The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.s1.19

c15.s1.19

So it cannot come as a surprise when on one hand we learn that local governors seem in practice to have been free to enter the market on their own initiative, while on the other hand, we see merchant community leaders in political roles, financing pretenders to imperial succession or negotiating political settlements. No less indicative are the fairly common instances of public authorities lending money to merchants and vice versa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries²⁹—that is, long before the time of the empire’s break-up. Nor was there a serious barrier preventing the merchant-financier from entering the ranks of the mansabdār nobility.³⁰ Even military roles came easily within his purview, since his operations would anyhow have acquainted him with the use of arms, both for the control of the revenue-paying estates and for providing protection to his transport.³¹ The cash nexus made the combination of commercial and financial operations with land control on the one hand and official administrative, on occasion even military, functions on the other rather natural and unavoidable.