Urban Settlements in Early Medieval India
- Urban settlements should be understood as a complementary component of the agrarian economy, not as a separate or isolated phenomenon — the two developed in close interdependence during this period.
- The post-Gupta centuries witnessed a new socio-economic formation built around the system of land grants, and the gradual expansion of cultivation and the agrarian economy through these grants had a direct impact on the growth of towns and cities between the eighth and twelfth centuries.
- While the overall picture across the Indian subcontinent is one of urban revival, there were notable regional variations, arising from differing economic forces, ecological and cultural conditions, and the nature of political organisation in each area — though detailed regional studies remain available only for Rajasthan, Central India, and South India.
- This article examines urban settlements in early medieval India through two lenses: the form and substance of urban centres (how historians have defined and identified a “town”), and the regional variations and types of urban centres that emerged across the subcontinent.
Form and Substance of Urban Centres
- Urban centres in early medieval India have generally been studied along two distinct approaches:
- As part of economic history — i.e., the history of trade, commerce, and craft production.
- As part of administrative or political history — i.e., as capitals, administrative centres, seats of major and minor ruling families, and fort towns.
- Urban studies have so far focused mainly on classifying types of urban centres — towns and cities have accordingly been listed under categories such as market/trade/commercial centres, ports, political and administrative centres, and religious centres.
- However, there has been insufficient attempt to explain the causes behind the emergence of towns — in other words, the form of an urban centre has been studied far more thoroughly than its underlying meaning or substance.
Phases of Urban Growth in India
- Before the arrival of the Turks, the Indian subcontinent experienced three distinct phases of urban growth:
- The Bronze Age Harappan civilisation (fourth–second millennium BC).
- The early historic urban centres of the Iron Age (c. sixth century BC to the end of the third century AD).
- Early medieval towns and cities (c. eighth/ninth to twelfth centuries AD).
Defining an Urban Centre
- Gordon Childe, who gave the concept of the “urban revolution,” identified the following as the prominent features of an urban centre:
- Monumental buildings.
- Large settlements with a dense population.
- The existence of people not engaged in food production — such as rulers, artisans, and merchants.
- The cultivation of art, science, and writing.
- Childe further stressed the importance of specialised craftsmen and the role of agricultural surplus in sustaining these non-food-producing urban populations.
- However, Childe’s criteria were framed specifically in the context of Bronze Age cities, and several of these traits are absent in Iron Age towns, many of which had sparse populations and mud houses.
- While an agrarian surplus drawn from rural areas is nearly indispensable for a town’s existence, a mere settlement of non-agriculturists cannot, by itself, be regarded as an urban centre.
- Early medieval literary texts instead describe towns as places inhabited by people of all classes, surrounded by a wall and moat, and governed by the laws and customs of artisan and merchant guilds.
R.S. Sharma’s Revised Criteria for Identifying Urban Centres
- A more recent study based on excavated data from 140 sites spread across the Indian subcontinent — R.S. Sharma’s Urban Decay in India, c. AD 300–1000 — reframed the question by focusing on:
- The quality of material life and the nature of occupations at a site.
- The need to view urban centres not as parasites thriving purely on agricultural surplus, but as settlements integrally linked with their rural hinterland.
- Building on this, Sharma identified the following prominent traits that can be applied to early medieval urban settlements:
- The size of a settlement, in terms of area and population.
- Proximity to water resources — river banks, tanks, ring wells, and similar sources.
- The presence or absence of artisanal artefacts — such as axes, chisels, ploughshares, sickles, hoes, crucibles, ovens, furnaces, dyeing vats, bead moulds, seals, sealings, jewellery, and terracotta.
- Evidence of coin moulds, signifying mint towns — the presence of metallic money alongside artisans and merchants lends a clear urban character to a site.
- The presence or absence of luxury goods, such as precious and semi-precious stones, glassware, ivory objects, and fine pottery — noting the possibility that luxuries of earlier towns may have become necessities for the superior rural classes of early medieval times.
- Given the moist, rainy climate of alluvial plains like the middle Ganga plain, the presence of baked brick (not merely burnt brick) structures on a considerable scale assumes special significance.
- Streets, shops, drains, and fortifications also indicate the nature of a settlement, while silos and granaries for storing surplus foodgrains have been found at many historical sites.
Regional Variations and Types of Urban Centres
- Early medieval urban centres in India can be grouped into four broad, overlapping types, based on regional variation in their origin and function: settlements that grew out of rural centres, market and trade-network centres, sacred/pilgrimage centres, and royal centres or capitals.
Rural Centres Transformed into Urban Centres
- Brahmadeyas and devadanas frequently provided the nuclei of urban growth.
- Brahmana and temple settlements tended to cluster together in key areas of agricultural production; these centres, initially rural, gradually became points of convergence for trade in goods from distant regions.
- Such centres are more commonly found in South India, for example:
- The Chola city of Kumbakonam (Kudamukku-Palaiyarai) developed out of agrarian clusters and grew into a multi-temple urban centre between the ninth and twelfth centuries — its growth was further boosted by its status as a residential capital of the Cholas.
- Kanchipuram is a second major example of such an urban complex, with the additional distinction of being the largest craft centre (textile manufacturing) in South India.
Market Centres, Trade Networks, and Itinerant Trade
- These were urban centres of relatively modest dimensions — market centres and trade centres (such as fairs) that functioned primarily as nodes of the exchange network, with a range of interaction varying from small agrarian hinterlands to wider regional commercial hinterlands.
- The nagaram of South India is the best example, serving as the market for the nadu or kurram — an agrarian or peasant region; the nakhara in Karnataka and the nagaramu in Andhra Pradesh served a similar function to some extent.
- Nagarams situated on important trade routes or at points of intersection developed into more significant regional trade and commercial centres, eventually becoming integrated into a network of intra-regional, inter-regional, and overseas trade through itinerant merchant organisations and royal ports.
- Markets within these centres were regulated by the nagaram assembly, headed by a chief merchant known as the pattanasvami.
- Many such centres were founded by ruling families or established under royal sanction, and were named after the rulers themselves — typically carrying the suffix pura or pattana.
- In Gujarat, Bhrigukachcha (Broach) continued to flourish as a major trade entrepôt in early medieval times, while Bayana served a similar role in Rajasthan.
- Some craft and commercial centres from the early historic urban phase survived into the early medieval period and were drawn into processes of re-urbanisation, linking them to new socio-economic institutions like the temple — Kashi (Varanasi) in the north and Kanchipuram in the south are two prominent examples of this continuity.
Sacred or Pilgrimage Centres
- Two broad types of pilgrimage centres can be identified:
- The idea of pilgrimage to religious centres developed in this period through the spread of the Bhakti cult, whose expansion across regions occurred via a process of acculturation — interaction between Brahmanical/Sanskritic worship and folk or popular cults that cut across narrow sectarian boundaries. As a result, some local cult centres of great antiquity, as well as those with early Brahmanical or non-Brahmanical associations, evolved into pilgrimage centres.
- Some pilgrimage networks remained confined to a specific cultural region, where a cult centre held a purely local sacred character; others, known as tirthas, attracted worshippers from far beyond their immediate region.
- Both types of pilgrimage centres developed distinctly urban features, driven by their mobile pilgrim population, associated trade, and royal patronage — historians have specifically noted the role of emerging markets in the growth of tirthas.
- A few illustrative examples:
- Pushkara, near Ajmer in Rajasthan, was a tirtha of regional importance with a dominant Vaishnava association.
- Kasi (Banaras) acquired a pan-Indian character, owing to both its greater antiquity and its importance as a Brahmanical sacred centre.
- In South India: Srirangam (Vaishnava), Chidambaram (Shaiva), and Madurai (Shaiva) remained largely regional in character, while Kanchipuram became part of an all-India pilgrimage network, and Melkote served as a regional sacred centre in Karnataka.
- Jain pilgrimage centres emerged in Gujarat and Rajasthan, where merchant and royal patronage led to a proliferation of Jain temples.
- In South India, two distinct patterns of urban growth around temple structures can be observed:
- Growth organised around a single large temple, as at Srirangam, Madurai, Melkote, and Simhachalam.
- Growth organised around several temples of different religious traditions, such as Shaivism, Vaishnavism, and Shaktism, together.
Royal Centres or Capitals
- Royal centres or capitals formed a major category of urban centres in early medieval India.
- Royal families typically developed their own ports, which served both as the main points of entry into their territories and as links to international commerce.
- The commercial requirements of these royal centres generated new trade and communication links, forging closer relationships between the royal centre and its agricultural hinterland or resource base.
- South of the Vindhyas, there is substantial evidence of such royal centres, for example:
- Vatapi and Vengi of the Chalukyas, in northern Karnataka and Andhra.
- Kanchipuram of the Pallavas, who maintained a royal port at Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram).
- Madurai of the Pandyas, with Korkai as their port.
- Kalyana of the Western Chalukyas, Dvarasamudra of the Hoysalas, and Warangal of the Kakatiyas, with Motupalli as their port — Warangal being a rare example of a fortified royal city in South India.
- North India offers its own set of examples of royal centres:
- Kanyakubja (Kanauj), the capital of the Gurjara Pratiharas.
- Khajuraho of the Candellas.
- Dhara of the Paramaras.
- Valabhi of the Solankis.
- A compiled list of 131 places in the Chauhan dominions appears to consist mostly of towns, while nearly two dozen towns have been identified in Malwa under the Paramaras.
- Gujarat under the Chalukyas was notably studded with port towns, while the number of towns in Eastern India appears comparatively modest — though all nine victory camps (jayaskandavaras) of the Palas (Pataliputra, Mudgagiri, Ramavati, Vata Parvataka, Vilaspura, Kapilavasaka, Sahasgand, Kanchanapura, and Kanauj) may themselves have functioned as towns.
- On occasion, important trade and market centres were also conferred upon feudatory families — such examples are documented in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
Conclusion
- The changes introduced by the land-grant system in the post-Gupta centuries were not confined to a new agrarian economy alone — urban settlements, which had been in a state of decay in the centuries following the Gupta period, were infused with new life as a direct consequence.
- The revival of trade, the rise of new markets, the dispersal of political authority, and the consolidation of economic power by religious establishments together gave rise to numerous towns and cities across the Indian subcontinent — with only minor regional variation in the relative weight of these causative factors.
- Taken together, the study of urban settlements in early medieval India — from the debates over Childe’s and Sharma’s defining criteria to the four regional types of urban growth — demonstrates that towns of this period cannot be understood in isolation from the agrarian, religious, and political transformations that were reshaping the subcontinent at the same time.