Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c16.29

c16.29

Later rulers, instead of deputing *dharmamahāmātras* or *anta-mahāmātras*, adopted the practice of planting brāhmaṇas in the tribal areas through land grants. Between the second and fifth centuries brāhmaṇas were granted land in good numbers in the Deccan—in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Land grants to brāhmaṇas on a considerable scale appear in Madhya Pradesh in the fourth-fifth centuries, in Orissa in the fifth-seventh centuries, in West Bengal and Bangladesh during the same period, in Assam in the seventh century and in Himachal Pradesh and Nepal in the fifth-seventh centuries. To the sixth-seventh centuries belong an appreciable number of grants issued to brāhmaṇas by the Maitraka princes of Valabhi in Gujarat. In short in the fourth-seventh centuries large-scale land grants were made to members of the priestly order in the outlying, peripheral, backward (and in some cases mountainous), and aboriginal areas such as Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bengal, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Nepal. In some cases the number of landed beneficiaries was quite large. In the fifth century 1000 brāhmaṇas were endowed with land in one district by a charter by Pravarasen II.¹ In the seventh century, 205 brāhmaṇas were granted land through a single charter in Assam, and 100 brāhmaṇas through a single charter in the wild tracts of the Tipperah district of Bangladesh. In the same century 23 brāhmaṇas in one case and 12 in another received lands in the Cuttack area, and in the following century 200 brāhmaṇas were given lands in the Balasore district of the same state.²