In this essay, I shall examine how the Bhils of the border region between the present states of Rajasthan and Gujarat understood and treated ill health and disease in the late nineteenth century.
The village communities of Goa, like their counterparts in Karnataka, performed an important function. They provided the spiritual and material bases for the process of state formation. The kings selected the Brahmanas as the spiritual and secular beneficiaries and gave land grants to them. On the one hand, they went a long a way in legitimising the position of the king and creating a material basis essential for state formation, a continuous process that involved not only political but also socio-economic processes. Land grants to the Brahmanas ensured social stability and order as the Brahmanas could provide the spiritual strength to the king and encourage the Sudra peasants to respect the state orders. On the other hand, they ensured agricultural production and maintenance of the irrigational projects. Interestingly, the Portuguese continued the policy of the Hindu kings by establishing a close relationship with the Brahmanas, at least in the initial years of their rule. This article shows the spiritual and material bases of the village communities of Goa. It contends that along with the process of state formation in Goa, there was an increase in the number of village communities.
The political, socio-economic and cultural development of Kashi was never blocked. The history of technological development in Kashi state has been very flourished. The present study is an attempt to present historical and analytical studies regarding bone technology and its characteristics used in the region of ancient Kashi. The contribution of bone technology in the wisdom of Kashi and the development of a socio-economic perspective has also been discussed. Various bone tools obtained from Kashi’s archaeological sites and excavations reports have been studied. Archaeological and literary sources revealed that ancient Kashi was very developed in technology. The sources candidly depicted the prosperous societal life of its inhabitants in the backdrop of rich culture. Bone objects remains constitute an essential theme to study the integrated ecological aspect of human life.
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In medieval Tamil country, starting from the eighth-ninth centuries, nagaram was the town, where merchants conducted commercial activities, through a corporate body called either as nagaram or nagarattār. if has been studied to some extent by some scholars in the context of the elucidation of medieval state structure and social formation. In the past studies, however, the relations between the state and nagarattār and those between nagarattār and itinerant merchant guilds like ainnūrruvar were not made clear. This study, using a larger corpus of inscriptions, seeks to clarify the changing character of nagaram through a period of five centuries.
In the earlier phase of our study period there was not much difference between nagaram (town) and other agriculture-based villages, and the former was utilized by the state for its local administration, but in the later phase, namely in and after the twelfth century, it transformed its character to the promoter of commerce by associating itself with itinerant merchant guilds. Jāti formation by merchants of various sorts also accelerated the process of network formation by nagarams in the later phase.
We find also a subtle difference in the activities of merchants between the central and northern regions of the Tamil country. As against the more independent attitude of merchants of the central region, who were organized in guilds, merchants and artisans in the northern region, appearing as kāsāyakudi (‘those who pay money taxes’), seem to have been placed under the control of the political powers such as local chiefs.
The sultans of Gujarat tried to transform the landscape by planting native and exotic trees and introducing gardens on the perceived Central-Asian Khorasan style to underpin their control over the acquired or conquered territory and its nature-landscape. After the founding of Ahmedabad, gardens within the religious and secular architecture came up all over the city. The foliage and gardens were hugely admired by the travellers passing by the city. Perusing their travelogues, we navigate the changing landscape and the green spaces of Ahmedabad over a period of time. While constructing the history of gardens in Ahmedabad, this article reflects on the future sustainability of the city if the culture of nature and environment-sensitive values are not inculcated and promoted.
