Religion and the Making of Mughal India, 1570-1670

FAIN: FB-53244-07

William R. Pinch
Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT 06459-3208)

The Mughal court in the late sixteenth century was the destination of choice for tens of thousands of central Asians, Persians, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans. Most sought careers as men of the sword, or of the pen, or both. Many came to trade. A few came to explain their religious beliefs and practices to the emperor. The liberality of the Mughal court was a function, in large part, of the intellectual curiosity of the emperor Akbar (d. 1605). The thrust of this book project is to describe the myriad religious influences that shaped Akbar's eclectic sensibilities, and to show how the institutionalization of those eclectic sensibilities informed in turn what it meant to be Hindu and Muslim, and even Christian, in the seventeenth century.

Associated Products

Nath Yogis, Akbar, and the “Balnath Tilla” (Book Section)
Title: Nath Yogis, Akbar, and the “Balnath Tilla”
Author: William R. Pinch
Editor: David Gordon White
Abstract: In this chapter, I analyze accounts of the Mughal Emperor Akbar's interaction with yogis, especially at the Balnath Tilla in what is now Pakistan. Several of the accounts were previously untranslated--some from Hindi oral tradition and one from Portuguese. These accounts confirm that the emperor Akbar (d. 1605) was fascinated by yogis and their practices and beliefs. I argue that these accounts should be understood in terms of the emerging Mughal imperialism of the time, which involved a process of mutual incorporation--a 'taking possession' of both territory and persons, by the emperor from above and the yogis from below--as each side 'domesticated' the other.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9565.html
Primary URL Description: Press website
Access Model: printed book
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Book Title: Yoga in Practice
ISBN: 9781400839933

The Corpse and Cult of Francis Xavier, 1552-1623 (Book Section)
Title: The Corpse and Cult of Francis Xavier, 1552-1623
Author: William R. Pinch
Editor: Mathew Schmalz
Editor: Peter Gottschalk
Abstract: In this essay, I examine the life, death, and afterlife of Francis Xavier--especially the politics surrounding his eventual canonization in 1623--in order to explore the degree to which early-modern Iberian imperialism was a complex and multi-centered global organism. I argue that the history of Xavier's canonization demonstrates a 'counterflow' of imperialism whereby institutional developments in Rome and Lisbon depended on the flow of ideas and testimony about Xavier from the social and geographical margins of Empire--from low-caste Christians from the 'Pearl Fishery Coast' of South India, and from the mixed-race denizens of Goa.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5043-engaging-south-asian-religions.aspx
Primary URL Description: Press website
Access Model: printed book
Publisher: SUNY Press
Book Title: Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, Resistances
ISBN: 1-4384-3323-9

The Slave Guru: Masters, Commanders, and Disciples in early modern South Asia (Book Section)
Title: The Slave Guru: Masters, Commanders, and Disciples in early modern South Asia
Author: William R. Pinch
Editor: Aya Ikegame
Editor: Jacob Copeman
Abstract: This chapter explores the overlapping ground of slavery and discipleship in South Asia as a problem of theory as well as practice. With respect to theory, it probes the social dynamics (especially ‘marginal kinship’ and ‘social death’) that account for slavery’s utility for asceticism. With respect to practice, the chapter examines the presence—and, for the British, the problem—of slave-disciples in the ‘warrior ascetic’ armies that operated across northern India in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, both against and alongside Company forces. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Mughal emperor Akbar’s late sixteenth-century anxieties about the shared meanings of slavery and discipleship.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415510196/
Primary URL Description: Press website
Secondary URL: http://edinburgh.academia.edu/JacobCopeman/Books/1154847/The_Guru_in_South_Asia_New_Interdisciplinary_Perspectives
Secondary URL Description: Academia.edu, a research sharing site
Access Model: printed book
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives
ISBN: 0415510198

Hiding in Plain Sight: Gosains in Banaras, 1809 (Book Section)
Title: Hiding in Plain Sight: Gosains in Banaras, 1809
Author: William R. Pinch
Editor: Michael S. Dodson
Abstract: In this chapter, I examine an outbreak of violence in Banaras in 1809 that is often remembered as the city's first 'communal riot'. Of particular interest is the central role of 'gosains' (Saiva ascetics) in the violence. I argue that the gosains involvement in the violence was connected to the termination of gosain military service in the neighboring region of Bundelkhand between 1806 and 1809. The involvement of gosains in the violence was also significant insofar as it marks the rising profile of Vaishnava bhakti among heretofore Saiva gosains.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415693776/
Primary URL Description: Press website
Access Model: printed book
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Banaras: Urban Forms and Cultural Histories
ISBN: 978-0-415-6937

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