The Indian Economic and Social History Review

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the publication of Textures of Time (2001), this article returns to the question of ‘history’ in South Asia. It counterposes two unlikely suspects: textual traditions in Persian and Kannada—tārīkh and campū kāvya, respectively—from the Karnatak region of southern India to show how caste concerns, specifically of warrior groups, shaped literary production in the late eighteenth century. It puts into dialogue genres from the literary cultures of these two languages that had a continuous set of conventions and themes since at least the medieval period. The two texts we analyse are Munshi Muhammad ‘Azimuddin’s Tārīkh-i Dilīrjangī (The Chronicle of Dilir Jang, completed ca. 1839), which was produced for the Miyana Afghan Nawabs of Savanur at the time when many such little kingdoms were increasingly beholden to the authority of the English East India Company, and Linganna’s Keḷadinṛpavijayaṃ (The Victory of the Kings of Keladi, ca. 1762–1804), written during or after the dissolution of the nāyaka kingdom of Keladi. Written from geographic zones located at the interstices of multiple political formations, both texts offer sites for intertextual readings of the intersecting social domains of elite martial groups and the literary cultures they fostered. Specifically, we pay close attention to parallel ways of narration and modes of recording contemporary politics, and build upon previous attempts to compare a regional vernacular like Kannada with transregional, imperial Persian. The article demonstrates how texts from two putatively different literary traditions show features of continuity in their respective genres while sharing concerns about the region, political genealogy and caste. The article makes the case for why the two texts—and by extension, the two literary traditions they are thought to be representing—should be seen as intertextually related, rather than dissimilar. In doing so, it opens up fresh avenues for historicising the region by questioning the long-standing practice of associating a region with a monolingual literary tradition.

This article analyses the impact of divination on political decision-making and warfare in the Ahom kingdom of Northeastern India. It identifies two principal state-sponsored mantic specialists: Ahom priests who relied on osteomancy (bone-divination), a practice traceable to Chinese cultural traditions; and daivajnas, a caste group in the Ahom kingdom, who utilised astrological knowledge derived from northern India. The Brahmaputra Valley became a site of ritual contestation as these traditions vied for royal patronage. The article traces the brahmanisation of Ahom polity reflected in the ascendancy of the daivajnas at the Ahom court. The study contributes to the scholarship on ritual power and state formation in pre-modern South Asia. Drawing on mythological, historical and ethnographic data, the article argues that divinatory praxis held greater importance in the kingdom’s political and social processes than hitherto recognised. The study situates dreams and omens within their socio-religious milieu, while emphasising their centrality in political decision-making. In military contexts, diviners were integrated into the army hierarchy, advising on strategic appointments and battlefield tactics. Their pronouncements could induce shifts in political allegiance, compelling the state to regulate their activities. Given the weight attached to and high stakes associated with the divinations, mantic practitioners faced risks of punishment as well as the lure of rewards, intensifying the contestations between mantic and religious traditions.