India in the Persian World of Letters : Ḳhān-i Ārzū Among the Eighteenth-Century Philologists

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book traces the development of philology (the study of literary language) in the Persian tradition in India, concentrating on its socio-political ramifications. The most influential Indo-Persian philologist of the eighteenth-century was Sirāj al-Dīn'Alī Khān, (d. 1756), whose pen-name was Ārzū. Besides being a respected poet, Ārzū was a rigorous theoretician of language whose Intellectual legacy was side-lined by colonialism. His conception of language accounted for literary innovation and historical change in part to theorize the tāzah-go'ī [literally,'fresh-speaking'] movement in Persian literary culture. Although later scholarship has tended to frame this debate in anachronistically nationalist terms (Iranian native-speakers versus Indian imitators), the primary sources show that contemporary concerns had less to do with geography than with the question of how to assess innovative'fresh-speaking'poetry, a situation analogous to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in early modern Europe. Ārzū used historical reasoning to argue that as a cosmopolitan language Persian could not be the property of one nation or be subject to one narrow kind of interpretation. Ārzū also shaped attitudes about reḳhtah, the Persianized form of vernacular poetry that would later be renamed and reconceptualized as Urdu, helping the vernacular to gain acceptance in elite literary circles in northern India. This study puts to rest the persistent misconception that Indians started writing the vernacular because they were ashamed of their poor grasp of Persian at the twilight of the Mughal Empire. Cover India in the Persian World of Letters: Ḳhān-i Ārzū among the Eighteenth-Century Philologists Copyright Dedication Acknowledgments Contents Abbreviations of Ārzū’s Major Works Notes on Conventions Used Transliteration Marked or Ambiguous Consonants Vowels and special marks Introduction The Cosmopolitan and the Classic On Method, the West, and the Non-West Where This Study Will Take You 1: A Literate Life: Placing Ārzū and His Works in Their Social Context Becoming K: hān-i Ārzū Early Life and Family Delhi Final Years in Lucknow Ārzū’s People: Friends, Patrons, and Rivals Ānand Rām Mukhlis Tek Chand Bahār The Ticket to Success: Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir Bedil Other Poets in Ārzū’s Network Patrons Rivals and Enemies Ārzū’s Works Conclusion 2: Ārzū’s Fruitful Theory of Language The Fruit of the Fruitful Tree A Brief History of Arabic Philology The History of Persian Literary Culture as Described in Mus ̄mir Phonetics, Vocabulary, and Regional Variation Connections between Languages Three Kinds of Connections Figurative Language and Where Meaning Comes From Conclusion 3: Innovation and Poetic Authority in Eighteenth-Century Persian The “Indian Style” and India The Texts: Munīr’s Critique and Ārzū’s Responses Dād-i Sukhan’s Prefaces The Commentary and Intertextuality Hazīn’s Critique and Ārzū’s Response Ārzū and the Persian Cosmopolis 4: Dictionaries Delimiting Literary Language Mughal Lexicography before Ārzū Reading Sirāj al-Luġhat and Chirāġh-i Hidāyat together Other Major Eighteenth-Century Persian Dictionaries Ārzū’s Vernacular Lexicography Observations on Indian Religion as “Proto-Anthropology” Later Persian Lexicography in the Sub-Continent 5: Building a Vernacular Culture on the Ruins of Persian? Beginning in the Middle: How Āb-i Hayāt Presents the Eighteenth Century A Who’s Who of the People of Rekhtah Shāh Hātim (1699–1783) and His “Contemporaries” Mīr Muhammad Taqī Mīr (1722–1810) Rekhtah in Majmaʿ al-Nafāʾis Defining the (Literary) Vernacular Hindī outside of Delhi and the Language of Delhi Urdu and the Everyday Revisiting the Question of the “Unprivileged Power” of Indo-Persian 6: How Language Actually Works: Contrasting Europe and the Non-West Language and Early Modern Thought Ārzū’s Philology and Its Possible (But Unlikely) Influence on European Philology Ancients and Moderns in India and Europe Europe and Vernacular Politics: The Vernacular as Modernity? The Pre-Colonial Language Economy Multilingualism and the Individual Relevant and Irrelevant Linguistic Distinctions for Pre-Colonial South Asia The Social Mechanisms for Defining Language “Imagine There’s No Countries” Conclusion Bibliography Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book traces the development of philology (the study of literary language) in the Persian tradition in India, concentrating on its socio-political ramifications. The most influential Indo-Persian philologist of the eighteenth-century was Sirj al-Dn 'Al Khn, (d. 1756), whose pen-name was rz. Besides being a respected poet, rz was a rigorous theoretician of language whose Intellectual legacy was side-lined by colonialism. His conception of language accounted for literary innovation and historical change in part to theorize the tzah-go' [literally, "fresh-speaking"] movement in Persian literary culture. Although later scholarship has tended to frame this debate in anachronistically nationalist terms (Iranian native-speakers versus Indian imitators), the primary sources show that contemporary concerns had less to do with geography than with the question of how to assess innovative "fresh-speaking" poetry, a situation analogous to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Mode early modern Europe. rz used historical reasoning to argue that as a cosmopolitan language Persian could not be the property of one nation or be subject to one narrow kind of interpretation. rz also shaped attitudes about reokhtah, the Persianized form of vernacular poetry that would later be renamed and reconceptualized as Urdu, helping the vernacular to gain acceptance in elite literary circles in northern India. This study puts to rest the persistent misconception that Indians started writing the vernacular because they were ashamed of their poor grasp of Persian at the twilight of the Mughal Empire. This book traces the development of philology (the study of literary language) in Persian tradition in India, focusing socio-political ramifications, and provides an intellectual biography of Arzu, an innovative and influential eighteenth-century scholar and poet in India. This book traces the development of philology (the study of literary language) in Persian tradition in India, focusing socio-political ramifications, and provides an intellectual biography of Ārzū, an innovative and influential eighteenth-century scholar and poet in India.