IISER MOHALI

Abstract: The Persian literary culture of both Central and South Asia had shown interest in understanding and translating the knowledge systems of India. Thus, from the Ghaznavid period to the twilight of the Mughal dynasty and the cinema of Revolutionary Iran (c.1000- c.2000), we have seen translations, descriptions and abridgements of phenomena and texts of mathematics, astrology, literature, music, philosophy and sociology texts from Sanskrit and other Indian languages and oral cultures to Persian. In this presentation, I shall discuss some translations from Persian, abridgements of the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and other ‘historical’ data. Primarily, I would discuss the seventeenth-century Ramayana translation by Masih Panipati and the Khulasat-ut-tawarikh. The purpose would be to discuss the terms used to describe political and cultural notables of ‘ancient India’ in these texts, and how these terms compare with the extant norms of politics and culture of the Mughal period.