Culture Under the Gahadavalas (An Epigraphical Study)

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About the Book Utilizing critically after a thorough assessment of the data gleaned from the Gahadavala inscriptions, substantiated by the contemporary literature and other archaeological sources, the book judiciously deals with the culture of the Middle Ganga Valley during the twelfth century CE. It also incorporates the relevant material available in the researches of modern scholars. The study mainly focuses on land grants, feudalism, scribes and artisans, historical geography, society, religion, education, art and architecture of the Gahadavala period. This is a valuable addition in the field of epigraphic studies, characterized by the objectively made new observations and fact-based interpretations.

About the Author Ashish Kumar Dubey, born in 1980, took his post-graduate degree from the Allahabad University and his doctorate from the Lucknow University. Devoted to reconstruct Indian Cultural History from inscriptions, he has published more than half a dozen papers in refereed journals. Historical geography, pilgrimage studies and epigraphy are his other forte.

Foreword In his General President's Address for the Second Conference of the Epigraphical Society of India at Indore, the famous epigraphist Dr. D.C. Sircar rightly observed that "nearly ninety percent of what we know about the early period of Indian history has been derived from the epigraphic source" and "the popular belief that all important inscriptions have already been discovered, studied and utilized for the reconstruction of history is wrong". In our General President's Address for the Thirty-second Conference of the same Society, held at the University of Bangalore, we humbly stated that what Dr. Sircar said thirty years back "is true even today". It is satisfying indeed to note that the veracity of our statement is amply borne out by the present work, entitled Culture under the Gahadavalas: An Epigraphical Study, of Dr. Ashish Kumar Dubey, which is a revised version of his dissertation earning him the Ph.D. degree of the University of Lucknow, and which I feel extremely happy to introduce to the learned world of historians. Utilizing fully and critically the material available in earlier publications and incorporating after a thorough assessment of the data culled carefully from as many as one hundred and seventeen inscriptions Dr. Dubey has judiciously dealt with the subject-matter of his work.

Preface King Candradeva established the Gahadavala dynasty in c. CE 1089 and ended the political anarchy that prevailed in the Middle Ganga Valley after the collapse of the Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty in Northern India. The dynasty continued to rule over the region till the Muslim conquest in CE 1193. The Gahadavala kings established peace and order and exercised substantial political authority over a kingdom roughly extending from the Firozabad district in Uttar Pradesh in the west to the Patna district in Bihar in the east and from the Gorakhpur district in the north to the banks of the Ganga-Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh in the south and maintained wide diplomatic and cultural relations with the contemporary rulers of different parts of India. They were in the possession of Kanyakubja and Varanasi and it is generally believed that the former was their capital, though their inscriptions show that they had closer and long association with Varanasi. They patronized the Brahmanical religion in various ways and followed the policy of toleration towards other religions. The rulers of this dynasty came into conflict with the Muslims, displayed considerable power of resistance and checked the Muslim advance in the Ganga Valley for a time being.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages