7.2. India (VII - XVIII centuries.)

Rajput period (VII-XII centuries) . As was shown in Chapter 2, in the IV-VI centuries. AD on the territory of modern India there was a powerful Gupta empire. The Gupta Epoch, perceived as the golden age of India, changed in the VII-XII centuries. period of feudal fragmentation. At this stage, however, the isolation of areas of the country and the decline of culture did not occur due to the development of port trade. The tribes of conquerors of Hun-Ephtalites who came from Central Asia settled in the north-west of the country, and the Gujarats who appeared with them settled in Punjab, Sindh, Rajputane and Malwa. The merger of alien peoples with the local population resulted in a compact ethnic community of Rajputs, which in the VIII c. Rajputana began to expand into the rich regions of the Ganges Valley and Central India. The clan Gurdjar-Pratiharov, which formed the state in Malva, was the most famous. Here the most vivid type of feudal relations with a developed hierarchy and vassal psychology was formed.

In the VI-VII centuries. India is developing a system of stable political centers fighting each other under the banner of different dynasties — North India, Bengal, Dean and the Extreme South. Canvas political events VIII-X centuries. there was a struggle for the Doab (between the Jamna and the Ganges). In the X century. the leading powers of the country fell into decay, divided into independent principalities. The political fragmentation of the country was particularly tragic for North India, which was subjected in the XI century. regular raids by the troops of Mahmud Ghaznewid (998-1030), the ruler of a vast empire that included the territories of the modern states of Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, as well as Punjab and Sindh.

The socio-economic development of India in the Rajput era was characterized by the growth of feudal possessions. The richest among the feudal lords, along with the rulers were Hindu temples and monasteries. If initially only uncultivated land complained to them and with the indispensable consent of the community that owned them, then from the 8th century more and more often, not only lands are transferred, but also villages, whose inhabitants were obliged to pay full-time duty in favor of the recipient. However, at this time, the Indian community still remained relatively independent, large in size and with autonomous self-government. A full member of the community hereditarily owned his field, although trade in land was necessarily controlled by the communal administration.

City life, frozen after the 6th century, began to revive only towards the end of the Rajput period. Faster evolved the old port centers. New cities arose near the feudal castle, where artisans settled, serving the needs of the court and the landowner's troops. The development of urban life was facilitated by the strengthening of exchanges between cities and the emergence of groups of artisans on castes. Just as in Western Europe, in the Indian city, the development of handicrafts and trade was accompanied by the struggle of citizens against the feudal lords who imposed craftsmen and merchants with new taxes. Moreover, the tax was the higher, the lower the caste status of the caste, to which artisans and merchants belonged.

At the stage of feudal fragmentation, Hinduism finally gained the upper hand on Buddhism, defeating it by the force of its amorphism, which could not be better corresponded to the political order of the era.

The era of the Muslim conquest of India. Delhi Sultanate (XIII - beginning of the XVI centuries.) In the XIII century. in the north of India, a large Muslim state, the Delhi Sultanate, is being established, the domination of Muslim military leaders from Central Asian Turks is finally taking shape. Islam becomes the state religion of the Sunni trend, the official language is Persian. Accompanied by bloody feuds, they successively alternated in Delhi of the Gulyamov, Hilgi, and Tuglakid dynasties. The troops of the sultans made aggressive campaigns in Central and South India, and the conquered rulers were forced to recognize themselves as vassals of Delhi and pay an annual tribute to the sultan.

The turning point in the history of the Delhi Sultanate was the invasion of Northern Asian troops in 1398 by the forces of the Central Asian ruler Timur (another name was Tamerlane, 1336-1405). Sultan fled to Gujarat. The country began an epidemic and famine. Abandoned by the conqueror as the governor of Punjab, Khizr-Khan Sayid in 1441 captured Delhi and founded a new dynasty of Sayids. Representatives of this and the Lodi dynasty that followed it already ruled as Timurid deputies. One of the last Lodi, Ibrahim, seeking to exalt his power, entered into an implacable struggle with the feudal nobility and Afghan commanders. Opponents of Ibrahim appealed to Timur Babur, the ruler of Kabul, with a request to save them from the sultan's tyranny. In 1526, Babur defeated Ibrahim in the Battle of Panipat, marking the beginning of the Mogul Empire, which existed for almost 200 years.

The system of economic relations undergoes some, although not radical, changes in the Muslim era. The state land fund increases significantly due to the possessions of the conquered Indian feudal clans. The main part of it was heard in the conditional service award - ikta (small areas) and mukta (large “feeding”). Iktadars and muktadars collected taxes from the villages in favor of the treasury, some of which went to support the family of the holder who supplied the warrior with the state army. The private landowners who managed the estate without government intervention were mosques, owners of property for charitable purposes, guardians of the tombs of the sheikhs, poets, officials and merchants. The rural community was preserved as a convenient fiscal unit, although the payment of the poll tax (jizii) fell on the peasants, most of them professing Hinduism, a heavy burden.

K XIV century. Historians attribute the new wave of urbanization in India. Cities became centers of craft and trade. Domestic trade was mainly focused on the needs of the metropolitan courtyard. The leading import item was the importation of horses (the basis of the Delhi army is the cavalry), which in India were not divorced due to the lack of pastures; archeologists find treasures of Delhi coins in Persia, Central Asia and on the Volga.

During the rule of the Delhi Sultanate, Europeans began to penetrate into India. In 1498, under the command of Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese first reached Kalikat on the Malabar coast of western India. As a result of subsequent military expeditions - Cabral (1500), Vasco de Gama (1502), d'Albukerki (1510-1511) - the Portuguese captured the Bijapur island of Goa, which became the backbone of their possessions in the East. The Portuguese monopoly on maritime trade undermined India’s trade with the countries of the East, isolated the interior of the country and delayed their development. To this led the war and the destruction of the population of Malabar. Gujarat was also weakened. Only the empire of Vijayanagar remained in the XIV-XVI centuries. powerful and even more centralized than the former states of the south. Its head was considered a maharaj, but all the fullness of real power belonged to the state council, the chief minister, to whom the governors of the provinces were directly subordinate. State lands were distributed in the conditional military award - Amarah. A significant part of the villages was in the possession of the Brahmanian collectives - sabh. Large communities fell apart. Their possessions narrowed to the lands of one village, and the community members increasingly began to turn into part-time tenants-sharecroppers. In the cities, the authorities began to collect duties at the mercy of the feudal lords, which strengthened their undivided rule here.

With the approval of the power of the Delhi Sultanate, in which Islam was a violently implanted religion, India was drawn into the cultural orbit of the Muslim world. However, despite the fierce struggle of Hindus and Muslims, long-term cohabitation led to the mutual penetration of ideas and customs.

India in the era of the Mogul Empire (XVI-XVIII centuries .) ¹ The final stage of the medieval history of India was the elevation in its north at the beginning of the XVI century. New powerful Muslim Mogul Empire, which in the XVII century. managed to subdue a significant part of South India. The founder of the state was Timur Babur (1483-1530). The power of the Mughal in India was strengthened during the half-century reign of Akbar (1452-1605), who transferred the capital to the city of Agra on the Jamna River, which conquered Gujarat and Bengal, and with them the access to the sea. True, the Mughals had to reconcile with the rule of the Portuguese here.

In the Mogul epoch, India entered the stage of developed feudal relations, the flowering of which went along with the strengthening of the central power of the state. The importance of the main financial department of the empire (couch), obliged to monitor the use of all suitable land, has increased. State share was declared third of the harvest. In the central regions of the country under Akbar, the peasants were transferred to a cash tax, which forced them to be included in market relations in advance. All conquered territories were transferred to the state land fund (Khalis). Jagirs were heard from it - conditional military awards, which continued to be considered state property. Dzhagirdary usually owned several tens of thousands of hectares of land and were obliged to maintain on these revenues military units - the backbone of the imperial army. Akbar’s attempt to eliminate the jagir system in 1574 failed. Also in the state there was private land ownership of feudal zamindars from conquered princes who paid tribute, and small private possessions of Sufi sheikhs and Muslim theologians, inherited, and free from taxes - suyurgal or mulk.

The craft reached its heyday during this period, especially the production of textiles valued throughout the East, and in the southern seas, Indian textiles acted as a kind of universal equivalent of trade. The process of merging the highest merchant layer with the ruling class begins. Money people could become jagirdars, and the last - owners of caravanserais and merchant ships. The merchant castes are emerging, playing the role of companies. Surat, the country's main port in the 16th century, becomes the place where the layer of comprador merchants (that is, those associated with foreigners) originates.

In the XVII century. value of the economic center goes to Bengal. It develops in Dhaka and Patna the production of fine fabrics, saltpeter and tobacco. Shipbuilding continues to flourish in Gujarat. In the south, there is a new large textile center Madras. Thus, in India XVI-XVII centuries. the emergence of capitalist relations is already observed, but the socio-economic structure of the Mogul Empire, based on state ownership of land, did not contribute to their rapid growth.

In the Mogul epoch, religious disputes became more active, on the basis of which wide popular movements were born, and the religious policy of the state undergoes major turns. So, in the XV century. in Gujarat, the Mahdist movement was born among the Muslim cities of the trade and craft circles. In the XVI century. the fanatical commitment of the ruler to orthodox Sunni Islam turned into lawlessness for the Hindus and the persecution of Shiite Muslims. In the XVII century. the oppression of the Shiites, the destruction of all Hindu temples and the use of their stones for the construction of mosques by Aurangzeb (1618-1707) caused a popular uprising, an anti-Gogol movement.

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So, medieval India personifies the synthesis of the most diverse sociopolitical foundations and religious traditions. ethnic cultures. Having melted all this set-up inside of herself, by the end of an epoch she appeared before a country of fairy-tale magnificence amazed by Europeans, which attracted wealth, exotic things and secrets. Inside it, however, began processes similar to the European, inherent in the New time. The internal market was formed, international relations developed, social contradictions deepened. But for India, the typical Asiatic power, the despotic state was a strong deterrent to capitalization. With its weakening, the country becomes easy prey for European colonialists, whose activities interrupted for many years the natural course of the country's historical development.