Canada India Centre Faculty Series: Translating Rama as a Proto-Muhammadan Prophet

This lecture aims to finesse understanding of pre-colonial Islamic-Persian literary translations of Indic language texts on Hindu themes by considering Mullah Masih’s famous early seventeenth century Masnavi-yi Ram va Sita, a Persian translation of Valmiki’s (circa 2nd century BCE) Sanskrit epic Ramayana. It opens by remarking on a shift in the study of the relations between poetics and politics of Persian translations of Indic texts. Then, purporting to finesse understanding of this relation, it takes issue with prior studies of this poem before answering the following questions these studies fail to pose: how does the Ibn Arabi-derived prophetological metaphysics of the prefatory chapters relate to the poetics of emotion in the main body of his tale? And: what does this relation let us infer of Masih’s Sufi theology of translation?

Join us for the Canada India Centre for Excellence Faculty Series as we hear from Prashant Keshavmurthy, Assistant Professor of Persian-Iranian Studies in the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. His interests include classical Persian and Urdu literary culture and late Mughal commentarial receptions of the earlier Persian literary canon.

The CICE Faculty Series showcases scholarly research of faculty involved in Canada-India studies to the university community and provide a platform for academic discourse.

For information contact: Gopika.solanki@carleton.ca (Dept of Political Science) or Richard.mann@carleton.ca (Dept of Religion)

RSVP: india@carleton.ca