Dil e nadaan tujhe hua kya hai Akhir is dard ki dava kya hai? Ghalib Sringara, viraha, ishq, prem, love—these are the themes of this cultural history of love in South Asia. The only way to succeed in such a mammoth venture is frankly to admit your limitations, which is exactly what the editor Francesca Orsini does. Recognizing the impressive body of work on Sanskrit, Tamil and bhakti works the papers in this book focus chiefly on medieval and modern sources in north India other than the bhakti saints. As Love in South Asia is founded on the premise that culture and language play a crucial role in defining love, its contributors highlight and celebrate the plurality of the idioms of love in South Asia. These they find in literature, literary history, philosophy, social history, anthropology and in Bollywood movies.
October 2007, volume 31, No 10