The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.s1.27

c15.s1.27

This would not have been so serious a limitation if the situation could have been stabilized in a durable manner. But, of course, that would have been too much to expect, and it stands to reason that the activities of the “rebels” in the interstitial areas were primarily directed at the trade routes, where sizable gains, ranging from simple plunder to regular transit dues, could be made.³⁷ Tolls and transit dues, though certainly an object of imperial regulation, were levied not only by “rebels,” but also by tributary rājās and even imperial officers, whether authorized to do so or not. An instructive case is provided by the transit dues levied by the rājā of Dhaita—not a “rebel”—on the road from Surat to Burhanpur. When the English complained on the grounds of the exemption from transit dues granted to them by the emperor, they were made to understand that the emperor could not interfere. The interesting point is that this was not so much a matter of the rājā’s autonomy as it was of the tributary arrangement, for, as the emperor somewhat lamely but understandably explained, it was out of the transit dues that the rājā paid his tribute.³⁸ Obviously, the empire was not a territorial unity, but this case shows the degree to which the emperor not only acquiesced in, but depended on, local situations and arrangements that went against the grain of imperial regulation. Quite apart from tributary rājās, there were also cases of villages forcibly exacting transit dues, even within a few miles of the imperial center, Agra. Even worse is reported by Pelsaert, who mentions the rājā of Rajpipla’s forces pillaging up to and inside Surat. Nor were the immediate neighborhoods of even greater centers, such as Ahmadabad, Agra, Delhi, and Lahore, spared the inroads of “thieves and robbers,” coming “in force by night and day like open enemies”³⁹—all this in the twenties of the sixteenth century, that is, long before there was any question of an impending breakdown of the empire.