What does this phrase mean?

Sanskrit translation may as well have been Arabic for the masses.

Brahmins who are familiar with Sanskrit are also more likely to be familiar with Hindu philosophy and epistemological reasoning.

And frankly Islam is far less philosophically sophisticated than Dharmic religions which the Brahmins would be familiar with.

( I think this is because a lot of intellectual energy of Muslim scholars was spent on minute legalistic interpretations, rather than bigger picture stuff. )

In any event the important thing would have been to translate the Quran into local vernacular and provide the masses with a simple, egalitarian faith. And then slowly coalesce that into a hardened identity.

This did sort of happen with Sufi saints, who championed popular Islam in the subcontinent. Ironically many modern Muslims hate practices like offering chadars at Dargahs of Sufi saints, as they consider it a form a Shirk / idolatry.

But many of these modern Muslims descendants of Hindus whose first introduction to Islam would have been these more familiar syncretic practices championed by a saintly person.

. In any case it’s almost certain that in 1764, when the Islamic rule in BD ended after 500 + years, BD was still a Hindu majority region.

this sounds plausible and that’s my prior…but according to eaton Portuguese reported that the area around dhaka was dominated by Muslim peasants by the mid 16th century. his argument is that the eastern part of bengal was not well populated until Muslim polities began sponsoring peasants settlements and these peasants were converted to Islam as a matter of course. he does give examples of hindu sub-rulers doing the same, and those peasants were orthodox hindu.

anyway, i’m not sure tbh.

Brahmins posting Ws amongst a sea of Ls.

Pakistan still has caste. Cousin marriages help preserve it.

This is not true, Salman Farsi (A persian companion of prophet Muhammad) translated some chapters of Quran into Farsi, so basically there was no taboo on translations in early Islam. Tafsir e Tabari is a surviving Farsi translation and exegesis of the Quran from the 10th century.. I’m sure there were other translations during 700-1000CE, especially those of the Mutazalite, that didn’t survive the Mongol invasions.

I have no idea why the Quran was not translated into Sanskrit, or perhaps it actually was and we don’t know about it yet. Dara Shikoh translated Upanishads into Farsi. To me it seems like Sanskrit was a guarded language, and as Al Biruni mentions – Brahmns who were gatekeepers of Sanskrit were usually uninterested in outside religions.

it wasn’t translated into the Iranian languages. nor into turkic.

if you dodge my question and answer a different one that i DIDN’T POSE like that again i will block your commenting abilities on this website. (if you respond to this comment i will block you too)