Documenting the Charters of Peripheral Dynasties and Clans of Bengal and Bihar of the 2nd half of the 8th – late 13th Centuries.

Abstract

The paper deals with the charters of Bengal and Bihar of the final stage of the early medieval period (late 8th – early 13th centuries), issued on behalf of the rulers of scattered dynasties and clans who ruled on the periphery of the territory of the political domination of the Pāla dynasty of Northern India. The task is to create a scheme for recording 14 individual forms of peripheral dynasties and compare them with Schemes 1 and 2. Scheme 3 was formed: “A formalized record of individual forms of charters of the rulers of peripheral dynasties and clans”, which included records of individual forms of 14 charters. Every schematic entry is located on three lines, where the first line contains the components of the “Initial Protocol”, the second line contains the components of the “Main Part”, and the third line contains the components of the “Final Protocol”. Sanskrit formulas are also affected. According to the study we can assume that in course of their moving away from the dominant dynasty both in space and in time, the local registries responsible for maintaining the cadastral register began to function in accordance with local conditions than with a tradition maintained from the center. We can conclude that the experience of schematically recording the specification forms of land acts of Bengal and Bihar of the Pāla era turned out to be productive: it made it possible to outline the territorial zones of socio-economic activity that existed on the territory of Bengal in the early Middle Ages.