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early medieval india ⁄ 27
been the focus of much research, and the continued search for India’s identity
tacitly begins with understanding India as the area encompassed by A$oka’s
edicts. 4 After A$oka, historians have been fascinated with the Gandharan
epoch, particularly from the time of the Indo-Greeks until the conquest of
Gandhara by the Sasanians, inclusively c. 160 b.c.e. to 225 c.e. Indic history after
the Gandharan Kusanas and before the complete Turkic control of the
north around 1200 c.e. has emphasized the Gupta and Vakataka period and
dominions (c. 320–550 c.e.). We need only observe that four of the first five
tomes of the massive Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum were dedicated to the
A$okan, Kusana, Gupta, and Vakataka inscriptions. Yet we certainly have an
abundance of epigraphs from the Gurjara-Pratiharas, the Palas, the Colas, and
many other polities. Therefore, the attractiveness of the Mauryan, Gandharan,
and Gupta dynasties to European aesthetics seemingly had much to do with
their selection and presentation to date.
By contrast, the early medieval period, approximately from c. 500 c.e. to
1200 c.e., is messy and confusing and has been perceived as uninteresting and
chaotic. It is the period of the rise of cultural forms that British and continental
authors loved to hate and that some Indians acknowledge with chagrin:
tantrism, bhakti, excessively sophisticated poetry, sati, the solidification of the
caste system, and the rapacious appropriation of tribal lands, to mention a few.
The historiography of these centuries is enveloped in the language of decline
and fall, of degeneration and decay. This language persists despite the fact that
some of the dynasties—for example, that of the Gurjara-Pratiharas (c. 725–
1018 c.e.) or the Palas (c. 750–1170 c.e.)—lasted as long as or longer than the
Guptas. A language of chaos does not acknowledge the reality that the Rastrakutas
dominated India in a manner that the Guptas never achieved.
A contributing element has been the social or political agendas of those
writing Indian history. British authors of the nineteenth century posited a
moral basis in Alexandrine historiography for their appropriation of power on
the subcontinent. 5 Indian authors, having limited critical models for indigenous
history, have both followed and reacted to the British lead. 6 Moreover,
some have employed their own history to search for a period of (Hindu) unification
that could serve as a counterpoint to the colonial enterprise of the
Ghaznivids, the Maliks, the Mughals, and the British. 7 In both the Indian and
the British camp, there has been a tendency to search for a “golden age” of India,
in which the aesthetic, literary, or political values have defined the best in
the civilization. Influenced by British historiography, the fundamental paradigm
was either Periclean Athens or Augustan Rome—although the imperial
image of Macedonian Hellenism was also influential—and the temporal locus