Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (South Asia Across the Disciplines) Paperback – December 25, 2018

Got hold of a copy from friend of mine, going to order few copies for library and friends. She makes Indian fascist (Modi/BJP and their ideological) go out of their minds; so if you see lower rating, it is because of concerted efforts by these individuals. They are mad about any good thing anybody says about Mughal, or Muslims.

Very interesting and informative

A really interesting read.

No contemporary sources. Completely ignores the fact that 90 million hindus were killed during the Mughal and other Muslim rulers. Close to 208 everyday for 1200 years. The Mughals were against Sanskrit and anything to do with hinduism. This is a propaganda document, based on fellow writers who have written similar things.

This book is not as bad and agenda driven as her book on Aurangzeb. Although she acknowledges that the Mughal era was not "secular" in the modern sense, on the whole the book tries to portray the Mughal period as a time of multicultural harmony, omitting anything which shows it as a period of conflict and jihad. A lot of the book concerns the period of the late Akbar, but the late Akbar was the exception to the rule and not representative of others like Aurangzeb. Indeed, many Muslims consider Akbar to be heretical. It was not all self-less interest in Hindu culture, Muslim rulers in India had to give some concessions to the Hindus in order to avoid revolts.The author is influenced by the history rewritings of negationist Marxist Indian historians like Irfan Habib, which have been criticized in Arun Shourie's Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud, Koenraad Elsts Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam, Sita Ram Goels Calcutta Quran Petition, Harsh Narain's Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of Religions, K.S. Lal's "Legacy of Muslim Rule in India" or in The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred, Oppressive or Liberating, Dead or Alive?. The history rewriting and whitewashing of genocide against Hindus by Marxists like Habib is not better than the history denial of the holocaust of a Kevin MacDonald or Irving.Better to read accurate historical sources, like Elliot Dowsons's "History of India as told by its own historians", to read first hand how the Mughal rulers viewed Hindu culture in reality. Read also Koenraad Elst's review of Truschke (you can google it).

It is just false mongering

Worst book ever written. She is basically promoting Mughals regardless of the historical facts.This book is a disgrace.

Poorly researched, selectively picking of facts to attest preconceived argument.

I so wish our schools had made a little effort to make History an interesting subject for us. Besides making us better citizens with an awareness of our rich past, this social science has the potential to help us make informed choices about our future through learnings and inferences. Provided we have authors and teaches like Audrey Truschke.The importance of Sanskrit in the Mughal courts during the dynasty's golden period (Akbar to Shah Jahan) and the way it helped shape Persian literature, is an invaluable piece of history which non-historians like us will mostly be unaware of. The contributions made by Jains and Brahmans in educating the Mughals about Sanskrit through its myriad manifestations in the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata as well as in poetry and prose of other literary works enriched philosophy, culture and the Mughal way of life in and outside of the royal corridors. Indians found a way to earn concessions on taxes from their Mughal rulers due to their personal influences in the court.This book is a delightful journey into the long forgotten history of the Mughals and about aspects of their courtly life which other scholars, historians and Indologists have shied away from researching.

The book is very detailed and nuanced to make a reader aware about how a truly imperial and cosmopolitan culture the Mughals had created in which multi lingual interactions were not just present but carefully encouraged. The Mughals by this cosmopolitan environment in which Braj Bhasha and Sanskrit were patronised, wanted to fashion themselves as legitimate sovereigns of Hindustan. The book painstakingly compiles little minute details of interactions between Sanskrit literati (both brahmanas and jains) with Mughal imperial and sub imperial courts.A must read for the polarising times we live in!

Good

I have always been entranced by history . I read the review of the book in The Hindu and The Mint . Dr. Truschke is a brilliant writer and historians. She made me realise that historians are really super heros of sorts .What Emperor Akbar did was have the Mahabharata translated into Persian . This I found to be extremely intriguing. He even set up and office of Translation . His ideas were quite radical (in a positive way) for his times .It's definitely a book that is worth reading . We must read and understand so that we may really take pride in our history and culture .

Great book with a totally new approach to understanding the Mughal rule in India.