The Buffalo Century is a keen exploration of satire and its role in society and politics. Written in praise of a buffalo, Vanchesvara Diksita's Mahisasatakam is timeless in its treatment of power, and its subversion. In resurrecting eighteenth-century Tanjore for the modern reader, Kesavan Veluthat lifts the poem beyond its immediate literary context and situates it in a contemporary global political setting. Presenting a modern English translation along with the Sanskrit text, this work provides a fare that is as rich in double entendre as it is in its onomatopoeic metaphors. A literary triumph and the voice of an age, this book will be a key text for students and scholars of history, political science, sociology, literature, especially Sanskrit and comparative, and cultural studies.

The Buffalo Century is a keen exploration of satire and its role in society and politics. Written in praise of a buffalo, Vanchesvara Diksita's Mahisasatakam is timeless in its treatment of power, and its subversion. In resurrecting eighteenth-century Tanjore for the modern reader, Kesavan Veluthat lifts the poem beyond its immediate literary context and situates it in a contemporary global political setting. Presenting a modern English translation along with the Sanskrit text, this work provides a fare that is as rich in double entendre as it is in its onomatopoeic metaphors. A literary triumph and the voice of an age, this book will be a key text for students and scholars of history, political science, sociology, literature, especially Sanskrit and comparative, and cultural studies.

This book is the companion volume to A People's History of India 6, which gave an account of the political and economic history of the post-Mauryan period from c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 300. The present volume deals with the important aspects of the society and culture of the same period. It traces the diffusion of the caste system and describes its detailed codification. The major changes in religion, notably the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism and Bhakti in Brahmanism, are surveyed in depth. The reader will also find much that is fresh and enlightening in the accounts of sculpture, languages, and literature, in all of which fields the period saw much innovation and change.