NCERT 7 HISTORY CHAPTER 2

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 2. NEW KINGS AND KINGDOMS


   THE EMERGENCE OF NEW DYNASTIES
  • New dynasties emerged after 7th century
  • Samantas - big landlords or warrior chiefs, subordinates to the kings, later declared themselves as maha-samanta, maha-mandaleshvara
  • Rashtrakutas - sub ordinate to Chalukyas
  • In mid eighth century, Dantidurga, a Rashtrakuta chief performed a ritual called hiranya-garbha (lead to the rebirth of the sacrificer as kshatriya)
  • From Brahmanas to  Kings - the Kadamba Mayusrasharman and the Gurjara-Pratihara Harichandra
    ADMINISTRATION IN THE KINGDOMS
  • Titles - Maharaja- adhiraja (great king, overlord of kings), tribhuvana-chakravartin (lord of the three worlds)
  • taxes collected to finance the king's establishment, construction of temples and forts, used to fight wars
  • close relatives of the king held important positions, positions were often hereditary
  • Inscription of the Cholas - Tamil Nadu, more than 400 terms for different kinds of taxes such as vetti ( in the form of labour), kadamai or land revenue
     PRASHASTIS AND LAND GRANTS
  • Prashastis - showed how rulers depicted themselves: as valiant, victorious warriors
  • kings rewarded Brahmanas by grants of land, recorded on copper plates (written partly in Tamil and partly in Sanskrit)
  • Kalhana wrote long Sanskrit poem - containing history of rulers of Kashmir, he referred inscriptions, documents, eyewitness accounts and earlier histories to write his account
     WARFARE FOR WEALTH
  • Tripartite struggle - rulers of Gurjara- Pratihara, Rashtrakuta and Pala dynasties fought control over Kanauj
  • Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, Afghanistan, ruled from 997 to 1030, his targets were wealthy temples including that of Somnath, Gujarat
  • Kitab ul-Hind - Sultan Mahmud asked Al-Biruni to write an account of the sub continent
  • Chahamanas / Chauhans - kings of warfare, ruled over Delhi and Ajmer
  • Best Chauhan ruler - Prithviraja III defeated Afghan ruler, named Sultan Muhammad Ghori but lost to him in the next year
     A CLOSER LOOK : THE CHOLAS
  • Muttaraiyar held power in Kaveri Delta, Vijayalaya from the Cholas captured Uraiyur and built the town of Thanjavur, the Pandyan and Pallava territories were made part of this kingdom
  • Rajaraja I, the most powerful Chola ruler in 985 reorganised the administration
  • Rajaraja's son Rajendra I developed a navy for expeditions
  • Big temples of Thanjavur and Gangai Konda Cholapuram are architectural and sculptural marvels; they were the hub of economic, social and cultural life as well 
  • Chola bronze images are considered amongst the finest in the world
    AGRICULTURE AND IRRIGATION
  • large scale cultivation opened up in the fifth or sixth century
  • Cholas made new developments in agriculture; forests cleared, lands levelled, embankments built to prevent flooding, canals constructed, two crops grown in a year
   THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE
  • Ur - settlements of peasants
  • Nadu - groups of such villages
  • Rich peasants of the Vellala caste controlled nadu under Chola government
  • Titles were muvendavelan (peasant serving three kings), araiyar (chief)
  • Nagarams - associations of traders, performed administrative functions in towns
  • Inscriptions from Uttaramerur - details of the way in which the sabha was organised, how committees and committee members selected to look after irrigation works, gardens, temples

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