Buch, Englisch, Band 35, 327 Seiten, GB, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 240 mm
Sayana and the Royal Project of Commenting on the Whole of the Veda
Buch, Englisch, Band 35, 327 Seiten, GB, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 240 mm
Reihe: Publications of the De Nobili Research Library
ISBN: 978-3-900271-41-1
Verlag: Sammlung de Nobili
A Commentator in Service of the Empire seeks to investigate an
intricate web of relationships between knowledge and power,
and empire and book history in the fourteenth-century South
Indian state of Vijayanagara. It concerns the border area of the
crossroads of disciplines inasmuch as it addresses problems of
intellectual and political history as well as cultural and textual
studies while attempting to demonstrate the complex world of
ideas and practices in the making of an empire to come.
The ambitions of the first rulers of the rising Vijayanagara
empire, the issue of the religious authority of the charismatic
pontiffs of the monastery of Srngeri and the scholarly ideas of
Sayana, a rare polymath, are presented as intertwined in the
unprecedented project of a commentary on the whole of the
scriptural Veda. The book demonstrates how the enterprise of
commenting on the whole of the Veda assumed an active role
in the making of the empire and its ideological image.
The book proposes a rethinking of the relationship between
power and knowledge in the historical context through a close
reading of Sayanas introductions to his Vedic commentaries
and attention to the historical context of the commentarial
project while situating it in the reconstructed social practices of
writing, editing, copying, circulating and using manuscripts in
late medieval South India. The chapters are designed to
reinforce the intention of the book, namely, to rethink the
question of power, knowledge, writing and manuscript culture
in relation to the inception of the empire of Vijayanagara in
particular and to medieval Indian forms of political power in
general.
