5.29 The indian subcontinent: a.d. 1501 to 1600

The indian subcontinent (see map in section on india, 18th century)

Two separate powers continued to exist in India. In the north Babur, a Turkish chieftain, 5th in line from Timur, entered India in 1523 from Afghanistan with artillery and only the Rajputs organized to resist. After the battle of Panipat in 1526 he became the Mogul ruler who made Delhi equal to a Medicean Rome. Agricultural activity increased greatly with land-clearing, irrigation projects and new industrial crops such as indigo, sugar cane, cotton and mulberry trees for silk-worms. Silver coins appeared in this century as rupees, although affecting only the upper level of economic life. Actually India was one of the countries that in effect helped to hoard the silver from American mines. It was this American silver which fed the countless mintings and reminting of coins. (Ref. 292 ) The less fortunate used copper coins and bitter almonds as money. The gold coins used in the reign of Akbar were seldom seen. Even more than in Europe, fairs were a part of every day life, almost always combined with the endless pilgrimages. Barter was often more common than the use of money, except in the large fairs on the Ganges. Each religion had its own fairs; the Hindus at Hardwar and Benares; the Sikhs at Amritsar; the Muslims at Pakpattan. (Ref. 260 , 292 )

After Babur's death, the Afghans were expelled from India by Sher Shah and it took a new full scale invasion by Babur's grandson Akbar to restore the Mogul rule over all Hindustan except for Mewar. The Mogul emperors regularly had relays of horsemen from the Hindu Kush bring their fruit-flavored sherbets or water ices to Delhi. Persian horses were brought in by fleets and sometimes sold for 20 times the value of a slave. With no barley or hay, the horses were fed on a type of large pea, crushed and then soaked. (Ref. 260 ) Akbar was the greatest and most beneficial of all the Mogul rulers and overall they were the best of the foreign dynasties that had ruled India. Akbar used the Persian language in his court and had Hindu literature translated into that tongue. He encouraged all religions - Moslem, Brahman, Buddhist, Christian, Zorastrian and Jains and finally tried to promulgate a new one, including some of the features of all and called this Din lahi . It did not succeed and throughout the Mogul period it was basically the Moslem faith that was in competition with Hinduism and the greatest barrier to Hindu-Moslem understanding was not metaphysical, but social. The five original castes of the Hindus had subdivided through the centuries into almost 5,000 sub-castes, a system that the original Aryan founders had developed to perpetuate the enslavement of the original dark-skinned Dravidian peoples, who became the "Untouchables". Islam 's mosques drew millions of converts, and the vast majority were those Untouchables seeking release from the hopelessness of their place in the Hindu hierarchy.

The Moslem upper classes -many of them descendants of the Mogul (Turkish) invaders, tended to be landlords and soldiers, but the Moslem masses usually continued to be landless peasants in the service of others. There were no "great families" in Delhi. The Great Mogul appointed lords for life, only, but did not continue such grants for their children. Thus there was no feudalism and perhaps accordingly no precursor for capitalism. (Ref. 292 ) Muslim food became popular, particularly the addiction to sweets. Our word "candy" is derived from an Arabic word for "sugar". (Ref. 37 , 211 ) Great famines occurred in 1555 and 1596 in northwest India and there were even reports of cannibalism. (Ref. 260 )