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Synopsis Aspect of Rural Settlements and Rural Society is an enlarged version of the 1985 S.G. Deuskar Lectures delivered at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, in March 1987. Based primarily on inscriptional evidence, the Lectures focus on two interrelated aspects of rural society. By analyzing the details available in the inscriptions, the Lectures bring out how early medieval perceptions are important not only for differentiating between broad segments of space but also for understanding the specific characteristics of rural settlements in their regional contexts and the ways in which rural settlements could interact spatially and socially. Analyses of inscriptional evidence on the structure of early medieval rural society again stress the significance of the regional context and highlight the nature of changes in the structure of rural society and in its relationship to different tiers of political power. The empirical evidence mustered in these Lectures thus meets headon the stereotyped but still powerful image of changeless and insular village India.