Pub Date : 2021-05-10DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2021.1909324
Shaila Bhatti
Since the introduction of museums in South Asia during the colonial period, there has been one troubling factor – the visitors. Colonial museum administrators/curators continuously failed to comprehend local visitor interpretations/interactions. This incomprehension led to visitors being variously classified as uneducated/illiterate; a stereotype that has stuck till today where the majority of visitors to museums are denigrated for their inappropriate behaviour and consumption of exhibits. This paper unpacks the misunderstood visitor experience through local visual practices, in particular the role of vision as embodied and enchanted rather than that pertaining to the modern gaze in the museum, in order to understand the South Asian museum experience. This re-assessment is grounded in a critical re-examination of South Asian vision, which so far has been singularly conceptualised as darshan, proposing instead the need for other scopic regimes to be investigated such as nazar. By applying this expanded view of the South Asian gaze to visitor interactions at the Lahore Museum, this paper aims to overcome the persisting bias against local visitors and suggest that their affective responses are not incongruous to the idea of the museum but relevant to contemporary museology.
{"title":"Opening the Eyes of South Asian Museums: Making Sense of the Visitor Gaze","authors":"Shaila Bhatti","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2021.1909324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2021.1909324","url":null,"abstract":"Since the introduction of museums in South Asia during the colonial period, there has been one troubling factor – the visitors. Colonial museum administrators/curators continuously failed to comprehend local visitor interpretations/interactions. This incomprehension led to visitors being variously classified as uneducated/illiterate; a stereotype that has stuck till today where the majority of visitors to museums are denigrated for their inappropriate behaviour and consumption of exhibits. This paper unpacks the misunderstood visitor experience through local visual practices, in particular the role of vision as embodied and enchanted rather than that pertaining to the modern gaze in the museum, in order to understand the South Asian museum experience. This re-assessment is grounded in a critical re-examination of South Asian vision, which so far has been singularly conceptualised as darshan, proposing instead the need for other scopic regimes to be investigated such as nazar. By applying this expanded view of the South Asian gaze to visitor interactions at the Lahore Museum, this paper aims to overcome the persisting bias against local visitors and suggest that their affective responses are not incongruous to the idea of the museum but relevant to contemporary museology.","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"35 1","pages":"89 - 102"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78416207","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 : 2021-03-05DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2021.1893021
Rosemary Crill
{"title":"Making Kantha, Making Home. Women at work in colonial Bengal","authors":"Rosemary Crill","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2021.1893021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2021.1893021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"60 2","pages":"1-2"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02666030.2021.1893021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72485488","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 : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2021.1875742
R. Lewis
The Chitradurga Nayakas ruled part of central Karnataka between the 1550s and 1779. When mapped by the British in the early 1800s, the former Chitradurga kingdom comprised eleven parganas or districts, each of which were administered by a headquarters town. Similar territorial divisions existed throughout the Early Modern kingdoms and chiefdoms of South India. Taking Mayakonda as an example, I trace its development and history as the fortified headquarters of a pargana on Chitradurga’s frontier. The results illustrate the contributions that such towns made to the overall success of small kingdoms like Chitradurga, as well as providing insight into some of the common objects of Early Modern wars in South India.
{"title":"Mayakonda, A Fortified Headquarters Town of the Chitradurga Nayakas","authors":"R. Lewis","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2021.1875742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2021.1875742","url":null,"abstract":"The Chitradurga Nayakas ruled part of central Karnataka between the 1550s and 1779. When mapped by the British in the early 1800s, the former Chitradurga kingdom comprised eleven parganas or districts, each of which were administered by a headquarters town. Similar territorial divisions existed throughout the Early Modern kingdoms and chiefdoms of South India. Taking Mayakonda as an example, I trace its development and history as the fortified headquarters of a pargana on Chitradurga’s frontier. The results illustrate the contributions that such towns made to the overall success of small kingdoms like Chitradurga, as well as providing insight into some of the common objects of Early Modern wars in South India.","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"161 ","pages":"1 - 12"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02666030.2021.1875742","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72426112","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 : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2020.1854496
B. J. Fleming
{"title":"Mapping the Pāśupata Landscape: Narrative, Place, and the Śaiva Imaginary in Early Medieval North India","authors":"B. J. Fleming","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2020.1854496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2020.1854496","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"72 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82364858","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 : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2021.1945251
Libbie Mills
Sanskrit building literature offers a thorough presentation of the complex planning, building and ritual that goes into a construction. Among the factors considered by these building manuals is the choice of the architect. In greater or lesser depth, they list the qualifications and qualities to be looked for in an architect so that all will go well, and a few of them go on to address what can go wrong. The paper will follow four texts that examine the architect: the Devyāmata, Samāraṅgaṇasūtradhāra, Aparājitapṛcchā, and Mayamata. The focus will be on the watchful relationship between the architect and his royal patron.
{"title":"The Master may Wander into Servanthood: The King and his Architect","authors":"Libbie Mills","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2021.1945251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2021.1945251","url":null,"abstract":"Sanskrit building literature offers a thorough presentation of the complex planning, building and ritual that goes into a construction. Among the factors considered by these building manuals is the choice of the architect. In greater or lesser depth, they list the qualifications and qualities to be looked for in an architect so that all will go well, and a few of them go on to address what can go wrong. The paper will follow four texts that examine the architect: the Devyāmata, Samāraṅgaṇasūtradhāra, Aparājitapṛcchā, and Mayamata. The focus will be on the watchful relationship between the architect and his royal patron.","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"13 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87801903","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 : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2021.1969807
Rajarshi Sengupta
This essay seeks to explore the significance of mimetic actions in making the knowledge reserve of the early modern kalamkari textile makers of the Coromandel region, southern India. A shared pool of visuals found in these textiles, south Indian murals, Deccani architecture, and artifacts allow us to assess the histories of the artisans who engaged with cross-cultural and intermedial mobilities. Images on these textiles were mediated, often supplied by their patrons. This compelled the artisans to explore the fullest possibilities of their knowledge employing mimetic actions, which are generally misunderstood as ‘copying’ or ‘imitation’. Contemporary woodblock making in Pedana, Andhra Pradesh, present examples to reflect on these actions as the knowledge practice of early modern textile makers. The layered actions of mediating and reproducing images are deeply informed by artisanal decision-making and thus offer insights to potentially retrieve their histories. I propose the reciprocity of mimetic flow in the early modern Deccani visual culture is a result of artisanal decision – a controlled act informed by artisanal resistance enabling transmission of visual knowledge. Further, I will elaborate on the relevance of the idea of ‘copying’ in terms of synthesizing and developing repositories of artisanal knowledge.
{"title":"From Reference to Knowledge Repositories: On Mimetic Aspects of Kalamkari Making","authors":"Rajarshi Sengupta","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2021.1969807","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2021.1969807","url":null,"abstract":"This essay seeks to explore the significance of mimetic actions in making the knowledge reserve of the early modern kalamkari textile makers of the Coromandel region, southern India. A shared pool of visuals found in these textiles, south Indian murals, Deccani architecture, and artifacts allow us to assess the histories of the artisans who engaged with cross-cultural and intermedial mobilities. Images on these textiles were mediated, often supplied by their patrons. This compelled the artisans to explore the fullest possibilities of their knowledge employing mimetic actions, which are generally misunderstood as ‘copying’ or ‘imitation’. Contemporary woodblock making in Pedana, Andhra Pradesh, present examples to reflect on these actions as the knowledge practice of early modern textile makers. The layered actions of mediating and reproducing images are deeply informed by artisanal decision-making and thus offer insights to potentially retrieve their histories. I propose the reciprocity of mimetic flow in the early modern Deccani visual culture is a result of artisanal decision – a controlled act informed by artisanal resistance enabling transmission of visual knowledge. Further, I will elaborate on the relevance of the idea of ‘copying’ in terms of synthesizing and developing repositories of artisanal knowledge.","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"51 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89848088","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 : 2020-07-02DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2020.1821515
Padma Anagol
Although child-bride harm was uncovered during the Age of Consent controversy (1890s), no attempt has been made to excavate its origins in Indian history. Rectifying this void, I investigate the phenomena of child sexual abuse in early modern and modern regions of Bengal and Maharashtra. I adopt a female-child-centred approach that involves engaging with the perspectives of girls and young women. Some questions raised are: Did a girl have rights? If so, how was her freewill visualised by the state, law and popular culture? What can we glean from women’s discourses through historical time on pre-pubertal sex, conjugality and child-marriage and how are they different from official discourses? In order to cast light on an obscured subject, I widen the archive to include an analysis of devotional poetry, bardic literature, personal narratives, royal chronicles besides, the more conventional media reports, religious and medical texts. The essay reveals how religious punditry combined with the state and popular culture to produce a convoluted concept of female agency that authorised girl-bride sexual abuse in child marriage. The study finds more continuities than breaks in the prevalence of child-wife abuse within the institution of child marriage from early modern to modern times.
{"title":"Historicising Child Sexual Abuse in Early Modern and Modern India: Patriarchal Norms, Violence and Agency of Child-Wives and Young Women in the Institution of Child Marriage","authors":"Padma Anagol","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2020.1821515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2020.1821515","url":null,"abstract":"Although child-bride harm was uncovered during the Age of Consent controversy (1890s), no attempt has been made to excavate its origins in Indian history. Rectifying this void, I investigate the phenomena of child sexual abuse in early modern and modern regions of Bengal and Maharashtra. I adopt a female-child-centred approach that involves engaging with the perspectives of girls and young women. Some questions raised are: Did a girl have rights? If so, how was her freewill visualised by the state, law and popular culture? What can we glean from women’s discourses through historical time on pre-pubertal sex, conjugality and child-marriage and how are they different from official discourses? In order to cast light on an obscured subject, I widen the archive to include an analysis of devotional poetry, bardic literature, personal narratives, royal chronicles besides, the more conventional media reports, religious and medical texts. The essay reveals how religious punditry combined with the state and popular culture to produce a convoluted concept of female agency that authorised girl-bride sexual abuse in child marriage. The study finds more continuities than breaks in the prevalence of child-wife abuse within the institution of child marriage from early modern to modern times.","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"83 1","pages":"177 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83482692","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 : 2020-07-02DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2020.1797354
Rohan D’souza
{"title":"Richard Grove (1955-2020) and the Quest for Interdisciplinary Environmentalism","authors":"Rohan D’souza","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2020.1797354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2020.1797354","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"222 - 224"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87543970","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 : 2020-07-02DOI: 10.1080/02666030.2020.1788281
A. Malhotra
{"title":"The Great Agrarian Conquest: The Colonial Reshaping of a Rural World","authors":"A. Malhotra","doi":"10.1080/02666030.2020.1788281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2020.1788281","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52006,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Studies","volume":"75 1","pages":"220 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86306250","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}