Dancer, your image is in the pupil of my heart
You are always sought after by my eyes
Waking and sleeping I can see only you
I look I see you standing.

In his poems, Quli often addressed the unknown woman as a “dancer”. This is believed to be a reference to Bhagmati because she was a dancer – a devadasi or servant of God. She lived in Chinchlam, a predominantly Brahmin settlement where the Sufi saint Shah Chirag also had his abode. In Chinchlam, the cult of Mathangis followed the tradition of offering young girls as devadasis to temples, writes Rekha Pande in her paper Writing the History of Women in the Margins: The Courtesans in India.

In the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, which had been Golconda’s neighbour before it was wiped off the map in the battle of Talicota in 1565, the devadasis were of great importance as they served the gods. They were well versed in dance and music and were patronised by both the state and the public. The English merchant and administrator William Methwold, who visited Golconda during the reign of Muhammad Qutb Shah, recounted in his memoirs Relations of the Kingdome of Golchonda and other Neighbouring Nations, that during the festival of...