Tales, Translations, Trajectories: Literary and Linguistic Journeys in South Asia and Beyond
Author: Simon Digby
Edited by David Lunn
with an Introduction by Francesca Orsini
| HB ₹1650 |
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INFORMATION
- AUTHOR : Simon Digby
- HB ISBN : 978-93-7179-565-4
- Year : 2026
- Extent : 358
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Tales, Translations, Trajectories: Literary and Linguistic Journeys in South Asia and Beyond is a collection of the late Simon Digby’s penetrating and revelatory essays on broadly literary topics.
Beginning with a substantial piece on the ‘Indian making’ of Richard Burton as an Arabist—on which Digby lectured when he was awarded the Burton Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1999—subsequent chapters explore connected themes through the Arabian Nights and related tales in the Indo-Persian tradition. The second section focusses on another of his great passions—‘wonder tales’—and includes a wholly original study of the north Indian kissa tradition and the Nepali Madhumālatī.
The final section focusses on Rudyard Kipling, Kim, and other lesser known but inter-connected colonial-era stories of ‘the little boy lost’, including missionary tracts. These probing, erudite, and in many cases never-before published essays make for essential and lively reading for anyone interested in the multi-lingual and interconnected literary worlds of South Asia.
The Author
Simon Digby (1932–2010) was one of the foremost scholars on pre-Mughal India as well as a prolific writer, translator and collector. He was Honorary Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, curator in the Department of Eastern Art of the Ashmolean Museum, and a member of the Oriental Institute of the University of Oxford. His contribution to the study of Indian history can be seen through his wide-ranging research into fields as disparate as art and architecture, travellers’ tales and religious tracts, numismatics and furniture, Kipling and Qalandars, toys and fairy tales.
The Editor
David Lunn was the Simon Digby Postdoctoral Fellow at SOAS University of London, where he also taught extensively between 2007 and 2023. He has published on Hindi–Urdu and Hindu–Muslim relations in pre-Independence India, early Hindustani cinema, and the poetry of Emperor Shāh ‘Ālam II, among other topics. He is currently an independent scholar.