| Recent Western scholarship on South Indian history has stressed the significance of religious gift-giving as the main integrative factor binding the disparate elements of medieval society together in one social fabric. Religious endowments to Hindu temples and to groups of learned brahmins served an incorporative function by creating a pool of wealth which was redistributed to diverse sectors of society. This study of donative inscriptions provides a comprehensive overview of the socio-religious culture of one specific area of South India during a limited time period (1175 to 1325 A.D.) and thus presents, for the first time, a complete body of statistical data on religious gift-giving in medieval South India. It has also extended the parameters of scholarly investigation by focusing on a state hitherto neglected, Andhra Pradesh.;Commencing with an examination of the geographic distribution of endowments from the time and area chosen, this work goes on to analyze the identity of the gift-recipients, the nature of the donated items, and the social background of the donors. Two markedly different endowment patterns are apparent in the state: one characteristic of the well-populated, fertile northern coastal region of Vengi and the other widespread in the sparsely settled, dry interior region. A very concentrated pattern of endowment existed in Vengi, with the bast majority of gifts going to only nine large temples. Drawing many patrons from the non-landed communities such as merchants and herders, these sites received large quantities of livestock in addition to gifts of land. They thus possessed economic networks encompassing agriculturalists, traders and pastoralists. In contrast, the inland region had a diffuse pattern of endowment, with many small temples receiving only land grants, mainly from those social groups possessing superior claims to landed income. Endowments to these small temples thus helped consolidate local networks of political allegiance in interior Andhra, a region experiencing a great expansion in settlement and in political influence during this period. The functions of religious gift-giving are hence shown to vary according to a region's ecology and its social composition. |
