The traditional Indian prescription for sensible living was to divide man’s life into four successive stages—brahmachari (student), grihastha (householder), vanaprastha (anchorite), and sanyasi (religious mendicant). Each of these stages, except the last stage, had its own specific pursuits: acquisition of knowledge as brahmachari, fulfilment of social and family responsibilities as grihastha, and spiritual quest as vanaprastha. And finally, after fulfilling all these duties, in the last stage of his life, as sanyasi, man renounces all human pursuits, both temporal and spiritual, and frees himself from life even while living.
This was the ideal. The reality was quite different. Hardly anyone, except a few exceptional individuals, went through all the prescribed four stages of life. The sole concern of nearly everyone was to earn a good livelihood and lead a pleasant life as a householder. In this mundane scheme of life, the most important events in the life of an individual were getting married and begetting children. These were the essential first steps for man to fulfil his responsibilities to his family, his society, and his species.
Marriage was considered particularly essential for women, and it was a matter of disgrace for a family to have unmarried adult women at home. But getting daughters married off entailed huge expenses—in Hindu as well as Muslim society, but more so in Hindu society—which were beyond the means of many families. In Delhi the sultans sometimes provided financial assistance to needy Muslim parents, to help them out of their embarrassing predicament of not having funds to marry off their daughters suitably. Thus Firuz Tughluq, according to Afif, ‘founded an establishment for the promotion of marriages’, which granted funds to poor Muslims to dower their daughters. Hearing about this, ‘people . . . flocked to the city from all parts of the country, and received grants for purchasing housekeeping requisites for their daughters.’
Among the affluent, it was considered essential to celebrate marriages lavishly, as demonstrations of their family status. Marriage celebrations in royal families were naturally the grandest, and were festive occasions for all in the royal capital. Thus, according to Amir Khusrav, on the occasion of the marriage of prince Khizr Khan, Ala-ud-din Khalji’s son, the whole city of Delhi was magnificently decorated with triumphal arches, and the public were entertained with music and dance, illuminations, jugglery, acrobatics, and so on.
MOST MIDDLE AND upper class families in medieval India were polygamous, in Hindu as well as Muslim society. Muslims were permitted by their religion to have four legal wives. Besides, they could have any number of concubines they fancied, and some Muslim kings and nobles maintained incredibly large harems. Thus Begarha, the sultan of Gujarat, had in his harem ‘three or four thousand women,’ reports Varthema. And Khan-i Jahan, an Andhra Hindu convert to Islam who became the vizier of Firuz Tughluq, was, according to Afif, ‘much devoted to the pleasures of the harem, and sought eagerly for pretty handmaids. It is reported that he had 2000 women of Rum and Chin in his harem, where he spent much of his time notwithstanding his onerous official duties.’ Such sexual profligacy involved no social disapprobation in medieval Indian society; rather, it was prestigious for a man to have a large number of wives and concubines. Says Battuta about himself: ‘It is my habit never to travel without [my slave girls].’
As for the rule that Muslims could have only four legal wives at a time, it could be easily circumvented, for divorce and remarriage were easy in Islam. The process for divorce was for the husband to merely say talaq—I divorce you—three times before his wife, after which he could right away marry another woman. This meant that men could divorce and marry any number of wives in succession, without going through any elaborate legal process. Similarly, a woman too could divorce her husband and marry another man, though the process involved in this was more complicated than in the case of divorce by men. And she could have, at least in theory, any number of husbands in succession, though at any given time she could have only one husband.
The facility for easy divorce in Islam led to the practice of some people entering into temporary marriages, sometimes for just a few hours. This form of marriage, termed muta marriage among Shias, was common in Maldives, the island chain off the southern tip of India. ‘When ships arrive, the crew marry wives, and when they are about to sail they divorce them,’ reports Battuta from his personal experience. ‘The women never leave their country.’
Unlike in Islam, there was no restriction at all in Hindu society about the number of wives a man could have. ‘The inhabitants of this region marry as many wives as they please,’ comments Venetian traveller Nicolo Conti about what he observed in Vijayanagar in the early fifteenth century. Indeed, having a large number of wives was, for upper class Hindus, a means to flaunt their socio-economic status—as well as their sexual prowess! Some Hindu rajas are known to have had a prodigious number of wives. Achyutadeva, the mid-sixteenth century king of Vijayanagar, had as many as 500 wives, according to Fernao Nuniz, a contemporary Portuguese trader-traveller. This is most likely an exaggeration, but probably not a gross exaggeration. Even Krishnadeva, whose preoccupation with wars and administration would have left him with little time for dalliance, had twelve wives, according to Paes.
Unlike polygamy, polyandry was rare in India, and the only people who practiced it routinely were Nairs of Kerala. ‘Among them there is a tribe in which one woman has several husbands,’ notes Abdur Razzak, the mid-fifteenth century Persian royal envoy in India, about what he observed in Kerala. ‘They (the husbands) divide the hours of the night and day amongst themselves, and as long as any one of them remains in the house during his appointed time, no other can enter. The Samuri (Zamorin) is of that tribe.’
‘Each [Nair] woman has from two to ten known [lovers],’ states Tome Pires, an early sixteenth century Portuguese pharmacist-traveller in India. ‘The more lovers a Nair woman has, the more important she is.’ Adds Portuguese traveller Duarte Barbosa, who was also in India in the sixteenth century: ‘Nayre women of good birth are very independent, and dispose of themselves as they please with Bramenes and Nayres, but they do not sleep with men of castes lower than their own under pain of death . . . The more lovers she has the greater her honour. Each one of them (her lovers) passes a day with her from midday on one day till midday on the next day, and so they continue living quietly without any disturbance or quarrels among them. If any of them wishes to leave her, he leaves her, and takes another woman, and she also, if she is weary of a man, tells him to go, and he does so, or makes terms with her.’ No ceremony at all was involved in accepting or discarding a lover.
This freewheeling amatory practice continued among Nairs well into modern times, as Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, a Scottish physician who was in India in the first decade of the nineteenth century, noted. Nair women, he writes, ‘marry before they are ten years of age . . . but the husband never cohabits with his wife . . . She lives in her mother’s house, or, after her parent’s death, with her brother, and cohabits with any person she chooses of an equal or higher rank than her own . . . It is no kind of reflection on a woman’s character to say that she has formed the closest intimacy with many persons; on the contrary, the Nair women are proud of reckoning among their favoured lovers many Brahmins, Rajas, or other persons of high birth . . . In consequence of this strange manner of propagating the species, no Nair knows his father, and every man looks on his sisters’ children as his heirs.’
Marriage customs in medieval India, like everything else, varied greatly from region to region and community to community. But generally speaking, women were not allowed to marry below their caste, though men could do that. In most communities marriage between close relatives was also forbidden. For instance, among high caste Maharashtrians, they ‘do not marry their relatives, except those who are cousins six times removed,’ notes Battuta. But first cousin marriages and uncle-niece marriages were common in South India.
SEXUAL PROMISCUITY WAS pervasive in medieval Hindu society. ‘Great licentiousness prevails in this country among women as well as men,’ writes Abu Said, an early tenth century Arab historian. Ibn Khurdadba, another Arab writer of about the same period, confirms: ‘The king and people Hind regard fornication as lawful.’ In that social milieu, illegitimate children were common, and they usually had no stigma attached to them. Indeed, even a child born out of the extramarital liaison of a woman was considered legitimate. ‘If a stranger has a child by a married woman, the child belongs to her husband, since the wife, . . . the soil in which the child is born, is the property of the husband,’ observes al-Biruni, an eleventh century Ghaznavid chronicler.
Because of this general laxity in sexual matters in Hindu society, abnormal sexual practices like homosexuality and pederasty were rare in it. According to al-Biruni, Hindus considered sodomy as revolting, as revolting as eating beef, which was the ultimate revolting act a Hindu could commit. But these deviant sexual practices were common in Muslim society. Even some of the sultans were bisexual or homosexual. In medieval Muslim society, as in ancient Greece, none of that entailed any strong disapprobation. Thus sultan Mubarak, a successor of Ala-ud-din Khalji, spent his whole time ‘in extreme dissipation,’ reports Barani. ‘He cast aside all regard for decency, and presented himself decked out in the trinkets and apparel of a woman before his assembled company.’ Similar was the conduct of Kurbat Hasan Kangu, a fourteenth century sultan of Ma’bar (Tamil Nadu), who, when he held court, ‘appeared decked out hand and foot with female ornaments, and made himself notorious for his puerile actions,’ notes Afif.
Muslim women too sometimes strayed, though they were usually very carefully guarded. But when caught, they, even royal women, were savagely punished. Thus, according to Battuta, Sultan Muhammad Tughluq once had a princess stoned to death ‘on a charge of debauchery or adultery.’ Muhammad’s successor, Firuz, was also quite severe in dealing with such matters, and he, as he notes in his autobiography, even prohibited women from going to the tombs on holy days, for that offered an opportunity for ‘wild fellows of unbridled passion and loose habits . . . [to indulge in] improper, riotous actions. I commanded that no woman should go out to the [sacred] tombs under pain of exemplary punishment.’
Another matter in which Muslims and Hindus differed radically was in their attitude towards prostitution. Islam considered prostitution a major sin, but Hindus viewed it as a normal and legitimate aspect of social life. In ancient India, in Mauryan Empire for instance, there were even state run brothels. Similarly, in medieval times brothels were run as a government sanctioned service in Vijayanagar, and they were a source of revenue for the state. According to Razzak, the state derived 12,000 fanams (small silver coins) a day from ‘the proceeds of the brothels,’ and used that revenue to meet the salary of a large number of policemen.
The brothels in Vijayanagar city were located on both sides of a long and broad avenue behind the state mint. ‘The splendour of those houses, the beauty of the heart-ravishers, their blandishments and ogles, are beyond description . . .,’ reports Razzak. ‘[In the afternoon] they place at the doors of these houses, which are beautifully decorated, chairs and settees on which the courtesans seat themselves. Everyone is covered with pearls, precious stones, and costly garments. They are all exceedingly young and beautiful. Each has one or two slave girls standing before her, to invite and allure [passers-by] to indulgence and pleasure. Any man who passes through this place makes choice of whom he will.’
THE FOOD HABITS of Hindus in medieval India were quite different from what they were in earlier times. Indian society in ancient and early classical period was quite permissive in the matter of food, and allowed all people, irrespective of their class and sex, including the priestly class, the freedom to eat whatever they liked, even beef, drink alcohol and take psychotropic drugs. The scene changed altogether by the middle of the first millennium CE, when the caste system tightened its iron grip on Hindu society. Caste regulations then defined and enforced the food and drink rules applicable to each caste, and these rules played a crucial role in segregating castes.
The old adage that you are what you eat thus acquired a new meaning in India. Predictably, the highest dietary restrictions were on those of the highest caste, Brahmins, who, because of their primary priestly function, were generally forbidden to eat any meat or fish, and had to avoid even certain vegetables— garlic, onions, leeks, and so on—which were thought to stimulate carnal desires. On the other hand, those on the bottom rung of the caste society, the outcastes, had virtually no food restrictions at all.
Caste rules specified not only the dietary taboos to be observed by different castes, but also the dining practices they had to observe. ‘No man of one creed will drink, eat, or marry with those of another,’ observes Nikitin. ‘Some of them feed on mutton, fowls, fish, and eggs, but none on beef . . . The [high caste] Hindus eat no meat, no cow flesh, no mutton, no chicken. They take their meals twice a day, but not at night, and drink no wine or mead. They neither eat nor drink with Mohammedans. Their fare is poor . . . They live on Indian corn, carrots . . . and different herbs. Always eating with their right hand, they will never set the left hand to anything. Nor do they use a knife; the spoon is unknown. While travelling every one carries a stone pot to cook his broth. They take care that Mohammedans do not look into their pot, nor see their food, and should this happen, they will not eat it; some therefore hide themselves under a linen cloth lest they should be seen when eating . . . They sit down to eat, and wash their hands and feet, and rinse their mouths before they do.’ Adds Battuta: ‘The nobles of the Marathas are Brahmins and Katris (Kshatriyas). Their food consists of rice, vegetables, and oil of sesame . . . They wash themselves thoroughly before eating . . .’
‘In eating, they use the right hand only,’ confirms Marco Polo, a late thirteenth century Venetian traveller. ‘So also they drink only from their own drinking vessels, and every man has his own; nor will anyone drink from another’s vessel. And when they drink they do not put the vessel to their lips but hold it aloft and let the drink spout into the mouth . . . They are very strict . . . in abstaining from wine. Indeed, they have made a rule that wine-drinkers and seafaring men are never to be accepted as sureties.’
Not only was interdining between castes prohibited in the Hindu society, but even within a family each individual usually took his or her meal separately. The family did not ever sit together for meals. ‘They eat not with one another, nor with their wives,’ states Nikitin. ‘It is an established usage of infidels never to eat in the presence of each other,’ adds Ferishta. Hindus considered eating to be a private act, and that it was preferable to do it in private, like other private acts.
There were of course occasions when several Hindus (all of the same gender, and usually all of the same caste) feasted together, as at a wedding reception. But even on such occasions, though they sat down together for the feast, they were only physically together, not socially together, for they ate in silence, and did not engage each other in conversation. And it was unthinkable for anyone to touch the food served to anyone else. ‘When someone takes something from your food, what remains is a leftover, and cannot be eaten,’ notes al-Biruni.1
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF the Delhi Sultanate and the large scale migration of Turks into India added several new elements to the dietary diversity of Indians. Muslims feasted on beef, but considered it abominable to eat pork; Hindus on the other hand considered it abominable to eat beef, but many Hindus, including high caste Rajputs, feasted on pork. While Hindus preferred to sit alone to eat, Muslims preferred to dine together in groups. And while the cuisine of Hindus, even of nobles and rajas, was quite simple, Muslim aristocracy favoured gourmet food. A medieval chronicle describes, no doubt with some exaggeration, a sultan being served a dish prepared with ‘300 and more ingredients in it.’ Several of these ingredients were no doubt Indian spices, to the use of which Turks took to in India. At the same time, Indians on their part added pilau and kuruma to their cuisine under the influence of Turks.
Turks loved to feast on rich food. According to Shahab-ud-din, 2500 oxen, 2000 sheep, as well as a large number of other animals, and many different kinds of birds, were daily slaughtered in the kitchen of the sultan of Delhi. This claim might be rather hyperbolic, but it is not entirely incredible, when we consider that the raja of Vijayanagar every day supplied for the kitchen of Abdur Razzak, the visiting Persian envoy, ‘two sheep, four couple of fowls, five mans of rice, one man of butter, and one man of sugar, and two varaha gold coins,’ as the ambassador himself states.
Some of the stories told about the gluttons of the age are quite astounding. Battuta, for instance, speaks of an Ethiopian who was renowned as much for his appetite as for his valour: ‘He was tall and corpulent, and used to eat a whole sheep at a meal, and I was told that after eating he would drink about a pound and a half of ghee.’ Even more fantastic are the dietary practices attributed to Begarha, the sultan of Gujarat. A man of gigantic size and gargantuan appetite, he, according to legend, ate about fourteen kilos of food every day, and his breakfast consisted of a cup of honey, a cup of butter, and over a hundred plantains. And, most curious of all, his daily diet included of a swig of poison!
As for the food served at Muslim feasts, Isami, a mid-fourteenth century chronicler, gives an account of a banquet held in the Deccan in honour of the local sultan. ‘It was the eighth part of the day when trumpets announced that the banquet was ready. Silk tapestries were spread and table cloths laid. Leavened and unleavened bread were kept ready, various items of salad were there, green and crisp. Then came roast quail and partridge and roast chicken and roast lamb. Curry puffs and cooked vegetables were there as accompaniments. Juicy almond puddings and halvahs were served as dessert and these were scented with camphor and musk. The meal ended with the distribution of betel and the tambula . . .’ The tableware used at this feast were imported from China.
THERE WAS NO bar on anyone drinking alcoholic beverages in ancient India, but their consumption fell sharply in the late classical period due to the decline of economic prosperity, the collapse of towns and the virtual disappearance of urban lifestyle, as well as due to the enforcement of caste taboos. Brahmins were now required to totally abjure alcoholic drinks. They, notes Battuta, do not ‘drink wine, for this in their eyes is the greatest of vices.’ Al Masudi, a tenth century Iraqi historian, offers a curious (but sensible) explanation for this. ‘Hindus,’ he writes, ‘abstain from drinking wine, and censure those who consume it; not because their religion forbids it, but in the dread of it clouding their reason and depriving them of their powers.’
In Islam too wine drinking was considered a major sin. Nevertheless, drinking was fairly common among the Muslim aristocracy in India and Afghanistan. And some of them were very heavy drinkers. According to Baihaqi, an eleventh century historian of the Ghaznavids, nobles at garden parties often ‘drank to excess. They passed the night there and the next morning they again drank . . . [One noble] when he once sat down to drink, would continue boozing for three or four entire days.’
Baihaqi once witnessed a garden cocktail party hosted by Sultan Masud of Ghazni, and offers an amusing account of it. As the feast progressed, the courtiers, reports Baihaqi, ‘began to get jolly, and the minstrels sang . . . [One noble] drank five goblets, his head was affected at the sixth, he lost his senses at the seventh, and began to vomit at the eighth, when the servants carried him off.’ Some drank as many as twelve cups, and fell into torpor. One noble drank eighteen cups, then politely requested the sultan’s permission to leave. Presently ‘the singers and buffoons all rolled off tipsy.’ But the sultan continued to drink. ‘He drank twenty-seven full goblets . . . He then rose, called for a basin of water and his praying carpet, washed his face, and read the mid-day prayers as well as the afternoon ones, and so acquitted himself that you would have said he had not drunk a single cup. He then got on an elephant and returned to the palace.’
In Delhi the attitude of rulers towards drinking varied from sultan to sultan. Several of them were heavy imbibers, who regularly held convivial parties with their courtiers. But some others, even when they were secret drinkers themselves, prohibited that indulgence to their courtiers, or at least prohibited them from holding cocktail parties, for drunkenness often led to indiscipline and rebellions. In Delhi the strictest measures against drinking were those taken by Ala-ud-din Khalji, who sought to enforce prohibition by seizing the vast quantities of liquor stored in the homes of nobles and pouring them out on streets, and by imprisoning prohibition violators. He had so many of them arrested that in a short while there was no more any room for them in the prisons, so the guilty were interned in pits dug along the road near the royal palace. But despite such harsh and humiliating punishments, people persisted in wine drinking, so the sultan had to eventually modify his regulations, and permit people to drink privately at home. Muhammad Tughluq also tried to enforce prohibition—‘Any Muslim who drinks is punished with eighty stripes, and shut up . . . for three months,’ notes Battuta—but he had no more success in it than Ala-ud-din. The common attitude of the Muslim aristocracy of the age, as the early medieval Ghaznavid poet Asjadi puts it, was:
I do repent of wine and talk of wine
Of idols fair with chins like silver fine
A lip-repentance and a lustful heart,
O god, forgive this penitence of mine.
The most widespread indulgence of medieval Indians—indeed, the universal indulgence of medieval Indians, irrespective of class and caste and religion and sex—was chewing betel leaves, a mild stimulant with antiseptic and breath-refreshing qualities. Commonly termed paan, this was a treat that even the poorest of the poor could afford, and was considered a healthy habit. ‘The inhabitants of India have little taste for wine and intoxicating drinks, but content themselves with betel, an agreeable drug, the use of which is permitted without the slightest objection,’ comments Shahab-ud-din. For chewing, the betel leaf was lightly daubed with slaked lime, and then put in the mouth along with a few shavings of areca-nut. Those who could afford it added pinches of various spices and flavouring ingredients to the chew, but that was not essential, for though it improved the taste of the chew, added little or nothing to its effect.
‘The betel is a leaf which resembles that of orange,’ writes Razzak. ‘It is held in great esteem in Hindustan, in the many parts of Arabia, and the kingdom of Hormuz, and indeed it deserves its reputation. It is eaten this way: they bruise a piece of areca nut . . . and place it in the mouth; then moistening a leaf of betel . . . together with a grain of quicklime, they rub one on the other, roll them up together, and place them in the mouth. Thus they place as many as four leaves together in their mouths, and chew them. Sometimes they mix camphor with it, and from time to time discharge their spittle, which becomes red from the use of the betel. This masticatory lightens up the countenance and excites an intoxication like that caused by wine. It relieves hunger, stimulates the organs of digestion, purifies the breath, and strengthens the teeth . . . [And it has] strong invigorating and aphrodisiac virtues . . . It is probably owing to the stimulating properties of this leaf . . . that the king of that country (Vijayanagar) is enabled to entertain so large a seraglio.’
NOTHING MUCH IS known about the sport and pastime of medieval Indians, except that the Muslim aristocracy were avid about polo; Sultan Qutb-ud-din Aibak in fact died in an accident while playing polo. The game is believed to have originated in Persia several centuries before the Common Era, and was introduced into India by Turkish invaders. In time the Hindu aristocracy also passionately took to it, and later so did the British officers in India.
Polo was a game of the elite. Virtually nothing is known about the games played by the common people in medieval India. Villagers no doubt played various rustic games, but the entertainment high points of their lives would have been attending the fairs, carnivals and temple festivals held in nearby towns, to which people from all the nearby villages flocked. The major attractions at these carnivals were performances by touring magicians, jugglers and acrobats. The feats performed by some of them were indeed astounding, if we are to believe medieval chroniclers. ‘The juggler swallowed a sword like water, drinking it as a thirsty man would drink sherbet,’ reports Amir Khusrav about a performance. ‘He also thrust a knife up his nostril. He mounted a little wooden horse and rode in the air. Large bodies were made to issue out of small ones; an elephant was drawn through a window, and a camel through the eye of a needle . . . Sometimes they (the jugglers) transformed themselves into angels, sometimes into demons. . . They sang enchantingly . . .’ There is no doubt a good amount of poetic fancy in this report of Khusrav, but Indian magicians of the age were indeed reputed for the awesome illusions they created.
Similar are the feats attributed to Indian sorcerers and yogis, many of which are truly incredible. ‘First of all, they can bring a dead man to life,’ writes Khusrav credulously. ‘If a man has been bitten by a snake and is rendered speechless, they can resuscitate him after even seven months . . . They can procure longevity by diminishing the daily number of the expirations of breath. A yogi who could restrain his breath in this way lived . . . to an age of more than 350 years . . . They know how to convert themselves into wolves, dogs and cats . . . They can also fly like fowls in the air, however improbable it may seem. They can also, by putting antimony on their eyes, make themselves invisible at pleasure . . .’
These acrobatic and magical shows were usually held in towns during their annual temple festivals, to which people from all the nearby villages flocked. Apart from attending these annual events the everyday life of medieval Indian villagers would have been quite drab and routine. Most people of medieval India, villagers as well as townsmen, were addicted to taking siesta daily, which was an essential restorative for them in the generally sweltering climate of India. In summer ‘the weather was very hot that at midday people kept indoors taking their siesta, so there were few people in the streets,’ Barani observed. And everyone, including the sultan, slept in the open at night in summer—‘the sultan slept on the roof of the palace, having only a few eunuchs around him,’ reports Battuta.
THERE IS VERY little information about the lifestyle of the common people in medieval chronicles, but there is in them a good amount of data on the lifestyle of the affluent. The urban rich in peninsular India in the mid-fifteenth century lived in palatial, multi-storeyed mansions, according Razzak. This was confirmed a few decades later by the Portuguese traveller Paes, who noted that the cities in the peninsula had large populations and had several rows of handsome buildings. The city of Vijayanagar, according to him, was as large as Rome and very beautiful, and had lakes and shady parks in it. But while the nobles lived in grand mansions, the common people lived in modest houses of just three or four small rooms, including kitchen. And the poor everywhere in India lived in mud-and-thatch single room hovels. In Kerala, kings even forbade the common people from roofing their houses with tiles instead of with thatch; they had to get royal permission to use tiles.
The walls and floors of the houses of commoners, and the mats on which their residents sat and slept, were invariably plastered with cow-dung, which Indians ‘looked upon as a clean substance,’ according to Chau Ju-Kua, an early thirteenth century Chinese chronicler. Confirms Marco Polo: ‘The people of this country have a custom of rubbing their houses all over with cow-dung.’ Another common feature of the Hindu homes was that people generally, even the poor, adorned their front-yard with rangoli, auspicious decorative designs, plain or colourful.
As for chairs and tables, there would have been hardly any of that in the homes of most medieval Indians, for, as Marco Polo notes, all the people of India, ‘great and small, kings and barons included, do sit upon the floor only.’ But beds seem to have been fairly common in the homes of the affluent, and are described in detail by Battuta. ‘The beds in India are light, and can be carried by a single man,’ he writes. ‘Every person when travelling has to transport his own bed, which his slave boy carries on his head. It consists of four conical legs with four crosspieces of wood on which braids of silk or cotton are woven. When one lies down on it, there is no need for anything to make it pliable, for it itself is pliable. Along with the bed they carry two mattresses and pillows and a coverlet, all made of silk. Their custom is to put linen or cotton slips on the mattresses and coverlets, so that when they become dirty they wash the slips, while the bedding inside remains clean.’ According to Marco Polo, ‘nobles and great folks slept on beds made of very light cane work, hanging from the ceiling by cords for fear of tarantulas and other vermin, while the common folk slept on the streets.’
THE DRESS AND ornaments of the people, as well as their lifestyle, varied considerably from region to region in medieval India, and even within each region these varied according to the religion, class and caste of the people. But the common people everywhere in India, particularly in the peninsula, were scantily dressed, because of the warm and humid climate of India, and also because they could afford nothing better. ‘The common people go quite naked, with the exception of a piece of cloth about their middle,’ states Varthema, about what he saw in peninsular India. ‘The blacks of this country go about with nearly naked bodies, wearing only a piece of cloth called langoti, extending from the navel to above their knees,’ writes Razzak about Kerala. ‘The king and the beggar both go about in this way . . .’
In coastal Maharashtra, according to Nikitin, ‘people are all naked and barefooted. Women walk about with their heads uncovered and their breasts bare. Boys and girls all go naked till seven years, and do not hide their shame.’ Adds Battuta: ‘The women of . . . all the coastal districts wear nothing but loose unsewn garments, one end of which they gird round their waists, and drape the rest over their head and shoulders. They are beautiful and virtuous, and each wears a gold ring in her nose.’
Men and women of the upper classes, unlike the near naked common people, dressed luxuriously in most regions of India. Notes Varthema about the nobles of Vijayanagar: ‘Their dress is this: the men of condition wear a short shirt, and on their head a cloth of gold and silk in the Moorish fashion . . . The king wears a cap of gold brocade two spans long, and when he goes to war he wears a quilted dress of cotton, and over it he puts another garment full of gold piastres, and having all around it jewels of various kinds. His horse is worth more than some of our cities, on account of the ornaments which it wears.’ Barbosa also offers a similar description; according to him the affluent men in Vijayanagar wore a girdle and a short silk or cotton shirt, often brocaded; they also wore a small turban or a brocaded cap.
As for upper class women, they, according to Barbosa, ‘wear white garments of very thin cotton, or silk of bright colours, five yards long, one part of which is girt round them below, and the other part is thrown over one shoulder and drawn across their breasts in such a way that one arm and shoulder remains uncovered . . . Their heads are uncovered and the hair is tightly gathered into a becoming knot on the top of the head, and in their hair they put many scented flowers . . . These women are very beautiful and very bold.’
The reports of various foreign visitors in medieval India on the dress and ornaments of the people are, in general terms, consistent, but there are several inconsistencies in the details they provide. Thus, while Varthema states that the people of Vijayanagar, even the nobles, wore ‘nothing on their feet,’ Paes notes that though ‘the majority of the people there, or almost all, go about the country barefooted,’ the affluent men in Vijayanagar wore shoes with pointed ends, or sandals fitted with straps, ‘like those which of old the Romans were wont to wear . . .’ According to Barbosa, even women of the affluent families in Vijayanagar wore shoes, embroidered leather shoes. And they dressed luxuriously.
One of the most commendable practices of the people of medieval India was that most of them, whatever their class and caste, generally maintained good personal hygiene. ‘It is their practice that everyone, male and female, washes their body twice every day,’ observes Marco Polo. According Barbosa, nobles in Vijayanagar after bath daubed their bodies with ‘white sandalwood, aloes, camphor, musk and saffron all ground fine and kneaded with rose water.’ And Chau Ju-Kua notes: ‘The inhabitants [of India] morning and evening besmear their bodies with turmeric so as to look like gold covered images.’
MEDIEVAL INDIANS, THE elite as well as the commoners, men as well as women, generally paid more attention to ornaments than to garments. ‘All the inhabitants of the country, whether high or low, even down to the artificers of the bazaar, wear jewels and gilt ornaments on their ears and around their necks, arms, wrists, and fingers,’ notes Razzak. ‘In the side of one of their nostrils they make a small hole, through which they put a fine gold wire with a pearl, sapphire or ruby pendant,’ reports Barbosa about the ornaments worn by affluent women in Vijayanagar. ‘They have their ears bored as well, and in them they wear earrings set with many jewels; on their necks they wear necklaces of gold and jewels and very fine coral beads; bracelets of gold and precious stones and many good coral beads are fitted to their arms.’ A common luxury which nearly everyone in India could afford was to adorn themselves, and their homes, with flowers. Notes Razzak about Vijayanagar: ‘Sweet-scented flowers are always procurable fresh in that city, and they are considered as even necessary sustenance, seeing that without them people could not exist.’
In medieval times there was some mutual influence in the sartorial styles of the Hindu and Muslim upper classes, especially in North India. Rajput chieftains, for instance, took to wearing a tight-fitting cloak under the influence of Muslim nobility, and their women adopted Muslim style tight-fitting trousers and a cloak over it. Muslims in turn adopted the Rajput headgear, took to wearing luxurious garments, and began to adorn themselves with elaborate jewellery. ‘Muslims clothe themselves in costly garments . . . and display various kinds of luxuries,’ notes Razzak.
These ostentations in dress and ornaments by Muslims were disapproved by Firuz Tughluq; he considered them uncanonical, and sought to enforce orthodox Muslim dress regulations. ‘Under divine guidance I ordered that . . . [only] such garments should be worn as are approved by the Law of the Prophet,’ states Firuz in his autobiography.
THE MEDIEVAL INDIAN society was characterised by several bizarre practices. The most conspicuous of these was the practice of ritual suicide, of which there were different forms. Though suicide in any form was considered a great sin by Muslims, the sultans generally tolerated its practice by Hindus, for they, as zimmis, were, according Muslim political tradition, free to follow their social and religious customs without any hindrance.
One form of Hindu ritual suicide was for people in woe or debility, because of illness or old age, to end their life in fire or water, to escape from the miseries of life and to attain salvation. This was noted by Abu Zaid, a tenth century Iraqi chronicler, in his account of early medieval India: ‘When a person . . . becomes old, and his senses are enfeebled, he begs someone of his family to throw him into a fire, or to drown him in water; so firmly are the Indians persuaded that they shall return to [life on] the earth.’
Jauhar,2 mass ritual suicide, was another practice of Hindus, but this was confined to the ruling class and the military aristocracy. Yet another form of ritual suicide, again practiced mainly, though not exclusively, by the Hindu aristocracy, was sati, the self-immolation by the widow or widows of a dead king or chieftain on his funeral pyre. ‘When the king dies four or five hundred women burn themselves with him,’ claims Barbosa. The number of royal women committing sati given by Barbosa is evidently a gross exaggeration, but it was not uncommon in medieval India for several queens to commit sati on the death of their lord.
There is a detailed description of a sati rite in Vijayanagar in the report of Nuniz. ‘They place the dead man on a bed with a canopy of branches and covered with flowers,’ he writes. ‘Then they put the woman on the back of a worthless horse, and she [follows the funeral procession] . . . with many jewels on her, and covered with roses. She carries a mirror in one hand and in the other a bunch of flowers, and [is accompanied by] many kinds of music . . . A man goes with her playing on a small drum, and he sings songs to her telling her that she is going to join her husband, and she answers, also in singing, that so she will do. As soon as she arrives at the place where they are always burned, she waits with the musicians till her husband is burned . . . in a very large pit that has been made ready for it, covered with firewood. Before they light the pyre his mother, or one of his nearest relatives, takes a vessel of water on the head and a firebrand in the hand, and goes three times round the pit, and at each round makes a hole in the pot; and when these three rounds are done breaks the pot; which is small, and throws the torch into the pit.
‘Then they apply the fire. And when the body is burned, the wife comes with all the feasters and washes her feet. Then a Brahmin performs over her certain ceremonies according to their law; and when he has finished doing this, she draws off with her own hand all the jewels that she wears, and divides them among her female relatives, and if she has sons she commends them to her most honoured relatives. When they have taken off all she has on, even her good clothes, they put on her some common yellow cloths, and her relatives take her by hand, and she takes a branch in the other hand, and goes singing and running to the pit where the fire is, and then mounts some steps which are made high up by the pit. Before they do this, they go three times round the fire, and then she mounts the steps and holds in front of her a mat that prevents her from seeing the fire. They throw into the fire a cloth containing rice, and another in which they carry betel leaves, and her comb and mirror with which she had adorned herself, saying that all these were needed to adorn herself by her husband’s side.
‘Finally she takes leave of all, and puts a pot of oil on her head, and casts herself into the fire with such courage that it is a thing of wonder. As soon as she throws herself in, her relatives, who are ready with firewood, . . . quickly cover her with it, and after this is done they all raise loud lamentations.’ Adds Barbosa: At the pyre the woman removes all her clothes ‘except a small piece of cloth with which she is clothed from the waist down. All this she does . . . with such a cheerful countenance that she seems not about to die . . . Then they place in her hands a pitcher full of oil, and she puts it on her head, and with it she . . . turns around thrice on the scaffold and . . . worships the rising sun. Then she casts the pitcher of oil into the fire and throws herself after it with as much goodwill as if she were throwing herself on a . . . [bed of] cotton . . . Then the kinsfolk all . . . cast into the fire many pitchers of oil and butter which they hold ready for this purpose, and much wood . . . [so that the pyre] therewith bursts into such a flame that no more can she be seen.3