عنوان

Ordering subjects: Merchants, the state, and Krishna devotion in eighteenth-century Marwar

Number

TL48402

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Ordering subjects: Merchants, the state, and Krishna devotion in eighteenth-century Marwar

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Divya Cherian

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Dirks, Nicholas B.

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Columbia University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2015

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

366

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-339-05015-7

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

History

Body granting the degree

Columbia University

Text preceding or following the note

2015

Text of Note

"Ordering Subjects" argues that the merchants of Marwar led efforts to demarcate a new, exclusive community of elites, one that they conceptualized of as self-consciously 'Hindu' and forged through the application of state power. This early modern Hindu community defined itself in opposition not to the figure of the Muslim but to that of the 'Untouchable,' a category that included but was not limited to the Muslim. The early modern Hindu identity was thus deeply imagined in caste terms. This elite community organized around Krishna devotion, especially the Vallabh Sampraday, and demarcated itself through cultural markers such as the practice of vegetarianism, teetotalism, and austerity. Merchants, often joined by brahmans, waged their battles for the demarcation of this new community by petitioning the crown and by successfully deploying the control that they had gained in prior centuries over the state apparatus as bureaucrats. State power, consisting of its judicial, fiscal, recordkeeping, and surveillance mechanisms, played a central role in the implementation of laws and regulations, including spatial, economic, social, and ritual segregation, enforced vegetarianism, and the moral policing of elite subjects' lives. Most of these petitions and state responses were legitimized with reference to ethics, marking a departure from the until-then prevalent emphasis on custom as the basis for legislating society. "Ordering Subjects" suggests that this marked a shift towards a more universal law and that the turn to ethical principles made possible the disregard for the force of custom that these departures marked. Further, the dissertation demonstrates that these processes enabled the ascendance of a mercantile ethos as the preeminent cultural code of the region, displacing that of the warrior and modifying that of the brahman. Lastly, it shows the extent to which the state in eighteenth century Marwar had penetrated society and was capable of intervening in it using surveillance and judicial methods.

Religious history; History; South Asian Studies

Subject Term

Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Caste;Eighteenth century;Hindus;India;Krishna;Vaishnav

McCaffrey, Charles A.

Dirks, Nicholas B.

Subdivision

History

Columbia University

Call Number

1721464444; 3722720

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y