Sufi-Vedāntic Interactions and Literary Interconnections in the Gulzār-i ḥāl by Banwālīdās

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on the Gulzār-i ḥāl by Banwālīdās (1662–3), a Persian adaptation of the Sanskrit allegorical drama Prabodhacandrodaya composed by Kṛṣṇamiśra (not long after 1065). It is also hypothesised that Banwālīdās may have used a Braj Bhāṣā version of the same text – by the poet Nanddās entitled Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka (c. 1570) –, as intermediary with the original Sanskrit. Regardless of the source that our author used to realise his Gulzār-i ḥāl, the filter used to adapt Advaitic elements to the Islamic mystical context was the Waḥdat al-Wujūd (“Unity of Being”), or the tradition of mysticism that was heavily inspiring Sufi traditions of South Asia at that time. Moreover, a codicological analysis of the Gulzār-i ḥāl’s manuscript tradition has brought to light that both Hindu and Muslim readership received the text. In this paper, I will show that the interpretative engagement of Banwālīdās carried on a tradition of philosophical studies that did not consider Sufi and Vedāntic metaphysics as separated entities but as elements that – in dialogue with each other – searched for a common answer to the ultimate truth.