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Saturday, August 12, 2023

Maduraivijayam as History: Ganga Devi, Kumara Kampana and Vijayanagara

 Vijayanagara: A Forgotten Empire of Potessess (sic)

Lidiya Dudyka, Krakow 2013


Vijayanagara remains a "Forgotten Empire" as Robert Sewell evocatively suggested more than a century and a quarter earlier. Though it existed as an Empire from the middle of the 14th century till the end of the 17th century, the cataclysmic defeat at Talikota not withstanding, its history largely disappeared from the consciousness of the people of Southern India. A distant echo of Vijayanagara Statecraft can be seen in the concept of Hindu Padshahi enunciated by Shivaji and later energetic Peshwas such as Balaji Vishvanath and Baji Rao I. Though Mark Wilks in his classic work Historical Sketches of South of India provided a reliable account of the Vijayanagara Empire ( Venkata Raghotham, "Soldier, Diplomat, Historian:Mark Wilks and the Representations of Empire in the early Nineteenth Century" Journal of Karnataka Studies 5-2, 2008, pp 135-158), this classic work like the Empire itself was forgotten and Robert Sewell relied on the Portuguese chroniclers to flesh out the history of Vijayanagara. Colin Mackenzie had discovered some inscriptions of Vijayanagara rulers in their Capital, Hampi, but these remained untapped. 

The discovery of a paper manuscript of Madura Vijayam in Trivandrum provided the impetus for further exploration of indigenous sources for the reconstruction of the History of the last great political entity that had overarching legitimacy over South India. The present work under review is essentially based on the translated version published by Annamalai Univerity some 70 years back. Lidiya Sudyka, a Polish Indologist has examined this Mahakavya using tools of post colonial discourse analysis and Feminist theory. 

Madura Vijayam does not claim to be a work of History. It is a poetic work that follows very closely the conventions of Classical Sanskrit eloquently examined by Sheldon Pollock in his Language of the Gods in the World of Men. However the formation of Vijayanagara as a political and military power took place in a context that was unprecedented in the History of India. The Turkish Invasions and the large scale destruction of Temples and slaughter of the indigenous people were events unknown to the history of India and certainly in South India. The attempt on the part of some "historians" to establish a moral equivalence between Indian wars of imperial expansion and Turkish invading hordes assault on the region is flawed as the scale of loot, plunder and destruction in the region in the aftermath of the Khilji expansion and later during the Tughlaq wars of conquest, as documented by Muslim chroniclers themselves evokes the miasma of an apocalyptic  disaster. Language of Mahakavya is a poor instrument to document and memorialize the destruction wrought  upon South India by the Turushka. 

Ganga Devi who calls herself a "beloved" of Kumara Kampana has to use the tropes of magic realism (and Rushdie has caught the drift of this) to express her anguish and heartfelt despair at the violence unleashed by the invading Turushka. And one of the primary purposes of his expedition into the devastated regions of South India was to restore Worship in Temples that had been desecrated by the Turks and their hordes. The inscriptions of the region speak of forty years of anarchy in the region following the Turkish invasion (tulukkan kalabai). And Kumara Kampana visited the great Vaishnava Temple of Srirangam and made elaborate arrangement by instituting endowments and overseeing all ritual matters related to the Temple. Of course, these are political acts and were performed as consequence of the tragic consequences of the pillage plunder and rapine that  followed in the wake of the Turkish armies. In order to fabricate a politically acceptable narrative, a Historian cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence that has survived. Another objective of his Southern Expedition was to eradicate the Madurai Sultanate so as not to allow even a toehold in the region for Islam to exist. Two centuries before the Reconquista changed the politics of the Iberian Peninsula, we find Ganga Devi articulating a similar strategy. 

This book is an interesting contribution. It would have been prudent to leave the post colonial rhetoric aside and concentrate on the events and realities that existed in post Turkish Invasion South India.


Saturday, July 8, 2023

Feudal Elements in Vijayanagara Polity 1336-1565: A Review


 Feudal Elements in Vijayanagara Polity: 1335-1565

Dr H P Keshava Naik

Mysore: Prasaranga, 1996.

The notion of "feudalism" hangs over Vijayanagara Historiography like the infamous kabayi, found in the sculptures around the Throne Platform in Hampi. No one seems to be interested in raising the larger issues that the concept of "feudalism" raises. Ever since R S Sharma unleashed the theory of Indian Feudalism in his 1965 Lectures at Calcutta University, feudalism in one form or other had bedeviled medieval Historiography.

First things first. Feudalism is a concept that hyphenates two very distinct periods of History: the time that elapsed from the fall of Rome /Roman Empire in western Europe to the advent of the absolutist monarchies in the 17th century. During this period, national cultures, languages, political institutions and judicial processes developed that were incompatible with a militarized hierarchical society that feudalism created. Such a historical process did not occur in India and except for the military aspect there is hardly any comparison with feudal Europe. Maurice Dobb following Karl Marx may even argue that feudalism carried within it the seeds of a capitalist economy. And in India we find that eighteenth and nineteenth century were dominated by colonialism and a colonial extractive state. The use of the concept of feudalism is highly  problematic in the Indian context.

Dr Keshava Naik in his book argues that Vijayanagara polity had elements of "feudalism" which he finds in the presence of the amaram tenure holders in Vijayanagara epigraphy. Amaram tenure and amaranayankara are terms found in Vijayanagara inscriptions and there seems to a definite pattern in the distribution of these terms in Vijayanagara inscriptions. The number of inscriptions bearing information about the grant of land to military leaders or nayakas is concentraed in the reign of Krishnadeva Raya (1509-1529) and there are frequent instances in the reign of Sadasiva Raya as well. And most of the inscriptions with nayakas as land holders or donors are concentrated only in the Rayalseema region of Andhra Pradesh and the region around the coast of Konkan. Hence only a region specific study of the corpus of Vijayanagara inscriptions can help us decide the role played by nayakas in the political and econmic life of the period.

This is a small book and perhaps started as a PhD thesis.


Thursday, November 25, 2021

Rajaraja Chola Interplay between an Imperial Regime and Productive Forces



Rajaraja Chola Interplay between an Imperial Regime and Productive Forces

Raghavan Srinivasan




 Rajaraja I (985-1014) is the subject of the book under review and he is a difficult personality to pin down. Srinivasan has set out to write a biography of a medieval Tamil king and given the extremely limited and fragmented evidence, it is creditable that he has produced a book length narrative. The book is structured around the known events of his reign and are discussed around the themes enunciated by historians such as K A N Sastri, Burton Stein, R Champakalakshmi and others. The evidence extant from the period do not permit an indepth investigation into the Life and Times of Rajaraja I as the Chola monarch lacked a biographer and chronicler like Akbar had in his companion, Abul Fazal. Given this limiting condition, the author has done a reasonable enough job in presenting the political and economic lineaments of the reign of Rajaraja I, the Splendid Monarch as one historian has called him.


The Historian has to depend on Copper Plate Inscriptions as his source for reconstructing the history of the period. Politically the reign of Rajaraja, the Rajaesari, was responsible for rehabilitating the fortunes of the Dynasty that had taken a drastic turn for the worse following the Rashtrakuta invasion and the defeat and death of the heir apparent, Rajaditya in the Battle of Takolam in 949 AD. Rajaraja showed his political skill in ensuring the survival of both the State and the Dynasty by changing the pattern of Chola succession. This important change which imparted a firm institutional foundation to the Chola State has been ignored in the analysis proffered by Raghavan Srinivasan. 

Another important aspect that is argued in the book as per the current historiographical trend is an examination of Kingship as practiced during the Chola period. While there is a great deal of debate on this  issue, the writer has waded into an extremely contentious one by using the concept of Deva Raja to situate Chola kingship. God King in South East Asia, especially for the Khemer kings meant the apotheosis of king as god upon death. Unfortunately the interpretation advanced by  Nilakanta Sastri has gathered vehement traction and needs examination. First, Rajaraja or for that matter no Chola king, claimed the status of gods. The closest that Rajaraja came to divinity was when he claimed the title, siva-pada-shekara in his inscriptions in the Big Temple at Tanjavur. (South Indian Inscriptions vol II No 1 and 2). The Esalam Plates of Rajendra I also attest to the patronage extended to radical Saiva groups like the Kalamukhas and the Pasupatas, a link that we first encounter when the mahavrattins of the Kalamukha order are given custody of the pallippadai shrine of Arinjeya at Melpadi. The evidence that we have goes to prove quite conclusively that the Cholas did not claim divinity as a constituent element of the ideological apparatus of the state.

The very name of Rajaraja's magnificent temple at Tanjavur, the Rajarajes'vara Temple, built in his 25th regnal year encapsulates the enigma of Chola kingship. The double entendre' refers both to the name of the King and Deity and does not indicate an appropriation of divinity by the mortal king. The medieval European monarchs considered Kingship as a union of Two Bodies, the Body of Christ and that of Man, but the Chola conception was resolutely secular.

This book provides a good introduction to the political history of the period and the author has essentially followed the identification of places mentioned in the inscriptions as given by Sastri in his now classic history. The inscriptional rhetoric of taking the head of the king, as the author points out was merely rhetorical as defeated kings were never killed as was the practice under Islamic rulers. The  trade and commerce carried out by the guilds has been discussed, though the extent of coined currency being used in commercial transactions may by disputed.

This is a well written and interesting book and deserves to be read by all those interested in the past of South India.

Friday, July 16, 2021

HISTORY AS IDEOLOGY: THE BHARATIYA VIDYA BHAVAN SERIES AND THE ATTACK ON HISTORIOGRAPHY

 

HISTORY AS IDEOLOGY: THE BHARATIYA VIDYA BHAVAN SERIES AND THE ATTACK ON HISTORIOGRAPHY


In the years immediately after the Independence of India in 1947, a collective multi-volume history of India was published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. This organization was headed by Dr K M Munshi, a Minister in the cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru. The purpose underlying this gigantic venture was to showcase the achievements of Indian historians who sought to publish a History of India on the same lines as other multi volume Histories such as the Cambridge Modern History. Spread over eleven volumes the BVB series attempted a synthetic and comprehensive History of India from the earliest period till the transfer of power from the British Government to their nominated successors in the Interim Government. Meticulously edited under the stewardship of Professor R C Majumdar, the doyen of Indian historians, the series represented the State of the Art in terms of historiographical achievement and canons of historical methodology. Surprisingly this splendid achievement became a victim of its own success in that it was relegated to obscurity as the tides of politics ebbed and flowed in the post Nehruvian dispensation. In this paper we examine a set of issues pertaining to the reception of this Series. First we study the scheme of the entire series with a view to uncovering the logic underlying this series. Aspects of periodization which have remained contentious are studied herein with the aim of explicating the overall schema. Secondly we examine the criticism leveled against this Series by Dr Romila Thapar who in her  various papers has accused the Series of providing “intellectual justification” for “Hindu Communalism” by invoking the ‘historical past”. In the now famous pamphlet Communalism and the Writing of Indian History Romila Thapar and her colleagues are at pains to delegitimize the entire pre Independence achievement in Indian Historiography on the grounds that it (a) glorified the past  (b) does not address the issue of social and economic change and (c)  advancing the notions of Hindu identity politics.  Given the leftward drift in intellectual life in India, it is no wonder that this litany of criticism was not subjected to scrutiny or examined for its inherent validity in terms of valid principles of historiographical criticism. It is totally inadequate to term this pioneering enterprise as a “communal” venture and consign it to the “immense condescension” of the historical profession.

 

      A fact that is often ignored by Historians is the late beginning of the Historian’s profession in India. The first post graduate Department of History was opened in India only after the end of World War I in 1919 to be precise. The Imperial Records Office which became the National Archives after 1947 opened its record for research only after Independence. Seen against the background of these facts, it is certainly very encouraging that soon after Independence such a stupendous task was undertaken and realized. It is worthwhile to recollect that none of the rival Series of collective scholarship which were meant to challenge the BVB Series have seen the light of day in their entirety. The flagship journal of the emerging profession of History, the Journal of Indian History was founded at Allahabad in 1922 and within a few years was shifted out.

The intellectual context in which History as a discipline emerged in India was vastly different from Western Europe. In both England and France, and perhaps elsewhere, the research into and the reconstruction of a National Past, went hand-in hand with the assertion of popular sovereignty which now imagined itself as the Nation. As Sovereignty came to be associated with and embodied in the will of the people as Natio or Nation, the State became the agency that sought to legitimize itself by appropriating the past and historians obliged by casting the past as a prologue for the emergent nations. Therefore the assertion of popular Sovereignty and the deployment of History as a vehicle for its imagined continuity with the past was a powerful intervention and made Historiography a new and powerful tool of Nationalism.

 

            A particular strand of Nationalist Historiography is unspooled as “Communal” and one of the reasons for the Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan Series faring poorly in the market place of Indian Historiography is the criticism that it represents that tendency. There has been no attempt hitherto made to understand and explicate the implications of this interpretation. At its most general level the concept of “communalism” has become for historians a compass that governs questions of interpretation, explanation and method. Yet there is virtually no discussion either on the concept or its use as a category of historiographical criticism. Apart from the naivety of assuming that Independent India was unencumbered by its past and as Romila Thapar stated in her Past and Prejudice, “In a sense, the coming of Independence terminated that debate in its overt and recognizable form”.  Did it? Were the issues raised by the earlier historians laid to rest or silenced.

 

         Indian Nationalism and its “tryst with destiny” as an early Prime Minister of Independent India triumphantly proclaimed on the day the transfer of power was effected, was a poisoned chalice. The objective of Indian Independence was belied by the tragedy of Partition and questions about the shadow cast by the events of 1947 have lingered on. The boundaries of the debate have been set in a manner that effectively excludes questions about the responsibility for Partition and the air of supreme triumphalism inherent in the speech just alluded to set the tone for historians to follow. Perry Anderson in his Indian Ideology has alluded to the Barbara Cartland streak in the Discovery of India and the general tendency to avoid real issues about the convoluted road to the Transfer of Power. The Khilafat Agitation, the Quit India Movement and the boycott of the Cripps Mission were all important staging posts and in each of these the conduct of the dominant faction within the Indian National Congress was untenable and therefore questions about the road to Independence and Partition remained extremely uncomfortable for historians writing in the shadow of 1947.

 

The Plan and Scope of the BVB Series

The Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan Series consist of XI Volumes each of which addresses a significant aspect of Indian history. The general view that it mimics the periodization of Indian history first suggested by James Mill is not correct as the Series does not characterize the early period as Hindu Period nor does it speak of the Medieval as Muslim Period. These terms are not used in the text and therefore to argue that Mill’s scheme of periodization was preserved in this work is not only incorrect but can easily be disproved. As Javed Majeed argues in his Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism, the Utilitarian doctrines underlying Mill’s work hardly had any impact on the subsequent study of India. In any event, the cautious policy prescriptions of Mill were soon superseded by Lord Macaulay’s Minute of Education, May 2 1835. Over interpreting Mill is responsible for exaggerating his influence on subsequent Historiography of India.

 

Empire and Statecraft

 

The study of recurring patterns of imperial political formations and their transmutations into variant forms, is an important theme in Indian historiography. The BVB series addressed this particular issue in three major volumes: The Age of Imperial Unity, The Classical Age and the Age of Imperial Kanauj. Stretching from the Mauryan Age till the fall of the Pushyabhuti Empire towards the close of the 8th century AD the three volumes are structured around the unification of India under the rule of dynamic and charismatic dynasties led by powerful chakravarti personages whose political fortunes were buttressed by a series of fortuitous matrimonial alliances with clans and lineages in their territories. The organizational scheme employed is certainly founded on narrative political history, but it’s conceptual topos is predicated on the longue duree of Indian history, the alternate rhythms of political expansion, contraction and eventual replacement by another set of political arrangements initiated by a rival clan or lineage which nested under the previous imperial carapace. The Gupta Dynasty is generally regarded as the archetypal instance of Indian imperial history in that its history illustrates the transformation of the kingdom under a maharaja in the third century AD into a powerful empire embracing the entire territory of India south of the Himalayas represents the apotheosis of an idea of kingship expounded in the texts known as the Dharmasastras that contain the informing principles of Rajadharma. The Gupta Era, appropriately inaugurated by the establishment of a new Era starting in AD 320, was marked by a steady pace of territorial expansion and the articulation of an imperial ideology that was to be the template for most of the early medieval period of Indian history. The Allahabad Pillar inscription of Samudragupta (AD 330-380) is the earliest expression of the new grandiose vision. The Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan volume entitled the Classical Age does not refer to this period as a Golden Age and much of the polemic directed against this idea seems misplaced. The title maharajadiraja assumed by Samudragupta and proclaimed in the Allahabad Inscription presupposes the very existence of a substratum of little kings whose presence in the imperial polity sustained its legitimacy. If we look at the distribution of the territories enumerated in the Inscription –the Malavas, Arjunayanas, Yaudheyas, Madrakas, Abhiras, Prarjunas, Sanakanikas, Kakas and Kharaparikas—we find that some of them were among the 16 Mahajanapadas of the Buddhist texts. Most of these janapadas were once part of the territories of the Indo-Greek rulers and were brought into the imperial framework for the first time. 

 

           The Classical Age which was volume III in the BVB Sries frames the entire period as one of recovery and resurgence: recovery from the ravages of foreign invasions of the Greeks, Huns and others and the emergence of an indigenous polity that reunited and re gathered the territories traditionally regarded as part of Aryavartta, a concept explicitly mentioned in the Samudra Gupta Inscription. Lines 20 and 21 refer to dakshinapatha-raja and anek-aryyavartta-raja. These terms are mere geographical expressions and so it would be churlish to make them carry the burden of identity driven ideologically weaponized meaning. Importantly the Dharmasastra texts such as the Gautama text refers to Yavanas and this may give us an indication of the time or period in which it was composed. Patrick Olivelle dates the text to the third century BC and has identified the yavanas with the Greeks who formed part of the population of North West India.

  

    The creation of an intellectual structure to underpin an expanding political system was the achievement of the three centuries of Gupta rule. Sheldon Pollock has drawn attention to an important feature of the Gupta Period when he argued that the shift from Prakrit to Sanskrit as the preferred language of political communication and the deployment of kavya as the rhetorical trope for articulating issues of genealogy, descent, political ideology and social form are to be viewed as innovations introduced in the cultural milieu that created the Gupta Age. There is absolutely no suggestion that anywhere in the Series that the Gupto Epoch constituted a Golden Age and hence the invective directed against R C Majumdar and his work seems not only misplaced but tendentious.

 

            Just as the James Mill scheme of periodization, was at best a flicker in the long course of Colonial Historiography, the idea of a Golden Age too remains a convenient straw man against which the brave Don Quixote can lead their progressive charge.  The Dharmasastra texts as Oliville has argued are codifications not of ritual but of custom, acara, and historians who use the texts as sources of past practices are confusing theology with History. Therefore the entire construction of the Golden Age nostalgia attributed to some Historians is in reality a chimera as neither U N Ghoshal nor R C Majumdar have made such a claim.

 

Historical Change and Society

 

One of the most frustrating features of early Historiography of India is the vexed question of change in Society and Economy. Political change reflected in dynastic upheavals are clearly visible and hence provide a reliable chronological framework and this has been the scholarly practice in professional Historiography.  The Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan Series follows the standard practice of using dynastic labels as markers of larger cultural and social transformations. This understanding of temporality is predicated on the assumption that while politics and military events bubble and froth at the surface there are deeper and profound forces at work that our sources tend to give at best a partial view. Therefore while the narrative informing the BVB Series is informed and structured by political events, there is certainly considerable discussion on the economic and social changes taking place beyond the political.

 

            Foreign invasion and its impact on India has been an important, almost a perennial theme of Indian Historical writing. Partly due to the fact that the past was viewed as a prologue to the National Movement which sought to create a united India without allowing identity divisions based on language and religion. Of course this pious hope was belied and Partition based on religious identity did happen and this reality has shaped Indian Historiography is a powerful way. The Indian National Movement was essentially a failure as it did not lead to a unified India and saw the triumph of identity based politics. The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Series was written under the shadow of those momentous cataclysmic developments that some have regarded as the substantial redemption of the credo of the Movement.

 

      It is possible to study each Volume in the Series and make a critical investigation of the characterization of indigenous society. In Struggle for Empire which covers the critical period from AD 1000 to AD 1300, there is considerable discussion on the Social reality prevalent in India, particularly North India during this period. There is neither glorification nor admiration for Indian social customs and the often repeated charge that the BVB Series is “communal” as it glorified Indian social practices stands refuted on the basis of the evidence presented in the book.

 

Temple Patronage, Violence and the State

 

The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Series was a pioneering attempt at re gathering the scattered strands of the Indian past and making it intelligible in an highly volatile atmosphere of Partition, State sponsored patronage of a usable Past, attempts at viewing the medieval period as an example of a “secular polity” and an assertion of identity politics based on language set forth by the Linguistic Reorganization of States in 1956. The Nehruvian State was actively promoting a version of Indian History which eventually became the orthodox view and was seldom challenged. The BVB stood as the lone outpost of a nuanced and balanced history which the Establishment decried and the Historical profession ignored.

 

                 Two examples may be cited to illustrate the contradictions inherent in the approach taken to the study of Indian history. The emphasis on State in the study of early India has led to the neglect of other institutions that were embedded in society. While Caste has received some attention, particularly as part of the larger agenda of identity and ideology infused studies, the religious institutions have not received adequate attention/

Saturday, April 3, 2021

George W. Spencer A Review of his work and Assessment of Chola Historiography

 

The death of Professor George Spence came both as a surprise and a shock. With his death the last significant American  interpreter of medieval South Indian History has called it a day. Burton Stein, James Heitzman and now George Spencer all three of whom contributed in their own unique way to further our understanding of the medieval period have now left the stage and with this we can say that a creative period of research comes to an end. A few years back Professor Noboru Karashima died and he too was a  contemporary of these historians.

George Spencer (b.August 30, 1939 d. January 19,2021)  taught for several years at Northern Illinois University, de Kalb.  He took his PhD in History from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967. His dissertation though extremely short was eminently readable unlike the dissertations churned out these days which are heavy on jargon and impenetrable post colonial drivel and make sense only to the writer and his press ganged audience.  He later revised this dissertation and published it in 1983 under the title, The Politics of Expansion: The Chola Conquest of Sri Lanka and Sri Vijaya.

Prof. Spencer
  In this book Spencer raised an issue that still resonates in the Historiography of the medieval period. How are the conquests of Indian kings and monarchs to be explained. It is generally believed that kingship in India was not predicated upon conquest and empire building. And yet we have inscriptions of the medieval period proclaiming the digvijaya extending over the eight directions and the four quarters. George Spencer attempted to explain the paradox of medieval kingship: military expansion presented as an elaborate pilgrimage or conquest justified as an act of restoration of the legitimate dynasty. Conquest primarily for political control or territorial aggrandizement was almost invariably absent. Basing his analysis on the inscriptions found on the walls of the Great Temple at the Chola capital, Tanjavur, Spencer argued that the very uncertainty of political and military power of medieval monarchs made them devise strategies that shored up their uncertain power in spectacular displays of royal might.

This thesis was highly problematic in that it seemed to see the practice of Statecraft as being predicated upon the exigencies of court factions and alliances rather than the human agency acting through the king. Medieval polities all over the world were animated by ideological considerations, but hard political realities lurked beneath the surface. There is no reason to doubt that medieval South India was any different.

The most interesting work of Professor George Spencer was the series of  papers he published in a Hong Kong based journal called Asian Profile. He tried to map the actual extent of the Chola conquest by studying the distribution of medieval inscriptions. Using locational information found in Chola Inscriptions collected by the Archaeological Survey of India, Spencer was able to demonstrate that Chola inscriptions can be used as markers of imperial control as they are seen the ebb and flow with the political fortunes of the dynasty. This line of investigation was further amplified by Peter Granda and his colleagues. 

George Spencer also investigated the Chola naval expedition on Sri Vijaya in AD 1025, the same year that Mohamed Ghazni launched his attack against Somnath Temple. He came to the conclusion that the Cholas were motivated by the desire for plunder and this interpretation is negated by the evidence found in the Karandai Copper Plate Inscription of Rajendra I. Of course we must say that the Karandai Plates were not available to scholars at the time when Spencer wrote his book.

We must celebrate the contribution of George Spencer. He may not have created a paradigm shift as did Professor Burton Stein. But he enriched the field of Chola Historiography and we are  grateful for that.

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Professor Burton Stein, Vijayanagara Empire and I: An Epistolary Journey

 

I worked for my Ph D in History with Professor Burton Stein in the Department of History, University of Hawaii at Manoa. I graduated in 1987 and returned to India where I taught in Pondicherry University as a Professor of History and retired as Dean, School of Social Sciences and International Studies and am now settled In Pondicherry,a toen I have grown to love. A few day back there was a programme on FaceBook in which a noted Delhi based historian gave a talk on "Working with Burton Stein". Since I am the only Historian in India who has had the privilege of working with his doyen of Medieval History, I thought that I could share my thoughts and experiences with my larger world of fellow Historians through this Blog. It has been more than 38 years since I received these letters and I am making them available to the wider world as I think, there will be greater interest in the sort of work that Burton Stein pioneered once the "Post Colonial" conceits are quietly set aside. Stein himself was very skepetical of the intervention of Edward Said who stareted this movement with his Orientalism


The work I did with Professor Burton Stein was entitled, Temples, Kings and Warriors: The Role of Warrior Chieftains in the Political Structure of Late Medieval Tamil Country, AD 1300-1565. From citations to this work, I learn that several Historians have contacted Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii, Manoa, and have consulted this dissertation. The starting point of my work was the last chapter of Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India in which Vijayanagara Empire was discussed. I felt that the Nayaka level of leadership that emerged with the Vijayanagara Expansion would enable us to get a good picture of the structure of Political Power at the intermediate level in the late medieval period. The old structured relations around land and its resources broke down under the impact of the decline of the Chola State and the expansion of the Turkish Sultanates into the region during the reign of Alauddin Khilji and later Muhhamad Bin Tughlaq. Through the difficult time when I was writing the Dissertation before the advent of internet and fast communication Professor Stein and I kept in touch through Correspondence and I have nearly 50 letters from him. I have uploaded a few so that in future there documents are available.

Professor Burton Stein taught me the value of meticulous documentation. He was a great believer in depth and on more than one ocassion admonished me that good history is done by reconstruction of the Past based on the basis of the maximum study of available records. For this reason I am tempted to say that the subjective post colonial deconstructist versions that are fashionable today would not have had his approval. In fact, a Guru of Post Colonialism whose work is now de riguer for contemporary purposes was not popular with Professor Stein, though after the unfortunate demise of Professor Stein in 1996, this Guru has acquired cult like status and with it a controversial image. In Thomas Munro: Man and Vision of Empire Stein showed that he was right in seeking the roots of the Munro System in the medieval past. I followed up this work by undertaking a study of Mark Wilks as a Historian of Vijayanagara. I worked on the basis of the official records of the East India Company.
Burton Stein insisted that History should be based on what he called Primary Documentation and all available records must be studies for the purpose of eliciting information of the past. He practically made London his second home even while he was teaching at the University of Hawaii and each Summer Dorothy and he would fly off to London and work in the India Office Library. I have  been interested in studying the papers of Mark Wilks and Colin McKenzie and hope that after the end of this season of COVID 19 will be able to visit the British Library. 
Thorough exploration of existing Documentation and Hisrtoriography were the main features of Burton Stein's work. In fact the first thing he made me do, when I joined him for the PhD was to spend a full semester reading books on Vijayanagara Empire. Stein had set aside Thursdays from 2:30 to 5:00 exclusively for me and we would meet in his Office with the glass windows overlooking the Japanese Bamboo Garden in Sakamaki Hall, Dole Street snd he insisted that I come prepared with a full 10 page critique. As I have always said and I say again, I learnt History from a Great Master and am proud of it.

To the best of my recollection he did not miss a single Thursday Class and from him I learnt to take Class timings seriously. After he left Hawaii and retired to London, Professor Stein continued to supervise my work and was able to graduate in 1987.

When I look back across the life time that has lapsed since I left Honolulu and the University of Hawaii, Manoa, the entire field of Medieval History has undergone a sea change. Scholars like the Late Noboru Karashima and James Heitzman continued to work on the lines suggested by Stein and widened the arena of investigation. The debate between Sanjay Subramanium and Noboru Karashima on the relative merits of Inscriptions written or rather engraved on hard surfaces like Stone and Copper and more ephemeral surfaces like paper was an exiting debate. Textures in Time could not have come about without the work of Burton Stein laying the foundation for the use of the McKenzie Collection.


Vijayanagara Historiography has not fared too poorly over the years. For some inexplicable reason Medieval History is dominated by the Mughals and their contempararies like Vijayanagara and other Southern polities have not got the same attention. One reason of ourse is the crass embrace of linguistic identity politics in post Independence India. Vijayanagara itself claimed to be Lord of Karnata a geographical term they used to denaote the entire imperium they commanded. However the creation of linguistic states has distorted the entire approach to Vijayanagara Historiography as Andhra Pradesh is seen as the heartland of the Empire. True Telugu was the chosen vehicle of expression of Krishandeva Raya but that did not make the Empire a "Telugu" one.  Andhra Pradesh has taken a lead in publishing the Telugu kaifyats collected by MCkenzie and his team. Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology has published 4 volumes culled from the Mackenzie vamshavalis or genealogies preserved in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library. This spate of interest in the Mckenzie Collection is due to the work of Professor Stein.

After my return to India I kept in touch with Professor Stein and or last meeting was when he came to Tanjavur to attend the World Tamil Conference in 1995. And in just over a year from then he passed on. I remember Professor Burton Stein with affection and gratitude. He made me what I am today and will ever remain in his debt.


Thursday, October 8, 2020

RAYA: Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara A Review

Srinivasa Reddy, a scholar of South Asian Literature trained in USA has tried his hand at writing history after a fairly successful run as a trasnslator. His earlier workGiver of Worn Garlands was an excellent translation of the putative work attributed to the Tuluva ruler Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara. The present work presents itself as a historically informed biography of the ruler but in reality it is a readable but badly researched work mixing legend, popular tradition and even cinematic renditions to create a pastice of historical narrative. Of course he has come with the proper credentials displayed prominently on the dusk jacket. It is certainly "engaging" but is it "exemplary" is a differnt question altogether.

Vijayangara history is complex in that it self consciously procalimed a template of Statecraft that was predicated upon the negation of the disruptions wrought by the onset or invasions of the turushka. In fact the trope of destroying the turushka appears even in the inscriptions of Krishnadeva Raya and to ignore the underlying political ideology animating Vijayanagara statecraft is merely a surrender to the kind of identity politics India has seen in the years follwing Independence. Turushka meant Turk and did not imply a religious identity at all and to shy away from this issue on the grounds that it may be offensive to present day sensibilities of political correctness is not merely being anachronistic by historically inaccurate.When Vijayanagara began its slow but steady march toward Empire it projected its raison d'tre as the Restoration of Worship in temples destroyed by the turushka. The raids of Kafur and the Tughlaqs had resulted in a virtual collapse of the moral order. The language of Apoclypse is deployed in an early Copper Plate Inscription: "When the sun. Prataparudra set, the world was enveloped in the turushka darkness".

Srinivasa Reddy begins his narrative biography of Krishnadevaraya with the famous Hampe Inscription which was trasnlated by Eugene Hultzsch in Epigraphia Indica Vol I. Generally recognised as a danasasana, issued on the occasion of his coronation the Inscription states in its 11th verse that Krishnadeva Raya connquered the Chera, Chola, the proud Pandyas, the brave Turushka, the Gajapathi king and others. This claim of conquest of the Gajapathi or for that matter even victory over the Turushka is merely rhetorical, a statement of intent rather than of accomplishemt an Krishdevaraya took control over the Empire upon the death of his half brother, Vira Narashimha in 1509 and there is no evidence that he had participated in any major campaign with his fater Narasa Nayaka. Again there is no hstorical evidence to suggest that Gandikota, Vinnukonda and Nagarajakonda were suggested as likely targets of Vijayanagar acquisition by Narasa Nayaka. Srinivas Reddy cannot resist the temptation of including an intersting myth, story fable even cinema  dialogues. Thus he accepts the story of Vidyaranya ad his association with Harihara and Bukka even though there is compelling evidence that this myth came to the fore only in the decades after 1565 as shown by Hermann Kulke. A historian will not allow an intersting story to structure his narrative.

The most impressive part of the book are the chapters dealing with the conflict with the Gajapathi rulers of Orissa. Reddy keeps harping on the "low caste" status of Krishnadevaraya. He calls him "dasi putra". There is absolutely no historical evidence to show that caste perceptions in any way influeced the conflict. Gajapathi, Narapathi and Ashwapathi remained the trypych around which the polity of the medieval South Indian empire revolved. And the Gajpathi king himself came fom a dynasty of usurpers and so would not have thow such caste laden invective against Krishnadevaraya. It appears tht identity politics of today and caste laden social sciences inflused with identity politics makes such outlandish interpretations not only possible but academically rspectable. The fact is that such labels were unknown in the Vijayanagara period.

Krishnadevara raya presided over an Empire that was linguistically diverse, complex in terms of religious and sectarian composition and the social structure of the Vijayanagara polity was certainly stratified. However caste was still not the deciding factor as the very diversity of the Great Captains, the amaranayankara-s. demonstrates. Only one Historian has attempted a prosopographical study of Nayakas. Krishnadevaraya bore the biruda, Hindu raya Sutrranna or Sultan of HinduKings a title which underscores the tremendous influence of the Islamic political formations of the Deccan.

The book under review is certainly interesting. But its claim to be History can be contested.