Search

This article discusses the field of Persianate studies and its growth over the past decade. It focuses on the Persianate world region throughout history, examining collective identities that are overlapping and concentric. The article highlights various books and edited volumes that contribute to the understanding of Persianate identity and its evolution over time. It also explores various topics related to Persianate culture and history, including the role of tradition and memory in shaping Persian Muslim identity, the impact of the Mongol conquests, the Timurid era and its intellectual networks, and the Ottoman redefinition of the caliphate. The article also discusses the influence of Persianate Islamicate culture on regions such as Bengal, Kashmir, and Mughal India, and the role of Persian translations of Sanskrit classics in the Mughal Empire. It concludes by mentioning the reception of Persianate Sufism in China and the poetry of two lesser-known women writers. [Extracted from the article]

This paper makes a case for exploring the cultural facets of Mughal rule as well as for a stronger engagement with sources in vernacular languages for the writing of Mughal history. Bengal's regional tradition of goddess worship is used to explore the cultural dimensions of Mughal rule in that region as well as the idioms in which Bengali regional perceptions of Mughal rule were articulated. Mangalkavya narratives—a quintessentially Bengali literary genre—are studied to highlight shifting perceptions of the Mughals from the late sixteenth century to the eighteenth century. During the period of the Mughal conquest of Bengal, the imperial military machine was represented as a monster whom the goddess Chandi, symbolizing Bengal's regional culture, had to vanquish. By the eighteenth century, when their rule had become much more regularized, the Mughals were depicted as recognizing aspects of Bengal's regional culture by capitulating in the end to the goddess and becoming her devotees. This paper also studies the relationship of the Mughal regime with Bengal's popular cultural celebration—the annual Durga puja—and explores its implications for the public performance of religion and for community formation during the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the economic conditions and political context of Bengal, India in the early modern era, focusing on the period from its takeover by the Mughal Empire in 1590 to the confirmation of the rule of the British East India Company in 1765. It addresses regional differences and analyzes ballads from Eastern Bengal, specifically from the regions of Mymensingh, Rangpur, and the Noakhali–Chittagong coast, to address material life. Themes of statelessness, oppression, anarchy, and globalization are considered.

This article explores a phase of cultural efflorescence characterised by temple construction, the cultivation of music, scholarship, the copying and embellishment of manuscripts in the kingdom of Bishnupur in south-western Bengal from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The inspiration for these cultural accomplishments is traced to a combination of Mughal-Rajput and Vaishnava influences. The article traces the historical factors that made possible the complex inter-relations among these strands of culture and argues that the rulers of Bishnupur initiated this cultural programme with the aim of assimilating cosmopolitan, elite practices associated with Northern Indian courtly society. The discussion highlights the role of Mughal-Rajput courtly culture in creating a concept of cosmopolitanism in tandem with the devotional culture of Vaishnavism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature and understandings of history, or itihasa/Purana, in eighteenth-century India using two Mangalkabya narratives. These materials belong to a large genre of performance narratives, usually devoted to eulogizing various deities, that were produced in Bengal for several centuries. The paper illustrates how a "traditional" genre such as the Mangalkabya was effectively used to articulate contingent political and cultural preoccupations. The narratives studied here show that the historical experiences and contexts mirrored in them were derived from Mughal rule over Bengal and large parts of India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The paper seeks to historicize and contextualize the shifts noticeable in these narratives and to engage with the notion that premodern, precolonial India lacked a sense of history molded by contemporary material and cultural imperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]