Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Time-Telling, the Exact Sciences, and Empire in Early Modern India

这篇博士论文研究改进拨款支持了一个科学史项目，该项目考察了印度早期现代时期(从16年到1800年)科学和帝国之间的关系；具体地说，它将通过关注利用精确的天文学和数学科学的活动、对象、机构和实践社区来分析莫卧儿印度的社会计时实践。该项目将探索计时如何赋予科学文化权威和物质效用，以及它们是如何反过来被动员起来支持帝国的。申请的资金将用于档案研究；它们将用于访问英国、印度和巴基斯坦持有的特定来源。该项目将对后殖民科学和技术研究、全球科学史和伊斯兰科学进行中心干预。这项研究通过围绕三组问题配置的原始档案研究，将计时作为进入莫卧儿科学实践的社会文化世界的门户。第一个问题涉及天文观测在日常政治决策以及更广泛层面上的帝国建设中的作用。谁是主要的演员，他们之间发生了什么竞争和合作？为什么莫卧儿建造天文台的野心直到近代早期才成功？用什么站点和方法来代替天文台进行原始的天文观测？下一组特别关注这个庞大的莫卧儿帝国的经济。新日历和日程表的不声明导致了农业和贸易方面的哪些变化？农民的逻辑在这个新的时间方案中得到了体现吗？作为世界上最繁荣的农业经济之一，莫卧儿的时间制度如何改变了农民的生活？最后一组考虑了在这个早期现代世界宗教最多元化的帝国中，莫卧儿计时实践中更深层次的价值观和文化纠葛。关于时间的哲学话语和历史结构塑造了印度莫卧儿和地区法院的价值观？来自不同传统的学者--穆斯林、佛教、斋戒、印度教、琐罗亚斯德教、耶稣会--如何在近代早期改变末世论和历史时代的情感？这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This doctoral dissertation research improvement grant supports a history of science project that examines relationships between science and empire in India during the early modern period (from sixteen to eighteen hundred); specifically, it will analyze the social practice of time-telling in Mughal India by focusing on activities, objects, institutions, and communities of practice that drew on the exact sciences of astronomy and mathematics. The project will explore how time-telling imparted cultural authority and material utility to the sciences and how they in turn were marshalled in support of the empire. The requested funds will be used to engage in archival research; they will be used to obtain access to specific sources that are held in Britain, India, and Pakistan. The project will make a central intervention in postcolonial Science and Technology Studies, history of global science, and Islamic science. The study uses time-telling as a portal into the socio-cultural world of Mughal scientific practices through original archival research configured around three sets of questions. The first concern the role of astronomical observations in political decision-making at an everyday level as well as empire-building on a broader level. Who are the principal actors and what contestations and collaborations occurred between them? Why did Mughal observatory-building ambitions not succeed until the end of the early modern period? In lieu of observatories, what sites and approaches were used for original astronomical observations? The next set focus specifically on the economy of this large Mughal empire. What transformations in agriculture and trade resulted from the instatement of new calendars and daily schedules? Were peasant logics reflected in this new temporal scheme? How did peasants’ lives change in one of the world’s most flourishing agricultural economies as a result of Mughal temporal systems? The last set consider the deeper values and cultural entanglements in Mughal time-telling practices in the most religiously diverse empire in the early modern world. philosophical discourses on and historical constructions of time shaped the values of Mughal and regional courts in India? How did scholars from different traditions—Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Jesuit—contribute to shifting sensibilities of eschatological and historical time during the early modern period?This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.