Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c6.s1: Rural Life
Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c6.s1
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Rural Life
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*General remarks* :-- India is an essentially agricultural country even to-day and its economic structure is very different from an industrial country.¹ In India, the source of production is land; its power, the ploughing animal; and its implements, the wooden plough, the toothed harrow, the smoothing board, the levelling beam, the sowing drill and a few others, for instance the pick and the hoe, various contrivances for raising water, a few mattocks, spades and rakes. The proportion of land which is irrigated by canals is still not very large and the crops usually depend on favourable monsoons at the appropriate seasons.² There are no violent dislocations of economic life except for periodical famines, a locust pest or, as it used to be in olden times, a band of invaders. When these epidemics have passed, life in the countryside resumes its normal activity. The life is essentially stereotyped and unprogressive, but extremely simple and continuous. Usually a whole community of people claiming a common descent and bound by a number of common social and religious ties, inhabits a number of adjoining villages. The village is usually composed of a number of such communities (or *baradaris*, ‘brotherhoods’). Given favourable monsoons and not too exacting an administration, the Indian peasant as a rule feels quite satisfied with his lot. He meets the ordinary demands of his everyday life with a cheerful heart and goes about his vocation with a feeling not very different from happiness and contentment. Under these conditions, if he finds suitable opportunity, he confers one of his many chlildren in marriage and invites to the celebration practically all his community and friends, as far as his means permit him. In his leisure hours he sings his popular ballads and folk songs in the common village courtyard (*chowpal*). The younger ones gather round in another corner and recite their favourite ghost stories and other lore. Under unfavourable conditions, the peasants, and particularly the women folk, resort more frequently to their gods and deities or the spirits of their forefathers and popular saints and in response to their prayers and offerings watch eagerly for clouds with a tearful eye. In the worst extremities of life they are reconciled to the irresistible workings of fate (*kismet*) and take misfortunes and disaster with a superhuman calmness and passive resignation. Life has very few good things to offer to stimulate their desires or promise their fulfilment. This has been the basis of Indian agricultural life for untold centuries in Hindustan.
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¹ Compare Indian Year Book, 1931, p.29 for the present classification of occupations :--‘If we add the pastoral and hunting occupations, the percentage (of agricultural population) rises to 73, while a considerable portion of the unfortunately large number of persons in the category of vague and unclassifiable occupations are probably labourers closely connected with the occupations of the land’.
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² The irrigated area was 12.1% of the total cropped area in 1931 (vide, I.Y.B., 1931).
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The attitudes of mind and modes of thought that have grown out of these conditions have moulded the life of an Indian village community. We have referred to its political aspect in an earlier chapter. Economically speaking, the village is a self-sufficient unit with an organic and well developed economic structure, if by organic life we mean the team wrok of a community to supply the needs and to fulfil the desires of its members. In fact, if an Indian village community were isolated physically from the rest of the world (as it is psychologically, in most cases) its economic organization would remain more or less unaffected. The leading feature of an Indian village community is a harmonious co-ordination of the specialized functions of its various component groups of workers. Everyone has his special function assigned to him; in fact, he is also born and brought up to it. For instance, of the various social groups, the husbandman takes to the tilling and the harvesting of crops which provide food for all the members of a village community. The rest of the members contribute to the productive process in a subsidiary manner. The women folk lend a hand in the various forms of farm labour, and look after animals and stock. The carpenters employ themselves in making and mending ploughs and other implements, the cultivator supplying them with wood. The blacksmiths supply the iron parts of the implements and repair them when necessary. The potters supply the household utensils. The cobblers make and mend the plough harness and shoes. In fact, everyone has his contribution to make, the washerman, the barber, the cowherd, the milkman, the water-carrier, the scavenger, even the beggar, the priest, the astrologer and the popular doctor and magician. Again, the produce of the field feeds a number of rural industries for instance, the making of ropes and baskets and the manufacture of sugar, scents, oils, etc. It finds occupation for a number of crafts namely, those of weavers, leather-workers, dyers, woodworkers and calico-printers. A group of people is set apart for the exchange of village produce. In one quarter of an Indian village, one comes across a tiny market where grain, cloth, sweetmeats, and other necessities of life are sold by petty shopkeepers. There is sometimes even a money-changer in a corner of the village market who changes coppers and cowries for silver and makes a small fortune in the process of conversion. Sometimes, the services of the local goldsmith come to his aid in testing the purity of the metal of a coin. The periodical fairs serve for bigger exchanges of commodities and for the supply of what one might call the luxuries of peasants, e.g., copper and mixed metal utensils, lead and tinsel ornaments, children’s toys, etc. The Indian village is not without its local politicians and even statesmen. The *chowpal* is full of discussions about individual quarrels and questions of caste behaviour. Somebody is even deeply thinking of the dangers of commercial wealth of village shopkeepers and expounds his political theories with all the pretensions of a Demonsthenes.¹ But outside their particular village or group of neighbouring villages, the rest of the world is one big mystery for them. This has been the structure of an Indian village in Hindustan, though signs of its decay are fast approaching under the strain of new economic forces.²
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¹ Compare I.K., III, 49; compare Gupta, Bengal, etc., 158 for the remarks of an old Bengali poet and writer on the wealth of the village petty shopkeepers :—‘They sell and buy and in the process they draw to themselves the wealth of the people’.
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² Compare a description of a village organization in I.G.I.; IV, 280-281; also Gupta, Bengal, etc., 163.
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In the period under review, the village community was a working institution in full vigour, and determined the economic outlook of the vast majority of the population of Hindustan. Its leading economic feature was production mainly for purposes of local consumption. Industries on a large scale were carried on in a few localized areas which were as a rule situated at the mouth of certain navigable rivers through which raw materials could be imported with facility, or else in the close vicinity of an area where raw material was available in sufficient quantities to feed them. Apart from a very few inland centres of other provinces, Bengal and Gujarat, because of their shipping facilities, were the chief industrial provinces which worked certain industries, collected the surplus of finished products from the inland centres of other provinces and exported them abroad. In this manner, while the vast majority occupied itself with agricultural pursuits, a small proportion engaged in trade and industry, and a few rich people lived on commerce with foreign nations.¹ This gave rise to a little urban life in a few big towns which also served as the seat of local or provincial administration. The towns were usually walled and protected and also served as centres of refuge to the neighbouring population in times of danger and insecurity. In times of peace, they served as centres of distribution of agricultural produce and industrial goods. In general we might say that though the towns led the country in social and intellectual culture, they were not of sufficient economic importance to modify the economic outlook of the people as a whole.²
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¹ Compare, the observations of Mahuan in Bengal. *J.R.A.S.*, 1895, p.530.
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² Compare the Indian Year Book (1931), p.22 for the ratio of 10.2: 89.8 between the urban and the rural population of India. 'The progress of urbanization in India—if there has been any progress at all—has been very slow during the past thirty years, the whole increase being less than one per cent.' p.21, *ibid.*
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An important factor in the economic life of the people was the administrative machinery. It shared the fruits of peasant labour and employed industrial labour on a small scale. In its turn, it gave some sort of security for the peaceful pursuit of agricultural vocations and incidentally gave certain facilities for the transport of goods from one part of the country to another. On the whole, any big improvement in the method of production, a more equitable distribution of the economic wealth or a better adjustment of the economic position of the various social classes, was outside the policy of the State. On the other hand, as has been shown above, the State was interested in perpetuating the low standard of economic life of the masses of the people. The economic framework of society worked as best it could within the limits of its productive capacity. It involved division into classes, disparity of incomes and a general degradation of the status of the productive labourer, but all these social factors had been adjusted into the system, over which a structure of culture and artistic developments was raised which still endears itself to all sorts of social dreamers and political philosophers. There was no economic revolution, for none was wanted. The land was almost limitless in potential wealth and resources and equally vast in extent which set serious limits to administrative exactions and to the domination of the ruling classes as a whole. Finally, there was no established standard of comfort, a fact which made matters easier for the ruling classes.
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1. *The produce of the land.*—Nearly all cultivation was done on land which furnished food for men and fodder for animals.¹ It is difficult to speak of the size of an average holding or even of the proportion of the population which took to active husbandry. We can roughly state that leaving aside those who were engaged in domestic labour and crafts, all others took to cultivation on land. There are no detailed references to the system of cultivation then in vogue, but probably it was not very different from the present system.² The agricultural produce of the country as a whole could not have been very different from what it is to-day except for the newly introduced cultivation of tobacco, tea, coffee and the extension of jute crop and the like. It appears, however, that medicinal herbs, spices and fragrant wood were grown in larger quantities, and found a market in and outside India. Pulses, wheat, barley, millet, peas, rice, sesame and oilseeds, sugarcane and cotton were the chief crops.¹ The area round about Kara and Manikpur (near Allahabad) was considered to be exceptionally fertile and grew good quality rice, sugarcane, and wheat which were exported to Delhi in great quantities.² As a result of canal irrigation introduced under Firuz Shah Tughluq, the area round Hissar and Firuzabad added to the existing cultivation of sesame and pulses the culture of wheat and sugarcane.³ Among other improved crops, the rice of Sirsuti was reputed for quality and found a ready market in Delhi.⁴ The usual method of storing the stock of grain was in grain-pits or khattees which preserved the grain for a very long time.⁵
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¹ Compare A.A., I, 79-80; *ibid.*, II, 6, for the crops of *singhara, salak*, *khus, kaseru*, which are grown on the surface of water and probably existed before Akbar, as they did under him, but their proportion to land crops was negligible.
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² Compare K.K., 709, where Amir Khusrau, beyond praising the skill and ingenuity of Indian peasants in general terms, gives no details. Compare K.R., II, 145, for the employment of Persian water-wheels on the Meghna in Bengal. Compare for a parallel the use of Persian water-wheels in Samarqand in the 13th century. Britschneider, I, 76; compare their use in Oudh (mentioned by Malik Muhammad Jaisi) under the name of *Rahat*, P., 52. Compare Babur's account in B.N., 249-50, for a more systematic survey. He refers to the use of Persian wheels in Lahore, Dipal-pur, Sirhind and thereabout; the use of large leather buckets (*pur*) drawn by a pair of bullocks in Agra, and Bayana; and the use of what is now called a *Dhenkli* for a constant supply of water. For a description of *dhenkli* see I.G.I., XXI, 125-6. Compare also Macauliffe, I, 22, for similar arrangements in other parts of Hindustan.
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¹ Compare, in connection with the growth of cotton, the cultivation of a kind of giant cotton plant (Deva kapas) growing full six paces in height and attaining an age of twenty years. Up to twelve years, the tree grew good spinning cotton. Vide Yule, II, 393, and note. For the introduction of smoking under Akbar, the Memoirs (waqai‘) of Asad Khan, composed under Jahangir.
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² K.R., II, 24.
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³ B., 568.
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⁴ K.R., II, 14.
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⁵ I.K., V, 66. For a description of Khattee, compare Tod, III, 1563 :— ‘These pits or trenches are fixed on elevated dry spots, their size being according to the nature of the soil. All the preparations they undergo are the incineration of certain vegetable substances and lining the sides and bottom with wheat or barley stubble. The grain is then deposited in the pit, covered over with straw, and a terrace of earth, about eighteen inches in height, and projecting in front beyond the orifice of the pit, is raised over it. This is secured with a coating of clay and cow-dung which resists even the monsoon and is renewed as the torrents injure it. Thus the grain may remain for years without injury while the heat which is extricated checks germination, and deters rats and white ants. Masalik-ul-absar, however, notes that the colour of the grain underwent a change through long storage.
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Among the fruits of the Gangetic plains, the mango was especially popular. The mango was easily the best of all fruits, even preferable to the melons of Islamic countries.⁶ This, however, is a delicate point, for Babur never forgets the melons of his country when he goes about Hindustan. In fact, he had some of the best musk melon plants of Kabul brought to India and planted in his garden at Agra.¹ Even some time after Babur, the cultivation of these melons was not extensive in Hindustan.² Among other fruits we may note the growth of a variety of grapes, dates, pomegranates, plantains, Indian melons, peaches, apples, oranges, grape-fruit, figs, lemons, *karna*, *jhong*, *khirnee*, *jaman*, jack-fruits and numerous others.³ Cocoanuts were abundant on the coasts.
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⁶ Compare the estimate of Amir Khusrau, Q.S., 166-7. Compare W.M., 74 for an interesting discovery of the Tradition of the Prophet in support of the superiority of the mango.
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¹ B.N., 357.
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² Compare the account of Haji Dabir who was provided with some melons in Delhi, but they were obviously not indigenous. Z.W., II, 770.
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³ Compare the account of Barani and Afif, B., 569-70, A., 128, in addition to Amir Khusrau in Q.S., 166-7.
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The Sultans of Delhi and other rulers appear to have taken pains to improve the quality of Indian fruit and the system of gardening as a whole. Firuz Tughluq carried out a big programme of laying gardens, which led to a general improvement in the quality of most of the fruits mentioned above.⁴ According to his chronicler, he laid out 1,200 gardens in the neighbourhood and in the suburbs of Delhi, eighty on the Salora embankment, and forty-four in Chitor.⁵ Rajputana maintained and even extended this tradition of laying gardens. Apart from Chitor, Dholpur, Gwalior, and Jodhpur, other places also took up the improved methods of fruit cultivation and gardening. In Dholpur especially, gardens shaded the route to the city for a distance of seven krohs (about 14 miles)⁶. Special attention was paid to the culture of pomegranates in Jodhpur, and the Lodi Sultan Sikandar confidently declared that Persia could not produce pomegranates which would compare favourably with the Jodhpur variety in flavour.⁷
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⁴ Compare also A., 295-6, for these improved varieties, especially seven different varieties of grapes.
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⁵ *Ibid.*
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⁶ Compare the fruits of Chitor in the time of Malik Muhammad Jaisi. P., 419-20; compare T.A., I, 324. for the destruction of Jodhpur gardens by the soldiers of Sikandar Lodi.
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⁷ Compare the account of *Tarikh-i-Daudi*, f. 45. Compare Amir Khusrau’s description of a ‘smiling pomegranate’ in *I.K.*, IV, 330.
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The culture of flowers is of very ancient date in Hindustan. They have been remarkable for their charm, smell and variety. A number of them like the *Tulsi* and the marigold have become partly sacred, being associated with many religious rites and offerings. The gift of flowers was a common courtesy among the Hindus. Important social occasions and domestic ceremonies were always accompanied by offers of flowers and flower-garlands. For instance, it was difficult to imagine a newly wedded couple or their bed without wreaths of flowers. Whole chapters of their books have been devoted by Amir Khusrau and Malik Muhammad Jaisi to the description of the flowers of the land. We will revert to flowers at the close of our paper. It is worth while remembering in this connection that Babur did not make any improvement in the quality or the variety of Indian flowers in his kingdom, beyond introducing a variety of rose from Gwalior into his garden at Agra.¹
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¹ Compare T.F., I, 391. ² Q.S., 101. ³ For instance ‘Mukhlisa’, E.D., II, 239. ⁴ Compare Yule, II, 393.
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Reference in this connection may be made to fragrant woods, for instance, sandal-wood and aloes, which were grown in Hindustan. Assam was specially reputed for a particular quality of aloe-wood which was sent as an offering to some of the most famous temples in the land. Bughra Khan did not forget to include some of this wood among his gifts to his son, Sultan Mu'izz-du-din Kaiqubad.² Similarly certain medicinal herbs used as antidotes for poisons and for snake-bites, were grown in the country.³ Among spices, pepper and ginger and other spices were grown in some parts of Gujarat in large quantities.⁴
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An enumeration of domestic and wild animals and fowl is difficult, for their number is legion. In the absence of the present land communications and the measures of security which have led to the elimination of considerable numbers of wild animals, it is easy to picture the old landscape full of wild and domesticated animals. Outside Africa and Australia, India is still one of the few countries which possess a great variety of wild animals. Among the species which have now become rare, if not extinct, were the rhinoceros, a variety of hunting falcons and the lion.
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2. *Village Manufactures and Cottage Industries.*—On the basis of agricultural produce, a number of crafts and industries were carried on on a small scale in the village. The labour employed in these industries was hereditary; the implements and the method of work were both crude and the output meagre. But through generations of exclusive employment and inherited traditions of efficiency and skill, the quality of the products was excellent and their artistic value great. The social status and the limited opportunities of village craftsmen discouraged them from making progress beyond certain limits. Moreover, they were not adequately protected against administrative oppression.¹ The introduction of Muslim craftsmen may have done something towards removing the social disabilities of the class as a whole, but in the long run Muslim influence succumbed to the older traditions. When Babur came to Hindustan no appreciable modification in the social character of these vocations was visible, for he finds all the craftsmen organized in rigid and exclusive castes.²
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¹ Compare Amir Khusrau I.K., II, 19-20, for oppressive regulations in the case of oil manufacturers of Delhi; compare also Gupta, Bengal, etc. 158, for the position of betel-leaf sellers in the colony of Bir in Bengal who in case of oppression could not offer any resistance beyond a wail of despair, ‘*duhai*’.
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² Compare also P., 19: Macauliffe, I, 284; K.K., 740.
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The more important manufactures based on agricultural produce were those of unrefined sugar, scents and spirits. We will refer to sugar later on. Scents and scented waters were manufactured where facilities existed for the development of the industry. A whole class of scent merchants, for instance, existed in Bengal and were known as *Gandha Baniks*.³ Rose-water was commonly used to sprinkle on friendly gatherings and social parties for its cooling and refreshing effect. Among other scents, Malik Muhammad Jaisi makes a particular mention of two strong scents or ottos named *Maidu* and *Chuvai*, but their specific variety is not clear.⁴
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³ Gupta, Bengal, etc. 163.
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⁴ P. (hin) 143; compare also T.M. (II), 124, for a present of an elephant load of white and red flowers and of a variety of scents ‘the smell of which looked down upon the gardens of paradise’ which Qutub-ud-din Aibak presented to Muhammad bin Sam of Ghur.
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The manufacture of spirits and liquors is very old in Hindustan. In very ancient days beers were manufactured from unrefined sugar, *mahwa*, barley cakes and rice.⁵ To this Amir Khusrau also adds the use of sugarcane in the manufacture of drinks.¹ Other varieties were made out of Indian date-palm and cocoanut juice.² In Bengal, where facilities for the manufacture of practically all varieties of strong drink existed, spirits were openly sold in the markets.³
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⁵ Compare J.A.S.B., 1906, J.C. Ray—‘Hindu method of manufacturing spirits’.
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¹ K.K., 740, 772; also B., 285.
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² Compare Mahuan, *J.R.A.S.*, 1895, 541; also Vambery 29. For the variety manufactured from Mahua (Bassia Latifolia) compare Ibn Batuta K.R., II, 11 who compares it to the taste of dates ‘dried in the sun’. Compare Babur who finds this drink distasteful. B.N., 26. For its strong intoxicating effect see P., 329. Babur considers the drink manufactured from the palm ‘on the whole, good stuff’ and the other variety from cocoanut, quite strong and nice. B.N., 262. Nicolo Conti speaks of a cheap beer made of ground rice and mixed with water and some ‘redde coloure’ all tempered with the juice of ‘Tall’ tree. Frampton, 137.
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³ Compare Mahuan *J.R.A.S.*, 1895, 531.
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Among other important manufactures, mention may be made of a variety of oils, which were manufactured through the familiar process of the oil-press (ghan) still in use at the present day.⁴
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⁴ Compare Gupta, Bengal, etc. 158.
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Among home industries, the most important were those of the weaving and spinning of cotton. The various processes of weaving and spinning were the same as are employed in Indian villages to-day.⁵ The finished piece of cloth was sold by the piece and even by weight for cash payment or in return for other goods. Other minor industries included cap-making, shoe-making and the making of arms of all kinds, especially bows and arrows. The better class of bow-makers used silk for bow-strings, cane for the arrows and steel for arrow-heads. The blacksmiths had a fairly busy time. The process of smelting iron-ore was widely understood by blacksmiths. Besides various agricultural implements and arms of iron, locks, keys, and razors were articles of common use in Indian homes.⁶ Goldsmiths and silversmiths had attained even greater skill in their work, to which reference will be made later. *Jarau* or inlay work had become very popular and all classes of women, rich and poor, were fond of using ornaments with inlay-work.⁷
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⁵ Compare two very interesting descriptions of the processes given by Kabir, who was the son of a weaver (*vide* Shah, 125, 169, 102) and Lalla of Kashmir (*vide* Temple, 225).
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⁶ Compare I.K., IV, 47-9; B., 365; K.K., 744, 749.
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⁷ Compare *Akharawat*, 25-6, for the fondness of poor women-folk for *Jarau* work; also G., 13, where A.S. Beveridge considers *‘Jarau’* as ‘*Jawahir*’ or jewels. The term is used even at the present day in the original sense of inlay-work.
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A class of craftsmen in Bengal also worked conch-shell into various ornaments. Brass-workers similarly, employed themselves in making jugs, cups, large plates of brass, cooking and other vessels, bells, idols, lamp-stands, betel-leaf boxes, etc.¹ There was even a class of drum-makers and makers of other musical instruments.² Other modest industries consisted of the making of ropes and baskets, earthen pots, leather-buckets, fans, etc. etc.
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¹ Compare Gupta, Bengal, etc. 162-3.
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² Ibid., 158.
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3. *Standard of economic life.*—To complete the discussion of rural life, a word may be added as to the standard of economic life in the villages. Of the produce of land, a large share went to the state, in the form of the land-tax and various perquisites. Of the remainder, a customary share was fixed for various classes of domestic and other labourers. The peasant and his family kept the rest for their own use, gradually consuming the produce, and making special use of it on the great occasions of domestic life, namely, at birth, marriage and funeral celebrations. A certain proportion went to the share of the priest and the temple, and the rest was consumed by the peasant and his stock of domestic animals. In a certain sense the menial and domestic labourers, for instance the carpenter, the smith, the potter, the washerman, the scavenger, etc. were better off, for no animals and not many respectable priests encumbered their lives. Their despised isolation gave them some sort of security against external interference. Like the peasants they also spent their meagre resources on domsestic ceremonies and the upkeep of family customs, and lived on a bare pittance, usually indebted to the local money-lender like all other producing classes.³
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³ Compare Gupta, Bengal, etc. 189, for a reference to money-lenders.
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It is difficult to convert the possible grain surplus of the peasant or of other labourers in the village into a cash money-value for comparison with other classes whose standards of income will be discussed later. As compared with them, the peasant usually worked hard and unceasingly, almost day and night during certain seasons of the year. His exacting labour was shared by his wife and other members of the family.⁴
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⁴ For woman's share in the rural labour, Shah, 87, 170.
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In return for all this labour he was lucky if he could obtain a square meal every day. There are very few and very vague references to the life of the peasants, but it can be asserted with confidence that their lot was very miserable and they lived constantly in a state of semi-starvation.¹ When you have said that people go nearly naked you have practically exhausted the topic of clothing and you can write little about furniture when the possessions of a family are limited to a couple of bedsteads and a scanty supply of cooking vessels.² We shall refer to the subject again in a later part.
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¹ Compare an extreme case mentioned by Mukandram where the cowife of a fowler lives on rice soup and stale curry and sleeps on a straw bed. Vide J.D.L., 1929, 223.
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² Moreland, India, etc. 255. Compare also Amir Khusrau's opinion in K.K., 204-5, where he frankly declares that 'every pearl in the royal crown is but the crystallized drop of blood fallen from the tearful eyes of the poor peasant.'