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A Political History of Literature
A Political History of
Literature
Vidyapati and the Fifteenth Century
Pankaj Jha
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries.
Published in India by
Oxford University Press
2/11 Ground Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002, India
T
he doctoral dissertation on which this book is based had been
long in the making. Part of the reason for this long gestation
was the need for a tolerable level of competence in several lan-
guages other than Hindi and English. I was very slow to acquire that.
It appears to be ages ago when I suggested somewhat hesitantly to
Sunil Kumar that I was thinking of working on Vidyapati. The excite-
ment with which he responded made it impossible for me to consider
any other topic of research. I was already teaching undergraduate
students in the University of Delhi at the time. Little did I know that it
would take me a few years and several trips to libraries in Darbhanga,
Patna, and even Delhi to collect all the published works of Vidyapati.
It took a further few years before I could get leaves sanctioned from
my college and focus solely on the project. Staying with a subject for
so long had its advantages inasmuch as it allowed me to think and
rethink through issues at length. It also allowed my ideas to brew over
time. I hope this shows in the book.
xiv Acknowledgements
granting me study leave for three years so that I could pursue the
PhD programme.
I spent nine months of the study leave at the University of Texas,
Austin. I must gratefully acknowledge that my stint at the University
of Texas was arranged for and financially supported by the Fulbright–
Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship. I take this opportunity especially
to thank Sudarshan Dash and Pratibha Nair of the United States–India
Educational Foundation, New Delhi, for their help. Thanks are due
also to Zachary Alger of the Institute of International Education, New
York, for prompt help on all official issues related to the Fulbright
Fellowship during my stay in the USA.
Cynthia Talbot, my research adviser while I was at the University
of Texas, was extremely generous with her time, suggestions, and
encouragement. She brought very useful readings to my notice and
gave invaluable suggestions, especially regarding the way I needed to
organize the chapters in my thesis. I express my sincerest gratitude
to her.
While I was at the University of Texas, Edeltraud Harzer Clear very
kindly allowed me to sit in her Sanskrit classes for the entire semes-
ter. I owe my sincerest thanks to her. The staff at the Perry-Castañeda
Library, Austin, were invariably prompt in their help. I would particu-
larly like to thank Merry Burlingham, among others.
Gratitude is due also to the library staff of Sahitya Akademi and
Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi; K.P. Jayaswal
Research Institute and Khuda Baksh Library, Patna; and Lalit Narayan
Mithila University, Darbhanga.
Among friends, who always stood strongly by me, often in spite of
complete disinterest in the precise nature of my work, I must grate-
fully mention Anil, Baba, Sanjay, Anil Chapoliya aka Sethji, Suman,
Sunilji, Topi, and Vijay Singh. Recently, I have also discovered some
old friends in new avatars: Rakesh Niraj and Samita among them. My
housemate-turned-friend at Austin, Aniruddhan Vasudevan, was one
of my most precious finds during my stay in the USA.
Scholars of humanities do not work in laboratories. But for those
of us who teach in a university/college, our classrooms are no less
than the place where we test our ideas and pick up new ones, frame
arguments and hone them. I have had the good fortune of learning
from a whole generation of students at Lady Shri Ram College.
xvi Acknowledgements
Pankaj Jha is presently teaching at Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi,
India. He is giving final touches to his English translation of a fifteenth-
century Sanskrit treatise on writing, entitled Likhanāvalī. He is also on
the editorial board of the international journal Indian Economic and
Social History Review. Earlier, Jha has taught at Ramjas College and
St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi.
Jha obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from
Ramjas College, and his MPhil and PhD degrees from the University
of Delhi. Part of his doctoral work was done at University of Texas at
Austin, U.S.A, on a Fulbright–Nehru fellowship. The primary area
of his research interest is the literary cultures of the middle ages.
Languages he has worked with include Persian, Sanskrit, Maithili,
and Apabhraṃśa. He has published research articles extensively in
peer-reviewed journals, in Hindi as well as in English.
Preface
T
his book is a partially revised version of my PhD thesis sub-
mitted to the University of Delhi. My doctoral work had started
more than a decade ago with three counts of dissatisfaction
with the existing state of historiography in the field normally referred
to as ‘medieval India’. The first of these was the fact that the fif-
teenth century in north India was, with only the rare exception, a
barely addressed period. In fact, even these exceptions did not exist
at the time when I started thinking about the area of my research.
The second point of dissatisfaction issued from the fact that a major
chunk of the historiography of this period in North India appeared
to have become synonymous with Persian studies. The ‘mainstream’
histories of ‘medieval’ North India rarely bothered to consult the
large corpus of extant materials in Sanskrit, thus catering lazily to
the popular and hugely problematic equation of medieval = Persian =
Muslim = foreign. The third point had to do with the disappearance
of the regions falling in the present province of Bihar from ‘histories
xii Preface
Pankaj Jha
September 2018
Delhi
Tables, Images, and Figure
Tables
1.1 Vidyapati’s Compositions with Their Language,
Script, Patrons, and Themes 7
Images
1.1 Ugnā Mahādeva Temple at Bisfi 14
1.2a Vidyapati Memorial at Bisfi 14
1.2b A Bust of Vidyapati at Bisfi 15
1.3a The Śiva Temple at Vidyapati Dhāma 16
1.3b A Jewellery Shop in Vidyapati Dhāma 16
1.3c An Eatery in Vidyapati Dhāma 17
Figure
1.1 Oinivāra Dynasty Succession Chart 29
Notes on Transliteration
A
ll translations from Sanskrit, Apabhraṃśa, and Hindi are
mine, unless otherwise specified. In the case of Persian,
I have indicated in the footnotes where I have consulted the
original and where I am using translation(s) by others.
All non-English words have been italicized except those that occur
too frequently. I have not used diacritics for place-names that are
still in official or/and popular use. However, the older variants of the
same have been marked with diacritics. Thus, I refer to the village of
Vidyapati’s birth, which is still there in north Bihar, as Bisfi. However,
its old name is referred not as Bispi but as Bisapī.
All dates in the book are in the Common Era (ce) unless otherwise
specified.
For Persian words, no diacritics have been used, partly in order to
avoid possible confusion between the standard methods of transcrib-
ing Persian words into English and those for transcribing Sanskrit
words into English. Hence, while rendering the Persian words into
xviii Notes on Transliteration
English, only readability has been kept in mind, which often led me
to adopt the most commonly used spellings.
The transliteration scheme followed for Sanskrit, Apabhraṃśa,
Hindi, and Maithili words are given below:
अ a आ ā इ i ई ī
उ u ऊ ū ए e ऐ ai
ओ o औ au ऋ ṛi
क ka ख kha ग ga घ gha
ङ ṅ च ca छ cha ज ja
झ jha ञ ñ ट ṭa ठ ṭha
ड ḍa ढ ḍha ण ṇa त ta
थ tha द da ध dha न na
प pa फ pha ब ba भ bha
म ma य ya र ra व va
श śa ष ṣa स sa
anusvāra ṃ
visarga ḥ
Introduction
T
his book has been conceived as a political history of literature
in the fifteenth century. It is neither an exhaustive consider-
ation of all literature produced in that age in North India, nor
does it claim to be a treatment of a ‘representative’ sample of all such
compositions. Rather, I have focussed on three sharply different texts
of a prolific poet, Vidyapati, from an atypical region, Mithila. I have
tried to use the three texts under consideration to open up the wider
world of literature in the fifteenth century. Thus, I relate Vidyapati’s
compositions to the existing traditions of literary production of the
time, with a view to unearth the deeper histories that lay behind them.
Given the state of the relevant historiography, this was a huge meth-
odological challenge.
The book is organized in five chapters, which are unevenly divided
in two parts, preceded by a short introduction, and followed by a
conclusion. The conclusion ties up the points made by the different
chapters both at a general, methodological level, as well as in the
A Political History of Literature: Vidyapati and the Fifteenth Century. Pankaj Jha,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Pankaj Jha.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199489558.001.0001
xx Introduction
specific context of the long fifteenth century, in a way that might con-
nect its details with certain larger questions of contemporary as well
as historical significance.
The first part of the book has two chapters: the first provides basic
information about Vidyapati, his compositions, and his immediate
geopolitical and intellectual milieu. The second chapter takes critical
stock of the more dominant and recent strands of historiography of
the ‘long’ fifteenth century. But it also uses this critical stock-taking
as a step towards (a) broadly mapping the literary cultures of the fif-
teenth century, and (b) thinking about issues of historical method,
historians’ possible engagements with literature, knowledge forma-
tions, and power, as a set of related themes. The second part of the
book has three chapters, each centred around, but not limited to,
one of the texts of Vidyapati, namely, Likhanāvalī, Puruṣaparīkṣā, and
Kīrttilatā, out of more than a dozen of his compositions available in
print whose authorship is not disputed. While I do refer to the poet’s
other compositions whenever the context requires me to, these are
not taken up for detailed exploration.
Before I move to the next section, let me put in an explanation
for why I treat Mithila as an ‘atypical’ region. The ‘region’ of Mithila
was atypical in two distinct ways. First, at a moment when a robust
system of long-distance trade had developed in most parts of the
subcontinent, Mithila lay on none of the major trade routes of the
time. Second, for related reasons, Mithila continued to survive as
either an independent chieftaincy or as a semi-autonomous princi-
pality of the three major sultanates of the long fifteenth century in
its neighbourhood: Delhi, Jaunpur, and Bengal. It was only in the
mid-sixteenth century that it emerged as an integral and separate
territorial unit of a major imperial power, namely, the Mughal state.
As such, it figures only marginally in the standard narratives of
the Delhi Sultanate or the other sultanates up to the first half of
the sixteenth century.
Why Vidyapati?
When I started researching the enormous corpus of literature
left behind by Vidyapati, all I knew was that I wanted to focus on
non-Persian textual productions of the fifteenth century. Medieval
Introduction xxi
1For a detailed argument of the case, see Jha, ‘Literary Conduits for
“Consent”’. Also see Orsini and Sheikh, ‘Introduction’.
Introduction xxiii