Dear List,
it is an honor for me to announce the release of the second, concluding, volume of
Emmanuel FRANCIS'
Le
discours royal dans l’Inde du Sud ancienne: Inscriptions et monuments pallava
(IVème-IXème
siècles),
Louvain-la-Neuve: Université catholique de Louvain - Peeters Publ.,
T. I : Introduction et
sources, 2013 (Publications de l'Institut Orientaliste de Louvain, 64), xlii pp. + pp. 1-320 (including 5 maps, 3 plans and 254 ill.)
T. II : Mythes dynastiques et panégyriques, 2017 (Publications de l'Institut Orientaliste de Louvain, 65), xl pp. + pp. 321-809 (including indices)
This book is an in-depth study of the royal ideology of the Pallava dynasty (South India, 4th-9th c. CE). These Hindu kings have left numerous and diverse sources evincing their conceptions of the world and the society, and particularly their self-representation of kingship. Through the examination of epigraphical and iconographical panegyrics as well as of coinage and Tamil court poetry (Nantikkalampakam), the argument is that, beside the brahmanical model of subordination of king to brahmin, there existed a specific royal discourse, at times contentious. The crucial point of divergence is the Pallavas’ claim to the double status of kings and brahmins. In this respect, kingship asserts its independence vis-à-vis the brahmanical class by incorporating it in its lineage, thus achieving the union of “temporal” and “spiritual” powers.
The first volume contains the introduction and the presentation of the sources. The first part is a general presentation of Hindu kingship and the Pallava dynasty (origin, history, art). The second part draws up and presents the sources considered as testimonies of the royal discourse, contrasting them with other Pallava-period sources of “local” nature. It concludes with considerations about the royal panegyric and the nature of royal sources (issuers, functions, addressees).
The second volume offers, in the third part, an analysis
of royal genealogies and dynastic myths of the Pallavas from epigraphical
sources. The fourth, fifth and sixth parts investigate the content and
development of the epigraphical and iconographical panegyric of the Pallavas in
the course of the three successive periods in the history of the dynasty: the
era of dāna (ca. 300-550), the era of monuments (ca. 550-730)
and the era of decline (ca. 730-900).
Here attached, the Table of contents.
Scholars interested by reviewing this book (viz. the set of two volumes) in an Indological periodical are invited to contact me (connexions with Annali, BEFEO, IIJ and JAOS have already been, or are in course to be, made).
Best wishes,
Christophe Vielle