The Volatile World of Sovereignty: The Vratya Problem and Kingship in South Asia

Contents: Introduction. Section I: The Vratya problem. 1. Sanskrit Kaparda (Braided Hair): Yet another Harappan symbol of royalty surviving in vedic Vratya rituals/Asko Parpola. 2. The Ekavratya, Indra and the Sun/Moreno Dore. 3. Lost speech: the poetry of Sattrins/Elena Mucciarelli. 4. On the track of the Vratya culture: vedic poets and poetry between the visionary mode and auditive mode/Paola Maria Rossi. 5. The broken world of sovereignty with special reference to the horse sacrifice (Ashvamedha), etc. in the vedic and later literature/Ganesh Umakant Thite. 6. Aims and functions of Vratyastoma performances: a historical appraisal/Maria Piera Candotti and Tiziana Pontillo. 7. Vratya running expeditions (dhavayanti)/Edeltraud Harzer. 8. Animal symbolism of warrior brotherhoods in Indian epic, history and culture/Yaroslav Vassilkov. 9. Why did Narasimha descend to the earth? some cases from Andhra/Ewa Debicka-Borek. 10. Select old Tamil tribal groups: basic characteristics in the context of ancient India/Jaroslav Vacek. 11. The Implied Leader and the vedic discourse on sovereignty: rethinking the exclusion of the vratyas from social intercourse in the framework of the reading process/Marianna Ferrara. 12. Discriminated gods: an annotated survey on the case study of the Mahabrahmana/Danila Cinellu. Section 2: Non-Orthodox Elements of Indian Sovereignty. 13. Orthodoxy in the Rigveda?/Frank Kohler. 14. The Paippalada Samhita of the Atharvaveda and the royal rituals: evidence from Kanda fifteen/Duccio Lelli. 15. Reflections on the concept of kingship and on the presence of the vratya tradition in the Pali Canon/Chiara Neri. 16. Generosity at the limits: The King Shibi story and its versions in the historical and cultural context of Andhra and Tamil Nadu/Lidia Sudyka. 17. Sovereignty of Tamil Kings and Tamil poetic tradition/Alexander Dubyanskiy. 18. Belur, the royal Tirtha of the Hoysala dynasty: the miscellanea of local elements contained in a sacred place/Cristina Bignami. 19. Schism, ritual and power: supremacy and Antagonism in Bengal rural contexts/Pier Giorgio Solinas. General Index. Index Locorum. This volume stems from the three-year Research Project Traces of a Heterodox Concept of Kingship in Ancient, Medieval and Modern India financed by the 'Regione Autonoma della Sardegna', developed by Cristina Bignami, Danila Cinellu, Ewa Debicka-Borek, Moreno Dore, Elena Mucciarelli, Chiara Neri and coordinated by Tiziana Pontillo. It mainly tries to postulate an alternative explanation to the vratya-phenomenon correlated with the heterodox facets of Indian sovereignty. Thus, the work consistently offers a new historical interpretation of the rise of the so-called orthodox Brahmanic (Shrauta-) culture that is understood as a 'reform'. Moreover, it resorts to a large collection of ancient, medieval, and modern texts and documents, interpreted by means of philological and anthropological tools. In this manner, the Vratya problem is launched onto a interdisciplinary platform, in order to profit from a broad scenario as far as this issue is concerned. The first section focuses on the vratya culture, as it can be reconstructed from old (and middle) Indo-Aryan generally marginalized sources, and from medieval and modern documents where this culture seems to have left some traces. The second section seeks to substantiate the polar opposition between orthodox and heterodox sovereignty, of which vratyas appear to be a capital example.…