題目：Persian digraphia in South Asia: Reading al-Ṭūsī’s treatise on the astrolabe in Devanagari script

報告者：Jean Arzoumanov (Postdoctoral Fellow, Ludo and Rosane Rocher Foundation, University of Chicago)

要旨

This paper examines Persian digraphia in South Asia as both a linguistic practice and a social phenomenon. We argue that the writing of Persian in Devanagari script emerged alongside the growing number of Hindu literati who learned and used Persian from the sixteenth century onward. Focusing on an anonymous Devanagari-Persian version of Bīst bāb dar maʿrifat-i usṭurlāb by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274)—a treatise on the astrolabe widely read in the Persianate world—the authors explore the function of synchronic digraphia and examine hypotheses concerning the text’s composition and readership. Drawing on scattered textual and epigraphic evidence, they argue that Devanagari-Persian was employed for a variety of purposes in South Asia, suggesting that its use in the Bīst bāb was not exceptional. The specific function of the Devanagari Bīst bāb indicates it was prepared for a Hindu patron proficient in spoken Persian but less comfortable with the Perso-Arabic script. Furthermore, the content of the source text and existing evidence for the reception of Ṭūsī’s scientific works among pre-colonial Hindu elites support the hypothesis that this version was produced in eighteenth-century Jaipur, as part of the broader astronomical initiatives sponsored by the Rajput ruler Sawai Jai Singh II (r. 1699–1743).