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Bankrolling Empire

By the 1660s, the mighty Mughal Empire controlled the Indian subcon-
tinent and impressed the world with its strength and opulence. Yet
hardly two decades would pass before fortunes would turn, Mughal
kings and governors losing influence to rival warlords and foreign
powers. How could one of the most dominant early modern polities
lose their grip over empire? Sudev Sheth proposes a new point of
departure, focusing on diverse local and hitherto unexplored evidence
about a prominent financier family entrenched in bankrolling Mughal
elites and their successors. Analyzing how four generations of the
Jhaveri family of Gujarat financed politics, he offers a fresh take on the
dissolution of the Mughal Empire, the birth of princely successor states,
and the nature of economic life in the days leading up to the colonial
domination of India.

Sudev Sheth is Senior Lecturer in History at the Joseph H. Lauder

Institute of Management & International Studies at the University of
Pennsylvania where he teaches across the School of Arts & Sciences and
the Wharton School.
Bankrolling Empire
Family Fortunes and Political Transformation
in Mughal India

Sudev Sheth
University of Pennsylvania
Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

a department of the University of Cambridge.
We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009330268
DOI: 10.1017/9781009330213
© Sudev Sheth 2024
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
First published 2024
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sheth, Sudev, 1986- author.
Title: Bankrolling empire : family fortunes and political transformation in
Mughal India / Sudev Sheth, University of Pennsylvania.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge
University Press, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023024324 (print) | LCCN 2023024325 (ebook) | ISBN
9781009330268 (hardback) | ISBN 9781009330220 (paperback) | ISBN
9781009330213 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Family-owned business enterprises–India–History. | Financial
crises–India–History. | Finance–India–History. | Mogul Empire.
Classification: LCC HD62.25 .S54 2024 (print) | LCC HD62.25 (ebook) |
DDC 338.70954–dc23/eng/20230722
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024324
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024325
ISBN 978-1-009-33026-8 Hardback
Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will
remain, accurate or appropriate.
For my mom and dad,
Jigisha & Jay Sheth
 Contents

List of Figures page ix

List of Maps xi
List of Tables xii
A Note on Translations, Transliterations, and Dates xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Mughal Family Tree xx
Jhaveri Family Tree xxi
Gaekwad Family Tree xxii
Haribhakti Family Tree xxiii

Introduction 1
1. Prelude: The Mughal Empire, 1526–1750 43
2. Courtly Mutualism: The Emperor’s Jeweler Shantidas Jhaveri,
1628–58 71
3. Political Commensalism: Manekchand Jhaveri and Bankrolling
Bids to the Throne, 1658–1707 109
4. Interlude: Cultivating Financial Crisis under Aurangzeb,
1660s–1719 136
5. Expedient Extortion: The Governor’s Golden Goose
Khushalchand Jhaveri, 1719–30 177
6. Competitive Coparcenary: Vakhatchand Jhaveri and Brokering
Politics, 1730–1818 223
7. Postlude: Bankrollers of Mughal Succession, 1750–1818 261
Conclusion 290

vii
viii Contents

Appendix A: Selected Verses from Cintāmani Praśastih 298

_ _
Appendix B: First Farmān of Aurangzeb Repaying Loans to
the Jhaveris upon Becoming Emperor 301
Appendix C: Second Farmān of Aurangzeb Extending Imperial
Protection to the Jhaveris 302
Appendix D: Mughal Farmāns and Other Royal Orders in
Gujarat Related to Shantidas Jhaveri and Other
Major Groups 303
Appendix E: Ijāra of village Shankheshwar Granted to
Shantidas Jhaveri by Shah Jahan for 1,050 Rupees Per Year 306
Appendix F: Selected Verses from Samal Bhatt’s Rustam no
Saloko 307
Appendix G: Account Summary of Tribute Owed and Paid
by the Gaekwads of Baroda to the Peshwa Authority at Pune
between 1770 and 1798 310
Appendix H: Debts Discharged and Acquired by the Gaekwads,
1803–7 313
Appendix I: Gaekwad Debts to the Haribhakti firm by
1818–19 315
Appendix J: Gaekwad Villages Sequestered to Creditors through
British Colonial Administrator John Malcolm by 1830 316
Glossary 318
Bibliography 327
Index 343
 Figures

0.1 The Bhadra Fort in Old City, Ahmedabad page 2

0.2 The jeweler-banker Shantidas Jhaveri, 1584–1659 9
0.3 I‘timad ‘Ali Khan, Mirāt-ul H aqā’iq, c. 1717–27, open to
fols. 94b–95a _ 35
1.1 Men inventorying a casket of jewels belonging to courtier
Rustam Khan (d. 1658) 54
1.2 I‘timad Khan “Gujarati” bows in submission to Akbar 65
2.1 Farmān of Emperor Jahangir to Shantidas Jhaveri, 1618 84
2.2 A moneychanger or sarrāf converting coins, c. 1760 89
2.3 A hand copied folio _of the Cintāmani Praśastih 95
_
3.1 Key farmān outlining terms of Manekchand _
Jhaveri’s loan
to Prince Murad Bakhsh, 1658 119
4.1 Portrait detail of Emperor Aurangzeb, 1618–1707 139
4.2 Portrait detail of Emperor Farrukhsiyar, 1685–1719 163
4.3 Portrait of Governor Daud Khan Panni with falcon 166
4.4 Maharaja Ajit Singh of Jodhpur with six sons, 1720 173
5.1 Portrait detail of a young Emperor Muhammad Shah,
1702–48 184
5.2 Damaji Gaekwad (d. 1721), First Gaekwad of Baroda and
adoptive father of Pilaji Gaekwad, seated on a terrace
smoking a hookah, c. 1730 188
5.3 The merchant guild’s promise to Khushalchand
Lakshmichand on October 8, 1725 199
5.4 Emperor Muhammad Shah smoking huqqah with courtiers
in Delhi, c. 1730 207
6.1 The British East India Company’s proclamation to
Nathushah Jhaveri by General Goddard, 1780 238
6.2 Vakhatchand Jhaveri marching in a red palanquin with
guards, 1740–1814 242

ix
x List of Figures

6.3 Hari Das and Bhakti Das, chief bankers of the Baroda
Gaekwads, 1790s 245
6.4 The adolescent and adopted banker Samal Bhakti with
father Bhaktidas at the Gaekwad Court, c. 1795 248
7.1 Kamāvīsdār Rangu Patel’s letter to the Haribhakti
firm, 1795 282
 Maps

0.1 Routes connecting cities of Gujarat and Rajasthan to

Delhi, 1600–1750 page 8
0.2 The Gujarat region with modern boundaries 12
0.3 The Gaekwad state of Baroda in the nineteenth century 17
1.1 The Mughal Empire by 1525 and 1530 under Babur 50
1.2 The Mughal Empire by 1605 under Akbar 52
1.3 The Mughal Empire by 1707 under Aurangzeb 59
1.4 The Mughal Empire by the 1750s after Muhammad Shah 61
4.1 Mughal provinces and neighboring Deccan states, 1650s 141
5.1 Gujarat in the eighteenth century 180
7.1 Indian states under British suzerainty by 1818 264

xi
 Tables

3.1 Loan repayment plan to Shantidas Jhaveri and his family

on June 22, 1658 page 120
4.1 Average term length of imperial governors appointed to
Gujarat, 1573–1707 146
6.1 Composition of the first rupee loan to the Gaekwads of
Baroda by bankers in 1802 256
7.1 Annual account sent by the revenue farmer of Sankheda
in 1786 280
7.2 Annual account sent by the revenue farmer of Vadanagar
in 1834 280

xii
 A Note on Translations, Transliterations,
and Dates

The translations presented in this work are the author’s own, unless
otherwise noted in the footnotes or bibliography. The diverse source
materials cited in this book contain similar words across multiple lan-
guages and scripts. This has made transliterating foreign words into the
Roman script challenging. For simplicity and elegance, I avoid complex
diacritics for non-English terms in favor of simple vowel and consonant
markers. I pluralize non-standard terms by adding a non-italic [s] as
suffix, so for example jāgīrdārs. Words quoted from other sources,
however, are left untouched. Specialists will readily identify relevant
terms and phrases with little ambiguity. For others, I have compiled key
words into a reference glossary at the end. For accessibility, this list
is alphabetized as if terms are unaccented and without foreign
language diacritics.
For Persian, the transliteration broadly follows the system set in
A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary by Francis Joseph Steingass,
using diacritics to mark long vowels, [‘] to indicate the Arabic ‘ain (‫)ﻉ‬,
and [gh] to indicate the Arabic ghayn (‫)ﻍ‬. The unpronounced ‘he’ at the
end of Persian words is marked with [h] in the dictionary but has been
left out to better convey pronunciation. For example, the word ‫ﺍﺟﺎﺭﻩ‬
(revenue farm) will appear as ijāra and not ijārah. The izāfat construction
is written with [-i], as in nāʼib-i nāzim (“the governor’s_ deputy”).
For the Sanskrit, Gujarati, and _ Marathi languages, I rely on the
International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration to write out terms. For
Gujarati and Marathi, I drop the final short “a” to resemble standard
pronunciation more closely. For example, I use derāsar not derāsara and
deśamukh not deśamukha. For names, diacritics are generally omitted in
favor of readability. Thus, I prefer Shantidas Jhaveri not Śāntidāsa
Jhaverī, and Nizam al-Mulk not Nizāmu’l-Mulk. I sometimes transliter-
ate proper names with a nod to pronunciation, for example Muhi-ud-
Din and Qamar-ud-Din. Place names are presented with modern con-
ventional spellings, except for the city Vadodara for which I write Baroda
as it appears in the sources.
xiii
xiv A Note on Translations, Transliterations, and Dates

Across chapters and in the appendices, I have translated excerpts from

a few key sources for the reader. This effort represents the first time most
of these materials have been offered in English. The aim is to convey the
texture and flavor of key evidence used for this study, and to highlight the
diversity of documentary genres and languages necessary for piecing
together historical change in early modern India.
I rely on www.islamicity.org/hijri-gregorian-converter to loosely trans-
pose Islamic-Hijri dates, which are based on the lunar calendar, to the
solar Gregorian or Common Era date. To convert dates from the Hindu
Vikram Samvat solar calendar to the Common Era date, I rely on a
simple formula of subtracting 57 years from the Vikram Samvat date.
For example, 1697 V.S. would correspond to 1640 C.E.
 Acknowledgments

Like many of the ambitious characters animating the pages to follow,

I too have accumulated many debts over the years. I am thankful to
family, friends, and teachers whose support has made writing this book
possible. And while I am responsible for any errors encountered, those
passages which inform or challenge the reader’s views are truly the
outcome of many helping hands.
For initiating me into the world of research as an undergraduate, I am
forever grateful to Bonnie Wade. During those impressionable years at
the University of California, Berkeley, I also received timely guidance
from Ashok Bardhan, Lawrence Cohen, Vasudha Dalmia, Munis
Faruqui, Robert and Sally Goldman, Usha Jain, Puneeta Kala,
Matthew Rahaim, Raka Ray, Sanchita Saxena, and Clare Talwalker.
Their encouragement during my time as a student and staff member at
the Institute for South Asia Studies gave me the confidence to buy a one-
way plane ticket to study history in India.
At the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, I am grateful to
Neeladri Bhattacharya, Kunal Chakrabarti, Najaf Haider, Janaki Nair,
Kumkum Roy, and Radhika Singha for their foundational teachings.
Their classes were my first real exposure to the intricacies of historical
thinking, and I still cherish my yellowing notes from their lectures.
My classmates during those years pulled and pushed at my entire being.
They welcomed me into the many worlds of student life and cultural
effervescence that make India such an attractive place to live. My mentor
Najaf Haider has been most generous in discussing ideas and introducing
me to sources that have often unlocked new vistas in my scholarship.
At the University of Pennsylvania, I extend my gratitude to Daud Ali,
Devesh Kapur, Lisa Mitchell, and Ramya Sreenivasan. Daud Ali and
Deven Patel were generous with help comprehending and translating the
Sanskrit praise poem Cintāmani Praśastih. To Lisa Mitchell for showing
_ curiosities
me how to transform intellectual _ into quality research, and for
providing me with several opportunities to share my writing and improve
my teaching. Devesh Kapur showed me how to connect my work to
xv
xvi Acknowledgments

broader issues beyond South Asia studies and continues to be my guide

during moments of incertitude.
As the Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in Business History at the Harvard
Business School, I had the good fortune of being mentored in the ways of
global business history by Geoffrey Jones. He elevated my scholarly
presence in several ways, most notably by inviting me to coauthor essays
and team teach MBA and doctoral seminars across Harvard University.
I have also been inspired by Tarun Khanna’s curiosity and his sugges-
tions for connecting history to contemporary concerns about entrepre-
neurship and leadership. I am grateful to former dean Nitin Nohria for
two in-depth conversations about how to create impact through insti-
tutional leadership, especially in higher education. At Harvard Business
School, I benefited immensely from exchanges with Walter Friedman,
Valeria Giacomin, Ai Hisano, Tom Nicholas, Sophus Reinert, and Laura
Phillips Sawyer. For research support, I also thank the Division of
Research and Faculty Development.
I have been teaching perspectives on history, entrepreneurship, and
leadership at the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management and
International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania since 2019. I am
grateful to the institute for supporting my research, and for providing me
with unique opportunities such as spearheading teaching initiatives
abroad and leading the development of our annual entrepreneurship
competition. I thank my workmates Ecaterina Locoman and Lynsey
Farrell along with colleagues from the Wharton School and the School
of Arts & Sciences for feedback and excellent humor during uncertain
times. I am beholden to board members Marina and Andrew Jacobson for
constant words of encouragement, and the diverse students and incred-
ibly committed alumni who make faculty life at the Lauder Institute
so exhilarating.
Over several years of research in India, Adhya Saxena of the Maharaja
Sayajirao University of Baroda provided unrestricted access to the
banking papers of the Haribhakti family collected as part of the S. C.
Misra Archives, Department of History. The staff at the Hansa Mehta
Library, the Baroda City Library, the Royal Gaekwad Library, and the
Baroda Record Office of the Gujarat State Archives provided a treasure
trove of historical remnants that informed my research.
In Ahmedabad, I thank Ramaji Savaliya and Preeti Pancholi of the
B. J. Institute for Indology and Learning, who spared no effort in helping
me take research on Gujarati business families forward. Staff at the L. D.
Institute of Indology, the Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra at Koba,
and the Sheth Anandji Kalyanji ni Pedhi also provided access to rare
 Acknowledgments xvii

works emanating from the Jain tradition. I thank Samveg Lalbhai, Shripal
Jhaveri, and Bhadrabahu Vijay for additional support in the city.
In New Delhi, I extend my gratitude to the staff of the National
Archives of India and the Oriental Records Room. In Mumbai, I thank
the Asiatic Society and the Jain scholar Suyaschandra for research sup-
port. Finally, beautiful reading days at the Bodleian Library at Oxford
University and the British Library in London turned up key sources that
have helped to advance arguments in the pages that follow.
Closer to home at the University of Pennsylvania, I could not have
done without the backing of the Center for the Advanced Study of India
and its former director, Devesh Kapur. In 2013, Devesh gambled the
first dollar in support of this research. The CASI family led by Director
Tariq Thachil, Juliana Di Giustini, Georgette Rochlin, Alan Atchison,
Juni Bahuguna, and former staffer Aparna Wilder deserve many thanks
for continuing to champion my work.
Several scholarly associations have sponsored my research over the
years. I have benefited from graduate student and faculty fellowships
from the University of Pennsylvania. Competitive fellowships from the
Social Science Research Council and the American Institute of Indian
Studies supported two years of archival research and ethnographic field-
work in India and the United Kingdom. The Harvard-Newcomen
Fellowship from Harvard Business School gave me an opportunity to
undertake additional interviews with the contemporary descendants of
the business families featured in the pages to follow. Finally, fellowships
from the Association for Asian Studies, the American Council of
Learned Societies, the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, and the
American Psychoanalytic Association enabled me to explore entirely new
intellectual avenues that have informed my views about human behavior
and social change.
History writing is a productively contentious terrain, one in which new
evidence often overturns long held assumptions and views. And while
they may disagree with some of what I have written, I have learned
something substantial about our intellectual heritage from Muzaffar
Alam, Hannah Archambault, Roger Chartier, Nandini Chatterjee,
Faisal Chaudhury, Divya Cherian, Michael Collins, John Deyell,
Frederick Dickinson, Arthur Dudney, Richard Eaton, Munis Faruqui,
Sumit Guha, Najaf Haider, Farhat Hasan, Douglas Haynes, Balvant Jani,
Abhishek Kaicker, Aparna Kapadia, Naimat Ullah Khan, Sunil Khilnani,
Sunil Kumar, Karen Leonard, Christina Lubinski, Makrand Mehta,
Nikhil Menon, Allyn Miner, Ghulam Nadri, Parimal Patil, Mircea
Rainu, Jawan Shir Rasikh, Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, Steven Rolfe,
Tirthankar Roy, A. M. Shah, Sunil Sharma, Samira Sheikh, Chander
xviii Acknowledgments

Shekhar, Charu Singh, Pushkar Sohoni, Howard Spodek, Babu Suthar,

Michael Szonyi, Eric Tagliacozzo, Thomas Tartaron, Dwijendra
Tripathi, Francesca Trivellato, Chinmay Tumbe, Dan Wadhwani,
Anand Yang, and Lawrence Zhang.
I thank Sadique Akhtar, Chetan Bhojak, Mohammad Dawood, Preeti
Pancholi, and Ramji Savaliya for assistance with better comprehending
the Persian, Gujarati, and Sanskrit literatures featured in this book.
I especially enjoyed reading eighteenth-century Gujarati poems with my
father, Jay Sheth, who helped me understand colloquial nuances that
I would have missed otherwise.
I am grateful to the entire editorial team at Cambridge University Press
for enhancing the manuscript through the peer-review and production
process, especially Lucy Rhymer’s pointed guidance and backend sup-
port from Lisa Carter and Rosa Martin. To my reviewers, thank you for
targeted feedback which helped to enhance the manuscript. For over-
arching book and editorial support, Hannah Archambault, Angie
Basiouny, and Katyln Knox have gained my deepest appreciation.
I thank Philip Schwartzberg of Meridian Mapping in Minneapolis for
producing maps and Derek Gottlieb for curating the index included in
this book.
There are two prominent business families featured in this work and
their contemporary descendants have graciously encouraged my
research. I express my gratitude to Jayshree and Sanjay Lalbhai of
Ahmedabad, and Swati and Gopal Ishwar Haribhakti of Baroda for
providing access to personal family documents that make this book
unique. Their intellectual curiosity and honesty are to be commended
because they never insisted on a particular vision of the past. In fact, they
will experience their ancestors in my version of history for the first time in
the pages to follow.
I am fortunate to have close friends living across continents, and they
have all been an integral part of my journey. Their listening ears and
timely jests have done much to push me ahead. I thank David Boyk,
Ishani Dasgupta, Shivang Dave, Sameer Deen, Lynna Dhanani, Nick
Eidemiller, Lukas Frei, Ashwin Gopalakrishnan, Ani Gupta, Samana
Gururaja, Shantanu Herlekar, Abhimanyu Herlekar, Shawn Jain,
Aniket Maitra, Misha Mintz-Roth, Madhu Narasimhan, Sudhir Nayak,
Purvi Parikh, Dinyar Patel, Vikas Phondni, Zoya Puri, Ken Sharp, and
Swetha Vakkalanka. Coming up with me from toddlerhood, I cherish the
daily camaraderie of Raghavan Narasimhan. Friends have become
couples, and I could not have done without the love and support of
Surbhi and Dan, Sweta and Nalin, Vennie and Chris, Khushi and
Neelanjan, Preema and Vivek, Rukmini and Gautam, Nayha and
 Acknowledgments xix

Vineet, Veena and Kishan, Neha and Abhijit, and the Walkers
on Larchwood Avenue.
My gurus Dr. Aneesh Pradhan and Shubha Mudgal exemplify how to
combine scholarship, creativity, and public outreach. Thank you for
instilling in me the importance of technique, uprightness, and distinct-
iveness in life’s pursuits. To my aunt and uncle Prafull and Ranjan, for
being my guardians in India and showing me how to live my family’s
legacy. Finally, to our family friends and relatives for their support over
the years.
The most important people in my life are my immediate family. To my
parents, Jigisha and Jay Sheth, for shaping me into a person who values
reading, music, travels, and learning about others. Your love, resources,
and untiring encouragement have put me in the privileged position to
always pursue my first choice. I am very lucky to have two incredibly
bright and affectionate sisters, Sonali and Manali. Thank you for being
my cheerleaders since playground days. To my brothers-in-law Jayant
and Ankush, for finding ways to connect our respective worlds and for
good humor as our family grows. I could not have done without the
encouraging hands of my in-laws Malti and Naween Bahuguna. I am
grateful to my wife’s sister Aroha and her husband Peter for always
making us feel loved and protected. And to the newbies of our family,
Sahaj, Sikander, Ameya, and Isabella, for bringing our families closer
and giving us the chance to relive the goodness of childhood.
Words cannot express my love and gratitude to Juni Bahuguna, my
confidant, life partner, and the most positive person I know. Thank you
for endless encouragement and for championing my dreams and desires
no matter how fleeting and incoherent they seem. And while I may be
able to settle most debts incurred, I am beholden to you for bringing our
baby girl Ameya Ensha into our lives. Ameya, your infinite curiosity,
hearty belly laughs, and giddy jives to “Sultans of Swing” make our
evenings overlooking the Philadelphia skyline truly delightful.
 Mughal Family Tree

Babur
1483–1530
r. 1526–30

Humayun
1508–56
r. 1530–40, 1556–6

Akbar
1542–1605
r. 1556–1605

Jahangir
1569–1627
r. 1605–27

Khusrau Parvez Shah Jahan (Khurram) Shahryar

1587–1622 1589–1626 1592–1666 1605–28
r. 1628–58
Dawar Bakhsh Gurshasp
1603–28 1612–28 Dara Shukoh Shuja‘ Aurangzeb Murad Bakhsh
r. 1627–8 1615–59 1616–61 1618–1707 1624–61
r. 1658–1707

Muhammad Sultan Bahadur Shah (Mu‘azzam) Muhammad A‘zam Akbar Kam Bakhsh
1639–76 1643–1712 1653–1707 1657–1704 1667–1709
r. 1707–12

Bidar Bakht Wala Jah ‘Ali Tabar Neku Siyar Buland Akbar Muhiy-us-Sunnat
1670–1707 1684–1707 1697–1734 1679–1723 c. 1680–1706 1696–1747

Jahandar Shah ‘Azim-ush-Shan Rafi‘-ush-Shan Jahan Shah

1661–1713 1664–1712 1670–1712 1671–1712
r. 1712–13

Muhammad Karim Farrukhsiyar Rafi‘-ud-Daulah Rafi‘-ud-Darajat Muhammad Shah

1679–1712 1683–1719 1678–1719 1699–1719 1702–48
r. 1713–19 r. 1719 r. 1719 r. 1719–48
 Jhaveri Family Tree

Padmanama = Padmadevi

Samadhar = Jeevani

Sahalua = Pati

Harpati = Punai

Vaccha = Gorade

Kuwari = Sahasra Kiran = Saubhagde

Virmadevi = Vardhaman Shantidas (1584–1659) = Rupa

Panji Ratanji Lakshmichand Manekchand Hemchand

Khushalchand (1680–1748)

Nathushah Jethmal Vakhatchand

(1720–1793) (1740–1814)
 Gaekwad Family Tree

Nandaji

Kerojirao

Damaji (I, ?–1721)

Pilaji (II, ?–1732)

Yashvantrao Damaji (III, ?–1768) Khanderao Anandrao Prataprao

(Jagirdar of Kadi)

Malharrao

Govindrao Sayajirao (V, ?–1792) Fatehsingh (VI, ?–1789) Manaji (VII, ?–1793)
(IV & VIII, ?–1800)

Kanhoji Anandrao (IX, ?–1819) Sayajirao (X, ?–1847)

Ganpatrao (XI, ?–1856) Khanderao (XII, ?–1870) Malharrao (XIII)

Sayajirao (XIV, ?–1939)

 Haribhakti Family Tree

Lakshmidas

Narsi Das Bhakti Das = Rattanbai Hari Das (?–1795)

(?–1796)

Samal = Acharat
(?–1809)
Bahechar (?–1845)

Purshottam (?–1863)

Magan (1844–1929)

Dhaya Bhai Ratanlal (1893–1984) Bapalal Rajendra Bhai (1915–35)

Ishwar Arvind
(Haribhakti Collection, HBC)
Gopal = Swati
(Haribhakti Personal Papers, HPP)
 Introduction

October 5, 1726, marked a major turning point for the business house of
the Jhaveris. Until then, at least two generations of the family enjoyed
privileged access to the Mughal court as royal jewelers and bankers.
On that day, however, such favorable relations took an irreversible turn.
Khushalchand Jhaveri, 46, was summoned to Bhadra Fort located in the
old walled city of Ahmedabad near the Sabarmati River. The historic city
of Ahmedabad, or Old Ahmedabad as it is known today, was the capital
of the Gujarat province of the Mughal Empire. A fertile coastal region
situated in western India, the province, or sūba as it was known in official
parlance, was then overseen by the sūbadār_ or governor Sarbuland Khan.
Khushalchand was a resident of the_ area and had visited Bhadra Fort on
several occasions prior. But this time would prove to be different.
Sarbuland Khan needed lots of money to fight off political rivals.
Of late, this had morphed into utter desperation as there was no financial
help from the reigning Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah, who resided
some 1,000 km (620 miles) away in Shahjahanabad, the imperial capital
known famously today as Old Delhi. After approaching the towering
gates of the citadel in measured steps, Khushalchand, accompanied by
a business associate, entered the compound and slowly made his way to
the audience hall inside Bhadra Fort.
Ahmedabad was founded in 1411. Political elites erected the Bhadra
Fort and its stone rubble perimeter on an elevated plain just off the
eastern bank of the Sabarmati River. In those days, walling the city
secured protection, while the river’s water provided sustenance in the
form of food and irrigation. Further east of the impressive fort and within
the medieval city’s limits was a triple gateway and the main mosque.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, nobles and merchants
developed this area into a major center of business activity. It is known
today as Manek Chowk. By the time the Mughals arrived in the late
sixteenth century, Old Ahmedabad had already grown into a sophisti-
cated urban network spanning 43 acres, comparable to twenty-six square
blocks of a major American city. Accentuated by numerous gates and
1
2 Introduction

Figure 0.1. The Bhadra Fort in Old City, Ahmedabad.

Author photograph, 2022.

roads leading in and out of the city, it was to this dense world of political
and mercantile activity that Khushalchand belonged.
Having entered Bhadra Fort from the Teen Darwaza gate pictured in
Figure 0.1, Khushalchand and his partner passed the fish market on their
right and crossed the central plaza towards the governor’s main chamber.
They exchanged apprehensive glances as Sarbuland Khan’s mounting
irritation was audible across the way. As they entered the echoing hall,
the large gathering of government officials and elites of the city came into
clear focus. Mughal officials stood erect and silent, and even more fretful
looking were the other merchants of the city, several with their backs
glued to the wall. Of the moneyed merchants present, two of them had
just refused loans to Sarbuland Khan, and the irate politician in need had
them thrown behind bars in the tower prison of Bhadra Fort seen above.
Khushalchand, at the time one of Ahmedabad’s wealthiest citizens, was
his last hope. Yet, there was a problem.
Khushalchand had already provided several loans to Sarbuland Khan’s
government in weeks prior. These totaled into several hundred thousand
rupees, and there was no indication that the state’s representative was
planning to repay the large sum.1 For Khushalchand, making any further

1
In a mainly agrarian economy, the price of wheat is a good indicator of rupee values. For
our period and region, the price of 10 kilograms of wheat was roughly 1 rūpiya or rupee.
Other common prices include 5–16 rupees for 25 kg of processed indigo, to 1–3 rupees
 Introduction 3

advances would be inopportune if not outright foolish. Sensing this

appropriate hesitation in Khushalchand, the Mughal governor became
enraged and suddenly turned violent. Picking up his long leather whip,
Sarbuland Khan brutally lashed Khushalchand. The banker cowered in
terror as his first beating from a Mughal official continued in full view.
Groveling on the floor, Khushalchand shuddered and shivered. This was
the first time that he had been subject to extortion of the most intrepid
kind. It was even more humiliating as state officials and elites of the city
stood witness. Sarbuland Khan capped the beatdown with an injunction,
that Khushalchand immediately hand over any “hidden money and
wealth, located either at home or buried elsewhere.”2
Under immense duress and without any choice, Khushalchand
gestured his company associate to accompany several of Sarbuland
Khan’s men to his large mansion. The home was situated in the heart
of jhaverīwāda, or the Jeweler’s Quarters located on the other end of the
medieval walled city. The occupational namesake of the family, the
residential manors of the famed Jhaveriwada contained the largest
concentration of private wealth in the city. Eager to recover all that
Khushalchand possessed, Mughal officials dug deeply, both in and
around his large home. They found priceless jewels and hoards of silver
and gold money. They confiscated these personal possessions along with
many other valuable items that belonged to Khushalchand’s family
members. Khushalchand was then held as prisoner in the fortress with-
out bail. Three days later, and still not satisfied with the wealth brutally
mined from the Jhaveri family, Sarbuland Khan “once again lashed
Khushalchand the banker with his own hands and exacted 200,000 silver
rupees from him.”3 Khushalchand was subject to further beatings and
merciless extortion for twenty-one additional days. Finally, on October
28, Sarbuland Khan sentenced Khushalchand to “prison confinement
until death.”4
This was the first time in recorded history that a member of the Jhaveri
family was brutalized at the hands of a Mughal official. In earlier times,
members of the family were considered close friends of the court. Such
favorable relations were transforming into theatrical-level hostility as the

for the buying and upkeep of slaves. One silver rupee equaled 40 copper dāms. In the early
seventeenth century, common wages were: ordinary laborer (2 dāms per day), carpenter
(3–7 dāms per day), and personal servants (3–4 rupees a month). See Tapan
Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds. The New Cambridge Economic History of India,
c. 1200–1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 360–81, 464.
2
I‘timad ‘Ali Khan. Mirāt-ul H aqā’iq. Fraser Collection, MS 124. Bodleian Library,
Oxford University, f. 452b. _
3 4
Ibid, f. 453b. Ibid, f. 461a.
4 Introduction

Mughal state’s need for money grew rapidly, and as the royal family’s
political footing in Gujarat, and really across much of the subcontinent,
was being challenged by rivals. Yet, unpredictable physical torture and
erratic imprisonment for confiscatory sums was no way for the city’s top
bankers to live. Violence was disruptive. Plus, Ahmedabad’s business-
men could hardly match the physical strength and tenacity of seasoned
military officers like Sarbuland Khan, who were willing to risk their own
lives and sacrifice others to remain in power.
How then did Khushalchand Jhaveri overcome the political instability
that threatened his personal safety and the fortunes of his family, which
were built up over several generations? The answer lies somewhere in the
intrigue involved with moving and manipulating capital. He was intim-
ately familiar with the art of playing with money. He saw immense
opportunity in deploying personal finance given the growing impoverish-
ment of Mughal elites on the one hand, and the increasing presence of
new money-hungry aspirants to power on the other. The changing con-
tours of how financial and political elites interacted with each another
during the high and low periods of Mughal rule between the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries forms the subject of this book. As we shall see, a
dive into political-capital relations brings into better focus the evolution
of state function and state capacity in South Asia during a moment of
great upheaval.
Bankrolling Empire centers around the remarkable experiences of the
Jhaveri family across four generations. In doing so, it advances two key
arguments about money, power, and politics in the Indian subcontinent.
First, the dissolution of the Mughal Empire starting in the 1680s firmly
fits global patterns of military-logistics overstretch, that is, pushing ambi-
tions of conquest further than what the Mughals could manage and pay
for. The Mughal state relied on commodity-backed silver as its primary
currency. Much of this raw silver came to India from South American
mines through trade. Unlike modern times, the Mughal state could not
simply print more coin to resolve its financial woes. To overcome this,
provincial governors, including Sarbuland Khan, began borrowing heav-
ily from prominent businesspersons, especially members of the Jhaveri
family. This seemed reasonable enough at first, but the practice quickly
became violently unsustainable as money streams ran dry.
The second argument focuses on how Mughal financial troubles both
coincided with and further engendered massive political crises from
within the ranks of the Mughal bureaucracy, unleashing regional forces
that led to the empire’s gradual dissolution. As central ministers and
provincial governors realized that the organization from which they
derived a sense of power, social belonging, and their income was going
 The Jhaveris of Ahmedabad 5

bust without recovery, they sought to extract all that they could from a
crumbling Mughal edifice in the locality. Many even tried to establish
their own areas of independent control, often involving surprising
alliances with rivals against whom they fought spirited battles in years
prior. Such scrambles by political elites to preserve older forms of lead-
ership and establish new state machinery provided significant opportun-
ities for financial entrepreneurship that members of the Jhaveri family
astutely identified and tried to exploit.
With the advantage of historical hindsight, this book traces how the
Jhaveris of Ahmedabad became central to political dispensations
emerging in the wake of Mughal dissolution. By analyzing the family
across several generations, we see how they combined political aware-
ness, personal capital, and unusual courage to adapt their businesses to
the need of the hour. A long-term trend inaugurated during the crisis of
the Mughal Empire by the early eighteenth century was the growing
reliance on private capital and debt by political actors to fund projects
of statecraft. Unlike pre-Mughal and Mughal India during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, when the strength of sovereigns and their
governors determined the nature of political authority and organization
in the locality, eighteenth-century India marked a critical turning point in
that political power was starting to be brokered through principles of
financial diplomacy. As we shall see, this would not have been possible
without the money and services provided by economic elites like the
Jhaveris, whose initial forays into the exciting world of the Mughal court
trace back to the seventeenth century. But first, who were the Jhaveris
and where did they come from?

The Jhaveris of Ahmedabad

Towards the end of his reign in 1626, the Mughal emperor Jahangir
ordered that his favorite diamond dealer, Shantidas Jhaveri, be placed
under the protective arm of the Mughal state. Shantidas was the illustri-
ous grandfather of Khushalchand, the daring banker we met earlier.
Imperial officials were given strict instructions not to interfere with the
jeweler’s trading activities in and around Ahmedabad, especially routes
across Gujarat that connected the large province to the imperial capital in
northern India. By then, Shantidas had become an indispensable link in
sourcing rare goods from all over the world for the royal court.
In exchange for such prized immunity, Shantidas was expected to regu-
larly submit gifts, presents, and every kind of jewelry that he procured
from overland trade and oceanic commerce through the ports of Gujarat
to the emperor’s treasury. Emperor Jahangir was particularly fond of
6 Introduction

large diamonds, bright pearls, deep rubies, and transparent emeralds.5

Skilled in gemology, Shantidas had developed an eye for scintillating
cuts, polished gems, and uncut rarities. He relied on his unique abilities
as a jeweler to ingratiate himself with Mughal elites and members of the
royal household, thereby growing his fortunes to great heights.
The early history of the Jhaveri family cannot be entirely verified and is
therefore imprecise. But here is what we know: The family’s origins can
be traced with certainty to Osian, a medieval village of temples located in
present-day Rajasthan some 75 km (35 miles) north of Jodhpur. Osian
was settled between the eighth and twelfth centuries and became a
prosperous town and pilgrimage site for members of the Hindu, Jain,
and Buddhist communities. As testament to such a long heritage, the
temples of the area, which still stand today, depict incarnations of Hindu
gods, Jain iconography, and Buddha figurines. In addition, the decorated
friezes of these temples highlight men and women adorned with orna-
ments, cosmetics, costumes, arms and armor, musical instruments, and
jewelry. These convey aspects of quotidian elite life in earlier times.6
In the sources of the time, followers of the temple culture of Osian would
come to be known as Oswal. As adherents of the Jain dharma or faith, the
Jhaveri family belonged to the Oswal Jain religious community. From an
occupational point of view, the Jhaveris belonged to the Vania or Banya
caste, referring to those traditionally involved with business activities
such as banking, moneylending, trading, and shopkeeping. Osian was a
prosperous town in the middle of a desert, and individual entrepreneur-
ship was closely tied to its temple and pilgrimage economy.7
Based on extant evidence, Shantidas’s forefathers migrated to
Ahmedabad sometime in the 1480s. It was during this time that the
then-sultan of Gujarat, Mahmud Begada, established Ahmedabad as a
new walled city and capital. It became famous for its lively bazars and
populated streets. Situated on an elevated plain next to the flowing
Sabarmati River, Ahmedabad and its fertile environs provided far greater

5
Nur-ud-Din Muhammad Jahangir. The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of
India. Translated by W. M. Thackston. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 96,
143, 188, 273. See also Kim Siebenhüner. “Precious Things in Motion: Luxury and the
Circulation of Jewels in Mughal India.” In Luxury in Global Perspective: Objects and
Practices, 1600–2000. Edited by Karin Hofmeester and Bernd-Stefan Grewe, 27–54.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
6
Devendra Handa. Osian: History, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Delhi: Sundeep, 1984,
175–208; Asha Kalia. Art of Osian Temples: Socio-Economic and Religious Life in India,
8th–12th Centuries. Ajmer: Abhinav Publications, 1982, 1–11, 145–54.
7
For Oswal origin myths, see Lawrence Babb. Alchemies of Violence: Myths of Identity and
the Life of Trade in Western India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004, 164–71.
 The Jhaveris of Ahmedabad 7

opportunities than those of an arid Osian.8 In addition, the relative social

stability that emerged as an outcome of the politics of the Gujarat sultans
(1407–1573) turned the walled city into an epicenter of commercial
activity. Resident and itinerant merchants in the area developed the trade
of local wares for horses and pearls, which made their way into the
subcontinent through the vibrant commerce of the Indian Ocean littoral.
The Jhaveris likely tapped into this emerging cosmopolitan world of
lucrative exchange represented in Map 0.1 to grow their own power
and influence.
Specific details about the early years of family patriarch Shantidas
Jhaveri are also hazy. It is only during his later years of fame that we
can rely on solid evidence to weave aspects of his life and business
activities together.9 Shantidas was born sometime in the 1580s, most
likely 1584, into a family of jewelers residing in the Jhaveriwada neigh-
borhood of Old Ahmedabad. They were a small and unremarkable family
that over the years became exceptional by developing close ties with
powerful people at the Mughal court. It was only a few years prior to
the jeweler’s birth that the Mughal emperor Akbar conquered Gujarat,
incorporating the entire walled city of Ahmedabad and key fertile dis-
tricts and strategic ports of the region into the imperial domain.
Figure 0.2 presents a fancy portrait of Shantidas currently displayed in
a public Jain rest house in Jhaveriwada.
By the time Shantidas came of age, the Mughals had established
paramount sovereignty across much of the subcontinent excepting the
south. As royal appetites for luxury goods grew, Shantidas astutely
leveraged his early training in gemology and jewelry, facility with metal-
lurgy and the minting of coins, and experience in the general trade
between Ahmedabad and Gujarat’s global ports to build his wealth and
social influence. He acquired this specialist knowledge by apprenticing
with his father Sahasra Kiran, and perhaps even his grandfather Vaccha,

8
Outmigration of financial specialists from Rajasthan was common between 1500 and
1800. See G. N. Sharma. Social Life in Medieval Rajasthan, 1500–1800. Agra: Lakshmi
Narain Agarwal, 1968, 336–44.
9
So far, scholars have noted Shantidas’s influence in the politics of temple management,
promotions of monks within Jain ecclesiastical orders, and his key abilities to obtain
certain favors such as the banning of animal slaughter and pilgrimage taxes to sacred sites
in Gujarat. See Malti Shah. Nagarsheth Shantidas Jhaveri. Ahmedabad: Gurjar
Prakashan, repr. 2013; Mangilal Bhutoriya. Osval (Osval Jati ka Itihas), A History of
the Osval Caste. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Priyadarshni Prakashan, 1995, 340–44; Makrand
Mehta. Indian Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Historical Perspective. Delhi: Academic
Foundation, 1991, 91–114; M. S. Commissariat. Studies in the History of Gujarat.
Ahmedabad: Saraswati Pustak Bhandar, repr. 1987, 53–76; M. S. Commissariat.
A History of Gujarat, Including a Survey of its Chief Architectural Monuments and
Inscriptions. 3 vols. Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co., 1938–80, 140–50.
8 Introduction

Map 0.1. Routes connecting cities of Gujarat and Rajasthan to

Delhi, 1600–1750

both mentioned cursorily in the sources as jewelers.10 Shantidas died in

1659, and his sons and grandsons inherited the family business, and

10
Evidence in the form of a rare will drafted by Shantidas and ratified by Mughal officials in
1657 confirms that his father Sahasra Kiran and grandfather Vaccha were also jewelers.
See Shantidas Jhaveri. Wasīyat-nāma [The last will of Shantidas Jhaveri, 1657]. Persian
_
text reproduced and translated by Chaghatai. “A Rare Historical Scroll of Shah Jahan’s
Reign.” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Pakistan 16, no. 1 (1971): 63–77.
 The Jhaveris of Ahmedabad 9

Figure 0.2. The jeweler-banker Shantidas Jhaveri, 1584–1659.

Author photograph.

along with it some of the specialist knowledge requisite to conduct

business adroitly in the world of high-stakes imperial politics.
Of Shantidas’s five sons, only Manekchand and Lakshmichand were
involved in the family business. Unfortunately, we are without any real
biographical information such as birth years or details about their
10 Introduction

professional dealings. We know that they were close associates of their

illustrious father, for their names are mentioned in a few Mughal royal
orders examined in Chapter 3.
It is Khushalchand – Shantidas’s grandson and Lakshmichand’s son –
who emerges as a major character in the story of Mughal dissolution and
regional revival in Gujarat. As a man of money and political acumen,
Khushalchand (1680–1748) became a controversial individual in the
financing of Mughal banditry, statecraft, and authority in the 1720s.
He also served as the business fraternity of Ahmedabad’s chief represen-
tative to political leaders of the day, a title known in the Gujarati language
as nagarśetha. When compared to his relatively obscure father,
Khushalchand_ is certainly much better documented across both
Persian and Gujarati sources.
By the mid-eighteenth century, Khushalchand’s sons Nathushah
(1720–93) and Vakhatchand (1740–1814) built on their family’s legacy
by becoming prominent bankers involved in supporting new forms of
state power in the wake of Mughal dissolution, especially that of the
Gaekwads of Baroda, and soon after the nascent authority of the British
East India Company. Our evidence for Nathushah and Vakhatchand is
also limited, but what we have strongly suggests major shifts in not only
how the Jhaveri family connected to sources of political authority, but
how the commercialization of political power more broadly in the
eighteenth century allowed for new groups to participate in state, soci-
ety, and economy in ways that went beyond being just imperial subjects.
From this point of view, while it was regime crisis that initially brought
capitalists into the world of political financing by the late seventeenth
century, it was capitalists themselves who shaped the nature of new
state formations and their financial underpinnings in the aftermath of
Mughal collapse.
Bankrolling Empire focuses on the experiences of four successive gen-
erations of the Jhaveri family as a way to explore money, power, and
politics during the growth and dissolution phases of the Mughal state.
By relating the experiences of each generation of the banking family
alongside political developments in Gujarat, we can better track the role
of capital and capitalists in the sustaining and eventual replacing of the
Mughal state by other forms of paramount authority in the Indian
subcontinent. A multi-generational approach which is quite unusual for
historical work on this period helps to visualize such transformational
changes in a much more panoramic and processual way.
Finally, a word on naming conventions. Jhaveri is a derivative of the
Persian word jauhar referring to jewel, gem, or pearl. A jauharī is a
jeweler and this word has been adapted into the regional Gujarati
 The Setting 11

language as jhaverī. What modern conventions have identified as the

family surname “Jhaveri” actually corresponds to a generic occupational
and residential namesake of many other families involved in the trading
of precious gems and jewelry. However, given the prominence that
Shantidas and his descendants achieved, original language sources and
scholarship from the Mughal and post-Mughal eras clearly identify and
refer to the family lineage as The Jhaveris. I, too, will refer to Shantidas
and his heirs in this way, although regrettably there is hardly any evidence
about the women of this illustrious lineage, who no doubt performed
a key role in the biological reproduction and social survival of the
household.

The Setting
The primary geographical focus of this book is the Gujarat region in
western India as captured in Map 0.2. Spanning a coastline that covers
1,600 km (1,000 miles), the region has an equally varied hinterland
ranging from dense forest areas in its southern parts to dry, semi-arid
desert tracks in the north. Given its prominent position along the Arabian
Sea, Gujarat has attracted migrant populations from early historical
times. Its own natives have also been enterprising and have crossed gulfs
and seas to adventure and improve their lives. Archaeological digs across
the region have revealed pottery and coins from Persia, Rome, and
Greece. This strongly suggests Gujarat’s early importance as an ancient
commercial zone. Despite ancient evidence of human activity, the name
Gujarat is derived from the Gujar tribes who settled in the area from 550
C.E. These groups entered northern India via overland routes coming
from Persia. However, these paths were treacherous. Even if caravans
could traverse the snowcapped mountains of the Hindu Kush, they
would face lethal conditions in the Thar desert, with scorching tempera-
tures between 40–50 degrees Celsius. After crossing the Thar, travelers
would be slowed by the vast salt marshes of the Rann of Kacch. As a
result, the less hampered oceanic routes that led to one of several ports
along Gujarat’s long coastline became the preferred mode of reaching the
area. By the eighth century, Arab seafarers from Sindh made regular trips
to Gujarat, marking some of the earliest interactions by Muslims with the
Indian subcontinent.
Equally dynamic is Gujarat’s interior landscape, comprising drylands,
salt marshes, and rich alluvial hinterlands watered by several flowing
rivers. The Tapti River exits at the port of Surat after flowing westward
from its origins in Madhya Pradesh. Moving north, the Narmada is the
longest west flowing river in India that also originates in Madhya Pradesh
12 Introduction

Map 0.2. The Gujarat region with modern boundaries

and empties at Bharuch. The Mahi flows through Rajasthan and after
passing near Baroda, empties out on the eastern seaboard of the Gulf of
Cambay. And the Sabarmati, which originates in the Aravalli hills of
Rajasthan, passes through Ahmedabad before emptying directly into
the Gulf of Cambay. Much like the Punjab region with its iconic five
rivers, Gujarat’s riverine routes bifurcate the vast region into dry, tem-
perate, and wet zones moving from north to south. Moreover, that the
rivers culminated at the Gulf of Cambay created, especially by early
Mughal times, a natural destination for people and products. Today,
the Gulf of Cambay has silted. As I stood on its shores during my last visit
to the city in 2016, the horizon of the sea was at a distance far beyond
what could be seen by the naked eye.
 The Setting 13

Until the early fourteenth century, Gujarat was controlled by Hindu

regional kingdoms such as the Maitrakas, Gurjara-Pratiharas, the
Chaulukya, and Vaghelas. This did not preclude other groups from
establishing homes in the area. Epigraphic evidence also confirms the
presence of Persians, Ismailis, and other Islamic sects drawn into the
trading orbit of Gujarat. By this period, several generations of soldiers
from central Asia had already established ruling territories in northern
India under the catchall banner historians call the Delhi Sultanate. While
Gujarat was certainly exposed to Islamic military pressure from land
routes, starting with Sultan Mahmud of Gazna’s sacking of Somnath
temple in 1025–6 and continuing with Mohammad Ghuri’s raids into the
area in 1178, it was not until the fourteenth century that these military
commanders annexed Gujarat as part of an empire-building exercise that
connected northern Indian to this coastal province of the west.
Mohammad Tughluq, who was in Gujarat between 1347 and 1351,
introduced Persian court culture, administration, manners, and language
to a region that was more accustomed to external stimulation in the form
of coastal trade and profit.
By 1407, a former vassal of the Tughluq dynasty named Zafar Khan
defected from the imperial banner at Delhi and assumed leadership of
Gujarat. As sultan, he inaugurated his own dynasty that would rule over
the region relatively uninterrupted until the Mughals made inroads
starting in 1572. Zafar Khan’s grandson, Mahmud Begada, would go
on to establish Ahmedabad as a major city and regional capital, while
later descendants increased state capacity by collecting taxes from mer-
chants and systematically harnessing land revenue from peasants.
Hindus and Jains were the most prominent business groups in the region,
although we have much better documentation for the Jains. The Jains
were actively involved in projects of public works, and established roads
and temples that morphed into major pilgrimage routes across Gujarat
and into the dry areas of Rajasthan on its northern side. Jain religious
elites, as we shall see in the chapters to follow, took greater care in
documenting their own activities as well as those of prominent patrons
and members of their community such as Shantidas Jhaveri.
During the fifteenth century, the sultans of Gujarat were self-sufficient,
and external contact was restricted to neighbors in Malwa and Khandesh
to the east, and the Deccan towards south India, where other sultans had
also developed their own spheres of authority. The early decades of the
sixteenth century marked a watershed. Supreme commanders of the sea,
the Portuguese arrived as fleets of warships and began controlling the
choppy waters off Gujarat’s long coast. Lacking naval aptitude,
Gujarat’s sultans turned inward and focused on their land-based
14 Introduction

enterprises. Their conciliatory approach to early European presence is

highlighted by Sultan Bahadur Shah (r. 1526–37) who ceded the Port of
Diu to the Portuguese in 1537. For the Portuguese, Diu provided new
access to commercial activities in the northern part of the subcontinent
where they sought to establish a stronghold. Members of the reigning
nobility of the sultans faced immense pressure from both the naval
squadrons of the Portuguese and from early Mughal commanders
Babur and Humayun, who were beginning to establish their political
footing in northern India by land. This kind of sandwiched political
pressure resulted in major infighting among the nobility of the Gujarat
sultans, culminating in the last Sultan Muzaffar III being overrun by
Akbar, Humayun’s son and the third major Mughal emperor, in 1572–3.
The Mughal conquest of Gujarat, explored in greater detail in the subse-
quent chapter, provided new business opportunities for entrepreneurs
like the Jhaveris and for local administrators who sought upward mobility
as Mughal bureaucrats.
Gujarat became an important node in one of the most viable early
modern global trade routes by the time the Mughals annexed the region.
Tome Pires, a Portuguese official at Malacca, wrote in the sixteenth
century, “Cambay stretches out two arms. With her right arm she reaches
toward Aden and with the other towards Malacca.”11 Another chronic-
ler, Duarte Barbosa, noted the merchants of the area importing beautiful
horses from the Middle East, elephants from Malabar, and other choice
items into Gujarat, while listing the area’s exports as ranging from cotton
and silk textiles to spices and aromatics, and especially the coveted cash
crops opium and indigo.12 Gujarat’s traders were keenly interested in
importing horses, precious stones, and bullion. According to one telling
account, Sikandar Lodi, who ruled in northern India from 1489–1517,
was quite jealous of Gujarat’s riches, lamenting that the “support of the
throne of Delhi is wheat and barley” but “the foundation of the realm of
Gujarat is coral and pearls.”13
It is certainly no surprise then, that Gujarat would develop into the
primary commercial zone for the Mughals, and into an area that con-
stantly supplied the royal court with top quality jewels, gold and silver
bulk metal, and other precious items desired by political elites. Increased
trading activity by Persian merchants, Arab sailors, and officials of the

11
Tomé Pires. The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues.
Translated by Armando Cortesao. London: Hakluyt Society, 1944, 42.
12
Duarte Barbosa. The Book of Duarte Barbosa. Translated by M. Longworth Dames. 2
vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1918–21, 108–58.
13
E. C. Bayley. The Local Muhammadan Dynasties: Gujarat. London: W. H. Allen,
1886, 20.
 The Setting 15

various European East India companies starting in 1600 also contributed

to enriching local Gujarati merchants like the Jhaveris. Such prosperity
was especially visible across Gujarat’s ports of Surat, Bharuch, and
Cambay, and in major hinterland areas such as Ahmedabad and
Baroda, which became key nodes connecting Indian rulers to the exciting
frenzy of the emerging global economy.
After ruling for over a century, the Mughals began losing control of
their key holdings in Gujarat to an upwardly mobile warlord lineage
coalescing around the label Maratha. Emerging from the Deccan coun-
tryside towards southern India, these peasant-soldiering elites began
raiding Gujarati cities on a regular basis starting in the 1660s. Given its
mercantile wealth, which steadily grew during the early seventeenth
century, Gujarat became a key target for the Marathas, who relied on
tactics of plunder to build resources. Organized as a loose confederation
of bandit groups, the Marathas made more definitive inroads into
Gujarat during Mughal expansion efforts into the Deccan. Starting in
the 1680s, the Deccan Wars represent more than two decades of major
expansion efforts into southern India. These campaigns were led by the
last major Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1618–1707). Disproportionate
time and resources invested into this unending military expansion
impacted the Mughal state, including administrative neglect of its
Gujarat sūba. By the early decades of the eighteenth century, this cata-
_
lyzed a fragmentation of Mughal power in the province, resulting in the
birth of several smaller states in its wake.
These major and minor nodes of authority that emerged in the after-
math of Mughal decline are more widely known as India’s native or
princely states, and after 1750 these were given further impetus by early
British colonial administrators, who sought to demilitarize western India
and permanently settle land revenues and administrative divisions.14
By 1818, after nearly twenty-five years of repeated military conflicts
and financial finagling, the British East India Company defeated the
Marathas and their lands were divided between the Company, the
Maratha Gaekwad family, and other small patrimonial estates across
the Kathiawar and Kacch regions.
By the early nineteenth century, the only obvious vestiges of Mughal
power that remained in Gujarat were those small princely states headed
by former Mughal governors such as those at Cambay and Junagadh.
In its place, the Gaekwads became a prominent source of political
authority, and this was made possible by the support of indigenous

14
Barbara N. Ramusack. The Indian Princes and their States. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004.
16 Introduction

bankers like the brothers Nathushah and Vakhatchand Jhaveri, the great
grandsons of Shantidas Jhaveri. Nathushah and Vakhatchand not only
served as bankers to members of the Gaekwad family, but also became
guarantors of complex financial transactions brokered by British colonial
officials as they sought to establish paramountcy in the region. To grow
their sovereign presence, the British demilitarized Gujarat and became
the lynchpin of a new and quite complex web of financial and diplomatic
relations spanning various sources of credible political authority.
After 1818, the Gaekwads’s share of Gujarat amounted to roughly
21,000 square km (8,160 square miles, the size of El Salvador). This
became known as the Princely State of Baroda. The remaining areas fell
under colonial jurisdiction, and this amounted to about 26,000 square
km (10,000 square miles, the size of Rwanda). These boundary negoti-
ations were not based on ease of territorial administration, but rather on
the British East India Company’s calculation of land revenue, income
from various levies, and a desire to control strategic cities. As a result,
Gujarat’s political geography in the nineteenth century resembled a jigsaw
puzzle in which the Gaekwads’s four major districts of Kadi, Baroda,
Amreli, and Navsari were not contiguous. Captured in Map 0.3, the
arbitrary borders of these four regions cut across distinct ecological,
cultural, and linguistic zones in Gujarat. These areas were only reinte-
grated with surrounding territories when princely forms of localized
government were entirely abolished in 1949, two years after India’s inde-
pendence from British colonial rule and in the initial years of its
nascent democracy.
Today, Gujarat is one of the wealthiest states in India, home to some of
the biggest industrial groups in the country. In fact, the modern-day
descendants of the Jhaveris run Arvind Limited, one of India’s most
recognized Fortune 500 companies that specializes in textile manufac-
turing and branding. Gujarat also plays host to prominent institutions
of higher learning, including the Indian Institute of Management at
Ahmedabad, India’s premiere business school. Farmers are hard at work
producing cotton, tobacco, and groundnuts, which are harvested across
more than one-half of the total state’s area. The trade in precious jewelry,
especially gold and diamonds, are major industries in Ahmedabad and
Surat. Estimates suggest that more than 90 percent of global diamond
polishing takes place in Surat, underscoring Gujarat’s importance in the
world market even today. Yet, as we shall see, Mughal elites were chief
consumers of precious stones passing through Gujarat long before our
own times, and it was this insatiable appetite for luxury and wealth that
catapulted Gujarat into a region much coveted by Mughal emperors,
princes, and governors.
 The Field of Study 17

Map 0.3. The Gaekwad state of Baroda in the nineteenth century

The Field of Study

The evidence and analysis presented in this book contributes to three
areas of research in South Asian history, and to broader themes in the
global history of capitalism. The first pertains to the causes of the Mughal
Empire’s dissolution by the early eighteenth century, and the processes
by which regional successor states consolidated influence in its wake.
The second relates to the relationship between commercial agents and
the state, especially whether they occupied parallel universes, or whether
there was significant mutual conditioning or even some kind of depend-
ency. The third focuses on Mughal studies more broadly, and the intel-
lectual possibilities unleashed by combining rigorous multilingual
18 Introduction

research with new conceptualizations of state power as not all encom-

passing, but rather processual and always in flux.
Let us turn to the first major area of concern, that is, the causes of
Mughal decline. An earlier generation of colonial commentators and
Indian historians explained decline in terms of the personal qualities of
emperors and their nobles.15 Jadunath Sarkar, in his well-known work on
Aurangzeb, also advocated the emperor’s religious bigotry as driving a
wedge between Hindus and Muslims, undermining the collaborative
nature of the Mughal state.16 These arguments have taken on renewed
significance in modern India, as political leaders turn to history, both real
and imagined, to mobilize groups along Hindu-Muslim fault lines to rally
votes.17 In recent decades, the work that has catalyzed immense interest
in the nature of Mughal power and its demise is Irfan Habib’s landmark
study The Agrarian System of Mughal India published in 1963. Drawing
on royal chronicles and state revenue documents, Habib argued that the
Mughal state extorted the entire surplus produced by peasants, reducing
them to low levels of subsistence. As a response, peasants revolted
leading to the birth of new regional polities across the subcontinent.18
Over the past sixty years, various scholars have responded to Habib’s
contention. Historians of Mughal India have offered new theories of
imperial crisis largely focusing on key failures. These range from the
Mughal failure to maintain the imperial ranking system of jāgīr-mansab
(Chandra), to resolve clashes with elite landed peasants called zamīnd_ārs
(Hasan), to curb corruption among the nobility (Athar Ali), to overcome
financial woes brought on by wars (Richards), to advance technologies in
firearms (Khan), and to maintain healthy political competition at the
court (Faruqui).19 Others have rejected the decline thesis altogether,

15
William Irvine. Later Mughals. 2 vols. Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar & Sons, 1921; Jadunath
Sarkar. Fall of the Mughal Empire. 4 vols. Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar & Sons, 1932–50.
16
Jadunath Sarkar. History of Aurangzib. 5 vols. Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar & Sons, 1912–24.
17
Two recent biographies of Mughal emperors demonstrate how contemporary views
about an emperor’s religiosity condition sectarian violence across South Asia today.
See Audrey Truschke. Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial
King. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017 and Supriya Gandhi. The Emperor
Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2020.
18
Irfan Habib. The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, repr. 1999.
19
Satish Chandra. Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707–1740. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, repr. 2002, 29–33; S. Nurul Hasan. “The Position of the Zamindars in
the Mughal Empire.” Indian Economic & Social History Review 1, no. 4 (1964): 107–19;
M. Athar Ali. The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
repr. 1997, 171–4; John F. Richards. Mughal Administration in Golconda. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1975, 132; Iqtidar Alam Khan. Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in
Medieval India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 195–6; Munis D. Faruqui. The
 The Field of Study 19

especially Muzaffar Alam, Chetan Singh, and Farhat Hasan, who have
argued that the Mughal state enabled new political possibilities, espe-
cially regionalization, localization, and economic growth.20 These views
have been supported by additional studies on the late Mughal period in
Banaras, Maharashtra, Khandesh, and Bengal.21 Opponents of the
decline thesis suggest that although social developments by the late
Mughal period enabled regional economic growth, it also expedited the
Mughal Empire’s eventual demise.22
The second body of literature this book contributes to is on relation-
ships between commercial agents and state power. In Mughal studies, an
initial influential view was advocated by M. N. Pearson and Ashin Das
Gupta, who both suggested that merchants and rulers occupied largely
parallel worlds. In their view, the arrival of Portuguese, Dutch, and
English merchants, and even Akbar’s conquest of Gujarat by 1573, did
not significantly impact merchants in the region.23 They contend that
Indian merchants were not mere peddlers, but commanded significant
resources including owning vessels, controlling money markets, and
adjudicating disputes.24 Furthermore, the Mughal state did not impinge

Princes of the Mughal Empire, 1504–1719. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2012, 311–25.
20
Muzaffar Alam. The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab,
1707–48. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986; Chetan Singh. Region & Empire:
Panjab in the Seventeenth Century. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991; Farhat Hasan.
State and Locality in Mughal India: Power Relations in Western India, c. 1572–1730.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
21
C. A. Bayly. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British
Expansion, 1770–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983; C. A. Bayly.
Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India,
1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; André Wink. Land and
Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-Century Maratha
Svarājya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; Stewart Gordon. “The Slow
Conquest: Administrative Integration of Malwa into the Maratha Empire, 1720–1760.”
Modern Asian Studies 11, no. 1 (1977): 1–40; and Abdul Karim. Murshid Quli Khan and
his Times. Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan, 1963.
22
Ghulam Nadri. Eighteenth-Century Gujarat: The Dynamics of its Political Economy,
1750–1800. Leiden: Brill, 2008; Muzaffar Alam. “Eastern India in the Early
Eighteenth Century ‘Crisis’: Some Evidence from Bihar.” Indian Economic & Social
History Review 28, no. 1 (1991): 43–71.
23
M. N. Pearson. Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the
Sixteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976; Ashin Das Gupta. The
World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500–1800. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
24
The idea of Asian traders as “petty” was put forth by J. C. van Leur. Indonesian Trade and
Society. The Hague: W. Van Hoeve, 1955 and Niels Steensgaard. Carracks, Caravans and
Companies: Structural Crisis in the European-Asian Trade in the Early 17th Century. Lund:
Studentlitteratur, 1973.
20 Introduction

on their trading activities, an argument also advanced by scholars based

on evidence from others parts of the Mughal hinterland.25
Yet, economic activities that both Pearson and Das Gupta acknow-
ledge but downplay for want of evidence are the loans and capital that
indigenous bankers provided Mughal and European nobles and elites.
This significant omission was taken up with great alacrity by Karen
Leonard, who boldly connected the role of indigenous business and
capital to the downfall of the Mughal Empire. She suggested that when
large, autonomous banking firms across the Indian subcontinent with-
drew finance from Mughal officials in the late seventeenth century, the
Mughal state collapsed.26 This provided fledgling groups like the
Marathas from the Deccan, the Sikhs of Punjab, and European mercan-
tile companies in Bengal and Gujarat amazing opportunities to fill voids
left by Mughal institutions. According to Leonard, such regional leaders
grew their power by relying on the very same financial personnel that
serviced the Mughals.27
While highly imaginative and bold in its argumentation, the main
shortcoming of Leonard’s thesis was the glaring absence of any empirical
evidence about banking firms and their activities during the Mughal
period. This omission was also noted by her most severe critic, John
F. Richards, who argued that the Mughal state was financially secure,
and nobles obtained money from official mints in the localities, and not

25
The story of Banarasidas who wrote Ardh-Kathanak in 1641 is telling. Born in 1586 at
Jaunpur, he studied various subjects including astrology, Sanskrit, and religion until
1610 when the elders of his community convinced him to ply a trade. With support from
his father and a loan obtained against a hundī or bill of exchange, he travelled to various
Mughal provinces including Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, Awadh, and Bihar buying and
selling goods. His account reveals the relative mobility and free choice that
characterized itinerant merchants of the empire and reveals the hands-off nature of the
Mughal state vis-à-vis commerce. See Banarasidas. Ardhakathanaka. Translated by
Mukund Lath. Jaipur: Rajasthan Prakrit Bharati Sansthan, 1981. For the career of
Banarasidas, see John Cort. “A Tale of Two Cities: On the Origins of Digambar
Sectarianism in North India.” In Multiple Histories: Culture and Society in the Study of
Rajasthan. Edited by Lawrence Babb, Varsha Joshi, and Michael Meister, 39–83. Jaipur:
Rawat Publications, 2002. See also Irfan Habib. Medieval India: The Study of a
Civilization. New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2007, 255.
26
Karen Leonard. “The ‘Great Firm’ Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire.”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 21, no. 2 (1979): 151–67. See also Karen
Leonard. “Family Firms in Hyderabad: Gujarati, Goswami, and Marwari Patterns of
Adoption, Marriage, and Inheritance.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 53,
no. 4 (2011): 827–54.
27
Variations of this thesis have been articulated by Wink, Land and Sovereignty; Alam,
Crisis of Empire; Sanjay Subrahmanyam and C. A. Bayly. “Portfolio Capitalists and the
Political Economy of Early Modern India.” Indian Economic & Social History Review 25,
no. 4 (1988): 401–24.
 The Field of Study 21

directly from any private bankers.28 For Richards, Mughal rulers con-
trolled financial specialists, and not the other way around.
A further consideration of key issues and limitations of the Leonard-
Richards exchange is addressed below. For now, suffice to say that
Bankrolling Empire does not view private capital and its involvement with
state power as exceptional and limited. Rather, the evidence in the pages
to follow strongly suggests that the money and administrative services of
bankers was critical to the functioning of Mughal power in South Asia,
and even more relevant for enabling major shifts in society during the
eighteenth century as political crisis mounted. As we shall see, capital
advances from local financiers became an alluring remedy for both
recalcitrant Mughal officials and upstarts from the countryside who
sought to challenge Mughal rule and replace it with their own visions
of public authority. From this point of view, Leonard is not entirely
wrong, but nor is Richards entirely right.
The third body of writings this book adds value to is that of Mughal
studies. This has been a large and vibrant area of research in recent
decades, and prolific output points to methodological and conceptual
innovation in analyzing precolonial polity and society. This book builds
on recent trends in micro, regional, multilingual, and processual studies
of the Mughal and post-Mughal era, while adding new empirical material
and interpretations for colleagues in the field to accept, challenge, or
modify. Much of our initial understanding of the Mughal Empire has
come from sources produced during the Mughal era itself. Chief among
these are court chronicles, royal orders, miniature paintings, foreign
accounts, biographical dictionaries, news reports, and statistical data
including gazetteers and revenue documents. An earlier generation of
scholars used these materials to advocate a structural-functionalist view
of the Mughal state.29

28
John F. Richards, “Mughal State Finance and the Premodern World Economy.”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 2 (1981): 285–308. See also a final
rejoinder by Karen Leonard. “Indigenous Banking Firms in Mughal India: A Reply.”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 2 (1981): 309–13.
29
This broadly designates forms of social science theorizing and history writing that tends
to explain society by analyzing how institutions like government, administration,
military, law, and currency work together in conditioning human behavior and
promoting stability. See W. H. Moreland. From Akbar to Aurangzeb: A Study in Indian
Economic History. London: Macmillan & Co., 1923; Meyer Fortes and E. E. Evans-
Pritchard. African Political Systems. London: Oxford University Press, 1940; Talcott
Parsons. The Social System. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951; A. R.
Radcliffe-Brown. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. London: Cohen and West,
1952; Nilakanta Sastri. The Cholas. Madras: University of Madras, 1955; Habib,
Agrarian System; N. A. Siddiqi. Land Revenue Administration under the Mughals,
22 Introduction

The most prominent advocates of this perspective have been a group of

historians from the Aligarh Muslim University, whose writings have
come to represent the Aligarh School. Since the 1950s, they have been
represented by Irfan Habib, M. Athar Ali, Shireen Moosvi, and John
F. Richards, among others. The overall thrust of their work has been to
demonstrate the strong, centralized nature of the Mughal Empire, its
bureaucratic sophistication, and its technologies of control ranging from
money, makeup of nobility, hold on revenue surplus, and alliances with
regional groups as a strategy of control. Sometimes, one can detect a
nationalist tinge in their views, for example suggesting that Mughal
technologies of control and administration were as dynamic as those of
their British colonial successor, going so far as to even suggest that
European colonialization of India cut short modernizing processes
already underway during Mughal rule.
While endorsing the empirical rigor and some of the key observations
made by this earlier generation of Mughal scholars, Bankrolling Empire
departs from such strict understandings of the Mughal state. Instead, it
espouses perspectives outlined in a critical introductory essay written
some twenty-five years ago for the edited volume titled The Mughal
State, 1526–1750.30 In this landmark work, Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam dispel the idea that the Mughal state was born mature.
Instead, it was fashioned and refashioned across time and geography
between 1526 and 1750. State power took on different shades based on
the particularities of region, be it Bengal in the east, Punjab in the north,
or the Deccan in the south. In the period after 1700, these variations
came full circle with the rise of regional states, smaller polities, and
eventually the British East India Company replacing the paramount
sovereignty of the Mughal emperor.
How should the dynamics of Mughal power across the sixteenth and
eighteenth centuries be characterized, and what explains the increase in
regional state formation in the long eighteenth century? The task, no
doubt a “daunting one,” as Alam and Subrahmanyam point out, requires
separating fact from fiction. For the authors, this necessarily entails
denationalizing views about the Mughal Empire, understanding its
regional variations through non-Persian regional sources, and ultimately
seeing eighteenth-century dissolution as part of a much longer process in

1700–1750. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1970; U. N. Day. The Government of the
Sultanate. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1972.
30
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. “Introduction” to The Mughal State,
1526–1750. Edited by Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 1–71. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1998.
 The Field of Study 23

the evolution of state capacity in South Asia. In other words, leaving

value judgments aside, the dissolution of the Mughal Empire by the early
eighteenth century was made possible by both conditions within the
Mughal state, but also by new developments in the military labor market,
formation of ethnic and regional consciousness, problems with imperial
succession, new dynamics of trade, including increasing European pene-
tration, and the overall commercialization of political power enabling
more groups to participate in the politics of public authority. Viewed in
this manner, Mughal state power in South Asia emerges dynamic, varied,
and punctuated at key nodes, such as urban centers and oceanic ports,
and not more all encompassing like the reach of the later British colonial
state or the modern Indian nation state.
Recent works have contributed productively to such processual under-
standings of Mughal power. They also rely on multilingual sources and
interdisciplinary approaches to pluralize the Mughal state and key devel-
opments in its aftermath. Landmark studies include Farhat Hasan’s work
on localized iterations of Mughal power in Gujarat, Abhishek Kaicker’s
analysis of popular politics in eighteenth-century Delhi, and Nandini
Chatterjee’s recent study of Mughal land and law from the archive of a
family of landlords in Malwa.31 Bankrolling Empire contributes to this
body of work by demonstrating how a family of merchants, bankers, and
financiers responded to shifts in Mughal imperial priorities, sometimes
willingly and at other times less so. We see that their capital, and espe-
cially their capital know-how, helped them overcome extortion at the
hands of Mughal officials to then emerge as key intermediaries in post-
Mughal projects of statecraft led by both indigenous agents and their
later colonial counterparts. This indicates that the Jhaveris were able to
withstand major upheavals in political power, a feature that also explains
their survival into modern times. Put succinctly, history helps us see how
the emblematic Jhaveris have emerged as more robust than the several
forms of state power that have risen and fallen in India since the late
sixteenth century.
Finally, given that the Mughal state was a major political power during
the early modern period, and that South Asia was part of wider transi-
tions worldwide during that crucial time, the book’s conclusion briefly
situates the major findings of Bankrolling Empire within global compara-
tive history. In short, stately institutions in India had a centripetal effect

31
Hasan, State and Locality; Abhishek Kaicker. The King and the People: Sovereignty and
Popular Politics in Mughal Delhi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; Nandini
Chatterjee. Land and Law in Mughal India: A Family of Landlords across Three Indian
Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
24 Introduction

on merchants dealing in luxury goods like jewelry or high-value com-

modities such as indigo, saltpeter, and bullion. With a focus on harness-
ing agrarian profits from the hinterland, the Mughal state was especially
hands-off in coastal regions where traders were long connected to littoral
networks of exchange. Yet, once the Mughals annexed Gujarat, they
developed new relations with foreign and local traders, and harnessed
incoming foreign silver as a critical technology of statecraft. The Mughal
land tax, salary payments to officials and soldiers, and the currency
demanded by producers and manufacturers were denominated in
Mughal rupees.
Due to initial military successes and by establishing control over key
agrarian resources, the Mughals maintained a robust treasury and fiscal
ecosystem. Unlike French monarchs and English kings during the
same period, the Mughal state did not rely on private money to
administer its influence. As a result, it never developed a state-led
credit and banking system that would have allow it to expand.
It remained a conquest state well into the seventeenth century, one
that eventually became victim to its own unsustainable expansion.
It was in the vigorous tussles for resources during military-logistics
overstretch by the 1680s that private money and capitalists suddenly
became essential for attempts to both salvage old political machines
and establish new ones. In contrast, and across much of Europe, it was
planned acts of government that brought political leaders and finan-
ciers into a nexus of state-capital relations. In India, the sudden
importance of merchants and bankers for projects of statecraft was an
unintended consequence of Mughal failures.
Readers additionally interested in how developments in Mughal India
do, and do not, fit patterns identified on the world scene may turn ahead
to the Conclusion; the remainder of this chapter turns squarely to the
book’s key arguments and framing concepts.

The Argument
The key arguments presented in this book are perhaps best understood
when framed as a response to the famous Leonard-Richards debate
mentioned earlier. To recap, Karen Leonard advocated the Great Firm
theory of Mughal decline suggesting banking firms were responsible for
the state’s demise, while John F. Richards offered a rebuttal underscoring
the strength of the Mughal Empire’s financial apparatus. In her final
rejoinder, Leonard suggested that the state finance theory advocated by
Richards exaggerated Mughal accumulation of capital, and did not
adequately account for credit systems developed and controlled by
 The Argument 25

bankers and other commercial agents.32 Second, she accused Richards of

simply repeating idealized versions of the Mughal Empire as outlined in
self-sponsored royal chronicles, suggesting that little was revealed in
those writings about how money was actually valued, circulated, and
deployed. Even strong supporters of Richards’s position that the
Mughal Empire was a highly centralized and self-sufficient affair acknow-
ledge that financial intermediaries and bankers played a crucial role in
imperial administration.33 Leonard concluded her rejoinder with a valu-
able critique, that is, even if we accept Richards’s view about the strength
of state finance, we are still left without a diachronically robust thesis as
to why the Mughal Empire faded.
During their own time and even in the years after, the Leonard-
Richards interaction has not been settled definitively. This is largely
because neither scholar nor later authors have been able to identify a
business group that was both key to Mughal politics, and then later
continued their services to its successor states. The evidence in
Bankrolling Empire bridges this significant gap, for Shantidas Jhaveri
and his descendants provide an unparalleled opportunity to revisit the
nature of state-capital relations both during and then immediately after
Mughal times. As we shall see, while the Jhaveris were implicated in
Mughal wars of princely succession in 1627 and again in 1658, it was
their descendants who further entrenched the family into financing com-
peting projects of statecraft well into the late Mughal and post-
Mughal periods.34
The research presented in the pages to follow strongly suggests that
while Leonard’s perspective was innovative, the Mughals did not depend
on private finance to run state operations. They were not consistently
bankrolled by private capitalists. It was during exceptional crises such as

32
Leonard, “Indigenous Banking Firms.”
33
A. Jan Qaisar. “The Role of Brokers in Medieval India.” Indian Historical Review 1, no. 2
(1974): 220–46; Irfan Habib. “Usury in Medieval India.” Comparative Studies in Society
and History 6, no. 4 (1964): 393–419 and Irfan Habib. “Banking in Mughal India.”
In Contributions to Indian Economic History. Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, 1–20.
Calcutta: K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1960.
34
Mehta, Indian Merchants and Entrepreneurs, 103–4; Dwijendra Tripathi and Makrand
Mehta. “The Nagarsheth of Ahmedabad: The History of an Urban Institution in Gujarat
City.” In Indian Institute of Management Working Papers, 1–26. Ahmedabad: Indian
Institute of Management, 1978. From a different region, the importance of the
Marwari Jagat Seth family in Patna, Murshidabad, and Calcutta demonstrates the
mobility and political power of individuals involved in commerce. For a detailed
account of how this family firm developed close ties with various political rulers
including the Nawabs of Bengal and officials of the early East India Company in
Bengal starting in the late seventeenth century, see J. H. Little. House of Jagatseth.
Calcutta: Calcutta Historical Society, 1920.
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shew fairer, and are made to look more attractive, in these artificial
representations, than in their own rude and native aspects. Thus, by
the united powers of discipline and inclination, we are almost
necessitated to see nature in the same light, and to know her only in
the dress, in which her happier suitors and favourites first gave her
to observation.

The effect of this early bias of the mind, which insensibly grows into
the inveteracy of habit, needs not be insisted on. When the poet,
thus tutored in the works of imitation, comes to address himself to
invention, these familiar images, which he hath so often and so
fondly admired, immediately step in and intercept his observation of
their great original. Or, if he has power to hold them off, and turn his
eye directly on the primary object, he still inclines to view it only on
that side and in those lights, in which he has been accustomed to
study it. Nor let it be said, that this is the infirmity, only, of weak
minds. It belongs to our very natures, and the utmost vigour of
genius is no security against it. Custom, in this as in every thing
else, moulds, at pleasure, the soft and ductile matter of a minute
spirit, and by degrees can even bend the elastic metal of the
greatest.

And if the force of habit can thus determine a writer knowingly, to

imitation, it cannot be thought strange, that it should frequently
carry him into resemblance, when himself perhaps is not aware of it.
Great readers, who have their memories fraught with the stores of
ancient and modern poetry, unavoidably employ the sentiments, and
sometimes the very words, of other writers, without any distinct
remembrance of them, or so much as the suspicion of having seen
them. At the least, their general cast of thinking or turn of
expression will be much affected by them. For the most original
writer as certainly takes a tincture from the authors in which he has
been most conversant; as water, from the beds of earths or
minerals, it hath happened to run over. Especially such authors, as
are studied and even got by heart by us in our early youth, leave a
lasting impression, which is hardly ever effaced out of the mind.
Hence a certain constrained and unoriginal air, in some degree or
other, in every genius, throughly disciplined by a course of learned
education. Which, by the way, leads to a question, not very absurd
in itself, however it may pass with most readers for paradoxical, viz.
“Whether the usual forms of learning be not rather injurious to the
true poet, than really assisting to him?” It should seem to be so for a
natural reason. For the faculty of invention, as all our other powers,
is much improved and strengthened by exercise. And great reading
prevents this, by demanding the perpetual exercise of the memory.
Thus the mind becomes not only indisposed, but, for want of use,
really unqualified, to turn itself to other views, than such as habitual
recollection easily presents to it. And this, I am persuaded, hath
been the case with many a fine genius, and especially with one of
our own country34; who, as appears from some original efforts in the
sublime allegorical way, had no want of natural talents for the
greater poetry; which yet were so restrained and disabled by his
constant and superstitious study of the old classics, that he was, in
fact, but a very ordinary poet.

2. But were early habit of less power to incline the mind to imitation,
than it really is, yet the high hand of authority would compel it. For
the first originals in the several species of poetry, like the
Autocthones of old, were deemed to have come into the world by a
kind of miracle. They were perfect prodigies, at least reputed so by
the admiring multitude, from their first appearance. So that their
authority, in a short time, became sacred; and succeeding writers
were obliged, at the hazard of their fame, and as they dreaded the
charge of a presumptuous and prophane libertinism in poetry, to
take them for their guides and models. Which is said even without
the licence of a figure; at least of one of them; whom Cicero calls
the fountain and origin of all DIVINE institutions35; and another, of
elder and more reverend estimation, pronounces to be ὁ θεὸς καὶ
θεῶν προφήτης36·

And what is here observed of the influence of these master spirits,

whom the admiration of antiquity hath placed at the head of the
poetic world, will, with some allowance, hold also, of that of later,
though less original writers, whose uncommon merits have given
them a distinguished rank in it.

3. Next, (as it usually comes to pass in other instances) what was, at

first, imposed by the rigour of authority, soon grew respectable in
itself, and was chosen for its own sake, as a virtue, which deserved
no small commendation. For, when sober and enlightened criticism
began to inspect, at leisure, these miracles of early invention, it
presently acknowledged them for the best, as well as the most
ancient, poetic models, and accordingly recommended, or more
properly enjoined them by rule, to the imitation of all ages. The
effect of this criticism was clearly seen in the works of all succeeding
poets in the same language. But, when a new and different one was
to be furnished with fresh models, it became much more
conspicuous. For, besides the same or a still higher veneration of
their inventions, which the distance of place and time insensibly
procured to them, the grace of novelty, which they would appear to
have in another language, was, now, a further inducement to copy
them. Hence we find it to be the utmost pride of the Roman writers,
such I mean as came the nearest to them in the divinity of their
genius, to follow the practice, and emulate the virtues, of the
Grecian.

Libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps,

Non aliena meo pressi pede—

says one of the best of those writers, who yet was only treading in
the footsteps of his Grecian masters.

But another was less reserved, and seemed desirous of being taken
notice of, as an express imitator, without so much as laying in his
claim to this sort of originality, in a new language—in multis versibus
Virgilius fecit—non surripiendi causâ, sed palam imitandi, hoc animo
ut vellet agnosci. Sen. Suasor. III.
And, on the revival of these arts in later times and more barbarous
languages, the same spirit appeared again, or rather superior
honours were paid to successful imitation. So that what a polite
French writer declares on this head is, now, become the fixed
opinion of the learned in all countries. “C’est même donner une
grace à ses ouvrages, que de les orner de fragmens antiques. Des
vers d’Horace et de Virgile bien traduits, et mis en œuvre à propos
dans un poëme François, y font le même effet que les statuës
antiques font dans la gallerie de Versailles. Les lecteurs retrouvent
avec plaisir, sous une nouvelle forme, la pensée, qui leur plût
autrefois en Latin37.”

It should, further, be added, that this praise of borrowing from the

originals of Greece and Rome is now extended to the imitation of
great modern authors. Every body applauds this practice, where the
imitation is of approved writers in different languages. And even in
the same languages, when this liberty is taken with the most ancient
and venerable, it is not denied to have its grace and merit.

4. But, besides these several incitements, similarity of genius, alone,

will, almost necessarily determine a writer to the studious emulation
of some other. For, though it is with the minds, as the faces of men,
that no two are exactly and in every feature alike; yet the general
cast of their genius, as well as the air and turn of the countenance,
will frequently be very similar in different persons. When two such
spirits approach, they run together with eagerness and rapidity: the
instinctive bias of the mind towards imitation being now quickened
by passion. This is chiefly said in respect of that uniformity of style
and manner, which, whenever we observe it in two writers, we
almost constantly charge to the account of imitation. Indeed, where
the resemblance holds to the last degree of minuteness, or where
the peculiarities, only, of the model are taken, there is ground
enough for this suspicion. For every original genius, however
consonant, in the main, to any other, has still some distinct marks
and characters of his own, by which he may be distinguished; and to
copy peculiarities, when there is no appearance of the same original
spirit, which gave birth to them, is manifest affectation. But the
question is put of such, whose manner hath only a general, though
strong, resemblance to that of some other, and whose true genius is
above the suspicion of falling into the trap of what Horace happily
calls, EXEMPLAR VITIIS IMITABILE. And of these it is perhaps juster to
say, that a previous correspondency of character impelled to imitate,
than that imitation itself produced that correspondency of character.
At least (which is all my concern it present) it will be allowed to
incline a writer strongly to imitation; and where a congenial spirit
appears to provoke him to it, a candid critic will not be forward to
turn this circumstance to the dishonour of his invention.

5. Lastly, were every other consideration out of the way, yet,

oftentimes, the very nature of the poet’s theme would oblige him to
a diligent imitation of preceding writers. I do not mean this of such
subjects, as suggest and produce a necessary conformity of
description, whether purposely intended or not. This hath been fully
considered. But my meaning is, that, when the greater provinces of
poetry have been, already, occupied, and its most interesting scenes
exhausted; or, rather, their application to the uses of poetry
determined by great masters, it becomes, thenceforward,
unavoidable for succeeding writers to draw from their sources. The
law of probability exacts this at their hands; and one may almost
affirm, that to copy them closely is to paint after nature. I shall
explain myself by an instance or two.

With regard to the religious opinions and ceremonies of the Pagan

world, the writings of Homer, it is said and very truly, were “the
standard of private belief, and the grand directory of public
worship38.” Whatever liberty might have been taken with the rites
and gods of Paganism before his time, yet, when he had given an
exact description of both, and had formed, to the satisfaction of all,
the established religion into a kind of system, succeeding poets were
obliged, of course, to take their theology from him; and could no
longer be thought to write justly and naturally of their Gods, than
whilst their descriptions conformed to the authentic delineations of
Homer. His relations, and even the fictions, which his genius had
raised on the popular creed of elder Paganism, were now the proper
archetype of all religious representations. And to speak of these, as
given truly and originally, is, in effect, to say, that they were
borrowed or rather transcribed from the page of that poet.

And the same may be observed of historical facts, as of religious

traditions. For not unfrequently, where the subject is taken from
authentic history, the authority of a preceding poet is so prevalent,
as to render any account of the matter improbable, which is not
fashioned and regulated after his ideas. A succeeding writer is
neither at liberty to relate matters of fact, which no one thinks
credible, nor to feign afresh for himself. In this case, again, all that
the most original genius has to do, is to imitate. We have been told
that the second book of the Aeneis was translated from Pisander39.
Another thinks, it was taken from the LITTLE ILIAD40. Or, why confine
him to either of these, when Metrodorus, Syagrus, Hegesianax, Aratus,
and others, wrote poems on the taking of Troy? But granting the
poet (as is most likely) to have had these originals before him, what
shall we infer from it? Only this, that he took his principal facts and
circumstances (as we see he was obliged to do for the sake of
probability) from these writers. And why should this be thought a
greater crime in him, than in Polygnotus; who, in his famous picture
on this subject, was under the necessity, and for the same reason, of
collecting his subject-matter from several poets41?

It follows, from these considerations, that we cannot justify

ourselves in thinking so hardly, as we commonly do, of the class of
imitators; which is, now, by the concurrence of various
circumstances, become the necessary character of almost all poets.
Nor let it be any concern to the true poet, that it is so. For
imitations, when real and confessed, may still have their merit; nay,
I presume to add, sometimes a greater merit, than the very originals
on which they are formed: And, with the reader’s leave (though I am
hastening to a conclusion of this long discourse), I will detain him,
one moment, with the reasons of this opinion.
After all the praises that are deservedly given to the novelty of a
subject, or the beauty of design, the supreme merit of poetry, and
that which more especially immortalizes the writers of it, lies in the
execution. It is thus that the poets of the Augustan age have not so
properly excelled, as discredited, all the productions of their
predecessors; and that those of the age of Louis XIVth not only
obscure, but will in process of time obliterate, the fame and memory
of the elder French writers. Or, to see the effect of masterly
execution in single instances, hence it is, that Lucilius not only yields
to Horace, but would be almost forgotten by us, if it had not been
for the honour his imitator has done him. And nobody needs be told
the advantage which Pope is likely to have over all our older satirists,
excellent as some of them are, and more entitled than he to the
honour of being inventors. We have here, then, an established fact.
The first essays of genius, though ever so original, are overlooked;
while the later productions of men, who had never risen to such
distinction but by means of the very originals they disgrace, obtain
the applause and admiration of all ages.

The solution of this fact, so notorious, and, at the same time, so

contrary, in appearance, to the honours which men are disposed to
pay to original invention, will open the mystery of that matter we are
now considering.

The faculties, or, as we may almost term them, the magic powers,
which ope the palace of eternity to great writers, are a confirmed
judgment, and ready invention.

Now the first is seen to most advantage, in selecting, out of all

preceding stores, the particulars that are most suited to the nature
of a poet’s work, and the ends of poetry. When true genius has
exhausted, as it were, the various manners, in which a work of art
may be conducted, and the various topics which may be employed
to adorn it, judgment is in its province, or rather sovereignty, when it
determines which of all these is to be preferred, and which
neglected. In this sense, as well as others, it will be most true, Quòd
artis pars magna contineatur imitatione.

Nay, by means of this discernment, the very topic or method, which

had no effect, or perhaps an ill one, under one management, or in
one situation, shall charm every reader, in another. And by force of
judging right, the copier shall almost lose his title, and become an
inventor:
 Tantum de medio sumptis accedit honoris.

But imitation, though it give most room to the display of judgment,

does not exclude the exercise of the other faculty, invention. Nay, it
requires the most dextrous, perhaps the most difficult, exertion of
this faculty. For consider how the case stands. When we speak of an
imitator, we do not speak, as the poet says, of

A barren-spirited fellow, one who feeds

On abject orts, and imitations—

but of one, who, in aiming to be like, contends also to be equal to

his original. To attain to this equality, it is not enough that he select
the best of those stores which are ready prepared to his hand (for
thus he would be rather a skilful borrower, than a successful
imitator); but, in taking something from others, he must add much
of his own: he must improve the expression, where it is defective or
barely passable: he must throw fresh lights of fancy on a common
image: he must strike out new hints from a vulgar sentiment. Thus,
he will complete his original, where he finds it imperfect: he will
supply its omissions: he will emulate, or rather surpass, its highest
beauties. Or, in despair of this last, we shall find him taking a
different route; giving us an equivalent in a beauty of another kind,
which yet he extracts from some latent intimation of his author; or,
where his purpose requires the very same representation, giving it a
new form, perhaps a nobler, by the turn of his application.

But all this requires not only the truest judgment, but the most
delicate operation of inventive genius. And, where they both meet in
a supreme degree, we sometimes find an admired original, not only
excelled by his imitator, but almost discredited. Of which, if there
were no other, the sixth book of Virgil, I mean taking it in the light of
an imitation, is an immortal instance.
Thus much I could not forbear saying on the merit of successful
imitation. As to the necessity of the thing, hear the apology of a
great Poet, for himself. “All that is left us, says this original writer, is
to recommend our productions by the imitation of the ancients: and
it will be found true, that, in every age, the highest character for
sense and learning has been obtained by those who have been the
most indebted to them. For, to say truth, whatever is very good
sense, must have been common sense in all times; and what we call
learning is but the knowledge of our predecessors. Therefore they
who say our thoughts are not our own, because they resemble the
ancients, may as well say, our faces are not our own, because they
are like our fathers: and indeed it is very unreasonable, that people
should expect us to be scholars, and yet be angry to find us so42.”

He adds, “I fairly confess, that I have served myself all I could by

reading:” where the good sense of the practice, is as conspicuous,
as the ingenuity, so becoming the greatness of his character, in
confessing it. For, when a writer, who, as we have seen, is driven by
so many powerful motives to the imitation of preceding models,
revolts against them all, and determines, at any rate, to be original,
nothing can be expected but an aukward straining in every thing.
Improper method, forced conceits, and affected expression, are the
certain issue of such obstinacy. The business is to be unlike; and this
he may very possibly be, but at the expence of graceful ease and
true beauty. For he puts himself, at best, into a convulsed, unnatural
state; and it is well, if he be not forced, beside his purpose, to leave
common sense, as well as his model, behind him. Like one who
would break loose from an impediment, which holds him fast; the
very endeavour to get clear of it throws him into uneasy attitudes,
and violent contorsions; and, if he gain his liberty at last, it is by an
effort, which carries him much further than the point he would wish
to stop at.

And, that the reader may not suspect me of asserting this without
experience, let me exemplify what has been here said in the case of
a very eminent person, who, with all the advantages of art and
nature that could be required to adorn the true poet, was ruined by
this single error. The person I mean was Sir William D’Avenant; whose
Gondibert will remain a perpetual monument of the mischiefs, which
must ever arise from this affectation of originality in lettered and
polite poets.

The great author, when he projected his plan of an heroic poem,

was so far from intending to steer his course by example, that he
sets out, in his preface, with upbraiding the followers of Homer, as a
base and timorous crew of coasters, who would not adventure to
launch forth on the vast ocean of invention. For, speaking of this
poet, he observes, “that, as sea marks are chiefly used to coasters,
and serve not those who have the ambition of discoverers, that love
to sail in untried seas; so he hath rather proved a guide for those,
whose satisfied wit will not venture beyond the track of others; than
to them, who affect a new and remote way of thinking; who esteem
it a deficiency and meanness of mind, to stay and depend upon the
authority of example43.”

And, afterwards, he professedly makes his own merit to consist in

“an endeavour to lead truth through unfrequented and new ways,
and from the most remote shades; by representing nature, though
not in an affected, yet in an unusual dress44.” These were the
principles he went upon: let us now attend to the success of his
endeavours.

The METHOD of his work is defective in many respects. To instance in

the two following. Observing the large compass of the ancient epic,
for which he saw no cause in nature, and which, he supposed, had
been followed merely from a blind deference to the authority of the
first model, he resolved to construct an heroic poem on the narrower
and, as he conceived, juster plan of the dramatic poets. And,
because it was their practice, for the purpose of raising the passions
by a close accelerated plot, and for the convenience of
representation, to conclude their subject in five acts, he affects to
restrain himself within the same limits. The event was, that, cutting
himself off, by this means, from the opportunity of digressive
ornaments, which contribute so much to the pomp of the epic
poetry; and, what is more essential, from the advantage of the most
gradual and circumstantiated narration, which gives an air of truth
and reality to the fable, he failed in accomplishing the proper end of
this poem, ADMIRATION; produced by a grandeur of design and
variety of important incidents, and sustained by all the energy and
minute particularity of description.

2. It was essential to the ancient epos to raise and exalt the fable by
the intervention of supernatural agency. This, again, the poet
mistook for the prejudice of the affected imitators of Homer, “who
had so often led them into heaven and hell, till, by conversation with
gods and ghosts, they sometimes deprive us of those natural
probabilities in story, which are instructive to human life45.” Here
then he would needs be original; and so, by recording only the
affairs of men, hath fairly omitted a necessary part of the epic plan,
and that which, of all others, had given the greatest state and
magnificence to its construction. Yet here, to do him justice, one
thing deserves our commendation. It had been the way of the
Italian romancers, who were at that time the best poets, to run very
much into prodigy and enchantment. “Not only to exceed the work,
but also the possibility of nature, they would have impenetrable
armors, inchanted castles, invulnerable bodies, iron men, flying
horses, and a thousand other such things, which are easily feigned
by them that dare46.” These conceits, he rightly saw, had too slender
a foundation in the serious belief of his age to justify a relation of
them. And had he only dropped these, his conduct had been without
blame. But, as it is the weakness of human nature, the observation
of this extreme determined him to the other, of admitting nothing,
however well established in the general opinion, that was
supernatural.

And as here he did too much, so in another respect, it may be

observed, he did too little. The romancers, before spoken of, had
carried their notions of gallantry in ordinary life, as high, as they had
done those of preternatural agency, in their marvellous fictions. Yet
here this original genius, who was not to be held by the shackles of
superstition, suffered himself to be entrapped in the silken net of
love and honour. And so hath adopted, in his draught of characters,
that elevation of sentiment which a change of manners could not but
dispose the reader to regard as fantastic in the Gothic romance, at
the same time that he rejected what had the truest grace in the
ancient epic, a sober intermixture of religion.

The execution of his poem was answerable to the general method.

His SENTIMENTS are frequently forced, and so tortured by an
affectation of wit, that every stanza hath the air of an epigram. And
the EXPRESSION, in which he cloaths them, is so quaint and figurative,
as turns his description almost into a continued riddle.

Such was the effect of a studious affectation of originality in a writer,

who, but for this misconduct, had been in the first rank of our poets.
His endeavour was to keep clear of the models, in which his youth
had been instructed, and which he perfectly understood. And in this
indeed he succeeded. But the success lost him the possession of,
what his large soul appears to have been full of, a true and
permanent glory; which hath ever arisen, and can only arise, from
the unambitious simplicity of nature; contemplated in her own
proper form, or, by reflexion, in the faithful mirror of those very
models, he so much dreaded.

In short, from what hath been here advanced, and especially as

confirmed by so uncommon an instance, I think myself entitled to
come at once to this general conclusion, which they, who have a
comprehensive view of the history of letters, in their several periods,
and a just discernment to estimate their state in them, will hardly
dispute with me, “that, though many causes concur to produce a
thorough degeneracy of taste in any country; yet the principal, ever,
is, THIS ANXIOUS DREAD OF IMITATION IN POLITE AND CULTIVATED
WRITERS.”
And, if such be the case, among the other uses of this Essay, it may
perhaps serve for a seasonable admonition to the poets of our time,
to relinquish their vain hopes of originality, and turn themselves to a
stricter imitation of the best models. I say, a seasonable admonition;
for the more polished a nation is, and the more generally these
models are understood, the greater danger there is, as was now
observed, of running into that worst of literary faults, affectation.
But, to stimulate their endeavours to this practice, the judgment of
the public should first be set right; and their readers prepared to
place a just value upon it. In this respect, too, I would willingly
contribute, in some small degree, to the service of letters. For the
poet, whose object is fame, will always adapt himself to the humour
of those, who confer it. And till the public taste be reduced, by sober
criticism, to a just standard, strength of genius will only enable a
writer to pervert it still further, by a too successful compliance with
its vicious expectations.
 A

DISSERTATION
ON

THE MARKS OF IMITATION.

 DISSERTATION IV.
ON

THE MARKS OF IMITATION.

TO MR. MASON.
I have said, in the discourse on Poetical Imitation, “that coincidencies
of a certain kind, and in a certain degree, cannot fail to convict a
writer of Imitation47.” You are curious, my friend, to know what these
coincidencies are, and have thought that an attempt to point them
out would furnish an useful Supplement to what I have written on
this subject. But the just execution of this design would require,
besides a careful examination of the workings of the human mind,
an exact scrutiny of the most original and most imitative writers.
And, with all your partiality for me, can you, in earnest, think me
capable of fulfilling the first of these conditions; Or, if I were, do you
imagine that, at this time o’ day, I can have the leisure to perform
the other? My younger years, indeed, have been spent in turning
over those authors which young men are most fond of; and among
these I will not disown that the Poets of ancient and modern fame
have had their full share in my affection. But you, who love me so
well, would not wish me to pass more of my life in these flowery
regions; which though you may yet wander in without offence, and
the rather as you wander in them with so pure a mind and to so
moral a purpose, there seems no decent pretence for me to loiter in
them any longer.
Yet in saying this I would not be thought to assume that severe
character; which, though sometimes the garb of reason, is oftener, I
believe, the mask of dulness, or of something worse. No, I am too
sensible to the charms, nay to the uses of your profession, to affect
a contempt for it. The great Roman said well, Haec studia
adolescentiam alunt; senectutem oblectant. We make a full meal of
them in our youth. And no philosophy requires so perfect a
mortification as that we should wholly abstain from them in our riper
years. But should we invert the observation; and take this light food
not as the refreshment only, but as the proper nourishment of Age;
such a name as Cicero’s, I am afraid, would be wanting, and not
easily found, to justify the practice.

Let us own then, on a greater authority than His, “That every thing
is beautiful in its season.” The Spring hath its buds and blossoms:
But, as the year runs on, you are not displeased, perhaps, to see
them fall off; and would certainly be disappointed not to find them,
in due time, succeeded by those mellow hangings, the poet
somewhere speaks of.

I could alledge still graver reasons. But I would only say, in one
word, that your friend has had his share in these amusements. I
may recollect with pleasure, but must never live over again

Pieriosque dies, et amantes carmina somnos.

Yet something, you insist, is to be done; and, if it amount to no

more than a specimen or slight sketch, such as my memory, or the
few notes I have by me, would furnish, the design, you think, is not
totally to be relinquished.

I understand the danger of gratifying you on these terms. Yet,

whatever it be, I have no power to excuse myself from any attempt,
by which, you tell me at least, I may be able to gratify you. I will do
my best, then, to draw together such observations, as I have
sometimes thought, in reading the poets, most material for the
certain discovery of Imitations. And I address them to YOU, not only
as you are the properest judge of the subject; you, who understand
so well in what manner the Poets are us’d to imitate each other, and
who yourself so finely imitate the best of them; But as I would give
you this small proof of my affection, and have perhaps the ambition
of publishing to the world in this way the entire friendship, that
subsists between us.

You tell me I have not succeeded amiss in explaining the difficulty of

detecting Imitations. The materials of poetry, you own, lie so much
in common amongst all writers, and the several ways of employing
them are so much under the controul of common sense, that
writings will in many respects be similar, where there is no thought
or design of Imitating. I take advantage of this concession to
conclude from it, That we can seldom pronounce with certainty of
Imitations without some external proof to assist us in the discovery.
You will understand me to mean by these external proofs, the
previous knowledge we have, from considerations not respecting the
Nature of the work itself, of the writer’s ability or inducements to
imitate. Our first enquiry, then, will be, concerning the Age,
Character, and Education of the supposed Imitator.

We can determine with little certainty, how far the principal Greek
writers have been indebted to Imitation. We trace the waters of
Helicon no higher than to their source. And we acquiesce, with
reason, in the device of the old painter, you know of, who somewhat
rudely indeed, but not absurdly, drew the figure of Homer with a
fountain streaming out of his mouth, and the other poets watering
at it.

Hither, as to their fountain, other Stars

Repairing, in their golden urns draw light.
The Greek writers then were, or, for any thing we can say, might be
Original.

But we can rarely affirm this of any other. And the reason is plain.
When a taste for letters prevailed in any country, if it arose at first
from the efforts of original thinking, it was immediately cherished
and cultivated by the study of the old writers. You are too well
acquainted with the progress of ancient and modern wit to doubt of
this fact. Rome adorned itself in the spoils of Greece. And both
assisted in dressing up the later European poetry. What else do you
find in the Italian or French Wits, but the old matter, worked over
again; only presented to us in a new form, and embellished perhaps
with a conceit or two of mere modern invention?

But the English, you say, or rather your fondness for your Masters
leads you to suppose, are original thinkers. ’Tis true, Nature has
taken a pleasure to shew us what she could do, by the production of
ONE Prodigy. But the rest are what we admire them for, not indeed
without Genius, perhaps with a larger share of it than has fallen to
the lot of others, yet directly and chiefly by the discipline of art and
the helps of imitation.

The golden times of the English Poetry were, undoubtedly, the

reigns of our two Queens. Invention was at its height, in the one;
and Correctness, in the other. In both, the manners of a court
refin’d, without either breaking or corrupting the spirit of our poets.
But do you forget that Elizabeth read Greek and Latin almost as
easily as our Professors? And can you doubt that what she knew so
well, would be known, admired, and imitated by every other? Or say,
that the writers of her time were, some of them, ignorant enough of
the learned languages to be inventors; can you suppose, from what
you know of the fashion of that age, that their fancies would not be
sprinkled, and their wits refreshed by the essences of the Italian
poetry?
I scarcely need say a word of our OTHER Queen, whose reign was
unquestionably the æra of classic imitation and of classic taste. Even
they, who had never been as far as Greece or Italy, to warm their
imaginations or stock their memories, might do both to a tolerable
degree in France; which, though it bowed to our country’s arms, had
almost the ascendant in point of letters.

I mention these things only to put you in mind that hardly one of our
poets has been in a condition to do without, or certainly be above,
the suspicion of learned imitation. And the observation is so true,
that even in this our age, when good letters, they say, are departing
from us, the Greek or Roman stamp is still visible in every work of
genius, that has taken with the public. Do you think one needed to
be told in the title-page, that a late Drama, or some later Odes were
formed on the ancient model?

The drift of all this, you will say, is to overturn the former discourse;
for that now I pretend, every degree of likeness to a preceding
writer is an argument of imitation. Rather, if you please, conclude
that, in my opinion, every degree of likeness is exposed to the
suspicion of imitation. To convert this suspicion into a proof, it is not
enough to say, that a writer might, but that his circumstances make
it plain or probable at least, that he did, imitate.

Of these circumstances then, the first I should think deserving our

attention, is the AGE in which the writer lived. One should know if it
were an age addicted to much study, and in which it was creditable
for the best writers to make a shew of their reading. Such especially
was the age succeeding to that memorable æra, the revival of letters
in these western countries. The fashion of the time was to
interweave as much of ancient wit as possible in every new work.
Writers were so far from affecting to think and speak in their own
way, that it was their pride to make the admired ancient think and
speak for them. This humour continued very long, and in some sort
even still continues: with this difference indeed, that, then, the
ancients were introduced to do the honours, since, to do the
drudgery of the entertainment. But several causes conspired to carry
it to its height in England about the beginning of the last century.
You may be sure, then, the writers of that period abound in
imitations. The best poets boasted of them as their sovereign
excellence. And you will easily credit, for instance, that B. Jonson
was a servile imitator, when you find him on so many occasions little
better than a painful translator.

I foresee the occasion I shall have, in the course of this letter, to

weary you with citations: and would not therefore go out of my way
for them. Yet, amidst a thousand instances of this sort in Jonson, the
following, I fancy, will entertain you. The Latin verses, you know, are
of Catullus.

Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis,

Ignotus pecori, nullo convulsus aratro,
Quem mulcent auræ, firmat sol, educat imber,
Multi illum pueri, multæ optavere puellæ.
Idem, quum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,
Nulli illum pueri, nullæ optavere puellæ.

It came in Jonson’s way, in one of his masks, to translate this

passage; and observe with what industry he has secured the sense,
while the spirit of his author escapes him.

Look, how a flower that close in closes grows,

Hid from rude cattle, bruised with no plows,
Which th’ air doth stroke, sun strengthen, show’rs shoot high’r,
It many youths, and many maids desire;
The same, when cropt by cruel hand, is wither’d,
No youths at all, no maidens have desir’d.
—It was not thus, you remember, that Ariosto and Pope have
translated these fine verses. But to return to our purpose:

To this consideration of the Age of a writer, you may add, if you

please, that of his Education. Though it might not, in general, be the
fashion to affect learning, the habits acquired by a particular writer
might dispose him to do so. What was less esteemed by the
enthusiasts of Milton’s time (of which however he himself was one of
the greatest) than prophane or indeed any kind of learning? Yet we,
who know that his youth was spent in the study of the best writers
in every language, want but little evidence to convince us that his
great genius did not disdain to stoop to imitation. You assent, I dare
say, to Dryden’s compliment, though it be an invidious one, “That no
man has so copiously translated Homer’s Grecisms, and the Latin
elegancies of Virgil.” Nay, don’t you remember, the other day, that
we were half of a mind to give him up for a shameless plagiary,
chiefly because we were sure he had been a great reader.

But no good writer, it will be said, has flourished out of a learned

age, or at least without some tincture of learning. It may be so. Yet
every writer is not disposed to make the most of these advantages.
What if we pay some regard then to the CHARACTER of the writer? A
poet, enamoured of himself, and who sets up for a great inventive
genius, thinks much to profit by the sense of his predecessors, and
even when he steals, takes care to dissemble his thefts, and to
conceal them as much as possible. You know I have instanced in
such a poet in Sir William D’Avenant. In detecting the imitations of
such a writer, one must then proceed with some caution. But what if
our concern be with one, whose modesty leads him to revere the
sense and even the expression of approved authors, whose taste
enables him to select the finest passages in their works, and whose
judgment determines him to make a free use of them? Suppose we
know all this from common fame, and even from his own confession;
would you scruple to call that an imitation in him, which in the other
might have passed for resemblance only?
As the character is amiable, you will be pleased to hear me own,
there are many modern poets to whom it belongs. Perhaps, the first
that occurred to my thoughts was Mr. Addison. But the observation
holds of others, and of one, in particular, very much his superior in
true genius. I know not whether you agree with me, that the famous
line in the Essay on Man;

“An honest man’s the noblest work of God,”

is taken from Plato’s, Πάντων ἱερώτατόν ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος ὁ ἀγαθός.

But I am sure you will that the still more famous lines, which shallow
men repeat without understanding,

“For modes of Faith let graceless zealots fight,

His, can’t be wrong whose life is in the right:”

are but copied, though with vast improvement in the force and turn
of expression, from the excellent and, let it be no disparagement to
him to say, from the orthodox Mr. Cowley. The poet is speaking of
his friend Crashaw.

“His Faith perhaps in some nice tenets might

Be wrong; his life, I’m sure, was in the right.”

Mr. Pope, who found himself in the same circumstances with

Crashaw, and had suffered no doubt from the like uncharitable
constructions of graceless zeal, was very naturally tempted to adopt
this candid sentiment, and to give it the further heightening of his
own spirited expression.

Let us see then how far we are got in this inquiry. We may say of the
old Latin poets, that they all came out of the Greek schools. It is as
true of the moderns in this part of the world, that they, in general,
have had their breeding in both the Greek and Latin. But when the
question is of any particular writer, how far and in what instances
you may presume on his being a professed imitator, much will
depend on the certain knowledge you have of his Age, Education,
and Character. When all these circumstances meet in one man, as
they have done in others, but in none perhaps so eminently as in B.
Jonson, wherever you find an acknowledged likeness, you will do
him no injustice to call it imitation.

Yet all this, you say, comes very much short of what you require of
me. You want me to specify those peculiar considerations, and even
to reduce them into rule, from which one may be authorised, in any
instance to pronounce of imitations. It is not enough, you pretend,
to say of any passage in a celebrated poet, that it most probably
was taken from some other. In your extreme jealousy for the credit
of your order, you call upon me to shew the distinct marks which
convict him of this commerce.

In a word, You require me to turn to the poets; to gather a number

of those passages I call Imitations; and to point to the circumstances
in each that prove them to be so. I attend you with pleasure in this
amusing search. It is not material, I suppose, that we observe any
strict method in our ramblings. And yet we will not wholly neglect it.

Perhaps then we shall find undoubted marks of Imitation, both in

the Sentiment, and Expression of great writers.

To begin with such considerations as are most GENERAL.

I. An identity of the subject-matter of poetry is no sure evidence of

Imitation: and least of all, perhaps, in natural description. Yet where
the local peculiarities of nature are to be described, there an exact
conformity of the matter will evince an imitation.

Descriptive poets have ever been fond of lavishing all the riches of
their fancy on the Spring. But the appearances of this prime of the
year are so diversified with the climate, that descriptions of it, if
taken directly from nature, must needs be very different. The Greek
and Latin, and, since them, the Provencial poets, when they insist,
as they always do, on the indulgent softness of this season, its
genial dews and fostering breezes, speak nothing but what is
agreeable to their own experience and feeling.

It ver; et Venus; et Veneris praenuntius antè

Pinnatus graditur Zephyrus vestigia propter:
Flora quibus mater praespergens antè viaï
Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

Venus, or the spirit of love, is represented by those poets as

brooding o’er this delicious season;

Rura foecundat voluptas: rura Venerem sentiunt.

Ipsa gemmas purpurantem pingit annum floribus:
Ipsa surgentis papillas de Favonî spiritu
Urguet in toros tepentes; ipsa roris lucidi, &c.

and a great deal more to the same purpose, which every one
recollects in the old classic and in the Provencial poets.

But when we hear this language from the more Northern, and
particularly our English bards, who perhaps are shivering with the
blasts of the North-east, at the very time their imagination would
warm itself with these notions, one is certain this cannot be the
effect of observation, but of a sportful fancy; enchanted by the
native loveliness of these exotic images, and charmed by the secret
insensible power of imitation.

And to shew the certainty of this conclusion, Shakespear, we may

observe, who had none of this classical or Provencial bias on his
mind, always describes, not a Greek, or Italian, or Provencial, but an
English Spring; where we meet with many unamiable characters;
and, among the rest, instead of Zephyr or Favonius, we have the
bleak North-east, that nips the blooming infants of the Spring.

But there are other obvious examples. In Cranmer’s prophetic

speech, at the end of Henry VIII. when the poet makes him say of
Queen Elizabeth, that,

“In her days ev’ry man shall eat with safety

Under his own vine what he plants.”

and of King James, that,

“He shall flourish,

And, like a mountain Cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him”—

It is easy to see that his Vine and Cedar are not of English growth,
but transplanted from Judæa. I do not mention this as an
impropriety in the poet, who, for the greater solemnity of his
prediction, and even from a principle of decorum, makes his Arch-
bishop fetch his imagery from Scripture. I only take notice of it as a
certain argument that the imagery was not his own, that is, not
suggested by his own observation of nature.

The case you see, in these instances, is the same as if an English

landskip-painter should choose to decorate his Scene with an Italian
sky. The Connoisseur would say, he had copied this particular from
Titian, and not from Nature. I presume then to give it for a certain
note of Imitation, when the properties of one clime are given to
another.
II. You will draw the same conclusion whenever you find “The
Genius of one people given to another.”

1. Plautus gives us the following true picture of the Greek manners:

—In hominum aetate multa eveniunt hujusmodi—

Irae interveniunt, redeunt rursum in gratiam,
Verùm irae siquae fortè eveniunt hujusmodi,
Inter eos rursum si reventum in gratiam est,
Bis tanto amici sunt inter se, quàm prius.
Amphyt. A. III. S. 2.

You are better acquainted with the modern Italian writers than I am;
but if ever you find any of them transferring this placability of
temper into an eulogy of his countrymen, conclude without
hesitation, that the sentiment is taken.

2. The late Editor of Jonson’s works observes very well the

impropriety of leaving a trait of Italian manners in his Every man in
his humour, when he fitted up that Play with English characters. Had
the scene been laid originally in England, and that trait been given
us, it had convicted the poet of Imitation.

3. This attention to the genius of a people will sometimes shew you,

that the form of composition, as well as particular sentiments, comes
from Imitation. An instance occurs to me as I am writing. The
Greeks, you know, were great haranguers. So were the ancient
Romans, but in a less degree. One is not surprized therefore that
their historians abound in set speeches; which, in their hands,
become the finest parts of their works. But when you find modern
writers indulging in this practice of speech-making, you may guess
from what source the habit is derived. Would Machiavel, for
instance, as little of a Scholar as, they say, he was, have adorned his
fine history of Florence with so many harangues, if the classical bias,
imperceptibly, it may be, to himself, had not hung on his mind?
Another example is remarkable. You have sometimes wondered how
it has come to pass that the moderns delight so much in dialogue-
writing, and yet that so very few have succeeded in it. The proper
answer to the first part of your enquiry will go some way towards
giving you satisfaction as to the last. The practice is not original, has
no foundation in the manners of modern times. It arose from the
excellence of the Greek and Roman dialogues, which was the usual
form in which the ancients chose to deliver their sentiments on any
subject.

Still another instance comes in my way. How happened it, one may
ask, that Sir Philip Sydney in his Arcadia, and afterwards Spenser in his
Fairy Queen, observed so unnatural a conduct in those works; in
which the Story proceeds, as it were, by snatches, and with
continual interruptions? How was the good sense of those writers, so
conversant besides in the best models of antiquity, seduced into this
preposterous method? The answer, no doubt, is, that they were
copying the design, or disorder rather, of Ariosto, the favourite poet
of that time.

III. Of near akin to this contrariety to the genius of a people is

another mark which a careful reader will observe “in the
representation of certain Tenets, different from those which prevail in
a writer’s country or time.”

1. We seldom are able to fasten an imitation, with certainty, on such

a writer as Shakespear. Sometimes we are, but never to so much
advantage as when he happens to forget himself in this respect.
When Claudio, in Measure for Measure, pleads for his life in that
famous speech,
 Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lye in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendant world—

It is plain that these are not the Sentiments which any man
entertained of Death in the writer’s age or in that of the speaker. We
see in this passage a mixture of Christian and Pagan ideas; all of
them very susceptible of poetical ornament, and conducive to the
argument of the Scene; but such as Shakespear had never dreamt
of but for Virgil’s Platonic hell; where, as we read,

aliae panduntur inanes

Suspensae ad ventos: aliis sub gurgite vasto,
Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni.
Virg. l. vi.

2. A prodigiously fine passage in Milton may furnish another example

of this sort,
 When Lust
By unchast looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of Sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres,
Ling’ring, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body, that it lov’d,
And linkt itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.
Mask at Ludlow Castle.

This philosophy of imbruted souls becoming thick shadows is so

remote from any ideas entertained at present of the effects of Sin,
and at the same time is so agreeable to the notions of Plato (a
double favourite of Milton, for his own sake, and for the sake of his
being a favourite with his Italian Masters), that there is not the least
question of its being taken from the Phaedo.

Ἡ τοιαύτη ψυχὴ βαρύνεταί τε καὶ ἕλκεται πάλιν εἰς τὸν ὁρατὸν

τόπον, φόβῳ τοῦ ἀειδοῦς τε καὶ ᾅδου, περὶ τὰ μνήματα καὶ τοὺς
τάφους κυλινδουμένη· περὶ ἃ δὴ καὶ ὤφθη ἄττα ψυχῶν σκιοειδῆ
φαντάσματα, οἷα παρέχονται αἱ τοιαῦται ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα, αἱ μὴ
καθαρῶς ἀπολυθεῖσαι——

There is no wonder, now one sees the fountain Milton drew from,
that, in admiration of this poetical philosophy (which nourished the
fine spirits of that time, though it corrupted some), he should make
the other speaker in the scene cry out, as in a fit of extasy,
 How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo’s lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns—

The very ideas which Lord Shaftesbury has employed in his

encomiums on the Platonic philosophy; and the very language which
Dr. Henry More would have used, if he had known to express himself
so soberly.

3. Having said so much of Plato, whom the Italian writers have

helped to make known to us, let me just observe one thing, to our
present purpose, of those Italian writers themselves. One of their
peculiarities, and almost the first that strikes us, is a certain sublime
mystical air which runs through all their fictions. We find them a sort
of philosophical fanatics, indulging themselves in strange conceits
“concerning the Soul, the chyming of celestial orbs, and presiding
Syrens.” One may tell by these marks, that they doted on the fancies
of Plato; if we had not, besides, direct evidence for this conclusion.
Tasso says of himself, and he applauds the same thing in Petrarch,
“Lessi già tutte l’opere di Platone, è mi rimassero molti semi nella
menta della sua dottrina.” I take these words from Menage, who has
much more to the same purpose, in his elegant observations on the
Amintas of this poet.

One sees then where Milton had been for that imagery in the
Arcades,
 then listen I
To the celestial Syrens’ harmony,
That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres
And sing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of Gods and men is wound.

The best comment on these verses is a passage in the xth Book of

Plato’s Republic, where this whole system, of Syrens quiring to the
fates, is explained or rather delivered.

IV. We have seen a Mark of Imitation, in the allusion of writers to

certain strange, and foreign tenets of philosophy. The observation
may be extended to all those passages (which are innumerable in
our poets) that allude to the rites, customs, language, and theology
of Paganism.

It is true, indeed, this Species of Imitation is not that which is,

properly, the subject of this Letter. The most original writer is
allowed to furnish himself with poetical ideas from all quarters. And
the management of learned Allusion is to be regarded, perhaps, as
one of the nicest offices of Invention. Yet it may be useful to see
from what sources a great poet derives his materials; and the rather,
as this detection will sometimes account for the manner in which he
disposes of them. However, I will but detain you with a remark or
two on this class of Imitations.

1. I observe, that even Shakespear himself abounds in learned

Allusions. How he came by them, is another question; though not so
difficult to be answered, you know, as some have imagined. They,
who are in such astonishment at the learning of Shakespear, besides
that they certainly carry the notion of his illiteracy too far, forget that
the Pagan imagery was familiar to all the poets of his time—that
abundance of this sort of learning was to be picked up from almost
every English book, he could take into his hands—that many of the
best writers in Greek and Latin had been translated into English—
that his conversation lay among the most learned, that is, the most
paganized poets of his age—but above all, that, if he had never
looked into books, or conversed with bookish men, he might have
learned almost all the secrets of paganism (so far, I mean, as a poet
had any use of them) from the Masks of B. Jonson; contrived by that
poet with so pedantical an exactness, that one is ready to take them
for lectures and illustrations on the ancient learning, rather than
exercises of modern wit. The taste of the age, much devoted to
erudition, and still more, the taste of the Princes, for whom he writ,
gave a prodigious vogue to these unnatural exhibitions. And the
knowledge of antiquity, requisite to succeed in them, was, I imagine,
the reason that Shakespear was not over-fond to try his hand at
these elaborate trifles. Once indeed he did, and with such success as
to disgrace the very best things of this kind we find in Jonson. The
short Mask in the Tempest is fitted up with a classical exactness. But
its chief merit lies in the beauty of the Shew, and the richness of the
poetry. Shakespear was so sensible of his Superiority, that he could
not help exulting a little upon it, where he makes Ferdinand say,

This is a most majestic Vision, and

Harmonious charming Lays—

’Tis true, another Poet, who possessed a great part of Shakespear’s

genius and all Jonson’s learning, has carried this courtly
entertainment to its last perfection. But the Mask at Ludlow Castle
was, in some measure, owing to the fairy Scenes of his Predecessor;
who chose this province of Tradition, not only as most suitable to the
wildness of his vast creative imagination, but as the safest for his
unlettered Muse to walk in. For here he had much, you knew, to
expect from the popular credulity, and nothing to fear from the
classic superstition of that time.
2. It were endless to apply this note of imitation to other poets
confessedly learned. Yet one instance is curious enough to be just
mentioned.

Mr. Waller, in his famous poem on the victory over the Dutch on June
3, 1665, has the following lines;

His flight tow’rds heav’n th’ aspiring Belgian took;

But fell, like Phaeton, with thunder strook:
From vaster hopes than his, he seem’d to fall,
That durst attempt the British Admiral:
From her broadsides a ruder flame is thrown,
Than from the fiery chariot of the Sun:
That, bears THE RADIANT ENSIGN OF THE DAY;
And She, the flag that governs in the Sea.

He is comparing the British Admiral’s Ship to the Chariot of the Sun.

You smile at the quaintness of the conceit, and the ridicule he falls
into, in explaining it. But that is not the question at present. The
latter, he says, bears the radiant ensign of the day: The other, the
ensign of naval dominion. We understand how properly the English
Flag is here denominated. But what is that other Ensign? The Sun
itself, it will be said. But who, in our days, ever expressed the Sun by
such a periphrasis? The image is apparently antique, and easily
explained by those who know that anciently the Sun was commonly
emblematized by a starry or radiate figure; nay, that such a figure
was placed aloft, as an Ensign, over the Sun’s charioteer, as we may
see in representations of this sort on ancient Gems and Medals.

From this original then Mr. Waller’s imagery was certainly taken; and
it is properly applied in this place where he is speaking of the Chariot
of the Sun, and Phaeton’s fall from it. But to remove all doubt in the
case, we can even point to the very passage of a Pagan poet, which
Mr. Waller had in his eye, or rather translated.
 Proptereà noctes hiberno tempore longæ
Cessant, dum veniat RADIATUM INSIGNE DIEI.
Lucr. l. v. 698.

Here, you see, the poet’s allusion to a classic idea has led us to the
discovery of the very passage from which it was taken. And this use
a learned reader will often make of the species of Imitation, here
considered.

V. Great writers, you find, sometimes forget the character of the

Age, they live in; the principles, and notions that belong to it.
“Sometimes they forget themselves, that is, their own situation and
character.” Another sign of the influence of Imitation.

1. When we see such men, as Strada and Mariana, writers of fine

talents indeed, but of recluse lives and narrow observation, chusing
to talk like men of the world, and abounding in the most refined
conclusions of the cabinet, we are sure that this character, which we
find so natural in a Cardinal de Retz, is but assumed by these Jesuits.
And we are not surprized to discover, on examination, that their best
reflexions are copied from Tacitus.

On the other hand, when a man of the world took it into his head,
the other day, in a moping fit, to talk Sentences, every body
concluded that this was not the language of the writer or his
situation, but that he had been poaching in some pedant; perhaps in
the Stoical Fop, he affected so much contempt of, Seneca.

2. Sometimes we catch a great writer deviating from his natural

manner, and taking pains, as it were, to appear the very reverse of
his proper character. Would you wish a stronger proof of his being
seduced, at least for the time, by the charms of imitation?

Nothing is better known than the easy, elegant, agreeable vein of

Voiture. Yet you have read his famous Letter to Balzac, and have
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