Save

Introduction: Persian Translations and Textual Productions in the South Asian Multilingual Context

In: Journal of Persianate Studies
Author:
Pegah Shahbaz Institute of Iranian Studies, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Search for other papers by Pegah Shahbaz in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1913-6365
Free access

How to (Re)define “Indo-Persian”?

In recent decades, the latest generation of scholars of Persian from various disciplines has distanced itself from the nationalistic approach towards “Persian” as the language of Iran or related solely to Iranian identity and culture and has taken instead the initiative to expand research to understudied regions outside Iranian borders across Eurasia, where New Persian was used as a lingua franca, a literary language, and a transregional mediator of knowledge, which maintained its perpetual interaction with local languages and their adjacent cultures for almost a millennium. In the South Asian cultural sphere (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan today), historians have joined specialists of Persian literature to uncover the colorful palette of the region’s textual heritage, which is loosely and vaguely referred to as “Indo-Persian.” Survey initiatives such as the Perso-Indica Project (perso-indica.net) have introduced the significantly rich corpus of Persian texts on Indian learned traditions through analytical entries available online. The Institute of Indo-Persian Studies (indopersianstudies.com) and the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS) (persianatesocieties.org) regularly organize scientific events and provide platforms for academics interested in the Persianate cultural and literary heritage of South Asia to share the results of their research and exchange findings and ideas. A number of books published in the past decade, such as Truschke’s Culture of Encounters (2016), Sharma’s Mughal Arcadia (2017), Eaton’s India in the Persianate Age (2019), Kia’s The Persianate Selves (2020), Flatt’s The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates (2019), Dudney’s India in the Persian World of Letters (2022), and two collective volumes, both titled The Persianate World, by Amanat and Ashraf (2018) and Green (2019), draw attention to the entangled relationship between Indian and Persian cultures and debate the role of Persian in cultural transfers in South Asia, providing multifarious architectural, literary, artistic, and historical evidence of the confluence of both cultures with the support of different ruling states in India and beyond. They also highlight the impact of nationalism on our vision today of such interconnectedness that is inherited from the past and offer solutions for more precision in scientific research.

Although we can witness a noticeable rise in the use of the term “Indo-Persian” for this literature in English-speaking circles, conferences, and publications, its definition remains ambiguous and imprecise as scholars interpret it in various ways. Holding Indian and Persian at its both ends, it is expected to treat a hybrid concept touching upon both cultural entities. The “Indo” part of the term remains general and refers to whatever languages, costumes, religions, and sciences come from the subcontinent, while the second part (the “Persian”) refers specifically to the main language used for the production of the texts under study, as well as its literary tradition.

It is not clear whether the term was forged only to evoke the production of Persian texts within specific geospatial and temporal limits—exclusively the South Asian territories of the Delhi Sultanate (r. 1206–1526), the Mughal Empire (r. 1526–1857), and the British Raj (r. 1858–1947)—or if it is also aimed to cover other forms of exchange between the two cultures and their literary traditions before or after the aforementioned periods, regardless of the geographical space inside or outside South Asia. Likewise, one may ask whether the term’s main focus is on Persian textual productions in India and the Persian reception of the Indian knowledge and its adaptation, or whether it is also intended to cover reciprocal influences and include the impact of Persian literature on South Asian arts, languages, literatures, and cultures. Does it exclusively target direct translations to and from the Indian languages, or does it also include indirect forms of transmission of Indic knowledge from non-Indian mediating languages into Persian? One may question whether there is any need to use a different term for these Persian-language texts and manuscripts, which might also be considered as a subcategory of Persian literature.1

The term “Indo-Persian” has no equivalent in the Persian language2 and seems to have been used first by English Orientalists in British India engaged in discovering and collecting manuscripts. Catalogues of manuscripts from the early twentieth century still distinguished the category of Persian manuscripts from India from ones coming from Central and West Asia by applying the term “Indo-Persian” (see, for example, Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge), a tradition which seems to continue in English scholarship to this day (see, for example, Szántó; Peacock). Persian manuscripts from South Asia cover a variety of topics, such as narrative literature, ethical treatises, chronicles and historiographies, glossaries and dictionaries, biographical dictionaries, books on Indian sciences, medicine, mathematics and astronomy, Indian religions and philosophy, and administrative documents; many amongst them are also reproductions of classical Persian literary texts in prose and verse, written by renowned Persian poets and authors, whose works were taught and followed as canon by Persian-speakers all across the Persian-speaking world, including India, for centuries.

In his writings, Eaton (2018) has applied the term “Persian cosmopolis” in contrast with a Sanskrit cosmopolis to refer to the significant exchange of ideas, cultural motifs, and symbols from the Ghaznavid (r. 977–1186) through British periods in India. Truschke (2016), who re-awakened academic interest in Sanskrit–Persian translations, drew attention towards Sanskrit versus Persian, though the generic interpretations of her work by others have overlooked the significance and role of vernaculars as intermediary languages connecting Persian to Sanskrit sources of knowledge in the production of Persian-language translations. The names of many of these vernacular languages—including Awadhi, Hindavi, Marathi, Telogu, Braj Bakha—are mentioned explicitly in Persian manuscripts.

As a member of the Perso-Indica Project since 2014, I have had the opportunity to discuss the term “Indo-Persian” and its shortcomings in terms of Persian material related to South Asia or Indian learning with multiple prominent scholars including Fabrizio Speziale, the director of the project. In recent lectures and interviews shared on online platforms and social media, a number of researchers have also criticized the term and its use in academic research. In a 2016 interview with Ektara Video Magazine, a digital platform for documentation and dissemination of the history, heritage, and cultural legacy of India and South Asia through audio visual and film media, Sharma considered Persian the classical language of the subcontinent and believed that “Indo-Persian” draws strong connections to the South Asian geographical milieu. He saw Indo-Persian as a culture and a phenomenon larger than language and literature that encompasses a wide range of components including court, religion, paintings, literature, and book culture in Persian, with influences received through the engagement of Persian with Indian flora and fauna and local traditions in Delhi, Lahore, Sindh, Bengali, Gujarat, Deccan, and even with the later colonial culture. Over time, Indo-Persian literary practices became localized and multiplied in various languages such as Deccani, Punjabi, and Gujarati throughout the Indian Subcontinent under Persian norms and literary traditions (ibid.).

In another online lecture organized by Aligarh Society of History and Archæology in December 2020, Rizvi preferred the term “Indo-Persian” to “Persianate,” as, according to him, “Persianate” which describes the impact of Persian upon other literary traditions in general, misses the Indian component or identity.3 To define “Indo-Persian,” he suggested querying the meaning of Persian in a South Asian context and what could be seen as “Indian” in the use of Persian in that context. Moreover, Dudney used “Indian Persian” and its distinguishing characteristics, such as the use of a considerable number of Indian words in contrast to “Iranian Persian” (Hamid and Khan; Dudney).

In a 2021 keynote lecture, entitled “What is Indo-Persian? The Material and the Imaginary between Iran and Hindustan,” given at the inaugural Seyeda Mubarik Begum Urdu-Persian Studies conference at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in 2021, Kia presented her observations, and categorized the way the term “Indo-Persian” is being used: (1) Persian written in India; (2) Persian written by those born in India; and (3) Persian written in some way discernibly Indian, such as translation from Sanskrit or a vernacular language. Yet to her, the term does not fit the historical evidence and contemporary scholarship needs to be vigilant to avoid its misinterpretation. She challenged the way that Iranian émigrés in seventeenth-century India used Persian in contrast to local Indian scholars of Persian, based on the colonial binary of native versus foreigner and expressed concerns regarding the implications of the term “Indo-Persian” in contemporary scholarship (ibid.). Contrary to Sharma (2019) who believed that the concept of Indo-Persian is related particularly to place and the Indian Subcontinent, Kia (2021) thought taking space as a major criterion may not be correct and that the geographic designation of the land—India—may originate from colonial sensibilities that saw Persian as a language arriving from outside in contrast to Indic, thus evoking the feeling of nationalism to distinguish the textual productions as “Indian Persian.” She accentuated the disparate role of Persian in different regions and recommended considering Persian literature (adab) and its circulation as a hermeneutic ground for exchange across the Persian world (ibid.). Recalling the blurring of boundaries between India and Persia in the past, she warned scholars of the fallacy of seeing the Indo-Persian through the lenses of nationalism and contemporary national identities. One should keep in mind that many Persian poets considered in this category may or may not have come from Indian lineage or may have produced their works inside or outside of India. Likewise, the works of poets such as Amir Khosrow (1253–1325) or Mirzā ʿAbd al-Qāder Bidel (1644–1721) were reproduced in multiple manuscript copies in Iran regardless of being composed originally by Indian Persian poets (ibid.). One may also question how these poets saw themselves vis-a-vis the term “Persian”? In other words, did they see Persian as a separate, non-Indian culture?

Today, this term seems to be used with certain fluidity in meaning by scholars of South Asian studies as opposed to scholars of Persian and Islamic studies, and, on many occasions, their understanding and use differ widely. Some Persianists apply it to the “Indian style (sabk-e Hendi),” the literary form of Persian poetry developed in India during the seventeenth-century by Iranian immigrants and local Persian poets, known for extremely refined language and exquisite imagery that may sound too abstract or abstruse to contemporary Persian readers. In 1956, Rykpa already included (721) an entire chapter on Persian as the literary language of India and the rise of “Indo-Persian literature” under the Mughals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Historians such as Alam (1998; 2003) and Eaton (2019) have applied the term “Indo-Persian” to the premodern period covering the Delhi Sultanates and Mughals when Persian attained the status of the official language of the court, and to the later colonial period, when it became popular as a non-static language, used by the masses regardless of their faith or status (see also Alam, Delvoye, and Gaborieau). Meanwhile, South Asian scholars may consult these Persian sources merely for their scientific or historical content rather than studying their literary merits. That may be the reason why Persian is treated as instrumental in South Asian scholarship and, today, little more than a limited knowledge of contemporary spoken Persian is pursued.

The problem with the term “Indo-Persian” becomes apparent when it is seen through a nationalistic lens as rather not “Persian,” but more “Indian,” and thus a branch of South Asian studies. While it is true that many of these texts cover specialized topics related to Indic knowledge, one should keep in mind that the Persian literary heritage in India was once produced in the most elaborate literary styles in prose and verse by the society’s élite and highly-educated scholars of classical Persian in the medieval and early modern periods. Along with diverse specialized subjects, a well-rounded knowledge of classical Persian, its history, stylistics, semantics, semiotics, metrics, linguistics, rhetoric, poetic devices, literary and narrative genres, intertextuality, and codicology are needed to consult these texts and conduct research on them. Multiple specialists of Persian literature have already observed this lacuna in South Asian studies. Truschke suggested looking at historiographies as complex documents that need to be parsed with an array of critical literary tools. She has argued (2019, 28) that historians of South Asia “could (and should) use sophisticated hermeneutical tactics to read Persian-medium chronicles, but many modern scholars remain ill-equipped to deal with literary aspects of premodern texts.” Sharma (2016), too, believes that the study of classical Persian should be included in the curriculum for South Asian studies.

I might add that, with our knowledge of the long-lasting reciprocal exchange between the two cultural entities as reflected in the New Persian textual productions, the imprecise application of the term only for Persian productions in the Indian Subcontinent becomes problematic as this exchange did not begin with the Persian-speaking ruling dynasties in India and did not end with their demise. The confluence of the two cultures can be traced back long before the political domination of Persian in the region; it was a perpetual phenomenon that took place both directly and indirectly via intermediary languages such as Sogdian, Arabic, Bactrian, and other languages in Central and West Asia, embodying diverse religious, political, and literary aspects. Apart from shared features in Indo-Aryan myths, renderings and adaptations of multiple Indian fables and tales such as the Belowhar va Budāsaf, Kalila va Demna, and embedded tales in the Sendbād-nāma, as well as records of medical treatises and descriptions of Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu religious practises, were transmitted through Middle Persian (Pahlavi) and afterwards into both Arabic and New Persian.4 It is difficult to define a singular beginning to “Indo-Persian” as a cultural concept, since we find traces of Indo-Persian interactions between the two cultural territories—which shared borders until the 1947 partition of India—as far back in history as we can trace Middle and New Persian. Nor can we identify an end point as such exchanges continued even afterwards and can still be found in the Dari dialect of Persian, food, music, art, and diverse cultural aspects of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Sistan region in Iran to this day. India still has a generation of scholars who write and publish in Persian and whose works merit to be included in the Persian studies of South Asia. The place and status of Persian in South Asia has changed over centuries and much as the exchange between Persian-speaking and South Asian societies has continued to our time, it will persist into the future.5 Further reflection is required about whether South Asian and Persian scholarship will include this under the same terminology, or if there is a need to create a new one for it in the future.

Persian–Indian Vernacular Translations

This special issue of the Journal of Persianate Studies presents a collection of articles on Persian translations of various scientific, religious, and literary subjects. Based on manuscripts available in different libraries, the scholars contributing to this issue shed light upon methods and aims of translation implied in the production of these under-researched texts, by focusing mostly on the Persian–Indian vernacular exchange, which was overshadowed in the past decade by the attention given to Sanskrit–Persian translations. The contributors consider various hypothetical interpretations for the term Hindavi (Hendavi), found in Persian texts, and challenge assumptions about it either as an undefined descriptive word meaning “Indian language,” including Sanskrit, or, read as it is, as an earlier form of the vernacular that gave birth later to Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi. In many cases, Hindavi is mentioned as an intermediary language for rendering Sanskrit works into Persian. The works under study deal with hippology, mathematics, literature, and religion; some of their authors were bilingual or multilingual, familiar with both the original and target languages, who could complete the task of translation individually and/or for non-courtly purposes. Others, on the contrary, followed the pattern of group work at the court, as described by Truschke (2016), and produced translations through collaboration, involving oral transmission as part of the rendering process.

Prakash’s evaluation of the Basātin al-ons (The Garden of Fondness, 1325–26), a narrative about a fictional king named Keshvargir, prepared by an erudite courtier at the service of the Toghloq dynasty (r. 1320–1413) named Akhsetān Dehlavi (1301–51), is an intriguing example of direct translation from a vernacular language, dating back to the fourteenth century. The Persian translator/author prepared a Persian artistic rendering of a Hindavi story based on a manuscript he received as a gift from a friend. This narrative, along with the Javāher al-asmār (The Pearls of Conversation) by ʿEmād b. Mohammad Saghari, a court secretary to ʿAlā al-Din Khalji (r. 1290–1316) and the Tuti-nāma (Tales of a Parrot) by Ziyāʾ al-Din Nakhshabi (d. c. 1350–51), both from the Khalji period (r. 1290–1320), is amongst the early literary translations of Indian tales in ornate prose during the Delhi Sultanate; they are crucial for our understanding of the way Persian was perceived and produced by the learned of that time in northern India. Prakash brings to our attention important semantic aspects of translation (tarjoma) in fourteenth-century Persian literary culture, as well as the literary motivations behind it, which do not necessarily match the criteria used today for the evaluation of translated works—such as fidelity to the source text.

Speziale and Orthmann look at translations of Indian sources on horses, known in general as Tarjoma-ye Sālutar (The Translation of Śalihotra), which had a wide circulation among Persian readers since the period of the Delhi Sultanate. Introducing the Persian textual tradition on Indian hippology, Speziale and Orthmann integrate the oral form of knowledge exchange and the implication of an intermediate vernacular hypo-text in a joint translation project supported by the Bahmani ruler Ahmad I Shāh Vali (r. 1422–35). They argue that the text went through various adaptations and adjustments to suit the mindset of their Muslim readers.

In her article, Karimian introduces the Persian adaptations of the Bījagaṇita on medieval Indian mathematics, hypothesizing about the rendering methods applied by ʿAtāʾollāh Roshdi (or Rashidi), a famous seventeenth-century mathematician at the court of Shāh Jahān (r. 1628–58), who mastered both Persian and Hindavi. Roshdi asserts that he rendered the text from Hindavi into Persian by himself, without the intervention of any other helper/translator.

Khodamoradi’s study delves into the Nāla-ye ʿAndalib (The Nightingale’s Lament), a romance produced by Mohammad Nāser ʿAndalib (1693/4–1759), the founder of the “pure Mohammadi way (tariqa Mohammadiyya khālesa),” a Sufi reformist movement in eighteenth-century India. The text, though not a translation, is a remarkable example of hybrid inter-religious dynamics that existed in South Asian Sufi communities, influenced by Islam, Hinduism, and yoga practices, that led to the creation of a hybridized mystical culture in Islamicate India. The Nāla-ye ʿAndalib is a narrative that reflects the counter-approaches and anti-hybridization positions taken by the followers of the Mohammadiyya khālesa sect in debates between the story’s characters. Hindi/Hindavi poetry inserted in this Sufi narrative, as well as allusions to Hindu philosophy and costumes, are significant for the study of Persian-vernacular literary interactions.

Arzoumanov examines the intriguing case of the eighteenth-century Persian translation of two texts on Jain philosophy by a certain Brahman Delārām at the request of a French officer of the East India Company, Claude Martin (1735–1800). Arzoumanov juxtaposes Delārām’s translation approach with those of the Mughal court, underlining the misconceptions that arise from the translation of religious terms and concepts when the translator is of another faith and attempts to domesticate those new terms according to the receiving religious culture. Arzoumanov demonstrates that the translator’s reinterpretation of the vernacularized Jain texts and his application of a hybrid Sufi-Advaita terminology in Persian helped his audience comprehend Jain concepts better. This study shows that Persian was relevant among Indian and European audiences during this period and that texts of diverse religious traditions circulated in Persian in India.

Finally, I would like to dedicate this special issue to the memory of our beloved colleague and friend, Dr. Soraya Khodamoradi (1978–2023), who contributed an article, but passed away sadly in December 2023. Dr. Khodamoradi was a specialist of Islam and Sufism in Iran and South Asia, and her field of research also involved Kurdish studies and the comparative study of religions. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Erfurt in 2014, joining the Perso-Indica Project immediately afterwards as a postdoctoral fellow. Ever since, I had the honor of working and collaborating with her for conference organizations, research missions in India, and the preparation of encyclopedic entries. She published her research in multiple articles, book chapters, and in a book entitled Sufi Reform in Eighteenth Century India (2019). Our professional relationship blossomed into a friendship, and I cannot express how kind and cherished she was, a generous soul with a truthful spirit, and how immensely she is missed in our hearts. Although words will not remove the grief at the loss of this erudite scholar, I am certain that she will be remembered through her academic works.

Bibliography

  • M. Alam, “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics,” Modern Asian Societies 32.2 (May 1998), pp. 317349, DOI 10.1017/S0026749X98002947.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • M. Alam, “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan,” in Sh. I. Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, A Philip E. Lilienthal Book in Asian Studies, Berkeley, 2003, pp. 131198, DOI 10.1525/j.ctt1ppqxk.10.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • M. Alam, F. N. Delvoye, and M. Gaborieau, eds., The Making of Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, New Delhi, 2000.

  • A. Amanat and A. Ashraf, eds., The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere, Iran Studies 18, Leiden, 2018, DOI 10.1163/9789004387287.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • S. A. Arjomand, “A Decade of Persianate Studies,” Journal of Persianate Studies 8.2 (2015), pp. 309333, DOI 10.1163/18747167-12341287.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • S. A. Arjomand, “The Second Decade of Persianate Studies,” Journal of Persianate Studies 16.1 (2023), pp. 6789 , DOI 10.1163/18747167-bja10036.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • A. Dudney, India in the Persian World of Letters: Ḳhān-i Ārzū among the Eighteenth-Century Philologists, Oxford, 2022, DOI 10.1093/oso/9780192857415.001.0001.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • R. M. Eaton, “The Persian Cosmopolis (900–1900) and the Sanskrit Cosmopolis (400–1400),” in A. Amanat and A. Ashraf, eds., The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere, Iran Studies 18, Leiden, 2018, pp. 6383, DOI 10.1163/9789004387287_004.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • R. M. Eaton, India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765, Oakland, 2019.

  • E. J. Flatt, The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates: Living Well in the Persian Cosmopolis, Cambridge/New York City, 2019, DOI 10.1017/9781108680530.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • N. Green, ed., The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, Oakland, 2019, DOI 10.1515/9780520972100.

  • U. Hamid and P. M. Khan, “Introduction: Moving Across the Persian Cosmopolis,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 37.3 (2017), pp. 491-493, DOI 10.1215/1089201x-4279200.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols., Chicago, 1974.

  • S. Khodamoradi, Sufi Reform in Eighteenth Century India: Khwaja Mir Dard of Delhi (1721–1785), Bonner Islamstudien 41, Berlin, 2019.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • M. Kia, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism, Stanford, 2020.

  • M. Kia, “What is Indo-Persian? The Material and the Imaginary Between Iran and Hindustan,” Seyeda Mubarik Begum Urdu-Persian Studies conference talk, Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences, 29 October 2021; online: https://facebook.com/urdupersian.at.lums/videos/1061824304575731 (accessed 28 July 2024).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • A. C. S. Peacock, “Indo-Persian Manuscripts,” Iran 59.2 (2021), pp. 147150, DOI 10.1080/05786967.2021.1911757.

  • J. Rypka, Dějiny perské a tadžické literatury, tr. P. van Popta as History of Iranian Literature, ed. K. Jahn, Dordrecht, 1968.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • S. Rizvi, “Transnational Shiʿi Networks Before Colonialism,” Aligarh Society of History and Archaeology talk, 21 December 2020; online: https://youtu.be/Z2ZFhbAF6qE (accessed 27 June 2024).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • P. Shahbaz, “Abū ʿAbd Allāh Jaʾfar [sic] ibn Muḥammad Rūdakī, Kalīla wa Dimna–yi manẓūm,” in F. Speziale and C. W. Ernst, eds., Perso-Indica: An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions, 23 February 2022, http://www.perso-indica.net/work/fables_and_tales/kalila_wa_dimna-yi_manzum (accessed 07 September 2024).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • P. Shahbaz, “Abū al-Maʿālī Naṣr Allāh Munšī, Tarjuma-yi Kalīla wa Dimna,” in F. Speziale and C. W. Ernst, eds., Perso-Indica: An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions, 30 November 2023, http://www.perso-indica.net/work/fables_and_tales/tarjuma-yi_kalila_wa_dimna (accessed 07 September 2024).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • P. Shahbaz, “The Persian Bilawhar wa Buyūdhas(a)f(a) as a Mirror for Princes,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 24.1 (2024), pp. 107129, DOI 10.5617/jais.10124.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • S. Sharma, “The Evolution of Indo Persian Literature and Culture: Part 1,” Etihas.in (Ektara) Video Magazine 3 (March 2016), interview with Y. Saeed; online: https://youtu.be/IL0RDJMkFD4 (accessed 28 June 2024).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • S. Sharma, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court, Cambridge/London, 2017, DOI 10.2307/j.ctvgd336.

  • S. Sharma, “Mughal Persian Poetry and Persianate Cultures,” Ottoman History Podcast 442 (16 December 2019), interview with Sh. Hamza and N. Naqvi; online: https://ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2019/12/mughal-arcadia.html (accessed 31 July 2024).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge, Catalogue of Fine Persian, Indo-Persian and Indian Manuscripts & Miniatures, Including the Property of Capt. F. M. E. Townsend, R. E., and a Fifth Century Fresco from the Caves of Ajanta, the Property of Mrs. Williams, of Hampsted, London, 1921.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • I. Szántó, “The Persian and Indo-Persian Manuscripts of Alexander Kégl,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 4.2 (2013), pp. 135157, DOI 10.1163/1878464-13040201.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • A. Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court, South Asia Across the Disciplines, New York City, 2016, DOI 10.7312/columbia/9780231173629.001.0001.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • A. Truschke, “The Power of the Islamic Sword in Narrating the Death of Indian Buddhism,” in B. H. Auer and I. Strauch, eds., Encountering Buddhism and Islam in Premodern Central and South Asia, Welten Süd- und Zentralasiens 9, Berlin/Boston, 2019, pp. 1447, DOI 10.1515/9783110631685-002.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • M. Zakeri, “Ẓahīrī of Samarqand’s ‘Sindbādnāma’: A Mirror for Princes,” Das Mittelalter 28.1 (2023), pp. 172188, DOI 10.17885/heiup.mial.2023.1.24774.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
1

Sharma mentioned this matter in his 2016 interview with the Ektara Video Magazine.

2

In Persian, this branch is called “the Persian literature and culture of the Indian Subcontinent (adabiyāt va farhang-e Fārsi dar shebh-e qārra-ye Hend).” Institutions in Iran, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have made significant contributions to the collection and introduction of the Persian heritage in South Asia by preparing catalogues and encyclopedic volumes; for example, Dānesh-nāma-ye zabān ō adab-e Fārsi dar shebh-e qārra (The Encyclopedia of the Persian Language and Literature in the Subcontinent) and Dānesh-nāma-ye jahān-e Eslām (The Encyclopedia of the Islamic World) are amongst the invaluable Iranian productions in the past few decades.

3

Hodgson first coined the term “Persianate” in 1974 to refer to the cultural traditions that developed on the basis of the Persian language. For more on the “Persianate” and Persianate studies, see Arjomand 2015; 2023.

4

The Belowhar va Budāsaf is a transcreation of the hagiography of the Buddha in Arabic and Persian (see Shahbaz 2024). The Kalila va Demna is a collection of fables and tales of Indian origin rendered from Indic sources, such as the old version of the Pañcatantra, the Mahābhārata, and Buddhist narrative texts into Middle Persian during the Sasanian period (r. 224–651). In the Islamic era, it was rendered into Arabic, New Persian, and Turkish (see Shahbaz 2022; 2023). The Sendbād-nāma is a story book in the genre of mirrors for princes that includes embedded tales of Indian origin; for more on the Persian versions of the text, see Zakeri.

5

Scholars of Persian and Persianate studies in Iran and India continue to engage on this subject in Iranian and South Asian institutions and their endeavors merit acknowledgment and consideration. The Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre in Tehran, for instance, has recently organized a regular lecture series which is available on its YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@SwamiVivekanandaCulturalCentre.

Content Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 0 0 0
Full Text Views 77 77 33
PDF Views & Downloads 175 175 107