City and the City
The City and the Vihara
The city of Narayanaksherta was founded on the northern bank of the river Godavari where it met the sea. Settled and planned by the Andhran guilds on top of an existing urban formation whose name is lost to history, its position at the mouth of a great river invariably allowed it to become wealthy off of tolls and eventually to prosper as a hub of manufacturing. By 915, what had once been a small Brahmin dominated village had become a major guild center with a large degree of autonomy from the rest of the Andhran Equal-Kingdom. The Viceroy of Narayanaksherta enjoyed a meteoric rise in power with the fortunes of his regime, a rise that did not go unnoticed. Soon the Maharaja of Andhra (a largely ceremonial and military position chosen from among prominent ayat patriarchs) turned on Naranda, the Uparika of Narayanaksherta.
Vengipura, the royal seat and the seat of the guild councils, was far less opportunely placed to take advantage of the economic changes happening in Andhra. The old guard who did not embrace this new city on the Godavari – a motley assortment of landowning elites, Brahmin, and the warrior-guilds – were felt threatened by its new power. However, for some time they merely fumed in silence. Vengipura was old, and prestigious, the very heart of the region. Long renowned as a cultural center and home to many beautiful temples and libraries, it was only with the departure of the renowned artist Dayarama, a symbolic blow to the city’s prestige, that the guilds and Vengipuran gentry united as one and took action.
Frustrated, the guilds of Vengipura decided to demand an increased tax from Narayanaksherta, a tax which they intended to appropriate for projects to serve their own capital and its environs. However, in an impassioned speech, Uparika Naranda brought the local administrations of many other cities, such as Addanki and stone cut Orukalla onto his side – appealing to particularist tendencies within the regional councils. The power to tax, he argued, was an aspect of royal authority. But royal authority was not merely in the hands of the King, but every official beneath the King who was effectively a representation of that authority as well. Just as a man’s head could not turn on his arm and destroy it, neither too could the King turn on his arms and seek to destroy them. And furthermore, the body of royal authority was a fundamentally unified thing. There could be no disparities in taxation – whatever one portion of the body suffered, all parts must suffer equally. The details of Naranda’s speech are lost, but a summation remains, and it would become known as Naradvaka, an ideology of radical particularism which would undermine the authority of the state to a large degree.
His arguments swayed the majority of the council and forced the Vengipuran “Royalist” faction to abandon their designs. Unlike in the north, there was never an Andhran equivalent of the goshthi movement – power remained directly concentrated in the hands of communities. However, where the goshthi of the north encouraged centralization and a strengthening of royal power, the Andhrans, under Naranda, diluted royal power into irrelevance through ideology. Indeed, it is perhaps erroneous to speak of an Andhran Kingdom. Vengipura represented a seat of formal power and the atrophied post-Maukhani bureaucracy. However, Narayanaksherta became the economic capital, bringing into its orbit the port city of Vishakapatnam to its north and the inland city of Vinukonda.
This rough coalition often found itself in a cold war with Vengipura, especially as Vinukonda itself had ancient pedigree as a capital under the Pallava kings and one of the few fortress-cities of the region never to fall under Maukhani control. While outright war was avoided, the guild-armies of Vengipura were not above occasional raids or illegal “tax collecting” along the Godavari.
In earlier times this situation might have resulted in outside intervention, but the Andhrans were fortunate. The great titans to their west were locked in their own conflict. The Chandratreya and the Chola had their own proxy wars and contests in the Deccan to attend to. Only the country of Utkaladesha [Odisha] remained as a threat. Sometimes known as the Trikalinga Republic, the name had increasingly fallen out of fashion because of local sentiments encouraged by local artists and poets of the goshthi movement. Writing in their native language, these poets emphasized their unique heritage. As with many regions of India, the culture of Utkaladesha was distinct, with its own dance, canon of literature, and religion, a notable feature being the worship of the tribal deity Jagannath as “Lord of the Universe.”
However, Utkaladesha had their own concerns and internal strife. The ideas of the Pancharajya’s goshthi movement had been spread by wandering teachers and holy men from Vijayapura in the north, and as it had along the cities of the Ganges, the goshthi movement challenged the authority of the guilds. The texts of Aparaka, the famous legal scholar[1], were disseminated among the monks of Pushpagiri. However, where the Gangetic goshthi had enjoyed the support of a long-established bureaucracy and various state apparatuses endangered by the guilds, in Utkaladesha the guilds had primarily threatened the indigenous, unassimilated tribes of the region.
Since the expansion of guild power had begun in earnest, the tribal societies had been devastated by guild land reform and many had been forced to move to the cities. However, they had retained a distinct identity and many had turned to the Jagannath temples which dotted the region for economic and spiritual support. The greatest of these tribes, the Kondha, would by the dawn of the tenth century be almost entirely converted.[2]
It was through the network of the Jagannath cultic temples that the Kondha Rebellions, as they became known, would be organized. In 911, a six-year war between Utkaladesha and Vijayapura came to an end. With the help of the Pancharajya, Vijayapura and the famous Gurjar mercenary general Sarabha won an impressive victory over the disorganized armies of Utkaladesha and forced them to sign a humiliating peace treaty. While the war itself was an on-and-off affair, prosecuted by an Utkaladeshi administration that feared losing recently acquired trade rights in Vanga, it led to considerable unrest as peasants were levied from the countryside to fill out depleted armies and the final defeat saw the burden of the indemnity placed disproportionately upon the marginalized communities who were poorly represented in the Ayat.
Four years later, the first of Kondha Rebellions would break out – riots in cities overwhelmed the guild armies, still not wholly recovered from the war. Irregular bands of rebels in the deeply forested interior regions wreaked havoc and the Utkala regime found themselves struggling. While the guilds knew that the Jagannath temples were at least complicit in the rebellion, many among the guilds were devout followers as well, or at least feared the public reaction should they appear to persecute the faith.
The rebellion was only just brought under control, and none of the underlying issues were addressed. The guilds still controlled the government and denied the common people any representation in the Ayat, using their legislative powers to maintain control and accrue further land for themselves at the expense of traditional tribal confederacies. Smaller rebellions would break out in 927 and 941, but the fourth, in 947, would be another uprising on a similar scale to the first. Indravarma, the Maharaja of Utkala, would be killed in battle against rebels in the interior, and the state would collapse into relative anarchy for a period.
The rebellion of 947 represented an existential threat to the guilds. Reduced to a smattering of cities on the coasts, they bit their tongues and appealed to the Chola monarchs for aid, striking treaties which left them deeply indebted to the southern dynasty. The following year, as campaign season came on, the tide turned. The guilds now possessed large mercenary armies, composed of soldiers from as far away as Izaoriaka. They armed their soldiers with fire spears, and hired the son of their famous adversary Sarabha to command their armies. Named Vijayaditya, he popularized a revolutionary defensive formation which destroyed the less organized rebel armies.
The first rank of soldiers carried conventional spears and large wooden shields. If the enemy were to charge, they would crouch while the second braced with fire-spears over their shoulders. As their foes drew close, or perhaps even engaged with the first rank, the second rank would ignite their spears and respond with a blast of shrapnel[3] and flame.
Impressive revolutions in military technology aside, the ultimate guild victory was a hollow one. Despite near-total triumph, they finally recognized that further rebellions were inevitable without compromise. Key tribal leaders and members of the Jagannath priesthood were invited into the Great Ayat. While much of the credit for this eventual compromise must go to the Kondha, it is worth noting that the thirty years of rebellion saw slow cultural changes as well. The guilds were largely Buddhist, and many of the prominent Buddhist viharas such as Pushpagiri unashamedly embraced the goshthi movement, leading to a change in the common perception of how guilds should interact with the people, one which eventually translated into policy.
[1] From the previous post about the Goshthi movement.
[2] No, converted isn’t really the best word, given the fact that this is the dharmic religious tradition and even alt-Jagannath worship is a remarkably pluralistic thing with loose rules about conversion. However, it’s the easiest way to express what I’m trying to say.
[3] Vijayaditya’s writings on his campaign and descriptions of the fire-spears correspond to the work of the polymath Meikanda, who described the evolution of the fire-spear from a terror weapon to a device which hurled nails and splinters of metal at close range. This is effectively the precursor to the hand-cannon, the first depictions of which come from Gandhara circa 1020, where they were used as a way of negating superior numbers of elephant cavalry employed by the Dauwa Maharajas. The invention of the hand cannon would truly change warfare, although it would be another hundred years before gunpowder weapons saw widespread introduction on the battlefield. There is some debate as to whether or not the hand-cannon is actually a Chinese invention based on a fire-spear brought back by the traveling Buddhist monk Sima Kuang - a debate fostered by inaccuracies in the depiction of the Gandharan cannons, and far more detailed Chinese histories of their use against the Kitai roughly contemporaneously.
[I'm impressed that I created such a monster completely by accident, Hobelhouse!
Next post will move entirely around the world.]
The city of Narayanaksherta was founded on the northern bank of the river Godavari where it met the sea. Settled and planned by the Andhran guilds on top of an existing urban formation whose name is lost to history, its position at the mouth of a great river invariably allowed it to become wealthy off of tolls and eventually to prosper as a hub of manufacturing. By 915, what had once been a small Brahmin dominated village had become a major guild center with a large degree of autonomy from the rest of the Andhran Equal-Kingdom. The Viceroy of Narayanaksherta enjoyed a meteoric rise in power with the fortunes of his regime, a rise that did not go unnoticed. Soon the Maharaja of Andhra (a largely ceremonial and military position chosen from among prominent ayat patriarchs) turned on Naranda, the Uparika of Narayanaksherta.
Vengipura, the royal seat and the seat of the guild councils, was far less opportunely placed to take advantage of the economic changes happening in Andhra. The old guard who did not embrace this new city on the Godavari – a motley assortment of landowning elites, Brahmin, and the warrior-guilds – were felt threatened by its new power. However, for some time they merely fumed in silence. Vengipura was old, and prestigious, the very heart of the region. Long renowned as a cultural center and home to many beautiful temples and libraries, it was only with the departure of the renowned artist Dayarama, a symbolic blow to the city’s prestige, that the guilds and Vengipuran gentry united as one and took action.
Frustrated, the guilds of Vengipura decided to demand an increased tax from Narayanaksherta, a tax which they intended to appropriate for projects to serve their own capital and its environs. However, in an impassioned speech, Uparika Naranda brought the local administrations of many other cities, such as Addanki and stone cut Orukalla onto his side – appealing to particularist tendencies within the regional councils. The power to tax, he argued, was an aspect of royal authority. But royal authority was not merely in the hands of the King, but every official beneath the King who was effectively a representation of that authority as well. Just as a man’s head could not turn on his arm and destroy it, neither too could the King turn on his arms and seek to destroy them. And furthermore, the body of royal authority was a fundamentally unified thing. There could be no disparities in taxation – whatever one portion of the body suffered, all parts must suffer equally. The details of Naranda’s speech are lost, but a summation remains, and it would become known as Naradvaka, an ideology of radical particularism which would undermine the authority of the state to a large degree.
His arguments swayed the majority of the council and forced the Vengipuran “Royalist” faction to abandon their designs. Unlike in the north, there was never an Andhran equivalent of the goshthi movement – power remained directly concentrated in the hands of communities. However, where the goshthi of the north encouraged centralization and a strengthening of royal power, the Andhrans, under Naranda, diluted royal power into irrelevance through ideology. Indeed, it is perhaps erroneous to speak of an Andhran Kingdom. Vengipura represented a seat of formal power and the atrophied post-Maukhani bureaucracy. However, Narayanaksherta became the economic capital, bringing into its orbit the port city of Vishakapatnam to its north and the inland city of Vinukonda.
This rough coalition often found itself in a cold war with Vengipura, especially as Vinukonda itself had ancient pedigree as a capital under the Pallava kings and one of the few fortress-cities of the region never to fall under Maukhani control. While outright war was avoided, the guild-armies of Vengipura were not above occasional raids or illegal “tax collecting” along the Godavari.
In earlier times this situation might have resulted in outside intervention, but the Andhrans were fortunate. The great titans to their west were locked in their own conflict. The Chandratreya and the Chola had their own proxy wars and contests in the Deccan to attend to. Only the country of Utkaladesha [Odisha] remained as a threat. Sometimes known as the Trikalinga Republic, the name had increasingly fallen out of fashion because of local sentiments encouraged by local artists and poets of the goshthi movement. Writing in their native language, these poets emphasized their unique heritage. As with many regions of India, the culture of Utkaladesha was distinct, with its own dance, canon of literature, and religion, a notable feature being the worship of the tribal deity Jagannath as “Lord of the Universe.”
However, Utkaladesha had their own concerns and internal strife. The ideas of the Pancharajya’s goshthi movement had been spread by wandering teachers and holy men from Vijayapura in the north, and as it had along the cities of the Ganges, the goshthi movement challenged the authority of the guilds. The texts of Aparaka, the famous legal scholar[1], were disseminated among the monks of Pushpagiri. However, where the Gangetic goshthi had enjoyed the support of a long-established bureaucracy and various state apparatuses endangered by the guilds, in Utkaladesha the guilds had primarily threatened the indigenous, unassimilated tribes of the region.
Since the expansion of guild power had begun in earnest, the tribal societies had been devastated by guild land reform and many had been forced to move to the cities. However, they had retained a distinct identity and many had turned to the Jagannath temples which dotted the region for economic and spiritual support. The greatest of these tribes, the Kondha, would by the dawn of the tenth century be almost entirely converted.[2]
It was through the network of the Jagannath cultic temples that the Kondha Rebellions, as they became known, would be organized. In 911, a six-year war between Utkaladesha and Vijayapura came to an end. With the help of the Pancharajya, Vijayapura and the famous Gurjar mercenary general Sarabha won an impressive victory over the disorganized armies of Utkaladesha and forced them to sign a humiliating peace treaty. While the war itself was an on-and-off affair, prosecuted by an Utkaladeshi administration that feared losing recently acquired trade rights in Vanga, it led to considerable unrest as peasants were levied from the countryside to fill out depleted armies and the final defeat saw the burden of the indemnity placed disproportionately upon the marginalized communities who were poorly represented in the Ayat.
Four years later, the first of Kondha Rebellions would break out – riots in cities overwhelmed the guild armies, still not wholly recovered from the war. Irregular bands of rebels in the deeply forested interior regions wreaked havoc and the Utkala regime found themselves struggling. While the guilds knew that the Jagannath temples were at least complicit in the rebellion, many among the guilds were devout followers as well, or at least feared the public reaction should they appear to persecute the faith.
The rebellion was only just brought under control, and none of the underlying issues were addressed. The guilds still controlled the government and denied the common people any representation in the Ayat, using their legislative powers to maintain control and accrue further land for themselves at the expense of traditional tribal confederacies. Smaller rebellions would break out in 927 and 941, but the fourth, in 947, would be another uprising on a similar scale to the first. Indravarma, the Maharaja of Utkala, would be killed in battle against rebels in the interior, and the state would collapse into relative anarchy for a period.
The rebellion of 947 represented an existential threat to the guilds. Reduced to a smattering of cities on the coasts, they bit their tongues and appealed to the Chola monarchs for aid, striking treaties which left them deeply indebted to the southern dynasty. The following year, as campaign season came on, the tide turned. The guilds now possessed large mercenary armies, composed of soldiers from as far away as Izaoriaka. They armed their soldiers with fire spears, and hired the son of their famous adversary Sarabha to command their armies. Named Vijayaditya, he popularized a revolutionary defensive formation which destroyed the less organized rebel armies.
The first rank of soldiers carried conventional spears and large wooden shields. If the enemy were to charge, they would crouch while the second braced with fire-spears over their shoulders. As their foes drew close, or perhaps even engaged with the first rank, the second rank would ignite their spears and respond with a blast of shrapnel[3] and flame.
Impressive revolutions in military technology aside, the ultimate guild victory was a hollow one. Despite near-total triumph, they finally recognized that further rebellions were inevitable without compromise. Key tribal leaders and members of the Jagannath priesthood were invited into the Great Ayat. While much of the credit for this eventual compromise must go to the Kondha, it is worth noting that the thirty years of rebellion saw slow cultural changes as well. The guilds were largely Buddhist, and many of the prominent Buddhist viharas such as Pushpagiri unashamedly embraced the goshthi movement, leading to a change in the common perception of how guilds should interact with the people, one which eventually translated into policy.
[1] From the previous post about the Goshthi movement.
[2] No, converted isn’t really the best word, given the fact that this is the dharmic religious tradition and even alt-Jagannath worship is a remarkably pluralistic thing with loose rules about conversion. However, it’s the easiest way to express what I’m trying to say.
[3] Vijayaditya’s writings on his campaign and descriptions of the fire-spears correspond to the work of the polymath Meikanda, who described the evolution of the fire-spear from a terror weapon to a device which hurled nails and splinters of metal at close range. This is effectively the precursor to the hand-cannon, the first depictions of which come from Gandhara circa 1020, where they were used as a way of negating superior numbers of elephant cavalry employed by the Dauwa Maharajas. The invention of the hand cannon would truly change warfare, although it would be another hundred years before gunpowder weapons saw widespread introduction on the battlefield. There is some debate as to whether or not the hand-cannon is actually a Chinese invention based on a fire-spear brought back by the traveling Buddhist monk Sima Kuang - a debate fostered by inaccuracies in the depiction of the Gandharan cannons, and far more detailed Chinese histories of their use against the Kitai roughly contemporaneously.
[I'm impressed that I created such a monster completely by accident, Hobelhouse!
Next post will move entirely around the world.]
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