Two 'global studies' events - coins and singing

    Two 'global studies' events - coins and singing this last weekend.

Dr. Sethuraman Suresh in Campbell Hall

 

 

    1) First on Thursday late afteroon, a lecture by Sethuraman Suresh on "West Meets East: Commerce Between Ancient Rome and South Asia," with slides.  Did it really take a year for the Roman merchants (Greeks earlier)  to travel by sea, overland, up river, across the Arabian Sea to Kerala, then climb up and over the Western Ghats (sailing around the tip of India was more dangerous because of ferocious pirates) to the area south of Chenai, buy cloth and spices paying with their Roman gold and silver coins, and then take the trip back? This was during the 100 or so years before A.D. and several hundred years after. Here's one sample of a Roman coin found in a south Indian archeological site, defaced to reduce its value in competition with the value of local coins. 

Roman gold coin

Tabla M Abhyankar and vocalist N. Bajekal in Old Cabell Hall

     2) The second event, on Friday afternoon, a colloquium or workshop, led and performed by Hindustani classical vocalist Nirmal Bajekal accompanied on the tabla by Mayuresh Abhyankar. After demonstration singing, Ms. Bajekal led us all to sing some basic ragas - what a new, first-time great experience.  Mr. Abhyankar also talked and demonstrated various beats and rhythm patterns on the tabla.  

     Listen to about 50 seconds of the Hindustani music. Or https://youtu.be/PqtKdar_Lxc

     I wish that I had been able to hear Ms. Bajekal’s Indian vocal ensemble Swaraprabha that evening in Cabell Hall. Click on http://music.virginia.edu/Nirmal-Bajekal

         At least I greatly enjoyed and learned from two of the 'global studies" events at the University of Virginia last week.

Now Read This - 2018 New Year’s Library Resources News

New for the New Year! You may be interested in some of the titles of the new recent issue of Biblio (Oct-Dec 2017).  Some of its reviews are online (red below); the other reviews are available in the print edition on Alderman’s 2^nd Floor, the Asian Room periodicals. Call number Z 1035 .A1 B43; Check it out.

     Do you know about the importance of the ‘attendant lords’ in the Mughal courts (Bairam Khan and Abdur Rahim) or the poetry of Bahadur Shah? There are reviews of several titles on partition and the India-Pakistan relationship, as well as an examination of the impact of demonitisation, corruption, and India’s changing economy.  Sister Nivedita? Also 3,000 years of India dissents. Finally a selection of the “top 10” (actually 16) of the best books of 2017, with the usual and the unusual picks by Biblio reviewers.

     See the list - Click on ‘Top 10 books for 2017 from India’

     The Telegraph has it’s own review of TCA Raghavan’s “The People Next Door” and also a review of Ila Pal’s book on Husain: portrait of an artist.

     There’s more, much more (daily connections) – such as the recent issues of Seminar and the Indian Economic and Social History Review including Jennifer Dubrow’s recent (Nov 2017) article “Serial fictions: Urdu print culture and the novel in colonial South Asia”

      Well, enjoy the new year of 2018 – keep reading, researching, writing – sometimes even check out the library resources.

[some of the most memorable books of 2017]

Here’s the list of the Biblio Table of contents:

Biblio: a review of books VOL XXII NOS. 10-12  OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2017 Table of Contents https://www.biblio-india.org/tocOD17.asp?mp=OD17

The articles in red are free to access and only require you to register with us. Please use Mozilla based browsers like Firefox to download any article from our website. For any further assistance please write to web@biblio-india.org You can click on the reviewer's name below to know more about them - The Golden House by Salman Rushdie Supriya Chaudhuri - Elmet by Fiona Mozley; Autumn by Ali Smith Alice Albinia - ‘The quinoa of literature’ — an essay on Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature Nandini Lal - The Poems of T.S.Eliot, Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems; The Poems of T.S.Eliot, Volume II: Practical Cats and Further Verses edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue Manju Jain - Attendant Lords: Bairam Khan and Abdur Rahim, Courtiers and Poets in Mughal India by T.C.A. Raghavan; The Life & Poetry of Bahadur Shah by Aslam Parvez, translated by Ather Farooqui Razak Khan - Footprints on Zero Line: Writings on the Partition by Gulzar, translated by Rakhshanda Jalil Tabish Khair - Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition Through Material Memory by Aanchal Malhotra Urvashi Butalia - Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage that Shook India by Sheela Reddy Syeda Hameed - The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan by T.C.A. Raghavan Mani Shankar Aiyar - Why Gandhi Still Matters: An Appraisal of the Mahatma’s Legacy by Rajmohan Gandhi Apoorvanand - Margot: Sister Nivedita of Vivekananda by Reba Som Jawhar Sircar - India Dissents: 3000 Years of Difference, Doubt and Argument edited by Ashok Vajpeyi Anant Maringanti - I Do What I Do: On Reform, Rhetoric and Resolve by Raghuram G. Rajan Mohan Guruswamy - Dialogue of the Deaf: The Government and the RBI by T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan Prem Shankar Jha - Why Scams Are Here To Stay: Understanding Political Corruption in India by N. Ram Paranjoy Guha Thakurta - Demonetisation: The Economists Speak edited by Uma Kapila; Demonetisation & Black Money by C. Rammanohar Reddy; Black Money and Tax Havens by R. Vaidyanathan Udit Misra - India Transformed: 25 Years of Economic Reforms edited by Rakesh Mohan; The Future of Indian Economy: Past Reforms and Challenges Ahead edited by Yashwant Sinha and Vinay K. Srivastava Pulin B. Nayak - Employment, Growth and Development: Essays on a Changing World Economy by Deepak Nayyar Rajeev Malhotra - Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India’s 12-Digit Revolution by Shankkar Aiyar Souvik Mukherjee - From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization through Ten Extraordinary Lives by Jeffrey E. Garton Devangshu Datta - Goras and Desis: Managing Agencies and the Making of Corporate India by Omkar Goswami Kanika Datta - The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam Karthik Shankar - When the Moon Shines by Day by Nayantara Sahgal Githa Hariharan - A Night with a Black Spider: Stories by Ambai, translated by from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan Kunal Ray - Open Couplets by Torsa Ghosal Shalini Mukerji - Unstoppable: My Life So Far by Maria Sharapova Satyam Viswanathan   - Reviewers’ Choice — a selection of the most memorable books of 2017 and the most anticipated ones of 2018 by some of our reviewers Biblio