Delhi: Manohar, 2000. VIII + 539 p.

(c) 2002

THE FEUDAL ORDER. STATE, SOCIETY AND IDEOLOGY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIA. Ed. by D.N. JHA. Delhi: Manohar, 2000. VIII + 539 P. ^*

For decades, historians in and out of India have been hotly debating what the country's social structure was like between the fall of the ancient empires and the beginning of the colonial era, i.e., from the first centuries AD to the eighteenth century. Some consider medieval India feudal, others insist that the concept of "feudalism" and in general any other categories developed on Western European material are not applicable to it, for others the "Asian mode of production" is the most acceptable, and for others none of the proposed definitions are satisfied: having become disillusioned with all existing approaches to the problem, they prefer euphemisms like "feudalism".pre-industrial", "traditional", "pre-colonial" society. The discussion has been going on for many years, now fading, now resuming with renewed vigor, and its relevance goes beyond the scope of medieval studies: it is, in fact, about whether there are uniform patterns in the development of various civilizations, what is the relationship between common features and the specifics of their evolution.

The reviewed collection of articles is devoted to one of the" eternal " problems of Indological medieval studies - the stadium characterization of medieval Indian society. It consists of a preface and 16 articles written by 11 authors. All of them are staunch supporters-

^* Feudal order. State, Society and Ideology in Early Medieval India / Edited by D. N. Jha. Delhi: Manohar Publ., 2000. VIII + 539 p.

page 191

the applicability of the feudal model to the analysis of medieval India. The collection includes articles both recently written and published 20 or more years ago. This practice can cause criticism, and many people in India do not accept it. However, one should pay attention to the fact that Indian historians are not in the habit of abruptly changing their views, unlike some of their Russian colleagues, who were staunch Marxists, supporters of the formation theory and the "pyatichlenka", but one fine August night became passionate opponents of Marxism. Such a metamorphosis, especially if it is clearly dependent on the political situation, can permanently destroy the reputation of an Indian scientist. Concepts are revised, and even then not dramatically, usually only in connection with the discovery of new sources, and since this happens very rarely, the author can not be ashamed to see his work of twenty years ago printed next to more recent research.

All the articles presented in the collection are written on the basis of a variety of source materials - data from archeology and epigraphy, religious-philosophical, legal and political treatises, local annals and genealogies, lexicographic and fiction literature. We respect the authors ' desire to expand the range of sources used as much as possible, to go beyond the existing stereotypes that dictate to the researcher where the necessary material is present and where it can never be.

The title of the collection turned out to be somewhat broader than its subject matter: The articles included in the book are not devoted to the entire more than thousand-year-old era when the "feudal order" ruled India, but only to the early period of feudalism, approximately between the collapse of the Gupta Empire and the Muslim conquest of Northern India. For a long time, this period was traditionally disliked by Indian historians and was characterized as a kind of "time of troubles", when the imperial order was replaced by a chaos of strife, the philosophical depth and harmony of early Brahmanism degenerated into the rough ritualism of local cults, and the sublimity of classical culture gave way to the vulgar licentiousness of Dandin and Kshemendra, the unrestrained eroticism of Khajuraho and Konarak. It is only relatively recently that a systematic study of the socio-economic system, political structure, religion, social thought and culture of the independent feudal states of the post-Gupta era (to which India, by the way, owes the most magnificent and beautiful temples, other architectural masterpieces, as well as the birth of literature in local languages) has begun.

The collection opens with an introduction by the managing editor, renowned Indian historian and Delhi University professor D. N. Jha, in which he examines the prehistory of the study of feudalism in India, while criticizing the concept of the "Asian mode of production", and raises the most important issues of socio - economic, political and cultural identification of early medieval Indian society. Special attention is paid to the discussion that has been going on for decades about the watershed between antiquity and the Middle Ages in India. Denying such a watershed, some researchers (in India - B. D. Chattopadhyaya, in Russian Indology - E. M. Medvedev) combined antiquity and the Middle Ages into a single formation. In the opinion of D. N. Jha and his associates presented in the collection, such a watershed undoubtedly existed, although it did not appear at the same time.

Among the signs of the transition to a new formation, the author highlights the practice that began under the Guptas and then became widespread in granting temples, Brahmins and persons in public service, villages along with fiscal, administrative and judicial rights over the population; political decentralization, the closure of individual regions in self-sufficient economic and administrative units, the weakening of trade, the decline of cities, a noticeable reduction in monetary circulation and the naturalization of the economy. At the same time, D. N. Jha does not share the position of those researchers who associate these processes only with the fall of the Roman Empire and the reduction of foreign trade. Such an approach, which the scientist rightly defines as an "anomalous and contradictory theoretical situation", would mean that its proponents, considering Indian society to be forever frozen and unable to develop without an external impulse, in fact, agree with the conclusions of the "Asian mode of production" theory rejected by them (p.6).

page 192

Defending the applicability of the term "feudalism" to the analysis of early medieval India, D. N. Jha pays special attention to the problem of comparing the society he studies with early feudal Europe. He critically examines the position of those researchers who, in support of their thesis about the "dissimilarity" of medieval Indian society to "classical European feudalism", cite the example of the absence in India of such an important socio - economic unit as a manor. Responding to his opponents, D. N. Jha, in my opinion, rightly notes that even in Western Europe, the manorial system was not widespread everywhere and not throughout the feudal era. Much more important here, he believes, is the social hierarchy and forms of exploitation, which show many similarities in India and Western European countries. D. N. Jha is also right that medieval India should not be compared with some abstract "West", not with an ideal "feudalism in general" (one can recall in this connection Engels: "Has feudalism ever lived up to its concept?" ¹ ), and with certain specific variants of feudalism, none of which is the "correct" model.

Considering the genesis of feudalism in India and trying to find the imaginary line that separated it from the previous era (which, by the way, is not defined in any way), D. N. Jha devotes several pages in the preface to such an interesting phenomenon of Indian literature as the description of the horrors of the Kali age - the fourth and last period in Hindu mythological cosmology, which In contrast to the previous three, it is marked by a wide spread of sinfulness, lies, violence and lawlessness. Such descriptions (often in the form of a kind of gloomy prophecies about the "last times") were already found in the epic and gradually formed a certain literary stamp, but by the beginning of the Middle Ages they were filled with a lively socio-ethical content, clearly indicating a certain social crisis, a shock to the foundations of the established order, which testified to an important formational shift.

Based on the specific material of ancient and early Medieval texts, this topic is continued in the collection of articles by R.S. Sharma "The Age of Kali: a period of social crisis" and B. N. S. Yadava "Description of the Age of Kali and the social transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages". R. S. Sharma focuses on such an important aspect of the "age of Kali" as destruction the rise of the Varna hierarchy, the degradation of the brahmanas, the rise of the sudras and other lower castes, as prophesied by the puranas, as well as other texts of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In turn, B. N. S. Yadava examines how the sources reflect the decline of slavery and the genesis of feudal forms of dependence. The author believes that the basis for the formation of new subordinate strata of society were not slaves, but free community members. Based on a broader historical material than R. S. Sharma's, with the involvement of literary and religious-philosophical texts, as well as epigraphy, B. N. S. Yadava notes that in the gloomy picture of the "age of Kali", the features of a feudal society with vassal relations,the immunities of independent possessions and the establishment of new values are becoming more pronounced. sometimes directly opposed to the ideals and values of antiquity. At the same time, the author takes a very cautious, balanced position and recognizes that in a number of parameters of social development, a cardinal break with antiquity did not occur.

These two articles, together with the famous Japanese indologist Noboru Karashima's article "The predominance of private land ownership in the lower Kaveri Valley during the Late Chola Period and its historical significance", form the first part of the collection, entitled "Transition to Feudalism". However, the article by Noboru Karashima is somewhat out of the topic of the section, since it is devoted chronologically to a later period (XII-XIII centuries) and examines not so much the genesis of feudalism as the socio-economic stratification within the community: on the one hand, the allocation of the rich elite of small and medium-sized landowners, and on the other - the impoverishment of some of the community members, tenants and farmhands.

The second part of the collection - "The Feudal State and Society" - opens with a sharply polemical article by R. S. Sharma "The Segmental State and the Indian Experience", directed against the conclusions of the famous American historian B. Stein and anthropologist A. Southall. In his numerous works, B. Stein ² denies the applicability of the concept of "feudalism" to India and calls, following some English and American anthropologists, first of all A. Southall, to look for parallels for medieval India not in Western Europe, but in tribal societies and early state formations of Africa. R. S. Sharma criticizes the absolutization by anthropologists of the results of modern field research. research and mechanics-

page 193

It is possible to transfer these results to the Middle Ages. The concept of a" segmental state " (a loose conglomerate of independent communities and possessions, consisting of a center and two levels of periphery, devoid of any administrative structure, tax system and standing army, and based only on the ritual power of the king), which Stein contrasts with feudalism, seems limited to R. S. Sharma, devoid of socio-economic foundation. In his opinion, opponents of the concept of feudalism draw, in fact, nothing more than a feudal society at the stage of early empires or feudal fragmentation.

Criticism of B. Stein's concepts is continued by K. Velluthat in the article " The role of Nadu in the socio-political structure of South India (c. 600-1200)". The subject of the author's research is Nadu-an association of several, sometimes up to a hundred, settlements, typologically close to the Western European mark and was the main structural unit of the medieval South Indian states. At the same time, special attention is paid to their socio-economic and political role, as well as to their transformation into administrative units with the gradual nationalization of community self-government bodies and the loss of their former "rights and freedoms".

The study of the specifics of the early feudal state based on the specific material of the principalities of North and West India is continued by very interesting articles by D. N. Jha "State education in the peripheral region on the example of the early Medieval Chamba" and V. M. Jha "Feudal elements in the Chalukya state: an attempt at a new localization". The first of them notes the specifics of the formation of a feudal state in the special conditions of a small mountain principality with a weak development of agriculture. The second is a detailed study of the administrative and political structure and social hierarchy of a large early feudal state, a kind of mini-empire. At the same time, both authors do not limit themselves to stating the specifics of the studied territories, but quite argumentatively go to historical generalizations, revealing similarities between local variants and the development of the feudal state in other regions of India, as well as in a number of Asian and Western European countries.

The working title of B. N. S. Yadava's article - "The problem of the formation of feudal relations in early Medieval India" -hides an interesting attempt to find information about the formation of the main socio-economic institutions of feudal society in astronomical and astrological works of the early Middle Ages. It turns out that this type of literature, which has not yet been used by historians, contains rich and versatile information about the life and social relations of early feudal India.

R.N. Nandi's articles "Agricultural Development and Social Conflicts in Early Medieval India" and K. M. Srimali's "Money Circulation in the Coastal Economy: The Case of Konkan under the Silahars"conclude the section. The first of them, despite its generalizing title, is based mainly on South Indian material and is a detailed study of the technique and socio-economic organization of agriculture, the system of feudal land ownership and the exploitation of peasants. At the same time, it is noted that in the early medieval South Indian society there was by no means a social idyll. The author considers various variants of conflicts both within the ruling elite and between feudal lords and the exploited rural population. This part of the article, although it contains some interesting information, is somewhat weaker analytically.

K. M. Srimali, drawing on a variety of epigraphic and numismatic materials, analyzes the development of trade and money circulation on the southwestern coast of India in the second half of the first - beginning of the second millennium AD. The author comes to the conclusion that, despite a certain development of trade and the expansion of areas under industrial crops in the Konkan coastal strip, commodity-money relations During the study period, they did not penetrate deeply into the socio - economic fabric of society, the markets remained narrowly localized and did not create a regional network. This is quite consistent with the thesis advocated by many Indian medievalists, including the authors of the reviewed collection, about the naturalization of the economy and the decline of cities in the post-Gupta period.

It is difficult to agree, however, with K. M. Srimali's conclusion that "the system of (commodity) exchange failed to encroach on the feudal socio-economic and political structure" and " instead relieved the burden of peasants and artisans... became a convenient oru-

page 194

diem is in the hands of the ruling elite " (pp. 371-372). It is strange that K. M. Srimali makes demands on the commodity-money relations of the early feudal era that are more likely to relate to the era of the disintegration of feudalism - after all, in many countries over the centuries, commodity-money relations in one form or another peacefully coexisted with feudalism and did not "encroach" on it until now, and in some cases the rapid development of commodity-money relations-monetary relations and even early capitalist elements were replaced, for a number of reasons, by the decline and "second edition" of feudalism. In none of the feudal societies that the author actively and successfully uses in his work did the development of commodity-money relations ease the burden of the exploited population, but, on the contrary, made it heavier, and it is not for nothing that the ideology of many popular movements of the era of developed and late feudalism felt a strong nostalgia for the good old days of patriarchal farms, free from the "dominance of merchants".

The third part of the collection - "Feudal Ideology" - is of particular interest because until recently, in India and outside of it, studying feudalism meant studying only economic relations, social structure, forms of exploitation, etc. The worldview of the medieval Indian, the value orientations of various social strata, the ideologies of social movements, cultural processes, the medieval type of religiosity - everything this is still poorly understood. Therefore, the authors ' appeal to this topic can only be welcomed.

The section opens with an article by M. G. S. Narayanan and K. Velluthat entitled "The Bhakti Movement in South India". It so happens that the religious reform movement of bhakti, one of the most important phenomena of the spiritual life of the Indian Middle Ages, which has retained its significance even today, is more studied by philologists and religious scholars than by historians, and the reviewed article is a very gratifying exception to this rule ^.3 The authors managed to show the origin and initial period of development of Bhakti in Southern India in direct connection with the most important historical processes of the early Middle Ages - the spread of the Brahmin cult among the non-Aryan population of South India, the struggle with Buddhism and Jainism for influence, and finally the development of feudalism. In this regard, the authors pay special attention to how deeply the terminology of feudal service penetrated the mystical outpourings of South Indian Bhakti preachers, and how gradually this "popular Hinduism" with its deep roots in pre-Aryan cults became an important element in the legitimization of local feudal dynasties.

The study of South Indian Bhakti at a later stage of its history is continued in the collection of R. N. Naidy's article "The Origin of the Virashaiva movement". It is dedicated to the powerful Virashaiva or Lingayat movement, which originated on the basis of Shaivite bhakti in the areas of northwestern Karnataka (late 12th-early 13th centuries). The author examines this movement, which brought together people from trade and craft castes, farmers and a small part of impoverished Brahmins, against the background of the development of feudalism and commodity-money relations in Karnataka, but uses data from more recent sociological and demographic studies, since the Lingayat community remains very numerous and influential here today. The article contains interesting factual material, especially in the part that characterizes the medieval economy of Karnataka, but the movement itself and its ideology are very poorly represented.

Another religious trend of late antiquity and early Middle Ages is studied in R. S. Sharma's article "Material foundations of Tantrism". The author connects the spread of Tantrism, especially in Eastern India, with the practice of land grants to Brahmins that was widespread in the early Middle Ages, which caused the latter to migrate to areas inhabited mainly by tribes with their special internal structure, different from the Varna system, and specific cults, primarily the cult of the mother goddess. The author considers the cult practice, social foundations and ideology of Tantrism as an objective attempt to resolve the conflict between the alien Brahmin element and the tribal world, between Sanskrit and aboriginal cultures.

V. Nath's article "Mahadana: dynamics of the gift Economy and the feudal environment" is an original study of the transformation of the gift ritual known to the Vedic cult into the fundamental institution of grants for feudalism, as well as the role of this ritual in the spread of Hinduism in the tribal periphery.

page 195

Another article by R. S. Sharma (the fourth in the collection) - "Feudal thinking" - unfortunately does not reach the breadth of generalization that the title claims. The author managed to make some striking observations, such as the reflection of the feudal hierarchy in temple sculpture and in the language sphere (especially the appearance in early Medieval Sanskrit and local languages of at least a ternary system of addresses in the second person singular, depending on the place of the object in the feudal hierarchical system4). In general, the research of "feudal thinking" and the medieval picture of the world did not work out in the article: such work, apparently, requires a completely different volume. Rightly noting the patriarchal nature of society and weak mobility within it, R. S. Sharma absolutizes these features (it is well known that despite its isolation, feudal society still knew changes in the caste hierarchy, population migration, and the spread of new occupations, technologies, and ideas). Emphasizing the special conservatism of the Indian ruling class, its "resistance to everything new" and "immunity to technological changes", the author ignores the fact that in the Middle Ages India borrowed a lot from other peoples (gunpowder, compass, silk-making, paper - from the Chinese, navigation techniques - from the Arabs, firearms - from the Turks,etc.). magnifying glasses, used in painting, and some technological improvements in the weapons industry - among Europeans, etc.).

The section and the entire collection ends with D. Desai's article " Art under Feudalism in India (c. 500-1300)", in which art criticism and historical methodologies successfully complement each other in the study of the new trends that the feudal era brought to Indian art (mainly sculpture and architecture), as well as the reflection of new, feudal traditions in art. values.

The executive editor of the collection managed to overcome the usual diversity in such publications and create, despite all the differences in methodological approaches and topics of the authors, a logically coherent and multi-faceted study of early feudalism in India. Each of the articles is a very well-reasoned work based on a colossal factual material of archaeological, numismatic and written sources. The historiographic base of research is no less impressive: it is pleasant to note that along with the works of Indian, Western European, American and Japanese scientists, the authors cite and analyze the works of Russian historians-E. Ya. Kosminsky, Z. V. Udaltsova, G. M. Bongard-Levin, L. B. Alaev and others. It is also very positive to note that the participants of the collection do not view Indian feudalism in isolation from the history of other peoples. There are no direct comparative articles in the collection, but almost every author, exploring one or another aspect of early medieval Indian society, compared Indian realities with those that existed in other early medieval societies - Western Europe, Japan, China, etc.

In general, the reviewed collection represents a serious and noteworthy contribution to the study of early feudal society by medievalists (not just indologists).

notes

^th F. Engels to Konrad Schmand. March 12, 1895 / / K. Marx, F. Engels. Essays, vol. 39, p. 356.

² See, for example: Stein В. Peasant, State and Society in Medieval South India. Delhi, 1980; idem. Politics, Peasants and the Deconstruction of Feudalism in Medieval India // Journal of Peasant Studies. V. XII, No. 2-3; idem. The Segmentary State: Interim Reflections // Kulke H. (ed.). The State in India, 1000-1700. Delhi, 1995.

³ In the section "Medieval Mysticism" written by me in the collective monograph " The Tree of Hinduism "(Ed. by I. P. Glushkov, Moscow, 1999) I have repeatedly referred to this article.

⁴ Ancient Sanskrit knew only one "thou", which was used to address both gods and kings. In the Middle Ages, R. S. Sharma emphasizes, in many languages, the appeal is diversified, "you" appears in addressing the lowest (by age or rank), "you" in addressing the equal, "You" in addressing the highest. Cf., for example, in modern Hindi tu, turn, ar.

Permanent link to this publication: