Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India

Scholars have long studied classical Sanskrit culture in almost total isolation from its courtly context. As the first study to focus exclusively on the royal court as a social and cultural institution, this book fills a gap in the literature. Using both literary and inscriptional sources, it begins with the rise and spread of royal households and political hierarchies from the Gupta period (c. 350–750), and traces the emergence of a coherent courtly worldview, which would remain stable for almost a millennium to 1200. Later chapters examine key features of courtly life which have been all but ignored by the previous literature on ancient Indian society: manners, ethics, concepts of personal beauty and theories of disposition. The book ends with a sustained examination of the theory and practice of erotic love, in the context of the wider social dynamics and anxieties which faced the people of the court.

DAUD ALI is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society 10

Editorial board
C. A. BAYLY
Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St Catharine’s College

RAJNARAYAN CHANDAVARKAR
Fellow of Trinity College and Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge

GORDON JOHNSON
President of Wolfson College, and Director, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge

Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society publishes monographs on the history and anthropology of modern India. In addition to its primary scholarly focus, the series also includes work of an interdisciplinary nature which contributes to contemporary social and cultural debates about Indian history and society. In this way, the series furthers the general development of historical and anthropological knowledge to attract a wider readership than that concerned with India alone.

A list of titles which have been published in the series can be found at the end of the book.

Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India

Daud Ali

University of London

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Daud Ali, 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Plantin 10/12 pt.   System LATEX 2_e   [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Courtly culture and political life in early medieval India / Daud Ali.
   p.   cm. – (Cambridge studies in Indian history and society; 10)
University of Chicago.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 81627 0
1. India – Court and courtiers – History.   2. India – Civilisation – to 1200.   I. Title.   II. Series.

DS425.A645   2004
954.02′1 – dc22   2003055901

ISBN 0 521 81627 0 hardback

For my mother and father,
who must surely be amused that their son has finally
taken an interest in manners!

Contents

Figures

Cover, crystal intaglio seal of the king Avarighsa. Photo courtesy of Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum

Acknowledgements

The seeds of this book were sown in the intellectual environment nurtured by teachers and friends at the University of Chicago. Martha Selby first pointed out to me, in the basement of the Regenstein Library, the fact that while nearly all of Sanskrit poetry was courtly in nature, courtly life itself had remained largely untreated in both historical and literary scholarship. My dissertation supervisor, Professor Ronald Inden, first opened my mind to the important problems of studying culture and practice in medieval India. Through both his teaching and published work, he conveyed to me one of the most important principles for historical research: that a close attention to one’s sources was not superflous to or inconsistent with thinking about theory and method, but in fact demanded it. To him I owe an immense debt. Through courses with Sheldon Pollock I gained an exposure to Sanskrit literary culture, both textual and epigraphical. What little I know about this culture is very much indebted to him. His interest in the social world of Sanskrit literature, though only nascent during my studentship at Chicago, has been nothing short of inspirational. The contributions of other teachers at Chicago, notably the Tamil scholars Norman Cutler and A. K. Ramanujan, both of whom are no longer with the scholarly community, as well as Dipesh Chakrabarty, were important in different ways for the conception of this book. The intellectual stimulus that these teachers provided, both individually and collectively, has been sorely missed.

   More recently, numerous colleagues, friends and students have provided encouragement and support in bringing this book to completion. Many of the ideas in this book have benefited in some way from discussions with a number of people, including Kunal Chakrabarti, Rachel Dwyer, Bhairabi Sahu, V. N. Jha, Vena Ramphal, Romila Thapar, Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay, Subho Basu, Sudipta Kaviraj, Shruti Kapila, Sarah Hodges, Carol Miles, Letchimi Veeron, Mattia Salvini, Oliver Winrow, Akira Shimada, Sergio Targa and, particularly, Nilanjan Sarkar, Indira Peterson, Sascha Ebeling, Martha Selby and Whitney Cox, some of whom took time to read drafts of various chapters. Francesca Orsini at Cambridge kindly invited me to participate in her workshops on ‘love’ in South Asia where I had the chance to put forth a number of ideas in this book. Rosalind O’Hanlon, Peter Robb, Chris Bayly, Stuart Blackburn and John Parker all gave important and crucial advice about the revision of the manuscript. My dear friend and teacher K. Srinivasan, lecturer in Sanskrit at Vivekananda College in Chennai, spent long hours discussing the finer points of many difficult Sanskrit terms. Michael Willis, my colleague at the British Museum, offered precious time, thought and resources to help me develop visual correlatives for some of my findings and think about the larger problems of Gupta India. Joe Cribb, from the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, provided advice on (and images of) Kūṣāṇa and Gupta coins, and Tapash Ray and Madhuvanti Ghose helped me locate slide images from Deogarh. Unfortunately, I cannot name the closest and most critical reader of the first draft of this book, to whom its present form is immensely indebted. The anonymous referee at Cambridge University Press, known to me only as ‘reader b’, provided what any author dreams of – a clear apprehension of the nature and significance of the arguments I was trying to make, with detailed and sustained criticism in light of those aims. I owe to this person and the many others who have contributed to my thinking on matters medieval, a deep gratitude, though they bear no responsiblity for the flaws in this book.

   The faith and patience which my own colleagues and staff in the History Department at SOAS have shown me through the course of writing and publishing this manuscript provided confidence and stability in the increasingly vexed environment of UK academics. I also owe thanks to the staff at the SOAS library (particularly Jane Phillipson, Romesh Dogra and Mohini Nair) who helped me locate missing volumes, extended borrowing privileges and obliged my incessant photocopying. These small kindnesses allowed me to conduct the research for this book during the busy time of the teaching year. And finally, my greatest thanks goes to my parents, who have offered unqualified support and love to me throughout my long education, and who continue to be a source of great strength, my mother for her humanity and my father for his dreams, to my life in ways they will never know. They, not to mention Sugra and Maryam, will certainly be happy to see this thing put to rest.

   Transliteration of Indic words follows the accepted style for South Asian languages. The citation of primary sources, barring inscriptions, in footnotes will not include publication information as in some cases multiple editions and translations, where available, were consulted. For readers who wish to check the original sources, the edition cited will usually be the first entry, unless otherwise noted, under the text’s title in the bibliography. Citation of Sanskrit texts is usually by book, chapter and verse (of the first Sanskrit edition cited in the Bibliography) as necessary. Prose works have been cited similarly, but with reference to chapter and page. In mixed prose and verse works, particularly dramas, note of the act/chapter is followed by a verse number, with ‘+’ referring to following prose sections. For the sake of brevity, I have shortened citations to published inscriptions in important epigraphical journals like Indian Antiquary (IA), Epigraphia Indica (EI), South Indian Inscriptions (SII), Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (CII), and Journal of the Epigraphical Society of India (JESI) by omitting the details of particular inscriptions and including only the volume, date, inscription number (where relevant) and page number.

Abbreviations

Glossary