Translating Wisdom : Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia
Hinduism Islam HISTORY / Asia / India & South Asia ancient india early modern india hindu sanskrit texts history indian history intellectual history islamic intellectuals jug basisht laghu yoga vasistha metaphysics mughal south asia mughal nonfiction persian religion religious diversity religious history religious studies sanskrit south asia spirituality sufi translation movement translations yoga vasistha
University of California Press
2020
EISBN 0520975758
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. Translating Wisdom reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Using as a case study the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vasistha—an influential Sanskrit philosophical tale whose popularity stretched across the subcontinent—Shankar Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced cultural exchange and interreligious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia’s past but also its present.
