Lineages of the Medieval: Texts and Histories in the South Asian World I
- Course Code:
- 15PHIH008
- Status:
- Course Not Running 2012/2013
- Unit value:
- 0.5
- Year of study:
- Year 1 or Year 2
- Taught in:
- Term 1
Objectives and learning outcomes of the course
The course provides a broad but sufficiently detailed survey of debates to enable students to confidently approach methodological and epistemological questions raised by the study of the South Asian past and will also provide more advanced training to those with existing interests in South Asia with an eye towards focusing interests that may be carried on into research.
Scope and syllabus
This course can be taken together or independently from Part II. It is meant to provide an advanced-level overview of the theoretical and conceptual problems raised by the study of South Asia during the medieval period, roughly 7th-13th c. CE. It is intended as a critical overview of past and current scholarly debates. It will ask how, if at all, this period may be meaningfully divided into smaller and more precise units of analysis and, in what ways can patterns of societal and cultural change be discerned in the surviving materials?
Themes will include the medieval as a term of analysis, the evolution and development of political structures and social formations, relations between cultural and political change, religious transformations, and the spread of culture both within and beyond peninsular South Asia.
Suggested reading
Sharma, R.S. 'Problem of Transition from Ancient to Medieval in Indian History,' Indian Historical Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (1974): 1-9;
Chattopadhyaya, B.D. The Making of Early Medieval India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994;
Pollock, Sheldon. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006;
Kulke, Hermann. 'Indian Colonies, Indianization, or Cultural Convergence? Reflections on the Changing Image of India's Role in South-East Asia.' Semaian 3 (1980): 8-32;
Thapar, Romila. Early India: from the origins to AD 1300. London, Penguin, 2002.
