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Historiography of Early Medieval India
(Nature of State)
The early medieval period spanning from c.600CE to 1300CE is to be situated
between the early historical and medieval. Historians are unanimous on the fact Page | 1
that this phase in Indian history had a distinct identity and as such differed from
the preceding early historical and succeeding medieval. Thus, it is identified as
a phase in the transition to the medieval. However, there is no unanimity on the
nature of state in this period which is defined differently by various scholars of
distinct schools based on their approaches and conceptual models. The debate
revolves around the degree of control and role played by religious institutions in
the polity.
The debate include various models suggested by dominant schools. The
Imperialist school promulgated the Oriental Despotism and Asiatic Mode of
Production. Another school is that of Nationalist scholars, who promoted the
Indian Historical Model. Other important contributing models are that of the
Marxist’s Indian Feudalism Model of R. S. Sharma and the Segmentary State
Model of Burton Stein. The Integrative State Model of B. D. Chattopadhyaya is
also one of the dominant models that has tried to determine the nature of the
state in the early medieval India.
The Marx’s notion of Oriental Despotism and Asiatic mode of production
depicted the Indian society as the unchanging and static society of communally
landowning village societies and the absolute power of the 'Oriental despot'.
Scholars of this model argued that the relationship between ruling class who
funded irrigation projects and peasants with no private property was that of
appropriation of surplus based on coercion. However, the notion of stagnation
and unchangeable nature of Indian society led to the discarding of this model by
several historians such as RS Sharma and BD Chattopadhyaya.
Second model is Indian Historiographical model by nationalist historians.
According to this model early medieval state was a unitary, centrally organized
and territorially defined kingdom with a strong bureaucracy. Historians viewed
early medieval as one. Further they tried to establish the existence of a
centralized empire as a continuation of the ancient empires, thereby negating the
elements of changes that took place in the nature of state during the period.
Both models depict the state in medieval India as a strong and centralized state.
With changes according to conditions of subcontinent a Marxist influenced
model of Indian feudalism was proposed. According to the conception of
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Indian feudalism, state formation after the Gupta period had a decidedly
negative character, since the many local kingdoms and principalities had
developed at the cost of the former larger political entities. The Indian Marxist
historians D.D Kosambi and R.S Sharma in spite of their rejection of the idea
of self sufficiency implied in AMP unanimously agree that by the end of Gupta Page | 2
period the Indian village became nearly self-contained owing mainly to the
decline of trade and urban life. D.D Kosambi gave feudalism a significant
place in the context of socio-economic history. In his book, An Introduction to
the Study of Indian History, Kosambi conceptualised the growth of feudalism
in Indian history as a two way process :from above and from below. From
above the feudal structure was created by the state granting land and rights to
officials and Brahmins; from below many individuals and small groups rose
from the village levels of power to become landlords and vassals of the kings.
The concept of feudalism was further developed by RS Sharma in his book
entitled Indian Feudalism. In his book, he highlighted the ever-increasing
number of land grants to Brahmins and religious institutions(religious) since
the early centuries AD and later also to government officials(secular) as major
cause of feudalism in India. Their endowment with more and more immunities
(pratihara), e.g. freedom from taxation and from inspection by royal officers and
with royal prerogatives e.g. jurisdiction and collection of fines, led to the
emergence of a class of landed intermediaries. They encroached on communal
village land and slowly reduced villagers to serfdom. This development was
partly caused and further aggravated by a decline of urbanism and interregional,
particularly international, trade, and as a result of this decline, there was a
paucity of coins in the post-Gupta period. In support of this theory, B.N.S
Yadava has shown the literary evidence which indicate antithesis between the
ruling aristocracy and the peasantry and also to the oppression of the latter
by former. Yadava even linked the decline of trade and urban life, paucity of
coins, social crisis and distribution of powers among ‘feudal lords’ to
establishment of Ghaznavid kingdom in Punjab in twelfth century.
Politically, this development was characterized by a continuous process of
fragmentation and decentralization caused by the widespread practice of
granting territories to vassals and officials who established themselves as
independent potentates.
This theory by R.S evoked several criticisms. First among these was by D.C
Sircar. In his paper 'Landlordism Confused with Feudalism', he called
feudalism as a misnomer in early Indian context. Sircar argued that while in
Europe land was granted to military class with certain obligations whereas in
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Indian context there are overwhelming evidence of land grants made to
Brahamanas and religious institution without any such obligation. He criticized
Marxist historians for their inability to distinguish between landlordism and
tenancy in India from feudalism. However, later it was defended by proponents
of feudalism on the grounds that in early medieval India Brahmins often Page | 3
fulfilled exactly this role though with means different from their contemporary
European feudal counterparts.
The other critique of Sharma’s theory was Harbans Mukhia. In his address
entitled ‘Was There Feudalism in Indian History?’, he questioned the Indian
feudalism while comparing with scenario at medieval Europe both at theoretical
plane and the empirical level.
Historians also criticized Sharma’s theory for ascertaining the emergence of
feudalism to external factors. This portrayed internal factors as insignificant and
unable to cause a change. This goes against his own contradiction for Asiatic
Mode of Production which implies India was a static society. D N Jha had
criticized him for relying too heavily on the absence of long distance external
trade as the cause of the rise of feudalism in India. B.D Chattopadhyay with
enough epigraphic evidence to show urban development and not decay in early
medieval India. Ranabir Chakravarti has brought forward ample evidence of
flourishing trade, different categories of merchants and market centres in the
concerned period.
In response to all these arguments R.S Sharma presented a new modified theory
in his article entitled ‘How Feudal was Indian Feudalism’ emphasizing on
internal social contradictions with other factors which led to major
transformation. He argued that a deep social crisis reflected in description of
Kali Age in various epic and Puranic passages datable to late 3rd and 4th century
CE, was a prelude to feudalization of Indian Society. It is characterized by
Varnasamkara i.e., intermixture of varnas or social orders. the gradual decay
of the economic and social status of the Vaishyas and Shudras. These two
Varnas eventually became indistinguishable from each other, while the
Kshatriyas and Brahmins became akin to the feudal lords of Europe. There was
gradual decay in the economic and social status of the Vaishyas and Shudras.
These social crises were reflective in the exercise of coercive power by king and
collection of revenue. However, R.S Sharma was not able to assimilate and
explain argument posed by researchers for the monetary and urban decline
factor.
A major disadvantage of the theory of Indian feudalism is the preponderance of
its conceptual framework on decentralization and political fragmentation. A
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structural interpretation of the early medieval period reveals that this period of
North Indian decentralization coincided with a very intensive process of state
formation on the local sub regional and regional level in some part of northern
India, many parts of central India and in most parts of southern India. It was
during this time that a process of indigenous state formation took place in many Page | 4
parts of India.
A major trait of the individuality of the early medieval south Indian polity can
be seen in the vital local self-bodies of the Pallava and the Chola regime. The
local self-bodies made their presence strongly felt in the political life within a
monarchical set up. N.K. Sastri opined that the Chola monarchy was a
juxtaposition of an extremely powerful monarchy at the apex level and the
overwhelming presence of local self-bodies at the villages.
This was challenged by Burton Stein in his segmentary state model which
also questions the inadequacy of the feudal model as a tool to explain the
prevailing polity in south India. Stein derived his inspiration from Southall’s
anthropological study of Alur society in Eastern Africa wherein he formulated
his concept of segmentary state. Burton Stein utilized this model to describe the
state formation under the Cholas and the Pallavas. In his work, Peasant State
and Society in Medieval South India, Stein argues that the element of
centrality existed only in the core area even where the presence of quasi-
autonomous foci of administration was tolerated by the Cholas .According
to this theory, king enjoyed only limited territorial sovereignty and state existed
only ritually. He further explained that there existed a number of independent
segments well defined in ethnic territories. The real foci of power were the
locality level centres or nadus. He distinguishes sharply between actual
political control on one side and ritual sovereignty on the other. All the
centres of the segmentary state do exercise actual political control over their
own part or segment, but only one centre the primary centre of the ruling
dynasty has the primacy of extending ritual sovereignty beyond its own borders.
He further argues that the absence of an organized bureaucracy forced the Chola
monarch to fall back instead on ritual sovereignty in which the position of the
ruler required to be legitimized and validated by the brahmana priest. Stein
confines ritual sovereignty mainly to the state cult exemplified in the royal Siva
cult of Rajaraja’s Rajarajesvara temple at Tanjore. He has elaborated on the '
fundamental importance of the royal Siva cult as 'the overarching ideological
element which makes these units segments of a whole’. Moreover, the
inscriptions are also looked at by Stein as a clear evidence of ritual sovereignty.
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This theory proposed by Stein was criticized by several historians on two major
grounds. First refers to degree of administrative centralization of political power
achieved by the Cholas and to the question whether the four hundred years of
Chola rule can be treated structurally as a single unit. In contrast to Stein, most
of his critics like R.S Sharma and D.N Jha emphasize the astonishing structural Page | 5
changes during the eleventh century when the Cholas succeeded in
establishing and maintaining direct political control over their considerably
extended core area through an impressive and well-organized antral
administration. While criticizing, R.S Sharma stated that this model was unable
to explain changes within the state structure, as it analyses the state system
from the Pallavas to the Vijayanagara kingdoms as almost changeless. D.N Jha
emphasized on social cleavage and class struggle under the Cholas and
therefore he subscribed to the “growing understanding of the medieval South
Indian state as feudal’.
On the basis of his analysis, Y Subbarayalu argued that the segmentary idea
could not be applied to the entire phase but to the period before 985 AD.
According to him later phase was followed by feudalization with decline of the
power of king.
Hermann Kulke questioned Stein’s concept of ritual sovereignty. According to
him in a traditional society, particularly in India, ritual sovereignty seems to
be an integral part and sometimes even a pace maker of political power.
According to him, these inscriptions were documents of a systematic ritual
policy which was as much a part of the general ‘power policy’ as, for instance,
economic or military policies.
The feudal polity and the segmentary state theory highlight the traits of
disintegration and fragmentation as opposed to a centralized state
structure. According to B.D. Chattopadhyaya, the segmentary state model or
the concept of ritual sovereignty cannot in fact resolve the problem of the
political basis of integration since a rigid use of the segmentary state concept
relegates the different foci of power to the periphery and does not really see
them as components of state structure. The phenomenon of different foci of
power was not peculiarly south Indian but cut across all major political
structures of the early medieval period.
These models have been challenged by a group of scholars clubbed together as
“non aligned historians” by Hermann Kulke who emphasized on processes
of state formation rather than the state as a given entity. This non-aligned group
is reluctant to accept any models. On the other hand their focus is on structural
developments and changes within a given state system. B.D Chattopadhyaya
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in his work, The Making of Early Medieval India and Herma Kulkein in his
work King and Cults and The State in India, 1000-1700, formulated a
different theory giving a different perspective to early medieval state. Unlike the
feudal model it locates the political processes at play in the regions, mostly
outside the Ganga valley, and then moves on to work out the emerging structure Page | 6
of polity and society. In other words, instead of simply asserting a paradigm
from the top the framework takes cognizance of the developments from below.
B.D Chattopadhyay’s and Herman Kulke’s integrative state model unlike
feudalism and segmentary which restricts political change mainly to aspects of
fragmentation and the segmentation of political authority ,it perceives political
changes through centralization and integration. According to them, these state
emerged not from fragmentation of large empire but from the changes in local
society. They highlighted the changes within the societies. In this model,
Chattopadhyay interprets early medieval period as a ‘period of state formation’.
It means the transformation of pre-state polities into state polities, thus the
integration of local polities into structures that transcended the bounds of local
polities. This integrative development was based on and accompanied by a
series of processes like extension of the agrarian society ·through
peasantization of tribal groups; the improvement of trading networks; an
expansion of caste society ('jatification'); the emergence and spatial extending
of ruling lineages by processes called 'Kshatriyaization' or 'Rajputaization';
interspersing the dynastic 'domain' (Stammland) and increasingly its hinterland
with a network of royally patronized religious and land assignments to
'officials'; 'greater penetration of the royal will into local arenas of power' ; and
never ending though rarely successful attempts to centralized administrative
functions, particularly revenue collection, etc. Chattopadhyaya regarded the
political integration of samantas as ‘a keynote of early medieval policy’. The
integration of the tribes in the jati system was further given a momentum by the
simultaneous absorption of tribal/folk cults into the sectarian Brahmanical
Bhakti cults. Knowing the role played by religious institutions in process of
state formation they were highlighted as factors facilitating the extension and
consolidation of royal power insofar as they helped the extension of the agrarian
frontier, invented origin myths for royalty, provided grand genealogical
linkages to ruling families, and disseminated the dominant ideology.
The state in this perception was not a static entity. It was dynamic, multi
layered, polycentric, and expanding or shrinking regularly.
Among the criticisms there are broadly three kinds of reservations: first, that the
economic dimensions need to be addressed, secondly that it is essentially a
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narrative of regionalism, and finally that one does not get very much about the
structural features of the state apparatus. It is widely admitted that the
conceptual framework under discussion focuses on the continuous evolution of
the state, instead of giving it a spatial-temporal fixity and treating it as static.
Since the both segmentary and integrative models are explained in terms of land Page | 7
grants which formed the crucial element in feudal state therefore, they provided
no alternative material basis.
Owing to the policy of land grants local landlords and chieftains were obliged to
pay tribute and perform military and administrative duties in turn of their fiscal
and administrative powers derived from the kin. In this way they worked for
integration in integrative model. On the other hand, they ruled over local areas
in an autonomous way it amounted to segmentation of authority.
Therefore, nature of different regions to be analysed differently. Thus, models
on the nature of state should be understood in terms of the parallel
existence of different model.
