An important compilation of the utterances of the early Vaishnava saints orBhagatsis contained in the sacred book, orĀdi Granth, of the SikhGurus. Nānak, the founder of this sect (1469-1538), though a native of the Punjab (born at Talvandī on the Rāvī near Lahore), took his doctrine from theBhagats(seeKabīr); and each of the thirty-onerāgs, forming the body of theGranth, is followed by a compilation of texts from the utterances of Vaishnava saints, chiefly of Kabīr, in confirmation of the teaching of theGurus, while the whole book is closed by abhōgor conclusion, containing more verses by the same authors, as well as by a celebrated Indian Sūfī, Shēkh Farīd of Pākpaṭṭan. The body of theGranth(q.v.), being in old Panjābī, falls outside the scope of this article; but the extracts included in it from the early writers of old Hindī are a precious store of specimens of authors some of whom have left no other record in the surviving literature. TheĀdi Granth, which was put together about 1600 by Arjun, the fifthGuruof the Sikhs, sets forth the creed of the sect in its original pietistic form, before it assumed the militant character which afterwards distinguished it under the fiveGuruswho succeeded him.
An important compilation of the utterances of the early Vaishnava saints orBhagatsis contained in the sacred book, orĀdi Granth, of the SikhGurus. Nānak, the founder of this sect (1469-1538), though a native of the Punjab (born at Talvandī on the Rāvī near Lahore), took his doctrine from theBhagats(seeKabīr); and each of the thirty-onerāgs, forming the body of theGranth, is followed by a compilation of texts from the utterances of Vaishnava saints, chiefly of Kabīr, in confirmation of the teaching of theGurus, while the whole book is closed by abhōgor conclusion, containing more verses by the same authors, as well as by a celebrated Indian Sūfī, Shēkh Farīd of Pākpaṭṭan. The body of theGranth(q.v.), being in old Panjābī, falls outside the scope of this article; but the extracts included in it from the early writers of old Hindī are a precious store of specimens of authors some of whom have left no other record in the surviving literature. TheĀdi Granth, which was put together about 1600 by Arjun, the fifthGuruof the Sikhs, sets forth the creed of the sect in its original pietistic form, before it assumed the militant character which afterwards distinguished it under the fiveGuruswho succeeded him.
2.Middle Hindī.—The second period, that of middle Hindī, begins with the reign of the Emperor Akbar (1556-1605); and it is not improbable that the broad and liberal views of this great monarch, his active sympathy with his Hindū subjects, the interest which he took in their religion and literature, and the peace which his organization of the empire secured for Hindostan, had an important effect on the great development of Hindī poetry which now set in.12Akbar’s court was itself a centre of poetical composition. The court musician Tān Sēn (who was also a poet) is still renowned, and many verses composed by him in the Emperor’s name live to this day in the memory of the people. Akbar’s favourite minister and companion, Rājā Bīrbal (who fell in battle on the north-western frontier in 1583), was a musician and a poet as well as a politician, and held the title, conferred by the Emperor, ofKabi-Rāy, or poet laureate; his verses and witty sayings are still extremely popular in northern India, though no complete work by him is known to exist. Other nobles of the court were also poets, among them theKhān-khānān‘Abdur-Raḥīm, son of Bairam Khān, whose Hindīdōhāsandkabittasare still held in high estimation, and Faiẓī, brother of the celebrated Abul-Faẓl, the Emperor’s annalist.
By this time the worship of Krishna as the lover of Rādhā (Rādhā-ballabh) had been systematized, and a local habitation found for it at Gokul, opposite Mathurā on the Jumna, some 30 m. upstream from Agra, Akbar’s capital, by Vallabhāchārya, a Tailinga Brāhman from Madras. Born in 1478, in 1497 he chose the land of Braj as his headquarters, thence making missionary tours throughout India. He wrote chiefly, if not entirely, in Sanskrit; but among his immediate followers, and those of his son Biṭṭhalnāth (who succeeded his father on the latter’s death in 1530), were some of the most eminent poets in Hindī. Four disciples of Vallabhāchārya and four of Biṭṭhalnāth, who flourished between 1550 and 1570, are known as theAshṭ Chhāp, or “Eight Seals,” and are the acknowledged masters of the literature of Braj-bhāshā, in which dialect they all wrote. Their names are Krishna-Dās Pay-ahārī, Sūr Dās (the Bhāṭ), Parmānand Dās, Kumbhan Dās, Chaturbhuj Dās, Chhīt Swāmī, Nand Dās and Gōbind Dās. Of these much the most celebrated, and the only one whose verses are still popular, is Sūr Dās. The son of Bābā Rām Dās, who was a singer at Akbar’s court, Sūr Dās was descended, according to his own statement, from the bard of Prithwī-Rāj, Chand Bardāī. A tradition gives the date of his birth as 1483, and that of his death as 1573; but both seem to be placed too early, and in Abul-Faẓl’sAīn-i Akbarīhe is mentioned as living when that work was completed (1596/7). He was blind, and entirely devoted to the worship of Krishna, to whose address he composed a great number of hymns (bhajans), which have been collected in a compilation entitled theSūr Sāgar, said to contain 60,000 verses; this work is very highly esteemed as the high-water mark of Braj devotional poetry, and has been repeatedly printed in India. Other compositions by him were a translation in verse of theBhāgavata Purāna, and a poem dealing with the famous story of Nala and Damayanti; of the latter no copies are now known to exist.
The great glory of this age is Tulsī Dās (q.v.). He and Sūr Dās between them are held to have exhausted the possibilities of the poetic art. It is somewhat remarkable that the time of their appearance coincided with the Elizabethan age of English literature.
To these great masters succeeded a period of artifice and reflection, when many works were composed dealing with the rules of poetry and the analysis and the appropriate language of sentiment. Of their writers the most famous is Kēsab Dās, a Brahman of Bundēlkhaṇḍ, who flourished during the latter part of Akbar’s reign and the beginning of that of Jahāngīr. His works are theRasik-priyā, on composition (1591), theKavi-priyā, on the laws of poetry (1601), a highly esteemed poem dedicated to Parbīn Rāi Pāturī, a celebrated courtesan of Orchha in Bundēlkhaṇḍ, theRāmachandrikā, dealing with the history of Rāma, (1610), and theVigyān-gītā(1610). The fruit of this elaboration of the poetic art reached its highest perfection inBihārī Lāl, whoseSat-saī, or “seven centuries” (1662), is the most remarkable example in Hindī of the rhetorical style in poetry (see separate article).
Side by side with this cultivation of the literary use of the themes of Rāma and Krishna, there grew up a class of compositions dealing, in a devotional spirit, with the lives and doings of the holy men from whose utterances and example the development of the popular religion proceeded. The most famous of these is theBhakta-mālā, or “Roll of theBhagats,” by Nārāyan Dās, otherwise called Nābhā Dās, or Nābhājī. This author, who belonged to the despised caste of Dōms and was a native of the Deccan, had in his youth seen Tulsī Dās at Mathurā, and himself flourished in the first half of the 17th century. His work consists of 108 stanzas inchhappāīmetre, each setting forth the characteristics of some holy personage, and expressed in a style which is extremely brief and obscure. Its exact date is unknown, but it falls between 1585 and 1623. The book was furnished with aīkā(supplement or gloss) in thekabittametre, by Priyā Dās in 1713, gathering up, in an allusive and disjointed fashion, all the legendary stories related of each saint. This again was expanded about a century later by a modern author named Lachhman into a detailed work of biography, called theBhakta-sindhu. From these nearly all our knowledge (such as it is) of the lives of the Vaishnava authors, both of the Rāma and the Krishna cults, is derived, and much of it is of a very legendary and untrustworthy character. Another work, somewhat earlier in date than theBhakta-mālā, named theChaurāsī Vārta, is devoted exclusively to stories of the followers of Vallabhāchārya. It is reputed to have been written by Gōkulnāth, son of Biṭṭhalnāth, son of Vallabhāchārya, and is dated in 1551.
The matter of these tales is justly characterized by Professor Wilson13(who gives some translated specimens) as “marvellous and insipid anecdotes”; but the book is remarkable for being in very artless prose, and, though written more than 300 years ago, shows that the current language of Braj was then almost precisely identical with that now spoken in that region. A specimen of the text will be found at p. 296 of Mr F. S. Growse’sMathura, a District Memoir(3rd ed., 1883).
The matter of these tales is justly characterized by Professor Wilson13(who gives some translated specimens) as “marvellous and insipid anecdotes”; but the book is remarkable for being in very artless prose, and, though written more than 300 years ago, shows that the current language of Braj was then almost precisely identical with that now spoken in that region. A specimen of the text will be found at p. 296 of Mr F. S. Growse’sMathura, a District Memoir(3rd ed., 1883).
It would be tedious to enumerate the many authors who succeeded the great period of Hind poetical composition which extended through the reigns of Akbar, Jahāngīr and Shāhjahān. None of them attained to the fame of Sūr Dās, Tuls Dās or Bihārī Lāl. Their themes exhibit no novelty, and they repeat with a wearisome monotony the sentiments of their predecessors. The list of Hindī authors drawn up by Dr G. A. Grierson, and printed in theJournal of the Asiatic Society of Bengalin 1889, may be consulted for the names and works of theseepigoni. The courts of Chhatarsāl, rājā of Pannā in Bundēlkhaṇḍ, who was killed in battle with Aurangzēb in 1658, and of several rājās of Bāndhō (now called Rīwān or Rewah) in Baghēlkhaṇḍ, were famous for their patronage of poets; and the Mogul court itself kept up the office ofKabi-Rāyor poet laureate even during the fanatical reign of Aurangzēb.
Such, in the briefest outline, is the character of Hind literature during the period when it grew and flourished through its own original forces. Founded by a popular and religious impulse in many respects comparable to that which, nearly 1600 years before, had produced the doctrine and literature, in the vernacular tongue, of Jainism and Buddhism, and cultivated largely (though by no means exclusively) by authors not belonging to the Brahmanical order, it was the legitimate descendant in spirit, as Hindī is the legitimate descendant in speech, of the Prākrit literature which preceded it. Entirely in verse, it adopted and elaborated the Prākrit metrical forms, and carried them to a pitch of perfection too often overlooked by those who concern themselves rather with the substance than the form of the works they read. It covers a wide range of style, and expresses, in the works of its greatest masters, a rich variety of human feeling. Little studied by Europeans in the past, it deserves much more attention than it has received. The few who have explored it speak of it as an “enchanted garden” (Grierson), abounding in beauties of thought and phrase. Above all it is to be remembered that it is genuinely popular, and has reached strata of society scarcely touched by literature in Europe. The ballads of Rajput prowess, the aphorisms of Kabīr, Tulsī Dās’sRāmāyan, and thebhajansof Sūr Dās are to this day carried about everywhere by wandering minstrels, and have found their way, throughout the great plains of northern India and the uplands of the Vindhyā plateau, to the hearts of the people. There is no surer key to unlock the confidence of the villager than an apt quotation from one of these inspired singers.
3.Literary Urdū.—Theoriginesof Urdū as a literary language are somewhat obscure. The popular account refers its rise to the time of Tīmūr’s invasion (1398). Some authors even claim for it a higher antiquity, asserting that adīwān, or collection of poems, was composed inRēkhtaby Mas‘ūd, son of Sa’d, in the last half of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century, and that Sa’di of Shīrāz and his friend Amīr Khusrau14of Delhi likewise made verses in that dialect before the end of the 13th century. This, however, is very improbable. It has already been seen that during the early centuries of Muslim rule in India adherents of that faith used the language and metrical forms of the country for their compositions. Persian words early made their way into the popular speech; they are common in Chand, and in Kabīr’s verses (which are nevertheless unquestionable Hindī) they are in many places used as freely as in the modern dialect. Much of the confusion which besets the subject is due to the want of a clear understanding of what Urdū, as opposed to Hindī, really is.
Urdū, as a literary language, differs from Hindī rather in its form than in its substance. The grammar, and to a large extent the vocabulary, of both are the same. The really vital point of difference, that in which Hindī and Urdū are incommensurable, is theprosody. Hardly one of the metres taken over by Urdū poets from Persian agrees with those used in Hindī. In the latter language it is the rule to give the shortainherent in every consonant ornexusof consonants its full value in scansion (though in prose it is no longer heard), except occasionally at the metrical pause; in Urdū this is never done, the words being scanned generally as pronounced in prose, with a few exceptions which need not be mentioned here. The great majority of Hindī metres are scanned by the number ofmātrāsor syllabic instants—the value in time of a short syllable—of which the lines consist; in Urdū, as in Persian, the metre follows a special order of long and short syllables.
The question, then, is not When did Persian first become intermixed with Hindī in the literary speech?—for this process began with the first entry of Muslim conquerors into India, and continued for centuries before a line of Urdū verse was composed; nor When was the Persian character first employed to write Hindī?—for the written form is but a subordinate matter; as already mentioned, the MSS. of Malik Muḥammad’s purely Hindī poem, thePadmāwat, are ordinarily found to be written in the Persian character; and copies lithographed in Dēvanāgarī of the popular compositions of the Urdū poet Naẕīr are commonly procurable in the bāzārs. We must ask When was the first verse composed in Hindī, whether with or without foreign admixture, according to the forms of Persian prosody, and not in those of the indigenous metrical system? Then, and not till then, did Urdū poetry come into being. This appears to have happened, as already mentioned, about the end of the 16th century. Meantime the vernacular speech had been gradually permeated with Persian words and phrases. The impulse which Akbar’s interest in his Hindū subjects had given to the translation of Sanskrit works into Persian had brought the indigenous and the foreign literatures into contact. The current language of the neighbourhood of the capital, the Hindī spoken about Delhi and thence northwards to the Himālaya, was naturally the form of the vernacular which was most subject to foreign influences; and with the extension of Mogulterritory by the conquests in the south of Akbar and his successors, this idiom was carried abroad by their armies, and was adopted by the Musalmān kingdoms of the Deccan as their court language some time before their overthrow by the campaigns of Aurangzēb.
It is not a little remarkable that, as happened with the Vaishnava reformation initiated by Rāmānuja and Rāmānand, and with the Vallabhāchārya cult of Krishna established at Mathurā, the first impulse to literary composition in Urdū should have been given, not at the headquarters of the empire in the north, but at the Muhammadan courts of Gōlkondā and Bījāpur in the south, the former situated amid an indigenous population speaking Telugu, and the latter among one whose speech was Kanarese, both Dravidian languages having nothing in common with the Aryan tongues of the north. This fact of itself defines the nature of the literature thus inaugurated. It had nothing to do with the idiom or ideas of the people among whom it was born, but was from the beginning an imitation of Persian models. It adopted the standards of form and content current among the poets of Ērān. Theqaṣīdaor laudatory ode, theghazalor love-sonnet, usually of mystical import, themarsiyaor dirge, themasnavīor narrative poem with coupled rhymes, thehijāor satire, therubā‘īor epigram—these were the types which Urdū took over ready-made. And with the forms were appropriated also all the conventions of poetic diction. The Persians, having for centuries treated the same themes with a fecundity which most Europeans find extremely wearisome, had elaborated a system of rhetoric and a stock of poetic images which, in the exhaustion of original matter, made the success of the poet depend chiefly upon dexterity of artifice and cleverness of conceit. Pleasing hyperbole, ingenious comparison, antithesis, alliteration, carefully arranged gradation of noun and epithet, are the means employed to obtain variety; and few of the most eloquent passages of later Persian verse admit of translation into any other language without losing that which in the original makes their whole charm. What is true of Persian is likewise true of Urdū poetry. Until quite modern times, there is scarcely anything in it which can be called original.15Differences of school, which are made much of by native critics, are to us hardly perceptible; they consist in the use of one or other range of metaphor or comparison, classed, according as they repeat the well-worn poetical stock-in-trade of the Persians, or seek a slightly fresher and more Indian field of sentiment, as the old or the new style of composition.
Shujā‘uddīn Nūrī, a native of Gujarāt, a friend of Faiẓī and contemporary of Akbar, is mentioned by the native biographers as the most ancient Urdū poet after Amīr Khusrau. He was tutor of the son of thewazīrof Sultān Abu-l-Ḥasan Kuṭb Shāh of Golkonda, and severalghazalsby him are said to survive. Kulī Kuṭb Shāh of Golkonda, who reigned from 1581, and his successor ‘Abdullāh Kuṭb Shāh, who came to the throne in 1611, have both left collections of verse, includingghazals,rubā‘īs,masnavīsandqaṣīdas. And during the reign of the latter Ibn Nishāṭī wrote two works which are still famous as models of composition in Dakhni; they aremasnavīsentitled theTūṭī-nāma, or “Tales of a Parrot,” and thePhūl-ban. The first, written in 1639, is an adaptation of a Persian work by Nakhshabī, but derives ultimately from a Sanskrit original entitled theŚuka-saptati; this collection has been frequently rehandled in Urdū, both in verse and prose, and is the original of theṬōṭā-Kahāni, one of the first works in Urdū prose, composed in 1801 by Muḥammad Ḥaidar-bakhsh Ḥaidarī of the Fort William College. ThePhūl-banis a love tale named from its heroine, said to be translated from a Persian work entitled theBasātīn. Another famous work which probably belongs to the same place and time is theStory of Kāmrūp and Kalāby Taḥsīnuddīn, amasnavīwhich has been published (1836) by M. Garcin de Tassy; what makes this poem remarkable is that, though the work of a Musalmān, its personages are Hindu. Kāmrũp, the hero, is son of the king of Oudh, and the heroine, Kalā, daughter of the king of Ceylon; the incidents somewhat resemble those of the tale of as-Sindibād in theThousand and One Nights; the hero and heroine dream one of the other, and the former sets forth to find his beloved; his wanderings take him to many strange countries and through many wonderful adventures, ending in a happy marriage.The court of Bījāpur was no less distinguished in literature. Ibrāhīm ‘Ādil Shāh (1579-1626) was the author of a work in verse on music entitled theNau-rasor “Nine Savours,” which, however, appears to have been in Hindī rather than Urdū; the three prefaces (dībājas) to this poem were rendered into Persian prose by Maulā ẕuhūrī, and, under the name of theSih nasr-i ẕuhūrī, are well-known models of style. A successor of this prince, ‘Alī ‘Ādil Shāh, had as his court poet a Brahman known poetically as Nuṣratī, who in 1657 composed amaṣnavīof some repute entitled theGulshan-i ‘Ishq, or “Rose-garden of Love,” a romance relating the history of Prince Manōhar and Madmālatī,—like theKāmrūp, an Indian theme. The same poet is author of an extremely longmasnavīentitled the‘Alī-nāma, celebrating the monarch under whom he lived.These early authors, however, were but pioneers; the first generally accepted standard of form, a standard which suffered little change in two centuries, was established by Walī of Aurangābād (about 1680-1720) and his contemporary and fellow-townsman Sirāj. The former of these is commonly called “the Father of Rēkhtah”—Bābā-e Rēkhta; and all accounts agree that the immense development attained by Urdū poetry in northern India during the 18th century was due to his example and initiative. Very little is known of Walī’s life; he is believed to have visited Delhi towards the end of the reign of Aurangzēb, and is said to have there received instruction from Shāh Gulshan in the art of clothing in a vernacular dress the ideas of the Persian poets. HisKullīyātor complete works have been published by M. Garcin de Tassy, with notes and a translation of selected passages (Paris, 1834-1836), and may be commended to readers desirous of consulting in the original a favourable specimen of Urdū poetical composition.The first of the Delhi school of poets was Zuhūruddīn Hātim, who was born in 1699 and died in 1792. In the second year of Muhammad Shāh (1719), thedīwānof Walī reached Delhi, and excited the emulation of scholars there. Hātim was the first to imitate it in the Urdū of the north, and was followed by his friends Nājī, Mazmūn and Ābrū. Twodīwānsby him survive. He became the founder of a school, and one of his pupils was Rafī us-Saudā, the most distinguished poet of northern India. Khān Ārzū (1689-1756) was another of the fathers of Urdū poetry in the north. This author is chiefly renowned as a Persian scholar, in which language he not only composed much poetry, but one of the best of Persian lexicons, theSirāju-l-lughāt; but his compositions in Urdū are also highly esteemed. He was the master of Mīr Taqī, who ranks next to Saudā as the most eminent Urdū poet. Ārzū died at Lucknow, whither he betook himself after the devastation of Delhi by Nādir Shāh (1739). Another of the early Delhi poets who is considered to have surpassed his fellows was In‘āmullāh Khān Yaqīn, who died during the reign of Ahmad Shāh (1748-1754), aged only twenty-five. Another was Mīr Dard, pupil of the same Shāh Gulshan who is said to have instructed Walī; hisdīwānis not long, but extremely popular, and especially esteemed for the skill with which it develops the themes of spiritualism. In his old age he became adarwēshof theNaqshbandīfollowing, and died in 1793.Saudā and Mīr Taqī are beyond question the most distinguished Urdū poets. The former was born at Delhi about the beginning of the 18th century, and studied under Hātim. He left Delhi after its devastation, and settled at Lucknow, where the Nawāb Āṣafuddaulah gave him ajāgīrof Rs. 6000 a year, and where he died in 1780. His poems are very numerous, and cover all the styles of Urdū poetry; but it is to his satires that his fame is chiefly due, and in these he is considered to have surpassed all other Indian poets. Mīr Taqī was born at Agra, but early removed to Delhi, where he studied under Ārzū; he was still living there at the time of Saudā’s death, but in 1782 repaired to Lucknow, where he likewise received a pension; he died at a very advanced age in 1810. His works are very voluminous, including no less than sixdīwāns. Mīr is counted the superior of Saudā in theghazalandmasnavī, while the latter excelled him in the satire andqaṣīda. Sayyid Aḥmad, an excellent authority, and himself one of the best of modern authors in Urdū, says of him in hisĀsāru-ṣ-Ṣanādīd: “Mīr’s language is so pure, and the expressions which he employs so suitable and natural, that to this day all are unanimous in his praise. Although the language of Saudā is also excellent, and he is superior to Mīr in the point of his allusions, he is nevertheless inferior to him in style.”The tremendous misfortunes which befell Delhi at the hands of Nādir Shāh (1739), Ahmad Shāh Durrānī (1756), and the Marāṭhās (1759), and the rapid decay of the Mogul empire under these repeated shocks, transferred the centre of the cultivation of literature from that city to Lucknow, the capital of the newly founded and flourishing state of Oudh. It has been mentioned how Ārzū, Saudā and Mīr betook themselves to this refuge and ended their days there; they were followed in their new residence by a school of poets hardly inferior to those who had made Delhi illustrious in the first half of the century. Here they were joined by Mīr Hasan (d. 1786), Mīr Sōz (d. 1800) and Qalandar-bakhsh Jur’at (d. 1810), also like themselves refugees from Delhi, and illustrious poets. Mīr Hasan was a friend and collaborator of Mīr Dard, and first established himself at Faizābād and subsequently at Lucknow; he excelled in theghazal,rubā‘ī,masnavīandmarsiya, and is counted the third, with Saudā and Mīr Taqī, among the most eminent of Urdū poets. His fame chiefly rests upon a much admiredmasnavīentitled theSiḥru-l-bayān, or “Magic of Eloquence,” a romance relating the loves of Prince Bë-naẕīr and the Princess Badr-i Munīr; hismasnavīcalled theGulzār-i Iram(“Rose-garden of Iram,” the legendary ‘Ādite paradise in southern Arabia), in praise of Faizābād, is likewise highly esteemed. Mīr Muḥammadī Sōz was an elegant poet, remarkable for the success with which he composed in the dialect of the harem calledRekhtī, but somewhat licentious in his verse; he became adarwēshand renounced the world in his later years. Jur’at was also a prolific poet, but, like Sōz, hisghazalsandmasnavīsare licentious and full of double meanings. He imitated Saudā in satire with much success; he also cultivated Hindī poetry, and composeddohāsandkabittas. Miskīn was another Lucknow poet of the same period, whosemarsiyasare especially admired; one of them, that on the death of Muslim and his two sons, is considered a masterpiece of this style of composition. The school of Lucknow, so founded and maintained during the early years of the century, continued to flourish till the dethronement of the last king, Wājid ‘Alī, in 1856. Ātash and Nāsikh (who died respectively in 1847 and 1841) are the best among the modern poets of the school in theghazal; Mīr Anīs, a grandson of Mīr Hasan, and his contemporary Dabīr, the former of whom died in December 1875 and the latter a few months later, excelled in themarsiyah. Rajab Alī Beg Surūr, who died in 1869, was the author of a much-admired romance in rhyming prose entitled theFisānah-e ‘Ajāibor “Tale of Marvels,” besides adīwān. The dethroned prince Wājid ‘Alī himself, poetically styled Akhtar, was also a poet; he published three dīwāns, among them a quantity of poetry in the rustic dialect of Oudh which is philologically of much interest.Though Delhi was thus deserted by its brightest lights of literature, it did not altogether cease to cultivate the poetic art. Among the last Moguls several princes were themselves creditable poets. Shāh Ālam II. (1761-1806) wrote under the name of Āftāb, and was the author of a romance entitledManẕūm-i Aqdas, besides adīwān. His son Sulaimān-shukoh, brother of Akbar Shāh II., who had at first, like his brother authors, repaired to Lucknow, returned to Delhi in 1815, and died in 1838; he also has left adīwān. Lastly, his nephew Bahādur Shāh II., the last titular emperor of Delhi (d. 1862), wrote under the name of ẕafar, and was a pupil in poetry of Shaikh Ibrāhīm ẕauq, a distinguished writer; he has left a voluminousdīwān, which has been printed at Delhi. Maṣḥafī (Ghulām-i Hamdānī), who died about 1814, was one of the most distinguished of the revived poetic school of Delhi, and was himself one of its founders. Originally of Lucknow, he left that city for Delhi in 1777, and held conferences of poets, at which several authors who afterwards acquired repute formed their style; he has left fivedīwāns, aTaẕkiraor biography of Urdū poets, and aShāh-nāmaor account of the kings of Delhi down to Shāh ‘Ālam. Qāim (Qiyāmuddīn ‘Alī) was one of his society, and died in 1792; he has left several works of merit. Ghālib, otherwise Mirzā Asadullāh Khān Naushāh, laureate of the last Mogul, who died in 1869, was undoubtedly the most eminent of the modern Delhi poets. He wrote chiefly in Persian, of which language, especially in the form cultivated by Firdausī, free from intermixture of Arabic words, he was a master; but his Urdūdīwān, though short, is excellent in its way, and his reputation spread far and wide. To this school, though he lived and died at Agra, may be attached Mīr Walī Muḥammad Naẕīr (who died in the year 1832); hismasnavīsentitledJogī-nāma,Kauṛī-nāma,Banjāre-nāma, andBuṛhāpe-nāma, as well as hisdīwān, have been frequently reprinted, and are extremely popular. His language is less artificial than that of the generality of Urdū poets, and some of his poems have been printed in Nāgarī, and are as well known and as much esteemed by Hindus as by Mahommedans. His verse is defaced by much obscenity.
Shujā‘uddīn Nūrī, a native of Gujarāt, a friend of Faiẓī and contemporary of Akbar, is mentioned by the native biographers as the most ancient Urdū poet after Amīr Khusrau. He was tutor of the son of thewazīrof Sultān Abu-l-Ḥasan Kuṭb Shāh of Golkonda, and severalghazalsby him are said to survive. Kulī Kuṭb Shāh of Golkonda, who reigned from 1581, and his successor ‘Abdullāh Kuṭb Shāh, who came to the throne in 1611, have both left collections of verse, includingghazals,rubā‘īs,masnavīsandqaṣīdas. And during the reign of the latter Ibn Nishāṭī wrote two works which are still famous as models of composition in Dakhni; they aremasnavīsentitled theTūṭī-nāma, or “Tales of a Parrot,” and thePhūl-ban. The first, written in 1639, is an adaptation of a Persian work by Nakhshabī, but derives ultimately from a Sanskrit original entitled theŚuka-saptati; this collection has been frequently rehandled in Urdū, both in verse and prose, and is the original of theṬōṭā-Kahāni, one of the first works in Urdū prose, composed in 1801 by Muḥammad Ḥaidar-bakhsh Ḥaidarī of the Fort William College. ThePhūl-banis a love tale named from its heroine, said to be translated from a Persian work entitled theBasātīn. Another famous work which probably belongs to the same place and time is theStory of Kāmrūp and Kalāby Taḥsīnuddīn, amasnavīwhich has been published (1836) by M. Garcin de Tassy; what makes this poem remarkable is that, though the work of a Musalmān, its personages are Hindu. Kāmrũp, the hero, is son of the king of Oudh, and the heroine, Kalā, daughter of the king of Ceylon; the incidents somewhat resemble those of the tale of as-Sindibād in theThousand and One Nights; the hero and heroine dream one of the other, and the former sets forth to find his beloved; his wanderings take him to many strange countries and through many wonderful adventures, ending in a happy marriage.
The court of Bījāpur was no less distinguished in literature. Ibrāhīm ‘Ādil Shāh (1579-1626) was the author of a work in verse on music entitled theNau-rasor “Nine Savours,” which, however, appears to have been in Hindī rather than Urdū; the three prefaces (dībājas) to this poem were rendered into Persian prose by Maulā ẕuhūrī, and, under the name of theSih nasr-i ẕuhūrī, are well-known models of style. A successor of this prince, ‘Alī ‘Ādil Shāh, had as his court poet a Brahman known poetically as Nuṣratī, who in 1657 composed amaṣnavīof some repute entitled theGulshan-i ‘Ishq, or “Rose-garden of Love,” a romance relating the history of Prince Manōhar and Madmālatī,—like theKāmrūp, an Indian theme. The same poet is author of an extremely longmasnavīentitled the‘Alī-nāma, celebrating the monarch under whom he lived.
These early authors, however, were but pioneers; the first generally accepted standard of form, a standard which suffered little change in two centuries, was established by Walī of Aurangābād (about 1680-1720) and his contemporary and fellow-townsman Sirāj. The former of these is commonly called “the Father of Rēkhtah”—Bābā-e Rēkhta; and all accounts agree that the immense development attained by Urdū poetry in northern India during the 18th century was due to his example and initiative. Very little is known of Walī’s life; he is believed to have visited Delhi towards the end of the reign of Aurangzēb, and is said to have there received instruction from Shāh Gulshan in the art of clothing in a vernacular dress the ideas of the Persian poets. HisKullīyātor complete works have been published by M. Garcin de Tassy, with notes and a translation of selected passages (Paris, 1834-1836), and may be commended to readers desirous of consulting in the original a favourable specimen of Urdū poetical composition.
The first of the Delhi school of poets was Zuhūruddīn Hātim, who was born in 1699 and died in 1792. In the second year of Muhammad Shāh (1719), thedīwānof Walī reached Delhi, and excited the emulation of scholars there. Hātim was the first to imitate it in the Urdū of the north, and was followed by his friends Nājī, Mazmūn and Ābrū. Twodīwānsby him survive. He became the founder of a school, and one of his pupils was Rafī us-Saudā, the most distinguished poet of northern India. Khān Ārzū (1689-1756) was another of the fathers of Urdū poetry in the north. This author is chiefly renowned as a Persian scholar, in which language he not only composed much poetry, but one of the best of Persian lexicons, theSirāju-l-lughāt; but his compositions in Urdū are also highly esteemed. He was the master of Mīr Taqī, who ranks next to Saudā as the most eminent Urdū poet. Ārzū died at Lucknow, whither he betook himself after the devastation of Delhi by Nādir Shāh (1739). Another of the early Delhi poets who is considered to have surpassed his fellows was In‘āmullāh Khān Yaqīn, who died during the reign of Ahmad Shāh (1748-1754), aged only twenty-five. Another was Mīr Dard, pupil of the same Shāh Gulshan who is said to have instructed Walī; hisdīwānis not long, but extremely popular, and especially esteemed for the skill with which it develops the themes of spiritualism. In his old age he became adarwēshof theNaqshbandīfollowing, and died in 1793.
Saudā and Mīr Taqī are beyond question the most distinguished Urdū poets. The former was born at Delhi about the beginning of the 18th century, and studied under Hātim. He left Delhi after its devastation, and settled at Lucknow, where the Nawāb Āṣafuddaulah gave him ajāgīrof Rs. 6000 a year, and where he died in 1780. His poems are very numerous, and cover all the styles of Urdū poetry; but it is to his satires that his fame is chiefly due, and in these he is considered to have surpassed all other Indian poets. Mīr Taqī was born at Agra, but early removed to Delhi, where he studied under Ārzū; he was still living there at the time of Saudā’s death, but in 1782 repaired to Lucknow, where he likewise received a pension; he died at a very advanced age in 1810. His works are very voluminous, including no less than sixdīwāns. Mīr is counted the superior of Saudā in theghazalandmasnavī, while the latter excelled him in the satire andqaṣīda. Sayyid Aḥmad, an excellent authority, and himself one of the best of modern authors in Urdū, says of him in hisĀsāru-ṣ-Ṣanādīd: “Mīr’s language is so pure, and the expressions which he employs so suitable and natural, that to this day all are unanimous in his praise. Although the language of Saudā is also excellent, and he is superior to Mīr in the point of his allusions, he is nevertheless inferior to him in style.”
The tremendous misfortunes which befell Delhi at the hands of Nādir Shāh (1739), Ahmad Shāh Durrānī (1756), and the Marāṭhās (1759), and the rapid decay of the Mogul empire under these repeated shocks, transferred the centre of the cultivation of literature from that city to Lucknow, the capital of the newly founded and flourishing state of Oudh. It has been mentioned how Ārzū, Saudā and Mīr betook themselves to this refuge and ended their days there; they were followed in their new residence by a school of poets hardly inferior to those who had made Delhi illustrious in the first half of the century. Here they were joined by Mīr Hasan (d. 1786), Mīr Sōz (d. 1800) and Qalandar-bakhsh Jur’at (d. 1810), also like themselves refugees from Delhi, and illustrious poets. Mīr Hasan was a friend and collaborator of Mīr Dard, and first established himself at Faizābād and subsequently at Lucknow; he excelled in theghazal,rubā‘ī,masnavīandmarsiya, and is counted the third, with Saudā and Mīr Taqī, among the most eminent of Urdū poets. His fame chiefly rests upon a much admiredmasnavīentitled theSiḥru-l-bayān, or “Magic of Eloquence,” a romance relating the loves of Prince Bë-naẕīr and the Princess Badr-i Munīr; hismasnavīcalled theGulzār-i Iram(“Rose-garden of Iram,” the legendary ‘Ādite paradise in southern Arabia), in praise of Faizābād, is likewise highly esteemed. Mīr Muḥammadī Sōz was an elegant poet, remarkable for the success with which he composed in the dialect of the harem calledRekhtī, but somewhat licentious in his verse; he became adarwēshand renounced the world in his later years. Jur’at was also a prolific poet, but, like Sōz, hisghazalsandmasnavīsare licentious and full of double meanings. He imitated Saudā in satire with much success; he also cultivated Hindī poetry, and composeddohāsandkabittas. Miskīn was another Lucknow poet of the same period, whosemarsiyasare especially admired; one of them, that on the death of Muslim and his two sons, is considered a masterpiece of this style of composition. The school of Lucknow, so founded and maintained during the early years of the century, continued to flourish till the dethronement of the last king, Wājid ‘Alī, in 1856. Ātash and Nāsikh (who died respectively in 1847 and 1841) are the best among the modern poets of the school in theghazal; Mīr Anīs, a grandson of Mīr Hasan, and his contemporary Dabīr, the former of whom died in December 1875 and the latter a few months later, excelled in themarsiyah. Rajab Alī Beg Surūr, who died in 1869, was the author of a much-admired romance in rhyming prose entitled theFisānah-e ‘Ajāibor “Tale of Marvels,” besides adīwān. The dethroned prince Wājid ‘Alī himself, poetically styled Akhtar, was also a poet; he published three dīwāns, among them a quantity of poetry in the rustic dialect of Oudh which is philologically of much interest.
Though Delhi was thus deserted by its brightest lights of literature, it did not altogether cease to cultivate the poetic art. Among the last Moguls several princes were themselves creditable poets. Shāh Ālam II. (1761-1806) wrote under the name of Āftāb, and was the author of a romance entitledManẕūm-i Aqdas, besides adīwān. His son Sulaimān-shukoh, brother of Akbar Shāh II., who had at first, like his brother authors, repaired to Lucknow, returned to Delhi in 1815, and died in 1838; he also has left adīwān. Lastly, his nephew Bahādur Shāh II., the last titular emperor of Delhi (d. 1862), wrote under the name of ẕafar, and was a pupil in poetry of Shaikh Ibrāhīm ẕauq, a distinguished writer; he has left a voluminousdīwān, which has been printed at Delhi. Maṣḥafī (Ghulām-i Hamdānī), who died about 1814, was one of the most distinguished of the revived poetic school of Delhi, and was himself one of its founders. Originally of Lucknow, he left that city for Delhi in 1777, and held conferences of poets, at which several authors who afterwards acquired repute formed their style; he has left fivedīwāns, aTaẕkiraor biography of Urdū poets, and aShāh-nāmaor account of the kings of Delhi down to Shāh ‘Ālam. Qāim (Qiyāmuddīn ‘Alī) was one of his society, and died in 1792; he has left several works of merit. Ghālib, otherwise Mirzā Asadullāh Khān Naushāh, laureate of the last Mogul, who died in 1869, was undoubtedly the most eminent of the modern Delhi poets. He wrote chiefly in Persian, of which language, especially in the form cultivated by Firdausī, free from intermixture of Arabic words, he was a master; but his Urdūdīwān, though short, is excellent in its way, and his reputation spread far and wide. To this school, though he lived and died at Agra, may be attached Mīr Walī Muḥammad Naẕīr (who died in the year 1832); hismasnavīsentitledJogī-nāma,Kauṛī-nāma,Banjāre-nāma, andBuṛhāpe-nāma, as well as hisdīwān, have been frequently reprinted, and are extremely popular. His language is less artificial than that of the generality of Urdū poets, and some of his poems have been printed in Nāgarī, and are as well known and as much esteemed by Hindus as by Mahommedans. His verse is defaced by much obscenity.
4.Modern Period.—While such, in outline, is the history of the literary schools of the Deccan, Delhi and Lucknow, a fourth, that of the Fort William College at Calcutta, was being formed, and was destined to give no less an impulse to the cultivation of Urdū prose than had a hundred years before been given to that of poetry by Walī. At the commencement of the 19th century Dr John Gilchrist was the head of this institution, and his efforts were directed towards getting together a body of literature suitable as text-books for the study of the Urdū language by the European officers of the administration. To his exertions we owe the elaboration of the vernacular as an official speech, and the possibility of substituting it for the previously current Persian as the language of the courts and the government. He gathered together at Calcutta the most eminent vernacular scholars of the time, and their works, due to his initiative, are still notable as specimens of elegant and serviceable prose composition, not only in Urdū, but also in Hindī. The chief authors of this school are Ḥaidarī (Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥaidar-bakhsh), Ḥusainī (Mīr Bahādur ‘Alī), Mīr Amman Luṭf, Ḥafīẕuddīn Aḥmad, Shēr ‘Alī Afsōs, Nihāl Chand of Lahore, Kāẕim ‘Alī Jawān, Lallū Lāl Kavi, Maẕhar ‘Alī Wilā and Ikrām ‘Alī.
Ḥaidarī died in 1828. He composed theṬoṭā-Kahānī(1801), a prose redaction of theṬūṭī-nāmahwhich has been already mentioned; a romance namedĀrāish-i Maḥfil(“Ornament of the Assembly”), detailing the adventures of the famous Arab chief Ḥātim-i Ṭai; theGul-i MaghfiratorDah Majlis, an account of the holy persons of the Muhammadan faith; theGulzār-i Dānish, a translation of theBahār-i Dānish, a Persian work containing stories descriptive of the craft and faithlessness of women; and theTārīkh-i Nādirī, a translation of a Persian history of Nādir Shāh. Ḥusainī is the author of an imitation in prose of Mīr Ḥasan’sSiḥru-l-bayān, under the name ofNaṣr-i Bēnaẕīr(“the Incomparable Prose,” or “the Prose of Bēnaẓīr,” the latter being the name of the hero), and of a work namedAkhlāq-i Hindī, or “Indian Morals,” both composed in 1802. TheAkhlāq-i Hindīis an adaptation of a Persian work called theMufarriḥu-l-qulūb(“the Delighter of Hearts”), itself a version of theHitōpadēša. Mīr Amman was a native of Delhi, which he left in the time of Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī for Patna, and in 1801 repaired to Calcutta. To him we owe theBāgh o Bahār(1801-1802), an adaptation of Amīr Khusrau’s famous Persian romance entitled theChahār Darwēsh, or “Story of the Four Dervishes.” Amman’s work is not itself directly modelled on the Persian, but is a rehandling of an almost contemporary rendering by Tahsīn of Etāwā, called theNau-ṭarz-i Muraṣṣa‘. The style of this composition is much admired by natives of India, and editions of it are very numerous. Amman also composed an imitation of Husain Wā‘iz Kāshifī’sAkhlāq-i Muḥsinīunder the name of theGanj-i Khūbī(“Treasure of Virtue”), produced in 1802. Ḥafīẕuddīn Ahmad was a professor at the Fort William College; in 1803 he completed a translation of Abu-l-Faẓl’s’Iyār-i Dānish, under the name of theKhirad-afrōz(“Enlightener of the Understanding”). The’Iyār-i Dānish(“Touchstone of Wisdom”) is one of the numerous imitations of the originally Sanskrit collection of apologues known in Persian as theFables of Bīdpāī, orKalīlah and Dimna. Afsōs was one of the most illustrious of the Fort William school; originally of Delhi, he left that city at the age of eleven, and entered the service of Qāsim ‘Alī Khān, Nawāb of Bengal; he afterwards repaired to Hyderābād in the Deccan, and thence to Lucknow, where he was the pupil of Mīr Ḥasan, Mīr Sōz and Mīr Ḥaidar ‘Alī Ḥairān. He joined the Fort William College in 1800, and died in 1809. He is the author of a much esteemed dīwān; but his chief reputation is founded on two prose works of great excellence, theĀrāish-i Mahfil(1805), an account of India adapted from the introduction of the PersianKhulāṣatu-t-tawārikhof Sujān Rāe, and theBāgh-i Urdū(1808), a translation of Sa’dī’sGulistān. Nihāl Chand translated into Urdū amasnavī, entitled theGul-i Bakāwalī, under the name ofMaẕhab-i ‘Ishq(“Religion of Love”); this work is in prose intermingled with verse, was composed in 1804, and has been frequently reproduced. Jawān, like most of his collaborators, was originally of Delhi and afterwards of Lucknow; he joined the College in 1800. He is the author of a version in Urdū of the well-known story of Sakuntalā, under the name ofSakuntalā Nāṭak; the Urdū was rendered from a previous Braj-bhāshā version by Nawāz Kabīshwar made in 1716, and was printed in 1802. He also composed aBārah-māsā, or poetical description of the twelve months (a very popular and often-handled form of composition), with accounts of the various Hindu and Muhammadan festivals, entitled theDastūr-i Hind(“Usages of India”), printed in 1812. Ikrām ‘Ali translated, under the name of theIkhwānu-ṣ-ṣafā, or “Brothers of Purity” (1810), a chapter of a famous Arabian collection of treatises on science and philosophy entitledRasāilu Ikhwāni-ṣ-ṣafā, and composed in the 10th century. The complete collection, due to different writers who dwelt at Baṣra, has recently been made known to European readers by the translation of Dr F. Dieterici (1858-1879); the chapter selected by Ikrām ‘Alī is the third, which records an allegorical strife for the mastery between men and animals before the king of theJinn. The translation is written in excellent Urdū, and is one of the best of the Fort William productions.Srī Lallū Lāl was a Brahman, whose family, originally of Gujarāt, had long been settled in northern India. What was done by the other Fort William authors for Urdū prose was done by Lallū Lāl almost alone for Hindī. He may indeed without exaggeration be said to have created “High Hindī” as a literary language. HisPrem SāgarandRājnīti, the former a version in pure Hindī of the 10th chapter of theBhāgavata Purāna, detailing the history of Kṛishṇa, and founded on a previous Braj-bhāshā version by Chaturbhuj Misr, and the latter an adaptation in Braj-bhāshā prose of theHitōpadēšaand part of thePancha-tantra, are unquestionably the most important works in Hindī prose. ThePrem Sāgarwas begun in 1804 and ended in 1810; it enjoys immense popularity in northern India, has been frequently reproduced in a lithographed form, and has several times been printed. TheRājnītiwas composed in 1809; it is much admired for its sententious brevity and the purity of its language. Besides these two works, Lallū Lāl was the author of a collection of a hundred anecdotes in Hindī and Urdū entitledLatāif-i Hindī, an anthology of Hindī verse called theSabhā-bilās,aSat-saīin the style of Bihāri-Lāl calledSapta-satikaand several other works. He and Jawān worked together at theSinghāsan Battīsī(1801), a redaction in mixed Urdū and Hindī (Dēvanāgarī character) of a famous collection of legends relating the prowess of King Vikramāditya; and he also aided the latter author in the production of theSakuntalā Nāṭak. Maẕhar ‘Ali Wilā was his collaborator in theBaitāl Pachīsī, a collection of stories similar in many respects to theSinghāsan Battīsī, and also in mixed Urdū-Hindī; and he aided Wilā in the preparation in Urdū of theStory of Mādhōnal, a romance originally composed in Braj-bhāshā by Mōtī Rām.The works of these authors, though compiled and published under the superintendence of Dr Gilchrist, Captain Abraham Lockett, Professor J. W. Taylor, Dr W. Hunter and other European officers of the college of Fort William, and originally intended for the instruction of the Company’s officers in the vernacular, are essentially Indian in taste and style, and, until superseded by the more recent developments of literature noticed below, enjoyed a very wide reputation and popularity. They may, indeed, be said to have set the standard of prose composition in Urdū and Hindī, and for the first half of the 19th century their influence in this respect continued almost unchallenged. Side by side with them, among the Musalmān population of northern India, another almost contemporaneous impulse did much for the expansion of the Urdū language, and, like the work of the Vaishnava reformers in moulding literary Hindī, gave an impetus to composition which might otherwise have been lacking. This was the reform in Islam led by Sayyid Ahmad16and his followers. In all Eastern countries religion is the first and chief subject of literary production; and the controversies which the new preaching aroused in India at once afforded abundant material for authorship in Urdū, and interested deeply the people to whom the works were addressed.Sayyid Aḥmad was born in 1782, and received his early education at Delhi; his instructors were two learned Muslims, Shāh ‘Abdul-‘Azīz, author of a celebrated commentary on the Qur‘ān (theTafsīr-i ‘Azīziyyah), and his brother ‘Abdu-l-Qādir, the writer of the first translation of the holy volume into Urdū. Under their guidance Sayyid Aḥmad embraced the doctrines of the Wahhābīs, a sect whose preaching appears at this time to have first reached India. He gathered round him a large number of fervent disciples, among others Ismā‘īl Ḥājī, nephew of ‘Abdu-l‘Azīz and ‘Abdu-l-Qādir, the chief author of the sect. After a course of preaching and apostleship at Delhi, Sayyid Aḥmad set out in 1820 for Calcutta, attended by numerous adherents. Thence in 1822 he started on a pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he went to Constantinople, and was there received with distinction and gained many disciples. He travelled for nearly six years in Turkey and Arabia, and then returned to Delhi. The religious degradation and coldness which he found in his native country strongly impressed him after his sojourn in lands where the life of Islām is stronger, and he and his disciples established a propaganda throughout northern India, reprobating the superstitions which had crept into the faith from contact with Hindus, and preaching ajihādor holy war against the Sikhs. In 1828 he started for Peshāwar, attended by, it is said, upwards of 100,000 Indians, and accompanied by his chief followers, Ḥājī Ismā‘īl and ‘Abdu-l-Ḥayy. He was furnished with means by a general subscription in northern India, and by several Muhammadan princes who had embraced his doctrines. At the beginning of 1829 he declared war against the Sikhs, and in the course of time made himself master of Peshāwar. The Afghāns, however, with whom he had allied himself in the contest, were soon disgusted by the rigour of his creed, and deserted him and his cause. He fled across the Indus and took refuge in the mountains of Pakhlī and Dhamtōr, where in 1831 he encountered a detachment of Sikhs under the command of Shēr Singh, and in the combat he and Ḥājī Isma‘īl were slain. His sect is, however, by no means extinct; the Wahhābī doctrines have continued to gain ground in India, and to give rise to much controversial writing, down to our own day.The translation of the Quran by ‘Abdu-l-Qādir was finished in 1803, and first published by Sayyid ‘Abdullāh, a fervent disciple of Sayyid Aḥmad, at Hūghlī in 1829. TheTambīhu-l-ghāfilīn, or “Awakener of the Heedless,” a work in Persian by Sayyid Aḥmad, was rendered into Urdū by ‘Abdullāh, and published at the same press in 1830. Hājī Ismā‘īl was the author of a treatise in Urdū entitledTaqwiyatu-l-Īmān(“Confirmation of the Faith”), which had great vogue among the following of the Sayyid. Other works by the disciples of theTarīqah-e Muḥammadiyyah(as the new preaching was called) are theTarghīb-i Jihād(“Incitation to Holy War”),Hidāyatu-l-Mūminīn(“Guide of the Believers”),Mūẓiḥu-l-Kabāirwa-l-Bid’ah (“Exposition of Mortal Sins and Heresy”),Naṣlhatu-l-Muslimīn(“Admonition to Muslims”), and theMi’at Masāil, or “Hundred Questions.”Printing was first used for vernacular works by the College Press at Fort William, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, and all the compositions prepared for Dr Gilchrist and his successors which have been mentioned were thus given to the public. But the expense of this method of reproduction long precluded its extensive use in India, and movable types, though well suited for alphabets derived from the Sanskrit, were not equally applicable to the flowing and graceful characters of Persian. Lithography was introduced about 1837, when the first press was set up at Delhi, and immediately gave a powerful stimulus to the multiplication of literature, both original and editions of older works. In 1832 the vernaculars were substituted for Persian as the official language of the courts and the acts of the legislature, and this at once led to the transfer to the former of a mass of technical and forensic terms which had previously been only to a limited extent in popular use. Thirdly, the spread of education in subjects of Western learning, for which text-books (many of them translations from English) were required, not only greatly enlarged the vocabulary of the common speech, but led by degrees to the use of a simpler and more direct style, and the abandonment wholesale of the florid and artificial ornament which was the legacy of the Persian literature upon which Urdū prose had at first modelled itself. Lastly, the establishment of a vernacular newspaper press, which lithography had rendered possible, placed within the reach of a continually widening public the means of becoming acquainted with new ideas in every department of culture, and practised the writers who contributed to it in the art of wielding their mother-tongue with effect in its application to European themes.All these revolutionary agencies were at work, though in a tentative and limited fashion, when the great change, following on the Mutiny of 1857, of the transfer of the government of India from the Company to the Crown inaugurated a new era. Since 1860 their operation has become extremely rapid and far-reaching. The use of lithography both for Urdū and Hindī annually gives birth to hundreds of works. The extension of education through both public and private agency has created an immense mass of school-books, and the spread of instruction in English and the activity of translators have filled the vernaculars with a multitude of new words drawn from that language. The newspaper press, in Urdū and Hindī, now counts over two hundred journals, the majority issued in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and in the Punjab, but a few at Madras, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bombay and Calcutta. Of this great body of literary production it is possible to speak only in general terms. Style and vocabulary are still in a somewhat fluid and unsettled condition, and the subjects treated are almost as various as they are in European literatures. Much, indeed, of the work produced has scarcely any claim to literary excellence, and in the crowd of writers we may content ourselves with mentioning only a few whose influence and authority make it probable that they will hereafter be known as leaders in the new culture.One of the first effects of the new literary inspiration seemed to be the extinction of poetical composition as previously practised. With the deaths of Ẕauq (1854) and Ghālib (1869) of the Delhi school, and those of Anīs (1875) and Dabīr (1876) of Lucknow, the end of Urdū poetry appeared to have come. The new age was intensely practical and eager to engage in the race for material and political advancement, and had no time for sentiment, or taste for mystical conceits. Moreover, poetical composition in India, as in other Eastern countries, has always owed much to the patronage of courts and princes. The thrones of Delhi and Lucknow had passed away, and the new rulers showed little interest in this form of achievement. Only at Hyderabad in the Deccan, under the patronage of the Nizam, were laureates still honoured; the last of these, Mirzā Khān Dāgh (1831-1905), enjoyed a wide reputation as a graceful and eloquent master of the poetic art.But prose and material prosperity did not succeed in monopolizing the genius of the people. The great movement of reform and liberalism in Islām led by Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (1817-1898) found its bard in Sayyid Alṭāf Ḥusain of Pānipāṭ, poetically styled Ḥālī—an ambiguousnom-de-plumenow generally taken in the sense of “modern,” or “up-to-date.” Ḥālī in his youth was a pupil of the famous Ghālib, whose life he has written and of whose writings he has published an able criticism. At the age of forty he came under the influence of Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, and from that time devoted his great poetic gifts to the service of his co-religionists. He has published much verse, of which an interesting specimen will be found in the edition of hisRubā‘īsor quatrains (101 in number), with an English translation, by Mr G. E. Ward (Oxford, 1904); in this is included a famous poem addressed to his muse, setting forth his ideals in poetry—simplicity, avoidance of exaggeration and unreality, direct and emotional appeal to the heart, and above all sincerity. There can be no doubt that he has succeeded in becoming the leader of a new poetic school, which shows much vigour and promise.Perhaps the most memorable of all Ḥālī’s compositions is his long poem in six-line stanzas (calledmusaddas) on “the flow and ebb of Islam” (1879), which has had an extraordinary influence in stimulating enthusiasm in the cause of progress among the Musalmāns of the north of India. In it he draws, in simple and direct but searching and eloquent language, a rapid sketch of the glories of Islam in the past, its principles and precepts, and the sources of its strength; and then turns to contrast with this picture the degradation and decay into which it had, when he wrote, fallen in Hindōstān. Never have the vices and shortcomings of a people been lashed by one of themselves with more vigorous denunciation, or with more earnestness of moral purpose. In his preface heexplains how the poem came to be written—after a youth spent in heedlessness and unsettlement, at the instigation of Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, and in the cause of that great reformer. The poem is still recited and imitated by Muslims in the Punjab and United Provinces, though the picture which it presents of Indian Musalmāns is no longer wholly applicable to the community. Ḥālī has recently completed a life of Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān in two volumes, entitledḤayāt-i Jāvīd(“eternal life”), a work of great merit.Another writer whose work, though chiefly in prose, deals with poetry and poetic style, is Maulavī Muḥammad Ḥusain Āzād, lately professor of Arabic at the Government College, Lahore. He has not himself composed much verse; but his biographies of Urdū poets, with criticisms of their works, entitledÄb-i Ḥayāt(“Water of Life,” Lahore, 1883), is by far the best book dealing with the subject. His prose style is much admired. As Ḥālī was the pupil of Ghālib, so was Āzād that of Ẕauq, of whose poems he has published a revised and annotated edition. His other works in prose areQiṣaṣ-i Hind, episodes of Indian history arranged for schools;Nairang-i Khayāl, an allegory dealing with human life; andDarbār-i Akbarī, an account of the reign of Akbar.Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān’s life and work are dealt with elsewhere. Among his literary achievements may be mentioned theĀsāruṣ-Ṣanādid(“Vestiges of Princes”), an excellent account of Delhi and its monuments, which has passed through several editions since it was first lithographed in 1847. His essays and occasional papers, published in theAlīgaṛh Institute Gazette(started in 1864), and afterwards (from 1870 onwards) in a periodical entitledTahẕībul-Akhlāq(or “Muhammadan Social Reformer”), handle all the problems of religious, social and educational advancement among Indian Musalmāns—the cause with which his life was identified. His greatCommentary on the Qur‘ān, in seven volumes, the last finished only a few days before his death in 1898, is carried to the end of Sūrah xx., a little more than half the book. In him Urdū prose found its most powerful wielder for the diffusion of modern ideas, and the movement which he set on foot has been the spring of the best literature in the language during recent years.Another excellent writer of Urdū is Shamsul-’Ulamā Maulavī Naẕīr Aḥmad of Delhī, who is the author of a series of novels describing domestic life, of a somewhat didactic character, which have had a wide popularity, and from their admirable moral tone have been specially serviceable in the education of Indian women. These are entitled theMir‘ātul-‘Arūs(or “Brides’ Mirror”);Taubatun-Naṣūḥ(“the Repentance of Naṣūḥ”),Banātun-Na’sh(“the Seven Stars of the Great Bear”),Ibnul-Waqt(“Son of the Age”), andAyāmā(“Widows”). But Naẕīr Aḥmad is a man of many sides; before he took to novel-writing he was the principal translator into Urdū of theIndian Penal Code(1861), which is reckoned a masterpiece in the exact rendering of European legal ideas; and more lately he gave to the world the best Urdū version of the Quran. He has been a popular lecturer on social subjects, displaying a rich vein of humour, and in his old age even ventured upon verse. During the latter portion of his life he was most closely associated with Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān.The novel is one of the most noteworthy features of recent literary composition in Urdū. India has from time immemorial been rich in stories and romances of adventure; but the description of actual life and character in action, as the modern novel is understood in Europe, is quite a new development. The most admired production of this kind in Urdū is a work entitledFisāna-e Āzād, by Paṇḍit Ratan-nāth Sarshār of Lucknow. The story, which is very long, is remarkable for the faithful and vivid pictures of Lucknow society which it presents, and its exact and lifelike delineation of character; it appeared originally as afeuilletonof theAwadh Akhbār, of which paper the author was at the time editor. Another good writer in the same branch of literature is Maulavī ‘Abdul-Ḥalīm Sharar, also a native of the neighbourhood of Lucknow, but settled at Hyderabad. He was editor of a monthly periodical called theDil-gudāz(“melter of hearts”), which contained essays and papers in European style, and in it his novels, which are all of an historical character, in the style of Sir Walter Scott, originally appeared. The best are‘Azīz and Virginā, a tale of the Crusades, andMansūr and Mōhinā, a story of which the scene is laid in India at the time of the invasions of Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghaznī.Although Urdū chiefly represents Musalmān culture, its use is by no means confined to adherents of that faith. It has just been mentioned that the most popular Urdū novelist is a Hindū (a Brāhman from Kashmīr); and the statistics of the vernacular press show that this form of the language is widely used by Hindūs as well as Musalmāns. Thus, of eighty periodicals in Urdū published in the United Provinces, twenty-nine are conducted by Hindūs; similarly, in the Punjab, of forty-eight Urdū journals, twenty are edited by Hindus.“High Hindī” has scarcely adapted itself to modern requirements with the thoroughness displayed by Urdū. It is taught in the schools where the population is mainly Hindū, and books of science have been written in it with a terminology borrowed from Sanskrit, in place of the Persian terms used in the other dialect. But Sanskrit is far removed from the daily life of the people, and the majority of works in this style are read only by Paṇḍits, the great bulk of them dealing with religion, philosophy and the ancient literature. There are thirty-seven Hindī and four Hindī-Urdū journals in the United Provinces; but many of them are exclusively religious in their character, and several, though written in Dēvanāgarī, employ a mixed language which admits Persian words freely. The old dialects of literature, Awadhī and Braj-bhāshā, are now only used for poetry; High Hindī has been a complete failure for this purpose.The most noticeable authors in Hindī since the middle of the 19th century have been Bābū Harishchandra and Rājā Ṡiva Prasād, both of Benares. The former, during his short life (1850-1885), was an enthusiastic cultivator of the old poetic art, using the dialects just mentioned. He published in theSundarī Tilakan anthology of the best Hindī poetry, and in theKabi-bachan-Sudhā(“ambrosia of the words of poets”) and the magazine calledHarishchandrikāa quantity of old texts, with much added matter. He also wrote a volume of biographies of famous men, European and Indian, and many critical studies, historical and literary. In history especially he cleared up many problems, and traced the lines for further investigation. In hisKashmīr Kusum, or history of Kashmīr, a list is given of about a hundred works by him. He was also the real founder of the modern Hindī drama; he wrote plays himself, and inspired others. Rājā Ṡiva Prasād (1823-1895) served for many years in the educational department, and published a number of works intended for use in schools, which have greatly contributed to the formation of a sound vernacular form of Hindī, not excessively Sanskritized, and not rejecting current Persian forms. The society at Benares called theNāgarī Prachārinī Sabhā(“Society for promoting the use of the Nāgarī character”) has, since the death of Harishchandra, been active in procuring the publication of works in Hindī, and has issued many useful books, besides conducting a systematic search for old MSS.Bibliography.—The best account in English of Hindī literature is Dr G. A. Grierson’sModern Vernacular Literature of Hindōstān, issued by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1889; the dates in this work, which is founded on indigenous compilations, have, however, in many cases to be received with caution. Before it appeared, Garcin de Tassy’sHistoire de la littérature Hindouie et Hindoustanie, and his annual summaries of the progress made from 1850 to 1877, were our chief authority, and may still be consulted with advantage. For the religious literature of the Vaishnava sects, Professor H. H. Wilson’sEssay on the Religious Sects of the Hindus(vol. i. of his collected works) has not yet been superseded.For Urdū poets, Professor Āzād’sĀb-i Ḥayāt(in Urdū) is the most trustworthy record. For the new school of Urdū literature reference may be made to a series of lectures (in English) by Shaikh ‘Abdul-Qādir of Lahore, printed in 1898. The catalogues by Professor Blumhardt of Hindōstānī and Hindī books in the libraries of the British Museum and the India Office will give a good idea of the volume of the recent productions of the press in those languages.
Ḥaidarī died in 1828. He composed theṬoṭā-Kahānī(1801), a prose redaction of theṬūṭī-nāmahwhich has been already mentioned; a romance namedĀrāish-i Maḥfil(“Ornament of the Assembly”), detailing the adventures of the famous Arab chief Ḥātim-i Ṭai; theGul-i MaghfiratorDah Majlis, an account of the holy persons of the Muhammadan faith; theGulzār-i Dānish, a translation of theBahār-i Dānish, a Persian work containing stories descriptive of the craft and faithlessness of women; and theTārīkh-i Nādirī, a translation of a Persian history of Nādir Shāh. Ḥusainī is the author of an imitation in prose of Mīr Ḥasan’sSiḥru-l-bayān, under the name ofNaṣr-i Bēnaẕīr(“the Incomparable Prose,” or “the Prose of Bēnaẓīr,” the latter being the name of the hero), and of a work namedAkhlāq-i Hindī, or “Indian Morals,” both composed in 1802. TheAkhlāq-i Hindīis an adaptation of a Persian work called theMufarriḥu-l-qulūb(“the Delighter of Hearts”), itself a version of theHitōpadēša. Mīr Amman was a native of Delhi, which he left in the time of Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī for Patna, and in 1801 repaired to Calcutta. To him we owe theBāgh o Bahār(1801-1802), an adaptation of Amīr Khusrau’s famous Persian romance entitled theChahār Darwēsh, or “Story of the Four Dervishes.” Amman’s work is not itself directly modelled on the Persian, but is a rehandling of an almost contemporary rendering by Tahsīn of Etāwā, called theNau-ṭarz-i Muraṣṣa‘. The style of this composition is much admired by natives of India, and editions of it are very numerous. Amman also composed an imitation of Husain Wā‘iz Kāshifī’sAkhlāq-i Muḥsinīunder the name of theGanj-i Khūbī(“Treasure of Virtue”), produced in 1802. Ḥafīẕuddīn Ahmad was a professor at the Fort William College; in 1803 he completed a translation of Abu-l-Faẓl’s’Iyār-i Dānish, under the name of theKhirad-afrōz(“Enlightener of the Understanding”). The’Iyār-i Dānish(“Touchstone of Wisdom”) is one of the numerous imitations of the originally Sanskrit collection of apologues known in Persian as theFables of Bīdpāī, orKalīlah and Dimna. Afsōs was one of the most illustrious of the Fort William school; originally of Delhi, he left that city at the age of eleven, and entered the service of Qāsim ‘Alī Khān, Nawāb of Bengal; he afterwards repaired to Hyderābād in the Deccan, and thence to Lucknow, where he was the pupil of Mīr Ḥasan, Mīr Sōz and Mīr Ḥaidar ‘Alī Ḥairān. He joined the Fort William College in 1800, and died in 1809. He is the author of a much esteemed dīwān; but his chief reputation is founded on two prose works of great excellence, theĀrāish-i Mahfil(1805), an account of India adapted from the introduction of the PersianKhulāṣatu-t-tawārikhof Sujān Rāe, and theBāgh-i Urdū(1808), a translation of Sa’dī’sGulistān. Nihāl Chand translated into Urdū amasnavī, entitled theGul-i Bakāwalī, under the name ofMaẕhab-i ‘Ishq(“Religion of Love”); this work is in prose intermingled with verse, was composed in 1804, and has been frequently reproduced. Jawān, like most of his collaborators, was originally of Delhi and afterwards of Lucknow; he joined the College in 1800. He is the author of a version in Urdū of the well-known story of Sakuntalā, under the name ofSakuntalā Nāṭak; the Urdū was rendered from a previous Braj-bhāshā version by Nawāz Kabīshwar made in 1716, and was printed in 1802. He also composed aBārah-māsā, or poetical description of the twelve months (a very popular and often-handled form of composition), with accounts of the various Hindu and Muhammadan festivals, entitled theDastūr-i Hind(“Usages of India”), printed in 1812. Ikrām ‘Ali translated, under the name of theIkhwānu-ṣ-ṣafā, or “Brothers of Purity” (1810), a chapter of a famous Arabian collection of treatises on science and philosophy entitledRasāilu Ikhwāni-ṣ-ṣafā, and composed in the 10th century. The complete collection, due to different writers who dwelt at Baṣra, has recently been made known to European readers by the translation of Dr F. Dieterici (1858-1879); the chapter selected by Ikrām ‘Alī is the third, which records an allegorical strife for the mastery between men and animals before the king of theJinn. The translation is written in excellent Urdū, and is one of the best of the Fort William productions.
Srī Lallū Lāl was a Brahman, whose family, originally of Gujarāt, had long been settled in northern India. What was done by the other Fort William authors for Urdū prose was done by Lallū Lāl almost alone for Hindī. He may indeed without exaggeration be said to have created “High Hindī” as a literary language. HisPrem SāgarandRājnīti, the former a version in pure Hindī of the 10th chapter of theBhāgavata Purāna, detailing the history of Kṛishṇa, and founded on a previous Braj-bhāshā version by Chaturbhuj Misr, and the latter an adaptation in Braj-bhāshā prose of theHitōpadēšaand part of thePancha-tantra, are unquestionably the most important works in Hindī prose. ThePrem Sāgarwas begun in 1804 and ended in 1810; it enjoys immense popularity in northern India, has been frequently reproduced in a lithographed form, and has several times been printed. TheRājnītiwas composed in 1809; it is much admired for its sententious brevity and the purity of its language. Besides these two works, Lallū Lāl was the author of a collection of a hundred anecdotes in Hindī and Urdū entitledLatāif-i Hindī, an anthology of Hindī verse called theSabhā-bilās,aSat-saīin the style of Bihāri-Lāl calledSapta-satikaand several other works. He and Jawān worked together at theSinghāsan Battīsī(1801), a redaction in mixed Urdū and Hindī (Dēvanāgarī character) of a famous collection of legends relating the prowess of King Vikramāditya; and he also aided the latter author in the production of theSakuntalā Nāṭak. Maẕhar ‘Ali Wilā was his collaborator in theBaitāl Pachīsī, a collection of stories similar in many respects to theSinghāsan Battīsī, and also in mixed Urdū-Hindī; and he aided Wilā in the preparation in Urdū of theStory of Mādhōnal, a romance originally composed in Braj-bhāshā by Mōtī Rām.
The works of these authors, though compiled and published under the superintendence of Dr Gilchrist, Captain Abraham Lockett, Professor J. W. Taylor, Dr W. Hunter and other European officers of the college of Fort William, and originally intended for the instruction of the Company’s officers in the vernacular, are essentially Indian in taste and style, and, until superseded by the more recent developments of literature noticed below, enjoyed a very wide reputation and popularity. They may, indeed, be said to have set the standard of prose composition in Urdū and Hindī, and for the first half of the 19th century their influence in this respect continued almost unchallenged. Side by side with them, among the Musalmān population of northern India, another almost contemporaneous impulse did much for the expansion of the Urdū language, and, like the work of the Vaishnava reformers in moulding literary Hindī, gave an impetus to composition which might otherwise have been lacking. This was the reform in Islam led by Sayyid Ahmad16and his followers. In all Eastern countries religion is the first and chief subject of literary production; and the controversies which the new preaching aroused in India at once afforded abundant material for authorship in Urdū, and interested deeply the people to whom the works were addressed.
Sayyid Aḥmad was born in 1782, and received his early education at Delhi; his instructors were two learned Muslims, Shāh ‘Abdul-‘Azīz, author of a celebrated commentary on the Qur‘ān (theTafsīr-i ‘Azīziyyah), and his brother ‘Abdu-l-Qādir, the writer of the first translation of the holy volume into Urdū. Under their guidance Sayyid Aḥmad embraced the doctrines of the Wahhābīs, a sect whose preaching appears at this time to have first reached India. He gathered round him a large number of fervent disciples, among others Ismā‘īl Ḥājī, nephew of ‘Abdu-l‘Azīz and ‘Abdu-l-Qādir, the chief author of the sect. After a course of preaching and apostleship at Delhi, Sayyid Aḥmad set out in 1820 for Calcutta, attended by numerous adherents. Thence in 1822 he started on a pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he went to Constantinople, and was there received with distinction and gained many disciples. He travelled for nearly six years in Turkey and Arabia, and then returned to Delhi. The religious degradation and coldness which he found in his native country strongly impressed him after his sojourn in lands where the life of Islām is stronger, and he and his disciples established a propaganda throughout northern India, reprobating the superstitions which had crept into the faith from contact with Hindus, and preaching ajihādor holy war against the Sikhs. In 1828 he started for Peshāwar, attended by, it is said, upwards of 100,000 Indians, and accompanied by his chief followers, Ḥājī Ismā‘īl and ‘Abdu-l-Ḥayy. He was furnished with means by a general subscription in northern India, and by several Muhammadan princes who had embraced his doctrines. At the beginning of 1829 he declared war against the Sikhs, and in the course of time made himself master of Peshāwar. The Afghāns, however, with whom he had allied himself in the contest, were soon disgusted by the rigour of his creed, and deserted him and his cause. He fled across the Indus and took refuge in the mountains of Pakhlī and Dhamtōr, where in 1831 he encountered a detachment of Sikhs under the command of Shēr Singh, and in the combat he and Ḥājī Isma‘īl were slain. His sect is, however, by no means extinct; the Wahhābī doctrines have continued to gain ground in India, and to give rise to much controversial writing, down to our own day.
The translation of the Quran by ‘Abdu-l-Qādir was finished in 1803, and first published by Sayyid ‘Abdullāh, a fervent disciple of Sayyid Aḥmad, at Hūghlī in 1829. TheTambīhu-l-ghāfilīn, or “Awakener of the Heedless,” a work in Persian by Sayyid Aḥmad, was rendered into Urdū by ‘Abdullāh, and published at the same press in 1830. Hājī Ismā‘īl was the author of a treatise in Urdū entitledTaqwiyatu-l-Īmān(“Confirmation of the Faith”), which had great vogue among the following of the Sayyid. Other works by the disciples of theTarīqah-e Muḥammadiyyah(as the new preaching was called) are theTarghīb-i Jihād(“Incitation to Holy War”),Hidāyatu-l-Mūminīn(“Guide of the Believers”),Mūẓiḥu-l-Kabāirwa-l-Bid’ah (“Exposition of Mortal Sins and Heresy”),Naṣlhatu-l-Muslimīn(“Admonition to Muslims”), and theMi’at Masāil, or “Hundred Questions.”
Printing was first used for vernacular works by the College Press at Fort William, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, and all the compositions prepared for Dr Gilchrist and his successors which have been mentioned were thus given to the public. But the expense of this method of reproduction long precluded its extensive use in India, and movable types, though well suited for alphabets derived from the Sanskrit, were not equally applicable to the flowing and graceful characters of Persian. Lithography was introduced about 1837, when the first press was set up at Delhi, and immediately gave a powerful stimulus to the multiplication of literature, both original and editions of older works. In 1832 the vernaculars were substituted for Persian as the official language of the courts and the acts of the legislature, and this at once led to the transfer to the former of a mass of technical and forensic terms which had previously been only to a limited extent in popular use. Thirdly, the spread of education in subjects of Western learning, for which text-books (many of them translations from English) were required, not only greatly enlarged the vocabulary of the common speech, but led by degrees to the use of a simpler and more direct style, and the abandonment wholesale of the florid and artificial ornament which was the legacy of the Persian literature upon which Urdū prose had at first modelled itself. Lastly, the establishment of a vernacular newspaper press, which lithography had rendered possible, placed within the reach of a continually widening public the means of becoming acquainted with new ideas in every department of culture, and practised the writers who contributed to it in the art of wielding their mother-tongue with effect in its application to European themes.
All these revolutionary agencies were at work, though in a tentative and limited fashion, when the great change, following on the Mutiny of 1857, of the transfer of the government of India from the Company to the Crown inaugurated a new era. Since 1860 their operation has become extremely rapid and far-reaching. The use of lithography both for Urdū and Hindī annually gives birth to hundreds of works. The extension of education through both public and private agency has created an immense mass of school-books, and the spread of instruction in English and the activity of translators have filled the vernaculars with a multitude of new words drawn from that language. The newspaper press, in Urdū and Hindī, now counts over two hundred journals, the majority issued in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and in the Punjab, but a few at Madras, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bombay and Calcutta. Of this great body of literary production it is possible to speak only in general terms. Style and vocabulary are still in a somewhat fluid and unsettled condition, and the subjects treated are almost as various as they are in European literatures. Much, indeed, of the work produced has scarcely any claim to literary excellence, and in the crowd of writers we may content ourselves with mentioning only a few whose influence and authority make it probable that they will hereafter be known as leaders in the new culture.
One of the first effects of the new literary inspiration seemed to be the extinction of poetical composition as previously practised. With the deaths of Ẕauq (1854) and Ghālib (1869) of the Delhi school, and those of Anīs (1875) and Dabīr (1876) of Lucknow, the end of Urdū poetry appeared to have come. The new age was intensely practical and eager to engage in the race for material and political advancement, and had no time for sentiment, or taste for mystical conceits. Moreover, poetical composition in India, as in other Eastern countries, has always owed much to the patronage of courts and princes. The thrones of Delhi and Lucknow had passed away, and the new rulers showed little interest in this form of achievement. Only at Hyderabad in the Deccan, under the patronage of the Nizam, were laureates still honoured; the last of these, Mirzā Khān Dāgh (1831-1905), enjoyed a wide reputation as a graceful and eloquent master of the poetic art.
But prose and material prosperity did not succeed in monopolizing the genius of the people. The great movement of reform and liberalism in Islām led by Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (1817-1898) found its bard in Sayyid Alṭāf Ḥusain of Pānipāṭ, poetically styled Ḥālī—an ambiguousnom-de-plumenow generally taken in the sense of “modern,” or “up-to-date.” Ḥālī in his youth was a pupil of the famous Ghālib, whose life he has written and of whose writings he has published an able criticism. At the age of forty he came under the influence of Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, and from that time devoted his great poetic gifts to the service of his co-religionists. He has published much verse, of which an interesting specimen will be found in the edition of hisRubā‘īsor quatrains (101 in number), with an English translation, by Mr G. E. Ward (Oxford, 1904); in this is included a famous poem addressed to his muse, setting forth his ideals in poetry—simplicity, avoidance of exaggeration and unreality, direct and emotional appeal to the heart, and above all sincerity. There can be no doubt that he has succeeded in becoming the leader of a new poetic school, which shows much vigour and promise.
Perhaps the most memorable of all Ḥālī’s compositions is his long poem in six-line stanzas (calledmusaddas) on “the flow and ebb of Islam” (1879), which has had an extraordinary influence in stimulating enthusiasm in the cause of progress among the Musalmāns of the north of India. In it he draws, in simple and direct but searching and eloquent language, a rapid sketch of the glories of Islam in the past, its principles and precepts, and the sources of its strength; and then turns to contrast with this picture the degradation and decay into which it had, when he wrote, fallen in Hindōstān. Never have the vices and shortcomings of a people been lashed by one of themselves with more vigorous denunciation, or with more earnestness of moral purpose. In his preface heexplains how the poem came to be written—after a youth spent in heedlessness and unsettlement, at the instigation of Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, and in the cause of that great reformer. The poem is still recited and imitated by Muslims in the Punjab and United Provinces, though the picture which it presents of Indian Musalmāns is no longer wholly applicable to the community. Ḥālī has recently completed a life of Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān in two volumes, entitledḤayāt-i Jāvīd(“eternal life”), a work of great merit.
Another writer whose work, though chiefly in prose, deals with poetry and poetic style, is Maulavī Muḥammad Ḥusain Āzād, lately professor of Arabic at the Government College, Lahore. He has not himself composed much verse; but his biographies of Urdū poets, with criticisms of their works, entitledÄb-i Ḥayāt(“Water of Life,” Lahore, 1883), is by far the best book dealing with the subject. His prose style is much admired. As Ḥālī was the pupil of Ghālib, so was Āzād that of Ẕauq, of whose poems he has published a revised and annotated edition. His other works in prose areQiṣaṣ-i Hind, episodes of Indian history arranged for schools;Nairang-i Khayāl, an allegory dealing with human life; andDarbār-i Akbarī, an account of the reign of Akbar.
Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān’s life and work are dealt with elsewhere. Among his literary achievements may be mentioned theĀsāruṣ-Ṣanādid(“Vestiges of Princes”), an excellent account of Delhi and its monuments, which has passed through several editions since it was first lithographed in 1847. His essays and occasional papers, published in theAlīgaṛh Institute Gazette(started in 1864), and afterwards (from 1870 onwards) in a periodical entitledTahẕībul-Akhlāq(or “Muhammadan Social Reformer”), handle all the problems of religious, social and educational advancement among Indian Musalmāns—the cause with which his life was identified. His greatCommentary on the Qur‘ān, in seven volumes, the last finished only a few days before his death in 1898, is carried to the end of Sūrah xx., a little more than half the book. In him Urdū prose found its most powerful wielder for the diffusion of modern ideas, and the movement which he set on foot has been the spring of the best literature in the language during recent years.
Another excellent writer of Urdū is Shamsul-’Ulamā Maulavī Naẕīr Aḥmad of Delhī, who is the author of a series of novels describing domestic life, of a somewhat didactic character, which have had a wide popularity, and from their admirable moral tone have been specially serviceable in the education of Indian women. These are entitled theMir‘ātul-‘Arūs(or “Brides’ Mirror”);Taubatun-Naṣūḥ(“the Repentance of Naṣūḥ”),Banātun-Na’sh(“the Seven Stars of the Great Bear”),Ibnul-Waqt(“Son of the Age”), andAyāmā(“Widows”). But Naẕīr Aḥmad is a man of many sides; before he took to novel-writing he was the principal translator into Urdū of theIndian Penal Code(1861), which is reckoned a masterpiece in the exact rendering of European legal ideas; and more lately he gave to the world the best Urdū version of the Quran. He has been a popular lecturer on social subjects, displaying a rich vein of humour, and in his old age even ventured upon verse. During the latter portion of his life he was most closely associated with Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān.
The novel is one of the most noteworthy features of recent literary composition in Urdū. India has from time immemorial been rich in stories and romances of adventure; but the description of actual life and character in action, as the modern novel is understood in Europe, is quite a new development. The most admired production of this kind in Urdū is a work entitledFisāna-e Āzād, by Paṇḍit Ratan-nāth Sarshār of Lucknow. The story, which is very long, is remarkable for the faithful and vivid pictures of Lucknow society which it presents, and its exact and lifelike delineation of character; it appeared originally as afeuilletonof theAwadh Akhbār, of which paper the author was at the time editor. Another good writer in the same branch of literature is Maulavī ‘Abdul-Ḥalīm Sharar, also a native of the neighbourhood of Lucknow, but settled at Hyderabad. He was editor of a monthly periodical called theDil-gudāz(“melter of hearts”), which contained essays and papers in European style, and in it his novels, which are all of an historical character, in the style of Sir Walter Scott, originally appeared. The best are‘Azīz and Virginā, a tale of the Crusades, andMansūr and Mōhinā, a story of which the scene is laid in India at the time of the invasions of Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghaznī.
Although Urdū chiefly represents Musalmān culture, its use is by no means confined to adherents of that faith. It has just been mentioned that the most popular Urdū novelist is a Hindū (a Brāhman from Kashmīr); and the statistics of the vernacular press show that this form of the language is widely used by Hindūs as well as Musalmāns. Thus, of eighty periodicals in Urdū published in the United Provinces, twenty-nine are conducted by Hindūs; similarly, in the Punjab, of forty-eight Urdū journals, twenty are edited by Hindus.
“High Hindī” has scarcely adapted itself to modern requirements with the thoroughness displayed by Urdū. It is taught in the schools where the population is mainly Hindū, and books of science have been written in it with a terminology borrowed from Sanskrit, in place of the Persian terms used in the other dialect. But Sanskrit is far removed from the daily life of the people, and the majority of works in this style are read only by Paṇḍits, the great bulk of them dealing with religion, philosophy and the ancient literature. There are thirty-seven Hindī and four Hindī-Urdū journals in the United Provinces; but many of them are exclusively religious in their character, and several, though written in Dēvanāgarī, employ a mixed language which admits Persian words freely. The old dialects of literature, Awadhī and Braj-bhāshā, are now only used for poetry; High Hindī has been a complete failure for this purpose.
The most noticeable authors in Hindī since the middle of the 19th century have been Bābū Harishchandra and Rājā Ṡiva Prasād, both of Benares. The former, during his short life (1850-1885), was an enthusiastic cultivator of the old poetic art, using the dialects just mentioned. He published in theSundarī Tilakan anthology of the best Hindī poetry, and in theKabi-bachan-Sudhā(“ambrosia of the words of poets”) and the magazine calledHarishchandrikāa quantity of old texts, with much added matter. He also wrote a volume of biographies of famous men, European and Indian, and many critical studies, historical and literary. In history especially he cleared up many problems, and traced the lines for further investigation. In hisKashmīr Kusum, or history of Kashmīr, a list is given of about a hundred works by him. He was also the real founder of the modern Hindī drama; he wrote plays himself, and inspired others. Rājā Ṡiva Prasād (1823-1895) served for many years in the educational department, and published a number of works intended for use in schools, which have greatly contributed to the formation of a sound vernacular form of Hindī, not excessively Sanskritized, and not rejecting current Persian forms. The society at Benares called theNāgarī Prachārinī Sabhā(“Society for promoting the use of the Nāgarī character”) has, since the death of Harishchandra, been active in procuring the publication of works in Hindī, and has issued many useful books, besides conducting a systematic search for old MSS.
Bibliography.—The best account in English of Hindī literature is Dr G. A. Grierson’sModern Vernacular Literature of Hindōstān, issued by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1889; the dates in this work, which is founded on indigenous compilations, have, however, in many cases to be received with caution. Before it appeared, Garcin de Tassy’sHistoire de la littérature Hindouie et Hindoustanie, and his annual summaries of the progress made from 1850 to 1877, were our chief authority, and may still be consulted with advantage. For the religious literature of the Vaishnava sects, Professor H. H. Wilson’sEssay on the Religious Sects of the Hindus(vol. i. of his collected works) has not yet been superseded.
For Urdū poets, Professor Āzād’sĀb-i Ḥayāt(in Urdū) is the most trustworthy record. For the new school of Urdū literature reference may be made to a series of lectures (in English) by Shaikh ‘Abdul-Qādir of Lahore, printed in 1898. The catalogues by Professor Blumhardt of Hindōstānī and Hindī books in the libraries of the British Museum and the India Office will give a good idea of the volume of the recent productions of the press in those languages.