The Continent of Circe

Last updated

The Continent of Circe
AuthorNirad C. Chaudhuri
CountryIndia
LanguageEnglish
SubjectAnalysis of Indian society in the early 20th century from historical, sociological and cultural perspective
Genreautobiographical,non fiction
PublisherJaico Books
Publication date
1965
Published in English
1965
Media typebook
AwardsDuff Cooper Memorial Prize (1966)
Preceded byA Passage to England (1959) 
Followed byThe Intellectual in India (1967) 

The Continent of Circe is a 1965 book of essays written by Indian author Nirad C. Chaudhuri that was winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for 1966. [1] In this book, Chaudhuri discusses Indian society from a socio-psychological perspective, commenting on Hindu society from Prehistory to modern times. The author's thesis is that militarism has been a way of life there from time immemorial.

Chaudhuri gives an account of various anthropological subgroups dominating the Indian subcontinent and the struggles between classes from the arrival of Aryans to later settlements of Huns in western India.

The book argues against the "pacifist" theory of India as being a peace-loving nation further cemented by the principles of nonviolence preached by Gandhi. The author holds a different view and points to what he sees as an inherent love for violence in Hindus stretching from Emperor Ashoka (exemplified with the battle of Kalinga), through the Imperial Guptas until the time India was invaded by Mughals in the early 15th century.

The focal point of the book is that every major Hindu dynasty has followed the path of war to secure and capture new domains and that violence is very much a part of life in Indian society. This is further corroborated by literary evidence, as can be seen in epics like the Mahabharata, Ramayana, the poems of Samudragupta etc., which give graphic descriptions of wars fought on a colossal scale.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arundhati Roy</span> Indian author and activist (born 1961)

Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.

The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and author. The prize was first awarded in 1956 to Alan Moorehead for his Gallipoli. At present, the winner receives a first edition copy of Duff Cooper's autobiography Old Men Forget and a cheque for £5,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nirad C. Chaudhuri</span> Indian writer (1897 – 1999)

Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri CBE was an Indian writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amitav Ghosh</span> Indian writer (born 1956)

Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer. He won the 54th Jnanpith award in 2018, India's highest literary honor. Ghosh's ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has written historical fiction and also written non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Dalrymple</span> British historian and writer

William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple is a Delhi-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, photographer, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers' festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Doniger</span> American Indologist (born 1940)

Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty is an American Indologist whose professional career has spanned five decades. A scholar of Sanskrit and Indian textual traditions, her major works include The Hindus: An Alternative History; Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva; Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; and The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit. She is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and has taught there since 1978. She served as president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gandhism</span> Body of ideas inspired by Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhism is a body of ideas that describes the inspiration, vision, and the life work of Mohandas K. Gandhi. It is particularly associated with his contributions to the idea of nonviolent resistance, sometimes also called civil resistance.

Raj Kamal Jha is an Indian newspaper editor and novelist writing in English. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express. He has written six novels that have been translated into more than 12 languages. His journalism and fiction have won national and international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize; Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize; Tata Literature Live! Book of The Year; the International Press Institute India Award for Excellence in Journalism; and the Mumbai Press Club Journalist of the Year award. In September 2021, Jha was awarded Editor of The Year by the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association Annual Leadership Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arindam Chaudhuri</span> Indian businessman, founder of a diploma-mill.

Arindam Chaudhuri is an Indian national best known for his involvement with the now-defunct Indian Institute of Planning and Management, an unaccredited institute that was previously headquartered in New Delhi and had 18 branches across India. The institute has been widely criticized for false advertisements and fraudulent practices. On 23 August 2020, Chaudhuri was arrested for tax evasion of 230 million (US$2.9 million).

Indian English literature (IEL), also referred to as Indian Writing in English (IWE), is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language but whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. Its early history began with the works of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt followed by Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao contributed to the growth and popularity of Indian English fiction in the 1930s. It is also associated, in some cases, with the works of members of the Indian diaspora who subsequently compose works in English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vikas Swarup</span> Former Indian diplomat and author

Vikas Swarup is a retired Indian diplomat and writer. He retired from the Indian Foreign Service as the Secretary (West) at the Ministry of External Affairs, India on 30 June 2021 and has previously served as High Commissioner of India in Canada and has been the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs. He was best known as the author of the novel Q & A, adapted in film as Slumdog Millionaire, the winner of Best Film for the year 2009 at the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards and BAFTA Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amit Chaudhuri</span> Indian poet and classical singer (born 1962)

Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, singer, and music composer from India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kai Bird</span> American author and columnist

Kai Bird is an American author and columnist, best known for his works on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, United States-Middle East political relations, and his biographies of political figures. He won a Pulitzer Prize for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Mark Mazower is a British historian. His areas of expertise are Greece, the Balkans and, more generally, 20th-century Europe. He is Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Louis Vivian Derozio</span> Indian educator and poet (1809–1831)

Henry Louis Vivian Derozio was an Indian poet and assistant headmaster of Hindu College, Kolkata. He was a radical thinker of his time and one of the first Indian educators to disseminate Western learning and science among the young men of Bengal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sahitya Akademi Award</span> Literary honour awarded to authors of outstanding literary works in India

The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the 8th Schedule to the Indian constitution as well as in English and Rajasthani language.

Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri is a historian, author, writer, graphic artist, and lately, a film-maker. He is the second son of the Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Chaudhuri has spent most of his adult life travelling and working in the Middle East, North Africa, South America, and Europe. He is a member of the British Academy and the Academia Europaea. Chaudhuri was ranked Number 58 on The Daily Telegraph's list of the "Top 100 Living Geniuses".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Dean Shulman</span> American poet

David Dean Shulman is an Israeli Indologist, poet and peace activist, known for his work on the history of religion in South India, Indian poetics, Tamil Islam, Dravidian linguistics, and Carnatic music. Bilingual in Hebrew and English, he has mastered Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi, and Telugu, and reads Greek, Russian, French, German, Persian, Arabic and Malayalam. He was formerly Professor of Indian Studies and Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and professor in the now defunct Department of Indian, Iranian and Armenian Studies. Presently he holds a chair as Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 1988.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meghna Pant</span> Indian author, journalist and speaker

Meghna Pant is an Indian author, journalist and speaker. She has won a variety of awards for her contribution to literature, gender issues and journalism. In 2012, she won the Muse India National Literary Awards Young Writer Award for her debut novel One-and-a-Half Wife. Her collection of short stories, Happy Birthday and Other Stories was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Award.

Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri (1934–2015), popularly known as MDC, was an Indian theoretical economist, academic and a professor of the Delhi School of Economics. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 2005, for his contributions to literature and education.

References

  1. Duff Cooper Prize Winners online