Department of History

Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

Bridging Two Worlds: Comparing Classical Political Thought and Statecraft in India and China

Ideas of empire in ancient India in a comparative frame

World University root node

The early modern in South Asia

The early modern in South Asia : querying modernity, periodization, and history

The historiography of the Mughal Empire has gone through many twists and turns since its inception. Significant shifts in terms of methodologies and arguments notwithstanding, a certain elitism has characterised this body of literature. This is manifested by the tendency of most historians to conceptualise the career of the empire primarily in terms of elite action. This elitism has kept the contributions of non-elite groups to the making of the empire fairly obscured. Problematising this lopsided historical understanding, the present article offers a people’s history of the empire by focusing on the domain of war as a case study. It explores the role of two non-elite groups in Mughal military campaigns. These are the common infantry and the logistical workforce. The article discusses their tactical importance, social basis, modes of recruitment, pay, and organisation. It argues that taking cognizance of the contributions of these groups to the processes of war-making and territorial expansion helps us challenge the view of the Mughal Empire being primarily an elite enterprise. It enables us see the broad-based, inclusive, and collaborative nature of Mughal state-formation and empire-building.&nbsp;

Medieval History Journal

War and the Non-Elite: Towards a People’s History of the Mughal Empire

The archaeology of historical India has usually been perceived through the lens of cities and states, leaving forest tracts to a large extent unexamined. This article considers the historical signature in a segment of the Bandhavgarh National Park and Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, India, in order to understand how histories of occupation in jungles and wilderness where no settlements presently exist can be studied. Our survey involved a combination of ground-level investigations using GPS devices along with an analysis of satellite images to explore whether such images can be used for locating structures and sites. The earliest archaeological markers in Bandhavgarh are cave shelters of the 2nd century CE, which form the subject of this article.&nbsp;

Current Science

Exploring the forest and mapping its archaeology: Bandhavgarh National Park and Tiger Reserve, India

This chapter explores the general characteristics of, and the role of law among, early Muslim communities of the Indian Ocean world in the seventh to the tenth centuries, a period usually understood as the formative and classical period of Islamic law. After dividing the oceanic littoral into five major zones on the basis of early Islamic settlements and identifying five functional groups of Muslim itinerants, I explore how the Muslims functioned within the existing physical and social structures, with or without following a particular legal paradigm. Did Muslims manage their own laws or did they operate under other legal regimes, and how did Islamic law appear in those places to administer a partly mobile and partly sedentary community?

Islamic Law in the Indian Ocean World

Zones of origins: The formation of Islamic law in the Indian Ocean littoral, c. 615–1000 CE

The category of ‘military labour’ has traditionally been used to designate ‘combat labour’ – the labour of soldiers. Focusing on the case of early modern South Asia, the present essay argues that this equivalence is misplaced and that it is a product of a distorted view of war defined primarily in terms of combat. The essay discusses the roles played by the logistical workforce of Mughal armies in conducting military campaigns and facilitating imperial expansion. It calls for broadening the category of ‘military labour’ to include all types of labour rendered consciously towards the fulfilment of military objectives. © The Author(s) 2021.

War in History

What is military labour? War, logistics, and the Mughals in early modern South Asia

This article examines the Bengal-China connections between the Ilyās Shāhī and Ming dynasties in the early fifteenth century across the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea. It traces how law played a central role in the cultural geography and diplomatic vocabulary between individuals and communities in foreign lands, with their shared understanding of two nodal points of law. Diplomatic missions explicate how customary, regional and transregional laws were entangled in inter-imperial etiquette. Then there were the religious orders of Islam that constituted an inner circle of imperial exchanges. Between the Ilyās Shāhī rule in Bengal and the Ming Empire in China, certain dimensions of Islamic law provided a common language for the circulation of people and ideas. Stretching between cities and across oceans the interpolity legal exchanges expose interesting aspects of the histories of China and Bengal. © 2021 Brill Academic Publishers. All rights reserved.

Fulltext

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient

Regimes of diplomacy and law: Bengal-China encounters in the early fifteenth century

Islamic Law in the Indian Ocean World: Texts, Ideas and Practices

Entangled Religions

Encounters of Indic-Abrahamic Religions with Matriliny in Premodern Southern India

This afterword reflects on the intellectual life of Chanchalkumar Chattopadhyaya who died at the age of 89 in 2004. Mr Chattopadhyaya, who lived in a small flat in north Calcutta, taught himself Greek, Latin and French, and it was the learning of the Italian language which introduced him to his life's great love, Dante. His other great love was western classical music. Mr Chattopadhyaya, who I refer to in this text as Chanchalbabu, represents a lost sensibility which was once integral to the culture and history of Calcutta. Despite being scoffed at, he, along with the other marginal characters in this anthology who are navigating, moulding and defying mainstream aesthetic narratives in Calcutta, remained committed to the passionate pursuit of knowledges which drew upon the best of European culture. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.