This conference explores the interrelationships among political literary, and religious culture in early second-millennium South India and Sri Lanka. Scholars of premodern South Asia and Indian Ocean political culture now recognize that transregional processes fundamentally shaped political environments in this region. The substantial migration of scholars, military operators, ritual specialists, and pilgrim-patrons led to substantial transfers of knowledge. During this period, textual forms, material culture, languages, and technical sciences were on the move. Speakers will highlight the potential of working across languages and between key political-cultural centers to identify core characteristics of premodern political culture in peninsular India and Sri Lanka from approximately 900-1500. The culture of politics in this region underwent substantial changes during this period, bookended by the Indian Ocean imperial vision of the Cōḷas to the advent of the Portuguese Indian Ocean colonial empire.

Conference participants include:

Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Daud Ali, South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Stephen Berkwitz, Religious Studies, Missouri State University

Anne Blackburn, Asian Studies, Cornell University

Whitney Cox, South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago

Elaine Fisher, Religious Studies, Stanford University

Alistair Gornall, History & Religion, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Larry McCrea, Asian Studies, Cornell University

Bruno Shirley, Buddhist Studies, Heidelberg University