History Of India

"“On 27 September 1681, the emperor issued orders for the destruction of the temples at Lakheri…” [12]"

"Here we may see what Emperor Qurangzeb’s order of 26 Wuly 1696, given in Mir’Át-iAhmadi, says about the rates of Jizya for the three classes – poor, middle class and rich: ‚Every year twelve Sirhams should be taken from a poor person, twenty-four Dirhams from a middle class man and forty-eight Dirhams from a rich person. If the Dirham, which is legal tender, is not available, an equivalent of it should be realized in silver, every year, weighing exactly 3 tolas, 1 masha and 6 3/5 gunjas from a poor person, double of it from a middle class man and double that of a middle class man from a rich person. When paid in rupees the equivalent of this weight should be taken‛. As regards the basis of determining the class to which a Jizya payer would be considered to belong by the Jizya collector, it says: ‚There is a lot of difference in the interpretation of the terms, a poor person, a middle class man and a rich person. According to the most reliable interpretation, ‘a poor person is he who possesses two hundred Sirhams or less than that; a middle class man is he who has more than two hundred Dirhams but less than ten thousand and a rich man is he who has more than ten thousand Dirhams in his possession.‛"

"Shaikh Abdul Momin, the Faujdar of Bithur, wrote to Jumdatul Mulk that he had converted one hundred fifty Hindus making them Musalman, and had given them saropas and cash (naqd).... The Emperor said “continue giving liberally."

"“The Emperor ordered Jumdat-ul-Mulk to write to the Mutsaddis of all the subahs (provinces) of the empire that display of fire-works (atishbazi) is being forbidden. Also, Faulad Khan was ordered to arrange for announcement in the city by the beat of a drum that no one is to indulge in atishbazi.”"

"Aurangzeb was opposed to granting remission in the collection of Jizya, and when requested, he would tell his officer, ‚You are free to grant remissions of revenue of all other kinds; but if you remit any man’s Jizya– which I have succeeded with great difficulty in laying on the infidels, it will be an impious act (bid‘at) and will cause the whole system of collecting the poll-tax to fall into disorder‛. When Tiruz Wang, who had been sent in October 1701 to guard the imperial Base camp at Islampuri on the Bhima river, requested the Emperor for remission of Jizya as an incentive to the Hindu traders to come and colonize the grain market so that copious grain might arrive in the nearby Base camp, Aurangzeb brusquely rejected the suggestion saying that it would amount to ‚upsetting the command in the text of the holy Qur’Án concerning Jizya, which is (chastise them till they pay Jizya with the hand) they are humbled by substituting for it the words ‘they deserve to be excused’. This would be he wrote, ‚thousand stages remote from the perfect wisdom of obedience to the august Shari‘at.‛ He wrote that he would not be deceived by such a ‘worthless idea resulting from immature greed.‛ Only in very rare cases, such as one reported by Ishwar Das, he showed some leniency when he permitted remission of Jizya and other cesses at Hyderabad for one year after his conquest when he was told that the people could not pay this tax on account of poverty and if it was levied, the place would be depopulated."

"The Emperor gave orders to Wawahar Chand, Darogha of the beldars, that (all) the temples which would come in his way (to Burhanpur) be demolished."

"January, 1670. “In this month of Ramzan, the religious-minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura known as the Dehra of Keshav Rai. His officers accomplished it in a short time. A grand mosque was built on its site at a vast expenditure. The temple had been built by Bir Singh Dev Bundela, at a cost of 33 lakhs of Rupees. Praised be the God of the great faith of Islam that in the auspicious reign of this destroyer of infidelity and turbulence, such a marvellous and [seemingly] impossible feat was accomplished. On ceeing this [instance of the ] strength of the [-:mperor's faith and the grandeur of his devotion to God, the Rajahs felt suffocated and they stood in amazement like statues facing the walls. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels, which had been set up in the temple, were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the mosque of Jahanara, to be trodden upon continually.’’—/bid., 95-96. [quoted in Sarkar Jadunath. History of Aurangzib. Volume III. Bombay: Orient Longman.]"

"[Newsletter dated November 19, 1702, notes that Aurangzeb ordered] “no Hindu in the army was to employ Muslim servants…“"

"“‘In every pargana officers have come from the thanas with orders from the Presence for the destruction of idols.'’"—A letter preserved in the Yasho-Madhav temple of Dhamrai in the Dacca district, dated 27 June, 1672, and printed in J. M, Ray's Bengali History of Dacca, i. 389. [quoted in Sarkar Jadunath. History of Aurangzib. Volume III. Bombay: Orient Longman.]"

"“A darvesh brought to the notice of the Emperor that the Musalmans (of the country) felt dejected on account of (the burden of) Zakat and that they should be exempted from paying it. Jumdat-ul Mulk now sought the Emperor’s orders regarding the matter. The Emperor (Aurangzeb) ordered that the Musalmans were to be exempted from paying it, but it should be charged from the Hindus.”"

"May, 1669. “Salih Bahadur, mace-bearer, was sent to pull down the temple of Malarna.”— M.A. 84."

"The infidels demolished a mosque that was under construction and wounded the artisans. When the news reached Shah Yasin, he came to Banaras from Mandyawa and collecting the Muslim weavers, demolished the big temple. A Sayyid who was an artisan by profession agreed with one Abdul Rasul to build a mosque at Banaras and accordingly the foundation was laid. Near the place there was a temple and many houses belonging to it were in the occupation of the Rajputs. The infidels decided that the construction of a mosque in the locality was not proper and that it should be razed to the ground. At night the walls of the mosque were found demolished. Next day the wall was rebuilt but it was again destroyed. This happened three or four times. At last the Sayyid hid himself in a corner. With the advent of night the infidels came to achieve their nefarious purpose. When Abdul Rasul gave the alarm, the infidels began to fight and the Sayyid was wounded by Rajputs. In the meantime, the Musalman resident of the neighbourhood arrived at the spot and the infidels took to their heels. The wounded Muslims were taken to Shah Yasin who determined to vindicate the cause of Islam. When he came to the mosque, people collected from the neighbourhood. The civil officers were outwardly inclined to side with the saint, but in reality they were afraid of the royal displeasure on account of the Raja, who was a courtier of the Emperor and had built the temple (near which the mosque was under construction). Shah Yasin, however, took up the sword and started for Jihad. The civil officers sent him a message that such a grave step should not be taken without the Emperor's permission. Shah Yasin, paying no heed, sallied forth till he reached Bazar Chau Khamba through a fusillade of stones' The, doors (of temples) were forced open and the idols thrown down. The weavers and other Musalmans demolished about 500 temples. They desired to destroy the temple of Beni Madho, but as lanes were barricaded, they desisted from going further."

"The Emperor ordered Qsad Xhan that a hasb-ul-hukm be sent to Amir-ul-Umara (Shaista Khan) to demolish the JagannÁtha temple (butkhana baism Jagannath) which is in Orissa‛."

"“About this time the emperor, hearings that an attack had been made on the Muhammadan post at Dwdrka, ordered the temple to be levelled to the ground.”"

"3rd April 1694. ““The Emperor learnt from a secret news-writer of Delhi that in Jaisinghpura Bairagis used to worship idols, and that the Censor on hearing of it had gone there, arrested Sri Krishna Bairagi and taken him with 15 idols away to his house ; then the Rajputs had assembled, flocked to the Censor’s house, wounded three footmen of the Censor and tried to seize the Censor himself ; so that the latter set the Bairagi free and sent the copper idols to the local subahdar.’’—Akhbarat, year 37, sheet 57. [quoted in Sarkar Jadunath. History of Aurangzib. Volume III. Bombay: Orient Longman.]"

"“The Emperor, summoning Muhammad Khalil and Khidniat Rai. the darogha of hatchet-men ordered them to demolish the temple of Pandharpur.”"

"In 1682, Aurangzeb once again turned his attention towards Banaras. In September, Nand-Madho (Bindu-Madhava) temple at Varanasi was demolished on his orders as his Court Bulletin (AkhbÁrÁt) of 13thReptember 1682, records. It says: ‚Qs per report of Rafi-ul-Amin, the Diwan of Banaras, the temple of Nand-Madho has been demolished. He requested that orders regarding the construction of a mosque (in its place) be sent. The Emperor ordered that a mosque be built there‛."

"The death of Rajah Waswant Singh was used by Aurangzeb as an opening to oppress the Hindus still more, since they had no longer any valiant and powerful rajah who could defend them. He re-imposed on the Hindus a poll-tax (Jizya)."

"“For different reasons, and also out of apprehension, people visit in large numbers (the mazars or shrines) of Shah Madar, Khwaja Muin-ud-din, Salar, Sarur Sultan and Pir Ganun (Pir Pabu?) etc. They go for ziyarat (visit to sacred tombs) and perform tawaf (circumbulation) which are bid‘at. Orders were issued to stop these practices... Also, the Hindus, and quite often the Musalmans also, flock at (the shrines of) Devi for worship and that of Pir Pabu. The Emperor ordered that this should be stopped. It was also ordered that the Hindus must not crowd at these places, and worship of Shitla wherever it is performed, should be held at a distance (from the habitation).”"

"“In 1661 Aurangzeb in his zeal to uphold, what he considered to be the law of Islam, sent orders to his Viceroy of Bihar, Baud Khan, to conquer Palamau. In the military operations that followed, many temples were destroyed…”"

"Next monlh Hasan Alt Khan defeated Gokla. The rebels, who mustered 20,000 strong, mostly Jat and other stalwart peasants, encountered the imperial forces at a place 20 miles from Tilpat. Bui after a very long and bloody contest they gave way before the superior discipline and artillery of the Mughals, and fled to Tilpat, which was besieged for three days and al last stormed at the point of the sword. Thehavoc was terrible. On the victors’ side 4,000 men fell and on the rebels’ 5,000, while 7,000 persons. Including Gokla and his family, were taken prisoner. The ]at leader's limbs were hacked off one by one on the platform of the police office of Agra, and his family was forcibly converted to Islam."

"In India the history of Jewish migration and settlement and of the development of Judaism after the twelfth century was less chequered than in Europe, but also less fruitful. Persecutions on a systematic scale are not in evidence at any time. Yet the career of the Jews in India was abortive. A recent collection of essays on Indian Jews has once again revealed ‘that there is remarkably little interaction with the Hindu religious tradition, classical and popular’. ... Ultimately the success of Jewish trade and the prosperity of the Jewish communities in India derived from the promi­nent position which the Jews occupied in Baghdad, Cairo and elsewhere in the Islamic Middle East in the period before they were absorbed by Europe."

"Two clusters of settlements developed, one in the north, spreading out from Khurasan, and one on the westcoast, mainly Malabar, which was important in the maritime network. It seems certain that in both areas the Jews were relatively thin on the ground before the rise of Islam, although in Malabar a considerable community did exist. The earliest and most significant settlement of Jews in India was the one on the Malabar coast and these Jews had probably come by sea after the destruction of the second temple. According to legend the presence of Jews in Khurasan and on the north-western frontier of India also dates from pre-Islamic times."

"The first definite proof of the existence of a Jewish colony near Cranganore is, in the meantime, the Tamil charter of Bhaskara Ravivarman (978-1036 A.D.), a grant of lands and privi­leges, written in the obsolete Vatteluttu script of ancient Tamil. Jewish, Muslim and Christian travel accounts of the twelfth and thir­teenth centuries mention small Jewish settlements all along the Malabar coast, in towns such as Calicut, Quilon and Cranganore (Shingali), and at various places further north... The Jews of Malabar came to be divided in ‘White’ and ‘Black’ Jews and the latter were either the offspring of mixed marriages between Jews and Hindus or descendants of Hindus who had converted to Juda­ism.125 White Jews say that the Black Jews are descendants of the nu­merous slaves who were purchased and who converted to Judaism to be manumitted. The Black Jews themselves claim to be the descendants of the Israelites of the first captivity.126 However that may be, the main source of replenishment of the Malabar Jews still remained the Islamic Middle East."

"Did they get this from the Jews? Did the Jews copy the Indians, were both original? The Jews are not allowed to think that their writers took (ont puisé) anything from the brahmins, of whom they have never heard. It is not permitted to think about Adam in another way than do the Jews. I will be quiet and I will not think."

"But only in the early Islamic caliphate the Jews began to develop an important ‘trade diaspora’, and it was only then that the an­cient Jewish communities in India succeeded in re-establishing links with the Middle East and emerged from obscurity. We will also see that the fate of most Jewish communities in India remained intimately linked to that of the Middle-Eastern Jews and that their fortune followed the political vicissitudes of Islam. The eighth to twelfth centuries, in sum­mary, were the palmy age of the Jews in India, but Jewish success in India was dependent on the presence of Jews in the Islamic Middle East and Egypt and hence did not survive the latter’s migration to Europe."

"Other historical factors which affected the position of the Jews in Islam were the revival of Greek learning and especially the development of the India trade. The new Jewish prominence in medicine and phar­macy was probably due to their deep involvement in both the transmis­sion of Greek science and the trade with India and the Far East simulta­neously.77 In the ninth-century Abbasid caliphate, as we have seen, the India trade became the foundation of the international economy, con­tributing also to a tremendous upsurge of internal commerce and, sub­sequently, the shift towards a unified bi-metallic currency system which encompassed the eastern and western caliphates. At this point, the cen­tral and hegemonic position of the Babylonian Jewry gave them a head­ start not only in the long-distace trade with India but in the organization of finance and also state finance generally.... The great Jewish banking houses of Baghdad also financed the Jewish radhanlya trade which extended - both overland and by sea - from Western Europe to the Middle East and to Sind and Hind and China."

"Some very intelligent thinkers say that the brahmin sect is incontestably older that that of the Jews . . . they say that the Indians were always inventors and the Jews always imitators, the Indians always clever and the Jews always coarse."

"Hail Prosperity! This is the gift that His majesty, King of Kings, Sri Bhaskara Ravi Varman, who is to wield sceptre for several thousand years, was pleased to make during the thirty sixth year opposite to the second year of his reign [according to Narayanan, 1000 C.E.], on the day when he was pleased to reside at Muyirkkode. We have granted to Joseph Rabban, Ancuvannam, tolls by the boat and by carts, Ancuvannam dues, the right to employ day lamp, decorative cloth, palanquin, umbrella, kettledrum, trumpet, arch, arched roof, weapon and the rest of the seventy-two privileges. We have remitted duty and weighing fee. Moreover, according to this copper-plate grant given to him, he shall be exempted from payments made by other settlers in the town to the king, but he shall enjoy what they enjoy. To Joseph Rabban, proprietor of Ancuvannam, his male and female issues, nephews and sons-in-law, Ancuvannam shall belong by hereditary succession. Ancuvannam shall belong to them by hereditary succession as long as the world, sun and moon endure. Prosperity!"

"The question is all the more poignant when we consider that the idea of a Jewish-Brahmin connection was already quite ancient. In his plea Contra Apionem (1.179) the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus quotes Aristotle’s pupil Clearchos of Soli as having claimed that Aristotle had been very impressed once with the discourses of a Jewish visitor, and more so with the steadfastness of his dietary discipline, and had concluded that in origin the Jews had been Indian philosophers. A similar claim is found in the Hellenistic-Jewish philosopher Aristoboulos. So, two millennia before Nietzsche, an Indian origin was already ascribed to the Jews."

"Fatimid Egypt (with North Africa) by the tenth century took over an important part of the India trade from their rivals in Iraq. The result was a vast migration of Jews to Cairo. When Baghdad declined and the Abbasids began to lose more and more power in the east and in the west, from the late tenth century and especially after the Seljuq invasion and the beginning of the Cru­sades (1096), an even larger portion of the India trade was redirected to Egypt. In Egypt the Jews again obtained a disproportionate share in this trade in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when it became one of their main pursuits. Jewish trading stations, linked to Egypt and the Red Sea termini, can be located in over twenty different places on the westcoast of India, to the south of Broach, and further in Indonesia. And in Egypt too the Jews sometimes attained high positions at court. But they were no longer as dominant as they had been in Baghdad, and the India trade of the tenth to twelfth centuries which is described in the Cairo Geniza documents was carried out and financed to a far greater degree by Mus­lims based in the Mediterranean area.83 Still, Cairo became an increas­ingly important centre of Jewish mercantile and financial activity. Egypt - Egyptian Muslims and Egyptian jlw ry - became the new in­termediary between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, with the old Babylonian centre receding to the background."

"As far as I have been able to discover these differences are usually caused by the Black Jews constantly pressing for equality with the White Jews. The latter would not allow this, because they did not look upon the Black Jews as original Jews, but considered the majority of them to be either the issue of their released slaves, or of the natives of Malabar, who had been proselytes. It is related that the Black Jews always wanted to mix with the white by intermarrying; also that instead of behaving humbly towards the whites, they laid themselves out to be discourteous in greetings and salutations in the street; also that they were so bold as to take the first places in the synagogues, at public meetings and on other occasions; so that they always aimed, if not at superiority, at least at equality."

"Their Hindoo complexion, and their very imperfect resemblance to the European Jews, indicate that they have been detached from the parent stock, in Judea, many ages before the Jews in the west, and that there have been intermarriages with families not Israelitish. — I had heard that those tribes, which had passed the Indus, had assimilated so much to the customs and habits of the countries in which they live, that they sometimes may be seen by a traveller without being recognised as Jews. In the interior towns of Malabar, I was not always able to distinguish the Jew from the Hindoo. I hence perceived how easy it may be to mistake the tribes of Jewish descent among the Afghans and other nations, in the northern parts of Hindostan. The white Jews look upon the black Jews as an inferior race, and as not of pure caste, which plainly demonstrates that they do not spring from a common stock in India."

"Who is not curious as to how the Jews of India survived for so long in an atmosphere of tolerance when other Jewish communities such as that in China, benefiting from similar toleration, assimilated so thoroughly. Their argument is that India as a host society combined tolerance with culturally enforced diversity which made the difference. Indian society, with its several major religions and further division within Hinduism into four major castes, a fifth of outcasts, and over 3,000 subcastes, tolerates wide diversity but does not permit people born into one group to cross over into another or even to associate with the others beyond the public square, since the food taboos of every religious community, caste and subcaste mean that they cannot eat with one another. Nothing separates more than that. The Jewish community could fit into India as another caste and even developed its own subcastes, as the authors explain, properly denoting this as the Cochin Jews' one great (and sad) departure from halakhic Judaism."

"Jews navigated the eddies and shoals of Indian culture very well. They never experienced anti-Semitism or discrimination."

"Indians Jews lived as all Jews should have been allowed to live: free, proud, observant, creative and prosperous, self-realized, full contributors to the host country."

"We have seen now that after the tenth century the most important centres of the Jewish diaspora were no longer in Babylonia or in the Islamic capital of Baghdad (which however remained the seat of the Gaonate and the Exilarch) but shifted westward to Egypt and Spain, and eastward to Khurasan, Central Asia and the frontier of Hind... Egypt, after the fall of Constantinople in 1204, virtually monopolized the Indian transit trade but the Jews were expelled from this trade and an association of Arab traders known as the karimi took over... All along the northern overland routes from India, in Sind and Afghanistan, the Babylonian-Persian Jewry spread and be­ came an important commercial intermediary between the Islamic world on the one hand and India and Central Asia on the other. Jewish settle­ment in this period rapidly increased here, until in the thirteenth century the Mongols brought Jewish involvement in trade and finance to a low pitch. It is quite clear that the elimination of the Jewish intermediary from the overland India trade virtually coincided in time with the elimi­nation of the Jews from the maritime trade between coastal western In­dia and Malabar and Egypt. In Malabar, Muslim traders superseded the Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Christian guilds. Jewish involvement in the trade between India and the Islamic lands of the Middle East, then, after reaching a peak in the tenth to eleventh centuries, eclipsed in the twelfth or thirteenth century - at the same time that the Jewish transition to Latin Christianity occurred. The simultaneousness of these developments appears to be no accident."

"If Janak's child be mine no more, In splendour fair as virgin ore, The lordship of the skies and earth To me were prize of little worth."

"He led the mournful lady where Resplendent gold adorned the stair, And showed each lattice fair to see With silver work and ivory: Showed his bright chambers, line on line, Adorned with nets of golden twine."

"The workmanship of the native hilts can scarcely be surpassed... The districts of Salem, Koimbatur, and North Arkat, (in Tamil Nadu, are those) in which the best Indian steel has been manufactured from time immemorial..."

"Gods, doing holy acts, devout, resplendent, smelting like ore their human generations."

"Grey iron is its flesh, copper its blood. Tin is its ashes, gold its colour, the blue lotus flower its scent."

"The working with wootz is so difficult, that it is a separate art from that of forging iron."

"The traditional view, that iron was brought into the subcontinent by invading ‘Aryans’, is wrong on two counts: there is no evidence of any knowledge of iron in the earliest Vedic texts, where ayas stands either for copper or for metals in general, and the idea that the aryas of the Rigveda were invaders has become just as questionable."

"The Indians are very good at making various compounds of mixtures of substances with the help of which they melt the malleable iron; it then turns into Indian iron, and is called after al-Hind. There, in al-Hind, are workshops where swords are manufactured, and their craftsmen make excellent ones surpassing those made by other peoples. In the same way, the Sindi, Sarandibi and the Baynimani iron vie with one another for superiority as regards the climate of the place, skill in industry, the method of melting and stamp­ing and beauty in polishing and scouring. But no iron is comparable to the Indian one in sharpness."

"That foremost one of Dasarha's race also gave unto Subhadra as her peculium ten carrier-loads of first class gold possessing the splendour of fire, some purified and some in a state of ore."

"There is a cake which is supposed to be steel from India and the kind to be rated most highly in Egypt. I could find no artisan in Paris who succeeded in forging a tool out of it."

"When the Harappan civilisation experienced the Copper Age in the Indus valley, southern India experienced the Iron Age."

"The Hindus seem to have been the first people to mine gold.... Much of the gold used in the Persian Empire in the fifth century before Christ came from India. Silver, copper, lead, tin, zinc and iron were also mined-iron as early as 1500 B.C."

"The art of tempering and casting iron developed in India long before its known appearance in Europe; Vikramaditya, for example, erected at Delhi (ca. 380 A.D.) an iron pillar that stands untarnished today after fifteen centuries; and the quality of metal, or manner of treatment, which has preserved it from rust or decay is still a mystery to modern metallurgical science. Before the European invasion the smelting of iron in small charcoal furnaces was one of the major industries of India. The Industrial Revolution taught Europe how to carry out these processes more cheaply on a larger scale, and the Indian industry died under the competition..."