explains 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, entitled Ḥayāt-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, entitled Äb-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 are Qiṣaṣ-i Hind, episodes of Indian history arranged for schools; Nairang-i Khayāl, an allegory dealing with human life; and Darbār-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 the Ās̤āruṣ-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 the Alīgaṛh Institute Gazette (started in 1864), and afterwards (from 1870 onwards) in a periodical entitled Tahẕībul-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 great Commentary on the Qurʽān, 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-ʽUlamā 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 the Mirʽātul-ʽArūs (or “Brides’ Mirror”); Taubatun-Naṣūḥ (“the Repentance of Naṣūḥ”), Banātun-Naʽsh (“the Seven Stars of the Great Bear”), Ibnul-Waqt (“Son of the Age”), and Ayāmā (“Widows”). But Naẕīr Aḥmad is a man of many sides; before he took to novel-writing he was the principal translator into Urdū 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 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 entitled Fisāna-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 a feuilleton of the Awadh Akhbār, of which paper the author was at the time editor. Another good writer in the same branch of literature is Maulavī ʽAbdul-Ḥalīm Sharar, also a native of the neighbourhood of Lucknow, but settled at Hyderabad. He was editor of a monthly periodical called the Dil-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 ʽAzīz and Virginā, a tale of the Crusades, and Mansūr 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 the Sundarī Tilak an anthology of the best Hindī poetry, and in the Kabi-bachan-Sudhā (“ambrosia of the words of poets”) and the magazine called Harishchandrikā 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 Kashmīr 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 the Nāgarī 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’s Modern 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’s Histoire 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’s Essay on the Religious Sects of the Hindus (vol. i. of his collected works) has not yet been superseded.
For Urdū poets, Professor Āzād’s Āb-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 ʽAbdul-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. (C. J. L.)
HINDU CHRONOLOGY. The subject of Hindu chronology
divides naturally into three parts: the calendar, the eras, and
other reckonings.
I. The Calendar
The Hindus have had from very ancient times the system of lunisolar cycles, made by the combination of solar years, regulated by the course of the sun, and lunar years, regulated by the course of the moon, but treated in such a manner as to keep the beginning of the lunar year near the beginning of the solar year. The exact manner in which they arranged the details of their earliest calendar is still a subject of research. We deal here with their calendar as it now stands, in a form which was developed from about A.D. 400 under the influence of the Greek astronomy which had been introduced into India at no very long time previously.
The Hindu calendar, then, is determined by years of two kinds, solar and lunar. For civil purposes, solar years are used in Bengal, including Orissa, and in the Tamil and Malayāḷam districts of Madras, and lunar years throughout the rest of India. But the lunar year regulates everywhere the general religious rites and festivals, and the details of private and domestic life, such as the selection of auspicious occasions for marriages and for starting on journeys, the choice of lucky moments for shaving, and so on. Consequently, the details of the lunar year are shown even in the almanacs which follow the solar year. On the other hand, certain details of the solar year, such as the course of the sun through the signs and other divisions of the zodiac, are shown in the almanacs which follow the lunar year. We will treat the solar year first, because it governs the lunisolar system, and the explanation of it will greatly simplify the process of explaining the lunar calendar.
