Indian feudalism

Indian feudalism refers to the feudal society that made up India's social structure until the Mughal Dynasty in the 16th century. The Guptas and the Kushans played a major role in the introduction and practice of feudalism in India, and are examples of the decline of an empire caused by feudalism.

Quotes

• [Karashima] cautions against the ‘mechanical application of the concept of feudalism in the South Indian context as has been done by scholars like D.N. Jha.’ He points out the many fallacies in their argument and observes that the number of villages granted by rulers to Brahmins and temples was decisively in minority and also says ‘it seems too hasty to take royal grants of villages as an evidence for a prevalence of feudalism or serfdom, unless we study the conditions of the non-grant villages’.
  • From a book review by K.V. Raman, History and Society in South India— The Cholas to Vijayanagar: Noboru Karashima; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, published Tuesday, Apr 09, 2002 in The Hindu <http://www.hinduonnet.com/br/stories/2002040900090200.htm>

• Sharma also focused strongly on bringing in a stage of feudalism on European model in the post-Gupta period. Sharma’s feudalism theory falls through for many clear reasons. The land-grant inscriptions of the kind Sharma mentions continue to occur in Rajasthan till the 17th/18th century and in the dynastic contexts mentioned by Sharma their number over a period of about 400 years is reputedly no more than 33, an insignificant number to build up an all-India stage of development. What is also ignored is the fact that such grants of land to Brahmins fall in line with a well-known Hindu ritual behaviour of granting Brahmins land on auspicious days after taking ritual bath. More importantly, KP Jayaswal demonstrated in Hindu Polity that the kings of ancient India were not the owners of the kingdom’s land. This land belonged to the individual owners. Many 19th century British administrators also supported this contention. The point is that the kings of ancient India did not have the legal right to distribute lands among a separate class of retainers and thus it was impossible for them to generate a class of feudal barons based on such donations. In the writings of Sharma’s associates, one notes the use of such terms as ‘early mediaeval’, ‘state formation’ and ‘legitimisation’ (of monarchy). The term ‘early mediaeval’ has been loosely used for a long time but the basic politics of this use in recent times is to suggest the existence of an ‘early mediaeval’ Hindu India merging smoothly into the ‘mediaeval’ Muslim India, thus obviating the drastic difference between the two.
  • Chakrabarti, D. K. (2021). Nationalism in the study of ancient Indian history. National Security, 4(1), 29-50.