Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary

Kinra, Rajeev

doi:10.1525/luminos.3

Cited by 80 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…13One beneficiary of more consistent focus on the production of texts and of textual authority is the scribe, who now has experienced a kind of heyday in historical studies. For examples see Alam and Subrahmanyam, “The Making of a Munshi”; Mitchell, The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran ; Raman, Document Raj ; Atiyas, “Political Literacy and the Politics of Eloquence”; Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire ; and, for a study that thematises scribal practices beyond state bureaucracies, Prange, Monsoon Islam .…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unseating “State” and “Archive”: Mobility and Manipulation in Past Environments and Present Praxis

Ferguson¹

2020

Itinerario

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These concluding reflections assess how the contributors to this special issue intervene in key assumptions that shape the current field of archival studies. As the “archival turn” gains ground, forms of Euro- and state-centrism reappear in scholarship otherwise innovative in its attention to the textual remnants of the past. Here, instead, we explore the methodological stakes involved in defining both the “archive” and the historical power brokers who created and preserved a documentary record in pursuit of their varied social, cultural, economic, and political projects. The essay points to the resurgence of culturalist and civilisational indices for comparative archivistics, and follows the arguments collected in this issue to assert by contrast the often uneven and uneasy regional, administrative, and procedural definitions at work within preserved records. Identifying “mobility” as both a methodological tactic and a historical process, this conclusion presents a fluid rather than fixed textual landscape and presents an alternative frame for investigating preservationist practices.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unseating “State” and “Archive”: Mobility and Manipulation in Past Environments and Present Praxis

Ferguson¹

2020

Itinerario

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“…30NLI, SC Ms. 94, Hidāyat-ul-qawāʿid , 27. For the life and intellectual milieu of one such sarkār -hopping scribe, see Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire .…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Mulk of One's Own: Languages of Sovereignty, Statehood, and Dominion in the Eighteenth-Century “Empire of Hindustan”

Abbott¹

2020

Itinerario

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Over the course of the eighteenth century, India's Mughal empire (1526–1858) fragmented into a number of regional polities that were, in turn, gradually subsumed under the paramount authority of the British East India Company. This essay describes concomitant developments in the empire's Persianate political language, particularly with regard to ideas of sovereignty, statehood, and dominion. It argues that by the mid-eighteenth century, the Mughal “empire of Hindustan” was increasingly framed as a territorialised governing institution comprising emerging provincial sovereignties rooted in local ruling households. This conceptual dispensation, however, remained ill-defined until the 1760s, when a treaty regime dominated by the Company built upon this language to concretise the empire as a confederacy of independent, sub-imperial states. The essay contends that in the short term, this redefinition bolstered the authority of incipient dynasties in provinces like Awadh, but in the longer term generated conflicts that abetted the expansion of colonial rule and laid conceptual foundations for British paramountcy in India.

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“…Chandrabhan became the caretaker of the Taj Mahal, and the Kanbu brothers were able to build themselves a substantial tomb, which was still a landmark in colonial-era Lahore. 34 But as the quartet's own works remind us, their positions were only available to those who had spent years mastering the demanding curriculum, etiquette, and practices of the Mughal imperial bureaucracy, and, what is more, also had some access to the network of influential men who commanded the ability to make (or break) careers. So what about those who did not have such access?…”

Section: From Majlis To Maktab (Scho Ols): the Pl Aces And Pr Acticesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marking Boundaries and Building Bridges: Persian Scholarly Networks in Mughal Punjab

Dhavan¹

2019

The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca

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Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary

Cited by 80 publications

References 11 publications

Unseating “State” and “Archive”: Mobility and Manipulation in Past Environments and Present Praxis

Unseating “State” and “Archive”: Mobility and Manipulation in Past Environments and Present Praxis

A Mulk of One's Own: Languages of Sovereignty, Statehood, and Dominion in the Eighteenth-Century “Empire of Hindustan”

Marking Boundaries and Building Bridges: Persian Scholarly Networks in Mughal Punjab

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