The last two decades of South Asian historical scholarship have seen an increased focus on the era of Mughal India and upon the Indo-Timurid empire for which this period is famed. The latest addition to this grand oeuvre is Allison Busch's Poetry for Kings, which is easily amongst the most fascinating texts of the period that I have read. Simply put, this is a superb book. Wide-ranging and exceptionally persuasive Busch's highly nuanced literary tour de force examines one of the least-known literatures amongst Mughal scholars of this period, Brajbhasha (a form of classical Hindi), little-recognized in part because of Brajbhasha's latter-day identification solely with Hindu devotional traditions rather than grand Islamic or Islamicate ones. Poetry of Kings thus offers a long-awaited corrective to the many monographs and translations that emphasized the empire's impressive Persian contribution alone.
Poetry for Kings is itself divided into six chapters along with an...
