The Female Companion in a World of Men: Friendship and Concubinage in Late Eighteenth-century Marwar

Abstract

This article maps the journey of the intimate companionship between a concubine and a Rajput ruler—Gulabrai and Vijay Singh, respectively—in the late eighteenth-century kingdom of Marwar in western Rajasthan. Based on hitherto unexamined local evidence, the article explores the ways in which a bond of friendship was constituted and unfolded in the everyday spheres of interaction between the concubine and the ruler. By turning attention to their evident emotions, such as of grief, trust, loyalty and love for each other, and shared partnership in spheres of religion and administration, this article suggests that friendship co-existed and overlapped with other forms of attachments in the overtly hierarchical relationship between the concubinage partners in focus. To emphasize the distinct form of this intimate companionship, the article also takes note of other forms of friendships that were centred on the agency of the concubine in the Rajput polity, and, in this way this article advances on the limited historical knowledge on concubinage in Rajput households and opens the possibility of including cross-sex associations in the discourse on friendship in early modern South Asia.