India before Europe

Catherine B. Asher is an art historian, focusing on the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims. She has served as President of the Historians of Islamic Art, Vice President of the College Art Association and Chair of the CAA International Committee as well as Chair of the CAA Publications Committee. She has been Treasurer of the American Council for Southern Asian Art and Chair of the American Institute of Indian Studies Center for Art and Archaeology. Her publications include Delhi's Qutb Complex: The Minar, Mosque and Mehrauli (Marg Foundation); The Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge University Press); and Perceptions of South Asia's Visual Past (American Institute of Indian Studies). Cynthia Talbot is a social and cultural historian whose research has focused on both south and north India. After studying temples and brahmins for years, in recent decades her interests have shifted to heroic histories and warrior culture. Her publications include Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra (Oxford University Press) Knowing India: Colonial and Modern Constructions of the Past (Yoda Press) and The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past, 1200-2000 (Cambridge University Press), which received the Association for Asian Studies A.K. Coomaraswamy book award in 2018.

• Preface; Glossary; Place names: alternative spellings; 1. Introduction: situating India; 2. The expansion of Turkic power, 1180–1350; 3. Southern India in the age of Vijayanagara, 1350–1550; 4. North India between empires: history, society, and culture, 1350–1550; 5. Sixteenth-century north India: empire reformulated; 6. Expanding political and economic spheres, 1550–1650; 7. Elite cultures in seventeenth-century South Asia; 8. Challenging central authority, 1650–1750; 9. Changing socio-economic formations, 1650–1750; Epilogue; Biographical notes; Bibliography; Index.

'A delightful and incisive book, the second edition of India before Europe is a must-read for students of history. It combines the insights of a historian and art historian to dynamite effect as it narrates social, religious, artistic, and political developments in second-millennium South Asia.' Audrey Truschke, Rutgers University