Archaeology of Knowledge Traditions of the Indian Ocean World

Himanshu Prabha Ray is Research Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford. From 2014 to 2019 she held the prestigious Anneliese Maier research award of Humboldt Foundation. She was the first Chairperson of the National Monuments Authority, Ministry of Culture in New Delhi, India from 2012 to 2015 and former Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her research interests include Maritime History and Archaeology of the Indian Ocean and the Archaeology of Religion in Asia. Her recent books include Decolonising Heritage in South Asia: The Global, the National and the Transnational (ed. 2019), Archaeology and Buddhism in South Asia (2018), Buddhism and Gandhara: An Archaeology of Museum Collections (ed. 2018), The Archaeology of Sacred Spaces: The Temple in Western India, 2nd Century BCE to 8th Century CE (with Susan Verma Mishra, 2017), The Return of the Buddha: Ancient Symbols for a New Nation (2014) and The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia (2003).

• 1. Introduction 1a: Conceptualising the Seas: Introduction 2. Seven Seas and an Ocean of Wisdom: An Indian Episteme for the Indian Ocean 3. Gendered Spatialisation of the Ocean in the Kathāsaritsāgara 4. Conceptualising the Far West: Early Chinese Notions of Da Qin and the Indian Ocean Trade 5. Al-Muqaddasī’s tenth-century maritime landscapes of the Arabian Red Sea 5a: The Materiality of Knowledge Production: Introduction 6. Making Megaliths and Constituting Collectives: Politics, Places, and Historicity in Prehistoric South India 7. Bullion, Baubles and Bowls: Reconstructing networks of exchange in the Indian Ocean 8. Material cultures of writing in the Indian Ocean world: a palm-leaf letter at the Mamluk court 8a: Anchoring the Coasts: Introduction 9. Practices of Faith: The Coastal Shrines of Ancient South Arabia 10. Entangled Traditions: The Royal Barges of Angkor 11. Musical Nomenclature for the Sanskrit term kangsa in Southeast Asia 12. Connected Words: Coins and Maritime Worlds of the Indian Ocean