Hindu Pasts

Vasudha Dalmia is Emerita Professor of Hindi and Modern South Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She has written, edited, and translated many books, including The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras; Poetics, Plays, and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre; and Fiction as History: The Novel and the City in Modern North India.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Where these Essays are Coming From

Part I. Colonial Knowledge-Formation

1. Friedrich Max Muller: Appropriations of the Vedic Past

2. Sanskrit Scholars and Pandits of the Old School: The Benares Sanskrit College and the Constitution of Authority in the Late Nineteenth Century

3. Sati as a Religious Rite: Parliamentary Papers on Widow Immolation

4. Mosques, Temples, and Fields of Disputation in a Late-Eighteenth-Century Chronicle

5. Vernacular Histories in Late-Nineteenth-Century Banaras: Folklore, Puranas, and the New Antiquarianism

Part II. Vaishnava Renewals C. 1600–1900

6. Forging Community: The Guru in a Seventeenth-Century Vaishnava Hagiography

7. Women, Duty, and Sanctified Space in a Vaishnava Hagiography of the Seventeenth Century

8. The Sixth Gaddi of the Vallabha Sampraday: Narrative Structure and Authority in a Varta of the Nineteenth Century

9. The Modernity of Tradition: Harishchandra of Banaras and the Defence of Hindu Dharma

Part III. The Hindi Novel: Nineteenth-Century Beginnings

10. A Novel Moment in Hindi: Pariksha Guru

11. Generic Questions: Bharatendu Harishchandra and Women’s Issues

12. Pilgrimage, Fairs, and the Secularization of Space in Modern Hindi Narrative Discourses

13. The Locations of Hindi

14. Hindi, Nation, and Community