Away from Where? Cosmopolitanism, Localization and the ‘Purity’ of Persian in and beyond 18th-century South Asia

This paper will deal with some aspects of the debate over the notion of stylistic and linguistic ‘purity’ in 18th century Indo-Persian literary culture, with a special attention to the conflicting reception of the aesthetics of ‘newness’ often identified with Mīrzā ‘Abd al-Qādir Bīdil (d. 1721) and his school in the works of famous Indian critics and linguistic scholars such as Sirāj al-Dīn ‘Alī Khān Ārzū (d. 1756) and Mīrzā Ḥasan Qatīl (d. 1817), but also in lesser known lexicographers such as Siyalkotī Mal Wārasta (d. 1766) and in coeval tazkira literature. This will lead us to finally tackle some central issues connected to the dialectics of Persian cosmopolitanism and nationalization at the eve of the colonial period and problematize the notions and nomenclature related to the (mis)construction of the so-called sabk-i hindī, to the ghost of ‘Indian Persian’ (and Hindu Persian writers) and to the idea of bāzgasht-i adabi - with all the appendant assumptions of baroquism and anti-baroquism in relevant Western scholarship. Well aware of the necessity of finally placing this transregional, multilingual problem in a proper Eurasian perspective, we will also call upon some compelling parallel - and possibly connected - phenomena regarding, for instance, literary Greek in the Ottoman empire, at the other end of the Persianate world.