Chapter VII: The Standard of Life

I. INTRODUCTORY

WE have now examined the resources of each of the main classes into which we divided the population of India, and it remains to bring together such information as is available regarding the way in which those resources were used, or in other words, to attempt a description of the standards of life prevailing at the end of the sixteenth century. It is scarcely necessary to say that the literature of the period contains nothing like a complete or systematic treatment of this subject, for, as I have remarked more than once, Indian writers accepted the existing state of things, whatever it might be, as natural or necessary, while foreign observers were content as a rule to note such particular circumstances as happened to attract their attention; the information available is therefore in- complete and fragmentary, but it has the qualities correspond- ing to its defects, and appears to be entirely devoid of bias. The observers on whose statements we have to rely were governed by no economic theories, and had no case to prove: ¹ allowances may have to be made for occasional errors, but there is no reason to suspect that the evidence is vitiated by prejudice or by the attempt to justify preconceived views, and as a general rule we can safely accept the facts as stated, even though it may be necessary occasionally to discard in-ferences drawn by their recorders.

The work of piecing together these fragmentary observa-tions so as to present something like a connected description is greatly facilitated by the rarity of contradictory statements among our authorities. Allowances have of course to be made for differences of time and place, but the most definite impres-sion produced by contemporary narratives is one of essential uniformity; whenever a traveller lifts the veil for a moment, the picture of which we get a glimpse is familiar in its main features, and each successive item of information becomes readily intelligible in the light of what has previously been learned. The nature of the evidence, therefore, justifies the attempt to speak of India as a whole, so long as we bear in mind that what is said of the whole does not apply necessarily to every individual member of the population; I have no doubt that frugal and parsimonious nobles could be found at the Courts, and that individual peasants or artisans may have been prosperous or even wealthy, but the broad facts remain that the mass of the nobles were steeped in luxury and that the mass of the people were miserably poor, poorer even than they are to-day. To realise the strength of the evidence in favour of this uniformity requires a first-hand study of the authorities: in the sections which follow, I attempt to bring together a sufficient num-ber of passages to furnish an idea of its nature, but their effect is necessarily weakened by removal from their context, and it is only by following the succession of travellers in their journeys through the country that we can appreciate the full significance of their direct statements, and still more, of the chance expressions scattered through their narratives. The uniformity of which I have spoken will be apparent in the sections which follow, but one striking illustration may be noticed here. The Jesuit missionary Monserrate has left us a detailed account of his reception at Akbar’s Court in the year 1580; other Jesuit missionaries have given descriptions of the Hindu Courts of the far south about fifteen years later, and in all essentials the two accounts might be transposed.¹ There are differences, of course, due largely to differences of climate and environment: in the south cotton fabrics take the place occupied in the north by wool, just as rice replaces wheat-flour, but these accessories are immaterial, and the main features of Court life appear with almost startling uniformity. Extracts, however, would not bring out the full weight of this evidence: to appreciate it properly, we must read the whole narratives, putting ourselves as far as possible in the position of the narrators, and seeing the country and people with their eyes; it is only by this process that we can obtain a complete and satisfactory view of the environment in which their experiences were obtained.

One result of the conditions which I have indicated is that we are told more of the life of the upper classes than of the rest of the community. As I have said above, our authorities noted such facts as interested them, and there can be no doubt that the life led by the nobles was intensely interesting to observe, while the food or clothes or homes of the common people afforded little scope for picturesque description; when you have said that people go nearly naked, you have practically exhausted the topic of clothing, and you can write little about furniture when the possessions of a family are limited to a couple of bedsteads and a scanty supply of cooking vessels. Some writers leave the common people entirely out of account, as when Conti tells us that the inhabitants of the country “sleep upon silken mattresses on beds mounted with gold,” a statement which sufficiently indicates the limitations with which it must be understood; in the case of others the position is not always so plain, and some care is needed in order to make sure whether a particular statement applies to the people generally, or merely to some small class in whose affairs the writer was interested at the moment. This fact furnishes an additional reason for studying the original authorities, and it may be well to repeat that the sections which follow must not be read as a complete statement of the evidence available, but rather as an attempt to indicate its general nature.

II. THE UPPER CLASSES

The economic position of the upper classes may be stated in very few words. As we have seen in Chapter III., their incomes were as a rule received, or at least calculated, in money, and were very large indeed when the low prices of necessaries and reasonable comforts are taken into account, so that the members of the aristocracy had a substantial surplus available for investment, or for expenditure on luxuries, after providing for the ordinary needs of themselves and their establishments. Investment in the strict sense of the term was, however, comparatively rare. The methods with which we are familiar at the present day were not avail- able: State loans were not openly placed on the market, stocks and shares did not exist, while land was held only at the will of the ruler, and could not be purchased except in small blocks for building houses or laying out gardens. It is possible that money could be placed on deposit with merchants, though I have found no mention of the practice, but in any case it can scarcely have been on the same footing as banking deposits in modern India. Probably some of the nobles undertook commercial ventures on their own account: we know that this course was taken by members of Akbar’s family, and it is reasonable to assume that their example was followed.¹ In industry as distinct from commerce there was, as we have seen, practically no scope for the employment of capital, and commerce was a risky business in which ordinary men were likely to be less successful than those who gave it their undivided attention: probably it attracted some of the courtiers and officials, but as a rule money not immediately spent would be hoarded in the form of cash or jewellery for use at a later period, or possibly in the hope that on its owner’s death the accumulation could be concealed from the knowledge of the authorities.¹

Spending, not hoarding, was, however, the dominant feature of the time. The example of magnificence set by Emperors and Kings was followed by their courtiers and officials, and while the resources of the country were freely drawn on, the taste of the period preferred novelties imported from abroad; indeed, the official encouragement given to foreign merchants must be attributed in great part to the fact that they were able to satisfy this insistent demand. This taste for imported goods had, from the nature of the case, least scope in the matter of food, the bulk of which was furnished by the grain and meat of the country : it appears partly in the lavish use of spices which has been mentioned in a previous chapter, and partly in the arrangements made to procure such auxiliaries as ice and fresh fruit. Abul Fazl gives details of the organisation of the ice-supply, then a comparatively recent innovation, and mentions that ordinary people used ice in summer while the great nobles used it all the year round; it might cost as much as 20 dams for a ser of the period, but the ordinary rate was nearer ten dams, or, allowing for the change in purchasing power, more than a rupee per pound, which fairly establishes its claim to be classed as a luxury. The Moguls appear to have been particularly fond of fruit: Babur writes of Indian fruits as a connoisseur, Akbar organised this department of his household on generous lines, while Jahangir’s outbursts of delight at the quality of his supplies are a characteristic feature of his Memoirs. So far as acclimatisation was effected, Akbar’s efforts were doubtless beneficial to the country as a whole, but the organisation of imports primarily for his own use from such distant sources as Badakhshan and Samar-qand can be classed only as a luxurious proceeding, as is indicated by the prices paid; a melon from Badakhshan was priced at Rs. 2$\frac{1}{2}$, or the approximate equivalent of a pound sterling at modern values. Expenditure on food depended, however, less on the cost of these adjuncts, or even on the richness of the dishes, than on the profusion of the service : Akbar himself is said to have cared little about the quality of his food, but in his kitchen “cooks from all countries” prepared daily such dishes “as the nobles can scarcely com-mand”; the number of dishes served was very great, and the elaboration of the service even more remarkable. If Terry’s often-quoted description of the dinner given by Asaf Khan to Sir Thomas Roe be compared with Abul Fazl’s account of Akbar’s table, a fairly accurate general impression can be obtained of the lavishness of provision and service maintained by the greatest men, and it is safe to infer that courtiers of smaller means followed the fashion set them so far as their resources permitted.

Dress afforded similar opportunities of expenditure both in the quantity of garments and in the costliness of the materials employed. If we may believe Abul Fazl, Akbar took much more interest in clothes than in food, and altered not merely the names of particular garments, but also the cut and the material; his wardrobe was sufficiently large to require an elaborate system of classification, but when we read that 1000 complete suits were made up for him every year, allowance must be made for the practice of conferring dresses as a reward or distinction on persons appearing at Court. Abul Fazl distributed his entire wardrobe every year among his servants, and a variety of casual allusions indicate that a large stock of clothes was an ordinary feature of Court life. The range of materials was very great, as may be judged from the lists recorded in the Ain-i Akbari, in which a prominent place is taken by imported goods. Cotton fabrics could be obtained up to Rs. 150 per piece, woollen stuffs to Rs. 250, and silks to Rs. 300, while embroidered velvets and brocades might cost anything up to Rs. 700, or even (in one case) Rs. 1500 ; Abul Fazl speaks of a “ piece ” as containing sufficient cloth to make a complete dress, and on this basis we can form a general idea of the possibility of spending money on a wardrobe designed to render the wearer a conspicuous object at Court. As regards jewellery, it is hardly worth while to give details ; it was worn in profusion ; rare stones were eagerly sought, and outlay was limited only by the means available.

I am inclined to think that, with the possible exception of jewellery, more money was spent on the stables than in any other branch of a courtier’s household. An adequate supply of elephants and horses was essential for the maintenance of a dignified position, and there were unlimited possibilities of expenditure on equipment and adornment. Elephants could be obtained at all prices, for Abul Fazl says that the cost varied from a lakh to Rs. 100. Horses suitable for gentlemen appear to have ranged from Rs. 200 to upwards of Rs. 1000,¹ and the maintenance of a large stable of high-priced animals must have been very costly even when the cheapness of grain and fodder is taken into account. As to the adornments, it is best to accept at once Abul Fazl’s statement that they cannot be described, though it may be noted that an elephant’s picket-chain might be made of iron, silver, or gold; ² there was in fact no limit to the amount that might be spent under this head. Sport and gambling, which then as now went together, could also be costly amusements, which, under Akbar at least, were obligatory on the more prominent courtiers ; the amount of bets was in some cases limited by regulation, but while we know that the practice was recognised, we are left to conjecture the extent to which the limitation was effective.

Expenditure on house accommodation was not, I think, an important item in the case of courtiers, for the Court was often on the move, and large camps seemed to have served as residences for most of those who accompanied it. In these camps the possibilities of spending money on display were practically unlimited, since the number, size, and decoration of tents were matters to be regulated by the aspirations of the individual, and a very high standard was set by the Imperial camp. Abul Fazl speaks of decorations of velvet and brocade, and of silken fastenings for the canvas screens, and we may be sure that the camp of a prominent noble presented a much more imposing spectacle than that which the word suggests in modern India. In the matter of furniture there was not the same variety as now, for tables, chairs, or couches were not in ordinary use. Carpets, bedsteads, mirrors, and utensils were, however, used in profusion, and their cost was limited only by the individual’s means.

The style of living required a very large staff of servants, and, as I have said in a previous chapter, the extent of this domestic employment is an important economic feature of the time. A noble must have required servants almost by the hundred if we reckon his household on approximately the scale indicated by Abul Fazl, allowing four men for each elephant, two or three to each horse, a crowd in the kitchen, two crowds of tent-pitchers (one for the fore-camp and one for the rear), adequate transport, torch-bearers, and all the other elements of a respectable establishment ; and while slaves were cheap, and wages were so low that a rupee would go as far as seven rupees in modern times, the cost must still have been very great. The crowd of attendants was by no means a feature peculiar to the Mogul Court, but was to be found in almost every part of India : when a traveller de- scribes the life on the west coast or reaches one of the Courts in the Deccan, when an ambassador comes to Goa, when the Jesuit missionaries visit a noble in Vijayanagar, in each case we read the same thing ; and it is significant that in this as in other matters the Portuguese at Goa followed the practice of the country, and a “man of quality” would not walk in the street without a train of attendants, pages, and African slaves.

Enough has perhaps been said to indicate that de Laet was justified in the conclusion which he drew from his materials, that the luxury of the nobles could scarcely be described, seeing that their one concern in life was to secure a surfeit of every kind of pleasure, a judgment which may be compared with Roe’s dictum that “they are nothing but voluptuousness and wealth confusedly intermingled.” One other object of expenditure has still to be mentioned—the presents to the Emperor and to persons of influence, the offering of which was prescribed by etiquette, while the value was determined mainly by the ambition of the donor. This practice should be distinguished from the secret bribery which also prevailed; presents were given openly, even ostentatiously, and they were part of the established system. No one could approach a superior empty-handed, and presents given to secure promo- tion may almost be regarded as akin to investments, just as Englishmen until the last century regarded the sums paid for posts in the public offices. In the atmosphere of Indian Courts, where novelty and riches were the things most desired, the practice assumed a form very different from the survivals of it which exist at the present day. Competition for appoint- ment or promotion was keen ; the prizes of a career at Court tended to go to the competitor whose gifts were most accept- able, and the results may be seen in the pages of Jahangir’s Memoirs, where the offerings of each visitor or suitor in succession are described and appreciated from a strictly financial point of view. It is probable that the system became more and more burdensome as time went on, and that Jahangir’s presents were more valuable than those of Akbar, but its existence in the earlier reign is beyond dispute, and the keenness with which gifts of the most varied kind were received by the Emperor, as well as by his contem- aries in the south, is clearly shown in the narratives of the Jesuit missionaries.

The natural result of the conditions which have been described was the impoverishment of the nobles, and we have Bernier’s authority for saying that this result actually followed. “I was acquainted,” he wrote, “with very few wealthy omrahs : on the contrary most of them are deeply in debt ; they are ruined . . . by the costly presents made to the King and by their large establishment.” The financial ruin of the aristocracy was by itself a matter of little moment, but it had an important bearing on the economic condition of the masses of the people : the provincial Governors and other officials had in practice very wide powers, and when their resources were running low it was on the peasants and artisans that the burden fell, so that there is no reason to question the substantial truth of the picture which Bernier draws of the misery of the masses at the end of Shahjahan’s reign. The impoverishment of the nobles was a process requiring time, and it may be assumed that the deterioration in the condition of the people was also gradual, and that they were somewhat better off under Akbar, but in estimating the economic effects of his administration we must allow for the fact that it fostered the tendencies in question.

It must not, however, be supposed that every one at Indian Courts lived beyond his means ; many, I think the great majority, did so, but there were thrifty men who built up large fortunes, and a few words must be said as to the disposal of these accumulations. So far as the wealth could be traced, it reverted, in Northern India at least, to the Treasury when its owner died, and since this result was distasteful, rich men endeavoured to dispose of it during their lifetime. One way of doing this was to bestow large dowries, like that which Raja Bhagwan Das provided for his daughter, which according to Badaoni included “several strings of horses and a hundred elephants, and boys and girls of Abyssinia, India, and Circassia, and all sorts of golden vessels set with jewels, and utensils of gold and vessels of silver, and all sorts of stuffs, the quantity of which is beyond all computation.” Another resource was the construction of great buildings, and, as the surface of India still bears witness, the fashion of the time set less towards works of practical utility than to tombs and commemorative monuments.¹ Sometimes, though rarely, a noble might be permitted to leave the country, and go to his home in Persia or elsewhere, or make a pilgrimage to the holy places of Arabia, carrying with him at least a portion of his accumulated wealth. Permission to take this course appears, however, to have been given only when it was desirable on political grounds, and the practice of carrying money out of the country was rigorously discouraged. A large fortune might thus prove to be nothing but an encumbrance, and while some men were apparently content to accumulate riches for the ultimate benefit of the State, the majority spent their income at least as quickly as it accrued, and spent it in the manner which I have illustrated in this section.

III. THE MIDDLE CLASSES

We know less of the life of the middle classes in the time of Akbar than of the classes which ranked either above or below them in the social scale; their numbers were certainly small, and we may fairly infer from the silence of our authorities that their life was at any rate free from ostentation. Professional men were, as we have seen, rarely to be found except at Court, where they might hope to attain to official rank, and probably lived more or less in accordance with the prevailing standards. Of the minor functionaries, who were certainly numerous at the various administrative centres, we get scarcely a glimpse, and in the absence of information regarding the current scale of salaries it is impossible even to conjecture how far they may have benefited by the cheapness of necessaries and reasonable comforts. In reading chronicles of the period, written presumably by men of this class, we occasionally notice that the economic outlook of the writers is that of men who found life hard : they do not indeed indulge in any detailed analysis of the conditions, but when they sum up the features of a dynasty or an epoch they dwell on the price of food in a way which indicates that the subject was of vital interest. Such passages suggest to me that the literate classes, to which these chroniclers belonged, were probably in much the same economic position then as now, and that the question of prices may have possessed for the clerks of Akbar’s time something of the same interest that it possesses for their successors at the present day, but until more positive evidence comes to light we should not be justified in forming any definite conclusion.

We know a little, but only a little, more of the position of the merchants of this period. We have seen that their economic condition must have varied greatly, and that while there were many rich men among them, their average income was probably not large.¹ If, however, they were wealthy, their possible ways of expenditure were confined within narrow limits, since ostentation was as dangerous in their case as it was desirable in the case of courtiers. Terry wrote that “there are very many private men in cities and towns, who are merchants or tradesmen, that are very rich : but it is not safe for them that are so, so to appear, lest that they should be used as fill’d sponges " ; while Bernier observed that “rich men study to appear indigent,” and that “let the profit be ever so great, the man by whom it has been made must still wear the garb of indigence.” These observations are probably of general application so far as the interior of the country is concerned, and they help us to understand the thrifty, or even parsimonious, scale of living which characterises so many of the commercial classes at the present day. An exception must, however, be made regarding some of the merchants engaged in business on the west coast. Barbosa says of the Moslems settled in Calicut that they went well dressed, had large houses and many servants, and were very luxurious in eating, drinking, and sleeping, though he adds that their position had greatly deteriorated since the Portuguese came to India. The same writer says that the Moslems living at Rander were well dressed, and had good houses, well kept and furnished. A century later della Valle commented on the freedom of life at Surat, where he was told that there was no risk in splendour or the appearance of riches, and observed that “generally, all live much after a genteel way,” a phrase which must be interpreted in the light of the writer’s own position as a gentleman of culture and refinement. The exceptional position on the coast is probably to be explained by the privileged status of the Moslem merchants, and by their importance for the maintenance of the customs revenue, and the supply of rare commodities; being free to live well, they acted in accordance with their inclinations, while the merchants of the interior were very far from being free, and led the quiet and unostentatious life required by the circumstances of their position.

IV. THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF THE LOWER CLASSES

We must now turn to consider the life of the masses of the people, the peasants, artisans, and labourers. I know of nothing approaching to a complete contemporary account of their mode of living: all that we possess is a series of glimpses, furnished mostly by the records of foreign observers, who noted facts that appeared to them to be of interest, and, as has been said before, the value of these occasional observations depends largely on their congruence. The fact that a certain person observed a particular phenomenon in one part of India at a certain time has by itself little general significance; but when we find men of different tastes and pursuits describing substantially the same phenomena, now here and now there, over a period of upwards of a century, each observation in turn contributes something towards a proof of the accuracy of the whole, and we are justified in combining the different items into something approaching to the complete picture which the writers of the period omitted to provide. One set of facts indeed comes to us from Indian as well as foreign sources—the liability of practically the whole country, excluding Bengal, to recurring periods of famine, with heavy mortality, enslavement of children, and cannibalism as its normal accompaniments ; these facts are quite certain, and the dread of such a calamity must always have been present to the minds of the people, but they form the background of the picture rather than the picture itself. Cannibalism was a normal feature of a famine, but famine itself was an exceptional rather than a normal characteristic of the country and the period, and for our present purpose its importance lies in the evidence which it furnishes that the mass of the people had no economic reserve. Early in the sixteenth century Barbosa wrote of the Coromandel coast, that although the country was very abundantly provided, yet if the rains failed, famine caused heavy mortality, and children were sold for less than a rupee ; the writer goes on to tell how in such seasons the Malabar ships brought food to the hungry, and returned laden with slaves which had been obtained in exchange. A generation later, Correa tells of depopulation and cannibalism on the same coast ; a decade after Correa, Badaoni records similar scenes near Agra and Delhi ; Caesar Frederic describes the sale of children in Gujarat about 1560 ; Linschoten when living in Goa saw children brought to be sold, and adults seeking to be en- slaved ; towards the end of the century it was again the turn of Northern India, and the accumulation of evidence shows that the people were dependent on the season for their sub- sistence, and that a failure of the rains resulted in an immediate economic collapse. The background of the picture is thus easily grasped.

When we look for evidence of normal rather than exceptional conditions, we may begin with the earliest of the writers who can fairly be called modern, the Italian Conti and the Russian monk Nikitin. Conti has nothing to say about the common people, though he gives an enthusiastic account of the splendour of the upper classes. Nikitin, who travelled in parts of the Deccan and Vijayanagar early in the fifteenth century, says, if the translation of his narrative may be trusted :¹ " The land is overstocked with people ; but those in the country are very miserable, while the nobles are extremely opulent and delight in luxury.” The latter statement agrees with what we have found was the case in the time of Akbar, and the former need not excite surprise. Our next authority is Barbosa, who wrote at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He was struck with the poverty existing on the Malabar coast, since he insists on the inferiority of the rice shipped for the use of the common people, and he mentions that some of the lower classes in that region were very poor, some bringing wood and grass for sale in the city, others living on roots and wild fruits, covering themselves with leaves, and eating the flesh of wild animals ; it is clear, therefore, that extreme poverty existed in Malabar, but we are not told the extent to which it prevailed. A similar impression is given by Varthema, whose experience was practically contemporary with that of Barbosa ; he notes that at one place on the Malabar coast the people lived very miserably ; he comments on the inferiority of house accommodation at Calicut and else- where, valuing houses at " half a ducat each, or one or two ducats at most " ; while regarding Vijayanagar he remarks that the common people " go quite naked with the exception of a piece of cloth about their middle." These facts are relevant, and he says nothing to suggest that he was any- where struck by the prosperity of the common people, while in most of the places described he passes over the subject in silence.²

About a quarter of a century after Varthema and Barbosa we come to Paes and Nuniz, the Portuguese chroniclers of Vijayanagar. Their evidence may be stated in the words of Mr. Sewell, who, after quoting Nuniz’s description of the revenue system, says: “This statement, coming as it does from a totally external source, strongly supports the view often held that the ryots of Southern India were grievously oppressed by the nobles when subject to Hindu government. Other passages in both these chronicles, each of which was written quite independently of the other, confirm the assertion here made as to the mass of the people being ground down and living in the greatest poverty and distress.” This evidence is important, because it relates to the period when Vijayanagar was at the height of its prosperity, and points to conditions prevailing over an area nearly as large as the modern Presidency of Madras.

The next witness is Linschoten, whose observations deal with conditions on the west coast between 1580 and 1590. He gives precise details of the poverty of the “common” Indians living in Goa, while of the country-people his account is even less favourable: they live very poorly, go naked, and “are so miserable that for a penny they would endure to be whipped, and they eat so little that it seemeth they live by the air; they are likewise most of them small and weak of limbs.” After Linschoten we come to the incidental observations of the first English travellers. Hawkins, who spent some time at the Court at Agra about the year 1610, attributed the lawlessness prevailing over large parts of the Empire to the oppression practised on the country-people, who were “racked” by grantees hurrying to get money before their grants passed into other hands. Salbank, writing of the thickly populated country between Agra and Lahore, observes that some of the Mogul’s subjects “are said to be very wealthy, such I mean as derive estates from him; but the plebeian sort is so poor that the greatest part of them go naked.” Jourdain, who had seen the country between Surat and Agra, summed up his experience a little later in the aphorism that India lived “like the fishes in the sea—the greater eat the lesser.” A few years later Sir Thomas Roe stated the same idea in more detail : the people of India “live as fishes do in the sea—the great ones eat up the little. For first the farmer robs the peasant, the gentleman robs the farmer, the greater robs the lesser, and the King robs all.” Such remarks as these, the casual observations of men of affairs to whom the condition of the people was a matter of no immediate concern, throw definite though narrow rays of light on the subject with which we are concerned, and we may add the summary of what the English merchants were able to learn of the possibilities of Bengal as a seat of trade : they were told that the market was limited to the “gentry,” of whom there were very few, and that most of the inhabitants were very poor. Meanwhile Pyrard had summed up his observations of life on the west coast, recording that the common people “throughout all these countries are much despised, vile and abject beings, just like slaves,” while about the year 1624 della Valle gave incident- ally a similar glimpse of Surat, which was then benefiting from the recent development of foreign trade. He explains the large establishments kept by almost “everybody” by pointing out that the people were numerous, wages were very low, and slaves cost practically nothing to keep. A few years later de Laet summarised the information he had collected from English, Dutch, and Portuguese sources regarding the Mogul Empire as a whole, in what is the nearest approach to a sys- tematic description that has survived. “The condition of the common people in these regions is,” he says, “exceedingly miserable”; wages are low; workmen get one regular meal a day ; the houses are wretched and practically unfurnished, and people have not sufficient covering to keep warm in winter. It would be going beyond our period to quote the various later travellers who recorded similar observations, but it is important to note that before the end of the seventeenth century the poverty of the people had become so notorious in England that it could be employed as an argument in current political controversy.¹

These glimpses of the condition of the common people are not sufficient to furnish the basis of a minute comparison with the position at the present day : we cannot deduce from them whether the masses were somewhat better off, or somewhat worse off, than now, but to my mind they afford adequate justification for the statement that there has been no great qualitative change, and that from the fifteenth to the seven- teenth century the great majority of the population of India were exceedingly poor, when judged by contemporary European standards, which, it must be remembered, were lower than the standards which now prevail. We may conclude, then, that, speaking generally, the masses lived on the same economic plane as now, and can proceed to examine the evidence in more detail in order to see if it indicates changes in the degree of poverty.

V. FOOD, CLOTHING, AND OTHER DETAILS

It is clear from contemporary accounts that the diet of the common people throughout India consisted essentially of the same articles as now—rice, millets, and pulses, with fish in Bengal and on the coasts, and meat in the south of the penin- sula. Terry, writing chiefly of his experience in the Imperial camp in Malwa, makes it plain that “the meaner sort of people” did not eat wheat, but used the flour of “a coarse, well-tasted grain,” which from the locality we may reasonably set down as jowār. The condition of agriculture in the Mogul provinces from Agra to Lahore makes it to my mind highly probable that wheat was less commonly eaten than now by the peasants in that part of the country ; millets were largely grown, and they must have been intended for local consump- tion, while it is unlikely that importation of supplies of wheat for the Court would have been necessary if ordinary people were accustomed to consume that staple. I have, however, found no direct evidence on this point, as the food of the common people in the north is not described by any authority. On the question of greater interest, the quantity of food, there is also almost complete silence ; indeed the only writer who touches on it seems to be de Laet, who noted that the principal article of food was “kitsery,” composed of pulse and rice, which was eaten with a little butter in the evening, while in the daytime the people chewed pulse or other parched grain. According to de Laet, then, there was only one regular meal a day; his statement is made in general terms, but we should scarcely be justified in applying it to the whole country, nor may we extend the application of Linschoten’s observation of definite under-feeding beyond the west coast where it was made; and apart from these two writers there is nothing to show that in ordinary times the people had either more or less to eat than they have now.

As regards fats, sugar, and salt, the principal adjuncts to the diet of ordinary people, there are not sufficient materials to furnish conclusions applicable to the whole of India, but it is permissible to take the prices of these articles recorded by Abul Fazl as indicating with substantial accuracy the position in the Imperial camp and the surrounding country, and as suggesting more vaguely the conditions prevailing in a larger area of Northern India. The figures in question show that fats, that is to say, butter (ghi) and the seeds furnishing edible oils, were, relatively to grain, distinctly cheaper than now, and in this respect the lower classes were better off as consumers, though not as producers. This inference is borne out, to some extent, by de Laet’s mention of butter, which has just been quoted, and inci- dental remarks made by other writers are consistent with the same view. On the other hand, salt and at least the better qualities of sugar were dearer than at present. In terms of grain, salt was more than double the present price, and remembering that the Court was usually located com- paratively near to the chief centres of supply, we may conclude that the extra cost was still greater in the country farther south and east. The case of sugar is more doubtful, but I think the probabilities are in favour of the view put forward in Chapter V., that refined sugar was a luxury beyond the means of the poor, and that sweetmeats must have been made almost entirely of the raw product (gur). The extent to which sweetmeats were eaten is uncertain; travellers say nothing to indicate that they were as now a staple food, and sugar was so expensive in Europe at this period that we should expect them to have noticed this form of consumption if it had been a conspicuous feature of the halting-places on the roads. I am myself inclined to think that the large con- sumption of sweetmeats is a comparatively modern feature of Indian life, but the evidence in favour of this view is wholly negative and does not justify a definite conclusion. Perhaps the changes in regard to this group of adjuncts may be taken as unimportant on balance; consumers have certainly bene- fited by cheaper salt and refined sugar, while they have suffered through the rise in the price of ghi, and it is not improbable that different parts of the country have been affected in different ways by alterations in the supply of the commonest forms of saccharine products.

The position in regard to housing accommodation is clear. No traveller has a good word to say for the houses occupied by the masses in any part of India, and it is scarcely worth while to reproduce their contemptuous descriptions in detail; even Terry, who usually looked on the bright side of things, wrote that the cottages in the villages were “miserably poor, little and base,” and we have similar accounts from all sides of India. Unfortunately this general condemnation is still substantially deserved: in some parts of the country, notably Bengal and Central India, progress has of late years been rapid in the matter of making the buildings weather-proof, but apart from this change, the housing of the people can still be described in the terms used three centuries ago, and the descriptions afford no basis for a comparative estimate of the degree of wealth or poverty. There are some indications that the class of houses occupied by the masses in the cities has improved; it would not now be correct to say of Agra, for instance, what Jourdain said of it, that “most part of the city is straw houses, which once or twice a year is burnt to the ground,” but the change in this case is probably to be explained by the fact that most of the population of the capital had to be prepared to follow the Imperial camp, and ordinary people were not likely to go to the expense of providing permanent homes.

The supply of furniture was scanty, as is still the case. De Laet records that furniture was exceedingly rare, con- sisting only of a few earthen vessels, bedsteads, and thin and scanty bedding, while Linschoten, writing of the west coast, says that “the household stuff of the people is mats of straw, both to sit and lie upon,” and that their “tables, tablecloths and napkins” are made of plantain-leaves. Such descriptions still hold good in the main, but there is a definite change to be recorded in regard to articles of metal, and particularly household utensils. We should expect travellers on the look- out for unfamiliar things to take special note of the brass or copper vessels now so commonly seen, which are rendered conspicuous to foreign observers by their shape as well as by their lustre, and by the scrupulous etiquette with which they are handled, but as a matter of fact such possessions are very rarely mentioned. Linschoten wrote that the common people at Goa drank out of a “copper can,” but used earthen- ware pots for cooking, while the country people in the same region “drink out of a copper can with a spout, which is all the metal they have in their houses”; but with the exception of this writer I have found no mention of such utensils. Nikitin in the fifteenth and de Laet in the seventeenth century spoke only of earthenware,¹ and even Terry said nothing of brass vessels, though he was careful to note the use of “thin iron plates” for baking bread, and might be expected to pay equal attention to the more conspicuous utensils had they come under his observation. The view suggested by the silence of the authorities that ordinary people used much less metal than now, is rendered probable by the facts regarding prices given in a previous chapter. Copper coins circulated, it will be remembered, at the value of the metal they con- tained, and not as is now the case as tokens, so that a drinking- cup or dish would have cost approximately its weight in coins. In the neighbourhood of Akbar’s Court copper cost five times as much grain as now, and we have seen that it cannot have been materially cheaper in the south; a supply of vessels comparable to that which the people now possess would thus have represented a large aggregate of wealth, and it is reason- able to conclude that to ordinary people metal goods in general were luxuries, desired perhaps as they are desired now, but too costly to be obtained in the quantities which are now available.

Contemporary evidence is more copious in regard to clothing than to furniture, but its general effect is rather to lay stress on the nakedness of the people than to enter into details regarding the various garments worn. The importance of clothing depends so much on the climate that it will be well to review the evidence under two heads, taking first the obser- vations relating to the south, where the question is mainly conventional, and then passing to Northern and Central India, where, for some part of the year, adequate clothing is neces- sary for efficiency. The tradition of the nakedness of the south is of old standing, and can be traced through various writers onwards from the beginning of the fourteenth century, when John of Montecorvino wrote that tailors were not required as the people went naked, covering only the loins. In the fifteenth century, Nikitin said that the Hindus of the Deccan " are all naked and barefooted." Barbosa notes that the Hindus of the Deccan go naked from the waist upwards and wear small turbans on their heads. Varthema records of the Hindus of Gujarat that " some of them go naked, and others cover only their privities," while as regards Vijayanagar he states that " the common people go quite naked, with the exception of a piece of cloth about their middle." Fitch writes that at Golconda " the men and the women do go with a cloth bound about their middles without any other apparel." Linschoten says that the peasants in the neighbourhood of Goa " go naked, their privy members only covered with a cloth," and della Valle writes regarding the population of that city that " the people is numerous, but the greatest part are slaves, a black and lewd generation, going naked for the most part or else very ill clad." Of the people of Calicut the same writer remarks that “as for clothing they need little, both men and women going quite naked, saving that they have a piece either of cotton or silk hanging down from the girdle to the knee.” De Laet does not describe the clothing of the common people, but he notes the scantiness of their bedding, “convenient during great heat, but of little use when the weather is really cold,” and the remark may serve as a sum- mary of the foregoing observations. It will be noticed that nothing is said of coats or upper garments, which are now common, though by no means universal.

For the north of India we have in the first place the observations of the Emperor Babur, according to whom " peasants and people of low standing go about naked. They tie on a thing which they call lunguta, a decency-clout which hangs two spans below the navel. From the tie of this pendant decency-clout, another clout is passed between the thighs and made fast behind. Women also tie on a cloth (lung), one half of which goes round the waist, the other is thrown over the head." This description is so detailed that it appears reasonable to accept it as exhaustive. Towards the end of the sixteenth century Fitch made some notes on the clothes worn in the Gangetic plain. At Benares he says that " the people go all naked save a little cloth bound about their middle. . . . In the winter, which is our May,¹ the men wear quilted gowns of cotton . . . and quilted caps.” At Tanda, near the old capital city of Gaur, he writes that “the people go naked with a little cloth bound about their waist ”; he uses the same expressions regarding the people of Bacola, which was situated near Chittagong; while as regards Sonargaon, the capital city, he tells us that the people “go with a little cloth before them, and all the rest of their body is naked.” These statements are corroborated as regards Bengal by the remark in the Ain-i Akbari that men and women for the most part go naked, wearing only a cloth; unfortunately for our present purpose, Abul Fazl did not give similar information regarding the remaining provinces of the Empire, for which we are dependent on the statements already quoted, and on the incidental observation of Salbank regarding the country between Agra and Lahore, that “the plebeian sort is so poor that the greatest part of them go naked in their whole body save their privities, which they cover with a linen ¹ overture.” The most striking feature of these accounts is the absence of any covering for the upper part of the body, and in this respect they are certainly not applicable to Northern India at the present time; we should expect also that a writer like Babur would have described the turbans now so commonly worn in the Panjab if they had come under his observation; and it appears reasonable to conclude that less clothing was generally worn. I have found no mention of woollen garments in any part of India, and no record of blankets being used or carried by the common people.

The tradition of nakedness in the south extends to the feet. John of Montecorvino reported that shoemakers were as little required as tailors. Nikitin said, as we have seen, that the people of the Deccan went barefoot. Paes says the same thing of “the majority of the people, or almost all,” in Vijayanagar; and since Linschoten describes the shoes of the better classes in the vicinity of Goa, we may regard his silence regarding the lower classes as significant. So far as Northern India is concerned, the evidence on this point is almost entirely negative. Barbosa states that in his time the common people in the city of Bengala wore shoes, but with the excep- tion of this statement I have not found a shoe mentioned any- where north of the Narbada river, and while this fact is not conclusive, the silence of such a writer as Babur appears to me to be at least suggestive; it is possible that shoes were as widely worn as now, but the probability lies in the contrary direction. If, as I believe, shoes were less worn than now throughout India, the cause is not to be found in the high cost of leather, which, as we have seen in a previous chapter, was probably abundant, at least in the raw state, and we must assume that, though the cost was small, the means of the people were insufficient to provide articles which were not strictly necessary for subsistence. In regard to other gar- ments, the cost of material may have been a factor of some importance; the statistics of prices given by Abul Fazl suggest that both cotton and woollen goods were dearer than now in terms of grain, but they are not by themselves sufficient to justify a definite conclusion, and the most that can be said is that they point in the same direction as the statements of travellers, and make it easier to understand their insistence on the nakedness of the masses of the population.

In other matters, people seem to have lived under Akbar much as they live now, and a quantitative comparison of their expenditure is impossible. Pilgrimages were popular, and in the absence of means of rapid travel they may have cost more than now, but we do not know the proportion of the people who were able to make them. Marriages were cele- brated in the style which is still familiar, but we are not in a position to compare the expense incurred. Jewellery and metal ornaments were largely worn, but there is nothing to show the extent of the practice, and our knowledge may be summed up in della Valle’s remark that “those that have them adorn themselves with many gold-works and jewels.” There were almost certainly fewer possibilities than now of spending money on the trifles and small conveniences obtainable everywhere at the present day—pocket-knives, buttons, looking-glasses, and similar goods; they were not then on the market, and probably the want of them was not felt. Intoxicating liquors, opium, and drugs appear to have been readily obtainable in most parts of the country, and, as I have said in an earlier chapter, the restrictions contained in Akbar’s regulations were probably not systematically enforced, but we have no information regarding the consumption of the masses, and it can be said only that over-indulgence did not occur on a scale to attract the attention of foreign visitors. Tobacco was not as yet generally available, and I have found no suggestion that the common people smoked any indigenous product, so that apparently we must conclude that the practice is comparatively novel. It is reasonable to infer that little money was spent on litigation: professional lawyers did not exist, and I doubt whether many high officers of the period would have given much time to the investigation of disputes among those of the common people who were not in a position to offer really substantial bribes. On the other hand, rather more was probably spent than now in satisfying the demands of petty officials of various classes, but it is impossible to form any definite idea of the expenditure necessary under this head.

To complete our review of the circumstances of the people, a few words should be said regarding the benefits which they were able to enjoy without payment. So far as the activities of the State were concerned, these benefits appear to have been very scanty indeed. There were some unmetalled roads, and a very small number of bridges; there was nothing in the way of organised medical assistance; I can trace no signs of a system of popular education;¹ and the day had not come for schemes of industrial or agricultural development, or for the provision of veterinary treatment or other modern forms of State activity. In all these matters the masses are economically better off at the present day. The question of the benefits arising from charitable endow- ments is not quite so clear, but, if one might judge from the surviving institutions, I should be inclined to conclude that for the people at large these benefits were of small account, though they may have been substantial in the case of particu- lar localities or special classes of the population ; speaking generally, the common people had to provide what they needed for themselves.

At the beginning of this chapter I suggested that the scattered and fragmentary observations, which alone are available, could be pieced together so as to make something like a picture of the economic life of India at the close of Akbar’s reign. The picture which I see is this. The upper classes, small in numbers and consisting largely of foreigners, enjoyed incomes which were very great relatively to reason- able needs, and as a rule they spent these incomes lavishly on objects of luxury and display. They did practically nothing towards promoting the economic development of the country, and such part of their income as was not spent was hoarded in unproductive forms. The single benefit resulting from their activities was indirect : their patronage of foreign merchants, dictated solely by the desire for novelty, in fact facilitated the opening of new channels of trade, and thus paved the way for economic developments in the future. Enjoying this patronage, the merchants on the coast adopted a somewhat similar style of living, but elsewhere it was dangerous for traders or men of business to indulge in open expenditure, and, like the rest of the middle classes, they lived inconspicuous and probably frugal lives. The great bulk of the population lived on the same economic plane as now : we cannot be sure whether they had a little more or a little less to eat, but they probably had fewer clothes, and they were certainly worse off in regard to household utensils and to some of the minor conveniences and gratifications of life, while they enjoyed practically nothing in the way of communal services and advantages. That is the picture itself : in the background is the shadow of famine, a word which has changed its meaning within the last century. In Akbar’s time, and long afterwards, it meant complete if temporary economic chaos, marked by features which, repulsive as they are, must not be left out—destruction of homes, sale of children into slavery, hopeless wandering in search of food, and finally starvation, with cannibalism as the only possible alternative. It is against this background that the splendours of Agra or Vijayanagar must be viewed.

AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER VII

SECTION 1.—Nil.

SECTION 2.—Details regarding the supply of ice are given in Ain, trans- lation, i. 56. For fruit, see i. 65, also Babur’s Memoirs, 503, and Tuzuk, passim. For the style of food, see Ain, translation, i. 57 ; Terry, 195, and Manrique, lxvi. Terry’s account of Asaf Khan’s banquet is quoted at length in V. Smith’s Akbar, 504. The particulars given regarding dress are taken from Ain, translation, i. xxviii and 87-94 ; those regarding the stable are from i. 118, 126, 129 ; for gambling and sport, see i. 219. Tents are described in i. 45-55. Particulars as to the staff of servants at the Mogul Court have been given in Chapter III. ; the references for other parts of India are della Valle, 42 ; Thévenot, 307 ; Pyrard, ii. 75, 80, 135 ; Hay, 750 and passim. De Laet’s general conclusion is p. 119, and Roe’s corresponding observations are in Letters Received, vi. 298. For presents, see Tuzuk, i. 103, 132, 134, etc. ; Hay, 723, 762, 869 ; Roe, 110 ; Sewell, 281 ; Manrique, lxiv ; but this list of references is very far from being exhaustive. The references to Bernier in the text are to pp. 213, 226, 230. The dowry provided by Raja Bhagwan Das is described in Badaoni, II. 352. Tavernier in particular refers (p. 75), to the difficulty of carrying money out of the country, and Manrique, lxxi, illustrates the practical importance of this rule.

SECTION 3.—Instances of the economic outlook of the chroniclers will be found in Elliot’s History, iv. 246, 476. The risks of display are referred to by Terry, 391, and Bernier, 223, 229. For the merchants of the west coast, see Barbosa, 280, 342, and della Valle, 42.

SECTION 4.—The references to famine conditions are Barbosa, 358 ; Hobson-Jobson (s.v. Xerafine) ; Elliot’s History, v. 490, vi. 193 ; Purchas, II. x. 1703, and Linschoten, c. 41 ; the list is by no means exhaustive. The passages cited as to normal conditions are, Major, 14 ; Barbosa, 295, 338, 339 ; Varthema, 129, 132, 136 ; Sewell, 379 ; Linschoten, c. 33, 39 ; Purchas, I. iii. 221 ; Letters Received, iv. 307, vi. 182 ; Jourdain, 162 ; Roe, 397 ; Pyrard, translation, i. 386 ; della Valle, 42.

SECTION 5.—For the nature of the food ordinarily consumed, see especially Ain, translation, ii. 122, 151, 239, 338 ; also Barbosa, 291 ; Sewell, 366 ; della Valle, 42 ; Linschoten, c. 33, and Terry, 198 ; for the quantity, see de Laet, 116. For the prices of food adjuncts, and of clothing, see Journal, R.A.S., October 1918, 375 ff.

For housing, see, amongst other authorities, Monserrate, 152 ; Purchas, II. x. 1732–35 ; Terry, 179 ; Thévenot, 48, 104, 129, 281, and (in Agra) Jourdain, 162. For furniture, see de Laet, 116 ; Linschoten, c. 33, 39 ; Major, 17, and Terry, 198.

The references to clothing in Southern India are Yule, Cathay, iii. 57 ; Major, 12 ; Barbosa, 290 ; Varthema, 129 ; Linschoten, c. 39 ; della Valle, 157, 360 ; Purchas, II. x. 1732, and de Laet, 116 : in the north, Babur, 519 ; Ain, translation, ii. 122 ; Purchas, II. x. 1735–37 ; Letters Received, vi. 182. For shoes, see Yule, Cathay, iii. 57 ; Major, 12 ; Sewell, 252 ; Linschoten, c. 38, 39, and Barbosa, 365.

For pilgrimages, see, e.g., Hay, 719 ; for marriages, Purchas, II. x. 1732 ; for jewellery, della Valle, 45.

Notes

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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 nin the narrative itself a single positive statement in favour of this view, and in order to deduce the inference stated we should have to assume that when Varthema says nothing about any class, that class was in a prosperous condition, an assumption which seems to me to be absolutely unjustifiable.