* Ram Sharan Sharma, Indian Feudalism: c. 300–1200 ( = Centre of Advanced Study in Ancient Indian History and Culture, University of Calcutta, Lectures and Seminars, No. 1-A (Lectures)) (Calcutta, University of Calcutta, 1965).

¹ Sharma, , p. 1.Google Scholar

² As Sharma thinks that feudalism has an economic side, his book contains two chapters, III and VI (out of seven), devoted to “feudal economy” and a third chapter, IV, on land rights, which is more economic than political. It would be a great pity not to have these chapters, which contain useful material, but, for the sake of the majority of scholars who would deny that there is an economic side of feudalism, the title of the book ought to be changed to show that this non-feudal material is included.

³ Shanna, , p. 2.Google Scholar

⁴ The term means one rise, culmination and decline of the society and its civilization. Cycles vary in duration but nothing like as much as the transitions from one to the next. Cycles vary between about 1000 and 1300 years. Transitions I conceive as overlaps between decline and revival, decline and revival occurring concurrently.

⁵ While I have the impression that Sharma is not the only scholar who has so described it, the late D. D. Kosambi directly denied that the charters in favor of brahmins created feudal property or landlordism (An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, Bombay, Popular Book Depot, 1956, p. 300). Kosambi observed that, later in the Gupta-Harsha period, the right of the brahmins to have their land cultivated by others “acted as model for the formation of landed, and even feudal property, except that the state claimed some tax and service from the recipient” (p. 301). Kosambi is here thinking of the words karṣatah karṣayatah in the grants. Sharma has compared the phrasing of ‘later’ feudal grants with those the brahmins got (and continued to get) and finds that the feudal grants are phrased as copies of the religious grants. He does not in form put this forward as justification for his notion that feudal tenures were derived from religious tenures, and he is certainly well aware of the substantial difference between the two, finding indeed that the formulae used for infeudation subsequently diverged from those used for religious grants (pp. 197 ff.). It would be as well if he had suggested that copying by scribes is not the same thing as making land grants.Google Scholar

⁶ These matters are too large to argue out here, and anyone who is moved to attack the thesis propounded is more than welcome to do so. To that end, a few observations and references: it must be borne in mind that any failure of the religious leaders was one of degree. The popularization of religion, occurring in every cyclic transition, always involves its corruption and some corruption of the priests. What is in question is how far the priesthood can sustain the quality of the higher culture being created against the inevitable corruption of religion. For the quality of the Indian priests' execution of their higher task, Kosambi should be read; for all his obvious parti pris, his indictment is highly relevant: see An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, pp. 235–253Google Scholar and passim; The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline (London, Routledge and K.P., 1965), pp. 166–187Google Scholar. D. G. Mandelbaum and his associates have seen the need to consider religion both from the small, local (village jati-iamily) standpoint and from the large (societal-transcendental) standpoint. They tend, however, to allow the “superhuman” and “supernatural” to crowd out of consideration the practical side of the higher culture and so, to my way of thinking, to produce rather formal studies of limited significance; see Mandelbaum, David G., ‘Transcendental and Pragmatic Aspects of Religion”, American Anthropologist, 68 (1966), pp. 1174–1191, 1175–1179 directly on Indian religion, and references there given.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ See Feudalism in History, ed. Coulborn, Rushton (Princeton, University Press, 1956), pp. 188–190 and passim.Google Scholar

⁸ Basham, A. L., The Wonder that was India: a Survey of the Culture of the Indian Subcontinent before the Coming of the Muslims (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1954), pp. 93–96; quotation, p. 94.Google Scholar

⁹ I take it that a ‘theoretical’ contract would be one found in the fairly numerous works of theory, contemporaneous or other, about political or other social relations, which India produced, but not found in actual transactions between lord and man. Incidentally, Sharma, says (p. 208) that in Gujarat and Rajasthan [the main region of feudal development] “the relation between the lord and his vassal was governed by contracts”. While I do not think he would make a plain statement like this without some ground, I do not find the evidence to support the statement or any discussion of it, in his book.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Sharma, (pp. 25–30) quotes the Harshacarita of Banabhatta, a contemporary authority, who makes these things quite clear.Google Scholar

¹¹ Sharma, , pp. 27–28.Google Scholar

¹² Feudalism in History, pp. 204 and passim.Google Scholar

¹³ Sharma, has difficulty in assessing its efficacy; it is instructive to look over his many observations and speculations about it: pp. 84–85, 92–93, 99, 105–106, 109, 160–162, 196–197.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Sharma, , pp. 101–103.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ibid.,p. 103.

¹⁶ Cf. Sharma, , pp. 97–98, 206–207.Google Scholar

¹⁷ But modern opinion is hardly needed. Dopsch blew this fable apart forty years ago. Perhaps if he had not blown away so much else, he would have been believed; Alfons Dopsch, ed. Erna Patzelt, trans. Beard, M. G. and Nadine Marshall, The Economic and Social Foundations of European Civilization (London, Routledge and K.P., 1937). pp. 283–291.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Epigraphia Indica, XIX, no. 4A, 11. 5–8Google Scholar, quoted, Sharma, , p. 101.Google Scholar

¹⁹ “The Assembly of the Samantas in Early Mediaeval India”, Journal of Indian History, XLII (1964), 241–250. The article appears in Sharma's bibliography.Google Scholar

²⁰ MrsGopal, suggests (p. 250) that there is no evidence that assemblies functioned “under the bigger feudatories”, but bigger feudatories is exactly what the Cahamanas, Gadavalas, Vaghelas of Gujarat, Mithila state, the Kalacuris, the Candellas and the Caulukyas, from whose careers she gets most of her evidence, were. To be sure, from the late tenth century these were all free of the original Pratihara authority, but, even though such principalities had an important future (text below), they were nothing but big barons busy trying to become bigger.Google Scholar

²¹ Sharma, , p. 196.Google Scholar

²² Gopal, K. K., “Feudal Composition of Army in Early Medieval India”, Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, XXVIII (1962–1963), p. 33; also a number of allusions in the contemporaneous literature to numbers of foot and horse to be rendered by vassals, but these without specifications of equipment.Google Scholar

²³ See p. 360, n. 9 above.

²⁴ ‛Feudal Composition ...”, loc. cit.Google Scholar

²⁵ Feudalism in History, pp. 190–197.Google Scholar

²⁶ Cf. Creel, H. G., The Birth of China (New York, Reynal and Hitchcock, 1937), pp. 242–245.Google Scholar

²⁷ For village government under the Cholas, see Sathianathaier, R. in History and Culture of the Indian People, V (Bombay, 1957), pp. 252–254.Google Scholar

²⁸ Sathianathaier mentions that the Chola villages were probably less free as baronial power grew (ibid., p. 250), presumably in the later days of the Chola regime.

²⁹ Sharma, , pp. 241–262.Google Scholar

³⁰ Which were re-discovered in the mid-nineteenth century by the anthropological field-work of Sir Henry Elliot, M.; see his Memoirs on the History, Folklore and Distribution of the Races of the North Western Provinces of India, ed. and rev. Beanies, John, II (London, Trübner, 1869), pp. 47–78.Google Scholar

³¹ The word is a late contraction of the Sanscrit rajaputra, a word which originally meant “son of a king”, but had come to be used in the feudal wars of the north somewhat like the word ‘knight’ in feudal Europe – an honorable term, but one which any gentleman could claim. The Rajputs went back to its earlier meaning, which probably survived only in marginal areas. I think this suggests where their velleities were tending.

³² Tod, James, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India, ed. and intro. Crooke, William, 3 vols. (London, O.U.P., 1920).Google Scholar

³³ Feudal Society, trans. Manyon, L. A., 2nd ed., I (London, Routledge and K.P., 1962), 142;Google Scholar cf. ibid., II, 443 and M. M. Postan in the Foreword, ibid., I, xii, “the older ties of family which the feudal system absorbed or replaced”.

³⁴ Asiatic Studies, Religious and Social, 2nd ed. (London, Murray, 1907), I, pp. 203–264.Google Scholar

³⁵ Feudalism in History, pp. 133–143, 218–222.Google Scholar

³⁶ Kosambi's and Sharma's work are each sufficient to prove feudalism in India – in the corrected and limited sense of the word feudal whether they like it or not!

³⁷ “The Princely States of Rajputana: Ethic, Authority and Structure”, Indian Journal of Political Science, XXTV (01–03, 1963), p. 20, n. 13.Google Scholar

³⁸ See Thorner, Daniel in Some Modern Historians of Britain: Essays in Honor of R. L. Schuyler, ed. Brebner, Ausubel and Hunt, (New York, Dryden, 1951), pp. 66–84.Google Scholar

³⁹ Sharma, , pp. 97–98.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ A Prakrit text by Haribhadra Suri called Sumaraiccakaha.

⁴¹ Tod, I, 228–229.

⁴² I am indebted for this perception to Professor Man Habib; see his monograph, “The Social Distribution of Landed Property in Pre-British India” (unpublished paper read at the International Economic History Conference, Munich, August 1965), p. 21. This paper led me to Elliot's work and influenced me in certain other matters which occur in this essay.

⁴³ Cf. Feudalism in History, p. 197.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ibid., pp. 325 ff.