Home
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   TDL DSpace Home
    • Federated Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • University of Texas at Austin
    • View Item
    •   TDL DSpace Home
    • Federated Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • University of Texas at Austin
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Political Brahmanism and the state : a compositional history of the Arthaśāstra

    Thumbnail
    Date
    2009-08
    Author
    McClish, Mark Richard
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    This dissertation is about how to use the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭalya as a source for the study of religion and culture in classical South Asia. The Arthaśāstra is perhaps the single most important source for reconstructing the culture of the period and one of the most misunderstood. In the following pages, I take two approaches to helping scholars produce more and better information from the text. First, I engage in source criticism of the extant Arthaśāstra, trying to unlock its various layers and compositional moments. Second, I use this material to demonstrate how the ideology of Brahmanism, which promotes the political interests of the Brahmanical community, was a later addition to a text previously devoid of such concerns. In the conclusion, I apply these findings to the current thinking on the history of religions in this period and argue that the redaction of the Arthaśāstra was part of a broad re-assertion of Brahmanical privilege in a new political context.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/2152/10568
    Collections
    • University of Texas at Austin

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2016  DuraSpace
    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    TDL
    Theme by @mire NV
     

     

    Browse

    All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    Login

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2016  DuraSpace
    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    TDL
    Theme by @mire NV