Somanatha Cl

by Thapar,Romila

• ISBN13: 9781844670208
• ISBN10: 1844670201
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-17
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

In 1026, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni raided the Hindu temple of Somanatha (Somnath in textbooks of the colonial period). The story of the raid has reverberated in Indian history, but largely during the raj. It was first depicted as a trauma for the Hindu population not in India, but in the House of Commons. The triumphalist accounts of the event in Turko-Persian chronicles became the main source for most eighteenth-century historians. It suited everyone and helped the British to divide and rule a multi-millioned subcontinent.In her new book, Romila Thapar, the doyenne of Indian historians, reconstructs what took place by studying other sources, including local Sanskrit inscriptions, biographies of kings and merchants of the period, court epics and popular narratives that have survived. The result is astounding and undermines the traditional version of what took place. These findings also contest the current Hindu religious nationalism that constantly utilises the conventional version of this history.

Author Biography

Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor in History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Table of Contents

The context	p. 1
The setting	p. 17
The Turko - Persian narratives	p. 36
Sanskrit inscriptions from Somanatha and its vicinity	p. 73
Biographies, chronicles and epics	p. 101
The perceptions of yet others	p. 140
Colonial interpretations and nationalist reactions	p. 163
Constructing memory, writing histories	p. 195
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.