Sociopolitical and cultural history, A.D. 900-1500.

Contributed articles presented at the National Seminar on State and Society in Pre-modern South India, held in 2002 at Post Graduate Department of History, Sri. C. Achutha Menon Government College, Thrissur on political sociology of medieval South India.

Sociopolitical and cultural history, A.D. 900-1500.

"This study of the Tirunelveli region of Tamil Nadu challenges the conventional view that subsistence, isolation, and immobility characterized village India before modern times. Examining the agrarian history of Tirunelveli during the millennium before 1900, David Ludden shows that peasant communities not only transformed rural society but shaped states and empires, including British India."--GOOGLE BOOKS.

State and Peasant Society in Medieval North India uses a variety of sources--archival records, Indo-Persian court chronic and folk literature --to explore the perception of kingship in the peasant society and its linkages with the changing nature of interaction between the state and the peasant society in medieval north India, especially Mewat. Dwelling on this central theme, the essays in this book delve into a range of issues: the process of state formation in Mewat, the role of state in the socio-economic and religio-cultural transformation of the region's Meo community, the conflictual engagement between the peasant community and state in the late medieval period and the perception of kingship in folktales popular in the peasant society. The book chiefly argues that a nuanced understanding of how the medieval state impacted the peasants' lives can be better arrived at by looking into the subjectivities of their perceptions and experiences.

This is also a truly pan-Indian volume on medieval Indian history as it looks at state forms and social organizations among the Cholas, the Delhi Sultante, the Sultante of Bengal, Himachal, Kumaon and Garhwal, medieval Rajasthanm the Vijayanagar State, Kerala, the Mughal Empire, Marahastra, and the Punjab. The contributors include eminent medievalist

South India underwent a process of tremendous social change in the period between the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. This was characterized by transformation of landholding and production systems; emergence of new jâtis; development of maritime trade, merchant guilds, and towns; and birth of new religious ideas and beliefs. Mapping this shift from ancient to medieval , this volume offers a new understanding of the emergence of medieval state and social formation in south India. Combining his fifty year experience of studying Tamil inscriptions with a nuanced historical rigour, Noboru Karashima rejects the segmentary state model as a category for understanding the Chola state. He argues that the Chola kings tried to build a centralized state apparatus taking control of the East West trade which in turn triggered widespread social change. The author examines Chinese ceramic shreds recently discovered in south India and also translates the description of the Chola state in Chinese dynastic annals to present a new picture of the south Indian state. The book also reviews debates surrounding land relations, caste, and commerce in south India and surveys the socio-political conditions leading to the establishment of the Vijayanagar rule.

This volume explores the process of social changes which unfolded in rural society of early medieval Bengal, especially the formation of stratified land relations and occupational groups which later got systematised as jātis. One of the first books to systematically reconstruct the early history of the region, this book presents a history of the economy, polity, law, and social order of early medieval Bengal through a comprehensive study of land and society. It traces the changing power relations among constituents of rural society and political institutions, and unravels the contradictions growing among them. The author describes the changing forms of agrarian development which were deeply associated with these overarching structures and offers an in-depth analysis of a wide range of textual sources in Sanskrit and other languages, especially contemporary inscriptions pertaining to Bengal. The volume will be an essential resource for researchers and academics interested in the history of Bengal, and the social and economic history of early South Asia.