Kingship In Northern India

The present work relates to the political organization in Northern India during the period from 600 A.D. to 1200 A.D. It describes, in detail, how several Kingdoms emerged and how their rulers claimed divinity, possessed absolute powers over their subjects. The author discusses the culminative effects of the separatist tendencies of the monarchs on Indian Polity which ultimately resulted in their weak resistance to the Muslim invaders from the North-West.The work is based on literary, epigraphic and foreign accounts. It is critical, informative and intelligible. The reader would find it interesting as well as instructive.

This work is a significant contribution to the study of kingship and the ritual process, two longstanding areas of anthropological debate both within and beyond South Asia. It is part of the growing literature on the general anthropology of colonialism and the contemporary politics and culture of postcolonial nation states. This book asks why the descendants of the royal elite have continued to enact and sustain these royal rites and ceremonies. Why do kingly rituals possess power and meaning for those who participate in them? Why have the maharajas initiated new rites which they have performed on a large scale at critical moments of crisis?

In a cultural history which considers the transformation of south Indian institutions under British colonial rule in the nineteenth century, Pamela Price focuses on the two former 'little kingdoms' of Ramnad and Sivagangai which came under colonial governance as revenue estates. She demonstrates how rivalries among the royal families and major zamindari temples, and the disintegration of indigenous institutions of rule, contributed to the development of nationalist ideologies and new political identities among the people of southern Tamil country. The author also shows how religious symbols and practices going back to the seventeenth century were reformulated and acquired a new significance in the colonial context. Arguing for a reappraisal of the relationship of Hinduism to politics, Price finds that these symbols and practices continue to inform popular expectation of political leadership today.