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.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Usage
List of Maps
1. Introduction
2. Sufi Tale of Rajputs in Sixteenth-century Avadh
3. Rajput Kings and their Pasts in the Mughal Period
4. Tales of Past Glory under Early Colonial Indirect Rule (c. 1750-1850)
5. Exemplary Patriotism in the Late Nineteenth Century
6. Conclusion
7. Appendix 1: Summaries of Selected Versions of the Legend
8. Appendix 2: List of Known Versions / Manuscripts / Editions of the Padmini Legend
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Ramya Sreenivasan is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in Indian History c. 1500-1900 (University of Washington Press, 2007).More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
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