New Books in Early Modern History

Dalpat Rajpurohit, "Sundar's Dreams: Ārambhik Ādhunikatā, Dādūpanth and Sundardās's Poetry" (Rajkamal, 2022)


Listen Later

Dalpat Rajpurohit's book Sundar's Dreams: Ārambhik Ādhunikatā, Dādūpanth and Sundardās's Poetry (Rajkamal, 2022) explores the making and lifespan of a religious community in early modern India. Demonstrating fresh perspectives on how to speak historically about the Hindi literary past it questions the categorization of Hindi literature into the binaries of ‘spontaneous’ devotional (bhakti) versus ‘mannerist’ courtly (riti) tropes which have remained prevalent in Hindi historiographies since the nationalist period. The book studies the devotional and literate community of the sixteenth-century poet-saint Dadu Dayal who flourished in north-western India during the heydays of the Mughal-Rajput multicultural milieu. Building networks with imperial and sub-imperial courts the community of Dadu Dayal grew in the towns located on the major trade routes in Mughal India. Dadu Dayal’s disciples got patronage from traders flourishing in Mughal trade and admitted saints of merchant castes backgrounds into their community. In such a socio-historical context emerged the poet-saint Sundardas who composed in the polished literary idiom of Hindi and whose life span covered almost the entire seventeenth century. 

By studying the large corpus of Sundardas, published and unpublished, the book demonstrates how Sundardas sought to create a new community of taste by participating in the literary innovations happening in the courtly circles. Sundardas was one of the early poet-saints who equated devotion (bhakti) with non-duelist thought, thus vernacularized the philosophical system which would later become the chief scholastic stance of modern Hinduism.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

New Books in Early Modern HistoryBy New Books Network

  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7

4.7

6 ratings


More shows like New Books in Early Modern History

View all
In Our Time by BBC Radio 4

In Our Time

5,389 Listeners

Radiolab by WNYC Studios

Radiolab

43,967 Listeners

History Extra podcast by Immediate Media

History Extra podcast

3,193 Listeners

The LRB Podcast by The London Review of Books

The LRB Podcast

293 Listeners

Odd Lots by Bloomberg

Odd Lots

1,789 Listeners

The Ancients by History Hit

The Ancients

3,043 Listeners

The Rest Is History by Goalhanger

The Rest Is History

13,053 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,321 Listeners

Gone Medieval by History Hit

Gone Medieval

1,758 Listeners

Not Just the Tudors by History Hit

Not Just the Tudors

1,982 Listeners

Ones and Tooze by Foreign  Policy

Ones and Tooze

346 Listeners

The Rest Is Politics by Goalhanger

The Rest Is Politics

3,286 Listeners

The Foreign Affairs Interview by Foreign Affairs Magazine

The Foreign Affairs Interview

421 Listeners

Empire by Goalhanger

Empire

2,107 Listeners

Past Present Future by David Runciman

Past Present Future

321 Listeners