The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate Read Online Free PDF Page B

women. However, Hindu women were not normally allowed to own property or to divorce their husband, but these rights were enjoyed by Muslim women.
    Another difference in the social practices of Hindus and Muslims was that while some Hindu communities, such as Rajputs, considered the birth of a girl child as a misfortune, and female infanticide was widespread among them, that practice was strictly prohibited in Muslim society. Similarly, while polyandry and matrilineal families were common in some Hindu communities—particularly among Nairs in Kerala—these were virtually unknown in Muslim society. On the other hand, deviant sexual practices, like homosexuality and pederasty, were very rare among Hindus, but were fairly common among Muslims. Even some of the sultans were bisexual or homosexual, and some held court dressed as women.
    A SOCIAL PRACTICE that was widely prevalent in medieval India, among Hindus as well Muslims, was polygamy. Muslims were however permitted to have only four wives, but in Hindu society there was no restriction at all about the number of wives a man could have. As for concubines, both societies permitted men to have as many of them as they desired or could afford, with some kings and nobles maintaining incredibly large harems. For instance, the sultan Begarha of Gujarat, according to contemporary chroniclers, had as many as 4000 women in his harem.
    As for prostitution, Hindus and Muslims held totally opposite views on it. Islam considered prostitution as a major sin, but Hindus viewed it as anormal and legitimate aspect of social life. In ancient India, in the Mauryan Empire for instance, there were even state run brothels. Similarly, in medieval India brothels were run as a government sanctioned service in Vijayanagar.
    Another oddity in medieval Hindu society was the practice of ritual suicide, in which people in woe or debility, because of illness or old age, drowned themselves in a holy river, such as Ganga, to escape from the miseries of life and to attain salvation. Jauhar, mass ritual suicide, was yet another Hindu practice, but this was restricted to the ruling class and the military aristocracy. Another form of ritual suicide—again practised mainly, though not exclusively, by the Hindu aristocracy—was sati, self-immolation by the widow or widows of a dead king or chieftain on his funeral pyre.
    Islam considered all these as abominable practices, but it was only very rarely that sultans intervened in them, for Hindus as zimmis were normally free to practice their traditional customs without any interference. It was in any case impossible to lay down uniform rules in dealing with Hindu social and religious practices, for there were countless variations in them, depending on sect and caste and region.
    As in social practices, so also there were great variations in the cuisine and dining practices of Indians, and these had become quite rigid in early medieval times. Society in ancient and early classical India was quite permissive in the matter of food, and allowed all, irrespective of their class and sex, including the priestly class, the freedom to eat whatever they liked, even beef, drink alcohol, and take psychotropic drugs. The scene changed altogether in the middle of the first millennium CE , when the caste system tightened its iron grip on Hindu society. Caste regulations then defined and enforced the rules about food and drink applicable to each caste, and these rules played a crucial role in segregating castes. The old adage that you are what you eat thus acquired a new meaning in India.
    Some of the nobles of early medieval India were incredible gluttons. Battuta, for instance, speaks of an Ethiopian officer in India who ‘was tall and corpulent, and used to eat a whole sheep at a meal, and … [drink] about a pound and a half of ghee.’ Even more fantastic were the dietary practices attributed to Sultan Begarha of Gujarat, a man of gigantic size and gargantuan appetite, who,