Friendship and the social life of merchants in South Asia: the articulation of homosocial intimacies in Banarasidas’ Ardhakathanaka

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the emotion of friendship among merchant communities in early modern South Asia. Based on the autobiography of a Jain merchant, Banarasidas, it argues that friendship as an emotion was invoked in multiple social contexts, sometimes to reinforce normative boundaries, and other times to subvert them. Even so, friendship was always multivalent, and extended beyond dyadic relationships. The social outreach of friendship was crucial in reinforcing community and kin ties. In the case of merchant communities, friendship played a crucial role in trade and business activities and very often it was the sentiment of friendship that sustained business partnerships. Friendship also ensured trust among merchants, enabling the free flow of goods and services in early modern South Asia. The autobiography of Banarasidas, Ardhakathanaka is written in versified Braj language. In exploring the text for emotion history, I have also looked at the relationship between language and emotions. Written in a vernacular language, the text combines literacy with performativity and this, I argue, imbues the text with a specific language of emotions that is intense, sensorial and embodied. At the same time, the choice of genre and its relations with emotions is no less significant. Within an autobiographical genre, emotions serve as indices to the constitution of selfhood. The articulation of friendship in Ardhakathanaka allows Banarasidas to situate his social self within a thick web of intimate relationships. Focusing on Ardhakathanaka, this paper looks at the entangled relationship between the choice of language, style and genre, and the articulation of specific emotions. Even as emotions are not entirely constituted in and through discourse, I still wish to suggest that language and emotions are co-dependent entities.