Multilingual Scripts and the Vernacular Question: A case of Islamic Women’s Advice Literature in Colonial Madras (1870 – 1920)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the scriptorial economy of Islamic Women’s Advice Literature, printed in colonial Madras between 1870 and 1920. It centres three versions of a poetic advice manual titled Peṇ Putti Mālai (Garland of percepts for women). Two early versions of it were printed in Tamil script from different presses in 1876 and 1878. Print editions in Arwi (Tamil written in modified Arabic script) were also in circulation, of which an 1911 print is also discussed. This Mālai’s authorship, attributed to an original oral performance, is credited to the poet Mukammatucain̲, active in the early nineteenth century. Though contemporaneous with Vētanāyakam Piḷḷai’s Peṇ Mati Mālai (Garland of advice for women) that is viewed as marking the shift to a ‘new vernacular’ favouring the social reformist agenda of colonial modernity (Ebeling 2010), the hitherto unexplored Peṇ Putti Mālai situates itself differently. Its association with an older multilingual poetic tradition through Mukammatucain̲ and the lack of clear differentiation of Arwi from Tamil until the twentieth century (Tschacher 2018), posits an alternative history of the vernacular idiom and sensibility. Aligning with critiques of a singular narrative of reform, this paper also addresses how comparable or distinct was the political theology of Peṇ Putti Mālai from a similar, more well-researched advice manual Bihishtī Zaywar (1905) from colonial North India (Metcalf 1990; Mian 2015; Alam 2021).