The feudal social structure is based on a dominant class of landlords and a subject

class of peasantry. It is headed by the King who symbolizes the state power dependent
primarily on the landlord class. The relation between the two broad classes is
established through the grant of fiefs and the process of subinfeudation. Subinfeudation
gives rise to a regular hierarchy which includes those who live on rent and pay a part of
it to the state and also those who cultivate the land and pay rent. The origin and
presence of feudalism in India has been a subject of debate amongst various scholars.
The period of the history of India-characterized as feudal varies widely according to
each historian’s understanding of feudalism.

R S Sharma, in his article “The Origins of Feudalism in India”, states that Indian
feudalism originated in the fourth century AD and reached its peak during the eleventh
and twelfth centuries. With the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, for political and
economic reasons, feudalism in B. N. S. Yadava’s view began to decline. M. M.
Kovalevski, on the other hand, believed that the process of ‘feudalization’ in India
started precisely with the ‘Muslim conquests’.

For D. D. Kosambi, however, the feudal system broke down around the middle of the
seventeenth century, under the rule of Aurangzeb. R. S. Sharma visualizes the
development in India of almost all components of west European feudalism- serfdom,
manor, self-sufficient economic units, the process of feudalization of crafts and
commerce apart from declining trade and urbanization. The elements which had
undermined the European feudal structure, namely the revival of trade and towns, the
flights of the peasants to escape impoverishment at the hands of the Lord, and the
process of commutation of forced labor into monetary payments- developed in India
also and similarly undermined Indian feudalism.

The integrating role of land grants is underlined by Kulke, in his work “The State in
India”, particularly in case of Kalinga, at social, religious and ideological levels. In the
land grants rulers appear as deputies of divinities. The land receiving Brahmans were
loyal and inculcated loyalty in others. But Kulke also stressed the “Samantisation” of
the medieval realm and the consequent erosion of the power of ruler.

The most critical element of Indian Feudalism, in Professor Sharma and Professor
Yadava’s opinion, consisted of the growing dependence of the peasantry on the landed
intermediaries following the grant of more land and more rights to them by the state.
The dependence was manifested in terms of increasing restrictions on the peasant’s
mobility and his subjection to forced labor, which in turn was becoming increasingly
intensive.

However, this characterization of the early medieval Indian society is not universally
accepted and the main challenge to the premises on which the model of early
 feudalism is based has often come from such quarters which seem to be reluctant to
recognize the elements of change in Indian society. For instance, in his work “Was
there feudalism in Indian History?” Harbans Mukhia suggests that unlike capitalism
feudalism is not a universal phenomenon. According to him feudalism, was
throughout its history, a non-universal, specific form of socio-economic organization-
specific to time and region, where specific methods and organization of production.

European feudalism developed essentially as changes as the base of society took

place, in India, on the other hand, the establishment of feudalism is attributed by its
protagonists primarily to state action in granting land in lieu of salary or in charity,
and the action of the grantees in subjecting the peasantry by means of legal rights
assigned to them by the state. This one basic difference appears to have been
overlooked by most historians.

Mukhia argues that the nature of forced labor in India is rarely used for purpose of
production. There is, indeed, an objective reason for the absence of serfdom in Indian
history, for conditions of production in India didn’t require serf-labor. Thus forced labor in
India remained, by and large, an incidental manifestation of the ruling class political and
administrative power rather than a part of the process of production.

Thus, Harbans Mukhia, while arguing against the existence of feudalism in India, puts
undue emphasis on free peasant production as the characteristic feature of medieval
Indian economy, implying thereby a general absence of change at the primary level of
the agrarian structure throughout the length and breadth of India during the ancient and
early medieval times. The most consistent opponent of the model of Indian feudalism is,
however, D. C. Sircar, who goes to the extent of asserting that early Medieval India did
not witness the growth of feudal institutions; instead the system obtaining in the
contemporary society can be characterized as landlordism.

D. C. Sircar is one of the most vehement critics and consistent opponent of the theory of
Indian feudalism. He asserts that the theory which states that after the fall of the Guptas
in the 6th century AD, India exhibited the characteristics of feudalism involving payment
of services in land instead of coins, which developed in an economy marked by dearth
of coins, and absence of trade and commerce, is the most ‘absurd’ conclusion. He is not
ready to accept the theory of dearth of coins in early medieval India, rather he has
gathered evidence from widely divergent sources to give an impression of the currency
of more coins during this period. Sircar further argues that coins once entering the
Indian market remained in circulation for many centuries and in many territories, it was
not the state but the traders who usually determined whether fresh coins required to be
issued. However, some of the recent detailed studies dealing with the coins and their
minting support the theory of the dearth of coins in early medieval India. The study of
mints and minting in India by Upendra Thakur makes it clear that coin moulds belonged
to the early centuries of the Christian era and they became virtually extinct in post-
Gupta times. D. C. Sircar’s objection to the concept of Indian feudalism is blunt, but the
same if not true of Harbans Mukhia’s attack of the Indian feudal model. The latter,
presumably arguing within the Marxist framework, refuses to admit the existence of
feudalism in early medieval India on the basis of its comparison with the situation in
Europe. His outright rejection of the concept of the presence of free peasantry
throughout the length and breadth of ancient and medieval Indian civilization, and their
dominant role in production, a formulation which helps him to assert that there was no
change in the mode and relations of production from the earliest times to the pre-British
days.

He too refused to recognize the changes that were affecting the economy of the period.
These mutually contradicting views regarding the very existence of feudalism in India
hints at a situation in which the very basis for the study of an important historical
formation is eroded, due to the absence of an accepted framework of discussion for
feudalism in the India context. This divergence of opinion has not only hindered a
proper understanding of the nature of the problem, but has also led to wide variations in
the chronological framework of Indian feudalism.

According to R. S. Sharma, from the post-Maurya period, and especially from Gupta
times, certain political and administrative developments tended to feudalize the state
apparatus. The most striking development was the practice of making land grants to the
brahmanas, a custom which was sanctified by the injunctions laid down in the
Dharmasastras. Administrative rights were perhaps given up for the first time in the
grants made to Buddhist monks by the Satavahana ruler Gautamiputa Satakarni in the
2nd century AD, which mention the transfer of the King’s control only over salt, which
implies that he retained certain other sources of revenue. But in later grants, from the
time of Pravarasena II Vakataka onwards (5th century AD), the ruler gave up his control
over almost all the sources of revenue. The Gupta period furnishes at least half a dozen
instances of grants of apparently settled villages made to the Brahmanas by the large
feudatories in Central India in which the residents, including the cultivators and artisans
were expressly asked by their respective rulers not only to pay the customary taxes to
the donees, but also to obey their commands.

Of the seven organs of the state power mentioned in literary and epigraphic sources,
the taxation system and coercive power based on the army are regarded as two vital
elements whose abandonment disintegrates the state power. This was a position
created by the grants made to the Brahmanas. The ‘fiefs’ were usually granted as long
as the existence of the Sun and the Moon which implied the permanent break-up of the
integrity of the state. They were allotted to the Brahmanas in return for their religious
services, which might secure the spiritual welfare of the donors or their ancestors.
Nevertheless it was apparently not merely a religious obligation to grant land to the
Brahmanas but also a necessity.

The political processes that took place in this era is best understood by studying the
process of conquest by which smaller chiefs were reduced to subordination and
reinstated in their positions provided they paid regular tributes and did homage
contributed in large measure to the growth of feudal relations. During the 6th century AD
the term used for conquered feudatories was samanta. The first epigraphic mention of
the term Samanta in the sense of a feudatory is found in the Barabar hill cave
inscription of the Maukhari chief Anantavarman, in which his father is described as
“samanta-cuda-manih” (“the best among feudatories”). The obligations of the samanta
towards the King cannot be precisely stated, but in the 7th century AD they included the
duty of providing troops for the lord; this seems to have been the case with the
samantas of Harsa.

B. D. Chattopadhyaya in his book “The Making of Early Medieval India”, questions R. S.

Sharma’s views as to whether they can explain the total political configuration of what is
called the feudal formation. He suggests that the explanation has to relate not to the
structure of individual monarchies alone but also to the political geography of the
subcontinent at any given point of time – a requirement suggested by frequent shifts in
the centres of power and the ongoing process of the formation of new polities as a
result of transition from pre-state to state societies. Further, he questions the use of land
grant evidence for explaining the genesis of feudal polity. In his opinion epigraphic
evidence regarding brahmadeyas is largely absent in the system of early and early
medieval land grants. Also, irrespective of whether administrative measures can bring in
changes in societal formations or not, Chattopadhyaya questions the reasons for the
generation of these measures. Land assignments are presented as deliberate acts
which corrode the authority of the state; the state not only parts with its sources of
revenue but also with its coercive and administrative prerogatives. Thus, feudal polity
arises because pre-feudal polity decides to preside over the liquidation of its own power.

The main features of B D Chattopadhyaya’s theory can be summarized as:

 The expansion of state society through the process of local state formation.
 The peasantization of the tribes and caste formation.
 Cult appropriation and integration.

He sees early medieval India as a “third phase of urbanization” and doesn’t agree that
trade and commerce was declining during this time period. This was a time period of
“crystallization of regions”. Firstly, the period between the 6th-7th and 12th-13th centuries
would show it to be vastly different from Indian society of the early historical period, the
change doesn’t has to be necessarily have to be envisaged in terms of a collapse of the
early historical social order. The most dominant pattern seems to be the shaping of
regional societies. Secondly, in the operation of major historical/societal processes in
regional contexts, the crucial agency of the change was phenomenon of state formation
at diverse territorial levels, from local through supra-local to regional, at times expanding
into supra-regional. So, the issue of whether Indian history is entitled to a feudal phase
or not can hardly ever be considered closed.

In response to his critique, R S Sharma points out that many passages in the epics and
the Puranas speak of a kind of social crisis heralded by the advent of the ‘Kali Age’.
These passages are ascribed to the 2nd half of the 3rd century and the beginning of the
4th century AD. They depict a state of affairs in which rural people were oppressed with
taxes and forced labor. The oppression of the state coupled with the havoc caused by
natural calamities created a state of chaos in the lower orders, particularly the Vaishyas
and the shudras, who refused to perform the functions assigned to them. In his
introduction to , “The Feudal Order: State, Society and Ideology in Early Medieval
India”, D. N. Jha points out that around the end of the 3rd and beginning of 4th century
land grant inscriptions do not appear on a large scale in the gangetic plains. They only
do so in eastern Madhya Pradesh and in Andhra Pradesh. R S Sharma believes that
social crisis involving a struggle between the priests and warriors on the one hand and
the lower orders on the other, first took place outside the gangetic zone in the areas
which were less civilized. The description of the Kali Age in the Puranas may be applied
to the peripheral areas because the Purana writers whole genealogies stop in the early
3rd century were familiar with them.

The economic developments which created conditions for the origin of feudalism are
rather difficult to determine. The simple structure of the closed peasant economy,
according to D. D. Kosambi, was disturbed during the early centuries of the Christian
era when the Kings began to transfer their fiscal and administrative rights over land to
their subordinate chiefs who thus came into direct relation with the peasantry, a process
he terms ‘feudalism from above’. It reached an advanced stage of development during
the period of the Guptas and Harsa. Kosambi holds that at a later stage “a class of
landowners developed within the village between the state and the peasantry, gradually
to wield armed power on the local population.” This process he calls ‘feudalism from
below’.

Thus, religious as well as secular grants became increasingly popular with the
emergence of local and self-sufficient economies marked by lack of commercial
discourse, decline in urban life and paucity of coins. The economic essence of
feudalism, like that of the European, it has been argued, lay in the rise of landed
intermediaries leading to the enserfment of the peasantry through restrictions on
peasant mobility and freedom, increasing obligation to perform forced labor- mounting
tax burdens and the evils of subinfeudation.

The social changes that led to the rise of feudalism, according to scholars, is based on
social inequality and landed hierarchy. This idea seems to have been articulated
through the medium of religious art and architecture. Sharp differences are seen in the
sizes of the divinities which appear in the Gupta and post Gupta periods. This is in tune
with the social structure in which the peasants greatly outnumber the landlords. The
idea of hierarchy influenced the organization of Tantricism as well as the Jaina
monasticism. Although Tantricism accommodated Sudras, tribal people and women, it
eventually followed the pattern of organization typical to the feudal polity and society. In
course of time the Tantric religious order was organized on hierarchical lines. All
Tantrics did not have the same status. This kind of grading also appears in medieval
Jainism. In early medieval mythologies, according to R. S. Sharma, the divinity which
occupied the central position appeared as a kind of paramount duty which received gifts
or tributes in the same manner as a superior feudal lord received them from his vassals
and feudatories. He gives the example of Durga who received the trident from Shiva,
the discus from Vishnu, the vajra from Indra and other weapons from other Gods. This
appears like vassals and feudatories supplying soldiers to their paramount lord.

Some early medieval inscriptions represent the relation between the King and the God
in the same manner as between the Lord and his vassals. The King appears to carry
out military obligations imposed upon him because of his relationship. This is
particularly true of the Ganga Kings who ruled in Kalinga. From the twelfth century
onwards the Ganga inscriptions call the King ‘rauta’, which is derived from the term
‘rajputra’ and really means a military vassal who is granted land. The idea that the King
appears as the vassal of the God can also be inferred from the titles assumed by the
Cholar rulers. Thus Rajaraja calls himself ‘Sivapada sekhara’ which means that he
places his crown at the feet of Lord Shiva. This is clearly a feudal practice since the
feudal phase was marked by constant military activity which became the exclusive
sphere of man; there was a tendency to degrade the position of women. Strong male
domination this appeared to be a strong characteristic of the feudal phase. The early
medieval economic system thus had very little scope for the operation of the market
economy. Coins were used sparingly and payments were made in kind, particularly in
land grants. That a person should not see his superior empty handed was a mark of
both gratitude and submission. During the feudal age peasants or vassals would
invariably carry some presents for their superiors. Both landlords as well as various
kinds of divinities were entitled to the bhoga. Thus the existing social formation was fed
and nurtured by the dominant ideas of the feudal ruling class in which the caste
complex of inferiority, superiority and hierarchy played an important part.
Thus we can state that certain broad features of feudalism, such as the granting of
cultivated land, the emergence of a self-sufficient local economy, paucity of coins,
retrogression of trade and decentralization in administration on account of grants of
revenues to the brahmanas and later to officials, are noticeable from the Gupta and
especially the post-Gupta period onwards. But the nature and extent of each of these
features require further investigation without which one cannot reach any definite
conclusions of a more precise character. According to B. D. Chattopadhyaya- “The
historiography on the transition to what is considered the feudal phase has been ever-
shifting and essentially dependant on the directions of European historiography; it
therefore suffers from internal inconsistencies. Unless this historiography reconciles
itself to certain empirically validated major societal processes in Indian history, the
current construct of Indian feudalism will continue with its Eurocentric orientation, from a
persistent refusal to consider alternative modes of social change.”