Whispers and shouts: Some recent writings on medieval south India

Indian Economic and Social History Review

Volumn 38, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 453-464

  Subrahmanyam, Sanjay ^a  

^a ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES   (France)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 25444455052     PISSN: 00194646     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/001946460103800405     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. Cynthia Talbot, Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region and Identity in Medieval Andhra, Delhi, 2001, p. 85.
2. Cf. Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India, Delhi, 1980;
3. for one of the earliest critical considerations, R. Champakalakshmi, 'Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India: A Review Article', Indian Economic and Social History Review, (hereafter IESHR), Vol. 18 (4), 1982, pp. 411-26.
4. We may also note the recent publication of Noboru Karashima, History and Society in South India: The Cholas to Vijayanagar, Delhi, 2001,
5. an omnibus edition containing two of the author's earlier collections of essays, South Indian History and Society (1984),
6. Towards a New Formation (1992).
7. For the debate, see T.J. Byres and Harbans Mukhia, eds, Feudalism and Non-European Societies, London, 1985, which includes essays - by authors such as Irfan Habib and Frank Perlin - that (while representing diverse positions) are conceived at a level of sophistication that is much removed from Karashima's formulations.
8. Most of R. Champakalakshmi's major essays are collected in Trade, Ideology and Urbanization: South India, 300 BC to AD 1300, Delhi, 1996;
9. R. Tirumalai's significant works include Collected Papers: Studies in South Indian Epigraphy and History (...), Madras, 1994.
10. Y. Subbarayalu, Political Geography of the Chola Country, Madras, 1973.
11. Noboru Karashima's 'graduation thesis on Chola history', submitted to the University of Tokyo in 1958 has, unfortunately, not been available to South Asian scholars. His earliest accessible works thus date to the latter half of the 1960s, including 'Allur and Isanamangalam: Two South Indian Villages of the Cola Times', IESHR, Vol. 3 (2), 1966, pp. 150-62.
12. For an overview, see Richard D. Saran, Peter A. Granda and Armgard Ruckert, 'The Study of South Indian Inscriptions', in Robert E. Frykenberg and Pauline Kolenda, eds, Studies of South India: An Anthology of Recent Research and Scholarship, Madras, 1985, pp. 1-29.
13. Kenneth R. Hall, ed., Structure and Society in Early South India: Essays in Honour of Noboru Karashima, Delhi, 2001. Among other unsolved mysteries is the word 'early' in the title. Why are the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 'early', and in relation to what?
14. Noboru Karashima, 'South Indian Temple Inscriptions: A New Approach to their Study', South Asia, Vol. 19 (1), 1996, pp. 1-12.
15. Kenneth R. Hall, 'Structural Change and Societal Integration in Early South India: An Introductory Essay', in idem, Structure and Society, p. 8. I am unclear how one is to reconcile this statement with Karashima's view that 'there is no difference between documents written on perishable materials and stone inscriptions as source-materials for history' (Karashima, 'South Indian Temple Inscriptions').
16. Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka-period Tamilnadu, Delhi, 1992. The fact that this book draws on literary materials in a variety of languages (not merely Telugu), European and other archives, as well as inscriptions, seems to escape Hall entirely.
17. Hall, 'Structural Change', pp. 7-8.
18. See Harbans Mukhia, 'Was there Feudalism in Indian History?', The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 8 (3), 1981, pp. 274-310.
19. am reminded here of the remarks of Michael Vickery in a review of Kenneth R. Hall, Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia, Honolulu, 1985,
20. published in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 46 (1), 1987, pp. 211-13: 'However, Kenneth Hall often shows ignorance of the latest work; he resolutely refuses to attempt any source criticism; he frequently draws illegitimate inferences from material that he does not fully understand; and he misuses the work of others'.
21. See Kesavan Veluthat, The Political Structure of Early Medieval South India, New Delhi, 1993, a work that bears favourable comparison with that of Karashima, and which also attempts to integrate inscriptional material with a reflection on normative textual material.
22. As for Subbarayalu's work, it is patronising to characterise it as belonging to a 'second generation' who 'drew' from the work of Karashima and Stein (as claimed in Hall, 'Structural Change', p. 27). In fact, Karashima cites and uses Subbarayalu's work even in his early publications; Stein's dependence on it in Peasant State and Society has already been remarked upon.
23. Hall, 'Structural Change', p. 7.
24. Peter A. Granda, Property Rights and Land Control in Tamil Nadu, 1350-1600, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1984.
25. Karashima's desire to give an 'answer to the criticism of my work made in Symbols of Substance', is repeated on numerous recent occasions, including in both prefaces to Karashima, History and Society in South India. I regret that despite at least two attempts to make him comprehend the nature of the critique (during meetings in Japan), he persists here in obfuscating the real issues; hence this response to his answer.
26. I hope to return to this question in an essay in preparation with Velcheru Narayana Rao, titled (tentatively) 'On How to Read South Indian Inscriptions'.
27. Karashima, 'South Indian Temple Inscriptions', p. 12.
28. Cf. George W. Spencer, 'Sons of the Sun: The Solar Genealogy of a Chola King', Asian Profile, Vol. 10 (1), 1982, pp. 81-95;
29. George W. Spencer, idem, 'Heirs Apparent: Fiction and Function in Chola Mythical Genealogies', IESHR, Vol. 21 (4), 1984, pp. 415-32.
30. George W. Spencer, 'In Search of Change: Reflections on the Scholarship of Noboru Karashima', in Hall, Structure and Society, p. 40.
31. Noboru Karashima, 'Whispering of Inscriptions', in Hall, Structure and Society, pp. 44-58.
32. Y. Subbarayalu, 'Arasus of the Pudukkottai Region and the Nayaka System', in Hall, Structure and Society, pp. 235-50.
33. Even earlier, the most significant concise statement on the nature of Cola state was by the same author: Y. Subbarayalu, 'The Cola State', Studies in History, Vol. 4 (2), 1982, pp. 265-306.
34. Nobuhiro Ota, 'Beda Nayakas and their Historical Narratives in Karnataka during the post-Vijayanagara Period', Acta Asiatica, No. 74, 1998, pp. 100-31;
35. th Centuries, Tokyo, 1986.
36. Talbot, Precolonial India in Practice.
37. Also see Talbot, idem, 'The Nayakas of Vijayanagara Andhra: A Preliminary Prosopography', in Hall, Structure and Society, pp. 251-75. The latter work is rather closer to the spirit of Karashima's project, and correspondingly also less imaginative than the former.
38. Talbot, Precolonial India in Practice, pp. 15-16.
39. Precolonial India in Practice, Ibid., p. 172.
40. J. Duncan M. Derrett, The Hoysalas: A Medieval Indian Royal Family, Madras, 1957.
41. th Centuries)', The Indian Historical Review, Vol. 24 (1-2), 1997-98, pp. 70-94.