David M Kane

Puthi-Pora: 'Melodic Reading' and its Use in the Islamisation of Bengal David M Kane

This 288 page book is a reproduction of David Kane's 2008 doctoral thesis on puthi-po?a, a Bengali tradition of book and manuscript reading. Kane's thesis pursues two central aims. The first is ethnographic: to provide a documentation and description of puthi-po?a as it was performed in Sylhet, Bangladesh, in 2005. The second is historical: to shed light on a historical mystery-how Islam spread so rapidly and pervasively in Bengal from the sixteenth century. Kane's hypothesis is that puthi-po?a was used in this process.