Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Past and Present Publications)
Cambridge University Press, 12/21/2000
EAN 9780521770552, ISBN10: 0521770556
Hardcover, 470 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm
Language: English
This book, first published in 2000, offers a wide-ranging and ambitious analysis of how European travellers in India developed their perceptions of ethnic, political and religious diversity over three hundred years. It analyses the growth of novel historical and philosophical concerns, from the early and rare examples of medieval travellers such as Marco Polo, through to the more sophisticated narratives of seventeenth-century observers - religious writers such as Jesuit missionaries, or independent antiquarians such as Pietro della Valle. The book's approach combines the detailed contextual analysis of individual narratives with an original long-term interpretation of the role of cross-cultural encounters in the European Renaissance. An extremely wide range of European sources is discussed, including the often neglected but extremely important Iberian and Italian sources. However, the book also discusses a number of non-European sources, Muslim and Hindu, thereby challenging simplistic interpretations of western 'orientalism'.
Preface
1. The search for India
the empire of Vijayanagara through European eyes
2. Marco Polo's India and the Latin Christian tradition
3. Establishing lay science
the merchant and the humanist
4. The Portuguese and Vijayanagara
politics, religion and classification
5. The practice of ethnography
Indian customs and castes
6. The social and political order
Vijayanagara decoded
7. The historical dimension
from native traditions to European orientalism
8. The missionary discovery of South Indian religion
opening the doors of idolatry
9. From humanism to scepticism
the independent traveller in the seventeenth century
10. Conclusion
before orientalism
Appendix
Bibliography.