Paratexting Persian Purāṇas Probing Religious and Communal Boundaries in South Asian History

Article Sidebar

cover image
PDF
Published: Dec 24, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14434/tc.v17i2.40322
Keywords:
Purāṇa, Hindu narrative, Persian purāṇa manuscripts, paratext, literary communities, religious communities, Persian and South Asian manuscript cultures

Main Article Content

Pranav Prakash
Christ Church, University of Oxford

Abstract

Purāṇa is a Sanskrit term reserved for a genre of Hindu narrative literature that grapples with themes like the creation and dissolution of the cosmos, the genealogies of gods and sages, the dynastic chronicles of royal figures, and the cyclical movement of time, among others. Purāṇas were recast into Persian genres throughout the second millennium CE, and a notable collection of Persian purāṇa manuscripts therefore survives today. This essay examines the paratextual elements of Persian purāṇa manuscripts with the aim of elucidating how the ethos of literary communities transcended religious and communal boundaries in early modern and colonial South Asia. In so doing, it reflects on the limits and challenges of deploying paratextual theory in the context of Persian and South Asian manuscript cultures.


 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 17 No. 2 (2024): Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation
Section
Essays

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (see:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors warrant that their submission is their own original work, and that they have the right to grant the rights contained in this license. Authors also warrant that their submission does not, to the best of your knowledge, infringe upon anyone's copyright. If the submission contains material for which an author does not hold the copyright, authors warrant that they have obtained the unrestricted permission of the copyright owner to grant Indiana University the rights required by this license, and that such third-party owned material is clearly identified and acknowledged within the text or content of their submission.
  3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
Author Biography

Pranav Prakash , Christ Church, University of Oxford

Pranav Prakash specializes in the comparative study of religions, literary cultures, and book arts in Persian and South Asian societies. His research grapples with historical sources and textual materials found in multiple languages, most notably Persian, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, and Maithili. His articles are featured in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Journal of Persianate Studies, and Asian Ethnology, among others. He is a fellow of Christ Church, University of Oxford, and the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, Rare Book School, University of Virginia. He is a trustee of the American Printing History Association, New York. He is the recipient of the Honorary Fellowship of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies (IASS), Collège de France; the Exchange Fellowship of the Newberry Library, Chicago and École Nationale des Chartes, Paris; and the Junior Research Fellowship of the American Institute of Indian Studies, University of Chicago.