Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The South Indian temple: cultural model and historical problem
- 2 Kings, sects, and temples: South Indian Śrī Vaisnavism, 1350–1700
- 3 British rule and temple politics, 1700–1826
- 4 From bureaucracy to judiciary, 1826–1878
- 5 Litigation and the politics of sectarian control, 1878–1925
- 6 Rethinking the present: some contextual implications
- Appendix A Rules and regulations of 1800
- Appendix B Justice Hutchins's scheme of 1885
- Appendix C Final judicial scheme of management, 1925
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The South Indian temple: cultural model and historical problem
- 2 Kings, sects, and temples: South Indian Śrī Vaisnavism, 1350–1700
- 3 British rule and temple politics, 1700–1826
- 4 From bureaucracy to judiciary, 1826–1878
- 5 Litigation and the politics of sectarian control, 1878–1925
- 6 Rethinking the present: some contextual implications
- Appendix A Rules and regulations of 1800
- Appendix B Justice Hutchins's scheme of 1885
- Appendix C Final judicial scheme of management, 1925
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This study is part of a larger ongoing effort to develop methods and models for the study of colonialism from a cultural point of view. As such, it draws upon the materials and techniques of social history but shares the methods and comparative concerns of anthropology. It follows, also, that the findings of this case study are relevant to the intrinsically cross-cultural problem of colonialism.
These larger aims, however, do not occupy the bulk of the pages that follow. Their content is culturally and historically specific and consists of an ethnohistorical analysis of conflict in a single South Indian temple over a two-hundred-year period. The arguments of the substantive chapters bear directly on the institutional formation of a set of South Asian ideas concerning power, ritual, and authority, especially in the colonial context. These arguments result from deliberately juxtaposing ethnographic fieldwork and archival research.
The results of this enterprise bear the marks, both for better and for worse, of a serious effort to achieve two goals, for which there are few clear precedents in the scholarship on South Asia: first, to provide a sustained analysis at the micro level of the cultural processes of an institution over a substantial period of time; second, to conduct an “archeology” of the ethnographic present, which entails a particular type of historical journey.
In the course of researching and writing this study I have incurred many debts to both individuals and institutions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Worship and Conflict under Colonial RuleA South Indian Case, pp. vii - viiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981