Winner of the 2009 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize, sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies The medieval Rajput queen Padmini - believed to have been pursued by Alauddin Khalji, the Sultan of Delhi - has been the focus of numerous South Asian narratives, ranging from a Sufi mystical romance in the sixteenth century to nationalist histories in the late nineteenth century. The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen explores how early modern regional elites, caste groups, and mystical and monastic communities shaped their distinctive versions of the past through the repeated refashioning of the legend of Padmini. Ramya Sreenivasan investigates these legends and traces their subsequent appropriation by colonial administrators and nationalist intellectuals, for varying different political ends. Using Padmini as a means of illustrating the power of gender norms in constructing heroic memory, she shows how such narratives about virtuous women changed as they circulated across particular communities in South Asia between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book will interest historians of memory, gender, community, culture, and historywriting in South Asia. Illustrating how enduring legends emerged out of particular precolonial repositories of "tradition," the book also addresses the nature of colonial transitions and precolonial historical consciousness.

What is the relationship between caste and gender in the narratives of Rajput woman? During a year and a half of fieldwork in Rajasthan, a parched land dominated by the great Indian Desert, Lindsey Harlan interviewed more than a hundred women from all levels of Rajput society. She wanted to understand why certain religious practices were so important to Rajput women, and how they justified these to themselves. During the course of her interviews, the women described their religious practices—chief among them the worship of the family kuldevi (the goddess who exemplifies the ideal wife by staving off sickness, poverty, and infertility) and the veneration of satimatas (women who have immolated themselves on their husband's funeral pyre). As the women discussed these rituals, many of them also told Harlan religious myths and stories, drawing parallels between their behavior and that of various Indian heroines. These narratives and the role they play in the women's self-perception are the fascinating and enlightening subject of this book. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

A fresh and stimulating examination of the ideology, programmes, expressions and consequences of the British 'civilizing mission' in South Asia.

Diary of Amar Singh with annotations, commentary, and introduction by DeWitt C. Ellinwood, Jr.

This title examines the worship of ancestral heroes in Rajasthan, India. Arguing that Rajput hero stories and songs encapsulate and express ideals of perfection and masculinity, it analyzes representations of wives and goddesses as tacit allies dispatching sacrificed heroes to heavenly paradise.

Traditional Storytelling Today explores the diversity of contemporary storytelling traditions and provides a forum for in-depth discussion of interesting facets of comtemporary storytelling. Never before has such a wealth of information about storytelling traditions been gathered together. Storytelling is alive and well throughout the world as the approximately 100 articles by more than 90 authors make clear. Most of the essays average 2,000 words and discuss a typical storytelling event, give a brief sample text, and provide theory from the folklorist. A comprehensive index is provided. Bibliographies afford the reader easy access to additional resources.

Examines the political worldview of courtly and royal women in India during the late colonial and post-Independence period. This book offers a history of the zenana, which served as the 'women's courts' or 'female quarters of the palace', where women lived behind pardah in seclusion.

With special reference to Rajasthan, India.

Although the princes of India have been caricatured as oriental despots and British stooges, Barbara Ramusack's study argues that the British did not create the princes. On the contrary, many were consummate politicians who exercised considerable degrees of autonomy until the disintegration of the princely states after independence. Ramusack's synthesis has a broad temporal span, tracing the evolution of the Indian kings from their pre-colonial origins to their roles as clients in the British colonial system. The book breaks ground in its integration of political and economic developments in the major princely states with the shifting relationships between the princes and the British. It represents a major contribution, both to British imperial history in its analysis of the theory and practice of indirect rule, and to modern South Asian history, as a portrait of the princes as politicians and patrons of the arts.