Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia

by Divya Cherian
Save 14% Save 14%
Current price ₹3,371.00
Original price ₹3,900.00
Original price ₹3,900.00
Original price ₹3,900.00
(-14%)
₹3,371.00
Current price ₹3,371.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 18-21 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Paperback
  • ISBN13: 9780520390058
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: University of California Press
  • Publisher Imprint: University of California Press
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 284
  • Original Price: GBP 30.0
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 431 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): Asia / South / India

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Winner of the 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences

Merchants of Virtue explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a fine-grained study of everyday life and local politics in the kingdom of Marwar in eighteenth-century western India to uncover how merchants enforced their caste ideals of vegetarianism and bodily austerity as universal markers of Hindu identity. Using legal strategies and alliances with elites, these merchants successfully remade the category of "Hindu," setting it in contrast to "Untouchable" in a process that reconfigured Hinduism in caste terms. In a history pertinent to understanding India today, Cherian establishes the centrality of caste to the early-modern Hindu self and to its imagination of inadmissible others.

Divya Cherian is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us