The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India

Christian Lee Novetzke

Published by Columbia University Press 2016

The Quotidian Revolution

Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India

Christian Lee Novetzke

https://doi.org/10.7312/nove17580

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Quotidian Revolution examines this pivotal moment of vernacularization in Indian literature, religion, and public life by investigating courtly donative Marathi inscriptions alongside the first extant texts of Marathi literature: the Līlācaritra (1278) and the Jñāneśvarī (1290).

Author / Editor information

Christian Lee Novetzke is professor of religious studies, South Asia studies, and global studies at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India (Columbia, 2008) and coauthor, with William Elison and Andy Rotman, of Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation (2016).

Reviews

Thomas Blom Hansen, Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Anthropology, author of Melancholia of Freedom: Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa:
Novetzke demonstrates the circumstances that enabled a vigorous, innovative, often irreverent set of Marathi texts describing and discussing the lives and experiences of ordinary men and women to burst forth in the second half of the thirteenth century. In his expert hands, this quotidian revolution of the literary imagination comes to life in an account that is deeply embedded in original textual and historical scholarship but also enlivened and illuminated by an impressive range of contemporary social theory.

Sumit Guha, author of Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present:
Novetzke offers scholars a new and exciting way of comprehending the relation of common or vernacular language and social power in everyday life in South Asia and elsewhere. This book enriches many fields, including the study of the history, of religion and of literature.

James W. Laine, author of Meta-Religion: Religion and Power in World History:
The Quotidian Revolution is required reading for anyone with a serious interest in Maharashtra, medieval bhakti, and vernacularization.

Davesh Soneji, author of Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India:
The Quotidian Revolution is by far one of the most sustained and profoundly suggestive works on religion, language, and social history in medieval India. This book is theoretically and methodologically rich and complex and draws on understudied primary materials that Novetzke has deftly translated and interpreted for his readers.

Laurie Patton, Professor of Indian Religions and President, Middlebury College:
The Quotidian Revolution is an erudite and thoughtful work, not only about Chakradhar and Jñandev, two powerful figures in the creation of Marathi culture, but also about how public spheres are created and maintained through literary and historical accounts. Novetzke surprises and delights in his unorthodox accounts of how canonical texts such as Lilacaritra and Jñanesvari came to be the standard bearers for accessible literary culture, and how Marathi came to be Marathi. We are indebted yet again to Novetzke for another lively, humane, and insightful account of the collective work of the Marathi thinkers gone before us.

Sheldon Pollock, author of A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics:
Christian LeeNovetzke's important contribution to the problem of vernacularization is to carefully track a given instance—early modern Western India and the Marathi language—by bringing to bear close reading of major texts, historical sensitivity, sophisticated social and cultural theory, and expository vivacity. Instead of emphasizing vernacularization's relationship to political change, he compellingly highlights the creation of a new public culture in which problems of inequality could be addressed, however much that culture was shaped, not by subaltern intellectuals, but by elites.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface. The Shape of the Book Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xvii
Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xxiii
Introduction. The Argument of the Book Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE. The Yadava Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
CHAPTER TWO. Traces of a Medieval Public Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
CHAPTER THREE. The Biography of Literary Vernacularization Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
PART TWO
CHAPTER FOUR. The Vernacular Moment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
CHAPTER FIVE. The Mahanubhav Ethic Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
PART THREE
CHAPTER SIX. A Vernacular Manifesto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
CHAPTER SEVEN. Sonic Equality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Conclusion. The Vernacular Millennium and the Quotidian Revolution Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	309
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	359
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	369
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	385

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 432

eBook

Published: December 19, 2016
ISBN: 9780231542418