Imperial Hunting and the Sublime: Race, Caste, and Aesthetics in the Central Himalayas (April 2021)
This article examines the relationship between imperial hunting and the sublime through the historical analysis of race, caste, and aesthetics in the Central Himalayas. Reading Raja Rudra Deva's sixteenth-century Śyainika Śāstra against the career of nineteenth-century timber merchant Frederick Wilson, it argues that the bodies of the courtly hawker and the imperial sportsman simultaneously articulated and naturalized hierarchies of caste and race in the Central Himalayas. In the precolonial context, dramatic displays of hawking calibrated caste status but did not codify boundaries between ''nature'' and ''culture.'' In contrast, the aesthetics of the sublime were deployed in English hunting journals to demarcate racial difference and legitimate colonial rule in the Central Himalayas. The aesthetics of courtly hawking and imperial sportsmanship were thus consequential to the elaboration of race and caste-based forms of authority over the Himalayan environment.
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