Audrey Truschke is associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark. She is the author of Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia, 2016) and Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King (2017).

Truschke demonstrates that the Sanskrit literary world was not simply an arena of elite male Brahmin scholars, but also one in which non-Brahmins, women, Jains, and a wider lay community of scholars and patrons had a voice. The lasting contribution of this work will be not simply its methodological or analytical innovations, but also firmly contesting and refuting the toxic Hindutva politics that has permeated debates about Sanskrit pasts, Hindu-Muslim interactions, and the nature of Hinduism and Islam itself in the last century.

• List of IllustrationsList of TablesAcknowledgmentsNote on Translations and Scholarly ConventionsSelect Time Line of Political Events, ca. 1190–1720Introduction: Controversial History1. Before Indo-Persian Rule: Many Sanskrit Ways to Write About Muslims2. Difference That Mattered: Defining the Ghurid Threat3. Indo-Muslim Rulers: Expanding the World of Indian Kingship4. Local Stories in Fourteenth-Century Gujarat and Fifteenth-Century Kashmir5. Meeting the Mughals and Reformulating Jain Identity6. Rajput and Maratha Kingships in an Indo-Persian Political Order7. Mughal Political HistoriesEpilogue: Starting PointsAppendix: Select Translations from Sanskrit HistoriesGlossaryNotesBibliographyIndex

Audrey Truschke is associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark. She is the author of Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia, 2016) and Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King (2017).

Truschke demonstrates that the Sanskrit literary world was not simply an arena of elite male Brahmin scholars, but also one in which non-Brahmins, women, Jains, and a wider lay community of scholars and patrons had a voice. The lasting contribution of this work will be not simply its methodological or analytical innovations, but also firmly contesting and refuting the toxic Hindutva politics that has permeated debates about Sanskrit pasts, Hindu-Muslim interactions, and the nature of Hinduism and Islam itself in the last century.

• List of IllustrationsList of TablesAcknowledgmentsNote on Translations and Scholarly ConventionsSelect Time Line of Political Events, ca. 1190–1720Introduction: Controversial History1. Before Indo-Persian Rule: Many Sanskrit Ways to Write About Muslims2. Difference That Mattered: Defining the Ghurid Threat3. Indo-Muslim Rulers: Expanding the World of Indian Kingship4. Local Stories in Fourteenth-Century Gujarat and Fifteenth-Century Kashmir5. Meeting the Mughals and Reformulating Jain Identity6. Rajput and Maratha Kingships in an Indo-Persian Political Order7. Mughal Political HistoriesEpilogue: Starting PointsAppendix: Select Translations from Sanskrit HistoriesGlossaryNotesBibliographyIndex

Audrey Truschke is associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark. She is the author of Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia, 2016) and Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King (2017).

Truschke demonstrates that the Sanskrit literary world was not simply an arena of elite male Brahmin scholars, but also one in which non-Brahmins, women, Jains, and a wider lay community of scholars and patrons had a voice. The lasting contribution of this work will be not simply its methodological or analytical innovations, but also firmly contesting and refuting the toxic Hindutva politics that has permeated debates about Sanskrit pasts, Hindu-Muslim interactions, and the nature of Hinduism and Islam itself in the last century.

• List of IllustrationsList of TablesAcknowledgmentsNote on Translations and Scholarly ConventionsSelect Time Line of Political Events, ca. 1190–1720Introduction: Controversial History1. Before Indo-Persian Rule: Many Sanskrit Ways to Write About Muslims2. Difference That Mattered: Defining the Ghurid Threat3. Indo-Muslim Rulers: Expanding the World of Indian Kingship4. Local Stories in Fourteenth-Century Gujarat and Fifteenth-Century Kashmir5. Meeting the Mughals and Reformulating Jain Identity6. Rajput and Maratha Kingships in an Indo-Persian Political Order7. Mughal Political HistoriesEpilogue: Starting PointsAppendix: Select Translations from Sanskrit HistoriesGlossaryNotesBibliographyIndex