ePub Boundaries of Toleration (Religion; Culture; and Public Life) by From Columbia University Press in History

Description

In thirteenth-century Maharashtra; a new vernacular literature emerged to challenge the hegemony of Sanskrit; a language largely restricted to men of high caste. In a vivid and accessible idiom; this new Marathi literature inaugurated a public debate over the ethics of social difference grounded in the idiom of everyday life. The arguments of vernacular intellectuals pushed the question of social inclusion into ever-wider social realms; spearheading the development of a nascent premodern public sphere that valorized the quotidian world in sociopolitical terms.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 Lilacaritra (1278) and the Jñanesvari (1290). Novetzke revisits the influence of Chakradhar (c. 1194); the founder of the Mahanubhav religion; and Jnandev (c. 1271); who became a major figure of the Varkari religion; to observe how these avant-garde and worldly elites pursued a radical intervention into the social questions and ethics of the age. Drawing on political anthropology and contemporary theories of social justice; religion; and the public sphere; The Quotidian Revolution explores the specific circumstances of this new discourse oriented around everyday life and its lasting legacy: widening the space of public debate in a way that presages key aspects of Indian modernity and democracy.