Ancient India · Topic 17 of 17
Debates and processes marking the shift to the medieval order
The Basics
By the sixth century, the Gupta empire had broken up into regional kingdoms such as the Pratiharas, Palas and Rashtrakutas. All of them continued and expanded a practice that had begun under the Guptas: granting land, mostly to Brahmanas, sometimes to officials and temples.
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As land grants spread and demands for revenue grew, simply extending cultivation was not enough. Villages and landholders needed ways to draw more water onto the fields. This was especially true where rivers or tanks were not directly accessible. This pushed early medieval India to improve its water-lifting technology, building on wells and tanks known from earlier periods.
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By the sixth century, the Gupta-era slowdown in trade seemed to deepen. Rome's trade with India had ended in the third century, the silk trade with Iran and Byzantium stopped by the mid-sixth century, and India's outreach to China and Southeast Asia came to be handled mostly by Arab middlemen. Gold coins became scarce, and old commercial cities such as Mathura, Kaushambi, Shravasti, Vaishali and Pataliputra are said to have shrunk or vanished, a decline the Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang (Xuanzang) noticed when he found many towns deserted.
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In the early medieval period, many new jatis emerged through land grants and tribal absorption.
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After the Gupta empire broke up, long-distance trade declined. Countrywide contact also weakened as a result. Land grants created local landed elites tied to particular tracts of land. These elites owed loyalty to their region rather than to a single pan-Indian centre. Regional literatures in Tamil, Prakrit and Apabhramsha had already begun to flourish. Together these forces pushed each area of the subcontinent toward its own political, linguistic and cultural life.
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The year 1206 CE marks the conventional end of the early medieval period in India.
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