Reifying Religion While Lost in Translation: Mirza Mazhar Jan-i-Janan (d.1781) on the Hindus

摘要

This paper examines the life and thought of one of the leading Muslim revivalist thinkers in 18th century India, Mirza Mazhar Jan-i-Janan (1699-1781) in an effort to understand the relationship, if any, between the structures of knowledge that informed colonial conceptions of India’s religious topography and 18th century projects of intra-religious and cross-religious interpretation (such as that conducted by Jan-i Janan)? In addition, the project aims at informing the inquiry as to the extent to which the process of reification that led to the development of a unified notion of ‘Hinduism’ in the modern era already was underway in the works of 18th century figures such as Jan-i Janan?