In the Shade of the Golden Palace: Alaol and Middle Bengali Poetics in Arakan

Cover
Half title
Series
In the Shade of the Golden Palace
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Transliteration Charts
Map of Arakan and Eastern South Asia in the Seventeenth Century
Introduction: Poetics in the Margins
	Ālāol’s life and works at a glance
	Studying Middle Bengali literature
	Overview of the contents of the book
1. The Formation of Bengali Literature in Arakan (ca. 1430–​1638)
	Setting a frame for a unified understanding of a composite tradition
	The Bengal–​Arakan continuum and the Bay of Bengal network system
	The formation of an Arakanese Islamicate political idiom circa 1430–​1630
	Bengali Muslim literature in Chittagong and the Dhaññavatī area
	Literary cultures in Bhulua
	Mardān’s (fl. 1622–​1638) Sādhur vacan [The Merchant’s Promise]
	Summary
2. Literary Urbanity in Mrauk U
	Urban Bengali Muslim literature in Arakan
	Locating Bengali Muslims in the social landscape of Mrauk U
	The royal dignitary as patron and host
	The secondary courts of Mrauk U
	The economy of the sabhā
	The functions of speech in the sabhā: The story of Bhāratīcatur
	Summary
3. New Beginnings: Ālāol’s Early Career in Mrauk U
	Beyond the trope of the aging poet, a context-​sensitive poetics
	An Indo-​Afghan childhood: Ālāol in Fatihabad
	Joining the royal household: Māgan Ṭhākur and his milieu
	Saẏphulmuluk Badiujjāmāl: Cosmopolitanism  in Mrauk U’s sabhās
	Satī Maẏnā and the first signs of the patrons’ withdrawal to  the edge of the royal household
	Summary
4. Ālāol’s Poetry and Mrauk U’s Political Turmoil
	1661: A political and poetical crisis
	The dissolution of the Arakanese courtly milieu
	Epilogue: The provincial afterlife of the Mrauk  U literary tradition
	Summary
5. Ālāol’s Poetics: When Locality Rhymes with Originality
	Ālāol’s poetics in the perspective of Bengali literary history
	Extending the paradigm of Bengali literary performance
	Reconstructing Ālāol’s poetics
	Speech, cosmology, and distinction
	Defining kavitva
	The sciences of kavitva
	Prosody [chanda]
	Sentiments and emotions [bhāva-​rasa]
	The nine rasas and the prema-​rasa
	The eight kinds of heroine [aṣṭa-​nāẏikā-​bheda]
	Poetic ornaments [alaṅkāras]
	The arrangement of all meanings [sarva-​artha-​gā̃thani]
	Cleverness of speech/​citation [ukti]
	Analogical and suggestive speech: upamā and iṅgita
	Translation as the recording of a reading experience
	Ālāol on translation
	Summary
6. Indo-​Afghan Historical Imaginaries and the Romance Genre
	A retrospective gaze through the lens of Ālāol’s oeuvre
	The classicization of vernacular literature
	The Indo-​Afghan historical imaginaries
	The ideological background of Indo-​Afghan multilingualism
	Literary multilingualism in Quṭban’s Mirigāvatī (1503)
	The Avadhi romance: A new template for love poetry
	Indo-​Afghan literary culture in the Deccan
	Summary
7. Lyric Poetry and Deśī Aesthetics in Eastern South Asia
	Deśī courtly culture, saṅgīta, and multilingualism
	Vidyāpati and the deprofessionalization of literacy
	Singing love after Vidyāpati: Vernacular lyrics in eastern  South Asia
	Locana’s (ca. 1680) Rāgataraṅgiṇī: Fashioning a grammar  of eastern vernacular lyrics
	Śubhaṅkara’s Saṅgītadāmodara and the making  of deśī connoisseurship
	Summary
Conclusion: Middle Bengali Poetics and the Multilingual Literary History of Bengal
Appendix 1: Summaries of Ālāol’s Padmāvatī and the Story of  the Goldsmith’s Wife
	a. Summary of Ālāol’s Padmāvatī (1651)
	b. The story of the Goldsmith’s wife in Saẏphulmuluk  Badiujjāmāl (ca. 1656)
Appendix 2: Analytical Tables of Ālāol’s Songs
Appendix 3: Original Texts of the Middle Bengali and  Old Maithili Songs
Appendix 4: A Persian Appraisal of Ālāol’s Life and Works
Bibliography
Index