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Of Music and the Maharaja: Gender, affect, and power in Ranjit Singh's Lahore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2019

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RADHA KAPURIA*
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Abstract

This article focuses on performing artists at the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (r. 1801–39), the last fully sovereign ruler of the Punjab and leader of what is termed the Sikh empire. After Ranjit's death, his successors ruled for a mere decade before British annexation in 1849. Ranjit Singh's kingdom has been studied for the extraordinary authority it exercised over warring Sikh factions and for the strong challenge it posed to political rivals like the British. Scholarly exploration of cultural efflorescence at the Lahore court has ignored the role of performing artistes, despite a preponderance of references to them in both Persian chronicles of the Lahore court and in European travelogues of the time. I demonstrate how Ranjit Singh was partial to musicians and dancers as a class, even marrying two Muslim courtesans in the face of stiff Sikh orthodoxy. A particular focus is on Ranjit's corps of ‘Amazons’—female dancers performing martial feats dressed as men—the cynosure of all eyes, especially male European, and their significance in representing the martial glory of the Sikh state. Finally, I evaluate the curious cultural misunderstandings that arose when English ‘dancing’ encountered Indian ‘nautching’, revealing how gender was the primary axis around which Indian and European male statesmen alike expressed their power. Ubiquitous in the daily routine of Ranjit and the lavish entertainments set up for visitors, musicians and female performers lay at the interstices of the Indo-European encounter, and Anglo-Sikh interactions in particular.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , March 2020 , pp. 654 - 690
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019.

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Footnotes

For their valuable guidance on this research, I wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers of the article, and especially Katherine Butler Schofield, Francesca Orsini, Farina Mir, Jasdeep Singh, Priya Atwal, Balbir Kanwal, Aakriti Mandhwani, Chinmay Sharma, Kavita Bhanot, Amarjit Chandan, Navtej Purewal, Virinder Kalra, Parmjit Singh, G. Arunima, Shilpi Rajpal, Naresh Kumar, Fakhar Bilal, Kelly Boyd, Leah Levane, Sarah Bedell, Kirit Singh, Kanav Gupta, Pritam Singh, Richard Williams, Imre Bangha, and Sonia Wigh. This research was funded by the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission and the Institute for Historical Research, London.

References

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9 The dating of the Prem Sumārag is a matter of some debate among scholars. McLeod, whose translation I rely on, argues for a late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century date, certainly no later than 1815. McLeod (trans.), Prem Sumārag, pp. 3–6. For a fuller definition of the Rahitnāma genre, see Murphy, Anne, ‘Representations of Sikh History’, in Singh, Pashaura and Fenech, Louis (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014, pp. 97–99Google Scholar. In the same volume, Christopher Shackle describes these texts as ‘prescriptive manuals for the Khalsa code of conduct (rahit)’. See Christopher Shackle, ‘Survey of Literature in the Sikh Tradition’, ibid., p. 117.

10 Though an account mainly based on oral history, Waheeduddin's work provides us with important information on musicians and dancers not readily available elsewhere. This is hardly surprising, given the primarily oral tradition that Hindustani music has been in India and, indeed, it is difficult to construct a social history of Indian music without relying in some measure on ethnographic evidence, howsoever fragmentary it may often be.

11 Stronge, Susan (ed.), The Arts of the Sikh Kingdom, V&A Publications, London, 1999Google Scholar.

12 Geeta Paintal's monograph on musical traditions of Punjab in Hindi and Balbir Singh Kanwal's extensive writings in Punjabi on Sikh liturgical performers and classical musicians are the only books outside the English language that discuss musicians and dancers at Ranjit's court in any detail. Paintal, Geeta, Punjāb kī Saṅgīt Paramparā, Radha Publications, New Delhi, 1988Google Scholar; and Kanwal, B. S., Panjab De Parsidh Rāgī Te Rabābī, Singh Brothers, Amritsar, 2010Google Scholar.

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16 Kalra, Virinder, Sacred and Secular Musics: A Postcolonial Approach, Bloomsbury, London, 2014, pp. 58–59Google Scholar. To be sure, though, Kalra's work is mainly ethnographic, and not historical.

17 On how social liminality is a defining feature of the lives of musicians, across spatial and temporal contexts, see Brown, Katherine Butler (née Schofield), ‘The Social Liminality of Musicians: Case Studies from Mughal India and Beyond’, Twentieth-century Music, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2007, pp. 13–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Grewal, J. S., ‘The Char Bagh-i Panjab: Socio-cultural Configuration’, Journal of Punjab Studies, Vol. 20, Nos 1 and 2, 2013, pp. 26, 36, 46–47Google Scholar.

19 Diwan Lacchiram composed the Buddhiprakasadarpana in 1681 in Lahore in Brajbhasha verse and Gurmukhi script; a scribal copy of this text from 1823, dating to Ranjit Singh's era, is available in the British Library. See Diwan Lachhiram, Buddhiprakasadarpana, British Library MSS Selfmark Or. 2765. I am grateful to Kirit James Singh, who is researching ‘Gurmukhi Sources on Musicology in Nineteenth Century Punjab’ for his PhD, for pointing out the correct date of this text to me. That Lachhiram was no exception is noted by O. C. Gangoly, who refers to another theorist from the Punjab, Sudarsan-acarya, who composed a Hindi treatise on music named Sangita-sudarsana. Gangoly, O. C., Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial & Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources, Clive Press, Calcutta, 1938, p. 138Google Scholar. Gangoly does not offer us a date for Sudarsan-acarya's treatise.

20 Written in the late eighteenth century by the ruler of Jaipur, Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh of Jaipur (1776–1804). The Gurmukhi version is available at the Panjab Archives, Chandigarh, and digital editions at the Chandigarh-based Panjab Digital Library.

21 A Braj translation (made circa 1653) of the original Sanskrit text by Damodara (circa 1600). The Gurmukhi transliteration is available at the Panjab Archives, Chandigarh, and digital editions at the Chandigarh-based Panjab Digital Library. I thank Richard David Williams for help with identifying these manuscripts.

22 Grewal, J. S. and Banga, Indu (eds and trans.), Civil and Military Affairs of Maharaja Ranjit Singh: A Study of 450 Orders in Persian, Guru Nanak Dev University Press, Amritsar, 1987, Order Number 244, p. 153Google Scholar. For more stray references to musicians and dancers, see ibid., Order Numbers 49 (‘Release of Two Women (Probably Dancers)’), and 287 (‘Grant of a Well to the Agent of Jugni Kanchani’). The most comprehensive monograph on dhadhis in Punjab remains Nijhawan, Michael, Dhadi Darbar: Religion, Violence, and the Performance of Sikh History, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006Google Scholar.

23 Grewal and Banga (eds and trans.), Civil and Military Affairs, p. 146. The format and language of these land grants echo those of Mughal ones pertaining to musicians. In the context of religious grants, Anne Murphy has noted the continuity of old Mughal land-grant practices in Sikh Punjab. See Murphy, Anne, Materiality of the Sikh Past, Materiality of the Sikh Past, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012, pp. 163–164CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Garrett, H. L. O. and Chopra, G. L., Events at the Court of Ranjit Singh, 1810–1817, Patiala, Punjab, 1970, pp. 70, 96, 101, 186, 189Google Scholar.

25 Suri, Sohan Lal, Umdat-Ut-Tawarikh, Daftar III, Chronicle of the Reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh 1831–1839 A.D., S. Chand & Co., Delhi, 1961, pp. 22, 109–110, 689Google Scholar; Garrett and Chopra, Events at the Court, pp. 198, 200, 205. On the mirāsīs’ facility in singing Persian, see Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, pp. 173–174.

26 Sanyal, Ritwik and Widdess, Richard, Dhrupad: Tradition and Performance in Indian Music, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004, pp. 105–108Google Scholar. See also Khan, Vilayat Hussain, Sangeetagyon Ke Sansmaran, Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi, p. 161Google Scholar. Many Punjab vocalists in the twentieth century trace their musical lineages back to Behram Khan. See Kalra, Sacred and Secular Musics, p. 104, for the world-famous twentieth-century qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's family tracing their lineage back to Behram Khan.

27 Vilayat Hussain Khan, Sangeetagyon Ke Sansmaran, p. 162. This translates as ‘Very Learned, Servant of the People and Lords of Musical Knowledge, Scholar of the Six Shastras, Master of Svaras, Sage-Counsellor, Serpent-King of the Underworld, Lord of the Sky, Ruler of the Earth’. The ‘Shesha Nāga’ or Serpent King in Hindu mythology is a companion of Lord Vishnu, and it is believed that the universe rests on one of his many thousand heads. The Nāga, Shesha ‘keeps his two thousand tongues engaged in singing the glories of God. He is highly learned and wise’. Dhody, C. L. (trans.), The Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa: Concise English Version, M.D. Publications, New Delhi, 1995, p. 277Google Scholar.

28 Given this information is available primarily through the oral record, it is arguable whether Ranjit actually bestowed Behram Khan with this title or in fact it is merely a gesture by which his descendants accord him respect. Either way, the distinctive honorific is both a mark of Behram Khan's artistic genius as much as Ranjit Singh's use of both Islamicate and Brahminical symbols in the crafting of a title to signify a man of learning.

29 Sharma, Amal Das, Musicians of India: Past and Present, Noya Prokash, Calcutta, 1993, p. 165Google Scholar.

30 ‘Sher-e-Punjab’ or ‘Lion of Punjab’ is how Ranjit was, and still is, referred to in colloquial usage.

31 Kanwal, Panjab De Parsidh, pp. 94–99.

32 Daniel Neuman has established how the tumult of 1857 definitively shaped the gharana system of modern Hindustani music. Neuman, Daniel, The Life of Music in North India: The Organisation of an Artistic Tradition, Manohar, New Delhi, 1980Google Scholar.

33 From a letter dated 31 May 1831 by C. M. Wade to the secretary of the governor general. Sethi, R. R., The Lahore Darbar: In the Light of the Correspondence of Sir C.M. Wade (1823–40), The Punjab Govt. Record Office Publication, Monograph No I, Simla, 1950, p. 281Google Scholar.

34 On the fear and admiration Ranjit inspired among the British, as head of the last significant empire of indigenous origin, see Chhabra, G. S., The Advanced Study in History of the Punjab: Ranjit Singh and Post Ranjit Singh Period, Parkash Brothers, Ludhiana, 1962, p. 95Google Scholar; Sheikh, Mohamed, Emperor of the Five Rivers: The Life and Times of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, I.B. Tauris, London, 2017, p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Albinia, Alice, Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River, Murray, John (Hatchette UK), London, 2008, pp. 120–121Google Scholar.

35 Garrett, H. L. O. (trans. and ed.), The Punjab a Hundred Years Ago: As Described by V. Jacquemont (1831) & A. Soltykoff (1842), Nirmal Publishers, Delhi, 1986Google Scholar.

36 Honigberger, John Martin, Thirty-five Years in the East and Historical Sketches Relating to the Punjab and Cashmere, Vol. I, R. C. Lepage & Co., Calcutta, 1852, p. 56Google Scholar.

37 Kaye, J. W., The Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe, Vol. I, Richard Bentley, London, 1854, p. 282Google Scholar.

38 Ibid., pp. 248–249.

39 An exception to this is Amrit Lal Nagar's largely sympathetic account of courtesans in north India, published shortly after Independence in 1947. See Nagar, Amrit Lal, Yeh Kothewalian, Ruchika Printers, Delhi, 1958Google Scholar.

40 Ali, A. F. M. Abdul, Notes on the Life and Times of Ranjit Singh, Indian Historical Records Commission, Calcutta, 1926Google Scholar. Ali was later in charge of the National Archives of India from 1922 to 1938.

41 Ibid., p. 15, emphasis added. Interestingly, here, Ranjit is speaking with Ochterlony, who, having styled himself as a ‘Nawab’, was greatly fond of female performers and Indian music. See Dalrymple, William, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India, Penguin, New Delhi, 2002Google Scholar.

42 Pasha Khan notes this historiographical trend in the context of the Persian Hātimnāmah literature sponsored by Ranjit. ‘On the one hand, there are the historians who insist that Ranjit Singh was illiterate and uncultured, and cared only for the arts of the vintner and the nautch girl; sunk in the pleasures of wine and women, he sponsored no literature or visual art of any kind. On the other hand, there is a plethora of offhand and strained attempts to prove that various Punjabi poets received patronage from Ranjit Singh.’ Pasha M. Khan, ‘The Broken Spell: The Romance Genre in Late Mughal India’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2013 p. 158.

43 Allison Busch's recent work on poetry in the courts of medieval north and central India also details the ways in which the presence of females (as performers and otherwise) was associated with the success and abundance of a given court. For example, she discusses the Kavipriya (1601) of Keshavdas, which has an important section devoted to explaining the importance of courtesans to the kingdom, especially the education and accomplishments of the singer ‘Pravin Ray’ at the court of Raja Indrajit of Orchcha in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Busch, Allison, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011, pp. 39–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 This is the number provided by Singh, Amarinder, The Last Sunset: The Rise and Fall of the Lahore Durbar, Roli Books, New Delhi, 2010Google Scholar. Fakir Waheduddin estimates Ranjit's harem consisted of 46 women; out of these, nine were married in the orthodox Sikh fashion, another nine through the chadar dalni ceremony, and seven were courtesans. The remaining were concubines. Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, p. 165.

45 Gupta, H. R., History of the Sikhs, Vol. V, Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi, 1982, p. 33Google Scholar.

46 See Ganesh Das, Char Bagh- i Punjab, 1849 (trans. Grewal and Banga 1975), p. 116, for a reference to the gardens of Moran.

47 Cunningham, J. D., History of the Sikhs: From the Origins of the Nation to the Battles of the Sutlej, J. Murray, London, 1849, p. 179Google Scholar. See also Griffin, Lepel, Ranjit Singh, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1892, pp. 108–109Google Scholar; Singh, Khushwant, Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the Punjab [George Allen Unwin 1962], Penguin Books, Delhi, 2001, p. 53Google Scholar; and Latif, S. M., Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains, New Imperial Press, Lahore, 1892, p. 224Google Scholar.

48 Latif, Lahore, p. 224.

49 See Bansal, Bobby Singh, Remnants of the Sikh Empire: Historical Sikh Monuments in India & Pakistan, Hay House Inc., New Delhi, 2015Google Scholar. Also Singh, The Last Sunset, p. 19; and Gupta, History of the Sikhs, p. 527. The mosque was also known as ‘Masjid-e-Tawaif’; see Sarbpreet Singh, ‘The Darbar Chronicles Vol.5: The Dancing Girls of Lahore Parts I–IV’, 2013/2014, https://sikhchic.com/article-detail.php?id=4775&cat=12 (accessed 29 March 2016).

50 Latif, Lahore, p. 199.

51 The Umdat of Suri consistently refers to the bridge as ‘Tawai'fpul’, whilst it is colloquially known as ‘Pul Kanjari’. This reveals the gap between history and memory, revealing divergent attitudes to female performers, since ‘tawai'f’ refers to courtesan, while ‘kanjari’ refers to common dancing girl/prostitute.

52 Ganesh Das also refers to the bridge: ‘Pul Kanjri is a well known place on the road from Amritsar to Lahore, with a dharamsala, a well, a tank, a garden and a sarai’, Grewal and Banga's (1975) translation of Ganesh Das's Char Bagh- i Punjab, p. 139. See also Grewal and Banga, Civil and Military Affairs, p. 123.

53 Singh, The Last Sunset, pp. 18–19.

54 Gupta, History of the Sikhs, p. 35. The story may well be anecdotal, but offers us a snapshot into popular perceptions of the Maharaja's association with Moran.

55 Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, pp. 168–169, emphasis added.

56 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 99.

57 Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, pp. 167–168.

58 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, pp. 149–150.

59 Parliamentary Papers 1864, p. 12, quoted in Khan, Nadhra, ‘The Secular Sikh Maharaja and His Muslim Wife, Rani Gul Bahar Begum’, in Sharma, Mahesh and Kaimal, Padma (eds), Indian Painting: Themes, Histories, Interpretations (Essays in Honour of B. N. Goswamy), Mapin, Ahmedabad, 2013, p. 248Google Scholar.

60 Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, p. 168.

61 Honigberger,, Thirty-five Years in the East, p. 56.

62 Ali describes the Pahul ceremony as follows: ‘The novice, who must have reached the age of discrimination, stands with his hands joined in supplication and repeats after the priest the articles of his faith. Some sugar and water are stirred in a vessel with a double-edged dagger and the water is sprinkled on his face and person; he drinks the remainder and exclaims “Wah Guru” which completes the ceremony.’ ‘The Punjab and North-west Frontier of India’ by An Old Punjabi, 1878, p. 12. Ali, Notes on the Life and Times, p. 15.

63 Ibid., emphasis added.

64 Dhavan, Purnima, When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699–1799, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011, pp. 138–139CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 While a follower of Sikhism, Ranjit celebrated the festivals Holi, Basant, and Dassehra with great splendour. Anil Sethi, ‘The Creation of Religious Identities in the Punjab, c. 1850–1920’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 60–62.

66 Gandhi, Rajmohan, Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten, Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, 2015, pp. 158–160Google Scholar.

67 Nonetheless, Ranjit often did utilize, rather playfully, the courtesan's charms to test the endurance and self-control of men, be they European travellers like the French mercenary, August Court, or his own courtiers, Fakir Nuruddin and Azeezuddin. See Garrett, H. L. O. (trans. and ed.), The Punjab a Hundred Years Ago As Described By V. Jacquemont & A. Soltykoff, (Patiala): Languages Dept., Punjab, 1971Google Scholar, Reprinted 1986, p. 45; and Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, pp. 173–174.

68 This was in 1811. Garrett and Chopra, Events at the Court of Ranjit Singh, p. 30.

69 Ibid., p. 278.

70 However, Ranjit's Lahore also had a hefty red-light district at Hira Mandi, with several women caught in the nets of an exploitative industry, as per Anshu Malhotra's work on female poetess, and originally ‘Muslim prostitute’ Piro, who went on to join the Gulabdasi sect of Sikhism. The Lahore chapter of Piro's story displays the familiar strand of conventional narratives on female performers in early nineteenth-century Punjab, which conflates the category ‘courtesan’ or ‘tawa'if’ with ‘prostitute’, since the terms used by contemporaries to refer to Piro were kasbi, ganka, besya, randi, kanchani, and kanjari. See Malhotra, Anshu, ‘Performing a Persona: Reading Piro's Kafis’, in Malhotra, Anshu and Lambert-Hurley, Siobhan (eds), Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance and Autobiography in South Asia, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2015, p. 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malhotra, Anshu, ‘Bhakti and the Gendered Self: A Courtesan and a Consort in Mid Nineteenth Century Punjab’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 46 No. 6, November 2012, pp. 1506–1539CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Persian sources analysed here use the term ‘tawa'if’ and the more esteemed ‘kanchani’ rather than the clearly derogatory ‘kanjari’ to refer to female performers, offering us a more fine-grained picture of courtesans’ social position in early nineteenth-century Punjab.

71 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 336.

72 Ibid., pp. 218, 322, 562, 570, 574.

73 Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, p. 173.

74 Osborne, W. G., The Court and Camp of Runjeet Sing: With an Introductory Sketch of the Origin and Rise of the Sikh State, Henry Colburn, London, 1840, p. 95Google Scholar.

75 Hügel, Baron (trans. and ed.), Travels in Kashmir and the Panjab, Containing a Particular Account of the Government and Character of the Sikhs, T. B. Jervis, London, 1845, p. 311Google Scholar.

76 See Garrett (trans. and ed.), The Punjab a Hundred Years Ago As Described By V. Jacquemont & A. Soltykoff, p. 21.

77 Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, p. 171.

78 Ibid., p. 172.

79 Ibid., emphasis added.

80 Hügel (trans. and ed.), Travels, p. 344.

81 Forster, George, A Journey from Bengal to England, through the Northern Part of India, Kashmire, Afghanistan, and Persia, and into Russia, by the Caspian Sea, R. Faulder, London, 1798, p. 250Google Scholar.

82 Lal, Mohan, Travels in the Panjab, Afghanistan, & Turkistan, to Balk, Bokhara and Heart, and a Visit to Great Britain and Germany, H. Allen & Co., London, 1846, p. 14Google Scholar.

83 Telstcher, Kate, India Inscribed: European and British Writing On India 1600–1800, Oxford India Paperbacks, Delhi, 1997Google Scholar. See also Clayton, Martin and Zon, Bennett (eds), Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s: Portrayal of the East, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007Google Scholar.

84 Suleri, Sara, The Rhetoric of English India, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1992, pp. 2–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 As an example of this methodology, see Brown, Katherine Butler, ‘Reading Indian Music: The Interpretation of Seventeenth-century European Travel-writing in the (Re)construction of Indian Music History’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2000, pp. 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 The generalized disdain toward female performers and musicians also stemmed in great part from the vast unfamiliarity of the Indian cultural landscape, encountered for the very first time by the bulk of European visitors. Given that musical norms of the European way differed vastly from the Indian aesthetic, we usually encounter negative appraisals of Indian music.

87 Osborne, The Court and Camp, p. 154, emphasis added.

88 Jacquemont, Victor, Letters from India: Describing a Journey in the British Dominions of India, Tibet, Lahore and Cashmere during 1828–31, Vol. II, E. Churton, London, 1834, pp. 85–86Google Scholar.

89 In the late eighteenth century, Sofia Plowden (of ‘Hindostannie Airs’ fame) noted how European men regarded physical beauty as a primary consideration in the evaluation of singing women, as opposed to their musical talents alone. Woodfield, Ian, Music of the Raj: A Social and Economic History of Music in Late Eighteenth-century Anglo-Indian Society, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 155Google Scholar.

90 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 88.

91 Katherine Butler Brown (neé Schofield), ‘Hindustani Music in the Time of Aurangzeb’, unpublished PhD dissertation, 2004, SOAS, University of London, pp. 188, 197–198, 224. This was also evident in the nineteenth century; see the treatise of Imam, Muhammad Karam, Madan-al-Mosiqui, reprint Hindustani Press, Lucknow, 1925Google Scholar.

92 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 88; also p. 92; 1831: ‘In the meantime Hindustani dancing girls from the troops of the “Nawab” Sahib (the G.-G.) came up for presenting themselves to the Maharaja. The Maharaja, out of great kindness, called those dancing girls before himself and gave them Rs. 200 by way of reward.’

93 Woodfield, Music of the Raj, p. 155.

94 Manuel, Peter, ‘Music in Lucknow's Gilded Age’, in Markel, Stephen et al. (eds), India's Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New York and Los Angeles, 2010, p. 247Google Scholar.

95 Ali, Notes on the Life and Times, p. 15.

96 For yet another example, see Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 42.

97 Ali, Notes on the Life and Times, p. 15.

98 Stocquelor, J. H., Memorials of Affghanistan between the Years 1838 and 1842, Peshawar, Calcutta, 1843Google Scholar, quoted in Steinbach, Henry, The Punjaub; Being a Brief Account of The Country of the Sikhs; Its Extent, Hisory, Commerce, Productions, Government, Manufactures, Laws, Religion, etc., Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1845, p. 114Google Scholar, emphasis added. Ranjit's desire to employ ‘good’ Western musicians who would ‘teach their art to my people’ has also been noted. Gupta, History of the Sikhs, p. 577.

99 Goswamy, ‘Those Moon-faced Singers’, p. 4.

100 For shetia traders in nineteenth-century Bombay using the nautch to favourably impress European visitors, see Pradhan, Anish, ‘Perspectives on Performance Practice: Hindustani Music in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Bombay’, South Asia, Vol. 27, No. 3, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 With the beginning of the 1830s, the Sikh kingdom had reached its widest territorial extent, from Kashmir in the north to Multan and Peshawar in the west. Duggal, K. S., Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Last to Lay Arms, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 2001, p. 100Google Scholar.

102 See Schofield, Katherine Butler, ‘The Courtesan Tale: Female Musicians and Dancers in Mughal Historical Chronicles, c. 1556–1748’, Gender and History, Vol. 24, No. 1, April 2012, p. 153CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The only other reference to a male monarch similarly employing female ‘bodyguards’ (who, however, were not performers) dates to the mid-fifteenth-century Malwa sultanate centred at Mandu, of Sultan Ghiyas-ud-din Shah (Khilji), who reigned from 1469 to 1500. Ursula Sims-Williams, ‘Nasir Shah's Book of Delights’, British Library blog, 21 November 2016, http://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2016/11/nasir-shahs-book-of-delights.html#_ftn2 (accessed 28 June 2019).

103 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 15, emphasis added.

104 Burnes, Alexander, Travels into Bokhara Together with a Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus from the Sea of Lahore, Vol. 1 [1834], Oxford University Press, London, [1834] 1973, p. 75Google Scholar, emphasis added.

105 Duggal, Maharaja, p. 100.

106 Ibid.

107 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 91, emphasis added. These were ranks in the army, the Subedār being equivalent to a captain, the Jamadar to a troop commandant, while the Chobdār referred to a mace-bearer or attendant.

108 Rajpreet Atwal, ‘Between the Courts of Lahore and Windsor: Anglo-Indian Relations and the Re-making of Royalty in the Nineteenth Century’, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2017, pp. 46–50.

109 Bakshi, S. R. and Pathak, Rashmi (eds), Punjab through the Ages (Studies in Cotemporary Indian History), Sarup & Sons, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 272–274Google Scholar.

110 Singh, Ranjit Singh, p. 39.

111 Osborne, The Court and Camp, p. 95, emphasis added.

112 Waheeduddin estimates the number at 125, instead, and remarks how they remained in the troupe up to the age of 25. The Real Ranjit Singh, p. 173.

113 Osborne, The Court and Camp, p. 95, emphasis added.

114 Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, p. 75, emphasis added.

115 M'Gregor, W. L., The History of The Sikhs Containing the Lives of the Gooroos: The History of the Independent Sirdars or Missuls and the Life of the Great Founder of the Sikh Monarchy, Maharajah Runjeet Singh, Vol. 1 [1846], R. S. Publishing House, Allahabad, 1979, p. 224Google Scholar, emphasis added.

116 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 36, emphasis added.

117 Fane, Henry, Five Years in India 1835–1839, Henry Colburn, London, 1842, pp. 172–173Google Scholar, emphasis added.

118 Sethi, ‘The Creation of Religious Identities’, pp. 61–62.

119 Fenech, ‘Ranjit Singh, the Shawl’, pp. 91–92, emphasis added.

120 Ibid., p. 92, emphasis added.

121 The evidence on the importance of these cross-dressing female martial dancers also offers an important vantage point from which to investigate shifting conceptions of masculinity and femininity, and to undertake a ‘queering’ of social and cultural histories in the region. This, however, would be the focus of an entirely new paper that evaluates the Lahore Amazonians in the context of changing notions of beauty and the emergence of a heterosocial public space in the wake of the colonial encounter. Relevant literature on this theme includes Afsaneh Najmabadi's ground-breaking study on the gradual ‘feminization’ of beauty and the historical transformations of sexuality in Iranian society from Qajar to modern times, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2005Google Scholar; and, in the Indian context, among others, Vanita, Ruth and Kidwai, Saleem (eds), Same-sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2000Google Scholar; and Ruth Vanita's essay collections, notably, Gandhi's Tiger and Sita's Smile: Essays on Gender, Sexuality, and Culture, Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2005Google Scholar; and Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India, 1780–1870, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012Google Scholar.

122 Atwal, ‘Between the Courts of Lahore and Windsor’, p. 102.

123 Vigne, Godfrey, A Personal Narrative of a Visit to Ghazni, Kabul, and Afghanistan, and of a Residence at the Court of Dost Mohamed: With Notices of Runjit Singh, Khiva, and the Russian Expedition, Whittaker and Co., London, 1840, pp. 300–301Google Scholar, emphasis added.

124 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 27.

125 Ibid., p. 36, emphasis added.

126 Ibid., pp. 88, 1831, emphasis added.

127 Medieval Arabic medical treatises prescribed ambergris as an aphrodisiac. http://www.doctorsreview.com/history/amazing-ambergris/ (accessed 1 September 2016.

128 Eden, Emily, Up the Country: Letters Written to her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India, Richard Bentley, London, 1867, pp. 132–133Google Scholar, emphasis added.

129 Suri, Umdat, Daftar III, p. 438, emphasis added.

130 Osborne, The Court and Camp, p. 95.

131 Hyde, Lewis, The Gift, Vintage Books, New York, 1983Google Scholar, quoted in Flores, Richard, ‘“Los Pastores” and the Gifting of Performance’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 2, May 1994, p. 278CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

132 Flores, ‘“Los Pastores” and the Gifting of Performance’, pp. 278–279.

133 This idea of reciprocity and mutual exchange was first theorized by Marcel Mauss in his classic work on gift-giving, The Gift: Form and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies [Paris, 1950]Google Scholar, English trans. by Ian Cunnison, Cohen and West Ltd, London, 1966.

134 Hügel (trans. and ed.), Travels, pp. 383–384.

135 Griffin, Ranjit Singh, p. 109.

136 Khan, ‘The Social Production’, p. 612.

137 Ballantyne, Tony, ‘Introduction’, in von Hügel, Baron Charles (ed.), Travels in Kashmir and the Panjab [1845], Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003, p. viiiGoogle Scholar.