The religious systems, coinage and linguistic practice of these Indo-Greek kingdoms reflected their plural inheritance: many of their coins bore simultaneous Greek and Sanskrit inscriptions. In the poem, ‘basileos’ or ‘emperor’ reflects the Greek legacy, while ‘trātara’ or ‘saviour’ reflects the Sanskrit. The ‘ass-lip script’, to which reference is made here, is Kharosthi, used in these regions during this period to write Sanskrit and Prakrit.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors and publishers of the following journals, anthologies and books in which a number of these poems were first published:

Almost Island, BLink, Four Quarters, Indian Literature, Indian Quarterly, Poetry at Sangam, Poetry Wales, Indian Express: Eye, Sunflower Collective, 3:AM, Schloss-Post (Akademie Schloss Solitude), Wild Court (King’s College, London) and Wolf;

The Two-Sided Lake: Scenarios, Storyboards and Sets from the Liverpool Biennial 2016 (Rosie Cooper, Sandeep Parmar and Dominic Willsdon eds.; Liverpool: Liverpool Biennial, 2016);

Between the Ticks of the Watch (Solveig Øvstebø and Karen Reimer eds.; Chicago: Renaissance Society, 2017);

Atul Dodiya and Ranjit Hoskote, Pale Ancestors (artist book; Bombay: Bodhi Art, 2008);

Sakti Burman and Ranjit Hoskote, What’s He Going to be Next? (artist book; Bombay: Afterimage, 2016).

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My thanks are due to the curators and organizers of the following festivals and platforms, where I have presented some of these poems:

The Kala Ghoda Festival, Times of India ‘Fully Booked!’, TATA Literature Live!, ‘Poets Translating Poets’ (Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Bombay, 2016), the Renault Mumbai Poetry Festival 2017, Words Tell Stories, The Poetry Club and Cappuccino Readings, Bombay; the Goa Arts & Literature Festival, Dona Paula; the Singapore Writers Festival; and, in Spain, Enclave de Libros, Madrid; the Expoesia Poetry Festival, Soria; the Episcopio, Avila; and Casa Museo Antonio Machado, Segovia.

I would also like to thank Anupa Mehta, curator and writer, who invited me to participate in the exhibition, ‘Liminal Space’, a collateral event of the 3rd Kochi Muziris Biennale (The Mill Hall, Mattancherry: December 2016–February 2017). For this exhibition, I developed a text installation, ‘Memoirs of the Jonahwhale’, around some of the poems in this volume.

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Very special thanks to:

Rajni George, my editor at Penguin Random House, for her deep belief in Jonahwhale, her championing of this project, her close and supportive engagement with the book during its preparation. Arpita Basu and Paloma Dutta, at Penguin Random House, for their gracious collegiality as they piloted this book to print; and Gunjan Ahlawat for a delightful exchange of thoughts and images while he designed the cover.