Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-384) and index.

Preface: The Shape of the Book -
Acknowledgments -
Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Abbreviations -
Introduction: The Argument of the Book -
Part One:
1. The Yadava Century -
2. Traces of a Medieval Public -
3. Two Biographies of Literary Vernacularization -
Part Two:
4. The Vernacular Moment
5. The Mahanubhav Ethic
Part Three:
6. A Vernacular Manifesto
7. Sonic Equality
Conclusion: The Vernacular Millennium and the Quotidian Revolution
Notes -
Glossary -
Bibliography -
Index.

In thirteenth-century western India, venture spiritualists—entrepreneurial religious figures—challenged the linguistic and cultural hegemony of Sanskrit, a language restricted to high-caste men. They did this by formulating new texts and social orders oriented around the use of the regional languages that reduced the barriers to access that Sanskrit had imposed.

In so doing, these venture spiritualists created an early form of the public sphere in which the social ethics of caste and gender inequity were debated. This debate drew from, and reconfigured, the sense and scope of “everyday life” permeated by social distinction.

The configuration of a new public sphere in medieval India that engaged with questions of social equality in the context of expanding the scope of everyday life is the process called “vernacularization.” The Quotidian Revolution examines this pivotal moment in Indian history and argues that the medieval public sphere endures as a key strand of the unique genealogy of Indian democracy and modernity.