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WARRIOR ASCETICS AND INDIAN EMPIRES. By William R. Pinch. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xi, 280pp. (Maps, figures, tables.) US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 0-521-85168-8.
William Pinch's ambitious book traces ascetic warriors-companies (akharas) of men and their retinues who variously called themselves sanyasis, gosains, bairagis, fakirs and (especially) nagas-from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the Nehru era. He suggests first, a process of expansion and institutionalization during the seventeenth century under Mughal rule; second, a peak of influence in the eighteenth century when armed ascetics were employed as inexpensive and well-armed infantry and cavalry soldiers; and third, an incomplete domestication of militant ascetics under the suspicious vigilance of British rule and with redefinitions of "proper" Hindu asceticism in modern devotional Hinduism and Hindu nationalism.
Armed yogis clearly antedated Mughal rule. Pinch argues that the terms of Mughal military service increased recruitment of lower caste boys, strengthened the discipline and identity of fighting akharasas non-biological corporate groups, especially in Dasnami Saiva orders, and routinized their employment as shock troops of the infantry. At the same time, fighting ascetics also operated independently in wandering and predatory bands. But was...