This dissertation demonstrates that there was an unprecedented expansion of Rajput-governed “little kingdoms” under the aegis of the Mughal Empire in the seventeenth century. The Rajputs, originating primarily from northwestern India, were elite Hindu upper-caste itinerant warriors. Rajputs belonging to notable clans served as administrative rank h...
Climate change significantly impacts water resources globally, posing unique challenges in diverse regions such as Ladakh and Jharkhand, India. This thesis examines the effects of climate change on water availability and distribution, focusing on community resilience and gender dynamics in these areas. Through qualitative research methods, includin...
This dissertation re-examines the concept of javānmardī (“young-manliness”) within the premodern Persianate world. While typically translated as “chivalry,” javānmardī encompassed a broader ethical ideal encompassing courage, generosity, and even trickery, highlighting its protean nature. It shapes how Persianate people understood themselves and ot...
This dissertation examines the tantric thought and writings of the Bengali master Atiśa Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna (Tib. Jowo Jé; Jo bo rje, 982–1054), one of the most important figures of the later transmission of Buddhism (tenpa chidar; bstan pa phyi dar), the “renaissance” of Buddhism in Tibet. Atiśa is best known for composing works such as the Lamp fo...
This dissertation explores how “madness” was conceptualized and perceived in early modern South Asia between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Notions of insanity were constantly being reformulated in the Mughal Empire and Deccan Sultanates, as Indo-Iranian physician-scholars (hakims) experimented with extant Greco-Arabic (Unani) and Indic (A...
Abstract‘Abounds with fine oysters’:The (post)colonial political ecology of an estuary in southwestern IndiabyAdam Franklin JadhavDoctor of Philosophy in GeographyUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Michael Watts, ChairThe persistence of fishing, farming and forestry by peasant households still provokes “agrarian questions” today, especiall...
My dissertation traces the valences of a moment in contemporary Anglophone publishing in India that is slowly marking the presence of an articulate Indigenous voice. In contemporary India, the Adivasi–sometimes called tribal or Indigenous, each term mired in a painful history––exist in a perpetual zone of disenfranchisement. With increasing encroac...
This dissertation explores how Indian anticolonialists Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) and Bhai Parmanand (1876-1947), through their writings and organizations, as well as their lived traumas and triumphs, directly contributed to the development of Hindutva on a global scale. Through the lenses of global revolutions, intellectual history, and connected...
This dissertation is about the transmission and reception of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, an influential Hindu scripture, in the Vallabha community of western India through sermon-storytelling performance known as kathā. Over the last couple of decades, elaborate ritual performances of the Bhāgavata, which celebrate the life and poetic memory of the ...
