lodhi dynasty

Lodhi Dynasty


Bahlol Lodhi was the founder of Lodhi dynasty. He ruled for 39 years.

His links were with a famous Afghan clan known as Shahurbel.He

established his suzerainty by defeating and capturing the jagirdar of

Mewat, Sambha, Koel, Khari, Bhogaon, Etawah and Gwalior.He

annexed the Jaunpur kingdom in his empire. In the last years of his

life he invaded Gwalior and obtained 80 lakh tankas from the ruler. He

was succeeded by his son Nizam Shah who ascended the throne with

the title of Sikandar Shah.

He was ablest of three Lodhi rulers. In 1504 he established the city of

Agra. He conquered south Bihar in 1494-95 and concluded a treaty of

friendship with Alauddin Husain Shah the ruler of Bengal. He

introduced the measurement of land and started a measurement

known as Sikandar Gaz.He tried to propagate Islam and crush

Hinduism. He died at Agra in 1517.The last Lodhi ruler was Ibrahim

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Lodhi.In 1526 Ibrahim Lodhi fought with Babur the battle of Panipat.In

this fierce battle Ibrahim Lodhi was defeated. The Sultanate came to

an end and a new power Mughals came to rule India.

Rulers of the Lodhi Dynasty

Rulers of the Lodhi Dynasty AD

1. Bahlol Lodhi 1451-1489

2. Sikander Lodhi 1489-1517

3. Ibrahim Lodhi 1517-1526

Administration of the Sultanate

The government established by the Turks was a compromise between

Islamic political ideas and institutions on the one hand and the existing

Rajput system of government on the other. Consequently many

elements of the Rajput political system with or without changes

became part and parcel of the Turkish administration in India. Most of

the Sultans kept up the pretence of regarding the caliph as the legal

sovereign while they themselves were the caliph's representatives.

Most of them included the name of the caliph in the Khutba and the

Sikka and adopted titles indicative of their subordination to the caliph.

Three rulers emphasised their own importance.Balban used to say that

after the Prophet the most important office was that of the sovereign

and called himself the Shadow of God.Muhmmad bin Tughlaq assumed

this style during the early years of his reign and although Balban had

retained the name of the caliph in the Khutba and Sikka, he made no

mention of caliph anywhere. Despite all this neither of them had the

power to call himself the caliph. The only person who had done this

was Qutubuddin Mubarak Khalji.Only three Sultans sought and secured

a mansur or letter of investiture from the caliph.The first among them

was Iltutmish.Next Muhmmad bin Tughlaq tried to pacify the ulema by

securing an investiture from the Abbasid Caliph in Egypt.

After him Firoz also sought and secured it twice. According to Islamic

ideals essential attributes of a sovereign required that he should be a

male adult suffering from no physical disability, a freeborn Muslim

having faith in Islam and acquainted with its doctrines and he should

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be elected by the people. There were several violations of the

prescribed criteria as Raziya was raised to throne despite her being a

woman. Minority proved no bar in the case of Mohammad bin

Tughluq.Alauddin Khalji admitted his ignorance of the Sharia but

nobody questioned him.In the framing of new rules and regulations

the authority of the Sultan was circumscribed and every ruler could

not govern the kingdom in complete disregard of the advice of the

ulema or theologians as Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad Tughluq had

been able to do. The power of the nobility also blunted their authority

to some extent. When there was a weak ruler on the throne the nobles

and the ulema particularly dominated him but during the reign of

Balban, Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad Tughluq these checks proved

ineffective. The sultans were not powerful enough to rule the land in

complete disregard of the sentiments of the Hindus.

The Sultan dominated the central government as he was the legal

head of the state and acted as the chief executive and the highest

court of appeal. The Sultan was assisted by number of ministers. The

slave dynasty sultans constituted four ministers at the top level these

were held by Wazir,Ariz I mamalik,the diwan -i-insha and the diwan-irisalat.

After sometime an extraordinary officer of the state styled as

naib-ul-mulk or malik naib the regent came into existence. When the

sultanate was well established two more departmental heads were

raised to the status of central ministers sadr-us-sadur and the diwan-iqaza.

The commander of the royal army next after the sultan, the

crown prince and above mentioned ministers constituted the nucleus

of the council of advisers called majilis-i-am or majilis-i-khawat which

comprised the most trusted and the highest officers of the state. The

wazir also styled as vakil was the prime minister and his department

was called the diwan-i-wizarat.He was head of the finance dept and

usually held overall charge of the entire administrative set up. The

head of the army establishment or the ministry of defence was the

diwan -i-arz.He was responsible for the organization and maintenance

of the royal army and exercised disciplinary control over it. The

department of correspondence and records of the royal court was

called diwan-i-insha; it was held under the charge of central minister

known as dabir-i-mamlik, dabir-i-khas or amir munshi.The diwan-irisalat

constituted the fourth pillar of the imperial administration of the

sultanate. Under slave dynasty the head of the dept was sadr-us-sadur

who was primarily a minister for ecclesiastical affairs. During the time

of Alauddin Khalji diwan-i-risalat dept was taken out of the hand of the

sadr and renamed diwan-i-riyasat.Its primary function was to

implement the economic regulations issued by the sultan and control

the markets and prices.Barid-i-mamalik ;vakil -i-dar,amir-i-

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barbak,amir-i-hajib,amir-i-majlis,amir-i-shikar,kotwal etc were other

important officials of the time.

Provincial Government

The provincial government of the sultanate was not well developed.

The provincial governors of the region were usually called walis or

muqtas.The provincial government was an exact replica of the central

government. In some provinces the sultan appointed an imperial

officer called sahib-i-diwan for controlling the provincial revenues and

he exercised a sort of check on the powers and activities of the

governor. The provinces were further divided into shiqs or districts

which were governed by shiqdars.Each shiq comprised a few parganas

which was an aggregate of villages. At the lowest ladder were the

villages which were governed by their local panchayats.

Judicial System

The sultans implemented shariat or the Islamic law of crime and

punishment the main sources of which were the Quran, the Hadis and

Ijma.The ecclesiastical cases were separated from the criminal and

civil suits. The durbar of the sultan constituted the highest civil and

criminal court of justice which took original as well as appellate cases.

Below the sultan there was the court of qazi-i-quzat or the chief justice

of the empire.Muhtasib the censor of public morals acted as police cum

judge in the observance of the canon law by the Muslims. The village

panchayats enjoyed the sanction of the state to administer justice

according to the local tradition, customs and the personal law of the

populace. The penal code was severe, physical torture and capital

punishment constituted an essential part of it.

Military organization

The sultanate was military dictatorship; it owed its genesis to the

military victory of the Turks over the Indian rulers in the 12th and

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13th centuries and its strength and stability depended primarily on its

strong and efficient army. The army organization of the sultans was

based on feudal principles which carried all the inherent defects of the

system with it.

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Geographical knowledge of the vedic

period.

The geographical evidence as to be found in the hymns of Vedas thros

some light on the course of Indo-Aryan migration and the origin of

Hinduism. Whether the Indo-Aryans came from Central Asia or not

depends largely on the interpretation of the geographical allusions in

the Rig and Yajur Vedas. The hymns in praise of rivers in the 10th

blcok are interesting. The author while singing the greatness of the

Sindhu enumerates at least 19 rivers including the Ganges. The fifth

Stanza gives a list of 10 streams, small and great-Ganges, Yamuna,

Saraswati, Satluj, Ravi, Chenab, Jhelum, Maruwardwan (in J&K),

Sushoma (Rowalpindi District) and probably Kanshi in the same

district. This system of rivers did not remain the Saraswati. The

existing delta of the Indus has been formed since the time of

Alexander the Great.

The Vedic hymns reveal the initial Aryan settlements in India : western

tributaries of the Indus, the Gomti (modern Gomal) the Krumu

(modern Kurram) and the Kubha (modern Kabul). The one river

mentioned in the North of Kabul is Suvastu (modern swat).

But the main focus of the Rig Vedic settlements was in the Punjab and

the Delhi region. When the Rig-Vedic hymns were compiled the focus

of Aryan settlement was the region between the Yamuna and the

Sutlaj, south of modern Ambala and laong the upper course of river

Saraswati. The most frequently mentioned rivers are the Sindhu

(Indus), the Sarasvati (modern Sarsuti), the Drishadvati (modern

Chitang), and the five streams of the Punjab.

Regarding the other geographical features, the Vedic poets knew the

Himalayas but not the land south of Yamuna, since they did not

mention the Vindhayas, In the east also the Aryans did not expand

beyond Yamuna; for the river Ganga is mentioned only once in one

late hymn.

And possibly, the Aryans had no knowledge of the oceans since the

word 'samudra' in the Vedic period meant a pool of water. But the

later Vedic knowledge shows that the Aryans knew the two seas, the

Himalayas and the Vindhyan mountainas and generally the entire

Indo-Gangetic plain.

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The Aryans used various kinds of pottery and the sites where the

painted grey were are found, confirm the Aryan settlements. The Vedic

texts show that the Aryans expanded from the Punjab over the whole

of western Uttar Pradesh covered by the Ganga-Yamuna Doab. The

Bharatas and Purus known as Kuru people first lived between

Sarasvati and Drishadvati just on the fringe of the Doab. Soon the

Kurus occupied Delhi and the Upper portion of the doab, that is the

area called Kurukshetra, After this event, the Kurus joined with the

people called Panchalas who occupied the middle portion of the Doab

or the moder districts of bareilly Dadaun and Farrukabad. It was the

Kuru-Panchalas who had set up their capital at Hastinapur situated in

the district of Meerut. Later the Kauravas and the Pandavas belonging

to the same Kuru clan fougth out a battle which led to the extinction of

the Kuru clan.

And by 600 B.C. the Aryans spread from the Doab further east to

Kosala in Eastern U.P. and Vedeha in north Bihar. The former town is

associated with the story of Ramchandra, but it is not mentioned in

Vedic literature.

Indus And Vedic Civilisation

There is muc to be contrasted between the cultures of the Harappans

and the Aryans. There are indeed a few points of similarities, but they

are not of any significance. Why the points of contrast are more is

primarily because of geographic location, economic activity and the

religious practices followed by both the cultures. Far more important is

the fact that the Aryans, with a plasticity of mind, made life vibrant;

whereas, the Indus life looks more like stylized puppet show.

The plasticity of the Aryan mind was shown in the language as well as

the way in which they adapted agricultural and settled life. The seals

of the Indus Valley show that the pictographs remained statis,

whereas, the Aryan language in the Rig Veda at places rises to musical

levels. The success with which the Aryan writings were composed

reveals the ability of the Aryan mind to grasp the mulitiple dimensions

of human life. And language which exhibits immense potentialities in

its vocabulary reveals that the community is full of potentialities. On

the other hand, out of nearly 400 characters known to the Harappans

only a few were repeated time and again.

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The other manifestation of Aryan civilization, that is, its capacity to

change and adapt itself, has given a continuity to Indian Civilization

despite the absence of mighty empires. On the other hand, the Indus

Valley people reached a blind alley and the never learnt anything from

other civilizations like the Sumerian. Adaptability or ability to respond

to challenges is the hallmark of any youthful civilization. The Indus

civilization reached its senilithy by 2000 B.C. whereas the Aryan

Civilization was full with creative dynamism.

Archaeology is the only source of our knowledge of the Harappan

civilization, but information concerning the Vedic Aryans depends

almost entirely on literary texts, which were handed down by the oral

tradition. It is clear from the material remains that the Harappan

civilization was in certain respects superior to that of the Aryans. In

Particular it was a city civilization of a highly developed type, while by

contrast city life was unfamiliar to the Aryans. The superiority of the

Aryans lay in the military field. In which their use of the light horse

chariot played a prominent part, or in literary exuberation.

Harappans were peace loving city-dwellers and good planners as is

evident by grid pattern towns, elaborate drainage system, street

lights, kelp-burnt brick houses, fortifications, granaries, baths and

wells. The early Aryans were not city builders. Their way of life,

nomad-pastoralists as theywere, was dominated by war like stockbreeding

(they practiced a little agriculture) and migrations. City

buildings etc. as a large-scale socio-economic activities is only much

later mentioned in the later Vedic texts, epics and the Puranas.

The Harrapa culture is located in the Indus Valley and western India

and its urbanization is based on a chalcolithic system with and absence

of iron. Later Vedic society centering on the Ganges Valley from which

the Harappan culture is largely absent owes its gradual urbanization to

iron technology, the widespread domestication of the horse and the

extension and intensification of plough agriculture. (Iron, horse and

plough being nearly absent - some evidence in later Harappan sites).

The expansion and budding off of the Harappan system in the east as

far as Alamgirpur (U.P.) and to the neighbouring areas was neither

'colonisation' nor was it 'political expansion' of any from, it was rather

the expansion in terms of the permeations of the socio-economic and

socio-cultural systems of Harappan society whereas, the Aryan

advance towards eastern region - the Doab of the Ganges and Jamuna

- was no doubt facilitated by their horse chariots and effective

weapons and can be viewed as 'colonisation' or 'political expansion'

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though not all the Aryan culture contacts and expansion need have

been of a violent kind.

The focal centers of the Harappan culture remained for a long time the

twin cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and it is from these centers

that Harappan culture budded off, whereas the focus of attention of

the Rig Veda was the Punjab and in the later Vedic period it shifted to

the Doab of the Ganges and Jamuna rivers. The Punjab seems

gradually to fade into the background and was regarded even with

disapproval.

The Harappan society had a very complex social stratification, division

of labour and multiplicity of crafts and industries, urbanism was its

marked feature with Harappans enjoying a settled and sedentary life,

and in this society the priest and the merchant played dominant roles

perhaps constituting a 'ruling' elite. On the other hand, in the early

period the Aryans were organized into a social organization which may

be described as 'tribal' or rural' one with a minimal of division of labour

and sedentariness. It was sed fully with more pronounced and

increased division of labour when specialized trades and crafts

appeared. But in this society it was not the priests and the merchants

(Vaishyas) but the Priests and the Kshtriya who constituted the rule in

elite (though with a tendency to rivalry).

In the Harappan society the Priestly class was of great importance as

the central authority. Though there is little evidence in the Rig Veda of

any special importance of the priests, however in later Vedic society,

the priests as a class assumed a form of institutional authority. The

institutions of slavery and prostitution were common to both the

societies.

The entire Harappan civilization was the product of an available food

surplus (wheat and barley), a fairly high level of craft industry, a script

and most important of active commercial intercourse by which it was

able to obtain its different and varied material from places far and near

both in India (the sub-continent outside the Harappan sphere was not

terra-incognita) and outside (i.e. Sumerian towns, Baluchistan and

Central Asia). Both northern and southern India was connected in

Harappan period by ties of brisk trade. But the early Aryans did not

fully emerged out from the food-gathering and nomadic pastoral

stage. They hated the panis, i.e. those who indulged in trade. Though

by the end of the Vedic age trade contracts and commercial intercourse

did not reach the Harappan level. It was only by the end of the

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Vedic period that the Aryans had some familiarity with the subcontinent.

The religion of the Harappan differed widely from that of the Vedic

people. The Harappan practiced the cults of Sakti (mother Goddess)

and Pasupati (Proto-Shiva) of animal-tree and stone worship and of

Phallus and Yoni, i.e. fertility cult. The early Aryans condemned many

of these cults. Harappans worshiped Mother Goddess but the Female

deities played a minor part in Vedic religion though the Aryans

provided spouses to their gods by later Vedic times. But the fear of the

Phallus worship was replaced in the Yajur veda by its recognition as an

official ritual. Siva also gained increased importance in the later Vedas.

The Aryans anthropomorphized most of the forces of nature and

prayed to them as Indra, Varuna, Agni, Mitra, Rudra, Soma, Surya,

and Asvins. The fire of sacrificial cult was common to both. Vedic

Aryans worshipped the cow while the Harappans reserved their

veneration for bulls. The Harappans were iconic and the Aryans

aniconic. Ascetic practices were known to both.

That the Harappan had a ruling authority or elite and / or an

administrative organization cannot be doubted. Almost uniform

planning of the cities and presence of sanitary system, standard

weights and measures, assembly halls, huge granaries and citadels

point to the existence of an authority, but what it was like as the later

Vedic period the Aryan tribes had consolidated in little kingdoms with

capitals and a sedimentary administrative system with important

functionaries the Purohit and the twelve ratrins playing dominant role

in support of the monarchy, the prevalent form of government.

The food habits of the Harappans were almost identical with those of

the later Aryans if not early Aryans. The Harappans unlike the Aryans,

preferred indoor games of outdoor amusements (chariot racing and

hunting) though dice was popular past time with both. Playing music,

singing and dancing were common to both. But about the musical

instrument of the Harappan little is known or not known while the

Aryans had the drum, lute and flute with cymbals and the harp as later

additions. The Harappans buried their dead - the Aryans largely

created their dead. The Harappans used a script, which remains

undeciphered to date in spite of many claims for its deco din, where as

references to writing in Vedic society came at a much later stage.

In art the Harappans made considerable progress. Their works of art

add tour comprehension of their culture. In fact, the earliest artistic

traditions belong to them. In sculpture (beareded man from Mohenjo-

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daro and two sand stone statuettes from Harappa), though a very few

sculptures survive, in metal (bronze dancing girl) and ivory works, in

terracotta's (small images and figures of animals, birds or human or

animal and inscription a 9 Harappan script on them), and in their

pottery (painted red and black, at times glazed), the Harappan show

vigor, variety and ingenuity. On the other hand, Rig Vedic age is

devoid of any tangible proof of Aryan achievements in these directions.

In fact the Rig Veda says nothing of writing, art and architecture. The

art of ceramics made Harappan, the Vedic pottery was a simple one.

The Harappans lacked that plasticity and dynamism of mind which is

very essential for further growth and survival and they refused to learn

from others, on the other hand, the Aryans possessing what the

Harappans lacked, were youthful enough to be receptive, adaptive and

assimilative, transforming themselves into a comprehensive civilization

which in due course of time became essentially composite in character.

In the end we have to say that apart from the minor causative factors

causing difference like the close mindedness of the Harappans and

contrasted to the Plasticity of the Aryan mind, formalized and

ritualized religion of the Harappans as contrasted to the animals and

the metaphysical traits of the Aryans and the geographical locale were

entirely different. The differences in socio-economic matrices between

the two civilizations primarily account for the contrast between the

two.