Concentration:  Cultural production in the Deccan Sultanates, late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dakhni padams. Yakṣagāna performance.

Texts:

Kitāb-i Navras of Ibrahim ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah II (Senior Scholar 1 and 2, PI). Yakṣagāna performance texts in Telugu and Kannada (PD1). Telugu Pāṇḍuraṅga-māhātmya.

Revisiting years 1, 2, and 3:

Deccani Paintings and the Paithan school. Bijapur monuments. Malayalam Keralolpatti literature. The second wave of canonical Telugu prabandhas. Muttutāṇṭavar Tamil padams.

Leading questions: 

Does the Kitāb-i Navras reproduce or adumbrate the aesthetic ethos of the padams in Telugu, Kannada, and Tamil? What specific Deccani themes come to the fore in all the major domains? How did Carnatic music evolve from its Deccan origins to the Kaveri Delta composers? How do Sultanate artistic styles resonate in the Tadipatri temples and the sculpture and painting of the far south?

Workshop: “Poetics, Painting, and Politics in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Deccan.”