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INDIA ix. POLITICAL AND CULTURAL RELATIONS: QAJAR PERIOD, EARLY 20TH CENTURY The Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906-11 (q.v.), directed against the native autocracy and British and Russian imperialist intervention, was an early example of an international revolutionary event in Asia. The contributions made by various non-Iranian individuals and groups to…

INDIA xiii. INDO-IRANIAN COMMERCIAL RELATIONS Since antiquity merchants have used both caravan and maritime routes to transport commodities between India and Persia. During the early modern era, as European companies became an important presence in the arena of Indian Ocean trade, an increased percentage of the total trade between the…

INDIA xiv. PERSIAN LITERATURE The amount of Persian literature composed in the Indian subcontinent up to the 19th century is larger than that produced in Iran proper during the same period (Schimmel, p. 1). From the very beginning of the Muslim invasion of northern India, Persian, as the language of…

INDIA xvi. INDO-PERSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY Historical works in Persian began to appear in India in the era of the Delhi Sultanate (q.v.) during the late 13th to 14th centuries. It was in Delhi itself, the capital of this expanding, if habitually unstable, kingdom, that most of the early Persian–language histories were…

INDIA xviii. PERSIAN ELEMENTS IN INDIAN LANGUAGES Some Persian elements are present in most of the modern languages of the subcontinent of South Asia, as a consequence of the prolonged cultivation of Persian associated with pre-modern Indo-Muslim culture. In those languages and registers in which the impact of the classical…

INDIA xx. PERSIAN INFLUENCES ON INDIAN PAINTING Between about 1300 and 1600, Persian painting styles had a sustained impact on the Indian art at the Sultanate and Mughal courts as well as on Hindu painting styles. Several approaches for a description of this far-reaching phenomenon would be possible. For the…

INDIA xxi. INDIAN INFLUENCES ON PERSIAN PAINTING During the 17th century, the flow of artistic influences between Persia and India reversed. Paintings and drawings in the developed Mughal style of the first quarter of the century were imported to the courts and bazaars of Isfahan. There the “new Indian art—”with…