Permanent Black deserves our gratitude for bringing together ten of Rosalind O’Hanlon’s important articles, previously scattered in different places. Read together, the collection completes the sense of each individual piece and adds enormously to the historiography on caste in early modern times. O’Hanlon’s monograph on Jotiba Phule and ‘lower caste’ Shudra protests in 19th century Maharashtra was groundbreaking for our understanding of caste in colonial times. The present volume is an interesting departure from that monograph in two ways. First, it looks at the top of the caste ladder on Brahmanical familial and intellectual cultures in western India. Such a perspective is indeed rare in our historiography: being in caste-denial, modern Brahmans claim that their hereditary privileges have nothing to do with their social location. Rosalind O’Hanlon,Lineages of Brahman Power,Permanent Black (2025).Second, while it focuses on the early modern times, it forays into the early-colonial period as well. So it vaults across the neat periodisation that we often work with. Numerous microhistories of different categories of Brahmans nestle within this broad temporal and thematic frame and the chapters are vivid with fascinating life stories. Caste is a structure whose organising principle of ranked hierarchy is rigid and constant. But it is also an event where the social standing of each caste is modulated by inter- and intra-caste interface on an everyday basis. The volume exemplifies such intertwined contrary pulls as it focuses on Brahmans, supposedly, the purest caste of all. At the same time, it destabilises the category itself. In the process, O’Hanlon explodes the myth that the social, material and intellectual power of Brahmans – indeed, the centrality of caste itself in Hindu social life – was largely a colonial construction. We invoke the term Brahmanism as a convenient handle, either to denote purity and scholarship or to signify social power. O’Hanlon adds flesh and blood, faces as well as complicated histories of Brahman individuals, families, households and lineages to that rather empty reference point. She explores the relations between Brahmans and other castes, most notably the scribal caste of Kayasthas. There are pointers, too, towards more comprehensive social conglomerates at the village-level, which included the ‘untouchable’ Mahars. Above all, she alerts us to their internal stratification, to their mutual competition for status, ritual entitlements, reputation for Sanskrit scholarship and for patronage from the political authorities. At the same time, as a later chapter shows, Brahmans – Chitpavans especially – were also keen to present a united front before a changing world, and to pull their internal subdivisions under certain overarching rules. Her primary concern is with the scholarly Brahman households, but she also draws our attention to the Brahman underclass of priests, astrologers, teachers and small farmers who developed circuits of migration from place to place and court to court in search of livelihood. All this, without letting go of the overarching fact that, however divided among themselves, Brahmans retained a near-monopoly over official, especially judicial positions, Sanskrit scholarship, ritual functions, state patronage at different regional and local courts and at pilgrimages like Benaras. The city’s great aura for sacrality and Brahmanical scholarship owed a lot to its Maratha patrons. It is interesting that the much-abused Mughals, as well the Deccan Sultans, had significantly augmented Brahmanical functions and privileges. The Brahman household is the thread that unifies the diverse chapters. Each household, led by the senior male scholar, specialised in a particular branch of Sanskrit knowledge: sons, as well as students, were carefully trained in that intellectual tradition which they carried forward. Sources permitting, one would have liked some reflection on their internal structures: relations among generations, genders, masters and servants. Did something of the pandits’ scholarship rub off on the family women? Vedic Brahmin Rishi worshipping Shakti. Photo: Wikimedia commonsEven though the ancient normative Dharmasastras remained important in their curriculum, there was also a busy production of early modern Sanskrit texts and digests. New puranas came into being to extol or to denigrate specific lineages. The competing narratives for Chitpavans and Shenvis, each attributing lowly origins to the other, are a case in point and O’Hanlon has carefully analysed a large number of such stories. The very interesting use of the Parashuram myth – Parashuram had supposedly killed off the entire Kshatriya community of warrior-kings in an act of genocidal rage against them – complicated the notions of the desirable relationship between Brahman priests and their patron kings. Were the kings actually of Shudra origin since the mythological sage had supposedly finished off all Kshatriyas? If so, should they have the right to wear the sacred thread which is the symbol of the dwija or the twice-born males? Should good Brahmans anoint them as kings if they are Shudra? The controversies were especially problematic since many scholars argued that only Brahmans and Shudras existed in the Kali age, all intermediate castes had disappeared. Interestingly, since kingly patronage was essential for Brahman fortunes, certain groups chose to designate the royals as a part of the more respectable, cleaner Shudra category. Their social standing depended on several critical coordinates. Geographical location mattered, the pilgrimage city of Benaras fast becoming the stronghold of Brahmanical glory. Kashikhanda, a 15th century text, which commemorated the sacred aura of Benaras, began to be translated in many languages. Pandits from the Southern regions, too, were particularly renowned for their scholarship. Enormous weight was placed on sista or righteous Brahmanical conduct, which decided the issues of intra-Brahman commensality as well as the question of which Brahman category could marry into which others. The Maharashtrian-Sanskrit text Sahyadrikhanda had named and enumerated the different regional Brahman clusters but doubts still lingered about which family should fit into which category – a problem that the British censuses would face much later. Buddhist painting of Brahmins from the 1800s, Thailand. Photo: Wikimedia commons.Sista conduct depended primarily on the relationship between Brahmans, other ‘lower castes’ and on the conduct of Brahman women. From the 18th century, the powerful Brahman Peshwa rulers from the Chitpavan lineage asserted supreme ritual purity for themselves and the authority to formulate a code of ideal conduct for all Brahmans. Balaji Baji Rao laid down stringent rules for marital exchange among different Brahman communities and tightened up the intertwined straitjacket of caste and gender. He commanded that while bride price was forbidden, dowry should continue. He also enjoined that daughters should be married off by the time they were nine. In 1751, Pune pandits, patronised by the Peshwai, brought out a uniform code of gender and caste relations under the rather impossible name of Yadi DharmasthapanasastrapramanaVedapurushadnyapramana…Sthali. Chapter three contains the entire list of those 48 items on proper domestic, ritual and social conduct. O’Hanlon provides instances of the stringent penalties if the injunctions were transgressed. Not all Brahman categories would, however, accept Chitpavan authority and different sub-castes forged mutual alliances to stand up to them. Occasionally, an exceptionally strong-willed woman could breach the boundaries of the prescriptive order. Chapter five recounts the ordeals of Gotmai, a Brahman widow who fought several court cases over the years to preserve the family property, threatened by her unscrupulous kin and their allies. In her determined pursuit of justice, she acquired a reputation as a shrew. So unpopular was she that no one would support her suit, nor would she be allowed to adopt an adult male who could fight on her behalf. Eventually, she did find an ally and won the case. O’Hanlon regards this as an example of female agency in the teeth of adversity and constraints. Four ascetic Brahmins from Gandhara, 2nd century. Photo: Wikimedia commons.The way she struggled to protect the property documents that she, an illiterate widow, could not read herself, reveals, too, the enormous importance of the “document Raj” at Maratha courts and at the village-level. It seems from O’Hanlon’s work, that more often than not, women were mere vectors – knowledge and property passed through them but did not belong to them. O’Hanlon recounts the instance of a grandson who wrote respectfully about his grandmother. During her pregnancy, she had travelled far and wide, so that the unborn son could listen to learned pandits from the womb and acquire sacred knowledge before birth. It is curious that she had no ambition to acquire knowledge for herself and that while her story was recounted, the grandson did not even mention her name. Remarkably, while describing Gotmai’s legal odyssey, O’Hanlon not only describes her life, her relatives and kinsmen, but also the village hierarchy, land relations revenue arrangements, the local bureaucracy and the Maratha state officials who, too, were drawn into the cases. Such unflagging attention to the minutest, even tangential detail, to enlarging the contexts of the stories as wide as possible, characterises her other chapters as well. For Gotmai’s story, the Karina, or the detailed report on the case submitted to the local judicial assembly, and preserved in historian Rajawade’s collection of family papers, came to O’Hanlon’s aid. As she points out, 19th century Western India had developed an especially felicitous tradition of collecting historical documents, a project initiated by British politician Charles Grant and directed by Malhar Rao Chitnis, a Kayastha from an illustrious scribal lineage. Chitnis’ caste and his research, however, came under the angry scrutiny of Chitpavan Brahmans who refuted his expertise. Caste rivalries clearly marked historical research as well.The Mughal court and its expansive bureaucratic apparatus had preserved and even added to Brahman entitlements. Maratha courts and Deccan Sultanates continued and strengthened the tradition. O’Hanlon very usefully connects the enlargement of the bureaucratic machinery with the spread of paper-use from the 13th century onwards: enabling not only the production of substantial court archives, but also new Sanskrit texts and the large private manuscript libraries which strengthened the scholarly fame of their owners. She argues that something like an early precursor of the public sphere came into being, once the texts, old and new, and disputes on social and religious issues were discussed and debated in various inter-region Brahman assemblies. Popular written texts were also supplemented with oral performances. A Brahmin family, 9th century. Prambanan, Indonesia. Photo: Wikimedia commons.Once Aurangzeb came to the Mughal throne, and demolished important temple centres in Benaras, the link between the Maharshtrian pandits and the holy city weakened. There was a reverse migration now, towards the court of Shivaji at Raigarh. Despite the controversies about his ritual and caste status, the formidable Bhatta and Deva Brahmans consecrated him as a proper kshatriya, deserving of the royal status. Other regional centres began to eclipse Benaras as hubs of Sanskrit learning: Pune, Satara, Kolhapur, Tanjore, Baroda. The importance of some of the older normative texts – Kamalakarabhatta’s Nirnayasindhu and Nilakanthabhatta’s Vyavaharamayukha – continued even in the colonial judicial processes. I found that the former was referenced in the debates on widow immolation in early 19th century Bengal. Early modern times constituted a particularly turbulent and fluid juncture. Mughal power was declining rapidly by the 17th century and the growth of the regional states involved frequent mutual warfare. The situation was further complicated with the advent of the European trading companies who had their own specific norms and habits of trade and diplomacy. The Brahman often had to act as an emissary – vakil – of a particular Indian court to other Indian or European ones, learning the ways of both and trying to establish a meeting point between the two. He was also in charge of intelligence gathering – a hazardous responsibility The fourth chapter discusses the Brahmans’ close transactions with Shaivite Maths or monasteries under the Dasnami Naga sectarian leaders who were divided into ten orders and who recruited their members predominantly from Brahmans. Somewhat similar to the Brahman scholar-households, the Dasnami orders too developed their own lineages of teachers and disciples. O’Hanlon recounts the fortunes of several Dasnami families and Dandi peripatetic ascetics, some of whom – Dandi Kavindra Saraswati, most prominently – performed political and spiritual services for the Maratha empire. A couple of the later chapters study the Kayasthas and their scribal, bureaucratic and military functions in the Mughal and regional courts. Many courts appointed a Brahman and a Kayastha official together in the same rank, so as to ensure that they keep a check on each other. This came close to, according to the Kayasthas, a sort of equality with Brahmans. Kayasthas were a highly educated and professional class, albeit with an uncertain caste location. Their importance bothered Brahmans who sought to denigrate them by calling them Shudras from lowly origins. Lucy Carroll has alerted us to the court cases that continued to question their high- caste claims well into the late 19th century. In turn, Kayasthas wrote their own chronicles or bakhars to substantiate their claims to upper caste status. O’Hanlon devotes a chapter to a particular Brahman debate at the Pune court in 1799 which met to decide their precise status and ritual entitlements. Pandits probed the various origin myths, their marriage practices and the occupations of the lesser Kayasthas with the help of Gopinath’s highly influential and enormously complex Jativiveka that ambitiously sought to classify all the supposedly mixed castes, 85 of them, in his count.He detailed the possible occupations, including that of the keeper of the king’s dogs, and the snake charmer. Amazingly, the exhaustive list excludes the location of kings. It seems that the pre-colonial states were anything but fuzzy in nature. Early 20th century British officials like Enthoven continued to investigate Kayastha histories and lineages to pinpoint their exact rank. The final chapter takes a long-range view from the late 17th century to 1820. It discusses the major changes that had affected Brahmanical judicial procedure. It also discusses the flood of petitions from the complainants to the state or to the local authorities, which travelled from the multi-caste web of stakeholders to local sites which later befuddled the early colonial officials. Colonial officials, ignorant of Indian systems, had honed in on the local panchayats as the traditional judicial forum. However, O’Hanlon shows the existence of several others that preceded it – dharmasabhas or assemblies to adjudicate religious issues, community bodies and the majis. She also shows that the panchayat was actually a relatively late development, starting from the late 17th and culminating in the 18th century. Judicial proceedings were witnessed by large crowds which would far exceed the number of litigants, forming, what she calls large scale “judicial publics” who supplemented the documentary evidence with collective memory, and thereby participated actively in the judicial process. Panchayats, in contrast, were smaller local affairs, and even though they admitted oral testimonies, they limited the role played by popular recollection of legal traditions. Since most disputes were land and property related, and since land rights had been carefully documented in western India from the early modern times, O’Hanlon discusses the regional land relations in great detail. She describes how the disputes were resolved, with some very interesting material on the use of rather violent ordeals. Those could constitute the final proof of guilt or innocence. She also retrieves the shared ethical norms that underpinned the trials.It is impossible to do anything like justice to the real scope of this work. The sheer weight of empirical data and the very wide range of concerns that arise from them reveal a level of scholarship which is almost intimidating as well as immensely inspirational. O’Hanlon’s clarity in dealing with the dense material with incisive analytical skills and insights makes the volume essential reading for historians of pre-colonial and colonial times.Tanika Sarkar is a historian who retired as professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.