IMAGINING THE URBAN

When you think of Indias ancient cities, you think of khaki archaeologists digging crumbling structures out of ancient mud. Urban spheres, from this perspective, often look as dull as the dust from which they emerge. But the early Indian city wasnt like that at all, says Shonaleeka Kaul; it was certainly not only brick-and-mortar, nor merely an agglomeration of built-up space. In Sanskrit literature these cities were alive, vibrant, teeming with variety. Kaul examines Sanskrit kand vyas over about a thousand years to see what Indias early historic cities were like as living, lived-in, entities. She looks at ideologies, attitudes, institutions and practices in ancient urban areas, showing the ways in which they often cohered into a worldview, a mentalit. This is also a book about Sanskrit literature. Scholars have long argued for a nuanced use of literary texts to achieve a more rounded understanding of ancient history and Kaul achieves exactly that. She takes forward the idea of a Sanskrit literary culture, arguing that genres influence methods of historical representation. Her book gives us a fresh view of the early city, showing distinctive urban ways of thought and behaviour which relate in complex ways to tradition, morality and authority. In advocating Sanskrit kand vyas as an important historical source, it addresses not just ancient India specialists but also scholars of literary history: the kand vyas rework history, says Kaul, providing us with transhistoricity rather than ahistoricity. By asking new questions about early Indian cities and ancient Indian texts, this book asks to be read by every scholar of history, urbanism, cityscapes, literary history, Sanskrit writings and South Asian antiquity.