Gupta, Vivek; (2025) Unfinished Hyperboles! Adam's Footprint in Sri Lanka and Wonder on the Edge of Modernity. In: Peacock, ACS, (ed.) Iran and Persianate Culture in the Indian Ocean World. (pp. 275-300). I.B. Tauris: London.

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Abstract

How can wonders be used to travel, perform pilgrimage and translocate oneself? How can paintings transport one to ports, across oceans, to distant lands and beyond? Fantastic islands, beasts, flora and fauna and maritime trade factor into many of the entries on seas (al-biḥār) found in illustrated Persian and Arabic wonders-of-creation cosmographies. The combination of word, image and extant evidence from these coastal or Oceanic sites allows for nuanced interpretations of how one may ‘sail’ or ‘stroll’ through these books. This chapter concentrates on an illustrated manuscript from the University of St Andrews Special Collections attributed to North India, c. 1780–1820. The book St Andrews Ms32(o) comprises of two texts focused on the natural world and bears numerous illustrations. The codex’s first text is the ‘Ayn al-Hayat (Source of Life), a Persian adaptation of the ‘Aja’ib al-Dahr (Wonders of the Universe) of Kamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Musa al-Damiri (1341–1405). ‘Ayn al- Hayat was composed by al-Damamini, an Egyptian who travelled to Yemen, the Deccan, and completed his work in Gujarat in 1420. The second is a Persian cosmography’s sections on seas and islands. In its resonances with multiple genres including anthology, geography and cosmography, this manuscript both codifies and creates new visions of the seas as both dangerous terrains and sites of breath-taking revelation. Through an analysis of the St Andrews book’s hyperbolic wonders – many of which are unfinished paintings – I argue that it resists the decline of non-modern affective programmes of wonder, especially as it is made on the eve of full-fledged colonial modernity..

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