The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c12.17

c12.17

The camp *bazars* not only supplied the needs of the army but formed a fruitful source of income to the Maratha chiefs. Every shopkeeper paid a fixed tax, and every man who plied his profession there had to pay for his license. The four *bazars* in Sindhia’s camp, as Major Broughton informs us,³ yielded no less than 14,000 Rupees in *palpatti* or tent-tax alone. ‘The bajar, or market-place belonging to his (Raghoba’s) own division’, says Forbes, ‘and to the principal generals, contained many thousand tents, where every trade and profession was carried on with as much regularity as in a city. Goldsmiths, jewellers, bankers, drapers, druggists, confectioners, carpenters, tailors, tent-makers, corn-grinders, and farriers, found full employment; as did the whole rows of silver, iron, and copper-smiths; but those in the greatest and most contant requisition, seem to be cooks, confectioners and farriers.’⁴ Nor was the camp unprovided with places of worship. Raghoba had a special tent for his idols, and Forbes tells us that ‘in the different divisions was a temporary dewal, or tent, consecrated to religious duties, where Brahmins regularly officiated, and prayer and sacrifices were offered to the deities with the same ceremonies as in the Hindoo temples’.¹