''The limits of Orientalism: seventeenth-century representations of India' challenges the recent postcolonial readings of European, predominantly English, representations of India in the
seventeenth century. Following Edward Said's discourse of 'Orientalism,' most postcolonial analyses of the seventeenth-century representations of India argue that the natives are represented as
barbaric or exotic 'others,' imagining these representations as products of colonial ideology. Such approaches tend to offer a homogeneous idea of the 'native' and usually equate it with the
term 'Indian.' Rahul Sapra, however, argues that instead of representing all natives as barbaric 'others,' the English drew parallels, especially between themselves and the Mughal aristocracy,
associating with them as partners in trade and potential allies in war. While the Muslims are, from the outset, largely portrayed as highly civilized and cultured, early European writers tended
to be more conflicted with the Hindus, their first highly negative views undergoing a transformation that brings into question any straightforward Orientalist reading of the texts and
anticipates the complexity of later representations of the indigenous peoples of the subcontinent'--Publisher's description, p. [4] of cover.
