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This book is a pioneering attempt to understand the prehistory of
Hinduism in South Asia. Exploring religious processes in the Deccan
region between the eleventh and the nineteenth century with class
relations as its point of focus, it throws new light on the making
of religious communities, monastic institutions, legends, lineages,
and the ethics that governed them. In the light of this prehistory,
a compelling framework is suggested for a revision of existing
perspectives on the making of Hinduism in the nineteenth and the
twentieth century.
India is generally regarded as a civilization with a set of
intrinsic attributes that emerged in the age of the Vedas or,
better still, in the Harappan times. In recent decades, historical
studies have moved away from rigid perspectives of singularity in
origin and expansion; the emphasis now is on pluralities and
long-term processes spanning centuries and millennia. There is also
an influential school of thought which rejects antiquity claims
such as these and holds that India is a construct of the colonial
and nationalist imagination. In his radical reinterpretation of
India's past, Manu V. Devadevan moves away from these reifying
assessments to examine the evolution of institutions, ideas and
identities that are characterized, typically, as Indian. In lieu of
endorsing their Indianness, he traces their emergence to specific
conditions that developed in India between 600 and 1200 CE, a
period which historians now call the 'early medieval'.
India is generally regarded as a civilization with a set of
intrinsic attributes that emerged in the age of the Vedas or,
better still, in the Harappan times. In recent decades, historical
studies have moved away from rigid perspectives of singularity in
origin and expansion; the emphasis now is on pluralities and
long-term processes spanning centuries and millennia. There is also
an influential school of thought which rejects antiquity claims
such as these and holds that India is a construct of the colonial
and nationalist imagination. In his radical reinterpretation of
India's past, Manu V. Devadevan moves away from these reifying
assessments to examine the evolution of institutions, ideas and
identities that are characterized, typically, as Indian. In lieu of
endorsing their Indianness, he traces their emergence to specific
conditions that developed in India between 600 and 1200 CE, a
period which historians now call the 'early medieval'.
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