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 the Bhakta-mālā, or “Roll of the Bhagats,” 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 in chhappāī 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 īkā (supplement or gloss) in the kabitta metre, 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 the Bhakta-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 the Bhakta-mālā, named the Chaurāsī 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 Wilson[1] (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, 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 the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1889, may be consulted for the names and works of these epigoni. 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 of Kabi-Rāy or 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’s Rāmāyan, and the bhajans of 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.—The origines of 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 a dīwān, or collection of poems, was composed in Rēkhta by Masʽūd, son of Saʽd, in the last half of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century, and that Saʽdi of Shīrāz and his friend Amīr Khusrau[2] 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 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 the prosody. 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 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 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 of mātrās or 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, the Padmāwat, 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 vernaSide 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 the Bhakta-mālā, or “Roll of the Bhagats,” 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 in chhappāī 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 īkā (supplement or gloss) in the kabitta metre, 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 the Bhakta-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 the Bhakta-mālā, named the Chaurāsī 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 Wilson[3] (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, 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 the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1889, may be consulted for the names and works of these epigoni. 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 of Kabi-Rāy or 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’s Rāmāyan, and the bhajans of 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.—The origines of 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 a dīwān, or collection of poems, was composed in Rēkhta by Masʽūd, son of Saʽd, in the last half of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century, and that Saʽdi of Shīrāz and his friend Amīr Khusrau[4] 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 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 the prosody. 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 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 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 of mātrās or 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, the Padmāwat, 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 Mogul cular which was most subject to foreign influences; and with the extension of Mogul
- ↑ Religious Sects, p. 132.
- ↑ Amīr Khusrau is credited with the authorship of many still popular rhymes, riddles or punning verses (called pahēlīs and mukurīs); but these, though often containing Persian words, are in Hindī and scanned according to the prosody of that language; they are, therefore, like Malik Muḥammad’s Padmāwat, not Urdū or Rekhta verse (see Professor Āzād’s Ābi-Ḥayāt, pp. 72-76). A late Dakkhanī poet who used the takkalluṣ of Saʽdī is said by Āzād (p. 79) to have been confused by Mīrzā Rafīʽus-Saudā in his Tazkira with Saʽdī of Shīrāz.
- ↑ Religious Sects, p. 132.
- ↑ Amīr Khusrau is credited with the authorship of many still popular rhymes, riddles or punning verses (called pahēlīs and mukurīs); but these, though often containing Persian words, are in Hindī and scanned according to the prosody of that language; they are, therefore, like Malik Muḥammad’s Padmāwat, not Urdū or Rekhta verse (see Professor Āzād’s Ābi-Ḥayāt, pp. 72-76). A late Dakkhanī poet who used the takkalluṣ of Saʽdī is said by Āzād (p. 79) to have been confused by Mīrzā Rafīʽus-Saudā in his Tazkira with Saʽdī of Shīrāz.
