A Desire for Meaning: Ḳhān-i Ārzū's Philology and the Place of India in the Eighteenth-Century Persianate World

During the early-modern period, Persian was the language of the imperial court and a prestigious literary medium in South Asia. Not only did Persian connect the Subcontinent with intellectual and cultural trends across western and central Asia, but during the early-modern period, India--even compared with Iran--was arguably the world's main center for the patronage of Persian literature and scholarship. However, our understanding of the societal role of Indo-Persian (that is, Persian used in South Asia) is still hazy in part because the end of Persian as a language of power in India has been so historiographically over-determined. Colonial intellectuals and nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalists in Iran and India have claimed that by the eighteenth century Indo-Persian had become an artificial, ossified tradition in decline, symptomatic of a political system in decline, whose ineluctable destiny was to be replaced by supposedly more democratic and properly Indian languages like Hindi and Urdu. The present study seeks to nuance and in some cases to completely revise this declinist narrative through an examination of eighteenth-century primary sources. This dissertation traces the development of philology (the study of literary language, known in Persian under several names including 'ilm-i lughat) within the Indo-Persian tradition, concentrating on its social and political ramifications, and the modes by which Indo-Persian writers smoothed the way for the adoption of the vernacular in contexts formerly reserved for Persian. The eighteenth century is a hinge between the pre-modern and the colonial modern, and yet our understanding of the intellectual history of that century is much poorer than for the colonial period. The most prolific and arguably most influential Indo-Persian philologist of the early-modern period was Siraj al-Din 'Ali Khan (1687/8-1756), whose nom de plume was Arzu. Besides being a much-admired poet in Persian and Urdu, Arzu was a rigorous theoretician of language. Arzu's conception of language accounted for literary innovation and historical change, a project whose newness he acknowledges and which was necessary in the face of the tazah go'i [literally, "fresh speaking"] movement in Persian literature. Although later scholarship has tended to frame this debate in anachronistically nationalist terms (Iranians versus Indians), the primary sources complicate the picture. The present study draws an analogy to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in Europe to show that the contemporary concern had far less to do with geography than with the question of how to interpret innovative "fresh speaking" poetry (just as in Europe the concern had been over assessing the value of texts not modeled on the Classics). Arzu used historical reasoning to argue that as a cosmopolitan language Persian could not be the property of one nation and be subject to one narrow kind of interpretation. In doing so he carefully defined the differences in usage within the Persian cosmopolis, and concluded that Indo-Persian usage was within the norms of Persian usage generally, meaning that properly educated Indians had as much right as Iranian native speakers to innovate in Persian. An intervention offered by the present research is the recognition that Arzu's theories, which superficially seem to concern only Persian, apply to language more generally. A study of his work can therefore elucidate the mechanisms that allowed Urdu to gain acceptance in elite literary circles in northern India during his lifetime. An often-overlooked aspect of intellectual history, both in India and in the West, is that advances in vernacular literary culture have usually come about not through a repudiation of the classics and their language but rather through a sustained engagement with them by bilingual writers. By changing attitudes about rekhtah, a Persianized form of vernacular composition that would later be renamed and reconceptualized as Urdu, Arzu defined and systematized vernacular literary production. Furthermore, this study presents a challenge to the persistent misconception that Indians started writing Urdu because they were ashamed of their poor Persian

India in the Persian World of Letters

This study traces the development of philology (the analysis of literary language) in the Persian tradition in India, concentrating on its socio-political ramifications. The most influential Indo-Persian philologist of the eighteenth century was Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Ḳhān (d. 1756), whose pen-name was Ārzū. Besides being a respected poet, Ārzū was a rigorous theoretician of language whose intellectual legacy was side-lined by colonialism. His conception of language accounted for literary innovation and historical change in part to theorize the tāzah-goʾī [literally, “fresh-speaking”] movement in Persian literary culture. Although later scholarship has tended to frame this debate in anachronistically nationalist terms (Iranian native speakers versus Indian imitators), the primary sources show that contemporary concerns had less to do with geography than with the question of how to assess innovative “fresh-speaking” poetry, a situation analogous to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in early modern Europe. Ārzū used historical reasoning to argue that as a cosmopolitan language Persian could not be the property of one nation or be subject to one narrow kind of interpretation. Ārzū also shaped attitudes about reḳhtah, the Persianized form of vernacular poetry that would later be renamed and reconceptualized as Urdu, helping the vernacular to gain acceptance in elite literary circles in northern India. This study puts to rest the persistent misconception that Indians started writing the vernacular because they were ashamed of their poor grasp of Persian at the twilight of the Mughal Empire

Why Did Shah Hatim's Collected Works Spawn a Child?

One of the celebrated Urdu poets of the eighteenth century was Shah Hatim (1699-1783), who is regarded as particularly influential because he abandoned the prevailing style of Urdu composition, which freely mixed indigenous Sanskrit-derived words with Persian and Arabic ones, in favor of a style in which the technical vocabulary was purely Perso-Arabic. Uniquely in the annals of Urdu literary history, Shah Hatim changed his mind about his diction after publishing his Collected Works [dīvān] and so prepared a new dīvān, entitled Dīvānzādah, or Child of the Collected Works, to reflect his new sensibilities. Many Persian and Urdu poets published multiple dīvāns, but none are so radically different from one another as Shah Hatim's. This paper examines the Dīvānzādah's preface, which is beguilingly short and simple at just two printed pages, and considers the larger context of Shah Hatim's aesthetic choices. I will argue that his desire to Persianize Urdu is a reflection of a sociolinguistic landscape in which vernacular literatures were becoming more assertive but Persian remained a high prestige language which was perceived as capable of elevating vernacular composition. Although Indian literatures had drawn on Persian tropes and vocabulary for centuries, what appears to be new in the mid-eighteenth century is a sense that Persian could be a vehicle by which vernacular literature could be made more respectable. Shah Hatim provides us with perhaps the only self-reflective prose on Urdu composition from the eighteenth century, and it is a window on how the torch of literary production was passed from the classical language, Persian, to the vernacular, Urdu

The portrayal of prison inmates and their families in juvenile literature

The purpose of this paper was to determine if juvenile literature portrays some characteristics of family members of male prison inmates in a realistic manner. Twenty five juvenile books were analyzed and compared to data gathered regarding characteristics of actual family members of prison inmates. This comparison revealed that juvenile literature does not portray the families of prison inmates in a realistic way

Sabk-e Hendi and the Crisis of Authority in Eighteenth-Century Indo-Persian Poetics

Modern debates over the merits of the so-called Indian Style (Sabk-e Hendi) in Persian literature, which was dominant from the late sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries, have been based on problematic assumptions about how literary style is tied to place. Scholars have often therefore interpreted the Persian literary criticism of the first half of the eighteenth century as a contest between Indians who praised Persian texts written in India and Iranians who asserted their privilege as native speakers to denigrate them. A more nuanced reading suggests that the debates mainly addressed stylistic temporality, namely the value of the writing styles of the “Ancients” (motaqaddemin) versus the innovative style of the “Moderns” (motaʾakhkherin). In the thought of the Indian critic Serāj al-Din ʿAli Khān Ārzu (d. 1756), there is clear evidence of a perceived rupture in literary culture that we can call a “crisis of authority.” Ārzu was concerned because Persian poetry had been judged according to “sanad” or precedent, but poets—both Indian and Iranian—were composing in a relatively new style (tāza-guʾi, literally “fresh speech”) that routinely went beyond the available precedents. All poets who know Persian well, he argued, including Indians, are allowed to innovate. While there was obvious rivalry between Persian-knowing Indians and the many Central Asians and Iranians settled in India, the contemporary terms of the debate have little in common with the later nationalism-tinged framing familiar to us.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Brill via https://doi.org/10.1163/18747167-1234129

Current and projected interior design possibilities for the Children's Department at Chapel Hill Public Library

This study describes and evaluates the layout and interior design of the Children's Department at Chapel Hill Public Library. It includes two sets of interior design and space planning suggestions for the Children's Department--Ones that could be implemented now and ones geared for adaptation after the department has undergone an expansion. The paper is divided according to the following categories: furniture, safety, lighting, color, walls, flooring, windows, artistic elements, and space planning. A multitude of techniques are outlined for creating an environment that respects children and their needs for physical movement, comfort, privacy, social interaction, and intellectual and creative stimulation

Thin-film rechargeable lithium batteries for implantable devices

Thin films of LiCoO{sub 2} have been synthesized in which the strongest x-ray reflection is either weak or missing, indicating a high degree of preferred orientation. Thin-film solid state batteries with these textured cathode films can deliver practical capacities at high current densities. For example, for one of the cells 70% of the maximum capacity between 4.2 V and 3 V ({approximately}0.2 mAh/cm{sup 2}) was delivered at a current of 2 mA/cm{sup 2}. When cycled at rates of 0.1 mA/cm{sup 2}, the capacity loss was 0.001 %/cycle or less. The reliability and performance of Li-LiCoO{sub 2} thin-film batteries make them attractive for application in implantable devices such as neural stimulators, pacemakers, and defibrillators

Growth and characterization of sputtered BSTO/BaM multilayers

Multilayers of Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 (BSTO) and BaFe12O19 (BaM), with tunable permeability and permittivity are attractive systems for radio frequency and microwave applications. We have grown multilayers of BSTO and BaM using magnetron sputtering on Al2O3 substrates. Film growth conditions such as sputtering parameters were optimized to obtain high quality multilayers. X-ray diffraction established that both BSTO and BaM were formed and cross-sectional SEM studies showed sharp interfaces between BSTO and BaM layers. Magnetization showed a large coercivity (similar to 2000 Oe) consistent with the hexaferrite component. The hysteresis loops also revealed the distinct influence of magnetocrystalline and shape anisotropies at different temperatures