Mysore

Missionaries working in Mysore, as elsewhere in India, took enthusiastically to the new art of photography from the 1840s, to record their 'views' of the society they undertook to transform. Evangelising was, however, early on, allied with education as a way for missionaries to make their way into a complex, hierarchical society with learning traditions of its own. How did the missionary 'see' the Indian classroom, and invite the viewer of their photographs to participate in its narrative of 'improvement'? What was the place of the photograph at a time when meticulous written records were kept of victories and reverses in the mission field of education? Revealing the work of the photograph in aiding missionary work must perforce begin with the more instrumentalist uses of this new art, as technologies of recording par excellence, before turning to the possible ways of looking at photographs, whether by those contemporaries of the missionaries who were physically distanced from the location, and were yet linked to their work in India, or when they formed part of the contemporary historian's archive. Here one may exploit photography's 'inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy' instead of its truth-telling capacity. I am precisely posing a dynamic and perhaps even antagonistic relationship between the copious written and the sparser visual record of educational changes in Mysore in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This investigation of the visual field in the service of education also allows us also to speculate about the specific aesthetic achievements of missionary photography, with its own pedagogic goals.

In the West, yoga of today is practiced with a strong focus on the physical exercises; whilst in India yoga is generally understood to be a mainstream ancient spiritual philosophy (Joshi 2018). This difference is at the core of a rigorous ongoing debate of historical arguments between Indian scholars and secular gurus; and Western researchers and yoga experts about what yoga, its practices and origins really are.

The process of documenting history is always an attempt to frame events and actions within the context of time with man as the essential component. But both elements are culturally conceptualized; in Europe time is perceived as of an essential quality, but in India an illusion where reality is of “timeless nature” (Saha 1990:113).

This cultural disparity has compelled me to analyze the arguments as to how man and time as social and cultural constructs are expressed in these opposing understandings of Yoga. The arguments with implied assertions form fundamental presumptions in which there appears to be an incompatibility between a fundamental Indian belief in the eternal truth in comparison with Western faith with its reality of documented facts.

The starting point for my analysis was Agamben's statement about time, history and culture: “Every conception of history is invariably accompanied by a certain experience of time which is implicit in it, conditions it, and thereby has to be elucidated. Similarly, every culture is first and foremost a particular experience of time, and no new culture is possible without an alteration in this experience.” (Agamben 2007:91).

I first discussed temporality; how the cultural understandings of time create the framework of logic in these arguments and how this affects the conclusion arrived upon. Thereafter the interpretations of modern yoga as cultural and social narratives for the archetypal meanings they espouse, and lastly how they are related to history, myth, legend and the understanding thereof.

The final debate between the Western and Indian scholars was then eventually put into a perspective of representation, which seems to boil down to who has the right to tell the story of Yoga.


Here are the main findings of my analysis:

Temporality:
The Western conception of time being solely linear has been culturally and historically amplified in Europe, where to prognosticate is to foresee a development with elements of the past introduced into the future. In the Western story of modern postural yoga āsana’s origins are seen to be the key element of the interpretation, both in the near and the distant past. This presumption has an ingrained cultural bias whereby the amount of āsana are considered to have increased over time due to human causation (Koselleck 2004:11). This logic leads in the Western interpretation to the final conclusion that modern posture-based yoga cannot be considered a successor of the Indian tradition of Haṭhayoga (Singleton 2010:5)

In the Indian presentation the past is not an object but present in the current moment and this cultural framework sets the condition for what can be considered knowledge. From this perspective it is not imperative to know by whom or during which period the āsana appeared, was created or developed as they are seen as timeless instruments.


Narratives:
Western history is written about men who, in their quest to master time, perform great deeds, by other men who use superlatives to capture those events (Arendt 1958:572-574).
The Western biography interprets the great Yogi Krishnamacharya without the mythical glow, and extraordinary knowledge, as in the Indian version. A narrative where the qualities and nature of the main character are not credible must therefore be presumed not to be creating the same impression for the reader as the Indian (Carrithers 1994:263). The view presented by the Western researchers of casting doubt on the main character's qualities thus weakens and disfigures that which the readers of the Indian version aspire to.

In a comparative analysis of these two interpretations and their different agendas it therefore at first resembles a contrast between history according to Western standards versus the Indian practice of recounting legend and myth (Hirsch & Stewart 2005:269). The disciplinary boundary dissolves though as they are both culturally framed interpretations with differing objectives.


Myth:
History, following Western standards, contains in theory no greater knowledge or truth than myth, although greater importance may be attached to it if it is deemed to be a historical fact (Leach 1970:56).

The legend of Krishnamacharya embodies the message of epic Indian myths that divinity can be experienced through the combined yogic practices of right belief, pure action and sacred ritual. Krishnamacharya´s character, his qualities, and his nobility are therefore key elements for the understanding and meaning of the Indian message of yoga; even understanding the role of myth in his life. The meaning and the significance of his character can then only be fully understood as a mythical or legendary figure in its proper cultural context (Dundes 1984:193), and therefore become upheld and honoured as a blueprint for a yogic way of life.


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This essay examines popular and public discourse surrounding the broad, amorphous, and largely grassroots campaign to "Save Chamundi Hill" in Mysore City. The focus of this study is in the development of the language of "heritage" relating to the Hill starting in the mid-2000s that implicitly connected its heritage to the mythic events of the slaying of the buffalo-demon. This essay argues that the connection between the Hill and "heritage" grows from an assumption that the landscape is historically important because of its role in the myth of the goddess and the buffalo-demon, which is interwo-ven into the city's history. It demonstrates that this assumption is rooted within a local historical consciousness that places mythic events within the chronology of human history that arose as a negotiation of Indian and colonial understandings of historiography.

The story of Krishnarāja Wodeyar III’s reign (r. 1799-1868), like those of many of his contemporaries, is a tale of coming to terms with the colonial presence in India. His rule was always intimately related to British power and his royal patronage developed in response to colonial rule. The courtly productions maintained and enhanced the central features of pre-modern royal forms, which is readily apparent across various media that he patronized. In the works that came out of his court, we see that Krishnarāja III was not interested in military prowess as most of his predecessors had been but his identity was fashioned through the intertwined practices of devotionalism and patronage. While patronizing temples, priests, and devotional works of visual, material, and performance arts was nothing new in Mysore or the subcontinent, it was greatly expanded within the court of Krishnarāja III. The products coming out of Krishnarāja III’s court, however, also dealt with the loss of political power—administrative, military, and revenue-collecting—and worked to establish a fixed identity of what it meant to be an Indian king during a period of British rule. Therefore, in the case of Krishnarāja III, his patronage cannot truly be understood except in light of the completely new set of political circumstances, wherein his rule was simultaneously acknowledged and dismissed. Therefore, his interest in patronage, including the arts, was a way to continue his royal duties despite the military and administrative dominance of the British.

''India, Modernity and the Great Divergence is an original and pioneering book about India’s transition towards modernity and the rise of the West. The work examines global entanglements alongside the internal dynamics of 17th to 19th century Mysore and Gujarat in comparison to other regions of Afro-Eurasia. It is an interdisciplinary survey that enriches our historical understanding of South Asia, ranging across the fascinating and intertwined worlds of modernizing rulers, wealthy merchants, curious scholars, utopian poets, industrious peasants and skilled artisans. Bringing together socio-economic and political structures, warfare, techno-scientific innovations, knowledge production and transfer of ideas, this book forces us to rethink the reasons behind the emergence of the modern world.''

In this chapter, I attempt to provide a different a way of viewing goddesses by examining how they develop through their roles in the legitimation of kingship in South India and how that relates to the Purāṇic conception of the cosmos. My aim is to demonstrate one process through which a local goddess has, over a period of time, become associated with pan-Indian Purāṇic deities yet retained a distinctly local flavor.  In the medieval period during which all kings of South India were configured within complex of hierarchic relationships based on a Purāṇic model of overlordship, the imagined separation between “vernacular” and “Sanskritic” or “Brahminic” only masks the significant role of goddesses at various stages in the construction of statehood.  Their function in the construction of polity provides more insight into their place in the study of medieval Indian society than those that arise through a discussion of the “high Sanskritic” tradition or the “low vernaculars,” especially since both regional and local kingdoms operated according to the model of statehood provided in Purāṇic material.

This essay is written with a dual agenda, the first aspect of which is to demonstrate the influence that martial traditions particular to India have or may have had on the formation of what DeMichelis refers to as Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) and its antecedents. But the second goal in writing this piece is to challenge a number of assumptions made by select scholars of modern yoga, and frequently repeated by others, about the level to which modern yoga's incorporation of standing poses, the concepts of physical strength, the nervous system, and even energetic healing are derived from Western sources in response to British colonial rule....In doing so we may allow a deeper reconsideration of the role of a warrior tradition on yoga that dates back at least to conflicts with an emergent Islamic population, if not all the way back to the great epics of ancient India and that tradition's influence on the formation of modern postural yoga practices.

During the second half of the eighteenth century, the first Muslim rulers of Mysore—Haidar ‘Ali (c. 1720-82) and his son Tipu Sultan (c. 1750-99)—were amongst the first South and West Asian rulers to unleash a process of administrative, socio-economic and military proto-modernisation. Haidar, a rather cautious and pragmatic autocrat who could neither read nor write, ruled within the framework of the traditional Mughal system of governance. Highly skilled in administrative, military and diplomatic realms, he initiated the proto-modernisation of the army and took some important measures towards the establishment of a central state. In turn, Tipu was an educated autocrat, fond of administrative, socio-economic, military, and technological inventions and innovations which he intended to use in the struggle against the British occupying forces in South India. In the extant literature, Tipu is either being idealised as an “enlightened” ruler or described as a pre-modern despot. Few scholars have given a balanced account of his rule by depicting both his autocratic style of leadership, as well as the pragmatic features and proto-modernising aspects of his rule. This article is concerned with the biographic and historical background of Haidar ‘Ali and Tipu Sultan and aims to furnish a concerted account of their rule by consulting fresh printed and unprinted primary sources in English, French and German.

It was during the reigns of the late-eighteenth-century rulers of
Mysore, Haidar ‘Ali (r.1761–82) and Tipu Sultan (r.1782–99), that one
of the earliest efforts of semi-modernization in the regions of West,
Central and South Asia, as well as North Africa was taking place. Some
scholars have described Haidar and Tipu as premodern rulers, but
continuity and tradition do not fully explain Mysore’s transitional
character, which was embodied in these rulers’ reforms. Their
encounter with European powers convinced and compelled them
that a transformation of state and society was the most promising
means to resist colonization and remain independent. The following
will inquire into Mysore’s late-eighteenth-century foreign relations
and recruitment of foreign artisans. It will be intended to assert
that neither can these efforts be exclusively understood in terms of
tradition nor do they reflect the minds of modern rulers. Instead, they
manifest a historical juncture that was neither dominantly traditional
nor modern, but resided in a transitory phase.

1. This study evaluated the effect of different temperature and humidity on growth and development of fifth instar silkworm larva and silk gland of popular Indian silkworm hybrid (CSR2 × CSR4). 2. The higher silk gland, larval, shell and cocoon weight were recorded when larvae were reared under the environmental condition of 25 °C and 70% RH. 3. The highest weight of the silk gland was recorded during the 8 th day of 5 th instar larvae for batches maintained under high humidity and low temperature. 4. Percentage of improvement in growth was higher during the 6 th day (105%), for the larvae maintained under control conditions.

The two songs translated below tell the story of the goddesses Cāmuṇḍi and her sister Uttanahaḷḷi and their epic battle against demons on the hill outside of Mysore in the modern state of Karnataka in South India. These songs, which are sung in the Kannada language, are part of a larger epic ballad Beṭṭada Cāmuṇḍi (Cāmuṇḍi of the Hill) about the goddess Cāmuṇḍi and her relationship with the deity Śiva in his local form as Nañjuṇṣēśvara, “the lord who consumed the poison.”  In these songs, and in the epic ballad more broadly, we can see the local traditions of these two situated goddesses seamlessly blend into the broader Indic tradition through narrative and mythic adaptation and acculturation.

Published in Kaveh Yazdani and Dilip M. Menon, Capitalisms. Towards A Global History (2020, Oxford University Press)

This paper enquires into Mysore’s potentialities for a proto-capitalist development and a sort of industrialization during the reigns of Haidar ‘Ali (r. 1761–82) and Tipu Sultan (r. 1782–99)—the first Muslim rulers of the sultanate of Mysore. During the second half of the eighteenth century, these two autocrats were not only among the most powerful modernizers of South India but also of the subcontinent and Asia as a whole. The threat posed by the growing power of the British East India Company lubricated the wheels of political, fiscal, and military reforms and fuelled profound efforts at centralization. In conjunction with the already existing advances in commerce, artisanry, and incipient capitalist relations of production, the changes that were set in motion suggest that Mysore found itself in an interim stage and historical conjuncture with multiple prospects of socio-economic developments, as well as the potential scope for a transition towards a type of industrial capitalism.

Hundreds of early modern forts dot the South Indian landscape, but more is known about their art-historical aspects than how these fortifications were built, maintained, and used. The latter aspects are examined in a comparative analysis of six Mysore hill forts, using East India Company surveys that were prepared in 1802 shortly after British forces took command of these installations from Tipu Sultan's garrisons. These highly detailed inventories show that the hill forts were poorly maintained, inadequately supplied, contained relatively few garrison buildings, and, from the British perspective at least, were inadequately armed to mount a successful defense. At the turn of the century, these forts were functionally obsolete, ill prepared to serve as supply depots, and strategically valuable only to quiet local populations and deny the use of such places to potential enemies.

Academic histories in contemporary India compete with a host of other 'regimes of historicity' as the stakes in writing/rewriting the past have increased enormously. Most disputes over the interpretation of history are moreover increasingly taking place in courtrooms rather than classrooms, on streets and in public spaces rather than in the safer environs of the research carrel or seminar room. More important, many contending histories do not necessarily respect the evidentiary protocols of professional history writing. However, the field of alternative historical practice is not necessarily dominated by appropriations by the Hindu Right. Rather, if one takes a specific region such as Karnataka, as this article does, what emerges is a set of regional concerns and perspectives on the power of the past which may help in developing a historical method that is more appropriate to our times. Taking Tipu Sultan's contentious legacy as the specific example, the article attempts to outline the possibility of a 'historical temper' in contemporary India.

Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India investigates the shifting conceptualization of sovereignty in the South Indian kingdom of Mysore during the reigns of Tipu Sultan (r. 1782-1799) and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (r. 1799-1868). Tipu Sultan was a Muslim king famous for resisting British dominance until his death; Krishnaraja III was a Hindu king who succumbed to British political and administrative control. Despite their differences, the courts of both kings dealt with the changing political landscape by turning to the religious and mythical past to construct a royal identity for their kings. Caleb Simmons explores the ways in which these two kings and their courts modified and adapted pre-modern Indian notions of sovereignty and kingship in reaction to British intervention.
The religious past provided an idiom through which the Mysore courts could articulate their rulers' claims to kingship in the region, attributing their rule to divine election and employing religious vocabulary in a variety of courtly genres and media. Through critical inquiry into the transitional early colonial period, this study sheds new light on pre-modern and modern India, with implications for our understanding of contemporary politics. It offers a revisionist history of the accepted narrative in which Tipu Sultan is viewed as a radical Muslim reformer and Krishnaraja III as a powerless British puppet. Simmons paints a picture of both rulers in which they work within and from the same understanding of kingship, utilizing devotion to Hindu gods, goddesses, and gurus to perform the duties of the king.

'Debating Race in Contemporary India is one of those rare books that initiate a dialogue about the idea of India, seen through the prism of Northeast communities. With characteristic flourish and elegant prose, Debating Race touches on these core issues with care and sensitivity, and questions the very idea of what it means to belong in India.' - Arkotong Longkumer, University of Edinburgh, UK

'Who said race didn't matter in South Asia, that it is something of the past, something that only had to do with the British? Duncan McDuie-Ra turns such thinking on its head, showing with great force that race and racial discrimination is very much alive and kicking in India today. This is social science at its best; attention to ethnographic detail and a close reading of everyday experiences are coupled with theoretical insights, analytical sharpness and political commitment. McDuie-Ra's call for a more nuanced debate about race is timely, it is a must read for anyone concerned with the larger drama of social differentiation and racism in today's world.' Bengt Karlsson, Stockholm University, Sweden

In the early 1840s, reformers in both the metropole and India began to orchestrate a sustained legalistic defense of native sovereignty and emerged as vocal opponents of British expansionism. Adapting concepts put forth by both law of nations theorists and contemporary jurists, they sought to preserve longstanding treaties and defend Indian princes’ exercise of internal sovereignty. The colonial government’s failure to adequately define modern “paramountcy” and convincingly establish continuity with Mughal state forms invited such creative maneuvering. Case studies of the annexation of Awadh, the dispossession of the Nawab of the Carnatic, and the restoration of the Maharaja of Mysore demonstrate that international legal jurisprudence did not simply function as a Eurocentric tool of subordination; properly manipulated, it could also provide a bulwark against colonial depredations.

This paper aims to contextualize the emergence of the Woḍeyar dynasty in Mysore during the time of the transitional ruler Rāja Woḍeyar.  It demonstrates the role of the goddess of the hill outside Mysore as the grāmadēvate, who aided in the establishment of the city. However, as the kingdom expanded, this relationship inevitably evolved.  Rāja Woḍeyar was aware of broader modes and motifs of South Indian statecraft and carefully and consciously constructed his newly-won kingdom under the aegis of those paradigms after he conquered Śrīraṅgapaṭṭaṇa in 1610 CE.  The linchpin of the process was the shift of the Woḍeyar lineage’s devotional allegiance from a locally situated goddess tradition to the more abstracted form of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism when Rāja adopted Nārāyaṇasvāmi of Mēlukōṭe as the family’s tutelary deity.  This transition signals the ruler’s aspirations for regional dominance and the Woḍeyars’ entrance into Purāṇic modes of polity.  It also served to connect the lineage to other South Indian kingdoms, such as the Hoysaḷas and Vijayanagara, who were associated with Śrī Vaiṣṇavism and the sacred site of Mēlukōṭe.

Tipu Sultan was defeated in the 3rd Anglo-Mysore war (1790-1792) by the British East India Company and its two allies, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Marathas, and was compelled to make terms of peace. On 24th February, 1792, preliminary articles of a treaty of peace concluded between Tipu and the allied armies; following were the terms dictated by the Governor-General Charles Marquess Cornwallis to Tipu Sultan:

I will briefly examine a variety of sources from dharmaśāstric literature and folk narratives that mention nose-cutting to provide a fuller picture of the many meanings latent within the practice that associate nose amputation with punishment and as a public mark of humiliation. The Mysore case, however, does not conform to usual characterization of nose amputation in secondary literature. I will show that the practice of nose-cutting in Mysore contains aspects of these broader connotations, but it also remains specific to the Mysore context as an amalgamation of the variety of meanings from the broader Indian context with local military and ritual practice. That is to say, Mysore’s predilection for nose-cutting cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Nose-cutting was part of a broader South Asian context in which intersecting ideas of humiliation and punishment and provided the context for this unique military tactic. The habitual removal of noses, which seems odd or barbarous when viewed out of context or from an anachronistic or merely symbolic perspective, functioned as an important act that situated Mysore amongst its contemporaries as a powerful, dharmic, and ritual military state. This essay, therefore, is an attempt to build a conceptual framework—a Foucauldian archaeology—through which we can see how the Mysore practice of nose-cutting was meaningful within South Indian medieval politics.

This paper contributes to recent scholarship that has used uneven and combined development to counter eurocentric accounts of modernity. Arguing that Trotsky's theoretical framework provides a conceptual basis for the revision of prevalent understandings of British imperialism, the paper shows how Britain learnt from the large Asian empires and only superseded them industrially in the early nineteenth century. The story of the Mysorean rocket is used to illustrate how the creative appropriation and adaptation of antecedent technologies formed part of Britain's ascent. Having first encountered the weapon in their crushing defeat at the hands of the Indian Kingdom of Mysore in 1780, the British went on to adapt the design so successfully that it proved crucial to their decimation of the Qing naval forces in 1841. The battle paved the way for British victory in the First Opium War and the consequent " opening of China " to colonial-commercial interests. As such, the tale of the Mysorean rocket illustrates the non-endogenous sources of British imperial power. Moreover, it suggests the period 1780 to 1840 was critical to Britain's 'leap-frogging' of the hitherto more advanced Asian polities.

a Just Governor General of English East India Company-many such incidents disprove Dalrymples trash narrative

JUSTICE BY THE BRITISH GOVERNOR GENERAL - CASE OF BOOTY CAPTURED BY MYSORE HORSE The Mysore Horse at Battle of Mehidpore captured vast bulk of booty worth a million Pounds sterlings , a huge sum at that time when a sepoy was paid few rupees salary .Lieutenant General Hislop C in C of Madras Army who had spent his entire service in West Indies wanted to force Mysore Horse to surrender this booty.However the English East India Companys Governor General ,Lord Moira (Marquis of Hastings) , a just man totally overruled Lt Gen Hislop and decided in favour of Mysore Horse. The Mysore Horse were deeply attached to Major General Malcolm , a very daring divisional commander who was presented one of the most expensive pieces in this booty. A sub continental commander may have proved more unjust and arbitrary.
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JUSTICE BY THE BRITISH GOVERNOR GENERAL - CASE OF BOOTY CAPTURED BY MYSORE HORSE The Mysore Horse at Battle of Mehidpore captured vast bulk of booty worth a million Pounds sterlings , a huge sum at that time when a sepoy was paid few rupees salary .Lieutenant General Hislop C in C of Madras Army who had spent his entire service in West Indies wanted to force Mysore Horse to surrender this booty.However the English East India Companys Governor General ,Lord Moira (Marquis of Hastings) , a just man totally overruled Lt Gen Hislop and decided in favour of Mysore Horse. The Mysore Horse were deeply attached to Major General Malcolm , a very daring divisional commander who was presented one of the most expensive pieces in this booty. A sub continental commander may have proved more unjust and arbitrary.

Kaveh Yazdani’s seven-hundred-page volume is an ambitious, imaginative expansion of the author’s PhD dissertation. The book’s aim is to address a longstanding historiographical conundrum: why did the modernity-capitalism nexus develop and thrive in Europe, but not in the rest of the world? In his concern with locating the historical roots of the rise of the West, Yazdani partially follows Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000). While Pomeranz sought answers in China’s lower Yangzi delta, Yazdani’s path takes him to South Asia. This geographical shift constitutes a refreshing development, as most explorations of the Great Divergence have not strayed far from East Asia. Yazdani’s focus is on two regions of South Asia that, because of their social, political, and commercial dynamism, make for particularly compelling case studies: Mysore and Gujarat.

Heavy metals are natural constituents of the environment, but indiscriminate use for human purposes has altered their geochemical cycles and biochemical balance. These results in excess release of heavy metals such as cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, zinc etc. into natural resources like the soil and aquatic environments. Prolonged exposure and higher accumulation of such heavy metals can have deleterious health effects on human life and aquatic biota. The role of microorganisms and plants in biotransformation of heavy metals into nontoxic forms is well-documented, and understanding the molecular mechanism of metal accumulation has numerous biotechnological implications for bioremediation of metal-contaminated sites. In view of this, the present review investigates the abilities of microorganisms and plants in terms of tolerance and degradation of heavy metals. In this study vegetables were collected from different places of Mysore district and analysed for the accumulated metals through ICP-MS.

In this chapter, I explore the tension present in these two very different understandings of politics and the selection of leaders in contemporary India, namely competing notions of democratic and divine election. While some might draw the distinction between the two forms as struggle of a modern, rational political system versus a traditional religious worldview, I argue that the overlap between the two ways of viewing election is based on the development of political theologies in the early modern period in which sovereignty itself was reconceptualized in the transition from kingdoms to princely states under British control.

In this chapter, I explore the tension present in these two very different understandings of politics and the selection of leaders in contemporary India, namely competing notions of democratic and divine election. While some might draw the distinction between the two forms as struggle of a modern, rational political system versus a traditional religious worldview, I argue that the overlap between the two ways of viewing election is based on the development of political theologies in the early modern period in which sovereignty itself was reconceptualized in the transition from kingdoms to princely states under British control.

Fin de siècle Mysore witnessed the gathering force of interminable rivalries of prestige between mathas (monastic institutions). Contests over the types and number of honours enjoyed by travelling gurus in Mysore became frequent, reaching a crescendo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By this time, the contests were also being adjudicated in courts, as the Mysore administration began to exert greater bureaucratic control over these institutions. The widening sphere of engagements of the modernising matha reveals that a new notion of publicness was taking shape, co-constituted by a triangulation of forces: on one side was the rapidly bureaucratising Mysore state which brought a different visibility and public accountability to the matha; a second side comprised the matha itself developing a new, socially purposive public life. Finally, the matha's redefinition was aided and shaped by the adherents of the matha, emerging as a 'public' which both drew on and remained at a remove from its caste identity. This period of reform had enduring consequences, as the Mysore matha took on a supplementary state form after Indian Independence in 1947.

On this day, Sept 15 th , we salute all engineers for their contributions in building up the nation and making it to a high position in Engineering and technology. The world is now moving towards higher technology and engineers stand as the building stones of technology. Every facet of our life is the result of engineering contributions. Everyday we see new technology emerging. Change is a constant thing now and it is the engineers that bring in this change. So how did we start recognizing this marvelous work of engineers ? Why did we choose Sept 15 th to celebrate Engineers Day? Let me start with a story

in this essay, I build upon Kesavan Veluthat’s notion of genealogy as royalist literature by opening the lens to a broader chronology to see how genealogy was central to the process of king- and kingdom-fashioning in the kingdoms of southern Karnataka, focusing on their development over time with the Western Gaṅga, Hoysaḷa, Vijayangara, and Woḍeyar kingdoms. I argue that the genealogical material (in which I include both the genealogy and origin story as distinct genres) seeks not only to create a royal image but it places a king, his lineage, and his kingdom within significant time and space. By examining this ‘interesting’ genre, we can get a better sense of how royal courts in medieval south India fashioned themselves and their kingdom in relation to their deities, sacred cosmography, overlords, vassals, and rivals. Therefore in this essay, I attempt to show how and why genealogical materials are important for our understanding of kingship in south India.

Analysis of the naval opposition to the East India Company by the indigenous state navy's of India during the period 1650-1800.  Emphasis is placed on the Mughal Empire, the Maratha Confederacy and the state of Mysore  and the progress of the latter to create a blue water navy more powerful than the Royal Navy in the region of the Indian Ocean.