The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c21.25

c21.25

Ghori in the 12th century A.D., is really a collection of bardic lays composed in Dingal Hindi, the peculiar mixed idiom of heroic poetry, by various minstrels through several centuries in medieval Râjpûtânâ. Some passages are as late as the seventeenth century A.D.¹ Râjas, Sâmantas, aristocrats abound throughout the Râso. Its feudalism is sometimes several layers deep. The government which is mirrored in its pages has fallen from the ancient cultural standards but its structure, while certainly less elaborate, follows the old pattern. The conclusions to which the study of the Râso leads are amply supported by other Râjpût compositions of a similar type which are preserved in Mss. in palace libraries and private collections, particularly in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, and Bûndi. The prefaces or conclusions of many ordinary Hindi and Sanskrit books which were written or copied in the latter half of the sixteenth or in the seventeenth century and which may be read in Mss. in various collections in the modern state of Jaipur bring out one very interesting fact. At the commencement or at the end they glorify Râjâ Mân Singh who, as a vassal of the Mughal emperors Akbar and Jahângir, ruled his hereditary patrimony of Âmer (Amber or modern Jaipur) and also occupied one of the very highest positions in the service of his suzerain. He governed an important imperial province like Bengal. He commanded imperial armies on momentous expeditions, even against the Râjpût state of Chittor or modern Udaipur. In the notices of Jaipur Mss. his campaigns are represented as a Digvijaya and celebrated as the conquest of the whole world or the whole of India. Yet he was only a feudatory and an imperial officer. Once again the Hindu mind failed to grasp firmly the distinction between autonomy and independence. It may be added that the career of Mân Singh was by no means unique in the annals of medieval India. Other Râjpût princes like Bhagvân Dâs, Sarbuland Râi, Jaswant Singh, Jai Singh, while governing their own territories, managed to play a high role in imperial politics and to rank in the highest grade of imperial officers—Mansabdârs as they were called. The conclusions on feudalism in Râjpûtânâ hold good of Central India as the genealogies, bardic lays and notices in general books, preserved in Ms. collections in central India, particularly in the palace library of Chhatarpur, prove. Of all this we can be perfectly sure, thanks to the contemporary Persian chronicles. Similar seems to have been the position of vassals in ancient India as indicated by the inscriptions. Like the Râjpût princes of medieval India, they received titles, commands and governorships from the suzerain and at the same time generally ruled their own territories as autonomous princes. If the ancient Hindus had cared to write their history, the statements and indications to this effect in the inscriptions and in Yuan Chwang might have been borne out in ample detail.¹