The Making of Early Kashmir

Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-19-948292-4
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 222 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 137 mm x 203 mm, Gewicht: 340 g

What is history? How does a land become a homeland? How are cultural identities formed? The Making of Early Kashmir
explores these questions in relation to the birth of Kashmir and the discursive and material practices that shaped it up to the 12th century CE.

Reinterpreting the first work of Kashmiri history, Kalhana's Rajatarangini, this book argues that the text was history not despite being traditional Sanskrit poetry but because of it. It elaborated a poetics of place, implicating Kashmir's sacred geography, a stringent critique of local politics, and a regional selfhood that transcended the limits of vernacularism.

Combined with longue durée testimonies from art, material culture, script, and linguistics, this book jettisons the image of an isolated and insular Kashmir. It proposes a cultural formation that straddled the Western Himalayas and the Indic plains with Kashmir as the pivot. This is the story of the connected histories of the region and the rest of India.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaul, Shonaleeka

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Östliche Religionen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Illustrations

Preface
Note on Edition, Translation, and Diacritics

1. Introduction

2. Poetics and the Past: Questions of History in Kalhana's Rajatarangini

The History Hypothesis or The History That Wasn't

The Literary Hypothesis

Is the Rajatarangini a Kavya?

Metapoetry and Epistemic Insight

'The River of Kings' as a Flow of Exemplars

Critique of Power---and Time

3. Imagined Landscape: Myth, Memory, and Place-Making

Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in Kashmir

Layers of Landscape
Mapping the Land
Nature and Ritual

Storytelling and the Moral Agency of Nagas

Local Imageries

Kingdom of Piety or This Troubled Land

4. (Re)locating Early Kashmir: Geoculture of a Region and Beyond

From Unique History to Connected Histories

Text

Material Culture

Script

Language

Art

5. Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Über Autor(innen)

Shonaleeka Kaul is a cultural historian of early South Asia, specializing in working with Sanskrit texts. She is associate
professor in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi, India.