Book cover of Early Modern Literatures in North India. The image on the cover shows Balwant Singh seated writing on a camp-bed. It is attributed to Nainsukh, c. 1760.

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Turek, Aleksandra: Individuality versus Collectivity: Pragmatic Goals of Ḍiṅgaḷ gīt Literary Compositions, 收入 Nagasaki, Hiroko, Horstmann, Monika 和 Okita, Kiyokazu (编): Early Modern Literatures in North India: Current Research 2022–2024, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2025, 页 309–327. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1553.c22786

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https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1553
ISBN 978-3-98887-025-4 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-98887-024-7 (Softcover)

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11/18/2025

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Aleksandra Turek

Individuality versus Collectivity

Pragmatic Goals of Ḍiṅgaḷ gīt Literary Compositions

This article aims to reflect on the genre of Ḍiṅgaḷ gīt – commemorative poems which form the bulk of indigenous middle Marwari literature in Ḍiṅgaḷ (sixteenth–nineteenth centuries) – and to show the poems as works composed to immortalize certain individuals, ordinary beings first of all, such as Rajput warriors, petty lords, landowners, and to praise their acts, deeds, or achievements. The existence of a large number of Ḍiṅgaḷ gīt stands in contrast to a generally held opinion that the notion of collectivity encompasses almost all aspects of life in India. The genre of panegyrical poems has been placed in the wider sociopolitical context of the Rajput world, which was inextricably linked to the land. In this fashion the notion of individuality and the function of the Ḍiṅgaḷ gīt as a way to achieve realistic goals for a certain individual person can both be discerned. The Ḍiṅgaḷ gīt, together with Rajput chronicles (khyāt) and genealogies (vaṁśāvalī), served locally oriented Rajput politics in their own ways as attempts to confirm someone’s individual rights to rulership in the jāgīrdārī and zamīndārī systems of land distribution. However, although they present highly sophisticated poetry, aesthetics was not the ultimate purpose of the Ḍiṅgaḷ gīt, but only the way to obtain pragmatic goals, namely to improve reputation and with this to legitimize power.

Aleksandra Turek is an Assistant Professor at the Chair of South Asian Studies, University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on early modern Rajasthani literature and the Rajasthani language.