Lineages of Brahman power : caste, family, and the state in western India, 1600-1900 / Rosalind O'Hanlon.
| Author/creator | O'Hanlon, Rosalind author. |
| Format | Book |
| Edition | First SUNY Press edition |
| Publication | Albany : SUNY Press, 2025. |
| Copyright Date | ©2025 |
| Description | x, 442 pages : black and white illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Portion of title | Caste, family, and the state in western India, 1600-1900 |
| Series | SUNY series in Hindu studies SUNY series in Hindu studies. ^A378297 |
| Contents | Preface -- Introduction: Between Brahman and Sudra in Colonial Western India -- Brahmin families in motion. Speaking from Shiva's Temple : Banaras Scholar Households and the Brahman "Ecumene" of Mughal India ; Entrepreneurs in Diplomacy : Maratha Expansion in the Age of the Vakil -- Family, gender, and the state. Disciplining the Brahman Household : The Moral Mission of Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Maratha State ; Brahman Lineages Beyond the Mughal Court ; Gotmai's Suit : A Brahman Woman of Property in Seventeenth-Century Western India -- Caste and the "early moderns". What Makes People Who They Are? Pandit Networks and the Problem of Livelihoods in Early Modem Western India (with Christopher Minkowski) ; The Social Worth of Scribes : Brahmans, Kayasthas, and the Social Order in Early Modem India ; Discourses of Caste Over the Longue Durée : Gopinatha and Social Classification in India, c. 1400-1900 (with Gergely Hidas and Csaba Kiss) -- Oral traditions and documentary cultures. Performance in a World of Paper : Puranic Histories and Social Communication in Early Modem India ; In the Presence of Witnesses : Petitioning and Judicial "Publics" in Western India, c. 1600-1820. |
| Abstract | Western India's Brahman communities have played a key role in the shaping of India's modern caste system. In Lineages of Brahman Power, Rosalind O'Hanlon focuses on their rise to power between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, exploring the ways in which some Brahman intellectuals sought to defend the hierarchies of caste against the social changes of the early modern era while others looked for compromise. Drawing on Marathi vernacular sources, O'Hanlon also examines the household, family, and lineage as key sites for Brahman accumulation of skills and cultural capital. This approach also reveals Brahman identity itself as contested, as Brahman subcastes competed with each other not only for service positions and state patronage but also to define who could actually be considered a Brahman, and of what kind. This focus on Brahman power is emerging out of their religious prestige and dominance of intellectual and literary cultures. The emphasis on Brahman identity itself as complex and internally contested also helps to avoid essentializing Brahman power as always and everywhere the same--back cover. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | ebook version : 9798855803235 |
| ISBN | 9798855803228 |
| ISBN | (ebook) |