Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

In contrast to the generally ostentatious lifestyle of sultans, the traditional lifestyle of rajas was relatively simple. But in time many of the rajas adopted some of the Turko-Afghan royal practices. While most Hindu kings customarily held court sitting on a mat or carpet, or on a low stool or chair, during the medieval period many of them gradually took to sitting on opulent and elaborately bejewelled thrones in the style of the sultans. According to Abdur Razzak — who visited India in mid-fifteenth century as an envoy of Timur’s son Shah Rukh — the throne of king Devaraya II of Vijayanagar ‘was of an extraordinary size; it was made of gold, and was enriched with precious stones of extreme value … The king was seated in great state in the forty-pillared hall, and a great crowd of Brahmins and others stood on the right and left of him. He was clothed in a robe of green satin, and he had around his neck a collar composed of pure pearls of regal excellence, the value of which a jeweller would find difficult to calculate.’ And when the raja travels ‘not less than a hundred thousand warriors go with him,’ states Barbosa, an early sixteenth century Portuguese traveller, rather exaggeratedly.

Unlike the opulence of the North Indian and Deccani kings, the lifestyle of the Dravidian kings of South India, particularly of the Chera kings of Kerala, was quite simple. Battuta, a fourteenth century Moorish traveller in India, saw the king of Kozhikode on the beach ‘wearing a large white cloth round his waist and a small turban, barefooted, with a parasol carried by a slave over his head and a fire lit in front of him.’ According to Barbosa, when the king of Kerala travels, he ‘comes forth in his litter borne by two men, which is lined with silken cushions … [The litter] is hung on a bamboo pole covered with precious stones.’ The bearers of the litter run at a jog-trot pace, all the while humming and grunting ‘in a curious antiphonic manner.’ Barbosa also notes the curious Kerala custom in which, when a raja dies and has been cremated, all the members of the royal family ‘shave themselves from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, saving only their eyelashes and eyebrows. This they do from the prince to the least heir of the kingdom.’

A commendable attribute of the early medieval Indian rulers, of sultans as well as rajas, in Delhi as well as elsewhere, is that many of them were keen and knowledgeable patrons of art, literature and learning, and some of them were distinguished scholars and writers themselves. But erudition in itself made little difference in the performance of a ruler; it was only his pragmatism, as well as his administrative and military capabilities, that really mattered. Muhammad Tughluq was probably the most erudite of the Delhi sultans, but he was a pathetic failure as a ruler; on the other hand, Ala-ud-din Khalji was illiterate, but was the most successful of the Delhi sultans.

MOST OF THE medieval Indian sultans and rajas were polygamous; they had several wives, and in addition maintained huge harems, as befitting their Olympian stature and lifestyle. This was mainly for pomp, but partly also for pleasure. Yet another reason for a king to have a large number of wives was for him to beget many children, to ensure that he would have enough sons to survive him in the perilous political environment of the age, so that his dynasty may endure.

Islamic convention allowed only four lawful wives to a man, whatever be his status, but among Hindus there was no such restriction. Achyutadevaraya, the king of Vijayanagar, according to a probably exaggerated account of Nuniz, had as many as 500 wives. ‘And when he journeys to any place he takes with him twenty-five or thirty of his most favourite wives … each one in her palanquin with poles. The palanquin of the principal wife is all covered with scarlet cloth tasselled with large and heavy work in seed-pearls and pearls, and the pole itself is ornamented with gold.’ More credible is what Domingos Paes, an early sixteenth-century Portuguese traveller, says about Krishnadeva. ‘This king,’ he reports, ‘has twelve lawful wives, of whom there are three principal ones … [The three] are in all respects treated and provided for equally,] so that there may never be any discord or ill feeling between them. All of them are great friends, and each one lives by herself … The king [too] lives by himself inside the palace, and when he wishes to have with him one of his wives, he orders a eunuch to go and call her.’

The queens of Vijayanagar, particularly the three chief queens, were sumptuously provided with all luxuries. ‘Each one of these wives has her house to herself, with her maidens and women of the chamber, and women guards, and all other women servants necessary; all these are women, and no man enters where they are, save only the eunuchs, who guard them,’ continues Paes. ‘These women are never seen by any man except perhaps by some old man of high rank by favour of the king. When they wish to go out they are carried in litters shut up and closed, so that they cannot be seen.’

This evidently was a practice that spread to the Hindu royal families under Turko-Afghan influence, for previously there was no such seclusion of the royal women in Hindu kingdoms. ‘Most of the princes of India, when they hold court allow their women to be seen by the men who attend it, whether they be natives or foreigners,’ writes Abu Zaid, an early medieval Arab historian. ‘No veil conceals them from the eyes of the visitors.’ However, whether the royal women remained in the zenana and behind the veil, or appeared openly in public, they usually played an important role in public affairs, through their influence on kings.

Apart from the queens, a large number of women, including several foreigners, lived in the royal harem. Some of them served as royal concubines — there was no restriction on the number of concubines a raja or a sultan could have — while the others provided various routine services in the palace. All the king’s female relatives, such as his mother, unmarried aunts, sisters and daughters, as well as his young sons, lived in the harem. His adult sons lived apart. There were also several female entertainers in the harem. According to Nuniz, the raja of Vijayanagar had ‘within his gates more than 4000 women, all of whom live in the palace; some are dancing girls, and others are bearers … He has also women who wrestle, and others who are astrologers and soothsayers; and he has women who write all the accounts of expenses that are incurred inside the gates, and others whose duty it is to write all the affairs of the kingdom … He has women also for music, who play instruments and sing. Even the wives of the king are well versed in music.’ Paes reports that Krishnadeva had 12,000 women in his harem, some of whom ‘handle sword and shield, others wrestle, and yet others blow trumpets and others pipes, and [various] other instruments … [There were also there] women bearers and washing-folk …’ The sultans too maintained huge harems. Portuguese sources report that sultan Ghiyas-ud-din Mahmud Shah of the mid-sixteenth century Bengal, had 10,000 women in his harem.

THE APPEARANCE AND lifestyle of some of the medieval Indian kings were odd beyond belief. Such was the case of Sultan Mahmud Shah Begarha of Gujarat. ‘The said sultan has mustachios under his nose so long that he ties them over his head as a woman would tie her tresses, and he has a white beard which reaches to his girdle,’ writes the early sixteenth-century Italian traveller Varthema, who was in Gujarat during Begarha’s reign. ‘Every day he eats poison. Do not, however, imagine that he fills his stomach with it; but he eats a certain quantity, so that when he wishes to destroy any great personage he makes him come before him stripped and naked, [and he spits on him the juice of the various fruits and leaves he has masticated, so that, because of the highly poisonous quality of spittle,] the man falls dead to the ground in the space of half an hour.