Description
Book SynopsisFor over five hundred years, Muslim dynasties ruled parts of northern and central India. Scholars have long drawn upon works written in Persian and Arabic about this epoch, yet they have neglected the many histories that India’s learned elite wrote about Indo-Muslim rule in Sanskrit. Audrey Truschke offers a groundbreaking analysis of these texts.
Trade ReviewTruschke demonstrates that the Sanskrit literary world was not simply an arena of elite male Brahmin scholars, but also one in which non-Brahmins, women, Jains, and a wider lay community of scholars and patrons had a voice. The lasting contribution of this work will be not simply its methodological or analytical innovations, but also firmly contesting and refuting the toxic Hindutva politics that has permeated debates about Sanskrit pasts, Hindu-Muslim interactions, and the nature of Hinduism and Islam itself in the last century. -- Purnima Dhavan, author of
The Lords of the Pen: Literary Associations in Early Modern South AsiaUnpacking a rich archive that is scattered or largely ignored, Truschke skillfully probes how Jains and Brahmins assessed Muslims and their rule and how those assessments changed over a millennium. This book offers fresh insights into the contested issue of cultural encounter in India’s history. -- Richard M. Eaton, author of
India in the Persianate Age: 1000–1765Few questions in premodern Indian studies are as fraught as the nature of historical consciousness—save for the nature of Indo-Muslim rule. Truschke takes on both, demonstrating not only the vitality of history writing in Sanskrit culture but also its intense political engagements. This is scholarship of the highest order. -- Sheldon Pollock, Arvind Raghunathan Professor of Sanskrit and South Asian Studies, Columbia University
In this masterful survey of literary narratives referring to Muslim rulers, Truschke once again publicizes Sanskrit’s participation in the world of premodern politics. Sweeping in its scope, incisive in its analysis, and crisp in its prose,
The Language of History demonstrates Sanskrit’s continuing vitality and creativity in a pluralistic age. -- Cynthia Talbot, author of
The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past, 1200-2000Sanskrit texts provide an archive for the study of the second millennium CE that historians have known of but have hardly explored. Truschke’s study demonstrates that Sanskrit histories of the period are partly a continuation from the past and partly a pointer to the new. Her analysis of these texts provides a necessary fresh perspective. -- Romila Thapar, author of
Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Note on Translations and Scholarly Conventions
Select Time Line of Political Events, ca. 1190–1720
Introduction: Controversial History
1. Before Indo-Persian Rule: Many Sanskrit Ways to Write About Muslims
2. Difference That Mattered: Defining the Ghurid Threat
3. Indo-Muslim Rulers: Expanding the World of Indian Kingship
4. Local Stories in Fourteenth-Century Gujarat and Fifteenth-Century Kashmir
5. Meeting the Mughals and Reformulating Jain Identity
6. Rajput and Maratha Kingships in an Indo-Persian Political Order
7. Mughal Political Histories
Epilogue: Starting Points
Appendix: Select Translations from Sanskrit Histories
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
