Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction / Sheldon Pollock  1

Part I. Communication, Knowledge, and Power  

1. The Languages of Science in Early Modern India / Sheldon Pollock  19

2. Bad Language and Good Language: Lexical Awareness in the Cultural Politics of Peninsular India, ca. 1300–1800 / Sumit Guha  49

3. A New Imperial Idiom in the Sixteenth Century: Krishnadevaraya and His Political Theory of Vijayanagara / Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam  69

Part II. Literary Consciousness, Practices, and Institutions in North India  

4. The Anxiety of Innovation: The Practice of Literary Science in the Hindi Riti Tradition / Allison Busch  115

5. Writing Devotion: The Dynamics of Textual Transmission n the Kavitavali of Tulsidas / Imre Bangha  140

6. The Teaching of Braj, Gujarati, and Bardi Poetry at the Court of Kutch: The Bhuj Brajbhasa Pathsala (1749–1948) / Françoise Mallison  171

Part III. Inside the World of Indo-Persian Thought  

7. The Making of a Munshi / Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam  185

8. Pages from the Book of Religions: Encountering Difference in Mughal India / Aditya Behl  210

9. "If There Is a Paradise on Earth, It Is Here": Urban Ethnography in Indo-Persian Poetic and Historical Texts / Sunil Sharma  240

10. Early Persianate Modernity / Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi  257

Part IV. Early Modernities of Tibetan Knowledge  

11. New Scholarship in Tibet, 1650–1700 / Kurtis R. Schaeffer  291

12. Experience, Empiricism, and the Fortunes of Authority: Tibetan Medicine and Buddhism on the Eve of Modernity / Janet Gyatso  311

13. Just Where on Jambudvipa Are We? New Geographical Knowledge and Old Cosmological Schemes in Eighteenth-century Tibet / Matthew T. Kapstein  336

Contributors  365

Index  369

Sheldon Pollock

Sumit Guha

Velcheru Narayana Rao

David Shulman

Sunjay Subrahmanyam

Allison Busch

Imre Bangha

Francoise Mallison

Muzaffar Alam

Aditya Behl

Sunil Sharma

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi

Kurtis R. Schaeffer

Janet Gyatso

Matthew T. Kapstein

“Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia succeeds in more than just
skimming the surface of South Asian scholarship, and as a new entry in a
relatively sparse field, opens several important questions about how we, as
scholars, recognize and define systems of knowledge in early modern history.”—Emily Rook-Koepsel, Journal of Early Modern History

”Yet the synergy created by bringing these excellent essays together in a single volume opens up new frameworks for the analysis of intellectual history. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia is an exciting and path-breaking volume of essays that will surely entice others to undertake research along similar lines.” —Cynthia Talbot, Asian Studies Review

“This compilation of essays is a valuable contribution to a nascent scholarly field that is beginning to chip away at too-long-held assumptions about the degree and kind of modernity that developed in South Asia.”—Erin E. O’Donnell, History: Reviews of New Books

Given the range of geographic and linguistic areas that this volume covers, scholars might be tempted to read only those essays pertaining to their fields of specialization. The advantage of this book’s breadth, however, is that it enables the identification of wider trends that cross particular language zones. On the other hand, the overlapping themes that emerge in the course of such a study are balanced by the high level of detail in the individual studies.—Supriya Gandhi, Sixteenth Century Journal

“Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia succeeds in more than just
skimming the surface of South Asian scholarship, and as a new entry in a
relatively sparse field, opens several important questions about how we, as
scholars, recognize and define systems of knowledge in early modern history.”—Emily Rook-Koepsel, Journal of Early Modern History

”Yet the synergy created by bringing these excellent essays together in a single volume opens up new frameworks for the analysis of intellectual history. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia is an exciting and path-breaking volume of essays that will surely entice others to undertake research along similar lines.” —Cynthia Talbot, Asian Studies Review

“This compilation of essays is a valuable contribution to a nascent scholarly field that is beginning to chip away at too-long-held assumptions about the degree and kind of modernity that developed in South Asia.”—Erin E. O’Donnell, History: Reviews of New Books

Given the range of geographic and linguistic areas that this volume covers, scholars might be tempted to read only those essays pertaining to their fields of specialization. The advantage of this book’s breadth, however, is that it enables the identification of wider trends that cross particular language zones. On the other hand, the overlapping themes that emerge in the course of such a study are balanced by the high level of detail in the individual studies.—Supriya Gandhi, Sixteenth Century Journal

“Deserving of our attention in their own right as splendid scholarly contributions to the growing field of early-modern studies in South Asia and Tibet, the essays in this collection have the additional merit of addressing, often explicitly, the fallacious but widespread tendency on the part of many to pronounce on colonial knowledge or modernity in the subcontinent without much engagement with what preceded them. Students of both precolonial and colonial South Asia will benefit from this book.”—Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference

“Cultural and postcolonial studies scholars conceptualize colonial power as overwhelmingly domineering, paying little attention to the complex changes underway in South Asia before British imperial domination. This creates a substantive gap, which Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia begins to fill. This collection of excellent essays is a major addition to the literature on early modern Asia.”—David Ludden, author of Early Capitalism and Local History in South India

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