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    Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary

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    Author(s)
    Kinra, Rajeev
    Language
    English
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    Abstract
    "Writing Self, Writing Empire examines the life, career, and writings of the Mughal state secretary, or munshi, Chandar Bhan Brahman (d. ca. 1670), one of the great Indo-Persian poets and prose stylists of early modern South Asia. Chandar Bhan’s life spanned the reigns of four emperors: Akbar (1556–1605), Jahangir (1605–1627), Shah Jahan (1628–1658), and Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1658–1707), the last of the “Great Mughals” whose courts dominated the culture and politics of the subcontinent at the height of the empire’s power, territorial reach, and global influence. Chandar Bhan was a high-caste Hindu who worked for a series of Muslim monarchs and other officials, forming powerful friendships along the way; his experience bears vivid testimony to the pluralistic atmosphere of the Mughal court, particularly during the reign of Shah Jahan, the celebrated builder of the Taj Mahal. But his widely circulated and emulated works also touch on a range of topics central to our understanding of the court’s literary, mystical, administrative, and ethical cultures, while his letters and autobiographical writings provide tantalizing examples of early modern Indo-Persian modes of self-fashioning. Chandar Bhan’s oeuvre is a valuable window onto a crucial, though surprisingly neglected, period of Mughal cultural and political history."
    URI
    http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/32861
    Keywords
    munshi; indo-persian literature; chandar bhan brahman; mughal empire; Aurangzeb; Hinduism; India; Shah Jahan
    DOI
    10.1525/luminos.3
    ISBN
    9780520961685
    OCN
    923818582
    Publisher
    University of California Press
    Publisher website
    https://www.ucpress.edu/
    Publication date and place
    Oakland, California, 2015
    Series
    South Asia Across the Disciplines,
    Classification
    Biography: general
    Literary theory
    Pages
    394
    Public remark
    Relevant Wikipedia pages: Aurangzeb - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurangzeb; Hinduism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism; India - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India; Mughal Empire - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire; Persians - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persians; Shah Jahan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Jahan
    Rights
    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
    • Imported or submitted locally

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    License

    • If not noted otherwise all contents are available under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

    Credits

    • logo EU
    • This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 683680, 810640, 871069 and 964352.

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