Description
Book SynopsisIndia is generally regarded as a civilization with a set of intrinsic attributes that emerged in the age of the Vedas or, better still, in the Harappan times. In recent decades, historical studies have moved away from rigid perspectives of singularity in origin and expansion; the emphasis now is on pluralities and long-term processes spanning centuries and millennia. There is also an influential school of thought which rejects antiquity claims such as these and holds that India is a construct of the colonial and nationalist imagination. In his radical reinterpretation of India's past, Manu V. Devadevan moves away from these reifying assessments to examine the evolution of institutions, ideas and identities that are characterized, typically, as Indian. In lieu of endorsing their Indianness, he traces their emergence to specific conditions that developed in India between 600 and 1200 CE, a period which historians now call the 'early medieval'.
Table of ContentsList of tables; List of maps and figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Institutions: 1. State formation and its structural foundations; 2. From the cult of chivalry to the cult of personality: the seventh-century transformation in Pallava statecraft; 3. Changes in land relations and the changing fortunes of the Cēra state; 4. Temple and territory in the Puri Jagannātha imaginaire; Part II. Ideas: 5. Svayamòbuddha's predilections: the epistemologies of time and knowledge; 6. Bhāravi and the creation of a literary paradigm; 7. Knowing and being: the semantic universe of the Kūdòiyātòtòamò theatre; 8. The invention of zero and its intellectual legacy; Part III. Identities: 9. The evolution of vernacular languages: a case study of Kannada; 10. Religious identities in times of Indumaulòi's grief; 11. Caste, gender and the landed patriarchy; 12. The making of territorial self consciousness (with particular reference to Kaliṅga); Bibliography; Index.
