Duality in the Language and Literary Style of Raskhan’s Poetry

Abstract

Hiroko Nagasaki looks closely at the poet Raskhan’s signature chands, that is, the metrical forms in which he most frequently composed, focusing in particular on the savaiyā. What she finds is a metrical structure that combined Persian and Indic systems of prosody, allowing different methods of scansion and therefore different stylistic options. This discovery in turn reveals a connection between Raskhan’s poems of Vaishnava bhakti and the highly stylized world of the Persian ghazzal, a form heavily influenced by the idiom of Sufi devotion. These insights into stylistic crossover are especially significant in light of the hagiographical tradition surrounding Raskhan, which claims he was a Muslim who took up devotion to Krishna at some point in adulthood.