vipur ey (AP Aprs wt ey wogi) pue speut.

the economic basis of the early urban centres of the Ganga basin was
an agricultural surplus generated by new methods as well as expansion
of cultivation® and by the gradual crystallization of a power struc-
ture which ensured the production of surplus.® A certain amount of
commercialization of this surplus was necessitated by the presence of
specialized labour and of surplus appropriated by social groups which
were not necessarily confined to the monarch,his kin and his officials.
Viewed from such a perspective, it stands to reason that trade (and not
necessarily foreign trade) and a power structure which needs it and
hence may promote it,are essential factors in urban growth. If foreign
trade did not play a crucial role in the birth of carly urban centres, a
reduced volume of such trade may hardly be held resporsible for their
decay in the post-Kusina or post-Gupta period.
Secondly, and this 1 more important, the alleged decay of urban
settlements coincides with, and in a number of cases even precedes,
the period when land grants actually start proliferating.* This may
preclude any possible connection between them, as the full impact of
land grant cconomy;, if any such impact is highlighted to explain the
decay of urban centres,” ought to have taken some more nime to assert
itself. This point needs to be stressed, as decline of trade and of urban
centres may not have logically followed from the types of assignments
that were made in early and medieval India. For the present this has to
remain at the level of a theoretical discussion, but it may be pointed
out that some trends to the contrary have already been discovered.
Of southeast Bengal, which initially as a peripheral area offers a good
example of the working of land grant economy, Morrison writes:*
Such an extensive series of occupation sites .. indicates a concentration of pop-
ulation whose food needs would have been met by the surplus production of
the losal agriculturises. There may well have been a commodity markes with a

" RS, Sharma, Light on Early Indian Society and Econonsy,pp. 575,
" A Ghosh, p. 20.
* Sofaras the urban centes along the Himalayan foothills are concerned, Medvedev
points out that the account of Fa-hien tallies with that of Hiuen Tsang.
* RS, Shanu, Social Changes in Estly Medievsl India, pp. 3-6.
* B.M. Morrison, Political Centers and Cultural Regions in Early Bengal (The Univer-
sity of Arizona Press, 1970). p. 153.
 73
s
The Making of Early Medieval India

curtency to facilitate exchange® as well a5 the transfer of extensive linds to tem-

ples and monssteries to secure to them productive lnd fom which their own
food needs might be supplied.
An increase in the number of assignees with their bases at already
existing urban centres perhaps served as an impetus to further urban
growth and trade, as it seems to have done in Mughal India,* while
their presence in rural areas could have created conditions for what
Medvedev calls ‘commodity-money relations’® Thus rural market
centres named after kings, like the Devapiladevahatta mentioned in a
Nalanda inscription,™ or created by feudatories, like the market centre
founded by Kakkuka in the Jodhpur area of Rajasthan,*” could and did
emerge in the context of a land grant economy. A conglomeration
of such hatas could evolve, as shown by Tattinzndapura and Siyadoni
evidence, into an urban cente where urban property along with
marketed goods would become objects of commercial transactions.
It may be mentioned that a good amount of Silpasistra material® on
towns and town-planning, despite its being highly stereotyped, relates
to the early medieval period and the ranking of houses prescribed by

® For currency in carly medieval southeast Bengal see my paper, ‘Currency in

Early Bengal', Journal of Indian Hister), vol. 55, pt. 3 (1977), pp. 4168; for relevant bib-
liographical references to the extensive writings of B. N. Mukherjee on the coinage
of southeast Bengal, see B. N. Mukletjee, Post-Gupta Coinages of Bengal (Calcurta,
1989).
™ 1. Habib, ‘Potentialities of Capitaistic Development in the Economy of Mughal
India', Enguiry, new series, ii, No. 3 (1971), p. 10; alsoA, L Chicherov, India: Economic
Development in the 16th-12th Centuries (Moscow, 1971), ch 1T Tt rmay be argued, of
course, that conditions in Mughal Inda weze completely different from those of early
medieval times as Mughal India was characterized by ‘the separation of the crafs from
agriculture and the town fiom the countryside’ (Chicherov, p. 95), but then we are
only thinking in terms of a theoretical possibility here, taking caste as the basis of the
separanon becween craft and agriculeural production,
¥ Medvedev.
™ Epigraphia Infica, xxv, p. 335
" Ibid., bx, pp. 277-80. The inscription refers not only to the establishment of a
hatga but also to the setding of merchants in it, kaffo maldanatea sthipita(=).
* For example. Samanbiganasiadhira of Bhop, T. Ganapati Sastri andV. S, Agrawala,
eds (Baroda, 1966}, chs 10, 13, 18, 30.0tc; for a list of Silpagdstra text, see D, N. Sukla,
Vistusdstra, |, Hindu Science of Architecure (Chandigarh, nc date), p. 33. Sec also B. B,
Dutea, Tounplanning in Ancient India (Calcurta, 1923), passi.
 -«
w
PIpuY YN [RapI AJANE] M4 S34IUAT) UPGA[) puT IpVAL,
early medieval texts for princes and different categories of samantas™
may be accommodarted within the framework of what they say about
towns and town-planning,
One has at the same time to contend with the unassailable archaeo-
logical evidence, which shows that many of the important—and not
50 important—urban centres decayed in north India in the Gupta
and post-Gupta times.An alternative way of looking at this process of
decay would be to start with a study of the geographical distribution
of the centres, for which, apart from archaeology, the travel account
of Hiuven Tsang, which is regarded as a standard source for the first
halfof the seventh century,” may be useful.” Hiuen Tsang too refers
to 2 number of decayed urban centres and in the Indus valley one
such typical site was Sikala.* Such sites were, however, much more
numerous in the Ganga basin proper and the adjoining arcas where
a selected list would include Kaudimbi,® Srivasd,® Kapilavistu,”
Ramagrima,” Kusinagara,” and Vaigili"*, the capital of the Vagis.""
The point to be noted in this account is that in many of the regions
where these cencres lay it was not only the townships which had gone
into decay, but the ‘peopled villages' too were ‘few and waste’."? Hiuen
Tsang seems also to have made a conscious distinction between a city
and a town. With reference to the capital of the Vajjis, he remarked that
*.... the capital is ruined" and that ‘it maybe calleda village or town"."

" R.S. Sharma, Social Changes in Earty Mediewal India,pp 6=7.

* Medvedev gives convincing reasons for treating it as a standard source.
“ From the tenth century onward the accounts of Arib geographers and others
contain much useful material, but they have not been used in thss paper.
“ S Beal, Si-yu-ki: Buddhist Records of the Western Werld (Indian reprint, Delhi,
1969), i, pp. 166-7.
* fbid,, pp. 235-9.
* Ibid,, 11, p. 1
* Ibid.,p 14,
* Ibid.,
p. 26.
* Ibid.,
pp. 31-2,
0 Thid., p.66.
I bid.,p. 8.
# Ibid,p. 32
“ Ihid...p, 78.
The Making of Early Medieval India

His statement about Magadha has similar implications: ‘'The walled

cities have but few inhabitants but the towns are thickly populated’."™
It would appear from his descriptions that this distinction would also
apply to the urban centres which he found surviving and some of
them would come under his category of cities. Thus Kinyakubja and
Varanasi may be definitely labelled as cities of his period. Both of them
were ‘thickly populated’ and ‘valuable merchandise was collected’ at
them ‘in great quantities’."* Urban characteristics were present also ata
number of sites listed by HiuenTsang in the Indo-Gangetic divice, the
Ganga valley and its extension, covering a recognizable stretch along
the Himalayan foothills. At Thaneswar ‘rare and valuable’ merchandise
was brought from elsewhere;"™ the chief town of P’o-lo-hih-mo-pu-lo
was densely populated and most of its people were ‘engaged in com-
merce""" at Kiu-pi-shwang-na too the population was numerous."*
The survival of old urban centres or the emergence of new ones
in these areas is attested by archaeology as well, although, owing to
the insignificant progress mads in historical archaeology so far, our
information is scanty here. The most important representative of the
old urban centres is Ahicchatri in Bareilly district, which reveals an
unbroken sequence in the early medieval context.’™ At Purana Qila in
Delhi the Gupta, post-Gupta ind Rajput phases show that here also
the sequence was uninterrupted between the Kugina and the Turkish
periods, though the quality of the structures at these phases appears to
have been poor.'" Atranjikhera in Etah district has remains of Gupta
and post-Gupta times.""! At Rajghat near Varanasi, period 1V lasted

bid., p.82.
bid,, I, p. 206; 11,p. 44.
% ki, I, p. 163,
7 bid., p. 198
" Thid.,p. 199. Excavaticns at Kashipur (Naisital district), generally identified with
Hiuen I'seng’s Kui-pi-shwang-na, have revealed imposing religious structures of the
carly medieval period; see bidian Archuealogy—1970-1, A Review, pp. 4165
1 A Ghosh and K. C. Panigrahi, The Pottery of Ahichchhatra, District Bareilly,
U, Ancient ndis, 1, pp. 3640,
1 Indian Archasology 1969-70 A Review, pp. 45,
4 bid,, 1960-1,pp. 323,
 up SapuID WPGIT) puP IpPAL @«
-
from AD 300 to 700 and periodV from Ap 700 to 1200."*At Chirand
m Saran district, representing the middle Ganga basin, 2 new occupa-
tional stratum was discovered in 1968-9 and the coins of Gangeyadeva
and other metal objects marked it out to be the early medieval phase
of the site.'"" Among the sites that appear to have emerged in the
post-Guptu period, apart from Ahar, Sankara in Aligarh districe may be
mentioned. Structures at chis site have been dated from berween the
ninth and twelfth centuries,'™

[Paspagy AP
To return to Hiuen Tsang, the deserted and deurbanized areas of
his account, so far as the Ganga basin and the adjoining areas along
the Himalayan foothills are concerned, correspond o a stretch which
was in early times intersected by a number of important trade routes.

PIpUL 0N
They connected Gaya, Patalipuera, Vaiili, Kusinagara, Nepalese farai,
Srivasti and Kau&mbi,"® covering precisely an area in which were
located the most important urban centres which had decayed by
Hiuen Tsang’ time, No detailed history of these trade roures is as yet
available, bur the impression that they had decayed faidy early may
saill be tested by analysing the chronology of the sources in which
some of them are mentioned, Mithila in north Bihar is believed to
have been touched by eight trade routes: (i) Mithila-Rijagrha; (i)
Mithila-Srivasti; (1) Mithila-Kapilavistu; (iv) Videha-Puskalivati: (v)
Mithila-Pratisthina; (vi) Mithila-Sindhu; (vii) Mithila-Campi; and
(viii) Mithila=Timralipti.'"* From the direction of these routes their
actual number may be reduced to three or four, bur even so it is
significant that not a single reference to them is of the early medieval
period, perhaps suggesting that they had become defunct by that time.
This apparently provides us with an explanation as to why the urban
centres in this area decayed, but it does not answer why the trade
roures chemselves had dried up.

19 Ihid ,p 39 See also ibid, 19578,

pp. 50-1, where periodIV was cated between the
fifth and eighth centuries and periodV berween the niat and fourceend: centuries.
™ Ibid., 1968-3,p 6
4 Ibid., 1960-1,pp 32-3.
" DD Kosamubi,op. cit.,p 132,
" Md Aquique, Economic History of Mithila (c. 600 8c=1097 an) (New Delhi,
1974},pp. 141-4.
-
o
=
The Making of Early Medieval India

There is another dimension to the problem already briefly touched

upon, and it bears upon the reltionship between trade, urban centres
and a stable political structure The role of the political organism in
the formation of early historical urban centres has often been stressed
to the extent that according to one writer*... :f any priority is to be
established, the ruler should get the credit because he happens to sym-
bolize a power structure very necessary for the maintenance of any
economic system represented by the merchants” " The problem of the
decay of urban centres has also 0 be viewed in this light. It is common
knowledge that the mahdjanagadas, within the framework of which
emerged the urban centres of the Buddha’s ume, were not merely
territorial structures but political structures as well."* With regard to
the urban sites along the Himalayan foothills, Medvedev's formulation
that ‘with the dissolution of Ksatriya oligarchical state-clan formations
(ganas) the Himalayan area lostits past political significance and came
to occupy the position of an vnimportant outlying province of eco-
nomically advanced north Indian states’,""” maybe only partly true.™
Bur itis significant that even in the Ganga basin and the Indo-Gangetic
divide there is in the post-Gupta period no sabstantial evidence of
any well-knit kingdoms, apart from the ephemeral empire of the
Vardhanas. Even in this short-lved empire two urban centres, Thane-
swar and Kanauj, stand out in the account of Hiuen Tsang, and in
Harsa’s time they were imporant political centres as well. Instances
of early medieval rulers estabishing new townships abound in lit-
erature and in epigraphs and they cover such widely distant regions

" Dilip K. Chakrabares, Review of The Ciry in Eardy Historical India by A. Ghosh,
Journal of Ancient Indian History, i, pts 1-2 (1572-3), pp. 31419,
% See H.C. Raychaudhuri, Politica History of Ancient India, bth edn. (University of
Calcuts, 1953), part i, ch. 11l alsoA, Ghosh, p. 13.
% Medvedev.
The oligarchical states disappeared as a result of Magadhan expansion, but
archacclogically the region, including the Nepalese tarai,is well-documented down to
the Kuydya period, if not later, Debala Mitra, Excavations ar Tilaura-kot and Explorations
in the Nepalese Tarai (The Department of Archazology, Nepal, 1972}, p. 15; aksa R. S.
Sharma, ‘Decay of Gangetic Towns in Gupta and post-Gupta Times', p. 97,
 PIpU] YisoN (PAIPIRY Ajie r 53s1ua)) uogI) pav AprAL
as Kashmir,'” Rajasthan'® and Bengal'™ Tattinandapura, Siyadoni
and Gopagiri, although not founded by any ruler, are all examples of
townships which emerged as important with the rise of the Gugara-
Pratihira empire.
This, however, does not guarantee that the rise of a kingdom or
an empire would necessarily bring in trade and urbanism.We have as
yet no substantial evidence of either, for example, in the long-lasting
kingdom of the Eastern Cilukyas of Andhra. And despite politi-
cal vicissitudes a number of traditional urban centres survived; such
survivals were the measure not of the stability of a kingdom but of
(i) some important trade routes; and (ii) the location of a traditonal
seat of manufacture at the centre.A single but representative example
would beVaranasi, which was not only located on a traditional artery of
trade, the Ganga, but was also an important centre of textile and ivory
products in the eardy historical period.™ As a centre of rextile manu-
facture, its importance continued till early medieval times."”* When
new centres emerged in different regional contexts—and studies on
early medieval India have to think in rerms of such possibilities—the
pattern of petty production was nor substantially different from that of
earlier times. Of the most important guilds of early historical times'*
at least seven existed at Tatcinandapura, Sivadoni and Gopagiri, those
of the goldsmiths, stone-masons, braziers, oil-pressers, garland-makers,
potters and caravan traders.'”

'3 See Rajatararigint,iv. 10, v. 156, etc.

2 Epigraphia Indica, xvisi, pp. 87-99.
" See Ramacarita of Sandhyikaranand, v. 32
" See B. Srivastava, Tiade and Commerce in Andient India ( From the Earliest Times to¢.
AD 300), Appendix A, pp. 278-9.
% L Gopal, ‘The Textile Industry in Early Medieval India’, joumal of the Asiatic
Seciety of Borbay, 1964-5, p. 103.
1% See R. C. Majumdar, Corponste Life in Arcient India, 3rd edn. (Calcuta, 1969),
ch1,pp 15-17.
7 For 3 list of 18 guikh mentioned i Jambudvipapriifiapr.
see A. K. Majumdar,
Chauleeyas of Gugarat (Bombay, 1956}, pp. 263-4: also L, Gopal, The Ewmemic Lifeof
Norther India, ch. V.
 CHAPTER 7

Urban Centres in Early Medieval India

An Overview*

RBANIZATION IN EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIA is as vet a lictle under-

stood phenomenon. Compared to the quantum of writing
on urbanization in other phases of early India the research
available on this phase is decidedly inadequate.” This inadequacy is
apparent at two levels. First, in the absence of any substantial empirical
work, the intensity or otherwise of urbanization and the distribution
of urban centres in the period can only be impressionistically gauged.
Second, general works on the period which touch on the problem of

* Reprinted from S, Bhacacharyya and Romila Thapar, eds, Situaring Indian History
(New Delhy, 1986).
' Genenal works on eatly medieval India hardly touch upon the problem of
urbanization;
even a work which purpores to trace the history of urban development
in India in 3 broad sweep rests content with Al Beruni’s evidence so far as the ealy
medieval period is concerned. See B. Bhattacharya, Urban Development in India (Since
Prehistoric Timses) (Delh:, 1979),ch. 11l The position is no beteer in standard works on
economic history in which a synthesss of voluminous empirical material has been
acempted See Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib {eds), The Cambridge Economic
History of India, ¢ 1200, 1750 (Cambridge Universicy Press, 1982). The section on
‘Economic Conditions before 1200" (pp 45-7) presents a rather dismal piccure of the
decline the economy soffered in che post-Gupe petiod. In the context of south India,
however, Burton Stein recognizes the development of urban places, but generally
from the thirteenth century. Ibid,, pp. 3642,
 =
-
w1 sanes) Qi)
urbanization lack an appropriate analytical framework.
The existence
of urban centres is taken for granted in such works and no reference
is usually made to the historical context in which they may have
emerged. Such studies are therefore in the nature of compilations of
urban place names from epigraphs and literature,? or they state what,

A
according to prescriptive Silpasistra texts, the various forms of urban
settlements were in terms of their plan or layout.’ Whereas such com-

PIPMT (P
pilations do not lay down specific criteria by which a settlement area
may be defined as urban, the prescriptive texts, in the absence of any
awempted correlation with other types of evidence and in view of

? Only a few examples need to be cited. P Niyogis Contributions

to the Economic
History
of Norther India
( fom the tenth to the rwelfih century AD) (Caleutea, 1962), has
a chapter (ch.V) on “Towns and Town-planning’ The chapter compiles, from indig-
enous and non-indigenous soutces. a list of place names which are regarded as urban
centresof the period with which the work deals, The information on town planning
is based on some literary evidence which cannotbe further tested; material whichis
datable to 2 much eaclier period i also used. K. C. Jain's Ancient Cities and Toums of Raj-
asthan (A Study of Culnure and Civilization) (Delhi-Varanasi-Patna,
1972) hat 2 rather
confised chapter on ‘Principles of Selection’ (ch.V) and takes the ‘criteria on the basis
of which the sclection
of cities and towns has been made as self-evident.
This work is
really
in the nature of a compilationof brief sketches of settlements
in Rajasthan and
does not distinguish between the early historical and the carly medieval period. P.K.
Bhattacharya’s compilation of a list of rural and urban centres in Madhya Pradesh in
Historical Geography of Madiya Pradesh fram Early Records (Delhi-Varanasi-Patna, 1977),
pp. 198-225, is similarly of little use for disunguishing beeween rural and urban and
between carly historical and early medieval. In face all the works cited above ke the
existence of urbin centres so much for granted that they do not regard the problem:
of urbanization a5 a theme requiring serious anlysis.
* See B. B. Dut, Touns Planming in Ancient India (Calcutta, 1925; reprinted, Delhi,
1977). Dutt’s work s based largely on such texts as Vistu-vidyd, Minasira, Mapdmatarm,
Manusilaya-Candried, Vidwakarmaprakitaand so on, Apart from the fact that the datesof
most texts cannot be ascertined with certainty, the material contained in such works i
of doubtfis relevance for the study of urbantzation, This is not to imply that literary texts
have no historical value; much of our understanding of early historical urban centres is
in fact derived from literary evidence I merely suggest that the use of literary matenial
requires a different kind of critical apparatus, which i generally absent in works which
depend on it That lirerary evidence can have exciting and suggestive details is revealed
by the text Kumirapdlacarita, which describes the urbas cenue of Apahilapura in Gujarat;
the texe has been cited by P Niyogi, p. 125, and B. N. S Yadava, Saviety and Cultuwre in
Norther India in the Tuelfth Century (Allahabad, 1973), p. 241.
 2
=
The Making of Early Medieval India

their uncertain chronology, are, in the final anaysis, hardly of any use
in understanding the nature and process of urbanization in the early
medieval period.
Although some beginnings have now been made in understanding
urban processes in various regional contexts,' in the absence of an
overall perspective there is a tendency to isolate factors and elements
relevant to a Jocal situation rather than view local developments as
expressions ofa broader genera’ process. Notwithstanding the possibil-
ity that urban centres represented varied typologies or that they were
generated by different ‘immediate’ factors, there is a need to transcend
locality-centred perspectives and view urbanization as correspond-
ing to a process, which alone can satisfactorily explain its emergence
and structure. Even the range of issues involved in the study of early

* Regional studies in the form of menographs on urbanization in carly madieval

India are rather rare. Q. P Prasad’s Ph.D). dissertation, "Towns in Karnataka’, submitted
at Patna Universicy, has only recently been published under the title Decry and Revivil
of Urban Centres in Mediewl South Indu (¢. AD 600-1200) (Pacna-Delli, 1989) A few
articles by him on this theme are also wvailable: (1) ‘A Study of Towns in Karnataka on
the Basis of Epigraphic Sources: . Ap $00-1200", Indian History Congress, Proceedings of
the 38th Session (1977), pp. 151-60: (ib ‘Two Ancient Part Towns of Karnatika—Goa
and Mangalore', ibid., 39th Sessicn (1378), pp. 53-61. Also relevanc is T. Venkateswara
Rao'’s Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Local Bodwes in Pre-Vijayanagara Andhra’, submuted at
Karnauka University in 1975; it contains much materizl on urban centres n the
Andhra region.
The picture of early medieval uranism is thus only slowly emerging and is
still mostly to be got from articles. For utban centres in the areas under Gugara-
Peagthiza rule, see B, D, Chattopadhyara, “Trade and Urban Centres in Eatly Medieval
North India’ in this collection, For the growth of urban centres in the Cola area
of Tamilnadu, see R, Champakalaksheni, ‘Growth of Urban Centres in South India
Kudamakku-Palaiyirai, the Twin-city of the Colas’, Stufies in History, val. 1 no 1
(1979, pp. 1-29;also idem.."Urban Process in Early Medieval Tamilnadu', Occasional
Papers Series, No 3, Urban History Association of [ndia (1982). See also, KR Hall,
‘Peasant State and Society in Chola Times: AView from the Tiruvidsimarudur Urban
Complex', The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 18, Nos. 34 (1981),
Pp. 393-410. See also R. Champakalakshmi,'Urbanization in Medieval Tamilnadu', in
S. Bhatticharyya snd Romila Thapa, eds, Situating Indian History,pp. 34-105; idem.,
‘Usbansation in South India: The Role of Ideology and Policy, Presidential Address,
Ancient India Section, Indian History Congress, 47 session, 1986 (Srinagar). [dem.
Trade, leology and Urbanization: South India, 300 8¢ to AD 1300 (New Delhi, 1996},
 wegi) 3
medieval urbanization remains to be properly defined and empirically
worked out, and | shall only underline some of the issues and present

wt s
a viewpoint. In so doing, it maybe found necessary to introduce some
empirical material in various regional contexts,but the main purpose
of this would be not to highlight regional trends but to identify factors

FIpup [PIpI A
which cut across what may have been taking place at a purely regional
level. If urbanization was a phenomenon which was geographically
widely distributed in the early medievl period, then ane is entided
to speculate as to what the commonality of elements was between the
urban centres of the period. This will be a valid exercise.
In defining the issues, the first point to be made is that urbaniza-
tion in the early medieval period is here taken as the beginning of
the third phase of the phenomenon in India. Two distinct phases
of urbanization in eardy India have already been demarcated The
first and perhaps the more readily recognized phase is represented
by the planned cities of the Harappan culture, and in several ways
this phase stands apart from the historical context which gave rise
to India’s second urbanization. Covering a long time span between
about the middle of the third and the middle of the second millen-
nium 8¢, the Harappan cities were mainly distributed over the Indus
drainage system, extending to what Spate calls ‘One of the major
structure-lines of Indian history’, namely ‘the Delhi-Aravalli axis and
the Cambay node’.* The Indus civilization sites did spill over into
other geographical regions and did interact with other cultures, but
beyond the *structure line’ there was no gradual territorial extension
of the Indus urban sites. In other words, the major part of the Indian
subcontinent remained unaffected by Indus urbanism. Secondly, the
Indus cities, with their accent on formal but variable layouts,” reflect
a kind of spatial and social organization which would be unfamiliar

* O.H.K Spate and A. T A. Learmonth, Indic and Pakistan; A General and Regional
Geography (Methuen & Co., 3rd edition, 1967}, pp. 175-9
* The literatureon Harappan urbanism is exteasive and to form satisfactory impres-
sions of Harappan urban centres the best guides are the excavation reports. For 2
useful though by now dated bibliography;see B.M. Pande and K. S. Ramachandran,
Bibiiography of the Hanappan Culture (Florida, 1971). For recent perspectives and bib-
liographical references, see G. L. Powehl, ed.. Harappan Civilisation: A Contemporary
ES
-
a
The Making of Early Medicval India

on such a scale in any other pkase of Indian history. The Indus valley
urbanism thus did not continue as a legacy beyond the middle of the
second millennium sc.”
The second phase of urbarization, the beginnings of which have
been dated around the sixth century 8¢, coincided with a gradual
maturation of the iron age. As a causative factor of the second phase
of urbanization iron has been 1 subject of some debate® The second
phase of urbanization reveals stages of internal growth and of horizontal
expansion. The distribution of two new and crucial cultural elements,
namely a multifunctional syllabic script and coinage, which are asoci-
ated with this phase, serves as an effective indicator of the geogranhical
spread of urbanism.” The factor adding substantially to the internal
RrOwth process was an enormous expansion of trade networks in the
period when India’s early contact with Central Asia and the Hellenistic
world reached its peak,'® and despite physical variations between the

Perspective (New Delhi, 1982); ]. M. Kenyor, Andent cities of the trades valley civikzation,
Karachi, 1998,
7 Despite oft-repeated suggestions to the effect that Harappan cultural traditions
continue into fater Indian history, chis point has been made with considerable emphasis
inA_Ghosh, The City in Early Historical India (Simla, 1973] and S. Ratnagar, Encounters:
The Westerly Trade of the Harsppa Choilization (New Delhi, 1981), p. xiii,
* See for example R. S Sharma, 'M:terial Background of the Origin of Buddhism',
in M. Sen and M. B, Rao, eds, Das Kapital Cemtenary Volume—A Sywposium
(Delhi-Ahmedabad-Bombay, 1968), 1. 61;A. Ghosh, ch. IV; R. S. Sharma, ‘[ron and
Urbanization in the Ganga Basin', Tae Indian Historical Review, vol. I, No. 1 (1974),
. 98-103; Dilip K. Chakrabart, ‘Beginning of lron and Social Change in India’,
Indion Studies: Past and Present, vol. 14,n0. 4, pp. 329-38. For & recent recapitulation of
the debate see B.P.Sahu, ed. Jron and Sodial Change in Early India, New Delhi, 2006,
* Aldiough the Brihmi and Kharoghi scripts emerged together, for the major part
of India 1t was Brihmi which was in ue.
" For a general survey of the trade networks of this period, the following works
may be consulted: G. L. Adbya, Early Indian Economics {Bombay, 1966); E. H. Warm-
ington, The Commerce Betueen the Rowan Empire and India (Cambridge, 1928) R_E.
M. Wheeler, Rome Beyend the Imperia. Frontiers { London, 1954); . H. 1. Eggermont,
“The Murundas and the ancient wade route from Taxila to Ugjam’, Journal of the
Economic and Sociel History of the Oriere, vol. 9 (1966),pp. 257-96, For bibliography of
recent works see Vimnalu Begley and R de Puma, eds, Rome and India: The Ancent Sea
Trade {New Delhi, 1992); Marie-Frangoise Boussac, Jean-Frangois Salles, Athens, Eden,
Arikamedu (New Delhs, 1995)
 pipup eaapapy Apie ur sauas) wegay
urban centres, berween Ujjayini'’ and Nagarjunakonda® for example,
this network is evident in the unprecedented mobility of men and
goods in the period. It is probably not coincidental that a shrinkage
in this nerwork coincides with the decline of urban centres from the
post-Kugina period through the Gupta period.” The decline was
geographically widely distributed, and since this observation is based
on a study of archaeological sequencesat a number of early histori-
cal sites, both of northern and southern India, the chronology of the
decline of this urban phase is not a matter of speculation. Thus if the
phenomenon of urbanism is noticeable again from the early medieval
period, one may not be off the mark in calling it the third phse of
urbanization in India."At the same time to characterize this
as a distinct

' No detatled report of Ujjayini excavations is available yet. Brief notces were
published (n Indian Archueclogy—A Review (1956-7),pp 20-8; and ibid. (1957-8),
pp-32-5,
' See H. Sarkir
and B. N. Mista, Nagaunakonds
(New Delhi, Archaeclogical
Survey of India, 1980)
" R.S. Sharma, in an attempt to add to the empirical base of his hypothesis that
decline of trade and urbanism is associated with Indian feudalisr (see his Indian
Feudalism, University of Calcutta, 1965, pp. 63), provided the first archaeclogical
documentation of this deckne. ‘Decay of Gangetic towns in Gupta and post-Gupta
times', Proceeding: of the Indian History Congress, 33rd sewsion (Muzaffarpur, 1972),
Pp. 92-104; idem., Urban Decay in India (c. 300~:. 1000) (New Delhi, 1987).
** That the decline of the early historical urban phiase was a widespread geographical
phenomenon 1 becoming increasingly evident with the progress of empirical research.
See V. K. Thakur, Urbanisation in Ancient India (New Delhi, 1981), ch. 7: ‘Decline of
Ushan Cenwres’s R Champakalakshini, ‘Urban Processes in Early Medieval Tamil-
nadu' R. N. Nandi, ‘Client, Ritual and Conflict in Early Brahmanical Order’, The
Indian Historical Review, vol.
6, nos. 1-2 (1979),pp. T4i.
5 The use of the term ‘third urhinization’ seems to have berome necessary in
view of the current historiography which points to a break in the early historical
urbanization sequence but does not st the sme time properly recognize early
medieval urbanism as 2 phenomenon to be pliced outide the context of the early
historical urban phase. For example, V. K. Thakur, who has a lengthy chapeer on
the decline of early urban centres, starts with 3 categorical statement:‘Urbanisation
in ancient India had two distinct phases’ (p. 1), Where does one then place urban
centres of the tenth or eleventh centuries? “Third urbanization” may imply a parcial
rejection of my earlier views (in ‘Trade and Urban Centres in Early Medieval
North India’), but the point made in that essay was not so much to underline
 6
-
>
The Making of Early Medieval India

phase in early Indian urban history leaves one with two vital questions:
(i) what contributed to the fresh emergence of urbamization after a
recognizable, although perhaps not total, lapse? and (ii) in what way did
early medieval urbanism differ from early histarical urbanism? Once
it is categorically asserted that early medieval urbanism represented a
distinct phase, there is no way in which one can avoid confronting
these two questions. These questions are particularly relevant because
the comparison intended in this essay is between the early historical
and the early medieval; the proto-historic Indus valley does not come
within its purview,
The hazards of defining an urban centre are more acute in the
early medieval context than in the context of the early historical
phase. The problem derives largely from the nature of the source
material. While there is a happy convergence of archacological and
literary material (and to these was added epigraphical material at a
later stage) for the study of early historical urbanism, the only kind
of material on which the historian has to depend for information on
early medieval urban centres is epigraphic. Indeed the almost total
absence of archaeological material on early medieval urban centres
is perhaps the chief reason why our understanding of the chronol-
ogy and chancter of early medieval urbanism remains imperfect,
and will continue to remain so unless, at some time or the other,
early medieval archacology draws the attention of the practising
archaeologists of the country. If Taxila or Kausimbi, to name only
two among many, offer a visual idea of early historical urban centres,

the conunuity of early historical utbanism into the early medieval period as o
structurally examine ‘urban centres’, so often projected 3 2 crucial variable in the
idea of ‘Indian feudalism'. Cf. R. S Sharma, Indian Feudalism. By tlking about
distinct phases of urbamzation in early India, one may be drawn somewhat towards
the two models of urbanization developed by R. M. Adams: the ‘Rump’ process
and the ‘Step’ process. See The Evwolution of Urban Society (Early Mesopotamia and
pre-Hispanic Mexico) (Chicago, 1966),p. 170. The formulation of‘third urbanization’
seems w0 establish a close parallel between the *Step’ process and the early Indian
experience. Adams’s model, however, does not provide for an examination of the
historical contexts, which alone explain the emergence and collapse of distinct
urban stages: the parallel therefore can at best be external.
 -
o
N
Papuy [eanpapy Apinsg wi sanuaD) ungi)
or Hampi'* and Champaner" of that of the medieval period, there
is not a single urban centre of the tenth or the eleventh century of
which we can form a similar idea."® Further, early historical urban
centres are known both from literature and archacology; what was
known for long from literary references came to be confirmed,
though in a necessarily modified form, when literary references
were geographically located and excavations exposed various stages
of the history of the sites. Literary reference alone cannot provide
the definition of an urban centre; archaeologists and historians
can more meaningfully start tlking about differentiation between
an urban and a non-urban centre when the actual dimensions of
a settlement are revealed by archaeclogy."” Since early medieval
archaeology is stll an elusive proposition, historians of early
medieval sertlements depend entirely on epigraphic data to stipulate
the recognizable characteristics of urban centres. The uncertainty
of historians in regard to this problem can be illustrated. Writing in
general terms on urbanization in Karnataka betweer: ap 973 and
1336, G. R Kuppuswamy states:
It is futile to attempt 3 clear cut chssification of medieval economy of Kamataka
into different sectors, namely urban and runl. For in actual practice there were
many things common to village and town life—industries, banking, fairs, corpora-
tions ar guilds and religious beliek. The distinction was only one of degree and

" For Hampi, see A. H. Longhurst, Hampi Ruins Described and Mustrated (Madiras,
1917); D. Devakunjari, Hampi (New Delhi, Archaeological Survey of India, 1970);
S, Settar, Hampl (Bangalore, 1990).
RN Meha, Mediowd Archaeolgy (Delhs, 1979), ch. 18, Town-planning 3¢
Champaner’. pp. 140ff, fig. 5.
™* The early medieval phase is represented at 2 number of archacological sites
which have sequences dating to carlier periods, but owing to the absence of a
horizontal clearing of this phase it is impossible to form any idea of settlernent
structure, The archaeological potential of early medieval urban centres is revealed
by such sites s Ahar, Archacological Survey of India, Annual Report, 1925-1926,
pp.56-8.
* An attempt was made by R, S. Sharma to lay down cermain criteria in the context
of the eatly hiscorical sites in ‘Decay of Gangetic Towns' also, Urban Decsy. See ako
B. D. Chattopadhyays, "Urban Cenires in Early Bengal: Archacologcal Perspectives',
reprinted in Studying Early India: Archacology, Texts and Histoncal Issues (Delhi, 2003),
PP 66-102.
The Making of Early Medieval India

not of kind. The villages extubited more the features of a runl or agriculcural
economy while the towns ot cities betrayed more of an urban or industrial and
commercial economy.®®

Viewed from this angle it is futile to attempt any distinction at all,

since the ‘distinction of degree' is impossible to measure; nevertheless
the quotation does underscors the basic difficulty of isolating and
defining a settlement as urban without being arbitrary.
The two major preliminary problems in the study of early medieval
urban centres are thus of locating them among rather voluminous
epigraphic references to place names of the period, and of explain-
ing their growth. Both call for sitting the epigraphic material with
caution,

1
If archaeology is more or less silent on the dimensions of early
medieval setdements, how should one determine their nature? The
initial method is to depend on contemporary perceptions regard-
ing the differential characters and typologies of the settlements.
These perceptions are conveyed by the use of terminologies which
(as in the early historical period) relate to what must have been
distinguishable categories, although the distinctions could not
have been immutable. In fact we have evidence of attempts to
transfer, under certain situations, settlements of one category into
another.?’ The range of both early historical and early medieval
settlement terminology, if we are to use literary references as well,
is extensive.The major categories for the early historical period are
those of grimas, nigama, pura, ragara and mahdnagara,™ and although
nigama seems to have been in infrequent use in the later period,
there was really no break in the use of the terms grima and pura

* Economic Conditions in Karnataka,AD 973=40 1336 (Dharwar, 1975), p. 95

' For examples of this in eady medieval Kurnataka, see G. S. Dikshir, Loal Selfe
govermnent in Medieval Karnataka (Dhacwar, 1964), pp. 140-2.
# For discussions an units and terminologies of settlements,
see N. Wagle, Seciety ar
the Time of the Buddha (Bombay, 1966},ch. 2,A. Ghosh,ch 3.
 5
vipuy [raapagy Apvg w supay ueqn)
or nagara. This indicates that the idea of two essentially different
categories of settlements, representing two opposite points on a
continuum pole, continued to survive, whatever the stages in the
history of urbanism,*
Yet this polarity at the conceptual level is not enough, since pura
or nagara seem at the same level to have represented some form of
ranking as well, and the use of the pur or nagara suffix could easily
have been a way of underlining the assumed or induced status of 2
particalar settlement space. Admittedly then, among the multtude
of sertlement names mentioned and very infrequently described in
any detail in epigraphs, it is hazardous, without applying further tests,
to try and locate urban centres and comprehend their structure,
Clues to further tests are, fortunately, provided by the epigraphs
themselves. In the majority of cases, villages appear in the epigraphs in
the context of grants of land.* The reference may be to an individual
village or to villages distributed around the village in which the grant
was made. The object of the grant and the details associated with it
almost invariably occur in the context of space which the records
themselves specify as rural. So when one comes across cases where the
object of grant and its associated details are sharply different, one can
leginmately assume that the nature of the spatial context in which the
grant was made was necessarily different.
The objects of grant in this
different spatial context consist of levies on industrial items locally
manufactured or brought from outside, on items brought for purposes
of sale or exchange, on shops and residential quarters, and so on Land
is not entirely absent a5 an object of grant in such spatial contexts, but
only rarely does one find it even as a subsidiary item.

® Fora brief discussion of urban terminology, see B. D Chattopadhyaya; also R.N.

Nandi. Nandi cites O. P Prasad’s dissernnon to show that such terms as purs, durga,
rdjadhdni and skandhdvdra, which occur in the epigraphs of the sixth-tenth centuries,
are repliced by pattana, nagara, mahdpattana, mahdnagara in the cleventh-thirteenth
centuries.
* For the general features of such documents, see D C. Sircar. Indian Epigraphy
(Delhi. 1965}, ch.V. Epigraphs also refer to the creation of rural habitw i areas
previously not seteled, and the distribution of Lind by specifying shares 1n such areas
would indicate the stress put on bringing the lind under cultvation.
The Making of Early Medicval India 3

The two types of grants thus relate to how spaces are differendy
occupied and used, and with this primary distinction in epigraphic
references to catly medieval settlements one can tentatively perceive
the difference between rural and non-rural spaces. Thus, irrespective
of whether rural space incorporated such activities as industry or
commerce, land as the major item of grant would be the determinant
of its nature as a human setdement; if the major object of grant,
by contrast, relates to industrial and/or commercial items, then the
spatial context within which such grants are made can justifiably
be characterized as non-rural. [t is perhaps necessary to add thar a
study of the different natures of the grants is essential since, despite
its volume, the epigraphic material almost invariably records various
types of grants.
There is one more genersl feature of the epigraphic evidence
bearing on this distinction. Land. cultivated or uncultivated—and
occasionally residential—being the major object of grant in rural
space, there is hardly any need in epigraphs to furnish details of
the rural settlement structure, The reference is specifically to land
donated in relation to surrounding plots and villages. Although a
typical village settlement is known to have consisted of three com-
ponents, the vistu (residential land), ksetra (cultivable) and gocara
(pasture),™ the relationship between the three is generally absent in
epigraphic matetial, except perhaps in south Indian records.® It can
therefore be assumed that one is moving away from a purely rural
landscape when one comes across references {although provided in
fragments in the same category of material) to centres of exchange,

* For discussions on various companents of rural settlements, see A K. Chaudhary,

Early Medievat
Village in North-Eastern India (4D 600~1200) (Caleutta, 1971), ch 3; also,
B. D. Chattopadhyaya, Aspects of Runal Settlements and Rusai Society in Early Medieval
India (Caleutea, 1990),
* For an introduction o the material bearingon rural serdementsin early medieval
Tamilnadu, see the interesting paper by N. Karashima, The Village Communities in
Chola times: Myth o Reality’, Joumal of the Epigraphical Society of India, vol. § (1971),
PP, B5-96, now imcluded in his South Indien History and Swciety: Studies fiom Insariptions
AD 850-1500 (Delhi, 1984), pp. 40-5.
 ueqiny 3
residential structures and their occupants, manufacturing quarters,
functionally different streets, and so on.”’

vipup paspapy Apimsg w s

This should not suggest, however, that a rural settlement was essen-
tally devoid of such features. It appears that urban centres can be
identified from among a multitude of references in epigraphic records
only by isolating what is stereotypical of the rural. This has nothing to
do with the mention of a place as 2 grdma or a nagany; it is the relevance
of how much is described in the context of what is being recorded
that will finally count in assessing the character of each settlement.
The method proposed here is admittedly inadequate and will appear
more so whenever an attempt is made at detailed empirical study, and
while preparing a distribution map of the urban centres of the period.
For the present, however, the epigraphs do not appear to offer many
more options.

m
Having suggested that urban centres of the early medieval period
may be so considered because they are presented in epigraphic
sources of the period as spatial units distinguishable from more
readily recognizable rural ones, one is led ro ask if this difference
can be stretched, on the strength of the ideally exclusive catego-
ries of grama and nagara, to the point of polarity. This question is
to a large measure related to the problem of the genesis of urban
spaces because acceptance of the idea of polarity—in spatial as well
as social terms—would correspond to viewing urban sertlements
as growths from above. This, while not placing urban settlements
totally outside the context of rural settlements, would nevertheless
tend to suggest that the sphere of interaction between the two was
largely induced.
As growths from above urban centres could be expected to exhibit
characteristics of planned settlements, marked to a considerable

" See B. D Chawopadiiyaya, Trade and Urbun Centres in Early Medieval North
Incha’ in this callection.
 3
=
The Making of Early Medieval India

degree by an absence of the components of rural settlements. There

are numerous references in early medieval records to the creation
of townships by rulers and officials,” but not a single record seems
to reveal how such settlements were planned. In fact an analysis of
such references merely suggests an extension, through official mitia-
tive, of an already emergent process; the creation of townships in
such cases consisted of laying the foundation of a core exchange
centre®® or a ceremonial centre or a combinztion of both in areas
where there was need for them: such initiatives would hardly be
equivalent to the urban process as a whole. Secondly, the very fact
that urban centres of various dimensions become readily recogniz-
able in records from a particular point of time immediately relates
to the problem of social charge, of which urbanization is only an
aspect. Considering the natur of the social formation of the early
medieval period. urban centres were likely to represent ‘an exten-
sion of that of the countryside’." However, if this perspective is
adopted, it cannot then be added in the same breath that they have
to be viewed ‘as works of artifice ... erected above the economic
construction proper’.” Indeec they could not be so, since it was the

* Ibid. Also, T Venkateswara Rao, pp. 1241

# This i conveyed by an interestirg passage in a Ghatiyala inscription of Ap 861
from the Jodhpur area, which record the establishment of haftas and mahdjanas by a
Pracihina king: Epigraphia Intica, vol. 9.p. 280, Reeferences to fairs or periodical matkets
are quite commen in early medieval records, ind while fairs cannot be comidered
necessarily equivalent to urban nuclei they do nevertheless suggest movement and
concentrations, which are associated with the urban process. One may here reall the
interesting observation of Fernand Eraudel: 'town or market or fair, the resalt was
the same—movements towards concentration, then dispersion, without which no
economic life of any energy could have been created .. ' The Structures of Everyday
Life (London, 1981}, p. 503
* John Merrington, “Town and Country n the Transtion to Capitalism’, in The
Thansition from Feudalism te Capitalism, introduced by Rodney Hilton (London. 1982),
p 178,
* Karl Marx, Grindrisse (Penguin edidon, Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 479. Marx
applies this statement
o ‘really large cities’, which he world consider ‘merely 35 royal
camps'. Apare from the fact that the two constirsents of the sentence sound samewhat
contradictory—mere royal camps, being in the nature of really large cities—Marx's
characterization of*Asiatic’ cities leaves, by merely suggesting
‘the indifferent unity of
 5
ipup praapapy Apeg ur auaD upgi)
nature of the economy which largely determined the spatal and
social shape that the urban centres took.
To the issue of genesis must be added another dimension on
which I have already focused, namely that the spurt of a new phase
of urbanism became noticeable several centuries after the earlier
phase had become moribund. There is no reason to suppose that
the spurt in early medieval urbanism became possible only with a
noticeablerevivalinIndia’s externaltrade nerwork, orwiththearrival
of new cultural elements with the establishment of the Sultanate;*
to stress this is to miss an important element in the significant
changes taking place in the earlier period to which the establish-
ment of the Sultanate added substartially. The existence of fully
developed urban centres in some parts of the country can be traced
to the close of the ninth century, if not earlier.” References to them
increase numerically. suggesting the crystallization of a process, and

town and countryside’ the issue of the emergence of towns as non-rural settlements
unaccounted for. After all, ‘ruralization of the city a5 in antiquiry’. use his exprec-
sion,is 2 general propesition and does not decrease the burden of finding out what 1
distinict berween town and country. In fact Marx's formulation regarding the Anatic
city, if one goes by the statement in the Grindrisre, is 3 component of his Asiatic Mode
of Production formulation. Parallel to its dichotomy between the Absolute Despot
and society is the dichotomy between the large city and the countryside.
" See L. Gopal, The Ecoromic Life in Northern India, ¢ ab 700-1200 (Delhi, 1965).
A. Appadorai, Economic Conditions in Sauthern India (a1 1000~1500), vol. | (Madras,
1936), ch. 5.
» Irfan Habib's suggestion that there was “considerable expanwion ofthe urban
cconomy” during the Sultnate, may appear convincing (see his ‘Economic History
of the Delhi Sultanate—an Essay in Interpretation’, The Indian Historical Review,
vol. 4, 0. 2, 1978, pp. 287-303), but the degree and nature ofthis expansion will
have to be assessed in relation to the kind of change that surely was taking place in
the pre-Sultanate period. The epigraphic data of the teath to thirteenth centuries
relating 1o the number and distribution of urban centres, whatever the inadeguacies
of the estimates available at present, make one hesitant about accepting Habib's
tentative statement: ‘It is possible that there was a modest revival of commerce
and towns before the Ghorian congquests ... ‘The Peasant in the Indian History',
Presidential Address, The Indian History Congess, 4 3cd session (Kurakshetra, 1982),
P M. M4
% B, D. Chattopadhyaya, ‘Trade and Urban Centres in Early Medieval North
India"
 S
-
The Making of Early Medieval India

unlike the early historical urban phase there is no suggestion as yet

that this phase too reached a stage of decay. The early medieval thus
seems to have advanced into the medieval, although this is a surmise
which can only be validated by substantial empirical work,
A work which deals with corporate activities in the Andhra
region from between ap 1000 and 1336 and dwells at some length
on urban organizations™ lists several factors which resulted in urban
growth in the region: (i) the holding of fairs; (i) the emergence of
religious centres; (iii) commercial activities centred around ports;
(iv) the bestowal of urban stztus on rural setdements; (v) initia-
tives taken by kings and ministers in the creation of urban centres,
and so on, A basically similar approach to causality is present in a
substantive recent study on the urbanization process in south India
in which the growth of Kudamikku-Palaiyirai, twin cities of the
Colas in the Kaveri valley, is analysed.” The factors which seem to
be highlighted in the context of the growth of this complex are:
(i) the geographical location, making it ‘a point of convergence of
all major routes which passed through the core region of the Cola
kingdom'; (ii) trade, which, however, to begin with, was ‘inciden-
tal in the process of urbanization’; (iii) importance as a centre of
political and administrative activities; and (iv) religious importance,
indicated by the presence of 2 large number of temple shrines. In
fact the study speaks of ‘four major criteria’ which ‘emerge as deter-
minant factors in urban development, leading to the evolution of
four main categories of urban centres’, although it is underlined
‘that in most cases, while trade was a secondary factor, religious
activity was a dominant and persistent, though not necessarily the
sole, factor’7

* T Venkateswara Rao, pp. 124-5.

* R. Champakalakshmi, ‘Growth of Urban Centres in South India ...
*" Ibid... p. 26. The facts that temple shrines were the most dominant monuments
of the urban landscape and that the available records mosdy relate to them have
considerably coloured the perspective regarding the growth of urban centres. This
is cvident, for example, from the juxuposition of the staternents which K. R. Hall
makes regarding the urban complex of Tirnvidaimarudur. In trying to conwovert
Burton Stein’s argument thae the religious importance of such a centre comes first,
 =
o
pipup (oanpapy Apvig wa sapuacy wpsy
One could add a few more to the list of the multiplicity of factors
behuind each historical phenomenon; but while the factor complex
approach may be of some use in understanding the separate personali-
ties of contemporary settlement centres, the simultaneity with which
factors became operative ultimately calls for 2 look at the process of
which the factors were many facers. It is necessary to see what sepa-
rates one phase from another and explain how one phase gradually
changes over to another.
In a study of early medieval urban centres no detailed reconstruc-
tion is possible of the stages of their growth since archacology alone
can unravel these stages. Epigraphy, when it happens to refer to an
urban centre, presents us with a fait accompli, and it is rare to find
epigraphic material on an urban centre covering a long chronclogical
span, How then is the process to be reconstructed?
The epigraphic references to urban centres—keeping in mind
the criteria laid down above—present, among a variety of other
details, two crucial items of information. The first relates to their
linkage with the space outside. The second bears on the nucleus or
nuclei within an urban area through which interaction,as a regular
urban actwity, takes place. These two features are present more or
less uniformly in relevant epigraphs from different regions, and a
digression will be in order to introduce some empirizal material on

Hall states, ‘Tiruvidaimarudur, strategically iocated at 2n important intersection of

the Kaveri communication network, had natural advantages which encouraged its
development a3 a centre of exchinge’; and further, ‘Tiruvidaimarudur’s nagaram
fulfilled the area’s commercial needs, specialising as the centre of 2 community of
exchange . . [It] was the locus for local eccnomic interaction. with higher order
networks of exchange’. And yet the temple remains the final contributory factor;
“Tiruvidsimarudur provides an cxample of an urban centre which s 2 major
religious hub was a partcipant in the pilgrimage networks of that era, bur akso,
and possibly as a consequence of this influx of religious pilgrirs, developed as a
supra-local cenwe of consumption as well, rquiring goods supplied not only by
area residents bur alse goods acquired from distant places; e g. condiments used in
temple rituals 2 well as provisions for the consumption of visitors to the temple
compound’, K. R Hall, ‘Peasant Swate and Society in Chola times:
A View From
the Tiruvidaimarudur Urban Complex', Indun Economic and Sodal History Review,
vol. 18, nos. 3—4 (1981), pp. 397-8,
 )
5
The Making of Early Medieval India

the significance of these two incerrelated features for a study of carly

medieval urban growth.
Two inscriptions, both dated to the tenth century and belonging
to the region of the Kalacuris, refer to the exisience of about seven
urban centres in the Jabalpur area of Madhya Pradesh.® Of these, some
details regarding two centres are available.
The Karitalai record, coming
from the watershed area between the upper Son and the Narmada,”
of the ume of Laksmanardja 11, mentions four major categories of
grants to a newly constructed temple and the brihmanas associated
with 1t:* (i) villages and fields, all located within a distance of about
twenty miles (see map on facing page); (ii) khalebhiksd or levies from
threshing floors of the mandala, probably a term denoting the geo-
graphical unit within which the urban centre was located; (iii) levies
on agricultural produce—covering, it would seem, both food-grains
and commercial items—as well as industrial items brought to the
purapattana or the township for sle; and (iv) income from fairs held at
the place. The second record, from Bilhari*! in the same geographical
region and datable to the close of the tenth century in the period of
Yuvardja II, provides a more detailed list of articles brought to the
pattanamandapiki and of the levies imposed on them in the form of
cash: salt (the quantity of which is specified and expressed in a term
not understandable); products fom oilmills; betelnurs; black pepper;
dried ginger; varieties of vegetadles, and so on. Items of considerable
value on the sale of which levies were also imposed were horses and
elephants.
To start with, ler ns assume thar rthese two represent the typical
urban centres of the carly medieval period.*? The epigraphs provide

** V.V, Mirashi, ‘Inscriptions of the Kalachuri-Chedi Exa’, Corpus Inscriptionum Indi-

carum, vel. 4, part | (Ootacamund, 1955), pp. 204-24,
* Ibid,,pp. 186-95.
* Another Kalacuri record, also of the time of Laksmanarija 1L, calls this centre
Somasvimipura, B. C Jain, ‘Kalachuri Inscription from Karicala’, Epigraphia Indica,
vol. 33 (1959-60).pp. 186-8.
41 Ibid,, pp. 204-24.
* Both Karitalai and Bilhari appear to have been urban centres of modest
dimensions with 2 Lirnited range of functions, but they are mevertheless wseful
 @ TR

a0 gy emcme & Dt e o v s v 0
*Vartie o Somaramges Coupatena s conind, ce o3 Uk Do 4 o0 .11
Bt i s bt 9
Bumtn 3 mive st o Kartus ;g by e sbed v ot
3 s o by b rntd o DV soma 1
8 e st bt T e s o e i i e
4 Catmacat G Grrent by Qmar w18 OSSN o wis Ak T st f o
ol g o i Coabmtas 7 e w0 ) Unagurik Gonated s, et wih Sasnes 10w
o Kokl by
b o W
 S
=
The Making of Early Medieval India

only partial glimpses of them; nevertheless, several things are clear.

First, there is the imposition of levies as a source of urban income,
indicating the nature of activities predominant at the urban centres;
second, the nucleus of urban space in which urban economic activities
take place; third, the nature of the interaction with settlements ourside;
and, finally, the nature of urban hierarchy, which may be derived from
an analysis of their respective nerworks.
Both Karitalai and Bilhari, as the epigraphs would have us view
them, were centres of exchange of goods. The centre of this activity
was the mandapikd, a term which literally means ‘a pavilion’ but the
contextual meaning of which is suggested by its survival in the form
of mandi in Hindi and mandai in Marathi, For Karitalai the range of
spatial interaction seems to have remained limited to its immediate
rural context, not only because the epigraph does not mention any
item of exchange which couldbe of distant origin but also because
the centre derived its resources, inter alia, from its immediate rural
hinterland. These were villages and land assigned to its inhabitants,
imposts on varied articles brought to its market centres, and levies
from the threshing floors of the mandala in which it was located.
By comparison Bilhari suggests a more extensive network: through
such items as pepper, horses and elephants, its maydapikd maintzined
contact with a much wider area, Considering that the two inscrip-
nons speak of at least seven urban centres in the core area of the
Kalacuri region in the upper Narmada basin, perhaps the possibility
of a hierarchical order of scttlements, covering the broad spectrum
from rural to urban, is indicated.
There are two more pieces of relevant evidence from two dispa-
rate regions, one from the extreme south of Rajasthan and the other
from north Karnataka, The Rajasthan record, dated Ap 1080, is from

as samples of the kind of urban sewlements which were coming up in the early
medieval period. It is profitable to refer to Braudel again in this context:‘it would
be a mustake only to coun: the sun<ities.. Towns form hierarchies everywhere,
but the up of the pyramid does not tell us everything, :mportant though it may
be', pp. 482-3
 vipup eapapy Aot g swiey wrgiy 3
Arthuna, twenty-eight miles west of Banswara, which provides a
detailed list of levies imposed, in both cash and kind, in favour of a
temple, Mandalesvara Mahideva, the name of the temple itself sug-
gesting the nature of its origin. The levies relate to various categories
of items which include agricultural produce of the immediate vicinity.
The levies were to the tune of one hdraka measure of barley on an
araghafta (i.e. field irrigated by an araghatta), one dramma on a pile of
sugarcane and a bharaka measure on twenty packs of loaded grain
(bhdndadhdnydndm). The imposts on merchants and merchant orga-
nizations are mentioned separately from those on items sold at the
market centre (haffa). On each bharaka measure of candied sugar and
Jaggery (khandagurayorbharakam) belonging to the traders (vanijam) was
imposed an amount which is not intelligible from the record; on each
bharaka measure of manjisthd, which obviously was to be used as a dye,
and on thread and cotton, the amount was one riipaka. In another part
of the record is mentioned the wanikmandala or association of traders,
which was required to pay one dramma each month.
The items which were sold at the market or were associated with
it appear to have been subjected to meticulous assessment, although
it is impossible to determine the basis on which the amount of
impost was worked out, On every bharaka of coconuts was assigned
one coconut; on each bullock load of salt one mdnaka measure of
salt; one nut on every thousand arecanuts; on every ghafaka of butter
and sesame oil one palika measure; and on each ‘kotika of clothing
fabric' one and a half nipakas. Owing to the obsolete terms used in
the record, the nature of other items listed cannot be ascertained
with any certainty; nevertheless it seems that the decision to impose
contributions in cash or in kind was determined on the basis of
whether the items were divisible into required shares or not. On
cach shop of the traders in the market area was fixed a contribution
of one dramma during the caitra festival and the sacred thread festival.

© Epigraphia bndica, vol. 14, pp. 295-310. See also H. V. Trivedi, ‘Inscriptions of the
Paramiras, Chandellas, Kachchapaghitas and Two Minor Dynastiey’, Corpus Inscrptio-
maom Indicarum, vol. 7.2 (Delhi, n.d.). pp. 286-96.
The Making of Farly Medieval India

The braziers, located in the same area, paid a dramma a month, and
each distillery, run by the kalycpdias, paid four ripakas. Besides, each
household was required to pay one dramma, whereas the contribu-
tion from a gambling house was fixed at two nipakas. The record
refers to other items which too were assessed and contributions
from which were received cither in kind or in some other variety
of cash, such as vrgavimfopaka, but owing to the uncertainty of the
meanings of the terms used in the record they are left out of the
present discussion. In any case they would do no more than supple-
ment the details already given.
The north Karnataka reccrd of 1204 from Belgium,* called
Vepugrima in the record, is ancther detailed statement of several vari-
eties of grants. They were made over to Subhacandra Bhagtaraka, dcrya
of the Jaina shrine Ratfa Jiniliya of Belgaum. The record is of the
period of Ragta Kirttavirya IV of Saundatti; the building of the temple
€00, as is evident from its name, was an act of patronage by this local
ruler. Unlike the records analysed above, the Belgaum record provides
a partial glimpse into the layout of urban space by mentioning land,
including arable land, as an item of grant within the territorial limits
of Venugrima. Thus an area, included in the twenty-fourth hafti or
division ofVenugrama, was given on a tenure of sthalavrtri. The context
and other details are even more telling:
In the aforesaid Vepugrima, in the western course nf the great eastern street, on
the north of the house of Duggiyara Tikina, one house; in the western course of
the western street, one house;in the western towngate, one house;in front of the
white-plastered building of the god Kapiledvara, on the east of the Sila-basadi,
three houses; on the north of the road going to Aneyakere (elephanty tank), a
fower garden of ewo mattars and 276 kammas according to the rod ofVepugrima;
on the west of the great ank of Alur of Kapamburige, twelve mattar of arabls land;
in the steec on the south of the western market, one house, five cubits in width
and twenty-one in length
To this may be added anotter significant detail, given toward the
close of the record, that Ragta Kirttavirya donated to the Jaina sanctuary

“ Epigraphia Indica, vol. 13, pp. 15-35, No.A.

© Ihid., ines 42-5
 oipup (raspapy Apog wn sauaory weqin
four bazaars ‘on the east of the high road at the western end of the
northern course of the north street”.*
The reference to the twenty-fourth hafti or division is a sufficient
indication notonly of the vast dimension of the sertlement space marked
off asVenugrima but of considerable intermingling of residential-cum-
institutional and non-residential space as well. However, the focus of
the record shifts immediately to the area of crucial economic activities
of Vepugrima, which centred around the professionals of two major
categories, the merchants and manufacturers. The decision to make a
comprehensive coverage of items on which levies were imposed for the
purpose of contribution to the sanctuary of Sintinitha emanates from
an assembly composed of the professionals of these two categories,
headed by their leaders.
The category of merchants includes not only the mummuridandas
of Vepugrima itself; it also comprises several groups of itinerant
traders: the pattanigas of the total hereditary area of the Ragtas,
namely Kundi, 3,000; the traders of Lia or south Gujarat and
those of Maleyila or Kerala. Their representation in the assembly is
understandable since they were all involved in the movement of a
great bulk of goods that converged at Venugrima. Since the terms
used in the record for indicating quantity elude explanation, only a
bare list of items which are specifically mentioned as coming from
outside is all that can be provided.*’ They include various loads of
paddy as well as husked rice, suggesting the importance of the cereal
as an item of import (this supposition is further strengthened by
references to separate levies on bazaars of paddy shops and shops of
husked rice),** loads of black pepper, asafoctida, green ginger and
turmeric, betel leaves and arecanuts, coconuts, palm leaves and grass,
sugarcane and coarse sugar, plantains and myrobalans. The list further
extends to include raw and consumer items such as cotton and
finished cloth, parcels of perfumery and horses.*” What is curious

* Toid., line 59.

“ Ibid., lincs 53-8.
* Ibd., lines 54-5.
“ Toid., lines 51-3.
The Mking of Early Medieval India

and defies explanation, however, is why the assembly decided to

grant immunity on all imports ‘in the case of sixty-five oxen and
buffaloes, however they be laden".* Since the loads are not specified,
this clearly deprives us of further details of the goods that came to
Venugrima from outside.
Despite its monotony, it was necessary to consolidate the list
given above on the basis of the record: its range, covering a wide
variety from paddy to horses, can alone make the composition of
merchants who participated ia the economic and other activities
at Vepugrima—as also the nawre of wansactions which obviously
formed the core of 1ts activitiei—understandable. There was a ange
of goods, starting from those which can be related to Vepugrima's
immediate rural context to those which could be brought only
through the organizations of professional itinerant merchants. The
local participants in the assembly, besides the mummuridandas, were
headed by goldsmiths, clothiers, oil merchants and others. The
imposts on local manufactures were on clothiers' shops,a goldsmith’s
‘booth’, a jeweller’s shop and a perfumer’s shop.®' It is ;mpossible to
ascertain the point of time at which Venugrima started developing
as a centre of manufacture.All that the Belgaum record suggests is
that a space, initially of a rural character and still retaining a measure
of that character, came, over time, to be a point of convergence of
goods, obviously from varied distances, and of specialized items of
manufacture for sale. If there were other crafts which did not come
under the purview of imposts, the record has very naturally chosen
to ignore them
Suarting from the significant fact that the urban settlement
mentioned in the Belgaum record of 1204, which included culti-
vable land within a defined utban space, was known as Vepugrima,
several inferences can be drawn from the ecarly medieval evidence
discussed so far, Although not invariably in a uriform manner, urban
space represented a slow transformation of rural space, perhaps

* Ibid., lines 51-2.

* Ibid, lines 52-3.
 -
®
nipup (ranpopy Aping w sy ungu)
reflecting in most cases a non-nuclear organization of such space.
Epigraphy provides inadequate evidence on how a total urban space
was defined, but considering what was relevant to this evidence
hatta or mandapikd emerge as key terms for understanding the
core of the urban space structure. They appear to have combined
manufacture and exchange—two dominant activities of any settle~
ment worth being considered a township. That their potential as
sources of revenue is recognized by the ruling elite is the criterion
by which such activities are assumed to be dominant. The details of
items of exchange vary from one centre to another, but there is one
common denominator: the mobilizztion of agricultural products,
both in the form of food-grains and commercial items, at certain
points in space where the act of exchange is intermingled with other
economic and non-economic activities. It is essential to remember
that the process of mobilization has a history which precedes the
imposition of levies—an event with which alone the epigraphs are
concerned—is a form of religious patronage. In other words, the ‘cer-
emonial’ or ‘ritual’ centres which represented the important foci of
many urban settlements were themselves part of a system of resource
mobilization and redistribution.
The total complex of these will have
to be underscored if one were to urderstand the specificity of the
urbanization process in early medieval India.
The ‘gross’ surplus™ which constituted the subsistence base of
this urbanization coveted a noticeatly wide range of commercial
and industrial items, including commercial crops. The production
and variety of these appear, from the surveys available for this period,

* This has been suggested eliewhere as well with regard both to the urban
centres of carly historical and early medieval periods; B. D. Chattopadhyaya,
‘Mathurd from the Sufiga to the Kusina period;An Historical Outline’ in Doris
M. Srinivasan, ed., Mathurd: The Cultural Heitage (Delhi, 1989), pp. 19-3); idem,
'Utban Centres in Early Bengal: Archaeological Perspectives’,
This, however, should
not be taken to mean that there wis no nuckation of professional or caste groups
within the urban space. Early medieval records, in fact. sbound in references to such
agglomerations,
™ For an elaboration of the concept ofgrosssurplus’,see R. M. Adams, The Evolu-
tion of Urban Sodety, p. 46
 *
-
The Making of Early Medicval India

to have been on the increase.* The exchange ‘nodes’ presuppose a

productive rural hinterland, and that this essential link has not gone
entirely unnoticed is evident from the relationship which has some-
times been suggested between some urban centres and their local rural
contexts, Of Kudamiikku-Palaiyirai in the Cola region the following
comments bring out the relevance of this relationship:
Numerous peasant seulements arore in this region from the Sangam period down
%0 the thirteenth century, forming he main resource base of the Colas. The crucial
stage in its development into an urban centee would be the period of the pro-
liferation of buhmadeytdemadanas, tre seventh to ninth centuries AD, henceforth 4
continuous phenomenon, showing the availibility of sufficient resources for sup-
porting a large populanon*

Similarly Mimallapuram, which, in the reign of Rajardja I, was admin-

istered by a managaram—signifying its status as an urban centre— ‘was
said to have received the produts of the fifty villages of Amir Kotram
(the regional unit of government) that were under the jurisdiction
of a Cola official’.** Vepugramy is similarly believed to have been the
chief town of a small district of seventy villages ¥
Despite their disparate geographical locations the point to be con-
sidered regarding urban centres is the kind of centripetality of surplus
flow which alone could make urbanization a viable socio-ccoromic
process. The mobilization of surplus is invariably assocated with an
‘elaboration of complex institurional mechanisms’,** The mechanisms
of production and mobilization of agricultural items—which have

# While any estimare, in comparative terms, would be impossible to cite, this is an

impression which general works on early medieval India seem to convey: (i) refer-
ences to frequency and variery of such crops; (i) regular movements of such crops for
purposes of exchange. See A K. Chaudhary,ch. &; P Niyogi, pp. 23-37; B.B Mazumdar,
Sacio-economic History of Northern India (1030-119440) (Calcuta, 1960), pp. 177-80;
S Gururajachar, Some Aspects of Ecomemic and Sodal Life in Karnatak (4D 1000-1300)
(Mysore, 1974), ¢ 3. G. R. Kuppuswamy has actempted a distribution map of crops
in Karpataka from besween tie close of the tenth and the middle of the fourteenth
century; see Kuppuswamy, pp. 60-6, map facing p. 48.
* R. Champakalakshmy,'Growth of Urban Centres in South Inda’,p. 22,
* K. Hall, Trade and Statecraft in she Age of the Colas (New Delhi, 1980),p 166,
= Epignaphia Indica, vol. 13,p. 18
= R.M Adams, p 46
 T
been underlined as the major economic activities that generated and
sustained urban centres of the early medieval period—are ultimately

L
tied up with the hierarchized structure of the polity in the period.”
An elaboration of this linkage is not possible within the brief span of
this essay. It suffices to say that this complex power structure not only
skimmed the surface of what was brought to the market in the form
of levies but that, in the final analysis, this structure was responsible
for drawing the rural productive units—and groups with exchange-

R
able commercial items—into the network of urban centres. It could
do this because the various groups of élites were not only the ideal
customers for circulating high value goods but because they were
also, in a complex situation of land distribution (partly characterized
by the system of assignments),
the ultimate destination towards which
the surplus was to move.

v
If the urbanization process of the early medieval period with its
continuity into the medieval period is taken as a case of the third
phase of urbanization, in what ways did it differ from early historical
urbanization? Only a tentative response to this question is attempred
here. It has been remarked that early historical urban centres were
all characterized by, first, being centres of political power, second, by
large agricultural hinterlands,and third, by their location along well
developed trade routes. The conjunction of these features may go
well with the earliest phase of early historical urbanization, but it is
doubtful if this conjunction continued with the horizontal expan-
sion of the urbanization process. In the context of early historical
urbanism it is legitimate to think, in terms of an epicentre—really
the region spread over the stretch of the upper Ganges and middle
Ganges basin—and a subsequent expansion reaching out in stages
to different parts of the subcontinent. There thus developed a wide

¥ For details, sce R. S. Sharma, Indian Feudalism, chs 2 and 5; B. N. §.Yadaws, ch. 3.
* Dilip K. Chakrabaru, ‘Concept of Urban Revolution and the Indian Context’,
Puntanwa (Bulletin of the Archacological Society of India), No. 6 (1972-3),pp. 30-1
The Making of Early Medieval India

network accentuated by new factors, which accounts for a certain

uniformity in cultural items uaearthed by archaeology at the early
urban centres. They did each have an agrarian base, with the excep-
ton perhaps of those which, with their littoral locations, were more
tied up with maritime trade than with an agricultural hinterland.
Bur ir is not adequate to try to understand early urban centres,
particularly those of the early centuries of the Christian era, only
in terms of their interaction and integration with an immediate
hinterland. If Taxila was one point in the network which linked up
carly urban centres, the other points could well have been as distant
as Pataliputra in the east, Barygaza in the west and Ter or Paithan in
the south.*!
Early medieval urban centres did not have an epicentre, even
though it may be empirically established that urban centres
in different regional contexts represent dufferent chronologi-
cal stages. There is again no lack of interregional linkage, for we
do often come across references to the presence of distant mer-
chants in various urban centres.”® But there is nothing in the
records which could indicate the regularity of such exchanges
on a subcontinental level, notwithstanding the possibility that
certain prized items of trade may have had a fairly exteasive
itinerary. Epigraphic evidence bearing on the range of interaction
of early medieval urban centres seems to suggest that they were far
more rooted in their regional contexts than their early historical pre-
decessors. No carly medieval centre seems to be comparable—and

* See,as illustration of thi, the evidence of The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, trans-
lated and edited by W, H. Schoff (repriated in Delhi, 1974), pp. 41-3
Evidence for the ftinerary of ndndfefis or merchants of disparate regional arigine
is more readily available for the south than the north; B. Seein,"Coromandel Trade in
Medieval India’, in John Parker, ed., Merchants and Scholars (University of Minnesota
Press, 1963), pp. 47-62; K. R. Hall, Tade and Swtecraft n the Age of the Colas, ch, 6;
S. Gururayachar, Seme Aspects of Ecomamic and Sacial Life in Karnataka (ap 1000-1300),
ch. 3, For detailed study of two itinerart merchant associations ofpeninsular India see
Mary Meera Abraham, op. cic. However, in different parts o north and west India too,
distant merchants can be seei W conve:ge at points which serve as foci of commercial
transactions. See, for example, Epigraphiz Indica, vol. 1, pp. 184-50; The Indian Antquary,
vol. 58, pp. 16161
 u sy wogiy &
the absence of archaeological information alone may not be a suffi-
cient explanation—with such early fortified seclements as Kausimbi
or Ahicchatrd, but it may be significant that the estimates available
regarding the numerical strength of early medieval urban centres
suggest a high incidence.
The estimates are imperfect, irregular and

ripu ppaaipapy A
only incidentally done, and are cited only for their dubious worth.
According to one estimate the Malwa area in the Paramira period
had cwenty towns.” The number is eight, obviously an extremely
low figure, for the Caulukya period in Gujarat.*T, Venkateswara Rao
esumates the number to have been more than seventy in Andhra
berween 1000 and 1336, and Dasaratha Sharma has compiled a list
of 131 places in the Cihamina dominions, ‘most of which seem to
have been towns'.* In a century-wise esumate for Karnataka, made
on the basis of epigraphic sources, it has been shown that compared
to seventeen in the seventh century and ‘more than twenty-one’
in the eighth century there was a ‘sudden increase’ from the tenth
century onward, and ‘more than seventy-eight towns are noticed in
the inscriptions of the eleventh century’.*” The numbers are clearly
uneven, and this is largely due to the absence of any criteria for
1dentifying urban centres.
But the estimates do make one positive point: the emergence of
centres which could be considered distinct from rural settdement
units was phenomenal in the early medieval period. This is nor sur-
prising if considered in the light of the profusion of place names in
early medieval records. Since the majority of the urban centres of
this period were primarily nodal points in local exchange networks,
the numerical strength of settlements and the growth in the number
of locality elites would tend to result in the proliferation of urban
centres of relatively modest dimensions. They would thus reflect the

# RS Sharma, Indian Feudalism, p.245.

“ P Niyogi,pp. 120-1.
“ 7. Venkateswara Rao, pp.124-=9; map 3.
“ . Sharma, Eurly Chashan Dynastics (A4 Study of Chuhzn Poitical History, Chauhan
Political Institwtions and Life @ the Chauhan Dommions
from ¢ 80010 1316 ap) Delhi,
1559), pp. 311-16.
#7 O.P Prasad,’A Study of Towns in Karnacaka',
pp. 151-9.
The Making of Early Medieval India

character of the economy and polity of the period: unlike the early
historical centres, which were directly linked with centres of authority
with supra-regional loci, the majority of the early medieval centres
would correspond to different tiers of regional power. Like land, urban
settlements too came to be objects of assignment—a phenomenon
which further reinforced the intimate linkage between them and their
immediate locality
In the final analysis, howeve:, was the basic nature of early medieval
urban centres so very differant from that of their predecessors
of the carly historical period? With our limited understanding it
may be too early to say, but even so M. I. Finley’s broad typolo-
gies of ‘consumer’ cities and ‘-ommercial’ cities, which correspond
to cities of the classical and the medieval west respectively, do not
seem to relate to the Indian utban phases.” If his major variable, the
rentiers and revenue collector, was what characterized the ancient
city, this variable was characteristic of both the early historical and
early medieval phases of Indizn urbanization.At the same time the
organizational and occupational specificities of Indian urban centres
accommodated the commerdial elite, organized into guilds, as a
substantial component in their structure. It was this juxtaposition
which may have prevented both the emergence of two distinct
typologies as well as the Indian urban groups from approximating
to the category of the ‘burgher’ in the medieval west."" Even the

* For examples of this from the early medieval period, see Epigraphia Indice, vol. 1,
Pp.162-79, document no. 27;ibid., vol 19, pp. 69-75; the Gurgi record of the Kalacuris,
urban centres in whose dominions have been discussed above, also mentions that the
king donated a whole city crowded with citizens as a grant (Puram paurajanikimam
samastakam /bhaktyd samarpaydmdsa fasinatvena bhapatilt), Mirashi, p. 230, verse 4L
“ M. 1 Finley, The Ancient City: From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and
Beyond', Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 19 (1977), pp. 305-27.
" Cf the perceptive comments of Carlo M. Cipolla, ‘The Origins’, in Catlo M.
Cipolla, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Eutope, vol. I: The Middle Ages (Collins/
Fontans, 1973), pp. 12-23. The conmast i brought out also by John Merrington,
pp178f
The separation of the town from the councry, which set 2 pace of change in the
medieval west, did not take place in India It would thus be futile to ery to see
the emergence of early medieval towns a possble dissolvent of ‘Indian Feudalism'
 sipu jradipapy Apeg wn souy wquy 3
aspired mobility of the Indian social groups did not extend beyond
validation within the norms of a traditional social order, the broad
contours of which remained identical in both early historical and
early medieval phases.™

For a critique of such attemprs, see D. N, fha, 'Early Indian Feudalisn:A Historio-
graphical Critigue', Presidential Address, Section I, Ancient Indhs, Indian History
Congress, 40th session (Waltair, 1979)
" Vaigpapurdyanu, 3 medival Telugs Purdna based apparenty on earher historical
events, is an excellent example of this conformity o societal norms. The Pundna relates
o the Kamatis, ako knownin early medieval records as Nakaramu-102 or merchants
of 102 gotras. The ascendancy of the merchants is evident from the way they styled
themselves lords of the city of Penugonda and the way they were organized int a
highly closed group. Their social organization sought validation not only dhrough
clainiig the vaidya scacus but abo through tighd otscrvance of the social cussomsof
the community, called menanikam or kuldcdra-dharmamu. For deails,
see T Venkateswara
Rao, pp. 240-5.