Objects of Translation offers a nuanced approach to the entanglements of medieval elites in the regions that today comprise Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north India. The book--which ranges in time from the early eighth to the early thirteenth centuries--challenges existing narratives that cast the period as one of enduring hostility between monolithic "Hindu" and "Muslim" cultures. These narratives of conflict have generally depended upon premodern texts for their understanding of the past. By contrast, this book considers the role of material culture and highlights how objects such as coins, dress, monuments, paintings, and sculptures mediated diverse modes of encounter during a critical but neglected period in South Asian history. The book explores modes of circulation--among them looting, gifting, and trade--through which artisans and artifacts traveled, remapping cultural boundaries usually imagined as stable and static. It analyzes the relationship between mobility and practices of cultural translation, and the role of both in the emergence of complex transcultural identities. Among the subjects discussed are the rendering of Arabic sacred texts in Sanskrit on Indian coins, the adoption of Turko-Persian dress by Buddhist rulers, the work of Indian stone masons in Afghanistan, and the incorporation of carvings from Hindu and Jain temples in early Indian mosques. Objects of Translation draws upon contemporary theories of cosmopolitanism and globalization to argue for radically new approaches to the cultural geography of premodern South Asia and the Islamic world.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments xi A Note on Translations and Transliterations xv Introduction 1 Roots or Routes? 1 Networks, Translation, and Transculturation 5 Things and Texts 9 Chapter 1: The Mercantile Cosmopolis 15 Polyglot Frontiers and Permeable Boundaries 15 Gifts, Idolatry, and the Political Economy 26 Heteropraxy, Taxonomy, and Traveling Orthography 37 Chapter 2: Cultural Cross-dressing 61 Prestigious Imitation 61 Fractal Kingship and Royal Castoff s 75 The Raja's Finger and the Sultan's Belt 84 Chapter 3: Accommodating the Infi del 89 Sunni Internationalism and the Ghurid Interlude 89 From King of the Mountains to the Second Alexander 93 Homology, Ambiguity, and the Rule of Sri Hammira 107 Chapter 4: Looking at Loot 121 Signs of Sovereignty 121 Looting and Diff erence 123 Trophies and Transculturation 126 Chapter 5: Remaking Monuments 137 Taxonomies, Anomalies, and Visual Pidgin 137 Rupture and Reinscription 152 Noble Chambers and Translated Stones 160 Patrons and Masons 184 Markets, Mobility, and Intentional Hybridity 189 Chapter 6: Palimpsest Pasts and Fictive Genealogies 227 A World within a World 227 Monuments and Memory 247 The Fate of Hamm?ra 255 Conclusion: In and Out of Place 261 Appendix: Principal Dynasties and Rulers Mentioned 269 Notes 271 Bibliography 311 1. Primary Sources 311 2. Secondary Sources (a) History and Material Culture 317 (b) Conceptual and Theoretical 347 Index 353