This book highlights emerging trends and new themes in South Asian history. It covers issues broadly related to religion, materiality and nature from differing perspectives and methods to offer a kaleidoscopic view of Indian history until the late eighteenth century.
Introduction Part I: Sacred Spaces and Cultural Landscapes 1. The Archaeology of Sacred Spaces: Re-examining Early Coastal Temples in Gujarat 2. Mathura: Exploring a Complex Associative Cultural Landscape (From 2nd Century BCE to 2nd Century CE) 3. Perfumes in 16th18th Century India: A Religious-Cultural Artefact and the Formation of a Scent-Landscape 4. Patronage as Political Proxy: 18th-Century State-Building and Religious Patronage in Ajmer and Pushkar Part II: Religious Traditions and Texts 5. Anthologies of Difference: Situating the Anthologies of Sdhanaml and Carypada in the Sacred Space of Tantric Buddhism 6. The Transformative Presence of Sufis in Medieval Indian Environment: Anecdotes of Miraculous Conversion and Islamicisation in Chishti Literature from the Delhi Sultanate 7. Conversion and Translation: Life and Work of Dom Antonio do Rosario Part III: The Material and the Sacred in Bengal 8. Settlements of Kasimbazar and Murshidabad, CE 16501800 CE 9. Physical Environment, Customary Practices, and the English East India Company Regime: A Narrative of Salt Smuggling in Late 18th-Century Lower Deltaic Bengal 10. Rise ofl“-