This book looks at the typologies of cities and ideas of urbanity. Focusing specifically on cities in South Asia, it analyses the unique planning concepts, archaeology, art, culture, life, and philosophy of various cities of ancient and modern South Asia. The book explores the concept of urbanity and the idea of an ideal city; it interrogates general notions of urbanity by juxtaposing city life in various periods and geographies of South Asia. By analysing the demography, architecture, rituals, and culture of various cities, it looks at the different spatialities of these places in terms of their size, population, commerce, and philosophy as well as the reasons behind the transformation of these places into urban centres. Drawing from various archeological and literary sources, the volume includes rich details about heterogeneity, rituals, festivals, social stratification, penal systems, famines, and insurrections in ancient cities as well as modern cities like Lahore, Dhaka, and Calcutta, among many others in South Asia. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of ancient and modern history, archaeology, urban studies, urban and town planning, urban sociology, urban geography, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, ancient and medieval architecture, heritage studies, conservation studies, and South Asian studies.

This book looks at the typologies of cities and ideas of urbanity. Focusing specifically on cities in South Asia, it analyses the unique planning concepts, archaeology, art, culture, life, and philosophy of various cities of ancient and modern South Asia. The book explores the concept of urbanity and the idea of an ideal city; it interrogates general notions of urbanity by juxtaposing city life in various periods and geographies of South Asia. By analysing the demography, architecture, rituals, and culture of various cities, it looks at the different spatialities of these places in terms of their size, population, commerce, and philosophy as well as the reasons behind the transformation of these places into urban centres. Drawing from various archeological and literary sources, the volume includes rich details about heterogeneity, rituals, festivals, social stratification, penal systems, famines, and insurrections in ancient cities as well as modern cities like Lahore, Dhaka, and Calcutta, among many others in South Asia. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of ancient and modern history, archaeology, urban studies, urban and town planning, urban sociology, urban geography, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, ancient and medieval architecture, heritage studies, conservation studies, and South Asian studies.

This book presents a paradigm shift in the long-term study of South India’s deep history. It refuses the disciplinary constraints of history and prehistory and interrogates the archaeological and textual records of the Deccan to disrupt its conventional archaeological periodizations, which have tended to reify and dehistoricize social and cultural differences. This book draws on over 20 years of original archaeological research from the southern Deccan region of India to critically reappraise the historiography that has framed its deep history. It fundamentally questions conventional archaeological paradigms, rooted in early colonial scholarship, which have structured interpretations of deep time with curiously ahistorical narratives of the past. This volume offers a more nuanced assessment of historical changes across a diversity of cultural, social, and political practices through the novel application of theoretical framings to archaeological and historical data, including political ecology, techno-politics, resource materialities, and landscape production. This book will interest an interdisciplinary audience of graduate and undergraduate students and professional academics, primarily in the fields of archaeology, history, and South Asian studies. Its theoretical interventions will also be of interest to those invested in the anthropology and the archaeology of politics, chronology, historicity, historiography, materiality and landscapes.

Chakshudana or rituals of opening the eyes are practiced across multiple South Asian communities by artists, sculptors, and priests. The ritual offers gods access to the mortal world. This practice, applied to the study of material and visual culture, offers a distinctive perspective to interrogate the complex engagements with paintings, sculptures, found objects, fragments, built environments, and ecologies. This volume takes the process of seeing as its focus—to look closely, remaining true to the object, but also to see widely—from multiple subjective stances and diverse bodily engagements such as walking to dreaming, glancing to looking askance, hypnotic stares, and to see beyond the visible. It examines art history through nuanced considerations of materiality, aesthetics, and regional specificities. The essays emerge from current research that builds on the contributions of Michael W. Meister, W. Norman Brown Distinguished Professor of History of Art and South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, whose works laid the foundations for the study of South Asian visual and material culture. The essays in this book underscore methodological resonances rather than privileging conventional categories of media or chronology, exploring artistic media including temples and paintings as well as Bengali-quilted textiles, manuscript ‘lozenges,’ and metal repousse. This volume, part of the Visual Media and Histories Series, will be of interest to students and researchers of history of art, religious studies, and history as well as the allied disciplines of anthropology and folklore studies. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book examines the social and cultural history of Bengal through two major themes — the intellectual and cultural dimension, and the socio-economic changes from the ancient to the postcolonial. Essays by major scholars highlight and analyse major debates as well as little known aspects of the region. From currency in ancient Bengal to the establishment of Calcutta, from the social history of Rahr to the challenges of writing history of mediaeval Bengal, from modern medicine to man-made famines, this book brings to the fore the diverse socio-cultural threads that constitute this region. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian history and culture and South Asian studies.

This volume presents a comprehensive study of the urbanization of Bengal from ancient to postcolonial times. It analyses the notion of urban space, examines the institutions which constitute the ‘urban’, and explores the crises brought about by the Partition. The book highlights the key features of urbanization in colonial Bengal––the print culture, institutions of Western education and Western medicine, and the census as a ‘modern form of knowledge’. It also looks at the refugee movement and discusses the contribution of Partition refugees in urbanizing Bengal. Rich in archival sources, this book will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of urban history, urban studies, Indian history, colonial history, postcolonial studies, partition studies, and South Asian history, particularly those interested in Bengal.

Connected Histories of India and Southeast Asia unravels the fascinating history of cultural interactions, of outstanding and universal significance, between India and Southeast Asia, with special emphasis on artistic expressions. India's connections with Southeast Asian countries, namely, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam are seen not only in trade and commerce but also in cultural and religious exchanges. Such histories are well-documented in their monuments, icons, narratives, inscribed artefacts, texts, and ritual paraphernalia. The first part of the book offers an overview of the nature of cultural and artistic interactions and the trade routes that facilitated an exchange of ideas, objects, people, and knowledge systems since ancient times. The second part addresses issues relating to architectural forms, motifs, and mobility across long distances and time periods. The final segment includes essays that discuss narratives and iconographies arising from cross-cultural artistic exchanges. With contributions by eminent scholars and over 170 colour photographs, maps, and illustrations, this book is an invaluable resource for understanding connected histories, which play a key role in revitalizing cultural connectivity and people-to-people contacts between India and Southeast Asia.

The economic history of early India is a rich and diverse area of study, covering agricultural developments, trade, markets, occupation and professional groups, urbanization and the institutions that govern the economy. Recent research has expanded our understanding of the processes of transformation of the economy in different temporal contexts within the Indian sub-continent. They have particularly led us to explore connected histories given the trans-continental trading networks and movements of people from very early times. This volume seeks to draw attention to this vast and unexplored terrain in the economic history of early India, by bringing together essays on a new and rich historiography. Essays in the volume cover neglected regions, economic processes and structures. Scholars have looked at questions of settlements, crops that were cultivated and market orientation. Essays cover material culture and provide insights into how early Indians lived, what kinds of activities they were engaged in, and how they organised their production activities within and outside domestic spaces. Further the volume bring new insights on hierarchy of settlement types, nature of exchange, and the significance of a nodal site in exchange networks. Maritime history as well as the understanding of trade in its varied forms and manifestations are covered in several essays.

Archives intersect with our lives in many ways. We have archives of our own, documenting family memories and histories. Then, there are larger archives that document different aspects of the past — memories, identities, location, time, and space. This volume explores changing notions of the archive in different areas, to trace the ways in which the archives continue to be used in history. It examines how history, the historian, and the archive interact in many ways to look at the past and record it. The chapters in this volume discuss an array of diverse and important themes regarding the making and usage of archives which include reconstructing pre-modern economic history from the Dutch archives; the role of India Office Records in the British Library; reading the Rungia Gosavi Affair in 1857 from colonial archives; and Uday Shankar’s Kalpana as archive besides the usage of archives to study nationalism, historiography and literature, water and Chola history, Mysorean invasions in Kerala, and cyberspace. The chapters also explore how archives impact and shape our investigations. First of its kind, this important work will be of interest to scholars and researchers of archival studies, research methodology, archaeology, Indian history, ancient history, medieval history, modern India, anthropology, and history in general.