Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing

This chapter seeks to contribute to expanding the canon of classical Hindi literature in three ways. First, it introduces the voice of a woman author who was a domestic slave in a royal Rajput household. Second, it moves away from the author as solitary male genius by foregrounding collaborative and dialogic modes of literary and other artistic production. Finally, it highlights the diversity of registers accessed within early modern ‘Hindi’ beyond what is often called ‘Braj’ and the affective work accomplished in doing so.
The chapter presents a case study of mid-eighteenth-century ‘Braj’ literary production from the small Rajasthani principality of Kishangarh, focusing on the synergy of the author–pair Sāvant Singh, the crown prince, and Banī-ṭhanī, one of his concubines. He sponsored paintings of the Kishangarhi school and she was the purported model for the distinctive traits of its portrayal of feminine types. While he is a star in the firmament of Braj literature under his pen name Nāgarīdās (Nāgrīdās), her literary work that carried the signature (chāp) Rasikbihārī is often overlooked. On the basis of newly discovered manuscript material, this chapter introduces her poems and brings them into conversation with his. First, it articulates methodological considerations, interrelating literary dialogic interaction of his and her poetry with visual art production. It further expands the dialogic approach to encompass response poems from their broader circle, including the powerful Nimbarkan abbot Vr̥ndāvandev Ācārya. Since the group shared poems in different idioms, the chapter reflects on the social milieus in which such ‘heteroglossia’ occurred and identifies emotional vectors carried by each register.