Chapter 3—
The "Religious" Places of Exchange:
Melas in the Nineteenth-Century Age of Colonialism
"I left Madras on the 18th, Tuesday of May in the year 1830 at 9 in the night and camped at Madhavaram village." With these words, Enugula Veeraswamy (1780–1836), a Niyogi Brahmin of Madras, retraced the beginning of his pilgrimage to Banaras (Kasi). Written almost half a century after Ghulam Husain's history, his "Kasiyatra Charitra," or account (charitra) of a pilgrimage (yatra) to the sacred place (tirtha) of Banaras, documents his long journey to the key pilgrimage sites of north India—mostly along the Ganges—before returning via Calcutta and eastern India.[1] Home, more than fifteen months later, in September 1831, his thoughts turned to God for having returned him safely to his "native place," a return that prompted his recounting of the history of Madras and its people. God and his "native place" also figure in the concluding paragraph in which he described his fellow countrymen as "religious minded" and respectful "towards God and Brahmins" and
[1] Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 1. Written originally in his native Telugu and first published in 1838, this "journal"—Veeraswamy himself used this term in his English correspondence with the Telugu scholar, C. P. Brown—was compiled by K. S. Pillai from detailed letters he received from Veeraswamy. Pillai had apparently requested Veeraswamy to keep him informed of his travels. See Vadlamudi Gopalakrishnaiah, "Preface," Journal , pp. xlii–xlii; V. Ramakrishna, "Traveller's Tales and Social Histories (A Study of Enugula Veeraswamy's Kasiyatra Charitra)," ProceedingsoftheIndian HistoryCongress , GoldenJubilee Session , Gorakhpur , 1989–90 (Delhi: Indian History Congress, 1989–90), pp. 574–55.
in which he acknowledged the colonial presence in this southern city. "God almighty," he noted in closing out the travelogue, "has bestowed upon me livelihood for generations to come under this government."[2]
That Veeraswamy turned to God at the end of his long journey is fitting. It emphasizes the religious character of tirthayatras[3] —pilgrimages or journeys, to a "river ford" or a "crossing place" (or a hierophany, to use Mircea Eliade's word)—and the related phenomenon of melas, or "religious" fairs, as this term is often translated. In so doing, it differentiates them from their ostensibly secular Western counterparts. As the "Kasiyatra Charitra" indicates, the pilgrimage entailed visiting sacred centers (darshan , or seeking an auspicious sight of a sacred shrine or place), fulfilling vows (vrata) , taking ritual baths in the Ganges (Gangaasnan) and other rivers, and performing specific rituals at specific sacred sites (e.g., shraddha , or "faithful offerings" to departed kin). "Pilgrims. . . go to places of worship," as one scholar explains, "either because they have some religious interest directed toward a specific place, the necessary means, or the need. They may also go because there are times when visiting certain places is particularly meritorious."[4] To use the title of a recent ethnographic study of the motivations and values of Indian villagers as pilgrims, pilgrimage involves "fruitful journeys,"[5] odysseys for personal fulfillment.
The reference to "government" is another instructive cue, because it ties the nineteenth-century practice of pilgrimage to a political context defined by the colonial state. The "Gentoo and Malabar" (meaning Telugu-speaking Hindu and Malayalam) interpreter for the Madras Supreme Court of Judicature, Veeraswamy acknowledged that he was favorably disposed toward government. He was a dubash (literally, a person who speaks two languages, or dobasha) , a go-between who could move back and forth between his own culture and that of the for-
[2] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 229–32 . In 1840 his wife and family unsuccessfully petitioned for a pension. GOI, Public, June 10, no. 15 of 1840, para. 8, E/4/954: Madras Despatches, June 10-Dec. 23, 1840.
[3] Diana L. Eck, "India's Tirthas: "Crossings" in Sacred Geography," HistoryofReligions20 (1981): 323–44. Tirtha-yatra , which in "common parlance [means] visitation to sacred places," literally refers to "'undertaking journey to river fords."' See Surinder Mohan Bhardwaj, HinduPlacesofPilgrimageinIndia:AStudyin CulturalGeography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), P. 2.
[4] Agehananda Bharati, "Pilgrimage Sites and Indian Civilization," in ChaptersinIndianCivilization , vol. 1, ClassicalandMedievalIndia , ed. Joseph W. Elder (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1970), p. 95; Veeraswamy, Journal , passim.
[5] Ann Grodzins Gold, FruitfulJourneys:The WaysofRajasthaniPilgrims (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).
eign government to which he owed his "livelihood." A Company man, well aware that British rule extended over much of the subcontinent, he was able to exploit his official connections and credentials to facilitate almost every step of the journey. Letters of recommendation supplied by his superiors opened doors wherever he traveled. At Patna, where he remained between February 18 and March 4, 1831, his contacts enabled him to meet a number of "big persons."[6]
Moreover, he was careful not to antagonize his patrons, even when several Englishmen asked him a question that he evidently found distasteful: "'Your [sic] are learned so much in English, why then do you perform these teertha yatras like a country cousin?' I was in need of their good offices. It would have been a strain for me to reply and convince them; I therefore maintained a discreet silence."[7] As well as reflecting a fundamental religious divide between colonial subjects and rulers, this exchange also points to the realities of power and authority and the spatial boundaries of colonial rule. Indeed, his experiences more generally highlight the geography and parameters of the colonial state that had consolidated its rule over the subcontinent by the early nineteenth century.
As in the previous chapter on Patna, here, too, I initially view history through the lens of one individual involved in making and writing about it, a method that has its advantages and disadvantages. As a first-person account, Veeraswamy's rich and insightful travelogue correctly accents the subjective considerations and objectives of going "On the Road," to use the suggestive title of Irawati Karve's wonderful anthropological and personal account of pilgrimage.[8] Whether undertaking long and distant trips to the most famous sacred centers of the country or brief visits to nearby holy places of local importance, the aims and experiences of pilgrims shared many similar considerations. But I am also well aware that an eyewitness account of a single pilgrim is obviously not a history of pilgrimage or of melas, however rare and
[6] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 147, 94–95. Among others, he met Judge H. Douglas, a longtime resident of the city.
[7] Ibid., p. 83.
[8] "'On the Road': A Maharashtrian Pilgrimage," in TheExperienceofHinduism:EssaysonReligioninMaharashtra , ed. Eleanor Zelliot and Maxine Berntsen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 142–71. See also Clifford Geertz, "'From the Native's Point of View': On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding," in MeaninginAnthropology , ed. Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976), pp. 222–23.
valuable it is as an emic perspective of melas from the early nineteenth century. Rather, such first-person records represent the voices of the literate elite and not the ordinary travelers, who were the overwhelming majority of pilgrims on the road. The same holds for two other first-person accounts cited in this chapter: the Travels of Bholanauth Chunder, a Bengali bania (trader, moneylender) and a graduate of Hindu College, who initially serialized the narrative of his peregrinations between 1846 and 1866 in the Calcutta newspaper, the Saturday EveningEnglishman; and the Rambles of Ramgopal Singh Chowdhari, a pleader in the Patna High Court and a member of a prominent Patna family, who compiled his Bihar experiences into a book.[9]
Both Veeraswamy, who began the new year of 1831 on the road from Patna to "the great pilgrimage centre Gaya," and Chunder, who undertook his travels toward the middle of that century, were part of the rising tide of pilgrims that crested in the age of colonialism. Most of these came from the ranks of ordinary people, a silent majority who came and went, leaving scarcely a textual trail. For some the only traces were their "signatures," left behind in the genealogical registers maintained at many sacred centers.[10] Remembered only by themselves and their families, these faceless and nameless pilgrims were always described as present "on the road" but rarely ever identified specifically in the colonial records.[11]
[9] Chunder, Travels , vol. 1; Chowdhari, Ramblesin Bihar . See also Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. ix–x, regarding his reputation as a "philanthropist." Contrast these subjective accounts with accounts by anthropologists and writers. The representations inherent in this kind of participant-observation literature is also problematic. See, e.g., Gold, FruitfulJourneys , pp. xi–xiii; E. Valentine Daniel, FluidSigns:BeingaPersontheTamilWay (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984); Karve, "On the Road."
[10] Registers, which record names and family particulars dating as far back as the seventeenth century, were maintained by pandas (priests) at pilgrimage centers. See B. N. Goswami, "The Records Kept by Priests at Centres of Pilgrimage as a Source of Social and Economic History," IESHR 3 (1966): 174–84. The Family History Library of the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City, is rapidly acquiring a large body of these registers.
[11] They surface in official sources only when recognized by the authorities as posing a threat to law and order or as police statistics because they were unfortunate victims of crime. Pilgrims were often victims of highway robbery and thugi because of their numbers and ubiquity on the roads. See, e.g., Colltr., Govt. Customs, Manjhi, to Judge, Shahabad, Apr. 15, 1793, Bengal Cr. Jdcl. Consltns., May 3 to 31, 1793, May 3, no. 5; Magte., Saran, to 3 rd Judge, Court of Circuit, May 10, 1828, Bengal Cr. Jdcl. Procs., Apr. 28 to May 5, 1829, Apr. 28, no. 47; Commr. to I. G., Police, May 7, 1873, Bengal Police Procs. 1873–74, June 1873, no. 29.
To broaden the subjective perspectives, therefore, I have drawn extensively on colonial records that betray biases very different from Veeraswamy's revelations. A juxtaposition of the "pilgrimage" of William Moorcroft with that of Veeraswamy is thus illuminating. Moorcroft's travels are emblematic of the emerging colonial state's concern with fairs. He undertook his early-nineteenth-century tour of the fairs and markets of north India in his capacity as superintendent of the Stud Establishment at Pusa (near the city of Patna) charged with the responsibility of securing and enhancing the military stock of horses. By contrast, Veeraswamy, although also a government official, made his journey as an act of devotion.
Moorcraft's account is indicative of the colonial documentation project, which generated a wealth of records, including material on the cattle complex of melas. In the course of his wide-ranging search for suitable cavalry mounts, which took him as far as Afghanistan, Moorcroft collected information not only on military supplies but also on political and economic conditions obtaining at the peripheries of the Empire.[12] In addition to this type of documentation, we have materials generated by medical and health concerns regarding the sites of pilgrimages and fairs in the second half of the nineteenth century. These, too, were part of the documentation project of the colonial state, a project that informs (and taints) this chapter.
As for the pilgrimage literature, at its best it can only evoke and invoke many of the shared aspects of the two phenomena of pilgrimage and the melas. The former is more readily recovered than the latter. Pilgrimages, that is, were clearly momentous events in the lives of people—the once-in-a-lifetime experience—and therefore they are better preserved in memories; melas, on the other hand—save for the handful of fairs that attracted supralocal and supraregional audiences and were the focal point of significant mela pilgrimages—tended much more to be woven into the everyday fabric of people's lives.
Nevertheless, Veeraswamy testifies to the close relationship between fairs and pilgrimage. For like pilgrimage, fairs have a locus of devotion; typically, the venues are tirthas . In the words of a Bihar resident, the sacred sites of melas include the "confluence of streams, the vicinity of
[12] E.g., see Wm. Moorcroft, Suptd., Hon. Co.'s Stud, to Secy., Bd. of Superintendence, Oct. 9, 1811, Bengal Military Consltns., Oct. 15–22, 1811, Oct. 15, no. 80; Garry Alder, Beyond Bokhara:TheLifeofWilliam Moorcroft , AsianExplorerand PioneerVeterinarySurgeon , 1767–825 (London: Century Publishing, 1985).
consecrated springs, or the neighbourhood of shrines whose reputation for religious merit runs high in the locality." No wonder melas have been termed "gatherings of pilgrims."[13]
How closely connected the two phenomena are can be gauged from the following attempt by the 1913 Bihar and Orissa Pilgrim Committee to distinguish between pilgrimages focusing on the great melas generally convened at pan-Hindu tirthas and pilgrimages classified as tirthayatras . Its report described a pilgrimage site as
a place to which pilgrims resort in considerable numbers throughout the year, a place that has special religious sanctity of its own, apart from the occurrence of a holy day, and which it is the duty of the pious to visit at least once during their lifetime. These places naturally support a permanent population; they are almost all Hindu; all are and have been for generations famous throughout India, and some have grown into large and important towns. A "fair" on the other hand is a place where pilgrims congregate in numbers on one or more occasions only during the year: frequently the attractions are secular as well as religious and only in rare instances do people come in numbers from long distances. Such places are, as a rule, but sparsely populated throughout the rest of the year, the only permanent residents being a few faqirs or the people of a small village.[14]
Notwithstanding the administrative effort by this 1913 Pilgrim Committee to write religion out of melas, as its report acknowledged only a fine line separated the two. That is, some fairs have more religious character than others; or, alternatively, "some are more secular than others."[15] From their very founding, fairs are bound up not only in a web of religious matters but also enmeshed in economic, social, and cultural concerns. Their beginnings, a local resident writes, can be located in the coming of
people from the surrounding territory. . . to perform their ablutions or to worship. The congregation of so many persons gave rise to the necessity of providing for their creature-comforts, and stalls of country confectionary came in time to be held there. Vendors of other goods began to perceive their opportunity, and temporary sheds came gradually to be erected on such occasions for the sale of the different necessaries and luxuries of village life. The success of these traders and the growing fame of the fairs attracted
[13] Bharati, "Pilgrimage Sites," p. 95; A. C. Ghose, "Rural Behar," CalcuttaReview 220 (1900): 222.
[14] B & O, ReportofthePilgrimCommitteeBiharandOrissa , 1913 (Simla: Govt. Press, 1915), p. 1.
[15] James J. Preston, "Sacred Centers and Symbolic Networks in South Asia," MankindQuarterly20 (1980): 266.
dealers of various classes and added to the number of visitors and sightseers. The scope and extent of the mela was by degrees thus expanded, and people began to combine motives of religion, business and pleasure in their visits to the fair.[16]
The anthropologists Victor Turner and Edith Turner have examined the processes that link pilgrimages to fairs:
A pilgrimage's foundation is typically marked by visions, miracles, or martyrdoms. The first pilgrims tend to arrive haphazardly, individually, and intermittently.. . . Later, there is progressive routinization and institutionalization of the sacred journey. Pilgrims now tend to come in organized groups, in sodalities, cofraternities, and parish associations, on specified feast days, or in accordance with a carefully planned calendar. Marketing facilities spring up close to the shrines and along the way. Secularized fiestas and fairs thrive near these. A whole elaborate system of licenses, permits, and ordinances, governing mercantile transactions, pilgrims' lodgings, and the conduct of fairs develops as the number of pilgrims grow and their needs and wants proliferate.[17]
By exerting a "magnetic effect on the whole communications and transportation system," pilgrimage centers, in other words, foster the "construction of sacred and secular edifices to serve the needs of the human stream passing through it.. . . [They] in fact generate a socioeconomic 'field'; they have a kind of social 'entelechy.' It may be that they have played at least as important a role in the growth of cities, marketing systems, and roads, as 'pure' economic and political factors have."[18]
Veeraswamy is not particularly forthcoming about the "socioeconomic 'field' " of melas; he appears not to have directed his gaze in that direction at all. Although he invariably stopped at fairs, or utsavams in his vernacular, and recorded their occurrence at pilgrimage centers, his account offers no other details.[19] Perhaps he shared the reli-
[16] Ghose, "Rural Behar," p. zzz. To what extent fairs were tied to religion is suggested by the many instances of melas established at sites of little or no religious significance that gained religious merit after their founding and development (through the acquisition of a sacred edifice or by the invention of religious "traditions"). See, e.g., S. D. Pant, TheSocialEconomy oftheHimalayas (London: Allen and Unwin, 1935), cited in Binod C. Agrawal, CulturalContours ofReligionandEconomicsin HinduUniverse (New Delhi: National, 1980), p. 9, on Jouljibi, a place without any "religious significance" that was invested with "some religious significance" after a fair had been established there in 1935.
[17] ImageandPilgrimageinChristianCulture:AnthropologicalPerspectives (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), p. 25.
[18] Ibid., pp. 233–34.
[19] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 10– 11 , 42, 5 , 84, 110. Preston, "Sacred Centers in South Asia," p. 60, notes the scholarly neglect of the connections between pilgrimages and melas and their relation to the multiple and multilevel activities associated with sacred centers, pilgrimage cycles, and festivals.
gious prejudice toward melas one finds in the anthropological literature. As one ethnographer's informants told her, "a pilgrim who goes for love of the gods and not for amusement of the mind does not go at mela time. For melas, if they offer intangible accumulated potencies of divine power, present an array of vital, sensual distractions concentrated in one location that is equally awesome."[20] Elided therefore in his observations-as in most present-day studies-are details regarding those economic, social, and cultural aspects of fairs that made them major events and institutions in the life of local and regional society.[21]
When Veeraswamy touches on the secular aspects of fairs, his remarks concern his preoccupation with provisioning his entourage. He was a traveler making sure that food and drink was available; and he was eager to collect information for use by those who would follow in his footsteps. His remarks about the "secular" aspects of sacred centers and melas offer no special insights; but indirectly they speak to the extent to which pilgrimage centers-and for our interest here, particularly those sacred centers that supported melas-were tied to a "socioeconomic field" in which pilgrims were involved in transactions that contrasted with the more everyday kinds of exchanges. Certainly, the commonplace distinction between fairs as "basically religious in character" and markets as "commercial in [their] composition" needs to be recalibrated.[22]
This chapter continues the exploration of my central interest in the processes and places of exchange by focusing on the "socioeconomic field" of melas in order to establish their fit in the larger marketing system of the region, particularly in their roles as livestock markets. It also examines the nineteenth-century history of melas to highlight the "overgrowing power of the zemindars" that the Patna historian had identified as a development of his ModernTimes . Veeraswamy observed this "power" firsthand when he wrote about Raja Mitarjit (Mitterjit) Singh of Gaya:
[20] Gold, FruitfulJourneys , pp. 302-4.
[21] . One attempt to look at other dimensions is Agrawal, Cultural ContoursofReligion , pp. 1- 15. See also Akos Ostor, CultureandPower:Legend , Ritual , BazaarandRebellioninaBengaliSociety (New Delhi: Sage, 1984), for a discussion of religion and economics as problematic categories because they are perceived not as autonomous but rather as closely interwoven domains in the indigenous conception.
[22] CDG 1960 , p. 326. Also Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 2, 6, 30, 36, 42.
He is a very rich man. He pays three lakhs of rupees annually to the Company government.. . . He derives nearly sixty lakhs of income annually. All the other Zamindars in this region are similarly very rich and enjoy their riches comfortably. The reason for their huge profits is this. When the British first entered this country 50 or 60 years ago they had enemies all around. So in order to take the princely estates under their control and secure those that came under their control, Lord Cornwallis issued an order through which collectors posted in these districts transferred the entire land to the old Zamindars by conducting Zamabandi [assessment] lightly and handed over possession under an agreement with them.. . . These Zamindars kept an army of clerks and servants to meet their requirements and are enjoying their unlimited riches and are whiling away their time.[23]
As a pilgrim he appears to have been especially cognizant of the fact that the major pilgrimage site of Gaya formed part of the great estate of Tikari, although he did not allude to the fact that Mitarjit Singh received one-tenth of the pilgrim fees collected there. He was keenly aware, however, of the kingly and patronage role of local elites in supporting religious activities, whether these entailed sponsoring rituals or the building and maintenance of temples. Indeed, as this chapter will show, landholders, merchants, and traders have historically sponsored activities such as the patronage of fairs as part of their expected roles as patrons and local lords. Furthermore, the patronage of melas and other religious activities and participation in pilgrimages reflected part of a heightened religious sensibility in an age of expanding markets and trade.
The record of Veeraswamy's journey also reveals the spatial dimension that has historically generated a sense of community and identity. Certainly, later on in the nineteenth century and continuing into the early twentieth century, changing political and social conditions gave rise to conflicting notions of a religious-based community and identity on the part of crowds who converged on those fairs in greater numbers than ever before. I begin by first filling in the historical context behind Veeraswamy's journey specifically and behind the nineteenth-century phenomena of pilgrimages and melas more generally.
Veeraswamy's tirthayatra conformed to an ancient tradition: his route followed a well-established pilgrimage circuit. Whether pilgrimage originated in the ancient period is still a matter of some dispute, although Vedic literature suggests some elements of the concept of pilgrimage, specifically the notion of the "merit of travel and reverence
[23] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 144-45.
for rivers."[24] As "semi-nomadic tribes," however, the people of the early Vedic period could not have performed pilgrimages to any considerable extent, if at all, because "pilgrimage to places which are considered to be more salutary than others is only to be found in sedentary societies."[25] This interpretation locates the emergence of pilgrimage in the rise of a brahmanic culture, which is said to have produced a "religion with a supra-regional character": a "common religious superstructure . . . that accounts for the fact that a special place far away is more holy than a similar place near home, and which consequently bestows an exclusiveness to this place which alone warrants the abandonment of home and family in order to embark upon a dangerous journey." The modest number of extant textual and empirical sources reveal that pilgrimage in the early period was limited, "relevant only to a small part of the population, especially those assimilated to the brahmanical 'All-Indian' religion."[26]
By the time of the Puranas and the Epics, religious texts dating roughly to the period between 300 B.C.E. and 1000 C.E., the practice of pilgrimage was clearly emerging. In the second millennium it grew into a popular phenomenon as increasing numbers of "common folk" participated in "a new type of religion of all-Indian significance"[27] that was more emotional and devotional [bhakti] in form. The bhakti movement changed the character of Hinduism, as the "focus of religious attention moved from the great gods and the liturgies connected with polytheism to the one God and his avatars, especially Krishna and Rama."[28]
North Indian "Hindu devotionalism" converged particularly on the figure of Vishnu's incarnation, Rama, whose cult was probably founded in the latter part of the first millennium of the Christian era
[24] Bhardwaj, HinduPilgrimage , pp. 4, 43–79; E. Alan Morinis, PilgrimageintheHindu Tradition:ACaseStudyof WestBengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 2–3, 46. Pilgrimage in the Indian tradition includes the idea of performing a metaphorical pilgrimage to a tirtha through meditation and without actually undertaking a physical journey. A viewpoint suggesting the post-Vedic development of pilgrimages is Bharati, "Pilgrimage Sites," p. 85.
[25] Hans Bakker and Alan Entwistle, Vaisnavism:The HistoryoftheKrsnaand RamaCultsandTheirContributiontoIndianPilgrimage (Groningen: Institute of Indian Studies, State University of Groningen, 1981), p. 78.
[26] Ibid., p. 81.
[27] Ibid.
[28] J. T. F. Jordens, "Medieval Hindu Devotionalism," in A CulturalHistoryofIndia , ed. A. L. Basham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 266. Whether the impulse for this great transformation was the coming of Islam to South Asia remains a controversial issue. Cf. Jordens, e.g., with Bakker and Entwistle, Vaisnavism , p. 76.
but whose widespread popularity dates to the second millennium. One factor in its rise may have been the movement of Rajput clans into the Gangetic plain, beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. As kshatriyas (warriors) and as participants in the struggle against Muslim invasions, Rajputs considered Rama, the divine warrior, an especially appropriate god. Many clans also traced their origins back to Rama or to ancestors belonging to his kingdom of Ayodhya. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the focus on Rama took "a more devotional approach" that "had a profound influence on people of all social classes and helped to propagate a more populistic form of Rama worship, which found expression in a gradual increase in the flow of pilgrims."[29]
The history of Gaya followed a similar chronology. Reference to it in the great epic, the Mahabharata , suggests that the sanctity of Gaya was already established by the outset of the Christian era. The Puranas, which date from roughly between 800 and 1100—and which Veeraswamy alludes to in acknowledging the "exemplary greatness of this place Gaya"—single it out as one of the most important pilgrimage sites on the subcontinent, more important even than Banaras.[30] But as inscriptions and other evidence show, its rise as a pan-Indian pilgrimage site dates to a later period. "Gaya, as a place of worship," states a nineteenth-century source, "was in comparative obscurity until about five or six centuries ago [thirteenth or fourteenth centuries]. Since that time, the number of pilgrims from all parts of India has been steadily increasing. "[31]
The traffic of pilgrims over the course of the colonial period rose dramatically, and only partially because of population increase.[32] Although Veeraswamy seems to have paid little attention to his fellow
[29] H. T. Bakker, "The Rise of Ayodhya as a Place of Pilgrimage," Indo-IranianJournal 24 (1982): 108; Jordens, "Hindu Devotionalism," p. 274. The history of Ayodhyaa place that has been the epicenter of recent communal tensions—epitomizes this chronology of the development of pilgrimage.
[30] Bhardwaj, HinduPilgrimage , pp. 30, 62–65; GayaMahatmya , ed. and trans. (into French) Claude Jacques (Pondichery: Institut Francais d'Indologie, 1962); Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 131 . Other sites often singled out as major pilgrimage centers are: Allahabad, Mathura, and Hardwar in north India, Kancipuram in Madras, and Ujjain and Dwarka in the western states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Bharati, "Pilgrimage Sites," pp. 95, 98, 106
[31] Hunter, AccountofGaya , p. 44; Buchanan, BiharandPatna; L. P. Vidyarthi, The SacredComplexinHinduGaya (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1961), p. 26.
[32] Peaks in pilgrim traffic occurred well before the amply documented population increase of the early twentieth century. As for the earlier period, population growth was generally negligible even as the numbers of pilgrims rose substantially. After 1830 there appears to have been some increase in population but only until 1891, after which therewas a falling off until 1921. Tim Dyson, "Indian Historical Demography: Developments and Prospects," in India'sHistoricalDemography:Studies inFamine , Disease , andSociety , ed. idem (London: Curzon Press, 1989), pp. 2-10; Leela Visaria and Pravin Visaria, "Population (1757-1947)," in The CambridgeEconomicHistoryofIndia , vol . 2, pp. 463-89.
travelers, Chunder recognized that he was part of a new trend made possible in "an era of security to life and property which has been never known to these regions." He documented this growing stream of pilgrims by pointing to the "certificates of service" and "testimonials" provided by pilgrims to the special priests (pandas) officiating at the tirtha of Brindaban that he found did not extend much beyond 1825.[33]
Records of licenses maintained at Gaya dating back to the late eighteenth century provide other figures on the rising tide of pilgrims. Thus, there were 17,670 licenses issued by colonial authorities at this city (site of several melas) in 1798 when the British first took over the regulation of license fees paid by pilgrims to their priests. The tally for 1805 was 31,114! The numbers represented by these licenses are suggested by Buchanan, whose 1811-12 account rounded out the total "number of pilgrims and their attendants" to 100,000. A tally made almost a century later tripled this figure to "not less than 300,000 a year."[34]
The growing traffic can also be tabulated specifically for mela-goers. What better illustration of this trend than the history of the oldest fair in Bihar, the Hariharkshetra or Sonepur Mela, which celebrates Sonepur's significance as a place of pilgrimage and worship (puja) . Although the precise date of its founding cannot be traced, its long history is established by local traditions and documentary evidence. Located at the confluence of the Ganges and Gandak, its sanctity derives from the belief that a ritual bath at the junction of rivers is the equivalent of giving away a thousand cows as a gift. Veeraswamy himself saw and experienced this ritual bathing firsthand when he was in Banaras in Kartik 1830; the practice is considered especially efficacious when done on Kartik Purnima, the full moon in Kartik. Local tradition attributes to Rama the founding of Sonepur's first temple, often said to be a precursor of the principal place of worship today, the Harihar Nath Ma-
[33] Chunder, Travels , vol. 2, pp. 4 -42; Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 129.
[34] GDG1906 , p . 66; Hunter, Accountof Gaya , p. 45; Buchanan, BiharandPatna , p. 106. Short-term fluctuations occurred because of a number of reasons, such as in the early nineteenth century when attendance ranged from two hundred thousand to quite a few less because of "dearness of grain to the westward, and the mortality to the eastward." See F. Gillanders, Asst. Colltr., Pilgrim Tax, Gaya, to W. Money, Colltr., Bihar, May 1, 1818, Bengal Bd. of Commrs. at Bihar and Banaras, Dec. 11 to 29, 1818, Dec. 15, no. 8A.
hadeo Temple, and also the beginnings of the mela. No doubt, the emergence of Sonepur as a pilgrimage center led to the establishment of the mela. A response to the rising traffic of pilgrims, its founding led to the annexation of new sacred domains and the establishment of additional facilities to cater to the growing nonspiritual demands. Small wonder then that the fair followed the same calendar used by most devotees in timing their visit to the river junction.[35]
Sonepur's importance as a pilgrimage site can be attested at least as early as the fourteenth century. Its merits were apparently known to Vidyapati (1360-1447?), the celebrated poet of the north Bihar area of Mithila, who journeyed there to worship and to take a ritual bath. By then its fair had already attained sizable proportions, attracting as it did the attention of Sultan Husain Shah (1493-1519) of Bengal, who deputed an officer to purchase horses worth three hundred thousand coins.[36] By the time the traveler John Marshall visited the fair in the seventeenth century, he found it playing to audiences as large as forty to fifty thousand. Veeraswamy, who visited in 1831, after the fair had been in session, noted that more than a hundred thousand people had been in attendance. Annual tallies of mela attendance kept by local administrators during the colonial period reveal that the crowds continued to swell. Although numbers fluctuated from year to year-depending on various religious and socioeconomic conditions-they never fell below two hundred thousand and could go as high as three or four hundred thousand. Crowds had grown to almost 3 million by the late twentieth century, with as many as a million participating in the ritual plunge into the river on the occasion of Kartik Purnima.[37]
Attendance figures for the other "great" fairs in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries indicate a similar rising pattern; these include the melas of Rajgir in Patna; of Deokund, Jahanabad, and Kishunpur in Gaya; of Brahampur in Shahabad; of Godna (or Revelganj) in Saran; of Bettiah in Champaran; of Sitamarhi in Muzaffarpur; and of Darbhanga in Darbhanga. Data for other "important" fairs tell the same
[35] HariharKshetraMahatmya (Gaya: Prabhu Narayan Misra, 1924); Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 104; LimitedRaj , chap. i.
[36] Radhakrishna Chaudhary, Mithilainthe AgeofVidyapati (Varanasi: Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1976), pp. 233, 239; B. P. Mazumdar, "Non-Muslim Society in Medieval Bihar," in ComprehensiveHistoryofBihar , vol. 2, part 1, p. 351.
[37] Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 147; Khan, Marshall inIndia , pp. 141-42, 158; AGRPD 1890-91; SDG1930 , p . 155; GOI, Censusof India1961 , vol. 4, Bihar , Part 7 -b, FairsandFestivalsofBihar by S. D. Prasad (Purnea: n.p., 1971), p. xxxiv.
story: those held at Bihar and Patna city in Patna, Bisua in Gaya, Buxar and Sasaram in Shahabad, Silhouri and Thawe in Saran, Tribeni in Champaran, and Dubhi, Mahinathpur, Silanath, and Mahadeo Math in Darbhanga.[38]
This trend can be detailed for the melas at Rajgir and Deokund, which, along with those at Gaya and Puna Pun, are recognized as four of the major religious sites in Magadh (Patna and Gaya). At Rajgir, where the mela is held triennially according to the intercalary calendar, Buchanan estimated an attendance of fifty thousand in the 1810s; and at Deokund, on the occasion of Sivaratri, he counted somewhere between ten and twelve thousand. Less than a century later, in the 1890s, Rajgir hosted one hundred thousand people on each of the two major days of the mela month, the fifteenth and the thirtieth, and ten to twenty thousand on the other days; whereas Deokund averaged five thousand people daily for its seven-day gathering. Much the same pattern can be discerned from the attendance figures for the major fair of Brahampur. Compare Buchanan's enumeration of twenty-five thousand people on the occasion of this Sivaratri Fair with an 1894 count of seventy-five thousand and a 1906 tally of more than a hundred thousand. At Buxar, a town overlooking the Ganges, where fairs convened five times a year, the crowds totaled thirty-six thousand in the 1810s but more than double that number-about one hundred thousand-in the 1890s.[39]
The widening constituency of melas-a doubling and tripling over the colonial period, with the increases most dramatic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-can also be documented for the other great fairs of Bihar. Champaran's Bettiah Fair increased its participation from close to thirty thousand in the 1870s to more than fifty thousand in the 1890s and to almost one hundred thousand by the 1950s. Sitamarhi, identified as the birthplace of Rama's wife, Sita, convened as many as fifty thousand people on the occasion of the Ramnavami (the birth anniversary of Rama) Fair in the early 1880s and eighty thousand by the first decade of the twentieth century.[40]
[38] Compiled from R. P. Jenkins, Offg. Commr., Patna, to Secy., GOB, Bengal Medical Procs., 1868, Apr., no. 50; AGRPD, 1876-77 to 1897-98; "Fairs," 1894, Patna Division; Ghose, "Rural Behar," p. 224.
[39] Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 71; "Fairs," 1894; ShDG1906 , pp. 96-97.
[40] AGRPD 1883-84; MDG 1907, p. 157; W. W Hunter, A StatisticalAccountofBengal , vol. 13, Champaran (London: Trubner, 1877), p. 255; "Fairs," 1894; CDG1960 , p. 326..
Nor were such patterns confined to the great fairs. Smaller fairs, such as those at Gupteswar and Tilothu in Shahabad, swelled from gatherings of five thousand and two thousand, respectively, in the early nineteenth century to five thousand and twenty thousand daily over the course of their weeklong meeting days by the close of that century. As for the mela near Mundesvari, also in Shahabad, where Buchanan had encountered "zooo votaries" in the second decade of the nineteenth century, it had grown to "more than ten thousand persons" by the mid-twentieth century.[41]
Detailed census information from 1961 provides a comprehensive profile of the melas of the region. The "great" fairs-those attended by twenty-five thousand people or more-accounted for the lion's share of those in attendance. The Sonepur Mela alone drew more than 3 million people, a number representing more than 68 percent of the audience of that district's fairs. Although no other fair in Bihar boasted such crowds, the great fairs in other districts also accounted for much of the total attendance. Patna's great fairs numbered fifteen (including three whose attendance amounted to at least one hundred thousand); Gaya had eight in that category; Saran six in addition to the Sonepur Mela; Champaran seven; Muzaffarpur fourteen (including four attended by more than one hundred thousand); and Darbhanga twenty-three, of which seventeen were in the twenty-five- to thirty-five-thousand category and only two in the hundred thousand and over range.
The vast majority of fairs, however, were fairlets. At least two-thirds of the fairs of Patna Division were attended by fewer than five thousand people-Darbhanga showing the lowest proportion of small fairs, with 68.9 percent, and Champaran returning the highest with more than 87 percent. The overwhelming majority of melas, in other words, were small-scale events with a constituency drawn primarily from the neighboring villages. Convened at sites that were often periodic markets (haats) , these minor fairs typically served areas encompassing at least the periodic marketing area but probably a greater area, because these were not weekly occasions but ones that were held annually.[42]
Thus, the mela profile emerging in the age of colonialism possessed two distinctive features: great fairs, few in number but great in atten-
[41] P. C. Roy Choudhury, TemplesandLegendsof Bihar (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1965), p. 63; Buchanan, Shahabad , pp. 90, 106, 135; "Fairs," 1894.
[42] Compiled from FairsofBihar , pp. 526-35. See also below, chap. 4, on rural markets.
dance; and fairlets, many in number but modest in attendance. The great fairs, in particular, attracted geographically diverse audiences, with supralocal and even regional constituencies. By contrast, fairlets constituted local gatherings of people drawn from their immediate areas. In this respect, too, melas and pilgrimage were linked phenomena: both catered to a range of constituencies. Whereas the best known tirthas drew "pilgrims across linguistic, sectarian, and regional boundaries," the overwhelming majority comprised the "countless local and regional tirthas visited regularly by pilgrims from their immediate areas." For "no place is too small to be counted a tirtha by its local visitors. In a sense, each temple is a tirtha."[43]
Nowhere were the crowds more conspicuous than at Sonepur, and nowhere did the crowds come from greater distances than at Sonepur. A late-seventeenth-century source reported that people came "thither from the remotest parts of India" and from as far away as "Tartary Central Asia."[44] So extensive was participation from within the region that entire towns-the city of Patna, for example-seemed deserted on the "the great days of bathing." Devotees came from both sides of the Ganges for this "most fashionable pilgrimage" in the region. An estimate of the early nineteenth century reckoned that as much as one-fourth of the population of Patna went to Sonepur and was joined there by a sizable proportion of the population of Gaya, twenty thousand from Shahabad, and five or six thousand from Bhagalpur. Its fame made it a popular subject for the Patna School of painters.[45]
Attendance figures tell only part of the tale of the growing phenomenon of melas in local society. Like markets, the number of fairs increased over time. There is ample evidence that this growth peaked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Buchanan's accounts of Patna, Gaya, and Shahabad in the second decade of the nineteenth century and Hunter's statistical reports of the same districts in the 1870s attest to this pattern, as do published and unpublished records (gazetteers, settlement reports, and the manuscript "village notes") of
[43] Eck, "India's Tirthas ," p. 325.
[44] MarshallinIndia , pp. 141-42, 158.
[45] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , pp. 365-66; idem, Shahabad , p. 217; Martin, Bhagalpur , p. 133. The mela also became the most important social gathering of European administrators and settlers in north India, "what Christmas is to home folks," said one British local resident. Harry E. Abbott, SoneporeReminiscences(Years1840-1896) (Calcutta, Star Press, 1896), p. v. See also my Limited Raj , chap. 1, for details regarding the British incorporation of the Sonepur Mela into their structure and ideology of rule.
the early twentieth century. A village-by-village comparison of information available for Saran for 1915-21 and the detailed 1961 census on fairs offers an even more striking picture of growth: from a tally of 75 fairs in the former period to 717 by 1961, a number that this census returned as the highest for the region. Gaya followed with 643, Champaran with 568, Darbhanga with 544, Muzaffarpur with 312, Patna with 295, and Shahabad with 218.[46]
Historical biographies of melas, although limited in number, paint a similar portrait. A sample of twenty-two in Saran included the ancient Sonepur Mela, three said to date from a "long time" or "long ago," five from the nineteenth century, and the rest from the twentieth century; no founding dates could be established for six fairs. For Patna's fifteen melas, three were classified as "ancient," one was an eighteenth-century creation, and six and five were from the nineteenth and the twentieth century, respectively. In the "ancient" category are such fairs as the Pitri Paksha Mela at Zahidpur, where "since time immemorial" pilgrims have been going for the ceremonial bath at the sacred Punpun River, and the monthlong Malmas Mela at Rajgir. By contrast the Sivaratri Mela at Thalpura and the Dashara Mela at Rupaspur were instituted in the nineteenth century; still later, the Dashara Mela at Alawalpur and at Pandarakh were probably inaugurated when temples were installed there-in the 1940s in the case of the former, in 1939 in the case of the latter. A similar profile can be drawn for other districts.[47]
The rising traffic of people is also reflected in the expanded schedules of fairs. Like periodic markets that stretch their meeting days to meet a growing demand, fairs tacked on additional sacred days to the festival calendar. The fair at Areraj, for example, convened for eight days in March and three days in May in the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, but by 1961 it had become a mela that met six times a year. Although the March schedule remained the same, the May fair was extended to five or seven days. The additional four fair meetings were held over three or four days.[48]
[46] FairsofBihar , pp. 504-12. In proportion to population: Saran had 1 fair for every 5,000 persons, Champaran 1:5,293, Gaya 1:5,673, Darbhanga 1:8,112, Patna 1:9,999, Muzaffarpur 1:13,200, and Shahabad 1:14,752. See also GOI, CensusofIndia , vol. 4, part 9, CensusAtlasofBihar by S. D. Prasad (Delhi: n.p., 1968), p. 35; SVN; FairsofBihar , pp. xxxi-xxxvi, 64-100, for longitudinal data. Village notes identify where fairs were held but not all the fairs that were held in a village.
[47] Compiled from SVN, 50 vols.; FairsofBihar , pp. xi-lvii.
[48] Hunter, AccountofChamparan , p . 2 55; CDG1938 , p. 92; CDG1960 , p. 326.
Melas also developed a wider constituency as the repertoire of festivals grew. Some were sustained by the familiar calendar of festivals; still others fashioned their places on the local calendar by celebrating new sacred days, occasions born out of the new religious movements and cults centered on the changing pantheon of divine figures and deified heroes and heroines.[49] Festivals-and therefore fairs-were continually evolving to keep pace with the changing sacred traditions of local society.
Throughout the "country," as Veeraswamy observed, people adhered to a religious almanac that was virtually the same.[50] There were also local and regional variations, and the astrological-astronomical events that were commemorated varied over time. In Bihar, according to one resident, melas typically occurred on auspicious days in the calendar that were "sacred to some god, or allotted to some particular festival."[51] The timing of each was "determined by some astrological-astronomical event. Some planet, or the moon, or the sun has to enter a particular sign of the zodiac; or else there has to be a lunar or solar eclipse. Commemoration of such an event as the birth, death, or the siddhi (attainment of religious consummation) of a particular saint may provide dates for melas ."[52]
A comparison of festival calendars from different eras reveals changes as well as continuities over the last millennium. Fourteen of the eighteen festivals identified in a fourteenth-century list compiled by the
[49] Several factors led to the founding of a fair at the junction of the Punpun and Dardha Rivers in the late eighteenth century: the presence of an embankment, the economic benefits to be gained by a cluster of nearby villages, and the founding of a shrine. See Ramdahin Singh, comp., BiharDarpan (Patna: Khadagvilas Press, 1883), pp. 35-36.
[50] Based on a Hindu lunisolar calendar, the year was (and still is) divided up by lunar months that end on a full moon day (purnima); the new month commences on the following day. Each lunar month consists of about 30 days; a year therefore comprises 360 days. Every third year an intercalary month of 30 days is added to synchronize the lunar calendar to the solar year. Because of its shorter year, the Hindu calendar only roughly approximates the Gregorian calendar: generally the Indian months commence at approximately the middle of the months according to the latter calendar. The Hindu months and their solar equivalents are as follows: Asin, September-October; Kartik, October-November; Aghan, November-December; Pus, December-January; Magh, January-February; Phagun, February-March; Chait, March-April; Baisakh, April-May; Jeth, May-June; Akarh, June-July; Sawan, July-August; Bhadoi, August-September. Grierson, PeasantLife , p. 271; Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 153, appendix A. See also Ruth S. and Stanley A. Freed, "Calendars, Ceremonies, and Festivals in a North Indian Village: The Necessary Calendric Information for Fieldwork," SouthwesternJournalofAnthropology 20 (1964): 67-90.
[51] Ghose, "Rural Behar," p. 222. I have not taken into consideration here the small percentage of fairs that were related to the Muslim calendar: 17.3 percent in Gaya, 13.7 in Champaran, 8 in Muzaffarpur, 7.2 in Darbhanga, 6.8 in Patna, and 1.8 in Shahabad. See also FairsofBihar .
[52] Bharati, "Pilgrimage Sites," p. 95.
Mithila scholar-statesman Chandreswar Thakur are today either minor events or no longer celebrated.[53] Many of these had faded earlier, a development discernible from the text associated with the sixteenthcentury scholar and founder of the great estate of Darbhanga, Mahesh Thakur. Although substantial differences exist between the festivals of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries-as Mahesh Thakur's list, which includes Nag Panchami, Krishna Janmashthami, Durga Puja or Navaratra, Dashara, Chhath, Kartik Purnima, Makar Sankranti, Basant Panchami, Sivaratri, and Ramnavami, indicates-far less appears to have changed in the annual cycle of festivals between the sixteenth century and the colonial era. Perhaps the more dramatic earlier transformation reflects the culmination of a shift in religious devotion from a focus on Tantric gods to a growing emphasis on Rama, a change that naturally ushered in a different pantheon of festivals. All of Hindi-speaking north India, including Bihar, was affected by this development, which elevated Rama to the status of supreme god, and his consort Sita to that of a sakti (goddess; divine power, personified as feminine). Instrumental in forging these new directions was the movement led by Ramananda (1400-70), which popularized the cult of Rama.[54]
Nevertheless, the emergence of the cult of Rama did not entirely displace earlier forms and modes of religious practices. In the precolonial period the north Bihar area of Mithila was a "great centre of Siva, Sakti and Vishnu worship and it was closely associated with Tantric forms of beliefs and practices.. . . [And] besides the worship of Siva and Vishnu with their consorts, along with that of the incarnations Rama and Krishna, there were other divinities. . . also held in reverence.. . . In fact, there was a multiplicity of gods and goddesses in the scheme of the religious life of Maithils."[55]
Such "multiplicity" persisted into the colonial era, as is shown by Buchanan's elaborate attempt to categorize and quantify religious beliefs and practices in the early nineteenth century.[56]
[53] Diwakar, BiharthroughtheAges , pp. 428-29. The exceptions are Janam Asthami, Nag Panchami, Sivaratri, and Basant Panchami. Diwali had also become a major festival by this time.
[54] Ibid., pp. 530-31; Jordens, "Hindu Devotionalism," p. 274; William R. Pinch, "Becoming Vaishnava, Becoming Kshatriya: Culture, Belief, and Identity in North India, 1800-1940," Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1990, pp. 103-6.
[55] Diwakar, Bihar , p. 410.
[56] In Patna and Gaya, he estimated that three-sixteenths of the people were Saivite, five-sixteenths Saktas, and two-sixteenths Vaishnavite. Saktas focused their attention on Kali and Durga, whereas Vaishnavites, "in Magadha and Mithila," to use Buchanan's phrase, people "chiefly worship Ram." Martin, Bhagalpur , Gorakhpur , p. 130
As for the festivals celebrated in Buchanan's day, the popular present-day festivals of Diwali, Holi, and Dashara-in that order of importance-were already major occasions. Dashara, however, was apparently not celebrated with as much fanfare as Durga Puja was in Bengal, there being no "feasting, dancing, and music" accompanying this holiday; it was "observed chiefly by the Brahmans, while the Holi and Dewali are observed by all."[57] But because of its association with Rama, Dashara grew in importance in the colonial period, reflecting the rising patronage role played by landholders-as well as their rising status and power in local society in the wake of the late eighteenthcentury revolution. Its celebration in Asin at the beginning of the agricultural year came to be associated with zamindars. In the great estates it was an occasion when tenants offered their raja "presents and congratulations." The Hathwa-owned newspaper, the Express , described Dashara as "pre-eminently a Kshattrya festival, [which] people of all castes and classes observe.. . . In Bihar, scions of old baronial houses and big Zamindars that have the status and position of Rajas .. observe the Puja and perform all the ceremonies in the same way as do the Ruling Chiefs and Princes, and march in state . . . with great pomp and splendour. "[58]
Another key festival was Sivaratri, ranked by Buchanan as next in importance to Dashara. Chhath and Kartik Purnima also brought out large crowds who converged on Sonepur or other prime ritual bathing spots. The Patna School of Painters vividly captured in their striking paintings how celebrated and well-attended these functions were. Other festivals that drew large numbers were Magh Purnima, Bishuwa Sankranti, and Nag Panchami.[59]
The rhythm of the mela calendar was also synchronized with the ebb and flow of the agricultural calendar. Peaks in fair activity coincided almost perfectly with the timing of the marketing of produce of the different harvests, generally within a month of harvest. In Bihar this was
[57] Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 218; idem, Biharand Patna , pp. 362-66.
[58] Oct. 12, 1915, reprinted in Chowdhary, SelectedWritings , pp. 89-90; Dutt, HutwaRaj , pp. 53-54, 23. See also Thomas R. Metcalf, Land , Landlords , and theBritishRaj:NorthernIndia intheNineteenthCentury (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 365-66, and my LimitedRaj , pp. 115-17, for an account of Dashara celebrations as a manifestation of kingly and patronage role.
[59] Buchanan, BiharandPatna , pp. 67, 75; idem, Shahabad , pp. 217-18; Martin, Gorakhpur , p. 481. See also my "Visualizing Patna."
typically in October and November (Asin-Kartik-Aghan) for the bhadai (autumn harvest sown in June-July), January and February (PusMagh-Phagun) for the aghani (winter harvest planted in June-July), and March and April (Phagun-Chait-Baisakh) for the rabi (spring harvest sown in October-November).[60] Consider also the fact that the area cultivated at each of the three principal harvests varied from district to district.
In the southern districts of Gaya, Patna, and Shahabad the bhadai harvest was relatively insignificant; the rabi harvest, by contrast, was important especially in Patna and Shahabad. In the north, however, although the rabi was a significant crop (except in Darbhanga), the bhadai and aghani together represented the largest percentage. No doubt, the dovetailing of the rhythm of work and slack seasons with the annual cycle of melas facilitated large turnouts.[61]
This interrelationship between the festival and agricultural cycle has long been recognized as a feature of local society:
Bhado and Asin [August-September to September-October] . . . are marked by many religious observances and ceremonies, because this is the most critical season of the year to the cultivator, when he must have rain. Towards the end of the former month the agriculturists have to observe the fast of anant brat in gratitude for the ingathering of the bhadai harvest and in the hope of future prosperity. During the first fortnight of Kuar or Asin, since it is on the rain of this period that a successful harvest of the aghani and the moisture for the rabi depends, they devote much time to religious offerings and oblations to their deceased ancestors. This is followed by Nauratra or nine nights of abstinence from worldly enjoyments and devotion to the goddess Durga. When the rabi sowings have been completed the Nauratra is over, there follows a day of universal rejoicing when alms are given . . .
During Kartik . . . when the paddy harvest is taking ear, many devotional performances are observed, especially by the women and unmarried girls. They bathe before dawn and worship the sun as the producer of rain
[60] Office Note on BOR's no. 904 A, Aug. 13, 1891, by D. R. Lyall, Commr., Patna, P.C. Rev. Basta no. 355, 1891–92; MSR ., pp. 249–55; Veeraswamy , Journal , pp. 42, 51.
[61] Jeth to Aghan (June to November) represent a peak of activity in the agricultural year, December to May (Pus to Baisakh) a period of relative slack. In other words, the slack period extends over most of the cold season, which commences in Kartik (OctoberNovember) and ends with the onset of the hot season in Phagun (February-March); the wet season begins in Akarh (June-July). Not surprising, the slack season of the annual cycle of festivals, Jeth and Akarh, is a time when work on the land is at a peak; it is in these two months that the autumn harvest is sown and followed immediately by the planting of the winter harvest in Akarh and Sawan. Moreover, this period is also an auspicious time for marriages in Bihar. By contrast, Kartik, a busy festival time, occurs at the planting of the spring harvest—a harvest that entails the least involved labor.
every morning until Purnamasi or the period of a full moon, when large crowds of the people . . . repair to bathe at the confluence of the Ganges and Gandak. . .
When, however, the rabi crop is assured, the devotional attitude is abandoned, anxiety is at an end, and on the first of Chait the people celebrate the Holi festival, breaking forth in unrestrained and hilarious enjoyment.[62]
This roster of major festivals remained constant over the course of the colonial era, shifting only in intensity. To use a "popularity index" based on monthly attendance figures, the peak in mela attendance-except in Champaran, Muzaffarpur, and Shahabad-was reached during the months of Asin and Kartik, followed by Bhadoi, the month preceding Asin. Not coincidentally, these are the months of some of the most auspicious moments in the annual cycle of festivals: they form the period that closes out the wet season beginning in Akarh and ushers in the cold season generally commencing in Kartik. It is a transitional period highlighted by the major festival of Dashara (in Asin), Chhath and Diwali (both in Kartik), and Kartik Purnima. Chait, also a period of high mela attendance, especially in Muzaffapur and Champaran, is another high point in the annual cycle because it is the month in which Rama's birthday is celebrated-Ramnavmi (Rama's ninth)-as well as Chaitra Sankranti and Chhath, the latter festival also occurring in Kartik. Magh and Phalgun, two other auspicious months of high levels of mela activity are notable for the worship of the god Shiva, an occasion commemorated in the Sivaratri melas, and for Maghi Purnima, Makar Sankranti, and Basant Panchami, all Magh festivals celebrated by ritual bathing in rivers and river junctions. Along with Baisakh-Baisakh Purnima is an auspicious day-Kartik and Magh are significant as times when ritual bathing is considered especially purificatory. And with the sacred Ganges and Gandak located in the region, the opportunities and locales to convene fairs are numerous. The only other months in which significant numbers attended melas especially in Champaran are Sawan-for fairs associated with Nag Panchami and Sivaratri-and Aghan, especially in Muzaffapur, for fairs relating to Vivah Panchami or Sita Vivah.[63]
[62] MSR , p. 253.
[63] Melas in Bhadoi, Asin, and Kartik accounted for 75, 65, and 55 percent of the total number of fairs in Patna, Darbhanga, and Gaya, respectively; 48 percent each in Muzaffarpur and Saran; and 25 and 22 percent in Champaran and Shahabad, respectively. Chait accounted for 6.8 percent in Patna, 10.4 percent in Gaya, and 15.1 percentin Shahabad. Magh and Phagun tallied zo and 23 percent of Shahabad's fairs; Sawan was the most active month of fairs in Champaran (28 percent). Contrast these peaks of mela intensity with the paucity of fairs in Jeth and Akarh (May-June and June-July), not coincidentally a period of virtually no important festivals, and with Pus; to a lesser extent, Aghan (December-January and November-December) was another period of relatively few festivals. See FairsinBihar , p. xcviii; Hunter, AccountofChamparan , p. 255; Grierson, NotesonGaya , p . 117 .
The dramatic increase in numbers of melas and pilgrims "on the road" and the emergence of Dashara as a major festival in the colonial era both point to changes in Hindu religious practices and in the composition and role of participants in these practices. As Bayly has observed, the numbers converging on pilgrimage sites "may have trebled" each year between 1780 and 1820 for the following reasons: "The British abolition of 'pilgrim taxes' and easier transport redoubled the flow. Brahmins and high Brahminical ritual introduced by eighteenth-century rulers. . . spread in the protected states of the nineteenth century for whom conspicuous piety replaced warfare as the chief charge on state revenues. New men who built up their fortunes through the services of the British invested in elaborate death anniversary ceremonies (shraddhas) in rural Bengal, while many of the great temples of Madras were renovated and expanded in the vivid styles of the early nineteenth century."[64]
Veeraswamy, who traveled at a time when the pilgrim tax was still in place, was confident that "the day is not far off when they may get an annulment of the collection of tax at pilgrim centres.. . . [And] God alone knows what an amount of good fortune this annulment would bring."[65] Despite his ties to "government" and his acknowledgment of the assistance he received from such connections, he openly criticized this one policy. At Patna, while en route to Gaya, he noted disapprovingly that his employers had taken over the collection of the pilgrim tax at several sacred centers, including Gaya. Bholanauth Chunder, who followed Veeraswamy by thirty years, was a beneficiary of this "good fortune," the pilgrim tax having been abolished in 1840. Official declarations regarding noninterference in religious matters notwithstanding, as recent scholarship shows the colonial state "penetrated Hindu religious institutions, both temples and maths (monasteries), deeply and systematically."[66]
[64] Bayly, IndianSociety , p. 159.
[65] Journal , p. 147.
[66] Franklin A. Presler, ReligionunderBureaucracy: PolicyandAdministrationforHinduTemplesinSouthIndia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 15;Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 147. See also Arjun Appadurai, WorshipandConflict underColonialRule:ASouth IndianCase (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Nancy Gardner Cassels, Religionand PilgrimTaxundertheCompany Raj (Riverdale, Md.: Riverdale, 1988).
Veeraswamy's journey, made under the sign of colonialism, also benefited from other developments. Thanks to the "good offices" of the British authorities, he was able to secure official assistance on the road; and because of the new regime of law and order ushered in by Pax Britannica his pilgrimage across the subcontinent encountered no political or military hazards. By contrast, in the period leading up to the age of revolution and continuing on through the early years of the nineteenth century, political and military disruptions frequently slowed down the traffic of pilgrims to a trickle. As pilgrims informed the official deputed to report on the pilgrimage center of Deoghar in Birbhum district (present-day West Bengal) in 1791, their numbers had fallen considerably because of "commotion" in northern and western India; those who had succeeded in reaching Deoghar from other regions "had proceeded by stealth." Similarly, an appreciable decline in the number of pilgrims in Gaya in 1804 was attributed by its priests "to the warfare and unsettled state of the country to the westward," which had made "pilgrims . . . afraid to come down and pay the usual devotions."[67]
Although Veeraswamy's trip had preceded the era of systematic and extensive road building projects by many decades, his experiences "on the road" reveal that the colonial authorities had already secured the major highways throughout the country, in many areas even providing shelter for travelers. By the 1860s, as Chunder testified, conditions obtaining on the road were in marked contrast to those existing in the time of "our grandfathers and great-grandfathers," who made out "their wills before setting on a pilgrimage.. . . By land, the journey was unsafe from wild beasts, from highway robbers, from Thugs, and from Mahratta rovers. By water, the voyage was unsafe from Nor-Westers , from pirates, and from the river-police.. . . In a few years the Railway shall further abridge this distance and time, and inaugurate an era of security to life and property which has been never known to these regions."[68]
[67] G. P. Ricketts, Colltr., Bihar, to C. Buller, Secy., BOR, Aug. 24, 1804, Bengal BOR Procs., Sayer, 1804, Sept. 28; C. Keating, Colltr., Birbhum, to Hon'ble Charles Stuart, President, BOR, Mar. 28, 1791, Bengal BOR Procs., Sayer, 1791, July 6.
[68] Chunder, Travels , vol. r, pp. 40–41; ReportofBiharPilgrimCommittee , p . 4. Also Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 20, 40, 66, 81, 177. The completion of the Grand Trunk Road by the mid-nineteenth century offered pilgrims an alternative to the Ganges highway, an option preferred especially by the less well-off pilgrims who could then travel on foot at little or no cost.
The "marvel and miracle" of railway, to use Bholanauth Chunder's phrase, further widened the streams of pilgrims; lines, furthermore, were specifically constructed to cater to such traffic.[69] As an earlytwentieth-century observer noted, the boom in the building of railways and roads meant that pilgrimages no longer entailed "a difficult and often dangerous journey by road.. . . The pilgrim who now wishes to go . . . can perform practically the whole of his journey by rail and the saving in time, expense and discomfort is incalculable. Enormous numbers now visit these holy places who under former conditions could never have dreamt of doing so."[70]
The development of more efficient communication and transportation not only facilitated travel by pilgrims but also by the so-called pilgrim hunters. "[E]ver since the city of Gyah became famous for its sanctity," wrote its administrator in 1790, "it has been the custom of its Brahmins . . . to travel through all countries where the Hindoo religion prevails in search of pilgrims." Termed "pilgrim hunters" in the colonial records, these "gomastahs or agents" were said to travel "throughout India for the purpose of enticing pilgrims to the several shrines and temples of repute," receiving in return "a fee from every pilgrim whom they can persuade to visit the particular seat of superstition to which they are attached. . . and they in fact seem to discharge their vocation with astonishing industry, dexterity and success."[71] Gaya was renowned for its "very extensive system of pilgrim hunting," its "scouts" not only intercepting the Bholanauth Chunders as they left the Grand Trunk Road for the branch road to Gaya but also seeking out potential visitors much farther afield. Veeraswamy, for one, felt the long reach of these enterprising individuals as he was pursued by "Gayavalis" intent on recruiting him as their client from almost the time he departed from Madras.[72]
[69] E.g., the new chord line of railway running across south Bihar to Bengal was deliberately laid out to intersect the important pilgrimage center of Deoghar. See R. P. Jenkins, Special Duty, Railway, to Joint Secy., GOB, Bengal Rev. Procs., Jan.-Apr. 1866, Apr., no. 2. Chunder, Travels , vol. 1, pp. 140-41.
[70] ReportofBiharPilgrimCommittee , p. 4. Better access also had the effect of adding "elasticity" to pilgrim schedules. Attendance at some sacred centers declined because some pilgrims apparently opted not to go on festival days when crowds were likely to be at their peak.
[71] Court of Directors to GOB, no. 3, Feb. 20, 1833, Bengal Rev. Miscellaneous Consltns., Jan. 5 to 3 May, 1836, 2 Feb., no. 2; Colltr., Bihar, to Hon'ble Charles Stuart, July 16, 1790, Bengal BOR Procs., Sayer, May 3 to Dec. 29, 1790, Aug. 23.
[72] Court to GOB, Feb. 20, 1833, Bengal Rev. Miscellaneous Consltns., Feb. 2, 1836, no. 2; Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 80; Chunder, Travels , vol. 1, p. 224.
Pilgrimage centers also advertised their merits in other ways. Many tirthas capitalized on print technology. Almost every significant sacred center turned to marketing a revised form of the ancient Sanskrit genre of writings known as mahatmya , "a laud, a hymn of praise, a glorification. These praises, of particular places or of particular gods, form a part of the many Puranas, the 'ancient stories' of the gods, kings, and saints.. . . These mahatmyas are not descriptive statements of fact. . . but statements of faith."[73] By the early twentieth century, this kind of "praise-literature" extolling the virtues of sacred centers was widely available in pamphlet form. Moreover, much of this literature was rendered partly or completely into vernacular languages, either Hindi or its regional Bihar variants, and sold inexpensively. The first edition of the HariharKshetraMahatmya , or "The Greatness of Harihar Kshetra as a Place of Pilgrimage," published in 1924 to celebrate the Sonepur Mela, was priced at one anna and issued in a run of two thousand copies.74
Advertisements in newspapers was another means of generating publicity. The Sonepur Fair, for instance, placed advertisements in a wide range of newspapers and posted vernacular and English notices throughout the region in the late nineteenth century.75
A literature based on personal experiences or on data collected from local gazetteers, histories, and other local-level materials also promoted pilgrimage by offering prospective travelers firsthand information regarding sacred sites and their facilities. In part, this literature was facilitated by the documentation project of the colonial state, a project that produced and normalized "a vast amount of information" for governing purposes. Sadhu Charan Prasad's BharatBrahman , a five-part account describing the topography and history of the tirthas , towns, and other famous places in India, combined both these genres: it was based partly on the author's travels in the 1890s and partly on data collected from English and vernacular sources. Take, for instance, his entry on Revelganj, the site of the Godna Mela, which he visited in 1892. In addition to the usual gazetteer-like information about transportation
[73] Diana L. Eck, Banaras:CityofLight (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), pp. 22–23.
[74] HariharMahatmya . See also, e.g., Arreraj Mahatmya (Bettiah: Lakshminarayan Saran, 193?); Vishwanath Mahto, ShriBarabarMahatmya (Bhagalpur: B.A. Press, 1915?); AsliGayaMahatmya (Gaya: Harilal Bannerji, n.d.).
[75] India, "Report on Metropolitan Horse Fairs and District Horse Shows, 1892–93," p. 25. Bharati, "Pilgrimage Sites," pp. 87, 126, attributes the rising popularity of pilgrimage to improved publicity.
links, population, and history, it also offers details regarding the site's religious significance, from the temples and maths (monasteries) and sadhus in the vicinity to its mela.[76]
The flow of pilgrims was also enhanced by the "patronage of elite Hindus—royalty, administrators, military leaders and landholders[who] triggered a boom in pilgrimage in the 1700s that continued well into the British era." And in the aftermath of this trend, which this historian terms "state-sponsored pilgrimage" came "new pilgrims" drawn from the "humbler" ranks: "rising commercial classes" and "civil servants" as well as "common people, such as land-tilling castes."[77] A recent study of Ayodhya, which views the surge in pilgrim traffic as a function of the changing composition of pilgrims "from the established elite to new groups," arrives at much the same conclusion. Many of the "new men" who swelled the ranks of travelers "on the road" were people who undertook such journeys to establish their "conspicuous piety." Among them were numerous "Bengali government servants together with merchant families" who were "conspicuous beneficiaries of the Pax Britannica."[78] Government sources confirm this trend. To use the language of the official records, a "very large proportion of the pilgrims are wretchedly poor." And they came from everywhere. "Every village in the country," as one seasoned administrator put it, "sends its one or two pilgrims to some gathering or other during the year."[79]
Veeraswamy, as a Madras government servant and a member of an elite, epitomizes simultaneously the "new" pilgrim and the well-to-do groups who have historically undertaken tirthayatras . Pilgrimage, a hallmark of piety and personal honor for such groups, may even have gained in status and currency over the course of the colonial era. In a period of flux, adherence to this practice, as has been argued for other religious and social practices, may well have represented a way of ex-
[76] Sadhu Charan Prasad, BharatBrahman (Banaras: Hariprakash Yantralaya, 1902–3). See, e.g., part 2, pp. 2–32; Cohn, "Anthropology of a Colonial State."
[77] Katherine Prior, "The British Administration of Hinduism in North India, 1780–1900," Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1990, pp. 81–86, 14.
[78] C.A. Bayly, "From Ritual to Ceremony: Death Ritual and Society in Hindu North India since 1600," in Mirrorsof Mortality , ed. J. Whaley (London: Europa Publications, 1981), p. 170; Peter Van Der Veer, GodsonEarth: TheManagementofReligious ExperienceandIdentityina NorthIndianPilgrimageCentre , pp. 212–13.
[79] R. P. Jenkins, Offg. Commr., Patna, to Secy., GOB, no. 10, Jan. 13, 1868, and E. W. Molony, Offg. Commr., Orissa, to Secy., GOB, no. 221 1/2, July 16, 1869, Bengal Sanitation Procs., 1869, Oct., no. 12 and Apr., no. 18.
pressing "conformity to older norms at a time when these norms had become shaky within."[80]
These norms themselves, however, may have constituted invented traditions created by changes in the settlement and landholding patterns of the region. The in-migration of Rajputs and, more significantly for much of the region, of Bhumihar Brahmins transformed the local landscape of religious belief and practices. In Shahabad the struggle between Rajput in-migrants and the local Cheros ensued for several hundred years before the former won out and the latter fled southward. Although earlier waves of Rajputs had staked out the area-petty Rajput chiefs were said to be in command at the time of Muhammad Bakhtiar Khalji's conquest of the region at the end of the twelfth century-a formidable Rajput presence in the locality dates from the time of the arrival of the Parmar Rajputs beginning in the early fourteenth century. Also known later as the Ujjainia Rajputs, this clan played a leading role in suppressing the Cheros and in challenging the different Muslim rulers who sought to extend their sway over the area. Branches of this clan eventually founded the major Shahabad estates of Dumraon, Bhojpur, and Jagdishpur, but not without struggles that persisted into the eighteenth century. By the sixteenth century Bhumihar Brahmins also controlled vast stretches of territory, particularly in north Bihar. In south Bihar their most prominent representative was the Tikari family, whose great estate in Gaya dates back to the early eighteenth century. Thus, by the late eighteenth century, Rajputs and especially Bhumihar Brahmins had established themselves as the premier landholders of the region, sharing power in some areas only with other upper castes-Brahmins and Kayasths.[81] Such a pattern of conquest and settlement may explain why the cult of Rama was so extensive in Bihar, earning a significant place for Rama alongside a "multiplicity of gods and goddesses."[82]
[80] Ashis Nandy has made this provocative argument, based on limited evidence, to explain why middle-class Bengalis resorted to sati in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See his At theEdgeofPsychology:Essays inPoliticsandCulture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 7.
[81] ShDG1906 , pp. 18-19; GDG1906 , pp. 237-38; K. K. Datta, BiographyofKunwar SinghandAmarSingh (Patna: K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute, 1957), pp. 1-17; Rana P. B. Singh, ClanSettlementsintheSaran Plain (Varanasi: National Geographical Society of India, 1977), PP. 100-9. The most important Brahmin landholding family in the region was the Darbhanga rajas.
[82] Deo Banarak in Shahabad, the site of two ancient temples and other remains, illustrates this legacy well. Inscriptions date the larger of the two temples back to the eighth century when it was apparently dedicated to the sun. Other pillars depict early Aryan deities-Indra, Yama, Varuna, and Kubera. And, although icons devoted to thesun have survived in the temple, an image of Vishnu subsequently formed its centerpiece. C. E. A. W. Oldham, ed., JournalofFrancisBuchanan KeptduringtheSurveyof theDistrictofShahabadin1812-13 (Patna: Govt. Printing, 1926), pp. 10-13.
Landholders especially, but also merchants and traders, increasingly resorted to "conspicuous piety," adopting public roles as religious patrons, which they took to be appropriate manifestations of kingly behavior. Moreover, they were well positioned to assume these roles because of the favorable conditions of landholding ushered in by the economic and political climate of Pax Britannica-a development chronicled and anticipated by the Patna historian Ghulam Husainand because of the political and social status that they had acquired under the "Limited Raj" of the colonial state.[83]
No wonder family histories of notables in the colonial period, whether autobiographical or biographical, invariably privileged the religious lives of their subjects, singling out especially for commendation the undertaking of pious pilgrimages. The history of the eminent Chaudharys of Patna, for instance, notes the family's long-standing practice of religious piety, beginning with a late-eighteenth-century ancestor, "a great devotee" who journeyed to several sacred centers "in days when the roads were infested with robbers and pillagers and traveling entailed indescribable sufferings owing to lack of conveyance and other troubles." This ancestor, Dudraj Sinha Chaudhuri, was noted for his largesse with grain relief during the great famine of 1770. He also made pilgrimages, touring the holy sites with a retinue of 150 people. One of his descendants earned a reputation as an accomplished scholar and poet, in his later years increasingly living the life of a recluse and devoting himself "exclusively to the worship of God." Subsequent generations continued the pilgrimage tradition, one late-nineteenth-century descendant combined his visits to sacred sites with visits to sessions of the leading nationalist organization, the Indian National Congress. In the nineteenth century the family was renowned for its patronage of the popular Ramlila festival in the city of Patna.[84]
Maharaja Hit Narayan Singh of Tikari was said to have been "a man of a religious turn of mind . . . [who] became an ascetic and left his vast property in the hands of his wife" shortly after inheriting a lion's share of the estate in the 1840s. The official history of the great estate of Hathwa notes that Sir Kishen Pratap Sahi Bahadur, who was the ma-
[83] See above, chap. 1; and my TheLimitedRaj .
[84] Pandey, "History of the Chaudhary Family, Patna City," pp. i-xxiv.
haraja between 1874 and 1896, "had the heart of an ascetic. Soon after he was installed. . . he set out on a pilgrimage to the shrines of Northern India and travelled through almost the whole of India. Later on he used to pass a portion of the year in travelling and pilgrimage, mostly, in Benares."[85] Janki Prasad Singh, maharaja of the great estate of Dumraon between 1838 and 1843, is remembered as having died en route to the sacred center of Jaggarnath. He was known during his lifetime as one who observed rituals on holy days, venerated holy men, offered prayers daily at his family shrine, and undertook pilgrimages. Pilgrimage as a leitmotiv in the lives of the famous is also evidenced in the 1883 BiharDarpan , a biographical dictionary of the great men of that province.[86]
Prominent in the ranks of the pilgrims were other groups that had also prospered during the colonial period. In north India generally and in Bihar specifically, "emigrant businessmen from the vicinity of Rajasthan" (better known as Marwaris and Aggarwals) who had been staking out intermediary positions for themselves in the new circuits of trade emerging in the colonial era were actively involved in pilgrimage, both as devotees and traders who set up shop in pilgrimage centers. They had also long been the major underwriters of well-to-do pilgrims who needed credit at their pilgrimage destinations. Veeraswamy, who first encountered them in central India, testifies to their presence all along his pilgrimage circuit.[87]
Trader histories and directories, written in the late nineteenth century partly for prospective pilgrims and partly for those who wished to tap into the lucrative pilgrimage trade, further locate this chronology of rising pilgrim traffic in that era. This timing reflects the growing prosperity of trading castes in Bihar and throughout much of India. Surely Bholanauth Chunder's experiences can be viewed as part of this trend because his travels were partially undertaken in his capacity as a trader
[85] Devendra Nath Dutt, ABriefHistoryof theHutwaRaj (Calcutta: K. P. Mookerjee, 1909), p. 35; GDG1906 , p. 238.
[86] Singh, BiharDarpan , e.g., pp. 35, 53; Rajiv Nain Prasad, HistoryofBhojpur(1320–1860) (Patna: K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute, 1987), p. 130. See also Philip Lutgendorf, TheLifeofa Text:PerformingtheRamcaritmanas ofTulsidas (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), p. 137, regarding elite patronage of pilgrimages and of a variety of activities associated with the epic poem, Ramcaritmanas .
[87] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 42, 46, identifies Marwaris present in bazaars beginning in central India. See also below, chap. 5, on the rising "outsider" trader groups in the nineteenth century. Prior, "British Administration of Hinduism," p. 17, refers to the practice of pilgrims to rely for credit on bankers rather than travel with cash in hand.
who dealt in "country produce." Perhaps he may even have been a beneficiary of the prosperity reaped as the fruits of the pilgrimage- and mela-associated trade.[88] Thus, the VyapriyonkiNamavali , a trade directory, lists by localities, the names of traders and their specialties, as well as information pertinent to traders interested in conducting business there, such as lists of things grown, manufactured, and exported. This directory also featured information on melas and other sites worth visiting, typically temples and shrines. In a trade guide of Bihar and Orissa produced by and for the trading caste of Aggarwals, commerce and religion were conspicuously highlighted, information about traders, products, and markets sharing space with descriptions of the prominent religious centers.[89]
Others among the new pilgrims were those of less privileged social and economic backgrounds, notably men and women drawn from such "new" groups as traders, mostly petty traders of the Shudra castes; and rich peasants, mostly of the Shudra castes. In both cases, their interest in pilgrimage was heightened by their drive for higher status at a time when they were making substantial economic gains. For traders of Shudra castes, emulation of the practices of the higher castes represented their ambition to lay claim to a Vaishya status. Thus Telis, a Shudra group actively engaged in trading, were enjoined to give up trafficking in items associated with traders of low caste, assume Vaishya ways, and strive to become mahajans (moneylenders, bankers), a role for which the Marwaris were upheld as the model to emulate.[90]
A similar pattern can be identified for peasants whom William R. Pinch categorizes as "low-status cultivators," particularly Kurmis, Koiris, and Ahirs, who constituted the "semi-independent cultivating" castes and who represented the "semi-independent cultivators on the margin of land-ownership." For them the ideal was to fashion a Vaishnava kshatriya , or warrior identity, centered on devotion to Rama and
[88] Chunder, Travels , vol. 1, p. xx. The participation of traders in pilgrimage was not new, the magnitude of it was; nor was their mixing of business and faith an entirely novel development. See Banarsidas, Ardhakathanaka , for a remarkable autobiography of a seventeenth-century merchant and pilgrim.
[89] B. P. Agarwal, AgarwalVyaparDarpan , BiharaurOrissa (Muzaffarpur: B. P. Agarwal, 191?), pp. 179–86; Karta Kishan Dube, comp., VyapariyonkiNamavali , part III (Lucknow: Karta Kishan Dube, 1919).
[90] Janki Prasad Sahu, TeliJatiyaNiyambali (Rules for the Teli Caste) (Bhagalpur: Janki Prasad Sahu, 1915), passim; see also below, chap. 5, on the rise of petty traders and rich peasants.
Krishna and the various symbols, meanings, and practices associated with these gods.[91]
The rich and powerful manifested their "conspicuous piety" and position in local society through their roles as patrons of fairs. Landholding families, as their histories often indicate, were tied to the founding of melas; others were connected through their roles as sponsors and caretakers of fairs. An unusual first-person testimony identifying the imperative of landholder patronage of fairs can be authenticated for the well-known Jahanabad Mela of Gaya in the late nineteenth century. This illustration is all the more compelling because it involves the Muslim zamindar of Jahanabad, whose voice can be heard distinctly in the colonial archive because he was the target of a criminal attack while he was asleep on the premises of the Hindu temple of that locality. When asked to explain what he had been doing there, he noted that it was the night of the full moon in Kartik, an important festival day of the fair. To continue in his words, "I slept away from my own house to take care of the fair (mela hifazut ke waste). I am a Zemindar of the place, and it is customary for the Zemindars to take care of the fair."[92]
That a temple figures in this account of landholder patronage of fairs is indicative of the landholder connection—to both fairs and temples—because the sites of temples (and shrines) were often the venues of fairs and because their building and maintenance were often tied to the kingly or patronage role of landed magnates. Certainly, Veeraswamy understood the responsibilities of this role, since he commented on it frequently. Contrast his chiding of the nawab of one area for failing to keep up with repairs of a temple with his words of praise for the landholder of another area where the temple was "not. . . constructed well" but the "worship. . . performed satisfactory with the required rituals according to southern traditions.. . . The Lord in the temple here is being worshipped splendidly; and it is no wonder that Lord's grace is showered in a visible manner as if the Lord is on talking terms with the Zamindar and his family."[93] Temples were indeed often founded by zamindars, and temple building, which increased significantly between the late
[91] "Becoming Vaishnava, Becoming Kshatriya," pp. 294–304.
[92] Testimony of Azmat Ali, Trial No. 3, Case No. 5, Sessions for Jan. 1863, Zillah Behar, Bengal Jdcl. Procs., Apr. 1863, no. 453.
[93] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 15, 31. Similar observations are sprinkled throughout the work, e.g., see p. 70.
eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century, was the "accustomed way an aspirant landholder laid claim to a higher status."[94]
Temples dating back to early Rajput in-migrants trace the longstanding practice of local lords sponsoring the building of temples in Bihar.[95] And their construction, generally alongside forts already in existence, accentuates the salience of both types of structures as the twin hallmarks of power and authority. While forts towered above the huts of the subject peoples, temples proclaimed their founders' religious faith and claim to moral authority. By virtue of their dedication to one or more specific gods, temples sought to forge a common religious identity with the local population. Like melas, temples and forts tied into a multiplicity of domains. And in the precolonial and early colonial periods, when there was more land than needed for the subsistence of a conquering group, forts and temples were the symbols of power and control: the former representing the coercive capacity of the controlling group, the latter asserting its hegemonic control. And each needed the other because together they constituted the essentials of authority and legitimacy.
Rajput and Bhumihar Brahmin conquerors turned controllers therefore emulated a model of kingship in which the role of religious patron was central. Political authority and ritual were thereby closely interlinked and not fraught with the "inner conflict of tradition," which some scholars view as ever present in the relationship between brahmin and king because "it is not the king but the brahmin who, according to the classical conception, holds the key to ultimate value and therefore to legitimacy and authority." And because of this powerful ambivalence, "kingship remains. . . theoretically suspended between sacrality and secularity, divinity and mortal humanity, legitimate authority and arbitrary power, dharma and adharma." The king, in other words, "desperately needs the brahmin to sanction his power by linking it to the brahmin's authority."[96]
[94] Metcalf, LandandtheBritishRaj , p. 352; Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 15, 70. On the proliferation of temple building and the occupational and caste backgrounds of people who sponsored the building of temples, see Hitesranjan Sanyal, "Social Aspects of Temple Building in Bengal: 1600 to 1900 A.D.," ManinIndia 48 (1968): 201–19; and his SocialMobilityinBengal (Calcutta: Papyrus, 1981), p. 67.
[95] One of the earliest examples of Rajput temples is Deo Banarak, dating back to the mid-sixteenth century. See Buchanan, JournalofShahabad , p. 13.
[96] J. C. Heesterman, TheInnerConflictof Tradition:EssaysinIndianRitual , Kingship , andSociety (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) , pp. 127, 111.
To keep state and society bound together, however, is to recognize that "caste was embedded in a political context of kingship." To pursue the lead supplied by one scholar: "The prevalent ideology had not to do, at least primarily, with purity and pollution, but rather with royal authority and honor, and associated notions of power, dominance, and order." Therefore he concludes: "It is a mistake to try to separate a materialist etic from a cultural emic: even the domain of ritual action and language is permeated with the complex foundations and lived experiences of hierarchical relations."[97] "The patronage of religion revolving around the restoration of temples, sponsorship of festivals, and distribution of temple honors," notes another source, "continued to be a focus of activity in privileged landholding because of the importance of Hinduism in the reproduction of royal status."[98] Melas, markets, and religion: these were all tied to the patronage role associated with kingship.
What Kunwar Singh—who later made a name for himself in the 1857 Mutiny/Rebellion—did when he assumed the mantle of the Ujjainia Rajput estate of Jagdishpur early in the nineteenth century represents one model of such kingly behavior. Having weathered the storms created by internecine disputes over inheritance, he set about the task of consolidating and developing his power and influence by building up his headquarters town of Jagdishpur as the centerpiece of the estate. Once he had renovated its fort, he began the construction of a Siva temple. His "new era of peace and prosperity, splendour and magnificence" included establishing markets and digging wells and tanks, "and soon the town became a centre of various festivals, melas (fairs), etc. . . . [T]he Shivratri festival was celebrated. . . with much pomp and a big mela (fair) was held on the occasion. Kunwar Singh took steps to induce compulsory attendance at this mela by local merchants and forbade them to carry their goods to other melas ."[99]
The prominence attached to the establishment of melas and temples in the histories of estates undergoing the process of consolidation further underscores their symbolic significance in the development of landholder power and influence. A striking illustration is furnished by the case of the Bettiah Mela initiated by Anand Kishore Singh during his
[97] Dirks, TheHollowCrown , p. 7.
[98] Pamela G. Price, "Kingly Models in Indian Political Behavior: Culture as a Medium of History," AsianSurvey29 (1989): 564.
[99] The temple, however, was never completed. Datta, Kunwar Singh , p. 21.
tenure as maharaja of this great estate between 1816 and 1832. Another fair closely tied to the fortunes of a landholding family is the mela at Deo, a marketing settlement that doubled as the residence of the Deo zamindars. Convened in Kartik and Chait, the fairs at this site highlight the sun temple, the Suraj Mandir. Six miles from Deo is the small village of Umga where a fair is held in Pus; both the place—the village was the former headquarters of the estate—and the fair are associated with the Deo family.[100]
The significance of fairs and their relation to landholder power and influence is evidenced not only by the "compulsory attendance" that Kunwar Singh demanded but also by the competing interests that emerged in places where the absence of clear-cut authority precluded anyone from monopolizing their patronage. Take the case of the fair originally established in the eighteenth century by Bidhata Singh at the junction of the Punpun and Dardha Rivers; it was subsequently contested by Rajputs groups from different villages. Their clash on the occasion of the 1825 fair led eventually to its demise.[101]
Another example of the charged connection between fairs and authority, albeit with a different twist, is the history of the well-known Karagola Fair of Purnea, long frequented by "merchants, pilgrims, and buyers" drawn by its strategic and religious location on the Ganges, commanding traffic between Bihar and Bengal and between south and north Bihar. This mela passed through many proprietarial hands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as different landholders claimed title to it by staging it on their own grounds. In the 1840s the fair was convened concurrently at two different locales, Kantnagar and Karagola, because feuding landholders tried to set up their own "shops, booths, and [facilities for] pilgrims." Not until the maharaja of Darbhanga gained sole control of the area in the 1860s did it begin to flourish as the famous Karagola Fair.[102]
As founders and patrons, zamindars can be linked to virtually every major fair in the region: to name a few, the Rajput Dumraon rajas for the Brahampur Fair; the Bhumihar Hathwa rajas for the Thawe Mela;
[100] Grierson, NotesonGaya , p . 45; FairsofBihar , p. xl; CDG1960 , p . 553 .
[101] Singh, BiharDarpan , pp. 36–37.
[102] R. DeCourcy, Sub-Manager, Court of Wards, to J. B. Worgan, Offg. Magte., Purnea, Bengal Jdcl. Procs., June 1868, no. 253. See also GOBi, BiharDistrictGazetteers , Purnea by P. C. Roy Chaudhury (Patna: Secretariat Press, 1963), p. 718, regarding its subsequent decline because of the rise of other melas and the declining position of the landholders "by whom it was liberally encouraged."
the Maksudpur rajas for the Maksudpur Dashara Mela; and the Brahmin Darbhanga rajas for the Mahadeonath Fair. A late-nineteenth-century list of the most important fairs of the region and the names of landholders on whose sites these were held connects almost every fair to a major local figure: in most cases to landholders, but in a few instances to traders, merchants, and people of other occupations.[103]
Thus, increasingly in the colonial period, the rising popularity of pilgrimage and of the related phenomenon of melas meant that the lives of virtually all were touched by these events. And, thus, increasingly, people were drawn out of their routinized spaces—villages, towns, and cities—and into new spatial arenas. In the words of a vernacular gazetteer of Bihar, "Every district has two, four or ten small or big melas once or twice a year that are attended by all the people of the district."[104]
As extraordinary events that celebrated the major festivals of the local and regional religious calendar, melas were distinct from the events of everyday life. They were further accented by their "socioeconomic 'field' " of activities, which was also different from everyday transactions.
There is considerable evidence that fairs were venues for the exchange of goods and services. Depending on their size and scale, small fairs might be comparable to periodic and standard markets. At the other end of the scale stood the great fair of Sonepur, which was much more than just the "most fashionable pilgrimage" of the region. In the words of one contemporary source, the "principal object" of most Sonepur-bound visitors was "trade and amusements," offerings that set fairs apart from everyday peasant markets.
Although not ordinarily a market—Sonepur formed part of a cluster of several villages that constituted a "minor marketing area" focusing on the nearby periodic market—at mela time it was transformed into the site of several markets. In addition to goods readily available in the markets of the locality, fairs offered other items of considerably higher value. So organized was the market at the Sonepur Mela that the sites of the different markets were "as fixed and certain as are those of the several bazars [sic] in the Municipal Market of Calcutta. The stalls and
[103] "Fairs," 1894, Patna. Included in this list are not only traders and merchants, such as Mohan Lal Marwari of Chapra (Sivaratri Mela at Mehnar) but also pleaders and mahants (head of a Hindu religious order) of this or that temple.
[104] Shivapujan Sahay, ViharkaVihar (Bankipur: Granthmala Karyala, 1919), p. 108.
booths in these bazars [sic] are arranged in rows, having open spaces between, which do duty for streets and roads."[105]
"[E]verything from a pin to an elephant was offered for sale" said one nineteenth-century visitor to the great Sonepur Mela. What it offered once a year, were goods otherwise available only in the city of Patna or a few other higher-order markets. "All the residents of a district," as one local source states, "were mobilized by melas to buy horses, bullocks, cows, buffaloes, palanquins, rugs, carpets, utensils, cloth, boxes, musical instruments, shoes, spices, toys, umbrellas, books and other necessary articles."[106]
Some of these goods-livestock in particular-were not routinely bought and sold at the ordinary markets-periodic (haats) and standard markets. Small fairs were also venues for the exchange of goods and, depending on their size and scale, comparable in their range of transactions to periodic and standard markets. To use the evocative language of Braudel, fairs interrupted the "tight circle of everyday exchanges.. . . Even the fairs held in so many modest little towns, and which seem only to be a meeting-point for the surrounding countryside and the town craftsmen, were in fact breaking out of the usual trade cycle. As for the big fairs, they could mobilize the economy of a huge region.. . . Everything contributed then to make a fair an extraordinary gathering. "[107]
What distinguished melas from most ordinary markets, and what made Sonepur Mela the greatest fair in Bihar (and according to one source "one of the biggest fairs in the world"), was their role as livestock markets. The focal point for buyers was the cattle mart, where bullocks, cows, goats, sheep, and other domesticated animals were displayed. A camel fair occupied the grounds next to it, followed by an elephant bazaar, which always drew crowds because of its circus atmosphere; beyond this lay the bird fair. The horse mart included an open space where prospective buyers could ride the animals. Sonepur specialized in the sale of "every type of big or small .. .birds and animals."[108]
[105] Ghose, "Rural Behar," p. 225; Sonepur thana nos. 1-100, 106-59, SVN. See also below, chap. 5, regarding market hierarchy.
[106] Sahay, Vihar , p. 108; Martin, Bhagalpur , p. 133; Lillian Luker Ashby with Roger Whately, MyIndia (London: Michael Joseph, 1938), p. 103.
[107] Fernand Braudel, CivilizationandCapitalism 15th-18thCentury , vol. 2, TheWheels ofCommerce (London: Collins, 1982), p. 82.
[108] FairsofBihar , p. xxxiii; C. T. Buckland, SketchesofSocialLifein India (London: n.p., 1884), pp. 72-73.
A late-nineteenth-century mela-goer estimated that "cows and calves, ploughing oxen, cart-bullock, and buffaloes sell to the number of some thirty thousand. Not less than ten thousand horses change their masters. The number of elephants bought for sale sometimes amounts to two thousand."[109]
Customers and dealers came from near and far to buy and sell livestock. Buyers from as far away as Punjab sought out elephants procured from Assam and Bengal. Horses for sale included the "sturdy breed of Kathiawar [western India], the hardy horses of Hardwar (north India), the sure-footed hill-ponies of Bhootan [Bhutan]."[110] Similarly, the Brahampur Fair catered to a wide audience because it was one of the major cattle fairs in south Bihar. Already a place of "considerable reputation" in the early nineteenth century, its main commodity, as at Sonepur, was cattle, although horses were also sold. [111]
As centers for cattle trade, fairs performed a vital role both in the workings of the local economy and culture and in that of local and translocal patterns of exchange. Cattle have historically played, and continue to play, a major role in Indian life. Bullocks, as the careful study of the village of Karimpur shows, are important for the peasant because "they plow his fields, help sow his seed, send water to his crops from wells during the dry months of both winter and summer, press his sugar cane, and carry to market any produce he may have to sell." No wonder the purchase of these animals represented a major undertaking and expense. "It is considered an occasion," observes one local account, "when a villager buys a cow[,] and much time is spent choosing one."[112]
The significance of the mela as a cattle fair in the local and regional economy and society can be highlighted in other ways as well. For melas not only marked ritual time but also followed the agricultural calendar. Occurring in the wake of harvests, fairs coincided with a time when people were most likely to have money and time to spare. More-
[109] Chunder, Travels , vol. 1, p. 122. Cf. with the period 1920 to 1930, when 7,180 horses and ponies were sold, 2,030 cows, 1,510 buffaloes, 363,300 bullocks and calves, and 735 elephants, or with 1931–40 when these same categories returned the following figures: 47,149; 11,621; 5,808; 289,077; and 6,080. SDG 1960 , p. 501.
[110] Ghose, "Rural Behar," p. 225; BharatBrahman , part 2, p. 7.
[111] . Buchanan, Shahabad , p. 71; "Fairs," 1904; ShDG 1906 , p. 97.
[112] Mohanti, MyVillage , p. 160; Wiser and Wiser, BehindMudWalls , p. 62. Cattlerich India possesses one of the largest concentrations of domesticated animals in the world. Much has been made of the ritual and symbolic importance attached to the cowsummed up in the "sacred cow concept"—an importance dating back well into the Vedic period.
over, the winter season was precisely when the need for plow cattle was the greatest in order to prepare fields for the sizable rabi crops, generally September-October in north Bihar and November-December in the south. It was also the time when bullocks were needed in south Bihar for crushing sugarcane and for transporting the rice crop.[113]
Cattle fairs were also synchronized with one another. The Sonepur Fair in October-November (Kartik) opened the season, and the Sitamarhi Ramnavami Fair in March-April (Chait) closed out the year. The fair at Sonepur inaugurated the cattle fair season because it was a major supplier for the other gatherings. "Soon after the Sonepur fair," according to one report, "streams of cattle begin to pour into Bengal, both by road and by train."[114] Although some cattle were purchased and taken directly into the fields, many, if not most, made their way into the villages of Bengal via the cattle fairs. And these fairs began in Dinajpur and Rangpur, the northwesternmost districts of Bengal bordering on Bihar; from there the cattle were moved eastward and southward into the rest of the province. Typically, the Bihari or the "imported" cattle available in the fairs of Bengal were handled by up-country dealers, who took out loans to purchase them at the Sonepur Fair and then marched them along the circuit of Bengal fairs.[115]
Fairs also broke out of the "usual trade cycle" by providing a range of other goods. Sonepur's English Bazaar, for instance, which presumably dated from after the turn of the nineteenth century, catered to "exotic" tastes: its offerings included European toys, groceries, brandy, beer, soda water, furniture, and assorted kinds of carriages and conveyances. The Mina Bazaar, usually the most congested part of the
[113] GOI, AgriculturalMarketinginIndia , ReportontheMarketingof CattleinIndia (Delhi: Government of India Press, 1946), pp. 19–20. Another factor in determining this schedule may have been the fact that "[a]s dairy animals are generally marketed when they are in milk, seasonal variations in demand for cows and she-buffaloes are closely associated with their calving seasons .. . . [In north India, cows are mostly purchased in February-April, and buffaloes in August-October, the periods that concur with the calving seasons of the two species" (p. zo).
[114] J. R. Blackwood, ASurveyandCensus oftheCattleofBengal (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1915 ), p. 11; W. B. Heycock, Director, Agric., B & O, to Secy., GOB&O, no. 65 8-A.T., June 15, 1912, B & O Rev. Procs., 1913, Agric., Mar., no. 12. Convened in late November in the wake of the Sonepur Mela, the opening fairs in Bengal were the Awakhoa in Dinajpur and the Dewti in Rangpur, followed by fairs in Dinajpur and Rangpur in December; the Jamalpur Mela in Mymensigh in January; the Darwani (Rangpur) and Dhaldighi (Dinajpur) fairs in February, the March fair in Haripur (Dinajpur), and the well-known Nekmurdan Fair in April, where substantial numbers of cattle were sold.
[115] Blackwood, CattleofBengal , pp. 10–11.
Sonepur Mela, was "where you can buy almost anything," which one observer specified as "goods from Manchester, Birmingham, Delhi, Cawnpore, the Punjab, Cashmere, or Afghanistan, and. . . rather neat Indian-made curios."[116] But it was also an outlet for the products of artisanal industries: "country-manufactures from all parts of India[, including the] beautiful ivory work of Delhi, the brass-wares of Benares, the bell-metal articles of Sewan, the carpets of Mirzapur, the tents of Cawnpur, Patna and Buxar, the iron-wares of Chupra."[117] Bholanauth Chunder in the late nineteenth century encountered "rows of booths extending in several streets, and displaying copper and brass wares, European and native goods, toys, ornaments, jewelry, and all that would meet the necessity or luxury of a large part of the neighboring population. Numerous are the shops for the sale of grain and sweetmeats. "[118]
A visitor who always seemed to have one eye trained on the bazaar, Chunder, the trader, was also remarkably perceptive about the declining state of artisanal industries. Although he considered "foreign" ascendancy to be the "natural result of unsuccessful competition with superior intelligence and economy," he nevertheless lamented the fact that "Indian weavers have been thrown out of the market.. . . The present native cannot but choose to dress himself in Manchester calico, and use Birmingham hardware." He looked forward to the day when "our sons and grandsons will emulate our ancestors to have every dhooty [dhoti , male dress], every shirt, and every pugree [pagri , turban] made from the fabrics of Indian cotton manufactured by Indian millowners."[119]
At the Brahampur Fair, a variety of goods were available, including its specialties—brass, spices, carpets, and cotton. Carpets were locally manufactured in Bhabhua and Sasaram. At the one-day mela of Ghazi Mia, held on a Sunday in Jeth in Maner, shopkeepers converged from nearby
[116] Minden Wilson, HistoryofBeharIndigo Factories;ReminiscencesofBehar; TirhootandItsInhabitantsof thePast;HistoryofBihar LightHorseVolunteers (Calcutta: Calcutta General Printing, 1908) pp. 167–71; "Diary (and correspondence);" Agarwal, AgarwalDarpan , pp. 134–35; HariharMahatmya , pp. 5–7.
[117] Ghose, "Rural Behar," p. 225; Prasad, BharatBrahman , part 2, p. 7.
[118] Chunder, Travels , 1 , pp. 122–23. A tax list in one portion of the fair alone counted the following shops: for grain (12), vegetables (1), cooked food (5), betel leaf (4), tobacco (5), money changers (15), sattu (1), ganja (1), cakes (1), sweetmeats (1), pathera (silk- or fringe-maker) (1), hardware (1), tents (7), and spices (1). See R. N. Farquharson, Colltr., Khas Mahals, to E. C. Ravenshaw, Commr., Patna, Jan 10, 1844, P.C. Records, vol. 115, 1844.
[119] Chunder, Travels , 1, p. 168–69.
Danapur and Patna and from Chapra and Arrah to set up stalls "for the sale of sweetmeats, fruits, toys and articles of feminine toilette."[120]
Fairs were also centers of popular culture and entertainment that enriched and interrupted the patterns of everyday life. Although Veeraswamy is not a reliable source on this aspect of the melas, because he did not acknowledge their "secular" aspects and therefore leaves out any discussion of their "sensual distractions," other eyewitness accounts more than make up for this "chasm." Bholanauth Chunder, who visited Sonepur in the late nineteenth century refers to "parties of strolling actors, dressed fantastically. . . dancing and singing." Melas were also, to use the censorious language of a government account, a "notorious place for prostitution."[121] But, as viewed through the wonder-struck eyes of one Indian traveler, the fair was "open to all descriptions of visitors. Much money is expended on the nautch-girls [dance girls], whose dancing and songs form the great source of Indian entertainment."[122]
Reminiscing about the Revelganj Mela, a local English resident remembered encountering "all sorts of amusements calculated to please youth, toys of every description are exposed for sale.. . . At one place a bear or other wild beast become domesticated is to be seen, whilst, the facetious and mischievous monkey, riding on a dog by way of a charger, is always present. . .; jugglers, nautches, puppet shows, and the attractive ups and downs, and round abouts, filled with boys and girls laughing, as they ascend the air, in their little swinging boxes, are met with on all sides."[123]
He quickly added, however, that these scenes were "a very good sample of the manners and amusements of the lower orders, and in some respects resemble similar sights in England." Syed Zahiruddin echoed this sentiment when he described the Maner Mela as a "bacchanalian festival resorted to by the lower orders."[124]
This aspect of fairs as featuring the "manners and amusements of the lower orders," although alluding to their character as arenas of popular culture, also suggests that melas-or pilgrimage generally for that
[120] Ghose, "Rural Behar," p. zz6; Syed Zahiruddin, HistoryandAntiquitiesofManair (Bankipore: n.p., 1905); R. W. Bingham, "Report on the Productive Resources of the Sasseram District," JAHSI12 (1861): 361; ShDG 1906 , p . 97 .
[121] SDG1960 , p. 500; Chunder, Travels , vol. 1, p. 123.
[122] Chunder, Travels , p. 122.
[123] Rankine, TopographyofSaran , pp. 27-28.
[124] Zahiruddin, Manair , p. 6; Rankine, Topography ofSaran , p. 27.
matter—do not conform to Victor Turner's well-known paradigm of pilgrimage. In this formulation, pilgrimage is construed as a process akin to a tribal rite of passage whereby pilgrims leave their everyday structured world to advance into a liminal state and then attain a state of freedom and unmediated fellowship, or communitas . This ethos is a form of antistructure because the pilgrimage setting generates social bonding among pilgrims that fashions them into a group. In Turner's words, this situation engenders "a direct, immediate and total confrontation of human identities. . . which tends to make those experiencing it think of mankind as a homogenous, unstructured and free community."[125] Victor Turner and Edith Turner have also described pilgrimage as offering "liberation from profane social structures that are symbiotic with a specific religious system" and generating such characteristics of liminality as "release from mundane structure; homogenization of status;. . . communitas; ordeal; reflection on the meaning of basic religious and cultural values; . . . [and] movement itself."[126]
While empirical research has identified a liminal condition in pilgrims in the process of shifting from the web of everyday life to the sacred center, there is little evidence to suggest that their condition in this stage can be viewed as a communitas-type relationship. On the contrary, adherence to inequality both "on the road" and at pilgrimage sites is commonplace because "people tended to bring structured social bonds with them, as pilgrim groups were often formed on the basis of existing social groups."[127]
Although "movement itself" to Kashi and to other sacred centers "out there" heightened Veeraswamy's sense of religious commonality with people throughout the subcontinent, clearly his pilgrimage was not a "liminoid phenomenon." For his imagined "country," though perceived as connected by religious threads, was nevertheless defined and limited by the brahminical and Hindu ideology and community he
[125] Drama , Fields , andMetaphors: SymbolicActioninHumanSociety (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. 169.
[126] PilgrimageinChristianCulture , pp. 34, 9, and 250, for a definition of "Communitas , or socialantistructure . A relational quality of full unmediated communication, even communion, between definite and determinate identities, which arises spontaneously in all kinds of groups, situations, and circumstances.. . . It is a liminal phenomenon which combines the qualities of lowliness, sacredness, homogeneity, and comradeship" (p. 250).
[127] Morinis, PilgrimageinHinduTradition , p. 258. In addition to Morinis's own work on Bengali pilgrims, which supports this conclusion, see also Gold, Fruitful Journeys .
was valorizing. He almost always sought out the local Brahmins, in part because he needed fellow castemen in order to find suitable accommodations and in part because he wished to meet with and observe his own brethren. Invariably, he engaged in comparisons—whether their "customs and manners . . . [were] different from ours."[128]
Consider also his identification of Hindustan as primarily comprising north India, or the areas mostly in the north where Hindustani was spoken. His Journal , furthermore, distinguishes between people of his own Hindu religion and Muslims, or "Mlecchas" (impure foreigners), as he terms them. A resident of Madras, he may not have had much direct contact with Indo-Islamic culture prior to his pilgrimage, but that changed as he made his way north. Acknowledging that Muslims had been in the subcontinent for almost a thousand years, he observed in Patna that people "mix up Urdu with Sanskrit and imitate the Muslims in clothes, ornamentation, use of palanquins[,] etc. In spite of this it is to be said that they have not completely given up their Varnasrama Dharmas [duties of social rank and stages of life]."[129]
Nor does a dimension of communitas surface in his few remarks about travelers he encountered undertaking "Kasiyatras," let alone in any overt statement of kinship or connection with others involved in "fruitful journeys." Yet this, as we have already seen, was a time of a growing traffic of pilgrims and mela-goers. Even within his own group, numbering almost a hundred, his ties and sentiments were restricted to members of his own household and retainers. Other than family members—and he periodically refers to the women of the household—the rest of his group are only identified as subordinates, as "twelve palanquin-bearers and six peons" and "six luggage-carriers."[130]
At times, the boundaries of Veeraswamy's imagined "country" did not even extend much beyond his own region, such as when it signified people "who have performed the Tirupati pilgrimage," that is, those who had undertaken the pilgrimage to the south Indian shrine of Tirupati. Thus, like the present-day Bengali pilgrims studied by the anthropologist Morinis, Veeraswamy's journey did not entail a process of divesting himself from his "social structural roles and relationships."[131]
[128] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 54, 6, 36, 62 , 70.
[129] Ibid., pp. 123, 122, 52 , 97.
[130] Ibid., pp. 80, 112.
[131] Morinis, Pilgrimagein HinduTradition , p . 274; Veeraswamy, Journal , p . 52. See also Van Der Veer, Gods onEarth .
Veeraswamy's journey across the country did evoke, however, a sense of place and identity, as the pilgrimage experience did and still does for many pilgrims. His obvious joy at returning home notwithstanding, his journey across the subcontinent clearly reinforced notions of a "native place" that encompassed much more than Madras. Indeed, by its very nature pilgrimage has a capacity to foster a sense of collective identity even as pilgrims retain their consciousness of social and economic distinctions. Thus, for people "on the road," whether from Madras or Banaras or Patna, the entire subcontinent constituted (and still constitutes) a landscape whose nodal points are sacred centers exerting a gravitational pull over their faiths and beliefs. Pilgrimage has therefore been appropriately investigated as a "remarkable and ancient institution sustaining a system of linked centers that helps bind together the incredibly diverse peoples of the Indian subcontinent."[132] It has also helped shape "larger national identification," because Hindu religion has engendered the notion "that there is an entity of India to which all its inhabitants belong. The Hindu epics and legends. . . teach that the stage for the gods was nothing less than the entire land and that the land remains one religious setting for those who dwell in it. The sense was and is continually confirmed through the practice of pilgrimage."[133]
Veeraswamy echoed this notion of a Hindu sacred land, in referring to the entire subcontinent, from the southernmost tip to the north, as comprising one "country." "This country," which, to use his words, "forms a part of 'Brahmandam' from Kanyakumari [in the south] to Kashmir [in the north] is the best Karma Bhoomi; Rama and Krishna and other Avatars [reincarnations] of the Lord are manifested here." That is, his "country," a distinct land ("bhoomi," or bhumi) shaped by karma constituted a part of Brahmandam, the universe that according to Hindu mythology had originated from a primordial egg. Thus, he was puzzled at the existence of differences "in the food habits, image-worship, courage and others[,] etc." between the people of the north and the south because in his mind the "country. . . [was] historically one according to the Smritis, Srutis and Puranas."[134]
Religious considerations also underlay his critique of British missionary efforts "to convert the Hindus to Christianity in order to save
[132] Gold, FruitfulJourneys , p . 1 .
[133] David G. Mandelbaum, SocietyinIndia , vol. 2, ChangeandContinuity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), p. 401.
[134] Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 70, 109, 26; also pp. 6, 36, 54, 62, 70.
them from the supposed doom." These efforts aroused the "hostile feeling to Europeans" apparently encountered by missionaries in the city of Patna. On the whole, though, his assessment of his masters was positive: he pronounced them "just, in their rule[,] and by the grace of God they are gaining His favour day by day." It was certainly positive in contrast to his view that the "Mohammadan race" was responsible for wreaking destruction on the temples of such sacred places as Prayag (Allahabad) and Kashi. Consequently, he says they succeeded in converting "not one in [a] thousand" to Islam. Whereas "Hindus gradually avoided Muslims," Christianity, he states, gained a measure of success through the "clever tactics of the English.. . . That which is not possible by valour is possibly [sic] by contrivance[,] is the principle adopted by the British[;] and they gradually took into their religion that section of the community which enjoyed the least status in society and preached the glories of Christianity to them who are ignorant of the intricate religious actions."[135]
Notwithstanding his tirades against Muslims and his seemingly favorable sentiments regarding the "English," he differentiated himself and his ilk from the British, because they possessed a different culture. Moreover, on at least one occasion, when he was in Hyderabad during the Muslim festival of Mohurrum, he minimized religious differences. In fact he observed that the "Lord's manifestation is evident in abundance in the city and attracts thousands of people including people of other religions who stay here from the ninth day to the last day of the festival. The Lord accepts the varying modes of worship of his children.. . . Accordingly I thought I had entered a sacred place at this time and was thankful to the Lord."[136] Contrast this with his designation of the British as "phirangis," a pejorative he used to set them apart from his Hindu countrymen as the "Other." Of Persian origin, this term referred "(especially in the South) specifically to the Indian-born Portuguese, or, when used more generally, for 'European,' implies something of hostility or disparagement."[137]
As Veeraswamy's ruminations about his "native place" and the "country" as a whole disclose, his pilgrimage prompted him to reflect on questions of identity and community: what people shared in common and what made them different communities. Such notions, more-
[135] Ibid., p. 186; MadrasAlmanacfor1830 (Madras: Asylum Press, 1830), p. 282.
[136] Veeraswamy, Journal , p. 24.
[137] Hobson-Jobson , p. 353; Veeraswamy, Journal , pp. 26, 186.
over, can be associated even more so with melas or "gatherings of pilgrims" because they were predominantly "locality"-based events tied to local systems of control. Their constituencies, except in the case of great fairs, were drawn from specific localities and communities, people bound together by a sense of place and by a common language, culture, and history. Their delimited geographical locus was in fact construed by the Bihar and Orissa Pilgrim Committee as forming a fundamental characteristic of fairs: "the places where 'fairs' are held are, as a rule, of consequence only to the neighbouring districts, and on a few special days, while the 'places of pilgrimage' are visited by devotees from all over India every day throughout the year."[138]
Fairs, at least for the duration of the festivals "seem to do away with . . . most of the distinctions of caste, and the separation of sexes."[139] Certainly, over the course of the colonial period, the number of women undertaking pilgrimages appears to have risen appreciably. Indeed, both qualitative and quantitative data from the late nineteenth century suggest that the majority of pilgrims on the road were women. According to one calculation, three-fourths of the twenty-nine thousand people estimated to have been present at the Burdwan district mela of Kistnanagar were women.[140] This growing presence may explain the development of a literature critical of their participation at the turn of the twentieth century. A different assessment of this increasingly public presence of women as well as of the communitas dimension of fairs is offered in the statement by a recent official account that melas "have helped break the rigours of casteism and orthodox habits. They have also helped to liquidate the strict parda system. . . [and] are more patronised by the women-folk."[141]
Because of the numbers that were involved and because of their potential for generating communitas , melas were fertile arenas for orga-
[138] ReportofPilgrimCommittee , p . 1 .
[139] Rankine, NotesonSaran , p. 27.
[140] Babu Jadunath Bose, Deputy Magte., Gurbata, to C. T. Buckland, Commr., Burdwan, no. 38, May 21, 1872, Bengal Gen. Procs., 1872, June, no. 44. A similar observation is made by F. J. Alexander, Offg. Magte., Rajshahye, to Commr., Rajshahye, no. 29, Mar. 18, 1869, Bengal Sanitation Procs., 1869, Apr., no. 9.
[141] CDG1960 , p. 132. Bhagwath Prasad, Mela Ghumani (Muzaffarpur: Vijay Press, 1925), enjoins women not to visit fairs. Such a moralizing tone was reinforced by the colonial discourse on women in which the British staked out a role for themselves as the protectors of female virtue. See, e.g., "Diary," of Jadunath Bose, Deputy Magte., Gurbata, with his letter no. 38, May 21, 1872, Bengal Gen. Procs., 1872, June, no. 44, which refers to men and women mingling "promiscuously" at the mela of Kistnanagar.
nizing and mobilizing people. And what better staging ground than the great Sonepur Mela, which provided the setting for virtually every significant political movement of the colonial era. Kunwar Singh, who actively sponsored and supported melas and markets on his estate—in keeping with his kingly role as zamindar—used this gathering as the venue for hatching the plot that eventuated in the Bihar episode of the 1857 Mutiny/Rebellion, the major nineteenth-century resistance movement against the British in the region. Earlier, in 1845, he had been involved, along with a number of regional Hindu and Muslim notables, in convening a political meeting at Sonepur that used the cover of the fair to broach the possibility of taking up arms because of perceived British violations of their cultural and religious beliefs and practices. Although the plan fizzled, secret invitations were issued to many prominent citizens and attempts were made to win the support of sepoys and the assistance of the Mughal emperor and the king of Nepal. But Sonepur, as well as other melas, could also be the sites for contention among the people themselves, as is dramatized by the numerous incidents in the late nineteenth century centering on the issue of cow slaughter: Hindus were pitted against Muslims. The very first meeting of the Indian Association of Cow Protection (Gauraksha) lecturers was held at Sonepur in 1888, and at several major melas that were also cattle fairs there were clashes involving Hindus, Muslims, and the colonial state. Another mela that served as a staging ground for political action was the Dashara Fair at Bettiah, where tenants of European indigo planters met to launch a resistance movement against the indigo factories and their plantations.[142]
Nowhere was the communitas dimension of fairs in the region more apparent and its potential political currency kept more under scrutiny than at the Sonepur Mela, where an official presence was established almost from the outset of colonial rule. The raison d'être for stationing officials at this major fair was said to be "to prevent ryots [peasants] gambling and drunkenness, and to be particularly careful that the ze-
[142] A. C. Amman to Suptd., Police, Champaran, Oct. 21, 1 908, Bengal Jdcl. Procs., Jan.-June 1909 , Apr., no. 16. Regarding clashes at the Brahampur Fair, the Bisua Mela at Gaya, and at the small fair of Basantpur in Saran, see my "Sacred Symbol and Sacred Space in Rural India: Community Mobilization in the 'Anti-Cow Killing' Riot of 1893," CSSH22 (1980): 576–96; Bengal Jdcl. Procs., June-Sept. 1891, Police, July 1891, B Procs., and May-July 1893, June, nos. 46–48.
mindars did not levy any taxes or contributions."[143] In part, government interest in fairs and pilgrimage centers was a concern for law and order heightened by the possibility of collective violence and political resistance erupting from the perceived volatile mix of numbers and religion: the large crowds of people that typically congregated in these ostensibly religious settings with varying degrees of cohesion. In part, government increasingly directed an ostensibly "medical" and "sanitary" gaze in the direction of fairs and pilgrimage because these "gatherings" were considered to be "responsible for much of the spread of infectious disease in India."[144] Fairs were also singled out for scrutiny and control because they were important venues for trade, especially of livestock, a commodity targeted as a source of government revenue and of the cattle and horses needed for military purposes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Yet precisely for the same reason that fairs and pilgrimages were subjected to colonial control—the political uses of these ostensibly religious gatherings—they were also feared by the authorities. Officials were reluctant to interfere for fear of inciting public unrest, as is underscored by the 1860s government debate regarding curtailing pilgrimage traffic to stop the spread of "disease and mortality." As a senior administrator noted, "It will never do for government to interfere with, or rather prohibit in any way, the attendance of pilgrims at religious or other fairs." Any such effort, he believed, "would at once be considered as an attempt to interfere with religious freedom, and would give rise to all kinds of rumours and thus open a door to the disaffected to work on the feelings of the people and create a discontent and dislike to our Government which in time might grow into open rebellion as serious and dangerous as was the Indian Mutiny of 1857."[145]
[143] C. Boddam, Judge, to Hon. Sir John Shore, G.G., Apr. 8, 1796, Bengal Cr. Jdcl. Consltns., Mar. 3-17, 1809, Mar. 10, no. 2, enclosure. See also my LimitedRaj , chap. 1, for an extended discussion of the colonial appropriation of this mela.
[144] United Provinces, ReportofthePilgrim Committee , UnitedProvinces , 1913 (Simla: Government Central Branch Press, 1916), p. 2. Similar considerations prompted a government presence at all major pilgrimage centers. See A. Tufton, Magte., Bihar, to Secy., Jdcl., Bengal Jdcl Consltns., Apr. 5 to June 28, 1799, May 3, no. 21; A. Seton, Judge and Magte., Bihar, Feb. 11, 1795, to Subsecy., Jdcl., Bengal Jdcl. Consltns., June 12 to July 10, 1795, June 26, no. 26; "Minute of Governor General," Mar. 25, 1831, Bengal Cr. Jdcl. Consltns., Apr. 26 to June 7, 1831 , May 3, no. 100.
[145] Jenkins to Secy., no. 10, Jan. 13, 1868, Bengal Sanitation Procs., Apr. 1868, no. 18.
Nor was the political capital of fairs lost on the twentieth-century leaders of the nationalist movement: they looked particularly to the Sonepur Mela as an arena of recruitment. The Bihar Provincial Congress Committee was founded by the regional supporters of the Indian National Congress, who met for this purpose at Sonepur in 1908. Thereafter recruiters for Congress regularly returned to this and other fairs to recruit new supporters. The Bihar Provincial Peasant Association (Kisan Sabha) was another organization that sought to tap into the popular dimensions of the Sonepur Mela. Attempts were made as early as 1922 to organize a peasant association at this venue; in 1929, the Kisan Sabha had its founding meeting there. When a local official arrived at the Sitamarhi Mela of 1921 to oversee the sanitary arrangements, he was surrounded "by a frenzied crowd, crying out 'Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai' [Long Live Mahatma Gandhi]."[146] Such evocations of Gandhi as Mahatma, as Shahid Amin has noted, reflect the "polysemic nature of the Mahatma myths and rumours, as well as. . . a many-sided response of the masses to current events and their cultural, moral and political concerns."[147]
In the new era ushered in by the emergence of a mass-based nationalist movement, in the early 1920s, the locus of history shifted from the central places to the hinterlands, as the politics of the nationalist movement took command. And as the historical initiative in matters political, economic, social, and cultural became increasingly lodged in melas and rural markets, the voices heard in these new arenas threatened to shake the foundations of colonial rule. By the twentieth century, cities—such as Patna, the "city of discontent"—and towns, many of which were the sites of fairs and markets (as the next chapter shows), formed part of a wider subcontinental network of sites that resonated with voices speaking of a new order. Thus, almost a century after Veeraswamy had been on the road under the sign of colonialism, pilgrims were seeking new types of journeys. For most, the path to their new India required that they extend beyond the cities into the hinterlands and that they conduct their exchanges in the appropriate political currency to negotiate with people and places at the margins. Peripheries, that is, were increasingly becoming the core, the center stage of the lived experiences of the twentieth century.
[146] W. M. Wilson, Suptd., Police, Muzaffarpur, to Commr., Nov. 28, 1921, B & O Polit. Procs., 1922, Police, May, no. 1; Yang, LimitedRaj , p . 18.
[147] "Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-2," in SubalternStudies:Writingson SouthAsianHistoryandSociety , ed. Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 7.