Of Musicians, Dancers, and the Maharaja

Abstract

Abstract This chapter establishes the significance of arts patronage in early to mid-nineteenth-century precolonial Punjab, especially focused on the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (r. 1799–1839). It provides evidence for the flourishing patronage of the performing arts under Ranjit Singh, with musicians and dancers being an affluent and influential class at the Lahore darbār. Second, it establishes the political centrality of specifically female dancers in the ritual infrastructure Ranjit Singh assembled, as part of political negotiations with the British particularly, and with European visitors more generally. A special focus is on Ranjit Singh’s corps of ‘Amazons’: female dancers dressed as men, performing martial feats, the cynosure of all eyes (especially male and European) and their significance in representing the martial glory of the Sikh state. The chapter reveals how musicians and female performers lay at the interstices of the Indo-European encounter in general, and Anglo-Sikh interactions in particular. More broadly, it reassesses performance as ‘gift-giving’ at the Sikh court, to demonstrate the powerful impact of cultural symbologies of rule, and of affect in the history of early nineteenth-century Punjab.