ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Medieval Period practices of ritualised land donations to temples in the context of archaeological evidence for land use around the site of Maski (Raichur District, Karnataka). In doing so, it calls attention to how ritual practices, when set within the unique geography of the Raichur Doab, articulated with the production of a new value-laden geography of social difference between the 10th and 16th centuries. Combined analyses of archaeological settlement sites, agricultural field stations, soil differences, and inscriptional sources suggest that differential access to more valued soils and associations of cultigens and infrastructure (e.g., irrigation wells and reservoirs) contributed to institutionalising forms of social inequalities during the period. More specifically, an examination of soil variability and inscriptional sources suggest that moisture-retaining regur—the so-called “black cotton soil” of the region—was the preferred soil type for both landed temple gifts and agricultural production. Although historical assessments of donative inscriptions have long allowed scholars to suggest that Medieval Period temples of southern India served economic functions as well as religious and ritual ones, the analyses presented in this chapter point to the combined role of archaeological and inscriptional sources to interrogate how ritual practices contributed to shaping the social, political, and environmental conditions of the medieval Deccan.
