Book contents
- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Text
- Additional material
- Ruling Dynasties*
- Genealogies of Principal Musicians and Music Treatises
- Additional material
- 1 Chasing Eurydice
- 2 The Mughal Orpheus: Remembering Khushhal Khan Gunasamudra in Eighteenth-Century Delhi
- 3 The Rivals: Anjha Baras, Adarang and the Scattering of Shahjahanabad
- 4 The Courtesan and the Memsahib: Khanum Jan and Sophia Plowden at the Court of Lucknow
- 5 Eclipsed by the Moon: Mahlaqa Bai and Khushhal Khan Anup in Nizami Hyderabad
- 6 Faithful to the Salt: Mayalee Dancing Girl versus the East India Company in Rajasthan
- 7 Keeper of the Flame: Miyan Himmat Khan and the Last of the Mughal Emperors
- 8 Orphans of the Uprising: Late Mughal Echoes and 1857
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Tazkira: List of Names
- Index
4 - The Courtesan and the Memsahib: Khanum Jan and Sophia Plowden at the Court of Lucknow
European Private Papers and Musical Notations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2023
- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Text
- Additional material
- Ruling Dynasties*
- Genealogies of Principal Musicians and Music Treatises
- Additional material
- 1 Chasing Eurydice
- 2 The Mughal Orpheus: Remembering Khushhal Khan Gunasamudra in Eighteenth-Century Delhi
- 3 The Rivals: Anjha Baras, Adarang and the Scattering of Shahjahanabad
- 4 The Courtesan and the Memsahib: Khanum Jan and Sophia Plowden at the Court of Lucknow
- 5 Eclipsed by the Moon: Mahlaqa Bai and Khushhal Khan Anup in Nizami Hyderabad
- 6 Faithful to the Salt: Mayalee Dancing Girl versus the East India Company in Rajasthan
- 7 Keeper of the Flame: Miyan Himmat Khan and the Last of the Mughal Emperors
- 8 Orphans of the Uprising: Late Mughal Echoes and 1857
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Tazkira: List of Names
- Index
Summary
Khanum Jan was a celebrity courtesan at the court of Lucknow in the 1780s. She became famous again in twentieth-century musicology because of her musical interactions with an Englishwoman, Sophia Plowden. Plowden’s involvement in the “Hindustani Airs” episode has been told before from the European side. In this chapter, I focus instead on Plowden’s collection of song lyrics in Persian and Indian languages, alongside writings by Indian musicians and patrons about their views of Europeans and their music. Reading Indian-language sources and European papers and notations together make it possible to get much closer to how songs from the Lucknow court may have sounded in the 1780s. But it also gives us a much richer understanding of Lucknow courtesan culture between late Mughal and early colonial patronage.
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- Music and Musicians in Late Mughal IndiaHistories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858, pp. 79 - 116Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023