India has been the homeland of diverse manuscript traditions that do not cease to impress scholars for their imposing size and complexity. Nevertheless, many topics concerning the study of Indian manuscript cultures still remain to receive systematic examination. Of Gods and Books pays attention to one of these topics - the use of manuscripts as ritualistic tools. Literary sources deal quite extensively with rituals principally focused on manuscripts, whose worship, donation and preservation are duly prescribed. Around these activities, a specific category of ritual gift is created, which finds attestations in pre-tantric, as well as in smārta and tantric, literature, and whose practice is also variously reflected in epigraphical documents. De Simini offers a first systematic study of the textual evidence on the topic of the worship and donation of knowledge. She gives account of possible implications for the relationships between religion and power. The book is indsipensible for a deeper understanding of the cultural aspects of manuscript transmission in medieval India, and beyond.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. How did the patronage activities of India’s Vijayanagara Empire (c. 1346–1565) influence Hindu sectarian identities? Although the empire has been commonly viewed as a Hindu bulwark against Islamic incursion from the north or as a religiously ecumenical state, Valerie Stoker argues that the Vijayanagara court was selective in its patronage of religious institutions. To understand the dynamic interaction between religious and royal institutions in this period, she focuses on the career of the Hindu intellectual and monastic leader Vyasatirtha. An agent of the state and a powerful religious authority, Vyasatirtha played an important role in expanding the empire’s economic and social networks. By examining his polemics against rival sects in the context of his work for the empire, Stoker provides a remarkably nuanced picture of the relationship between religious identity and sociopolitical reality under Vijayanagara rule.

Southern Karnataka emerged as a regional entity between the fourth and eleventh centuries AD. Although interest in the nature of early medieval states and their social formations has defined much historical research since the 1970s, studies have, until now, been limited to clarifying only the political-dynastic history of the region. In this path-breaking new study, Malini Adiga reveals the political, social and cultural features that characterised the region. Its distinct identity is explored by examining the processes that created this political and cultural entity: the various social strata, the nature of the socio-political structure, the developments in the field of religion, and the manner in which the early medieval state patronised and utilised the various religious cults and sects to legitimise itself. Based on an extensive analysis of the inscriptions from the region and period under study, this book also drwas on the region's literary sources to explain its characteristic social ethos. Exhaustively researched, carefully analysed and richly descriptive, this book is essential reading for all those interested in early medieval Karnataka.