Predatory care: The imperial hunt in Mughal and British India

Journal of Historical Sociology

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 79-107

  Pandian, Anand S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0035529503     PISSN: 09521909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-6443.00135     Document Type: Article

References (157)

1. R-G. Burton, A Book of Man-Eaters, London: Hutchinson and Co., 1931.
2. Muhammad Arif Qandhari, Tarikh-i Akbar, Tasneem Ahmad (tr.), Delhi: Pragati Publications, 1993, p.52.
3. For a study of Tipu's passion for tigers, see Kate Brittlebank, "Sakti and Barakat: The Power of Tipu's Tiger", Modern Asian Studies, 29(2): 257-269, 1995.
4. Mildred Archer, Tippoo's Tiger, London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1959.
5. Reproduced in Kailash Sankhala, Tiger! The Story of the Indian Tiger, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977.
6. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 45. For other instances of predatory metaphor see E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, New York: Pantheon, 1975; Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1987; Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, London: Longman, 1993.
7. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 45. For other instances of predatory metaphor see E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, New York: Pantheon, 1975; Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1987; Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, London: Longman, 1993.
8. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 45. For other instances of predatory metaphor see E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, New York: Pantheon, 1975; Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1987; Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, London: Longman, 1993.
9. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 45. For other instances of predatory metaphor see E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, New York: Pantheon, 1975; Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1987; Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, London: Longman, 1993.
10. Michel Foucault, "Omnes et singulatim: towards a criticism of 'political reason'", The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, II, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1981; "Governmentality", in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1991; The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, New York: Vintage, 1978.
11. Michel Foucault, "Omnes et singulatim: towards a criticism of 'political reason'", The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, II, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1981; "Governmentality", in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1991; The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, New York: Vintage, 1978.
12. Michel Foucault, "Omnes et singulatim: towards a criticism of 'political reason'", The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, II, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1981; "Governmentality", in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect, Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1991; The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, New York: Vintage, 1978.
13. For a systematic exploration of this theme with respect to the West, see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1998.
14. Foucault, Sexuality, p. 149.
15. On the British hunt, see J. M. Mackenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988; Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India's Central Provinces 1860-1914, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. On the Mughal hunt, see Ebba Koch, Dara Shikoh Shooting Nilgais: Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Painting, Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1998.
16. On the British hunt, see J. M. Mackenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988; Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India's Central Provinces 1860-1914, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. On the Mughal hunt, see Ebba Koch, Dara Shikoh Shooting Nilgais: Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Painting, Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1998.
17. On the British hunt, see J. M. Mackenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988; Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India's Central Provinces 1860-1914, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. On the Mughal hunt, see Ebba Koch, Dara Shikoh Shooting Nilgais: Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Painting, Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1998.
18. See for example Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989; Homi Bhabha, "Sly civility" in The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge, 1994.
19. See for example Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989; Homi Bhabha, "Sly civility" in The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge, 1994.
20. Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 65.
21. Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch, London: Basil Blackwell, 1985.
22. Following Clifford Geertz and Michael Herzfeld respectively. See Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981; Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, New York: Routledge, 1997. Thanks to Donald Moore for the pithy formulation.
23. Following Clifford Geertz and Michael Herzfeld respectively. See Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981; Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, New York: Routledge, 1997. Thanks to Donald Moore for the pithy formulation.
24. Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Bernard Cohn, "Representing Authority in Victorian India" in An Anthropologist among the Historian and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987.
25. Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Bernard Cohn, "Representing Authority in Victorian India" in An Anthropologist among the Historian and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987.
26. Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
27. Although I follow textual convention in describing these animals as man-eaters, it should be noted that many (and perhaps even most) of their victims were women searching the jungles for forest resources. I hope that my discussion of the gendered nature of colonial power makes up for this elision.
28. I use 'men' advisedly as an index of the masculinity at work. I understand the state as a cultural project of rule that extends beyond the formal administrative apparatus.
29. Rangarajan, Fencing.
30. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The 'manly Englishman' and the 'effeminate Bengali' in the late nineteenth century, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.
31. Henry Shakespear, The Wild Sports of India, London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1860, pp. 2-3, Cited in Mackenzie, Empire.
32. Henry Shakespear, The Wild Sports of India, London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1860, pp. 2-3, Cited in Mackenzie, Empire.
33. T. H. Hendley, "Sport in Indian art", Journal of Indian Art and Industry, 17: 55-65, 1916, p. 65.
34. Rangarajan, Fencing.
35. E. P. Stebbing, The Diary of a Sportsman Naturalist in India, London: John Lane, 1920, p. 229.
36. R. G. Burton, The Book of the Tiger, Dehra Dun: Natraj Publishers, [1933] 1989.
37. M. S. S. Pandian has argued that the practice of British hunting was more complicated than codes of sportsmanship would suggest: like stereotyped native Indians, the planters, army personnel and vacationers in the Nilgiri Hills of the Madras Presidency often hunted just for game meat with little attention to masculinist hunting norms. See Pandian, "Gendered negotiations: hunting and colonialism in the late 19th century Nilgiris", Contributions to Indian Sociology, 29(1&2): 239-263, 1995.
38. Jim Corbett, Man-Eaters of Kumaon, New York: Oxford University Press, 1946.
39. G. P. Sanderson, Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India, Edinburgh: John Grant, 1912, p. 269.
40. Sanderson, Thirteen Years, p. 272
41. R. G. Burton, Sport and Wildlife in the Deccan, London: Seeley, Service and Company, 1928, p. 112.
42. Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
43. On the government of nature in Victorian Canada, see Bruce Braun, "Producing Vertical Territory: Geology and Governmentality in Late Victorian Canada", Ecumene, 7(1): 7-46, 2000.
44. K. Sivaramakrishnan, "A Limited Forest Conservancy in Southwest Bengal, 1864-1912", Journal of Asian Studies, 56(1): 75-112, 1997, p. 100.
45. Travelling in Nagpur, Major Shakespear for example learned of a pair of man-eaters that had "desolated" a village and killed a number of people; writing "[m]y determination was taken: I felt this was a call" Shakespear changed his plans to pursue the tigers. See Shakespear, Wild Sports, p. 53.
46. Martin Booth, Carpet Sahib, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 129; D. C. Kala, Jim Corbett of Kumaon, Delhi: Ravi Dayal, 1999, p. 64.
47. Martin Booth, Carpet Sahib, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 129; D. C. Kala, Jim Corbett of Kumaon, Delhi: Ravi Dayal, 1999, p. 64.
48. Corbett, Man-Eaters, p. 45 and p. 4.
49. Laura Ann Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire, Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
50. On the discourse of Oriental despotism, see Brendan O'Leary, The Asiatic Mode of Production, London: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
51. Corbett, Man-Eaters, pp. 182-3.
52. Corbett, Man-Eaters, pp. 208-32.
53. Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989.
54. Corbett, Man-Eaters, pp. 122-131.
55. G. R. Kala, Memoirs of the Raj: Kumaon 1911-1945, New Delhi: Mukul Prakashan, 1974, p. 62.
56. Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's 'Dirty War', Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.
57. Corbett, Man-Eaters, p. 166.
58. Peter Woodruff, The Men Who Ruled India, Volume 2: The Guardians, New York: Schocken Books, p. 178.
59. For a classic and nuanced reflection on this theme, see George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant", in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1945.
60. Corbett, Man-Eaters.
61. James Mill, History of British India, Volume II, London, p. 492, p. 340 and p. 517.
62. Uday Mehta, "Liberal Strategies of Exclusion" in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
63. Metcalf, Ideologies.
64. On the notion of 'provincializing Europe' that informs this question, see Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for 'Indian' Pasts?" Representations 37(Winter): 1-26, 1992.
65. The metaphors are his. See Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Illuminations, New York: Schocken Books, 1968, p. 261.
66. Muhammad Azhar Ansari, Social Life of the Mughal Emperors, Allahabad: Shanti Prakashan, 1974; Mubarak Ali, The Court of the Great Mughuls, Lahore: Book Traders, 1986.
67. Muhammad Azhar Ansari, Social Life of the Mughal Emperors, Allahabad: Shanti Prakashan, 1974; Mubarak Ali, The Court of the Great Mughuls, Lahore: Book Traders, 1986.
68. See, for example, Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, Advice on the Art of Governance: Mau'izah-i Jahangiri, Sajida Sultana Alvi (tr.), Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989, p.69.
69. Abu'l Fazl Allami, Ain-i Akbari, H. Blochmann (tr.), Lahore: Qausain, [1927] 1975, p. 292.
70. Abu'l Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, p. 173.
71. Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari, p. 41.
72. P. Hardy, "Force and Violence in Indo-Persian Writing on History and Government in Medieval South Asia", in Milton Israel and N. K. Wagle (eds.), Islamic Society and Culture, Delhi: Manohar, p. 202.
73. Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, Akbar and Religion, Delhi: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i-Delli, 1989, p. 156.
74. Baqir, Advice, p. 46 and p. 48. My italics.
75. Mansura Haidar, Mukatabat-i 'Allami: Letters of the Emperor Akbar in English Translation, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1998, p.33.
76. Abu'l Fazl Allami, Akbar-Nama, H. Beveridge (tr.), Delhi: Ess Ess Publications, 1977, Volume II, p. 539.
77. Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, or Memoirs of Jahangir, Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge (eds.), London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1909, Volume I, p. 444. Aurangzeb too commanded one of his sons to slay a lion that was 'laying waste' to the countryside. See Bernier, Francois, Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656-1668, Archibald Constable (tr.), Delhi: S. Chand and Co., 1972, p. 182.
78. Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, or Memoirs of Jahangir, Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge (eds.), London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1909, Volume I, p. 444. Aurangzeb too commanded one of his sons to slay a lion that was 'laying waste' to the countryside. See Bernier, Francois, Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656-1668, Archibald Constable (tr.), Delhi: S. Chand and Co., 1972, p. 182.
79. Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari, p. 10.
80. K. K. Trivedi, Agra: Economic and Political Profile of a Mughal Suba 1580-1707, Pune: Ravish Publishers, 1998, pp. 187-8.
81. Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 159-60. A. L. Srivastava, Akbar the Great, Volume 11: Evolution of Administration, 1556-1605 AD, Agra: Shiva Lal Agarwala and Co., 1967, p. 275.
82. Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 159-60. A. L. Srivastava, Akbar the Great, Volume 11: Evolution of Administration, 1556-1605 AD, Agra: Shiva Lal Agarwala and Co., 1967, p. 275.
83. Geertz, Negara. For a discussion of radial space in kingly Thailand, see Peter Vandergeest and Nancy Peluso, "Territonality and state power in Thailand", Theory and Society, 24: 385-426, 1995.
84. Geertz, Negara. For a discussion of radial space in kingly Thailand, see Peter Vandergeest and Nancy Peluso, "Territonality and state power in Thailand", Theory and Society, 24: 385-426, 1995.
85. M. N. Pearson (ed.), Legitimacy and Symbols: The South Asian Writings of F. W. Buckler, University of Michigan: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1985.
86. Cohn, "Representing Authority", p. 636.
87. J. F. Richards, "The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir" in J. F. Richards (ed.) Kingship and Authority in South Asia, Madison: Center for South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, 1978.
88. Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1963.
89. H. K. Naqvi, History of Mughal Government and Administration Delhi: Kanishka Publishing House, 1990.
90. Chetan Singh, "Conformity and conflict: tribes and the 'agrarian system' of Mughal India", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 23(3): 319-340, 1988; "Forests, Pastoralists and Agrarian Society in Mughal India" in David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha (eds.) Nature, Culture, Imperialism Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
91. Chetan Singh, "Conformity and conflict: tribes and the 'agrarian system' of Mughal India", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 23(3): 319-340, 1988; "Forests, Pastoralists and Agrarian Society in Mughal India" in David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha (eds.) Nature, Culture, Imperialism Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
92. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "The Mughal state: Structure or process? Reflections on recent western historiography", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 29(3): 291-321, 1992.
93. Richards, "Imperial Authority".
94. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume II, p. 486.
95. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume III, p. 755.
96. For similar reflections on Louis XIV, his nobility and the gardens of Versailles, see Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
97. C. R. Naik, Abdur-Rahim Khan-i-Khanan and His Literary Circle, Ahmedabad: Gujarat University Press, 1966, p.60.
98. A. L. Srivastava, Akbar the Great: Political History, 1542-1605 A.D., Agra: Shiva Lal Agarwala & Company, 1962, p. 113.
99. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume II, p.251. Srivastava, Political History, p. 66.
100. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume II, p.251. Srivastava, Political History, p. 66.
101. Srivastava, Political History, Douglas Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989.
102. Srivastava, Political History, Douglas Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989.
103. Antonio Monserrate, The Commentary of Father Monserrate on His Journey to the Court of Akbar, J. London (tr.), Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1922, p. 74 and p. 72.
104. Monserrate, Commentary, pp. 77-83.
105. There is a measure of semantic ambiguity between 'lion' and 'tiger' in these Persian texts. Asok Kumar Das notes that sher typically means lion in ordinary Persian but sometimes also tiger. Beveridge translates sher in this text as tiger, noting the use of babar - another Persian word for tiger - for this incident in a few manuscripts. The animal in this painting is clearly striped, though striped lions also sometimes appear in Mughal paintings. See Asok Kumar Das, "Mughal Royal Hunt in Miniature Paintings", Indian Museum Bulletin, 2(1): 19-23, 1967, p. 20.
106. Abu'l Fazl, AJcbar-Nama, Volume II, pp. 222-3.
107. Reprinted in Stuart C. Welch, The Art of Mughal India, New York: Asia Society Publications, 1963.
108. Bernard Cohn has argued that the Mughals dwelt in a world of substantial relations rather than arbitrary signs, where authority was transmitted through bodily contact ("The Command of Language and the Language of Command" in Ranajit Guha, (ed.) Subaltern Studies, Volume IV, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985). The physical connection established in this painting between the body of the emperor and the body of the tigress suggests that Mughal sovereigns may have incorporated the qualities of their powerful prey into their own bodies through the medium of the hunt. Badauni noted that '[t]he flesh of the wild boar and the tiger was also permitted [to the members of Akbar's Din-i Ilahi] because the courage which these two animals possess would be transmitted to anyone who fed on such meat'. See his Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh W. H. Lowe (tr.), Karachi: Karimsons, [1884] 1976, Volume II, p. 315. There is no evidence, however, that Akbar himself engaged in such consumption, and he in fact proposed abstention from meat on several occasions.
109. Bernard Cohn has argued that the Mughals dwelt in a world of substantial relations rather than arbitrary signs, where authority was transmitted through bodily contact ("The Command of Language and the Language of Command" in Ranajit Guha, (ed.) Subaltern Studies, Volume IV, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985). The physical connection established in this painting between the body of the emperor and the body of the tigress suggests that Mughal sovereigns may have incorporated the qualities of their powerful prey into their own bodies through the medium of the hunt. Badauni noted that '[t]he flesh of the wild boar and the tiger was also permitted [to the members of Akbar's Din-i Ilahi] because the courage which these two animals possess would be transmitted to anyone who fed on such meat'. See his Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh W. H. Lowe (tr.), Karachi: Karimsons, [1884] 1976, Volume II, p. 315. There is no evidence, however, that Akbar himself engaged in such consumption, and he in fact proposed abstention from meat on several occasions.
110. Abu'l Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, p. 294.
111. Ansari, Social Life.
112. See Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari, p. 127.
113. The signifying relation between emperor and predator may perhaps be understood as iconic in the sense proposed by C. S. Peirce, founded on the persuasive play of resemblances. See Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy, pp. 56-73.
114. William L. Hanaway, Jr., "The Concept of the Hunt in Persian Literature", Museum of Fine ArtsBoston Bulletin, 69: 21-34, 1971.
115. 'Rulers should dip the lancet of their rage in the honey of kindness'. Baqir, Advice, p. 47.
116. Arif, Torikh-i Akbari, p. 78.
117. For a discussion of the mystical and erotic connotations of such imagery, see Hanaway, "Concept of the Hunt" and Koch, "Dara Shikoh".
118. For a discussion of the mystical and erotic connotations of such imagery, see Hanaway, "Concept of the Hunt" and Koch, "Dara Shikoh".
119. Ebba Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus, Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1988.
120. Aziz Al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian and Pagan Polities, London: Tauris Publishers, 1997, p. 118 and p. 127.
121. Baqir, Advice, p. 68.
122. Divyabhanusinh, The End of a Trail: The Cheetah in India. New Delhi: Banyan Books, 1995.
123. Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari, p. 68.
124. Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari, p. 135. The word employed in the original Persian passage is in fact ruqbat, denoting a pit used to catch leopards according to Steingass' Persian-English Dictionary. Thanks to Aditya Behl for the translation.
125. Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari, p. 135. The word employed in the original Persian passage is in fact ruqbat, denoting a pit used to catch leopards according to Steingass' Persian-English Dictionary. Thanks to Aditya Behl for the translation.
126. Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari, p. 221.
127. Arif, Tarikh-i Akbari, p. 254.
128. Eaton, Rise of Islam, pp. 141-3.
129. Baqir, Advice, p.73.
130. Ali, Great Mughuls, p. 76.
131. This area was sixty miles in diameter, according to Bamber Gascoigne, The GreatMoghuls, London: Jonathan Cape, 1971. One source suggests that 50,000 beaters were employed on this occasion. See Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume II, p. 416, n. 2.
132. This area was sixty miles in diameter, according to Bamber Gascoigne, The GreatMoghuls, London: Jonathan Cape, 1971. One source suggests that 50,000 beaters were employed on this occasion. See Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume II, p. 416, n. 2.
133. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume II, pp. 416-7.
134. Abu'l Fazl Allami, Ain-i Akbari, Volume III, H. S. Jarrett (tr.) and Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Co., 1978, p. 451.
135. Jahangir, for example, ordered 84 antelope caught in one qamargah to be fitted with silver nose rings and set free. See Tuzuk-iJahangiri, Volume I, p. 204. Persian kings often freed captured animals after branding them or fitting them with earrings displaying the royal seal. Anyone who killed or captured such animals was subject to death by command of the king. See Hanaway, "Concept of the Hunt".
136. Jahangir, for example, ordered 84 antelope caught in one qamargah to be fitted with silver nose rings and set free. See Tuzuk-iJahangiri, Volume I, p. 204. Persian kings often freed captured animals after branding them or fitting them with earrings displaying the royal seal. Anyone who killed or captured such animals was subject to death by command of the king. See Hanaway, "Concept of the Hunt".
137. Akbar, overcome by a trance-like possession, ordered the release of all of the animals captured in this particular enclosure. In an enigmatic and somewhat inscrutable index of the political stakes of the Mughal hunt, Badauni reports that as stories of this event spread to eastern India, 'strange rumours and wonderful lies became current in the mouths of the common people, and some insurrections took place among the ryots, but these were quickly quelled'. See Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh Volume II, p. 261.
138. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume III, p. 346.
139. "The Biloch of the hills lives in huts or temporary camps, and wanders with his herds from place to place'. Denzil Ibbetson, Panjab Castes, Lahore: Government Printing Press, 1916, p. 42.
140. Ahsan Raza Khan, Chieftains in the Mughal Empire, Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1977.
141. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume III, p. 335.
142. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume III, p. 346.
143. Shall Mayaram, "Mughal State Formation: The Mewati Counter-Perspective", Indian Economic and Social History Review, 34(2): 169-197, 1997.
144. Khan, Chieftains, 1977.
145. Abu'l Fazl, Akbar-Nama, Volume III, p. 404.
146. See Eaton, Rise of Islam, p. 209. Thanks to Aditya Behl for this association.
147. Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, p. 76.
148. Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 114.
149. Talal Asad, "Conscripts of Western Civilization" in Christine Ward Galley (ed.) Ciuilizatton in Crisis: Anthropological Perspectives, Volume 1, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1992.
150. The Chinese encyclopedia that inaugurates The Order of Things, New York: Vintage Books, 1970, for example.
151. Such an argument could be sustained even in the face of emerging efforts to regulate hunting and conserve wild tiger populations. Consider, for example, the following reflections of a colonial huntsman: The tiger is a very necessary evil in India, and were it not for him, deer and wild-boar would increase to such numbers that the cultivation of the land would become an immense hardship, and almost an impossibility; he keeps them within bounds, and relieves the ryots from watching their fields by night in the unhealthy localities. We are accustomed in England to hear constant war preached against this animal for its total extermination: but this ought only to be in cases of the destructive cattle-killer or man-eater, and these ought to be got rid of at any cost'. See R. Caton Woodville, "Tiger Hunting in Mysore", Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 85: 706-15, 1892, p. 707.
152. Chakrabarty, "Postcoloniality".
153. See for example Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom, Ann Arbor: U Michigan Press, 1993; Pamela Price, Kingship and Political Practice in Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1996; Nandini Sundar, Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar 1854-1996, Oxford University Press, 1997.
154. See for example Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom, Ann Arbor: U Michigan Press, 1993; Pamela Price, Kingship and Political Practice in Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1996; Nandini Sundar, Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar 1854-1996, Oxford University Press, 1997.
155. See for example Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom, Ann Arbor: U Michigan Press, 1993; Pamela Price, Kingship and Political Practice in Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1996; Nandini Sundar, Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar 1854-1996, Oxford University Press, 1997.
156. On Tipu's tigers, see Brittlebank, "Sakti and Barakat"; on wild tribes, wildness and the modern state, see Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
157. On Tipu's tigers, see Brittlebank, "Sakti and Barakat"; on wild tribes, wildness and the modern state, see Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.