Book contents
- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Text
- Additional material
- Ruling Dynasties*
- Genealogies of Principal Musicians and Music Treatises
- Additional material
- 1 Chasing Eurydice
- 2 The Mughal Orpheus: Remembering Khushhal Khan Gunasamudra in Eighteenth-Century Delhi
- 3 The Rivals: Anjha Baras, Adarang and the Scattering of Shahjahanabad
- 4 The Courtesan and the Memsahib: Khanum Jan and Sophia Plowden at the Court of Lucknow
- 5 Eclipsed by the Moon: Mahlaqa Bai and Khushhal Khan Anup in Nizami Hyderabad
- 6 Faithful to the Salt: Mayalee Dancing Girl versus the East India Company in Rajasthan
- 7 Keeper of the Flame: Miyan Himmat Khan and the Last of the Mughal Emperors
- 8 Orphans of the Uprising: Late Mughal Echoes and 1857
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Tazkira: List of Names
- Index
6 - Faithful to the Salt: Mayalee Dancing Girl versus the East India Company in Rajasthan
Official Records of the East India Company
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2023
- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Text
- Additional material
- Ruling Dynasties*
- Genealogies of Principal Musicians and Music Treatises
- Additional material
- 1 Chasing Eurydice
- 2 The Mughal Orpheus: Remembering Khushhal Khan Gunasamudra in Eighteenth-Century Delhi
- 3 The Rivals: Anjha Baras, Adarang and the Scattering of Shahjahanabad
- 4 The Courtesan and the Memsahib: Khanum Jan and Sophia Plowden at the Court of Lucknow
- 5 Eclipsed by the Moon: Mahlaqa Bai and Khushhal Khan Anup in Nizami Hyderabad
- 6 Faithful to the Salt: Mayalee Dancing Girl versus the East India Company in Rajasthan
- 7 Keeper of the Flame: Miyan Himmat Khan and the Last of the Mughal Emperors
- 8 Orphans of the Uprising: Late Mughal Echoes and 1857
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Tazkira: List of Names
- Index
Summary
In 1835, the East India Company sequestered the salt lake at Sambhar from the Rajput states of Jaipur and Jodhpur, until 1842. This historical footnote left behind a set of financial accounts in the Company records that are alive with musicians and dancers and the cycle of the ritual year in Rajasthan. One courtesan stands forth as exceptional: Mayalee “dancing girl”. Her insistence on being paid in salt reveals the extraordinary stories the fleeting appearance of performers in the official records of the East India Company can tell about relations between the British and the princely states in the 1830s and 40s, about the Rajput notions of prosperity and sovereignty invested in courtesans and in salt, and the existence of a salt commons at Sambhar before the ill-informed interference of the Company there.
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- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal IndiaHistories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858, pp. 147 - 179Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023