The Making of Early Medieval India.

• Author: Heitzman, James

This is a collection of nine articles previously published by the author between 1973 and 1986, with an extended introduction written especially for the book. The chapters present case studies of social and economic change occurring between the sixth and thirteenth centuries, primarily in the northern part of India. The collection clearly confirms the author's position as one of the leading scholars in this period of Indian history, making major contributions in methodology and in theory.

The first four chapters concentrate on Rajasthan and the last five deal with a range of materials from throughout north India. The two main topics, however, are politics and economy, and it may have been more felicitous to group the chapters according to these concepts, to allow the reader to see more clearly the evolution of the author's ideas. From this perspective the last. chapter, on "Religion in a Royal Household" (1984), is somewhat out of place, although it is a masterful and scholarly preamble to the study of Sanskrit courtly literature as a source for the understanding of tantric ritualism in its social context.

The chapter on "Irrigation in Early Medieval Rajasthan" (1973) also hangs loose a bit, although it has obvious ramifications for the discussion of economic development. The methodology here demonstrates an early sensitivity to parameters of space and time, unlike much preceding scholarship, and focuses on a limited geographical area with a clear presentation of the chronology (there are thirty-three source inscriptions dateable between 644 and 1302, i.e., one record per twenty years). The first part of the chapter deals with the territorial distribution of tank and well irrigation, but actually bogs down in discussions of well technology and has no map. The very short second section lists the various crops associated with irrigated fields. The third section teases from the inscriptions details on the social organization surrounding donations of irrigated fields to religious institutions, and not surprisingly finds a clear connection between grants and the highest levels of political power, "rulers and their officials" (p. 52). In the end, we feel that only the first steps have been taken toward "microscopic political-spatial levels" and "a certain positive correlation" between irrigation systems and agricultural development (p. 56). This article forms the major link in this collection between the means of production and the political or...