Kalachuri Administration and Revenue

Prerequisites

• Origin of the Kalachuris and the Ratanpur Branch: the rulers whose inscriptions name these officials
• The Raipur Branch: the 18 + 18 garh division
• Early Medieval India: feudatories (samantas) and land grants across India in the same period

The Hook: The Village Gaontia Your Grandparents Remember

Why it matters: Prelims loves the officer-to-unit pairs (garh–Diwan, barhon–Dau, village–Gaontia) and the duties of officials named in inscriptions. Mains GS-I can ask how the Kalachuri administrative system shaped later Maratha and British arrangements.

Two Layers of Evidence

Keep two periods apart, because the sources differ:

The King and His Officials (Early Kalachuris)

The king

• The king was the head of the state, the army and the courts. Great rulers took grand titles: Prithvideva I called himself Sakala-Kosaladhipati, “lord of the entire Kosala country”.
• Succession was hereditary. The crown prince was called the Yuvaraja (युवराज).
• The king was advised by a council of ministers (mantri-mandala), headed by a chief minister.

High officials named in Kalachuri records

Territorial units

• The kingdom was made up of mandalas (मंडल), provinces. The Tripuri inscriptions say Kokalla I made his younger sons lords of mandalas, and the Ratanpur records name mandalas such as Talahari.
• Below the mandala were smaller divisions and then the grama (ग्राम), the village. Prithvideva I is called lord of 21,000 villages.
• Outlying areas were held by feudatories (samantas, सामंत) who acknowledged the king, paid tribute and supplied troops. Several Ratanpur inscriptions were put up by such feudatories and by ministers.

The Garh System (Later Haihayas)

By the later centuries of Kalachuri rule the kingdom was organised around garhs: fortified headquarters, each with a group of villages around it.

graph TD
    A["Raja: Ratanpur (north) / Raipur (south)"] --> B["Garh: fort and district, under a Diwan"]
    B --> C["Barhon: about 12 villages, under a Dau"]
    C --> D["Gaon (village): under a Gaontia"]

• By tradition 18 garhs lay north of the Shivnath under Ratanpur and 18 south of it under Raipur: 36 garhs, the popular origin of the name Chhattisgarh.
• Each garh was both a military post and a revenue unit. Its Diwan collected revenue, kept order and raised troops when the king called.
• The word barhon is linked with barah (twelve), a reminder of the twelve-village unit.
• In practice there were more than 36 fortified centres at different times, and some garhs were held by zamindar or tribal chiefs. The “36” is best treated as a traditional, rounded figure.

Revenue

Sources of income

1. Land revenue (भू-राजस्व): the main source. A share of the produce, or its value, was taken from cultivators. The Mahapramatri surveyed land and fixed the assessment, and the Mahakshapatalika kept the records.
2. Trade and market dues: tolls and dues on goods at markets and on routes.
3. Tribute from feudatories: samantas and garh-holders paid fixed tribute.
4. Royal monopolies and forest produce: a large forested kingdom drew income from forests and their products.

Land grants

• Kings and feudatories made grants of villages to Brahmanas, temples and monasteries, recorded on copper plates. The Amoda plates of Prithvideva I (1079 CE) record such a grant.
• Jajalladeva I’s Ratanpur inscription (1114 CE) records villages given to a deity at Jajallapura and trees given to a monastery.
• Such grants transferred the state’s revenue rights over those villages to the grantee. This is the same process seen across early medieval India.

Currency

• Gold coins of Jajalladeva I and his successors have been found. Coins issued in the king’s own name point to a prosperous kingdom with a working money economy, and to a ruler confident enough to act as a sovereign.

Continuity into later rule

• The garh-barhon-village structure and the gaontia as the village revenue collector did not end with the Kalachuris. The Marathas built their administration on it, and the gaontia remained a key figure in village revenue arrangements into British times.
• In the 16th century Kalyan Sai’s revenue records, as preserved at Ratanpur, were later consulted by the British settlement officer J. W. Chisholm: an example of how Kalachuri-era records shaped British understanding of the region.

Analysis: Strengths and Limits of Kalachuri Administration (Mains)

Strengths

1. Layered and local: Raja → garh → barhon → village matched the region’s scattered, forested settlement pattern.
2. Military and fiscal in one unit: each garh both defended territory and gathered revenue.
3. Record-keeping and survey: offices like the Mahapramatri and Mahakshapatalika show a revenue system based on measurement and records.
4. Durability: the system lasted long enough to be inherited by the Marathas and recorded by the British.

Limits

1. Feudal dependence: power rested on samantas, Diwans and garh-holders, who could become semi-independent.
2. Two branches, two courts: the Ratanpur–Raipur split divided resources and weakened defence by the 18th century.
3. Thin sources for the later period: much of the garh-system picture comes from tradition and later records rather than contemporary inscriptions.

Memory Tricks

Don’t Confuse

Common Mistakes

Practice

These are original practice questions written in CGPSC style. They are not previous-year questions.

Level 1: Foundation

1. In the Kalachuri garh system, a barhon of about ________ villages was headed by a ________.
2. The Kalachuri official in charge of records was the ________.
3. The head of a garh was called the ________.

Level 2: Prelims MCQs

Q1. Consider the following statements about the Kalachuri garh system:

1. A garh was headed by a Diwan.
2. A barhon was a group of about twelve villages under a Dau.
3. The Gaontia was the head of a garh.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 2 only (d) 1, 2 and 3

Q2. Match List-I (Official) with List-II (Function):

(a) A-3, B-4, C-2, D-1 (b) A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1 (c) A-3, B-4, C-1, D-2 (d) A-2, B-4, C-3, D-1

Q3. According to tradition, the 36 garhs of Chhattisgarh were divided between the Ratanpur and Raipur kingdoms as:

(a) 24 and 12 (b) 18 and 18 (c) 20 and 16 (d) 30 and 6

Q4. The Amoda copper plates of Prithvideva I are primarily a record of:

(a) a military victory over the Eastern Gangas (b) the founding of Ratanpur (c) the construction of a fort (d) a land grant made on the dedication of a temple

Level 3: Mains Answer Writing

Q1. Describe the garh system of the Kalachuris and assess its legacy for later administration in Chhattisgarh. (150–200 words)

Quick Revision Table

Key Takeaways

What’s Next

• Art, Architecture and Inscriptions: the temples and records that give us this evidence
• Maratha Rule in Chhattisgarh: how the Marathas reused the garh base and introduced the pargana system
• British Rule, Princely States and Zamindaris: the later life of garh-holders as zamindars
• Panchayati Raj and Local Government in Chhattisgarh: village government today