While one can argue that the rise of a particular state to prominence at a partic- ular time in history is largely a fortuitous occurrence, based on the chance appear- ance at a certain place and time of an especially capable leader or series of such leaders, one can also adopt a probabilistic view that at certain times within a broad span of history there is a much greater likelihood of great states' arising than at other periods of comparable length. Figure 14.6 was prepared with the latter view- point in mind and may be regarded, if one wishes, as an a posteriori approximation of the changing set of probabilities that states of certain size categories would arise during successive five-hundred-year periods of Indian history. That the Mauryan and Guptan Empires arose at the particular times they did may well be related to certain seemingly fortuitous events; but one may assert that certain objective con- ditions existed virtually throughout the Ancient Period of Indian history that fa- vored the formation of pan-Indian states to a greater degree than was the case for roughly the next millennium.

What could those conditions have been? First, for roughly five hundred years, from the rise of the Harya&ndot;kas, in the mid-6th century B.C., till close to the begin- ning of the Christian era, there was no power center on the Indian subcontinent itself that could rival Magadha, where five successive dynasties achieved either supra-regional or pan-Indian status. Although the historical evidence to support this view is suggestive rather than conclusive, it seems probable that population densities in Magadha, at least until the Śu&ndot;ga period, were significantly greater than in any other part of India and that the relative closeness and continuity of settlement in that area facilitated the consolidation of a powerful state and the maintenance of an army large enough to defeat whatever opposition was likely to be encountered in other parts of India.

Why Magadha should have attained its early lead is a question we shall consider later. The point that seems important here is that so long as no other part of India was sufficiently developed to give rise to a supra-regional power of its own, a well- organized Magadhan state had a relatively clear field for expansion. By way of analogy one might consider—within a much collapsed time scale—the difficulty of other states' launching their own industrial revolutions and competing in world trade with England once the latter had attained a commanding technological and commercial lead over the rest of the world.

But once the knowledge of statecraft, the idea of the cakravartin as ruler of a universal state, and, possibly, certain aspects of military technology had diffused throughout the subcontinent—which was certainly the case by the close of the Guptan period—the number of would-be great powers in the field must have sub- stantially increased and the competition any one power would have had to face in bidding for greatness would have risen commensurately. This may be the principal underlying reason for the relative frequency during the Early Medieval and Sul- tanate Period of decades marked by the coexistence of two, three, or even up to five supra-regional powers and for the pronounced rareness of pan-Indian powers. On figure 14.4 much the same picture is conveyed with respect to the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500. It is to be noted on figure 14.6 that roughly from the time of the expansion of the "probability" of regional power configurations with as many as two supra-regional powers coexisting in a single decade the related "prob- ability" of achieving a single pan-Indian state begins first to level off and then to decline.

Some speculation about the comparative ecological conditions of the Ancient and Medieval Periods of Indian history is here in order. We may be resonably certain that over much of the Ancient Period most of India was still forested and that, within this vast sea of forest, islands of sedentary agricultural settlement were formed, within which a number of organized states arose. Save for Magadha and large portions of the Gangetic Plain to the west, the territorial extent of areas of continuous settlement and of firm political control of these states was probably not large. Accordingly, it would not have required, as a rule, a very large invading army to bring them to submission. The initial provisioning, then, of armies for ex- peditions of conquest and their maintenance in the field through the exaction of tribute and provisions, while not easy, were tasks that should have been well within the capability of leaders and generals of a well-organized state such as that which the Mauryans created.

During the period of Guptan ascendancy, for reasons that are far from clear, and that we shall consider later, the principal center of north Indian power shifted westward to the vicinity of Kāśī. Though the portion of India that retained the greatest potential as a power base for the establishment of pan-Indian hegemony remained in the Gangetic Plain, other regions of India probably grew significantly in population and productivity, in the interim since Mauryan rule, and are known to have given rise to a number of states achieving imperial power on a supra-regional scale. The power potential, then, of the Gangetic Plain relative to the rest of India declined markedly. Thus, when the expansion of the Guptas brought many parts of India into their own imperial system it was necessary for the dominant power to reckon with and adjust to this new regional situation by a variety of administrative devices that are spelled out in the text for plates III.D.1 and 4. The result was a much looser, more decentralized system than that achieved under the highly cen- tralized rule of the imperial Mauryas.

Before the beginning of the Medieval Period, possibly, most of the more favored alluvial and coastal plains, and the better agricultural lands in general, had been effectively and permanently settled. At such a stage in history a tendency may well have set in to intensify agriculture on the better lands rather than clearing forests for new settlements in poorer environments. That tendency would have led in turn to a greater density of settlement in the favored areas and a substantial increase in both total population and felt population pressure. At such a stage the normally present, but often latent, desire to conquer other favored areas should presumably have been heightened by a sense of demographic urgency. And in all likelihood the will to oppose foreign invasion and the exaction of tribute by alien powers may also have been strengthened. Moreover, with larger populations and larger armies in many parts of India rather than in only one or a few, and with the widespread diffusion of military technology and tactical knowledge, the capability of opposing an invader was also presumably increased. Finally, since the invading armies had to be larger in Medieval than in Ancient times in order to be fairly sure of success, the difficulty of sustaining them in the field at the expense of larger hostile popu- lations must indeed have been considerable.

From the point of view of the present analysis the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate introduces a significant, though hardly profound, change into the re- gional power system of the subcontinent. While the differences between the Sultan- ate and Early Medieval Periods that show up in figure 14.7 are appreciable, those revealed by figure 14.8 are negligible in magnitude. Figure 14.9 helps explain why, despite the notably greater frequency of pan-Indian powers and more espe- cially of supra-regional powers during the Sultanate Period, the aggregate choro- chronic volume of major states in that era of South Asian history, relative to the total CCV of the period (36.3%) was only slightly different from that of Early Medieval times (30.9%). The major states of the Sultanate Period, it may be seen, were on the average significantly shorter-lived than those of the Early Medie- val Period, which in turn were themselves less enduring and markedly smaller on the average than those of the Ancient Period.

The key to this progressive decline in the average size and duration of major powers appears to lie in the secularly increasing degree of serious competition major powers had to face from other powers of comparable strength. (The rele- vant data are provided by figure 14.4 and table 14.2.) Hence, there was presum- ably a long-range tendency toward a rise in both the frequency and the intensity of wars between or among major powers throughout the Sultanate Period. This would have resulted in increasing instability within the power system as a whole and seriously inhibited the growth potential of all states within the system. It might fur- ther be supposed that the antipathy during the Sultanate Period between Muslim- ruled and Hindu-ruled states heightened the general level of conflict and instability. But such an argument is not very convincing. The major Hindu powers of the period were only six in number, counting the Tuluvas, who overlapped into the Mughal Period, and accounted for a total of only nineteen out of sixty-two major power-decades. Most of the serious fighting of the Sultanate Period was between one major Muslim state and another, and some was between one major Hindu state and another (e.g., between Vijayanagara and the Gajapatis). The urge for combat, which has characterized virtually the whole of South Asian history, scarcely needed the stimulus of religious discord to make itself manifest.¹⁷

In the latter portion of the Sultanate Period, after the shock of disruption wrought by Tīmūr's invasion and sack of Delhi, the power struggle over much of India was especially intense. The North Indian Plain in particular must have reached a state of near-exhaustion from the unremitting warfare of the 15th and early 16th cen- turies. No major power occupied the throne of Delhi when Bābur first seized it for the Mughals or, after the brief period of Sūr ascendancy, when it was regained by Akbar in 1556. One might almost suppose that a prostrate northern India em- braced the unwonted orderliness of the regime Akbar introduced.

With the advent of the Mughals, then, the situation altered drastically. From the time (about 1580) that dynasty first achieved the status of a pan-Indian power until the present day, only six decades (1710–40 and 1770–1800) were not marked by the existence of some pan-Indian power—Mughal, Maratha, British, or contemporary Indian. In probabilistic terms one might say that the conditions making for the likelihood of a pan-Indian state appear to have been favorable for roughly the last four centuries, though obviously not to such an extent as to pre-