Devotional Sovereignty

Abstract

This book investigates the shifting articulations of kingship in a wide variety of literary (Sanskrit and Kannada), visual, and material courtly productions in the South Indian kingdom of Mysore during the reigns of Tipu Sultan (r. 1782–1799) and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (r. 1799–1868). Tipu Sultan was a Muslim king famous for resisting British dominance until his death, and Krishnaraja III was a Hindu king who succumbed to British political and administrative control. Both of their courts dealt with the changing political landscape of the period by turning to the religious and mythical past to construct a royal identity for their kings. With their use of religious narrative to articulate their kingship, the changing conceptions of sovereignty that accompanied burgeoning British colonial hegemony did not result in languishing. The religious past, instead, provided an idiom through which the Mysore courts could articulate their kings’ unique claims to kingship in the region, as they attributed their rule to divine election and increasingly employed religious vocabularies in a variety of courtly genres and media. What emerges within this material is an increasing reliance on devotion to frame Mysore kingship in relation to the kings’ changing role in regional politics. The emphasis on devotion for the constitution of Indian sovereignty in this period had lasting effects on Indian national politics as it provided an ideological basis for united Indian sovereignty that could simultaneously integrate and transcend premodern forms of regional kingship and its association with local deities.

Mathas, toward understanding the public religious, educational, and political ascetic institution in South Asian religions

“…The primacy of this relationship between matha leaders and sovereignty transcended communal or religious identity. This is particularly salient given the current trends in public historiography of Islam in India, as Muslim rulers who are framed as virulently anti‐Hindu, like Tipu Sultan, Mahmud of Ghazni, and Muhammad Ghori had ongoing relationships with mathas and their ascetic leaders (Simmons, 2020, pp. 57–76 and, forthcoming; Simmons and Taylor, forthcoming; Bouillier, 2017, pp.…”

“…Perhaps as a result, there exists a homological overlap between matha head and ruler that is accentuated in the titles taken by ascetic leaders that often correspond with royal titles, for example, raja, maharaja, odeyar, bhattaraka (Bouillier, 2017, pp. 113–114; Simmons, 2020, pp. 125–126; Pierce Taylor, 2020, pp.…”

Colonialism and Translation: A Study of Kirmani’s History of Tipu Sultan

“…In Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy (1997), Kate Brittlebank studies Tipu's denominational politics in the rapidly evolving dynamics of late eighteenthcentury Mysore. Simmons (2019) takes up the same theme, emphasizing a devotional component to Tipu's appeal to religion for justifying his regime to the majority Hindus of Mysore.…”