Defining a Tradition

Abstract

Allison Busch's seminal work on the classical Hindi literature of Mughal India demonstrated how the composition of works of poetic theory (ritigranths) became a defining literary enterprise of vernacular court poets in the Mughal-Rajput milieu. Though firmly based in a Sanskrit worldview, Hindi intellectuals exhibited newness in their theorization of the art of poetic craft. Engaging with Busch's work on the ritigranth genre, this article demonstrates how the poet-scholars of Rajasthan who were experts in Brajbhasha and Marwari—or Hindi and Rajasthani, respectively, as they are largely understood today—theorized and created new knowledge systems to define their four-hundred-year-old Marwari literary culture. Keeping up with the theoreticians of Brajbhasha who blended Vaishnava bhakti (devotion) with poetic theory, the Rajasthani scholars placed their work in a multilingual literary culture that was increasingly expanding as India came under the knowledge regimes of colonialism.