The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  Political developments on the opposite coast, that of Kerala, were of a quieter nature. The Chera kingdom had alternating friendly or hostile relations with the Cholas, but the political ambitions of its rulers became apparent only during the reign of Ravivarman Kulashekhara at the end of the thirteenth century. Although unsuccessful, he set out to acquire a larger kingdom, building on the ruins of the existing southern kingdoms. But there was little economic pressure to encourage territorial conquest, the Malabar coast being naturally rich and obtaining an adequate income from trade with west Asia.

  It was during this period that another group of people from the west came to India. Copperplate charters of the Cheras, generally dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries, granted land to Jewish traders, such as Joseph Rabban – the earliest evidence of a Jewish community settling in India, although tradition has it that a previous settlement in Cochin dates to the early centuries AD. This parallels the chronological uncertainty of the arrival of the Syrian Christians. It is possible that this later group had links with the Jewish commercial community in Alexandria, or with the later trade between Aden and ports in the southern part of the west coast, such as Mangalore. The settlements in India were in pursuit of trade. The Cairo Geniza records contain many letters of a personal nature, as well as pertaining to business, written by Jewish traders active in commerce with India towards the end of the first millennium AD. Indians were partners, or representatives of Jewish merchants, and some of the latter spent time in India and married locally. The area associated with this group of traders was Kodungallur or Cranganore, identified by some scholars with the ancient site of Muziris, a port that had been active in the Roman trade. The frequency with which later traders from the west located their settlements in the vicinity of those used by earlier traders from the west is quite striking. Doubtless it was not coincidental, being connected with safe harbours and access to cargo. The arrival of new groups was part of the pattern of trade connections between the west coast and other commercially active parts of Asia. Subsequent to the persecution of the Jews in Europe in later centuries some Jews came to Kerala, already familiar from trading contacts, and made it a part of the Jewish diaspora.

  Further north in the western Deccan, the Rashtrakutas were being gradually unseated by their samantas, the Shilaharas. The Shilaharas took the title of ‘Lords of the West’, presumably referring to their control over the trade with west Asia. So firm was this control that in one case an association of merchants was required to pay a regular and substantial sum to the royal family, from the revenue of a village donated to it. One inscription suggests that the commercial hinterland of the Konkan extended as far as Rajasthan. The Shilaharas, wanting a monopoly over trade, discontinued the employment of Arabs as part of their higher administration.

  Apart from the families constituting the main dynasties, there were lesser rulers of smaller areas in the Deccan and some of these claimed descent from the lineages of the main dynasties. These often began as subordinate rulers of earlier kingdoms, or as landed magnates promoting the settling of new lands through clearing forests, extending agriculture and constructing irrigation tanks. Possibly some were chiefs of forest tribes, converted to cultivation and caste, and were claiming high status. The status sought was kshatriya, and the link was either with the Chandravamsha, or lunar line, or the Suryavamsha, or solar line. Land rights also had to be claimed and these required relationships with the ruling dynasty. The dynasty would bestow title and rank on those performing administrative functions. Taxes on a variety of produce were collected and some were transferred to the central administration. This inevitably meant that peasants were frequently under severe pressure to provide more wealth to the landholder.

  Change in the agrarian system was noticeable throughout much of the peninsula in the late first millennium AD. The pattern of change carried some similarities with parts of the north, although the process in Tamilaham in south India had variations. This may be the result of the more detailed studies of this region. The economic backing given to political power in the south is apparent, and to that extent makes an interesting comparative study with other pans of the peninsula.

  Structures of an Agrarian System

  The Chola kingdom was initially described as a centralized bureaucratic state, the standard description of virtually every large kingdom in India. Recently, historians have been exploring the different ways in which states were formed and the social and economic links to changes in politics. The Chola state has been the subject of such attention. The most extensively discussed have been the concepts of the segmentary state and, on a broader level but with less intensive study, forms of feudalism for states of the peninsula. As pointed out in Chapter 1, the segmentary state model is untenable largely because of its insistence on a dual sovereignty – political and ritual. In the three zones envisaged – central, intermediate and peripheral – political control gradually fades out to be replaced by ritual sovereignty, moving from a smaller to a greater degree, from the first to the third. Inscriptions are described as expressions of ritual sovereignty rather than political sovereignty. Yet ritual encodes symbolism and ritual symbolism need not indicate a weakening of political sovereignty. The changes that led to the consolidation of power in the Chola state were reflected in ways not conforming to the segmentary state, such as in official titles especially at higher levels of administration, the tendency to reorganize administrative units territorially, standardization of taxation, and the gradual replacement of chiefs by high-status officers. The theory of a segmentary state also minimizes the impact of the merchant associations, some of which functioned across the administrative units, as well as the trade that developed in both the peninsula and south-east Asia to bring in a substantial commercial revenue. Although the spread of the Tamil devotional movement and the subsequent major changes in religion focused on the temple and sacred centres, temples were not a-political as is evident from their rivalries and competition for royal patronage when they functioned as major religio-political institutions. This would not have supported the concept of ritual sovereignty as distinct from political sovereignty.

  Another theory argues that Chola wealth was acquired through campaigns that were essentially plunder raids. This also has not found support, in view of the impressive network of revenue collection from both agricultural and commercial activities. Virtually all campaigns at one level were plunder raids, but such raids could not have sustained a state as complex as the Chola kingdom.

  The model of a feudal state has encouraged some forays into the social and economic history of south India, but it requires further investigation. The theories giving priority to agrarian change are those that emanate from various hypotheses originally relating to feudalism. Although in many respects they are closer to the evidence, the paradigm label of ‘feudalism’ for this period of Indian history is still being debated. However, these debates have led to a more precise understanding of social and economic change. Terms such as feudatory or feudal cannot be equated with their use in European history, where in any case the particular part of Europe under discussion would have to be specified. There are some similarities and some divergences. A clarification of the specific use of such terms in the context of the data is always helpful. The nature of the relative autonomy of local organizations, for example, is a theme receiving far more attention than it did when it was thought that the ruler alone exercised political control. In the currently emerging picture of agrarian and commercial structures, their relationship to hierarchies of authority is a central question.

  Much of the argument hinges upon the changes introduced through the granting of land to religious beneficiaries or persons rewarded for their services to the king. The land granted was often ‘wet land’ which was already under cultivation and had irrigation facilities. Sometimes wasteland was also given in a grant. Wherever land had to be cleared before cultivation, and irrigation tanks constructed, this was done on a fairly substantial scale that woul
d have changed the landscape. The density of population in the ‘wet zone’, for example the fertile and well-watered Kaveri Valley, indicates a preference. In the later Chola period, grants were made in the dry zone when presumably the extension of irrigation was more common. The ecology of an area was significant to its economic use. The two landowning groups were the brahmans and the velalas, the latter ranging from the wealthy to those less so. These two categories had superior rights over tenants and cultivators, although the range of tenurial rights complicates any easy descriptive label. In some cases tenants could even be dispossessed and earlier grants of land excluded. Artisans and cultivators formed yet another category at a lower level.

  The brahmadeya, or the agrahara, introduced Sanskritic culture which included the norms of social organization as laid down in the Dharmashastras. The integration of the brahmadeyas and agraharas into existing agrarian communities led to some innovations. Negotiations were required between the existing peasants and the new landowners. Since the latter came with royal backing, and often with advanced knowledge of organizing agriculture and other technologies, they had a distinct edge over the existing peasants or those recently converted to peasant status.

  Brahmadeya donations remained unchanged in pattern from those of Pallava times, as is evident from the Chola grants, such as the Anbil grant of Sundara Chola recording the donations of land to the brahman Anirudha Brahmadhiraja.

  We marked [the boundaries of] the land thus defined by erecting mounds of earth and planting cactus. The several objects included in this land – such as fruit-yielding trees, water, lands, gardens, all upgrowing trees and down-going wells, open spaces, wastes in which calves graze, the village site, ant-hills, platforms [built around trees], canals, hollows, rivers and their alluvial deposits, tanks, granaries, fish-ponds, clefts with bee-hives, deep ponds included; and everything else on which the iguana runs and the tortoise crawls; and taxes such as the income from places of justice, the taxes on [betel] leaves, the cloths from looms, the kanam [of gold] on carriages,… the old tenants being evicted, everything that the king could take and enjoy – all these shall be made over to this man. He shall be at liberty to erect halls and upper storeys with burnt bricks; to dig wells, big and small; to plant southernwood and cactus; to dig channels in accordance with watering requirements: not to waste surplus water but to dam it for irrigation; no one shall employ small baskets [for lifting such water]. In this wise was the old order changed and the old name and old taxes removed, and an ekabhoga brahmadeya (land granted to a single brahman) under the name of Karunakaramangalam was constituted.

  ‘The Anbil Plates of Sundara Chola’, in K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas (Madras, 1955), p. 577

  Knowledge of agriculture included assessing irrigation. This involved tanks, reservoirs with sluices, canals and wells, which were built and maintained with local expertise available in the villages. The more impressive irrigation works of the Cholas, consisting of dams and anicuts on rivers, would have been directly controlled by the state. But whether under local or central control, irrigation involved organizing labour at both the village level and across villages. Landowners would have had enough control over the peasants under their jurisdiction to demand forced labour from them. Labour over longer periods would largely have been from the landless or from the lowest castes. Such subservient groups had existed for a long time in many parts of the subcontinent, and would be a short step from what some might call bonded labour or even stave labour, and slaves – atimai – are referred to. Even if not identical to forms of slavery in other societies, the terms of the bond were such that generally people were unable to regain their freedom. Bonded persons were liable to be transferred together with the transfer of land through a grant. The system would doubtless have been intensified in the later period of Chola rule when individual ownership of land became more frequent than the control of land by a village.

  There are few instances of peasant revolts in Indian history. Sources of the earlier period suggest that discontented peasants migrated to a neighbouring kingdom or an area outside the jurisdiction of the current ruler, although such migration was not permitted. This would be a feasible protest causing a decline in the revenue of the ruler. But its feasibility was possible only while land was available. From the early second millennium there are sporadic instances of revolt, generally as objections to some aspect of administration. Possibly the availability of easily cultivable land had declined and the number of small kingdoms increased.

  Village assemblies were crucial to Chola administration. Those living in the usual peasant villages met in an assembly called the ur, whereas those from the brahmadeya villages used the superior title of sabha. Royal officials were present at the meetings of the sabha but do not appear to have played a commanding role. Their participation in village affairs was more as observers and advisers. This permitted continuity in local growth and development without too much interference from political changes at the upper level, and the degree of apparent autonomy at village level deserves to be underlined.

  Large villages could be divided into wards, each with a smaller assembly representing its households. Given the layout of the village and the tendency for people in similar occupations to be located in the same wards, the latter came to represent professional groups, such as carpenters, potters, smiths and so on. The assemblies controlled production through consultation with the heads of the peasant families, the velalas, who were their members. This necessitated discussion on a range of matters, including those of crucial importance, such as the setting up of irrigation facilities. Rights in land were insisted upon and among these were the kani, or hereditary rights.

  Villages were grouped together within a nadu, a defined territory. Agrarian organizations of the brahmadeyas, temples, and the commercial associations linked to centres of exchange, such as the nagaram, functioned within the nadu, although some had connections traversing the nadu. Members of the associations of the velala handling agricultural products, such as the Chitrameli Periyanadu who were referred to from the twelfth century onwards, traversed the area more widely. The nadu was not an autonomous peripheral area but was under central control. This enabled the centre to regroup the nadus into units called the valanadu and the mandalam, especially as the nadus were not of a uniform size. Such a rearrangement was an indicator of control over the territories.

  Agricultural expansion in the valanadu became associated with brahman settlers receiving grants of land, as in the Tamraparni Valley of the far south. Where the land was already under cultivation there had to be agreements between the cultivators and the grantees, obviously to the advantage of the latter. Other units such as mandalams could also be realigned to determine revenue demands, administrative controls and the needs of cities in the region. The population of the mandalam consisted of peasants, as well as the settlements of forest and hill peoples in their proximity.

  If the brahmadeya and the temple were important players in the restructuring of the economy during the Chola period, it was not merely because of their ritual authority, but was also a result of their administrative and functional control over productivity. Ritual is important but does not exist in a social void and, more often than not, is also tied to social and economic realities and ambitions. The grantees themselves were beholden to the king for the grant, and the king’s officers were required to allocate temple resources and audit temple accounts. As was the case with Buddhist monasteries, the temple complex could only survive where it had some control over resources from agriculture, or from revenue generated by the regular fairs and festivals which became surrogate markets. This necessitated temple control over agriculture and irrigation, together with some participation in commercial exchange.

  The working of these assemblies differed according to local conditions. The ur was open to male adults of the village, but in effect the older members such as heads of households took a more prominent part, some of them forming a small executive body for routine matt
ers. The sabha had the same system and, in addition, could constitute smaller committees of any size from among its members for specialized work. Election to the sabha sometimes appears to have been by lot from among those who were eligible, though amendments to the working of the sabha could be made whenever necessary. An inscription from the temple wall at Uttaramerur (a brahmadeya village) gives details of how the local sabha functioned. It dates to the tenth century and reads:

  There shall be thirty wards. In these thirty wards those that live in each ward shall assemble and shall select each person possessing the following qualifications for inclusion for selection by lot:

  He must own more than one quarter of the tax-paying land. He must live in a house built on his own site. His age must be below seventy and above thirty-five. He must know the mantras and Brahmanas [from the Vedic corpus].

  Even if he owns only one-eighth of the land, his name shall be included provided he has learnt one Veda and one of the four Bhashyas.

  Among those possessing these qualifications only such as are well conversant with business and are virtuous shall be taken, and one who possesses honest earnings whose mind is pure and who has not been on any of the committees for the last three years shall also be chosen. One who has been on any of the committees but has not submitted his accounts, and his relations specified below, cannot have their names written on the tickets:

  The sons of the younger and elder sisters of his mother.

  The sons of his paternal aunt and maternal uncle.

  The uterine brother of his mother.