Wrestling with Community and Social Change in Early Modern Western India: the Jyesthimallas and the MallapurÄá¹a, c. 1674
In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientSearch for other papers by Karil Soral in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article studies a community text of a group of professional wrestlers hailing from the town of Modhera in western India. Titled the MallapurÄá¹a (literally, The PurÄá¹a of the Wrestlers), the text was compiled in c.1674 at the behest of a group of individuals known as the Jyesthimallas. The MallapurÄá¹a narrativises the origin of these wrestlers and records the processes of their identity formation. Remarkably, it is through an idea of wrestling as a sacred science (mallavidyÄ) bestowed upon these wrestlers by lord Krishna that the MallapurÄá¹a articulates the identity of the Jyesthimallas as brahmanas. The text brings together various schemes of classification and sub-categorization juxtaposing these with a complex set of inter-related themes of devotion, physiology, medicine, and non-human animals, to further connect these with the processes of the Jyesthimalla âethnogenesisâ. The article considers these discussions on wrestling within the text and historicises them vis-Ã -vis the processes of identity formation and claims to brahmana status in early modern western India.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Abhayatilakagani. 1915. DvyÄÅrayakÄvya by Hemachandra with A Commentary, ed. Abaji Vishnu Kathavate. Bombay: Government Central Press.
-
Alam, Muzaffar. 2016. The Languages of Political Islam in India c. 1200â1800. Delhi: Permanent Black.
-
Alavi, Seema. 2007. Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600â1900. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.
-
Ali, Daud. 2006. Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
-
Alter, Joseph S. 1992. The Wrestlerâs Body: Identity and Ideology in North India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Anooshahr, Ali. 2018. The Elephant and the Sovereign: India circa 1000CE. JRAS, Series 3: 1â30.
-
Anooshahr, Ali. 2020. The Elephant and Imperial Continuities in North India, 1200â1600 CE. IESHR, 57/2: 139â169.
-
Anonymous. No date. MallavidyÄ. Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, Jaipur. Accession number 6510, Pothikhana (Khasmohor Collection).
-
Babayan, Kathryn. 2002. Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
-
Balachandran, Jyoti Gulati. 2020. Narrative Pasts: The Making of a Muslim Community in Gujarat, c. 1400â1650. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
-
Barz, Richard. 1976. The Bhakti Sect of VallabhÄcÄrya. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.
-
Bayly, C.A. 1998. Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
-
Blochmann, H., trans. 1873. The Ain i Akbari by Abul Fazl Ê¿Allami vol. 1. Calcutta: The Baptist Mission Press.
-
Cherian, Divya. 2023. Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia. New Delhi: Navayana.
-
Das, Veena. 1968. A Sociological Approach to the Caste Puranas: A Case Study. Sociological Bulletin, 17/2: 141â164.
-
Das, Veena. 1982. Structure and Cognition: Aspects of Hindu Caste and Ritual. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
-
Digby, Simon. 1971. War-horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
-
Diksalker, D.B. 1939. Inscriptions of Kathiawad. In New Indian Antiquary (II), ed. S.M. Katre and P.K. Gode. Bombay: Karnatak Publishing House: 591â606.
-
Divyabhanusinh. 2014. Lions, Cheetahs, and Others in the Mughal Landscape. In Shifting Ground: People, Animals, and Mobility in Indiaâs Environmental History, ed. Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 88â108.
-
Flatt, Emma J. 2019. The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates: Living Well in the Persian Cosmopolis. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
-
Gommans, Jos. 2002. Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and Highroads to Empire, 1500â1700. New York: Routledge.
-
Green, Nile. 2005. Whoâs the king of the castle? brahmins, sufis and the narrative landscape of Daulatabad. Contemporary South Asia 14/1: 21â37.
-
Hawley, John Stratton. 1979. Krishnaâs Cosmic Victories. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 47/2: 201â221.
-
Hawley, John Stratton. 2015. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
-
Holdrege, Barbara A. 2015. Bhakti and Embodiment: Fashioning Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies in Ká¹á¹£á¹a Bhakti. New York: Routledge.
-
Horstmann, Monika. 2006. Visions of Kingship in the Twilight of Mughal Rule. Thirteenth Gonda Lecture, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences: 1â40.
-
Horstmann, Monika. 2013. Jaipur 1778: The Making of a King. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
-
Kapadia, Aparna. 2018. In Praise of Kings: Rajputs, Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
-
Khan, Ali Muhammad. No date. Mirat-i Ahmadi Supplement, trans. Syed Nawab Ali (1928). Baroda: Oriental Institute.
-
Kolff, Dirk H.A. 2002. Naukar, Rajpur & Sepoy: The ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 1450â1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Kothiyal, Tanuja. 2016. Nomadic Narratives: A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
-
Mallison, Françoise. 2019. Religious Culture of Gujarat: Twelfth to Twentieth Century. New Delhi: Primus Books.
-
Maclean, Derryl. 2000. Real Men and False Men at the Court of Akbar: The Majalis of Shaykh Mustafa Gujarati. In Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, ed. Bruce Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence. Gainesville: University Press of Florida: 199â215.
-
OâHanlo, Rosalind. 2007a. Military Sports and the History of the Martial Body in India. JESHO 50/4: 490â523.
-
OâHanlon, Rosalind. 2007b. Kingdom, Household and Body History, Gender and Imperial Service under Akbar. Modern Asian Studies 41/5: 889â923.
-
OâHanlon, Rosalind. 2013. Performance in a World of Paper: Puranic Histories and Social Communication in Early Modern India. Past and Present 219: 87â126.
-
OâHanlon, Rosalind and Christopher Minkowski. 2008. What Makes People Who They Are? Pandit Networks and the Problem of Livelihoods in Early Modern Western India. IESHR 45/3: 381â416.
-
Orsini, Francesca and Samira Sheikh, ed. 2014. After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
-
Pathak, Prabhashankar Jayshankar. 1924. Dharmaranya Purana: Modh Jnatinu Pavitra Itihas (Sanskrit original with Gujarati trans.). Baroda: Modh Martanda.
-
Pauwels, Heidi R.M. 2017. Mobilizing Krishnaâs World: The Writings of Prince SÄvant Singh of Kishangarh. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan.
-
Peabody, Norbert. 1991. In Whose Turban Does the Lord Reside?: The Objectification of Charisma and Fetishism of Objects in the Hindu Kingdom of Kota. Comparative Studies in Society and History 33/4: 726â754.
-
Peabody, Norbert. 2006. Hindu kingship and polity in precolonial India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
-
Rao, Velcheru Narayana, David Shulman, Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 1992. Symbols of Substance: Court and State in NÄyaka Period Tamilnadu. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
-
Ray, Sugata. 2019. Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550â1850. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
-
Rochard, Philippe and Oliver Bast. 2023. ZurkhÄneh, AkhÄá¹Ä, PahlavÄn, and Jyeá¹£á¹hÄ«- Mallas: Cross Cultural Interaction and Social Legitimisation at the Turn of the 17th Century. Journal of Yoga Studies: 175â214.
-
Rocher, Ludo. 1986. The PurÄá¹as: A History of Indian Literature, ii, 3 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz).
-
Saha, Shandip. 2007. The Movement of Bhakti along a North-West Axis: Tracing the History of the Puá¹£á¹imÄrg between the Sixteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. International Journal of Hindu Studies 11/3: 299â318.
-
Sandesara, Bhogilal Jayachandbhai, and Ramanlal Nagarji Mehta. 1964. MallapurÄá¹a: A Rare Sanskrit Text on Indian Wrestling especially as practised by the Jyeá¹£á¹Ä«mallas. Baroda: Oriental Institute.
-
Shaffer, Holly. 2022. Grafted Arts: Art Making and Taking in the Struggle for Western India: 1760â1910. London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
-
Shastri, J.L. and G.V. Tagare, ed. 2004. The BhÄgavata-PurÄá¹a, Parts 3 and 4. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
-
Sheikh, Samira. 2010. Forging A Region: Sultans, Traders and Pilgrims in Gujarat 1200â1500. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
-
Sheikh, Samira. 2018. Aurangzeb as seen from Gujarat: ShiÊ¿i and Millenarian Challenges to Mughal Sovereignty. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Series 3, 28/3: 557â581.
-
Shrigondekar, G.K. ed. 1925, 1939, 1961. MÄnasollÄsa of King SomeÅvara. Baroda: Oriental Institute.
-
Sikandar b. Muhammad, Manjhu Gujarati. No date. Mirati Sikandari: Or The Mirror of Sikandar, trans. Fazlullah Lutfullah Faridi (1899). Dharampur: Education Societyâs Press.
-
Sreenivasan, Ramya. 2004. The âMarriageâ of âHinduâ and âTurakâ: Medieval Rajput Histories of Jalor. The Medieval History Journal 7/1: 87â108.
-
Stronge, Susan. 2002. Painting for the Mughal Emperor: The Art of the Book, 1560â1660. London: V&A Publications.
-
Thapar, Romila. 2008. Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History. Gurgaon: Penguin Books.
-
Trautmann, Thomas R. 2018. Elephants and Kings: An Environmental History. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.
-
Truschke, Audrey. 2016. Cultures of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court. Gurgaon: Penguin Allen Lane.
-
Vaudeville, Charlotte. 1976. Braj, Lost and Found. Indo-Iranian Journal 18/3â4: 195â213.
-
Vaudeville, Charlotte. 1980. The Govardhan Myth in Northern India. Indo-Iranian Journal 22/1: 1â45.
-
Wujastyk, Dominik. 2005. Change and Creativity in Early Modern Indian Medical Thought. Journal of Indian Philosophy 33/1: 95â118.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1648 | 622 | 51 |
| Full Text Views | 91 | 24 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 138 | 54 | 3 |
Wrestling with Community and Social Change in Early Modern Western India: the Jyesthimallas and the MallapurÄá¹a, c. 1674
In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientSearch for other papers by Karil Soral in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article studies a community text of a group of professional wrestlers hailing from the town of Modhera in western India. Titled the MallapurÄá¹a (literally, The PurÄá¹a of the Wrestlers), the text was compiled in c.1674 at the behest of a group of individuals known as the Jyesthimallas. The MallapurÄá¹a narrativises the origin of these wrestlers and records the processes of their identity formation. Remarkably, it is through an idea of wrestling as a sacred science (mallavidyÄ) bestowed upon these wrestlers by lord Krishna that the MallapurÄá¹a articulates the identity of the Jyesthimallas as brahmanas. The text brings together various schemes of classification and sub-categorization juxtaposing these with a complex set of inter-related themes of devotion, physiology, medicine, and non-human animals, to further connect these with the processes of the Jyesthimalla âethnogenesisâ. The article considers these discussions on wrestling within the text and historicises them vis-Ã -vis the processes of identity formation and claims to brahmana status in early modern western India.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1648 | 622 | 51 |
| Full Text Views | 91 | 24 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 138 | 54 | 3 |
