Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia

Description

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. Translating Wisdom reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Using as a case study the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vasistha—an influential Sanskrit philosophical tale whose popularity stretched across the subcontinent—Shankar Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced cultural exchange and interreligious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia’s past but also its present. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Note on Translation and Transliteration Introduction Religious Interactions in Early Modern South Asia Terms of the Inquiry Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian Intellectual Cultures in Early Modern South Asia Chapter Outline 1. The Laghu-Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha and Its Persian Translation Introducing the Sanskrit Treatise The Mughal “Translation Movement” and the Laghu-Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha The Jūg Bāsisht Translation Team A “Taste” of the Persian Text 2. Madhusūdana Sarasvatī and the Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Madhusūdana Sarasvatī: Life and Times Fearing the “Muslim Threat”? On the Soul (jīva) in the Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha 3. Muḥibb Allāh Ilāhābādī and an Islamic Framework for Religious Diversity A Sufi Philosopher of Seventeenth-Century South Asia An Islamic Non-Dualism: Muḥibb Allāh’s Taswiyah bayna al-ifādah wa’l-qabūl The Question of Religious Diversity The Arabo-Persian Jet Stream and the Question of Interaction 4. Mīr Findiriskī and the Jūg Bāsisht A Peripatetic Philosopher between the Safavids and the Mughals Between Philosophy and Poetry A Muslim Commentary on a Hindu Text The Framework in Concrete Application 5. A Confluence of Traditions The Arabo-Persian Jet Stream in the Jūg Bāsisht The Sanskrit Jet Stream in the Jūg Bāsisht Conclusion From History to Theory? Possibilities for the Academic Study of Religion Notes Bibliography Index