Religion, accumulation and credit in Mughal times—Evidence from the Vrindavan archives

Abstract

This is a study of how the holy men of Vrindavan—the Gosā’ins of the Chaitanya sect—accumulated wealth and property, and how this enabled them to further augment it by investing in land, credit and usury. They lent money against mortgage of peasant-held land, which resulted in further land-acquisitions. The study is based on the large amount of private papers preserved by the Gosā’ins since c. 1550, mainly in Persian but also in Braj. This material in the form of photographs and xerox copies was collected by the late Dr Tarapada Mukherjee.