There are number of works devoted to the study of the political history of almost all dynasties of Deccan. But there hardly exists any work tracing the progress of society and economy in Deccan from the period of the Satavahanas to that of the Yadavas with the help of the internal evidence from epigraphs along with archaeological, literary, sculptural, and numismatic evidence.
The present project is an attempt towards achieving this end. It is based mainly on the inscriptions issued by the kings of Satavahana, Vakataka, Calukya of Badami, Rastrakuta, Calukya of Kalyani, Yadava and Silahara dynasties as well as of some other dynasties which had some sort of contacts with these royal families and the data obtaines is supplemented and corroborated wherever possible and essential with the evidence available from other sources. Taking into account the vast gamut of the territory and the period the study is restricted to the region ruled by these dynasties and particularly to western and northern Deccan including Vidarbha.
The other point to be noted here is that in order to have clear idea about the position of different so called castes in the society, efforts are made to describe these classes in the context of their duties prescribed in Dharmasastras.
Here an attempt is made to trace the beginning of different arts and professions based on each of these sources with the corroboration of the evidence from different sources.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Malati Mahajan
Dr. Malati Mahajan who retired as lecturer from the Post Graduate Teaching Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology of Nagpur University, Nagpur is the student of the same department. She passed her M.A. examination in first division and was awarded Motilal Nehru centenary prize for standing first in order of merit. She was the recipient of the U.G.C. fellowship while working for her Ph.D. thesis under the guidance of Dr. S.B. Deo. After Ph.D. she worked as research assistant with Dr. S.B. Deo and completed the work of translation of the "Topographical List of Inscriptions found in Maharashtra and Goa". Again I the same capacity she worked with Dr. Ajay Mitra Shastri and completed the Project "Dictionary of Place names from Inscriptions found in Maharashtra and Goa". She has participated in some all India conferences of Place Name Society of India and presented good number of research papers on different aspects of Cultural and Historical Geography of ancient Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh which have been widely appreciated. She was elected as General President of the Thirteenth All India Annual Conference of Place Name Society held at Udupi (Karnataka) in April, 1992. She is the author of books, Development of Material Culture in India (Based on Archaeological evidence corroborated and supplemented with evidence from other sources); Cultural history of Maharashtra and Goa from Place Names in Inscriptions found in Maharashtra and Goa; Madhya Pradesh-Cultural and Historical Geography from Place Names in Inscription and Chhattisgarh- A Geography from Place Names in Inscriptions.
There are no reviews yet.