{"title":"Towns in Kalidāsa’s Kāvyas and the Thesis of Urban Decay","authors":"Kesavan Veluthat","doi":"10.1177/23484489241233667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489241233667","url":null,"abstract":"This essay tries to look at the way in which Kālidāsa approaches towns in his three kāvyas: Meghadūta, Kumārasaṁbhava and Raghuvaṁśa. Most of the descriptions are stereotypical, using stock phrases and formulaic expressions, some of them straight from texts like the Arthaśāstra. However, there is one city that is described somewhat realistically—Ayodhya, which was deserted following Rāma’s departure. Both these—the stereotypes of prosperous towns and the realism of a decayed town—fit into the pattern of ‘urban decay’ presented by historians on the basis of archaeological evidence, a landmark in Indian historiography.","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140573592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hierarchies of Oppression: Ancient Indian Antecedents of Caste and Gender","authors":"Shalini Shah","doi":"10.1177/23484489241233666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489241233666","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to analyse the evolution of social hierarchies in ancient India. While the primary focus of the article is on gender hierarchy, it also attempts an examination of the intersection of class and caste as well. This article seeks to trace the linkages between women and śūdra in the ancient textual sources. It has also been argued that since hierarchy is never organic but a deliberate act of creation, in this deliberation, alternative possibilities are either marginalised or effaced.","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140573607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Deepak Kumar, Science and Society in Modern India","authors":"Arnab Rai Choudhuri","doi":"10.1177/23484489241233653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489241233653","url":null,"abstract":"Deepak Kumar, Science and Society in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2023, 220 pp. (Pb.).","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140075331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Divya Cherian, Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-century South Asia","authors":"Irfan Habib","doi":"10.1177/23484489241233654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489241233654","url":null,"abstract":"Divya Cherian, Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-century South Asia (USA: University of California Press), 2023, 284 pp., (Pb.).","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140075348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Herman Tieken, The Asoka Inscriptions: Analysing a Corpus","authors":"Kesavan Veluthat","doi":"10.1177/23484489241233510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489241233510","url":null,"abstract":"Herman Tieken, The Asoka Inscriptions: Analysing a Corpus (Delhi: Primus Books), 2023, xvi + 488 pp., ₹1,595 (Hb).","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140056900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Aloka Parasher Sen, Gender, Religion and Local History: The Early Deccan","authors":"Kumkum Roy","doi":"10.1177/23484489241233655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489241233655","url":null,"abstract":"Aloka Parasher Sen, Gender, Religion and Local History: The Early Deccan (Delhi: Primus Books), 2023, xxv + 390 pp., ₹1,750 (Hb).","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140075327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Tajen Dabi, Medicine and Integration of Frontier Tribes: The British and After in Arunachal Pradesh","authors":"Deepak Kumar","doi":"10.1177/23484489241233652","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489241233652","url":null,"abstract":"Tajen Dabi, Medicine and Integration of Frontier Tribes: The British and After in Arunachal Pradesh (Delhi: Primus Books), 2023, xvii + 219 pp., ₹1150.","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140075345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Malda: The Birth and Growth of a Small Town in Mughal-Period North Bengal","authors":"Subrata Roy","doi":"10.1177/23484489231199035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489231199035","url":null,"abstract":"Bengal had a long tradition of emergence, growth and decline of towns from the earliest times to the present century. During the rule of the independent Sultans of Bengal, a list of capital towns appeared in the urban history of early medieval Bengal. The trend of urbanisation also continued in Bengal under Mughal rule. But the European companies’ trade with Bengal also contributed. How the factory of the English at Malda during the seventeenth century contributed to the growth of a manufacturing and trade centre is a key issue in this study.","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134906454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hospitals and Medicine in Medieval and Early Modern India","authors":"Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi","doi":"10.1177/23484489231198563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489231198563","url":null,"abstract":"Hospitals and the practice of medicine have been known in India since long. This paper focuses on hospitals (bīmāristān, dārush shifā’ and shifā’-khāna) that were established during the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries in the Indian subcontinent. This is a theme that needs to be studied, for our primary sources do reveal some information about these institutions. The help of a miniature from Bāburnāma, illustrated during the reign of Akbar, is taken to demonstrate how imperial shifā’-khānas were organised.","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134906117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disease and the Untouchable: Insights from Vernacular Histories of North India","authors":"Charu Gupta","doi":"10.1177/23484489231199026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23484489231199026","url":null,"abstract":"This article delves into the connections between disease, contagion, caste, gender and religion in colonial North India. It looks at the ‘Untouchable’ not just as a figure or a category but as a concept that is utilised by dominant sections to deal with disease, contact zones and social distancing in society. The article focuses on select perceptions in popular Hindi print culture of the early twentieth century, which normalised exclusionary terms to reaffirm the nation’s well-being. Through representations of four figures—the Dalit (with a specific focus on Dalit women), the servant, the sex worker and the Muslim male—all considered ‘Untouchable’ in different senses, the article highlights how these figures embody the ‘Other’ through idioms of stigma and hygiene.","PeriodicalId":53792,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Peoples History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134906442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}