The lecture will explore some of the recent claims of Persian influence in the works of Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja, a well known poet and literary critic of the 17th century. His presence at the Mughal court for two decades makes it plausible to assume a link to specific Persian literary practices. We consider some of these suggested influences by reviewing his two major works: the Rasagaṅgādhara and the Bhāminīvilāsa. Borrowing R. Young’s concept of “resistant Hinduism“ may help us reconsider the strategies deployed by Jagannātha in both śāstra and kāvya genres. Select themes of Indian poetics will be explored, along with poetic models from earlier poets. The evidence for influence will be considered in light of a long established proclivity among scholars to extract biographical material from selected poems.

Timothy Cahill is an associate professor in Religious Studies at Loyola University New Orleans. He specializes in the religious traditions of South Asia as revealed in literary texts. Dr. Cahill first trained in Sanskrit at Andhra University in South India, before taking up graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has edited a bibliography of Indian poetics, documenting the scholarship of the ancient systems of literary analysis. He has written a number of book reviews and articles, including contributions to the Oxford Bibliography Online. He is currently editing a collection of Sanskrit poetry and translating the first portion of Jagannātha’s Rasagaṅgādhara. His profiles of Asian religious centers in the New Orleans area are available online via the Pluralism Project: www.pluralism.org .