Indo-Persian narrative literature: Cultural translation and rewriting of Indian stories in Persianate South Asia

Abstract

Abstract The present article aims to study the translation and rewriting process of Indian narratives in Persian during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) and the Mughal period (1526–1858), and to examine their cultural adaptations and strategies of adjustment to the Muslim recipient culture involving a reciprocal exchange of literary and cultural elements and religious interpretations. In the first stage, the features of Indo-Persian narrative tradition are briefly introduced with regards to structure and integral themes and in the second, the acculturation of Indian elements will be analysed according to Islamic principles and mystical thoughts in a selection of literary texts produced by Muslim Persian scholars. The article will focus on the representations of gender in stories and the perception of justice in the Perso-Islamic context to see, in particular, how narratives carried across Indian rituals and women’s codes of conduct to the Muslim readership; in other words, we try to shed light on how the alienated Indian became domesticated in the Persian-Muslim world of thought.