Situating Sanskrit after the Sultanates<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n This special collection, guest-edited by Luther Obrock, explores what he describes as \u201cSanskrit interlopers in a Persian age\u201d. Engaging with the issue of its purported \u2018decline\u2019 that has been long embedded in academic and non-academic debates, the collection\u2019s articles collectively address the complexity of Sanskrit, and Sanskrit\u2019s use, under the sovereignty of Muslim polities in second-millennium North India (twelfth to seventeenth centuries ce).\u00a0 By focusing on the context within which Sanskrit material was copied or composed at Sultanate and Mughal courts, it makes a very timely contribution towards deconstructing \u201cthe simple cultural binaries of Hindu and Muslim in South Asian history\u201d.<\/p>\n In this venture, Obrock is joined by four other scholars, namely Daud Ali, Shankar Nair, Pranav Prakash and Steven M. Vose, whose combined efforts have resulted in a set of essays that shed new light on \u201cSanskrit\u2019s various uses in an increasingly vernacularised or Persianised world\u201d.\u00a0 Encompassing literature and mercantile dealings, the lives of poets and scenes of authorship, a Jain monk and his relationship to Muslim rulers, and more, key challenges are raised, such as: How did the increasingly powerful transregional language of Persian impinge upon Sanskrit literary culture? And did Sanskrit become merely a \u201cdead\u201d language for elites, or rather did it evolve into an additional \u2018vernacular\u2019 that allowed poets, among others, added freedoms?\u00a0 Through its attention to these and other questions, the collection provides valuable insights on how, and how far, supposedly \u2018dead\u2019 languages can resonate powerfully with respect to unfolding literary, political and social cultures during periods of significant historical change and continuity.<\/p>\n JRAS<\/em> readers interested in the changing ways in which the study of Sanskrit has been approached over the last (nearly) two centuries will find much evidence on this contained in the pages of earlier issues, now available in digital libraries such as jstor and via the journal\u2019s Cambridge Core website.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ———————————————————————————————————————————<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Journal re-opens for submissions on 1 February. Meanwhile, Fellows can read articles and reviews before they appear in print by going to the Journal on the Society\u2019s website and clicking through to the JRAS page on the Cambridge Core platform. Appearance on \u2018FirstView\u2019 is now the formal date of publication with allocation to a printed paper volume following.<\/p>\n Fellows can also read on the same website all the articles published since the Journal was first published in 1834.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ———————————————————————————————————————————<\/p>\n Next Thursday 6.30pm Dr Farouk Yahya will give a hybrid lecture entitled\u00a0Talismans with the names of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus\/Ashab al-Kahf in Southeast Asia<\/em>. Farouk Yahya is Research Associate in the Department of History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts, SOAS University of London. His research interests include the Southeast Asian arts of the book, as well as texts and images relating to magic and divination in Southeast Asia. He is the author of\u00a0Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts<\/em>\u00a0(2016), editor of\u00a0The Arts of Southeast Asia from the SOAS Collections<\/em>\u00a0(2017), and co-editor of\u00a0Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice<\/em>\u00a0(2021).<\/p>\n To attend this talk please register with Matty Bradley at\u00a0mb@royalasiaticsociety.org<\/a><\/p>\n When you register, please specify whether you plan to attend at the Society \u2018in person\u2019 or \u2018online only\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nOther News\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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