Abstract
This volume of twelve essays is divided under the following heads: sources and historiography (K.S. Mathew, G.T. Kulkarni, K.K. Sarvestani), identity formation (Kesavan Veluthat, Umesh A. Kadam, R.L. Hangloo, T.T. Mahajan), medieval economy (Ranabir Chakravarty, Sumitra Kulkarni), urban economy (Ruby Maloni, Adhya Bharti Saxena) and gender (Radhika Seshan).
In her introduction Seshan asks: What was ‘medieval’: a time period, an attitude, a state of mind or point of reference? Or even all of them? Again, when can we locate the medieval in Indian history: does it run from 1206 to 1757, from 1000 to 1765 or quite simply, from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries? Is the medieval only ‘Muslim’? Implicit in the introduction is the question: is the medieval period a transitional era in Indian history, to be seen merely an antechamber of the ‘modern’?
Added to the varying definitions and dates is the question of the thematic (religion, ideas, institutions or economy) and spatial (the Dakhin, for example, as compared to the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire) lenses adopted to study the medieval. The same can be said for the Gujarat and Bengal sultanates, as well as for Vijaynagara or India’s Northeast, which are not addressed. In fact, the question arises: did the Northeast experience a medieval period at all? Given the spatial and temporal inconsistencies visible in our understanding of medieval India the possibilities of research become immense (pp. 1–4) and the volume under review, a collection of papers from a seminar held in the History Department of the University of Pune in 2005 as tribute to Professor A.R. Kulkarni, aims at opening up these divergent trends and themes as possibilities for further research.
In the opening chapter of the first section K.S. Mathew questions the notion of periodisation in medieval India, while G.T. Kulkarni and Sarvestani talk of Persian texts as sources. In the second section Veluthat’s and Kadam’s papers deal with regional (Kerala) and ethnic (Maratha) identity-formation respectively, while Hangloo’s and Mahajan’s chapters deal with identity and legitimacy through symbols and ceremonials (Hangloo) and assertions of sovereignty through Sufism and monuments in Khandesh (Mahajan), an area little researched until now, respectively. The focus on regional history is a strong feature of the volume.
The next two sections are titled Medieval Economy and Urban Economy; I am not certain as to whether ‘urban economy’ deserves a separate section, this giving the impression that it is seen in this volume as distinct from the medieval economy. Chakravarti’s and Sumitra Kulkarni’s chapters focus on sea borne traffic in the first section and present two contrasting conclusions: Chakravarti sees a change by 1300 while Kulkarni sees largely a continuity with earlier forms of trade and taxation, but with some minor changes. Both essays underline the significance of the international maritime economy as well as coastal trade to the economy of medieval India. Maloni and Saxena concentrate on the urban economy of Ahmedabad and Haryana respectively in the section on urban economy. Perhaps the two sections with the four articles could have been put under the catchall title of ‘Medieval Economy’ and then sub-divided into maritime and land-based economies? This strategy might have highlighted the many facets of the medieval economy. This is only a suggestion however. Seshan’s stand-alone paper on gender explores the lives of Bhakti saints and upper-class women by taking Gul Badan Begum and the empress Nur Jahan as examples.
It has been somewhat strange for me, reviewing a volume eight years after its publication. The editor and contributors are not to be blamed for this; it is however indisputable that research in medieval India has moved on since 2006 when the book appeared and many of the themes and preoccupations of the contributions appear dated at present. Moreover, some of the debates on the ‘early modern’ that appeared prior to the volume’s publication could have been addressed in the introduction; the following examples should suffice: Victor Lieberman, ‘Local Integration and Eurasian Analogies: Structuring Southeast Asian History, c.1350–c.1830’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 27(3), 1993, pp. 475–572; Victor Lieberman, ed., ‘Special Issue: The Eurasian Context of the Early Modern History of Mainland South East Asia, 1400–1800’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31(3), 1997; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31(3), 1997, pp. 735–62; David Ludden, ‘History Outside Civilization and the Mobility of South Asia’, South Asia (n.s.), Vol. 17(1), 1994, pp. 1–23; Jack A. Goldstone, ‘The Problem of the “Early Modern” World’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 41(3), 1998, pp. 249–84; Peter Van der Veer, ‘The Global History of “Modernity”‘, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 41(3), 1998, pp. 285–94. The debates in these articles could have helped the editor to take a more theoretical stand and also to interrogate more closely the notion of an all-pervasive ‘medieval’, since the thrust of the volume is on the seeds of change embedded within the ‘medieval’.
Also, the notion of the ‘early medieval’ could have been explored in greater detail and the editor could perhaps have placed the papers of the volume in the wider contexts of the ‘early medieval’, ‘medieval’, ‘late medieval’ and even ‘early modernity’. As is well known, the jury is still out as to whether the notion of ‘early’ modernity can be applied to the Indian context at all and also whether it is by any means a desirable lens to adopt in general (Goldstone, 1998; Van der Veer, 1998).
Like any collection of seminar proceedings, the collection is inconsistent in terms of quality. Moreover a conclusion, welding together the many divergent arguments presented in the volume and summing up the lessons learnt from this exercise of stocktaking of the medieval would have been useful and would also have rounded off the volume. Nevertheless, the contributors do take up some broad historiographical issues and suggest new interpretations. The vision of this volume will be useful to students of medieval India, for the concerns over the spatial and temporal boundaries of the medieval remain, even if they are not always addressed directly in the papers that form this collection.