The City and the Wilderness: Indo-Persian Encounters in Southeast Asia

California World History Library

by Arash Khazeni

The City and the Wilderness recounts the journeys and microhistories of Indo-Persian travelers across the Indian Ocean and their encounters with the Burmese Kingdom and its littoral at the turn of the nineteenth century. As Mughal sovereignty waned under British colonial rule, Indo-Persian travelers and intermediaries linked to the East India Company explored and surveyed the Burmese Empire, inscribing it as a forest landscape and Buddhist kingdom at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia. Based on colonial Persian travel books and narratives in which Indo-Persian knowledge and perceptions of the wondrous edges of the Indian Ocean merged with Orientalist pursuits, The City and the Wilderness uncovers fading histories of inter-Asian crossings and exchanges at the ends of the Mughal world.

268 pages, Paperback

Published July 28, 2020

Reviews

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This primarily focuses on present-day Myanmar, but it's this really interesting exchange between the Buddhist world of mainland southeast Asia and a Persian Islamicate (note - not necessarily Islamic) world of much of West, Central, and South Asia.

This takes a few different incarnations.

- Language. Persian was apparently the diplomatic language par excellence, in a role that far outstripped the current position of Farsi. Persian was used as an international language within the Middle East and Iran, Central Asia, and by both Muslim and non-Muslim polities within India. It had the advantage of being a relatively standardized Indo-European language that was not tied to one specific state or sect. So when the EIC exchanged relations with the Konbaung dynasty - and when various Burmese polities sent embassies to India - they used Persian as the medium of exchange.

- Religion. What does it mean when the Arakan kings call themselves Padishah or Sultan, or publish firmans, or mint coins with the Islamic kalimas? What does it mean when Muslims pray to a mihrab with a Buddha statue installed, or recite Buddhist mantras? One of the fascinating things that I am learning about South(east) Asia is just how nebulous religion was, especially given how distinct the religions are today.

- Trade. Chittagong and the Bay of Bengal were major centers population and agriculture for centuries, which is why the British EIC set up camp there. But there were trade networks spanning the Indian Ocean. Elephants and Teak from Mayanmar sailing out of Yangon. Cowrie shells from the Maldives and the Nicobar islands. Spices from Malabar. Textiles from Gujarat. The book lays how some of these trade networks were set up, in this case by focusing on a particular trade mission from the British EIC to the Konbaung dynasty in Burma.

We also get to explore writing and material culture of both the Persian world (in the form of Persian travel narratives) and of Burmese and Arakan culture (in the form of government edicts, city planning and architecture, palm leaf manuscripts). The author dives more deeply into the Buddhist conception of kingship as understood and projected by Mon, Arakan, Burmese, and Thai dynasties. How did the city and the forest fit into their cosmology? How did common people interact with the stupas and temples of the country? What did ordinary dwellings look like?

The author wraps up the book by examining contemporary Rakhine State and the violence against Muslims, versus the lengthy communal history and intermingling in the borderlands. The author even examines what buildings and monuments the government chooses to protect vs what it chooses to close or permit to fall into disrepair.

This may be a niche topic - early modern Burma and Bengal - but it's really fascinating to get a glimpse into what the region was like before the colonial period. The text itself is only about 180 pages with plenty of beautiful photographs, so you are also not committing to a doorstopper.

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just from the number of tags on this book one should be able to guess how deeply and admirably it falls into so many baskets of my interest. The author makes a supremely timely intervention in the historiography of Southeast Asia, and Asia at large by tying both the maritime continent and mainland continent firmly with the 'Persian Cosmopolis' of Eaton et al. And in doing so, makes Arakan look like an interesting world toying with Arakanese, Pali, the Burmese languages, and Persian and, Burma itself a tad to self-oriented. There is a host of characters, drifters to use Khazeni's choice who venture out into the ocean using Persian cosmologies and ideas while talking about the vast SEAsian continent. Michael Symes' mission long considered both by contemporaries and historians as an ineffectual effort in 1795 is reimagined here as having been fueled by genuine curiosity and driven also using curious relations calling in intermediaries and itinerants. But hands down readers will agree that Azizullah's translation of the Jatakas from the Pali to Persian with Sufic touches and personality is the most lively of all representations in this book.

[Theresa Barton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Amongst a wealth of early modern history of the indian ocean world, truly colorful sources writing in Persian give one a feel for the era. From Mirza Abu Talib Khan - a downtrodden Isfahani chronicler drifting among the Nicobar and Maldives - to Singh Bey, a bengali illustrator working for the British whose hyperreal sketches of stupas impressed the Burmese sovereign, these previously inaccessible texts provide insight into an exciting and cosmopolitan time.
Sadly, the modern Myanmar state is erasing evidence of Mrauk U, a syncretic muslim/buddhist city-state (which devolved into a piracy for a time with the help of the portuguese). The book harks back to a time before today's violent treatment of the Rohinga Muslims in the Rakhine state (previously Arakan), when muslim scholars such as Shah 'Azizallah drew harmonious connections between elements of their Sufi spirituality and the Theravada Buddhist cycles of life, death, and rebirth. Sufis recognized in buddhist texts a shared belief in asceticism - that time spent in the forest, in nature, is a devotion.