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FAMINES IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT, 1500 to 1767
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1616 (a) [to 1617]: Kashmir1616 map
Documented causes: unspecified
Documented effects: major epidemic; Sikh relief efforts

Sikh Missionary College, "Brief History Of The Sikh Gurus" (undated, c2000)
p45: [Life of the sixth Sikh Guru, Hargobind] "In 1616, he visited Kashmir where people were suffering due to famine. Satguru Ji spent the Dasvandh [voluntary tithe] amount on improving the conditions of the people there. Impressed by the gesture, many Muslims accepted Sikhism. Bhai Kattu is a famous person of this conversion." [I have been unable to find this story in English translations of authoritative sources]
Shyam Lal Sadhu, "Rupa Bhavani" (2003)
p51: "A few years before Rupa Bhavani took her birth the population was decimated in a severe epidemic of cholera in the regime of Ahmad Beg Khan, subedar (A.D. 1615-17). Dead bodies of the victims were thrown naked into the river and people abstained from taking fish for a long time. One Hassan Shawl had a large herd of cattle, but he was forced to drive them into the forest as he had no heir to look after them."
Abdul Majid Mattoo, "Kashmir Under Jahangir (1605-1627 AD)" (M. Phil. Dissertation, Aligarh Muslim University, 1973)
p87: [Events when Ahmad Beg Khan was governor in Kashmir] "During the brief spell of his governorship an epidemic broke out in 12 H.r [This appears to indicate the 12th regnal year of Jahangir, corresponding roughly to 1026 AH / 1617 CE] and swept the state entirely for one and half year. There did not remain a single house which was not effected. The plague was so acute that even the attendants did not survive. The magnitude of disaster was so great that the entire city was devastated and most of the people left for woods …"
Pandit Anand Koul, "Geography Of The Jammu And Kashmir State" (2nd ed., 1925)
[This famine and epidemic seem to match the events described by Koul on pages 105 and 110 as events of 1603-4.]

1616: Gingee, Tamil Nadu
Documented causes: war
Documented effects: dam broken

C.S. Srinivasachari, "History of Gingee and its Rulers" (1943)
[In 1614, the Emperor of Vijayanagar, Sriranga II, was deposed by forces loyal to Jagga Raya (brother of the widow of the previous Emperor Venkata II) and subsequently murdered, with all his family except one son who had escaped. A civil war ensued.]
pp143-4: "From the beginning, the legitimist party gradually gained strength and the Nayak of Madura cut the great dam across the Kaveri in order to prevent the enemy from advancing further south. [Footnote: "The Sahityaratnakara (Canto XIII, 78 and 83) says that some-one should have broken the dam at the instigation of Jagga Raya. Ramabhadramba, the authoress of the Raghunathabhyudayam, distinctly says that the dam should have been cut up by the rulers of the west (Raghunathabhyudayam, Canto IX, 26.)]
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