Part 5 - The Area of Problem

The probable division of understanding regarding the kingship and polity could be delineated in terms of two different ways: first is the historiography applied to it before and after independence of India, because a major shift has took place of looking at historical changes in the post 1940. The second is the issue of kingship which become unintended victim in studies of the 2^nd. Half of 20^th century models and the role of king and his office got diminished importance, even unwittingly reduced his personality as joker, puppet, clown or in terms of sad or percellised sovereignty, ritual king and actual king etc.

As we mentioned earlier, the general trend of polity in pre modern India, as divided by Hermann kulke are fivefold divisions.^[1] Out of these models, coming out from divergent angles of analytical concept to define the extent of central authority or local autonomy, the role of religious institutions (agraharas/brahmadeyas/temples) as markers of political fragmentation sometimes segmentation or as instrumental for the incorporation or the integration of disparate social groups.

For instance, Romila Thapar^[2] presented the ancient state formation as the ‘process of transformation from lineage to state’; while Ram Saran Sharma^[3] and his followers have applied the concept of Feudalism in studying the state and society. This model simultaneously has been attempted to early medieval South India also. M.G.S. Narayanan and Kesavan Veluthat envisaged that the Bhakti Movement in South India was feudal in nature. K. Veluthat has opined in favour of the prevalence of the feudal political structure in early medieval South India.

Japanese Scholar Noboru Karashima and his associates have studied enormous number of epigraphical sources of south India depending upon the quantitative analysis method. This largely helps scholars to replace the speculation of an earlier period and open up the possibilities of examining the different hypothesis with greater confidence.

Similarly, Dinesh Chandra Sircar,^[4] Asoke Rudra^[5] and Harbans Mukhiya,^[6] came out with their writings by questioning the relevance of Feudal model in Indian context. Contrarily, Kathleen Gough^[7] examined the south Indian society by using the concept of ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’. Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya,^[8] in his submission of Indian History Congress Presidential Lecture intended to examin the pan early-medieval polity as logical development of state-society at local agrarian levels with gradual but far greater penetration. Hermann Kulke^[9] termed this approach as an integrative processsural model of studying state and society in the early medieval phase. Burton Stein,^[10] few years back introduced the theory of ‘Segmentary’ state for the study of south Indian history. Other scholars like Noboru Karashima^[11] argued for the presence of different social structure in Chola and Vijayanagara periods. R. Champakalakshmi^[12] by opposing B. Stein have clarified mainly the urban economy of the state as an important factor in the process of state formation.

Actually the theory put forward by B. Stein was perhaps evolved out as the most provocative amid these new interpretations. It was not only invited lots of criticism, simultaneously it introduce the social-anthropological concepts into the state studies. The ‘ritual-sovereignty’ or the religious aspects of kingship become the core issue for analysis. Though the importance of religion in state administration has been well recognized by many scholars in the past, yet the level of sophistication that is obtain in recent writings is unprecedented.

The theory of Segmentary state received enormous criticisms from different schools of thought. Some of the arguments are like, ‘ignoring the clan character of the state’^[13] ;‘negation of king’s exercise of political sovereignty over the kingdom’^[14] ;‘lack of view point of historical change or development of society’^[15] ;and ‘misunderstanding or ignoring certain fundamental facts’.^[16] Various other scholars like R. Champakalakshmi, Sanjoy Subramanian, James Heitzmann have also been critical of Stein’s model.

In last three decades, the study of Indian kingship and its other aspects have come onto the fore amongst historians and anthropologists, by opening up a two way approach that may be characterized as ‘Historico-Anthropological’ or ‘Ethno-Historical’ studies of Indian kingship.^[17]

Several historians like Burton Stein, Hermann Kulke and Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya came out with valuable contributions in this regard. Similarly the anthropologists like Nicholas Dirks, Gloria Raheja, Declan Quigley and Charles Drekmeier who made valuable contributions in this intensifying study. Primarily by engaging different disciplines the interaction amidst scholars greatly advanced the study of kingship. But, it also coined a number of problems came out from these studies urging more careful investigation in a historical perspective.

The major concern is related to the division of the Indian kingship into ‘secular and religious’ or into ‘political and ritual’ aspects of it. It raised the questions about king’s power he exercised impersonally and secularly as the head of the state, and what he applied personally and ethically as the follower and guardian of a certain creed or ideology.

B. Stein clearly separated the ‘ritual-sovereignty’ from the political one and he actually denied of the king’s exercise of ‘political-sovereignty’ over his kingdom. This becomes the main concern for criticism by Brajadulal Chottopadhyaya and others. They analytically opposed the concept of ‘ritual-sovereignty’ and ‘of defining the state as Ritual-space’. It is worth mentioning that Marxist view of Feudalism considers kingship as ‘Parcellized-Sovereignty’ which refute both the secular or religious aspects of it.

These anthropological inputs largely attracted the attention of the historians;^[18] historical studies started giving more importance to the religion and ritual aspects. In anthropological surveys Kingship has been utterly analysed as a problem of ritual and symbol, than an issue for what became political anthropology. The primary concern for the anthropologists was to ascertain the connection between the king and the Brahmanas or the status of the king in the social hierarchy. The important endeavours in this regard are: Louis Dumont’s ‘Pure-Impure’ ideology^[19] , A.M. Hocart’s ‘King at the pinnacle of society in terms of the gift giving-receiving system^[20] ’, R. Inden’s ‘Auspiciousness-Inauspiciousness’ ideology^[21] , pivoting around Hindu kings. It is noteworthy in this concern that the works of Nicholas Dirks, which significantly correlates social and political authority and the ethno-history of the Indian kingdom, as he defined it as the ‘Hollow Crown’,^[22] but all major works lay emphasis on king’s ritual or religious aspects.

B. Stein was influenced by A. Southall’s Alur Society, 1956, and B. Subha Rao’s archaeological geographical study–‘The Personality of India, 1956, and Y, Subbarayalu’s ‘Political Geography of The Cola Country’, 1973. ‘The Segmentary State in South Indian History’ first published in 1977, which was expanded in the book, ‘Peasant, State and Society in Medieval South India’, in 1980. By emphasizing this as an alternative model to the unitary state system, scholars like G. Spencer [1983], H. Kulke [1982], D. Sulman [1985], N. Dirks [1987], and Berkemer published their works. The notable critiques of this model are: R. Champakalaxmi [1981], V. Ramaswamy [1992],^[23] B.D. Chattopadhyaya [1983]. New research in structural analysis of the Chola state derived in the writings of Y. Subbarayalu [1982] and James Heitzman [1987]. Steins reaction against his critiques in 1985 and also critical to the feudal concept in his ‘interim Reflections’ in 1991, which was again crucially judged by R.S. Sharma in 1993.

On this juncture, scholars like Brajadulal chottopadhyaya and Herman Kulke preach out in accordance of the combined-exercise of the king’s authority. Noboru Karashima and other Japanese scholars similarly show their interests in reassessing the political aspects of kingship in historical perspective of the development of the state and society. These scholars intended to focus deeply on the analysis of the overall structure and changes of Indian kingship. They suggest some new approaches and analytical method into the study of Indian kingship.

G. Yamazaki^[24] in his study re-examines the north Indian kingship as portraed in three different kinds of Sanskrit literature and classified the attributes of kingly affairs into major and minor. He further sub-divided these kingly affairs as secular/political and matters of divinity purity. This undoubtedly specifies regarding the religious association/ foundation of kingship behind its political philosophy at the same time its common, secular attributes, like the right to collect tax and protection of his subject. Study also distinguishes between Hindu, Buddhist and secular forms of kingship, and to demonstrate how the kingship shifts from heterodoxy to orthodoxy, he re-assesses the four major inscriptions of Asoka, Kharavela, Rudradaman and Samudragupta.

Hiroshi Yamashita^[25] shows his keenness in re-examining the nature and evolution of Tamil kingship. He selected to study the early Tamil classics and inscriptions. He reassesses the assumptions of George Hart and others that the concept of Tamil devotional god was formed on the basis of the concept of ancient Tamil kings. These contributions further reflect into the study of the changing concept of kingship in the Chola period by Yasushi Ogura^[26] . He intended to readdress the major issue of south Indian kingship. The policy of royal temple construction, how was connected with the Hero-Worship of the Sangam age.

The issues he discussed intended to gaze the change in the conception of the king in two ways, the king-God and King-Brahmana relation. He tried to define it with the rise of the Saiva-Siddhanta sect in the Chola court, the idolization of even the living king, king as the supreme priest or devotee of the God and the like.

The interaction or inter-relationship of king-God or king-Cult and kingBrahmana bondage at the same nature discussed by B. Stein, H. Kulke, A. Eschmann and others. H. kulke relates it with the changing ideology of legitimization and the consolidation of the newly established kingship within the nuclear areas. Kingship started enjoying greater ascendancy over relatively larger areas and disparate human groups in later period with huge temple construction and consolidation of large temple cities around it.

Work of A. Eschmann and others^[27] exemplify empirically the correlation developed between royal power and the perception of divinity. It also demonstrates the nexus involving different social groups which operated around a major cult centre. Instead of relating the social groups in a locality (segment) and king, who integrated all the locations only ‘ritually’ (as done by B. Stein), N. Karashima, after examining the inscriptions thoroughly, opines that the relation between the king and the local people assumes divergent shapes in accord with changes of social formation.

The relationship between the king and his intermediaries^[28] and the king-locality relationship^[29] also evolved out as important issues in this regard. Scholars tried to throw welcome lights on the question that was it an interrelated or a separate relation only amalgamated by ritually emerged as an important question about kingship? N. Karashima, in this regard emphasizes the role of surplus production which was needed for both the local community and the state. King, by the

‘system of entitlements’ in his view, was the key policy which defines the division of labour and distribution of recourses in a locality. The ‘Ranking system’ adopted by the kingship, could also be an approach to know how the kings maintain political superiority over other class participated in state administration as titleholders^[30] .

Japanese scholar H. Kotani,^[31] studies the system of punishment (dandaniti, and thus he put forward another important approach in kingship studies. he criticizes the recent studies for not taking the cognizance of the importance of the king’s role as the state-head, who inflicted punishment impersonally, independent of ideology and also for their arguing for penetration of kingship into the local community through the performance of rituals. He shows the importance of the locality and its own ritualistic-apparatus for maintaining social order as revealed by the existence of Dharmadhikaris.

H. Kulke, specially draws our attention with his studies on legitimization processes prevailed in early-medieval India. In his view, the policies taken by the kingship was manifested in ‘the acknowledgement of the dominant autochthonous deities as tutelary deities………and it was aimed at the consolidation within the nuclear areas. This in his term, the early religious policy mainly strengthens the ‘vertical’ (internal) legitimization of the political hierarchy. Later, with huge temple construction corresponds with the rise of great regional kingdoms, when the kingship needed a ‘horizontal’ (external) legitimization against his rivals^[32] . What he suggests, is clearly the religious aspects of Indian kingship, which in his view, later transplanted into the southeast Asian ‘Dev-Raja cult’.

Another important issue in this regard, discussed by H. Kulke was family history or the ancestor legends associated with temples, which are as a combination of mythical accounts of local deity and the founder figure of ‘Hoary-past’. Kulottunga-Chidambaram or the Gajapati-Kingship and Jagannatha Trinity at Puri, are the examples he cited as centres of regional deity or ‘Ksetra’, which were utilised by the later descendants of that locality through additional patronage and in eulogies, associating themselves with former imperial ancestor in the temple chronicles.

The emergence and development of the institution of kingship as a social political institution is by passing through various layers of processes. For the genesis and evolution of this institutions we must go through the original texts of Vedic, Puranic, Epic, Sutra and Smriti literatures, Arthasastra, Nitisara, Rajanitisastra, and their commentaries in later periods and their regional counterparts, chronicles of the kings and other Sanskrit works, Buddhist and Jain works with foreign accounts [Greek and Chinese], and large volume of epigraphic and numismatic evidences.

The evolution of the institutions of kingship, his role in the realm of state formation, his diplomatic policies, position, status, powers, functions, what privileges and prerogatives he enjoyed, what are the role of checks of both constitutional and non-constitutional, are interesting aspects regarding the study of kingship.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Introduction of this dissertation, p. 5

[2]:

From Lineage to State, Bombay, 1984

[3]:

Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India, Delhi, 1959; Indian Feudalism, c.300-1200, Calcutta, 1965

[4]:

Landlordism Confused with Feudalism, 1966.

[5]:

‘Against Feudalism’, Economic and Political Weekly, 16, 1981, pp.213-46

[6]:

‘Was there Feudalism in Indian History’, IHC, Presidential Address, 40^th Session, 1979

[7]:

‘Modes of Production in South India’, Economic and Political Weekly, Feb. 1980, pp. 337-64

[8]:

‘Political Processes and the Structure of Polity in Early Medieval India’, IHC, 44^th Session, 1983

[9]:

Kings and Cults: State Formation & Legitimization in India and South-East Asia, Delhi, Monohar, 1993.

[10]:

‘The Segmentary State in South Indian History’, in R.G. Fox; op.cit, 1977, pp. 3-51 & Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India, Delhi, OUP, 1980

[11]:

South Indian History and Society, Studies from Inscriptions AD 850-1800, Delhi, OUP, 1984; Kingship in Indian History, (ed.) Monohar, 1999

[12]:

“Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India: A Review Article”, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 18, 1981, pp. 34-105

[13]:

R.S.Sharma, ‘The Segmentary State and the Indian Experience’, Indian Historical Review, 16, 1993, pp. 81-110

[14]:

Brajadulal Chottopadhyaya, ‘Political Process and Structure of Polity in Early Medieval India’, 1983

[15]:

N.Karashima, South Indian History and Society: Studies from Inscriptions, A.D. 8501800, Delhi, OUP, 1984

[16]:

Y. Subbarayalu, ‘The Cola State', Studies in History, 4, pp. 265-307, 1982; D.N. Jha; (ed.), Feudal Social Formations in Early India, Delhi, 1987

[17]:

N.Karashim, (ed.), Kingship in Indian History, New Delhi: Manohar, 1999, pp. 1011

[18]:

Specially Burton Stein

[19]:

Several anthropological studies of Indian castes and religions contribute to our subject at this point. For, as L. Dumont remarked, ‘what can India teach us chiefly, if not precisely the meaning of pure and impure?’ in Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, Chicago University Press, London, 1980 [1966]: xxxix.

[20]:

A. M. Hocart, Kingship, New York: Oxford University Press, American Branch, 1927.

[21]:

As Ronald Inden notes, in ‘Indic thought’, ‘nothing is inherently auspicious or inauspicious; auspicious and inauspicious signs are contextually variable–what may be considered to be auspicious in one context can be inauspicious in another.’ Kings and Omens, in Purity and Auspiciousness in Indian Society, (ed.) by John Braisted Carman, Frédérique A. Marglin, Leiden, 1985, p.30

[22]:

The Hollow Crown: Ethno history of an Indian Kingdom, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987

[23]:

Vijaya Ramaswami, ‘Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India–A Review Article’, Studies in History, 4, 1982, pp. 307-19.

[24]:

Gen’ichi Yamazaki, ‘Kingship in Ancient India as described in Literary Sources and Inscriptions’, in N. Karashima, (ed.), Kingship in Indian History, Monohar, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 17-36

[25]:

Hiroshi Yamashita, ‘God as Warrior King: Images of God in Late Classical Tamil Literature’, in N. Karashima, (ed.), Kingship in Indian History, Monohar, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 63-88

[26]:

Yasushi Ogura, The Changing Concept of Kingship in the Cola Period: Royal Temple Constructions, C. A.D. 850-1279, in N. Karashima, (ed.), Kingship in Indian History, Monohar, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 119-142

[27]:

A. Eschmann, H. Kulke, and G.C. Tripathi, (eds.), The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa, New Delhi, Monohar, 1978

[28]:

N. Karasimha, Y. Subbarayalu, J. Heitzmann, B. Stein and Others.

[29]:

Akio Tanabe, ‘Kingship Community and Commerce in Late Pre-Colonial Khurda’, in N. Karashima, (ed.), Kingship in Indian History, Monohar, 1999, pp. 195-236

[30]:

Masahiko Mita, ‘Polity and Kingship in Early Medieval Rajasthan’, in N. Karashima, (ed.), Kingship in Indian History, Monohar, 1999, pp.89-118

[31]:

Hiroyuki Kotani, ‘Kingship, State and Local Society in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century Deccan with Special Reference to Ritual Functions’, in N. Karashima, (ed.), Kingship in Indian History, Monohar, 1999, pp.237-271

[32]:

H. Kulke;'Jagannatha as the State Deity under the Gajapatis of Orissa', in A. Eschmann, H. Kulke, and G.C. Tripathi, (eds.), The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa, New Delhi, Monohar, 1978, pp.199, 125