2022 - Leiden University Press
E-book
Digital Version
The Heirs of Vijayanagara
596 p.
- A comparative study of courtly politics in four early modern kingdoms in South India.When Dutch traders arrived on the Indian subcontinent in the early seventeenth century, they encountered a courtly culture they perceived to be traditional, peaceful, and static. In reality, the kings and Brahmins they met were engaged in a fresh power struggle following the recent collapse of the Vijayanagara empire. In The Heirs of Vijayanagarai, Lennart Bes marshals a wealth of untapped sources from both Indian and Dutch archives to recover the dynamic complexity of political life in early modern India. By comparing four kingdoms-Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnand-across the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, this book offers a captivating analysis of political culture, power relations, and dynastic developments in south India. [Publisher's text].
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