A transitional phase in history
RAJAN GURUKKAL
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Essays exploring the notion of an early medieval period in South India as distinct from early history
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THE EARLY MEDIEVAL IN SOUTH INDIA: Kesavan Veluthat; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 695.
A collection of 14 essays written over two decades and grouped into three parts, this book delineates the institutional, relational and structural features of the socio-economic system of the Tamil south in general, and the Kerala and Karnataka regions in particular, characterising the early medieval as distinguished from the early historical, social formations.
Transition
The four essays in the first part examine the processes of transition from the pre-medieval to the medieval, the multiple functions of the early medieval South Indian temple, the structure of the early medieval land rights and social stratification, the pattern of exaction of dues in the age, and the role of the “nadu” in the socio-political structure of the period respectively.
The eight essays in the second part relate to Kerala history, and raise questions such as the status of Keralolpatti as history, the role of epigraphy in the course of historiography, the nature of literacy and communication of pre-modern times, the turns of the king as lord and overlord, the significance of the capital city as a sacred centre, characteristics of the medieval state and society, the evolution of landlordism, and the emergence of a regional identity. The essays presented in the section dealing with early medieval Kerala in a broad manner seek to test the general socio-economic patterns about South India as a whole within the limited region of the West Coast of the deep south.
Case study
There are clearly distinguishable specificities in the case of Kerala, which mark this region out from the rest of South India. The experience on the West Coast in the southern end of the peninsula had no exact parallels, even if they cannot be described as unique in any sense. This will amply support a case for a distinct early medieval in this part of South India. In fact, that experience can serve as a case study in the processes and structures that define the early medieval in South India. This is one of the intelligible reasons for the author to include a larger number of studies on Kerala in his collection than about the rest of South India.
The two essays constituting the third part, relate to the interpretation of an apparently unique institution of “velevali”, or the self-sacrifice of the soldiers on the death of their king, and to the role of landed magnates as agents of the state. These studies subject a couple of ostensibly unique institutional instances drawn from the history of the neighbourhood to deeper probing with a view to conceptually accessing the underlying universal about them.
The essays presented in the volume raise seminal and fundamental questions about the constitutive elements of the early medieval in South Indian history, their causal connections, onset in time and processes in space. They convincingly argue how compelling reasons by way of intellectual justification for identifying early medieval period in South Indian history are intelligible. The author has adduced certain characteristic features that distinguish the early medieval from the preceding phase.
Developments
According to the author, the early medieval became distinct as a period of wet-rice agriculture with considerable surplus relegating the pre-existing economy characterised by cattle-keeping and subsistence agriculture. Another feature that he identifies is the replacement of a simple exchange system with the instituted process of trade and the subsequent development of urbanism. Yet another characteristic is the transformation of a relatively undifferentiated society into the one stratified sharply by “casteisation and peasantisation” of tribes. A large number of other entailing developments such as acceptance of an organised religion with its ideas and institutions suited to the new economic and social order, the emergence of the state as an articulation of the newly evolved socio-economic system, and the cultural mapping of the region in terms of identity as expressed in the case of Kerala and Karnataka.
Normally, there could be obsolescence at the level of interpretations, for the essays are written during disparate periods and occasioned by diverse events. But surprisingly, the running explanatory thread of concepts and theories across the essays harmoniously holds them fast as up-to-date texts. The thematic compatibility and temporal sequence of the essays help the volume transcend the limitations of an anthology and give the feel of a continuous narrative.
An eminently readable work of scholarly nature, the volume is sure to attract the students graduating in history, researchers specialising in South India and teachers besides the general public interested in the past.
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