"A PASSAGE TO INDIA":

TEMPLES, MERCHANTS AND

THE OCEAN

(Contributions to Indian Studies in JESHO with Particular Reference to

Economic *
History)

BY

HERMANN KULKE

(Kiel)

India has had its due share in JESHO. Second only to the Near
East, India is represented by altogether some ninety-seven articles.
Chronologically, they cover the whole period from the Indus Civiliza-
tion through "the coming of the Aryans", to early historical India,
classical, early medival, medieval (or
"Muslim") India and to the
consolidation of the East India Company in the late century. 18th
The scope of various Indian topics covered
by JESHO in its first
thirty-five volumes is equally impressive. Before trying to summarize
some of these contributions under a few selected subjects of Indian
economic and social history, two special topics will be taken up. They
may highlight both the importance of JESHO's contributions to
ongoing debates, and the intensity with which such debates were
taken up in JESHO itself. These controversal topics are the role of
Indian feudalism and the so-called "Dravidian hypothesis" of the
origin of certain Sumerian names of distant trading centers.
With regard to Indian feudalism, JESHO can rightly claim to have
contributed to, or even partly initiated, this most important debate
in contemporary Indian historiography. In 1956, two years before the

* In this
case, the well-known title "A Passage to India" has been adopted from
Prabhati Mukherji's article on the migration of the Indo-Aryans to India (vol.
29 (1986) 87-88).

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first issue of JESHO appeared, D. D. Kosambi had already pub-

lished the first two articles ever written on Indian feudalism and his
famous book Introduction to the Study of Indian History, in which he
elaborated on his concept of "feudalism from above" and "feudalism
from below". This book was reviewed in the first volume of JESHO
by A. L. Basham, one of the founding board members of JESHO and
the academic guide of the temporarily London-based new school of
Indian historians. 1) It is worth quoting at some
length s from Basham's
review, as it precisely predicted the further course of the debate on
Indian feudalism and on Kosambi's role in this debate: "Kosambi's s
book will find numerous critics both in India and elsewhere. Many
Indian historians, writing in a period of resurgent nationalism, will
be horrified at Prof. Kosambi's attacks on many dogmas cherished
in the undergraduate classes of Indian universities. Marxists of the
orthodox school may well find fault with several of his conclusions.
Many passages in the book will be found irritating by non-Marxists
while professional Indologists will be quick to point out errors in
detail. In fact the book will please no one... Nevertheless we believe
that this book is in its class, a great book." In the following years,
JESHO published two more of Kosambi's papers on Indian
feudalism which too did not tally with the mainstream of the early
phase of the orthodox Marxist debate on feudalism in India. His
paper on Indian feudal trade charters emphasized the administrative
decentralization through samanta chiefs whose rise in the post-Gupta
period accelerated the conversion of communal property into feudal
property 2). His second article on social and economic aspects of the
Bhagavadgita stressed certain cultural values, particularly bhakti,
fostered by India's medieval feudal regimes 3). Kosambi may have to

1) A. L. Basham, "A New Interpretation of Indian History" [Review of D. D.

Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, Bombay 1956], 1 (1958)
333-347.
2) D. D. Kosambi, "Indian Feudal Trade Charters", 2 (1959) 281-293.
3) D. D. Kosambi, "Social and Economic Aspects of the Bhagavadgita",
4 (1961) 198-224.

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be regarded as the first historian to draw attention to the political

dimension of bhakti faith when he wrote: "To hold this type of society
and state together, the best religion is one which emphasizes the role
of bhakti, personal faith." Kosambi's emphasis on the political and
cultural dimensions of Indian feudalism-as manifested in the role of
the Sdmantas and the bhakti religion-was not the primary concern of
the orthodox Marxists and their contributions to the debate on Indian
feudalism.
The first contribution to the still prevailing Marxist interpretation
of Indian feudalism, was published too, in the first volume of JESHO
by R. S. Sharma, a student of A. L. Basham. In his seminal article
on the origins of feudalism in India, Sharma pointed out that the
land grants to Brahmins and religious institutions have to be regard-
ed as the key diagnostic feature of Indian feudalism4). The
stepwise
endowment of the donees in the post-Gupta period with juridical and
administrative powers, immunities from taxes, the right to extort
forced labour from the villagers etc, all this led to the rise of a class
of rural landowners as the backbone of Indian feudal society. The
process of feudalization was accelerated
by urban decline, paucity of
coins, retrogression of trans-local trade and the emergence of a self-
sufficient local economy. In a second article Sharma rounded off his
concept of Indian feudalism through a detailed study of land grants
to vassals and officials in the eleventh and twelfth centuries5). These
grants "led to the emergence of a hereditary military class, living on
fiefs assigned to its members." According to Sharma this new
development, which in India was not found in earlier times, closely
resembled the emergence of hereditary military families in medieval
Europe.
Sharma's two papers, published in JESHO, clearly laid the foun-
dation of the concept of Indian feudalism. In 1965 he included the

4) R. S. Sharma, "The Origins of Feudalism in India", 1 (1958) 297-328.

5) R. S. Sharma, "Land Grants to Vassals and Officials in Northern India
(c.A.D.1000-1200)", 4 (1961) 70-105.

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enlarged versions of these articles as key chapters in his book Indian

Feudalism, which still forms the standard text of the "Indian
Feudalism School". Further contributions of Sharma and his col-

leagues in other journals supplemented, rather than modified, the

concept of Indian feudalism as laid down for the first time in JESHO,
and this was to dominate the field till the mid-eighties.
JESHO contains several other important papers which
either fol-
lowed or rejected Sharma's concept. Already in 1963 L. Gopal wrote
about "quasi-manorial rights" in ancient India 6) . He compiled a

large number of epigraphical references to the practice of granting

land together with its inhabitants, thus strengthening one of the
major props of Sharma's concept. N. Karashima's paper on the

nayakas as lease-holders of temple land in South India is of particular

interest'). Even though its author may not be regarded as a

"member" of the Indian feudalism school, his results are definitely
supporting its concept. Karashima shows how the nayakas (a group of
late medieval local magnates in South India) were able to strengthen
their local power through becoming hereditary lease-holders of tem-
ple land. The new emerging network of land owners and temples con-
tributed considerably to the decline of the central authority of the

Vijayanagara empire. Karashima's argument thus confirms

Sharma's theory of the rise of a class of landed intermediaries as the
major cause of feudalization in India. An article by Upendra Thakur
on ancient and
early medieval Indian mint towns also supports, at
least indirectly, one of Sharma's causes of feudalization 8). On the
basis of his exhaustive study of the available evidence on India's pre-
Muslim mint towns, Thakur detects a "more or less uninterrupted
continuity from the third century B.C. down to the thirteenth century
AD." However, out of the fifteen known mint towns, twelve belong
to the pre-Gupta period, two to the Gupta and post-Gupta period and

6) Lalanji Gopal, "Quasi-Manorial Rights in Ancient India", 6 (1963)

296-308.
7) Noboru Karashima, "Nayaks as Lease-Holders of Temple Land", 19 (1976)
227-232.
8) Upendra Thakur, "Early Indian Mints", 16 (1973) 265-297.

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only one (Kadakal) to the llth to 14th centuries. The study of mints
thus indirectly corroborates Sharma's controversial hypothesis of
the paucity of coins in the period of early medieval India, the period
of Sharma's Indian feudalism. Upendra's son, V. K. Thakur, in a

paper on trade and towns in early medieval Bengal comes up with a

more direct
support of the Indian feudalism concept9). He rightly
points out that so far only 350 coins are known to have been found
in Bengal for a period of nine hundred years from the Guptas to the
Sultanate period. Coins therefore did not form the basis of Bengal's
early medieval commercial exhange 1°). However, as regards the

alleged urban decay during this period, Thakur sees "unmistakingly

archaeological evidence for a continuation of urban tradition" in

early medieval Bengal. He tries to explain this contradictory evidence

with a change of the socio-economic functions of the surving urban
centres. He assumes that they had become religious centres rather
than centres of economic activities and therefore concludes that
"even in a feudal milieu, urban centres with no commercial or mer-
cantile associations can flourish".
However, his assumption that
these religious urban centres "hardly served any positive economic
interest of contemporary society" was to be contradicted by other
contributions in JESHO (see below).
JESHO also contains at least one of the early clearly dissenting
votes against the concept of Indian feudalism. Buddha Prakash's
paper on the genesis and character of the landed aristocracy in
ancient India rejects most of Sharma's hypotheses11). Thus he rightly
points out that in early medieval India (the alleged heyday of Indian

feudalism) the institution of commendation, the personal bonds

9) Vijay Kumar Thakur, "Trade and Towns in Early Medieval Bengal

(c.A.D.600-1200)", 30 (1987) 196-220.
10) M. P. Joshi and C. W. Brown register for a Himalayan region the total
absense of coins in the post-Kushana times up to the 10th century: "Some
Dynamics of Indo-Tibetan Trade through Uttarakhanda (Kumaon-Garhwal),
India", 30 (1987) 303-317.
11) Buddha Prakash, "A Debated Question: The Genesis and Character of
Landed Aristocracy in Ancient India", 14 (1971) 196-220.

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between lord and chiefs, was unknown. Moreover he postulates that

during this period trade and commerce did not decline, wide circula-
tion of coins is still attested in literary sources and spatial and social
mobility continued to exist. Moreover, he comes conclusion to the
that to link the practice of making land grants to officers "with the

emergence of a feudal and manorial set-up in parts of India is

historically unsound". The whole spectrum of different issues of this
debate, as seen by the proponents of Indian feudalism, is again taken
up by R. S. Sharma and D. N. Jha in 1974 in a comprehensive article
on modern Indian historiography, dealing with British "imperial",
Indian nationalistic and contemporary Indian Marxist

historiography 12). JESHO thus has become very directly involved in

the formulation of the concept of Indian feudalism which doubtlessly
has to be regarded not only as the most important but certainly also
the most controversial debate in modern Indian historiography.
Romila Thaper's "Dravidian hypothesis" evoked another pro-
tracted debate on an Indian topic in JESHO 13). In her article pub-
lished in 1975 she suggested new "possible identifications" of
Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan, three toponyms which were fre-
quently mentioned in Sumerian and post-Sumerian cuneiform
sources as distant trading places/regions. Whereas these names are
generally identified as the region of the Indus civilization, Bahrein
and the Balutchistan coast respectively,
Thapar suggests instead,
southern coastal
Gujerat, Saurashtra and Sindh/Balutchistan. Her
new approach is based on the widely accepted hypothesis that western
and northwestern India at the time of the Indus civilization was
inhabited by a Dravidian population. Accordingly, Thapar tries to
identify the above toponyms etymologically as Dravidian or proto-
Dravidian place names in western India and to substantiate her iden-
tifications through archaeological evidence, particularly from Lothal

12) R. S. Sharma and D. N. Jha, "The Economic History of India up to

A.D.1200: Trends and Prospects", 17 (1974) 48-91.
13) Romila Thapar, "A Possible Identification of Meluhha, Dilmun and
Makan", 18 (1957) 1-42.

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and Saurashtra. Her most controversial identification is her "equa-

tion" of Dilmun with Saurashtra against the established theory of
Dilmun being Bahrein. Etymologically, however, her proto-
Dravidian hypothesis sounds particularly convincing in this case. She

suggests that the Sumerian description of Dilmun as "the pure land"

may have had its origin in proto-Dravidian telman "the pure earth",
which in turn may have been Sanskritized as su(au)rastra during the
first millennium B.C.
As expected, the reaction to Thapar's hypothesis was prompt.
Already in the same volume D. K. Chakravarti rejected Thapar's
thesis with archaeological arguments 14). Thapar's emphasis on
western India as the location of all the three places would suggest a
degree of direct contacts between Sumer and western India which "is
not suggested by archaeological evidence". Apart from the so-called
"Persian Gulf seal", which, after all, is a surface find, the
archaeological data do not support any direct India-Mesopotamia
contact. And arguing
against Thapar's reliance on S. R. Rao, the
excavator of Lothal, Chakravarti emphasized that "the entire point
of 'established trade contacts' between Lothal and Susa is
unproven". He therefore concludes that whatever basis Thapar's
hypothesis may have, existing "the
archaeological evidence from
west India is not one of them". Three years later the debate flared
up fully with an article published by Elisabeth C. L. During Caspers
together with A. Govindankutty 15). During Caspers, who herself in
several articles has always strongly argued in favour Bahrein's iden-
tification as Dilmun'6), strictly rejects Thapar's Dravidian

14) Dilip K. Chakravarti, "Gujerat Harappan Connection with West Asia: A

Reconstruction of the Evidence", 18 (1975) 337-342.
15) Elisabeth C. L. During Caspers and A. Govindkutty, "R. Thapar's Dravi-
dian Hypothesis for the Location of Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan. A Critical
Reconstruction", 21 (1978) 113-145.
16) E.g.: "Sumer, Coastal Arabia and the Indus Village in Protoliterate and
Early Dynastic Eras. Supporting Evidence for a Cultural Linkage", 22 (1979)
121-135; "Dilmun: International Burial Ground", 27 (1984) 1-32; "A Copper-
Bronze Animal in Harappan Style from Bahrain: Evidence of Mercantile Interac-
tion", 30 (1987) 30-46; "The Indus Valley 'Unicorn'. A Near Eastern Connec-
tion ?", 34 (1991) 312-350.

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hypothesis. On the basis of evidence from cuneiform texts and

archaeological findings, she draws the conclusion that "so far we
have found no single scrap of archaeological evidence or any convinc-
ing linguistic ground to corroborate Romila Thapar's iden-
tifications" .
In a rejoinder in 1983, Thapar reproaches During Caspers and
Govindankutty for having "been so carried away by their enthusiasm
to prove me wrong on every count that at times
they are assailing not
what I have said but what is assumed that
I have said" 17) . Thapar
remarks that
the point at issue of the debate is viewing the problem
from the two ends of the spectrum, i.e. from the ancient Near Eastern
sources or from the Indian evidence. In view of a possible Dravidian
population of the Indus Civilization, historians are confronted with
the probability that proto-Dravidian toponyms may have been
translated both into Sumerian and-later-into Indo-Aryan. As a more
recent example, she refers
to Puliyur ("tiger village"), the original
name of Chidambaram, which later became Vyaghrapura in San-
skrit. With regard to the identification of Dilmun as Saurasthra,
Thapar points out that "had it been a single identification it might
have been dismissed as coincidence but in the context of the total
argument of other identifications it remains enigmatic". And with
regard to the other identifications, she reminds her critics
that W. L.
Leemans too had suggested to search for Meluhha in coastal
Gujerat 18) . Another important possible evidence of the Dravidians'
presence in Western India and their relationship with Meluhha is the
term mleccha which is frequently used since late Vedic time for
denoting non-Aryans. Its Pali rendering milakka or milakkhu is cer-
tainly the closest known linguistic form of Meluhha. In her first paper
Thapar therefore rightly had raised the question as to whether the
original mlecchas could have been the proto-Dravidian speakers of

17) Romila Thapar, "The Dravidian Hypothesis for the Identification of

Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan", 26 (1983) 178-192.
18) W. F. Leemans, "Old Babylonian Letters and Economic History. A Review
Article in a Disgression on Foreign Trade", 11 (1968) 171-226.

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Meluhha, an assumption which meanwhile is widely accepted. But in

her rejoinder Thapar surprisingly appears to be reluctant to continue
with this interpretation, as she wonders why, then, this term does not
occur in the Rigveda, which was composed in northwestern India and
which often refers to a variety of non-Aryan peoples. In the same year
that Thapar published her rejoinder, B. Krishnamurty wrote a short
note on the Dravidian aspect of her hypothesis 19). He accepts her
Dravidian reconstructions of Makan and Meluhha and emphasizes
that "the word Dilmun should present even fewer problems from the
Dravidian point of view". The debate thus appears to remain as con-
troversial as it began when Romila Thapar published her first paper
in 1975.
As may be seen from other contributions in JESH02°),
Dilmun remains Bahrein, at least for the time being. Whatever may
be the final outcome of this debate-perhaps after the decipherment
of the Indus script-it drew again our attention to the even more con-
troversial question of who were the creators of the Indus cities: The
Dravidians or-as more and more fundamentalist North Indian
historians appear to be convinced-the Indo-Aryans?
Apart from these two major debates on Indian subjects a few more
general topics emerged from the successive publications of
thematically related
papers. These focal points include topics such as
urbanization, studies on external, mainly maritime, trade and on
irrigation. With regard to urbanization, JESHO contains contribu-
tions to the three major phases of post-Harappan urbanization,
i.e. the early and classical period with its important towns in
the Ganges valley21), the early medieval period of alleged urban

19) Bh. Krishnamurti, "The Dravidian Identification of Meluhha, Dilmun and

Makan", 26 (1983) 191-192.
20) Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola and Robert H. Brunswig, "The Meluhha
Village. Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millen-
nium Mesopotania", 20 (1977) 129-165. This paper contains the interesting
cuneiform references to a "holder of a Meluhha ship", to an "Meluhha inter-
preter" and to the "Meluhha village".
21) George Erdosy, "The Origin of Cities in the Ganges Valley", 27 (1984) 81-
109. See also R. S. Sharma, "Material Background of Vedic Warfare", 9 (1966)
303-307; Steven G. Darian, "The Economic History of the Ganges to the End of

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decay22) and on the culmination of urban development in premodern

India under Muslim domination23). Moreover, contributions to
JESHO included several important papers to various aspects of In-
dia's medieval temple cities which in recent decades have become the
focus of intensive studies.
G. Erdosy's paper on the early Ganges valley cities may have to
be regarded as one of the more recent comprehensive attempts to
define the causes of their origin in a theoretical historical framework.

Though himself an archaeologist, he rejects the utility of traits lists

in determining the growth and nature of early cities. Instead he sug-
gests a systemic approach and the need to look at the earliest urban
centers of northern India as agents of socio-political and economic
changes and to study the causes of their emergence accordingly. He
therefore links their rise with the emergence of the janapada states
towards the mid-first millennium B.C. The massive fortifications of
several early capitals were caused by the protracted and often
internecine rivalries between the janapadas and testify the organizing
capacity of the janapada elites to collect and control surplus of raw
materials and to extract manpower from the countryside. The early
cities were therefore fortifications with a citadel and with a cluster of
settlements without, rather then having densely populated quarters
within. Signs of maturing urbanization appeared only between 500
and 300 B.C. "with a somewhat abrupt appearance of flourishing
urban elements around 300 B.C.". This sudden rise of the classical
cities is attributed by Erdosy to the vastly enhanced politico-economic
capacity of the Maurya state as depicted particularly in Kautilya's

Arthasastra24). In a further step of hypothetical reasoning, he points

the Gupta Times", 13 (1970) 62-87; D. K. Chakravarti, "Prehistoric Ganges

Basin", 15 (1972) 213-219.
22) Vijaya Kumar Thakur, see note 9.
23) Hamida Khatoon Naqvi, "Progress of Urbanization in United Provinces,
1550-1800", 10 (1967) 81-101; B. G. Gokhale, "Ahmadabad in the XVIIth Cen-
tury", 12 (1969) 187-197.
24) For studies on the Arthasastra in JESHO see the following papers: F.
Wilhelm, "Das Wirtschaftssystem des Kautiliya Arthasastra", 2 (1959) 294-313;

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out that "there is good evidence for crediting the Aryan intruders (of
the central Ganges valley) with causing the instability which set the
stage for the rise of cities."
A particularly characteristic manifestation of early medieval Indian
urbanization is of the form of the vast temple complexes, some of
them developing into veritable
temple had
cities. Previous studies
viewed temples simply as objects of art history and religion. JESHO
contains one of the earliest contributions to a radically new inter-
pretation of these temple cities and sacred places. In his article on the
famous Rdjardjegvara temple at Tanjore, G. W. Spencer emphasized
its function as a nodal of the political
point structure and the royal

authority of the emerging "imperial" Chola state25). According to

him the authority of the Chola kings was based on the manipulation
of pre-existing non-political institutions rather than on the building
up of a solid state
bureaucracy. These pre-existing institutions were
e.g. village assemblies, craft guilds "and above all temples and their
ritual communities". Spencer came to the important conclusion,
expressed in the following frequently cited quote: "in order to under-
stand the importance to Rajaraja of patronage to the Tanjore temple,
we must recognize that such patronage, far from representing the
self-glorification of a despotic ruler, was in fact a method adopted by
an ambitious ruler to enhance
his very uncertain power." In a most
recently published article J. Heitzman took up again the study of the
imperial temple of the Cholas at Tanjore26). He too emphasizes the
political role of the temple complexes as major instruments of ritual

E. Brucker, "Grundsatze der Besteuerung im Kautilya-Arthasastra", 15 (1972)

183-202; idem, "Offentlicher Haushalt, staatliche Wirtschaftsplanung und Finanz-
kontrolle im Kautilya-Arthasastra", 23 (1980) 312-319; A. M. Samazvantsev,
"Some Remarks Regarding a Term of diisakalpa in the Kautillya Arthasastra", 29
(1986) 190-197.
25) George W. Spencer, "Religious Networks and Royal Influence in Eleventh
Century South India", 12 (1969) 42-56.
26) James Heitzman, "Ritual Polity and Economy. The Transactional Network
of an Imperial Temple in Medieval South India", 34 (1991) 23-54.

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integration and economic development of early medieval states of

India. In a detailed survey of the famous corpus of more than fifty
lengthy temple inscriptions of Rajaraja's time Heitzman analyses the
major components of the transactional network of the temple. It
operated through a highly sophisticated system of ritual-economic
exchanges between the temple complex and its hinterland, involving
men, material goods and religio-ideological messages. Of particular
interest in the case of the Tanjore temple is its complicated but most
revealing system of the recruitment and economic support of ritual
specialists (priests, temple dancers etc.) and service workers (accoun-
tants, washermen etc.) by altogether more than 300 villages,
distributed mainly in the central core but also located in some
strategically important places in peripheral regions. As in most other
cases, the temple derived a large amount of its annual income
through allocation of land taxes by the king. Agricultural villages
paid their taxes in kind whereas commercial communities (nagara)
remitted theirs in
gold to the
temple treasury. But South Indian
temples in general and Tanjore in particular are known for another
transactional network, combining the maintenance of the temple
complex and the economic development of its hinterland. Courtiers,
military groups and the treasury arranged reinvestment of the annual
income of the temple through deposits made with brahmana villages.
The assemblies of these villages were responsible for investing the
money to provide the temple with an annual return of 12,5 9lo . A
major emphasis of Heitzman's paper is a detailed analysis of the
allocations and the conditions under which these transactions were
carried out. Heitzman's study leaves no doubt that these transactions
aimed at the economic uplift of the core
area of the Chola state and
the direct association of the core with the state temple and its imperial
cult. Its outflowing message was to identify the royal creator of the
temple as the greatest human of the kingdom
being and as the main-
tainer of the cosmic order. According to Heitzman the transactional
network of the temple brought Rajaraja and numerous local leaders
into a single administrative system headed by the king. Heitzman

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therefore concludes that "this ideological system provided an avenue

for political affiliation within extended political orders."
In another important recent contribution to the field of temple city
studies, P. S. Kanaka Durga and Y. A. Sudhakar Reddy emphasize
the function of the sacred places as integrators of various pastoral and
tribal communities in the state 27). In a case
study, they analyse the
integration of the tribal group of the Boyas into the economy and
ritual of the Drakshrama temple complex in coastal Andhra Pradesh
in the period from 1038 to 1458. The process of their integration

operated through the donation of land and cows for the maintenance
of perpetual lamps at the Drakshrama temple. These cows and the
regular supply of ghee to the temple were entrusted to members of
the Boya community. In altogether 275 epigraphically registered
donations of the above mentioned period, 13,440 cows were transfer-
red to the temple and entrusted to a total of 882 Boyas. From them
139 Boyas are explicitly listed as custodians of cows whereas 40 are
referred to as "commanders" obviously being in charge of
(adupunu),
their supervision and of the regular supply of ghee to the temple. The
status of the Boyas was raised from that of outcastes to Sudras. But
the integration of the Boyas did not end in the precincts of the temple.
Since the 13th century some of them entered the "state service" as
administrators (adhikari) of velaniirju ` `districts" and in a few cases
Boyas were even promoted to the ranks of local Nayaka leaders and
Samanta chiefs. Another result makes this study quite revealing. The

histograms of the frequency of donations to the temple shows a clear

correspondence with the rise of the "Imperial Gangas" of Kalinga
during which Draksharama became a bone of contention between the

Gangas and their arch-enemies, the Cholas. Far from suffering from
these struggles, Draksharama obviously profited as a legitimizer of
both contending parties and their competing claims.

27) P. S. Kanaka Durga and Y. A. Sudhakar Reddy, "Kings, Temples and

Legitimation of Autochthonous Communities. A Case Study of a South Indian
Temple", 35 (1992) 144-166.

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A recently published paper on weavers of South India contains

another interesting piece of information on the importance of temple
cities for weaving guilds and textile production 28). Even though the
activities of weaving-guilds can be traced back to the period of the
Cholas, their concentration in temple cities appears to have become
more frequent under Vijayanagara. V. Ramaswamiquotes, as a
particularly striking example of this temple-oriented economic policy,
an inscription of Tirupati dated 1538. It registers an agreement
between cloth and yarn-merchants and imposed certain regulations
on weavers. The inscription concludes with the explicit order that
these regulations have to be communicated "to every Hindu village
and Muslim dwelling
(of weavers), every cloth merchant and agent
for strict of application
observance in Tirupati, Kanchipuram
(another temple city famous for its excellent weaving) and other parts
of the South." The concentration of weaving-guilds in temple cities
and clusters of weaving villages thus existed in South India already
in precolonial times.
JESHO contains several articles on India's premodern
technological development, e.g. to gold mining29), iron
production 3°), cotton manufacture and textiles 31), sugar making32),
irrigation33) and ship building34). Moreover, a comprehensive review

28) Vijay Ramaswami, "The Genesis and Historical Role of the Master-
Weavers in South Indian Textile Production", 28 (1985) 294-325.
29) F. R. Allchin, "Upon the Antiquity and Methods of Gold Mining in
Ancient India", 5 (1962) 195-211.
30) S. D. Singh, "Iron in Ancient India", 5 (1962) 212-216; D. D. Kosambi,
"Beginning of the Iron Age in India", 6 (1963) 309-318.
31) Lalanji Gopal, "Textiles in Ancient India", 4 (1961) 53-69; D. Schlingloff,
"Cotton Manufacture in Ancient India", 17 (1974) 81-90.
32) Lalanji Gopal, "Sugar-Making in Ancient India", 7 (1964) 57-72.
33) B. D. Chattopadhyaya, "Irrigation in Early Medieval Rajasthan",
16 (1973) 298-316; Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, "Water Works and Irrigation System
in India during Pre-Mughal Times", 29 (1986) 52-77.
34) Archibald Lewis, "Maritime Skills in the Indian Ocean 1363-1500",
16 (1973) 238-264 (with an excellent bibliography); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "A
Note on Narsapur Peta: A 'Syncretic' Ship Building Center in South India,
1570-1700", 31 (1988) 305-310.

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article sums up the state of research in the early seventies35). All these
papers contributed considerably to the extension of our knowledge
about a subject which for a long time was one of the most neglected
topics of Indian history. Of particular relevance are the studies on
iron and irrigation as they pertain to sustained debates in their
respective fields. The distribution of iron-ores and
the beginning of
the Iron Age in India and its impact on socio-economic and political
development is taken up in a comprehensive study by D. K.
Chakravarti ??). On the basis of his survey of India's twenty
places/regions of iron ores, he argues against two widely held assump-
tions, firstly, against the diffusionist concept that the beginning of
India's iron metallurgy was directly influenced by developments in a
single center, i.e. the Anatolian plateau, and secondly, that "the
large-scale growth of Iron Age settlements in the Ganges Valley
depended on the control over and exploitation of ore-deposits of
eastern India". His survey reveals that iron metallurgy in inner India
(Nagda II: ca 1100 B.C.) was earlier than that of India's north-
western borderlands. Further, the widespread distribution of iron
ores in the subcontinent underlines the fallacy of the latter assump-
tion which links the process of early state formation in northern India
directly with the control over eastern India's iron ores.

Irrigation is of particular importance for Indian history and

historiography. In India, the ancestral home of Marx's "Oriental
Despot" whose sole productive role was supposed to increase produc-
tion (and thus revenues too)
through large-scale irrigation projects,
it has become commonplace to play down or even completely deny
royal or state initiative in irrigation works. In this deadlock, two
authors came forward with new material and thoughts for an urgently
needed new approach to this debate. B. D. Chattopadhyaya under-
took an exhaustive study of the territorial distribution of diffferent

35) Amita Ray and Dilip K. Chakravarti, "Studies in Ancient Technology and
Production: A Review", 18 (1975) 219-232.
36) D. K. Chakravarti, "Distribution of Iron Ores and the Archaeological
Evidence of Early Iron in India", 20 (1977) 166-184.

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irrigation devices in Rajasthan and

their relationship with particular
crop productions3?). Moreover, he emphasized irrigation organiza-
tion as part of the agrarian structure. On the basis of his survey he
detected clear indications for agrarian extension through royal
initiative in irrigation works as "grants of irrigational facilities
emanated largely from rulers and officials". In a summary of his fin-
dings on early medieval Rajasthan, Chattopadhyaya therefore con-
cludes that the organizational aspects of irrigation works undertaken
by an emerging socio-political system "could assume a significance
which would be absent in a different historical context". Chat-
topadhyaya's findings in early medieval Rajasthan are fully cor-
roborated by I. H. Siddiqui's article on water works and irrigation
systems in the time of the Delhi Sultanate 38). The construction of
cisterns, tanks and artificial lakes undertaken by the early Sultans of
Delhi appears to have served mainly for the embellishment of their
capitals. The construction of large-scale artificial irrigation canals
outside the capital began under Alauddin Khalji, apparently in con-
nection with his far-reaching administrative and economic reforms.
Siddiqui's quotation from a contemporary source is particularly
revealing in this context: "any neglect shown by the state in keeping
them (the canals) intact, would ruin the cultivation and the peasantry
at large" (Ain-ul Mulk Mahru). Irrigation works, and in particular the
construction of irrigation canals, appear to have reached their
culmination in the mid-fourteenth century when Firoz Shah tried to
consolidate again the north Indian power base of the Sultanate after
two generations of disastrous imperial expansion. Siddiqui refers at
length to Barani who described Firuz Shah's impressive efforts to
improve the economic conditions in the core area of this Sultanate
through the construction of two
canals, linking the Ganges and
Yamuna. It is astonishing to hear from Siddiqui that these canals (of
a length of 100 and 120 miles) so far seem to have escaped the notice of

37) B. D. Chattopadhyaya, see note 33.

38) 1. H. Siddiqui, see note 33.

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modern scholars. Even though Chattopadhyaya and Siddiqui

prudently avoid any
attempt "to revive the sensative polemic on the

society' per se" (Chattopadhyaya), their findings

" `hydraulic
certainly have a bearing on our knowledge of the organizational

capacity of the much-maligned premodern state in India.

India's relations and trade with various regions of the Eurasian
continent may be taken as a final example points of
of those focal
research which emerged in the course of time from a series of
contents-related contributions to JESHO. Especially in the field of
India's "foreign relations", JESHO covers chronologically the whole

range from the Indus valley civilization up to European domination

of the Indian Ocean. Much has already been said about India's
earliest relations with west Asia in connection with Romila Thapar's
controversial "Dravidian hypothesis". During Caspers contributed

altogether four more papers on various aspects of India's earliest rela-

tions with coastal Arabia (particularly Bahrein) and Sumer39). More-
over, the "Parpola brothers" and R. H. Brunswig wrote a paper on
the "Meluhha village" as a case study of possible acculturation of
Harappan traders in Mesopotamia4°) and M. J. Shendge reasoned
about possible consequences of Sumer's relations with the Indus
civilization for the invention of writing 41).
The classical period of Indo-Greek history and Indo-Roman trade
is represented by four articles. Himanshu P. Ray's paper contains a
comprehensive survey of the archaeological and literary evidence of
the presence of the "Yavanas" in India42). Ray's specific contribu-
tion to this subject (on Greeks, Indo-Greeks and on Roman trade in

India), which has already caused much ink to flow, is her emphasis
of the Indian roots of the Yavana trade. According to her, their role

39) E. C. L. During Caspers, see note 15.

40) Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola and Robert W. Brunswig, see note 20.
41) Malati J. Shendge, "The Inscribed Calculi and the Invention of Writing:
The Indus View", 28 (1985) 50-80.
42) Himanshu P. Ray, "The Yavana Presence in Ancient India", 31 (1988)
311-322.

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and the influence they were able to exert was determined by two fac-
tors : the efficiency and complexity of Indian local trade networks and
the use of indigenous coinage in local transactions within these net-
works. Moreover, Ray applies the concept of "trading diaspora" (so
far usually ascribed to medieval trading communities e.g., Jews,
Muslims etc.) to this early period. She suggests that Buddhist and

Jain trading communities might have fulfilled the economic and

cultural functions of a trading diaspora. "Thus gifts and donations
by the Yavanas in the western Deccan may be seen as attempts to
participate in the cultural distinctiveness of the Buddhist trading
diaspora on which the Yavanas were dependent." K. W. Dobbins
contributed an extremely helpful and intelligible article on the history
and trade in north-western India after the downfall of the Indo-
Greeks, one of the least known periods of early Indian history43).
Although the main
emphasis of this paper is the reconstruction of

political history, he also points out that participation in and exploita-

tion of trade and commerce was "a fundamental policy of the Indo-
Greek kingdoms." The control over this trade was largely deter-
mined by their famous coins of superb craftsmanship and reliable
intrinsic value, which were accepted by merchants with confidence.
Lionel Cassons
provides a new interpretation of a significant passage
in Periplus on the struggle between the Sakas and the Andhras for the
control of West Indian trade 44) . Whereas hitherto it was assumed that
the Sakas were hijacking or at least diverting the commerce intended
for their Andhra rivals, he shows that it was exactly the other way
round. The Andhras tried to intercept the Saka trade whereas the lat-
ter supplied guards to Greek ships to Barygaza. P. H. L. Egger-
mont's article of trade routes in western and northwestern India
during the period of Yavana trade has to be regarded as an example
of a very successful case study to reconstruct regional history through

43) K. Walton Dobbins, "The Commerce of Kapisene and Gandhara after the
Fall of the Indo-Greeks", 14 (1971) 286-302.
44) Lionel Casson, "Sakas versus Andhras in the Periplus maris Erythraei",
26 (1983) 164-177.

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historical geography by an extensive utilization of classical western

and Indian textualevidence 45).
India's foreign trade relations after the decline of Indo-Roman
trade in the third century A.D. are still a matter of controversy. Con-
ventional historians assume a more or less swift shift from the west
to the east coast and an intensification of India's trade with Southeast
Asia as a compensation for the decline of the Roman trade. Pro-

ponents of the concept of Indian

feudalism, however, detect a drastic
decline of India's internal
and external trade in the post-Gupta period
as a major cause of its proposed feudalization. An article by V. K.
Thakur emphasizes this latter position 46). In a case study of urbaniza-
tion and trade in early medieval Bengal, he points out that Tamralipti,
once Bengal's flourishing port town, declined rapidly since the early
eighth century. For about half a millennium no other important ports
are known to have existed in Bengal till the coming of the Muslims
in the late 12th century. The Bengal region therefore appears to have
been left out of the expanding trade in the Indian Ocean which was
dominated by Near Eastern traders and Indians operating from
western and southeastern ports. This situation did not change "even
when a stable government was established in eastern India under the
Palas in c. 750 AD."
The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed a steep rise of inter-
national trade relations in the Indian Ocean, which is usually
ascribed to the nearly synchronous rise of the Fatimids in Egypt, the
Cholas in South India and the Song dynasties (North and South) in
China. The rediscovery of this important period of maritime history
of Asia is at least partly due to S. D. Goitein's systematic and
laborious study of the unique corpus of Jewish Geniza documents
from Old Cairo, which are now dispersed in a large number of
libraries in USA and Europe. Until 1980 Goitein was able to identify

45) P. H. L. Eggermom, "The Murundas and the Ancient Trade-Routes from

Taxila to Ujjain", 9 (1966) 257-296.
46) Vijay K. Thakur, see note 9.

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and analyse about 400 documents from the Cairo Geniza pertaining
to Indian trade and traders out of which about 245 deal with trade
proper, whereas the rest pertains to various personal and communal
activities of the persons involved in this trade. They all illustrate the
existence of a flourishing trade network of Jewish, Arab and Indian
traders operating between the Mediterranean world, the Arab Penin-
sula and India.
Apart from publishing his famous monographs, Goi-
tein contributed five papers on the Geniza documents to JESHO, the
last one pertaining to Indian trade47). It analyses two documents
written by the Muslim representative of merchants and superinten-
dent of the port of Aden to a learned Tunisian Jew whose mercantile
and industrial activities on the Malabar coast can be traced during
the years 1132 through 1149. These two letters, too, are fascinating
documents of the pre-European trade networks in the Indian Ocean
and their participants.
The various aspects of commercial relations and activities in the
eastern sector of the Indian Ocean of the eleventh and twelfth cen-
turies are well illustrated by three other papers. K. R. Hall's two
articles reveal a period of intensive quadruple interrelations between
the regionally dominant powers of this period, viz., the Cholas in
South India, Angkor in mainland Southeast Asia, Srivijaya with its
control of the coastal
regions on both sides of the Straits of Malakka
and Song Ghina48). Hall argues convincingly that the economic com-

petition between these four regional powers set the stage for a unique
episode in India's relations with its neighbouring countries. After
having systematically annexed all coastal regions of eastern and
southeastern India and northern Sri Lanka, and having brought
under its control the Maldives and the Andamans, the Cholas under-

I 47) S. D. Goitein, "From Aden to India. Specimens of the Correspondence of

India Traders of the Twelfth Century", 23 (1980) 43-66, (Goitein's other articles
dealing with the Mediteriancna and Arab World appeared in vols. 1,4,6 and 9).
48) Kenneth R. Hall, "Khmer Commercial Development and Foreign Contacts
under Suryavarman I", 18 (1975) 318-336; "International Trade and Foreign
Diplomacy in Early Medieval South India", 21 (1978) 75-98.

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took their maritime expedition against

Srivijaya in A.D. 1025. Less
known than this
spectacular expedition, but well documented by
Hall, is the close network of interrelated "diplomatic" and economic
relations which accompanied the power struggle of these "Big Four"
in the eastern Indian Ocean. According to Hall's essays, a major
means of establishing "special relations" between these powers took
the form of diplomatic in the garb of religious
missions activities, e. g.
through temple construction in the host country, whose ruler then

generously equipped it with land and revenue transfer. A special varie-

ty of this "religious diplomacy" is attested by J. Stargardt's paper

from Burma where the kingdom of Pagan had come up as a new

regional power in mid-eleventh

century49). Its second king Kyan-
zittha sent a mission to the Pala
King of Bengal to have the sacred

temple of Bodh Gaya repaired with the latter's support. Moreover,

Kyanzittha claimed to have converted a Chola prince, to whom he
sent a Buddhist text composed by himself and written, in golden leaf.
The establishment of the Delhi Sultanate by central Asian Turks
in the early thirteenth century has to be regarded as a major event
not only in South Asian history5°). In the maritime history of Asia
it set off a process which changed Muslim domination of maritime
trade into its partial control in pre-European times, only temporarily
interrupted by the famous Indian Ocean expeditions by the Ming
dynasty in early fifteenth century. A major factor which had a very
direct impact on maritime trade and its control was the supply of the
war horses from the Near East to India which had multipled since the
establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in the early thirteenth
century.
In his case study on Thana on the Konkan coast in western India
Ranabir Chakarvarti illustrates the impact of this most important
trade "item" on medieval trade in the western section of the Indian

49) Janice Stargardt, "Burma's Economic and Diplomatic Relations with India
and China from Early Medieval Sources", 14 (1971) 38-62.
50) M. Athar Ali, "The Islamic Background to Indian History. An Interpreta-
tion of the Islamic Past", 32 (1989) 335-345.

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Ocean"). The competition between the Delhi Sultanate and the

independent states of central and southern India for the much sought
after "Bahri" horses of the Near East increased
considerably when
the Delhi Sultansbegan a policy of aggressive expansionism against
these southern states and, at the same time, tried to reduce the supply
of war horses to these states. Marco Polo visited India only a few

years before the central Indian Yadava dynasty and its port Thana
fell prey to the victorious army of the Sultans. It is this historical
situation in which Chakravarti "locates" Marco Polo's detailed

report about Thana's astonishing, but abominable, methods of

piracy when a fleet of 20 to 30 vessels
joined together and called a sea
cordon of something like one hundred miles with an interval of 5 to
6 miles between the ships. One will agree with Marco Polo's conclu-
sion that "no merchant ship could escape them. "
Though perhaps not in a strictly scientific way, one may compare
the impact of war horses on the political and military structure of the
Delhi Sultanate with the influx of western silver on the political and
economic structure of the Mughal state. The latter subject is dealt
with in an extensive study by Shireen Moosvi52). Correlating the ran-
dom dispersion of 7,382 Mughal coins (from all treasures
troves
discovered in Uttarpradesh since the mid-nineteenth century) and the
detailed British reports on the daily output of the Surat mint during
the years 1635-1636, she calculates an average annual output of all
Mughal mints as 151,690 metric tons of silver for the years 1576 to
1705. Comparing this amount with an annual average output of 75.3
metric tons of silver coins in France between the years 1631 and 1660,
Moosvi remarks that her figures for Mughal India are "by no means
unreasonable". Most important, though perhaps also most daring, is
her attempt to calculate the actual annual circulation of silver coins
in the Mughal state on the basis of the chronological distribution of

51) Ranabir Chakravarti, "Horse Trade and Piracy at Tana (Thana,

Maharashtra, India): Gleanings from Marco Polo", 34 (1991) 159-182.
52) Shireen Moosvi, "The Silver Influx, Money Supply, Prices and Revenue-
Extraction in Mughal India", 30 (1987) 47-94.

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the existing 7,382 Mughal coins and to correlate her respective

histograms of Mughal silver coinages with historical events of the
Mughal state. Thus, she ascertains a dramatic rise in the number of
silver coins during the years 1576-1580 and a peak from 1591 to 1595.
These dates not only correspond with the years of successful Mughal
expansion under Akbar but also with the established evidence of
silver influx from America to Europe, a considerable part of which
obviously reached Mughal India very soon through European trade.
The influx of silver and the monetization of India's economy may
have had a stronger impact on 16th century India than the territorial
establishment of the Estado da India by the Portuguese who had

opened India's floodgates for the influx of the silver and all the
rest to come from Europe through its colonial companies. Portuguese
conquest of coastal strongholds was followed by the initially "soft"
intrusion of the north European companies in the seventeenth cen-
tury. This period of trading partnership in India between
Indian/Asian and European merchants was the heyday of the famous
"merchant princes" who appear to have become some of the most
publicized individuals of recent Indian historiography. One of them
was Virji Vora, who played a crucial role in the affairs of the East
India Company at Surat in the mid-17th century. In a short note
Lotika Varadarajan is able to establish his identity with "the brother
Boras" who is frequently mentioned in the memoirs of Francois
Martin, head of the French counter at Surat from 1681-168653).
Varadarajan is thus able to disclose new historical evidence of this
"merchant prince", who was reputed to be the wealthiest merchant
of his age. One of the rarer cases of an European "merchant prince"
is dealt with by Walter J. Fischel in his study of the Jewish merchant

colony in Fort St. George (Madras) in the late 17th century54). The
focus of this study is three Jews who entered Madras in 1683 as

53) Lotika Varadarajan, "The Brothers Boras and Virji Vora", 19 (1976)
224-227.
54) J. W. Fischel, "The Jewish Merchant-Colony in Madras (Fort St. Georg)
during the 17th and 18th Centuries", 3 (1960) 78-107; 175-195.

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disliked "interlopers". The story of these three Jewish merchants,

(the most important of thembeing Bartholomeus Rodriguez), their
rapid rise to influence and
wealth during the last two decades of the
17th century, and the establishment of "a business of vast dimensions
from which the entire trade of English settlements on the eastern part
of India greatly benefited", is a story of success which would have
been envied even by the British "Nabobs" of the late eighteenth cen-
tury. Farhat Hassan, too, ascertains in his paper on Anglo-Mughal
trade conflict and cooperation that there existed between Mughal
officials and Company servants an "undefined and nebulous alliance
which safeguarded and fostered each other's interest" 55). It was only
during the later half of Aurangzeb's reign that this cooperation at the
local level changed drastically. Hassan detects as causes of this
development "growing pressure resulting from determined efforts on
the part of the imperial court to raise resources from cesses on trade
and commerce and to organize the Mughal mercantile taxation
system" 56). Aurangzeb's farman of the year 1680 to raise the customs
duty on goods of the East India Company from 2 9lo to 3 . 5 9lo was one
cause of the outbreak of the first Anglo-Indian war in 1687. The date
and particularly, the circumstances under which the change from
European partnership in Asian trade to British domination in India
took place are still a matter of controversy, as can be seen from Sushil
Chaudhury's paper on merchants, companies and rulers in 18th cen-
tury Bengal5'). It is not surprising, that he, too, rejects the famous
van Leur thesis on pre-modern Asian international trade as being
essentially a small-scale peddling trade. However, it is interesting
that his findings about the great Asian merchants of mid-17th century
Bengal (Jagat Seths, Omichand and Khwaja Wazid) corroborate van

55) Farhat Hassan, "Conflict and Cooperation in Anglo-Mughal Trade Rela-

tions during the Reign of Aurangzeb", 34 (1991) 351-360.
56) See also Satish Chandra, "Jizyah and the State in India during the 17th
Century", 12 (1969) 323-340.
57) Sushil Chaudhury, "Merchants, Companies and the Rulers. Bengal in the
Eighteenth Century", 31 (1988) 74-109.

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Leur's statement that

the wealthy Asian merchant class was allied to
the social and political elites. S. Chaudhury points out that this close
alliance of the "merchant princes" and the ruling elites is in flat con-
tradiction to the findings of M. Pearson and Ashin Das Gupta who
portray the merchants as an independent entity with hardly any close
connection to the ruling hierarchy. Moreover, he rejects K. N.
Chaudhuri's contention that the decline of Asian merchants in
Bengal had begun already in the early 1750s, as in S. Chaudhuri's
view "the prominent merchant families were still preeminent" and
able to resist successfully attempts by the East India Company to dic-
tate the terms of trade. Apart from other well-known reasons which
led to their fall after Plassey in 1757, S. Chaudhury suggest a few
more general sociological (nearly Weberian) causes for the ultimate
fall of the great Indian traders. Thus he points out that "trade or
business was the concern of individuals rather than groups acting in
common interest". Impersonal cooperation in institutions of
business, as already developed in Europe, was unknown in India.
And he even goes a step further in his reasoning when he concludes
that "business transactions more often than not took place within the
same caste or communal group. Even within the Hindu community
one caste group would be reluctant to do business with men from
other castes". Even though S. Chaudhury's explanation of the failure
of Indian merchants on the eve of European domination may not
meet with unanimous approval, his thesis certainly merits further
'
investigation.
From an Indian point of view, looking back at thirty-five volumes
of JESHO means much more than a mere tour d'horizon of its various
contributions to the socio-economic history of India. They reveal the
story of the emergence of these socio-economic studies as a new and
fascinating focus of oriental and, in particular, Indian studies. The
nearly one hundred articles published so far in JESHO on Indian
subjects are likewise as much contributions to Indian historical
themes as they are indicators of the progress of historical research on
these themes. The scale of this progress can be perceived from a letter

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written by R. S. Lopez to the editors of JESHO published in the first

issue. 58) Even though Lopez wrote in his unpretentious way "il serait
bien t6m6raire de ma part de proposer des themes d'enquete", as a
renowned scholar of international medieval commerce, he was most
qualified to do exactly this. His letter therefore indeed reads like a
programme for future research on various aspects of the economic
and social history of Asia in the broader context of Eurasian history.
Many of his profound thoughts appear to have meanwhile ger-
minated in Braudel's and Wallerstein's works and therefore need not
to be repeated here.
One point however is worth mentioning in this context. While
explaining the relevance of certain topics of future research for their
Eurasian contexts, Lopez mostly refers to the various states of
classical and Muslim Near East and to the contemporary Chinese
dynasties, whereas India goes almost unnoticed. This disregard of
India's premodern economic history repesents the state of knowledge
until the late fifties of our century, rather than any bias on the part
of R. S. Lopez. The poor readings on India's economic history which
had been available to Max Weber in the early part of the century had
not changed substantially until the late fifties when Satish Chandra
and the historians of Aligarh University began their studies on the
agrarian and political system of Mughal India, in continuation of
Moreland's studies
during the twenties and thirties. The economic
system of early medieval or pre-Muslim India still remained buried
in rather descriptive and compartmentalized dynastic studies. It was
exactly in this situation that JESHO's first volume
published. was
JESHO thus likewise participated in the emerging new approach to
Indian economic history and contributed to its success. The issue of
Indian feudalism, despite or perhaps due to the controversy it raised,
was instrumental in raising new questions and destroying the myth
of an unchanging India. As has been shown in this attempt to sum-
marize JESHO's contributions to the economic history of India,

58) "Une lettre du Professeur R. S. Lopez", 1 (1958) 3-8.

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several more such focal topics emerged from the contributions of vari-
ous authors, some of which would make quite valuable anthologies on
their respective topics59). Even though the idea of JESHO's initial
editors to regard the journal only as a first step towards the publica-
tion of a monumental Economic and Social History of the Orient so far has
not materialised, in the field of Indian studies it has certainly con-
tributed to the establishment of a new discipline in the field of Indian
studies. One final remark should be permitted. In contrast to the
other regional foci of JESHO (Ancient Near East, Muslim World and

China) the greater part of the contributions to Indian subjects was

authored by Indian scholars. Even though Indian scholars are now

provided with several excellent Indian

journals of socio-economic
history it is to be hoped that
they will continue to regard JESHO as
one of "their" principal journals for participation in the international
scholarly community.

59) The contributions to social history with special reference to the caste system
as a further grand theme of JESHO may be last, but not least listed as follows: A.
Sharma, "The Purusasukta: Its Relations to the Caste Sy?tem", 21 (1978)
294-303; idem, "An Analysis of three Epithets Applied to the Sudras in Aitareya
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