The “evidential paradigm” in Persian Classics: princes from Sarandip and other clue interpreters

The rich history of Persian literature reception in the West includes such a major event as the translation of the Persian narrative into European languages. This has influenced the comprehension of a new epistemological paradigm in the humanities. The story under discussion is the first chapter of Amir Khusrav Dihlavi’s poem “Eight Paradises” (Hašt bihišt, 1299–1301), in which the Indian princess tells the Sassanian king Bahram Gur a tale of three princes from Sarandip (Sri Lanka, Ceylon). As the plot progresses, the princes restore the events of the past according to clues and signs and repeatedly demonstrate their firāsa or ability to guess based on the analysis of evidence. The stages of European reception of this story are well known. All this material is discussed in the methodologically famous work “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm” (1986) by Carlo Ginzburg, who connected the “evidential paradigm” with the Arabic firāsa, a “complex notion which, in general, designated the ability to pass, on the basis of clues, directly from the known to the unknown”; Ginzburg noted that the Sarandip princes were famous exactly for that ability. In this article, the Persian prose sources of the Three princes tale are under discussion, as well as some other sagacity stories from Persian didactic books (adab). Among the detective characters Abū ʻAlī ibn Sīnā gained particular popularity; in some stories, the great philosopher and author of the fundamental canon “The Medicine” acts as a doctor who recognizes a disease by symptoms and at the same time as a detective who restores the course of events from evidence and refutes unfair accusations before a judge.

‘Did You Know Your Great-Grandmother Was an Indian Princess?’

This chapter is based on oral history and brings valuable new perspectives to the social world of the Anglo-Indian migrant community—an ethnically and culturally hybrid Indian minority of colonial origin, whose members are primarily Westernised, English-speaking, and Christian. Anglo-Indians have migrated from India in large numbers, mainly to English-speaking Commonwealth countries, including Australia and New Zealand. While most migrated after India’s independence in 1947, a number arrived in Australia and New Zealand much earlier. This chapter explores early Anglo-Indian migration to New Zealand, focusing on the experiences of Mrs Frederica Hay, née Coventry, who migrated from Calcutta via South Africa to Dunedin in 1869 and the importance of this transnational link to some of her descendants.

Browning the Dark Princess

Chapter 5 explores how brownness appeared in Harlem Renaissance fiction as an index of growing sentiments around transnational activism. Focusing on W. E. B. DuBois’s novel, Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), this chapter analyzes the novel’s narrative device of brownness with a focus on the representation of an Asian Indian princess as the main female protagonist and love interest of the African American male hero. This chapter also explores DuBois’s intellectualizing on the “race concept”; it highlights the political, social, and legal shifts in understandings of race while considering how these meanings shaped views of New Negro womanhood.

Dalit Women Writings: Breaking the stereotypical annotations of “being an untouchable”

Indian women writers have established a permanent place in the arena of literature, because they have written with a woman’s point of view and have not imitated the established and stereotypical manners of writing. Most of the earlier Indian women autobiographies are written by educated, high-caste and rich women, especially queens and princess. However in their writings they have not glorified their riches instead have written about the social practices committed on women of their times and thus have expressed a genuine female experience.The Autobiography of an Indian Princess (1921) is one of the earliest writings by an Indian woman. Sunetee Devi (1864-1932), a daughter of Brahma follower Keshav Chandra Sen, who became the Maharani of Cooch Behar, lost her husband early in life. The book is a stepping stone in the realm of Indian women autobiographies as it depicts the inner feelings of most of the Indian women of 19th and 20th century. Another remarkable woman autobiography is India Calling (1934) by Cornelia Sorabji (1866-1954). It is the autobiography of India’s first woman lawyer, who raged a struggle against the suppression of women. Sorabji belonged to Parsi-Christian family. She was inspired to choose her job by observing the plight of women who visited her mother. Her book depicts the gender discrimination encountered by her not only in India but also in England where she went to study

The Princess and the Squaw

This chapter examines the representation of Indian women—also overlooked in most previous studies of the pictorial press—contrasting the romantic “Indian princess” stereotype with a harsher set of qualities often associated with Indian women in the pictorial press. Many Indian women in the pictorial press were placed in one of two culturally constructed categories: princesses or squaws. Either way, Indian women were marked as different from whites, a safe and controlled “cultural other.” Young, beautiful Indian women and mothers could be cast as “princesses,” while old, poor, and “uncivilized” Indian women were depicted as “squaws.” Both Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly employed these categories routinely, though there were differences between these papers. Harper's emphasized the poverty and hardship of Indian women, often suffering at the hands of Indian men, while Leslie's sometimes ridiculed Indian women for their silliness or grooming habits.