The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  Despite the continuity in the forms developed during this period, the suggestion that there were two phases is worth reconsideration, although the characteristics may have differed from those originally suggested by Kosambi. The earlier phase saw the opening up of new areas, the creation of intermediaries and kshatriyas, with the stirring of religious practices in some ways different from the prevailing ones. The later phase saw the establishing of the new system. The change from the earlier to the later lay in the enhancement of grants of land, the revival and resurgence of commerce, increased conversion to caste and the formation of new religious sects. Each of these aspects would have modified or exaggerated the influence of the others. Thus if a decline in commerce characterizes a feudal society, then the resurgence of commerce would have changed some aspects of the feudal nature of society, and transregional trade might have interfered with integrative polities. Whether it is because the quantity and quality of source materials differs, it does seem that there might have been some justification for describing the earlier phase as witnessing change introduced by those in authority, but with the participation of those at the local level, whereas the later phase was characterized by the intervention of more ranks of intermediaries representing those at a local level and perhaps taking the initiative in creating a change. Whereas initially the intervention of the state led to the granting of land and a change in the economy, in the latter part of this period the initiative towards change came from the intermediaries aspiring to a higher status.

  Theories of explanation have recognized that the structure of the state in post-Gupta times was different from that of pre-Gupta times. Although there were some states in areas where none had existed before, many were created from a realignment of existing administration. The state was now characterized by a distributive political economy where power, authority and resources were distributed through a chain of linkages rather than a one-to-one relationship with the state or its representatives. A major point of departure lay in the extensive grants of land that came to be seen as property, overriding the rights of others on the land. The increasing emphasis on the divinity of the king could also be viewed as expressive of his growing weakness, paralleled by the multiple centres of authority – the grantee, the tributary raja, the temple. The distribution was unequal because of the hierarchy and was expressed in tributary relations and claims to lineage connections. The insistence on kshatriya status points to caste statuses underlining inequality. Regional identities indicated differences, but similarities drew on the pattern of land grants requiring the intervention of the landed magnate and the suppression of the peasant, as well as on the spread of Sanskritic culture with attempts at cultural homogeneity.

  Distributive Political Economies

  The debate on the patterns of change has usefully introduced many themes that require closer examination, especially in the context of a multiplicity of states. Apart from grants of land to beneficiaries, the payment of salaries to officers in equivalent grants of revenue or land, rather than in cash, have been linked to the weakening of the sovereignty of the state and of a centralized bureaucratic system. This raises other questions. The explanation for introducing a system of granting land could relate to the decreasing authority of the king or, alternatively, the well-matched authority of a number of tributary rajas constantly reaching for suzerainty. Brahmans received land grants because they both legitimized the many new kings and claimed that they could avert the evil consequences of events such as eclipses – which they predicted – through performing the correct rituals as an antidote. Equally important, they were the settlers and pioneers in new lands. As landed intermediaries they became wealthy, in some cases functioning as kshatriyas when they established brahma-kshatra dynasties. Officers receiving grants of revenue from specific lands in lieu of cash salaries, may have spent more time and energy on their own estates than on the administration entrusted to them. The transference of administrative authority to the grantee would have made the grant more attractive.

  A grant given for service, especially military service, could sometimes be revoked. Unfortunately there is less evidence available on the revoking of grants or reasons for doing so. To some extent this detracts from more specific information on the legal stipulations of the grant in terms of the definition and rights of property. A difference between ownership and rights of usage was recognized. Obviously not every governmental right was conceded, and therefore what was not conceded is a matter of interest. In land disputes involving a grant, the king’s charter was the final authority. Where the grant could supposedly not be revoked it was stated that the grant should last as long as the moon and the sun endure, and here the right to inherit is implicit. The right to alienate may also be implied.

  Other questions relate to the extension of cultivation through state action. Whereas earlier the Mauryan state settled cultivators on deserted lands or on lands newly developed for cultivation, or had such lands worked by prisoners of war, bringing the settlements under direct administrative control, this system gradually changed in the post-Mauryan period. The restructuring of the economy began with the increase in grants of land. New methods of expanding agriculture had to be found. The location of a land grant doubtless had to do with its intention: was it to reward brahmans; to intensify agriculture in areas already under cultivation; to clear forest land and start cultivation, converting the people of the forest into cultivators? Were there perhaps fewer people who could be forcibly settled on land or encouraged to settle, hence the resort to using grantees to enforce cultivation? Was there a growth in population but such that it was balanced by a growth in agricultural production, reducing the need for the peasant to migrate? Alternatively, was the possibility of migration prevented because the peasant was tied to the land through various controls, so that despite the burden of taxes in kind and in labour migration was not an easy solution?

  The possibility of multiplying intermediaries at various points in the structure led to a wider diffusion of income from land. This weakened the king and placed him politically in a vulnerable position vis-à-vis the intermediaries, since he was dependent on their honouring their obligations. It is likely that the prosperity of intermediaries was at the expense of the peasants, with the demand from the landowner being as high as one-third in some cases. The peasants would also have had to cope with additional taxes imposed by intermediaries. These would have included cesses for the construction of irrigation works such as tanks, water-lifting devices and Persian wheels, or providing free labour on demand. Where the state constructed a major irrigation system it would initially have made demands of free labour. In the eleventh century the Paramara King Bhoj built an extensive reservoir with a dam (near Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh), which would have required a large investment of labour and possibly special taxes. That this was a normal procedure can be assumed by the specific mention in earlier records of this not being done when repairs were carried out to the dam on the Sudarshana Lake in western India.

  Revenue was collected by the grantees, who were gradually empowered to carry out judicial functions and assert their authority in cases of dispute. The grantees therefore had both a political and administrative function. This did not eliminate the need for administrators controlled by the king and court, as evident from the functioning of various governments, but it could in theory reduce the number. The powers of the king’s officers were specified even to the point of their not being allowed to enter the territory of some grantees. The area that was not given away in grants varied from kingdom to kingdom but was nevertheless substantial enough to constitute crown lands that were directly administered by the king.

  Grants to brahmans were intended to bring religious merit to the king or to ward off an impending calamity. The grants reactivated to some extent the rural setting for Vedic practices and were often given to those who were specialists in Vedic ritual. Royal donors could claim that they were defending the norms of caste in governance, a statement that may not hav
e been welcome in areas with a recent memory of a more egalitarian society. The brahmans performed sacrifices on behalf of the king who by accepted theory acquired one-sixth of the merit from such rituals. Kings were careful to patronize the brahmans, who in turn, to show their gratitude, composed fictitious genealogies for them to ensure their kshatriya status. The claim to this status even by intermediaries made them potential aspirants to kingship. Brahman landholders employed cultivators since caste laws forbade them to cultivate. Most such holdings were in fact large enough to require many tenants of various categories.

  Among the samantas there was a premium on military achievements and heroic acts. The ideology of a warrior caste was current among those claiming kshatriya status. Frequent campaigns were essential to perpetuate this image and establish the reputation of military prowess. Where the desire for plunder was not in itself a sufficient excuse for war, an elaborate code of etiquette was established to justify response to the merest disparaging remark. War became a grand pageant, compared in one Chandella inscription to the performance of a Vedic sacrifice; in this kingdom villages were donated to maintain the families of those who had acquired the highest honour of death on the battlefield. This was also a means of encouraging the continuing flow of soldiers.

  Village autonomy was naturally hampered by the privileges of the grantee but the relationship varied. The village headman, often a landholder, would have mediated where possible. Designations of such persons, for example mahattaras and pattakilas, have continued to the present in the mehtas, mahtos, patels and patils, some of whom retained this function until recently. There is a reference to a thakkura of a Chauhan village having to obtain the sanction of the village assembly to raise new dues for the village temple. But this need not have been a common practice. A smaller committee known as the panchakula – literally of five families – had some appointed members and some local representatives. They functioned as administrating committees both in towns and in rural areas, and on occasion collected the state revenue, recorded religious and secular grants, supervised the sale of goods and trade and acted as arbiters in disputes. These committees are suggestive of the institution of the panchayat whose membership was either of a locality or of a caste. Caste panchayats of professional castes carried elements of democratic functioning because the status of its members was relatively equal. Nevertheless, this was a limited practice since the wider context of caste was hierarchical. Long-established societies were habituated to accepting hierarchy, but would those freshly inducted into the caste system and more familiar with the egalitarian clan have acquiesced to the same degree?

  Many issues have entered the discussion of whether or not this was feudalism. Among them are the ties of vassalage, the creation of fiefs and the existence of serfdom, all drawing from the debates on European feudalism. They assume not only an economic relationship but also the accommodation of a particular legal system. The numerical growth of samantas decreased the concentration of power at one central point. The grant was in a sense a contract between the king and the grantee but need not have created a condition of vassalage. In most regions grants for non-religious purposes were fewer than those for religious purposes. The grant to the brahman would not have required either homage or an oath of fidelity, both required of the European vassal, since the relationship between king and brahman was complementary. Fief has a special meaning in relation to the contract between the suzerain and the vassal, involving the kind of authority delegated over a region and a possible hereditary right which is not applicable arbitrarily to any grant of land, even for services rendered. Servile labour, however much it ties a peasant and may even prevent him from migrating, is not the same as serfdom. The latter requires a contractual relationship between the peasant and the landholder, which could include the cultivation of the latter’s land. Servile labour need not always be linked to agricultural production as was serfdom. The use of the term pida, pain, for the taxes imposed on the peasant is different from the specific terms used earlier for taxes, such as bali, bhaga, shulka and kara. Pida indicates a burden, and it is interesting that it was used by those who imposed the burden. Another form of tying down the peasant was either pledging his field or his labour, imposed because of a failure to pay back a debt often arising out of rent or taxes. Bonded labour had continuity over generations.

  Additional taxes would have required improvement in the use of resources, which would have involved agricultural technology and especially irrigation. There are texts that discuss soil, fertility and crops. Irrigation facilities were expanded in the form of wells, tanks and devices for lifting water. The araghatta was a water-wheel, but the gearing mechanism associated with the Persian wheel may have been introduced towards the latter part of this period. Land irrigated by this device was regarded as special, and the expense of constructing such a wheel may have been left to the landholder who would charge a tax on its use. A variety of people are said to have been involved in constructing irrigation tanks.

  Land being an important economic asset, problems concerning the division of land and inheritance received special attention in contemporary Dharmashastras and their commentaries. The texts discussed disputes over boundaries of fields, fallow and cultivated land, embankments and suchlike. An increase in such disputes might also point to a pressure on the land or even a rise in the population of some areas. The beginning of a more intensive use of land is also reflected in categories of fallow, some following one or two years. Land that had been fallow for five years was treated as having reverted to forest.

  Kings and Politics

  The genesis of dynasties differed. Some were built up by adventurers through raiding and conquest, others through intermediaries defying a suzerain and eventually being recognized as independent, while still others descended from recipients of grants of land or from administrators. Initially, power relations would have been determined by these origins, as well as the questions of fiscal and military agreements so essential to politics.

  Almost in inverse ratio to their actual power, kings took exalted titles such as maharajadhiraja, parameshvara, paramabhattaraka and suchlike, which were generally embedded in eulogistic phraseology. Prithviraja III, the Chauhan King, was referred to as bharateshvara, ‘the lord of Bharata’. A twelfth-century ruler of Kanauj described himself as ‘the most exalted, the great king of kings, the supreme lord, the king over horses, elephants and men, the sovereign of the three worlds’. Such statements were not to be taken literally as defining the geography of the kingdom, but as pan of the rhetoric associated with royalty and their world of make-believe. Minor deeds were depicted as heroic acts. Flattery even of the most obvious kind became part of the courtly style, though admittedly the more intelligent rulers preferred subtler forms.

  Relations between the king and the brahman, that had once included both dependency and competition, now tended to the former especially as there were tangible benefits for the brahman. Rituals intended to consecrate or empower kings were at one level aimed at balancing the competing authority between the two. Land grants enhanced the relations between patron and client: the brahman validated the king as a kshatriya or performed a similar act, and in return received wealth in the form of land. This carries echoes of the competition for power between the raja as chief and the brahman as priest that had accompanied the process of state formation in the early first millennium BC. With new states being created through a comparable but more complex process a millennium later, the potential of that relationship seems to have been revived. The analogy with the earlier system is, however, circumscribed. The wealth in earlier times had been movable and barely heritable, whereas now it was land and therefore immovable, permanent and heritable. There was also a competition over patronage among kings, where the most generous in granting land would be eulogized.

  To the extent that land constituted property, it changed the politics of the balance. It allowed the brahman to appropriate the authority of the kshatriya and establish a ruling lin
eage. The branch lineages may not have been kin-related but the fiction of kinship had to be maintained, and this fiction attempted to follow the normative rules, thus adding to the emphasis on caste. In the earlier period the popularity of the Shramanic sects with their heterodox teachings probably led to more questioning of caste norms. Now, when the fiction was more apparent and the norms actually flaunted, with brahmans taking to kingship or trade, the theoretical reiteration of the norms nevertheless continued.

  Kingdoms were less frequently named after founding clans than in the past and more frequently after territories. This would be expected, especially where the new state was pan of an earlier kingdom or created with some additions of territory. This is suggested by the continuance of terms from earlier administrative units, such as bhukti and vishaya in the new names. There was a re-mapping of territories based on dominance and alliances. Administrative structures are said to reflect links between territory and lineages, and although a regulated administration has been suggested it may not have been so regulated in practice. In some areas under Rajput control for instance, the territorial unit was said to be that of eighty-four villages – the chaurasi – and was furnished with a garh or fort as its nucleus. Those in authority owed allegiance to a Rajput king. Marriage alliances within Rajput families further demarcated the Rajput as a social category. At a wider level the change from clan to caste was not immediate, with those aspiring to high status restrained by having to retain their clan identity. Hence the seemingly contradictory references to brahmans and shudras carrying the same name, for instance, Abhira brahmans and Abhira shudras.