Jain Journal 1973 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 43

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Akbar established friendly relations with the Rajput rulers in Rajasthan, the home of large number of Jainas. The Rajput leaders of Rajasthan placed themselves in the service of the Mughals. As the Mughals had created a common bureaucracy and army for the empire, many of these Rajput nobles went to the east. Some of them were accompanied by members of the Jaina community as 'financial advisers'. In reality, these 'financial advisers' were traders, bankers, money-changers and usurers, all rolled into one. Further, the Rajput army contingents were accompanied by the Jainas who arranged supplies of food, etc. Thus the Jainas, had a good and first-hand look at the potentialities of Bihar market. Therefore, when the Jainas found going hard in the AgraDelhi and Gujarat markets in the second half of the seventeenth century, they turned to Bihar.
JAIN JOURNAL
In the second half of the seventeenth century, a number of factors had depressed profits in the markets of north and north-western India. From the time of Shahjahan, the Mughals were on inimical terms with Safavid rulers of Persia and their relations with Central Asian powers were not cordial. This affected India's overland trade with Persia and Central Asian principalities. The Lahore market thus lost much of its importance. The Sikh uprising in the Punjab further affected business opportunities in the province.
The beginnings of Maratha invasions on Gujarat in 1664 and the political instability on the western coast of India compelled the European trading companies to shift their attention to eastern coast. But the growing conflict between the Mughals and the Deccan kingdoms, the Mughals and the Marathas and between the Marathas and the Deccan kingdoms made operations in the markets of the Deccan and the Coromandel coast difficult. Things became still more difficult when Aurangzeb left the north for south and intensified military measures against the Deccan states. Hence, the Europeans too were now concentrating on Bihar, Bengal and Orissa. Here they could get in abundance their requirements of textiles, saltpetre, indigo, sugar, etc. without encountering much political interference. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century Bihar, Bengal and Orissa were commercially the most prosperous territory in India.
The Jainas now began moving to the east as the other northern Indian trading communities like the Vaisyas and Ksatris had been
4 Guru Tegh Bahadur left his pregnant wife at the house of a devotee in Patna while proceeding to Assam. She gave birth to a child who acquired fame as Guru Gobind Singh.