Dr Daud Ali is an historian of pre-Mughal South Asia. He taught history for many years at SOAS, University of London, before relocating to Penn in 2009. His area of training and expertise is early medieval South Asia, but his research interests have expanded over the years. His research has focused on the history of mentalities and practices in pre-Sultanate South Asia, and he has published on a wide range of subjects, including courtly and monastic discipline, mercantile practices, conventions in erotic poetry and courtship, slavery, ideas of space, time and history in inscriptions, early Southeast Asian history, and, most recently, on gardens and landscape in the medieval Deccan. Future and ongoing projects include collaborative projects on the history of friendship in early and medeival South Asia, a translation of a Buddhist text on erotics, as well as a study of the production of the king Bhoja cycles in Western India.

Monographs and Edited Volumes

2011. (ed., with Emma Flatt) Garden and Landscape Practices in Precolonial India: Histories from the
Deccan (Delhi: Routledge, 2011).

2011. (ed., with Indra Sengupta). Knowledge Production, Pedagogy and Institutions in Colonial India. (New York: Palgrave, 2011).

2010. (ed., with Anand Pandian) Ethical Life in South Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

2004. Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

2000. Querying the Medieval: The History of Practice in South Asia (with Ronald Inden and Jonathan Walters). Oxford University Press, New York, 2000.

1999. (ed.) Invoking the Past: the Uses of History in South Asia.  Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.

from: https://www.southasia.upenn.edu/people/daud-ali

Understanding Violence among Political Elites in Early Medieval India

This paper will explore the range of attitudes and practices toward violence among early medieval courtly and political elites in north India. It will suggest that new codes violence (and non-violence) were introduced that served to sustain court hierarchy and regulate relations among agents in the complex political formations that were emerging at the time. The overall coercion of this system, a process perhaps akin to what Norbert Elias referred to as courticization in Europe, is revealed though projections that this courtly literature offered of so called ‘forest peoples’ deemed unfit for royal service. 

Ganesh Umakant Thite is Professor Emeritus in Sanskrit at the University of Pune. He has published several books including Sacrifice in the Brāhmaṇa Texts (1975), Medicine: Its Magico-religious Aspects in the Vedic and Later Literature (1981), and Music in the Veda (1996) as well as more than two hundred and fifty papers. In addition to Vedic ritual, Dr. Thite drew attention to intellectual discussions and aspects of what he calls the “magico-religious” in Brāhmaṇa texts. As a result of his close attention to Vedic concepts, he has corrected misinterpreted English translations of numerous Vedic technical terms found not only in Vedic literature, but in other texts in which “Vedisms” are found.

Ritual: Violence and Non-violence

In this paper vicissitudes of the thoughts on Violence and Non-violence, from Vedic period up-to-now in India are detailed. While Vedic people started with violent life, they practiced a lot of animal-sacrifices. Slowly, however, they started using euphemisms in connection with the ritualistic violence. Subsequently they started non-violent rituals. There was a lot of opposition to the ritualistic violence mainly from Buddhist and Jaina Thinkers. Even later Hinduism accepted the principle of Ahimsaa (non-violence). Even though now some followers of Vedic ritual do not practice violence in the Vedic ritual,some do partly accept it and perform accordingly. Outside Vedic ritual also there is some ritualistic violence. But definitely there is some change.

Dr. C. Rajendran, Ex Dean, Faculty of Sanskrit Literature at Sreesankaracharya University, Kalady and retired Professor and Head of the department of Sanskrit, University of Calicut is the author of thirty one books and more than two hundred research papers some of which have appeared in prestigious International journals. He received Ramakrishna Sanskrit Award, instituted by Canadian World Education Foundation for outstanding contributions in Teaching and Research.

His noted works include Vyaktiviveka: A Critical Study, Studies in Comparative Poetics, The Traditional Sanskrit Theatre of Kerala, Eco Aesthetic Studies in Kalidasa, Excursions in Indian Aesthetics, Understanding Tradition and English translation of Sisupalavadha.

He has also received several prestigious awards for his works in Malayalam. He has delivered lectures at Cambridge, Brussels, Warsaw, Berlin, Helsinki, Milan, Leipzig, Aix En Provence, Singapore and Cagliari, and worked as Visiting Professor at École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociale, Paris and Jageillonian University, Krakow, Poland.

from: https://chettiarthodirajendran.academia.edu/

Violence and death in Kerala's classical theatre: Texts and performances

This paper is an attempt to probe into the depiction of violence and death in classical Sanskrit drama, especially in its avatar as kῡṭiyāṭṭam, the performance related to the temple theatre of Kerala. Bruce M. Sullivan (2007) has already examined the issues related to the depiction of dying on the stage in the Nāṭyaśāstra and kῡṭiyāṭṭam maintaining that despite the stereotyped perception of the Sanskrit theatre tradition of India as avoiding depiction of death on the stage, death was enacted on the stage, and has always been integral to the Sanskrit theatre tradition, as seen to the present day in Kerala’s kῡṭiyāṭṭam tradition. Largely agreeing with these findings, and in continuation with them, in the present paper, violence and death as the culmination of it are examined in the context of the semiotics in the depiction of terrible scenes in a drama, including costume, color scheme, tonal features and acting in its ramifications. The paper will first of all examine attitude of the Nāṭyaśāstra, the seminal text of Indian theatre, to the darker side of life and the issues related to the portrayal of violence and death in kῡṭiyāṭṭam, the only living stage related to Sanskrit drama. The paper will also have an occasion to briefly touch upon other classical art forms like Kathakali which are based on epic and Purāṇic themes and which are noted for their prominent portrayal of violence on stage.