Author: Harbans Mukhia
Publisher: UBS Publishers
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 296
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0706983386
Description
The essays, published and unpublished, put together in this anthology extend to the range of the author's explorations in medieval Indian history over the past nearly two decades. Some of these had resulted in somewhat heated controversies among leading historians from several countries; others had a little more cooling effect.
But all of them experimented with new questions or subjected old ones to new modes of scrutiny. Based on data derived from Persian language chronicles and texts, medieval Hindi literature, documents, East India company's archival records, travellers accounts, painting and drawings and, in one case, fieldwork, the essays are imbued with a theoretical perspective which has a strong Marxist flavour but without its dogmatic certitudes.
The last piece in the anthology is a translation of a Persian language treatise on agriculture (though actually more on the complex working of the Mughal revenue collection mechanism), the only copy of which is now located at the Edinburgh University Library; this is the first complete translation.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
THE INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL MILIEU
Treatment of History and Historical Causation in the Akbar Nama
Communalism and the Writing of Medieval Indian History: A Reappraisal
The Ram Janmabhoomi-Babari Masjid Dispute: Evidence of Medieval Sources
The Ideology of the Bhakti Movement:
The Case of Dadu Dayal
Marx on Pre-Colonial India: An Evaluation
ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
Was There Feudalism in Indian History?
Peasant Production and Medieval Indian Society
Illegal extortions from Peasants, Artisans and Menials in Eighteenth Century Eastern Rajasthan
Agricultural Technology in Medieval North India
Social Resistance to superior Technology: The Filature in Eighteenth Century Bengal
AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TREATISE
The Risala-I Zira't (A Treatise on Agriculture)
Epilogue