Panel Organizers:

Thomas de Bruijn - Leiden University, the Netherlands
Allison Busch - Asst. Prof. of Hindi Literature, Dept. of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages en Cultures, Columbia University, USA

Abstract

With the mobility of people in pre-modern South Asia, whether involved in trade, political life, military campaigns, following pilgrimage circuits, or seeking new patronage opportunities, came various degrees of exchange and circulation within and between cultural spaces. This circulation of people and ideas renders inadequate any essentialist model that narrowly links cultural production to a specific social class, region, language, or religious identity. Foregrounding movement and exchange may also require researchers to question the division of cultural processes along traditional disciplinary lines like literature, music or religion. This panel will bring together experts from the fields of early modern North Indian literature and music to track a range of multi-channeled and in some cases intersecting cultural trajectories. It invites reflection on the question of how circulatory processes impacted one or more aspects of Indian cultural life. These processes can be traced through dialogic linkages that explore polyphony across traditions (eg. Hindi and Persian, or poetry and music), across regions (eg. Hindustan and Bengal) or across different time periods. The panel emphasizes a crossdisciplinary approach to open up new avenues for thinking about early modern cultural life outside of strictly bounded categories. Besides the analysis of cultural artifacts it also encourages the formulation of relevant theoretical models that can accommodate complex flows and interactions. In order to streamline the flux of ideas in a wide and varied field of research the conveners propose that panelists adhere to one of the following three formats:

1) Crossovers between cultural traditions.
Scholars are invited to study crossovers between particular traditions-whether defined in linguistic, formal or disciplinary terms, or socially-based ones (whether Hindu or Muslim, court or temple)-demonstrating how the circulation of ideas precipitated new genres, styles, forms of intertextuality and other kinds of cultural innovation or reconfiguration.

2) Movements of producers of culture.
Other papers might track the movement of people whether scholars, musicians, bards or court poets, exploring the geography and sociality of cultural flows. What are the conceptual, material, and socio-political manifestations of the movement of people as evident from shifts in cultural attitudes, the distribution of manuscripts or changing patronage practices?

3) Culture circulating through time and space.
Some cultural forms appear to circulate (and recirculate) across vaster temporal reaches than has been formerly acknowledged. A third rubric for papers would be to track the circulation of ideas over stretches of time, whether narrowly (e.g. shifts from seventeenth to eighteenth century) or broadly (precolonial versus colonial or postcolonial) conceived. What are the critical continuities and/or breaks with earlier traditions that need to be factored into any theorization of South Asian culture and circulation?

Aditya Behl, University of Pennsylvania, Department of South Asia Studies, Philadelphia, USA
Chair/Discussant

Vasudha Dalmia, University of California - Berkeley, Department of South Asian Studies, Berkeley, USA
Chair/Discussant

John Stratton Hawley, Department of Religion, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, USA
Mirabai at the Court of Guru Gobind Singh

"Circulation" has long been a leading motif in the best-known stories of the life of the 16th-century poet-saint Mirabai. Famously, her circulation was responsible for a good bit of the scandal that caused her in-laws to try to poison her. Seen from a more positive angle, the regions where she is said to have travelled and the companions she is said to have made along the way are held responsible for giving birth to the various linguistic registers found in the substantial corpus of poetry attributed to her.
For all this travel, however, none of the standard accounts suggests that Mirabai ever had reason to visit the Punjab. Yet the second oldest account of her life to have survived to the present day (after that of Nabhadas, ca. 1600) comes precisely from the Punjab; and despite the fact that Mirabai had earlier been expunged from the Guru Granth Sahib, it reads as if it might have been performed at the court of Guru Gobind Singh. This is the Mirabai section of the Prem Abodh, a hagiographical document that comes to us in a manuscript dating to 1783 (V.S. 1840). That manuscript, housed at Khalsa College, Amritsar, tells us it is a copy of a manuscript dated 1693 (V.S. 1750), which points more or less directly to the time and ambience of Guru Gobind Singh. In the Prem Abodh, like the Bhaktirasabodhini of Priyadas (1712), we find Mira arrayed against a rana, but the Prem Abodh's Mira is distinctly devotionalized. We have multiple passages in which her pellucid inner spirituality, focused on Giridhar-the antari realm-is contrasted to the external deceptions of the world: samsar-the bahari domain. The rana represents samsar.
The Prem Abodh's rana seems clearly to be a father-figure rather than her putative husband Bhojraj or his evil brother Vikramajit, for this rana he speaks of her as a daughter (putri). This nowadays heretical perspective on Mirabai's family dynamics tallies in some measure with a passage that Heidi Pauwels has brought to light from the 16th-century verse of Hariramvyas, which also stresses the father-daughter relationship:

Mirabai vinu ko bhaktani pita jani ura lavai
With Mirabai gone, who will embrace devotees like [a daughter] her
father?

Thus it is not just Mirabai who circulates in early hagiographical accounts, but the dramatis personae who surround her.
I am hoping that Gurinder Singh Mann will be able to join me in this presentation. We have shared notes on the Prem Abodh, and he has also been involved in a large project dedicated to reassessing the nature and status of the Dasam Granth, especially its relationship to the court of Guru Gobind Singh and specifically the Guru himself. Gurinder Mann's work helps us understand how Mirabai managed to appear at Guru Gobind Singh's court, and helps us ask in what way the Guru was "there."

Thomas de Bruijn, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Rasa on the Run: Patterns of Change in the Aesthetics of Pre-Modern and Modern Fiction

Recent research into the traditions of pre-modern Indian writing in Hindi and other vernaculars developed against the background of a much more mobile cultural and religion than it has been presumed before. These conclusions have raised doubts as to the validity of the present categories of genre, language and religious affiliation common to the canonical descriptions of the history of medieval writing in India.

It would follow from these observations that the fluidity ascribed to the medieval cultural scene also extended to the aesthetical concepts that underlie pre-modern literature. Apart from a few isolated cases, the range of change and fluidity in the aesthetics of medieval poetry has received relatively little attention.

There is, however, good reason to assume that with geographical and cultural circulation, the aesthetical underpinnings of Indian writing of the medieval period was also less monolithic than has been always assumed.

The present paper will try to question the apparent domination of the rasa-model of aesthetics by analyzing the influence of other aesthetical models, such as those that came with Islamic poetry, on Indian genres. It will not only deal with this from the perspective of pre-modern writing, but also try to find a pattern of change and fluidity of aesthetical models that is valid for modern writing, too. By juxtaposing examples from medieval bhakti and Sufi-poetry in Hindi with modern prose by authors such as Sa'dat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) and Nirmal Verma (1929-2005), it will argue for an interesting consistency in the way aesthetics travel through India's cultural space.

Allison Busch, Columbia University, Dept. of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures, New York, USA
Tracing the Steps of Seventeenth-Century Braj Court Poets

This paper centers on a new literary development in seventeenth-century India: the widespread circulation of Brajbhasha poets (and poetry) to a range of courts across North India and the Deccan. Although the name "Brajbhasha" suggests the language's ties to a particular region, the movements of poets and poetry during the Mughal period reveal a translocal constituency of striking reach. In the paper I map some of the new circulatory spaces of Braj literary culture as poets moved from regional courts to the Mughal court, and even as far a field as Golconda and Raigarh (Shivaji's capital). I am interested in tracing the larger social and historical conditions that made this movement possible. Of particular salience was the favour shown to Braj poets by the Mughal court, affording one important set of new patronage opportunities. Aside from the physical movement of poets within this new cultural economy I explore circulatory processes in the realm of texts. What kinds of poetic exchanges and borrowings were transacted through the movement of poets in seventeenth-century India? What were the implications of this multi-faceted circulation for early-modern Hindi literature?

Heidi Pauwels, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
Urdu Poetry by a Rajput Krishna Devotee: Nagridas of Kishangarh

This paper focuses on the Rajput Savant Singh of Kishangarh (1699-1764). He is famous as patron of miniatures and was also a prolific author under the alias "Nagridas." He wrote mostly in Old Hindi, but experimented also with Urdu, a new poetic medium at the time. I am in the process of editing, translating, and analyzing his Urdu works and study the manuscripts with special attention to the miniature illustrations. The project contributes to the study of circulation of ideas in 18th century North India and to the revision of the early history of Urdu-Hindi.

Francesca Orsini, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Bahurupi is the Pir

The short text by the Bilgrami Sufi Mir Abdul Vahid Haqaiq-i Hindi (1576) has been often quoted by historians of medieval India and of Sufism as an instance of the interest Indian Sufis had in Indian musical and song traditions, and of what Muzaffar Alam has called an attitude of "assimilation from a distance". The text glosses over 300 "Hindui/Hindavi" words found in dhrupad, Vishnupad and other songs and verses in the vernacular, both providing a comprehensive introduction to Hindi poetic vocabulary and to the poetic and emotional ground of the Krishna story, and also a new interpretation in the light of mystical Sufi teachings. It is therefore an excellent example of cultural crossover. On the basis of the Persian manuscript, the paper will examine closely some of the words included and the explanations given, looking for evidence of the kind of "Hindavi" tradition(s) Bilgrami had access to, for what for him constituted the Hindavi poetic vocabulary and emotional range, and for the creative process of transcodification. If possible, evidence will be drawn also from "Hindavi" verse in other Persian manuscripts of the period.

Corinne Lefèvre-Agrati, EHESS, Paris, France
The Court of ‘Abd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan as a Bridge Between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions

Born in India from an Iranian amir having joined Babur's service, ‘Abd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan (1556-1627) was a major figure of the Mughal nobility during Akbar's and Jahangir's reigns. He took an active part in the conquests of Gujarat and Sind before being sent in the 1590s to the Deccan where he spent his remaining life as a warrior cum administrator. Yet, it is mostly for his literary abilities and his munificent patronage that he is today remembered.

Composed in 1616 by a Persian immigrant named ‘Abd-ul-Baqi Nahawandi, the Ma'asir-i Rahimi presents us, among other things, with an exceptional account of his cultural activities. A man of the sword as well as of the pen, ‘Abd-ur-Rahim had a perfect command over Arabic, Turkic, Persian and medieval Hindi, and wrote poetry in these last three languages under the penname of ‘Rahim' (‘the compassionate'). Reflecting the wide-ranging interests of its patron in literature, mysticism, architecture and painting, his court (and renowned generosity) drained scholars and artists from all over Iran but also from different parts of India.

Successively established in Thatta, Ahmadabad and Burhanpur, ‘Abd-ur-Rahim's court thus appears as an ideal locus to analyze a) the circulation of producers of culture between Iran and India and across South Asia through the study of the Khan's entourage, b) the complex crossovers between Persian and the multi-facetted Indian cultural traditions as expressed in the works produced or patronized by Rahim in such fields as court chronicling, mystical poetry, architecture and painting. Focusing on these two intertwined questions, the paper will conclude with an examination of the links between ‘Abd-ur-Rahim's cultural stance and the standard set up by the imperial Mughal court.

Bicchukatti Kumar Naik Pramiladevi, Holenarasipura, Karnataka, India
The Mysore Musical Maharaja- J.C. Wodeyar-[1919-1974] As a Patron of Western Music a Study

An Indian king as a pianist, musicologist and patron of western music.
Family - Wodeyars a ruling family with a reach cultural legacy. The kings were erudite scholars and patrons of both Hindustani and karnatic styles of music. celebrations of Dasara [nauratri] and other festivals, marriages, birthdays were a platform for the artists of fame to exhibit their talents. Mysore palace a royal academy in perpetual session.

1800's close association with the English- official needs of having ceremonials. Palace Band on the model of English bands.

The prince's fondness for western music. Chamaraja Wodeyar 10th [ 1868-1893] introducing Saxophone, widening the activities of the Band.

Regent Vanivilasal Sannidhana's [1893 1900] role is paise worthy. patronised Good Shephered Convent, encouraged the children of royal house-hold and the ladies of Arasu community to learn western music. The nuns of the convent were encouraged-as a local centre of Trinity College of Music, London. Beneficiaries were her children Krishnaraja, Kanteerava Narasaraja and daughter-in-law Yuvarani Kempucheluvajammanni, aharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar 1900-1941with a high taste for music surprisingly had keen interest in western classics. Arranged concerts recitals from Europe. Charles Shesky. Dr. Mistovesky, Otto Schmidt etc were invited as royal guests. Patronised British Musical Association, Y.M.C.A., centenary celebrations of Beethovanin 1926, Schubert in 1928. Maharaja cup for T.C.M writing of English notations to Indian music was a rare contribution of the Maharaja.

Yuvaraja Kanteerava Narasaraja and his wife Yuvarani Kempucheluvajammanni had good taste for western music. The yuvarani used to play piano. All their children became qualified in western music Thus they influenced their son and daughters.
Jayachamaraja wodeyar who was born in this atmosphere of music, being influenced by his parents grew to be a patron of western music. His interest in western music to be traced to his early childhood. He was initiated to western music by Sister Ignatius of G.S.C Mysore, followed by Mother Maurice, j de Fries, Arnold Hunt, Otto Schmidt and Dr. Mistovesky. Visitors like Charles Schesky Mark Hamburg nourished his keen interest. He passed music exams of T.C.M., and qualified to be a music teacher with a Licentiate diploma in pianoforte. He was equally well versed in theory of music.

His European tours added to his knowledge. Frequented the concert halls of Berlin, Paris, London etc, collected rare records of Schubert, Wagner, and Beethoven. Richard Strauss and others. closely associated with composers and singers in the west.-fond of Russian musicians Fellow of The Royal Society Of London, Member on the board of T.C.M. Founder president of Philharmonic concert society, London [1949] He financed the publication of Medtner's composition who dedicated his works to this musical Maharaja' Aare combination of western and eastern music A composer of 94 kritis in karnatic music' He's contribution is writing of all his Indian music in English notations. whether any influence of his knowledge of western music on his compositions of karnatic music needs further research.

Robert van der Walle, CNWS, Leiden, The Netherlands
The Wandering Civil Servant: Two Brajbhasha Poems by Thakur Jagmohan Singh

In the nineteenth century, new opportunities for education and employment gave an impetus to the mobility of Indians - at least the middle and upper classes. Thakur Jagmohan Singh (1857-1899) is an example of such an Indian from a respectable background whose life was characterized by travel. Hailing from the chiefship of Vijayraghavgarh in Baghelkhand, he was educated at the Wards' Institution and Queen's College in Banaras. In 1880 he was appointed as a collector of revenue in Dhamtari in Central Provinces. In the years that followed, he was frequently transferred, which meant he was stationed as a civil servant in various places in Central Provinces; in addition, he worked as a secretary to the council of the raja of Kuch Bihar in Bengal. He sometimes returned to his birthplace Vijayraghavgarh, visited friends in Jabalpur and Bharatpur, and undertook lengthy journeys which took him to Lahore, the Himalayas and Bombay. The special interest of Jagmohan for this panel is the fact that he wrote an oeuvre that reflects his travels, and the fact that his travels were not caused by a search for patronage, but by his work in government service. His employment as a civil servant while also writing literature is exemplary of the shift from a patronage system to the modern paradigm of the "independent" writer. The paper will trace Jagmohan's moves throughout his career, and link his literary production to them. Two poems will be considered in detail: Pralay (1889) and Omkar Candrika (1894), both dealing with places in Central Provinces. The paper will focus on the author's use of metrical poetry in Brajbhasha to convey his experience of these places. Thus, the topic of the paper shades from one aspect of the panel, the mobility of a producer of culture, into another, the circulation of cultural forms.

Ramya Sreenivasan, University at Buffalo, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, USA
New and Old Histories in Shyamaldas's Vir Vinod: Mewar ka Itihas (1886)

This paper explores the new norms of genre, language and historicity in Kaviraj Shyamaldas's Vir Vinod, composed between 1871 and 1886 and published in 1943.
This encyclopaedic history of the Rajput kingdom of Mewar was produced under the patronage of successive rulers of Mewar, Shambhu Singh and Sajjan Singh. In its patrons and its status as courtly chronicle, the Vir Vinod belonged to a tradition of such chronicles in the Rajput courts of what is now Rajasthan. Like its acknowledged predecessors, the Vir Vinod was written in prose. Instead of the customary Marwari, however, Shyamaldas used Hindustani with a significant number of loan words from Persian, especially bureaucratic and political terms. The author also deployed new tests of reliability and veracity for his evidence in writing the history of Mewar. Surveying the old Rajput chronicles and traditions about the past, he deplored their tendency to exaggerate and their accounts of miraculous events and supernatural interventions. He also suspected their historicity because of their paucity of dates - as he noticed, only the Jain narratives and some kavya in the regional traditions included any dates and seemed to have relied on historical fact. In place of the chronicle and anecdotal traditions, therefore, he privileged inscriptional evidence and court and administrative records. The Vir Vinod was unusual in actually including the full texts of many such inscriptions and official documents such as royal grants between the fifteenth century and its own time.

This paper will focus on the Vir Vinod as representing a transition in historiography in late- nineteenth-century Rajasthan, articulating a new mode of representing the past, breaking self-consciously with pre-modern precedents, and engaging in a sophisticated reading of Tod's Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (1829-32), at the same time that it addressed a much wider, trans- regional audience for the new Rajput history.

Stefano Pello, Universita' di Venezia, Venezia Lido, Italy
Persian as a Passe-Partout: the Case of Mirza ‘Abd al-Qader Bidel and his Hindu Disciples

One of the most distinguishing features of Persian literature in India from the second half of the seventeenth century onwards is the huge contribution of Hindu authors who chose to write Persian verse, thus adopting the classical ‘Islamic' forms (i.e. qasida, ghazal, mathnawi, etc.) along with their aesthetic language. As many tadhkeras (collections of biographies of poets and specimens of their verse) of the period point out, the poetic output of these writers was usually the result of a period of apprenticeship spent attending to literary circles led by renowned Muslim masters. Through a selective analysis of the biographies of the Hindu authors traditionally related to Mirza ‘Abd al-Qader ‘Bidel' (1644-1721) - one of the main figures in the history of Indo-Persian literature - as described in the most important tadhkeras of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we try here to delineate the structure, the values, and the internal ties of a typical non-homogeneous (by the religious point of view) Persian poetic circle of late seventeenth-early eighteenth century Delhi. More specifically, we will deal with the rules governing the encounter and the interaction between the master and his non-Muslim pupils, and their textual effects. By looking at Persian as the key factor in this kind of cross-cultural (or trans-cultural) phenomena, we will finally underline its role as a bridge for literary exchange and innovation in pre-modern South Asia (a useful example is the creative handling of Persian literary canon by a Hindu pupil of Bidel, Lala Amanat Rai ‘Amanat', in his verse rendering of the Bhagavata Purana).

Thibaut d'Hubert, Ecole Pratique de Hautes Etudes, Paris, France
The Status of Bengali Language and Literature in 17th Century's Mrauk-U

During the first half of the 17th century, in Mrauk-U, the capital city of the Kingdom of Arakan, poets patronized by Muslim courtiers of the Buddhist kings used Bengali language to compose literary texts. Arakan was then a kingdom expending from the harbour of Chittagong, in present Bangladesh, to lower Burma.

Architectural vestiges of Mrauk-U as well as the accounts of Dutch and Portuguese who stayed there during the 17th century testify to a highly cosmopolitan metropolis. The Bengali literature mentioned above - and especially the works of Âlâol (fl. 1651-1671) which will be the major concern of my paper - is mostly constituted of adaptations and translations from Avadhi and Persian poems and their poetical idiom evinces an acquaintance with various literary genres such as Persian narrative poetry (mathnavi), Sanskrit kâvyas or Brajabuli and Bengali Vaishnava lyrical poetry (padas).

In this paper I propose to study the status of Bengali language and literature in Mrauk-U during the 17th century. After introducing the statements made by earlier scholars about this issue, I will cross-check historical evidences with what the texts relate about the use made of this language and the people who spoke it. This study is a preliminary stage towards mapping the cultural field of a literary production that evolved in a context of ‘frontier culture'.

Samira Sheikh, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK
Conversion Narratives from Gujarat: Mobility and Transformation on a Moving Frontier, c.1200-1920

Changes in religious affiliation offer a point of entry towards an understanding of how religion, belonging and identity are perceived and retold. In early modern Gujarat, mobile and pastoralist groups were particularly apt to make such re-affiliations. These were sometimes accretive, as when groups took up deities and practices prevalent in the regions through which they were passing. Religious change could also be associated with sedentarisation and absorption into an agrarian landscape. Religious affiliation and change had important political consequences in early modern Gujarat which had been the locus of overlapping zones of migration, trade and politics from an early period. Mobile groups were important for the continuance of trade, as carriers and livestock herders. As repositories of military manpower, they were an important component of the nascent Rajput and Islamicate polities of the region. Additionally, they were the target of proselytisers seeking patrons and followers.

While it is clear that many groups and individuals underwent changes in their religious affiliation, the mechanics of such conversions are still substantially unknown. Conversion to Islam is still the dominant narrative, usually accomplished ‘by the sword' or ‘by Sufis'. This explanatory model remains anecdotal and fails to acknowledge the rise of new religious groupings - Pustimarga Vaisnavism, reformist Jainism, Satpanth Ismailism amongst others - that found a significant numbers of ‘converts' in Gujarat, in particular amongst sedentarising pastoralist groups. My paper will explore Gujarati and Persian narratives of conversion from c.1200 onwards, attempting to show that such narratives often show remarkable similarities across religious traditions and at different historical junctures.

Catharina Kiehnle, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
The Gopīs of the Jñāndev Gāthā (report of research)

The collection of songs attributed to Jñāndev (13th cent. A.D.), the Jñāndev Gāthā, deals with a great variety of subjects, such as the praise of God's name, of the Guru's greatness, the santa-s, moreover with dialogues, songs on yoga, philosophy, and riddles. The main deity is God Vi¤¤hal of Pa arpūr (South Maharashtra). He has his own mythology, centering around Pu alīka, whose devotion to his parents attracted God Vi¢ u to the small village on river Bhīmā. The names of Hari/Kr¢ a, however, are used for the God as well, and Kr¢ a mythology is alluded to especially in about 150 songs which partly have been labeled gaula ī, ‘cowherd woman', (the equivalent of the North Indian gopī) by the editors. I have started to edit the gaulanīs by means of the editions available, consulting manuscripts whenever possible. The subject of the paper will be an analysis of the types of the gaulanīs, which reflect the influences that the Maharashtrian Bhāgavata (i.e. Vārkarī) sampradāya has assimilated in course of time. There are at least four traditions visible: the aforesaid local Vi¤¤hal cult, the pan-indian, mostly ‘sanskritized' Kr¢ a tradition, women's lore, and the teachings of the Nāth yogīs. Because of the amalgamation of the Advaitavedānta and Ku alinī yoga experiences, the songs of the latter type are of special interest.

F. 'Nalini' Delvoye, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, France
Catering to the Taste of Medieval Indian Rulers: Poet-composers in Motion from Madhyadesh to the Mughal Court via Muzaffarid Gujarat

Nâyak Bakhshû is known as a prolific poet-composer close to Raja Mân Singh Tomar, the king of Gwalior (r. 1486-1516), the first great patron of the Dhrupad genre of North Indian vocal music. After composing lyrics for Raja Vikramaditya (d. 1518) the last Tomar ruler, Nâyak Bakhshû joined the court of Raja Kirat of Kalinjar in Madhyadesh and along with other eminent musicians from Gwalior he migrated to the court of the Muzaffarid Sultans of Gujarat Muzaffar Shâh II (r. 1511-26) and Bahadur Shâh (r. 1526-37).

A century later, lyrics ascribed to Nâyak Bakhshû were still sung at the court of Emperor Shâh Jahân (r. 1628-58) who developed a great liking for them and ordered their compilation, within two years, with a particular care for their authenticity, as attested by the anonymous Indo-Persian preface introducing the collection of 1004 dhrupad songs in madhyadeshiya language noted with the musical mode in which they were performed. The Hazâr Dhrupad or "The Thousand Dhrupad [Songs]", also called Sahasras or "The Thousand Delights" is an extremely valuable anthology which has been critically edited from two manuscripts in Arabo-Persian script and rendered into Devanagari by Prem Lata Sharma (1972). It deserves further research, in view of its relevance not only for the history of medieval Indian poetry, music and dance, but also for a case-study of aesthetics prevailing in the composite literary and artistic culture of Madhyadesh and Gujarat in the 16th and 17th centuries. Data about the context in which the lyrics were composed and performed are provided by Indo-Persian sources documenting the life of court musicians.
Starting from a study of the thematic range of hundreds of lyrics which were originally composed for specific patrons, the paper will highlight the aesthetic awareness and the poetic skill of Nâyak Bakhshû. Beyond diverse contexts of state patronage, the versatile poet-composer was addressing a nâyak or ‘hero', close to the nâgaraka of the Kâmasûtra, i.e. a connoisseur of music, dance and other arts. The image of such a perfect rasika, enjoying sahasras or thousand aesthetic delights, as the ideal benefactor, deeply inspired Emperor Shâh Jahân's fascination a century later!

Hugh van Skyhawk, University of Mainz, Institut für Indonlogie, Germany
The impact of new currents of Sufism and Shiism on religious life in the medieval Deccan

It is well known that the reception of Islam in India on the folk level was effected to a large extent by the charisma of famous pirs, both the living and those who had 'gone behind the curtain' or 'moved from one house to another' (i.e. passed away). Far less obvious to the non-specialist is the influence that folk Shiism, the cult of the pancatan pak (the 'Holy Group of Five') and, above all, the cult of Ali, the 'Lion of God' (Sher i Qhuda), has had upon folk culture and, even more importantly, folk ethics in the Deccan since the 15th century. In the planned presentation (insha'llah) I will first describe the particular historical development of the Deccan which prepared a fertile

field in which devotion to the 'People of the House' (ahl-i-bet) would merge easily with indigenous hero cults and the cult of the personal relationship to God (bhakti). Then I will briefly cite literary examples of the folk reception of the cult of Ali and the 'People of the House'. Finally, I will offer an example taken from oral tradition of the ethical content of the folk cults of the 'People of the House' that has lived on to the present day, while, at the same time, politely nodding in assent to the frantic notes of the chairperson who will be exhorting me to keep within the time allotted for my presentation. Parallel to my verbal presentation I intend to show several slides that illustrate the iconographic continuity of medieval folk Shiism in present-day pilgrimage festivals (jatras).