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Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Languages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
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What have been the Historical Relationships Between the Islamic and Hindu religious traditions? Variations on this question inevitably come to mind in any attempt to assess the significance of the past dozen centuries of South Asian civilization, during which time significant Muslim populations have played important roles, interacting with Indian religions and cultures from a variety of perspectives. Although frequently this kind of question is posed in terms of assumptions about the immutable essences of Islam and Hinduism, I would like to argue that this kind of approach is fundamentally misleading, for several reasons. First, this approach is ahistorical in regarding religions as unchanging, and it fails to account for the varied and complex encounters, relationships, and interpretations that took place between many individual Muslims and Hindus. Second, it assumes that there is a single clear concept of what a Hindu is, although this notion is increasingly coming into question; considerable evidence has accumulated to indicate that external concepts of religion, first from post-Mongol Islamicate culture, and eventually from European Christianity in the colonial period, were brought to bear on a multitude of Indian religious traditions to create a single concept of Hinduism.
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References
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84. ˓Abd Allah, Adabīyāt-i fārsī, 216, no. 11, where the offensive treatise is identified as Tuḥfat al-Hind. This seems unlikely, since that work is primarily an account of Indian arts and culture that is not in any way critical; see Mirza Khan ibn Fakhr al-Din Muhammad, Tuḥfat al-Hind, ed. Ansari, Nur al-Hasan (Tehran, 1354/1975).Google Scholar Perhaps what is meant is the similarly entitled Ḥujjat al-Hind of ˓Ali Mihrabi, which consists of a polemical dialogue between two birds on the merits of Hindu mythology and Islam. The dating of the text by the Indian Vikrama or Samvat era, rather than the Islamic calendar, is a telling index of the polemical character of this work.
85. ˓Abd Allah, Adabīyāt-i fārsī, 216, no. 12, found in Punjab University Library, Lahore.
86. Shayagan, Daryush Adyān wa maktab-hā-yi falsafī-yi Hind, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1967).Google Scholar
87. Besides the previously mentioned editions of Dara Shukuh's Majma˓ al-baḥrayn and the Mahābhārata, see Shukuh, Dara trans., Ūpānīshād (Sirr-i akbar), ed. Tara Chand and Muammad Riza Jalali Na˒ini, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1963Google Scholar; reprint Tehran, 1368/1989).
88. Muhammad Riza’ Jalali Na'ini, Guzīdah-i sarūd-hā-yi rīg vedā (Tehran, 1348/1969)Google Scholar; idem, Ṭarīqa-i Gurū Nānak va paydāyī-yi āyīn-i Sik (Tehran, 1349/1970)Google Scholar; idem, Ādāb-i ṭarīqat va khudāyābī dar ˓irfān-i hindū (Tehran, 1347/1968)Google Scholar; idem, Khwīshāvandī-yi zabān va maẕhab-i qadīm-i dū qawm-i āryā-yi Īrān wa Hind (Benares, 1971); Shahrastāni, Ārā-yi Hind (bakhshī az kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal, new ed. Mustafa Khaliqdad ˓Abbasi, ed. Muhammad Riza’ Jalali Na'ini, (Tehran, 1349/1970); Dara Shukuh, trans., Bhagavad Gītā, ed. Muhammad Riza’ Jalali Na'ini (n.p., 1957).
89. Muhammad Riza’ Jalali Na'ini and Shukla, N. S. Lughāt-i sānskrīt maẕkūr dar kitāb mālil-Hind-i ˓Allāma Bīrūnī (Tehran, 1353/1975)Google Scholar; idem, Farhang-i fārsī prakāsh (farhang-i sānskrīt bi-fārsī) (n.p., 1354/1976); idem, Farhang-i Sanskrīt-Fārsī (Tehran, 1996).Google Scholar Cf. also Raja, Chittenjoor Kunhan Persian-Sanskrit grammar, (New Delhi, 1953)Google Scholar, and Muhammad ˓Ali Hasani Da˓i al-Islami, Khwudāmūz-i zabān-i Sanskrīt [Teach Yourself Sanskrit] 2nd edition, (Tehran, 1982).Google Scholar
90. Mujtabai, Fathullah “Muntakhab-i Jug-basasht or, Selections from the Yoga-vasistha,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1976.Google Scholar
91. al-Din Ashtiyani, Muhandis Jalal Īdiāl-i bashar; tajziya wa taḥlīl-i afkār-i ˓irfān-i būdīsm wa jaynīsm, maẕāhib-i hindū, (The Ideals of Humanity: Analysis of the Mystical Thought of the Indian Religions of Buddhism and Jainism,) (Tehran, 1377/1999).Google Scholar
92. Carandas Sukhadevji, Svarodaya, Persian trans. from Hindi by Satidasa son of Ram Bha'i “˓Arif,” Muḥīṭ-i ma˓rifat (Lucknow, 1860)Google Scholar; reprint ed. Chahardihi, Nur al-Din Asrār-i panhānī-yi maktab-i yūg (Hidden Secrets of Yoga Teaching) (Tehran, 1369/1991).Google Scholar
93. Kalidasa, Śakuntala, Persian trans. by Hasan, Hadi Shakuntala yā khatīm-i mafqūd (Tehran, 1956)Google Scholar, also trans. ˓Ali Asghar Hikmat (Delhi, 1957); Rabrindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, Persian trans. by Farhadi, Ravan Surūd-i nayāyish (Kabul, 1975).Google Scholar
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