CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW

UNIVERSITY, PATNA

TOPIC: Feudalism: Its relevance in Ancient India

Submitted To:- Submitted By:-

Dr. Priya Darshini Aniket Raj
Faculty of History Roll no.-1712
B.A.LLB (Hons.) 1st Semester
 DECLARATION BY CANDIDATE

I, hereby, declare that the work reported in the B.A., LL.B (Hons.) Project Report entitled
Feudalism: Its relevance in Ancient India submitted at Chanakya National Law University is
an authentic record of my work carried out under supervision of Dr. Priya Darshini. I have not
submitted this work elsewhere for any other degree or diploma. I am fully responsible for the
contents of my project report.

SIGNATURE OF CANDIDATE

NAME OF CANDIDATE: ANIKET RAJ

CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

AKNOWLEDGEMENT

The present project on the Feudalism: Its relevance in ancient India has been able to get its
final shape with the support and help of people from various quarters. My sincere thanks go to all
the members without whom the study could not have come to its present state. I am proud to
acknowledge gratitude to the individuals during my study and without whom the study may not
be completed. I have taken this opportunity to thank those who genuinely helped me.

With immense pleasure, I express my deepest sense of gratitude to Priya Darshini mam, Faculty
for History , Chanakya National Law University for helping me in my project. I am also thankful
to the whole Chanakya National Law University family that provided me all the material I
required for the project. Not to forget thanking to my parents without the co-operation of which
completion of this project would not had been possible.

I have made every effort to acknowledge credits, but I apologies in advance for any omission
that may have inadvertently taken place.

Last but not least I would like to thank Almighty whose blessing helped me to complete the
project.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SUBJECT: History

TOPIC: Feudalism: Its relevance in ancient India

OBJECTIVES:

1. To understand the meaning of feudalism in ancient India.

2. To analyse the relevance of feudalism in ancient India.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: Keeping the objectives in mind, material was collected with
the help of different books and then it was compiled to make the theoretical part of the project.

RESEARCH TOOLS: The research of this project was carried with the help of the Internet and
Library of Chanakya National University.

FOOTNOTING STYLE: In whole of my project uniform footnoting style is adopted in

Conformity Bluebook mode of citation.
What is feudalism?
In Europeans sense, feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among
the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs.
However, in context with ancient India, the system gradually developed from the beginning of
the land grants.

The practice of making land grants to the Brahmanas was a custom, sanctified by the injunctions
laid down in the Dharmashashtras, Epics and Puranas. The Anusasana Parva of the Mahabharata
devotes a whole chapter to the praise of making gifts of land (Bhumidanaprasamsa).

The Land Grants & Administrative Rights

The early Pali texts of the pre-Maurya period refer to the villages granted to the Brahmanas by
the rulers of Kosala and Magadha. A term used for such grants was Brahamdeyya.

Earliest Land Grants

The earliest land grants belonging to the first century BC were given to the Buddhist priests and
Brahmanas and other religious establishments. However, in the post-Guptas period even
administrative officials were granted land. The landed beneficiaries were given both powers of
taxation and coercion, leading to the disintegration of the central authority. The secular recipients
of the grants and the autonomous holders of land are generally termed as fief holders and free
holders. The major outcome was decentralization.

However, the Earliest epigraphic record of a land grants in India is a Saatavahana inscription of
the first century BC, which refers to the grant of a village as a gift in the Ashvamedha Sacrifice.
However, it is not clear, whether the administrative or revenue rights of these lands were also
given to those priests or not. It has been guessed that the administrative rights were perhaps
given up for the first time in the grants made to Buddhist monks by the Satavahana ruler
Gautamiputra Satakarni in the second century AD. Such a land grant included the rights that :
 The royal troops could not enter such land granted

The government officials and district police was not supposed to disturb such lands.

Changes in Land Grants

From the period of later Mauryas, the land grants included the transfer of all sources of revenue,
and the surrender of police and administrative functions. The grants of the second century AD
mention that the transfer of the kings control only over salt, which implies that he retained
certain other sources of revenue. But in some other grants, it was recorded that the donor (King)
gave up his control over almost all sources of revenue, including pastures, mines including
hidden treasures and deposits.

Then, the donor not only abandoned his revenues but also the right to govern the inhabitants of
the villages that were granted. This practice became more prevalent in the Gupta period. There
are many instances of grants of apparently settled villages made to the Brahmanas during the
Gupta era. In such grants, the residents, including the cultivators and artisans, were expressly
asked by their respective rulers not only to pay the customary taxes to the donees, but also to
obey their commands. All this provides clear evidence of the surrender of the administrative
power of the state.

One of the important aspect of the Kings sovereignty was that he used to retain the rights of the
punishing the culprits. In the Post-Gupta times, the king made over to the Brahmanas not only
this right, but also his right to punish all offences against family, property, person, etc.

Implications of Land Grants

We see that, by giving such privileges, the state was bound to disintegrate. Out of the seven
organs of the state power mentioned in literary and epigraphic sources, taxation system and
coercive power based on the army are rightly regarded as two vital elements. If they are
abandoned, the state power disintegrates. This was the system created by the grants made to the
Brahmins. The land was granted for as long as the existence of the sun and the moon, which
implies the permanent break-up of the integrity of the state.
The above discussion makes it clear that in the Post-Gupta period, the Brahamdeyya carried
freedom from taxes , Administrative freedom and also the freedom from punishments
(Abhayantarasiddhi). The widespread practice of making land grants in the Gupta period paved
the way for the rise of Brahmin feudatories, who performed administrative functions not under
the authority of the royal officers but almost independently. What was implicit in earlier grants
became explicit in grants from about 1000AD; and well recognised in the administrative systems
of the Turks.

The implications were many but the major implication was the creation of powerful
intermediatories wielding considerable economic and political power. As the number of the land-
owning Brahmins went up, some of them gradually shed their priestly functions and turned their
chief attention to the management of land. Thus, their case secular functions became more
important than religious functions. The comprehensive competence based on centralised control,
which was the hallmark of the Maurya state gave way to decentralisation in the post-Maurya and
Gupta periods. The functions of the collection of taxes, levy of forced labour, regulation of
mines, agriculture, etc., together with those of the maintenance of law and order, and defence
which w re hitherto performed by the state officials, were now systematically abandoned, first to
the priestly class and later to the warrior class.

Thus, the main implications of the Indian Feudalism in early medieval period are as follows:

Political decentralization: The seed of decentralization that was sown in the form of Land
grants turned into a vividly branched political organization made up semi-autonomous rulers,
Samantas, Mahasamantas and others such as Rajpurushas.

Emergence of new landed intermediatories: The emergence of landed intermediaries- a

dominant landholding social group absent in the early historical period- is linked to the practice
of land grants which began with the Saatavahana.

Changes in agrarian relations: Free vaishya peasants dominated the agrarian structure in
early historical India and labour services provided by the Shudra. But, from the sixth century AD
onwards the peasants stuck to the land granted to the beneficiaries because they were asked not
to leave the village granted to the beneficiaries or migrate to tax-free village. This resulted in the
immobility of the population and isolation from the rest of the world. Its implication was very
profound such as development of localized customs, languages and rituals.

Indian Feudalism
The early medieval period in Indian history has been described by historians a rather dark phase
of Indian history characterised by political disintegration and cultural decline. The absence of
political unity is the key factor that led to the emergence of rich regional cultures and the
kingdoms of early medieval period. The decentralised nature of early medieval polity, according
to Marxists historiography, is to be appreciated, analysed and situated in the broader context of a
new type of formation in the early medieval period, viz. the emergence and crystallization of
what is termed as the Indian feudalism. The early medieval state and society in north India has
been explained in the context of Indian feudalism by historians like D.D. Kosambi, R.S. Sharma,
D.N. Jha, B.N.S. Yadava, and various others. The period from 750 1200 in Indian history has
been termed as a period of Indian feudalism by these historians. The multiplicity of regional
powers and the absence of a unitary or paramount power have obliged historians to suggest a
shift in the nature of polity during this period. They believed that a number of changes took place
in Indian society. According to Irfan Habib, the period between the collapse of the last great
North Indian empire of the 1st millennium, that of Harshavardhana (648 BC), and the beginning
of the regime of the Sultans of Delhi (1206) is often designated as either late ancient or early
medieval. D.D. Kosambi and R.S. Sharma have invoked a more profound basis these six
centuries, namely, the dominance of Indian feudalism during this period. Kosambi was the first
to provide a conceptual definition of Indian feudalism when he talked about what he described as
feudalism from above and feudalism from below. Feudalism from above Feudalism from
below A state wherein the king levied tribute from subordinates who still ruled in A stage where
a class of landowners developed between the state and the their own right as long as they paid.
peasantry within the village to wield armed power over the local population. The taxes were
collected directly by the royal officials. Taxes were collected by small intermediaries who passed
on a fraction to the feudal hierarchy. Kosambi thought that by a process of craft diffusion among
villages, there came about a breakdown of the previous dependence of the village on town and,
thereby, the emergence of village isolation. This, to him, formed the bedrock of the feudal
order, seen in the weakening of the centralised state and the rise of localised aristocracies. The
conversion of the untouchables or outcasts into a landless working class also appears to have
reached an advanced stage within the 1st millennium AD. Village self sufficiency undermined
commerce; and the entire period up till about 1000 is widely seen as one of urban decline. Gold
and silver money tended to contract over most of India and even disappear; and this strongly
suggests a decline in the number of large commercial transactions.

The most theoretical construct that contributed towards a better understanding of the early
medieval period was developed by R.S. Sharma. He calls this type of agrarian setup as feudal
based on the pan-Indian character of land grants. He talks about various issues like:

Administrative structure based on the control and possession of land

Fragmentation of political authority

Hierarchy of landed intermediaries

Dependence of peasants on landlords

Oppression and immobility of peasants

Restricted use of metal money

According to him, there were a decline in trade and urbanism, paucity of coins, and increasing
numbers of land grants to the state officials in lieu of salary and to the Brahmans as charity or
ritual offering in the post-Gupta period. He described the period, in political terms, as one which
stood witness to a continuous process of fragmentation and decentralisation, caused by the
widespread practice of granting land holdings to feudatories and officials who established their
control over these territories and emerged as independent potentates. Almost all features of west
European feudalism, such as serfdom, manor, self-sufficient economic units, feudalisation of
crafts and commerce, decline of long-distance trade and decline of towns, were said to be found
in India. The most crucial aspects of Indian feudalism were the increasing dependence of the
peasantry on the intermediaries who received grants of land from the state and enjoyed juridical
rights over them. This development restricted the peasants mobility and made them subject to
increasingly intensive forced labour.

Feudalism appears in a predominantly agrarian economy which is marked by a class of landlords

and a class of servile peasantry. It has been seen as a mechanism for the distribution of the means
of production and for the appropriation of the surplus. When Indian Feudalism appeared, early
critics argued that Sharma had mechanically imported the "Europeanist" model, especially in his
invocation of the role of foreign trade as an instrument of socio-economic change.

The construct of Indian feudalism by R.S. Sharma drew criticism from scholars like D.C. Sircar
who was of the view that a large number of grants were made to Brahmins and other religious
institutions, there was scant evidence of the existence of land grants of a secular kind with
service tenures.

For B.N.S. Yadava, the most important feature of Indian feudalism was the samanta or the
independent neighbouring chief, who rose to prominence in about 600 or so. His main intention
was to reinstall feudatories and court dignitaries and to reclaim them from the oblivion that their
erstwhile vanquished status had relegated them to.

Harbans Mukhia questions the very possibility of the existence of Indian feudalism. He begins in
his article Was there Feudalism in Indian history? by arguing that there is no single,
universally accepted definition of feudalism. He actually contends that the term feudalism itself
is not conducive for implementation in the context of any period in Indian history. He defines
feudalism as the structured dependence of the entire peasantry on the lords. Such a system was
specific to Western Europe between the 5th 15th centuries.

He considers feudalism as a transitional system which stood mid-way in the transition of the
West European economy from a primarily slave-based system of agricultural production to one
dominated by the complementary classes of the capitalist farmers and the landless agricultural
wage-earner, but in which the free peasantry also formed a significant element. On the basis of
this definition of feudalism, Mukhia now argues against the concept of feudalism in India.

He is of the opinion that Indian feudalism could well have been a non-existent, make belief
construct for which there was no supporting evidence. He points out that, in the European
context, feudalism emerged due to changes in society, whereas in India, the establishment of
feudalism has been attributed to the state practice of making land grants. He is of the view that
feudalism, which is a very complex socio-political structure, could not have possibly been a state
imposition, which gained more ground and later became more firmly entrenched on Indian soil
through administrative and legal procedures. He expressed virulent disbelief in the existence of
serfdom. He argues that it is not sure that there was a very significant decline of trade and towns
in early medieval India. About the most crucial aspect of feudalism the dependence of
peasantry on the landlords he thinks that there is no evidence to prove it in Indian case.

He is of the view that the medieval Indian system was marked by a free peasant economy. The
medieval European serfs labour for the purposes of agriculture production was set under the
control of the lord, whereas the labour of his Indian counterpart was under his own control; what
was subject to the states control was the amount of produce of the land in the form of revenue.
He argues that even though the exploitation of the peasantry might have increased, there is no
evidence to prove that there was any extraneous control over the peasants process of
production. He thinks that forced labour in India remained, by and large, an incidental
manifestation of the ruling class political and administrative power rather than a part of the
process of production.

B.D. Chattopadhyaya has questioned the theory of urban decay and the decline of trade in the
post-Gupta period, a very essential premise of the feudalism argument. He agrees that the
existence of land grants cannot be denied, nor can the presence of the contractual element in
these land grants be negated completely. He considers land grants as an important but not the
sole criteria for understanding the structure of polity. He tries to give a fresh look at the
formation of polity in early medieval India and it is this that has led historians to reinterpret
developments from a macro to a micro level. He talks about the emergence and gradual
development of a state society.

According to Harman Kulke, this process of the expansion of state society, through the
transformation of pre-state polities into state polities, was based on and progressed along with
certain other crucial phenomena like the emergence and expansion of ruling lineages.
The model developed by Chattopadhyaya, is called Integrative polity which linked the process
of the formation of state polities with economic and social processes. He has successfully been
able to link the expansion of agrarian society through the peasantisation of tribal groups. The
integrative polity sees political processes in the context of contemporary economic, social and
religious developments, such as the horizontal spread of the dominant ideology of the social
order based on the Varna division, integration of local cults, rituals and sacred centres/places into
a larger structure.

Chattopadhyaya also highlights the formation of ruling lineages from the perspective of the
process of social mobility in early medieval India. He explains that through Kshatriyaisation, any
lineage or segment of a large ethnic group could make an attempt to assume political power and
establish a large state structure by an effective mobilisation of force. Salient features of Indian
feudalism according to R.S. Sharma:

Emergence of hierarchical landed intermediaries. Vassals and officers of state and other
secular assignees had military obligations and were called Samanta. Sub-infeudation by these
donees to get their land cultivated led to the growth of different strata of intermediaries. It was a
hierarchy of landed aristocrats, tenants, share- croppers and cultivators. This hierarchy was also
reflected in the powers, administrative structure, where a sort of lord-vassal relationship
emerged. In other words, Indian feudalism consisted of the gross unequal distribution of land and
its produce.

Prevalence of forced labour. The right of extracting forced labour is believed to have been
exercised by the Brahmanas and other grantees of land. Forced labour was originally a
prerogative of the king or the state. It was transferred to the grantees, petty officials, village
authorities and others. As a result, a kind of serfdom emerged, in which agricultural labourers
were reduced to the position of semi-serfs.

Due to the growing Claims of greater rights over them by rulers and intermediaries,
peasants also suffered a curtailment of their land rights. Many were reduced to the position
of tenants facing ever-growing threat of eviction. A number of peasants were only share-croppers
(ardhikas). The strain on the peasantry was also caused by the burden of taxation, coercion and
increase in their indebtness.
Surplus was extracted through various methods. Extra economic coercion was a conspicuous
method, new mechanisms of economic subordination also evolved.

It was relatively a closed village economy. The transfer of human resources along with land to
the beneficiaries shows that in such villages the peasants, craftsmen and artisans were attached to
the villages and, hence, were mutually dependent. Their attachment to land and to service grants
ensured control over them by the beneficiaries. Sharma had also placed much emphasis upon the
absence of long distance external trade as the cause of the rise of feudalism in India. But trade
had flourished in several regions of India long before the feudalism proponents set a deadline for
its revival around the year AD 1000 BD.

The most crucial aspects of Indian feudalism were the increasing dependence of the peasantry on
the intermediaries who received grants of land from the state and enjoyed juridical rights over
them. This development restricted the peasants mobility and made them subject to increasingly
intensive forced labour.

Feudalism in Ancient India

With the introduction of Marxist method of analysis in the study of ancient history of India, the
political and economic aspects of the period have been revalued and the question of the
feudalism in ancient India has once again come into surface. Scholars have talked about the class
struggle and feudalism in ancient India and told us about the existence of slave society in later
Vedic period.

In fact, the production system of Asia had some special characteristics of the system. Those
were:

the state controlled irrigation system,

lack of private ownership of land,
existence of the self sufficient villages,
paucity of urbanization,
tribal ownership of land,
self-sufficiency in handicrafts and
 the existence of agrarian economy.

The Asian system of production had many differences with what was followed in Ancient India.
India during that period had private ownership of land as well and there was a ruling class also,
clustering round the king, who used to grasp the surplus money from the people. Archaeological
excavations have proved that there were planned urbanization as well and hence the old theory of
Asian economic system has been rejected. Now the social structure of ancient India is being
studied from the angle of historical materialism and Dialectical materialism.

In a vast country like India where there are so many languages and varied environment, the
stages of social mobility or social progress could never have uniformity. Indian society had never
depended absolutely on the labour of the slave, who in the ancient period was known as
the Sudras and the member of slaves also were limited only a few. However, during the post-
later Vedic era there might have slaves who played a significant part in the Mauryan economic
system. He preferred to call it a Vaishya Sudra society. The Sudras too were not slaves. The
higher castes too tried to grasp the surplus money from the people. Thus the Indian feudal system
cannot be compared with that of Europe. In fact, there were some changes in the social system of
India at that period where in there was an inter mixing or interaction between the Brahmanical
ideology and the tribal culture and following this interaction the tribal life was greatly influenced
by the agrarian rural economy of those days.

Feudalism in India practically began with the early medieval period, when the villages became
almost self-sufficient owing to slanginess in urbanization and commercial activities during the
fag end of the Gupta period. During the first century the Indian kings began to donate land freely
to the Brahmins, scholars and religious institutions conferring the ownership of the land and the
right to collect revenues thereof on them. This had enabled them to make a direct link and
control over the peasantrya system which Kosambi called a super imposed feudalism. It
increased in its volume during the reign of Guptas and Harsha Vardhana , and a new class of
land owners emerged who began to exploit the cultivators. He called this system-feudalism from
the bottom as a result of which the agrarian economy had suffered much.
Some scholars believe that feudalism began when the kings started donating lands to the
Brahmans, temples and the monasteries which increased in its volume during the time of the
Guptas. During this period many of the densely populated villages along with all their cultivable
lands, revenues, executive and judicial rights, freedom from royal interference and right to enjoy
money collected from the fees and fines and confiscations were gifted to the Brahmans or
religious institutions.

Later on the same type of gifts were made to the soldiers. With the growth of regional self-
sufficient economic system this religious and secular gifts gained popularity. As a result of this
self-sufficient economic system both the urban life and commerce deteriorated and the amount of
coin also deteriorated.

As feudalism developed community right on land diminished. The pasture-land, marshes and
forests-all were gifted. A middle order land owner class emerged. The peasant lost his right of
free movement and was forced to pay heavy taxes and do forced labour. He became a slave.
There was the possibility of further transfer of land and in reality that .happened too. By 6th
century A.D. production fell causing fall in commercial activities and the growth of self-
sufficient economy. In such an economy coins became scarce and hence the priests and the royal
servants began to collect their revenues through land revenue causing the peasant to face further
hardship and exploitation.