This book is about the legendary Rajput chieftain Hammira Chauhan the king of the impregnable
fortress of Ranthambore in southern Rajasthan who died in 1301 CE after a monumental battle
against Alauddin Khalji the sultan of Delhi. This singular event reverberates through time to
the point of creating a historical and cultural region that crystallizes through copious texts
composed in different genres and languages (Persian Sanskrit Hindi Rajasthani English) in
shifting religious and political contexts medieval as well as modern. The main
poetical-historical work composed in Sanskrit the Hammira-Mahakavya (¿great poem¿) by the
Jaina poet Nayachandra Suri (15th century) is propelled by a dream in which the dead king
urges the poet to write about his deeds. Can history with its preoccupation for the factual
begin in a dream? What does it mean to think about history and time via the imagination? Is
time whether past present or future linked to imagination? Do imagination time and history
arise together? What are the implications of thinking of history as something that appears in
our experience? What does it mean to write a history as a historical being in whom diverse
temporalities intertwine in the here and now?
