Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India

Scholars have long studied classical Sanskrit culture in almost total isolation from its courtly context. As the first book-length study to focus exclusively on the royal court as a social and cultural institution, this book fills that gap in the literature. Using both literary and inscriptional sources, it begins with the rise and spread of royal households and political hierarchies from the Gupta period (c. 350-750), and traces the emergence of a coherent courtly worldview which would remain stable for almost a millennium to 1200. Later chapters examine key features of courtly life which have been all but ignored by the previous literature on ancient Indian society: manners, ethics, concepts of personal beauty, and theories of disposition. The book ends with a sustained examination of the theory and practice of erotic love in the context of the wider social dynamics and anxieties which faced the people of the court.