Design and Rhetoric in a Sanskrit Court Epic

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791487415
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis Design and Rhetoric in a Sanskrit Court Epic by : Indira Viswanathan Peterson

Download or read book Design and Rhetoric in a Sanskrit Court Epic written by Indira Viswanathan Peterson and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indira Viswanathan Peterson provides an introduction to the Sanskrit court epic (mahākāvya), an important genre in classical Indian poetry, and the first study of a celebrated sixth-century poem, the Kirātārjunīya (Arjuna and the Hunter) of Bhāravi. Sanskrit court epics are shown to be characterized both by formalism and a deep engagement with enduring Indian values. The Kirātārjunīya is the earliest literary treatment of the narrative of the Pandava hero Arjuna's combat with the great god Śiva, a seminal episode in the war epic Mahābhārata. Through a close analysis of the structural strategies of Bhāravi's poem, the author illuminates the aesthetic of the mahākāvya genre. Peterson demonstrates that the classical poet uses figurative language, rhetorical devices, and structural design as the primary instruments for advancing his argument, the reconciliation of heroic action, ascetic self-control, social duty, and devotion to God. Her discussion of the Kirātārjunīya in relation to its historical setting and to renderings of this epic episode in literary texts and temple sculpture of later periods reveals the existence of complex transactions in Indian civilization between the discourses of heroic epic and court poetry, political ideologies and devotional religion, Sanskrit and the regional languages, and classical and folk traditions. Selections from the Kirātārjunīya are presented in poetic translation.

Body, History, Myth

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 069125799X
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Body, History, Myth by : Anna Lise Seastrand

Download or read book Body, History, Myth written by Anna Lise Seastrand and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The first major scholarly history of the important South Indian mural tradition in the early modern period, and a reconception of their role in negotiating the relationship between art and devotion"--

Into the Twilight of Sanskrit Court Poetry

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520282051
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Into the Twilight of Sanskrit Court Poetry by : Jesse Knutson

Download or read book Into the Twilight of Sanskrit Court Poetry written by Jesse Knutson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the twelfth-century into the thirteenth, at the court of King Laksmanasena of Bengal, Sanskrit poetry showed profound and sudden changes: a new social scope made its definitive entrance into high literature.Ê Courtly and pastoral, rural and urban, cosmopolitan and vernacular confronted each other in a commingling of high and low styles. A literary salon in what is now Bangladesh, at the eastern extreme of the nexus of regional courtly cultures that defined the age, seems to have implicitly reformulated its entire literary system in the context of the imminent breakdown of the old courtly world, as Turkish power expanded and redefined the landscape.Ê Through close readings of a little-known corpus of texts from eastern India, this ambitious book demonstrates how a local and rural sensibility came to infuse the cosmopolitan language of Sanskrit, creating a regional literary idiom that would define the emergence of the Bengali language and its literary traditions.

Text to Tradition

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231536534
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Text to Tradition by : Deven M. Patel

Download or read book Text to Tradition written by Deven M. Patel and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the twelfth century, the Naisadhiyacarita (The Adventures of Nala, King of Nisadha) is a seminal Sanskrit poem beloved by South Asian literary communities for nearly a millennium. This volume introduces readers to the poem's author, his reading communities, the modes through which the poem has been read and used, the contexts through which it became canonical, its literary offspring, and the emotional power it still holds for the culture that values it. Text to Tradition privileges the intellectual, affective, and social forms of cultural practice that inform a region's people and institutions. It also proposes a new way to conduct literary historiography, understanding literary texts as "traditions" in their own right and emphasizing the various players and critical genres involved in their reception. The book underscores the importance of the close study of individual works to building a history of literary cultures. In addition, it creates a groundbreaking model for approaching the study of other venerated South Asian texts.

The Multivalence of an Epic: Retelling the Ramayana in South India and Southeast Asia

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Publisher : Manipal Universal Press
ISBN 13 : 8195279716
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (952 download)

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Book Synopsis The Multivalence of an Epic: Retelling the Ramayana in South India and Southeast Asia by : Parul Pandya Dhar

Download or read book The Multivalence of an Epic: Retelling the Ramayana in South India and Southeast Asia written by Parul Pandya Dhar and published by Manipal Universal Press. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rāmāyaṇa traditions of South India and Southeast Asia are examined at multiple levels in this volume. The research presented here offers in-depth investigations of chosen moments in the development of the epic tradition together with broader trends that help in understanding the epic’s multivalence. The journey and localization of the Rāmāyaṇa is explored in its manifold expressions – from classical to folk, from temples and palaces to theatres and by-lanes in cities and villages, and from ancient to modern times. Regional Rāmāyaṇas from different parts of South India and Southeast Asia are placed in deliberate juxtaposition to enable a historically informed discussion of their connected pasts across land and seas. The three parts of this volume, organized as visual, literary, and performance cultures, discuss the sculpted, painted, inscribed, written, recited, and performed Rāmāyaṇas. A related emphasis is on the way boundaries of medium and genre have been crossed in the visual, literary, and performed representations of the Rāmāyaṇa. These are rewarding directions of research that have thus far received little attention. Bringing together 19 well-known scholars in Rāmāyaṇa studies from Cambodia, Canada, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, UK, and USA, this thought-provoking and elegantly illustrated volume engages with the inherent plurality, diversity, and adaptability of the Rāmāyaṇa in changing socio-political, religious, and cultural contexts and with shifting norms, tastes, traditions, and ideologies.

Extreme Poetry

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 023152529X
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Extreme Poetry by : Yigal Bronner

Download or read book Extreme Poetry written by Yigal Bronner and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in the sixth century C.E. and continuing for more than a thousand years, an extraordinary poetic practice was the trademark of a major literary movement in South Asia. Authors invented a special language to depict both the apparent and hidden sides of disguised or dual characters, and then used it to narrate India's major epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, simultaneously. Originally produced in Sanskrit, these dual narratives eventually worked their way into regional languages, especially Telugu and Tamil, and other artistic media, such as sculpture. Scholars have long dismissed simultaneous narration as a mere curiosity, if not a sign of cultural decline in medieval India. Yet Yigal Bronner's Extreme Poetry effectively negates this position, proving that, far from being a meaningless pastime, this intricate, "bitextual" technique both transcended and reinvented Sanskrit literary expression. The poems of simultaneous narration teased and estranged existing convention and showcased the interrelations between the tradition's foundational texts. By focusing on these achievements and their reverberations through time, Bronner rewrites the history of Sanskrit literature and its aesthetic goals. He also expands on contemporary theories of intertextuality, which have been largely confined to Western texts and practices.

Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190889829
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir by : Hamsa Stainton

Download or read book Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir written by Hamsa Stainton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, Kashmir was one of the most dynamic and influential centers of Sanskrit learning and literary production in South Asia. In Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir, Hamsa Stainton investigates the close connection between poetry and prayer in South Asia by studying the history of Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotras) in Kashmir. The book provides a broad introduction to the history and general features of the stotra genre, and it charts the course of these literary hymns in Kashmir from the eighth century to the present. In particular, it offers the first major study in any European language of the Stutikusum=añjali, an important work of religious literature dedicated to the god 'Siva and one of the only extant witnesses to the trajectory of Sanskrit literary culture in fourteenth-century Kashmir. The book also contributes to the study of 'Saivism by examining the ways in which 'Saiva poets have integrated the traditions of Sanskrit literature and poetics, theology (especially non-dualism), and 'Saiva worship and devotion. It substantiates the diverse configurations of 'Saiva bhakti expressed and explored in these literary hymns and the challenges they present for standard interpretations of Hindu bhakti. More broadly, this study of stotras from Kashmir offers new perspectives on the history and vitality of prayer in South Asia and its complex relationships to poetry and poetics.

The Postcolonial Epic

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Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1351201573
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis The Postcolonial Epic by : Sneharika Roy

Download or read book The Postcolonial Epic written by Sneharika Roy and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2018-01-12 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates the epic genre’s enduring relevance to the Global South. It identifies a contemporary avatar of classical epic, the ‘postcolonial epic’, ushered in by Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a foundational text of North America, and exemplified by Derek Walcott’s Caribbean masterpiece Omeros and Amitav Ghosh’s South Asian saga, the Ibis trilogy. The work focuses on the epic genre’s rich potential to articulate postimperial concerns with nation and migration across the Global North/South divide. It foregrounds postcolonial developments in the genre including a shift from politics to political economy, subaltern reconfigurations of capitalist and imperial temporalities, and the poststructuralist preoccupation with language and representation. In addition to bringing to light hitherto unexamined North/South affiliations between Melville, Walcott and Ghosh, the book proposes a fresh approach to epic through the comparative concept of ‘political epic’, where an avowed national politics promoting a culture’s ‘pure’ origins coexists uneasily with a disavowed poetics of intertextual borrowing from ‘other’ cultures. An important intervention in literary studies, this volume will interest scholars and researchers of postcolonial studies, especially South Asian and Caribbean literature, Global South studies, transnational studies and cultural studies.

Disorienting Dharma

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199860769
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis Disorienting Dharma by : Emily T. Hudson

Download or read book Disorienting Dharma written by Emily T. Hudson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the relationship between ethics, aesthetics, and religion in classical Indian literature and literary theory by focusing on one of the most celebrated and enigmatic texts to emerge from the Sanskrit epic tradition, the Mahabharata. This text, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important sources for the study of South Asian religious, social, and political thought, is a foundational text of the Hindu tradition(s) and considered to be a major transmitter of dharma (moral, social, and religious duty), perhaps the single most important concept in the history of Indian religions. However, in spite of two centuries of Euro-American scholarship on the epic, basic questions concerning precisely how the epic is communicating its ideas about dharma and precisely what it is saying about it are still being explored. Disorienting Dharma brings to bear a variety of interpretive lenses (Sanskrit literary theory, reader-response theory, and narrative ethics) to examine these issues. One of the first book-length studies to explore the subject from the lens of Indian aesthetics, it argues that such a perspective yields startling new insights into the nature of the depiction of dharma in the epic through bringing to light one of the principle narrative tensions of the epic: the vexed relationship between dharma and suffering. In addition, it seeks to make the Mahabharata interesting and accessible to a wider audience by demonstrating how reading the Mahabharata, perhaps the most harrowing story in world literature, is a fascinating, disorienting, and ultimately transformative experience.

Historical Dictionary of Ancient India

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0810853663
Total Pages : 490 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of Ancient India by : Kumkum Roy

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Ancient India written by Kumkum Roy and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

To Savor the Meaning

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197544851
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis To Savor the Meaning by : James D. Reich

Download or read book To Savor the Meaning written by James D. Reich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval Kashmir in its golden age saw the development of some of the most sophisticated theories of language, literature, and emotion articulated in the pre-modern world. These theories, enormously influential on the later intellectual history of South Asia, were written at a time when religious education was ubiquitous among intellectuals, and when religious philosophies were hotly and publicly debated. It was also a time of deep interreligious influence and borrowing, when traditions intermixed and intellectuals pushed the boundaries of their own inheritance by borrowing ideas from many different places-even from their rivals. To Savor the Meaning examines the overlap of literary theory and religious philosophy in this period by looking at debates about how poetry communicates emotions to its readers, what it is readers do when they savor these emotions, and why this might be valuable. Focusing on the work of three influential figures-Anandavardhana [ca. 850 AD], Abhinavagupta [ca. 1000 AD], and the somewhat lesser known theorist Mahimabhatta [ca. 1050 AD]-this book gives a broad introduction to their ideas and reveals new, important, and previously overlooked aspects of their work and their debates. James D. Reich places these pre-modern intellectuals within the wider context of the religious philosophies current in Kashmir at the time, and shows that their ideas cannot be fully understood in isolation from this broader context.

World of Wonders

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019753824X
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis World of Wonders by : Alf Hiltebeitel

Download or read book World of Wonders written by Alf Hiltebeitel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-25 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In World of Wonders, Alf Hiltebeitel addresses the Mahabharata and its supplement, the Harivamsa, as a single literary composition. Looking at the work through the critical lens of the Indian aesthetic theory of rasa, "juice, essence, or taste," he argues that the dominant rasa of these two texts is adbhutarasa, the "mood of wonder." While the Mahabharata signposts whole units of the text as "wondrous" in its table of contents, the Harivamsa foregrounds a stepped-up term for wonder (ascarya) that drives home the point that Vishnu and Krishna are one. Two scholars of the 9th and 10th centuries, Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, identified the Mahabharata's dominant rasa as santarasa, the "mood of peace." This has traditionally been received as the only serious contestant for a rasic interpretation of the epic. Hiltebeitel disputes both the positive claim that the santarasa interpretation is correct and the negative claim that adbhutarasa is a frivolous rasa that cannot sustain a major work. The heart of his argument is that the Mahabharata and Harivamsa both deploy the terms for "wonder" and "surprise" (vismaya) in significant numbers that extend into every facet of these heterogeneous texts, showing how adbhutarasa is at work in the rich and contrasting textual strategies which are integral to the structure of the two texts.

Ratnākara's Haravijaya

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Ratnākara's Haravijaya by : David Smith

Download or read book Ratnākara's Haravijaya written by David Smith and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1985 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Arjunawiwāha

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004253947
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Arjunawiwāha by : Stuart Robson

Download or read book Arjunawiwāha written by Stuart Robson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arjunawiwāha is one of the best known of the Old Javanese classics. This volume presents a new text, based on Balinese manuscripts, with a complete translation, building on the work done by earlier writers. An introduction provides ample background information, as well as an original interpretation of the significance of the text, within its historical and cultural setting. This poem was written by Mpu Kanwa in around A.D. 1030 under King Airlangga, who ruled in East Java. It is Mpu Kanwa’s only known work, and is the second oldest example in the genre of kakawin. The poem is a narrative, but also contains passages of description, philosophical or religious teaching of great interest, as well as remarkable erotic scenes. Parts of the tale have been depicted on early temple reliefs and in paintings, and the text is still recited in Bali by literary clubs and in temple ceremonies.

The Argumentative Indian

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466854294
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis The Argumentative Indian by : Amartya Sen

Download or read book The Argumentative Indian written by Amartya Sen and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Nobel Laureate offers a dazzling new book about his native country India is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country's history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition. The millenia-old texts and interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, agnostic, and atheistic Indian thought demonstrate, Sen reminds us, ancient and well-respected rules for conducting debates and disputations, and for appreciating not only the richness of India's diversity but its need for toleration. Though Westerners have often perceived India as a place of endless spirituality and unreasoning mysticism, he underlines its long tradition of skepticism and reasoning, not to mention its secular contributions to mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine, and political economy. Sen discusses many aspects of India's rich intellectual and political heritage, including philosophies of governance from Kautilya's and Ashoka's in the fourth and third centuries BCE to Akbar's in the 1590s; the history and continuing relevance of India's relations with China more than a millennium ago; its old and well-organized calendars; the films of Satyajit Ray and the debates between Gandhi and the visionary poet Tagore about India's past, present, and future. The success of India's democracy and defense of its secular politics depend, Sen argues, on understanding and using this rich argumentative tradition. It is also essential to removing the inequalities (whether of caste, gender, class, or community) that mar Indian life, to stabilizing the now precarious conditions of a nuclear-armed subcontinent, and to correcting what Sen calls the politics of deprivation. His invaluable book concludes with his meditations on pluralism, on dialogue and dialectics in the pursuit of social justice, and on the nature of the Indian identity.

History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135531358
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (355 download)

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Book Synopsis History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect by : Paul Dundas

Download or read book History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect written by Paul Dundas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the history and intellectual activity of the medieval Svetambara Jain renunciant order, the Tapa Gaccha, this book focuses on the consolidation by the Tapa Gaccha from the thirteenth century of its identity as the leading Svetambara order. The author argues that this was variously effected by negotiating the primacy of lineage, the posthumous divinity of one of its leaders, the validity of styles of scriptural exegesis and customary practice and the status of non-Jains through the medium of chronicles and poetry and polemical engagement with other Jain orders and dissident elements within its own ranks. Drawing on largely unstudied primary sources, the author demonstrates how Tapa Gaccha writers created a sophisticated intellectual culture which was a vehicle for the maintenance of sectarian identity in the early modern period. The book explores issues which have been central to our understanding of many of the questions currently being asked about the development not just of Jainism but of South Asian religions in general, such as the manner in which authority is established in relation to texts, the relationship between scripture, commentary and tradition and tensions both between and within sects.

Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 113678764X
Total Pages : 864 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (367 download)

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Book Synopsis Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing by : Kelly Boyd

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing written by Kelly Boyd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-09 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing contains over 800 entries ranging from Lord Acton and Anna Comnena to Howard Zinn and from Herodotus to Simon Schama. Over 300 contributors from around the world have composed critical assessments of historians from the beginning of historical writing to the present day, including individuals from related disciplines like Jürgen Habermas and Clifford Geertz, whose theoretical contributions have informed historical debate. Additionally, the Encyclopedia includes some 200 essays treating the development of national, regional and topical historiographies, from the Ancient Near East to the history of sexuality. In addition to the Western tradition, it includes substantial assessments of African, Asian, and Latin American historians and debates on gender and subaltern studies.