Language of History Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Audrey Truschke is associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark. She is the author of Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia, 2016) and Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King (2017).Truschke 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 <i>The Lords of the Pen: Literary Associations in Early Modern South Asia</i>,
Unpacking 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 <i>India in the Persianate Age: 1000–1765</i>,
Few 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, <i>The Language of History</i> demonstrates Sanskrit’s continuing vitality and creativity in a pluralistic age.
- Cynthia Talbot, author of <i>The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past, 1200-2000</i>,
Sanskrit 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 <i>Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300</i>,
The author meritoriously introduces a broader definition of written history and demonstrates how the analysis of literary aspects as a device for writing history within Sanskrit texts can be a promising study for present-day historians and philologists as well.
Contributions to Indian Sociology
A detailed and nuanced examination of a new and relevant topic and is of clear interest for readers interested on both broad subjects, such as the philosophy of history, as well as more specific ones, such as Sanskrit historiography, aesthetics and lexicography, Indo-Muslim history, and the premodern representations of ideal and counter-ideal types in Indo-Muslim India.
Práticas da História
Audrey Truschke offers a groundbreaking analysis of these Sanskrit texts that sheds light on both historical Muslim political leaders on the subcontinent and how premodern Sanskrit intellectuals perceived the “Muslim Other.” She analyzes and theorizes how Sanskrit historians used the tools of their literary tradition to document Muslim governance and, later, as Muslims became an integral part of Indian cultural and political worlds, Indo-Muslim rule. Truschke demonstrates how this new archive lends insight into formulations and expressions of premodern political, social, cultural, and religious identities. By elaborating the languages and identities at play in premodern Sanskrit historical works, this book expands our historical and conceptual resources for understanding premodern South Asia, Indian intellectual history, and the impact of Muslim peoples on non-Muslim societies.
At a time when exclusionary Hindu nationalism, which often grounds its claims on fabricated visions of India’s premodernity, dominates the Indian public sphere, The Language of History shows the complexity and diversity of the subcontinent’s past.
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