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Power, Memory, Architecture
English
395 (150 B/W Illustrations )
About The book
Focussing on India's Deccan Plateau, this book explores how power and memory combined to produce the region's built landscape, as seen above all in its monumental architecture. During the turbulent sixteenth century, fortified frontier strongholds like Kalyana, Warangal, or Raichur were repeatedly contested by primary centres-namely, great capital cities such as Bijapur, Vijayanagara, or Golconda. Examining the political histories and material culture of both primary and secondary centres, the book investigates how and why the peoples of the Deccan, in their struggles for dominance over the secondary centres, promoted certain elements of their remembered past while forgetting others.
The book also rethinks the usefulness of Hindu-Muslim relations as the master key by which to interpret this period of South Asian history, and proposes instead a model informed by both Sanskrit and Persian literary traditions. Further, the authors systematically integrate the methodologies of history, art history, and archaeology in their attempt to reconstruct the past, as opposed to the standard practice of using one of these methodologies to the exclusion of the others. The book, thus, describes and explains interstate politics of the medieval Deccan at a more grassroots level than hitherto attempted.
About The Author
Richard M. Eaton is professor of history at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. His research focusses on the social and cultural history of late medieval and early modern India (AD 1000-1800), especially on the range of historical interactions between Iran and India, and on Islam in South Asia.
Phillip B. Wagoner is professor of art history at Wesleyan University, Midd
395 (150 B/W Illustrations )
About The book
Focussing on India's Deccan Plateau, this book explores how power and memory combined to produce the region's built landscape, as seen above all in its monumental architecture. During the turbulent sixteenth century, fortified frontier strongholds like Kalyana, Warangal, or Raichur were repeatedly contested by primary centres-namely, great capital cities such as Bijapur, Vijayanagara, or Golconda. Examining the political histories and material culture of both primary and secondary centres, the book investigates how and why the peoples of the Deccan, in their struggles for dominance over the secondary centres, promoted certain elements of their remembered past while forgetting others.
The book also rethinks the usefulness of Hindu-Muslim relations as the master key by which to interpret this period of South Asian history, and proposes instead a model informed by both Sanskrit and Persian literary traditions. Further, the authors systematically integrate the methodologies of history, art history, and archaeology in their attempt to reconstruct the past, as opposed to the standard practice of using one of these methodologies to the exclusion of the others. The book, thus, describes and explains interstate politics of the medieval Deccan at a more grassroots level than hitherto attempted.
About The Author
Richard M. Eaton is professor of history at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. His research focusses on the social and cultural history of late medieval and early modern India (AD 1000-1800), especially on the range of historical interactions between Iran and India, and on Islam in South Asia.
Phillip B. Wagoner is professor of art history at Wesleyan University, Midd
Hardcover
First published April 1, 2014
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August 21, 2019
Eaton does his magic again! This book is an ingenuous piece of cultural history. Eaton and Wagoner employ imagination that is rarely sighted in historiography. They affirm that history-writing is an area of art. How can one re-imagine the arrangement of ancient and medieval temple artefacts in a living city? How can inscriptions mean more than chronicles? The authors are able to think between centuries and dynasties and break the fetters of chronology and classification. The book argues that architecture is one of the tools in the building of genealogies for the sake of legitimacy. The Tughluqs built links with Chalukyas and so did the Aravidus and Adil Shahis they say. Likewise the Qutb Shahis saw themselves as successors to the Kakatiyas it seems. A few of the chapters in this book - I had to read for an earlier course of mine. After reading it then, I was certain that I would return to it. And there is more that I must return to: the sites themselves. I was awed by Hampi, Bijapur, and Warangal. Since Eaton, more intense light was thrown at these places and their fascinating pasts.
Displaying 1 of 1 review