A Prehistory of Hinduism

by Manu V. Devadevan

Overview

This book is a pioneering attempt to understand the prehistory of Hinduism in South Asia. Exploring religious processes in the Deccan region between the eleventh and the nineteenth century with class relations as its point of focus, it throws new light on the making of religious communities, monastic institutions, legends, lineages, and the ethics that governed them. In the light of this prehistory, a compelling framework is suggested for a revision of existing perspectives on the making of Hinduism in the nineteenth and the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110517361
Publisher:	De Gruyter Poland
Publication date:	10/10/2016
Pages:	234
Sales rank:	1,012,563
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.45(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

First Name: Manu V.; Surname: Devadevan; Institution: Indian Institute of Technology; City: Mandi; Country: India

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements viii

A Guide to Pronunciation of Diacritical Marks xi

1 Introduction 1

2 Indumauli's Grief and the Making of Religious Identities 13

3 Forests of Learning and the Invention of Religious Traditions 43

4 Heredity, Genealogies, and the Advent of the New Monastery 80

5 Miracles, Ethicality, and the Great Divergence 112

6 Sainthood in Transition and the Crisis of Alienation 145

7 Epilogue 174

Bibliography 184

List of Tables 196

Index 197

Editorial Reviews

The sterile standoff between constructivists and primordialists on the question of the "invention of Hinduism" has entered a new and fertile phase with Manu Devadevan's Prehistory of Hinduism. Unlike most other analysts, the author can actually read precolonial texts—in this case, the very rich archive of Kannada materials—and thereby make real sense of the economic, social, and conceptual changes that with ever-accelerating speed in the early-modern period produced new category-thinking about religion. This new category is based, in Devadevan's analysis, at once on unprecedented developments in economy (class), society (a secular labor market), and ideology (the reified text). Hinduism as a religious community, at least in one South Asia region, was an outcome in the nineteenth century of this complex conjuncture, typified in the abolition of the peasantry and of the living saint. The Prehistory of Hinduism is an important work by a remarkable young historian that is going to challenge the way we think about precolonial India.
Prof. Sheldon Pollock, Columbia University

This book, a scholarly achievement of the first order, offers a radically innovative history of the Western Deccan over the last eight or nine centuries. It is rich in insights generated by profound knowledge of the multi-lingual and multi-cultural worlds of medieval and early-modern Karnataka. Although it purports to be primarily a history of religion in this region, in fact it illuminates political, economic, and social life no less than the astonishing intellectual traditions in medieval Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam,Sanskrit, Tamil, and Persian. A landmark in the study of pre-modern South India.​
Prof. David Dean Shulman, Hebrew University Jerusalem

From the Publisher