On equal terms: The equivocal origins of an early Mughal Indo-Persian vocabulary

The Qas{combining dot below}i¯dah dar Lug{combining dot above}ha¯t-i Hindi¯ ('A Qas{combining dot below}i¯dah on Hindi¯ Terms'), composed in the early sixteenth century, is an unusual example of the nis{combining dot below}a¯b genre of multilingual vocabularies in verse, providing Persian glosses for various terms drawn from a language the text labels Hindi¯. The author of the vocabulary, Yu¯suf K{combining dot below}hura¯sa¯ni¯ 'Yu¯sufi¯', was a physician who followed the first Mughal-Timurid emperor, Ba¯bur, from Afghanistan to India. This paper examines the content and the arrangement of Yu¯sufi¯'s vocabulary, paying particular attention to the means through which 'Yu¯sufi¯' was able to assert semantic equivalences between lexical terms and the materials with which they correspond. It concludes by contrasting the Hindi to Persian glossing directionality of this work with the Persian to Hindi directionality prevailing in later examples of the nis{combining dot below}a¯b genre, arguing that the Qas{combining dot below}i¯dah reflects a period when practitioners of the Persianate yu¯na¯ni¯ system of medical knowledge engaged with Indic counterparts in dynamic and especially fruitful ways.