“Romancing Radha: Nagridas’s royal appropriations of Bhakti themes.” (Article)
Title: “Romancing Radha: Nagridas’s royal appropriations of Bhakti themes.”
Author: Heidi Pauwels
Abstract: This article looks at confluence of riti and bhakti and at the interface of the personal and the religious, in particular at the influence of the Radha-Krishna mythology in construing personal identities in 18th-century North India. The article presents a case study of Savant Si?h of Kishangarh (1699–1764), who wrote under the pen name Nagaridas. He was a prolific author of devotional verse as well as a patron of miniature paintings depicting Krishna and Radha. His work shows a tendency that could be termed a ‘royalization’ of Krishna poetry, and is instructive about how religious imagery became meaningful in construing personal lives in medieval India.
Year: 2005
Primary URL: http://sar.sagepub.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/content/25/1/55.abstract
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: South Asia Research 15: 55-78.
Publisher: SOAS, London.

“Literary Moments of Exchange in the 18th Century: The New Urdu Vogue Meets Krishna Bhakti.” (Article) [show prizes]
Title: “Literary Moments of Exchange in the 18th Century: The New Urdu Vogue Meets Krishna Bhakti.”
Author: Heidi Pauwels
Abstract: This paper highlights the interface of Braj and early Urdu poetry in the 18th century. It focuses on the sponsor of the arts Savant Singh of Kishangarh alias the bhakta- poet Nagridas. He is best-known as the source of inspiration for the famous Kishangarh "sub-imperial" minature paintings, several of which were inspired by his own poetic works. He was a prolific poet in Braj, and also tried his hand at some Urdu- then under the name of Rekhta newly de vogue in Delhi in the wake of the arrival of Wali Deccani's diwan. Nagridas' Rekhta work is little-known and not appreciated by the writers of the canons of Hindi literature. Yet, it raises all kind of issues regarding circulation of ideas in 18th-century North India, fluidity of boundaries between poetic register and genre at the time, and later canon-formation and erasure or suppression of Indo-Muslim hybridity.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.humanities.uci.edu/arthistory/indomuslimcultures/Participants.html
Format: Other
Periodical Title: In Alka Patel and Karen Leonard, eds. Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition. Brill’s Indological Library 38. 61-86.
Publisher: Leiden: Brill.

Permalink: https://apps.neh.gov/publicquery/products.aspx?gn=FT-54161-06