Rajput Arms & Armour: The Rathores & Their Armoury at Jodhpur Fort ( Volume I & II )

Description

VOL 1: Some years ago the study of arms and armour of the subcontinent reached a plateau where enough was known to allow curators and collectors a veneer of authority when writing and speaking about the topic. This book shows how very thin that veneer was. For political and more recently commercial reasons the cultural history of the subcontinent has been largely expressed through the Mughal experience of India. Whilst it is true that the Muslim Mughals dominated India the empire they ruled was predominantly Hindu. This book reclaims the Hindu contribution to the military culture of the Mughal period. The Rajputs were very closely aligned to the Mughals from the reign of Akbar in the sixteenth century but they retained their own distinctive values: in the military sphere their preferences were extremely conservative. A Rajput warrior’s sword was his most valued possession, guardian of his honour and his women, the means to fame and spiritual release. The armoury at Mehrangarh helps us to enter an unfamiliar world with a tradition of courage and self-sacrifice conserved in music and poetry that was so extreme that scholars have struggled to concede its existence. This radical book challenges arms and armour orthodoxy and is essential reading for scholars, collectors and dealers interested in India and its wider culture.

VOL 2: Some years ago the study of arms and armour of the subcontinent reached a plateau where enough was known to allow curators and collectors a veneer of authority when writing and speaking about the topic. This book shows how very thin that veneer was. For political and more recently commercial reasons the cultural history of the subcontinent has been largely expressed through the Mughal experience of India. Whilst it is true that the Muslim Mughals dominated India the empire they ruled was predominantly Hindu. This book reclaims the Hindu contribution to the military culture of the Mughal period. The Rajputs were very closely aligned to the Mughals from the reign of Akbar in the sixteenth century but they retained their own distinctive values: in the military sphere their preferences were extremely conservative. A Rajput warrior’s sword was his most valued possession, guardian of his honour and his women, the means to fame and spiritual release. The armoury at Mehrangarh helps us to enter an unfamiliar world with a tradition of courage and self-sacrifice conserved in music and poetry that was so extreme that scholars have struggled to concede its existence.This radical book challenges arms and armour orthodoxy and is essential reading for scholars, collectors and dealers interested in India and its wider culture.

Author : Robert Elgood

Robert Elgood, an expert on the historic arms of Hindu India and the Islamic world, has lectured and worked in many countries. He is the author or editor of numerous books, the major ones being Islamic Arms and Armour (1979), Arms and Armour of Arabia (1994), Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Collection, Kuwait (1995), Hindu Arms and Ritual (2004), The Arms of Greece and her Balkan Neighbours in the Ottoman Period (2009), Arms and Armour at the Jaipur Court (2015) and Rajput Arms and Armour: The Rathores and their Armoury at Jodhpur Fort (2017). He has a BA from SOAS in Islamic History and a DPhil in Indian Anthropology from Oxford. He has worked at Sotheby’s and the Wallace Collection and as a guest scholar or consultant at various major museums. He is an independent consultant and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, London and the Society of Antiquaries.