Introduction

Abstract

This volume brings together the papers presented at the third and final conference of the AHRC-funded project "North Indian Literary Culture and History from a Multilingual Perspective: 1450-1650", which Francesca ran at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) between 2006-2009 and in which Katherine was intimately involved from start to finish. The conference was initially entitled "Tellings, Not Texts", but over the course of the three days it became clear that texts were very much involved in many of the performance forms and traditions we were discussing, hence the change of title. (The first conference volume, After Timur Left, came out in 2014 from Oxford University Press, New Delhi, co-edited by Francesca and Samira Sheikh.) We would first of all like to thank the AHRC for its generous support. The conference, which took place on 8-10 June 2009, benefited from a British Academy conference support grant, for which we are also grateful, as we are to the European Research Council which supported Katherine's contributions in the latter stages. We would like here to heartily thank all the contributors for their patience and good humour as we asked for more and more changes. We thank Alessandra Tosi for her enthusiasm and welcome, and Dr David Lunn for careful copy-editing. Our dear friend Aditya Behl helped plan the conference and was supposed to come, but was in the end too ill to travel. He died, tragically young, two months later. We would like to dedicate the volume to him, for he remains in our thoughts and in our love. FO and KBS London and Cambridge, July 2015This volume necessarily makes reference to four discrete calendrical systems.Where otherwise unmarked, we use the Common/Christian Era (Anno Domini), denoted "CE". The Islamic calendar (denoted "AH": Anno Hegirae, or Hijri year), commenced in the year 622 CE. A lunar calendar, it does not correspond directly to the Gregorian Calendar, and the year 2015 CE is 1436-37 AH. The Vikram Samvat calendar, denoted "VS", is between 56-57 years ahead of the Common Era, thus 2015 CE covers 2071-72 VS. Finally, the Banggabda or Bengali Calendar, denoted "BA", is between 593-94 years behind the Common Era, thus 2015 CE is 1421-22 BA. Both VS and BA are solar calendars, but do not begin in January, so there is no precise overlap with CE. List of Illustrations5.1 (L) Jnaneshwari Stamp, issued in 1990 to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the composition of the Jñāneśvarī; (R) "Saint Dnyaneshwar" stamp, issued in 1997 in memory of Jnaneswhar/ Jnandev. Public Domain. 5.2 Namdev Performing a Kirtan, folio from a nineteenth-century publication of Mahipati's eighteenth-century biography [1890]. Public Domain. 5.3 Four typical badas or "notebooks" in the collection of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Author's photograph, CC BY. 5.4 Transcript of a kirtan from a Marathi bada, c. eighteenth century.

Emotions in performance: Poetry and preaching

“…63 Insights into oral and aural aspects of the telling of texts in South Asia are increasing and their importance is emphasised in recent scholarship. 64 This confirms the importance rhetoric has long attributed to voice, particularly so for group phenomena such as emotional entrainment. 65 Waʿz mahfils combine possibilities for intimate communication opened up by amplification 66 with a characteristic style of chanting that links it to earlier times, times when the voice was not technically amplified.…”

“…pp. [63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76]'Feminine Authorship'. 36 Reportedly, attendance at a mahfil tended to be by invitation only, with the audience consisting of reputed poets and their pupils.…”

“…pp. [63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76]. See also Petievich, 'Feminine Authorship'.…”

Ḥamza versus Rustam: Comparing the Ḥamzanāma with the Shāhnāma

“…According to Fakhr al-Zamānī (2013: 20–21) and Sabri (2011: 32), the story of Ḥamza had similar therapeutic effects on Masʿūd of Ghazna (r. 1030–1041), who recovered from illness by listening to the recitation of the Ḥamzanāma for four months; but the story continued for another two months. Thus, the Ḥamzanāma was seen from its mythological inception as an oral “performative” (Khan 2015: 198; 2019a: 114) story that was given in successive instalments with cliffhanger endings or as oral serial narrative, probably reflecting Fakhr al-Zamānī's own performance style 3…”

Emotions in Indian music history: anxiety in late Mughal Hindustan

“…Bear in mind that most Indian literature in this period was designed to be recited aloud to listeners. 95 Naim notes that the passage I have italicized makes unusual use of eight idioms constructed on the word 'hand' (dast) in rapid succession. 96 Mir wielded them in short, punchy sentences that would have left a Persian-literate audience stunned and reeling from the metaphorical weight of the blackguards' fists and swords raining down on them, too, as they listened.…”