Medieval India

7 Key excerpts on "Medieval India"

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  A History of India

  • Burton Stein, David Arnold(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  This has a number of advantages. Smaller regional realms and social orders permit the treatment of Muslims and their kingdoms in the same manner as Hindus, and the southern penin- sula in the same manner as the north. Smaller geographical scaling also avoids the implication that a whole subcontinent passively and presciently awaited its eventual conquest by Europeans. Medieval and Early Modern India 108 Three general periods are taken up in this second part of the history of India: the post-Gupta, early medieval age in India and Southeast Asia, between 500 and 1200 ce; the incursions of Muslim power from 1000 ce, culminating with the establishment of a series of sultanates in the Gangetic plain from 1200 to 1500; and the conditions shaping the Mughal epoch of the seventeenth century. The processes which define the transition from ancient to Medieval Indian history are all-encompassing. One reason for positing a feudal epoch in India is a supposed decline of cities. Urban centres of commerce and of centralized state authority are thought to have declined from about the fourth century ce, leaving rural institutions in a dominant position during Gupta times, when agrarian production and therefore the power of landed interests became ascendant. Deurbanization suggests similarity with Europe, but the evidence for this thesis is somewhat thin. What is clear, however, is the spread of field agriculture, and the dominance of agrarian over pastoral, if not over urban-based industrial and commercial, interests. Whether or not it resembled changes in Europe at about the same time, there is broad agreement that agricultural settlement spread more rapidly then ever before, from the scattered zones of secure riverine irrigation to ever larger areas. These enlarged agrarian zones consisted of mixed wet and dry cultivation and mixed agriculture and herding. As landed communities proliferated and spread, the status enjoyed by brahmans increased.

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  The History of India

  • Britannica Educational Publishing, Kenneth Pletcher(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Britannica Educational Publishing

    (Publisher)

  HE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIAN CIVILIZATION FROM C . 1500 BCE TO 300 CE

  T he gradual decline of the Indus civilization marks the beginning of the transition, over the span of roughly 1,800 years, from prehistoric to historic times. Among many remarkable developments, the period is notable for the rise and fall of vast and small states (notably the Mauryan empire), the further spread of Indo-Aryan speakers and, later, the invasion of Alexander the Great, the emergence of great religions, and remarkable achievements in literature and the arts.

  TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO INDIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

  The European scholars who reconstructed early Indian history in the 19th century regarded it as essentially static and Indian society as concerned only with things spiritual. Indologists, such as the German Max Müller, relied heavily on the Sanskritic tradition and saw Indian society as an idyllic village culture emphasizing qualities of passivity, meditation, and otherworldliness. In sharp contrast was the approach of the Scottish historian James Mill and the Utilitarians, who condemned Indian culture as irrational and inimical to human progress. Mill first formulated a periodization of Indian history into Hindu, Muslim, and British periods, a scheme that, while still commonly used, is now controversial. During the 19th century, direct contact with Indian institutions through administration, together with the utilization of new evidence from recently deciphered inscriptions, numismatics, and local archives, provided fresh insights. Nationalist Indian historians of the early 20th century tended to exaggerate the glory of the past but nevertheless introduced controversy into historical interpretation, which in turn resulted in more precise studies of Indian institutions. In more recent times, historians have reconstructed in greater detail the social, economic, and cultural history of the subcontinent—though politics has continued to influence the study of Indian history.

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  The Study of the State

  • Henri J. Claessen, Peter Skalnik, Henri J. Claessen, Peter Skalnik(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  This is no stable state: state (political, social) is not state (physical). Finally, we were tempted to compare political development and societal growth, and certain important institutional developments, with events in Europe in medieval times. But what makes it different is precisely the question of chronology (the fact that in the task of synthesis one eventually reaches a moment at which comparison and connection are no longer isolable problems). In India we are referring to a phase of growth coterminous with the epoch of European transformation and expansion: the growth of the world market. The implications of this relationship — especially with respect to the highly developed mercantile economy of Medieval India — have yet to be examined, let alone understood. NOTES 1. 'Successor state' refers to the various polities emerging from the ruins of the Mughal empire; briefly, we argue that the state is a long-term development transcending different regimes in time and space. 'Feuda- 298 Frank Perlin listic' is used to describe societies in which militaristic, patrimonial, and parcelized authorities, based on fractional property forms, have a crucial role in their organization; 'feudal' defines the nature of a society, mode of production, the fianl synthesis. It is time to reinstate European history as an appropriate basis for comparison and contrast with precolonial Asia, not merely because of descriptive similarities and the realm of connection, but because it is the only densely worked, extensively debated history of preindustrial societies available. 'Empire' and 'imperial' are used according to the convention of Indianist historiography, and generally refer to broad, expansive hegemonies subsuming smaller once independent polities. Here, I distinguish between earlier extensive empire, and a later intensive phase. Finally, I use current regional names to facilitate comprehension by non-Indianists (thus Rajastan instead of Mewar).

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  Trade and Traders in Early Indian Society

  • Ranabir Chakravarti(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  c. 600 BC -AD 300)

  Researches in early Indian history over the last three decades show a major change in historical vision: the earlier emphasis on dynastic chronicling is increasingly being replaced by the historian’s penchant for understanding the economy, society, polity and culture of early India. Historians appear now to have been less interested in what Kosambi termed as ‘episodic history’1 and engage themselves in unravelling the changing character of early Indian history and also identifying the possible agents of such changes. One such formative stage of Indian history is termed ‘early historical’ which spans from sixth century BC to third century AD and which succeeds the proto-historic/pre-literate phase in the history of the subcontinent.

  The period witnessed the rise of territorial powers (janapadas/mahājanapadas) in place of lineage-based polities (janas); it also saw a continuous struggle between the urge for imperial unity and the love for local autonomy (expressed mainly by the ‘republican’/oligarchic or gaṇa-samgha type of polities).2 The most important change in the economic life was the emergence of agriculture as the mainstay of the material life of the people first in the Ganga valley and then gradually over the whole of the subcontinent. The agrarian economy when firmly rooted naturally provided enough surplus to maintain whole-time craftsmen of diverse types. As production increased both in the spheres of agriculture and crafts, trade developed in a natural sequence. The early centuries df the Christian era ushered in a glorious phase of Indian commerce which was drawn into the network of international trade, both overland and maritime. The new generative forces must have helped in transforming an essentially lineage-based and more or less egalitarian society into a stratified society. Symptoms of a complex society are discernible in the form of sharpening of varṇa-jāti

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  Spirals of Contention

  Why India was Partitioned in 1947

  • Satish Saberwal(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Commercial rivalry, in Ahmedabad in 1714, between some leading men led to violence between “Muslims” and “Hindus”, the spark coming, as so often, from offensive Holi revelry – and possibly from cow sacrifice at Id in another episode at about the same time. The events were serious enough for the adversaries to travel to the court in Delhi – where they seem to have settled their dispute voluntarily (Haider 2005). Aziz Ahmad has written of serious rioting, at about the same time, “when Muharram coincided with Hindu festivals like Ramanavami and Dashera” (1964:157, citing Jafar Sharif, tran. in 1921). Rajat Ray’s list for the eighteenth century (2003:29) includes Delhi, Agra, and Kashmir (1720s during the festivals of Holi, Muharram, and Id) and Surat (1788, 1795, between Muslim weavers and Parsi and Bania contractors).

  To sum up our sketch of the legacy from the medieval period. The Saltanat victories, from the twelfth century on, arose in the central Asian horse-borne warriors’ ability to concentrate the application of force to telling effect. Alongside the matching of arms, there was also an encounter of “cosmic schemes”, of worldviews. Commenting on this overall process, Rajat K. Ray notes that “This was not a conflict between the Vedic religion of antiquity which had nothing against the sacrifice of cows, and the original Islam of Arabia, which did not require it” (2003: 104). He sees it rather as “an encounter between two parties defined by the confrontation itself: an interface between Hinduism, newly denominated by Islam, and the latter, recontextualized by the former (ibid.).” It was an encounter with much silent give and take, and acceptance and rejection, on both sides.

  While the hosts lacked the means to meet the conquerors on equal terms militarily, both sides had strong reasons for helping things to settle down. In later generations, the caste system, and the imperatives of governance and neighbourliness, provided frameworks for organizing basic social and economic cooperation, and for maintaining the agrarian cycle, commerce, and revenue flows under conditions of some stability.

  We can say a little more. Medieval social arrangements were such as to allow even the same person, even in the course of a single day, to participate in both a shared space and an exclusive one

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  Resistance at the Edge of Empires

  The Archaeology and History of the Bannu basin from 1000 BC to AD 1200

  • Cameron A. Petrie(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Oxbow Books

    (Publisher)

  In the following section, a model for the reconstruction of the administration and economy of the Bannu region over the extended period being considered in this volume will be proposed. This will include a review of the applicability of the term ‘feudalism’ for defining the states of the first millennium AD.

  4.3. Regionalised economy in the first millennium BC and the first and early second millennia AD

  Morrison (1997: 97) has pointed out that the early Middle Historic period (AD 500–1200) is one of great regional diversity in polity and economy, and that there is no simple way to characterise change across the entire subcontinent. The same can be said for the Iron Age and Early Historic periods. Indeed, to attempt to do so runs the risk of denying the complexity and diversity that is inherent in a landmass that is so historically, politically, and culturally diverse.

  Sharma’s model for the feudal states of India follows a pattern whereby a decline in trade and urbanism led to a shift towards an agrarian economy, and that this was facilitated by grants of land to numerous groups. This process allegedly decentralised the state system and led to the growth of regionalised control units. In turn, this led to an arrangement where a regular surplus was extracted from an immobile peasant population (Sharma 1965, 1985, 1995). Kulke and Rothermund (1990: 138) have suggested that simultaneously with the emergence of regional kingdoms, there was a characteristic evolution of regional languages and the growth of regional cultures in the later first millennium AD in India.

  The overview of the administration and economy of north-west South Asia outlined above drew attention to the existence of regionalised control structures from the early first millennium BC and their continued appearance until the end of the first millennium AD. It has been presumed that these control structures were governed by either governor/kings or hereditary local elites. Larger kingdoms and empires certainly existed and they thrived for short, medium, and long stretches of time, but typically they appear to have subsumed existing regional administrative structures and not enforced centralised control (Chapter 11

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  India: The Ancient Past

  A History of the Indian Subcontinent from c. 7000 BCE to CE 1200

  • Burjor Avari(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  et al. 2000: 443–4). However, there can be no doubt that both religious and secular land grants during these early medieval centuries provided a major boost to the growth of feudalism and a feudal mentality in north India.

  The debate on feudalism

  Despite various dissenting views among historians, the inscriptions of the period provide strong evidence of the way feudalism linked the states with their economies. Feudalism would long remain a persistent factor in the shaping of Indian society and its mindset, although its characteristics would undergo much transformation in succeeding centuries. Karl Marx described feudalism as the pre-capitalist stage of development in the social and economic history of Europe. It was a stage in which the mode of agricultural production was based on the relationship between the lord and the peasantry. In this relationship the peasants owed the lord labour service for being allowed to till the soil and eke out a subsistence living. They also had to accept extensive judicial powers over their lives as a measure of protection by the lord. Historians have also debated over feudalism as a method of maintaining order at a time, particularly between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries in Western Europe, when public institutions were in a state of crisis and flux. In that situation, private relationships had become crucial, and one of the key manifestations of this relationship was the arrangement by which a tributary lord attached himself to a liege lord for protection through homage, tribute and military service.

  Excerpt 9.2   A land grant in Bengal

  Thousands of land grants have been found recorded on copper plates all across India. It was an old tradition, but the bulk of the evidence comes from the Gupta and post-Gupta centuries. The inscriptions are engraved on one or more plates of copper varying in size, between 6 and 20 inches long. The plates were prepared with great care in order to protect the writing from damage or wear and tear. Often the edges were raised to prevent the plates from rubbing together, and sometimes the outer plates or faces were left blank. Multiple plates were bound by one or two rings inserted through holes in the plates. As many as a dozen plates could be found joined, carrying as much as 200 pounds of weight. A typical inscription had a preamble that included an invocation, the place of issue, the grantor’s name and ancestry, address. This was followed by the specification of the gift, names of the grantee(s), the purpose of the grant and the reason for it. There would be a word or two of exhortation to respect the grantor’s command. The names of people witnessing the grant would also be recorded. The following partial extract is a typical example

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