Can ‘Om’ be an Islamic term? Translations, encounters, and Islamic discourse in vernacular South Asia.
This article aims at offering a critique of recent approaches to the study of vernacular Islamic literature in South Asia through examples taken from Islamic literature composed in Tamil. First, the article argues that many approaches tend to re-inscribe essentialised religious differences by assumi...
| Publicado en: | South Asian History & Culture Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 195 - 212 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
2014
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=94643797&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 94643797 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 19472498 B7KP jtl: South Asian History & Culture issn: 19472498 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 2014 vid: 5 iid: 2 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 94643797 10.1080/19472498.2014.883766 ppf: 195 ppct: 17 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T db: hlh ui: 94643797 – @attributes: type: P db: hlh ui: 94643797 tig: atl: Can ‘Om’ be an Islamic term? Translations, encounters, and Islamic discourse in vernacular South Asia. aug: au: Tschacher, Torsten affil: Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany su: South Asia Native language Translations Hinduism Islamic literature Dhimmis (Islamic law) sug: subj: Native language Translations Hinduism South Asia Islamic literature Dhimmis (Islamic law) keyword: historiography Indic and Islamicate civilizations literary history Muslim literature in Tamil translation historiography Indic and Islamicate civilizations literary history Muslim literature in Tamil translation ab: This article aims at offering a critique of recent approaches to the study of vernacular Islamic literature in South Asia through examples taken from Islamic literature composed in Tamil. First, the article argues that many approaches tend to re-inscribe essentialised religious differences by assuming that specific religious meanings underlie the semantics of a given language. This tendency ignores that both Arabic as well as South Asian vernaculars were employed in multi-religious environments long before Islamic vernacular literature came to be composed in any of these languages. Second, the article seeks to challenge the assumption that the prime aim of vernacular literature was didactic, i.e., that it was composed for the sole purpose of educating a population largely ignorant of religious tenets in Islam. This has led scholars to overemphasize the constraints under which authors composed texts and to ignore the importance of aesthetics in the production of vernacular Islamic literature. Third, the article critiques the portrayal of vernacular Muslim authors as isolated individuals grappling with a non-Muslim environment. Rather, it suggests that many authors responded to other Muslims communicating in the same vernacular, forming a network of poets and texts following similar conventions. In conclusion, the article argues for understanding vernacular Islamic discourse in South Asia as expression of an ‘Indic’ Islam rather than of an uneasy encounter between Islam and Hinduism. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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