Potere e gloria nell'India antica nella trilogia di Johannes Bronkhorst

Between 2007 and 2016, the Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst published three volumes about the religious, social, and political history of Northern regions of ancient India, released by Brill as the volumes 19, 24 and 30 of the “Handbuch der Orientalistik” series. As a whole, these three works draw an original fresco of ancient India as they provide an historical-religious enquiry that embraces a millennium of political events and religious doctrines. During this time, a religious minority without an army was able to establish the ideology that supported its social supremacy in the succeeding centuries. The ideology of the four varṇas ended up becoming an integral part of the religious, political, and social order guaranteed by Brahmins. Bronkhorst highlights those elements of historical discontinuity that contributed to redefining the religious system. He also captures the vicissitudes of the Brahmanical circles and provides an elaborate analysis of the history of Brahmanism in ancient India. Not only the religious oppositions but also the political interactions impacted on the redefinitions of political borders on the eastern and western sides of the Ganges valley. Consequently, the redefinition of political borders encouraged migrations, facilitating the circulation of ideas, people and religious groups. In this paper, I aim to highlight the originality of Bronkhorst’s works and I wish to emphasise the importance of his contribution to the history of religions of ancient India.