Violence, courtly manners and lineage formation in early medieval India 1

Abstract

This chapter examines the attitudes toward uncouth, vulgar and violent behaviors among the aristocratic elites through the lens of a specific social transformation widespread in early medieval society—that of courticization of warrior lineages through varied spaces. It endeavors to understand behavioral inclinations both socially and historically. The point of this essay will be not so much to apply Elias’ theory of ‘civilization’ to medieval India, but instead to approach the sources with a view toward correlating mental dispositions, violence and social change. The more immediate concern of this essay arises from the apparent contradiction common in early medieval political rhetoric. Though their lineage goes back to the Junagadh inscription (150 CE), from the fourth century onward celebration of martial valor is typically accompanied by praises of man’s gentility and softness. The problem of political violence here is treated as integral to the political realm itself in the wider context of the spatial spread of local state formation and concomitant changes. The paper has imprints of the Marxist historian B. N. S. Yadava, who in the 1970s made the obvious comparison with European codes of chivalry. It is based on epigraphical and textual evidence and temporally focuses on the third-seventh centuries.