Urbanisation in Early Historic India

Erdosy, George

doi:10.30861/9780860545576

Cited by 113 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Yet, differences in urbanism also existed between these neighbouring areas. Settlements around Pauni conform to the ‘classic’ model of early historic urbanism, with a large, fortified city dominating the immediate area (Erdosy 1988; Allchin 1995); around Mandhal, however, a much smaller fortified centre at Adam was part of a more diffuse distribution of sites, indicating more localised networks of resourcing, production and exchange. By contrast, developments around Chammak continued to follow an earlier, Iron Age pattern of settlement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Grounding texts and theories of societal change

Hawkes

Abbas²,

Casile

et al. 2022

Antiquity

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During the mid-first millennium AD, new kingdoms and states emerged across South Asia. At this time, land grants made to Hindu temples are thought to have led to wide-ranging societal transformations. To date, however, neither the land-grant charters nor the changes they are said to have driven have been studied archaeologically. Here, the authors present the results of the first archaeological investigation of the charters and their landscape context. Bringing together the textual record with a survey of 268 religious and residential sites, the results establish historical baselines against which the longue durée developments of South Asian social, political and economic formation can be profitably re-posed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Grounding texts and theories of societal change

Hawkes

Abbas²,

Casile

et al. 2022

Antiquity

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“…In particular, texts like the Arthaśāstra and the Mānavadharmaśāstra (a legal text, possibly redacted in northern India, second century BCE to second century CE) make reference to a common settlement pattern in which administrative centers are appointed for the coordination of a number of satellite villages: for instance, a thānīya was to be located as a center for eight hundred villages, a droṇamukha for four hundred villages, a kārvaṭika for two hundred villages, and a saṃgrahaṇa for ten villages (KA 2:1.4). This hierarchical and heterarchical settlement pattern, mirroring an increasing socioeconomic complexity, was archaeologically documented by George Erdosy (1988) in the district of Allahabad around the city of Kauśāmbī in northern India, where such a multi-tiered settlement pattern was apparently well established by 400 BCE (Erdosy 1995: 107).5…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 97%

Releasing Urban Religion beyond the City Wall: The Spatial Capital of Early Buddhist Monasticism in NW South Asia

Iori

2023

Numen

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This paper examines the complexity of the entanglement between rural and urban space in historic South Asia through the lens of urban religion. The article is organized in two stages. First, ancient literature and archaeological evidence are used to rethink the centrality of the agrarian space in the formation and development of ancient cities and urban religions in South Asia. Second, by using the concept of spatial capital as an analytical tool I examine how the geographical assets held by Buddhist monastic institutions in the countryside affected the economic and social mobility of urban actors in the city. This second section uses the ancient city of Barikot (Swat, Pakistan) during the first three centuries of the Common Era as a case study. On this ground, I argue a direct connection between the prominent role of the saṃgha in the transformation of social, economic, and political aspects of the ancient urban society in South Asia and its ability to master geographical space and relativize distances.

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“…After the decline of Arabian maritime power, the European traders came to Asia in the late 15th century, but their commercial activities were limited to small trading stations along coastal and river ports until the mid-18th century [73] (pp. [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. Meanwhile, the vast areas of South and Southeast Asia were all included in China's massive tributary trading network, and numerous ports of these areas were connected with the lower Ganges Valley through the ports of Chittagong and Sonargaon [71] (pp.…”

Section: Analysis Of Centrifugal Forcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Systematic archaeological studies of early historic settlement patterns in the middle and lower Ganges Valley have been conducted by scholars such as Chakrabarti [30,31], Lal [32], Erdosy [33] and Allchin [34]. Colonial economic models based on statistical data from the British Indian period have been widely used by scholars such as Raza [35] to analyze the structure and growth patterns of regional urban systems in India.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial Evolution and Driving Mechanism of City Networks in the Middle and Lower Ganges Valley from the 16th to the Mid-18th Century

Wang

2022

Land

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The middle and lower Ganges Valley constitute an important part of the Asian economic and cultural corridor. Multicultural exchanges have had a profound impact on the development of historic cities and towns in the region. Considering the towns and cities of the middle and lower Ganges Valley from the 16th to the mid-18th century, this paper integrates the network theory and the centrifugal and centripetal force theory to explain how factors and forces have driven the spatial evolution of the regional urban system. By extracting spatiotemporal data from multiple sources, using the historical map translation method and spatial calculations based on GIS (Geographical Information System), the spatial pattern evolution of the city networks in this historical period is analyzed. The results show that centripetal and centrifugal forces that are generated by different driving factors combined to produce city networks in the middle and lower Ganges Valley from the 16th to the mid-18th century, forming a polycentric “axis network” spatial pattern with a stable and unified overall structure and dynamic and diverse local structures. The paper also argues that constant cultural and socioeconomic communication between the middle and lower Ganges Valley and the East is the key reason for the continuous expansion of the network.

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Urbanisation in Early Historic India

Cited by 113 publications

References 0 publications

Grounding texts and theories of societal change

Grounding texts and theories of societal change

Releasing Urban Religion beyond the City Wall: The Spatial Capital of Early Buddhist Monasticism in NW South Asia

Spatial Evolution and Driving Mechanism of City Networks in the Middle and Lower Ganges Valley from the 16th to the Mid-18th Century

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