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

这项博士论文研究改进基金支持一个科学史项目，该项目研究近代早期（从16世纪到1800年）印度科学与帝国之间的关系；具体来说，它将通过关注活动、对象、机构和实践社区来分析印度莫卧儿时代讲时间的社会实践，这些活动、对象、机构和实践社区借鉴了精确的天文学和数学科学。该项目将探索计时是如何赋予科学文化权威和物质效用的，以及它们是如何反过来被组织起来支持帝国的。申请资金将用于从事档案研究；他们将被用来获取保存在英国、印度和巴基斯坦的特定信息来源。该项目将对后殖民时代的科学与技术研究、全球科学史和伊斯兰科学产生重要影响。该研究通过围绕三组问题配置的原始档案研究，将讲时间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中的作用，以及在更广泛的层面上的帝国建设。谁是主要的参与者，他们之间发生了什么争论和合作？为什么莫卧儿建造天文台的野心直到近代末期才成功？代替天文台，哪些地点和方法被用来进行原始的天文观测？下一集特别关注这个庞大的莫卧儿帝国的经济。新的日历和日程安排的使用导致了农业和贸易的哪些变化？农民的逻辑是否反映在这个新的时间计划中？作为世界上农业经济最繁荣的国家之一，农民的生活在莫卧儿王朝的时间制度下发生了怎样的变化？最后一组考虑了在现代世界早期宗教最多样化的帝国中，莫卧儿王朝的报时实践中更深层次的价值观和文化纠集。关于时间的哲学论述和历史建构塑造了印度莫卧儿王朝和地方法院的价值观？来自不同传统的学者——穆斯林、佛教、耆那教、印度教、琐罗亚斯德教、耶稣会——是如何在近代早期对末世论和历史时间的敏感变化中做出贡献的？该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.