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This book traces the genealogy and historical memory of the twelfth-century ruler Prithviraj Chauhan, remembered as the 'last Hindu Emperor of India'.
List of contents
1. Introduction: layers of memory; 2. Literary trajectories of the historic king; 3. Delhi in the making of the last Hindu emperor; 4. The heroic vision of a regional elite; 5. Imagining the Rajput past in Mughal-era Mewar; 6. Validating Prithviraj R¿so in colonial India, 1820s-70s; 7. Contested meanings in a nationalist age, 1880s-1940s; 8. Epilogue: the postcolonial Prithviraj; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Cynthia Talbot is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. She is author of Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra (2001), co-author (with Catherine B. Asher) of India before Europe (with Catherine B. Asher, Cambridge, 2006), and editor of Knowing India: Colonial and Modern Constructions of the Past (2011). Her scholarship has been supported by numerous organizations including the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Advanced Study, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Institute of Indian Studies.
Summary
A fascinating genealogy of the historical memories surrounding Prithviraj Chauhan, a Hindu king who was defeated and overthrown during the Muslim conquest of Northern India. Surveying a wealth of narratives from the twelfth century to the present day, Cynthia Talbot explores the various reasons why he is remembered, and by whom.
