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The Roles and Uses of Intoxicants at the Mughal Court

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The Roles and Uses of Intoxicants at the Mughal Court University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2010 Pursuing pleasure, attaining oblivion : the roles and uses of intoxicants at the Mughal court. Stephanie Honchell 1984- University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Honchell, Stephanie 1984-, "Pursuing pleasure, attaining oblivion : the roles and uses of intoxicants at the Mughal court." (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 628. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/628 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PURSUING PLEASURE, ATTAINING OBLIVION: THE ROLES AND USES OF INTOXICANTS AT THE MUGHAL COURT By: Stephanie Honchell B.A., University of Louisville, 2008 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2010 PURSUING PLEASURE, ATTAINING OBLIVION: THE ROLES AND USES OF INTOXICANTS AT THE MUGHAL COURT By Stephanie Honchell B.A., University of Louisville, 2008 A Thesis Approved on May 7, 2010 by the fol1owing Thesis Committee JohI\ McLeod, Thesis Director Raphael Njoku I!.,. AIl&t'l Furr ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my father Roger Louis Honchell iii ABSTRACT PURSUING PLEASURE, ATTAINING OBLIVION: THE ROLES AND USES OF INTOXICANTS AT THE MUGHAL COURT Stephanie Honchell May 7, 2010 Intoxicant use in Mughal India was not only widespread, it also represented an important part of the empire's history and culture. The influence of intoxicants - specifically opium and alcohol - has often been overlooked in secondary literature, leading to several misconceptions in modern historiography. This is especially true in the case of the relationship individual emperors had with drugs and alcohol. During the formative years of the empire, intoxicant use was representative of both a peripatetic lifestyle and the Turko-Mongol cultural legacy. As the empire took on more elements of settled society, the roles and uses of intoxicants underwent a significant shift. Drinking practices became increasingly private leading to greater incidence of addiction, while opium use became much more habitual and ingrained in Mughal culture. Attempts to curb intoxicant use by Aurangzeb not only contradicted the precedents set by earlier emperors, but also served to weaken the emperor's authority and foster internal dissent. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ .iv INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 Opium - History, Production, and Pharmacology ............................................... 7 BABURAND HUMAyUN ................................................................................................... 12 AKBAR AND JAHANGIR .................................................................................................... 40 SHAH JAHAN AND AURANGZEB ..................................................................................... 64 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 76 REFEREN CES .................................................................................................................... 79 APPENDICES ..................................................................................................................... 85 CURRICULUM VITAE ....................................................................................................... 87 v INTRODUCTION Intoxicants have been consumed throughout human history with their roles and uses dictated by and reflective of every individual society. Despite this, very little scholarship has focused on the impact of intoxicants on history prior to the modern period. The use of intoxicants - such as alcohol and opium - in Mughal India is well documented and often acknowledged in secondary sources written on the period. That intoxicants played a role at the Mughal court is undeniable but is often only vaguely referred to by historians, with the same basic information repeated over and over again in secondary literature. However, rather than identifying an evolution in the use of drugs and alcohol, intoxicants have been depicted either as widespread and unchanging or only mentioned in reference to specific individuals. The goal of this study is to both explicate and analyze the changing roles and uses of intoxicants at the Mughal court from 1526-1707 during the reigns of its first six emperors: Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb.1 During this period both alcohol and opium's roles in Mughal society transformed and reflected the larger changes that were happening within the Mughal world. 1 To avoid confusion, Jahangir and Shah Jahan will be referred to by their regnal names throughout as opposed to their given names, Selim and Khurram, respectively. 1 The lack of any study focused solely on the Mughals' changing relationship with and use of drugs and alcohol has unfortunately led to several misconceptions about both the Mughal world and the individuals within it. Portrayals of each emperor's relationship to intoxicants has increasingly had more to do with perceptions of the successfulness of their reigns than on what is actually in the historical record. Less effective rulers such as Humayun and Jahangir have become the emperors most often associated with addiction, while Akbar has been presented as a sober and temperate ruler. Humayun specifically has continually been portrayed as an opium addict in works such as those by John Richards, Waldemar Hansen, and Abraham Eraly; though when opium use throughout the empire is examined, his consumption hardly stands out as unique or out ofthe ordinary.2 This perception of Humayun has remained relatively unquestioned since it entered modern historiography through the works of Stanley Lane-Poole, Vincent Arthur Smith, and Stephen M. Edwardes.3 The opposite stance has been taken in relation to Akbar, as evidenced by Andre Wink who draws a direct correlation between the emperor's moderate use of intoxicants and his moderation in public policy, as apparently the two must go hand in hand.4 These ideas about who the emperors were has even effected the ways in which some primary sources have been interpreted. For example, in her book Nur 2 John Richards, The Mughal Empire (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India, 2007), 9-12; Waldemar Hansen, The Peacock Throne: The Drama of Mug hal India (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1972); Abraham Eraly, The Mugha/ Throne: The Saga of India's Great Emperors (London: Orion Books, 2004), 42-43. 3 Stanley Lane-Poole, Medieval India Under Mohammedan Rule, 712-1764 (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1903), 219; Vincent Arthur Smith, Akbar the Great Mogul, 1542-1605 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1919),406; Stephen Meredyth Edwardes and Herbert Leonard Offley Garrett, Mughal Rule in India (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributers, 1995), 11, 158. 4 Andre Wink, Akbar (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 58-59. 2 jahan, Ellison Banks Findly wrongly identifies Jahangir as the subject of a story about his father, Akbar, riding an elephant while drunk. Findly even goes so far as to use the episode as an example of Akbar's disapproval of his son's drinking habits. This and other misinterpretations appear to be the direct result of incorrect assessments that over time have come to be regarded as facts.s The only publication specifically on the topic of intoxicants, S.P. Sangar's article "Intoxicants in Mughal India," fails to provide any analysis of the subject, instead only listing off the names of different drugs and citing direct quotations from European travelers as evidence. Sangar does not scrutinize his sources, mention their consumption by specific individuals, or provide any indication of changes in how they were perceived or used.6 One significant exception to this tradition is Stephen Dale's book, The Garden of the Eight Paradises, wherein mUltiple connections are drawn between Babur's use of intoxicants and the earlier nomadic traditions from which he hailed. Though the focus of the work is on Babur's life and not narcotics, Dale discusses the changes that occurred in relation to drug and alcohol consumption during Babur's lifetime. Annemarie Schimmel's work The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art, and Culture has a short section on intoxicants which provides an interesting overview, but gives little information related to changing uses of or attitudes towards drugs and alcohol. In his book The Mughals of India, Harbans Mukhia mentions opium and alcohol multiple times but, like Schimmel, presents their place in society as 5 Ellison Banks Findley, Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughallndia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993),78. 6 S.P. Sangar, "Intoxicants
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