Objects of Translation

Material Culture and Medieval "Hindu-Muslim" Encounter

Finbarr Flood (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

384 Seiten

2018
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-18074-8 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

Objects of Translation offers a nuanced approach to the entanglements of medieval elites in the regions that today comprise Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north India. The book--which ranges in time from the early eighth to the early thirteenth centuries--challenges existing narratives that cast the period as one of enduring hostility between monolithic "Hindu" and "Muslim" cultures. These narratives of conflict have generally depended upon premodern texts for their understanding of the past. By contrast, this book considers the role of material culture and highlights how objects such as coins, dress, monuments, paintings, and sculptures mediated diverse modes of encounter during a critical but neglected period in South Asian history.

The book explores modes of circulation--among them looting, gifting, and trade--through which artisans and artifacts traveled, remapping cultural boundaries usually imagined as stable and static. It analyzes the relationship between mobility and practices of cultural translation, and the role of both in the emergence of complex transcultural identities. Among the subjects discussed are the rendering of Arabic sacred texts in Sanskrit on Indian coins, the adoption of Turko-Persian dress by Buddhist rulers, the work of Indian stone masons in Afghanistan, and the incorporation of carvings from Hindu and Jain temples in early Indian mosques. Objects of Translation draws upon contemporary theories of cosmopolitanism and globalization to argue for radically new approaches to the cultural geography of premodern South Asia and the Islamic world.

Finbarr Barry Flood is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Art History and the Institute of Fine Arts, and founder-director of Silsila: Center for Material Histories at New York University. His books include Piety and Politics in the Early Indian Mosque and The Great Mosque of Damascus.

Acknowledgments xi

A Note on Translations and Transliterations xv

Introduction 1

Roots or Routes? 1

Networks, Translation, and Transculturation 5

Things and Texts 9

Chapter 1: The Mercantile Cosmopolis 15

Polyglot Frontiers and Permeable Boundaries 15

Gifts, Idolatry, and the Political Economy 26

Heteropraxy, Taxonomy, and Traveling Orthography 37

Chapter 2: Cultural Cross-dressing 61

Prestigious Imitation 61

Fractal Kingship and Royal Castoff s 75

The Raja's Finger and the Sultan's Belt 84

Chapter 3: Accommodating the Infi del 89

Sunni Internationalism and the Ghurid Interlude 89

From King of the Mountains to the Second Alexander 93

Homology, Ambiguity, and the Rule of Sri Hammira 107

Chapter 4: Looking at Loot 121

Signs of Sovereignty 121

Looting and Diff erence 123

Trophies and Transculturation 126

Chapter 5: Remaking Monuments 137

Taxonomies, Anomalies, and Visual Pidgin 137

Rupture and Reinscription 152

Noble Chambers and Translated Stones 160

Patrons and Masons 184

Markets, Mobility, and Intentional Hybridity 189

Chapter 6: Palimpsest Pasts and Fictive Genealogies 227

A World within a World 227

Monuments and Memory 247

The Fate of Hamm?ra 255

Conclusion: In and Out of Place 261

Appendix: Principal Dynasties and Rulers Mentioned 269

Notes 271

Bibliography 311

1. Primary Sources 311

2. Secondary Sources

(a) History and Material Culture 317

(b) Conceptual and Theoretical 347

Index 353

Erscheinungsdatum	16.04.2018
Zusatzinfo	70 b/w illus.
Verlagsort	New Jersey
Sprache	englisch
Maße	203 x 254 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
	Technik ► Architektur
ISBN-10	0-691-18074-1 / 0691180741
ISBN-13	978-0-691-18074-8 / 9780691180748
Zustand	Neuware