Social World of Documents
The people who appear in these documents may be grouped by their profession as well as their ethnic, religious, and/or caste affiliations. These categorisations often overlap and in some cases, members of a profession may develop a strong group identity that transcends identities acquired at birth.
Cultivators, Artisans, and Workers
Towards the bottom of the early modern social hierarchy in India and the Indian Ocean world were the people whose labour produced the wealth that sustained regimes and enabled the privileged lifestyles of the wealthy. They make fleeting appearances in our documents, sometimes in their own right – for example when a dismissed retainer demanded his wages, when a carpenter participated in the evaluation of a house being sold, or when the architect of a house was referred to. Some others appear to be of humble backgrounds, for example the Afghan women and men who sold small pieces of land or old houses to the prominent landlords of Dhar, witnessing their sale deeds with symbols that refer to artisanal professions, such as scissors (for tailors) or spinning wheels (for weavers). More often, working people appear indirectly, for example, when landlords were ordered to keep the cultivators in their areas content.
Landlords
Privileged ownership of large amounts of land entailed special social status in South Asia. Landlords, referred to variably as zamindars, maliks, deshmukhs, or patils, served as conduits of revenue and information between rural society and any state that attempted to control the countryside. Landlords acquired their lands in a variety of ways – agricultural pioneering, royal or noble grants for piety, military services or routine office-holding at the village level and loan-sharking. This means that landlords were frequently also officials, religious leaders, and nobles. In most cases, they appear as militarised little kings, with bands of retainers that could be used in service of the state but also against it.
Bibliographic references: The Position of Zamindars under the Mughal Empire (1964)
Merchants
The trading communities of India and the Indian Ocean were of many different backgrounds and their trade was of different scales. There were nomadic grain traders called banjaras who travelled with animal caravans around the subcontinent. There were locally eminent merchants such as the Lingayats. There were also successful long-distance traders – Afghans, Arabs, banias, Bohras, Iranians and Maraikkayars, amongst others, plying ships across the Indian Ocean. In some cases, individual merchants became extremely powerful, playing crucial political as well as economic roles within kingdoms and empires.
Affiliated ethnic groups: Afghan, Baluchi, Bania, Banjara, Lingayat
Bibliographic references: A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (2017); Capital and Crowd in a Declining Asian Port City: The Anglo-Bania Order and the Surat Riots of 1795 (1985); Merchant Communities in Precolonial India (1990)
Religious Leaders
Most of the religious communities of South Asia have a diffuse leadership structure. As such, there are many leaders in the many religious communities – Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Sikh, and Zoroastrian. There is no single hierarchy of religious authority in any of these religions. Some important kinds of religious leaders were mystic teachers, often revered as saints (pirs among Muslims, gurus among Sikhs and Hindus). There were heads of religious orders and of monastic institutions, and there were also the more humble prayer leaders and priests who engaged in the day-to-day life of ordinary people.
Affiliated ethnic groups: Brahmin, European, Pirzada
Bibliographic references: Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (1992); Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India (2019)
Rulers and Nobles
Several regimes and many ruling groups feature in the documents presented on this website. The grandest of these are the Mughals, a Central Asian dynasty of Sunni Muslim warriors who settled in India, inter-married with Indian and Iranian nobility, and ruled large parts of India and Afghanistan from 1526 until the 1750s, lingering on until the last emperor was exiled by the British in 1858. There were also the Hindu Maratha rulers – who were of Maratha caste in the seventeenth century, Brahmin Peshwas in the eighteenth, and of various castes subsequently. In time, members of the nobility in every regime rose to form independent kingdoms of their own. This included Rajput, Maratha, and Afghan dynasties, as well as other dynasties of Indian and Central Asian origin in the various provinces of the Mughal empire.
Affiliated ethnic groups: Afghan, Brahmin, European, Girasiya, Kayasth, Mansabdar, Maratha, Mughal, Rajput
Bibliographic references: The Mughal Empire (1995); The Marathas, 1600-1818 (1993)
Judges, Officials, and Clerks
Thousands of people worked in important but often obscure judicial and administrative positions that made the production of the documents on this site possible. This included Muslim judges (qazis), imperial officials and employees of nobles' households, and scribes from a variety of social and religious backgrounds. In theory, every Mughal mansabdar was also a rank-holding official, some with specific administrative functions, while others acted as full-time military generals.
Affiliated ethnic groups: Brahmin, European, Kayasth, Lingayat, Mansabdar
Bibliographic references: Between Qanungos and Clerks: The Cultural and Service Worlds of Hindustan's Pensmen, c. 1750–1850 (2014)
Warriors
All empires of South Asia depended on a vibrant 'military labour market', which consisted of many different ethnic groups. Well known warrior groups in South Asia were the Rajputs, Afghans and Marathas but immigrant communities from Iran and Central Asia and marginal groups such as the Bhils and girasiyas were equally important. The category of 'warrior', however extends from humble foot-soldiers to fearsome conquerors and emperors. As such, every Mughal emperor was also an experienced warrior, as were the Rajput rulers and many of the Maratha leaders and kings.
Affiliated ethnic groups: Afghan, Baluchi, Brahmin, European, Girasiya, Mansabdar, Maratha, Mughal, Rajput
Bibliographic references: Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire, 1500-1700 (2002); The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 1710-1780 (1994); Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market of Hindustan, 1450-1850 (1990)
Unknown Occupation
Not enough details are available in the documents to determine the occupation of these individuals.
Afghan
Afghans, alternatively known as Pashtuns, had a long history in the Indian subcontinent, primarily associated with war, trade, and Sufi discipleship. The last dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, the Lodis (r. 1451–1526) were ethnic Afghans. Various Afghan soldiers and governors of the Delhi Sultanate also formed break-off kingdoms in central and eastern India, including in Malwa. Mughal rule was interrupted by the Afghan interregnum, 1540-1555, when Sher Shah Sur defeated and ejected Humayun from Delhi. In the eighteenth century, Afghan soldiers fought both with and against the warring Marathas, Mughals, Rajputs, and the Nizam of Hyderabad. There were also fresh incursions of Afghan soldiers from the north-west with the rise of the Durrani dynasty in the eighteenth century. Small settlements of Afghan soldiers and their families, along with traders and craftspeople, formed around Sufi shrines in various parts of the subcontinent, including in Dhar in Malwa.
Wikipedia: Afghan_(ethnonym)
Bibliographic references: The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 1710-1780 (1994)
Baluchi
A number of documents from Oman and the western Indian Ocean litoral involve Baloch traders, referred to in Arabic as 'Al-Balushi'. This community, originally from Balochistan (today in Southern Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan) were intertwined with Omani political expansion from early on: Baloch soldiers fought wars alongside Omanis, manned forts, and helped Omani sultans consolidate their hold over their new possessions. At the same time, the Baloch moved around Oman and East Africa as merchants and planters, and gradually began to develop their own communities in those places.
Wikipedia: Baloch_(people)
Bibliographic references: Reimagining Baloch “Mercenaries” in the Western Indian Ocean (2020)
Bania
Banias were Hindu and Jain merchants predominantly from western India, who were involved in both trade and moneylending. Some were active in Indian Ocean trade throughout the early modern and colonial periods, and even up to the present day. The term mahajan is also frequently used to refer to this community.
Wikipedia: Bania_(caste)
Bibliographic references: Capital and Crowd in a Declining Asian Port City: The Anglo-Bania Order and the Surat Riots of 1795 (1985); A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (2017)
Banjara
These were communities of nomadic grain traders, both Hindu and Muslim, who criss-crossed the Indian subcontinent with their cattle caravans. They often accompanied and supplied armies, even on distant expeditions. Although generally illiterate, they were known for their accounting skills. The term 'banjara' was first used in Indo-Persian sources from the sixteenth century. They are described vividly in accounts written by Mughal emperors and European travellers alike. A nineteenth-century ethnographic survey provides some of the earliest images.
Wikipedia: Banjara
Bibliographic references: Merchant Communities in Precolonial India (1990); Nomadic Narratives: A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert (2016); Tashriḥ al-aqwām
Brahmin
Brahmins were, in theory, the highest of all Hindu castes, and according to Hindu ethico-legal texts, meant to work only as scholars, priests, and religious preceptors. In practice, many formed part of service communities of scribes and administrators, and some became warrior-kings. Marathi-speaking Brahmins in particular exerted a major role in several parts of South Asia in the early modern period. This included Brahmin lineages such as the Bhat household, which held the post of chief minister (Peshwa), the de facto ruler of the Maratha empire. At a lower level, there were warrior-landlords, such as the Mandlois of Indore.
Wikipedia: Brahmin
Bibliographic references: Contested Conjunctures: Brahman Communities and "Early Modernity" in India (2013); Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-Century Maratha Svarājya (1986), pp. 67-85
European
From the sixteenth century, European traders, emissaries, soldiers and missionaries travelled to and through South Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral. Many were officers or agents of the various East India Companies incorporated in England, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal. Others were mercenaries or private traders. After the dissolution of the English East India Company in the middle of the nineteenth century, leading British colonial officials were political appointees in the direct service of the British government.
Girasiya
There are several passing references to tumultuous and marginal warrior groups called girasiya in Mughal documents from central India. The name's etymology is disputed, but scholars have suggested communities related by descent and patronage to Rajputs on the one hand, and Bhil 'tribal' groups on the other. Some girasiya chieftains of central India were powerful enough for the British government to conclude treaties with them.
Bibliographic references: Negotiating Mughal Law: A Family of Landlords across Three Indian Empires (2020), p. 66; A Memoir of Central India (1823), pp. 415-416
Indeterminate
No further details are available about the identity of some people who appear in the documents.
Kayasth
Kayasths were a Hindu caste best known as a service community of scribes and administrators. Arising from diverse backgrounds, the Kayasths rose to prominence around the fifteenth century in the service of Muslim kingdoms around the Indian subcontinent. As a result, they were deeply Persianised in their professional and well as personal lives. Some Kayasth lineages, such as the Purshottam Das family, remained more oriented towards landholding and military services. As with other large trans-regional castes, Kayasths were further divided into sub-castes, which competed among themselves and with Brahmins over relative status. Such competition continued well into the twentieth century.
Wikipedia: Kayastha
Bibliographic references: Between Qanungos and Clerks: The Cultural and Service Worlds of Hindustan's Pensmen, c. 1750–1850 (2014); Negotiating Mughal Law: A Family of Landlords across Three Indian Empires (2020); Social History of an Indian Caste: the Kayasths of Hyderabad (1994); Ksatriyas in the Kali Age? Gāgābhatta and His Opponents (2010)
Lingayat
Lingayat (also known as Virashaiva) refers to a Hindu sectarian community concentrated in southwestern India (Maharashtra and Karnataka). The name derives from the word 'linga', the symbol of the god Shiva. The sect may have originated as an anti-caste movement, but it developed into a caste-like group with internal gradations. Lingayat traders often assumed the titles seth or mahajan. They dealt in cloth and staple goods, lent money, and kept shops. In Solapur district, a Lingayat trading family held the office of deshmukh, or district headman, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Members of the Lingayat community knew both Kannada and Marathi languages, and were clearly familiar with Persian as well.
Wikipedia: Lingayatism
Bibliographic references: The Tangled Roots of Vīraśaivism: On the Vīramāheśvara Textual Culture of Srisailam (2019)
Mansabdar
Mansabdar is the only social group in this category which is not an ethnic or caste type. The word means 'rank-holder'. A mansabdar was a Mughal noble, in theory a rank-holding official. Mughals treated their nobility as employees of state, ranked according to a single decimal-based hierarchy. Each rank in this system was a mansab. It entailed equipping and maintaining a certain number of mounted soldiers ready for imperial service on demand, and receiving a corresponding pay to cover the costs of doing so. This pay was usually given as revenue allocations (jagirs) rather than cash, and consequently were also referred to as jagirdars. Mughal mansabdars were of various ethnic and religious backgrounds, but shared a common Persianised courtly culture.
Wikipedia: Mansabdar
Bibliographic references: Manṣab and Manṣabdār (2012)
Maratha
The term Maratha can encompass all those who speak Marathi, a western Indian language. But it can also mean a particular set of warrior castes of western India – the Maratha-Kunbi caste cluster. Many Maratha cultivators and landlords found employment in the armies of the Muslim-ruled Deccan Sultanates. Shivaji Bhonsle (1627/30–1680) rebelled against the Adil Shahi Sultanate of Bijapur and the Mughal Empire in the late seventeenth century and established an autonomous Maratha polity with himself as the first Chhatrapati (Lord of the Parasol). In the eighteenth century, the Maratha Empire spread into central India. It eventually became a loosely allied network of polities reaching from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, led by the Chhatrapati’s Brahmin chief minister, or Peshwa. The Marathas formed one of the most formidable successors to the Mughal Empire, but they were stymied by invading Afghans in the Battle of Panipat in 1761 and eventually defeated by the British East India Company in the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1818.
Wikipedia: Maratha_(caste), Maratha_Empire
Bibliographic references: ; Caste as Maratha: Social Categories, Colonial Policy and Identity in Early Twentieth-century Maharashtra (2004)
Mughal
The word Mughal is a Persian corruption of 'Mongol'. It held a range of meanings for different people at different places and times, some of which were pejorative. The Mughal dynasty, which ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 1526 until the mid-eighteenth century, were the descendants of Chinggis (or Genghis) Khan, the thirteenth-century Mongol warlord, and Amir Timur, the fourteenth-century Central Asian conqueror known to Europeans as Tamerlane. Kings and princes of the Mughal dynasty never referred to themselves as Mughal, preferring 'Timurid' or 'Gurgani'. The appellation Mughal (or Mogol) was applied to them by others. More broadly, in South Asia, the term implied Central Asian in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, but Iranian in the nineteenth and twentieth.
Wikipedia: Mughal_Empire
Bibliographic references: Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin before Nationalism (2020); The Mughal Empire (1995)
Nath
This is a Hindu sectarian community and religious tradition devoted to the deity Shiva. It includes both householders and ascetics. Leaders in the Nath ascetic tradition found favour with Maharaja Mansingh, the ruler of Jodhpur in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Wikipedia: Nath
Pirzada
Literally meaning ‘son of a holy man', the term Pirzada refers to the descendants of Muslim holy men, including Sufi saints. In the early modern period, these descendants often were religious scholars and holy men in their own right and many were religious officiants and caretakers of tomb-shrines known as dargahs.
Wikipedia: Pirzada
Bibliographic references: Disputed Transactions: Documents, Language, and Authority in Eighteenth-Century Marwar (2021)
Rajput
Rajputs include a variety of warrior and soldiering communities that coalesced into a group of castes from the beginning of the second millennium CE. The most powerful Rajputs acquired landed wealth alongside their military service; some even ruled kingdoms, especially in Rajasthan and Malwa. These Rajputs formed tight-knit kin groups and acquired their status as Rajputs hereditarily. Many of these Rajputs served as nobles (mansabdars) in the Mughal Empire and played prominent roles in the Mughal army. In central North India, Rajput continued to refer more broadly to a title or soldiering identity that could be attained through military service. Although most Rajputs were Hindu, there were some Muslim Rajputs as well.
Wikipedia: Rajput
Bibliographic references: Embattled Identities: Rajput Lineages and the Colonial State in Nineteenth-century North India (2002); Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market of Hindustan, 1450-1850 (1990)