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.

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.

Noboru Karashima (1933-2015): A Tribute

Dr Noboru Karashima, the well known historian of medieval South India died yesterday at Tokyo and the field of medieval history stands impoverished today as he was responsible for some path breaking research. In 1996 Professor Burton Stein passed away and with the death of Karashima, a whole generation of stalwart historians has ended. A few years back Dr James Heitzman passed on and I can say that medieval history of Peninsular India will never be the same again.

Dr Noboru Karashima began his study of medieval South India by adopting a new method one that looks at history from the locality or nadu outwards. He studied the inscriptions found in a particular locality and dissected the internal variations in the structure of the inscriptions in terms of social groups mentioned, revenue terms, the titles of the parties involved in the transactions and the personal names of the functionaries mentioned in the record. One of his early publication was a comprehensive computerized data base of personal names found in Chola inscription. One can say that Karashima was a pioneer in the use of machine searchable databases. Another important contribution of Karashima lay in his comparative stusy of the social and economic resources of brhamadeya and ordinary peasant villages, the ur. His pioneering paper on Allur and Isanamangalam still hold the field. Under his leadership micro study of peasant localities became the norm. The work of Mitzhushima on the Nattar in the 18th century was inspired by the methodological implications of Karashima's work. The publications edited by Professor Noboru Karahima under the rubric of the Institute of Oriental Cultures are impressive micro studies based on a wealth of information culled from the archaeological sources. Unlike Burton Stein who raised medieval historiography to  a very high level of theoretical abstraction with the use of the concept of the segmentary state, Noboru Karashima based his analysis entirely on the empirical evidence at hand and eschewed theoretical consideration. I would say that like most Japanese historians, Karashima oriented his work broadly toward material factors. There is no place for oriental notionas of "caste" "identity" and "satic society" in the works of Karashima.

Towards the last phase of his life, Karashima trned his attention towards Vijayanagara History. His book Towards a New Formation and Concordance of Nayakas in Vijayanagara Inscriptions, both pub;lished by Oxford University Press mark important milestones in Vijayanagara historiography. The death of Noboru Karashima is a great loss and those of us in the filed of medieval history will remain indebted to him.