Pineapples, Marigolds, and Marvels of Peru: South Asian Literary and Artistic Responses to Exotic Flora, 1600-1800 (original) (raw)

Abstract

From the sixteenth century onward, a veritable flood of hitherto unknown plant species from the Americas, East Asia, and elsewhere poured into the Indian Subcontinent as part of the Columbian Exchange and the growth of colonial trade. Some of the new arrivals remained mere curiosities to their South Asian observers; others would fundamentally alter environment and culture by becoming integral elements of local farming and horticulture, dietary habits, and social and religious practice. Historiographic scholarship has so far paid little attention to these developments and even less to the indigenous responses to them. Yet the engagements of early-modern South Asian intellectuals and artists with novel flora are illuminating in both their emphases and their omissions. They shed light not only on local delight in novelty, beauty, and utility but also on aesthetic and cultural concerns linked to larger efforts to define individual and communal values and identities amidst the shifting social landscape of the Mughal Empire and its successor states. Drawing on Indo-Persian, Urdu, and Braj Bhasha textual sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as Mughal and Rajput paintings from the same period, this paper will explore how South Asians chose to acknowledge, celebrate, incorporate, or ignore the exotic plants then newly available to them in their literary and artistic endeavors. This analysis, in turn, will allow for a better understanding of the creation and circulation of knowledge in late-Mughal India on the one hand and the making of modern South Asian material culture on the other.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

References (13)

  1. Abū'l Faz̤ l ibn Mubārak. Ā'īn-i Akbarī. Edited by H. Blochmann. Kolkata: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1872.
  2. Ahmad, Aziz. "The British Museum Mīrzānāma and the Seventeenth Century Mīrzā in India." Iran 13 (1975): 99-110.
  3. "Ghazals of Fa'iz Dihlavī." rekhta.org. Accessed September 10, 2017. https://rekhta.org/poets/faez-dehlvi/ghazals?lang=ur.
  4. Hakala, Walter N. A Sultan in the Realm of Passion: Coffee in Eighteenth-Century Delhi," Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 4 (2014): 371-388.
  5. Hakala, Walter N., and M. A. Naru, trans. "A Maṣnavī in Praise of Coffee: [prepared] at the bidding of Nawāb 'Umdat al-Mulk Amīr Khān Bahādur," Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 4 (2014): 425-427.
  6. Haynes, Jerry. "History of Roses: China Roses." American Rose Society. Accessed March 17, 2018. http://www.rose.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/History-of-Roses-China-Roses- Part-One.pdf.
  7. 'Kalīm' Kāshānī, Abū Ṭālib. Dīvān-i Abū Ṭālib Kalīm Kāshānī. Edited by Partaw Bayz̤ ā'ī. Tihrān: Kitābfurūshī-i Khayyām, 1957.
  8. Koch, Ebba. "Jahangir as Francis Bacon's Ideal of the King as an Observer and Investigator of Nature." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Series 3 19, no. 3 (2009): 293-338.
  9. Merrill, Elmer Drew. "The Botany of Cook's Voyages and its Unexpected Significance in Relation to Anthropology, Biogeography, and History," Chronica Botanica 14, no. 5/6 (1954): 161-383.
  10. Mīrzānāmah. 1739. Manuscript. Persian Manuscripts Add. 16, 817. British Library. Mīrzā Nūr al-Dīn Bayg Muḥammad Khān Salīm 'Jahāngīr.' Tūzuk-i Jahāngīrī. Lakhna'ū: Maṭba'-i Munshī Naval Kishūr.
  11. 'Mukhliṣ', Ānand Rām. Mir'āt al-iṣṭilāḥ. Edited byChandar Shīkhar, Ḥamīd Riz̤ ā Qīlich'khānī, and Hūman Yūsifdāhī. Tihrān: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 2016.
  12. Shāh 'Ḥātim,' Shaikh Z̤ uhūruddīn. Dīvānzādah. Edited by 'Abdulḥaq. Dillī: Neshanal Mishan fār Menuskripṭs, 2011.
  13. Somnāth. Somanātha Granthāvalī. Edited by Sudhākar Pāṇḍey. Vārāṇasī: Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Sabhā, 1969.