ABSTRACT
This handbook presents a multilayered and multidimensional history of state formation in premodern India.
It explores dense and rich local and subregional historiography from the mid-first millennium BC to the eighteenth century in South Asia. Shifting the focus away from economic and political factors, this handbook revises the conventional understanding of states and empires and locates them in their quotidian conduct and activity on socio-cultural and concomitant factors.
Comprehensive in scope, this handbook addresses a range of themes connected with the idea of state formation in the subcontinent. It includes discussions and debates on ritual practices and the Brahmanical order in early India; the Delhi Sultanate and role of Sultans among the Hindu kings; the cosmopolitan ‘Islamicate’ cultural influences on Puranic Hinduism; cultural background of the Mughal state.
The handbook examines new questions and ideologies of state formation, such as:
- facets of violence and resistance;
- the significance of the autonomous spaces and forests;
- regional elites, including ‘Little kings’; tribal background of some famous cults;
- trade and maritime commerce;
- royal patronage, courtly manners, lineage formation;
- imperial architecture, monuments, and temple, among others.
Featuring case studies from different part of the India subcontinent, and with contributions by renowned historians, this authoritative handbook will be an indispensable reading for teachers, scholars, and students of early India, medieval India, premodern India, South Asian history, Asian history, historiography, economic history, historical sociology, and South Asia studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|144 pages
Political systems in practice
chapter 2|13 pages
‘Autonomous spaces' and the authority of the state
chapter 7|12 pages
State formation and the frontiers
part II|182 pages
Early medieval polities
chapter 17|18 pages
Imperial temple architecture and the ideology of kingship in Odisha
part III|106 pages
Into the medieval
chapter 19|22 pages
Building a past
chapter 20|12 pages
Kosalananda Kavyam and the making of a Rajput dynasty
chapter 21|26 pages
“Sultan among Hindu Kings”
chapter 22|19 pages
Preparing for the Mughal state
chapter 23|19 pages
Durga and the king
part IV|78 pages
Beyond the premodern