Seeking History through Her Source by Aloka Parasher Sen
About the Book
In the late twentieth century, the scope of history writing has expanded beyond textual sources to include additional sources such as literature, coins, art, and architecture. Meanwhile, history writing on ancient India continues to be burdened by an Indological discourse, which takes ‘India’ as a monolithic whole and interprets sources in ways that contribute to a pan- Indian meta-narrative. Sources which are fragmentary in nature, or located far from the so-called centres of civilisation, are relegated to the footnotes and margins, merely as tools of corroboration.
Seeking History through Her Source corrects this imbalance by interrogating ‘sources’ in innovative ways. The authors seek historical realities south of the Vindhyas, and contextualise oft-neglected sources in their respective local niches. They highlight literary, art-historical and archaeological sources—such as the Jātakas, Cankam literature, Kāvya narratives, coins and praśastis of local rulers—while also highlighting fragmentary sources, such as label inscriptions and statuettes. Thus, literature and myths, and even non-textual traditions are centred as valid ways to address new areas of historical research, and complicate dominant narratives for a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of the past.
This book will be invaluable to teachers, scholars, and students of history, as well as to readers interested in learning how history can also be constructed from fragmentary and regional sources.
About the author
Aloka Parasher Sen is Professor Emerita in the Department of Sanskrit Studies, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad.
Language, Mind and Society: A Language and Education Reader by Rama Kant Agnihotri, Rajesh Kumar
About the book
Language, Mind and Society: A Language and Education Reader is a collection of essays that has been curated to create awareness about the interactional nature and structure of language, and to explore and examine its relationship with mind, society and education. This reader covers a wide range of topics including the structuring of language, language acquisition in children, multilingualism, the nature of language variation, and the ways in which language is related to social power structures, among others. The essays have been grouped under four sections: the nature of language, language and the human mind, language and society, and language and education. The selections represent the diverse and multifaceted views held by scholars renowned in their respective fields, and will provide students with an in-depth understanding of the topics discussed and help them form their own ideas on these topics.
About the Editors
Rama Kant Agnihotri retired as Professor and Head, Department of Linguistics at the University of Delhi, and is Professor Emeritus at Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur. He was Chairperson of the NCERT’s National Focus Group on the teaching of Indian languages, and advisor to CBSE, NCERT, SCERTs and DIETs across India.
Rajesh Kumar is Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras. His book Negation and Licensing of Negative Polarity Items in Hindi Syntax was published as part of the prestigious Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics series in 2006.
You must log in to post a comment.