With a literary history spanning centuries, the languages of Odisha have found myriad expression in prose, poetry, mythology, history, and politics. The Big Book of Odia Literature goes where very few have dared—into a history of language, literature and song that can be traced back all the way to the tenth century. In this careful curation, The Big Book curates essays, stories, poems, and plays that have defined the culture of a state and a people. A first of its kind, the volume is for lovers of linguistic history and literary traditions.

Historical Teleologies in the Modern World tracks the fragmentation and proliferation of teleological understandings of history – the notion that history had to be explained as a goal-directed process – in Europe and beyond throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. Historical teleologies have profoundly informed a variety of other disciplines, including modern philosophy, natural history, literature, humanitarian and religious philanthropism, the political thought and practice of revolution, emancipation, imperialism, colonialism and anti-colonialism, the conceptualization of universal humankind, and the understanding of modernity in general. By exploring the extension and plurality of historical teleology, the essays in this volume revise the history of historicity in the modern period. Historical Teleologies in the Modern World casts doubt on the idea that a single, if powerful, conception of time could function as the unifying principle of all modern historicity, instead pursuing an investigation of the plurality of modern historicities and its underlying structures. By bringing together Western and non-Western histories, this book provides the first extended treatment of the idea of historical teleology. It will be of great value to students and scholars of modern global and intellectual history.

Autobiography of a Dalit social worker from Orissa, India.

A Critical Analysis of Bhima Bhoi and the Mahima Cult is a rare compendium of insightful essays by eminent Indian scholars on the Mahima Cult, its genesis, and its growth. The volume focuses on Bhima Bhoi, the poet-philosopher and the prime interlocutor of the Renegade Faith, who started a revolt from below to champion human rights. To critically appreciate the Saint-poet Bhima Bhoi and the Mahima Cult (Dharma of Glory), the history of the 19th-century Indian sociocultural system, especially that of Odisha and its adjoining states, needs to be reconstructed. Since there is no surviving oral and written text authored by the founder of the cult, Mahima Swami, it is only the unlettered genius Bhima Bhoi, who produced innumerable prayers, hymns, and poetic recitals of profound philosophical import, which made him the legend, the poet-archivist, and historiographer of the Mahima Cult. Bhima was simultaneously the poet of the soul and the soil, who used theology and social experience to provide a supportive sub-structure to a transcendent, ecstatic vision. This volume asserts that Mahima Dharma is an autochthonous reform movement and a regional variation of the Indian Bhakti tradition and mystical poetry.

"The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures is a compilation of scholarship on Indian literature from the 19th century to the present in a range of Indian languages. On one hand, because of reasons associated with national academic structures, publishing resources, and global visibility, English writing gets privileged over all the other linguistic traditions in the scholarship on Indian literatures. On the other hand, within the scholarship on regional language literary productions (in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, etc.), the critical works and the surveys focus only on that particular language and therefore frequently suffer from a lack of comparative breadth and/or global access. Both reflect the paradigm of monolingualism within which much literary scholarship on Indian literature takes place. This handbook instead focuses on the multilingual pathways through which modern Indian literature gets constituted. It features cutting-edge literary criticism from at least seventeen languages, and on traditional literary genres as well as more recent ones like graphic novels. It shows the deep connections and collaborations across genres, languages, nations, and regions that produce a literature of diverse contact zones, generating innovations on form, aesthetics, and technique. Foregrounding themes such as modernity and modernism, gender, caste, diaspora, and political resistance, the book collects an array of perspectives on this vast topic"--

First published in 1965, The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline is a strikingly original work, the first real cultural history of India. The main features of the Indian character are traced back into remote antiquity as the natural outgrowth of historical process. Did the change from food gathering and the pastoral life to agriculture make new religions necessary? Why did the Indian cities vanish with hardly a trace and leave no memory? Who were the Aryans – if any? Why should Buddhism, Jainism, and so many other sects of the same type come into being at one time and in the same region? How could Buddhism spread over so large a part of Asia while dying out completely in the land of its origin? What caused the rise and collapse of the Magadhan empire; was the Gupta empire fundamentally different from its great predecessor, or just one more ‘oriental despotism’? These are some of the many questions handled with great insight, yet in the simplest terms, in this stimulating work. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, South Asian studies and ethnic studies.