¹ “The Islamic Frontier in the East: Expansion into South Asia,” South Asia 4 (1974), p. 91.

² Jan (Kavi), in Sharma, Dasaratha, Nahata, Agarcand and Nahata, Bhamvarlal (eds.), Hindi trans. Misra, Ratanlal, Kyamkhan Rasa, 3rd ed. (Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracya Vidya Pratishthan, 1996)Google Scholar.

³ In KKR, Jan Kavi states that his father was Alaf Khan, but does not give his own name; it is provided in another of his poems, however. He was the second of five sons (Dasaratha Sharma, “Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta Kavivar Jan aur Unke Granth,” in Kyamkhan Rasa, by Jan Kavi, pp. 2–3).

⁴ KKR, vv. 377–81.

⁵ Dasaratha Sharma, “Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta,” p. 45.

⁶ KKR, vv. 317, 328–9.

⁷ KKR, v. 121.

⁸ ibn Mubarak, Abu al-Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, trans. Blochmann, H. and Jarrett, H. S. (Osnabruck: Biblio Verlag, 1983), Vol. 2, pp. 194 & 277Google Scholar.

⁹ Jos Gommans, J. L., Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to Empire, 1500–1700 (London & NY: Routledge, 2002), p. 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the significance of these statistics, see Guha, Sumit, “The Politics of Identity and Enumeration in India, c. 1600–1990,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45.1 (2003), pp. 151–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ The story of how Karamcand became a Turk is narrated in KKR, vv. 122–62.

¹¹ Robinson, Chase F., Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 150Google Scholar.

¹² Mumhata Nainsi, in Sakariya, Badriprasad (ed.), Mumhata Nainsi ri Khyat, Vol. 3, (Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracya Vidya Pratisthan, 1993), pp. 273–4Google Scholar.

¹³ Saran, Richard D. and Ziegler, Norman P., The Mertiyo Rathors of Merto, Rajasthan: Select Translations Bearing on the History of a Rajput Family, 1462–1660 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 2001), Vol. 1, pp. 10–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ The Cauhans and Jats are both major landholding communities in the Haryana region. Cauhans, as members of the broader Rajput category, are typically ranked higher in social status than Jats.

¹⁵ This is a loose translation, based on the Hindi rendition provided by Sakariya, Khyat, Vol. 3, p. 275. The word I gloss as dependant is bandi, which can mean prisoner or slave; it may also here be a variant of banda (slave, servant, dependant). Another label applied to Kyam Khan in the Khyat verses is gola, a term that implies a condition of servitude, as well as inferiority (Sreenivasan, Ramya, “Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines: Female Slaves in Rajput Polity, 1500–1850,” in Chatterjee, Indrani and Eaton, Richard M. (eds.), Slavery & South Asian History, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 144)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ For biographical details on Nainsi, see Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 1, pp. 15–24.

¹⁷ Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 1, p. 11.

¹⁸ Kolff, Dirk H. A., Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 72–4Google Scholar.

¹⁹ For a discussion of some of the historical texts, both literary and visual, produced at the seventeenth-century Mewar court, see Talbot, Cynthia, “The Mewar Court's Construction of History,” in Williams, Joanna (ed.), The Kingdom of the Sun: Indian Court and Village Art from the Princely State of Mewar, (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2007), pp. 12–33Google Scholar.

²⁰ Ziegler, Norman P., “Marvari Historical Chronicles: Sources for the Social and Cultural History of Rajasthan,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 13 (1976), pp. 231–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Ziegler, “Marvari Historical Chronicles,” pp. 233–35, 240–44.

²² KKR vv. 184–242.

²³ Jackson, Peter, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 306–13, 318–21Google Scholar.

²⁴ KKR vv. 187–8, 192–3.

²⁵ There was a range of unfree statuses in medieval India, making it difficult to translate words like banda or cera; nor were the boundaries between free and unfree status entirely clear. Richard M. Eaton has advanced the following definition of slavery: “the condition of uprooted outsiders, impoverished insiders—or descendants of either—serving persons or institutions on which they are wholly dependent” (“Introduction,” in Chatterjee, Indrani and Eaton, Richard M. (ed.), Slavery & South Asian History, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 2Google Scholar). An important feature of slavery was an individual's alienation from his/her natal family, a situation that was true for Kyam Khan in both KKR and Khyat.

²⁶ The following summary is based on the English translation by Edward Clive Bayley (The Local Muhammadan Dynasties: Gujarat [London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1886], 67–72) and a Hindi translation (Manju, Iskandar ibn Muhammad, Mirate Sikandari [Jaipur: Sabd Mahima Prakasan, 2002], pp. 1–6Google Scholar).

²⁷ Bayley, Local Muhammadan Dynasties, p. 72.

²⁸ References to Khan, Qawam appear in Tarikh-i Mubarakshahi, trans. Basu, K. K. (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1932), pp. 182, 183, 186, 195Google Scholar.

²⁹ The date of the text is given in Hardy, Peter, Historians of Medieval India: Studies in Indo-Muslim Historical Writing, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997), p. 56Google Scholar.

³⁰ Approximately 120 verses of the KKR cover the period from Firuz Shah Tughluq's death to Kyam Khan's death, out of a total of 1,045 verses. Alternatively, Jan Kavi may have been familiar with Indo-Persian historical literature and/or traditions and fleshed out this portion of his text with their help, although the considerable divergence in particulars makes this scenario less plausible.

³¹ KKR vv. 242–303; cf. Jackson, Delhi Sultanate, pp. 321–2.

³² See the extract from Futuhat-i Firuz Shahi, a text intended to be made public as an inscription, in Elliot, H. M., in Dowson, John (ed.), The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1996), Vol. 3, p. 386Google Scholar.

³³ Mayaram, Shail, Against History, against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins (NY: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 23Google Scholar.

³⁴ For more on Maqbul's career, see Jauhri, R. C., Medieval India in Transition—Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, a First Hand Account (New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 2001), pp. 221–34Google Scholar.

³⁵ For the political history of Shams Khan of Nagaur and his descendants, see Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 2, pp. 439–42.

³⁶ Musalman appears in vv. 14 & 153; Turk (turak) in vv. 120, 122, 131, 140, 816, 859; and Hindu in vv. 14, 121, 130, 385, 429, 511, 640, 818.

³⁷ KKR vv. 385, 640. See also v. 816.

³⁸ The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 116.

³⁹ Hodgson, Marshall G. S., The Venture of Islam, Vol. 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 538CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ Jauhri, Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, pp. 158–9.

⁴¹ “Service, Status, and Military Slavery in the Delhi Sultanate: Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” in Chatterjee, Indrani and Eaton, Richard M. (ed.), Slavery & South Asian History, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 97–102Google Scholar; see also Siddiqui, Iqtidar Husain, “Social Mobility in the Delhi Sultanate,” in Habib, Irfan (ed.), Medieval India 1, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 27–8, 37–42Google Scholar.

⁴² For recent scholarship on conversion as an often ambiguous and protracted process, see Robinson, Rowena and Clarke, Sathianathan (eds.), Religious Conversion in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁴³ Digby, Simon, “Before Timur Came: Provincialization of the Delhi Sultanate through the Fourteenth Century,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47. 3 (2004), pp. 302–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ The marriages are mentioned in KKR, vv. 433–5, 438–44 and 581–2, respectively. For the dates of Jodha and Lunkaran, I have relied on Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, pp. 194 and 256.

⁴⁵ Norman P. Ziegler, “Action, Power and Service in Rajasthani Culture: A Social History of the Rajputs of Middle Period Rajasthan” (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1973), pp. 61–3.

⁴⁶ According to KKR, the first Kyamkhani to have contact with the Mughals was Daulat Khan I, whom Babur supposedly visited and described as one of the three most renowned men in Hindustan (vv. 517–31). This is highly implausible. KKR also states that Fadan Khan, Taj Khan's father, was honoured by both Humayun and Akbar and gave a daughter in marriage to the latter (vv. 627–42). While this is possible, Fadan Khan is not mentioned in any Mughal sources.

⁴⁷ Taj Khan Khatria is No. 404 in the list of mansabdars in Ain-i Akbari (Vol. 1, p. 526), whereas the other Taj Khan is No. 172 (Vol. 1, p. 457).

⁴⁸ It should be noted that numerical mansab ranks were considerably lower during Akbar's reign than in later times. The Ain-i Akbari lists only 57 mansabdars at 1,000 zat or higher, another 145 in ranks from 900 down to 250 zat, and 81 at 200 zat; for a total of 283 men (Shireen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire c. 1595 [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987], Table 9.2 on p. 214). Hence, despite his seemingly low rank, Taj Khan was a member of a very select circle. The rankings initially indicated the number of horsemen that an officer was supposed to maintain for the imperial service, but inflation in the rankings during the seventeenth century led to the introduction of complicated ratios between mansab rank and the required level of troop support.

⁴⁹ Alaf Khan's highest rank was 2,000 zat/1,500 sawar (Ali, M. Athar, The Apparatus of Empire: Awards of Ranks, Offices and Titles to the Mughal Nobility, 1574–1658 [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985], pp. 80, 84Google Scholar). He is mentioned in Jahangir's memoirs, sometimes with the suffix Qiyamkhani (Jahangir, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston [Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; NY: Oxford University Press, 1999], pp. 94, 180, 353, 374–5, 381, 410).

⁵⁰ Anwar, Firdos, Nobility under the Mughals (1628–1658) (Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2001), p. 21Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Daulat Khan's highest rank was 1,500 zat/1,000 sawar, achieved in the 1640s. Mention of him in Mughal sources is noted in Athar Ali, Apparatus of Empire, pp. 100, 147, 169, 194, 216.

⁵² Richards, John F., Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 132–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ KKR, v. 939.

⁵⁴ Alam, Muzaffar, “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics,” Modern Asian Studies 32.2 (1998), pp. 323–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ He also prepared a Braj Bhasa version of the Sanskrit Pancatantra animal fables, which was presented to emperor Shah Jahan (Sharma, “Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta,” pp. 3, 6, 9)

⁵⁶ For more on these two genres in Braj Bhasa literature, see Busch, Allison, “The Anxiety of Literary Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in Hindi/Riti Tradition,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24.2 (2004), pp. 45–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Literary Responses to the Mughal Imperium: The Historical Poems of Kesavdas,” South Asia Research 25. 1 (2005), pp. 31–54.

⁵⁷ McGregor, R. S., Hindi Literature from Its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 1984), pp. 126–29, 173–74Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Snell, Rupert, The Hindi Classical Tradition: A Braj Bhasa Reader (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1991), p. 43Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Two volumes of Jan's poems have recently been published (Lahoti, Vina et al. (ed.), Jan Granthavali, Vol. 3: Premakhyan Sangrah, [Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracya Vidya Pratishthan, 2004]Google Scholar; Singhvi, Vandana et al. (ed.), Jan Granthavali, Vol. 4: Premakhyan Sangrah, [Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pracya Vidya Pratishthan, 2005]Google Scholar). A good number of Jan's poems (some of which are quite short) are classified as premakhyans or romantic adventure tales. Unlike the famous romances written earlier in Avadhi by Jayasi and others, however, Jan's poems do not reveal any Sufi influence (Om Prakash Sharma, “Foreword,” in Jan Granthavali Vol. 3, p. vi).

⁶⁰ Dasaratha Sharma, “Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta,” pp. 3, 11–12.

⁶¹ The information on Sundardas and Dadu in the previous sentences has been taken from Thiel-Horstmann, Monika, Crossing the Ocean of Existence: Braj Bhasa Religious Poetry from Rajasthan (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983), pp. 3–14Google Scholar.

⁶² Dasaratha Sharma, “Kyamkhan Rasa ke Kartta,” pp. 11–12.

⁶³ A pioneering study of the transregional character of Braj Bhasa is Allison Busch, “The Courtly Vernacular: The Transformation of Braj Bhasa Literary Culture (1590–1690),” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2003.

⁶⁴ On Bikat Kahani, see Phukan, Shantanu, “‘Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet’: The Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 38. 1 (2001), pp. 37–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Tuhfatu'l Hind, see McGregor, R. S., “The Progress of Hindi, Part I: The Development of a Transregional Idiom,” in Pollock, Sheldon (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 942–4Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Snell, Hindi Classical Tradition, pp. 33–4, 39–40.

⁶⁶ Phukan, “‘Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet’,” pp. 43–8, 54.

⁶⁷ KKR, vv. 14–15.

⁶⁸ The word Rajput appears in KKR, vv. 68, 605, 635, 1041.

⁶⁹ KKR, vv. 458, 557.

⁷⁰ KKR, v. 68.

⁷¹ KKR, vv. 895, 936.

⁷² ibn Mubarak, Abu al-Fazl, The Akbarnama of Abu-l-Fazl, trans. Beveridge, H. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1897), Vol. 1, pp. 155–69Google Scholar.

⁷³ Trautmann, Thomas R., Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 28–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁴ Trautmann, Aryans and British India, p. 53.

⁷⁵ KKR, v. 32.

⁷⁶ KKR, vv. 110–111.

⁷⁷ Briggs, G. W., Goraknath and the Kanphata Yogis (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973 [1938]), pp. 235–6Google Scholar; Lapoint, Elwyn C., “The Epic of Guga: A North Indian Oral Tradition,” in Vatuk, Sylvia (ed.), American Studies in the Anthropology of India, (New Delhi: Manohar, 1978), pp. 281–308Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Crooke, William, The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, 2nd ed. (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), Vol. 1, pp. 211–13Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ E.g., Nainsi identifies Daraira/Dadreva as Guga's residence (Smith, John D., The Epic of Pabuji [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], pp. 72, 488Google Scholar). Dadreva appears to have long been under Cauhan sway, for an inscription there dated 1217 AD cites a Cauhan lord who appears four generations before Karamcand's father, Mote Ray, in the Kyamkhani genealogy (Sharma, Dasaratha, Early Chauhan Dynasties, 2nd ed., [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1975], p. 365Google Scholar). Scholars have placed considerable credence in the genealogy because of its correspondence with the inscription, without considering the possibility that the Kyamkhanis were somehow aware of the inscription's contents.

⁸⁰ KKR, v. 740. Other references to Kyamkhani greatness as a result of their descent from Hammir and Prithviraj Cauhan are found in vv. 612 and 1032.

⁸¹ On laj, see Saran and Ziegler, Mertiyo Rathors, Vol. 1, p. 96 n. 120. The word raj, meaning pride in one's bravery or honourable reputation, is sometimes paired with laj in KKR (vv. 881, 952).

⁸² KKR, vv. 879–928.

⁸³ KKR, vv. 879, 927.

⁸⁴ KKR, vv. 934, 936–7.

⁸⁵ Gordon, Stewart, “Zones of Military Entrepreneurship in India, 1500–1700,” in Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 189–92Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ KKR, v. 936. See Richards, John F., “The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir,” in Richards, J. F. (ed.), Kingship & Authority in South Asia, (Madison: South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1978), pp. 253–4, 271–2Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Ziegler,”Action, Power and Service,” pp. 58–60.

⁸⁸ Riport Mardumsumari Rajmarvar San 1891 Isvi: Marwar Census Report 1891 (Jodhpur: Sri Jagadisasingh Gahlot Sodh Sansthan, 1997), p. 77.

⁸⁹ Lavania, B. K. et al. (ed.), People of India, Vol. 38 pt. 2: Rajasthan (Mumbai: Anthropological Survey of India & Popular Prakashan, 1998), p. 311Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Taft, Frances H., “The Origins of the Shekhavat Thikanas of Jaipur,” in Singhi, N. K. and Joshi, Rajendra (ed.), Religion, Ritual and Royalty, (Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 1999), pp. 289–95Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Census of India 1911, Vol. 22 pt. 1, p. 253.

⁹² People of India: Rajasthan, p. 510.

⁹³ The Meos are a much larger group than the Kyamkhanis, comprising 165, 416 individuals in the 1911 census. Although they are considered a dominant landed caste comparable to rural Rajputs, they never possessed the elite status that is characteristic of the aristocratic Rajput lineages of Rajasthan. For more on the Meos, see Shail Mayaram, Against History, against State, and Jamous, Raymond, Kinship and Rituals among the Meo of Northern India: Locating Sibling Relationships, trans. Scott, Nora (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar. For descriptions of a range of Muslim communities in Rajasthan, see Zaidi, S. Inayat A. and Zaidi, Sunita, “Conversion to Islam and Formation of Castes in Medieval Rajasthan,” in Qaisar, Ahsan Jan and Verma, Som Prakash (eds.) Art and Culture: Felicitation Volume in Honour of Professor S. Nurul Hasan, [Jaipur: Publication Scheme, 1993], pp. 27–42Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ KKR, vv. 710–717.

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