Suchergebnisse

Osmund Bopearachchi and Suchandra Ghosh, eds, Early Indian History and Beyond: Essays in Honour of B. D. Chattopadhyaya. New Delhi: Primus Books, 2019, 561pp.

Daud, Ali, "The idea of the medieval in the writing of South Asian history: contexts, methods and politics," Social History 39, no. 3 (2014): 382-407.

Shonaleeka Kaul, Imagining the Urban: Sanskrit and the City in Early India, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010, pp. 278.

The articles in this issue contribute to a paradigm shift in our approaches to historical discourse in precolonial South Asia. Rather than posing again the well-worn question of whether the Rājataraṅgiṇī should be considered a properly 'historical' text or a work of poetry, they focus on the complex and often hybrid sytlistic, thematic and aesthetic 'lineages' of the text, to understand how Kalhaṇa was able to articulate a unique vision of the past—and one that created the space for further iterations in later times. This final article seeks to at least partly test the value of such an approach through a similar examination of largely contemporaneous materials from Western India. Long noted for its peculiar combination of tantalising historical detail with magical elements and chronological anachronisms, the prabandha literature of Gujarat has recently been interpreted as an expression of a 'Jain' approach to kingship, morality and biography. Without denying this obvious connection, this article approaches the prabandhas by contexualising them against the wider background of temporalities and narrational styles in Sanskrit literature. It argues that the peculiar conventions of prabandha literature in Western India may best be explained through the interaction of distinctive narrative traditions and temporal orientations in Sanskrit writing that may have broad parallels in Kashmir's literary history.

AbstractRelations between royal courts and merchant groups have been a frequently discussed but narrowly circumscribed topic in early Indian history—with analyses confined to mutual gains acquired through interactions. Using the careers of two merchant families active at the Hoysala court in south India at the end of the twelfth century as a starting point, this essay explores the existence of "shared" worlds between court and market, and focuses particularly on the development of distinctively "courtly" codes and sensibilities among merchant groups. It postulates the existence of a commensurable, and to a certain extent, composite culture between the realms of court and market which allowed ambitious men to move between both worlds.Les relations entre les régimes dynastiques et les groupes de marchands a fait l'objet bien défini de discussions nombreuses dans l'historiographie de l'Inde ancienne tandis que les approches se limitaient aux profits réalisés des deux côtés par ces interactions. Fondé sur l'étude des carrières de deux familles de commerçants qui furent actives à la cour des souverains Hoysala dans le Sud de l'Inde à la fin du douzième siècle, cet essai explore l'existence de ces mondes "partagés" entre la cour et le marché, et se focalise en particulier sur le développement de codes spécifiquement "courtois" et les sensibilités entre les groupes de marchands. Cela demande l'existence d'une culture analogue et dans un certain sens composite entre le domaine de la cour et celui du marché qui permettait aux ambitieux de les fréquenter tous les deux.

Argues that the emergence of the female voice in medieval bhakti represents a transformation of patriarchal power in early India. Examples from dramatic & devotional works, particularly courtly literature, are used to illustrate a discourse shift called a "new deployment of femininity," & to suggest that theistic bhakti traditions were responsible. Special attention is given to concepts of pleasure & its association with women, noting that sensual enjoyment was treated heroically, with sentimentality added to the lord-subject relationship by orders of bhakti. The new model of joyful service to a lord replaced early paradigms that stressed labor & duty & placed the feminine voice in the political arena. Contrary to the opinion that female voices in medieval bhakti texts were a reaction against patriarchal power, the emphasis on pleasure between lord & servant promoted a more careful articulation of feminine subjectivity into the public discourse. Although the altered relationship did not challenge the dominant patriarchal structure, it provided greater audibility to the feminine voice, & signaled a "whole new formulation of gender.". 27 References. J. Lindroth

AbstractThis paper attempts to link the growth of courtly and monastic practices as related historical phenomena in early historic India. The consolidation of urban courts and monastic communities represented a departure from the Vedic way of life in the context of new social relations and increasing urbanisation. Urban society and Buddhist monasticism, as scholars have pointed out, were linked materially and sociologically. This paper explores this linkage further. At the level of practice, courtly comportment and monastic discipline, centred around artifice and discipline, respectively, can be seen as direct inversions of one another. This opposition, however, was complementary and reveals a number of shared assumptions about "reality" leading to a common "hermeneutics" of phenomena, despite contrary ontological approaches and implications for practice.