The Courtesan Tale: Female Musicians and Dancers in Mughal Historical Chronicles, <i>c</i>.1556–1748

Schofield, Katherine Butler

doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.2011.01673.x

Cited by 22 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…Chaudhry [7] writes in his LLM 1 thesis that before the Britishers arrival into the subcontinent, Indians were ruled by different kingdoms where sexuality was governed through religious texts, poetry, culture, music and therefore these precolonial societies had no uniform laws to regulate same sex relationship between men and boys. Same sex relationships were the common pattern in Mughal periods because the noblemen used to have sex with Khawaja Sara and Hijra's and this was too considered an act of masculinity in ancient Indian societies [8,9]. Perhaps, the concept of sexuality was more fluid during precolonial periods than now and in the colonial time.…”

Section: Section-377: An Anti-same Sex Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonization of Gender and Sexuality: Exploring the Stories of Discrimination, Marginalisation, Resistance, and Resilience in the Communities of Khawaja Sara and Hijra in Pakistan

Alamgir¹

2023

LGBT+ Communities - Creating Spaces of Identity

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This chapter draws attention on the different ways of colonisation, Islamisation and the decolonization of gender and sexuality amongst the transgender communities called Khawaja Sara and Hijra in contemporary Pakistan. The literature describes that during British colonialism the communities of Khawaja Sara and Hijra have been regulated and they were declared criminals with Criminal Tribal Act and Section-377, that produced rigorous repercussion on the living life of trans folks in colonial, postcolonial and contemporary periods. They are now and then were discriminated, oppressed, and marginalised, but this was not the case in precolonial periods where their lives were considered honourable, and they were given respectable positions in the Mughal Harems and other princely palaces. To investigate the contemporary marginalisation and then the survival practices of Khawaja Sara and Hijra as decolonial practice, this chapter engages with 10 members from Khawaja Sara and Hijra communities in a face-to-face direct interview and 04 photovoice interviews in Peshawar city. The findings highlight that Khawaja Sara and Hijra communities has the capacity to resist against the colonised and Islamised policies and to advocate for their rights and to get their voices heard across in their communities. This process is named as the decolonization of gender and sexuality in contemporary Pakistan.

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Section: Section-377: An Anti-same Sex Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonization of Gender and Sexuality: Exploring the Stories of Discrimination, Marginalisation, Resistance, and Resilience in the Communities of Khawaja Sara and Hijra in Pakistan

Alamgir¹

2023

LGBT+ Communities - Creating Spaces of Identity

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“…(Anon. 1885, 279) In India, dancing was a form of paid service, and it was not considered socially acceptable for women unless they were professional dancing girls, from hereditary families of musicians, or courtesans (Schofield 2012). This contrasted with what the British found in Burma, where the sons and dancers of officials could perform in group dances without being considered thabin-the (belonging to the theatrical profession) (Singer 1995a, 37).…”

Section: Indian Music and Theater In R Ango Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape

2023

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Sounding the Indian Ocean is the first volume to integrate the fields of ethnomusicology and Indian Ocean studies. Drawing on historical and ethnographic approaches, the book explores what music reveals about mobility, diaspora, colonialism, religious networks, media, and performance. Collectively, the chapters examine different ways the Indian Ocean might be “heard” outside of a reliance on colonial archives and elite textual traditions, integrating methods from music and sound studies into the history and anthropology of the region. Challenging the area studies paradigm—which has long cast Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as separate musical cultures—the book shows how music both forms and crosses boundaries in the Indian Ocean world.

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The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia

Cherian

2023

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Historians of Islamic occult science and post-Mongol Persianate kingship in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires have in recent years made clear just how central this body of knowledge was to the exercise of imperial power. Alongside, scholarship on tantra has pointed to its diffuse persistence in the early modern period. But what dynamics beyond courts and elite initiates did these investments in occult science and tantra unleash? Through a focus on the seventeenth-century Mughal court and the Rajput polity of Marwar in the eighteenth century, this article weaves together the history of animals with that of harmful magic by non-courtly actors. It demonstrates the blended histories of tantra, Islamicate occult sciences, and folk magic to argue that attributions of liminality encoded people, animals, and things with occult potential. For some, like the owl, this liminality could invite violence and death and for others, like expert male practitioners, it could generate authority. By the eighteenth century, the deployment of practical magic towards harmful or disruptive ends was a political tool wielded not only by kings and elite adepts for state or lineage formation but also by non-courtly subjects and “low”-caste specialists in local social life. States and sovereigns responded to the popular use of harmful magic harshly, aiming to cut off non-courtly access to this resource. If the early modern age was one of new ideologies of universal empire, the deployment of occult power outside the court was inconsistent with the ambitions of the kings of this time.

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The Courtesan Tale: Female Musicians and Dancers in Mughal Historical Chronicles, c.1556–1748

Cited by 22 publications

References 7 publications

Decolonization of Gender and Sexuality: Exploring the Stories of Discrimination, Marginalisation, Resistance, and Resilience in the Communities of Khawaja Sara and Hijra in Pakistan

Decolonization of Gender and Sexuality: Exploring the Stories of Discrimination, Marginalisation, Resistance, and Resilience in the Communities of Khawaja Sara and Hijra in Pakistan

Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape

The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia

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