India before Europe

Second edition of the leading textbook on India's art, architecture, literature, religions, political and economic history, c. 1200 to 1750.

Catherine B. Asher (Author), Cynthia Talbot (Author)

9781108448901, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 September 2022

350 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.63 kg

'This second edition of India before Europe is no mere reprint of the original. The engagingly written text moves seamlessly from discussions of political structure and social-economic history to consideration of large-scale cultural processes and the physical realia of architecture, painting, and textiles. A splendid accomplishment.' Phillip B. Wagoner, Wesleyan University

India is a land of enormous diversity. Cross-cultural influences are everywhere in evidence, in the food people eat, the clothes they wear, and in the places they worship. This was ever the case, and at no time more so than in the India that existed from c. 1200 to 1750, before European intervention. In this thoughtfully revised and updated second edition, readers are taken on a richly illustrated journey across the political, economic, religious, and cultural landscapes of India – from the Ghurid conquest and the Delhi Sultanate, through the rise and fall of the southern kingdom of Vijayanagara and their successors, to the peripheries of empire, to the great court of the Mughals. This was a time of conquest and consolidation, when Muslims and Hindus came together to create a literary, material, and visual culture which was uniquely their own and which still resonates today.

Preface
Glossary
Place names: alternative spellings
1. Introduction: situating India
2. The expansion of Turkic power, 1180–1350
3. Southern India in the age of Vijayanagara, 1350–1550
4. North India between empires: history, society, and culture, 1350–1550
5. Sixteenth-century north India: empire reformulated
6. Expanding political and economic spheres, 1550–1650
7. Elite cultures in seventeenth-century South Asia
8. Challenging central authority, 1650–1750
9. Changing socio-economic formations, 1650–1750
Epilogue
Biographical notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Asian history [HBJF]