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"A Passage to India": Temples, Merchants and the Ocean Author(s): Hermann Kulke Source: Journal of the Economic
and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 36, No. 2, Special 35th Anniversary Issue in Honour of the Founders of JESHO, Claude Cahen and W. F. Leemans (1993), pp. 154-180 Published by: BRILL Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3632507 . Accessed: 26/04/2013 10:57
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Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. XXXVI
"A PASSAGE TO INDIA": TEMPLES, MERCHANTS AND THE OCEAN

to Indian Studies in JESHO with Particular to (Contributions Reference Economic History)*
BY
HERMANN KULKE
(Kiel)
India has had its due share in JESHO. Second only to the Near East, India is represented by altogether some ninety-seven articles. Chronologically, they cover the whole period from the Indus Civilization through "the coming of the Aryans", to early historical India, classical, early medival, medieval (or "Muslim") India and to the consolidation of the East India Company in the late 18th century. The scope of various Indian topics covered by JESHO in its first thirty-five volumes is equally impressive. Before trying to summarize some of these contributions under a few selected subjects of Indian economic and social history, two special topics will be taken up. They may highlight both the importance of JESHO's contributions to ongoing debates, and the intensity with which such debates were taken up in JESHO itself. These controversal topics are the role of Indian feudalism and the so-called "Dravidian hypothesis" of the origin of certain Sumerian names of distant trading centers. With regard to Indian feudalism, JESHO can rightly claim to have contributed to, or even partly initiated, this most important debate in contemporaryIndian historiography. In 1956, two years before the
* In this case, the well-known title "A Passage to India" has been adopted from Prabhati Mukherji's article on the migration of the Indo-Aryans to India (vol. 29 (1986) 87-88).
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first issue of JESHO appeared, D. D. Kosambi had already published the first two articles ever written on Indian feudalism and his famous book Introductionto the Study of Indian History, in which he elaborated on his concept of "feudalism from above" and "feudalism from below". This book was reviewed in the first volume ofJESHO by A. L. Basham, one of the founding board members ofJESHO and the academic guide of the temporarily London-based new school of Indian historians. 1) It is worth quoting at some length from Basham's review, as it precisely predicted the further course of the debate on Indian feudalism and on Kosambi's role in this debate: "Kosambi's book will find numerous critics both in India and elsewhere. Many Indian historians, writing in a period of resurgent nationalism, will be horrified at Prof. Kosambi's attacks on many dogmas cherished in the undergraduate classes of Indian universities. Marxists of the orthodox school may well find fault with several of his conclusions. Many passages in the book will be found irritating by non-Marxists while professional Indologists will be quick to point out errors in detail. In fact the book will please no one... Nevertheless we believe that this book is in its class, a great book." In the following years, JESHO published two more of Kosambi's papers on Indian feudalism which too did not tally with the mainstream of the early phase of the orthodox Marxist debate on feudalism in India. His paper on Indian feudal trade charters emphasized the administrative decentralization through sdmantachiefs whose rise in the post-Gupta period accelerated the conversion of communal property into feudal property2). His second article on social and economic aspects of the Bhagavadgita stressed certain cultural values, particularly bhaktz, fostered by India's medieval feudal regimes3). Kosambi may have to
1) A. L. Basham, "A New Interpretation of Indian History" [Review of D D
333-347. 2) D D. Kosambi, "Indian Feudal Trade Charters", 2 (1959) 281-293 3) D D Kosambi, "Social and Economic Aspects of the Bhagavadgita", 4 (1961) 198-224.
Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, Bombay 1956], 1 (1958)
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be regarded as the first historian to draw attention to the political dimension of bhaktifaith when he wrote: "To hold this type of society and state together, the best religion is one which emphasizes the role of bhakti, personal faith." Kosambi's emphasis on the political and cultural dimensions of Indian feudalism-as manifested in the role of the Sdmantasand the bhaktireligion-was not the primary concern of the orthodox Marxists and their contributions to the debate on Indian feudalism. The first contribution to the still prevailing Marxist interpretation of Indian feudalism, was published too, in the first volume ofJESHO by R. S. Sharma, a student of A. L. Basham. In his seminal article on the origins of feudalism in India, Sharma pointed out that the land grants to Brahmins and religious institutions have to be regarded as the key diagnostic feature of Indian feudalism4). The stepwise endowment of the donees in the post-Gupta period with juridical and administrative powers, immunities from taxes, the right to extort forced labour from the villagers etc, all this led to the rise of a class of rural landowners as the backbone of Indian feudal society. The process of feudalization was accelerated by urban decline, paucity of coins, retrogression of trans-local trade and the emergence of a selfsufficient local economy. In a second article Sharma rounded off his concept of Indian feudalism through a detailed study of land grants to vassals and officials in the eleventh and twelfth centuries5). These grants "led to the emergence of a hereditary military class, living on fiefs assigned to its members." According to Sharma this new development, which in India was not found in earlier times, closely resembled the emergence of hereditary military families in medieval Europe. Sharma's two papers, published in JESHO, clearly laid the foundation of the concept of Indian feudalism. In 1965 he included the
4) R. S. Sharma, "The Origins of Feudalism in India", 1 (1958) 297-328. 5) R. S. Sharma, "Land Grants to Vassals and Officials in Northern India (c.A.D 1000-1200)", 4 (1961) 70-105
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enlarged versions of these articles as key chapters in his book Indian Feudalism, which still forms the standard text of the "Indian Feudalism School". Further contributions of Sharma and his colleagues in other journals supplemented, rather than modified, the concept of Indian feudalism as laid down for the first time in JESHO, and this was to dominate the field till the mid-eighties. JESHO contains several other important papers which either followed or rejected Sharma's concept. Already in 1963 L. Gopal wrote about "quasi-manorial rights" in ancient India6). He compiled a large number of epigraphical references to the practice of granting land together with its inhabitants, thus strengthening one of the major props of Sharma's concept. N. Karashima's paper on the nayakasas lease-holders of temple land in South India is of particular interest'). Even though its author may not be regarded as a "member" of the Indian feudalism school, his results are definitely supporting its concept. Karashima shows how the ndyakas(a group of late medieval local magnates in South India) were able to strengthen their local power through becoming hereditary lease-holders of temple land. The new emerging network of land owners and temples contributed considerably to the decline of the central authority of the argument thus confirms Vijayanagara empire. Karashima's Sharma's theory of the rise of a class of landed intermediaries as the major cause of feudalization in India. An article by Upendra Thakur on ancient and early medieval Indian mint towns also supports, at least indirectly, one of Sharma's causes of feudalizations). On the basis of his exhaustive study of the available evidence on India's preMuslim mint towns, Thakur detects a "more or less uninterrupted continuity from the third century B.C. down to the thirteenth century AD." However, out of the fifteen known mint towns, twelve belong to the pre-Gupta period, two to the Gupta and post-Gupta period and
6) Lalanji Gopal, "Quasi-Manorial Rights in Ancient India", 6 (1963) 296-308. 7) Noboru Karashima, "Nayaks as Lease-Holders of Temple Land", 19 (1976) 227-232. 8) Upendra Thakur, "Early Indian Mints", 16 (1973) 265-297
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only one (Kadakal) to the 11th to 14th centuries. The study of mints thus indirectly corroborates Sharma's controversial hypothesis of the paucity of coins in the period of early medieval India, the period of Sharma's Indian feudalism. Upendra's son, V. K. Thakur, in a paper on trade and towns in early medieval Bengal comes up with a more direct support of the Indian feudalism concept9). He rightly points out that so far only 350 coins are known to have been found in Bengal for a period of nine hundred years from the Guptas to the Sultanate period. Coins therefore did not form the basis of Bengal's early medieval commercial exhange10). However, as regards the alleged urban decay during this period, Thakur sees "unmistakingly archaeological evidence for a continuation of urban tradition" in early medieval Bengal. He tries to explain this contradictory evidence with a change of the socio-economic functions of the surving urban centres. He assumes that they had become religious centres rather than centres of economic activities and therefore concludes that "even in a feudal milieu, urban centres with no commercial or mercantile associations can flourish". However, his assumption that these religious urban centres "hardly served any positive economic interest of contemporary society" was to be contradicted by other contributions in JESHO (see below). JESHO also contains at least one of the early clearly dissenting votes against the concept of Indian feudalism. Buddha Prakash's paper on the genesis and character of the landed aristocracy in ancient India rejects most of Sharma's hypotheses "). Thus he rightly points out that in early medieval India (the alleged heyday of Indian feudalism) the institution of commendation, the personal bonds
9) Vijay Kumar Thakur, "Trade and Towns in Early Medieval Bengal (c.A.D.600-1200)", 30 (1987) 196-220. 10) M. P Joshi and C. W Brown register for a Himalayan region the total absense of coins in the post-Kushana times up to the 10th century- "Some Dynamics of Indo-Tibetan Trade through Uttarakhanda (Kumaon-Garhwal), India", 30 (1987) 303-317 11) Buddha Prakash, "A Debated Question: The Genesis and Character of Landed Aristocracy in Ancient India", 14 (1971) 196-220.
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between lord and chiefs, was unknown. Moreover he postulates that during this period trade and commerce did not decline, wide circulation of coins is still attested in literary sources and spatial and social mobility continued to exist. Moreover, he comes to the conclusion that to link the practice of making land grants to officers "with the emergence of a feudal and manorial set-up in parts of India is historically unsound". The whole spectrum of different issues of this debate, as seen by the proponents of Indian feudalism, is again taken up by R. S. Sharma and D. N. Jha in 1974 in a comprehensive article on modern Indian historiography, dealing with British "imperial", nationalistic and Indian Indian Marxist contemporary historiography 2). JESHO thus has become very directly involved in the formulation of the concept of Indian feudalism which doubtlessly has to be regarded not only as the most important but certainly also the most controversial debate in modern Indian historiography. Romila Thaper's "Dravidian hypothesis" evoked another protracted debate on an Indian topic in JESHO 13). In her article published in 1975 she suggested new "possible identifications" of Melubba, Dilmun and Makan, three toponyms which were frequently mentioned in Sumerian and post-Sumerian cuneiform sources as distant trading places/regions. Whereas these names are generally identified as the region of the Indus civilization, Bahrein and the Balutchistan coast respectively, Thapar suggests instead, southern coastal Gujerat, Saurashtra and Sindh/Balutchistan. Her new approach is based on the widely accepted hypothesis that western and northwestern India at the time of the Indus civilization was inhabited by a Dravidian population. Accordingly, Thapar tries to identify the above toponyms etymologically as Dravidian or protoDravidian place names in western India and to substantiate her identifications through archaeological evidence, particularly from Lothal
12) R. S. Sharma and D N Jha, "The Economic History of India up to A.D 1200: Trends and Prospects", 17 (1974) 48-91. 13) Romila Thapar, "A Possible Identification of Melubba, Dilmun and Makan", 18 (1957) 1-42.
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and Saurashtra. Her most controversial identification is her "equation" of Dilmun with Saurashtra against the established theory of Dilmun being Bahrein. Etymologically, however, her protoDravidian hypothesis sounds particularly convincing in this case. She suggests that the Sumerian description of Dilmun as "the pure land" may have had its origin in proto-Dravidian telman "the pure earth", which in turn may have been Sanskritized as during the su(au)rds.tra first millennium B.C. As expected, the reaction to Thapar's hypothesis was prompt. Already in the same volume D. K. Chakravarti rejected Thapar's thesis with archaeological arguments14). Thapar's emphasis on western India as the location of all the three places would suggest a degree of direct contacts between Sumer and western India which "is not suggested by archaeological evidence". Apart from the so-called "Persian Gulf seal", which, after all, is a surface find, the archaeological data do not support any direct India-Mesopotamia contact. And arguing against Thapar's reliance on S. R. Rao, the excavator of Lothal, Chakravarti emphasized that "the entire point of 'established trade contacts' between Lothal and Susa is unproven". He therefore concludes that whatever basis Thapar's hypothesis may have, "the existing archaeological evidence from west India is not one of them". Three years later the debate flared up fully with an article published by Elisabeth C. L. During Caspers together with A. Govindankutty15). During Caspers, who herself in several articles has always strongly argued in favour Bahrein's identification as Dilmun16), strictly rejects Thapar's Dravidian
14) Dilip K. Chakravarti, "Gujerat Harappan Connection with West Asia: A Reconstruction of the Evidence", 18 (1975) 337-342. 15) Elisabeth C. L. During Caspers and A. Govindkutty, "R. Thapar's Dravidian Hypothesis for the Location of Melubba, Dilmun and Makan. A Critical Reconstruction", 21 (1978) 113-145. 16) E.g.. "Sumer, Coastal Arabia and the Indus Village in Protoliterate and Early Dynastic Eras. Supporting Evidence for a Cultural Linkage", 22 (1979) 121-135; "Dilmun: International Burial Ground", 27 (1984) 1-32; "A CopperBronze Animal in Harappan Style from Bahrain: Evidence of Mercantile Interaction", 30 (1987) 30-46; "The Indus Valley 'Unicorn'. A Near Eastern Connection?", 34 (1991) 312-350.
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hypothesis. On the basis of evidence from cuneiform texts and archaeological findings, she draws the conclusion that "so far we have found no single scrap of archaeological evidence or any convincing linguistic ground to corroborate Romila Thapar's identifications". In a rejoinder in 1983, Thapar reproaches During Caspers and Govindankutty for having "been so carried away by their enthusiasm to prove me wrong on every count that at times they are assailing not what I have said but what is assumed that I have said" "). Thapar remarks that the point at issue of the debate is viewing the problem from the two ends of the spectrum, i.e. from the ancient Near Eastern sources or from the Indian evidence. In view of a possible Dravidian population of the Indus Civilization, historians are confronted with the probability that proto-Dravidian toponyms may have been translated both into Sumerian and-later-into Indo-Aryan. As a more recent example, she refers to Puliyur ("tiger village"), the original name of Chidambaram, which later became Vyighrapura in Sanskrit. With regard to the identification of Dilmun as Saurasthra, Thapar points out that "had it been a single identification it might have been dismissed as coincidence but in the context of the total argument of other identifications it remains enigmatic". And with regard to the other identifications, she reminds her critics that W. L. Leemans too had suggested to search for Melubba in coastal Gujerat18). Another important possible evidence of the Dravidians' presence in Western India and their relationship with Melubba is the term mleccha which is frequently used since late Vedic time for denoting non-Aryans. Its Pali rendering milakka or milakkhuis certainly the closest known linguistic form of Melubba. In her first paper Thapar therefore rightly had raised the question as to whether the original mlecchascould have been the proto-Dravidian speakers of
17) Romila Thapar, "The Dravidian Hypothesis for the Identification of Melubba, Dilmun and Makan", 26 (1983) 178-192. 18) W. F Leemans, "Old Babylonian Letters and Economic History A Review Article in a Disgression on Foreign Trade", 11 (1968) 171-226.
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Melubba, an assumption which meanwhile is widely accepted. But in her rejoinder Thapar surprisingly appears to be reluctant to continue with this interpretation, as she wonders why, then, this term does not occur in the Rigveda, which was composed in northwestern India and which often refers to a variety of non-Aryan peoples. In the same year that Thapar published her rejoinder, B. Krishnamurty wrote a short note on the Dravidian aspect of her hypothesis'9). He accepts her Dravidian reconstructions of Makan and Melubba and emphasizes that "the word Dilmun should present even fewer problems from the Dravidian point of view". The debate thus appears to remain as controversial as it began when Romila Thapar published her first paper in 1975. As may be seen from other contributions in JESHO20), Dilmun remains Bahrein, at least for the time being. Whatever may be the final outcome of this debate-perhaps after the decipherment of the Indus script-it drew again our attention to the even more controversial question of who were the creators of the Indus cities: The Dravidians or-as more and more fundamentalist North Indian historians appear to be convinced-the Indo-Aryans? from these two debates on Indian subjects a few more Apart major general topics emerged from the successive publications of thematically related papers. These focal points include topics such as urbanization, studies on external, mainly maritime, trade and on irrigation. With regard to urbanization, JESHO contains contributions to the three major phases of post-Harappan urbanization, i.e. the early and classical period with its important towns in the Ganges valley"), the early medieval period of alleged urban
Makan", 26 (1983) 191-192.
19) Bh. Krishnamurti, "The Dravidian Identification of Melubba, Dilmun and "The Melubba
Village. Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millennium Mesopotania", 20 (1977) 129-165. This paper contains the interesting cuneiform references to a "holder of a Melubba ship", to an "Melubba interpreter" and to the "Melubba village"
20) Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola and Robert H. Brunswig,
303-307, Steven G. Darian, "The Economic History of the Ganges to the End of
109. See also R. S. Sharma, "Material Background of Vedic Warfare", 9 (1966)
21) GeorgeErdosy,"The Originof Citiesin the GangesValley", 27 (1984)81-
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decay22) and on the culmination of urban development in premodern India under Muslim domination23). Moreover, contributions to JESHO included several important papers to various aspects of India's medieval temple cities which in recent decades have become the focus of intensive studies. G. Erdosy's paper on the early Ganges valley cities may have to be regarded as one of the more recent comprehensive attempts to define the causes of their origin in a theoretical historical framework. Though himself an archaeologist, he rejects the utility of traits lists in determining the growth and nature of early cities. Instead he suggests a systemic approach and the need to look at the earliest urban centers of northern India as agents of socio-political and economic changes and to study the causes of their emergence accordingly. He therefore links their rise with the emergence of the janapada states towards the mid-first millennium B.C. The massive fortifications of several early capitals were caused by the protracted and often internecine rivalries between the janapadas and testify the organizing capacity of the janapada elites to collect and control surplus of raw materials and to extract manpower from the countryside. The early cities were therefore fortifications with a citadel and with a cluster of settlements without, rather then having densely populated quarters within. Signs of maturing urbanization appeared only between 500 and 300 B.C. "with a somewhat abrupt appearance of flourishing urban elements around 300 B.C.". This sudden rise of the classical cities is attributed by Erdosy to the vastly enhanced politico-economic capacity of the Maurya state as depicted particularly in Kautilya's Artha?'stra24). In a further step of hypothetical reasoning, he points
the Gupta Times", 13 (1970) 62-87; D K. Chakravarti, "Prehistoric Ganges Basin", 15 (1972) 213-219 22) Vijaya Kumar Thakur, see note 9 23) Hamida Khatoon Naqvi, "Progress of Urbanization in United Provinces, 1550-1800", 10 (1967) 81-101, B. G Gokhale, "Ahmadabad in the XVIIth Century", 12 (1969) 187-197 24) For studies on the Arthasidstrain JESHO see the following papers: F Wilhelm, "Das Wirtschaftssystem des Kautiliya Arthasastra", 2 (1959) 294-313;
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out that "there is good evidence for crediting the Aryan intruders (of the central Ganges valley) with causing the instability which set the stage for the rise of cities." A particularly characteristic manifestation of early medieval Indian urbanization is of the form of the vast temple complexes, some of them developing into veritable temple cities. Previous studies had viewed temples simply as objects of art history and religion. JESHO contains one of the earliest contributions to a radically new interpretation of these temple cities and sacred places. In his article on the famous Rajardajesvaratemple at Tanjore, G. W. Spencer emphasized its function as a nodal point of the political structure and the royal authority of the emerging "imperial" Chola state25). According to him the authority of the Chola kings was based on the manipulation of pre-existing non-political institutions rather than on the building up of a solid state bureaucracy. These pre-existing institutions were e.g. village assemblies, craft guilds "and above all temples and their ritual communities". Spencer came to the important conclusion, expressed in the following frequently cited quote: "in order to understand the importance to Ra-jaraja of patronage to the Tanjore temple, we must recognize that such patronage, far from representing the self-glorification of a despotic ruler, was in fact a method adopted by an ambitious ruler to enhance his very uncertain power." In a most recently published article J. Heitzman took up again the study of the imperial temple of the Cholas at Tanjore26). He too emphasizes the political role of the temple complexes as major instruments of ritual
E. Briicker, "Grundsaitzeder Besteuerung im Kautilya-Artha astra", 15 (1972) 183-202; idem, "Offentlicher Haushalt, staatlicheWirtschaftsplanungund Finanzkontrolle im Kautilya-ArthaS?stra", 23 (1980) 312-319; A. M. Samazvantsev, "Some Remarks Regarding a Term of dasakalpa 29 m the Kautillya Artha?.stra", (1986) 190-197. Eleventh 25) George W Spencer, "Religious Networks and Royal Influence inm Century South India", 12 (1969) 42-56. 26) James Heitzman, "Ritual Polity and Economy The Transactional Network of an Imperial Temple in Medieval South India", 34 (1991) 23-54.
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integration and economic development of early medieval states of India. In a detailed survey of the famous corpus of more than fifty lengthy temple inscriptions of Rajaraja's time Heitzman analyses the major components of the transactional network of the temple. It operated through a highly sophisticated system of ritual-economic exchanges between the temple complex and its hinterland, involving men, material goods and religio-ideological messages. Of particular interest in the case of the Tanjore temple is its complicated but most revealing system of the recruitment and economic support of ritual specialists (priests, temple dancers etc.) and service workers (accountants, washermen etc.) by altogether more than 300 villages, distributed mainly in the central core but also located in some strategically important places in peripheral regions. As in most other cases, the temple derived a large amount of its annual income through allocation of land taxes by the king. Agricultural villages paid their taxes in kind whereas commercial communities (nagara) remitted theirs in gold to the temple treasury. But South Indian temples in general and Tanjore in particular are known for another transactional network, combining the maintenance of the temple complex and the economic development of its hinterland. Courtiers, military groups and the treasury arranged reinvestment of the annual income of the temple through deposits made with brahmana villages. The assemblies of these villages were responsible for investing the money to provide the temple with an annual return of 12,5%. A major emphasis of Heitzman's paper is a detailed analysis of the allocations and the conditions under which these transactions were carried out. Heitzman's study leaves no doubt that these transactions aimed at the economic uplift of the core area of the Chola state and the direct association of the core with the state temple and its imperial cult. Its outflowing message was to identify the royal creator of the temple as the greatest human being of the kingdom and as the maintainer of the cosmic order. According to Heitzman the transactional
network of the temple brought Rajaraja and numerous local leaders system headed by the king Heitzman into a single administrative
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therefore concludes that "this ideological system provided an avenue for political affiliation within extended political orders." In another important recent contribution to the field of temple city studies, P. S. Kanaka Durga and Y. A. Sudhakar Reddy emphasize the function of the sacred places as integrators of various pastoral and tribal communities in the state27). In a case study, they analyse the integration of the tribal group of the B6yas into the economy and ritual of the Drakshrama temple complex in coastal Andhra Pradesh in the period from 1038 to 1458. The process of their integration operated through the donation of land and cows for the maintenance of perpetual lamps at the Drakshrama temple. These cows and the regular supply of ghee to the temple were entrusted to members of the B6ya community. In altogether 275 epigraphically registered donations of the above mentioned period, 13,440 cows were transferred to the temple and entrusted to a total of 882 B6yas. From them 139 B6yas are explicitly listed as custodians of cows whereas 40 are referred to as "commanders" (adupunu), obviously being in charge of their supervision and of the regular supply of ghee to the temple. The status of the B6yas was raised from that of outcastes to Siidras. But the integration of the B6yas did not end in the precincts of the temple. Since the 13th century some of them entered the "state service" as administrators (adhikari) of velanddu "districts" and in a few cases Boyas were even promoted to the ranks of local Ndyaka leaders and Sdmantachiefs. Another result makes this study quite revealing. The histograms of the frequency of donations to the temple shows a clear correspondence with the rise of the "Imperial Gafigas" of Kalinga during which Draksharama became a bone of contention between the Gafigas and their arch-enemies, the Cholas. Far from suffering from these struggles, Draksharama obviously profited as a legitimizer of both contending parties and their competing claims.
27) P S. Kanaka Durga and Y A. Sudhakar Reddy, "Kings, Temples and Legitimation of Autochthonous Communities. A Case Study of a South Indian Temple", 35 (1992) 144-166.
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A recently published paper on weavers of South India contains another interesting piece of information on the importance of temple cities for weaving guilds and textile production28). Even though the activities of weaving-guilds can be traced back to the period of the Cholas, their concentration in temple cities appears to have become more frequent under Vijayanagara. V. Ramaswami quotes, as a particularly striking example of this temple-oriented economic policy, an inscription of Tirupati dated 1538. It registers an agreement between cloth and yarn-merchants and imposed certain regulations on weavers. The inscription concludes with the explicit order that these regulations have to be communicated "to every Hindu village and Muslim dwelling (of weavers), every cloth merchant and agent for strict observance of application in Tirupati, Kanchipuram (another temple city famous for its excellent weaving) and other parts of the South." The concentration of weaving-guilds in temple cities and clusters of weaving villages thus existed in South India already in precolonial times. contains several articles on India's premodern JESHO to gold mining29), iron development, e.g. technological production30), cotton manufacture and textiles31), sugar making32), irrigation33) and ship building34). Moreover, a comprehensive review
28) Vijay Ramaswami, "The Genesis and Historical Role of the MasterWeavers in South Indian Textile Production", 28 (1985) 294-325. 29) F R. Allchin, "Upon the Antiquity and Methods of Gold Mining min Ancient India", 5 (1962) 195-211. 30) S. D. Singh, "Iron in Ancient India", 5 (1962) 212-216; D D Kosambi, "Beginning of the Iron Age in India", 6 (1963) 309-318. 31) Lalanji Gopal, "Textiles in Ancient India", 4 (1961) 53-69; D. Schlingloff, "Cotton Manufacture in Ancient India", 17 (1974) 81-90. 32) Lalanji Gopal, "Sugar-Making in Ancient India", 7 (1964) 57-72. 33) B. D Chattopadhyaya, "Irrigation in Early Medieval Rajasthan", 16 (1973) 298-316; Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, "Water Works and Irrigation System in India during Pre-Mughal Times", 29 (1986) 52-77. 34) Archibald Lewis, "Maritime Skills in the Indian Ocean 1363-1500", 16 (1973) 238-264 (with an excellent bibliography); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "A Note on Narsapur Peta: A 'Syncretic' Ship Building Center in South India, 1570-1700", 31 (1988) 305-310.
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article sums up the state of research in the early seventies35). All these papers contributed considerably to the extension of our knowledge about a subject which for a long time was one of the most neglected topics of Indian history. Of particular relevance are the studies on iron and irrigation as they pertain to sustained debates in their respective fields. The distribution of iron-ores and the beginning of the Iron Age in India and its impact on socio-economic and political development is taken up in a comprehensive study by D. K. Chakravarti36). On the basis of his survey of India's twenty places/regions of iron ores, he argues against two widely held assumptions, firstly, against the diffusionist concept that the beginning of India's iron metallurgy was directly influenced by developments in a single center, i.e. the Anatolian plateau, and secondly, that "the large-scale growth of Iron Age settlements in the Ganges Valley depended on the control over and exploitation of ore-deposits of eastern India". His survey reveals that iron metallurgy in inner India (Nagda II: ca 1100 B.C.) was earlier than that of India's northwestern borderlands. Further, the widespread distribution of iron ores in the subcontinent underlines the fallacy of the latter assumption which links the process of early state formation in northern India directly with the control over eastern India's iron ores. Irrigation is of particular importance for Indian history and historiography. In India, the ancestral home of Marx's "Oriental Despot" whose sole productive role was supposed to increase production (and thus revenues too) through large-scale irrigation projects, it has become commonplace to play down or even completely deny royal or state initiative in irrigation works. In this deadlock, two authors came forward with new material and thoughts for an urgently needed new approach to this debate. B. D. Chattopadhyaya undertook an exhaustive study of the territorial distribution of diffferent
35) Amita Ray and Dilip K. Chakravarti, "Studies in Ancient Technology and Production: A Review", 18 (1975) 219-232. 36) D K. Chakravarti, "Distribution of Iron Ores and the Archaeological Evidence of Early Iron in India", 20 (1977) 166-184.
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irrigation devices in Rajasthan and their relationship with particular crop productions"37). Moreover, he emphasized irrigation organization as part of the agrarian structure. On the basis of his survey he detected clear indications for agrarian extension through royal initiative in irrigation works as "grants of irrigational facilities emanated largely from rulers and officials". In a summary of his findings on early medieval Rajasthan, Chattopadhyaya therefore concludes that the organizational aspects of irrigation works undertaken by an emerging socio-political system "could assume a significance which would be absent in a different historical context". Chattopadhyaya's findings in early medieval Rajasthan are fully corroborated by I. H. Siddiqui's article on water works and irrigation systems in the time of the Delhi Sultanate38). The construction of cisterns, tanks and artificial lakes undertaken by the early Sultans of Delhi appears to have served mainly for the embellishment of their capitals. The construction of large-scale artificial irrigation canals outside the capital began under Alauddin Khalji, apparently in connection with his far-reaching administrative and economic reforms. Siddiqui's quotation from a contemporary source is particularly revealing in this context: "any neglect shown by the state in keeping them (the canals) intact, would ruin the cultivation and the peasantry at large" (Ain-ul Mulk Mahru). Irrigation works, and in particular the construction of irrigation canals, appear to have reached their culmination in the mid-fourteenth century when Firoz Shah tried to consolidate again the north Indian power base of the Sultanate after two generations of disastrous imperial expansion. Siddiqui refers at length to Barani who described Firuz Shah's impressive efforts to improve the economic conditions in the core area of this Sultanate through the construction of two canals, linking the Ganges and Yamuna. It is astonishing to hear from Siddiqui that these canals (of a length of 100 and 120 miles) so far seem to have escaped the notice of
37) B. D Chattopadhyaya, see note 33 38) I. H. Siddiqui, see note 33
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scholars. Even though Chattopadhyaya and Siddiqui prudently avoid any attempt "to revive the sensative polemic on the " 'hydraulic society' per se" (Chattopadhyaya), their findings certainly have a bearing on our knowledge of the organizational capacity of the much-maligned premodern state in India. India's relations and trade with various regions of the Eurasian continent may be taken as a final example of those focal points of research which emerged in the course of time from a series of contents-related contributions to JESHO. Especially in the field of India's "foreign relations", JESHO covers chronologically the whole range from the Indus valley civilization up to European domination of the Indian Ocean. Much has already been said about India's earliest relations with west Asia in connection with Romila Thapar's controversial "Dravidian hypothesis". During Caspers contributed altogether four more papers on various aspects of India's earliest relations with coastal Arabia (particularly Bahrein) and Sumer39). Moreover, the "Parpola brothers" and R. H. Brunswig wrote a paper on the "Melubba village" as a case study of possible acculturation of Harappan traders in Mesopotamia40) and M. J. Shendge reasoned about possible consequences of Sumer's relations with the Indus civilization for the invention of writing41). The classical period of Indo-Greek history and Indo-Roman trade is represented by four articles. Himanshu P. Ray's paper contains a comprehensive survey of the archaeological and literary evidence of the presence of the "Yavanas" in India42). Ray's specific contribution to this subject (on Greeks, Indo-Greeks and on Roman trade in India), which has already caused much ink to flow, is her emphasis of the Indian roots of the Yavana trade. According to her, their role
39) E. C. L. During Caspers, see note 15 40) Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola and Robert W Brunswig, see note 20. 41) Malati J Shendge, "The Inscribed Calculi and the Invention of Writing: The Indus View", 28 (1985) 50-80. 42) Himanshu P Ray, "The Yavana Presence in Ancient India", 31 (1988) 311-322.
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and the influence they were able to exert was determined by two factors: the efficiency and complexity of Indian local trade networks and the use of indigenous coinage in local transactions within these networks. Moreover, Ray applies the concept of "trading diaspora" (so far usually ascribed to medieval trading communities e.g., Jews, Muslims etc.) to this early period. She suggests that Buddhist and Jain trading communities might have fulfilled the economic and cultural functions of a trading diaspora. "Thus gifts and donations by the Yavanas in the western Deccan may be seen as attempts to participate in the cultural distinctiveness of the Buddhist trading diaspora on which the Yavanas were dependent." K. W. Dobbins contributed an extremely helpful and intelligible article on the history and trade in north-western India after the downfall of the IndoGreeks, one of the least known periods of early Indian history43). Although the main emphasis of this paper is the reconstruction of political history, he also points out that participation in and exploitation of trade and commerce was "a fundamental policy of the IndoGreek kingdoms." The control over this trade was largely determined by their famous coins of superb craftsmanship and reliable intrinsic value, which were accepted by merchants with confidence. Lionel Cassons provides a new interpretation of a significant passage in Peripluson the struggle between the Sakas and the Andhras for the control of West Indian trade 44). Whereas hitherto it was assumed that the Sakas were hijacking or at least diverting the commerce intended for their Andhra rivals, he shows that it was exactly the other way round. The Andhras tried to intercept the Saka trade whereas the latter supplied guards to Greek ships to Barygaza. P. H. L. Eggermont's article of trade routes in western and northwestern India during the period of Yavana trade has to be regarded as an example of a very successful case study to reconstruct regional history through
43) K. Walton Dobbins, "The Commerce of Kapisene and Gandhara after the Fall of the Indo-Greeks", 14 (1971) 286-302. 44) Lionel Casson, "Sakas versus Andhras in the Periplus marls Erythraei", 26 (1983) 164-177.
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historical geography by an extensive utilization of classical western and Indian textual evidence45). India's foreign trade relations after the decline of Indo-Roman trade in the third century A.D. are still a matter of controversy. Conventional historians assume a more or less swift shift from the west to the east coast and an intensification of India's trade with Southeast Asia as a compensation for the decline of the Roman trade. Proponents of the concept of Indian feudalism, however, detect a drastic decline of India's internal and external trade in the post-Gupta period as a major cause of its proposed feudalization. An article by V. K. Thakur emphasizes this latter position 46). In a case study of urbanization and trade in early medieval Bengal, he points out that Tamralipti, once Bengal's flourishing port town, declined rapidly since the early eighth century. For about half a millennium no other important ports are known to have existed in Bengal till the coming of the Muslims in the late 12th century. The Bengal region therefore appears to have been left out of the expanding trade in the Indian Ocean which was dominated by Near Eastern traders and Indians operating from western and southeastern ports. This situation did not change "even when a stable government was established in eastern India under the Palas in c. 750 AD." The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed a steep rise of international trade relations in the Indian Ocean, which is usually ascribed to the nearly synchronous rise of the Fatimids in Egypt, the Cholas in South India and the Song dynasties (North and South) in China. The rediscovery of this important period of maritime history of Asia is at least partly due to S. D. Goitein's systematic and laborious study of the unique corpus of Jewish Geniza documents from Old Cairo, which are now dispersed in a large number of libraries in USA and Europe. Until 1980 Goitein was able to identify
45) P H. L. Eggermont, "The Murundas and the Ancient Trade-Routes from Taxila to Ujjain", 9 (1966) 257-296. 46) Vijay K. Thakur, see note 9
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and analyse about 400 documents from the Cairo Geniza pertaining to Indian trade and traders out of which about 245 deal with trade proper, whereas the rest pertains to various personal and communal activities of the persons involved in this trade. They all illustrate the existence of a flourishing trade network of Jewish, Arab and Indian traders operating between the Mediterranean world, the Arab Peninsula and India. Apart from publishing his famous monographs, Goitein contributed five papers on the Geniza documents to JESHO, the last one pertaining to Indian trade47). It analyses two documents written by the Muslim representative of merchants and superintendent of the port of Aden to a learned Tunisian Jew whose mercantile and industrial activities on the Malabar coast can be traced during the years 1132 through 1149. These two letters, too, are fascinating documents of the pre-European trade networks in the Indian Ocean and their participants. The various aspects of commercial relations and activities in the eastern sector of the Indian Ocean of the eleventh and twelfth centuries are well illustrated by three other papers. K. R. Hall's two articles reveal a period of intensive quadruple interrelations between the regionally dominant powers of this period, viz., the Cholas in South India, Angkor in mainland Southeast Asia, Srivijaya with its control of the coastal regions on both sides of the Straits of Malakka and Song China48). Hall argues convincingly that the economic competition between these four regional powers set the stage for a unique episode in India's relations with its neighbouring countries. After having systematically annexed all coastal regions of eastern and southeastern India and northern Sri Lanka, and having brought under its control the Maldives and the Andamans, the Cholas under47) S. D Goitein, "From Aden to India. Specimens of the Correspondence of India Traders of the Twelfth Century", 23 (1980) 43-66, (Goitein's other articles dealing with the Mediterianena and Arab World appeared in vols. 1,4,6 and 9). 48) Kenneth R. Hall, "Khmer Commercial Development and Foreign Contacts under Sfiryavarman I", 18 (1975) 318-336; "International Trade and Foreign Diplomacy in Early Medieval South India", 21 (1978) 75-98.
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took their maritime expedition against Srivijaya in A.D. 1025. Less known than this spectacular expedition, but well documented by Hall, is the close network of interrelated "diplomatic" and economic relations which accompanied the power struggle of these "Big Four" in the eastern Indian Ocean. According to Hall's essays, a major means of establishing "special relations" between these powers took the form of diplomatic missions in the garb of religious activities, e.g. through temple construction in the host country, whose ruler then generously equipped it with land and revenue transfer. A special variety of this "religious diplomacy" is attested by J. Stargardt's paper from Burma where the kingdom of Pagan had come up as a new regional power in mid-eleventh century"9). Its second king Kyanzittha sent a mission to the Pala King of Bengal to have the sacred temple of Bodh Gaya repaired with the latter's support. Moreover, Kyanzittha claimed to have converted a Chola prince, to whom he sent a Buddhist text composed by himself and written, in golden leaf. The establishment of the Delhi Sultanate by central Asian Turks in the early thirteenth century has to be regarded as a major event not only in South Asian history50). In the maritime history of Asia it set off a process which changed Muslim domination of maritime trade into its partial control in pre-European times, only temporarily interrupted by the famous Indian Ocean expeditions by the Ming dynasty in early fifteenth century. A major factor which had a very direct impact on maritime trade and its control was the supply of the war horses from the Near East to India which had multipled since the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in the early thirteenth century. In his case study on Thana on the Konkan coast in western India Ranabir Chakarvarti illustrates the impact of this most important trade "item" on medieval trade in the western section of the Indian
49) Janice Stargardt, "Burma's Economic and Diplomatic Relations with India and China from Early Medieval Sources", 14 (1971) 38-62. 50) M. Athar Ali, "The Islamic Background to Indian History An Interpretation of the Islamic Past", 32 (1989) 335-345
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Ocean'). The competition between the Delhi Sultanate and the independent states of central and southern India for the much sought after "Bahri" horses of the Near East increased considerably when the Delhi Sultans began a policy of aggressive expansionism against these southern states and, at the same time, tried to reduce the supply of war horses to these states. Marco Polo visited India only a few years before the central Indian Yadava dynasty and its port Thana fell prey to the victorious army of the Sultans. It is this historical situation in which Chakravarti "locates" Marco Polo's detailed report about Thana's astonishing, but abominable, methods of piracy when a fleet of 20 to 30 vessels joined together and called a sea cordon of something like one hundred miles with an interval of 5 to 6 miles between the ships. One will agree with Marco Polo's conclusion that "no merchant ship could escape them." Though perhaps not in a strictly scientific way, one may compare the impact of war horses on the political and military structure of the Delhi Sultanate with the influx of western silver on the political and economic structure of the Mughal state. The latter subject is dealt with in an extensive study by Shireen Moosvi52). Correlating the random dispersion of 7,382 Mughal coins (from all treasures troves discovered in Uttarpradesh since the mid-nineteenth century) and the detailed British reports on the daily output of the Surat mint during the years 1635-1636, she calculates an average annual output of all Mughal mints as 151,690 metric tons of silver for the years 1576 to 1705. Comparing this amount with an annual average output of 75.3 metric tons of silver coins in France between the years 1631 and 1660, Moosvi remarks that her figures for Mughal India are "by no means unreasonable". Most important, though perhaps also most daring, is her attempt to calculate the actual annual circulation of silver coins in the Mughal state on the basis of the chronological distribution of
51) Ranabir Chakravarti, "Horse Trade and Piracy at Tana (Thana, Maharashtra, India): Gleanings from Marco Polo", 34 (1991) 159-182. 52) Shireen Moosvi, "The Silver Influx, Money Supply, Prices and RevenueExtraction in Mughal India", 30 (1987) 47-94.
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the existing 7,382 Mughal coins and to correlate her respective histograms of Mughal silver coinages with historical events of the Mughal state. Thus, she ascertains a dramatic rise in the number of silver coins during the years 1576-1580 and a peak from 1591 to 1595. These dates not only correspond with the years of successful Mughal expansion under Akbar but also with the established evidence of silver influx from America to Europe, a considerable part of which obviously reached Mughal India very soon through European trade. The influx of silver and the monetization of India's economy may have had a stronger impact on 16th century India than the territorial establishment of the Estado da India by the Portuguese who had opened India's floodgates for the influx of the silver and all the rest to come from Europe through its colonial companies. Portuguese conquest of coastal strongholds was followed by the initially "soft" intrusion of the north European companies in the seventeenth century. This period of trading partnership in India between Indian/Asian and European merchants was the heyday of the famous "merchant princes" who appear to have become some of the most publicized individuals of recent Indian historiography. One of them was Virji Vora, who played a crucial role in the affairs of the East India Company at Surat in the mid-17th century. In a short note Lotika Varadarajan is able to establish his identity with "the brother Boras" who is frequently mentioned in the memoirs of Francois Martin, head of the French counter at Surat from 1681-16861"). Varadarajan is thus able to disclose new historical evidence of this "merchant prince", who was reputed to be the wealthiest merchant of his age. One of the rarer cases of an European "merchant prince" is dealt with by Walter J. Fischel in his study of the Jewish merchant colony in Fort St. George (Madras) in the late 17th century54). The focus of this study is three Jews who entered Madras in 1683 as
53) Lotika Varadarajan, "The Brothers Boras and Virji Vora", 19 (1976) 224-227 54) J W. Fischel, "The Jewish Merchant-Colony in Madras (Fort St. Georg) during the 17th and 18th Centuries", 3 (1960) 78-107, 175-195.
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disliked "interlopers". The story of these three Jewish merchants, (the most important of them being Bartholomeus Rodriguez), their rapid rise to influence and wealth during the last two decades of the 17th century, and the establishment of "a business of vast dimensions from which the entire trade of English settlements on the eastern part of India greatly benefited", is a story of success which would have been envied even by the British "Nabobs" of the late eighteenth century. Farhat Hassan, too, ascertains in his paper on Anglo-Mughal trade conflict and cooperation that there existed between Mughal officials and Company servants an "undefined and nebulous alliance which safeguarded and fostered each other's interest" 55). It was only during the later half of Aurangzeb's reign that this cooperation at the local level changed drastically. Hassan detects as causes of this development "growing pressure resulting from determined efforts on the part of the imperial court to raise resources from cesses on trade and commerce and to organize the Mughal mercantile taxation system" 56). Aurangzeb's farman of the year 1680 to raise the customs duty on goods of the East India Company from 2 % to 3.5 % was one cause of the outbreak of the first Anglo-Indian war in 1687. The date and particularly, the circumstances under which the change from European partnership in Asian trade to British domination in India took place are still a matter of controversy, as can be seen from Sushil Chaudhury's paper on merchants, companies and rulers in 18th century Bengal57). It is not surprising, that he, too, rejects the famous van Leur thesis on pre-modern Asian international trade as being essentially a small-scale peddling trade. However, it is interesting that his findings about the great Asian merchants of mid-17th century Bengal (Jagat Seths, Omichand and Khwaja Wazid) corroborate van
55) Farhat Hassan, "Conflict and Cooperation in Anglo-Mughal Trade Relations during the Reign of Aurangzeb", 34 (1991) 351-360. 56) See also Satish Chandra, "Jizyah and the State in India during the 17th Century", 12 (1969) 323-340. 57) Sushil Chaudhury, "Merchants, Companies and the Rulers. Bengal in the Eighteenth Century", 31 (1988) 74-109.
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Leur's statement that the wealthy Asian merchant class was allied to the social and political elites. S. Chaudhury points out that this close alliance of the "merchant princes" and the ruling elites is in flat contradiction to the findings of M. Pearson and Ashin Das Gupta who portray the merchants as an independent entity with hardly any close connection to the ruling hierarchy. Moreover, he rejects K. N. Chaudhuri's contention that the decline of Asian merchants in Bengal had begun already in the early 1750s, as in S. Chaudhuri's view "the prominent merchant families were still preeminent" and able to resist successfully attempts by the East India Company to dictate the terms of trade. Apart from other well-known reasons which led to their fall after Plassey in 1757, S. Chaudhury suggest a few more general sociological (nearly Weberian) causes for the ultimate fall of the great Indian traders. Thus he points out that "trade or business was the concern of individuals rather than groups acting in common interest". Impersonal cooperation in institutions of business, as already developed in Europe, was unknown in India. And he even goes a step further in his reasoning when he concludes that "business transactions more often than not took place within the same caste or communal group. Even within the Hindu community one caste group would be reluctant to do business with men from other castes". Even though S. Chaudhury's explanation of the failure of Indian merchants on the eve of European domination may not meet with unanimous approval, his thesis certainly merits further investigation. From an Indian point of view, looking back at thirty-five volumes ofJESHO means much more than a mere tour d'horizonof its various contributions to the socio-economic history of India. They reveal the story of the emergence of these socio-economic studies as a new and fascinating focus of oriental and, in particular, Indian studies. The nearly one hundred articles published so far in JESHO on Indian subjects are likewise as much contributions to Indian historical themes as they are indicators of the progress of historical research on these themes. The scale of this progress can be perceived from a letter
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written by R. S. Lopez to the editors ofJESHO published in the first issue. 58) Even though Lopez wrote in his unpretentious way "il serait bien temeraire de ma part de proposer des thames d'enquete", as a renowned scholar of international medieval commerce, he was most qualified to do exactly this. His letter therefore indeed reads like a programme for future research on various aspects of the economic and social history of Asia in the broader context of Eurasian history. Many of his profound thoughts appear to have meanwhile germinated in Braudel's and Wallerstein's works and therefore need not to be repeated here. One point however is worth mentioning in this context. While explaining the relevance of certain topics of future research for their Eurasian contexts, Lopez mostly refers to the various states of classical and Muslim Near East and to the contemporary Chinese dynasties, whereas India goes almost unnoticed. This disregard of India's premodern economic history repesents the state of knowledge until the late fifties of our century, rather than any bias on the part of R. S. Lopez. The poor readings on India's economic history which had been available to Max Weber in the early part of the century had not changed substantially until the late fifties when Satish Chandra and the historians of Aligarh University began their studies on the agrarian and political system of Mughal India, in continuation of Moreland's studies during the twenties and thirties. The economic system of early medieval or pre-Muslim India still remained buried in rather descriptive and compartmentalized dynastic studies. It was exactly in this situation that JESHO's first volume was published. JESHO thus likewise participated in the emerging new approach to Indian economic history and contributed to its success. The issue of Indian feudalism, despite or perhaps due to the controversy it raised, was instrumental in raising new questions and destroying the myth of an unchanging India. As has been shown in this attempt to summarize JESHO's contributions to the economic history of India,
58) "Une lettre du Professeur R. S. Lopez", 1 (1958) 3-8.
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several more such focal topics emerged from the contributions of various authors, some of which would make quite valuable anthologies on their respective topics59). Even though the idea of JESHO's initial editors to regard the journal only as a first step towards the publication of a monumental Economicand Social History of the Orientso far has not materialised, in the field of Indian studies it has certainly contributed to the establishment of a new discipline in the field of Indian studies. One final remark should be permitted. In contrast to the other regionalfoci ofJESHO (Ancient Near East, Muslim World and China) the greater part of the contributions to Indian subjects was authored by Indian scholars. Even though Indian scholars are now provided with several excellent Indian journals of socio-economic history it is to be hoped that they will continue to regard JESHO as one of "their" principal journals for participation in the international scholarly community.
59) The contributions to social history with special reference to the caste system as a further grandthkneof JESHO may be last, but not least listed as follows: A. Sharma, "The Purusasuikta: Its Relations to the Caste System", 21 (1978) 294-303; idem, "An Analysis of three Epithets Applied to the Sfidras in Aitareya Brahamana VII.29,4", 18 (1975) 300-317, T. R. Trautmann, "On the Translation of the Term varna", 7 (1964) 196-205; N K. Wagle, "Social Groups and Ranking: An Aspect of Ancient Indian Social Life Derived from the Pali Canonical Texts", 10 (1967) 278-316; R. R. Sharma, "Slavery in the Mauryan Period (c. 300 B.C.-200 B.C.)", 21 (1978) 185-194; S. Chandra, "Two Aspects of Hindu Social Life and Thoughts, as Reflected in the Works of Tulsidas", 19 (1976) 48-60. B. Kdlver, "On the Origins of the Jajmdni System", 31 (1988) 265-285. J D M. Derrett, "Law and Social Order in India before the Muhammadan Conquest", 7 (1964) 73-120.

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"A Passage to India": Temples, Merchants and the Ocean Author(s): Hermann Kulke Source: Journal of the Economic

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA": TEMPLES, MERCHANTS AND THE OCEAN

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, Bombay 1956], 1 (1958)

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

20) Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola and Robert H. Brunswig,

109. See also R. S. Sharma, "Material Background of Vedic Warfare", 9 (1966)

21) GeorgeErdosy,"The Originof Citiesin the GangesValley", 27 (1984)81-

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

"A PASSAGE TO INDIA"

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