Abstract
The book under discussion by Professor Krishna Mohan Shrimali brings back memories of Master’s days in the late eighties and the discussions related to the Feudalism debate. The Feudalism debate was an informed debate among specialists, and publications surrounding various aspects of the debate were something very regular, either in favour of it or strongly opposing the idea of feudal formations in early medieval India. These essays were at times provocative as well as thought provoking. In early 2001, R. S. Sharma published his book Early Medieval Indian Society: A Study in Feudalisation and a year after, in 2002, D. N. Jha’s edited volume Feudal Order: State, Society & Ideology in Early Medieval India was published, which re-invigorated the ‘Feudalism debate’. Thus, when, almost after twenty-two years, an indefatigable historian like Krishna Mohan Shrimali publishes a book with the subtitle ‘The Feudal Order Revisited’, you immediately know that the book will be written under the conceptual construct of ‘The Feudal Order’ with a fresh assessment of historical situations. Over the years, one has been reading and appreciating Professor Shrimali’s myriad contributions, the last being on the religious enterprise of early India.
The book is divided into two sections. The first part of the book is a reprint of his seminal work on the agrarian structure in central India and the northern Deccan, first published way back in 1987. The strength of his writing rests on his extensive use of epigraphic data as an explanatory tool for understanding history. In the two centuries of the Vākāṭaka rule, central India and the northern Deccan experienced considerable agrarian expansion, and in this work, K. M. Shrimali captured the complexities of the agrarian world in the Vākāṭaka domain. His analysis of 131 settlements listed in the inscriptions leads him to suggest that many of these sites emerged in this period. In fact, studies of settlement patterns can shed important light on the changing nature of settlements and their social composition.
An important contribution of the book was plotting the locations of such grants on a map and then identifying the fact that the majority of these grants were located in outlying regions of the kingdom. Most appear to be located in the foothills of the Satpura and Maikal range, and thus people living in the periphery were brought within the close networks of the political centre, perhaps a form of sanskritization. However, he also indicated that with burgeoning rural settlements there was relative contraction of urbanism. In the preface of the book, the author discussed the points raised by the critiques, particularly the characterization of the Vākāṭaka agrarian order as ‘feudal’, and foregrounded the need for revisiting the Vākāṭaka agrarian order, and more so in the context of the back seat that the study of economic history has taken with regard to more fashionable ‘turns’ such as ‘cultural’, ‘linguistic’ and the likes. He is rather disappointed that scholars are ‘eschewing the use of “feudal social formation” while writing on early and early medieval India’.
The second section of the book opens with the essay ‘Revisiting the Agrarian Order Under the Vākāṭakas’. This is the central essay of the second section and brings in an analysis of the new epigraphic, numismatic and archaeological data post 1987. The essay also addresses the questions raised by scholars on reading his book on agrarian structure. I may discuss some of the issues here.
There is no denying that Professor Shrimali’s contribution to place name studies from the Vākāṭaka inscriptions, with an elaborate inventory of 134 villages/ settlements and cartographic plotting, was well recognized, though some methodological issues were raised. The author accepts the limitations on the use of statistics, particularly in working out the dynamics of the different types of Vākāṭaka settlements, though he feels that his method should not be summarily rejected.
Monetization, or rather the absence of monetization, is an issue which has been flagged by historians who supported the presence of the feudal order in India. In the case of the Vākāṭakas, the author meticulously went through the excavation reports of the sites within the Vākāṭaka territory and came to the conclusion that Vākāṭakas did not mint coins. Significantly, none of the Vākāṭaka inscriptions mention any coin denominations or use of cowries. This is a rare case, as we are aware that in Bengal, during the reign of the Pālas and Senas, who perhaps did not issue coins, inscriptions were replete with coin names and use of terms like kapardaka/kapardaka purāṇa (cowries). Then, the natural question would be: how did the economy function? Did the coins of the previous dynasties continue to be in circulation? Incidentally, a large number of those coins were retrieved from the sites. Can we think of a situation where the Vākāṭaka rulers allowed the continuation of the circulation of those coins? Archaeologists and numismatists such as Derek Kennet and Ellen Raven actually point towards that scenario, and Shrimali discusses their arguments. Largely on the basis of Federico de Romanis’s recent essay on exchanging coins at Barygaza in the context of exchange value between Roman gold coins and silver punch-marked issues, Shrimali contends that ‘circulation of other powers’ currencies is not a straightforward exercise’. True, but one has to remember that the case of circulation of previous rulers’ coins in the Vākāṭaka domain cannot be the same as with circulation of Roman coins in India.
The other crucial issue that gained centrality to the understanding of the feudal order was a decline in trade and urbanism. By the same methodology of meticulously studying the reports of each and every site, he argues for de-urbanization and the decline of trade. His study of Kennet’s work in Paithan is very detailed. His critique of some of the arguments of Nath and Kennet is well founded, and I totally agree with him regarding the problems of the nomenclatures used by some archaeologists and a greater need for viewing periodization in Indian history afresh. Having said that, I cannot view the silence in the epigraphic records about merchants and trade as an absence of trade and traders in the Vākāṭaka domain. When we have epigraphs of the almost contemporary western Gaṅgas and Kadambas, a little south of the Vākāṭaka territory, talking about trade and traders, how can we say that the situation was otherwise to their north? I shall just provide one example, but there are several others. The Meḷekōṭe Plates of the Gaṅga king Mādhavavarma II (around 400
Professor Shrimali rightly raises concerns about the use of dynastic labels and is appreciative of labels such as ‘Threshold times’ used by Romila Thapar for the period between c.300–700
The inclusion of new inscriptions, along with the plates, has furthered the importance of this valuable contribution by Professor Shrimali. The chapter on the Vyavasthā charters of the Śilāhāras is useful, but I only wish that for the Charter of Viṣṇuṣeṇa, along with D. C. Sircar, he had referred to the excellent new study by Harald Wiese and Sadananda Das. His article on Konkan under the Silharas in D. N. Jha’s volume was focussed and richly documented and attempted to show the limited nature of monetization in the coastal economy of Konkan. Although new works are brought within the purview of his study, the basic premise remained the same.
Finally, I, would go back to his regret that scholars are avoiding the use of the word ‘feudal’ and being diplomatic in their writings. I cannot answer for others, but since this reviewer too falls in that group with regard to the study of the Bagh Copper plates, I would humbly submit that at no point in time, when I was reading the Valkhā charters (4th–5th centuries) in 2015 and later in 2022, did the word ‘feudal’ ring any bell. I did not see any indication of feudal formation in those charters. Rather, these charters saw the beginning of the many ideas which were crystallized in the later ‘classic’ examples of land grants and perfectly fitted the features of threshold times.
Having shared my views, I would like to point out that this book by Professor Shrimali, which is specific to a dynasty and an area, given its thoroughness with the sources and ability to read them critically, will always remain a convenient reference point for the history of northern Deccan in general and the Vākāṭakas in particular. I hope that this work will be instrumental in generating interest in exploring the economic history of early India.