The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation, and the Making of Bengali Islam

In The Muhammad Avatara, Ayesha Irani offers an examination of the Nabivamsa, the first epic work on the Prophet Muhammad written in Bangla. This little-studied seventeenth-century text, written by Saiyad Sultan, is a literary milestone in the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural history of Islam, and marks a significant contribution not only to Bangla's rich literary corpus, but also to our understanding of Islam's localization in Indic culture in the early modern period. That Sufis such as Saiyad Sultan played a central role in Islam's spread in Bengal has been demonstrated primarily through examination of medieval Persian literary, ethnographic, and historical sources, as well as colonial-era data. Islamic Bangla texts themselves, which emerged from the sixteenth century, remain scarcely studied outside the Bangladeshi academy, and almost entirely untranslated. Yet these premodern works, which articulate Islamic ideas in a regional language, represent a literary watershed and underscore the efforts of rebel writers across South Asia, many of whom were Sufis, to defy the linguistic cordon of the Muslim elite and the hegemony of Arabic and Persian as languages of Islamic discourse. Irani explores how an Arabian prophet and his religion came to inhabit the seventeenth-century Bengali landscape, and the role that pir-authors, such as Saiyad Sultan, played in the rooting of Islam in Bengal's easternmost regions. This text-critical study lays bare the sophisticated strategies of translation used by a prominent early modern Muslim Bengali intellectual to invite others to his faith.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments A Note on Transliteration and Other Conventions A Map of Medieval Bengal and Arakan 1. The Prophet of Light and Love: N=ur Muhammad in Bengal's Mirror A Historical Overview of Ca.t.tagr=ama Islamic Bangla Literature and Islamization Literary Portraits of the Author Inscribing Islam in the Bengali Religious Landscape N=ur Muhammad as the Ontological Principle of Light and Love The Islamic Cosmogony of Obm Later Developments in Islamic Bengali Cosmogonical Discourse Cosmogony, Translation, and Conversion 2. Text, Author, and Authority: The Nab=iva.m'sa and the Making of Islamic Community Genre and Performance The Structure of the Nab=iva.m'sa's Salvation History The Critical Edition of the Nab=iva.m'sa vis-à-vis the Manuscript Tradition Author and Authority in the Making of Islamic Community 3. Translation and the Historiographic Process: The Work of a Text in the Making of Bengali Islam The Terms of Translation Translation as Qur)q=anic Exegesis The Representation and Transculturation of Musalm=ani and Hindu=ani Traditions Translation as Entextualizing Conversion A Hermeneutic Model of Muslim Missionary Translation Frontier Literature 4. A New Prophetology for Bengal: Pur=a.na-Kor=an Salvation History An Indo- Islamic Salvation History for Bengal The Original Couple, M=aric- M=arij=at or 'Siva- P=arvat=i The Pur=a.nic Predecessors of =Adam The Account of =Adam, the First Man Righteous 'Si's and Islam's Triumph over Hindu=ani Adharma Evil Iblis as Primal Guru of the Hindu=ani Clans Translation as Renewal, Subversion, and Manipulation 5. Hari the Fallen Prophet: An Avat=ara's Descent into Disgrace In the Shadow of Gau.r=iya Vai.s.navism Recasting the Acts of Kcr.s.na The Polemics of the Tale of Kcr.s.na An Islamic Reappraisal of Vai.s.nava Theology Messianic Intersections of the Avat=ara and Nab=i Missionary Translation as Creative Iconoclasm 6. Ascension and Ascendancy: Constructing the Prophet for Bengal The Nab=iva.m'sa's Ascension Narrative in the Perso- Turkic Mi]cr=aj Tradition The Prophet as God's Beloved The Prophet as Perfect Phakir The Prophet as Intercessor The Historiographer and Legitimation Conclusion: Historiography, Translation, and Conversion Appendix: Distribution of Manuscripts of the NV in Various Bangladeshi Archives Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Ayesha A. Irani is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston

Review :
Ayesha Irani's carefully researched study shows how a monumental Bengali epic, Saiyad Sultan's Nabīvaṃśa, became canonical for Bengali Muslims between the mid-1600s and the late 1800s, just when that community was becoming consolidated. Exploring how the epic subtly co-opted Hindu culture while simultaneously adapting the Qur'an to the culture of Bengal's rural masses, this book will be essential reading for students of both religious studies and South Asian history. Saiyad Sultān's seventeenth century Nabīvaṃśa is the first major work in Bangla to tell the life of Muhammad as the Prophet. In a display of marvelous hermeneutic virtuosity, Irani unpacks the text's hagiographical function as a larger exercise in 'conversion history.' Sensitively utilizing an array of literary critical tools that converge in translation and polysystem theory—and tracing with unerring accuracy the text's Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindavi, and Bangla antecedents —Irani gently unravels the text's rhetorical and theological strategies. She argues that Saiyad Sultān appropriated hinduāni Bengal's religious world in order to write Bengal and Bengalis into Islamic history, making conversion a naturalizing process grounded in story, not a radical break with the past. I have waited for a work like this for a long time. In the immense panorama of South Asian Islam, the study of Bengal has loomed as a vast territory only explored by a few intrepid scholars. The Nabīvaṃśa is clearly one of the most important textual monuments in this field, yet nonspecialists have not had any extended access to the text until now. This study presents an absorbing, detailed, and sophisticated picture of this rich literary creation and its role in the Islamization of East Bengal. Much recommended for scholars across Religious studies, Islamic studies, South Asian studies, South-East Asian studies, Indian Ocean history, and early modern global history.