This is the first notice, edition, and translation of a royal order in Sanskrit, engraved on a se... more This is the first notice, edition, and translation of a royal order in Sanskrit, engraved on a set of three copper-plates kept in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The inscription is dated to the seventh year of the reign of Nannarāja i, king of the Pāṇḍuvaṃśin lineage active in Dakṣiṇa Kosala in the sixth and seventh centuries ce. The inscription provides important new information about a family of engravers, probably relocated from Śarabhapura to Sirpur, who served both the Śarabhapurīya and Pāṇḍuvaṃśin courts. The plates further suggest that Nannarāja i, as the first Pāṇḍuvaṃśin king of South Kosala, continued the epigraphic traditions of the Śarabhapurīyas, whom he may have served with his father Indrabala in his early career before the conflicts which brought him to power.
This essay argues that the rise and circulation of large numbers of Sanskrit literary anthologies... more This essay argues that the rise and circulation of large numbers of Sanskrit literary anthologies as well as story traditions about poets in the second millennium together index important changes in the 'authorfunction' within the Sanskrit literary tradition. While modern 'empirical authorship' and external referentiality in Sanskrit has long been deemed 'elusive'by Western scholarship, the new forms of literary production in the second millennium suggest a distinct new interest in authorship among wider literary communities. This new 'author-function' indexed a shift in the perceptions of literary production and the literary tradition itself. Focusing on the famous sixteenth-century work known as the Bhojaprabandha as both an anthology as well as a storybook about poets, this essay further argues that the paradigmatic courts of kings like Vikramaditya and Bhoja (but particularly the latter), placed not in historical time but in an archaic temporality, became the mise en scène for the figure of the poet in the second-millennium literary imagination. They were courts where the finest poets of the tradition appeared and where their virtuosity could be savored and reflected upon by generations of readers.
The birth of courtly emotions in early India was intimately linked to the proliferation of royal ... more The birth of courtly emotions in early India was intimately linked to the proliferation of royal households across the subcontinent between the fourth and seventh centuries CE. Though earlier political formations saw the consolidation of monarchy, the rise of imperial ideology, and the evolution of royal functionaries, sources neither shed light upon, nor stress, the affective world of individuals around the king and his court until the first centuries of the Common Era. A convergence of sources from the end of the third century-including inscriptional encomia, manuals on polity, and didactic poetry-all point to the steady emergence of a constellation of openly articulated emotions that were deemed to constitute the relations between men of birth and standing who attended the lordly households of the era. These emotions, often obliquely perceived through the modern lens of a 'classical' literary culture' are here situated in the political context of the fourth to seventh centuries and through an analysis across genres, with the hope of moving beyond current assumptions about the relations between aesthetically defined emotions (bhāva and rasa) and the social world that produced them. In particular, the essay explores different types of bonds of love and affection and their various inflections that were thought to arise between courtly actors. It further argues that knowledge about these emotions contributed to a kind of 'science of emotional interpretation' that helped men and women express and interpret emotions at court and negotiate the complex relationships that were cast in their idiom.
This article argues that the languages of loyalty and affiliation that marked public and formal r... more This article argues that the languages of loyalty and affiliation that marked public and formal relations of service and hierarchy in medieval India, though traditionally understood as thinly veiled pretexts for class exploitation or self-aggrandizement, may instead be interpreted, when combined with other sorts of sources, as elements within a larger ethical landscape where men of rank shared varieties of companionship and intimacy with one another. The article will enter this realm of intimacy through an exploration of the emotions of grief and loss in two strangely parallel Chola-period friendships: one epigraphically documented to the tenth century, and the other recounted in an important contemporary hagiographical tradition. The article argues not only for the importance of male friendship and intimacy in the political and religious life of elites in medieval south India but also suggests that fragmented memories of particular lived experiences between individuals may have been embedded in or triggered by more idealized representations. I hope to suggest that there were not only structures of affect at work in the constitution of male intimacy but also models and paradigms. The eminent medieval historian Noboru Karashima once recommended to a younger generation of historians that they 'listen' closely to their sources—in Karashima's case the large corpus of lithic inscriptions—for what he called the 'whisperings' of history—subtle hints and detached fragments of otherwise hidden events and lives through which scholars might bring to light hitherto unknown realms of historical experience that could enrich and diversify our understandings of the past. This article, inspired by such an approach, treats the Ali 37 topic of male companionship in medieval South India through the exploration of two specific historical 'cases' taken from the period of the Chola empire (c. 950– 1250 ad). 2 One will be reconstructed primarily from a handful of epigraphic records, and the other from an extended and well-known textual hagiography. These cases have some striking historical resonances with one another, and together present us with an insight into the contours of friendship and affiliation in Chola South India. They deal with parallel arenas of social interaction where male companionship was highly valued—the sphere of courtly/military societies on the one hand and the realm of religious mendicancy on the other hand. Historians have tended to overlook the pronounced emphasis in sources related to both of these spheres on the importance of companionship and the shaping and maintenance of lateral bonds, particularly in the context of service to a higher power.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Third Series), Jan 1, 2012
Colonial scholars and administrators in the latter half of the nineteenth century were the first ... more Colonial scholars and administrators in the latter half of the nineteenth century were the first to subject South Asia to modern historicist scrutiny. Using coins, inscriptions, and chronicles, they determined the dates and identities of numerous kings and dynasties within an ...
This is the first notice, edition, and translation of a royal order in Sanskrit, engraved on a se... more This is the first notice, edition, and translation of a royal order in Sanskrit, engraved on a set of three copper-plates kept in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The inscription is dated to the seventh year of the reign of Nannarāja i, king of the Pāṇḍuvaṃśin lineage active in Dakṣiṇa Kosala in the sixth and seventh centuries ce. The inscription provides important new information about a family of engravers, probably relocated from Śarabhapura to Sirpur, who served both the Śarabhapurīya and Pāṇḍuvaṃśin courts. The plates further suggest that Nannarāja i, as the first Pāṇḍuvaṃśin king of South Kosala, continued the epigraphic traditions of the Śarabhapurīyas, whom he may have served with his father Indrabala in his early career before the conflicts which brought him to power.
This essay argues that the rise and circulation of large numbers of Sanskrit literary anthologies... more This essay argues that the rise and circulation of large numbers of Sanskrit literary anthologies as well as story traditions about poets in the second millennium together index important changes in the 'authorfunction' within the Sanskrit literary tradition. While modern 'empirical authorship' and external referentiality in Sanskrit has long been deemed 'elusive'by Western scholarship, the new forms of literary production in the second millennium suggest a distinct new interest in authorship among wider literary communities. This new 'author-function' indexed a shift in the perceptions of literary production and the literary tradition itself. Focusing on the famous sixteenth-century work known as the Bhojaprabandha as both an anthology as well as a storybook about poets, this essay further argues that the paradigmatic courts of kings like Vikramaditya and Bhoja (but particularly the latter), placed not in historical time but in an archaic temporality, became the mise en scène for the figure of the poet in the second-millennium literary imagination. They were courts where the finest poets of the tradition appeared and where their virtuosity could be savored and reflected upon by generations of readers.
The birth of courtly emotions in early India was intimately linked to the proliferation of royal ... more The birth of courtly emotions in early India was intimately linked to the proliferation of royal households across the subcontinent between the fourth and seventh centuries CE. Though earlier political formations saw the consolidation of monarchy, the rise of imperial ideology, and the evolution of royal functionaries, sources neither shed light upon, nor stress, the affective world of individuals around the king and his court until the first centuries of the Common Era. A convergence of sources from the end of the third century-including inscriptional encomia, manuals on polity, and didactic poetry-all point to the steady emergence of a constellation of openly articulated emotions that were deemed to constitute the relations between men of birth and standing who attended the lordly households of the era. These emotions, often obliquely perceived through the modern lens of a 'classical' literary culture' are here situated in the political context of the fourth to seventh centuries and through an analysis across genres, with the hope of moving beyond current assumptions about the relations between aesthetically defined emotions (bhāva and rasa) and the social world that produced them. In particular, the essay explores different types of bonds of love and affection and their various inflections that were thought to arise between courtly actors. It further argues that knowledge about these emotions contributed to a kind of 'science of emotional interpretation' that helped men and women express and interpret emotions at court and negotiate the complex relationships that were cast in their idiom.
This article argues that the languages of loyalty and affiliation that marked public and formal r... more This article argues that the languages of loyalty and affiliation that marked public and formal relations of service and hierarchy in medieval India, though traditionally understood as thinly veiled pretexts for class exploitation or self-aggrandizement, may instead be interpreted, when combined with other sorts of sources, as elements within a larger ethical landscape where men of rank shared varieties of companionship and intimacy with one another. The article will enter this realm of intimacy through an exploration of the emotions of grief and loss in two strangely parallel Chola-period friendships: one epigraphically documented to the tenth century, and the other recounted in an important contemporary hagiographical tradition. The article argues not only for the importance of male friendship and intimacy in the political and religious life of elites in medieval south India but also suggests that fragmented memories of particular lived experiences between individuals may have been embedded in or triggered by more idealized representations. I hope to suggest that there were not only structures of affect at work in the constitution of male intimacy but also models and paradigms. The eminent medieval historian Noboru Karashima once recommended to a younger generation of historians that they 'listen' closely to their sources—in Karashima's case the large corpus of lithic inscriptions—for what he called the 'whisperings' of history—subtle hints and detached fragments of otherwise hidden events and lives through which scholars might bring to light hitherto unknown realms of historical experience that could enrich and diversify our understandings of the past. This article, inspired by such an approach, treats the Ali 37 topic of male companionship in medieval South India through the exploration of two specific historical 'cases' taken from the period of the Chola empire (c. 950– 1250 ad). 2 One will be reconstructed primarily from a handful of epigraphic records, and the other from an extended and well-known textual hagiography. These cases have some striking historical resonances with one another, and together present us with an insight into the contours of friendship and affiliation in Chola South India. They deal with parallel arenas of social interaction where male companionship was highly valued—the sphere of courtly/military societies on the one hand and the realm of religious mendicancy on the other hand. Historians have tended to overlook the pronounced emphasis in sources related to both of these spheres on the importance of companionship and the shaping and maintenance of lateral bonds, particularly in the context of service to a higher power.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Third Series), Jan 1, 2012
Colonial scholars and administrators in the latter half of the nineteenth century were the first ... more Colonial scholars and administrators in the latter half of the nineteenth century were the first to subject South Asia to modern historicist scrutiny. Using coins, inscriptions, and chronicles, they determined the dates and identities of numerous kings and dynasties within an ...
... of this book: John Cort, Richard Davis, Ginni Ishimatsu, Padma Kaimal, Noboru Karashima, Sask... more ... of this book: John Cort, Richard Davis, Ginni Ishimatsu, Padma Kaimal, Noboru Karashima, Saskia Kersenboom, Mohan Khokar, Anne ... assistantsSteven Engler, Michelle Folk, Paul Hammett, Daphne Lazar, Grant Martin, Philip Moscovitch and Tanisha Ramachaudranfor all ...
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