Themes in Indian History II

Chapter 5 of Themes in Indian History Part II examines Indian society from the tenth to the seventeenth century through the accounts of three foreign travellers: Al-Biruni (11th century), Ibn Battuta (14th century) and François Bernier (17th century), covering customs, cities, trade, the caste system and women's lives.

• 1Three travellers are studied: Al-Biruni (born 973, Khwarizm/Uzbekistan; 11th century), Ibn Battuta (from Tangier, Morocco; 14th century) and François Bernier (French; in India 1656–1668).
• 2Al-Biruni's Kitab-ul-Hind is written in Arabic and divided into 80 chapters on subjects including religion, philosophy, festivals, astronomy, alchemy, manners, social life, weights and measures, iconography, laws and metrology.
• 3Al-Biruni identified three barriers to understanding India: the great difference between Sanskrit and Arabic/Persian; differences in religious beliefs and practices; and the self-absorption and insularity of the local population.
• 4Ibn Battuta's Rihla describes Delhi as the largest city in India, praises the productivity of Indian agriculture (two crops a year), and notes Indian textiles — cotton cloth, fine muslins, silks, brocade and satin — were in great demand across West Asia and Southeast Asia.
• 5Ibn Battuta described India's two-tier postal system: the horse-post (uluq) with royal horses every four miles, and the foot-post (dawa) with three stations per mile; while normal travel from Sind to Delhi took fifty days, spy reports reached the Sultan in just five days.

Chapter 6 of Themes in Indian History Part II traces bhakti and Sufi devotional movements across India from roughly the eighth to the eighteenth century, showing how poet-saints and mystics challenged caste hierarchies and theological orthodoxy through vernacular poetry, music, and new forms of worship.

• 1Earliest bhakti movements began around the sixth century in Tamil Nadu, led by the Alvars (devotees of Vishnu) and Nayanars (devotees of Shiva), who composed hymns in Tamil that were later compiled into the Nalayira Divyaprabandham and Tevaram.
• 2The Nalayira Divyaprabandham — an anthology of compositions by the twelve Alvars compiled by the tenth century — was called the Tamil Veda, claiming equal authority to the four Sanskrit Vedas.
• 3Basavanna (1106–68), a Brahmana and minister to a Kalachuri ruler, founded the Virashaiva (Lingayat) movement in Karnataka; followers challenged caste, questioned rebirth, encouraged widow remarriage, and ceremonially buried rather than cremated their dead.
• 4Sufi silsilas (spiritual chains linking master to disciple back to the Prophet) crystallised around the twelfth century; the Chishti order, arriving in India in the late twelfth century, was the most influential, centred on khanqahs (hospices) and dargahs (tomb-shrines).
• 5Kabir (c. fourteenth–fifteenth centuries) drew on Islamic terms (Allah, Khuda), Vedantic terms (Brahman, Atman) and yogic terms (shabda, shunya) to describe the Ultimate Reality, rejecting both Hindu polytheism and Muslim orthodoxy.

Vijayanagara, meaning 'city of victory', was a fourteenth-to-sixteenth-century empire founded in 1336 by brothers Harihara and Bukka; its capital (now called Hampi) was sacked in 1565 and is today a UNESCO World Heritage site.

• 1Founded in 1336 by Harihara and Bukka (Sangama dynasty); contemporaries called it 'karnataka samrajyamu'.
• 2Three ruling dynasties: Sangama (till 1485), Saluvas (till 1503), and Tuluvas — Krishnadeva Raya (ruled 1509–29) was the empire's most celebrated ruler.
• 3The amara-nayaka system was a major political innovation: military commanders were given territories to govern, collected taxes, and maintained armed contingents; the system is likely derived from the iqta system of the Delhi Sultanate.
• 4Water supply relied on the Kamalapuram tank (built in the early fifteenth century) and the Hiriya canal (drawn from a dam across the Tungabhadra and apparently built by the Sangama dynasty).
• 5Abdur Razzaq, a fifteenth-century Persian ambassador, noted seven lines of fortification; uniquely, agricultural tracts were enclosed within the fortified area to withstand prolonged sieges.

This chapter examines agrarian society in Mughal India (c. 16th–17th centuries), exploring how peasants, zamindars, and the Mughal state interacted through land revenue, the village community, and the Ain-i Akbari as a historical source.

• 1About 85 per cent of India's population lived in villages during the 16th–17th centuries; the Mughal state derived the bulk of its income from agricultural production.
• 2The primary source for this period is the Ain-i Akbari, authored by Abu'l Fazl and completed in 1598 (the 42nd regnal year of Akbar) after five revisions.
• 3Peasants were classified as khud-kashta (residents who held lands in their own village) and pahi-kashta (non-resident cultivators who farmed lands in other villages on a contractual basis).
• 4Agriculture centred on two seasonal cycles — kharif (autumn) and rabi (spring) — with most regions producing at least two crops a year (do-fasla); the Ain records 39 crop varieties in Agra, 43 in Delhi, and 50 varieties of rice alone in Bengal.
• 5Cash crops called jins-i kamil ('perfect crops') — particularly cotton (central India and the Deccan) and sugarcane (Bengal) — were actively encouraged by the Mughal state as they brought higher revenue.