Pub Date : 2019-08-01DOI: 10.1177/0257643019874555
Cynthia Talbot
Suraj Bhan Bhardwaj, Contestations and Accommodations: Mewat and Meos in Mughal India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016, 304 pp., ₹850. ISBN: 9780199462797.
{"title":"Book review: Suraj Bhan Bhardwaj, Contestations and Accommodations: Mewat and Meos in Mughal India","authors":"Cynthia Talbot","doi":"10.1177/0257643019874555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643019874555","url":null,"abstract":"Suraj Bhan Bhardwaj, Contestations and Accommodations: Mewat and Meos in Mughal India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016, 304 pp., ₹850. ISBN: 9780199462797.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"1 1","pages":"295 - 296"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79677220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-01DOI: 10.1177/0257643018816399
R. Ray
Shubhra Chakrabarti and Utsa Patnaik (eds), Agrarian and other Histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2017, xxiv + 328 pp., ₹995.
{"title":"Book review: Shubhra Chakrabarti and Utsa Patnaik (eds), Agrarian and other Histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri","authors":"R. Ray","doi":"10.1177/0257643018816399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643018816399","url":null,"abstract":"Shubhra Chakrabarti and Utsa Patnaik (eds), Agrarian and other Histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2017, xxiv + 328 pp., ₹995.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"1 1","pages":"297 - 300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89605770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-01DOI: 10.1177/0257643019864299
Rahul Govind
Raja Rammohan Roy has been called various things, from the first Indian liberal and a ‘maker of modern India’ to one who could bring about little more than a caricature of promised transformation. That Roy saw himself as a subject of the English King is much less analysed. The following essay takes this self-perception of Roy as a ‘British subject’ as a clue to develop a twofold problematic on the nature of religion and law in Roy’s lifetime, that is, between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. (a) We emphasize the importance of the King of England, and the importance of Kingship in which religion and law cannot be disentangled. This is established through an examination of the institutional arrangements in relationship to Kingship in the British Isles and the subcontinent, a study of S. T. Coleridge’s On the Constitution of the Church and State (London: Hurst, Chance and Co., 1830) and John Austin’s Province of Jurisprudence Determined (Delhi: Universal Publishers, 2012), amongst lesser known texts. (b) From an investigation into this religio-political constitution, we will explore the other dimensions opened up in Roy’s self-perception as a subject, that is, the relationship between religion, law and public reason in colonial India. By Roy’s ‘public hermeneutics’, we mean his arguing in the public medium of print as much as for a public (the colonial state and the reading public). But we also mean his use of reason in a sustained fashion so as to critique social and legal conditions. His arguments in structural and substantive terms, as we show, allow one to re-think the relationship between religion, law and universality.
{"title":"Sovereignty, Religion and Law in the British Empire: Raja Rammohan Roy’s Public Hermeneutics in His Times","authors":"Rahul Govind","doi":"10.1177/0257643019864299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643019864299","url":null,"abstract":"Raja Rammohan Roy has been called various things, from the first Indian liberal and a ‘maker of modern India’ to one who could bring about little more than a caricature of promised transformation. That Roy saw himself as a subject of the English King is much less analysed. The following essay takes this self-perception of Roy as a ‘British subject’ as a clue to develop a twofold problematic on the nature of religion and law in Roy’s lifetime, that is, between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. (a) We emphasize the importance of the King of England, and the importance of Kingship in which religion and law cannot be disentangled. This is established through an examination of the institutional arrangements in relationship to Kingship in the British Isles and the subcontinent, a study of S. T. Coleridge’s On the Constitution of the Church and State (London: Hurst, Chance and Co., 1830) and John Austin’s Province of Jurisprudence Determined (Delhi: Universal Publishers, 2012), amongst lesser known texts. (b) From an investigation into this religio-political constitution, we will explore the other dimensions opened up in Roy’s self-perception as a subject, that is, the relationship between religion, law and public reason in colonial India. By Roy’s ‘public hermeneutics’, we mean his arguing in the public medium of print as much as for a public (the colonial state and the reading public). But we also mean his use of reason in a sustained fashion so as to critique social and legal conditions. His arguments in structural and substantive terms, as we show, allow one to re-think the relationship between religion, law and universality.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"6 1","pages":"218 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89166325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Sumanyu Satpathy, Will to Argue: Studies in Late Colonial and Postcolonial Controversies","authors":"A. Sarangi","doi":"10.1177/0257643019863936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643019863936","url":null,"abstract":"Sumanyu Satpathy, Will to Argue: Studies in Late Colonial and Postcolonial Controversies, Primus Books, Delhi, 2017, 222 pp., ₹850.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"14 1","pages":"285 - 289"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72979154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Ranabir Samaddar, Crisis of 1974: Railway Strike and the Rank and File","authors":"S. Sherlock","doi":"10.1177/0257643019864910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643019864910","url":null,"abstract":"Ranabir Samaddar, Crisis of 1974: Railway Strike and the Rank and File, Primus Books, New Delhi, 2017, 198 pp., ₹850.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"19 1","pages":"289 - 291"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81250485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-01DOI: 10.1177/2348448919876869
Rajashree Mazumder
Travel plays a critical role in twentieth-century Bengali adventure literature for adolescent males. Armchair journeys through the Empire and beyond let that audience discover the world: a panoply of high- to low-ranking cultures, utterly strange geographical spaces and, often, their ‘barbarous’, ‘uncivilized’ inhabitants. Exemplified by Hemendrakumar Roy’s works, the genre encourages boys to draw correlations between race, ethnicity and territory in a way that elevates Hindu elites within a civilizational hierarchy that borrows, but will not follow wholesale, the Western schema. The literary trope of travel imaginatively transports the colonized protagonists and audience across their country’s borders. Yet the destinations, distanced from their experience by perilous voyages, are clearly chosen to spark reflection on their own domestic spaces. The adventures, in turn, fuel their individual and, ideally, national self-transformation. For Roy’s travel narratives promote such changes by featuring Bengali heroes defeating horrific hazards with courage, strength, intelligence, self-sacrifice and perseverance—‘masculine’ qualities the author hopes a new generation will imbibe and use to serve the nation. Doing so, he also hopes, will disprove in reality what he demolished in writing: colonizers’ stereotype of Bengalis as effeminate cowards, and their dismissal of Indian culture as beneath their own.
{"title":"‘In Search of Mammon’s Treasure Trove’: Hemendrakumar Roy’s Use of Travel in Children’s Adventure Literature","authors":"Rajashree Mazumder","doi":"10.1177/2348448919876869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2348448919876869","url":null,"abstract":"Travel plays a critical role in twentieth-century Bengali adventure literature for adolescent males. Armchair journeys through the Empire and beyond let that audience discover the world: a panoply of high- to low-ranking cultures, utterly strange geographical spaces and, often, their ‘barbarous’, ‘uncivilized’ inhabitants. Exemplified by Hemendrakumar Roy’s works, the genre encourages boys to draw correlations between race, ethnicity and territory in a way that elevates Hindu elites within a civilizational hierarchy that borrows, but will not follow wholesale, the Western schema. The literary trope of travel imaginatively transports the colonized protagonists and audience across their country’s borders. Yet the destinations, distanced from their experience by perilous voyages, are clearly chosen to spark reflection on their own domestic spaces. The adventures, in turn, fuel their individual and, ideally, national self-transformation. For Roy’s travel narratives promote such changes by featuring Bengali heroes defeating horrific hazards with courage, strength, intelligence, self-sacrifice and perseverance—‘masculine’ qualities the author hopes a new generation will imbibe and use to serve the nation. Doing so, he also hopes, will disprove in reality what he demolished in writing: colonizers’ stereotype of Bengalis as effeminate cowards, and their dismissal of Indian culture as beneath their own.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"8 1","pages":"250 - 279"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81677775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-01DOI: 10.1177/0257643019852823
Kanad Sinha
Classical Indian thought has often stated that human life has four ends: dharma (social righteousness), artha (material profit), kāma (sensual pleasure) and mokṣa (spiritual liberation). The historical tradition called itihāsa claims itself as a comprehensive commentary on these four. The principal itihāsa text available to us, the Mahābhārata, boasts of containing everything that exists on these. However, the ultimate goal of human life in the Mahābhārata is predominantly dharma. But, the dharma the Mahābhārata speaks of is not necessarily what dharma came to represent in classical Brahmanical orthodoxy: a combination of the institutions of varṇa and āśrama Rather, in the narrative sections of the Mahābhārata, which possibly originated in the context of the Later Vedic Kuru kingdom of c. 1000–800 BCE, there is often a questioning of the traditional hereditary varṇadharma. Through the character of Yudhiṣṭhira, the Mahābhārata unfolds an alternative understanding of dharma, known as ānṛśaṁsya (non-cruelty). Scholars have often considered it as an alternative to the heterodox notion of ahiṁsā (non-violence). This paper shows the gradual evolution of the ideal to show that its fundamental opposition is not with the heterodox ahiṁsā, but with the orthodox varṇadharma, particularly kṣātradharma, the martial heroism expected of the kṣatriya.
{"title":"Redefining Dharma in a Time of Transition: Ānṛśaṃsya in the Mahābhārata as an Alternative End of Human Life","authors":"Kanad Sinha","doi":"10.1177/0257643019852823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643019852823","url":null,"abstract":"Classical Indian thought has often stated that human life has four ends: dharma (social righteousness), artha (material profit), kāma (sensual pleasure) and mokṣa (spiritual liberation). The historical tradition called itihāsa claims itself as a comprehensive commentary on these four. The principal itihāsa text available to us, the Mahābhārata, boasts of containing everything that exists on these. However, the ultimate goal of human life in the Mahābhārata is predominantly dharma. But, the dharma the Mahābhārata speaks of is not necessarily what dharma came to represent in classical Brahmanical orthodoxy: a combination of the institutions of varṇa and āśrama Rather, in the narrative sections of the Mahābhārata, which possibly originated in the context of the Later Vedic Kuru kingdom of c. 1000–800 BCE, there is often a questioning of the traditional hereditary varṇadharma. Through the character of Yudhiṣṭhira, the Mahābhārata unfolds an alternative understanding of dharma, known as ānṛśaṁsya (non-cruelty). Scholars have often considered it as an alternative to the heterodox notion of ahiṁsā (non-violence). This paper shows the gradual evolution of the ideal to show that its fundamental opposition is not with the heterodox ahiṁsā, but with the orthodox varṇadharma, particularly kṣātradharma, the martial heroism expected of the kṣatriya.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"93 1","pages":"147 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75431213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-30DOI: 10.1177/0257643019844620
Sanjukta Datta
In conventional historiography, kings of the Pa-la dynasty are celebrated for upholding the last bastion of Buddhism in early medieval eastern India. The article demonstrates, on the basis of epigraphic evidence, that along with royal patrons, there were other categories of benefactors actively involved in the building and sustenance of Buddhist establishments. In fact, compared to the brief epigraphic history of royal patronage, there is a more sustained record of support provided to Buddhist establishments by subordinate rulers and Buddhist monks in the Pa-la domain. Through a close analysis of two twelfth-century stone inscriptions, an attempt is made to track continuities and changes in the nature of patronage provided by these two categories in a milieu defined by the presence of Buddhist institutions of trans-regional renown and participation of patrons from other realms. By paying attention to the inscriptional vocabulary, the article also highlights a typology of Buddhist monastic establishments within an eastern Indian sector and a range of devotional activities open to donors to acquire religious merit at these centres.
{"title":"Building for the Buddha: Patrons in the Pa-la Kingdom","authors":"Sanjukta Datta","doi":"10.1177/0257643019844620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643019844620","url":null,"abstract":"In conventional historiography, kings of the Pa-la dynasty are celebrated for upholding the last bastion of Buddhism in early medieval eastern India. The article demonstrates, on the basis of epigraphic evidence, that along with royal patrons, there were other categories of benefactors actively involved in the building and sustenance of Buddhist establishments. In fact, compared to the brief epigraphic history of royal patronage, there is a more sustained record of support provided to Buddhist establishments by subordinate rulers and Buddhist monks in the Pa-la domain. Through a close analysis of two twelfth-century stone inscriptions, an attempt is made to track continuities and changes in the nature of patronage provided by these two categories in a milieu defined by the presence of Buddhist institutions of trans-regional renown and participation of patrons from other realms. By paying attention to the inscriptional vocabulary, the article also highlights a typology of Buddhist monastic establishments within an eastern Indian sector and a range of devotional activities open to donors to acquire religious merit at these centres.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"208 1","pages":"162 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80513262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1177/0257643018804315
Pratik Chakrabarti
Saurabh Mishra, Beastly Encounters of the Raj: Livelihoods, Livestock and Veterinary Health in North India, 1790–1920, University of Manchester Press, Manchester, 2015, ix + 208 pp., Illustrated, £75.
{"title":"Book review: Saurabh Mishra, Beastly Encounters of the Raj: Livelihoods, Livestock and Veterinary Health in North India, 1790–1920","authors":"Pratik Chakrabarti","doi":"10.1177/0257643018804315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643018804315","url":null,"abstract":"Saurabh Mishra, Beastly Encounters of the Raj: Livelihoods, Livestock and Veterinary Health in North India, 1790–1920, University of Manchester Press, Manchester, 2015, ix + 208 pp., Illustrated, £75.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"17 1","pages":"143 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88174841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1177/0257643018804048
F. D. Romanis
Rajan Gurukkal, Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016, 330 pp., ₹950.
Rajan Gurukkal，重新思考古典印度-罗马贸易:东地中海交流关系的政治经济学，牛津大学出版社，新德里，2016年，330页，950卢比。
{"title":"Book review: Rajan Gurukkal, Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations","authors":"F. D. Romanis","doi":"10.1177/0257643018804048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0257643018804048","url":null,"abstract":"Rajan Gurukkal, Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016, 330 pp., ₹950.","PeriodicalId":44179,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History","volume":"8 1","pages":"123 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74073194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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