2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Local Society and Sultans as Revealed by the Sanskrit Inscriptions of the Delhi Sultanate Age.
| Project/Area Number |
13610418
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Asian history
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| Research Institution | NAGOYA UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
MITA Masahiko Nagoya University, Graduate School of Letters, Research Associate, 文学研究科, 助手 (30262827)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2001 – 2004
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| Keywords | India / medievalhistory / epigraphy / Sultan / Rajasthan / Gujarat / diploma / city |
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| Research Abstract |
North Indian Historical researches of the Delhi-Sultanate period has so far been made by "medieval" historians solely with Persian sources. But as the Persian sources do not depict local Hindu societies, those researches cannot reveal the mechanism of the Sultanate rule over Hindu societies. We in this project have collected and analyzed inscriptions in Sanskrit and local languages of 13^<th>-15^<th> century-Rajasthan and Gujarat, which have so far been studied by very few historians, and have shown the significance of the inscriptions as historical sources of valuable information on structure of local society, local administration of the Delhi and Gujarat Sultanates and Hindu-Muslim relations of the period, as bellow :
1)Inscriptions written in Sanskrit and local languages are unexpectedly large in number-more than 1500-, which enable to make detailed social analyses on each city.
2)Those inscriptions mention rulers of various levels from Sultans to petty chiefs who ruled or influenced over the cities where the inscriptions are located. From those sources, we can get much more detailed information about local administration of the Sultanates on city level than from the Persian sources.
3)The Sultanates are said to have ruled India through indigenous local elite and their socio-political system, and as revealed from our research, that must have been pancakulas and autonomous bodies of the cities in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
4)Those inscriptions solely clarify how Hindu local elite perceived the Sultanate power, and we know from our brief research of some inscriptions that Hindu received Sultan rule by translating the Sultan power as righteous Hindu kingship.
Those points are not expected in Persian sources, and are very important in understand actual conditions of the Sultanate rule in India.
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