The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  The Chalukyas were trying to unite a divided kingdom and curb the ambitions of their subordinates. In 655 one of the sons of Pulakeshin succeeded in bringing about a semblance of unity, and the power of the Chalukyas was gradually restored with the regaining of the territory lost to the Pallavas. The Chalukya provinces north of the Narmada River were ruled by a prince of the main family whose descendants were later referred to as the Lata Chalukyas, named after the region they ruled and who were still loyal and as yet not troublesome. The Chalukya king was now free to give his attention to the Pallavas, who had been preparing for a renewal of the war. After a long-drawn-out campaign the Pallavas once more swept into Vatapi. The losses were heavy on both sides, according to a graphic description of the battle in a Pallava grant found in the vicinity of Kanchi. Doubtless this was generally the case, given that the armies of the Pallavas and the Chalukyas were equally matched and victory was usually achieved by a narrow margin. The inability of each to hold the other’s territory after annexing it would point to a precarious balance in military strength and political authority.

  Among the achievements of Narasimha-varman II, more frequently referred to as Rajasimha, was the building of the exquisite shore temple at Mahabalipuram and the temple now known as Kailasanatha at Kanchipuram. The latter marks a turning-point away from what was earlier a religious centre dominated by Buddhists. One of the by-products of major military campaigns was that famous icons were sometimes taken from royal temples as a trophy by the victors. Frequently, masons, builders and artisans were also taken back to work on the temples in the capital of the victor. Artistic styles therefore tended to merge on occasion.

  But this seemingly halcyon period ended in 731, with the Chalukyas and the Gangas uniting in an attack on the Pallavas. The reigning king died and, there being no direct heir, the council of ministers in consultation with the college of priests appointed a member of the collateral branch of the family, who reigned as Nandivarman Q. The boy king was supported by the Bhagavata faction at the court, whereas earlier the Shaiva faction had been powerful. The Chalukyas had avenged their earlier defeat in the usual manner by occupying Kanchi. The Pallavas would now be expected to counter-attack, but at this point there was a change in the situation, with the southern neighbours of the Pallavas joining in the conflict. These were the Pandyas of Madurai, and they were not in sympathy with the Pallava cause although their enmity was less intense than that of the Chalukyas. The Pandyas had established their position in southern Tamil-nadu by the sixth century, and they were to remain in control of this region for many centuries. Their effectiveness varied according to their relations with the other powers. Despite the Pandyas harassing their northern neighbours they could never obliterate the power of the latter.

  In Kerala, on the west coast, brahman settlement grew in various agriculturally rich areas, and these were a source of support to the Makotai kingdom in the Periyar Valley. But the wealth and standing of Kerala derived more from maritime trade. In Kerala, too, brahman migrants were later arrivals and had to function with cultures not altogether familiar. As usual, local recruitment into brahman ranks was inevitable, and adjustments also had to be made with local kinship systems. The adjustment to matrilineal societies, for instance, in the relationship between Nambudri brahmans and Nair landowners, took a different form from those recognizable in other parts of the subcontinent.

  The earlier contacts between the east and west coasts of south India continued in the relations between the Pallavas and the Perumal dynasty of Kerala. The motive was largely trade with west Asia, a trade that others were also anxious to tap. Trade with the eastern Roman Empire had declined, but there continued to be a demand for pepper and spices in Europe. It had been kept going by Arab traders supplying items to the markets of Byzantium. The Malabar and Konkan coast had settlements of Arabs who were part of this trade. Unlike earlier traders linked to the Roman trade, the Arabs settled permanently in the coastal regions of the west and the south from about the eighth and ninth centuries. They were welcomed, given land for trading stations and left free to practise their religion, as had been the convention with Christians earlier in south India. However, they were scarcely regarded as new arrivals, for even in pre-Islamic times there had been traffic between the west coast and the Arabian peninsula. The present-day Mappilas or Malabar Muslims are descendants of these settlers, as are the Navayats who have emerged from those settled amid the Jaina trading communities of the Konkan.

  Among the more interesting aspects of Arab settlements along the west coast is that each group adopted some of the customary law, and even some forms of worship, from the local community with whom they had the closest contact. Thus there is a difference in the Islam practised by the Khojas and Bohras of Gujarat, the Navayats of the Konkan and the Mappilas of Malabar. Matriliny and matrilocality, for example, were characteristic of the Mappilas but not of the others. These customs appear to have been borrowed from the local Nair practice, since they would otherwise seem unacceptable to conservative Islam. Being mainly traders, the Muslim Arabs settled along the western coast were not primarily concerned with acquiring political power or making large-scale conversions to Islam. Adjustments with local society were therefore not acrimonious. Arab authors describe the Arabs settled in India as bayasirah, which may suggest people from southern Arabia.

  In the seventh century, Arab armies had invaded Persia. Some Zoroastrians were converted to Islam and some preferred to migrate to India, which they did from the early eighth century. They too came to western India where they already had trading contacts, and established large settlements to the north of Mumbai, such as the one at Sanjan. Their descendants founded a community later known as Parsi, reflecting the land of their origin and their language. Some settled in rural areas but close to centres of trade; others were more active in the trading circuits of the time. Arab officers working for the Rashtrakuta administration in the ninth century were appointed in the Sanjan area, which was important to commercial relations with west Asia. The settlement seems to have been peaceful. Since the Arabs were the people from whom the Zoroastrians are said to have fled, some of the migration to India may have been linked to pursuing commercial interests rather than solely to avoiding religious persecution.

  The Arabs had however occupied Sind in the eighth century and established footholds in western India, both of which encouraged their advance towards Chalukya territory in an effort to control the ports of the west coast. The Lata Chalukyas managed to hold them back, thus allowing their southern neighbours time to arm themselves. The immediate danger from the Arabs passed, but the Chalukyas were faced with an even more formidable threat. Dantidurga, one of their subordinates, who was a high official in the administration, declared his independence, and by slow stages his family overthrew the Chalukyas to establish a new dynasty – the Rashtrakutas. The family was based in the Gulbarga region, with their centre of power located in what came to be called Manyakheta. Dantidurga was the father-in-law of Nandivarman and helped him regain Kanchi, an act commemorated by the Pallava King in the building of the Vaikuntha Perumal temple, almost as a counterpoint to the Kailasanatha temple. The temple marked the end of the King’s exile and his return to power. The Pallavas survived the Chalukyas by about a century, but with declining authority during the ninth century. The Pallava line was terminated by the last of the Pallavas being assassinated by a subordinate functionary.

  The Rashtrakuta kingdom battened on the weakness of the other kingdoms. The Pallavas were in decline, and their successors, the Cholas, had not yet entered the fray. There was no power in northern India strong enough to interfere with the affairs of the Deccan. The geographical position of the Rashtrakutas led to their involvement in wars and alliances with both the northern and, more frequently, the southern kingdoms. The Rashtrakutas interfered effectively in the politics of Kanauj and this interference cost them many a campaign, though they did gain possession of Kanauj for a brief period in the early tenth century.


  But the Rashtrakutas had the advantage of controlling a large part of the western seaboard and therefore the trade with west Asia, particularly with the Arabs. They referred to the Arabs as Tajiks, employing them as officers and even governors of their administrative districts in coastal areas. One of these governors, named Madhumati – thought to be a Sanskritization of the name Mohammad – granted land to a wealthy brahman matha. The inscription also states that he controlled many of the harbour officers on behalf of the Rashtrakutas.

  Dantidurga established the kingdom in about 753, and was succeeded by Krishna I whose fame is associated with the remarkable rock-cut temple at Ellora, known as the Kailasa temple. Amoghavarsha is probably the best remembered of the Rashtrakuta kings. His long reign (814-80) was militarily not brilliant although he strengthened the core area at Manyakheta. His patronage of the Jaina religion and of Shaivism provided both with considerable support. He was the author of a work on poetics in Kannada, the Kavirajamarga, illustrating once again the interest taken by royalty in literature. The tenth-century ruler, Krishna III, was the last of the major Rashtrakuta rulers.

  Amoghavarsha’s persistent problem had been the threat of rebellion by subordinate rulers under his suzerainty and this was never eliminated. The Chalukyas, reduced to subordinate status, were once again asserting themselves. They were soon to overthrow the Rashtrakutas and install themselves as the rulers, bringing the wheel round full circle. The ambitions of another family, the Shilaharas, began to take shape although they too had been subordinates of the Rashtrakutas. Meanwhile, the rising power of the Cholas in Tamil-nadu was another threat to the independence of the Rashtrakuta kingdom. The first half of the tenth century saw the Rashtrakutas still in the ascendant, with one of their kings claiming the title ‘conqueror of Kanchi’. But this was a short-lived claim. By the end of the tenth century, the new rulers of Kanchi and the Chalukyas had between them brought the Rashtrakuta dynasty to an end, and the second line of Chalukyas was ruling the kingdom of the Rashtrakutas.

  Political Economies of the Peninsula

  Dynasties tend to see-saw when they are equally matched, as in the peninsula. A relatively less obtrusive governmental system encouraged local autonomy in village and district administration, without too much interference from the capital. This autonomy did not divest the state of authority.Instead it was effective in matters of administration and collection of revenue. It was preserved to a considerable degree in Tamil-nadu, where the tradition was actively maintained for many centuries.

  Kings took high-sounding titles, some of which, such as maharajadhiraja, were familiar from northern usage. Others were of local invention, such as dharma-maharaja, great king ruling in accordance with the dharma. Kings were required to rescue and protect dharma since it was believed to be ebbing away in the Kali Age. The more unusual aggitoma-vajapeya-assamedha-yaji, he who has performed the agnishtoma, vajapeya and ashvamedha sacrifices, sounds like a self-conscious insistence on conformity with Vedic practices prescribed for kingship. Many inscriptions now carried prashastis, eulogies, of the king. This had a political purpose, for, with the strengthening of monarchy, the king had to be projected as extraordinary.

  In theory, the king was the supreme arbiter of justice, but it is more likely that conflicts were settled at the local level. He was assisted by a group of ministers, and in the later Pallava period this ministerial council played a prominent part in state policy. Some of the ministers bore semi-royal titles, and may have been appointed from the tributary rulers, landed magnates and others who had access to power through administration and economic control over revenue. Among the latter, some may have begun as tenants with large holdings, gradually assuming positions of authority. The term ‘feudatory’, used for those who controlled power at the local level and who had a subordinate relationship with the king, covers a generally prevailing situation, but it has the disadvantage that in earlier historical writing it has often been taken as suggestive of a similarity with European feudalism. Irrespective of similarities, the nature of power held by such persons differs over space and time in the subcontinent. It might therefore be better to mention the specific categories.

  The names given to some administrative units went back to the Mauryan period, such as ahara, vishaya and rashtra, and in Tamil-nadu the basic unit continued to be the nadu. There was a hierarchy of officials in charge of provincial administration who worked with local autonomous institutions, largely in an advisory capacity. These institutions appear to have been more common in the south than in northern India during this period. They were built on local relationships of caste, profession and religious sect. Frequent meetings or assemblies were essential to their functioning. Assemblies were of many varieties and at many levels, and could include those of merchant guilds, craftsmen and artisans – weavers, oil-mongers and suchlike – as well as students, ascetics and priests. The smaller groups were chosen by lot from among the eligible persons, and worked in a manner somewhat analogous to modern committees, each group having its specific function.

  In the village the basic assembly was the sabha, which was concerned with all matters relating to the village: temple property and endowments of various kinds; irrigation; cultivated land; punishment of crime; the keeping of a census and other necessary records. The sabha was a formal institution but it worked closely with the ur, a gathering of the leaders of the area controlled by nonbrahman cultivators. Beyond the ur was the cheri, the habitat of those regarded as outside the boundaries of caste. A council of landowners worked with the administration of the nadu. The nagaram was largely a collectivity of traders. Villages which were populated mainly by brahmans have sometimes preserved records of the functioning of assemblies and councils. Records of assemblies in other villages have not survived. This has led to the suggestion that these autonomous bodies were restricted to the former villages. But this does not necessarily follow. If village assemblies were found useful in a particular set of villages, it is likely they would become more common in other villages of that region. The link between the village assembly and the official administration was the headman of the village, who acted both as the leader of the village and the mediator with the government.

  Further north in the Deccan there was less autonomy in administrative institutions. In the Chalukya domains government officers were more involved in routine administration, even at the village level. Village assemblies functioned under the paternalistic eye of the official, and the role of the headman as the leader of the village was of a more formal nature. From the eighth century onwards some of the Deccan rulers adopted administrative divisions where groups of ten or twelve villages were formed into larger units.

  The expansion of political power was largely based on increased revenue from the introduction of agriculture in areas previously treated as wasteland. One mechanism for doing this was by making grants to brahmans and to temples. This differed from the earlier period. Initially brahmans from elsewhere were invited to settle locally and in the process to convert land to agriculture. The process also involved the conversion of local societies to peasant cultivators in areas where such cultivators had not existed before. The settlement of migrant cultivators is not recorded, although they probably came as and when it was feasible. They would have brought only their labour and not the ideological backing that the rulers received from brahman grantees. The latter included the performance of Vedic sacrifices, which carried echoes of the period of state formation in the first millennium BC. The transition from chiefship to kingship involved the performance of these elaborate rituals that also permitted some claim to association with divinity. In some ways this was both a replay of earlier times and the continuation of a historical tradition. Once the kingdoms were well established the rituals were performed less frequently, or else largely as statements of conformity.

  There was a gradual shift from ruling through chiefs to ruling through landed intermediaries, and through temples performing a similar role. The economy was
being restructured in areas where there were frequent grants of land. Brahmanical legitimation and the support of the temple networks were sought. Varna rules were introduced, but with limited success except among the brahmans. The support for orthodoxy among brahmans was probably related to their dependency on the velalas, the other landowners and peasants, who were culturally distinctive and whom the brahmans tried to subordinate by giving them the status of shudras. But those among the latter who were landowners also had power.

  Other than the land privately owned, the remainder was mostly regarded as crown land. The king could make revenue grants to his officers and land grants to brahmans, or else continue to have the land cultivated by small-scale cultivators and landlords who paid taxes. Tenancies in the latter situation were by their nature not permanent. Private landowners could buy and sell land or gift it for religious purposes. Grants to officers of either land or revenue from land were largely in lieu of salaries, and did not stipulate that the grantee had to provision troops or give a percentage of the revenue to the state.

  Grants were usually in perpetuity and their frequency increased over time. Although there is an impression that grants were the predominant form of organizing agriculture, this was not the case everywhere. As elsewhere in the subcontinent, cultivators had existed prior to their land becoming part of a grant. An agreement between the state and the peasant regarding assessment and taxes was either a continuation of the existing norm or required new arrangements. Such agreements were obviously more favourable to the state than to the cultivator. If such land became part of a royal grant then there would be more complex terms and conditions, given the intervention of an intermediary between the state and the peasant. The intermediary’s right to alienate or inherit this land depended on the terms of the grant.