The book operates on the premises that the centuries preceding the colonial conquest of India, which in scholarship influenced by orientalist concepts has often been referred to as medieval, already participated in modernity through, circulation of ideas, new forms of knowledge, new concepts of the individual, of the community, and of religion.

Literary Cultures in Early Modern North India: Current Research grows out of over a 40-year tradition of the triennial International Conferences on Early Modern Literatures in North India (ICEMLNI), initiated to share 'Bhakti in current research.' This volume brings together a selection of contributions from some of the leading scholars as well as emerging researchers in the field originally presented at the 13th ICEMLNI (University of Warsaw, 18-22 July 2018). Considering innovative methodologies and tools, the volume presents the current state of research on early modern sources and offers new inputs into our understanding of this period in the cultural history of India. This collection of essays is in the tradition of 'Bhakti in current research' volumes produced from 1980 onward but reflecting our current understanding of early modern textualities. The book operates on the premises that the centuries preceding the colonial conquest of India, which in scholarship influenced by orientalist concepts, has often been referred to as medieval. However these languages already participated in modernity through increased circulation of ideas, new forms of knowledge, new concepts of the individual, of the community, and of religion. The essays cover multiple languages (Indian vernaculars, Sanskrit, Apabhramsha, Persian), different media (texts, performances, paintings, music) and traditions (Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Sant, Sikh), analyzing them as individual phenomena that function in a wider network of connections at textual, intertextual, and knowledge-system levels.

Culture and Circulation reflects an innovative approach to early modern Indian literature. The authors foreground the complex hybridity of literary genres and social milieus, capturing elements that have eluded traditional literary history. In this book, jointly edited by Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch, Hindi authors rub shoulders with their Persian counterparts in the courts of Mughal India; the fame of Mirabai, a poetess from Rajasthan, travels to Punjab; the sayings of Kabir are found to be as difficult to pin down as the holy men who transmitted them. Drawing on new archives in several Indian languages, Culture and Circulation presents fresh ideas that will be of interest to scholars of Indian literature, religious studies, and early modern history. Contributors include Stefano Pellò,Thibaut d'Hubert,Corinne Lefèvre, John Stratton Hawley, Gurinder Singh Mann, Thomas de Bruijn, Catharina Kiehnle, Allison Busch, Francesca Orsini, Heidi Pauwels, Robert van de Walle.

This book provides a detailed analysis of riti-kal poetry, which helps us understand the administrative set-up, kinship, caste and gender issues in pre-modern India. It also examines the legends of Radha and Krishna as encountered through riti poetry.

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 immense 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. It focuses on the rise of vernacular languages as vehicles for literary expression and historical and religious self-assertion, and particularly attends to ways in which these regional spoken languages connect with each other and their cosmopolitan counterparts. Hindu, Muslim, and Jain idioms emerge in new ways, and the effect of the volume as a whole is to show that they belong to a single complex cultural conversation.

The essays in this volume explore the ways in which individual scholars, intellectuals and men of religion negotiated the boundaries between discipline, sect, lineage and community as they moved through different social milieux in early modern India: courtly centres, temples, sectarian monasteries, the pandit assemblies of the cosmopolitan city of Banaras and of lesser religious centres in India's regions. This book was a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

Fills a gap in scholarship on Indian culture and power between 1500 and 1800, arguing that we can't know how colonialism changed South Asia unless we know what there was to be changed.

This book examines the nature and function of history-writing in India by focusing on early modern traditions of historiography with particular reference to Bengal. Situating distinctive cultures of history vis-à-vis their relevant political and cultural contexts, it highlights the richness, variety and politically sensitive character of a range of oral and textual narratives. Kumkum Chatterjee also makes a significant contribution to the intellectual and cultural history of early modern India by exploring interactions between regional, vernacular cultures on the one hand and the Islamicate, Persianized culture of the Mughal Empire on the other. Strongly grounded in primary sources, The Cultures of History in Early Modern India re-examines the concepts of authority, evidence and method in early modern historiography. It also discusses the debates surrounding the culture of history writing in India.

This volume considers the Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka (c. 1760 CE), an allegorical drama composed by Brajvāsīdās in Brajbhāṣā. It contributes to the study of vernacular nāṭakas with its first complete English translation. Moreover, the critical analysis shows that the foundational Sanskrit texts for Vedānta and those for Bhakti play a part in the Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka's philosophical and religious edifice. At the same time, the investigation demonstrates that Brajvāsīdās expresses several philosophical ideas by adaptively reusing the Rāmcaritmānas by Tulsīdās (c. 1574 CE). Brajvāsīdās composes a dohā by combining one line of his invention with a line from the Mānas. This method is employed throughout all the personified metaphysical concepts. That Brajvāsī not only read Bhakti but also Vedānta through the Rāmcaritmānas highlights the philosophical and literary creativity in 18th c. North India. It points to the necessity to rethink the sources of Vedānta philosophies, by including works non-conventional for language and genre, because not in Sanskrit and not śāstras. Such sources may not be original in their contribution per se but are essential to understand how early modern philosophy was done, conceived and transmitted.

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