Tellings and Texts : Music, Literature and Performance in North India

"Examining materials from early modern and contemporary North India and Pakistan, Tellings and Texts brings together seventeen first-rate papers on the relations between written and oral texts, their performance, and the musical traditions these performances have entailed. The contributions from some of the best scholars in the field cover a wide range of literary genres and social and cultural contexts across the region. The texts and practices are contextualized in relation to the broader social and political background in which they emerged, showing how religious affiliations, caste dynamics and political concerns played a role in shaping social identities as well as aesthetic sensibilities. By doing so this book sheds light into theoretical issues of more general significance, such as textual versus oral norms; the features of oral performance and improvisation; the role of the text in performance; the aesthetics and social dimension of performance; the significance of space in performance history and important considerations on repertoires of story-telling. The book also contains links to audio files of some of the works discussed in the text. Tellings and Texts is essential reading for anyone with an interest in South Asian culture and, more generally, in the theory and practice of oral literature, performance and story-telling."--Publisher's website Acknowledgements 10 Note on Transliteration 12 Note on Dating Systems 13 List of Illustrations 14 Notes on Contributors 16 Introduction 22 I. Between Texts and Practices 50 1. The Example in Dadupanthi Homiletics 52 2. Making it Vernacular in Agra: The Practice of Translation by Seventeenth-Century Jains 82 3. World Enough and Time: Religious Strategy and Historical Imagination in an Indian Sufi Tale 128 4. Hearing Mo‘jizat in South Asian Shi‘ism 158 II. Books and Performances, Books for Performance 188 5. Note to Self: What Marathi Kirtankars’ Notebooks Suggest about Literacy, Performance, and the Travelling Performer in Pre-Colonial Maharashtra 190 6. A Handbook for Storytellers: The Ṭirāz al-akhbār and the Qissa Genre 206 7. Did Surdas Perform the Bhāgavata-purāṇa? 230 8. Text, Orality, and Performance in Newar Devotional Music 252 III. Written Clues about Performed Texts 268 9. Listening for the Context: Tuning in to the Reception of Riti Poetry 270 10. Reading the Acts and Lives of Performers in Mughal Persian Texts 304 11. Persian Poets on the Streets: The Lore of Indo-Persian Poetic Circles in Late Mughal India 324 12. Texts and Tellings: Kathas in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 348 13. A Curious King, a Psychic Leper, and the Workings of Karma: Bajid’s Entertaining Narratives 380 IV. Musical Knowledge and Aesthetics 404 14. Raga in the Early Sixteenth Century 406 15. Learning to Taste the Emotions: The Mughal Rasika 428 16. Patterns of Composition in the Seventeenth-Century Bengali Literature of Arakan 444 17. The Musical Lives of Texts: Rhythms and Communal Relationships among the Nizamis and Some of Their Neighbours in South and West Asia 466 Glossary 506 Bibliography 514 Index 556 Annotation Examining materials from early modern and contemporary North India and Pakistan, Tellings and Texts brings together seventeen first-rate papers on the relations between written and oral texts, their performance, and the musical traditions these performances have entailed. The contributions from some of the best scholars in the field cover a wide range of literary genres and social and cultural contexts across the region. The texts and practices are contextualized in relation to the broader social and political background in which they emerged, showing how religious affiliations, caste dynamics and political concerns played a role in shaping social identities as well as aesthetic sensibilities. By doing so this book sheds light into theoretical issues of more general significance, such as textual versus oral norms; the features of oral performance and improvisation; the role of the text in performance; the aesthetics and social dimension of performance; the significance of space in performance history and important considerations on repertoires of story-telling. The book also contains links to audio files of some of the works discussed in the text. Tellings and Texts is essential reading for anyone with an interest in South Asian culture and, more generally, in the theory and practice of oral literature, performance and story-telling Examining materials from early modern and contemporary North India and Pakistan, Tellings and Texts brings together seventeen first-rate papers on the relations between written and oral texts, their performance, and the musical traditions these performances have entailed. The contributions from some of the best scholars in the field cover a wide range of literary genres and social and cultural contexts across the region. By doing so this book sheds light into theoretical issues of more general significance, such as textual versus oral norms; the features of oral performance and improvisation; the role of the text in performance; the aesthetics and social dimension of performance; the significance of space in performance history and important considerations on repertoires of music, literature and dramatization. 'Tellings and texts' is essential for anyone with an interest in South Asian culture and, more generally, in the theory and practice of oral literature, performance and storytelling. -- book cover Edited By Francesca Orsini And Katherine Butler Schofield. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.