Leaving Kashi: Sanskrit knowledge and cultures of consumption in eighteenth-century South India

Recent studies of scholarly life in early modern India have concentrated on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My essay has two aims: to push this study into the long eighteenth century, and to contextualise the new configurations of Sanskrit scholarship in the movement of people between Banaras and Thanjavur, theorised here as centres of gravity and of levity, respectively. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the Maharashtrian scholar RaghunÄ tha GaṇeÅ›a Navahasta moved from his post as temple priest at ChÄ phaḷ, in the SÄ tÄ rÄ district, down south to Thanjavur, to receive the patronage of Queen DÄ«pÄ bÄ Ä«. At the behest of the queen, RaghunÄ tha began writing in Marathi instead of Sanskrit, in order to reach a wider audience. Despite his elite education as a young man in Banaras, his Sanskrit writing itself was likely accessible to the same audience that the queen had envisioned. What were RaghunÄ tha’s true aspirations, and how did changes in his working conditions shape his career? In this essay, I trace RaghunÄ tha’s entrepreneurial spirit through his BhojanakutÅ«hala, or Curiosities on Consumption. Although traditionally the prerogative of cultural historians of food, the BhojanakutÅ«hala reveals just as much about the intellectual context of its author as he travelled from north to south. I conclude by comparing RaghunÄ tha’s career with that of his contemporary and namesake, RaghunÄ tha PaṇḠita.