A Scent of Sandalwood

Indo-Ismaili Religious Lyrics

Aziz Esmail

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780700717675
• eBook ISBN: 9781136876530
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Ginans are religious lyrics which have long been a central part of the religious life of the Indian Mizari Ismaili community (known as Khojas), and continue to form their living poetic tradition. Aziz Esmail's translation is suggestive of the depth of religious thought, feeling and imagination out of which this poetry was born, and the lyrical beauty of the form in which this experience found a voice. The poetry of the Ginans illustrates an historically and culturally specific conception of the world, and of the norms peculiar to that culture, as well as a religious perception that forms a significant part of the religious experience of mankind. This volume will appeal both to specialists and more general readers, including Indologists, scholars of Islam in the Subcontinent, students of Comparative Religion, Comparative Literature, and those with an interest in mystical or devotional poetry.

Appendix 1: Note on Transliteration

 

 

 

Concerned to avoid technicalities, I have kept transliterations from the original to a minimum, bowing only to necessity.

The Gujarati script has a standard scheme for Romanised transliteration (easily adaptable to Khojki), used by the Library of Congress and the British Library. I have used this as a guide, making small departures when these are likely to be more readily recognisable to a general reader with no linguistic specialisation. Thus, I have substituted the more obvious ch for the standard c (necessitating the next consonant in the Gujarati alphabet to be rendered as chh). Likewise, I have substituted sh for ṡ, and have ignored the distinction between i and ī and u and ū.

For uninitiated readers, the following general clues may be useful. Gujarati consonants have an inherent vowel. Thus, a strict transliteration will register ka rather than k. An English-speaking reader unfamiliar with Gujarati must thus avoid the mistake of reading the vowels in Satagur represented by a, as the a in ‘man’, or a in ‘father’. Indeed, the second a in Satagur may safely be ignored in pronunciation, except as a reminder that the preceding consonant is to be fully pronounced rather than elided. In words which have become entrenched in usage, however, I have retained the customary spelling — thus, Satpanth rather than Satapanth.

The inherent ‘a’at the end of Sanskrit words is neither written nor pronounced in Gujarati. This has led in the present work to two distinct transliterations of certain words, e.g. avatāra and avatār, according as to whether the intended reference is to the term in Sanskrit, or in the Ginans, respectively. However, in the transliteration of first lines (in Appendix 2), a final ‘a’ has been inserted in words which, when sung as part of the line, necessitate utterance of this vowel. This should ensure correspondence, on this point, between the transliteration here and the lines as they are heard in oral performance.

A commonly occurring notation is ṅ. This represents nasalisation (e.g. of the a in Janpudip).

As a general rule, in the transcription of sounds from Indian languages, a dot under a consonant indicates its retroflex counterpart (produced, that is, with the tongue curling towards the back of the roof of the mouth).

No diacritical marks have been used in Arabic or Persian words, which at any rate occur only in my historical analysis (chiefly the Introduction), and not in the Ginans themselves (where words of Arabic derivation ought to be treated as Indicized rather than foreign).

I have made an exception, however, by retaining the spelling, ‘Muhammad’ when it refers to the Prophet, as it is so well-established as to make the Ginanic form, ‘Mahmad, seem idiosyncratic.

In keeping with the philosophical distinction I have urged in the Introduction between a given figure in a religious text and the historical figure from which it takes its name, a name like ‘Ali b. Abu Talib refers in this form to the historical figure (quoted in my historical analysis) while the Indicized spelling, transcribed as Ali (i.e., without the sign for the Arabic ‘ayn) refers to the figure as he appears (or better, the figure who appears) in the Ginans.

In well-known words like ‘Quran’, ‘Imam’ or, for that matter, Tsmailism’, the signs for the distinctive Arabic consonants have been omitted altogether.

Similarly diacritical marks have been omitted from relatively well-known words (e.g. Shah).

Words from Gujarati have been supplied with diacritical marks (with modifications as indicated above), principally as it is the main language of the literature which is the subject of this work. However, diacritical marks have been omitted in many proper nouns, such as the names of the Pirs (which, moreover, have for the most part, been transcribed in line with established usage) as well as in place-names.

Appendix 2: Sources and Index of First Lines

The following procedure for referring to the Ginans has been used in this Appendix. The opening (first) line of each Ginan is given in transliteration. This is followed (in parenthesis) by Roman numerals indicating the stanzas from the original which have been translated. The reader should bear in mind that, often enough, selected verses have been translated, and not the entire Ginan. A hyphen here denotes inclusive sequence (e.g. I–X) while an ‘&’ (e.g. I & II) indicates that the respective stanzas have been merged (for poetic or formal reasons) into a single passage in English. The reader is reminded again that for reasons discussed in the section on translation in the Introduction, the length of the passages in English may not correspond to the length of the passages in the original.

Beneath this notation, is the reference to the Khojki edition, along with the number of the Ginan and/or the page. This is followed by the reference to the Gujarati edition, followed again by the number of the Ginan and/or the page. References to the Khojki and Gujarati editions are given in abbreviated form (see the select bibliography for the complete reference).

For the Saloko Nāno (see the bibliography for the complete reference) the Roman numerals refer to the numbers of the quatrains in the original.

Index of First Lines Miscellaneous Ginans

1. Swāmi mārāji uṇiya bi uṇiya (I, IV–VII)
Part Three, 38, pp. 67–70; Pir...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• The Institute of Ismaili Studies
• Table of Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Interpretative Essay
• Miscellaneous Ginans
• From the Saloko Nāno (Pir Sadardin)
• ‘A Plea’ (Pir Hasan Kabirdin)
• Notes to Ginans
• Appendix 1: Note on Transliteration
• Appendix 2: Sources and Index of First Lines
• Appendix 3: Select Bibliography