Eighteenth Century Urdu poetry: Hakala talk at Library of Congress

[Guest guest]

‘A Banquet of Words’

Insights from a Poet’s Notebook into the Literary Culture of

18th-century Delhi

Walter Hakala

Florence Tan Moeson Fellow

Department of South Asia Studies

University of Pennsylvania

12 to 1 p.m.

Thursday October 2, 2008

Library of Congress

Asian Division

Conference Room

101 Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, DC

Capitol South Metro stop

 

The recent acquisition by the Library of Congress of a significant

Pakistani collection of manuscripts provides an exciting new archive for

the study of late Mughal South Asia. Among the manuscripts in the

collection is a small and incomplete notebook containing verses by

thirteen near-contemporary poets of the 18th century, including Shah

Mubarak 'Abru', Shakir ‘Naji’, the infamous 18th-century kingmaker,

'Imad al-Mulk ‘Nizam', and his wife, the accomplished poet Gunna

Begum. This notebook therefore tells us much about the particular social

milieu in which a new literary language-what came to be called

Urdu-coalesced and circulated in Delhi during the 18th century. The

poetry of this time is characterized by its free borrowings from local

Indic idioms and a fluidity in orthography and rhyme, underlining the

still experimental state of Urdu as a literary language. That this

manuscript survives to the present day is all the more significant

because poets of the following generations were so dismissive of these

early efforts, critical of what they considered an over-reliance on word

play and punning, known imham-go. This manuscript, thus, fills a gap in

our understanding of how Urdu in the 18th century emerged from the

shadows of a cosmopolitan Persian literary culture to become the

celebrated language of the Mughal capital.

 

Sponsored by the Asian Division Friends Society of the Library of

Congress

Questions? Contact Nuzhat Khatoon (nkha) at (202) 707-2194 or

Allen Thrasher (athr) at (202) 707-3732.

 

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at

(202) 707-6362 (voice/TTY) or email: ADA.