Narratives, Routes and Intersections in Pre-Modern Asia 9781138688582, 9781315401980

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NARRATIVES, ROUTES AND INTERSECTIONS IN PRE-MODERN ASIA

This book traces connections in pre-modern Asia by looking at different worlds across geography, history and society. It examines how regions were connected by people, families, trade and politics as well as how they were maintained and remembered. The volume analyses these intersections of memory and narrative, of people and places and the routes that took people to these places, using a variety of sources. It also studies whether these intersections remain in later and present times, and their larger impact on our understanding of history. The narratives cover several journeys drawn from archaeology, texts and cultural imagination: trade routes, marts, fairs, forts, religious pilgrimages, inscriptions, calligraphy and coinages spanning diverse regions, including India–Tibet–British forays, India–Malay intersections, corporate enterprise in the Indian Ocean, impacts of slave trade in Southeast Asia shaped by the Dutch East India company, movements and migrations around IndoIranian borderlands and those in western and southern India. The book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of history and archaeology, cultural studies and literature. Radhika Seshan is Associate Professor at the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Maharashtra, India. Her area of specialisation is medieval Indian history, with a focus on economic history, especially maritime and urban history. In recent years, she has also been working on travel accounts and the constructions of the East therein. She recently organised a panel at the World Economic History Congress in Japan. Apart from publishing many papers in national and international journals and editing five books, she has authored Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast: Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (2012) and Ideas and Institutions in Medieval India: Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries (2013). She is joint editor (with Professor Rila Mukherjee) of the series ‘Issues in History’, in which she edited the book Convergence: Rethinking India’s Past (2014).

NARRATIVES, ROUTES AND INTERSECTIONS IN PRE-MODERN ASIA

Edited by Radhika Seshan

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 selection and editorial matter, Radhika Seshan; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Radhika Seshan to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-68858-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-40198-0 (ebk) Typeset in Goudy by Apex CoVantage, LLC

T O M Y F A M I LY

CONTENTS

List of figures Contributors Acknowledgements

ix xii xiv

Introduction: intersections: narratives, routes and marts in the pre-modern Asian world 1 Imagination, memory and history: narrating India-Malay intersections in the early modern period

1

8

B A R B A R A WAT S ON ANDAYA

2 Routes into the present

36

RILA MUKHERJEE

3 Movements and migrations around the porous Indo-Iranian borderlands: the view from archaeology and texts (c. third century BCE–third century CE)

64

S U C H A N D R A G H OS H

4 Minor trade between India and Tibet and new routes after the British intervention

76

M.N. RAJESH

5 Slavery and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in seventeenth-century island Southeast Asia L E O N A R D A N D AYA

vii

85

CONTENTS

6 Goa at the intersection of world trade routes in the pre-modern age: strangers at home and at home with strangers

115

T E O T O N I O R . DE S OUZ A

7 The Indian fort as a site of intersections

126

A N I R U D H D E S HPANDE

8 English corporate enterprise and private trade in the Indian Ocean: a common meeting ground

146

RUBY MALONI

9 Inscriptions and calligraphy on the Mughal and Safavid coinages: a comparative study

157

DANISH MOIN

10 Looking around the institution of tīrtha-yātrā in the context of Maratha expansion

176

I R I N A G L U S H K OVA

11 Fairs and pilgrimages as points of intersections: the case of medieval western Maharashtra

206

S U M I T R A K U L K ARNI

12 Continuing routes, changed intersections: a study of Fort St. George (Madras) in the seventeenth century R A D H I K A S E S H AN

viii

214

FIGURES

3.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.14 9.15 9.16

Map of Karakoram Highway Map of the island world of Southeast Asia Map of the Maluku world Map of the Onin and Kowiai regions of Southwest New Guinea Map of Central and South Maluku Inscription on Mughal coins – Babar: silver: Shahrukhi type Inscription on Mughal coins – Humayun: Shahrukhi type Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: silver: rupee Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: gold Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: gold: Ilahi type Inscription on Mughal coins – Jahangir: silver: Kalima type Inscription on Mughal coins – Jahangir: silver: couplet type Inscription on Mughal coins – Jahangir Shah: gold Inscription on Mughal coins – Shahjahan: silver Inscription on Mughal coins – Aurangzeb: silver Inscription on Mughal coins – Shah Alam Bahadur: silver Inscription on Mughal coins – Farukh Siyyar: silver Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: copper: Hijri type Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: copper: dam, Ilahi type Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: copper: Tanka type with the name of Akbar Inscription on Mughal coins – Aurangzeb: copper

ix

73 88 100 103 105 160 160 160 161 161 161 161 162 162 162 162 163 163 163 163 164

FIGURES

9.17 9.18 9.19 9.20 9.21 9.22 9.23 9.24 9.25 9.26 9.27 9.28 9.29 9.30 9.31 9.32 9.33 9.34 9.35 9.36

Inscription on Safavid coins – Ismail Shah I (AH 908–23): silver Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Tahmasp I (AH 930–84) Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Tahmasp I (AH 930–84) Inscription on Safavid coins – Abbas I (AH 996–1002): silver Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Safi I (AH 1038): silver Inscription on Safavid coins – Abbas II (AH 1052–77): silver: couplet type Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Hussain I (AH 1105–35) Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Hussain I (AH 1105–35) Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Babar Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Ismail Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Humayun Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Tahmasp Shah Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Akbar Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Abbas I Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Shahjahan Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Safi I Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Aurangzeb Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Abbas II Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Akbar Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Hussain I

x

165 165 165 166 166 166 166 167 169 169 169 169 169 169 170 170 170 170 170 170

FIGURES

9.A.1 9.A.2 9.A.3 9.A.4 9.A.5 9.A.6 9.A.7 9.A.8 9.A.9

Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Iltutmish: silver (with kalima and name of Abbasid Caliph) Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Iltutmish: silver (with the name of Abbasid Caliph) Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Balban: silver (with the name of Abbasid Caliph) Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Alauddin Muhammad Shah: silver Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah: silver Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah: silver Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Muhammad bin Tughluq: silver Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Muhammad bin Tughluq: bronze Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Firuz Tughluq: gold

xi

172 172 173 173 173 174 174 174 175

CONTRIBUTORS

Barbara Watson Andaya is Professor of Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, USA. Her current project is a history of Christian localisation in Southeast Asia, 1511–1900. Leonard Andaya has held positions at the University of Malaya, the Australian National University, the University of Auckland and the University of Hawaii, where he has been Professor of History since 1993. His present research is on the history of the seas in eastern Indonesia in the early modern period. Anirudh Deshpande is Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi. Previously, he has been Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum  & Library (NMML), Teen Murti Bhawan; Indian Council of Historical Research Post-Doctoral Fellow, Junior Research Fellow/ Senior Research Fellow, University Grants Commission. Suchandra Ghosh is Professor, Department of Ancient Indian History & Culture, University of Calcutta. She specialises in epigraphy and numismatics. Irina Glushkova is Senior Research Scholar, Center for Indian Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences and a trained philologist and historian with PhD and D.Litt degrees. Sumitra Kulkarni is Professor, Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University. Her area of specialisation is Maratha history. She has published many articles in both English and Marathi on the subject. Ruby Maloni recently retired from the Department of History at Mumbai University, where she had been teaching for more than 30 years. Her specialisation is the Indian Ocean and maritime trade, with special emphasis on the history of Gujarat. xii

CONTRIBUTORS

Danish Moin is Associate Professor, Department of History, Maulana Azad National University, Hyderabad. His specialisation is in medieval Indian numismatics. Rila Mukherjee is Professor of History, University of Hyderabad and formerly Director, Institut de Chandernagor, West Bengal. M.N. Rajesh is Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Hyderabad. His main research interest includes pre-modern Tibet and South India. Teotonio R. de Souza is a historian and the founder-director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Alto Porvorim, Goa.

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

These chapters are the result of a seminar organised by the Department of History, University of Pune in December 2013. Funding for this seminar was provided by the Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi, and by the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Pune, under the UPE-II scheme. I would like to place on record my thanks to both these organisations for giving me so much and making it easy for me to organise an international seminar. I would like to thank my colleagues in the department – Professor D.S. Gaikwad, head of the department, for his constant support; Professor Sumitra Kulkarni, who despite a family emergency still presented a paper; Mr B.H. Dudhbhate for all the work that he did and for his willingness to respond every time I yelled for help; and Dr Shraddha Kumbhojkar for the sharing of the responsibilities. All the student volunteers, particularly Rahul, Kunal and Yogesh, for all the running around that they did. As always, Shweta for being a general dogsbody and for doing all the formatting of the volume in order for it to be ready for the press.

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INTRODUCTION Intersections: narratives, routes and marts in the pre-modern Asian world

One should perhaps begin with trying to define the word ‘intersections’. In purely lexical terms, the first meaning of the word is to do with mathematics. The second definition broadens the focus slightly, to make it a point ‘two or more things intersect especially road junctions’. Is such a brief description sufficient? It is all very well to say that an intersection is a point on the road, but a question that begs to be asked is, why only a road? Why not an island, or an archipelago? More important, when one talks of it as a point where two lines intersect, or two roads meet, one is ignoring the essential human dimension – why, for instance, did the line intersect only at that point, and no other, and who came together when two roads crossed, or who travelled, to meet other travellers on the road? Sufi philosophy, for example, constantly uses the metaphor of the journey, and the people and the halting places on the way; in this philosophy, the ‘intersections’ of peoples, places and journeys are seen as inseparable from human life as a whole. Other questions could also be asked, concerning the difference between, for instance, an intersection and a crossroad, or an intersection and a junction of some kind. Equally important would be the issue of the networks that ‘intersected’ at any given place, as, for example, at Samarkand, which was the ‘crossroads’ of the Asian world in many ways. As John E. Wills has pointed out, ‘The intensity of commerce connecting Europe, Africa, and America made the South Atlantic one of the best-known and most regularly crossed stretches of open ocean.’1 Given that so much of this ‘intensity of commerce’ involved movement of both bullion and goods from the Americas to Asia, the Indian Ocean world was also one that was connected with, and therefore crossed by, traders, diplomats, travellers of many kinds, migrants, soldiers, sailors, freebooters and, of course, pirates. Many of these dimensions have been studied by historians of the Indian Ocean trade networks. 1

INTRODUCTION

In India, Indian Ocean history is usually begun (and often continued) with Ashin Das Gupta’s early work, Malabar in Asian Trade, and his Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat.2 The focus in his work was on what M.N. Pearson later defined as the ‘western Indian Ocean’, often seen as the busier part of the Indian Ocean. For the eastern Indian Ocean one of the most important works has been J.C. van Leur’s Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History,3 which brought in the idea of the ‘peddling trade’. Focus on the Southeast Asian networks developed further with Denys Lombard’s works, culminating in his three-volume work, Le Carrefour Javanais, Essai d’une Histoire Globale (The Javanese Crossroads: An Essay in Global History).4 M.N. Pearson has pointed to the existence of a ‘long history of contact and distant voyages from its coasts, and then a brief hiatus, when westerners controlled things’.5 Other works that have studied the networks of exchanges across seas include S. Arasaratnam’s Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast and Maritime India in the 17th Century,6 K.N. Chaudhuri’s Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean,7 Rila Mukherjee’s Pelagic Passageways and Vanguards of Globalization,8 Om Prakash’s edited work, The Trading World of the Indian Ocean, 1500–18009 and Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s Political Economy of Commerce and Explorations in Connected Histories.10 In addition to these there are works that focus on specific sub-regions of the Indian coast. There is obviously no shortage of writing on the theme of trade, maritime history and port cities. However, all tend to focus, as Shami Ghosh has argued in a review of Tirthankar Roy, on moving inwards from the coast.11 The rise of a ‘coastal polity’ may have shaped the history of Asia in the ‘early modern’ period, but surely it is necessary to highlight, once again, the nature of the connections between the agrarian economy, production systems and the many connected worlds of Asian trade and exchange. Historiography has tended to highlight the break that colonialism brought in of power coming from the sea to the land where early Asian systems were totally land based and agro-centric. But the Asian world seems to have traditionally been one in which such a separation, if it existed, was never as marked as later historiography would make it out to be. It is with this in mind that we use the word ‘intersections’ in preference to networks or connected histories. This work, therefore, begins with this premise – that an intersection is much more than its dictionary definition. It is, by our definition, a meeting point in a variety of ways: historical, geographical, economic, social, cultural, mythical, imaginary or conceptual. What are the possible historical intersections? A facile answer would be all of the above, for it is through history that one relates to geography or understands economy, society or myth. Many historians have studied trade networks, and the Indian Ocean 2

INTRODUCTION

trade routes, which connected peoples and places not directly on the littoral, and these were undoubtedly important networks of contact. What we are arguing here is that it is necessary to bring in, much more, the social dimensions of these routes. To frame this differently, we could perhaps ask if one can study trade and trade routes without examining who was trading, in what, where from and to where, and how and when. Was trade controlled or fostered? If the former, what were the mechanisms of control? If trade was being fostered, was this promotion or fostering episodic, and personal, or systemic? If systemic, what were the checks and balances that were established, either through a legal system or through tradition or through both? Was the approach to trade the same in different times and spaces or in the same spaces at different times, or vice versa? There would be other questions that could be asked with reference to trade and trade routes. What were the routes that were followed? How were taxes collected along the roads, and how was security guaranteed? Indian sources of the medieval period have many references to rahdari, the collection of taxes for using the roads, and not all of these were official (i.e. there were illegal extortions in the name of rahdari). If these illegal taxes were to be avoided, were alternative routes discovered and used? How long did these routes continue to be used, and how long were they remembered? Did the memory of routes and connections pass into folklore and legend? When these questions are asked, one has to move beyond the narrowly economic into the social and the political, for among other things, one is also asking who travelled, who made the roads for travel, or the conveyances for it, what travelled and when. We therefore get back to peoples and places. Further aspects could include examinations of what changed when armies marched, for example, or when pilgrims travelled, along the same routes. The purpose was different, the route the same – did this then change the perception of the route itself? If one is to talk of a point of intersection, then that point is usually understood as having a physical location, mostly conveniently a mart or market, a place, in its narrowest sense, of economic exchange. But here again one would have to ask how a mart can exist without the people. A mart would perhaps be better defined as a meeting point and an exchange point. Who meets whom and what is exchanged may have nothing to do with material exchanges and everything to do with gossip, news of different kinds or maybe marital alliances. Exchanges are necessarily as numerous as people. Therefore marts too can lend themselves to analysis in many ways, for they represent many different kinds of intersections. Can one have imaginary intersections? Perhaps – in stories, for example, or when a story is retold, when a historical or geographical location is 3

INTRODUCTION

provided to lend credence to a construction of a mind. A good example of this that comes to my mind is Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Connections or the finding of connections or their creation is a human mental exercise. Thus, one can argue that an intersection can be both imaginary and conceptual. Belief in the existence of a place can lead to exploration and voyages in search of that place, such as the many expeditions launched to search for the land of Prester John. This imaginary world requires a physical location to make it more meaningful. Geography can enter this world to give shape, substance or coherence. I am not arguing that geography has to do only with the material world; rather that geography provides a landscape that could exist only in the mind but to which a map is provided through words or pictures or memory. A map in itself is a point of multiple intersections. To this, I would add the sacred landscapes – where narrative and physical structure, in the form of pilgrimage routes and temples, would come together, to give a different shape to the notion of connections and networks. The pre-modern Asian world was one that had many intersections, through polity, culture and trade among other things. Routes crisscrossed this world, to be used by armies, mendicants, merchants, migrants, travellers and many others. The tendency has been to emphasise the trade aspect of routes and marts, but it is necessary to study the broader connections and intersections as well. Were interior marts, for example, just places of local exchange, or did they too feed into the broader political and cultural worlds? Where and how did inter- and intra-regional networks intersect? Armenians, Persians, Hadramis, Chettis and Chulias were to be seen across the Asian world, and not just in the larger commercial centres. Yet another dimension would be the transformation of certain ideas and forms across regions, as they were assimilated into different socio-economic, political or cultural contexts. All these points, thus, necessarily involve humans and their connections. An intersection, therefore, is a connection of people to places and things as well as a way of remembering these connections. Intersections, I would further argue, are not just about all that I have outlined earlier, but also about remembering these multiple points of contact. Memory is a key aspect of history. Points of contact are remembered or forgotten, consciously or unconsciously, and the memories are embellished or truncated. Memory itself then would be an area of intersection, not a point of intersection. It is perhaps out of such memories that myths emerge and themselves create innumerable highways and byways and therefore that many more dimensions of ‘intersections’. One further question that needs to be asked is the role of borderlands as intersections. I would use ‘borderlands’ in many ways – as the no-man’s-land 4

INTRODUCTION

between nation-state borders, as the borderlands of eco-zones, where one begins to fade into another, as well as those rather nebulous borders of cultures and peoples, which are themselves populated by myth, memory and legend, and which then feed into different kinds of connections and intersections. The Indian Ocean world, for example, was one that can perhaps be said to have had rather porous geographies. Through the medieval and early modern periods, it was one which was not ‘bounded’, either by land or by sea. There were many intersections where land and sea met, and impinged on one another, but there were also clearly defined areas in which the two were separated. Into these geographies could be inserted the different networks – of trade, of cultures, of politics, of language, of diplomacy. The chapters in this volume examine some of these issues. Barbara Watson Andaya studies the memories of India that existed in Malaysia through an examination of five Malay accounts. Pointing out that ‘the region’s location athwart the crossroads linking the Indian sub-continent to China made trade a primary vehicle for the transmission of religious and political influences’, she goes on to examine the ways in which these transmissions were visualised and then transmitted further, within the region. Memory, here, was a powerful marker of connections, for the narratives point to both, the continuity of contact, and the persistence of the memory of contact even in different times and historical contexts. Rila Mukherjee continues with the idea of memory, but points to the ways in which routes were remembered. She therefore tracks the ‘life and career of routes’ from and to eastern South Asia – connecting the east and north east of India with parts of South China and Myanmar (Burma). These routes and their continuity are discussed through maps, to examine the spatial and temporal variations of peoples and places. Suchandra Ghosh takes the idea of routes across regions to another part of Asia, the Indo-Iranian border. Studying the nature of migrations in the ‘porous’ Indo-Iranian border through archaeology and early texts, she points out that this region was for long one that was a ‘focal point for travellers, monks, merchants and political personalities’. All these movements shaped the culture of the region in diverse ways, finding their expression in both art and legends, thus leading to multiple cultural interactions. Looking to the north of the Himalayas, M.N. Rajesh traces the intersections of region and narrative through historiography, in a different time frame, that of British entry into Tibet. Questioning the images of Tibet through historiography, he argues that these images need to be better contextualised and understood through a study of the existing networks of the time, rather than the perceptions of the early explorers of the region. 5

INTRODUCTION

Leonard Andaya moves back to the maritime regions, to study the involvement of the Dutch East India Company in the slave trade of the Indian Ocean. Pointing to the voluminous research on the exchange of goods and ideas between India and Southeast Asia, he argues that very little work has been done on the slave trade, despite the fact that a number of Indians were brought to the region as slaves. He therefore examines the question of slavery through both historiography and a specific case of slavery in the eastern Indonesian islands. Teotonio R. de Souza moves from routes and regions to places, to trace the development of Goa as a specific point of interaction in the Asian world. Raising the issues of supply chains, agents, trade organisations and the politics of trade, he points to the centrality of Goa in the maritime and political worlds of the early modern period. Continuing with the theme of places as points of intersection, Anirudh Deshpande focuses on the role of forts in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in particular, to argue that it is necessary to locate forts within their larger regional contexts, rather than just see them as military centres. The fact that many of these forts have today become tourist destinations, he argues, tends to obscure their significance in the socio-economic dimensions of the times in which they were built. Ruby Maloni moves from places to people, to examine the ways in which the interactions of private and official interests in the English East India Company led to the creation of multiple points of contact, and both ‘a convergence of economic practice among Englishmen trading in the ‘Indies’ and ‘bonds of vested interest were forged among themselves, and also with indigenous merchants, on the basis of profit and gain’. Danish Moin’s chapter examines a less-studied aspect of intersections, that of calligraphy and coinage. Inscriptions on coins have long been seen as a valuable source of information on the notions of legitimacy and identity, but here, the focus is on cultural connections seen through the coins of the Mughal and Safavid dynasties in the late medieval period. Irina Glushkova’s chapter moves back to people, to study the place of routes and memories in the practice of religion, specifically the tirth-yatra of the Bhakti movement. Focusing on the idea of travel, she outlines the formation of both a mental and a real map, in which the sacred landscapes were clearly defined and maintained through the community practice of travel for a specific purpose. Sumitra Kulkarni’s chapter carries on the theme of religion, but as practised through the markets. Religion and its practice brought together religion and economy, in the form of local fairs and festivals organised around holy days. Such practices have been fairly extensively studied in European 6

INTRODUCTION

history, but have not received much attention in Indian history. This chapter examines the small fairs, and specially the bazaars, and therefore, looks at the local markets as points of cultural, social and economic interactions. Radhika Seshan’s brief chapter focuses on the continued intersections that can be traced from a single place, Fort St. George. Examining the Asian shipping from this port, she attempts to trace the networks that developed as a result of the East India Company and its servants, as well as the older networks that continued along the coast or across the Bay of Bengal. She therefore examines the multiple networks that were maintained, altered or created as a result of the emergence of a new port, and a new player in the Coromandel trade.

Notes 1 John E. Wills Jr., 1688: A Global History (New York; London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), p. 11. 2 Ashin Das Gupta, Malabar in Asian Trade 1740–1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1967); Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1978; New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1994). 3 J.C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (The Hague: W. van Hoeve, 1955). 4 Denys Lombard, Le Carrefour Javanais, Essai d’une Histoire Globale (Paris: Editions EHESS, 1990). 5 M.N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 3–4. 6 S. Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650–1740 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986); S. Arasaratnam, Maritime India in the 17th Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). 7 K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 8 Rila Mukherjee, ed., Pelagic Passageways: The Northern Bay of Bengal before Colonialism (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2011); Rila Mukherjee, ed., Vanguards of Globalization: Port Cities from the Classical to the Modern (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2014). 9 Om Prakash, ed., The TradingWorld of the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800, vol. 3, part 7 of D.P. Chattopadhayah, ed., History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization Series (New Delhi: Pearson, 2012). 10 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern Indian, 1500–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Explorations in Connected History from the Tagus to the Ganges, 2 volumes (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011). 11 Shami Ghosh, “How Should We Approach the Economy of ‘Early Modern India’?,” Modern Asian Studies, 49, no. 5 (2015), pp. 1608–56, first published online 5 June 2015.

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1 IMAGINATION, MEMORY AND HISTORY Narrating India-Malay intersections in the early modern period Barbara Watson Andaya

This volume invites readers to think about trade routes and economic exchanges as ‘intersections’ that open doorways into larger worlds of social and cultural interaction. Such an approach is familiar to historians of Southeast Asia because the region’s location athwart the crossroads linking the Indian sub-continent to China made trade a primary vehicle for the transmission of religious and political influences. There can be little doubt that in the pre-modern world the most far-reaching of these influences originated from India, and a large and growing corpus of research continues to demonstrate the multiple ways in which incoming beliefs, technologies and models from the sub-continent were adopted and adapted in Southeast Asian societies. Nonetheless, although the tracking of trading connections as pathways for religious and cultural transmission has been fundamental to our appreciation of this localisation process, it has not been easy to visualise the ways in which those involved conceptualised other societies and conveyed the experiences of ‘encounter’ to their own communities. It is especially difficult to view these connections from the standpoint of Southeast Asia, since so much of our surviving evidence relates to the flow of ideas and peoples from India across the Bay of Bengal rather than the reverse. In examining five Malay accounts ranging from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, this chapter argues not merely that Southeast Asians had long ‘imagined’ India, but that these imaginings persisted in communal memory, even when they contrasted with lived experience and even when the historical environment itself had changed significantly.

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I M A G I N AT I O N , M E M O R Y A N D H I S T O R Y

Introduction: a century of scholarship on India-Southeast Asia relations The metal and ceramic artefacts that represent the earliest tangible evidence of trade between India and Southeast Asia were found in the coastal areas of the upper Thai-Malay Peninsula, and date from the period between 200 BCE and 300 CE. Constituting the oldest proof of the exploitation of tin resources in this area, they support the view that Indians and local people were collaborating in ‘trans-Asiatic flows’ of cultural as well as technical knowledge as early as the mid-first millennium BCE.1 These conclusions assume added significance when placed in the context of over a century of scholarly debate regarding the nature of the early relationship between India and Southeast Asia. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was commonly believed that certain areas of Southeast Asia had been ‘colonised’ by Indians, who brought religion, political models and technological expertise.2 Such views gradually gave way to a greater stress on local agency, and the manner in which Indian influences had been reshaped and adapted.3 By the latter part of the twentieth century, an emphasis on responses among Southeast Asians themselves had become a standard element in interpretations of the processes of cultural transmission from India.4 In 1990, reviewing developments over the previous hundred years, Hermann Kulke thus preferred to speak of a ‘convergence’ of Indian/Southeast Asian interests and concerns, which in turn ‘required and enabled similar solutions to similar problems of social change. ‘Application of this hypothesis’, he contended, would give ‘more space to indigenous initiatives in Southeast Asia.’5 Nonetheless, despite the more deliberate attention given to Southeast Asians, the focus of research has primarily been on the dynamics of trade and on the flow of religious, political and occasionally technical influences from India to Southeast Asia. The concentration on what might appear to be a one-way movement of people and ideas was strengthened because nineteenth-century British colonialism opened the gates to a virtual flood of humanity from India into Southeast Asia, notably to British Malaya. These migrants often described their experiences in Malaya in considerable detail, remarking particularly on the differences with India, and on the lives of compatriots who had settled overseas and established their own local families.6 However, although the Bay of Bengal is slowly beginning to develop its own historiography,7 for earlier times we rarely encounter personal memories of the people who moved backwards and forwards across this body of water. In Southeast Asia we have no Indian equivalent, for instance, to the late thirteenth-century account of Cambodia by the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan.8

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The same comments could also be made as we move into the early modern period (roughly 1400 to 1830), even though it is characterised by a major increase in documentation, especially in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago. The records left by Europeans, most notably the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC), bequeathed a vast corpus of data that remains a rich field for historians, especially for those interested in the economics of trade. Yet precisely because of the depth of this trade-oriented material, academics have been inclined to treat the waters of the Bay of Bengal as a surface for the transport of goods rather than an arena of intense human involvement.9 There are plenty of detailed European accounts of commercial dealings (indeed, far too numerous to list here), but they contain virtually nothing about the experiences of the thousands of traders, passengers, sailors, slaves and religious teachers who travelled between India and Southeast Asia. In short, the interaction between local communities and incoming arrivals, whether in terms of acceptance, negotiation, suspicion or confrontation, receives little attention in European sources, except when trade was directly affected. The problem is compounded because participants in these activities themselves left almost no written accounts, and as we have noted, Indian voices are noticeably absent. Certainly no one would today castigate sailors, traders, sea captains and religious teachers from Sri Lanka and the Indian subcontinent for their ‘failure’ to record impressions of the time they spent in Southeast Asia (as did Phené Spiers in 1910),10 but it means that the many individuals who visited the region remain shadowy figures, even when they assumed positions of authority. For instance, the activities of the sixteenthcentury Tamil merchant Nina Chatu, a resident of Melaka, come through to us only via his appearance in Portuguese documents after the city was captured in 1511.11 The names of other prominent Indian merchants and intermediaries are scattered through the documents – as harbourmasters, as royal merchants, as intermediaries, as clerks, as translators – but in no case are we provided with a personal view of the ways in which they approached their tasks, the difficulties they experienced or indeed, their impressions of Southeast Asian societies. Official missions, which might have led to documentary reports, are also rare. What, we might ask, did Mukhtar Beg, the emissary of the nawab of Bengal, make of his visit to the court of Siam in 1636 and the warm welcome he received?12 And while we have many examples of the relative ease with which the Indians known as Chulias (Tamil Muslim traders) took up residence in Sumatra and the Malay areas, the sources reveal little about the ways in which relations with local societies were negotiated. We can only speculate about the specific issues that led to an attack on ‘Moors and Chulias’ in Ujung Salang in 1677, and the 10

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underlying resentment that led to the reprimand from an Acehnese ruler, recorded in a local manuscript.13 In sum, a century of scholarship on early modern commercial connections between India and Southeast Asia means that we know a great deal about the goods that were traded and the networks of production, but the human interactions by which ships were loaded, crews recruited and port protocol satisfied are only sketched in broad terms. For example, Indian traders were deeply involved in transporting elephants from Siam and the Malay Peninsula to India, but who took command of organising workmen for the ‘great trouble and labour’ involved in the gathering of the leaves and branches which lined the jetty and covered the ships? Who collected the sand that was scattered on the deck to simulate a jungle environment so that elephants would not be frightened?14 What kind of language was used in this organisation, or aboard ships themselves? Did it resemble the ‘seaspeak’ of Indian Ocean ships that has been documented for the nineteenth century?15

Kalinga, Southeast Asia and the Malay imaginaire The gaps in our knowledge of this cultural interaction are the more frustrating because India loomed so large in the Southeast Asian imaginaire. In mainland Southeast Asia and in Java this imprint is most evident in the religious influences manifested in great monuments, art and vocabulary, but the creation of a ‘sacred geography’ could equally serve as a reminder of the long-standing connections with India. In Theravada Buddhist societies, for instance, discoveries of ‘footprints’ in natural rock formations appeared to confirm the Buddha’s personal visits to the region, reinforcing accounts of his ocean voyages to ‘Suvanabhumi’ undertaken in previous lives (often depicted in temple murals). Though visual representations of Indian scenes in the great Hindu/Buddhist monuments of Cambodia and Java depict nothing that can be specifically identified as a representation of ‘India’, it is worth noting that images of lions (often used in India as emblems of royal power, and sometimes in conjunction with Buddhism) are prominent, even though they are not found in Southeast Asia. What was intended, one wonders, by giving the island of Singapore the name ‘lion (Malay singa) city’?16 Examples of ancestral genealogies from many Southeast Asian societies also attest the widespread perception that connections to India were rooted in a community’s very origins. Among scholars the most well known is probably the third-century Chinese account of a Brahman called Hun-t’en (said to be a rendering of the Sanskrit Kaudinya) whose ship was directed 11

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towards Funan (in Cambodia), where he married the daughter of the ruler and subsequently himself succeeded as king.17 Of particular interest when we turn to the Malay-Indonesian archipelago is the persistence of the word ‘Kalinga’, the ancient realm located in the region of modern Orissa. References to Benua (or alternatively Negeri) Keling (the country of the Kelings) and ‘Keling’ to denote individuals from India (especially southern India) frequently appeared in Malay accounts well into the nineteenth century, raising questions about interactions in the distant past. A seventh-century Chinese description of ‘the country of Kalinga’ that speaks of its prosperity ‘in olden times’ supports the suggestion that Kalinga played a significant role in the maritime networks that linked the Malay areas to India, especially from the fourth century CE. Indeed, a port thought to be near Masulipatnam has been identified as the ‘starting point’ for those sailing to the ‘Khersonese’, that is Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula.18 The continuing prominence of traders from this region (and the persistence of the term) is indicated in the Kaladi inscription from the delta of Java’s Brantas River, dated to 909 CE, which specifically refers to the presence of people from Kalinga.19 Probably even more central to Southeast Asia conceptualisations was the inclusion of Kalinga in the dramatic stories of great kingdoms and princely achievement that circulated throughout the region, like episodes from the Mahabharata and the Buddhist Jātaka. Given this background, it is not difficult to understand that legendary power, wealth and cultural influence attached to ‘Benua Keling’ lived on in Southeast Asian memories. Many local histories continued to assert mythical links with Kalinga long after it had ceased to exist as an independent polity. In the early nineteenth century, for instance, Stamford Raffles recorded a Javanese legend about the prince Dewa Kasuma, who sent his ‘four sons and a daughter to Kling [i.e. India] in order that they might there be educated and instructed in the religion of Bráma’. The eldest son married the daughter of one of the greatest Indian princes, and returned to Java with a valuable cargo, artists of different professions and a personal bodyguard of a thousand men.20 A Malay hikayat (story, account) from south-east Borneo is similarly proud to trace the descent of its royal house from an ‘extremely rich’ Keling merchant whose grandson migrates to avoid jealousy and opposition at home.21 Although references to the ‘realm of Kalinga’ are scattered through Southeast Asian sources, its reputation in the Malay literary world was especially formidable. There is little doubt that this was largely due to the endorsement given in court chronicles from Melaka, the great Malay port that dominated regional commerce in the fifteenth century. Melaka was frequented by traders from all over India, but the term ‘Keling’ was so rooted 12

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in the local vocabulary that it was even picked up by the Portuguese, who saw the Hindu ‘Quelins’ of Melaka as potential allies against Muslims.22 Though falling to the Portuguese in 1511, Melaka’s wealth, court culture and patronage of Islam encouraged emulation in other archipelago polities, stretching from Aceh in the west to Ternate in the east. Its prestige as an international entrepôt even prompted the last ruler to proclaim that ‘the world needed his port’ and to boast that Melaka could become equivalent to Mecca.23 This self-confidence, and the sense that ‘Kalinga’ and Melaka could relate as equals, permeates the Malay chronicles that relate Melaka’s legendary history. Relayed through oral transmission, disseminated through the archipelago and recorded in texts, these accounts played a major role in ensuring that the name Kalinga was retained.

Benua Keling in Melaka texts The first of these accounts is the so-called Malay Annals or Sejarah Melayu,24 the oldest-surviving text of which dates from 1612. It is evident, however, that Malays now identified legendary Kalinga with south India, and linked it to great kingdoms such as Vijayanagara and to the ancient port of Nagapattinam, which had a long history of trade with the Malay Peninsula.25 One of the earliest episodes in the Sejarah Melayu relates ‘the story of a certain city in Benua Keling: its name was Nagapatnam and the ruler . . . was Raja Syulan’. Aiming to conquer the entire world, Raja Syulan assembled a mighty army and met Malay forces led by Raja Culin in a place near Perak (on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula).26 The account of the bloody battle that ended when Raja Syulan successfully shot an arrow and killed Raja Culin could well encapsulate faint Malay memories of the arrival of Chola fleets in the Melaka Straits and the attack on the south Sumatran polity of Srivijaya around 1025.27 However, although a Tamil inscription celebrates Chola raids on several towns and the capture of elephants and treasures, the Sejarah Melayu records an outcome that was in keeping with time-honoured traditions for the restoration of amicable relations. In this case, peace between Kalinga and the Malays was re-established through a marriage between Raja Syulan and Princess Onangkiu, Raja Culin’s daughter.28 The manner in which Malay imaginings of Kalinga were transposed into a familiar cultural mould is also well illustrated in the Sejarah Melayu’s description of Raja Syulan’s capital ‘Bija Nagara’ (a rendering of Vijayanagara). By the fifteenth century when Melaka was founded, Vijayanagara’s reputation was formidable, with its great wealth and the extent of its authority supported by contemporary accounts like that left by Nicolo di 13

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Conti, who visited the city in 1420 and noted that ‘the king is more powerful than all the other kings in India’. Twenty years later Abdur Razzak spoke of its grandeur in a similar vein, ‘The city of Bidjanagar is such . . . that there existed anything to equal it in the world. It is built in such a manner that seven citadels and the same number of walls enclose each other.’29 Indeed, the description of Raja Syulan’s palace given in the Sejarah Melayu, though not accurate like that of an eyewitness like Abdur Razzak, still conveys the same message of magnificence by adopting the formulaic depiction of ‘greatness’ that Malay audiences would have expected.30 In his contribution to this volume Anirudh Deshpande has emphasised the importance of the fort in medieval Indian centres, and as a symbol of power such fortifications assume an iconic place in Malay accounts of India. In this case, we are told, Bija Nagara’s fort was of black stone with walls seven fathoms thick and nine fathoms high. The number seven, of course, has universal significance, but it is of special meaning to Muslims since Paradise is also said to have seven levels. The symbolism occurs frequently in Indian Muslim architecture, and it is not surprising to see that it also features prominently in Malay descriptions of royal buildings.31 Furthermore, the text continues: The gate was of hammered gold, bejewelled with studs of gold. As for the extent of the fort, there were seven mountains within its compass, and in the midst of the city was a lake, so large that it looked like a sea . . . in the middle of [this lake] stood an island of great height, over which vapour constantly hovered as though the summit was wrapped in dewy mist. And on this island [Raja Syulan] planted trees of all kinds and every sort of flower and fruit tree that exists in this world was to be found there. . . . And by the side of this island [the king] made a great forest into which he released wild beasts of every kind. . . . When the city was completed, Raja Syulan gave it the name of Bija Nagara. . . . The city exists to this day in Benua Keling.32 It is worth noting that although the Sejarah Melayu description might appear fantastic, there are intriguing references that connect with European accounts, such as references to a large lake, to a fort and gates, to groves of fruit trees and to forests of wild animals, which suggest that some Malays had gone beyond the coastal area and visited the capital itself.33 Yet despite the touted wealth of Benua Keling and its ruler, we can detect undercurrents that may recall older rivalries. For example, the Sejarah Melayu deems it inappropriate for a Singapore prince to make the long voyage to India 14

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for his wedding. Rather, it is his bride, a Keling princess, who crosses the Bay of Bengal to meet her husband. In another episode, Indian craftsmen are unable to reproduce the complex textile designs ordered by the Melaka ruler, while across the Straits another text from Pasai (in Sumatra) describes local warriors who display such martial prowess that the Keling champions were ‘covered with confusion. They looked like chickens who are afraid of the hawk. . . . Hanging their heads in shame they returned to their ship and sailed away’.34 These undercurrents, however, are overshadowed by the dual themes of India’s great wealth and the kinship relationships with Malay rulers, which remain a recurring motif in Malay texts.35 Let us then turn to these themes as they are represented in another Malay epic, the ‘story’ or hikayat of the Melaka hero, Hang Tuah.36 More than 40 years ago a study of a fifteenth-century Javanese epic argued that there were ‘direct relations’ between Melaka and Vijayanagara, and dealings between the two courts certainly formed a significant part of the Hang Tuah saga.37 According to this account, the sultan of Melaka decided to send envoys to his ‘brother’ in Benua Keling in order to obtain a powerful ally. Hang Tuah, the Laksamana (head of Melaka’s fleets), is appointed to lead the mission to Bijaya Nagaram (Vijayanagara), since he knows the Keling language (which he had studied in Java) ‘and the ways and governance of their rajas’. In his letter to ‘Seri Sultan Benua Keling’, the Melaka ruler expresses his hope ‘that the distance between Melaka and Keling should be shortened and that there should be no shred of distrust’. The use of the title ‘sultan’ for a known Hindu king is interesting, for it is possible that a desire to establish closer relations may have been encouraged by Melaka’s knowledge of expanding Muslim influences in the Vijayanagar court. Indeed, Philip Wagoner has suggested that by adopting the title ‘sultan’, Bukka 1 (r. 1344–77) was presenting himself as a ‘muslim’ ruler in terms of substance and style.38 In any event, the mission receives divine sanction, for during their voyage the Melaka ships meet strong winds and waves as high as hills, but Allah protects them. On one island Hang Tuah even meets the Prophet al-Khidr, who predicts that the Laksamana will be honoured in the Keling land and will be asked to lead a mission to China.39 These prophecies are all fulfilled. When Hang Tuah and his followers arrive at Nagapattinam in Benua Keling, they are greeted with hospitality and affection. The harbourmaster adopts the emissaries as his sons, as does the wife of the local governor, since she and her husband have no children. This governor, Nala Sang Guna, is so wealthy that scores of warehouses are required to contain his riches, his gold and silver, his textiles and fine fabrics, his precious stones, pearls, valuable metals, copper, and all manner 15

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of trading items. In addition, he owns over 3,000 slaves and 5,000 debt slaves, as well as employs other workers. But other Keling merchants are also extremely rich, and in the words of the chronicler ‘all the Malay rajas together would not compare with one single Keling merchant’.40 After the necessary arrangements are complete, Laksamana Hang Tuah and his party are ceremonially escorted to Bijaya Nagaram to meet the Keling ruler, Kisna Rayan (apparently referring to Krishna Deva Raja of the Tuluva dynasty, who reigned from 1509 to 1529 and was said to be the most powerful of all Hindu rulers at that time).41 After a few days into the journey they sighted the fort of Bijaya Nagaram, surrounded with a wall as pure as combed cotton. As they rode closer, the Laksamana noticed that the great doors of the fortress were carved with magnificent animals on what appeared to be jacinth, and on another level of black marble, as dark as the shiny wings of the beetle; on yet another level he could read the story of the Ramayana and on yet another level the drama of the Pandawa Jaya and on another level were carved all kinds of animals in the jungles of the land; their doors were of copper and pinchbeck, all of them bearing witness to a fine and wonderful craftsmanship. [Inside this city] there were a thousand mosques in which Muslim cloth-weavers worshipped and thousands of tents of woollen fabric with carpets spread out for the merchants to trade their wares.42 In his splendid palace the king was holding court with a great many rajas, ministers and eunuchs, heralds and warriors. He sat on a golden throne, inlaid with precious stones and draped with ropes of pearls. Five hundred rajas wearing crowns sat to this right and five hundred wearing crowns to the left; seven thousand war chiefs in coats of chain mail and casques stood on His Majesty’s right while 70,000 stood on his left, all fully armed. A thousand war-elephants in chain mail stood on His Majesty’s right, and 7000 horses stood on his left. When people in Bijaya Nagaram asked why such great honours are bestowed on the Melaka mission, they were told that ‘the Raja of Melaka is the elder brother of our Raja’. The explanation of some observers even takes the argument further: ‘How can it be otherwise, since our raja is descended from the Malay rajas? ’ Indeed, Kisna Rayan himself talks of ‘our 16

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father on Bukit Siguntang’ (a sacred hill in south Sumatra from where the Melaka rulers traced their descent) and refers to his ‘elder brother’ in Melaka.43 Yet embedded in these kinship relationships is the almost inevitable sibling rivalry. As elsewhere in his travels, Laksamana Hang Tuah stands as the quintessential Malay hero, and in Benua Keling he astounds Kisna Rayan with his skills, his knowledge and initiative. He tames a horse no Keling warrior can ride; he produces a medication that guarantees conception for the childless; when a crisis looms because firewood is lacking he comes to the rescue by proposing that cloth (which Kalinga has in abundance) be used instead; he defeats a Keling champion in hand-to-hand combat. The Bijaya Nagaram court is astounded when he plants a magic seed obtained from Nabi Khidr which, ‘before their very eyes’, grows into a leafy tree. Within a few moments it begins to flower, producing a bud, and then a mature fruit. After the fruit is eaten, the tree inexplicably vanishes from sight.44 Through such feats Melaka’s reputation as the homeland of ‘men of prowess’ is upheld, and the Keling verdict is unanimous. ‘Truly the Laksamana is a great warrior from the land of the Malays, and it would be hard to find a warrior like him in the Keling country.’45 The prophecies of Nabi Khidr are brought to pass when Kisna Rayan wishes to send an envoy to China, and chooses not one of his own people but the Malay Hang Tuah. After many adventures, Hang Tuah finally returns home, bearing a letter and gifts from Kisna Rayan to the ruler of Melaka. The latter receives these gifts with delight and duly honours his faithful servant, who relays to him ‘all the news about the Keling country’.46

Tanah Keling in a seventeenth-century hikayat It is the legendary reputation of Keling, entrenched in Malay views of the world, that provides the motivation behind the visit recorded in our third description. Here we make a significant transition from myth to an eyewitness account, but one that is nonetheless composed under the shadow of transmitted memories. The writer, Imam Rijali, was an Islamic teacher, a resident of the Muslim area of Hitu (northern Ambon) in eastern Indonesia. His Hikayat Tanah Hitu (Story of the Land of Hitu) was apparently completed around 1650, by which time the political and economic environment was very different from that depicted in the Hikayat Hang Tuah. In southern India the great kingdom of Vijayanagara was in eclipse, and it was the cosmopolitan Coromandel Coast ports that now dominated trade with the Malay world and for which Rijali represented the power and 17

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wealth associated with Benua Keling. One of the more important of these was Masulipatnam, which was estimated to have a population of around 100,000 by the mid-seventeenth century and where both the English and Dutch East India Companies (VOC) maintained factories. The European presence along the Coromandel Coast reflects other extensive changes that had directly affected the Malay world. In 1511 Melaka had been captured by the Portuguese, only to be retaken in 1641 by the Dutch East India Company. From this time on Melaka was relegated to the position of a guard post on the Straits, with Batavia (modern-day Jakarta) developed as the centre of VOC trade. There had also been major shifts in eastern Indonesia, especially in relation to religious affiliation. The island of Ambon, for example, was divided between Christian populations converted by the Portuguese, and subsequently the Dutch, and Islamic areas like Hitu. In Hitu itself the Portuguese had introduced commercial clove cultivation, and for administrative purposes they had appointed one of the leading figures as ‘Kapitan Hitu’. From 1605 the VOC signed agreements with local rulers on Ambon (including Hitu) that awarded a monopoly over the expanding clove production. Because of these close relations, it is possible to coordinate the Malay material with Dutch documentation and establish distinct dates and chronology that are entirely lacking in earlier hikayat. Imam Rijali tells us that his cousin, Mihirjiguna, the son of the Kapitan Hitu, went to Jawakatra (Jakarta, i.e. Batavia) to meet the governor general (jeneral – at that time Jan Pietersz Coen) and the ‘great men’ (orang besar), even telling us the name of the ship (the Delft). In confirming this entry, VOC material records that the Hitu party reached Batavia in November 1621, and left for India in 1622 (late July or early August) on the vessel Zeeland. However, it is in the Malay version of events that we discover the reasons behind Mihirjiguna’s decision to visit India. In Batavia he was struck by the numbers of ships leaving for distant destinations. On being told that some were returning to Masulipatnam with the west monsoon, he asked if he could be included as a passenger so that ‘at least once in my lifetime I would visit the world of the land of Kalinga’ (melihat dunia tanah Kalinga).47 The governor granted his wish, giving him a thousand rials for expenses, ‘and one cannot tell of the other favours he received’. Unwittingly, Imam Rijali also reminds us that legend and reality can intersect, for like Hang Tuah, the Hitu party encountered heavy storms in the Bay of Bengal, when ‘the flapping of the sails sounded like gunshots and the mizenmast broke’, but eventually the ship reached Tevanapatam. Imam Rijali tells us little of the places he visited, and though most are easily identified, Nagahpatan (Nagapattinam), for instance, others (like 18

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Tiribbambum Tirumlsir and Kunmuri) cannot be identified with certainty.48 Because his account is quite short, it is therefore interesting to note the particular features that he chose to include. Coming from a Muslim area, he had probably little exposure to Catholic churches, and at San Tumi (São Tomé), where he commented on the Portuguese community, he spoke of the hill where a chapel housed an ‘idol’ (berhala), named Nona Sinyora di Mundi (Nossa Senhora do Monte, Our Lady of the Hill).49 Rijali obviously understood that this chapel was important (perhaps because of the numbers of pilgrims it attracted), but he was probably unaware that it was associated with the apostle Thomas himself.50 During another visit, this time to Pondicherry, he saw slaves for sale, in all likelihood not a new sight for him, since a slave market certainly existed in Batavia and in his home island of Ambon. Indeed, on the return trip the Zeeland carried 1,167 slaves back to Batavia, mostly women and children. What attracted Rijali’s attention was the cheap prices; for example an adult slave in Batavia cost around 8–12 rials and a child 6–7, whereas in Pondicherry an individual could be bought for as little as two or two and a half rials. His critical comment that ‘there are those who sell themselves, and others who sell their children’51 clearly suggests that he had no idea of the poverty and general destitution suffered by local populations in the wake of Vijayanagara’s decline. According to one English observer, privation was so widespread that parents have brought thousands of their young children to the seaside, selling there a child for five fanums (at that time, two shillings and sixpence) worth of rice; transported from thence into other parts of India (i.e. the east Indies) and sold again to good advantage.52 From Pondicherry the Hitu party left for Pulikat, where the VOC had constructed a fort (Geldria) as its headquarters. They stayed there for some time before leaving for Masulipatnam (Masilpatani), where the Dutch also had a post. Here Mihirjiguna, a guest in the home of a trader named Haji Baba, was popularly called ‘Sultan Karanful Kipati Syah – Sultan Cloves Kipati Syah’ – a strong indication that the Ambonese had brought muchdesired cloves to sell.53 It was probably in Masulipatnam that Mihirjiguna had the first taste of the renowned wealth he had come to expect, as Anthony Schorer, employed at the Dutch factory, wrote in 1616, Masulipatnam was ‘the most famous market on the Coast’ and the principal port of the kingdom of Golconda.54 Even among Europeans the ‘huge treasure’ of the Golconda ruler was legendary, for ‘in elephants and jewels he is accounted one of the richest Princes of India’.55 In a place renowned for his exports of precious stones, such as rubies and sapphires, the gems Rijali saw defied description 19

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‘one could hardly imagine [such brilliance] in the entire world . . . so that we thought no more of our parents and of home’. He found it impossible to describe the elegant lifestyle of Masulipatnam residents, which incorporated everything that could be imagined to make a person beautiful and that would fulfil all human desires.56 A particular source of wonder was a bathing place where the temperature was regulated, so that people could bathe in warm water in the evening and cool water at midday. One obvious difference between this account and those associated with Melaka is not merely its factual nature, but also its brevity. Furthermore, the power holders have changed, and Mihirjiguna’s relationships are not with the king of Golconda, whose court he never saw, but with the Dutch ‘jeneral’ and the ‘great men’ of Batavia. Certainly the Ambon party is given hospitality in India, but this was on a far more modest level than the receptions celebrated in Malay legend. More particularly, Rijali depicts a darker side of ‘tanah Keling’, for he says that he saw great contrasts in Indian life  – not only joy and wealth, but evil and hatred, sorrow and poverty, with people living in the ground, or spending their entire lives homeless while others were relegated to collecting human waste.57 Nonetheless, he is still struck by the splendour of the Keling country. In Rijali’s words, ‘All kinds of objects could be seen, the finest in the world, because at that time Masulipatnam was the harbour of the kings of Golconda, and the current ruler Muhammad Huli [Muhammad Qutb Syah, 1611–25].’58 The Zeeland carried the entire party (including, as noted in Leonard Andaya’s chapter, a cargo of slaves) back to Batavia, where it arrived on 25 December 1622. Three weeks later Mihirjiguna died from smallpox, possibly contracted it from one of the slaves, 69 of whom had perished on the voyage.59 But one would like to think that on his deathbed Mihirjiguna found some consolation in the fact that he had ‘once in his life’ visited the land of Kalinga. Indeed, according to Rijali this was specifically stressed in a letter from Governor General Coen that accompanied the casket back to Hitu, for the VOC’s official message of sympathy stressed that despite tragedy, Mihirjiguna’s wishes, including the visit to ‘tanah Kalinga’, had been fulfilled ‘a thousand times over’.60

Calcutta in the shadow of Benua Keling Our final accounts record the impressions of two men, believed to have been brothers, who visited Calcutta in 1810. Both were born in Penang of mixed Malay-Tamil Chulia descent, and in the Malay context, they were considered ‘peranakan Keling’, locally born Keling, or in their own designation, ‘Keling Malays’.61 The first and far longer text, entitled Hikayat Perintah Negeri 20

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Benggala (Story of the Government of the Country of Bengal), was written by Ahmad Rijaluddin bin Kandu. Born about 1770, he became a translator, interpreter and language teacher for the European mercantile community in Penang. In 1810 he went to India in the company of Robert Scott, a British trader who was providing advice to Governor General Lord Minto about the proposed British expedition to Dutch-controlled Java.62 The second, a shorter piece, was probably composed by Ahmad’s younger brother, Ibrahim bin Kandu.63 Employed as a scribe by Stamford Raffles, the more scholarly Ibrahim was just 30 years old when coincidentally he was in Calcutta at the same time as his brother. He had been taken there by John Leyden, a specialist in Indian language and culture, who had previously spent time in Penang studying Malay and was a close associate of Lord Minto.64 Again, we must consider the context in which these texts were produced. In 1622, when Imam Rijali visited Masulipatnam, the Dutch were fast asserting their position as the dominant European power in Asian waters. Two hundred years later the situation was very different. In the Malay world the British East India Company had established Penang in 1786 as a free port, which successfully drew trade away from Dutch Batavia. The bankrupt VOC was formally dissolved in 1799, while from 1795 the Netherlands itself had fallen under a Napoleonic government. The British had then assumed control of numerous VOC posts in the MalayIndonesian archipelago, including Melaka, to prevent their falling into French hands. In India the political and economic situation had changed dramatically. From its base in Bengal, the British East India Company was rapidly expanding its territorial control, and the growing cities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay testified to its ambitions and military ascendancy. Yet in the Malay world the old magic of ‘Benua Keling’ still resonated, and in 1792 the English country trader Thomas Forrest reported that sea captains he met in Makassar (Sulawesi, eastern Indonesia) ‘were always very inquisitive about Europe and Negeri Telinga [sic]’.65 The intersection between old and new is reflected in the ways in which Ahmad and his brother represent ‘Benua Keling’. The dominant polity in India is now clearly identified as ‘Benggala’ ruled by a distant ‘Raja Inglan’ who has appointed ‘Raja Lord Minto’ as his representative. The achievements of Lord Minto, however, rival any of the great conquerors who anchor so much of Malay story-telling. Not only are large negeri like Madras, Bombay, Surat, Gujarat, Ceylon and Goa under his authority; he is now lord of all the lands of Benua Keling – ‘Tipu, Mahu Bandar (Mahé) Nagor, Naga Patan, Harkat (Arcot), Tanjauru (Tanjore) and Maceli Bandar (Masulipatnam), the rulers of which all send yearly tribute.66 Yet although we hear no more of Bija-Nagara or of Raja Syulan, Bengal itself is still represented 21

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according to the same protocols that had long governed representations of the Keling country. Standing in the continuum of prestigious forebears described in traditional hikayat, Ahmad thus tells his audience that the fame of Bengal has spread ‘to the east and to the west, as far as Benua Rum (Istanbul), Egypt, China, Mecca and Medina’.67 Such examples affirm that these ‘Keling Malays’ identified with Malay society and that they were writing for Malay audiences. The unassailable authority of the Malay literary tradition accordingly ensured that Ahmad should refer to himself as ‘the one who tells this story (orang yang empunya cetera)’ and express his hope that his story would endure in the time to come.68 But a hikayat must not be simply edifying. It should also be entertaining. As in the past, a primary form of entertainment was the creation of a fantasy-like world that would transport Malay audiences to a realm very different from their everyday environment. For Ahmad and his brother, even at a basic level, this contrast was real enough, for Calcutta in the early nineteenth century was very different from Georgetown, the administrative centre of Penang. Until 1805 Bengal was under the authority of Calcutta, but in that year it had become capital of the Straits Settlements (which included Melaka, Singapore and Province Wellesley) and named India’s fourth East India Company presidency. Yet in 1810, when Ahmad and Ibrahim left for India, Penang’s main settlement of Georgetown comprised only around 13,885 residents, primarily Indians (5,604 Chulias and Bengalis), Chinese and peoples from the Malay archipelago, in addition to a small number of Europeans.69 By contrast, although an official census had never been conducted, the population of Calcutta and its environs was estimated at more than a million, and although the European community stood at the apex it was ‘peopled by inhabitants from every country in the world’.70 One result of this difference in scale was Calcutta’s extensive ‘red-light’ districts, which clearly fascinated Ahmad. While Penang certainly maintained its fair share of brothels to service a heavy male population, they would have paled in comparison with the variety and style of urban prostitution in Calcutta. Ahmad (who obviously had time to wander to the shipyards and docks, and must have struck up many conversations, since his narrative includes a number of Urdu words) even provides colourful descriptions of the manner in which newly arrived sailors, seduced by local ‘hospitality’ and plied with toddy, were duped by prostitutes working in tandem with tavern keepers. While Malay audiences no doubt laughed at these stories of gullibility, they would have been caught up by the amazement that infuses Ahmad’s account as he elaborates on dense crowds of people, the ‘hundreds and thousands’ of small markets, the spectacle of Hindu festivals, the variety 22

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of ships in the harbour and the vast array of goods for sale. In contrast to Imam Rijali, who records nothing of the Islamic environment he encountered, Ahmad devotes particular attention to the ‘thousands’ of splendid tabut (model representations of the tomb of Hussein, the prophet’s grandson, killed at Karbala) and the processions that transformed the month of Muharram, and especially Ashura, the 10th day, into a great Muslim carnival.71 The pageantry of Calcutta, it is clear, dwarfs the same religious events and other forms of street entertainment that were a common feature of Penang life among ‘Keling Malays’.72 A second contrast with the description by Imam Rijali is Ahmad’s unwillingness to portray Calcutta in anything other than a flattering light. From the time of his entrance into the Hugli River, which the Englishwoman Maria Graham described as ‘desolate’, Ahmad remains true to hikayat mandates, conveying virtually nothing of the ugly side of Calcutta, or of the destitution and poverty that is documented in European and visual representations.73 In keeping with time-honoured traditions regarding the Malay hero’s travel to distant places, every place Ahmad visits in the Calcutta region is described in terms of a formula that recalls the mnemonic devices used in oral recitation – great armies, splendid buildings, flourishing markets, beautiful gardens, lovely women bathing and seductive prostitutes.74 Standard metaphors abound, although in place of Keling sailors retreating before Malays, it is now the Dutch who as frightened of the English ‘as chickens are of a hawk’.75 But the power of the Malay imagination and weight of expectation thereby induced is best exemplified in the descriptions of Calcutta itself, the city occupied by the great raja, Governor General Lord Minto. While we would expect Malay visitors to be impressed by the physical structures they encountered in Calcutta, it is worth noting that Europeans too were struck by Calcutta’s ‘handsome’, ‘good-looking’, ‘fine’ buildings, and ‘beautiful appearance’.76 The foremost symbol of British dominance, however, was the ‘new’ Fort William, rebuilt after 1757. Like other Malays, Ahmad and Ibrahim would have certainly have seen European-style forts, possibly in Melaka (demolished by the British in 1807), but at least Fort Cornwallis in Penang. Originally constructed in 1786, the latter had undergone several modifications and it was being repaired and extended in 1810, the very year the two men left for Calcutta.77 Yet Calcutta’s Fort William was far larger and far more imposing than anything Ahmad or his brother would have hitherto seen. Covering nearly five square miles, it was a powerful symbol of the British Raj, and its reputation as ‘one of the finest forts in the world’ had even made its way into contemporary British novels set in India.78 The fact that the fort and the nearby esplanade had been walled off in 1807 would have served to enhance its mystery and fascination for ordinary Indians.79 23

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The dictates of the Malay hikayat tradition are clearly evident in the manner in which Ahmad and Ibrahim shaped their descriptions. Rather than a verbal portrait of ‘reality’, Fort William was presented in terms that matched or exceeded accounts of legendary forts constructed by great kings, like those depicted in the Hikayat Hang Tuah and the Sejarah Melayu. Because the country of Bengal is so large that a man walking for three months would still not reach the boundaries,80 it stands to reason that its fort must also be immense – ‘several kos (one kos = about two miles) long and several kos wide’. In accordance with the literary prescriptions to which Malay audiences were accustomed, it is built in tiers, several stories high, surrounded by a ditch several parasang81 deep, lined with black stone. Around the entire fort is a river, as deep as the ocean, in which several ferocious crocodiles are maintained. This immensely strong fort appears to be made of highly polished iron, with untold numbers of gates and breastworks and ramparts, with thousands of heavy iron and bronze cannon. ‘How beautiful is the Fort!’ exclaimed Ibrahim. ‘How exact all its proportions, its four sides and all its angles!’82 His brother was even more euphoric. There is nothing to match this fort of Calcutta. . . . In this present age no fort can compare with it; from west to east it has no equal. . . . Viewed from the sea, the fort looks like a savage tiger about to spring.83 Patrolled day and night by English officers and well-armed soldiers – Sheikhs, Sayids, Moguls, Pathans, Hindus, Rajputs and Brahmins – the fort houses an armoury that contains weapons of all descriptions – matchlocks, cannon, muskets, swivel guns, spears, swords, shields, arrows, war quoits ‘piled up like an island rising from the sea’. It is no wonder that it arouses admiration and envy, prompting Ahmad to introduce another metaphor beloved of Malay chroniclers: Calcutta Fort is like a fair young maiden: the rulers of many races are deeply smitten when they behold it, but although they would like to attack it, they realize that it is beyond their resources, because the guards and sentries are always on the alert and because of the skills with which the English organize their guards and patrols, never relaxing for a moment.84 The only place that can match the grandeur of the fort is the residence of ‘His Majesty Raja Lord Minto’. Here again, as Cyril Skinner reminds us, Ahmad’s hikayat remains true to the conventions by which a chronicler 24

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should extol the might and grandeur of the ruler.85 This also entails a shift in vocabulary, for when speaking of Lord Minto Ahmad employs the ‘royal’ language of Malay hikayat (‘angry’ is thus murka rather than marah). By the same token, several officials are given courtly titles familiar to Malays, so that the commissioner of police becomes a ‘temenggung’ and the naval commander a ‘laksamana’, while the names of outsize characters who people Malay stories, like the beautiful nymph Sekerba or the legendary Rama, are invoked in order to summon up comparative images.86 Appointed by ‘Raja Inglan’, His Majesty Raja Lord Minto holds sway over many lands, which are just too numerous to enumerate.87 His authority is concentrated in splendour of the palace, for it is here that English officers and Indian rulers come to pay their respects, presenting the governor general with all kinds of fruit, as well as animals like mouse deer they have captured while hunting – as Malays might do to their overlord.88 In the same vein, Malay audiences could envisage the magnificence of Lord Minto’s court, where he receives his lords and vassals seated on a golden throne under a canopy ‘supported by pillars of gold and gold-fringed curtains of scarlet’. To the left of his throne are many beautiful women, his ‘wives’, whose presence is an essential element in affirming a ruler’s virility and masculine prowess. According to Ibrahim, ‘The Raja looked around from time to time and often cast his eyes on the ladies, when I could perceive that his heart was gladdened for his countenance glowed with satisfaction.’89 In keeping with tradition, Ibrahim even includes a traditional syair (narrative poem) that extols female elegance and grace, employing the kind of imagery common in Malay literature. ‘Such proud Bengala’s king and court/Where chiefs and champions brave resort/With ladies happy, gay and free/As fishes in Bengala’s sea!’90 It matters not that these accounts of ‘Government House’ are far from matching the more ‘authentic’ and contemporary description provided by Maria Graham, because both writers were complying with the demands of Malay literature and catering to an audience that would expect a palace in the Keling country to far exceed any building in Singapore or Penang.91 Malay memory could draw on an almost infinite number of poems and stories that described the palaces of great rulers in other distant lands, providing all the criteria necessary to meet the expectations of a Malay readership. In this context, Ahmad tells us that the wall surrounding Lord Minto’s residence is made from panchalogam stones,92 and on top of this wall is wooden lattice work – the interstices of which are polygon-shaped – surmounted by what looks like Chinese caskets, painted in vermilion – a most handsome sight – which ‘shines like the sun breaking through the clouds . . . attached to the lattice-work are wrought-iron chains like so many coiled snakes’.93 The palace covers about 25

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three acres, and like the great palaces of Keling rulers in the past, it too is as high as a mountain, and is built in seven tiers. In Ahmad words: The lowest tier is made of jet black stone, several cubits thick, the next tier of white stone, several cubits thick, the next tier of large bricks, the fourth tier of small bricks, the fifth tier of blood red bricks, the sixth tier of ornamental bricks with a semi-circular design and the seventh tier of European stone as white as paper and as smooth as a polished mirror which sparkles whenever the sun catches it. Each side of the palace has projecting corners and all doors and windows have collared glass fixed in them, red, white, yellow, green and purple, and when the sun or moon shine on then they glitter in such a way as to dazzle the eye.94 Perhaps more importantly, the fact that Ahmad is received within this magnificent edifice is a tribute to the special standing he enjoys. How else, he implies, could he provide such a detailed ‘eyewitness’ description of the pavilions, the gardens, the flowering trees, or report that the viceroy leaves the palace in the afternoon, relaxing by catching fish from the pool, picking flowers and plucking fruit. How else could he tell his readers that ‘the palace is so high that if you try to look up at it your turban falls off!’ Only through his personal penetration of this special place, his description infers, could he have seen the splendour of the park, with its many fruit trees, the tanks of fish, the hunting dogs and deer and the guards who pace up and down like tigers, ‘their moustaches thick enough for birds to nest in’.95 His brother Ibrahim is even more explicit, assuring his readers that he will ‘faithfully describe’ what he saw in the governor general’s palace, even providing the date of his visit. In the year of the Hijra one thousand two hundred and twenty five [15 September 1810], at the hour of ten in the morning . . . I went to the palace of the Raja . . . and was admitted to the second ‘heaven’.96 Although any talk of marriages and kinship relations like those that feature in earlier texts would now be unthinkable, Ibrahim could ‘imagine’ such connections, for one of the ‘wives’ of the Raja, being pregnant, reminded him of his own wife, Fatima. In the final stanza of his syair he even remarks that if he were an angler, he would be ready to reel in one of the beautiful fish swimming in Bengal’s sea! But lingering shadows of other memories are more evident, for the hospitality that Kalinga society extended to Malays in the legendary past is amply demonstrated in 26

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Calcutta. John Leyden, says Ibrahim, thus explains that the Raja is kind to all people, but ‘particularly to Malays’. Distant recollections of the honours accorded Hang Tuah similarly underpin Ibrahim’s description of his own privileged status at the Government House reception. As the sole Malay (and in this sense representing the entire community) he mixed freely with the Tuans (lords, i.e. white men), all of them having large black fans (i.e. cocked hats) in their hands, and kindness in their looks, for whenever I raised my eyes to any of them they smiled. . . . all made room for me when I passed, so much was I distinguished among the people of the court.97 And like Hang Tuah, the task of this young man is to bring back ‘news’ of India, ‘so that Malays may no longer be ignorant of this great country, but be acquainted with all its wonders and all its beauties, so that their hearts may be glad’.98 Yet in his brother’s account we can also detect counter-images, which could be read as faint traces of much older rivalries between ‘Benua Keling’ and Melaka. At the very beginning of his hikayat, after introducing Negeri Benggala, Ahmad turns immediately to stress Penang’s importance and its pre-eminent position among the lands ‘below the winds’.99 Presumably aware that it had been raised to become the British East India Company’s fourth presidency and had thus gained the same administrative status as Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, he stressed that ‘of all the Malay negeri there is none greater than Penang Island, which is more important than all the other negeri’.100

Conclusion In the early twentieth century the Indian scholars who conceived of their ancestors as boldly taking to the seas and colonising distant lands were addressing a question that we continue to debate: what was the nature of early Indian influences in Southeast Asia? Although few would now agree with their vision of ‘adventurous’ Indian navigators building ‘towns and cities’ in newly discovered lands,101 we realise that these scholars were responding to a specific historical context and were drawing on preconceptions about cultural transmissions that were accepted at the time in which they wrote. In the years after the Second World War, in a muchchanged environment, it was possible to reconsider the available evidence and to reach very different conclusions. This ongoing scholarly debate has contributed to the evolution of a more sophisticated approach and a far more nuanced appreciation of the complex ways in which Southeast 27

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Asian societies responded to centuries of Indian influence. Explanations of culture transfer have increasingly stressed a convergence of similar needs and the importance of local agency in establishing priorities of acceptance, rejection or negotiation. Nonetheless, the extent to which we can extend this approach is always restrained by the available documentation. During the early modern period the increase in European sources opened up many new lines of inquiry, but their very preoccupation means that research has largely focused on matters such as trade routes, types of goods, market demands and the consequences of change in economic patterns. Despite the rich detail they provide, these sources provide few opportunities to explore the reciprocal relationships that brought Indian and Southeast Asians together and to investigate the daily human interaction that made this massive trade possible. We know that ports and markets were connected in complex networks of commercial exchange, but the ways in which attitudes towards other cultures were transmitted across these networks are far more difficult to gauge. This chapter has used five Malay accounts to demonstrate how memory, narrative and culture were entwined in the creation of local histories of interaction between India and the Malay world. Trade to Southeast Asia across the Bay of Bengal can be traced back at least 2,000 years, and the cultural implications of this extended period are evident not only in great buildings like the Borobodur in Java and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, but in a multiplicity of other aspects, notably religious beliefs, language, literature, performance and the visual arts. The Malay texts discussed here provide rare records of the ways in which cultural expectations were combined with memories to produce narratives that Malays saw as history. It would be easy to dismiss the account of ‘Benua Keling’ in the Sejarah Melayu and the Hikayat Hang Tuah as simple legend but to Malays they represented a historical record, a map, as it were, for understanding the past. The influence of this heritage is patently apparent when we turn to the three ‘eyewitness’ accounts. By the time Imam Rijali was writing in the seventeenth century the political situation along the eastern coast of India had changed considerably, but the desire to visit ‘negeri Keling’ was still a powerful inducement in undertaking what could be a dangerous voyage from Java across the Bay of Bengal. Two hundred years later, when Ahmad Rijaluddin and his brother Ibrahim composed their accounts of Calcutta we encounter yet another political transformation, as the shadow of British imperialism began to spread across the region. Nonetheless, the power of memory and the expectations of Malay audiences combined to dictate the manner in which India is presented. The purpose of these travel accounts was not to reproduce a verbal photograph, but to offer a narrative that 28

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would comply with cultural assumptions of an ‘imagined’ India that was characterised by great wealth, large populations, huge armies and powerful rulers. Ahmad Rijaluddin and his brother Ibrahim were fully aware of the new dominance of the British East India Company, but their descriptions of Calcutta were still located in the framework of a remembered ‘Benua Keling’. This volume of essays was stimulated by the invitation to look beyond the purely economic aspects of routes and markets, and to think about a wider framework in which trade, culture and polity interacted. While we uncover new material that helps us see human activity in the interstices of well-known trade routes, we can also think about the ‘cultural maps’ that economic exchanges helped create and promote. Maritime trade bridged the geographical distance that separated India and the Malay world, and the Bay of Bengal was therefore a major domain of cross-cultural interaction. Over the centuries the perceptions of India that became entrenched in the Malay imaginaire were not easily displaced. In the nineteenth century, despite the realities of global imperialism and the far-reaching changes thus introduced, ‘Benua Keling’ could still be envisaged as a place where Malay status was acknowledged and its representatives were welcomed. In the world of the hikayat, India remained an enchanted land where forts of black stone glistened in the sun, where seven-tiered palaces reached to the skies, where armies of horsemen rode like jinns, where beautiful women frolicked in crystal pools and where a great raja presided over all. As we seek to understand more about the cultural exchange that was inseparable from the expansion of interlocking trade routes, we can also think about the ways in which economic interaction contributed to the storehouse of memories that come to comprise ‘history’.

Notes 1 Mercedes Murillo-Barroso, Thomas Pryce, Bérénice Bellina and Marcos Martinón-Torres, “Khao Sam Kaeo – An Archaeometallurgical Crossroads for Trans-Asiatic Technological Traditions,” Journal of Archaeological Science, 37 (2012), pp. 1761–972. 2 R.C. Majumdar, Ancient Indian Colonies in the Far East (Lahore: The Punjab Sanskrit Book Depot, 1927); Kishor K. Basa, “Indian Writings on Early History and Archaeology of Southeast Asia,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Third Series, 8, no. 3 (November, 1998), pp. 395–410; Susan Bayly, “Imagining ‘Greater India’: French and Indian Visions of Colonialism in the Indic Mode,” Modern Asian Studies, 38, no. 3 (July, 2004), pp. 703–44. 3 F.D.K. Bosch, “A Hypothesis on the Origin of Indo-Javanese Art,” Rupam: Indian Society of Oriental Art, 17 (1924), pp. 6–41; N.J. Krom, “Een Protest,” Tijdschrift Bataviaasch Genootschap, 53 (1911), pp. 360–71, and Hindu-Javaansche

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4

5

6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14

geschiedenis, 2nd edition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), p. 129; H.G. Quaritch Wales, “The Exploration of Sri Deva, an Ancient Indian City in Indochina,” Indian Art and Letters, 10, no. 2 (1936), pp. 90–6. John R.W. Smail, “On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 2, no. 2 (July, 1961), pp. 72–102; Harry J. Benda, “The Structure of Southeast Asian History: Some Preliminary Observations,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 3, no. 1 (March, 1962), pp. 106–38; O.W. Wolters, History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982), pp. 101, 52–3. A second and revised edition was published jointly with Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program in 1999; Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani and Geoff Wade, eds., Early Interactions between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange (Singapore: ISEAS, 2011). Hermann Kulke, “Indian Colonies, Indianization or Cultural Convergence? Reflection on the Changing Image of India’s Role in Southeast Asia,” in H. Schulte Nordholt, ed., Onderzoek in Zuidoost-Azië (Semaian 3) (Leiden: Vakgroep Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië, University of Leiden, 1990), pp. 8–32. For recent studies, see Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), and Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). For example, Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal 1500– 1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Rila Muhkerjee, ed., Pelagic Pathways: The Northern Bay of Bengal before Colonisation (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2011); Om Prakash and Denys Lombard, eds., Commerce and Culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1800 (New Delhi: Manohar/Indian Council of Historical Research, 1999). Chou Ta-Kuan, Notes on the Customs of Cambodia. Translated from the French Version of Paul Pelliot by J. Gilman D’Arcy Paul (Bangkok: Social Science Association Press, 1967). Philip E. Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 46. Richard Phené Spiers, “Eastern Architecture,” in James Fergusson, ed., History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1910), p. 415. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India 1500–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 97–9. Bhawan Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, ca. 1604–1765 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 74, 83–8. Barbara Watson Andaya, “ ‘A People That Range into All the Countries of Asia’: The Chulia Trading Network in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Om Prakash, ed., The Trading World of the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800 (New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2012), pp. 305–36. S.P. L’Honoré Naber, Reise nach Java, Vorder-Indien, Persien und Ceylon, 1641– 1650: Neu herausgegeben nach der zu Greslau im verlag von Urb. Spaltholtz im jahre 1668 erschienenen original-ausgabe (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1930.

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15 16

17 18

19

20 21 22 23

24 25

26

27

Reprint of original, 1669), pp. 120–1. Shifting of the heavy weight of an elephant would obviously have severe effects on a ship’s ability to stay afloat. Amatav Ghosh, “Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail,” Economic and Political Weekly, 43, no. 25 (21–27 June, 2008), pp. 15–31. John Miksic, Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1999), pp. 56–7; Charles Higham, The Origin of the Civilization of Angkor (London: A & C Black, 2013), pp. 83–4. Lions were also used in panels on the Borobodur to denote wilderness, and one village in central Java in the tenth century was called ‘Lion City’. Laurence Palmer Briggs, The Ancient Khmer Empire (Philadelphia, PA: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1951), p. 17. Li Rongxi, trans., The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Region (Berkeley, CA: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1996), pp. 306–7; B.N. Mukherjee, “Coastal and Overseas Trade in Pre-Gupta Vanga and Kalinga,” in Ranabir Chakravarti, ed., Trade in Early India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 215; Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the Historical Geography of the Malay Peninsula before A.D. 1500 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1961), pp. 144–7. Jan Wisseman Christie, “Asian Sea Trade between the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries and Its Impact on the States of Java and Bali,” in Himanshu Prabha Ray, ed., Archaeology of Seafaring: The Indian Ocean in the Ancient Period (New Delhi: Pragati, 1999), pp. 246–7. Thomas Stamford Raffles, The History of Java, Vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1978; reprint of 1817 edition), p. 87. J.J. Ras, Hikajat Bandjar: A Study in Malay Historiography (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), pp. 229–37. Walter de Gray Birch, ed., The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Vol. 3 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1880), p. 146. Armando Cortesão, ed., The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues, Vol. 2 (New Delhi/Madras: Asian Educational Services, 1990; reprint of 1944 edition), pp. 253, 269, 286–7; de Gray Birch, Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, p. 82. More precisely, the text is called Sulalat al-Salatin, ‘Genealogy of Kings’. Radhika Seshan, Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast: Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2012), p. 6; E. Edwards McKinnon, “Continuity and Change in South Indian Involvement in Northern Sumatra: The Inference of Archaeological Evidence from Kota Cina and Lamreh,” in Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani and Geoff Wade, eds., Early Interactions between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange (Singapore: ISEAS, 2011), p. 146. C.C. Brown, trans., “Sejarah Melayu or ‘Malay Annals’, a Translation of Raffles MS 18,” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 25, nos. 2 and 3 (1953), pp. 18–20; Cheah Boon Kheng, ed., Sejarah Melayu: The Malay Annals. Ms Raffles 18 (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1998), pp. 74–5. See further Hermann Kulke, K. Kesavapany and Vijay Sakhuja, eds., Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to South and Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009).

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28 Brown, “Sejarah Melayu or ‘Malay Annals,’ ” p. 20. 29 Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India (New Delhi: National Book Trust: 1970; reprint of 1900 edition), pp.  81–95. See further Burton Stein, The New Cambridge History of India: Vijayanagara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 39, 149. 30 Barbara Watson Andaya, Perak, the Abode of Grace: A Study of an Eighteenth Century Malay State (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 95; Teuku Iskandar, ed., Bustanu’s-Salatin (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1966), pp. 30, 58–60; Brown, “Sejarah Melayu or ‘Malay Annals,’ ” p. 87; W. Shellabear, “Hikayat Sri Rama,” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 71 (1915), p. 234; S.W.R. Muljadi, Hikayat Indraputra: A Malay Romance (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1983), p. 148. 31 M. Th. Houtsma, ed., Brill’s First Encyclopaedia of Islam: 1913–1936 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), p. 3. 32 Brown, “Sejarah Melayu or ‘Malay Annals,’ ” pp. 19–20. Similar accounts of the ruler of Rum (‘Rome’, i.e. Istanbul) and China can be found in Kassim Ahmad, ed., Hang Tuah (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1971), and Antonio Pigafetta, The First Voyage around the World 1519–1522: An Account of Magellan’s Expedition, ed. Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 122–3. 33 See, for example Sewell, A Forgotten Empire, pp. 244–56. 34 Brown, “Sejarah Melayu or ‘Malay Annals,’ ” pp. 34, 141; A.H. Hill, “Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 33, no. 2 (1960), p. 142. 35 For further examples, see J.J. Ras, Hikajat Bandjar (The Hague: H.L. Smits, 1968), 229ff., 253. Ras also discusses similarities with Javanese material, see pp. 20, 57, 182. 36 Ahmad, Hikayat Hang Tuah, p. 3339ff. For an English translation, see The Epic of Hang Tuah, trans. Muhammad Haji Salleh, ed. Rosemary Robson (Kuala Lumpur: Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia, 2010), p. 374ff. Though the oldest extant version of this hikayat probably dates from the early seventeenth century, it incorporates oral traditions that would have been passed down from Melaka days. 37 A. Teeuw, Th.P. Galestin, S.O. Robson, P.J. Worsley and P.J. Zoetmulder, Śiwarātrikalpa of Mpu Tanakun? An Old Javanese Poem, Its Indian Source and Illustrations (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), p. 23. A short summary of this mission is in S. Singuravelu, “The Ambassadorial Mission of Lakshman Hang Tuah from the Kingdom of Malacca to the Kingdom of Vijayanagara,” Tamil Studies, 2, no. 1 (1982), pp. 24–33. 38 Philip Wagoner, “ ‘Sultan among Hindu Kings’: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara,” Journal of Asian Studies, 55, no. 4 (November, 1996), pp. 851–80. 39 Al Khidr literally means ‘The Green One’, whose story is found in the Qur’an (al-Kahf 18:60–82). Revered throughout the Muslim world, he is a mysterious sage, prophet and holy man associated with the sea, and in Malay literature he accompanies Alexander the Two-horned on his travels. 40 Salleh, The Epic of Hang Tuah, pp. 382, 386; Ahmad, Hikayat Hang Tuah, p. 347. 41 Sewell, Forgotten Empire, pp. 120–36. This may be an anachronistic insertion, since Melaka fell to the Portuguese in 1511.

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42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Salleh, The Epic of Hang Tuah, pp. 372–86; Ahmad, Hang Tuah, pp. 340–8. Salleh, The Epic of Hang Tuah, pp. 384–6; Ahmad, Hang Tuah, pp. 346–8. Salleh, The Epic of Hang Tuah, pp. 389; Ahmad, Hang Tuah, pp. 352–9. Salleh, The Epic of Hang Tuah, pp. 389; Ahmad, Hang Tuah, pp. 359. Salleh, The Epic of Hang Tuah, pp. 394–404; Ahmad, Hang Tuah, pp. 374–93. Hans Straver, Chris van Fraassen and Jan van der Putten, eds., Ridjali: Historie van Hitu. Een Ambonse geschiedenis uit de zeventiende eeuw (Utrecht: Landelijk Steunpunt Educatie Molukkers, 2004), pp. 156–8. Perhaps Tirumala(rajan)patnam, Tirumulavasal and Konimere (Kanyimedu). Straver, Fraassen and Putten, Ridjali: Historie van Hitu, p. 158. See Eliza Fay, Original Letters from India (1779–1814), ed. E.M. Forster. New Introduction by M.M. Kaye (London: Hogarth Press, 1986), p. 165. The church mentioned by Rijali was dedicated to the Virgin as Our Lady of Expectation, and was built around 1547. It contains a wooden icon of the Virgin said to have been painted by St. Luke and given to St. Thomas at Jerusalem, as well as an eighth-century ‘bleeding’ cross allegedly carved by St. Thomas himself. S. Jeyaseela Stephen, Caste, Catholic Christianity, and the Language of Conversion: Social Change and Cultural Translation in Tamil Country, 1519–1774 (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 2008), p.  299; I. Sharan, ed., The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple (New Delhi: Voice of India, 1992), p. 68, fn. 32. In 1726 a Jesuit friar described the church as a major pilgrimage site, ‘the most famous and most highly regarded monument in India’. See Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri, S.J., ed. and trans. Michael Swift and Leonard Zilling (Somerset, MA: Wisdom Books, 2010), p. 528. Straver, Fraassen and Putten, Ridjali: Historie van Hitu, p. 158. W.H. Moreland, ed., Relations of Golconda in the Early Seventeenth Century (London: Hakluyt Society, 1931), p. 3. Arabic qarnful = ‘cloves’. Moreland, Relations of Golconda, pp. 6, 55. For a sustained description of Masulipatnam in the seventeenth century, see Sinnapah Arasaratnam and Aniruddha Ray, Masulipatnam and Cambay: A History of Two Port Towns, 1500–1800 (New Delhi: Munishiram Manoharlal, 1994), especially pp. 26–30. Moreland, Relations of Golconda, pp. 9–10, 46. Ibid., pp. 33n, 38–9, 60, 63; Ram Chandra Prasad, Early English Travellers in India: A Study in the Travel Literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean Periods with Particular Reference to India (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965), p. 48. Straver, Fraassen and Putten, Ridjali: Historie van Hitu, pp. 158–9. Malays used the river or the sea for defaecation. Straver, Fraassen and Putten, Ridjali: Historie van Hitu, pp. 158–9. Ibid., p. 59; Peter Boomgaard, “Crisis Mortality in Seventeenth-Century Indonesia,” in Ts’ui-jung Liu, James Lee, David Sven Reher, Osamu Saito and Wang Feng, eds., Asian Population History (London: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 209. Straver, Fraassen and Putten, Ridjali: Historie van Hitu, pp. 158–9. For some discussion of the Chulias in Malaya, see Andaya, “A People That Range into All the Countries of Asia,” pp. 305–36. C. Skinner (ed. and trans.), Ahmad Rijaluddin’s Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), p. 60.

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62 Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 154, n. 4. 63 Ibid., pp. 8–11. The only manuscript extant is John Leyden’s English translation, included as an appendix in Maria Graham, Journal of a Residence in India (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Company, 1812). 64 Leyden accompanied Minto on his expedition to Java, but died there in 1811. 65 Thomas Forrest, A Voyage from Calcutta to the Mergui Archipelago (London: J. Robson, 1792), p. 82. 66 Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, pp. 28–9. 67 Ibid. 68 For similar ideas that hikayat should help in the retention of memories, see B. Andaya, Perak, p. 155. 69 Nordin Hussin, Trade and Society in the Straits of Melaka: Dutch Melaka and English Penang, 1780–1830 (Copenhagen; Singapore: NIAS Press and NUS Press, 2007), pp. 187–92. 70 Walter Hamilton, The East Indian Gazetteer (London: Parbury, Allen, 1828), p. 320; Graham, Journal of a Residence in India, p. 137. 71 Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 73. 72 For a fuller overview of processions associated with Ashura, especially in Penang, see Mervyn Llewelyn Wynne, Triad and Tabut: A Survey of the Diffusion of Chinese and Mohamedan Secret Societies in the Malay Peninsula A.D. 1800–1935 (Singapore: Government Printing office, 1941), Chs. 11 and 12. 73 William Macintosh, Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa: Describing Characters, Customs, Manners, Laws and Productions of Nature and Art, Vol. 2 (London: J. Murray, 1782), pp. 174–9 describes Calcutta’s ‘scattered and confused chaos of houses, huts, sheds, streets, lanes, alleys, windings, gutters, sinks and tanks . . . a distinguished mass of filth and corruption’. See also James Baillie Fraser’s ‘A View of the Bazaar Leading to Chitpore Road’ of 1819, which shows the wares for sale in the Calcutta bazaar, but also depicts decaying buildings and carries suggestions of poverty and beggars. See Ashely Dawson, “The Visual Economy of Urban Empire,” http://ashleydawson.info/2011/04/10/the-visual-economyof-urban-empire/. Accessed 14 March 2014. 74 Simon Digby, “Review of Ahmad Rijaluddin’s Hikayat Perintah Negeri Benggala,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland (New Series), 115, no. 2 (April, 1983), p. 326. 75 Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 151. 76 Fay, Letters from India, p. 17; Graham, Journal of a Residence in India, p. 137. 77 Salma Nasution Khoo, Streets of George Town, Penang (Penang: Areca Books, 2007), pp. 108–9. 78 See Phoebe Gibbes, Hartly House, Calcutta, ed. Michael Franklin (London: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 42. Gibbes, who died in 1805, set this historical novel in the time of William Hastings and presented Calcutta through the eyes of a single protagonist, Sophia Golborne. See also Fay, Letters from India, p. 172, where the Fort in 1780 was also described in glowing terms. 79 Bhaskar Chakrabarty, Basudeb Chattopadhyay and Suranjan Das, Fort William: A Historical Perspective (Calcutta: Sankar Modal, 1995), pp. 42–4. 80 Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 188. 81 One parasang equals about three miles. 82 Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 188.

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83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101

Ibid., pp. 38–9. Ibid., pp. 40–1. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., pp. 70, 92, 142, 144. See further C. Skinner, “Transitional Malay Literature: Part 1 Ahmad Rijaluddin and Munshi Abdullah,” Bijdragen tot de Taal, land- en Volkenkunde, 134, no. 4 (1978), pp. 466–87. Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, pp. 3, 27. Ibid., pp. 42–5, 189. Ibid., p. 190. Ibid., p. 191. Maria Graham, Journal of a Residence in India (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1813), 137; Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 160, n. 51. Panchalogam is an alloy of five metals, often said to be gold, silver, bronze, copper and iron. Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 41. Ibid., pp. 160, n. 51, 140–3, 188–9; see also Graham, Journal of a Residence in India, p. 137. Ibrahim also speaks of the floors of the great hall as being of black stone, ‘polished and shining like a mirror . . . and all around, how many transparent lusters and branches for lights were suspended, dazzling and glistening so that I could not look long upon them!’ Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, pp. 42–3. Ibid., p. 189. The translator of Ibrahim’s account (probably John Leyden) notes that ‘storey’ used in the translation was literally ‘heaven’. For a Muslim this would have invoked the seven levels of Paradise. Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 189. Ibid., p. 188. A term frequently used by Malays to refer to the Malay-Indonesian archipelago. Skinner, Hikayat Perintah, p. 29. Radha Kumud Mookerji, Indian Shipping: A History of Seaborne Trade and Maritime Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times (Bombay; London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1912), p. 102.

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2 ROUTES INTO THE PRESENT 1 Rila Mukherjee

This chapter documents routes into eastern South Asia from China between the third century BCE and the seventeenth century. The region visualised is eastern and northeast India, Bangladesh, southern Tibet, Nepal, northcentral Burma (present-day Myanmar) and southwest China (Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou).2 Sun designates this last region as Mainland Southeast Asia, connecting northeast India and northern Southeast Asia.3 Five nation-states occupy this area presently: India, China, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh. Polities such as Yunnan (referenced as Nan Zhao, Dali), Tibet and the Shan realm are now parts of China and Myanmar, respectively. Additionally, routes from Cambodia and Laos enter our story, so actually seven countries inhabit this space. This region formed a composite bloc in terms of the circulation of metals, medicinal drugs, scripts, texts, relics and icons, evincing similar patterns in cultural transfers, trade and coinage. This connective history has been discussed elsewhere, and I shall not engage with it.4 Since textual sources are scarce and often obscure, our vision of the routes remains unclear, with their rise, extent and spatiality being unknown.5 Multiple and often differing place names add to our difficulties. Government initiatives are now under way in India to revive old connections, such as the reopening of the Stilwell or Ledo Road connecting India and Myanmar, so the routes investigated in this chapter actually link to the present in a very tangible way.

Contextualising routes over time The long time span adopted in this chapter results from the fact that estimating the circulation of peoples, objects and ideas along these routes is tricky; assessing variations over time is equally problematical, yet these are essential in comprehending interactions beyond present national frames. 36

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An investigation into routes over the longue duree (long duration) enables us to tease out spatial and temporal variations in interactions, highlighting those moments when the nature of interactions changed significantly. It has been argued that three motivations from the Chinese end may be discerned in the early phase of interactions: the first being to secure borders against Central Asia with Indian help; the second being to tap the maritime route when Central Asian land routes became hazardous; and the third being the acquisition of texts and scholars from India for providing authenticity to Chinese Buddhism. The first routes to appear were marked by strategic co-operation, the second set of routes facilitated Buddhist networking and the third, particularly visible during the Ming period, enhanced commercial contacts.6 Accordingly, we have much information on coastal contacts for this period. From the Indian end, motivations remain ambiguous, seemingly both defensive and facilitatory at the same time. Many were defensive frontier posts, initially set up by the late Guptas on eastern routes to ward off aggression from neighbouring Yunnan, Tibet and Nepal.7 I-tsing, however, noted that the Guptas maintained an eastern route called Cinapatha, and a ‘Temple of the Cinas’ was erected for pilgrim-scholars visiting from China.8 Battles, pilgrimage and commercial and diplomatic voyages occurred through these routes; scholarly and religious exchanges took place along them, and art styles and artefacts, technology and various types of cultural goods were transmitted through them. The intersections highlighted here formed significant nodes in the various networks observable along the routes. These encounters shape our past and are significant for our understanding of Indian history.

A tale of two maps I start my reconstruction of routes with a review of the so-called Fatimid Map which is at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The map possibly dates from the late eleventh century and shows a route passing from China through Kanauj in northern India.9 This was the westward arm of the Southern Route from China into India. The map has a southward orientation in accordance with prevalent cartographic practices. If we orient the map to the east we can see the actual placement of the Indus, the Bengal delta and China. The map of 1667 titled Tabula Geodorica Itinerum a varijs in Cataium, or Roads to Cathay from Athanasius Kircher’s encyclopaedia China Illustrata, shows this whole route. A road can be seen in light brown and grey-green lines running from southwestern China through the Shan states and north Myanmar into eastern 37

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India and then continuing down to the Coromandel Coast, as well as three variants of the Silk Route in light brown. Other than humans, elephants from Myanmar, Siam, Champa, Laos and Annam, at least one lion and a single-backed camel from Khotan, a lion each from the Tanguts and Champa (the latter via Srivijaya), rhinos from Laos and Champa, tigers from Champa, horses from Yunnan and Inner Asian polities travelled this route, while a camel from Samudera and a giraffe from Malindi arrived by sea and at least three giraffes came into Ming China via Bengal.10 Many capillary land routes led to India, as evidenced in political interactions from 1406 to 1439 between China, the Bengal and Jaunpur sultanates, and the northeastern polities: the Tripuri, Dimasa and Ahom kingdoms.11 But as late as 1441 Chinese troops seem to have been unfamiliar with the tortuous routes leading from Yunnan into northern Thailand and Myanmar, it being noted in 1537 that ‘northern persons’ were ‘not suited for a southern expedition’, native guides and local tactics being essential to warfare in the hostile climate and terrain.12 It must have been a very humid route.

Story of the initial routes The Digital Silk Roads project at the Toyo Bunko in Japan divides the Silk Route into three arms: the early steppe routes (through present-day Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan and onto the Black Sea), the later Central Asian oasis routes (through Tibet, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, a portion of north India to which Uttarapatha connected, Pakistan and Afghanistan into the Mediterranean Sea) and the well-known sea routes from the Adriatic, Black and Mediterranean seas to the Indian Ocean that emerged even later.13 The Silk Route therefore was not one, but a combination of several capillary routes, the most important being the Central Asian oasis route, pivotal in connecting India and China in the fourth-fifth centuries CE.14 It seems to have been well known from around the third century BCE, as evidenced in Alexandrine history and Graeco-Roman texts and toponyms.15 We can appreciate the enormous reach of this web in transporting objects, ideas, diseases and humans across Eurasia and its function as global transmitter of art forms, architectural conventions and religious beliefs. Frescoes recently ‘discovered’ along the oasis route at the ‘sky caves’ in the Mustang valley – now in north-central Nepal but originally a part of Tibet until c. 1790 – share many features with the grottos of Dunhuang and at Longmen near Luoyang, as well as with Ajanta in western India.16 38

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Not one Silk Route but three Our knowledge of the initial routes comes from Chinese historical notices.17 The Wei Lue, composed between 239 and 265 CE, highlights three routes: It was at the beginning of the Han that the routes were opened leading to the kingdoms of Xiyu (‘The Western Regions’ – the countries of the Tarim Basin and adjoining areas). At this time the kingdoms numbered thirty-six. Later they split into more than fifty. From the Jianwu period [CE 25–55] to our time, they have torn each other to pieces, and destroyed one another, and now they number twenty. There were previously two roads, but now there are three, which go to the Western Regions from Dunhuang and the Yumen guan (‘Jade Gate Frontier Post’): 1

2

3

Heading west from the Yumen (‘Jade Gate’) Frontier Post, and passing through (the territory of) the Chuo Qiang (‘Disobedient Qiang’), one turns west to pass over the Congling (the Pamirs), and through the Xuandu (the ‘Hanging Passages’ in northern Hunza), to enter (the territory of) the Da Yuezhi (Kushans). This is the Southern Route. Heading west from the Yumen (‘Jade Gate’) Frontier Post, leaving the Dadu jing (The Protector General’s Well), turning around the northern end of the Sanlongsha (‘Three Sand Ridges’) one passes by the Julu cang (‘Depot Dwellings’). Then, on leaving the Shaxi jing (‘West-of-the-Sand Well’), and turning northwest, passing by the Longdui (‘Dragon Dunes’) one arrives at ancient Loulan and, turning west, goes to Qiuci (Kucha), and on to the Congling (Pamir) mountains. This is the Central Route. Heading northwest from Yumen (‘Jade Gate’) Frontier Post, passing through Hengkeng (‘East-West Gully’ = the Bēsh-toghrak Valley), one avoids the Sanlongsha (‘Three Sand Ridges’) as well as the Longdui (‘Dragon Dunes’), and emerges to the north of Wuchuan (‘Five Boats’ and arrives in the territory of Jushi at Gaochang (47 km SE of Turfan), which is the residence of the Mao (Wu) and Ji Colonel (in charge of the agricultural garrisons). Then it turns to the west and rejoins the Central Route to Qiuci (Kucha). This is the New Route.18

Of these three, it is the first or the Southern Route that led to northwestern India. Surprisingly the route from China into eastern South Asia is ignored in the Wei Lue. 39

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The fourth or Southern Route In addition to these three routes there was yet another Southern Route with various branches, heading west to: 1

2

3

the kingdom of Qiemo (Cherchen), the kingdom of Xiaoyuan (‘Little Yuan’ – 3 marches south of Qiezhi), the kingdom of Jingjue (Niya), the kingdom of Loulan (north of Lop Nor), which are all dependencies of Shanshan (Lop Nor and surrounds). the kingdom of Ronglu (4 marches south of Jingjue or Niya), the kingdom of Hanmi (Keriya), the kingdom of Qule (south of Keriya), and the kingdom of Pikang (modern Pishan or Guma), which are all dependencies of Yutian (Khotan). the kingdom of Jibin (Gandhāra-Kapisha), the kingdom of Daxia (Bactria), the kingdom of Gaofu (Kabul) and the kingdom of Tianzhu (Northern India), which are all dependencies of the Da Yuezhi (Kushans).19

Note that, as before, only northwestern India is mentioned on the last route, implying that at the time the direct route into eastern India was unknown. But this is incorrect, as the route between eastern India and China was known as early as the third century BCE.20 An examination of classical Indian texts reveals that around the fourth century BCE Indians may have known of this route, but they did not use it much, and it became popular only from the second century BCE.21 The Southern Silk Route into eastern India via Yunnan and Myanmar became certainly known by the third century CE, with various branches appearing by the seventh century.22 Initially a fluvial route, the land route was discovered later.23 However, despite being known as early as the third century BCE the Indus route through Peshawar in northwestern India into eastern India continued to be used, at least until the seventh century, testifying to the importance of Gandhara and affirming the inordinate attention paid to the Yuehzhi or Kushans in Chinese sources.24 One reason for its popularity was the enduring link between Chinese Turkestan and the early Kushans despite the latter resisting Chinese control being re-imposed over the Tarim basin in 127 CE. The Wei Lue’s omission of an eastern route into South Asia cannot be explained through ignorance. Was the route perhaps blocked owing to reasons unknown to us? The Chinese frequented Bengal through both land and sea from the late Gupta period. Bhamo in the Shan states between Yunnan and Upper Myanmar was central here, linking Yunnan with Pataliputra through Kamarupa, Pundravardhana (Mahasthan), Kajangala (Rajmahal) and Champa 40

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(Bhagalpur).25 Interactions increased, I-tsing referring in the seventh century, the Gupta promotion of the eastern Cinapatha with a Temple of the Cinas for pilgrim-scholars visiting from China.26 Ray writes: By the seventh century AD we have detailed records of the roads and mileages from Dali to Burma and India. The Xin Tangshu (The New History of the Tang Dynasty), Dili Zhi chapter (Geography) gives the distance from present-day Dali to the ancient city of Tagaung in Burma as 700 km from where the city of Pyus (Pugan, ancient Burmese kingdom) was 500 km. Thence Kamarupa at the lower and middle course of the Brahmaputra river was 800 km to the west, from where Pundravardhana (in north Bengal) was 200 km and Magadha on the south bank of the Ganga 300 km. Another route from Zhuge Liang passed through Myitkyina and Mogaung to Manipur (called Daqin Bolomen, Dakshin [South] Brahmadesa) covering a distance of about 850 km and finally south-west-ward to Pundravardhana, a distance of 750 km. Xuanzang describes the route from Magadha to Kamarupa which covers a distance of 1,200 km.27 We do find a Chinese notice on northeastern India – present eastern Uttar Pradesh – prior to the Gupta period: The main centre of the kingdom of Dongli (‘Eastern Division’, pracyadesa-author) is the town of Shaqi [Śāketa, thought to be Sanci, but now identified as Ayodhya of the Kosala kingdom]. It is more than 3,000 li (1,247 km) southeast of Tianzhu (Northwestern India). It is a big kingdom. Its products are similar to those of Tianzhu (Northwestern India). There are several dozen major towns [Varanasi, Sravasti] whose rulers take the title of king. The Da Yuezhi attacked and subdued it. The men and women are all eight chi tall (about 1.85 metres or 6 feet), but are cowardly. They ride elephants and camels when travelling to neighbouring kingdoms. When invaded, they ride elephants to wage war.28 The account is questionable since eastern Uttar Pradesh has no camels and women of six feet seem improbable. But the ‘Da Yuezhi’ attack referenced is real, being the combined assault on Saketa or Ayodhya in c. 127 CE by Kanishka along with the king of Kucha and King Vijaya Kīrti of Khotan. Pathways in Bengal were well developed in the Gupta period, land grants of ancient and early medieval Bengal mentioning road and waterways 41

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developing out of link roads as a network of communication in both Upper and Lower Bengal. These connected with Pataliputra in the west, with Myanmar in the east and with the south as well, witnessed from Chola and Eastern Chalukya invasions of Gaur and Kamarupa.29 The padinen-vishayam of the Chola merchant guilds, in an inscription at Nagapattinam dating c. 1090, refers to the ‘eighteen countries’, one of which was Vangam, or Bengal.30 The eastern routes were still in use in the seventeenth century. If one studies iconography and inscriptions from Dali Yunnan, these provide an idea of the circulation of images, scripts and peoples from eastern India into the Dali kingdom.

The Southern Silk Route and its capillaries The Silk Route was neither a frozen entity, nor did it remain unchanged over time. As new state forms emerged, as the demands of trade and religion grew and as the circulation of scholars and pilgrims increased, evernew variants of the route, sometimes also called the wool roads, appeared. The Southern Silk Route and its variant: the Southwest Silk Route into India The outcome of Tang loss of control over the western routes to India was an explosion of geographical knowledge in the seventh century. Disturbances along the Central Asian routes through Arab inroads snapped China’s traditional links with Daqin or the Roman Orient. The Arabs attacked Antioch in 638 CE and Constantinople between 668 and 675 CE, while Persia and Fu-lin – the latter the seat of the Nestorian See and at that time part of the Seljuk Empire – were defeated in 661 CE.31 Moreover, Tibetans, western Turks and the Tangs fought for control of the Tarim basin, with the Tibetans attacking Tang China in c. 662 and 670 CE. Eastern routes to India became vital. Several Tang references to seventhcentury land routes from China to India via northern Myanmar appeared in 691, 807/810, 863 and 1060 CE.32 While the Tsang-ko route through Szechuan, Yung-ch’ang and Tibet was the shortest to India known by the third century CE, now the Nepal route was used in the Tang-Sassanid silk trade, and the silk was probably imported from China via the sea route: through Samatata bordering the Bay of Bengal, upland to Pataliputra in the kingdom of Harshavardhana, Nepal, Tibet and further on to Bukhara and thence to the Sassanian Empire of Iran.33 According to Hirth and Rockhill the century was a period of expanding land and sea routes into India, and by the second half the sea route from Canton to Tamralipti in the Bengal 42

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delta via Ho-ling (Java), Palembang (Sumatra), Nicobars and Sri Lanka was almost exclusively used.34 Yet another route, again by sea and perhaps a continuation of the former, radiated from Sriksetra in Myanmar to Tamralipti in the eighth century.35 This was the span of the new land route or the Southwest Silk Road: The Shu-Yandu dao (The Road between Sichuan and India) was a major section of the SSR. It started from Chengdu, capital of Sichuan. . . . (and) Guanghan, a city about an hour’s drive from Chengdu. . . . From Chengdu through Kunming to Dali, the latter two being major commercial and cultural centers of Yunnan, there are two roads. The northern one passed through the following cities: Chengdu, Lingqiong (Qionglai), Lingguan (Lushan), Zuodu (Hanyuan), Qiongdu (Xi-chang), Qingling (today Dayao, entering Yunnan), Dabonong (today Xiangyun), and Yeyu (Dali). Because the Lingguan Pass must be used, so the northern route is called the Road of Lingguan (Lingguan dao). The southern one went through the following cities: Chengdu, Yibin, Zhuti (Zhaotong), Wei County (Qujing), Dian (Kunming), Anning, Chuxiong, and Yeyu (Dali). The two roads joined in Dali, where the so-called Road of Bonan (Bonan dao) commenced, because it had to cross Bonan Mountain. The Road of Bonan passes Yongchang and Tengyue to Burma and India.36 As regards branches, two land routes initially ran into eastern India from Myanmar. By the eighth century these were overland from Mogaung to Kamarupa and Magadha, connecting northern Myanmar and the Shan states to India, and from Yungchang-fu (Yunnan) through the Pyu capital either at Sriksetra or at Halingyi – it is not clear – and thence onto Kamarupa by the Chindwin, linking the middle Aerawady valley to eastern India.37 Kamarupa and China interacted closely: ‘in the Mahabharata, in the description of the army of Bhagadatta, the king of Pragjyotisa, an earlier name for Kamarupa, we find tasya cinaih kiriitais ca kancanair iva samvrtam babu balam’ (taking away by the prowess of his arms the golden crown of the Chinese [kiriitai  is crown]).38 Elephant/Tea/Horse Route There is a reference to Chengxiang Guo or Elephant Riding Country, a Tai polity located in Assam or at an unspecified point along the Sino-Indian route in 90 BCE, which may have been an offshoot of the early silk routes.39 43

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Another variant of the Southwest Silk Road was the Tea/Horse Route: ‘from Yunnan, sometimes via Sichuan, to Tibet and India. Because the main articles traded along this road were tea and horses, it is named DianZang Cha-Ma Gudao (Ancient Road of Tea and Horses between Yunnan and Tibet)’.40 This sub-Himalayan route extended into medieval Bengal. Studying bullion imports from Yunnan and Upper Myanmar into Bengal during 1200–1500, Deyell noted an intertwined network of three overland routes in this space in addition to the water route. All three ran from Yungchang, through Upper Myanmar, westward to Bengal. The first went from Yung Chang to Momien, crossed the Irrawaddy to Mogaung and went north through the Hukong valley, across passes in the Patkai Range, to the upper Brahmaputra valley. This was the eastern frontier of Kamarupa, certainly known by the eighth century. The second route dated from the same period and followed the Shweli River, crossing the Aerawady at Tagaung, then followed the Chindwin River north and crossed via the Imole Pass to Manipur. This was the eastern approach to Bengal via Tripura. The third route embarked on the Aerawady at Tagaung, Ava or Bagan, and then passed from Sri Ksetra over the Arakan Range to Arakan. A variation of this went directly from Bagan to Arakan via the Aeng Pass. This either gave access to a land route northward to Chattagrama or enabled embarkation on coastal trading boats to Bengal.41 The centrality of Kamarupa/Assam Ahmad gives us some more information on Kamarupa as a significant node: There were three routes from Assam to Bengal one by water and the other two by land. The river Brahmaputra was an excellent water way for the movement of vessels. Of the two land routes, one was from Tezpur (Darang district of Assam) to Lakhnauti (the capital of Bengal Sultans) through the districts of Kamrup and Goalpara, in the north of Brahmaputra; the route from Sibsagar and that of Nowgong-Gauhati, in the south of Brahmaputra, crossing over it, joined this path, respectively, at Tezpur and Barpeta in Kamrup. The other route went from Sibsagar, across the Jayantia hills to Sonargaon (Dacca) via Sylhet and Mymensingh. Travel on the latter, as it had a connection with the river ports of Bengal, was favoured by those traders who were interested in sea-trade. Lakhnauti had the line of connection with Tibet via Kamrup. There were thirty five passes between Kamrup and Tibet and the passage reached Tibet through Mahamhai darah. There 44

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was a route from Kashmir to China (Yunnan) via Koh-i-karachal (Kumaon mountains), Patkai Hills and the upper districts of Burma; and a passage from Lakhnauti joined it. It is also possible that some portions of the three routes (Lakhnauti-Tezpur, Lakhnauti-Tibet and Lakhnauti-China) were common.42 These routes joined the great pan-Indian routes: Mughal coins (found in Assam) bear the mint names Tatta, Ahmadabad, Surat, Bijapur, Arkat, Lucknow, Allahabad, Patna, Akbarnagar (Rajmahal) and Jahangirnagar (Dacca). They reveal the movement of the caravans from the ports of Gujarat to the places of the upper Assam-Balipara and Sibsagar via Tezpur. The traders of Tatta (Pakistan), in all probability, travelled to Assam via Lucknow; and, those of Ahmadabad and Surat reached Assam passing through Allahabad, Patna and Rajmahal. Assam exported its pepper to Surat and thence it was shipped to Ormuz, Basrah and the Red Sea. After the fall of Lakhnauti, the lower part of the LakhnautiAssam route appears to have been abandoned. The passage to Kashmir was extended to Kabul for establishing commercial traffic with central Asia. . . . Thus Assam had the commercial links with Kabul (Afghanistan), Sindh (Pakistan) and Gujarat, in the latter half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries. The Mughal coins of Jahangirnagar (Dacca) found from Assam show that, during this period, it also continued its trade relations with Lower Bengal.43 From Assam a caravan route went down to Bengal and then fanned out over the sub-continent. These connected with the routes to northern and western India, passing through Khandesh, Malwa, Agra into Gujarat in the seventeenth century. Branches linked to the ports on the east coast: for example in the seventeenth century, ancient Tamralipta (Tamluk) in southwest Bengal and Puri in Orissa connected to Vrindavan through Vishnupur; similarly Orissa linked to Monghyr in Bihar via Vishnupur.44 The totality comprised the great overland Indian route by the seventeenth century; the other came from China into Suvarnagrama-Rajmahal-PatnaPrayag-Benares-Agra and connected with Kabul and Multan.45

The case for the Nepal route The overland route from China and Inner Asia through Nepal, which was the shortest for reaching Buddhist sites in Bengal, Bihar and Central India, 45

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was not used before the Tang emergence in 618, so the Ganges basin was usually reached from the west, that is through the Pamirs and Kashmir, after traversing the Indus basin.46 As Nepal entered world history only from the fourth century CE, the India-Nepal route was also not well known from India.47 Things changed in the seventh century. During Amshuvarman’s reign Nepal became the centre of Vajrayana and Mahayanist Buddhism through connections established with India and China. King Candradeva (Pracandradeva) renounced his throne at Gauda, was ordained at Swayambhunath with the religious name of Santikara and practised Vajrayana tantra-yoga there. He became renowned as Santikara Acharya, the first Tantric master of the Kathmandu valley. Once the Tangs consolidated and Mahayanist Buddhist circulations increased, this route, granting direct access into north India, became popular. It was a significant segment of the Silk Route from China into Sassanid Persia connecting Songtsen Gampo’s Tibet, Amshuvarman’s Nepal, Bhaskaravarman’s Kamarupa and Harsavardhana’s north Indian empire in the first half of the seventh century. Prevalence of snake/dragon myths and similar foundation myths of Kathmandu and Kunming in the seventh-eighth centuries point to longstanding regional associations. Manjusri from China established Swayambhunath in Kathmandu in the early seventh century; he cleared a lake infested with nagas (snakes) and established Chinese-style governance and a Chinese king.48 This Chinese king was re-named Dharmakara and was succeeded by Dharmapala from India, thereby reconciling Chinese and Indian influences.49 The Nan Zhao t’u-chuan and contemporary texts indicate that Buddhist authority was established in Kunming c. 649 CE with the shift of the capital from Dali to Kunming. Again a lake, menaced by a dragon, was cleared. The declaration of Kunming as the eastern capital in 880 CE and the changeover from the Chinese era to the Sanskrit Jaya in 889 CE confirmed the strategic change, revealing a move away from China towards India.50 Improved connectivity facilitated other associations. The Manjusri legend was probably transmitted from China via Khotan, whose ruler was given a Chinese princess as a consort who introduced sericulture in Khotan in the first century CE. Tibet and Nepal forged a matrimonial alliance in the seventh century CE when Songtsen Gampo of Tibet married Amshuvarman’s daughter Bhrikuti near Patan in the Kathmandu valley51 in addition to a Chinese princess.52 The Nan Zhao ruler also attempted to marry a Tang princess in 881 CE, but gained instead a K’un-lun queen, from the Malay Peninsula, who was most likely a Srivijayan princess.53 Such alliances offer glimpses into the political and trading worlds of the 46

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eastern Himalayas and highlight their connectivities with Bay of Bengal economies. Circulation of gold coins in Samatata and Pundravardhana in Bengal indicate trade with the uplands, a capillary route connecting the sea routes of the Bay of Bengal with the Nepal–Tibet route. From c. 650 CE this route seems to have collapsed, as evinced from decreasing coin hoards in Bengal.54 Chinese Central Asia too seems to have entered a period of political turmoil at this time, with routes consequently being disturbed from then on until at least the ninth century.55 It is clear that the Central Asian routes were linked to the fortunes of the China–Persia silk trade passing through Bengal. The Nepal route may therefore have been intermittently used. However, a smaller segment of the Nepal route remained important for linking Bengal with Tibet, evidenced from Buddhist circulations on this sector from early times, as Nepal became a noted Buddhist destination for Tibet from the seventh century.56 This gained further impetus from the thirteenth century, and Dowman argues that the destruction of Nalanda, Vikramasila, Jagaddala and Uddandapura and the establishment of Muslim power in Bengal in the thirteenth century fragmented Buddhist circulations into Bengal and centred thereafter on Nepal.57 Three routes, of almost equal length, were popular from Tibet into Nepal: the direct route from Shigatse, Chumbi (Bhutan) and Sikkim and two routes through the Kathmandu valley passing Tingri, Kodari and Sankhu, or through Kyirong and Trisuli. The first connected central Tibet to southern Bihar, while the ones through the Kathmandu valley connected western Tibet to eastern India.58 Kircher gives us an idea of the China– Nepal route into India in 1667: from Pekin to Siganfu and thence to Siningfu the journey took two months. At Siningfu there was a gate in the wall through which merchants from India entered China. From Siningfu, through the Kalmak desert of Tartary, also called the Lop desert by Marco Polo, to Lhasa or Barantola, the journey took three months. From Barantola to Cuthi in Nepal through the Caucasian Mountains, the journey took another one month. The travel from Cuthi to Cadmendu (present-day Kathmandu) took 11 days. From there it took 13 days to reach the first city of the Mughal Empire, Mutgari (probably Motihari), via Hedonda (Hetaura in Nepal) of the Maranga kingdom (Morung in the Terai). From Mutgari to Agra, via Patna, Benares, Kanpur the journey lasted 36 days; Kircher estimates that the whole journey from Peking to Agra lasted 214 days of non-stop travelling. Counting stopovers by the caravans it could take up to 14 months.59 But this was a long route; by contrast the route to Sichuan through northeast India took only two months.60 47

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Identifying toponyms along the routes is often difficult. Barantola was a name for Greater Tibet according to Kircher, although sometimes it was also mistaken for Bhutan.61 However, Kircher emphasised that Lhasa and Barantola were the same, including a convincing description of the Dalai Lama at Potala (‘Citadel Bietala’) in Barantola.62

Intersections: fortified townships and shadowy nodes The China route through Myanmar extended into Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal in India, having already connected with the Tista-Karatoya valley. The route was of immense strategic value. Here are clusters of mud forts and fortified townships spanning north Bengal and Bangladesh.63 The forts at Bhitargarh and Garh Mendabari have been explored, the latter showing urban planning very similar to the Sui–Tang capital of Changa’an and thereby hinting at close interactions through Tibet between the two.64 The clusters contain forts, moats and ramparts, and both Jahan and Santra stress the defensive character of these frontier posts set up by the late Guptas to ward off aggression from neighbouring Yunnan, Tibet and Nepal.65 However, although defensive, these fortified townships were also nodes in various transmission networks emanating from Yunnan. Later falling under Khen and then Koch territory, they continued to exist at least until the seventeenth century when Mir Jumla, the Mughal subahdar of Bengal, invaded Assam, roughly around the time as Kircher drew his map. The Tista-Karatoya valley: an international crossroads The Tista-Karatoya tract is therefore very significant in terms of transmission networks between Bengal, the Brahmaputra valley and beyond. Both Bhitargarh and Garh Mendabari were hubs or junction points on strategic routes, with their radials spanning many directions: to the Middle Ganga valley, to the Middle Brahmaputra valley, to the Trans-Himalayan region, to peninsular India, to southwestern China and toward Laos/Cambodia (Champa or Cochin China).66 Because Bhitargarh was situated on the main channel of the Karatoya – the Talma – people could access Tibet through the Tista in Sikkim, by way of its riverine port of Dhumgarh. Jahan surmises that Bhitargarh may also have connected Magadha .  .  . with Southwestern China (Yunnan/Szechwan/Tongkin) via the Brahmaputra Valley in upper Assam, the Namkin range of East Tibet, western side of the Mekong river, Batang, and southern section of the eastern bank of the Mekong.67 48

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Coin hoards discovered in Chandirjhar village in Jalpaiguri district indicate the commercial importance of this region into the medieval period and also designate the extant peninsular routes, and coins from faraway Bijapur and Gulbarga testify to the importance of Chandirjhar as a node in commercial circuits linking the Himalayan foothills to the Dakhin.68 The notion of connectivity between Bengal and Cambodia/Laos is supported by the various branches of the Southwest Silk Route: the first variant went to Myanmar and India, the second went to Vietnam and the third connected Yunnan with Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. Southern Yunnan, Upper Myanmar and Laos cannot be divided geographically, culturally or ethnically – communications among them being self-evident. Though early Chinese sources are deficient, tribute missions of small states in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia were by no means rare after the Tang.69 The Xin Tang Shu (New History of the Tang Dynasty), edited in the tenth century, noted a route linked Annam with India (Tianzhu), starting in Tonkin, and continuing via Yunnan, through Prome (Sriksetra), to Magadha – a mix of land, river and sea routes.70 Deyell also writes of this third route: ‘A separate apparently well-traveled and renowned route led from the region of the Upper Yangtse-MekongSalween Rivers through Tibet. Passes led through Bhutan and Nepal into Kamarupa and Hindustan respectively.’71 Therefore, the Tista-Karatoya belt had significant interactions not only with Tibet, Yunnan and Sichuan but with Laos and Cambodia as well. The putative tenth-century Khmer mission to the Chandra capital at Vikrampur, near Dhaka, came in most likely by the sea route.72 The coastal unit of Samatata in Bengal is privileged here.73 This mission had considerable cultural impact, and perhaps there were many such missions between the Chandras and the Khmers; the first and second Bhatera plaques of the Chandras, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries and containing 55 and 32 lines, respectively, in Sanskrit in a proto Bengali script, seem to have a similar style to old Khmer inscriptions from Cambodia.74 Therefore, when Ralph Fitch wrote, while travelling through the Koch domains in the Tista-Karatoya belt in 1586, that northeastern Bengal was contiguous to ‘Cauchin China’, he was not far wrong, but it is not clear if this route was still used or if by then this connectivity remained only in popular memory. Fitch may have got his information from Fra Mauro’s World Map of 1450, which innovatively conceived of a geographic component of ‘Bengala-Machin’ where Bengal, Myanmar and Laos were seen as one.75

Conclusion The essential unity of this region advocates a shift from the history of the nation to the history of borderlands, proposing a new conceptualisation of 49

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regions. Emphasising this borderless space by tracing routes and interactions over the longue duree, we foregrounded Yunnan and the Tista-Karatoya region as ideal locations for envisioning a connective history as old networks still remain significant. We may now ask: when did routes become sufficiently permanent, or stable enough in popular perception, to transform into durable networks? Did informal networks along the routes show more staying power than formal ones? Routes created new spatialities as well as new sub-regional units. While now the notion of Bengal, Laos and Cambodia being part of the same geographical-cultural unit may seem odd, it was then a reality; Fra Mauro’s World Map of 1450 showing ‘Bengala-Machin’ composed of Bengal, Myanmar and Laos. Politics too created new components: Ming China provides us an example of this strategy; by way of various proclamations on pacification posts, prefectures and sub-prefectures, new regional units were created along routes.76 The centuries-old Bengal-Yunnan kauri route fragmented when Yunnan was split into several prefectures c. 1411 and had to buy kauris from Lin-an in present northern Vietnam, but then part of Yunnan.77 Ming ‘pacification’ – and hyperbole – created new units, Ava, Tripura and parts of present-day Laos and Vietnam lying within a greater Yunnan of the fifteenth century. Our task as historians is to bring to light these hidden connectivities. Moreover, this chapter showed that as geographical knowledge advanced due to pressures of war, migration and commerce, these occurring in turn from the emergence of various polities, new routes were constantly added to the existing corpus. At first, until about the seventh century, the Ganges basin may have been approached through the Indus basin, but in the following centuries eastern India was approached through both the Nepal and the Yunnan/Myanmar routes. The role of technology in clearing forests and constructing roadways, often through remote mountain passes, has also to be kept in mind. Third, this chapter illustrated the existence of extensive land routes in ancient eastern South Asia, showing that, despite our assumptions, land routes not only supplemented waterways but were also used extensively on their own, altering our perception of Bengal as a land of waterways. Like riverine ports, mountain passes in north Bengal played the role of gateways. References to dalahs or check points at entries to hill passes exist for Bengal; some also functioned as markets, such as Sagar Katra near Chattagrama.78 However, the problem with tracing land routes is that little indication exists of the numbers involved, with fewer records being kept of crossings by land than by sea. Only three tribute missions from eastern India to Song China between 960 and 1126 are recorded: one from an 50

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unidentified eastern kingdom, one possibly from Nalanda and a third not from eastern India at all, but from Tibet.79 Yet surely there must have been many more such passages between eastern India and China. Finally, we need to ask ourselves why there were more Chinese notices on India than the reverse. Was it because India as the birthplace of Buddhism was accorded a special status in China from very early times and thus routes carrying pilgrims, scholars, icons and relics received more attention? More questions now arise. First, which body maintained the routes connecting China with India? If it was primarily the state that did so, how were routes administered and order imposed? Ming records are replete with references to banditry and harassment of diplomatic and commercial missions along routes.80 Other than troop movements, local officials often hampered mobility. Furthermore, troublemakers and fraudulent persons pretending to be imperial envoys often travelled the routes, so much so that the Mings manufactured and bestowed upon native officials verification tallies and gold-character red appointment warrants in 1402 to facilitate movements of legitimate envoys, particularly along the important military and tribute routes such as the Yunnan-Ava route.81 So, what happened to routes in times of crisis? An entry of 16 February 1530 informs us of the Yunnan-Ava route becoming increasingly unsafe, making the procurement of precious stones hazardous.82 Natural calamities added to the crisis. On 17 June 1515 it was reported that continuous earthquakes over a month had transformed Yunnan’s landscape.83 On 18 August 1520, 21 May 1526, 8 August 1539, 31 January 1545, 21 May 1552, 9 September 1571 and 12 March 1577 earthquakes were reported in Yunnan.84 This continued into the seventeenth century, February 1609 witnessing another earthquake in Yong-Chang.85 From March 1533 pacifying magistracy posts and military storehouses were established in Yong-Chang, and in December 1534 and February 1579 it was decided that while the ‘eagle strike’ method was to be applied to quash dissent in Guang-dong/Guangxi, ‘soothing’ pacification was to be applied in Yunnan/Guizhou, thereby underscoring the latter’s importance.86 On 7 July 1577 parts of Yunnan were reported as becoming unmanageable and local flare-ups continued in 1578.87 During 1583–4 disturbances were reported from the Yunnan-Ava region when, in the wake of Toungoo decline, Mon Pegu captured much of middle and upper Myanmar.88 On 7 March 1585 6 postal relay stations and 13 forts were established to facilitate troop movements in Yunnan.89 Yunnan-Ava was declared a war area on 27 March that year, and the situation was not resolved as late as 1604, with Man-mo (Bhamo) – ‘a strategic meeting point for the water and land 51

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routes of Ava-Burma’ – lost and routes blocked.90 Man-mo was recovered only in 1605.91 In July 1606 Mu-bang (Hsenwi), another strategic point along the Yunnan-India route, was lost, and troubles in Yunnan-Ava continued until 1609.92 It was declared in November 1614 that the Ava-Burma ‘yi have been the scourge of Yun-nan for years. The Long-chuan circuit, which is near to Ava-Burma, is the Lu-chuan of old. That place is one of the gates into West Yun-nan. If the three pacification commissions are endangered Teng-chong and Yong-chang will be imperilled.93 In May 1627, facing the growing might of Toungoo Burma, Ming annals commented: Ava-Burma was originally considered to be a submissive yi. Now, it has dared to use troops to brow-beat others and it appears that there is no option but to raise an army to punish their crimes. However, it is over 8,000 li to Yun-nan and such an expedition cannot be lightly discussed. But, if we give no thought to the danger, the power of Ava-Burma will become increasingly strong and Yun-nan’s calamities will become increasingly great. The future would then be unpredictable.94 From the late sixteenth century Ming border controls weakened, pirates infested the coastal waters off Fujian and Guangdong, illegal maritime trade flourished, while Yunnan, Annam and parts of Laos slipped from Ming grasp. The old statist logic of route control was eroded in the maritime sphere as well. In December 1604 the Fujian provincial chief informed the War Ministry that ‘the “red fan” have burst into the inner seas. WE should make arrangements by which to expel them and clean up the coastal borders’, and in January 1608 a memorial from Fujian noted that ‘the “red yi” have come again, have slaughtered merchants and fishermen, and are looking to encroach upon the inner territory’.95 Ming coastal control became a myth by the 1620s; an entry of January 1631 notes that people of the Fujian coast had turned to piracy in face of growing European control of trade and shipping.96 The Ming shi-lu (MSL) ends abruptly with an entry of 18 January 1643 denouncing excessive reliance on western-style firearms.97 The Yunnan-Ava route into India therefore had a cyclical nature, alternating between decay and regeneration. It was ‘discovered’ in the second century BCE and ‘lost’ in the third century CE. Political instability in Central Asia in the seventh century and disturbances in the ninth-tenth 52

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centuries—resulting from the Pyu decline c. 832 CE, the rise of Bagan in 849 CE, the demise of Nanzhao by 902 CE and the Tang overthrow of 907—impacted on overland routes, and Bagan-Song interactions are recorded only from 1004 CE.98 The second half of the thirteenth century was a volatile period for new states and new connectivities; the Mongols captured Yunnan in 1256 and Bagan in 1287. Iconic Kamarupa fragmented into three polities just prior to this period: the Cachari kingdom (1086–1830 CE), Srihatta (eleventh century) and the Ahom state (early thirteenth century). The Khen polity, lasting from c. 1185 to 1498 in the Tista-Karatoya valley attempted, unsuccessfully, to revive the lost glory of Kamarupa and claim similar iconic status. The Tripuri state consolidated itself in the thirteenth century, while lesser polities such as Udessa and Tarap, the last the remnant of a former Mongol state to Bengal’s northeast, rose between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Again, for about 20 years from c. 1436 through 1456 routes from Yunnan to Ava were disturbed with Chinese attempts to crush Lu’chuan’s leader Si Ren-Fa and his son Si Ji-Fa who subsequently fled to Ava, carrying on resistance from there.99 Lu’chuan, known also as Mong Mao and Pong in records, was a major polity between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and a major contender of Ming-controlled Yunnan until crushed in 1456. Between 1499 and 1506 Si Lu, descendant of Si Ren-Fa, sought to regain lost territory, again blocking much of the Yunnan-Ava route.100 By the seventeenth century the Yunnan route became altogether unusable. What happened to the circulation of goods and peoples at such times? Second, how dependent were local polities on regional trade? How did they tax it? It is evident that as more and more state forms appeared along the routes the latter multiplied; all kingdoms and chiefdoms wanted to participate in the burgeoning regional trade across borders.101 There was also what may be termed ‘route politics’. In 1047 CE the Tibetan chief Hsia-chan built an independent walled city on the tribute road to Song China. Upon threats of cutting off the tribute road and in fear of Hsiachan allying with the Tanguts, Song China sent a mission to the walled city and opened trade relations with Hsia-chan.102 In September 1116 CE a collusion was alleged between the officials of Kuang-chou and Hu-nan regarding the old and new routes to Ting-chou. A tribute mission from Dali was diverted to the old route via T’an-chou to benefit the Kuangchou official’s hometown, a route both dearer and longer.103 The matter did not rest there; in October 1120 it was discovered that the so-called Dali mission was actually composed of horse traders.104 It is clear that lesser polities and local authorities ensured that capillary routes passing through their domains supplemented longer routes. But since routes were 53

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interdependent, what happened if one portion collapsed, due to war, natural disasters or other, unspecified, reasons?105 How did routes in polities owing dual or more allegiances – to India and China, for example – function? Kingdoms in the Ptolemaic India Extra Gangem seem to have had multiple allegiances to state forms in India, Myanmar and China, for example the eleventh-thirteenth century kingdom of Pattikera, the Buddhist Comilla-Mainamati complex in Bangladesh or the thirteenth-sixteenth–century feudal polity of Tarap near Srihatta.106 Was payment of revenue in one case and tribute on the other an example of dual allegiance, as the MSL indicates? In that case, who took policy decisions and which authority maintained and controlled routes and collected taxes? Also, how was trade carried on in a non-state, non-metal currency area? The Khen and Cachari polities, for example, have left few, if at all any, coins, so we have no idea of the medium used for commerce. Was it solely the hoary old barter trade, a concept that has now been discarded as being too simplistic, or was some other form of natural currency used? Silk, for example, was used as currency on many sectors of the Silk Route including Yunnan.107 What kind of economic or fiscal logic prevailed along routes? Who, for instance, decided on weights, measures and currencies?108 How were equivalences worked out with distant polities to facilitate movement of goods? Third, the silk and wool roads passed through the Himalayan borderlands, a region sometimes seen as zomian or a non-state area.109 How, and through which agency, were routes maintained? Markets and resting houses, as well as a postal system for the exigencies of the state and the convenience of travellers, were established at the mouths of routes, as well as at strategic points along routes. During the Buddhist period, monasteries functioned as resting houses and postal offices, demonstrating clearly that the region was not zomian. Monasteries, temples and mosque-complexes (often containing a bazaar or katra and a caravanserai) contained rooms and horses for travellers, the Chinese from quite early times, the Muslims somewhat later, maintaining pack animals (mules, camels, horses), granaries, police offices, serais (food, water, beds) and postal systems, the last being a Mongol innovation.110 While investment in communication infrastructure was possible for large states, how did smaller polities fare? How were issues of information (projected arrival of caravans, boats, prices, for example) hospitality and communication dealt with? In 1711, in the absence of formal serais (rest houses) and adequate communication and transport facilities, Ahom and Tripuri envoys, on their way back to Tripura from Assam, were offered safe 54

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conduct through the Cachari domains and also 19 days of hospitality at Khaspur by the Hedamba king, and were given boats and escorts for the remainder of the route.111 At what time was infrastructural initiative passed on to the state and can we locate the exact moment when political order was imposed over a largely unregulated and expansive religious space? Therefore, how do we locate the coming of the state along these routes? Once again, our evidence comes from China; the tribute trade in Song and Ming China offers good examples of state-regulated routes.112 Song China prohibited fake missions, giving salt vouchers to legitimate embassies to finance their journey and buy grain, once they entered China.113 Action was taken against merchants who sold salt vouchers to foreign missions as also against local authorities that did not render assistance en route.114 Song China ensured that foreign embassies left promptly, and the members were not allowed to conduct commerce within China, except in the Hsi-chou and Ch’in-chou circuits in the case of Khotan.115 In 1017 Arab traders, entering China in the guise of a Ta-shih (Arabs, Persians?) tribute mission, were not granted exemption from commercial taxes.116 In 1024, following complaints that the Ta-shih had arrived by the land route, it was decreed that they must use the sea route and disembark at Kuang-chou henceforth, and in 1096–7 the Khotanese and the Ta-shih were asked to declare and pay tribute at Hsi-chou itself and not proceed to the capital.117 Song edicts enforced specific routes for missions from specific countries, stipulated duration between missions – the latter possibly an attempt to stop illegal commerce by members – and specified the number of members per mission.118 Ming China administered religious networks by maintaining – and controlling – Confucian schools and Buddhist and Daoist registries along routes.119 An example of religious orders working for the state is found in 1442 when the Buddhist monks of the A-chi-li Buddhist Registry in Dali assisted the invading Ming troops, conducting purification rites against the ‘bandit’ Si Ren-Fa.120 Did other states also manipulate religious bodies for similar surveillance and control? Were routes dual in function and ultimately paradoxical in nature, being connectors but also enforcers of state control?

Notes 1 I thank Teotonio R. de Souza for suggesting the title. 2 Rila Mukherjee, “Silver Links! Bagan-Bengal and Shadowy Metal Corridors: Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries,” in Michael Aung-Thwin, John Miksic and Goh Geok Yian, eds., Bagan and Its Overseas Connections (Singapore: ISEAS/ Nalanda-Srivijaya Centre, submitted to ISEAS Press, Singapore).

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3 Sun Laichen, “Assessing the Ming Role in China’s Southern Expansion,” in Geoff Wade and Sun Laichen, eds., Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century: The China Factor (Singapore: NUS Press, 2010), pp. 44–79, p. 45. 4 Rila Mukherjee, “Introduction,” in Rila Mukherjee, ed., Pelagic Passageways: The Northern Bay of Bengal before Colonialism (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2011), pp. 1–260 and chapters following; Arlo Griffiths and Amandine Lepoutre, “Campa Epigraphical Data on Polities and Peoples of Ancient Myanmar,” The Journal of Burma Studies, 17, no. 2 (2013), pp. 373–90. 5 Rila Mukherjee, “Routes, Ports and Networks in Bengal: China Connection,” Marie-Francoise Boussac, Jean-Francois Salles and Jean-Baptiste Yon, eds., Ports of the Ancient Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2016), pp. 323–50; Rila Mukherjee, forthcoming in TOPOI, “Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean: One World, Two Seas, Multiple Routes?” 6 Tansen Sen, “In Search of Longevity and Good Karma: Chinese Diplomatic Missions to Middle India in the Seventh Century,” Journal of World History, 12, no. 1 (2001), pp. 1–28; Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 (Asian Interactions and Comparisons, Association for Asian Studies, University of Hawai’i Press, 2003); Tansen Sen, “Chinese Sources on South Asia,” in Rila Mukherjee, ed., Beyond National Frames: South Asian Pasts and the World (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2015), pp. 52–73. 7 Tarapada Santra, Jalpaiguri Jelar Purakirti (Kolkata: West Bengal State Archaeology Department, 2005), in Bangla, pp. 29–36, 65–81; Shahnaj Husne Jahan, “Archaeological Investigations at Bhitargarh in Panchagarh District,” Journal of Bengal Art, 15 (2010), pp. 173–200, pp. 188, 191, 195. 8 Janice Stargardt, “Burma’s Economic and Diplomatic Relations with India and China from Early Medieval Sources,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 14, no. 1 (April, 1971), pp. 38–62, p. 41; Paul Pelliot, “Deux itinéraires de Chine en Inde à la fin du VIIIe siècle,” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, 4, no. 1 (1904), pp. 131–413, p. 150. 9 Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, “Medieval Islamic View of the Cosmos: The Newly Discovered Book of Curiosities,” The Cartographic Journal, 41, no. 3 (December, 2004), pp. 253–9, pp. 258–9: ‘The map of the Indus (Figure 5) is of particular interest, for it curiously represents the major rivers of northern India – the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra – as one continuous river system. While in reality the Indus flows westwards from its origins in the Himalayas, and the Ganges and the Brahmaputra flow towards the Bay of Bengal in the east, the map envisages one river system that has its origins in the mountains of Tibet. This single river apparently runs from east to west across the northern part of the Indian sub-continent, eventually flowing into the Indian Ocean. The itineraries drawn on the map of the Indus show that commerce overcame the political boundaries between the Muslim and Hindu states of northern India. On the right the map shows the itinerary from the Muslim capital of al-Multan in the lower Indus valley to the Hindu capital of Kanyakubja (known to Muslim geographers as Qanawj or Qinawj) on the banks of the Ganges. The itinerary continues on the left part of the map, where it follows the river (in reality, the Ganges) eastwards from Qanawj to southern China’. 10 Geoff Wade, trans., Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: An Open Access Resource (Singapore: Asia Research Institute & Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore), http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/entries 299, 609, 730, 1464, 1465,

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11 12 13 14

15

16 17 18

19 20

21 22 23

1470, 1557, 1631, 1910, 2137, 2239, 2242, 2329. Accessed 27 December 2013. Henceforth MSL, entries accessed by date; Robert M. Hartwell, Tribute Missions to China: 960–1126 (Philadelphia, publisher unknown, 1983); Khotan mission of 1085, Table 12, pp. 57, 60; Ali ku (Tibetan) mission of 1094, Table 17, p. 103; Champa mission of 1011, Table 24, p. 156. Wade, MSL, entries 564, 572, 573, 610, 733, 894, 911, 949, 1229, 1266, 1274, 1286, 1443, 1450, 1621, 1732, 1774, 1775, 1792, 1908, 1910, 1911, 2137, 2262, 2778, 2690, 2695, 2888, 2955, 2957, 2964, 2965. Wade, MSL, entries 1335, 2563. http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/imdsr/07DSR_E/dsrmap_e/. Accessed 19 December 2013. Marianne Yaldiz, “These Boots Are Made for Walking: Travellers from East to West?,” in Osmund Bopearachchi and Marie-Francoise Boussac, eds., Afghanistan: Ancien Carrefour entre l’Est et l’Ouest (Turnhout, Belgium: BREPOLS, 2005), pp. 403–11, p. 405. Claude Rapin, “L’Afghanistan et l’Asie Centrale dans la Geographie Mythique des Historiens d’Alexandre et dans la Toponymie Greco-romains,” in Osmund Bopearachchi and Marie-Francoise Boussac, eds., Afghanistan, pp. 143–72; Charlotte Baratin, “Les Villes du Sud-Ouest de l’Afghanistan: Le Long de l’Itineraire d’Herat a Kandahar,” in Osmund Bopearachchi and MarieFrancoise Boussac, eds., Afghanistan, pp. 173–86. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2403094/Mystery-ancient-cavesNepal.html,http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/10/mustang-caves/ finkel-text. Accessed 20 December 2013. Yang Jupin, “The Relations between China and India and the Opening of the Southern Silk Road during the Han Dynasty,” The Silk Road, 11 (2013), pp. 82–92. John E. Hill, The Peoples of the West from the Weilue 魏略 by Yu Huan 魚豢: A Third Century Chinese Account Composed between 239 and 265 CE, Quoted in zhuan 30 of the Sanguozhi, published in 429 CE, Draft English translation, © September 2004. Ibid. Haraprasad Ray, The northeastern trade route from India to China, known in China as the ‘Southern Silk Route’ (Nanfang Sichou Zhilu) existed even before the Central Asian Silk Route became popular and the introduction of Buddhism to China; Haraprasad Ray, “The Southern Silk Route from China to India − An Approach from India,” China Report, 31, no. 2 (1995), pp. 177–96, p. 177. My thanks to Tansen Sen for this essay. Ray, “The Southern Silk Route,” pp. 186, 194–6. Pelliot, “Deux itinéraires,” pp. 142–3; Wilfred H. Schoff, “Navigation to the Far East under the Roman Empire,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 37 (1917), pp. 240–9, pp. 242–5. Frederick Hirth: ‘there was also a water-road leading through to Yi-chou and Yung-ch’ang [in the present Yunnan]. It is for this reason that curiosities come from Yung-ch’ang. Formerly only the water-road was spoken of; they did not know there was an overland route.’ The Water Road was probably the sea route through the Gulf of Tonkin. Or was it the fluvial route through the Irrawaddy? See F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient: Researches into Their Ancient and Mediaeval Relations as Represented in Old Chinese Records (Shanghai; Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, 1885), pp. 74–5.

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24 Edouard Chavannes, “Voyage de Song Yun dans l’Udyana et le Gandhara,” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, 3, no. 1 (Année, 1903), pp. 379–441, pp. 386–7. 25 Ernelle Berliet, Territoires et Urbanisations en Birmanie, des origines (IIe s. avant J.-C.) a la fin du XIIIe siècle (Turnhout: BREPOLS, 2010), p. 230. 26 Yjing noted that one of the Gupta kings (possibly Srigupta at the end of the third century CE) erected a Temple of the Cinas to honour the visit of 20 Chinese pilgrim-scholars using the land route from Yunnan and Myanmar to his kingdom. This was probably in eastern Uttar Pradesh, likely to be near Bodh Gaya or Sarnath in Bihar. Stargardt, “Burma’s Economic and Diplomatic Relations,” p. 41; Pelliot, “Deux itinéraires,” p. 150. 27 Ray, “The Southern Silk Route,” p. 196. 28 John E. Hill, trans., The Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu. The Xiyu juan “Chapter on the Western Regions” from Hou Hanshu 88. Second Edition (Extensively revised with additional notes and appendices) © September 2003. See Section 16 – The Kingdom of Dongli – The ‘Eastern Division’ (of the Kushan Empire). The Hou Hanshu, the official history of the Later (or ‘Eastern’) Han dynasty (25–221 CE), was compiled by Fan Ye, who died in 445 CE. 29 Amitabha Bhattacharyya, “Trade Routes of Ancient Bengal,” in Asok Datta, ed., History and Archaeology of Eastern India (New Delhi: Books and Books, 1998), pp. 157–72. 30 N. Karashima and Y. Subbarayalu, “Goldsmiths and Padinen-Vishayam: A Bronze Buddha Image of Nagapattinam,” in Noboru Karashima ed., Ancient and Medieval Commercial Activities in the Indian Ocean: Testimony of Inscriptions and Ceramic Shards, Report of the Taisho University Research Project 1997–2000 (Tokyo: Taisho University, 2002), pp. 57–61. See fn. 10, p. 59. 31 Hirth, China and the Roman Orient. 32 Sun Laichen, “Chinese Historical Sources on Burma,” Journal of Burma Studies, 2, Special Issue (1997), pp. 1–53, pp. 13, 15–16. 33 Chavannes, “Voyage de Song Yun,” pp. 386–7; Bhattacharyya, “Trade Routes of Ancient Bengal,” p. 160; Nicholas G. Rhodes, “Trade in Southeast Bengal in the First Millennium CE: The Numismatic Evidence,” in Rila Mukherjee, ed., Pelagic Passageways: The Northern Bay of Bengal before Colonialism (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2011), pp. 263–75, p. 266. 34 Chau ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Entitled Chu-fan-chi, trans. Friedrich Hirth and W.W. Rockhill (St. Petersburg, 1911, rpt, Taipei: Literature House, 1965), p. 9. 35 G.H. Luce, “The Ancient Pyu,” Journal of the Burma Research Society, 27, no. 3 (1937), pp. 239–53, pp. 248–9. 36 Bin Yang, “Horses, Silver, and Cowries: Yunnan in Global Perspective,” Journal of World History, 15, no. 3 (September, 2004), pp. 281–322, pp. 286–7. 37 Luce, “The Ancient Pyu,” p. 248. 38 Anthony Christie, “Ta-ch’in p’o-lo-men,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 20, no. 1/3, Studies in Honour of Sir Ralph Turner, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1937–57 (1957), pp. 159–66, p. 164. Haraprasad Ray notes: ‘In the Sabhaparva (the Court Chapter) of the Mahabharata when the third Pandava, Arjuna, went to conquer Pragjyotish (Assam), Bhagadatta, the King of Assam fought with him

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39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50

with an army comprising Kirata and Chinese soldiers (sa Kirataisca Cinaisca Vritah Pragjyotisobhavat) who lived beyond the mountain (parvat-antara vasinah). Chinese deer skins are mentioned and the skills of the Chinese are also noted.’ Again: ‘at this stage of our knowledge it is difficult to say which part of China was referred to in connection with Bhagadatta of Assam. It could be the Jin state (about 841–223 BC), and in the other cases the Qin state of northwest China (841–206 BC), but the linkage with China cannot be denied. . . .’ Ray, “The Southern Silk Route,” pp. 179, 184. However, Tansen Sen (e-mail, 18 September 2013) notes that ‘cina- in Mh. and Arth. may not indicate “China.” Moreover these references probably date from the second century CE. First, it could be a place in Central Asia or even NE (Sinae). Second, it could refer to products that were supposed to have originated in the Qin state, but reached India through intermediaries. In any case, I think they are not evidence of direct contacts between India and China’. Christian Daniels, “Agricultural Technology and the Consolidation of Tay Polities in Northern Continental Southeast Asia during the 15th Century,” in Geoff Wade and Sun Laichen, eds., Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century: The China Factor (Singapore: NUS Press, 2010), pp. 246–70, p. 255. Bin, “Horses, Silver, and Cowries,” p. 286. See also Marco Polo, Travels; Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani, Tabaqat-i-Nasiri. trans. H.G. Raverty (1881, rpt, New Delhi: Oriental Books Corp., 1970), 2 vols. John Deyell, “The China Connection: Problems of Silver Supply in Medieval Bengal,” in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ed., Money and the Market in India 1100–1700 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 112–36, p. 128. Nisar Ahmad, “Assam-Bengal Trade in the Medieval Period: A Numismatic Perspective,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 33, no. 2 (1990), pp. 169–98, pp. 176–7. Ibid., pp. 181–2. Pika Ghosh, “Tales, Tanks, and Temples: The Creation of a Sacred Center in Seventeenth-Century Bengal,” Asian Folklore Studies, 61 (2002), pp. 193–222, p. 197. Tapan Raychaudhuri, “Inland Trade,” in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; India: Orient Longman, 1982), pp. 325–59, p. 332. Chavannes, “Voyage de Song Yun,” pp. 386–7. Samudra Gupta’s Allahabad Pillar inscription mentions Nepal as a subsidiary and marginal kingdom, placed between Kamarupa and Kartrapura, the last perhaps a kingdom in the Western Himalayan foothills incorporating Kumaon and Garhwal. V.R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, The Gupta Polity (Madras, 1952, reprint. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993), p. 81. Sylvain Levi, “The History of Nepal,” I, in Kailash, pp. 5–60, pp. 11, 13. Accessed 18 December 2013. http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/kailash/pdf/kailash_ 03_01_01.pdf. Keith Dowman, “A Buddhist Guide to the Power Places of the Kathmandu Valley,” Kailash. http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/kailash/ pdf/kailash_08_0304_03.pdf. Accessed 17 December 2013. Levi, “The History of Nepal,” p. 17. Alexander C. Soper and Helen B. Chapin, “A Long Roll of Buddhist Images,” I, Artibus Asiae, 32, no. 1 (1970), pp. 5–41, pp. 38–9.

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51 Bhrikuti may have not been Amshuvarman’s daughter but the Licchavi king Narendradeva’s sister. Songtsen Gampo’s invasion of Nepal c. 642 placed Narendradeva on the throne. Dowman, “A Buddhist Guide,” pp. 242–4. 52 Dowman, “A Buddhist Guide,” p. 243. 53 Soper and Chapin, “Long Roll,” pp. 16, 37–8. 54 Rhodes, “Trade in Southeast Bengal.” 55 The Biographies of Eminent Monks notes that before 644 CE some 710 monks used the Buddhist Route and only 633 used this route between 645 and 988 CE. Vadime Elisseeff, “Introduction: Approaches Old and New to the Silk Roads,” in Vadime Elisseeff, ed., The Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce (New York; Oxford: UNESCO/Berghahn Books, 2000), pp. 1–26, p. 5; Yaldiz, “These Boots Are Made for Walking,” p. 405, notes that after 1036 CE there is no mention of a western monk at the Chinese court; Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade, pp. 211, 213, mentions armed conflicts along the Taklamakan and the Yunnan-Myanmar border as one of the reasons for the decline of the land routes and the rise of a maritime trade between China and India from the ninth century. The Licchavi kingdom of Nepal fragmented in the ninth century. 56 Other than the famed Atisa Dipankara visiting the valley in 1041 and establishing the reformist and purged Tham Vihara (Thamel, in Kathmandu), the Bengali Atulyavajra imparted the Vajrayana doctrine to Tibetan scholars at Swayambhu Stupa in the eleventh-twelfth centuries. In 1349 Sham al Din Ilyas Shah of Bengal attacked and destroyed the stupa, Dowman, “A Buddhist Guide,” pp. 210, 244. 57 Dowman, “A Buddhist Guide,” pp. 184–6. 58 Ibid., p. 186. 59 Charles D. Van Tuyl, trans. and S.J. Athanasius Kircher, l; China Illustrata, from the 1677 original Latin edition (Oklahoma, 1986), pp. 58–9. hotgates.stanford.edu/Eyes/library/kircher.pdf. Accessed 3 September 2013. Subsequently as Charles Van Tuyl, trans., Athanasius Kircher, S.J.: China Illustrata. Translated from the Latin by Charles van Tuyl (Indiana Oriental Series, vol. 6) [xi], 228 pp. and three foldout maps. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1987; Cornelius Wessels, Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia: 1603–1721 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1924, reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992). 60 Ray, “The Southern Silk Route,” p. 196. 61 Romolo Gandolfo, “Bhutan and Tibet in European Cartography (1597– 1800),” in The Spider and the Piglet: Proceedings of the First Seminar on Bhutan Studies (Thimphu: Centre for Bhutan Studies, 2004), pp. 90–136, http://www. bhutanstudies.org.bt/pubFiles/9-Spdr&Pglt.pdf. Accessed 5 September 2013. 62 Kircher, China Illustrata, pp. 64–8. 63 Some of them are Nal Rajar Garh or Garh Mendabari in the Torsa valley in North Bengal and Bhitargarh in Bangladesh. See Mukherjee, “Introduction”; Jahan, “Archaeological Investigations at Bhitargarh.” 64 Santra, Jalpaiguri, pp. 29–36; Pareshchandra Dasgupta, appendix, in Santra, Jalpaiguri, pp. 65–81. Field visit during 12–14 September 2013. 65 Santra, Jalpaiguri, pp. 29–36, 65–81; Jahan, “Archaeological Investigations at Bhitargarh,” quoting Montgomery Martin, 1838, pp. 188, 191, 195. 66 Jahan, “Archaeological Investigations at Bhitargarh,” p. 196.

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67 Ibid., p. 196. 68 Santra, Jalpaiguri, pp. 36–7. 69 Bin, “Horses, Silver, and Cowries,” pp. 287–8; Hartwell, Tribute Missions; Wade, MSL. 70 Bin, “Horses, Silver, and Cowries,” pp. 287–8. 71 Deyell, “The China Connection,” p. 128. 72 Jean Boisselier, “Review: [Untitled], Reviewed Work(s): Copper-Plates of Sylhet, vol. I (7th–11th Century A.D.) by Kamalakanta Gupta,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 14, no. 1 (April, 1971), pp. 90–4, p. 92. 73 Padmanath Bhattacharya, “To the East of Samatata (On the Six Countries Mentioned but Not Visited by Yuan Chwang),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1 (January, 1920), pp. 1–19. 74 Boisselier, “Review,” p. 93. 75 Rila Mukherjee, “Maps, Concealed Geographies and Ambiguous Connectivities,” in Lipi Ghosh and Rila Mukherjee, eds., Rethinking Connectivity (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2016), pp. 136–69. 76 Wade, MSL. 77 Ibid., entry 1779. 78 A.M. Serajuddin, The Revenue Administration of the East India Company in Chittagong, 1761–85 (Chittagong: Chittagong University Press, 1971), p. 155. 79 Hartwell, Tribute Missions, Table 33, pp. 191–3. It is likely that the mission from Na-lan-t’o in 991 CE referred to Nalanda in eastern India and not South India, as Hartwell notes. 80 Wade, MSL, entries 1789, 2028, 2122, 2245 and numerous others. Note however that the ‘bandits’ were often deposed chiefs or legal claimants to a particular chieftaincy or polity as in the cases of the deposed chiefs Si Ren-Fa of Lu’chuan, and Li in Annam. See for Si Ren-Fa as ‘bandit’, Wade, MSL, entries 566, 721, 723, 944, 950, 953, 955, 1147, 1152, 1160, 1162, 1173, 1329, 1331, 1337, 1340, 1341, 1350, 1353, 1354, 1498, 1501, 1502, 1529, 1535, 1542, 1655, 1670, 1675, 1678, 1679, 1682, 1685, 1687, 1833, 1840, 1843, 1841, 1853, 1952, 1965, 2072, 2146. There are similar, and equally numerous, references to Li in the MSL. 81 Wade, MSL, entry 316. 82 Ibid., entries 1399, 1398, 1573, 1872. Stones from Yunnan are recorded for 26 April and 4 August 1563, 12 February and 22 August 1564, entries 3228, 3230, 3237, 3239. In January 1606 the mines were closed down, entry 3145. See Sun Laichen, “Shan Gems, Chinese Silver and the Rise of Shan Principalities in Northern Burma, c. 1450–1527,” in Geoff Wade and Sun Laichen, eds., Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century: The China Factor (Singapore: NUS Press, 2010), pp. 169–96. 83 Wade, MSL, entry 1995. 84 Ibid., entries 2463, 579, 2742, 3024, 3124, 581, 583. 85 Ibid., entry 3181. 86 Ibid., entries 2202, 2305, 1575. 87 Ibid., entries 584, 1412. 88 Ibid., entries 2092, 2096, 2100, 2103, 2219. 89 Ibid., entry 2309. 90 Ibid., entries 2310, 2582, 2796, 2800, 2801, 2867, 3098, 3113, 3115, 3118, 3130, 3141.

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91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105

106

107

Ibid., entry 3141. Ibid., entries 3149, 3176. Ibid., entry 3235. Ibid., entry 1582. Ibid., entries 3135, 3168, 3169, 3205, 3221, 3236 (coastal controls, November 1610, October 1612, January, 1615). Ibid., entries 586, 816, 817, 829, 830, 831, 833, 1030, 1031, 1033, 1421. Ibid., entry 2477. The Lingwai daida of 1178 is the earliest Chinese record containing the word ‘Pugan’, Sun, “Chinese Historical Sources on Burma,” p. 17. See note on ‘bandits’; Wade, MSL, entries 1845, 1189, 1549, 1551. By 1459 the area was ‘pacified’, Wade, MSL, entry 754. Wade, MSL, entry 2187, 2188, 2191, 2302, 2392, 2542, 2738, 265. Rila Mukherjee, “Srihatta as Space, Sylhet as Place,” in Anuradha Chanda, ed., Script Identity Region: A Study in Sylhet Nagri (Kolkata: Dey’s/MAKAIAS, 2013), pp. 29–46; Rila Mukherjee, “Between Land and Sea: The Integration of ‘Small’ Polities into a Northern Bay of Bengal Economic System between the 9th and 19th Centuries,” forthcoming, Nalanda-Srivijaya Centre/ISEAS, Singapore. See also Rila Mukherjee, “Northeast India between Land and Sea,” Journal of History and Culture, Gauhati University, 2 (2015), pp. 1–19. Hartwell, Tribute Missions, Table 17, pp. 89–90. Ibid., Table 19, p. 116. Ibid., Table 19, p. 117. Rila Mukherjee, “An Early Medieval Metal Corridor, Silver, Bengal, Bagan and Yunnan: 7th to the 13th Centuries,” in George Depeyrot, C. Bregianni and M. Kovalchuk, eds., Three Conferences on International Monetary History (Wetteren: Moneta, 2013), pp. 431–41. Tilman Frasch, “Coastal Peripheries during the Pagan Period,” in Jos Gommans and Jacques P. Leider, eds., The Maritime Frontier of Burma: Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World, 1200– 1800 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), pp. 59–78; Geoff Wade, “An Annotated Translation of the Yuan Shi Account of Mian (Burma),” chapter 2 in Perry Link, ed., The Scholar’s Mind: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Mote (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009), pp. 17–49; Goh Geok Yian, “The Question of ‘China’ in Burmese Chronicles,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 41, no. 1 (February, 2010), pp. 125–52; Goh Geok Yian, “Myanmar’s Relations with China from Tagaung through Hanthawati-Taunggu Periods,” in Ho Khai Leong, ed., Connecting and Distancing: Southeast Asia and China (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009), pp. 115–33; Berliet, Territoires et Urbanisations, pp. 232–3. Tribute was paid in silk equivalents; Hartwell, Tribute Missions; Hans Ulrich Vogel with the assistance of Sabine Hieronymus, “Cowry Trade and Its Role in the Economy of Yunnan, the Ninth to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century,” in Roderich Ptak and Dietmar Rothermund, eds., Emporia, Commodities and Entrepreneurs in Asian Maritime Trade, c. 1400–1750 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991), pp. 231–62, p. 234; Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Special Issue Textiles as Money on the Silk Road, 23, no. 2 (April, 2013), notably: Helen Wang, “Textiles as Money on the Silk Road?,” pp. 165–74;

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108

109

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111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

Valerie Hansen and Xinjiang Rong, “How the Residents of Turfan Used Textiles as Money, 273–796 ce.,” pp. 281–305; Qing Duan and Helen Wang, “Were Textiles Used as Money in Khotan in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries?,” pp. 307–25; Eric Trombert, “The Demise of Silk on the Silk Road: Textiles as Money at Dunhuang from the Late Eighth Century to the Thirteenth Century,” pp. 327–47; Feng Zhao and Le Wang, “Glossary of Textile Terminology (Based on the Documents from Dunhuang and Turfan),” pp. 349–87. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Special Issue Textiles as Money on the Silk Road, 23, no. 2 (April, 2013), notably: Angela Sheng, “Determining the Values of Textiles in the Tang Dynasty in Memory of Professor Denis Twitchett (1925– 2006),” pp. 175–96; Feng Zhao and Le Wang, “Reconciling Excavated Textiles with Contemporary Documentary Evidence: A Closer Look at the Finds from a Sixth-Century Tomb at Astana,” pp. 197–221; Chang Xu and Helen Wang, “Managing a Multicurrency System in Tang China: The View from the Centre,” pp. 223–44; Masahiro Arakawa and Valerie Hansen, “The Transportation of Tax Textiles to the North-West as Part of the Tang-Dynasty Military Shipment System,” pp. 245–61; Binghua Wang and Helen Wang, “A Study of the Tang Dynasty Tax Textiles (Yongdiao Bu) from Turfan,” pp. 263–80. Willem van Schendel, “Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20, no. 6 (2002), pp. 647–68. See also the special issue on Zomia, Journal of Global History, vol. 5, 2010, notably the following: Jean Michaud, “Editorial – Zomia and Beyond,” pp. 187–214; Magnus Fiskesjo, “Mining, History, and the Anti-State Wa: The Politics of Autonomy between Burma and China,” pp. 241–64; Sarah Turner, “Borderlands and Border Narratives: A Longitudinal Study of Challenges and Opportunities for Local Traders Shaped by the Sino-Vietnamese Border,” pp. 265–87; Sara Shneiderman, “Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia? Some Scholarly and Political Considerations across Time and Space,” pp. 289–312; Bernard Formoso, “Zomian or Zombies? What Future Exists for the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif?,” pp. 313–32. William Marsden (trans. and ed.), Thomas Wright (Re-ed.), The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), pp. 221–26; Wade, MSL, entries 384, 385, 1453, 1618, 1637, 1639, 1647, 2344, 2350, 2328, 2522, 2103, 2309. Tripur Chandra Sen, ed., Tripur Desher Katha, 1724 (Agartala: Tribal Research Centre, 1964, 1997, in Bangla), p. 36. For Song control in 1017 CE, see Hartwell, Tribute Missions, Table 7, p. 36; for the same in 1092 CE, Hartwell, Tribute Missions, Table 12, p. 63; for Ming China, Wade, MSL. Hartwell, Tribute Missions, Table 11, p. 51; Table 12, pp. 59, 60, 61, 64; Table 19, p. 117. Ibid., Table 12, p. 64; Table 17, p. 89. Ibid., Table 11, p. 49; Table 12, pp. 62, 63. Ibid., Table 34, p. 200. Ibid., Table 14, p. 71; Table 12, pp. 63–4. Ibid., Table 7, p. 36; Table 11, p. 51; Table 12, pp. 57–8; Table 17, p. 95. Wade, MSL, entries 1649, 1918, 2343, 2506, 2624. Ibid., entry 1534.

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3 MOVEMENTS AND MIGRATIONS AROUND THE POROUS INDOIRANIAN BORDERLANDS The view from archaeology and texts (c. third century BCE–third century CE) Suchandra Ghosh

Movement and migration and the related changes that these two bring are very basic to any historical experience. Early South Asia too had illdefined, unconstrued boundaries through which men and merchandise moved which perhaps does not tally with what we understand by migration today but very well fits in with the dictionary meaning ‘to move from one country, locality or place to another’. Human migration is not a recent phenomenon but has existed since time immemorial. Here an attempt is made to understand the kind of movement that took place through the porous borders of the Indo-Iranian borderlands which one would like to call the crossroads of Asia. It is a geographical horizon extending from Afghanistan to northwest India which from a long time formed the focal point for travellers, monks, merchants and political personalities. The boundary line between regions to the north and south of Hindukush was extremely fluid, and mutual contacts must have been intensive. Further south, the valleys and plains along the course of the Kabul River have always constituted an important thoroughfare for contacts between east and west. The land around Jalalabad was used as winter pasture grounds by the nomads who during the spring moved north, across the Hindukush watershed to the alpine pasture of Badakshan. Though the Khyber Pass is at present the most important thoroughfare between the sub-continent and the West, in the past there may have been other passes in this area which were equally important. Alexander often bypassed this pass. Makran was important and when the

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southwestern flanks of the Punjab were better watered, Multan and the Tochi and Gomal routes were correspondingly more significant. The crossroads as a physical space embraced diverse geographical markers.1 These movements and migrations shaped the landscape of the region, and here we would like to focus on interactions in the field of art, legends, technological tradition through a few case studies. Outward movement from the borderlands as gleaned from the petroglyphs and inscriptions along the Karakorum Highway is also an interesting phenomenon2 and would be touched upon. Through these case studies the chapter would argue that during the period under discussion the borderland was porous enough to allow continuous movements and exchanges among neighbours and had been open to interactions with and influences from West and Central Asia. Political intrusion by the Greeks, Scythians, Parthians and Kushanas in the region was perhaps not a deterrent but acted as a stimulant as their culture was part of them and so there was cultural adaptation and adoption both by the rulers and by the ruled.

Outward movement from South Asia along the Karakorum and upper Indus Parallel to Central Asian intervention in the area and period of our study, another kind of movement was happening along the Karakorum Mountains and the upper Indus valley. This was an outward movement from South Asia and could be related to trade, religion or travel. A brief description of this zone would be in order. This region forms an important geocultural zone, which is posited between the highlands of Central Asia and northwestern India. The Karakorum Range is bounded on the northeast by the edge of the Tibetan plateau and on the north by the Wakhan corridor and the Pamir Mountains. To the immediate west of the Karakorum lies the Hinduraj Range, beyond which is the Hindu Kush Range. The southern boundary is formed by the Gilgit, Indus and Shyok Rivers, which cut through the mountain barriers to create a deep valley, linking the Tarim basin, Sinkiang and Tibet with the plains of the Punjab. Here, in the area of the valley extending from Indus Kohistan to the districts of Gilgit and Baltistan, huge numbers of petroglyphs were found. Along with those images numerous inscriptions, written in Kharoshti, Brahmi, Sogdian, Bactrian, Proto Sarada, Chinese and Hebrew, have been located and studied by scholars.3 Altogether the inscriptions cover the time between the second century BCE and ninth century CE, and for this chapter we are restricting ourselves till third century CE. The different styles of

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drawing of petroglyphs and different languages used for writing inscriptions are connected with various waves of artistic, linguistic and historical development in India, Iran, China and Tibet.4 The presence of different kinds of writing over a long and uninterrupted period is indicative of the fact that this region was used as a passage for pilgrims, merchants and travellers moving between South Asia and Central Asia or China. The route went along the Indus and into the Hunza valley and then branched off towards Samarkand, Tashkurgan and Yarkand, thus becoming an offshoot of the Silk Route. The important sites of the zone are Thalpan, Chilas, Hodar, Oshibat, Thor and Shatial.5 That there was a large influx of people from the Indian sub-continent is clear from the fact that most of the inscriptions are in Kharoshti and Brahmi; Kharoshti was the dominant script of IndoIranian borderlands and northwest India, and Brahmi was the common script used throughout the sub-continent. To understand the kind of people traversing this route, one needs to read through the inscriptions and the engravings. About 30,000 rock carvings reflect early migrations, dynamic changes in artistic patterns and overlaps of indigenous, Indian, Iranian and other religious and cultural spheres. It is also important to gauge the type of political control exercised in the upper Indus valley in the period of our study. In the beginning of the early historical period it was the Achaemenids who held some control over this area. We know that a little before 530 BCE, Cyrus, the Achaemenid emperor of Persia, crossed the Hindu Kush Mountains and received tributes from the people of Kamboja and Gandhara, with Gandhara being the 20th satrapy. In the opinion of Romila Thapar, ‘Achaemenid control over some western parts of Central Asia, as well as over Gandhara, brought the two areas under a single suzerainty, a connection which was to be repeated by various dynasties in subsequent centuries.’6 In spite of Gandhara being a part of the Achaemenid territory, it cannot be confidently said that the regions around Chilas were within their political control. There might have been small chiefdoms ruling independently who surfaced more prominently in the succeeding periods. But cultural influence was definitely felt, and this is reflected in the presence of Achaemenid art and Achemenoid figures of mounted warriors.7 Following the Achaemenids, it was Alexander who marched into this area followed by the Seleucids and then the Mauryas. The location of Asokan edicts written in Kharoshti script in Manshera and Shabazgarhi suggests that Kharoshti was used by people who lived in the northwest of India and so logically people writing in Kharoshti in the caves belonged to northwest of India. In the postMauryan times the area came under the sway of the Bactrian Greeks who came to be known as Indo-Greeks as they crossed the Hindu Kush and were designated Yavanas in the Indian texts. It should be mentioned here 66

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that though we have evidence mainly in the form of numismatic issues of the rule of the Indo-Greeks in the various pockets around the Indus and the Punjab Rivers, the upper Indus valley was perhaps beyond their sphere of direct control and influence. No person with a Greek name has been recorded, nor do we find any inscription written in Greek. A late contemporary of the Indo-Greeks in the northwest were the Sakas. Some Sakas followed routes from Central Asia to northwestern India through the mountain valleys of northern Pakistan, while other groups of Sakas came through Afghanistan and western Iran. We learn from Chinese texts that as a result of the Yueh-chih invasion of the Saka country in Central Asia, a section of the Sakas migrated through a Southern Route across the Pamirs into a part of the extreme northwestern region of the Indian sub-continent. The first Saka invasion of India, which came from the north, resulted in the establishment of a Saka kingdom in the extreme northwest including Swat, Darel, Gilgit and Chilas area by c. 158 BCE.8 Some Kharoshti inscriptions speak of early Saka dynasties.9 Though A.K. Narain10 talked about the plausibility of the use of this route, it was not widely recognised but after these discoveries it is now well accepted that this pathway formed an important artery of communications among the several feeders of the Silk Route. According to Karl Jettmar the appearance of different varieties of Scytho Siberian animal style suggests that movements like that of the Sakas might have started earlier than the Saka inroads. It is apparent from the carvings that this art of the northern nomads was not indigenous to the region to suggest a parallel development. They must have reached such places from the steppes by migrants. Images of animals not indigenous to the mountains point towards cultural diffusion. It is quite natural that migrations or movements occurred in phases. It has been pointed out that a later movement took place in the third century CE bringing the tribes to the south that used the so-called Sarmatian animal style for the decoration of their jewellery.11 There was another group of people who held sway in the regions south of Hindu Kush known as the Saka-Pahlavas. But they entered this region through Bactria and Arachosia. The political control of the Indus valley was taken over by the Kushanas in the coming centuries. The Kushana polity was structured in such a way that there were many local chiefs ruling over respective regions owing allegiance to the Kushana monarch. Under their rule the region from Central Asia to Mathura and even beyond was integrated.12 It was possible to integrate the Indus valley around Chilas, ruled by the local chieftains, in the network of routes used for trade and pilgrimage. Buddhism flourished under their patronage, and the security provided by a single rule helped monks and merchants traverse the rough terrains of the Karakorum. So the connected networks were 67

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conducive for the initial spread of Buddhism beyond South Asia. It was possible for the South Asians to move towards Central Asia and China. One must, however, remember that people from South Asia actually meant a motley group having diverse ethnic origin as shown earlier. Thus the region of our study experienced a continuous presence of heterogeneous people, expression of heterogeneity dominant in the use of scripts and in their ethnic composition. There was perhaps one commonalty, at least, in the period of our study and that was in the religious sphere. The depiction of stupas in their varied forms suggests that Buddhism was the common religious belief of the people who were using Kharoshti as their script.13 The earliest engravings of stupas in the upper Indus valley accompanied by Kharoshti writings date from about the first century BCE to first century CE, when Buddhism gained ground in this region through the travellers from northwest India. Representations of these early stupas are characterised by an external simplicity, a relatively squat form and the pronounced dome. Often we find worshippers depicted near the stupa. In the post-Kushana period the depiction of the stupa is found in a much more embellished form with pilaster, vines, umbrellas, banners.14 Representation of men with horses could also be seen. They are represented in two different ways. One kind of depiction suggests that they were soldiers. The other portrays them as horse traders coming from Central Asia. Thus apart from the much-talked Silk Road, this route witnessed the transmission of artistic, religious and cultural influences and the development of trade relations between Central Asia and South Asia. The movement was in the form of a continuous stream of people belonging to diverse ethnic groups and diverse profession, motivated by economic gain or religious piety or simply by the spirit of adventure, connecting the northwestern part of South Asia to China and Central Asia. Karakoram Highway was indeed a melange of trade and pilgrim routes.

Circulation of legends/stories across the borderlands Our attention may be drawn to a story in the Ghatạ̣ Jātaka no. 45415 which bears close similarity with the Greek myth of Danae.16 In the Jātaka story, it is predicted of princess Devagabba that a son born to her would be the killer of his uncles. So the brothers of Devagabba resolved to keep her a spinster and imprisoned her in a single-pillared room where she would be far off from any male companion. But after a while, a young man, Upasagara gained access to her. Their eldest son fulfilled the prediction when he threw a wheel which beheaded both his uncles. According to the Jātaka story, the incident took place in Uttarapatha. In case of the Greek myth, 68

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Danae was the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos. As the myth goes, Acrisius imprisoned his daughter Danae in a tower for fear of an oracle that if a son was born to her, he would kill Acrisius. But Zeus impregnated her in the form of a shower of gold pouring into her lap. In no time the great hero Perseus was born. The dreaded prediction came true as by an unlucky cast of the discus Acrisius was killed by Perseus.17 It is interesting to note that in the Jātaka story, the flying wheel killed the brothers of Devagabba and in the Greek myth Perseus slew Acrisius with a discus. That the story of Danae or Devagabba inspired local fables is evident from a folklore from Tashkurgan in Chinese Turkestan. From an article by Merlin Peres, entitled ‘To Tashkurgan and Panduwasnara’,18 we learn that a Chinese archaeological expedition team heard this story. According to the story, a soldier was taking a Chinese princess to Persia as a bride for the king. On the way he encountered a war and guarded her in a tower. On his return he found that the princess was pregnant. The explanation, quite like that of Danae, was that a God had come down to her from above. The son born to her later became a renowned hero. The basic similarities between these stories belonging to three different time frames naturally tempt us to believe that probably the story travelled to Greece or to India through a route which traversed the region of Tashkurgan. We know that a flourishing trade network existed between South Asia, Central Asia and West Asia in the early periods of the Christian era. So, trade as a cross-cultural activity and traders as purveyors of culture had immense potential for rich cultural exchange in this period. We do not know whether the Greek myth influenced the Jātaka story or vice versa. But what we know is that in the first century CE, a trade route, popularly known as Silk Route and its extension, began from Loyang in China and reached the two Mediterranean ports at Antioch and Alexandria by traversing through Central Asia, West Asia and Eurasia. From Dunhuang in China, the route bifurcated into two, the Northern and the Southern Silk Routes, located, respectively, to the north and south of the Taklamakan desert. The two branches converged at Kashgarh in Chinese Turkestan and passed through Afghanistan and Iran to reach the famous marts of Seleucia and Palmyra.19 Tashkurgan was located near Kashgarh. The geographical location of Kashgarh was such that it acted as a point of convergence for traders arriving from various directions. Pliny refers to the practice of silent trade in this region. Obviously Kashgarh could have been the transmission point of our story. While merchants are defined by their trans-regional commercial interests, these were not their only interest. In fact merchants played a significant role in shaping the cultural life of the region. 69

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Migration of technological tradition Migration of technological tradition was also possible due to the porous border of the Indo-Iranian borderlands. The greatest influence of the Greeks is seen in the technology of crafts, in domestic utensils and in the manufacture of jewellery of various kinds.20 In the excavations at Sirkap in Taxila, iron tools were found that must surely have added to the efficiency of craftsmen in different branches of work, viz tongs, pliers and scissors – all based on the same mechanical principle of two arms crossing each other at a central point but put to different uses. They were used in the Graeco-Roman world, and until other discoveries were made India seems to have received it from the Hellenistic world (kartari used in Charaka). Thriving commerce facilitated the infusion of technical expertise. This is also evident from the techniques of granulation and filigree, which are seen in the ornaments discovered from Sirkap. Surgical instruments were also excavated from Taxila. One pair of forceps from Sirkap, stratum II, corresponding to early first century BCE was excavated. This pair is similar to many such instruments discovered from Greek and Roman sites, which are displayed in the museums of Europe.21 The technique of granulation, that is the decoration of a gold surface with fine granules, was known in Greece and the Near East for a long time. The art of filigree is affected by soldering fine wire to the surface of the metal, the wire being either plain, twisted, plaited into a chain or beaded. Examples of filigree work may be seen in the disk pendants and earrings, and this method of decorating gold and silver ornaments surely came from the Graeco-Roman world. The semi-precious stones used in jewellery in Taxila were carnelian, chalcedony, agate, onyx, garnet, jasper, lapis lazuli, rock crystal and so on. It is understandable that inlaying of gems in ornaments required technological knowledge. What is also noteworthy is that the semi-precious stones used in Taxila for incrustation were the same as those used in Ai Khanum.22 High technological efficiency in metallurgy has been noticed by Marshall in Taxila. Bronze containing 21–25% tin, with little lead but some antimony, was in general use in Taxila for casting domestic utensils, bells, ornamental pieces. As early as fourth century BCE a technological breakthrough in Taxila was made and that was the earliest evidence of the use of zinc in the world. From Taxila we also learn about the copper-nickel alloy. It was evidently prepared by the smelting of mixed ores of copper and nickel that are known to occur naturally in the province of Yunnan in China and must have reached India through trade.23 This alloy gave a durable silvery lusture and was used for minting coins by the Indo-Greek kings EuthydemusII, Agathocles and Pantaleon. Perhaps nickel alloys of this kind have not so far been found at any other

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ancient site in India. As regards the bead industry, there were technological developments in bead industry during the early historical period and Taxila was no exception. Beads of glass, shell, faience, semi-precious stones, coral and so on have been unearthed. Metal wares of Taxila are also very impressive. Sirkap for the first time produced evidence for the use of copper, bronze and silver for household objects. The copper and bronze caskets were all cast and sometimes embossed. Bowls, cups, ladles, spoons, dishes and plates are all made of copper, bronze or lead.24 Silverwares show the taste of the class of people who lived in Sirkap. Taxila has also produced evidence of glass, which was used for bangles as well as for vessels, among which those of particular importance are the translucent flasks. With this brief overview of select finds from Taxila, it is at least understandable that Taxila could boast of a technological knowledge, which was a combination of indigenous and Hellenistic wisdom. This was in reality the character of the crossroads where we had influences pouring in but the local tradition was not altogether forgotten. Barikot (Bir-kot-ghwandai) is located in the Swat valley. This site was excavated by the Italian Mission. Giuseppe Tucci identified Barikot with the ancient city of Bazira which was conquered by Alexander during his last phase of campaign.25 It has been referred to by Arrian as having a citadel that was very tall and carefully fortified all around.26 That it was a prosperous city is attested by Curtius Rufus. It was strategically located in the central part of the Swat valley and was well connected with the routes from Upper Swat, Lower Swat and Buner. The site has a history of continuous habitation from the proto-historic period. Though Barikot does not offer us with the kind of material that Ai Khanum and Taxila did, it is still important for us because it demonstrates the development of craft production of Hellenistic inspiration. The picture provided by the pottery assemblage of Barikot suggests links with Greek Bactria, and one fact emerges clearly that there was an undeniable presence of workshops and craftsmen of Hellenistic tradition active in the northwest, the only ones who would have been capable of producing materials following a consistent stylistic approach. Along with the potteries of the Ganga valley, several new types appear, including dishes with oblique rectangular walls and everted triangular rims which are similar to Graeco Bactrian dishes known as plat a poisson and small bowls with concave walls and everted triangular rim and necked jars with everted rims of different types which are common with the pottery of the Greek cities of Bactria.27 An embossed emblem was found in the inner base of a red ware bowl or cup depicting in pure Hellenistic style a female bust with slightly bent head turned three quarters to the right. 71

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There are immense similarities between some Taxila materials of Sirkap, Barikot pottery and Ai Khanum materials though they are not contemporary. The stone bases and capitals of the temple of Jandial were worked with such a formal coherence that it is certain that they were produced in workshops of the Hellenistic tradition – as Callieri mentions ‘that it is not an “Indian” production imitating a foreign model but an actual Hellenistic production’.28 The next question that we need to ask is, how do we have an actual Hellenistic production in Taxila or Barikot when they are in no way a proper Greek city? One does not see in Sirkap or Barikot the columned porticoes met with everywhere else in Central Asia from Greek times onwards. Moreover within the city no Greek temple, theatre, gymnasium or any other building associated particularly with the Greeks has so far been found. No Greek inscriptions were found. Taxila’s claim to Hellenistic influence was definitely the layout of Sirkap. However, part of the material culture shows that Taxila did show a preference for Hellenistic way of life. To answer our question we need to go back to political history where we find that eastern Bactria was conquered by the nomads in about 145 BCE.29 In such a historical context it is reasonable to assume that the craftsmen working in the region migrated to the northwest which was already conquered by the Bactrian Greeks in search of a safer settlement. The case of the specialised craftsmen, migrating at the time in which their regular clients lose power and moving towards a place offering new work prospects, is a well-known phenomenon. We have the example of the dispersal of the gem cutters of Alexandria at the time of the Roman conquest. In our case the landscape of the region and proximity to the northwest made the migration much easier. These craftsmen need not belong to a single occupational group. There could be potters, metal smiths, gem cutters, jewellers and others who settled in various urban centres of the northwest and catered to the needs of the people there. Earlier it had been suggested that particular areas of cities were being inhabited by all tradesmen of a particular craft. This view is now gradually being questioned as re-examination of data, or re-excavation of early historic sites like Taxila in the northwest or Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka suggests that different types of craft activity might have been processed in a single area and so there was a co-occurrence of dissimilar crafts (each locus is host to a variety of different craft activities) – segmentation (craft activities at isolated loci).30 Thus there was no clustering of crafts within particular blocks of the exposed city. This further suggests that the migrating craftsmen from Bactria, albeit skilled in different craft activities, perhaps worked together in a common locus and disseminated their knowledge to the indigenous population. The picture that emerges is twofold. On 72

Figure 3.1 Map of Karakoram Highway

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the one hand we find the presence of Hellenistic artefacts unconnected with the tradition of the sub-continent and possibly imported or produced locally by immigrant craftsmen, and on the other hand there are artefacts combining Hellenistic and Indian features. From the preceding survey it is perhaps clear that the ruling Indo-Greek rulers did not refrain from introducing Hellenistic artefacts, minting techniques and so on through the agency of a few immigrant craftsmen who introduced craft traditions new to India, for example the toilet trays. Finally there was a wider diffusion among the Gandharan elite to such an extent that it became widespread in the succeeding periods. The very composite cultural basis of the borderland nourished by Hellenism helped in this diffusion. Through these case studies the chapter argues that during the period under discussion the borderland was porous enough to allow continuous movements and exchanges among neighbours and had been open to interactions with and influences from West and Central Asia. Political intrusion by the Greeks, Scythians, Parthians and Kushanas in the region was perhaps not a deterrent but acted as a stimulant as their culture was part of them and so there was cultural adaptation and adoption both by the rulers and the ruled.

Notes 1 Suchandra Ghosh, “Blurring the Boundaries: Movement and Migration at the Cross Roads of Asia (c.5th Century BCE – c.3rd Century CE),” Journal of Ancient Indian History, 26 (2011), pp. 13–23. 2 G. Fussman in Karl Jettmar, ed., Antiquities of Northern Pakistan, Vol. 1 (Mainz, 1989), p. 22. 3 A.H. Dani, Chilas: The City of Nanga Parvat (Islamabad, 1983). 4 Jason Neelis, Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks (Mobility and Exchange within and beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia) (Leiden, 2010), p. 45. 5 Aloka Parasher, “Beyond Boundaries – Travellers along the Karakorum,” Journal of the Asiatic Societyof Bangladesh (Humanities), 50, nos. 1–2 (2005), pp. 27–60. 6 Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (London, 2002), p. 157. 7 Jettmar Karl, “The Art of the Northern Nomads in the Upper Indus Valley,” South Asian Studies, 7 (London, 1991), pp. 1–20. 8 B.N. Mukherjee, “Commentary,” in H.C. Ray Chaudhuri, ed., Political History of Ancient India (Calcutta, 1996), p. 692. 9 G. Fussman in Karl Jettmar, ed., Antiquities of Northern Pakistan. 10 A.K. Narain, The Indo Greeks (Oxford, 1956), p. 135. 11 Jettmar, op. cit., pp. 10–16.

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12 B.N. Mukherjee, The Rise and Fall of the Kushana Empire (Kolkata, 1989). For a recent study on the political history of the Kushanas see Ranabir Chakravarti, “The Kushanas,” in Dilip K. Chakrabarti and Makkhan Lal, eds., History of Ancient India, Vol. 4 (New Delhi, 2014), pp. 35–68. 13 For a detailed study of the Kharoshti inscriptions see G. Fussman, “Les inscriptions Kharoshthi de la plaine de Chilas,” in Karl Jettmar, ed., Antiquities of Northern Pakistan: Reports and Studies, Vol. 1 (Mainz, 1989), pp. 1–40. 14 Ditte Bandini-Konig, Martin Benmann and Harald Hauptmann, “Rock Art in the Upper Indus Valley,” in Harald Hauptmann, ed., The Indus, Cradle and Crossroads of Civilizations (Islamabad, 1997), pp. 43–44. 15 D. Fausbol, ed., The Jatakas together with Its Commentary, Vol. 4 (London, 1887), Jātaka no. 454. 16 J. Pinsent, Greek Mythology (London, 1982), p. 63. 17 Suchandra Ghosh, “Transmigration of Legends between India and the Hellenistic World: Two Cases,” in G. Bhattacharya, G.J.R. Mervissen, M. Mitra and S Sinha, eds., Kalhar, Professor Enamul Haque Felicitation Volume (New Delhi, 2007). 18 Merlin Peris, “To Tashkurgan and Panduwasnuwara: A Greek Myth on the Silk Routes,” in D.P. Dubey, ed., Rays and Ways of Indian Culture (New Delhi, 1996), pp. 229–41. 19 Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History (New York, 2010); Ranabir Chakravarti, ed., Trade in Early India (New Delhi, 2001), p. 61. 20 A.H. Dani, The Historic City of Taxila (Paris, 1986), p. 86. 21 Nasim H. Naqvi, A Study of Buddhist Medicine and Surgery in Gandhara (New Delhi, 2011), pp. 166–9. 22 C. Rapin, Fouilles D’Aikhanoum, VIII, La Tresorerie Du Palais Hellenistique D’Aikhanoum (Paris, 1992), p. 255. 23 Sir John Marshall, Taxila, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1951), p. 571. 24 Ibid., p. 125. 25 Giuseppe Tucci, “A Preliminary Report on an Archaeological Survey in Swat,” East and West, 9 (1958), pp. 296 and 327. 26 Arrian, Anabasis, IV, 27. 27 Pierfrancesco Callieri, “Decorated Pottery from the IsIAO Excavations at Birkot-Ghwandai (Swat, Pakistan, 2nd century BC–15th century AD),” in M. Taddei and G. De Marco, eds., South Asian Archaeology, 1997 (Rome, 2000), pp. 859, 869, 871. 28 Callieri Pierfrancesco, “Barikot, an Indo-Greek Urban Center in Gandhara,” in Doris Meth Srinivasan, ed., On the Cusp of an Era, Art in the Pre-Kusana World (Leiden, 2007), pp. 133–64. 29 Mukherjee, op. cit. 30 R. Coningham and B.R. Edwards, “Space and Society at Sirkap Taxila: A Re-examination of Urban Form and Meaning,” Ancient Pakistan, 12, pp. 47–75.

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4 MINOR TRADE BETWEEN INDIA AND TIBET AND NEW ROUTES AFTER THE BRITISH INTERVENTION M.N. Rajesh

Religion has emerged as the main prism through which Tibet has been represented, and by extension centuries of Indo-Tibetan contacts too have been approached from this. Thus, the larger picture that one gets of the Indo-Tibetan contacts is the travel of Indic ideas and practices to Tibet. One of the casualties of such an approach that stressed the predominance of religion is the obscuring of other forms of contacts, some of which were couched in religion and are inseparable, but the modern classification views such phenomena as purely religious. Medicine is one such example as the transfer of medicinal knowledge was inseparable without religion as they were intertwined and such a reading would be anachronistic and would be a false opposition in the Tibetan case.1 However, the transfer of medicinal knowledge and ingredients of the Tibetan materiamedica, some of which have an undoubtedly Indian origin, are not studied in detail.2 Similarly, in the case of religion also, religious artefacts have not emerged as an area of enquiry as the volume of trade between Tibet and other regions in terms of religious commodities was very small. An exception is found only in the context of Tibeto-Mongolian trade where religious artefacts find frequent and detailed mention as the volume of trade was very high. The blockprinted Tibetan Kangyur’s and Tangyur’s (the religious texts which form the core of Tibetan Buddhism) were in high demand in Mongolia.3 In the Indian context yak-tails or camara have been an important part of the temple rituals since a very ancient period and are used as fly whisks, originated from Tibet. Similarly conch shells played an important role in the Tibetan monastic rituals and are sourced from India and Southeast Asia (through 76

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India). This chapter thus argues that there was a sizeable prevalence of trade when one examines the history of Indo-Tibetan contacts, but this has been obscured due to historiographical bias and problems of using certain static categories. The various histories of Tibet by Indian, Chinese and Western scholars have disproportionately focused on religion and politics, leading to an erasure of other aspects of Tibetan life. This is not surprising for two reasons, the first reason is that Tibet was a religious state ruled by the Buddhist monasteries since the fourteenth century CE and by the Dalai Lamas since the seventeenth century CE when the Tibetan state was proclaimed under the Fifth Dalai Lama as the ‘harmonious blend of religion and politics’. It can be understood as a culmination of the Buddhist ascendancy that began on a large scale since the twelfth century CE when many Lamas emerged as a solid literary elite in Tibet and therefore, most of the literature composed in Tibet was of a religious nature or had a religious tinge. Second, the discovery of India by the Europeans during the romantic period presupposed the existence of religion in India and the discovery of China in the Enlightenment period invested China with a scientific past.4 As a landlocked and secluded region Tibet had a subsistence economy and limited trade with China, Nepal, Mongolia and India, with China accounting for the largest share of trade, and this was the tea trade with Tibetan demand for tea in the form of bricks.5 Tea was an important item for the Tibetans as it was not just a beverage like in other societies but a staple food as the Tibetan diet consisted of tsampa or barley moistened with butter tea, the other items consumed being sheep and yak meat as there were very few vegetables and cereals in Tibet. Tea trade with China is well documented in Tibetan sources as also the Chinese silk, and in return the Tibetans supplied them with yak meat, borax and other natural products but no processed or manufactured goods. So important and voluminous was this trade that there was also a separate ministry established by the Chinese called the tea horse agency, and it brought in a considerable amount of profit and that much like the maritime trade of Song China, the Central Asian trade was also an important source of income in the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE.6 Thus the image of Tibet as a region that has more in common with its Buddhist neighbours is well essayed in historiography, and this image has carried on despite doing a lot of damage to the image to Tibet by creating stereotypes. Even later writers like Janet Rizvi have laid undue stress on this aspect by emphasising the peculiar nature of Tibetan trade, harping on the fact that most of the trade carried out with the Buddhist countries was in the form of tribute.7 One aspect that is missed out is that the political 77

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system of Tibet was very different from that of the other contemporary polities in the world, including its neighbours, and second, these alliances were also shaped in a very different way on account of the evolution of the Tibetan polity under the twin determinants of extraterritorial actors and the shared language of Buddhism. Thus the political geography of Inner Asia by the seventeenth century (beginning from the thirteenth century CE) reveals the presence of a peculiar type of arrangement known as choyon or priest-patron relationship where the Tibetans were the priests and the secular rulers like the Mongols and Manchus were the patrons.8 After the collapse of the Tibetan Empire in 842 CE Tibet ceased to be a great military power, and the Mongol interlude in c. 1246 CE Tibet was spared of the Mongol invasion but was from thence forced to look up to extraterritorial actors as military patrons in the absence of an army and a fighting force. Caravans and traders also traversed the routes of Central Asia and not just monks or religious missions as the dominant impression goes. It is thus in amazement that Charles Sherring as late as in 1906 talks of the town of Gartok where traders from Central Asia, China, Hindustan, Ladakh, Kashmir, Tartary, Yarkand and Lhasa all came.9 This reveals that the generalised images of Tibet that were propagated by the early explorers were at odds with the developments and the already-existing networks. However, since the early images of Tibet were already cast as an exotic place imbued with religiosity, they persisted.10 The paradigm was set and it was thus difficult to overcome it, though many of the administrators and travellers found some problems with this narrative as they found a great deal of similarity between the Tibetans or people of Tibet proper and the border peoples.11 Thus we see that the pre-modern rulers of the different polities in India and the people of the borderlands and Nepal had clear ideas about Tibet and the Tibetan trade and its potential as the sources show. One of the most important sources for this is the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri where there are frequent references to Tibet and the surrounding regions. One can see that as many as 35 different mountain passes were available to Tibet from Kamarupa, and this was one of the important routes for horses to Lakhnauti. This text further mentions that in the market town of Lakhnauti, one of the most important towns of medieval Bengal, 1,500 horses were sold every morning which is very significant. Though the number seems to be a conventional one, the mention of ‘more than a thousand’ is also an indicator of the importance.12 Lakhnauti was important for another reason, being that as it ensured the supply of horses for Bengal, it was in a pivotal position as far as the trade routes were concerned as it marked an important destination for the Tibetan trade. It would also be worthwhile to mention another important point that Bengal was the only region in India where two types of horses, the classic 78

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Central Asian horses and the Tangan horses of Tibet and Yunnan, were sold. The popularity of Tangan horses is also attested in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri and is mentioned as a popular item in Bengal and also in the Mughal cavalry centuries later.13 What is attested here is that while the contacts between India and Tibet date to the seventh century CE and were of a religious nature to have come to an end by 1206 CE after the destruction of Nalanda and Buddhism in the aftermath of the Turkish invasion, we also see parallel contacts, that is of the horse sellers. In fact one of the early references to Persians in the Tibetan reconstruction of Buddhism is associated with horses, and Taranatha in his famed work The History of Buddhism in India and Tibet recounts the story of a Persian king who made a gift of jewels and horses to a king of madhya-desha.14 Continuing from this we also see the presence of a number of Persians in Bengal, and Taranatha specifically mentions that they were Persians of the mlechcha faith, indicating that they were different from the earlier pre-Islamic Persians.15 Along with a history of the religious contacts between Tibet and India there is also a history of commercial contacts that survived even after the fall of Buddhism in north India in 1206. This event is referred to in Tibetan history as the cutting off of the umbilical cord. On a closer reading it is more of a religious issue, and there is still space for other readings of the Indo-Tibetan contacts and the commercial transactions would illustrate the same better. Two points become clearer in this, one being that trade was not an insignificant part of the Tibetan socio-economic structure as essayed in the modern representations of Tibet following a Eurocentric discourse that has now become conventional. Second, Tibetan trade to China was predominantly a horse–tea exchange but also included many other items, and some of them were also traded to India through the many Himalayan passes. The traditional trade routes that find frequent mention are the two great corridors to Tibet from Kalimpong in the east and Ladakh in the west. Both of them became famous after the eighteenth century when the wool marts became prominent after the rise of the East India Company in Bengal and north India. However, the linkages between Nepal, Patna, Bengal and the other regions are mentioned and also the merchants who travelled and sold their wares directly or through intermediaries to Tibet, and the reason that these routes are not in great focus after the eighteenth century is the changed nature of the commodities and volume of trade. It is at this juncture that among the list of commodities we see yak-tails.16 Both these items were regular and also low profile. Yak-tails were important as they were transmitted through different networks to all parts of India as a ritual item in royal courts and temples and also in Sri Lanka and thus were connected to the Tibetan trade network. This connection was not clearly established and also is not fully mapped till now. This is also because even 79

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authoritative works did not deem it important to focus on such items as their horizons were limited to small volumes or to luxury items. Wim van Spengen’s Tibetan Border Worlds: A Geohistorical Analysis of Trade and Traders is a case in this point. It is only when we return to the western corridor in Ladakh that we hear the names of many trading groups who ventured to Tibet and beyond, and here too we get to know of yak-tails in large numbers.17 The yak-tails from Ladakh were supplied in great numbers to the religious establishments all over north India. A similar voice is echoed by other writers too who forged networks with large parts of north India. Like the yak-tails, it was earlier surmised that the conches which also formed an important item of export to Tibet as ritual items in the monasteries came from south India and were traded to Tibet through Bengal. However, the conch trade from Bengal to Tibet has a large number of references.18 In fact all the items were in detail a matter of consideration for Bogle who was the first representative of the East India Company to Tibet. Trade between Bengal and Tibet was a matter of great discussions and what was subsumed among other items is the conch trade, and with the onset of the British rule in India the Panchen Lama, when contacted by the British for trade relations, expressed interest in religion and religious articles and requested for right-turning conches from India.19 Jahar Sen in a lengthy article makes the canvas larger by saying that this trade has to be placed in a larger perspective, that is India’s trade with Central Asia through Nepal. Here, we see the presence of many trading communities like the businessmen from Patna, Kashmiri traders, traders from Assam and Cooch Behar and Bengal that are indicative of the confluence of these diverse groups of traders in marts and a larger trading world.20 The trade routes can be grouped into the four major trade routes from Tibet that were prominent from the period of the Tibetan Empire (c. seventh century CE) to the modern period. Of the four routes mentioned here the third and the fourth are important to us for this topic. 1 2 3 4

The eastern route via Tachienlu to China. The northeastern route via Koko Nor to China, the Turks and Siberia. The northwestern route via Ladakh to Khotan, Kashgarh, Kucha and trans-Oxania: to Bokhara and Samarkand. The Trans-Himalayan routes to Ladakh, Kashmir, Indian states, Nepal, Sikkim, Cooch Behar, Bhutan and Assam.21

Leh and Darjeeling emerged as two important towns after the rise of British presence in India. The pace was accelerated after the colonial state took over India in 1858, and we see a transformation of both these towns and their 80

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rise as marts and the eclipsing of other routes to Tibet. Beginning from the days of the height of the Mughal Empire in India one of the most important products of exports to Europe was the Kashmiri shawl, and the early European travellers like Bernier remarked that the shawl was one of the main items that brought revenue to Kashmir and the Mughal state was one of the main purchasers of the shawl as it was presented to the nobles and this practice spread wherever the Mughal Empire expanded as far as Bijapur and Golconda in the Deccan.22 For the Mughals, the use of shawls was one way of conferring honour. It was one among the many practices in South Asia and has been analysed in detail by Stewart Gordon in his work titled Robes of Honour: Khi’lat in Pre-Colonial and Colonial India, and the practice of the Mughal state giving shawls was a variant of such a practice.23 In Europe the audience that had a taste for the Kashmiri shawl used it mainly as table cloths and counterpanes first in England by the East India Company and later by the nineteenth century, France became the most important customer of Kashmiri shawls.24 One of the important trends in the shawl trade is the change in patterns and production based on European preferences, but what remained unchanged is the place of Leh as the source of the wool.25 The Ladakh trade increased after two important developments in Tibet, the introduction of metal coinage in Tibet from the late sixteenth century CE and the unification of the Tibetan state under the Fifth Dalai Lama in 1642 CE.26 Wool was the main commodity that was exported to Leh from Tibet as the contiguous regions of western Tibet were the source of wool that was woven in Kashmir. In 1643, the king of Ladakh closed the routes apprehending Mughal invasions that became a reality and then followed a war with Tibet that led to the Ladakh-Tibet Treaty of 1684 and it regulated both wool and Chinese tea that were the main commodities of export.27 According to the Italian Jesuit Ippolito Desideri, the trip took nearly 168 days to reach Lhasa and was thus an arduous one in high altitude with compulsory food supplies needed for the first three months.28 Such a dangerous journey was also filled with even more dangers like the fear of bandits and harsh weather that led the British to look at the Kalimpong route to Tibet in the eastern Himalayas. Nepal was seen as a plural entity by traders but missed out by many writers who focused on the Kathmandu valley. Two such regions that were seen as part of Nepal and later became British India are the regions of Kumaun and Garhwal. It is here that the importance of Dharchula and the trading communities of the Rongpa come into the picture. Except for one author Charles Sherring, there are no noticeable works on this particular area. Very few references are found for this region, and they are by and large anthropological. One striking point is that before 1962 when the borders were still open with Tibet, a steady trade was carried out by the Rang people. In 81

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addition to both the eastern and western routes, there is a Himalayan route from Dharchula as a base and this route had the villages Chaudas, Byas, Munshiyari and Garbayang as the major points. The trade with Tibet through these regions needs to be explored in detail so as to shed light on the connections between north India and Tibet. It is also important as this is one of the routes to Kailash. There is also a route that was built partly by the patronage of the Maharaja of Mysore to Kailash passing through this region and is recounted in the local folklore. Similarly we also see that the trade was conducted at Chouna, a village on the Assam side. Here many items of exchange are mentioned. While trade from Ladakh and Kalimpong has attained the status of a cosmopolitan venture, such a status has eluded this network, which however has great potential for research, as trade and religion in the form of pilgrimage are intertwined here. In the eastern Himalayas, the rise of Kalimpong was singularly due to the fact that it was the shortest trade route from India to the heart of Tibet and was developed primarily because of two reasons, one being the need to safeguard the northern borders of India and other the trade with Tibet.29 As the political situation created problems and the trade with Tibet through Nepal was difficult due to the difficult route, the route by Sikkim and the Jelep Pass of Kalimpong was favoured, but it took more than a century for this to materialise. The items of trade included horses, blankets, wool, musk, musical instruments, tar, tea and shoes, and the importance of wool is clearly reflected here.30 Most of the trade was carried out from Tibet to Nepal by the Kyirong-Kathmandu and the Kuti-Kathmandu routes and from there to India.31 But the story has many turns and twists and goes back to the early days of the East India Company in India. Having come to know that wool in Gyantse, the second most important town after Lhasa, was a frequently traded item, the British started making initial forays through the Gossains and later came to know about the larger trade between Tibet and China; and thus through the office of the Panchen Lama the British sent a request from the East India Company for trade relations with China. In the company’s view the item that was important from Tibet was wool as the popularity of the Kashmiri shawl would testify and thus the route to Gyantse that lay in central Tibet was the primary goal to reach Tibet.32 In this direction, they tried many alternatives in competition with the other European powers like the Dutch and the French like sourcing wool from Iran or trying to breed the goats of Tibet and Central Asia. The greatest hurdle that the British, like all Europeans, faced in this shawl business was while the rise of an imitation shawl industry took off in Europe, they were never able to source the best pashm wool that the Kashmiri weavers painstakingly wove to produce the lightweight shawls.33 Thus the route to 82

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central Tibet became a necessity, and Kalimpong was favoured as it was the shortest route. The shift we see by this time is that Tibet was seen as a supplier of wool to India and also as a market for the fledgling tea industry of Assam.34 This is now a clear shift from the earlier commodities whereby horses were important for centuries followed by smaller items as musk and the rise of tea. It is indeed a paradox that tea which came from Tibet to Darjeeling was thoroughly domesticated here that it became the mainstay of the economy in Darjeeling, and in 1889, F. Prestage, the chairman of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Company, presented a report to the British resident arguing for a railway line extension from Darjeeling to as far as Manibhanjan on the eastern end of the Kathmandu valley and pointed out that it would yield many benefits to Nepal, India and England. Among the many benefits, wool to Calcutta from Tibet and the tea from India to Tibet were the favoured commodities.35 The rise of Kalimpong was mainly due to the defeat of the Nepalese by the British and the Anglo-Nepal Treaty of Sagauli in 1816, followed by the defeat of the Sikkim Raja by the British and the consequent Treaty of Tunlong (1861), followed by the defeat of Bhutan and the Treaty of Sinchulia (1865). In the disturbed environment in India after the revolt of 1857, the British found allies in the Gurkhas and the theory of martial races led to the increase of Gurkha regiments in Darjeeling followed by the rapid increase in tea gardens and industry.36 Thus the character of the Tibetan trade to India underwent a major shift both in terms of commodities and also in volume with the rise of Leh and Kalimpong as wool marts overshadowing other marts.

Notes 1 The Tibetan Astro-Medical Institute or Men-TseeKhang was established in the seventeenth century and, as the name indicates, conveys a meaning of inseparability of astrological sciences and medicine. 2 Pasang Yonten Arya, Dictionary of Tibetan Materia Medica (Motilal Banarsidass Publications, 1998). 3 M.N. Rajesh, Gompas in Traditional Tibetan Society (Decent Books, 2007), p. 128. 4 Frits Staal, “ ‘Introduction’ to ‘Part II Systematic Thought,’ ” in Gavin Flood, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), p. 346. 5 Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 (University of Hawaii Press, 2003), p. 218. 6 Ibid., pp. 218–19. 7 Janet Rizvi, Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 10. 8 Thomas Laird, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama (Grove Press, 2007), pp. 135, 199. 9 Kenneth M. Bauer, High Frontiers: Dolpo and the Changing World of Himalayan Pastoralists (Columbia University Press, 2013), p. 70.

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10 For a detailed discussion on the orientalist writings and Tibet refer to Dibyesh Anand, Tibet: A Victim of Geopolitics (Routledge Chapman & Hall, 2008). 11 Zahiruddin Ahmad, “The Ancient Frontier of Ladakh,” The World Today, 16, no. 7 (1 July, 1960), pp. 313–18. 12 Sen, op. cit., p. 218. 13 F.A. Qadri, “Society and Economy of Kamarupa in the Early 13th Century as Reflected in the Context of Muhammad Bin Bhaktiyar Khilji’s Invasion,” in Mignonette Momin and Cecile A. Mawlong, eds., Society and Economy in NorthEast India (Daya Books, 2004), p. 264. 14 Tārānātha, Taranatha’s History of Buddhism in India (Motilal Banarsidass, 1990), p. 137. 15 Ibid., p. 318. 16 Wim van Spengen, Tibetan Border Worlds: A Geohistorical Analysis of Trade and Traders (Routledge, 2000), pp. 106–7. 17 Luce Boulnois, “Gold, Wool and Musk: Trade in Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century,” in Gray Tuttle and Kurtis R. Schaeffer, eds., The Tibetan History Reader (Columbia University Press, 2013), p. 467. 18 Kate Teltscher, The High Road to China: George Bogle, the Panchen Lama and the First Expedition to Tibet (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), p. 241. 19 Toni Huber, The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India (University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 413. 20 Jahar Sen, “India’s Trade with Central Asia via Nepal,” Bulletin of Tibetology, 8, no. 2 (1971): 21–40. 21 Christopher I. Beckwith, “Tibet and the Early Medieval Florissance in Eurasia: A Preliminary Note on the Economic History of the Tibetan Empire,” Central Asiatic Journal, 21, no. 2 (1977). 22 Tripta Verma, “ ‘Shawl’ Karkhana during Mughal Period from Akbar to Aurangzeb,” in Pratima Asthana and Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri, eds., Transformations in Indian History (New Delhi, Anamika Publishers & Distributors, 2009), pp. 279–84. 23 Stewart Gordon, Robes of Honour: Khil’at in Pre-Colonial and Colonial India (Oxford University Press, 2003). 24 Verma, op. cit., p. 284. 25 Michelle Maskiell, “Consuming Kashmir: Shawls and Empires, 1500–2000,” Journal of World History, 13, no. 1 (1 April, 2002), pp. 27–30. 26 Boulnois, op. cit., p. 460. 27 Ibid., p. 470. 28 Ibid., p. 471. 29 Atis Dasgupta, “Ethnic Problems and Movements for Autonomy in Darjeeling,” Social Scientist, 27, no. 11/12 (1 November, 1999), pp. 48–9. 30 Ibid., p. 49. 31 Boulnois, op. cit., p. 462. 32 Teltscher, op. cit., pp. 14, 26, 38, 204. 33 Maskiell, op. cit., pp. 44–5. 34 Teltscher, op. cit., p. 545. 35 Sen, op. cit., pp. 30–1. 36 Dasgupta, op. cit., pp. 47–8.

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5 SLAVERY AND THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY (VOC) IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ISLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA Leonard Andaya

Interactions between India and Southeast Asia can be traced before the common era and have been the subject of numerous and increasingly sophisticated studies. While there is a vast corpus of works examining the role of India in Southeast Asia, studies of the reverse flow are still in its infancy.1 The literature on the India-Southeast Asia connection has focused primarily on the exchange of goods and ideas, which have spawned an entire genre of ‘Indianisation’ studies in Southeast Asia for the prenineteenth-century period. Indian sailors, merchants and even Brahmans figure prominently, but only occasional mention is made of the numerous Indians who were brought to the region as slaves. While we know little of the fate of these Indian slaves, this human traffic is another aspect of the India-Southeast Asia connection that deserves further study. The slave trade in the Indian Ocean world was an indigenous small-scale enterprise, leaving behind very few records. By contrast, the North Atlantic slave trade was dominated by Europeans, who kept systematic accounts of the traffic in human cargo that have formed the basis of numerous studies of slavery as an institution. It is inevitable, therefore, that the theoretical ideas of what constitutes slavery should have been influenced by this debate. Yet there is a vast difference in the ‘industrial slavery’ of the plantations of the Americas, for example, from the dominant forms of slavery found in South Asia or Southeast Asia. The North Atlantic slave traffic involved the long-distance forceful transportation of African slaves to the New World to labour as plantation workers; in the Indian Ocean world the use of the word ‘slave’ was culturally contested because of its close association with other

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forms of unfree labour. Even the apparently least contentious and widely accepted proposition among Western scholars that a slave is property or chattel that can be bought and sold has been challenged. Instead, in South and Southeast Asia there is a growing tendency to recognise the variant cultural and historical conditions under which slavery was practised and understood, hence focusing attention on ‘slaveries’.2 Within regions often grouped together in scholarly discourse (such as ‘South Asia’ or ‘Southeast Asia’), the particularities of individual areas make it difficult to do more than offer a few general characteristics that can be applied to most of the examples of slavery. Richard Eaton, one of the editors of a collected volume on Slavery and South Asian History, proposed the following definition of slavery as used and understood by the contributors: ‘[T]he condition of uprooted outsiders, impoverished insiders – or the descendants of either – serving persons or institutions on which they are wholly dependent.’ He recognised that in South Asia almost everyone formed part of a hierarchically structured group, and that slaves were more dependent on the will and power of another than were non-slaves.3 In another collection an attempt to determine an Indian Ocean world definition of slavery proved edifying, but in the end the editor of the volume, Gwyn Campbell, carefully concluded that ‘the concept of “slavery” was highly time- and culture-specific’.4 Among scholars of Southeast Asia, the term ‘slavery’ has most often been equated with debt bondage, though the cultural variations and implications of labour and dependency have resulted in some scholars deliberately using indigenous terms instead of slavery to highlight cultural specificities.5 One of the earliest and still the most useful collection bears a meaningful title that incorporates the major elements of the debate in Southeast Asia: Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia. In the introduction to the volume written by Anthony Reid, the complexity and overlapping elements of slavery, debt bondage and social attitudes of dependency are intelligently discussed. He argues that the term ‘slavery’ should be retained for those in bondage ‘whose character as property is most marked’. It is at the point of sale that the chattel and the ‘outsider’ quality of the slave become established.6 In this chapter I hope to contribute to the debate by using a time- and culture-specific approach advocated by Gwyn Campbell in order to examine what ‘slavery’ meant in the Southeast Asian context in the seventeenth century. I begin by discussing what the term meant in the pre-seventeenth century period and then examine the major factors in the seventeenth century that transformed ideas of slavery for the Southeast Asians. In the subsequent section I provide the historical and cultural context for understanding a specific case of slavery as it occurred in the eastern Indonesian islands and in the Birdshead and Onin Peninsulas in Papua. The 86

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conclusion then summarises the major findings in this chapter and offers some thoughts on the ongoing debate on slavery as part of the history of interconnections between India and Southeast Asia.

Slavery in pre-seventeenth-century Southeast Asia Embedded within Southeast Asian social structures is the idea of hierarchy and dependency. Individual relationships are governed by generational difference, with respect and deference given to the elderly. It was not uncommon for the ruler to be regarded as the father and mother, and his subjects as his or her children. But any lord or commander could be regarded in the same relationship with his followers. The first-person singular pronoun is often the same word for ‘slave, subject’ and used in self-reference when addressing a superior. The subject undertakes to serve his lord/superior with total devotion as labourer, procurer or producer of goods, and as a member of the lord’s retinue or fighting force when required. The lord reciprocates by providing the subject with protection, credit and a path to increased status through association with a prestigious and powerful family. In pre-colonial Southeast Asia there was a dearth of people and an abundance of forested land. For rulers or lords to attract subjects, they had to be able to offer real advantages or face the prospect of their own people seeking the ‘protective shade’7 of another lord or simply moving to new lands that could be cleared, cultivated and occupied. Raids by competing lords seeking subjects made life precarious, and so coming under the protection of a lord eliminated some of the uncertainties and fears of living without a patron. Equally important once settled under the protection of the lord was the ability to obtain credit when necessary to purchase seeds and farm implements, to repair boats and nets and to purchase food and medicines in times of famine or grave illness. Credit could then be repaid over time as the subject worked the land or fished the seas in better times. Another important advantage of being part of a lord’s retinue was the ability to increase one’s status and gain fame and advantage for one’s family. Finally, there was the belief or hope that if seized in a raid one would be ransomed by the lord. Entering into a debt–bondage relationship, therefore, was a more demanding form of dependency than an ordinary patron–client relationship, but it was regarded as temporary and reversible. The obligations of subjects to their lord were primarily in the form of labour and on occasion as soldiers and members of the retinue on public occasions. Whenever called upon to perform tasks such as clearing the lord’s land for cultivation, contributing labour and food for special feasts for the various rites of passage of the lord’s family or undertaking projects to 87

Figure 5.1 Map of the island world of Southeast Asia

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build roads, boats or royal structures, the subjects did so without compensation. In centralising polities, these occasional demands were institutionalised into specific number of days of corvée labour that had to be performed each year. In addition, whenever an army or militia was required, the men had to serve by bringing their own supplies during the duration of a campaign. Such subject–lord relationships were first noted in the late seventh century in the famous polity of Srivijaya. In a recent study of its political organisation based on seventh-century inscriptions, the term used to define the polity was huluntuhan, consisting of the word hulun (‘subject’) and tuhan (‘lord’). The perception of the society as consisting of networks of subjects and lords was also found in Java and is affirmed in the sixteenth century, where the compound word used was the Javanese kawula-gusti (‘subject-lord’).8 The relationship between lord and subject is conceptualised in the kinship terms of father/mother and child, and so the use of huluntuhan (and kawula-gusti in Java) clearly depicts the polity as a family unit.9 Marriages between the families of the central and peripheral lords were a primary means of strengthening and extending the family/polity. Other common methods used for the same purpose were by enabling the children of powerful lords to share the same milk mother as the ruler’s heir,10 and the adoption by the royal family of individuals possessing special abilities. Obligations of subject to lord were thus equated to familial obligations due a father and mother by their children. Maintaining the well-being of the family was the duty of the father and mother figures, and in return the labour and loyalty of the children were assured. New subjects were attracted to successful families, and hence a steady supply of labourers for all the required tasks was usually met through a social hierarchy of dependency expressed in terms of family ties. Because labour needs were filled by debt bondsmen/women and by corvée obligations, slave raids in pre-seventeenth-century Southeast Asia were not intended to acquire labour. Instead, slaving in this period could be regarded as a part of an economic exchange network. While acknowledging the violence and suffering involved in the raiding and ransoming of individuals, from a strictly economic viewpoint the process served to redistribute labour, reallocate resources and create kinship bonds that facilitated other exchanges.11 Except for major wars between powerful centralising polities as in mainland Southeast Asia, the numbers of war captives who were enslaved were relatively small. By the very nature of raids, captives were often victims from neighbouring communities and, to facilitate ransom negotiations, they were not sent to distant places. Runaway slaves and ransoming of slaves provided a mechanism for the return of those seized in 89

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raids or wars. In the eastern Indonesian island of Seram Laut, for example, the people contributed to a fund which was used for the payment of ransom and hence prevent the loss of valuable inhabitants.12 If they were not redeemed by their own people, slaves were often employed in the households of their captors. The more fortunate among them would be able to become incorporated into the family through marriage or adoption, which usually occurred by the second generation. In certain cases, such slaves formed a separate social unit within the local social hierarchy. Yet in some societies the stigma of having once been slaves remained in the form of their lowly occupations, poor housing and their being shunned as marriage partners. The mechanism of ransoms and the openness of Southeast Asian societies to the absorption of outsiders obviated the worst forms of slave practices, though there is no denying the cruelty and suffering that it inflicted. In the wars between the Burmese and the Siamese between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, large numbers of Siamese war captives or slaves were forcibly transplanted and re-settled in the capital of the victorious Burmese. The purpose of the wars, however, was not to seize people but to settle rival claims of who was the greater Buddhist ruler. The mass displacement of people was intended to weaken any future challenge from a rival, though there was a deliberate targeting of those with special skills, such as smiths of various kinds, court dancers, artisans, weavers and artists. Most of these special individuals were absorbed into the host society in the second generation, though some continued to retain their earlier ethnic identities and maintained their skills even to the present because of the special status it conferred in the host society.13 In short, slaving through wars and raids was rarely conducted for the purpose of filling labour requirements since they were usually met by traditional obligations between rulers and subjects. But this situation changed dramatically with the introduction of cash crops and the entry of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) into Southeast Asia in the seventeenth century.

The VOC, cash crops and the transformation of slavery in Southeast Asia The Dutch East India Company (VOC) formed in 1602 was unlike any other trading enterprise. Although it was a private joint-stock company whose primary objective was profit for its shareholders, it was given quasisovereign powers by the states general of the Republic of the Netherlands. Throughout its jurisdiction in the Asian region and in the Cape Settlement 90

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in South Africa, the VOC could levy taxes on its subjects, create armies, build fortresses and even sign treaties with sovereign powers. It was also highly capitalised, possessed some of the most modern naval and cannon technology of any other power at the time and combined the experiences of the rival Dutch trading companies that formed the new entity. Despite the VOC’s unique advantages, for nearly two decades it had no permanent headquarters in Asia. A major turning point in its history and that of the region was the foundation of Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in 1619, which was to become the nerve centre for the entire VOC operations from the Cape Settlement to China. The foundation and the ongoing physical development of Batavia and its environs, coupled with similar projects in other Dutch-controlled settlements in Ambon (1605), Banda (1621), Melaka (1641) and Makassar (1667), required vast amounts of labour. Some of the labour needs for Batavia were met by the Javanese, who were paid wages through contracts with their lords, but in general the indigenous populations were reluctant or even forbidden to work for the Dutch. The absence of available cheap labour was a major problem for the VOC authorities, who were always obsessively concerned with costs. The solution, therefore, was to acquire slaves for the many projects of the VOC.14 The decision to use slaves had to be reconciled with one of the visions of the architect of the VOC Empire in Asia, Governor General Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1618–23, 1627–9). From the very outset, Coen had conceived of Batavia as a colonial Asian establishment. At the uppermost layer of the colony would be a European minority (including Dutch ‘burgers’, i.e. those formerly in the service of the VOC), who would be supported by those of mixed blood (almost exclusively offspring of Dutch men and native women). The entire economic foundation of Batavia would rely on the labour of thousands of slaves, especially from India, and an equally large number of immigrants from China. To achieve Coen’s vision, many thousands of Asians were necessary to populate the colony and make it economically viable. In the early 1630s Batavia had a total population of about 8,000, of whom 1,373 were burgers and 1,912 were current VOC employees. A half century later the population of Batavia had risen to 32,000, with 2,200 burgers and 90% Asians.15 The primary reason for the vast increase of Asians in Batavia was the VOC policy to use Asian slaves to meet the labour requirements and to fulfil the goal of making Batavia a colonial ‘Asian’ settlement. The annual import of slaves into Batavia was necessary because of the scale of the building projects in Batavia itself. The Dutch had ambitious plans to build an entire city along with fortifications on a site of a fishing village. It was a mammoth task that continued well into the seventeenth 91

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century. The VOC official Johan Nieuhof was in Batavia from 1667 to 1670 and has left an extensive description of the city, which would have impressed neighbouring rulers both for its scale and its use of permanent building materials rather than wood as was the practice in native settlements.16 He listed eight major streets running in a straight line through the city, each about 30 feet wide and paved with brick, with cross-streets. There were also no fewer than 15 canals that flowed through the city and served as thoroughfares. The major canals were lined with stones and crossed by some 56 bridges supported by large stone arches, each about 12 feet wide. In addition there were wooden drawbridges that spanned the major canals. Within the city were the public buildings, including several churches. The Cross-Church was built in 1640 of solid stone; another church was erected within the castle itself in 1644 with polished white and blue stone floors and the pews carved of the best wood available in the Indies; and while Nieuhoff was there the foundations were laid for another church, whose stone foundations had almost been completed. As in any Dutch settlement, the City Hall (Stadhuis) occupied a central place and was built of brick in 1652. It was a two-story structure with finely glazed windows and with beautifully wrought ironwork. There were other requisite buildings: the main hospital with its outhouses for the doctors, the apothecaries and their servants; other hospitals for the Chinese and one for children; the Pest House (for contagious diseases), the spin house for ‘wayward’ women; the slaughter houses; a linen house for the washing and whitening of linen cloth; warehouses for the storage of cloth and other goods; housing for all the artisans; and the various markets. The pride of Batavia was the castle itself, a quadrangular structure with four stone bastions with watch-houses placed at convenient distance between them, and surrounded by a wide and deep moat. Within the castle grounds were residences for the governor general, members of the Council of the Indies (the governing body), the head factor in charge of accounts, the general bookkeeper, the secretary of the council, the captain of the armoury, the commander of the soldiery and the physician and surgeon. The governor general’s mansion was a two-storied structure of brick, whose roof, but particularly its turret, could be seen a great distance out to sea. It was a large building whose broad stone steps led up to the chambers where the Council of the Indies met, and where the secretaries and the accountants had their offices. Behind the building were pleasant walkways planted with trees and a summer house built on piles over the water. The armoury had separate compartments for the various types of weapons, with underground vaults for the gunpowder. Storage houses were also constructed for 92

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meat, bacon, wine, Dutch butter, oil, vinegar and other provisions. The environs of the city were transformed into plantations of sugar cane, rice and other fruit trees, and served by seven mills: a corn mill, four gunpowder mills, a sawmill and a paper mill – all run by water. The vast scale of the Batavia project engaged free and unfree labour for many years, and even at the time that Nieuhoff left Batavia in 1670, there were plans afoot to build a new tower and steeple on one of the bastions, additions to two of the gates of the city, and to enlarge the city to the east and north. The labour requirements could not be met by the indigenous population, nor was there a sufficient number of Chinese coolies for hire. Slaves, therefore, were regarded as an ongoing necessity, and so a systematic programme for the purchase of slaves was instituted. The scale of slave imports can only be appreciated by figures which show that slaves in Batavia constituted 49.05% of the total population of 27,068 in 1673, 51.97% of the total population of 32,124 in 1679; and 56.93% of the total population of 21,966 in 1699. In the other Dutch cities of Ambon and Makassar, slaves also constituted more than half the total population.17 While most of the slaves were absorbed in Batavia, some were re-exported to other VOC settlements in Amboina,18 Banda and Maluku (the Moluccas), or to the gold mines in Salida in west coast Sumatra. Slaves also constituted the majority in these VOC-controlled areas, as can be seen from the modified table provided by Welie given here in Table 5.1 below.19 In these posts the slaves were used to build fortifications, warehouses and housing for the VOC officials, and were even considered as suitable Table 5.1 Assorted slave and free populations in the Dutch colonial world (VOC domain) Colony

Year

Slaves (company and Europeans and private slaves) mestizos

Kota Ambon Banda Islands

1694 2,870 (52.3%) 1638 2,190 (57.0%) 1687 3,731 (58.5%) Makassar (Sulawesi) 1730 2,915 (58.5%) Batavia 1632 2,724 (33.8%) (inner city) 1673 9,938 (56.0%) 1699 12,505 (57.1%) Malacca 1678 1,780 (35.2%) Fort 1678 511 (43.9%) Silida (West 1681 131 (76.6%) Sumatra)

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1,008 (18.4%) 539 (14.0%) 1,111 (17.4%) 622 (12.5%) 2,368 (29.4%) 2,336 (13.2%) 2,453 (11.2%) 814 (16.1%) 652 (56.1%) 40 (23.4%)

Free nonEuropeans 1,609 (29.3%) 1,115 (29.0%) 1,533 (24.0%) 1,448 (29.0%) 2,968 (36.8%) 5,466 (30.8%) 6,953 (31.7%) 2,463 (48.7%) n.a.*** n.a.

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replacements for the more costly European sailors and soldiers.20 They were employed in numerous necessary tasks because the European employees of the VOC could not tolerate the heat nor resist the drink.21 The nutmeg plantations on Banda after 1621 and the clove plantations on Ambon after the mid-seventeenth century were the greatest purchasers of slaves after Batavia. After denuding the Banda Islands of their population in 1621, Governor General Coen divided the cultivable land into about 70 ‘gardens’ (perken), which he leased to the burgers (who came to be referred to as the perkeniers) and supplied with 20–30 slaves each. Each perkenier signed a lease and an agreement to deliver all the nutmeg and mace to the company at a fixed price. The few remaining Bandanese were employed to teach the perkeniers about tending the nutmeg trees. Without any indigenous population to work the gardens, the perkeniers were forced to import slaves as labourers. A high death rate and the frequent flight of slaves made it necessary to import about 100 new slaves annually to maintain the nutmeg plantations.22 Contributing to the high death rate was the frequent volcanic eruptions and the emission of noxious fumes onto the islands. Those who were not sickened by the fumes had to be employed in clearing the devastation and sweeping away the ashes, thus diverting precious labour from the nutmeg plantations. In addition, the flight of slaves and the ever-present fear of a slave rebellion forced the Dutch to build forts and other strongholds, which required more labour and expense.23 Amboina proved equally desirous of slave labour as a major Dutch establishment, and its demands grew stronger after the VOC decision to limit clove production to the island of Ambon. As with Banda, Amboina faced similar problems of acquiring sufficient slaves to replace those who had died or had fled.24 In the urban environment where many slaves were employed as domestic help, there was a greater likelihood of their developing bonds with their masters and eventually being manumitted, thus providing yet another reason for the persistent demand for slaves. Finally, the VOC was first and foremost an economic animal, and it adopted the policy of selling surplus slaves after the completion of a major project. At times of great hardship as in an epidemic, slaves were also sold in order to lessen the cost of maintaining them.25 Governor General Coen’s vision of founding Dutch Asian colonial settlements, coupled with the decision to establish special clove and nutmeg plantations in Maluku, provided the impetus for the company’s major slave-purchasing expeditions to various parts of Africa, India and Southeast Asia. Africa as a source of slaves for Batavia proved unsatisfactory because of the high attrition rate during the long voyage, and because those obtained (in this case from Madagascar) were judged to be ‘very dirty and 94

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lazy’.26 India became initially the major supplier of slaves to Batavia in the first two-thirds of the seventeenth century. On 25 December 1622 a Dutch ship arriving in Batavia from the Coromandel carried about a thousand male and female slaves, mostly young and children, who were intended to ‘strengthen’ the VOC settlements in Batavia, Amboina and Banda. This is apparently the same slave ship mentioned by Imam Rijali of Hitu (the Islamic part of the island of Ambon), who was in the Coromandel at the time (see Barbara Watson Andaya’s chapter in this volume), and would have been in response to the governor general’s recommendation that large numbers of ships be sent to Sri Lanka, the Coromandel Coast and the Bay of Bengal to bring back as many slaves as the ships could carry. Coen sincerely believed that importing ‘a large number of people was the most important foundation of the Company’s State in the Indies, without which it would not be able to survive’. A second basic principle was to institute a frugal government, which could be achieved through the use of slave labour for the many building projects and economic initiatives to be undertaken by the company.27 This initial shipment of Indian slaves was followed by many others from the Coromandel Coast, Malabar and Bengal. Batavia kept the bulk of the slaves, while others were shipped to Amboina, Banda, northern Maluku and the gold mines in Silida, west Sumatra. The demand from Banda was particularly strong, and already by the first two months of 1624 some 600 slaves had been sent there.28 The VOC contemporary sources report the occasional arrival of VOC ships with large shipment of slaves from India and Sri Lanka. Dutch readiness to purchase slaves wherever and whenever available was understandably not well received by the local people. VOC officials on the Coromandel Coast reported that the ongoing purchase of slaves had given the company a bad name in the surrounding lands, and the well-born regarded the Dutch with great disdain.29 The greatest source of slaves from India appears to have been those who had sold themselves or family members to the Dutch because of starvation caused by the failure of crops through natural disasters, such as drought or severe storms.30 In 1660 the city of Nagapattinam suffered two sieges within a short period of time, resulting in the destruction of crops and fruitbearing plants and a subsequent severe famine. A contemporary observer, Philip Baldaeus, reported the streets covered with emaciated and half-starved persons, who offered themselves to slavery for a small quantity of bread; and you might have bought as many as you pleased at the rate of ten shillings a head; above five thousand of them were there bought 95

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and carried to Jafnapatnam, as many to Columbo, besides several thousands that were transported to Batavia.31 Famine and upheaval in Bengal in 1646–7 and in the southern Coromandel in 1658 resulted in yet more people selling family members and even themselves into slavery. Such occasions throughout the seventeenth century offered an ample opportunity for the Dutch to acquire slaves for Batavia. The scale of the shipments of slaves from India to Batavia and other Dutch Asian settlements is noteworthy. Up until the Dutch seizure of the Portuguese settlements on the Malabar coast (1658–63), the Cochin interior of Malabar supplied large numbers of slaves to the Dutch. Thereafter, the flow became a trickle with only some 80–100 slaves annually from Malabar to Batavia.32 Slaves from Bengal and Arakan were sent more frequently but in relatively modest numbers averaging several hundred per shipment. The Coromandel, on the other hand, sent fewer but larger shipments, with about 8,000–10,000 slaves sent in the years 1659–61.33 While there were some large, long-distance VOC shipments of slaves, most of the slaves were brought on ships in small numbers as part of other commodities.34 Those from Bengal were usually obtained through Arakan. The Arakanese (called Magh in Bengal) were commissioned by their rulers to seize people from Bengal to be sold to the Dutch as slaves. Another important supplier of slaves from Arakan was the Luso-Asian population or Portuguese mestiços at Dianga, Chittagong and Mrauk-U, which became major slave markets. The Arakanese rulers claimed the right to a quarter of all slaves seized, and through payment of a large sum their subjects were granted permission to conduct slave raids abroad.35 Although the rulers of Arakan proved unpredictable, there was a steady flow of slaves from the Arakanese ports to Batavia. In 1625 some 10,000 slaves were seized from Bengal by the Arakanese, but 4,000 of them died in Arakan, convincing the king not to sell the slaves to the Dutch at that time. Instead, he gave them permission to go directly to the northern Arakanese port of Dianga and to Chittagong (then under Arakan) to obtain slaves.36 Based on scattered reports from the Generale Missiven of the VOC, some 5,500 slaves were sent from Arakan to Batavia between 1625 until the supply ended sometime in 1667.37 Although the Dutch retained a reduced presence in Arakan, Mughal pressure in 1665 resulted in the VOC decision to abandon Arakan as a source of slaves.38 The dwindling supply of slaves from Arakan coincided with the end of the Makassar War in eastern Indonesia in 1667, which resulted in the defeat of the Makassarese kingdom of Gowa by the VOC and its Bugis allies. This event proved to be a crucial turning point in the slave trade within the Malay-Indonesian archipelago. Not only did the VOC succeed 96

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in removing one of its most powerful rivals in the spice trade, but it also acquired the loyalty of the Bugis, who provided experienced and effective warriors in support of VOC military campaigns against those who opposed its policies. Most important of all, the VOC supported the Bugis leader, Arung Palakka, in becoming the pre-eminent ruler of the whole of eastern Indonesia. Assured of VOC support, Arung Palakka became the de facto overlord of all the kingdoms in South Sulawesi and was ruthless in his punishment of those he regarded as his enemies. In the wars that he conducted against rivals from the end of the Makassar War in 1667 until his death in 1696, those who were unable to flee overseas were taken and sold as slaves.39 Between 1653 and 1682 of 10,000 slaves from the Indonesian archipelago brought to Batavia, about 42% originated from South Sulawesi and 24% from Bali. Slaves from other areas of eastern Indonesia were often shipped through the ports of Makassar or Bali, though the majority would have been natives of South Sulawesi and Bali.40 Portuguese Dominicans in Timor and the Jesuits in Makassar also supplied Timorese and Makassarese slaves for Manila,41 most probably through the port of Makassar. The Sula islanders, who annually undertook slave raids to the eastern areas of Indonesia, would have been another source of slaves for the thriving slave market in Makassar.42 In late 1665, the Makassarese went with a fleet and purchased some 1,500 slaves from Sula.43 The practice of pre-seventeenth-century slaving in island Southeast Asia underwent rapid changes as a result of the strong demand for slave labour by both the VOC and Dutch private individuals. With the completion of most of the infrastructural and building projects, more and more of the company slaves were sold to the private sector, thus accounting for the striking disparity in the number of slaves held by the VOC and those in private Dutch hands towards the end of the seventeenth century. For the year 1687–8, for example, in Ambon the company held just 74 slaves, while the total number of slaves held by the Dutch was 10,569; in Batavia the company had 1,430 and the total Dutch slave-holding was 26,071. It was estimated that to replenish or increase the numbers of slaves required by the VOC and private Dutch slave-holders would mean an annual import between 3,730 and 6,430 slaves.44 This demand remained strong throughout the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth, thus providing the stimulus for greater slaving in the archipelago. In the past, slaves had been acquired through limited warfare, raids and voluntary and involuntary debt bondage, but the numbers were never large. Some in debt bondage suffered from unscrupulous lords who imposed fines for ‘illegal’ practices, charged for food and other necessities and offered such low wages that it became difficult to repay the debt.45 The importance 97

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of debt relationships to both creditor and debtor, however, assured that the duties and obligations of both parties in such arrangements were maintained. Those seized in raids or local warfare were rarely transported long distances from their homeland because of the practice of demanding ransom from their families and communities for their release. All this changed in the late seventeenth century when the VOC realised that India and Arakan would no longer be a major source of slaves. To fill the ongoing demand for slave labour, the Dutch turned to island Southeast Asia. While wars and raids were the primary means of obtaining slaves in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, the Dutch also introduced novel methods, such as making a condition of their military assistance to a warring faction the delivery of captives that could be used as slaves. In one case on the small island of Sawu in eastern Indonesia, the ruler of Seba promised to deliver his captives to the Dutch in return for their help in a dispute with another ruler. Half of the captives would be compensation for Dutch support, and the remainder would be purchased by the Dutch for a reasonable price.46 Later in the century Sawu became a reliable source of slaves for the company. In a war between Rote (island off Timor) and its allies against the Portuguese and their allies at about 1654, Rote delivered all the war captives to the Dutch apparently to be used as slaves.47 Some six years later Rote succeeded in quelling a revolt and delivered 100 of the rebels to the Dutch as slaves.48 When the Dutch purchased 60 slaves from the island of Damar (island in the Banda Sea), they were told that many more could be obtained from the numerous islands that were situated beyond Damar.49 Timor was also a source of slaves for the Dutch as a result of the numerous conflicts between the many polities on the island. It appears that rulers in Nusa Tenggara (Eastern Lesser Sundas) tended to sentence many more ‘wrong-doers’ to slavery around the time when slaving ships were due to arrive at port.50 Another means by which the company acquired slaves was through arbitrarily deciding how best to punish those who opposed the Dutch. The people around Lake Tondano in northern Sulawesi, for example, were required to deliver slaves as a form of a fine for their opposition to the Dutch.51 Areas in the western half of the archipelago were further sources of slaves for the company: in 1671 Jambi brought the company 35 slaves, and the Nias islands were considered as prime targets for slaves to work the nearby VOC mines at Salida in west coast Sumatra.52 The flow of slaves to Batavia continued in the last third of the seventeenth century, this time mainly from island Southeast Asia. As noted earlier, South Sulawesi was the major source and accounted for almost half the slave population in Batavia.53 Bali was the second major supplier, and it is estimated that from the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth century 98

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between 100,000 and 150,000 Balinese slaves were brought to Batavia.54 Unlike the case of the slaves brought from Makassar, the Balinese slave trade was in the hands of Chinese merchants working with Balinese slave dealers, and the slaves were destined for the Chinese, the burgers and the free Indonesian population in Batavia.55 The reliable and profitable VOC market for slaves encouraged the Balinese rulers to engage actively in the pursuit of slaves, mainly through wars. The revenue from slaving enabled many of the kingdoms to acquire weapons, Spanish rials and other desired goods from the outside world. In Bali there may indeed have been the situation where ‘wars generated slaves . . . [and] the demand for slaves also generated wars’.56 By 1689, however, the VOC decided to forbid the purchase of slaves from Makassar, Buton, Bali, Java and the Malay areas because of the many incidents of ‘violence’ committed against their owners.57 Since this decision removed the major supply of slaves in the Indonesian archipelago, the Dutch began to look further eastward to the islands of the Nusatenggara and to Papua to make up the shortfall.

The Papuan slave networks in eastern Indonesia A close look at the complexity of the slave trade in the Papuan areas reveals an established network that easily adjusted to the increased demands in the late seventeenth century. It also offers insights into the slave trade in one tiny part of the Southeast Asian world and reminds one of the necessity of understanding the specific cultural and historical context in which slaving occurred, whether in Southeast Asia, South Asia or elsewhere in the world. The Dutch initially sought to trade directly with the two major sources of Papuan slaves: the Birdshead and the Onin Peninsulas in the western part of the island of New Guinea. They were disadvantaged by the lack of knowledge of the area and inability to obtain proper guides or interpreters. Even when they succeeded in locating some of the slave markets, they were unable to convince the people to sell their slaves or else they were told that all slaves had already been purchased by others. After a series of violent encounters leading to a loss of men, as well as a fruitless search for slaves, the Dutch realised that the only feasible way of obtaining slaves was by working with the two major established slaving networks in the area – one controlled by the settlements in Southeast Seram (a collective name for the settlements on the eastern edge of the island of Seram, the Seram Laut archipelago and the Gorom archipelago) and the other conducted by the kingdoms in the Raja Ampat Islands under the direction of the Gamrange settlements on the southeast coast of Halmahera. These latter two areas acknowledged the sultan of Tidore in north Maluku as their sovereign lord, and many of the 99

Figure 5.2 Map of the Maluku world

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slaves were transported through this network to Tidore, where they were sold directly to traders or brought further west to the port of Makassar. Despite the collective name, the Southeast Seram communities were independent entities and often fierce competitors in the Papuan trade. In resource-deprived Southeast Seram there was a fierce rivalry for control over fishing reefs, and dyadic relationships were established with other communities to assure access to food, other necessities and trade goods. These Southeast Seram settlements divided the coasts of the Birdshead and Onin Peninsulas among themselves by establishing trading arrangements with the Papuans known as sosolot, which delineated the bays and anchorages that were considered their sole trading area. In the late seventeenth century, for example, the Keffing villages of Rumatameri and Kelu were said to have sosolot trading arrangements with certain areas in Onin Kowiai.58 They fiercely defended these exclusive trade arrangements from other traders, even from settlements from their own island chain. One of the most prominent of the Southeast Seramese settlements was Rarakit, which was described by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century as ‘a pirate’s nest which served the Papuans and Tidorese as a refuge and a marketplace’.59 Of equal importance was the tiny island of Kilwaru off the eastern tip of Seram. It typically sent 10 ships annually during the seventeenth century to Uring and Hote on the island of Seram to obtain slaves and massoi bark (used as a warming salve, medicine and perfume), which were brought there from the Birdshead by other South Seramese traders.60 Kilwaru was one of the islands frequently mentioned in the VOC accounts as an important trading site. It was only a tiny island measuring some 45 metres across and a metre high, but it had access to good ground water and safe anchorage in any monsoon weather. Traders from Seram Laut and Gorom brought their goods from the Birdshead to Kilwaru, where they were exchanged for cloth and sago,61 two necessary items for the Papuan trade. Boats from all over the archipelago descended on Kilwaru, which provided a reliable market in eastern Indonesian products, such as slaves, spices, massoi bark, tortoiseshell, birds of paradise and, in the eighteenth century, tripang (bêche de mer, a delicacy in China). But other settlements in Southeast Seram were also involved in this trade. In 1632, for example, an Ambonese reported sighting at one of the Seram Laut islands some 28 boats, of which 8 were Malay, 6 Makassarese and the remainder from Banten (west Java), Japara (northeast Java) and Bukit (near Surabaya in east Java).62 The merchants of Southeast Seram divided the Birdshead into three: Notan, Onin Lascar and Onin Kowiai.63 Onin Lascar was apparently known as ‘Onin Mariner or Land of the Slave Perahus’,64 a name that it may have earned because of its dominant role as a source of Papuan slaves. The rajas 101

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of Onin Lascar established bilateral koyar65 relationships with communities who shared the same lingua franca (based on a Seram Laut language) along the southern and western coasts of Teluk Berau (MacCluer Gulf). The Southeast Seram merchants went regularly to their sosolot for the purchase of Papuan commodities, among which slaves were the most valuable. In addition to koyar relationships, there was a great dependency on special fortified settlements called muar, which were located just offshore to protect the Southeast Seramese traders. In time, marriages were contracted between these Southeast Seramese merchants and local women, creating a mixed community that was invaluable in facilitating trade. The Portuguese Roxo de Brito visited the area in 1581–2 and noted that along the south shore of MacCluer Gulf was a string of small islands (the muar settlements), which had a population partly black and partly of mixed blood.66 The presence of such mixed communities is also noted in VOC sources, where Tidore rulers bestowed titles, insignia and even clothing to selected Papuan leaders to assure their loyalty and assistance in trade.67 Many later became Muslim and may have been the families that provided marriage partners to foreign traders. Papuans from Onin also came regularly to Gorom (and presumably other Southeast Seram settlements) with slaves, whom they sold for 25–30 rials apiece in the form of cloth as well as knives and swords from Tobunku.68 The principal slaving area in Onin was Rumbati, where 200–300 slaves could be obtained for 10 Tobunku swords each.69 These slaves were captives in conflicts between interior groups that were brought to the coast to be sold to Muslims linked by sosolot arrangements and through marriage with the Muslim traders from Southeast Seram or from Tidore’s Muslim subjects. The other major Papuan slave trading network was under the direction of the Gamrange and the Raja Ampat Islands, which owed allegiance to the sultan of Tidore. The leader of the Gamrange in the seventeenth century was the settlement of Patani. Its leader, the Sengaji Patani, was entrusted by the sultan of Tidore with the task of collecting tribute from his Papuan subjects. The four major kingdoms of the Raja Ampat Islands traded directly with the coastal communities in New Guinea with whom they had special trade arrangements. They carried goods that had been advanced as credit from the Gamrange, and so the Papuan commodities, including slaves, were delivered directly to the Gamrange settlements in southeast Halmahera. The Dutch discovered to their great amazement the variety of cloth found in the Gamrange, most of which were destined for the trade to New Guinea. The Raja Ampat islanders came annually to the Gamrange with a large fleet bringing slaves, massoi bark, spices, iron implements. Without waiting for the arrival of the Papuan fleets to Gamrange, at times 102

Figure 5.3 Map of the Onin and Kowiai regions of Southwest New Guinea

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the Gamrange settlements would go directly to the Raja Ampat Islands with their cloth, iron and other goods to purchase slaves and other products. The Papuan goods brought to the Gamrange were then sold directly to the waiting Tidorese traders, who brought the commodities back to the Tidore capital where the goods were sold to the Chinese and other traders from the islands further west. Other slaves were obtained through raids to various islands in eastern Indonesia and as far west as Sulawesi and Buton with crews and warriors from the Gamrange and the Papuans of the Raja Ampat Islands under the command of one of the leaders of the Gamrange, usually Patani.70 While the Southeast Seram and the Gamrange-Raja Ampat networks were the most active and successful in the Papuan slave trade, the Chinese had a limited part in this trade along the New Guinea coasts. Their trade in Papuan slaves was linked to a wider economic interest in tortoiseshell, massoi bark, birds of paradise plumes and tripang, which were exchanged for porcelain, cloth and the much-valued Tobunku knives and swords. Except for the slaves and massoi bark, which could be sold profitably within the region, the Papuan products were destined for China where they fetched high prices. But this successful trade suffered a setback in 1712, when the VOC restricted any Chinese from trading anywhere east of Makassar to prevent the ‘smuggling’ of spices. This measure effectively stifled Chinese trade in the east until later in the eighteenth century.71 Eastern Indonesia, including the Papuan areas, became the major source of VOC slaves after 1689 because of the company’s decision to stop purchasing slaves from Makassar, Buton, Bali, Java and the Malay areas. The reliable supply of Papuan slaves was only possible because the communities of the slave networks had some cultural links to the Papuans and were successful in forming trade friendships reinforced by the swearing of traditional oaths. The establishment of an intermediary space enabled negotiations to occur on neutral grounds, and the mixed populations that came to service these spaces became the cultural bridge between the Papuans and their trade partners from Southeast Seram and the Raja Ampat Islands.

Impact of increased slaving activities What is clear from the documents is that there was a rapid increase in slaving in the seventeenth century, much of it due to the steady and strong demand for labour by the VOC. In the past, raids were generally small scale, and even wars between communities never resulted in mass sale of captives. The aim was to obtain ransom, and in 1581–2 de Brito was able to witness the practice at first hand. Upon his arrival, the Papuan communities sent 104

Figure 5.4 Map of Central and South Maluku

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a large fleet to confront the Portuguese ship. The latter fired some shots, which wounded one of the Papuans, who was left in one of the boats while the others jumped overboard to seek safety. Later the Papuans approached the Portuguese to offer chickens and a large number of bamboo cylinders filled with palm wine as ransom for the wounded man.72 The situation changed dramatically from the mid-seventeenth century when the VOC reliance on slaves principally from India and Arakan ended. The continuing strong demand for labour for the company’s many building and plantation projects now focused primarily on the slave trade in insular Southeast Asia. From contemporary sources it is obvious that there was a qualitative change in slave-raiding tactics. The occasional raids into enemy territory to obtain slaves for ransom were superseded by the far more profitable slaving expeditions, with thousands being sold annually to the Dutch. The generally held practice of Muslims not enslaving other Muslims resulted in raids conducted against non-Muslim communities, many of whom lived in the interior, in the highlands and in the more remote islands. While slaving of Muslims by Muslims still continued as a result of wars, there was an increasing number of non-Muslim captives being sold into slavery. The non-Muslim Toraja uplanders in central Sulawesi were frequent targets of the Bugis and Makassarese slave-raiders, thus contributing to the steady flow of slaves from this area to Batavia. Bali, a Hindu island, also proved to be a major source of Batavian slaves, though they were often sold by their own Hindu lords. Warfare became an important economic activity as all captured warriors were now sold as slaves at premium prices because they were usually strong, young males who fetched the highest prices. In 1655 the Dutch paid 12 rials for male slaves from 20 to 36 years old; 8½ rials for women from 12 to 25 years old; 7½ rials for young boys from 8 to 19 years; and 6 rials for girls from 7 to 12 years old.73 Only in subsequent centuries did a female slave fetch a higher price than a male as a result of the greater demand for brides or partners by the large number of single male Chinese arriving in Batavia and its environs. Batavia became an attractive slave market, where the ongoing strong demand for labour, including domestic help, and the growing interest in slaves as an investment assured high prices and a healthy profit for the native slave dealers.74 The pace and scope of slaving activities in island Southeast Asia and the central role played by the VOC, especially Batavia, in directing this traffic in slaves brought major economic and demographic changes to the region. In the seventeenth century it was VOC demand that stimulated larger and frequent campaigns by the more powerful polities to seize those unable to resist. Not until the late eighteenth century did Sulu in the 106

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southern Philippines surpass Batavia as a major purchaser of slaves for its own economic needs to provide sea and forest products for the thriving China market.75 One predictable defensive measure taken by vulnerable coastal communities to avoid frequent disastrous raids from the sea was to move further inland or into less accessible areas. As people abandoned their coastal settlements, they built fortified villages in defensible hilltops or in the remote interior. Another measure taken by communities was to avoid areas on land or sea that were frequent sites of raiding, thus abandoning old and establishing new routes and opportunities. In the Onin Peninsula in New Guinea, lands occupied by a tribe notorious for raiding its neighbours were deliberately avoided and whole villages resettled beyond the reach of this particular tribe.76 As demand for slaves rose to unprecedented heights in the seventeenth century, many slaving communities became far more aggressive and extended their activities far beyond their homelands. Their human cargoes consisted of many different ethnic groups, who were now transported to distant markets, where the possibility of being ransomed or of returning home was considerably lessened. The Dutch were delighted by the ethnic diversity of the slaves since they feared that a concentration of slaves from one community could encourage revolts.77 Batavia and other VOC cities, as well as Southeast Asian urban settlements, thus became home to a large mix of different ethnic communities, which in time led to the creating of a slave population consisting of offsprings of parents from different ethnic communities. The most famous of such communities was the orang Betawi (people of Batavia), with a distinctive language and culture that emerged from the dynamic mix of slaves and their descendants. But other slaves were used by rulers in Palembang, Jambi, Banjarmasin, Sukadana, Johor and Aceh to clear land and to plant cash crops, particularly pepper,78 and the Dutch plantations in Amboina and Banda purchased slaves from the different areas of the archipelago to replace the dwindling supplies of slaves from India and Arakan. Throughout island Southeast Asia, therefore, there was a major demographic shift as people from all over the region were brought as slaves to labour in distant lands. In time some of the slave population eventually merged with the local populations, while others intermarried with other slaves from different ethnic groups and formed a new ethnicity at the margins of the host society.

Summary and reflections on slavery in Southeast Asia In this chapter I have argued that there was a qualitative and quantitative change in slaving practices in island Southeast Asia in the seventeenth 107

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century as a result of the voracious demand for slave labour by the Dutch East India Company. The high death rate and frequent flight of slaves kept demand for slaves strong throughout the century. Furthermore, indigenous rulers embarking on new cash crop cultivation such as pepper or rice came to rely heavily on slaves for the labour-intensive tasks associated with these crops. Early attempts to supply slave labour from India (and very infrequently from Africa) and Arakan were only partially successful, and by the 1660s the Dutch began to look to the archipelago for their slave requirements. The strong demand by the VOC transformed earlier indigenous slaving practices, which were localised, involved relatively small numbers of people and frequently resulted in the ransoming of captives taken in raids. In the late seventeenth century slaving became a major industry using a variety of methods that resulted in the enslaving of tens of thousands of people. Traditional small-scale raids now became large slaving expeditions, war captives were routinely condemned to slavery and those found guilty of crimes against the ruler or state were punished by being sold into slavery. The principal outcome of these changes to the practice of slavery was a major demographic shift of large numbers of people from their homeland to foreign parts, transforming Batavia and other Dutch-controlled urban areas into multicultural hubs of substantial slave populations. The impact of the new slaving practices was also evident in the movement of vulnerable coastal villages to the safety of the interior, and of measures taken to avoid areas on land and sea that were well known as the hunting grounds of raiders. My specific focus was on the slave trade in the Papuan areas with the intention of engaging some of the ideas about slavery advanced by other scholars. Throughout this chapter I have been guided by Gwyn Campbell’s useful comment that any assessment of slavery should be time- and culturespecific. My observations of slavery in the Papuan areas have definitely been enriched by adopting this approach. The following remarks are thus intended to stimulate further debate on slavery in Southeast Asia and to encourage others to use this approach to provide the foundation for more in-depth comparisons across the Indian Ocean world. Despite opposition by some scholars to the application of the term ‘slavery’ to refer to any form of bondage in Southeast Asia, Anthony Reid argues that those who were bought and sold like chattel and remained outsiders should be regarded as ‘slaves’.79 Based on my understanding of slaving in the Papuan context in the seventeenth century, the presence of these criteria may not be as dire as in other areas. Papuans seized in raids were bought and sold, but they were not mere chattel because of the maintenance of the 108

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practice of ransom. As long as there was a cultural acceptance of the idea of ransom, the status of ‘slave’ was regarded as a temporary condition. Nevertheless, those most likely to be ransomed were the elite, and so the poorer members of the community could remain unredeemed and thus become bonded to their owners. While these Papuans were ‘outsiders’ in the sense that they belonged to a different ethnolinguistic group from the host society, they remained within a familiar region and their position was mitigated by the type of relationships established to promote trade, such as the sosolot agreements. Through special ceremonies reinforced by oaths, such agreements established a bond between the Papuan suppliers and the slave network communities. With the creation of coastal communities of mixed populations, the difference between outside and inside was bridged. It was this liminal space that offered both danger and opportunity and enabled the forming of the bonds that enabled all Papuans to be regarded as ‘insiders’, at least in the eastern Indonesian areas. In Southeast Seram today there are descendants of such individuals who in time created a separate clan or etar within the local social hierarchy.80 The Gamrange-Raja Ampat network had similar trade agreements with their Papuan partners, which were reinforced by the prestigious titles and objects associated with the ruler of Tidore.81 In both networks, therefore, the agreements solemnised by the swearing of blood oaths created a familial relationship that offered the opportunity for Papuan captives to become insiders and incorporated into the social hierarchy of the slave-owning community. The Dutch, on the other hand, never entertained any notion that the slave population could become part of the establishment. While Governor General Coen had envisaged an Asian colony in Batavia, he saw it as being ruled by the Dutch supported by the Eurasian population. Yet this concept of an Asian city under Europeans made all non-Europeans outsiders, and the position of slaves was not made any better or worse for being outsiders. What was denied slaves and even free indigenous populations under the company’s jurisdiction was the ability to become part of the social hierarchy. The solution for these permanent outsiders was ethnogenesis, the creation of new ethnicities from the amalgam of peoples in Batavia. One group, the ‘Portuguese tribe’, consisted of mardijkers (freed Christian Indian slaves), Portuguese mestiços (Eurasians of Portuguese and indigenous descents) and other freed indigenous slaves who had become Christian.82 Another interesting case was the ‘Betawi’ discussed earlier. Without the prospects of ever becoming insiders, these outsiders formed their own ‘ethnic’ community with all the obligations and responsibilities which such relationships entailed. They were permanent outsiders without 109

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the prospects of ever becoming insiders in the Dutch social hierarchy. The company’s attitudes towards slaves, however, may not always have been followed by private Dutch owners, and the practice of concubinage provided a way for some slaves to enter into the informal kin network of the private Dutch slave owner. The seventeenth century saw a major increase in the numbers of slaves who were bought and sold in the archipelago, with the majority destined for VOC-controlled cities, for plantations belonging both to the Dutch or to local rulers and for private households. In the VOC areas there was little or no assimilation of the slaves into the dominant ethnic community of the Dutch. The latter remained the top layer of society, which could never be penetrated by outsiders, particularly outsiders who were not Europeans. In the indigenous areas, however, there are numerous instances of slave populations becoming part of the society of their owners through a variety of means that were culturally determined. It did not necessarily mean, however, that the stigma of having been slaves ever disappeared. Nevertheless, slave status was not an irreversible condition, and those who were assimilated came to adapt to the local hierarchy as dependents of a client as others in the society.

Notes 1 A new stimulating study of the role of Southeast Asia in India is a DPhil from Oxford by Tom Hoogervorst “Southeast Asia in the Ancient Indian Ocean World: Combining Historical, Linguistic and Archaeological Approaches.” DPhil, Oxford University, 2012. 2 See for the Indian Ocean world, Gwyn Campbell, “Introduction: Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour in the Indian Ocean World,” in Gwyn Campbell, ed., The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. vii–xxxii; Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton, eds., Slavery & South Asian History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006). For Southeast Asia, see Anthony Reid, ed., Slavery, Bondage & Dependency in Southeast Asia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983); and Bryce Beemer, “The Creole City in Mainland Southeast Asia: Slave Gathering Warfare and Culture Exchange in Burma, Thailand, and Manipur, 18th-19th C,” PhD dissertation, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 2013. 3 Richard M. Eaton, “Introduction,” in Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton, eds., Slavery & South Asian History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 2–3. 4 See, for example, Michael Aung-Thwin, “Athi, Kyun-Taw, Hpayà-Kyun: Varieties of Commendation and Dependence in Pre-Colonial Burma,” in Anthony Reid, ed., Slavery, Bondage & Dependency in Southeast Asia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983), pp. 64–89. 5 See, for example, Aung-Thwin, “Athi, Kyun-Taw”.

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6 Anthony Reid, “Introduction,” in Anthony Reid, ed., Slavery, Bondage & Dependency in Southeast Asia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983), p. 36. 7 This was a common metaphor in Southeast Asian societies, where rulers were often likened to a bird extending its protective wings over its young, or to a large tree whose branches provided a welcome shelter to the people. 8 Jan Wisseman Christie, “State Formation in Early Southeast Asia: A Consideration of the Theories and the Data,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- enVolkenkunde 151, 2 (1994), pp. 267–8; Soemarsaid Moertono, Soemarsaid (Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1968), pp. 14–15. Christie, “State Formation,” pp. 267–8; Moertono, State and Statecraft, pp. 14–15. 9 Tony Day, Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), ch. 2. 10 In the kingdom of Ternate in eastern Indonesia in the early modern period, it was a common practice for rulers to invite nursing women of families of subordinate lords to nurse the royal child, hence creating a sibling relationship and strengthening the ruler through the expansion of the royal family. Leonard Y. Andaya, The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993), p. 68. 11 Warren, “Ransom,” p. 87. 12 J.H.F. Sollewijn Gelpke, “The Report of Miguel Roxo de Brito of His Voyage in 1581–1582 to the Raja Ampat, the MacCluer Gulf and Seram,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- enVolkenkunde,150 no. 1 (1994), p. 132. The archives of the Dutch East India Company housed in the National Archives in The Hague contain other examples of ransoms being paid for captive individuals. In an unusual case of ransom, the ruler of Tobunku once exchanged 100 of his subjects to redeem his sister who had been seized in a raid. Leonard Y. Andaya, “Local Trade Networks in Maluku in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries,” Cakalele, 2, 2 (1991), p. 84. 13 Beemer, “Creole City,” pp. 212–44. 14 Kanumoyoso Bondan, “Beyond the City Wall: Society and Economic Development in the Ommelanden of Batavia, 1684–1740,” PhD dissertation, University of Leiden, 2011, pp. 110–3. 15 Hendrik E. Niemeijer, Batavia: Een Koloniale Samenleving in the Zeventiende Eeuw (Amsterdam: Balans Uitgeverij, 2005), p. 50. 16 Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels. The description of Batavia is found on pages 264–73. 17 Markus Vink, “ ‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of World History, 14, 2 (June 2003), p. 148, Table 2. 18 ‘Amboina’, or ‘Mother Ambon’, was an indigenous term used by the Dutch to refer to the islands of Ambon, Haruku, Saparua and some other smaller islands. Ambon was the location of the major Dutch settlement in Amboina. 19 Rik van Welie, “Patterns of Slave Trading and Slavery in the Dutch Colonial World, 1596–1863,” in Gert Oostindië, ed., Dutch Colonialism, Migration, and Cultural Heritage (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2008), p. 52. I have only included the posts in the Indonesian archipelago and the figures for the seventeenth century, except for the sole figure for Makassar from 1730. For the year 1688, Sutherland provides a figure of 54% of Makassar’s population being slave and

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20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

debt-bondsmen. H. Sutherland, “Slavery and the Slave Trade in South Sulawesi, 1660s–1800s,” in Anthony Reid, ed., Slavery, Bondage & Dependency in Southeast Asia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983), p. 269. Generale Missiven, edited by W. Ph. Coolhaas: vol. I, 1610–1638 [1960], document dated 11 Nov. 1614, p. 44. Generale Missiven, I, 26 Oct. 1615, p. 46. Hanna, Willard A. Indonesian Banda: Colonialism and Its Aftermath in the Nutmeg Islands. Banda Naira: Yayasan Warisan dan Budaya Banda Naira, 1991. Jacobs, Elisabeth Maria. Koopman in Azie: De Handel van de Verenigde OostIndische Compagnie tijdens de 18de Eeuw. Leiden: Walburg Press, 2000. Ibid., pp. 79, 85. Generale Missiven, III, 14 Dec. 1658, p. 214, passim. Welie, “Patterns of Slave Trading,” pp. 62–4. Generale Missiven, II, 9 July 1645, p. 270. Generale Missiven, I, 1 Feb. 1623, pp. 121–2. Generale Missiven, I, 4 Mar. 1624, p. 148. Generale Missiven, I, 3 Feb. 1626, p. 186. S. Arasaratnam, “Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” in K.S. Mathew, ed., Mariners, Merchants and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), pp. 195, 199, 204; S. Manickam, Slavery in the Tamil Country: A Historical Overview (Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1982), pp. 36–8. Philip Baldaeus, Description of the Most Celebrated East-India Coasts of Malabar and Coromandel; as Also of the Isle of Ceylon, Vol. III (Amsterdam, 1672), pp. 585–6; Baldaeus, True and Exact Description, pp. 585–6. Vink, “The World’s Oldest Trade,” pp. 140–1. Ibid., p. 141; Table 1 lists the number of slaves sold to the Dutch from Bengal/ Arakan and the Coromandel in different years in the seventeenth century. Welie, “Patterns of Slave Trading,” p. 47. Jacques P. Leider, LeRoyaumed’Arakan, Birmanie: Son Histoire Politique entre le début du XVe et la Fin du XVIIe Siècle (Paris: EFEO, 2004), pp. 440–1. Generale Missiven, I, 3 Feb. 1626, pp. 185–6. Generale Missiven, I: 1610–38; II: 1639–55; III: 1655–74. Arasaratnam, “Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean,” pp. 202–3; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Dutch Tribulations in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U,” Journal of Early Modern History, 1, 3 (August 1997), p. 246. Andaya, Heritage of Arung Palakka. Vink, “World’s Oldest Trade,” p. 143. William Henry Scott, Slavery in the Spanish Philippines (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1991), pp. 31, 39. Generale Missiven, II, 19 Jan. 1654, pp. 678–9. Sutherland, “Slavery,” p. 267. Vink, “World’s Oldest Trade,” p. 166, Table 4. Gwyn Campbell and Alessandro Stanziani, eds., “Introduction,” in Campbell and Stanziani, Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean World (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), p. 20. Generale Missiven, II, 19 Dec. 1651, p. 500. Generale Missiven, II, 7 Nov. 1654, p. 750. Generale Missiven, III, 16 Dec. 1660, p. 320.

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49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63

64 65

66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Generale Missiven, II, 19 Jan. 1654, p. 679. Sutherland, “Slavery,” p. 271. Generale Missiven, III, 30 Jan. 1662, p. 384. Generale Missiven, III, 19 Dec. 1671, pp. 758, 762. Still the best source on the slave trade originating from Makassar is Heather Sutherland’s 1983 article, “Slavery and the Slave Trade in South Sulawesi, 1660s–1800s,” which appeared in the collection edited by Reid, Slavery, Bondage. H.G. Schulte Nordholt, The Spell of Power: A History of Balinese Politics, 1650– 1940 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996), p. 41. Bondan, “Beyond the City Wall,” p. 118. Nordholt, Spell of Power, p. 41. Andaya, “Local Trade Networks,” p. 83. Roy Ellen, On the Edge of the Banda Zone: Past and Present in the Social Organization of a Moluccan Trading Network (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), p. 126; Thomas Goodman, “The Sosolot: An Eighteenth Century East Indonesian Trade Network,” PhD dissertation, Department of History, University of Hawaii, 2006, p. 72. A. Haga, Nederlandsch Nieuw Guinea en de Papoesche Eilanden: Historische Bijdrage, ca 1500–1883 (Batavia/’s Hage: W. Bruining & Co./Martinus Nijhoff, 1884), vol. I, p. 161. Haga, Nederlandsch Nieuw Guinea, I, p. 161. Andaya, “Local Trade Networks,” p. 84. Pamela Swadling, Plumes from Paradise: Trade Cycles in Outer Southeast Asia and Their Impact on New Guinea and Nearby Islands until 1920 (New Guinea: National Library of New Guinea, 1996), p. 142. Andaya, “Local Trade Networks,” pp. 83–4. Notan was either somewhere on the west coast of the island of Salawati or on the south and west coasts of the Birdshead. Onin Lascar originally referred only to northwestern tip of the Birdshead but later came to include the southwest coasts of Teluk Berau (MacCluer Gulf) to the Kumawa Peninsula, southeast of present-day Fak Fak. Onin Kowiai originally was the coastline from the Karas Islands southeast of Fak Fak to the entrance of Arguni Bay, but in the VOC period it extended even further southeastward to Etna Bay and perhaps as far as the Omba River. Goodman, “Sosolot,” p. 81. Ibid., p. 85. Koyar was a bilateral relationship, where a sacred blood oath is sworn between members of allied villages, creating a relationship akin to brothers. Whenever a major project or expedition was launched, both parties contributed equally, and the enemy of one became the enemy of the other. The brother relationship assured the success and safety of any trading transaction among koyar members. Gelpke, “Report of Miguel Roxo de Brito,” p. 135. Andaya, World of Maluku, p. 107. Andaya, “Local Trade Networks,” p. 85. Generale Missiven, III, 26 Dec. 1662, p. 408. Andaya, “Local Trade Networks,” pp. 85–7. Ibid., pp. 77–8. Gelpke, “Report of Miguel Roxo de Brito,” p. 136. Generale Missiven, III, 1 Feb. 1655, p. 48.

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74 Niemeijer, Koloniale Samenleving, p. 50. 75 James Francis Warren, The Sulu Zone 1768–1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981). 76 Jelle Miedema and Ger Reesink, One Head, Many Faces: New Perspectives on the Bird’s Head Peninsula of New Guinea (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2004), p. 116. 77 Bondan, “Beyond the City Wall,” p. 119. 78 Barbara Watson Andaya, To Live as Brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993), p. 80; Sutherland, “Slavery,” p. 267. 79 Reid, “Introduction,” p. 36. 80 Etar is defined by Ellen as ‘composed of rumara, literally “houses” (e.g., Rumakat, Rumadan), bound together by common residence, consanguinity, and descent’. Ellen, Edge of the Banda Zone, p. 41. 81 Andaya, World of Maluku, pp. 101–2. 82 Andaya, The World of Maluku, pp. 101–2.

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6 GOA AT THE INTERSECTION OF WORLD TRADE ROUTES IN THE PRE-MODERN AGE Strangers at home and at home with strangers Teotonio R. de Souza

I wish to present Goa as a port of call (porto de escala), meaning an intermediate stop, where ships picked up supplies and fuel, a sort of entrepôt for storage of imported goods and distribution centre. It was not a home port, nor a final destination. It needed obviously an administrative set-up to ensure efficient and smooth running services, earning the confidence of all parties and making all feel safe and at home. That is what Goa had been under various pre-Portuguese rulers. Under the Kadambas and Vijayanagara, Gove is mentioned as the capital of the Banavasi and other neighbouring regions, including controlling political centres across Ghats in the Deccan.1 Under the Portuguese rule it gained in scale, such as was required by the administrative headquarters and colonial capital of the Estado da Índia, that extended from East Africa till the Far East. The Bhojas, Mauryas, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Shilaharas, Kadambas, Yadavas, Bahmanis, the Vijayanagar and the Bijapur dynasties ruled Goa of different sizes at different times. Since ancient times, Goa maintained commercial connections with cultures of Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, as well as with East Africa. Goa’s global trade and traffic increased manifold when the Portuguese captured it from the Muslim rulers in 1510. We have a good survey of Goa’s coastal and overseas trade, from the earliest times to 1510, by V.T. Gune.2 Pius Malekandathil has recently updated our knowledge of the maritime trade with the Islamised Arab and Sassanid Persian merchants and the political economy of Goa under Silaharas and Kadambas, during 800–1500.3

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How the city of Goa evolved into a major port of call and as a business station between Europe and the East in 1530 was analysed by K.S. Mathew in Goa through the Ages: An Economic History (pp. 137–45); M.N. Pearson continued the analysis for Goa-based seaborne trade in the seventeenth– eighteenth centuries (pp. 146–76), and Celsa Pinto treated Goa-based overseas and coastal trade during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (pp. 176–212). All these authors have made extensive use of archival documentation and published studies. There is no point in my repeating here the data that can be culled from the authors and studies that I have just cited. I can also refer those interested in the specifics of the Portuguese Goa-based seaborne trade around early seventeenth century to an article I published in The Indian Economic and Social History Review.4 I shall rather limit myself to raising some issues about trade agents, trade organisations, politics of trade, urban institutions that Goa acquired during the early modern period under the Portuguese, who made Goa an international nodal trade port. These issues may suggest new aspects that require attention of younger researchers. Looking for the role of the foreigners, spies, smugglers and shady politics can also be a welcome approach to perceiving the functioning of an international trade network. I propose that we imagine Goa as an historic nest of foreigners attracted by its commercial opportunities. None of us gathered here will be unfamiliar with the notorious Portuguese Inquisition in Goa. But while it is usually associated with religious fanaticism, it is rarely seen as an instrument of urban control. It assisted the Portuguese officials in gathering information about foreigners. I wish to suggest the reading of a study by J.A. Rodrigues da Silva Tavim about the Jews in Portuguese India in the sixteenth century.5 The Jewish ability to handle various languages made them expert international informants, double agents and traders. S.D. Goitein revealed to us their trade activities in India using the documents of the Cairo geniza.6 Some of them proved to be strategic informants of Vasco da Gama, as commercial, diplomatic and military advisors to early Portuguese empire builders.7 However, following the influx of the Dutch and the English in the Indian Ocean, many suspected as foreign spies were packed off from Goa to Europe with the help of the Goa Inquisition. One can also glean in the lists of those accused in the autos-da-fé many natives from within and beyond the Goa borders. It was a mechanism to ward off violence and ensure security for trade. My analysis presumes that colonial interests are incompatible in the long run with the native interests. Enlisting and exacting some partial collaboration permitted the colonial port cities to survive as long as they did. Politics of cloak and dagger, or rather elimination by poisoning the enemies and rivals, could tell better the story of Goa as a world mart.8 116

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While all foreigners are also strangers at an initial stage, Goa was also a known base for smuggling and clandestine operations, which necessarily implied dealings between strangers and local inhabitants, or between local inhabitants who were at home with undisclosed foreigners, and as such ‘strangers’. At home may be understood as friendly, but also supposedly at ease to deal with, in accordance with the interests of the dominant elite or elites. The foreigners, meaning other Europeans, including the Dutch who had rebelled against Spain, but also the English and the French, were all under watch and suspected of spying. Two well-known foreigners, namely J.H. van Linschoten and Jacques Mocquet, in Goa have left their travel accounts. In the category of foreigners were also included the Castilians, who according to the promise made by the Philips of Spain would not be appointed to serve in the administration of the Portuguese territories overseas during the period of the unification of the two kingdoms. The Goa municipality’s correspondence with the king has references to Antonio Giralte, whom the viceroy had removed from the office of Public Revenue Inspector of Goa, replacing him with Vicencio de Brune, ‘pessoa estrangeira’, a foreigner or non-Portuguese national. There was a swift response from the crown to the municipality, disapproving the action of the viceroy.9 Smuggling was a serious menace to the security and survival of the ports of call. There is yet another side, a tanatographic perspective about the strangers at home. We may yet have to investigate how many of those were buried in Goa, as gleaned from the epitaphs found in the forts, churches and cemeteries of Goa. Many of them survived fortunately due to efforts of J.H. da Cunha Rivara and Ricardo Micael Teles, who recorded them. Were they Portuguese nationals serving in Goa as officials or businessmen, or Portuguese or foreign missionaries serving under Padroado, or undisclosed foreigners or strangers, who stayed for good in Goa by choice or otherwise? One could also find six epitaphs in the cemetery at Cabo, where lay some who were serving in the British garrison that occupied Goa during the Napoleonic wars.10 We know through Duarte Barbosa, an early Portuguese chronicler, that the city of Goa captured by the Portuguese in 1510 from Adil Shah was inhabited by respectable moors and wealthy white foreign merchants, as well as by Hindus, both land cultivators and fighters. It was a land with much trade and had a good harbour that was visited by many ships coming from Mecca, Aden, Hormuz, Cambay and Malabar, bringing many horses that were sold for 200 to 400 cruzados each, providing 40  cruzados on each for the state treasury. In exchange for horses and pearls that came from Hormuz and were sold to the sultans of the Deccan and 117

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Vijayanagar, the ships took back sugar, pepper, ginger, variety of spices and sundry other goods. Entry into the island and the city was strictly guarded, and there were magistrates, clerks and guards who would check the identity and place of origin of every incomer, and noted down their distinguishing physical marks. That was how the entry and exit from the city was regulated. The island was rich in land and sea revenues.11 The capital city of Goa captured by the Portuguese was at Elá, where they developed their capital that came to be known as Velha Goa. The Muslims preferred to conduct their trade from there, two miles away from the earlier Hindu-dominated port city. Ibn Batuta, who took part in the capture of Goa for the nawab of Honawar, mentioned two cities, one Hindu and the other Muslim. The grave situation created by the smugglers in the West Coast of India was presented by Anthony Disney at the Indo-Portuguese History Seminar at Cochin in 1989.12 Despite all the apparatus of organisation Goa was a base for large-scale clandestine activities that successfully evaded state control and its customs, often with official connivance! Jacques de Couttre, the Flemish jewel merchant who lived in Goa and visited several regions of India and South East Asia, attributed to smugglers the loss of Hormuz, an important port of call. Passadores smuggled goods in Goa up the River Mandovi and overland through the Ghat passes into Bijapur. Disney described one particularly notorious passador residing in the small island of Jua, strategically located in the Mandovi River, where considerable quantities of illicit goods were often stored for shipment in the mainland. We are told that two brothers were between them, the owner and captain of that island, and helped their smuggler-clients, which included Cambay Banias and several prominent figures among the local Portuguese, some of them connected with lucrative China–Japan trade. Some of the devassas (judicial inquiries) revealed that items like spices, gold, silver reales and pearls were objects of smuggling, and the smuggling activity was so well organised that it was backed by insurers from among the resident New Christians (converted jews), such as Francisco Menezes de Crasto. The manchuas (small boats) owned by the viceroy and archbishop were often used by their servants and friends for smuggling purposes. Many white settlers or casados, and even a vedor da fazenda, like Nuno Vaz Castelo Branco, had their quintas (holiday homes) along the banks of the River Mandovi, which served as landing places for goods taken from the ships before they reached the customs in Pangim.13 Beside passadores there were pimenteiros (smugglers), who were more difficult to check in their smuggling of pepper in particular, but also other high-value goods, including horses, pearls, slaves through ports all along 118

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the West Coast of India, across the Red Sea, the Hadramaut coast and as far as the Persian Gulf and Mozambique, and on the other coast along the Bengal ports, Malacca and Macao. They used the more swift and elusive oar-vessels and small galliots, and often bought cartazes (passes) from the local commanders as a legal cover. They would find ways of bypassing ports of call and arrange rendezvous at sea with other smuggling vessels. They were also effectively armed to defend themselves if chased, and often had the backing from the native rulers who held share in the benefits, and as the viceroy Count of Redondo revealed in one of the devassas ‘the majority of fidalgos and casados of Goa were public robbers of the customs’, but were skilful in covering their tracks by utilising the services of third parties. Mocquet arrived in Goa in May 1609 as a French tourist and spy, who had managed to infiltrate the entourage of the viceroy designate Count of Feira. It was a case somewhat similar to the earlier successful attempt of the Dutchman Linschotten who joined the entourage of the archbishop designate D. Vicente da Fonseca. The viceroy had died during the journey, and he had embalmed his body as official apothecary. He was not impressed by the Portuguese Catholicism in Goa. He preferred the honest natives to the arrogant fidalgos and their cruel treatment of slaves. He returned with the ship that brought back to Portugal the viceroy André Furtado de Mendonça, who was ill (suspected of poisoning) and accepted the medical care of Mocquet who wanted to get back to Europe. An English pilot joined the voyage as co-pilot, but Pyrard was assigned to a different ship. The governor died near Saint Helena, and he was the second governor to be embalmed by Mocquet, assisted by a barber-surgeon. The ship N. Sra da Penha de França touched Cascais on 2 July 1610. Mocquet left a very tragic picture of the Indo-Portuguese society, far from harmonious.14 He mentions with gratitude the good reception he had in Goa from the French Jesuit priest based in Goa, Fr. Etienne de la Croix, who had earlier helped the other French traveller Pyrard de Laval with some cash and willingness to intervene before the viceroy to get him out of jail.15 Similarly, the two Englishmen caught in Hormuz and brought to Goa were helped by their Jesuit countryman, Thomas Steven. Let me return to the issue of non-integration of the complex and conflicting interests in colonial Goa. That was precisely the central argument of my doctoral dissertation entitled originally ‘Goa in the Seventeenth Century: A Socio-economic History’.16 In several of my later studies I have extended the analysis right up to the end of the colonial rule. It cannot be forgotten that the life of a maritime trading port is vitally dependent upon the supply lines, not just by sea, but also from the hinterland. Most of the studies of the colonial cities, including Goa, either 119

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touch the issue of this latter dependence very superficially or ignore it altogether as of little consequence. Very little serious attention has been paid, for instance, to various cases of local rebellions in Goa as expressions of the native discontent with the colonial policies. The murder of half a dozen Jesuits in Cuncolim in 1583 was one such early and serious case. It has been presented generally as Hindu reaction to the Jesuit conversion drive in Salcete. As I pointed out in my research, Cuncolim was one of the rare villages that lived on more than agriculture for subsistence.17 It had its own petty industry, including gun-manufacturing capacity. In the letters of Afonso de Albuquerque one reads that guns of good quality were manufactured in Cuncolim, and he finds them comparable to those the Portuguese brought from Bohemia.18 The anger of local elite that murdered the Jesuits was provoked by the destruction of their local temple that was located at crossroads of trade routes that linked Goa with the hinterland through the Ghat passes.19 The trade fairs held during the temple feasts were vital for their economic activity. I have analysed elsewhere how the Portuguese had been sufficiently content with their maritime trade during most of the sixteenth century, and consequently did not interfere with the agriculture-based economy of the local inhabitants. This situation started to change from the beginning of the seventeenth century. The threats posed by the arrival of the Dutch and the Englishmen led to the building of the new fortifications at the entrance of the Mandovi River, but resulted simultaneously in an increasingly frequent investment by the casados (married white settlers) in the rural lands, violating the assurances given to the village communities in the Foral of Afonso Mexia in 1526. During this process the religious parish priests posed themselves as protectors of the native interests against the intrusion of the white casados. In reality the religious orders were themselves upset in their unrivalled white domination of the rural areas until then.20 In addition to the violation of the exclusive land proprietory rights of the Goan natives in their village communities, there were complaints about coconuts being taken forcibly by the captains of the Aguada and Reis Magos forts that defended the bay entry to the capital city. The natives were paid only one-third of the market price. The native labour was also regularly recruited for digging trenches of the Tivy fortifications in the northern Bardez taluka of Goa, and to watch the coastline against any enemy intruders. The village communities were made to pay 36,000 xerafins to cover the cost.21 A representation of the village communities of Salcete Province to the king in 1643 discloses how Viceroy Pero da Silva had ordered galleons to be built in Goa and the contractors were allowed 120

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to cut down jackfruit trees and other fruit-bearing trees for timber without paying just compensation to the native owners. The note makes it a point to suggest sabotage by stating that the galleons caught fire and were burnt when they entered the bay.22 The preceding incident of sabotage should convince us that history cannot be written only on the basis of what documents say, but it is important also to analyse the circumstantial evidence to read what documents do not say or leave unsaid. It is important to read in the gaps, often left unexplained by activities of financial corruption or political espionage. One such case was analysed by Sanjay Subrahmanyam in a study entitled ‘O inimigo encoberto: a expansão mogul no Decão e o Estado da Índia’ (The hidden enemy: the Mughal expansion in the Deccan and the Portuguese State of India).23 It is the Mughal policies of expansion in the Deccan that often kept the Portuguese on the West Coast on their toes. The Portuguese relations with Ahmadnagar at the time of Chand Bibi and the eve of the rise of the Marathas formed part of this tangle from the close of the sixteenth century. Bijapur had become at this time a great mart of European private traders, like Flemish Jacques de Couttre, a jewel trader. The correspondence of the Portuguese viceroy Count of Vidigueira suggests that Prince Murad was eliminated by ‘a foreign hand’ (his own). The Count is not likely to have made false claim, because he proved capable of eliminating a renegade Portuguese recruited by Ibrahim Adil Shah in 1620 to manufacture cannons for him.24 There is much to be read in between the lines and the silences in the Portuguese sources. My late guru, Professor A.R. Kulkarni, acknowledged this fact when he quoted me to explain why the Portuguese, who kept a vigilant eye upon Shivaji’s growing power, have nothing to say about his much-publicised coronation in 1974. Pissurlencar’s argument about this case is far from convincing, namely that there is a gap in the Portuguese documentation for the years 1669–77. It is far from true. A.R. Kulkarni quoted me as ‘one young scholar from Goa’. He wrote: The silence can be explained only as an intended black out. This is not difficult to believe. The religious fanaticism of the Portuguese had always considered the Hindu religious rites as devilish and any public celebration was banned within the limits of the Portuguese jurisdiction. Hence the coronation ceremony performed by Hindu priests and attended by them in large numbers was surely regarded by the Portuguese as a grand pagan act, which they could neither aprove [sic] nor talk about without feeling guilty of blasphemy or fearing the stern hand of the Inquisition.25 121

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As a net result of the violent conversion drive, the arrests and punishments of the Inquisition and the repeated forced levies from the village communities to cover the war costs against the neighbouring rulers, a sizeable number of Goan inhabitants, both Hindus and Christians, had moved out of Goa and settled down in various regions of the Konkan and beyond in the Indian sub-continent. It would be ultimately their pressure that would end the Portuguese colonial rule in Goa in 1961. The Indian military intervention is generally invoked as the real cause, but let me point out to those who are unaware that Goa Liberation Council created in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in 1954 was a civic organisation representing nearly 100,000 Goan expatriates eking out their living in Bombay. The leadership of the Goa Liberation Council was largely with the Catholics, including the Archbishop-Cardinal of Bombay, a Goan by origin. More interesting still is the fact that the Operation Vijay, as the military action to occupy Goa, was under operational command of nine highranking Goan officers, including only one Hindu. All of them were chosen for their familiarity with Portuguese language, besides their acknowledged military experience in various branches of India’s armed forces.26 Major General Pezarat Correia who led one of the expeditionary batallions that was sent from Portugal to Goa in 1954 at the height of tension created by the satyagraha movement, and later served in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau before taking part in the Revolt of 25 April 1974, which ended Salazar regime in Portugal, wrote in a recent publication of the Liga dos Combatentes no Ultramar:27 The citizens of Goa, Daman and Diu were not incorporated in the Portuguese Armed Forces. . . . There was just one company of infantry in Panjim and that was meant for mere protocolar functions. Let us acknowledge honestly that Goans, and people of Daman and Diu, did not in reality benefit from the statute of Portuguese nationals, with rights and duties of Portuguese citizens, including the duty of performing military service. They were subjected to foreign occupation, and as such, the duty of defending them militarily and the territory belonged to the occupying power. If they were or not Indian citizens, that was a different issue which they had to decide. But Portugal, when it did not permit a different solution that was not invasion, even that right of option was denied to them. To conclude, Goa’s history as a node of international network of trade precedes and follows pre-modern times. Goa’s ruling elites can still be studied 122

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as ‘strangers at home and at home with strangers’. In post-liberation Goa we witnessed a chief minister accused of gold smuggling along with his brothers. He continues to be popular in the promotion of football and politics, was elected to represent Goa in the Parliament in 1996 and continues to be active in local politics till date. In the past decade some Goans made hay in selling iron ore to the Chinese to build their Olympic stadia at immense profit, without caring for tragic consequences to the ecology of the territory.28 To give a truly surreal touch to Goan internationalism, the Goa government is now facing a delicate task of expelling two elected MLAs who have been denounced as holding Portuguese nationality in a country that does not permit dual nationality.29

Notes 1 P. Pissurlencar, “Um Passo do Cronista Barros elucidado à Luz duma Inscrição Sânscrita,” O Oriente Português, no. 18 (1937), pp. 35–48. Refers to three copper plates issued by Madhav Mantri, governor of Govapura, serving Vijayanagar king Harihara II, in 1391, where we come across reference to ‘Gova sinhasane’, as capital of Konkan. He captured Goa from the Bahmani rulers in 1366, and ruled in Goa at least till 1387. Goa remained under Vijayanagar until 1470, when it was retaken by Bahmani sultan Muhamad Gawan, general of Muhammad Shah II. A copper plate of this year refers to him as ‘Raiá of Goa’ (king or ruler of Goa); P. Pissurlencar, “As primitivas capitais de Goa,” O Oriente Português, no. 1 (1931), pp. 1–20; K.G. Vasantamadhava, “Gove-Karnataka Cultural Contacts from 1000–1600 A.D.,” in P.P. Shirodkar, ed., Goa: Cultural Trends (Panaji: Directorate of Archives, 1987), pp. 22–33; Pius Malekandathil, Maritime India: Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2010). Chapter 2 deals with Maritime Trade and Political Economy of Goa, 800–1500 (pp. 19–37). 2 Teotonio R. de Souza, ed., Goa through the Ages, II (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 1989), pp. 117–36. 3 Malekandathil, Maritime India, pp. 19–37. Cf. Chandrapura (Chandor) on the bank of River Paroda (a tributary of the Zuari) was the oldest known port of Goa. The discovery of Roman coins and amphorae sherds from Pilar near Gopakapatana port indicates that Roman ships called in ports of Goa during the Satavahana period. The Shilaharas and Kadambas were maritime powers and had trade contacts with West Asia and East African countries. The depiction of a naval battle in the memorial stones (twelfth–thirteenth centuries) exhibited in the Archaeological Museum, Old Goa, reflects the maritime activity of this region. A rare inscription on copper plates belonging to the reign of Kadamba Jayakeshi I was sent to Portugal by the Goa government in 1727. It was published by P.S.S. Pissurlencar along with several other pre-Portuguese inscriptions of Goa, in “Inscrições Pre-Portuguesas de Goa,” O Oriente Portuguez, no. 22 (1938), pp. 381–460. This particular inscription dated 1053 CE is transcribed from original plates in Sanskrit and translated into Portuguese in pp. 386–98.

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4 T.R. de Souza, “Goa-Based Portuguese Seaborne Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 12, no. 4 (1975), pp.  433–42. Cf. also T.R. de Souza, “Marine Insurance and Indo-Portuguese Trade History: Na Aid to Maritime Historiography,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 14, no. 3 (1977), pp. 377–84. 5 J.A. Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “Os judeus e a expansão portuguesa na India durante o século XVI. O exemplo de Isaac do Cairo: espião, «língua» e «judeu de Cochim de Cima»,” in Arquivos do Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian, Vols. 31, 32 (Paris, 1994), pp. 137–260. 6 S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Gueniza, Vol. 1 (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967). 7 Dejanirah Couto, Léspionnage portugais dans lémpire ottoman au XVIe siècle, offprint of La Decouverte, le Portugal et lÉurope: ACts du Colloque, Paris, 26–28 May 1988, ed. J. Aubin (Paris: F. Calosute Gulbenkian, Centre Culturel Portugais, 1990). 8 Mocquet embalmed two viceroys who died during his voyage to Goa and return from it. Recently published correspondence of Judge Jorge de Amaral e Vasconcelos (1649–1656), ed. Amandio J. Morais Barros, Porto: Afrontamento, 2011. There was much demand in Goa for the bezoar stones, or ‘pedras cordiais’, sold by the Goa Jesuits, as antidote to poisoning. 9 Archivo Portuguez-Oriental, Fasc. 1-Parte 1, ed. J.H. Cunha Rivara (New Delhi: AES Reprint, 1992), p. 116, Fasc. I-Parte 2, p. 42. The Goa municipality complaints about the decision of the viceroy Mathias de Albuquerque who had removed Antonio Giralte from the office of Vedor da Fazenda and given it to a foreigner, Vicencio de Brune. Cf. Archivo Portuguez-Oriental, Fasc. 3, pp. 577–8: The king writes to the viceroy and the municipality expressing his disapproval of the action of the viceroy and orders that all salaries paid to Vicencio de Brune should be replaced by the viceroy from his personal account, and Antonio Giralte should be duly compensated for his losses. 10 Ricardo Micael Teles, “Fortalezas de Goa e as suas Legendas,” O Oriente Português, no. 38 (1937), pp. 7–34; A.B. De Bragança Pereira, “As capitais da India Portuguesa,” O Oriente Português, no. 1 (1931), pp. 122–70; A. Delduque da Costa, “A tentativa da reconstrução de Gôa em 1777,” O Oriente Português, no. 1 (1931), pp. 104–20. It was decided in 1684 following the invasion of Goa by Sambhaji. 11 Duarte Barbosa, The Book of Duarte Barbosa, ed. Mansel Longworth Dames, Vol. 1 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1908), pp. 174–5. This is a travel account of the sixteenth century. We have followed the recent critical edition in Portuguese by Maria Augusta da Veiga e Sousa, O Livro de Duarte Barbosa, Vol. 2 (Lisboa, 2000), pp. 20–7. 12 Anthony Disney, “Smugglers and Smuggling in the Western Half of the Estado da India in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” Indica, 26, nos. 1–2 (March–September, 1989), pp. 57–75. 13 Archivo Portuguez-Oriental, Fasc. 3, pp. 323–4. The crown advises the viceroy Mathias de Albuquerque against the requests of the Goa municipality that suggested recalling all the New Christians as harmful for the interests of the state. The king sees no reason why they should not have the right to trade just like

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14

15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

anyone else. Only it suggests keeping an eye on those who misbehave and sending information that may enable taking proper action (p. 507). Voyage à Mozambique & Goa: La relation de Jean Mocquet (1607–1610), ed. Xavier de Castro, Prefaced by Dejanirah Couto (Paris: Ed. Chandeigne, 1996), pp. 7–21. Mocquet was arrested in Mozambique suspected of foreign spy, because the island was under Dutch attack at that time. Mocquet could recognise among those who arrested him some whom he had helped during the voyage. He has harsh words for the Portuguese: ‘ces Portugais, la plupart race de juifs, sont de ce naturel malin et méconaissant’ (p. 61). The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval, Vol. 2, eds., Albert Gray and H.C.P. Bell (New Delhi: AES Reprint, 2000), p. 22. Teotonio R. de Souza, Medieval Goa: A Socio-Economic History (Panaji, Goa: 1556 & Broadway Book Centre, 2009), pp. ix, 46. http://www.goacom.com/culture/history/cuncolim.html. Cartas de Afonso de Albuquerque, Vol. 1, ed. Bulhão Pato (Lisboa, 1884), p. 203. T.R. de Souza, “Ghat Passes and Ghat Routes in South Konkan,” unpublished paper presented at the 301st Punyathithi Seminar on Shivaji, University of Poona, 9–10 February 1982. Cf. Shankar N.V. Joshi, Marathi Rajvathitil kahi Ghatmarg Chaukya va Sankirna (Pune: Bharat Itihasa Sanshodaka Mandal, 1954). de Souza, Medieval Goa, pp. 44–7. Ibid., pp. 203–4 (App. A-11: Monções 54, fls. 55–57). Ibid., pp. 193–8 (App. A-8: AHU, Caixas da India, n. 15, doc. 110). S. Subrahmanyan, “O inimigo encoberto´: a expansão mogol no Decão e o Estado da India,” in Povos e Culturas: Portugal e o Oriente – Passado e Presente, Vol. 5 (Lisboa: CPCEP, 1996), pp. 115–68. Ibid., p. 166. A.R. Kulkarni, Medieval Maratha Country (New Delhi: Book & Books, 1996), p. 120, n. 3. Valmiki Faleiro, Patriotism in Action: Goans in India’s Defense Services (Panaji, Goa: 1556, 2010). Revisitar Goa, Damão e Diu (Lisboa: Liga dos Combatentes, 2010), pp. 215–16, 218. http://bit.ly/11rIWoa. http://bit.ly/1grwryG.

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7 THE INDIAN FORT AS A SITE OF INTERSECTIONS Anirudh Deshpande

It would be rather simple to assert that fortified settlements and forts have played a multidimensional role in Indian history, and its various imaginations, since the dawn of civilisation. Fortifications have been excavated at several Harappan sites and find copious mention in the Vedic literature and Indian epics. Ideas of the fort and state power reinforce each other in the multiple memories of the Indian past. Normative ancient and medieval Indian political texts were incomplete without a reference to the forts. For instance, the Arthashastra contains an entire section devoted to the forts. According to its author(s) the maintenance and conquest of a variety of forts was politically significant. Further, the conquest of enemy forts was the sine qua non of the political success of an ambitious king; a strong fort left untaken was an obvious source of eternal danger. According to this ancient Indian political treatise the ‘five means of taking a fort are: psychological warfare, enticing the enemy out, weakening him, besieging him and taking the fort by direct assault’.1 Forts, as defensive and offensive formations, were the mainstay of the medieval Indian states and societies for several reasons mentioned in this chapter. This point was reasserted in an eighteenth-century Marathi text written specifically with the purpose of revisiting the practice of statecraft under the seventeenth-century Maratha king Shivaji: Forts are the basis of the state. In the absence of forts the kingdom falls to foreign rule, the subjects desert the realm and the country becomes desolate. How can a state exist in such conditions? Hence, the kings who have ruled in the past built forts and secured their rule. They also defended themselves against foreign invasions by taking shelter in these forts.2 126

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Medieval Indian forts, like Kumbhalgarh and Chittorgarh, were often quite massive, and opulent fort-cities, like Vijayanagara and Golconda, flourished in many parts of India during the medieval period and their relationship with voluminous trade, local religious practices and artisanal manufacture is a well-documented fact. Cities like Vijayanagara or later Fort William, for example, were essential to the historical imagination of India conveyed in both the Western and Eastern narratives about a fabled land both rich and powerful. The Indian forts and walled cities, like Shahjahanabad and Golconda, impressed the minds of visitors who came to India from many parts of the world and later wrote their travel accounts extolling the virtues of what they had seen. While the importance of forts to the medieval Indian polity is a well-known fact, forts remained crucial to the establishment and rise of European power in India from the beginning of the sixteenth century. All European colonial powers, starting with the Portuguese on the West Coast of India, built fortifications in several parts of the country to protect their trade and personnel, project their power and instill fear in the native societies they dominated and governed. Over time the European fortified cities became the bases and symbols of modern colonialism in India. Increasingly from the second half of the seventeenth century Indian merchants threatened by political strife under Indian rulers sought shelter in the European forts and fortified cities. Thus the English forts in Surat, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta provided a fertile ground for the growth of a sustained collaboration between the East India Company and the heterogeneous Indian mercantile class.3 The English encouraged the Indian traders to settle in large numbers in their fortified port cities and the traders obliged them because these cities, because of their design, fortifications and disciplined troops, became safe havens for both Indian and European merchants in the long run.4 The Europeans imported new fort designs, superior artillery and modern gunnery techniques into India, and this enhanced the importance of forts in India in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The English-fortified port cities (Madras, Bombay and Calcutta) became the springboards of British power in India in the eighteenth century. The first comforting view a visitor from the sea got of these cities from the harbour was that of a redoubtable, well-stocked and heavily armed fort. The military and commercial importance of forts in India declined from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and finally the modernisation of artillery and emergence of air power reduced their real military significance. Yet, as the example of Singapore touted as the British ‘Gibraltar of the East’ in the 1930s shows, the fort continued to play an important role in the imagination associated with imperial strength long after its days in history were over. The decline of forts notwithstanding, the larger forts in British and Princely India continued to house substantial garrisons and impressive 127

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military stores including an assortment of artillery. They were the sites of royal pomp, state power, social control, religious hegemony and military violence and, wherever maintained properly, kept the people in awe of the ruling dispensation. Although forts have been important to the evolution of Indian society in the long run, they have not generated a large body of historical literature based on methodical research. While it is true that the numerous texts on Indian trade, politics, culture and warfare have paid attention to the historical importance of Indian forts, research directed primarily towards the Indian forts is rare even now. Indeed the paucity of historical literature on Indian forts observed by the pioneer scholar Sydney Toy in 1962 has not been overcome even today.5 In the recent past the commendable scholarship of Jean Deloche at the French Institute of Pondicherry has addressed this problem in the context of south Indian history. His excellent monographs on the cultural history and evolution of fortifications in the Tamil country and the upper Deccan have opened new vistas of research for younger scholars in the country. In his studies the forts of south India come alive as historically responsive entities and repositories of historical sources for a more complete history of medieval south India.6 In addition historical work on varied aspects of the Indian forts and fortified port and fort-cities by F.J. Varley, Bruce Watson, Partha Mitter, Meera Kosambi, John E. Brush and B. Lewis has been referred to in this chapter. Nonetheless the feeling that much of Indian historiography has generally taken the omnipresent Indian fort for granted remains strong. A great number of small, medium and large forts can still be seen standing in India, and although most of them are neglected by the agencies in charge of them, they comprise an invaluable material and ideological source of the pre-modern Indian state and society. In this context this chapter argues in favour of rescuing the Indian fort from the popular tourist discourse of nationalism and martial valour and locating it at the conjuncture of state and society in pre-colonial India. There is much to learn and recover from the forts in India if only we observe them carefully once again and unlearn what the textbooks and tourist brochures teach us about them.

The historical importance of forts in India The etymology of languages spoken in a country often provides us with a clue to the importance of subjects particularly dear to the people of that country. The Indian knowledge, imagination and collective memory of forts grew over a long time before assuming definite contours in the medieval and modern periods of Indian history. Here it must be pointed out that India had a chronologically longer medieval period in its history than Europe. 128

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This was so because the transition to modernity in large parts of Europe began with the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution which started happening from the late eighteenth century. In contrast, India became a colony of Britain in this period and British rule preserved the largely pre-modern native princely states till 1947. This historical peculiarity, combined with the impact of Central Asia and Europe on Indian history increasingly from the thirteenth century, influenced the history of fort-building India in myriad ways. History has made India the land of forts and Indians usually associate forts with legendary memories of martial valour – a collective memory reinforced by the national and local imaginations of historical chivalry and romance associated with the forts encouraged by colonial historiography initially. Nationalist historiography, ill-informed money-minded tourist guides, tourist brochures, Indian cinema historicals and official handouts keep this chivalric memory alive. Perhaps no country in the world has as many words designating the existence of forts and fortified places than India. Pura, durg, kila, kot, kottai, kote, garh, garhi, gilacha are some of the words used in languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi to describe forts both major and minor. In Marathi the word wada also refers to a large fortified residence of the local notables like the jagirdars. In fact, the fortified residence built by the Brahman Peshwa in Pune, substantial by Deccan standards, during the eighteenth century to symbolise the rise of Peshwa power is called Shaniwarwada. Shivaji, it is well known, became an autonomous ruler in the Deccan primarily because he built, controlled and renovated numerous strategically important forts in western Maharashtra. When a number of important forts were wrested from him by the Mughal commander Jai Singh in 1665 he was left with no choice but to sign the Treaty of Purandhar and temporarily become a Mughal ally. The power of Vijayanagara and the medieval Deccan Sultanates was also based on exceptionally strong forts. Fortress cities like Bijapur, Ahmadnagar and Golconda were simultaneously important to the political, social, economic and military history and the balance of power of the region. This military and strategic importance of forts in south India is visible in the way Tipu Sultan held the British at bay for several months during the siege of his wellprovisioned and largely French-designed fortress capital Seringapatnam in Mysore (1798–9). This hard-fought siege would have lasted longer had the Nizam not helped the English. Medieval Indian forts were well stocked with soldiers, weapons, grain and water and withstood sieges laid by large imperial forces lasting several months. This was evident in the case of self-sufficient large forts like Chittorgarh (1567–8) and smaller strategic forts like Asirgarh (1600) besieged by heavily armed Mughal armies commanded by none other than Emperor Akbar.7 That forts have a long lineage in India and were 129

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considered politically significant in ancient India is amply demonstrated by the fact that the Arthashastra of 300 BCE mentions no fewer than four different types of forts – mountain, river, jungle and desert. The conquest of forts by various means, including the siege, is also described in great detail in the Arthashastra.8 The Arthashastra is usually read both as a source of ancient Indian history and a normative text ascribed to Kautilya, the Brahman advisor of Chandragupta Maurya. Buddhist sources also support the contention that forts, like the one built by Ajatashatru at Pataligram, were considered important by the kings of ancient India and they spent considerable money and time on them.9 In sum forts were normatively and really important to Indian history for a variety of reasons. Forts were significant to pre-modern Indian rulers because feudal, or in general medieval, power was essentially military and fiscal power in comparison with power in the modern capitalist period where it becomes primarily economic power exercised through both military and non-military institutions including the media. The arrival of modernity and the development of artillery and air power are important causes for the military decline of forts throughout the world since the nineteenth century. In India forts have always been numerous. They have been built by all the powers who have ruled the land since the ancient times. The Rajput dynasties, which rose to prominence in north India in the early medieval period, were renowned fort builders. The making of Kumbhalgarh, Chittorgarh, Ranthambhor, Bundi and Jaisalmer in the erstwhile Rajputana, among scores of others, underscores the value of forts in the region called Rajputana. Following the Rajputs the Muslim ruling dynasties literally built hundreds of forts in medieval India. From the thirteenth century most forts in India were heavily influenced by the Islamic styles of fort architecture imported into India first by the Turko-Afghans and later the Mughals. Medieval Indian forts evolved in response to developments in military technology which occurred from 1200 to 1650 CE in India. The impact of gunpowder technology on Indian fort design has been noted by Indian historians. The European powers like Portugal, England and France added to the number of forts in India steadily from the sixteenth century, bringing into India new technologies of fort construction.10 Indeed forts continued to be built and refurbished in India well into the nineteenth century. This happened despite the large-scale destruction of forts and fortifications carried out by the British in the process of India’s conquest and modern colonisation. Forts were maintained by the princely states, for reasons both real and symbolic. These forts added to the prestige of the ruling houses, helped consolidate their power and diffused the ruling ideology as religious beliefs among the people who venerated the deities located inside these forts. Forts, 130

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like the one built by General Zorawar Singh in Ladakh after his famous nineteenth-century military expedition to that region, also projected power and helped states tap revenues from busy trade routes. Zorawar Singh’s fort, strategically located close to the Indus, was made of stone, mud and wood. It can still be found standing on the border of Leh although it is not a major tourist attraction these days for ‘security’ reasons. A formidable-looking fort built by the Leh rulers can still be seen straddling a mountain side close to the road leading to Pangong Tso from Leh. This must have been a safe haven for the trade caravans passing into Ladakh from Tibet. And, despite Ladakh’s reputation as a ‘peaceful’ Buddhist haven, the palace at Leh, its capital, is heavily fortified and contains a large Buddhist shrine. Forts, like the ones with massive curtain walls in Patiala and Gwalior, were the seats of political, administrative, juridical and social power. They were sites of punishment, worship and the dispensation of justice in a society where the ruling class was related to the subaltern classes in a matrix of pre-modern custom. At the same time they protected the ruling class from professional brigands, foreign marauders and rebellious sections of the peasantry. The forts provided refuge, rest and replenishment to tired military units, rich traders and occasionally the peasantry in distress we may add. Even as late as the early twentieth century the British attached particular importance to the forts in the northwest of India. The colonial military organisation, to which an Indian Army comprising the ‘martial races’ was central, was influenced in a variety of ways by the British obsession of defending the passes in northwest India bordering the Punjab. Towards this end the British developed and maintained a strong line of strategically connected forts called the Sandeman Line running from the north to the southwest in the Northwest Frontier Province of British India. This line of forts was supposed to be the first line of defence against an invasion from the north. The bulk of the Indian Army was deployed in this region and trained and equipped to defend India against a possible Russia-backed Afghan invasion from the northwest. In Southeast Asia the British continued to repose confidence in the battery-mounted fortifications built by them in Singapore against a possible Japanese attack from the sea in the 1930s. This confidence was shattered by the swift Japanese infantry-based conquest of Malaysia and Singapore in 1942.

Enumeration and classification of forts: two examples (Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh)11 The importance of forts to local histories is illustrated here with reference to two states for which I have statistics at hand. Let us take the case of 131

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Maharashtra which probably contains the largest number of forts and fortifications in India. There is hardly an important hill in Maharashtra, a rugged mountainous state, not capped by a fort. The forts in the region would have been far more numerous had the British, following the final defeat of the Marathas in 1818, not followed a policy of systematically destroying Maratha fortifications and neglecting forts in western India (more on this later). Maharashtra, it is reported, has a total of 463 forts including 11 island, 71 coastal, 225 hill and 156 land forts. This figure would be infinitely larger if the fortified jagirdar and police caste outposts were to be added to it. Certainly the number of forts and fortified residences must have run into a few thousands in the eighteenth century. The domination of hill forts in Maharashtra is reflected in the fact that they comprise almost 50% of the total number of forts. Since many of the coastal forts are also built on hills the actual percentage of hill forts is much larger. Hence topography was of prime concern in the making of forts. Of the total of 463 forts 48 have been classified as main forts, 37 as secondary forts and 378 as fortified outposts. If we look at the distribution of forts in Maharashtra, the greatest number of forts, 317, is to be found in western Maharashtra on either side of the Western Ghats. The enormous percentage of fortified outposts is explained by the nature and power of the zamindari and jagirdari feudal ruling class in India. It would be safe to presume that these outposts were major deshmukh strongholds. Without the support of these deshmukhs the ruling dynasties could not hope to last very long in Maharashtra. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such outposts mushroomed because of the large number of hereditary watan jagirs granted to the local chiefs, that is the deshmukhs by the Marathas, Mughals and the Nizam. The Agjnapatra pays special attention to forts and their keepers are collectively called the Gadkaris, that is the keepers of the forts. It advises the king to keep the Gadkaris, who could easily use the forts under their command as centres of resistance and revolt, divided and always under the control of the sovereign. The forts and fortifications at the village level thus played a crucial role in the tension between the king and his vassals during the medieval period. In the case of Maharashtra it has also been noted that forts were built on hill tops close to the valleys through which trade passed and where agriculture and crafts flourished. It must be noted that several medieval cities in Maharashtra have strong forts located nearby. There is no doubt that over time a symbiotic relationship informed by religious practices, myths and labour relations developed between the fort and the countryside surrounding it. Without the use of labour and local expertise on a daily basis the building and maintenance of forts and the fortified outposts connected 132

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to it was impossible. Fort garrisons, guards and priests were often recruited from the countryside the fort controlled.12 Since India did not have slavery the expropriation of this labour was based on the caste system mediated by a religious ideology to which the locally venerated temples within the forts were important. Hill forts were always important to the Deccan which stretches from Khandesh in the north to the northern highlands of Karnataka in the south. This explains why the Marathas insisted on gaining a fort like Asirgarh in Khandesh from the Nizam after the Battle of Udgir (1760).13 Hill forts to the north of Mysore were also considered strategically and commercially important by Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan and before them the local chieftains called Nayaks.14 Asirgarh, a gateway fort, commanded the Tapti valley containing Burhanpur, a centre of trade and manufacture in Khandesh. Trade caravans also passed through this area on their way to south India. While speaking of the Deccan it has been noticed that even small forts like Galna, Laling and Songir in the Khandesh were considered strategically important by their owners. Their importance is underscored by the elaborate and instructive rainwater harvesting systems developed on their rocky summits by the Marathas which can teach us a lesson or two in these days of water scarcity. Wherever possible, deep talaos (ponds) were hewed out of solid rock to collect water by means of carefully constructed rain water drains running into them. Even a small fort like Songir had a talao 70 feet deep. Further, to minimise the loss of water by evaporation, at places takis (deep cisterns) with surface troughs and pillared underground chambers without spring action were constructed by chiselling through the rock under the summit of the hill. The takis with a trough above them kept the water uncontaminated for long periods of time, and this helped the defenders hold the fort till reinforcements or the time for negotiations arrived.15 Water was the key to holding the fort against enemies, and the builders of these forts knew very well that during a siege water could not be transported from the plains to the forts. Hence even the smaller forts of the Deccan, never to be taken by escalade, could be held by a small wellequipped garrison against large besieging forces. Large forts, as the archaeological remains, observers’ accounts and maps from the period show, usually contained more elaborate arrangements. I wish to suggest two explanations for the rise of so many fortifications, and the importance attached to their keepers, in medieval Maharashtra. First, the great expansion of India’s overseas trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries increased the quantity of commodities which were transported to the coast from the hinterland by land and river routes. The export of expensive commodities and import of bullion created new 133

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opportunities for taxation and necessitated measures of mercantile protection. The Maratha hill fort, towering over commercial towns, was tailormade for this dual role. This underlines the location of most hill and coastal forts on promontories commanding the important passes and rivers used by the traders. The fact that trade surpluses, besides agricultural taxes, were an important source of regional political power is demonstrated by Shivaji’s sacking of Surat in 1660 and 1664. In the eighteenth century the power of Admiral Kanhoji Angre and his successors was predicated upon the tapping of coastal and inland river trade from a string of redoubtable coastal forts on the Konkan Coast.16 Thus forts were important bases from which trade could be monitored, tolls collected and raids launched. At the same time treasure and money could be safely kept in the forts and this increased the protection money accruing to the owners of the forts. The cost of hospitality, it may be safely assumed, was borne by the guests. The second explanation connects the proliferation of fortifications to the regional class struggle in which a militant and armed peasantry threatened the ruling order on the one hand. On the other hand the forts, as observed earlier, were crucial to the political aspirations of recalcitrant, rajas, poligars, zamindars and jagirdars who were loath to submit to central authority. During the Mughal period the manufacture of firearms developed rapidly in India, and by the middle of the seventeenth century India became a land of armed peasants who lost no opportunity to resist the state land revenue drives.17 The proliferation of firearms among the peasants increasingly converted several areas in north India into zortalab zones. In this context massive and thick fort walls, moats, drawbridges and heavy doors were built to deter both invaders and audacious bands of peasants who thought nothing of royal power. It is rumoured, and probably true, that the deep moats surrounding some of the bigger Indian forts like Bharatpur teemed with crocodiles. The beginning of the decline of the Mughal Empire and the rise of the regional elites from the middle of the seventeenth century created the political spaces which benefited peasant bands armed with muskets and light mobile artillery. In these circumstances banditry became common and the growing insecurities of the ruling orders expressed often themselves in the rise of fortifications.18 Incidentally this was also the period marked by the increasing zamindar revolts against the Mughal state in north India – the enormous, and grossly under studied, Jat forts at Bharatpur and Deeg date from these years. Bharatpur was renowned for its ability to withstand sieges and Surajmal was right in requesting the arrogant Bhausaheb to leave his heavy equipment there on his way to Delhi in 1760. The siege of Kumbher in 1754, in which the joint armies of the Shindes, Holkar and Raghunath Rao participated, 134

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had already demonstrated the resilience and negotiating power of the Jat forts to the Marathas. Later when the British started their conquest of north India in the early nineteenth century they first failed against Bharatpur and later came across stiff resistance offered by numerous fortified and heavily armed villages called garhis in zamindar control.19 Recent research on the rise and consolidation of the Naruka Rajput thikanedar power in Mewat in the wake of the Mughal decline from the late seventeenth century onwards highlights the important role of the garhis in this process. The Narukas were a branch of the Kachwaha Rajput house of Amber and carved out a virtually autonomous kingdom based on Alwar in Mewat by deftly projecting their power from their garhis. Sources make it clear that by the nineteenth century the zamindars and thikanedars, based in their garhis and commanding independent well-armed bands of retainers, of north and west India had effectively undermined all central authority.20 Consequently the British could establish their rule in north India only after they violently razed scores of such garhis in the so-called mud wars of the nineteenth century. These wars left a bitter legacy of resentment in the militant propertied peasantry of Hindustan, and much of this turned the mutiny into a general popular uprising against the British in 1857. The historian Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri has also highlighted the role of the garhis/qilachas (gilachas) in the rise of the zamindar class in north India from 1600 CE till at least the Ghadar of 1857. The innovative zamindars of north India, to resist any superior authority, built well-planned garhis ‘surrounded by deep ditches and bamboos’ impervious to cannon shot.21 Indeed in north India the fortress was both synonymous with and symbolic of military and political power and any ‘zamindar of consequence always tried to keep his hold over his fortresses and seize those of his weaker neighbours’.22 Zamindar forts were also used extensively to interdict and milk the trade routes and prevent punitive imperial expeditions to be launched against their owners. We are told that the garhis of the zamindars situated ‘alongside the highway were also used to by the zamindars to block the passage of the imperial troops’. The zamindar garhi and banditry went hand in hand even on the relatively flat plains of Awadh. The local roads and highways were rendered unsafe for the passage of imperial traffic, and ‘it was always considered necessary for heavy armed escort to accompany the treasures passing through the territorial limits of Awadh’.23 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the zamindari garhis became the centres of local rebellions generally involving the non-payment of land revenue. By the end of the eighteenth century, when the power of the Awadh Nawabs began to wane and the star of the East Indian Company began to rise in Hindustan, the zamindars had become bold enough to attack detachments 135

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of company sepoys detailed to escort the royal treasury. After the death of Asaf-ud-daulah (1797) and Sa’adat Ali Khan (1814) the zamindars in Awadh began to ‘multiply their armed retainers, forts, cannons and guns’ and became, according to the sources of the period, invincible.24 Zamindars could easily recruit a thousand expert matchlock-men and, on occasion, slay state officials like the chakledars and faujdars. Further, the zamindars, entrenched in their garhis situated ‘amidst thick bamboo jungles’, usually joined forces against the central authority in the event of a crisis. The besieging force could thus be outflanked by a fellow caste neighbour, attacked from the rear and have its supply lines cut.25 In sum what Jafri writes of the forts in Awadh can easily be applied to the rest of India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: The country was dotted with innumerable fortresses, surrounded with dense forests, carefully rendered inaccessible for state forces. All the zamindars invariably kept cannons and big guns for the defense of their forts. A combination of all these factors always proved more than a match for the ‘royal forces’.26 The importance of forts in ancient and medieval India is also highlighted by the history of forts in Andhra Pradesh. This aspect usually does not command an important place in Indian military history. Going by the ‘traditional classification’ of forts and fortified places Andhra Pradesh has 160 forts and fortified villages.27 This number would have been much bigger in the eighteenth century and even earlier. Of the identified 160 about 50 are considered important because of ‘political and military’ reasons although, in my view, there is no doubt that a large number of fortified villages and minor forts played an important role in the history of peasant and zamindar resistance in the region. This changes our conception of military history. In the state coastal Andhra has 73 forts, the region of Rayalseema 50 and Telengana 37. Of these 129 are Sthaladurgas, 4 Jaladurgas, 30 Giridurgas and 2 Vanadurgas (land forts, water/sea forts, hill forts and forest forts, respectively) according to the classical definition of Indian forts.28 Again, like Maharashtra, the coastal forts played an important role in the medieval economy of the region. The vast and fertile deltaic plains made by the Godavari and Krishna Rivers created a rich hinterland for the lucrative Andhra coastal and overseas trade. This would explain the existence of a large number (66) of Sthaladurgas and three Jaladurgas (island forts) in coastal Andhra. Even Andhra Pradesh, where forts are probably not as numerous as Rajasthan, has three categories of forts defined by functions like the forts of Maharashtra. The three categories are capital forts, 136

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intermediary-cantonment forts and frontier outposts. Among the wellknown capital forts of the state are city forts like Warangal, Golconda, Vengi and Hanumankonda with long histories related to local ruling lineages and outsiders like the Qutab Shahis and later the Nizam. It is best to see the forts in the region connected to each other in a structure of political and military relationships involving a changing tributary sovereign and the more or less permanent class of powerful and socially entrenched intermediaries. In this scheme of things the fortified outposts played a significant role when it came to signalling, communications and the housing of military detachments which backed the state control of smaller localities. The smaller forts could become the local headquarters of the central government or the redoubts of recalcitrant zamindars in varying circumstances. Indian forts: a historical appraisal This chapter began by highlighting the role played by forts in the contemporary historical imagination of Indians in general and the reinforcement of this imagination by the media. The first two sections of the chapter have also underlined the real historical importance of Indian forts by locating them in their pre-modern pre-capitalist social, economic and political context. This section juxtaposes the imagination and history of forts to arrive at a realistic historical appraisal of Indian forts. History always produces a sobering effect on imagination without necessarily falsifying it. The history of siege warfare in medieval Rajasthan, for instance, qualifies the popular imagination of Rajput chivalry without detracting from the military importance of forts. The long, hard-fought and legendary siege of Chittorgarh by Akbar in the sixteenth century exemplifies the military and political importance of forts in medieval India. Before this, the fact that sieges were important to medieval rulers can also be seen in the effort made by Sher Shah to conquer forts like Kalinjar. Carelessness in handling gunpowder during this siege caused Sher Shah’s premature death. In 1760, for instance, Ahmad Shah Abdali was driven away by the capable killedar of Agra whose use of artillery on this occasion was exemplary. The Afghan also had to negotiate a bargain with the Jats who literally pulled up the drawbridges and sat pretty in their well-defended forts. On the other hand, despite possessing strong forts, the majority of Rajput rajas struck bargains with the Mughals and rose to prominence in their courts. They preferred this to the kesaribana, the last sally, exemplified by Medini Rai after his refusal to negotiate with Babar at Chanderi following the Battle of Khanwa in 1527. Forts were always a source of princely strength, and medieval rulers were right in emphasising their importance to the survival of themselves and their states. 137

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On the other hand Indian history is replete with instances in which forts exchanged hands frequently and forts were surrendered by their killedars for one reason or another. In this context the heroic resistance associated with the defenders of forts, often painted in nationalist colours, in our historical imagination might appear an exception to the rule. In general, if the cost of taking a fort was likely to exceed the benefits provided by its possession the besiegers normally settled for a bargain by scaling down their demands. Treachery and bribery were the common means of taking Indian forts. More often than not bargains were struck. This happened at Kumbher in 1754 when the Marathas settled for a bargain negotiated by none other than Surajmal’s wife Anusuya.29 Forts could also capitulate to the attackers for a variety of reasons not excluding the demoralisation of the garrison or outright treachery by the killedar who was promised favourable terms by the attackers. The question of national feeling did not arise at all in such circumstances. During the Second Maratha War some Maratha forts, held by the troops of Daulat Rao Shinde, negotiated surrender after initial resistance because the fort garrisons had been kept in arrears for several months. Upon the death of Tipu Sultan in 1799 several fort commanders in Mysore surrendered to the British knowing well that resistance was futile. Economic distress, grievances over unpaid arrears or the collapse of central authority could precipitate the surrender of forts to superior forces. I have earlier referred to forts as sites of peasant resistance in Indian history. The so-called mud wars of north India in the nineteenth century testify to this. There were numerous instances of fortified villages resisting state revenue collection drives in medieval and early modern India. Indian peasants have not left behind written records, but a critical reading of the sources reveals unmistakable traces of their militant activities. Reading the sources against their grain provides vital clues to armed medieval peasant resistance. There is ample evidence to prove that fortifications in the highlands of south-central India had become the strongholds of social bandits in the eighteenth century and communities of such bandits were audacious enough to attack and defeat even royal forces. There may also be reason to believe that several forts in central and south-central India were initially built by powerful peasant clans or the pastoralists who needed fortifications to safeguard their flocks against marauders in certain seasons. The drier highlands were also preferred by the pastoral nomads because these places were less humid and therefore favourable to the health of men and animals. In due course of time such strongholds with local legends attached to them grew into formidable bandit redoubts. The Ramoshi legends, according to which the robber-god Khandoba worshipping Ramoshis had once owned several forts in Maharashtra which they turned over to Shivaji in 138

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the seventeenth century, would fall in this category.30 The Marathas came across such bandit forts upon projecting their power beyond the Desh: Jankoji Shinde was young in age but in enterprises he was old and wise, even intent on his duty, devoted in religion, munificent to warriors, patient in forbearing. Crossing the Narmada he came to Ujjain and from there he went on to Bundi. In that state there was a (fortified) place called Harigad and in it dwelt the brigand Gujalsingh who was spreading terror over the whole of Malwa and gathering tribute secretly. He (Jankoji) came straight away to that fort (and laid siege to it). The fort was more like a great house, but all around was much forest and ascent to it was very steep. There was no village around it. In it were about two hundred and fifty men and women. They were true brigands by nature. In the night with their women in the centre surrounded by fighters they attacked the standard of the Peshwa and fighting fiercely cut their way out through the batteries.31 The British, who were aware of these ground realities, had to fight the expensive Pindari Wars in the early nineteenth century to gain control over peninsular India. The defeat of the Marathas in the Second and Third Anglo-Maratha Wars between 1803 and 1818 released thousands of Pindaris (irregular freebooters) who created a major law and order problem for the new rulers of India in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The British knew that if they let stand the majority of forts captured from the Marathas, there would be no end to brigandage and India would never witness peace. Ridding India of military opposition to the British was a top priority for the company because peace was necessary for its commercial activities and financial health. It was feared that the ‘plundering highlanders’ would use the abandoned forts against the British in the same way as they had once done against the Mughals.32 Hence the British resorted to a conscious policy of denying their opponents the military advantage of possessing the forts. This is precisely what happened in the hilly parts of Maharashtra where the refractory jagirdars and bands of professional fighters could hold out for months against the new rulers and the forces of the native states friendly to them. The case of Chittur Singh ‘an errant Gossain’, pretending to be the uncle of the Satara Raja, comes to mind here. This influential rebel was quite popular among the Maratha-Kunbis in the area for having resisted the Brahman Peshwa in 1798. In 1817–18, taking advantage of the fluid political conditions in southwestern Maharashtra, he repaired to the ‘remote’ fortress of Prachitgarh with his armed followers. 139

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Though captured after a great deal of effort in June 1818 his name seems to have inspired at least two major rebellions in Satara till 1822, one of which was led by Rup Singh and required at least a thousand regulars to put down.33 Another reason why the Indian fortifications had to be reduced to impotence by the British after their victories over the Indian powers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries can be traced to the unemployment of thousands of professional soldiers following the defeat of the Indian powers. In western Maharashtra, where society had become militarised in the war-torn seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this was evident in the case of ‘police castes’ like the Ramoshis and Mangs who later became the ‘predatory tribes’ much reviled in colonial accounts.34 Beside these old well-organised quasi-military castes there were thousands of trained soldiers rendered unemployed by the British conquest and more than willing to assist any ‘refractory’ jagirdar who could pay them well enough. In the eighteenth century the English had resorted to extensive ship burning to destroy once and for all the military power of rebellious coastal chiefs like Tulajee Angre. If ships were the backbone of coastal resistance to the British, forts well mounted with artillery played the same role on land. The Second Anglo-Maratha War had demonstrated the destructive efficiency with which the Marathas used artillery in the battlefield. After the Third Maratha War it was the turn of the forts in the Deccan to either be garrisoned by expensive British troops or be destroyed. Mountstuart Elphinstone, who had fought against the Marathas under the command of Arthur Wellesley during the Second Maratha War, was a keen scholar of Maratha history in the Anglo-Indian scholar-official tradition and knew this better than anyone else. He knew how the Marathas used their forts against their enemies in a terrain which always did not favour set piece battles: It is evident that these forts if kept up must be extremely expensive both in garrison and provision and repair and if merely abandoned by us could be liable to be occupied by the insurgents. . . . It seemed, therefore, necessary to destroy them.35 In north India, where the English had come to realise the threat posed to any central power by the hundreds of forts zamindar garhis dotting the countryside in the eighteenth century, it became necessary for the English to destroy fortifications on a large scale. These garhis were also conspicuous in the Ghadar of 1857 which swept across north India with astonishing speed and almost ended British rule in India. In the aftermath of the Ghadar 140

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no less than 1,575 forts were systematically destroyed and 720 cannon pieces seized in the region of Awadh alone.36 Indian eyewitness records of the mutiny speak with eloquence and sadness of the orgy of destruction unleashed by the British in all the rebellion-affected areas in 1857–8. Thousands of havelis, garhis, forts and other walled and fortified places belonging to the rebels, and which threatened to become inspiring reminders and symbols of the Ghadar, were demolished or burnt down by the victors after the mutiny had been quelled.37

Conclusion This chapter has tried to highlight the Indian fort as a multidimensional achievement of the Indian civilisation. Although the chapter has concentrated on the forts of Maharashtra, the Andhra region and garhis and gilachas of north India, its overall implication must not be missed in future work on the Indian forts. This chapter is an attempt to provide a historical framework for the study of Indian forts in general. In trying to do so, it has moved away from the dominant military-nationalist-tourist context within which forts in India are usually located by the state, scholarship and media alike. The generalisations of this chapter stem from the belief that a relatively dispassionate historical examination of the Indian fort is possible only if we have the will to consider them as historical necessities located outside the influence of nationalist ideology. Forts were necessary to the multilayered elites of medieval India for a number of reasons. They were sites of established and shifting political and military power in a society marked by rising zamindar and peasant rebelliousness in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This could easily underline the rise and fall of forts over time. The forts functioned in a symbiotic relationship with trade and commerce in a period when travelling on the Indian roads, which often passed through forests and wastelands inhabited by bands of well-armed robbers, was unsafe for trade caravans. In such conditions while the smaller forts, well stocked with powder and shot and built to secure the lines of transport and communications, provided much-needed armed escort to traders, the bigger forts and fort cities like Golconda and Bijapur easily sheltered large caravans who paid the rulers of these forts protection money in the form of tax. Many Indian forts were built close to trade routes and toll posts. Coastal forts were made either on or close to rivers and creeks on which much trade was conveyed in boats which carried the passes issued by the rulers of these forts. In many parts of India recalcitrant zamindars or thikanedars produced a combination of the fort and banditry which no historian can miss. Forts and the various kinds of Indian fortifications were 141

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the source of real and symbolic power of the Indian warrior-peasant elites at various levels. The forts and garhis were important to zamindar or deshmukh resistance to central state power in later Mughal India, and they played such a conspicuous role in the great rebellion of 1857 that thousands of them were destroyed by the British soon after that cataclysmic event. All Indian forts contained locally important shrines, temples and mosques and a complement of the priestly classes. Almost all non-Muslim forts had principal fort deities patronised by their rulers and respected by the local inhabitants of the area surrounding the forts. This meant that the fort was not only a seat of power radiating fear in the countryside but that in time it had also evolved into an effective device of social and religious control over large sections of the peasantry exercised by the ruling order. Thus the Indian fort was located at the intersection of social collaboration and struggle which progressed simultaneously in pre-colonial India – armed peasants could plunder a fort in its moment of weakness, feel awed by its strength and travel to it on a pilgrimage if the need arose. Thus the relationship of a fort with the population surrounding it remained fluid throughout history. In sum the Indian fort evolved as a marvel of a people responsive to changing historical conditions; it was at once the object and subject of the subtle and, sometimes sudden, changes in Indian history. The Indian fort has a number of lessons for the contemporary visitor in subjects ranging from medieval Indian architecture, military technology, art history, Indian engineering and even indigenous rainwater harvesting systems because in a semi-arid country like India the political and military importance of water could hardly be exaggerated. The time has come to release the study of Indian forts from the valorised notions of elite politics and take it into the domains of medieval social conflicts, state control over the countryside, economy, trade and religion. This view of Indian forts must be positioned against the nationalist imagination foisted upon the history of Indian forts. In this elite imagination the peasantry is divested of historical agency in contradistinction to the historical evidence presented earlier. In conclusion, I would like the readers to examine the text quoted here in the light of some facts presented earlier: It must be remembered that in that age the means and quality of communications was very poor. The country was thick with jungles with hardly any roads. There was no mass media and no rapid means of communicating news or ideas. Yet Shivaji’s name and fame, his message, his ideals of creating a Maharashtra Dharma, spread rapidly to the far corners of the land. Forts were the chief symbols of this image and the chief centers for propagating his 142

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message. The majority of the peasants, tilling their small plots of land in distant corners of the kingdom, had never set their eyes upon Shivaji. And Shivaji had never set foot in a large number of his forts. To the ryot, with his very limited physical and mental horizon, the fort in the vicinity was the only real and tangible center of power. A place where he sold his produce, where he paid his taxes, where he took shelter in times of turmoil [sic]. From the fort could flow oppression or benevolence, it depended so much upon the character of the killedar, the sole arbitrator of his fate. If he was selfish and corrupt, all was lost. If he was imbued with a national spirit, everything fell in its proper place. . . . The forts became symbols of freedom and dignity, a dignity which the Hindu population had not had for a long time under Muslim rule.38 (emphasis added)

Acknowledgements I am thankful to Dr Chander Sundaram for comments on an earlier draft.

Notes 1 For details see The Arthashastra, ed. L.N. Rangarajan (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1992), XI.i, pp. 676–9. The siege is described in XI.x, pp. 728–39. 2 Ramchandra Neelkanth, Agnyapatra (Marathi), ed. P.N. Joshi (Pune: Venus Prakashan), p. 33. 3 For more on this, see I.B. Watson, “Fortifications and the Idea of Force in Early East India Company Relations with India,” Past and Present, 88 (August, 1980), pp. 70–87. The fact that Indian traders and weavers felt safer in the English forts which were built according to carefully laid-out plans is also mentioned by Partha Mitter, “The Early British Port Cities of India: Their Planning and Architecture Circa 1640–1757,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 45, no. 2 (June, 1986), pp. 95–114. 4 Meera Kosambi and John E. Brush, “Three Colonial Port Cities in India,” Geographical Review, 78, no. 1 (January, 1988), pp. 32–47. 5 Stewart Gordon, “Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State,” Modern Asian Studies, 13, no. 1 (1979), p. 1. 6 For details see Senji (Gingee) A Fortified City in Tamil Country, 2005; Studies on Fortification in India, 2007 and Four Forts of the Deccan, 2009. (All books are by the French Institute of Pondicherry.) 7 See Gordon, “Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State,” for a description of Asirgarh in Khandesh. Gordon also notes that most forts in the Deccan were situated close to important political and trading centres and afforded refuge to traders and artisans during distress. 8 For details see The Arthashastra, pp. 676–9. The siege is described in XI.x, pp. 728–39.

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9 Iqbal Singh, Gautama Buddha (London: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 237–8. Also see Roger Boesche, “Kautilya’s ‘Arthaśāstra’ on War and Diplomacy in Ancient India,” The Journal of Military History, 67, no. 1 (January, 2003), pp. 9–37, for Kautilya’s views on forts among other things. 10 I.B. Watson, “Fortifications and the Idea of Force in Early East India Company Relations with India”. 11 The main sources for Maharashtra used are M.S. Narvane, “The Forts of Western Maharashtra,” in Western India: History, Society and Culture [Dr. Arvind Deshpande Felicitation Volume] (Kolhapur: Itihass Shikshak Mahamandal, 1997), pp. 1–15, and M.S. Narvane, The Maritime and Coastal Forts of India (New Delhi: APH Publishing Corporation, 2007). The source for Andhra Pradesh is N.S. Ramachandra Murthy, Forts of Andhra Pradesh – From the Earliest Times upto the 16th Century. (New Delhi: Bharatiya Kala Prakashan, 1996). 12 See Gordon, “Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State,” for more details. Gordon highlights both the wartime and peacetime functions of the Maratha fort taking Asirgarh as an example. 13 Barry Lewis, “British Assessments of Tipu Sultan’s Hill Forts in Northern Mysore, South India, 1802,” Published online: 12 February 2012. Springer Science & Business Media, LLC 2012S, p. 167, points that in 1861, Charles B. Saunders, Officiating Commissioner, Mysore, reported the existence of 7,417 hill and village forts in Mysore. Of these 159 were hill forts. 14 See Gordon, “Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State,” for details. 15 F.J. Varley, “On the Water Supply of Hill Forts in Western India,” The Geographical Journal, 40, no. 2 (August, 1912), pp. 178–83. 16 For details see Anirudh Deshpande, “The Politics and Culture of Early Modern Warfare on the Konkan Coast of India during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Yogesh Sharma, ed., Coastal Histories: Society and Ecology in PreModern India (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2009), pp. 43–75; Anirudh Deshpande, “Limitations of Military Technology: Naval Warfare on the West Coast, 1650–1800,” Economic and Political Weekly (25 April, 1992). 17 See Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 208–10, and my review of this book “Firearms in Medieval India,” Economic and Political Weekly (15 January, 2005). 18 Jean Chesneaux mentions this aspect of medieval fortifications in the context of Chinese history as a corrective to the familiar, and romantic, view of the peasantry as a docile class in Pasts and Futures or What Is History For (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978). Forts were crucial ruling-class instruments designed to control the peasantry and simultaneously protect the feudal nobility from their depredations. 19 Locals in Bharatpur are fond of calling its fort an iron fort made impregnable by the special efforts of the Jat rajas. The retreat of General Lake from Bharatpur soon after the Second Maratha War ultimately ensured the survival of that kingdom as a long-lasting princely state. These days Bharatpur is known more for its famous bird sanctuary and less for its fort. The fort walls, as is usual in modern India, have been breached at several places for traffic to pass. The promontory within the fort houses the old capital of the Jats. Several buildings, including temples which speak of the religious culture of the Jat nobility, and

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

inner fortifications have survived and a museum of Jat history attracts the occasional tourist and history enthusiast. Details of this have been presented in Ms. Kartika Saharan, “The Naruka Revolts in Mewat, 1680–1780 CE,” unpublished MPhil Dissertation, Department of History, University of Delhi, 2014. Saiyid Zaheer Husaid Jafri, “Caste and Zamindar Class in Awadh (c.1600– 1900),” in Ishrat Hussai Ansari and Hamid Afaq Qureshi, eds., Essays in Indian History and Culture (New Delhi: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i-Delli, 2013), pp. 170–96. Ibid., p. 185. Ibid., p. 187. Ibid., p. 189. Ibid., p. 190. Ibid. Murthy, Forts of Andhra Pradesh, p. 125. Ibid., p. 126. Interesting details of this can be found in the Bhausahebanchi Bakhar. P.W. Bradbeer, “The Role of the Kingdom of Satara in Suppressing Deccan Bunds, 1812–1832,” in A.R. Kulkarni and N.K. Wagle, eds., Region, Nationality and Religion (Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1999), p. 61. According to the influential Ramoshi leader Umaji Naik, an important source of Captain Makintosh’s History of the Ramoossees, the Ramoshis legally owned 26 forts and were proud of their association with Shivaji. They believed that the fort of Pratapgad had been captured by their ancestors and subsequently gifted to Shivaji. The Decade of Panipat (1751–61): Marathi Historical Papers and Chronicles, trans., Ian Raeside (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1984), p. 25. Mountstuart Elphinstone, Aurangzeb (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 43. Bradbeer, “The Role of the Kingdom of Satara in Suppressing Deccan Bunds, 1812–1832,” pp. 58–68. Ibid., p. 60. Narvane, “The Forts of Western Maharashtra,” p. 8. “Caste and Zamindar Class in Awadh (c.1600–1900),” p. 190. For details see Parwez Nazir, “1857 and Destruction of India’s Cultural Heritage,” in Ishrat Hussain Ansari et al., eds., Essays in Indian History and Culture, op. cit, pp. 265–74. Narvane, “The Forts of Western Maharashtra,” p. 9.

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8 ENGLISH CORPORATE ENTERPRISE AND PRIVATE TRADE IN THE INDIAN OCEAN A common meeting ground Ruby Maloni

Corporate enterprise on one hand, as designed and shaped by the English East India Company, and private trade of English merchants on the other display multiple layers and patterns of interconnections and exchanges during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the macro to the micro levels, multiple points of contact were created. In various commercial outposts of the Indian Ocean, not only was there a convergence of economic practice among Englishmen trading in the ‘Indies’, but bonds of vested interest were forged among themselves, and also with indigenous merchants, on the basis of profit and gain. Trade, either controlled or fostered, provided meeting points at several stages. Merchants, trading in a vast array of commodities, interacted at many facets of the commercial arena of the Indian Ocean. These multiple points of intersection were long-lasting, continuing in full strength from the pre-modern to the modern globalised world. The English East India Company took advantage of the alreadyestablished networks of trade covering different segments of the Indian Ocean, in order to offset the adverse balance of Euro-Asian trade and to gain large-scale profit margins. Private trade was an intrinsic element in this intra-Asian trade or ‘country trade’, and was carried out with fervour by all European maritime powers. The intersection of official and private interests of European merchants was a common feature. The players were variegated, including factors and officials in their private capacity, as well as interlopers, adventurers and private entrepreneurs. Employees of the corporate enterprises of the Europeans almost without exception engaged in intra-Asian trade in their private capacity. By far the most important 146

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category of these employees and largest group was the English, who operated overwhelmingly from India. Protectionism and expansion were part of the logic of this commerce. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, a new element introduced in Asian trade was that of the joint-stock companies of the English and the Dutch, and later the French. The almost contemporaneous formation of government-chartered trading monopolies, of the English East India Company1 and the Dutch Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie,2 marked a new stage and presaged the rise of global companies.3 They pioneered innovations such as the shareholder model of ownership and the administrative framework of the modern form of the corporation.4 The two joint-stock companies took for themselves an overwhelming proportion of the intraAsian trade, amassing vast fortunes and power, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The English proved to be dominant in the race among European trading powers for commercial dominance over the Indian Ocean. They had focused on India for the supply of spices and textiles, due to Dutch opposition in the archipelago, and were able to overwhelm the latter on the strength of their newly acquired status in Bengal. Since Holden Furber published his John Company at Work5 historians have become increasingly aware of the role played by English private traders. English private trade can be described as the business carried on by Englishmen in their private capacity, in and with the East. English private traders played a pivotal role in the accumulation of wealth and the construction of the English ‘Trading Empire in the Orient’. Through the search for personal advantage came about the development of relationships which became imperialistic in the precise sense of infringing on the sovereignty of another national group. Commercial interaction established enclaves which altered the relations of production, from which the results extended to change the power relations of much wider regions. The EIC’s deeply ingrained mercantilist quest for a trading monopoly came into play in the Indian Ocean, with commercial ascendancy followed by political hegemony. ‘Global economic shifts’ linked to political changes led to the rise and fulfilment of British rule, and collaborating elites.6 To the company’s directors in London, this branch of their servants’ activities, viz. the link of private trade and country trade, with its bizarre and colourful ramifications, would always be a subject of misunderstanding and suspicion. Country trade invariably confounded the auditors and enriched the adventurers. References to private country trading and to the employment of English captains and mates on Indian-owned country ships became common in the EIC dispatches of the 1670s.7 Officially the private country trade of EIC servants remained restricted until 1674, after which 147

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the directors issued further ‘indulgences’ which allowed their servants virtually complete freedom of trade in the eastern seas. From the early eighteenth century onwards, the individual European ‘country captain’ came into his own. Cromwell’s renewal of the EIC Charter in 1657 gave a new impetus to the company’s Asian trade. The president and council at Surat became the EIC’s governing body in the East, with subordinate agencies in Persia, the Coromandel Coast, the Bay of Bengal and the Indonesian archipelago. After 1760 the situation was further transformed, following the English gains in Bengal and also assumption of political control over Surat. Plassey in 1757 had changed the political situation, and intra-Asian trade’s focus became Bengal, with many players in private trade. Men like Job Charnock, ‘Agent and Chief of the Bay’, who was in effect the head of the EIC Bengal Council, made large personal profits from private trade. A new class of nouveau riche ‘nabobs’ was created, who returned to England with fortunes unheard of before. These fortunes constituted an element in financing the Industrial Revolution. In the initial stages, both company servants and free merchants settled in India realised that the real field of activity was trade within Asia and plunged into it. The profitable pepper trade was taken up avidly, much to the detriment of the profits of the EIC. The latter, like the VOC, tried to prevent its servants from participating in it. Only company servants were allowed to do so, a space being reserved for them on company ships, to compensate for poor salaries. This gave way to clandestine trade by individuals outside the company. Being unable to stop it, the company decided to legalise it in 1662 and at the same time also restrict it. Later these restrictions were also circumvented. The VOC, being much less flexible on private trade, suffered the most from the expansion of English private trade. In several instances, local Dutch personnel at all levels were secretly partners with the English in private trading ventures.8 The company’s limited participation in intra-Asian trade and the 1661 decision to largely withdraw from it was found disappointing in several quarters. But to ensure that English commercial presence in various parts of Asia should continue, it was decided by the directors to legalise trade carried on by both company servants and free merchants. Unlike the VOC, the EIC usually did not own the ships it used, but hired them from private parties. The ‘Charterparty’ agreements often obliged the company to make available to the owners a minor proportion of shipping space, thus creating yet another category of private traders. A small amount of shipping space was also granted to ship’s personnel. But such practices were bound by strict rules and regulations. From 1667 onwards, it was obligatory for 148

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private traders to operate by certain rules, and consignments had to go through the EIC warehouses in London.9 The major commodities of private trade were indigo, spices and Indian cotton textiles. The English had established themselves as the leader of the trade in Indian chintz, which found new markets both in Europe and in West and East Asia. Diamonds were a high-value commodity in which the English private traders made vast fortunes. Direct involvement of the EIC was comparatively negligible in intra-Asian trade and was confined essentially to the first half of the seventeenth century. Private English traders based in India constituted by far the largest and most enduring group of Europeans engaged in intra-Asian trade. They built up their business in the English commercial enclaves based on both the West and East Coasts of India. In the east, Madras and Hughli, then Calcutta, became the centres of English private trade. On the West Coast, English private trade began in Surat in the early years of the seventeenth century and moved to Bombay in the eighteenth century. British expansion in western India was based on the increase of their influence in the hinterland. In building a coastalhinterland connection, the rapidly growing English country trade was of critical importance, as it allowed Bombay to build up large reserves of capital and commercial expertise. Within a few years of the company’s foundation Sir Thomas Roe indicated that private trade was rampant.10 In 1613, when the James arrived at Bantam from Surat, it was heavily laden with privately owned goods. ‘The pull of filthy lucre’ drew more and more Englishmen to India, despite appalling reports of mortality. By 1630, they were recorded as returning home with fortunes of between 30,000 pounds and 40,000 pounds.11 Private trade, sustained by the private use of company resources, and dismissals were mechanisms that made EIC contracts workable. Mechanisms of minimal purpose were salaries and pre-employment bonds.12 There was a striking discrepancy in the salaries of the higher and lower ranks. The entire group of company servants were arranged in three classes, rising from the lowly level of writer to factor and then to Merchant. Salaries ranged from a paltry 5 pounds per annum for writers to 200 pounds per annum for the president.13 An inducement for young Englishmen to ‘go East’ was the profitable ‘liberty of traffick to all parts, wherein from China to Surat, they commonly make cent per cent’.14 Englishmen holding senior positions in the company hierarchy dominated the trade. On the western axis, this group included George Oxenden, Gerald Aungier and John Child, each president at the Surat EIC factory between the 1660s and 1680s. Oxenden owned vessels, which in 1664 plied a vigorous trade with Gombroon in Persia. At his demise, he 149

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left behind a lavish estate, created out of private trade. Oxenden’s ships were purchased by Aungier and a consortium of Surat merchants including Mohammed Chellaby, scion of a distinguished merchant family of the city. Eventually Aungier and his associates owned as many as five vessels including the Happy Rose and the Recovery, built at Bombay.15 John Child made a huge fortune through private trade, and left his wife 100,000 pounds after his demise. In the seventeenth century, English private merchants’ trade was lucrative in the western Indian Ocean, particularly in Surat, Gujarat’s premier port. As an entrepôt, Surat’s role was vital in the entire construct of intraAsian trade, its trade involving vital links with Persian Gulf and Red Sea ports, as well as with the rest of the Indian Ocean littoral. As early as 1608, the EIC stressed the commercial reality that Gujarat textiles were to be utilised for the South East Asian trade. In 1630, lack of discipline led to the replacement of Richard Wylde as president of the EIC Surat factory by Thomas Rastell. The latter immediately wrote to the EIC directors in London, asking them to order the agent at Isfahan to take steps to curb English private trade between Gujarat and Persia.16 He also wrote to the agents at Masulipatnam and Bantam to suppress the ‘exorbitance and abuse’ of private trade in that sector.17 By 1652, the Surat factory had branches at Ahmadabad, Agra, Thatta, Baroda, Broach, Basra and Gombroon or Bandar Abbas. Almost all EIC records of the seventeenth century are punctuated with vociferous condemnation or resigned acceptance of the activities of English private traders. Letters from the EIC Surat factory were rife with complaints of indiscipline on company ships and insubordination caused by the presence of unattached Englishmen not under the control of the company, both interlopers and private traders. There are those with us that can call themselves Freemen, that are very pernicious in their actions to us, being companions to all such of our people as they find discontented, and not only inveigle them from our service, but convey them to the Dutch or Moors as they find them most inclined.18 President Fremlin’s term of office (1639–44) at the Surat factory saw lucrative private trade plied along the shores of western India, especially with Portuguese-controlled ports. Bribes were freely taken by the EIC authorities to ship private goods free of charge on company vessels. Discipline was poor in the EIC factory at Surat. Business was left to the ‘Shroffs and Banias’, and all, from the president downwards, indulged in private 150

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trade.19 Factors often used company capital in their private trade, which was detrimental to the actual trade of the company. In 1660, the Court of Directors sent several missives to President Matthew Andrewes at Surat, stating that diligent inquiry should be made of those parties who freighted vessels on their own account in the port to port trade, despite prohibition of all private trade. If found guilty, such men were to be dismissed from service.20 Again, in 1679, the directors ordered their servants that the men in company service who were misusing company finances, commodities and estate should be ‘forthwith discharged from Company service, and from all benefit of salary, or other advantages, by or from the Company for such unfaithfulness’.21 But EIC’s attempts at controlling private trade were only on paper and proved to be futile. By 1667, company factors were conceded the right to operate on their own account in the country trade. It was believed that private trade eased some of the uncertainty of the country trade by maintaining the supply of Indian commodities to the company’s factories. Also, by this time, new actors had emerged to take advantage of the lucrative Indian Ocean commerce. The activity of a growing number of ‘freemen’ and interlopers was outside the purview of the EIC. Rival English enterprises such as those of William Courten, Thomas Pitt, Captain Weddell and the Assada Merchants consisted of many discontented and discharged company servants who used the knowledge gained in its service. Private interest impacted the EIC’s relationship with Indian merchants and local politics. The alliance between Indians and Englishmen developed along a long and tortuous path. The English sought advantages to ensure personal and corporate enrichment, while their Indian associates looked for profit and security for their enterprise. In private trade can be seen the evolution of common commercial identifications between Indian and English merchants. By interacting with English private traders, the Indians had the advantage of wider markets. While there were several members of the local mercantile community who were wealthy in their own right, such as Virji Vohra and Abdul Ghafur in seventeenth-century Surat, many became rich due to their association with the English. Company factors arranged secret partnerships with Indian merchants, who readily shared profits with them due to the advantage of custom and transit duties the EIC soon obtained. Collaboration with European companies grew in the eighteenth century, out of increasingly common commercial interests. When company servants’ private aspirations surged against the company’s discipline, new outlets were discovered through Indian associates who, in their turn, came to identify their own interests with those of the Englishmen. The collaboration was, of course, neither general nor total. 151

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On regular occasions, conflicts arose over debts and debtors. In 1665, the Lambton brothers, Richard and John, who were EIC factors at Surat, were embroiled in complicated private trade transactions with local merchants. The EIC Council at Surat did not intervene, as it was a matter to be left to the ‘justice of the country’.22 English private traders did not always co-operate with their Indian counterparts, instead interfering in the private business of powerful local authorities such as Mir Jumla in 1669.23 Well into the eighteenth century, Englishmen involved in private trade were dependent on Surat Banias for large-scale financial transactions. William Andrew Price, who, besides being the chief of Surat three times in the years 1759–74, was a substantial ship-owning merchant, kept his money with Shroffs.24 William Stratton, a Surat councillor during the 1760s, depended for all financial transactions on his Shroff and cash keeper Manohar Mughal.25 In 1788, the EIC itself asked for loans from the great Benares bankers in Surat such as Bhawani Das and Dwarka Das.26 It is important to note that in the seventeenth century, the bulk of the country trade was mainly in the hands of indigenous merchants unaffected by the competition from English ships in Indian waters. The EIC attempted to defray the costs of keeping its shipping in Indian waters for the season by carrying freight. By 1680, this state of affairs began to change, as activities of EIC servants in the country trade on their own account began to assume greater proportions. This was due to the concentration of settlements in three presidencies, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, with fewer outstations, This focus of English trade produced expansion in the country trade to supply the main settlements. The prevalent Indian competition was finally circumscribed by English national identity and self-protection. Surat’s traditional links with the ports of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf were utilised by the English shippers. It was common to carry, in addition to their own goods, Indian merchants’ goods on freight. Demand for this service was high though the rates charged by the English were much higher than those by others. This was due to more efficient sailing and the immunity English ships offered against piracy. Often English shipowners were willing to assume the ownership of freight cargo, a customs privilege enjoyed by the English in many Asian ports.27 Ships were operated on an individual account as well as on a partnership basis. Indians lent money to English merchants on respondentia for specific voyages, and some had shares in English-owned ships. By Farruksiyar’s Farman of 1717 the English enjoyed a differential advantage and were exempted from transit and customs duties in Bengal. This was well utilised by private English traders, who for a consideration assumed the ownership of Indian merchants’ goods. Bengal and Gujarat became closely connected by the coastal route, 152

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via Cape Comorin, to the Malabar ports of Anjengo, Cochin, Calicut and Tellicherry and on to Goa, Bombay and Surat. After Calcutta was founded by the English in 1690, Surat became the most important port of call for its private traders’ shipping, bringing Bengal textiles, sugar and raw silk, and carrying back Gujarat’s raw cotton, even up to 1734. This trade was at the expense of Surat merchants. In all their efforts, private traders were driven by the need to make a quick fortune, and the ambition to return to England to enjoy a landed retirement. So lucrative were the operations that apart from the fortunes made by men in high positions, men of lesser authority also directed ‘Homewards’ a continuous stream of handsome remittances. This wealth furnished capital both for the transition from small-scale crafts to large-scale industrial enterprise in England and for the growth of English commerce with the New World. The two spheres of trade, private and corporate, though separated in the rule books of India House, had much in common. The fundamental dichotomy between private and corporate interests was demolished by Englishmen seeking advantage by exploiting the company’s privileges under agreements with Indian rulers. The corporate interest found it had to become involved in Indian politics, because its servants were so embroiled. In India, the perspective of most rulers and their representatives combined the EIC and private traders as one body of Englishmen. In England, societal changes brought merchants and gentry closer, creating an admixture of the various contemporary ideas of commerce, colonialism, national identity and glory. In this process, the individual search for personal advantage became identified with a perceived advantage to the group. The relationship became imperialistic as soon as this group assumed its advantage would be gained by infringing on the power relations in India. During the first half of the eighteenth century, the development of the company’s own country trade was paralleled by the build-up in the number of private voyages originating from Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. The entrepreneurial community of these presidency cities was enlarged by a growing colony of ‘free’ British, Jewish and Armenian merchants. Formal company permission was needed before they could settle there. In general, the Court of Directors became sympathetic to the idea of its agents making commercial fortunes out of Asian trade, provided their activities did not interfere too much with the official business of the company.28 The intermingling of official and private activity, together with the ability to commandeer the military on its behalf, tended to strengthen and not weaken the English Company’s position.29 English private traders continued to combine the stimulus of the individual profit motive with the advantage of an informal connection with 153

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the company. They established themselves in the ports where the company already had its fortified factories. They had access to classified information about price fluctuations on the spot markets, which was vital in troubled times. Through company servants, almost all active in country trade, they were able to manipulate company policy and to ensure for themselves the privileges and concessions made to the company by local rulers. Apart from the Farman of 1717 which made British goods in Bengal duty free, there were many other cases. The formal agreement with the Ottoman authorities at Basra in 1723 for lower customs duties to be paid by British ships applied to both company and private trade. In Mocha, British goods paid 3% customs duty compared to 9% by Asian merchants, at Jiddah 8% as against 10–17%.30 Everywhere private traders enjoyed the protection of the English flag, deterrent to extortionate rulers and pirates. Private English shipping based at Calcutta and Bombay was able to dominate the trade in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea in the eighteenth century. This period was marked by the growing popularity of China tea in the European market. By an intermingling of private traders’ interests with that of the company, the China trade became not only an important vehicle for the generation of private European fortunes in India but also the leading medium of remittances to home of their fortunes. English private trade to Manila, concealed for the most part under Armenian names, became an important silver earner. The growth of Calcutta was even more marked after John Surman obtained the privilege of dutyfree trade for the private trader. This century was marked by EIC coercion and oppression, in relation with intermediary merchants. English private traders were indirect beneficiaries of the new political status of the EIC in the second half of the eighteenth century. The corporate interest in England was promoted by private interests in India in order to make the most of the opportunities for private aggrandisement. The EIC found it had to become involved in Indian politics, because its servants had become so. The corporate infrastructure was vulnerable to the reactions of indigenous rulers, to whom the company and its servants-cum-private traders were one body of Englishmen. The changes in English society brought merchants and gentry closer together, combining the various ideas on trade, colonialism, national strength and glory. Imperialism came to the fore as soon as the group assumed its advantage would be gained by infringing upon the power relations in India. This occurred in Surat and Bengal by 1760. Aspects of English private trade in the Indian Ocean region can help in an understanding of the processes whereby different English commercial groups, with a coincidence of interests, penetrated

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a traditional economy, establishing situations which changed political relations within that economy. Going beyond stark definitions and the dimensions of a geographical framework, common interests binding corporate enterprise and private trade together can be discerned in the fluid and complex story of the rise of the English East India Company, first to economic preponderance and later to political power. This chapter attempts to be part of this rich discussion, and provides concrete instances and examples of the use of common interests in the construct of hegemony.

Notes 1 Henceforth referred to as EIC. 2 Henceforth referred to as VOC. 3 Nayan Chanda, Bound Together, How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warriors Shaped Globalisation (New Delhi, 2007), p. 71. 4 Nick Robins, The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (London, 2006). 5 Holden Furber, John Company at Work, a Study of European Expansion in the Late 18th Century (Cambridge, 1951). 6 Pamela Nightingale, Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784–1806 (Cambridge, 1970). 7 Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800 (Minneapolis, 1976), p. 270. 8 See Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton, 1985). 9 Ian Bruce Watson, Foundation for Empire, English Private Trade in India, 1659– 1760 (New Delhi, 1980), pp. 68–75. 10 W. Foster, ed., The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Moghul, 1615–19, Vol. 1 (London, 1926), p. 442. 11 P.J. Marshall, “Private British Trade in the Indian Ocean before 1800,” in Ashin Das Gupta and M.N. Pearson, eds., India and the Indian Ocean 1500–1800 (Calcutta, 1987), pp. 278–9. 12 Santhi Hejeebu, “Contract Enforcement in the English East India Company,” The Journal of Economic History, 65, no. 2 (Cambridge, June, 2005), p. 496. 13 John Keay, The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company (London, 1993), p. 35. 14 J. Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, ed. H. Rawlinson (London, 1929), p. 391. 15 India Office Records (IOR): E/3/31, Official Correspondence, Gerald Aungier’s Commission to Ralph Lambton, 30 March 1670, No. 3416, British Library. 16 Surat Outward Letter Book, 1630, Letter dated 25th July, Maharashtra State Archives. 17 Surat Outward Letter Book, 1630, Letter dated 12th November and 3rd December. 18 W. Foster, ed., English Factories in India, 1651–54 (London, 1926), p. 252.

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19 Ibid., p. 16. 20 Surat Inward Letter Book, 1660–1663, Letter dated 22nd February 1660, Maharashtra State Archives. 21 MS, 24/935, Letter dated 31st October 1679, British Museum. 22 Surat Outward Letter Book, 1665, Letter dated 4th April, Maharashtra State Archives. 23 Miscellaneous Records, India Office Records: G/40/3. 24 IOR/P/417/31, Mayors Court, Letter from Elizabeth Price, Surat, 15th April 1774, pp. 818–19, British Library. 25 IOR/P/417/34, Mayors Court, Letter of Jane Stratton, 27th May 1781, p. 391, British Library. 26 FRS, 4th May 1788, 1st July and 3rd December 1796, British Library. 27 P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1976), pp. 58–60. 28 K.N. Chaudhary, The English East India Company: The Study of an Early JointStock Company 1600–1640 (London, 1965), p. 213. 29 Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, p. 159. 30 Marshall, East India Fortunes, pp. 81, 84.

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9 INSCRIPTIONS AND CALLIGRAPHY ON THE MUGHAL AND SAFAVID COINAGES A comparative study Danish Moin

Inscription has been a prime feature of Islamic coinages, well evident since its introduction in seventh century CE during the reign of Umayyid Caliph, Abd-al-Malik (685–705 CE). Later Abbasid Caliph Al-Mamun (813–33CE) introduced major reforms in Islamic currency, which continued for centuries throughout the Islamic world.1 Since Islamic-type coins primarily bear inscriptions on them, these became more informative. The information together offers religious and secular messages. The religious messages generally include Kalima or Shahada (basic creed of Islam), the name of khalifah (Abbasid Caliphs and khulfa-i-rashedin or four pious Caliphs) and religious titles, while secular messages may be understood as the name of the rulers, mint name, date.2 Inscriptions apart, the Islamic coinage also witnessed various styles of Arabic calligraphy which made them distinct. The calligraphy used on these coins helps us to understand calligraphic development of Arabic and Persian scripts on the one hand and also reflects an artistic sense of the calligraphers of this period on the other. The present chapter intends to discuss the inscriptional and calligraphic similarities and changes in Indian and Persian coinages from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries mainly covering the coinage of Mughal and Safavid dynasties. The sixteenth century witnessed the emergence of two important dynasties – the Mughals in India and the Safavids in Persia. Ismail Safavid bin Haider founded the Safavid dynasty in 1501 CE which continued to rule for about 200 years till 1732 CE, ruled by 10 rulers. The Mughal dynasty was established by Zahiruddin Babar in 1526 CE. His successors made this dynasty a powerful empire, which ruled for about 300 years till 1857 CE. 157

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Like many other dynasties of the Islamic world, these two dynasties also issued their coins on Islamic patterns, with religious and secular messages. The Islamic-type coins were well known to India and Persia prior to the Mughal and Safavids. In India they were introduced in the early eighth– ninth centuries CE when we come across the coins of the Amirs of Sind; later in the eleventh century CE Ghaznavid rulers also issued some of their coins in Islamic pattern in Lahore and Punjab.3 Coinage of Islamic tradition in India, however, became popular in the early thirteenth century after the establishment of Mameluk Sultanate of Delhi. Mameluk Sultan Iltutmish is considered as the real founder of Islamic coinage in India; his coinage was issued with kalima and the name of Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mustansir along with his name, mint name and date.4 His successors followed the tradition of writing the name of Abbasid Caliph along with their names. The coins inscribing the name of Caliphs were first introduced by Abbasid Caliph Al-Mamun.5 Later the name of the Abbasid Caliph along with the name of the issuing ruler became the major style of Islamic coinage in other parts of the Islamic world. After the assassination of Abbasid Caliph Al-Mustasim, when there was no Caliph in Baghdad, the coinage was issued wherein the ruler represented himself as deputy or right hand of the Caliph. Inscribing the name of Abbasid Caliph on the coins simply suggests the importance of the Khalifah in the eyes of a ruler of Islamic world on the one hand and acceptance of the authority of a particular Abbassid Khalifah on the other. A remarkable change in the inscription of Islamic coinage can be seen in India on the coins of Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah Khalji wherein he calls himself the Khalif-ullah or khalifah rabil-alemin6 (Caliph of Allah). Use of such title by a ruler was a daring step and not liked by many people of his period. The name of Abbasid Caliph on the coins was re-introduced by Muhammad bin Tughluq. His coins, however, bear the name of Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mustakfi and Al-Hakim II stationed at Egypt.7 The inscription on token currency of Muhammad bin Tughluq is interesting and noticed for the first time. It has an appeal inscribed on the coins which reads man ata as-sultan faqad ata rahman (he who obeys king obeys the God) on one side and Muhr shud tanka raij dar raijgar banda – e-umidwar Muhammad Tughluq8 (sealed as a tanka current in the reign of slave, hopeful Muhammad Tughluq) on the other. His successor Firuz Tughluq calls himself naib amir al-mominin (deputy of the Caliph). The Abbasid Caliphs had direct control over Iran, and they were supported by both Iranians and Arabs. The Abbasid rule in Iran was primarily governed by the amirs of different regions, as Khurasan was under charge of Tahirids (820–72 CE). The region of Sistan was governed by Saffarids 158

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(867–903 CE), and Samanid (875–1005 CE) controlled the region of Bukhara. Gradually the rule of the Abbasids declined, and independent dynasties started ruling Iran. The coinage during this period was issued with Islamic pattern bearing Kalima and the name of the rulers.

Inscriptions on Mughal coins The religious content of Islamic-type coins witnessed a major change in the time of the Mughals as these coins neither find the name of contemporary Abbassid Caliph nor ruler giving importance to contemporary Caliph; instead they prefer to inscribe the name of khulfah-i-rashedin or the first four pious Caliphs – Abu Bakr, Umar, Usman and Ali (Figures 9.1–9.4). But their names always appear with the Kalima with or without their epithets. Apart from Mughals, Suri rulers of India had also issued coins with Kalima and the names of four pious Caliphs.9 Thus in terms of religious inscriptions Kalima and the names of four great Caliphs became common features of Mughal coins on their gold and silver issues during the sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. In the later years of Akbar in his Ilahi-type coins the religious inscription of Kalima and the name of pious Caliphs were replaced by the alternative legend as Allah-u-Akbar Jale-e- jalalahu (Figure 9.5). But Jahangir retained only the kailma (Figure 9.6), while Shahjahan issued coins with the Kalima and the names of the four great Caliphs (Figure 9.9). It is interesting to note that religious messages on Mughal coins were used till Shahjahan’s period. As during the reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707 CE) the religious message was completely discarded from the coins, as he preferred to inscribe his name in the form of a couplet on the one side and a new secular legend manus maimanat sanah julus zarb (coin was struck in year of accession associated with prosperity) (Figure 9.10) on the other. These new words were commonly used on Mughal coins after Aurangzeb (Figures 9.11 and 9.12) and became an important feature on Indian coins until 1857 and were used in the coins of Nizam of Hyderabad until 1947. In terms of secular messages, these coins primarily bear the names of rulers (often with the father’s name on the coins of Jahangir), date in hijri era (both in words and in numerals), mint name (some mint names are used with their epithets). Some of these coins also bear couplets (poetic legend generally in praise of the ruler). Akbar was the first Mughal emperor who introduced the couplet on his coins, which became popular in the reign of Jahangir, and various types of couplets are found on his coinage (Figure 9.7). From Aurangzeb onwards, couplets bearing names of the rulers became common on the coins of Mughal emperors (Figures 9.10 and 9.12). 159

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The religious messages on the Mughal coins are used only on gold and silver coins, except a few copper coins of Akbar with Kalima.10 The inscription on copper coins primarily appears with secular messages mainly with date and mint. The early copper coins of Mughals (Babar to Akbar) are anonymous (Figures 9.13 and 9.14). The name of the emperor on the Mughal coins was introduced by Akbar in his later period (Figure 9.15) which was followed by his successors (Figure 9.16). Inscription on Mughal coins 9.1

Figure 9.1 Inscription on Mughal coins – Babar: silver: Shahrukhi type

Babar: silver: Shahrukhi type Obv. Kalima: around: name of four great Caliphs Rev. Zaheer uddin Muhammad badshah ghazi within rectangle; around: as-sultan al-azam al-khaqan al-mukarram khaladallah mulkahu

Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

9.2

Humayun: Shahrukhi type Obv. Kalima Rev. Muhammad Humayun ghazi within circle; around: as-sultan al-azam al-khaqan al-mukarram khaladallah mulkahu Figure 9.2 Inscription on Mughal coins – Humayun: Shahrukhi type Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

9.3

Figure 9.3 Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: silver: rupee Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

160

Akbar: silver: rupee Obv. Kalima; margin: basidque Abi Bakr Adl-e-Umar Faruq ba heyyai-i-Usman adl-e-Ali Rev. Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar badshah ghazi within rectangle; margin: top, as-sultan al-khaqaan; bottom, zarb jaunpur

9.4

Figure 9.4 Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: gold Courtesy: Trustee British Museum, London.

Akbar: gold Obv. Kalima within lettered square; margin: basidque Abi Bakr Adl-e-Umar Faruq ba heyyai-i-Usman adl-e-Ali Rev. Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar badshah ghazi above the word Akbar within lettered rectangle; margin: top, khalad allah taala mulkahu; bottom, zarb dar-ul-sultante Lahore Akbar: gold; Ilahi type Obv. Allah-u- Akbar Jalle jalallah Rev. Merh Ilahi zarb 50 Agra .

9.5

Figure 9.5 Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: gold: Ilahi type Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

Jahangir: silver: Kalima type Obv. Kalima zarb Agra 1024 Rev. Nuruddin Jahang ir Shah Akbar

9.6

Figure 9.6 Inscription on Mughal coins – Jahangir: silver: Kalima type Courtesy: Trustee British Museum, London.

Jahangir: silver: couplet type Obv. Ba-hukm Shah Jahnagir yaft sad zewar Rev. ba naame Nurjahan badshah begum zar

9.7

Figure 9.7 Inscription on Mughal coins – Jahangir: silver: couplet type Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

(Continued)

(Continued) 9.8

Jahangir Shah: gold Obv. Nuruddin Jahang ir Shah Akbar Rev. Mah-e- khurdad Ilahi zarb Agra sanah 1023 zarb Figure 9.8 Inscription on Mughal coins – Jahangir Shah: gold Courtesy: Trustee British Museum, London.

9.9

Figure 9.9 Inscription on Mughal coins – Shahjahan: silver Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

Shahjahan: silver Obv. Kalima within square; margin: basidque Abi Bakr Adl-e-Umar Faruq barzim-iUsman wa-e-ilm- Ali Rev. Shahjahan badshah ghazi within square; margin: top, Shahabuddin; right, Muhammad sahib; bottom, qiran sani, left, zarb Surat

Aurangzeb: silver Obv. Aurangzeb Alamgir shah zad chu badr munir sikkah dar jahan Rev. Manus maimanat sanah julus zarb Itawa

9.10

Figure 9.10 Inscription on Mughal coins – Aurangzeb: silver Courtesy: IIRNS Collection, Anjaneri, Nasik.

Shah Alam Bahadur: silver Obv. Shah alam bahadur badshah ghazi sikkah Mubarak Rev. Sanah julus manus maimanat zarb Surat

9.11

Figure 9.11 Inscription on Mughal coins – Shah Alam Bahadur: silver Courtesy: IIRNS Collection, Anjaneri, Nasik.

9.12

Figure 9.12 Inscription on Mughal coins – Farukh Siyyar: silver

Farukh Siyyar: silver Obv. Sikkah zad az fazl haq barseem wa zar badshah bahr-obarFukh Siyyar Rev. Dar-al-khilafah Shahjahanbad zarb manus maimanat julus sanah

Courtesy: IIRNS Collection, Anjaneri, Nasik.

Akbar: copper: Hijri type Obv. Zarb falus dar-al-Khilafah Dogaon Rev. Sanah nahsad hashtaad wa

9.13

Figure 9.13 Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: copper: Hijri type Courtesy: IIRNS Collection, Anjaneri, Nasik.

Akbar: copper: dam, Ilahi type Obv. Falus Burhanpur Rev. 37 Ilahi Amardad

9.14

Figure 9.14 Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: copper: dam, Ilahi type Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

Akbar: copper: Tanka type with the name of Akbar Obv. Tanka – e- Akbar shahi zarb Rev. 37 Ilahi Ardibahisht

9.15

Figure 9.15 Inscription on Mughal coins – Akbar: copper: Tanka type with the name of Akbar Courtesy: Photo cardex section, IIRNS, Anjaneri, Nasik.

(Continued)

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(Continued) 9.16

Aurangzeb: copper Obv. Falus Aurangzeb shahi Rev. zarb Surat

Figure 9.16 Inscription on Mughal coins – Aurangzeb: copper Courtesy: Photo cardex section, IIRNS, Anjaneri, Nasik.

Inscriptions on Safavid coins Like Mughal coins, the coins of the Safavids also bear religious and secular messages. The content of religious inscription underwent some changes, while secular messages remained the same. In order to understand these changes we need to know that Islam has two major sects – Sunni and Shia. These sects of Islam developed after the death of Prophet Muhammad. The Sunni faith of Islam believes in the concept of Khilafat and considered the Khalifah as both religious and political head of Islam. Abu Bakr became the first Caliph, who was succeeded by Umar, Usman and Ali and they are known as great or pious Caliphs. While the Shia faith of Islam believes in the concept of Imamat and Ali (the fourth great Caliph) is considered as the first imam of Shias who was succeeded by 11 imams, all from his family. But the basic beliefs of both the sects are similar as both believe in Kalima (there is no god but Allah and Prophet Muhammad as messenger of Allah). Kalima was the prime inscription of Islamic-type coins in the sixteenth century, and the same is well evident on the coins of the Safavid. But these coins bear Shiete Kalima, which has two additional words Ali waliullah, besides Lailaha illallah Muhammad-ur-rasul allah. The coins of Shah Ismail I were issued with Shiete Kalima with the name of 12 imams of Shia11 in the margin on the one side and the name of the ruler with the title on the other (Figures 9.17–9.19). Apart from Shiete Kalima, the coins of the Safavid also have another religious content of Shiaism in the form of a word Willayat. The word Willayat is commonly noticed on the coins of Abbas I, Safi I, Abbas II and Shah Hussain Shah (Figures 9.20–9.24). The legend can be read as Safi Banda-e-Willayat, meaning servant of king of Willayat. The term Willayat refers to Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam and first imam of Shia. In the Shia faith, it is believed that Ali had a special relationship with God. 164

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Secular content on Safavid coins is quite similar to that found in the Mughal coins, bearing the name of the ruler, date (hijri era), mint name and often with Persian couplets.12 Thus the differences can be seen in religious content between the coins of Mughal and Safavid. The inscription in the form of Persian couplets is seen on the coinages of both the dynasties, but Mughals couplets are generally in praise of the ruler and secular in nature, while Safavid couplets are in praise of imam, which are generally in religious nature. Inscription on Safavid coins 9.17

Figure 9.17 Inscription on Safavid coins – Ismail Shah I (AH 908–23): silver Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

9.18

Ismail Shah I (AH 908–23): silver Obv. Shia’te Kalima; around: name of 12 imams of Shia Rev. Ismail bahadur shah: around: as-sultan al-adil al-kamil al-hadi al-wali khaladallah mulkahu was sultanahu Shah Tahmasp I (AH 930–84) Obv. Shia’te Kalima Rev. Tahmasab Shah zarb Yezd

Figure 9.18 Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Tahmasp I (AH 930–84) Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

9.19

Figure 9.19 Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Tahmasp I (AH 930–84) Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

Shah Tahmasp I (AH 930–84) Obv. Shia’te Kalima; around: name of 12 imams of Shia Rev. Zarb Nimruz within star in the centre; around: as-sultan al-adil al-kamil muzaffar khan bahadur Tahmasb shah al- hussaini alsafavi khaladallah mulkahu (Continued)

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Figure 9.20 Inscription on Safavid coins – Abbas I (AH 996–1002): silver Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

Abbas I (AH 996–1002): silver Obv. Shia’te Kalima; around: name of 12 imams of Shia Rev. Banda shah Wilayat Abbas zarb Shuster in the centre; around: khaladallah mulkahu wa sultanahu wa Ali ali emin

Shah Safi I (AH 1038): silver Obv. Shia’te Kalima Rev. Banda Vilayat shah Safi zarb Ganja

9.21

Figure 9.21 Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Safi I (AH 1038): silver Courtesy: Stan Goron, Journal of Oriental Numismatic Society, issue no. 176.

Abbas II (AH 1052–77): silver: couplet type Obv. Shia’te Kalima Rev. Bagiti sikkah-i-sahib qirani zad az taufiq haq Abbas sani

9.22

Figure 9.22 Inscription on Safavid coins – Abbas II (AH 1052–77): silver: couplet type Courtesy: Stan Goron, Journal of Oriental Numismatic Society, issue no. 176.

Shah Hussain I (AH 1105–35) Obv. Shia’te Kalima Rev. Shah Willayat Hussain Shah zarb Tiftish 1130

9.23

Figure 9.23 Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Hussain I (AH 1105–35) Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

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9.24

Figure 9.24 Inscription on Safavid coins – Shah Hussain I (AH 1105–35)

Shah Hussain I (AH 1105–35) Obv. Shia’te Kalima; around: name of 12 imams of Shia Rev. Shah Willayat Hussain Shah zarb Tabrez 1129

Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

Calligraphy Calligraphy or the art of writing is an important feature of all scripts, and it emerged as an exclusive art of the Islamic world. The remarkable calligraphic development in the Arabic script may be ascribed to the following factors: (1) In the development of the Arabic script and calligraphy, the Quran played an important role. It was revealed to Prophet Muhammad and became the very basis of Islam, and after the death of Prophet Muhammad during the reign of Khalifah Abu Bakr and Umar the Quran was compiled in the form of a book and the people of the Islamic world began to make copies. (2) Since Islam does not encourage the rendering of animate forms, the artist concentrated on the beautification of the alphabet. (3) The Arabic alphabet is best suited from the point of view of adaptability to artistic use. In course of time, various styles of Arabic calligraphy developed. Mashq and Kufic were the early styles of writing which developed in the area of Mecca/Madina and Kufa, respectively.13 The Kufic style developed considerably, replaced all earlier scripts and reached its perfection in the eighth century CE. Later in the ninth century calligraphers developed six styles of cursive writing known as Aqlam al-Sittah or Shish Qalam and styles are Thulth, Nashki, Muhaqaq, Rayhani, Tawqi and Riqa.14 These cursive styles reached the status of major scripts when they were subjected to strict calligraphy rules.15 By the tenth century Arabic calligraphy reached to its glorious phase during the time of great calligrapher Abu Ali Ibn Muqlah. His knowledge of geometric science helped for important development in Arabic calligraphy, and he is considered as the true founder of Arabic cursive calligraphy.16 167

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Calligraphy as an art form also took its due place in India and Iran in the medieval period. Various styles of calligraphy are noticed on Indian and Iranian coins. These styles may be mentioned as Kufic, eastern Kufic, nashq, Tughra and others. Each medieval dynasty adopted a distinct style of calligraphy for its coins. The calligraphy, however, reached its zenith in the sixteenth century in the Safavid period in Iran. Safavid rulers took keen interest in this art, and the sixteenth century witnessed the development of a new form of calligraphy called Nastaliq in Iran. The style is based on the cursive styles of Tawqi and Riqa. The development of calligraphy in Iran also received due attention in India during the Mughal period. Humayun was the first Mughal emperor, who took interest in this art, and established a regular scientific school of calligraphy and painting.17 Two artists, namely Abdus Samad and Mir Saiyyid Ali, were brought from Persia to Humayun court and were asked to train the local craftsmen.18 In the times of Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan, this art form flourished and consequently attracted a number of Iranian artists to India, who in turn trained the local men to this art. Sixteenth century onwards, Nastaliq became the most popular style of Arabic calligraphy in the Indian sub-continent, and most of the inscriptions are found in Nastaliq. Abul Fazl mentions, ‘His Majesty, Emperor Akbar shows much regards to art, and takes great interest in different system of writing, Nastaliq has especially received new impetus under him.’19 The use of Nastaliq on Mughal coins became popular in the time of Akbar with the introduction of his Ilahi-type coins, and this calligraphic form remained on Mughal coins up to the year 1857. But Mughal coins prior to the Ilahi coin types of Akbar, particularly the Shahrukhi type issued by Babar, Humayun and Akbar, utilised a different style of calligraphy, which resembles the Tughra style (Figures 9.1 and 9.2). Tughra is a purely decorative style of calligraphy, and it is probably a later development. It is not included in the six cursive styles of writing, but it has similarities with Thulth. Similarly the early rulers of the Safavids, like Ismail Shah, Shah Tahmasp and Abbas I, issued their coins with a similar style of calligraphy (Figures 9.17 and 9.18) used on the coins of Babur and Humayun. However, the coins of Safi I and Shah Hussain witnessed beautiful examples of the Nastaliq style of calligraphy (Figures 9.21 and 9.24).

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Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids Mughals Safavids 9.25

Figure 9.25 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Babar Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

Figure 9.26 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Ismail Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

9.27

Figure 9.28 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Tahmasp Shah Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental

Figure 9.27 Calligraphic similarities Coins and Their Values: The World of on the coins of Mughals Islam, London. and Safavids – Humayun Courtesy: Humayun IIRNS Photo cardex, Nasik.

9.29

Figure 9.29 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Akbar

Figure 9.30 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Abbas I

Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

(Continued)

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(Continued) 9.31

Figure 9.31 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals Figure 9.32 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Shahjahan and Safavids – Safi I Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

Courtesy: Stan Goron, Journal of Oriental Numismatic Society, issue no. 176.

9.33

Figure 9.33 Calligraphic similarities Figure 9.34 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Aurangzeb and Safavids – Abbas II Courtesy: IIRNS Collection, Anjaneri, Nasik.

Courtesy: Stan Goron, Journal of Oriental Numismatic Society, issue no. 176.

Figure 9.35 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Akbar

Figure 9.36 Calligraphic similarities on the coins of Mughals and Safavids – Hussain I

Courtesy: Trustees, British Museum, London.

Courtesy: Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam, London.

9.35

Conclusion As discussed earlier the inscription (content-wise) and calligraphy used on the coins of Mughals and Safavids are similar to each other. But the religious messages inscribed on them very much reflect the religious 170

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belief of these rulers (Sunni and Shia). Mughal coins use the ideology of Sunni faith, while Safavids propagated the idea of Shia faith of Islam. However, the most remarkable fact which we notice on Mughal coins is the discarding of religious messages from the coins during the time of Aurangzeb (1068–1117 hijri). Since then Mughal coins were issued without religious messages. However, a few commemorative coins are listed with kalima. However, Safavid coins continued with the religious messages till the end of its reign of Ismail III, that is 1163–69. Interestingly, the Persian couplets inscribed on Mughal coins are secular in nature, mainly in praise of the ruler, while Safavid coins inscribed Persian couplets of religious nature, using the concept of Wilayat and so on. It is very interesting to note that the calligraphy and geometrical design used on Mughal and Safavid coins are similar in the same period as the calligraphy on the coins of Babar, Humayun and Akbar are similar to their contemporary and Shah Ismail, Shah Tahmasp and Abbas I, respectively.

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APPENDIX A

The inscription on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi sultanates: Mameluk; Iltutmish and Balban (Kalima and name of Abbasid Caliph)

9.A.1

Figure 9.A.1 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Iltutmish: silver (with kalima and name of Abbasid Caliph)

Iltutmish: silver (with kalima and name of Abbasid Caliph) Obv. Kalima in two lines followed by Al-Mustsansir nasir amir- al- momenin within circle; margin: dates in words Rev. As-sultan al-azam shamsudduniya waddin abul muzaffar Iltutmish as-sultan

Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

9.A.2

Figure 9.A.2 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Iltutmish: silver (with the name of Abbasid Caliph) Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

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Iltutmish: silver (with the name of Abbasid Caliph) Obv. Fi-ahd Al- Mustansir amir-al- momenin within double square; margin: dates in words Rev. As-sultan al-azam shamsudduniya waddin abul muzaffar Iltutmish as-sultan within double square

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9.A.3

Figure 9.A.3 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Balban: silver (with the name of Abbasid Caliph) Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

Balban: silver (with the name of Abbasid Caliph) Obv. Al-Imam AlMustansim amir-al- momenin within square; margin: date and mint Rev. As-sultan al-azam ghiyasudduniya waddin abul muzaffar Balban as-sultan within square followed by circle; around: date and mint

The inscription on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Khalji; Alauddin Muhammad Shah without the name of Abbasid Caliph but with the title yamin-ul-khilafah (right hand of Caliph) and Qutubuddin Mubarak (with the title of khalifullah) 9.A.4

Figure 9.A.4 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Alauddin Muhammad Shah: silver

Alauddin Muhammad Shah: silver Obv. As-sultan al-azam ala-udduniya waddin abul muimzaffar Muhammad Shah as sultan Rev. Sikander-us-sani yamin-al-khilafah nasir amir-al- momenin within square; margin: date and mint

Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

9.A.5

Figure 9.A.5 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah: silver

Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah: silver Obv. Al-Imam al-azam Qutub-udduniya waddin abul muzaffar Khalifullah Rev. Mubarak Shah as-sultan ibn as-sultan al-wasiq billah amir al-momenin within circle; margin: date and mint name

Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

(Continued)

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(Continued) 9.A.6

Figure 9.A.6 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah: silver Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

Qutubuddin Mubarak Shah: silver Obv. Al-Imam al-azam khalifah rabil alemin Qutub-udduniya waddin abul muzaffar Mubarak shah Rev. As-sultan ibn as-sultan al-wasiq billah amir al-momenin within square; margin: date and mint

The inscription on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Tughluq; Muhammad bin Tughluq (with Kalima and the name of Abbasid Caliph of Egypt) and Firuz Tughluq (with the title of naib-amir-al-mominin) 9.A.7

Figure 9.A.7 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Muhammad bin Tughluq: silver Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

9.A.8

Figure 9.A.8 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Muhammad bin Tughluq: bronze Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

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Muhammad bin Tughluq: silver Obv. ashado ana lailaha ila allah wa ashhado anna muhammadan abdahu wa rasulahu Rev. al-wasiq ar-rahman Muhammad shah as-sultan within circle; around: date in Arabic words and mint

Muhammad bin Tughluq: bronze Obv. Man ata as-sultan faqad ata ar-rahman within circle; around: date in Arabic words and mint Rev. Muhr shud raij dar rozgar banda – e-umidwar Muhammad bin Tughluq

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9.A.9

Firuz Tughluq: gold Obv. Naib-amir-almomenin 785 Rev. Firuz shah sultani

Figure 9.A.9 Inscriptions on pre-Mughal coins – Delhi Sultanates: Firuz Tughluq: gold Courtesy: Bhartiye Sikke ek aitehasik Parichaye by Amiteshwar Jha, IIRNS Publication, 2003.

Notes 1 Jonathan William, ed., Money: A History (London, 1997), pp. 90–91. 2 Danish Moin, “Inscription on Medieval Indian Coins: An Analysis,” in Amiteshwar Jha, ed., Medieval Indian Coinages: A Historical and Economic Perspective (Nasik, 2001), pp. 193–210. 3 Stan Goron and J.P. Goenka, The Coins of Indian Sultanates (New Delhi, 2001), pp. xxvi–xxx. 4 Ibid., pp. 19–21. 5 William, op. cit., pp. 90–1. 6 Goron and Goenka, op. cit., pp. 41–2. 7 Ibid., pp. 59–61. 8 Ibid., p. 57. 9 Ibid., pp. 93–129. 10 Colin Bruce, John Deyell, N. Rhodes and W.F. Spengler, Standard Guide to South Asian Coins and Paper Money since 1556 (IOLA: Krause Publications), p. 27, type no. 48. 11 Imam Ali, Imam Hassan, Imam Hussain, Imam Zain al-abedin, Imam Muhammad Baqar, Imam Jaafar Sadiq, Imam Musa, Imam Riza, Imam Taqi, Imam Hadi, Imam Hasan Askari and Imam Mehdi. 12 Michael Mitchiner, Oriental Coins and Their Values: The World of Islam (London, 1997), pp. 292–4. 13 Y.H. Safadi, Islamic Calligraphy (London, 1978), p. 9. 14 Ibid., p. 17. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ziyauddin Desai, “Monumental Islamic Calligraphy of India,” in C. Margabandhu, A.K. Sharma, R.S. Bisht and Agam Kala Prakashan, ed., Puraratna, Emerging Trends in Archaeology, Art, Anthropology, Conservatism & Art History in Honour of Shri Jagat Pati Joshi (New Delhi, 2002), p. 463. 18 Shanti Swarup, Mughal Art: A Study of Handicraft (New Delhi, 1996), p. 5. 19 M. Blochman (trans. and ed.), Abul Fazl’s Ain-i- Akbari (New Delhi:, Low Cost Publications Reprint, 1977), p. 109.

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10 LOOKING AROUND THE INSTITUTION OF TĪRTHA-YĀTRĀ IN THE CONTEXT OF MARATHA EXPANSION 1 Irina Glushkova

Not until modern times could Maharashtrians easily reach tīrthas (Hindu holy places), located outside their own domain, and even during the prime of the Maratha Confederacy’s territorial stretch, the tīrthas they most wanted had been held by alien powers. The nature of the terrestrial magnetism that put Marathi-speaking folk into spatial motion led me to dig into the sandarbha (context) related to the formation of the concept of tīrtha-yātrā (a classical pilgrimage as different from Pandharpur-oriented vārī, an annual visit to the abode of the god Vithoba) and into the historical conditions of physical transit, or movement, that required real space and time. Following Jacob Heesterman’s treatment, of sacred as dynamic by definition, which exercises ‘its pull over long distances from a static center’ which is a ‘political center’ at the same time,2 throughout a decade of research I travelled from Maharashtra to outside destinations checking environments that generated ideas meaningful for the development of the śāstra (theory) of tīrtha-yātrā, and checked them by juxtaposition with prayoga (practice) of pilgrimages actually performed and recorded in Marathi sources (correspondence, chronicles, financial documents, court poetry, family pedigrees, etc.). The most popular concept of tīrtha-yātrā à la Maharashtra used to be expressed through a notion of tristhaḷī(-yātrā), or alternatively kāśī-yātrā (pilgrimage to Kasi), that is a combined journey to Prayag (Allahabad), Kashi (Varanasi/Benares) and Gaya, also implying visits to on-the-way sacred places and various out-of-way deviations. It became clear through the repetitive usage of this word combination in various narratives – from

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Narayana Bhatta’s Tristhalisetu3 and the Tristhaḷi yātrecyā lāvaṇyā (Śarabhendra bhūpāl kṛt)4 ascribed to Serfoji II, a Maratha ruler of Thanjavur, to manuscripts of Marathi Tristhaḷī-māhātmya which had circulated in Maharashtra till the beginning of cheap printing, early travel-guides similar to Tristhaḷī yātrā-varṇan arthāt prayāg-kāśī-gayā,5 and even a chapter on pilgrimage entitled Kāśī-yātrā in V.K. Bhave’s Peśvekālīn mahārāṣṭra6 among others.

The idea of tīrtha-yātrā This practice might have grown as a śrāddha (ancestor worship ritual at the river bank) and then developed into a travel through successfully promoted sites for snāna (ablution), dāna (gift-giving) and other karmakāṇḍa rites. Contrary to general belief, the literature on tīrtha-yātrā proper (in contrast with devotional pilgrimages of the bhakti type) is scarce and monotonous. It is limited to discursive references to the tīrtha-yātrā of the epic Pandavas, to a list of sacred places from the Viṣṇu-smṛti and to instructions laid by miscellaneous purāṇas (theological compendia) and pilgrimage digests. This is the kind of literature known as śāstra. It is no mere chance that both Namdev in his Tīrthāvaḷī by reference to the sage Narada and the Pandavas7 and the author of Śarabhendra tīrthāvaḷī by comparison of Serfoji II with Yudhishthira going on pilgrimage8 acknowledged characters from the Mahābhārata and their actions as a standard to follow. Apart from mythology, the emergence of the idea of travelling to sacred places outside Maharashtra might go back to the thirteenth century and the revival of Brahmanism in Maharashtra. I link it to the influence of Brahmanic literature in general and to that of Hemadri’s Caturvargacintāmaṇi in particular. It is not known whether a section on tīrthas which had been a part of the preliminary planning had been written at all,9 or it had been written and then lost.10 It is evident on the basis of textual comparison that Hemadri’s composition was based on the earlier Kṛtyakalpataru11 written by Lakshmidhara Bhatta of Kashi, the political centre of the twelfthcentury Kannauj.12 Lakshmidhara, and his one-century-later counterpart, Hemadri of Devagiri, was a statesman and elaborated various particularities related to dharma in various sections, one of them on tīrthas. Its manuscript was discovered in the mid-twentieth century only, and since then has been accepted as the first nibandha (composition) on the subject of tīrthayātrā. As Lakshmidhara did not mention any predecessor, he also has been accepted as a pioneer in this field. It is relevant to the idea of this chapter that the lost digest was found nowhere else but in the private library of the Nagpurian Bhosles, once the most powerful and influential Maratha

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princes, and published nowhere else but in Baroda of a long-lived Maratha dynasty of the Gaekwads. The content of the Tīrthavivacanakāṇḍaṃ laid a pattern of the genre – after dutiful references to the Mahābhārata heroes and citations from purāṇas it turned to establishing Benares, then the capital of the Gahadavala dynasty and the minister Lakshmidhara’s native place, as a focus of the tīrtha section. Additionally Lakshmidhara included small chapters on Prayag, Gaya and a few obscure tīrthas of which he was ill-informed. What I find really important was his concern regarding the mode of movement from Benares to Prayag, located at a distance of about 120 km from the former. This concern testified to the author’s personal experience of the route, and introduced an idea of actual (and not metaphorical) approaching towards a sacred place. Following into the steps of Lakshmidhara, Hemadri’s ‘quite similar’13 composition could have propelled the idea of visiting the same tīrthas. In any case, it is not coincidence that almost at the same time the Mahanubhava teachers commanded their followers to not leave Maharashtra14 indicating that ‘Maharashtra is sāttvic’ (pure) and ‘is [where] dharma gets accomplished’.15 Later a steady flow of Maharashtrian Brahmans to Benares started. Not much is yet known about the exact time and impulses of the mass exodus though a few family names are routinely mentioned among the first migrants from Deccan, later to be widely known as dakhnī (southern) Brahmans.16 They hailed mainly from Paithan and other seats of learning located on the river banks in Desh.17 A.S. Altekar, in the 1930s the head of the Department of Ancient History and Culture in Benares Hindu University, wrote about the descendants of the Dharmadhikari family who – on the basis of unreliable evidences – had dated their arrival at Benares by the eleventh century.18 Motichandra in his Kāsī kā itihās simply stated that ‘Brahmans from Maharashtra began to appear here from the times of Akbar. They were flocking in not as pilgrims but to get settled’.19 Ananya Vajpeyi mentioned as probable a period from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries when Brahmans were forced to search for livelihood: ‘It was as though the ksatriyas disappeared altogether from the world of Maharashtra’s Brahmans’, after the Yadava kingdom of Devagiri ‘fell to Allaudin Khalji and subsequently became Daulatabad’.20 An attempt to get resettled in prosperous Vijayanagar of the Hindu rulers has been mentioned in the Gādhivaṃśavarṇana, which tells a story of Rameshvara Bhatta,21 a renowned Sanskrit scholar and a forefather of the famous Bhatta clan of Benares to which Narayana Bhatta, and later Gaga Bhatta belonged.22 Maratha Brahmans from Desh were shortly followed by members of other priestly communities from Konkan. Though Brahmans often migrated by extended families they preserved their private and professional ties with 178

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the land of exodus. By the seventeenth century, Maharashtrian migration to Benares resulted in making the city authoritative in the matters of religious and social concern back at home. The density of Maharashtrians as leading authorities is easily recognised through the names in Pollock’s New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-Century India and other studies.23 The participants of the Paṇḍit (scholars) project went on investigating their individual contributions and try to get them connected to their homes back in Maharashtra, as shown, for example, in the work of Christopher Minkowski and Rosalind O’Hanlon.24 It is in this context that we should look at the oldest specimen of the Marathi chronicles, the Mahikāvatīcī urf māhīmcī bakhar, which is credited with the first reference to the ‘Maharashtra dharma’ in its chapter allegedly dating back to the fifteenth century. Besides other contexts, it speaks of Kashi as a northern limit of the spread of the Maharashtra dharma pointing to Shvetambaradharameshvar in the south, Dwarka in the west and Tuljapur in the east.25 Privileging the Paithani Brahmans who initiated the migration to the land of Aryavarta, that is their legal (and not ritual) specialisation, the geography outlined might be taken as the territory where the law they laid down might have been recommended for practice.26 It was in the century to follow that a monumental figure of Narayana Bhatta emerged. The son of Rameshvara Bhatta, who had turned his steps away from Vijayanagar and had eventually reached Varanasi, was born on the way to the sacred city and honoured for his achievements with a title of jagadguru (the world preceptor). He is credited with the reconstruction of the Vishvanath temple by the end of the sixteenth century and prescription of many rites related to the god who eventually became the main symbol of Kashi. He also compiled the famous Tristhalisetu, or ‘The Bridge to the Three Holy Cities’27 which set up a pattern of visiting Prayag, Kashi and Gaya. Taking into account a probability of the Vishvanath’s aniconic image’s absence from the temple, and the temple itself being demolished, he made a provision that ‘if, owing to the power of foreign rulers, there is no linga at all in that place, even so, the dharma of the place itself should be observed’.28 By stressing the dharma of the place, Narayana compiled the nibandha as consisting of a general chapter and consequent sections on Prayag, Kashi and Gaya. Many passages of Narayana’s digest were adopted virtually verbatim from earlier authors, including Lakshmidhara Bhatta, as was painstakingly established by Richard Salomon. Still it is Narayana whom I credit with the coinage of the term tristhali,29 which assembled the three holy cities into an unbreakable chain. By combining tristhali with yātrā (journey, march) another term meaning a prescribed visitation to Kashi, Prayag and Gaya within one pilgrimage came into usage. It is in the meaning of 179

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‘bridging’ the three cities that I read through the word setu (a bridge) in the title of Narayana’s digest. ‘The Bridge to the three holy cities’ unconditionally became the most authoritative treaty on tīrthas and tīrtha-yātrās. Its influence was still recognised three centuries later as per Benarasi mahāmahopadhyāya (a most respected spiritual teacher) Haraprasad Shastri who summed up the contribution of Narayana Bhatta in the following way: The great Pandit, who infused southern ideals at Benares in all matters relating to Hindu life and Hindu religion in preference to northern ideals current in Kannauj, Kasi, Mithila and Bengal, was Narayan Bhatta, an intellectual giant who not only wrote a vast number of Sanskrit works but organized the colony of Southern Brahmans at Benares, traveled far and wide and founded a family of Pandits who hold their pre-eminence even up to the present moment.30 By 1924, a genealogy of this clan contained 88 names of Sanskrit experts who established their authority over every field of traditional knowledge.31 Narayana Bhatta reiterated the importance of śrāddha (rites) for almost every stage of pilgrimage and by commenting on his predecessors elaborated many rules in this respect. His firm support of wearing shoes and also a positive attitude towards means of transportation to be allowed in some contexts for reaching the holy places signified to a shift from an imagined journey to a real one. He should have been thinking about his compatriots from Maharashtra when he eventually proclaimed the benefit of the journey itself thus accepting traversing a distance of over one thousand kilometers as a significant part of tīrtha-yātrā: (4) Thus also if one who has reached the tīrtha but has not yet bathed etc. by chance dies or is taken by force elsewhere by barbarians, etc., then, since there is no human fault, there is no offense nor lack of benefit from the journey. (5) Now, enough of this arguing with those who say ‘Pilgrimage has no benefit’ – a statement which is denied by the whole world.32 Narayana also encouraged paṇḍits to interpret matters unspecified in sacred texts on their own, and recommended prayoga example as setting up precedents: ‘Other religious duties of pilgrimage also are to be observed, as they are learned from the practice of refined people’.33 It was Maharashtrian

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nobility – from peshwas to their generals to royal widows – who later acted as ‘refined people’ and led caravans of pilgrims-cum-warriors through Maratha-controlled areas towards the tristhaḷī-cities. Otherwise not in vogue among Hindu population of north India (or to the south of Maharashtra as well) either as a term or as a practice, in Maharashtrian usage the tristhaḷī used to be easily interchanged with kāśī-yātrā. The idea was propagated and disseminated through various Brahmanic sources, especially through personal channels of Maharashtrian Brahmans from Kashi, Prayag and Gaya and their agents in Maharashtra. There are still remnants of that ideally organised network found in the activities of the Akhil Bhāratīy Mahārāṣṭra Tīrthapurohit Saṅgh (All-Indian Board of Maharashtrian Priests of Holy Places) I dealt with during my fieldwork in Benares, Allahabad and Gaya. Along with Narayana’s nibandha there were other influential sources aimed at drawing Maharashtrians to Benares. Thus, the earliest Kāśīmāhātmya in Marathi is found as a part of the sixteenth-century Gurucaritra, the sacred text of the Datta sampraday known for its orthodoxy.34 There were also shorter texts in Marathi written by hand and named Tristhaḷī-māhātmya which contained popular explanation of sequence of events and distribution of rituals among three places and respective groups of tīrtha-purohits.35 As per reinforcement of rules accepted, if anyone moves towards Gaya [for śrāddha] he cannot skip Kashi and Prayag which are situated very near by. They are great kṣetras (sacred spots), and it would be a wrong [decision] having come so far to go back without visiting them. That is why at the moment of departure from one’s home, one should realise that turning to [these places] is unavoidable.36 Still further the author of the Tīrtha-yātrāprabandh clarified: ‘If one comes across other gods and other tīrthas one should perform every prescription regarding them’.37 This logic shows that by the end of the nineteenth century the concept of tristhaḷī had been accepted with implication that there was no chance to escape other sacred spots and rituals throughout the way to Allahabad, Kashi and Gaya. This concept, thus, drew Maharashtrian pilgrims over big distances and made them pass to and through strategically and spiritually significant places. The mere chance of this passage testified to political situation, safety conveniences and transit facilities that is to the environment favourable to Maharashtrians more than to any other ethnic group.

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The ‘pull’ of a sacred place The propagandist efforts of Kashi paṇḍits and priests of a Maharashtrian descent had in many ways provided the conditions for the expansion of the Maratha power. After 1680 the Marathas appear to have replaced the Rajputs as major donors at all these centres [Benares, Allahabad, Jagannath and Gaya]. By the mid-nineteenth century, the majority of temples in Benares were foundations of ‘natives of the Deccan’ within the previous 150 years.38 Their rise to political predominance in the eighteenth century largely contributed to the prosperity of the city, and therefore writing in the 1930s S.A. Altekar stated that ‘modern Benares was largely a creation of the Marathas’.39 Whatever might have been the intentions of Maratha rulers nothing stopped them from trying to take possession of the tristhaḷī-cities and of tīrthas like Ayodhya and Mathura and to encompass their nascent polity with dhāms (holy abodes) located in four cardinal points of the subcontinent. By halting at famous tīrthas when on military campaigns (also yātrās!), peshwas and their generals stimulated both pilgrims’ progress and legends’ growth. Balaji Vishvanath, the first peshwa of the Bhat dynasty, visited Benares in 1719, after his successful mission at the Mughal emperor’s court for negotiation of a right to collect a cauth (one quarter of the revenue) and sardeśmukhī (one-tenth of the revenue) from a few provinces in Deccan on behalf of Shahu, chatrapati (a sovereign) and the grandson of Shivaji. This ‘cauth became the fulcrum of Maratha expansion to the north’40 and also a pretext of inviting various fiscal functionaries for inspection and residence outside the Marathi-speaking region. The next peshwa, Bajirao I, who had accompanied his father during the first encounter with the sacred place, laid the foundation for Shanivar-vada in 1730, which became a residence of a ruling family in Pune and a centre of power with imperial ambitions. In parallel to this he launched a monumental transformation of Benares and other tristhaḷī-cities. Other prominent figures, especially the Bhosles of Nagpur, and later the houses of Sindhias and Holkars which ruled the dominant Maratha states took up this initiative. Having already acquired parts of Bundelkhand in 1729, and – a few years later – taking control of Malwa, Bajirao I became literally preoccupied with appropriation and subjugation of space in Benares. For this his personal contacts – like Sahashiv Naik (Joshi), his sister Bhiubai’s father-in-law and Narayan Dikshit (Patankar), a family guru, who moved to Benares in the 182

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early 1730s – kept on informing Pune about land acquisition and architectural contributions to the sacred landscape. Altogether the high claims of Maharashtrians can be judged from the fact that their involvement started from the reconstruction of the Manikarnika-ghat, the central and the most important of the Kashi river-stairs.41 At least one quarter of 80 ghāṭs (bathing wharves) still functioning – including the most remarkable and ritually significant – were built by individuals from Maharashtra – from peshwas to princes to their ministers to royal widows. Naik and later other prominent bankers were specifically interested in establishing a financial network for regulation of money flow and monetary provision of pilgrims through a practice of huṇḍīs (a bill of exchange) and also real estate deals. Dikshit, too, while pursuing his own interests as a usurer, launched, on behalf of the peshwas, a process of visual ‘Marathaisation’ of Benares – the remnants of his efforts, including brahmapurīs, that is Brahman colonies, with ‘the lane of Dikshit’ among them are still found in Varanasi. The part of the city known for its better- or worse-maintained impressive palaces of Maratha princes, generals and their concubines is even today known as ‘Kashi Maharashtra’. Besides many other innovations Dikshit is credited with invention of huge umbrellas made of bamboo stems and foliage meant to protect from sun and rain Brahmans waiting for clients at the Ganga bank. These umbrellas together with the contour of the riverside eventually turned into a symbol of the city itself.42 His generosity in feeding paṇḍits and priests made him every four months replace trays because of bottoms rubbed into holes by eating Brahmans.43 In present-day terms, he may be called a public relations manager whose job was to create a favourable public image of the peshwas and Maharashtrian nobility. References to peshwas’ aspirations of control over main tīrthas are scattered around any book related to the history of that period. Starting from 1736 Bajirao I kept on demanding from the Mughal emperor to pass on him as jagīr Prayag, Benares, Gaya and Mathura. Altogether peshwas’ letters are full of orders similar to ‘Take Benares, Allahabad, Ayodhya’, their last words cited in G.S. Sardesai’s volumes, J. Sarkar’s collections and elsewhere are reminders of objectives still unfulfilled and promises given like the one inscribed in a letter to one of the Hinganes, the peshwas’ resident envoys at Delhi: ‘You want to take possession of Prayag and Benares after the abolition of taxes there. That will also be done’.44 The next peshwa Balaji Bajirao led four expeditions to the north from 1741 to 1746. A newsletter of 1743 states: The Shrimant has advanced from Bundelkhand to this place with the object of proceeding to the territory of Patna. He had a holy 183

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bath along with his whole following of 75 thousand at Triveni near the Allahabad fort. The boats were provided by the Muslim Subadhar of the place. What a wonderful achievement never before attempted by anybody else, for such a concourse to have a successful pilgrimage thus attaining the highest bliss of life.45 The same episode was later narrated in the Paraśarāma caritra composed by some Vallabha in the second half of the eighteenth century. It tells about a cordial meeting between Balaji Bajirao and Muhammad-Shah and then proceeds: And receiving (from him) the riches of robes and money, he took the eastern road. He performed the yātrā of Prayāg, and came near Banāras. He took a bath on the right bank of the Ganga, and to his heart’s content gave charity to the brāhmans. In (Gaya) he satisfied Vishnu (by worship). By doing the gayā vidhī, he released his ancestors in (his lineage) (from their bondage). He completed all his religious duties and then invaded Baṅgāl.46 It is one of many examples illustrating a fusion of tīrtha-yātrā, or, to be precise, tristhaḷī, meaning pilgrimage with yātrā as a military attack. An observation made by James Grant Duff about one of the Sindhias (‘he frequently went on pilgrimages and expeditions’47) can be justly applied to any prominent personality of the epoch of the Maratha supremacy. In 1744 on the order of Shahu, still formally a chatrapati, a right for cauth and sardeśmukhī from Bengal went to Raghuji I Bhosle, a founder of the Nagpur principality. Using this opportunity, the Bhosles took hold of many parts of Orissa including the sacred Jagannath-Puri, that is an eastern dhām. After Rameshwaram on the southern extreme had fallen under the Maratha influence following the 1676 appropriation of Thanjavur by Vyankoji, Shivaji’s half-brother, it became the second dhām within the Marathas’ impact. In the 1750s Dvarka, the third dhām, located westwards came within the territorial control of the Gaekwads. As the fourth one – Badrinath, situated at a greater distance and was not protected by any Maratha state – could not be recommended for visiting its status was relegated to Kashi: There is Kashi to the north, Rameshvaram to the south, Dvarka on the west, and Jagannath to the east. . . . The old belief used to be that whoever makes a yātrā to all of them, will he gain plenty of merits.48 184

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Thus, in the eighteenth century a space encircled within a four-dhām maṇḍala (a sacred diagram) was formed around the Maratha polity which also had a kind of central pier, or a peculiar ‘geopolitical corridor’ created by an almost unbreakable chain of Maratha princely states. This corridor stretching from Pune led not only northwards through the domains of the various branches of the Pawars, Holkars, Sindhias and other chieftains, that is Dhar and Dewas, Maheshwar and Sagar, Jhansi and Gwalior to the famous tīrthas of Aryavarta, to the seat of power in Delhi and even further but also towards other directions controlled by the Pantsachivs of Bhor, the Pratinidhis of Aundh, the Patwardhans of Miraj, Sangli and other princes of southern Maharashtra, along with the Bhosles of Thanjavur to the south, the Gaekwads of Baroda to the west and the Bhosles of Nagpur to the east. I am not aware of any other more or less homogeneous ethnic group in Indian history which managed to have established a special transit passage via ethnically friendly principalities located throughout the peninsula. In 1754 a new Moghul emperor showed to the Marathas his gratitude by issuing a royal rescript surrendering to the peshwa Kurukshetra and Gaya. The Muslim officers of those places were withdrawn, and the two cities were placed under the Hingane brothers. Alamgir II also wished to favour the Marathas with the same duties at Kashi and Prayag, but he was helpless since these places were under the jurisdiction of the Nawab of Avadh.49 There were many episodes when Marathas felt impatient to capture the tristhaḷī-cities by force, and many more actors, besides the peshwas, along with the Sindhias, Holkars and the renowned ‘peshwa of peshwas’ Nana Phadnis who were eager to pull down the grand Jñāna Vāpī, a mosque built by Aurangzeb, and restore the Vishvanath temple at its original place. In 1772 Marathas managed to have obtained an imperial sanad (grant) for (Kora and) Allahabad, but could not take possessions of them due to Shuja-uddaula’s refusal.50 The surrender of the most important Hindu tīrthas to the Marathas meant ‘disaster to Muslim prestige throughout India’,51 and only the British starting in the 1770s in almost no time did succeed in the cession of Benares, Prayag and Gaya, thus delivering a deadly blow to both the Marathas and Muslims. For the Marathas it also meant loss of a uniting goal, as since then every princely state from Gwalior to Maheshvar/Indor to Nagpur to Baroda began to pursue its own interests and to fight each other. The Maharashtrian involvement in Doab52 and around is confirmed and reconfirmed by numerical data in almost every writing of C.A. Bayly53 (though he is interested in Benares proper and not in Marathas’ presence there): Few buildings in Allahabad or Benares appear to date in their present form before 1600. The majority of the great bathing and 185

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cremation wharves or ghats on the River Ganges in Benares were constructed in the years 1730 to 1810 and most of the major temples and rest houses for pilgrims and Brahmins which dot the city appear to date from the same period. So, too, many of the most prestigious of the Brahmin teachers and scholars who inhabited the city in the nineteenth century traced their families’ arrival there to the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries at the earliest. Though Gaya’s rise to ritual preeminence can be dated back to the thirteenth century, the majority of its temples were also built between 1700 and 1800.54 He acknowledges that ‘between 1760 and 1830 the Mahrattas poured wealth into Benares, Allahabad and Hardwar, constructing large numbers of religious buildings and feeding a whole new generation of priests in these centers’.55 He reiterates that the majority of temples existing by the mid-nineteenth century in popular pilgrimage-places had been built during the preceding 150 years by folks from Deccan,56 and in ‘the year 1786, as many as 170,000 Maratha pilgrims elected to increase their merit by traveling to Allahabad in an opulent armed convoy’.57 The British governor general reported about 30,000 Marathas as residing in Benares in 1817,58 and the city was regularly visited by armed ‘Mahratta’ pilgrimages of up to 200,000 men; by 1820 ‘Mahratta’ chiefs and nobles constituted 8% of the population.59 James Prinsep, an assay master, while taking the first census of Benares in 1828–9, discovered 11,311 Maharashtrian Brahmans from 11 subcastes60 – this number amounted to one-third of the Brahmanic population of the holy city as per Vasundhara Dalmia’s calculation.61 There are details scattered here and there on rounds of money controlled by Maharashtrians in almost any of Bayly’s writing related to Benares as well as in respective chapters in other studies.62 The remarkable peculiarity, if not obsession, about all narratives on tristhaḷī-yatras of Maratha princes is that every one knows and enumerates whatever was built and how much was spent by anybody hailing from Maharashtra.63 Stone inscriptions still readable on the walls of temples in the tristhaḷī-cities and other places refer to various Maratha donors from the Vincurkars of Vincur to the Pantsachivs of Bhor to the Patwardhans of Miraj or Sangli. Even when exiled to Bithoor after the fall of Pune in late 1817, the last peshwa Bajirao II kept on accumulating property and constructing temples in Benares.64 Altogether the Maratha hold on Varanasi and some other sacred places of allIndian significance ended only after the mutiny of 1857 but was unerringly recognised until 1947 when a new era of regional self-identification began. 186

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The account of the Maharashtrian presence in the most important tīrthas of South Asia cannot be imagined without a reference to two widows – Ahilyabai Holkar and Baijabai Sindhia, famous for their charity which manifested itself in erection of various religious structures around India and financial support extended to temples. It was Ahilyabai who contributed to complete reconstruction of the Vishveshvar temple in Benares and Vishnupad temple in Gaya, and it was she who, being a devoted Shaiva, initiated on the Maha-Shivaratra night a delivery of the Ganga water to 34 sacred places around the sub-continent, Rameshwaram being only one of them. I did not investigate the actual longevity of this project, but eventually it became a common place to present it as an old tradition of a ritual exchange between Benares and Rameshwaram which it had not been.65 In the twentieth century P.V. Kane, the last nibandhakār, reconfirmed it at the very beginning of the chapter on tīrtha-yātrā: ‘Benares and Rāmeśvara were held sacred by all Hindus, whether they hailed from the north of India or from the peninsula’66 which by no means reflects multiple practice of various communities. This rule is neither fully supported by Hindus of north India nor by Hindus of south India; it had also manifold manifestation even among pilgrims from Maharashtra. There were people who also contributed to a nationalist perception of this practice calling it, similar to Sister Nivedita and others, ‘The Web of Indian Life’ and the ‘Fundamental Unity of India’,67 and strengthening the ‘pull’ of sacred places by promotion of statements of such national leaders of the highest status like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

The invention of memory While the Marathas’ rise to political predominance in the eighteenth century largely contributed to the prosperity of Kashi and other tīrthas, to visual transformation of landscape and patterns of religiosity, ‘the creation’ I have mentioned earlier also meant the invention of memories of Benares which were implanted into their images back in Maharashtra. This invention revealed itself in various ways, mainly by establishing a link between sacred places and persons of all-Maharashtrian standing (from Shivaji to saintpoets or in reverse) who started to be perceived as ideal model-makers. One of the most praised deeds of Shivaji has been his escape in 1666 from Agra captivity and a speedy arrival (allegedly within a month’s time) at the fort of Raigad or Rajgadh. Though current historiography does not provide details of this flight of over 1,500 kilometres, popular imagination slows down this pace by bringing Shivaji to the tristhaḷī-cities. The Śrīśivaprabhuce by K.A. Sabhasad (1697) spoke of Maharashtrian Brahmans 187

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residing in Mathura who took care of Shivaji’s son while Shivaji disguised as a pilgrim reached Benares, performed rituals and then made for Maharashtra. As per S.N. Sen’s rendering, Shivaji addressed an accompanying Brahman (Krishnaji Pant): ‘Get the religious rites at Gaya and Prayag performed for me through [men] you know.’ So saying (he) took him in his company, and came to Benares. There (he) performed the bath in secret, visited Visvesvar and performed the bath at Prayag and the gayavarjan ceremony. There he contracted an immense loan and performed [deeds of] charity. Then it was so arranged that he should come home to his own kingdom.68 Though gayāvarjan is a śrāddha variety normally performed in Gaya and not in Prayag, this short description corresponds with behaviour prescribed in the tristhaḷī-cities, including ritual mediation recommended by (Maharashtrian) priests and distribution of charity, that is feeding Brahmans and presenting them with gifts. After one hundred years the Śakakarte śrīśiva chatrapatī mahārāj by Malharrao Chitnis (1810) described Shivaji as reaching Allahabad, making ablutions and visiting temples in Benares and also leaving for Jagannath-Puri, that is the eastern dhām. The earliest historian of the Marathas, J.G. Duff followed the bakhars (chronicles) by remarking that ‘his [Shivaji’s] party as well as himself escaped, in the disguise of Gosaeens; they visited several places of religious resort; but the route by which they returned to the Deccan is not satisfactorily ascertained’.69 Later C.A. Kincaid and D.B. Parasnis relying upon the Sivdigvijaya-bakhar stated that ‘Shivaji and his guide made for Benares and went through the usual routine of worship followed by pilgrims to that famous shrine. From Benares they went to Allahabad and Gaya and thence to Bengal’.70 Later on this statement started to roam freely from a study to a study. Not going into details A.C. Altekar referred to a chronicle dated the mid-nineteenth century which ascribed to Shivaji the construction of Rajghat in Benares, foundation of the nearby village of Shivpuri and even well sinking.71 It is worth mentioning that the first link between Shivaji and Benares that I came across was an account of the poet Kavindra (‘Indra of Poets’) Paramananda, a ‘southern’ Brahman hailing from Nevase but residing in Benares. He narrated how – when in meditation – he was ‘approached’ by Shivaji with a request of composing a story of his deeds. Thus came to life the Sanskrit poem Anupurāṇa, or Śivabhārata.72 Unfortunately, the poem depicts the events until 1661, and hence it is not known what would have been an evidence of Kavindra who was mentioned 188

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in Rajput correspondence as having appeared either in Agra or in Delhi immediately after the escape of Shivaji.73 In any case it is another reminder of omnipresence of Maharashtrian Brahmans. Although every saint-poet – from Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath, Tukaram and Ramdas – sang of their deep affection with Vithoba and Ram, respectively, every saint-poet spoke of futility of visiting sacred places, and some of them are even said to have never travelled to Pandharpur, they all were literally propelled to far-away Kashi by questionable references and interpolations into their hymns or in accounts of later hagiographers.74 The Varkari tradition even framed its most creative period – from Dnyaneshvar to Tukaram – with references to long-distance pilgrimages by no means related to Vithoba. Thus, a tīrtha-yātrā of Vitthalpant happened to have become a main requisite which led him to a meeting with Rakhumabai, their marriage and to the birth of Dnyaneshvar in the thirteenth century. Four centuries later disappearance of Tukaram from his native village of Dehu – besides some other versions – is explained by his deliberate retirement to Kashi. In respect to the Ramdasi tradition, its ideological basis is said to be rooted in the experience acquired by Ramdas during his 12 years of travel, which is interpreted as a pilgrimage to all famous tīrthas of the sub-continent. The style and trend of the hymns ascribed to Dnyaneshvar differ drastically from the Dñyāneśvarī, his main composition, if only in the fact that none of the ovīs (verses) of the commentary mentions the god Vitthal while the majority of the hymns praise no one but him. Though they express total delight extolling Pandharpur, a possibility of going to other sacred places is not excluded. In one of his poems the author displays his knowledge of various tīrthas, both within Maharashtra and outside (Varanasi, Prayag, the triple confluence in the north, the mountain of Shrishailam with the Mallikarjuna temple in the south) and precedes every new toponym with an affirmation that ‘I will go to [this place] / I will see [that place]’ (vārāṇaśī yātre jāīn / prayāg tīrtha pāhīn. . .). 75 Judging from the fact that the position of the author of the Dñyāneśvārī is not in concord with pilgrimage, M.S. Kanade and R.S. Nagarkar76 eliminate all such abhaṅgs (hymns) from the corpus of Dnyaneshvar’s works. Pilgrimage beyond Maharashtra is recognised in at least two groups of poems ascribed to Namdev, – the Ādi,77 and the Tīrthāvaḷī (913–73). The first enumerates various toponyms and introduces the pilgrimages (tīrthāṭaṇ) of Vitthalpant, the father of Dnyaneshvar. The latter tells about Dnyaneshvar and Namdev going on tīrtha-yātrā (otherwise unknown from other sources) though their transit from place to place is substituted for a philosophical discussion and then for details of a feast arranged for 189

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local Brahmans on return to Pandharpur. There are other versions of the Tīrthāvaḷī either published elsewhere78 or found among manuscripts in the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute which do not mention Dnyaneshvar as a co-pilgrim. Moreover, they are ‘starkly different’ from the one which was narrated as ‘a joint venture’ of two poets: ‘There is . . . hardly a mention of anything other than place’79 in those versions which actually make of Namdev an early integrator of the sub-continent. The uncertainty of the authorship of the Ādi and the substantially varying versions of the Tīrthāvaḷī as well as existence of several other Namdevs living in different centuries has never been a secret though the fruitful discussions of the saint-literature have almost become redundant in the wake of politically coloured literary studies. Still the Varkari community of today is keen on including ‘Dnyaneshvar+Namdev’ geographically irrelevant version into their singing programmes, while a wide public indoctrinated by popular booklets on the saint-poets and their visual images is found under the spell of the idea of their all-India pilgrimage, with almost every distinguished saint-poet of the Varkari community joined his blissful company. In one of the poems (Kāśī-mahimā) Eknath, a Paithani Brahman, demonstrated a good knowledge of sacred objects that generally attract devotees to Kashi: the presiding god Vishvanath, the Ganga-Bhagirathi River, the deity Kalabhairav, the ritual circumambulation of Kashi (pañckrośīcī pradakṣiṇā). He concluded with a line that can be interpreted as ‘overjoyed was daily Eknath during his stay in Kashi’ (eka janardanī nitya kāśīvās / param sukhās pātra jhālo [3481]). This poem might suggest the possibility of Eknath’s visit to Kashi though he could have easily obtained the first-hand information of the tīrtha from agents of Paithani Brahmans already settled in Kashi. His son too was said to have migrated there. My own study80 has confirmed a presence of a strong Maratha lobby and its contribution to the theory and practice of pañcakrośī-yātrā (a circumambulation ritual around Benares) which begins at the very Manikarnika-ghat many times renovated by the Marathas, goes by the road built/improved by Maharashtrians and prescribes stops at temples founded – and until recently, run by Brahmans from Maharashtra. Similar to Dnyaneshvar, Tukaram is unlikely to have ever visited even Pandharpur. All his hymns are located within the premises of his native village. Still some editors bring together three abhaṅgs and even name them as ‘a letter to the Bhagirathi [river] passed by Tukaram to pilgrims’.81 These verses contain three easily recognisable symbols: the Bhagirathi River (the Ganga), the god Vishvanath and the ritual of gayāvarjan, that is ancestors’ worship held in Gaya, and allegedly show the poet’s longing for a northwards journey. Of special interest is the Niryāṇ abhaṅg, a 190

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group of poems in which Tukaram bids farewell to everybody and gets ready to ascend to Vaikunth in a chariot that has arrived for this purpose. In most editions this group consists of 23 abhaṅgs only, while the authoritative ‘government’ edition published in 1950 to commemorate the tercentenary of Tukaram’s ‘departure’, along with the ‘Dehu edition’ published 50 years later for the 350th anniversary,82 gives this group a different title (Svāmīnī kāyā brahma kelī, te abhaṇg) and adds a 24th abhaṅg, which tells about Tukaram’s safe arrival at Kashi (vārāṇasīparyant aso sukharūp / sāṇgāvā nirop santāsī hā // yethūniā āmhā jāṇe nidhāmā 83)! A section of the Dāsbodh by Ramdas contains a wide-ranging discussion of pilgrimage between two participants. While one speaks positively of it, the other calls it a hardship resulting in meeting ‘rock’ and ‘water’ and in suffering at the time of bathing because of water penetrating one’s eyes and mouth.84 Besides the Dāsbodh, references to places of pilgrimage are found in utsphurta (‘spontaneous’) poems of Ramdas. Many of them, not published until recently, have been kept in bāḍs (bundles) in a depository (Śrīsamarthavāgdevatāmandir) in the town of Dhule established in 1935 by S.S. Dev, a collector, publisher and interpreter of Ramdasi literature. Dev resorted to a statement of Ramdas that ‘a brahman should roam’ (brāhmaṇu hiṇḍtā barā) and traced two poems ascribed to Ramdas of 60 and 75 ovãs, respectively, with enumeration of various toponyms: ‘Kashi, Kanti, Kolhapur, Kashmir, Kushavarta’ or ‘Ayodhya, Kashi, Kolhapur, Mathura, Delhi, Matapur’.85 Dev could not explain the idea behind monotonous rendering of these spatially scattered names and failed to geographically locate each, but he still made a general list of over one thousand places which he assumed Ramdas might have visited at the time of his pilgrimages (Dev 1944: 231–5). The Marathi hagiographic literature started to emerge from the seventeenth century and reached its climax during the second part of the eighteenth century thanks to Mahipati Tahrabadkar, a Brahman hailing from a village at about 100 kilometres from Paithan. Mahipati authored four volumes of hagiographies – the Bhaktavijaya, the Santlīlāmṛta, the Bhaktalīlāmṛta, and the (incomplete) Santvijaya during the span from 1762 to 1789, when Marathas had been recovering after the Panipat disaster and ‘the pull’ of sacred places had still been a decisive factor in shaping the direction of their movement. It is in Mahipati’s narration that the saintpoets’ journeys to sacred places outside Maharashtra were treated in details. In his own words, Mahipati was guided not by imagination but by literary sources, and he drew heavily from the Ādi, the Tīrthāvaḷī and some north Indian hagiographies. He kept on varying in description of pilgrimages in stories related to the same person. The Bhaktavijaya (1762), for 191

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example, his first compilation, contains two chapters on Eknath,86 which do not mention Eknath’s departure from Marathi-speaking region at all. As G.V. Tagare stated in the introduction to the Bhaktalīlāmṛta (1774), the Pratiṣṭhāna-caritra, the earliest available biography of Eknath, written by Krishnadas Jagadananda in 1698, just one hundred years after Eknath’s death, did not contain an account of Eknath’s pilgrimage either (Abbot 1983: xvi). This gap was more than compensated for in (Mahipati’s) The Life of Eknath from the Bhaktalīlāmṛta, which significantly enriches Eknath’s life story with the version created by Keshav-swami in 1720.87 Since then the Bhaktalīlāmṛta account has been many times re-created and enriched by Eknath’s biographers of the twentieth century and popular authors. Mahipati’s persistence in sending Dnyaneshvar, Namdev and Eknath (although not Tukaram or Ramdas, who were chronologically closer to him) on prolonged journeys to sacred places, especially in the aftermath of the Panipat battle of 1761, confirms the absolute importance of tīrtha-yātrā for the reconstruction of core values characteristic of pre-colonial Maharashtrian society and gives a vivid idea of the dynamics of their formation. The further in time a hagiographer strayed from the hero of his account, the more sacred places he included in the itinerary of his hero. Later this device was used by modern promoters of both traditions, who called the statements that Tukaram stayed at home myths invented by his ill-wishers and introduced more and more details about Ramdas’s 12-year wanderings. Having outgrown the allusions to the Pandavas’ so-called pradakṣiṇā (circumambulation), Maharashtrians of the twentieth century while taking a decision of going on kāśī-yātrā felt inspired by the examples of Dnyaneshvar, Namdev and other saint-poets and named their travelogues in the style of the Kāśī rāmeśvar gītā kṛṣṇeśvar,88 that is fixing their itinerary into the Maharashtrian-type maṇḍala made of four dhāms with a tristhaḷīcombination hidden inside. This dhāms and other sacred places appropriation strategy laid by earlier Maharashtrians and intensified by aspirations of the Brahmanic clan of peshwas converted tīrthas of their choice into ‘frontier posts’ at the extreme points of the ‘real’ or ‘imagined’ territory under their control.89

The practice of tīrtha-yātrā In the 1730s the region of Malwa and the territories beyond – the Ganga and Yamuna valleys, Delhi and Rajputana, were an area of major political turmoil with significant Maratha involvement. It might have been precisely because of this that Radhabai, the widow of Balaji Vishvanath, the first peshwa from the Bhat dynasty, and the mother of Bajirao I, then an 192

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incumbent ruler, under a pretext of tīrtha-yātrā accepted the role of a special envoy which only a woman of her will and stature could play. She had always kept a finger on political affairs, and instead of straightforward movement, leading northwards, to the towns of tristhaḷī, she chose the northwestern direction and found herself in the boiling pot of Rajputana. Two centuries later nationalist historians interpreted the goal of her journey as ‘consolidation of Rajput kings against the Delhi power’.90 Keeping in mind a perpetual intestine feuds among local rajas, their loyalty-cum-revolt relationship with the Mughal Delhi and confrontation with the ‘southern’ Marathas, this remarkable endeavour amidst the severe battles and marauding of various troops, on the contrary, testifies to pursuing of Realpolitik of drawing a wedge between everyone and all. Radhabai eventually reached Benares to further strengthen a Maharashtrian hold over the sacred city by her own presence and charity. Other widows of the peshwas’ family, including Kashibai, Sagunabai and Esubai, visited the holy cities and made people and powers adjust to the Marathas’ presence as routine.91 Kashibai, the widow of Bajirao I and the mother of Balaji Bajirao, even managed to arrogantly have quarrelled with Balwant Singh, the first Raja of Benares whose palace she was invited to stay in during her pilgrimage in 1746.92 This practice was picked up by other powerful clans – from the Patwardhans to the Sindhias to the Nagpurian Bhosles who were the most stubborn opponents of the Bhat clan. Influential widows from Maratha princely states kept flowing in as leaders of pilgrim caravans named yātrā, reaching in numbers to 30,000–40,000. Noble pilgrimesses were accompanied by kin and servants, and by crowds of indigenous people from athrāpagaḍ jāt (people of all castes), drawn both by religious motives and for perspectives of safe travel under the protection of armed guards. What those pilgrimages looked like was summed up in relation to the tīrtha-yātrā of Saraswatibai Patwardhan of Miraj by historian V.V. Khare who said: ‘This gathering could be named a yatra as much as it could have been named an army’.93 This was exactly the case of the peshwas’ army accompanied by large numbers of pilgrims which started from Pune in March 1760 to its shocking defeat at the Battle of Panipat in January 1761. Every pilgrimage was thoroughly organised as a state affair. Long before a journey’s start, special envoys (pratinidhī, mutsadī, vakīl) were sent along the itinerary. They carried official letters to the emperor of Delhi, to the nawab of Awadh, to the Holkars, the Sindhias and other rulers, as well as to local nobility and fiscal agents (rājerājvāḍe, jamīdār, kamavīsdār). The envoys were responsible for solving practical problems of the royal pilgrims and their retinues and dealt with food supplies, night stays and waiving taxes (jakat, kar) both en route and in the tīrthas. The peshwas’ patronage 193

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was decisive in cutting down financial expenditures as no ruler dared to neglect the requests of the peshwas, in their prime before the Battle of Panipat and still powerful till the end of peśvāī. As soon as the location of tristhaḷī came under the control of the British authorities, they, along with Mahaji Sindhia, their nominee, were to be approached for various favours in regard to visits to sacred places. This is what Saraswatibai Patwardhan, similar to other Maratha caravan leaders she met on the way and in tīrthas, felt as her responsibility towards her ‘subjects’ and corresponded directly with Warren Hastings, a governor general. At the time of the Maratha expanse the idea of tīrtha-yātrā – first pragmatically reduced to visits to Prayag, Kashi and Gaya, and then expanded to include any sacred place on the way to any destination – became a fact of prayoga rather than an instruction of sāstra. During the eighteenth century, especially in its second half, authentic information on tristhaḷī-yātrā was in great demand through cross-references among nobility, or ‘refined people’, infecting those who had not yet followed the pattern established within the Maratha elite ranks. Visits to four dhāms (Dvarka, Kashi [rarely Badrinath], Jagannath-Puri and Rameshwaram) perceived as ‘frontier posts’ encircling the space of ‘Maharashtra dharma’ were also propagated as being actually achievable through the Marathas’ control (in various degrees) over them. Ultimately, what held together the space and determined the sacred stops thus providing the itinerary and security for pilgrims from Maharashtra was the Maratha Confederation, and a ‘geopolitical corridor’ expanding from Pune in various directions which was formed by location, that is territorial sequence and proximity, of Maratha princely states. The Maratha hold over India had still been a matter of fact till the sepoy revolt of 1857–9. It was not a first-hand experience of the mutiny that caught me in Godse Vishnubhat’s Mājhā pravās,94 but it was a tīrtha-yātrā of a bhikṣuk Brahman, whose poverty made him leave his home in Konkan. For two and a half years Vishnubhat travelled through central, north and western India taking advantage of his Sanskrit knowledge and professional service rendered at various ritualistic functions. Wherever he directed his steps to during his adventurous movement – be it Jhansi or Dhar, Banda or Indor or at tīrthas he eventually reached, or even on the road – encounters with his compatriots were happening non-stop. Never once he complained of his ignorance of Hindustani or English being absolutely comfortable with the Marathi language spoken throughout the space he traversed. Though Godse, a learned Brahman as he was, by the end of his adventures became obsessed with the idea of the Ganga water, it never occurred to him of carrying it to Rameshwaram but to the Godavari River and to Varsai where he hailed from. Many other pilgrims, from my readings, used to do precisely 194

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the same, and many of them did carry water not from Kashi but from the saṅgam, triple confluence at Prayag or – occasionally – from Hardwar. Actually, simultaneously with the decline of Maratha power an attempt can be traced to replicate the tristhaḷī network in Nasik, Panchavati and Tryambakeshwar, that is within what was proper Maharashtra. Though the density of Marathi speakers throughout the sub-continent was favourable to an advance of pilgrims from Maharashtra, especially Brahmans, during the nineteenth century and later ‘refined people’ had to cooperate with colonial administration as a precondition to be allowed to travel at all, and, moreover, to be granted various privileges, including those fitting to their royal status – although lost in reality but still acknowledged formally as studies of tīrtha-yātrās of Serfoji II of Thanjavur,95 Raghunath Vincurkar of Vincur96 or Raghunath Pantsachiv of Bhor97 have shown. After the East India Company captured the control over the vast space, the way for Indians from other regions was paved – first, from Madras and Calcutta – to start going on pilgrimage to tīrthas promoted as pan-Indian. It is worth noting that Velcheru Narayana Rao and Sanjay Subrahmanyam were disappointed by having found almost no long way pilgrimageliterature in Tamil or Telugu for the period prior to 180098 though they wrote of Brahman students who – ideally – ‘must have undertaken [this travel] in medieval period, even if none of them have left us accounts’.99 Expressing their uncertainty through a grammar mode in regard to earlier times, the scholars hold the East Indian Company as ‘the guarantor of traditional circulation from Kashi to Rameshwaram’ though the data they analysed did not contain a single reference to Rameshwaram or to the practice of controlling a space through ritual exchange. Also – as I argue in greater detail in my book on tīrtha-yātrās100 – the so-called tradition of connecting Kashi to Rameshwaram and vice versa was introduced in and disseminated by the brain-centre from the sacred city on the Ganga; its most distinguished paṇḍits, mostly of Maharashtrian origin, happened also to have been those informants who helped the British in shaping ‘the representation of religion called Hinduism’,101 including what, eventually, came to be believed as ‘tradition [of travel] from Kashi to Rameshwaram’, that is the ‘frontier posts’ embracing a territory associated with the ‘Maharashtra dharma’. Kumkum Chatterjee found only two narratives of the earliest Bengali pilgrimages dated the mid-eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries, respectively.102 Recording his field experience of the late 1940s, M.N. Shrinivas stated: I am fairly certain that over 50 yrs ago, only a few Rampurians, most of them Brahmins, had heard of the famous pilgrim centres 195

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at Tirupati, Madura, Rameshwaram and Banaras, and even among them probably not more than one or two had visited them. In those days, a pilgrimage to Banaras was regarded as a hazardous enterprise though much less so than in the nineteenth century when a pilgrim’s successful return from it was a fortuitous accident.103

Afterword Altogether the principal results of my study show that the performance of tīrtha-yātrā had long been – by constant references to the Pandavas and by instructions laid by such ministers as Lakshmidhara Bhatta and Hemadri Pant – understood as primarily a ritualistic part of rāja-dharma (ruler’s responsibilities) linked to the prosperity of the state and subjects. It was, therefore, prescribed as a practice for kings and a priestly class, and used by them for multiple purposes. Therefore it was primarily manifested through the practice of Maharashtrian Brahmans, peshwas and generals of Brahmanic origin, generals-turned-princes and noble widows of the loosely organised Maratha Confederacy. Contrary to arguments presented in The Bridge to the Three Holy Cities, a pilgrimage digest per se, going on tīrthayātrā with subsequent performance of (non-stop śrāddha) rituals at tīrthas required a substantial financial basis. Those athrāpagaḍ jāt who joined caravans led by nobles did it for safety reasons as well as for accumulation of money by doing odd jobs for well-to-do pilgrims. Not until modern times had a tīrtha-yātrā ever been a private affair but always an event of public importance providing for political legitimation and various types of socialisation, including professional growth, matrimonial matters, entertainment. There was a cognitive urge, a drive for seeing and experiencing wonders, that is camatkārs, inherent in movement beyond one’s domain, money and prestige involved in the institute of tīrtha-yātrā, but the most important feature of it was physical movement of human bodies through vast space and its appropriation. During the might of the Mughal Empire the Rajputs, as Mughals’ allies, had enjoyed a kind of freedom to visit famous tīrthas of Doab, also located at a close distance from Rajputana. The Marathas while slowly replacing both polities during the years of their supremacy sought for legitimacy through the authority of sacred places also aspired for because of their economic potential. As fate willed it, Marathi-speaking people emerged as an ethnic community and, later, consolidated into Marathas and Maharashtrians in the middle territory located in between the north and the south of the peninsula. They took advantage of this geography and fearlessly trespassed 196

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their own linguistic and ethnic domain being more or less at ease with both – southern and northern – cultural models. Their impact on the history of the sub-continent grew dramatically during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries due to dominant position of Maharashtrian Brahmans at several important tīrthas, the foundation of the Maratha polity by Shivaji Bhosle who bid defiance to the Mughal Empire and the formation of the Maratha Confederacy led by ambitious peshwas. These rulers along with their generals wrote the history of India by intellectual, military and political strategy and tactics of space appropriation which they strengthened by ‘[c]irculation as a modality of the exercise of power’104 and by imparting to the areas they passed by of symbols and ideas pertinent to their native region. Moreover, if the ‘cauth became the fulcrum of Maratha expansion’, the ‘geopolitical corridor’ which linked the north and the south via Pune and also facilitated the movement of no other ethnic group but Maharashtrian functioned as its ‘axis’. That is how the vectors of expansion and pilgrimage coincided, that is the Marathas could go on real pilgrimages at the place of imagined ones. While campaigning they never missed a chance to drop into a tīrtha and when on the march to tīrthas they had to take up arms. As was diagnosed by Najib Khan, a Rohilla leader, in his communication with Shuja-ud-daula (both allied with Abdali Shah at the time of Panipat 1761) in the historical novel by Patil Vishvas: ‘This peshwa wants such sacred places as Prayag, Kashi, Mathura, Hardwar, Kuruksehtra. Today [he demands] tirthas, tomorrow [he will demand] a throne’ (Tyā peśvyālā prayāg, kāśī, mathurā, haridvār, kurukṣetra hī tīrhe havīt. Āj tīrtha udyā takht).105 After the fall of the Marathas, the urge for tīrtha-yātrā-cum-tristhaḷī remained rooted in the mentality of the high-caste Maharashtrians and kept pushing them to visit sacred places outside Maharashtra. Besides habitually connecting the space laid in between by various symbolic actions pilgrims also searched for connections to their own past by tracing their ancestors’ signatures in registration books of Maharashtrian priests residing in Allahabad, Kashi, Gaya and elsewhere. The idea of all-India circumambulation also stayed as ‘an ideal’ and was, occasionally, tried by pilgrims who were no less intrigued by artefacts left by former Maratha elite at various tīrthas around India. Those rare pilgrims visited four dhāms and whatever they came across on the way according to their own imagination and conveniences until this ‘ideal’ was picked up by various tourist companies and turned into a commercial trip organised along the lines of business efficiency. By looking around the institution of tīrtha-yātrā and focusing on its dynamics I came to research the spatial and temporal context /sandarbha /environment 197

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of being on the way or en route. This led me to absolute understanding that tīrtha-yātrā was not at all about religion only. It was a multifaceted space of transit related to many things – some of them unimaginable – which are left unnoticed if the road is lost in between departure and arrival rituals. It is here that I found an approach hinted at more than 20 years ago by Alan Morinis and N. Ross Crumrine, both scholars of pilgrimage studies, useful. Discussing pilgrimage, an event that still eludes definition notwithstanding almost 40 years of intense discussion, they suggested that ‘[a]t its simplest, the pilgrimage represents an opposition between the sacred and the profane such that the pilgrimage is situated as a mediating intermediary between the wholly profane and the wholly sacred realms’.106 Though none of the ‘realms’ can be named ‘wholly profane’ or ‘sacred’,107 it is exactly on the road, in movement, that this ‘mediating intermediary’ is found. It is through the idea of tīrtha-yātrā in its Maharashtrian variety as a tristhaḷī-yātrā and, later, more imagined than real travels to four dhāms, or, to be precise, through the movement to attain an end, that I came to a better understanding of the last millennium of the Maharashtrian history, of things both mundane and sacred and of people’s ways to obtain them. It happened to be tīrtha-yātrā that was both a goal and a medium at the time of the Maratha grand expansion in the eighteenth century. The essence of this institution as taken not from the recommendation of śāstra but extracted from facts of prayoga suggests a valuable addition to a promising approach to studies of history ‘in movement’, ‘with a renewed emphasis on the fluid reconfiguration of identities in the early modern and colonial periods having come to replace an earlier image of stasis and fixity’.108

Notes 1 My 1990s were dedicated to the study of vārī, that is pilgrimage to Pandharpur [I.P. Glushkova, Indiiskoye palomnichestvo. Metafora dvizheniya i dvizheniye metafori (“Indian Pilgrimage: The Metaphor of Motion and the Motion of Metaphor”), Moskva: Nauchniy mir, 2000], through its cultural and spatial environment that included both Varkari saint-poets and roads of nowadays Maharashtra leading to Vithoba. During the 2000s I tried to specify the difference between vārī and tīrtha-yātrā, and hence went deep into research of the latter as had been promoted and practised by Maharashtrians [I.P. Glushkova, Podvizhnost’ i podvizhnichestvo. Teoriya i praktika tirtha-yatri (“Mobility and Endeavour. Theory and Practice of Tirtha-Yatra”), Moskva: Natalis, 2008]. It is an outline of 550 pages of my book in Russian that I am trying to present in a highly abridged version in this chapter. Some evidences and arguments were earlier presented at Maharashtra conference sessions held from St. Paul to Tokyo, and are available in English [Irina Glushkova, “Moving God(s) ward: The Idea of Tīrtha-yātrā,” Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and

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2 3 4 5

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Research Institute (Deemed University), Professor Ashok R. Kelkar Felicitation Volume, vols. 62–63 (2002 and 2003), Pune: Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute (Deemed University), 2004, pp. 265–83; “Moving God(s) ward, Calculating Money: Wonders and Wealth as Essentials of a tīrtha-yātrā,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 29, no. 2 (August, 2006) pp. 215–34; “Tīrtha-yātrā in Maharashtra: Recorded and Imagined,” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 2005, 86 (2006); “A Philological Approach to Regional Ideologies,” in Rajendra Vora and Anne Feldhaus, eds., Region, Culture, and Politics in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 2006); “To Go or Not to Go: The Ideas of Tīrtha-yātrā and Sainthood in Medieval Maharashtra,” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 2001, 87 (2007), pp. 179–201; “Mārg(a)kramaṇ of Maharashtrian Princely Families: A Search for Self within the Boundaries Made for Others,” M. Naito, I. Shima and H. Kotani, eds., Mārga: Ways of Liberation, Empowerment, and Social Change in Maharashtra (New Delhi: Manohar, 2008); “Marathi Saint Poets: Statics versus Dynamics, or Contradictions Ignored,” D.N. Jha and E.Yu. Vanina, eds., Mind over Matter (New Delhi: Tulika, 2009); “Politics in the Eighteenth Century: tīrtha-yātrās of Royal Widows from Maharashtra,” forthcoming. J.C. Heesterman, “Centres and Fires,” in Bakker Hans, ed., The Sacred Centre as the Focus of Political Interest (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1992), p. 1. Richard Salomon (ed. and trans.), The Bridge to the Three Holy Cities: The Sāmānya-praghaṭṭaka of Nārāyana Bhaṭṭa’s Tristhalisetu (Delhi–Varanasi– Patna–Madras: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985). A. Krishnaswami Mahadick, Tristhaḷi yātrecyā lāvaṇyā (śarabhendra bhūpāl kṛt) āṇi Śarabhendra tīrthāvaḷī (śrī śivkṛt), part I (Tanjore: T.M.S.S.M. Library, 1951), p. 34. Dattatray Digambar Kulkarni, Tristhaḷī yātrā-varan arthāt prayāg-kāśī-gayā yātrā (Pune: Dattadigambar Yatra Kampani, 1964). I cling to transliteration of the word tristhaḷī in its Marathi spelling throughout the chapter unless I refer to its Sanskrit usage. Vasudev Krishna Bhave, Peśvekālīn mahārāṣṭra (New Delhi: Bharatiy Itihas Anusandhan Parishad, 1976). Kashinath Anant Joshi, ed., Śrīsakalsantgāthā. Khaṇḍ I-II (Pune: Shreesantvangmay Prakashan Mandir (avrutti dusri), 1967), No. 956–7. Mahadick, op. cit., p. 34. Kunjuni K. Raja, New Catalogus Catalogorum: An Alphabetical Register of Sanskrit and Allied Works and Authors, Vol. 6 (Madras: University of Madras, 1971), p. 318. P.V. Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law in India), Vol. 4 (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1953), p. 582. K.V. Rangaswami Aiyangar, “Introduction,” in K.V. Rangaswami Aiyangar, ed., Tīrthavivacanakāndaṃ. Vol. VIII. Kṛtyakalpataru of Bhatta Lakṣmīdhara, Gaekwad’s Oriental Series, Vol. 98 (Baroda: Oriental Institute 1942), p. V. It is worth mentioning that the details of Hindu pilgrimage as described by al-Biruni in his composition of the eleventh century were based on information received from Kannauji Brahmans and their interpretation of Sanskrit purāṇas. The author stayed mainly in Gazna, and did not see India behind Multan, now in Pakistan.

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13 Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi, Myth and Reality (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, (reprint) 1992), p. 32. 14 Interestingly, this command is preceded by geographical specification: ‘Do not go to the Kannada country or the Telugu country’ which, to my mind, indicates the better knowledge of places located to the south and southeast of Maharashtra than to the north. 15 Anne Feldhaus, “Maharashtra as a Holy Land: A Sectarian Tradition,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XLIX49, no. 3 (1986), pp. 535, 541. 16 Haraprasad Shastri (Mahamahopadhyaya), “Dakshini Pandits in Benares,” The Indian Antiquary: A Journal of Oriental Research, 41, pt. DXV (January, 1912), pp. 7–13; Ananya Vajpeyi, “Politics of Complicity, Poetics of Contempt: A History of the Śudra in Maharashtra, 1650–1950 CE.” PhD Thesis, University of Chicago, Chicago, 2004. 17 Desh is a sub-region of Maharashtra on the Deccan Plateau, historically and culturally different from its other parts, especially from the coastal plain of Konkan. 18 A.S. Altekar, History of Benares: From Pre-Historic Times to the Present Day with Six Plates (Benares: Benares Hindu University, The Culture Publication House, 1937), p. 40. 19 Motichandra, Kāsī kā itihās. Vaidik kāl se arvācīn yug tak kā rājnaitik sānskṛtik sarvekṣaṇ, tritiy sanskaran (Varanasi: Vishvavidyalay Prakashan 2003), p. 227. 20 Vajpeyi, op. cit., p. 36. 21 James Benson, “Śamkarabhaṭṭa’s Family Chronicle: The Gādhivaṃsavarṇana,” in Michaels Axel, ed., The Pandit: Traditional Scholarship in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), p. 111. 22 My contacts from Maharashtrian Brahman community of Varanasi halfjokingly told me a legend that their ancestors from Maharashtra were invited for the śrāddh(a) rituals to Gaya and were so generously paid that they could not make further to home and settled in Benares. 23 Sheldon Pollock, “New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-Century India,” The Indian Economical and Social History Review, 38, no. 1 (2003), pp. 3–31; Bronkhorst Johannes, “Bhaṭṭojī Dīkṣita on sphota,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 33, no. 1 (2005), pp. 3–41; Baldev Upadhyay, Kāśī kī pāṇḍitya paramparā (kāśī sanskṛt vidvānõ kā jivancarit evaṃ sāhityak avdānõ ka prāmāṇik vivaraṇ), kāṇḍ I (Varanasi: Vishvavidyalay Prakashan, 1983); Vajpeyi, op. cit. 24 Christopher Minkowski, “Nīlakantha Caturdhara’s Mantrakāśīkhaṇḍa (Text on Interpretation of Vedic Verses),” The Journal of the American Oriental Society, 122, no. 2 (2002), pp. 320–44; Rosalind O’Hanlon and Christopher Minkowski, “What Makes People Who They Are? Pandit Networks and the Problem of Livelihoods in Early Modern Western India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 45, no. 3 (2008), pp. 381–416; Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Letters Home: Banaras Pandits and the Maratha Regions in Early Modern India,” Modern Asian Studies, 44, pt. 2 (2010), pp. 201–40. 25 V.K. Rajvade, ed., Keśavācāryādikṛt mahikāvatīcī urf māhīmcī bakhar Pune: Chitrashala Press, (shake 1847) 1923, pp. 53–61. 26 This is a point I haven’t expressed in my earlier chapter on Maharashtra dharma: Irina Glushkova, op. cit., pp. 51–82.

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27 Salomon, op. cit. 28 Cited from Diana L. Eck, Banaras: City of Light (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 134. 29 I asked C. Minkowsky’s opinion on probability of this hypothesis. His answer was: ‘As for tristhali, I again don’t know anything more than Bohtlingk and Roth, who only cite the Tristhalisetu as their source for the meaning of this term’ (e-mail, dated 12 September 2008). Pandits and Sanskrit scholars from Varanasi I spoke to during my fieldwork in the tristhali-cities in September 2007 held the opinion that the names of three holy cities could be found in proximity to each other while there hardly had been any generic term before the Tristhalisetu. 30 Shastri, op. cit., p. 7. 31 Benson, op. cit., p. 107. 32 Salomon, op. cit., p. 249. 33 Ibid., p. 261. The authority of texts that paved a way for high-caste pilgrims from Maharashtra and their authors was indisputable. In Kane words: ‘The influence the Kalpataru exercised on succeeding generations was very great’ [P.V. Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law in India), Vol. I (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1930), p. 317; ‘Within a few decades his Caturvarga-cintāmaṇi. . . came to be looked upon as the standard work in the whole Deccan and southern India’ (ibid., p. 359); ‘Pandits all over India looked up to him as their leader and patron . . . It was Nārāyaṇabhaṭṭa and his equally worthy descendants that raised daksinatya pandits to the position of high eminence at Benares which they still hold’ (ibid., pp. 419–20)]. 34 R.K. Kamat, ed., [Sarasvatī Gaṅgādhar]. Gurucaritr(a), tisri avrutti (Mumbai: Keshav Bhikaji Dhavke, 1950). 35 Copies are still available from the collection of manuscripts accumulated by V.L. Manjul. 36 Ganesh Sadashivshastri Tryambakkar Lele, Tīrthayātrā prabandh, dusri avrutti (Pune: Deshmukh ani kampani, 1964), p. 280. 37 Ibid., p. 281. 38 C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 137. 39 Altekar, op. cit., p. 62. 40 André Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-Century Maratha Swarajya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 45. 41 Motichandra, op. cit., pp. 227–8. 42 B. Bhattacharya, Varanasi Rediscovered (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1999), pp. 251–2. 43 Motichandra, op. cit., p. 230. 44 Poonam Sagar, Maratha Policy towards Northern India (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1993), pp. 42–3. 45 Govind Sakharam Sardesai, New History of the Marathas, Vols. 1–3 (Bombay: Phoenix Publications, vol. II, 1948), p. 216. 46 Narendra Wagle and A.R. Kulkarni, eds., Vallabha’s Paraśarāma Caritra. An Eighteenth Century Marāṭhā History of the Peśwās (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1976), pp. 77–8.

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47 James Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas, Vols. 1–3 (New Delhi: Low Price Publications, vol. III (1863) 1990), p. 230. 48 Anant Narayan Bhagvat, Tīrthayātrāprabandh (Bhor–Mumbai: Ramchandra Lohakare, 1905), p. 137. 49 Hari Ram Gupta, Marathas and Panipat (Chandigarh: Punjab University, 1961), p. 25. 50 Surendra Nath Sen, Anglo-Maratha Relations during the Administration of Warren Hastings 1772–1785 (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, Sen, 1961), p. 10. 51 Sardesai, op. cit., Vol. II2, p. 406. 52 It is a matter of negligence that almost no study work (notwithstanding occasional remarks scattered in literature concerning other issues of respective areas) has been done in relation to the Marathas’ religious involvement in Rameshvaram (which housed hosts of Maharashtrian Brahmans functioning as upādhyes, i.e. hospitallers, and priests educated in Shringeri on the grants from the Bhosles of Thanjavur), Jagannath-Puri (where a Maratha-type turban is still present in the temple ritual etc.) and Dvarka. 53 Further references are found in C.A. Bayly’s publications. 54 Bayly, 1983, op. cit., pp. 141–2. 55 C.A. Bayly, “Patrons and Politics in Northern India,” in John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal Anil, eds., Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870–1940 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 44. 56 Bayly, 1983, op. cit., pp. 136–7. 57 Ibid., p. 127. 58 Ibid., p. 137. 59 Bayly, 2003, op. cit., p. 144. 60 James Prinsep, Benares Illustrated in a Series of Drawings (Introduction by O.P. Kejariwal) (Varanasi: Vishwavidyalaya Prakashan, reprint 1996), p. 13. 61 Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions. Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras, 2nd impression (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 94. 62 Kamala Prasad Mishra, Banaras in Transition (1738–1795): A Socio-Economic Study (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1975); K.N. Chitnis, Socio-Economic History of Medieval India (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1990). 63 Govind Vinayak Apte, Paṭwardhan gharāṇyācā itihās, No cover, 1919; Bhagvat, op. cit.; Hari Raghunath Gadgil, Viṅcūrkar gharāṇyācā itihās (Pune: Punevaibhav, 1883); Vasudev Narayan Joshi, Rājā śrīmant raghunāthrāv paṇḍit pantsaciv rājesāheb saṃsthān bhor yāñce caritra, Khaṇḍ I (Bhor: Vinayak Bapurav Deshpande, 1939); Tryambakkar, op. cit., and others. Wealth as a condition for going on tīrtha-yāñtrā as well as other monetary matters are dealt with in my paper “Moving God(s)ward, Calculating Money.” 64 Prinsep, op. cit., p. 21. 65 In the 1750s the peshwa specially arranged relays of servants to get the holy water from the Ganga at Haridwar to Poona. Still, what, eventually, became to be taken for granted as an old tradition was a circulation of water and sand between Kashi and Rameshvaram. I could not find facts testifying to popularity among other ethnic groups of this allegedly traditional exchange between Kashi and Rameshvaram, that is the territory proclaimed as belonging to the

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66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

‘Maharashtra dharma’. Moreover, respondents of Tamil descent told me that it was not ‘their ritual’. Pandits of North Indian origin in Allahabad and Benares were unanimous in that water taken from the Ganga had to be preserved at home. Kane, 1953, op. cit, p. 553. V.V. Thakur, ed., Life and Life’s Work of Shree Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar (Indore: Nai Dunia Press, n.d.), pp. 42–3. Surrendranath Sen, Siva Chhatrapati Being a Translation of Sabhāsad Bakhar with Extracts from Chitnis and Śivadigvijaya: Extracts and Documents Related to Maratha History, Vol. 1 (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co, reprint 1977), p. 71–2. Duff, op. cit., Vol. I1, p. 158. C.A. Kincaid and D.B. Parasnis, A History of the Maratha People, 2nd edition (Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 77. Altekar, op. cit., p. 38. James W. Laine (ed. and trans., in collaboration with S.S. Bahulkar), The Epic of Shivaji. Javindra Paramananda Śivabhārata (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001). Sardesai, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 179; Laine, op. cit., p. 10. For detailed study of this theme with discussion of every saint-poet’s position on tīrtha-yātrā see Glushkova, 2007, op. cit., 2009, op. cit. Kashinath Anant Joshi, ed., Śrīsakalsantgāthā, Khaṇḍ I-II, avrutti dusri (Pune: Shreesantvangmay Prakashan Mandir, 1967), vol. I, No. 78. M.S. Kanade and R.S. Nagarkar, Śrīdñyāndevāñcā sārth cikitsak gāthā (Pune: Suvidya Prakashan, 1996). Joshi, 1967, op. cit., Vol. 1, No. 884–909. P.S. Subandh, Nāmdev rāyācī sārth gāthā (bākrīḍā va tīrthāvaḷī sah) (Pune: Sant Vangmay Visharad, shake 1871, 1949). C.L. Novetzke, The Tongue Makes a Good Book: History, Religion, and Performance in the Namdev Tradition in Maharashtra., PhD Thesis, Columbia University, 2003, p. 5. I.P. Glushkova, Podvizhnost’i podvizhnichestvo. Teoriya i praktika tirtha-yatri (“Mobility and Endeavour. Theory and Practice of Tirtha-Yatra”), Moskva: Natalis, 2008. Joshi, 1967, op. cit., Vol. II2, No. 1675–7; Śrī tukārāmbāvāñcyā abhaṅgācī gāthā. Bhāg I–II (Mumbai: Government Central Press, 1950), Vol. I1, No. 1656–8. Śrī tukārāmbāvāñcyā, op. cit.; Jagadguru santśreṣṭh śrī tukārām mahārāj yāñcyā abhaṅgāñcā gāthā (Dehu: Shri Vithoba–Rakhumai Devsthan Samsthan, 2001). Joshi, 1967, op. cit., Vol. 2, No. 1609; Śrī tukārāmbāvāñcyā, op. cit., Vol. 1, No. 1604. K.V. Belsare, ed., Sārth śrīdāsbodh, dvitiy avrutti (Pune: Pracharya Dandekar dharmik, samskrutik va shaikshnik vangmay prakashan mandal, 1981), Belsare (sections) 18-17-17, 18, 19. S.S. Dev, Śrīsamarth-caritra, śrīsamarth-sampradāy, Khaṇḍ III (Mumbai: Keshav Bhikaji Dhavle, 1944), p. 230. J.F. Abbot and N.R. Godbole, Stories of Indian Saints: Translations of Mahipati’s Marathi Bhaktavijaya (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, reprint 1988), pp. 154–71, 172–88. J.E. Abbot, The Life of Eknath. Śrī Eknāth Charita. Translated from the Bhaktalīlāmṛta (Delhi–Varanasi–Patna: Motilal Banarsidass, reprint 1983), p. viii.

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88 R.K. Ranade, Kāśī rāmeśvar gītā kṛṣṇeśvar, dvitiy avrutti (Pune: Gitadharmamandal, 1998). 89 In this they followed methodology already successfully probed by Vijayanagar which ‘disclosed’ details of seventh- and eighth-century Shankaracharya’s circumambulation around the Indian Peninsula in the Śaṅkaradigvijaya by Vidyaranya in the fourteenth century only. Referring to Paul Hacker, H. Kulke writes: ‘Hacker drew our attention to the fact that none of the literary works that can be ascribed to Śaṅkara himself refers to anything like Śaṅkara’s digvijaya throughout India during which he allegedly established the advaita maṭhas (pantheistic monasteries) at the four cardinal points of India’ – Hermann Kulke, “Mahārājas, Mahants and Historians: Reflections on the Historiography of Early Vijayanagara and Sringeri,” Hermann Kulke, Kings and Cults: State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, reprint, 2001), pp. 236–8. 90 Pramod Ok., Peśve gharāṇyācā itihās., dusri avrutti (Pune: Continental Prakashan, 1991), p. 75. 91 The reaction to this presence should be studied separately. British witnesses of Maharashtrians in the tristhaḷī-cities – from Warren Hastings to James Prinsep – were unanimous in condemning Maharashtrian pilgrims-cumwarriors who were armed and behaved as if it were their own domain. 92 Bhave, op. cit., pp. 329–30. 93 Vasudev Vaman-shastri Khare, ed., Aitihāsik lekh saṅgrah. Sevāī rāvsāheb peśvā yāñcī kārkīrd (epril 1778 te epril 1784), bhāg II (Pune: Aryabhusan, 1912), p. 3758. For details see Glushkova, “Mārg(a)kramaṇ”. According to B.G. Gokhale: ‘Indeed, the influence of women on politics is an unusual characteristic of the history of the Marathas and the Peshwa family. . . . a phenomenon with few parallels in the histories of the other regions of India’ (Balkrishna Govind Gokhale, Poona in the Eighteenth Century: An Urban History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 48). L.W. Preston also stresses ‘the actual power of a widow when placed in a position of management’ and suggests that it ‘demands a close study of the position of women in Maharashtra’ (besides well-known cases of Tarabai of Kolhapur or Ahilyabai Holkar) (Laurence W. Preston, The Devs of Cincvad: A Lineage and the State in Maharashtra, (Cambridge – Hyderabad: Cambridge University Press – Orient Longman, 1990), p. 213). 94 Godse Vishnubhat/Godse Bhatji, Mājhā pravās [1857 cyā baṇḍācī hakīkat], punarmudran (Pune: Vhinas Prakashan, 1974). 95 Glushkova, 2004, op. cit. 96 Glushkova, “Moving God(s)ward, Calculating Money.” 97 Glushkova, “Mārg(a)kramaṇ.” 98 ‘Why was there no travel-literature in Tamil or Telugu in an earlier period?’ Velcheru Narayana Rao and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Circulation, Piety and Innovation: Recounting Travels in Early Nineteenth-Century South India,” in Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchedadass and Sanjay Subrahmanyam Sanjay, eds., Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia 1750–1950 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), p. 308. 99 Ibid., p. 354. 100 Glushkova, Podvizhnost.

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101 ‘Orientalism’ in construction of the image of Hinduism is often connected with Bengali Brahmans and their interaction with the British administratorsturned-scholars, while the contribution to this of Maharashtrian Brahmans of the tristhaḷī-cities and, in the first place, of Benares has been underestimated. Jonathan Duncan (to mention just one example), an East India Company’s resident in Benares (and then governor general of Bombay) and a founder of the Sanskrit College, had Maharashtrians as his own tutors and was later called ‘brahmanised’ on the ground of his views and approaches related to Hindu ‘traditions’, V.A. Narain, Jonathan Duncan and Varansi (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1959), pp. 3, 172, 175, 221. 102 Kumkum Chatterjee, “Discovering India: Travel, History and Identity in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century India,” in Daud Ali, ed., Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 198–200. 103 M.N. Shrinivas, The Remembered Village (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 320–1. 104 Jacques Pouchepadass, “Itinerant Kings and Touring Officials: Circilation as a Modality of Power in India, 1700–1947,” in Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchedadass and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds., Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia 1750–1950 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006), p. 244. 105 Patil Vishvas, Pānipat, savvisavi avrutti (Pune: Rajhams Prakashan, 2007), p. 155. 106 Alan Morinis and N. Ross Crumrine, “La Peregrinación: The Latin American Pilgrimage,” in N. Ross Crumrine and Alan Morinis, eds., Pilgrimage in Latin America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), p. 11. Altogether the motion as the main characteristic of pilgrimage began to be taken into consideration during the last decade. See William H. Swatos Jr. and Luigi Tomasi, eds., From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety (Westport, CT; London: Praeger, 2002); Simon Coleman and John Eade, “Introduction: Reframing Pilgrimage,” in Simon Coleman and John Eade, eds., Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion (London; New York: Routledge, 2004). 107 I deal with this subject in detail in Glushkova, Podvizhnost’; see also preliminary analysis in Glushkova, 2004, op. cit., “Moving God(s)ward, Calculating Money” and “Mārg(a)kramaṇ.” 108 Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchedadass and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds., Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia 1750– 1950 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006), p. IX.

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11 FAIRS AND PILGRIMAGES AS POINTS OF INTERSECTIONS The case of medieval western Maharashtra Sumitra Kulkarni

Fairs and pilgrimages in medieval Maharashtra were points of multiple intersections. One should not look at them as just assemblage of pilgrims. They were much more than that. They were meeting points in a variety of ways: religious, economic, social, cultural and political. Pilgrimage to various sacred places and shrines1 was purely religious in nature. There used to be a heavy rush of pilgrims to holy places on particular sacred days. As the devotees gathered in great numbers, merchants, traders, shopkeepers had a great scope for business. At every place of pilgrimage a market was held. It was thus a centre of exchange and cell of distribution. At the same time it also served as a place of socio-cultural networks. As people of the same community would gather together at these fairs, meetings of that community’s caste councils were also held. Issues regarding the caste were solved in this caste council. Jatras, that is, religious fairs, were generally connected with deities, temples and dargahs, and were held yearly at stated time. Jatras though a periodical festival in honour of an idol, to which pilgrims resort, were also served as an occasion for great enjoyment and entertainment, for there would gather on that occasion comedians, dancing girls, snake charmers, jugglers and others to amuse the people.2 It was common to hold on this occasion wrestling combats and other athletic sports for which people had a great fascination. Great attraction of the fair was its bazaar which would abound with all sorts of fancy articles, clothes, sweetmeats, wooden toys and many such things. Most of the people, even children, used to amuse themselves with shopping at such fairs.3 The present chapter seeks to find out the nature of multiple intersections of fairs and pilgrimages. How did people get together at such fairs? 206

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What was the nature of bazaar economy? Who was trading, in what, from where and to where? What role did the state play in connection with bazaar economy? What about the state patronage to fairs and pilgrimages? Fairs were periodic, but were also fixed, and had to be held at stated intervals of time. Depending on the deity in whose honour a fair was held, it could be yearly, half-yearly or once in a quarter. For example, a fair held in a village in honour of the grama devatas (village deities), that is village deities, was held once a year. In some villages a fair could be held in honour of a Muslim saint or at a tomb of a Pir, which was known as Urus. Local accounts of the origins of the fairs can be seen in some cases, and these could be different from the generally accepted stories of the saints. For example, the local account of the origin of the fair at Kolvadi, a hamlet of Ale in prant (province) Junnar, was that the great saint Dnyaneshwar buried here a buffalo god to whom he had taught the Vedas and so raised a Samadhi (memorial) on the spot.4 At village Dehu, Saint Tukaram’s spirit is still supposed to live in the Tukaram temple there, and a yearly fair was held on ‘dark second of Falgun’, that is in March.5 While the majority of fairs at the village level were in honour of the village deity, in some villages, larger fairs were also held, mainly in honour of Shiva and his incarnations, or of Ganapati and Vishnu. The nature of these village deities was varied; some of them were representations of evil spirits and demons, while others typified survival in a debased form of mythological heroes and local gods, sometimes identified with the deities of orthodox Hindu pantheon.6 One comes across references of a number of village deities such as Maruti, Khandoba, Mhasoba, Mhaskoba, Vetala, Munjya, Bhairoba, Bhairava, Martanda. There were mother goddesses like Yogeshwari, Navadurga and local mother goddesses like Tukai, Janai, Jokhai, Talajai, Navalai, Satvai. Of the village deities the Pir was the spirit of a Muslim saint; Vetala was believed to be the king of demons and spirits; Mhasoba was the lord of ghosts; Bhairoba or Bhairava was the deity of village guardian. These grama devatas were believed to have power over demons. They were worshipped for pleasing and appeasing. They were worshipped to protect their votaries against the attacks of evil spirits and for granting boons. On the festival days in honour of deity or any other special occasion a fair was held. It was customary to offer these village deities the sacrifice of a buffalo or a goat with a view to ensure health and prosperity of their village by keeping them pleased and well disposed.7 Shitala-devi and Laxmi were disease goddesses. The outbreak of a disease or an epidemic was generally attributed to the wrath of these divine mothers. People therefore took care to keep them well disposed and pleased. A contemporary document shows how goddess Laxmi, the goddess of small pox, was prohibited from entering 207

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a village by means of a fair held in her honour and sacrificing a buffalo. According to the document, a fair was to last for four days.8 In village fairs Haqs and Lajimas, that is rights and privileges, held an important place. They were decided according to the customs and traditions. All village inhabitants would take an active part in the village fair. People from nearby villages also gathered at such fairs. The main attraction of Jatras was the bazaar. Out of the total village land, a piece of land was reserved and left vacant for holding Jatras and the bazaar.9 Bazaars held at village fairs no doubt differed in many ways from the weekly markets. Weekly markets were basically held for fulfilling the dayto-day needs of the villages and nearby Kasbas (provincial headquarters, with a permanent market),10 but a bazaar held at a fair had a wider scope. It made available varieties in eatables, sweetmeats, wooden toys and many such things. Artisans and traders from adjoining villages and Kasbas used to attend the bazaar. Trade by barter often used to take place in between husbandmen and shopkeepers or peddlers. There seemed to be one-to-one correspondence between the buyer and the seller. The economic transactions done at bazaars were not very big. The expenditure of village fairs was borne by the whole village community.11 Pilgrimages may be categorised into two broad levels, that is intraregional and regional on the bases of distance of travel covered by pilgrims as well as traders, the number of pilgrims who visited the place, the volume of trade, the nature of economic transactions and the socio-cultural network. Pilgrimages held at a bigger village or at Kasbas, that is market town, or at a known pilgrimage site may be included in the first category. It is not possible to identify each and every pilgrimage of this category in medieval Maharashtra. One gets various references of pilgrimages held at market towns like Indapur, Otur, Rahimatpur, Khed (Rajgurunagar) and Madh.12 At Indapur Kasba yearly pilgrimage was held in honour of a Muslim saint Chand Khan. One also gets various references of pilgrimages held at places like Alandi, Chinchwad and Kondhapur near Pune, Morgaon, Saptashringa near Vani in Nasik, Mandhardevi near Wai. The custom of animal sacrifice seems to have been very common at this last-named fair. Pilgrimages of this category were attended by nearby villages and nearby Kasbas.13 A bazaar, which was, as said earlier, an invariable feature of these pilgrimages, shows a number of distinctive characteristics. Its distinction lay in its empirical structure, in the processes which operated and in the way those processes were shaped into a coherent form. A bazaar was a distinctive system of social relationships centring around the production and consumption of goods and services – that is a particular kind of economy. Regarding 208

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its empirical structure, a place for each type of trade was fixed. Setting up shops and booths for each specific trade and trader of specific regions was fixed and reserved. The contemporary documents give a reliable picture about the commercial life in a market. Market was inhabited by different craftsmen. These occupational craftsmen lived in concentrated pockets. The shops of Wani, Shimpi (tailor), Sonar (goldsmith), kasar (brazier, worker in white or bell metal), sutar (carpenter), kalal (distiller of liquor), atari (perfumer), halwai (confectioner) were generally to be found in the market. At the bazaar few shops were permanent, while other shops were erected on a temporary basis. Traders, who attended such markets, usually travelled short distances. For example, a market held during the Kondhanpur pilgrimage was attended by nearby Kasbas like Saswad, Khedshivapur, Nanded, Pune and Narayanpur.14 In some cases, market of cattle and animals such as donkeys and horses also used to be held. At Rahimatpur a market of horses used to be held.15 Geographical factors also dictated the patterns of trade. In the bazaar held at Pimpri in Igatpuri, where the country is hilly and most of the people belonged to Kunbi, Koli or Thakur communities, a considerable trade in blankets was carried on by the shepherd community. Pilgrimages held at well-known pilgrimage centres had a wider scope for economic intersections. At such pilgrimages, long distances were covered by pilgrims as well as by traders. In medieval Maharashtra, the well-known places of pilgrimages like Nasik, where a very large number of pilgrims would come during Sinhast, were not only from Deccan but also from Rajputana and the Punjab,16 Trimbak, Pandharpur, Jejuri, Alandi and other places. One of the famous places associated with the god Khandoba in Maharashtra is Jejuri. With the help of contemporary unpublished Marathi archival sources one may study in detail the pilgrimage held at Jejuri.17 These pilgrimages centred on two temples: one on the hill close to and 250 feet above the village and the other on a plateau called Karhepathar, two miles from the village and about 400 feet higher. Four chief pilgrimages on four festivals, that is Margashirsh (December–January), Paush (January– February), Magh (February–March) and Chaitra (March–April), used to be held here between December and April, and two minor ones Somawati, that is no-moon Monday whenever it comes, and Dasara in October were held. Khandoba is worshipped by all sections of the society. Right from Brahamanas to Lingayats, Vanis, Kolis, Ramoshis and Dhangars were worshippers of Khandoba. Pilgrimages held at Jejuri were thus a conglomeration of the various social groups. Pilgrimages at Jejuri were attended by pilgrims not only from surrounding areas but also from various parts of Deccan and Maharashtra. The pilgrims, especially Marathas, came from Varhad and 209

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Khandesh in large numbers. The fishing Kolis from the Konkan Coast were also worshippers of Khandoba. They attended the Magh pilgrimage in large numbers. The various references of Bhagats support their presence of participation in the pilgrimages.18 The contemporary unpublished Marathi archival documents throw light on the trading and commercial transactions at the bazaar held at Jejuri during the four pilgrimages.19 They also give information about trading communities such as who were trading, in what, from where and to where. The market was attended by local as well as outside merchants and traders. In the market few shops were permanent and many shops were set up on a temporary basis. Outside merchants used to set up temporary shops and booths in streets. Markets were attended by various merchants, traders and craftsmen in big numbers. The Bakal and Chate (Wani shopkeepers) who dealt in grain, pulses, spices and groceries were always greater in number than the other shops. These Wani shopkeepers mainly came from nearby Kasba markets like Saswad, Supe, Wai and places like Kasegaon, Nasrapur and Khadakwasla. These Wani shopkeepers did not have their own capital. They were almost entirely dependent on borrowed capital. Their business was not very big, and generally they had no dealings outside the region. Lingayat and Maratha communities were generally engaged in the trading of groceries. These merchants brought groceries packed on bullocks and horses.20 Shimpis (tailors) also used to set up their shops at the market on a temporary basis. They dealt in cloth. Shimpis had a great scope for their business. Shimpis from Supe, Pune, Saswad, Mhaswad and Man would attend the bazaar. Kasars (workers in white or bell metal) dealt in copper and brassware. Most of them were merchants who would come from Supe and Morgaon. Their shops in the market were considerable in number. Tambats (coppersmiths) dealt in copper and were makers of large articles. Shops of Sarrafs (goldsmiths) were considerable in number and often almost as many as those of the grocers. Sarrafs mainly came from Pune and Baramati. One also gets references about shops of Khatiks (butchers) who dealt in selling mutton. Khatiks from Saswad, Pune and Supe would set up their shops at the market. The shops of Maneris (jewellers and makers or vendors of bangrya – bangles, bracelets and beads) were also found in great numbers. They were generally Muslim by faith. One also gets references of artisans who cast copper and brass vessels in the contemporary documents. Market was also attended by considerable number of Dhangars (shepherds) who dealt in blanket selling. Kadasani (makers of cart rope and makers of rope for loads), atari (perfumers), Revdikari (makers of sweet meat made of sugar and sesame), Bagwan (retailers of vegetables or flowers), Sarekari (vendor of liquor), Kunkukari (makers of red and yellow powders), 210

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Lonari (lime dealers), Kharkhade (salt dealers), Patwekari (who string and fix gems), Bhut furosi (sellers of images of gods) and Palnekari (makers of cradle) sold their articles in the market.21 One also gets references to cotton cloth manufacturers and traders like Momin (weaver), Pinjari (cotton cleaner) and Koshti (spinner). Varieties of cotton clothes are mentioned in the contemporary records, which were brought in from Saswad, Supe, Aurangabad, Danda-Rajpuri and Burhanpur. Sale and purchase of animals was also an important economic activity at the market. On the days of pilgrimages, the population of the place probably got doubled. That the bazaar was an important local institution is beyond doubt, as considerable percentage of the town or village labour was employed there. This is proved by the references in the contemporary records to Pendharis, who seem to have been labourers and peasants who participated in the market and its activities. Sant Ramdas in one of his padas (verse) has given a graphic picture of pilgrimage of Khandoba held at Jejuri. Ramdas said, ‘There was a conglomeration of pilgrims. How can one describe its grandeur? When one goes to the market, one gets amazed and is not able to decide what to buy, as the variety is in a great number.’22 The state charged custom duties on each shop and each trader and craftsman. One cannot get rates of the import duties but only the amount collected is available.23 The Maratha Chhatrapatis, the Peshwas, Maratha potentates worked hard for the growth of the market as increased monetary transactions at market and its prosperity were profitable to the state. The state played a vital role for promotion of the market. Protection of the market was the responsibility of the government. The state always patronised the market by adopting various measures. The state extended facilities to merchants and artisans in many ways. They were never pressed for the custom duties.24 Sometimes because of the political disturbances caused by the enemy the day-to-day life got disturbed. Raiyats were sometimes harassed. The state in that case would offer concession on custom duties.25 To conclude, pilgrimages and fairs were points of multi-layered contacts. Fairs, held locally, were associated with local village deities and temples and dargahs. After the rainy season when the crop was ready to be harvested, the season of Jatras would begin. The majority of fairs were held in the months of Magh and Chaitra, when the agricultural communities were free of their agricultural activities. Fairs had a special significance for the inhabitants of villages. It was an integral part of village life. Everybody, from the watandar to the common people, would participate in the village fair. A sense of belonging was the main basis for the village fair. Bazaar held at villages was an exhibition of skills of artisans as various types of fancy articles were for sale. Fairs were the main means of amusement and recreation. 211

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Therefore it was celebrated with great joy and enthusiasm. Pilgrimages had wider connotation than local fairs and provided multi-faceted points of contacts. Difficult and slow transport, unsafe roads and political uncertainties added to the difficulties of pilgrims and traders, many of whom would travel long distances to get to the place of the pilgrimage. In trade, it is possible to conclude that long-distance trade was mainly in specific types of articles, while short-distance trade related to day-to-day consumables. The latter was much more common. Pilgrimages and the fairs associated with them served as platforms for social and cultural interactions. Although the inter-community interaction was limited, it helped to accelerate the process of socialisation of an individual.

Notes 1 According to the evidence of contemporary documents the celebrated places of pilgrimage in Maharashtra were Tuljapur, Nasik, Trimbak, Paithan, Toke, Pandharpur, Jejuri, Karavira, Pravara Sangama, Harihareshwar, Bhimashankar, Mahuli, Karhad, Wai. See G.C.Vad, Selections from Peshwas’ Diaries, Vol. 8, no. 1129 (Poona: Deccan Vernacular Translations Society, 1911). 2 James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, vol. 1, no. 72, cited in Sudha Desai, Social Life in Maharashtra under the Peshwas (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1980), p. 142. 3 N.G. Chapekar, Peshwaichya Savalit (Poona: L.N. Chapekar, 1937), p. 185. 4 Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Poona District, vol XVII, part III, originally printed in 1885, reprinted in 1992, Government of Maharashtra, Bombay, p. 104. 5 Ibid., p. 129. 6 W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. I (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1896), p. 83, cited in Desai, op. cit., p. 103. 7 R.V. Oturkar, Peshwekalin Samajik Va Arthik Patravyavahar, nos. 68, 72 and 96 (Poona: Bharat Itihas Samshodhak Mandal, 1950). 8 Vishwanath Kadhinath Rajawade, ed., Marathyanchya Itihasachi Sadhane, Vol. 21, Lekhanka 215 (Dhule: Satkaryottejak Sabha, 1910). 9 Pune Jamav, Rumal No. 940, Pune Archives. 10 A Kasba was a place with a permanent market. 11 Narayan Trimbak Atre, Gav-gada (Pune: Varada, 1995), p. 157. 12 Shivcharitra Sahitya, Vol. 5, Bharat Itihas Samshodhak Mandal, Pune, No. 895. See also Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, op. cit., p. 132. 13 Oturkar, op. cit., no. 97. 14 Ibid. 15 Shivcharitra Sahitya, op. cit. 16 Report on the Pilgrim Committee Bombay (Simla: Government Monotype Press, 1916), p. 50. 17 Samshodhanasathi Nivadlele Kagad, Rumal No. 49, 50, Pune Archives. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

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20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Anant Das Ramadasi, ed., Gatha of Shri Samartha Ramdas, pp. 353–54, cited in R.C. Dhere, Khandoba (Pune: R.J Deshmukh, 1961), p. 96. Some of these padas are as follows: khanderav dekhilaa dev| jan yatra milale sarva| Kay sangu nana vaibhav||Lokanchi datee, swaranchi datee| yatrechi datee, divtyanchi datee| dindyanchi date, vadyanchi datee|| Another says hate kinkattee, untabhadakatee| ghode himsati, baila durati| namghoshe grajatatee|| kon kothe kahee kalena| yatre madhe te aakelenal| garda jala aasharya mana|| pudhe datee,maghun datee,| dohankade dukan datee|antara;ee chhatryanchi datee||.  .  .  . bazari java chakit vhave| kay ghyave, kay na ghyave| seema nahi, dhnya vaibhav|| 23 Samshodhanasathi Nivadlele Kagad, Rumal No. 49, 50, Pune Archives. See also S.N. Joshi, ed., Aitihasik Sankirna Sahitya, Vol. 9, Marathi Rajwatitil Kahi Ghatmarga va Chaukya (Pune: Bharat Itihas Samshodhak Mandal, 1953), pp. 38–9. 24 Chandrakant Abhanga, “Peshwekalin Jatra va Tyanche Prashasan,” in Traimasik, Vol. 75 (Pune: Bharat Itihas Samshodhak Mandal, July, 1996), p. 20. 25 G.C. Vad, Selections from Peshwas’ Diaries, Peshwa Madhavrao I, Vol. 1, BK VII, op. cit., p. 69.

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12 CONTINUING ROUTES, CHANGED INTERSECTIONS A study of Fort St. George (Madras) in the seventeenth century Radhika Seshan

What routes and intersections can we identify in the seventeenth century? In the Indian Ocean world, the routes had of course long been well established. They were seasonal but fixed in that the suppliers and the consumers both knew what they wanted and from where they could get it. This is not to imply or suggest that nothing changed in this world. Changes did happen, in the people who moved across this world and in the ports to which they traded. In an earlier time (the early medieval period), the south Indian merchant guilds were very important in the trade of the southern Bay of Bengal. Increasingly, this changed so that, by the fourteenth century, we find not only weavers who were involved in long-distance trade, but also many individual merchants. The earlier very loosely defined ‘Arab’ merchant also now began to be more clearly identified so that we now (from the fifteenth century) find specific mention of Turk or Armenian merchants, to name just two of the groups. Still later, in the seventeenth century, we find individuals – Virji Vora and Abdul Ghafur in Surat, or Malaya Chetti and Mir Jumla on the Coromandel Coast. Different ports also emerged. Motupalli, mentioned as an important port by Marco Polo, is hardly mentioned in the seventeenth century. And with the coming of the Europeans, we have the altogether new dimension of the European factories and forts – Pulicat (Fort Geldria) of the Dutch, Madras (Fort St. George) of the English and Tranquebar (Dansborg) of the Danes, to name just a few. Changes were of peoples and ports. Thus points of intersection and networks of connections could ebb and flow, along with the changing patterns and points of trade. 214

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R.J. Barendse pointed out1 that ‘long-distance commerce was built on interlocking circuits of commerce’. These circuits were not limited to the ports and coasts, but stretched inland as well. Including the Silk Route in the maritime world of the Indian Ocean is probably stretching the point too far, but the overland routes and the sea routes were in many ways complementary to each other. There was, of course, the hinterland of each port, and these hinterlands were obviously accessed over land; but there were also longer routes, such as those connecting north India with Samarkand or Damascus, which were well known and regularly used. According to Stephen Dale,2 ‘Throughout most of the 16th, 17th centuries and 18th centuries India’s most important markets were located in the countries bordering the Indian Ocean and the contiguous land mass of the Iranian plateau and the Central Asian steppe.’ Arguing that the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires managed to establish a ‘pax Islamica’, he further said that by the early decades of the seventeenth century, Muscovite Russia had also become part of this network. Philip Curtin used the term ‘trading diasporas’ to describe the world of Asian traders before colonialism. Composed of communities and networks of foreign merchants who lived for varying lengths of time outside their own homelands, they nevertheless maintained their distinct identity, through language in particular, but also ethnicity and family ties, to become part of a pan-Asian ‘global’ economy long before modern times.3 What were the networks of the Indian Ocean? And what ‘trade diasporas’ operated within this system? We should perhaps begin by trying to define the Indian Ocean world itself. Om Prakash called it ‘the oldest of the seas in history, in terms of it being used and traversed by humans’. K.N. Chaudhuri pointed out that, when seen from the tip of the Indian Peninsula, it clearly extended eastwards to the Middle East and westwards to China. In recent years, Australia has been included as the extreme end of the Indian Ocean world, and the impact of this ocean on the Australian outback has begun to be studied. Obviously, such a large expanse of land and water could not have been traversed with just one network, or one set of families. It is therefore necessary to delineate smaller networks that fed into, and off, the larger ones, and also to try and identify the players in these more localised networks. Included in these small-scale networks would be the port-to-port trade along the Indian coast, termed ‘country trade by the Europeans’, as well as trade among the islands of Southeast Asia, for whom the sea was the major highway. There were also well-established connections between specific ports – Porto Novo on the Coromandel Coast and Manila, for instance, or Rajapur and Madagascar (which was highlighted by the fact of the notorious Captain Kidd taking shelter in Rajapur creek 215

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early in the eighteenth century). Certain regions were naturally far more important, as points of intersection of both larger and smaller networks, and these would include the areas around Gombroon, Basra and Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, the entrance to the Red Sea, Gujarat and Kerala on the West Coast of India, the Coromandel and Bengal Coasts and Melaka and Aceh in Southeast Asia. There was thus a ‘grid’ of interlocking trade circuits, centred on a number of ports across the Indian Ocean. Equally important is the question of the role – continuous, episodic or fragmentary – of the Asians in this world and the impact of the Europeans on their trade. In this chapter I propose to focus on Fort St. George as a point of multiple intersections, first through an examination of continued Asian shipping and Asian trade from this port and then as a point from which negotiations were opened up with local rulers for additional place/s from which to trade. For the first it is perhaps necessary to understand the nature of Asian shipping and Asian trade through two parallel lenses – one, the trade for and through the English, and two, the trade from the English settlements, associated with the private trade of the factors, or as independent merchants. To begin with, therefore, it is necessary to identify the groups involved in the trade. These could be broadly divided into three groups – Indian, mainly Tamil or Telugu; Chetti merchants and Indian Muslim merchants, from the local Tamil communities (Labbai, Chulia or Marakkayar); and Armenians and Europeans, not part of the East India Company. These were, of course, not strictly compartmentalised, for there were many overlaps, both among the groups and vis-à-vis the companies. The records provide the names of a fair number of Tamil and Telugu merchants who were important in the trade from Fort St. George, but who were clearly not the only groups trading from this port. In 1676, when questions arose about the possible methods to be employed in regulating non-English trade from the Fort, it was stated that the merchants who were involved in such trade were ‘Portuguez. . ., Danes, Spanyards, French, Armenians, Indostans, Bengalers, Visapores, Mores Gentues and Mallabars of this Coast, Javaas, Chinese, Mallayas, Syamers etc.’4 These were in addition to the ‘freemen’ and those who ‘came out long before this Compa: began, or who have served out their times or paid their fines’.5 The records do not indicate the specific items in which these merchants traded, but it is clear that part of the trade was in goods brought on the company’s ships. There was also a conscious effort on the part of the English to promote trade through their fort, so as to get the benefit of both, access to trade, and the customs duties that they were entitled to charge. In this, great dependence was placed on the Portuguese. In February 1680, it was decided that ‘John Pereira de Faria Junior Inhabitant of this place’, who 216

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was already trading in Pegu and Burma, would be asked to ‘treate with the King of Barma and Pegu upon Articles of Comerce for the Settling a trade in his Countrys and a Paper of Articles and alsoe Comission and Instructions for the said John Perera to treate thereupon’ were drawn up.6 Further encouragement was also to be provided so it was declared that the Marchants of Pegu having desired, a Cowle or Letter of promise of a Cowle to bring their Rubies from Pegu to this Port, it is thought fit to gratifie them therein, and accordingly Such a forme of a Cowle was read and passed and ordered to be translated into Portugez, allsoe into Persian, the Gentue and Mallabar languages, Sealed with the Companys Seale and Sent to divers places in Severall Copys.7 The formal grant that was made stated that all whatsoever Marchants from Pegu or Ava that shall desire to come to this Place upon any ship or Vessell belonging to this Towne, or upon any other Vessells, and shall bring their bulses of Rubys, they shall only shew and Register them at the Choultry, without being obliged to open the Seales or to pay any Custome for the said Rubys untill they doe sell them, and after that they have sold them then they shall pay the usuall Custome of one and a halfe Per : Cent : and ½ : Per : Cent to the Towne Broker and noe more, and when they doe not sell them in this place, they may freely and without any hinderance carry away their said Rubys either by Sea or Land, or by what meanes soever they please, without being anywise obliged to pay any Custome for the same, The same shall be understood for Jewells and Kings as it is for loose Rubys, yt noe Custome shall be paid.8 Apparently, the move was fairly successful, for in 1681, it was reported that ‘a Small vessel belonging to Sinr Joan Perera de Faria Junr arrived from Pegu, upon which came severall Ruby Marchants with considerable quantitys of Rubies’.9 References are also found to the trade carried on by officials and royalty outside India; thus, we have statements saying Copper of Jappon worth pa : 10 ye Candy less then ye other, and sold heere in Towne by the King of Bantams Shipp at pa : 60 the Candy about three Months since and yet held up at pag° : 68 the Candy.10 217

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Another part of this trade was the sale of European goods to Asian merchants. Coral was one of the major items that were brought in, and this was sold either through auction or by informing merchants known to trade in coral – often referred to as ‘coral merchants’. This trade came in by sea but was subsequently demanded by merchants coming from the interior and presumably then taking it further inland to sell. The English reported in 1681 that divers Currall Marchants that is to say Basawoory Jangam, Coolooree Conay, Cangpetta Etterasoolo, Zeeputtee Kisnama and others from Congee Voram and other parts having been severall days in towne treating about the Currall did now come to Bargaine and agree for four Chests being the first which have been opened.11 The seventeenth century did see a continuation of the trade along the coast and across the Bay of Bengal, sometimes in ships owned by the Asian merchants, and sometimes on ships belonging to private traders. In 1675, it was reported that Haji Mohammad, the servant of the Subahdar of Hughly and Balasore, had arrived in Fort St. George on a private ship, and in order to keep on good terms with the officials (in case of any future problems regarding trade), it was decided to land the said Mores goods and 4 Horses here, giving him all possible accomodation for himself and them, and his people also, untill the arrival of the Honoble: Compas: Shipps from Europe, and then to give them passage thereon for the Bay.12 Haji Mohammad himself had been engaged in trade on behalf of his master, for he declared that he owed the owner of the ship, one William Alley, the ‘sum : of Rups. 1904½’ which Alley had ‘disboursed for me at Gombroon or Bundar Abassy in Persia for payment of severall rich and precious goods wch: I have bought there by order and for actt. of my Master’. This was in addition to a sum of Rups. 684½ for freight of 4 Horses wch: with my other goods the said Mr. Alley has now brought from Persia for my Said Master after the rate of Tommans 6 for each horse, wch: is no more than the usuall freight from Persia to Surrat. Haji Mohammad had also been permitted to carry certain goods without paying freight. These consisted of ‘Hing 7 Bales, Tobacco 7 Bales, Rosewater 1 chest, Athar 10 Chests, fruit 29 Jarrs, Almonds 160 Maund, Arack 218

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2 chests, Sheep 8’.13 Some years later, it was reported that ‘Mr. William Jearsey with Hodge Abdull Coddar a Moor Marchant were endeavouring to provide goods at St. Thoma and ship them off from thence for Manila upon a Ship now in this Road belonging to the said Moor’.14 A second dimension of the networks was the opening up of avenues of diplomacy and, therefore, political concessions. The grant for Fort St. George had come from the local nayak of the region, and this was reaffirmed by Golconda when this region came under that Sultanate. As English trade expanded and as interference from Golconda increased, the English officials on the scene began to be instructed to try and acquire another port further to the south of Madras, which was not in Golconda territory. This meant negotiating with the Marathas at Gingi, which was also attempted at Surat itself. The Dutch did not bother with the Marathas on the West Coast or at Gingi; instead they dealt with Ekoji, the Maratha ruler of Thanjavur, who gave them in 1676 the privilege of paying half the tax on exports from and imports into the kingdom and mint facilities at Nagapattinam. Efforts through Surat being fruitless, the English dealt directly with Harji Raja, the ‘Chief Subidar’ of the region, and his representative Gopal Pandit. As a result, they got permission, in 1682, to settle at and trade from Porto Novo, Cuddalore and Kunimedu. Gopal Pandit and Harji Raja declared that the English were to come and settle at the seaport ‘without fear’, so that ‘the Divan may receive greater and greater benefits.’15 At the end of the century when the Mughals arrived in the south, efforts were made to negotiate with the Mughals and to reaffirm the concessions that had been acquired from earlier rulers. The point that I am trying to make is that this was a time when the intersections were much more open-ended. Routes remained open, and connections remained possible and could be negotiated at multiple levels. So if at one level the Asian shippers continued to operate from Madras and linked themselves with both English private traders and other Europeans or other Asians, at another level different Europeans themselves operated at times in concord and at times as rivals. On the East Coast the earliest rivals of the English were the Dutch, while the Portuguese, the main rivals on the West Coast, were seen here as, if not partners, then definitely a group whose presence was beneficial to trade. Of course, this lasted only so long as the Portuguese made no attempt to regain control of their earlier settlement of San Thomé near Madras – when that happened the English managed to get their own chief broker to get the annual farm of San Thomé from the Golconda rulers. From the late 1670s the French began to replace the Dutch as the main rivals. However, there was no direct confrontation at this time, for when the French had occupied San Thomé in 1672 the English did not 219

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take part in the siege of the place along with Golconda and the Dutch. The action was supported in principle, but not in practice!16 The routes did not change, but those operating the routes changed. Establishing the trajectory or trajectories of control laid the groundwork for later intersections. All of these multiple points were finally subsumed into the colonial framework. The multiple directions of trade of the seventeenth century narrowed by the end of the century but were still operable. It is then possible to see Madras as the port at which peoples and trade intersected, but the place ultimately became more important than the multiple players. The seventeenth-century intersections can perhaps be compared with a juggler keeping a number of balls up in the air. Through the eighteenth century the number reduced and one avenue became that into which everything else was incorporated.

Notes 1 R.J. Barendse, “Trade and State in the Arabian Seas: A Survey from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of World History, 11, no. 2 (Fall, 2000), pp. 173–225. 2 Stephen Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 4. 3 Philip Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 1–3. 4 Records of Fort St. George – Diary and Consultation Books (henceforth RFSG – Diary), 16 Feb. 1676. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 23 Feb. 1680. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 24 Jan. 1681. 10 Ibid., 20 Oct. 1674. 11 Ibid., 4 Apr. 1681. 12 Ibid., 4 Jun., 1675. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 28 Apr. 1681. 15 Records of Fort St. George – Letters to Fort St. George, 12 January 1682. 16 A point of interest is that at the time that they were officially complaining about the presence of the French as close neighbours and officially declaring that they were not supporting the French, the English also knew and possibly encouraged their chief broker to provide supplies to the French, by sea not land, at night.

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