I. THE COUNTRY
I ATTEMPT in this book to present a sketch of the economic life of India at the close of Akbar’s reign, that is to say, to show how the people spent their incomes, and the sources from which those incomes were derived. In order to do this, it is necessary first of all to define the meaning of “India,” for the word has not always conveyed the precise signification which it bears to-day. In the Middle Ages the ordinary European, if he thought of India, or the Indies, at all, probably thought merely of some vague region lying somewhere to the east of Syria, which supplied various costly commodities, and in particular the spices used in preparing his food. With the progress of geographical discovery the Indies were in time subdivided into East and West, and the word India was gradually restricted (at least in English use) to the former area, which comprised in a general way all the country lying between the Persian Gulf and the Malay Peninsula. This extensive area was further subdivided by geographers into various regions, the mouths of the Indus and the Ganges being commonly taken as dividing points, so that the “second” or “middle” India of some writers of the sixteenth century corresponds roughly to the modern meaning of the word. The Portuguese, however, and also some travellers of other nations who visited the country under Portuguese auspices, gave the word a much narrower signification: to them India meant primarily the west coast and the land lying immediately behind it, so that we may read of journeys from Sind to “India,” or from “India” to Bengal, and we have to be on our guard in order to grasp the precise meaning of writers of this class. In the present book I use India in the modern and familiar sense as denoting the country lying between the sea and the Himalayas, and not extending farther into the mainland of Asia than Baluchistan on the west and the vicinity of Chittagong on the east. The modern Indian Empire includes, also, Burma, but in the sixteenth century the country which now bears that name was composed of kingdoms entirely independent of India, and for my present purpose it is most conveniently treated as a foreign land. The subject of this book is, then, the economic life of the country whose limits I have indicated, or, speaking generally, of the modern Indian Empire including the States, but excluding the province of Burma.1
At the time of which I write the bulk of this area was divided between the Mogul Empire in the north, the Hindu territories of the south, and the Moslem kingdoms of the Deccan. The Hindu territories might at this period still be justly described as the Empire of Vijayanagar. It is true that the military power of this Empire had been finally broken in the Battle of Talikot (A.D. 1565), but the dynasty con- tinued to claim supremacy over what was left of its dominions, and we read of the Empire, under the current name of “Narsinga,” for some time after Akbar’s death. This supremacy was, however, little more than nominal, and the Imperial officers or local chieftains enjoyed a large measure of independence, and were concerned chiefly in strengthening themselves and enlarging the areas subject to their juris- diction. The Moslem kingdoms of the Deccan had not as yet definitely submitted to the Moguls : one of them, Ahmad- nagar, was claimed as a province in the latter part of Akbar’s reign, but its independence was reasserted a few years later : another, Khandesh, was more definitely, but still incompletely, incorporated in the Mogul Empire : the remainder, Golconda, Bijapur, and Bidar, were separate and independent States.
The Mogul Empire, which covered nearly all the rest of India, was at this time still a novelty. When Akbar came to the throne in 1556, he had at most a precarious footing in parts of the country between Agra and Peshawar, as well as in what is now Afghanistan, and the territories conquered during his long reign were by no means completely assimilated at its close. The position which then existed in regard to administration has sometimes been compared to the inter- mingling of British provinces and Indian States familiar at the present day, but the analogy is by no means exact. Under the Moguls administration meant primarily the collection of the land revenue, and the administrative ideal of the period was that the Emperor, or his nominees, should collect the revenue from the actual cultivators of the soil, but this ideal was not always realisable in practice, and in various parts of the Empire we find that the local administration was in the hands of men who are spoken of consistently as “zamindars.” As used by the writers of Akbar’s reign, this word ordinarily denotes something different from the land-holder of the present day, but it would be a mistake to regard these zamindars as necessarily equivalent to Princes or Chiefs ; the word covers everybody, other than a grantee or an official, who stood between the peasants and the Emperor, and it may mean a land-holder in the modern sense, a chief, or a rebel, while it is occasionally used to signify an independent king. Akbar’s administration was severely practical : a Chief or a Raja who submitted and agreed to pay a reasonable revenue was commonly allowed to retain his position of authority : one who was recalcitrant or rebellious was killed, imprisoned, or driven away, and his lands taken under direct control. The existence of zamindars is not therefore by itself significant of any precise constitutional arrangements : we hear of them in the Gangetic plain, where Akbar’s supremacy was definitely established ; we hear of them in the borderlands where his rule was little more than nominal ; and we find them in Rajputana, and in the mountainous country south of Allahabad and Benares, where his adminis- tration was compelled by circumstances to be content with a somewhat dubious position. They serve to remind us that the Empire was very far from being a homogeneous entity, and if we possessed detailed knowledge of the position of individuals, we should probably find a wide variety of superior tenures, ranging from what would now be termed land- holders to rulers in subordinate alliance with the Emperor, and linked together only by the universal obligation to pay revenue or tribute.
In addition to these main divisions, there were various smaller States scattered through the country, some of them important from the economic standpoint. The strength of Vijayanagar had lain mostly in the interior, and along the west coast the political situation at this time was intricate. The Portuguese were established as a sovereign power in Goa and other settlements: the “pirate” chiefs, whose position will be described in a later chapter, owed allegiance to no superior authority ; while the Zamorin of Calicut also main- tained a position of independence, sometimes allied with the Portuguese, sometimes in open hostility, but always giving secret support to the piratical communities. On the east coast the position was more regular, though the Portuguese had informally assumed jurisdiction over portions of the territory of Vijayanagar, but farther north we find a few petty Hindu States situated between Golconda and the Mogul province of Orissa.
In Northern India the existence of separate States at this period is usually little more than a question of words. A zamindar who paid revenue to the Mogul was clearly in a position of dependence, and if he wished to establish a claim to sovereignty, the first step was to refuse, or omit, to pay revenue. Such an omission might, however, arise from various other causes, and it is probable that in Rajputana, Central India, and Chota Nagpur there were numerous chiefs and tribes occupying what constitutional lawyers would regard as an anomalous position, sometimes paying the stipulated revenue, sometimes in open rebellion, and sometimes enjoying practical independence because the Mogul authorities found it inconvenient to undertake active measures of coercion. An exception to these general remarks is, however, presented by the State of Kūch, lying in the valley of the Brahmaputra, over which the Moguls did not claim to exercise jurisdiction.
I have not attempted to indicate more than a few of these minor States on the map prefixed to this chapter, nor have I tried to lay down the boundaries of even the larger territorial areas with any approach to precision. Boundaries are, in fact, frequently obscure, and in many cases all that can be said is that a frontier was indeterminate, jurisdiction being commonly claimed by two parties and exercised sometimes by one and sometimes by the other. A cursory survey of the boundaries of the Mogul Empire will illustrate this statement, and will assist the reader to understand the political con- ditions of the period. On the west, Akbar’s dominions in- cluded a portion of what is now Baluchistan, but the west- ward limit of the actual jurisdiction is not precisely indicated in any authority within my reach. Farther north, the Empire included what is now Afghanistan, from Kabul southwards, but the narratives of travellers make it clear that the hill- country west of the Indus was then, as now, more or less independent, the Moguls endeavouring at most to keep open the caravan routes through the passes. The southern portion of Kashmir was effectively administered, and this is also perhaps true of parts of Southern Kumaun, but much of this mountainous tract was subject to no real control. From Kumaun eastward, the northern limit of the Empire was, in practice at least, set by the Himalayan forests as far as the valley of the Brahmaputra, where the boundary turned south- ward, skirting the State of Kūch and the territory occupied by the tribesmen of Hill Tippera. From this point the authorities are conflicting, but there seems to be little doubt that Chittagong was outside the Empire, and probably Akbar’s jurisdiction was limited in practice by the estuary of the Meghna. From the Meghna, the boundary followed the coast to a little south of Puri, whence it struck westwards across the Peninsula to Bombay. The position between the Maha- nadi and Godavari rivers is uncertain : some chiefs in this area were certainly independent, while others paid revenue, and only an approximate line can be drawn. The boundary then followed roughly the line of the Godavari to Ahmadnagar, and reached the west coast between Surat and Bombay, but in this part of India the extension of the Empire was in pro- gress, and as has been said above the latest conquests had not been fully assimilated.
The uncertainties regarding frontiers, of which some illustration has just been given, are of interest mainly to the political historian, and in the present state of our knowledge it cannot be said that these boundaries were of any particular importance from the economic point of view. We have fairly full descriptions of the life of Vijayanagar in the first half of the sixteenth century : we know something of life in the Deccan kingdoms of Golconda and Bijapur ; and I cannot see that either of them differed in essentials from life in Akbar’s Empire. The quality of the administration varied from place to place and from time to time, but its framework was sub- stantially identical, and the people lived under it as best they could. I shall not, therefore, attempt to describe the life of each region separately : the period is marked by uniformity rather than diversity, and the available materials can best be employed to present a sketch of the position in India as a whole.
Leaving, then, political boundaries out of account, what was the surface of India like at the time of Akbar’s death ? I should answer that on the whole it was very like the India which we know to-day. There are, of course, important differences to be borne in mind. There were no railways : the great canal systems of the Punjab and the United Provinces did not exist ; and there were no metalled roads, though the main routes of land travel were clearly defined, in some cases by avenues of trees, and more generally by walled enclosures, known as sarais, in which travellers and merchants could pass the night in comparative security. In Northern India these routes were, in some cases at least, suitable for wheeled traffic, and long lines of carts might occasionally be seen, but from Golconda southwards to Cape Comorin carts were practically unknown, and pack-animals or porters were the only means of transport by land. Navigable rivers such as the Indus, the Ganges, and the Jumna were at this time important highways, and carried a large volume of heavy traffic throughout the north of India, while the waterways of Bengal were perhaps even more fre- quented than now. There was certainly more forest or jungle than exists at the present day, but this statement is not equally true of all portions of the country. In some parts forest predominated, and the groups of settled villages might be described with accuracy as clearings in the jungle, but it appears probable that in others, such as Bengal, Guja- rat, and the upper Gangetic plain, the bulk of the country was under regular cultivation, and the jungles, though more extensive than now, were not the principal feature of the landscape. One point in the topography of Northern India is worthy of notice: the submontane forests extended much farther into the United Provinces and Bihar than is now the case, and the frontier of settled cultivation might be defined roughly by a line drawn very little to the north of Bareilly, Gorakhpur, and Muzaffarpur. The prevalence of forest land meant necessarily the presence of large numbers of destructive animals: herds of elephants were not uncommon in the hilly country south of the Ganges and the Jumna, lions could be shot in the province of Malwa, rhinoceros were found on the Gogra, and tigers were killed, though not I think very fre- quently, in portions of the Gangetic plain. Extensive hunting- grounds were maintained near the Imperial capital of Agra, and probably near other administrative centres, and Jahangir tells in his Memoirs how antelope overflowed from one of his preserves into the cultivated tracts, “and were not subject to any kind of molestation.”
The general aspect of the settled country must have been very similar to that of the present day. The fields were as a rule unenclosed, or “champion country” in the phrase of contemporary English travellers. The crops grown and the trees planted at the present time were to be seen with a few exceptions of minor importance; and apart from trees and crops there is little in the landscape to attract the eye. The villages too have probably changed but little. There were of course no roofs of corrugated iron such as now strike the observer in Bengal and some other parts of the country: walls of mud or wicker-work, with tiled or thatched roofs, were universal, and the inferiority of the accommodation, together with the lack of furniture, is commented on by Europeans of the period who had occasion to seek temporary hospitality. In regard to the towns and cities there are perhaps greater changes to be noticed. Calcutta and Bombay, Cawnpore and Karachi have all come into existence since Akbar’s death, and the modern Madras was represented in his time only by Mylapore and S. Thomé. Some ancient capital cities, like Kanauj and Vijayanagar, were already in a state of decay, others like Jaunpur still retained some portion of their earlier importance, while Fatehpur Sikri, the most recent capital of all, had been deserted within a few years of its establishment. The Imperial capital of Agra, the Deccan capitals of Golconda and Bijapur, and such provincial centres as Multan, Lahore, Delhi, Allahabad, Patna, Ujjain, Ahmada- bad, and Ajmer, were large and populous cities, and European observers did not hesitate to compare the largest of them with London or Paris or Constantinople, the greatest cities with which they were familiar. These Indian cities did not as a rule include anything corresponding to a modern “civil station” or residential suburbs: extensive gardens commonly lay out- side their walls, but families and places of business were safer within, and though the city houses were in some cases large and luxurious, their importance was not usually visible from the outside. Father Monserrate, who had travelled from Surat to Agra and had accompanied Akbar on his march through Lahore to Kabul, sums up the results of his observa- tions somewhat as follows: “The cities look attractive from a distance, but inside them all the splendour is lost in the narrowness of the streets and the hustling of the crowds. The houses have no windows. Rich men have gardens, ponds, and fountains within their walls, but externally there is nothing to delight the eye. The common people live in huts and hovels, and to have seen one city is to have seen all." That descrip- tion is substantially applicable at the present day to those cities which have not as yet passed under the hands of the town-planning expert, or developed residential areas on the familiar Anglo-Indian lines.
A few words may be added regarding India’s neighbours. On the west, Persia was at this time a powerful State, in friendly relations with the Mogul, but at war with the Turks, who were endeavouring to extend their borders to the south and east, and already dominated the Arabian coast. On the north- west lay Bokhara, which like Persia maintained intercourse with India. Of Tibet we hear little beyond vague tales ; a caravan route between Bengal and China was theoretically in existence, but I have found no record of its actual use at this period, and travellers from Agra for China were advised to journey by way of Kabul and the main east-and-west road through Central Asia.1 To the east of Bengal lay the kingdom of Arakan, and south-east of it was Pegu, the two States cover- ing much of the country now known as Burma. Pegu was at this period desolate as the result of a series of disastrous wars : Arakan appears to have been prosperous, and its king was described (perhaps with some exaggeration) as the most powerful prince in India next to the Great Mogul, but its traffic by land was unimportant. Apart then from the intercourse with Persia and Bokhara, the relations of India with other nations were then as now maintained by sea rather than by land, and since they were based principally on commerce their description may appropriately be postponed to the chapter dealing with that subject.
II. THE NUMBERS OF THE PEOPLE
It is scarcely necessary to say that no records exist showing the numbers of the population of India in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. I have not read of anything approach- ing to a census of any part of the country, and our information consists mainly of comparative estimates made by individuals, which are subject to large errors, even larger perhaps in India than in the Europe of the same period. Indian chroniclers throw little light on the question because they had no standard of comparison, and the most they can tell us is something about the relative density in different parts of the country: such facts as I have gathered from them in this respect are adequately represented in a saying recorded by the historian M. de Faria y Sousa, who wrote in the latter part of the seven- teenth century. “The heathens,” he tells us, “say that God granted these particular prerogatives or blessings to five kingdoms—to that of Bengala, infinite numbers of foot: to Orixa, elephants: to Bisnagar, people skilled in sword and buckler: to Delhi, abundance of towns, and to Cou, innumerable horses.” 1 Some further information can be obtained from the observations of European travellers, pro- vided we can ascertain the standard of comparison which was in their minds, a matter of some uncertainty, since the census was not yet an established institution in Europe, and the estimates of population framed by later students are by no means always in agreement. It is perhaps fair to say that at the period of which I am writing the population of France was somewhere about half its present size, while that of England may have been as much as one-eighth, and if it be assumed that Western Europe as a whole lay between these somewhat wide limits, we obtain a rough measure of what was in the minds of travellers when they spoke of Eastern countries as densely or sparsely populated: their observa- tions do not mean that the population of India was large or small judged by Europe at the present day, but that it was large or small when compared with a Europe which had at any rate much less than half its present population.
Judged by this standard, there can be no doubt that the territory of Vijayanagar had been very densely populated for at least two centuries. Conti, writing soon after the year 1400, said that “ the numbers of the people exceed belief ” ; the Persian Envoy, Abdur Razak, who was in Vijayanagar about the same period, wrote that the Empire contained so great a population that it would be impossible to give an idea of it, and, a century later, Paes observed that the whole country was thickly populated with cities and towns and villages. A temporary reduction in numbers must have followed on the famine of 1540, which was very severe on the Coromandel coast, but I have found no record of a similar calamity in the next sixty years, and the observations of the Jesuit mission- aries about the year 1597 show that the description given by Paes was still in the main applicable : the pearl fishery at Manar attracted a crowd estimated at 60,000, and the im- pression left by the narratives of Pimenta and Simon Sa is one of numerous towns and fully occupied country. As regards the narrow strip of land below the Western Ghats, the presence of a dense population must be assumed in order to explain the facts recorded in the Decadas, and is expressly affirmed by Barbosa among European writers.
For the Deccan kingdoms, there is very little evidence relating directly to our period. In the fifteenth century the Russian monk Nikitin commented on the number of small towns, and said (if the translation is to be trusted) that “ the land is overstocked with people.” Throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century these kingdoms maintained a bitter, and eventually successful, struggle with Vijayanagar, and must have been able to draw upon a large population to swell their armies to the necessary size ; while half a century after Akbar’s death the French traveller Thévenot found the population dense from Aurangabad to Golconda, but sparse from Golconda eastward to Masulipatam. The narrative of Tavernier’s travels in the Deccan gives a general impression of density, and his account of the crowds at the diamond fields suggests that there was no scarcity of labourers in this part of the country.
As regards the Mogul Empire we have a considerable number of incidental observations made by travellers along certain routes. Taking first the journey from Surat to Agra, it is clear that Gujarat was thickly peopled. Della Valle, writing of Surat, says it “is very populous as all other cities and places are in India, which everywhere abounds with people.” This writer uses the word India in the restricted sense favoured by the Portuguese, and his travels did not extend north- wards, but his evidence is relevant to the condition of Gujarat and the west coast. Finch counted a city, seven “great towns,” and three other “towns” on his march from Surat to Burhanpur, and his narrative leaves the impression of a closely settled country. From Burhanpur northwards to Gwalior the population was less dense; parts of Malwa were indeed fully occupied, but much of the broken country on both the north and the south of the plateau was very nearly desolate. The alternative route through Rajputana was in general sparsely inhabited, at least as far north as Ajmer, and travellers found little to notice in this part of the country. The route from Agra to Lahore, on the other hand, lay through a dense population, and the same statement holds good from Lahore as far as Multan, and down the Indus to Bhakkar, but from Bhakkar onwards most of Sind was desert. In this case also there was an alternative route across the desert from Ajmer to Tatta, but the country traversed was, as might be expected, uninhabited or occupied only by nomads.
Of the routes eastwards from Agra we have much scantier knowledge. Finch gives an itinerary through Kanauj and Lucknow to Jaunpur, but it is hearsay and throws little light on the state of the country: he mentions, however, that the road from Jaunpur to Allahabad lay through a continuous forest, a fact of which the significance will appear later. Fitch some years earlier travelled by river from Agra to Bengal, and he notes that the country from Allahabad to Patna was populous, but this remark applies only to the river-banks, and I have found no other description of Bihar and the east of what is now the United Provinces.
So far then we have reached a rough general idea of the relative density of the population in different parts of the country, and we may say that Bengal, the north-western plains, Gujarat, and Southern India were thickly, or very thickly, populated when judged by contemporary European standards. As regards the size of the great cities, it is possible to make a further approximation: travellers compared Indian cities with others which they knew, and though such comparisons are liable to large errors, they are not therefore entirely to be neglected. To take a modern parallel, we should not expect a traveller un- provided with statistical information to discriminate between the great cities of Northern India: to him, Lahore and Delhi, Agra and Lucknow would all appear to be of about the same size. On the other hand, a man of ordinary intelligence could hardly fail to observe that all of them are much inferior in population to Calcutta or Bombay, and larger than places like Jullundur or Saharanpur, and we may fairly allow to earlier travellers a corresponding exactitude of discrimination. Speaking generally, they class the largest cities of India with the largest cities of the West. Jourdain says Agra was one of the biggest cities of the world: Coryat says that Lahore was larger than Constantinople, and that Agra was not so large as Lahore: Paes says that Vijayanagar was as large as Rome: Bernier (rather later than our period) says that Delhi was not much less than Paris, and that Agra was larger than Delhi: Ralph Fitch says that Agra and Fatehpur Sikri were each much greater than London: Monserrate says that Lahore was second to no city in Europe or in Asia; and other travellers offer similar comparisons. Now the population of European cities about this period is by no means accurately known, but it appears reasonable to say that Paris contained not more than 400,000 inhabitants at the outside, and that no other city in Europe had more than 200,000; we may therefore conclude that the greatest Indian cities were most probably of the quarter-million to half-million standard, and that in any case their inhabitants were not to be counted by the million.1
This conclusion, vague as it is, will serve at least to correct the exaggerated ideas which grew up in Europe during the period when intercourse with India was rapidly increasing, and which are not even now entirely discarded. Thévenot, writing in the middle of the seventeenth century, took pains to test the accuracy of some of these stories by inquiries among people likely to know the facts, and his results are in general agreement with the view which has just been expressed. Of Agra, probably the largest city in India, he writes that it was populated as befits a great town, but the current story that it could furnish 200,000 armed men was an exaggeration : the gardens within the city gave a false impression of size, while the streets were so narrow that they were necessarily crowded when the Imperial Court was present, though at other times they were empty. Similarly, in considering Delhi he lays stress on the number of people who accompanied the Court, and concludes that without the Court the city was of small importance ; if the population amounted to 400,000 when the Emperor was present, it might be less than one-sixth of that number when the Emperor was elsewhere. An example of the exaggerations current during the seventeenth century is the statement made by various writers that the city of Gaur in Bengal contained 1,200,000 houses, a figure which would indicate a population approximating to that of modern London. In the previous century, however, Barros, the Portuguese annalist, gave its population at 200,000, and since the city was of no particular importance at this epoch, it is safe to conclude that the number of houses indicated in the later story was either a wild exaggeration or took into account the ruins of the various capitals which had existed in the neighbourhood. At any rate I have been unable to find any reasonable grounds for inferring that any city in India had a resident population of as many as half a million. It is probable, indeed, that an influx of troops or pilgrims might result, as happens to-day, in temporary aggregations of people in excess of this number, but for comparative purposes such incidents must be disregarded : the population of modern Allahabad is correctly taken as less than 200,000, though over a million persons may gather there for a religious festival, and the same basis must be adopted in estimating the population of Indian cities at the earlier period.
A general idea of the magnitude of the city population can thus be drawn from the particulars within our reach. From the nature of the case, the question of rural density cannot be determined on similar considerations, and we must look else- where for information which may enable us to give somewhat greater precision to the vague conclusions at which we have already arrived. Such information may be drawn from two sources, the strength of armies and the extent of cultivation, and it so happens that from the first source we can learn something about the south of India, while the second throws some light on the position in the north. I shall examine these sources in order, but at the outset it is necessary to utter a word of warning as to the degree of exactitude which may be expected in these calculations, and in others of a similar nature which will be found in subsequent chapters. A certain amount of statistical information was indeed recorded in India at this period, but we have not access to the original records, and we do not always know the basis on which they were compiled. We have to be content, as a rule, with secondary and partial evidence in the shape of facts stated by contemporary writers, who may have made mistakes in the figures, or may have been misled as to their precise signifi- cance ; and we can interpret their statements only by the aid of assumptions, the validity of which may be open to question. We can scarcely ever say that a conclusion is certain or that a particular number is unquestionably correct ; we have to estimate probabilities and seek for limits within which the truth may lie. Data, assumptions, and conclusions are alike open to criticism, and if I sometimes appear to speak too confidently in matters of number or of quantity, the reader must bear in mind that this preliminary caution applies throughout, and that we are not travelling on the broad road of modern statistical information, but are trying to find a path through a hitherto untrodden jungle.
The information at our disposal regarding the strength of the armies of Southern India has been set out by Mr. Sewell, who, without committing himself to a numerical estimate, concludes that “all the chroniclers believed that the King of Vijayanagar could, if he so desired, put into the field immense masses of armed men. They were probably not all well armed or well trained or well disciplined, but as to large numbers there can be little reasonable doubt.” The state- ments on which this conclusion is based fall into two groups : some authorities tell us the nominal strength of the army of Vijayanagar, while others give the numbers actually put into the field on particular occasions, and the evidence under these two heads is on the whole reasonably consistent. Five writers, of whom four at least may be regarded as independent, put the nominal strength of the army at about one million, while two of them add that it could be increased to two millions if necessary. Now it is possible that these round numbers may be mere vague guesses having no relation to the truth, but to my mind it is more probable that they represent a notorious fact. The great bulk of the army was organised on the quota system, which will be described in a subsequent chapter; each Imperial officer was bound, as a condition of his tenure, to produce on demand a fixed number of troops, and the most reasonable interpretation of the statements we are considering appears to me to be that the total of these contingents amounted on paper to about a million, that this fact was common know- ledge in the city, so that all strangers received approximately the same answer to their questions, and that the possibility of doubling the numbers was added by men who were jealous for the reputation of the Empire. This interpretation does not, of course, imply that an army of a million ever took the field. Nuniz tells us, what we might in any case have guessed, that some of the officers kept smaller forces than their obligations required, and we should regard the number of a million as a theoretical limit, not perhaps in excess of the capacity of the country, but not likely to be reached in any particular campaign. This view is borne out by such details as we possess of the actual strength mobilised. The array of the army in the year 1522 is described by Nuniz with a fulness which shows that he must have had access to detailed sources of information; he mentions eleven separate bodies of the main army, which aggregate just over 600,000 men, and in addition there were other contingents of 10,000 or 12,000 men, as well as a strong advance-guard, so that on this showing about 650,000 men, or say two-thirds of the nominal strength of the Empire, were put into line in a very serious emergency. At Talikot forty years later, when the danger to the Empire was known to be even greater, we are told on Portuguese authority that the army was 700,000 strong, a number which accords generally with the description quoted by Mr. Sewell of the final campaign, when the force marched in three bodies, an advance guard of 120,000, then another “large army,” and then “the whole power” of the Empire. These independent statements appear to me to justify a view of the military organisation which is in harmony with all that we know as to the activities of the great Empire of the south, and also with the relation of performance to promise prevalent at this period—a huge army provided for, and in the utmost emergency an array of perhaps two men out of three, pre- sumably because some contingents failed to appear, and the others were substantially below the obligatory strength.1
Similar data are not available for the opposing armies of the Deccan. They must obviously have been numerous, since they maintained the struggle for so many years and at last gained a decisive victory, but I am disposed to infer from the imperfect accounts of particular battles that the northern forces were usually in a minority, and that they owed their success in part to their strength in cavalry, and in part to greater skill ; the Portuguese account of the battle of Talikot says that the Deccan had half the numbers of Vijayanagar, and this proportion is not in itself improbable, but allowance must be made for the wastage of the invading armies, which had marched some distance from their bases to the scene of the battle. Taking then the Deccan and Vijayanagar together, it is not unreasonable to infer that this part of India could actually put something like a million men in the field, though it could not have maintained this number throughout a long campaign ; and armies of this strength would not represent what it has become the fashion to call the " man-power " of the country, for the figures which have been given for Vijayanagar exclude numerous camp-followers, while the brahmans, merchants, and artisans, constituting in the aggregate a substantial proportion of the population, were exempted from service. These forces were drawn from an area consisting of the greater part of the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay (excluding Sind) together with the States of Mysore and Hyderabad, and containing accord- ing to the last census a population of between sixty and seventy millions ; 1 the question is what numbers were con- tained in this area at the period under consideration. So far as I know, there are no data to show directly what forces could be raised from a given population in the conditions which prevailed in India at this period, and European analogies must be used with a certain amount of caution. We may, however, be sure that the latest European experience must be set aside ; the world has now learned that a proportion as great as one-sixth of the total population can be armed, but that this requires progressive organisation extending over a series of years, and it is practically impossible that any similar proportion could have been attained in the short and sudden campaigns characteristic of Indian warfare. A closer analogy is the number of men which European States were prepared to mobilise on the outbreak of war : according to the published figures, France had arranged before the year 1914 to mobilise one out of 31, and Germany one out of 32, so that, if the recruiting organisation of the Deccan and Vijayanagar was as efficient as that of modern France and Germany, their united strength of a million would imply a population of about thirty millions, while the population would be greater if the efficiency was less. The degree of efficiency attained in India at this period is entirely a matter of conjecture : on the one hand the quota system was calculated to distribute the demand for men over all portions of the country, and it is im- probable that a high standard of physique was required, but on the other hand the exempted classes were, as we have seen, considerable in point of numbers, and speak- ing for myself, I find it difficult to believe that the Indian system can have been the more efficient of the two. At any rate, if we accept the inference that the Deccan and Vijayanagar could together put somewhere about a million men into the field, we must agree that they could draw on a population of over thirty millions (or about half the present numbers), unless we are prepared to maintain that their military system was more efficient than those of modern Europe so far as the enrolment of recruits is con- cerned. This inference is of course based on data drawn from the period ending with the battle of Talikot in 1565, but, as has been said already, there is no record of any serious calamity between that date and the end of the century, and since the country cannot be described as overcrowded with about half its present population, we should not be justified in concluding that the numbers had decreased largely in the interval ; a moderate increase is in fact the more reasonable inference.
To my mind then the available information suggests that the population of the southern territories was at least thirty millions, and probably substantially more. No similar inference can be drawn regarding Northern India, for the sufficient reason that the strength of the Mogul forces is unknown. Akbar, at least in his later years, never had occasion to put his whole power into the field ; he was indeed frequently at war, but the operations were of a secondary nature, and it is no more possible to deduce from them the potential strength of his army than it is possible to calculate the forces of modern India from the details of successive expeditions on the frontiers. It is true that the Ain-i Akbari contains much information in regard to Akbar’s military organisation, but unfortunately the account is not complete, and after working up all the figures furnished by Abul Fazl, I have found myself compelled to assent to the conclusion reached by Mr. Irvine that the numbers of the army cannot be estimated with any approach to precision. For the north, however, we have access to the alternative source of information to which I have already alluded, for the statistics preserved in the Ain-i Akbari suffice, if we can interpret them correctly, to give a general idea of the extent of cultivation in those provinces of the Mogul Empire in which the regulation system of revenue assessments had been effectively introduced. Unfortunately, these statistics have not yet been thoroughly studied, and I can offer only my individual interpretation of the figures which relate to a portion of Northern India. My conclusions may be stated as follows :
(1) A detailed study of the statistics for the western portion of the United Provinces, that is to say, the area lying between the Jumna and a line joining Bareilly and Agra, indicates that the cultivated area in settled country was about three-fourths of the present standard, the proportion being more than eight-tenths in the tract between the Ganges and the Jumna known as the duāb, and almost seven-tenths in Rohilkhand, the country lying east of the Ganges. The area of settled cultivation was less, because as has been said in the preceding section the line of the Himalayan forests lay nearer the Ganges than is now the case, but the duab, and also a strip of country on the left bank of the Ganges, may almost be described as fully occupied.
(2) A general survey of the statistics for the Punjab suggests that the density of cultivation found in the duab extended westwards across the Jumna, at any rate as far as Lahore, but that on the other hand the South and West Punjab was very sparsely occupied.
(3) The statistics for the centre of the United Provinces present difficulties which I have not yet been able to sur- mount, but they suggest a rapid decline in cultivation in the duab from Agra eastwards.
(4) In the east of the Provinces, the amount of cultivation north of the Gogra was very small, while between the Gogra and the Ganges, eastwards of a line joining Allahabad and Fyzabad, the proportion was less than one-fifth.
(5) The figures for Bihar suggest on a general examination that this proportion of one-fifth extended as far as Monghyr, at which point the statistics come to an end.
In order to translate density of cultivation into density of population, it is necessary to anticipate the conclusion reached in Chapter IV., that, while there have been many changes in detail, the main lines of the Indian system of agriculture have persisted during the last three centuries, and consequently the area placed under crops is a rough index to the numbers of the rural population. If this conclusion is provisionally accepted, it follows that the western Gangetic plain was almost as full of people in Akbar’s time as it is to-day, and consequently was very densely populated when judged by the European standard of the sixteenth century, while on the other hand the eastern Gangetic plain as far as the confines of Bengal was not, as it now is, a congested area, but supported a population of about one-fifth the present density. We have already seen that European travellers found a dense population in that portion of the former area which was visited by them, and on the other hand we have here an explanation of the statement made to Finch that the road from Jaunpur to Allahabad lay through a continuous forest, as well as of the fact recorded in the Akbarnama that forests were traversed and various strange beasts seen during a march along the southern bank of the Gogra in what is now the congested district of Azamgarh. The conclusions drawn from contemporary statistics are thus not entirely uncorroborated, and it is possible that further study of the literature of the period will furnish other statements of a similar nature.
If now we apply these conclusions to the figures of the last census, we shall find that the population of the northern plains from Multan to Monghyr must have been well over 30 millions and probably little less than 40 millions at the period to which the statistics relate.1 We have thus a total of, at any rate, more than 60 millions in sight for the northern and southern areas taken together, but without allowing anything for two populous regions, Bengal and Gujarat, or for any part of the more sparsely peopled but extensive intervening area ; and when we bring these excluded tracts into account, we are justified in concluding that there must have been at the least somewhere about 100 millions of people in India in order to carry on the activities disclosed by contemporary authorities. The number is absolutely very great, and would have appeared almost incredible to European observers of the period, but it is only one-third of what the same area contained in the year 1911 ; various arguments could be adduced in favour of a higher figure, but the nature of the data compel us to be content with indefinite estimates, and it appears to me that we shall run no risk of serious error if we take 100 millions as indicating a total, not indeed attained by careful enumeration, but rendered probable by a consideration of all the relevant facts which are available.
III. THE CLASSES OF THE POPULATION
The population of whose numbers we have been trying to form some idea was by no means homogeneous. Among the Hindus, who formed the great majority, the caste system existed substantially as it exists to-day, and the differences among castes and races were such that we find travellers speaking of baniyas or of Gujaratis as " nations " distinct from brahmans or rajputs. The Sikhs were at this time regarded merely as a sect of Hindus, and from the economic point of view the Christians of the South may apparently be classed as resembling in essentials the people among whom they lived. Jews and Armenians were few in numbers, but important in commercial life. The position of the Parsis is not altogether clear. Terry, writing of his experiences about 1616, says that " their profession is, for the generality, all kinds of husbandry “; Mundy, a little later, speaks of them as cultivating palm-trees, and Monserrate was unable to dis- tinguish them from the rest of the crowd of what he calls heathens, meaning, I take it, the ordinary Hindu population of the country round Navsari, in which they were at that time settled. On the other hand, in Thévenot’s time they were conspicuous figures in Surat, essentially a commercial city, while in the middle of the sixteenth century Garcia da Orta knew some of them as traders in Cambay and Bassein, and notes that they were regarded as Jews by the Portu- guese. Apparently, therefore, they were at this period pass- ing from the pursuit of agriculture to the commercial career in which they have since achieved such remarkable success.
Two other elements of the population, the Moslems and the Portuguese, require to be noticed in greater detail. Among the Moslems we must distinguish between the Arabs and Persians of the coast and the men of Northern India, and the latter again must be divided into old-established inhabitants and recent immigrants. In the centuries preceding the year 1500 Arabs and Persians had acquired a position of pre- dominance in the sea-borne trade of the whole Indian Ocean from Mozambique to the Straits of Malacca. They had settlements at the seaports on both sides of India, wherever they could come to arrangements with the local authorities, and the value of their trade to those authorities was so great that they were commonly welcomed and in some places at least enjoyed special favours. The Moslem population of these settlements did not however consist wholly, or even mainly, of foreigners. The merchants came primarily for trade, but they did not neglect the interests of their faith, and at the seaports which they frequented larger or smaller groups of converts were to be found, increased as the result of intermarriages or less formal unions with the people of the country. Early in the sixteenth century the Portuguese had ousted these Moslems from their predominant position in the Indian Ocean, but had not succeeded in driving them out of trade, and we meet with Moslems at practically every seaport in India, even in some of those where the Portuguese had acquired territorial jurisdiction. From the seaports Moslems made their way into the interior, chiefly as dis- tributors of the commodities their ships brought to India, and Vijayanagar in the days of its prosperity included a considerable Moslem quarter.
Altogether apart from these sea-borne influences, a large number of Moslems had entered India from the north-west in the five or six centuries preceding the establishment of Akbar’s Empire, and had effected conversions on a very large scale. The descendants of the early arrivals were already well assimilated when the Moguls first appeared on the scene, and as a rule took the Indian side in the struggles against Babur and Humayun: in the time of Akbar, they may be described with substantial truth as Indian Moslems, in contradistinction to the men who had come with him to India or who followed him there on the establishment of his authority. Akbar’s Court was essentially foreign, and even in his later years the Indian element, whether Hindu or Moslem, constituted only a small proportion of the whole.1 Such influence as was exerted by the Court in the economic sphere came from the predominant party, whose tastes and habits led to the patronage of foreign merchants and the use of foreign commodities, as will be explained in the following chapters.1
The coming of the Portuguese at the opening of the six- teenth century was the result of a variety of motives. At that time eastern commodities for Europe were carried up the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf, and, after paying heavy duties to the Moslems in authority in Turkey and Egypt, were distributed by the Italian merchants who dominated the trade of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Portuguese desired to carry these commodities in their own ships round the Cape of Good Hope : by doing this, they would at once enrich them- selves and strike a heavy blow at the prosperity of the Moslem States, which were still regarded as the enemies of Christen- dom, but at the same time they hoped to secure a position whence the Christian religion could be propagated, and thus their enterprise was at once commercial and missionary in its nature. They did not attempt to found an empire on land : the root-idea of their policy was such supremacy in the Indian seas that they could control and direct the course of trade, and with this object they established maritime settlements, protected by forts sufficiently strong to resist attack, and large enough to provide the supply of soldiers and sailors which their policy required. These settlements existed on the east coast of Africa, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, on the western coast of India, in the Straits of Malacca, and even farther east. Their capital city was Goa ; they occupied several other ports on the west coast, and while they were not estab- lished in the Gulf of Cambay, they controlled its traffic from their posts at Daman and Diu. On the east coast they were established less formally but effectively at S. Thomé and else- where ; they had trading establishments at the mouths of the Indus and the Ganges, while Portuguese subjects occupied an anomalous position at Chittagong and elsewhere in the Bay of Bengal, depending for their livelihood largely upon piracy. In the interior of the country they were rarely met with. They had representatives engaged in trade at a few places like Lahore, and missionaries from Goa were at Court for long periods towards the end of Akbar’s reign, but apart from such cases the only mention I have found of their presence up the country is Terry’s remark that he occasionally met Portuguese “who would beg relief”; they were usually men who had deserted from one of the settlements or had absconded to avoid punishment for some crime.
To complete the enumeration of the races found in India, mention should be made of the imported slaves. Abyssinians were in much demand, and we read of them frequently—some- times in very responsible positions—in the chronicles of the time; a regular traffic existed in the inhabitants of Mozam- bique, and there was also an import trade from Persia and the countries lying beyond. Finally it may be noted that the number of temporary residents must have been considerable. Merchants from Arabia, Armenia, Persia and other countries to the north-west, and Europeans travelling for pleasure, profit, or adventure appear in various places, and in numbers greater than might be expected, while there are a few refer- ences to the presence of Chinese and Japanese on the west coast. India was very far from being a closed country, and access to it could be obtained by men of any nation who cared to face the dangers and discomforts of the journey.
When we turn from the racial to the economic classification of the people, the first point to arrest our attention is the comparative insignificance of the middle classes. Bernier, writing half a century later, remarked that “in Delhi there is no middle state. A man must be either of the highest rank or live miserably”; and this is the impression left by a perusal of the narratives and chronicles relating more particu- larly to our period.1 There were at this time no lawyers, very few if any professional teachers, no journalists or politicians, no engineers, no forms of employment corresponding to the modern railway, postal or irrigation services, or to factories and large workshops, few landholders in the modern sense, and, unless I am mistaken, scarcely any families living upon accumulated property; and if we remove these elements from the middle classes as they exist to-day, we shall find that there is very little left, beyond the families dependent on the various public offices. Materials do not exist for a precise or scientific classification of the remaining elements of the population, but for our present purposes they can be studied most conveniently in two groups, the first of which is of interest mainly from the point of view of consumption, while the second comprises the classes whose principal importance is found in production. The former group includes (1) the Court and the Imperial Service, (2) the professional and religious classes, including mendicants and ascetics, and (3) domestic servants and slaves. In the second group we have to consider the classes engaged in (1) agriculture, (2) industry, and (3) commerce. The precise economic position of the men known in Akbar’s days as zamindars may fairly be regarded as arguable; there are very few definite data as to their activities, and what little there is to say can be said appropriately in connection with the agricultural interest. Another class which is not provided for in this scheme consists of the tribes inhabiting the mountains and the forests, but they are scarcely mentioned in the authorities and can be left out of account in an economic study.1
The classification which I have indicated will furnish the framework of the remainder of this book, but before we take up the study of the first group it is necessary to say a little about the nature of the administration, so far as it influenced the conditions under which the processes of production and consumption were carried on, and this subject is dealt with in the following chapter.
AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER I
NOTE.—In these Notes on Authorities, reference is made by means of abbreviations or key-words, which are printed in italics, and are explained in alphabetical order in Appendix E.
SECTION 1.—For an account of the various meanings of the word India, the article with that heading in Hobson-Jobson may be consulted. For Vijayanagar at this period, see Sewell, 199 ff. Father N. Pimenta, in reporting on his missionary journey of 1598, noted that Vijayanagar was regarded as King of Kings (Hay, 741), and Father Simon Sa, writing in the same year, described his visit to the Imperial Court (Hay, 762 ff.).
The constitutional organisation of Akbar’s Empire has to be inferred from a detailed study of the Ain and the Akbarnama. Some of the passages bearing on it were discussed by Mr. Yusuf Ali and the present writer in the Journal of the R.A.S. (January, 1918, “Akbar’s Land-Revenue System,” etc.). As regards the smaller Indian States, the position on the west coast can best be studied in the later Decadas (x.-xii.), while Portuguese activities on the east coast are referred to frequently in the same work, and also in Hay, 737. The existence of Hindu States to the south of Orissa is mentioned by Jahangir (Tuzuk, i. 433); for Kuch, see the “Account” of Bengal in the Ain (translation, ii. 117), Fitch’s journey (Purchas, II. x. 1736), and Hobson-Jobson (s.v. Cooch Bahar).
For the boundaries of the Mogul Empire, I have made use of the map facing p. 322 of Mr. Vincent Smith’s Akbar, the Great Mogul, but the details have been drawn mainly from the Ain, especially the “Account of the XII. Subas.” The conditions in the hills beyond the Indus are clearly indicated in the narratives of travellers such as Steel and Crowther (Purchas, I. iv. 521). As regards the portion of Bengal lying east of the Meghna estuary, the Ain includes the country as far as Chittagong in the revenue roll of Bengal (translation, ii. 139), and twice mentions Chittagong itself specifically as part of the Empire (ii. 116, 125), but it also states (ii. 119) that the port was held by Arakan. Pyrard (translation, i. 326) visited the port in 1607 and found that it was held subject to Arakan by a petty king ; while the Jesuit missionaries whose narratives are quoted by Father N. Pimenta in 1597-98 (Hay, pp. 730-33, 840-47) seem to have known nothing of Mogul jurisdiction after leaving Hooghly, but dealt with various " Kinglets " (reguli) in the country they traversed, and obtained concessions from " the Most High and Mighty King of Arakan, Tippera, Cucoma and Bengal,” a title which indicates the claim of Arakan to, at any rate, a portion of the Delta.
As to the country between the Mahanadi and the Godavari, Mr. Vincent Smith shows on the map mentioned above the territory of Gondwana (which was a Mogul province in later times), as held by " Chiefs mostly independent, some tributary," and carries it nearly as far north as Allaha- bad. This description is borne out in a general way by the portions of the " Account " in the Ain referring to the frontiers of the adjoining provinces : it is fairly certain that many of the Chiefs in this area had not submitted to Akbar, but I am inclined to include the area as a whole in his " sphere of influence," though not in his actual dominions.
The general description given of the surface of India is really the im- pression left on my mind by the accounts of all the contemporary writers named in the list of authorities, and it is not worth while quoting the refer- ences in detail. The absence of wheeled traffic in Southern India is vouched for in particular by Tavernier, 121. The extension of forest land is referred to in Elliot, Races, ii. 149, also in a paper by the present writer on " The Agricultural Statistics of Akbar’s Empire," which is being published in the Journal of the United Provinces Historical Society.
Jahangir has much to say of sport in Northern India : the passage quoted in the text is from the Tuzuk, i. 190. Monserrate’s summary of the aspect of Indian cities is on p. 651 ; unfortunately this careful observer seems to have been more interested in the towns than in the country.
As regards neighbouring countries, a few references may be given to supplement the ordinary authorities. Steel and Crowther (Purchas, I. iv. 522 ff.), among other writers, tell something of Persia at this period. For the country north of India, Yule’s Cathay is of course indispensable. The land routes from India to China are discussed in letters printed by Hay, 798 ff. The ruin of Pegu is mentioned by various writers : details are given by Father A. Boves (Hay, 850), and a portion of his letter is trans- lated in Purchas (II. x. 1748) along with other information on the subject. Various details as to Pegu are scattered through the Xth and XIIth Decadas. The description of the King of Arakan as second only to the Mogul is given by Pyrard (translation, i. 326), but this accurate writer makes it plain that during his short stay in Chittagong he could learn only what was said in the port, and he does not vouch for the details which he records.
SECTION 2.—For the population of France I follow Levasseur ; for that of England I have been guided mainly by the figures in Cunningham, i. 331 (note), and by the suggestions of Mrs. C. M. Knowles, the Reader in Economic History in the University of London. The observations regarding the general population quoted in the text will be found in Major (Conti, 26, Abdur Razak, 32, Nikitin, 14) ; Sewell, 237 ; Hay, 735-738 ; Barbosa, 294 ; Thévenot, 104, 129, 231, 312 ; Tavernier, 336 ff. ; della Valle, 30 ; Manrique, lxi, lxix ; Purchas (Finch, I. iv. 423 ff. ; Steel and Crowther, I. iv. 520 ff. ; Fitch, II. x. 1734 ff.) ; Mundy, ii. 55, 245. It is advisable, however, to read the entire narratives of these and other travellers in order to obtain a just idea of the state of the country through which they passed. For references to Indian cities, see Jourdain, 162 ; Sewell, 256 ; Bernier, 282, 284 ; Monserrate, 622 ; Purchas (Coryat, I. iv. 493 ff. ; Fitch, II. x. 1733). The exaggerated statement as to the size of Gaur will be found in Faria y Sousa, i. 415 ; Barros’ estimate is in Decadas, IV. ix. c. 1, and is quoted in Hobson-Jobson under Gour. For the strength of the army of Vijayanagar, see Sewell, 147-150, and the authorities there enumerated ; for maintenance of inadequate forces, idem, 384 ; and for exemptions from service, idem, 279. The strength of Akbar’s army is discussed in Irvine, 87 ff., the data being scattered through many sections of the Ain. The present writer’s study of the agricultural statistics in the Ain is referred to above under Section 1.
SECTION 3. The institution of caste is referred to by practically all the European writers who made any attempt to describe India. For the Parsis, see Terry, 377 ; Mundy, ii. 306 ; Monserrate, 550 ; Thévenot, 46 ; Garcia da Orta, 445 ; Jourdain, 128.
Moslems at the Indian seaports are referred to in all descriptions from Barbosa (passim) downwards. For their settlements in Africa, see Decada, X. i. 42, and passim. Accounts of the spread of Islam in Malaysia will be found in Clifford’s Further India, 16 ff., and (by R. O. Winstedt) in the Journal of the R.A.S. (Straits Branch) for December 1917. The position of Moslems on the west coast is stated by Whiteway (3 ff. and passim) : for Moslems in Goa, see Purchas, II. x. 1758 ; and in Vijayanagar, see Sewell, 256. The position of Moslems in Northern India must be gathered from the chronicles of the period, as represented in Elliot, History, iv.-vi., the Akbarnama, and the Ain.
General accounts of the Portuguese in India are given by Whiteway and Danvers, while for more detailed information it is necessary to refer to the Decadas and other contemporary authorities. For their possessions at this period, see Decada, X. i. 42 ff., where the position on the east coast is clearly distinguished from that on the west. For the Indus, see Purchas, I. iv. 496 ; for the Ganges and Chittagong, see in particular Hay, 727-733, 840-847, also Pyrard, translation, i. 334. For the missionaries at Akbar’s Court, see the full account in V. Smith, Akbar, and the references there given, especially Monserrate. Terry’s reference to Portuguese being met up the country is on p. 154.
The presence of foreigners in India is noted incidentally in most of the authorities ; for examples, see Garcia da Orta, 442, and Finch, in Purchas, I. iv. 427. Pyrard (translation, ii. 38) mentions " a goodly number " of Chinese and Japanese at Goa, and Father Pimenta records (Hay, 832) that a famous Malabar pirate employed a Chinese secretary.
Notes
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variety of estimates of the population of Paris, which taken together suggest a maximum figure of 400,000 in the year 1600. In his History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (translation, Hamilton, viii. 407) Gregorovius quotes with apparent approval an estimate putting the population of Rome in 1520 at about 85,000 : Paes’s account of Vijayanagar is of about the same date. Paes also states (Sewell, p. 290) that there were more than 100,000 houses in Vijayanagar ; this would mean a population of half a million or somewhat more, and probably the truth lay between the two numbers.
suggests the presence of something like a middle class, but my ignorance of the language has prevented me from following up the subject in detail. There is no trace of such a distinctive feature in the authorities within my reach, but they are not conclusive on this particular point.
or beasts. . . . The beasts taken, if man’s meat, are sold, and their money given to the poor ; if men, they remain the King’s slaves, which he sends yearly to Kabul to barter for horses and dogs : these being poor, miserable, thievish people, that live in woods and deserts, little differing from beasts.” I do not know if this story be true : other writers tell it besides Finch, but the fact that it was told may be safely accepted as evidence of the estimation in which these unfortunate people were held by their more highly civilised brothers.