Imperial Sovereignty and Local Politics takes at its focus the historically significant interconnections between local polities and imperial formations in South Asia. Using the relationship between the Bhadauria Rajputs and the Mughal, Maratha and British Empires as a prism to evaluate the constitution of sovereignty and the process of state formation, it demonstrates the enduring relevance of symbolism and ritual, the persistence of pre-colonial political forms and ideologies and the continuing importance of local power networks in moulding imperial projects. Employing theories of state formation borrowed from anthropology, Singh emphasizes the need to conceptually separate political authority from symbolic sovereignty and examine the local context of imperial politics. This work provides a compelling re-orientation of the way we understand the nature of imperial states, the experience of sovereignty and the processes of political change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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.

Savant Singh (1694–1764), the Rajput prince of Kishangarh-Rupnagar, is famous for commissioning beautiful works of miniature painting and composing devotional (bhakti) poetry to Krishna under the nom de plume Nagaridas. After his throne was usurped by his younger brother, while Savant Singh was on the road seeking military alliances to regain his kingdom, he composed an autobiographical pilgrimage account, “The Pilgrim’s Bliss” (Tirthananda); a hagiographic anthology, “Garland of Anecdotes about Songs” (Pad-Prasang-mala); and a reworking of the story of Rama, “Garland of Rama’s Story” (Ram-Carit-Mala). Through an examination of Savant Singh’s life and works, Heidi Pauwels explores the circulation of ideas and culture in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries in north India, revealing how Singh mobilized soldiers but also used myths, songs, and stories about saints in order to cope with his personal and political crisis. Mobilizing Krishna’s World allows us a peek behind the dreamlike paintings and refined poetry to glimpse a world of intrigue involving political and religious reform movements.

Records publications acquired from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, by the U.S. Library of Congress Offices in New Delhi, India, and Karachi, Pakistan.