151

China

p In the third century A.D. the disintegration of the slave-holding order brought about the collapse of the Han Empire and the political decline of the central regions of that empire, inhabited by the Hans. On the territory of the Han Empire (the basin of the Yellow River) the Wei state was eventually set up, while in the basin of the Yangtze part of which had been incorporated into the Han Empire, there emerged the Wu and Shu kingdoms. Thus there were two important centres in mediaeval China. In the South, where a great deal of territory remained uncultivated, development was slow. In the North, where it had been imperative to maintain large irrigation networks and provide fortifications against nomad invasions, a centralised state emerged and developed more rapidly.

p In the North, in the Tsin state, a transition to new feudal forms of exploitation was underway as early as the third century A.D. Some of the commune peasants and slaves became dependent peasants, the armed retainers of the powerful slave-owners also being allocated land by their masters (on more favourable terms than the former slaves). Meanwhile, within the framework of the traditional allotment system (which had been in existence since 280 A.D.),  [151•*  another section of the peasantry became feudally dependent tenants of state plots (such tenure involved the payment of taxes, working state land, and labour and military service), and administrative officials in the framework of the new feudal bureaucracy were assured larger plots 152 of land while in office. The estates abandoned during the wars of the latter second and early third centuries provided a land pool from which plots were allocated to the landless peasants. However, before these new feudal relations had been consolidated in the Yellow River valley, it was invaded by nomadic tribes (the Huns, Toba, etc.) and the Tsin state was destroyed. The Han states remained intact only in the Yangtze basin where feudal relations had taken shape more slowly.

p The mass devastation of the North wrought by the nomads which was followed by their mingling with the Hans and eventual assimilation, paved the way for the subsequent emergence of feudal relations despite continued state ownership of the land. The need to ensure the proper upkeep of large canal systems and collective defence from the nomads, demanded the creation of a large centralised state. Its main supports were the small and moderately prosperous landowning warriors whose estates were dependent on conditions of service and who played an important part in the ousting of the powerful secular and Buddhist landowners. In the Han-Toba state of the Northern Wei (fifth and first half of the sixth century) a new, more streamlined allotment system was introduced: compulsory labour on state land was replaced by a tax which the peasants had to pay for their holdings—part of which went to the state, and part being divided among the administrative officials of the given region. Private property continued to exist side by side with state lands and these private estates were worked by dependent peasants. The main form of exploitation on the private estates was a crippling rent; the peasants were required to give up approximately half their harvest and payment became obligatory and unavoidable.

p The introduction of new, more progressive forms of labour exploitation contributed to the consolidation of the North. The Southern state where the emergence of feudal state property was taking place more slowly and where the landowning aristocracy was still extremely powerful was subjugated by the Northern state in the year 589.

p During the reign of the Sui dynasty over a reunited China the allotment system spread to the South as well. Methods of exploitation throughout the whole of China were made uniform likewise, the official religion—Confucianism—with its teaching of submission to the state, held unchallenged sway.

p Under the Sui dynasty the unification of the Han lands gave way to a period of wars of conquest; large-scale construction projects were begun and the Great Canal was built—a giant waterway linking the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Labour services on the state lands were so drastically increased that mass uprisings broke out. The emperors of the Tang dynasty (618-907), which 153 succeeded the Sui dynasty, continued to perfect the feudalbureaucratic system of exploitation. Corvee was reduced, the collection of rents and taxes was reorganised, the lands were allocated to merchants, craftsmen and state slaves. All these factors helped to put an end to the wave of peasant uprisings and facilitated certain economic and cultural advances and an expansion of trade and crafts. To a large extent these advances were achieved at the cost of all-out exploitation of the non-Han population. In order to carry out these new policies an intricately ramified administrative apparatus was set up which was accountable to a vigilant host of inspectors supported by an army consisting of infantry recruited among the Han peasantry and cavalry of conquered nations.

p The Tang dynasty waged wars in southern Mongolia and southern Manchuria and in the valleys of the Tarim and Upper Yangtze rivers. These wars undermined China’s economic system, which was already undergoing radical alteration with the growth of hereditary landownership in the eighth century, when more and more tax-paying peasants were taken into the service of individual lords as serfs. Wars bled the country white and weakened the central apparatus, and the political position of the landowning bureaucracy was undermined once and for all after a number of defeats by the nomad invaders. The subject peoples of the south (such as the Vietnamese) regained their independence; local chieftains who had since become powerful landowners declared themselves independent. In these conditions private landownership spread rapidly and state revenues decreased accordingly. The impossibility of re-establishing the allotment system eventually led to partial recognition of the feudal chieftains’ ownership of their estates and their power over their serfs (they were already collecting taxes from the peasants living on their estates), and also of the right to own landed estates of any size. In China, just as in other feudal states, the development of the new economic system led to an increase in the number of small and medium-sized estates, the owners of which went in for direct exploitation of peasant labour on the spot. However, the need to ensure the upkeep of irrigation and adequate defence measures against nomad invaders (which was particularly vital in China) meant that the feudal bureaucracy did not disappear here, as in other states of the Far East, during the early feudal era.

p Under the Tang dynasty in the ninth century, the emergent class of landowners exploited the peasants side by side with the feudal bureaucracy which led to a number of uprisings among the peasants and conquered peoples. In the year 881, the Huang Chao insurgents captured the capital Ch’ang-an. Although the uprising was suppressed, the system of dual exploitation was 154 thereafter abolished and power was gradually concentrated in the hands of the powerful lords, who had no need to rely on a strong state apparatus.

p The seventh, eighth and ninth centuries saw a great flowering of Chinese culture. Gunpowder was invented, techniques for producing paper and china were perfected and wood-block printing began. The number of schools increased, academies were founded and many towns became important cultural centres. Chinese scholars made a number of major discoveries in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, physics, and geography and history also developed apace. The reign of the Tang dynasty also stands out as an era of great poetry—it was the time of Li Po, Tu Fu and Po Chii-i. Tang Ch’uan-ch’i or Tales of Marvels were also to make literary history, representing the first serious attempts to write fiction. A materialistic approach to the real world was to be found in the works of a large number of these writers. New schools of painting and sculpture also appeared and many talented artists achieved fame.

p The first half of the tenth century was taken up by wars waged between powerful landowners and warlords of Chinese, Turkic, Tai and other extraction. On the ruins of the former empire there arose a number of states, the most powerful of which was that set up by the Khitan tribe. The Khitan invasion of the Yellow River valley brought about a certain amount of cooperation between the powerful Chinese landowners with the support of the towns and the priesthood. Yet the main driving force behind this new movement towards centralisation were the small and moderately-prosperous landed warriors; they proclaimed Chao K’uang Yin emperor, and he founded the Sung dynasty (960-1279).

p A new stage in the movement towards centralisation began on a basis of a more developed economy. The Sung dynasty ruled over a smaller territory than the Tang, yet on the other hand, all its lands along the Yellow River, Yangtze and Hsi Chiang valleys were inhabited by an ethnically (Chinese) and socially homogeneous population. The advance of the Sung state was hindered by invasions from the Khitan, Tangut, Tai, and other peoples.

p The struggle between the powerful landowners and the central power supported by the small and medium landowners became intensified. In the course of this struggle the old forms of social organisation died away and were replaced by new ones. The most important new feature of this period was the appearance of private landed estates, worked by tenant farmers, who were obliged to pay crippling rents, or serfs. Peasants meanwhile were still obliged to pay taxes to the state. Towns grew up at junctions of important trade routes and a complex fiscal and credit system 155 took shape. The urban craftsmen together with the traders in the relevant branch of industry united in guilds, which not only settled questions relating to the production of particular goods but also those of an administrative nature (the election of leaders, the granting of help to members in need, the settlement of strife between members, liaison with the town authorities, etc.). In the towns power was in the hands of the imperial officials; there was no independent town administration and its emergence was obstructed by the state monopolies of the production and sale of the most important commodities.

The lack of free lands combined with the attempts to intensify exploitation of rural labour in the tenth and eleventh centuries brought about an increase in taxes, which in its turn caused peasant uprisings, predominantly among the non-Han peasants, who were subjected to the fiercest exploitation. An attempt was made to re-introduce state property (partly at the cost of the landowners and traders) but it proved totally unsuccessful. The situation was extremely critical, and when a great nomad invasion followed soon afterwards, the empire began to fall apart. In 1127, a HanJurchen state by the name of Chin was set up in the north, while the southern Han provinces remained in the hands of the Sung dynasty. Both states were economically and politically weak: in the north wars undermined the economy and in the south, after the defeat at the hands of the Jurchen, the powerful lords became more independent than ever, which served to weaken the economic power of the Southern Sung Empire and bring about a temporary decline in trade and urban expansion, not to mention the state’s military power.

Korea

p Feudal relations in Korea arose in early class states—the Koguryo, Paekche and Silla kingdoms. Power in these states was in the hands of the landed nobility, descended from the clan leaders, while peasants living in communes were the main producers. The latter were either directly dependent on the state or on state officials, members of the emergent class of landowning warriors. Slaves did not play any prominent role in Korean society of the third, fourth and fifth centuries and their number gradually decreased. The main religion of the early feudal Korean society was Confucianism, later to be replaced by Buddhism. In the third and fourth centuries towns were growing up in Korea, and trade and communications were developing.

p The fact that the Korean states formed a single ethnic, cultural and geographical unit called forth a natural desire for political unification, which was strengthened by the military threat of the 156 Chinese Empire (there were Chinese invasions in 598, 611, 613, 614, 645 and in 660). After the wars for unification, the whole of Korea was united under the leadership of the southern state of Silla (late seventh and early eighth centuries).

p The united Silla state possessed all the features of a Far Eastern early feudal society: the state structure was based on the state ownership of all the land, and the distribution of this land to the peasants in the form of individual holdings or allotments led to the exploitation of the latter both by the state, in the form of rent and taxes, and also by members of the bureaucracy, who in return for their services were accorded the right to collect rent and taxes from a number of villages. This period was also marked by the gradual disappearance of the commune. Large allotments were worked by peasants bound to overlords. The existence of an allotment system and a pool of free land facilitated the rapid creation of a centralised state apparatus, in as far as the officials of that apparatus were given plots of land instead of salaries, and usually together with the land, the peasants that worked it. The unification of the country provided new stimulus for the development of internal trade and crafts. Foreign trade in Korea was at a low level of development, since it suffered from Chinese competition.

p The unwieldy mechanism of allotment systems usually began to obstruct economic development if reforms were not introduced. In the ninth century an upheaval began in the allotment system when a section of the landowning military caste gained possession of large domains. The Buddhist monasteries by this time also owned large landed estates. Intensified exploitation of the peasants by the new feudal lords began, the number of tax-payers decreased, and as a result the state apparatus run by the landowner-administrators was greatly weakened. The state alone was unable to keep down the peasant uprisings (889, 896, etc.), and the struggle against such insurrections was waged on the spot by the powerful landowners and their retainers. Centralised power soon disappeared and two separate states emerged.

p The long campaign to suppress the peasant revolts and a wave of invasions from China and what is today Manchuria made it imperative to re-establish a strong centralised state. When Wang Kon began to work towards re-unifying the country in 918, many of the feudal lords voluntarily came to his support. In the new united state, Koryo, the allotment system was reorganised: all the peasants were to pay the state tax-rent (those working state land paid all taxes to the state direct, while the peasants working on estates belonging to members of the bureaucracy paid part to the state and the rest to their employers). It proved possible to consolidate the allotment system largely as a result of the cultivation 157 of the free lands in the north-west, where many peasants settled and a system of fortifications was set up along the border.

p Those engaged in state service were remunerated by land grants, while all feudal lords, even those who were in practice the owners of their land, paid the state a set tax deducted from the revenues from their estates. Since there was a great deal of waste land in Korea, this together with arable land was included in the allotments. For this reason serfs were particularly valuable (unlike those in Vietnam and Japan where there was a shortage of land): more and more of them were bound to these tracts of hitherto uncultivated land by non-economic means, and hostilities between the landowners were mainly over these serfs, who were resettled or taken captive, since without them it was impossible for the landowners to expand their land under cultivation.

p By the end of the tenth century, the system of feudal relations had been brought into line with the now uniform methods of exploitation, a streamlined state apparatus had been set up and clear demarcations had been drawn between the rights and duties of civilian administrators and military commanders. A regular army of mobilised peasants had been set up to replace the former retainers. This enabled the feudal lords of Koryo to ward off a Khitan invasion (at the beginning of the eleventh century) and quell peasant uprisings. As was the case with Vietnam, the lessening of the pressure exerted by Chinese feudal lords, now that the power of the Chinese Empire was on the wane, was yet another factor which contributed to the flowering of the centralised feudal state in Korea during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.

During this period it was possible to distinguish between two clearly-defined groups of peasants, those that were free and those that were bound to the service of either individual landowners or the state. While the main forms of exploitation to which the first category was subjected were tax-rents, labour and military service, the second were bond-tenants, generally employed in the service of powerful landowners or the monarch himself. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was a considerable amount of urban expansion and industrial development, but these processes advanced relatively slowly, obstructed as they were by state control, export bans and the absence of organised guilds, quite apart from the fact that the products for export made in Korea were very like those in which China traded, and the competition was very keen. The only town of any size was the capital. Meanwhile cultural links with China at this period and Chinese science, art and literature exerted an important influence on Korean culture.

158

Japan

p The emergence of a class society in Japan coincided with the transition to feudal patterns in the majority of Asiatic states. The nascent Japanese class society (like its Indonesian and other counterparts) followed, from the very outset, the path of feudal development: the latent elements of a slave-owning society never took firm root. The early class society of the Yamato “state” in the fifth and sixth centuries was inhabited predominantly by free peasants living in communes and the lower categories of hereditary dependent peasants and slaves. During that period a hereditary aristocracy gradually emerged from the ranks of the clan leadership and by the end of the sixth century the main principles of regal power (the Sumeragi dynasty) had crystallised.

p Meanwhile towns were growing up and industry was expanding; a hierarchy of administrative officials and a special caste of priests of Shinto, the traditional Japanese religion, were taking shape. The formation of a class society was accompanied by intense struggle. In 592 power fell into the hands of the Soga clan, but for the peasants who had formed the main body of insurgents against the Sumeragi nothing changed. During the rule of the Soga the exploiting ruling class which required a religion better adapted to a class society than Shinto proceeded to encourage the propagation of Buddhism in Japan (from the sixth century onwards). The internal structure of the early class society in Japan did not change under the rule of the Soga. Meanwhile the intensification of internal social contradictions and clashes with China and the Korean state of Silla necessitated a reorganisation of the administrative apparatus.

p The basic principles of a new feudal society were drawn up in the laws of Shotoku Taishi, which represented a local adaptation of a Chinese code of laws. Parallel with this consolidation of centralised state power, the Buddhist monasteries were acquiring large landed estates which were being organised on feudal patterns. These new developments were resisted by the hereditary aristocracy led by the Soga, who were overthrown to be replaced by the Sumeragi as rulers of a new state run on strictly feudal lines (the Reforms of Taikwa, 645).

p Making the most of the now consolidated centralised state machine the feudal lords started a campaign against the free peasants working in communes and the vestiges of the clan aristocracy. The results of this campaign found expression in the Code of Taiho (701): the sovereign was the supreme owner of all the land; free peasants were allowed temporary rights to plots of arable land, granted them by the monarch on condition that they paid taxes and fulfilled their obligations. Peasants were forbidden 159 to abandon their plots. In this way the free and bond peasants became state serfs and constituted the lowest social class apart from the state slaves. The state officials and titled nobility received much larger tracts of land, part of which were hereditary in as far as state office was often hereditary. They were allowed to keep part of the tax-rents paid by the state peasants by way of remuneration for their services. The forms of social and economic organisation which emerged in Japan in the eighth century were largely modelled on those of her more advanced neighbours, especially China (the allotment system, etc.).

p The combination of the institution of state serfs and the distribution of allotment holdings to feudal lords (without peasants) was fraught with contradiction, since the owners of the allotments required peasants to work their land and the only way to obtain their services (after the eighth century slave labour was no longer used) was by ruining the state peasants. This then brought about a decrease in the number of tax-payers. However, these contradictions had not yet come to the surface in the eighth century. The Taikwa reforms ushered in a new period in Japanese history, the so-called Nara period (710-784) named after the capital, Nara.

p The Nara period was a time of comparative economic and political stability. The production relations which had shortly before been legally defined had not yet come to clash with the productive forces. The amount of land under cultivation increased, the irrigation network was expanded and rice production rose. Mining and urban development also flourished. The laws were codified, a chronicle of historical events was drawn up, in which real events were to be found side by side with myths (for example the myth of the divine descent of the emperors from the sunGoddess Amaterasu Omikami). Important works of literature were also produced, such as the Manyoshu anthology in the second half of the eighth century.

p Nara Japan was ruled over by the Sumeragi dynasty, which was obliged to contend not only with the vestiges of the old hereditary aristocracy but also with the leading members of the feudal bureaucracy. By the end of the eighth century the old aristocracy had been defeated and the feudal bureaucrats had come to power. This change in the social foundation of feudal society led to a change in its structure and the character of the struggle waged between the feudal lords. This struggle was now led by a group of noble courtiers holding administrative office against powerful landowners in charge of administration in the provinces. These two groups were not of the same line of descent as the clan aristocracy and they continued their struggle against imperial power, aiming to turn the estates which went with their office into 160 hereditary property, and in so doing they succeeded in seriously undermining imperial power. Real power was now no longer in the hands o f the Sumeragi but in the hands of a family of landowners, the Fujiwara. This change marked the beginning of the socalled Heian period (ninth, tenth and early eleventh centuries).

p During this period the main form of land tenure was the large private estate or shoen, which was not subject to taxation. These estates first appeared as a result of the working of former uncultivated lands, which once cultivated were exempted from taxes. This led to a sharp decrease in state revenue since more and more peasants were being enlisted to work the estates. The emergence of these new landowners also undermined the political foundation of the centralised state. Other factors which favoured this process of decentralisation were the absence of any major foreign enemies at that time, and hence of the need to build up a large army, and the lack of wide-scale irrigation.

p In the course of the struggle against the powerful landowners the administration intensified the tax-burden, which led to an exodus of state peasants to the shoen estates and mass uprisings in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries. The impossibility of organising the labour of the state peasants effectively from the centre obliged the state to distribute much of its lands as small hereditary estates to knights or Samurai, in the service of the state or the powerful lords. This section of the landowning classes grew rapidly and gradually ousted the local administrative officials in the provinces. The eleventh and twelfth centuries, particularly in the north and east of the country, saw the rise of the Samurai, who soon came to contend with the owners of the shoen for influence on the central power.

p The owners of the shoen in the south and the central part of the country were unable to retain their control over the emperors: the balance of power between the large landowners and the Samurai enabled the emperors, with the support of the monasteries, to conduct independent policies (1069-1167). Yet this consolidation of the central power was on a rather limited scale. During this period small landed estates were to appear on the scene (earlier than in other countries of Asia): they evolved mainly as a result of the disintegration of the communes, a process which took place particularly rapidly in Japan, since no important communal amenities such as advanced irrigation systems existed. This disintegration was accelerated by the weakness of the central power, the need for which was less acute on the Japanese islands than in other states with well-developed irrigation systems, constantly exposed to attacks from foreign invaders. The decline of the economic system based on state ownership of the land, agricultural production run by feudal lords and 161 162 administrators, and commune farming took place earlier in Japan than in Korea, China, Vietnam and other countries of the Far East.

p The replacement of one type of feudal relations by another could not possibly take place without bloodshed, since each type represented the interests of a specific group of landowners, none of whom was willing to relinquish former rights and privileges. In the mid-twelfth century there were three groups of landowners in Japan: the Samurai and their liege-lords in the north (the Minamoto family), the owners of the large estates in the south, where the Samurai were much weaker (the Taira family) and the landowning officers of state from the capital who formed the emperor’s retinue (the Fujiwara family). The North with its more advanced social development and predominance of small landed estates was to emerge victorious. The Taira were defeated in 1185 and the emperor’s following in 1192: this second defeat incidentally was contributed to by the peasant uprisings in the enormous estates of the Heian aristocracy. Minamoto Yoritomo declared himself the new ruler of Japan—the shogun—and the title was proclaimed hereditary.

p The wide-scale redistribution of land carried out after the victory of the Samurai replaced the old forms of landownership with new ones. Samurai estates sprang up throughout the country. The considerably reduced number and scale of the landed possessions in the hands of the emperor, the landowning officers of state from the capital and the Buddhist monasteries now constituted a minority share. The peasants from now on paid taxes to the state and rent to the Samurai and other landowners.

In twelfth-century Japan, towns, trade and industry reached a high level of development. Guilds were to be found throughout the country; the predomination of small and medium-sized Samurai estates led to the emergence of a number of economic centres each with a number of large towns. This set Japan apart from the typical feudal states of Asia which had an enormous capital, and otherwise only small provincial centres. As a result of the growth of internal and, to a lesser extent, foreign trade, large groups of traders and carriers grew up. Twelfth-century Japan was a feudal state with high standards of economic and cultural development. Many aspects of its social and cultural life were strongly influenced by China.

India

p After the collapse of the slave-holding society of the Gupta Empire and the slave-holding states in the south of India feudal elements, which had started to emerge in the fifth century, gradually came to dominate in Indian society. Former peasant commune 163 farmers set up as small landowners on their own, adopting feudal methods of exploitation just as the large clans and the temples. The impoverished peasants from the former communes, slaves working the land, and the population of conquered lands came to constitute the dependent agricultural labour force.

p The process of feudalisation in northern and southern India took place simultaneously but followed different patterns. Yet Indian feudalism as a whole exhibited various distinctive characteristics, in particular the slow consolidation of state ownership of land and the conditional landownership of the nobles in their rulers’ service. Privately owned estates predominated, while the feudal hierarchy was bound up with the hierarchy of hereditary landowners, and the feudally exploited commune preserved a considerable degree of internal independence (both economic and administrative). The caste system played an important part in the evolution of the various estates of feudal society and the main forms of exploitation were the leasing of land and the collection of quit-rent.

p Early feudalism in India went hand in hand with political decentralisation. However, the decline of urban and cultural development did not make itself felt particularly at this period. This was largely due to effective urban administration and the fact that the source of prosperity of many towns was external trade, which at that period was well-advanced. The presence of artisans in the village communes meant that the exchange of goods between town and country played a less important part in India than in other Asian countries (China, Japan, etc.).

p The first empire of the early feudal period was the north Indian Vardhan state. Its rulers depended for their power on the support of a hierarchy of feudal princes; state ownership of land was not widespread and the stratum of landed administrative officials had not yet come to dominate the society of that period. The army was made up partly of armed retainers of the feudal lords and partly of mercenaries. The harsh laws introduced at that time were designed to promote new forms of exploitation and the bondage of more and more of the peasantry.

p In the middle of the seventh century in place of the Vardhan Empire there emerged a number of princedoms, ruled over by an aristocracy of warlords of an immigrant people, the Rajputs. During this period the landed military caste bound more and more peasants from the former communes to their service and each individual landowner consolidated his power with the support of his armed retainers. Meanwhile the central power remained weak.

p Comparable processes, which however did not involve the assimilation of new ethnic groups, took place in southern India 164 (Deccan). Here large states were to emerge (such as those of the Pallavas and the Chaulukyas) in which an important role was to be played by the large coastal towns. In the middle of the first millennium A. D. the bulk of the peasants from the former communes were either bound to the powerful landowners and made to pay crippling rents or deprived of almost all the rights they had formally enjoyed in the communes and exploited by the commune elders who gradually came to resemble feudal landowners.

p The eleventh and twelfth centuries saw a tendency towards unification of the northern and central Deccan ruled over by the Chaulukya dynasty and the princedoms of southern India ruled over by the Chola dynasty. At the same time state ownership of land became widespread throughout a large part of the south, many representatives of the feudal class becoming non-hereditary landowners. A marked consolidation of the state apparatus took place.

p In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was growing uniformity in the economic and cultural patterns and foreign policies of the various Indian states, largely as a result of trade. In the towns an important role was played by the guild-like organisations of traders and craftsmen, which ultimately, however, remained under the control of the feudal lords.

p Universal bondage of the commune peasants and the consolidation of the feudal states led to resistance on the part of the exploited. This was to find expression in the foundation of a number of religious sects, which propagated the idea of religious and, to varying degrees, economic equality (Bhakti, Lingayats) and attacked caste privileges. By this time the traditional caste system defined with relation to men’s professions and economic roles had led to the setting up of a complex and conservative state structure. In order to counter this new opposition the traditional Brahmin religion was reformed under the pressure of changing social patterns and Hinduism evolved in its place. Its distinctive characteristics were the complete absence of a church hierarchy and a church apparatus: each member of the highest caste—each Brahmin—by right of birth became a spiritual mentor of the faithful and the failure to obey the Brahmins, according to Hindu beliefs, evoked the wrath of the gods. Together with the military caste of the Kshatriya the Brahmins exploited the members of the lower castes, the Vaisya and the Sudra, to which all the peasants, artisans, traders belonged as well as groups outside the caste system who found themselves at the very bottom of the social ladder.

The early feudal era in India was marked by outstanding cultural achievements: impressive architectural monuments like the 165 166 Tanjore temple and the rock temple at Ellora were built. In the sphere of religious sculpture, which played such an important didactic role, the realistic art of the first-fifth centuries was replaced by stylised portrayals of various divinities striking for their size and unusual poses. The literature of the period was very rich in panegyric poetry dedicated to various princes and was almost completely lacking in historical writing. Philosophical literature flourished but here as in literature as a whole imitations of early classical models were the order of the day.

South-East Asia

p Unlike the peoples of India and China who made the transition to feudalism from a relatively developed slave-holding society, the peoples of South-East Asia, just like the Arabs, did not evolve developed slave-holding civilisations. The social structure of the states which emerged in this part of the world after the third century B.C. was in many ways ill-defined, yet there is no doubt that there existed some kind of slavery, a monarchy and clan aristocracy, while well-knit communes were preserved. Both in the early and later Middle Ages, the peoples of South-East Asia constituted a unified group of states with economic, political and cultural features all their own, each of which was to develop in a manner- determined by local conditions. In the second and third centuries A.D. the states of South-East Asia were centred in the deltas of the main rivers and around the most important points on the trade route from India to the Far East and the Spice Islands. Each of these states was centred round a large town lying on a trade route and in the delta of a large river, where agriculture flourished. The emergent class societies of the forerunners of the Mon, Burmese, Khmers, Vietnamese and Indonesians adopted with increasing rapidity the forms of class organisation and religion to be found in India at that period (one of the most important of these religions being Buddhism), particularly those of southern India, with which these states traded. Some forms of Chinese class organisations were also adopted, but on a smaller scale.

p As agricultural techniques developed and trade with India expanded, many of the small states in this part of the world started to amalgamate to form early feudal empires and states. The economy of these states was determined to an important degree by the fact that they were situated along major trade routes. Among the largest were the Southern Khmer Empire of Funan (second-sixth centuries), the Srivijaya Empire in western Indonesia (seventh-fourteenth centuries) and the state of Champa 167 in Central Vietnam (second-fifteenth centuries). As agriculture advanced and sea-trade gradually became the domain of the Arabs, powerful landowners came to play an increasingly important role in the states of South-East Asia. In the early Middle Ages state ownership of the land predominated in the states of Indochina and elements of it were to be found in Indonesia. The military and administrative nobility which grew up as a result in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, embarked on a struggle for power with the old hereditary aristocracy (in Vietnam with the Chinese aristocracy). In the ninth century in Cambodia, in the tenth century in Vietnam, the eleventh in Indonesia and Burma and the thirteenth in Siam advanced feudal states were set up, in which the economy was based on a system of land rent and compulsory labour services by the commune peasants. Trading empires gradually weakened and disintegrated while the peoples and states to be found today started to take shape. Within each of these states there was a struggle for power between the small and medium landowners (who supported state ownership of land) and the powerful feudal lords who favoured the division of their countries into a number of large provinces under their control. At the same time both these groups opposed the interests of the commune peasants who were gradually being bound to the land. In the northern part of South-East Asia state ownership of land was always more firmly established than in the south, but despite this in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries more and more of the peasants came to be bound to the land throughout the area, and a complex administrative machine was also taking shape, while religions were reformed and adapted to the demands of the new era (new versions of Buddhism and Islam were propagated, replacing Hinduism and various other faiths).

p The political history of these centuries consists of a series of wars for the unification of various princedoms around the main centres of state power, and uprisings of the commune peasants seeking to regain their former freedoms.

The period between the seventh and twelfth centuries was a time of cultural advance when such architectural masterpieces as the stupa of Borobudur in Indonesia, the temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Pagan in Burma were built.