Penguin Book By Upinder Singh The Idea Of Ancient India Essays On Religion, Politics & Archaeology English Medium

Upinder Singhis Professor of History at Ashoka University. Her interests range over ancient Indian history and archaeology, the history of ideas, and India’s connections with the wider world. She is the author of Kings, Brahmanas, and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Study (ad 300-1147); Ancient Delhi; The Discovery of Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology; A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the Twelfth Century; The Idea of Ancient India: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Archaeology; and Political Violence in Ancient India. She has edited Delhi: Ancient History; Rethinking Early Medieval India; and The World of India’s First Archaeologist: Letters from Alexander Cunningham to J .D. M. Beglar; and co-edited Ancient India: New Research; Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories; and Buddhism in Asia: Revival and Reinvention.

1. Religion and Region

1. Sanchi: The History of the Patronage of an Ancient Buddhist Establishment

2. Nagarjunakonda: Buddhism in the ‘City of Victory’

3. Cults and Shrines in Early Historical Mathura (c. 200 BC to AD 200)

4. Early Medieval Orissa: The Data and the Debate

II. Archaeologists and the Modern Histories of Ancient Sites

5. Archaeologists and Architectural Scholars in 19th Century India

6. Amaravati: The Dismembering of the Mahacaitya (1797-1886)

7. Buddhism, Archaeology, and the Nation: Nagarjunakonda (1926-2006)

8. Exile and Return: The Reinvention of Buddhism and Buddhist Sites in Modern India

viii THE IDEA OF ANCIENT INDIA

III. The Intersection of Political Ideas and Practice

9. Governing the State and the Self: Political Philosophy and Practice in the Edicts of Asoka

10. Inscribing Power on the Realm: Royal Ideology and Religious Policy in India (c. 200 BCE-300 CE)

11. Politics, Violence, and War in Kamandaka’s Nitisära

12. The Power of a Poet: Kingship, Empire, and War in Kalidasa’s Raghuvansa

13. The State, Violence, and Resistance (c. 600 BCE-600 cz)

IV. Looking beyond India to Asia

14. Gifts from Other Lands: Southeast Asian Religious Endowments in India

15. Politics, Piety, and Patronage: The Burmese Engagement with Bodhgaya

Index