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SUMMARY:Noah’s Grandsons and the Elephant: Functions of Pseudepigraphic 
 Writing in Persianate South Asia - Prof. Fabrizio Speziale\, School of Adv
 anced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS)\, Center for South Asian and 
 Himalayan Studies\, Paris-Marseille
DTSTART:20231201T140000Z
DTEND:20231201T150000Z
UID:TALK206929@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Said Reza Huseini
DESCRIPTION:Abstract:\nThis lecture examines Muslim elephant keepers and t
 he function of Persian-forged texts in South Asian society. It will inquir
 e into forgery as a tool to domesticate technological knowledge translated
  from Indic sources and to legitimate the status of a guild that has emerg
 ed from Muslims’ interaction with the South Asian natural environment an
 d society. It investigates the function of apocryphal writing in the trans
 lation context as a stratagem to produce semantic shifts concerning featur
 es of both the translated and the translating cultures. In the Kursī-nām
 a-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 ass
 imilated from the Indian environment.\nThis is accomplished by making them
  congruent with Muslims’ conception of the origin of technical and scien
 tific professions as practices connected to the early Islamic prophets. Th
 us\, the Kursī-nāma-yi mahāwat-girī creates a legend about the mahout 
 as a profession practiced by Noah’s grandsons. This fictional account al
 so entailed a reflexive meaning in that it operated a significant shift fr
 om earlier Muslim negative views on the elephant and provided a new framew
 ork for emerging Muslim professional groups involved in the care of this a
 nimal.\n\nAbout the speaker:\nFabrizio Speziale is Professor at the School
  of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS)\, Center for South Asi
 an and Himalayan Studies\, Paris-Marseille. His research interests focus o
 n the history of sciences in Persianate South Asia and the interactions be
 tween Persian and Indic textual cultures. His last book\, Culture persane 
 et médecine ayurvédique en Asie du Sud (Leiden\, 2018)\, presents a deta
 iled 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 on
 e of his recent articles\, he examines the accounts of the alchemical tech
 niques associated with yogis in Persian medical texts (“Beyond the “wo
 nders of India” (‘ajā’ib al-hind): Yogis in Persian medico-alchemic
 al writings in South Asia.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and Afric
 an Studies\, 85\, 3\, 2022).\n
LOCATION:This is an Online Event
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