Audrey Truschke, The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Muslim Pasts: New Delhi: Penguin Random House India, 2021, pp 412.
Year: 2026
Type: book-review
Abstract: This book review examines Audrey Truschke’s The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Muslim Pasts, a study of Sanskrit texts from c. 1190 to 1721 that engage with Muslim and Indo-Muslim rule in South Asia. By foregrounding historiography rather than political history, Truschke demonstrates how Sanskrit literati represented Muslims through fluid, context-specific cultural and political idioms rather than fixed religious binaries. Drawing on inscriptions, courtly literature, regional histories, and texts on Jain–Mughal ties, the book challenges modern Hindu–Muslim dichotomies while contributing to debates on secular history and early modern identity formation. Despite certain conceptual limitations, it opens up a valuable archive of understudied Sanskrit historical writings.
Source: Reading the Archive
Author: Bhattacharjee, Anusmita
Institution: University of Delhi
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7219980607