History and Other Engagements with the Past in Modern South Asian Writing/s. Varia

Abstract

History and Other Engagements with the Past in Modern South AsianWriting/s. VariaThe present issue of Cracow Indological Studies is the second dedicated to the subject outlined in the subtitle: History and Other Engagements with the Past in Modern South Asian Writing/s. We thus continue with our investigation into the manifold ways that South Asian literatures are concerned with the past. Specific texts that have been put under scrutiny by the authors of articles in the present volume, do not only comment on, replace, complement or reconstruct the existing historical narratives, but often create new functional modes of depicting the past.Out of the six papers included in the current volume and subscribing to the subject of our editorial project set forth in the twin issues of Cracow Indological Studies (2021), three pertain to the literary texts composed in Hindi, while the other three focus on writings in Persian, Punjabi and Tamil respectively. 1 Two additional papers that have been accepted for publication this year are not related to the overall concept of the volume and are accordingly published in the Varia section. 1The arrangement of articles in the volume and of references to particular contributions in the present introduction relies only on the alphabetical order. In the first case this is the alphabetical order of authors' names, and in the second-of languages referred to in the papers. We do not aim to give particular importance to any of the literary cultures of South Asia. The dominant number of studies on Hindi literature reflects the actual response we got from the scholars in the initial stage of our editorial work.