Reprint of the original, first published in 1873. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

Includes the Annual report of the Geological Survey of India, 1867-

India is rich in its oral tradition. Its antiquity defies historical inquiry. Indian folklore offers diversity in the forms of expression while retaining the unity of theme, i.e. Dharma., The forms may be changing periodically to suit the times. The purpose of these popular art forms has been the same in a way as the classical arts. They provide education through entertainment. Andhra Desa, comprising roughly the present state of Andhra Pradesh, is very significant in its folk tradition in variety of forms. Numerous producing and service castes so far maintained their own sub castes of bards to retain their collective memory of the community and family histories besides propagating the Puranic knowledge and stories from great epics. The dependent sub-castes who have been so far preserving these arts and ancient knowledge are speedily disappearing due to lack of patronage and changing life-style. In this context, this book, the result of a painstaking research involving lot of field work may serve as a tribute to those unselfish barefoot narrators and preservers of history of bygone ages.

Essays on Violence: Pollution, Sacrifice and Madness is an exploration of the intersecting histories of caste and violence in the Indian context foregrounding ideational and temporal continuities and deep linkages between ideas, processes and events by combing historical sources with ethnographic data. Traversing the diverse and conflicting strands in Indian traditions, it traces the centrality of the idea of violence in discourses on sacrificial violence, self, body, evil and danger and their reverberations in critical moments of Indian history. The discourse on caste violence is unpacked through analysis of concepts like danda, matsyanyaya and vadhoavadha, religious and textual exegesis of negation and demonization and historical sites to locate processes of transitions in cultures of violence via the Telangana armed uprising and imagined cartography of the incipient nation. By drawing attention to the nature of caste violence in postcolonial Andhra, the book offers glimpses into the emergence of contradictory pulls in the forging of caste identities, nationhood and the shifts in the subjectivity of outcastes within the context of repressive political culture of postcolonial democratic experience.