Translating Wisdom

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more atwww.luminosoa.org. During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. Translating Wisdom reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Usingas a case study the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vasisthaan influential Sanskrit philosophical tale whose popularity stretched across the subcontinentShankar Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced cultural exchange and interreligious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia's pastbut also its present.