Settlement and Local Histories of the Early Deccan

Settlement and Local Histories of the Early Deccan
Author: Aloka Parasher Sen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2021-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000361128

This book is a detailed account of the multi-faceted history of the Deccan. Beginning with its historical foundations it goes on to delineate how it is the key to understanding its social, economic, political and ideological evolution. Containing nine essays, this volume attempts to look at regional history from the perspective of given localities that provides the many facets of early Deccani society and culture. Hitherto, this was mainly articulated in terms of the broad categories of language and religion in the many historical studies of present-day linguistic states. In focussing on local spatial contexts as the primary layer of historical reality, the book has relied on multiple sources of information, largely extant archaeological material while also drawing information from inscri­ptions, textual material and oral memory. The book also reflects on the important events of various periods by placing them as part of larger social and economic processes emanating from the local. The essays in this collection have been presented thematically moving from general issues discussed in Part I to the more particular in Part II and finally, to reflect on the multiplicity and simultaneity of different kinds of processes in a constant state of negotiation, in Part III. The historical sensibilities of people in various locations right from Kotalingala and Dhulikatta to Phanigiri, Patancheru, Kondapur and Nanakramguda and from Thotlakonda to Nagarjunakonda, Amaravati, Vaddamanu and Shravan Belgola have been recounted. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The Archaeology of Sacred Spaces

The Archaeology of Sacred Spaces
Author: Susan Verma Mishra
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2016-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317193741

This volume focuses on the religious shrine in western India as an institution of cultural integration in the period spanning 200 BCE to 800 CE. It presents an analysis of religious architecture at multiple levels, both temporal and spatial, and distinguishes it as a ritual instrument that integrates individuals and communities into a cultural fabric. The work shows how these structures emphasise on communication with a host of audiences such as the lay worshipper, the ritual specialist, the royalty and the elite as well as the artisan and the sculptor. It also examines religious imagery, inscriptions, traditional lore and Sanskrit literature. The book will be of special interest to researchers and scholars of ancient Indian history, Hinduism, religious studies, architecture and South Asian studies.

Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India

Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India
Author: John Guy
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2023-07-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588396932

A pioneering study of the emergence of Buddhist art in southern India, featuring vibrant photography of rare works, many published here for the first time Named for two primary motifs in Buddhist art, the sacred bodhi tree and the protective snake, Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India is the first publication to foreground devotional works produced in the Deccan from 200 BCE to 400 CE. Unlike traditional narratives, which focus on northern India (where the Buddha was born, taught, and died), this groundbreaking book presents Buddhist art from monastic sites in the south. Long neglected, this is among the earliest surviving bodies of Buddhist art, and among the most sublimely beautiful. An international team of researchers contributes new scholarship on the sculptural and devotional art associated with Buddhism, and masterpieces from recently excavated Buddhist sites are published here for the first time—including Kanaganahalli and Phanigiri, the most important new discoveries in a generation. With its exploration of Buddhism’s emergence in southern India, as well as of India’s deep commercial and cultural engagement with the Hellenized and Roman worlds, this definitive study expands our understanding of the origins of Buddhist art itself.

Historical Dictionary of Ancient India

Historical Dictionary of Ancient India
Author: Kumkum Roy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2009
Genre: India
ISBN: 0810853663

India's history and culture is ancient and dynamic, spanning back to the beginning of human civilization. Beginning with a mysterious culture along the Indus River and in farming communities in the southern lands of India, the history of India is punctuated by constant integration with migrating peoples and with the diverse cultures that surround the country. Placed in the center of Asia, history in India is a crossroads of cultures from China to Europe, as well as the most significant Asian connection with the cultures of Africa. The Historical Dictionary of Ancient India provides information ranging from the earliest Paleolithic cultures in the Indian subcontinent to 1000 CE. The ancient history of this country is related in this book through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on rulers, bureaucrats, ancient societies, religion, gods, and philosophical ideas.

Forms of the Goddess Lajj? Gaur? in Indian Art

Forms of the Goddess Lajj? Gaur? in Indian Art
Author: Carol Radcliffe Bolon
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780271043692

Striking images of a certain Indian goddess have been variously referred to as the "shameless woman" the "nude squatting goddess," the "mother goddess," or, because her historical name remains unknown, more than twenty-five names, among them Aditi, Lajjā Gaurī, Renukā, and Nagna Kabambdha. The best-known images of this goddess have a female torso and a lotus flower in place of a head, while her legs are bent up at the knees and drawn up to each side in a position that has been described as one of "giving birth" or "self-display." This type of goddess figure is explained as part of a long, highly sophisticated tradition of expressing fertility and well-being in Indian art. The artists creating images of Lajjā Gaurī drew on various ancient symbols of fortune, fertility, and life-force to communicate her power through their rich heritage of meanings. As these historical-religious symbols and images were constantly reused and reincorporated, they formed a new and enriched religious context. In the process of recycling they became empowered cultural metaphors, visual morphemes in the language of Indian art. Because there are no texts to explain the figure, the study proceeds from the basis of the objects to derive their meaning. Carol Bolon charts the changes in the goddess's form over a period of more than four centuries, including its possible adoption from tribal worship into Hindu temples, and brings a new appreciation of Lajjā Gaurī's rich symbolic meanings and cultural context.

Conversations with the Animate ‘Other’

Conversations with the Animate ‘Other’
Author: Aloka Parasher-Sen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2023-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9356406901

Human interventions with living entities have had to be in a constant state of negotiating space necessary for co-habitation with animals, birds, trees, plants, grasslands, forests, hills, water bodies in the creation of villages and other settlements. The book argues that negotiating this space meant sharing, which impacted economic strategies, religious experiences, cultural interactions and oral performances that humans have strategized and preserved. This intersectional theme, through individual case studies, ultimately provides us the civilizational ethos of the Indian sub-continent on how human non-human relations informed it. The book provides a window on how this relationship was represented in a variety of material and literary texts, visual representations, archival records, folklore and oral testimonies. It brings to the fore these narratives over the longue durée to explicate the complex and delicate relationships in region specific ecological settings and thus give readers a perspective that crosses disciplinary and conceptual boundaries.

Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity

Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 547
Release: 2014-11-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004283897

A unique variety of approaches to all aspects of urban culture in the ancient world can be found in Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity, a collection of 19 essays addressing ancient cities from an interdisciplinary perspective. As the title indicates, the volume considers both how ancient people lived in their cities as physical structures and how they thought with them as ideas and symbols. Essays in this volume deal with texts and sites from Spain to South India, but there is a particular focus on the archaeology and epigraphy of Roman-era Italy, civic identity in the Roman provinces, the Hebrew Bible and Early Christian literature, Vergil and other imperial Latin authors.

Colonialism, Orientalism and the Dravidian Languages

Colonialism, Orientalism and the Dravidian Languages
Author: K. Venkateswarlu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2020-11-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000365778

The Dravidian language family is marked historically by a protracted struggle between Tamil and its aggressively assertive supremacy, and the consequent peripheralizing of other majoritarian languages of the region. This book looks at the development of Telugu — with its unique grammatical and lexical tradition as instrumental in the construction of the concept of the Dravidian language family in 1816, and in the development of comparative linguistics since that time. The author’s arguments locate Telugu in multiple matrices: of historical and theoretical Orientalism; the colonial state’s interest in native languages; the politics of state patronage; questions of cultural assimilation and divergence; the overbearing presence of Tamil and its literary traditions; and the related inter- and intra-civilizational dialogues. The book thus grapples with the tortured emergence of Telugu — a product of the dynamics of Andhra society, economy, polity and culture influenced and driven by Muslim, Hindu and Western influence. With its richly textured narrative, this book will be of interest to those in the fields of history, sociology, socio-linguistics, colonial studies, and literature, apart from the generally interested reader.