The Idea of Ancient India: Essays on Religion, Politics and Archaeology

Table of Contents:

Introduction

I. Religion and Region
Sanchi: The History of the Patronage of an Ancient Buddhist Establishment
Nagarjunakonda: Buddhism in the ‘City of Victory’
Cults and Shrines in Early Historical Mathura (c. 200 BC to AD 200)
Early Medieval Orissa: The Data and the Debate

II. Archaeologists And The Modern Histories Of Ancient Sites
Archaeologists and Architectural Scholars in 19th-Century India
Amaravati: The Dismembering of the Mahacaitya (1797–1886)
Buddhism, Archaeology, and the Nation: Nagarjunakonda (1926–2006)
Exile and Return: The Reinvention of Buddhism and Buddhist Sites in Modern India

III. The Intersection Of Political Ideas And Practice
Governing the State and the Self: Political Philosophy and Practice in the Edicts of Aśoka
Politics, Violence, and War in Kamandaka’s Nītisara
The Power of a Poet: Kingship, Empire, and War in Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa

IV. Looking Beyond India To Asia
Gifts from Other Lands: Southeast Asian Religious Endowments in India
Politics, Piety, and Patronage: The Burmese Engagement with Bodhgaya

Index