{"product_id":"merchants-of-virtue-9780520390058","title":"Merchants of Virtue","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visitwww.luminosoa.orgto learn more.    Winner of the 2022 Joseph W.ElderPrize in the Indian Social SciencesMerchants of Virtue explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a fine-grained study of everyday life and local politics in the kingdom of Marwar in eighteenth-century western India to uncover how merchants enforced their caste ideals of vegetarianism and bodily austerity as universal markers of Hindu identity. Using legal strategies and alliances with elites, these merchants successfully remade the category of Hindu, setting it in contrast to Untouchable in a process that reconfigured Hinduism in caste terms. In a history pertinent to understanding India today, Cherian establishes the centrality of caste to the early-modern Hindu self and to its imagination of inadmissible others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Divya Cherian’s \u003ci\u003eMerchants of Virtue\u003c\/i\u003e is a vibrant and engaging intervention in the historiography of South Asia and caste history. Its strong arguments, rich analysis of historical sources, and careful scholarship will prove stimulating for scholars of South Asia, South Asian religions, history, the social sciences, and archival studies.\" * Reading Religion *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContents\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e List of Illustrations \u003cbr\u003e Note on Transliterations and Citations \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Introduction \u003cbr\u003e 1. Power \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e PART ONE. OTHER \u003cbr\u003e 2. Purity \u003cbr\u003e 3. Hierarchy \u003cbr\u003e 4. Discipline \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e PART TWO. SELF \u003cbr\u003e 5. Nonharm \u003cbr\u003e 6. Austerity \u003cbr\u003e 7. Chastity \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Epilogue \u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments \u003cbr\u003e Notes \u003cbr\u003e Bibliography \u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e  ","brand":"University of California Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48864927744343,"sku":"9780520390058","price":27.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780520390058.jpg?v=1722273301","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/merchants-of-virtue-9780520390058","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}