TY - BOOK ID - 101186810 TI - The Heirs of Vijayanagara : Court Politics in Early-Modern South India PY - 2022 SN - 9087283717 9400604165 PB - Leiden Leiden University Press DB - UniCat KW - Asian history KW - Politics & government KW - India KW - South Asia, India, kingship, courts, modern history, diplomacy, political history KW - India, South KW - Court and courtiers KW - History. KW - Kings and rulers. KW - Politics and government. KW - History KW - India, Southern KW - South India KW - Southern India UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:101186810 AB - This comparative study investigates court politics in four kingdoms that succeeded the s outh Indian Vijayanagara empire during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Ikkeri, Tanjavur, Madurai, and Ramnad. Building on a unique combination of unexplored Indian texts and Dutch archival records, this research offers a captivating new analysis of political culture, power relations, and dynastic developments. In great detail, this monograph provides both new facts and fresh insights that contest existing scholarship. By highlighting their competitive, fluid, and dynamic nature, it undermines the historiography viewing these courts as harmonic, hierarchic, and static. Far from being remote, ritualised figures, we find kings and Brahmins contesting with other courtiers for power. At the same time, by stressing continuities with the past, this study questions recent scholarship that perceives a fundamentally new form of Nayaka kingship. Thus, this research has important repercussions for the way we perceive both these kingdoms and their ‘medieval’ precursors. ER -