Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia

by Shankar Nair

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. Translating Wisdom reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Using as a case study the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vasistha--an influential Sanskrit philosophical tale whose popularity stretched across the subcontinent--Shankar Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced cultural exchange and interreligious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia's past but also its present.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520345681
• ISBN13: 9780520345683
• Release Date: April 2020
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"