OK, well, good afternoon, everybody.
Greetings from the South Asia, the modern South Asia Seminar here in Oxford, UK.
I hope this finds you all doing okay in these troubled times.
Troubled, but now rather more hopeful times, I think, than was the case yesterday.
Well, today, we're absolutely delighted to have with us Professor Cynthia Torbert from the Department of History at the University of Austin in Texas.
Professor Torbert will be known to very many of you, a leading historian of mediaeval and early modern India.
Her first book, Precolonial India in Practise Society, Region and Identity and Mediaeval Ondra, published in 2001,
was an absolutely pathbreaking exploration of the complex layers of political and cultural
affiliation which shaped the important state of the cockatiels based in the warrior lineages
of mediaeval endre and the ways in which these lineages map themselves onto a subcontinent
that was increasingly exposed to the power and also the opportunities of the Mughal north.
Professor Talbert's interest in historical memory and its role in shaping identities and relationships
of many kinds has really marked out her subsequent work and made the case in a unique way.
I think amongst historians of the early modern made the case for the importance of
memory and emotional regimes in the history of the subcontinent's warrior cultures.
Her most recent book, The Last Hindu Emperor.
Pretty, Pretty, writes Tahan and the Indian passed 12 hundreds to 2000, published in 2016, won the Association for Asian Studies,
AK Kumara Swami Book Price and a very prestigious prise for the best English language scholarly work on South Asia.
So it's an enormous pleasure to welcome Professor John Roberts, who will talk to us today on the theme of Rajput loyalties in the mutual age.
Just to let you know that at the end, as Professor Talbert's talk,
there will be a short opportunity for those of you who would like to Emet to not email, who would like to put questions to Professor Tolbert.
Please do so if you'd like to via the Q and A box.
That should be there at the bottom of your screens.
You send in questions. I'll pick I'll pick ones that that seem to be most pertinent.
And Professor Tolbert, we'll have a short chance to respond.
Well, thank you very much indeed. Once again, everyone, for joining us. And Professor Torbert, over to you.
Thank you very much for inviting me. And this is a great opportunity for me to introduce some of my recent work.
I have slightly changed the title of my talk.
Once I realised that the previous titles are actually very close to the title of an article by Norman Ziegler.
So I changed fighting to a competing loyalties to King and King and Upwith India,
which gives you a little bit more information about what I'm trying to do today. So I'd like to reflect on the issue of loyalty and Mughal era India.
And I'll do so through a brief exploration of the histories of three sets of brothers
from separate warrior lineages of Rajastan of the heart out shorthands based in Burundi.
Okay, I'm trying to get my no PowerPoint to work here because it is not there earlier.
So how much of your hands based in Burundi? Over here.
There are tours of Beker, there appear. And the societies of midwater who are based in Shita over here at the time.
Now this map, of course, shows the various kingdoms in the colonial era when the boundaries, boundaries were very, very fixed.
But that wasn't the case at all in the timeframe we were considering. Now the brothers I'm looking at were all active in the midst of rapid political
change and dramatic fluctuations and territorial control during the 50s,
60s and 50s, 70s. In these decades, they look at the Movil.
Emperor Upwey was making deep inroads into the regions of Rajastan in Gujarat.
An increasing number of Rajput lineages had joined the Movil bandwagon following UPA successful siege.
This gives me his successful siege of Chatoor in fifteen sixty eight.
But some lineages such as this. So there's a diaper in the rafters of Jodhpur was still resisting the mules from the hills.
Let's see if this will work. This is a little video that I always like to show my classes.
It is not working. Oh, there are those. So the 15. This is Hawaiian, and then we get up spreading very quickly in the 50s, 60s and 15 70s.
Kid. So in this era of considerable flux and turmoil, when a lawyer.
There were many occasions when a warrior's loyalty might come into conflict.
The potential for conflict is one of the intriguing aspects of loyalty for most people have multiple loyalties nowadays,
for instance, to family, friends, bosses, companies, communities, religions, etc.
In the context of 16th century Rajastan, the question of political allegiance was particularly acute since kinship bonds,
both by descent and by marriage, were so significant in shaping military alliances amongst Rajputs.
In some parts of western Rajastan, the dominant men were the Brotherhoods or Biy Bun,
or descendants of male king who had conquered certain localities and parcelled out the lands.
While these brotherhoods had started out fairly egalitarian and in character.
This is no longer true in most cases, even before the local conquests.
The consolidation of power within martial lineages had led to greater hierarchy between different branches of the same clan,
as well as the proliferation of what Norman Ziegler has called ruler client relations.
So I have a small quote from him here at the bottom of this PowerPoint slide saying that while
the institutions of rulership and client ship existed in Rajastan prior to the Movil period,
they developed greatly during the 16th and 17th century at the expense of kinship as a basis of organisation.
So even within the ruling families, more power now accrued to the brother who succeeded to the throne.
All three sets of brothers I'm focussing on had to deal with the expansionism of the Lugo's in
some fashion and in the process experienced great step strains in their own family relationships.
So in the case of the societies of Milhaud who talk about first,
two brothers confront confronted each other at the famous battle Hulsey Gotti in fifteen seventy six,
which led to a stalemate between the moguls and the Sears audience,
who then retreated to the hills and avoided submission to the Empire until sixteen fifteen in the case of the heart, out to a hands of Lunardi.
There was a rift between brothers after one of them rebelled against the moguls.
It's been 15. Seventy seven, eight years or so after their father had surrendered the Fort of Ranthambore and submitted to Upper.
In the last case, the rotters of because they joined the Mogel banner voluntarily and 15 70.
But the eldest son later had trouble keeping his younger brothers from offending the emperor.
And there's an incident that I'll be discussing that occurred between the brothers in fifteen seventy seven.
So today's presentation is part of a larger project I'm engaged in on Marshall sentiments, in the heroic histories of Rajastan.
I do use the term sentiment's to broadly indicate what we today generally refer to as emotions.
But some emotional dimensions or emotional registers that were meaningful in the past may not be so to us today.
A good example of this is honour, which does a scholar from early modern Europe Huta forever describes as a lost
emotion and a disposition whose emotional power has more or less vanished.
So in that connexion, it's interesting to think about the word Hindi word lodge, which is usually transferred Chaib today.
But in early modern text, it's really closer to honour. In other words, having a sense of shame was what constituted warrior honour.
So by focussing on loyalty,
I hope to add to our understanding of what we might call the ethos of the values of the world view of the Rajput warrior community,
which is a topic that's really been surprisingly neglected. Now, in this project on Marschall Sentiments,
I draw on several texts produced at the Courts of Rajputs Subordinate's as a Moghuls during the long 17th century.
That is for about 15, 80 to 60, 90 or so.
These works emanating from Rajput courts and often named after a noble patron, are composed in a variety of languages and genres.
Some are elaborate Sanskrit poems in the Moha Clavius style.
Others are bardic text and Dingel verse or prose chronicles in the dialect called Middle Marathi.
And then there are Bruch Pasha poems like those studied by the late Ellson Bush of Columbia University.
He was only 50 years old when she died a little over a year ago.
Tragically cutting short a brilliant career usher,
Ellison's interest in bringing scholarly attention to these texts as works of history that provide a different vantage point into the Movil empire,
which has largely been studied through the prism of Persian language texts.
These Rajput histories can offer us valuable insights into the experience of serving the Mughal emperors,
as Alison Bush demonstrated in some of her last articles. OK, now let me finally turned to my three case studies after this introduction.
Each case study represent a different type of resolution to the family conflict occasioned by growing legal ascendancy under UPA.
So in order to make the difference a little bit clearer, clearer of labels them according to what happened to a brother in each instance.
So the first instance from May oir is the brother who reappeared.
Then secondly, the brother who was elided. And then thirdly, the brother who elided himself.
OK. So I'll begin with May, why the example of the brother who reappeared in the family history?
His name was Sisodia Succot Singh or shut this thing in Sanskrit.
A younger brother of the celebrated Iran for top. Now you're looking now at a much later painting of the famous battle Hardy Gotti.
This actual painting was brought to England by Colonel James Todd from Udaipur in the early 19th century and said the Royal Asiatic Society.
Now this battle occurred in fifty seventy six and you see in the middle of the painting,
the combat between round up the top of May was seated on his famous course, cheered up.
And then Roger Mansingh of a man from the Katwala clan in the howdah here he was the lead general on the Movil side.
So I'll give you suck up Singh's story, which is distilled from a of various traditions.
Sometime in the late in the early 50s, 60s,
he's said to have left me are either because he was exiled by his father or due to animosity with his brother.
The upper NAMA, the official history of upas reign written in Persian states,
Succot Singh served in the local military for a while until he was told by A about the Mughal plants attack Shita,
the capital of Millaa, and he was asked what he would contribute to that effort.
Not wanting to fight against his family and kingdom heated abruptly left Google service,
returned to memoir and supposedly informed the defenders of Shita thought about the emperor's intentions.
But they didn't trust him and would not allow him entry into the fort, which eventually fell apart in 15 sixty eight after a bitter siege.
Prevented from joining the fight. Succot Singh resided on the periphery of memoir for years and became known as a strong but impetuous warrior.
Now, eventually, Scott Singh found himself at the famous battle hall,
died at the age of in 76 with a contingent that was fighting against his brother pithos.
Now they're on of Mae La. See if I can get to the next slide here.
There we go. So this is a blow up of the centre. It's a famous scene that's replicated lots of paintings, especially from the early 19th century.
But here's Potok here with his slants. And he was trying to get Mansingh over here, but failed.
And then the elephant is supposed to have injured his his horse.
So when this happened, he left there on a top left battlefield and supposedly watching on the sidelines.
His brother thought that Sitting saw that Thorpe was unaware of two pursuers, then out of affection.
One text says that is snake affection, out of affection for his brother Succot.
Singh warned him of the danger and joined him in killing the two enemies.
Afterwards, Ronna Pithos said that his brother was a Godi, a benefactor well-wisher, a friend.
Succot Singh was given land and may lie later on, and his descendants became one of the kingdom's leading lineages.
Now, this is a heartwarming narrative of a brother who went astray but came back to the fold.
He switched his allegiance temporarily. But in the end, he did the right thing, at least from my lawyer's perspective.
Whatever the reason for his earlier abandonment of family and kingdom Succot, Singh made up for it by coming to his brother's aid at a crucial moment.
And so he was reconciled with his brother after this public display of affection and allegiance.
Brother served with brother in a time of calamity, as brother should do.
Or so the Ramayana suggests that its depiction of Lucht Myrna, who accompanied his older brother Rama on his years of exile and then epic,
of course, all of Ramas brothers stand firm in their support of the firstborn son and his right to rule.
It's their stepmother, K.K, who's responsible for Ramas exile and the consequent descript disruption to the orderly succession to the throne.
The Mahabharata was also an epic about solidarity between brothers, even though two sets of brothers who are cousins go on to fight a bloody war.
Much more could be said about fraternal bonds in the classical Indian epics.
But my point here is that both of these epic stressed the importance of brothers as allies.
Now, the story of Succot Singh rescuing his brother during the most critical battleground pickup's rain has been highly popular and Millaa,
as you might expect. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be true.
Well, up, but the llama confirms sort that Singh's presence at the Google court until sometime before the assault on Thor,
neither it nor any other contemporary account of the battle, the digga diga Godi places Scott Singh at that momentous event.
And the first very brief mention of it comes a century later.
At the same time that a number of poems produced at the Maler court were glorifying her on a platter.
So in the 60s, 70s, under the reign of Rana Rodge Singh.
The mentioned have been comes in to Texas. There's, I think, maybe three verses and I got Rossow,
which is a Dingel Bardic verse work and then an hour to process city, which is Sanscrit MacVeagh.
There's about five verses referring to some of that sing.
So the memory of that song may have been retrieved and we reworked as part of a trend of lionised and drawn up put up in the 60s,
70s and 80s because right up top came to signify the essence of Sisodia heroism.
Now, this isn't to deny that Succot Singh left Bugel service and returned to May,
well sometime before the Google invasion of the kingdom, just said he wasn't at the 15th 76 battle.
He may have actually been dead by then. And so it could not have come to his brothers a.
succoured sinks cases interesting, however, it illustrates the relative ease with which Rajput switched their allegiances,
at least in this early phase of legal expansion.
This is contrary to what one might expect from occasional textual condemnations of those who fail to support the Lords whose salt they have eaten,
salt been numb up from from the Persian or in Rajasthani loon.
So Namak Haraam is well known phrase about being untrue as one salt.
That is being disloyal to somebody who's like who's giving you a livelihood.
A similar notion of obligation towards one lord or Master Pearson's expression, Swami Dhamar,
which finds increasing, mentioned that Rajput text from the late 16th century onward.
However, a close look at the context in which Swami Dunnam up occurs reveal a pretty restricted definition.
It really means the duty to fight in battle for the Lord to the point of death if necessary.
So you're swarmy daughter must die in battle for your master.
So while Rajput is in someone's military service, which in just say, Texas called Chalkida,
but maybe better known to you by the word Naukri, a Rajput who was in talkative or a talker.
He was expected to fight in return for the land or other sustenance he received from his lord,
but nothing prevented him from giving those up and going elsewhere.
So while this issue needs more study, I suspect there a fair amount of agency for these fighters in choosing who they wanted to serve.
OK, let me turn to the second case now, that of the brother who was delighted from his family history, and this was a hard up clan Rajput from Boudi.
He's variously called Do the DAOUDA or do you alternate depending on the text.
But he's entirely absent from the first of the Harras, several dynastic histories, which was a Sanskrit Moha COB entitled Sujan.
A study done. And much of this lengthy texts covers the life of do those father surgeon, the first horror lord to submit to Mogel Overlordship.
This occurred after he surrendered the fort of Ron tumbled upper and 15 Sixty-nine.
And so you're looking at two pages from the Upper Lama, the illustrated imperial volume.
It was actually, I think, earned five illustrations, so it was a big deal from the upper class viewpoint.
And so over on the left, we see the siege of the fort with these big guns of here, very long guns.
And Ranthambore is famous for being on a sort of a cliff, as you see.
And then over here, we have the actual surrender submission of surgeon, the father here.
He's been sort of guided in how to bow down properly.
And this is actually uppa shown here. No surgeon went on to become a higher ranking months of the or imperial officeholder,
and his last posting was that two NA right outside of Banaras, where he died in 15.
Eighty five, according to slow down a study. So this Lord of Bundi was succeeded by his son, by.
Who we see here? There's no other offspring mentioned at all.
Now, Upper Anoma tells us a different story.
It states that, right, Susan had a son named Doda who went, quote, to his native country of Blundy and opened the hands of oppression and quote,
that is, he rebelled, rebelled or refused to be subservient to the Movil empire.
So the army that was sent out on that occasion wasn't able to subdue do thus.
So a second army had to be sent out in 15 Seventy-Seven, which included both his father, Suzanne, and his brother Boge.
It, too, was illustrated in the upper nyama.
This is the Battle of Blundy. Now, biologists in the upper NAMA, he said to have taken an active part in assaulting the troops of his brother,
who we learn elsewhere, was actually the firstborn son of Sir John.
Submerges was actually the second. Both the brother and father were rewarded for their role in quelling do those bid for independence.
After his older brother was finally forced out of the Blundy region, this homeland of the hard US was entrusted to board.
While surgeons met months of Branca's rates raised to two thousand, Zade, which was a very high rank in the days of UPA.
Then the following year, after the battle for 15 78 a do that made an appearance at the Movil court.
But he soon left without permission, and he died a few years later.
Fifteen eighty five unreconciled with both the Empire and his family.
So these are the two texts that I be talking about, I have just mentioned the Sudan site up here on the top tier.
This is the first of the hard up. Histories.
So this elder brother, Drew, that was wiped out of the public record in the form of this elaborate family history that is so devastated.
But his thought family didn't forget him. Do the resurfaces under the name?
Do you hold the knot in a second Sanskrit poem related to the horrors of Rindy?
Shut the Shaadi attorney. Which comes from about 16 thirty five.
Now he's called Dude Hold Now, which of course was the eldest of the wicked Cordova brothers in the Wahhab out of the conflict.
And so the poem implies that though the do the was antagonistic by using this name for him,
yet overall sought to show the child the presents do their duty of DNA in quite a positive light.
First, quite acknowledging that he was a legitimate ruler who had been assigned control of Bwindi by his father and secondly,
by praising him as a mighty warrior. The only hint the do the heavy character flaws, aside from his being called the alterna,
comes from the poet's observation that out of pride do the only bowed his head to the gawp God Vishnu unto his father's surgeon.
So the Moghul Empire Emperor is conspicuously missing from this list of people that he bowed his head to otherwise in the poem that differs from his
father and brother primarily in his hatred Galatia for upper who Bush calls his own associates a thorn and his father sort of Jen's friend sarky.
In this second poem, Boge is said to call up his father's friend and his own associate.
Now, what do them? We have a situation in which one brother fought another, although perhaps not a choice.
Well, surgeon and board to put their allegiance with the Googles and thus their official careers above
their loyalty to a close relative and the overlord Trump the son and brother in this instance.
So it's not difficult to imagine why Borge, his father's successor's ruler, Blundy,
and the patron of Syria's Anatoliy, done the first of the works on the slide.
It's not difficult to imagine why he might have wished his errant brother left out of the family history completed around
50 90 still and to up his reign by the time said to show the yellow tank that was composed in sixteen thirty five or so.
More than 50 years have passed since. Do those rebellion,
perhaps the decades of military service the hard US had provided to the Empire in the interim were sufficient
evidence of their loyalty so that they no longer had to be concerned about reclaiming do those part of their history.
They might have even felt some pride. Looking back over the decades and do this warlike spirit and the ability to resist.
One thing did not change, however, Senator Shelby. Teddy.
Just like the earlier students, Haditha omits the fact that Bush took up arms against his older brother.
So we can only infer that it was regarded as shameful for family members to fight each other.
While the memory of do that as a fearsome warrior who had resisted musical power could be resurrected half a century after he died.
The truth that his father and brother had opposed to militarily was still best overlooked.
OK, I will move on now to the third brother, we've had the buzzer who reappeared in Chuck Singh and just now the brother who was delighted,
at least from the first history that is, do the heart of Bundi, the third set of brothers is appear in become their.
Now. Become there.
Excuse me, I have something else to say. Got a little bit ahead of myself here.
So. I was talking about the.
And how the fact that his brother and father had opposed him was being overlooked.
Now, that might be true in the ideal world of Sanscrit narratives, but an actual Rajput history.
We have many, many instances where brothers of ruling families competed for power and sometimes engaged in combat with each other.
Thus, for example, during a brief battle in 50 60 foreign memoir I'm sorry, in my war over here,
Iraj Rajput name is Dicing is said to have struck a blow against his younger brother Raul Tundras in the Rothhaar Ruler Jode Poor.
So we have a case where an older brother didn't get the throne and he actually is supposed to have hit his younger brother.
The rajha with the weapon. Or we have the case of Jugg maul a victim.
They will. Who became a chocker or military servant of Raul Molvar.
Day of joke put the ruler of jail after his own brother, the Jörg Miles brother Jai Maul became the chief of the rod of their.
So he didn't get to be the chief himself. His brother got to be the chief.
And so he joined his brother's enemy as a military surgeon.
And then the jode poor ruler, the enemy of his brother, promptly conquered Marathon and gave it half of it to his top gunner,
his military servant, Jug Maul, the brother of the ousted chief.
So we could actually go on and on. Because there, you know, Rajput protects really depict their heroes,
especially Rajput text from Marmar depict their heroes as intent on wresting away local territory from their rivals who are often kinsman.
So the focus on regaining home territory, the importance of that meant that Rajput Lords simply had no compunctions about
seeking support from a powerful ruler that was based some distance away,
regardless of his religious faith.
So in history books, we usually have mentions of incursions or invasions of Muslim outsiders into the largest study and affairs.
But when you look at Rajput chronicles, especially one like Moon, but the is cut,
the internal perspective shows it is more like an invited expedition by this outside ruler,
which was meant to assist a power struggle between local Rajputs.
OK, now to be cutting into. So this is the brother who elided himself.
He was a Rottweiler Klansman from become their appear and his name was Rob Singh, calling Mullah.
I say that he alighted himself because one day in July 15, 77.
Renxing courted death deliberately. That he chose to die in a battle that he provoked in the face of competing loyalties that he could not reconcile.
His problem was being a second son repeatedly caught between his domineering older brother.
Just sing a become there. On the one hand and his troublemaking younger brothers on the other.
OK, here we have a picture, a portrait of the older brother, the rods rising of cutting there, and he had, I think, nine brothers with their arms.
Thing is the second in a number of others who appear in the records.
Now, like the Sisodia is a memoir in the heart, two hands of budy.
During the 50s, 70s romps things linage was adjusting to the intrusion of Mogel Power into into Rajastan,
the big on air tours were early allies of the moguls joining them a15 15 70.
From Sting's older brother, Rising Assistant Ikebana is Gujarat campaign of 15 73.
As well as in Movil, efforts to take over the job putit kingdom and eventually rising became one of his most important nobles.
Before his death and 16 12 early on in Jahangir, his reign Roger icing had risen to the high months of Brankov 4000 Zahed.
He was a great patron of Abad's and poets who left behind behind many flattering accounts of this of the Rajha the prose chronicle.
I'm a consulting, however, remembers Raja I rising quite differently.
It's called d'Alpuget but loss and it's probably a critical of Rajah's rising because it was written for one of his sons,
d'Alpuget, who rebelled against his father around the time the text was composed.
So this is just the cover of the one publish edition of the coracle, which also only exists in one surviving, incomplete managed script.
Don't put he lost presents, Roger, arising unfavourably as a bad temper man who is worried about his opinion,
of whom the right to chastise his brother, Romme Singh.
On one occasion for dining with another Lord Rajput Lord,
who is still resisting movil control because pricing was worried that the Emperor might hear this of his brothers eating with.
Enemy and disapprove. On another occasion occasion, the Rojak that infuriated at the behaviour of one of Robson's retainers.
This retainer had acted in an insulin manner when the largest troops were being inspected by an imperial paymaster.
Buzkashi Lords and Ampules Service had to maintain armed troops at a number that was commensurate with their rank.
And their compliance with this requirement was assessed by the imperial officials sent out for that purpose.
So in being rude to the imperial paymaster Rob Syngman, Retainer was being disrespectful to the Emperor.
And in his rage, the Raja ordered both Rom's thing and the retainer killed.
Luckily, the Ronnie was able to dissuade her husband from harming his own brother.
Well, Rossing did his best to act as his royal brother wished their other brothers did not.
One of them, Umbra here stole a herd of imperial sheep camels and his men fought ferociously when
the Raja ordered his sundial but to retrieve the animals for the emperor's sake.
And this fight led to numerous fatalities.
Umbra wanted to retaliate against the Raja, but I'm saying advise him not to destroy the relationship with him often.
Raja, he soon thorning the heated. Time and again we find Drama Singh in this role of mediating between the divergent interests of his brothers.
Two other brothers, a certain and pretty dodge, also supplemented their village income by looting and plundering.
When they tried to get her, I'm saying to stay with them after his wife died. He refused, citing their violent or oppressive behaviour.
A judge at the which was causing destroys distress to their royal brother, rising so up to the rajha and judging them to have this fear.
I must not cause the rods of pain, Ram Singh said. They insisted that they would not be violent and Renxing want to live with them temporarily.
But this is despite their assurances, Soutar and pretty soon went back to their old ways.
They start they harass them. Local jots and merchants Banias and seise their goods, leading to an argument between the brothers.
Renxing told them, if you will despoil the land of the Rajah D, then you must let me depart.
So the Rosten was in a quandary. On the one hand, he had this authoritarian older brother ruler who sought to exercise control over his
younger brothers so as to avoid any censure or displeasure from the imperial master,
at least of one of the Raja's other brothers. Pretty Dodge is known to have fought on behalf of the empire and been record of rewarded accordingly.
Yet these younger brothers seem unwilling to entirely give up their older ways of raiding and plundering, presumably unarmed commoners.
But regardless of their brother, Overlord's wishes they wouldn't give it up.
So it's the second oldest, if so on, promising to keep his younger brothers in line, or so the Raja, the elder brother seemed to assume.
The realisation that the younger ones wouldn't heed is advice.
Promising. Anxious. And so he decided. Because of this, I quote, because of this, it would be good, huh, if I were to die.
Accordingly, Renxing intentionally provoked a quarrel with a Rajah's young son.
But in his men, some of whom had past grievances against wrong thing and then promising provokes this quarrel.
They go stay near these small ward war band of men who oppose him.
When these Rajputs heard that Robertson was nearby and vulnerable without his brothers and other allies by his side,
they hurried off to attack Graham, saying, without even asking permission of d'Alpuget, their ostensible master, who was only about 12 or 13.
When these masters came after him with their gunners in front, Rossing left, leapt into battle without any armour on and died almost immediately.
Afterward, the young girl.
But who had not been able to stop the support supposedly subordinate Rajputs from attacking his uncle, got angry and repeats.
Renxing,
a dustbin placed in an untenable position for there is no way for him to be simultaneously loyal to his younger brothers as well as to the Rajha.
So in the end, he saw death as the only resolution to this emotional dilemma.
He took himself out of the picture. That's what I meant by he aligned himself in this instance of tension between brothers from Big On,
they're different from the memoir and Buendia cases in that the pressure from the Mughal empire is more indirect.
UPA is not presently calling for alms things, legions or beat obedience.
Instead, it's his brother. Who demands it?
His brother, who demands his allegiance in his capacity, both his elder brother and as Lord,
the competing loyalties in this case are being generated within the royal family.
And the conflict is mainly internal. I'm going to change the slide so you can look at something different for the rest of my talk.
This is a for. You not go for it become there.
That was actually built by Rajo Racing. Now,
the case studies that I've just discussed suggests that Rajput audiences preferred
an imagined world in which brothers were loyal and did not harm each other.
Succot Singh could readily be assimilated in Sisodia historical memory one hundred years after the fact.
Despite his initial affiliation with the Bluegills because he never participated in any
action against the interests of the family and in an allegedly rescuing his brother,
the runoff from Probabl Death Succot singler simultaneously demonstrating his political loyalty to Mallat.
The case of Rom's thing that I just discussed is more fraught because fighting did occur and death ensued.
Still, Ron Singh didn't openly rebel against his brother, the Lord Raja Rising.
Instead, he engaged in self-sacrifice by bringing about his own death.
In some ways, the most problematic of the three is do the Bundy who was restored in his family history some 50 years after his death.
This suggests that having to rebel against the locals in a family's past was not something that had to be kept hidden indefinitely.
But the continuing silence about the participation of the father and brother in the legal tax on dude is very telling.
OK, well, this was something that the Descendants did not want to publicise, but had whatever had actually happened between brothers there for Ross,
but narrative's favourite accounts of brotherly loyalty and sacrifice and sought to repress the presence of strife within the family.
Now, these case studies have shown, though, that Rochfort Warriors were often torn between their political loyalties and their familiar ones.
This is a point that's been made by others before,
especially by Norman Ziegler in his article that I referenced earlier, rapidly fluctuating political fortunes.
Fortunes could exacerbate the situation,
especially when there are a relatively new overlord's like upma who people didn't really know in advance how to deal with brothers and sons,
made different decisions about how to deal with legal military superiority,
whether they should offer various forms of resistance, sometimes not immediately over.
Or instead, whether they acquiesce.
Which meant, of course, having to go fight on behalf of further imperial expansion, but also secured the local locally stable positions.
So these decisions could in turn determine the nature of the relationships within a warrior family.
But even otherwise, that is even before the Mughals Rajput brothers could be fierce rivals.
This isn't to deny the stakes of familial ties in many instances, especially when it came to vengeance there for a relative's death.
Again, the Rajput narratives, especially from Western son, are full of feuds and revenge.
A brother, surrogate sons and even fathers might bide their time before taking revenge.
And so actually, one of the men who led the assault on thing of becoming the brother who delighted himself.
This man was the father of someone who I think had killed years earlier on behalf of his own father, the previous Raja.
And suffer, several of Rumson's younger brothers suit on pretty rides, and Umbra often acted in concert and protecting each other.
Umbro is actually later killed on Akbar's command and 15 ninety one for quote didn't be disobedience and practising violence.
So he seems to have continued in the plundering witness. But these three brothers often were together and they did protect each other militarily,
but at the very highest levels of the political hierarchy, the first and second sons of really families.
There was the commonly contestation between the king kin.
I'm placing a lot of emphasis on this point about fraternal strife,
because too often our discussions of Movil India focus only on discourses of difference,
that is, discourses that articulate group identities and differentiate one group from another, particularly Muslim from Hindu.
But hostility in early modern narratives is not limited to the sociologically distinct community of Muslims.
But it's also frequently directed at other Rajput groups whose social identities were similar.
In other words, in some mobile era narratives,
Rajputs opposed other Rajputs where Muslims were either a remote threat or were actively solicited as idolised by one side or the other.
So this means we need to break the habit of attributing enmity only to social difference.
Not only does scuse me. Not only does familiarity breeds contempt, but the most acrimonious disputes often occur within the family.
An ending I'd like to raise a couple of questions about loyalty in the study of emotion history.
How do we care or characterise loyalty like honour?
It's not something we might immediately classify as an emotion today.
Is it instead of quality air condition estate or the quality estate or a condition?
These are words that the dictionaries have used to describe in the Oxford English Dictionary scribes two basic meanings, loyalty.
The first is faithful adherence to one's promise. Oath.
Word of honour. And the second is faithful adherence to the sovereign or most loyal government.
If the Internet is any indicator, however,
the most rise spread use of the word loyalty nowadays is in relation to customers and their attachment to a particular brand.
A form of fidelity in a way. So I do have a question about what we mean about loyalty and how we define it.
Secondly, I'm going to skip ahead a little bit because I think I'm running out of time.
Secondly, does it matter that there are no clear equivalents to loyalty in Indian languages?
This has been bothering me. So I would welcome some discussion at this point. But I've already mentioned the ideas of Chalkida and Swami Dunbar,
but they refer more to war is obligation in my mind and sort of lack the sense of passion, attachment that one often finds in loyalty.
Well, we could use the more religiously oriented language of devotion and servitude.
But your sales are the last year, which also emphasises self-sacrifice.
And some scholars have argued that warriors felt the same kind of a devotion to their human laws as they did to the divine ones.
But I don't see much indication of that in the texts I'm reading. So are we just injecting our own culture to a text?
If we find a sentiment for which no exact Indian equivalent term exists.
Lesterville, let me raise a question about how to engage in the history if emotions with Rajput texts,
which are often quite sparse in their emotional terrain.
That's not always the case. But that we get do, on the other hand, get texts like Delpit de Los, which is very prosaic.
It's full of short, declarative sentences. A king goes somewhere.
He says something. It goes somewhere else. There are very few emotion words in Delp of the loss of very few adjectives in Everest.
So some of the standard messages, the methods used by scholars of mediaeval Europe,
like carefully counting emotion, words or analysing advice, literature don't work with early modern texts.
This leaves us really primarily with a narrative that is the plot.
What goes on in the story as a means of think about emotion.
Now, I'll end with one detail about her saying that I haven't shared with you yet.
So not long before he dies. The Chronicle tells us, and I quote, Meanwhile, there are no GS.
Daughter Rahm Singh's wife, umba by name, died upon which Grump's, Rahm Singhji became a renunciation of the idea.
He took Viborg. He would not have his beard shave.
Nor would he have his clothes washed. He would never neither wear his tunic, nor would he use the mirror, end quote.
When certain pretty dogs came to attend ambo's funeral, they saw Rahm sing in the state and repeatedly urged him to leave and come stay with them.
And he finally did so. Later, after Rumsen beseeches his brothers to stop plundering.
To no avail. He thinks to himself, cook. Before there was only the grief Dukat about Umba on top of that.
Now there's the anxiety santita about my brothers, end quote.
So this is when he decides it would be better to die. And then right before he leapt out in front of the artillery fire,
Renxing cut his hair and shaved isberg beard for the first time since his wife's death.
In these passages, there are only two emotion words Lukáš, grief, pain, unhappiness and a just stunning words on teeth, meaning concern or anxiety.
These two words come in consecutive sentences as Rahm Singh contemplates death.
Yet way before this point. I personally found these passages to be awash with implied emotions, both rhymes, things,
pain upon his wife's passing away and his brother's concern for him in the aftermath.
So even if it might be misguided, even if I might be reading too much into the text I chose to read, this narrative is commemorated.
16TH Century Warriors love for his wife, without whom he lost the will to live.
Thank you. Well, thank you very much indeed, Cynthia.
That was an absolutely wonderful talk, which took us into a colourful, dramatic and enormously exciting world.
And it was great to have the illustrations alongside you, the arguments and the names and the stories set out for us so well there.
And whilst we wait to see if any folks from outside just have one or two questions, we're running a little bit short of time.
But if anyone would like to send in a question for you via the Q&A, Boxey would be most welcome.
Whilst we do that, I wonder if I could ask a question, which is really perhaps a familiar question,
because aside from the perspective of this history of emotion that you're laying out for us here.
Something that is is quite commonly said about the Rajputs, particularly, I think, by Norman Ziegler.
But others have said it, too. Is that what we see happening with the Rajputs under the Moghuls is a is a gradual shift from
the horizontal values of brotherhood to the more vertical ties of lineage of single lineages,
as the Rajputs invented themselves as a kind of category of protected mogel royalty.
You'll be familiar with that argue.
You're about this is what's happening in Rajputs society during the sort of the particularly during the 16th and 17th centuries.
And I wondered if you could give us a sense of if you see that process happening,
whether you could give us a sense of of the implications for the worlds of brotherhood and the ties between brothers,
but also of ties between fathers and sons.
Because if if one is dealing with with horizontal lineages and the expectation of loyalty amongst brotherhoods, that's one thing.
But loyalty to a single family lineage, which in a way you've perhaps been dealing with here,
that kind of loyalty and the vertical ties between fathers and sons of a particularly eminent lineage implies a different set of emotional appeals.
And I wonder if if that's something that you see at all your material.
I just first first of all, I guess I actually sees a little bit of a difference between Eastern Rodgerson and Western.
Just so people don't tend to talk about that much. So, for example, a lot of Zeigler's work in his work with the Richard SERN.
They keep talking about Rajastan, but they're really talking about the western half. That's.
I think there is a little bit of a difference because eastern Rajastan developed states kind of earlier.
It was a little bit more well settled and populated. But there is a gradual shift.
You're absolutely right in that direction. And I think in the case of the become their family that I was talking about at the end,
it's really startling to see that they're being between older ways of of living
where the brothers all sort of they all seem to have had a village or two,
but they went out and supplemented their their livelihoods with this old style sort of cattle raiding kind of thing.
And now whereas the you know, the older brother is really trying to centralise his power as the king.
So I do see a gradual shift. Again, it was a little bit further along in the east.
But a couple of points to see if I can remember the more when I started, I had given this presentation once before us, a shorter conference paper.
And I was just I just picked out these episodes. And then it wasn't till after I had all three that I realised it was brothers against brothers.
I was just looking for family conflict. But you're absolutely right.
It's also a father against son. Look at the father and son.
Ty does continue very strongly.
And I've noticed that a number of chronicles like the sort of genocide that was probably commissioned by his son Raja preciously,
which is a famous Sanskrit inscription, texts from memoir.
I was probably commissioned by Raj Singh's son.
Another one, Kam Rossel. This is full of praise for the father.
So I think that this is the tie with the father does continue very strongly.
I haven't really thought about it yet. So that's something for me to think more about.
Oh, one other difference. I think those can say in eastern Rajasthan.
I think to some extent this is the kind of ruler client Ty had developed more strongly and earlier.
But one of the big changes we see an upwards age is the kind of is that many of these families like Bundy, they were kind of second tier.
They had been clients of the memoir, but they weren't very keenly.
And one of the things that happened I've written about this before is that with what's they become months of those,
they have sort of secure positions and to some extent, as if some of these families really became quite a bit more affluent.
And so, you know, Sudan is able to go to Banaras and be a big benefactor.
And he builds, you know, palaces and gives lots of money away and the like.
So they they they they're able to sort of adopt more kingly ways in a way, once they've joined the Movil empire.
So thank you. But, you know, the father and son issue is something I do want to think more about things.
Okay. Well, a question here from from Richard Williams.
I think this must be the Richard Williams of Southwest. And he says, thank you, Cynthia.
That was fascinating. Do you have a sense of these scenes, brother, loyalty, negotiation being discussed in Rajput comportment literature?
I suppose it's a need to Schostak texts that were read and composed in these courts.
And and all that. Is there an element of cautionary tales?
That's a DC. And the sources that you've described to the poets reflect on these brothers did or didn't act correctly?
Well, this is something then I'll have to ask Richard, because I I'm not really aware of this literature.
So if he knows of some that I should look at, I would certainly, because this is one of the troubling things so far is there hasn't.
There isn't. I'm not aware of much advice literature.
And that's one of the first areas that most historians of emotion go to, is to see, you know, what least what is being prescribed and be easier.
Yes. But I'm just using stories instead, I guess, as models.
That's why I was referring to the Mahabharata, especially, which really has a lot of currency, even in early modern.
Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So we're we're slightly.
We're out of time. So we will. Thank you very much indeed.
And we will leave. You know, I think we will now join our students.
If you log out of this meeting, Cynthia, and then rejoin the students meeting, which the link should be there on your screen.
OK. Thank you very much indeed. Stay here. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Thank you.