Early India Research Articles

Book Review: Bhairabi Prasad Sahu, The Changing Gaze: Regions and the Constructions of Early India

Bhairabi Prasad Sahu, The Changing Gaze: Regions and the Constructions of Early India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 341.

Book Review: Hope for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America. Emory Studies in Law and Religion

Book Review: <i>Hope for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America</i>. <i>Emory Studies in Law and Religion</i>

Translating the “Exact” and “Positive” Sciences: Early Twentieth Century Reflections on the Past of the Sciences in India

Inductivist theories of science dominated the landscape of the philosophy of science in nineteenth century Europe. This paper explores their vocation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century India. In the first half of the nineteenth century British Indologists and educationists introduced scholars at the Oriental colleges in India to Francis Bacon's Novum Organum Scientiarum . Baconian inductivism was simultaneously interpreted as a methodology that highlighted the distinctiveness of the method of the modern sciences, as well as its similarities with the constellations of knowledge in South Asia. The paper attempts to show that in the second half of the century and later, inductivism as formulated in the writings of William Whewell and J.S. Mill sets the stage for the debate on the inductive nature of the sciences in India. Two Bengali scholars, the philosopher B.N.Seal and the social scientist Benoy Kumar Sarkar, turn to the writings of Whewell and Mill as resources as well as offering a `Kuhnian exemplar’ to mine the history of Indian philosophy for cognitive homologues in order to reconstruct the specific nature of `the exact and positive sciences of the `Hindus’. In other words, the corpus of writings of Whewell and Mill, notwithstanding the differences amongst them, provides these two South Asian writers with a lens to embark on a comparative history of philosophy and present the knowledge systems of India as scientific.

How Should We Approach the Economy of ‘Early Modern India’?

AbstractTirthankar Roy's recent synthesis on the economic history of early modern India claims to provide a new, overarching narrative placing this period within the broader sweep of the history of what Roy defines as ‘capitalism’ in India in the very long term. This article provides a detailed critique of Roy's monograph, suggesting that it suffers from some serious methodological deficits, arising not least from a future-oriented paradigm that imposes anachronistic concepts on this period, including the very notion of ‘India’. Furthermore, Roy's view of the economy as being fundamentally driven forward by the rise of a coastal polity, expanding inwards from Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, sits awkwardly with his repeated claim that colonialism was of little significance for Indian economic history. Finally, this article suggests that this period might be more fruitfully approached not only by abandoning thetelosof what we know of India's future, but also by adopting both regionally focused and comparative approaches, turning away from long-distance trade as the primary lens through which to view the economy, and instead examining endogenous factors in the economies of individual regions and enriching our understanding of them by reference to studies of other world regions with comparable patterns of development in the same period. More nuanced ways of approaching economic change in the very long run, including the importance of developments in modes of consumption and market- and profit-oriented economic behaviour, are suggested as a better means of understanding both the economies of the late pre-colonial centuries in the Indian subcontinent and the development of capitalism, which should also be understood in a more specific manner than Roy allows.

Stars, Peripheral Scientists, and Equations: The Case of M. N. Saha

Peripheral actors rarely make an appearance in the general story of scientific practice, and their work in science is usually viewed as somewhat derivative of the practices of the main community. Contrary to this received model, here I argue that the peripheral contexts of science can be quite important and reveal novel conduits to creative scientific thinking. Not only can such contexts offer us a new window into how contributory expertise in science could be born amid difficult circumstances, they also allow us to see how new scientific communities could be founded during such encounters. Using case studies of M. N. Saha and other physicists in early twentieth-century India, I argue that such modest practices begin when peripheral protagonists seek to initiate new trading zones with the established centers of science. The resulting exchanges can give rise to new breakthroughs and conceptual changes in scientific practice. Such peripheral breakthroughs can be studied cognitively, giving us newer models of scientific practice as well as creating a new kind of self-image for such scientists.

Modes of betel leaf consumption in early India

In this article, I analyse some food practices surrounding betel in early Indian history. Betel consumption was not prescribed for everyone in Brahmanical society. Hence I examine texts referring to betel from the late pre-modern to early modern era (roughly 300–1800 ce) in order to explain proscriptions of betel in the legal discourse that discusses religious practice. The literature I consider in my analysis of betel consumption ranges from the kāmaśāstra genre, influential works of tantra, texts detailing worship, and ascetic and renunciant guides. Material cultural studies aid my exploration of betel as a socio-religious identity marker and my development of three modes of betel consumption and one mode of non-consumption.

The Longmala and Mengya’a skarn Pb–Zn deposits, Gangdese region, Tibet: evidence from U–Pb and Re–Os geochronology for formation during early India–Asia collision

The Longmala and Mengya’a deposits are two representative skarn Pb–Zn deposits of the Nyainqêntanglha Pb–Zn–(Cu–Mo–Ag) polymetallic belt in the Gangdese region, Tibet, China. Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) zircon U–Pb dating of the mineralization-related biotite monzogranite from the Longmala deposit yielded a weighted mean age of 55.7 Ma, which can be interpreted as the emplacement age of the pluton. Re–Os dating of three molybdenite samples from the Longmala deposit yielded model ages of 51.8–54.3 Ma, with a weighted mean age of 53.3 Ma, which is interpreted as the mineralization age of the deposit and overlaps the age of the causative intrusion. The Re–Os dating of four molybdenite samples from the Mengya’a deposit yielded model ages of 60.4–65.8 Ma, with a weighted mean age of 63.6 Ma, which represents the mineralization age of this deposit. Our new precise age data for these two deposits are consistent with the existing ages of ca. 65–51 Ma for other skarn polymetallic deposits in the Nyainqêntanglha metallogenic belt. In addition, these new age data, combined with existing information on the geological evolution history of the Lhasa terrane, indicate that the belt of skarn deposits is closely related to initial collision between India and the Asian continents.

The geography of weaving in early nineteenth-century south India

Most research on the handloom industry is focused upon the export trade and production for export, and, by extension, upon the Coromandel Coast. This article, by contrast, explores the physical and human geography of weaving for the ‘domestic’ market in the ‘inland’ regions of south India. Using visual sources such as Company paintings, together with archival materials and statistical data, it reconstructs everyday modes of dress and clothing in the early nineteenth century in order to obtain a picture of the ‘kinds’ of cloth produced: this analysis shows that the largest proportion was white or predominantly white, and of coarse to middling quality. It goes on to map different systems of cloth production, and the pattern of weaver settlements, and shows that both were significantly different from those described for the Coromandel Coast. In the inland regions, coarse and durable kinds of cloth were woven almost everywhere by plebeian weavers scattered through the countryside; patterned and fine varieties were woven by specialist, full-time weavers who usually lived in large settlements. The article describes a diversity of markets and production systems, unpicks the meanings of part-time and full-time work, and their significance. The data and analysis serve to complicate the debate on the nature of the textile economy in early modern India.

Book Review: P.K. Basant, The City and the Country in Early India: A Study of Malwa

P.K. Basant, The City and the Country in Early India: A Study of Malwa, Primus Books, New Delhi, 2012, 369 pp., price ₹1150.

A study of scientific reasoning in a peripheral context: the discovery of the Raman Effect

This paper is an attempt to reconstruct how C.V. Raman, a peripheral scientist in the early 20th century colonial India, managed to develop a research programme in physical optics from his remote colonial location. His attempts at self-training and self-education eventually led him to the discovery of the Raman Effect and to the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930. In trying to re-construct an account of the ways in which Raman developed his research programme in optics by grasping various elements of a scientific practice from the Western scientific community, we see how a newcomer in science could be surprisingly creative in achieving new breakthroughs, and how through such efforts he or she can establish new trading zones with another established community that has the potential to develop into independent practices.

Daniel E. White. From Little London to Little Bengal: Religion, Print, and Modernity in Early British India, 1793–1835.

Daniel E. White. From Little London to Little Bengal: Religion, Print, and Modernity in Early British India, 1793–1835.

Cities of power and protest: spatial legibility and the colonial state in early twentieth-century India

It is a commonplace in Indian history that the decision to move the colonial capital from Calcutta to New Delhi was spurred by the political landscape of Calcutta: anticolonial nationalism had made Calcutta ungovernable. What is rarely asked is exactly what aspect of the urban attributes and political landscape of the city prompted this reaction? What made it difficult or impossible to carve out a twentieth-century imperial diagram in Calcutta? Based on readings of the nationalist and terrorist movements launched in Calcutta (and Bengal) during the first two decades of the twentieth century, I argue that what was at stake was the spatial legibility of the state. If New Delhi produced a clear description of the imperial state, making it visually explicit, Calcutta defied this legibility of the state. Anticolonial nationalism fundamentally altered the political geography of Calcutta as the capital city of empire: the colonial archives tell a story of a spatially beleaguered state. The story describes the process through which city space, even those that display the most authoritative diagram of power, is appropriated and disarticulated to produce a new political field.

The Fragrance of the Buddha, the Scent of Monuments, and the Odor of Images in Early India

Cet article propose une première évaluation d’un sujet fort négligé des études bouddhiques, l’odeur et le parfum. Dans plusieurs textes (Lalitavistara ; le corpus des vinaya des Mūlasarvāstivādin ; Kathāvatthu par exemple) il apparaît que les odeurs émanant du Buddha sont fondamentalement différentes de celle d’un humain – y compris celles de ses excréments ou celle qu’exhalent ses restes après la crémation. Les données archéologiques confirment l’importance du champ olfactif pour les bouddhistes : le gandhakuṭi, la « chambre des parfums », constitue une part essentielle des complexes architecturaux monastiques des Mūlasarvāstivādin, au centre desquelles elle se trouve placée et c’est là un constituant du monastère qui apparaît dans de nombreuses inscriptions. Dans le vinaya des Mūlasarvāstivādin on observe que tout comme le stūpa cette pièce bien particulière est la propriété du Buddha lui-même et son importance pour les bouddhistes se marque entre autres par les parfums qui s’y attachent. Il s’agit là sans doute de marques de culte, mais certaines données textuelles autorisent également à considérer ces fragrances comme signalant une présence qui doit par ailleurs demeurer invisible. Les textes nous apprennent aussi que les figures elles-mêmes du Buddha peuvent être imprégnées de parfums. Cet ensemble de données, tant textuelles qu’archéologique fait conclure à l’importance de l’odeur dans le champ bouddhique – une odeur divine qui marque la présence du Buddha là où elle s’exhale.

Indigenism in Contemporary IR Discourses in India: A Critique

This article critically examines indigenism in the field of International Relations (IR) in India. Indigenism involves a claim that a select corpus of resources from early India—‘indigenous historical knowledge’— is relevant for understanding contemporary India’s politics and international relations. It is also projected as a basis for reimagining IR in India. Contesting these claims, the article outlines the ahistorical and politically problematic nature of indigenism. It also argues that the appeal of indigenism reveals a predicament of imaginative capacity that marks the scholarship concerned with reimagining IR in India: despite considerable interest in lessening the dependence on the architecture of IR of the West, there is less clarity about the shape and substance of new scholarly frameworks. The enthusiasm for reimagining IR is not, as yet, matched by very substantive pathways to doing it. This too, inadvertently, encourages indigenism. The article concludes by arguing that closely studying the political modernization of South Asia and its implications for international relations of India and the region can resolve this predicament.

Public philology: text criticism and the sectarianization of Hinduism in early modern south India

By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, south India had witnessed a widespread sectarianization of its religious landscape. We observe a growing polarization among religious institutions, the social and economic networks they mediated, and religious discourse across genres, whether Sanskrit or vernacular, whether devotional poetry or systematic theology. The present article examines the textual culture that emerged from the intersectarian discourse of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Tamil country. In particular, I focus on a definitive but overlooked dimension of this discourse that I refer to as ‘public philology’: text criticism that serves as public theology. During the early modern centuries, sectarian theologians across community boundaries increasingly challenged their rivals specifically on philological grounds, combing the scriptures of their rivals for textual corruptions and unstable recensions. Focusing on one particular case of public philology in practice – the debate concerning the scriptural justification for bearing the sectarian tilaka on the forehead – I argue that the philological ventures of these early modern theologians served simultaneously as public theology. This trans-sectarian public theology, far from being a strictly academic enterprise, served to solidify the boundaries between sectarian communities. By adjudicating public standards for orthodox religious belonging, ‘public philologians’ left a lasting impression on the religious landscape of south India up to the present day.

Darbār, maṭha, devasthānam: the politics of intellectual commitment and religious organization in sixteenth-century South India

This essay examines the nexus of the court (darbār), monastery (maṭha) and temple (devasthānam) through the career of the monastic leader, Vyāsatīrtha (1460–1539). Vyāsatīrtha was head of the Mādhva Brahmin sect under successive Vijayanagara emperors, most notably, Krishnadevarāya (r. 1509–1529). He is famous for his doctrinal polemics against alternative forms of Vedānta advanced by rival sects and in favour of his own system of thought often called ‘Dvaita’ or ‘Dualist’ Vedānta. Vyāsatīrtha’s fame as a polemicist is linked directly to his role as an institutional leader, overseeing a network of sectarian monasteries that was significantly expanded by Krishnadevarāya’s patronage. In this capacity, Vyāsatīrtha was both an agent of the Vijayanagara state and a powerful regional authority. Inscriptional and literary sources indicate that Vyāsatīrtha used royal patronage of his sect to forge productive relationships with a variety of social groups, simultaneously expanding the Empire’s economic and social networks and spreading Mādhva Brahminism into new territories. Thus, studying Vyāsatīrtha’s role as a maṭhādhipati, or the head of a monastic institutional network, illuminates key connections between Brahmin intellectual and religious activity and various socio-political formations of early sixteenth-century South India. However, the sources also reveal important distinctions between the political arena, on the one hand, and religious and intellectual arenas, on the other hand.

Eknāth in context: the literary, social, and political milieus of an early modern saint-poet1

This article attempts to envision the sixteenth-century brahman saint-poet, Eknāth of Paiṭhaṇ, in his historical context by plotting what is known about him over against recent scholarship on early modern India. Conventional scholarship classifies Eknāth as a bhakti poet. This label actually conceals more than it reveals, because the definition of bhakti is deceptively familiar, uncritically understood, and historiographically overburdened. Avoiding the term forces us to conceptualize Eknāth’s activities and significance in new ways. Exploration of his literary milieu shows how his Marathi compositions position themselves over against Sanskrit and reveals the disputed status of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as a religious authority. Within his social milieu, stories of Eknāth’s caste boundary transgression are considered alongside recent scholarship on dharmasabhās and brahman migration patterns from the Deccan to Banaras. The political milieu section envisions Eknāth and his vernacular commitment in relation to the employment of Marathi-speaking brahmans by Deccan sultanate courts, which indirectly supported the development of Marathi vernacular culture. By considering Eknāth in his historical context, this article contributes to our understanding of vernacular religion, non-elite society, and the social location of brahmans in the Deccan sultanate, thereby offering a richer background and the means to a more critical examination of early modern devotional traditions.

A. G. Roeber. Hopes for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America.

A. G. Roeber. Hopes for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America.

Can the Subaltern Woman Run? Gender, race and agency in colonial missionary texts

This article challenges the contention that it is not feasible to trace the agency of subaltern female subjects in colonial documents without at the same time distorting and even violating that very agency. Taking as its prism a letter written by a male Danish missionary chronicling a young Pariah woman’s escape from missionary control in early 20th-century South India, it argues that while a search for authentic, autonomous agency is a highly dubious endeavour, relinquishing attempts to recover the acts and interventions of persons at the bottom of social hierarchies is equally problematic. Suggesting a reading ‘along as well as against the grain’, the article tracks the ways in which the subaltern woman’s agency has been simultaneously recorded and denied, and argues for the necessity of probing both the possibilities and impossibilities presented by this type of a source.

Spoiled for Choice? The Sacred Landscapes of Ancient and Early Medieval Banavasi

This study explores how the sacred landscape was variously defined, demarcated, and appropriated in ancient and early medieval South India. Focusing in particular on the site of Banavasi in the modern state of Karnataka, I examine archaeological and epigraphic evidence to parse out some of the spatial and temporal patterns in the interaction between a surprising diversity of religious traditions and practices. While the close connection between local elite authority and traditional religious institutions such as Buddhism and Hinduism is apparent in Banavasi, the spatial and temporal organization of the landscape reflects several larger processes of interaction. These include the legitimization of local and regional elites, as well as more complex processes of interaction, competition, and replacement between religions. In addition, while stupas and temples are clearly recognizable elements of the archaeological record in South Asia, there is also considerable evidence for local cults and religious traditions, such as naga (snake) stones and various forms of commemoration. At times, these were appropriated within the larger religious traditions, and at other times remained separate and distinct entities in their own right. The persistence and longevity of these local traditions ensured that they occupied an important space in the sacred landscape of Banavasi. This article presents a case study that illustrates the complex and overlapping patterns of replacement, competition, appropriation, and abandonment that constitute historical sacred landscapes in ancient and medieval South India.