Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X22000166
Purnima Dhavan, Heidi Pauwels
Abstract The emergence in eighteenth-century India of literary compositions that used the elite registers of what was, at the time, called ‘Rekhtah’, and later defined as Urdu, is poorly understood. Conventionally, after an initial infatuation in Delhi with the works of Vali Dakhani,1 a mid-century break is assumed, exemplified by the revision of Zuhur ud-Din Hatim’s Divan as Divanzadah in the 1750s. Scholars have viewed this as a radical intervention in the creation of Urdu, which excised old vernacular models and embraced further Persianization. This article re-examines the evidence, combining methodologies from literary and historical studies. It points to the continuities present in Hatim’s revision, including sustained engagement with Vali, even as Hatim attempted to appeal to new audiences, incorporating new trends alongside older literary models. Foregrounding literary networks and arenas of poetic practice shows the limited impact of the proscriptions and literary criticisms voiced by Hatim’s critics. In studying the contested space of literary aesthetics and linguistic shifts against self-fashioning within changing networks, this article demonstrates that the relationship between the Persianate and vernacular sphere continued to be generative, rather than oppositional or hierarchical.
{"title":"Crafting literary Urdu: Mirza Hatim’s engagement with Vali Dakhani","authors":"Purnima Dhavan, Heidi Pauwels","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X22000166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000166","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The emergence in eighteenth-century India of literary compositions that used the elite registers of what was, at the time, called ‘Rekhtah’, and later defined as Urdu, is poorly understood. Conventionally, after an initial infatuation in Delhi with the works of Vali Dakhani,1 a mid-century break is assumed, exemplified by the revision of Zuhur ud-Din Hatim’s Divan as Divanzadah in the 1750s. Scholars have viewed this as a radical intervention in the creation of Urdu, which excised old vernacular models and embraced further Persianization. This article re-examines the evidence, combining methodologies from literary and historical studies. It points to the continuities present in Hatim’s revision, including sustained engagement with Vali, even as Hatim attempted to appeal to new audiences, incorporating new trends alongside older literary models. Foregrounding literary networks and arenas of poetic practice shows the limited impact of the proscriptions and literary criticisms voiced by Hatim’s critics. In studying the contested space of literary aesthetics and linguistic shifts against self-fashioning within changing networks, this article demonstrates that the relationship between the Persianate and vernacular sphere continued to be generative, rather than oppositional or hierarchical.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42392677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-28DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X22000191
Hema Kiruppalini
Abstract While there is burgeoning scholarship on the transnational lives of Nepali Gurkhas and their families, research on their migration history and lived experiences in Asian contexts is few and far between. Building upon Vron Ware’s concept of Gurkha families as ‘military migrants’ and using an inter-Asia approach as a framework, this article foregrounds the interconnections between military service and migrant pathways during the period of decolonization, particularly in Southeast Asia, and in so doing, offers a gendered perspective on labour migration. Drawing on multi-sited archival and ethnographic research, it seeks to argue that from 1948 to 1971, the Asian region(s) were a dominant feature in the global migration process of Gurkha families who circulated within the arc of a declining British empire. The article further advances that their gendered mobility patterns problematizes the ‘migration–left behind’ nexus as binary opposites as Gurkha wives and children engaged with mobility and mediated their transnational lives in complex ways. It also expands upon the notion of dukha—meaning ‘sadness’ or ‘suffering’ in Nepali—as an analytical theme to yield further insights into their lived experiences and to revisit colonial historiography about Gurkha society.
{"title":"Imperial inheritance: The transnational lives of Gurkha families in Asian contexts, 1948–1971","authors":"Hema Kiruppalini","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X22000191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000191","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While there is burgeoning scholarship on the transnational lives of Nepali Gurkhas and their families, research on their migration history and lived experiences in Asian contexts is few and far between. Building upon Vron Ware’s concept of Gurkha families as ‘military migrants’ and using an inter-Asia approach as a framework, this article foregrounds the interconnections between military service and migrant pathways during the period of decolonization, particularly in Southeast Asia, and in so doing, offers a gendered perspective on labour migration. Drawing on multi-sited archival and ethnographic research, it seeks to argue that from 1948 to 1971, the Asian region(s) were a dominant feature in the global migration process of Gurkha families who circulated within the arc of a declining British empire. The article further advances that their gendered mobility patterns problematizes the ‘migration–left behind’ nexus as binary opposites as Gurkha wives and children engaged with mobility and mediated their transnational lives in complex ways. It also expands upon the notion of dukha—meaning ‘sadness’ or ‘suffering’ in Nepali—as an analytical theme to yield further insights into their lived experiences and to revisit colonial historiography about Gurkha society.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47423011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-28DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X22000178
Nicholas J. Abbott
Abstract This article examines the durable, yet largely overlooked, claims of Bahu Begam (1727–1815) to dynastic wealth and authority in the Awadh nawabi (1722–1856), a North Indian Mughal ‘successor state’ and an important client of the East India Company. Chief consort (khass mahal) to Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula (r. 1754–75) and mother to his successor Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula (r. 1775–97), Bahu Begam played a well-documented role in the regime’s tumultuous politics, particularly during Warren Hastings’s tenure as the Company’s governor-general (1773–85) and his later parliamentary impeachment. But despite her prominent political influence, little attention has been paid to the substance of her persistent claims to proprietorship over revenue rights and the immense fortune in her custody, as well as her broader assertions of authority over Awadh’s male rulers. Taking those claims seriously, this article contends that the begam rooted her arguments in notions of natural deference to maternal authority and generational seniority, evolving dynastic traditions of co-sharing sovereignty and fiscal resources, and her particular history as a principal financier of the Awadh regime. In so doing, the article argues that the begam’s claims reflect the shifting conceptual language of late-Mughal Persianate political discourse and the ambivalent position of elite women as dynastic financiers and state-builders in early colonial South Asia.
{"title":"‘It all comes from me’: Bahu Begam and the making of the Awadh nawabi, circa 1765–1815","authors":"Nicholas J. Abbott","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X22000178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000178","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the durable, yet largely overlooked, claims of Bahu Begam (1727–1815) to dynastic wealth and authority in the Awadh nawabi (1722–1856), a North Indian Mughal ‘successor state’ and an important client of the East India Company. Chief consort (khass mahal) to Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula (r. 1754–75) and mother to his successor Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula (r. 1775–97), Bahu Begam played a well-documented role in the regime’s tumultuous politics, particularly during Warren Hastings’s tenure as the Company’s governor-general (1773–85) and his later parliamentary impeachment. But despite her prominent political influence, little attention has been paid to the substance of her persistent claims to proprietorship over revenue rights and the immense fortune in her custody, as well as her broader assertions of authority over Awadh’s male rulers. Taking those claims seriously, this article contends that the begam rooted her arguments in notions of natural deference to maternal authority and generational seniority, evolving dynastic traditions of co-sharing sovereignty and fiscal resources, and her particular history as a principal financier of the Awadh regime. In so doing, the article argues that the begam’s claims reflect the shifting conceptual language of late-Mughal Persianate political discourse and the ambivalent position of elite women as dynastic financiers and state-builders in early colonial South Asia.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42274599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X22000130
Eleonor Marcussen
Abstract This article seeks to address a thematic thread that remains relatively unexplored in historical disaster research—victimhood—through an analysis of publications by disaster relief funds and their supporters in the aftermath of the 1934 earthquake in Bihar in northern India. By examining the representations of victimhood, I aim to explore the historical significance of perceptions and constructions of victimhood in the late colonial period. Based on photographs, illustrations, and descriptions of suffering in images and texts, the article suggests that constructions of victimhood effectively relied on imagery that contained, on the one hand, an absence of bodies and, on the other, a feminized anthropomorphization of suffering. The narratives underlying such depictions of earthquake victims are based on a constitution of victimhood that relied on contemporary historical and culturally founded imageries. The analysis of images and texts focuses on how representations of disaster victims were effective in communicating suffering to audiences. I tentatively argue that historically and culturally founded tropes of what constituted a victim formed along two narratives of victimhood that appealed to a colonial and a nationalist readership respectively. These conceptualizations of victimhood formed the basis for collecting aid for relief and reconstruction, rather than the loss of life, dispossession, social marginalization, and displacement suffered by victims of the earthquake.
{"title":"Representations of disaster victimhood: Framing suffering and loss after the 1934 Bihar-Nepal earthquake","authors":"Eleonor Marcussen","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X22000130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000130","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article seeks to address a thematic thread that remains relatively unexplored in historical disaster research—victimhood—through an analysis of publications by disaster relief funds and their supporters in the aftermath of the 1934 earthquake in Bihar in northern India. By examining the representations of victimhood, I aim to explore the historical significance of perceptions and constructions of victimhood in the late colonial period. Based on photographs, illustrations, and descriptions of suffering in images and texts, the article suggests that constructions of victimhood effectively relied on imagery that contained, on the one hand, an absence of bodies and, on the other, a feminized anthropomorphization of suffering. The narratives underlying such depictions of earthquake victims are based on a constitution of victimhood that relied on contemporary historical and culturally founded imageries. The analysis of images and texts focuses on how representations of disaster victims were effective in communicating suffering to audiences. I tentatively argue that historically and culturally founded tropes of what constituted a victim formed along two narratives of victimhood that appealed to a colonial and a nationalist readership respectively. These conceptualizations of victimhood formed the basis for collecting aid for relief and reconstruction, rather than the loss of life, dispossession, social marginalization, and displacement suffered by victims of the earthquake.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46995292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-15DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X22000038
Tomas Larsson
Abstract The political salience of religious issues and identities has been rising in Thailand, and this is increasingly reflected in electoral politics. Thai political parties seek to position themselves in relation to struggles over the location of the ideological centre of gravity, which has pitted defenders of the religio-political status quo—a monarchy-centred civil-religious nationalism—against Buddhist nationalists, on the one hand, and proponents of greater secularization, on the other. In the 2019 general election, political entrepreneurs ‘particized’ these religio-political differences, which has far-reaching implications for majority-minority relations, to an extent that appears unprecedented in recent Thai political history. This argument is developed through an analysis of the platforms, policies, and rhetoric put forward by political parties contesting the election, which concluded an almost five-year period of direct military rule. This analysis suggests we need to pay greater attention to the role of political parties and electoral competition in maintaining and contesting the secular settlement in Thailand.
{"title":"Religion, political parties, and Thailand’s 2019 election: Cosmopolitan royalism and its rivals","authors":"Tomas Larsson","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X22000038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000038","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The political salience of religious issues and identities has been rising in Thailand, and this is increasingly reflected in electoral politics. Thai political parties seek to position themselves in relation to struggles over the location of the ideological centre of gravity, which has pitted defenders of the religio-political status quo—a monarchy-centred civil-religious nationalism—against Buddhist nationalists, on the one hand, and proponents of greater secularization, on the other. In the 2019 general election, political entrepreneurs ‘particized’ these religio-political differences, which has far-reaching implications for majority-minority relations, to an extent that appears unprecedented in recent Thai political history. This argument is developed through an analysis of the platforms, policies, and rhetoric put forward by political parties contesting the election, which concluded an almost five-year period of direct military rule. This analysis suggests we need to pay greater attention to the role of political parties and electoral competition in maintaining and contesting the secular settlement in Thailand.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42988181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X21000524
John Solomon
Abstract This article examines British Protestant missionary scholars' representations of Tamil culture and history, analysing how this form of knowledge evolved in relation to missionary concerns and the intellectual trends of nineteenth-century India. I focus on the work of Robert Caldwell, whose scholarship had a profound influence on the identity discourses of twentieth-century Tamil nationalism. I situate Caldwell's work in ethnography and philology within the broader field of colonial knowledge produced about Tamils in nineteenth-century India and within a broader study of British missionary concerns in South India. I examine two of Caldwell's publications to argue that his later work, far from being driven by mere scholarly interests, was also shaped by his concerns as a missionary, and that his evolving scholarship mirrored the development of anti-Brahmanism in British Protestant missionary circles of the time. Missionary anti-Brahmanism arose as a response to the caste system, which missionary groups came to regard as the biggest obstacle to Christian conversions. Departing from some of his earlier ideas, Caldwell strategically positioned his later work to challenge Brahman influence, which he saw as being intrinsically tied to the strength of caste sentiment in Indian society. Caldwell's construction of a discursive framework for understanding Tamil linguistic identity was informed by public reactions to his first publication and his subsequent understanding of the dynamic relationship between European scholarship and Indian social relations. More broadly, this article demonstrates the close relationships between Protestant Christian missionary activity, Indian social politics, and the field of knowledge production in colonial South India.
{"title":"Caldwell's Dravidians: Knowledge production and the representational strategies of missionary scholars in colonial South India","authors":"John Solomon","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X21000524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X21000524","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines British Protestant missionary scholars' representations of Tamil culture and history, analysing how this form of knowledge evolved in relation to missionary concerns and the intellectual trends of nineteenth-century India. I focus on the work of Robert Caldwell, whose scholarship had a profound influence on the identity discourses of twentieth-century Tamil nationalism. I situate Caldwell's work in ethnography and philology within the broader field of colonial knowledge produced about Tamils in nineteenth-century India and within a broader study of British missionary concerns in South India. I examine two of Caldwell's publications to argue that his later work, far from being driven by mere scholarly interests, was also shaped by his concerns as a missionary, and that his evolving scholarship mirrored the development of anti-Brahmanism in British Protestant missionary circles of the time. Missionary anti-Brahmanism arose as a response to the caste system, which missionary groups came to regard as the biggest obstacle to Christian conversions. Departing from some of his earlier ideas, Caldwell strategically positioned his later work to challenge Brahman influence, which he saw as being intrinsically tied to the strength of caste sentiment in Indian society. Caldwell's construction of a discursive framework for understanding Tamil linguistic identity was informed by public reactions to his first publication and his subsequent understanding of the dynamic relationship between European scholarship and Indian social relations. More broadly, this article demonstrates the close relationships between Protestant Christian missionary activity, Indian social politics, and the field of knowledge production in colonial South India.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45010874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-28DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x22000476
{"title":"ASS volume 56 issue 6 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x22000476","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x22000476","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46671262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-28DOI: 10.1017/s0026749x22000488
{"title":"ASS volume 56 issue 6 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0026749x22000488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x22000488","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48639946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-28DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X2200004X
M. Pelevin
Abstract The article explores the ethnocultural aspects and ideological implications of a hagiographical collection from the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī wa Makhzan-i Afghānī (1613), a book on the general history of the Pashtuns compiled in the Indo-Afghan diaspora. This article primarily focuses on the stories that either presumably originate from or directly relate in content to Pashtun tribal areas to the west of the Indus. Being foremost a supplement to the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī’s genealogical section, the hagiographical anthology was included in this book to highlight and illustrate the idea of the Pashtuns’ continuous adherence to Islam throughout many centuries. However, its narratives suggest that Islamic traditions in the Pashtuns’ collective memory can be traced back as far as the turn of the thirteenth century. While the genealogies maintained the principle of patrilineal descent as the basic attribute of Pashtun identity, the hagiographies affirmed the profession of Islamic faith as another integral component of this identity and also brought to light its linguistic criterion. One of the article’s sections offers a survey of the cases where the Pashto language as well as Pashto lexemes and phrases are mentioned in the Persian text of the hagiographies. The article also attempts to locate the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī’s hagiographical collection among similar works in Indo-Persian literature; it also considers such still-understudied issues as the emergence of spiritual lineages in Pashtun tribes and the entwining of folklore and conventional Islamic elements in the stories about Pashtun religious leaders.
摘要:本文探讨了《Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī wa Makhzan-i Afghānī》(1613)的圣徒文集的民族文化方面和意识形态含义，这本书是在印度-阿富汗侨民中编纂的关于普什图人通史的书。本文主要关注的是那些可能起源于印度河以西普什图部落地区或在内容上与之直接相关的故事。作为Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī的宗谱部分的最重要的补充，这本书中包含了圣徒文集，以突出和说明普什图人在许多世纪以来一直坚持伊斯兰教的想法。然而，它的叙述表明，普什图人的集体记忆中的伊斯兰传统可以追溯到13世纪初。虽然族谱坚持父系血统的原则是普什图人身份的基本属性，但圣徒传记肯定了伊斯兰信仰的职业是这种身份的另一个组成部分，并揭示了其语言标准。这篇文章的一个章节提供了普什图语以及普什图语词汇和短语在波斯语的圣徒传记中被提到的情况的调查。本文还试图在印度-波斯文学的类似作品中定位Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī的圣徒文集;它还考虑了一些仍未被充分研究的问题，如普什图部落中精神血统的出现，以及普什图宗教领袖故事中民间传说和传统伊斯兰元素的相互交织。
{"title":"Pashtun homelands in an Indo-Afghan hagiographical collection","authors":"M. Pelevin","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X2200004X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X2200004X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article explores the ethnocultural aspects and ideological implications of a hagiographical collection from the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī wa Makhzan-i Afghānī (1613), a book on the general history of the Pashtuns compiled in the Indo-Afghan diaspora. This article primarily focuses on the stories that either presumably originate from or directly relate in content to Pashtun tribal areas to the west of the Indus. Being foremost a supplement to the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī’s genealogical section, the hagiographical anthology was included in this book to highlight and illustrate the idea of the Pashtuns’ continuous adherence to Islam throughout many centuries. However, its narratives suggest that Islamic traditions in the Pashtuns’ collective memory can be traced back as far as the turn of the thirteenth century. While the genealogies maintained the principle of patrilineal descent as the basic attribute of Pashtun identity, the hagiographies affirmed the profession of Islamic faith as another integral component of this identity and also brought to light its linguistic criterion. One of the article’s sections offers a survey of the cases where the Pashto language as well as Pashto lexemes and phrases are mentioned in the Persian text of the hagiographies. The article also attempts to locate the Tārīkh-i Khānjahānī’s hagiographical collection among similar works in Indo-Persian literature; it also considers such still-understudied issues as the emergence of spiritual lineages in Pashtun tribes and the entwining of folklore and conventional Islamic elements in the stories about Pashtun religious leaders.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46243458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-27DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X22000087
Hans Martin Krämer
Abstract The modern Japanese nation-state that was established from 1868 onwards was marked by a strong tendency towards the separation of state and religion: religions were protected as a private matter, but the public sphere was resolutely kept free of them. This was mainly done so that competing religions would not get in the way of state-sanctioned emperor worship. The latter, although imbued with elements from Shinto, was carefully defined as non-religious, so that emperor worship could be prescribed without harm to the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion. This secularist approach to policing religions was broadly shared among Japanese elites—but it did not remain unopposed. From around the turn of the twentieth century, dissatisfaction with the separation of the religious and the secular spheres began to be voiced, especially by pan-Asianist activists, who sought to combine the spiritual unity of Asia with the political liberation of Asian countries from Western colonialism and imperialism. Although Japanese pan-Asianism has conventionally been seen as a purely political movement, one cannot explain it fully without taking into account its spiritual dimension, which up to the 1920s drew its primary inspiration from India. This article will show how pan-Asianist activists in Japan opposed mainstream secularism and discuss what their vision for a unified Asia was. In doing so, it will focus on the Japanese reception of the Frenchman Paul Richard, an important political activist-cum-spiritual seeker who was a central node in the network of Indian and Japanese pan-Asianists in the early twentieth century.
{"title":"An anti-secularist pan-Asianist from Europe: Paul Richard in Japan, 1916–1920","authors":"Hans Martin Krämer","doi":"10.1017/S0026749X22000087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000087","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The modern Japanese nation-state that was established from 1868 onwards was marked by a strong tendency towards the separation of state and religion: religions were protected as a private matter, but the public sphere was resolutely kept free of them. This was mainly done so that competing religions would not get in the way of state-sanctioned emperor worship. The latter, although imbued with elements from Shinto, was carefully defined as non-religious, so that emperor worship could be prescribed without harm to the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion. This secularist approach to policing religions was broadly shared among Japanese elites—but it did not remain unopposed. From around the turn of the twentieth century, dissatisfaction with the separation of the religious and the secular spheres began to be voiced, especially by pan-Asianist activists, who sought to combine the spiritual unity of Asia with the political liberation of Asian countries from Western colonialism and imperialism. Although Japanese pan-Asianism has conventionally been seen as a purely political movement, one cannot explain it fully without taking into account its spiritual dimension, which up to the 1920s drew its primary inspiration from India. This article will show how pan-Asianist activists in Japan opposed mainstream secularism and discuss what their vision for a unified Asia was. In doing so, it will focus on the Japanese reception of the Frenchman Paul Richard, an important political activist-cum-spiritual seeker who was a central node in the network of Indian and Japanese pan-Asianists in the early twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":51574,"journal":{"name":"Modern Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41345501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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