Glorifying Banaras in Eighteenth-Century Persian Translations of Sanskrit Purāṇas

Abstract

The city of Banaras has been considered for centuries among the most sacred sites for Hindus. The numerous Sanskrit hymns and mythical stories about gods and sages that are dedicated to the glorification of Banaras are key in tracing the processes through which it was sanctified. With the spread of Persian learning among Hindus in North India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, texts dedicated to the praise of Kāshī began to be composed in Persian. Most of them, and especially Persian translations of purāṇas that narrate stories about Banaras, have remained entirely unedited and unexamined to this day. This paper offers a comparative analysis of two such Persian translations: The first is ʿAyn al-Ẓuhūr, a 1730s translation of the Sanskrit Kāśimāhātmya, by Kishan Singh ‘Nashāṭ’. The second is Baḥr al-Najāt, a 1790s translation of the Sanskrit Kāśikhaṇḍa, by Anandghan ‘Khwush’. The two authors, while both North Indian Hindus, came from very different backgrounds: the first was a Śaiva scribe from Sialkot who translated puranic literature to praise Śiva and spread his faith among his fellow Hindus in the Punjab. The other was a Vaiṣṇava brahmin from Banaras who translated puranic literature for his patron, the British Resident of Banaras. This paper explores how the different historical context in which these translations have been produced and copied influenced the authors’ translation strategies and shaped the mythological past of Banaras.