Janamsakhi: Retracing Networks of Interpretation

My dissertation, “Janamsākhī: Retracing Networks of Interpretation,” analyzes a genre called the janamsākhī, to argue that, instead of reading these texts as biographies or hagiographies of Sikhism’s founder, Gurū Nānak, we should instead view them as exegetical engagements with Sikh scripture (Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib, or SGGS). By taking janamsākhīs as exegetical writings that embed scriptural verse within imaginative tales (sākhīs) about Nānak, we can understand the language of these texts as a form of decentered speech that has its own living existence outside of the author or speaker. By reading intertextually between the janamsākhī and the SGGS, I show how this understanding of language allows us to interpret these texts as engagements with Nānak’s philosophy in which markers of identity and difference exist without operating as exclusive or exclusionary. This reading of janamsākhīs stems from information gleaned during ethnographic interviews with traditional exponents who practice kathā—a narrative form of exegesis of the SGGS that deploys sākhīs in order to expand upon the philosophy of Oneness in the SGGS. Using an interdisciplinary method incorporating these interviews alongside archival manuscript work and historiography of existing work on janamsākhīs from the colonial period through today, I analyze the networks of reading and interpretation that today form the overlapping layers of hermeneutic approaches to these works. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the concepts of sākhī and kathā as they appear in the janamsākhīs and SGGS. Chapter 2 presents theories of kathā and its relationship to janamsākhī and the SGGS gleaned from my interviews with traditional exponents. Chapter 3 critically examines the development of the janamsākhī manuscript archive through the colonial period. Chapter 4 analyzes how unique conceptions of the nature of language have proved challenging for prominent scholars and translators of janamsākhī, ultimately leading to the common understanding of these texts as biographical or hagiographical. Finally, Chapter 5 critically engages select anecdotes from the janamsākhīs by reading between narrative and scripture to analyse motifs like Nānak’s disembodiment or his denials of HinduPHDAsian Languages & CulturesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138769/1/harjeets_2.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138769/2/harjeets_1.pd

Text and Intensification of Its Impact in Chishti Samā`

In my master’s thesis I analyse mystical Islamic poetry in ritualistic performance context, samā` , focusing on the poetry used by the Chishti Sufis. The work is based on both literary sources and ethnographic material collected in India. The central textual source is Surūd-i Rūhānī, a compilation of mystical poetry. Textual sources, however, can be understood properly only in relation to the living performance context and therefore I also utilise interviews of Sufis and performers of mystical music and recordings of samā` assemblies along with texts. First part of the thesis concentrates on thematic overview of the poems and the process of selecting a suitable text for performance. The poems are written in three languages, viz. in Persian, Urdu and Hindi. Among the authors are both Sufis and non-Sufis. The poems, mystical and non-mystical alike, share the same poetic images and they acquire a mystical meaning when they are set to qawwali music and performed in samā` assemblies. My work includes several translations of verses not previously translated. Latter part of the thesis analyses the musical idiom of qawwali and the ways in which the impact of text on listeners is intensified in performance. Typically the intensification is accomplished in the level of a single poem through three different techniques: using introductory verses, inserting verses between the verses of the main poem and repeating individual units of text. The former two techniques are tied to creating a mystical state in the listeners while the latter aims at sustaining it. It is customary that a listener enraptured by mystical experience offers a monetary contribution to the performers. Thus, intensification of the text’s impact aims at enabling the listeners to experience mystical states.Pro gradu-työni käsittelee mystistä islamilaista runoutta rituaalisessa esityskontekstissa. Työ keskittyy islamilaisten mystikoiden Chishtiyya-veljeskunnan samā`-istunnoissaan käyttämään runouteen ja perustuu sekä kirjallisille lähteille että Intiassa kerätylle kenttätyömateriaalille. Tärkein tekstilähde on runokokoelma Surūd-i Rūhānī. Olen suhteuttanut kirjalliset lähteet elävään esityskontekstiin haastattelemalla huomattavia suufeja sekä äänittämällä samā`-istuntoja. Tutkimuksen alkuosa keskittyy Chishtien käyttämän runouden teemoihin ja siihen, millä perusteella runot valitaan esitettäväksi. Runot on kirjoitettu kolmella kielellä: persiaksi, urduksi ja hindiksi, ja huomattava osa niistä ei ole mystikoiden kirjoittamia. Tärkein peruste runojen valinnassa on niiden kaksitulkintaisuus. Mystisinä runot tulkitaan, kun ne esitetään rituaalisessa kontekstissa sovitettuna qawwali-musiikkiin. Työni sisältää runsaasti käännöksiä mystisistä runoista, joita ei aikaisemmin ole käännetty. Työni loppuosa keskittyy analysoimaan qawwalin musiikillisia ominaispiirteitä sekä tapoja, joilla tekstin vaikutusta kuuntelijoihin pyritään lisäämään. Yleensä vaikutuksen lisääminen tapahtuu yksittäisen runon tasolla. Työssäni olen erottanut kolme tapaa käsitellä tekstiä: johdantosäkeiden käyttö, säkeiden istuttaminen varsinaisen runon säkeiden lomaan sekä runotekstin osien pitkitetty toistaminen. Kaksi ensimmäistä tekniikkaa ovat kiinteästi sidoksissa mystisen kokemuksen aikaansaamiseen kuuntelijoissa, kun taas kolmas tekniikka liittyy mystisen kokemuksen ylläpitämiseen. Täten qawwalin musiikillisten erityispiirteiden taustalla eivät ole puhtaasti esteettiset syyt, vaan mystisen kokemuksen aikaansaaminen kuuntelijoissa

Where Lovers Prostrate: Poetry in the musical assemblies of Chishti Sufis

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Muslim Saints of South Asia. The eleventh to fifteenth centuries. New York - London, Routledge Curzon, 2004, 244 p.

Publié auparavant en Russie en 1999, cet excellent ouvrage apporte une réflexion renouvelée et approfondie sur les pratiques et rituels de vénération des saints en Asie du Sud, et il se lit comme un roman, ce qui ne gâche rien. L’approche est pluridisciplinaire : l’analyse historique, religieuse et littéraire des sources majoritairement persanes se combine avec l’étude anthropologique des rituels et le symbolisme de l’architecture des tombeaux. Les huit chapitres forment une typologie de la s..

Muslim Saints of South Asia. The eleventh to fifteenth centuries. New York - London, Routledge Curzon, 2004, 244 p.

Publié auparavant en Russie en 1999, cet excellent ouvrage apporte une réflexion renouvelée et approfondie sur les pratiques et rituels de vénération des saints en Asie du Sud, et il se lit comme un roman, ce qui ne gâche rien. L’approche est pluridisciplinaire : l’analyse historique, religieuse et littéraire des sources majoritairement persanes se combine avec l’étude anthropologique des rituels et le symbolisme de l’architecture des tombeaux. Les huit chapitres forment une typologie de la s..

Qand-i Pārsī: An Introduction to Twenty Persian Texts on Indo-Persian Music

An introduction to twenty Persian musical texts written in India which included both Persian and Indian musi

Au confluent des cultures : de quelques exemples pris dans Kanz al-asrār de Ṣanhājī

This paper aims to explore the how some ideas circulating in the Mediterranean area had a direct or indirect influence, on the work by Muḥammad ibn Saˁīd aṣ-Ṣinhāǧī entitled Kanz al-asrār wa-lawāqiḥ al-afkār, in order to put this text in his intellectual context. The author lived in the European Renaissance, when the Christian West made an impressive economic and cultural progress, together with moral and physical freedom of humankind and a liberation from spiritual and temporal guidance. This does not mean an irreligious century, precisely when Islam begun its decline. For instance, the rich intellectual movement of this epoch was reflected in the treatment of some topics by means of a particular style in the Kanz, where we can find some traces of Barocco.Nuestro artículo intenta poner de relieve en el Kanz al-asrār wa-lawāqiḥ al-afkār, de Muḥammad ibn Saˁīd aṣ-Ṣinhāǧī la influencia, directa o no, de algunas ideas que se manifestaban en el Mediterráneo y así enmarcar el texto en este contexto intelectual. El autor del Kanz vivió en la época del Renacimiento, es decir en una época en la cual el Occidente cristiano conoció un nuevo desarrollo económico y cultural espectacular, una libertad moral y física del ser humano así como una liberación de las tutelas esprituales y temporales. Este último punto no significa que fuera un siglo irreligioso en el mismo momento en el que el Islam empezaba su declive. A modo de ejemplo, este periodo intelectualmente rico experimentado por dicha área geográfica se reflejó en la mención de ciertos temas y, mediante un estilo propio, en el Kanz, donde podemos encontrar algunos rasgos del barroco

Poetics of Cross-cultural Assimilation: A Study of Taufiq Rafat’s ‘Reflections’

‘Reflections’ is one of Taufiq Rafat’s longest, most complex poems, with significant philosophical contours and symbolism. It is also the most important in a very personal sense. The author presents a study of this poem as based on three major themes: the concepts of Birth, Death and Rebirth, the relationship between life and art and the mystic apprehension of the artistic, poetic experience.</p

Inquiries into Proto-World Literatures

Western studies on Persian metrical system debate the linguistic origins of quatrains, (Per. robāʽiyyāt - Ar. rubāʽiyyāt) in Arabic, and regard prosodic Persian schemes independently of Arabic counterparts, despite reciprocally influenced metrical patterns. Attempts to dismantle Arabo-centric critical inferences about Persian metres are largely prosodic observations of the robāʽi/rubāʽī, thus neglecting their ontological evolution from a metrical scheme into an aesthetically experimental frame in Persian and Arabic poetry. This study closely investigates the spread of robāʽī/rubāʽī from Persian to Arabic literature employing a holistic culturally embedded methodology to reread their linkages in global terms, as an example of an inherited “Proto-World Literature”