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        Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia
Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500-1800
            
        
    
    
    
    
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                Edited by:
            
            
        Sheldon Pollock
        
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                With contributions by:
            
            
        Sumit Guha
        
                        
                            Language:
                        
                        English
                    
                
                
                
                    
                        
                            Published/Copyright:
                            
                                2011
                            
                        
                    
                
            About this book
Essays illuminate the extraordinarily varied and dynamic intellectual developments underway in India and Tibet during the three centuries prior to the consolidation of British imperial power in 1800.
Author / Editor information
Sheldon Pollock is the William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India; the editor of a number of books, including Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia; and a co-editor of Cosmopolitanism, also published by Duke University Press.
Reviews
“Cultural and postcolonial studies scholars conceptualize colonial power as overwhelmingly domineering, paying little attention to the complex changes underway in South Asia before British imperial domination. This creates a substantive gap, which Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia begins to fill. This collection of excellent essays is a major addition to the literature on early modern Asia.”—David Ludden, author of Early Capitalism and Local History in South India
“Deserving of our attention in their own right as splendid scholarly contributions to the growing field of early-modern studies in South Asia and Tibet, the essays in this collection have the additional merit of addressing, often explicitly, the fallacious but widespread tendency on the part of many to pronounce on colonial knowledge or modernity in the subcontinent without much engagement with what preceded them. Students of both precolonial and colonial South Asia will benefit from this book.”—Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
“Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia succeeds in more than just skimming the surface of South Asian scholarship, and as a new entry in a
relatively sparse field, opens several important questions about how we, as scholars, recognize and define systems of knowledge in early modern history.”
relatively sparse field, opens several important questions about how we, as scholars, recognize and define systems of knowledge in early modern history.”
-- Emily Rook-Koepsel Journal of Early Modern History
”Yet the synergy created by bringing these excellent essays together in a single volume opens up new frameworks for the analysis of intellectual history. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia is an exciting and path-breaking volume of essays that will surely entice others to undertake research along similar lines.”
-- Cynthia Talbot Asian Studies Reader
“This compilation of essays is a valuable contribution to a nascent scholarly field that is beginning to chip away at too-long-held assumptions about the degree and kind of modernity that developed in South Asia.”
-- Erin E. O’Donnell History: Reviews of New Books
“Given the range of geographic and linguistic areas that this volume covers, scholars might be tempted to read only those essays pertaining to their fields of specialization. The advantage of this book’s breadth, however, is that it enables the identification of wider trends that cross particular language zones. On the other hand, the overlapping themes that emerge in the course of such a study are balanced by the high level of detail in the individual studies.”
-- Supriya Gandhi Sixteenth Century Journal
“This innovative volume contains thirteen essays on languages, knowledge traditions, and literary cultures in South Asia and Tibet in the three centuries before 1800…. The essays raise many interesting questions and bring to light fascinating material, and the book is highly recommended.”
-- Knut A. Jacobsen Journal of World History
“The text is versatile for both specialist and student, for it introduces hundreds of little-known works that enrich areas where previous scholarship had all-too-often focused exclusively on religious literatures…. The volume ultimately makes the reader hungry for more, for more on South India and for more on the traffic in and out of Southeast Asia. The prospect of what is left to be discovered has never been more tantalizing.”
-- Tony K. Stewart Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
Topics
| Publicly Available Download PDF | i | 
| Publicly Available Download PDF | vii | 
| Publicly Available Download PDF | ix | 
| Sheldon Pollock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 1 | 
| Part I Communication, Knowledge, and Power | |
| Sheldon Pollock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 19 | 
| Sumit Guha Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 49 | 
| Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 69 | 
| Part II. Literary Consciousness, Practices, and Institutions in North India | |
| Allison Busch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 115 | 
| Imre Bangha Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 140 | 
| Françoise Mallison Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 171 | 
| Part III. Inside the World of Indo-Persian Thought | |
| Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 185 | 
| Aditya Behl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 210 | 
| Sunil Sharma Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 240 | 
| Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 257 | 
| Part IV. Early Modernities of Tibetan Knowledge | |
| Kurtis R. Schaeffer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 291 | 
| Janet Gyatso Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 311 | 
| Matthew T. Kapstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 336 | 
| Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 365 | 
| Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed | 369 | 
Publishing information
                
                Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
                
                eBook published on:
                            March 14, 2011
                        
                        
                        eBook ISBN:
                        9780822393580
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
                
                Main content:
                            392
                        
                    
                    
                    
                        
                            Other:
                            1 map, 3 figures