Arabic in Hindustan: Comparative Poetics in the Eighteenth Century and Azad Bilgrami’s The Coral Rosary

Abstract This article examines the contributions of Ghulām ʿAlī “Āzād” Bilgrāmī (1704–1786) to our understanding comparative poetics and Arabic in eighteenth-century Hindustan. It attends Azad’s oeuvre through lenses translation, multilingualism, literary science. Philological analysis reveals how Azad establishes analogues across these three languages that attest adaptive capacity poetics. His sections on Hindi poetry his work Subḥat al-marjān fī āthār Hindūstān ( The Coral Rosary Hindustan’s Traditions , 1763–64), its later adaptation into Persian Ghizlān al-Hind Gazelles India 1764–65) anchor this study. essay also a inspiration for poem Mir‘āt al-Jamāl Mirror Beauty 1773). By probing intertextualities within beyond corpus, study demonstrates production Hindustan benefits from method accounts multilingual milieu. thus considers precolonial literatures reading