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Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia New Edition
Author(s): Ronald B. Inden (Author), Jonathan Walters (Author), Daud Ali (Author)
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication Date: 8 Jun. 2000
- Edition: New
- Language: English
- Print length: 248 pages
- ISBN-10: 0195124308
- ISBN-13: 9780195124309
Book Description
Indologist Ronald Inden has in the past raised questions about the images of a "traditional" or "medieval" India deployed by colonial scholars and rulers--"Orientalists"--and has also argued that a history of "early medieval" India very different from both the colonial and nationalist accounts could be written. This volume is designed as an important first step towards that goal. The authors look closely at three genres of texts that have been crucial to the representations of precolonial India. All three essays challenge not only colonialist scholarship but the attempts by religious nationalists to identify Hinduism as the essence of national identity in India and Buddhism as the essence of nationality in Sri Lanka.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This volume is an important, groundbreaking work challenging how we read and understand texts. . . . This is must reading for those engaged in the struggle to understand the deeper past or disheartened by radical deconstruction of texts to the point that signifiers 'float, ' meaning everything and nothing."--Stewart Gordon, University of Michigan
Review
"This volume is an important, groundbreaking work challenging how we read and understand texts. . . . This is must reading for those engaged in the struggle to understand the deeper past or disheartened by radical deconstruction of texts to the point that signifiers 'float,' meaning everything and nothing."--Stewart Gordon, University of Michigan
