Looking Within Looking Without includes discussions based on archaeology, visual representations, the Sanskrit epics, medical literature, early Tamil texts, compositions drawn from a variety of religious traditions, official documents including court records, and inscriptions. Chronologically, the volume ranges from the early historic to the early modern period. Spatially, the regions explored include the Gangetic Valley, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Bengal and Rajasthan. The contributors envisage the household as a site of production, consumption and distribution, and as one where cultural meanings are constituted, communicated and contested. Running through the essays is a focus on the everyday, on the ways in which gender, class, caste and community identities evolve through and revolve around the household. What emerges is a richly textured, complex set of arguments, which inevitably step beyond the household, drawing attention to connections with the wider world.
As a tribute to the memory of Nandita Prasad Sahai, a careful, committed and passionate historian and teacher, the volume creates space for dialogue, debate and difference as the contributors bring their distinctive perspectives and questions on an institution that is often naturalized and taken for granted.