THE REGIONAL KINGDOMS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIAchakravartins (conquerors of the whole world), but their actual power was
limited: near a realm’s border, the influence of the neighbouring ‘conqueror
of the whole world’ made itself felt. In both instances we are faced with a
kind of confined universalism.
Furthermore, the hierarchy of gods also reflects the levels of
government. Even today all villages have their village gods (gramadevata),
whose power does not extend beyond the village. At the next level we
often find sub-regional gods who were sometimes the tutelary deities of
local princes. They can be traced back to autochthonous gods, whose
influence was felt in a larger area even prior to their adoption as patrons of
local princes. The cults of such sub-regional gods have been more or less
integrated into the general sphere of Hinduism. However, often their
priests are still of local, even tribal, origin and their icons are crude (stones,
pillars, etc.). Brahmins were sometimes consulted only for special rites, and
not for the daily worship of this type of god. At the next level were
regional gods whose rise to that position was often due to their being the
‘family gods’ (kuladevata) and later the ‘gods of the realm’ (rashtradevata)
of a royal dynasty. Sometimes such a god was even considered to be the
territory’s actual overlord (samraja).
‘Royal’ gods owed their career to the dynasty with which they were
associated and their cult was usually completely Sanskritised.
Nevertheless, the legends about their origin and the shape of their icons
often showed clear traces of their autochthonous descent. These traces
were at the same time the mainspring for the development of a distinctive
regional culture. The special traits of such gods were highlighted and
embellished by many legends which formed the core at regional literature
and enriched the regional tradition. There was a great variety of ways
and means by which regional, sub-regional and local gods could be
associated with each other. Like great kings, the regional gods held court
surrounded by sub-regional gods, who were the family gods of the king’s
samantas. The sub-regional gods again rallied the village gods around
them, just as headmen were occasionally invited to attend the court of a
prince. Many scholars have written about the deification of kings, but for
medieval India the converse evolution of a ‘royalisation of gods’ is as
important. The legitimacy of a ruler was enhanced in this way. The more
‘royal’ the cult of the territorial god, the more legitimate the claim of the
king—represented as the deity’s temporal embodiment—to rule that
territory on behalf of the god. The Bhakti cults contributed to this
devotion to gods and kings in medieval India.
The institution of pilgrimage has remained a central and most vital
element of Hinduism. It links holy places of the local, regional and all-
Indian level. Such holy places were known even in Vedic times. The Early
Vedic term for such a holy place was tirtha, which originally meant ‘ford’.
With the spread of Vedic culture, the number of such holy places increased.