Inscriptions and Agrarian Issues in Indian History- Essays in Memory of D. C. Sircar

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B.D.Chattopadhyaya is Former Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has authored/edited several books, including D. D. Kosambi, Combined Methods in Indology and Other Writings (2002), A Social History of Early India (2009), The Making of Early Medieval India (2012, Oxford Perennial Series) and The Concept of Bharatavarsha and Other Essays (2017).

Suchandra Ghosh is Professor, Department of Ancient Indian History & Culture, University of Calcutta, Kolkata. She has authored Exploring Connectivity: Southeastern Bengal and beyond (2015), From The Oxus To The Indus, A Political and Cultural Study c.300BCE to c.100 BCE (2017) and edited with others Revisiting Early India: Essays in honour of D.C. Sircar (2013)

Bishnupriya Basak is Senior Faculty. Department of Archaeology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata. She has authored New Dimensions in Hunter-Gatherer Studies: The Prehistory of the Tarafeni valley (2017) and edited with K.Paddayya Prehistoric Research in the subcontinent: A Reappraisal and New Directions (2017)

The present volume is the outcome of the birth centenary national seminar in memory of Professor D C. Sircar held at the Asiatic Society, Kolkata during 16-17 November, 2007. The organisers of the seminar wanted to emphasise and concentrate on a focused subject broadly captured by Professor Sircar i.e. Epigraphy in general and concomitant exploration in the study of Indian agrarian history in particular. The senior most Editor, in the three-member team, Professor B. D. Chattopadhyaya has very elaborately drawn our attention on the various theoretical issues in this academic exercise as well as on the diverse geographical spread encapsulated by the 12 individual contributors of this country and abroad. The volume is spread out into two parts. While Part I portrays Professor Sircar's biographical background along with academic excellence and attainments, Part II concentrates on regional spectrum with special relation to various agrarian issues vis-à-vis an embedded scenario of available inscriptions as documentary evidence.

This important volume will be of immense help and relevance to the present day researchers and scholars belonging not only to the politico- economic history, but quite reasonably across other branches of social science disciplines also. It has brought back to us the long drawn theoretical debate on the character of 'feudalism' in India in which Professor Sircar has substantially engaged himself and contributed valuable insights towards enriching our knowledge. Hope the readers will fruitfully gain from this important publication of the Asiatic Society.

The genesis of the idea of a seminar at the Asiatic Society to mark the birth centenary of late Professor DC. Sircar owes a great deal to the members of the General Council of the Society, presided over, at the time by late Professor Biswanath Banerjee. Professor Banerjee also endorsed the proposal to focus the theme of the seminar to a specific area of Professor Sircar's vast range of expertise and thus let the seminar focus meaningfully on aspect of Professor Sircar's scholarship and its continuing relevance. It is a matter of great regret and sadness that Professor Banerjee is no longer with us to express his happiness over the publication of the proceedings of the seminar Professor Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, present Vice-President and the then Secretary of the History and Archaeology section and Professor Ramkrishna Chatterjee, Publication Secretary of the Asiatic Society provided all varieties of help and encouragement at the time the centenary anniversary seminar was held. We have great pleasure in recalling their enthusiasm and encouragement. We would also like to thank the present General Secretary Dr. Satyabrata Chakrabarti and members of the Council of the Society for their support.

Both at the time when the seminar took place and in the course of preparing its proceedings for the publication, the official staff of the Society in general have been a source of great help, and we fully acknowledge our indebtedness to them for their support. The preparation of the manuscript owes a great deal to the technical and other forms of help to Mr. Dev Kumar Jhanjh, Mr. Durbar Sharma and Mss Smita Halder, young scholars and enthusiasts. On the occasion of the publication of the volume, we acknowledge their help with thanks.

INSCRIPTIONS AND THE STUDY OF INDIAN AGRARIAN HISTORY THE PROBLEMATIC

BD. CHATTOPADHYAYA

I wish organized on the centenary controle she seminar organized on the occasion of the birth centenary of Professor Dines Chandra Sircar. There is hardly any area of Indian studies on which Professor Sircar did not write, his essays touched upon areas as diverse as Historical Geography. State and Administration, Society, Religion,. Numismatics and so on. Perhaps he deliberately chose to abstain from writing on art history, but the reasons for withdrawing his prolific pen from this area cannot even now be guessed. For two main reasons, it was decided that the Seminar be devoted to the theme, related to the most important area of his work: Epigraphy. Epigraphy, without doubt, was the most engaging, most competent and most memorable field of his work, to the extent that Indian epigraphy, despite the fact that he worked mostly on north Indian inscriptions, came to be identified with D. C. Sircar. He single-handedly resurrected the almost moribund series Epigraphia Indica, the major organ for the publication of Indian inscriptions, with the exception of those in Persian and Arabic. He deciphered, transliterated and edited with detailed notes and commentaries, year after year, a large number of inscriptions, reedited inscriptions edited earlier by other scholars; and wrote, drawing on inscriptional sources, works on diverse historical issues. Despite his access to all other categories of sources from which he drew facts, the major source for all his writings was epigraphy. The second reason for making the choice is that despite the multi-directionality and the authority of judgement in his writings. The single area of a major historical debate in which he participated, was undoubtedly related to Indian agrarian history. This was essentially what his significant interventions were about in the debate on Indian Feudalism.