Books+ Search Results
The Idea of Ancient India : Essays on Religion, Politics, and Archaeology
Author
Title
The Idea of Ancient India : Essays on Religion, Politics, and Archaeology / Upinder Singh.
ISBN
9789351506461
9351506460
9789351506478
9789351506454
Publication
Los Angeles : SAGE Publications, 2016.
Physical Description
xlii, 439 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Summary
"This book engages with some of the most important issues, debates, and methodologies in the writings of ancient Indian history. Thematically structured into four sections, it critically addresses how the material remains of India's early past were discovered and understood in colonial and post-colonial times. The first section highlights the importance of a thorough empirical approach for understanding the process of social history and early medieval state formation. The second connects ancient and modern India, based extensively on archival sources. The third and fourth sections emphasize the important issue of ancient Indian intellectual history, underlining the significance of reconstructing the intellectual landscape of ancient India through a sensitive and yet critical historicization of its texts and inscriptions"--Provided by publisher.
Format
Books
Language
English
Added to Catalog
December 09, 2016
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
I. Contextualizing inscriptions
Sanchi : the history of the patronage of an ancient Buddhist establishment
Nagarjunakonda : Buddhism in the "City of Victory"
Cults and shrines in early historical Mathura (c. 200 BC to AD 200)
Early medieval Orissa : the data and the debate
II. Archaeologists and the modern histories of ancient sites
Archaeologists and architectural scholars in 19th century India
Amaravati : the dismembering of the Mahacaitya (1797-1886)
Buddhism, archaeology, and the nation : Nagarjunakonda (1926-2006)
Exile and return : the reinvention of Buddhism and Buddhist sites in modern India
III. The intersection of political ideas and practice
Governing the state and the self : political philosophy and practice in the edicts of Asoka
Politics, violence, and war in Kamandaka's Nitisara
The power of a poet : kingship, empire, and war in Kalidasa's Raghuvaṃśa
IV. Looking beyond India to Asia
Gifts from other lands : Southeast Asian religious endowments in India
Politics, piety, and patronage : the Burmese engagement with Bodhgaya.
Subjects
Bookmark As
Citation
