Modes of gender relationships in early medieval India: Study based on inscriptions

Abstract

One major source of information on the position of women and the male attitude towards them in early medieval India (ad 800–1200) consists of the large body of inscriptions in Sanskrit and south Indian languages. This article is concerned with the woman’s position in the family as contemporaneously conceived based on this extensive source. Male preference and dominance were expressed in particular ways; and it is with this particularity that the present study is largely concerned. Since inscriptions, especially the voluble ones, were set up to record some act of the royalty or the nobility, one is warned in advance of the limitations of the evidence. Yet, as will be seen, ordinary women too sometimes appear in our epigraphic evidence.