Manohar Publishers and Distributors

16 September, 2012

Trade and Traders in Early Indian Society

By- Ranabir Chakravarti

Situating trade and traders in the overall agrarian milieu of early India, this book highlights the diversities of merchants and market places, which are not viewed as an undifferentiated category. Chakravarti strongly argues against the perception of declining trade in India during the period AD 500-1000, and demonstrates the linkages of trade at the locality level during this period. The author questions the stereotyped account of early Indian commerce merely in terms of trade in luxuries and draws our attention to transactions in daily necessities. In-depth analysis of maritime commerce in the Bengal coast (c. 200 BC to AD 1300) is a major feature of the book.

The author also explores different, if not sometimes conflicting, attitudes of early Indian society to merchants, who were lauded as patrons to cultural activities and also branded as ‘open thieves’; yet the presence of non-indigenous merchants was always favoured. The settlements of foreign merchants especially in coastal tracts witnessed in different ages remarkable cultural synthesis and coexistence among diverse trading communities. Most significantly, the social and cultural accommodation of several non-indigenous minority groups is inseparably associated with the history of early Indian commerce. The author also examines the role of trading communities in the making of a plural and complex society like India.

Ranabir Chakravarti, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi specializes in the social and economic history of early India, with a thrust particularly on the maritime trade of India in the Indian Ocean (c. AD 700-1500).

ISBN 81-7304-695-6 2007 300p. Rs.295/ pounds 19.99

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Tools and Ideas: The Beginnings of Local Industrialization in South Gujarat, 1970-2000

By- Hein Streefkerk

This book is a study of industrial development and labour relations in south Gujarat, western India. The empirical findings presented are based on long-term intensive anthropological fieldwork covering a period of 30 years, from 1970 to 2000.

The book provides an in-depth analysis of the different phases of industrialization in one of the most industrialized regions of India, covering both the period of planned development and that of the more recent phase of economic liberalization. It describes the transformation of a predominantly rural area into an industrial belt by giving a detailed account of the owners and workers in small scale factories. Economic success in this part of India has been accompanied by structural poverty among a large part of the population. Entrepreneurial spirit has gone together with a worsening of labour conditions, among them erosion of the rights of the labour force. In various respects, developments in south Gujarat, as described in this book, illustrates the contradictory model of development and deprivation in India.

Providing a long-term perspective on industrial development, this book will be essential reading for those engaged in the study of rural development, entrepreneurship, labour relations, and social change in India.

Until his retirement in 2004, Hein Streefkerk was Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

ISBN 81-7304-693-X 2006 188p. Rs.475/ pounds 35

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10 September, 2012

Time in India: Concepts and Practices

By- Angelika Malinar (ed.)

Thinking about notions of time in India still evokes images of circles and wheels symbolizing the fading away of collective and individual histories into the repetitious, cyclical movement of cosmic death and rebirth. However, time is perceived and reckoned in India in many different ways mirrored in a wide spectrum of philosophical and theological interpretations, methods of calculation, mythological narratives and ritual performances.

The richness of concepts and practices shows the concern for different dimensions of the experience of time in Indian cultures. The interplay between time as quality and quantity persists in many aspects of social life in India and has not been replaced by the advent of moden standardisations. Thus, ritual calendars and the concern for auspicious or inauspicious moments co-exist with other methods of time reckoning. Such as the digital clock or dynastic eras.

The essays collected in this volume highlight this multiplicity by studying both notions and practices of time in relation to the different contexts in which they are enacted. Scholars from different disciplines address these topics with regard to history, religion, methods of time-reckoning, festivals, life-cycle rituals kinship and modern historiograpy. The essays deal with both, pan-Indian notions and traditions located in Orissa. While there are some distinct features that relate to Orissa in particular, the regional and local traditions often draw on conceptural frameworks used in other parts of the subcontinent too.

Angelika Malinar is Lecturer in Hinduism at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research interest are Sanskrit Epics and Puranas. Hindu monasticism, Yoga and Samkhya.

ISBN 81-7304-713-8 2007 330p. Rs.825/ pounds 65

Art, Myths and Visual Culture of South Asia

By- Piotr Balcerowicz and Jerzy Malinowski (Eds.)

The study of South Asian Art requires not only expert knowledge of an art historian, but also sound philological proficiency and cultural competence of an Indologist. This calls for a close cooperation of specialists in both fields. The present volume of interdisciplinary character is just this: a solid exemplification of this vital principle.

The volume presents a collection of stimulating and inspiring papers linked by a common theme which incorporates various aspects of art, religion, myths, parables, symbols, literature and visual culture of the region of South Asia. The researchers’ interests go, in certain aspects, far beyond the geographical boundaries of South Asia and reach out to South-East Asia and even to Europe and Far East, revealing close cultural linkages and influences. The collection offers an entirely new material which explores a range of important motives and themes concerned with the art and visual culture of the region of South Asia, and partially with South-East Asia.

The authors examine a wide range of aspects of South Asian art, including sculpture, painting and decorative art, related to religious practice, temple consecration rituals, mythology and cult, eroticism, politics and power as well as the history and spread of artistic and mythological motives from South Asia to other parts of the world.

Piotr Balcerowicz, Professor of South Asian studies at the University of Warsaw, specializes in Indian philosophies, religions (including Jainism) and culture as well as in intercultural relations, conflict management and contemporary history of Asia (South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East).

Jerzy Malinowski is President of the Polish Institute of World Art Studies, Professor of history of art, head of the Departments of History of Modern and Oriental Art at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (Torun).

ISBN 978-81-7304-951-4 2011 320p. Rs.995/ pounds 70

09 September, 2012

The World of the Oraon: Their Symbols in Time and Space

By- Abhik Ghosh

In the early 1990s renowned anthropologist Sarat Chandra Roy published his ethnographies on Oraons, one of the numerous tribes in Chotanagpur region. Since then there has been no major work on this tribe, one of the largest in the areas.

The present work begins by using the symbol as a key ingredient in classifying and analyzing criteria used in the cognition of the Oraons. It goes into the detail of symbol formation to show how they are used in everyday contexts. Symbols include aspects of rituals, festivals and knowledge about other spheres of Oraon life. Since the raw material of anthropological studies comes ultimately from the individual, it is the latter who is the focus of this study.

The idea of time, space and boundaries help the Oraons to practice a large variety of medical practices for their curative and other health requirements. Further, the identity of the Oraons as one having a religion is also ambivalent, caused by inclusion-exclusion realities of various kinds operating on them. This makes them include converts to Christianity for certain reasons and also to resent and reject them for others. These ideas further enable them to politically create a pan-community identity as Jharkhandis, creating a demand for a space to be created called Jharkhand, having its own individual culture separate from other states around them. This imagined homeland became a reality recently with the creation of Jharkhand.

This work attempts a major stocktaking of the Oraons nearly a hundred year after Roy’s classic works appeared.

Abhik Ghosh is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Panjab University, Chandigarh. He holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Delhi. He has conducted fieldwork in the Chotanagpur region of Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.

ISBN 81-7304-692-1 2006 364p. Rs.895/ pounds 55

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The Valley of Kashmir: The Making and Unmaking of a Composite Culture?

By- Aparna Rao (ed.)

With a Foreword and an Introductory Essay by T.N. Madan

The Valley of Kashmir, long famous around the world for its unparalleled natural scenic beauty also has a rich cultural heritage with religious tolerance and amity among people belonging to different religious faiths as its core. The arrival of Islam in the late fourteenth century and its interaction with an ancient Shaiva tradition resulted in the emergence of a liberal version of the faith. It was a turning point in Kashmir’s history. Popular culture grew rich with folk tale, song, dance and music and with what craftsman could weave, stitch and shape with their nimble fingers.

When self-rule came in 1947, it was overshadowed by armed intervention to secure the accession of the state of Jammu & Kashmir to Pakistan. The dispute over the issue is still unresolved. Within the Valley, years of opportunistic policies pursued by Delhi and corruption and misgovernance by Srinagar proved to be fertile soil for the eruption of a violent, jehadi, secessionist movement around 1980 that drove the Hindu minority into exile, tore apart the composite culture, and resulted in large scale loss of life and property. There are signs visible today that the utter futility of the path of violence, which engendered counter violence, has dawned on some of its votaries.

These and other issues are addressed in this volume by a galaxy of scholars, including Kashmiris, from India, France, Germany, the UK and the USA under the thoughtful editorship of Aparna Rao who, sadly, died before the work could be placed with a publisher. Throughout the preparation of this volume, Rao worked in consultation with Professor T.N. Madan. The result is a book rich in information, insights and interpretations that entitle it to stand alongside Walter Lawrence’s classic work, The Valley of Kashmir (1985), from which its title is borrowed.

Aparna Rao received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of Paris, Sorbonne. At the time of her death in 2005 she was associated with the Department of Anthropology, the University of Cologne (Germany).

T.N. Madan is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth (University of Delhi), Honoray Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (London) and Docteur Honoris Causa of the University of Paris, Nanterre.

ISBN 978-81-7304-751-0 2008 758p. Rs.1250/ pounds 95

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07 September, 2012

Tradition and Archaeology: Early Maritime Contacts in the Indian Ocean

By- Himanshu Prabha Ray and Jean – Francois Salles (Eds.)

This volume compromises a collection of studies extending from the fourth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE and includes updated versions to the Introduction and Preface. The two broad themes examined are archaeological evidence of maritime links, and technological studies of water-craft involved in trade and communication. This inter-disciplinary dialogue provides new insights on early seafaring in the Indian Ocean and questions several theories that have continued to be repeated in archeological and historical writing.

Trade did not cease with the decline of empires; instead there were relocations in routes and changes in the participants involved. A focus on traditions of ship-building and navigation in a study of maritime contacts emphasizes the role of innovation and technological change vis-à-vis tradition and continuity. This addition to the corpus of research on Indian Ocean studies will be useful to archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers investigating the evolution of maritime technologies.

Himanshu Prabha RAY is Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her recent publications include Colonial Archaeology in South Asia 1944-1948: The Legacy of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, OUP, 2008; The Archaeology in South Asia, CUP, 2003; and edited volumes, Reimagining Aśoka: Memory and History, OUP, 2012 (edited by Patrick Olivelle, Janice Leoshko and Himanshu Prabha Ray); Sacred Landscapes in Asia: Shared Traditions, Multiple Histories, Manohar, 2007.

Jean-Francois SALLES is Director of the Franc- Bangladesh Archaeological Mission to Mahasthangarh and was until recently Researchers, Dept, of Archéologie et histoire de l’Antiquité, Institut Francais du Proche-Orient, Amman, Jordan. His publications include France-Bangladesh Joint Venture Excavations at Mahasthangarh: First Interim Report, 1993-1999, edited by Md. Shafiqul ALAM and Jean-Francois SALLES, 2001 and “Pundranagara. Cité antique de Bengale”, sans la direction de J.-F. Salles, Indicopleustoi, Archaeologies of the Indian Ocean, Brepols, Turnhaut, 2007.

ISBN 978-81-7304-947-7 2012 368p. Rs.1595/ pounds 90

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