This is a study of an aspect of the ethnohistory of North Indian peasant society: the importance of its military labour market for state and sect formation, for social change as well as for the energetic survival strategies of the villages of Hindustan. It traces the history of the British Indian sepoy to at least as far back as the fifteenth century, firmly rooting him in India's medieval past. It also shows that, from the anthropological point of view, not the hierarchically arranged castes, but the multiple alliances and fluid identities of the peasantry were the central phenomena of North Indian politics and decision making.