New Kings and Kingdoms

After the fall of the Guptas, India was not ruled by one great empire but by many regional kingdoms. Between roughly the seventh and twelfth centuries, ambitious chiefs and landlords across the land carved out their own realms, fought one another, and built temples and cities. The greatest of these were the Cholas of the far south. This age of regional powers set the stage for medieval India. The reading then follows that southern story forward: its final section jumps ahead to the Vijayanagara Empire and the Deccan sultanates of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, the powers that inherited the world the Cholas had built.

Before the new dynasties matured, northern India passed through a brief age of transition. After the Gupta decline and before the rise of Harshavardhana in the early seventh century, power was shared by a handful of successor kingdoms:

• Later Guptas of Magadha: a smaller line that kept the Gupta name alive in the east.
• Pushyabhutis of Thanesar: the family into which Harsha himself was born.
• Maukharis of Kanauj: rulers of the great city that Harsha later made his capital.
• Maitrakas of Valabhi: rulers of Saurashtra in the west.

Dynasties such as the Paramaras of Malwa and the Yadavas of Devagiri belong to a much later period and should not be confused with this age.

Harsha (606–647 CE) united much of the north from Kanauj. His push to the south failed. Pulakesin II, the Chalukya king of the Deccan, defeated him on the banks of the Narmada around 619 CE. The Aihole inscription, a Chalukya record composed by the court poet Ravikirti, celebrates this victory. The Narmada thus became the border between Harsha's north and the Chalukya Deccan.

Harsha was a generous patron of religion. He convened the Prayag Assembly, a great gathering at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna held every five years. There he gave away his accumulated wealth to people of all faiths. He personally favoured Mahayana Buddhism, the form of Buddhism that worships compassionate bodhisattvas, but the assembly was not held only to spread it. The Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang attended and described it.

Harsha's southern contemporary was Mahendravarman I, the Pallava king of Kanchipuram. He was a man of many talents who took playful titles: Mattavilasa (jolly drunkard), Vichitrachitta (curious-minded) and Gunabhara (bearer of virtues). He also wrote the Sanskrit farce Mattavilasa Prahasana.

In this period, many new ruling families rose to power. Often they began as powerful landlords or chieftains serving a larger king, then grew strong enough to declare independence.

A new ruler would announce his status with grand titles such as maharaja-adhiraja ("great king of kings"). To win acceptance, kings performed rituals, made gifts to Brahmanas, and built temples. Power was shared with local chiefs and assemblies, so a kingdom was held together as much by alliances as by force.

One older idea about provincial power is worth noting here. Military governorship in India did not begin with these dynasties. The Indo-Greeks introduced it first: their military governors were called strategos. The practice later shaped Shaka and Kushana administration, centuries before the age of the new kingdoms.

A few founding moments fix the chronology of this age:

• Gopala: founded the Pala dynasty of Bengal around 750 CE. Local chiefs chose him as king to end a long spell of disorder.
• Dantidurga: founded the Rashtrakuta empire (c. 735–756 CE) by overthrowing his Chalukya overlords in the Deccan. The Rashtrakuta capital was Manyakheta.
• Mihira Bhoja: led the Gurjara-Pratihara rise in the ninth century (c. 836–885 CE).
• Parantaka I: established Chola power in the early tenth century (c. 907–950 CE).

The order of events therefore runs Gopala first, then Mihira Bhoja, then Parantaka I. Mahendravarman I, the Pallava, belongs earlier still, in the seventh century.

Exams often pair a king with the wrong house. Keep these straight:

• Nannuka: founder of the Chandela dynasty of Bundelkhand.
• Jayashakti: a later Chandela king; the Chandela land was named Jejakabhukti after him.
• Nagabhata II: a Gurjara-Pratihara king.
• Bhoja of Dhara: the scholar-king of the Paramaras of Malwa in the eleventh century. He is a different ruler from Mihira Bhoja, the ninth-century Gurjara-Pratihara.

Small kingdoms also took shape in the Himalayan hills. Match the old names to modern regions:

• Durgara: the Jammu region; the name survives in the word Dogra.
• Champaka: modern Chamba, in the hill country between Himachal and Kashmir.
• Kuluta: modern Kullu in Himachal Pradesh.

None of these states lay in Malabar, which is the coast of Kerala in the far south.

Each great house left signature buildings. Learn the pairs:

• Guptas: the Dashavatara temple at Deogarh, from the age before the new kingdoms.
• Chandelas: the temple complex at Khajuraho.
• Chalukyas: the cave and structural temples at Badami.
• Pallavas: the temples at Mamallapuram and Panamalai.

New ruling families kept appearing after the first wave. The Hoysalas of Karnataka, the Gahadavalas of Kanauj, the Kakatiyas of Warangal and the Yadavas of Devagiri all arose between the tenth and twelfth centuries. None of them existed in the early eighth century, a point exams test directly.

Southern India, in particular, grew a patchwork of such regional kingdoms rather than one large empire. The reason was social, not military. The social structure of the south was deeply divided, and regional identities were strong. These divisions prevented consolidation into a single centralised empire.

For about two centuries, three powerful dynasties fought a long, three-way contest, the tripartite struggle, for control of the rich city of Kanauj and the Ganga valley. The three rivals were:

• The Gurjara-Pratiharas of the north and west.
• The Rashtrakutas of the Deccan.
• The Palas of the east (Bengal and Bihar).

None could win lasting control, and the long wars eventually weakened all three, opening the way for new powers.

The rivals were more than warlords. The Palas of Bengal and Bihar were great patrons of Mahayana Buddhism. They founded the famous monastic universities of Vikramashila and Odantapuri in Bihar. In this they resembled the earlier Ikshvakus of the Andhra region in the south, who had likewise patronised Buddhism rather than opposed it.

The most remarkable kingdom of the age was that of the Cholas in the far south, who rose to greatness from about the ninth century. Under rulers like Rajaraja I and his son Rajendra I, the Cholas built a powerful empire.

The Cholas were notable for:

• A strong navy, which carried their power across the sea to Sri Lanka and South-East Asia.
• Magnificent temples, above all the great Brihadishvara temple at Thanjavur.
• Superb bronze sculpture, especially images of the dancing Shiva (Nataraja), among the finest art India has produced.

On land, the Cholas first defeated their old peninsular rivals, the Pandya and Chera rulers, and so came to dominate southern India. At sea, Rajaraja I began the occupation of Sri Lanka. His son Rajendra I completed the conquest of the island's northern part. Exams ask who conquered Ceylon: the answer is Rajendra, who finished what Rajaraja began.

Rajendra then went further. Around 1025 CE he sent a naval expedition against the Srivijaya empire of South-East Asia, ruled by the Sailendra dynasty, and conquered some of its territory. No other Indian power projected force overseas on this scale.

What made such voyages possible? The monsoon winds over the Bay of Bengal reverse direction with the seasons. Ships sailed out on one monsoon and returned on the other, so voyages to South-East Asia became predictable. This seasonal reversal, more than ship-building skill or royal patronage, made the Bay of Bengal the main highway of early Indian maritime trade.

Chola rule is famous for its well-organised local government. Villages enjoyed a remarkable degree of self-government through assemblies:

• The ur was a general village assembly.
• The sabha was an assembly of Brahmana villages, which ran local affairs through elected committees managing irrigation, gardens, temples and justice.

The grand Chola temples were far more than places of worship. They were the centre of village life, owning land, employing priests, craftsmen and dancers, running schools, and acting as banks and centres of art. Through these institutions the Cholas governed one of the best-administered kingdoms of medieval India.

Chola inscriptions use precise terms for categories of land and institutions. Three are tested often:

• Eripatti: tank land; its revenue was set apart to maintain the village tank.
• Taniyur: a village granted to a single Brahmana or to one group of Brahmanas.
• Ghatika: a college, usually attached to a temple.

Trade in this age was organised through guilds, associations of merchants or craftsmen who acted together as a body. A guild fixed prices, protected its members and even made gifts to temples. The most famous merchant corporation of the south was the Manigrama. Inscriptions record its activity across the Deccan and as far away as South-East Asia. Other well-known bodies were the Ayyavole (the Five Hundred of Aihole) and the Nanadesi, traders who moved across many lands. These names should not be confused with terms like parishad, which meant a learned or advisory assembly, not a trading body.

Long-distance trade needed credit. Merchants of the post-Harsha centuries used the hundi, a written bill of exchange. A trader deposited money in one town and the paper could be encashed in another. This let merchants move value across great distances without carrying coin, and it shows how sophisticated commercial life had become.

Agriculture remained the base of the economy, and new technology raised its output. The most important irrigation device was the araghatta, also called the Persian wheel. It was a large wheel with earthen pots tied to its rim or to the outer ends of its spokes. As bullocks turned the wheel, the pots lifted water from a well or river and emptied it into channels. The araghatta allowed steady irrigation and helped extend cultivation into drier lands.

Learning also flourished, especially in law. Medieval India produced famous jurists, scholars who wrote authoritative digests of Hindu law:

• Vijnanesvara: author of the Mitakshara, a commentary on inheritance and property that guided most of India.
• Jimutavahana: author of the Dayabhaga, the rival school of inheritance law followed in Bengal.
• Hemadri: author of the Chaturvarga Chintamani, a vast digest of religious law and duties.

Rajasekhara, by contrast, was a playwright and poet, not a jurist. Exams often test this distinction.

In the fourteenth century, a new power rose in the south. Harihara I, with his brother Bukka, founded the Vijayanagara Empire in 1336. He built his capital on the south bank of the Tungabhadra, a tributary of the Krishna. He claimed to rule not in his own right but as the agent of the god Virupaksha, a form of Shiva to whom all land south of the Krishna was held to belong. Royal orders were even signed in the god's name.

Four dynasties ruled Vijayanagara in turn:

• Sangama: the founding dynasty of Harihara and Bukka. Devaraya I (1406–1422) built a great dam across the Tungabhadra and a canal-cum-aqueduct several kilometres long to bring water to the capital.
• Saluva: Saluva Narasimha ended the weakened Sangama line and seized the throne for himself, an act driven by ambition rather than by any wish to save the kingdom.
• Tuluva: Vira Narasimha deposed the last Saluva ruler. His younger brother Krishnadeva Raya (1509–1529) succeeded him and brought the empire to its peak. Krishnadeva Raya was in turn succeeded by his half-brother Achyuta Raya.
• Aravidu: the last dynasty, ruling a shrunken state after the empire's defeat at the battle of Talikota in 1565. During this decline Raja Wodeyar founded the kingdom of Mysore, when Ranga II of the Aravidu line was the nominal Vijayanagara ruler.

For chronology, place Krishnadeva Raya correctly: the Qutb Minar was begun around 1193, Firoz Tughlaq of the Delhi Sultanate died in 1388, the Portuguese reached India in 1498, and only then came Krishnadeva Raya's reign.

Vijayanagara administration was well documented. Under Krishnadeva Raya, the land tax was graded by the quality of the soil, and private owners of workshops paid a separate industries tax. Foreign visitors left vivid accounts. The Portuguese chronicler Fernao Nuniz recorded that women of the empire were experts in wrestling, astrology, accounting and soothsaying, and that they served as palace guards and royal secretaries.

Vijayanagara's northern rivals were the Deccan sultanates, five Muslim kingdoms (Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Berar and Bidar) formed from the break-up of the Bahmani kingdom. The most celebrated of their rulers was Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur. His subjects hailed him as Jagadguru (world teacher) for his secular outlook. He patronised Sanskrit and Kannada and honoured the goddess Saraswati. In the seventeenth century the Marathas under Shivaji would carve their own kingdom out of these sultanate lands, a story taken up with the eighteenth-century political formations.