The Territorial Basis of Medieval Town and Village Settlement in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India 1

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8377603
AutoresKASHI N SINGH (0000-0003-3592-533X, Banaras Hindu University, autor correspondente)
Ano1968
Volume58
Fascículo2
Páginas203-220
Data de publicação1968-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAnnals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-8306.1968.tb00640.x
OpenAlexW2139719904
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8

Although the national and regional political structure of India was Muslim-controlled and centralized in nature through the latter half of the medieval period, the Brahmanic Hindu lineages, mainly Rajput, evolved as the dominant local powers in various territories of eastern Uttar Pradesh. These lineages articulated a strong cultural and political dominance over other groups of peoples in their territories through the intricate Hindu caste and jajmani system. There developed a three-tier territorial segmentation in each locality on the functional basis of kinship of the dominant lineage—the occupied territority became the pargana which was segmented into secondary clan areas known as tappas, and the latter were further parcelled into smaller territories of gaon, or village units. Corresponding with these territorial segmentations, there also proliferated three basic settlement units: whereas the pargana and tappa headquarters evolved as quasi-urban settlements because of their viable territorial commands, the gaon became the basic rural settlement unit. It is hypothesized that it is this dominant lineage territory which was a more nearly self-contained culture-bearing unit in traditional rural India (as against the popular notion of the self-sufficient Indian village) in which the village and town settlements proliferated on the landscape, as shown through a model, through the social, cultural, economic, and political interdependence pattern of the local inhabitants

Archaeology · Caste · Clan · Dominance (genetics) · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Hinduism · Human settlement · Kinship · Political science · Politics · Settlement (finance) · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies