South India (History)

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume work on the little-known South Indian folk cult of the goddess Draupadi and on the classical epic, the Mahabharata, that the cult brings to life in mythic, ritual, and dramatic forms. Draupadi, the chief heroine of the Sanskrit Mahabharata, takes on many unexpected guises in her Tamil cult, but her dimensions as a folk goddess remain rooted in a rich interpretive vision of the great epic. By examining the ways that the cult of Draupadi commingles traditions about the goddess and the epic, Alf Hiltebeitel shows the cult to be singularly representative of the inner tensions and working dynamics of popular devotional Hinduism.

This book explores the impact that notions of ritual, caste, and religion had on society in 19th-20th century colonial South India. The authors present detailed studies of Tamil and Telugu sources, with a particular focus on the newly established print media of the time. They show how these concepts played a crucial role in the formation of social, cultural, and religious identities.
The e-version of the book is available from HASP, https://doi.org/10.11588/xabooks.539

"Selected proceedings of the “First International Conference on Ethnoastronomy: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World”held at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 5-9 September 1983."

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Modern Tamil Saivism as a global discourse emerged concurrently in India as well as in other places. Yet, recent scholarship has barely given attention to these global entanglements and their wider consequences for conceptualising Saiva Siddhanta and Saivite religious practice today. This article focuses on reformist Tamil Saivite movements in South Africa and explores their origins and development during colonial and Apartheid South Africa in the twentieth century. It will discuss the complex interplay between modern interpretations of Saiva Siddhanta philosophy and notions of a con-textualised 'Tamilness' in the South African setting. It will further explore how Saivism in South Africa relates to back to Saivite scriptural traditions from South India and elaborate how the close but hybrid connection between local and global forms of Tamil religious identity is mirrored by questions of authenticity and canon as well as recent attempts to reframe relations between the (perceived) 'centres' and 'peripheries' of Saivism.

Schröder, Ulrike. "No Religion, but Ritual? Robert Caldwell and the Tinnevelly Shanars." In  Ritual, Caste, and Religion in Colonial South India, edited by Michael Bergunder, Heiko Frese and Ulrike Schröder. 131-60. Halle (Saale): Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen, 2010.

This comparative study investigates court politics in four kingdoms that succeeded the south Indian Vijayanagara empire during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Ikkeri, Madurai, Ramnad, and Tanjavur (the latter under both the Nayaka and Maratha Bhonsle dynasties). Building on a unique combination of unexplored Indian texts and Dutch archival (VOC) records, this research offers a captivating new analysis of political culture, power relations, and dynastic developments -- with chapters devoted to foundations myths, successions to the throne, the power of courtiers, court protocol and diplomatic insults, influences from Sultanate courts, and mutual relations.

In great detail, this monograph provides both new facts and fresh insights that contest existing scholarship. By highlighting their competitive, fluid, and dynamic nature, it undermines the historiography viewing these courts as harmonic, hierarchic, and static. Far from being remote, ritualised figures, we find kings and Brahmins contesting with other courtiers for power. At the same time, by stressing continuities with the past, this study questions recent scholarship that perceives a fundamentally new form of Nayaka kingship. Thus, this research has important repercussions for the way we perceive both these kingdoms and their ‘medieval’ precursors.

From the fourteenth century CE onward, south Indian states ruled by Hindu kings were strongly influenced by politico-cultural conventions from Muslim-governed areas. This development was, for instance, manifest in the dress and titles of the rulers of the Vijayanagara Empire. As has been argued, they bore the title of Sultan and on public occasions they appeared in garments fashioned on Persian and Arab clothing. Both adaptations exemplified efforts to connect to the dominant Indo-Islamic world. From Vijayanagara’s fragmentation in the sixteenth century new Hindu-ruled kingdoms arose. We may wonder to what extent those succeeding polities continued practices adopted from Islamic courts. With that question in mind, this paper discusses royal dress at court audiences in four Vijayanagara successor states, chiefly on the basis of embassy reports of the Dutch East India Company and south Indian works of art. It appears that kings could wear a variety of clothing styles at audiences and that influences on these styles now came from multiple backgrounds, comprising diverse Islamic as well as local elements. Further, not all successor states followed the same dress codes as their dynasties modified earlier conventions in different ways, depending on varying political developments.

This paper was presented as part of the special panel "Dutch sources on Indian history" at the Indian History Congress in December 2016 at the University of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram.

This presentation consists of two sections. The first part briefly describes the presence of the Dutch East India Company in India during the 17th and 18th centuries and next considers the vast number of Dutch sources that were consequently created. It deals with the various branches of the Company that produced records relevant for Indian history, where these materials are presently kept, and how they are accessible.

The second part of the presentation addresses the question what can be found in the Dutch sources with respect to India. Serving as an illustration of the often surprising contents of these records, the focus lies here with court politics in the Vijayanagara successor states, ruled by Nayaka dynasties. Since the Dutch maintained close and long-lasting relations with these states, the Company archives contain numerous references to matters like succession struggles, the powers of courtiers, and court ritual. For each of these aspects, examples are discussed that show how Dutch sources contribute to our knowledge of India’s past.

The late-nineteenth century in India, usually scrutinized for the emergence of anti-colonial nationalist thought and politics, witnessed broader, and potentially more radical changes in the making and re-making of political subjectivities as articulated within burgeoning vernacular public spheres. Vernacular publics coalesced around the emergence of new communicative forms, the formation of voluntary and political associations, and the restructuring of literary communities. It is within this context I place the writings of Gidugu Venkata Ramamurti (1863–1940). He proclaimed at the turn of the twentieth century that Telugu as a language had to be reformed in order for it to become an appropriate medium for the newly emergent Telugu public spheres. Through his study of linguistics, his commitment to educational reform, and his study of Telugu language and literature, Ramamurti became the spokesperson for a new Telugu that would be able to traverse the boundaries of modern genres of writing that flourished in the colonial era. Fully immersed in linguistic theories of the day, Ramamurti's concerns were primarily with language reform and its centrality in the remaking of political subjectivities.

Seit die religionswissenschaftliche und kolonialgeschichtliche Forschung sich verstärkt der wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung von Dokumenten in den Archiven der Missionsgesellschaften zuwendet, ist der Wert solcher Quellen, besonders aus der vorkolonialen Zeit, für eine religionsgeschichtliche Erforschung des Hinduismus in Südindien häufig herausgehoben worden. Weniger beachtet geblieben ist hingegen die Frage nach dem Beitrag der christlichen Mission zur Herausbildung von Kategorien wie „Religion“ und „Ritual“ im kolonialen Diskurs des 19. Jahrhunderts, sowohl auf einer globalen als auch auf einer lokalen Ebene. Eine gemeinsame Betrachtung beider Ebenen kann zeigen, dass zwischen ihnen im 19. Jahrhundert ein enger Zusammenhang bestand. Dieses Buch beschäftigt sich mit der Rolle von christlichen Missionaren im kolonialen Diskurs und der Wechselwirkung zwischen christlich-kolonialer Mission und lokalem hinduistischen Kontext in Südindien im 19. Jahrhundert. Diese Fragestellung wird exemplarisch am Beispiel des Missionars Robert Caldwell (1814–1891) aufgearbeitet, der als Missionar der anglikanischen Missionsgesellschaft SPG in Tirunelveli (Südindien) gewirkt hat. Das Buch will damit einen Beitrag leisten zur Verknüpfung bisher getrennter Themenfelder der Geschichte des Christentums und des Hinduismus in Europa und Indien sowie zum Verständnis der christlich-kolonialen Mission des 19. Jahrhunderts als Teil der globalen und lokalen Religionsgeschichte.

English Translation:
Studies on colonial and religious history in India in the 19th century have so far largely focused on sources from colonial and missionary archives. Consequently, the value of these sources for the history of Christianity and Hinduism in South India has been much debated. However, the role of Christian mission and its encounter with Hinduism in the colonial discourse and its contribution to the emergence of universal concepts like “religion” – on a global as well as on a local level – have not yet been treated extensively enough.
A combined analysis of these two levels – the global as well as the local level of ‘category formation’ – can show that there was a close connection between both. This book addresses the role of Christian missionaries in the colonial discourse, the interaction of missionaries and local forms of South Indian Hinduism, and the mutual effects it had on both sides. As an example, the book analyses the missionary and scholarly work of the Anglican missionary Robert Caldwell (1814-1891) in Tirunelveli. His ethnographic and linguistic accounts of South Indian religion and culture, particularly about the Shanars /Nadars, and the local forms of Christianity that emerged out of his missionary work in Tirunelveli, show that local and global levels of colonial discourse are intricately connected to each other.
This book aims at connecting separate fields in the study of the history of religions – “Christianity” and “Hinduism”, as well as “Europe” and “India” – and contribute to an understanding of Christian mission in the 19th century as part of global and local religious history.

Between 1600 and 1800, Dutch East India Company employees paid diplomatic visits to dozens of Asian courts, from Yemen to Cambodia and from Japan to the Maldives, sometimes even annually. The hundreds of voluminous reports on these missions contain information not only about Asian-Dutch encounters, but also about the Asian courts themselves. Thus, these accounts deal with kings and queens, the power of courtiers, and both courtly protocol and insults. Although obviously compiled from a Dutch perspective, those descriptions are often the only remaining sources on such topics, or else have much to contribute to what transpires from Asian texts and images. Still, the majority of these reports have not yet been studied, let alone made available in some detail to a wider audience through publications. Hoping to encourage such research, this paper inventories the embassy accounts scattered in the VOC archives, gives examples of how they can be used by historians of Asia, and discusses the value of the observations made by Dutchmen in these texts.

Arab Geographers' Knowledge of Southern India is a construction of India from the narratives of famous Arab travelers. A fresh perception on the land of many cultures by some iconic navigators whose mission it was to pollinate knowledge and culture.

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Touching kings, chewing leaves, and hurling gifts; these were all part of the court protocol—or the breach of it—in the kingdoms that succeeded the south Indian Vijayanagara Empire in the early-modern period. South Indian texts include several normative treatises on court protocol, but they are often silent on how it proceeded in practice. Therefore, this study is partly based on the experiences of Dutch East India Company servants, who regularly visited the south Indian courts of Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad.

This presentation addresses the following issues: What were the manifestations and functions of court protocol and diplomatic insult at these courts? How did protocol and insult mirror or shape other facets of court politics? To what extent was Indo-Dutch diplomacy based on south Indian conventions? And did these courts and the Dutch actually understand each other when it came to protocol and insult?

As has been argued, Vijayanagara was strongly influenced by politico-cultural conventions from Muslim-ruled states, which, for instance, became manifest in the titles and dress of the empire’s rulers. They called themselves Sultan and on public occasions they appeared in garments fashioned on Persianate clothing. Both adaptations exemplified efforts to connect to the dominant Indo-Islamic world. From Vijayanagara’s fragmentation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries new kingdoms arose. We may wonder to what extent those succeeding polities adopted politico-cultural practices from its parental state and—directly or indirectly—from Persianate courts. With that question in mind, this paper compares dynastic titles used in Vijayanagara itself and in several of its successor states. This is done chiefly on the basis of inscriptions commissioned by these rulers and documents received from them by the Dutch East India Company. The focus lies on two aspects of such titles: claims to imperial status and Persianate elements. It appears that the various dynasties substantially differed from one another with regard to both of these facets, reflecting divergent political circumstances and ambitions.

Vijayanagara is a Hindu government which was established in 736 AH/ 1336 CE in South India. This government first was founded by establishing a city with the same name ( the city of victory) in the south of Deccan to prevent attacks from Delhi Sultans to South India. The formation of this govern was The origin of the major developments in the political and culture situation of South India, It is necessary for the researchers of the Indian subcontinent history to be aware of motivations and the historical analysis of how the state was established. In this paper it has been attempted to consider the historical backgrounds using the descriptive - analytical  method and  historical texts and resources. The analytic view of the paper leads to investigate the internal and external factors and the motivation of Hindus for the establishment of this government.

Touching kings, chewing leaves, and hurling gifts; these were all part of the court protocol, or the breaching of it, in the kingdoms that succeeded the south Indian Vijayanagara empire. The main question of this lecture is how protocol mirrored or shaped other facets of court politics. Protocol may be regarded as a special manifestation of attempts to forge, confirm, strengthen, or strain relations and therefore it sheds more or even a different kind of light on power struggles at the court, dynastic legitimation efforts, inter-state geopolitics, and the like. Outwardly, relationships may have appeared harmonious or at least ‘courteous’, but certain ceremonial—or the very departure from it—would in fact hint at the opposite. Further, humiliating ritual or breach of protocol, originally meant to merely reflect hierarchical or discordant contacts, could assume a life of its own and in turn worsen such relations.

As south Indian texts are often silent on how protocol actually proceeded, this study is largely based on the experiences recorded by Dutch East India Company servants who regularly visited the courts of Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, Ramnad, and (during its last phase) Vijayanagara itself. This research—still very much work in progress—addresses the following issues: What were the functions and manifestations of protocol and diplomatic insult at these courts? To which extent did these states resemble one another and Vijayanagara with respect to protocol? What was the influence of protocol and insult on political developments in these states? What is the value of south Indian and Dutch sources for the study of protocol at these courts?