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Williams, Richard David (2024) 'Music for Hunting: Animals, Aesthetics, and Adivāsīs in Rajput Culture.' In: Bangha, Imre and Stasik, Danuta, (eds.), Literary Cultures in Early Modern North India: Current Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 321-341.

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Abstract

This chapter explores early modern understandings about the relationship between music, sound, and nature by examining the place of music in Rajput hunting practices, and imagery relating to animals and the forest in musicological literature and poetry. Examining poetic and visual materials relating to deer and musical entrapment, it considers theories of the sonic expression of power and mastery. It then brings images of the hunt into conversation with depictions of hunting, the wilderness, and tribal communities in musical iconography, taking rāginī Āsāvarī as a case study. Retracing the romanticization of tribal women in the Rajput imaginary, it suggests that attending to the relationship between courtly music and courtly hunting sheds light on both aesthetics and social history.

Item Type: Book Chapters
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > School of Arts > Department of Music
ISBN: 9780192889348
Copyright Statement: This is the version of the chapter accepted for publication in Bangha, Imre and Stasik, Danuta, (eds.), Literary Cultures in Early Modern North India: Current Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 321-341 (2014). Re-use is subject to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192889348.003.0012
Date Deposited: 27 Jun 2024 06:53
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/42124

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