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Hist-2 1 1
Hist-2 1 1
Lesson – 2.1.1
Paper-2: History of India (650 – 1550 AD)
Topic-1: Early Medieval Period – Historiography and
Debates
Lecture: 1
Glossary
Objectives
Summary
The three kinds of polity that can be found in India in the early
Medieval Period were:
In south India the Chola and the Pallava monarchs were all very
powerful. Chola polity had a segmented kind of Polity. The entire
kingdom was divided into segments that were not answerable to
the other or to the king. The ruler had the primacy and ritual
control but the entire segments were independent and they had
their own kind of administration. Also there were very strong
local/ village level bodies which were not encouraged in the
Centralized polity.
9. Why did Col. James Todd see the replication of the lord-
vassal relationship in the Indian social setup?
QUIZ
1. Indian feudalism in the context of lord and vassal was first seen
by A) Col. James Todd B) Henri Pirenne C) D.N. Jha
1. Introduction
2. Feudalism Debate
The mooring of the Indian feudalism was brought from the ideas
that were persistent in the historiography of Europe. R.S. Sharma
and others borrowed the ideas of Henri Pirenne (1852 – 1935)
and Marc Bloch (1886 – 1944) from the European concept of
Feudalism and put it lock, stock and barrel into the Indian
scenario. In the Indian scenario R.S. Sharma saw it in the whole
process of the land grant economy. There was a time when the
rulers were granting lands to the Brahmins and the monasteries
and the other religious institutions like a Brahmanical Matha or a
Jain Vasadi. These granting of lands were actually rent free lands.
This is known as the Agrahara System in Indian economy. So
when this rent free land is given and thereby some sort of judicial
rights were also given to these donees, so the Marxist
historiography look at it as the diminishing of the rights of the
rulers. So they hold the idea of the coercive power of the ruler i.e.
Dandha is not there anymore in the hands of the monarchs. Here
is seen a total breakdown.
Marxist Historiography
For R.S. Sharma actually the whole breakdown took place in the
context of the Social Crisis. The king was not exercising enough
power because a kind of landed intermediary was created between
the king and the actual peasantry. Secondly R.S. Sharma
visualized that gradually lands were also been given not only to
the religious donees but also to the secular donees. The secular
donees were getting land because, according to him, the state
was not in a position of having enough currency and so in lieu of
money or salary, these secular people who were in service to the
king were being given lands. But R.S. Sharma does not go much
into the decline of the concept of feudalism in India.
3. Controversy
It was not because the full feudalism thesis was based on the land
grant economy and it is said that between the land grant economy
and expansion of state and there is a kind of contrast. All these
things led to the decline of trade and urbanization. It was D.C
Sarkar the first among the non-Marxist historians, who first
opposed R.S. Sharma’s feudalism thesis. He said that the
proponents of feudalism are actually confusing landlordism and
overlordism with feudalism. Way back in 1979 Harbans Mukhia
questioned the entire formulation both empirically and
theoretically of Indian feudalism. He looked at it not only from the
economic perspective but also from the ecological perspective.
After Harbans Mukhia there were other historians also who
challenged the views of the Marxist historiography.
Social Perspective
5. Samanta System
Burton Stein posited the Chola polity (he began with the Pallava
and extended his idea till beyond the Vijaynagar Period) had a
segmented kind of Polity. The East African Alur Society acted as a
model for Burton Stein. According to Burton Stein the Chola
kingdom was divided into certain segments. In these segments
there is the ruler who has the primacy and ritual control but the
entire segments were independent and they had their own kind of
administration and each segment was not responsible to the other
segment or to the rulers. So he differentiated between the actual
political control and ritual sovereignty. For him the main ritualist
was the Chola ruler.
When differentiating between actual political control and ritual
sovereignty, the Chola monarch is relegated in the background.
He does not have the kind of control that he should have over the
other segments of his territory. This concept of ritual sovereignty
has been questioned by a German historian Hermann Kulke.
According to Kulke, ritual sovereignty should not be confused as
lack of sovereignty. He said in a traditional country like India ritual
is a very important part of the tradition. So, actually ritual
sovereignty is a pacemaker of power.
When the monarch made the Raja Rajeshwara Temple which was
built by Chola monarch Rajendra Chola in modern Tanjore, it was
reflecting the power and glory of the Cholas. For the proponents
of the Segmentary i.e. Burton Stein, this was showing the lack of
power of the Cholas monarch. He did not think that the Cholas
monarch was very powerful and therefore he was building the
temple. Taking cue from this there is another historian George
Spencer who talks about the Chola raids in South East Asia as a
politics of plunder. For him these plunder, raids and Chola control
over the South East Asian countries were with a plunder motive
and not otherwise. These things have been challenged by
historians.
7. Non-Aligned historians