How can we conceptualize multilingual literary culture, and how can we do research around this idea? Using the turbulent ‘long fifteenth century’ in north India as a site, this article questions the efficacy of those research models employed by experts on South Asian history which were based on single languages (Hindi, Urdu), and engages critically with early modern taxonomies and archives. The article focuses on the materiality of the archive–the language, script, and format in which texts were written down and copied–on the spaces and locations in which literature was produced and performed, and on the oral–performative practices and agents that made texts circulate to audiences in ways not bound by the script in which the texts appear to us. Translating this scholarly article into Urdu, parallel research has been done to not just verify the facts but evaluate the paradigm used by the author. The translator has added many annotations and footnotes.

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