Translating Jain Philosophy at the Confluence of Persianate Hinduism

In 1796, Claude Martin (1735–1800), a wealthy French officer of the East India Company living in Lucknow, commissioned the Brahman Delārām to translate into Persian two classical texts from the Digambara Jain philosophical tradition. Using the Braj Bhāṣā commentaries composed by the seventeenth-cent...

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Autres titres:Persian Translation and Textual Production in the South Asian Multilingual Context
Auteur principal: Arzoumanov, Jean (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Publié: 2024
Dans: Journal of Persianate studies
Année: 2024, Volume: 17, Numéro: 1/2, Pages: 119-147
Sujets non-standardisés:B Lucknow
B Colonial India
B Persianate India
B Translation
B Jainism
B Claude Martin
Accès en ligne: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Volltext (kostenfrei)
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Résumé:In 1796, Claude Martin (1735–1800), a wealthy French officer of the East India Company living in Lucknow, commissioned the Brahman Delārām to translate into Persian two classical texts from the Digambara Jain philosophical tradition. Using the Braj Bhāṣā commentaries composed by the seventeenth-century Jain author Hemrāj Pāṇḍe, Delārām was able to access the original Prakrit texts of the eighth- and tenth-century philosophers Kundakunda and Nemicandra via an updated vernacularized version. His translations are as an exceptional document showing the hermeneutic tools that a Persian-speaking Brahman could use to parse the doctrinal system of Jainism. Delārām’s language was markedly shaped by his familiarity with Advaita Vedānta and the “unity of being (vahdat al-vojud)” school of Sufism, focused on ontological unity. More specifically, the Sufi-Advaita idiom that developed in Persian from the early Mughal period onward functioned for Delārām as a lens through which he could engage with the doctrinal diversity of India’s religious landscape. His efforts to translate the unfamiliar and sometimes perplexing elements of Jainism reveal the complex modalities of crossing linguistic and religious boundaries through Persian in South Asia and their partial incommensurabilities.
ISSN:1874-7167
Contient:Enthalten in: Journal of Persianate studies
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/18747167-bja10043