The English Translation of C¿nd¿yan

The Pioneer Indo-Suf¿ Masnav¿ of Maulan¿ D¿¿d
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-52079-7
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 338 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 429 g

This book is the first English translation of Candayan, the pioneer work in a long tradition of Indian-Sufi love narratives. The story was adapted from an oral epic Chanaini, popular in the Awadhi speaking region of north India in the fourteenth century. The early manuscripts of Candayan, though composed in the Awadhi dialect, were recorded in the Persian script. Each stanza-like unit is introduced by a phrase or sentences in the Persian language style, making it necessary for a reader to know the Persian script and language, as well as the Awadhi dialect. This somewhat limits the access to fully explore Candayan. In addition to this, the esoteric interpretation, which is the distinguishing feature that gives the Indian-Sufi masnavi literature its unique identity, was also not yet realized.

Candayan deserves to be celebrated and recognized because it marks the beginning of the indigenizing process of the masnavi in India, and served as a model for this literary genre for the next 540 years. A serious study of Maulana Daud’s Candayan, composed in 1379, in the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, did not begin until well into the twentieth century because only a few pages of its manuscript folios were discovered at a time, in various academic institutions and museums around the world. Candayan is a fascinating study of the blending of the features of the Persian masnavi with the features of the Hindi premakhyan narratives and the features of the medieval Jain literature. Even today, annually in the Mahakoshala region Candayan is presented in the form of drama and in the folk-song and play forms.

Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Zielgruppe

Academic, General, and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hines, Naseem A.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Fremdsprachenerwerb und -didaktik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Ali S. Asani

Acknowledgements

Notes on Transliteration

1. Introduction

What is Candayan?

The Socio-Political Milieu of the Masnavi

The Chishti Sufi Order in India

Amir Khusrau and the Qawwali

Maulana Daud

The Structural Design of Candayan

a. The Prologue

b. The Abode of the Beloved

c. The Nakha-Sìikha Varnana

d. The Barahmasa in Candayan

e. A Mystic’s Spiritual Journey

f. The Reconciliation/Homecoming

g. The ‘Key’ to the Masnavi

2. Candayan

3. Finding Candayan

Translation Process vis-à-vis the Language and the Prosody

Appendices
1. Sufi Masnavis in India

2. The Chishti Sufi Order in India

3. Ruler and Noblemen in Candayan

Sources of Appendices

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Naseem A. Hines has taught medieval and modern Hindi literature and Urdu prose and poetry at the University of Washington, Washington University in St. Louis, Harvard University, Boston University, Wellesley College and the University of British Columbia. She lives in Seattle now where she continues to teach Sufi poetry.