“Parlare l’inglese φαρσί”: il persiano come criterio di language proficiency?

In the following reflections, we explore the historical and lexicographical story of the neo- Greek adverb φαρσί (fārsi), generally used in colloquial language to indicate the ability to speak a language “fluently” and, by extension, to denote a particular skill in other intellectual activities as well. Generally, the term is etymologised from Turkish (Ottoman) far(i)si “Persian”, referring to the “prestige” enjoyed by the latter language in the Ottoman world itself. Despite the considerable diffusion of this etymological reading, there are currently no studies devoted to the issue. After a discussion of the actual and articulated historical dimension of the “prestige” of the glottonym fārsi in the Neo-Persian context from which it originates, we build here the premises for a cultural history of the term and its sociolinguistic identity, following a possible Balkan track that could explain its specific characteristics of use and diffusion in South-Eastern Europe

Black Curls in a Mirror: The Eighteenth-Century Persian Kṛṣṇa of Lāla Amānat Rāy’s Jilwa-yi ẕāt and the Tongue of Bīdil

This paper is the first substantial study of the Jilwa-yi ẕāt, an unabridged Persian verse translation of the tenth skandha of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, completed in Delhi in 1732–33 by Amanat Ray, a Vaisnava pupil of the influential poet- philosopher Mırza ‘Abd al-Qadir Bıdil. The paper focuses especially on the textualization of Krsna and Krsnaite devotion within the framework of Persian literary conventions and the dominant Sufı-Vedantic conceptual atmosphere, with a special attention for the intertextual ties with the works of Bıdil. A few philological remarks on the contours of a hitherto largely ignored Krsnaite subjectivity in Persian are also included

Atmosfere indo-persiane: cumulonembi, bolle e avatāra monsonici in Mīrza 'Abd al-Qādir Bīdil e nella sua scuola

Intendiamo aprire, con questo studio, una discussione sulla poetica e sulla filosofia della natura nell’opera di Mīrzā ‘Abd al-Qādir Bīdil (1644-1720), il maggiore poeta di lingua persiana dell’India mughal, e nella sua scuola. Riprendendo alcune suggestioni di Alessandro Bausani, ormai risalenti a quasi sessant’anni fa, ci concentriamo qui in modo particolare sull’ecologia testuale e metaforica della nuvola (abr) e di alcune realtà fisiche a questa connessa, in modo particolare la bolla (ḥabāb), che si trasformano, nella lettura bideliana, in veri e propri specchi per una riflessione concettuale fondata sul metodo del taḥqīq, insieme “indagine” e “realizzazione”. Il principale testo di nostro interesse è un mathnawī relativamente breve, il Ṭūr-i maʿrifat (Sinai della conoscenza), recentemente tradotto in italiano e tra le opere meno note del maestro di Patna: un vero e proprio safarnāma, o resoconto di viaggio, focalizzato esclusivamente sull’osservazione e la narrazione del paesaggio naturale dell’India del nord nel momento del monsone. A questo poema si affiancano, nell’analisi, alcuni versi tratti dai ghazal di Bīdil e, soprattutto, dall’opera di due suoi discepoli krishnaiti, Amānat Rāy e Shivrām Dās Ḥayā (entrambi attivi nella prima metà del Settecento), che riprendono, nei loro versi persiani, la tematica naturale del maestro declinandola in chiave vedantica e devozionale

La "scienza del respiro" indo-persiana

This paper deals with the tradition of practical philosopby called in Persian 'ilm-i dam or 'ilm-i nafas, i.e. the "science of breath". Recent studies have underlined the depth and the multiple layers of the entaglement of this Islamicate tradition with its original inspiration, the Indic reflections on breath and pneumatic realities (pranayama and svarodaya). Here, we aim at problematizing the connection of the intellectual spaces of the Indo-Persian "science of breath" with some South Asian theories about self-understanding, and at the same time we discuss possible new readings of the 'ilm-i dam theory in the light of the recent philosophical manifesto of Emanuele Coccia

11. Persian Poets on the Streets: The Lore of Indo-Persian Poetic Circles in Late Mughal India

Memorialising the Present The early modern Persian tazkira can be thought of as an attempt to catalogue and archive, in a narrative-fictional way, specific individual personalities and the internal dynamics of the Persian-writing poetic community, and thus to describe (in terms that are also prescriptive) its protocols with regards to poetic education, poetic production, reception, and criticism. In other words, the genre of literary tazkiras can be understood as a kind of autobiography or, e..