hindu muslim linguistic encounter

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In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter through Translation TheoryAuthor(s): Tony K. StewartSource: History of Religions, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Feb., 2001), pp. 260-287Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176699 .

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TonyK. Stewart IN SEARCH OFEQUIVALENCE:CONCEIVINGMUSLIM-HINDUENCOUNTER THROUGHTRANSLATION THEORY

From the sixteenthcenturyto the earlycolonial period,the regionof Ben-gal was notable for its vibrantreligious activity, activity that was oftenclosely allied to politicalandmilitary ortune,economicexpansion,and theopening of new landsfor cultivation. As population grew,the deltaregionbecame the site of numerousencountersof religious communities,not somuch in the sense of active proselytizing or efforts to lay claim to a landin the name of religion, but in the considerably more casual processof individuals and groups from different backgrounds meeting as theymoved into previouslyunsettled territoriesand tried to keep somethingof

A numberof people have contributed o the argumentof this article since it was firstpro-posed duringthe National Endowmentfor the Humanities(NEH) Summer Seminarfor Col-lege Teachers,titled "Hindu and Muslim: Rethinking Religious Boundaries in South Asia"(Universityof North CarolinaatChapelHill, summer1995), which I codirectedwith Carl W.Ernst. The paperwas subsequentlydelivered in nascent form as the Lyman-ColemanLec-turesat Lafayette College, in a seminaron religious encounter at the College of Charleston,a seminaron premodernBengali Islam at Emory University,a religious studies seminarat theUniversityof North Carolinaat Greensboro,and finally at the TriangleSouth Asia Consor-tium'scolloquium.I would like especially to thank David Gilmartinof North CarolinaStateUniversity, Carl W. Ernst of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, BruceB.Lawrenceof Duke University,RobinC. Rinehartof LafayetteCollege, RichardEaton of theUniversity of Arizona, Charles Orzech of the University of North Carolinaat Greensboro,Natalie Dorhmannof North Carolina StateUniversity,and CharlesKurzmanof the Univer-sity of North Carolinaat ChapelHill, all of whom contributed ubstantially.A shortprelim-inary version of the argumentwas contributed to the commemoration volume for the lateProfessor M. R. Tarafdarof Dhaka University, with whom I had discussed many of theseissues; see "TheLanguageof Equivalence:InterpretingBengali Muslim Literature rom theMiddle Period" n Essays in Memory ofMomtazurRahmanTarafdar, d. PerweenHasan andM. Mufakharul slam(Dhaka:Centrefor AdvancedResearch in the Humanities,Dhaka Uni-versity, 1999), pp. 380-409.? 2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0018-2710/2001/4003-0003$02.00

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History of Religionstheir religion about them. This is especially importantto rememberinthe study of Islam in Bengal because of an often naive assumptionthatBengal was innately "Hindu" and then gradually converted to Islam,when, in fact, only portionsof western Bengal and the peripheryaroundthe delta were initially Hindu in orientation,while much of the remain-ing territorywas unsettled or sparsely so. This frontierterritory-muchof what constitutes Bangladesh and southern parts of western Bengaltoday-was domesticatedby practitionersof one or the othertraditionona more ad hoc basis. Those areas east of the Gafigatended to yield morereadily to Muslim developmentbecause of certainexplicit restrictionsonbrahmanasettlement and the more general fact that much of that landwas insufficiently domesticated for Hindu habitation of a kind favoredelsewhere. Manyof the small communitiesthatcarved theirniches in theun- or partiallysettled land were often remote and isolated, only eventu-ally linking to largermetropolitan radingand political networksthat weassume today to be the norm in the region that is now so heavily popu-lated. In these outposts it comes as no surprisethatreligious power-theability for individuals to negotiate and impose a meaningfulmoral orderon an often wild andunrulyphysical and cultural andscape-was not au-tomatically an issue of theology or doctrinalpurity and even less so anissue of religious practice.The evidence suggests that what was deemedright was what was powerful (and vice versa), and what was religiouslypowerful in these regions was often simply what worked to help peopleendure.Regardlessof theirbackground,nearlyeveryonein thisprecolonialperiod acknowledgedcertain forms of local and regional power, and be-cause of this, apposite religious structures(e.g., the ascetic Hindu sam-nyasin and the Sufi pir) operatedwith a kind of exchange equivalence.1Doctrine seems often to have had little bearing n these situations,but thatin no way should imply that doctrine was not present; t was simply usedandunderstooddifferently han is the academicnormtoday.If we approach he developmentof religiousbelief andpracticein Ben-gal as a function of the local and assume that in this environment mpro-visation was central to survival-as it would have to be in an area withoutthe stronginstitutions thataccompanymoreorganized religion-then wemust reconceive thenatureof thereligiousencounter hatcharacterizes heregion in this pre- andearlycolonial period.The reason is straightforwardenough:old academic models for articulating his encounter abel it "con-flict" in which case there is little left to say apart romthat one succeededand the other did not, or label it "syncretism,"which produces something

1For more on this phenomenon,see TonyK. Stewart,"AlternateStructuresof Authority:SatyaPir on the Frontiersof Bengal"in Beyond Turk nd Hindu:RethinkingReligious Iden-tities in Islamicate SouthAsia, ed. David Gilmartinand BruceB. Lawrence Gainesville:Uni-versity of FloridaPress, 2000), pp. 21-54.

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In Search of Equivalencenew and different romeitheroriginal part.Seldomdo we see any analysisthat articulateshow two or more traditions n this region might encounterone anotherwithout this ontological shift in the makeupof the tradition;and the change most often assumed is the latter.Syncretismis predicatedon the assumptionthatpreexistingand discrete doctrinalor ritualsystemsare mysteriously combined to form some unnaturaladmixture. But themyriadforms of the concept of syncretism(when used as an interpretive,rather than strictly descriptive, category) become highly problematicinnearlyall of their applications because they nearly uniformly read intothe history the very institutional (ritual, theological, social) structuresthat are not yet presentin any enduring way. But this is to say that theconstituentpartsthatarebroughttogetherto create this syncretistic entityare historical back formationsof a kind that could be made only once thetraditionwas successfully rooted.And precisely because the end productis conceived as the unholyalliance of religiousentities that should be keptapart n an ideal world-again because the constituentpartsare idealized,essentialized, and completely strippedof their historicalgrounding-thefocus is on the result,rather hanthe process, and thatproduct s routinelydescribed in negative terms. Until very recently, this has been the casewith nearly all of the studies of Islam in the Bengali environment.2Ulti-mately,this kind of theorizingconstructs models thathave little or no re-lation to what actually happens in the course of practice except as anarbitrarymeasureof deviation from some presupposednorm, a measurethat is rhetoricallyeffective for religiously committed reformersbut thatshould be highly problematicfor historians.The experienceattestedin the extensive literaturesof precolonialBen-gal, however, suggestsa very differentkind of religious experience,an ex-perience that did not produceunviable end productsas syncretistswouldargue,but establishedenduringframeworksof religious organizationandinterpretation hat eventually groundedthe traditions as we understandthemtodayin theirregionalforms. These encountersemphasized he local,the creativeefforts of individualstryingto make sense of an environmentthat did not always cooperate.The textual evidence of early Bengali Islam,whichby virtue of this dearthmust be consideredpotentially diosyncratic,individualistic,andhighly localized, points to very pragmaticapplicationsof doctrine o practice, rom theraggedandincomplete o very sophisticatedcreations.These textsportray he struggleof individualsandtheirgroups-variouspersuasionsof Sufis, but also Sunnis and Shicahs-to understand

2 The most sophisticateduse of the problematic onceptof syncretism orBengali religioncan be found in the importantbook by Asim Roy, Islamic SyncretisticTradition n Bengal(Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1983). It was Dick Eaton'sstudy that markedthe shift away frommodels of syncretismto morehistoricallynuanced andhistoricallycon-textualizedstudies;see RichardM. Eaton,The Rise of Islamand theBengal Frontier,1204-1760 (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1993).

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History of Religionstheir Hinducounterparts-Vaisnavas,Saivas, Saktas,andothers,and neverin termsof the gross categories of Hindu andMuslim, which arethe stockand trade of syncretisticformulations.These early Bengali Islamic textsdocument the way authorsattemptedto make their understanding"fit"with those they encountered,and thatprocessof understanding ecame anextended act of "translation." ranslation n this context defines a way thatreligious practitionersseek "equivalence"among their counterparts.Aswill become apparent, t is this act of translation hatoffers an alternativeinterpretivestrategyfor conceptualizingthe way these various Sufi com-munities formulated heirunderstandings f the contoursof powerin Ben-gal. Because of the local nature of this religious expression, power thatcould be translatedcould be effective for everyone, regardlessof persua-sion; by extension, we might arguethatonly those constructions hat weretranslatedwere trulyeffective, and in thatdynamic process of translationcomes the creative applicationof doctrineto real life. The results of theencounter of traditionscan best be appraised n the process of this inter-action,not in the staticinstantiated nd product hatis often falsely under-stood to result. But before examininghow the processes of translationcanprovidea model for reconceptualizing he issue, it is necessary to under-standfirst why the concept of syncretismfails in most cases as a viableinterpretive category to explain the encounterof Islam with the variousHindu traditions of Bengal. It is importantto note that both argumentshinge on common butcomplex issues of languageandcategoryformationthat are sharedby nearlyall religious writers of the time andregion.

LANGUAGEAND CATEGORYFORMATION N THE BENGALI MIDDLEPERIOD

In the premoder, precolonialliteratureof Bengal, it is not at all uncom-mon to find overtly religious texts using common technical vocabulariesthattoday we routinelyidentify as significantmarkersof sectarianaffilia-tion. Fromour late twentieth-centuryperspective,this languageallows usto categorize the orientationof these texts as Muslim or Hindu,and thosecategoriesthemselves aredeemed transparent ndgenerally unambiguousto the contemporaryreader.Yet many texts from the older period do notlend themselves to such easy marking,not only in the common Bengalifolk genres such as pdncall andpala gdn, but in romance and semiepic,andeven certainovertly religious speculationsand instructionalmanuals.Among the latter, t is the Sufi literature hat is perhapsmost difficultto in-terpretbecause of the mixtureof technical and nontechnical terms fromsometimesunexpectedsources,butotherless overtlyreligiousgenreshaveadoptedsimilar lexical strategies, so the analysis of the Sufi approachesshouldyield insights into the full rangeof forms.Because many among today's scholastically oriented,as well as manyamong the general educatedpopulace, judge these texts by holding them

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In Search of Equivalenceto a standardof value thatequatesa purityof languageto a purityof reli-gious intention,these Sufi and related texts are all too frequentlydeemedso sufficiently problematicthat they are not seriously examined as docu-ments of a Bengali Islam. For many modem interpretersof South AsianIslam, a text is often assumed to be unworthyof study when the tech-nical vocabulary or key theologicalconcepts suggests anythingother thana consistentuse of a strict andunambiguous slamicvocabulary hat is de-rived from Urdu or Persian (and ultimately from Arabic). A text thatmixes Islamicvocabularieswithothers,especially those apparentlyHindu,can be acknowledged in only a limited way, if at all, but is more oftensimply avoided as a perhapswell-intentioned,but somehow confused, orat least confusing-and thereforepotentiallydangerous-work. The effectof this approach s to divert the gaze from an important ormativedimen-sion of the history of Bengal. This negative result is furtherexacerbatedwhen the depictionof Islamic life found in some of these texts appears ooverlap with otherreligious traditions-again especially various modali-ties of Hindu religion-or when its praise extends to specific religiousfigures, mythical or historical, who are promotedor sharedacross theseboundaries (e.g., Satya Pir), or, more problematicyet, when opposingsectarianethical or religious systems of value areespoused thatappearatleast on the surface to be transparentlyhe same in their working effect(e.g., adab anddharma).In today'soften highly charged political climatewherelanguageandreligion andpolitics are often alignedto define mutu-ally exclusive identities, the reasonfor this responseis actuallyratherun-ambiguous:for most contemporary nterpreters,whether in Bangladesh,India, Pakistan,or the West, the concept of religious encounter-whichthis shared vocabulary and shared experience imply-is almost auto-maticallyunderstood n termsof ideological "contest," f not conflict, anassumptionthat pits two opposing groups in eternalenmity. These rigidmonolithic constructsplay a very importantrole in nearly all theories oftheirinteraction,as will become apparent.Historicallythis has not alwaysbeen the case.Because of the natureof this commonly held presuppositionabouttheexclusive natureof religions and religious experience, the contemporaryinterpreters generallyblindto the fact that this attitude s itself the resultof historical processes that have conflated religious orientations withpolitical identities in the colonial and postcolonial periods. Since the re-form movements of the late eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies, startingwith the Wahhabis,but eventually including others of differentreligiouspersuasions,a generalandvery unreflectiveassumption n the intellectual(andcertainly hepolitical)communityof Bengalhas gradually akenhold:people routinelyassumethat when an authoruses a specializedvocabularyto talk of religious matters, that authoris making a political statement

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History of Religionsabout his religious intentions.3Since the mid-nineteenthcentury, it hasbecome increasingly difficult when declaring religious preferencenot todeclarea political proclivity, f not a clearlydemarcateddentity,becauseofthe various state-imposedinstitutionsthat have historicallyconflatedthetwo; this was especially precipitated n the effects of the firstcensus takenin 1872 and then translated nto otherstate apparatuses, uch as domesticlaw andparliamentary epresentation,which guaranteed eparationof reli-gions as a standard or public polity.4An overtreligious declarationor theequallyobvious choice of technicallanguageto speakof significant ssuesis now generallyassumed to signify a political orientation hatreveals theauthor's"real"or underlying ntention in writinga religious work.But today the possibility of ever determining"authorial ntent"pre-cisely is now moot, with most modem analysts arguing that no matterwhat an author claims to be doing, the readercan never really know; or,in the extreme, the authorcannot know fully what he is about, therebymaking any estimate of intention little more than informed speculationthatoften reflects more theconcernsof the interpreter nd his world. In itsworst case, this hermeneuticalskepticismcan producean outrightepiste-mological impasse for analysis.5 While this debate about intentionalitygenerallyfocuses on fiction, it has important amifications or otherformsof writing,especially where religious values arearticulated.So whenevera religious text uses a mixed language that seems to confuse "proper"

3 The impulse to ignorecenturies of historicalchange within Islamitself, and to eliminatethe inevitable subtle shifts that take place when a universalreligion moves into anothercul-turalarena-in this case, a Perso-ArabicIslamtakingroot in Bengal-motivates a classicalfundamentalistdecision to "purify"Islam of perceived foreign accretions and to try to re-create the experience of an archaic, pristine Islam as conceived by its original foundingmembers. The implications should be obvious.4 See KennethW.Jones,"ReligiousIdentityandthe IndianCensus" n TheCensus in Brit-ish India:New Perspectives,ed. N. GeraldBarrier Delhi: Manohar,1981), pp. 73-101; andBernardS. Cohn, "The Census, Social Structureand Objectification n South Asia" in AnAnthropologistamong the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press,1990), pp. 224-54.5 The most commonly cited individuals responsible for this shift in perspective includeBarthes,Derrida,and Bakhtin.Butmoreimmediatelygermane s receptionaesthetics,startingwith that initiatedby Hans Robert Jauss at the Universityof Konstanz,and its follow-on inreader-responsecriticism. The latter diverges specifically from the initial inquiries of thephenomenologyof reading (e.g., Georges Poulet)and, while refiningcertainpropositionsofdeconstruction,has greatlyenhanced ourunderstanding f the role thereaderplays in creat-ing the text. The text of course becomes a variableentity based on what the readerbringstoit and how he or she understands t. There is an obvious debt here to basic hermeneutic he-ory,but of more specific reader-responsenterest s the approachadoptedby WolfgangIser,TheImpliedReader(Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress, 1974), TheAct of Reading:A Theory of AestheticResponse(Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress, 1978); PeterJ.Rabinowitz,BeforeReading:NarrativeConventionsand the Politics of InterpretationIthaca,N.Y.:Cornell UniversityPress, 1987); see also the very useful anthology,Jane P Tompkins,ed., Reader-ResponseCriticism: From Formalismto Post-StructuralismBaltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniversity Press, 1980).

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In Search of Equivalencereligious ideals-ideals that are determined in advance by these nine-teenth- and twentieth-century standards of purity and exclusion-theprecolonial author s judged to be either confused orjust ignorant,or al-ternativelyhis work can comfortablybe ignored in a way that allows thetext to be manipulated oward the ends of the interpreter.Eitherway, thetext seems to disappearfrom public view as an independentdocumentwith any historicalor intrinsic value.In his pioneering Bengali literaryhistories, MuhammadEnamul Haq(Beng. MuhammadEnamul Hak) cataloged Muslim writers from thisearly period,classifying their worksintogenres,suchas sara-sariyit (legaland moralcode), kahini ("historical ales"),srstitattva(cosmogony), dar-sana (theology and philosophy), suphitattva(Sufi metaphysics),premo-pakhyana (romance literature),marsiyd (lamentations), itihasika-kavya(historicalpoetry), rupaka(rhetoric),padavali (lyric poetry), and a mis-cellaneous categoryfor leftovers.6 He also did much the same for Sufi lit-erature n his Barge siphi prabhdva.7It is significantthat in those earlyworks an entire class of religious literaturewas simply eliminated, textsthatwere to his eyes a hodgepodge of Sufi, Vaisnava,Natha,general tan-trika,and otherreligious ideas both mainstreamand not. It is easy to spec-ulatethat these texts were omittedpreciselybecause in theirlanguagetheyfailed to fit the exclusive categories he had constructed.Their apparenthybriditywas, not surprisingly,problematic or those construingreligiousor ideological purityas a litmus test for inclusion in a "proper"iteratureand was just as problematicfor those compiling a "national" iterature,both impulses applying to the Pakistanin which he wrote.8Among those texts omitted,and thereforeworthyof additionalscrutiny,were two bookscalledAgamaandJninasigara by one Ali Raja,and one ofthese will retainourattentionas examplefor analysis.9These books, oftenpaired as two parts to a single book, present a sophisticatedsystematic

6 MuhammadEnamulHak,Muslimbamlasahitya, in Muhammad namulhak racdnavali,ed. MansurMusa,vol. 1 (1957; reprint,Dhaka:BamlaEkademi,1398B.s.);for summary, eepp. 375-79.7 MuhammadEnamulHak, Bange suphi prabhdva (1935; reprinted n Musa, ed.).8 After Bangladesh independenceMuhammadEnamulHaq expandedhis doctoraldisser-tation in English under the title A History of Sufi-ism n Bengal (Dacca: Asiatic Society ofBengal, 1975) and significantly appended wo new chaptersthatincludedthis unique litera-ture.It is not unreasonableo imaginethat he was signalingthe natureof thenew Bangladeshidemocracythatwas moreinclusive than its Pakistanicounterpart.9 These texts can be found in the anthologyof premoder Sufi texts compiled and editedby Ahmad Sharif.See AhmadSaripha,ed. andcomp.,Banlarasiphi sahitya:alocand o nay-akhani grantha sambalita (Dhaka: Bamla Ekademi, 1375 B.s. [1969]). Abdul Karim firstpublicizedthe worksof Ali Raja,andit is from the introductiono his publishededitionof theJianasagara that all biographical nformationhas been gleanedby subsequentscholars.SeeAbdul Karim Sahityavis'rada,ed., Jnanasagara of Ali Raja, Sahitya ParisadGranthavalino. 59 (Calcutta:BafigiyaSahityaParisatMandir,1324 B.s. [ca. 1917]). This entirepublica-tion has been reprinted n Saripha,ed. andcomp., pp. 400-532.

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In Search of Equivalenceperceivedgreatervalue. But if we begin with a differentpropositionabouthis use of this non-Islamicvocabulary,assumingthat it was a searchforequivalence, assuming that he and others were attemptingto articulatesophisticatedideas of their own using the locally available lexicon withits limitingconceptualstructure, hese texts suddenlycome alive as exam-ples of Islamic expansion in an entirely new mode, a linguistic and cul-turalappropriation, ot an Islamic dissipation.Before attempting o classify by genre the texts of Ali Rajaand otherslike him, and automatically implying in that classification a value judg-ment, we might fruitfullystartone step earlierin the hermeneuticprocessby asking ourselves about the availability and limits of language in thehistorical time andplace of these texts. It becomes clear that no unambig-uously Islamic idiom existed in Bengali duringthe time, or at least it wasonly beginning to emerge by the end of the period. Such specific Islamictechnical vocabularywould not prevail until sometime later, largely withthe developmentof institutional nfrastructures, nd even thatlanguage-in spite of attemptsby certain factions to identify a "Musalmani"Ben-gali-has never been, nor could it be, completely "pure"in ideationalterms.The reasonit cannot be purein exclusively Islamicterms is becausethe Bengali language itself has its roots in Sanskrit,which has been thebearerof a traditionalculturethatoperatesaccordingto assumptionsthatare commonto the religious traditionsof the Hindus,and of courseJains,Sikhs, early Buddhists,and others. It has been well documentedthat re-ligions and languages share many features as formal, albeit now widelyunderstoodto be open-ended, semiotic systems, regardlessof how thatstructural imilitude is construed.For our purposes,one of the most rel-evantpointsof convergenceis in the abilityof bothlanguageandreligionto capture,preserve,andreify basic culturalvalues, to structure xperienceaccordingto sharedconceptualelements. Languageof course is not reli-gion, but the two rely heavily on each otherin this process of articulatingwhatis of value,becauselanguage tself structures heconceptualworldofany culture to the point where certainthoughtscannot be entertained n agiven language,and those structures hatprevail in a languagewill reflectwhat is significantto its host culture.14 t is important o note thatreligionis often the most pronouncedarticulator ndrepositoryof those key struc-

14The first to arguethis now widely accepted position was perhapsBenjaminLee Whorf,Language, Thought,and Reality,ed. John B. Carroll Cambridge,Mass.:MITPress, 1956);and EdwardSapir, Culture,Language,and Personality(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1949), andLanguage:An Introduction o the Studyof Speech(New YorkandLondon:HarcourtBrace Jovanovich, 1949), esp. chaps. 7-11. There are of course cognitive sciencespecialistswho challengethisview, startingwith the initial formulationsof Chomskyandthenpushingthe implicationsof his propositionsabout the predetermined atureof grammaticaldeep structures; ee Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge,Mass.:MITPress, 1965).

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History of Religionsturesof meaning andvalue, andin its use of texts-whether oral or writ-ten-language becomes the medium of the experience; hence the closerelation. Any analysis should, then, account for the ways that BengaliMuslims chose to use this Bengali language that has from its inceptionbeen imbued with a religious or ideational sensibility that is other thanIslamic.The problemwas not simply thatthese authors were attemptingto usethe Bengali language to express ideas that were not in the Bengali lan-guage's original conceptual structure, or many of the key concepts thatcontrolan Islamic cosmology andtheology were in fact present(andthis,as will become apparent, s vitally important o our strategyof interpre-tation). Precisely because these concepts were present-even though theterms frequentlycarriedor at least implied additionalconceptual entail-ments that were alien to Islam as an extension of the terms' semanticfields-Bengali offered a potentiallymalleable mediumfor the message ofIslam, which is to say that the ideas were not so alien thatthey could notbe expressed in the extant vocabularyof the sixteenth, seventeenth, andeighteenthcenturies. ThatBengali shouldbe so used is paramount o theIslamic conceptionof its own message, for Islam claims for itself a trans-nationaland universal status;that is, Muslim practitionersargue that thesublimeobject of theirreligious world is transportable cross all nationaland culturalboundaries,and its tenets can be conveyed in any language(in spite of the caveat that the Holy Qur'an can only be in Arabic). Hadthis not been so, Islam would have remained exclusively limited toSemitic languagespeakers n a tightlyconfinedgeographicarea;yet Islamhas been a vibrantforce in South Asia for well over a thousandyears, andin Bengal for a good portionof that.Given the developing natureof thelanguage duringthe premoder period, coupled with the propositionthatthe languageitself structures he very ideas being conveyed, we might notunreasonablyask how it is thata Muslim authorcan use Bengali success-fully to convey his religious sensibility, without compromisinghis com-mitments or inadvertentlychanging Islam itself. To answer this questionmay be the first step in determiningwhat constitutesa distinctively Ben-gali Islam, as opposed to the more usual strategyof measuringIslam inBengal against some essentialized ideal. And the few extant Sufi texts areamong the most extensive Islamic Bengali documents of the formativeperiod, capturingthe struggleof these early practitionersas they tried toarticulatea Muslim vision in the local vernacular,a languagethat boretheweight of centuriesof Hinduadaptation.

THE PROBLEM OF SYNCRETISMThe languageof the texts composedby the likes of Ali Raja, especially thetechnicalvocabulary,appears o ourcontemporary ensibilityto be largely

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In Search of EquivalenceHindu,perhapsmost obviously in the yogic terminology,but thatappear-ance only disguises to our modem eyes what werethoroughlyIslamic con-ceptions.Mostinterpretersharacterizehislanguageas somehow"hybrid"in character.Hybridity s only one version of the larger interpretive trat-egy thathinges on the concept of "syncretism."But the model of syncre-tism is never simply appliedto the languageitself but-and this is one ofits biggest flaws-operates on the assumptionthat the language transpar-ently and faithfully reflects the traditions behind the language (not justtheirconceptualstructures), ndso the analysisalmostimperceptibly hiftsfromlanguageto tradition,naively extrapolating he form of religionfromits limited expression in texts. As it has been used in the history of reli-gions, this modelof syncretismassumes thattwo distinct entities-in theseexamples,"Islam"and"Hinduism," s if those were somehowtrulymono-lithic entities-were brought ogetherto form some new construction hatsharedpartsof both but couldbe classified as neither.15But the conceptofthis syncretism s ultimatelyfaultyas an interpretivemodel for two closelyrelated reasons, which have been hinted at above. First, syncretism as-sumes at the outset its own conclusions, in a curious form of the logicalfallacy of petitioprincipii, by articulatinghe inappropriate lliance of twothings thatin theiressential form aremutuallyexclusive and distinctfromeach other-yogic meditation n ecstaticpractice n the case of earlyBen-gali Sufis, for example-and which do not "naturally" elong togetherbe-cause they have been defined as such. Second, the unstatedobject of themodel of syncretismis its end product, pointing to the creation of somekindof static"entity" hat is by virtueof its violationof exclusive catego-ries inherently unstable. This model, which conveniently sidesteps anyattemptto understand he process by which these seemingly disparateordisjunctivereligious beliefs and practices interact, is forever damned toprojectunseemly(i.e., "impure") ntitiesthatcannotreproduce hemselves(i.e., they arenot viable), if in fact they areanythingmore than the productof the scholastic imagination n the firstplace. It is the way this end prod-uct is articulated hat reveals the problemmost vividly, because any resortto interpretivemodelsof syncretismappearson the surfaceto produceneu-traldescriptions,but the descriptionsare never direct nor arethey precise:they arealwaysmetaphoricand value laden. And the metaphoric onstructsnot only free the interpreterromexaminingsyncretism tself butgenerallyreveal their almost universally negative implications. The metaphors,which only hint at processes (butnever explicitly articulate he combiningactiondirectly, eaving it to the reader o imagine), imply that the resulting

15Since the first modem use of the term (1615 C.E.),"syncretism"has described"mis-guided"attemptsat reunionof the Protestantand Catholicchurches,and its earliestuse wasto comparethe "mixed"religions of the Hellenistic and Romaneras to "pure"Christianity.See the OxfordEnglishDictionary, 1971 compactedition, for early use of the term.

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History of Religionsform is unnatural,and thereforeunstable, if not doomed to eventual de-struction.There are four basic categories of metaphorthat control theseimages, each of which demonstrateshow the underlyingnotion of inva-lidity is disguised but omnipresent:(1) influence and borrowing, (2) theoverlay or "culturalveneer,"(3) alchemy, and (4) organic or biologicalreproduction. 6Borrowingand influence. Often noteven understoodas a form of syn-cretism,the economically derivedmetaphorof "borrowing" uggests thatmembers of one group (here Sufis, especially in Bengal the Chishtayyaand Naqshbandayya)are not sufficientlycreative or independentto thinkfor themselves and must take prefabricated deas or rituals from some-where else (here Hindu, largely Vaisnavatheology, or fromyoga in mo-dalities of meditative practice) to articulate its truths-and of coursewith that limited understandingthe borrower inevitably uses the "bor-rowed" ideas and rituals improperly,that is, not as they were "meant tobe" used. Similarly, the astrologically based metaphor of "influence,"originally explained as emanations from the stars and planets, is under-stood to exert mysteriousunseen force, often articulated hroughsophisti-catedhydraulicmetaphors, ausingsomeone or some groupto be persuadedwithoutfully understandingwhy. The explanationthen suggests that voli-tion was absent in the decision-makingprocess,which thinlydisguises theborrowingmetaphor,making one group dependent,passively receptive,andthereforeof less value thanthe source.Forexample, the Sufi poets ofthis early age could only imagine theirreligious path in alreadywell de-veloped yogic terms.The "culturalveneer"or overlay. Anothercommonmetaphorof syn-cretism is that of "culturalveneer,"an overlayof one alien culture on an-other,which in ourexamples is inevitablyan importedIslamoverlaid ontoa Bengal that is assumed to be Hindu.While giving the appearanceof ac-countingforhistoricalchange,since Hinduswere assumed to be therefirst,theresultingamalgamdescribes no processbutrathera staticcondition,anend result. The entailmentof the metaphor,however, is decidedly pointedwith respect to an obviously anticipatedresult, for veneers are generallythinlayersof fragileornamentalwood or othermaterialbonded to a foun-dationthat is coarse andsturdy.Subjectto delamination, he veneer is eas-ily damagedor destroyed;thatis, it is impermanent,while the permanentbase continues to function as it always had, perpetratingby the choice of

16 Forthe more detailed study of this problem,which is here only summarized,see TonyK. Stewart and Carl W. Ernst,"Syncretism," n Encyclopedia of South Asian Folklore, ed.MargaretMills and PeterJ. Claus (Garland,N.Y., in press). The analysis itself is much in-debted to the understandingof the metaphorsof everyday speech developed by Lakoff andJohnson; see George Lakoff and MarkJohnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 1980).

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In Search of Equivalencemetaphora not-so-subtlepoliticalcommentary.Occasionallythis approachis articulatedas the "false mask,"with manyof the same entailments.Alchemy. Alchemy is arguablythe most popularmetaphorof syncre-tism, one that secondarilysharesin the hydraulicmetaphorof influence,while maintaining a chemical basis of interaction and reaction. Thecombinations hat can be forged in the alchemicalcrucibleproduceeitherpermanentchange or reversibletemporaryconditions.Understoodas badorquackscience, the irreversible ombinationof fluidsor the dissolutionofa compoundresultsin the creationof a solutionthat is oftenconstruedas adangerousprocessby combiningelements thatshould not be. Such daringprocessescreate new entitiesthat often have littleor no use, andcan in factbe fatal to those who come into contact with them, as religious reformersarequickto pointout. The more common alchemicalmodel of syncretism,however, is the "mixture," colloidal suspensionof two ultimatelyirrec-oncilable liquids that will inevitably separate,or the admixtureof solidsthat with little effortwill disintegrate.In both versions of this more com-monlyconceived mixtureof religiousbeliefs andpractices,the partsretaintheirunique dentities, mplyingthattheir essences areunchangedand theirconcoction is little more than a momentary uxtaposition.Biologicalmodel. Thebiologicalis arguably hemostpersuasivemodelof syncretism:two or more contributing"parents"producethroughmis-cegenation an offspring that cannot be classed with either parent (evenManuinvokes this image to explain the multitudeof varna designations);equally often the offspringis a "bastard" f unacknowledgedprovenance,for example, the mother was raped by some unknownassailant.The po-tentialinflammatorynatureof this kindof metaphor ends itself to an ob-vious polemic. When the offspring'scharacteristicsare identifiableto aparent, he "mixture"metaphor s subsequently nvokedand those featuresare understoodto be dominant," hat is, its "real"characteristicscomethrough.If the productis blended in such a way that dominantfeaturesfrom bothparentsare incorporated,t is a hybrid(plant)or halfbreed(ani-mal), againclassifiablewith neithersource.But the negativeentailmentofthe hybridmetaphor s that these offspringdo not reproducebecause theyaresterile,or if they manageto reproduce, hey do not "breed rue"; hat s,most will disaggregate n one or two generations.None of these models of syncretism adequatelycharacterizes he pro-cess by which the religious practitioneractuallyencountersthe otherandaddresses it, leaving those processes to the imaginationinvoked by themetaphor tself, a move that shifts the focus onto the ostensibleend prod-uct, itself a metaphoriccreation.And, of equalimport,each of the modelsof religious syncretismcarriesin its metaphor he implicit expectationoffailure,falsity, or impermanence,a decidedly negative valuationin nearly

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History of Religionsevery case, the only possible exceptionbeing the occasional good alchem-ical solution or the rare hybrid that does manage to reproduce.On thewhole, themodelspresuppose ssentialized,dehistoricized,monolithicenti-ties thatinteract n ways thatcannot be describeddirectly,only metaphori-cally,with theconclusion thatthey areunnatural ndinappropriate ot onlybuilt into their original category formation,but reinforcedin the entail-ments of the metaphors hemselves.Further,he evidence that s marshaledto make the arguments or syncretism s largely linguistic, punctuatedbythe occasionalphysicalmonumentor recordof ritualbutpredicatedon theall-too-easy assumption hatthe languageof these texts transparently nddirectly reflects experience and practice, an assumptionthat uncritically,althoughnot necessarily intentionally,extends the original Whorfianhy-pothesis (i.e., that languagereflects categories of meaning) to the instan-tiation and reification of religious traditions that are at best idealizedconstructionsread backinto thematerial.The readercan see in thepassagebelow how seductive and easy these models would be to apply, whichshouldin itself give pause. So to offer analternative hat does not naivelyassumethat the languageof thetext is a literalreplicaof religiousbelief orpractice,we must return o the initial language throughwhich we under-stand these early Bengali Sufis andother Islamicpractitionersandtheolo-gians. I would like to propose a different nterpretivestrategythat wouldrefocus the question onto the active dimension of these texts and theirauthorsandconsumers,thatis, to account for the "processof production,"rather than a description of the static end product of this complex andchallenging culturalandreligious interaction.In contrast to the model of syncretism that proposes to describe thenew amalgamcreatedby these Sufi texts, I would proposethatwe can re-construct a process by which the premodernSufi or otherMuslim writer,workingwithin the constraintsof a Bengali language whose extant tech-nical vocabularywas conditionedlargely by Hinduideationalconstructs,attempted to imagine an Islamic ideal in a new literary environment.These texts become, then, historical witnesses to the earliest attemptstothinkIslamic thoughtsin the local language,which is to say, to think newthoughtsfor Bengali, ideas thathad never previously been explicitly ex-pressed, otherwise there probably would have been an explicit vocabu-lary to supportthem, as there now is. In orderto express their ways ofimagining the world, we must assume that these Muslim authors did not"borrow"terms but, in a more intellectually astute process, sought theclosest "terms of equivalence" in order to approximatethe ideas theywanted to express.Putanotherway-and here the directionof this methodshould become clear-these early Bengali Islamic authors "translated"their concepts into the closest locally available terminology as a step

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274 In Search of Equivalencetowardarticulatinga differentkind of religiousorientation,but as we shallsee, terminology is not just words, but entire conceptual worlds, meta-phoricworlds.If we assume thatthe authorswere fully cognizantof whatthey were doing, that is, they were not confusing Islam and various tra-ditions of Hinduism, then we can see that while appearingto write intheir own language (Bengali), they were in effect translating into thatlanguageideas andconcepts that were at least somewhat alien to it. Even-tually a technical terminology derived from Persian and Arabic wouldtake its place in the Bengali of the Muslim author,and this vocabularywould prove to be formidable in size and effect;17but in the earlieststages of this process, which dateto the sixteenththrougheighteenthcen-turies, thatparticular echnical terminology was not a common or widelyagreed-uponpartof the Bengali language, so the texts from this periodillustrate the initial experimentsof these innovative and adventurousau-thors.In order to understandhow translation tself can become the modelfor interpreting hese texts, I propose that differentstyles of translationimply, if not explicitly dictate, systematic decisions regardingthe act oftranslating;that in turn suggests that formal theories of translation canhelp to illustrate the complexity of the process by providing a logicalstructureagainst which to measure the extent of these early authors'struggleto use Bengali to a new end. What follows is an all-too-brief out-line of the proposed approach,based on an extended close readingof asingle passage of an eighteenth-centuryBengali Sufi text.

"TRANSLATIONTHEORY" AS HERMENEUTICMODELAll of translation s a search for equivalence, but obviously the kind ofequivalence that is sought is dictatedby the natureof the concept beingtranslatedrom the sourcelanguage(SL) and the desiredresult n the targetor receiving language (TL). In our examples, however, the language ap-pearsat firstglanceto bejust Bengali,but in this premodernperiod,it is thespecial relationshipof Bengali to its "parent" anguages, especially San-skrit, that makes this "translation"possible. In this precolonial period,when a Bengali authorwished to speak technicallyaboutmattersof reli-gion, or economics, medicine,or any specializedbranchof knowledge,hetapped Sanskritfor its rich and precise vocabulary,often appropriatingwords and phrases in toto without modification.This special diglossia,which was markedby the learnedwho were frequentlymultilingualandcould shift easily from Bengali to Sanskrit-or, more often, who used ahighly SanskritizedBengali in complex acts of "code-switching"-gradu-ally enriched heBengali languageto thepointwhere it couldexpressideas

17One need only consult any of the several dictionariesof "foreignwords" n Bengali tosee the extent of this vocabulary, .g., Dictionary of Foreign Words n Bengali, comp. Gobin-dial BonnerjeeKaviratna, ev.JitendriyaBonnerjee(Calcutta:Universityof Calcutta,1968).



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History of Religionsthatpreviouslyhadonly been possible in Sanskrit tself.18The processwasquickenedby the many translationsof Sanskritepics and otherworks thathad been commissioned by various royal patrons during the fifteenththrougheighteenthcenturies,translations uch as the Mahabharatand Ra-mayana,the storiesof the Bhagavataand otherpuranas,and so on. Whenthe first authorsof distinctlyIslamic texts began to write in the vernacu-lar-something that apparentlywas consideredunnecessaryat first, sincethe languageof the courts was generallyPersian,which was consideredamore appropriate ehicle for the lofty ideas of Islamic scholarship-mostof the Bengali technicalterminologyand its concomitantconceptualstruc-tureswere of Sanskritorigin. Problematicwas the fact that the conceptualstructure hese Sufi authorswere seeking to translate derived ostensiblyfromArabic,although t was actually primarily hroughPersian; t was de-cidedly not Bengali. It is interestingto note thatBengali speakersin gen-eral, but especially notably,Bengali Muslims, resisted the dominationofthe higher languages of the Muslim elite, unlike vernacularspeakers inotherregions that underwent he Islamizationprocess.19This is borneouttoday by the role language played in the independenceof Bangladeshin1971 and how that functioned as a unifier of diverse peoples. Conse-quently,after several centuriesof active use of Bengaliby Muslimauthors,the situationis differentfor the users of the language,for Bengali enjoyswhat Bakhtinwould call a polyphonicrelationto the languagesof its highculture (Sanskrit,Arabic, Persian,and even Urdu).20Before that level ofadaptation ould occur,however, the initialmove was to seek appropriate,albeitapparentlynot altogethercomfortable, erms of equivalence.

18Sheldon Pollock has recently argued that the use of Sanskrit in the various regionsoften functioned as a hyperglossia (ratherthan diglossia), because Sanskritcut across re-gional boundaries in ways that made it and its claims universal but also because, in thistranscendingmode, Sanskritwas the ideal vehicle for expressing what was "really real,"the most important deas (in contrast to the vernacularsthat were used for the mundane).See Sheldon Pollock, "The SanskritCosmopolis, 300-1300: Transculturation,Veracular-ization, and the Question of Ideology" in Ideology and the Status of Sanskrit: Contribu-tions to the History of the SanskritLanguage, ed. Jan E. M. Houben (Leiden: E. J. Brill,1996), pp. 197-247, and "Indiain the VernacularMillennium:LiteraryCulture and Polity,1000-1500," "EarlyModernities,"Daedalus (ed. Shmuel EisenstadtandWolfgangSchluch-ter) 127, no. 3 (1998): 41-74.19 See Eaton (n. 2 above), esp. pp. 291-97.20 Bakhtincharacterizesmonoglossiaas the use of a single uniform anguage, diglossia asthe complex interactionof a languageand its parent,and heteroglossiaas the interactionoftwo or more contributingparentswhen these are in conflict with each other. He resortstopolyphonyto describethe conflict-freeuse of multiple parentcontributors.While analyticallyuseful, the practicaldistinction of heteroglossiaand polyphonyseems somewhatstrained, fnot artificial,in this context. See Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination,ed. MichaelHolquist,and trans.CarylEmerson and Michael Holquist,Slavic Series no. 1 (Austin:Uni-versityof TexasPress, 1981);and forBakhtin'spositionrelativeto membersof his school, seePam Morris,ed., The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writingsof Bakhtin,Medvedev,Voloshinov(London:Arnold, 1994).

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In Search of EquivalenceRelying on contemporary ranslationstudies, we can isolate a numberof often radically different formal approachesto this search for equiva-lence that can account for many, if not all, of the incredible linguisticmanipulationsfound in these early religious texts, such as Ali Raja's.Religious encounter seen as translation,however, is not just an act ofutterance ollowed by the emotional,political, and ideological conflict ofconversion,but ultimatelyreveals a movement of accommodationby thereceiving or target language and the culture it represents,which whensufficientlypursued eventually becomes an act of appropriation.The tar-get language incorporates fully the new terms and concepts that resultfrom this encounter,a process that is patentlydifferentfrom syncretism.The act of incorporatingwhat is alien ultimately changes its host-andhere is where we can trace some of the processes of religious change, themakingof a Bengali Islam. Forexample, the Muslimpir and his teachingare not just accepted as legitimate expressions of Bengali religiosity;when appropriatednto the languageandculture,the image of thepir hasactuallyhad an effect on analogous, thatis, "equivalent," heological andinstitutional structuresof Hindus by modifying their images of the holyman. This process is especially obvious in the Vaisnava case where thepower of thepir was morereadilyrecognizedbecause of strong theologi-cal affinities,amongother factors. The initialactof this Muslimencounterwith a Hindureligious figureleads the authorsto searchfor some kind ofparallelor analoguein an effort to find an equivalentterm or concept, forexample, samnydsl,vairagi, and so forth,thatsignifies the original term'scommon featuresas found in pir, a strongmatchin the semanticfields ofthe term and its gloss. But as the terms of equivalence are actively used,the target language concept-in this example, the Hindu holy man-slowly yields to a dialectic of differentiationwith the alien concept-inthis example, the pir-that graduallyincorporates he alien term and its

concept as similar to but uniquelydistinct fromits analogue,so thattodaypir and samnydsiare both recognized as Bengali words with relatedbutdistinctmeanings.When the "translation"s successful, the new termbe-comes a partof the targetculture'sextendedreligious vocabulary,and car-ries with it, or at least pointsto, anotherconceptualworld. Yet this processof seeking equivalence invariablyleaves out some of the original idea,while introducingnew ideas into the equation. Ortega y Gasset capturedsomethingof the paradox nherent n the effortto express the thoughtsofone language and its culture in those of another:21 Twoapparentlycon-tradictory aws are involved in all uttering.One says, 'Everyutterance sdeficient'-it says less than it wishes to say. The other law, the opposite,

21Jose Ortega y Gasset, Man and People, trans. Willard R. Trask(New York:Norton,1957), quoted in A. L. Becker, Beyond Translation:Essays toward a Modern Philology(Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 5.

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History of Religionsdeclares,'Everyutterance s exuberant'-it conveys more than it plans andincludes not a few things we should wish left silent." As do languages,when religious traditionsencounterone another,they translate,and whenthey do, they inevitably observe this paradoxicalrule of discursive trans-formation. This is a creative and improvisationalact that enriches andstrengthensboth participants,but this dialectic is uneven, and it does notautomaticallyor predictably lead to the creation of some strange newcreation but augmentsthe existing entities, enrichingall. To impose somelogical order on our analysis of these varying processes, we will brieflysample four differentstrategiesof increasing complexity that are in evi-dence in Ali Raja'stext and others like it, although it would be easy tomultiplythe numbers: 1) formalliteralequivalence, (2) refractedequiva-lence, (3) dynamic equivalence, and (4) metaphoricequivalence.22Let us turn,then,to Ali Raja,to look at a snippetof theAgamatext thatdeals with cosmogony.23The Foundationof Creation:TheMetaphysicsof Light(nur-tattva)In the beginninglesspacethe primemoverand creatorkaratd) alone existed.TheStainlessOne(niranjana) as a creamy ssence n the thickof theenvelop-ing universe f bleak nertia tamaguna).When he one calledStainless nirai-jana) rentthe interior f thatorb,he transformednto the LordIsvara.Forms(dkdra)began to differentiatewithin that universeand the unitary ormless(niriakra)metamorphosedntoseventy-oneorms.When heformlessnirakdra)assumed orm,the Stainless niranjana)ookthe nameof Visnu. The blazingeffulgence ujjvala) f the formless nirakdra)quickenedhe form dkdra);andthe darknessnvelopedheblazing ightwithits dazzling olors:white(sattva),black tamah) ndreddish-orangerajah)were atentandundifferentiated.oonecoulddistinguishmong he threequalitiesguna)whatwaspleasing.

22 It should be notedthat to use differentstyles of translation explainedby the underlyingtranslation heories)as a way of conceiving the encounterof religious traditions,or to betterunderstand he apparentencounter,is to use "translation" s a metaphor n its most generalsense as the expressionof one thingin termsof another.This is fundamentallydifferent romthe metaphoricbasis of the conceptof syncretism tself and thereforenot subjectto the samecritique.The reason the metaphoricuse of translationescapes this critiqueis simple: trans-lation is an identifiable,analyzableact, a concrete process that seeks to express one set ofconcepts in another anguagewith a potentiallydifferentconceptualstructure.Syncretism sitself a metaphor,no matterhow it is construed,and generallyone with no identifiablepro-cess to be uncovered;in contrast,the classic metaphorsof syncretismserve to cover overwhat is not understoodaboutthe process they ostensibly seek to describe,all too often mak-ing syncretisma pseudo-explanation.Todeploy translationas a model of religious encounter(i.e., to use it metaphorically) s really to use it on the metadiscursive evel, not on the pri-marylevel as metaphor s used by the constructionsof syncretism.23 Ali Raja, Agama, in Saripha,ed. andcomp. (n. 9 above), p. 323-25. It shouldbe notedthat in the sample passage that follows, when speaking directly of the letters thatcomposethe bija mantra"aum," have translatedaksara/akdraas "syllable"or "sonic form"-ratherthan the more common gloss of "letter"-in orderto convey the auralquality of this cos-mogonic act; in otherplaces dkarais translated imply as "form."

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In Search of EquivalenceWhen the unsegmenteduniverse was segmented into parts,consciousness (ce-tana) driftedin the primalwaters. EmotionalBeing (bhava) inferred ts own ex-istence within those primalwaters.As it labored to unite (yoga) with the Lord, it

experiencedthe essence of love (prema rasa). No part (kald) can be underthecontrolof passionatelove in a form that is unsegmented.In the absence of syzy-gies (yugala) the intellect (manas) can not discern name [and form]. Unable todistinguish pairs, neither action nor naming can occur. Without the conjunction[of opposites], neither speech nor love are possible. When the Stainless (niran-jana) conceived a love for an opposing lover, consciousness (cetana) permeatedthe realm of the unmanifest(nirdkdra).The PrimeMover (karatd)was concealedwithin the realm of creation, and through his independent immaculate powerpartedthe waters and cleansed the darkness.From that which was without form(nirakdra),the formed (akara) was born as the initial sonic-form "a."The form-less (nirakara)generatedthe sonic-form "u"(ukara)throughthe sonic-form "a."From the union of the sonic-forms "a" and "u,"the sonic-form "m" (makira)was born. Its power (sakti) was realized as [the qualities] sattva, rajah, andtamah.The sonic-form "m"(makara)pulled himself from the waters.Looking athimself [reflected]in the waters, he was smitten (mohita) with the love of a de-votee (bhakta).As he gazed at the reflectionof his own initial image (nijaakdra),he gained consciousness of himself, yet he remainedabsorbed,undifferentiatedfrom the sonic form "a" (akdra)and the sonic form "u" (ukdra).For aeons theyremainedcoiled together as a single form, the universe of the sonic-form "m"(makara)within the sonic-form "u" (ukira) within the sonic-form "a" (akdra).The sonic-form "m" (makdra) grew fiercely hot within the sonic-forms "a"(akara) and "u"(ukara).From the unified one came the two a coupled pair [like]the archer with his bow properlystrung.The unifying single name of the tripleworld remained hidden, the sonic-form "m" (makdra)and the sonic-form "u"(ukara)togetherpreservingthe unifying essence. The ImperishableSyllable (ak-sara) remained n solitude within the triple forms. It was from this single Imper-ishable Syllable (aksara) that the tripleworld arose.While others more knowledgeable of the niceties of the explicit and im-plied cosmological systems in this not altogether transparent text may notagree with every line of my translation, there are some unmistakably dis-tinct acts of Ali Raja's translation that we can identify, and which will inthe final analysis show him to be using this vocabulary for his own verydistinct Islamic objectives.

FORMAL LITERARY EQUIVALENCEWhile serving as a logical starting point, "formal literary equivalence" inpractice was seldom sought in the early Bengali Muslim writings, becauseformal equivalence operates on the naive assumption that each idea orconcept can be literally translated from the source language into the targetlanguage without addition or subtraction of meaning. In the West, thisformalism has grounded nearly all classical theories and confounded morethan a few interpreters over the last two millennia. But perfect one-to-one

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History of Religionscorrespondences simply seldom existed in the materials that the earlyBengali Muslim writers sought to describe, and this is tacitly acknowl-edged by its absence; on this simplistic level, perfect equivalence makestranslation nvisible, which is only possible for very simple, nontechnicalconcepts. In practice this literalism in mattersof religious import func-tions more as an ideal generallyheld by the unreflective,by those who donot translateat all, or by those who wish to make a point thatdeliberatelyrunsroughshodover subtletyandnuance, as, for example, in the Vaisnavafigure Krsna Caitanya's argument with a pir wherein he equates theBhagavataPuranaand the Qur'an,the point of coursebeing conversion.24Beyond that basic semantic level, literal equivalence loses much of itspractical value because it works only for the simplest terms or for thebroadestgeneralizations.Take,for instance, such limited concepts as rec-itation of the name, dhikrandjapa; but even here supposedequivalencerequires mmediateclarification,which is to admitits failure.While notingthat this strategy s useful for settinga baseline in ouranalysis, thereis lit-tle evidence within these works that the semantic fields of religiouslysignificant terms were ever conceived to be identical, transparent,or lit-erally equal to theiradoptedequivalents-our examples would be limitedhere to very general mythic constructs such as the primal waters, thechaos before order,or the darkness thatpervadespriorto creation,all ofwhich are sufficiently vague that they requirelittle or no reflection untilthey are later manipulated.Most of the equivalences, however, are morerealistically seen as "approximationsof equivalence,"which leads to themore common conception of translation hattoday is called, amongotherthings, "refraction."

REFRACTION AND MIRRORINGRefractiontheory suggests that one be not so much concernedwith liter-alness as with locating approximations-and this strategywas historicallyuseful for establishing equivalentgroundsof meaning between Muslimsand Hindus. To describerefraction,Andre Lefevre coined the expression"mirroring,"or a translationreflects the originalidea but refracts t in theprocess; that is, it does not capture the identical semantic field but ap-proximates it, often with distortions, the latter being key.25With this

24 CaitanyaCaritdmrtaof KrsnadasaKaviraja,trans.EdwardC. Dimock, Jr.,ed. TonyK.Stewart,with an introductionby EdwardC. Dimock andTony K. Stewart,HarvardOrientalSeries 56 (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, 1999), pp. 608-9 (2.18.175-203).25Andre Lefevre, "Mother Courage's Cucumbers:Text, Systems and Refraction in aTheory of Literature,"Modern Language Studies 12, no. 4 (1982): 3-19, and his mono-graph, TranslatingPoetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint (Assen and Amsterdam:VanGorcum, 1975); see also AndreLefevre, "Theoryand Practice:Process and Product,"Mod-ern Poetry in Translation 1-42 (March1981): 19-27, "LiteraryTheoryand TranslatedLit-erature,"Dispositio 7, nos. 19-21 (1982): 3-22. In a related vein, see also J. C. Catford,A LinguisticTheory of Translation London:OxfordUniversityPress, 1965), especially thechapterson formalcorrespondenceand transference.

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In Search of Equivalenceapproach,central religious or other concepts can be established as ana-logues. Forinstance,a Hindu notion of god, Visnu-Narayana,s held to bethe equivalentof Allah, especially throughthe sharedconcept of "stain-lessness"or niranjana,as Ali Rajauses the termthroughout he firstpara-graphof the sampletext. This concept, explicitly denotingone of Visnu'sfeatures,resonatesstronglywith the equivalentcharacteristicsof God thatare enumerated n dhikr.This kind of refractionworks best in those areaswhere obvious and overt similaritiesof characteror actioncan be aligned.In this way an authorcan comparein generalterms an institution such asthe Hindu tola with the Islamic madrasa,or a guruparamparawith a Sufisilsilah, with a certain confidence that he will not be misunderstoodasequatingthe two; they areroughlysimilar n function or form,butthey arenot the same. Refractiontheoryreachesits limit of usefulness,or is proneto confusing the reader,when it reaches the point where the communitiesplace differentvalues on these apparentlyequivalent practicesor expres-sions, especially in their specific and technical functions. To handle thisdifferentiation,he authors urnto a morecomplex strategyof establishing"functionalanalogues" hat bearstrongresemblance o the translation he-ories of EugeneNida thatemphasizethe context of a term or phrase.

DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCENida, who rejects the "literal" and "refraction"approachesas logicallyformal theories that describe impracticalideals, offers an alternativeinhis theoryof "dynamicequivalence."26Dynamic equivalencenot only ac-counts for overlappingsemanticdomains but also gives priority o culturalcontext, which can begin to account for the different values ascribed toequivalentterms.The emphasis shifts away from the precise content andcontours of the idea being translated, oward that idea as it is used in itssocial context, its role andfunction within the target anguageandculture,which then allows for a kind of creative latitude in seeking equivalence.Ali Rajain this shortpassage uses a sdmkhya-derived erminologyto de-scribe thebasic dualismthat is inherent n all Islamiccosmogonic portray-als according to which the world depends on the opposition of pairedelements, the syzygies (yugala), necessary for discrimination and cog-nition to arise. Yet, by invoking the classical samkhyadarsana or philo-sophical system, he instantlyfinds himself embroiledin its implications,especiallynotablehere in thegenerationof the threegunas, the elementsofsattva, rajas, and tamas.While I can find nothingin the Islamic cosmog-onies thatcorrespondsdirectly o thisprocessof generation, t is the mecha-nism by which the "unfolding"of creation takes place and representsa

26 Eugene Nida, Towardsa Science of Translating Leiden:Brill, 19g64);ee also E. Nidaand C. Taber,TheTheoryand Practice of TranslationLeiden:Brill, 1969).

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History of ReligionsprominentPiacaratracosmogonic concept thatbears strongresemblanceto the mitosis that characterizesIslamic cosmogonies, especially some ofthe more elaborateamongIsmailis and others. The point is thataccordingto Nida'ssuggestion,the distinctiveBengali vocabulary or creation,whichis nearlyuniversallygroundedn theterminologyof sdmkhya,s the bestve-hicle to translate he idea of duality,even if exact matches cannot be madeand the concomitantconceptsblur otherdistinctions.Put anotherway, wecan say that the translations dynamicto context.Therearenumeroussuchexamples from the literaturesof this period thatby comparisoncan clar-ify the range of the dynamic translation even further.Vaisnavas,for instance,talkof the descents of god or avatara,27 igureswho descend to guide the wayward back to the path of properconduct(dharma),and as such these figures can easily be conceived as the "dy-namicequivalent"of the Islamicconceptof "prophet" rnabi. For the ob-vious reason thatonly Allah can be divine, a Muslim authorwould clearlydeny as heresythat dimension of the semantic domainthatdesignates"di-vinity"for the Vaisnava termof avatara; but because prophethood unc-tions in an Islamic environment n a way analogousto that of the avatdra,thatis, to guide people to the properreligious path,the terms could be es-tablishedas parallelor equivalent.So, in responseto the popularand un-derlying notion of "inspiredguidance,"which can be found in both nabiand avatara, authorssuch as Saiyad Sultan could adopt the termavatirato describe the ProphetMuhammad,as he did with some regularity n hismonumentalwork Nabi Vamsa.28To suggest that Saiyad Sultan understoodnabi and avatira to be iden-tical, or thatthis representeda shift in basic Islamic theology (a shift thatwould inevitably be considered a degradationand heresy), or to proposethathe was constructingsome kind of new hybridor syncretisticreligiousmodality,is utterlyto misreadhis text, for it is clearhe did none of these.Rather,he articulated his function of inspired guidancein termscommonto a Bengali-speakingworld;thatis, he "dynamicallytranslated" he ideain context. But the effect of this dynamic translationwas not unidirec-tional, because while Saiyad Sultan may have been simply seeking aHindufunctionalanalogue for nabi, in choosing avatdra, he actually ex-pandedthe semanticdomainof the concept of avatara itself. In the NabiVamsa, Siva and Hari and other figures become nabis or prophets, asmuch as Muhammadbecomes an avatara (althoughtheir functions weredifferentiated).And with this exchange, the two terms become pairedin

27Avatara is usually misleadingly translatedinto English as "incarnation,"but in theHindu conception there is no "flesh"(carn-) involved, making the translationan exampleof "refraction."28 Saiyad Sultan,Nabi Vamsa, n Rasul Carita,ed. AhmadSariph,2 vols. (Dhaka:BamlaEkademi, 1385 B.s.).

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History of Religionsworld is understoodin terms of another,not just in its single terms orphrases.Because these worlds arenot identical,yet admit to being under-stood in terms of direct or implied comparison, they are extended, com-plex metaphorical constructs, which can be conceived as "shared"or"emergent"metaphoricalworlds (and we might even arguethat to call ittranslation s itself a metaphoric eap). Linguistically,the impulse behindthis analysis is what GideonTouryhas called "polysystemtheory,"whichattemptsto extend the processes of translation o the cultural,intersemi-otic level, wherein differentfeatures of cultureparticipate n increasinglycomplicated,oftendisjunctive,systemsof discourse.31 olysystemassumesthat no single mode of discourseor culturalconstructcan accountfor thevarieties of lived experiences or types of exchanges within which peopleroutinely operate and that people comfortably shift from system to sys-tem, often without reflection, depending on the situation. The system inoperation s context-dependent; he domains of meaningare not limitedtoexclusively verbal significations;andthe applicationof them is necessar-ily imprecise, if not inconsistent.Translation, hen, will shift frompurelylinguistic to symbolic and other forms of culturalexpressionin ways thatare not naively arithmetic;different modes of translationwill embodygreaterand lesser degrees of conformityin the same complex act, so thatdependingon what is being emphasized,the various dimensions of cul-turalexpressionwill be more or less translated nto theirequivalents.If inourexampleseach expressionof religiosity attemptedby theseprecolonialauthors s understood o participate n a rangeof semiotic systems, thenitstranslationwill likewise reflect these multiplereferentsas well. A theolog-ical term could conceivably imply, then, certain ritualactions, cosmologi-cal expectations, political allegiances, and so forth, in an ever spiralingcomplicationas one attempts o accountfor the encounterof one religiousculture with anotherthrougha shared language and its metaphoricandsymbolic systems.

31 GideonToury, n Searchof a Theoryof TranslationTelAviv: Porter nstitute or Poeticsand Semiotics, 1980); for the implicationsof such an approach, ee the interestingessays inPramodTalgeriandS. B. Verma,eds., Literaturen Translation: rom CulturalTransferenceoMetonymicDisplacement London:Sangam,1988). See also Gentzler's ritiqueof polysystemtheoryin ContemporaryTranslationTheories,pp. 105-43. A slightly differentapproach hatseeks to quantifydiscretelythecomplex levels of translation hat account for the rich culturalcontext can be found in the "variational"model as describedby Lance Hewson and JackyMartin n RedefiningTranslation:The VariationalApproach(London:Routledge, 1991). Inthis model, the highest level of intersemiotic translation nvolves the isolation of multi-faceted "homologons"that lead to more tightly controlledparaphrastic onstructions. Thisseems to be a promisingmodel for translators o conceptualizewhat they do, but less usefuldescriptively in conceptualizingthe problemI have described in the encounterof religioustraditions.

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In Search of EquivalenceIt must be remembered,however, that what is sought is not the preciseequationof the partsof one symbolic or semiotic system with another nclear one-to-one matches.Rather, his overt use of an apparentlyalien ter-

minology and conceptual system is an attemptto establish the basis for acommon conceptual underpinning o that the matchingsystems and theirpartsare demonstratedo be coherentlyconceived, or at least rectifiable-hence the possibility of equivalence-while almost certain to remainin-consistentin theirparticulars.32quivalence n this mode suggests that twoconceptualworlds are seen to addresssimilarproblems in similar ways,without ever proposingthatthey are identical;to express one in terms ofthe other-the quintessentialmetaphoricstep-remains an act of transla-tion, not an assertionof identityor some mysterious changeof allegianceon the partof the author.This might help explain how Ali Raja'sattemptto articulate he cosmogony in the opening passage of the "nurtattva"ofhis Agama text can appearto appropriatewholesale a generic Hindu cos-mogonic actof differentiationhrough he sacredsyllable"aum."Whenwesee how he seeks to locate some measureof symbolic equivalence throughcomparing parallel cosmological constructs-a move that would allowhim to express a Muslim truth n a languageandconceptualstructure hatis at least nominallyHindu-the text suddenlyilluminatesa very differentculturalandreligious process. In its application, his processof translatingon a higher conceptualplanecanbe understoodas anextension of the pre-viously noted processes, which have upped the ante of complexity. Andthere is in this passage an importanthermeneuticmove that makes clearthatAli Raja s lookingfor equivalence,not voicing preference or a Hinducreationscheme.In general but precise terms, Ali Raja asserts from the first phrase ofthis passage the unity of the creator before creation, while noting theineffable connection between this unity and the dualismnecessary for allexistent things to interact with the divine, the dualismnecessary for a re-lationshipof love to exist. This position of tawhid (tauhid)-which be-comes clear in the passage in the second paragraphbeginning with thephrase"The Prime Mover (karta) was concealed within the creation"-is wholly consistent with any mainstream slamic theology, yet this sameineffable connection resonates stronglywith the mainstream heology ofthe Vaisnavas of Bengal and their emphasis on acintya bhedabheda-asimultaneous distinctionand nondistinctionbetween the ultimate and thecreatedworld that is cognitively unresolvable, that is a mystery.It is no

32 I am here following the lead of Lakoff andJohnson,who arguein their work on meta-phorin everyday speech thatthe mechanicsof this process can be envisioned as seeking the"coherence"of conceptionswithoutworryingaboutthe consistencyof the details of the ex-pression,image, or symbolbeing manipulated.

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History of Religionsaccident, then, that he chose the alreadynoted use of the termniranjana,hereconnecting Visnu with Allah.33 t is the treatmentof the processes ofcreationthroughthe auralpower of aum thatsuggests Ali Raja'sattemptto establish an analogy with common Islamic cosmogonies. In the nextfew lines of the text, which redescribe the process of differentiationthroughwhich the formless becomes formed, as he noted initially in theopening paragraph, he world unfolds throughsonic mitosis: it is the "a"(akdra) that produces "u" (ukara), and together they generate the "m"(makira). It is important o note that the latter two are somehow mysteri-ously contained within the original ikara and are not just discrete linearunfoldingsfrom it. At thisjuncture,Ali Rajaportrays he process in a waythat mimics a generic Islamic cosmogony so that direct parallels can bedrawn between a number of different Sufi, and even Shia and Sunnicosmogonies. The sonic transformation of creation begins with God,Allah, as representedby the character rom which all characters low, alif,the numberone, the uncreatedwho creates; from alif is then generatedmim,Muhammad,andthroughhim eventually all of creation.Alif and theakdra, mim and the makdra-these are the two points of action in thecreationof the world, the vowel and the consonant as the progenitorsofspeech andthe world. The ambiguousukdra,which at firstglance appearsto have no directanaloguepositionedbetween alif andmim,is not super-fluous, nor is it simply glossed over. In Ali Raja'sconceptual world (asnoted later in this same text), creation does not move directly from Allahto Muhammadbut is mediatedby a formless form, the nur muhammadi,the nur tattva, which separates and connects the world from God, theworldly Prophet Muhammad from his creator; it is the Muhammad ofguiding light. Yet the relationshipof nurto Muhammadandthatof thosetwo to Allah is vague and mysterious, yet hierarchically progressive asthe individual parts of aum. It is Ali Raja'streatmentof the ukara thatreveals his hand and makes clear his choice of symbolic homologies.Neither the fact that Ali Raja does not spell out that connection, northe fact that his handling of the problematicukdra is imprecise, shouldbe taken as a sign of some abortive attemptat fusing theologies. Rather,it is this apparent imprecision, especially in the vagueness with whichthe ukdraandmakdraaregenerated romthe dkara,that alertsus to his at-temptto findan analogousstructurewithin which to translate he mystery

33 For a summaryof the acintya bhedabhedatheory as it was adaptedby the GaudiyaVaisnavas,see RadhagovindaNatha, Gaudiya vaisnava darsana, 5 vols. (Calcutta:Pracya-vani Mandira,1363-66 B.S.), 1:137-43 for a brief introduction,hen vols. 1-3 passim.ForanEnglish summary,see EdwardC. Dimock, Jr.,"Doctrine and Practiceamong the Vaisnavasof Bengal," n Krishna:Myths,Rites andAttitudes,ed. MiltonSinger(Hawaii:East-WestCen-terPress, 1966), pp. 41-63.

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In Search of Equivalenceof Sufi cosmogony. Had the aum been presented as a progression ofdiscrete steps followed by the all-importantsilence with which it sym-bolically closes in the traditionalHindu cosmogonies of the upanisads,Ali Raja might be understood to have attemptedsome synthesis or evento have adopteda Hinduperspective, but his manipulationof the partsofaum so that they mimic and parallel the relationship of the creationthroughalif and mim suggests a search for equivalence, a translation ofa fundamental but complex concept into the target culture'sconceptuallexicon. And precisely because it is a search for equivalence-not anassertion of positive identity-the partsmust remainvague, analogous,or at best homologous. The use of one conceptual structureto expressanothersuggests the coming togetherof metaphoricworlds thatoperatesaccordingto a logic of both metonymicand synechdochaldisplacements,where parts can be exchanged and substituted in ways that allow oneculturalsystem (the equivalentof a source language) to interactwith andbe understood by another (the equivalent of a target language). Wemight conceptualize this search for equivalence taking place on the levelof a culturalmetalanguage,a kind of conceptualhyperglossiathatallowsthese critically important figures to speak in a conceptual idiom thatbringsdifferentcultures ogether,while acknowledgingand evenjustifyingtheirown independentconceptual-and in this case religious-worlds. Inour last example, it is an Islamic theology that uses and appropriatesaHindu cosmology to its own purposes, explaining the "real"meaning ofthe sacredsyllable aumto an audience thatmightnot otherwise have seenthe connection, an act that is substantiallyapartfrom syncretism;at thesame time it demonstrates hat the truth of God's creation has been ob-servedby Hindus,even if they did not fully comprehend t. The result is athoroughlyIslamic view of the world in a text that uses an ostensiblyHindu terminology to express it.

CONCLUSIONIn conclusion we arguethat the searchfor equivalencein the encounterofreligions-when understood hrough he translationmodels we have char-acterized as literal,refractive,dynamic,andmetaphoric-is an attempt obe understood, o makeoneself understood n a languagenot always one'sown; it does not necessarily reflect religious capitulationor theologicalignoranceor serve as the sign of a weak religious identity.A hermeneuticstrategythat acknowledges the unusuallinguistic and culturalconfluencefound in the Bengali-speakingworld clearly will help to explain how somany culturalproductionscould appearon the surface to violate or be in-consistentwith contemporarynotionsof the pristine deal standard f reli-gious exclusion, when in fact they projecta coherenceof conception.Thetexts that reveal these actorsattempting o locate commensurateanalogues

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History of Religionswithin the languagetraditioncapturea uniquehistorical "moment" n theprocess of cultural and religious encounter,as each traditionexplores theother and tries to make itself understood.Once the translationprocess canbe shown to have moved from the simplistic modes of seeking equiva-lence to the complex realmsof conceptualsharing hat we have designatedas metaphoric n nature, he analysismust,of necessity, shift. Because thiscu

hindu muslim linguistic encounter

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