Day 64 : Essay Excerpt: Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines

This essay explores the forms of female slavery and servitude among the Rajput ruling clans of Rajasthan between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
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Evidence on the procurement of slaves from just before our period suggests that women in particular were vulnerable to capture and enslavement during battles and raids. An inscription on the Kirtistambh pillar, erected to commemorate the victory of Rana Kumbha of Mewar over Sultan Qutb al-Din Ahmad Shah of Gujarat in 1454, declares that the rana (king) “stole Nagaur from the sultan, demolished the fort there, captured many elephants and took many Muslim women prisoners, and then turned Nagaur into a pasture for grazing.” Similarly, Malu Khan—subedar (governor) of Ajmer on behalf of the Mandu sultan—brought an army against the principality of Merta around 1490, “looting and burning villages and taking prisoners.”

While comparable information is not available for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, evidence from the late eighteenth century suggests that the practice may have continued. During this period, the principality of Alwar (in eastern Rajasthan) emerged as a Rajput state, partly through the subjugation of Meo pastoralists within its declared “territories.” Meo memory recorded how, during one raid upon their fortress, the chief minister of Alwar captured and imprisoned two hundred girls, nine hundred cows, and seventy men. Similarly, during the Jodhpur state’s conflict with Jaipur in 1807, “first the Jaipur forces caught and sold the women of Marwar for two paise each; then in the same way the forces of Singhvi Indraraj [of Jodhpur] and Nawab Amir Khan caught the women of Dhundhar and sold them for one paisa each.”

The availability of the “women of the vanquished” as spoils of war seems to have been widely assumed in the region. It is clear that not all such captives were of the same kind. As we discuss below, some female captives were skilled artisans, while others were kinswomen and lesser servants and clients of defeated warriors. However, it is not always possible to determine which captives were retained exclusively by the victorious chiefs or military commanders, and which, if any, became shares in the “loot” distributed among ordinary soldiers. Courtly chronicles concerned with celebrating the preeminence of their princely patrons were not likely to record the disbursement of captives to humble-born soldiers. Nevertheless, these chronicles hint at the fact that all captives were not always sold as slaves; some women perceived to be of higher social rank were incorporated into the harems of their conquerors, with or without “marriage.”

In his chronicle, dating to around 1660, Nainsi recounts how in the early fifteenth century Rao Rinmal of Jodhpur exacted vengeance upon the Sisodiya Rajputs of Mewar for murdering their ruler, Rana Mokal. After a successful siege of Chitor and the killing of those responsible for Mokal’s murder,

Rinmalji cut off the heads of the Sisodiyas and planted them on stakes to create an enclosure [chokya kivi]. Then he created a wedding pavilion [mandap] with those stakes. And he wedded the daughters of the Sisodiyas to the [victorious] Rathors. The weddings continued throughout the day.

~~ESSAY: Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines -by- Ramya Sreenivasan from the book: Slavery and South Asian History