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Nature of the Chola state

Ba.history honours (University of Delhi)

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MIRZA SHAHZAN ASAGAR

Student ID 20177701
M.A. History 2nd Semester
JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA

T he characteristics of the early medieval period of the south Indian state is defined
differently by various scholars of distinct schools based on conceptual models. The
debate’s major issues include the degree of control (central authority versus local
autonomy) and the various roles of religious institutions in the polity.
The important contributing models are that of the Imperial State model by K.N. Sastri, Marxist’s
Indian Feudalism Model of R. S. Sharma and the Segmentary State Model of Burton Stein. The
Integrative State Model of B. D. Chattopadhyaya is also one of the dominant models that have
tried to determine the nature of the state in the early medieval India.
The writings of pioneering scholars such as Nilkantha Sastri represented a major
initiative in weaving together the scattered data from diverse sources into a larger historical
narrative. However, this narrative bowed down with nationalist enthusiasm and the propensity
to glorify the kingdom of Chola which was represented as a highly centralized empire and
bureaucratized with a clear hierarchy which facilitates control even over the vast and diversified
geographical terrain which was under the rule of the Cholas.
The chola state managed to balance the function between centralised bureaucracy and
active local assembly which foster a life sense of citizenship and high efficiency of the level
which never achieved before. Sastri also quick to identified the chola state like Vijayanagar.
He is not just the ruler but even the military head. Although Sastri does go into the
divisions of clusters of villages which form the Nadu and the Nadus which form Vallanadu, he
basically comes back to state that all of these territorial units were ultimately controlled by the
kind because of the high degree of central authority. T.V. Mahalingam and A.Appadorai later on
followed his line of argument.
Second state model is Feudal which was produced by R.S. Sharma and his follower such
as D.N. Jha, B.N.S. Yadav and R.N. Nandi focusing on production relations in the fief and the
decline of trade in medieval period. According to Sharma, a major cause of feudalism in India
was the land grants to Brahmans, religious institutions and officials with the given the rights of
ownership with the legal action and freedom from taxation. They encroached on communal
lands of villages and slowly reduced these villagers to serfdom. This development was partly
caused and further aggravated by a decline of urbanism and trade.
Politically, this development was characterized by a continuous process of fragmentation
and decentralization caused by the widespread practice of granting territories to vassals and
officials who established themselves as independent potentates. Socially, this period was
characterized by a proliferation of castes and the gradual decay of the economic and social
status of the Vaishyas and Shudras. These two Varnas eventually became indistinguishable from
each other, while the Kshatriyas and Brahmins became akin to the feudal lords of Europe.

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D. C. Sirkar critiques that the Indian Feudalism Model defended its argument that the
Brahmins performed the same tasks as the military officials in Europe but only in a different
approach. Thus, Brahmins provided legitimisation to their rulers in several ways.
The Segmentary State is an anthropological model developed by Southall. Burton Stein
utilized this model to describe the state formation under the Cholas and the Pallavas. Southall
describes the Segmentary State as a state where the spheres of ritual suzerainty and political
sovereignty do not coincide. The former extends widely towards a flexible changing periphery.
The latter is confined to the central core domain. The Stein divided into 3 zone- centre,
intermediate and peripheral. He divides the entire territory on the basis of inscription.
In this theory, the king as having enjoyed only limited territorial sovereignty. The
element of centrality existed only in the core area even where the presence of semi-autonomous
foci of administration was tolerated by the Cholas. He had no political authority over the
surrounding segments. The real foci of power are suggested to have been the locality level
centres or Nadus. He also denied the existence of a Chola standing army, arguing that military
power was distributed among various groups including peasants, merchants and artisans.
Southall criticized the points of Stein’s denial of the king’s political authority over
segments other than his own. According to him, a king has political authority was combined
with his ritual authority in the case of Hindu Kingdoms. For e.g.the temple of Rajarajeshwara
shows his own greatness and the unchallenged prestige of the state by building this temple.
It depicts the ritual sovereignty of the king over the whole country. Rajaraja granted to
the temple state revenue accruing from as many as 40 villages in Chola mandalam, the core
area of the state and 16 villages in the conquered area (Karnataka, Sri Lanka). It shows also
well-developed bureaucracy for revenue collection. The various departments called puravwari
comprised various offices, functions and feature. They invoked the Siva cult by constructing
temples across the region.
He view that the peasant society of the Cholas, which was presented as united structured
one, on the primary bonds being those of kingship and marriage, was in effect an extremely
stratified society, vertically divided into numerous segments. These segments created a highly
pyramidal which encourage the series of relationships between the centre and the peripheries.
Each of these segments had a specialised administrative staff. It also had a large amount of
centres, and all the features of a dual sovereignty consisting of political as well as ritual
sovereignty.
Stein distinguishes sharply between actual political control on one side and ritual
sovereignty on the other. All the centres of the segmentary state do exercise actual political
control over their own parts or segmentary but only one centre of extending ritual sovereignty
beyond its own borders.
Stein’s description of the early medieval south Indian state as a peasant state is even
more questionable and seems to represent an extreme reaction to the idea of highly centralized
monarch. The existence of corporate village organizations does not indicate that peasants
exercised political power at a high level.

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Hermann Kulke has questioned Stein’s concept of ritual sovereignty. According to him,
in a traditional society, particularly in India, ritual sovereignty seems to be an integral part and
sometimes even a pace maker of political power. These inscriptions were documents of a
systematic ritual policy which was as much a part of the general “power policy” as for instance,
economic or military policies.
A key of the segmentary state theory was also the so called Brahaman peasant alliance at the
nadu. The peasant is always known to have been exploited by the Brahaman and Kshatriya
combination. The creation of Valanadu (larger than the nadu but smaller than a mandalam) by
RajaRaja and kulottunga I is an indicator of the administration innovation and hence direct
intervention by the Chola Central authority.
Another model proposed by B.D. Chattopadhyaya was called the integrated polity model.
In this model, he interprets the early medieval period as a ‘period of state formation’ not
disintegration. It means the transformation of pre-state polities into state polities, thus the
integration of local polities into structures that transcended the bounds of local polities.
This integrative development was based on and accompanied by a series of processes like
peasantization the emergence and spatial extending of ruling lineages by processes called
Kshatriya; interspersing the dynastic domain and its hinterlands with network of royally
patronized religious institutions and land assignments to officials, etc.. Moreover, state
formation implies that there was an existence of resources capable of generating surplus.
Chattopadhyaya further argues that while land grants were important in country, they did
not represent a complete breakdown of imperial authority. He further argued that land-grants
gave too much importance under the Indian Feudalism model while other factors such as the
frequent invasions and continuing authority of the kings had been ignored.
According to Hermann Kulke, The multiplicity of local and regional power is the result
of the extension of monarchical state society into areas and communities tribal, non-monarchical
polity.
Noboru Karashima and Kesavan Veluthat have attempted an alternative model for
understanding the nature of the Chola state. They have attempted a systematic application of the
idea of feudalism to the socio-economic formation in the early medieval period in south India
and have called it a “Feudal State”. The research of Karashima indicates that several titles in
Chola inscriptions refer to administrative offices and that the Chola kings made certain attempts
to centralized their administration.
James Heitzman and Y. Subbarayaluhas preferred to call the Chola state an ‘Early State’.
According to this model, the Chola state was a centralised socio-political organisation, in a
complex stratified and extremely unequal society, which consisted of the rulers and the ruled.
Heitzman says that royal political unification took place under the Cholas. The Chola kings
remained ritual leaders but aspired to be managers in the Arthashastra style.
Heitzman says that the success of royal integrative policies depended on local variables
of geography. The most striking feature of the Chola rule was the rapid decline of royal
influence with increasing trend towards decentralized. James Heitzman elaborates that the

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underlying dynamics of state formation rested on the ability of these agencies to give direction
to the aspirations of the village elite. Political and economic leadership, within a predominantly
agrarian economy, rested on the possession of land or came from control exercised over profits
accruing from land. Heitzman the Chola polity was an ‘Early State’ since its agrarian base and
the political power of its landed elite were at a rather nascent stage of development.

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