The economy

Cultivation was still carried out by the peasants, generally Shudras, who remained tied to the land. Since the revenue was now to be paid not to the king but to the samanta, the peasants naturally began to give more attention to his requirements. Although the samantas copied the life-style of the royal court, often to the point of setting up miniature courts in imitation of the royal model, the system also encouraged parochial loyalties and local cultural interests. One manifestation of this local involvement was a sudden spurt of historical literature such as Bilhana’s Vikramankadevacarita, the life of the Calukya king Vikramaditya VI, and Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, a history of Kashmir.

The earlier decline in trade was gradually reversed in this period, with trade centers emerging in various parts of the subcontinent. Some urban centers developed from points of exchange for agrarian produce, whereas others were involved in long-distance trade. In some cases, traders from elsewhere settled in India, such as the Arabs on the Malabar Coast; in other cases Indian traders went to distant lands. Powerful trading guilds could enjoy political and military support, as was the case during the Cola monarchy. Even the rich Hindu temples of southern India invested their money in trade. Pala contacts were mainly with Srivijaya, and trade was combined with Buddhist interests. The monasteries at Nalanda and Vikramashila maintained close relations. By now eastern India was the only region with a sizable Buddhist presence. The traditional trade routes were still used, and some kingdoms drew their revenue from such routes as those along the Aravalli Range, Malava, and the Chambal and Narmada valleys. Significantly, the major technological innovation, the introduction of the sāqiyah (Persian wheel), or araghatta, as an aid to irrigation in northern India, pertains to agrarian life and not to urban technology.

Social mobility

Historians once believed that the post-Gupta period brought greater rigidity in the caste structure and that this rigidity was partially responsible for the inability of Indians to face the challenge of the Turks. This view is now being modified. The distinctions, particularly between the Brahmans and the other castes, were in theory sharper, but in practice it now appears that social restrictions were not so rigid. Brahmans often lived off the land and founded dynasties. Most of the groups claiming Kshatriya status had only recently acquired it. The conscious reference to being Kshatriya, a characteristic among Rajputs, is a noticeable feature in post-Gupta politics. The fact that many of these dynasties were of obscure origin suggests some social mobility: a person of any caste, having once acquired political power, could also acquire a genealogy connecting him with the traditional lineages and conferring Kshatriya status. A number of new castes, such as the Kayasthas (scribes) and Khatris (traders), are mentioned in the sources of this period. According to the Brahmanic sources, they originated from intercaste marriages, but this is clearly an attempt at rationalizing their rank in the hierarchy. Many of these new castes played a major role in society. The hierarchy of castes did not have a uniform distribution throughout the country. But the preeminent position of the Brahman was endorsed not merely by the fact that many had lands and investments but also by the fact that they controlled education. Formal learning was virtually restricted to the institutions attached to the temples. Technical knowledge was available in the various artisan guilds. Hierarchy existed, however, even among the Brahmans; some Brahman castes, who had perhaps been tribal priests before being assimilated into the Sanskritic tradition, remained ordinary village priests catering to the day-to-day religious functions.

Religion

The local nucleus of the new culture led to a large range of religious expression, from the powerful temple religion of Brahmanism to a widespread popular bhakti religion and even more widespread fertility cults. The distinctions between the three were not clearly demarcated in practice; rites and concepts from each flowed into the other. The formal worship of Vishnu and Shiva had the support of the elite. Temples dedicated to Vaishnava and Shaiva deities were the most numerous. But also included were some of the chief deities connected with the fertility cult, and the mother goddesses played an important role. The Puranas had been rewritten to incorporate popular religion; now the upa-puranas were written to record rites and worship of more-localized deities. Among the more-popular incarnations of Vishnu was Krishna, who, as the cowherd deity, accommodated pastoral and erotic themes in worship. The love of Krishna and Radha was expressed in sensitive and passionate poetry.

The introduction of the erotic theme in Hinduism was closely connected with the fertility cult and Tantrism. The latter, named for its scriptures, the Tantras, influenced both Hindu and Buddhist ritual. Tantrism, as practiced by the elite, represented the conversion of a widespread folk religion into a sophisticated one. The emphasis on the mother goddess, related to that expressed in the Shakti (Śakti) cult, strengthened the status of the female deities. The erotic aspect also was related to the importance of ritual coition in some Tantric rites. The depiction of erotic scenes on temple walls therefore had a magico-religious context.

Vajrayana Buddhism, current in eastern India, Nepal, and Tibet, shows evidence of the impact of Tantrism. The goddess Tara emerges as the saviour and is in many ways the Buddhist counterpart of Shakti. Buddhism was on the way out—the Buddha had been incorporated as an avatar of Vishnu—and had lost much of its popular appeal, which had been maintained by the simple habits of the monks. The traditional source of Buddhist patronage had dwindled with declining trade. Jainism, however, managed to maintain some hold in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Karnataka. The protest aspect of both Buddhism and Jainism, especially the opposition to Brahmanic orthodoxy, had now been taken over by the Tantrists and the bhakti cults. The Tantrists expressed their protest through some rather extreme rites, as did some of the heretical sects such as the Kalamukhas and Kapalikas. The bhakti cults expressed the more-puritanical protest of the urban groups, gradually spreading to the rural areas. Preeminent among the bhakti groups during this period were the Lingayats, or Virashaivas, who were to become a powerful force in Karnataka, and the Pandharpur cult in Maharashtra, which attracted such preachers as Namadeva and Jnaneshvara.

Literature and the arts

It was also in the matha (monastery) and the ghatika (assembly hall), attached to the temples, that the influential philosophical debates were conducted in Sanskrit. Foremost among the philosophers were Shankara (8th–9th century), Ramanuja (d. 1137), and Madhva (13th century). The discussions centerd on religious problems, such as whether knowledge or devotion was the more effective means of salvation, and problems of metaphysics, including that of the nature of reality.

Court literature, irrespective of the region, continued to be composed in Sanskrit, with the many courts competing for the patronage of the poets and the dramatists. There was a revival of interest in earlier literature, generating copious commentaries on prosody, grammar, and technical literature. The number of lexicons increased, perhaps necessitated by the growing use of Sanskrit by non-Sanskrit speakers. Literary style tended to be pedantic and imitative, although there were notable exceptions, such as Jayadeva’s lyrical poem on the love of Radha and Krishna, the Gitagovinda. The bhakti teachers preached in the local languages, giving a tremendous stimulus to literature in these languages. Adaptations of the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagavadgita were used regularly by the bhakti teachers. There was thus a gradual breaking away from Sanskrit and the Prakrit languages via the Apabhrahmsha language and the eventual emergence and evolution of such languages as Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, and Oriya and of the Bihari languages.

The period was rich in sculpture, in both stone and metal, each region registering a variant style. Western India and Rajasthan emphasized ornateness, with the Jain temples at Mount Abu attaining a perfection of rococo. Nalanda was the center of striking but less-ornate images in black stone and of Buddhist bronze icons. Central Indian craftsmen used the softer sandstone. In the peninsula the profusely sculptured rock-cut temples such as the Kailasa at the Ellora Caves, under Calukya and Rashtrakuta patronage, displayed a style of their own. The dominant style in the south was that of Cola sculpture, particularly in bronze. The severe beauty and elegance of these bronze images, mainly of Shaiva and Vaishnava deities and saints, remains unsurpassed. A new genre of painting that rose to popularity in Nepal, eastern India, and Gujarat was the illustration of Buddhist and Jain manuscripts with miniature paintings.

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Temple architecture was divided into three main styles—nagara, dravida, and vasara—which were distinguished by the ground plan of the temple and by the shape of the shikhara (tower) that rose over the garbhagrha (cubical structure) and that became the commanding feature of temple architecture. The north Indian temples conformed to the nagara style, as is seen at Osian (Rajasthan state); Khajuraho (Madhya Pradesh state); and Konarka, Bhubaneshwar, and Puri (Orissa state). The Orissa temples, however, remain nearest to the original archetype. South Indian temple architecture, or dravida, style—with its commanding gopuras (gateways)—can be seen in the Rajarajeshvara and the Gangaikondacolapuram temples. The Deccani style, vasara, tended to be an intermixture of the northern and the southern, with early examples at Vatapi, Aihole, and Pattadakal and, later, at Halebid, Belur, and Somnathpur in the vicinity of Mysore. The wealth of the temples made them the focus of attack from plunderers.

The question that is frequently posed as to why the Turks so easily conquered northern India and the Deccan has in part to do with what might be called the medieval ethos. A contemporary observed that the Indians had become self-centerd and unaware of the world around them. This was substantially true. There was little interest in the politics of neighbouring countries or in their technological achievements. The medieval ethos expressed itself not only in the “feudatory” attitude toward politics and the parochial concerns that became dominant and prevented any effective opposition to the Turks but also in the trappings of chivalry and romanticism that became central to elite activity.

It has been generally held that the medieval period of Indian history began with the arrival of the Turks (dated to either 1000 or 1206 ce), because the Turks brought with them a new religion, Islam, which changed Indian society at all levels. Yet the fundamental changes that took place about the 8th century, when the medieval ethos was introduced, would seem far more significant as criteria.

The Turkish conquest

By 1186 the Ghūrids had destroyed the remnants of Ghaznavid power in the northwest and were in a favorable military position to move against the northern Indian Rajput powers. The conquest of the Rajputs was not easy, however. The Cauhans (Cahamanasa) under Prithviraja defeated Muḥammad of Ghūr in 1191 at Taraori, northwest of Delhi, but his forces returned the following year to defeat and kill the Rajput king on the same battlefield. The victory opened the road to Delhi, which was conquered in 1193 but left in the hands of a tributary Hindu king. Muḥammad of Ghūr completed his conquests with the occupation of the military outposts of Hansi, Kuhram, Sursuti, and Sirhind and then returned to Ghazna with a large hoard of treasure, leaving his slave and lieutenant, Quṭb al-Dīn Aybak, in charge of consolidation and further expansion.

Quṭb al-Dīn displaced the Cauhan chief and made his headquarters at Delhi in 1193, when he began a campaign of expansion. By 1202 he was in control of Varanasi, Badaun, Kannauj, and Kalinjar.

In the meantime, an obscure adventurer, Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khaljī of the Ghūrid army, conquered Nadia, the capital of the Sena kings of Bengal (1202). Within two years Bakhtiyār embarked on a campaign to conquer Tibet in order to plunder the treasure of its Buddhist monasteries, and in 1206 he attacked Kamarupa (Assam) to gain control of Bengal’s traditional trade route leading to Southeast Asian gold and silver mines. The attempt, however, proved disastrous. Bakhtiyār managed to return to Bengal with a few hundred men, and there he died.

The availability of a large number of military adventurers from Central Asia who would follow commanders with reputations for success was one of the important elements in the rapid Ghūrid conquest of the major cities and forces of the north Indian plain. Other factors were important as well; better horses contributed to the success of mobile tactics, and the Ghūrids also made better use of metal for weapons, armour, and stirrups than did most of their adversaries. Perhaps most important was the tradition of centralized organization and planning, which was conducive to large-scale military campaigns and to the effective organization of postcampaign occupation forces. While the Rajputs probably saw the Ghūrids as an equal force competing for paramount power in north India, the Ghūrids had in mind the model of the successor states to the Abbasid caliphate, the old Iranian Sasanian empire, and particularly the vast centralized empire of Maḥmūd of Ghazna.

Soon, however, the Ghūrid possessions were insecure everywhere. In 1205 Sultan Muḥammad of Ghūr suffered a severe defeat at Andkhvoy (Andkhui) at the hands of the Khwārezm-Shah dynasty. News of the defeat precipitated a rebellion by some of the sultan’s followers in the Punjab, and, although the rebellion was put down, Muḥammad of Ghūr was assassinated at Lahore in 1206. The Ghūrids at the time held the major towns of the Punjab, of Sind, and of much of the Gangetic Plain, but almost all the land outside the cities still was subject to some form of control by Hindu chiefs. Even in the Ganges–Yamuna Doab, the Gahadavalas held out against the Turks. Most significantly, the chiefs of Rajasthan had not been permanently subdued.