“‘A Banquet of Words’: Insights from a Poet’s Notebook into the Literary Culture of 18th-century Delhi
“‘A Banquet of Words’: Insights from a Poet’s Notebook into the Literary Culture of 18th-century Delhi”
A paper presented by Walter Hakala
Florence Tan Moeson Fellow and Ph.D. candidate,
Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania
12:00 to 1:00 p.m., October 2, 2008
Library of Congress Asian Division Conference Room, 10 First Street, SE, Washington, DC.
Metro stop: Capitol South on the Blue/Orange Line
The recent acquisition by the Library of Congress of a significant Pakistani collection of manuscripts provides an exciting new archive for the study of late Mughal South Asia. Among the manuscripts in the collection is a small and incomplete notebook containing verses by thirteen near-contemporary poets of the 18th century, including Shāh Mubārak ‘Ābrū’, his student, Shākir ‘Nājī’, and Nājī’s student, Miyān ‘Sikandar’. We also find verses by the infamous 18th-century kingmaker, Imād al-Mulk ‘Niām’, and his wife, the accomplished poet Gunnā Begum. This notebook therefore tells us much about the particular social milueu in which a new literary language—what came to be called Urdu—coalesced and circulated in Delhi during the 18th century. The poetry of this time is characterized by its free borrowings from local Indic idioms and a fluidity in orthography and rhyme, underlining the still experimental state of Urdu as a literary language. That this manuscript survives to the present day is all the more significant because poets of the following generations were so dismissive of these early efforts, critical of what they considered an over-reliance on word play and punning, known as īhām-go. This manuscript, thus, fills a gap in our understanding of how Urdu in the 18th century emerged from the shadows of a cosmopolitan Persian literary culture to become the celebrated language of the Mughal capital.
Contact: Dr. Allen Thrasher, 202-707-3732, athr@loc.gov
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