Merchants of Virtue by Divya Cherian
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Winner of the 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences Merchants of Virtue explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a fine-grained study of everyday life and local politics in the kingdom of Marwar in eighteenth-century western India to uncover how merchants enforced their caste ideals of vegetarianism and bodily austerity as universal markers of Hindu identity. Using legal strategies and alliances with elites, these merchants successfully remade the category of “Hindu,” setting it in contrast to “Untouchable” in a process that reconfigured Hinduism in caste terms. In a history pertinent to understanding India today, Cherian establishes the centrality of caste to the early-modern Hindu self and to its imagination of inadmissible others.
"Divya Cherian’s Merchants of Virtue is a vibrant and engaging intervention in the historiography of South Asia and caste historyIts strong arguments, rich analysis of historical sources, and careful scholarship will prove stimulating for scholars of South Asia, South Asian religions, history, the social sciences, and archival studies." * Reading Religion *
Divya Cherian is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780520390058 |
| ISBN 10 | 0520390059 |
| Title | Merchants of Virtue |
| Author | Divya Cherian |
| Series | South Asia Across The Disciplines |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | University of California Press |
| Year published | 2022-12-27 |
| Number of pages | 284 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |