Transitions and translations: Regional power and vernacular identity in the Dakhan, 1500-1800

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Volumn 24, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 23-31

  Guha, Sumit ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

SOCIAL HISTORY;

EID: 17344367097     PISSN: 1089201X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/1089201X-24-2-23     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Sheldon Pollock, "Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History," Public Culture 12 (2000), 592.
2. Pollock has, of course, already warned us against unthinkingly adopting "a conceptual style that typically reduces language to power and precludes even asking what may be different about their interaction in the past." Sheldon Pollock, "The Cosmopolitan Vernacular," Journal of Asian Studies 57 (1998), 32.
3. The oft-cited and much-critiqued work of Benedict Anderson on print capitalism and its structuring effects may be cited as an example of such analysis on a macro-scale.
4. Cynthia Talbot, Pre-Colonial India in Practice: Society, Region and Identity in Medieval Andhra (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 34-7.
5. A. S. Altekar, "The Yadavas of Seunadesa," part 8 in The Early History of the Deccan (1960; repr. ed. Ghulam Yazdani [Delhi: Oriental Book Co., 1982]), 569-71.
6. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Recovering Babel," in Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in Soutb Asia, ed. Daud Ali (Delhi: Oxford University Press 1999), 280-321.
7. Shantanu Phukan, "'Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet': The Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian," Indian Economic and Social History Review 38:1 (2001), 33-58.
8. I venture to suggest that the rustic speech of the unlettered wet-nurses and attendants in the women's quarters might recall to aristocratic men a blissful period when they were cocooned in deferential affection-a period that ended with their induction into a world of slaps from tutors and snubs from grandees (if nothing worse).
9. This instability is highlighted by Sheldon Pollock when he condemns a History of French literature as "teleological to the core and unhistorical except in its brute linearity." Pollock, "Introduction," in Literary Cultures in History, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 11 (hereafter cited as LCIH .
10. Richard M. Eaton, Sufis of Bjapur 1300-1700: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 91-4, 135-74. By the late eighteenth century we have a poet complaining in five languages that only Shiva patronized Tamil, that Coastal Muslims rejected him, saying, "Arabi bat tumko malum nai nikal ja" (You do not know Arabic! Get out!). Cited in Indira V. Peterson, "Speaking in Tongues: The Cultural Discourses of Literary Multilingualism in Eighteenth-Century India" (paper presented at Columbia University, 2 December 2003).
11. Muzaffar Alam, "The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics," Modern Asian Studies 32:2 (1998), 349.
12. Alam, "Pursuit of Persian," 349, and the revised version of this paper, "Persian in Pre-colonial Hindustan," in LCIH, 162-3.
13. Alam, "Persian in Pre-colonial Hindustan," 188.
14. As Harish Trivedi elegantly puts it, "India remains a nation effectively without a national language, but at least-and perhaps precisely for that reason-it remains a nation." Harish Trivedi, "The Progress of Hindi," in LCIH, 981.
15. Noted by Alam, "Persian in Pre-colonial Hindustan," 157-8.
16. S. G. Tulpule and Anne Feldhaus, A Dictionary of Old Marathi (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), xi.
17. Cited in Bhimrao Kulkarni, ed., Sabhasad Bakhar (Pune: Anmol Prakashan, 1987), 25.
18. Sumit Guha, "Indigenous Historical Traditions and Colonial Histories: The Maratha Case" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, San Francisco, 3-6 January 2002).
19. Andre Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India (1985; Indian ed., Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1986).
20. Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal Nortb India: Awadh and the Punjab 1707-1748 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), 2 and n. 2.
21. Max Weber is still important for this concept: "Ethnic membership differs from the kinship group precisely by being a presumed identity, not a group with concrete social action, like the latter. In our sense, ethnic membership does not constitute a group; it only facilitates group formation of any kind, particularly in the political sphere." Max Weber, Economy and Society, trans. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), vol. 1, 389-90.
22. A few years ago, D. H. A. Kolff suggested that identities such as "Afghan" or "Rajput" were "soldier's identities" rather than "ethnic or genealogical denotations," but the evidence advanced for this sweeping statement is scanty. Furthermore, even by his own account, leaders had ethnic identities which were then donned and doffed by their followers as expedient. See D. H. A Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 56-8.
23. So, for example, writing from Senji (Jinji) in the 1690s, hundreds of miles from significant concentrations of Marathi speakers, Chatrapati Rajaram could still say, "This is a Maratha kingdom." Cited in Setumadhavarao Pagdi, Hindvi Svarajya ani Mogal (Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1966), 17.
24. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 141.
25. Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur, 133.
26. R. R. Gosavi, ed., Srisakalasantagatha (Pune: Sarathi Press, 2000), vol. 2, 1023.
27. Jayarama Pindye, Radhamadhavavilasacampu, ed. V. K. Rajwade (Pune: Varda Books reprint, 1996), 227.
28. Gosavi, Sakalasantagatha, vol. 2, 583-6.
29. Gosavi, Sakalasantagatha, vol. 2, 1023.
30. Close assimilation with the Mughal court led to the demise of the long-established Baghul kingdom in north Maharashtra. See Sumit Guha, Environment and Ethnicity in India c.1200-1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 62-80.
31. This refers to dysentery.
32. Gosavi, Sakalasantagatha vol. 2, 527-8.
33. S. N. Joshi and G. H. Khare, eds., Sivacaritrasahitya (Pune: Bharata Itihasa Samshodhaka Mandala 1930), vol. 3, 22.
34. V. K. Rajwade, Marathyancya Itihasanci Sadhanen (Dhule, 1912), part 15, 272.
35. S. B. Varnekar, "Shivaji's Patronage to Sanskrit Learning," in Chhatrapti Shivaji Coronation Tercentenary Commemoration Volume, ed. B. K. Apte (Bombay: University of Bombay, 1974-5), 85.
36. K. N. Sane has printed the Rajavyavaharakosa, and cites the sloka in his epilogue to it; Sivacaritrapradipa (Pune: Bharata Itihasa Samshodhaka Mandala 1925), 144-77.
37. Pindye, Radhamadhavavilasacampu.
38. To be exact, the poems are reported in the text as composed on various occasions at the court of Sahaji Bhonsle, who is praised in every part of the text. But there may be interpolations as well: the Marathi poem "Bhujangaprayaga" goes on to praise Sivaji, "who will wage war against four patshahs" (Radhamadhavavilasacampu, text, 267).
39. "dvadasabhasalalita Shahanaresvarane akarnile," Radhamadhavavilasacampu text, 3.
40. Radhamadhavavilasacampu, text, 226.
41. Radhamadhavavilasacampu, text, 227.
42. Rudrakavi, Rashtraudhavamsamabakavya, ed. C. D. Dalal (Baroda: Gaikwad Oriental Series V, 1917).
43. Radhamadhavavilasacampu, text, 245.
44. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, 120-58;
45. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Friday's Child: How Tej Singh became Tecinkurajan," Indian Economic and Social History Review 36:1 (1999): 69-113.
46. Joseph L. Saldanha, ed., The Christian Puranna of Father Thomas Stepbens (Mangalore: Simon Alvares, 1907), 7.
47. Pandita Avlikara, ed., Shrinijgunashivayogi krita Vivekacintamani (Dharwad: Karnataka University; Pune: Pune University, 1963). The modern edition of this work was itself a statement in the cultural politics of Nehruvian India: it was being edited and jointly published by state universities in Dharwad and Pune just as violent demonstrations erupted over the allocation of Belgaum district to Karnataka rather than Maharashtra.
48. This had begun with Akbar: see M. Athar Ali, "Translation of Sanskrit Works at Akbar's Court," in Akbar and His Age, ed. Iqtidar Alam Khan (New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 1999), 171-80.
49. Sheldon Pollock, "New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-Century India," Indian Economic and Social History Review 38:1 (2001), 20.
50. The proverbial nature this sloka came to acquire is shown by Ramacandra Pant's quotation of its first two words when composing the introduction to the Ajnapatra in 1717. S. N. Banhatti, the editor of the text, was able trace the allusion. S. N. Banhatti, ed., Ajnapatra (Pune and Nagpur: Suvicar Prakasana Mandala, 1986), 58, 121.
51. Pollock, "New Intellectuals," 20.
52. Parmananda, Sivabharata (Pune: Anandasrama Press, 1930). For an English translation see James W. Laine and S. S. Bahulkar, trans., The Epic of Shivaji (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001).
53. Akshayakirti Vyasa and G. H. Khare, "Udepurcya Vyasa gharanayakadila kahi Patren" Bharata Itihasa Samsodhaka Mandala Traimasika 33 (1952-3), 80.
54. Pagdi, Hindui Svaraj ani Mogal, 17.
55. Rajwade, Marathyancya Itihasanci Sadhanen, part 15, 377-8.
56. Cited in Kulkarni, Sabhasad Bakhar, 76.
57. Vyasa and Khare, "Udepurcya Vyasa gharanayakadila kahi patren," 80.
58. Cited in M. T. Patwardhan, introduction to Farsi-Marathi kosa, 2nd ed. (Pune: Varda Books, 1996), 6.
59. Narendra Wagle and A. R. Kulkarni, ed. and trans., Vallabha's Parasrama caritra (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1976).
60. T. Sambamurti Row, transcribed and ed., The Marathi Historical Inscription at the Sri Bribadeeswaraswami Temple at Tanjore (Tanjore: Sri Krishna Vilasa Press, 1907), passim and 119.