Money and Ritual in Eighteenth-Century South India

Abstract

Between 1600 and 1800 South Asia absorbed about a fifth of the new silver injected into the global economy and a number of historians have documented the commercial boom and monetization of economic life that followed. This article, which draws on evidence from South India, examines the use of money in rituals that marked life-cycle events such as birth, marriage and death, which is an element of monetization that has thus far gone unrecognized. Money was a critical part of the gifts that were given at ritual moments and coins were an essential object in rituals as they were believed to possess magical powers. The ubiquity of money in South Indian ritual life and its role in solidifying personal relations suggests that the classic social theories of money, which drew upon European thought and viewed it as a force that destroyed connections between people, must be rethought.