Worship and Festivals in Mughal South Asia

Between the Mughal conquest of 1526 and the empire’s end in 1857, worship in South Asia took place in homes, temples, mosques, shrines and congregational kitchens. Court accounts from Akbar and Shah Jahan preserve particular rites, while later descriptions record local gatherings; together they show how people connected devotional practice with food, travel and the calendar.

On this page6 sections

Household worship and ritual preparation

Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari, compiled at Akbar’s court in the late sixteenth century, presents a sequence for Hindu image worship. The worshipper sits facing east or north, sprinkles rice and water, venerates a pitcher and a conch shell, then pours the shell’s water over the image. After washing, dressing and perfuming it, the worshipper lights a lamp with ghee, or clarified butter, and sets food before the image. Abu’l Fazl places the lamp and food offering at step 13, followed by supplication at step 14. His account presents a learned ritual sequence.

Muslim practice also joined devotion to practical service. Inayat Khan’s Shah Jahan Nama records that in 1650, during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, jurists excused Shah Jahan, then over sixty, from the fast and allowed charity in its place. The emperor distributed 60,000 rupees and ordered food and sweetmeats set out each night in the Chihil Sutun, the public audience hall, for poor people. The account concerns an imperial dispensation and a public relief arrangement.

Writing in 1832 after twelve years among Muslim households in India, Meer Hassan Ali describes Muharram, the Islamic month of mourning, in Lucknow. Families and visitors gathered in homes and imambaras, halls for mourning assemblies, before models of Husayn’s tomb; Husayn was the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. On the tenth day, processions carried temporary models to public burial grounds.

Pilgrimage and shrine gatherings

A shrine could serve as both a destination and a place where worshippers gathered for an annual observance. The urs, a saint’s death anniversary understood by devotees as a reunion with God, brought pilgrims to the tomb and its surrounding shrine. At Ajmer in Rajasthan, India, Akbar and Jahangir attended the urs of Muin al-Din Chishti. Akbar donated a large cauldron, or deg, for cooking food for pilgrims, joining imperial patronage to the work of feeding visitors at the shrine. The gathering belonged to an established devotional site as well as to the emperor’s public religious life. See Ajmer Sharif.

A different Muslim festival reached the public through a royal procession. On 19 June 1632, the English merchant Peter Mundy watched Shah Jahan celebrate Buckree Eede, or Bakr Eid (Eid al-Adha), the festival during the pilgrimage month. The emperor rode on a royal elephant beneath a cloth-of-gold canopy with three of his sons; as the procession passed, he threw gold among the assembled people. Mundy’s account records the public route and distribution, while leaving the prayer and sacrifice outside his description.

The hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, required arrangements across household, port and court. Annette Beveridge’s introduction to Gulbadan’s memoir reports that in 1575 Gulbadan Begum and other Mughal women set out from Fatehpur Sikri for Surat on Gujarat’s western coast, then sailed in 1576 aboard a hired Turkish ship. Portuguese control of the sea route delayed departure until the Mughal port governor intervened and secured permission; the ships left in October. The episode tied a royal pilgrimage to port officials and chartered sea travel.

Hindu calendars and local observances

Abu’l Fazl’s calendar records festivals through lunar months and notes that different methods of reckoning could place a festival a month apart. For Navaratri, the nine nights of worship in Chaitra, he describes pilgrims assembling at Nagarkot, present-day Kangra in Himachal Pradesh, and other places devoted to Durga, the Hindu goddess. On Vijayadashami, he says, people decorated horses with green barley sprouts and workers honoured their tools. The entry brings pilgrimage and work objects into a festival calendar, while its date discrepancy shows that a named observance did not always fall on the same calculated day.

The same calendar gives concrete household and public actions for other festivals. It describes lamps lit for Diwali, coloured powders thrown and songs sung at Vasanta, and fires and coloured powders during Holi. These short entries show how observance could use light, sound, tools, animals and seasonal gatherings. Abu’l Fazl also lists fasts with different demands: some involved abstaining from food and water for a full day and night, while others allowed fruit and milk or a single meal. His account records several fasting disciplines.

François Bernier, a French physician living in Delhi in northern India, described a solar eclipse in 1666 from his house beside the Yamuna. He saw people standing waist-deep along the river, immersing themselves when the eclipse began, raising water toward the sun and praying. Wealthier families crossed the river with tents and screens so relatives could bathe in privacy. Bernier’s account records a specific riverside observance and the arrangements made by families with different resources.

Jain observance and negotiated protections

Jain teachers brought ritual concerns before Mughal officials as well as teaching their own communities. Audrey Truschke records that Hiravijaya, leader of the Tapā Gaccha, a Jain monastic lineage, obtained an order from Akbar banning animal slaughter during Paryushana, a Jain festival of fasting, repentance and reflection. His successor Vijayasena later secured a similar order from Jahangir. Hiravijaya also petitioned against fishing in a pond near Fatehpur Sikri. The orders tied Jain observance to local protections negotiated with the Mughal court.

Sikh congregations and shared kitchens

In Sikh communities, the Gurus were religious teachers and leaders. The sangat was a congregation that met to sing their hymns, while a dharamsala was a place for such gatherings. The related langar was a community kitchen, and pangat described people sitting together in a row to eat. Under Guru Amar Das (1552–1574), Goindwal in Punjab became a centre where visitors first ate in the langar before meeting the Guru. Guru Angad’s wife, Mata Khivi, is remembered in Sikh scripture for distributing food from the kitchen at Khadur; accounts describe rice pudding with ghee among its dishes. By Guru Arjan’s time, service in the kitchen included grinding grain and tending the oven, and community offerings helped maintain meals at meeting places. Cooking, serving and eating were part of congregational practice.

Court festivals and public giving

Akbar’s court also marked Nawruz, the Persian New Year, as a royal festival. Abu’l Fazl describes a nineteen-day period beginning when the sun entered Aries, with the first and nineteenth days treated as major feasts. Drums sounded at the start of each watch, singers and musicians performed, and coloured lamps were used for three nights. The two principal days brought gifts and distributions. A separate imperial birthday ceremony involved weighing Akbar against goods such as gold, silk, perfumes and grain, then giving animals and other donations to recipients. These are court ceremonies recorded by a writer serving Akbar; they show how a ruler’s calendar could turn ritual occasions into public acts of patronage.