scholarly journals Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shankar Nair
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Early Modern South Asia

What is military labour? War, logistics, and the Mughals in early modern South Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 096834452091861
Author(s):  
Pratyay Nath
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Early Modern South Asia

The category of ‘military labour’ has traditionally been used to designate ‘combat labour’ – the labour of soldiers. Focusing on the case of early modern South Asia, the present essay argues that this equivalence is misplaced and that it is a product of a distorted view of war defined primarily in terms of combat. The essay discusses the roles played by the logistical workforce of Mughal armies in conducting military campaigns and facilitating imperial expansion. It calls for broadening the category of ‘military labour’ to include all types of labour rendered consciously towards the fulfilment of military objectives.

scholarly journals Dyeing the Springtime: The Art and Poetry of Fleeting Textile Colors in Medieval and Early Modern South Asia

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 627
Author(s):  
Sylvia Houghteling
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Devotional Poetry ◽  
Literary Arts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
South Asian Art ◽  
Regional Histories ◽  
Early Modern South Asia

This paper explores the metaphorical and material significance of short-lived fabric dyes in medieval and early modern South Asian art, literature, and religious practice. It explores dyers’ manuals, paintings, textiles, and popular and devotional poetry to demonstrate how the existence of ephemeral dyes opened up possibilities for mutability that cannot be found within more stable, mineral pigments, set down on paper in painting. While the relationship between the image and the word in South Asian art is most often mutually enhancing, the relationship between words and color, and particularly between poetry and dye color, operates on a much more slippery basis. In the visual and literary arts of South Asia, dye colors offered textile artists and poets alike a palette of vibrant hues and a way to capture shifts in emotions and modes of devotion that retained a sense of impermanence. More broadly, these fragile, fleeting dye materials reaffirm the importance of tracing the local and regional histories even of objects, like textiles, that circulated globally.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 346-366
Author(s):  
Ayesha A. Irani
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Early Modern South Asia

The conclusion begins with reminiscences of a visit to a mosque in the Baṛaliyā village of Patiya district, Chittagong, which houses a cot that supposedly belonged to Saiyad Sultān. The chapter tells the tale of this miraculous cot, and the connections of its master to the kingdom of Arakan. This account highlights the interconnected nature of the histories of Chittagong and Arakan, and the bitter irony of today’s Rohingya crisis. It foregrounds this book’s contribution to translation theory and to research on the Islamization of southeast Bengal and the Islamic cosmopolis of early modern South Asia, while pointing to new directions for research.

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