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300 Pages
MUGHAL ADMINISTRATION AND THE ZAMINDARS OF BIHAR
This volume looks at the prominent chieftaincies of the suba of Bihar like Kharagpur, Bhojpur, Palamau, Gidhaur, Khokhra, Darbhanga, Champaran (Betia Raj) and Kalyanpur (Hathwa Raj) and presents the biographies of their chieftains to understand their relationship with the Mughal Empire from the period of Akbar to Aurangzeb and their power and position during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It takes into consideration only those zamindars who enjoyed autonomous control over their possessions.
The volume examines the origin and growth of these chieftaincies and the manner of their subjugation as well as the nature of overlordship established by the Mughals over them. It also discusses the career and achievements of the chiefs at the Mughal court, particularly their appointments, awards of mansabs, promotions and so on. The study is divided into ten chapters including Introduction and Conclusion. After the introduction, the next eight chapters are devoted to the study of chieftaincies. The ninth chapter is related to Hathwa Raj, which also includes a brief study of other chieftaincies like Panchet, Seor, Garhi, Ratanpur, Ramnagar, Ramgarh, Bhagwanpur, Chai and Kahalgaon. The volume provides a complex portrait of the chieftains of Bihar and their relationship with the Mughal Empire as well as their role in the consolidation and expansion of the Mughal Empire in India.
Tahir Hussain Ansari is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Assam University, Diphu Campus, Assam. His main area of research is political, social and economic history of Mughal Bihar during sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
Acknowledgements
It is a great pleasure for me to express my heartiest gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Afzal Husain, under whose valuable guidance, critical advice and constant encouragement, I was able to complete my doctoral thesis. He always gave me adequate space to discuss various themes of my work and accepted my views. Without his constant care, guidance and assistance, this work would not have seen the light of the day. He has always been an immense source of inspiration for me.
I am greatly indebted to my eminent teachers: Prof. Irfan Habib, Prof. Shireen Moosvi, Prof. I.A. Zilli, Prof. S. Zaheer H. Jafri and Prof. S.P. Verma, who not only helped and guided me in the completion of my research work but also always motivated me in my pursuit of knowledge. I am highly obliged to my esteemed teachers, Dr. M.K. Zaman, Prof. Ishrat Alam, Prof. Farhat Hasan, Prof. S. Ali Nadeem Rizavi and Prof. Jabir Raza who inspired me to complete my doctoral thesis. My thanks are also due to Prof. Mohd. Pervez, Prof. Mohammad Sajjad, Dr. Amir Ahmad and Dr. Reyaz Ahmad for their constant support in the completion of this study. I am thankful to my friends, Syed Ali Kazim, Noor Hasan, Hammad Rizvi, Tabir Kalam, Mohammad Nazrul Bari, Ashfaque Ali and Amit Gaur who helped me in many ways to prepare my thesis in the present form. Particularly, I am grateful to my loving parents, Late Mrs. R. Khatoon and Janab Abdul Sattar and my elder brother, Ashfaque Hussain, for their affection and blessings, which has been a great source of inspiration for me.
I am equally indebted to my brotherin-law, Mazharul Haque and my sister, Aitun Nisha, for their constant encouragement. I am beholden to the staff members of the Research Library, CAS, Department of History and Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh, especially to Arshad Ali, Mazhar Hussain, Salman Ahmad and B.D. Sharma for their cooperation. I owe a debt of gratitude to the former director, Dr. Mohd. Ziauddin Ansari and the staff members of the Khuda Bakhsh Library, Patna, especially Hasibur Rahman, Ehsan Manzar, Irfan Ahsan Safdari, Iftekharunnabi Ahmad Madani, Md. Jawaid Ashraf and others for their kind cooperation. I would also like to thank the members of the K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna; the Bihar State Archives, Patna; and the Mahafiz Khana of the Darbhanga Raj, Darbhanga, for their valuable cooperation. I am thankful to my colleagues in the Department of History, Assam University, Diphu for their kind cooperation and support. Last but not the least, I must acknowledge my deep sense of love and gratitude to my wife, Sultana and my loving sons, Taha and Dayyan, who provided me strength and patience during the writing of this book. Diphu TAHIR HUSSAIN ANSARI.
Introduction
During the Mughal period, we find references to a large number of territorial chiefs in almost every part of northern India. Locally, they were known as rajas, ranas, rais, raos, rawats, etc., while in the contemporary and near-contemporary Persian chronicles, they have been referred to as zamindars and marzabans, usually as kalantaran and buzurg. 1
These were mostly hereditary chiefs who ruled over their respective territories.2 In short, these autonomous or semi-autonomous zamindars constituted an important element in medieval Indian polity. They commanded not only a considerable part of the economic resources of the empire but also military power. After the conquest of Hindustan, Emperor Babur informs us that one-sixth of his total revenues came from the territories of these chiefs. He writes: The revenue of the countries now held by me (1528 AD) from Bhira to Bihar is fifty-two crores as will be known in detail. Eight or nine crores of this are from the parganas of rais and the rajas who have submitted in the past (to the Sultans of Delhi), receive allowance and maintenance.3
According to Arif Qandhari, one of the contemporary historians of Akbar’s reign, there were two or three hundred rajas and zamindars that were for long in possession of strong forts.4 Each of them commanded an army of their own, generally consisting of their clansmen, and the total numbers of their troops as Abul Fazl, the famous court historian of Akbar, tells us, stood at 47,00,000, comprising 3,84,558 cavalry, 42,77,057 infantry, 1,863 elephants, 4,260 guns and 4,500 boats.5 William Harrison Moreland was the first historian to draw our attention to the importance of the chiefs in medieval India. He defined zamindars as ‘vassal chiefs’. He also pointed out that they could not exist in territories under the direct control of the Mughal state.6 However, according to him, Bengal was an exception to this practice.7 After him, Parmatma Saran in his work, Provincial Government of the Mughals 1526-1658, has highlighted the position and role of the chieftains in the Mughal Empire by listing the principalities of a few of them.
He also defined zamindar as ‘vassal chiefs’ and, like Moreland, also believed that they could not be found in all parts of the empire.8 But Irfan Habib, who, on the basis of the study of Ain-i-Akbari, pointed out that the zamindars were to be found in every part of the empire, questioned this opinion.9 Actually, Moreland committed this mistake because of an error in Heinrich Blochmann’s standard edition of the Ain-i Akbari. Blochmann did not reproduce the statistics under the Account of the Twelve Provinces in their original tabular form. He not only dispensed with the columns of the original tables but also dropped, without any explanation, the column headings. Moreland, therefore, could not notice the names of the castes entered against each pargana in these tables, which belonged to a column headed ‘zamindar’ in the manuscript.10 As a result of this mistake, Moreland assumed that the zamindars were not found in all parts of the empire.
However, Irfan Habib, in a chapter on the zamindars in his book, Agrarian System of Mughal India, made a detailed discussion on the rights, privileges, genesis and the composition of the zamindars in general. He also mentioned the two categories of zamindars: the autonomous chiefs who enjoyed ‘sovereign power’ in their territories and the ordinary zamindars who exercised superior rights in land and functioned as collectors of land revenue.11 Nurul Hasan accepted the universal character of the zamindars, and described the position and the role of the chiefs in the Mughal Empire. However, he divided the zamindars into three categories: (i) the autonomous chiefs, (ii) the intermediary zamindars, and (iii) the primary zamindars. 12 Discussing the features of the autonomous chiefs, the theme of the present work, he observed that the Mughals admitted a large number of chiefs in the imperial service by conferring mansab, important governorships and military commands.
They asserted the principle, which came to be known as that of ‘Paramountcy’, according to which they reserved to themselves the right of recognizing the successor of a deceased raja, thus making a chieftain dependent for his position on the goodwill of the emperor rather than on his inherent rights. They also imposed the obligation of military service upon the chieftains but they were not granted mansabs. Moreover, they entered into a direct relationship with the chieftains, reduced their powers and created a new class of allies. They also attempted to treat the hereditary dominions of the autonomous chiefs as watan jagir, which meant that, theoretically, they were supposed to have the status of jagirdar. Finally, they succeeded in compelling the autonomous chiefs to confirm to imperial regulations, especially with regard to the maintenance of law and order and the freedom of transit, as well as claiming the right to dispense justice to those who appealed to the imperial government against their chiefs.13 Hasan also touches upon the different roles the chiefs must have played in the economic and cultural life of the country before and after their submission to the Mughals.
However, his observations, based as they are on a general survey of the Mughal Empire covering a period of about 150 years, need a close region-wise and period-wise scrutiny before they can be accepted.14 Ahsan Raza Khan in his book, Chieftains in the Mughal Empire during the Reign of Akbar, has tried to analyse the position and powers of the chieftains of the Akbari provinces of Delhi, Kabul, Lahore, Multan, Gujarat, Ajmer, Malwa, Agra, Oudh, Allahabad, Bihar and Bengal, and their relation with the Mughal imperial authority.15 He has identified the principalities of the various chiefs and then examined the manner of their subjugation and the nature of overlordship established by the Mughals over them. Khan has indeed made an in-depth study of the zamindars but his study is only confined to the reign of Akbar and, besides, it is in the nature of a general survey, as he had covered the zamindars of Akbar’s entire period. Another shortcoming of his study is that it is mainly based on Persian chronicles with the exception of a few Rajasthani sources.
Hence, the picture of the zamindars and their problem is from the perspective of the imperial court. The reaction of the zamindars towards the imperial policy adopted with regard to them hardly finds any place in the chronicles. Besides, it may also be pointed that barring a few articles and research papers, no detailed study of the zamindars of a particular region or of a (Mughal) suba, including Bihar, has been made of the Mughal period so far. The present study is my doctoral research work, which gives detailed accounts of the zamindars of Bihar and their relationship with the Mughals from the time of Akbar to the death of Aurangzeb. After the acceptance of my thesis for publication, I extended the period of my study uptil the nineteenth century. Besides, I have also consulted a number of local Persian sources, including family records, in the preparation of the present work. However, unlike the zamindars of the suba of Ajmer, for whom we have a large number of source material, information about the zamindars of Bihar is very little both in Persian chronicles as well as in local records.
The first problem in this regard, was to identify the prominent zamindar families of Bihar. No detailed study of this nature had been attempted so far. Another problem faced during the course of this study was, as mentioned above, the paucity of source material about the zamindars of Bihar, particularly regarding their relations with the Mughal court after their acceptance of their subordination to the imperial authority. However, we have been able to identify Kharagpur, Bhojpur, Palamau, Gidhaur, Kokhra, Darbhanga, Champaran (Betia Raj), Kalyanpur (Hathwa Raj), Panchet, Seor, etc., as important chieftaincies of the Bihar suba. Some of these were very large with a group of parganas under their sway, while others were so small that they held only a part of a pargana. Nevertheless, the information on their relation with the Mughal administration was so little that it was not possible to make a correct assessment of their position in the Mughal political structure.
Therefore, I decided to prepare detailed biographical accounts of each of the well-known chieftaincies, including biographies of their chieftains on the basis of information collected from all possible sources: contemporary, near-contemporary and later Persian sources, European travel accounts, local sources, family records, survey reports and district gazetteers. I was able to get a lot of information on their relations with the imperial government and, in my concluding chapter, in the light of this information; I have discussed the relationship of the zamindars of Bihar with the Mughal administration in detail. It may, however, be added that I have taken into consideration only those zamindars who enjoyed autonomous control over their possessions. It is now important to briefly discuss the geography of the Bihar suba with particular reference to the areas under the control of the chieftaincies. Abul Fazl records that the area of the suba of Bihar from Gardhi16 to Rohtas was about 120 kos (300 miles) and its breadth from Tirhut to the northern mountains (Himalayas) was 110 kos (275 miles).
On its eastern boundary was the suba of Bengal and to its west were the suba of Allahabad and Awadh. On the north and south, it was bounded by hills comprising the Himalayas and Vindhyas, respectively.17 Abul Fazl does not mention any suba bordering the suba of Bihar in the north and south. It seems that because of the hilly tract and forest areas on both sides of the suba, Abul Fazl failed to mention the name of any territorial unit to its north and south, although Nepal lies to its north and Orissa (Odisha) to its south. Some of the important rivers that flowed across Bihar were the Ganga, Sone, Maner, Gandak, Karmanasa and Punpun.18 The suba of Bihar had seven sarkars, which were divided into 199 parganas. During the reign of Akbar, the suba was divided into two broad and equal portions of territory, north and south of the river Ganga.
The northern territory was a vast tract of flat land and it comprised the Saran, Champaran, Hajipur and Tirhut sarkars. Tirhut, being the most easterly, contained a strip of lands adjacent to the north of the course of the Ganga in north Bihar and formed the part of the sarkar of Munger. The latter chiefly lay to the south of the Ganga.19 The southern territory lay to the south of the Ganga and extended to the range of Vindhyas, which separated the lower plains from the elevated mountainous region. In the west, the southern territory was separated by the river from the sarkar of Chunar in the suba of Allahabad. On the east, it was separated from Bengal by a branch of the southern hills. The sarkar of Bihar in the middle cover about half of the flat and level area of this great southerly division. The plains of the sarkar of Munger to the east covered a fourth of the entire district with all its mountainous dependencies.
The southern and western sarkar of Rohtas was situated chiefly between the two rivers of Sone and Karmanasa. Subsequently, the sarkar of Shahabad (Bhojpur) was carved out of the sarkar of Rohtas.20 The southernmost region of the Bihar suba was upland of Chota Nagpur, which comprised the sub-division of Palamau, Ramgarh and Chota Nagpur. Chota Nagpur is also known by the appellation of Khokhra, more commonly called Nagpur. John Beams is of the view that the name Nagpur was derived from the diamond mine in the region.21 It may be pointed out that the entire region was not included in any of the sarkars of the suba of Bihar apparently because the zamindars of the area could not be fully subjugated. A general survey of the geographical distribution of chieftaincies in Bihar shows that most of them were located in the peripheral regions, amidst forests and the hilly tracts of south Bihar. For example, the chieftaincies of Kokhra and Palamau were located in south Bihar and were full of forests.
The hilly tracts of Munger had the largest number of principalities, such as Kharagpur, Gidhaur, and Seor. Similarly, the principalities of Hathwa and Betia Raj in north Bihar were situated, by and large, in those regions of Saran and Champaran where the forest abounded. The territory of the Ujjainias of Bhojpur was also full of forests. The remarks of Mannucci and Palsaert, the European travellers, that the tracts ruled by the rajas and the ‘princely’ zamindars in Hindustan are usually to be found only behind mountains and in forests seem in complete agreement with the geographical distribution of the chieftaincies in Bihar.22
Even the eighteenth-century Persian chronicle Siyar-ulMutakherin gives a vivid picture of the forests in north Bihar: No man that has not seen the forests of India can have an idea of the darkness and horror by which a visitor is at once surrounded. Lofty trees eternally green, growing close together, intercept not only the light of the sun, but the very sight of the sky. Not a leaf is seen moving, not a bird is seen hopping about, save some crows; and chirping is as unknown there as would be an organ touched by a Handel. Such are the sal forests that bound Bengal on the north. Myriads of red ants, still more formidable by their enormous bigness than by their voracity, seem as well as stupendous serpents, to be the only inhabitants of those lonely woods, that is, the western ones.23 This thesis is divided into ten chapters, including the introduction and conclusion. After the introduction, the next eight chapters are devoted to the study of chieftaincies.
The ninth chapter is related to the Hathwa Raj, which also includes a brief study of other chieftaincies like Panchet, Seor, Garhi, Ratanpur, Ramnagar, Ramgarh, Bhagwanpur, Chai and Kahalgaon. To understand in better way the chieftain’s relationship with the Mughal Empire I have prepared detailed political biographies of the chieftains, especially from the time of Akbar to Aurangzeb’s reign including the events of the war of succession among the sons of Shah Jahan. A short history of these chieftaincies during eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been also mentioned. While describing about the chieftains, I have noted all the developments that have taken place in their chieftaincies, in and around the Bihar suba and at the imperial court. I have also discussed the career and achievements of the chiefs at the Mughal court, particularly their appointments, awards of mansabs, promotions and so on. I have particularly mentioned the nature of the relationship established after the chieftains accepted the overlordship of the Mughal imperial authority.
In the preparation of this thesis, I have consulted almost all the available Persian sources in print as well as in manuscript form. I have also used a number of official documents, such as imperial farmans, nishans and hasbul hukms issued by the Mughal emperors and the princes. European travel accounts have also been used with utmost care. Barring the reign of Akbar, information provided by Persian sources on the reign of Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb and the later Mughal period is fragmented. Similarly, only brief references to a few chieftaincies are available in European travel accounts. Therefore, I have also consulted a large number of family records and regional histories, housed in the Bihar State Archives, Patna; Khuda Bakhsh Library, Patna; K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna; Patna University Library, Patna; and Mahafiz Khana of Darbhanga Raj, Darbhanga.
Some family accounts, such as Tawarikh-i-Ujjainia, Tawarikh-i-Kharakpur Raj Darbhanga, Bhojpur mein Paramaron ka Itihas 1577 tak and Ain-i Tirhut have greatly helped me in filling in the gaps and reconstructing the history of some of the chieftaincies. Apart from these works, I have also consulted District and Imperial Gazetteers, several Survey Reports, Montgomery Martin’s book, The History, Antiquities, Topography, and Statistics of Eastern India, vol. II, and W.K. Firminger’s The Fifth Report from the Selected Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company with Glossary, London, 1812-13, vol. III, Francis Buchanan’s An Account of the District of Patna and Gaya, An Account of the District of Bhagalpur (some other districts accounts also), William Wilson Hunter’s, The Statistical Accounts of Bengal (20 vols.), etc. Research papers and books published in English, Hindi and Urdu on the theme connected with my topic has also been used in the preparation of the present study.
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