Satire reveals fault lines and incongruities between ideal and practice. Satirical discourse may be independent or invade and parody literary genres. It unmasks, ridicules and thereby deconstructs evil and hypocrisy to reconstruct honesty and reason, and at its farthest end may amount to moral utopia. This volume brings together essays on satire in the Indian vernaculars and in painting, mainly from the period of first modernity (ca. mid-fifteenth to mid-eighteenth century). These are framed by a contribution on the more ancient Tamil Jain satire and two essays on colonial satire. Among the contributing researchers are Purshottam Agrawal, France Bhattacharya, Ludwig Habighorst, Hans Harder, Monika Horstmann, Hephzibah Israel, Rohini Mokashi-Punekar, Anne E. Monius, Christina Oesterheld, and Heidi Pauwels.