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SUMMARY:Mayalee Dancing Girl\, the East India Company\, and the Sambhar Sa
 lt Lake Affair 1835-42 - Dr Katherine Butler Schofield (King's College\, L
 ondon)
DTSTART:20191120T170000Z
DTEND:20191120T180000Z
UID:TALK131779@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Barbara Roe
DESCRIPTION:In 1818\, the East India Company signed a treaty with the auto
 nomous Rajput states of Jaipur and Jodhpur\, offering British political an
 d military protection in exchange for heavy cash tribute. By the early 183
 0s\, these states were swimming in debt and increasingly resisting the Com
 pany's influence. So in 1835 the Company took direct control over the reve
 nue of the salt lake at Sambhar\, still one of India’s largest sources o
 f that most precious of commodities\, salt. Sambhar Lake was returned to J
 aipur's and Jodhpur’s control in 1842 when\, having been brought to the 
 brink of ruin by the Company’s protection racket\, their arrears were wr
 itten off by the Government in Calcutta. Short-lived and little-studied\, 
 the Sambhar Lake affair left behind a set of financial accounts in the Eas
 t India Company records that are alive with details of musicians and dance
 rs\, the cycle of Sambhar's festival year\, and the economics of such cult
 ural production.\nOne musician in particular stands forth from Jaipur's ac
 counts as exceptional: Mayalee “dancing girl”. As well as being paid a
  monthly cash stipend\, she received 25 maunds of salt annually\, and was 
 clearly one of Sambhar’s chief courtesans. Little exculpatory notes in t
 he margins of successive Company accounts reveal that Mayalee successfully
  resisted the Company’s attempt to force her to give up her salt stipend
  in exchange for cash. Was she merely protecting a nice little sideline se
 lling salt? Or did the more lofty ideal of “faithfulness to the salt” 
 (namak-halālī) underpin her resistance? In this paper I consider why Ind
 ian musicians\, and especially courtesans\, appear at all in the official 
 records of the East India Company\, and what this tells us about relations
  between the British colonial state and the Indian peoples whose worlds th
 e Company was increasingly encroaching upon during the 1830s and 40s.\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room SG1\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambri
 dge CB3 9DT
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