| Author/Contributor(s): | Nair, Shankar |
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Date: | 04/28/2020 |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Condition: | NEW |
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.
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.