Many of the social groups who acquired scribal skills in the early modern period went on to acquire western education in the colonial period, and to lead the growth of the professions and the development of science and technology even into the postcolonial era. Yet, especially for Brahmins, the transition in both the early modern and modern epochs was never easy and raised awkward questions about the relationship between their ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ identities, about the nature of the different ‘knowledges’ which they possessed. This article argues that, for the transition in southern India, developments among Brahmin communities in Maharashtra from the fifteenth century were crucial. They established an acceptable model of secular Brahmin behaviour, which, if not without difficulty, eventually came to establish itself as normative across the South.
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