Books published by Primus Books

In this first critical edition of the legal treatise of Viṣṇu (Viṣṇu Smṛti), Olivelle locates the text geographically in Kashmir and dates it to around the seventh century CE based, among other factors, on the iconographic description of Viṣṇu. The text was composed by a scholar who belonged to the Kāṭhaka Branch of the Yajur Veda and who was also an adherent of the Vaiṣṇava Pañcarātra tradition. This is the only legal text that shows a deep influence of the bhakti tradition. Although the Viṣṇu Smṛti did not have as illustrious a life as the treatises of Manu and Yājñavalkya, we find it cited frequently in medieval legal digests. Indeed, unlike citations from other Dharmaśāstras, medieval authors regularly cite entire sections of this treatise, indicating that they were familiar with a text more or less identical to the one that has come down to us. Consisting of 100 chapters, the text is framed as a conversation between Goddess Earth and Viṣṇu, with Earth requesting the dharma that should govern the lives of those belonging to the four varṇas. Originally published in the Harvard Oriental Series, this Indian edition will hopefully make this important text available to a wider Indian audience of scholars and students.

The essays in this volume examine 'hidden histories' related to gender, religion, and reform in modern South Asia. Chapters from an array of eminent contributors examine Indo-Muslim cultures and political mobilization, literary aesthetics, and education, broadly defined. Dedicated to Gail Minault, a pioneering scholar of women's history, Islamic reformation, and Urdu literature, this volume raises new questions about the role of identity in politics and public life, about memory and historical archives, and about innovative approaches to envisioning egalitarianism. It showcases interdisciplinary methodologies. Timely and thought-provoking, this book will interest all who wish to understand how our diverse and plural pasts have informed our cosmopolitan present as we struggle to arrive at a better future for all.

Previous editions published under the title: Såur Dåas.

A History of Humanity is the definitive symbolic history of the world. The methods of symbolic history revolve around (1) an account of the human endowment taking up thought, feeling, and behaviour from fruitful new perspectives, and (2) a correspondingly new account of global history from the point of view of the degrees of retention, surrender, and deformation of fundamental elements of the human endowment over time. Among the new perspectives informing the account of the human endowment are semiotics, neuroscience, and palaeoethnobotany. They combine the classical modes of analysis: social anthropology and social history, political anthropology and political history, economic anthropology and economic history, and cultural anthropology and cultural history, that are gathered and unfolded under the aegis of symbolic history, bringing to the narrative a unique clarity. Original source materials from the Neolithic world and from South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Western civilizations illustrate and challenge the narrative, which is unbroken but not dogmatic. Both the narrative and original sources are accompanied by a two-level marginal commentary: the first keeps the reader located in time and space, while the second brings insights from other observers of the world to the reader's attention. The aim of the commentary is to help the reader think about the human world, without, however, closing the question of the nature of the human world.

This book is a collection of papers on suicide and self-immolation, reprinted from the almost forgotten Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, published in 1886-1936. The book carries a Foreword by Professor Ashis Nandy on death and self in culture. Part I includes nineteen papers, analysing statistics of suicides committed in Bombay (now Mumbai) from 1886 to 1907, classified by religion, gender, age, month, date, cause and means of suicide, etc. The data is presented in a number of tables, often with remarks on individual cases. Launched by Edward Rehatsek, a Hungarian scholar who had made Bombay his home, the papers were continued after his death by the Parsee scholar, Bomanjee Byramjee Patell. Part II includes seven general essays: one is on suicide and old age in a comparative perspective, and another on suicide in ancient India. The question of self-immolation of Hindu widows, commonly referred to as sati, is discussed in three of the essays. Of special interest is the essay on the Sati of Ramabai, widow of Madhavrao Peshwa. Two essays deal with the issue of selfimmolation of persons in religious contexts.

"First published 2017"--Title page verso.

This book on the city of Agra makes a close examination of this medieval Indian urban centre that grew into a multifunctional town completely outside of the supposed agenda or impact of Turkish rule, as well as European influence. This enquiry uncovers possible deliberations in the evaluation of a settlement that was unknown in the sixteenth century, but which was to develop into an alternate prominent political centre in northern India

In the last decade or so. There has been substantial development in understanding the behavioral patterns of the pasthunter-gatherers societies. Although images of existing hunting-gathering populations continue to be used as analogues in drawing inferences about the past, there has been considerable shift in the analyses of both the archaeological record and the ethnographic data as well as more meaningful engagement with inquiries in territoriality, mobility strategies, and the use of raw materials by past hunter-gatherers.

This volume is a collection of essays on untouchability written by Professor Jha at various points of his long and illustrious career. It dwells on the manner in which social stratification in ancient India developed to exclude castes like Caṇḍālas and Niṣādas, leading to their exploitation and sub-human treatment. The book begins with tracing the origin and condition of Caṇḍālas (1000 BC to AD 600), who were first mentioned in later Vedic literature (1000 to 600 BC) at the Purushamedha (symbolic human sacrifice) dedicated to deity Vayu. Another essay examines the acculturation of the Niṣādas--who were mainly fishermen and hunters by profession--which started from the Later Vedic Period. Caṇḍālas and Niṣādas were both over time assimilated into the Brahmanical caste structure as degraded shudras, and ultimately relegated to being untouchables.

This work traces the history of the Medieval Jain community, focusing on the engagements of the Jains with the imperialo authority in the Mughal provinces of Ajmer, Awadh, Allahabad, Bihar, Delhi, Gujarat, Lahore and Malwa. It examines the trajectories of Jain community formation under the Mughals in India by scrutinizinh the everyday reproduction of a religious minority ruled by a monarchical dynasty belonging to another religious affilation. The endeavour is to gain insights on how diverse complexities of early modern South Asian society were dealt with. One can argue that soci-economicrealties and cultural considerations had a significant influence in the evolution of the inter-community relationship amd state formation in early modern South Asia. An analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the political processes into their relations with the Jains reflects the subtleties of the making of Mughal India. Although most of the Jains were traders and merchants, their relations with the Mughal state can be examined beyond the technicalities of economic considerations. The extensive use of contemporary Jain literary genres, like vigyaptipatras, in this work may thus widen the horizons of the history of Jain 'pasts' and Mughal historiography.

Dāna: Reciprocity and Patronage in Buddhism explores the concept of dāna in Buddhism as a primarily rational and ethical phenomenon and examines its superimposing, mythic, and cultic dimensions. Scholars who have contributed to this volume have attempted to place dāna in the context of contemporary religious traditions in relation to various sects and traditions of Buddhism, re-examining established hypotheses and challenging extreme opinions that are prone to exaggeration. It elucidates evolution, transition, and maturity of the process of dāna in different phases of Buddhism. The Buddha introduced the practice of dāna to sustain his monastic community. Subsequently its character transformed with the division of Buddhism into different sects and traditions. Some of the papers specifically deal with ideological differences and changes in nature of reciprocity, patronage, and possessions.

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Deccan sultanates of southern India lay at the crossroads of maritime and agrarian empires of the early modern world. While the artistic and architectural merits of the Deccan's Indo-Islamic courts are wellknown, the region's unique historical relationship to Iran remains unexamined, often subsumed under the shadow of the Mughal Empire. This volume explores the diplomatic connections and intellectual linkages of the Golkonda sultanate with Safavid Iran and Mughal Hindustan. Complementing studies of early modern empires, it examines a breadth of Persian manuscripts, epistolary correspondence, archival documents, and European travel accounts from the Deccan. It is one of the first of its kind to explore the movement of knowledge, talent, and people in the early modern world from the perspective of a non-imperial, regional polity. Regional sultanates were not merely receivers of statecraft, religion, and politics from large empires, but also a critical site where diplomatic negotiations and new forms of intellectual exchange transpired and bore upon broader shifts in the eastern Islamic world.

Identities and Assertions attempts to capture the construction of self in Dalit women's oral narratives. Their spontaneous revelation of their selves, their assertion of identity, their negotiations with multiple identities, and their constant struggle to achieve social and economic mobility are analysed in the context of Dalit feminism, feminist research methodologies, and non-mainstream critical theories from the West. Based on the fieldwork conducted between 2003 and 2005 in what is now the state of Telangana, it examines the various dimensions of Dalit women's narratives such as how identities are formulated, education is sought for and political representation is perceived as the source of social liberation. It also discusses how education, location, religion, work, family and sexuality emerge as crucial categories for them which are sometimes questioned, sometimes re-defined and sometimes subverted. Dalit women's writing in Telugu is also used as a critical framework to analyse the oral narratives of Dalit women, some of whom are people's representatives, performers, joginis, child labourers, social activists and teachers.

Beyond the 'Woman Question' both revisits and interrogates some of the central tenets of the 'woman question' as it emerged in colonial India and shaped (and continues to shape) subsequent historiography. These include issues of women's access to resources, ritual 'rights', and locations within the family, primarily relating to an unmarked category of upper-caste/class women. In terms of chronology, the essays range from the mid-first millennium BCE to the turn of the first/ second millennium CE. Spatially, they deal with regions as diverse as Kashmir, and parts of north and central India. Using a wide range of sources--inscriptional and visual as well as normative and narrative texts--this book contends that gender identities were not monolithic, even as elite women seem to be the most visible/accessible. The issues explored include participation in gift exchanges and their economic, social, political and cultural significance; the construction of gender identities through rituals; and the representation of gender relations in literary traditions. Collectively, the volume contributes to the growing body of historical research on gender relations in early India.

This volume deliberates on various dimensions of the challenges confronting parliamentary democracy in India, and provides a platform for debates emanating from the depths of society, new critiques of the manner in which democracy has functioned, and the strengths and weaknesses of Indian democracy. It deals with the theory and practice of democratic governance, the role of the judiciary in strengthening the legislative and executive functions of the state, the role of the media as the fourth estate, the rise of social movements and civil society, the critical role of economic development in sustaining democracy, and the role of democracy in containing ethnic conflicts. It also includes two essays on democracy at the grassroots analysing electoral behaviour and the gender perspective, and presents alternatives that have been offered by civil society activists, academicians, and researchers, who together form an intellectual comity.

Cultivating Pathways of Creative Research: New Horizons of Transformative Practice and Collaborative Imagination strives to cultivate new pathways of research and engagement in social sciences and humanities where cultivation is linked to cross-fertilization of creative theorizing and transformative practice, appropriate self-formation and collaborative imagination, experimental creativity and world transformation. With a foreword and an afterword, the book brings together thirty creative thinkers of our world from diverse backgrounds who share with us their vision and practice of cultivating pathways of creative research. They help us go beyond formalism of method and cultivate new pathways of research in social sciences and humanities, especially in sociology, anthropology, education, art and literature. The volume, second in the trilogy of Creative Research, which follows Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues and is followed by Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony is not only a pioneering contribution to the world research but also to rethinking and regenerating self, culture, society and the human condition. This book speaks to a wide readership and concern in transdisciplinary cross-currents of the academy and to the strivings and aspirations of seeking souls all across our fragile and meditative humanity.

In a world becoming increasingly sensitive to the failings of narrow empiricism this book offers insights into creative and meaningful approaches to research. It explores ontological epistemology of participation as a new pathway of research as well as conceptualization of reality which goes beyond conventional methods such as participant observation and the familiar dualisms between qualitative and the quantitative and epistemology and ontology. Drawing on the editor's wide ranging network of creative scholars at work in the world of academia and beyond Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues brings together twenty-five insightful chapters each rich in insights into the role that creativity and dialogue play in the work researchers do. Drawing on both Western and Eastern approaches as part of a festival of dialogues, the book offers pathways of creative research that strives to understand the work of the non-dual in self, culture, society and the world. Pathways of Creative Research, the first volume in the trilogy of creative research which includes the subsequent volumes, Cultivating Pathways of Creative Research: New Horizons of Transformative Practice and Collaborative Imagination and Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony, is not only a pioneering but also a monumental effort in our world of scholarship, thinking, practice and collaborative imagination which raises some of these vital and deeper questions of theory and practice and then overflows to an epochal and epic quest for rethinking and regenerating life, culture, society, polity and our fragile humanity.

Can research contribute to the realization of reality as well as its potential? Can science and spirituality dance together to reveal the hidden and awaiting harmony in life, and manifest it in self, culture, society and the world? Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony explores these neglected and repressed questions of modernity and presents trans-modern possibilities and neo-human futures based upon multiple traditions of humanity--European, Indian, Latin American, Islamic, and others. It encourages wholeness in this world of fragmentation and invites the reader to realize the poetic and spiritual dimension of reality where realization is not so much an end but a process. The book brings together a diverse range of creative thinkers and offers a festival of dialogues and co-realizations in the fragile world of the present. Third in the trilogy of Creative Research, together with the earlier two volumes, Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues and Cultivating Pathways of Creative Research: New Horizons of Transformative Practice and Collaborative Imagination, this is not only a pioneering but also a monumental effort in rethinking and regenerating research, life and the human condition.

Big History is a new field that has been gaining ground rapidly around the world. It deals with the universe's grand narrative of 13.8 billion years and attempts to provide a connection between our past, present and future. Appearing in three volumes, this is the first international anthology of Big History. The first volume, Our Place in the Universe: An Introduction to Big History, provides an overview and notes trends in Big History today. The second volume, Education and Understanding: Big History around the World, considers humanity's search for meaning and expression.The third volume, The Ways that Big History Works: Cosmos, Life, Society and our Future, reflects on how Big History helps us understand the nature of our existence and consider the pathways to our future. This volume will challenge and excite your vision of your own life as well as focus on the new discoveries happening around us. Together with the authors, who come from all the inhabited continents of our planet, you will embark on a fascinating trip into the depths of time and space, and--we hope--will join us in coming to an understanding of our origins and our future.

The anthropogenic impact on the environment has led to devastating consequences and irreversible damage to both humans and nonhumans. Environmentalists warn that the damage incurred so far threatens to intensify further due to the lack of adequate corrective measures. The Humanities cannot remain unresponsive towards this deterioration. The effort is directed towards erasing the binary opposition between Nature and Culture in favour of a more holistic and anti-schismatic existence. The growing field of Ecocriticism has expanded and crossed boundaries into numerous areas including Environmental Studies, Postmodern Geography, Neurobiology and many others; all leading to the common aim of sensitizing humans to environmental health and the survival of the non-human world, in the spirit of environmental justice. The book addresses this concern taking into consideration texts for their pronounced bioethical and biophilic awareness. This compilation of essays and adds to the existing discourse by bringing all three aspects of criticism--the critical paradigm of ecocriticism, its need and application--in one volume.

What does the idea/concept of South Asia mean in a time when borders have become absolute, predetermining our sense of self, culture, and politics? In a critical and creative engagement with this question, Another South Asia! attempts to explore novel possibilities beyond the stratagem of nation states. Amidst the shrinking utopias in the various disciplinary discourses due to the predominance of cartographic reason, the essays in this book propose a new lease to the utopian imagination of the region. Grounded in history, civilization, culture, and people across boundaries, located in the domain of post-disciplinary enquiries, this book enables a dialogue among the Sociologists and Social Anthropologists, students and scholars of International Relations, Literary and Performance studies, Art History, Diaspora studies, Historical and Civilizational studies and South Asian studies to name a few. This book will interest scholars as well as ordinary readers and persuade them to imagine another South Asia to ensure a better future of the region.

Visual histories of South Asia is one of the first comprehensive contributions to the rapidly developing cross-disciplinary scholarship that connects visual studies with South Asian historiography. The key purpose of the book is to introduce scholars and students of South Asian and Indian history to the first in-depth evaluation of visual research methods as a valid research framework for new historical studies. The volume identifies and evaluates current developments in visual sociology and digital anthropology relevant to the study of contemporary South Asian constructions of personal and national identities. Owing to its wide-ranging theoretical methodology, from concepts of visual perception to media semiotics, Visual Histories of South Asia covers a rich thematic agenda with contributions ranging from ethnographic research to gender studies, fine arts analyses, theoretical and methodological questions, economic structures, international politics and contemporary cultural patterns. In charting the theoretical and historical advances in visual and historical studies dedicated to South Asia, and by addressing issues of private and national memory within regional, national, and contemporary South Asian iconography, from the mid-seventeenth century to the early twenty-first century. The thirteen contributions selected for this volume are of immediate relevance to visual theorists and historians, sociologists and cultural anthropologists, as well as to students and scholars of South Asian history and culture."

Plunging the Ocean engages with the voluminous content of the Kathāsaritsāgara, a text meant for courtly entertainment, locating the various points of its retelling. The volume weaves gender as the discursive mesh with various themes such as caste, class, occupations, control and flow of resources or wealth, religious practices, sexuality and power structures to highlight the discourse of the text itself. In their creation and negotiation with the past, the narratives are seen as crucially demonstrating the importance of 'social space'; in the organization of space itself and in the reflection of social relations of production and reproduction. The conclusion highlights the contradictions inherent in the characters and plots, in the folk antecedents and monarchical elite appropriation of the kathās, in conformity and subversion. The structures of power that create systems of knowledge are essentially projected as ominously omnipresent in the 'Ocean of Stories'.

This volume inverts the othering characteristic of most studies of Odisha by drawing attention to the highlands in the west and south. Based on fieldwork, participant observation, oral traditions, archival materials and long-term historical and anthropological research by a range of scholars negotiating this region and its people, this volume examines the less visible and often misrecognized highlands of Odisha, thus questioning dominant coast-centric views and acknowledging a mutlitude of perspectives on Odisha beyond simplified dichotomies. The nine essays herein cover themes such as social structures and patterns of kinship and relatedness; concepts of food, music or death and their significance to wider cosmologies; interdependencies among highland communities and the posititon of migrant farmers between caste and Adivasi society; and processes of resistance and ideas around Nehruvian industrialization projects set up in the supposed 'wilderness'.

Variations in ceramics are culturally significant. These are an expression of the functions that they are meant to perform, the identity of a community and a reflection of time. It is therefore of great interest to archaeologists and anthropologists. Ceramic Variability is based on a survey of villages in different parts of West Bengal to see ceramic variability that is noticed these days within a linguistically similar community occupying different regions. The research work attempts to locate the nature of variations within regions and analyse its causes. It examines how form is related to function, how variations are related to technique of production and how variations are associated with local conditions, both natural and cultural. This volume ultimately aims at developing a conceptual framework for analysing archaeological ceramic. In the appendix section it attempts to classify the pottery rims from a technical aspect which the author feels would be culturally more relevant than a simple morphological aspect. Further, the book also tries to draw attention to the contribution of women potters to the pottery-making tradition of India.

Late Professor Amalendu Guha belonged to that first generation of historians in post-independent India who not just gave Indian history an identity but were also responsible for its decolonization, modernization and internationalization. When most historians were writing macro history, Professor Guha concentrated on regional history and brought into focus a region of India about which very little was then known--north-east India. Besides being an eminent scholar, he was a firstrate poet in Assamese, a fearless political activist, as well as a political theorist. He passed away in May 2015. In this commemoration volume to Professor Guha, eminent historians of India, his contemporaries, and a host of younger scholars who have grown up following his scholarship gather to offer a scholarly tribute to him through their own research which discuss, debate, discover and controvert a wide array of themes of Indian history.

Mumbai, the city of dreams, has always been a city of migrants. People moved here from near and far, by land and sea, their dreams wrapped in optimism and hope. The seven islands that became the erstwhile Bombay welcomed them all. Just as the islands of this city were linked, so were its people, creating a multi-hued and multi-textured fabric--one that is uniquely Mumbai. Mumbai is popularly known for its cosmopolitan culture and its financial clout. This book, however, focuses on the history of the many communities that contributed to its wealth, both culturally and financially. While the Kolis, the Pathare Prabhus, and the East Indian Christians are regarded as its early inhabitants, others like the Parsis, Marwaris, Bhatias, Bohras, Khojas, Konkani Muslims, and the Jewish communities arrived later and created a space for themselves. Residential quarters, like the baugs, emerged to house them, while their cuisines mingled to create a vibrant food culture. This collection of essays is an attempt to introduce the reader to some of the early settlers of Mumbai and their culture.

Indian nationalism has been a contested space over the last century. Claims and counter-claims have been advanced regarding its nature for long now. This book argues that there are multiple visions of Indian nationalism, each seeking hegemony over national discourse, and that divergences regarding the cultural-ideological contours of the idea of India are central to the contest over what Indian nationalism means. Contesting Nationalisms identifies four strands: composite culture nationalism; religious nationalism; a secular, citizen-centric nationalism, and a vision of 'Dalit nationalism' seeking to reorder the public sphere in its own fashion. It traces these visions, which emerged in colonial India, through an exploration of the ideas of key ideologues in colonial Punjab. The analysis also has implications for our understanding of communalism, which has been seen as intertwined with nationalism in India for more than a century now.

Ecocriticism and Environment: Rethinking Literature and Culture focuses on the interface of sustainability, ecology and the environment as reflected in literature and culture. The eclectic collection of essays examined how writers have, across the twentieth century and in the new millenium, addressed ecological crisis and environmental challenges that cut across national, cultural, socio-political and liguistic borders. The book also singles out literary genres which are particularly sensitive to issues of sustainability. The essays in this volume, by scholars and activists across the globe, address the diverse ways in which environments are imagined, produced and articulated in diverse contexts and mediums and the consequent changes.

The women featured in this book Children of the Goddess: Devotion and Female Priesthood in Bengal live on the frontier between the tribal and the low-caste society in Bengal, and turn to religion in order to forge a new identity. Often rejected by their own community, and having lived through long and difficult personal crises some of them turn to religion to accultured identity. Some may succeed in becoming female priests, presiding over a Goddess shrine, having given up their femininity by ceasing to menstruate. As Parvati, the central personality of the book, puts it: 'Now I no longer need a child. I am the child of the Goddess', even as she innovates on the boundaries of Hinduism. The book provides a window to a little-known world where social marginality, subaltern assertion, the politics of gender, and the contestation between tribal religion and Hinduism merge to produce a unique perspective on popular Hinduism.