The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c21.62

c21.62

A Profound Change. It struck at the root of feudal-federalism and inaugurated the era of the unitary state. It is true that many Hindu principalities were allowed to subsist for long as autonomous vassals. Again, a close study of medieval India shows, what scholars have generally failed to notice, that certain epochs and regions witnessed a sort of feudalism among Musalınâns themselves. In the last years of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth, the Lodis whose dominion comprised the major part of North India, never understood the meaning of a unitary state and persisted in a sort of clan-feudalism which their ancestors on the north-western frontier had evolved. Much later in the eighteenth century, the Rohillâs who dominated the north of the present United Provinces reproduced a similar type of feudalism. Nevertheless, when all allowance has been made for such exceptions, the fact remains that the Muslim state was predominantly a unitary one. The Muslim conquerors destroyed one Hindu dynasty after another, annexed its