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Orsini, Francesca (2014) 'Traces of a multilingual world: Hindavi in Persian texts.' In: Orsini, Francesca and Sheikh, Samira, (eds.), After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in fifteenth-century north India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 411-444.

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Abstract

This chapter offers an analysis of multilingualism and vernacularization in north Indian literary culture in the fifteenth century. Asking why there are few traces of Hindavi in Persian writings of the period, and similarly, little recognition of the large Hindavi Sufi corpus in Persian Sufi writings, the chapter problematizes questions of genre, translation, and recording; questions that cannot be understood through the histories of present-day Hindi and Urdu that have been split on community lines. Through an analysis of ‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi’s Rushdnāma (ca. 1490), it points to the widespread oral practice of multilingualism that did not, however, often translate into textual traces. The chapter serves to pull together some of the dominant themes in the volume: of language use and the production of literature in the long fifteenth century.

Item Type: Book Chapters
Keywords: Hindavi, Persian, bilingual texts
SOAS Departments & Centres: Legacy Departments > Faculty of Languages and Cultures > Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia
ISBN: 9780199450664
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199450664.003.0014
Date Deposited: 09 May 2015 21:25
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/19889

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