Manohar Publishers and Distributors

12 December, 2012

The Khalsa: Sikh and Non-Sikh Perspectives

By- J.S. Grewal (ed)

This book demonstrates that historiography is a dynamic process. The five major Sikh writers analysed in the book present differences of factual detail, objectives and approach. If one glorifies the Khalsa as upholding the monotheistic tradition, another compromises the monotheistic tradition by bringing in the goddess. If one negates the egalitarian norm of the Khalsa social order, another valorizes its uncompromising sovereignty in the face of threat from the British.

Modern historians present no less divergent views. If one looks upon the Khalsa as the emergence of a new ‘nation’, another minimizes their achievement in comparison with the British. If one tries to reconcile doctrinal sovereignty with political loyalty, another presents the Khalsa as serving the cause of Hindu nationalism. Still others can talk of the Khalsa as ‘transfiguration’ of the earlier Sikh tradition.

With its multiple perspectives on the Khalsa, this book introduces the subject in a manner that no single perspective can do. It should be of interest of those concerned with the Sikh tradition and its study, and also to those concerned with other religious traditions.

J.S. Grewal, formerly Professor of History and then Vice-Chancellor, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, and Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, is an eminent historian of the Punjab, and of medieval and modern Indian history in general.

ISBN 978-81-7304-580-6 2004 222p. Rs.550/Pounds 40

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09 December, 2012

Against The Current: Volume II: Fixing Tariffs, Finance and Competition for the Power Sector in India

Against The Current: Volume II: Fixing Tariffs, Finance and Competition
for the Power Sector in India

By- Joël Ruet (ed)

A non-starter for years, reforms of the power sector in India has finally started. In relation to the country’s growth and general economic buoyancy, the power sector has not only been slow with its reforms, but is also impeding the furthering and fostering of general reforms. In that respect, delays in reform not only bear a cost in terms of budgetary and human resource, but also in terms of credibility and opportunity. Every delay worsens the situation and the margin for wider option reduces. Some opportunities that are missed today will remain irremediably so.

An articulate vision makes a pivotal difference and this is now the time of understanding (i) the organizational tasks, (ii) the tariff aspects, (iii) the role of the private sector, (iv) the role of technology in the complex, variegated, state-specific, Indian scenario. This new volume in the series, Against the Current deals with tariffs and the effective role of the private sector, and offers analyses by specialists and practitioners of different disciplines. The objective is to give leads for creation of a diversity suitable to face challenges of a post-developmentalist running of the power sector.

This book includes studies and papers presented and discussed at a seminar jointly organized by the Centre de Sciences Humaines and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in September 2003.

Joël Ruet is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Associate Researcher, CERNA, Ecole des Mines, Paris and teaches in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has specialized in the study of economic reforms of the Infrastructure and Urban sectors in India.

ISBN 978-81-7304-684-1 2005 194p. Rs.500/Pounds 35

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07 December, 2012

A Practical Sanskrit dictionary: With Transliteration, Accentuation, and Etymological Analysis Throughout

A Practical Sanskrit dictionary: With Transliteration, Accentuation, and Etymological

Analysis Throughout

By- Arthur Anthony Macdonell

This classic work by a renowned scholar has several advantages over other similar works because of its distinct features.

It is much more copious than other lexicons for Sanskrit students. It contains nearly double as much material as other Sanskrit works of the same character.

Another merit of the work is that it is the only one of its kind that is transliterated and can thus be used with advantage by comparative philologists not conversant with the Devanagari Alphabet.

Further it is etymological in character and gives a derivative analysis of all the words it contains. This enhances its utility from a linguistic point of view and its practical value to the students. It would help the students better remember the meanings of words once they are equipped with their derivation.

Lastly it is the only lexicon of its type that indicates not only with respect to words, but also to their meanings, the literary period to which they belong and the frequency or rarity of their occurrence—a feature which is so important for both the scholars and the students.

Arthur A. Macdonell’s services to the study and research of Sanskrit literature are too well known to need any introduction and too vast and varied to be covered in brief. From writing a Sanskrit Grammar to preparing a Vedic Index, he has indebted the students and scholars of Sanskrit alike, in many ways.

Macdonell was educated at the University at Gottingen, Universities of Leipzig and Tubingen, and Oxford University. He was Boden Professor of Sanskrit and Keeper of the Indian Institute, Oxford. He was elected Fellow of Royal Danish Academy; Fellow of the British Academy, Vice-President of Council of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

His published works include: Sarvanukramani of the Rigveda (1886); A Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1892); Vedic Mythology (1897); A History of Sanskrit Literature (1900); Brihaddevata (1904); Vedic Grammar (1910); Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (1912); A Vedic Grammar for Students (1916); A Vedic Reader for Students (1917).

ISBN 978-81-7304-303-1 2005 396p. Rs.550/Pounds 95

05 December, 2012

A Gateway from the Eastern Mediterranean to India : The Red Sea in Antiquity

By- Marie-Francoise Boussac and Jean-Francois Salles (eds)

Published in association with

Maison De L’orient Mediterraneen, Jean Pouilloux

Inter-disciplinary studies about the connections between India and the Mediterranean world in antiquity have been growing in the last few decades. These have followed a range of
approaches. This book focuses on one segment of the maritime world geographically defined as the Red Sea and its surrounding areas. This regional perspective is necessary to understand the dynamics of exchange.

A large number of texts in Greek and Latin, papyri, ostraca, stone inscriptions, archaeological excavations and surveys especially at sites such as Berenike and Myos Hormos provide a wealth of data on historical development in the Red Sea region.

Contributors to this volume are drawn from a variety of disciplines such as philology, Egyptology, African studies, archaeology and ancient history and base their papers on recent discoveries as well as re-interpretation of textual sources.

Many of these papers first appeared in issues of the French journal Topoi but on account of their importance to maritime history of the Indian Ocean it was decided to publish them for a wider audience.

M.-F. Boussac is Professor in Greek History at Lille University and Deputy Director of the French Mission at Mahasthangarh in Bangladesh. She is currently in-charge of excavations at Taposiris—a Graeco-Roman site in Egypt, near Alexandria. She continues to edit Topoi devoted to the Mediterranean world and its linkages with Asia.

J.-F. Salles is Research Director, French National Centre for Scientific Research and is now in-charge of the Jordan Branch of the French Institute for Near East (IFPO, Amman). He was Director of Maison de l’Orient Méditerranéen, Lyon until 1999 and in-charge of the French Mission at Mahasthangarh in Bangladesh until December 2004.

He has specialized in the archaeology of the Gulf, especially from the mid-first millennium bc to the mid-first millennium ad. His publications include excavation reports on archaeological sites in the Gulf, as also contributions to major international journals.

ISBN 978-81-7304-570-7 2005 270p. Rs.675/Pounds 60

03 December, 2012

A Concise Encyclopaedia of North Indian Peasant Life : Being a compilation from the writings of William Crooke, J.R. Reid and G.A. Grierson South Asian Colonial Archive: I

By- Shahid Amin (ed)

During the late nineteenth-century British officials, often doubling as scholar-collectors, created a huge and variegated ‘colonial archive’, collecting, arranging and recasting information about ‘The Natives of India’ into compendia for ready reference and administrative recall. Taking these neglected official materials on peasant and rural life, the distinguished historian Shahid Amin has fashioned a new synthesis, one that interrogates the colonial understanding of rural Indians with an insider’s historical inflections. Amin’s Concise Encyclopaedia weaves an intricate tapestry of crops, seasons, products, beliefs, ceremonies, aphorisms and folk adages, showcasing all the while the multiple dimensions of rural life, and the unlikely but enduring threads that bind and sustain the peasant world.

In this Encyclopaedia, Amin has reproduced and engaged with the text of Crooke’s Glossary, Reid’s famous description of the agricultural calendar and of his little known compilation of a peasant dictionary. He also incorporates and works with selections from Grierson’s voluminous writings on language and literature to explore the issues of ‘rusticity’, ‘simplicity’ and ‘wisdom’ that characterize much of rural life. A marked feature of this work is the constant dialogue that the editor sets up between the late-nineteenth century colonial experts and the contemporary historian, one with a sure grasp both of the colonial archive as well as popular culture and idiom of contemporary north Indian peasant life. Amin’s scholarly, incisive and lucid introduction, coupled with his additions and explanatory footnotes are enriched by rare colour plates and line drawings. Together these enable the reader, both scholar and lay person, to understand better Both peasant life and culture, and the Ways of colonial ethnography.

Shahid Amin is Professor of History at the University of Delhi. A founding member of the Subaltern Studies Collective, Professor Amin has been a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, Shelby Cullom Davies Center, Princeton University and the Institute of Advanced Studies, Berlin, and Visiting Professor at the Univesity of Chicago. Among his publications are Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992 (Delhi and Berkeley, 1995).

ISBN 978-81-7304-597-4 2005 596p. Rs.2250/Pounds 125

02 December, 2012

The Indian Entrepreneur: A Sociological Profile of Businessmen and Their Practices

By- Bruno Dorin (ed)

Drawing a sociological profile of the Indian entrepreneur is an ambitious and tricky task. India is a world of diversities, and the same is true in its corporate world. Some great Indian businessmen developed worldwide activities, while others confined themselves to the local market. They may be deeply attached to the traditions of their religious or caste community, whereas others are very westernized and have been so for generations. They may be heirs to an hundred-year old family business, or self-made men whose affairs flourished within a few years. They may have studied in prestigious business schools, or given up their studies rather early. In order to have an overview of these various universes, and also to provide a practical guide of key names and concepts, this book focuses on three different levels; the socio-cultural world (family, community and value-concepts in India), the politics of business (history and strategy of five Indian industrial empires) and the employer in his enterprise (international leather shoemakers in the southern state of Tamil Nadu).

Bruno Dorin, French socio-economist and former Director of the CSH (1995-1999), lived 8 years in India where he conducted various research programmes on contemporary Indian economy and society.

ISBN 81-7304-477-5 2003 172p. Rs.400/Pounds 45

30 November, 2012

The Good Country: Individual, Situation and Society in Saurashtra

The Good Country: Individual, Situation and Society in Saurashtra

By- Harald Tambs-Lyche

Dealing with Saurashtra, a complex but little studied part of western India, this book extends monographic treatment to an entire region, and thereby reveals the dynamic and changing nature of relations between castes. Town, village and hamlet all participate as backgrounds for the image people in Saurashtra have of their society, while the ever-present past informs them of the past itinerary of present groups, and provides a diachronic perspective on the power relations that inform the system and pervades the consciousness of the regional population. Their knowledge of society extends both through changing relations over time and variation within the region. Though considerable, such knowledge is always and necessarily partial. Constant but differing efforts are made to relate such knowledge to the precepts of caste society as structuring the image of the whole. But such efforts are made by people who are differently situated, and who construct contradictory images, of which the most important, traditionally, are those emanating from the feudal past, and those linked to the merchant communities. Thus caste cannot fruitfully be seen as a single structure, in static and synchronic terms. By analysing interaction in various settings, the author shows how the encounters of daily life are embedded in the rank consciousness peculiar to India, while difference is constantly underscored in hierarchizing discourse. In this study, the individual emerges as an agent of the hierarchical order, with an image of the self just as individual as his Western counterpart though differently constructed.

Harald Tambs-Lyche received his Ph.D. from the Univesity of Bergen in 1972. After early work on Indian immigrants in Europe, he has worked on Saurashtra since 1973, and has published a volume on the emergence of its traditional society: Power, Profit and Poetry (Manohar, 1997); and edited a collection of articles on The Feminine Sacred in South Asia (Manohar, 1999), A study of Scandinavian missionaries among the Santals, in collaboration with Marine Carrin, is being prepared for publication. He is presently working on ethnic and religious revitalization in Karnataka, and a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Picardie–Jules Verne, Amiens, France.

ISBN 978-81-7304-417-5 2004 354p. Rs.795/Pounds 55

MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
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