Indian and Persian Prosody and Recitation is a comparative study of Indo-Aryan and Persian metrical systems and their musical performances, with text and audio samples.
The essays in Part I of this volume survey Persian, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali metres and compare their rhythmic patterns. In addition to offering comparative surveys on Indo-Aryan and Persian metres and their musical and recitational performances, the essays attempt to identify the legacy of traditional Sanskrit-Prakrit-Apabhramsa metre as well as the influence of Perso-Arabic metre in Hindi-Urdu poetry. The papers on Bengali prosody look into its unique path of development between the medieval and modern periods. The musicological papers on Indian and Persian recitation of poetry address the relationship between the linguistic and musical rhythms.
Part II of this book contains actual sample poems using the metres under study, along with prosodic analysis. A CD-ROM of corresponding recordings recited by native speakers comes with the volume.
This book is a product of the three-year international joint research project titled "Rhythmic construction of Hindi and Urdu metre and its origin in Persian prosody" conducted at Osaka University. It is a contribution both to prosody and Indo-Persian poetry.
THE EDITOR
Hiroko Nagasaki is Associate Professor of Hindi Language and Literature at Osaka University, Japan. Her main area of research is medieval Hindi Bhakti literature, especially Tulsidas's Ramcaritmanas. She has written articles about Bhakti literature and has been translating the Dohavali of Tulsidas into Japanese. She is also a translator of modern Hindi literature, particularly the novels of Krishna Baldev Vaid.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Hassan Rezai BAGHBIDI, Ph.D., Professor at the University of Tehran, Iran.
Zahra Taheri HAGHIGHI (Tanha), Ph.D., Lecturer in the College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Taigen HASHIMOTO, Professor of Indology at Toyo University, Japan.
Suhail Abbas KHAN, Assistant Professor in Urdu at the International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Makoto KITADA, Lecturer at Osaka University, Japan.
Takamitsu MATSUMURA, Professor of Urdu at Osaka University, Japan.
Yoshifumi MIZUNO, MA (University of Tokyo), Professor of Hindi and Sanskrit at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan.
Hiroko NAGASAKI, Associate Professor of Hindi Language and Literature at Osaka University, Japan.
Kyoko NIWA is Lecturer in Bengali Language and Literature at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan.
Teiji SAKATA, Professor Emeritus at Takushoku University, Japan.
Ayano SASAKI, Associate Professor in Persian Language and Culture at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan.
Takako TANAKA, Professor of Musicology at Kyoto University of Education, Japan.
Masato TANI, Ph.D., Lecturer at Kobe Gakuin University, Japan.
So YAMANE, Professor of Urdu at Osaka University, Japan.
REVIEW
- Dr. Imre Bangha, University of Oxford, U.K.
"This truly extraordinary volume is the outcome of a major Japanese collaborative project on some of the most important north Indian literary languages. It examines more than a millennium of Persian, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali poetry (with an excursion into Panjabi). In spite of the fact that most part of early literature in these languages has been in verse their metrical arsenal has so far been a little-studied field. The use of metrical patterns is approached sometimes from a historical or a comparative angle and at other times from a contemporary musicological point of view. The scope of this book bringing together the prosodic tradition of languages that for several centuries interacted with each other is unprecedented. Scholars and lovers of medieval and modern Indian poetry will find real gems among its essays while the rich treasury of metres in the second part will make the volume an indispensable tool for dealing with north Indian poetry." |
