Chapter - Review:
- In several regions, regional cultures developed around religious traditions.
- The local people made a wooden image of the deity which, originally a local God, came to be identified with Vishnu.
- Temple became the centre of pilgrimage.
- In the 19th century, the Rajasthan of today was called Rajputana by the British.
- There are many groups who call themselves Rajputs in Northern and Central India.
- Prithviraj Chauhan was one such ruler.
- Women had been given a heroic image since they committed sati or self-immolation.
- The heroic traditions of various regions also helped in the evolution of dance in several regions.
- One such dance was Kathak, which was evolved in Northern India. The Kathaks initially were a caste of story-tellers in North Indian temples.
- The legends of Radha-Krishna were enacted in folk plays known as rasalila.
- It integrated folk dance with the basic gestures of the kathak story-tellers.
- Music also developed into various forms like qawwali and khayal and new instruments like Sitar were invented.
- During this period, one more tradition which deserves our attention is the miniature painting. Miniatures are small sized paintings done in watercolour on cloth or paper.
- Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan hired highly skilled painters to illustrate their manuscripts in the Kitab Khana containing their accounts and poetry.
- When the Mughal empire started declining, new artistic tastes developed in the regional court of Deccan and Rajput rulers.
- One bold style of miniature painting was called Basohli.
- One of the most popular paintings of the Himalayas region was Bhanudatta’s Rasamanjari.
- The Kangra artists by mid-18th century infused a new life into miniature painting.
- Regional language is the language which a person speaks in a region.
- It is generally assumed that the Bengali language is spoken by people of Bengal.
- Bengali originated from Sanskrit but later on developed its own identity and literature.
- Early Bengali literature may be divided into two categories—The first includes translations from Sanskrit epics and the
- the second includes Nath literature.
- From the 16th century, people migrated in large numbers from less fertile western Bengal to the forested and marshy of south-eastern Bengal.
- With Mughal control over Bengal, the capital shifted to Dhaka. Officials received land grants. Mosques were set up.
- The early settlers got help from teachers called Pirs. They included saints or Sufis and prominent religious personalities.
