Agro-Pastoralism, Archaeology and Religious Landscapes in Early Medieval South India

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 207-243
Author(s):  
Hemanth Kadambi
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
South India ◽  
The Political ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Deccan Plateau ◽  
Medieval India ◽  
Semi Arid

Agro-pastoralism has been an important economic subsistence among diverse communities in the semi-arid climate and dry-deciduous ecology of the Deccan for the last four millennia. Recent research that looks at the entanglements of human-animal-environment relations in South Asian archaeology and history have highlighted the complex histories that prompt a reconsideration of the contexts within which political authority articulated in medieval India. This essay demonstrates the presence of non-elite agro-pastoral groups based on the evidence from my archaeological survey. I then present results from a limited study the Early Chalukya inscriptions to identify agro-pastoral activities. In addition, I employ limited architectural and iconographic analysis and argue that the non-Brahmanical religious affiliations of pastoral groups played a role in shaping the political and sacred landscapes of the Early Chalukya polity (ca. 550–750 ad) in the Deccan plateau of South India. A related aim in this essay is to highlight the productive engagement of archaeological investigations with ‘conventional’ history research. I suggest that the medieval period of Indian archaeology is a potent arena for such interdisciplinary research.

Politics Beyond Imperial Cores: Spatial Production in the Peripheries of Medieval South India

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 92-129
Author(s):  
Eduard Fanthome
Keyword(s):  
South India ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Urban Settlements

Current scholarship on medieval South India has developed a comprehensive account of the ways in which political claims were constituted by dynasts and their subordinates in a range of contexts, from imperial courts to provinces. It has elaborated the modalities of political claim-making through instantiations of politico-cultural traditions or ‘cosmopolises’, and the integrative processes and social changes associated with them. However, this scholarship largely focused on imperial capitals and secondary urban settlements, which constituted nodes in the political networks of polities and loci of contestation and integration within them. Regions in which cosmopolitan traditions did not inform political practice remain opaque to this historiography. This article investigates one such contest- the ‘contested’ Raichur Doab. It explores the politics of the production of a settlement- MARP-30 and the ways they were negotiated to constitute relations of inclusion and exclusion.MARP-30 is part of the multi-component site at Maski that during the period of MARP-30’s occupation does not evince evidence of cosmopolitan practices. Examining the constitution of socio-political relations in this context will expand our understanding of political practice in medieval South India to include practices inaccessible through texts and under-explored archaeologically, and yet typical of medieval South India given the political and social dynamism that characterize the medieval period.

South Asia

2020 ◽  
pp. 542-573
Author(s):  
Mehrdad Shokoohy ◽  
Natalie H. Shokoohy
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
South India ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
North And South ◽  
The Way

In South Asian archaeology, Buddhist and Hindu sites and monuments dominate, while Muslim ones, with the exception of a few grand edifices, have never been given the priority they deserve. In India, there has been little significant excavation of any Muslim sites, but during the British period the major ones were gradually identified, some of the better-preserved monuments were restored, while the ruins, if regarded as significant, were cleared of debris and rudimentary efforts made to preserve the standing remains. After Partition, the Archaeological Survey of India continued to maintain Muslim sites such as those in Delhi; the forts and monuments of Bidar, Bijapur, Daulatabad, and Gulbarga in the Deccan; scattered remains in Gaur and Pandua (the site of Laknautī, the Muslim capital of Bengal); and the monuments in Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh) and Sasaram in Bihar. The monuments of Ahmadabad and some other towns of Gujarat have been more extensively studied. Whatever has been undertaken in the way of fresh exploration in North and South India has been mainly by independent scholars and experts. In Pakistan, some excavation has been carried out in the early Muslim sites, including at Banbhore, the site of the ancient port of Daibul, and at Brahmanābād, the site of al-Manṣūra, the seat of the Arab governor of Sind, both dating from the first and second century of the Hijra. In Bangladesh, the historic sites already restored before Partition have been maintained, but funds and resources to carry out fresh excavations or restoration are lacking. Much is left for present and future archaeologists to explore.

Agricultural Technology Depicted in Mughal Paintings

Itinerario ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
A. Jan Qaisar
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Aspect ◽  
Agricultural Technology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Medieval India

Most of the historians of medieval India have been interested in the political, administrative and economic aspect of the period, while some have exhibited fondness for religious and cultural history, albeit in a limited sense. Of late, new sectors of study have been explored: for example, the development of technology during the medieval period.

The Death of a Friend: Companionship, Loyalty and Affiliation in Chola South India

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-60
Author(s):  
Daud Ali
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
South India ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Grief And Loss ◽  
Formal Relations ◽  
Medieval India ◽  
Affect At Work

This article argues that the languages of loyalty and affiliation that marked public and formal relations of service and hierarchy in medieval India, though traditionally understood as thinly veiled pretexts for class exploitation or self-aggrandizement, may instead be interpreted, when combined with other sorts of sources, as elements within a larger ethical landscape where men of rank shared varieties of companionship and intimacy with one another. The article will enter this realm of intimacy through an exploration of the emotions of grief and loss in two strangely parallel Chola-period friendships: one epigraphically documented to the tenth century, and the other recounted in an important contemporary hagiographical tradition. The article argues not only for the importance of male friendship and intimacy in the political and religious life of elites in medieval south India but also suggests that fragmented memories of particular lived experiences between individuals may have been embedded in or triggered by more idealized representations. I hope to suggest that there were not only structures of affect at work in the constitution of male intimacy but also models and paradigms.

Book review: Whitney Cox, Politics, Kingship, and Poetry in Medieval South India: Moonset on Sunrise Mountain

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-126
Author(s):  
Ranjeeta Dutta,
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
South India ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Cambridge University

Whitney Cox, Politics, Kingship, and Poetry in Medieval South India: Moonset on Sunrise Mountain, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi (South Asian Edition), 2017, 309 + i–xv pp., ₹470.

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