ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the long, colourful, evolving life of a pack of ganjifa cards between the late-16th and late-18th centuries in order to highlight the connected history of the early modern Islamic world, and the adoption, adaptation, and translation of Mughal courtly culture in regional/local courts within India – the small Hindu kingdom of Bishnupur in Bengal or the ‘little kingdoms’ of Orissa, for instance – that resulted in a discrete transformation of the icons of the cards from Islamic into ‘Hindu’. The career of the ganjifa cards open a new vista on India’s composite Indo-Islamic, early modern past.
