Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia

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During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. Translating Wisdom reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Using the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha--one of the most influential philosophical texts, often attributed to Valmiki--as a case study, Shankar Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced inter-religious and cross-philosophical dialogue and cultural exchange significant not only to South Asia's past, but also its present.