Kings, Farmers and Towns

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT History Class XII (Themes in Indian History Part I), Chapter 2.

The king nobody could name

In the 1830s James Prinsep, an officer in the mint of the East India Company, kept meeting the same puzzle. Coins and inscriptions across the subcontinent mentioned a king called Piyadassi, "pleasant to behold". Nobody knew who he was. Only when other inscriptions linked the title with the name did it become clear that Piyadassi was Asoka, the Mauryan ruler.

That discovery opened up a thousand years of early Indian history. The period from about 600 BCE to 600 CE saw the rise of early states, empires and kingdoms, new ways of farming, and fresh towns. This chapter shows you how historians read that age from stone, copper and coins, and what these sources cannot tell us.

Reading the evidence: inscriptions and coins

An inscription is writing engraved on a hard surface such as stone, metal or pottery. It usually records the achievements, activities or ideas of the people who ordered it. The study of inscriptions is epigraphy, and the study of coins is numismatics. The earliest inscriptions were in Prakrit, and Pali, Tamil and Sanskrit came into use later. Because many inscriptions carry no date, historians use palaeography, the study of the shapes of letters, to place them in time: the letter "a" of about 250 BCE looks different from the same letter of about 500 CE.

Cause → effect: how the scripts were cracked. European scholars worked backwards from the Bengali and Devanagari scripts they knew, and Prinsep completed the reading of Asokan Brahmi in 1838. Most modern Indian scripts descend from Brahmi. Kharosthi, used in the northwest, was read with the help of bilingual coins of the Indo-Greek kings, which carried the ruler's name in both Greek and Kharosthi (Apollodotus is one example). Prinsep identified the language as Prakrit.

Asoka's inscriptions rarely use the name "Asoka". They use titles, devanampiya ("beloved of the gods") and piyadassi. Matching content, style, language and palaeography across many inscriptions confirms that one ruler issued them. Most are in Prakrit and in the Brahmi script, though some in the northwest are in Kharosthi, and those in Afghanistan are in Aramaic and Greek.

Sixteen states and a turning point

The sixth century BCE was a turning point. Early states, cities, iron, coinage, and the rise of Buddhism and Jainism all appear around then. Early Buddhist and Jaina texts list sixteen mahajanapadas, "great states". A janapada is a land where a jana (a people, clan or tribe) settles. The most often named are Vajji, Magadha, Koshala, Kuru, Panchala, Gandhara and Avanti.

Most were monarchies, but some, called ganas or sanghas, were oligarchies: power was shared by a group of rajas. Both Mahavira and the Buddha belonged to such ganas, and the Vajji sangha is the best known. Each mahajanapada had a fortified capital. From about the sixth century BCE Brahmanas composed Sanskrit Dharmasutras that set norms for rulers (ideally Kshatriyas) and prescribed taxes from cultivators, traders and artisans.

Why Magadha won. Between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE Magadha, in present-day Bihar, became the most powerful state. Several things combined.

The capital moved from Rajagaha (modern Rajgir), a fortified settlement among hills, to Pataliputra (modern Patna) in the fourth century BCE, a site that commanded the Ganga routes.

Pause and predict: a historian reads in a Buddhist text that Magadha's kings were ambitious. Why should she be careful about treating this as the whole truth?

Check your answer: The text was written by Buddhist or Jaina authors who judged kings by their own beliefs, so it reflects a viewpoint. Historians test such statements against other sources, such as inscriptions and archaeology.

The Mauryas: an empire of five centres

Chandragupta Maurya founded the Mauryan empire around 321 BCE, with control reaching Afghanistan and Baluchistan. His grandson Asoka (c. 272 or 268 to 231 BCE) conquered Kalinga, the coastal region of present-day Odisha. The empire lasted about 150 years and did not cover the whole subcontinent. It ended in 185 BCE.

Historians use five kinds of source for the Mauryas: sculpture, the account of Megasthenes (a Greek ambassador at Chandragupta's court), the Arthashastra (parts attributed to Kautilya or Chanakya), later Buddhist, Jaina and Puranic texts, and above all Asoka's inscriptions on rocks and pillars.

Asoka's dhamma. Asoka proclaimed a code of conduct: respect for elders, generosity to Brahmanas and renouncers, kindness to slaves and servants, and respect for other religions. He appointed special officers, the dhamma mahamattas, to spread the message.

Two views. For the exam: Dhamma was Asoka's ethical message of toleration and kindness, spread through inscriptions and officers. Another reading: Historians such as Romila Thapar have also read dhamma as a political strategy: a common code that could help hold together a large, diverse empire with many beliefs and peoples. Both readings rest on the same inscriptions.

After the Mauryas: new kingdoms

By the second century BCE new chiefdoms and kingdoms appeared. In the south the Chola, Chera and Pandya chiefdoms of Tamilakam became stable. A chief was a powerful man who received gifts, not taxes, and redistributed them; he had no regular army or officials. Tamil Sangam texts describe these chiefs.

The Kushana title devaputra was possibly borrowed from Chinese emperors, who called themselves sons of heaven. Colossal statues of Kushana kings and a shrine in Afghanistan show that they presented themselves as godlike.

Praise in verse. Court poets wrote prashastis, compositions in praise of kings. The best known is the Prayaga Prashasti (also called the Allahabad Pillar Inscription), written in Sanskrit by Harishena for Samudragupta. It describes him as a king without a rival on earth and compares him to gods such as Kubera, Varuna, Indra and Yama.

Pause and predict: is a prashasti a neutral report of Samudragupta's reign?

Check your answer: No. It was written by his court poet to praise him, so it shows how a king wished to be seen. A historian reads it with other evidence.

Farmers: tools, water and land

Between about 600 BCE and 600 CE farming changed in three main ways.

The plough was not used in the semi-arid parts of Punjab and Rajasthan until the twentieth century, and hilly areas in the northeast and centre used hoe farming.

The Sudarshana lake. Near Girnar in Gujarat, an artificial reservoir was built under the Mauryas. A rock inscription records that the Shaka ruler Rudradaman repaired it in about the second century CE, using his own resources and without imposing a tax. A Gupta ruler repaired it again around the fifth century.

Who farmed? Rural society was unequal: landless labourers, small peasants and large landholders. Pali texts use gahapati for the owner and head of a household. Tamil Sangam texts speak of vellalar (large landowners), uzhavar (ploughmen) and adimai (slaves).

Land grants. From the early centuries CE, kings made grants of land, mostly to Brahmanas or religious institutions, recorded on copper plates, often in Sanskrit. An agrahara was land granted to a Brahmana, usually exempt from land revenue and royal dues, with the right to collect dues from local people. Prabhavati Gupta, daughter of Chandragupta II and married into the Vakataka family, granted the village of Danguna in this way. It is notable because Sanskrit legal texts did not allow women independent access to land.

Two views. For the exam: Land grants are seen as a way for kings to bring new areas under cultivation. Another reading: Some historians argue that they show kings losing control over their samantas and having to win allies by giving away land, so that grants were a sign of weakness. Historians still debate which reading fits better.

Towns, guilds and trade

Towns appear from about the sixth century BCE. Pataliputra stood on a river, Ujjayini on a land route, Puhar on the coast, and Mathura was a commercial, cultural and political hub. Archaeologists find a fine pottery called Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) and ornaments and tools of gold, silver, copper, bronze, ivory, glass, shell and terracotta.

Short votive inscriptions of about the second century BCE name donors and sometimes their occupations: washing folk, weavers, scribes, carpenters, potters, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, officials, religious teachers, merchants and kings. They also mention shrenis, guilds of craft producers and merchants that procured raw materials, regulated production and marketed the finished goods.

Trade routes crossed the subcontinent and linked it to Central Asia, East and North Africa, West Asia, Southeast Asia and China. Successful merchants were called masattuvan in Tamil and setthis or satthavahas in Prakrit. Pepper, textiles and medicinal plants went to the Roman empire across the Arabian Sea. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (c. 1st century CE) is a Greek guide to these sailing routes.

Cause → effect: why the coins thin out. Gold coin finds taper off after about the sixth century CE.

Two views. For the exam: Some historians link the fall in gold coins to the collapse of the Western Roman empire, which reduced long distance trade and the prosperity of regions that had gained from it. Another reading: Others say that new towns and trade networks were emerging, and coins may simply have been in circulation rather than being hoarded, so the finds do not prove a crisis.

What inscriptions cannot tell us

Inscriptions have limits. Letters may be faint, damaged or missing, words can be ambiguous, some inscriptions are still undeciphered and many are lost. Above all they show the viewpoint of whoever ordered them. Everyday farming and ordinary joys and sorrows are rarely recorded. So historians combine inscriptions with texts, coins and archaeology.

Timeline

Key people, places and terms

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Bricks, Beads and Bones is the age with a script we cannot read; here the writing can be read, but it tells a ruler's story.
• Next: Kinship, Caste and Class turns from kings to the society in which they ruled, using a text, the Mahabharata.
• Related: Thinkers, Beliefs and Buildings covers the religious ideas of the same age, including Buddhism and Jainism.