Abstract
Irfan Habib and Tarapada Mukherjee (late), Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times: The State, Peasants and Gosā’ins (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2020), 286 pp., ₹1,095 (Hb).
Braj and Its Antiquity
In today’s common parlance, the area containing villages of Nandgaon, Barsana, Govardhan, Gokul, Vrindavan and Mahaban, surrounding the modern township of Mathura, is identified as the Brajamandala (see map on p. 72). It is specifically associated with the childhood exploits of Lord Krishna—the Balakrishna and Gopala Krishna of Paurāṇic lore. For Sanskritists, vrajanti gāvo yasminniti vrajaḥ [the place where cows roam], meaning pastureland, defines the region of Vraj (Braj). Among countless names of Lord Krishna is Brajmohana, the enchanter of Braj. The Braj parikramā (circumambulatory pilgrimage route) worked out by devout Vaishnavas in their later day hagiographical writings is spread across 84 kos (one kos being equal to 3.08 km). This certainly goes beyond Mathura; and the ever-fluctuating boundaries of the Brajmandala also included the district of Bharatpur and adjacent parts of other districts, including the present-day towns of Aligarh, Hathras, Agra and Alwar.
The vague antiquity of ‘Braj’ as a religious and cultural entity is supposedly sanctioned in an evolving but intangible ‘tradition’ and tempts us to treat it as its kṣetra sampadā [regional heritage], which seems to be getting crystallised in the Mathurāmāhātmya (c. sixteenth century).
1
However, defining parameters of its ‘linguistic’ and ‘territorial’ configuration is an arduous task. It is only with some Vrindavan documents of the 1690s and a 1704 parwāna of Mu
Situating the Vrindavan Documents and Braj Bhūm
The monograph BB is an outcome of more than three decades of painstaking and sustained involvement of the two authors, one of whom, the late Dr Tarapada Mukherjee (1928–90), passed away in 1990. He was the pioneer responsible for photographing the remarkable archives of documents in the possession of Chaitanya Goswamis (‘Gosā’ins’ in Braj) and their several temples (Govind-dev, Madan Mohan, Rādhākund, Rādhā Dāmodar, Gopīnāth, etc.) in Vrindavan and Jaipur. In addition, documents submitted in course of litigation in the strong room of Mathura District court were also photographed. The effort brought together an extremely rich and hitherto untapped source material, which was expected to open up fresh frontiers of history, even if of a limited area. This effort began in 1978, when Dr Mukherjee was at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London), where he was able to get the assistance of Professor J.C. Wright, who handled the documents in Braj. And, finally, Professor Irfan Habib was brought into the project, owing to his expertise in handling texts in Persian.
The joint venture of Mukherjee and Habib started in October 1986. They presented three joint papers at the annual sessions of the Indian History Congress in 1987, 1988 and 1989–90, duly published in its Proceedings (PIHC) of the respective (48th, 49th and the 50th) sessions (Chs. 3, 4 and 6 in BB). The untimely demise of Dr Mukherjee naturally affected the pursuit of the project, at least, for some time. Professor Wright spoke thus of Dr Mukherjee: ‘A dedicated scholar, a man of kindliness and determination, an authority on the whole range of Baṅgālī literature, a student of the religious, cultural, economic and social life of Vraja, a palaeographer and calligrapher, philologist and theoretical linguist, rasika and sahṛdaya, guru and friend’. 3
Professor Habib has taken more than three decades ‘to fulfil at least part of Tarapada Mukherjee’s ambitious plan’, which required him to decipher, transcribe, arrange and analyse the massive corpus of documents (see specially pp. 109–10 for his method of arranging his transcripts chronologically). Apart from the three joint papers (with Dr Mukherjee) mentioned above, the second chapter has also been written jointly with Faiz Habib. As many as six other chapters in the BB (1, 5 and 7–10) were published in the PIHC and other publications (duly credited, pp. 9–10) written single-handedly by Professor Habib. It needs underlining, however, that there has been considerable revision, addition and corrections in all chapters. Even after the publication of this monograph, an article focusing on women in Braj Bhūm has been published (2020). 4
BB needs to be situated in the broader context of the extant monographs on Braj. Indeed, there are many that throw light on its political history through the millennia, its cultural specificities, its haloed traditions and its religio-philosophic persona. They are, however, rarely concerned with the material life of people of this ‘sacred land’.
5
By and large, they follow a slightly formulaic framework, especially when it comes to delineating its political profile. One can generally sense a conspicuous ‘Hindu’ ethos that permeates these discourses. For six centuries, spanning between the thirteenth and the eighteenth, most of the rulers of North India, except perhaps Akbar, are demonised for their ‘anti-Hindu’ dispensations. A relatively more recent monograph of A.W. Entwistle is somewhat more circumspect:
The historical chapters are based largely on secondary studies, supplemented with details gleaned from the accounts of European travellers and the mass of devotional literature. Anyone embarking upon further research into the history of Vaishnavism in Braj must delve into the various documents in the possession of Pandas and Goswamis, temple libraries, archives and law courts. I am not equipped to deal with firmans [sic] and other documents in Persian, and even a study of archival material in languages known to me would have required much more patient negotiation and research, resulting in many more years of work… [emphasis added].
6
The richness and uniqueness of the Vrindavan documents have been here rightly underlined, for, unlike most archival records, these findings bring into focus ordinary people including some ordinary women. Unfortunately, however, their overall quantification is not indicated in BB. We read about (a) Wright providing to Habib his decipherments and translations of over thirty Braj documents (p. 2); (b) Chapter 4 (dealing with Akbar’s period, 1556–1605) focusing on six documents comprising ‘Orders of Mughal administration concerning grants to the temples and temple servants and, in one case, temple management’; (c) fifty-six documents in Persian providing bases for delineating salient features of the BB grants during the reigns of Jahāngīr (1605–27) and Shāhjahān (1628–58); (d) calendars of documents for both Chapters 3 and 4 are provided, which is not the case with Chapter 5 focusing on Aurangzeb’s reign (1658–1707), though numerous references to farmāns and other documents are offered in parentheses; and (e) numerous private sale deeds involving transactions of land and landed properties in Chapters 7, 8 and 9, which are quite a revelation. True, it has been pointed out:
Only such documents were deliberately preserved as could influence recognition of the preservers’ ownership rights and privileges or monetary and proprietary claims. Contrary to some assumptions in recent historical writings about the limitations of power of the pre-colonial state, the Vrindavan Gosā’ins seem to have found in the Mughal state an effective protector of their property rights in both town and country, which made them anxious to get the terms of their pettiest transactions recorded in Persian. (pp. 3–4)
However still, at the end of it all, we cannot put our fingers on any specific number to let the reader know about the total quantum of documents brought into the public domain by the efforts of Dr Mukherjee and his associates, and by the National Archives, New Delhi.
All the ten chapters of the present monograph were written over a period of nearly three decades. However, their presentation here does not give the impression of their being disparate pieces. Instead, they have been integrated in a well-structured and coherent thesis. Notwithstanding some avoidable repetitions, the tome must be seen as an epitome of the genre of holistic ‘regional studies’. The four sections titled ‘Braj Bhūm’ (Chs. 1–2), ‘The State’ (Chs. 3–5); ‘Peasants’ (Chs. 6–9) and ‘Gosā’ins’ (Ch. 10) encompass a whole range of activities of ordinary people and that of major influential institutions impacting their lives. Not only the region called ‘Braj/Brajmandal’ in myths and legends has been demarcated in reasonably precise geographical parameters but also its economic and ethnographic profiles over a period of two centuries (c.1550–1750) have been fleshed out. In the process, the administrative apparatus of the Mughal times in both its benign and malevolent dimensions; and the state patronage of sectarian temples, particularly of the Gauḍīya Vaishnavas [the Gosā’ins of the Order of Chaitanya Mahāprabhu (1486–1533)], come into focus. No less significantly, the very crucial issues of land rights, land holdings, private/institutional ownerships; mutations of settlements on account of expanding economic activities—villages getting transformed into towns and urban centres—have also been explored. With their priests developing into landed magnates, the temples faced disputes over succession and so naturally invited the mediation of the State. There were conflicts, again over properties such as trees, ponds, huts, groves and soi on, leaving their mark in the documents. This extensive canvas provides justification for the sub-title of the monograph, namely, ‘The State, Peasants and Gosā’ins’.
Temples: Managerial Arrangements, Properties and State Control, c. 1550–1750
The first two chapters concerned with the regional profile of BB constitute a kind of overall resume of the following seven chapters (3–9). In many respects, the third chapter detailing the land grants to thirty-five named temples of Mathura and its environs (including Bindrāban, Gordhan, Nandgrām, etc.) during the reign of Akbar forms the bedrock of the volume. It lays down the basic structure and format of land grants which are repeated with minor variations in subsequent reigns—right down to the mid-eighteenth century. Some of the grants are recalled by descendants of grantees even after a century or more to get them revalidated. The overall structure of these grants reminds us of land grants made to numerous religious beneficiaries of diverse sectarian affiliations during the millennium preceding, the arrival of the Turks in India. Like the farmāns of Akbar, these too specified an ever-expanding list of officials who were expected to get the terms of grants implemented without any hindrance. 7 Further, the grants of the two phases also contained lists of exemptions/privileges granted to the donees. High officials of the state affixing their seals was another common feature. Sometimes, however, seals of more than one officer are seen on the reverse side of the Mughal farmāns—Akbar’s farmān of 1598 bears seals of as many as eight officers, of which three impressions are illegible (p. 85). A significant seal is that of Akbar’s minister Todar Mal, affixed to his parwāncha of 1584. It bears the legend ‘Todar Mal, Banda-i Dargāh, Rām kī panāh’, affirming both his loyalty to Akbar, and his allegiance to Rāma. 8
Within the first decade of his reign, Akbar had issued a farmān in 1565 which granted 200 bīghas of land to Gopāldās (sevak and pujārī of Madan Mohan temple) under the ‘Rule of Half’ t]arīq-i munāṣif, that is, 50 per cent in ‘cultivated land’ (mazrū’) and the remaining 50 per cent in ‘waste land’ [uftāda]. Apparently, the rule came down to the Mughals from the Sūr administration and specially Sher Shah’s farmāns. In an earlier writing, Professor Habib had noted that some grants of Akbar go further and ‘stipulate that the whole grant was to consist of cultivable waste, not previously paying revenue’. In laying down such terms, ‘the authorities seem also to have been anxious that the grantees should not draw away cultivators from the revenue-paying land’. 9
Of the six documents mentioned above, the farmān of 1598 appears to be the most extensive and interesting. It came after a committee of four learned and reputed ‘brahman’ divines under the leadership of Abū’l Fazl made a set of specific recommendations, which were approved by Akbar after careful consideration. The farmān granted about 1,000 bīghas of land to as many as thirty-five temples [devālas], of which the prominent ones were Govind-dev, Madan Mohan, Gopīnāth, Rādhā Ballabh and Nandnandan. One surprising omission is that of the Rādhā Dāmodar temple built by Jīv Goswami at Vrindavan. The temple of Keshav Rāi at Mathura was also a recipient of 45 bīghas. The places where the identified temples stood and the villages where they obtained grants (to the extent located) are shown in Map 3 (p. 72), which also shows townships and villages mentioned in later documents. Of the total of 1,000 bīghas, as many as 730 bīghas lay in pargana Mathura; and out of this 469 in the village of Dosāij (or Dosāīch), which was later absorbed into the township of Vrindavan as Dusayat, a quarter [mahalla] of the city. Next to pargana Mathura, pargana Sahār contributed 215 bīghas of land in grants. The early eighteenth century documents (of 1719 and 1722) refer to a madad-i ma‘āsh grant originally made by Akbar in 1568–69 to Mādho, a priest of the Gopīnāth Temple at Vrindavan (surprisingly overlooked in the 1598 farmān). These missing links in the 1598 document, coupled with Akbar’s acts of the early 1560s, such as the abolition of the pilgrimage tax (1562) and of jizya (1564), demonstrate the heralding of a fresh imperial outlook vis-à-vis Hindu temples and the holy men of BB. There does not seem to be any causal link between this and Akbar’s possible temporary shift to orthodox Islam in mid-1570s. 10
Some of the officers figuring in the farmāns of Akbar’s time included jāgīrdārs, amīns, karorīs, dīwān, ‘āmils, chaudhurīs and qānūngos. The lists of exemptions (equivalent of parihāras of early medieval centuries) included survey fee, collector’s levy, dāro-
An issue of great relevance concerns the ‘tenure’ of land grants made throughout Mughal times. The early medieval land grant inscriptions of North India explicitly state, though somewhat rhetorically and in a stereotyped manner, that the grantees—be they individuals or religious institutions/establishments (Śaiva, Vaishnava devālayas, Buddhist saṁghas, Jain basaḍis and maṭhas of other religious denominations)—are to enjoy their fruit of the grants exclusively and in perpetuity until the moon, the sun and the stars last [ā-chandr-ārkka-tārakā-kālīnāṁ]. Thus, even the individuals enjoyed hereditary rights. The state officers responsible for maintaining law and order are strictly prohibited from entering the donated lands. The Vrindavan land grants are reticent on these aspects. However, Mughal state policy vis-à-vis madad-i ma‘āsh (revenue-free) grants reveals several indicators which assert the authority of the state quite unambiguously. First, the law of escheat came into effective force in the late 1660s in Aurangzeb’s time, even if this may have been on the list of legal prescriptions earlier. According to it, the property of those who died intestate was held to belong to the emperor and so could be taken into custody by the state treasury, or Baitu’l Māl (pp. 123–25). Indeed, in one of his accession ordinances of 1605, Jahāngīr had ordered that the income from such property, whether the dead was non-Muslim or Muslim, was to be spent on ‘the construction of mosques and inns, repairs of bridges, and construction of tanks and wells’ (p. 123). 11 Second, beginning with Akbar’s reign, the area of the grant after the death of the original grantee, if an individual, was usually reduced. Third, the introduction of the new measuring standard, that is, gaz-i ilāhī [measurement by bamboo rod] in the nineteenth regnal year of Akbar (1575) also affected the area of granted lands in terms of the gaz. The old bīgha measurements tended to be reduced by more than 10 per cent. 12
We come across some very interesting instances of the implementation of the law of escheat, and their reversals as well. In 1721, Rāja Sawāī Jai Singh intervened in the case of the seizure of the properties of deceased mendicants (both Hindu and Muslim) by the officials of the Baitu’l Māl. He petitioned for the reversion of the properties of the heirless mendicants in favour of the Govind-dev temple, which was accepted by the emperor. Kishan Charan’s properties were appropriated, converted into the
On the whole, ‘the Mughal administration saw it as its inherent right to exercise the power of ultimate control over the management of certain temples. Its authority was, in any case, indispensable for the protection of any installed management against pretentious usurpers’. Thus, in a dispute between Chaitanyites and Rādhāvallabhīs over encroachments on ‘a seat’ (nishastgāh) of Shri Chaitanya, the Mughal administration mediated to the apparent satisfaction of both parties (1654) (pp. 96–97). Reflecting on the nature of relationship between the ‘State’ and ‘religious grantees’, one is struck by a very early formulation (in the 1598 farmān) mandating that the grantees should ‘engage themselves in praying for the long life of this ever-lasting state’ (emphasis added; p. 80). 14 The flip side of this state control was the growing bureaucratisation of the apparatus seen in the actual functioning of the administration. Each grant made through emperor’s farmān needed to be supported by the jāgīrdār’s parwāna and the Ṣadr’s taṣḥīhas (certificates). During thirty years of Shāhjahān’s reign, there were eleven jāgīrdārs of Mathura, giving an average term of just 2.7 years.
Jahāngīr was not particularly enamoured of Vrindavan temples; writing about his visit there in 1620 in his Tuzuk, he speaks of bad smells of bats and owls making breathing difficult. And yet, he never thought of disturbing the arrangements worked out in Akbar’s times. Further, perhaps for the first time, going by the Vrindavan documents, he also granted lands ranging between 12 and 50 bīghas to eight individuals outside the temple-based grantees. Of these eight, a woman named Kunjdāsī got 30 bīghas in her own right. Shāhjahān’s reign sent mixed signals. According to a passage in Lāhorī’s Pādshāhnāma, in his sixth regnal year (1633–34), Shāhjahān ordered that no temple whose foundations had been laid in Jahāngīr’s time but had not been completed would be allowed to be completed; and, in the Banaras area, accordingly, seventy-six such temples were reportedly destroyed. However, only a year later, his farmān of 1634 ordered that the time-gong (ghaṛīāl) be allowed to be sounded in the temple of Madan Mohan (Bindrāban), in order to assist ‘the worship of God’ [ibādat-i ilāhī]. Not only did Shāhjahān not show any intention to disturb any grants of the temples in Vrindavan but also took measures to enhance the Amber family’s control over management of the Govind-dev temple, whose new great building had been the work of Rāja Mān Singh.
The fifth chapter, ‘Dealing with Multiplicity: Mughal Administration in Braj Bhūm Under Aurangzeb, 1659–1707’ (pp. 108–25), focuses on three aspects of Mughal administration, namely, treatment of temples, their managerial arrangements, properties and others; functioning of the machinery of justice and law-and-order; and application of the law of escheat. Of these, the last one has already been discussed. The first one has been in focus for a variety of reasons—the most important being the image of Aurangzeb as the destroyer par excellence of ‘Hindu temples’ in large numbers. Most of the histories of Braj, as noted above, have treated him as a villain in this respect. It is strongly alleged that he reversed all the tolerant policies of Akbar.
Notwithstanding the fact that ‘Abdu’n Nabī The sole reference to temple demolition in Vrindavan that I have been able to trace is in a sale-deed of AD 1691, where, while giving particulars of a plot of land sold near Chīrghāt, it is said to be bordered on the west by the wall of Gobindī Bāgh, a garden attached to a ‘demolished temple’ (but
Habib also looks into the contesting claims over possibilities of the destruction of the garbhagrihas [sanctuaries] of the Govind-dev and Rādhā Vallabha temples at Vrindavan, which he finds puzzling, since worship in the Govind-dev temple was unaffected until c. 1730 (pp. 112–13, note 8).
It is not denied that the officialdom down the ladder were capable of playing mischief and resorting to the extortion of what we call today as ‘cut-money’, but one notes with some bewilderment that the local administration had little interest in dispossessing the Gosā’ins of their grants. Muḥammad Hāshim, the revenue-assessor [amīn] of the pargana had no hesitation in accepting the claim of Gosāindās, the custodian of the Madan Mohan temple, (April 1692) that the chaknāma [demarcation document] of the imperial grant of 89 bīghas, 9 biswas, in village Rājpūr, that he held, had been lost in the Jāt uprising [futūr-i Jāt]. A new chaknāma was issued to the claimant. Further, Aurangzeb’s general order of 1672–73 requiring resumption of all grants held by the Hindus was obviously not implemented in BB. The famed parwāna of 1704 by Mu
The successors of Aurangzeb, who did not apparently share his ‘prejudiced outlook’, could offer further conciliatory measures. An illustration of this was the 1718 parwāna of Māhyār Gusāins, Bairāgīs, and Mahants had from old times been living in village Bindrāban and people coming from different provinces left large amounts in charity for them, which were secretly divided up… (but now representatives of) the Gauḍīyas (Chaitanya sect), Rādhā Ballabhīs, Haridāsīs, Rāmānandīs, etc. (have) agreed to distribute charity among mendicants of their respective sects in a proper manner. (p. 116)
Justice and law enforcement under the Mughals rested on qāzīs and faujdārs in parganas, who dealt with civil and criminal cases respectively. Their functioning seems to have overlapped in zamīndārī disputes and other land-right matters. The qāzī was the certifying officer of all sale-deeds, transfer and gift documents, and contractual agreements, by which rights and entitlements could be subsequently protected. After about 1650, the physical descriptions [ḥuliya] of the persons concerned also began to be furnished in the margin of each document issued at the qāzī’s court. While religious conversions worked both ways—a Muslim becoming a Hindu and a Hindu becoming a Muslim—neither case seems to have excited any adverse observation at the qāzī’s court.
The certification of numerous documents apart, qāzīs mainly handled disputes over properties. In 1675, Seo Rām, the custodian of the Govind-dev temple, had temporarily left Vrindavan and taken the idol with him to Kāmān. Later, when he returned, his tenant Arjun refused to vacate his ḥavelī (house) at Mathura. The case went to the qāzī of Mathura, who made an on-the-spot enquiry, with seven people testifying before him in favour of Seo Rām. Although in Muslim law the testimony of a single woman is valueless, oral evidence of a woman, Gangādāsī, was here entertained and judgement was pronounced: the accused was ordered to surrender the house to the complainant.
In another case of alleged usurpation, there was much confusion and official embarrassment because the executive and judicial arms of the administration functioned at cross-purposes. Dispute arose in 1704–05 among two lines of Chaitanyites claiming rights of succession. A long period of hostility existed between the lines of the successors of Rūp and Jīv Gosā’ins for the custodianship of the Govind-dev temple. This time, it involved a woman Kishan Priyā (widow of Braj Kunwar of Jīv Gosā’in’s line), whose claim to succeed her husband in his priestly position was being contested by Gobind Charan (of the Rūp Gosā’in line) on the ground that a woman could not be a religious head. Several officials from the executive and judicial machinery made their interventions, sometimes reversing their orders and changing sides. After much tumult, Kishan Priyā remained in possession of the estate. Habib is not hesitant in recognising that given the general repute of qāzīs, it is not improbable that bribes privily offered kept the judicial machinery well-oiled.
Light on Peasants and Refreshing Recall of ‘Village Community’
Four out of ten chapters, forming 40 per cent of the text, are devoted to the third section of the monograph dealing with substantive issues of the peasants: land rights and land holdings. At one end, one has the luxury of reading through a macro-study of Vrindavan’s peasants and, on the other, a surprise package of two micro-studies of transformations of two villages, namely, Āriṭh and Rājpūr—all largely based on numerous sale-deed documents. The most striking feature of the whole section is the spotlight thrown on the concept of ‘Village Community’, which had apparently gone out of vogue after the 1980s. In the context of pre-Turkish India, the writings of D.D. Kosambi and R.S. Sharma made us familiar with its varied nuances, including its limitations. 16 The first edition of Irfan Habib’s The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556–1707), published in 1963, had an extensive discussion in the chapter titled ‘The Peasant & The Land; and the Village Community’. Much of it was presented in an extensively revised second edition (1999), incorporating material from the Vrindavan documents as well. 17 Its recall in the BB is, therefore, very refreshing.
The sixth chapter, like the third one, is anchored on the half a century of Akbar’s reign. Based on as many as twenty-seven documents, 18 it dilates upon such questions as: Where did the village community stand in respect of land transfers? What was the nature of the individuals’ rights to land? What were the details of actual transactions? The village of Āriṭh (in Sahār pargana) and Vrindavan figure prominently here. While Vrindavan was getting developed as a pilgrim centre, Āriṭh provided greater rural flavour. Of the twenty-seven documents, eleven deal with Āriṭh. The remaining sixteen documents related with Vrindavan, and its environs are discussed under four series, relating to separate localities in Vrindavan.
Āriṭh-related documents show some peculiarities; four of them are pre-Akbar: the dates of almost all of these are suspect, the mention of sale price being given in ‘rupaiya’, and repetition of the sale of the same plots of land and at the same price in several documents. And yet, hints of agriculture-related specifications are not irrelevant. Back-dating documents, most probably with the connivance of the village headmen concerned, was probably aimed at giving some age to these documents—the earliest one going back to 1538. The actual transaction may have taken place half a century later, in 1588. The sellers in all cases must have been headmen, though designated as ‘inhabitants’ (mutawaṭṭanān) of village Āriṭh. The facts that the land under transaction is identified as zamīn-i mauẓa‘ [the land of the village] and the sellers are also designated muqaddams [headmen]—‘panch mukadaman’ (in 1545)—only cast doubt on the sellers being just ‘individuals’. The buyer (Raghunāthdās) seems to have dealt with the ‘village oligarchs’. It may not have been the modern-day land mafia, but a nexus of the social elite of the village, that is, headmen, naturally set covetous eyes on the virgin land of the village, by selling which they could make a profit.
Of the sixteen Vrindavan-related documents, twelve sale-deeds were transacted in the 1590s. Plots of land in the hamlets of Nagū of village Dosāij/Dosāich, the paṭṭi/paṭī of Gopā, and in hamlet of Vrindavan proper were sold. In some cases, ‘individuals’ once again become mere subterfuge—the village headmen becoming the real operators. Some of these oligarchs are designated as zamīndār, ṭhākur, chaudhurī. Though the Gosā’ins are the major buyers, it also transpires that occasionally transactions were undertaken by village oligarchs on behalf of these Chaitanyites and, in one case, the purchase was made by a Gosā’in on behalf of Rāja Mān Singh of Amber (1594). Cases of joint property, with as many as thirteen sellers, being ‘all the panch, acting jointly’ (savpanchan milikari), are not unknown. That a panch could also mean ‘the principal man’ is shown by the allusion to ḥākim [chief officer] as ‘panch of the sarkār of Bayāna’ in a Braj document of 1596. It is equally interesting that, in two documents of the late 1590s, sellers call themselves ‘the panchāyat of the village (deh)’ of the Gopīnāth temple—the deh being presumably a hamlet in the vicinity of the temple. The presence of Muslims in the collective of sellers (e.g., 2/7; 3/13) demonstrates that the religious identity did not affect one’s position within the village community. The presence of three baqqāls (Baniyas) and one sarrāf (money changer, banker), as witnesses in a document of 1599, reveals that the business potentials of Vrindavan’s temples and pilgrims were now being recognised by wider and more resourceful sections of society.
The issues of the authority of the set of panch to sell ‘uncultivated land’ and headmen investing in land in expectation of making profit through appreciation of land prices must have had some effect on the livelihood of peasants of Vrindavan. In the wake of such developments, the positions of panch and ‘muqaddamī rights’ assumed added importance. Thus, as many as thirteen panch in the hamlet of Nagū in village Dosāich came together in 1594 to sell land called vithal-wārī, presumably meaning land which could only produce stunted crop (baithal), that is, ‘waste land’. It could perhaps not be a mere coincidence that all these panch/muqaddams were of the Gauruā caste. In subsequent times (mid-seventeenth century), almost all the panch whose caste is given turn out to be Gauruās. Indeed, Gauruās appear to be the most common among ordinary peasants as sellers. Further, the muqaddamī rights also got monetised (1/20th share in the tax) and could even be transferred to non-peasant classes, such as adhikārīs of temples.
In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the social fabric of landholders also produced some examples of non-Gauruās: Mālī [professional caste of flower and vegetable gardeners], kāchhī [market gardeners] and a bāda-farosh [wine-seller], probably of kalāl caste, are shown as landholders in documents of 1706, 1708 and 1725. A wine-seller is mentioned as a nirankālī [believer in a formless God] donor of a small single door temple in as early as 1600. Evidently, the growth of the temple town of Vrindavan as a pilgrims’ centre must have generated demands for the services of these non-Gauruā castes in Dosāich. Temple establishments were seekers of land ownership too (pp. 154–55) and, in one case, we find that they did not mind purchasing even ‘taxable land’. Temple lands must have been cultivated by their servants and hired labour, or through temporary lessees. Begār (forced labour, viṣṭi of the olden times), too, cannot be ruled out, for it is listed among exemptions that came with the land grants to devālas. By the way, all these modes of getting temple lands cultivated were practised in the ancient past as well.
Why did peasants sell their land to temples or priests? Any financial pressure? Or social pressure? Answers are not forthcoming. But in 1654, two Gauruā peasants sold three bīghas to the adhikārī of the Govind-dev temple. The land sold was zir‘ī
We have welcomed the recall of the concept of ‘Village Community’. However, its application in the BB on the basis of the unique Vrindavan documents appears to be somewhat restricted. These documents per se do not display the full gamut of the components of this notion. If criteria such as ‘self-sufficiency’, ‘joint/community-ownerships of land’ and services of service providers (chamārs, mālīs, kāchhis, etc.) are reflected in these documents, signs of the unity of agriculture and crafts/manufacturing, specially ‘petty production’, are not still visible. Hardly any light is thrown on land tax, rent, wages, and so on in the domain of agriculture and voices of cultivators/peasants and artisans remain unheard. The first edition of Professor Habib’s The Agrarian System (1963) could boldly defend the case of ‘Village Community’ even when the Vrindavan documents had not fallen in the hands of historians. In the second edition of his classic work (1999), too, the essential economic activities of such a village were rooted more in the non-Vrindavan documentary evidence.
The advice received by the legendary king Mahāvijita from his purohit [chaplain] is indicative of the sensitivity shown by political authorities towards the forces of society and economy. The counsel is spelt out thus:
To those in the kingdom who are engaged in cultivating crops and raising cattle, let Your Majesty distribute grain and fodder; to those in trade, give capital; to those in government service, assign proper living wages. Then those people, being intent on their own occupations, will not harm the kingdom [emphasis added].
19
Sā’dī Shīrāzī, the renowned Persian litterateur of the thirteenth century, is also known to have advised rulers of his time such kings who look after the welfare of peasants of the realm do not require to maintain armed forces. How far did the Mughal emperors and the state heed such aphorisms of pragmatic wisdom? Taking cognisance of quantitative data based on the madad-i ma‘āsh grants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Professor Moosvi had concluded:
[M]uch of the charity exercised was not intended to benefit the poor, but the “respectable” classes; … it went to maintain elite classes, such as priests, theologians, scholars, etc., groups that were supposed to have a role to play in sustaining the current political and social regime.
20
There were few receptive ears for either the purohit or the poet!
Micro Studies: Āriṭh and Rājpūr
Two micro-studies on villages of Āriṭh and Rājpūr introduce us to the mutations that we see in their developmental trajectories. Before we take cognisance of these, a short digression about the state of art in pre-modern rural studies might be helpful. The need to situate the twin case studies within the larger frame of ‘Village Community’ also makes that foray quite imperative. It is often said that peasants do not write their histories, they are written about. But how? That indeed is the moot question. The historians of pre-modern India haven’t had the luxury of a Montaillou or its documentation in the form of the Fournier Register. Without the classic study of Ladurie on that medieval village in the Pyrenees, 21 our understanding of the rural landscape of medieval Europe in general, and France in particular, would have been much poorer.
Going further back in point of time, if the English Heritage Trust had not funded the excavations at Flixborough, an early medieval (c. 600–1000) rural settlement in the East Midlands, undertaken between 1989 and 1991, we would have been in complete dark about the dynamics of this settlement. 22 The excavators have identified complexities of the settlement, taking cognizance of both its discontinuities and transformations. It is remarkable that excavators have combined the varied categories of evidence from these excavations with that from across Western Europe to place the settlement in context rather than adopt a jingoistic position to proclaim its glories, as is commonly done by archaeologists in India. 23
Nearer home, it would perhaps be a cliché to say that India lives in villages. And yet, neither the archaeologists nor historians of pre-modern India have paid much attention to the rural landscape. 24 Some early Pali texts mention the transformation of Pāṭaligāma (a village settlement) into an agga nagara [a premier city], which we have known as Pāṭaliputra (Patna in Bihar). However, in a rather more concrete form, Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya’s landmark study of 1990 brought Kalikaṭṭi, an early medieval village in South Karnataka, into focus. 25 It has yielded twelve inscriptions in addition to three more from other villages which refer to it. These allusions cover a span of about 100 years (c. 1130–c. 1230). Kalikaṭṭi had its distinct identity as a village with a composite society and not merely as an integral administrative unit of the Hoysaḷa domain. Chattopadhyaya demonstrates the passage of this settlement from an ur [rural settlement] to an agrahāra (involving a declaration of allegiance to the brahmanas by a dominant community of Kalikaṭṭi). Several water tanks of varying sizes, some privately owned and some others, perhaps owned by the dominant community, provided an important fulcrum of this transformation. In the case of Kalikaṭṭi’s transformation, there are hints of ill-concealed tension between the mahājanas (i.e., the brahmanas) and the sthānikas [heads of temples], perhaps on account of lack of clarity regarding land rights. 26
Kalikaṭṭi’s transformation offers several insights for comprehending the course of the development of Āriṭh, a village in the Mughal pargana of Sahār. It was a place with hardly any identity of its own prior to the arrival of the Gosā’ins of the Shri Chaitanya order. Apropos eleven Āriṭh-related documents spanning over half a century (from 1537–38 to 1588), noted above, the Raghunāthdās saga generated several ripples in a hitherto dormant social order. Invoking some questionable means, he was able to acquire several plots in ‘waste land’ infested with jungle and shrub. In hindsight, Raghunāthdās, a Gauḍīya Gosā’in, turned out to be quite, enterprising and far-sighted in investing his resources in land. By 1588, he managed to create several properties, namely, two ponds [tālāb] named Rādhākund and Krishnakund, a well [chāh], two retreats [kunj] (one each for Raghunāth and Jīv), and a small temple of Rādhākund. The ponds attracted further growth of properties—the kunj of Rādhāballabhajīū and of certain Māthurs (perhaps brahmans from Mathura), and a temple of Bihārījīū. The Āriṭh road was also laid out and moneyed men from Mathura seemed to vitiate the tranquil waters of the Rādhākund. When a high-rated crop of singhārā [water-chestnuts] was grown in the tank, the local Mughal administration intervened to stop it (1640–41), holding that the pond was dug ‘by a person for gaining merit’ and not for commercial use. Notwithstanding such hiccups, multi-caste (Gauruās, Gūjars, Bāgrīs) peasants and service groups of Chamārs contributed to the enrichment of Āriṭh. A sale-deed of 1667 mentions ‘the thala of Chamārān’, and a Braj sale-deed of 1728 records sale by two Chamārs, who were grandsons of one Manohara. Thus, a community of these leather workers also served the hamlet. 27
In the post-Shāhjahān decades and right up to the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the fortunes of Āriṭh were affected by intra-sectarian squabbles, mainly centring round succession issues. These took some ugly turns when a new ‘invention of tradition’ emerged in 1713. It was now being averred that Raghunāth had bequeathed his legacy not to Jīv Gosā’in but to Haridās and that the current incumbent was Jagannāth. Logically, then, this would negate the will of Jīv Gosā’in made in 1606 (in Sanskrit). On the whole, however, despite such petty affairs, the mutation of Āriṭh into Rādhākund and the emergence of something like ‘Vrindavan Estate’ could not be halted. The propensity of Mughal time villages to change and be also under the thumb of the state authority is difficult to miss. How much of this development percolated to peasants and artisans remains invisible, at least, in the Vrindavan documents.
The narrative of the village Rājpūr on the southern outskirts of the expanding township of Vrindavan is not as glamorous as that of Āriṭh. The adhikārīs of the Madan Mohan and Gopīnāth temples became the dramatis personae. Gopāldās, the sevak and pujārī of Madan Mohan temple, was the beneficiary of jāgīrdar Todar Mal’s parwāna of 1584, whereby he received tax-free 100 bīghas of
The record of other significant grants in Rājpūr comes from documents of 1719 and 1722 that allude to an earlier grant (1568–69) of Akbar’s time made in favour of Mādho/Mādhav Rāy Bangālī, priest of the Gopīnāth temple. This grant made more than 150 years earlier, comprised 100 old bīghas, reduced to 76 bīghas and 2 biswas after the introduction of gaz-i ilāhī. The grant now continued in the hands of Jagjīvan Dās and his descendants. The 1722 document makes it clear that this grant was in untaxed cultivable wasteland. In order to continue enjoying the exemption from tax liability, the grantee was expected to settle peasants here or otherwise arrange cultivation of the area.
Some areas of granted lands in Rājpūr fell under the khādar—the riverine-flood land that was home to shifting cultivation of rice and grazing for large herds of cattle. Surrounding this khādar land were ‘kisht of Kunbiwāra’, ‘khet Chamārān’ and ‘khet Rahār’. Kunbis specialised in intensive agriculture, specially tending vegetable gardens. Chamārs, the leather workers, as already noted, were service providers. Rahār perhaps signified the Rahwari caste, whose members tended camels. By 1732, parganas of Mathura and Sahār came under the jāgīr of Sawāi Jai Singh. It is notable that even substantive tenant farmers were expected to pay mahs[ūl (tax) on tax-free grants to the adhikārīs of the Madan Mohan temple.
Life of People in Braj Bhūm:
The two chapters (1 and 7) on people in Braj Bhūm and the peasants of Vrindavan, respectively, have some very illuminating details about the state of their health, literacy, language and religious affiliations. Sellers or witnesses involved in sale-deed documentation were mandated to appear before the qāzīs of the concerned areas. The Qāzī’s staff was expected to put on record ḥuliya of men and women. The earliest case of ḥuliya recording is of March 1653. Between 1669 and 1758, five recorded cases of ḥuliya of women appearing in the court of the Qāzī of Mathura give an idea of some aspects of appearance: wheatish complexion, broad forehead, wide eyebrows, dark grey eyes, and high nose are common to all, but only three have both their ears pierced, and the same number have holes in their left nostrils. Only one woman (Īsarwī) had neither her earlobes nor her nostrils pierced. She also had a black mole on her left cheek. We are, of course, not told anything about what the women wore or the ornaments, if any, they displayed. (All these appear to be better than the photographs appearing on our modern-day Aadhaar Cards!). Clearly, no purdah or ghūnghat [veil] was observed by non-Muslim women. However, one is left to speculate about the situation when Muslim women appeared before the qāzī! Men too were increasingly getting their ear lobes pierced. From 1702 onwards, one hardly finds anyone, whether among peasants or men of upper classes, with unpierced ears.
Literacy among peasants seems to have been almost non-existent. Not a single peasant, the panch included, seems to have known how to write. Sellers/witnesses could only affix marks [nisānī]. The only exception is offered by a bilingual document of 1654 where Alī
Insofar as the Vrindavan documents are concerned, the inter-religious relations appear quite cordial. In contrast, the intra-sectarian squabbles often crossed frontiers of decency. Alongside Aurangzeb’s destruction of the great Keshav Rāi temple of Mathura in 1670, we have evidence of the generous grants to temples and their priests in the Braj region being maintained under all Mughal emperors from Akbar to Aurangzeb: yes, including under Aurangzeb (ch. 5). The unprecedented official provision of income for the Gosā’ins through a levy on all the villages of the eighteen parganas of Braj Bhūm from 1704 onwards, noted above, also belongs to a late phase in Aurangzeb’s reign.
Surprisingly, as has been noted, there was a casual acceptance of the change of one’s religion, whether to Islam or Hinduism, with the legal and social status of the convert remaining unaffected. And qāzīs, too, recorded particulars implying such conversions almost routinely, without raising eyebrows. Commingling of religious idioms is found in a rare private letter in Persian that has also survived among the Vrindavan documents. Written by an avowed devotee of Jīv Gosā’in and addressed to one Mehta Sītaldās, in or before 1658, it has the Arabic invocation Allāhu Akbar at the top, while ‘Rām Rām’ is recited in salutation to the addressee in the main text. Hindu and Muslim witnesses appear together in several documents. An old Muslim cotton carder, named Ghāsī, stood as surety for three Hindu widows—Dayālī and her two daughters-in-law. Humanitarian ethos par excellence! [See also the next section of the article.]
What language did peasants speak? Nearly all peasants were unlettered, as we have noted. The language of the Vrindavan documents had to be Persian for all legal purposes. For the comprehension and consent of the locals as a party to any transaction, a version had to be drawn up and written out in Nagari or Kaithi in the local dialect, which we now call Braj. 28 This is a very fascinating area which has only been touched upon in the BB (pp. 158–60, 193). May we contextualise this discourse?
Long before the BB came to our hands, we had the privilege of listening to a lecture delivered by Professor Habib at the annual gathering called Jashn-e Rekhta in Delhi in 2017. The subject was ‘Dilli jo ek Shahr Thā’ [The Town that was Dilli/Delhi]. He spoke in Hindustani.
29
Though it was largely concerned with the spoken language of the inhabitants of Dilli, he extended the geographical expanse of the discourse and covered almost the whole of North India. In the process, he could explode the myth propagated by language purists such as Amrit Rai (1921–1996), the son of the renowned novelist Premchand, who had argued about Persianisation and imposition of Persian words in Hindi.
30
Habib had alluded to the comprehensive listing of almost all non-Persian (‘Hindavī) languages of India by Amīr
Fortunately, the case of women in the Vrindavan documents has now been extensively documented. In BB, these lie quite scattered. However, a cohesive presentation is now available in Professor Habib’s comprehensive article on the subject. 31 The most remarkable thing about notices on women is their plebeian character, which rarely appears in historical narratives. And still more significantly, their portrayal in the Vrindavan documents is in the form of full-blooded persona—their personal names, ḥuliyas, and so on. There is no example of a working woman—all being consigned to domestic network. We come to know them as wives, daughters, daughters-in-law, widows, mothers-in-law, and so on. They appear in sale-deeds as buyers and sellers (though not of agricultural land) and have no qualms in appearing before concerned officers of the state and getting their ḥuliyas recorded. Gangādāsī offered herself as a witness.
Women had shares in inherited property. Musammāt (Ms/Mst) Īsarwī, daughter of Bihārī and aged 50, was given a compensation of ₹40 for a hut constructed by her deceased father. She was probably the only surviving heir. In another case, Dayālī and her two daughters-in-law Jīū and Besākhā, all being widows, became sellers of a 79 square gaz land inherited from their respective deceased husbands. Daughters shared the paternal inheritance if there were no sons, but there is also a curious case where a daughter inherited property even when her brother (i.e., son of the deceased) was alive. Over a period of nearly one hundred years (between 1662 and 1760), duly identified five women, possibly inheriting properties as widows, donated them to the holy men of the Chaitanya sect. Three out of these five donors were wives of bankers/merchants and belonged to the Baniya caste. Regrettably, however, the menfolk were suspicious of ambitious women when they staked claims to get involved in temple affairs. Two women, Gobind Priyā and Kishan Priyā, were treated as dissidents, though the latter or her namesake had managed to manipulate headship of the Govind-dev temple after a long-festering dispute in the early eighteenth century. As an indicator of further control of the patriarchs, remarriage of widows was detested and communities permitting (Gauruā Ṭhākur/Rājputs, for example) this socially progressive move was, in fact, treated as inferior to others (pp. 152–53).
The Central Asian traveller Maḥmūd Bal
The last chapter in BB is an encyclopaedic dictionary of the who’s who of the Chaitanya sect at Vrindavan. Alphabetically arranged biographies of 110 Gosā’ins and mendicants of this sect between c. 1550 and c. 1740 have been worked out very meticulously (among these, there were three Bangālīs, one Udiya, three brahmans, one Gauḍīya brahman, two kāyasthas, one of whom became a Brahman). Details of each one of them are arranged chronologically with numerous cross references. We could identify two omissions: of the six primary disciples (Gosā’ins) known to have been sent by Chaitanya to Braj/Vrindavan, that is, Rūp, Sanātan, Jīv, Gopāl Bhaṭṭa, Raghunāthdās and Raghunāth Bhaṭṭa, Gopāl Bhaṭṭa and Raghunātha Bhaṭṭa do not figure in this encyclopaedia.
The Vrindavan documents have come down to us because their possessors believed that these were relevant to their claims over properties, priestly offices or personal rights. Thanks to them, lively narratives of usurpations, pretentious claims, misrepresentations, expulsions, forged sanads/farmāns, evictions, fraud, theft of ornaments, gold, silver, pearls, cloth, utensils, ox and a cart from Gopī Rāman’s ḥavelī (1724), Kishan Priyā’s complaint of her servant being ‘beaten up’, and so on, have survived. These are genuine indicators of internal functioning of the sect and its relations with the administrative apparatus of the state.
Looking Beyond the Vrindavan Documents?
Finally, we would like to raise an issue, that might appear to many readers as ‘external’ to the Vrindavan documents which form the basis of the monograph under review. Our take is that the monograph is not confined to these unique documents, and it has adduced a substantial amount of evidence from several other textual and archival resources spanning the entire Mughal period. Could the insights emanating from the Vrindavan documents be juxtaposed to signals coming out of other contemporary and competing religious sects? And could the overall disposition of the Mughal state vis-à-vis these sects with its predilection towards conscious intervention in their affairs be situated in the broader canvas of the ‘Bhakti Movement’? Our response to both the supplementary questions would be in the affirmative, recalling the state’s intervention in the dispute between the Gauḍīya Vaishnavas and the Vallabhites figuring in the Vrindavan documents.
There is a reference to the original copperplate grant from the time of the Emperor Jahāngīr in favour of the Vaishnavas of the Pindori gaddi (Gurdaspur district, Panjab) being preserved, though not traceable now, at the daughter-shrine of Damtal (near Pathankot). The memoirs of Jahāngīr also make tangential allusion to some affairs of this establishment. 33 Emperor Shāhjahān’s farmān of 1631 mentions Goswami Viṭṭhalrāi of Puṣṭimārg buying land in Jatipura/Gopālpur from zamīndārs and funding the construction of buildings, gardens, cowsheds, kārkhānās (workshops) for the temple of Govardhan in Jatipura village, adjoining Gokul. The funds for these works perhaps came from merchant followers. 34 That the Mughal emperors kept their eyes on religious groups beyond the Gauḍīya Vaishnavas of BB, therefore, need not be contested. However, the stroke of our brush on the aforesaid broad canvas will need to go beyond the binary of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’. Even if our inferences of the presence of such identities during the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries may have been derived from personal names of individuals, the use of these terms in the Vrindavan documents is conspicuous by their absence.
Some anthologies of provocative essays have been brought out since the 1990s. These collaborative studies have explored not only the multiplicity within a given religious tradition but also focused on the exchanges across the various religious communities in North India from c. 1500 to c. 1800, thereby presenting a panoramic view of religious interactions during the period broadly regarded as Mughal. 35 Close intertwining of religious traditions with political power, while also highlighting the diversity of traditions in active conversation with one another, becomes quite manifest. Inter- and intra-sectarian conflicts for acquiring material resources through state patronage and power to control social relations became guiding principles of almost all religious orders. Second, perhaps no religious order could claim to be ‘monolithic’ for any length of time. Additionally, the religious scenario appears to have been marked by growing competition of identifying the -itar [the other]. In the fifteenth century, Munisundaras[ū]ri, the leader of the Tapā Gachchha, mercilessly satirised Śaiva clerics and monks, who were a prominent feature of rural Gujarat in the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries, in his Bhara[t]aka-dvātriṁśikā. 36 The Mūrtipūjakas, Sthānakvāsis and Terāpanthis emerged within the Śvetāmbaras and the linguistic dyad of Jain and Jainetara (‘Jain’ and ‘other than Jain’) got formed. And like the shifting pāṣaṇḍa/pāṣaṇḍin of ancient times, the frontiers of the Jainetara were also very fluid.
The mutations within the Vaishnavas have also thrown up very challenging issues. The Dabistān-i-Mazāhib is a phenomenal text of the Mughal times (completed in or little after 1653) on comparative religion, apparently written with painstaking research. 37 It mentions ‘four sects’ of the Vaishnavas, namely, Madhu Achāris or Brahma Sampradāya founded by Madhvāchārya; Rāmānandis; Harbayāntis and the Rādhāvallabhīs. 38 This rubric is intended to show how the theological and initiatory lineages established by Rāmānuja, Nimbāraka, Madhva and Viṣṇusvāmī in the south all travelled north in time and set up shop in a new way. 39 This is a rather simplistic narrative. At least in North India, behind this meta-narrative of ‘four sampradāyas’ were countless ‘searchers of the Self’, who should not be labelled as ‘small’ and ‘big’ or ‘high’ and ‘low’, or always mutually antagonistic.
The hagiographical writings about the ‘four sampradāyas’, too, show greater predilection towards identifying ‘the Other’ among themselves. The Puṣṭimārgī Vallabhites, in their Chaurāsi Vaishnavan kī Vārtā, reserve their utmost scorn for devotees of the Keshavdevrāi temple in the heart of the Braj country and even ensured the ouster of the Gauḍīya Vaishnavas from the shrine of Shrīnāthjī at Govardhan. Chaitanya is accused of divine madness. One of the devotees of Thākurji (Shrīnāthjī) abuses Mīrābai of Krishna devotion fame as Ḍari Rānd [scared prostitute]. The Śaivas, the Devi, ‘folk’ deities, worshippers of Śani devatā, that is, the Dakotas, and so on, are all branded as ‘the Other’ and strongly vilified. Even vis-à-vis the Mughals/Muslims, their attitudes range from indifference to mild hostility, but sometimes becoming quite positive. They are mlechchhas, but sometimes even righteous mlechchhas. Muslims are also occasionally referred to in the vārtā literature (c. sixteenth–seventeenth centuries) only in terms of their ethnic identity as ‘Pathans’ or ‘Turks’. Pragmatism, which essentially meant state patronage and also the patronage of the affluent commercial class, the mercantile communities, emerges as a major determining factor of these relations. 40 Long ago, Kosambi had pointed out that medieval Bhakti and its reform ‘was never consciously directed against feudalism, so that its very success meant feudal patronage’. 41
Amid these internecine battles of ‘othering’, narratives forging ‘Hindu kingships’ and their patronage to Vaishnav orders, particularly in the declining phase of the Mughals in the eighteenth century in some regions, look fanciful. 42 The Vrindavan documents tell us about (a) the phenomenal state patronage of the Gauḍīya Vaishnavas (the Gosā’ins of the Chaitanya Order), (b) occasional dispute between the Gosā’ins and the Vallabhites and (c) land grants to the Chaitanyites, affected by disturbances of the Jāts, but restored by the Mughal authorities. However, these documents do not tell us much about the class of merchants and moneylenders, though an occasional banker and a baqqāl (Banya) patronised Gosā’ins in their personal capacities. That the Mughal economy was thriving and also contributing significantly to the international commerce is known from many other texts. How much of this pie went to innumerable religious establishments? If pre-Turkish North Indian scenario is considered for comparison, the urge for grabbing the largest possible chunk out of this pie by such establishments must have been quite strong. But did the strong Mughal state oblige them? If, yes, why and how much? This necessitates some exclusive and extensive discussion, preferably in a separate chapter. Specially, insofar as these affected the forging of monolithic religious identities in terms of untenable binaries of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’.
Addenda & Corrigenda
The BB (pp. 8–9) provides a short Glossary of Terms relating to Persian Documents. We felt the need of adding the following terms to help the non-specialist but curious reader of this stupendous work:
adhikār/adhikārī, management ārāzī, measured land ‘āriyatan, on lease, by way of loan ‘amla, building material amlāk, grant-land chobdār, macebearer daro deh, village dehra, temple fuqarā, mendicants gadāī, mendicancy gahnāī, security against loan gumāshta, agent ḥāṣilāt, income, receipts ijāra, farm jāhā, places, seats kārinda, agent kār kyārī pātrīvārī, dressed fields mazrū‘, cultivated land musammāt, =Ms naddāf, cotton-carder nishastgāh, seat paharāvanī, garments pichora, cloth pisar-i-luṭfī, adopted son qaum, sept, caste rozīna, cash grant (daily rated) sākhī, witness (might be apabhraṁśa of sākṣī) sā sar-shumārī, per-head tax sayāḥat, travelling, pilgrimage s]ālis]ān, mediators ṣamdiyat, Divinity sikhaya, disciple silsila, family/line tamām qad, full height tamlīk, gift, transfer of property gratis t]anāb, measuring rod uftāda, wasteland wakīl, agent ẓāmin, surety zamīn-i zirā‘ati, cultivated land zar- zir‘ī
There are some very minor typos (pp. 113, 145, 247, etc.), which even a casual reader would be able to handle. However, the following typos need correction or clarification: (a) p. 119, sixth line from the top: Doc. No. 253 appears to be the same as No. 252 (cited in the SIP article on Women, p. 143); (b) p. 134, Section III, 4th line: Doc. 18 to be read as Doc. 19; and (c) p. 238, it should be 22 mans of wheat (not 2 mans) spent on the funeral feast of Narāyan, the correct figure being given on p. 244. I understand the author has inserted a corrigendum re. page 169, fn. 17, first paragraph, deleting the entire sentence beginning: ‘Incidentally, half a bigha…’.
Here is a monograph that is a product of the passion of two very committed authors, one of whom was its principal catalyst but unfortunately is no more with us. Both, the late Dr Tarapada Mukherjee and Professor Irfan Habib, have put us in great debt through their academic tapasyā of more than three decades. Discovery of a bhaṇḍāra-like set of the Vrindavan documents happens very rarely, and then it is equally rare to find scholars who are not only competent to handle them but also willing to spend valuable years of their lifetime to bring them into the public domain. Further, deciphering them, creating a calendar of the earlier documents and, finally, putting all of them in perspective to make cohesive historical sense must have been a herculean task. The world of historical research and discipline stands enormously enriched.