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Arthur Dudney
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People were interested in Mukhlis's Hindi adages, so I've collected a few more at my personal blog:
http://splendidcities.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/eighteenth-century-hindi-sayings.html
I'd like to explore these further, because of the thirty or so I found in the dictionary, none is familiar (at least to my knowledge) in modern Hindi/Urdu. It's a great opportunity for a bit of linguistic archaeology.
A Dictionary Packed with Stories from Eighteenth-Century Delhi
In a previous post (When Good Literary Taste Was Part of a Bureaucrat’s Job Description) I introduced readers to the high-ranking courtier, poet and writer Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ (1697?-1751). Here I focus on his idiosyncratic dictionary, the Mirʾāt al-iṣt̤ilāḥ (ʻMirror of Expressionsʼ) completed in ...
Not including references to the published editions of Mir'at al-Iṣṭilāḥ here was an oversight—they were to appear in a second post devoted to Mir'at al-Iṣṭilāḥ that will follow. The English translation was a commendable undertaking but it is often confusing or misleading, and for that reason I would recommend that serious scholars only use it alongside the original text rather than as a replacement for the Persian. The editors of the Persian critical edition did good work.
As a colleague reminded me, there are reasons to think that Dastūr al-ʿamal (mentioned in the list of mss above) was not actually written by Mukhliṣ but rather by a near-contemporary also called Ānand Rām who held a more humble bureaucratic post. The text does not actually mention Mukhliṣ’s pen-name nor refer to any biographical or bibliographical specifics. Ethé implies that the author’s many quotations of Bedil serve as evidence of the author’s identity but of course quoting Bedil in eighteenth-century India was hardly unusual. I would be grateful to anyone who could provide more information.
When Good Literary Taste Was Part of a Bureaucrat’s Job Description
Ānand Rām Mukhliṣ (1697?-1751) was a high-ranking courtier in Mughal Delhi in the first half of the eighteenth century. He came from a Punjabi Hindu family and followed his father into government service as had so many in the Khattri community, a sub-caste traditionally associated with record-ke...
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Dec 7, 2015
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