Analyze the different dimensions of the historical processes of the origin of the Rajputs in early medieval India. (2006)

The origin of the Rajputs has been much discussed in historical writings on early-medieval and medieval India. These writings reveal an extreme polarity of opinions, extending from attempts to trace the Rajputs to foreign immigrant stocks of the post-Gupta period—explaining in the process a later origin myth, namely the Agnikula myth—to contrived justifications for viewing the Rajputs as of pure Ksatriya origin. The question of the indigenous origin of the Rajputs assumed symbolic overtones in the heyday of nationalist historiography, where the military and chivalrous qualities of the Rajputs were repeatedly projected. Another facet of this viewpoint is revealed by the suggestion that the Rajputs rose to prominence in the process of resisting foreign invasions.

At the level of narrative political history, the reconstruction of the early history of the Rajputs follows a pattern which has recently been characterized as a tendency to ‘dynasticize’. Even in detailed studies of Rajasthan, the origin of the Rajputs in the early medieval period has hardly been examined as a process which may have had parallels of otherwise in early medieval developments outside the region. The study of the Rajputs in isolation seldom refers to the factors, except as generalizations, which are now known to have been in operation in early medieval India. BD Chattopadhyay attempts to study the phenomenon as a total process and to trace the early stages of the history of such clans as came to be recognized as the Rajputs.

The general framework for the argument is provided by the recent analyses of claims to traditional ‘ksatriya’ status, which became widespread in the early medieval period. Such claims were attempts to get away from, rather than reveal, the original ancestry, and they underline the nature of a polity in which new social groups continued to seek various symbols for the legitimation of their newly acquired power. Furthermore, ‘Rajput’ is known to have been assimilative in space and time and has, until recent times, been a recognizable channel of transition from tribe to state polity. The process of Rajputization was thus as work in different periods and different areas.

In trying to define the term ‘Rajput’, it has been seen that in the early medieval period, it is not all that easy to distinguish the Rajputs from the non-Rajputs, despite clear evidence regarding certain recognizable clans. One way of recognizing the early Rajputs may be extrapolating evidence from later literature. Statements regarding the lists of Rajput clans, traditionally numbering thirty-six, are available in relatively early works like Kumarapalacarita and the Varnaratnakara. If the early medieval and medieval references to the rajaputras in general are taken into account, they represented a ‘mixed caste’ and constituted a large section of petty chiefs holding estates. The criterion for inclusion in the list was provided by the contemporary status of a clan at least in the early stages f the crystallization of Rajput power. However the names of certain clans—such as the Cahamanas or the Pratiharas—occur regularly in the lists, possibly due to their political dominance.

At one level the process may have to be juxtaposed with the spate of colonization of new areas. The evidence of colonization must be seen not only in the significant expansion of the number of settlements but also in some epigraphic references, suggesting an expansion of agrarian economy. In fact some of the territorial divisions with suffixed numbers mentioned in the Skanda Purana have been located in Rajasthan. If all this cumulatively suggests a proliferation of settlements, then the relationship of this process, through an expansion of agrarian economy, may be postulated with the emergence of the early Rajputs from about the seventh century.

Evidence from Rajasthan reveals two important aspects of a process. First, the territorial expansion of what has come to be known as Rajput power was achieved, at least in certain areas, at the expense of the erstwhile tribal settlements. Similar movements for expansion are found in the cases of the Guhilas and the Cahamanas as well. There is also a voluminous bardic tradition which suggests that the Guhila kingdoms in south Rajasthan succeeded the earlier tribal chiefdoms of the Bhils.

Secondly, the colonization of new areas appears to have been accompanied by what may be loosely termed a more advanced economy. In other words, Rajasthan, in the period when Rajput polity was beginning to emerge, was, in its various areas, undergoing a process of change from tribalism. To conceive of the emergence of the Rajputs only in terms of colonization would be an erroneous view of the total process involved. The fact that the mobility of the ksatriya status was in operation elsewhere in the same period prompts one to look for its incidence also in Rajasthan.

The cases of two groups who are included in the list of Rajput clans are significant in this context. One is that of the Medas who are considered to have reached the Rajput status from a tribal background. The other is that of the Hunas. The inclusion of these two groups in the Rajput clan structure is sufficient to belie any assumption that the structure could be composed merely of such groups as were initially closely linked by descent, ‘foreign’ or ‘indigenous’.

This therefore leads one to search not for the original ancestry of the clans but for the historical stages in which the Rajput clan structure came to be developed. This can be done with reference to the majors of the Pratiharas, Guhilas and Cahamanas.

The Pratiharas, having risen to prominence sometime in the eighth century, were really from the Gurjara stock. The argument that the Pratiharas could not have emerged from the pastoral Gurjara stock is misplaced, because as early as in the seventh century, the Gurjaras of Nandipuri represented a ruling family. Documents dating from the seventh century suggest a wide distribution of the Gurjaras as a political power in western India. It would seem that the Pratiharas branched off from the Gurjara stock through the channel of political power, and the case probably offers a parallel to that of the Kusanas. A definite correlation did exist between the achievement of political eminence and a movement towards a corresponding social status.

Chattopadhyay’s study has shown that there was a close correspondence between the different stages in the assumption of political power and the stages in which various claims to ancestral respectability were made, although the genealogies, having been drafted by different hands, did not always follow a uniform pattern. In a period when detailed genealogies with a respectable ancestry were being put forward on behalf of sovereign families of a clan, another section of the same clan, placed in a feudatory position, did not advance any such claim at all.

When one looks at the genealogies, it appears that for the majority of the newly emerging royal lines, ‘brahma-ksatra’ was a transitional status, and explanations continued to be given for the supposedly authentic transition from the brahmana to the ksatriya status. It could also be that ‘brahma-ksatra’ was a relatively open status, which is indicated by its wide use in India at this time, which was adopted by the new royal families before they could formulate a claim to a pure ksatriya origin.

All this would suggest then that detailed genealogies of ruling clans can hardly be extrapolated for an assessment of actual origin. The different stages in the formulation of genealogical claims also thus reveal a political process, being one of upward mobility from an initial feudatory position. The transition from feudatory to independent status was clearly through the growth of military strength. This shows that the emergence of the early Rajput clans took place within the existing hierarchical political structure. An understanding of this initial political stage is important as a vantage point from which to examine how their initial feudatory position the Rajput clans, in their bid for political ascendancy, moved towards creating economic and social bases for their interlocking interests.

At the level of economy, the process of the emergence of the Rajputs is associated with certain new features of land distribution and territorial systems, which were perhaps present both in the large empires of the Pratiharas and the Cahamanas as also in the localized kingdoms such as those of the Guhilas. Chattopadhyay examines them in relation to the consolidation of clan networks among the early Rajputs and notices feature, more incident in Rajasthan than elsewhere, of the distribution of land among royal kinsmen. It must be emphasized though that this appears to have represented a process which gradually developed and was associated in particular with the spread of one clan, the Cahamanas. A certain measure of clan exclusiveness, which could have been very rigid in the system of land distribution, appeared in a nebulous form in Rajasthan in the context of the Cahamanas.

Related to this was a new land unit which appears to have consisted of six villages and multiples thereof. The use of this land unit was not limited to Rajasthan, but its incidence is highest in this region. The units were in many cases part of such administrative divisions as mandala, bhukti or visaya, but the statements in inscriptions that villages were attached (patribaddha) to such units may suggest that the units became the nuclei of some kind of local control. The earliest reference to the units of eighty-four villages seem to be available in Saurashtra, towards the end of the ninth century, by the Gurjara-Pratiharas, and its spread to Rajasthan was perhaps intended to facilitate the distribution of land and political control among the ruling elites. Such big holdings emanated from the process of the distribution of land among the members of the ruling clans. Despite inadequate inscriptional evidence, the rudiments of the caurasia arrangement and its connection with the distribution of land can be traced to this time, in the early phases of the crystallization of Rajput polity.

The early phases of Rajput ascendancy also coincided with the construction of fortresses, numerically on a large scale. The fortresses served not only defence purposes but had, as the composition of population in some of them will show, wider functions. They represented the numerous foci of power of the ascendant ruling families and appear to have had close links with landholdings in the neighbouring areas. The forts were foci of control for their rural surroundings. Thus along with the assignment of land, occasionally in terms of units which could be made into administrative units as well, the construction of fortified settlements in large numbers could be seen as part of a process of the consolidation of their position by the ruling clans.

At the level of social relations, the obvious pointer to this process would be the marriage network among the clans. The few cases of inscriptional evidence of marriages suggest that they have been recorded because of their significant political implications for the family. One can see a change in the marriage network pattern in which not only does the supposed origin of a family play an unimportant part, but there is also a development towards an understandable pattern of interclan relationship.

Marriage relations, contracted by the Guhilas with specifically Rajput clans, extended to the Calukyas, Paramaras, Rastrakutas, Cahamanas and the Hunas. Inter-clans relationships in terms of marriage contracted could, at a certain point of time, be limited to two clans and any consistency in the pattern could have been due to the nature of political relations between such clans or, as in the case of the Guhilas, it could be quite expansive. The choice was essentially political.

Inter-clan relationships, however, revealed through cases of marriage, seem to have had wider social implications as well. It could provide social legitimacy to such groups as the Hunas who had acquired sufficient political power in western India by this period, leading finally to their inclusion in the Rajput clan list. Secondly, inter-clan marriage relationships may have led to collaboration in wider areas of social and political activity. Inter-clan relationships therefore offer a key to an understanding of the processes through which Rajput polity evolved in the early medieval period.

There was a change in the connotation of the term rajaputra which came to denote descent groups and not necessarily a particularly exalted political status. Among the ruling elites, rajaputra covered a wide range, from the ‘actual song of a king’ to ‘the lowest ranking landholder’. However, the number given in the textual evidence suggests not so much a rigid set of thirty-six clans as the idea of descent setting apart the rajaputras from the others.

There is no direct evidence regarding the changing status of the traditional ‘ksatriya’ groups or ruling elites of Rajasthan and one can even assume their incorporation into the Rajput structure if they survived in power, but the evidence of two inscriptions of the tenth century may suggest the possibility that some among the traditional ksatriyas were going through processes of change. The proliferation of the Rajputs contributed towards an undermining of the political status of the early ksatriya groups which were taking to less potent occupations and also that the preferred term for the ruling stratum was now not so much ‘ksatriya’ as ‘Rajput’.

The substitution of the traditional ‘ksatriya’ groups by the Rajputs and the consolidation of the Rajput structure can be seen as a result of the collaboration between the emerging clans. Whereas the royal commands conveyed through epigraphs from 7-10th centuries were addressed to various categories of officials, in later inscriptions these lists of officials are absent generally. It is only in a much later period that the rajaputras, or more generally the members of various clans, are found placed at various positions in the Rajput socio-political structure. The interclan relationship governing the distribution of power helped to consolidate the structure of Rajput polity in the early medieval period.

There is practically no direct evidence about the compilation of the warriors at various levels, except for memorial stone relics known as govardhana dhvajas, which were installed to commemorate death, especially on the battlefield. The range of social groups which the memorial stones generally cover is quite extensive, but the memorials to violent deaths relate mostly to such groups as came to be recognized as the Rajputs, and the incidence in their cases are higher.

An important aspect of the proliferation of the Rajputs was the emergence of various minor clans and subdivisions of the major clans. The continuing process of the formulation of the Rajput clans, presumable through the acquisition of political power, is attested by inscriptions. The subdivisions of the major clans had become fairly numerous by this time. That the new clans and what came to be recognized as subdivision of earlier clans were being drawn into the Rajput network is suggested by a few cases of marriages of which records are available.

How did these clans emerge? The process expectedly used to explain would be the segmentation of clans, which sometimes resulted from their movements to new areas. But there seems to be no actual evidence to support this claim. BD Chattopadhyay puts forth the concept of ‘localism’ in the phenomenon of caste formation. Rajputization, according to him, was a process of social mobility which, in the wake of its formation into a structure, drew in such disparate groups as the Medas and the Hunas. From these perspectives, the formation of various subclans was not necessarily a result of the direct segmentation of clans, but perhaps a product of the mechanism of the absorption of local elements, when such elements came into contact with some already established clans.

In conclusion, two chronological stages of the emergence of the Rajputs may be envisaged. In the first stage it was essentially a political process in which disparate groups seeking political power conformed to such norms as permeated the contemporary political ideology. As the entry into the Rajput fold basically continued to be through political power, the traditional norms or the need for legitimization remained. In this respect, the emergence of the Rajputs was similar to a pan-Indian phenomenon, namely the formation of dynasties. In the second stage however (11-12th centuries), the rise of the Rajputs became a comprehensive social phenomenon as well. As such the multiplication of the rajaputras should not be viewed merely as reflecting the consolidation of a political power structure; its implications should also be used to explain the growing phenomenon of minor clans and subclans.

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Bibliography:

  • B D Chattopadhyay: The Making of Early Medieval India
  • Class Notes