1. Early Hindi, of the period during which the language was being
fashioned as a literary medium out of the ancient Prakrits,
represented by the old heroic poems of Rajputana and the literature of
the early _Bhagats_ or Vaishnava reformers, and extending from about
A.D. 1100 to 1550;
2. Middle Hindi, representing the best age of Hindi poetry, and
reaching from about 1550 to the end of the 18th century;
3. The rise and development of literary Urdu, beginning about the end
of the 16th century, and reaching its height during the 18th;
4. The modern period, marked by the growth of a prose literature in
both dialects, and dating from the beginning of the 19th century.
1. _Early Hindi._--Our knowledge of the ancient metrical chronicles of
Rajputana is still very imperfect, and is chiefly derived from the
monumental work of Colonel James Tod, called _The Annals and Antiquities
of Rajasthan_ (published in 1829-1832), which is founded on them. It is
in the nature of compositions of this character to be subjected to
perpetual revision and recasting; they are the production of the family
bards of the dynasties whose fortunes they record, and from generation
to generation they are added to, and their language constantly modified
to make it intelligible to the people of the time. Round an original
nucleus of historical fact a rich growth of legend accumulates; later
redactors endeavour to systematize and to assign dates, but the result
is not often such as to inspire confidence; and the mass has more the
character of ballad literature than of serious history. The materials
used by Tod are nearly all still unprinted; his manuscripts are now
deposited in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society in London; and one
of the tasks which, on linguistic and historical grounds, should first
be undertaken by the investigator of early Hindi literature is the
examination and sifting, and the publication in their original form, of
these important texts.
Omitting a few fragments of more ancient bards given by compilers of
accounts of Hindi literature, the earliest author of whom any portion
has as yet been published in the original text is Chand Bardai, the
court bard of Prithwi-Raj, the last Hindu sovereign of Delhi. His poem,
entitled _Prithi-Raj Rasau_ (or _Raysa_), is a vast chronicle in 69
books or cantos, comprising a general history of the period when he
wrote. Of this a small portion has been printed, partly under the
editorship of the late Mr John Beames and partly under that of Dr Rudolf
Hoernle, by the Asiatic Society of Bengal; but the excessively difficult
nature of the task prevented both scholars from making much progress.[3]
Chand, who came of a family of bards, was a native of Lahore, which had
for nearly 170 years (since 1023) been under Muslim rule when he
flourished, and the language of the poem exhibits a considerable leaven
of Persian words. In its present form the work is a redaction made by
Amar Singh of Mewar, about the beginning of the 17th century, and
therefore more than 400 years after Chand's death, with his patron
Prithwi-Raj, in 1193. There is, therefore, considerable reason to doubt
whether we have in it much of Chand's composition in its original shape;
and the nature of the incidents described enhances this doubt. The
detailed dates contained in the Chronicle have been shown by Kabiraj
Syamal Das[4] to be in every case about ninety years astray. It tells of
repeated conflicts between the hero Prithwi-Raj and Sultan Shihabuddin,
of Ghor (Muhammad Ghori), in which the latter always, except in the last
great battle, comes off the worst, is taken prisoner and is released on
payment of a ransom; these seem to be entirely unhistorical, our
contemporary Persian authorities knowing of only one encounter (that of
Tirauri (Tirawari) near Thenesar, fought in 1191) in which the Sultan
was defeated, and even then he escaped uncaptured to Lahore. The Mongols
(Book XV.) are brought on the stage more than thirty years before they
actually set foot in India, and are related to have been vanquished by
the redoubtable Prithwi-Raj. It is evident that such a record cannot
possibly be, in its entirety, a contemporary chronicle; but nevertheless
it appears to contain a considerable element which, from its language,
may belong to Chand's own age, and represents the earliest surviving
document in Hindi. "Though we may not possess the actual text of Chand,
we have certainly in his writings some of the oldest known specimens of
Gaudian literature, abounding in pure Apabhramsa Sauraseni Prakrit
forms" (Grierson).
It is very difficult now to form a just estimate of the poem as
literature. The language, essentially transitional in character,
consists largely of words which have long since died out of the
vernacular speech. Even the most learned Hindus of the present day are
unable to interpret it with confidence; and the meaning of the verses
must be sought by investigating the processes by which Sanskrit and
Prakrit forms have been transfigured in their progress into Hindi.
Chand appears, on the whole, to exhibit the merits and defects of
ballad chroniclers in general. There is much that is lively and
spirited in his descriptions of fight or council; and the characters
of the Rajput warriors who surround his hero are often sketched in
their utterances with skill and animation. The sound, however,
frequently predominates over the sense; the narrative is carried on
with the wearisome iteration and tedious unfolding of familiar themes
and images which characterize all such poetry in India; and his value,
for us at least, is linguistic rather than literary.
Chand may be taken as the representative of a long line of successors,
continued even to the present day in the Rajput states. Many of their
compositions are still widely popular as ballad literature, but are known
only in oral versions sung in Hindostan by professional singers. One of
the most famous of these is the _Alha-khand_, reputed to be the work of a
contemporary of Chand called Jagnik or Jagnayak, of Mahoba in Bundelkhand,
who sang the praises of Raja-Parmal, a ruler whose wars with Prithwi-Raj
are recorded in the Mahoba-Khand of Chand's work. Alha and Udal, the
heroes of the poem, are famous warriors in popular legend, and the stories
connected with them exist in an eastern recension, current in Bihar, as
well as in the Bundelkhandi or western form which is best known. Two
versions of the latter have been printed, having been taken down as
recited by illiterate professional rhapsodists. Another celebrated bard
was Sarangdhar of Rantambhor, who flourished in 1363, and sang the praises
of Hammir Deo (Hamir Deo), the Chauhan chief of Rantambhor who fell in a
heroic struggle against Sultan 'Ala'uddin Khilji in 1300. He wrote the
_Hammir Kavya_ and _Hammir Rasau_, of which an account is given by Tod;[5]
he was also a poet in Sanskrit, in which language he compiled, in 1363,
the anthology called _Sarngadhara-Paddhati_. Another work which may be
mentioned (though much more modern) is the long chronicle entitled
_Chhattra-Prakas_, or the history of Raja Chhatarsal, the Bundela raja of
Panna, who was killed, fighting on behalf of Prince Dara-Shukoh, in the
battle of Dholpur won by Aurangzeb in 1658. The author, Lal Kabi, has
given in this work a history of the valiant Bundela nation which was
rendered into English by Captain W. R. Pogson in 1828, and printed at
Calcutta.
Before passing on to the more important branch of early Hindi
literature, the works of the _Bhagats_, mention may be made here of a
remarkable composition, a poem entitled the _Padmawat_, the materials of
which are derived from the heroic legends of Rajputana, but which is not
the work of a bard nor even of a Hindu. The author, Malik Muhammad of
Ja'is, in Oudh, was a venerated Muslim devotee, to whom the Hindu raja
of Amethi was greatly attached. Malik Muhammad wrote the Padmawat in
1540, the year in which Sher Shah Sur ousted Humayan from the throne of
Delhi. The poem is composed in the purest vernacular Awadhi, with no
admixture of traditional Hindu learning, and is generally to be found
written in the Persian character, though the metres and language are
thoroughly Indian. It professes to tell the tale of Padmawati or
Padmini, a princess celebrated for her beauty who was the wife of the
Chauhan raja of Chitor in Mewar. The historical Padmini's husband was
named Bhim Singh, but Malik Muhammad calls him Ratan Sen; and the story
turns upon the attempts of 'Ala'uddin Khilji, the sovereign of Delhi, to
gain possession of her person. The tale of the siege of Chitor in 1303
by 'Ala'uddin, the heroic stand made by its defenders, who perished to
the last man in fight with the Sultan's army, and the self-immolation of
Padmini and the other women, the wives and daughters of the warriors, by
the fiery death called _johar_, will be found related in Tod's
_Rajasthan_, i. 262 sqq. Malik Muhammad takes great liberties with the
history, and explains at the end of the poem that all is an allegory,
and that the personages represent the human soul, Divine wisdom, Satan,
delusion and other mystical characters.
Both on account of its interest as a true vernacular work, and as the
composition of a Musalman who has taken the incidents of his morality
from the legends of his country and not from an exotic source, the
poem is memorable. It has often been lithographed, and is very
popular; a translation has even been made into Sanskrit. A critical
edition has been prepared by Dr G. A. Grierson and Pandit Sudhakar
Dwivedi.
The other class of composition which is characteristic of the period of
early Hindi, the literature of the _Bhagats_, or Vaishnava saints, who
propagated the doctrine of _bhakti_, or faith in Vishnu, as the popular
religion of Hindostan, has exercised a much more powerful influence both
upon the national speech and upon the themes chosen for poetic
treatment. It is also, as a body of literature, of high intrinsic
interest for its form and content. Nearly the whole of subsequent
poetical composition in Hindi is impressed with one or other type of
Vaishnava doctrine, which, like Buddhism many centuries before, was
essentially a reaction against Brahmanical influence and the chains of
caste, a claim for the rights of humanity in face of the monopoly which
the "twice-born" asserted of learning, of worship, of righteousness. A
large proportion of the writers were non-Brahmans, and many of them of
the lowest castes. As Siva was the popular deity of the Brahmans, so was
Vishnu of the people; and while the literature of the Saivas and
Saktas[6] is almost entirely in Sanskrit, and exercised little or no
influence on the popular mind in northern India, that of the Vaishnavas
is largely in Hindi, and in itself constitutes the great bulk of what
has been written in that language.
The Vaishnava doctrine is commonly carried back to Ramanuja, a Brahman
who was born about the end of the 11th century, at Perambur in the
neighbourhood of the modern Madras, and spent his life in southern
India. His works, which are in Sanskrit and consist of commentaries on
the Vedanta Sutras, are devoted to establishing "the personal existence
of a Supreme Deity, possessing every gracious attribute, full of love
and pity for the sinful beings who adore him, and granting the released
soul a home of eternal bliss near him--a home where each soul never
loses its identity, and whose state is one of perfect peace."[7] In the
Deity's infinite love and pity he has on several occasions become
incarnate for the salvation of mankind, and of these incarnations two,
Ramachandra, the prince of Ayodhya, and Krishna, the chief of the Yadava
clan and son of Vasudeva, are pre-eminently those in which it is most
fitting that he should be worshipped. Both of these incarnations had for
many centuries[8] attracted popular veneration, and their histories had
been celebrated by poets in epics and by weavers of religious myths in
_Puranas_ or "old stories"; but it was apparently Ramanuja's teaching
which secured for them, and especially for Ramachandra, their exclusive
place as the objects of _bhakti_--ardent faith and personal devotion
addressed to the Supreme. The adherents of Ramanuja were, however, all
Brahmans, and observed very strict rules in respect of food, bathing and
dress; the new doctrine had not yet penetrated to the people.
Whether Ramanuja himself gave the preference to Rama against Krishna as
the form of Vishnu most worthy of worship is uncertain. He dealt mainly
with philosophic conceptions of the Divine Nature, and probably busied
himself little with mythological legend. His _mantra_, or formula of
initiation, if Wilson[9] was correctly informed, implies devotion to
Rama; but Vasudeva (Krishna) is also mentioned as a principal object of
adoration, and Ramanuja himself dwelt for several years in Mysore, at a
temple erected by the raja, at Yadavagiri in honour of Krishna in his
form Ranchhor.[10] It is stated that in his worship of Krishna he joined
with that god as his _Sakti_, or Energy, his wife Rukmini; while the
later varieties of Krishna-worship prefer to honour his mistress Radha.
The great difference, in temper and influence upon life, between these
two forms of Vaishnava faith appears to be a development subsequent to
Ramanuja; but by the time of Jaideo (about 1250) it is clear that the
theme of Krishna and Radha, and the use of passionate language drawn
from the relations of the sexes to express the longings of the soul for
God, had become fully established; and from that time onwards the two
types of Vaishnava religious emotion diverged more and more from one
another.
The cult of Rama is founded on family life, and the relation of the
worshipper to the Deity is that of a child to a father. The morality it
inculcates springs from the sacred sources of human piety which in all
religions have wrought most in favour of pureness of life, of fraternal
helpfulness and of humble devotion to a loving and tender Parent, who
desires the good of mankind, His children, and hates violence and wrong.
That of Krishna, on the other hand, had for its basis the legendary
career of a less estimable human hero, whose exploits are marked by a
kind of elvish and fantastic wantonness; it has more and more spent its
energy in developing that side of devotion which is perilously near to
sensual thought, and has allowed the imagination and ingenuity of poets
to dwell on things unmeet for verse or even for speech. It is claimed
for those who first opened this way to faith that their hearts were pure
and their thoughts innocent, and that the language of erotic passion
which they use as the vehicle of their religious emotion is merely
mystical and allegorical. This is probable; but that these beginnings
were followed by corruption in the multitude, and that the fervent
impulses of adoration made way in later times for those of lust and
lasciviousness, seems beyond dispute.
The worship of Krishna, especially in his infant and youthful form
(which appeals chiefly to women), is widely popular in the neighbourhood
of Mathura, the capital of that land of Braj where as a boy he lived.
Its literature is mainly composed in the dialect of this region, called
Brajbhasha. That of Rama, though general throughout Hindostan, has
since the time of Tulsi Das adopted for poetic use the language of Oudh,
called Awadhi or Baiswari, a form of Eastern Hindi easily understood
throughout the whole of the Gangetic valley. Thus these two dialects
came to be, what they are to this day, the standard vehicles of poetic
expression.
Subsequently to Ramanuja his doctrine appears to have been set forth,
about 1250, in the vernacular of the people by Jaideo, a Brahman born at
Kinduvilva, the modern Kenduli, in the Birbhum district of Bengal,
author of the Sanskrit _Gita Govinda_, and by Namdeo or Nama, a
tailor[11] of Maharashtra, of both of whom verses in the popular speech
are preserved in the _Adi Granth_ of the Sikhs. But it was not until the
beginning of the 15th century that the Brahman Ramanand, a prominent
_Gosain_ of the sect of Ramanuja, having had a dispute with the members
of his order in regard to the stringent rules observed by them, left the
community, migrated to northern India (where he is said to have made his
headquarters Galta in Rajputana), and addressed himself to those outside
the Brahman caste, thus initiating the teaching of Vaishnavism as the
popular faith of Hindostan. Among his twelve disciples or apostles were
a Rajput, a Jat, a leather-worker, a barber and a Musalman weaver; the
last-mentioned was the celebrated KABIR (see separate article). One
short Hindi poem by Ramanand is contained in the _Adi Granth_, and Dr
Grierson has collected hymns (_bhajans_) attributed to him and still
current in Mithila or Tirhut. Both Ramanand and Kabir were adherents of
the form of Vaishnavism where devotion is specially addressed to Raama,
who is regarded not only as an incarnation, but as himself identical
with the Deity. A contemporary of Ramanand, Bidyapati Thakur, is
celebrated as the author of numerous lyrics in the Maithili dialect of
Bihar, expressive of the other side of Vaishnavism, the passionate
adoration of the Deity in the person of Krishna, the aspirations of the
worshipper being mystically conveyed in the character of Radha, the
cowherdess of Braj and the beloved of the son of Vasudeva. These stanzas
of Bidyapati (who was a Brahman and author of several works in Sanskrit)
afterwards inspired the Vaishnava literature of Bengal, whose most
celebrated exponent was Chaitanya (b. 1484). Another famous adherent of
the same cult was Mira Bai, "the one great poetess of northern India"
(Grierson). This lady, daughter of Raja Ratiya Rana, Rathor, of Merta in
Rajputana, must have been born about the beginning of the 15th century;
she was married in 1413 to Raja Kumbhkaran of Mewar, who was killed by
his son Uday Rana in 1469. She was devoted to Krishna in the form of
Ranchhor, and her songs have a wide currency in northern India.
An important compilation of the utterances of the early Vaishnava
saints or _Bhagats_ is contained in the sacred book, or _Adi Granth_,
of the Sikh _Gurus_. Nanak, the founder of this sect (1469-1538),
though a native of the Punjab (born at Talvandi on the Ravi near
Lahore), took his doctrine from the _Bhagats_ (see KABIR); and each of
the thirty-one _rags_, forming the body of the _Granth_, is followed
by a compilation of texts from the utterances of Vaishnava saints,
chiefly of Kabir, in confirmation of the teaching of the _Gurus_,
while the whole book is closed by a _bhog_ or conclusion, containing
more verses by the same authors, as well as by a celebrated Indian
Sufi, Shekh Farid of Pakpattan. The body of the _Granth_ (q.v.), being
in old Panjabi, falls outside the scope of this article; but the
extracts included in it from the early writers of old Hindi are a
precious store of specimens of authors some of whom have left no other
record in the surviving literature. The _Adi Granth_, which was put
together about 1600 by Arjun, the fifth _Guru_ of 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 five _Gurus_ who succeeded him.
2. _Middle Hindi._--The second period, that of middle Hindi, 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 Hindu 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 Hindi poetry which now set in.[12] Akbar's court was
itself a centre of poetical composition. The court musician Tan Sen (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, Raja Birbal (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, of _Kabi-Ray_,
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 the
_Khan-khanan_ 'Abdur-Rahim, son of Bairam Khan, whose Hindi _dohas_ and
_kabittas_ are still held in high estimation, and Faizi, brother of the
celebrated Abul-Fazl, the Emperor's annalist.
By this time the worship of Krishna as the lover of Radha
_(Radha-ballabh)_ had been systematized, and a local habitation found
for it at Gokul, opposite Mathura on the Jumna, some 30 m. upstream from
Agra, Akbar's capital, by Vallabhacharya, a Tailinga Brahman 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 Bitthalnath (who succeeded his father on
the latter's death in 1530), were some of the most eminent poets in
Hindi. Four disciples of Vallabhacharya and four of Bitthalnath, who
flourished between 1550 and 1570, are known as the _Asht Chhap_, or
"Eight Seals," and are the acknowledged masters of the literature of
Braj-bhasha, in which dialect they all wrote. Their names are
Krishna-Das Pay-ahari, Sur Das (the Bhat), Parmanand Das, Kumbhan Das,
Chaturbhuj Das, Chhit Swami, Nand Das and Gobind Das. Of these much the
most celebrated, and the only one whose verses are still popular, is Sur
Das. The son of Baba Ram Das, who was a singer at Akbar's court, Sur Das
was descended, according to his own statement, from the bard of
Prithwi-Raj, Chand Bardai. 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-Fazl's _Ain-i Akbari_ he 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
the _Sur Sagar_, 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 the _Bhagavata Purana_, 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 Tulsi Das (q.v.). He and Sur Das 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 Kesab Das, a Brahman of Bundelkhand, who flourished
during the latter part of Akbar's reign and the beginning of that of
Jahangir. His works are the _Rasik-priya_, on composition (1591), the
_Kavi-priya_, on the laws of poetry (1601), a highly esteemed poem
dedicated to Parbin Rai Paturi, a celebrated courtesan of Orchha in
Bundelkhand, the _Ramachandrika_, dealing with the history of Rama,
(1610), and the _Vigyan-gita_ (1610). The fruit of this elaboration of
the poetic art reached its highest perfection in BIHARI LAL, whose
_Sat-sai_, or "seven centuries" (1662), is the most remarkable example
in Hindi of the rhetorical style in poetry (see separate article).
Side by side with this cultivation of the literary use of the themes of
Rama 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 the _Bhakta-mala_, or "Roll of
the _Bhagats_," by Narayan Das, otherwise called Nabha Das, or Nabhaji.
This author, who belonged to the despised caste of Doms and was a native
of the Deccan, had in his youth seen Tulsi Das at Mathura, and himself
flourished in the first half of the 17th century. His work consists of
108 stanzas in _chhappai_ metre, 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 a _ika_ (supplement or gloss) in
the _kabitta_ metre, by Priya Das 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 the _Bhakta-sindhu_.
From these nearly all our knowledge (such as it is) of the lives of the
Vaishnava authors, both of the Rama 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 the _Bhakta-mala_, named the
_Chaurasi Varta_, is devoted exclusively to stories of the followers of
Vallabhacharya. It is reputed to have been written by Gokulnath, son of
Bitthalnath, son of Vallabhacharya, and is dated in 1551.
The matter of these tales is justly characterized by Professor
Wilson[13] (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's _Mathura, 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, Jahangir and Shahjahan. None of them attained to the
fame of Sur Das, Tuls Das or Bihari Lal. Their themes exhibit no
novelty, and they repeat with a wearisome monotony the sentiments of
their predecessors. The list of Hindi authors drawn up by Dr G. A.
Grierson, and printed in the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_
in 1889, may be consulted for the names and works of these _epigoni_.
The courts of Chhatarsal, raja of Panna in Bundelkhand, who was killed
in battle with Aurangzeb in 1658, and of several rajas of Bandho (now
called Riwan or Rewah) in Baghelkhand, were famous for their patronage
of poets; and the Mogul court itself kept up the office of _Kabi-Ray_ or
poet laureate even during the fanatical reign of Aurangzeb.
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 Hindi is the legitimate descendant in speech,
of the Prakrit literature which preceded it. Entirely in verse, it
adopted and elaborated the Prakrit 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 Kabir, Tulsi Das's _Ramayan_, and
the _bhajans_ of Sur Das 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 Vindhya 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 Urdu._--The _origines_ of Urdu as a literary language are
somewhat obscure. The popular account refers its rise to the time of
Timur's invasion (1398). Some authors even claim for it a higher
antiquity, asserting that a _diwan_, or collection of poems, was
composed in _Rekhta_ by Mas'ud, son of Sa'd, in the last half of the
11th or beginning of the 12th century, and that Sa'di of Shiraz and his
friend Amir Khusrau[14] of 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 Kabir's verses
(which are nevertheless unquestionable Hindi) 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
Urdu, as opposed to Hindi, really is.
Urdu, as a literary language, differs from Hindi 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
Hindi and Urdu are incommensurable, is the _prosody_. Hardly one of the
metres taken over by Urdu poets from Persian agrees with those used in
Hindi. In the latter language it is the rule to give the short _a_
inherent in every consonant or _nexus_ of consonants its full value in
scansion (though in prose it is no longer heard), except occasionally at
the metrical pause; in Urdu 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 Hindi metres are scanned by the
number of _matras_ or syllabic instants--the value in time of a short
syllable--of which the lines consist; in Urdu, 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
Hindi 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 Urdu verse was composed; nor When was the Persian
character first employed to write Hindi?--for the written form is but a
subordinate matter; as already mentioned, the MSS. of Malik Muhammad's
purely Hindi poem, the _Padmawat_, are ordinarily found to be written in
the Persian character; and copies lithographed in Devanagari of the
popular compositions of the Urdu poet Nazir are commonly procurable in
the bazars. We must ask When was the first verse composed in Hindi,
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 Urdu 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 Hindu 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
Hindi spoken about Delhi and thence northwards to the Himalaya, was
naturally the form of the vernacular which was most subject to foreign
influences; and with the extension of Mogul territory by the conquests
in the south of Akbar and his successors, this idiom was carried abroad
by their armies, and was adopted by the Musalman kingdoms of the Deccan
as their court language some time before their overthrow by the
campaigns of Aurangzeb.
It is not a little remarkable that, as happened with the Vaishnava
reformation initiated by Ramanuja and Ramanand, and with the
Vallabhacharya cult of Krishna established at Mathura, the first impulse
to literary composition in Urdu should have been given, not at the
headquarters of the empire in the north, but at the Muhammadan courts of
Golkonda and Bijapur 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 Eran. The _qasida_ or
laudatory ode, the _ghazal_ or love-sonnet, usually of mystical import,
the _marsiya_ or dirge, the _masnavi_ or narrative poem with coupled
rhymes, the _hija_ or satire, the _ruba'i_ or epigram--these were the
types which Urdu 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 Urdu
poetry. Until quite modern times, there is scarcely anything in it which
can be called original.[15] Differences 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.
Shuja'uddin Nuri, a native of Gujarat, a friend of Faizi and
contemporary of Akbar, is mentioned by the native biographers as the
most ancient Urdu poet after Amir Khusrau. He was tutor of the son of
the _wazir_ of Sultan Abu-l-Hasan Kutb Shah of Golkonda, and several
_ghazals_ by him are said to survive. Kuli Kutb Shah of Golkonda, who
reigned from 1581, and his successor 'Abdullah Kutb Shah, who came to
the throne in 1611, have both left collections of verse, including
_ghazals_, _ruba'is_, _masnavis_ and _qasidas_. And during the reign
of the latter Ibn Nishati wrote two works which are still famous as
models of composition in Dakhni; they are _masnavis_ entitled the
_Tuti-nama_, or "Tales of a Parrot," and the _Phul-ban_. The first,
written in 1639, is an adaptation of a Persian work by Nakhshabi, but
derives ultimately from a Sanskrit original entitled the
_Suka-saptati_; this collection has been frequently rehandled in Urdu,
both in verse and prose, and is the original of the _Tota-Kahani_, one
of the first works in Urdu prose, composed in 1801 by Muhammad
Haidar-bakhsh Haidari of the Fort William College. The _Phul-ban_ is a
love tale named from its heroine, said to be translated from a Persian
work entitled the _Basatin_. Another famous work which probably
belongs to the same place and time is the _Story of Kamrup and Kala_
by Tahsinuddin, a _masnavi_ which has been published (1836) by M.
Garcin de Tassy; what makes this poem remarkable is that, though the
work of a Musalman, its personages are Hindu. Kamrup, the hero, is son
of the king of Oudh, and the heroine, Kala, daughter of the king of
Ceylon; the incidents somewhat resemble those of the tale of
as-Sindibad in the _Thousand 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 Bijapur was no less distinguished in literature. Ibrahim
'Adil Shah (1579-1626) was the author of a work in verse on music
entitled the _Nau-ras_ or "Nine Savours," which, however, appears to
have been in Hindi rather than Urdu; the three prefaces (_dibajas_) to
this poem were rendered into Persian prose by Maula Zuhuri, and, under
the name of the _Sih nasr-i Zuhuri_, are well-known models of style. A
successor of this prince, 'Ali 'Adil Shah, had as his court poet a
Brahman known poetically as Nusrati, who in 1657 composed a _masnavi_
of some repute entitled the _Gulshan-i 'Ishq_, or "Rose-garden of
Love," a romance relating the history of Prince Manohar and
Madmalati,--like the _Kamrup_, an Indian theme. The same poet is
author of an extremely long _masnavi_ entitled the _'Ali-nama_,
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 Wali of Aurangabad (about 1680-1720)
and his contemporary and fellow-townsman Siraj. The former of these is
commonly called "the Father of Rekhtah"--_Baba-e Rekhta_; and all
accounts agree that the immense development attained by Urdu poetry in
northern India during the 18th century was due to his example and
initiative. Very little is known of Wali's life; he is believed to
have visited Delhi towards the end of the reign of Aurangzeb, and is
said to have there received instruction from Shah Gulshan in the art
of clothing in a vernacular dress the ideas of the Persian poets. His
_Kulliyat_ or 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 Urdu poetical composition.
The first of the Delhi school of poets was Zuhuruddin Hatim, who was
born in 1699 and died in 1792. In the second year of Muhammad Shah
(1719), the _diwan_ of Wali reached Delhi, and excited the emulation
of scholars there. Hatim was the first to imitate it in the Urdu of
the north, and was followed by his friends Naji, Mazmun and Abru. Two
_diwans_ by him survive. He became the founder of a school, and one of
his pupils was Rafi us-Sauda, the most distinguished poet of northern
India. Khan Arzu (1689-1756) was another of the fathers of Urdu 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, the _Siraju-l-lughat_; but his compositions in
Urdu are also highly esteemed. He was the master of Mir Taqi, who
ranks next to Sauda as the most eminent Urdu poet. Arzu died at
Lucknow, whither he betook himself after the devastation of Delhi by
Nadir Shah (1739). Another of the early Delhi poets who is considered
to have surpassed his fellows was In'amullah Khan Yaqin, who died
during the reign of Ahmad Shah (1748-1754), aged only twenty-five.
Another was Mir Dard, pupil of the same Shah Gulshan who is said to
have instructed Wali; his _diwan_ is 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 a _darwesh_ of the
_Naqshbandi_ following, and died in 1793.
Sauda and Mir Taqi are beyond question the most distinguished Urdu
poets. The former was born at Delhi about the beginning of the 18th
century, and studied under Hatim. He left Delhi after its devastation,
and settled at Lucknow, where the Nawab Asafuddaulah gave him a
_jagir_ of Rs. 6000 a year, and where he died in 1780. His poems are
very numerous, and cover all the styles of Urdu 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. Mir Taqi was born
at Agra, but early removed to Delhi, where he studied under Arzu; he
was still living there at the time of Sauda'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 six _diwans_. Mir is counted the superior of Sauda in the
_ghazal_ and _masnavi_, while the latter excelled him in the satire
and _qasida_. Sayyid Ahmad, an excellent authority, and himself one of
the best of modern authors in Urdu, says of him in his
_Asaru-s-Sanadid_: "Mir'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 Sauda is also
excellent, and he is superior to Mir in the point of his allusions, he
is nevertheless inferior to him in style."
The tremendous misfortunes which befell Delhi at the hands of Nadir
Shah (1739), Ahmad Shah Durrani (1756), and the Marathas (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 Arzu, Sauda and Mir 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 Mir Hasan (d. 1786), Mir Soz (d. 1800) and
Qalandar-bakhsh Jur'at (d. 1810), also like themselves refugees from
Delhi, and illustrious poets. Mir Hasan was a friend and collaborator
of Mir Dard, and first established himself at Faizabad and
subsequently at Lucknow; he excelled in the _ghazal_, _ruba'i_,
_masnavi_ and _marsiya_, and is counted the third, with Sauda and Mir
Taqi, among the most eminent of Urdu poets. His fame chiefly rests
upon a much admired _masnavi_ entitled the _Sihru-l-bayan_, or "Magic
of Eloquence," a romance relating the loves of Prince Be-nazir and the
Princess Badr-i Munir; his _masnavi_ called the _Gulzar-i Iram_
("Rose-garden of Iram," the legendary 'Adite paradise in southern
Arabia), in praise of Faizabad, is likewise highly esteemed. Mir
Muhammadi Soz was an elegant poet, remarkable for the success with
which he composed in the dialect of the harem called _Rekhti_, but
somewhat licentious in his verse; he became a _darwesh_ and renounced
the world in his later years. Jur'at was also a prolific poet, but,
like Soz, his _ghazals_ and _masnavis_ are licentious and full of
double meanings. He imitated Sauda in satire with much success; he
also cultivated Hindi poetry, and composed _dohas_ and _kabittas_.
Miskin was another Lucknow poet of the same period, whose _marsiyas_
are 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, Wajid 'Ali, in 1856. Atash and Nasikh
(who died respectively in 1847 and 1841) are the best among the modern
poets of the school in the _ghazal_; Mir Anis, a grandson of Mir
Hasan, and his contemporary Dabir, the former of whom died in December
1875 and the latter a few months later, excelled in the _marsiyah_.
Rajab Ali Beg Surur, who died in 1869, was the author of a
much-admired romance in rhyming prose entitled the _Fisanah-e 'Ajaib_
or "Tale of Marvels," besides a _diwan_. The dethroned prince Wajid
'Ali himself, poetically styled Akhtar, was also a poet; he published
three diwans, 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. Shah
Alam II. (1761-1806) wrote under the name of Aftab, and was the author
of a romance entitled Manzum-i Aqdas, besides a _diwan_. His son
Sulaiman-shukoh, brother of Akbar Shah 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 a _diwan_. Lastly, his nephew Bahadur
Shah II., the last titular emperor of Delhi (d. 1862), wrote under the
name of Zafar, and was a pupil in poetry of Shaikh Ibrahim Zauq, a
distinguished writer; he has left a voluminous _diwan_, which has been
printed at Delhi. Mashafi (Ghulam-i Hamdani), 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 five _diwans_, a _Tazkira_ or biography of Urdu poets, and a
_Shah-nama_ or account of the kings of Delhi down to Shah 'Alam. Qaim
(Qiyamuddin 'Ali) was one of his society, and died in 1792; he has
left several works of merit. Ghalib, otherwise Mirza Asadullah Khan
Naushah, 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
Firdausi, free from intermixture of Arabic words, he was a master; but
his Urdu _diwan_, 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 Mir Wali Muhammad Nazir (who died in the
year 1832); his _masnavis_ entitled _Jogi-nama_, _Kauri-nama_,
_Banjare-nama_, and _Burhape-nama_, as well as his _diwan_, have been
frequently reprinted, and are extremely popular. His language is less
artificial than that of the generality of Urdu poets, and some of his
poems have been printed in Nagari, 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 Urdu prose than had a
hundred years before been given to that of poetry by Wali. 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 Urdu
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
Urdu, but also in Hindi. The chief authors of this school are Haidari
(Sayyid Muhammad Haidar-bakhsh), Husaini (Mir Bahadur 'Ali), Mir Amman
Lutf, Hafizuddin Ahmad, Sher 'Ali Afsos, Nihal Chand of Lahore, Kazim
'Ali Jawan, Lallu Lal Kavi, Mazhar 'Ali Wila and Ikram 'Ali.
Haidari died in 1828. He composed the _Tota-Kahani_ (1801), a prose
redaction of the _Tuti-namah_ which has been already mentioned; a
romance named _Araish-i Mahfil_ ("Ornament of the Assembly"),
detailing the adventures of the famous Arab chief Hatim-i Tai; the
_Gul-i Maghfirat_ or _Dah Majlis_, an account of the holy persons of
the Muhammadan faith; the _Gulzar-i Danish_, a translation of the
_Bahar-i Danish_, a Persian work containing stories descriptive of the
craft and faithlessness of women; and the _Tarikh-i Nadiri_, a
translation of a Persian history of Nadir Shah. Husaini is the author
of an imitation in prose of Mir Hasan's _Sihru-l-bayan_, under the
name of _Nasr-i Benazir_ ("the Incomparable Prose," or "the Prose of
Benazir," the latter being the name of the hero), and of a work named
_Akhlaq-i Hindi_, or "Indian Morals," both composed in 1802. The
_Akhlaq-i Hindi_ is an adaptation of a Persian work called the
_Mufarrihu-l-qulub_ ("the Delighter of Hearts"), itself a version of
the _Hitopadesa_. Mir Amman was a native of Delhi, which he left in
the time of Ahmad Shah Durrani for Patna, and in 1801 repaired to
Calcutta. To him we owe the _Bagh o Bahar_ (1801-1802), an adaptation
of Amir Khusrau's famous Persian romance entitled the _Chahar
Darwesh_, 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 Tahsin of Etawa, called the _Nau-tarz-i
Murassa'_. 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 Wa'iz Kashifi's _Akhlaq-i Muhsini_ under the name
of the _Ganj-i Khubi_ ("Treasure of Virtue"), produced in 1802.
Hafizuddin Ahmad was a professor at the Fort William College; in 1803
he completed a translation of Abu-l-Fazl's _'Iyar-i Danish_, under the
name of the _Khirad-afroz_ ("Enlightener of the Understanding"). The
_'Iyar-i Danish_ ("Touchstone of Wisdom") is one of the numerous
imitations of the originally Sanskrit collection of apologues known in
Persian as the _Fables of Bidpai_, or _Kalilah and Dimna_. Afsos 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 Qasim 'Ali Khan, Nawab of Bengal; he afterwards repaired to
Hyderabad in the Deccan, and thence to Lucknow, where he was the pupil
of Mir Hasan, Mir Soz and Mir Haidar 'Ali Hairan. He joined the Fort
William College in 1800, and died in 1809. He is the author of a much
esteemed diwan; but his chief reputation is founded on two prose works
of great excellence, the _Araish-i Mahfil_ (1805), an account of India
adapted from the introduction of the Persian _Khulasatu-t-tawarikh_ of
Sujan Rae, and the _Bagh-i Urdu_ (1808), a translation of Sa'di's
_Gulistan_. Nihal Chand translated into Urdu a _masnavi_, entitled the
_Gul-i Bakawali_, under the name of _Mazhab-i 'Ishq_ ("Religion of
Love"); this work is in prose intermingled with verse, was composed in
1804, and has been frequently reproduced. Jawan, 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 Urdu of
the well-known story of Sakuntala, under the name of _Sakuntala
Natak_; the Urdu was rendered from a previous Braj-bhasha version by
Nawaz Kabishwar made in 1716, and was printed in 1802. He also
composed a _Barah-masa_, 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 the _Dastur-i
Hind_ ("Usages of India"), printed in 1812. Ikram 'Ali translated,
under the name of the _Ikhwanu-s-safa_, or "Brothers of Purity"
(1810), a chapter of a famous Arabian collection of treatises on
science and philosophy entitled _Rasailu Ikhwani-s-safa_, and composed
in the 10th century. The complete collection, due to different writers
who dwelt at Basra, has recently been made known to European readers
by the translation of Dr F. Dieterici (1858-1879); the chapter
selected by Ikram 'Ali is the third, which records an allegorical
strife for the mastery between men and animals before the king of the
_Jinn_. The translation is written in excellent Urdu, and is one of
the best of the Fort William productions.
Sri Lallu Lal was a Brahman, whose family, originally of Gujarat, had
long been settled in northern India. What was done by the other Fort
William authors for Urdu prose was done by Lallu Lal almost alone for
Hindi. He may indeed without exaggeration be said to have created
"High Hindi" as a literary language. His _Prem Sagar_ and _Rajniti_,
the former a version in pure Hindi of the 10th chapter of the
_Bhagavata Purana_, detailing the history of Krishna, and founded on a
previous Braj-bhasha version by Chaturbhuj Misr, and the latter an
adaptation in Braj-bhasha prose of the _Hitopadesa_ and part of the
_Pancha-tantra_, are unquestionably the most important works in Hindi
prose. The _Prem Sagar_ was 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. The
_Rajniti_ was composed in 1809; it is much admired for its sententious
brevity and the purity of its language. Besides these two works, Lallu
Lal was the author of a collection of a hundred anecdotes in Hindi and
Urdu entitled _Lataif-i Hindi_, an anthology of Hindi verse called the
_Sabha-bilas_, a _Sat-sai_ in the style of Bihari-Lal called
_Sapta-satika_ and several other works. He and Jawan worked together
at the _Singhasan Battisi_ (1801), a redaction in mixed Urdu and Hindi
(Devanagari character) of a famous collection of legends relating the
prowess of King Vikramaditya; and he also aided the latter author in
the production of the _Sakuntala Natak_. Mazhar 'Ali Wila was his
collaborator in the _Baital Pachisi_, a collection of stories similar
in many respects to the _Singhasan Battisi_, and also in mixed
Urdu-Hindi; and he aided Wila in the preparation in Urdu of the _Story
of Madhonal_, a romance originally composed in Braj-bhasha by Moti
Ram.
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 Urdu and Hindi, and for the first half of the
19th century their influence in this respect continued almost
unchallenged. Side by side with them, among the Musalman population of
northern India, another almost contemporaneous impulse did much for
the expansion of the Urdu language, and, like the work of the
Vaishnava reformers in moulding literary Hindi, gave an impetus to
composition which might otherwise have been lacking. This was the
reform in Islam led by Sayyid Ahmad[16] and 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 Urdu, and
interested deeply the people to whom the works were addressed.
Sayyid Ahmad was born in 1782, and received his early education at
Delhi; his instructors were two learned Muslims, Shah 'Abdul-'Aziz,
author of a celebrated commentary on the Qur'an (the _Tafsir-i
'Aziziyyah_), and his brother 'Abdu-l-Qadir, the writer of the first
translation of the holy volume into Urdu. Under their guidance Sayyid
Ahmad embraced the doctrines of the Wahhabis, 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 Isma'il Haji,
nephew of 'Abdu-l'Aziz and 'Abdu-l-Qadir, the chief author of the
sect. After a course of preaching and apostleship at Delhi, Sayyid
Ahmad 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 Islam 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 a _jihad_ or holy war against the
Sikhs. In 1828 he started for Peshawar, attended by, it is said,
upwards of 100,000 Indians, and accompanied by his chief followers,
Haji Isma'il and 'Abdu-l-Hayy. 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 Peshawar. The Afghans, 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 Pakhli and Dhamtor, where in 1831 he
encountered a detachment of Sikhs under the command of Sher Singh, and
in the combat he and Haji Isma'il were slain. His sect is, however, by
no means extinct; the Wahhabi 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-Qadir was finished in 1803,
and first published by Sayyid 'Abdullah, a fervent disciple of Sayyid
Ahmad, at Hughli in 1829. The _Tambihu-l-ghafilin_, or "Awakener of
the Heedless," a work in Persian by Sayyid Ahmad, was rendered into
Urdu by 'Abdullah, and published at the same press in 1830. Haji
Isma'il was the author of a treatise in Urdu entitled
_Taqwiyatu-l-Iman_ ("Confirmation of the Faith"), which had great
vogue among the following of the Sayyid. Other works by the disciples
of the _Tariqah-e Muhammadiyyah_ (as the new preaching was called) are
the _Targhib-i Jihad_ ("Incitation to Holy War"), _Hidayatu-l-Muminin_
("Guide of the Believers"), _Muzihu-l-Kabair_ wa-l-Bid'ah ("Exposition
of Mortal Sins and Heresy"), _Naslhatu-l-Muslimin_ ("Admonition to
Muslims"), and the _Mi'at Masail_, 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
Urdu 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 Urdu
and Hindi 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 Urdu and Hindi, 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 Zauq (1854) and Ghalib (1869) of the Delhi school, and
those of Anis (1875) and Dabir (1876) of Lucknow, the end of Urdu
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, Mirza Khan Dagh
(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
Islam led by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) found its bard in
Sayyid Altaf Husain of Panipat, poetically styled Hali--an ambiguous
_nom-de-plume_ now generally taken in the sense of "modern," or
"up-to-date." Hali in his youth was a pupil of the famous Ghalib,
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 Ahmad Khan, 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 his
_Ruba'is_ or 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 Hali's compositions is his long poem
in six-line stanzas (called _musaddas_) on "the flow and ebb of Islam"
(1879), which has had an extraordinary influence in stimulating
enthusiasm in the cause of progress among the Musalmans 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 Hindostan. 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 he explains how the poem came to be written--after a
youth spent in heedlessness and unsettlement, at the instigation of
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, 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 Musalmans is
no longer wholly applicable to the community. Hali has recently
completed a life of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan in two volumes, entitled
_Hayat-i Javid_ ("eternal life"), a work of great merit.
Another writer whose work, though chiefly in prose, deals with poetry
and poetic style, is Maulavi Muhammad Husain Azad, lately professor of
Arabic at the Government College, Lahore. He has not himself composed
much verse; but his biographies of Urdu poets, with criticisms of
their works, entitled _Ab-i Hayat_ ("Water of Life," Lahore, 1883), is
by far the best book dealing with the subject. His prose style is much
admired. As Hali was the pupil of Ghalib, so was Azad that of Zauq, of
whose poems he has published a revised and annotated edition. His
other works in prose are _Qisas-i Hind_, episodes of Indian history
arranged for schools; _Nairang-i Khayal_, an allegory dealing with
human life; and _Darbar-i Akbari_, an account of the reign of Akbar.
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan's life and work are dealt with elsewhere. Among
his literary achievements may be mentioned the _Asarus-Sanadid_
("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 the _Aligarh Institute Gazette_ (started in 1864), and
afterwards (from 1870 onwards) in a periodical entitled
_Tahzibul-Akhlaq_ (or "Muhammadan Social Reformer"), handle all the
problems of religious, social and educational advancement among Indian
Musalmans--the cause with which his life was identified. His great
_Commentary on the Qur'an_, in seven volumes, the last finished only a
few days before his death in 1898, is carried to the end of Surah xx.,
a little more than half the book. In him Urdu 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 Urdu is Shamsul-'Ulama Maulavi Nazir Ahmad
of Delhi, 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 the
_Mir'atul-'Arus_ (or "Brides' Mirror"); _Taubatun-Nasuh_ ("the
Repentance of Nasuh"), _Banatun-Na'sh_ ("the Seven Stars of the Great
Bear"), _Ibnul-Waqt_ ("Son of the Age"), and _Ayama_ ("Widows"). But
Nazir Ahmad is a man of many sides; before he took to novel-writing he
was the principal translator into Urdu of the _Indian 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
Urdu 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 Ahmad Khan.
The novel is one of the most noteworthy features of recent literary
composition in Urdu. 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 Urdu is a work entitled _Fisana-e Azad_, by Pandit Ratan-nath
Sarshar 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 a _feuilleton_ of the _Awadh Akhbar_, of which paper the
author was at the time editor. Another good writer in the same branch
of literature is Maulavi 'Abdul-Halim Sharar, also a native of the
neighbourhood of Lucknow, but settled at Hyderabad. He was editor of a
monthly periodical called the _Dil-gudaz_ ("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 _'Aziz and Virgina_, a tale
of the Crusades, and _Mansur and Mohina_, a story of which the scene
is laid in India at the time of the invasions of Sultan Mahmud of
Ghazni.
Although Urdu chiefly represents Musalman culture, its use is by no
means confined to adherents of that faith. It has just been mentioned
that the most popular Urdu novelist is a Hindu (a Brahman from
Kashmir); and the statistics of the vernacular press show that this
form of the language is widely used by Hindus as well as Musalmans.
Thus, of eighty periodicals in Urdu published in the United Provinces,
twenty-nine are conducted by Hindus; similarly, in the Punjab, of
forty-eight Urdu journals, twenty are edited by Hindus.
"High Hindi" has scarcely adapted itself to modern requirements with
the thoroughness displayed by Urdu. It is taught in the schools where
the population is mainly Hindu, 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 Pandits, the great bulk of them dealing with
religion, philosophy and the ancient literature. There are
thirty-seven Hindi and four Hindi-Urdu journals in the United
Provinces; but many of them are exclusively religious in their
character, and several, though written in Devanagari, employ a mixed
language which admits Persian words freely. The old dialects of
literature, Awadhi and Braj-bhasha, are now only used for poetry; High
Hindi has been a complete failure for this purpose.
The most noticeable authors in Hindi since the middle of the 19th
century have been Babu Harishchandra and Raja Siva Prasad, 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 the _Sundari Tilak_ an anthology of the
best Hindi poetry, and in the _Kabi-bachan-Sudha_ ("ambrosia of the
words of poets") and the magazine called _Harishchandrika_ a 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 his
_Kashmir Kusum_, or history of Kashmir, a list is given of about a
hundred works by him. He was also the real founder of the modern Hindi
drama; he wrote plays himself, and inspired others. Raja Siva Prasad
(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
Hindi, not excessively Sanskritized, and not rejecting current Persian
forms. The society at Benares called the _Nagari Pracharini Sabha_
("Society for promoting the use of the Nagari character") has, since
the death of Harishchandra, been active in procuring the publication
of works in Hindi, and has issued many useful books, besides
conducting a systematic search for old MSS.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The best account in English of Hindi literature is Dr
G. A. Grierson's _Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindostan_, 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's _Histoire de la litterature 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's
_Essay on the Religious Sects of the Hindus_ (vol. i. of his collected
works) has not yet been superseded.
For Urdu poets, Professor Azad's _Ab-i Hayat_ (in Urdu) is the most
trustworthy record. For the new school of Urdu literature reference
may be made to a series of lectures (in English) by Shaikh
'Abdul-Qadir of Lahore, printed in 1898. The catalogues by Professor
Blumhardt of Hindostani and Hindi 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.
(C. J. L.)