115 research outputs found
Sources persanes et sanscrites sur la théorie et l'histoire de la musique de l'Inde
No full textFull recording of a seminar held at the Department of music, Banaras Hindu University (Varanasi, India) on 25-27 March 1985. The aim of this seminar was to initiate a dialogue between two experts of Indian music history working from Sanskrit and Persian sources, resp. Dr. Prem Lata Sharma, the head of the Department of music in BHU, and Dr. Shahab Sarmadee, a fellow of the Department of history at Aligarh Muslim University. Born in 1914, the latter had been engaged by the International Society for Traditional Arts Research (ISTAR) on the first English translation of Faquirullah's Mankutuhal and Rag Darpan.La grabación completa de un seminario en el Departamento de Música, Banaras Hindu University (Benarés, India) los días 25-27 de marzo de 1985. El objetivo de este seminario fue iniciar un diálogo entre dos expertos de la historia de la música india de trabajo del sánscrito y persa fuentes, resp. el Dr. Prem Lata Sharma, jefe del Departamento de la música en el BHU y el Dr. Sarmadee Shahab, un compañero del Departamento de Historia en la Universidad Musulmana de Aligarh. Nacido en 1914, éste había sido contratado por la Sociedad Internacional para la International Society for Traditional Arts Research (ISTAR) en la primera traducción al Inglés de Mankutuhal y Rag Darpan de Faquirullah.Enregistrement intégral d'un séminaire au Département de musique, Banaras Hindu University (Bénarès, Inde) du 25 au 27 mars 1985. Le but de ce séminaire était d'initier un dialogue entre deux experts historiens de la musique indienne travaillant à partir de sources sanscrites et persanes : respectivement Dr. Prem Lata Sharma, directrice du Département de musique à BHU, et Dr. Shahab Sarmadee, associé au Département d'histoire d'Aligarh Muslim University. Ce dernier, né en 1914, a été engagé par l'International Society for Traditional Arts Research (ISTAR) pour éditer la première traduction en anglais du Mankutuhal et du Rag Darpan de Faquirullah
Banaras, Urdu, Poetry, Poets
No full textThis dissertation is a richly textured description of the lives of Muslims who reside in the Hindu pilgrimage town of Banaras, India, as encountered in and through their life histories and poetry. The first two chapters, Banaras and Urdu, focus on the physical and linguistic environments in which my consultants reside, since Muslims in Banaras share a dialectical relationship with both the city and the language in which they reside and which reside in them. That my consultants lived in the storied city of Banaras is important, for Banaras is a city with strong Hindu associations, but there is a long and complex history of Muslim residents as well.
The history and current status of Urdu in India is described in detail. As a language which is now strongly associated only with the Muslim community in South Asia, the author suggests that Muslims in North India share a metonymic relationship with Urdu--such that the treatment of Urdu reflects the treatment of Muslims.
The last chapters focus on poetry and the poetic presentation of Muslim life experience in Banaras. The institutions of poetry ustad (master) and poetry shagird (apprentice) are explored as the site where a poet learns to understand adab (propriety, cultured-ness), enact it in culture as tahzib (respectable society), and perform it as takalluf (respect).
The most popular of the poetic forms used by poets in Banaras is the ghazal. The classical aesthetic tradition of this poetry, the condensationary character of the universe of tropes associated with it, and the ambiguous idea of the beloved allow for a poetics which may be used as a powerful tool of critique, a way to speak truth to power and to call together and create alternative communities based on common constructions of history and articulations of memory.
The site where all these ideas come together is the role of the poet in Urdu-speaking North India. The poet mines the traces of Indo-Muslim history, utilizing the potentialities of the Urdu language and the ghazal universe, and constructs a coherent history--and thus an Indo-Muslim present--with meaning
From Topophilia to Despair. Kashinath Singh’s Banaras Trilogy
No full textKashinath Singh’s three Banaras-novels are interesting examples of the continuing occupation of a contemporary author with urban space and its social life. Beyond Banaras
as a physical location, the three novels emulate deeper and more symbolic layers of meaning of a cityscape with its fascinating complexity of social, cultural and religious relations between tradition and modernity. Kashinath Singh’s Banaras trilogy also represents the changing perspective of its author on his surroundings over the course of his lifetime. While the plot of Apnā morcā unfolds in the culture of political debate during the 1960s and early 1970s in the university milieu, Kāśī kā assī can be read as a kind of documentation on the author’s vivid relationship with a traditional quarter of the town and its lifestyle. Rehan par Ragghū, the third novel, somehow continues the sense of loss that is already present in the nostalgic mood of Kāśī kā assī. It deals with the growing disillusionment of the elder generation with contemporary society, its self-focused individualism and social modernity as such. The novel is about the betrayed hopes of a father in his children, the opening rift between generations and the general decline of values. The change of the central location of the plots in the three novels from the university quarter and from a traditional environment in the old town towards the “new colonies” also marks a shift from progressivism towards existentialism, and from topophilia to despair
Banaras jyotirliṅgas: constitution and transformations of a transposed divine group and its pilgrimage
No full textBanaras (Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India) is renowned as one of the more notable pilgrimage destinations of India. The ways of approaching and investigating the sacred landscape and the religious practices of this city varied throughout times and are still a matter of discussion among scholars. The author firstly addresses this debate in order to re-conceptualize the need and intents of writing (still) about Banaras and its mainstream religious traditions. The contribution addresses one common pattern of Indian sacred geography, that is the spatial transposition of gods. The article, in fact, goes through the formation path of a transposed group of pan-Indian deities, namely the jyotirliṅgas, in a city which is presented by eulogistic literature as a universal tīrtha, where all sacred centres and gods dwell. Through the analysis of textual and visual material the author shows how these divine forms have been produced in the city’s territory throughout time and projected spatially in the various shrines and, eventually, in a procession. The pilgrimage circuit connected with the twelve local jyotirliṅgas is investigated as a recent and evolving practice of Banaras religious life and its currently deviating path is shown as something to be constantly rephrased and negotiated. Ritual transformations appear as challenged by the need to adapt and survive in a developing urban context, where sacred space is shared, contested and cyclically re-written
Friends, brothers, and informants: fieldwork memoirs of Banaras
No full text"Why was Banaras such a mystery to me when I arrived in 1981? Was it ironically because I was an Indian and expected to have a privileged insight into it?"In this unusually personal, evocative account of her fieldwork experiences, Kumar tackles the dilemma of how a Western-trained Indian intellectual adapts to the field and builds deeply affecting relationships with strangers. She discloses what it is like to be a native researching her own culture, offering her fieldwork memoirs in all their spontaneity and candor.We see Banaras through her eyes when she first arrives: throngs of people, cramped and dark lodgings, unappetizing food, mischievous monkeys, and almost overwhelming filth. But as she establishes friendships, we are treated to her discoveries not only about the city and its people, but also about her place in this society.The familiar problems that face most anthropologists conducting fieldwork - of Self versus Other, objectivity versus bias, familiar circumstances versus new and dismaying ones - are given a surprising and complex dimension. Through a narration of her own experiences, the author demonstrates how personal locations - habits, preferences, expectations deriving from childhood memories, and areas of ignorance - impose themselves on the process of selection, observation, and interpretation in research
The Allotted Share. Managing Fortune in Astrological Counselling in Banaras
No full textInternational audienceAnthropological studies on causality in South Asia in the past decades have mostly focused on local idioms of misfortune, and very little attention has been paid to ideas of fortune and luck. This paper, based on fieldwork carried out among astrologers and their clients in Banaras, shows that -- even though it interacts with ideas of misfortune -- astrology provides an ideological framework for the conceptualisation and the management of "fortune" in contemporary urban India. The analysis of horoscopes' exegesis carried out by astrologers, shows that destiny (bhāgya, literally meaning "the allotted share") is conceived as a wealth given at birth that can be increased or wasted according to planetary influence and personal choices. The author suggests that, beyond the Sanskrit tradition, the semantics of destiny should be linked to decision-making processes and values of achievement that mark the lives of middle and upper class families in contemporary India
The Allotted Share. Managing Fortune in Astrological Counselling in Banaras
No full textInternational audienceAnthropological studies on causality in South Asia in the past decades have mostly focused on local idioms of misfortune, and very little attention has been paid to ideas of fortune and luck. This paper, based on fieldwork carried out among astrologers and their clients in Banaras, shows that -- even though it interacts with ideas of misfortune -- astrology provides an ideological framework for the conceptualisation and the management of "fortune" in contemporary urban India. The analysis of horoscopes' exegesis carried out by astrologers, shows that destiny (bhāgya, literally meaning "the allotted share") is conceived as a wealth given at birth that can be increased or wasted according to planetary influence and personal choices. The author suggests that, beyond the Sanskrit tradition, the semantics of destiny should be linked to decision-making processes and values of achievement that mark the lives of middle and upper class families in contemporary India
Friends, Brothers and Informants: Fieldwork Memoirs of Banaras
No full textIn this unusually personal, evocative account of her fieldwork experiences, Kumar tackles the dilemma of how a Western-trained Indian intellectual adapts to the field and builds deeply affecting relationships with strangers. She discloses what it is like to be a native researching her own culture, offering her fieldwork memoirs in all their spontaneity and candor. We see Banaras through her eyes when she first arrives: throngs of people, cramped and dark lodgings, unappetizing food, mischievous monkeys, and almost overwhelming filth. But as she establishes friendships, we are treated to her discoveries not only about the city and its people, but also about her place in this society. The familiar problems that face most anthropologists conducting fieldwork--of Self versus Other, objectivity versus bias, familiar circumstances versus new and dismaying ones--are given a surprising and complex dimension. Through a narration of her own experiences, the author demonstrates how personal locations--habits, preferences, expectations deriving from childhood memories, and areas of ignorance--impose themselves on the process of selection, observation, and interpretation in research.https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_facbooks/1004/thumbnail.jp
Library stock verification: a ritual and an occupational hazard
No full textExplains the sensitive, controversial stock verification as one of the occupational hazards and a postmortem, emphasises need for clarity of objectives and procedures regarding stock verification and responsibilities of loss, points out that the cost of stock verification often far exceeds the benefits, highlights norms and procedures of stock verification for Government of India institutions, discusses some advantages and various methods and procedures of physical verification, put forth precautionary measures to be taken against loss and mutilation of library documents, analyses the issue of responsibility of loss and ways of resolving the conflict of responsibility, presents the procedure for write-off of reasonable loss, finally concludes by stressing the need for rational and updated rules and procedures about stock verification, responsibility of loss and limits to write-off loss as well as vital role of professional bodies in this direction
Bargaining Justice: Negotiating Law in an Indian Bazaar
No full textThis Symposium Article details the bazaars in the city of Banaras and explains why it is an especially good test case for considering the topic at hand: Corporate Capitalism and the City of God. The article explores how Banaras challenges normative views of “corporate capitalism,” both in terms of how it is practiced in the city and the rules that govern it. It further focuses on the legal system that is mobilized to guide commercial exchange and daily life in the bazaars of Banaras, this legal system’s relationship to the city’s courts and police, and the relationship between these two justice systems and the kinds of justice they deliver. Last, it offers an overview of India’s courts and police to assess the limitations of India’s criminal justice system and provide context for the flourishing of India’s bazaar law system, especially in Banaras. This article further provides the author\u27s observations and insights from academic writing on these topics and from more than two decades of ethnographic research in Banaras
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