New Horizons: A Socio-Economic Study of the Sixteenth Century India

The subject of the present study is society and economy during the sixteenth century as reflected in contemporary Braja literature. Literature has its own importance as a source of history though it can neither displace nor be a substitute for studies based on Persian historical sources, it can surely improve our understanding of the situation by showing what Herbert Butterfield has called the ‘other end of the stick’. Literature under reference has been studied not only as a barometer of the time but also as a weather-cock of public moods, opinion and reactions with regard to the changes tasking place in the social and cultural structure of the society. The intention is to study not only the changes that were imperceptibly but surely taking place in the different facets of the society but also the manner in which those changes were received by the people.