The Competing Canons of Anandghan Eighteenth-century Brajbhasha Poetry in Manuscript Circulation

Abstract

The study of A n a n d g h a n’s transmission presents a case to examine how early modern manuscript circulation in north India was effected when a radically new idea appeared on the literary scene. The Vaishnava renunciate A n a n d g h a n (c. 1700–1757) in his quatrains wrote about love towards a person whom he called Sujan, a word having both Persianate and Indian undertones. By the use of this word, he emphasised continuity between mundane and divine love. Although this approach was rejected by his religious community and later even by A n a n d g h a n himself, his poetry became widely appreciated in north India and many of the most innovative Hindi poets in the coming centuries are indebted to him. The four extant early collections of his poetry were prepared under the influence of the A n a n d g h a n debate in A n a n d g h a n’s lifetime or shortly after. Taking two other, now lost, anthologies into account the article examines the development of the corpus of A n a n d g h a n’s quatrains into six collections, manipulated to present either a more religious or a more secular A n a n d g h a n.