Paper short abstract:

The paper proposes an examination of forms of domestic service in the fifteenth century Mithila. It does so by historicizing both the ‘domestic’ and the idea of ‘service’ to write a pre-history of the colonial and post-colonial category of ‘naukar’.

Paper long abstract:

My paper proposes to study a series of 'service-relationships' as prescriptively described in the Sanskrit and vernacular literature of the fifteenth century Mithila.

Historians have come to realize that the pre-modern states and societies drew their strength and stability as much from the way a series of fluid and contingent relationships were maintained as from the institutions within which they were nurtured.

My study focuses on the oeuvre of a prolific author of Mithila, namely Vidyapati who wrote in three different languages, several genres and a variety of themes. His varied compositions present a rich variety of occasions to study domestic service in very different contexts. I seek to locate domestic servants within a range of comparable relationships: from those that were affectively and ethically constituted to those that were also legally secured. It is true that between legal slavery and intimate service bonding, a continuum of such relationships might be mapped (Eaton & Chatterjee, 2006). However, my study seeks to suggest that within the limitations of available 'sources' (e.g. all extant accounts are invariably from the perspective of the beneficiary of service), it is possible to clearly distinguish between these relationships as they are represented in contemporary narratives. Secondly, both caste and gender considerations seem to embed such relationships within a dharmaśāstrika context, but caste identity itself could be shaped by the nature of service. It would appear at the same time that the distinction between the house-hold as a private realm and the 'productive' space as a public realm appears to be hardly present.