Regional States and Early Indian Cultural History — UPSC History Optional Notes

1. The Kadambas of Banavasi

Foundation: Mayurasharman, a Brahmana, founded the dynasty in the mid-4th century CE. The Talagunda pillar inscription of Shantivarman, composed by the poet Kubja, says he went to the ghatika at Kanchi to study, was insulted by a Pallava horseman, took up arms and won a kingdom.

Capital: Banavasi (Vaijayanti) in Uttara Kannada district; a branch later ruled from Triparvata and Halasi.

Kakusthavarman: The Talagunda inscription says he married his daughters into royal families including, by most readings, the Guptas, showing the Kadambas' prestige.

Halmidi inscription: Found at Halmidi in Hassan district and usually dated c. 450 CE (some scholars place it later), it is regarded as the earliest known inscription in Kannada and is associated with the Kadamba period.

End: The early Kadambas were absorbed by the Chalukyas of Badami in the 6th century; later Kadamba lines ruled Goa and Hangal as feudatories.

Culture: Sanskrit and Prakrit charters, grants to Brahmanas and Jains, and an early form of the stepped Kadamba tower seen in later Karnataka temples.

2. The Pallavas of Kanchi

Origin debate: Older theories linking them with the Parthian Pahlavas are now discarded; most scholars see them as a local dynasty of Tondaimandalam, possibly starting as Satavahana feudatories, since their earliest charters are in Prakrit.

Early Pallavas: Prakrit charters of Shivaskandavarman (Mayidavolu and Hirahadagalli plates) record grants and a Brahmanical sacrificial kingship; Vishnugopa of Kanchi was defeated by Samudragupta.

Simhavishnu: Ruled in the late 6th century; extended Pallava control to the Kaveri and began the line of great Pallavas.

Mahendravarman I: Ruled c. 600 to 630. Tradition says he was a Jain who was turned to Shaivism by Appar. He wrote the Sanskrit farce Mattavilasa Prahasana, took titles such as Vichitrachitta and Chaitya-kari, and began rock-cut temples; the Mandagapattu inscription says his shrine was made without brick, timber, metal or mortar.

Narasimhavarman I Mamalla: Ruled c. 630 to 668. He defeated Pulakeshin II, captured Vatapi in 642 and took the title Vatapikonda; he sent a naval expedition to Sri Lanka to help the prince Manavarma; Xuanzang visited Kanchi in his reign; Mamallapuram is named after him.

Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha: Ruled c. 700 to 728. He built the Shore temple at Mamallapuram and the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchi; Chinese records note a Pallava embassy to China.

Nandivarman II Pallavamalla: Built the Vaikuntha Perumal temple at Kanchi, whose wall panels narrate Pallava history; he faced Chalukya and Rashtrakuta invasions.

Last phase: Nandivarman III (victor at Tellaru, praised in the Nandikkalambakam); Aparajita was defeated by the Chola Aditya I in the late 9th century, ending Pallava rule.

3. The Chalukyas of Badami

Pulakeshin I: Fortified Vatapi (Badami) and performed an Ashvamedha; the Badami cliff inscription (543 CE) records the fortification.

Kirtivarman I and Mangalesha: Mangalesha's inscription in Badami Cave 3 (578 CE) records the excavation of this Vishnu cave, one of the earliest dated Brahmanical cave temples.

Pulakeshin II: Ruled c. 610 to 642. The Aihole inscription (634 to 635 CE) on the Meguti Jain temple, composed by Ravikirti, lists his victories over the Kadambas, Gangas, Alupas, Mauryas of Konkan, Latas, Malavas and Gurjaras, and over Harsha on the Narmada.

Eastern Chalukyas: His brother Kubja Vishnuvardhana was made ruler of Vengi in Andhra (c. 624), founding the Eastern Chalukya line that lasted until the 11th century.

Xuanzang's visit: The pilgrim described his kingdom (Mo-ho-la-ch'a, Maharashtra) as a land of proud, martial people loyal to their king.

Defeat and recovery: Pulakeshin II was defeated and probably killed when Narasimhavarman I took Vatapi in 642; Vikramaditya I restored Chalukya power and attacked Kanchi.

Vikramaditya II: Ruled 733 to 744. He occupied Kanchi but did not plunder it; a Kannada inscription on the Kailasanatha temple records that he returned its wealth to the temple. His queen Lokamahadevi built the Virupaksha temple (Lokeshvara) at Pattadakal to celebrate his victories, and Trailokyamahadevi built the Mallikarjuna temple.

Arab threat: The Navsari plates (739 CE) of the Gujarat Chalukya feudatory Avanijanashraya Pulakeshin record his defeat of an Arab (Tajika) army, checking Arab expansion from Sind.

End: The Rashtrakuta Dantidurga overthrew Kirtivarman II in about 753.

4. Polity, Administration and Economy

Kingship: All three dynasties used Sanskrit prashastis, Vedic sacrifices (Ashvamedha, Hiranyagarbha) and gotra claims to present themselves as dharmic Kshatriya rulers, though the Kadambas and Pallavas (as recorded) were of Brahmana origin.

Units: Pallava territory was divided into rashtra or mandalam, kottam and nadu; Chalukya grants mention vishaya and bhukti.

Villages: Pallava inscriptions show ur (assembly of landholders in ordinary villages) and sabha (assembly of Brahmanas in brahmadeya villages); the Kasakudi and Tandantottam plates list taxes and privileges of donees.

Land grants: Brahmadeya and devadana grants spread Brahmanical settlement and wet-rice cultivation, especially in the Kaveri and Palar valleys.

Trade and guilds: The Pallava ports of Mamallapuram and Nagapattinam traded with Southeast Asia; a 9th-century Tamil inscription at Takua Pa in Thailand mentions the Manigramam merchant body and a tank named after Nandivarman III's title. The Ainnurruvar (Five Hundred of Ayyavole) traced their origin to Aihole.

5. Literature and Religion

Sanskrit: Bharavi and Dandin are linked by tradition with the Pallava court at Kanchi; Ravikirti's Aihole inscription mentions Kalidasa and Bharavi, which helps date them.

Kannada: The Kappe Arabhatta inscription at Badami (c. 700) is an early example of Kannada verse.

Tamil: The Nayanar and Alvar saints (Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar, Tirumangai and others) composed hymns during Pallava rule.

Religious policy: Kings patronised Shaiva and Vaishnava temples but also Jain sites (the Meguti temple at Aihole) and Buddhist monasteries.

6. Art and Architecture

Pallava phases: Mahendra style rock-cut mandapas (Mandagapattu, Mamandur); Mamalla style monolithic rathas and relief panels (the Five Rathas, the Descent of the Ganga or Arjuna's Penance); Rajasimha style structural temples (Shore temple, Kailasanatha at Kanchi); Nandivarman style smaller temples (Vaikuntha Perumal, Mukteshvara).

Mamallapuram: A UNESCO World Heritage Site (1984); the great relief is interpreted either as the Descent of the Ganga or Arjuna's Penance, and the debate remains open.

Chalukya sites: Aihole (Lad Khan, the apsidal Durga temple, Meguti dated 634), the Badami caves (three Brahmanical and one Jain), Mahakuta, and Pattadakal (UNESCO 1987), where Nagara temples (Papanatha, Galaganatha, Kashivishveshvara) stand beside Dravida temples (Virupaksha, Mallikarjuna, Sangameshvara).

Influence: The Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal follows the plan of the Kailasanatha at Kanchi, showing artistic transfer through war.

7. Historiography and Debates

Causes of conflict: Historians link the Pallava-Chalukya wars to control of the fertile Krishna-Tungabhadra (Raichur) doab, the Vengi region, coastal trade and royal prestige.

Classic studies: K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, in A History of South India, gave the standard narrative; later scholars such as Kesavan Veluthat (The Political Structure of Early Medieval South India, 1993) stress how Brahmanas, temples and bhakti built royal legitimacy.

Aihole as cradle: Aihole is often called a cradle of Indian temple architecture, but its many temples belong to different centuries and should not all be dated to the 6th century.

8. Using it in the Exam

10-marker: Significance of the Aihole inscription, or the Pallava contribution to temple architecture.

15 to 20-marker: Pallava-Chalukya conflict and its cultural effects; Pallava art phases with examples; administration with village assemblies.

Keywords: Vatapikonda, Mamalla style, ratha, ghatika, brahmadeya, ur and sabha, Vengi, Raichur doab, Nagara and Dravida side by side.

Source extract (paraphrased): The Mandagapattu inscription says that Vichitrachitta made a temple for Brahma, Ishvara and Vishnu without brick, timber, metal or mortar.

1. Growth of Vaishnavism

Early roots: The Heliodorus pillar at Besnagar (Vidisha, c. late 2nd century BCE) was set up as a Garudadhvaja to Vasudeva by a Greek envoy who called himself a Bhagavata; the Ghosundi inscription mentions Sankarshana and Vasudeva.

Fusion of deities: Vasudeva-Krishna, the Vedic Vishnu and Narayana merged into one god, and the doctrine of avatars (incarnations) absorbed local and tribal deities such as Varaha and Narasimha.

Gupta patronage: Many Gupta kings called themselves parama-bhagavata; the Garuda was their emblem; great Varaha images at Udayagiri and Eran and the Deogarh temple show royal Vaishnavism.

Texts: The Bhagavad Gita, the Vishnu Purana and later the Bhagavata Purana (often dated c. 9th to 10th century, from the south) taught devotion; the Pancharatra and Vaikhanasa Agamas laid down temple ritual.

Vaishnava acharyas: Nathamuni (c. 10th century) collected the Alvar hymns; Yamuna and Ramanuja (traditional dates 1017 to 1137) gave Vaishnavism a philosophical base in Vishishtadvaita.

2. Growth of Saivism

Pashupatas: The oldest organised Shaiva sect, traced to Lakulisha (c. 2nd century CE). The Mathura pillar inscription of Chandragupta II's time (380 CE) records a Pashupata teacher in a line of succession from Kushika, showing early organisation.

Other sects: Kapalikas (ascetics carrying skull bowls, satirised in Mahendravarman's Mattavilasa Prahasana), Kalamukhas (strong in Karnataka, 11th to 12th century, running mathas), Shaiva Siddhanta (Agamic, temple-based) and later Kashmir Shaivism (Vasugupta's Shiva Sutras, 9th century; Abhinavagupta, c. 10th to 11th century).

Royal patronage: Many dynasties were Shaiva: the Vakatakas (Pravarasena II was a devotee of Shiva), the Maitrakas, Pallavas, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas (Kailasa at Ellora) and Cholas (Brihadishvara at Thanjavur).

Tamil Shaiva Siddhanta: The devotional hymns were later given a systematic theology in Meykandar's Sivajnanabodham (13th century), which treats god, souls and bondage as three eternal realities.

Puranic religion: Puja (offering to an image) replaced yajna for most worshippers; pilgrimage (tirtha), vows (vrata), gifts (dana) and festivals became central. Tantric and Shakta worship of the goddess grew in the same period.

3. The Tamil Bhakti Movement: Saints and Texts

Period: Roughly the 6th to 9th century, under the Pallavas and Pandyas, after the Kalabhra interregnum when Jainism and Buddhism had strong patronage.

Kalabhras: The Velvikudi plates of the Pandya Nedunjadaiyan (8th century) describe the Kalabhras as kings who seized the land and set aside earlier grants to Brahmanas, which is why Brahmanical sources present them as a dark interlude.

Nayanars (63 Shaiva saints): Early Karaikkal Ammaiyar, a woman; Appar (Tirunavukkarasar), a convert from Jainism; Tirujnana Sambandar, a Brahmana boy-saint; Sundarar; Manikkavachakar, author of the Tiruvachakam; Nandanar, of a Paraiyar background, in the hagiography.

Shaiva canon: The hymns of Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar form the Tevaram; Nambi Andar Nambi (c. 10th to 11th century) arranged the Shaiva canon (Tirumurai); Sekkilar's Periyapuranam (12th century, under Kulottunga II) narrated the lives of the 63 saints.

Alvars (12 Vaishnava saints): The first three (Poygai, Bhutam, Pey), Tirumalisai, Nammalvar (author of Tiruvaymoli, from a Vellala background), Madhurakavi, Kulasekhara (a Chera king), Periyalvar, Andal (the only woman Alvar, author of Tiruppavai), Tondaradippodi, Tiruppan (from the Panar community) and Tirumangai.

Vaishnava canon: Nathamuni compiled the Nalayira Divya Prabandham (Four Thousand Divine Compositions).

Sacred geography: The hymns name specific shrines; tradition counts 275 Shiva temples sung in the Tevaram (padal petra sthalam) and 108 Vishnu shrines (Divya Desams), which created a Tamil sacred map.

4. Features and Social Character

Language: Hymns were in Tamil, not Sanskrit, and were sung in temples, giving Tamil a sacred status; the hymns themselves were later called a Tamil Veda.

Emotional devotion: The devotee relates to god as servant, child, friend or lover; Andal imagines herself as the bride of Vishnu.

Caste and gender: Saints came from many castes and included women (Karaikkal Ammaiyar, Andal); the hymns say devotion matters more than birth. Yet the movement did not reject the caste order as a whole, and Brahmanas controlled temple ritual.

Hostility to Jains and Buddhists: Many hymns attack Jain and Buddhist monks. Tradition says Appar converted the Pallava Mahendravarman I and Sambandar converted a Pandya king, and the Periyapuranam tells of the impaling of Jains at Madurai; historians treat this story as legend but see real competition for patronage.

Temple-centred: Bhakti was tied to temples and the agrarian villages around them, not to forest asceticism.

Music and ritual: The hymns were set to melodic modes (pan) and later sung in temples by hereditary singers, the oduvars for the Tevaram and the araiyars for the Prabandham, so bhakti also shaped Tamil music and temple ritual.

5. Shankaracharya and Vedanta

Life: Born at Kaladi in Kerala; traditional dates are 788 to 820 CE, but many scholars place him in the late 7th or early 8th century. He travelled widely and debated with Mimamsakas (the story of his debate with Mandana Mishra) and Buddhists.

Works: Commentaries (bhashyas) on the Brahma Sutra, the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita; his predecessor Gaudapada wrote the Mandukya Karika.

Advaita doctrine: Brahman alone is real; the individual self (atman) is identical with Brahman; the world of many things is a product of maya (illusion) and avidya (ignorance) and is real only at the practical level (vyavaharika), not at the highest level (paramarthika); liberation comes from knowledge (jnana).

Mathas: Tradition credits him with founding four mathas at Sringeri, Dwarka, Puri and Jyotirmath (Badrinath) and organising the Dashanami order; the historical evidence for these foundations is late, so present it as tradition.

Critics: Later Vaishnava thinkers called his view crypto-Buddhist (prachchhanna bauddha) because of its similarity to Madhyamaka; Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism) and Madhva's Dvaita (dualism, 13th century) rejected maya and made bhakti the path.

Significance: Advaita gave Brahmanical Hinduism a powerful philosophical system; combined with monastic orders, it helped Brahmanical religion recover ground from Buddhism.

6. Historiography and Debates

Bhakti as protest or as legitimation: M.G.S. Narayanan and Kesavan Veluthat, in their study of the bhakti movement in south India (1978), argued that bhakti served the new temple-centred agrarian order and royal power, rather than being a revolt from below.

Champakalakshmi: R. Champakalakshmi (Religion, Tradition and Ideology: Pre-colonial South India, 2011) links bhakti to an alliance of Brahmanas and landowning Vellalas against Jain and Buddhist mercantile groups.

Literary studies: A.K. Ramanujan's Hymns for the Drowning (1981) translated Nammalvar; Indira Viswanathan Peterson's Poems to Siva (1989) studied the Tevaram; Friedhelm Hardy's Viraha-Bhakti (1983) traced the emotional Krishna bhakti of the south.

Spread northward: Many historians see the Tamil movement as the source of later bhakti traditions across India, carried through the Bhagavata Purana and the acharyas.

7. Using it in the Exam

10-marker: Features of the Tamil bhakti movement, or the role of women saints, with named saints and texts.

15-marker: Shankara and Advaita: doctrine, works, mathas and impact.

20-marker: Social and political character of Tamil bhakti: inclusion versus hierarchy, protest versus legitimation, with historians named.

Keywords: Tevaram, Divya Prabandham, Periyapuranam, sacred geography, maya, vyavaharika and paramarthika, bhakti and temple, Brahmana-Vellala alliance.

Source extract (paraphrased): Appar sings that he is subject to no one and fears no death, since he belongs to Shiva; use it to show the confidence bhakti gave to devotees.

1. The Palas of Bengal and Bihar

Gopala: Around 750 CE, according to the Khalimpur copper plate of his son Dharmapala, the prakritis chose Gopala as king to end matsyanyaya (the law of the fish, where the big fish eat the small), meaning anarchy. Who the prakritis were (people, chiefs or ministers) is debated.

Dharmapala: Ruled c. 770 to 810. He installed his nominee Chakrayudha at Kanauj and held a darbar there attended by many northern kings (Khalimpur plate); the Gujarati poet Soddhala later called him Uttarapathasvamin. He founded Vikramashila and the Somapura Mahavihara at Paharpur (Bangladesh, UNESCO 1985).

Devapala: Ruled c. 810 to 850. His Nalanda copper plate records a grant of villages for a monastery at Nalanda built by Balaputradeva, the Shailendra king of Suvarnadvipa (Sumatra and Java region), showing close links with Southeast Asia.

Decline and revival: The Palas lost ground to the Pratiharas and Rashtrakutas; Mahipala I (c. 988 to 1038) revived the kingdom but was defeated by Rajendra Chola's northern expedition (recorded in the Tirumalai inscription).

Ramapala and the Kaivarta revolt: Sandhyakara Nandi's Ramacharita, a poem with double meaning (telling the story of both Rama and king Ramapala), describes the revolt of the Kaivartas under Divya (Divvoka) in Varendra (north Bengal) and Ramapala's recovery of it.

Administration: Pala plates list long series of officials and feudatories (samanta, mahasamanta, raja, rajanaka), and units of bhukti, vishaya and mandala, a picture often used for the feudal model.

Buddhism and learning: Patronage of Nalanda, Vikramashila, Odantapuri and Somapura; growth of Vajrayana; Atisha Dipankara of Vikramashila went to Tibet in the 1040s.

Art: The Pala school of black stone sculpture and bronzes; the Tibetan historian Taranatha names the artists Dhiman and his son Bitpalo; illustrated palm-leaf manuscripts such as the Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita spread the style to Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asia.

Language: The Charyapada songs of Buddhist Siddhas (c. 10th to 12th century) are among the earliest works in proto-Bengali and related eastern languages.

2. The Senas of Bengal

Origin: The Senas came from Karnata (the Kannada region) and called themselves Brahma-kshatriyas, probably descendants of southern officials or soldiers who settled in Bengal.

Vijayasena: Ruled c. 1097 to 1160. He overthrew the last Palas; the Deopara inscription, composed by the poet Umapatidhara, praises his victories.

Ballalasena: Author of the Danasagara and the Adbhutasagara (completed by his son). Later tradition credits him with organising Kulinism (ranking of Brahmana and Kayastha families), but this attribution is based on later genealogical texts and is debated.

Lakshmanasena: Ruled c. 1178 to 1206. His court had the poets Jayadeva (Gitagovinda), Dhoyi (Pavanaduta), Umapatidhara, Govardhana and Sharana, and the scholar Halayudha.

Fall: Minhaj-us-Siraj's Tabaqat-i-Nasiri says Bakhtiyar Khalji surprised Lakshmanasena at Nadia (Nudiya) around 1204 with a small band of horsemen, and the king fled to east Bengal, where his successors ruled for some decades.

Character: The Senas patronised Brahmanical Hinduism and smriti law, in contrast to Pala Buddhism.

3. The Rashtrakutas

Dantidurga: A Chalukya feudatory who overthrew Kirtivarman II around 753 (Samangad plates) and performed a hiranyagarbha ceremony at Ellora (Dashavatara cave inscription).

Krishna I: Ruled c. 756 to 774. Built the monolithic Kailasa temple (Cave 16) at Ellora, cut from the top downward out of a single rock.

Dhruva and Govinda III: Dhruva raided the Ganga-Yamuna doab and defeated both the Pratihara Vatsaraja and the Pala Dharmapala; Govinda III (793 to 814) defeated Nagabhata II and reached as far as the Himalaya region by his own claims.

Amoghavarsha I: Ruled 814 to 878. He built Manyakheta (Malkhed) as capital; the Kannada work on poetics Kavirajamarga is attributed to him or his court poet Srivijaya; he patronised the Jain scholars Jinasena and Mahaviracharya (author of the Ganitasarasangraha). The Arab merchant Sulaiman (851) called the Balhara (Vallabharaja) one of the four great kings of the world.

Krishna III: Ruled c. 939 to 967. He defeated the Chola Parantaka I at Takkolam (949) and held Kanchi and Tanjore regions for a time.

Fall: Siyaka of the Paramaras sacked Manyakheta in 972, and Taila II of the Chalukyas of Kalyani overthrew the last Rashtrakuta in 973.

Administration: Kingdom divided into rashtras under rashtrapatis, vishayas and bhuktis; village headmen (gavundas in Kannada records); powerful feudatories; Arab writers note an army with many elephants and friendliness to Arab traders.

Arab accounts: Sulaiman, Ibn Khurdadbih and al-Masudi (who visited c. 916) describe the Balhara's wealth, toleration of Muslim traders and the use of dirhams; al-Masudi also notes the hostility between the Balhara and the Gurjara (Pratihara) king.

Culture: Kannada literature grew: Pampa (Vikramarjunavijaya and the Jain Adipurana) wrote at the court of a Vemulavada Chalukya feudatory, and Ponna at the court of Krishna III. Ellora has Buddhist, Brahmanical and Jain caves side by side.

4. The Paramaras of Malwa

Origin: Padmagupta's Navasahasankacharita (c. 1000) gives the earliest version of the legend that the Paramara ancestor rose from the sacrificial fire of Vasishtha on Mount Abu; later bardic texts extended this agnikula story to four Rajput clans.

Early kings: Siyaka (Harsha) sacked Manyakheta (972); Vakpati Munja (c. 974 to 995) was a poet and patron who was captured and killed by Taila II; his brother Sindhuraja is the hero of Padmagupta's poem.

Bhoja: Ruled c. 1010 to 1055 from Dhar. Works attributed to him include the Samarangana Sutradhara (architecture), the Sringaraprakasha (poetics), the Rajamartanda and the Yuktikalpataru; he founded a Sanskrit school at Dhar. The unfinished Shiva temple at Bhojpur (Raisen district) and a large reservoir there are linked with him.

Later Paramaras: Bhoja was defeated by an alliance of the Chalukya (Solanki) Bhima I of Gujarat and the Kalachuri Lakshmikarna; Udayaditya built the Udayeshvara temple at Udayapur (Vidisha district). Alauddin Khalji's forces conquered Malwa in 1305.

Sources: Paramara copper plates, Udaipur prashasti, Padmagupta's poem and Merutunga's Prabandhachintamani (1305), which is full of anecdotes about Bhoja and must be used with care.

5. The Tripartite Struggle

Participants: Gurjara-Pratiharas (Vatsaraja, Nagabhata II, Mihira Bhoja), Palas (Dharmapala, Devapala) and Rashtrakutas (Dhruva, Govinda III).

Course: Roughly from the late 8th to the mid-9th century, Kanauj changed hands several times; the Pratiharas finally held it under Nagabhata II and Mihira Bhoja.

Causes: The prestige of Kanauj as the imperial city of Harsha; control of the fertile Ganga valley; trade routes and access to ports; and the ambition of each dynasty to claim paramountcy.

Results: No power gained lasting supremacy; the wars exhausted all three and allowed feudatories (Chandellas, Paramaras, Chalukyas of Kalyani) to rise.

6. Historiography and Debates

Matsyanyaya and election: Older nationalist writers saw Gopala's choice as a popular election; most historians now read it as selection by leading chiefs to end disorder.

Feudal or segmentary: The long lists of officers and feudatories in Pala and Rashtrakuta grants are used by R.S. Sharma for the feudal model, while B.D. Chattopadhyaya reads them as signs of integrated regional states.

Rajput origins: Colonial writers stressed foreign origin of clans such as the Paramaras; B.D. Chattopadhyaya, in his essay on the origin of the Rajputs (1976), argued that Rajput status emerged through political and social processes of state formation, with fire-origin myths as later legitimation.

Regional cultures: Historians see this age as the formation of regional languages, scripts and art styles (Bengali, Kannada, Pala art), not as a dark age.

7. Using it in the Exam

10-marker: Pala contribution to art and learning, or Bhoja as patron of culture.

15-marker: The tripartite struggle: participants, causes and results.

20-marker: Rashtrakuta polity and culture with Arab accounts and Ellora, or the Palas and Senas compared.

Keywords: matsyanyaya, prakriti, Vikramashila, Somapura, Balhara, Kailasa, Manyakheta, Samarangana Sutradhara, Kanauj.

Source extract (paraphrased): The Khalimpur plate says that, to end the law of the fish, the people made Gopala take the hand of royal fortune.

1. Background

Sind before the Arabs: After the Rai dynasty, the Brahmana minister Chach seized power; his son Dahir ruled Sind from Alor (Aror) and Brahmanabad. The population included many Buddhists, especially among traders and town dwellers, besides Brahmanical groups and pastoral Jats.

Earlier Arab raids: Arab naval expeditions reached Thana and Bharuch in the 630s, and land campaigns probed Makran and the Kabul region in the following decades.

Immediate cause: According to the Chachnama and al-Baladhuri, pirates near Debal seized ships carrying gifts and Muslim women sent from Sri Lanka, and Dahir refused to punish them. Underlying causes were the expansionist drive of the Umayyad caliphate under al-Walid I, control of the sea route to India, and the wealth of Sind.

2. The Conquest (711 to 713)

Commander: Hajjaj bin Yusuf, governor of Iraq, sent his young kinsman Muhammad bin Qasim (aged about 17) with a large army and siege engines.

Debal: The port was taken after a siege in which a large catapult (manjaniq) brought down the flag of the temple; a massacre followed, according to the sources.

Advance: Nirun and Sehwan submitted, partly because local Buddhist groups and chiefs negotiated terms; Dahir was defeated and killed at Rawar in 712.

Brahmanabad, Alor and Multan: These cities were taken by 713; Multan yielded large amounts of gold from its famous sun temple.

End of Muhammad bin Qasim: After al-Walid's death (715), the new caliph Sulaiman recalled him; he was imprisoned and died, though sources differ on how.

Later history: Arab governors such as al-Junaid (c. 720s) raided further east and south, but were checked. Sind later split into the Arab principalities of Mansura and Multan; Multan came under Ismaili rulers and was conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni in the early 11th century.

3. Arab Administration of Sind

Dhimmi status: Hindus and Buddhists were treated as protected people (dhimmis), a status originally meant for Jews and Christians, on payment of jizya.

Brahmanabad settlement: According to the Chachnama, Muhammad bin Qasim allowed temples to be repaired, let Brahmanas continue their rites, and appointed them as revenue collectors, saying that temples were like the churches of Christians and fire temples of Magians.

Revenue: The land tax (kharaj) was collected largely through existing local officials; Muslims paid zakat.

Military rule: Arab garrisons were placed in key towns; the Arab population remained small.

Conversions: Conversion was gradual; Derryl MacLean argues that Buddhist merchant groups converted more readily than Brahmanical and rural groups.

4. Why the Arabs did not advance further

Indian resistance: The Pratihara Nagabhata I repulsed the Arabs, as the Gwalior prashasti of Mihira Bhoja claims; the Navsari plates (739) of the Chalukya feudatory Avanijanashraya Pulakeshin record a defeat of the Tajikas in Gujarat.

Geography and resources: Sind was a dry, poor frontier with deserts on its east; holding it was costly.

Caliphate politics: Internal conflicts, the shift from the Umayyads to the Abbasids (750) and distance from Baghdad weakened central support.

5. Impact and Cultural Exchange

Political impact: Stanley Lane-Poole called the conquest a mere episode and a triumph without results; politically this is largely true, since Arab rule did not spread into India.

Cultural impact: Under the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, an Indian astronomer brought a Sanskrit siddhanta to Baghdad in the 770s; it was translated into Arabic by al-Fazari as the Zij al-Sindhind, generally linked with Brahmagupta's work.

Numerals: Al-Khwarizmi wrote a treatise (c. 825) on calculation with Indian numerals; through Latin translations, the Hindu-Arabic numerals and place value reached Europe.

Medicine and stories: Charaka and Sushruta were translated into Arabic; Indian physicians served at the Abbasid court; the Panchatantra reached Arabic as Kalila wa Dimna through Ibn al-Muqaffa's version of a Pahlavi text.

Trade: Arab merchants settled on the western coast (Malabar, Konkan, Gujarat), and the Rashtrakutas welcomed them, which was more important for long-term contact than the Sind conquest.

6. Sources and Historiography of the Conquest

Al-Baladhuri: Futuh al-Buldan (9th century) gives the earliest connected Arabic account.

Chachnama: A Persian work written c. 1216 by Ali bin Hamid Kufi at Uch under Nasiruddin Qabacha, claiming to translate an older Arabic book; its reliability is debated. Manan Ahmed Asif, A Book of Conquest (2016), reads it as a 13th-century text of political advice rather than a simple chronicle.

Colonial framing: Elliot and Dowson's The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians (1867 to 1877) began with Sind, presenting it as the start of Muslim conquest, a framing later used in communal histories.

Other views: Andre Wink, Al-Hind (volume 1, 1990), places Sind in the wider Indian Ocean and frontier world; MacLean's Religion and Society in Arab Sind (1989) studies conversion and social change.

7. Alberuni and the Kitab-ul-Hind

Life: Abu Rayhan al-Biruni was born in 973 in Khwarazm (Central Asia). After Mahmud of Ghazni conquered Khwarazm (1017), he was taken to Ghazni and travelled with Mahmud's campaigns in north-west India.

The book: Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind, known as Kitab-ul-Hind, was completed c. 1030 in Arabic; Edward Sachau's English translation Alberuni's India appeared in 1888.

Method: He learnt Sanskrit, read texts such as the Gita, the Puranas, Patanjali's Yoga Sutra and the works of Brahmagupta and Varahamihira, and compared Indian ideas with Greek ones (Plato, Aristotle). He translated Sanskrit works on Sankhya and Yoga into Arabic.

Contents: Eighty chapters on religion, philosophy, castes, laws, festivals, calendars, astronomy, astrology, weights and measures, geography and customs.

Barriers to understanding: He listed difficulties: the Sanskrit language, religious differences, differences of customs, and the Hindus' self-regard and reluctance to share knowledge with foreigners.

On caste: He described four varnas, eight groups of antyaja (such as cobblers, weavers, fishermen) below them, and groups such as the Hadi, Doma and Chandala outside the system; he noted that impurity rules restricted contact, and compared the system with ancient Persian class divisions.

On society: He wrote on marriage, the inheritance rules, the position of women, idol worship by the common people as against philosophical monotheism of the learned, and the decline of science into astrology.

On Mahmud: He wrote that Mahmud's raids ruined the prosperity of the country and scattered the Hindus like atoms of dust, creating aversion towards Muslims.

Value and limits: A careful, comparative and textual account; but it relied heavily on Brahmanical texts, so it shows the ideal order more than daily practice, and his travels were limited to the north-west.

8. Using it in the Exam

10-marker: Why the Arab conquest had limited political results, or Alberuni's view of the caste system.

15-marker: Arab administration of Sind: dhimmi status, Brahmanabad settlement, revenue and conversions.

20-marker: Cultural consequences of Indo-Arab contact, or Alberuni as a historian of India: method, content, value and limits.

Keywords: Debal, Rawar, dhimmi, jizya, Chachnama, Sindhind, Hindu-Arabic numerals, Kitab-ul-Hind, antyaja.

Source extract (Sachau translation): The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.

1. Chalukyas of Kalyana (Western Chalukyas)

Foundation: Taila II (Tailapa), a Rashtrakuta feudatory, overthrew the Rashtrakutas in 973, and later defeated and killed the Paramara Munja.

Capital and rivals: Someshvara I made Kalyana (Basavakalyan, Bidar district) the capital; the Chalukyas fought the Cholas for the Vengi region and the Raichur doab (battles of Koppam, 1054, and Kudal Sangamam).

Vikramaditya VI: Ruled 1076 to 1126 and started the Chalukya-Vikrama era; Bilhana's Vikramankadevacharita praises him, and Vijnaneshvara wrote the Mitakshara, the famous commentary on the Yajnavalkya Smriti, at his court.

Someshvara III: Compiled the Manasollasa (also called Abhilashitartha Chintamani), an encyclopaedia on kingship, food, music, games and art.

Decline: The Kalachuris of Kalyani under Bijjala seized power in the mid-12th century (Basava, founder of the Virashaiva movement, was linked with his court); the kingdom was then divided among the Yadavas of Devagiri, the Kakatiyas of Warangal and the Hoysalas.

Administration: Powerful mahamandaleshvaras ruled provinces; units included nadu, vishaya and kampana; village affairs were run by gavundas and assemblies of mahajanas in agraharas.

Architecture: Ornate temples in soapstone and sandstone at Lakkundi (Kashivishveshvara), Ittagi (Mahadeva temple, called an emperor among temples in its inscription), Kuruvatti and Dambal, a bridge between Badami Chalukya and Hoysala styles.

2. The Cholas: Political History

Vijayalaya: Took Thanjavur from the Muttaraiyars around 850 and founded the imperial Chola line.

Aditya I and Parantaka I: Aditya defeated the Pallava Aparajita; Parantaka I (907 to 955) took Madurai (title Maduraikonda) but was defeated at Takkolam (949) by the Rashtrakuta Krishna III.

Rajaraja I: Ruled 985 to 1014. Destroyed the Chera fleet at Kandalur Salai, conquered northern Sri Lanka (made a Chola province with Polonnaruwa as centre), took the Maldives, allied with Vengi through marriage, completed the Brihadishvara (Rajarajeshvara) temple at Thanjavur (c. 1010), and ordered a land survey; his inscriptions begin with a historical introduction (meykirti).

Rajendra I: Ruled 1014 to 1044. Conquered the whole of Sri Lanka; led an expedition to the Ganga (c. 1022 to 1023), defeating the Pala Mahipala I, and took the title Gangaikondachola and built Gangaikondacholapuram; his naval expedition (c. 1025) against Srivijaya attacked Kadaram (Kedah) and other ports.

Later Cholas: Rajadhiraja I died at Koppam (1054); Kulottunga I (1070 to 1122), of Chola-Eastern Chalukya descent, abolished certain tolls (sungam tavirtta), sent an embassy to China (1077) and fought the Kalinga war celebrated in Jayankondar's Kalingattupparani.

Decline: In the 13th century Chola power declined under pressure from the Pandyas and Hoysalas; the last ruler, Rajendra III, is known to c. 1279.

3. Chola Administration

King and court: The king ruled with officials of higher and lower grades (perundaram and sirudaram); royal orders were recorded by secretaries; kings were deified and royal temples displayed their power.

Territorial units: Mandalam (province), valanadu (group of nadus, created under Rajaraja I), nadu (the basic agrarian locality) and ur (village); towns had the nagaram.

Revenue: Land tax was the main source; Rajaraja I and Kulottunga I carried out land surveys; tolls, professional taxes and fines added income. Officials called puravuvari-tinaikkalam kept revenue registers.

Army and navy: A large army including elephant corps and regiments such as the Velaikkarar, and a navy that made overseas expeditions possible.

Inscriptions: Tens of thousands of Tamil inscriptions on temple walls and copper plates (Anbil, Tiruvalangadu, Karandai, the Larger and Smaller Leiden plates) record grants, disputes and assembly decisions.

4. Local Self-Government under the Cholas

Ur: The assembly of landholders in ordinary (non-Brahmana) villages, managing land, tanks and local disputes.

Sabha or mahasabha: The assembly of Brahmana landholders in brahmadeya villages, the best documented local body.

Nagaram: The assembly of merchants in market towns, which also handled commercial matters.

Nadu and nattar: The nadu was an assembly of a whole locality (the nattar) and dealt with revenue assessment and collection, linking villages with the state.

Variyams (committees): Sabhas worked through committees such as the samvatsara variyam (annual committee), eri variyam (tanks), totta variyam (gardens) and pon variyam (gold).

Uttaramerur inscriptions (919 and 921 CE): Records of the sabha of Uttaramerur (Kanchipuram district) under Parantaka I lay down rules for choosing committee members: the village was divided into 30 wards (kudumbu), names were written on palm leaves, put in a pot (kudam) and drawn by a boy (the kudavolai system).

Qualifications: A candidate had to own a certain quantity of tax-paying land and a house on his own site, be between 35 and 70 years old, know Vedic texts and be of good conduct; those who had served in the preceding three years, failed to submit accounts, or committed certain offences, and their relatives, were barred.

Limits: These were assemblies of propertied men, mostly Brahmanas in sabhas; labourers, many artisans and women had no role, so this was oligarchic self-government, not democracy.

5. Hoysalas

Origin: Hill chiefs of the Malnad region of Karnataka; the legend of Sala killing a tiger gave them their emblem.

Vishnuvardhana: Ruled c. 1108 to 1152. Tradition says he turned from Jainism to Vaishnavism under Ramanuja; his queen Shantala Devi remained a Jain patron; he captured Talakad from the Cholas (1116) and built the Chennakeshava temple at Belur (1117).

Veera Ballala II: Made the Hoysalas fully independent; the capital was Dorasamudra (Halebidu), where the Hoysaleshvara temple was built in the 12th century.

Later Hoysalas: The Keshava temple at Somanathapura (1268) was built by the general Somanatha under Narasimha III. Malik Kafur attacked Dorasamudra in 1311; Veera Ballala III died fighting the Madurai Sultanate in 1343.

Architecture: Stellate (star-shaped) plans on raised platforms, soapstone (chloritic schist) carving of extraordinary detail, and sculptors who signed their work (such as Mallitamma). The Hoysala temples of Belur, Halebidu and Somanathapura were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023.

Literature: Kannada writers such as Harihara, Raghavanka, Janna and Rudrabhatta flourished; Jain inscriptions at Shravanabelagola record Hoysala patronage.

6. Pandyas

First Pandya empire (c. 6th to 10th century): Kadungon ended the Kalabhra interregnum; the Velvikudi plates of Nedunjadaiyan describe the dynasty and its grants; the Pandyas were subdued by the Chola Parantaka I.

Second Pandya empire (13th century): Maravarman Sundara Pandya I revived the kingdom; Jatavarman Sundara Pandya I (1251 to 1268) defeated the Cholas, Hoysalas and Kakatiyas, invaded Sri Lanka and gilded the Srirangam and Chidambaram temples.

Maravarman Kulasekhara I (1268 to 1310): Marco Polo visited Ma'bar (the Pandya coast) around 1292 and described its pearl fisheries, rich jewels of the king, sati and the import of horses; the Persian historian Wassaf also records a large horse trade.

Fall: A succession war between Sundara Pandya and Vira Pandya coincided with Malik Kafur's invasion (1311); the Madurai Sultanate was set up around 1335.

Administration: Similar to the Chola system: mandalam, valanadu, nadu and village assemblies, recorded in many Tamil inscriptions.

7. Historiography: Nature of the Chola State

Centralised view: K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas (1935 to 1937), described a centralised monarchy with an efficient bureaucracy, comparing it to the Byzantine empire, combined with vigorous local self-government.

Segmentary state: Burton Stein (1980), using Aidan Southall's model, argued that real power lay in peasant nadus dominated by Vellalas, while the king had mainly ritual sovereignty beyond the core.

Early state and statistics: Noboru Karashima's studies of inscriptions (South Indian History and Society, 1984) and Y. Subbarayalu's Political Geography of the Chola Country (1973) mapped nadus and landholding, showing growing state control and a rise of landed magnates.

Other contributions: R. Champakalakshmi on temple urbanism; Kesavan Veluthat on Brahmanas and monarchy; James Heitzman's Gifts of Power (1997) on lordship and temple gifts.

8. Using it in the Exam

10-marker: Features of Chola local self-government with the Uttaramerur rules; or Chola naval expeditions.

15-marker: Compare Chola and Pallava administration, or describe Hoysala temple architecture.

20-marker: Critically examine the nature of the Chola state: Sastri, Stein, Karashima and Subbarayalu; conclude that the state combined a strong core, ritual authority and local institutions.

Keywords: ur, sabha, nagaram, nadu, variyam, kudavolai, brahmadeya, valanadu, meykirti, segmentary state.

Source extract (paraphrased): The Uttaramerur inscription orders that anyone who has taken bribes or stolen another's property shall not be chosen for the committees for the rest of his life.

1. Temple Architecture: Parts and Texts

Basic parts: Garbhagriha (sanctum), antarala (vestibule), mandapa (hall), ardhamandapa (porch), pradakshinapatha (circumambulatory path), shikhara in the north or vimana in the south over the sanctum, with amalaka and kalasha on top in Nagara temples.

Texts: Silpa and vastu texts such as the Manasara, the Mayamata, Bhoja's Samarangana Sutradhara and the Vishnudharmottara Purana describe plans, proportions and the three styles.

Symbolism: The temple was conceived as the house of the deity and a model of the cosmos, built on a square grid (vastupurusha mandala); Stella Kramrisch's The Hindu Temple (1946) explains this symbolism.

2. Nagara Style (North India)

Features: Square sanctum, curvilinear tower (rekha-prasada), projections on the walls (rathas), no boundary walls or gateways as in the south.

Odisha: Parashurameshvara (7th century), Mukteshvara (c. 10th century, often called the gem of Odishan architecture), Lingaraja (11th century) at Bhubaneswar; the Jagannatha temple at Puri (12th century, Anantavarman Chodaganga) and the Sun temple at Konark (13th century, Narasimhadeva I, UNESCO 1984). Odishan parts are called deul (sanctum) and jagamohana (hall).

Khajuraho (Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh): Built by the Chandellas; the Lakshmana temple has an inscription of 954 CE; the Kandariya Mahadeva (c. 1030) is the peak of the style, with clustered towers rising like a mountain. UNESCO site (1986).

Gujarat and Rajasthan (Solanki or Maru-Gurjara style): The Sun temple at Modhera (1026 to 1027, Bhima I); the Jain temples of Dilwara at Mount Abu, Vimala Vasahi (1031, built by Vimala, a minister of Bhima I) and Luna Vasahi (1230, by the brothers Vastupala and Tejapala), famed for marble carving.

Central India: The Paramara Udayeshvara temple at Udayapur and the Bhojpur temple; Kalachuri temples at Amarkantak.

3. Dravida and Vesara Styles

Dravida features: Pyramidal storeyed vimana, enclosing walls (prakara), gateways (gopuram) that became very tall from the 12th century, water tanks and pillared halls.

Pallava phase: Rock-cut caves and rathas at Mamallapuram; structural Shore temple and Kailasanatha at Kanchi.

Chola phase: Brihadishvara at Thanjavur (completed c. 1010 under Rajaraja I), with a vimana about 66 m tall; Gangaikondacholapuram (Rajendra I); Airavateshvara at Darasuram (Rajaraja II). The three form the UNESCO site Great Living Chola Temples (1987, extended 2004). Chola bronzes such as Nataraja reached their classic form.

Later phase: Under the later Cholas and Pandyas the gopurams of temples such as Chidambaram and Srirangam outgrew the central vimana, a trend continued under Vijayanagara.

Vesara: The Deccan style mixed Nagara and Dravida features; seen at Pattadakal and Aihole (Badami Chalukyas), in the Kalyani Chalukya temples (Lakkundi, Ittagi) and in the star-shaped Hoysala temples of Belur, Halebidu and Somanathapura.

Rock-cut monolith: The Rashtrakuta Kailasa temple at Ellora (8th century) is a Dravida temple carved from a single rock.

4. The Temple as an Institution

Landlord: Temples received devadana land, villages and gold from kings, queens, merchants and assemblies; they leased land to tenants and collected rent.

Employer: Rajaraja I's inscriptions at Thanjavur record about 400 temple women (talichcheri pendugal) settled in two streets near the temple, besides drummers, singers, accountants, washermen, potters and many others assigned shares of land.

Bank: Temples lent money and grain at interest to assemblies and individuals and received deposits for perpetual lamps and feasts.

Redistributor: Feeding houses (sattra, salai), festivals and offerings redistributed produce; temples organised irrigation and tank repairs.

Cultural centre: Music, dance, recitation of the Tevaram and Prabandham, drama and the teaching of Vedas took place in temples.

Political role: Royal temples displayed the king's power and linked him to the deity; temple gifts tied local elites to the king.

Historiography: Burton Stein's study of the Tirupati temple (1960) showed its economic functions; R. Champakalakshmi links temples to a new phase of urbanisation (temple towns such as Kanchipuram, Kumbakonam, Thanjavur); James Heitzman studies temple gifts as instruments of lordship.

5. Mathas and Agraharas

Shaiva mathas: Pashupata and Kalamukha mathas in Karnataka (for example at Balligave, the Kodiya matha), the Mattamayura order of central India patronised by the Kalachuris, and Shaiva Siddhanta mathas in the Tamil country, ran schools, feeding houses and hospitals.

Vaishnava and Advaita mathas: Ramanuja's centres at Srirangam and Melkote; the mathas associated by tradition with Shankara (Sringeri and others).

Jain institutions: Bastis and mathas at Shravanabelagola, Humcha and elsewhere taught and preserved texts.

Agraharas and brahmadeyas: Villages granted to Brahmanas, free of tax, managed by their assemblies (sabha in Tamil country, mahajanas in Karnataka); they were centres of Vedic and Sanskrit learning and of agrarian expansion.

6. Education

Ghatikas: Colleges attached to temples; the Kanchi ghatika is known from the Talagunda inscription, and later Chalukya and Pallava records refer to ghatikas.

Salotgi (Bijapur district): A 945 CE inscription records that Narayana, minister of the Rashtrakuta Krishna III, endowed a hall attached to a temple for students from different regions, with land for their support.

Ennayiram (Villupuram district): An inscription of Rajendra I records a Vedic college supporting about 340 students, with teachers paid in land, teaching Vedas, grammar and Mimamsa.

Tirumukkudal (Chengalpattu district): An inscription of Virarajendra (c. 1067) records a school and a hospital (atulasalai) attached to the temple.

Buddhist universities: Nalanda, Vikramashila, Odantapuri, Somapura and Jagaddala in the east under the Palas until the Turkish raids around 1200.

Kashmir: A centre of Sanskrit learning, Shaiva philosophy and poetics.

7. Literature (c. 700 to 1300)

Sanskrit: Bhavabhuti (Uttararamacharita, at Yashovarman's court), Magha (Shishupalavadha), Rajashekhara (Kavyamimamsa, Karpuramanjari), Bilhana, Kalhana's Rajatarangini (1148 to 1149, a history of Kashmir), Somadeva's Kathasaritsagara, Kshemendra and Jayadeva's Gitagovinda.

Prakrit and Apabhramsha: Vakpati's Gaudavaho; Jain writers such as Svayambhu; Hemachandra at the Solanki court wrote grammar, lexicons and histories.

Tamil: Kamban's Ramavataram (12th century, date debated), Sekkilar's Periyapuranam, Jayankondar's Kalingattupparani, Ottakkuttar's court poems, the Jain epic Jivaka Chintamani of Tiruttakkadevar, and Pavanandi's grammar Nannul.

Kannada: The three gems Pampa, Ponna and Ranna; the 12th-century vachana poetry of Basava, Akka Mahadevi and Allama Prabhu; Hoysala-era poets Harihara and Raghavanka.

Telugu: Nannaya began the Telugu Mahabharata in the 11th century under the Eastern Chalukya Rajaraja Narendra; Tikkana continued it in the 13th century.

Marathi and Bengali: The Jnaneshvari (1290), Jnaneshvar's Marathi commentary on the Gita; the Charyapada songs in early eastern language.

8. Using it in the Exam

10-marker: Difference between Nagara, Dravida and Vesara with one example each, or the temple as an economic institution.

15-marker: Education in early medieval south India: ghatikas, agraharas, mathas and temple colleges with inscriptional examples.

20-marker: Role of the temple in early medieval society and economy, with Thanjavur, Tirupati and historians' views.

Keywords: garbhagriha, shikhara, vimana, gopuram, Vesara, devadana, ghatika, agrahara, matha, temple urbanism.

Source extract (paraphrased): Rajaraja I's Thanjavur inscription lists the temple women brought from other temples and settled in two streets, each given a house and a share of land.

1. Languages and Scripts

Harappan script: Short sign sequences on seals, written mostly right to left; still undeciphered, so the Harappan language is unknown.

Vedic Sanskrit: The language of the Rigveda and later Vedic texts, transmitted orally with great precision; Panini's Ashtadhyayi (c. 5th to 4th century BCE) codified Sanskrit grammar, and Patanjali's Mahabhashya (c. 2nd century BCE) commented on it.

Prakrits: Spoken Middle Indo-Aryan languages; Ashokan edicts use regional Prakrits; the Buddhist canon of the Theravada tradition is in Pali and the Jain canon in Ardhamagadhi; Maharashtri and Shauraseni were used in literature and drama.

Rise of Sanskrit in public life: Rudradaman's Junagadh inscription (c. 150 CE) is the earliest long inscription in classical Sanskrit; from the Gupta age Sanskrit became the language of courts and prashastis across India and much of Southeast Asia (what Sheldon Pollock calls the Sanskrit cosmopolis).

Tamil: The oldest literary Dravidian language, with Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, the Tolkappiyam and Sangam poetry.

Other Dravidian languages: Kannada (Halmidi inscription, c. 450 CE; Kavirajamarga, 9th century), Telugu (inscriptions from about the 6th century; Nannaya's Mahabharata, 11th century) and Malayalam (emerging from about the 9th to 12th century).

Regional Indo-Aryan languages: Apabhramsha bridged the Prakrits and the new languages; early Bengali, Odia and Assamese appear in the Charyapada, Marathi in the Jnaneshvari (1290).

Scripts: Brahmi (deciphered by James Prinsep in 1837) and Kharoshthi (written right to left, in the north-west); Brahmi developed into Gupta Brahmi, Siddhamatrika, Nagari, Sharada, Grantha and the southern scripts, as well as many Southeast Asian scripts; Vatteluttu was used in the Tamil and Kerala region.

Classical languages: The Government of India has recognised Tamil (2004), Sanskrit (2005), Kannada and Telugu (2008), Malayalam (2013), Odia (2014), and in October 2024 Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali as classical languages.

2. Major Stages in Art and Architecture

Harappan: Planned cities, the Great Bath, steatite seals with animals, the bronze dancing girl and the stone priest-king figure from Mohenjodaro.

Mauryan: Polished sandstone pillars with animal capitals (the Sarnath lion capital, now India's national emblem), the Barabar caves (Lomas Rishi), early stupas; the Didarganj Yakshi is often called Mauryan, but its date is debated.

Post-Mauryan: Stupa railings and gateways of Bharhut and Sanchi; rock-cut chaityas of the western Deccan; the Amaravati school in Andhra.

Gandhara and Mathura: Under the Kushanas, Gandhara artists made Buddha images in grey schist with Greco-Roman features, while Mathura artists used red sandstone in an Indian idiom for Buddhist, Jain and Brahmanical images. Alfred Foucher argued that the Buddha image first appeared in Gandhara; Ananda Coomaraswamy (The Origin of the Buddha Image, 1927) argued for an independent Mathura origin; many now accept parallel development.

Gupta: The Sarnath seated Buddha, Udayagiri Varaha, early temples at Deogarh and Bhitargaon, and the paintings of Ajanta and Bagh.

Early medieval regional styles: Pallava Mamallapuram and Kanchi, Chalukya Aihole and Pattadakal, Rashtrakuta Ellora, Pala stone and bronze sculpture, Odishan and Khajuraho Nagara temples, Chola temples and bronzes (Nataraja; Coomaraswamy's essay The Dance of Shiva explained its symbolism), Hoysala temples.

Continuity: Wood and brick forms were translated into stone; the stupa, chaitya and vihara fed into temple design; each region kept common principles while developing its own style.

3. Philosophical Schools: The Six Darshanas

Astika and nastika: The six orthodox (astika) schools accept the authority of the Vedas; the heterodox (nastika) schools, Buddhism, Jainism, the Ajivikas and the Lokayata or Charvaka, reject it.

Nyaya: Founded on Gautama (Akshapada)'s Nyaya Sutra; a school of logic and epistemology that accepts four means of valid knowledge: perception, inference, comparison and verbal testimony.

Vaisheshika: Kanada's Vaisheshika Sutra; analyses reality into categories (padarthas) and holds that matter is made of eternal atoms (paramanu). Nyaya and Vaisheshika later merged.

Sankhya: Associated with Kapila; its classical text is Ishvarakrishna's Sankhya Karika (c. 4th to 5th century CE). It is a dualism of purusha (consciousness) and prakriti (matter, made of the three gunas); classical Sankhya does not need a creator god.

Yoga: Patanjali's Yoga Sutra (dated variously between c. 2nd century BCE and 4th century CE) accepts Sankhya metaphysics with a special role for Ishvara, and gives the eight-limbed path (ashtanga) to still the mind.

Mimamsa (Purva Mimamsa): Jaimini's Mimamsa Sutra; defends the eternity of the Vedas and the efficacy of ritual; its great commentators were Shabara, and in the 7th to 8th century Kumarila Bhatta and Prabhakara.

Vedanta (Uttara Mimamsa): Based on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and Badarayana's Brahma Sutra; branches include Shankara's Advaita (non-dualism), Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism) and Madhva's Dvaita (dualism, 13th century).

4. Heterodox Schools

Lokayata or Charvaka: A materialist school, traditionally linked with Brihaspati, that accepted only perception as a valid means of knowledge and rejected the soul, rebirth and the Vedas; known mainly through its opponents. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya's Lokayata (1959) linked it to popular and material traditions.

Ajivikas: Led by Makkhali Gosala, a contemporary of the Buddha; taught strict determinism (niyati); Ashoka and Dasharatha gave them caves in the Barabar and Nagarjuni hills.

Jainism: The doctrines of anekantavada (many-sidedness of reality) and syadvada (sevenfold conditional predication), and the division of reality into jiva (soul) and ajiva (non-soul).

Buddhist schools: Theravada and Sarvastivada (Abhidharma analysis of dharmas), Sautrantika, Mahayana schools of Madhyamaka (Nagarjuna, c. 2nd century CE, doctrine of emptiness or shunyata) and Yogachara (Asanga and Vasubandhu, consciousness only), and Buddhist logic (Dignaga, Dharmakirti).

Debate culture: Schools developed through public debate (shastrartha) and commentaries that refuted rivals, so Indian philosophy was argumentative rather than static.

5. Ideas in Science and Mathematics

Sulba Sutras: Manuals for building fire altars (Baudhayana, Apastamba, Katyayana, c. 800 to 200 BCE) give geometric constructions and a statement of the relation now called Pythagorean, and a good approximation of the square root of 2.

Vedanga Jyotisha and Pingala: Lagadha's calendrical astronomy; Pingala's Chhandahsutra on Sanskrit metres uses combinatorial methods that resemble a binary system.

Decimal place value and zero: Developed in India over the early centuries CE; clear in the Aryabhatiya's methods, in Brahmagupta's rules for zero (628), and in the Gwalior inscription of 876 CE; carried to the Islamic world (al-Khwarizmi, c. 825) and Europe.

Astronomy: Aryabhata (499) on the rotation of the earth and eclipses; Varahamihira's Pancha Siddhantika preserved five systems including Greek-influenced ones; Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta; Bhaskara II's Siddhanta Shiromani (1150).

Mathematics after Brahmagupta: Mahaviracharya's Ganitasarasangraha (9th century, Rashtrakuta court) and Bhaskara II's Lilavati and Bijaganita, including the chakravala method for indeterminate equations.

Medicine: The Charaka Samhita (internal medicine) and the Sushruta Samhita (surgery, including the description of rhinoplasty and many surgical instruments); Vagbhata's Ashtanga Hridaya; ayurveda was carried to the Arab world and Tibet.

Metallurgy and technology: Wootz steel from south India was prized in West Asia; the Mehrauli iron pillar and Chola bronzes show advanced casting and forging.

Later developments: The Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics (Madhava of Sangamagrama, 14th century) went on to infinite series for trigonometric functions, beyond the period of this unit.

6. Historiography and Debates

Spiritual India view: Max Muller's The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy (1899) and S. Radhakrishnan's Indian Philosophy (1923 to 1927) presented Indian thought as mainly spiritual and Vedantic; S.N. Dasgupta's A History of Indian Philosophy gave a fuller survey of all schools.

Materialist reading: Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya stressed Lokayata and science, and argued in Science and Society in Ancient India (1977) that science, especially medicine, was held back by orthodoxy and the low status of manual work.

Argumentative tradition: Amartya Sen's The Argumentative Indian (2005) highlights the heterodox and sceptical strands of Indian thought.

History of mathematics: Kim Plofker's Mathematics in India (2009) gives a careful account of Indian mathematics and its transmission, separating evidence from exaggerated claims.

7. Using it in the Exam

10-marker: Explain Sankhya or Nyaya, or the significance of the Gandhara and Mathura schools, or Indian contributions to zero and place value.

15-marker: Trace the stages of art from the Mauryas to the Guptas, or compare Buddhist and Brahmanical philosophies.

20-marker: Major philosophical thinkers and schools of early India, or scientific achievements and the reasons for their later slowing; use historians' views.

Keywords: astika and nastika, pramana, paramanu, purusha and prakriti, shunyata, anekantavada, place value, Sulba Sutras, Sanskrit cosmopolis.

Source extract (paraphrased): Brahmagupta states that a number minus itself is zero, and that zero added to a number leaves it unchanged.

1. Kadambas, Pallavas and Chalukyas of Badami

Example 1 (UPSC 2025, 15 marks): Discuss the circumstances which led to the conflict between the Pallavas and the Chalukyas and mention how this rivalry shaped the power dynamics in South India.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)

Approach: Two parts: the circumstances (geography, resources, ambition, alliances) that produced the conflict, and its effects on the balance of power in the south. Keep the narrative brief and use it as evidence.

From the late sixth century two expanding powers faced each other: the Chalukyas of Badami (Vatapi) in the western Deccan and the Pallavas of Kanchi in the Tamil plain. Their wars lasted, with pauses, for about 150 years.

Circumstances: (i) the fertile Krishna-Tungabhadra doab (the Raichur region) and Vengi, the Krishna-Godavari delta, lay between them, rich in revenue and ports; (ii) control of the eastern coast meant trade with south-east Asia; (iii) both dynasties were new and sought prestige through the digvijaya ideal of conquest. Pulakeshin II's conquest of Vengi (c. 624) and his advance to Kanchi, recorded in the Aihole inscription (634 CE), opened the rivalry.

Course in brief: Narasimhavarman I took Vatapi (c. 642) and was styled Vatapikonda; Vikramaditya I recovered it and raided Kanchi; Vikramaditya II occupied Kanchi in the 740s.

Effects on power: neither side could hold the other's heartland, so the conflict exhausted both. The Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi emerged as a separate power. In 753 the Chalukyas fell to their feudatory Rashtrakuta Dantidurga, who carried on the war against Kanchi, while the Pandyas rose in the far south. The weakened Pallavas later gave way to the Cholas.

The conflict thus set the pattern of south Indian politics for centuries: a Deccan power against a Tamil power, fighting over the doab and Vengi.

Example 2 (UPSC 2024, 15 marks): Examine the course of Pallava-Chalukya conflicts between sixth and eighth century CE.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)

Approach: "Examine the course" asks for the phases of the conflict in order, with the evidence for each from both sides' records, and a brief assessment of the outcome.

The Pallava-Chalukya conflict between Kanchi and Vatapi (Badami) ran from the early seventh to the mid-eighth century. It is known from the Aihole inscription (634 CE), Pallava copper plates such as the Kasakudi and Kuram plates, Chalukya grants and the account of Xuanzang.

Phase I, Pulakeshin II and Mahendravarman I: Pulakeshin II (c. 610–642) took Vengi and advanced on Kanchi. The Aihole inscription says he forced the Pallava king to shelter behind the walls of Kanchi, while Pallava records claim Mahendravarman routed his enemies at Pullalur.

Phase II, Narasimhavarman I: he defeated Pulakeshin at Manimangalam and other battles named in the Kuram plates. In c. 642 his general Paranjoti took and sacked Vatapi, where a Pallava inscription records the victory, and he took the title Vatapikonda. Pulakeshin probably died in this war.

Phase III, Vikramaditya I: after a gap of about thirteen years he recovered Vatapi (c. 655) and pushed towards Kanchi, though Paramesvaravarman I claims a victory over him at Peruvalanallur.

Phase IV, Vikramaditya II: in the 740s he occupied Kanchi but spared it, returning treasures to the Rajasimheshvara (Kailasanatha) temple, as his Kannada inscription there records. His queen Lokamahadevi then built the Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal.

The war ended without a final victor. In 753 the Chalukyas fell to the Rashtrakutas, who inherited the rivalry with Kanchi.

Example 3 (UPSC 2020, 20 marks): Describe the evolution and development of regional temple architecture of South India with special reference to Pallavas.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)

Approach: Describe the stages of Pallava architecture (rock-cut to structural) with examples and features, place them in the wider regional experiments of the Deccan, and show their legacy in the Dravida temple.

The Dravida style of temple architecture, with its stepped pyramidal vimana crowned by a domed shikhara, took shape in the Tamil country under the Pallavas (c. 600–900 CE). G. Jouveau-Dubreuil divided their work into four phases.

Mahendra style (early seventh century): Mahendravarman I introduced rock-cut pillared halls (mandapas), as at Mandagapattu, Mamandur and Tiruchirappalli. The Mandagapattu inscription boasts that he built a shrine without brick, timber, metal or mortar, marking the shift from perishable materials to stone.

Mamalla style (mid-seventh century): under Narasimhavarman I Mamallapuram gained refined mandapas (Mahishamardini, Varaha) with lion-based pillars, the great open-air relief of Arjuna's Penance, and the five monolithic rathas. The rathas are models in stone of different roof forms, the Dharmaraja ratha anticipating the Dravida vimana.

Rajasimha style (c. 700–728): Narasimhavarman II (Rajasimha) built the first major structural temples: the Shore Temple at Mamallapuram, the Kailasanatha at Kanchi with its enclosure of subsidiary shrines and early gateway, and the Talagirishvara temple at Panamalai.

Nandivarman style (eighth to ninth century): the Vaikuntha Perumal temple at Kanchi, with sculpted panels of Pallava history in its cloisters, and smaller shrines such as the Mukteshvara and Matangeshvara.

Regional context: in the same years the Chalukyas experimented at Aihole, Badami and Pattadakal, mixing Nagara and Dravida forms, and the Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal followed the Kailasanatha model. The Kailasa at Ellora carried the idea further.

The Pallavas thus took south Indian building from cave to monolith to structure, and their vimana, enclosure and gateway grew into the Chola achievement at Thanjavur (1010 CE) and the later gopuram-dominated temple.

Example 4 (UPSC 2015, 10 marks): Why is Mamallapuram famous ?

Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(b)

Approach: A short note: identify the place, then give the reasons for its fame (Pallava port, monuments, art history, heritage status) in a compact list.

Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram), on the coast south of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, was the port of the Pallavas of Kanchi and takes its name from Narasimhavarman I (c. 630–668), called Mamalla, "the great wrestler".

Rock-cut art: it has the finest Pallava cave halls, such as the Mahishamardini and Varaha mandapas, and the huge open-air relief known as Arjuna's Penance or the Descent of the Ganga, carved on two boulders with gods, animals and sages around a natural cleft.

Monoliths: the five rathas, each cut from a single rock, are stone models of early temple forms, and the Dharmaraja ratha anticipates the Dravida vimana.

Structural temple: the Shore Temple, built under Rajasimha (c. 700), is one of the earliest structural stone temples of south India.

It is famous, therefore, as a showcase of the evolution of Dravida art from cave to structure, and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.

2. Growth of Vaishnavism and Saivism and the Tamil Bhakti Movement

Example 5 (UPSC 2023, 15 marks): Is it correct to say that the post-Gupta period was remarkable for the expansion of religious cults in India?

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)

Approach: Test the claim: show the expansion of Puranic, Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakta, Tantric and devotional cults with examples, then qualify it with the decline of Buddhism and the regional unevenness, and conclude.

The post-Gupta centuries (c. 600–1200 CE) saw religion spread through temples, land grants and regional courts rather than through royal sacrifice. In that sense the claim is largely correct.

Puranic Hinduism: the Puranas spread the worship of Vishnu's avataras, Shiva and the Goddess through image worship, vows (vratas), pilgrimage and gifts. Temples multiplied from Aihole and Bhubaneswar to Khajuraho.

Sects: Shaivism divided into Pashupata, Kapalika, Kalamukha and Shaiva Siddhanta orders, and Kashmir Shaivism reached its peak with Abhinavagupta. Shaktism and Tantra grew, with yogini temples at Hirapur and Bheraghat, while the cults of Surya and Ganesha gained shrines.

Devotion: the Tamil Alvars and Nayanars (c. sixth to ninth century) made bhakti a mass movement, and Shankara (eighth century) organised Advaita monasticism.

Assimilation: local and tribal deities were absorbed into the Puranic fold, as in the Jagannatha cult of Puri, extending these cults into new regions.

Qualifications: Buddhism declined in most regions. Xuanzang (seventh century) saw many deserted monasteries, although it flourished in its Vajrayana form under the Palas. Jainism lost ground in the Tamil country but kept strong patrons in Karnataka and Gujarat.

The period was thus remarkable for the expansion and diversification of Brahmanical cults, though it was also a period of contraction for some older faiths.

Example 6 (UPSC 2022, 15 marks): Throw light on the chief characteristics of Tamil Bhakti Movement during the early medieval period.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)

Approach: List and explain the chief characteristics (saints, language, ideas, social base, institutions, attitude to rivals) with examples, then add the historians' reading of the movement.

The Tamil bhakti movement (c. sixth to ninth century CE) was led by twelve Vaishnava Alvars and sixty-three Shaiva Nayanars, who travelled from shrine to shrine singing to Vishnu and Shiva.

Vernacular hymns: they composed in Tamil, not Sanskrit. The Shaiva hymns of Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar (the Tevaram) were compiled by Nambi Andar Nambi in the Tirumurai, and the Vaishnava hymns by Nathamuni in the Nalayira Divya Prabandham (c. tenth century).

Emotional devotion: they stressed love for a personal god over ritual and learning, often in the language of a lover or servant, drawing on Sangam akam conventions.

Temple and pilgrimage: the hymns praise particular shrines, which became sacred sites (such as the 275 Shiva temples sung in the Tevaram), tying devotion to temples and a sacred map of Tamil land.

Social range: saints included women such as Andal and Karaikkal Ammaiyar and low-caste devotees such as Nandanar and Tiruppan Alvar, but the movement did not attack caste as an institution.

Royal patronage and rivalry: Appar is said to have converted the Pallava Mahendravarman I from Jainism. The hymns are sharply hostile to Jainism and Buddhism.

M.G.S. Narayanan and Kesavan Veluthat read the movement as the ideology of a brahmana-led agrarian order against the mercantile heterodox faiths, and R. Champakalakshmi links it to temple-centred state formation.

Example 7 (UPSC 2020, 15 marks): Puranas were the innovative genre of literature to popularise and revive Vedic religion. Elaborate with examples.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(a)

Approach: Elaborate with examples: define the Puranas, show what was innovative in their form and content, how they popularised and reworked Vedic religion, and whether "revive" is the right word.

The eighteen Mahapuranas, such as the Vishnu, Vayu, Matsya, Markandeya and Bhagavata, took their classical form between c. third and tenth century CE. Traditionally they cover five themes (pancha-lakshana): creation, re-creation, genealogies, the ages of Manu and dynastic histories.

An innovative genre: they mixed cosmology, myth, genealogy, law, geography and ritual in simple narrative Sanskrit. Recited by sutas and brahmanas at temples and festivals, they were open to women and shudras, who were barred from the Veda.

Popularising Vedic religion: they kept Vedic gods and the authority of the Veda but placed Vishnu and Shiva at the centre. The avatara doctrine (Matsya to Kalki) joined Vedic figures and local cults, and the Devi Mahatmya in the Markandeya Purana raised the Goddess.

They replaced costly sacrifice with puja, vows, pilgrimage to tirthas and gifts to brahmanas, which ordinary householders could perform. The Bhagavata Purana gave bhakti its classic text.

Social uses: genealogies gave new dynasties a solar or lunar lineage, and the Kali-age chapters defended varna order.

Strictly, the Puranas did not revive Vedic religion so much as transform it into Puranic Hinduism. Their success lay in keeping Vedic authority while making religion devotional and accessible.

Example 8 (UPSC 2018, 15 marks): "Utpannā dravide bhaktih, Karnāte vriddhimāgatā |
Sthitā kinchit mahārāshtre gurjare jīrnatām gatā ||" — Padmapurāna
Account for the emergence of bhakti in Dravida desa.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)

Approach: Explain the verse briefly, then account for why bhakti arose first in the Tamil land: the earlier devotional tradition, the social and economic setting, the religious competition and royal patronage.

The verse, from the Bhagavata Mahatmya in the Padma Purana, has Bhakti say that she was born in Dravida, grew in Karnataka, lived a little in Maharashtra and grew old in Gujarat. It reflects the accepted view that devotional religion first took popular form in the Tamil country.

Older roots: Sangam poetry already knew Murugan and Mayon and the Paripadal hymns, and the akam conventions of love gave the saints a language of longing for god.

Social and economic setting: the spread of wet-rice farming in the river valleys, brahmana settlements (brahmadeyas) and temples created an agrarian society in which the temple became the centre of village life. Puranic ideas brought by brahmanas met local cults and were fused.

Religious competition: under the Kalabhras (c. third to sixth century) Jainism and Buddhism had gained ground with merchants and courts. The saints' attacks on them show bhakti as a response, which M.G.S. Narayanan and Kesavan Veluthat read as the ideology of the new agrarian order.

Royal patronage: the Pallavas and Pandyas, who ended Kalabhra rule, backed the saints and built temples; Mahendravarman I's turn from Jainism to Shaivism is the best-known case.

Bhakti emerged in Dravida desa because literary tradition, agrarian expansion, religious rivalry and royal support came together there first. From there it spread north through Karnataka and Maharashtra.

3. Arab Conquest of Sind and Alberuni

Example 9 (UPSC 2023, 10 marks): Examine the defects in Alberuni's assessment of the Indian society.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(b)

Approach: Name the work and its method briefly, then set out the main defects (sources, range, bias, specific errors) and end with a fair verdict.

Alberuni (973–1048), who came to India with Mahmud of Ghazni, wrote the Kitab fi Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind (c. 1030), translated by Edward Sachau as Alberuni's India (1888). Despite its scholarly method, his assessment of Indian society has clear defects.

Textual bias: he learnt Sanskrit and relied mainly on Brahmanical texts such as the Gita, Puranas and Smritis. He therefore described the normative varna order and rules of pollution as if they were practised everywhere.

Narrow range: he knew mostly the Punjab and the north-west, so regional variety, the peasant economy, trade and towns, and the south hardly appear.

Generalisation: he called all Hindus haughty and closed to foreigners, and said they lacked a sense of chronology, judgements shaped by the hostility that Mahmud's raids had created.

Yet he was aware of these barriers himself, and his account remains the most careful foreign study of India before the Mughals, best read with inscriptions and other evidence.

Example 10 (UPSC 2016, 10 marks): Comment on the veracity of Alberuni’s account of the Indian society.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(d)

Approach: Comment on veracity: show where the account is reliable and why (method, sources, self-awareness), where it is not, and give a balanced verdict.

Alberuni's Kitab al-Hind (c. 1030) is the first systematic study of Indian society by an outsider, written after years of studying Sanskrit texts with pandits under Mahmud of Ghazni.

Reliable aspects: he was a careful scholar who compared Indian ideas with Greek and Islamic ones and admitted the barriers of language, religion and Mahmud's raids. His account of the four varnas, the eight antyaja guilds below them (fullers, shoemakers, weavers and others) and the outcastes such as the Hadi, Doma and Chandala fits the Smritis and is broadly confirmed by other sources. His notes on Indian astronomy, calendars and festivals are precise.

Limits: he relied on Brahmanical texts, so he described the ideal more than practice. He knew mostly the north-west, and some judgements, such as calling Hindus insular and lacking historical sense, are generalisations.

His account is thus truthful about what the Sanskrit tradition said about society and largely reliable on learning, but it must be checked against regional evidence for actual social life.

4. Temples, Mathas, Agraharas, Education and Literature

Example 11 (UPSC 2026, 20 marks): "Royal patronage and religious institutions significantly contributed to the development of Nalanda, Vikramashila and Vallabhi into prominent centres of learning." Elucidate.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(c)

Approach: Elucidate with each centre in turn: founding and royal grants, the monastic organisation and curriculum that made it a centre of learning, and its decline when patronage failed.

Between the fifth and twelfth centuries Nalanda and Vikramashila in Bihar and Valabhi in Saurashtra became the great Buddhist mahaviharas of India. Royal grants gave them income, while monastic rules gave them discipline and a curriculum.

Nalanda: Xuanzang names a king Shakraditya, usually identified with Kumaragupta I (fifth century), as founder; later Gupta kings added viharas. Harsha endowed it richly, and Yijing says the revenue of more than two hundred villages supported it. Under the Palas, Devapala's Nalanda copper plate grants villages at the request of the Shailendra king Balaputradeva of Suvarnadvipa for a monastery he built. Under abbots such as Shilabhadra it taught Mahayana philosophy, logic (hetuvidya), grammar, medicine and the Vedas, with a strict entrance test.

Vikramashila: founded by the Pala king Dharmapala (late eighth century) at Antichak near Bhagalpur, it was run on royal lines and specialised in Vajrayana and Tantra. Its scholar Atisha Dipankara went to Tibet in the 1040s.

Valabhi: under the Maitraka kings it held many monasteries, such as the Duddha vihara founded by Dhruvasena I's niece. Yijing ranked it with Nalanda, and teachers such as Sthiramati taught there. It was a centre of the Sammitiya school.

The religious side: the sangha provided teachers, libraries and international students from China, Tibet and south-east Asia, and merchants and lay donors added gifts.

Their dependence on patronage showed in their fall: Valabhi declined with the Maitrakas in the eighth century, and Nalanda and Vikramashila were sacked around 1200. They show how royal grants and the monastic institution together built India's first universities.

Example 12 (UPSC 2024, 15 marks): Examine the role played by the Agraharas in the promotion of education in the early medieval India.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)

Approach: Define agraharas, show their educational role with named institutions and inscriptions from different regions, and examine the limits (who was taught and what).

Agraharas or brahmadeyas were villages granted tax-free to learned brahmanas, multiplying from the Gupta age. In early medieval India (c. 600–1200 CE) many became centres of Vedic and Sanskrit learning, often with colleges (ghatikas, salais) and mathas attached.

South India: the Talagunda inscription says the Kadamba founder Mayurasharman went to the ghatika at Kanchi to study the Vedas. Chola inscriptions record endowed colleges: Ennayiram under Rajendra I (c. 1023) fed 340 students and paid teachers of the Vedas, grammar and Mimamsa; Tribhuvani (1048) had about 260 students; Tirumukkudal (1067) had a school, hostel and hospital. In Kerala the Parthivapuram salai (ninth century) supported Vedic students.

Deccan: the Salotgi inscription (945 CE, Rashtrakuta Krishna III) records a college with hostels for students from many regions. Agraharas of the Kalyana Chalukyas such as Balligave had mathas teaching grammar, logic and philosophy.

Their role: they preserved Vedic recitation, Sanskrit literature and law, trained temple priests and court officials, and spread brahmanical culture into new regions.

Limits: learning was largely for brahmana males and Sanskrit-based. Others learnt crafts through guilds, and Jaina and Buddhist monasteries had their own schools.

Agraharas were therefore the backbone of Sanskrit education in the period, but an exclusive one.

Example 13 (UPSC 2016, 15 marks): How did the temples of South India, as financial institutions, have deep impact on the social institutions of early medieval period? Critically examine.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)

Approach: First show how temples worked as financial institutions (land, deposits, loans, livestock, employment), then their impact on social institutions, and critically weigh the integrative reading against hierarchy and exclusion.

From the Pallava to the Chola period (c. seventh to thirteenth century) the great temples of south India owned land, received endowments and lent money. Their inscriptions, above all those of the Brihadishvara temple at Thanjavur (1010 CE), show them as the financial institutions of the region.

Finance: kings, queens, merchants and village assemblies gave land, gold and livestock. Rajaraja I's Thanjavur temple lent money to village assemblies at an interest of about 12.5 per cent a year. Sheep and cattle given for perpetual lamps were entrusted to herders, who paid in ghee, a system studied by George Spencer.

Impact on social institutions: (i) temples employed priests, accountants, musicians, artisans and about four hundred temple women at Thanjavur, creating the devadasi institution; (ii) they tied village assemblies (sabhas, urs) and merchant guilds such as the Ainnurruvar to the temple through deposits and duties; (iii) they gave kings legitimacy and set ranks through temple honours.

Critical view: Burton Stein saw the temple as the centre of a brahmana-peasant alliance in a segmentary state, and R. Champakalakshmi linked it to temple towns such as Kanchipuram and Kumbakonam. But temple wealth also reinforced brahmana and landed dominance, excluded untouchables, and competition over temple rights fed the right-hand and left-hand caste divisions.

Temples thus deeply shaped south Indian society as both integrators and agents of hierarchy.

5. Themes in Early Indian Cultural History: Languages, Art, Philosophy and Science

Example 14 (UPSC 2020, 15 marks): Trace and identify the changing pattern of Tantrism in Ancient India with examples.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)

Approach: Trace Tantra in stages from its roots to its early medieval forms in Shaiva, Shakta, Buddhist and Jaina traditions, identify its features at each stage with examples, and note its absorption into the mainstream.

Tantra denotes ritual and meditative systems that seek power and liberation through initiation (diksha) by a guru, mantras, diagrams (yantra, mandala) and worship of the divine as energy (shakti). Its pattern changed over a thousand years.

Roots: fertility and mother-goddess cults, the magic of the Atharvaveda and folk practices supplied elements, though a direct line from Harappan figurines is debated.

Formation (c. fifth to eighth century): written Tantras appear. Shaiva ascetic orders such as the Kapalikas and Kalamukhas, and Shakta cults of fierce goddesses, spread, while Buddhism developed Vajrayana texts such as the Guhyasamaja Tantra.

Expansion (c. eighth to twelfth century): under the Palas, Vikramashila taught Vajrayana, and Tantric Buddhism went to Tibet. Circular open-roofed yogini temples were built at Hirapur (Odisha) and Bheraghat (Madhya Pradesh). Some practices, called left-hand, involved forbidden substances and admitted women and low castes to initiation.

Refinement: Kashmir Shaivism, culminating in Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1016), gave Tantra a philosophy, while the Shaiva Siddhanta agamas turned Tantric rites into temple ritual. Alexis Sanderson calls the period a "Shaiva age".

Absorption: later Tantra merged into Puranic and temple worship and the Nath and Sahajiya traditions.

Tantra thus moved from folk magic to sectarian esoteric cults and finally into the mainstream of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina ritual.

Example 15 (UPSC 2016, 20 marks): “The changes in the field of art from the Kushana period to early medieval period are mere reflection of changing outlook.” Comment.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(c)

Approach: Comment on the claim: trace the main changes in art from the Kushana to the early medieval period, link them to changing religious and political outlook, then show the other causes (patronage, materials, regional schools, texts) that make "mere" an overstatement.

Indian art changed greatly between the Kushana age (first to third century CE) and the early medieval period (c. 600–1200). The statement sees these changes simply as a mirror of changing outlook.

Kushana age: the Gandhara school, using Greco-Roman forms in grey schist, and the Mathura school, in red sandstone, made the Buddha in human form. Mathura also produced Jaina and Brahmanical images and royal portrait statues of Kushana kings, reflecting Mahayana devotion and imperial self-display.

Gupta age: the serene Sarnath Buddha, the Udayagiri Varaha and the Deogarh temple expressed a classical ideal of calm, spiritual beauty and the rise of Vaishnava and Shaiva theism.

Early medieval: Nagara, Dravida and Vesara temples grew taller and more richly carved (Khajuraho, Bhubaneswar, Thanjavur), Chola bronzes such as the Nataraja gave theology form, and Pala-Sena sculpture served Vajrayana and Puranic cults. The changes reflect bhakti, Tantra and the use of temples to proclaim royal power. Devangana Desai links Khajuraho's erotic sculpture to the culture of a feudal and Tantric age.

Why "mere" overstates it: (i) patronage moved from merchants and guilds to kings and landed elites, changing scale and themes; (ii) materials and technique, from schist to granite and bronze, shaped style; (iii) regional schools and guild traditions had their own logic; (iv) texts such as the Vishnudharmottara, Manasara and Mayamata codified form, so art followed canon as much as outlook.

Art therefore reflected changing outlook, but through economic, technical and institutional conditions. It was a product of society as a whole, not merely a mirror of ideas.

Example 16 (UPSC 2015, 15 marks): Kailasa temple built at Ellora marks the culmination of rock-cut architecture in India. Elucidate.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)

Approach: Show the stages of rock-cut architecture that led up to Kailasa, describe what makes Kailasa unique (scale, technique, design, sculpture), and explain why it is seen as the culmination.

The Kailasa temple (Cave 16) at Ellora in Maharashtra was excavated under the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I (c. 756–773). It is the largest monolithic rock-cut temple in the world.

Background: Indian rock-cut architecture began with the Mauryan Barabar caves (third century BCE), grew through the Buddhist chaityas and viharas of Bhaja, Karle and Ajanta, and took Brahmanical form at Udayagiri, Badami and Elephanta. The Pallava rathas of Mamallapuram showed that a whole temple could be cut from rock, though they were small.

Technique and scale: Kailasa was carved from the top downwards out of a basalt cliff, the builders cutting trenches on three sides and then shaping a free-standing temple, so that nothing was added and everything was removed. Its tower rises about 30 metres.

Design: it reproduces a complete structural temple complex in the Dravida style, following the Virupaksha at Pattadakal: a gateway, a Nandi shrine, the main vimana on a high plinth carved with elephants, two tall pillars (dhvajastambhas) and surrounding cloisters with subsidiary shrines.

Sculpture: panels such as Ravana shaking Mount Kailasa and friezes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata join architecture and sculpture. A Rashtrakuta copper plate of 812 CE praises its marvel, saying even the gods wondered whether it was self-made.

It is the culmination because it carried rock-cutting to its limit of scale and ambition; after it, temple building turned to structural stone.