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During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. Translating Wisdom reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Using as a case study the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vasistha-an influential Sanskrit philosophical tale whose popularity stretched across the subcontinent-Shankar Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced cultural exchange and interreligious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia's past but also its present.
| ISBN: | 9780520345683 |
| Publication date: | 5th May 2020 |
| Author: | Shankar Nair |
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 276 pages |
| Genres: |
Middle Eastern history Comparative religion Ancient religions and Mythologies |