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Book Review
From the blurb
Pondicherry Inscriptions — Part II: Compiled by Bahour S. Kuppusamy; Edited and translated by G. Vijayavenugopal; Pub. by French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, St. Louis Street, P.B. 33, Pondicherry-605001. Price not mentioned.
This second part provides an English translation of the inscriptions found in the Union Territory of Pondicherry — 544 in all, of which 454 are from the Pondicherry region and the rest from the Karaikkal region. The first part, published in 2006, carried these inscriptions, duly edited. In the introduction, a note on the corpus says that all the inscriptions found in the administrative territory have, as far as possible, been copied, estampages taken, and the texts published. Even inscriptions found in bronzes, sculptures, and conch shells have been included. They are all in Tamil script, except for the four in Sanskrit (grantha script), two in Kannada, two in French, one in Latin and another in English. Apart from one inscription in Tamil-Brahmi discovered in Arikkamedu, inscriptions datable before the 9 {+t} {+h} century AD are not found in the area. Emmanuel Francis and Charlotte Schmid, in a substantial preface to the volume, explore the form and changing role of the ‘ meykkirtti', the royal eulogy in Tamil that prefaces and dates many inscriptions of the Chola period. An array of indices and appendices has been provided to open up the corpus to potential users.
The Making of the Awadh Culture:Madhu Trivedi; Primus Books, an imprint of Ratna Sagar P. Ltd., Virat Bhavan, Mukherjee Nagar Commercial Complex, New Delhi-110009. Rs. 1095.
The nawabs of Awadh are known for their patronage of art and culture. They forged an elaborate and synthesised version of the rich tradition of the Mughals, the ganga-jamuni tahzib that represented Persian aesthetics, and Indian cultural values. Surprisingly, this rich cultural heritage has not been accorded its due place in the historiography of post-Mughal India. This book, which has seven chapters, makes an extensive study of the art and culture of Awadh during the Nawabi period (c 1722-1856), with its focus on Lucknow city. While the first two chapters give an overview of the capital as the ‘culture centre' and of Awadh as the crucible of Shi'a culture, the rest deal with literary culture, musical arts, painting, architecture, and industrial arts. It also explores how some of the arts and crafts assumed considerable European colour due to the foreigners' interaction with local elite and shows how the ethos of the syncretic Indo-Persian culture managed to remain intact.
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