Noah’s Grandsons and the Elephant: Functions of Pseudepigraphic Writing in Persianate South Asia

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• Prof. Fabrizio Speziale, School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), Center for South Asian and Himalayan Studies, Paris-Marseille
• Friday 01 December 2023, 14:00-15:00
• This is an Online Event.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Said Reza Huseini.

Abstract: This lecture examines Muslim elephant keepers and the function of Persian-forged texts in South Asian society. It will inquire into forgery as a tool to domesticate technological knowledge translated from Indic sources and to legitimate the status of a guild that has emerged from Muslims’ interaction with the South Asian natural environment and society. It investigates the function of apocryphal writing in the translation context as a stratagem to produce semantic shifts concerning features of both the translated and the translating cultures. In the Kursī-nāma-yi mahāvat-girī (Genealogy of the mahout), a text of uncertain period about the elephant and the elephant keeper, apocryphal writing functions as a device that allows to Islamize professional and technical skills assimilated from the Indian environment. This is accomplished by making them congruent with Muslims’ conception of the origin of technical and scientific professions as practices connected to the early Islamic prophets. Thus, the Kursī-nāma-yi mahāwat-girī creates a legend about the mahout as a profession practiced by Noah’s grandsons. This fictional account also entailed a reflexive meaning in that it operated a significant shift from earlier Muslim negative views on the elephant and provided a new framework for emerging Muslim professional groups involved in the care of this animal.

About the speaker: Fabrizio Speziale is Professor at the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), Center for South Asian and Himalayan Studies, Paris-Marseille. His research interests focus on the history of sciences in Persianate South Asia and the interactions between Persian and Indic textual cultures. His last book, Culture persane et médecine ayurvédique en Asie du Sud (Leiden, 2018), presents a detailed study of the translation process of Ayurvedic sources into Persian, which took place in India between the 14 th and the 19 th centuries. In one of his recent articles, he examines the accounts of the alchemical techniques associated with yogis in Persian medical texts (“Beyond the “wonders of India” (‘ajā’ib al-hind): Yogis in Persian medico-alchemical writings in South Asia.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 85, 3, 2022).

This talk is part of the King's Silk Roads series.

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