Book Reviews t 401

Book Reviews
Rodney H. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements
and the English Rising of 1381, new edn, Routledge, London and New
York, 2003, pp. 240.

The new edition of Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements
and the English Rising of 1381, which carries an Introduction by
Christopher Dyer, among the very faithful disciples of Rodney Hilton,
would delight all medievalists and everyone else interested in peasant
societies. The book is considered one of the great classics of medieval
historiography, one that could without hesitation be mentioned among
the landmark works of the past century, of the same calibre as Marc Bloch’s
Caractères originaux de l’histoire rurale française (French Rural History:
An Essay in Basic Characteristics).
Bond Men is Rodney Hilton’s mature work. He has erected a sort of
monument in honour of the peasantry of the West, often and for long
considered secondary, even negligible, as a social category, as a category
eclipsed by others who had forced their way into the limelight: nobles,
priests or merchants. Owing to his engagement with working-class move-
ments and by virtue of his Marxist commitment, Hilton is better placed
than anyone else to draw attention to the role of the masses (and thus to
the peasants of the feudal epoch) in historical processes. His exceptional
erudition and scientific rigour have also helped him produce a master-
piece, safe from the suspicion of a priori doctrinaire intent.
The work unfolds as a succession of three distinct but complementary
approaches. First, the medieval peasantry is analysed as a class (the struc-
tural approach). This is followed by an examination of peasant move-
ments, the breadth of their spread and their transformation during the
course of centuries (the dynamic approach). Finally, the author narrates
the revolt that became emblematic of the Middle Ages, that is, ‘the English
rising of 1381’, which despite its apparent defeat, shook the medieval
order to its foundations and created space for the emergence of a new

The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

Sage Publications t New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London
DOI: 10.1177/097194580500800205
402 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

society, thereby imparting to the event an exemplary significance. On

none of these counts has the book, some 30 years after its first publication,
lost its force. No doubt occasional new sources have been unearthed, or
new agrarian conflicts, whose existence had remained unsuspected, come
to light and their political, ideological and economic contexts recon-
structed with greater precision and accuracy. But the larger perspective
set up by Hilton survives intact and remains the first point of reference
for researchers exploring the medieval peasantry in Europe, or perhaps
also elsewhere. This is all the more remarkable given that since the 1970s
a large part of western historiography has deserted the field of social
history—a perverse effect of ‘globalisation’ on contemporary societies—
and has instead launched into the aseptic and innocuous domain of the
‘societal’. In the face of such collapse, which is a veritable intellectual
tragedy, the work of Hilton stands out in greater relief and has become
more valuable today than it was yesterday.
The major innovation brought by Rodney Hilton to the study of the
medieval peasantry was the adoption of a rigorous point of view of class.
Before him, there was nothing of the kind. With Marc Bloch, for example,
who was incontestably the pioneer in rural studies and to whom Hilton
owed a lot, the peasantry as a class never appeared with the same clarity
as an actor in the historical process: the peasant was above all viewed
through an ensemble of agrarian structures and techniques. In the works
of the Cambridge School, of Postan in particular, innovative as he was
in his time, the peasant was equally relegated to the shadows, the light
being invariably focused on the rural economy, more specifically on the
dominial economy in its conjunctural dimension. The same can no doubt
be said of Georges Duby as well, a very close friend of Hilton and like
him a grand historian of rural societies, but one whose perception of the
peasant world was above all intuitive and did not attain the same theor-
etical rigour. One need not speak of numerous others who, in their incap-
acity to grasp the identity and the unity of the peasantry as a class, have
reserved their attention to the countless diversities that characterised rural
societies in the Middle Ages, so as to effectively preclude all effort at
conceptualisation and generalisation.
It is in the first part of the work—the general problems of rural
societies—that a reader discovers Hilton’s major theoretical contribution:
I propose to devote the review essentially to his characterisation of the
peasantry. His point of departure is clearly inscribed within the perspec-
tive outlined long ago by Marx: that of the relations of production. This
concerns a class of petty producers subjected to the authority of the lord
 Book Reviews t 403

who, owing to his mastery of the land as well as his powers derived from
the judicial and military order, imposed levies of all sorts on them. This
said, Hilton proceeds to undertake an exhaustive analysis of that social
category. He evokes its ancient origins embedded in prehistory. He under-
lines the two interlinked social structures that provide this class with an
exceptional cohesion. On one side is the family, at once the unit of labour
and the unit of consumption; on the other is the community of the village
(or hamlets). The latter, resting on communal practices that governed
cultivation and animal rearing, and contained within the agricultural unit
that provided subsistence, generated an essential solidarity without which
one cannot comprehend the rise of peasant movements. Hilton also evokes
the collective behaviour particular to the peasantry: a profound sentiment
of family property, the will to control its labour resources (and thus resist-
ing the seigneurial demands of levies), the exigencies of cooperation
among peasant families. All of these elements which suggest unity do
not, however, preclude the multiple factors making for diversity that the
author analyses from every angle with great care to define the contours
of peasant society. With cultivators (properly speaking, the centre of
gravity of the peasantry) he enjoins the rural artisans who were as a rule
in possession of a patch of land, and the rural wage-earners—all parties
comprising rural communities and occupying their place in diverse move-
ments of emancipation. Turning to the core constituted by the group that
possessed land, Hilton underlines its hierarchical character that formed
the source of contradictions at the heart of rural communities. This group
comprised a small number of families, comfortably placed and equipped
with domestic servants and other employees, situated above the very
modest cultivators, the latter often dependent on the former. He further
draws attention to the diversity of juridical statuses; for within an overall
atmosphere of servitude that weighed upon the rural world, the degrees
of dependence varied here and there, indeed at the heart of the same vil-
lage. In this fashion, without losing sight of the unity of the peasantry as
a class, Hilton invites us to comprehend it in all its complexity (which
indeed deepened from the eleventh century onwards in the wake of a
growing merchant economy) for a better understanding of the forms of
struggle specific to the world of the peasantry. These too were complex
and marked by a growing intensity. For a long time peasant struggles
had assumed a local character and their ambitions were limited to the
lightening of dependence on seigneurial power, notably to the acquisition
of rural franchise and the autonomy of communities. The slowing down
404 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

of progress from the thirteenth century onwards had the effect of intesify-
ing the class struggle along with a spreading of conflicts, a radicalisation
of objectives, all of which culminated in the grande jacqueries of the
fourteenth century that shook feudal structures in Flanders, France and
England to their foundations.
I have said that the work of Hilton has not aged and would like to
reaffirm it. It is worth mentioning, however, that since the publication of
the first edition of the book, we understand better the importance of the
shock provided by the eruption of merchant economy upon the totality
of medieval society, especially upon the peasantry. Rodney Hilton has
himself contributed in no small measure to this re-evaluation with the
publication of his English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Com-
parative Study (1992). He shed light on the role of the burgs as a central
link in the relationship between town and country, contributing to the
articulation of peasant movements. That is a good reason why one cannot
do better than to appreciate the grand classic work of 1973 by reading it
along with this more recent publication.

Guy Bois
Université Paris VII
Paris

(Translated from the French by Harbans Mukhia.)

Sarah Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern

France, Routledge, London and New York, 2004, pp. 227.

Firm belief in the presence of evil functioned as a crucial element in the

multiple worlds of early modern Europe. The notion of demonic power
is normative and occupies an essential place in the universal Christian
moral world. Privileging the Devil in early modern France is one of the
keys to understanding the puzzling and stimulating circumstances sur-
rounding ideas of demonic possession and exorcism; ideas that Sarah
Ferber goes to considerable lengths to place in meaningful context. The
result is an analysis of an altogether unedifying series of episodes which
nonetheless illuminate aspects of demonic interference and release—
possession and exorcism—dissected quite satisfactorily by Ferber.
 Book Reviews t 405

Early modern Europe may be described as a world with an undercurrent

of religious violence shaped by precedents of crusade, war, inquisition,
possession, exorcism, witch hunts, schism and religiously motivated mur-
der. In France, Henri III and Henri IV were felled by assassination plots
undertaken for religious reasons. Crucial in this respect is an appreciation
of the power which religion continued to wield in the seventeenth-century
French world. One should not underestimate the psychological disturb-
ance created by the concurrent streams of the Reformation. Ferber places
the rise of the Huguenots within the context of upheaval and sees a definite
correlation between the problem of possession and exorcism. She cites
the celebrated case of Nicole Obry in 1566, whom both Catholics and
Huguenots attempted to exorcise (Protestants generally avoided exor-
cism), thus making the process essentially distinctive of Catholicism in
early modern Europe. Understanding the world of post-Tridentine Cath-
olicism is therefore crucial.
The Christian religion is a vast and broad tradition incorporating within
its folds agonising ambiguities and numerous historical tensions. Particu-
lar attention to context is necessary. Catholicism was (and is) profoundly
local and was (and is) shaped by nation-states, language, economy, folklore,
customs, and so on. Doctrine, theology and tradition are important, but
so are matters like politics and social issues. To meaningfully delineate
Roman Catholicism, one must speak in concrete local and social contexts.
Roman Catholicism is not just about parishes, bishops and popes. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was mainly lay and rural rather
than priestly and urban. Given these variations, it is understandable that
Christianity allows for the possibility that opposite positions might in
fact be equally orthodox. This elasticity permitted the Devil to be used
for and against the Church. Ferber recognises the localisation of Catholi-
cism as one of its essential elements, and with that focus develops a
number of points which this nuance helps to illuminate. For example,
she attempts to show that charismatic tendencies of the mystics and the
tenets of affective religion were not at odds with the institutional goals
of the Church. However, these models were efforts to secure spiritual
authority and legitimation.
Fear of the Devil’s power was a dominating force to be reckoned with
in early modern Europe. Demonic possession was alien intrusion into
the domains of Christendom, and each exorcism ‘proved’ the faith and
the authority of the exorcist as well as of the Church, which functioned
as the sanctioning body of the exorcism itself. Possession, like heresy,
was believed to exist only when confirmed by the magisterium, or a
406 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

member of the religious hierarchy. This confirmation was crucial for an

age obsessed with order, truth and asserting authority. Ferber—citing
the case of Heinrich Institoris, who hoped to prove that people were
bewitched and carnally joined to demons and thereby established his
faith—suggests that the ‘fact’ of demonic possession helped to confirm
the Christian faith. Indeed, possession required exorcism to prove its
reality. If there were no demons, there would be no possession. And if
people could not be possessed by evil spirits, exorcism would be an illusion.
If the power of Satan was dismissed, what would be the foundation for
assuming the existence of God? The horns of that dilemma were unthink-
ably severe for Christians—especially religious authorities—in early
modern France. In fact, it was believed that God required devils to exist
and that the latter had to be controlled in order to demonstrate divine
existence. The demonologist Henri Boguet affirmed his conviction that
sometimes God allowed innocent people to be possessed in order that
His works might be glorified. It was rather like Calvinist ordinands being
asked if they were prepared to be damned for the glory of God.
Apart from actually legitimating the claims of the Christian Church,
possession and exorcism also proved to be a means for people seeking
power over others, a point Ferber makes rather well. In France this aspect
of possession can be linked to the twin threats of schism and Satan which
were easily conceived as related. Ferber identifies three essential con-
ditions prompting the widespread use of exorcism in France: religious
war, witchcraft (witch trials), and the new forms of mystical spirituality.
She argues that each was promoted in part due to fear of the Devil.
That dread prompted the witch hunts which convulsed France in early
modernity. A number of classic texts on witchcraft appeared in conjunc-
tion with the increased attention on possession and exorcism—by Jean
Bodin, Henri Boguet, Nicholas Rémy, Pierre de Lancre, the Belgian
Martín Del Rio, and others.
While exorcism has never been regarded by the Church as sacramental,
it has persisted on the boundaries—and Ferber would argue at times at
the centre—of the functions of the Church. Exorcism was big business
in early modern France. William Monter long ago pointed out that the
seventeenth century was the golden age of the demoniac. Ferber rightly
argues that mass possession in female convents (especially in France)
became a hallmark of the early modern period. There are several cele-
brated cases, three of which involve the mass possession of nuns in
Ursuline convents: Aix-en-Provence in 1609, Loudun in 1634 and Auxonne
in the period between 1658 and 1663, while another striking example
 Book Reviews t 407

can be found at a Franciscan house in Louviers in the 1640s. The recur-

rence of these events among the Ursulines is intriguing. Founded in 1544,
the order was installed in France in 1597 and within 100 years there
were 320 houses. Michel de Certeau, in dealing with events at Loudun,
pays special attention to the context of spirituality and the cult of exorcism
which seems to have grown up around the Ursulines. I think this approach
is salutary and Ferber employs it in her analysis. She makes the claim
that if ecstatic spirituality had not been in favour in seventeenth-century
France, it is doubtful that demonic possession could have emerged as a
form of spirituality. The correlations were essential especially when
influential authors like Martín Del Rio argued that voluntary ecstasy
was a sure sign of witchcraft. Perceptive scholars like Certeau have com-
mented tersely to the effect that the theatres of Satan are also centres for
the mystics.
In that vein, Ferber boldly makes the suggestion that some of the ‘pos-
sessed’ may have found in their ‘possession’ a form of devotional expres-
sion, indeed a claim to some spiritual authority or a means of accessing
divine mysteries. It is clear that access to divine mysteries and super-
natural insight was generally reserved for the elite. There were women
who entered the religious life other than through the nominated gate.
Some of the possessed like Marthe Brossier failed to gain entrance into
religious life and seems to have viewed ‘possession’ as an alternative
route to the life of the religious, coming in through the back door as it
were. Other notable examples include Marie des Vallées in Coutances
and Jeanne des Anges at Loudun. Both of these possessed women eventu-
ally came to be regarded as holy women possessing spiritual power.
Demonological discourse provided them with a means to attain spiritual
goals and both appear to have succeeded. In the case of Marie des Vallées—
possessed for 46 of her 66 years—the conflict with demons shaped her
spirituality. As for Jeanne des Anges, once she was delivered from her
demonic afflictions she went on tour as a ‘mobile pilgrimage site and
miracle-worker’ (p. 139).
Conversely, Marthe Brossier became a somewhat pathetic travelling
‘professional’ demoniac who made a career out of being possessed. All
did not end so well for some of the possessed. Madeleine Demandols de
la Palud, the Ursuline nun who denounced Fr. Louis Gaufridy, was 19 at
the time of her possession. Once delivered she existed as a social outcast.
More than 40 years after Gaufridy perished in the flames mainly as a
consequence of her testimony, Madeleine was arraigned on charges of
witchcraft and sentenced to life imprisonment. Others were consigned
408 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

to debasement of their identities. The Franciscan Anne Barré at Louviers

went from being spiritually endowed to being identified as a demon, as
being possessed (though innocent) and finally ending up being formally
suspected of witchcraft.
Ferber interprets the cases of these possessed women through the
framework of martyrology and hagiography, finding much of value in
both sources. If her arguments on this point are valid (and I suspect they
are), then she is right in her observation that in the matrix of possession
and exorcism there is evidence of a ‘desperation to be closer to things
divine’ (p. 133). One of the admirable strengths of Ferber’s book is her
resistance to separating issues like demonic possession, ecstatic spiritu-
ality and witchcraft into distinct categories. And she puts forward the
logic of this resistance thus: ‘[E]xorcism stood at the crossroads of mys-
ticism, witchcraft and reform because of its ambiguous relation to
authority’ (p. 112).
The pervasive presence of politics in matters of possession and exor-
cism is quite extraordinary and it is possible to sustain the argument ad-
vanced by Ferber that ‘possession’ could be subjected to political uses.
Ferber rightly draws much-needed attention to the imbalance in power
relations between exorcists and the possessed, an imbalance sometimes
characterised by physical and psychic violence. She points out that it is
quite wrong to pathologise the behaviour of women suggesting, carte
blanche, mental instability. Why not suspect the exorcists of a similar
malady? The point is well taken and she does not flinch from opening
the question about differences (and similarities!) between Catholic priests
and magicians. Both were workers in the spiritual arts. Might there not
be some overlap? She makes the point, and accurate it is, that the case
against Fr. Louis Gaufridy in 1610–11 established a benchmark in the
development of the possibility that priests might well be practitioners of
magic and demonism.
This notwithstanding, a strong case can be made for the prevalence of
gimmicks and quackery in the ritual of exorcism. Indeed, possession
and exorcism were very much susceptible to the vagaries of manipulation.
Louise Capeau kept insisting that Fr. Gaufridy had to die in order for the
possessed to be released from their demonic torment. As propaganda,
one also hears of demons speaking through the possessed, insisting that
the Huguenots belonged to Satan. In this manner, possession could be
used as a form of proselytism. Huguenots could be denounced, others
might be condemned as servants of Satan, or the veracity of the institu-
tional church might be proclaimed. Ferber does not avoid these issues.
 Book Reviews t 409

The victimisation of those possessed found support in conventional wis-

dom which asserted that the possessed bore culpability for their possession.
Sarah Ferber steers judiciously around the pitfalls of speculation and
scepticism, while setting out an argument which functions best as a guide
for dealing with the realities of early modern France in the context of
possession and exorcism. She shows convincingly that exorcism was a
two-edged sword. Pointing outwards, it supported claims of Church au-
thorities while pointing inwards it worked at times to undermine the
authority of the Church.
The bookends to Ferber’s study is a document written by Thomas
Killigrew (1612–83), an English playwright, describing the exorcisms
at Loudun in 1635 following the execution of Fr. Urbain Grandier. The
Killigrew letter was used in a capital murder case in Australia in 1993.
In that court case, the four accused defended themselves on manslaughter
charges in the death of a woman by asserting that force had to be used
against demonic resistance. Ferber argues that the use of this document
by defence attorneys demonstrates the continuing validity of categories
sometimes considered anachronistic.
The business of witch hunting and witchcraft developed as a sustained
practice of sexualising and demonising men and women for religious
and political motives. The same argument can be applied to the problem
of possession and exorcism in early modern France. An excellent back-
ground study to the issues Ferber deals with can be found in Nancy Caciola’s
recent book, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the
Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2003), where she outlines the
process by which some medieval people were deemed saints, possessed
or touched by the Holy Spirit, while others were denounced as demoniacs,
possessed by evil spirits. Caciola argues that the discernment of the nature
of the human spirit as evil or blessed was central to the religious culture
of the later Middle Ages. That religious culture undergirds the world of
Ferber’s investigations.
Sarah Ferber set out to address the social and institutional processes
by which the status of exorcism was created. She acquits herself of this
task admirably by incorporating the wider foundation studies on the sub-
ject, especially the work of Robert Mandrou and Michel de Certeau, while
providing important dimensions to our knowledge of related issues devel-
oped by Robin Briggs, Jonathan Pearl, Alfred Soman, William Monter
and Stuart Clark, among others. She celebrates the questions rather than
privileging answers which can only be at best hypothetical, speculative
and approximate. Her study demonstrates that proper questions are more
410 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

revealing than guesses masquerading as answers. Sarah Ferber’s contri-

bution is original rather than derivative, and this book takes its place
among the front-rank literature on the subject of religion, witchcraft and
demonic power in the early modern world.

Thomas A. Fudge
Hewitt Research Foundation
Washington

Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui (ed.), An Eighteenth Century History of North

India: An Account of the Rise and Fall of the Rohilla Chiefs in Janbhasha
by Rustam Ali Bijnori, Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 123.

Thomas William Beale, An Oriental Biographical Dictionary, new edn,

Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 431.

Rustam Ali Bijnori’s is a focused account of the rise and fall of the Rohilla
chiefs of Katehar region which enriches historians’ understanding of the
struggle to carve a niche out of the decaying Mughal empire during the
course of the eighteenth century. Siddiqui’s competent introduction, both
in English and Urdu, summarises the story, debunks a simplistic under-
standing of the nature and character of the Rohillas and their lives, and
highlights their complex engagements with local potentates, the imperial
centre and its provincial magnates. Not only does the introduction provide
a nuanced understanding of the Rohillas, it also links it with other major
developments.
Rustam Ali begins his account with Daud Khan, founder of Rohilla
power in Katehar, and proceeds to recount events that led to the rise and
finally to the extinction of their power. It may be noted that his is the
earliest work on the rise and fall of the Rohilla chiefs of Katehar. The
salient feature of Bijnori’s presentation is that he avoids unnecessary
details and this makes his work ‘unique in the history of history writing
in pre-modern India’ (p. 8). However, it is largely a personal narrative
containing an account of some of the events to which he was an eye-
witness. Besides its corroborative importance, the work yields evidence
of primary significance with regard to the origin of administrative terms
like zila in a somewhat later-day sense of the term, the changing import of
the term sarkar, and emergence of a new term, jaidad for jagir. It provides
 Book Reviews t 411

equally significant insight into the social relations between members of

various ethnic groups and religious communities at the local level. Bijnori’s
use of the expressions Hindustan and Hindustani is quite interesting. He
describes the Mughal army as lashkar-i Hindustan or fauj-i Hindustan
in contradistinction to Nadir Shah’s forces, which he prefers to identify
as fauj-i wilayati. Similarly, the Mughal emperor is quoted as having
addressed his soldiers by calling them Hindustan ke jawanon. Mughal
victory over a contingent of Durrani is likewise characterised as fatah-i
lashkar-i Hindustan. Mughal nobles who had accompanied Durrani are
likewise termed nobles of Hindustan.
Rustam Ali is certainly not the first in the field of the history of local
potentates and adventurers amongst whom the Rohillas are just one group.
The other stalwarts comprising those writing in Persian also made remark-
able contributions. But Bijnori’s work carries added significance in that
it is the first of its kind written in mixed Urdu–Hindi. It represents the
nascent stage of history writing and progress of prose writing in Hindustani.
Moreover, the work is characterised by a degree of maturity, which
sets it apart from the contemporary sources of information written in the
Persian language. Unlike the contemporary Indo-Persian works, which
have a partisan attitude, Rustam Ali’s ‘nostalgia is discernible in his work
written between the lines’ (p. 8). On the whole, he stands above any anti-
Afghan bias and is simultaneously and markedly free from Afghan
chauvinism, which are common in Persian works. The beauty of the style
of his work lies in its brevity and the use of pithy expressions.
But the editor’s observation that Rustam Ali went to ‘great extent to
verify the authenticity of evidence he collected about any historical event’
(p. 10) does not quite stand the test of rigorous scrutiny. Rustam Ali, in
the first place, has neither made any such claim, nor does his narrative of
events tend to suggest it. On the contrary, he has been honest enough in
stating that he recorded whatever he knew of himself and heard from
others. Moreover, the information furnished in the work does not neces-
sarily substantiate the editor’s claim. Thus, the reported strength of troops
commanded by Nawab Ali Muhammad Khan, Qasim Khan Bangash
Zafarjung, Nawab Ahmad Khan, Raja Surajmal and Holkar seems to be
considerably exaggerated. Likewise, the reported value of jagirs that
Nawab Ali Muhammad Khan assigned, and the amount in cash (Rs 2 crore,
or 20 million) that Safdarjung’s Begum is stated to have offered to her
husband, appears to be inflated. Similarly, the cause of the flight of Deep
Singh, raja of Almora on being confronted by the Rohilla chief is pre-
sented as a supernatural phenomenon, and is devoid of facts of acceptable
412 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

authenticity. It may be added that the editor has himself pointed out some
glaring mistake in Rustam Ali’s narration of events (p. 89).
One criticism that may haunt this book is the fact that its author was a
paid employee of a British official, who was decidedly an ally of the Nawab
of Awadh and decisively anti-Rohilla. Safdarjung and Shuja-ud-Dawlah
are too well known for their treachery against the Bangash Nawab of
Farukhabad and Hafiz Rahmat Khan Rohilla and for their annexation of
Katehar. But these flaws should not detract from the overall value of the
book which presents almost a detached description of the struggle. This
reviewer, for one, found the book a valuable source on its own merits.
The work goes beyond mere apologies or polemics. With its focus on
the Rohilla region and largely with respect to the history of Katehar, it is
a valuable contribution to the existing literature. Bijnori’s work may be
taken as a means for entry into the Katehar region, a lens through which
to view the lives of Rohillas and other characters as part of a broader
socio-historical drama. A well-written account, it sets an important stand-
ard in the field of historiography in the language of common people. It is
to the author’s credit that such a nearly impartial depiction of events has
been produced.
On his part, the editor has not been consistently meticulous on a few
counts. In the parentheses, he provides the standard version of colloquial
expressions as used in the text only now and then. Spelling errors are
galore. One comes across parha for padha, kang for gang, baksha for
bakhsha, Murabad for Muradabad, khayam for qayam, Kethar for Katehar,
badi for nadi, Lashkat for Lashkar, etc., in the text. Besides spelling and
typographical errors, there are a few omissions which need to be addressed.

An Oriental Biographical Dictionary by Thomas William Beale is pri-

marily based on the material which the author had collected but could
not put to print during his lifetime (d. 1875). Later on, H.G. Keene revised
and enlarged the material and saw it through the press in 1894.
Beale is known for his earlier work, Miftah-ul Tawarikh. He had served
as a clerk under H.M. Elliot, compiler of The History of India as Told by
its Own Historians, while he was a Secretary at the office of the Board of
Revenue, North West Frontier. Whether this association benefited the
author in the production of the present work is a matter of speculation. It
is, however, on record that Beale made extensive use of the primary sources
within his reach.
The author focuses mainly upon the ‘Muslim world’, from the rise of
Islam down to his own times. But in this, he does not survey all the
 Book Reviews t 413

Muslim ruled states or Muslim-concentrated areas like South-east Asia.

Nor is his description restricted to Muslims alone. It enlists some Euro-
pean figures such as Reinhardt (French adventurer), George Thomas
(British adventurer), Hieronymot Xavier (Portuguese missionary), General
Raymond (who worked under the Nizam), all of whom had, at one or the
other time, been active in the Orient, particularly in the Indian subcontinent.
It is a biographical dictionary spanning various communities and regions.
Second, the entries go far beyond rulers, nobles and the elite. They in-
clude litterateurs, astronomers, astrologers, musicians, reformers, mis-
sionaries, saints, etc., of both sexes regardless of community, region and
linguistic or cultural affiliations. In terms of the details provided within
entries, these are richer than similar works of pre-modern India.
Third, the work carries some non-biographical entries as well. Thus,
terms like Ahl-i bait, Ahl-i Kitab, Ijtihad, Imam, Mu’tazila, Diwan,
Takhallus, Gakkhar, and so on, also find description. Such entries enrich
the work even as they go beyond what the title of the book conveys.
Although the author claims to have taken the ‘greatest care’ to ‘ensure
accuracy’, a few factual inaccuracies have indeed crept into the text. For
example, Kaiqubad’s year of death (1290) is incorrectly given as 1288.
Alauddin Khalji conquered Anhilwada in 1299, but the event is dated
1297 in the book. Some inconsistencies are also noticeable: for instance,
Kamla Rani is recorded as Kaula Devi at one place (p. 120) and as Kula
Devi or Kawaldah (p. 224) at another.
Making entries in English as well as in Persian script is appreciable.
But in this, one comes across entries which vary between the two scripts.
Thus, ‘Adil Khan Faruqi’ of Persian text is Adil Khan in English (p. 34).
Also, ‘bin Ibrahim’ and ‘bin Muhammad’ are detached from ‘Ahmad’ in
English, although they appear in Persian. Gaj Singh Rathor Kuchhawaha,
as mentioned in the Persian text, is mentioned as Gaj Singh Rathor in
English (p. 138). The Rathors are rightly identified as a ‘tribe of Rajputs’
but then elaborated further as ‘Rajas, who reigned in Jodhpur’ as if all
the Rathors were rajas of and confined to the place (p. 332). Mota Raja
Udai Singh, a Rathor, is incorrectly called ‘Rathouri’ (p. 407). ‘Azim’ of
Persian text finds mention, at more than 10 places, as ‘Azam’ in English
(pp. 87–89). Similar errors may also be seen in the Persian text: qiran is
put as qarin, in a quote, and Khan as Kham (pp. 140, 336). Hindi names
too are not spelt correctly in a consistent manner. Thus, Tulsidas is spelt
as Tulshidas in both the texts. The same name is not spelt the same way
all through: Ruqayya is also spelt as Ruqia (p. 336).
414 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

The dictionary also carries a number of entries, which being extremely

deficient in terms of content, should not have found a place in it. See, for
example, the following: ‘Abu Zarr (sic) Yaqut Mausili, a celebrated callig-
rapher’ (p. 33), or ‘Adham Artamani, author of a Diwan in Persian’ (p. 34),
and ‘Talmasani, a poet’ (p. 399).
The errors may in part be the consequence of the fact that the author
had not used a good library. Besides, the author’s zeal to furnish consider-
able information with an eye on the interest of his contemporaries seems
to have put him under disproportionate stress.
Despite the shortcomings, the concise dictionary is of some worth
particularly because it is by and large free of the polemics of the colonial
era. On the whole, the work may be treated as a preliminary text. There
may, however, be two opinions about the work being of ‘unique value’
for ‘oriental students’ and ‘as a work of reference on matters [emphasis
added] connected with oriental history’ as was originally intended
(pp. v–vi).

Shaukatullah Khan
Department of Education
Jamia Millia Islamia
New Delhi

Madhu Tandon Sethia, Rajput Polity: Warriors, Peasants and Merchants

(1700–1800), Rawat Publications, Jaipur and New Delhi, 2003, pp. 356.

In the year 2003, two studies on the eighteenth-century history of the

principality of Kota appeared in print. One is Norbert Peabody’s Hindu
Kingship and Polity in Precolonial India; the other is the book under
review. The authors of these two books do not refer to each other. In a
sense, this is not an omission. Whereas Peabody addresses the complexity
of the political legitimacy of Hindu kingship, Madhu Sethia analyses the
political economy of the state and focuses on the structure of village
society, the grip of the state on it, and on the involvement of bankers,
merchants and other men of capital in agrarian management and taxation.
Her book, therefore, is neither about Rajputs, nor about warriors, but
very much on agrarian investment and revenue farming, on the migration
of peasants and their standards of living, on state debt and agro-industry,
 Book Reviews t 415

on the composition of the Kota elite and the various categories of claim-
ants to labour and land that must be distinguished if one is to understand
the process of increasing status differentiation that was going on in the
region.
The author makes extensive use of the stunningly rich records of the
Hada state of Kota preserved in the Rajasthan State Records at Bikaner,
which allow her to speak authoritatively on a number of subjects hitherto
not discussed in such detail by historians, though it is clear that she con-
tinues conversations on eighteenth-century Rajasthan started by Satish
Chandra, S.P. Gupta and Dilbagh Singh. What struck me in Madhu
Sethia’s text was the enormous scope and intensity of mediation and
negotiations, involving practically all persons of means and influence in
the Kota state, by which, in an apparently never-ending process, the re-
sources of agriculture were increased, shared and redistributed. Law and
customary privilege did have a place in this political culture and guaran-
teed the continuation of institutional means of access to agrarian resources
in many cases. More often than not, however, the indebted court was, to
keep its festivals and rituals going and to pay its army, compelled to
delegate its executive authority to the informal stock exchange where it
put up for sale that part of its institutional powers which could be com-
modified. Many others—members of the nobility, for instance—did the
same. Through subleasing and redistribution, credit networks spread and
large numbers of people participated in the dynamics, the expansion,
and the improvement of the agrarian economy of Kota in this period and
profited from it. Never before, as far as I am aware, has this bargaining
feature of the late eighteenth-century north Indian state been brought
out so clearly and convincingly.
The author stresses that, in spite of this delegation of powers and in
the face of increasing social inequality in the villages, the state did not
give up its direct involvement with small peasant agriculture. The archival
material to further study the mediating role of the state in the fields of rural
credit and patronage, she indicates, is available (p. 151). One wonders by
what mechanism the ‘growing state intervention’ (p. 205) that the author
repeatedly speaks of, could be maintained in a state the agrarian manage-
ment of which was to a large extent alienated, farmed and sub-farmed to
all kinds of entrepreneurs.
In a separate chapter, the author discusses the integration of a large
proportion of artisans in the commodity markets of the region and the
degree to which this replaced the older jajmani arrangements of caste
416 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

society. She adds many insightful details on several categories of agro-

based production, begar and the artisans’ earnings that must be of great
value when it comes to comparing the Kota data with the results of other
studies.
The author must be commended for the fieldwork she undertook in
and around Kota, which certainly deepened her—and therefore our—
understanding of the more technical aspects of black soil agronomics.
This is entirely in tune with her focus on the commercialisation of taxation
and agriculture. On other subjects, she is less exhaustive. Interested in
structure and structural change, her study avoids chronological narrative.
As far as the debts of the Kota court (‘the financial mess’, she calls it,
p. 315) are concerned, for instance, she tantalisingly indicates that, though
‘much more information is available’ (p. 266), the data she lists is ‘sufficient’
to conclude that rates of interest fluctuated sharply. One would like to
know whether a complete chronology of the Kota debt could be gleaned
from the Bikaner archives. Surely such a table would be a fascinating
novelty in Indian historiography. But one must be patient. As it is, Madhu
Sethia’s contribution breaks much new ground and seems to promise
even more.
There are several oddities of grammar and punctuation in the text.
The only map in the volume hardly supports the text. On a more positive
note, Madhu Sethia’s careful footnoting will be of much help to future
historians.

Dirk H.A. Kolff

Leiden University
The Netherlands

Eugenia Vanina, Ideas and Society. India between the Sixteenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,
2004, pp. 254.

Eugenia Vanina’s book belongs to a fairly recent trend among Russian

scholars to pay greater attention to the history of ideas, culture and religion
in medieval India. Vanina examines certain dominant political and social
ideas prevalent during Mughal rule, traces their lineages in the remote
past and sets them in their historical contexts. The scope of the theme is
wide and, as such, it is possible for the author to discuss most concepts
 Book Reviews t 417

only in general terms, although efforts to draw information from primary

sources and descend to details are visible throughout the book.
Vanina’s approach is generally irenic, but she recognises that from the
sixteenth century two opposing intellectual tendencies exercised influ-
ence on the development of ideas on politics, religion and the social order.
One stream was represented by orthodox Islam and nurtured by theolo-
gians (ulama) and jurists (fuqaha). The other was represented by the
Indian and Islamic traditions of pantheism and espoused by mystics,
preachers, monarchs and intellectuals who attempted to break free of
the rigidity of denominational religions, customs and conventions. In
the four chapters of the book, Vanina examines the complex configuration
of the two streams of thought and political events, institutional changes
and cultural interactions. The presence of a strong state (in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries) and its gradual disappearance (in the eighteenth
century) generated two sets of ideas of political power which are discussed
in the first and last chapters of the book. The substantive part of the first
chapter brings together Abul Fazl’s views on state and polity expressed
in the Ain-i Akbari, Akbarnama, and his letters (maktubat). Vanina argues
that some of these ideas were new while others, such as the ‘divine nature
of royal power’, were ‘derived from the views of his Muslim and Hindu
predecessors’ (p. 39). In Vanina’s view:

[T]he core of Abul Fazl’s notion of kingship was that the king should be
guided by the principles of universal good and for this he could rise above
the regulations of the holy law. This was, no doubt a blow for the court ulemas
(sic) and mujtahids who felt offended and displaced due to the loss of their
prerogatives. No wonder that some of them openly accused Akbar of being a
heretic and an apostate when he started implementing this scheme (p. 40).

Vanina is right in treating the subordination of religious laws as an

important breakthrough, but the idea can only be regarded as the starting
point of Abul Fazl’s theory of state. Whereas the preference shown for
state regulations (zawabit) over divine law (sharia) by previous monarchs
such as Alauddin Khalji was grounded in despotism alone, Abul Fazl
justified the liberation of polity from religion by putting a spin on Ibn al
Arabi’s (1165–1240) doctrine of pantheism. According to this version,
there is only one Divine Reality (yak husn-i dilawez) which is indivisible.
All differences associated with the Reality in formal religions (din) are
false and illusory. The implication of this argument is that theocracy is
not only irrational but also disastrous, since ‘every creature begins to
418 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

have a distinct leader and these become engaged in mutual denunciation’

(Ain, I: 158). One could argue that the idea could have had its origin in
the acceptance of the absolute unity of divinity by popular monotheistic
preachers such as Kabir, and the rejection of all manifestations of formal
religions (a theme which Vanina takes up fully in the third chapter), but
the credit for drawing a political argument from this goes to Abul Fazl.
Once the ground was cleared, the basis for sovereignty was located in
social needs and reciprocal exchange. Premised on a pessimistic anthro-
pology, where ‘abundant differences are embedded in the nature of
humankind and disturbance, internal and external, are of daily growth ...
and anger is quick to break out’ (Ain, I: 290), Abul Fazl’s notion of social
exchange rationalised the existence of a strong political authority which
protected the four essences (life, property, honour and religion) of the
subjects. In lieu of this, the state demanded taxes and the description of
taxes as wages of sovereignty (paranj-i jahanbani) comes close to the
notion of vetana which Vanina recognises as the ‘foundation of the relations
between the ruler and the ruled’ in ancient India (p. 26). She chooses not
to explore it further apparently because the idea was never fully articulated
in previous writings. In Ziyauddin Barani’s Opinions on Statecraft
(Fatawa-i Jahandari), the authority of the monarch rests on an innate sense
of justice (adl-i jibilli) towards his subjects rather than a clear-cut social
contract between the two parties. One could argue that in orthodox Islam,
the primordial contract (covenant) is between man and God and one needed
to break free from the traditional framework in order to rework the concept.
The idea of a just political order was summarised in the notion of
sulh-i kul, or absolute peace, which in simple terms meant tolerance of
sectarian differences without polemics and conflicts at the level of the
civil society and their exclusion from policy formulations at the level of
the state. This was an important principle of Mughal polity which was
repeatedly restated until the time of Aurangzeb and even later. As Vanina
shows, it came under pressure from the orthodoxy and was violated in
practice under pressing political circumstances, but it was used, even
then, to justify acts of religious tolerance. Akbar’s understanding of reli-
gions within the broad framework of sulh-i kul was reflected at a more
personal level in the norms of moral behaviour that Akbar prescribed for
his devotees (arbab-i iradat) and for members of the court elite. The use
of the term din-i ilahi for these norms by Vanina is at odds with Akbar’s
conscious rejection of the concept of formal religion (din).
The second and third chapters of the book deal with the ideas surround-
ing social and religious syncretism. In these chapters, Vanina makes an
 Book Reviews t 419

important point that social interactions were also a natural outcome of

the realities of everyday life and not necessarily of conscious intellectual
efforts. According to her:

[T]he process of the Hindu–Muslim cultural interaction and religious contacts

developed from the lower ranks or ‘bottom’ of social life, mostly from the
trading and industrial community of the cities. It was a reflection of objective
social processes, devoid of any philosophical or theological contemplation.
Both communities retained their doctrinal and cultural identity, but at the same
time there emerged some common cultural values, and ideas of unity which
found popularity among the common people and the educated elite (p. 67).

This was largely because:

Indian Muslims were not a united social body in an either ethnic, doctrinal, or
class sense. They adjusted to the caste system and formed their own hierarchy
of castes, sects, clans and ethnic groups. As a result, a significant number of
similar social and professional divisions operated in both Hindu and Muslim
communities. This was especially true of the city, where the population was
mixed. Many professional castes of Hindus had their counterparts among the
Muslims of nearly equal status .... [I]n the city market a Muslim julaha
(weaver) had his workshop near that of a Hindu weaver. They lived in similar
conditions, worked on the same looms, equally suffered from poverty, wars
and epidemics, were equally exploited by the feudal administrators and
moneylenders (pp. 63–64).

This perspective is important for understanding the emergence of popu-

lar monotheistic (Bhakti) movements in India, and one can see in it the
rejection of the belief that the purpose of the Bhakti movement was to
save a hierarchical Hinduism from subversion by an egalitarian Islam.
More important, one gets the picture of a dynamic society in which iden-
tities were fuzzy and barriers of caste and religion were assailable. Sensitive
individuals from these communities reacted against the established order
according to their moral fervour and inspiration (pp. 112–13).
The disintegration of the Mughal empire had a major impact on Indian
polity and society. In the fourth chapter, Vanina surveys a range of intel-
lectual opinions on the vagaries of a weak and fragmented polity, the
breakdown of economic order, the resurgence of religious and regional
identities, and the impact of colonial invasion. There appears to be no
common thread binding the disparate ideas except for the broader concern
to overcome the crisis, restore political and economic order and look for
‘new perspectives’ (p. 182).
420 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

The present book is the second edition of the one published in 1996.
The author has made a minor change in the subtitle and updated the ref-
erences and bibliography. Although the text is the same as that of the
first edition, it does not appear dated and deserves to be treated as a
useful contribution to the intellectual and social history of Mughal India.

Najaf Haider
Centre for Historical Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi

Guy Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450–900,

Routledge, London and New York, 2003 (Warfare and History Series),
pp. xix + 320.

If there is any single period in pre-modern European history that conjures

up images of heroic barbarian warriors, it must be the early, the ‘dark’,
Middle Ages. Right from the first chapter of his informative book, Guy
Halsall starts to disenchant us in two ways: first, by giving precise and
unromantic information on scores of things that have to do with the core
business of war, from the size of armies and methods of recruitment up
to and including the handling of weapons, the use of battle tactics, and
the (grizzly) pathology of close combat; second, by making it clear how
much early medieval military traditions owed to the later Roman empire.
To those familiar with the exciting new scholarship on the transformation
of the Roman world, this second point will come as no surprise. But in
banishing any thought of savages gone berserk, Halsall goes very far: he
totally avoids speaking of ‘Germans’ or ‘Germanic (roots)’. For example:
the well-known model of early medieval warrior kingship is traced back
not so much to the Germanic Heerkönige as to the late Roman military
emperors (p. 25 sqq); similarly, such other supposedly typically Germanic
features of early medieval warfare as the annual assemblies on the
‘Marchfield’ (p. 43), and the so-called landwere, or duty of any able-bodied
man to come to the defence of the land in case of an invasion (p. 99), get
Roman roots.
The same sort of radical exclusion is applied on the basic ‘approach’
Halsall has chosen to take. After having first qualified this approach as
 Book Reviews t 421

‘materialist’, meaning that his book ‘ultimately seeks the dynamics for
political change in competition for resources’ (p. 23) rather than in any
ideological (or religious) motives, Halsall adds that, given his subject,
his history is more a history ‘from above’ (how did the state maintain its
ability to intervene in politics throughout the realm?) than one ‘from the
bottom upwards’ (how was lordship perceived by the people?). Sound as
this may seem, the proposition has two disadvantages. One is the dismissal
of any non-materialist motivation in Halsall’s treatment of warfare; he
tells us little if anything about why barbarian leaders waged war; there is
no chapter on causes or motives, nor on justification or ideology; nor,
for that matter, on warfare as part of the aristocratic mentality, way of
life, lifestyle, ‘culture’ or whatever other denominator one would prefer.
To this we may add some other general lacunae in Halsall’s book, which,
quite in line with other volumes of the series Warfare and History, is
narrowly focused on warfare as an activity. Readers have to make do with
the scant attention (cf. pp. 141–44) paid to related topics such as the ef-
fects of war on society in terms of human suffering and material loss; the
use of alliances, embassies, arbitration, non-aggression pacts, peace treaties,
etc., to avoid or to end war; and possible moral standards or rules of the
game respected in warfare.
Second, the author’s approach makes him vulnerable to criticism on
his almost naïve a priori conviction that the barbarian kingdoms of the
West were ‘states’ at all—which in my opinion should have been one of
the quod demonstrandum’s of this book. In that case, the key question
would have been: to what extent can the ability of barbarian kings to
regularly mobilise armies have contributed to kingdoms developing char-
acteristics of ‘modern states’? For Halsall the same ability now provides,
as it were, a quality test for states that are already there.
Halsall’s assumption that early medieval kingdoms were ‘states’ also
obscures the fact that not all early medieval warfare was a thing of kings,
let alone one they could monopolise. In addition to wars between kingdoms,
there were also many internal armed conflicts: between ambitious scions
of a royal family and their factions, between kings and rebellious aristo-
crats, and ‘private wars’ between great men—the word ‘war’ in its original
imputation is close to ‘private feud’. In Halsall’s book such internal con-
flicts crop up incidentally, but they have not been treated systematically.
Without so much saying, Halsall sees warfare mainly as military exped-
itions against external enemies.
But all this does not detract from the indisputable fact that warfare
was endemic in the early medieval world, and this makes the relationship
422 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

between kings and warriors a crucial one. From this perspective warfare
was a key element, not only in the distribution of power but also as a
major provider of ‘prestigious objects’ to oil the wheels of the aristocratic
networks which formed the basic building blocks of early medieval
aristocratic society. Unlike modern wars, early medieval warfare could
probably be profitable from a purely economic point of view because
winners had an immediate access to ‘objects’ of high value which could
either be directly or indirectly redistributed among warriors (who ‘worked’,
so to speak, on a ‘no cure [= victory], no pay’ basis), or amassed treas-
ures for future war expenses. Quite to the point, Halsall argues that in
addition, ‘the right [sic] to participate in warfare was a very important
aspect of the construction of various forms of identity [that is, social and
political identities] in this period’ (pp. 25,135). War was an opportunity
for kings and ‘big men’ to show off and prove all the qualities that made
them acceptable as the leaders of society, while for ordinary warriors it
was an occasion to take part in events larger than those affecting local
society, where they could share in wealth and privileges that were normally
out of reach, and where they might have felt one with a ‘people’ or ‘nation’.
The next question is, how broad or narrow the social base from which
warriors were recruited was. To tackle it, Halsall classifies the early Mid-
dle Ages into a number of sub-periods, and discusses these sub-periods
over four chapters (chapters 3–6). The ensuing narrative leads from the
Goffart thesis on the payment of barbarian foederati and the ethnic status
of the so-called Poitevin Taifali in the Migration period to the hiring of
Viking mercenary bands in the ninth century. In his analysis Halsall
wrings from the poor documentation a complicated positive correlation
between access to the army, on the one hand, and such attributes as ethnic
identity, free status, landholding, or the position of retainer, on the other.
Even if, on closer inspection, this relationship is far less unequivocal
than it seems to be at first sight, Halsall has no doubt about the overall
pattern that emerges: whereas in the sixth century most kings raised armies
‘horizontally’, that is, by some sort of general levy, in the seventh century
this began to change. From then on, ‘armies were increasingly raised
through calling up [only] aristocrats and their dependants, down what
one might loosely term a “vertical” chain of lordship and dependence’
(p. 56). A more broad-based recruitment of warriors was probably only
maintained in fringe areas such as Wales (but not Ireland, which clearly
followed the general pattern!).
 Book Reviews t 423

If this seems clear enough, problems arise when things got really com-
plicated by the end of the eighth century. On the one hand, there was a
reversal to a more horizontal form of recruitment in the Carolingian empire
after Charlemagne’s imperialist ambitions started flagging. The Frankish
grand strategy returned from expansionist to defensive (except may be
on the Elbe frontier), which, in its turn, reinforced the comeback of a more
broad-based military conscription. The legal framework was created by
the famous capitulary of 807, which for the first time specified a ‘service
ratio’ of number of (free) recruits to quantity of land—a system that was
further improved several times in the following decades.
A similar development occurred in Anglo-Saxon England. In Mercia,
measures comparable to those of Charlemagne had already been taken
around 800 (cf. p. 103), and later on, in Wessex, Alfred the Great [re?]
introduced a defence system that was even more sophisticated and prob-
ably also more effective than Charlemagne’s initiative had been. Its two
distinctive elements are well known: the construction of a series of burhs
or fortified settlements, and the creation of a standing public defence
service, assured by an ingenious system of successive duty shifts for the
performance of the trinoda necessitas, the ‘three common obligations’
of army service and maintenance of burhs and bridges.
But at this point Halsall starts to waver. First, he is openly doubtful
about the effectiveness of the Carolingian system, and on top of that,
although at several points he insists that the military could be an avenue
to social advancement for ordinary freemen (pp. 96, 100), he remains
convinced that warfare ‘as before’ remained ‘essentially the business of
aristocrats and their loosely defined followings’ (p. 96); ordinary freemen
were only summoned when absolutely needed as reinforcements. Little
by little the ‘right’ to participate in war had become an almost exclusive
prerogative of the aristocracy. The constitution and empowerment of a
warrior aristocracy as a new military, political and administrative elite,
taking charge of what had remained of public authority, was undoubtedly
one of the most sweeping social changes in early medieval history. Military
obligation of just any able-bodied man was limited to the worst-case
scenarios of large-scale invasions (cf. pp. 93, 96–97, 99). This was even
more accentuated in (post-)Carolingian Italy (p. 98) and non-Frankish
Brittany (p. 101).
Halsall then finds support for this ‘aristocracy thesis’ in several directions.
The first is inextricably connected to the adjective that hovers like stormy
weather above early medieval history: feudal. Can we or can we not classify
424 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

those military relations that bound kings to aristocrats, as well as aristo-

crats to each other, as ‘feudal’, or, more precisely, as ‘feudo-vassalic’ in
the classical, Ganshofian sense of the word, which links becoming a vassal
to getting a benefice or fief? Following Susan Reynolds, Halsall wisely
refuses to ‘assume any neat or legal “system” of service in return for land’
(p, 73; emphasis added). The Carolingians only took the first steps in
that direction by making use more often of various types of non-permanent
land grants (precariae, beneficia) as well as by ‘upgrading’ and extending
the use of the term vassus. Consequently, feudal and vassalic ties—even
if not necessarily tied together—did reinforce the transition from more
horizontal to more vertical ways of raising armies in the core areas of
the Frankish empire. What happened elsewhere in the same field gets
only passing attention, but it is important to notice that even in Anglo-
Saxon England, where, as we saw, ‘popular’ military or semi-military
obligations held up much longer than on the continent, the core of fighting
units was composed of aristocratic warriors or thegns.
Halsall could have easily backed up the thesis of increasing aristocratic
specialisation by serving in the right way another hot potato of medieval
military history: the supposedly growing tactical importance of horse
and cavalry, especially due to technological innovations like the stirrup,
bucket saddle and nailed horseshoe. But surprisingly, instead of using
this long-term development to support the specialisation thesis, Halsall
declares himself repeatedly and emphatically against that line of inter-
pretation. His bottom line is the first sentence on page 186: ‘It is clear
that warriors from across Europe were usually horsed, and it is difficult
to see the evidence for any dramatic upsurge, or change, in the use of
cavalry between 450 and 900’. But evidently Halsall misses the point
here. To put things simply, aristocratic warriors would always have travelled
on horseback, but whether they fought on horseback or on foot when it
came to fighting, was a matter of tactical decision. Thus far no serious his-
torian would disagree, despite what Halsall seems to think—why else
his urge to bash down the point by repeating it time and again? Besides,
Halsall leaves the real question unanswered, which is, when had fighting
on horseback developed into the formidable mounted shock combat of
heavily armed knights—the ‘crashing shock charge with couched lance’
in Halsall’s words—that in popular imagination is so typical of medieval
warfare? Because this kind of combat ruled out any option of dismounting
and fighting on foot; it put an end to the ‘tactical flexibility’ of early
medieval warfare. At the same time, it was the culmination point of the
 Book Reviews t 425

long-term evolution that Halsall set out to sketch but hesitated to provide
with an ending.
One of the reasons that Halsall has left us in the dark about some vital
issues of medieval military history is to be found in the book’s time-frame:
it stops right at the point when some really interesting changes were
starting to brew. One has to do with mounted shock combat tactics—
announcing itself in the great battles of the Saxon kings against the Magyars,
but still in full development at Hastings; another with changes(?) in the
tactical deployment of archers and crossbowmen (cf. p. 197); yet another
with changes in siege warfare in reaction to new developments in castle
building. I think Halsall’s book would have gained interest if the author
had extended his discussions of these much-debated issues beyond the
time limits he (or his publisher) set himself.
But Halsall has also some surprising compensation to offer, especially
by stressing Viking influence on western warfare. The Vikings may have
heightened the awareness that mobility, good timing and tactical flexibil-
ity can be of vital importance for armed forces on the move. They may
have introduced fighting on foot in close order from behind shield walls,
and they were very good in quickly taking sheltered defence positions.
Vikings were tough warriors also because they were aggressors in places
far away from their homelands, so this often gave their fighting an envi-
able à l’outrance quality. They were the first mercenaries who could be
hired in some numbers. On just one occasion, however, Halsall has stretched
his interpretation too much to my taste. Combining the facts that Viking
armies were often bought off and that much more coin struck in western
Europe is found in western Europe than in Scandinavia, Halsall infers
that the Viking invaders must have spent most of their profits ‘on the spot’,
for buying ‘food, drink, and other items’, which must have stimulated the
growth of markets (p. 37). Though this is not an entirely new interpretation
of the Viking invasions, in Halsall’s version of it the Vikings almost look
like a Robin Hood gang avant la lettre, reinvesting in the local economy
what it first had stolen from the rich. But even for those who are not pre-
pared to follow Halsall in each and every of his arguments, his book makes
for good and interesting reading.

Peter Hoppenbrouwers
Department of Medieval History
University of Amsterdam

t
426 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

Conor McCarthy (ed.), Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle Ages.
A Sourcebook, Routledge, London and New York, 2004, pp. xii + 292.

The publisher announced this book as a text for university teaching, and
that is exactly what it is: a handy companion to a popular course on love,
sex and marriage in the Middle Ages. With a book like that one has to put
up with certain limitations of scholarly account. In this particular case,
not all source fragments are taken from the best editions available; some
are even taken from translations without any reference to the standard
edition at all, but since in the Acknowledgements, Conor McCarthy, with
a wink at Chaucer, confesses to be just a ‘lewd compilator’, which reviewer
could quarrel with that? At least this critic had more problems with the—
also inevitable—bias in the selection of sources. McCarthy’s stress on
English sources may be understandable from a commercial point of view,
but it is hardly satisfying for someone interested in the medieval vicissitudes
of the three important concepts surveyed by the book. For it will be clear
that McCarthy’s selection leaves extensive fields uncovered.
To give just one example: whereas McCarthy starts his introduction
of the theme of ‘love’ with discussing courtly love and troubadour poetry,
romances (the most important literary carrier of courtly love) are hardly
represented—there is not even one fragment of a Chrétien de Troyes text,
and none at all of any of the great German Minnesänger—and troubadour
poetry is not represented at all, nor its South-Italian form, nor, for that
matter, the great Italian lyrical love poetry of the later Middle Ages, Dante’s
La Vita Nuova to start with. Only the category of ‘ecclesiastical sources’
lacks the English bias, but here the basic Bible texts are badly missing—
not medieval sources, of course, but definitely the ultimate reference point
for every medieval discussion on almost anything related to love, sex
and marriage.
The presentation of the 84 source fragments, divided over five broadly
defined source types, is preceded by a 23-page general introduction,
which is sketchy in its attempt to touch upon mainstream developments
in modern historiography on each of the three themes. Less understand-
ably, it hardly seeks to consider the three subjects in their exciting inter-
relationship. For, are not love, marriage and sex three things that, because
of their mutual inescapability, always go together uneasily? This was
probably more so in medieval culture, which was dominated by Christian
religion and morals, than in our highly secularised western world. To
mention just three things that made a huge difference: whereas nowadays
in western Europe everybody, man and woman, is free to marry or not;
 Book Reviews t 427

has a free choice of his or her marriage partner; and can freely ask for
a divorce, in Europe’s medieval past this was completely different—
marriages were generally arranged, and in principle indissoluble. But there
are also points of agreement: married people generally had no sexual
intercourse outside wedlock, as they still do not have, but even on that
point, the nature of intra-marital sex has drastically changed after the
availability and acceptance of contraceptives. And all this leads to the
all-important question that is best quoted from a Tina Turner song: ‘What
has love got to do with it?’ In short, the whole point is to unravel the
manifold ways in which this complex relationship between love, marriage
and sex is structured, institutionalised, regulated, intellectually discussed,
emotionally felt and expressed in a specific cultural setting. McCarthy’s
introduction does little to help us (and our students) out on this point.
Instead, he chooses to go for a separate treatment of each of the three
terms.
First, it is love’s turn. This part of the introduction boils down to differ-
ent understandings of ‘courtly love’—itself an invention of the nineteenth
century—from C.S. Lewis to Jacques Lacan, ending with a summary in-
ventory of ‘medieval categories of love’, meaning love’s labels in Latin,
ranging from affectio and amor to caritas and cupiditas (and that is all).
McCarthy’s discussion of ‘sex’ leans heavily on Foucault and his critics
among medievalists such as Chaucer specialist Carolyn Dinshaw. In
McCarthy’s rendering, a whole range of obvious key concepts to under-
standing sexuality are missing, like contraception, the erotic and eroti-
cism; pornography; prostitution; abstinence and chastity; body, beauty
and attraction.
Instead, the focus is unilaterally on ‘homosexual sex’, proving the fact
that (writing about) homosexuality is at least as problematic and awkward
in modern (Anglo-American) historiography as the homosexual act and
allusions to it in writing may have been in medieval society. If John
Boswell is rightly put at the centre of recent historiographical discussion
on this issue, the reproduction of the discussion itself is disappointingly
superficial. For example, there is no hint at the great Richard Southern’s
razor-sharp contribution on ‘love’ between monks in his book on Saint
Anselm. Besides, little of this debate is reflected in the chosen source
fragments. Finally, McCarthy’s introduction of the marriage theme leads
from the Church Fathers by way of Anglo-Saxon penitentials and the
consensual theory of marriage, developed in canon law by the twelfth
century to secular law on marriage, marital goods and marriage settlement.
Due attention is paid to prominent modern authors, such as Georges Duby,
428 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

but McCarthy steers clear of recent debate. For instance, Jack Goody’s
1983 book on the ‘development of marriage’ is mentioned but without
any explanation of its talked-about central thesis and the serious criticism
it has raised.
The selected source fragments themselves have been divided into five
main categories: first, ecclesiastical sources (including patristic texts and
canon law); second, legal sources (meaning Anglo-Saxon and Norman
secular law); third, a catch-all category including historiography, vitae,
letters and conduct books; fourth, literary sources (a minimum of Latin
texts, the remainder vernacular, mainly taken from Old and Middle English
literature); and fifth, medical sources (by far the smallest category, and for
that reason more a bonus). Each of the five parts has its own short intro-
duction, as has each of the 84 text fragments. The prefaces to the parts
by and large account for the subdivision and selection of fragments; the
introductions to the fragments give brief information about the source
itself and the edition or translation used by McCarthy, as well as, inciden-
tally, suggestions for further reading. Understandably, McCarthy had to
limit himself to the barest essentials in order to avoid getting an unreadable
mess of source texts and introductory explanations, but the implication
is that a fruitful use of this sourcebook presupposes an acquaintance with
such key contextual concepts and institutions as sacraments, (episcopal)
visitations, leyrwite, merchet, wardship and enfeoffment—to mention
just a few. And what does one do with the following one-line introduction
to Beowulf: ‘The date of Beowulf is the subject of much controversy—
the sole manuscript is from the early eleventh century’ (p. 167)?
Finally, the source fragments themselves are well chosen and highly
recognisable, certainly for an Anglo-American scholarly public. There is
a lot of Augustine and Chaucer, there is the Venerable Bede and Saint
Thomas Aquinas, there is Andrew the Chaplain and the Romance of the
Rose, Abélard and Héloise, and the Paston Letters, there is Gower, Hoccleve
and the Owl and the Nightingale; and there are quite some pages of Anglo-
Saxon and Norman law flavoured with Bracton, Glanville, and enough
samples from manorial court rolls. All in all, a convenient anthology,
almost medieval in its design, but without big surprises.

Peter Hoppenbrouwers
Department of Medieval History
University of Amsterdam

t
 Book Reviews t 429

Laura Napran and Elizabeth van Houts (eds), Exile in the Middle
Ages—Selected Proceedings from the International Medieval Congress,
University of Leeds, 8–11 July 2002, vol. 13 in the series International
Medieval Research, Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2004,
pp. xii + 249.

The International Medieval Congress held at the University of Leeds in

July 2002 took as its special thematic strand the concept of exile. This
book contains a selection of papers presented at the Congress, supple-
mented by commissioned papers, on the issue of banishment as a form
of social punishment. It covers the period of the central Middle Ages from
around 900 to 1300 in western Europe, in two parts. Part One considers
exile in the secular world and contains five papers. The nine papers in
Part Two examine exile in the ecclesiastical world.
Exile in the Middle Ages took a number of forms. In the secular world,
exile usually meant banishment of a person by a higher authority for pol-
itical reasons, resulting in the exiled person leaving home for a short or
a long period. Leaving home to go on pilgrimage or, in the case of women,
to marry could be experienced as a form of exile. In the ecclesiastical
sphere, there were two main forms of exile—monasticism was often seen
as a form of permanent spiritual exile from the secular world, and excom-
munication was a punishment exercised by church authorities in order
to eject persons (even if only temporarily) from the community of Christians.
Laura Napran’s ‘Introduction’ suggests that the most exciting aspect
of the book is the vast range of forms of exile and the considerable fluidity
in contemporaneous understanding of its meaning. Exile need not neces-
sarily have been a negative experience, particularly for ecclesiastics who
could use their banishment, whether forced or self-imposed, as a route
to inner development and spiritual purification.
The first paper in Part One is by co-editor Elisabeth van Houts and
deals with ‘The Vocabulary of Exile and Outlawry in the North Sea Area
around the First Millennium’. She traces the transmission of the Scandinavian
terminology for ‘outlaw’ into Anglo-Saxon and Norman legal thinking as
a result of the increasingly ethnic mix in England and Normandy through
invasion and immigration.
Ewan Johnson in ‘The Process of Norman Exile into Southern Italy’
points out that to understand how Norman exiles in Italy understood the
conditions of exile, it is necessary to understand banishment not as some
formalised legal procedure, but rather as any process by which fear of
authority might drive someone from Normandy. The most obvious pro-
cess by which exile could be forced was disinheritance, which would
430 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

deprive an individual of political and material sustenance within Normandy.

The imprecise nature of banishment meant that its effects were felt beyond
the individuals who suffered directly, so that the banishment of a man
affected not only him, but his entire family. Some people, after experienc-
ing temporary banishment, might choose to remain in their new home,
thus in effect making their exile a permanent one.
Chris Lewis, in ‘Gruffudd ap Cynan and the Reality and Representation
of Exile’, highlights the types of exile. Sometimes ‘exile’ implied formal
judicial banishment, but other individuals were sent away against their
will, with/without actual or threatened coercion. Some exiles left of their
own volition, choosing absence as a means of avoiding political difficul-
ties at home. In short, the idea of exile merges variously into banishment,
flight, enforced removal, captivity, voluntary departure and other types
of displacement. The case of Gruffudd ap Cynan (1055–1137) throws
light on the tension between the reality and the representation of exile in
the central Middle Ages: exile was both an event in the real world and a
narrative construct.
Miriam Shergold’s paper ‘Like Joseph in Egypt? Exile Experiences
of Royal Women’ explores the terrain of marriage as a sort of exile that
necessarily affected only women. On marriage, it was usual for women to
relocate to their husband’s home. While a royal marriage was supposed
to be an honour, separation from the familiar environment of the parental
territory was a frightening prospect, sharing aspects of exile as an undesir-
able event. The royal bride faced the prospect of life with a stranger in a
faraway country from which there was no return.
Co-editor Laura Napran ends Part One with a paper on ‘Marriage and
Excommunication: The Comital House of Flanders’. She considers the
case of Laureta of Flanders in the mid-twelfth century, who chose the
exile of flight to escape an unhappy marriage, and who later chose the
self-banishment of the veil to avoid the punishment of excommunication.
Her choices, therefore, were limited to the options of different types of
exclusion.
Part Two begins with Manuala Brito-Martins’ paper entitled ‘The Con-
cept of peregrinatio in Saint Augustine and its Influences’. It covers the
concept of peregrinatio as used by the classical Latin authors, through
Saint Augustine and his influence on Saint Bernard. The concept of
peregrinatio, as seen in the Christian authors, characterises man as exist-
ing in a condition of exile, whose life is established solely in the stability
of God. Thus, there are three essential levels of peregrinatio: (a) as the
journey of a peregrinus, that is, of a foreigner; (b) the spiritual journey
 Book Reviews t 431

to holy place of someone who is searching for God and wishes to carry
out God’s will; and (c) the inner journey of the soul towards God.
Haki Antonsson addresses the theme of ‘Exile, Sanctity, and Some
Scandinavian Rulers of the Late Viking Age’. Adam of Bremen in his
history tells the story of King Haraldr Bluetooth of Denmark (c. 958–86)
who was the first Christian king of Denmark. His son, Sweyn Forkbeard,
led a revolt against him with the intention of establishing himself as sole
ruler. Haraldr was defeated and, mortally injured, sought sanctuary amongst
the pagan Slavs. Antonsson suggests that Haraldr Bluetooth’s period of
exile was an essential step on his road to sanctity and martyrdom as a
result of religious revelation. Adam of Bremen’s account of Haraldr’s
downfall is the earliest combination of the themes of exile and sanctity
to be associated with a Scandinavian ruler. The paper goes on to consider
two more Scandinavian princes who were considered saints after their
death—Stain Magnús of Orkney (d. 1117) and Saint Ólafr of Norway.
Anne Duggan, in ‘The English Exile of Archipshop Øystein of Nidaros
(1180–1183)’ states that Øystein’s (old Norse Eysteinn) exile from Iceland/
Norway was forced rather than voluntary. His exile left significant traces
in English records, and on his return to Norway, he introduced the cult
of Saint Thomas of Canterbury to the province of Tronheim. English
chroniclers learned something about the complex history of twelfth-century
Norway from Øystein. English ecclesiastics encountered a foreign prelate
from whom they received legal and other texts. Øystein gained first-hand
experience of the power of an English king; saw the wealth and status of
English monasteries and episcopal sees; and perceived the symbolic
significance of an ecclesiastical hero like Thomas Becket. The experience
of exile, therefore, could be enriching both for those who gave sanctuary
and for the exile.
Brian Brigg’s paper is on ‘Expulsio, Proscriptio, Exilium: Exile and
Friendship in the Writings of Osbert of Clare’. Osbert was prior of West-
minster (died c. 1160) who spent much of his career away from Westmin-
ster Abbey in some form of exile. The paper examines how Osbert ad-
dressed the two related themes of exile and friendship in his writings,
and explores the range of models of exile and friendship which he drew
upon.
Leonie Hicks in ‘Exclusion as Exile: Spiritual Punishment and Physical
Illness in Normandy c.1050–1300’ considers the process of excommu-
nication within a religious context and illness as motives for exclusion,
and thus exile, from the wider spiritual community. First, the spiritual
punishment of excommunication is discussed in terms of exile from the
432 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

monastic community or secular parish in the case of priests and their

wives or concubines. The next section focuses on physical illness and
the use of the monastic infirmary, a place apart from its inmates, in tem-
porary exile from the full monastic community, as a means of exclusion.
Michael Staunton’s ‘Exile in the Lives of Anselm and Thomas Becket’
explains that both Anselm (1093–1109) and Thomas Becket (c.1118–70)
spent six years of their term as Archbishop of Canterbury away from
their see. In both cases, exile was a political act, born out of conflict with
the royal power, and in both cases it was controversial, provoking criticism
from churchmen in England who regarded their actions as a cowardly
and damaging dereliction of duty for personal reasons.
Lynsey Robertson’s ‘Exile in the Life and Correspondence of John of
Salisbury’ details, through a close examination of John’s letters and the
language and imagery he employs in them, John’s thought concerning
exile, particularly its spiritual aspects. John fell into royal disfavour and
feared exile in 1156, which actually came about in 1163. His approach
to exile is multifaceted. As a churchman and philosopher, John regarded
his exile as more than merely a punishment imposed by the king—it was
ordained by God as part of His divine purpose. Therefore exile is for John
a pilgrimage, a means of expressing devotion and a trial of faith, granted
as a blessing from God so that he may follow the example of the saints.
It was also a punishment for past sins, and therefore an opportunity to
perform penance.
Renée Nip’s paper ‘Exile and Peace: Saint Arnulf of Oudenburg’,
Bishop of Soissons (born c.1048 and d. 1087)’ argues that the saint was
both a voluntary exile as a religious man and a pauper (exsul et pauper),
and also a juridical exile of political authority. Nip’s view is that as an
exile in a religious, political and juridical sense, Saint Arnulf became an
effective mediator, and was successful as a peacemaker because he was
considered an outsider who lived almost his whole life in exile.
The last paper is by Romedio Schmitz-Esser, and is on ‘Arnold of
Brescia in Exile: April 1139 to December 1143—His Role as a Reformer
Reviewed’. Schmitz-Esser’s view is that to understand the last stage of
Arnold of Brescia’s (1100–1155) life, where his ideas fell on fertile
ground in Rome, ensuring him a permanent place in European history, it
is important to examine his exile closely. The paper therefore presents
the accounts of his activities in exile. As a result of his views on church
reform and his support of the commune of Brescia in its efforts to become
independent of the city’s bishop, in April 1139 he was sentenced to silence
and had to leave his diocese, and his four-year exile from the Italian
 Book Reviews t 433

peninsula began. He went to Paris, where he taught at the Ste-Geneviève,

and when banished from France, found ground for his opinions on Church
reform in Zürich and Rome.
The fact that there is just about one paper on exile in the secular world
and two on exile in the ecclesiastical world in the volume gives the impres-
sion that the editors may have placed more emphasis on the significance
of religious exile as compared with the secular. Elisabeth van Houts’
‘Introduction’ raises the issue of the association of banishment with sanc-
tity, and the contrast between exile as a punishment for bad deeds, and
exile perceived as part of a divine purpose. What does come through in
all the papers is the fact of the universal use of exile as punishment through-
out Europe, and that economic ties between countries were often a factor
in the reception of banished persons.
The Introduction ends with the statement that the goal of the collection
of papers on exile is not simply to raise new ideas on the topic, but also
to elicit dialogue and discussion. The papers contribute towards a better
understanding of exile, pilgrimage, the outlaw and the outsider, and at-
tempts to understand ‘the Other’ in medieval society.
There is a subject index and a name index, both providing sufficient
information, and the book uses footnotes instead of endnotes, which en-
ables one to read each paper without the irritating disruption of having
to turn to the paper’s or the book’s end, in order to find out where a quota-
tion or statement originates. There is, however, no information on the
various authors, and one is left wondering who they are, where they are
employed, and what their research interests are, so that one might use
their papers in this book as a springboard to other relevant research they
may have undertaken.

Reva Berman Brown

Oxford-Brookes University
Oxford

Pashaura Singh, The Bhagats of the Guru Granth Sahib: Sikh Self-
Definition and the Bhagat Bani, New Delhi, Oxford University Press,
2003, pp. xviii + 210.

In the course of the last few years, the world of Sikh studies has witnessed
many unfortunate confrontations regarding the relevance of textual
434 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

studies pertaining to Sikh traditions. A few leading Sikh and non-Sikh

academicians had suffered much owing to their unorthodox approach to
the Sikh sacred text. In this list Pashaura Singh’s name perhaps comes
very close to the first. His doctoral dissertation on the Adi Granth (The
Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority, New Delhi, 2002)
has already been acclaimed as a major contribution to the field of textual
analysis of Sikh studies; the present work may be regarded as its sequel.
It is based upon his earlier research which he undertook for his M.A. thesis,
now extensively revised. It is a timely publication and breaks an absolutely
fresh ground. As the Sikh faithful and academia are celebrating the fourth
centenary of the Parkash Utsav of the Guru Granth Sahib in India and
elsewhere, the book may offer a serious scholarly profile to the festivity.
The study primarily reviews the contributions of three important saint-
poets, namely, Shaikh Farid, Bhagat Kabir and Jaidev, representing the
Sufi, Sant and Vaishnava religious traditions, respectively. While examin-
ing the process of scriptural adaptation in the Sikh sacred text, Singh has
sought to address three related questions: (1) How was the Bhagat Bani
of three different regions of India collected and canonised in the Adi Granth?
(2) Why did certain hymns of the poet-saints of three distinct religious
traditions receive direct comments from the different Sikh gurus? (3) What
is the place of the Bhagat Bani in the Sikh scriptural heritage?
The author argues that the text of the Adi Granth carries many important
signs of Guru Arjan’s ‘editorial discretion’, where he ‘dropped several
hymns’ of Kabir and Namdev available in the manuscripts of the Gowinval
volumes, ‘reframed’ certain hymns to fit them in the wider context of the
message of the Sikhism and ‘simplified the language of others’ so that
these could represent a meaningful and comprehensive profile of the Sikh
sacred text. In the past, any ‘strictly academic criterion’ as well as a critical
methodology of a scholar in analysing the Sikh canonical text raised a
bitter debate in the Sikh panth, sometimes dividing the community into
camps. Its academic fallout has occasionally enriched the world of Sikh
studies. The present study is a crucial step forward in this direction.
It reflects the scholar’s relentless commitment to an analytical method-
ology, thereby seeking to provide Sikh studies an important space beyond
pulpit oratory and theology. It represents an attempt to appreciate the
nature of interaction between the early Sikh tradition and the experiences
of other contemporary religious communities of medieval India. The
scholar suggests that the inclusion of the Bhagat Bani in Sikh sacred text
 Book Reviews t 435

underlines a genuine experiment of religious pluralism in India in the

late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It not only stimulates a
dialogue and debate across religious lines but also raises serious doubt
about the so-called religious malignancy of India’s medieval centuries.
There are six chapters in the volume of which three are devoted to the
three saint-poets coming from three different parts of the Indian subcon-
tinent. In the second chapter, the scholar refers to Sikh Gurus’ comments
on the works of the Sufi poet Shaikh Farid and points out the areas of
agreement with the message of Sikhism. He, however, asserts his originality
while pointing out the areas of disagreement between them on issues
like the doctrine of rebirth, attitude towards death and the perception of
worldly existence. This line of demarcation offers the early Sikh faith an
excellent opportunity of outlining its different ‘cohesive ideals and institu-
tions’ in relation to Sufism.
Another important section is devoted to the works of Kabir, universally
hailed as the most important figure in the north Indian sant tradition.
It highlights the major areas in the works of Kabir that have been ‘edited’
by Guru Arjan ‘to bring them into harmony’ with the ‘moods and motiv-
ations’ of the Sikh panth. The author makes sure of not only the ‘common-
ness’ between the messages of the Sikh gurus and the banis of Kabir but
also brings to our notice their major areas of disagreements. These are
evident in the Gurus’ interesting comments on issues like begging, attitude
towards worldly life, etc., thereby seeking to outline the early Sikh identity.
The third Bhagat, Jaidev, perhaps receives a place of added importance
in the study, though the poet had contributed only two hymns in the Sikh
scripture. Singh is of the opinion that Birbhum (in West Bengal) was the
poet’s place of origin though he has shown scholarly tolerance by also
accommodating others’ views in this regard. He suggests that these hymns
carry a ‘developmental’ message in Jaidev’s theology and lays special
stress on the tone of Gujari hymn that was primarily meant for the ‘com-
mon people’ ‘leading the life of the householder’. The chapter also attempts
to put an additional emphasis on the gradual transformation in the philo-
sophical experiences of Jaidev, possibly reminding us of an evolutionary
mind of a sant from the world of saguna to a nirguna one. Instead of
putting one single definitive label or invariably bracketing him within a
fixed and rigid framework, the scholar tries to keep us aware of the dif-
ferent shades as well as the complex play of light and shade in the life
of a sant. He implies this interesting issue towards the end of his study.
436 t The Medieval History Journal, 8, 2 (2005)

He has left out many other Bhagats; let us hope this would comprise an
interesting starting point for Singh’s subsequent studies on the Sikh sacred
text.

Himadri Banerjee
Jadavpur University
Kolkata