The Lotus and The Lion: Essays on India’s Sanskritic and Persianate Worlds

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The Lotus and The Lion dwell on Indian history between the eleventh and the eighteenth centuries, when India was the site of the encounter between two great pan-Asian literary traditions, the Sanskrit and the Persian-metaphorically, the lotus and the lion-and the socio-cultural and moral worlds they created and sustained. The book’s first part explores how these cosmopolitan and prestigious worlds interacted both with each other and with regional cultures. The second part presents five essays dealing with Islam in precolonial India, ranging from the nature of Islamic traditions, to Islamization in Punjab and Bengal, to current debates on understanding Islam in India. The third part offers two essays on the Mughals, the first elaborating different kinds of frontiers in Mughal history, and the second proposing new ways of evaluating the emperors Akbar and ‘Alamgir. The fourth part contains four essays on the Deccan, ranging from the Tughluq invasion to the earliest advent of gunpowder technology and of written vernaculars in the region. The book closes with five essays on historical methodology, each one illustrating a different way of engaging with, and of illuminating, India’s rich past.