A book titled “Settlement and Local Histories of the Early Deccan” by Aloka Parasher-Sen, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sanskrit Studies, University of Hyderabad has been published by Manohar Publishers as a South Asia edition. The Global edition will be brought out by Routledge UK in March 2021.
Aloka Parasher-Sen
About the Book:
In focussing on the Deccan, the book unravels its multi-faceted history to reflect on the earliest historical foundations of her personality to provide the basis of understanding her social, economic, political and ideological evolution over historical time.
In nine essays, this volume is an attempt to look at regional history from the perspective of given localities that give multiple readings of the many facets of early Deccani society and culture. Hitherto, this has been mainly articulated in terms of the broad categories of language and religion in the many historical studies of present-day linguistic states. In focussing on local spatial contexts as the primary layer of historical reality, the book emphasizes on multiple sources of information, largely on extant archaeological material while, also drawing on inscriptions, textual material and oral memory found in local contexts. Settlement and Local Histories does reflect on larger events of various periods of history but, by placing them as part of larger social and economic processes emanating from the local.
In straddling the diversity of time, space, and data, these essays have been presented thematically moving from general issues discussed in Part I to the more particular in Part II and finally, to reflect on the multiplicity and simultaneity of different kinds of processes in a constant state of negotiation, in Part III. The historical sensibilities of people in various locations from Kotalingala and Dhulikatta to Phanigiri, Patancheru, Kondapur and Nanakramguda and from Thotlakonda to Nagarjunakonda, Amaravati, Vaddamanu and Shravan Belgola have thus been recounted and illustrated for the readers.
About the Author:
ALOKA PARASHER-SEN Ph.D. (London) has taught History at the University of Hyderabad, India since 1979 where, since 2018, she is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sanskrit Studies.
Her major publications are in the main area of her interest in social history, namely, early Indian attitudes towards foreigners, tribes and excluded castes and different aspects of the social, economic, cultural and religious history and archaeology of the Deccan.