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Wiley Blackwell Companion to Hinduism.
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Translating the ‘Other’: Early-Modern Muslim Understandings of Hinduism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2017
Abstract
This essay examines the theme of inter-religious translation in the context of early modern India. More specifically, it considers the prominent 18th century Sufi master and scholar Mirzā Maẓhar Jān-i Jānān's (d.1781) translation of Hindu thought and practice as reflected in his Persian letters on this subject. Through a close reading of the content and context of his translation project, I show that while according the Hindu ‘other’ remarkable doctrinal hospitality, Jān-i Jānān's view of translation was firmly tethered to an imperial Muslim political theology committed to upholding the exceptionality of Muslim normative authority. Interrogating his negotiation of hospitality and exceptionality and the notions of time that undergirded that negotiation occupies much of this essay. I also explore ways in which Jān-i Jānān's translation of Hinduism might engage ongoing scholarly conversations regarding the rupture of colonial modernity in the discursive career of religion in South Asia. In the Euro-American study of religion, many scholars have shown the intimacy of modern secular power and the reconfiguration of religion as a universally translatable category. But what conceptual and historiographical gains might one derive by shifting the camera of analysis from the colonial reification of religion to the inter-religious translation efforts of a late 18th century thinker like Jān-i Jānān who wrote at the cusp of colonial modernity? This question hovers over the problem-space of this essay.
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References
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3 I use the term ‘Hinduism’ here, as I do throughout this article when describing Jān-i Jānān's views, rather reluctantly, and primarily for heuristic purposes. As I discuss later, the positing in the eighteenth century of a clearly demarcated world religion called ‘Hinduism’ involves a fair number of problems and ambiguities.
4 For instance, Aziz Ahmad, I. H. Qureshi, I. M. Ikram and to a certain extent Fazlur Rahman are notable members of this camp. This list is, of course, by no means exhaustive.
5 Imtiaz Ahmad, Sarvelli Gopal and Mushirul Hassan are all good examples.
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9 Jān-i Jānān was Mirzā Maẓhar's poetic epithet. But since he is most well known as Jān-i Jānān, I use this name throughout this article.
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43 Persian for Vedas.
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48 Ibid .
49 Ibid .
50 Ibid .
51 Ibid .
52 Qur'an 35:24; Muhammad Asad translation.
53 Qur'an 10:47. Muhammad Asad translation.
54 Murādābādī, Kalimāt-i Ṭayyibāt, p. 28.
55 Ibid .
56 Qur'an, 40:78.
57 Murādābādī, Kalimāt-i Ṭayyibāt, p. 28.
58 Ibid ., p. 29
59 Ibid .
60 Ibid . Literally meaning ‘like a stick’, the practice of dand'vat represents a Hindu salutation involving falling, lying prostrate or bowing before a person or an entity. It usually signifies the recognition of moral authority in a situation that demands the expression of such respect.
61 Ibid .
62 See Buehler, Arthur, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Columbia, SC, 1998.)Google Scholar
63 Friedmann, Yohanan, “Muslim views of Indian religions”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, XC, (April–June 1975), p. 221 Google Scholar.
64 Ibid .
65 Dihlavī and Mujaddidī, Maqāmāt, pp. 101 and 127.
66 See for instance Mandair, Arvind, Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality and the Politics of Translation (New York, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dalmia, Vasudha, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar; Frykenberg, Robert “Constructions of Hinduism at the Nexus of History and Religion,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIII: 3 (Winter 1993), pp. 523–550 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oberoi, Harjot, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (Chicago, 1994)Google Scholar.
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74 Venuti, Lawrence, The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation (London and New York, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
75 Quoted in Ibid ., p.41.
76 Quoted in Friedrich, Hugo, “On the art of translation” in Schulte, Rainer and Biguenet, John (eds), Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida (Chicago and London, 1992), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.
77 Ibid., p.14.
78 Quoted in Ibid .
79 I would like to thank Carl Ernst, Ebrahim Moosa, Bruce Lawrence, James Laine, Barton Scott and Hoda Yousef, also the peer reviewers for comments on this essay. I also benefited from participation in the 2013 National Endowment for Humanities Institute on Translation in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: I thank the institute organisers Chris Higgins, Elizabeth McCoy and all participants for their stimulating conversations. I also presented different versions of this essay at the American Academy of Religion Meeting, Annual South Asia Conference. I thank all respondents and audience members at these venues for their feedback and comments.
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