Precolonial India in practice : society, region, and identity in medieval Andhra /

The history of the Telugu-speaking Andhra region of south India has been little studied by non-Indian historians of the subcontinent. Talbot's principal focus in this scholarly and exciting monograph is the regime of the Kakatiya dynasty of Warangal (12th-14th centuries) between the Godavari and Krishna rivers. Warangal was exposed to devastating raids from Delhi in the early 14th century, and the dynasty itself was finally overthrown in 1423 by the forces of Sultan Ghiyas al-Din Tughluq. Talbot (Univ. of Texas at Austin) continues her research through the period when the region was loosely linked with the Bahmanid sultanate of the Deccan, but ends before the Mughal advance southwards and the rise of European mercantile activities on the east coast. Noting that both "post-Orientalism and modernist theories of nationalism posit too radical a rupture between the 'traditional' and the 'modern'," she offers the reader a brilliant interpretation of the period from largely epigraphic sources. The fifth chapter, analyzing the persistent recollection of the Kakatiya era in later Telugu history, is a masterly essay that prospective readers may wish to sample first. Upper-division undergraduates and above. G. R. G. Hambly University of Texas at Dallas