Abstract
The present article aims to study the translation and rewriting process of Indian narratives in Persian during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) and the Mughal period (1526–1858), and to examine their cultural adaptations and strategies of adjustment to the Muslim recipient culture involving a reciprocal exchange of literary and cultural elements and religious interpretations. In the first stage, the features of Indo-Persian narrative tradition are briefly introduced with regards to structure and integral themes and in the second, the acculturation of Indian elements will be analysed according to Islamic principles and mystical thoughts in a selection of literary texts produced by Muslim Persian scholars. The article will focus on the representations of gender in stories and the perception of justice in the Perso-Islamic context to see, in particular, how narratives carried across Indian rituals and women’s codes of conduct to the Muslim readership; in other words, we try to shed light on how the alienated Indian became domesticated in the Persian-Muslim world of thought.
References
‘Abbāsī, Mustafā Khāliqdād (1984): Panchākhyāna. Edited by Siyyid Ḥasan ‘Ābidī and Tara Chand. Tehran: Iqbāl.Search in Google Scholar
‘Ābidī, Siyyid Ḥasan (1971): “Muqaddima”. (Introduction) In: Bazmī, ‘Abd al-Shakūr: Dāstān-i Padmāwat. Edited by Ḥasan ‘Ābidī. Tehran: Intishārāt-i bunyād-i farhang-i īrān (Iran’s Cultural Foundation publishers), 9–29.Search in Google Scholar
‘Ābidī, Siyyid Ḥasan (1976): “Muqaddima: Dāstān-hā-yi satī dar Adabīyyāt-i fārsī” (Introduction: Stories About satī in Persian Literature). In: Nau‘ī Khabūshānī, Muḥammad Riżā: Sūz-u Gudāz. Edited by Ḥasan ‘Ābidī. Tehran: Bunyād-i farhang-i īrān (Iran’s cultural Foundation), 9–30.Search in Google Scholar
Alam, Muzaffar (1998): “The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics”. Modern Asian Societies 32.2: 317–349.10.1017/S0026749X98002947Search in Google Scholar
Alam, Muzaffar et al.. (eds.) (2000): The making of Indo-Persian culture: Indian and French Studies. New Delhi: Manohar.Search in Google Scholar
Alam, Muzaffar (2003): “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan”. In: Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Edited by Sheldon Pollock. Berkeley: University of California Press, 131–198.Search in Google Scholar
Alam, Muzaffar / Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2004): “The making of a munshī”. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24.2: 61–72.10.1215/1089201X-24-2-61Search in Google Scholar
Al-Mustamallī, Bukhārī, Abū Ibrāhīm, Ismā‘īl ibn Muḥammad (1984): Sharḥ-i al-ta‘arruf li-maḏhab-i al-Taṣawwuf (Explicit knowledge of the school of Sufism). Edited by Muḥammad Rowshan. Vol. IV. Tehran: Asāṭīr.Search in Google Scholar
Al-Ṯagharī, Imād ibn Muḥammad (2006): Ṭūṭī-nāma: Jawāhir al-asmār (Tales of the parrot: The gems of stories). Edited by Shams Āl-i Aḥmad. Tehran: Firdows.Search in Google Scholar
Āryā, Ghulām ‘Alī (1986): Ṭarīqa-yi Chishtīyya dar Hind wa Pākistān (The Chishtiya Sufi Sect in India and Pakistan). Tehran: Zawwār.Search in Google Scholar
Ashraf, Ahmad (2012): “Iranian Identity i. Perspectives”. In: Encyclopaedia Iranica. https://iranicaonline.org/articles/iranian-identity-i-perspectives (10/10/2020).Search in Google Scholar
Ashraf, Muḥammad (1971–1975): Persian manuscripts in the National Museum of Pakistan at Karachi: history, biography, tales and legends, geography and travel. Vol. 1. Karachi: National Museum of Pakistan.Search in Google Scholar
‘Aṭār-i, Niyshābūrī, Farīd al-Dīn (2019): Taḏkirat al-aulīyā (The Biography of Saints). Edited by Muḥammad Riżā Shafī‘ī Kadkanī. Tehran: Sukhan.Search in Google Scholar
Bazmī, Abd al-Shakūr (1971): Dāstān-i Padmāwat. Edited by Ḥasan ‘Ābidī. Tehran: Intishārāt-i bunyād-i farhang-i īrān (Iran Cultural Foundation publishers).Search in Google Scholar
Behl, Aditya (2012): Love’s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379-1545. Edited by Wendy Doniger. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146707.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Behl, Aditya / Doniger, Wendy (eds.) (2012): The Magic Doe: Qutban Suhravardi’s Mirigavati. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199842926.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Buden, Boris / Nowotny, Stefan (2009): “Cultural Translation: An Introduction to the Problem”. Translation Studies 2.2: 196–208.10.1080/14781700902937730Search in Google Scholar
De Blois, François (1990): Burzoy’s voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalīla wa Dimna. London: The Royal Asiatic Society.Search in Google Scholar
Eaton, Richard (2019): India in The Persianate Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520974234Search in Google Scholar
Ernst, Carl W. (June 2003): “Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Languages”. Iranian Studies 36.2, 173–195.10.1080/00210860305244Search in Google Scholar
Ernst, Carl W. (2016): Refractions of Islam in India situating Sufism and Yoga. New Delhi: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
Fragner, Bert (1999): Die “Persophonie”: Regionalität, Identität und Sprachkontakt in der Geschichte Asiens (Persophonia—Regionalism, Identity, and Language Contacts in the History of Asia). Berlin: Das Arabische Buch.Search in Google Scholar
Gambier, Yves / Van Doorslaer, Luc (eds.) (2012): “Cultural translation”. In: Handbook of Translation Studies. Vol. III. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 21–25.Search in Google Scholar
Green, Nile (ed.) (2019): The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520972100Search in Google Scholar
Ismā‘īlī Ḥussayn (ed.) (2008): Ḥātam-nāma. 2 vols. Tehran: Mu‘īn.Search in Google Scholar
Khan, Pasha M. (2015): “The Handbook of Storytellers: the Ṭirāz al-akhbār and the Qiṣṣa Genre”. In: Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India. Edited by Francesca Orsini and Katherine Butler Schofield. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 185–207.10.11647/OBP.0062.06Search in Google Scholar
Khan, Pasha M. (2019): The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kalānaurī, Ḥamīd (1985): ‘Iṣmat-nāma yā dāstān-i Lurik wa Mīnā. Edited by Ḥasan Ābidī. New Delhi: Indian Centre for the Studies of Persian Language and Literature.Search in Google Scholar
Lefèvre, André (1992): Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Flame. London, UK: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Mahjūb, Muḥammad Ja‘far (2018): Adabīyāt-i ‘Āmīyāna-yi Iran (Iranian Popular Literature). Tehran: Chishma.Search in Google Scholar
Martin, Anna (2017): “ ‘Translator’s Invisibility’: Strategies of Adaptation in Persian Versions of Indian Tales From the Mughal Period”. Iran-Namag 2.2: 24–37.Search in Google Scholar
Mazdāpūr, Katāyūn (1995): Riwāyatī dīgar az dāstān-i Dalīla-yi muḥtāla wa makr-i zanān (Another Version of the Story of Dalīla-yi Muḥtāla (the deceitful go-between lady) and Women’s Guiles). Tehran: Rowshangarān.Search in Google Scholar
Mills, Margaret et al.. (eds.) (2003): South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopaedia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Munshī, Naṣr Allāh (1992): Kalīla wa Dimna. Edited by Mujtabā Mīnawī. Tehran: Amīr Kabīr.Search in Google Scholar
Nakhshabī, Żīyā al-Dīn (1978): Tales of a Parrot: Cleveland Museum of Art’s Ṭūṭī-Nāma. Translated by Muhammed Simsar. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art.Search in Google Scholar
Nakhshabī, Żīyā al-Dīn (1993): Ṭūṭī-nāma. Edited by Fatḥullāh Mujtabāyī and Ghulām ‘Alī Āryā. Tehran: Manūchihrī.Search in Google Scholar
Nau‘ī Khabūshānī, Muḥammad Riżā (1976): Sūz-u Gudāz. Edited by Ḥasan ‘Ābidī. Tehran: Bunyād-i Farhang-i īrān (Iran’s cultural Foundation).Search in Google Scholar
Obrock, Luther (2018): “Śrīvara’s Kathākautuka: Cosmogony, Translation and the Life of a Text in Sultanate Kashmir”. In: Jāṃī in Regional Contexts: The Reception of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Jāṃī’s Works in the Islamicate World, ca. 9th/ 15th-14th/20th Century. Edited by Thibaut D’Hubert and Alexandre Papas. Leiden: Brill, 752–776.Search in Google Scholar
Pollock, Sheldon (ed.) (2003): Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520926738Search in Google Scholar
Pollock, Sheldon et al.. (eds.) (2015): World Philology. Cambridge/ Massachusetts/ London, England: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Pūrnāmdārīyān, Taqī (2004): Ramz wa dāstān-hā-yi ramzī dar adab-i fārsī (Symbol and the Symbolic Tales in Persian Literature). Tehran: ‘Ilmī wa Farhangī.Search in Google Scholar
Rajgiri, Mir Siyyid Manjhan (2000): Madhumālatī, An Indian Sufi Romance. Translated by Aditya Behl and Simon Weightman. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Rieu, Charles (1881): Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum. Vol. II. London: British Museum.Search in Google Scholar
Rizvi, Sayid Athar Abbas (1975): A History of Sufism in India. Vol. I. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
Rukn al-Dīn (1311/1894): Laṭāyif-i Quddūṣī (Celestial subtle words). Delhi: Maṭba‘-i Mujtabā’ī.Search in Google Scholar
Sharma, Sunil (2007): “Novelty, Tradition and Mughal Politics in Nau‘ī’s Sūz u Gudāz”. In: The Necklace of the Pleiades: Studies in Persian Literature Presented to Heshmat Moayyad on his 80th Birthday. Edited by Franklin Lewis and Sunil Sharma. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 251–265.Search in Google Scholar
Sharma, Sunil (2011): “‘If There is a Paradise on Earth, It is Here’: Urban Ethnography in Indo-Persian Poetic and historical Texts”. In: Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500-1800. Edited by Sheldon Pollock. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 240–256.10.2307/j.ctv11cw6b7.13Search in Google Scholar
Sharma, Sunil (2015): “Reading the Acts and Lives of Performers in Mughal Persian Texts”. In: Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India. Edited by Francesca Orsini and Katherine Butler Schofield. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 283–302.10.11647/OBP.0062.10Search in Google Scholar
Sharma, Sunil (2017): Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court. Cambridge / Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.10.2307/j.ctvgd336Search in Google Scholar
Sharma, Sunil (2020): “Forging a Canon of Dakhni Literature: Translations and Retellings from Persian”. In: Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, 1400-1700. Edited by Keelan Overton. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.10.2307/j.ctvz0hb4h.18Search in Google Scholar
Schimmel, Annemarie (1973): Islamic literature of India. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Search in Google Scholar
Ṣiddīqī, Ṭāhira (1999): Fiction-writing in Persian in the Sub-Continent During the Mughal Period. Islamabad: Iran-Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies.Search in Google Scholar
The Ocean of the Rivers of Story (2007): Translated by Sir James Mallinson. New York: New York University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Speziale, Fabrizio / Hermann, Denis (eds.) (2010): Muslim Cultures in the Indo-Iranian World during the Early-Modern and Modern Periods. Berlin : Klaus Schwarz – IFRI.10.1515/9783112208595Search in Google Scholar
Speziale, Fabrizio (2018): Culture Persane et Médecine Ayurvédique en Asie du Sud. Leiden – Boston: E. J. Brill.10.1163/9789004352766Search in Google Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2012): Mughals and Franks Explorations in Connected History. New Delhi / Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
The Jātaka or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births (1895): Translated by E. B. Cowell. Vols. I-VI, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
The Kokashastra and Other Indian Writings on Love (1964): Translated by Alex Comfort. Paris: Simson Shand LTD.Search in Google Scholar
The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation (1953): Translated by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall. New York: Signet. https://www.islam101.com/quran/QTP/index.htm (05/08/2020).Search in Google Scholar
Trivedi, Harish (2007): “Translating culture vs. cultural translation”. In: Translation— Reflections, Refractions, Transformations. Edited by Paul St-Pierre and Prafulla C. Kar. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 277–287.10.1075/btl.71.27triSearch in Google Scholar
Truschke, Audrey (2016): Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/columbia/9780231173629.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Van Bladel, Kevin (2011): “The Bactrian Background of the Barmakids”. In: Islam and Tibet Interactions along the Musk Routes. Edited by Anna Akasoy, C. Burnett and R. Yoeli-Tlali. London: Ashgate, 43–88.Search in Google Scholar
Vishnusharman (1993): The Pañcatantra. Translated by Chandra Rajan. London: Penguin Books India, 1993.Search in Google Scholar
Yiktā, Aḥmad Yār Khān (n.d.): Maṯnawī-i Yiktā. Edited by Maulawī Muḥammad. Lahore: Kutubkhāna Muḥammadī Darwāza-i Lahore.Search in Google Scholar
Ẓahīrī, Samarqandī, Muḥammad, Ibn ‘Alī (2002): Sindbād-nāma. Edited by Muḥammad Bāqir Kamāl al-Dīnī. Tehran: Mirāṯ-i maktūb.Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston