These verses, extracted from a longer Urdu naz?m or poem, were written by Nazir, a blacksmith and bladesmith based in the North Indian city of Rampur in the mid-twentieth century. I first encountered Nazir and his poetry as part of a collection that the librarians of the renowned Raza Library in Rampur had put together to honor the city’s artisanal and material heritage.2 Nazir’s ve…
This equation suggests that if relationships 1 and 2 are opposedin type, then relationships 3 and 4 will be similarly opposed.A similarity in type between 1 and 2, or 3 and 4, though allowedby the formula, is taken to be a very rare occurrence. IndeedL6vi -Strauss suggests that this latter type of structure couldwell be expected to break down or at lea…