This article explores Shivaji’s use of Braj Bhasha poetry to construct and assert his identity in the furtherance of his royal consecration and realisation of his geopolitical ambitions. Departing from the cultural environment of Deccani sultanates with their established patronage of Dakani and Persian, Shivaji employed Braj to appeal to Hindu aristocracy, most notably Rajput chiefs, linking himself genealogically to the Sisodia Rajputs. Śivrājbhūṣaṇ, poetical treatise commissioned by him, blends indigenous Hindu themes with Persianate royal imagery, reflecting complex political and cultural strategy to claim legitimacy and imperial status. Drawing on Dirk Kolff’s hypothesis on warrior identities (1990), the article attempts to consider Shivaji’s Rajput affiliation as both pragmatic and indicative of flexible social identities shaped by military alliances. The study situates one of Shivaji’s literary and political endeavours within a broader tradition of Braj Bhasha literary cultivation in the Deccan, tracing its origins to Shivaji’s father, Shahaji, and poets such as Cintāmaṇi Tripāṭhī. This transregional literary engagement reinforced Shivaji’s royal authority and positioned him within the competing cultural landscapes of early modern India.

The tragic events that followed the demolition of Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 in Ayodhya were the culmination of a conflict simmering for almost the entire period of independent India, especially after the 1980s, striking at democracy and secularism, two values on which independent India was built. The Hindi literary world did not remain silent to these developments. However, the literary output that emerged on the subject during this time, though largely known and studied from the perspective of communal conflict and politics, has not been explored in the context of bearing witness by the literary community—their specific gaze as a witness. This article attempts to fill this gap by looking at two poetry collections, Apnī zabān, and Yah aisā samay hai, edited by Asad Zaidī and Viṣṇu Nāgar, and published by SAHMAT in 1994. It offers a contextualised analysis of the creative expression offered by poets acting in defence of a democratic, secular state.

The article examines narratives on domestic violence in middle-class families in selected novels of an acclaimed Indian author, Bani Basu, who writes in Bengali. Svetpātharer thālā (1990) and Khārāp chele (2002), set in the second half of the 20th century in Kolkata, provide meticulous depictions of the patriarchal system in an urban middle-class society that is modern and conservative at the same time. The analysis suggests that Basu follows relatively conventional narrative patterns while portraying women experiencing domestic violence, namely showing their journey from submissive wives—psychologically manipulated by their husbands, their in-laws and the society at large—to self-confident agents of change who fight for their freedom and happiness, paying a heavy price for their acts of rebellion.

In the paper, I examine the concept of “cruelty” (kaṭumai) of physical substances in the Tamil siddha alchemical literature, by taking as the starting point an analysis of the selected texts ascribed to Siddhar Yākōpu alias Rāmatēvar (ca. 17th–18th c.), a prominent author of the Tamil siddha alchemical tradition. The alchemical works of Yākōpu repeatedly describe certain alchemical operations, the names of which allude to acts of violence, such as “binding” (kaṭṭutal) and “killing” (kollutal). Such operations, according to the texts, should be mastered and performed by alchemists on various material substances. In the paper, I analyze passages that shed light on the purpose and character of such operations in the alchemical tradition of the Siddhars. I also address the issue of the non-human material agency related to the perspective of material ecocriticism as presented in the Tamil siddha texts.

The aim of this article is to reflect on certain keywords of the Rajput world shaped by the “predominantly masculine martial culture” (Kasturi 2002: 12). Those keywords are crucial to understanding the phenomenon of violence in the Rajput milieu, violence that is perpetrated irrespective of kshatriyahood and outside the battlefield. Keeping in mind that violence cannot be identified with a particular community, but certain types of aggressive acts can be associated with certain social classes or groups (Kasturi 2002: 20), this article seeks to demonstrate that terms such as vair, bāroṭiyā, dacoity, and bhomiyāvat, reveal the mechanisms of collective violence in the socio-political practice of the Rajputs. This will be useful in understanding the cultural background of specific regional patterns of violent behaviour in contrast to the colonial stereotype of a Rajput as primitive, violent, but brave.

This paper focuses on the genesis of the association between the Indian warrior goddess and the lion. As is well-known, this is a goddess with a multifaceted identity, who evokes both imperial grandeur and village cultic practices. This figure cannot be identified as Mahiṣāsuramardinī or Durgā in any Pre-Kuṣāṇa and Kuṣāṇa text or inscription. A considerable influence on her burgeoning representation was probably exercised by Nanā, a Hellenistic goddess, who takes on characteristics of the Mesopotamian Inanna-Ištar, typically associated with lions. Significantly, in the early centuries CE, this feline was still a widespread species on the Subcontinent and had already become identified as the fiercest wild predator, informing the long-lasting lion-warrior imagery. While the background and the rise of Durgā have been the object of several studies, relatively little attention has been paid to her symbolic association with the lion as a key perspective that may contribute to providing a deeper understanding of both the shaping and the significance of this divine figure. By analysing some of the most significant of the earliest iconographic and textual representations, this paper is an initial attempt to employ the feline attribute as a prism to trace the earliest phase in the historical process of the development of the goddess. It may provide insights regarding both the degree of entanglement between local cults and early Hinduism, and the interrelation between the representation of this warrior goddess and kingship ideology in Kuṣāṇa and early Gupta India.

In a recent study (Pontillo 2016) it has been argued that the Mahābhārata contains traces of a heterodox culture, the Vrātya-culture, and these emerge most clearly in connection with Bhīṣma and Droṇa. In this article it will be strongly suggested that any analysis of these two epic characters should take Kṛpa into account as well, since he has many features in common with them, especially with Droṇa. Furthermore, after a briefly outlined proposal to explain these commonalities, the function of the narrative character of Kṛpa will be examined.

The cover of Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions, and Belonging in Princely Rampur, picks up on the earlier book's pictorial clues and by way of another, closely related painting, "a visual depiction of the Jashn-e-Benazir celebration in princely Rampur" (Khan 2022: back cover), surreptitiously epitomizes objectives underwriting Razak Khan's research project and his views on the history of the local. The "royal festival jashn-e-benazir, first held in 1866 by the Nawab Kalb-e-Ali Khan (1832-87) with the aim of promoting art, culture and trade in the state" (ibid.: 4) thus becomes an allegory for the larger story of a quest "to understand localized Muslim political and historical experiences" (ibid.: 1-2) against the regional as well as the larger, pan-regional backdrop. With present-day technologies providing handy tools which allow us to peep into books in a virtual space, on the publishers' or the sellers' websites, it seems almost superfluous to reiterate the books' contents in a review. However, not yet ready to abandon a useful template, I present here briefly a formal structural arrangement of both books. In the case of The Incomparable Festival, its two main parts, evenly matched in length, are Introduction (pp. 1-40) and Translation (pp. 41-80). These are followed by Editor's Note and Acknowledgments (pp. 81-82), Translator's Note and Acknowledgements (pp. 83-86), Bibliography and Notes. Introduction, as we learn later (Khan 2022: xiii), is also reiterated in parts as Chapter 1 of Minority Pasts where historical milieu is given more attention and where Jan Sahib's princely patron, Nawab Kalb-e-Ali Khan (r. 1865-1887), to whom the musaddas 1 is dedicated, and whose life spans the pre-Mutiny and the post-Mutiny periods, is discussed at greater length. In The Incomparable Festival, however, we are given a fine, in-depth textual analysis of the poem itself, spoken of as a "literary artefact", "a quintessential text that evokes the locale of princely Rampur [and] its literary centrality (markaz)" (Khan 2021: 4). One needs to remember that at that point in time, with the 1 A poem in six-line stanzas used for commemorative or hortatory verse, a late-classical form which reached its fruition during the late 19 th century.

Among the extensive repertoire of Pāṇḍya dynastic themes, the motif of clash between a Pāṇḍya sovereign and Indra is ubiquitous. This topos which supposedly originated around middle of the 5th century CE, can be traced to Cilapattikāram XI, 17–30, which celebrates a Pāṇḍya monarch wearing Indra’s garland, capturing the clouds, and breaking the god’s crown. The narrative was later employed in the Tiruviḷaiyāṭaṟpurāṇam (late 13th century) and its Sanskrit rendering, the Hālāsyamāhātmya (14th–15th centuries), where the actions of the Pāṇḍya kings were inserted in the narratives about the divine līlās of Śiva in Madurai. Since the early phase of the dynasty, this mytheme was employed as a tool of political display in the South. After a survey of the motif in the first phase of the imperial documents, the paper will focus on the reemployment of the category of royal violence in the Teṅkāśi dynastic period (14th–18th centuries CE), using the lens of the official copper plates of the late Pāṇḍya chancery and the previous Sanskrit literary production.