The Robot and the Ayyar: Tracing Technologies of the Marvelous in Urdu and Hindi Tilismi Tales

Abstract

The appearance of automatons, machines, and other techno-scientific objects in the enchanted and fantastical world of the 19th century Hindi and Urdu dastanand tilismi novel tradition might seem incongruous to modern sensibilities, which hold,  on the one hand the fantastical, the mythic and the marvelous, and on the other hand, completely separately, hold the scientific, the empirical, and the technological. This paper will argue that, to the contrary, the existence of such technologies points to the larger history of science, technology, and mechanical marvels within Islamicate and Sanskrit literary traditions that served as the epistemological and aesthetic roots of the dastangenre in 19th century North India. Focusing on the Urdu dastan Tilism-e-Hoshruba (1881), composed by Ahmed Husain Qamar and Muhammad Hussain Jah, and Devakinandan Khatri’s Hindi tilismi novel Chandrakanta (1888), I will show that the precolonial epistemologies activated in these two texts were expansive and elastic enough to contain within themselves categories of knowledge pertaining to mechanical marvels, technological advancements and scientific inquiry alongside (and without any contradiction with) the magical or the fantastic. Situating these texts within the fields of North Indian literary history, history of science, and history of emotions, I will argue that tracing the ways in which science and technology are framed and how specific emotions accrue to them in these works can provide us with fresh insight on modern popular genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in South Asia.