论19世纪北印度的印地语写本

Hindi Manuscripts in Nineteenth-Century North India

19世纪,现代印刷出版业在北印度虽然已有发展,但写本作为文化记忆的一种传统物质载体仍旧在很大程度上维持了其前印刷时代的活力。这一时期,北印度印地语写本的制作、流通与保存联系着从统治者到民间文化精英的诸多社会群体,覆盖了北印度的广阔地域。不过,随着印度社会的结构性变迁,社会记忆的方式也发生了改变。写本逐渐退出了新一代文化精英的日常阅读活动,成为学术研究的对象,并在印地语文学史学科建立的过程中扮演了不可或缺的角色。

In the nineteenth-century north India, despite the rapid advance of modern printing and publishing, manuscript as the material form of cultural memory was still visibly active. During this period, the network of the production, circulation and preservation of Hindi manuscripts in north India stretched across regional boarders and connected various social groups, from royal families to other cultural elites. However, as structural changes in Indian society took place, the ways in which society remembers also changed. Manuscripts gradually faded away in the everyday reading activities of the new cultural elites and became the objects of scholarly studies. This historical process is essential to the writing of Hindi literary history.