The high period of Indian civilisation, in material prosperity as well as cultural efflorescence, was the thousand year period from the middle of the first millennium BCE to the middle of the first millennium CE. During that age India was one of the most urbanised, prosperous and civilised countries of the world. The scene changed altogether thereafter, as India slid into the Dark Ages, around the same time as Europe did. India’s commercial economy and urban culture then collapsed. Towns turned derelict. And India slid into a state of dreary rusticity. India then, like Europe, curled up in a several centuries long slumber. But while Europe woke up from the slumber in the fourteenth century, during Renaissance, and made rapid economic, social and cultural progress, India remained in a comatose state well into the twentieth century.
Though there was some urban revival during the Sultanate period, India’s socio-economic and cultural progress remained sluggish. The preponderant majority of Indians during the Sultanate period lived in villages, as they had done in the preceding several centuries, and would continue to do in the succeeding several centuries. And the life of the villager remained very much the same all through these centuries. The urban affluence that had characterised classical India was mostly missing in medieval India.
But despite its civilizational collapse, India remained a singularly enticing land in the eyes of foreigners virtually all through its history, well into modern times. This was largely because of India’s fabulous natural resources. ‘The whole of this country is very fertile, and the resources of Iran, Turan, and other lands are not equal to those of even one province of Hindustan,’ states Mukhtasiru-t Tawarikh. ‘In this country there are also mines of diamonds, ruby, gold, silver, copper, lead and iron. The soil is generally good, and is so productive that in a year it yields two crops, and in some places more. All kinds of grain, the sustenance of human life, are brought forth in such quantities that it is beyond the power of pen to enumerate . . . Men of refined and delicate taste find great relish in eating the fruits of Hindustan. A separate book would have to be written if a full detail were to be given of all the different kinds of fruits which are produced in spring and autumn, describing all their sweetness, fragrance and flavour.’
There is a fair amount of exaggeration in this radiant medieval portrait of India, but in broad terms it is factual. India was indeed blessed with rich natural resources. And the basic survival requirements of the common people—food and shelter—were easily available there for all in normal times. But it is equally true that the common people of medieval India lived at a bare subsistence level. The land was rich, but the people were poor.
And the richness of the land continued to fascinate foreigners, and it attracted many adventurers, migrants and invaders into India all through history, well into modern times. And foreign visitors continued to write glowingly about the riches of India.
But there was a dark side to this luminous medieval image of India. India, like most other regions of the medieval world, was periodically ravaged by famine, for its agricultural production at this time was mostly dependent on the vagaries of weather. When weather failed, famine felled thousands and thousands of people in one sweep.
And those who survived did so by eating whatever they could find, however filthy or rotten, even putrefied carrion, and by taking to cannibalism. ‘One day I went out of the city, and I saw three women . . . cutting in pieces and eating the skin of a horse which had been dead for some months,’ writes Battuta about the horrors of famine he witnessed in India. ‘Skins were cooked and sold in the markets. When bullocks were slaughtered, crowds rushed forward to catch the blood, and consumed it for their sustenance.’ Adds Barani: ‘Distress and anarchy reigned in all the country and towns . . . [In Delhi] famine was very severe, and man was devouring man.’
On such occasions the sultans, despite their general indifference to the plight of the people, often did what they could to alleviate their sufferings. Even Muhammad Tughluq, a sultan not particularly known for his compassion, once, during a time acute scarcity, ‘ordered provisions for six months to be distributed to all the people of Delhi,’ reports Battuta. In normal times too Delhi sultans usually took care to open almshouses in towns to succour the poor, as a pious act. This was mainly for the benefit of poor Muslims, but low caste Hindus, who could eat the food cooked by Muslims, also benefited from it.
THE EFFULGENT VIEW of India propagated by ancient and early medieval foreign visitors to India began to change gradually in the late medieval period, as the contrast between regressive India and progressive Europe sharpened, and as more and more European travellers visited India, and India became a familiar land to them. The fabled luminous images of India were then gradually replaced in their accounts with the images of the stark reality of India. Many visitors were now appalled by what they saw as the abysmal conditions of the life of the common people in India. Typically, Pelsaert, a Dutch traveller in India during the Mughal period, writes: The common people of India live in a ‘poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe. Their houses are built of mud, with thatch roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking.’
These and similar reports about the abject conditions of life of the common people in medieval India are in many cases rather exaggerated, just as the earlier glowing reports about India were exaggerated. There was still great wealth in medieval India, and though most of it was in the hands of the small ruling class, there was enough of it left over for the subsistence of the common people. Daily provisions were usually quite cheap and abundantly available everywhere. The disparity between the incredibly luxurious lifestyle of the ruling class and the dreary life of the common people was of course shocking, but this was a common feature of human societies nearly everywhere in the premodern world, though in European countries the conditions of life of the underclasses were not as dismal as it was in India.
Curiously, despite the growing awareness among Europeans of the abject poverty of the common people of India, many European powers were drawn to India in medieval times. This was because there were vast untapped natural resources in India to be exploited. And the very poverty and backwardness of Indians made the invasion of India seem easy. India thus remained, till modern times, a most enticing land in the eyes of foreigners, and migrants and invaders continued to stream into India.
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS in medieval India varied considerably from region to region, but most of the land was quite fertile and was extensively cultivated. ‘This is a vast country, abounding in rice, and nowhere in the world have I seen any land where prices are lower than there,’ notes Battuta about what he observed in fourteenth-century Bengal. And he goes on to report that an old inhabitant there once told him that he could maintain his family for a whole year with just eight dirhams, small silver coins. And Battuta found that in Kerala ‘there is not a foot of ground but is cultivated. Every man has his own orchard, with his house in the middle and wooden palisade all around it.’
Orissa too was luxuriantly verdant. Afif, who visited the region during the reign of Firuz Tughluq, found it ‘in a very flourishing state . . . [with] abundance of corn and fruit . . . The numbers of animals of every kind were so great that no one cared to take them. Sheep were found in countless numbers.’ The scene in Jammu too was similar. ‘The five or six kos which I traversed in this day’s march was entirely through a cultivated country; nowhere did I see any dry or waste land,’ writes Timur about Jammu in his autobiography. In addition to cultivating fields, most villagers in medieval India also maintained cattle-pens, for that involved virtually no expenditure, as there was plenty of open land in India for cattle-grazing.
Most farmlands in early medieval India were rain fed. Though Indian villages generally had water tanks in them, these were usually small and were used only to provide drinking water to villagers. ‘They have a custom in those villages of making tanks in which the rain-water collects, and this supplies them with drinking water all the year round,’ notes Battuta about what he observed in North India. As for irrigation facilities, pre-medieval India had a system known as araghatt—the precursor of the Persian wheel—for lifting water from wells and channelling it into fields, and these were modified and made more efficient in medieval times under Turkish influence. The spread of tank irrigation, and the cultivation of cash crops like cotton and indigo, notably boosted the income of farmers, and improved the living conditions in rural India at this time, even in dry regions.
The building of tanks to irrigate fields and to provide drinking water for people was a major community activity in ancient and medieval Indian villages. Kings also built them, huge reservoirs, to serve several villages. One of the oldest and largest of these reservoirs was the Sudarsana Lake in Gujarat built by Mauryan emperor Chandragupta in the fourth century BCE. Similar major irrigation works were constructed by kings in several other regions of India over the centuries. Paes saw a great reservoir being built in Vijayanagar by Krishnadeva, the embankment of which was a ‘falcon-shot wide.’ This reservoir, notes Paes, was built ‘at the mouth of two hills, so that the water which comes from either one side or the other collects there.’ In addition to rain water, the reservoir was also fed with water brought through pipes from a nearby lake. This was a gigantic enterprise, and it took several thousand men very many months to build it. ‘In the tank I saw so many people at work that there must have been fifteen or twenty thousand men there, looking like ants, so that you could not see the ground on which they walked, so many were there,’ states Paes. And while the dam was being constructed the raja had sixty men, presumably prisoners, and a number of horses and buffaloes sacrificed at the gate of the local temple, to appease gods and thus ensure the safety of the dam. Apart from this huge reservoir, the Vijayanagar rajas also built a number of other irrigation facilities, and this substantially increased the agricultural prosperity of the kingdom.
Some of the Delhi sultans also took care to build irrigation facilities to promote agriculture. Firuz Tughluq in particular was active in this; he built a vast network of canals in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, which drew water from several rivers—Yamuna, Sutlej, Ghaggar and so on—and distributed it for irrigation. This canal system is considered to be the largest such network ever built in India in pre-modern times. Provincial governors also played a notable role in expanding irrigation facilities in their territory. Besides these massive canal networks built by the state, several villages also built local canals to feed their fields.
A great variety of cereals, fruits, nuts, kitchen vegetables and spices were cultivated in medieval India. In addition to these native agricultural products, India in medieval times also took to the cultivation of tobacco, maize and potatoes, produce of the Americas brought into India by the Portuguese, and these in time became major crops.
Cereals were usually harvested twice a year in India: an autumn harvest (kharif) and a spring harvest (rabi). ‘When they have reaped the autumn harvest, they sow spring grains in the same soil in which autumn grains had been sown, for their country is excellent and the soil is fertile,’ reports Battuta. ‘As for rice, they sow it three times a year.’ Most of the agricultural produce in medieval India were consumed locally, in the villages that produced them, but there was also some trade across the subcontinent in them, particularly in cereals, carried by Banjaras, wandering grain traders.
In early medieval India farming was almost entirely in the hands of Hindus. Most of the farm holdings at this time were small, and were cultivated by their owners themselves. There were however also a few large estates owned by landlords, who cultivated them by hiring farm labourers. Hindu temples also played a major role in agriculture—they owned extensive tracts of land, which they usually rented out to tenants, but sometimes they themselves cultivated them by employing labourers. Temples also financed agriculture by advancing loans to farmers on the security of their lands. The state too played a notable role in promoting agriculture, inducing farmers to expand cultivation by granting them tax remissions or concessions, and by encouraging them to plant more valuable crops—sugarcane, oil-seeds, spices and poppies—instead of cereals.
Another development of economic importance in medieval India was the mass migration of people from one region to another. A major instance of this was the migration of a large number of farmers from the dry areas of Karnataka to the fertile lower Kavery valley. There was also a notable movement of Telugus into the Tamil country at this time, so that Telugu farmers and merchants came to constitute significant elements in the population of several districts in Tamil Nadu.
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT economic development of the early medieval period in India was the gradual revival of urban prosperity, and the related expansion of industrial production and trade. Some of the traditional industrial products of India, such as high quality textiles, underwent notable changes at this time, to reflect the Turkish taste, as Turks had become the major consumers of these products. Even the very mode of textile production changed at this time, as Indians now, in the thirteenth century, took to the use of the spinning wheel under Turkish influence, replacing the traditional the hand spindle. This technology became widespread in India over the next century, and it greatly speeded up textile production. Indians also took to the use of cotton-carder’s bow around this time. Possibly the weaver’s loom also underwent a modification in the medieval period, but information about this is scanty. Bengal was the main textile manufacturing region of India at this time, with Gujarat close behind it.
Cloth-weaving was the most widespread industrial activity in medieval India, but there were also several other crafts flourishing in India at this time. Metal crafts, for instance, boomed during this period, manufacturing war materials like swords and guns, as well as several household items. Indians also took to the manufacture of paper now, around the thirteenth century.
A notable economic development in India in the middle ages was the growing prominence of state run manufacturing units, producing a variety of luxury goods. This happened in nearly all the kingdoms of the period, but most prominently in Delhi. What the royal factories produced were not, however, for sale in the market, but for the consumption of the vast royal establishments, and for the king and his family members to give away as presents.
‘The sultan has a factory, in which 400 silk weavers are employed,’ notes Shahab-ud-din. ‘And there they make stuffs of all kinds, for the dresses of persons attached to the court, for robes of honour and presents, in addition to the stuffs which are brought every year from China, Iraq and Alexandria. Every year the sultan distributes 200,000 complete dresses; 100,000 in spring and 100,000 in autumn. The spring dresses consist principally of the goods manufactured in Alexandria. Those of the autumn are almost exclusively of silk manufactured in Delhi or imported from China or Iraq . . . The sultan keeps in his service 500 manufacturers of golden tissues, who weave the gold brocades worn by the wives of the sultan, and those given away as presents to the amirs and their wives.’
Indian craftsmen enjoyed a high reputation in the medieval world for their skills. ‘I tell you that they are the greatest and the most expert workmen . . . in all the world,’ states Varthema. But the crafts environment in India also had a negative aspect to it, in that the top Indian craftsmen were usually very secretive about their skills, passing them on to their sons or favourite disciples late in their lives, often near the time of their death. Sometimes they failed to do this, so that their unique skills died with them.
DOMESTIC TRADE IN India had declined sharply in the post-Gupta period, due to the ruralisation of Indian society and economy. Around that time India’s foreign trade too petered out, because of the collapse of the Roman Empire and the slide of Europe into the Dark Ages. But now, with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, internal trade gradually revived, stimulated by the insatiable demand for luxury goods by the sultans and nobles. India’s foreign trade also revived at this time, as the demand for Indian goods rose in Europe as it emerged out of the Dark Ages. These economic developments in India were noted by several contemporary foreign visitors—Battuta, for instance, found cities flourishing in the upper Gangetic valley, Gujarat, Bengal, the Deccan, Vijayanagar and Kerala. Barbosa and Paes also speak of the lively commercial scene in India at this time. Gold coins, which were rarely issued in India after the collapse of the Gupta Empire, now once again began to appear, indicating the revival of Indian economy.
Towns now rose to prominence again, with flourishing markets, where trade fairs were held periodically. Also, the political integration of a large part of the subcontinent under the Delhi sultans led to the economic integration of the subcontinent, as well as to the expansion of trade and to the close commercial interlinking of villages and towns. New towns now began to sprout all over the land. And alongside the existing major towns there appeared flourishing suburbs, indicating the spread of prosperity and the increased feeling of security among the people. The travel of people and the transport of goods across the land were now safer than in the previous period, though they were still quite hazardous. Caravanserais now appeared along major trade routes, and this also greatly facilitated regional and inter-regional trade.
There was however no notable change in the pattern of India’s trade, or in its merchandise, from what they had been for many centuries previously. Nor was India’s economic growth vigorous enough to bring about any civilizational change in India, or to markedly improve the standard of life of the common people. It is significant that there is no evidence at this time of the existence of trade guilds, which had played a crucial role in Indian economy in the classical age.
THE PROMINENT TRADING communities of medieval India were Banias of Gujarat, Multanis of Punjab, Marwaris of Rajasthan, and Chettis of peninsular India. Apart from these major trading communities, there were also several other Hindu communities engaged in trade in medieval times. Muslims too played an important role in trade at this time, in local as well as foreign trade. Banjaras—a nomadic people divided into several tribes and based in different parts of the subcontinent, but probably originally from Rajasthan—also played a prominent role in Indian economy at this time, as itinerant grain traders.
Brahmins too, according to Marco Polo, played a key role in trade at this time, as agents of foreign traders, and were highly respected for their integrity. Nuniz also speaks highly of Brahmin traders, and notes that they ‘are honest men, given to trade, very acute and of much talent, very good at accounts, lean men and well-formed, but little fit for hard work.’
Did Brahmins at this time really play the prominent role in trade that is attributed to them by Polo and Nuniz? That is doubtful. It is quite probable that these chroniclers were mistaking Jains for Brahmins, for Brahmins were not known to have been active in trade in medieval India, except along the northern Karnataka coast, where the Konkani-speaking Saraswat Brahmins were prominent regional traders. Elsewhere in India too Brahmins played a major role in trade, but as financiers of traders, not as traders themselves.
In medieval India, as in classical India, trade in particular commodities was handled by particular communities, as an extension of the occupation specialisation of castes. Similarly, financing business was also usually a community specialisation. Two of the most prominent financier communities of medieval India were Shahs and Multanis, of whom the latter also directly participated in trade. Hindu temples, like Buddhist monasteries in earlier times, also played a major role in the economy and social life of medieval India. ‘The temple,’ as Thapar notes, ‘was the bank, the landowner, the employer of innumerable artisans and servants, the school, the discussion centre, the administrative centre for the village, and the place for major entertainments in the form of festivals.’ Muslims had virtually no role in financial services, as Islamic law condemned lending money on interest as a sin.
As for business ethics, it varied from community to community, and region to region. In Gujarat traders were invariably straightforward in their dealings, and charged only the right price for what they sold. On the other hand, traders in Lahore, whose customers were mostly itinerant foreigners, usually quoted inflated prices, and entered into a battle of wits in bargaining with their customers before agreeing on the price.
Traders in major towns in India at this time were generally very wealthy and lived in luxurious mansions. Battuta, for instance, mentions the case of one Mithqal—quite probably an Arab trader—in Kozhikode in north Kerala, who possessed ‘great riches and many ships for trading with India, China, Yemen and Fars (Iran).’
ISLAM DISAPPROVED ITS votaries from taking to money lending business, but it had no serious objection to Muslims borrowing money on interest. In fact, the Muslim aristocracy in India were heavy, reckless borrowers of money, often at exorbitant interest rates. Notes Barani: ‘The Multanis and Shahs of Delhi, who have acquired abundant wealth, have derived it from the resources of the old nobles of Delhi.’ The nobles took huge loans from these moneylenders, and repaid them by assigning to them shares in the revenue of their fiefs. Being deep in debt was for these nobles even something to be proud of, as a demonstration of their extravagant and carefree lifestyle.
Muslim travellers, traders and migrants were also heavy borrowers, and they were served by Hindu moneylenders, particularly in the north-western frontier towns of India. ‘The merchants of Sind and India began to furnish each newcomer with thousands of dinars as a loan, and to supply him with whatever he might desire, to offer as gift or for his own use, such as riding animals, camels, and goods,’ reports Battuta. ‘They place both their money and their persons at his service, and stand before him like attendants. When he reaches the sultan, he receives a magnificent gift from him and pays off his debt to them.’
The common people were also heavy borrowers in medieval times, but they often defaulted in their repayments, so the relationship between the lender and the borrower was seldom cordial in India, and sometimes the lender had to take coercive measures to recover his money. Marco Polo describes a curious South Indian practice of a creditor drawing a circle around his defaulting debtor, for the custom of the region required that ‘the latter should not pass out of this circle until he had satisfied the claim, or given security for its discharge.’
Apart from financiers, brokers (dallals) also played a key role in trade deals, particularly as intermediaries in the transactions between Indians of different regions, or between Indians and foreigners, because the cultural and language differences between such persons made direct negotiations between them virtually impossible. This, the prominent role played by brokers in trade, was a relatively new development in India in medieval times, and was indicative of the expansion of inter-regional and foreign trade in India at this time. Brokers also served as clearing agents, transporters, and stockers of trade goods.
Trade negotiations in the market at this time were carried out in a peculiarly secretive manner in some Indian towns. ‘They always sell by the hands of the . . . broker,’ notes Varthema. ‘And when the purchaser and the seller wish to make an agreement, they all stand in a circle, and the broker takes a cloth and holds it there openly with one hand, and with the other hand he takes the right hand of the seller, that is, the two fingers next to the thumb, and then he covers with the said cloth his hand and that of the seller, and touching each other with these two fingers, they count from one ducat up to one hundred thousand secretly, without saying “I will have 60” or “so much.” But by merely touching the joints of the fingers they understand the price and say “Yes” or “No”. And broker answers “No” or “Yes”. And when the broker has understood the will of the seller, he goes to the buyer with the said cloth, and takes his hand in the manner above mentioned, and by the said touching he tells him he wants so much. The buyer takes the finger of the broker, and by the said touches says to him: “I will give him so much.” And in this manner they fix the price.’
POLITICAL CONSOLIDATION IN India in early medieval times—in North India under the Delhi Sultanate, and in the peninsula under the Bahmani Sultanate and Vijayanagar—facilitated the economic recovery of India from the morass into which it had sunk in the late classical period. Though Mahmud Ghazni’s pillaging raids in the early eleventh century had devastated the already moribund Indian economy, now, two centuries later, with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, the economy stabilised and began to expand. There were still incessant wars in many regions of the subcontinent at this time, but conditions were on the whole better than what they had been in the previous several centuries. There was now relative political stability in the subcontinent, and that facilitated the expansion of trade. Moreover, trade at this time was greatly stimulated by the patronage it received from the fabulously affluent and extravagant Muslim ruling class. And kings generally sought to promote trade by granting tax concessions to traders and by conferring on them various privileges, for the prosperity that traders brought to kingdoms strengthened the economic base of royal power.
The primary concern of the medieval Indian kings in their tax policies, as in everything else, was to consolidate and enhance their own power and resources; ruling for the benefit of the people was more a pretence than a practice with nearly all of them. But even from the narrow point of view of self-interest, it was very much in the interest of kings to nourish trade and be facilitative towards traders, especially towards foreign traders, for kings were dependent on those traders to provide them with the luxuries essential for their lifestyle, and also, more importantly, to supply them with the horses their armies needed. Besides, traders often operated across kingdoms, and if a king overtaxed or oppressed them, they could easily move their business elsewhere.
In every respect it was very much in the interest of kings to maintain good relationship with traders. And traders on their part usually avoided getting embroiled in political tussles, for that could jeopardise their business interests. But major traders, because of their great wealth, and the armed escorts they maintained, were sometimes tempted to enter into the perilous arena of politics. Thus the Tibi family, trade tycoons in peninsular India in the late thirteenth century, once played the role of kingmakers in the Pandya kingdom, in a tussle between two brothers for the throne. Similarly, according to Battuta, there was once, on the west coast south of Goa, a very rich trader named Jamal-ud-din, who maintained an army of 6,000 and a fleet of over fifty ships, styled himself ‘sultan’, and exercised considerable political power for a while in the late fifteenth century.
COMMERCIAL TAX PRACTICES and rates in India varied considerably from kingdom to kingdom, even from ruler to ruler in a kingdom. This was inevitable, given the political, economic and social diversity of India. The most rigorous of the trade control measures enforced by any medieval Indian king were those of Ala-ud-din Khalji, who sought to firmly control all economic activities in his empire, particularly in Delhi, by regulating both the movement of goods as well as their prices. The major trade objective of the sultan was to stabilise the price of grains, the essential food of Indians of all classes, and in this he was entirely successful. He achieved this by fixing and enforcing the price of grains, and by carefully balancing supply and demand, releasing into the market grains from the royal stores during times of scarcity. ‘The unvarying price of grain in the markets was looked upon as one of the wonders of the age,’ comments Barani.
Ala-ud-din’s economic policies were comprehensive. In addition to the price of grains, he also sought to control the prices of all essential commodities, such as ‘piece goods, garments, sugar, vegetables, fruits, animal oil, and lamp oil,’ states Barani. The prices of slaves and concubines (essential commodities in that age!) were also fixed by the sultan. Even in the case of ‘articles . . . of the most trifling value . . . the sultan took the greatest trouble to fix their prices and to settle the profit of vendors.’ These were not mere paper regulations, but were rigorously enforced. And the sultan kept himself regularly informed about the market conditions through the reports of three independent sources—the superintendent of the market, reporters, and spies—and he took prompt remedial measures whenever required to restore market stability. Merchants who used short-weights were punished with ‘blows and by cutting off flesh [of an equal weight] from the haunches of those who gave short weight.’
To enforce his market regulations, Ala-ud-din held the families of the major suppliers of goods in the market as hostages, and held out the threat of severe punishment to those who violated government regulations. But this was only one side of the sultan’s policy. His was a carrot-and-stick policy, by which, on the one side, he coerced traders to abide by his market regulations, and, on the other side, encouraged and supported fair traders by honouring them with robes of honour, and by granting them loans from the royal treasury for financing their business. An equally creditable aspect of Ala-ud-din’s trade regulations was that they were as much beneficial to the common people as to the state, as they created stable market conditions and kept the prices of essential commodities low. Ala-ud-din was an autocrat, but a benevolent autocrat. Unfortunately, his market regulations ‘came to an end on his death, for his son . . . was not able to maintain even a thousandth part of them,’ comments Barani.
THE ECONOMIC POLICIES of Krishnadeva of Vijayanagar was the exact opposite of the policies of Ala-ud-din—the raja’s objective was to stimulate economic activity, while the sultan’s objective was to control it—but in both cases their policies were beneficial to the king as well as to the people.
Of all the Indian kings of the early middle ages, Krishnadeva’s economic policies were the most liberal. ‘A king should improve the harbours of his country and encourage its commerce, so that horses, elephants, precious gems, sandalwood, pearls, and other articles are freely imported into the country,’ he advises in Amukta-malyada, his poetic work. ‘He should arrange that foreign sailors who land in his country on account of storm, illness, and exhaustion are looked after in a manner suitable to their nationality . . . [He should] make the merchants of distant foreign countries who import elephants and good horses be attached to him by providing them with daily audience and presents, and by allowing decent profits. Then those articles will never go to his enemies. . . .’
This liberal import policy however applied only to the items that the state itself did not produce. In other items the protection of local producers and traders was a high priority for Vijayanagar kings, and they usually imposed high taxes on the goods brought from outside the state. This was the common practice of most Indian kingdoms.
Import taxes were usually collected at the frontiers of kingdoms. For instance, at a river crossing near Multan, ‘the goods and baggage of all who pass are subjected to a rigorous examination,’ reports Battuta. ‘Their custom at the time of our arrival was [for government officers] to take a quarter of everything brought in by merchants, and exact a duty of seven dinars for every horse.’ These were quite high rates. Further, in addition to import duties, medieval Indian states also collected octroi at the gates of towns.
The range of commercial taxes in medieval Indian kingdoms was indeed very broad. Indian kings usually imposed tax on all trade and economically productive activities in the state, however trivial, because, from the point of view of kings, the very existence of those activities depended on the protection that the state provided to them through the maintenance of law and order.
However, despite the wide range of commercial taxes collected by Indian states, these taxes were relatively fewer than the other taxes collected by medieval Indian states. And the rates of commercial taxes were usually lower than the rates of agricultural taxes. In Vijayanagar, for instance, agricultural tax was between one-third and one-sixth of the produce, but customs duty was only between 2.5 and 5 per cent of the sale price. But even at such low rates, commercial taxes yielded high revenue for the state, next only to the revenue from agricultural taxes.
Kings were generally protective towards traders, because it was very much in their interests to do so. But practices in this varied considerably from kingdom to kingdom. And sometimes kings acted like brigands or pirates. For instance, in Kerala, according to Battuta, it was ‘a custom of theirs that every ship that passes by a [port] town must drop anchor there and give a present to the [local] ruler . . . If anyone omits to do this, they sail out in pursuit of him, bring him into the port by force, double the tax on him, and prevent him from proceeding on his journey for as long as they wish.’ Kerala kings apparently considered the coastal seas as their territorial waters.
SUCH PIRATICAL CONDUCT by kings was however rare. Usually the relationship between kings and traders was mutually supportive, and mutually beneficial. This was reflected in the fact that the most flourishing markets in kingdoms were generally in royal capitals. ‘By the palace of the king there are four bazaars, situated opposite one another . . .,’ reports Razzak about Vijayanagar. ‘At the head of each bazaar there is a lofty arcade and magnificent gallery . . . The bazaars are very broad and long . . . The tradesmen of each separate guild or craft have their shops close to one another. Jewellers sell their rubies and pearls and diamonds and emeralds openly in the bazaar.’ The largest market in medieval India was, as was to be expected, in Delhi, which Battuta considered the largest market in the world. Apart from these permanent markets, large temporary trade fairs were usually organised in towns and major villages during temple festivals.
A major item of trans-regional trade in medieval India was salt, the main source of which was the Sambhar Salt Lake in Rajasthan. Several metals of commercial value were also mined in India. Of these, the most important item was iron, which was quarried in several places in the extensive region stretching from the southern Gangetic Valley to almost the very tip of India. Indian iron had a good overseas market in medieval times, as it was considered ideal for making swords. Copper was another notable metal mined in India, mainly in Rajasthan. But gold and silver were scarce in India, and only very small quantities of them were mined there. Diamonds were mined in the Deccan. And pearl fishery was a major industry on the southern Tamil Nadu coast.
In medieval times there was also some inter-regional and international trade in a few items manufactured in India, particularly in cloth. A variety of fabrics were woven in India at this time—in cotton, silk, and wool—and some of the special regional textile products were of very high quality and were marketed across India, and also exported. Gold and silver embroidery was a speciality of Gujarat; shawls and carpets of Kashmir.
MEDIEVAL INDIA HAD, for that age, fairly good transportation and communication facilities, with its main roads running east-west across the breadth of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, and north-south from the Gangetic Valley to deep into peninsular India. These roads had halting stations at regular intervals, where there were caravanserais and shops, as well as porters, horses, horse-carriages, bullock-carts and palanquins for hire. There was also an efficient long distance postal system in India at this time, with runners and horsemen posted at regular intervals along the main roads to carry mail. This facility was primarily for government use, but presumably it, or a similar service, was also available to traders.
These services however linked only the major political and commercial centres of India, and did not cover the interior regions of the subcontinent, where roads were rare, and communication facilities poor or nonexistent. Because of this, carts were seldom used to transport goods in India, except for short haul. The common mode of transport of goods in medieval India was to carry them on bullocks, which travelled in huge caravans, often consisting of thousands of bulls—Battuta mentions a caravan of 3000 bulls carrying 30,000 maunds of grain; other reporters mention caravans of 10,000 and even 20,000 bulls.
In Kerala most of the bulk goods were transported in boats on the backwaters or rivers; alternately men carried the goods on their heads. Animals were seldom used for transporting goods in Kerala—‘There are no beasts of burden in this land,’ states Barbosa. In North India, the Ganga-Yamuna river system was extensively used for transporting goods by boat, which was relatively cheaper and safer than road transport, and boats and guards were available for hire by traders at jetties along these rivers. There was also some amount of coastal shipping in India at this time.
Apart from the poor network of roads in the interior regions of India, there were several other hazards for the transport of goods in India in medieval times. Travel routes in several regions of India passed through dense forests inhabited by brigands, so traders usually travelled in groups and under the protection of hired guards. Wars and rebellions, which were perennial in medieval India, also disrupted trade. Venetian trader Caesar Frederic, for instance, was once held up in Vijayanagar for seven whole months, for the roads in the region were at this time, following the defeat of Vijayanagar in the battle of Talikota, infested by bandits.
Another major impediment to the free flow of trade in medieval India was the confusing diversity of currencies, weights and measures in use in different parts of the country. These often varied from region to region, and from kingdom to kingdom, sometimes even in the different parts of the same kingdom, or from king to king. Coins of the same name, as well as weights and measures of the same name, often had different values in different places and in different times. Vijayanagar had several mints, one at each provincial capital, which would have made it very difficult to maintain uniform standard in its coins. Adding to the confusion of all this was the free circulation of foreign coins in India, particularly the coins of Portugal, Italy, and the Middle Eastern kingdoms. Comments Caesar Frederick, a mid-sixteenth century Italian trade prospector in India: ‘The money we take this day would not serve the next.’
All this impeded the smooth transaction of business in the subcontinent. What prevented Indian trade from collapsing altogether in this monetary chaos was the presence of money changers in all major markets, who would, for a commission, give local coins in exchange for the coins of different Indian kingdoms and of foreign lands. Besides, the barter system was still extensively used in India for small transactions, with grain as the medium of exchange. According to Battuta, the common people in Bengal and Maldives used cowrie as money.
AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT in the Indian economy of the early medieval period was the participation of Indians in the brisk maritime trade in the Indian Ocean, particularly in the trade with South-east Asia and China. ‘The curiosities of Chin (China) and Machin (Canton) and the beautiful products of Hind and Sind, laden on large ships . . . sailing like mountains . . . are always arriving there (at Mabar: Coromandel Coast) . . . which is so situated as to be the key of Hind,’ writes Wassaf.
The major players in the Indian Ocean trade at this time were Indians, Arabs, Chinese and South-East Asians. Of these, Arabs were the most active and successful traders, and their dominant presence in the Arabian Sea eventually obliged Indian traders to gradually retreat from there, though they still maintained a residual presence in a few Middle Eastern trade centres, like Aden. Indians thereafter largely confined themselves to trade with South-east Asia and China; Indian traders, particularly Chettis of the Tamil country, had at this time a notable presence in places like Malacca.
Arab traders had been active in the Indian Ocean long before the founding of Islam, but now, energised by their new faith, they surged ahead, and went on to dominate the sea trade in the entire region. This was the result of peaceful though fierce competition; virtually no military action was involved in it. And, as Arab trade in the region expanded, Arab settlements in India’s coastal towns increased in number and size, and they generally enjoyed great prosperity. Arab traders in Cambay in Gujarat were very affluent, and lived in grand mansions, Battuta noted. And he found numerous mosques along the coast of Kerala, which indicated the presence of a large number of Arabs and local Muslims there, and their general prosperity.
Peninsular Indian kings, sultans as well as rajas, generally patronised Arab traders, as these traders contributed to the prosperity of their kingdoms, and because the kings were dependant on Arabs for the regular supply of horses, a perennial military requirement of most Indian kings. Arab traders enjoyed virtual autonomy in Kerala, as the local rulers there allowed them to live there under their own laws, and to have their own governors to regulate their lives and to punish their criminals, without any reference to the raja. According to Barbosa, fresh batches of Arab merchants arrived in Kerala periodically, and they were favoured by the local raja by assigning to each of them attendants like bodyguards, accountants and brokers, to help them in their local transactions. Many of these merchants settled in Kerala, married local women, and they and their descendants, called Mapilas, in time became a notable element in the local population.
Arabs dominated the Arabian Sea trade for several centuries, till the early sixteenth century, when the Portuguese wrested control from them. The Portuguese had arrived on the scene at the close of the fifteenth century, and soon they became absolute masters of the seas around India, because of their superior naval capabilities. Presently they built their fortified settlements on the eastern and western coasts of peninsular India, with Goa as their chief centre, and thus entrenched themselves on land in India, to backup their dominant naval presence in the Indian seas.
The Portuguese then considered the Indian Ocean as their sovereign territory, and controlled all the traffic there by laying down the rule that the ships of all other nations sailing there, particularly in the Arabian Sea, should do so only by calling at a Portuguese port in the region, to pay duty on their cargo and to obtain a pass for their safe journey. And they decreed that no ship plying in the Arabian Sea should carry certain items, especially spices and ammunitions, which they considered as their monopoly. They also required that merchantmen should sail in small convoys, and under the escort of Portuguese warships. This hegemony of the Portuguese in the Indian seas lasted for about a century, but they were eventually, in the early decades of the seventeenth century, displaced by other European powers, particularly the British.
BY THE SIXTEENTH century the port cities of peninsular India emerged as the most prominent foreign trade centres in the subcontinent, displacing the cities in north-western India which had dominated this trade for many centuries. This change was because foreign trade, which had been mostly by land route previously, was now mostly by sea route, and the peninsular ports were ideally situated to serve both eastern and western sea traders.
There is a good amount of information about the trade activities in peninsular India at this time, because the region was then visited by very many foreign traders and travellers, and several of them maintained records of what they observed. In particular, the Kerala coast, which was studded with several natural harbours, was abuzz with commercial activity at this time. Kozhikode (Calicut, in north Kerala) and Kollam (Quilon, in south Kerala), according to Battuta, were among the best ports he had seen anywhere in the world, and were equal to Alexandria. ‘It has fine bazaars, and its merchants . . . are immensely wealthy,’ writes Battuta about Kollam. ‘A single merchant will buy a vessel with all that is in it and load it with goods from his own house. There is a colony of Muslim merchants there; the cathedral mosque there is a magnificent building. This city is the nearest of the Mulaybar (Malabar: Kerala) towns to China, and it is to it that most of the merchants [from China] come.’ Kollam was the main centre for the transhipment of East Asian goods to the West, and of European goods to the East.
This trade prominence of Kollam was rivalled by Kozhikode, but the town seems to have gained importance only around the fourteenth century, for Marco Polo, who visited Kerala in the thirteenth century, does not mention it at all. But by the next century the town emerged into great prominence, and became renowned as the City of Spices. Battuta, who was in Kerala in the mid-fourteenth century, found the town flourishing. ‘Qaliqut,’ he writes, ‘is one of the chief ports in Mulaybar and one of the largest harbours in the world. It is visited by men from China, Sumatra, Ceylon, the Maldives, Yemen and Fars (Persia), and in it gather merchants from all quarters.’
Razzak also is all praise for the prosperity of Kozhikode, and its good government. The city, he reports, ‘brings together merchants of every city and every country . . . It is the practice at other ports, that if any vessel be consigned to any particular port, and unfortunately by the decree of the Almighty it is driven to any other [port] than that to which it is destined, the people plunder it, on the plea that it is sent [to them] by the winds. But at Kozhikode every vessel, wherever it comes from, and whichever way it arrives, is treated like any other, and no sort of trouble is experienced by it.’
Several other Indian towns engaged in foreign trade are also mentioned in medieval texts. Khambhat (Cambay) in Gujarat is one such town, where, according to Varthema, ‘about three hundred ships of different countries come and go.’ The town was also renowned for the excellent jewellery made there. Daulatabad in Maharashtra was another famed centre for jewellery—‘the infidels of this town are merchants, dealing principally in jewels, and their wealth is enormous,’ states Battuta. The entire stretch of the Coromandel Coast was also involved in overseas trade in medieval times.
SPICES WERE WHAT medieval foreign traders mainly sought for export from India, and that gave Kerala exceptional prominence in the world trade of that age, for it was, as Battuta describes it, ‘the pepper country’. The main items exported from India in medieval times were pepper, cloves, ginger, cardamom and cinnamon; India also exported saffron, indigo, sugar, rice, tamarind, coconut and rhubarb, as well as sandalwood, brazilwood, musk, ambergris and myrobalan. Incense, precious stones, beads, and seed pearls were the other common items exported from India. Another product of India that was keenly sought by foreigners was fine cotton fabrics, manufactured in many parts of India, but which was a speciality of Bengal. Elegant leather shoes made in Sind were yet another prized item of export from India.
Because of this flourishing overseas trade a great amount of gold flowed into India in medieval times, and it remained there. ‘I have calculated that for the last 3000 years that country has not exported gold to other countries, and whatever has entered it has never come out again,’ Syrian chronicler Shahab-ud-din was once told by one of his informers. China also had an adverse trade balance with India. Consequently there was a drain of gold from China into India, and this so bothered the Chinese government that it at one time banned imports from India.
But it was not all a one-way trade for India. Just as India exported a wide variety of goods, it also imported a wide variety of goods. But the total value of its imports seems to have been far less than that of its exports. The most notable item imported into India in early medieval times was horses, several thousands of which were brought into the country every year. It was also the most expensive item that India imported, a single horse costing as much as 220 dinars! Horses were brought into North India by land through the northwestern mountain passes, and by sea into the peninsula. India also imported perfumes, coral, quicksilver, vermilion, lead, gold, silver, alum, madder, and saffron from the Middle East; and from China it imported silks, taffetas and satins, blue and white porcelain, gold, silver, copper, vermilion, quicksilver, and so on. Various spices were also imported into India from South-east Asia. The opulent lifestyle of Muslim kings and nobles in medieval India led to an exponential growth in India’s demand for imported luxury products like silks, velvets, damasks, camlets and satins. India also imported dates. In time India’s export of manufactured goods declined, while its import of such goods increased.
A wide variety of ships from different nations were engaged in trade with India in medieval times. The largest of these were the Chinese junks, but the Chinese also plied medium and small ships in the Indian seas. Indian ships were smaller than the junks, but larger than the European ships, according to Nicolo Conti. But European ships, despite their relatively small size, had a decisive advantage over Asian ships, as they were more robustly built. While the Indian, Arab and Chinese ships were not strong enough to sail in the open seas in rough weather, European ships could do that. European ships also carried superior artillery. These were the key factors that enabled Europeans to eventually dominate the Asian seas.
Medieval sea transport was slow, averaging only around sixty kilometres a day, and was often further delayed on the way for various reasons—a delegation sent by a Chola king to China in the early eleventh century, for instance, took as many as three years to reach the Chinese capital. Not surprisingly, it took ships around fifteen days to reach Colombo from Kozhikode.
Sea travel was also hazardous, because of violent storms in the Indian Ocean, and also because the sea was infested with pirates at this time. These pirates belonged to different nations, but many of them operated from the west peninsular coast of India, no doubt with the connivance of the local rulers, who received a share of the booty. According to Marco Polo, these pirates were ‘the most arrant corsairs of the world.’ Because of the ever present menace of pirates in the Indian seas, merchantmen usually sailed in fleets, just as trade caravans in India travelled in large groups for protection against brigands. For the same reason, Chinese junks in the Indian seas usually carried a good number of soldiers in them. According to Battuta, a large Chinese ship carried a crew of 1,000, of whom 600 were sailors and 400 warriors: ‘archers, shield-bearers and crossbow archers . . . who shoot naphtha missiles.’