Introduction
The present volume, Literary Cultures in Early Modern North India Current Research, brings together a selection of contributions from some of the leading scholars as well as emerging researchers in the field, ori-ginally presented at the 13th International Conference on Early Modern Literatures in North India (ICEMLNI), organized by the University of Warsaw (Chair of South Asian Studies, Faculty of Oriental Studies; 18-22 July 2018). For over forty years, these triennial conferences, initiated to share "Bhakti in current research' and commonly referred to as "Bhakti con-ferences, have been an established forum for scholars working on literary cultures of the Early Modernity (conceived broadly as ranging from the fifteenth/sixteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries¹). Initially, conference participants focused on early vernacular poetry in northern India, which has been primarily perceived as religious literature. Bhakti texts had barely been studied by scholars of Sanskrit or by scholars of modern languages, who mostly specialized in contemporary literature. While there was a wealth of research publications in Indian languages unravelling the literary heritage of an emerging nation, scholarship in English, French, German, Russian, and other European languages was scarce. Until the first decades of Indian independence, the study of vernaculars was mostly carried out by Indian scholars usually positioned at the newly established public institu-tions and universities of the country. Interest beyond Indians was limited to a few academics, such as Garcin de Tassy, Abraham George Grierson, Frederic S. Growse, Luigi Pio Tessitori, Aleksei Petrovich Barannikov, Camille Bulcke, Vladimir Miltner, Charlotte Vaudeville, and some others who studied India's living traditions not through the classical but the ver nacular languages. Most of these scholars never met each other but shared their research in books, articles, and correspondence. A new generation of Western academics made their appearance in print from the late 1960s on-wards. These scholars, unlike their predecessors, were able to discuss their findings with each other and with Indian colleagues through meetings at conferences. The most important forum for this was the triennial confer-ence series initiated in 1979 at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, bringing together scholars from India, Japan, New Zealand. America, and Europe. The proceedings of the first conference presented the research of 39 scholars indicating the liveliness of the field by that time. Initially, the texts under study were particularly difficult to access due to the lack of good editions even for some of the most important authors, and the lack of dictionaries as well as other reference volumes. Information about the authors was based on hagiography and colonialist or nationalist historiography. Consulting Indian scholars who grew up as part of a still living tradition was of particular help. Since the last decade of the twentieth century, the field has undergone enormous change. It was the publication of dictionaries, such as McGregor's Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary, Callewaert and Sharma's Dictionary of Bhakti, and the editions of Kabir and of other important authors that facilitated subse-quent research. The early years of the second millennium saw the expan-sion of the conceptual framework of the field. Through this expansion, a wide range of subjects beyond religious texts have been included; new conceptualizations of knowledge, history, textuality, and authorship have emerged, along with the digitization of texts and reference material.
About The Book
Literary Cultures in Early Modern North India grows out of over a 40-year tradition of the triennial International Conferences on Early Modern Literatures in North India (ICEMLNI), initiated to share 'Bhakti in current research.' This volume brings together a selection of contributions from some of the leading scholars as well as emerging researchers in the field originally presented at the University of Warsaw in 2018. Considering innovative methodologies and tools, it presents the current state of research on early modern sources and offers new inputs into our understanding of this period in the cultural history of India. The essays cover multiple languages (Indian vernaculars, Sanskrit, Apabhramsha, Persian), different media (texts, performances, paintings, music), and traditions (Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Sant, Sikh), analysing them as individual phenomena that function in a wider network of connections at textual, intertextual, and knowledge-system levels.
About The Author
IMRE BANGHA is Associate Professor of Hindi at Oxford. He studied Indology in Budapest and holds a PhD from Visva-Bharati. His publications include English, Hindi, and Hungarian books and articles on literature in Brajbhasha and other forms of classical Hindi with special focus on the poetry of Anandghan, Thakur, Vişnudās, Tulsidās, Kabir, Bājīd as well as on Nāgari Rekhta compositions.
DANUTA STASIK is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Warsaw where she studied Indology and did her PhD. Her research focuses on the history of Hindi literature, the Rāmāyaņa tradition in North India, and the Indian diaspora in the West with a particular emphasis on Hindi writing. Her publications include books and research papers in English, Hindi, and Polish devoted to these subjects.
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