ABSTRACT
The genesis of the debate surrounding the movement from the early historical to the early medieval period goes back to the middle of the twentieth century, when D. D. Kosambi and R. S. Sharma conceptualized the post-Gupta period as the early medieval times so as to distinguish it from the early historical, and equated the former with Indian feudalism. In a situation where the broadly two phases of early Indian history were located in opposition to each other, dramatic developments alone could be invoked to explain the transition towards the early medieval. The contestations, which gradually changed the discursive ground, began to surface from the early 1980s and were more clearly visible by the middle of the 1990s in the alternative writings on early medieval India.
