Text and Tradition in Early Modern North India

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
North India ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Literary Histories

Early modern India—a period extending from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century—saw dramatic cultural, religious, and political changes as it went from Sultanate, to Mughal, to early colonial rule. Witness to the rise of multiple literary and devotional traditions, this period was characterized by pulsating political energy and cultural vibrancy. Text and Tradition in Early Modern North India brings together recent scholarship on the languages, literatures, and religious traditions of northern India to highlight the importance of reconstructing multilingual literary histories. Focusing on the rise of vernacular languages, the volume underscores the manifold connections across regions, languages, communities, and traditions to reveal the diversity of literary and religious practices in this multilingual world. Analysing the emergence and development of literary cultures of north India, Text and Tradition also highlights processes of exchange and influence across these cultures. Spanning across various disciplines, the chapters here shed new light upon not only existing literary and religious traditions, but also those that may have disappeared but which should not be forgotten.

scholarly journals Dreams, songs and letters: Sectarian networks and musical archives in eighteenth-century North India

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-604
Author(s):  
Richard David Williams
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
North India ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Musical Accompaniment

Early modern poets conventionally began their compositions by praising and invoking the blessings of their higher authorities, be they their gods, gurus or courtly patrons. In the eighteenth century, North Indian society was particularly unstable, and the relationships between these different power brokers proved volatile. This article considers how intellectuals attached to religious households navigated the challenges of the period, particularly invading armies, religious reforms and forced migration. I examine the works of Vrindavandas (c. 1700–87), a Brajbhasha poet and lay devotee of the Radhavallabh Sampraday, and provide contextualised readings of two of his poems, concerned with recent history and the contemporary political climate. Vrindavandas was not a scribe or chronicler in a conventional sense; however, closer examination of his works reveals the porous boundaries between scribes-cum-recorders and other kinds of intellectuals. Here, I consider how Vrindavandas’ literary activity included copying archival sources, recording recent history, documenting dreams and emotions, and folding different senses of temporality into a single work. This article asks how far his poetic works gesture to a distinctively eighteenth-century mode of literary expression and reflexivity, and how performing these poetic archives through reading, singing, and musical accompaniment provided the sect with tools to navigate a turbulent political landscape.

From Little King to Landlord: Property, Law, and the Gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas B. Dirks
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Permanent Settlement ◽  
The Impact

In the last few years, modern historians of India have pushed the historical frontier of their field backwards in time. Colonialism is no longer considered the great watershed it once was thought to be. Historians who concern themselves with economic processes such as protoindustrialization tend in particular to minimize the impact of the consolidation of colonial rule in the late eighteenth century. Changes viewed as significant by these historians usually begin with the introduction of capitalism and the early encroachment of a world system, both of which predate the full political realization of colonialism. Historians who concern themselves with political changes tend in the other direction, although increasingly they have proposed major continuities between the ancien régime and the early colonial state. Historians concerned with social change view colonialism as significant but invoke various new forms of dualism to account for the limited effects of colonialism on local social forms. Whatever their differences, all of these historians agree that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are crucial for viewing later changes in economy, polity, and society, and, from their varying theoretical and ideological perspectives, delight in excoriating traditional views of India as static and “traditional” before the arrival of the British.

Peasants and Debt in Eighteenth-Century Champagne

2006 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Rural Households ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Modern Europe

Recent scholarship about debt in early-modern Europe has replaced an old model of misery and exploitation with a new paradigm that emphasizes the entrepreneurial rationale for going into debt. Reassessment of these arguments on the basis of detailed information about 5,000 rural households in France finds that debt posed a high risk of ruin to nearly half of the region's debtors and that viticulture played a unique role in stimulating a borrowing frenzy in the countryside.

‘The Real Value of the Lands’: The Nawabs, the British and the Land Tax in Eighteenth-Century Bengal

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. TRAVERS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Revenue Collection ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Real Value ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Ever since the late eighteenth century, no subject has been more prominent in histories of ‘the transition to colonialism’ in south Asia, than the issue of taxation. In particular, the complex system of agrarian taxation that was developed under the Mughal empire, and further elaborated by various post-Mughal regimes, has often been seen as the defining institution of both the pre-colonial and colonial states. What the British called ‘land revenues’, which included taxes on land proper (mal) and taxes on trade and markets (sair), were the main source of income for both Indian and British rulers. Assessments of the impact of colonial rule have often depended on supposed changes in the tax regime. Since the nineteenth century historians have tended to focus their attention on the relationship between the land tax and structures of agrarian property. They have generally argued that British rule both substantially increased the tax burden, and modified structures of agrarian tenure by splicing together rights of revenue collection and private property in land. But they have focused much more on early colonial policies with regard to private landed property, and less on the issue of the actual tax assessment. This paper takes up the issue of the land tax demand (known as jama in the terminology of Mughal and post-Mughal administration) tracing British debates about tax assessments through the first three decades of colonial rule in Bengal.

Narrative Fiction in Early Modern Europe

Quaerendo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 160-188
Author(s):  
Rita Schlusemann ◽  
Krystyna Wierzbicka-Trwoga
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The article presents a corpus of European fictional narratives, which were continuously printed in at least six European languages from the beginning of printing until the end of the eighteenth century. It analyses the denominations of the works in European literary histories in a comparative way in order to show the impact of the different national traditions in literary history, and provides a survey of the contemporary terms for the works used in European vernaculars. In early modern Europe there was an awareness of the congruence of these narratives and a similar choice of genre attributions in different European vernaculars whereas, as a consequence of the development of nationalism and national studies, the denomination of the genre and their studies has become much more tattered. We therefore propose to use the term ‘narrative fiction’ for the genre and the term ‘fictional narrative’ for the works themselves.

Early British Rule and Social Classification in Lanka

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 625-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN D. ROGERS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Social Classification ◽  
Epistemological Break

Recent scholarship has put forward two distinct interpretations of the origins of modern national and communal identity in South Asia. One sees colonial modernity as a radical epistemological break and judges the content of pre-colonial pasts irrelevant for understanding modern politics. According to this view, modern identities are responses to colonial constructions of Asian ‘tradition’. The other approach sees continuities between the late pre-colonial and early colonial periods. For these writers, the origins of modern national and communal identities lie not only in colonial interventions, but also in non-colonial eighteenth-century social formations and in early colonial interaction between the British and South Asians.

The Rural ‘Middling Sort’ in Early Modern England, circa 1640–1740: Some Economic, Political and Socio-Cultural Characteristics

Rural History ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Kent
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
English Society ◽  
The Subject

A middle class ‘did not begin to discover itself (except perhaps in London) until the last three decades of the [eighteenth] century’. So wrote E. P. Thompson in the 1970s in a now-famous analysis which divided English society into patricians and plebeians, and which, along with J. H. Hexter's ‘The Myth of the Middle Class in Tudor England’, largely eliminated ‘middle class’ from the vocabulary of early modern English historians. During the past decade, however, there has been renewed focus on the middle ranks in early modern England, now commonly labelled ‘the middling sort’, and such studies explicitly or implicitly call into question Thompson's polarized portrayal of English society. A number of earlier works analyzed the middling in the countryside, particularly in the period 1540 to 1640; but recent discussions focus largely on townsmen, and most are concerned with a later period, the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Even in a volume such asThe Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England 1550–1800, a collection of essays presenting recent scholarship on the subject, the rural middling sort receive very little attention (a fact acknowledged by one of the editors). This essay will draw upon detailed evidence from several parishes to consider characteristics of the middling in the countryside during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Warriors and the State in Early Modern India

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Richards
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Rural Society ◽  
North India ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Grand Nombre ◽  
Nous Permet ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Military Contractors ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractThis essay argues for reconsideration and greater scholarly attention to the insights of Prof. Dirk Kolff as expressed in his 1989 book, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy and in later writings. Kolff described a fluid, pervasive military labor market in late Mughal and early colonial North India that made vast numbers of armed, largely peasant soldiers available to military contractors, rulers, and rebels alike. His formulation permits us to see that armed Indian peasants in this period had considerable agency and independence within a society that was riven with con flict. Such a reconsideration underscores the magnitude of the changes wrought in Indian society by violent British conquest, pacification and disarmament in rural society — especially after the failed 1857 revolt. L'article plaide pour une reconsidération et une réévaluation des idées du professeur Dirk Kolff, telles qu'elles sont présentées dans son ouvrage paru en 1989, Naukar, Rajput et Sepoy, et dans ses publications ultérieures. Kolff décrit un marché du travail militaire flexible et omniprésent en Inde Mogole et en Inde Septentrionale au début de l'ère coloniale, et qui a rendu disponible aux courtiers militaires, aux dirigeants et aux rebelles un grand nombre de soldats d'origine paysanne. Son exposé nous permet de voir comment, pendant cette période, les paysans indiens armés avaient une importance et une indépendance considérables dans une société fendue par les con flits armés. Une telle reconsidération souligne l'importance des changements dans la société indienne, déclenchés par la soumission violente, la paci fication et le désarmement par les Anglais — surtout après l'échec de la révolte de 1857.

scholarly journals Jesuit Foreign Missions. A Historiographical Essay

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
New Granada ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Jesuit Missions ◽  
Matteo Ricci ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries

A review of recent scholarship on early modern Jesuit missions, this essay offers a reflection on the achievements and desiderata in current trends of research. The books discussed include studies on Jesuit missions in China (Matteo Ricci), on the finances of the eighteenth-century Madurai mission in India, the debates over indigenous missions in the Peruvian province in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, on print and book culture in the Jesuits’ European missions, and finally a series of studies on German-speaking Jesuit missionaries in Brazil, Chile, and New Granada.

Controversies Surrounding the Reception of Valī “Dakhanī” (1665?–1707?) in Early Tażkirahs of Urdu Poets

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
PURNIMA DHAVAN ◽  
HEIDI PAUWELS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
North India ◽  
Inflected Form ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Modern Form ◽  
Historical Origins

Early Urdu poetry, at the time called Reḳhtah, forms a remarkable example of the circulation of ideas in early modern India. Scholars trace its modern form to the reception in early eighteenth-century Delhi of a Southern literary idiom, usually called Dakhanī that is itself the result of repeated waves of migration from North India to the Deccan. While the historical origins of Urdu occupy an arena of lively scholarly debate, its later historical and literary importance is quite clear. By the start of the nineteenth century a highly literary and Persian-inflected form of Urdu would swiftly replace Persian in elite circles. Thus we have a historically significant moment at which the confluence of the vernacular and the cosmopolitan created a new cosmopolitan vernacular, however this process remains understudied.

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