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Book Reviews / JESHO 52 (2009) 734-753 745 William R. PINCH. Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires. Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society 12. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2006. xi + 280 pp. 11 illustrations. ISBN 0-521-85168-8. Scholarly books on Indian history and culture fall into diff erent categories: postmodern constructions; pedantry; and really infl uential epochal works. William Pinch’s Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires undoubtedly belongs to the last one. Th is book describes the lives and deeds of two famous military leaders of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: Anupgiri Gosain alias Himmat Bahadur and his brother Umraogiri. Th eir armies, consisting of Hindu monks ( sadhu, sannyasi, yogi ), were active in North India covering the area from Brindaban in the west to Gorakhpur in the east and Bun- delkhand in the south. Directly involved in the political and military aff airs of the Mughals, the Marathas, and the British, Anupgiri was “India’s most successful military entrepreneur in the eighteenth century” (p. 5). By the beginning of the nineteenth century he had changed from being an enemy into an important military ally of the emerging British Empire in India (pp. 107, 114-6) due
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 2009
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