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This volume offers an in-depth study of the conflicting as well as cordial relationship of the leaders of different schools of Bhakti thought with the state and their approach to society, politics and administration. It also analyses the circumstances that led some of the spiritual movements to assume political and militant character.
Reconstructs Indian regional history, from the rooting of Arab principality in Sind to the arrival of colonial rule in eastern India. Regional History of Medieval India: Society, Culture and Economy is a compilation of twenty chapters written on various themes associated with regional history during the medieval period. The volume offers varied, but comprehensive studies relating to medieval Indian History from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. The volume is based on extensive use of contemporary sources (including hitherto unknown), studied both at the macroscopic and microscopic levels. It is divided into five main sections namely, literary sources, state and administration, society, culture and economy, art and architecture and religion and mysticism. Contributors: C.M. Agrawal, Syed Mohammad Amir, S. Chandni Bi, Balwant Singh Dhillon, S.M. Azizuddin Husain, Mohammad Idris, Shahabuddin Iraqi, Arshad Islam, Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri, Syed Jamaluddin, Gulfishan Khan, M. Ifzalur-Rahman Khan, Sumbul Halim Khan, Yaqub Ali Khan, Nishat Manzar, Jigar Mohammed, S. Liyaqat Hussain Moini, Tasneem Suhrawardy, Rashmi Upadhyay, S.P. Vyas
India celebrates itself as a nation of unity in diversity, but where does that sense of unity come from? One important source is a widely-accepted narrative called the “bhakti movement.” Bhakti is the religion of the heart, of song, of common participation, of inner peace, of anguished protest. The idea known as the bhakti movement asserts that between 600 and 1600 CE, poet-saints sang bhakti from India’s southernmost tip to its northern Himalayan heights, laying the religious bedrock upon which the modern state of India would be built. Challenging this canonical narrative, John Stratton Hawley clarifies the historical and political contingencies that gave birth to the concept of the b...
This is a Comprehensive Survey of the Bhakti Movement as it sprang in South India to spread across the subcontinent in independent and multifarious manifestations yet marked with amazing commonalities. Spanning a period of 11 centuries starting from the 6th CE, the movement encompassed in its sweep a vast range of dimensions; Social, political, economic, religious, cultural, linguistic, ethical and philosophical. Among the multifarious movements which contributed to the formation of India and its Culture, the Bhakti was undoubtedly the most pervasive and persistent, says the author. Besides its sweep and depth, what proved most remarkable about the movement was that it arose almost everywher...
How do writing and literacy reshape the ways a language and its literature are imagined? If All the World Were Paper explores this question in the context of Hindi, the most widely spoken language in Southern Asia and the fourth most widely spoken language in the world today. Emerging onto the literary scene of India in the mid-fourteenth century, the vernacular of Hindi quickly acquired a place alongside “classical” languages like Sanskrit and Persian as a medium of literature and scholarship. The material and social processes through which it came to be written down and the particular form that it took—as illustrated storybooks, loose-leaf textbooks, personal notebooks, and holy scri...
This book presents a comprehensive survey of warfare in India up to the point where the British began to dominate the sub-continent. It discusses issues such as how far was the relatively bloodless nature of pre-British Indian warfare the product of stateless Indian society? How far did technology determine the dynamics of warfare in India? Did warfare in this period have a particular Indian nature and was it ritualistic? The book considers land warfare including sieges, naval warfare, the impact of horses, elephants and gunpowder, and the differences made by the arrival of Muslim rulers and by the influx of other foreign influences and techniques. The book concludes by arguing that the presence of standing professional armies supported by centralised bureaucratic states have been underemphasised in the history of India.
Covering the history of medieval and early modern India, from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries, this volume is part of a new series of collections of essays publishing current research on all aspects of polity, society, economy, religion and culture. The thematically organized volumes particularly serve as a platform for younger scholars to showcase their new research and, thus, reflect current thrusts in the study of the period. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
A FASCINATING AND RIGOROUS EXAMINATION OF KABIR’S LIFE AND POETRY AND HIS RELEVANCE TODAY, FOR BOTH THE SCHOLAR AND GENERAL READER As the right wing tries to claim Kabir for itself, while other conservatives disown him and yet others portray him as a secular idol beyond religion, the poet has never been so misunderstood. Coming from the Nirgun bhakti tradition, the words of this fifteenth-century poet have the power to reach beyond time and speak to us today. Was he a Hindu or Muslim or was he beyond religion? Did he try to cultivate a new faith or did he eschew organised religion altogether? Was his modernity an exception or a reflection of the times he lived in? What does Kabir’s life and poetry tell us about this nation’s past and present? In this rare appraisal of Kabir’s writings and his life, Purushottam Agarwal approaches this timeless poet-revolutionary with little preconceptions, presenting him the way the poet wanted to be seen, rather than what his followers and fans want to see in him.
In this book, Patton E. Burchett offers a path-breaking genealogical study of devotional (bhakti) Hinduism that traces its understudied historical relationships with tantra, yoga, and Sufism. Beginning in India’s early medieval “Tantric Age” and reaching to the present day, Burchett focuses his analysis on the crucial shifts of the early modern period, when the rise of bhakti communities in North India transformed the religious landscape in ways that would profoundly affect the shape of modern-day Hinduism. A Genealogy of Devotion illuminates the complex historical factors at play in the growth of bhakti in Sultanate and Mughal India through its pivotal interactions with Indic and Pers...
Military Thought of Asia challenges the assertion that the generation of rational secular ideas about the conduct of warfare is the preserve of the West, by analysing the history of ideas of warfare in Asia from the ancient period to the present. The volume takes a transcontinental and comparative approach to provide a broad overview of the evolution of military thought in Asia. The military traditions and theories which have emerged in different parts of Eurasia throughout history are products of geopolitics and unique to the different regions. The book considers the systematic and tight representation of ideas by famous figures including Kautlya and Sun Tzu. At the same time, it also highl...