety.
In 1648 the court, army and household moved from Agra to the newly completed imperial capital, Shahjahanabad.

The Mughal court

The physical arrangement of the court, focused on the sovereign, mirrored his status as the heart of society.
Its centrepiece was therefore the throne, the takht, which gave physical form to the function of the sovereign as axis mundi.
The canopy, a symbol of kingship in India for a millennium, was believed to separate the radiance of the sun from that of the sovereign.
In court, status was determined by spatial proximity to the king.
The place accorded to a courtier by the ruler was a sign of his importance in the eyes of the emperor.
Once the emperor sat on the throne, no one was permitted to move from his position or to leave without permission.
Social control in court society was exercised through carefully defining in full detail the forms of address, courtesies and speech which were acceptable in court.
Axis mundi is a Latin phrase for a pillar or pole that is visualised as the support of the earth
The forms of salutation to the ruler indicated the person’s status in the hierarchy: deeper prostration represented higher status.
The highest form of submission was sijda or complete prostration.
Under Shah Jahan these rituals were replaced with chahar taslim and zaminbos (kissing the ground).
The protocols governing diplomatic envoys at the Mughal court were equally explicit.
An ambassador presented to the Mughal emperor was expected to offer an acceptable form of greeting – either by bowing deeply or kissing the ground, or else to follow the Persian custom of clasping one’s hands in front of the chest.
Thomas Roe, the English envoy of James I, simply bowed before Jahangir according to European custom, and further shocked the court by demanding a chair.
The emperor began his day at sunrise with personal religious devotions or prayers, and then appeared on a small balcony, the jharoka, facing the east.
Below, a crowd of people (soldiers, merchants, craftspersons, peasants, women with sick children) waited for a view, darshan, of the emperor.
Jharoka darshan was introduced by Akbar with the objective of broadening the acceptance of the imperial authority as part of popular faith.
The Mughal kings celebrated three major festivals a year:
the solar and lunar birthdays of the monarch and Nauroz, the Iranian New Year on the vernal equinox.

Titles and gifts

Grand titles were adopted by the Mughal emperors at the time of coronation or after a victory over an enemy.
High sounding and rhythmic, they created an atmosphere of awe in the audience when announced by ushers (naqib).
Mughal coins carried the full title of the reigning emperor with regal protocol.
The granting of titles to men of merit was an important aspect of Mughal polity.
The title Asaf Khan for one of the highest ministers originated with Asaf, the legendary minister of the prophet king Sulaiman (Solomon).
The title Mirza Raja was accorded by Aurangzeb to his two highest-ranking nobles, Jai Singh and Jaswant Singh.
Mir Khan offered Rs one lakh to Aurangzeb for the letter alif, that is A, to be added to his name to make it Amir Khan.
Other awards included the robe of honour (khilat), a garment once worn by the emperor and imbued with his benediction.
One gift, the sarapa (“head to foot”), consisted of a tunic, a turban and a sash (patka).
Jewelled ornaments were often given as gifts by the emperor. The lotus blossom set with jewels (padma murassa) was given only in Exceptional circumstances

The Imperial Household

The term “harem” is frequently used to refer to the domestic world of the Mughals.
It originates in the Persian word haram, meaning a sacred place.
The Mughal household consisted of the emperor’s wives and concubines, his near and distant relatives (mother, step- and foster-mothers, sisters, daughters, daughters-in-law, aunts, children, etc.), and female servants and slaves.
Polygamy was practised widely in the Indian subcontinent, especially among the ruling groups.
Both for the Rajput clans as well as the Mughals marriage was a way of cementing political relationships and forging alliances.
The gift of territory was often accompanied by the gift of a daughter in marriage.
This ensured a continuing hierarchical relationship between ruling groups.
In the Mughal household a distinction was maintained between wives who came from royal families (begams), and other wives (aghas) who were not of noble birth.
The begams, married after receiving huge amounts of cash and valuables as dower (mahr), naturally received a higher status and greater attention from their husbands than did aghas.
The concubines (aghacha or the lesser agha) occupied the lowest position in the hierarchy of females intimately related to royalty.
They all received monthly allowances in cash, supplemented with gifts according to their status.
The line age based family structure was not entirely static. The agha and the aghacha could rise to the position of a begam depending on the husband’s will, and provided that he did not already have four wives.
Love and motherhood played important roles in elevating such women to the status of legally wedded wives.
Apart from wives, numerous male and female slaves populated the Mughal household.
The tasks they performed varied from the most mundane to those requiring skill, tact and intelligence.
Slave eunuchs (khwajasara) moved between the external and internal life of the household as guards, servants, and also as agents for women dabbling in commerce.
After Nur Jahan, Mughal queens and princesses began to control significant financial resources.
Shah Jahan’s daughters Jahanara and Roshanara enjoyed an annual income often equal to that of high imperial mansabdars.
Jahanara, in addition, received revenues from the port city of Surat, which was a lucrative centre of overseas trade.
Control over resources enabled important women of the Mughal household to commission buildings and gardens.
Jahanara participated in many architectural projects of Shah Jahan’s new capital, Shahjahanabad (Delhi).
Among these was an imposing double-storeyed caravanserai with a courtyard and garden.
The bazaar of Chandni Chowk, the throbbing centre of Shahjahanabad, was designed by Jahanara.
An interesting book giving us a glimpse into the domestic world of the Mughals is the Humayun Nama written by Gulbadan Begum.
Gulbadan was the daughter of Babur, Humayun’s sister and Akbar’s aunt.
Gulbadan could write fluently in Turkish and Persian.

The Imperial Officials

One important pillar of the Mughal state was its corps of officers, also referred to by historians collectively as the nobility.
The nobility was recruited from diverse ethnic and religious groups.
This ensured that no faction was large enough to challenge the authority of the state.
The officer corps of the Mughals was described as a bouquet of flowers (guldasta) held together by loyalty to the emperor.
In Akbar’s imperial service, Turani and Iranian nobles were present from the earliest phase of carving out a political dominion.
Many had accompanied Humayun; others migrated later to the Mughal Court Char Chaman book on Mughal nobility was written by Chandrabhan Barahman
Two ruling groups of Indian origin entered the imperial service from 1560 onwards: the Rajputs and the Indian Muslims (Shaikhzadas).
The first to join was a Rajput chief, Raja Bharmal Kachhwaha of Amber, to whose daughter Akbar got married.
Members of Hindu castes inclined towards education and accountancy were also promoted, a famous example being Akbar’s finance minister, Raja Todar Mal, who belonged to the Khatri caste.
Iranians gained high offices under Jahangir, whose politically influential queen, Nur Jahan (d. 1645), was an Iranian.
Aurangzeb appointed Rajputs to high positions, and under him the Marathas accounted for a sizeable number within the body of officers.
All holders of government offices held ranks (mansabs) comprising two numerical designations:
zat which was an indicator of position in the imperial hierarchy and the salary of the official (mansabdar), and sawar which indicated the number of horsemen he was required to maintain in service.
The nobles participated in military campaigns with their armies and also served as officers of the empire in the provinces.
Each military commander recruited, equipped and trained the main striking arm of the Mughal army, the cavalry.
The troopers maintained superior horses branded on the flank by the imperial mark (dagh).
The emperor personally reviewed changes in rank, titles and official postings for all except the lowest-ranked officers.
Akbar, who designed the mansab system, also established spiritual relationships with a select band of his nobility by treating them as his disciples (murid).
For members of the nobility, imperial service was a way of acquiring power, wealth and the highest possible reputation.
A person wishing to join the service petitioned through a noble, who presented a tajwiz to the emperor.
Tajwiz was a petition presented by a nobleman to the emperor, recommending that an applicant be recruited as mansabdar.
There were two other important ministers at the centre: the diwan-i ala (finance minister) and sadr-us sudur (minister of grants or madad-i maash, and in charge of appointing local judges or qazis).
The three ministers occasionally came together as an advisory body, but were independent of each other.
Akbar with these and other advisers shaped the administrative, fiscal and monetary institutions of the empire.
Nobles stationed at the court (tainat-i rakab) were a reserve force to be deputed to a province or military campaign.
They were duty-bound to appear twice daily, morning and evening, to express submission to the emperor in the public audience hall.
They shared the responsibility for guarding the emperor and his household round the clock

Information and empire

The mir bakhshi supervised the corps of court writers (waqia nawis) who recorded all applications and documents presented to the court, and all imperial orders (farman).
In addition, agents (wakil ) of nobles and regional rulers recorded the entire proceedings of the court under the heading “News from the Exalted Court” (Akhbarat-i Darbar-i Mualla) with the date and time of the court session (pahar).
The akhbarat contained all kinds of information such as attendance at the court, grant of offices and titles, diplomatic missions, presents received, or the enquiries made by the emperor about the health of an officer.
Round-the-clock relays of foot-runners (qasid or pathmar) carried papers rolled up in bamboo containers.
The emperor received reports from even distant provincial capitals within a few days.
Agents of nobles posted outside the capital and Rajput princes and tributary rulers all assiduously copied these announcements and sent their contents by messenger back to their masters.

Beyond the centre: provincial administration

The division of functions established at the centre was replicated in the provinces (subas) where the ministers had their corresponding subordinates (diwan, bakhshi and sadr).
The head of the provincial administration was the governor (subadar) who reported directly to the emperor.
The sarkars, into which each suba was divided, often overlapped with the jurisdiction of faujdars (commandants) who were deployed with contingents of heavy cavalry and musketeers in districts.
The local administration was looked after at the level of the pargana (sub-district) by three semi-hereditary officers, the qanungo (keeper of revenue records), the chaudhuri (in charge of revenue collection) and the qazi.

Persian was made the language of administration throughout, but local languages were used for village accounts.

The Mughal chroniclers usually portrayed the emperor and his court as controlling the entire administrative apparatus down to the village level.
The relationship between local landed magnates, the zamindars, and the representatives of the Mughal emperor was sometimes marked by conflicts over authority and a share of the resources.

Beyond the Frontiers

General titles such as Shahenshah (King of Kings) or specific titles assumed by individual kings upon ascending the throne, such as Jahangir (World-Seizer), or Shah Jahan (King of the World).
The chroniclers often drew on these titles and their meanings to reiterate the claims of the Mughal emperors to uncontested territorial and political control.

The Safavids and Qandahar

The political and diplomatic relations between the Mughal kings and the neighbouring countries of Iran and Turan hinged on the control of the frontier defined by the Hindukush mountains that separated Afghanistan from the regions of Iran and Central Asia.
All conquerors who sought to make their way into the Indian subcontinent had to cross the Hindukush to have access to north India.
A constant aim of Mughal policy was to ward off this potential danger by controlling strategic outposts – notably Kabul and Qandahar.
Qandahar was a bone of contention between the Safavids and the Mughals.
The fortress-town had initially been in the possession of Humayun, re- conquered in 1595 by Akbar.
While the Safavid court retained diplomatic relations with the Mughals, it continued to stake claims to Qandahar.
In 1613 Jahangir sent a diplomatic envoy to the court of Shah Abbas to plead the Mughal case for retaining Qandahar, but the mission failed.

The Ottomans- pilgrimage and trade

The relationship between the Mughals and the Ottomans was marked by the concern to ensure free movement for merchants and pilgrims in the territories under Ottoman control.
This was especially true for the Hijaz, that part of Ottoman Arabia where the important pilgrim centres of Mecca and Medina were located.
The Mughal emperor usually combined religion and commerce by exporting valuable merchandise to Aden and Mokha, both Red Sea ports, and distributing the proceeds Jahangir’s dream An inscription on this miniature records that Jahangir commissioned Abu’l Hasan to render in painting a dream the emperor had had recently.
Abu’l Hasan painted this scene portraying the two rulers – Jahangir and the Safavid Shah Abbas – in friendly embrace.
Both kings are depicted in their traditional costumes.
The figure of the Shah is based upon portraits made by Bishandas who accompanied the Mughal embassy to Iran in 1613.
This gave a sense of authenticity to a scene which is fictional, as the two rulers had never met.

Jesuits at the Mughal court

Europe received knowledge of India through the accounts of Jesuit missionaries, travellers, merchants and diplomats.
The Jesuit accounts are the earliest impressions of the Mughal court ever recorded by European writers.
Following the discovery of a direct sea route to India at the end of the fifteenth century, Portuguese merchants established a network of trading stations in coastal cities.
The Portuguese king was also interested in the propagation of Christianity with the help of the missionaries of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits).
The Christian missions to India during the sixteenth century were part of this process of trade and empire building.
Akbar was curious about Christianity and dispatched an embassy to Goa to invite Jesuit priests.
The first Jesuit mission reached the Mughal court at Fatehpur Sikri in 1580 and stayed for about two years.
The Jesuits spoke to Akbar about Christianity and debated its virtues with the ulama.
Two more missions were sent to the Mughal court at Lahore, in 1591 and 1595.

Important Terminologies-

Ulama (plural of alim, or one who knows) are scholars of Islamic studies.

As preservers of this tradition they perform various religious, juridical and teaching functions

Matrilocal residence is a practice where women after marriage remain in their natal home with their children and the husbands may come to stay with them

Wali (plural auliya) or friend of God was a sufi who claimed proximity to Allah, acquiring

His Grace (barakat) to perform miracles (karamat).

Yavana is a Sanskrit word used for the Greeks and other peoples who entered the subcontinent from the North West.

Amara is believed to be derived from the Sanskrit word samara, meaning battle or war.

It also resembles the Persian term amir, meaning a high noble

Pargana was an administrative subdivision of a Mughal province.

Peshkash was a form of tribute collected by the Mughal state.

Amin was an official responsible for ensuring that imperial regulations were carried out in the provinces.

A diachronic account traces developments over time, whereas a synchronic account depicts one or several situations at one particular moment or point of time.

Kornish was a form of ceremonial salutation in which the courtier placed the palm of his right hand against his forehead and bent his head. It suggested that the subject placed his head – the seat of the senses and the mind – into the hand of humility, presenting it to the royal assembly

Chahar taslim is a mode of salutation which begins with placing the back of the right hand on the ground, and raising it gently till the person stands erect, when he puts the palm of his hand upon the crown of his head. It is done four (chahar) times.

Taslim literally means submission.

Shab-i barat is the full moon night on the 14 Shaban, the eighth month of the hijri calendar, and is celebrated with prayers and fireworks in the subcontinent.

It is the night when the destinies of the Muslims for the coming year are said to be determined and sins forgiven.