A Persian Praise of Krishna: A Note on the Preface of Amānat Rāy’s Persian Bhāgavaṭa Purāṇa (1733)

This paper deals with the introductory section of a little-known 18th- century Persian versified translation of the tenth skandha of the Bhāgavaṭa Purāṇa, the Jilwa-yi ẕāt “The epiphany of the Essence”, completed in Delhi in 1733 by Amānat Rāy, a Vishnuite pupil of the influential poet-philosopher Mīrzā ‘Abd al-Qādir Bīdil (1644-1720). Notwithstanding its obvious relevance for the intellectual and religious history of late Mughal South Asia, especially as far as the use of Persian as prestigious literary-devotional medium among the communities of Hindu secretaries of North India is concerned, the text has never been the object of any study up until now. In these preliminary remarks, I focus not so much on the translation itself but on the relatively long preface embedded by Amānat in his work: here the author provides an articulate description of Krishna filtered through the Persian poetic canon and a series of conceptual keys for reading his work, showing the deep connections between the poetic lesson of his master Bīdil, the domi- nant Sufi-Vedantic views and the still little understood sphere of Krishnaite devotion in the Persianate environment of courtly Delhi in the 1700s.