Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c14.19

c14.19

The *Ain-i-Akbari* and other similar works giving data about the wages of servants and labourers, in consequence indirectly giving the value of slaves as a market commodity. W.H. Moreland observes that some of the men employed on various works were free, while others were slaves, but the functions assigned to the two classes were to a great extent interchangeable and, therefore, for our purpose it is relevant to treat them as a single group, and the price of slaves may be estimated on the basis of wages paid to the free labourer. In Mughal India, in the reign of Akbar (sixteenth century), and as seen by Bernier (seventeenth century), Freemen were hired at rates which sufficed for a little more than a bare existence a servant with no special qualifications cost about 1 ½ rupees monthly at Akbars court, and perhaps 2 on the west coast Pyrard puts the price of a slave-girl at the equivalent of about 50 rupees in Goa, which was a very busy market for such commodities, but the rate must have varied between very wide limits, depending as it did partly on the qualities of the individual and partly on fluctuations in the supply.³⁸ This price of 40 to 50 rupees for a slave paid by the English was the average, the earlier reference shows that the Dutch demand had raised prices to about this level from the former standard of Rs. 15 to 20.³⁹ The wages of free men, that is, labourers and not slaves, were equally low. But the proportion of slaves, who were valued as property, was more considerable than that of servants, who can be computed only as an expense. It was more to the interest of rulers, nobles, merchants and manufactures to purchase than to hire their workmen. In the countryside, slaves were employed as the cheapest and most laborious instruments of agriculture. But medieval slavery was more necessary for urban service. So rural populations were made captives and brought for work in cities. Rural slaves and servants were not bought on the market but reproduced themselves through demographic increase. In the cities themselves there was no dearth of them. Pelsaert and so many other foreigners noted that men stood in the market to be hired and most of the great lords reckon 40 days to the month, and pay from 3 to 4 rupees for that period.⁴⁰ Akbar sanctioned the following daily wages for workers and artisans - 2 *dams* (copper coins, 140 to the *Rupia*) for ordinary labourers, 3 to 4 *dams* for superior labourers, 3 to 7 *dams* for carpenters and 5 to 7 *dams* for builders.⁴¹ In several instances the lowest grades of servants were entitled to less than two rupees monthly, while the bulk of the menials and of the ordinary foot-soldiers began at less than three rupees The minimum for subsistence at the Court is probably marked by the lowest grade of slaves who were allowed one dam daily, equivalent to three-quarters of a rupee monthly in the currency of the time These instances appear to justify the conclusion that early in the seventeenth century foreigners could secure capable servants for somewhere about three rupees a month. What this represents in real wages is uncertain (but) the rates struck the Europeans as extraordinarily low⁴²