6. In India, dowry is the payment in cash or in gifts (jewellery, electrical appliances, furniture, bedding, crockery, utensils and other household items) made to a bridegroom’s family to help the newlywed bride set up her home. The dowry system is thought to put great financial burden on the bride’s family. The payment of a dowry has been prohibited under the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 in Indian civil law. See Maya Unnithan-Kumar, Identity, Gender, and Poverty: New Perspectives on Caste and Tribe in Rajasthan, (New York: Berghahn Books, 1997).
7. The Mirasis are hereditary bards of lower caste who are said to have converted to Islam about eight centuries ago. They originally belonged to the Hindu Dhadi caste.
8. Lindsey Harlan, Religion and Rajput Women: The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
9. During the marriage ceremony, the groom applies a red-coloured powder, kumkum, to the parting in the bride’s hair as a part of the Hindu marriage ceremony. Subsequent, kumkum is applied by the wife as part of her dressing routine to signify her status as a married woman. Once widowed, a woman is not supposed to wear kumkum.
Chapter 3: The Genealogists of Haridwar
1. Sapta Puri are the seven holy pilgrimages or tirthas in India, namely: Ayodhya, Mathura, Haridwar, Varanasi, Kanchipuram, Ujjain and Dwarka. In Hinduism, ‘tirtha’ connotes religious places of spiritual importance. The root word in tirtha is tri (in the Sanskrit), which means ‘to get rid of all sins’, a step towards the attainment of Nirvana or salvation.
2. Hindu Brahmin priests or pandits are popularly known as Pandas in Haridwar; they essentially fulfil the roles of family priests, pilgrim guides and record keepers for families; the term is generally used as a suffix to the names and often used instead of last names. See John Renard, The Handy Religion Answer Book (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 2002).
3. The Great Plague lasted from 1665–66 and killed an estimated 1,00,000 people—almost a quarter of London’s population. There was no one whose duty it was to report a death to anyone in authority. Instead, each parish of the city appointed two or more ‘searchers of the dead’, whose duty it was to inspect a corpse and determine the cause of death. A searcher was entitled to charge a small fee from relatives for each death they reported and thus it was noted. But many of these parish clerks who kept the records themselves died and the rest of the records were destroyed in the Great London Fire. See James Leasor, The Plague and the Fire (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962).
4. Hsiang-lin Lo, The extent and preservation of genealogical records in China (Utah: The Genealogical Society of Utah, 1969).
5. The Kathats or Merats are a Rajput community from the state of Rajasthan in India and the provinces of Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan.
6. The scriptures, in ancient times, were written on bhojpatra (a paper-thin bark of the Himalayan birch tree) which never lasted in a readable condition for more than 500 to 800 years, even with extreme care. Some of the bhojpatras might still be available with some Pandas and are preserved in public libraries.
7. Besides being folk singers, Manganiyars are also genealogists and orally remember family histories. They also make shubhraj, which was sometimes an eulogy and other times a testimonial of the family and its history, which they sang at public places and family gatherings.
8. A traditional greeting for followers of Goddess Ganga translating to ‘Victory to Goddess Ganga’.
9. The term gaddi means ‘mattress’. Back in time, one-man offices were a mattress and a desk in a marketplace. Although brick-and-mortar structures replaced them, they are often known as ‘gaddi’, which essentially imply ‘the seat of the owner’.
10. The Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) is dedicated to gathering, preserving and sharing genealogical information throughout the world. Established in 1894, the GSU is an incorporated, non-profit educational institution entirely funded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In the 1990s, the church expanded the Genealogical Society of Utah and it eventually became known as FamilySearch.
Chapter 4: The Kabootarbaaz of Old Delhi
1. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: Forgotten Books, 2015).
2. Scientists at the University of Pisa have discovered that the secret behind pigeons’ ability to navigate perfectly over journeys of several hundred miles is by creating odour maps of their neighbourhoods and using these to orient them. This replaces the idea that they exploited subtle variations in the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate. See Hans G. Wallraff, Avian Navigation: Pigeon Homing as a Paradigm (Germany: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2005).
3. For further reading about ishqbazi, see the website of The Packard Humanities Institute (Persian Literature in Translation): http://persian.packhum.org/persian//.
4. Edward James Rapson, Wolseley Haig and Richard Bur, The Cambridge History of India 4 (New Delhi: S. Chand Publishing, 1963).
5. Abū’l-Fażl ‘Allāmī, The Ain i Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann and H.S. Jarrett (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873).
6. S.J. Monserrate, The Commentary of Father Monserrate on His Journey to the Court of Akbar, trans. J.S. Hoyland (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1922).
7. Chawri Bazaar was popular for its courtesans in the nineteenth century, frequented by nobility as well as the rich. With the British, tawaifs receded into the background and prostitutes came to occupy the upper floors of the market. This eventually led to the area becoming a hub of criminality and thus the Delhi Municipal Committee evicted them from the area, altogether, with most moving to the GB Road area.
8. Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
Chapter 5: The Storytellers of Andhra
1. Makar Sankranti is one of the most important festivals of the Hindu calendar and celebrates the sun’s journey into the northern hemisphere, a period which is considered to be highly auspicious.
2. A Tanjore doll is a type of traditional Indian bobblehead made of terracotta material. The doll’s head moves in a continuous dance-like motion because its centre of gravity and total weight is concentrated at its central core all the time.
3. The forerunner of the Burrakatha was known as the Jangamkatha, literally translating to ‘the stories of the Jangam tribe’. The storyteller, accompanied by his wife, would travel from village to village, performing for two to three days at a stretch. This then became a popular form called Burrakatha which was used for political purposes and social messages, the performance often laced with sarcasm.
4. The Budaga Jangalu are listed in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution as a scheduled caste community that has lived in history as alms seekers and hunters, reciting Jangamkathas for a living. See Nagendra K.R. Singh, ed., Global Encyclopaedia of the South Indian Dalit’s Ethnography, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Global Vision Publishing House, New Delhi).
5. Virasaivism, or Lingayatism, traces its origin to the five great religious teachers, Renuka, Daruka, Ghantakarna, Dhenukarna and Visvakarna, who, according to tradition, were the earthly manifestations of the five aspects of Lord Shiva. The religion was later made popular by Basava, a preacher and saint and Revanasiddha. Virashaivnism was a reformist’s movement on the lines of the Arya Samaj in the nineteenth century. See Homer Alexander Jack, ed., World Religions and World Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).
6. On 2 June 2014, Telangana was formed as the twenty-ninth state of India, separating the former state of Andhra Pradesh into two.
7. The large black carpenter bee.
8. Country liquor.
9. The ‘Fourth Wall’ is a theatrical term for the imaginary ‘wall’ that exists between actors on stage and the audience. Obviously, no such wall really exists, but to keep up the illusion of theatre, the actors pretend that they cannot hear or see the audience and the audience gets to enjoy the wonderful sensation of being a fly on the wall.
10. The Telangana Mo
vement refers to a people’s movement for the creation of the new state of Telangana from the existing state of Andhra Pradesh in South India. The proposed new state corresponds to the Telugu-speaking portions of the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad. The Union Cabinet, on 7 February 2014, unilaterally passed the bill for the creation of Telangana, clearing the way for its introduction in Parliament. This has been one of the most controversial movements in South India.
11. The Praja Natya Mandali emerged in 1943, having been inspired by the establishment of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) by progressive writers. In the initial years of the organization, the activities of the association were confined to the Krishna and Guntur districts. Gradually, however, the Mandali extended to other parts of Andhra Pradesh as well. Under the leadership of Garikapati Rajarao and Koduri Atchaiah, the Praja Natya Mandali conducted district workshops and taught youngsters the performatory methods of Telugu folk forms including Burrakatha. As the leading radical cultural group of the time, it was almost inevitably drawn into the Telangana Movement and began to play an active role in it. See Ananda Lal, ed., The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Chapter 6: The Street Dentists of Baroda
1. A ‘torus’ is a harmless growth of bone in the mouth.
2. A. Coppa et al., ‘Palaeontology: Early Neolithic Tradition of Dentistry’, Nature 440 (7085) (6 April 2006).
3. Josephine M.T. Khu, ed., Cultural Curiosity: Thirteen Stories about the Search for Chinese Roots (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2001).
4. Ahmad Ka Mohalla is a street in Chandni Chowk, Delhi, now known as Krishna Gali. It was known to be inhabited by the affluent, mostly Muslims. Many families that lived here were looted and destroyed during the days of the Partition, and the area was later occupied by Sikh families.
5. Madehow.com, ‘How to Make Dentures’, vol. 3; available online at http://www.madehow.com/Volume-3/Denture.html.
6. Smokeless tobacco.
7. Jo Johnson, ‘India’s Street Dentists facing decaying business’, Financial Times, 3 November 2007; available online at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/51f29222-899f-11dc-8dff-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz3s0n3DWs7.
8. ‘Gendarmes round up “Dodgy Dentists”,’ BBC News, 11 September, 2003; available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3100490.stm.
9. Khwaja Jamal, ‘Bitter pill for fake dentists’, Telegraph, 22 July 2011; available online at http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110723/jsp/bihar/story_14274077.jsp.
Chapter 7: The Urdu Scribes of Delhi
1. The imperial capital of Shahjahanabad was built by the Mughal Emperor Shahjahan (1628–58) between 1639–48, and it spread out over a large area along the banks of the river Yamuna in the south-eastern parts of the Delhi triangle. Today, what remains are the crumbling walls, gates and a few majestic buildings like the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid. See Stephen P. Blake, Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India (1639–1739) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
2. Manjusha Madhu, ‘The Art of Devotion and a Devotion to Art’, Sunday Guardian, 20 May 2012; available online at http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/the-art-of-devotion-a-a-devotion-to-art.
3. Diwani is an Arabic script first invented in the fifteenth century and later developed during the reign of the early Ottoman Turks (from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries). It was used in the Ottoman courts, and the rules of this script were kept a secret, confined only to its masters and a few bright students; it was mostly used for official purposes.
4. The Nastaʿlīq script was a predominant style of Persian calligraphy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A cursive script, the Nastaʿlīq was a combination of the Naskhī and Taʿlīq styles, featuring elongated horizontal strokes and exaggerated rounded forms. The diacritical marks were casually placed, and the lines were flowing rather than straight. Nastaʿlīq was frequently incorporated into the paintings of the early Safavid period (in the sixteenth century), and is traditionally considered to be the most elegant of the Persian scripts. It is sometimes used to write Arabic-language text, but its use has always been more popular in Persian, Turkic, Urdu and other South Asian scripts. Nastaʿlīq has extensively been, and still is, practised in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan for writing poetry and as a form of art.
5. The Kufic is the oldest calligraphic form of the various Arabic scripts and consists of a modified form of the old Nabataean script.
6. A book written during Akbar’s reign, it was and, still is, considered to be a standard work of book production. Shah Jahan’s sons were trained calligraphers, using their skills to write letters and books. Prince Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan, patronized master calligraphers and artists from Iran and Central Asia. Tughra, a style that creates animal forms with letters and texts, was executed by Dara Shikoh
7. Tariq Rehman, From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012).
8. John Windsor, ‘Get some writing on your wall’, Guardian, 12 November 2006; available online at http://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/nov/12/alternativeinvestment.india.
9. Brij Narayan Chakbast was an Urdu poet born in in Faizabad, near Lucknow, in January 1882, to a Kashmiri Pandit family. He was primarily a poet, but his prose is also considered at par with his poetry. This is a famous couplet on his description of life and death.
10. Kakizome, which, in Japanese means ‘first writing’, is traditional Japanese calligraphy written at the beginning of the year or, more precisely, on 2 January annually. This tradition is also known as Kitsusho Hajime, or ‘first fortune writing’.
Chapter 8: The Boat Makers of Balagarh
1. Shaista Khan eliminated the Portuguese who were frequently raiding trade ships and settlements near the Hooghly river. The Mughal naval forces were weak at this time and were often plundered by Portuguese pirates. Shaista Khan prepared a flotilla of around 300 boats from yards on the Hooghly and defeated the enemy and later developed a boat-building business in Dhaka in Tanti Bazaar. See Abhay Kumar Singh, Modern World System and Indian Proto-Industrialization: Bengal 1650–1800, volume 1 (New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 2006); and Jaswant Lal Mehta, Advanced Study in the History of Modern India, 1707–1813 (New Delhi: New Dawn Press Group, 2005).
2. ‘In every part of His Majesty’s empire, ships are numerous; but in Bengal, Kashmir, and T’hat’hah (Sindh) they are the pivot of all commerce. His Majesty had the sterns of the boats made in the shape of wonderful animals, and thus combines terror with amusement. Turrets and pleasing kiosks, markets, and beautiful flower-beds, have likewise been constructed on the rivers.’ Abū’l-Fażl ‘Allāmī, The Ain i Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann and H.S. Jarrett (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873).
3. The Rajbanshis are a community of fishermen belonging to a lower caste, according to the Hindu caste system. Most other boatmen who build boats do it with the help of the knowledge of these Rajbanshis. They often operate in Rajbanshi para, Sripur or Chandra Colony in Balagarh along with other Muslim craftsmen. A lot of Brahmanic customs have filtered into this essentially non-Brahmanic community to ensure the sanctity of the boat-making craft and a wider economic reach catering to all castes and classes. For further reading on the tradition and culture of Rajbanshis and the boats made by them, see Swarup Bhattacharyya, ‘Balagarhi Dinghi’ in Connected by the Sea: Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, Denmark 2003, ed. Lucy Blue et al. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006).
4. A local spirit made from rice. Chullu production is a part of the culture and spiritual practices of the region. The recipe for it is, however, a secret and passed on orally from generation to generation.
5. Various editions of the Manasha Mangal Kavya, written around the fifteenth century, speak of a seafaring merchant Chand Sagar and the boat-making units in Saptagram. The word ‘Saptagram’ means seven villages. These are identified as Bansberia, Kristap
ur, Basudebpur, Nityanandapur, Sibpur, Sambachora and Baladghati. From the map of Van Don Broucke (1560 AD) it is quite clear that River Bhagirathi used to branch off into three streams near Triveni, on the Hooghly. But Rennel’s Atlas, a century later, shows that the three streams had merged into one, more or less corresponding to the present-day river. In the process of shifting, it had abandoned Saptagram, and boats and ships could no longer reach here due to the river closing up. The boat-making units moved to the neighbouring village of Balagarh, whereas the trade activities moved to Calcutta. See Nitish Sengupta, Land of Two Rivers (London: Penguin Books UK, 2011).
6. Clinker built is a method of boat building where the edges of hull planks overlap.
7. Bhatiali, or Bhatiyali, is a form of folk music in Bengal. Bhatiyali is a boat song sung by boatmen while going downstream, as the word bhatiyali comes from bhata, meaning ‘ebb’ or ‘downstream’. The boatmen also wrote ballads which were later set to music by village musicians. See Amaresh Datta, Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1987).
Chapter 9: The Ittar Wallahs of Hyderabad
1. The Charminar is a monument and mosque located in Hyderabad. It was built by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah in 1591 to commemorate the eradication of the plague. He had prayed for the end of the plague that was destroying his city and had vowed to build a mosque at the very place where he prayed.
2. The Char Kaman, built in 1592 by Sultan Muhammad Quli, are four arches at a distance of about 75 metres from the Charminar. All four arches are equidistant from each other. They served as a gateway to the palaces or other structures of royal importance. The Char Kaman also had areas allocated for shops that functioned from inside the four arches, selling jewellery, ittar and even Irani chai. The heritage conservation committee of Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority claims that they cannot evict the occupants as they are not harming the monument.
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