Kingship in early Medieval India

by Sudip Narayan Maitra | 2015 | 67,940 words

This thesis is called: Kingship in early Medieval India: A comparative study of the Cholas and the Eastern Gangas. It represents a detailed empirical study of “kingship and polity” of two broad deltaic alluvial stretch of land on the “eastern coast”, namely ‘Mahanadi’ and ‘Kaveri’ delta. These were among the main centers of political and cultural a...

The purpose of this chapter is to review the earlier studies on kingship and polity of pre-modern India by different scholars. Discussing some of the aspects of pre-modern polity of India, there are a large number of works already in the field of ‘evolution of Indian polity’ dealing with various ‘lineages’ or ‘empires’ that successively occupied the stage of Indian polity.

The issue of kingship and state formation has emerged as one of the most discussed, researched and confronted theme of debate in Indian historiography in recent years. The study of early and especially early medieval polity has and is going through several important empirical debates and has attracted the attention of other disciplines like Anthropology, Religious studies and Sociology as well.

In pre-modern Indian political structure, kingship was undoubtedly the central and most important political institution. With the changes in sociopolitical patterns it was able to retain its position but the centrality and importance was not always of same value.

This was broadly due to two basic historiographical constructs of Indian past. In one construct, India was seen as examples of decadence or changeless political order unto the modern age; and the notion of ‘oriental despotism’, where state-ness is observed, only when with a strong despot, which was endorsed by the Marxist variant of ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’ (AMP).

In general formulation of the disintegration of an empire, weak and incompetent rulers are often become responsible for the impermanence of that empire, though the early rulers of the formative stage are mere ‘despotic’ or ‘benevolent despot’. In later years the validity of this construct has been questioned by employing newer perception and models. In the long span of Indian historiography the image of the king and his office or the issue of kingship received various treatments from divergent school of thought in pre and post independent writings of Indian polity.

The patterns of secondary writings on kingship and polity are primarily focused on literary sources and late studies emphasised the role of epigraphical land deeds in colonial and post colonial era respectively. Before independence the general trend was in the field of ‘histories of philosophy and religion’, ‘myth and psychology’, ‘Hinduism-its law and customs’, studies on political thought’ and ‘studies on institutions and administration. The other studies specially focus on dynastic polities like ‘Maurya and Gupta polity’, and also on political treaties of ‘Brahmanism’, Buddhism and other heterodox socio religious cultural construct. South Indian historiography also put stress on early Samgam literature, its hero-poetry, the treatment of state in Tirukural and formation of state and its structural evolution in Pallava, Chola, Pandya, or Hoysala dynastic rules.

The form and formation of kingship evolved out from the Dharmasastrs, Epics, Puranas and political treaties, are discussed in early studies. These issues are: the origin of kingship, its divine rights and hereditary nature, the image construction by the king and his court as protector and donor by dynastic traditions of his deeds, genealogical charts, caste and the position of the king, his chakravarti ideal, the hero ideal, etc. Works like P.V. Kane’s, History of Dharmasastrs, Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Laws in India[1] ; U.N. Ghoshal’s, A History of Indian Political Ideas, The Ancient Periods and the Period of Transition to the Middle ages,[2] J.W. Spellman’s, Political theory of Ancient India, A Study of Kingship From the Earliest Times to circa A.D. 300[3] , C. Dreakmeire’s Kingship and Community in Early India[4] , and J. Gonda’s Ancient Indian Kingship from Religious Point of View[5] are of the above genre.

Issues related to imperialism, nationalism and euro-centric models emerged as important historiographical concerns, by understanding the analytical contexts and agendas that formulates the shaping of analytical methodologies of scholars of the ages.

India’s past history and polity, at the colonial age, was largely dominated by Imperialist ideology. It was simply the justification of the colonial rule and to counter the demand for self government in India. From Max Muller[6] to V. A. Smith, they postulates that the Indian kings were only ‘…….exercising coercive power on their subjects as mere tax collecting institutions and do not impose laws as distinct from particular and occasional commands’.[7] In their view Indians were essentially philosophers, ‘that their material world should be managed by for them by their imperialist masters’. Christian Lassen approving Alexander, as he served the world by accelerating the dialectic process of history, with this postulation he described British rule as the synthesis of the ancient kingdoms, the thesis, and predatory Muslim rule as the antithesis.

V. A. Smith also worshipped Alexander, and only those strong and successful kings like Chandragupta Maurya- ‘a man of blood and iron’ or Asoka- ‘a masterful autocrat ruling church and state alike with a strong hand’ and Samudragupta-the ‘Indian Napoleon’, who were ‘endowed with no ordinary powers’, simply a hero worshipper who used derogatory words about so called Hindu kingship exaggerate the ‘ruthlessness and sternness of the ancient Indian kings’.[8] He criticises Arthasastra as of ‘autocratic and Machiavellian character and its laws are ferociously severe.’

The “early medieval”, which was often considered as ‘Dark Age’[9] in Indian history, due the absence of large territorial states, is characterized by the emergence of a number of regional kingdoms in different parts of the subcontinent. The historical processes and background of these Indian kingdoms were, however, different from those of their counterparts elsewhere in different regions.

Early medieval period witnessed a transition from early historical polity and society through the gradual shaping of regional structure and identity; saw the emergence of regional polities. In this way, the regional pattern remained rather stable, where one dynasty eclipsed, another took over. At the most, there could be slight shifts in the relative position of nuclear areas. These regional powers made major contributions in the formation of regional societies in early medieval India.

In this broader context of pre-modern Indian polity and kingship or its study, the formation of early Indian state or state-society or its evolution and nature has been a subject of greater discussion and debate. Terms associated with it, like, non-statal state, pre-state, proto-state, the varying degree of state-ness are used to understand the stages of a state-like structure in India; and the nature of the study of kingship got treatment like tribal-chief and his chieftaincies, little-kingdoms, lineages.

Essentially, an empirical work of these genre, has been inevitably be influenced by the dominant ideologies of the time and terminal access to newer sources and newer methods of looking at existing evidences. Thus, an interdisciplinary interest or approach opened up the newer dimensions in broader historical perspectives. Not only the discussion of ‘state’ or ‘state-formation’ being articulated in newer approach but also the question of ‘kingship’, ‘legitimacy’ the question of ‘sovereignty’ become interesting in recent multi disciplinary studies. Various perspectives related to the study of political organization of the early medieval Indian kingdoms help us in critically analyzing the nature of polity of this period.

With regard to polity in pre modern India, two broad but opposite strands of assumptions stand aside. According to some scholars, it was ‘changeless’ (traditional or Oriental Despotism) and according to others it underwent ‘structural changes’. Though the view held by scholars on change or the mechanism of change are not identical or even mutually contradictory. Current perspectives include at least fivefold models of state formation.

These have been summed up by Hermann kulke[10] as follows:

1. Marx’s notion of Oriental Despotism and the AMP[11] .

2. Indian Historiographical Model of rather unitary centrally organized and territorially defined kingdom with a strong bureaucracy.

3. Indian Feudalism model.

4. The Model of ‘Segmentary State’.

5. Non-Aligned Integrative Processes and structural developments within a given state system.

In these models, the state and society have been studied from divergent angles or by employing a specific analytical concept to define the degree of central authority or local autonomy, the role of religious institutions (agraharas / temples) as indicators of political fragmentation sometimes segmentation or as instrument of the extension of central political authority.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

-8 Books in 5 Vols., Poona, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1930-62

[2]:

Oxford, OUP, 1959; 1st published as -A History of Hindu Political Theories, 1923.

[3]:

Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964

[4]:

Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1962

[5]:

Leiden, 1969

[6]:

Who follows the Aristotle dictum that oriental rule is autocratic in character, largely influenced Gibbon, Green and other ‘Orientalists’.

[7]:

Mentioned by Beni Prasad in his The State in Ancient India, Allahabad, 1928, p.498

[8]:

V.A. Smith, Early History of India, 4th edn. Oxford, 1924, p.143; and Oxford History of India, Oxford, 1920; for imperialist outlook of India see also A.L. Basham; in ‘Modern Historians of Ancient India’ Penguin, 1961; Studies in Indian History and Culture, Calcutta, 1964, pp. 193-237.

[9]:

‘Dark Period’ Reflected in writings of Simon Digby, "The Maritime Trade of India," in The Cambridge Economic History of India, (ed.), Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 45-47

[10]:

H. Kulke, (ed.), The State in India, OUP, Delhi, 2003(1995), pp.1-2

[11]:

‘the unfortunate thesis that Marx has once propounded’, Irfan Habib, ‘Problems of Marxist Historical Analysis’, in Science and Human Progress, Essays in Honour of The Late Professor D.D. Kosambi, Bombay, 1974, p.38

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