Rāḍha was located to the west, bordered by the Rajmahal and Chotanagpur hills. The Ganga and Bhagirathi demarcated it from the other subregions. The subregion consisted of lateritic old alluvium flanked by the coalesced fans, and the moribund and mature deltas along the Bhagirathi-Hoogly.6 Rāḍha saw the earliest occurrence of protohistoric settlements with evidence of agriculture, as indicated by the archaeological sites scattered all over the area, especially along the Ajay and Damodar valleys.7 The growth of sedentary agrarian society and the early state formation in the subsequent period are attested by the Susuniya rock inscription of mahārāja Candravarman assignable to the mid-4th century.8 In the coastal area, the urban settlements with implications of thriving seaborne trade rose up at the estuary of Ganga and its tributaries from the 3rd century bce onwards.9
Sedentary agriculture and agrarian society developed earlier in Puṇḍravardhana and Rāḍha, both of which were characterized by old alluvium and mature deltas, than in Vaṅga and Samataṭa with active deltas. The elements which contributed to the early development of the former subregions could be the relative ease of reclamation and the proximity to the mid-Ganga heartland, of which the latter also facilitated the early establishment of administrative apparatus and urban settlements. The basic pattern of agrarian expansion in Bengal inferable from these points is the one that advanced from the plains of Puṇḍravardhana and Rāḍha to the deltas of Vaṅga and Samataṭa, with encroachment on forest tracts at margins. The development of political powers also shows some diversity corresponding to this pattern.
early medieval indian society rs sharma pdf 12
Download: https://byltly.com/2vBDCn
From the early 7th century onwards, Samataṭa and Śrīhaṭṭa saw the intensification of the formation of local power relations, namely the development of a subregional kingdom with a hierarchy of subordinate rulers, and an agrarian development with synchronic diversity. Bhāskaravarman, the king of Kāmarūpa, extended his control at least to Śrīhaṭṭa. In the mid-7th century, the Khaḍgas established their sovereign power in eastern Vaṅga and Samataṭa, to be followed by the Devas ruling Samataṭa in the 8th and 9th centuries. Meanwhile, the Nāthas and the Rātas, subordinate rulers under the unnamed common overlord, wielded semi-independent power in parts of Samataṭa in the second half of the 7th century. Agrarian expansion in these subregions showed synchronic diversity in patterns reflected on forms of land donation. In Śrīhaṭṭa and peripheral Samataṭa, reclamation of forest tracts was pursued by settling a large number of brahmins by initiatives of subordinate rulers, while stratified land relations with four layers of tenure holders was observed in eastern Vaṅga or western Samataṭa, indicating an advanced level of development. With a case showing an intermediate pattern in a riverine tract of Samataṭa, these patterns indicate the phases of agrarian expansion and development experienced in each locality, from newly reclaimed tract to areas of established sedentary society, with progress in the stratification of land relations.34
The constituents of state power most prominent under the regional kingships were subordinate rulers called sāmantas. While losing power to issue their own copper plate grants against royal monopoly, they still kept territorial control over a particular area, with their own agenda and stakes in rural society. Their negotiation with the king is detectable in the early Pāla grants donating village or land tract to religious institutions established by the subordinate rulers. They tried to safeguard a part of their territory from royal interference by making it a tax-free donated tract for religious institutions closely connected with themselves. The Pāla kings, however, curved such attempts at enclosure by limiting land and village grants to those for settling qualified brahmins associated with the kingship, who would represent royal authority in the villages they migrated to, and by tightening control over rural society through the measurement of the dimensions of the land of the whole village and the assessment of its production in currency units. These measures gave the Pāla kings the upper hand to their subordinate rulers, but also heightened tension between both parties.43
From the mid-20th century, the socioeconomic history became the mainstay of the historiography on early South Asia in general, and the early history of Bengal also followed suit. The most important works in the 1960s and 1970s were those of Puspa Niyogi and Barrie M. Morrison, respectively, on the expansion of Brahmanical settlements and the political and cultural geography, both based on the analysis of inscriptions from Bengal.63 Both were conscious of subregional diversity within Bengal and the process of settlement expansion and regional integration. In connection with the heated debate on Indian Feudalism proposed by Ram Sharan Sharma, the works of Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, Momtazur Rahman Tarafdar, and Bratindra Nath Mukherjee on trade and the monetary system in early medieval Bengal negated his theory of a closed agrarian economy and monetary anemia by providing counterevidences.64 Meanwhile, Abdul Momin Chowdhury elaborated on the political history of early medieval Bengal by incorporating the latest results from epigraphic discoveries in East Pakistan.65
Studies more concerned with the socioeconomic aspects of rural society in early medieval Bengal, based on the detailed analysis of epigraphic sources, appeared in the 1980s and 1990s, with due attention being paid to the contemporary discussions on early medieval historical change. A series of articles by Chitrarekha Gupta investigated the land system and process of agrarian expansion in each period of early medieval Bengal through the reading of copper plate inscriptions.66 Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya studied the rural settlements and society of Bengal by analyzing copper plate inscriptions with refined frameworks and pointed out the spatial and social interrelations among settlements.67 His insights, sharpened through his critical engagement with Indian Feudalism and other theories on early medieval South Asian history, gave perspectives to be followed by generations to come.68
The monograph of Kunal Chakrabarti took a different but fruitful approach to the formation of Bengal as a region.69 He focused on the process of cultural interaction and the making of regional traditions, in which brahmins tried to incorporate local cultures through the composition of localized purāṇas, with the aim to maintain their hegemony over other social groups. Around the same time, the works of Ranabir Chakravarti tried to locate early medieval Bengal in wider trade networks.70
Following the steps of the earlier generation and also prompted by the surge of new inscriptional discoveries, more scholars of younger generations have engaged in the early medieval history of Bengal since the end of the 2000s. Many of them contributed to the History of Bangladesh: Early Bengal in Regional Perspectives, edited by Abdul Momin Chowdhury and Ranabir Chakravarti, and some produced monographs including that of Ryosuke Furui delineating the early medieval history of Bengal as a socioeconomic process.71 Among the new questions raised by them, the most prospective was the monetary history of Bengal in reference to its connection with wider commercial networks, for which several articles were written.72
The main source for studying early medieval Bengal is contemporary inscriptions. Though several corpuses were published, they are not comprehensive and vary in quality of edition.73 The surge of new discoveries in the first and second decades of the 21st century also requires the publication of an updated corpus incorporating all the relevant inscriptions edited in better quality.74
Among textual sources, the Rāmacarita of Sandhyākaranandin is important for narrating the deeds of Rāmapāla and his descendants centered on the Kaivarta rebellion. The text and its contemporary commentary provide not only a minute account of the event but also details of sāmantas participating in it.75 The Kr̥ṣiparāśara, an agricultural manual in Sanskrit, describes the agricultural operations and agrarian society of the mid-11th century, while some verses in the Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa and the Saduktikarṇāmr̥ta, anthologies of Sanskrit poems, give us a glimpse of rural life.76 The Caryāgīti, a collection of esoteric Buddhist verses composed in Old Bengali, contains depictions of marginal social groups and their interaction with sedentary agrarian society.77 The purāṇas composed in early medieval Bengal, especially the Br̥haddharmapurāṇa datable to the second half of the 13th century, present Brahmanical perception of social reality and their attempts at its reorganization.78
2ff7e9595c
Comentários