NEGATIVE THEOLOGY OF NUND RISHI : poetry and politics in medieval kashmir

Nund Rishi (1378–1440) is considered one of the most important Sufi poets from Kashmir. He is revered as the 'flag-bearer of Kashmir' ('Alamdār-e Kashmir), and his poems draw upon the hyperlocal imagery of the Kashmiri literary universe. Despite his popular status as a spiritual successor of Lal Ded, Nund Rishi's poetry has received next to no attention in modern scholarship. This book embodies Abir Bazaz's enduring engagement with the poetic corpus of Nund Rishi. By unpacking the cryptic philosophical and philological riddles in the poems, Bazaz unearths a negative theology in Nund Rishi's mystical poetry. He argues convincingly that the themes of Islam, Death, the Nothing and the Apocalyptic in these poems reveal an existential politics. Bazaz further suggests that the apophatic style of Nund Rishi's poems is in turn mirrored in mystical poetry across South Asia and the larger Indo-Persian world. 01.0_pp_i_iv_Frontmatter 02.0_pp_v_v_Dedication 03.0_pp_vi_vi_Epigraph 04.0_pp_vii_viii_Contents 05.0_pp_ix_xii_Acknowledgments 06.0_pp_1_50_Introduction 07.0_pp_51_130_The_Sahaja_Islam_of_Nund_Rishi 08.0_pp_131_183_Practicing_Death 09.0_pp_184_213_Becoming_Nothing 10.0_pp_214_245_Vernacular_Apocalypse 11.0_pp_246_249_Conclusion 12.0_pp_250_262_Bibliography 13.0_pp_263_281_Index