ABSTRACT
The administration centred on the adhikaraṇa and activities of rural influential people around it continued under the sovereign kinships ruling the sub-regions of Puṇḍravardhana, Vaṅga and Rāḍha in the sixth and seventh centuries. However, the power relation surrounding rural society has changed with the ascendancy of landed magnates, in collaboration with clerical groups, and the rise of subordinate rulers under the stronger state presence. Their power to mobilise local population enabled them to overcome the limit of agrarian expansion imposed by the limitation of labour power to family labour of peasant householders. Samataṭa, on the other hand, witnessed the progress in the formation of local political powers and the agrarian development, which manifested in the hierarchy of rulers with establishment of sovereign kingship and the reclamation of forest tracts resulting in the three phases which existed synchronically. This period also saw the emergence of religious institutions as large-scale landholders.
