Download Free The Concept Of Bharatavarsha And Other Essays Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Concept Of Bharatavarsha And Other Essays and write the review.

This exploration of key terms related to social and political order, found in early Indian texts, challenges the idea of a unified ancient India and a unified national identity at that time. This collection explores what may be called the idea of India in ancient times. Its undeclared objective is to identify key concepts which show early Indian civilization as distinct and differently oriented from other formations. The essays focus on ancient Indian texts within a variety of genres. They identify certain key terms—such as janapada, desa, var?a, dharma, bh?va—in their empirical contexts to suggest that neither the ideas embedded in these terms nor the idea of Bharatavarsha as a whole are “given entities,” but that they evolved historically. Professor Chattopadhyaya examines these texts to unveil historical processes. Without denying comparative history, he stresses that the internal dynamics of a society are best decoded via its own texts. His approach bears very effectively on understanding ongoing interactions between India’s “Great Tradition” and “Little Traditions.” As a whole, this book is critical of the notion of overarching Indian unity in the ancient period. It punctures the retrospective thrust of hegemonic nationalism as an ideology that has obscured the diverse textures of Indian civilization. Renowned for his scholarship on the ancient Indian past, Professor Chattopadhyaya’s latest collection only consolidates his high international reputation.
Charts the interactive contours of European culture of the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, extending the chronological limits of Romanticism by identifying fresh links among works, authors, contexts, and institutions across national and linguistic borders.
These essays explore the processes of change in Indian society over the period from about the seventh to the thirteenth century. Departing radically from the current historiography on the period, the author posits change as represented by processes of progressive transformation, not by the breakdown of an earlier social order. Within this framework, he discusses such diverse themes as irrigation, urbanization, the formation of a dominant ruling caste, and the structure of polity in general.
The Sogdian Traders were the main go-between of Central Asia from the fifth to the eighth century. From their towns of Samarkand, Bukhara, or Tashkent, their diaspora is attested by texts, inscriptions or archaeology in all the major countries of Asia (India, China, Iran, Turkish Steppe, but also Byzantium). This survey for the first time brings together all the data on their trade, from the beginning, a small-scale trade in the first century BC up to its end in the tenth century. It should interest all the specialists of Ancient and Medieval Asia (including specialists of Sinology, Islamic Studies, Iranology, Turkology and Indology) but also specialists of Medieval Economic History.
God of Desire presents Sanskrit tales of the Indian deity Kāmadeva as he battles the ascetic god Śiva, assists the powerful goddess Devī, and incarnates as the charming son of Kṛṣṇa. Exploring the imagery and symbolism of the god of desire in art and ritual, Catherine Benton reflects on the connection of Kāmadeva to parrots, makaras (gharials), and apsarases (celestial nymphs), and to playful devotional rituals designed to win his favor. In addition to examining the Hindu literature, Benton also highlights two Buddhist forms of Kamadeva, the demonic Māra, who tries to persuade the Buddha to trade enlightenment for the delights of a woman, and the ever-youthful Mañjuśri, who cuts through ignorance with the bodhisattva sword of wisdom. Tales of Kāmadeva from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions present desire as a powerful force continually redefining the boundaries of chaos and order and gently pulling beyond the ephemeral lure of passionate longings.
The deeply entrenched image of the interaction between Hindus and Muslims in India's past--as indeed in the present-- has generally been that of two aggressively antagonistic religious communities, with the superior political power wielded by one community defining its dominance over the other. This original colonial notion has often been contested by positing the thesis of syncretism at the religious level; by citing evidence of patronage across religious establishments, and of participation of both communities in the country's administration. Neither approach, however, took up the critical task of examining the viability of the premise of homogeneity in the composition of the two communities, or how contemporary perceptions may be used as a touchstone for 'othering' in heterogeneous societies of the past. Chattopadhyaya's Representing the Other?, originally published almost two decades ago, makes an attempt to construct perceptions of new ethnic groups in India in an important phase of its history, from the eighth to the fourteenth century. The evidence though insufficient, reveals not homogenous religious communities, but ethnic groups of diverse origins, located in different socio-political contexts as traders, raiders and plunderers, as well as rulers and administrators. The contexts define the characterization of these different categories by either invoking terminologies from the past for others or by coining ethnic terms. Based mainly on contemporary Sanskrit epigraphic and textual sources, this book is expected to be a major corrective to the way students are generally taught to read the history of our country of this period and of what followed.
A focal study of the methodological changes that confront historians of pre-colonial India.
Aspects of Rural Settlements and Rural Society in Early Medieval India seeks to undertake two kinds of explorations, one methodological and the other thematic. Methodologically, it examines texts of inscriptions--historians' main source for references to ancient villages--from diverse angles to try and understand the morphologies of villages in relation to different terrains across the country. One important aspect of this exploration concerns understanding, to the extent possible, the relationship of village location/s and sources of water, both for fields and habitats. Thematic explorations, apart from looking for possible physical appearances of ancient villages, extend to the search for the re-examination of the concept of village community, the search for hierarchies among village residents and settlements, and the changing nature of relationship between apex political authorities and villages. The conclusion, deriving from these explorations, makes an argument for the need to depart from the image of India's villages as unchanging, inert, insulated and self-sufficient spatial units to viewing them as varied social spaces in interaction with other spaces, which also went through phases of historical change.
A wide-ranging survey of the Indian sub-continent, Modern South Asia gives an enthralling account of South Asian history. After sketching the pre-modern history of the subcontinent, the book concentrates on the last three centuries from c.1700 to the present. Jointly written by two leading Indian and Pakistani historians, Modern South Asia offers a rare depth of understanding of the social, economic and political realities of this region. This comprehensive study includes detailed discussions of: the structure and ideology of the British raj; the meaning of subaltern resistance; the refashioning of social relations along lines of caste class, community and gender; and the state and economy, society and politics of post-colonial South Asia The new edition includes a rewritten, accessible introduction and a chapter by chapter revision to take into account recent research. The second edition will also bring the book completely up to date with a chapter on the period from 1991 to 2002 and adiscussion of the last millennium in sub-continental history.