Aspects of Rural Settlements and Rural Society in Early Medieval India

Aspects of Rural Settlements and Rural Society in Early Medieval India seeks to undertake two kinds of explorations, one methodological and the other thematic. Methodologically, it examines texts of inscriptions—historians’ main source for references to ancient villages—from diverse angles to try and understand the morphologies of villages in relation to different terrains across the country. One important aspect of this exploration concerns understanding, to the extent possible, the relationship of village location/s and sources of water, both for fields and habitats. Thematic explorations, apart from looking for possible physical appearances of ancient villages, extend to the search for the re-examination of the concept of village community, the search for hierarchies among village residents and settlements, and the changing nature of relationship between apex political authorities and villages. The conclusion, deriving from these explorations, makes an argument for the need to depart from the image of India’s villages as unchanging, inert, insulated and self-sufficient spatial  units to viewing them as varied social spaces in interaction with other spaces, which also went through phases of historical change.