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A Tale of Two Courts: Thanjavur and Travancore: Indira Peterson, Manu S. Pillai & Arundhathi Subramaniam
Indira Viswanathan Peterson is Professor Emerita at Mount Holyoke College. She has published widely on Sanskrit, Tamil and Marathi literature and the performing arts. Major translations include Poems to Siva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints and Arjuna and the Hunter: Bharavi’s Kiratarjuniya. She is currently working on monographs on the cultural innovations of Serfoji II of Tanjore, Kuravanji and south Indian dance dramas and a translation of the Tamil novel Tillana Mohanambal.
Manu S. Pillai is a London-based writer and historian. His book, The Ivory Throne, won him the 2017 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar. A columnist for Mint Lounge, he was Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Indian Parliament, and worked with the BBC on their Incarnations history series.
Arundhathi Subramaniam is the award-winning author of eleven books of poetry and prose. Described as ‘one of the finest poets writing in India today’, her recent volume, When God is a Traveller, won the inaugural Khushwant Singh Award, was selected as the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
A Tale of Two Courts: Thanjavur and Travancore
Two of South India's most brilliant historians tell the tale of two of South India's most brilliant courts. In 1498, when Vasco da Gama set foot in Kerala looking for Christians and spices. he unleashed a wave of political fury that would topple local powers like a house of cards. The cosmopolitan fabric of a vibrant trading society with its Jewish and Arab merchants, Chinese pirate heroes and masterful Hindu Zamorins was ripped apart, heralding an age of violence and bloodshed. One prince, however, emerged triumphant from this descent into chaos. Shrewdly marrying Western arms to Eastern strategy, Martanda Varma consecrated the dominion of Travancore , destined to become one of the most dutiful pillars of the British Raj. What followed was two centuries of internecine conflict in one of India's premier princely states. culminating in a dynastic feud between two sisters battling to steer the fortunes of their house on the eve of Independence. Manu S. Pillai tells of this sprawling saga by focussing on the remarkable life and work of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last, and forgotten , queen of the House of Travancore . Against this, cultural historian Indira Peterson tells the tale of the equally brilliant court of the Maratha Bhonsle ruler Serfoji II of Thanjavur , who ascended the throne in 1798 AD, at a time when Thanjavur was under the control of the East India Company. Devoting his life to scholarship and culture, Serfoji turned his tiny state into a renowned centre of European and Indian learning and the arts . Thanjavur painting , Karnatak music and Bharata Natyam dance were shaped and perfected at Serfoji's court. A keen student of European literature , science and medicine, the king built up the Sarasvati Mahal into a premier library of Sanskrit and vernacular manuscripts in Indian knowledge systems. He also pioneered modern education in south India.
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