Hunting ground, agricultural land and the forest: sustainable interdependency in Mughal India 1526–1707

The Mughal society had two salient characteristics: it was agrarian and had a complex imperial hunting culture. The enactment of cultivation and the hunt, both vital to the state in different respects, transformed the natural environment of forested spaces which were appropriated for cultivation and hunting needs. These needs, along with the prevailing attitudes towards forests as spaces of lawlessness and hostility, generated a demand for deforestation. The paper proposes that this demand resulted in differentiating the ‘natural landscape’ (the forest) from the ‘modified landscape’ of the imperial shikargah (hunting ground), which were sited on deforested land at the edge of cultivated spaces. It argues that the Mughals viewed the shikargah as a transitional zone between the cultivated land and the uncultivated forest as it established a continuity between hunting and agricultural practices. Symbolic notions of harmony that were said to exist between the two spaces, and proximity of wildlife and shikargahs to agriculture, formed the basis of this continuity. The paper also proposes that while the cultivated land and shikargah were often seen as conflictual spaces due to the detrimental effect of hunting practices on agricultural growth, they were also seen as mutually beneficial spaces due to the contributions the sophisticated hunting practices made to agriculture. It discusses the various processes through which the Mughal emperor dealt with the dichotomy of imperial hunting practices and its impact on agriculture and forestry. The paper concludes that a sustainable interdependency existed between these three important components of Mughal landscapes in terms of spatial, cultural and political perspectives.