Thread by @AudreyTruschke

At my talk earlier today on the Doha Ramayana, there were some questions we didn't have time to answer. So, a #THREAD of Q and A here.

Image is the opening page of this magnificent manuscript, now at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. #Ramayana #Mughal #Persian

Q: Is there any evidence of struggle in translation from Sanskrit into Farsi. Are there cases when they couldn't find equivalents so used the Sanskrit words in Farsi?

A: There are lots of Sanskrit terms retained and transliterated in the Akbari Ramayan, including the Doha manuscript.

Usually, I think it was an aesthetic choice, to retain something of the flavor of the original (mediated through vernacular Hindi pronunciation).

There are also moments when the translators misunderstood bits.

I give an example in my chapter on this manuscript of bhutesha, which the Brahmin translators seem to take as referring to Shiva, whereas in context it refers to Kubera (a more unusual use, which explains the error)

There are also points where the Persian translation is more elaborate than the Sanskrit original, where I think we can see oral commentary being added by the Brahmin translators.

Q: Badayuni, author of Muntakhab-ut Tawarikh is known to have translated the Ramayana for Akbar. Do you think the Doha manuscript may be his work?

A: This is complicated, and I have a long footnote on this issue in my book Culture of Encounters.

In brief -- Badauni says he translated the Ramayana into verse. The Akbari translation is in prose. There is no known versified Persian Ramayana directly sponsored by Akbar.

There are a few options to square this circle, none of which I like.

Maybe Badauni was mistaken in saying he translated it into verse.
Maybe there were two translations and one was lost (positing lost evidence is a dangerous game).

I really don't know.

In short -- Badauni may have been involved in translating the Akbari Ramayan, but the evidence is jumbled. If he was involved, he was on a team of translators, so the work wasn't his alone, as we have it today.

Q: In Valmiki's Ramayan, Rama is depicted as human being as Purushottam, whereas in Tulsidas's Ramayana he is depicted as Vishnu's incarnation. Since the Akbari Ramayan recognizes Rama as an incarnation of Vishnu, is it then closer to Tulsidas's Ramayana?

A: Nope. The Akbari Ramayan is unequivocally based on Valmiki's text, not Tulsidas's (which was quite new in the 1580s).

Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu in Valmiki too. He keeps forgetting his divinity and it is not as strong a framework as it becomes later. But it's there.

In fact, Akbar kinda liked the whole king-as-divinity idea. Akbar plays with this idea in numerous traditions during his reign. We know from both Sanskrit and Persian texts that Akbar liked being imagined as an incarnation of Vishnu specifically, a normal thing for an Indian king

In some of the imagery from illustrations within the Doha Ramayana, it almost looks like we're in Akbar's court, with the pink sandstone, carpets, and even how people dress.

Was Akbar trying to project himself as Rama? Probably, like many Indian kings before him had done.