MEDIEVAL INDIA (PART -1)

MEDIEVAL AGRARIAN ECONOMY

SOURCE : IGNOU

Agrahara:

Primarily a rent free village in the possession of Brahmanas.

Ardhika:

A cultivator who tills land of others and gets half the crop as his share.

Brahmadeya:

Generally tax free land or village given as gift to Brahmanas.

Dana:

The idea of dana or gift to Brahmanas was developed by Brahmanical texts as the surest means of acquiring merit (punya.) and destroying sin (pataka).

Devadana:

grants to the temple, either plots of Land or Whole village, were known us devadana in the south Indian context.

Pallichanda:

Devadana isRent free land gifted to brahmanical temples deities. Its Jain and Buddhist counterpart is pallichanda.

Halin: Ploughman

Parihara:

Exemptions from taxes and obligations (privileges granted to the donees of rent-free land).

Samghas:

Religious establishments of the Buddhist monasteries .

Basadis:

Religious establishments of the Jain monasteries .

Brahmadeya:

A brahmadeya represents a grant of land either in individual plots orwhole villages given away to Brahmanas making them landowners or land controllers

kani rights:

The new landed elite also consisted of local peasant clan chiefs or heads of kinship groups and heads of families, who had kani rights i.e. rights of possession and supervision.

Agriculture:

• Tanks (tataka, eri) and wells (kupa and kinaru)
• The step wells (vapis) in Rajasthan and Gujarat became extremely popular in the eleventh-thirteenth centuries.
• Vrikshayarveda mentions steps to cure diseases of trees.
• Water lifting devices such as araghatta and ghatiyantra are mentioned in inscriptions and literary works.
• Jagati-kottali (community of weavers) and the community of Telligas (oil
• pressers).
• sabha (Brahrnana assembly) ur (non-Brahmana village assembly) in Tamil Nadu.

The salient features of 'Indian Feudalism':

·         Emergence of hierarchical landed intermediaries. Vassals and officers of state and other secular assignee had military obligations and feudal titles.

·         Indian feudalism consisted in the gross unequal distribution of land and its produce.

·         Another important feature was the prevalence of forced labour.

·         The right of extracting forced labour (vishti) is believed to have been exercised by the Brahmana and other grantees of land.

·         Forced labour was originally a prerogative of the King or the state. It was transferred to the grantees, petty officials, village authorities and others.

·         Even the peasants and artisans come within the jurisdiction of vishti.

·         As a result, a kind of serfdom emerged, in which agricultural labourers were reduced to the position of semi-serfs.

·         Due to the growing claims of greater rights over land by rulers and intermediaries, peasants also suffered a curtailment of their land rights.

·         A number of peasants were only ardhikas (share croppers).

·         Surplus was extracted through various methods.

·         Extra economic coercion was a conspicuous method.

·         The increasing burden is evident in the mentioning of more than fifty levies in the inscription of Rajaraja Chola.

·         It was relatively a closed village economy. The transfer of human resources along with land to the beneficiaries shows that in such villages the peasants, craftsmen and artisans were attached to the villages and hence were mutually dependent.

Autonomous peasant:

·         According to this theory, autonomous peasant regions called the nadus evolved in South India by early medieval times.

·         Agricultural production in the nadus was organised and controlled by the nattar.

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