Early Medieval India

Submitted By-

SHIKHA SINGH

II YEAR

ROLL NO.-81

DAULAT RAM COLLEGE

Assignment Question

Looking at various social,economic, political andcultural aspects of the period750 to 1200 A.D. in Indianhistory, which ‘mode ofproduction’ propositionaccording to you explains thesocio-economic formation ofthe above mentioned period?Substantiate your argument on

the basis of recent historicalwritings.

Looking at various social,economic, political and culturalaspects of the period 750 to1200 A.D. in Indian history,according to me Feudalism modeof production explains thesocio-economic formation of theabove mentioned period.Feudalism generally refers tothe type of society that existed

in Europe in the 5th-15th centuryA.D. based on self-sufficienteconomy. It had dominant classof landlords who extractedsurplus, products and labourservices from Peasants.Earlier the early medievalperiod in India was seen as a‘Dark Age’, one of thestagnation and decay. Marx’sconcept of the ‘Asiatic Mode OfProduction’ depicted the Indiaas an unchanging world ofunstratified, communally landowing village societies. Butthis was contested for the firsttime in the 1950s by D.D.

Kosambi and later by otherIndian historians. D.N. Jha andIrfan Habib have shown that thediscussion on the IndianFeudalism began with protractedMarxist debate on Asiatic modeof production.In the 1940s, writers likeB.N.Datta and S.A. Dange spokeof the growth of Feudalism inIndia. Early scholars however,simply transplanted anessentially European concept ofFeudalism on to Indian soil, andspoke of an Indian variant ofFeudalism. A new genre ofempirical works emerged in the

1950s, when, through a reasonedargument, Feudal Polity wasshown to be a stage whichrepresented a structural changein the Indian social andeconomic order, characterized bya hierarchy of intermediariesbetween the state and thepeasantry.D.D. Kosambi was the first togive this conceptual definitionof Feudalism in India in 1956.He spoke of ‘Feudalism fromAbove’, which was essentiallyPolitical Feudalism, when duringthe pre-4th century A.D. period,after conquest and political

expansion, kings began totransfer their fiscal andadministrative rights over landto subordinate autonomouschiefs. It reached an advancedstage of development during theGupta period and later when aclass of land owners developedwithin the village between thestate and the peasantry,gradually to wield armed poweron the local population, thatis, ‘Feudalism from below’,essentially socio-economic innature.Niharranjan Ray, a contemporaryof Kosambi, in his book,

’Bangalir Itihas’, pointed tothe emergence of a new statestructure in the regionalcontext of Bengal. This wasmarked by a hierarchicalpolitical order represented bysamantas and mahasamantas, andtenuous bonds with politicalallies and the new economicorder was characterized by localagrarian economy. He alsosuggested the characteristicswhich, for him, define IndianMedievalism-regional rulingdynasties, natural economy andcrystallization of regionalcharacter of script, language

and literature, proliferation ofsects and sub-sects in religionand development of art in samecontext. He associated theadvent of Medievalism withFeudalism.It was R.S. Sharma who broughttogether all earlier attempts togive new, original framework forIndian Feudalism. He dividedIndian Feudalism into 3 phases-origins and the first phase(350-750 A.D.), phase two(750-1000A.D.) and the third phase(1000-1200 A.D.), which towards theend saw the beginning of itsdecline.

Some of the features of IndianFeudalism outlined by R.S.Sharma were- practice of makingland grants which gave thebeneficiaries judicial andfiscal rights and rights overthe people of donated village aswell as the increasing incidenceof forced labour, decline intrade and coinage and payment ofofficials through land revenue.R.S. Sharma traces the originsof Feudalism to early centuriesof Christian era when theprocess of land grantsintensified. The earliestevidence of land grants in India

comes from 1st century B.C. butthey did not transferadministrative power tobeneficiary. Perhaps theserights were given for the veryfirst time in 2nd century A.D. toBuddhist monks. From 5th centuryA.D. onwards, these grantsbecame frequent and developedcertain features which led topolitical decentralization.These were-right to collecttaxes, enjoy the revenue ofland, autonomy on the land andmore. Dating in 6th century A.D.grants were given to merchantguilds also. They were allowed

the exemption from dues, freedomto deal with labours and more.Economic Feudalism on the basisof R.S. Sharma’s conception ofFeudalism is characterized byRuralization. Its main aspectsare:-

emergence of landedintermediaries

presence of closed, naturaleconomy

emergence of village as aself-sufficient unit ofproduction and distribution

Agrarian expansion on asubstantially large scale.

These structural changes in theeconomy traced to the growth ofland grants. This disturbed andtransformed the existingagrarian order. After thetransformation, Land grantsbecame permanent, reducing theoriginal cultivators to theposition of tenants who couldeven suffer eviction. Theemergence of forced labour wasan important institutionaldevelopment and this right wasgiven to donees. Subjection alsoincreased due to the wide rangeof taxes and levies which thepeasants had to pay.

According to Sharma, evidencefor the dispossession andimpoverishment of peasantrycomes from peasant protest.Migration was difficult andunviable so they asserted theirland rights through revolt.Gradually subjection of allproducing classes took place,marked by degradation in theireconomic and social status.There is decline in ritualstatus of many artisanal groups,possibly deriving from the factthat due to decline of trade anddevelopment of a closed economy,they were now localized and made

subservient to landholdingclasses.According to Sharma, in 600-1200A.D., a process of acculturationbegan. A number of social groupscame into existences which wereregarded as untouchables. Theywere carmakara (leather worker),rajaka (washer man), bambooworker and basket maker.Since the rise of Feudalism istraced to land grants, whichgave away the sovereignty of thestate were made. R.S. Sharmaexplains them using a Theory ofCausation, citing two crises as

the reason for the prevalence ofland grants. Crises started withthe decline in India’s long-distance trade. Decline of tradeis demonstrated by the paucityof coins from the Gupta periodonwards. Shortage of coinsimplies that the urban lifebegan to disappear. The urbancommercial centre began to beinterpreted as village in somepost-Gupta texts and their sealshave also been disappeared. Sodecommercialization,demonetization and deurbaniztionmade land grants a device forpayment for services in lieu of

cash salaries. Sharma alsoconsiders the nature of internalsocial dynamics as responsiblefor land grants. He speaks of asocial crises based on theaccounts of kali age inpuranans.R.S. Sharma’s theory is takenforward by the works of scholarslike D.N. Jha and B.N.S. Yadava.Yadava elaborates the concept ofkali age as a period ofallegedly sharp classantagonism, which led to theemergence of Feudal order. Heprovided an evidence forincreasing land grants to

military officers during thepost-Gupta period. However B.D.Chattopadhyaya says that thesepost-date the assumed genesisFeudal polity. Hence serviceland grants acted as a facet andnot as precondition to theemergence of the overall patternof political dominance. The Feudalism theory generatedconsiderable debate amongscholars about the nature ofearly medieval social formation.The most influential structuralcriticism comes from HarbansMukhia. He says that applyingFeudalism to India is inapt,

because its definingcharacteristic is absent i.e.the structure dependence betweenthe landlords and the peasantwhere the landlord is the landowner and a peasant is merely atenant. Moreover, there is afree peasant production as thepeasant controlled the processof production. In addition,Mukhia says that the landlordsdidn’t need to enserf thepeasant because of the high soilfertility and the lowsubsistence needs of Indianpeasantry, which resulted inhigh surplus.

R.S. Sharma responds to Mukhia’scriticism, saying that the lorddoes not mean anything withoutits products. The peasant mayhave possessed land, labour,cattle, and agriculturalimplements but his control overthe means of production was notvery effective as the fruits ofproduction were taken by thelandlords. Land grants leave nodoubt that the landlord largelycontrolled the means ofproduction. The argument thatthe landed beneficiaries weremainly concerned with theproblem of surplus collection

also needs to be re-examined.Mukhia contends that serfdom isan incidental feature in India.But Sharma says that evidencefrom the skand puranans producedby Yadava leaves little doubtthat hundreds of people werecompelled into forced labour.Mukhia says that while there isevidence of exploitation, thedegree of subjection of thepeasantry was not so substantialin early medieval period, asthere would have been no scopefor intensification ofexploitation, as happened in thesultanate period. He also blames

Sharma for producing empiricalevidence indicating similardevelopments in India andEurope. He adds that in Indiathe establishment of Feudalismis attributed primarily to stateaction in granting land in lieuof salary and the action ofgrantees in subjecting thepeasantry by means of legalrights assigned to them bystate. Mukhia ends by sayingthat if Feudalism ended in the11th-12th centuries as Sharmasays, then it remains tocharacterize the 6th centuriesfalling between this decline and

India’s colonization- ‘a sadcomment on the lack of rigour inthe concept of Indian Feudalism.B.D. Chattopadhyaya says therole of land grants as a mean ofexploitation is over emphasized,because one doesn’t know theproportion of the totalcultivable land that was beinggranted. He has raisedconceptual and empiricalarguments against deurbanizationand decommercialization. Heprovides evidence to show thatforeign trade did not declinebut continued. Similarly, hesays that economic basis of the

urban centre was an agriculturalsurplus generated by expansionand new methods of cultivation.So cities could not decline dueto trade decline because theywere not dependent on it.Chattopadhyaya also says thateven if some early medievalcities did decline, agrarianexpansion led to trade andexchange which led todevelopment of local exchangenodes from the 9th centuryonwards, providing the kernel ofa new kind of urbanization inearly medieval times. Some ofthe examples are- Siyadoni where

the presence of mandapikaimplies outside trade.Criticism of Indian Feudalismhave resulted in certain otherschemes being put forward toexplain the state structure inearly medieval times. One suchis the ‘Segmentary State’concept by Burton Stein, whichspeaks of dual sovereigntymainly in the context of SouthIndia. The other is an‘Integrative Model’ whichfocuses on intensive statedevelopment at the regionallevel, mainly by Herman Kulkeand B.D. Chattopadhyaya.

Chattopadhyaya suggests analternative way of looking atthe developments in this period.He indentifies 3 major inter-related historical processesthat help us understand theintense process of stateformation; and examines theircrystallization in theirspecific temporal and spatialcontexts. The first is economic,i.e. agricultural expansion thatintensified and widened itsgeographical horizons in thisperiod. The social process wasconsequence of the economic, asdue to the spread of

agriculture, the pre-existingindigenous tribes gotincorporated into caste systemat lower levels, leading to aspurt in untouchability.Agrarian expansion into newerareas led to a surplus, whichwas a pre-requisite for theformation of state society.

The Indian Feudalism debate hasled to a critical evaluation ofseveral important aspects ofmedieval Indian history. Theconcept of Indian Feudalismbroke away from the conventional

methods of history-writing andtook a definitive ideologicalposition. Supporters of theFeudalism theory themselves saythat Indian Feudalism has yet toachieve greater theoreticalsophistication in historicalanalysis. Others likeChattopadhyaya feel that view ofpolitical formation needs to berevaluated. Subrahmanyam noticesthe dependence of thehistoriography on receivedmodels, particularly from Europeand complaints of the failure todevelop adequate asianistmodels. However, before such a

model is elaborated, a number ofcrucial question, which theprevailing models have raised,require further clarification.The fruitful debate aboutcertain key institutions ofmedieval Indian society andtheir conceptual meaning mayhave to continue for rather along time yet.

Bibliography

Sharma R.S. - Early MedievalIndian Society:A society in Feudalization

Chattopadhyaya B.D. - TheMaking of Early MedievalIndia( second edition)

Kulke Hermann (ed.)- The Statein India: 1000-1700

Mukhia Harbans (ed.)- TheFeudalism Debate

Jha D.N. (ed.)- Feudal SocialFormation in Early India

Internet Articles- The Early Medieval Indiadebate:http://anaryasviews.blogspo

t.in/2012/03/early-medieval-india-debate.html

Medievalism Defined: http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1813/18130740.htm

India between 750-1200 A.D.: http://download.nos.org/srsec315new/History%20Book_L08.pdf