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Translating the New Taste
Rasa, Movement, and Multilingualism in Ibrahim Adil Shah II’s Kitāb-i nauras
Speakers
From Konkan to Coromandel – Deccan Heritage, Art and Culture (Autumn 2022)
The fifth season of webinars co-organized by the Deccan Heritage Foundation, the Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, the Bangalore International Centre and the Museum of Art & Photography, presenting the pioneering scholarship in various cultural fields from both the Northern and Southern Deccan Regions of India.
Around the year 1600, Ibrahim Adil Shah II, the king of the Bijapur Sultanate, composed a book of songs titled Kitāb-i nauras (The New Book). Due to its extensive number of manuscript copies—including one by the well-traveled scribe Khalilullah Butshikan—and inclusion of verses in praise of Ganesha, Shiva, and Sarasvati, the book is one of the best-known examples of literature in the regional language Dakkani. While prior scholarship has focused on luxury manuscripts of the text that traveled, this presentation shifts focus to the contents of the songs. In contrast to suggestions that Ibrahim’s inclusion of verses in praise of Hindu deities and use of Indian themes reflect his particular political tolerance or personal religious convictions, Zoë Woodbury High will argue that the text’s innovations lie in the realm of poetics rather than religion. Through an analysis of several of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Kitāb-i nauras, she will demonstrate how its author oriented the work towards a readership familiar with Persian literary models and conventions, even as he incorporated tropes drawn from an Indian context.
Image credit (website & poster): Folio from the Kitab-i nauras by Ibrahim Adil Shah II
In collaboration with the Deccan Heritage Foundation, the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, the Museum of Art & Photography and the Bangalore International Centre.
Speakers
Zoë Woodbury High
Zoë Woodbury High is a PhD Candidate in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the cultural history of the early modern Deccan and Indian Ocean regions, particularly histories of taste, emotion, and the senses. Her dissertation project focuses on new understandings of taste in and around the Bijapur court, relations between Iran and the Deccan in the seventeenth century, and intersections between literary culture and the history of consumption. She works in Dakkani, Persian, Sanskrit, and Kannada.
