Land grants and new rural elites

Land grants from the early centuries of the Common Era are a major source of information about rural society, the economy, and the relationship between kings and local communities. Most of these grants were recorded in inscriptions — some on stone, but the majority on copper plates, which were probably handed over to the recipient as a legal record. The surviving records are overwhelmingly about grants to religious institutions or to Brahmanas. Most inscriptions were composed in Sanskrit, though from the seventh century onwards, a part of the inscription was often in Sanskrit while the rest was in a local language such as Tamil or Telugu.

A particularly revealing example is the inscription of Prabhavati Gupta. She was the daughter of Chandragupta II (c. 375–415 CE), one of the most important rulers of the Gupta dynasty, and was married into the Vakataka family, a powerful ruling lineage in the Deccan. According to Sanskrit legal texts, women were not supposed to have independent access to resources such as land. Yet the inscription shows that Prabhavati did have access to land, which she then granted. This may have been because she was a queen — one of the very few known from early Indian history — and her situation was therefore exceptional. It is also possible that the provisions of legal texts were not uniformly implemented in practice.

The inscription also gives us a clear picture of rural populations. It mentions gramakutumbinas (householders or peasants living in the village), Brahmanas, and others. These people were expected to provide a range of produce to the king or his representatives. According to the inscription, they would now have to obey the new lord of the village — the donee — and pay him all these dues. The grant included a list of exemptions typical of an agrahara (land granted to a Brahmana, who was usually exempted from paying land revenue and other dues to the king, and was often given the right to collect these dues from the local people). The exemptions included:

• The village was not to be entered by soldiers and policemen.
• It was exempt from the obligation to provide grass, animal hides as seats, and charcoal to touring royal officers.
• Exempt from the royal prerogative of purchasing fermenting liquors and digging salt.
• Exempt from the right to mines and khadira trees.
• Exempt from the obligation to supply flowers and milk.
• It was donated together with the right to hidden treasures and deposits, and together with major and minor taxes.

Land grants like this one have been found in several parts of the country. There were regional variations in the sizes of land donated — ranging from small plots to vast stretches of uncultivated land — and in the rights given to the donees (the recipients of the grant).

The impact of land grants is a subject of heated debate among historians. Two main views exist:

Land grants provide some insight into the relationship between cultivators and the state. However, there were many people who were often beyond the reach of officials or samantas: pastoralists, fisherfolk and hunter-gatherers, mobile or semi-sedentary artisans, and shifting cultivators. Generally, such groups did not keep detailed records of their lives and transactions, so our knowledge of them remains limited.

The textbook also includes a rare description of life in a small village from the Harshacharita, a biography of Harshavardhana (ruler of Kanauj, c. seventh century CE) composed by his court poet Banabhatta. The excerpt describes a settlement on the outskirts of a forest in the Vindhyas: …