Audrey Truschke, The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Muslim Pasts
New Delhi: Penguin Random House India, 2021, pp 412.
Keywords:
Sanskrit, South Asian History, Audrey Truschke, Indo-Muslim rule, Secular historiography, Cultural encountersAbstract
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.
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