The Emergence of Hindavi Literary Cultures in the Sultanate and Early Mughal Period

Orsini, Francesca

Abstract

This chapter discusses the main vernacular genres in sultanate and early Mughal north India—romances, versions of the Sanskrit epics, and songs. It focuses on vernacular texts under the broad rubric of Hindavi, but adopts a multiscalar approach to situate them within the broader context of the multilingual literary culture of the time. At the textual level, this approach analyses texts for register, artistry, and interlingual and intertextual traces. At the level of genre, it identifies the most popular genres and traces their diffusion (or not) across languages. Spatial proximity allows us to put together archives and languages that historiography has divided. Finally, at a social level, this approach interrogates texts for their social concerns and imagination, and for the narrative solutions they put forward to the problems they deal with.

Citation

Orsini, F. (2024). The Emergence of Hindavi Literary Cultures in the Sultanate and Early Mughal Period. In R. M. Eaton, & R. Sreenivasan (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Mughal World. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190222642.013.3

• Publication Date: Dec 18, 2024
• Deposit Date: Dec 28, 2024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Book Title: The Oxford Handbook of the Mughal World
• ISBN: 9780190222642
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190222642.013.3
• Keywords: Hindavi, romances, pemkathas, songs, bhakti, Sufi, multilingualism, circulation, north India