South Asian History
From The Ruins of Empire
If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ve probably figured out that I like books that look at familiar history from another point of view. (For example, here, and here, and here.) It should be no surprise that Pankaj Mishra’s latest book caught my eye. In From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who…
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Sita Sings the Blues
The Ramayana is one of the classic Indian epics. Ascribed to the great Sanskrit poet-sage, Valmiki, it’s a love story, a moral lesson, and/or a foundation myth, depending on what kind of reader you are. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl to demon king. Boy rescues girl with the help of monkey-god. Boy worries that…
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Ashoka: The Buddhist Emperor of India
I recently blogged about Chandragupta Maurya, who created an empire out of the chaos that followed Alexander the Great’s invasion of India. Chandragupta was an empire founder, but the real empire builder in the Mauryan dynasty was Chandragupta’s grandson, Ashoka, who ruled from 269 to 232 BCE. Although he was a successful warrior, who expanded…
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